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World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity

20 Years Have Passed Since 1992 World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity

 

World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity (1992)

Some 1,700 of the world’s leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued this appeal in November 1992. The World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity was written and spearheaded by the late Henry Kendall, former chair of UCS’s board of directors.

 

 

Introduction

Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.

 

The environment

The environment is suffering critical stress:

The Atmosphere

Stratospheric ozone depletion threatens us with enhanced ultraviolet radiation at the earth’s surface, which can be damaging or lethal to many life forms. Air pollution near ground level, and acid precipitation, are already causing widespread injury to humans, forests, and crops.

Water Resources

Heedless exploitation of depletable ground water supplies endangers food production and other essential human systems. Heavy demands on the world’s surface waters have resulted in serious shortages in some 80 countries, containing 40 percent of the world’s population. Pollution of rivers, lakes, and ground water further limits the supply.

Oceans

Destructive pressure on the oceans is severe, particularly in the coastal regions which produce most of the world’s food fish. The total marine catch is now at or above the estimated maximum sustainable yield. Some fisheries have already shown signs of collapse. Rivers carrying heavy burdens of eroded soil into the seas also carry industrial, municipal, agricultural, and livestock waste — some of it toxic.

Soil

Loss of soil productivity, which is causing extensive land abandonment, is a widespread by-product of current practices in agriculture and animal husbandry. Since 1945, 11 percent of the earth’s vegetated surface has been degraded — an area larger than India and China combined — and per capita food production in many parts of the world is decreasing.

Forests

Tropical rain forests, as well as tropical and temperate dry forests, are being destroyed rapidly. At present rates, some critical forest types will be gone in a few years, and most of the tropical rain forest will be gone before the end of the next century. With them will go large numbers of plant and animal species.

Living Species

The irreversible loss of species, which by 2100 may reach one-third of all species now living, is especially serious. We are losing the potential they hold for providing medicinal and other benefits, and the contribution that genetic diversity of life forms gives to the robustness of the world’s biological systems and to the astonishing beauty of the earth itself. Much of this damage is irreversible on a scale of centuries, or permanent. Other processes appear to pose additional threats. Increasing levels of gases in the atmosphere from human activities, including carbon dioxide released from fossil fuel burning and from deforestation, may alter climate on a global scale. Predictions of global warming are still uncertain — with projected effects ranging from tolerable to very severe — but the potential risks
are very great.

Our massive tampering with the world’s interdependent web of life — coupled with the environmental damage inflicted by deforestation, species loss, and climate change — could trigger widespread adverse effects, including unpredictable collapses of critical biological systems whose interactions and dynamics we only imperfectly understand.

Uncertainty over the extent of these effects cannot excuse complacency or delay in facing the threats.

 

Population

The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth’s limits. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair.

Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth. A World Bank estimate indicates that world population will not stabilize at less than 12.4 billion, while the United Nations concludes that the eventual total could reach 14 billion, a near tripling of today’s 5.4 billion. But, even at this moment, one person in five lives in absolute poverty without enough to eat, and one in ten suffers serious malnutrition.

No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished.

 

Warning

We the undersigned, senior members of the world’s scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.

 

What we must do

Five inextricably linked areas must be addressed simultaneously:

We must bring environmentally damaging activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth’s systems we depend on.

We must, for example, move away from fossil fuels to more benign, inexhaustible energy sources to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of our air and water. Priority must be given to the development of energy sources matched to Third World needs — small-scale and relatively easy to implement.

We must halt deforestation, injury to and loss of agricultural land, and the loss of terrestrial and marine plant and animal species.

We must manage resources crucial to human welfare more effectively.

We must give high priority to efficient use of energy, water, and other materials, including expansion of conservation and recycling.

We must stabilize population.

This will be possible only if all nations recognize that it requires improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.

We must reduce and eventually eliminate poverty.

We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.

 

Developed Nations Must Act Now

The developed nations are the largest polluters in the world today. They must greatly reduce their overconsumption, if we are to reduce pressures on resources and the global environment. The developed nations have the obligation to provide aid and support to developing nations, because only the developed nations have the financial resources and the technical skills for these tasks.

Acting on this recognition is not altruism, but enlightened self-interest: whether industrialized or not, we all have but one lifeboat. No nation can escape from injury when global biological systems are damaged. No nation can escape from conflicts over increasingly scarce resources. In addition, environmental and economic instabilities will cause mass migrations with incalculable consequences for developed and undeveloped nations alike.

Developing nations must realize that environmental damage is one of the gravest threats they face, and that attempts to blunt it will be overwhelmed if their populations go unchecked. The greatest peril is to become trapped in spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic, and environmental collapse.

