Our Nature Reality: Current State of the Biosphere
The Biosphere Under Stress
Every ecosystem on earth is under stress and individual species are adapting, migrating, or disappearing… permanently. The WWF 2018 Living Planet Report shows that the size of vertebrate populations across the Earth has declined by 60% on average (1970-2014). The Living Planet Index, which synthesizes trends in vertebrate populations, shows species declining rapidly since 1970, with reductions of 40% for terrestrial species, 84% for freshwater species and 35% for marine species. What’s happening to our Garden of Eden? Where have all the flowers, plants, and animals gone?
Could this rapid extinction happening be our true, albeit grave present reality? Have we finally as a living biosphere arrived at earth’s ecological cliff? And if our species is fundamentally responsible for this ecological demise, then what are we going to do to course correct? Will we jump over the edge of the cliff or join efforts to build a bridge and walk into a new, regenerated earth paradigm, together? Will we risk our Garden of Eden–our comfortable, stable climate, and bring an end to the Holocene that has been defined by abundant biodiversity and life? Have we already committed ourselves to transitioning out of the Holocene and into the Anthropocene– an epoch defined, driven, and determined by our one species, Homo sapiens (wise ones)? What will our human-divined epoch look like? What legacy will we live out and leave to the 3.8 billion year, ever-evolving, living history of the biosphere upon which we live and with which we are a part? Will we calibrate and design our future human civilization to be in symbiosis and right balance with our fellow citizens and our fellow creatures? Are we aware that we are dependent upon one another and a healthy, regenerating natural environment for the survival of all living species, as well as our own? Have we already crossed a planetary threshold– reached critical tipping points, triggering earth systems to accelerate positive feedback loops (e.g. melting sea ice, permafrost thaw, destabilized forests) that now irreversibly, symptomatically, and without sympathy, are now automatically causing our earth’s operating system to drive in a different bio-physical, climate direction?
UN Headquarters, New York
To Be A Cautious Optimist: Retro-Casting our Future toward 2030
The “Cautious Optimist” mindset–embraced by Christiana Figueres, is the right one. We can’t afford as a global society to glaze over nearly universal scientific observation of anomalous climate trends and degraded nature patterns, worldwide. We can’t afford to downplay the severity, scale, and systemic nature of our current ailing earth reality- no matter how scary. We certainly can’t afford to remain uninformed and non-critical of economic or political decisions affecting our home planet, to ignore or remain ignorant of the nature-climate reality showing up in fires, floods, droughts, or heat waves seemingly now ubiquitous around the world. We can’t afford to live another day without a sense of individual responsibility and recognition of our personal power to take action through our every action to make conscious choices in the way we eat, move, live, design our living-working spaces, and create our world. According to Peter Diamandis (co-author of Abundance), there has never been a better time in human history, where more individuals have had the power to influence the future, than now. If we can invent our future; if a positive mind produces positive outcomes; if we are naturally intelligently hardwired for cooperation and care of another (E.O.Wilson); and if our innovative, intelligent species is now in the ecological, evolutionary driver’s seat to manifest an extraordinary future that works for all life on earth; then WOW this next chapter of life on earth is going to be extraordinary.
If you want to learn more about the author, Catherine Cunningham, and her creative work to awaken natural intelligence in the world, please visit Natural Intelligence Media.
Catherine’s Weekly Natural Intelligence Worldwide podcast with Eurovision News can be found HERE.
Catherine’s current book, Naturally Intelligent by Design can be found HERE.
