Ecocide Is Not Development; Love and Ecology Are the Answer

Earth's ecosystems are collapsing, human and all species' habitats are being lost, and our one shared biosphere is failing and dying. Love of other peoples and species and of nature, truth, justice, and equity are the only lasting basis for global ecological sustainability.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Krishnamurti

“Truth matters. Freedom matters. Justice matters. Ecology matters. Peace matters. Compassion matters. Knowledge matters. Love matters. We should all try to matter by serving such ideals.” – Dr. Glen Barry

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

Earth is alive – just like the biological patterns found in cells, species, individual organisms, and ecosystems; only at a different scale – and thus can die if boundary conditions for health are exceeded. The biosphere [search] – Earth's thin mantle of life – is collapsing and dying, as ecosystems and climate are being murdered by human industrial growth. Such ecocidal madness, called "development," is hailed as the goal for society when in fact it is ecocide, and can only end in utter social, economic, and ecological collapse. Industrial human development destroys natural ecosystems necessary to maintain a habitable Earth.

Burning fossil fuels and clearing natural ecosystems are industrial ecocide, the furthest thing possible from "development" or any meaningful and lasting human advancement. The global ecological system is being overrun by human industrial growth, which is ravaging ecosystems upon which all life depends. Runaway human exponential growth systematically strips our habitat of life-giving species and ecosystems, and then it fouls and poisons whatever remains.

The problem with climate change and ecosystem loss is that we think we have time, when in fact the biosphere is already well into collapse. The evidence is pouring in that climate change, biodiversity extinction, and terrestrial ecosystem loss already exceed thresholds whereby the biosphere is collapsing. Humanity is already in mid-death swoon, pulling down the biosphere as it annihilates itself, kindred species, and shared habitat. Humanity is like a disease on the planet, consuming life-giving habitats and treating nature as resources to liquidate and consume, after which there can only be collapse and mass death.

Humanity’s wild careening towards apocalyptic global ecosystem collapse is caused by, and is causing, the rise of new fascist and violent governments. The global environment and freedom are collapsing and dying in tandem as the industrial growth machine liquidates ecosystems in the doomed attempt to keep up with the material demands of burgeoning population and the ruling elites’ overconsumption. To maintain the mirage of advancement from ecosystem liquidation, governments strip away liberties and impose fascism, obstructing the necessary social change to sustain ecology.

True peace is not the absence of conflict as enslaved and needlessly dying at your own hand. Peace is rights, equity, justice, jobs, ecological sustainability for which people sometimes must fight. Only a prudent, well-considered revolutionary change of governance that is minimally violent or nonviolent can stop the cycle of big nanny, corporatist government razing the Earth for a few decades of further irrational ecocide.

Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: Ecocide Is Not Development; Love and Ecology Are the Answer" »

The Fascist State of America

#IStandWithEdwardSnowden because free nations don't spy on and murder their citizens. Democracies don't terrorize sovereign nations and their peoples with torture, false imprisonment, and drone-based perma-war. It is time to stand up against the oil oligarchy’s police state that is stifling social change required to achieve universal human rights, justice, equity, and global ecological sustainability.

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

“If living unfreely but comfortably is something you are willing to accept… it is going to get worse with the next generation… The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The greatest fear I have for the outcome of these disclosures is that nothing will change… [that people] won’t be willing to stand up and take the risks to fight. I am not afraid, because this is the choice I've made.” – Edward Snowden

The Bush administration "puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide." – Candidate Barack Obama 2007

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." – George Orwell

“With American spying and drone perma-war we are witnessing the end of democracy, the failure of a fragile experiment that governments are derived from the people.” – Dr. Glen Barry

** The latest Earth Meanders essay looking at issues of green liberty, including:
- Freedom Isn’t Free, Terrorism Is Pervasive
- The Green Liberty Party



“We the People" are not enemies of the state and deserve and need to know what our government is doing. The truth matters – particularly when human freedom is at stake, and our shared environment is collapsing, with both at risk of being lost forever. America’s civil liberties have been trampled on, and sadly, most don’t seem to care, failing to understand the full implications of big brother’s ascendancy. Defending freedom from government tyranny is not a left-or-right, conservative-or-liberal matter; it is the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies, liberty and enslavement, life and death.

