Ecology Is the Meaning of Life
By Dr. Glen Barry
Naturally evolved ecosystems are marvels that make Earth
habitable, yet sadly they and all life are threatened
Ultimately, all humanity and all life have is the biosphere,
the thin layer of life just above and below Earth’s surface, composed of
ancient, miraculously evolved natural ecosystems. The natural Earth is a marvel
– a complex coupling of species within ecosystems, whereby life begets life.
Ecology is far more than the study of life and its environment.
The word is used here as a synonym for ecosystems – the vibrant connections
that emerge between species across scales, which cumulatively make life on
Earth possible.
Nature is far, far more than pretty plants and animals.
Ecosystems make Earth habitable, providing water, food, air, shelter, and more
– everything that we need and desire to live well. In naturally evolved
ecosystems, from genes to individual organisms and species, to ecosystems and
everything else in between, each living being present fulfills a niche which
sustains itself, its neighbors, and the whole.
All species uniquely express evolutionary brilliance and
have a purpose, a reason for being, a right to exist, and are necessary to
maintain life’s full potential. From the lowly worm to soaring eagles, to the
human race – all naturally evolved life has value and relies upon all the rest.
Even seemingly noxious disease organisms and man-eating predators have a role
to play in maintaining ecological balance.
The Earth as a whole is a living organism, similar
biologically to a cell, plant, animal, or ecosystem. Without large intact
ecosystems, Earth becomes uninhabitable. Yet sadly, she is being murdered by
industrial human growth at the expense of ecosystems. Past certain planetary
boundary conditions, like any life, Earth can die.
The vibrant mélange of life found in natural ecosystems is
godlike in its all-embracing nurturing. Ecology is the meaning of life.
Ecosystem Collapse
Humankind’s demand for resources and growth overwhelms
nature, our steady diminishment of ecosystems abruptly changes climate, and
this is collapsing the
biosphere. Global ecosystems – water, air, food,
forests, oceans, wetlands, and more – are collapsing and dying under the burden
of human industrial and population growth.
Human destruction of natural ecosystems and disintegrating
climatic integrity are already past critical thresholds. Humanity (meaning each
of us) can’t dump filth into air, defecate into water, kill and diminish
natural vegetation, plunder oceans, and expect a habitable Earth and decent
lives. Abrupt climate change is indicative of much broader decline, both
ecological and social – habitat loss, water shortages, inequitable
overconsumption, dead oceans, nationalistic injustice, and industrial agriculture
– that threatens life itself.
Comforts of modern life for some come at the expense of
utterly decimating natural ecosystems required to sustain life; such comforts
cannot last. Mass chaos and death are sure to ensue. No one will survive abrupt
climate change, ecosystem loss, and biosphere collapse.
Ecosystems are being wantonly liquidated based upon the myth
that we can grow forever. Yet we know perpetual exponential economic growth is
impossible on a finite planet. Humanity is systematically dismantling Earth’s
environmental life support systems, and at most a few more decades of
industrial growth will be inevitably followed by ecosystem and biosphere
collapse.
The human family is epically failing to protect and restore
ecosystems and reduce greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to avert global
ecosystem collapse, achieve ecological sustainability, and enjoy universal
well-being forever. The brutal manner in which humankind treats Earth, other
species, and each other makes a mockery of claims of being civilized. At our
worst, we have become out-of-control vermin destroying our own habitat for
momentary pleasure.
The human family is in ecological overshoot, having exceeded
Earth’s carrying capacity, and is pulling down all species and the biosphere
with us, as Earth’s life collapses into nothingness. There is no easy way out,
as together we face an end to ecology, and thus life itself.
Sustainability Solutions Exist
Workable solutions to climate change and broad-based
environmental decline exist; they include ending fossil fuels, protecting and
restoring ecosystems, agro-ecological food production, reducing population and
inequity, and establishing a steady state economy. Plainly, however, such a
transition is not going to be easy. Solutions to avert global ecosystem
collapse will be disruptive. Yet there is no alternative if together humanity
is to survive and enjoy well-being within Earth’s ecological boundaries.
Industrial growth at the expense of ecosystems and climate
must end as soon as possible. For human and all life’s survival and well-being,
intact ecosystems must remain the context for human endeavors. Huge potential
exists to further develop organic, permaculture based agro-ecological systems
for growing our food. Ultimately, we are all challenged to create something of
worth from our hands and minds working on the land, based upon regenerating and
nurturing ecosystems, for our daily sustenance.
We each must nurture a sense of enoughness, realizing more
isn’t always better, particularly if it undermines our natural habitat, and
thus our ability to persist.
It is not too late to embrace an ecology ethic. But the
longer we wait, the more limited our options. Despite pernicious trends in
ecological decline – and allowing for the possibility of a deep resiliency to
the Earth System of which we are unaware – out of love of life, we owe it to
Earth, kindred species, and kids everywhere to try everything possible to save
being.
Growth in industry, population, consumption, and inequity
cannot be maintained. Together we must reach a steady state economy whereby
natural capital is replenished, not diminished. Through measures like educating
all girls and providing birth control to all, we must urgently pursue
reductions in human population, the most basic human impact upon the climate
and ecosystems, or the biosphere collapses.
Ignorance and superstition must be banished through
education and promoting a love of truth, justice, knowledge, wisdom, and
fairness.
For capitalism to have any future and avoid social, ecological,
and economic collapse on a dead planet, it must learn to price external costs
and environmental risk now, while
rejecting its obsession with growth as the
ultimate measure of well-being. Otherwise industrial capitalism will have to be
replaced soon just so most may survive, let alone thrive.
Alternatives exist that are fair and reward hard work, but
sadly we find it easier to consider the end of life on Earth, rather than
embrace essential social change.
For human survival and well-being, committing acts of
ecocide that destroy ecosystems must somehow be made unacceptable, and this
must be enforced. The environment movement must make more of an effort to
communicate the complexity of ecological crises, their profound risk, and these
and other sufficient solutions – while resolutely rejecting and outing
greenwash that legitimates ecocidal activities.
The green movement must also move beyond awareness-raising
stunts and build a broad-based movement to seize power and to implement the
ecological policies necessary to sustain being.
Only total societal reorganization away from destroying
ecosystems and burning fossil fuels can save Earth and humanity. Either
humanity finds a way together to implement difficult ecological policies to end
fossil fuels, protect ecosystems, and achieve a steady-state economy – or it is
the end. No measures except indiscriminate terrorism targeting innocents can be
off the table in efforts to together protect ecology.
Hope in Ecosystems
Today free your mind and senses to see ecology everywhere,
in everything you do, and the myriad ways it suffers from human hubris,
indifference, ignorance, and overuse. As long as together we still breathe,
there is hope we can sustain Earth, but realistically the state of ecosystems
and the biosphere is grim and worsening. We must start in haste, today, to
build the world that is possible and needed.
Love of other peoples and species, nature, truth, justice,
and equity are the only lasting basis of global ecological sustainability and
show the only effective way forward to avoid final ecosystem collapse. For a
sustainable, decent future we must go back to the land, stop burning fossil
fuels, and nurture ecosystems and one another.
We are one human family with inalienable rights and duties
to freedom, work, equity, peace, justice, and sustained ecology. Profound
inequity, ecological collapse, persistent injustice, nationalistic perma-war,
superstition, and ignorance when faced with truth – all are sicknesses that mar
human potential and will prove fatal.
Together the human family either learns to live well
together within intact ecosystems and without fossil fuels or faces a period of
profound suffering, followed by biosphere collapse and the end of being.
Together we could end the current system’s elite rule, inequity, injustice, and
gross ecological negligence at any time. Either we act together soon,
courageously, on the basis of truthful ecological knowledge, or else each of us
alone faces misery and a final apocalyptic global ecological collapse.
Ecology is the meaning of life. Truth, justice, equity, and
sustainability are the ideals whereby ecology can be maintained. Let’s make it
so.
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