Success in this global endeavor will require a great reduction in violence and war. Resources now devoted to the preparation and conduct of war — amounting to over $1 trillion annually — will be badly needed in the new tasks and should be diverted to the new challenges.

A new ethic is required — a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. We must recognize the earth’s limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged. This ethic must motivate a great movement, convincing reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes.

The scientists issuing this warning hope that our message will reach and affect people everywhere. We need the help of many.

  • We require the help of the world community of scientists — natural, social, economic, and political.
  • We require the help of the world’s business and industrial leaders.
  • We require the help of the world’s religious leaders.
  • We require the help of the world’s peoples.

We call on all to join us in this task.

Complete list of signatures available at http://www.deoxy.org/sciwarn.htm

Union of Concerned Scientists, 96 Church Street, Cambridge, Mass 02238-9105,

USA

[email protected]

Union of Concerned Scientists

Phone – 617-547-5552 Fax – 617-864-9405

 

 

 

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A New Kind Of Capitalism

It is becoming increasingly clear that no economic program or transaction can be successful without taking humanity into consideration. Today, if I want to make a successful deal with someone, my new thinking should be: “What would be good for my business in the “round”, integrated, common world? Perhaps I should make sure my business is good for everybody…”

A business can be successful on a condition that I am concerned about other people and their families as much as I am care about my own. If we realize that to live well means to “feed each other”,  that I wouldn’t be able to find a piece of bread unless you brought it to me and you would not be able to feed yourself unless I gave you a piece of cake, then we would gladly agree to stat doing just that – caring for all as we care of ourselves.

We need to acknowledge that the world has changed and requires for us to re-consider our egoistic ways; we have to take into consideration that we must contribute to the world and prepare ourselves for this new world through global education. A new economy will not work unless its aim is global and integrative, in line with producing goods and services for the benefit of the whole world.

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A Glimpse Into The New World

One may ask, “How do we help to bring this new integrated world about, where everybody willingly accepts and joyfully follows the law of interdependence and mutual responsibility?”

It has to start with a motivation to study ourselves: what it means to be a complete human being, what the correct environment is, and how we can influence one another favorably – in a manner that is good for everyone.

To accomplish that, each of us must become a self-observing scientist, an analyst who studies him or herself as a unique contributor to the common happiness, and the society as a whole – as the most natural, nurturing element necessary for raising a wholesome human being. This requires that we first learn how to get along and co-exist with others and know how to prevent mindless, impulsive conflicts, fraught with total destruction.

The entire history of human development was propelled by the notion that some new social, political, or economic system would serve us better than the previous one. If that’s true, why are we still not living in the happy future, after we’ve tried all known paradigms? The answer is – they all failed. Hence, these days humanity finds itself at odds with what used to be the ultimate goal – pleasure. It simply became too hard to reach. Today, we are more apathetic than anxious, disillusioned than hopeful, drained of ambition and ideals.

Clearly, our next evolutionary state must be fundamentally different from the current one, which brings us hardly any satisfaction, but is replete with disappointment, frustration, and fatigue. We are no longer thrilled with this world. It has become so corrupt and saturated by our egos that by obeying them, we are placing ourselves and each other in great danger.

We are becoming increasingly aware that there is nothing in this world to build on. Marriage, friendship, work, government – these anchors of human life are shaken and have nearly collapsed, which prompts us to seek how to reform, rebuild them so as to make these essential social rudiments match the structure of the harmonious world we all desire. Therefore, as we evaluate our lives and count disappointments, let’s try to view it as a transition into the new life and opportunity to change.

This is a special time indeed, as we zoom down the road to a brand new world. The signs are getting clearer as we approach a future where we feel interconnected, equal, like one great family whose members are mutually responsible and therefore prosperous and happy.

It serves us to study the rules of the road – this new world’s laws – so we can transition from childhood to maturity smoothly and painlessly. Until now, we were evolving by Nature’s push, being programmed with new desires and forced to actualize them.

This is no longer the case. As we stare down the blind alley – the egoistic self – we must assess our next step with a new, altruist attitude: What is our next destination and how will we get there? Unlike our previous, instinctive behaviors in times of transition, today’s shift requires our conscious participation. Instead of being blind passengers rowing down the river of life, we must assume the driver’s seat in this evolutionary process.

For the first time in history, Nature is demanding that all of us, without exception achieve complete comprehension of who we are, the world we live in, and why we are in it to begin with. Our primary duty is to understand and know the essence of life, if we wish to be truly human.