Edward Snowden has revealed the extent to which America has become a total surveillance police state – with wholesale spying upon its own citizens – adding to revelations since 9/11 of the murder of U.S. citizens as well as torture, indefinite detention, and pursuit of drone perma-war, terrorizing entire nations. All of these acts are occurring upon the basis of suspicion alone – without due legal process, violating international law and the U.S. Constitution – in an unprecedented expansion of government powers in the name of a war on terror, when in fact they are being used to control dissent and access oil.

President Barack Obama is a profound epic failure, in many ways worse than Über-fascist Bush, just a new black face on the American oil oligarchy’s long history of tyranny and warmongering. What a feeble, sellout, murdering, cynical disappointment Barack Obama has turned out to be. After killing a million Arabs and Muslims, Bush policies continued with vigor under Obama, has the U.S. avenged 9/11 yet? Or does America need to spy, torture, falsely imprison, and wage perma-war for years longer? Perhaps forever?

America is poised upon the precipice of becoming a totalitarian police state overseeing final global environmental collapse. As America is at risk of becoming a third-rate police state, all lovers of liberty – from the Tea Party to progressives – must come together to resist oppression, remain free, embrace justice and equity for all, and sustain our shared global environment. One can feel a libertarian–progressive alliance building to stop big nanny government from enslaving us while destroying our environment. A commitment to Green Liberty is the human family’s only path to sustained well-being.

Continue reading "ESSAY: The Fascist State of America" »

Freedom Isn’t Free, Terrorism Is Pervasive

Enduring occasional acts of random terror is the cost of living in a free society. Giving up civil liberties does not provide security, but rather enslaves you in a state of pervasive terror. The human family is threatened by systematized eco-terrorism and other assaults by the elite upon the poor far more than by infrequent criminal acts which the courts can and should handle.

By Dr. Glen Barry, EcoInternet
Earth Meanders

Eco-terrorism

PERVASIVE TERROR

Terrorism is the act of inspiring terror in others by harming presumed innocents. For many, unjust postmodern life on a dying planet is full of PERVASIVE TERROR. The term terrorism has been usurped by the nanny military state to mean only politically motivated violence that targets the public. While such murder is never justified, in fact it occurs rarely and is not a high-profile threat to most. It is one of the manageable costs of being free.

Infrequent criminal acts, of the sort that recently occurred in Boston and occur much more frequently around the world, are tragic but best handled by the criminal justice system. America has become such a drama-queen nation that it continues to incautiously react to such dastardly acts with endless pundit pontificating, needlessly giving up hard-earned revolutionary civil liberties, and lashing out militarily in a counterproductive manner. Doing so breeds the next generation of criminal terrorists and ensures further blowback.

America is not special. In fact, many acts of terror occur around the ecologically and socially collapsing Earth for which America is responsible. The far greater threat issues from systematic targeting of the poor and of nature by America’s and other nations’ privileged elite. The rich and their corporations, police, and military routinely practice systematic terrorism that is much grander in scale, with devastating impact.

To name but a few: two billion people live on less than $2 a day, at least 3,000 kids die daily from bad water, and millions of innocents fear random drone attacks. Where are the outrage and the manhunts to bring those responsible for these preventable tragedies to justice? Their terror is no less heartfelt than that of the pampered elite.

Imagine the terror of an indigenous tribe suddenly finding a logging, mining, or oil company entering their ancestral land, where they have lived from time immemorial, telling them it does not belong to them. Instead, their forests will be cut, they must go to the cities, and their women are whores to service their needs. Or please consider the heartfelt terror of innocent communities hearing the incessant buzz of drones over their heads, not knowing when or whether they will be targeted as “collateral” damage – meaning murder victims. Or feel the everyday terror of the working poor, serving as slaves to the elite and then going home to unfed families and uneducated children, devoid of hope. What of the terror felt by kindred wildlife species as their habitat is razed and their young slaughtered in the name of “progress”?

Such systematic terror arising from pervasive inequity, lack of human rights, militarism, and other injustices have been endured for far too long. Many acts of criminal terror result from these social ills, and we will not achieve a lasting reduction of violence until they are addressed. Working to resolve the terror pervasive in our social and economic structures may well be the only way that an unlikely, albeit possible, large scale act of biological or nuclear criminal terrorism can be avoided. Further stripping our civil liberties, establishing a police surveillance state, and waging perma-war certainly won’t do so.

