Dominic Stratton

Professor Cassel

English 1201

10 April 2019

Sustainability and Humankind

Will a lack of environmental sustainability lead to the end of humankind? A very

daunting question indeed, however it's a very important one. Assuming in our lifetimes the world

will not undergo a massive catastrophic event such as an asteroid impact or thermonuclear

holocaust. There are a number of things we as a species need to consider about our sustainable

future. World population is increasing at an alarming exponential rate. With the advanced

medical techniques of today people are living a lot longer. Each individual on this planet has an

immediate and constant effect on the environment, stepping on a blade of grass can alter an

entire ecosystem. The balance and tranquility of natural processes have taken millions of years to

come into being. Earth is an extremely rare catalyst for life in the chaotic universe, and it could

all be for nothing because of egotistical consumerist behavior patterns on a massive scale. To

consider ourselves an environmentally sustainable species, we must be able to thrive and survive

forever. Based on the current research, this may be impossible for us because of apathetic human

tendencies. What can we predict about the future of humanity in the next hundred years? Will

our children have a sky to walk under? Questions I set out to answer because I am now an adult

member of the species and need to understand and propagate the positive future of mankind. I

nor should anyone else allow the destruction of natural ecosystems continue.

The urgency of environmental sustainability seems to depend entirely on the individual

you ask about it. The current most powerful mindset is the military-industrial globalist, capitalist
ideal. The ultimate goal of this ideal would be for everyone to have a new solid gold car each

consecutive year, and we would all have access to thermonuclear warheads for personal

protection under the law. This model, is obviously not sustainable in the slightest, and if it

persists into the modern age will inevitably lead

to war, extreme poverty, and suffering. The

mindset of the cut throat capitalist is an

egocentric behavioral pattern which is

characterized as thinking only of oneself, without

regard for the feelings or desires of others.

Inherently the goals and agendas of a culture are

set by those that have the most power over others. Government organizations prioritize

modernizing weaponization rather than investing in humanistic endeavours such as space travel.

The future of humanity should aim towards complex scientific and technological advancement

and adaptation based on our environment. For example mining our planet for resources is

inefficient and destructive compared to the resources we could be collecting in space from

asteroids and other planets. For environmentally conscious scientist there is a more hopeful view

of the future that involves fulfilling the natural human desire to understand the universe.

Scientists and researchers around the world have made the personal decision to take immediate

action mitigating the crisis of environmental destruction, and discover new ways of cultivating a

prosperous future.

The first thing to do when looking at the environments health is to examine it for what it

is, as outlined in (“Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our

Common Future”).”From space, we can see and study the Earth as an organism whose health
depends on the health of all its parts. We have the power to reconcile human affairs with natural

laws and to thrive in the process.” (p.2) Human beings have become parasitic to the earth as a

complex living object. Ideally man should live in a partnership with nature. In order to develop

this symbiotic relationship a complex understanding of this issue must be formulated. (“Journal

of Environmental Sustainability”), John Morelli explains that this complex issue requires

extensive evaluation of the values within nations and communities to change

consumeristic patterns of behavior, into reliable renewable way to live alongside the

progression of nature. (“Our common future”) was extensive in regards to large scale

human related environmental events such as pipeline explosions, oil spills, fires, and

flooding all caused by human interactions. As the artificial structures designed to store

toxic waste, hold back the power of nature, and support the massive consumption of

fossil fuels start to fail they will cause massive amounts of damage to there surrounding

ecosystems.

What a majority of people don't understand is that one dysfunctional tendency

leads to people living very unsustainable and destructive lifestyles because of their

socioeconomic status and privilege. For example if I spend 20 years working a corporate

job where the primary goal is to produce as much of a product as efficiently as possible.

Then my intentionality will be motivated by the accumulation of more money and stuff.

The only way to progress in such an environment is to increase materialistic

competitiveness and adopt a mindset where the worker is submissive to the large entity

of the corporation. These attitudes that shape a person's lifestyle represent what's most

damaging to the natural ecosystem. With a more competition based economy workers are
encouraged to drink coffee on a daily basis. Caffeine is a drug that is primarily distributed

in plastic packaging. If an individual believes their ability to perform at a corporate job

with coffee is more important than saving the environment, they will continue to

consume unhealthy plastic products and further support the corporations that create

problems. This all means that negative dysfunctional tendencies are cyclical and can only

be stopped or changed by a change or disruption of the status quo. Such change is

motivated by the passionate pursuit of lasting peace and tranquility of natural ecosystems.

