Ecological Apocalypse Now

Rewilding, Population Controls, Local Food, Forever Peace, and Emission Cuts – or Die

Witness inequitable overpopulation’s thunderous crescendo before global ecological collapse destroys everything, because many could not fathom how much is enough, as too many others have nothing

"You smell that? Do you smell that?... Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning." – Apocalypse Now

"Humanity's and nature's future, if any, are being determined now." – Dr. Glen Barry

Earth Meanders Essays by Dr. Glen Barry

Ecological Apocalypse Now

I have a story to tell you. It regards the mayhem you see all around you. The exponential growth tearing apart being, sending humanity well beyond Earth’s carrying capacity, and threatening perma-war, abject poverty, and environmental collapse if we don’t act immediately…

We will get to the solutions, but first understand the magnitude of intertwined crises as biosphere collapse looms.

Earth is massive yet finite. For eons humans have intensively cultivated natural ecosystems, and once overexploited, moved on to destroy the next forest, grassland, and aquatic ecosystem. At low population densities, this allowed diminished areas time to recover.

In an ecological blink of an eye humanity’s population has exploded. In just over a century, human numbers have surged nearly ten-fold from one to eight billion. It’s so damn simple – the actual and perceived material needs of these apex predators in sum are totally and completely overwhelming nature.

The global life support system that humans and all life depend upon for our habitat is dying.

It is obscene that billions of human beings live meagerly upon a few dollars a day, while a small group of billionaires live lavishly, having hoarded half of Earth’s wealth. We now witness the grinding violence of poverty as billions eke out a living unable to meet basic needs for their children. As a sizable minority opulently overconsumes.

The madness of GDP growth as the measure of human well-being is pernicious; nonsensically equating economic growth, often at the expense of liquidating natural systems, with the well-being of billions of human beings, kindred life forms, and their shared habitat and atmosphere.

Grotesque inequity, with everyone wanting more and little sharing, precludes ever achieving global ecological sustainability.

Living as if there are no biogeophysical limits upon personal consumption and procreation is shredding natural ecosystems and the climate. The human family faces an era (perhaps our last) of Ecological Apocalypse Now.

A given piece of land can only be so productive before overuse leads to collapse and becoming barren. There are limits on the water that can be withdrawn from aquifers and rivers, and then they run dry. The atmosphere can only bear a certain amount of waste, before run-away climate heating occurs.

A couple decades ago it was said that Earth could support all of humanity at the material wealth of the average European. Sadly, those days are long gone, and reasonable levels of equity required to sustain an operable biosphere are going to require the wealthy to share. And all of us to have fewer children, as we seek less impact from our consumption.

Evidence of the population bomb going off are everywhere. People of different cultures packed more closely together make forever wars. Overt racism and even slavery are on the rise once again. Anti-bacterial resistance and epidemics result from many people living close together, including in proximity with livestock.

Look at the mangled landscape surrounding you, with quivering fragments of nature flickering out. Witness the mass migration of climate and ecosystem loss refugees. Hear the cries of terrorized wildlife, feel viscerally the loss of plants upon which all life depends, immerse yourself in the heat of a climate run amuck.

The human enterprise is drunkenly careening past Earth’s carrying capacity, living as if our shared natural habitat has no value. And like we have no duties to nature, if we are to survive.

When you push nature too hard, she pushes back. Until nature becomes overwhelmed and dies. We need to face the truth regarding our personal role in ecocide. Or together we face the end of being.

Ecological Solutions Now

Portends of the end of the world are all around you. Humanity's and nature's future, if any, are being determined now. 

Sustainability means redefining progress. As an immediate triage we must stop destroying natural vegetation. And quickly transition away from all types of burning including but not limited to fossil fuels.

The underlying lack of knowledge – and widespread ignorance, superstition and conspiracies – are all so tragic because it does not have to end this way. People want to feel special, successful and clever, I get it. Yet there is nothing appealing in a carefree, selfish lifestyle that pushes your species, planet, and all life beyond the carrying capacity.

As the world descends into a dystopian nightmare, foremost we are called upon to hold onto our humanity. While together we embark upon an unprecedented program of emissions cuts, rewilding of natural ecosystems, demobilizing militarily and making forever peace, re-localizing sustainable food systems, and limiting both our reproduction and personal consumption.