TIME OF GREAT DYING

Earth’s ecosystems are collapsing and dying as all life and the biosphere are murdered for industrial economic growth. Just like a cancer cell, exhibiting profound personal and societal sickness, humanity is systematically destroying billions of years of naturally evolved ecosystems for a few generations of excessive consumption for some, to be followed by biosphere collapse and unimaginable terror for all.

A time of great suffering and dying is upon us as global ecosystems – water, land, oceans, air, and food – are routinely destroyed by the industrial growth machine. Everywhere on Earth species, ecosystems, economies, communities, climate, and our one shared biosphere are being liquidated.

Drone perma-war, tar sands and coal, old-growth logging, inequity, ecocide, lack of justice, poverty, and human rights abuses are all terrorism and need to end.

These acts of ecocidal and genocidal terror are waged upon Earth and her ecosystems every day by the industrial growth machine and by our unfair consumption. Ecosystems and their life – that together power Earth’s biosphere – are being methodically plundered by this growth-at-all-costs mentality, which can only end in ecological collapse and the end of being for most or all life. As ecological thresholds are surpassed and climate and ecosystems are in the process of collapsing, this means continued economic growth without destroying the biosphere is not possible, and the continuation of an economic system that tries is itself an act of unspeakable terrorism upon all being.

It is time to passionately love all life and end the burning, cutting, and pillaging. Out-of-control human growth in industry, economies, and population is steadily stripping Earth of its ecosystems – meaning the end is near unless we stop.

ECO-TERRORISM

The real, worst sorts of terrorists are eco-terrorists, the corporate elite and their minions ravaging ecosystems and climate. Every day, eco-terrorism by the industrial growth machine and nanny government is waged against Earth’s ecosystems and all species, killing billions (including humans) and destroying the biosphere as habitats essential to life are weakened and killed.

Because the ruling oligarchy holds the wealth, power, and guns, such terror is nonsensically called progress and rarely questioned. Yet the terror of ecocide is unmatched in human history.

Postmodern humanity shows utter contempt for other species – terrorizing all other life forms before murdering them – as we cut down and burn our own and all life’s ecosystem habitats, filling them with waste and perversely calling it development. Earth’s ecosystems are being scoured of life to “develop” as if air, land, water, oceans, and other species are worthless. Animals certainly are terrified as their habitat is cleared and their young massacred.

Eco-terrorism is the oil oligarchy and corporate elite ravaging ecosystems and climate, destroying our one shared biosphere and all life’s well-being, for a bit more growth in stuff for a while; what will follow are apocalyptic collapse and the end of being. Where are the outrage and government resources to stop this preventable corporate terrorism? Oh wait, that’s right, they aren’t affluent Americans so they don’t matter.

If you train yourself to listen, you can hear Earth wailing in pain, speaking of and mourning her and all life’s death as ecosystems are lost.

TERRORISM IS TERRORISM WHEREVER IT OCCURS

It is time for President Barack Obama and America, after triumphing over the horrific Boston Marathon terrorism, to stop terrorizing and murdering other innocents with drone-based perma-war worldwide. Terrorism is terrorism, whenever innocents are killed, whoever pulls the trigger. After an estimated million revenge killings, how many more must be murdered to avenge 9/11?

Exaggerated fear of criminal acts of violence continues to be used as a straw man – in a misconstrued “war on terror” (though no longer referred to as such, remains nonsensical against a tactic) – in order to enslave us, and wage eco-terrorism upon the planet and the poor.

The amount spent on “defense” and “homeland security” by America is obscene. A one-time expenditure of twenty billion dollars could provide clean water for the world and save a million children a year from a preventable and terrible death. Yet America spends 30 times as much yearly to dominate the world and continue to extract an unfair share of everyone’s resources.

Again, giving up freedom does not make you secure. I sense from the Boston Marathon tragedy an America slowing becoming recommitted to justice and freedom, rather than cowering in fear and lashing out. Terrorism is a criminal act and not well addressed through military force. America must never give up its freedoms because of terrorists – and its very soul and well-being depend upon again committing to justice, freedom, sustainability, and the rule of law.

Billions of people overconsume every day, as billions of others are in excruciating pain and suffer with unmet basic needs. Each in their own way – through a combination of sheer numbers and inequity – are destroying the ecosystems necessary for life. There is no surviving such exponential industrial growth that feeds upon itself. The overdeveloped world must stop being so self-absorbed and face the daily terror borne by much of the world.