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Author Charles Eisenstein Says Occupy Wall St. Is A Different Type Of Revolution

The system isn’t working for the 1% either. You know, if you were a CEO, you would be making the same choices they do. Institutions have their own logic. Life is pretty bleak at the top too; and all the baubles of the rich – they’re kind of this phony compensation for the loss of what is really important: the loss of community, the loss of connection, the loss of intimacy, the loss of meaning.”

That statement was made by Charles Eisenstein, author of Sacred Economics, in the below video, which was made as part of a documentary film project in the works titled Occupy Love. The film asks the question: “how are the economic and ecological crises we are facing today a great love story?”

Watch Occupy Wall St – The Revolution Is Love [5 min.]:

Highlighted quotes from the video:

As More People Wake Up, The Easier It Is To Change

I think now, as more and more people wake up to the truth, that we’re here to give, and wake up to that desire, and wake up to the fact that the other way isn’t working anyway; the more reinforcement we have from people around us that this isn’t crazy, this makes sense, this is how to live.

And as we get that reinforcement, our minds and our logic no longer have to fight against the logic of the heart which wants us to be of service. This shift of consciousness which inspires such things is universal in everybody – the 99% and the 1%. And it’s awakening in different people in different ways.”

The Felt Experience Of Connection

An economist says that the more for you is essentially less for me, but the lover knows that the more for you is more for me, too. If you love somebody then their happiness is your happiness; their pain is your pain.

Your sense of self expands to include other beings. That’s love. Love is expansion of the self to include the other. And that’s a different kind of revolution: there’s no one to fight, there’s no ‘other’ in this revolution.

Everyone has a unique calling and it’s really time to listen to that. That’s what the future is going to be. It’s time to get ready for it, help contribute to it and make it happen.”

Click here for more information about the film Occupy Love

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Observing The Law Of Interdependence

For decades, leading scientists have been trying to explain to us Nature’s law of interdependence, which also includes us, humans. And because of that law, we cannot keep avoiding one another. On the contrary, our interdependence is constantly growing – moment to moment, day to day.

Historians and economists warn against nations adopting policies of protectionism and isolation in an effort to secure them from the harms of the global crisis by disconnecting themselves from one another.

These warnings are valid because they are based on thorough knowledge of history, which shows that such attempts oppose the trajectory of human development that dictates for us to seek each other’s company. So it has been since humanity’s dawn. Yet, our desire for isolation and independence, the culmination of our egoistic growth, has led us to the global crisis we are experiencing today.

This begs a question: Is it really to our benefit? After all, perhaps Nature is steering us toward a new and better life, while we, humankind, keep stomping our feet in a stubborn tantrum – we want what we want and we want it now, regardless of what it is going to cost. In other words, to know and ignore the truth about our collective predicament is similar to knowing and ignoring the laws of physics: being aware of gravity and still jumping off a roof leads to a predictable consequence – we’ll get hurt!

All our technological and scientific achievements, along with the theoretical and experiential knowledge we have accumulated over the course of history, had but one simple objective: to learn the laws of Nature so we could become its master and use it to our benefit.

To use the previous example with the law of gravity—not only have we learned to avoid its harmful aspect (falling down and getting hurt) but we also applied it to various areas of life: construction, transportation, and so on. Similarly, Nature’s laws can be applied to repair our relationships, the broken human connection between people, societies, and nations.

The deeper our knowledge of the laws of Nature, particularly laws pertaining to environment, society, individual and social psychology, the more correctly we can carry them out and quickly and efficiently fix the broken bonds tying us together. The only other option is to initiate a “divorce”, with all that it entails – a world war ending in millions of casualties.

Essentially, the crisis is overtaking the family we call humanity. But if we heal the connection between us, we will resolve all existing manifestations of the crisis. It is our duty to awaken everyone to the fact that we must consider everybody’s welfare, all seven billion of us, and in return, find a life of peace, security, and happiness. The bottom line is that we must take responsibility for one another just as in a family and healthy ecosystem.

 


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Ecologize Growth

The words “Economy” and “Ecology” both come from the Greek word “Ecos,” meaning “household.” In other words, Ecology is the science about how to arrange our household on the planet Earth, and Economy sets forth the rules by which this household should operate. Therefore, we shouldn’t separate ecology from economy.

Economy and ecology both have their own natural laws. And if we’re building an artificial economy, one that’s based on our own invented rules instead of the rules embedded in nature, then we’re leading ourselves to bankruptcy. Nature is a massive, complex, harmoniously designed, living household. By meddling in it and violating its laws, we induce the crisis. The entire economy must be reconstructed from being an economy of consumption to an ecologically correct economy – an economy of sensible consumption.