The Depauperate World of 2049

And what an equitable, just and ecologically sustainable society will look like

The Earth, human society and those species with who we share creation are on a crash course with global ecological collapse characterized by horrific death and destruction. Human populations have exploded and in sum have become a disease consuming the ecological systems which provide for their habitat and being. Environmentalism such as it is remains mostly bureaucratic greenwashing, seeking to defend practices such as ancient forest logging and excessive personal air travel, which are the very activities that have led to our fatal situation in the first place and continue to threaten the Earth. This meander attempts to pull together seemingly discordant themes of recent essays into a coherent vision for your and the Earth’s future.
“Depauperate” — meaning lacking in numbers of variety of species, impoverished — is a particularly apt biological term which captures Gaia’s and humanity’s future prospects rather well given current trends. This reduction in biodiversity through excessive population and consumption is the core of the Earth crisis. The challenge of environmental communication and campaigning is to truthfully highlight the absolutely atrocious, dire, depauperate future with which we are faced; while simultaneously spawning personal actions and societal policies that are of sufficient magnitude to solve global ecological problems. This must be done without entirely bogging down in feelings of desperate helplessness; but not at the expense of not telling the truth, advocating insufficient responses, or justifying continued personal excessive consumption.

There is no road to a sustained, desirable human future that does not include enlightened self-sacrifice and voluntary simplicity as we learn to live well and sustainably in a post-modern age. The obstacles include vile talking heads such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity; that as evil incarnate stupidly and in an ill-informed manner defend a system careening towards planetary self-immolation. And in my opinion only slightly less damaging to long-term planetary prospects are Madonna, Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio — knowing there is an urgent crisis, using their formidable skills to communicate it to others, but showing unwillingness to lead by example and check their own opulent conspicuous consumption.

Earth Meanders