STOP THE LIES: WE ARE ONE

Going forth we must base our actions upon ecology truth. We are one human family utterly dependent upon ecosystems, climate, and kindred species for life. Nations, gods, and economic growth are passing fables; only billions of years of natural evolution reflected in life-giving ecosystems, their species, and the biosphere in sum are real and truly indispensable.

Wake up, you foolish and deluded (you know who you are). Without ecosystems there can be no economy. Global ecosystems are collapsing. The end of being draws nigh because we won’t stop burning fossil fuels and destroying natural ecosystems. When we kill the planet, all other issues will be null and void.

Love Earth, humanity, and all species like close family and friends; and together we will end the terror and sustain Earth and well-being for all life.

It is time for a radical political center to come together globally and in each of our communities with answers to threats including climate, poverty, abuse, war, denied human rights, and ecosystem collapse.

Global ecosystems and all life’s one shared biosphere are collapsing and dying under the strain of the insatiable and ecocidal human industrial growth machine. Human well-being is inseparable from the health of land, air, and water, yet we devastate ecosystems for throwaway junk. To survive, let alone thrive, humanity must immediately power down fossil fuels, protect and restore natural ecosystems, and embrace justice, equity, and peace.

Abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse are a global ecological emergency. Resistance to ecocide is self-defense yet must NEVER target innocents. The answer lies in loving life and using all possible other just means to achieve and maintain green liberty.

It is clearly time for global Earth Revolution to sustain land, water, and air and to achieve universal human rights and economic fairness. Let’s make it so together, firmly denouncing all forms of terrorism while clearly understanding that all other forms of resistance are legitimate when used to avoid global ecosystem collapse and end systematic terrorism upon the poor and nature.

What Would John Muir Say... About the Sierra Club?

What would Muir say about the Sierra Club being led by Michael Brune, Accountant-in-Chief and old-growth forest logging apologist? On the occasion of Muir's 175th birthday, we are certain he would not be pleased and would say so strongly. As we celebrate Earth Day, will Madison Progressives see through Brune's greenwash of logging ancient, sacred wildlands for toilet paper and books?

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness." - John Muir

"Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed -- chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got..." - John Muir

"The battle we have fought, and are still fighting for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it." - John Muir

“By choosing to sell FSC-certified wood, The Home Depot is walking its talk.” - Michael Brune, Executive Director, Sierra Club


By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk


John Muir was one of the greatest protectors of forests and nature who ever lived. He was connected to my hometown Madison, Wisconsin, where he attended college. He later went on to drive the creation of the National Park system and to found the Sierra Club.

Most important, Muir took an uncompromising position that old-growth forest wildernesses must be protected for their intrinsic values. He was bold and brash, and he waged verbal and written warfare with the likes of Gifford Pinchot, the founder of the U.S. Forest Service, over the fate of old-growth forest wildernesses. Their battle over the relative merits of preservation versus conservation of natural wildlands continues to rage today as Earth's last remaining naturally evolved primary forests are industrially cleared and diminished.

Given Muir's absolute commitment to not logging primary forests, I am certain he would be deeply troubled over the ascendency of old-growth logging greenwasher extraordinaire Michael Brune as the head of the Sierra Club. Mr. Brune spoke Saturday in Madison, Wisconsin, and was not expected to mention his years promoting old-growth forest logging.

Continue reading "ESSAY: What Would John Muir Say... About the Sierra Club?" »

The Green Liberty Party

The political philosophy: “Earth is dying if we let it. Stop burning and cutting, or die. Without ecology there can be no economy. We must work less and live more. Live free and green.”

Human growth in population and industry, at the expense of ecosystems is destroying the natural world, causing mass extinction, abrupt climate change, and economic as well as biosphere collapse. The challenge facing humanity, the greatest challenge of all time, is to foster a political, social, and economic transformation that realigns the human project with its ecosystem habitat.

The corporate-owned American two-party duopoly has proven to be corrupt, unethical, and profoundly ecologically unsustainable. It is time for a political agenda that values all species and ecosystems and plans for the long-term well-being of humanity and all life. It is time for global political Earth revolution to sustain land, water, and air and to achieve universal human rights and economic fairness.

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet

ECOLOGY CENTRAL

Earth is collapsing and dying. Humanity is systematically destroying the biodiversity, ecosystems, climate, and biosphere upon which all life depends. Earth's ecosystems continue to be plundered for profit as if air, land, water and oceans have no intrinsic value. Climate change is an important yet singular part of a more widespread collapse of the global biosphere – the thin mantle of life arrayed in ecosystems surrounding the planet – as industrial growth destroys nature for stuff.

There remains only a short time to stop the industrial growth machine from irreparably destroying the biosphere. There is NO replacement, no backup biosphere. Either the human family comes together now to cut emissions and protect ecosystems, or being may well end – certainly well-being.

The central tenets of a Green Liberty political philosophy affirm that abrupt climate change, global ecosystem loss, and biosphere collapse threaten the well-being of the entire human family and of all life. This crisis is only survivable if we drastically cut emissions and move at once to protect natural ecosystems. Continued exponential human and industrial growth at the expense of life-giving ecosystems can only end in ecological and social collapse. We have met ecocide, and it is us. Yet not even this ecocidal state of affairs excuses loss of humanity's inherent rights, freedom, and duties.

Earth's people want and deserve universal democracy, political liberty, economic justice, and sustained ecology for everyone, for the whole world, and they want it now. It is time for a monumental global political realignment as lovers of ecology and liberty unite to topple the ecocidal nanny state and corporate oligarchy, at the ballot box and marketplace when possible, otherwise in the streets.

The human industrial growth machine is systematically liquidating the ecosystems upon which all life depends. At its root, abrupt climate change is one of many crises, others including overpopulation, ecocidal industrial growth, ecosystem loss and diminishment (especially the oceans and old-growth forests), inequity amidst plenty, and failed human development that equates advancement with ecocide.

Without ecology there can be no economy. Either the human family together invests in ecosystems and renewable energy, or else abrupt climate change and ecological collapse kill us. Industrial economic growth as it has widely been practiced by large corporations and individuals alike destroys ecosystems, collapses climate and biosphere, and destroys habitat, murdering all life.

Continue reading "ESSAY: The Green Liberty Party" »

Earth Is Dying, Yet Climate and Forest Movements Lack Urgency and Substance

Human industrial growth is systematically liquidating the natural ecosystems that are the habitat for humans and for all life. Earth is dying, one logged old-growth tree and tank of gasoline at a time, yet most environmental groups are shilling solutions that are inadequate and ill-conceived – such as logging old-growth forests to protect them. Nothing shows this better than Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network – in an age of mass extinction, abrupt climate change, and ecosystem collapse – wanting us to wipe our asses with toilet paper from "certified" old-growth forest pulp.

By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk

A profound lack of understanding exists, even amid the supposedly radical environmental movement, of the seriousness of merging ecological crises. If Gaia – the Earth System or biosphere – is alive, as science has come to understand, then clearly she can die as key ecosystems are destroyed and biogeochemical processes fail. To survive, much less thrive, humanity must stop scraping Earth's land of life, spewing waste into our air and water, and claiming it can all be certified as sustainably done, while calling it "development."

Industrial growth's destruction of ecosystems is undermining the habitability of the planet, threatening the maintenance of conditions necessary for life, by destroying the ecosystems required for a living planet. As key ecosystems are lost, indications are humanity will soon be going extinct, quite possibly taking the biosphere and all life with us.

Continue reading "EARTH MEANDERS: Earth Is Dying, Yet Climate and Forest Movements Lack Urgency and Substance" »

Old Forests, Kerala's Elephants, and the Biosphere

Proposing a planetary boundary for terrestrial ecosystem loss

By Dr. Glen Barry, December 16, 2012

Paper presented at the Kerala Law Academy International Law Conference on Conservation of Forests, Wildlife and Ecology, December 15-17, 2012

Full Paper: http://bit.ly/EIKeralaPaper

Theme - The Legal Regime and Measures for Conservation of Bio Diversity and Protection of Ecological Balance of Western Ghats

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." – Anne Frank

*Version 1.0, not yet peer reviewed, or final edits for publication in conference proceedings

Review Paper Abstract

Planetary boundary science continues the study of requirements to avoid ecosystem collapse and to achieve global ecological sustainability, by defining key thresholds in the Earth System's ecological conditions that threaten human well-being. Terrestrial ecosystems do not enter into the nine originally defined boundaries ranging from climate change to water availability, except peripherally through other boundaries such as land use and biodiversity. A rigorous research agenda is necessary to determine what quantity and quality of terrestrial ecosystems are required across landscapes so as to sustain the biosphere. This includes a spatially explicit way of indicating what extent of a landscape, bioregion, continent and global Earth System must remain in the form of connected and intact core ecological areas and semi-natural agroecological buffers, in order to sustain local ecosystem services as well as the biosphere commons. Connectivity of large ecosystem patches which remain the matrix for the landscape is a preeminent consideration. When ~60% of a natural ecosystem habitat remains, after just under 40% of the ecosystem has been destroyed, the landscape is said to percolate, and we see critical collapse of the "percolating cluster" – the dominant large habitat patch constituting the matrix of the landscape – into smaller, more distant habitat, in a sea of human development. This critical deterioration of habitat connectivity continues so that at or near 50% loss of a landscape or bioregon's natural vegetation, the natural habitat percolates from people within ecosystems, to natural islands surrounded by human works. This transition is likely to be similar at a continental and global scale.

A new planetary boundary threshold is proposed: that 60% of terrestrial ecosystems must be maintained across scales – with the boundary set at 66% as a precaution – as a safe space not only for humanity but for all life and to maintain the long-term viability of the biosphere. It is thought that loss and diminishment of terrestrial ecosystems aggregates from the local and regional scale, yet disrupts planetary process with this global scale threshold. It is hypothesized that ensuring natural ecosystems and their biogeochemical flows remain the context for human endeavors is a requirement to sustain the biosphere for the long term, and that fundamentally this requires large core ecological areas, and the critical connectivity of ecosystem processes and patterns, as the global and fractal landscape matrix. It is further proposed on the basis of ecology's percolation theory that two-thirds of the 66% of terrestrial ecosystems must be protected as ecological core areas (in total 44% of the global land mass as intact ecological cores, 22% as agroecological, agroforestry and managed forest buffers, and transition zones), to ensure the ecological integrity of the semi-natural agroecological landscapes, to maintain critical ecosystem connectivity across scales, and encompass semi-natural landscapes and bioregions within a matrix of intact nature to ensure that their own ecological patterns and processes are sustainable. Up to 50% of Earth's land surface has already been transformed from mostly wild to mostly anthropocentric, so the biosphere is likely to have already lost its global percolating cluster. If indeed bioregional and global scaled landscapes are similar to landscape and bioregional pattern, terrestrial ecosystem connectivity is already critically lacking, and the global ecosystem now exists as patches of nature within a sea of humanity. It is urgent to protect most of what remains and to begin reconstructing connected ecological landscape matrixes of intact ecosystems across scales, so that globally the biosphere can percolate back to connected nature as the provider of top-down context to human and all life.

To have meaning in guiding global ecological sustainability policy, these continental and global observations – and proposed 66% presence / 44% protected – planetary boundary for terrestrial ecosystem loss must be grounded in real-life landscape and bioregional conservation considerations. An example are efforts to achieve ecological sustainability, including maintaining continued viable populations of Asian elephants in the Western Ghats bioregion of India, particularly within Kerala state, as an umbrella species. The Asian elephant requires extensive and adequate natural habitat for its survival, and the Western monsoon depends upon forest-dependent pressure gradients – and thus the provision of both provides for water, clean air, soil, pollinators, and other ecosystem services for the region, nation, and biosphere. An initial expansive regional ecosystem mapping exercise that seeks to identify natural gradients in ecological importance has taken place in Kerala, but its largely top-down processes have faced organized socio-political resistance, it is not clear the scientifically valid mapping processes have enough understanding and support, and the legal structure is not in place to tie its requirements for local and regional sustainability to laws. As a real-world example, elephants moving across landscapes are emblematic and widely visible examples of the myriad types of flows that continue on a connected landscape, making life possible. It is suggested that as go the Western Ghats' and Kerala's Asian elephants and their habitat, so shall go the biosphere, and that it is crucial to build awareness that healthy ecosystems are essential to both local advancement and global sustainability. On the basis of taking such an ecosystem and landscape approach to the needs of Earth System sustainability, and given pernicious trends of ecosystem loss and decline, it is concluded that more attention is needed to prevent worst-case outcomes including biosphere collapse and a lifeless Earth, particularly because of abrupt climate change and ecosystem loss. A massive and global program to protect and restore natural ecosystems – funded by a carbon tax on fossil fuels – is presented as the sort of policy approach necessary at this time to avoid biosphere collapse. Humanity is now the major force shaping the biosphere, which, if current trends in ecological loss and diminishment continue, may collapse or die as a result.

Full Paper: http://bit.ly/EIKeralaPaper