A primary threat to the food chain and the environment on a global scale is the human

created threat of plastic disposal that is covering the surface of the earth. The most dangerous

attitude we have developed toward plastic is the “out of sight out of mind” approach. Putting this

massive amount of waste out of sight is proving to be extremely difficult. In (‘‘Plastics Pollution:

A New Common Concern of Humankind?’’) Balraj K. Sidhui and Bharat H. Desai go into

extensive detail encompassing the scale of this issue. “More than 300 million tonnes of plastics

are manufactured every year.7 India generates around 5.6 million tonnes of plastic waste

annually.” In this journal they explain how plastic is polluting every ecosystem on the planet as

far reaching as the bottom of the ocean. And the amount of plastic pollution is not decreasing

according to this statistic by Marine life and land animals mistake the many forms and colors of

plastic as food. For this reason researchers believe a huge portions of sea animals will have

plastic in there bodies. The implications of this are that plastic can only break down into smaller

and smaller individuals pieces and microplastic will inevitably make it into our food supply.

Plastic use in consumerist society will only increase as long as the companies producing it are

not made responsible by the consumer. It seems important to identify that our best method for

mitigating huge amounts of toxic, organic, and construction waste is in massive landfills, these
disposals will have a huge place in the fossil record for the rest of all existence. Even a global

cleanup effort to recycle every piece of trash on the planet could not remove all the plastic from

the ecosystem. Yet the vast majority of consumers have no conscious awareness of the plastic

they use every single day which is all thrown away.

In (‘’Population–Environment Interactions:

European Migration, Population Composition and Climate

Change”) by Sarah Harper explains the effect of large

scale human behavior. Within the current system of socio

economic values. The number of extremely poor people

will increase alongside the population of privileged members of the population. But the poor will

not have as much access to clean water, nutritional food, or even an education. Further dividing

the poor from the rich.”It has been argued that many cities will need to adapt to mitigate the

impact of short and long term climate change. However, most urban dwellers are left vulnerable

in cities with lim- ited infrastructure and services needed to mitigate climate change-related risks,

and with inadequate political and institutional systems. The existing vulnerability of African

cities, for example, with their fast growing populations and weak management, means any

environmental change is likely to have significant consequences”(Harper p.528) Ironically the

higher class members of modern society have a much larger damaging impact on the

environment than more primitive societies. A woman with five kids living in upstate new york

will have a vastly greater ecological footprint than a ugandan woman with 5 kids living in a

village. So the most highly valued economic system in the world is the least sustainable in

practical terms. This would suggest a need for humanity to return to a relationship with nature

that puts its values over the neurotic needs of the consumerist human. Accepting the reality that
we should be prioritising adequate urban organization to accommodate everyone rather than

retaining nationalistic or socioeconomic based values.

A very crucial aspect of this to consider is the huge populations of people that live in

cities and how the modern era makes cities some of the largest places of resource consumption

and human based pollution in the world. I read about this in (‘’Environment, health &

sustainability in the context of cities.’’) By Arlindo Philippi Jr. It outlines how it is imperative to

use the technology and resources we have available

to eliminate human suffering in the forms of poverty

and social inequality. “Currently, 54% of the world’s

population live in big cities, where this number

should reach 66% in 2050. Today, the situation is

even more alarm- ing in Latin America and the

Caribbean, where 80% of the population already lives

in urban areas, with the perspective of increasing to

87% until 2050. This means that 650 of the 750 million people are expected to live in urban

areas in this region by 2050.” (Phillipi p.1) Government institutions should be moving in the

direction of taking more responsibility for the future implications of the current state of society.

To mitigate these issues will take complex problem solving on the part of organizations and

individuals to determine the causes and solutions to the global environmental crisis. We must

organize our rising population in a way that is meaningful and beneficial to the successful

survival of the species in the future.

Lets go over some statistical data that is most concerning to our current state of affairs as

a survivable ecosystem. Somewhere between 10,000 - 130,000 species of animals go extinct

each year because of human impact on natural habitats. According to biological diversity.org

scientists expect a snowball of extinctions to occur over the next century. We are in the midst of

the sixth mass extinction known to have occured on earth. Extinction is a natural phenomenon,

however the fate of the human species has been accelerated in the wrong direction by our own

hand. And our manipulation of the planets surface into a layer of artificial concrete is disrupting

the ability of other non-sentient species on the planet to survive. The world population will reach

nearly 10 billion people in the next 31 years, which will exponentially increase the rate of human

caused change to the environment. For each extra person on the planet we are producing more

plastic, extracting more raw materials, and making more sacrifices to the natural environment to

provide modern housing for more and more people. For each generation that is not made aware

of environmental consciousness, there will be another generation of children growing up and

participating in the same destructive neurotic patterns of their parents.