It remains possible to save nature and thus ourselves and our children. But it requires a rapid emergence of a regenerative worldview. Key is a commitment to degrowth, which requires shrinking extractive and industrial activities; to focus upon a restoration of natural ecosystems, righteous livelihoods, a commitment to reasonable levels of equity, and having fewer children.

So much could be done now to control population. Eliminate child tax breaks. Free condoms. Preferential access to higher education for small families. A basic income to guarantee essential needs are met for all. And first and foremost, educate all women and girls equally to men and boys.

Rewilding refers to actions to regenerate natural ecosystems as the surrounding context for meeting the needs of human society, kindred species, and our shared ecosystems right up to the biosphere. It involves both nurturing nature's natural process of succession and renewal, as well as augmenting regrowth with ecological restoration and permaculture plantings. Think of permaculture as forest gardens where human needs are met within perennial plantings that also provide ecosystem services.

Natural ecosystem processes, though weakened, still have an innate ability to repair themselves. Strict land controls will remove human pressures and allow fragmented ecosystems to recover, expand, and reconnect. Humanity can augment this natural recovery with carefully targeted restoration plantings. Massive greenhouses full of native plant genotypes, and a large workforce of gardeners, will supplant natural vegetation’s regeneration. Such restoration ecology reestablishes dominant native natural plants, that provide the natural structure and dynamics for nature to do the rest. Maximal benefits are achieved by targeting sites for planting that increase ecosystem connectivity and reduce fragmentation.

Native ecosystem restoration will be interspersed within a matrix of permacultural plantings to provide food, fiber, and a healthy environment. Increasingly communities will be required to live within their bioregion’s limits; growing, processing, and sharing their own food. Local, organic, non-industrial, and non-meat food sources need to be the focus.

Sources of drinking water must be zealously protected and restored. And we have all the tools we need in renewable energy, efficiency, and simplified lifestyles to end greenhouse gas emissions. Avoiding abrupt climate change requires a whole-systems ecological approach that includes both technology and reinvigorated nature.

Other key pillars of global ecological sustainability include an universally educated citizenry, demobilizing standing armies, and a commitment to racial justice and restitution. Imagine what is possible as the human family commits to Forever Peace. The quest for the stars, an AI assisted life of leisure, true passionate love, and great accomplishments in sports and the arts lie before us.

Within a couple generations, one can envision a once again lush and productive environment surrounding human works; where all basic needs are met, as those who work hard have reasonably more of the fruits of natural abundance.

A right-sized human future will be one of peace, ecology, truth, and equity if we want it to be. Or else business as usual means incomprehensible human and natural suffering before being ends. A verdant future is ours to make.

 

 

Falling into Nothingness

Being is ending. Humanity and kindred species’ one shared environment is collapsing and dying. Wake up. Before you experience up close and personal the horrors of habitat collapse.

“Go back to the abyss! Fall into nothingness that awaits you and your master!” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“The biosphere is collapsing… Global ecological sustainability depends critically upon a swift end to both cutting natural vegetation and all burning.” – Dr. Glen Barry

 

Falling into Nothingness

Earth Meanders – Deep Ecology Essays by Dr. Glen Barry

The environment, which provides the habitat to sustain life, has been and continues to be shredded by the consuming hordes for throw-away products. Water, food, clean air, and natural resource depletion loom as exponential growth gobbles the last bits of global greenery. Sick ecosystems, abuse of animals, and over-crowdedness threaten rolling pandemics.

Nature is our only home

Humanity is dismantling the biosphere, the shared thin mantle of life in which we live, to have ever more babies that seek more of everything. The human family has surpassed Earth's carrying capacity and unless we pursue a policy of deliberate degrowth the biosphere will collapse and die.

The state of the world is simply wretched. There has always been human environmental impact, sickness, war, and social ills. But rarely at this scale, with entire bioregions becoming uninhabitable dead zones, and the serious possibility of destruction of the global ecological system by humans. As much of humanity suffers wanton despair.

