We humans are a threatened species, and it is mostly of our own making. To survive the ten mega-threats we must act fast, and we must collaborate.
We can unmake these mega-threats, but in order to do so, huge collaborative actions must be taken across the world. We have no more than ten years to reverse the deadly trend towards human extinction. In doing so, we could offer our progeny a reprieve, and even the prospect of a rich and exciting future.
That was the broad conclusion reached at a round-table of 37 leading Australian scientists and thinkers, who met this month via Zoom, to consider ten mega-threats to human survival. The round-table was convened by the recently formed Commission for The Human Future grew out of discussions between The Australian National University, and the not-for-profit think tank for the public good, Australia21.
Simply stated, the ten interacting threats to continuing human existence are:
- Unconstrained climate change.
- The possibility of nuclear war.
- Unconstrained growth in human numbers.
- The mass extinction of non-human species and collapse of the web of life on which human life depends.
- The rapidly increasing insecurity of human food supplies.
- Depletion of essential resources on which modern civilisation depends.
- Universal pollution with chemicals.
- Pandemic diseases, caused both by pathogens that are new, and others well known by humans.
- The advent of powerful new technologies, including artificial intelligence.
- Failure , nationally and globally, to understand and act to prevent these nine threats – as a result of both widespread denial and intentional misinformation.
Dealing with one threat at a time will not be enough. We must deal with all of them together. And we are not yet adequately dealing with any of them. Perhaps Covid-19 has done us a service. It has threatened our entire species and profoundly transformed our way of life in our collective endeavour to minimise its impact.
We cannot “snap back” to the way we lived before. The virus is a wake-up call and now we must intentionally transform the human world in ways that will enable us to survive and thrive.
We must commit our best brains and develop a new academic discipline and a new global industry around surviving and thriving. We must think of “security” in new ways. Security depends on the genuine well-being of humans everywhere and on the health of the “web of life” that includes diverse ecosystems on which our own lives also depend.
We must think afresh and creatively about the “systems” which dominate our human world. Our current economic system is manifestly not fit for purpose. We must rethink it to serve the needs of all humans and the planet rather than the needs of clever human entrepreneurs.
The Internet has provided us with the tools for working as a species and the growing emancipation of women is now injecting growing sanity, cooperation and concern for the future into our decision-making bodies.
We urgently need a new human narrative to guide our thinking and our behaviour and with which to train our young.
As a result of the work of numerous cooperating NGOs, a start has been made on the development of a new narrative for Australia. It is called “Australia Remade“. The nine pillars of that statement have been developed in the context of interviews with many hundreds of Australians about the kind of country they would like our nation to be.
The task ahead is to realise that vision, not just for Australians, but for all of our threatened species. That is the challenge facing The Commission for The Human Future, as it develops specific policy proposals for our governments and agencies around the world.
You can read the communique from our first round-table discussion here.
Em Prof Bob Douglas is an Epidemiologist and Secretary of the new Commission.
Em Prof Bob Douglas, AO is a retired Public Health Academic and a committee member of The Council for The Human Future (CHF) and The Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy (CAPaD).
Comments
3 responses to “Surviving the mega-threats to our world”
Bob,
The report from the concerned scientists adds weight to the appeal from the 10,000 scientists issued a few months ago. I can’t for the life of me understand why we humans “still don’t get it!”. In my everyday interactions (not face to face) with friends and colleagues, I still run into contrarians who would try to convince me that the Earth is flat! No amount of layman’s explanations about the causes of the acidifying oceans, melting polar caps, glaciers, sea level rise; the likely cause of droughts, floods, severe cyclones and other extreme weather events afflicting the Planet seems to get through to them.Their reasons often verge on fantasies.
The advent of the COVID-19 Virus Pandemic shows just what we can do as a world, however imperfectly when the consequences are so blatantly obvious and the potential impact becomes immediate and personal.
I wonder how serious these ‘silent’ killers have to become before we realize we are stuffed as a species !
Gavin O’Brien, FRMetS.
Available evidence suggests that large-scale extraction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is best achieved by converting it into soil organic carbon. Plants are best at making this happen. I’m told the Europeans are considering paying at least 30 euros per offset tonne of sequestered carbon, so the setting of a realistic carbon price internationally would enable Australian farmers prepared to maximise levels of soil organic carbon by switching to regenerative agriculture get a decent return for their efforts. Right now they earn a pittance. Widespread re-greening will also fix the drought issue and save us from ecological disaster.
Unfortunately, at present, instead of uniting to resist the viruses which threaten life, COVID-19 is being weaponized by vested interests against each other.
As stated by Albert Einstein ““Problems cannot be solved with the same mind set that created them.”.