Reducing the emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels and the release of methane gas are but a small part of an environmental crises facing the world. Of overriding concern beyond climate change should be the excessive consumption of all forms of energy, which are used to exploit the material world. Consumption in the modern world has resulted in better health, longer lives, and luxuries unknown until the last two hundred years of human life on earth. However overconsumption has also resulted in the environmental crises we face today.
All life depends on consuming energy. When deprived of it, organic life dies. Humans, like other organisms, have depended almost completely on solar energy since they evolved. That energy is captured by human metabolic processes that depend ultimately on the photosynthesis of plants. For all but the last couple of centuries since they evolved, humans have fitted successfully within the broader natural ecological conditions in which they are embedded. However, in the last two hundred years, since humans discovered how to use fossilized solar energy in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas they have greatly disrupted that natural ecology.. They have created new ways to harness energy and consume natural earth materials in the manufacturing of products, which have allowed humans to liberate themselves from necessary daily demands to produce food but also to produce goods and services in excess any imagined by earlier societies.
For most of human existence, extreme alteration of the earth’s natural ecology was limited 1) by the size of human populations, and 2) by the limited availability in time and space of the material resources that had been until then identified as useful. (Natural resources are cultural evaluations.) Some resources became in short supply; some areas became unsuitable for human exploitation, and humans sometimes became unable to organize themselves to work the resources that supported them. The result was the abandonment of some places, the destruction of many identified resources, and the pollution of particular sites. However, as long as there were new places to occupy, wanted supplies could be obtained from afar, new people’s labor could be harnessed, or the size of human populations remained small, the ecology of the Earth had time to recover or adjust slowly to the changes wrought by human. This was the life of all of the billion or so humans who had lived since homo sapiens had evolved. (In personal terms, the life experienced by all of my ancestors until my grandfathers were born in the mid 19th century.)
Yes, humans had long consumed energy by processing or changing the forms of naturally occurring materials.. When humans altered natural materials to make primitive tools, they used energy stored temporarily in their own bodies. Later they increasingly altered nature by focusing their energy within larger social groups and by the selection of plants and animals for domestication and use. Further advances in manufacturing came with human application of energy in the form of fire to concentrate particular natural materials; in running water, or wind for transportation or driving water or wind mills. Nevertheless, for almost all of human time, energy for human use was primarily based on capturing recent solar radiation.
But wham! New sources of energy that accelerated the processes of transforming Nature were discovered. Coal, and then petroleum and natural gas begot a completely new order of power that humans could focus on making the goods and services they wanted. Innovation, and consciousness of latent desires, essential organic– certainly human traits–were able to break free from old ecological limitations.. At first in England, then northwestern Europe, soon in America, and now the whole world, inherent animal and mental desires found ways to express themselves. People could improve their health, live longer and produce more children who could live into adulthood. They could find ways to make life easier and surround themselves with goods and pleasures never before imaginable. Economies were no longer primarily local and the resources of the world became global, seemingly limited only by human ingenuity. Material progress was born. The ecological imperatives of a world based on solar energy and limitations of human innovation, which had existed since the evolution of humans, were seemingly broken.
For increasing numbers of people–and the numbers of people themselves increased because of these innovations–the “good life” arrived. More people lived longer, had more material goods, could travel the globe, and consume more luxuries–whether to dine out more, live extra months or years in better health; they could attend huge public functions such as ball games, concerts, or movies; and communicate by technologies undreamed of when they were children. The world in which we now live and think of “normal” is based on the exploitation of fossil fuel energy, limitless natural “resources,” and the hubris of boundless human abilities to manage natural processes.
Only within the last hundred years have people become aware of the ecological world in which humans are embedded. And now, seeing major changes in climate, the rise of sea level, increasing wildfires, floods and hurricanes, increasing millions of people see the impact on the earth’s ecology. Many groups now alert us to the losses in biodiversity, to chemical changes to rivers and oceans, and to massive pollution to land, sea, and air by the byproducts of our consumption.
Recent alerts have come from many sources. Here I only refer you to one of the more recent reports detailing the unanticipated or unthought-of negative impacts of the exploitation of fossil fuel energy and massive consumption of natural Earth materials: WWF (2020) Living Planet Report 2020 – Bending the curve of biodiversity loss. Almond, R.E.A., Grooten M. and Petersen, T. (Eds). WWF, Gland, Switzerland. and its accompanying report: WWF (2020) Voices for a Living Planet – Living Planet Report 2020 special edition. Grooten, M. Dillingh, S. and Petersen, T. (Eds). WWF, Gland Switzerland.
Recent trends as shown in these graphs indicate that alterations to earth systems have accelerated greatly especially since 1950.
That they may be nearing a “tipping point” at which time the processes, or systems may be altered so significantly that unstoppable effects may occur.
I refer you to the work of the Stockholm