Gaia, our one shared biosphere, is analogous to a living organism. Her constituent ecosystem organs are being pillaged by war, resource thievery, a belief system based upon myths of ancient ghosts, and a thirst for ever more stuff. Millions of years old naturally evolved rainforests teaming with life, fantastical marine abundance, natural water flows and stores, fertile ancient soils, and clean fresh air have been raped and plundered for god, country, and fleeting personal wealth and soon will be gone.

We spend much of societies' resources upon war making. At the detriment of all else including education, health care, and job training. A handful of billionaires have more financial resources than billions of others. White supremacy and other intersectional forms of discrimination dehumanize all who are not white christian males. 

Disease, hunger, ignorance, and greed run roughshod upon the land. We might as well eat our children, poison the well, and burn our food crops, as our behavior towards others and the natural world is so repugnant and could not be much worse.

Such pain as together we rush towards the darkness. 

How has the global zeitgeist become so banal, trivial and evil? What has become of pondering cosmological mysteries? Advancing the rights of humanity? Crafting hand-made masterpieces? Marveling at the wonders of the human body? Growing and building with our own hands? Working for truth, justice and equity? What of community, helping your neighbor, true love, and countless other human pursuits of excellence.

No ghosts in the sky

Many now aspire for no better than D-list influencer celebrity, a virtual life of gaming in the metaverse, and over-consuming. Rather than for a just, righteous livelihood within nature and community. Pixels on a screen are a poor replica of sunning on a beach, listening in an ancient forest, or finding true love (or for that matter lust). What an empty life. How clueless to not realize the energy and resources that technology requires.

And forget about engineering a biosphere, it will never happen. Too complex, too much can go wrong. And it is unnecessary as we already have a biosphere that can be be protected and restored.

A small handful of individuals possess half of Earth’s wealth as billions face the terror of abject poverty. CEOs make hundreds of times as much as their workers, and the working poor need food assistance and live out of their cars. Feel viscerally if you can the pain of three billion human beings living on a few dollars a day as they watch the opulent elite promenade. 

How long before the have-nots come for us? And pull down civilization such as it is. Or are they already?

The brutal rape of humanity and nature is nothing less than evil thuggery. Many must sell their bodies and souls simply to survive. As kindred noble primates cling to their offspring as their rainforest home is mowed for curios and trinkets. Wildlife and domesticated animals live lives of institutional terror as our playthings and factory food. 

Our whole way of being constitutes profoundly illogical terroristic dismembering of ourselves and our habitat, in a willful death-wish.

Tin-pot dictators can blow
us up on a whim

And why have peace, justice, and international law fallen out of fashion? Because the American Empire was attacked 20 years ago, now we are going to wage global perma-war? How could such an exceptional political system have become so grotesquely debased, belligerent, and self-entitled? Petty dictators sit upon the tin-pot thrones of many rich and ancient cultures, now fading in glory, yet with buttons to at a whim unleash nuclear war.

How will this transition into depletion and collapse be managed? How do we avoid fascist, authoritarian, falsely populist responses? Will the superstitious, poorly educated, and simply deplorable low-lives ever overcome their crass, belligerent ignorance; to be made to feel their oneness with natural ecosystems and people that are different than them? To savor their rights, while realizing their duties? Or will they continue to babble nonsensical conspiracy-theories, fall prey to fascist demagoguery, pursue traitorous sedition, and terrorize those of other colors and faiths?

Such ecological and social deterioration in such a short time. It really began in earnest with Cowboy Reagan's slashing of government, and the rise to power of far-right christian white supremacy. And before that, and since, bi-partisan war-making bolstering the Congressional-Industrial-Military complex. Along with the unquestioned irrational belief that growth in population and inequitable consumption comprises development. 

America’s recent fascist sedition epitomizes the underlying anti-truth, anti-science, hateful social disease.

I have tried to live a purpose-driven life committed to ideas. Channeling my visions of ecocide into written words and activism for 35 years has come at great expense to my physical and mental wellbeing, relationships with loved ones, and material comfort. I am getting tired. Recently I had a moment of doubt on whether I could continue. Thus, I have pared back my environmental science efforts including retiring aspects of EcoInternet after 25 years of service. My focus will be continuing to research artificial intelligence technologies for sustainability under the moniker Big Earth Data ( https://bigearth-data.com/ ), and perhaps other appropriate uses of information technologies. 

