Roger W. Sperry
This world, our earth, is in serious danger. The balance of natural system has been so disrupted that unless major steps are taken immediately to re-establish it, we will soon reach an irreversible state, in which most species, including our own, will face extinction.
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These changes in the balance of nature have already resulted in worldwide political, social, and economic instability.
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Human population has grown by more in the last 50 years than it did in the 4 million years before the mid-20th century. This tremendous acceleration in the rate of growth is having a profound effect on every aspect of our lives and demands an equally rapid response.
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As the human population has increased in the last 50 years, demand for grain has tripled, as has the demand for beef, mutton, water rights and firewood.
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The rate of economic growth between 1985 and 1995 exceeded that which occurred from the beginning of civilization to 1950.
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The long-term outcome of this prodigious rate of economic growth cannot be accurately predicted, but most projections suggest that if serious measures are not taken soon, there will be dire, if not calamitous, consequences.
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At the same time that the greatly expanded human population has demanded more resources and economic growth, we have seen smaller grain harvests, the collapse of world fish supplies, water shortages and desertification, severe droughts and crop failures, along with the rise of infectious diseases.
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We are on a dangerous collision course between increasing food demands by greater and greater numbers of people and decreasing capacity far food production.
The sea is our second major source of food, and today, nearly all of the major fisheries of the world are being fished beyond their carrying capacity.
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Global warming is another serious challenge, both to food production and to ecosystems, with rising sea levels and global temperatures and an increase in the incidence of floods and droughts.
The rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is now known to be a major factor in worldwide temperature increases – the “greenhouse ‘” effect.
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World Bank figures demonstrate that 40% of the world’s population is already experiencing severe chronic water shortages which not only cause great human suffering, but also impact significantly on the economic development of affected countries.
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Another area of serious concern is the spread of global epidemics, which are clearly related to population density and climate change. Global warming is creating new warm moist habitats in which insects and other animals that carry infectious diseases can thrive, and we are seeing a resurgence of malaria, cholera, and dengue fever.
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One of the single most important vehicles for change is, of course, the United Nations. Until quite recently, however, the only mechanism available to individual citizens for influencing the UN, has been an indirect route through their own national governments, with the hope that this might eventually affect the international scene. This indirect approach has proven largely ineffective.
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We may take some hope in the great worldwide increase of NonGovernmental Organizations (NGOs) dedicated to environmental issues, human rights, and education. NGOs are now major participants in UN environmental conferences and treaty negotiations. Non-governmental Organizations played a major role in the United Nations World Population Conference held in Cairo in 1994. At that conference there was a well publicized debate on the empowerment of women, a crucial step toward gaining control of population growth.
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The past 50 years have not only seen the depletion and pollution of soil and water, the distortion of natural cycles and the onset of deleterious processes we are unable to manage, they have also seen the worldwide spread of an economic system that measures success wholly and only by the amount of profit generated – the “‘bottom line.”
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Examination of our shared values and public discussion of them at every level of community must be undertaken if we hope to establish new standards of human conduct that support a sustainable future.
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There is much corporate discussion these days of “the bottom line”, a powerful organizing principle that balances costs against profits. But most “bottom lines” in both businesses and governments are false bottoms that conceal or exclude – through carelessness, ignorance or deliberate manipulation – certain critical costs to non-renewable resources or fragile ecosystems. It is absolutely essential to the survival of our civilization that uncosted materials such as water, air, soil, plants, forests, and animals be factored into economic calculations.
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Many people in developed countries have already begun to practice lifestyles which include a reduction in material possessions, resistance to intense advertising pressures, and an increase in recycling.
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Sperry, in his 1992 paper entitled Paradigm of Belief, Theory and Metatheory, made abundantly clear the choices we face: Assuming that high-quality sustainable survival will require radically revised social value priorities to live and govern by and, that a value-belief system along the described lines, might be the key to such a change, it follows that anything that might speed its acceptance could make the difference for humankind between quality survival and cosmic obliteration.
Duty#9 is reinforced by:
