ix
career as a soil scientist was disillusioned as Borlaug saw populations exploding
from 2.2 billion when I was born to over 7 billion today. In 1986, he wrote to me,
“Many put great emphasis on ecological problems and to me one of the great unrecognized parts of the equation that bears on ecological systems is human population
pressure and yet, one seldom hears the ecologists speak out about the population
monster.” Norman Borlaug’s successful battle to give birth to the Green Revolution
ultimately served as but one more desperate stop-gap measure that could not prevent
inequitable distribution of staples, or the sheer expansion of populations forever
undermining gains in high-yielding varieties, an equation for unstoppable chronic
malnutrition in large population pockets across the globe. There were 2 billion people on the planet in 1930. Today there are 7.7 billion. Since the publication of the
authors’ book, World War III, 2.2 billion more people have been added to the planet.
At the turn of the century there will be over 10 billion. Indeed, if current total fertility rates continue, our species might even exceed 11.5 billion.
And yet, as Tobias and Morrison point out in so many ways, while most species’
well-being is measured, in part, by the degree of their reproductive success, in the
case of Homo sapiens, we have clearly outsmarted ourselves. What are key drivers,
stressors, psychological components and ethical inflection points that might yet
enable our species to grow up, to make peace with the world, to learn from our all
but 330,000 year+ history? We are newborns who have, as Nikos Kazantzakis warns
in one of the chapters, discovered fire and are ready to burn up the world. Is this
destiny socio-biological? Are there compassion fatigue/regeneration bifurcation
points where we can, as individuals, and as a collective, transcend moral bankruptcy? Total self-destruction? Or is our destiny implacable, against the unflexing,
albeit resilient combination of biomes, over 40% of which our species has already
appropriated for its own fast increasing wants and desires?
The stranglehold of the self-interested political and economic structures is illuminated by the scientists, politicians, writers, artists and world leaders exquisitely
detailed in Michael and Jane’s prose. As is the senseless destruction of habitat that
supports the myths of exponential growth, revealing the sheer cruelty to most other
species and the billions of other humans caught in a path of evolution we ourselves
have commandeered.
On the Nature of Ecological Paradox represents an intellectual and ethical breakthrough, by the very courage of its principles and sturdiness of its arguments. And
by these two leading thinkers bringing such wide experience, data and wisdom to
the most profound ecological and moral crises of our time. They have faced the
abyss head-on, though not without flinching. There is a personal through-story in
this great book that lends an emotional underpinning to all that they describe,
explore and theorize. They passionately and persuasively bring to the open tables of
science, mathematics and the many histories of consciousness a dramatic, sometimes terrifying focus upon the deeply frustrating reality that, despite sound reasoning and a plethora of information widely promulgated regarding the many
human-imposed plights to the planet, it is more often the fact that what is good for
the earth and all that dwell therein is not what humans want. By that predisposition,
our future – and that of all others - is indeed imperiled. Few intellects in the world
Foreword
career as a soil scientist was disillusioned as Borlaug saw populations exploding
from 2.2 billion when I was born to over 7 billion today. In 1986, he wrote to me,
“Many put great emphasis on ecological problems and to me one of the great unrecognized parts of the equation that bears on ecological systems is human population
pressure and yet, one seldom hears the ecologists speak out about the population
monster.” Norman Borlaug’s successful battle to give birth to the Green Revolution
ultimately served as but one more desperate stop-gap measure that could not prevent
inequitable distribution of staples, or the sheer expansion of populations forever
undermining gains in high-yielding varieties, an equation for unstoppable chronic
malnutrition in large population pockets across the globe. There were 2 billion people on the planet in 1930. Today there are 7.7 billion. Since the publication of the
authors’ book, World War III, 2.2 billion more people have been added to the planet.
At the turn of the century there will be over 10 billion. Indeed, if current total fertility rates continue, our species might even exceed 11.5 billion.
And yet, as Tobias and Morrison point out in so many ways, while most species’
well-being is measured, in part, by the degree of their reproductive success, in the
case of Homo sapiens, we have clearly outsmarted ourselves. What are key drivers,
stressors, psychological components and ethical inflection points that might yet
enable our species to grow up, to make peace with the world, to learn from our all
but 330,000 year+ history? We are newborns who have, as Nikos Kazantzakis warns
in one of the chapters, discovered fire and are ready to burn up the world. Is this
destiny socio-biological? Are there compassion fatigue/regeneration bifurcation
points where we can, as individuals, and as a collective, transcend moral bankruptcy? Total self-destruction? Or is our destiny implacable, against the unflexing,
albeit resilient combination of biomes, over 40% of which our species has already
appropriated for its own fast increasing wants and desires?
The stranglehold of the self-interested political and economic structures is illuminated by the scientists, politicians, writers, artists and world leaders exquisitely
detailed in Michael and Jane’s prose. As is the senseless destruction of habitat that
supports the myths of exponential growth, revealing the sheer cruelty to most other
species and the billions of other humans caught in a path of evolution we ourselves
have commandeered.
On the Nature of Ecological Paradox represents an intellectual and ethical breakthrough, by the very courage of its principles and sturdiness of its arguments. And
by these two leading thinkers bringing such wide experience, data and wisdom to
the most profound ecological and moral crises of our time. They have faced the
abyss head-on, though not without flinching. There is a personal through-story in
this great book that lends an emotional underpinning to all that they describe,
explore and theorize. They passionately and persuasively bring to the open tables of
science, mathematics and the many histories of consciousness a dramatic, sometimes terrifying focus upon the deeply frustrating reality that, despite sound reasoning and a plethora of information widely promulgated regarding the many
human-imposed plights to the planet, it is more often the fact that what is good for
the earth and all that dwell therein is not what humans want. By that predisposition,
our future – and that of all others - is indeed imperiled. Few intellects in the world
Foreword