And I will write as I can, even as few are listening.

While I do not want to believe it is too late, it certainly could be. Still my hope is that there is some unknown fount of global ecological resilience that will sustain us until we can marshal a great transition to renewed well-being.

It is going to take everything we have got. Every strategy: actions as diverse as Wall Street impact investing, youths organizing online, widespread social gardening, population controls, and income redistribution. Solutions for ecological sustainability include dramatic cuts in personal consumption, restoring ecosystems, end old-growth logging, demobilization of standing armies, and down-sizing of both corporate power and government bureaucracy.

Global ecological sustainability depends critically upon a swift end to both cutting natural vegetation and all burning. 

We must allow Gaia to rest.

We begin together to work in earnest on these priorities or we all face unimaginable deprivation and horrors as, with our hands on each other’s throats, together we fall into nothingness.

It is a choice. Miraculous nature and being do not have to end this way. 

Choose well.

Be the Seed

Be the seed...

Amid collapse, recall life begets life. Reject lazy thinking, reimagine everything, be the seed promoting truths that rejuvenate Earth and uplift all life.

“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Life begets life. As ecology narrates… Be the seed, and tend to your garden.”

Dr. Glen Barry

Life Begets Life 

Miraculous seeds are our future and always have and will be. Programmed in sprouting seeds and animal zygotes, deeply within their DNA, is the perpetual renewal of life. Faith can be found in a seed, as well as the willful knowledge upon which life’s promise rests.

...that begets future ancient oaks

Together organisms propagated through seeds combine to produce plant communities, wildlife populations, human habitats and livelihoods, ecosystems, landscapes and ultimately our one living biosphere. In a cosmological wonder, these habitats born from seeds are the culmination of life, even as they make life of individual organisms possible.

Life begets life. As ecology narrates.

Out of this whirlwind of billions of years of genetic combinations emerged the hairless ape with the opposable thumbs. While clearly an animal, constant self-improvement has led to self-awareness. And the will to know, be free, and create.

Sadly, the human project while promising, has a dark, self-fulfilling death wish. Human comfort has come at the cost of a separation from, and destruction of, natural ecosystems. Packed tightly together, in weakened collapsing ecosystems, with industrial livestock and threatened wildlife; the future of the cosmic homo-sapien dance with nature is in question.

Nature and her humanity are in a race between ecosystem loss and regeneration, carbon emissions and renewables, vaccines and variants, scientific truths versus anti-science conspiracy theories. Human agency is both the problem and the answer.

At stake is personal and civilization’s well-being and survival. Human liberty for which it is worth living. And the future of a habitable biosphere. Nothing less than continued being or the end of being.

Powerful new seeds are needed to sow the pathway to continued nature and humanity. One might as well be an informed, awoke, and active you.

Looming Collapse

We are really in the shit. Environmental collapse, coronavirus, fascism, and I think I heard something about fire tornadoes. We find ourselves in this position of ecological and social collapse because of abrupt climate change, ecosystem loss, and over-population.

And hubristic and inequitable human material aspirations cumulatively surpassing the biosphere’s carrying capacity.

In a geological blink of an eye there has been enormous change to the ecological systems of the planet of which humans are a part, fully enmeshed, and utterly dependent. Anyone that looks with knowing eyes can see indicators that conditions for the global biosphere’s health are worsening. And that human society has been profoundly negatively impacted by environmental decline, finding itself now perched upon an apocalyptic end.

Deforestation, atmospheric change, water and ocean degradation, soil and wetland loss, clearing of natural ecosystems, and widespread cataclysmic wildfires are completely unprecedented. As wildlife habitats shrink diseases are coming in closer proximity to humans and there are increased inter-species jumps.

The context within which we live is changing. Our shared habitat is being simplified, toxified, and is dying. Socially, economically, and ecologically things are deteriorating fast. The situation has been bad for billions of humans for awhile, but the social implication of environmental decline is now hitting the well-off too.

Social competition and stress for limited resources in increasing. Globally protests are raging and may soon converge into an ecological, demonstration, injustice maelstrom. And we are seeing authoritarian responses including a drift towards fascism.

Those impeding science (and indigenous, justice, equity) based policy responses are on the wrong side of history and will be vilified for however long we have left.

Lazy Thinkers

Nature’s last chance is threatened by conspiracy theories promulgated by lazy thinkers. You know the type. The ones that find meaning in random YouTube videos, obscure podcasts, and millennia old texts. Those with poor critical thinking skills that have not educated themselves, invested time in being well-read, and pondered cosmology amongst old trees peering at the inscrutable stars.

Personally I have been first shocked and then saddened to hear family and friends repeat to me known falsehoods for which there is no truth. Trump won, COVID vaccines change your DNA, and many more. Humanity faces a deficit in critical thinking from which we may never recover.

Yet so many objective, science-buttressed truths exist. Life needs water. Land has a finite carrying-capacity. Earth is alive. Humans are born and meant to remain radically free. No Abrahamic gods sit in judgment. Love is the answer.

Earth and her humanity are faced with looming tragedies for which we don’t have much time. Critical thinking and rejecting conspiracy theories are more important now than ever.

It is OK, indeed admirable, to seek to live a special life in service to higher ideals, that has meaning other than self-stimulating your nerve endings. 

Science does not have all the answers and is fallible. But it is method whereby data and observable, repeatable outcomes very often arrive at objective truth.

In these challenging times, little is as fulfilling as taking the time to critically identify truth required for community survival and thriving. Which must be just, equitable, and sustainable. Reading and listening to experts of many sources and types, until becoming one yourself. And making your hard earned and demonstrable truths known to others, implementing with others your action-knowledge on behalf of being.

Here are some of my truths. Community gardens. Tree planting. Birth control. Reducing emissions. Eating locally. Flying and driving less. Race does not matter. Making Love. Feeding the hungry. Absolute radical freedom and responsibility. Teaching the uneducated. Healing the sick. Resisting fascists. Loving Earth. Serving nature.

All from life-long questioning and learning. And subject to revision at any time from new data and repeatable observation.

The deplorable indoctrinated hordes; bent upon self-indulgent consumerism and indoctrinated dogma at the expense of the biosphere, will try to limit, constrain, and tell you that you are not special. Maybe suggesting you are crazy.

Your task is the hard slog of self-education, to arrive at objective truths, to imagine a better society and world, and develop a program of self-expression and action. Despite lesser evolved beings.

Become the seed from which a new world springs that is just, equitable, free, and sustainable. And lasts forever.

Reimagine Everything                

We did it! Humanity is once again surrounded by intact nature. We have successfully returned to our natural condition. Energy, water, and nutrient cycles have been restored and once again make for a living biosphere.

After the decade long battle with coronavirus in which hundreds of millions died; we – the human family and kindred species – started over. The entire manner we related to our planet habitat was dramatically changed. When nature once again surrounded human works, we began to undo and reverse other types of collapse.

Many roads and other unnecessary human works were ripped out to reconnect water and woods and wildlife. Greatly reduced violence resulted from ending spending on militarism, and reductions in human population expanded wildlife habitat and opportunities for nature-based righteous livelihoods.

A choice was made to globally demobilize nuclear weapons and dramatically shrink standing armies. The money was plowed into children, and lifelong education, art and sport, job training, and of course the environment and health care.

Reasonable population reductions over time through educating all and on demand birth control were successfully implemented, allowing all basic human needs to be met with a guaranteed basic income. Positive results flowed from restraining capitalism’s excesses with simple long-prescribed notions like pricing environmental externalities, and favoring capital investments in the environment, social good, and governance.

In Closing

This seed seeks to highlight the universality of concerns across protests roiling the Earth, and the inherent ecological nature of many of these grievances.

There will be lasting peace. All humans will be treated equally. All will have enough as some have more. The Earth’s one shared biosphere will be sustained as the murderous suffering of nature will end as ecosystems are fully protected and restored.

Beside an occasional challenging essay, day in and day out EcoInternet’s seed provides an aggregated encyclopedic tracking and archiving of environmental and social events through EcoSearch. We seek to augment ecological knowledge and action using artificial intelligence.

Be the seed, and tend to your garden.