I find it very important to break apart and analyze the philosophy of environmentalism.

Humanity is reaching a critical point in its population and in it intellectual advancement that will

require strategizing our actions and efforts on a massive scale. The role the average modern

human plays in environmental interaction is a very submissive and separated role. We do not

inherently question the standards of agencies that have major influences on the environment and

we have accepted that nature serves the purposes of humanity as opposed to us serving nature.

The truth is that humanity would not and cannot exist or function without the flow and

interconnection of natural processes. The air we breathe is constantly filtered and circulated by

the cycles of sunlight, plantlife, and cycles of carbon and water. We did not one day decide to

have our heart start beating or our lungs to fill with air, these things occurred and are still

occurring beyond our control. Yet we constantly question whether or not nature as an entity is
mute. It of course communicates with us all the time by overpowering and re constructing the

patterns of man and other organisms through natural disaster or other changes in pattern.

Ignoring these incoming signal from nature can only result in these problems growing in size and

severity. I believe that for each individual action we perform that does not align with the goals of

nature will be met with consequences. The more we ignore the reality of our situation the more it

will come back and effect us later on. A very excellent work called the (‘’Beyond

environmentalism; a philosophy of nature”) was by Jeffery e. Foss, “We are animals of the

species Homo sapiens, a type of large ape that arose by the process of natural selection. That

process is, in fact, nothing other than the struggle for existence, a struggle that every organism

wages with its natural competitors. Nature giveth and nature taketh away.”(Foss p. 15) Foss also

makes the proposition that growing up, generations of people came to the understanding that

humankind is not quite sane and may even be suicidal, considering our tendencies of developing

nuclear weaponry that has no practicality in survival.

Based on the investigation and organization of experts all over the world it’s clear that a

lack of sustainability is a very serious problem on our planet. And whether we like the reality of

our situation or not we will no doubt be forced to face the consequences of our reckless behavior

over the next hundred years. We require an ecocentric models of interaction over an egocentric

one. Adopting a planetary mindset will require openmindeness and cooperation, even the

removal of political boundaries to share more common goals as a planet. It will be the choices of

individuals that will decide our ultimate fate. We may need to learn our lesson with the help of

mother nature putting us in our place. We must hope that the shift in planetary attitude does not

come to late, if it does there is a place in the fossil record for our failed species. The chances of
our survival depends entirely on our ability to work as a collective world society to change the

fate of our environment ranging from the air we breathe to the ground we stand on.

Works Cited

1. Cassen, R. H. “Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment

and Development.” International Affairs, vol. 64, no. 1, 1987, pp. 126–126.,

doi:10.2307/2621529. Accessed 20 April 2019.

2. Harper, Sarah. “Population-Environment Interactions: European Migration, Population

Composition and Climate Change.” Environmental & Resource Economics, vol. 55, no.

4, Aug. 2013, pp. 525–541. Environment Complete, EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10640-

013-9677-4. Accessed 27 Apr. 2019.

3. Morelli, John. “Environmental Sustainability: A Definition for Environmental

Professionals.” Journal of Environmental Sustainability, vol. 1, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1–10.,

doi:10.14448/jes.01.0002. Accessed April 17 2019.

4. Philippi Jr., Arlindo. “Environment, Health & Sustainability in the Context of Cities.”

Acta Paulista De Enfermagem, vol. 30, no. 3, May 2017, pp. III-VI. Ccm, EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1590/1982-0194201700033. Accessed 27 Apr. 2019.

5. Sidhu, Balraj K., and Bharat H. Desai. “Plastics Pollution: A New Common Concern of

Humankind?” Environmental Policy & Law, vol. 48, no. 5, Sept. 2018, pp. 252–255.

Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, doi:10.3233/EPL-180084. Accessed 27 Apr.

2019.
6. Center for Biological Diversity. "Extinction Crisis."

www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_

crisis/index.html. Accessed April 15 2019.

7. Foss, Jeffrey E. Beyond Environmentalism: A Philosophy of Nature: a Philosophy of

Nature. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Accessed April 20 2019.

8. “PLASTIC BAGS.- How Much?” Reducing 4 More!, 19 Jan. 2008,

reducing4more.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/plastic-bags-how-much/. Accessed April 19

2019.

9. Lebreton , Laurent, et al. “River Plastic Emissions to the World’s Oceans.” Nature

Communications, 7 June 2017, doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f. Accessed April 20

2019.