This US Memorial Day Remember War Is Murder

We must stop glorifying war murders and their perpetrators. Instead we must demobilize globally in order to address the far greater threat of abrupt climate change and ecosystem collapse. Murder has not, nor will it ever, make us free.

War is Murder

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

By Dr. Glen Barry, EcoInternet

This Memorial Day, as America lionizes the bravery and sacrifice of its soldiers, try if you can to step aside from jingoistic nationalism for a moment and think freely. Recall that stripped of ritual and pomp, war is the killing of other human beings for political and economic gain. America has proven particularly adept, by some estimates being at war all but 20 years of its nearly 240-year history.

In war brainwashed young men (and now women) of one tribe hunt down and kill the indoctrinated from another tribe to serve the interests of rich old men. It doesn’t matter which gods or arbitrarily delineated nation are displayed or what rhetoric is used; war is murder. Bodies are cut and blown apart, homes destroyed, families ripped asunder, women raped, and the land, water, and air plundered as the wealthy declare a respite from the laws of humanity to further their own enrichment.

This is not to suggest that humanity never has to fight to stop the march of some madman or to stop some overconsuming nation from wantonly stealing resources. We may yet have to fight to overthrow the oil oligarchy’s hold on our economy and destruction of our biosphere.

But the way we glorify soldiers and war – covering up the brutal nature of war, and the profound suffering it causes – does a sad disservice to those killed, those aggrieved who will start the next war, and those who blindly followed orders. Young, naïve men and women go to war believing falsely that a nation can excuse their acts of murder – and remain forever traumatized as a result.

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On Overpopulation and Ecosystem Collapse

Earth's biosphere is collapsing and dying as human industrial growth overwhelms ecosystems and abruptly changes climate. Equity, education, condoms, and lower taxes and other incentives to stabilize and then reduce human population are a huge part of the solution.

By Dr. Glen Barry, EcoInternet

Overpopulation

THE FALL

Earth in overshoot;
human growth is killing her;
the end of being.

The global ecological system is collapsing and dying under the cumulative filth of 7 billion people INEQUITABLY devouring their ecosystem habitats. It is impossible to avoid global ecosystem collapse if humanity continues to breed like bunnies; tolerates exorbitant inequality, abject poverty and conspicuous overconsumption; and destroys the ecosystems and climate that – rich or poor – are habitat for all of us. As I have written previously and will write again, the human family either comes together to address converging ecology, rights, and injustice crises – largely brought on by inequitable overpopulation – or faces global ecological collapse and the end of being.

It is not possible to go from 1 to 7 billion people in 135 years – while still growing exponentially – without profound impacts upon natural ecosystems that provide air, water, food and livelihoods. If you don’t understand this, you are uneducated, dumb, and/or indoctrinated; you need to study ecology and get out and see the world. Or go and look at an overgrazed cow pasture and extrapolate. Merging climate, food, water, ocean, soil, justice, poverty, and old-growth forest crises – all which are to some degree caused by inequitable overpopulation – are destroying ecosystems and threaten to pull down our one shared biosphere.

Earth has lost 80% of her old-growth forests, 50% of her soil, 90% of the big fish – and many water, land, and ocean ecosystems, as well as atmospheric stability, as human population has soared more than sevenfold. The human family is living far beyond its means, devouring natural capital principal and ravaging its own ecosystem habitats, which can only end in ecological, social and economic collapse. Earth's carrying capacity has been exceeded, and we must equitably and justly bring down human population and consumption inequity or else face global ecosystem collapse. We can start the necessary social change or an angry Earth will sort it out herself by killing billions; as we possibly pull down the biosphere with us, ending most or even all life, during a prolonged collapse.

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Terrestrial Ecosystem Loss and Biosphere Collapse

By Dr. Glen Barry
Independent Political Ecology Scientist
glen.barry@gmail.com

Excerpt of manuscript accepted for publication mid-2014 by Management of Environmental Quality

Abstract

 Planetary boundary science defines key thresholds in the Earth System's biogeochemical conditions that precede ecosystem collapse and threaten human well-being. Terrestrial ecosystems enter into the nine originally defined planetary boundaries only indirectly, through boundaries such as biodiversity and land use. This study proposes a measurable terrestrial ecosystem boundary to answer the question: what extent of landscapes, bioregions, continents, and the global Earth System must remain as connected and intact core ecological areas and agro-ecological buffers t sustain local and regional ecosystem services as well as the biosphere commons? Two preeminent considerations are connectivity of large ecosystem patches, enabling them to persist as the matrix for the landscape, and critical collapse of the dominant large habitat patch – or "percolating cluster" – into smaller, more isolated habitats, amid a matrix of human development. This transition, found to occur at about 40% habitat loss in landscapes and bioregions, is likely to be similar at continental and global scales.

A new planetary boundary threshold is proposed based on ecology’s percolation theory: that across scales 60% of terrestrial ecosystems must remain, setting the boundary at 66% as a precaution, to maintain key biogeochemical processes that sustain the biosphere and for ecosystems to remain the context for human endeavors. Strict protection is proposed for 44% of global land, 22% as agro-ecological buffers, and 33% as zones of sustainable human use.

Because humanity is now the major force shaping the biosphere, up to 50% of Earth's land surface has already been cleared of natural ecosystems; thus the biosphere may already have lost its global percolating cluster. If so, with diminished connectivity, the global ecological system is now composed of islands of nature within a sea of humanity, meaning critical water, climate, soil, and other ecosystems processes are at risk. This observation suggests that to sustain the biosphere it is urgent to protect remaining large, relatively intact terrestrial ecosystems, especially old-growth and primary forests. This will require accelerating current approaches such as biosphere reserves, and taking up new polices such as a carbon tax to fund protection and restoration of natural and agro-ecological terrestrial ecosystems. To ensure global ecological sustainability, it will be necessary to reconnect matrices of intact ecosystems across scales, so that globally the biosphere and its constituent ecological processes and patterns can percolate back to connected nature as the context to all life. Otherwise, it is hypothesized the global biosphere may collapse and the Earth System perish.

Introduction to Planetary Boundaries

From Malthus (1798), through Aldo Leopold's land ethic (1949), to The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972), the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005), and finally current planetary boundary and global change science (Rockström et al. 2009a, 2009b) runs a strand of concern about human growth's impacts upon Earth's biophysical systems – terrestrial ecosystems in particular – and about requirements for global ecological sustainability, while avoiding biosphere collapse. Our biosphere is composed of Earth's thin mantle of life present at, and just above and below, the Earth's surface. Some have indicated that human impacts upon the biosphere are analogous to a large, uncontrolled experiment, which threatens its collapse (Trevors et al. 2010). Little is known regarding what collapse of the biosphere would look like, how long it would take, what are its ecosystem and spatial patterns, and whether it is reversible or survivable. But it is becoming more widely recognized that Earth's ecosystem services depend fundamentally upon holistic, well-functioning natural systems (Cornell 2009).

Accelerating human pressures on the Earth System are exceeding numerous local, regional, and global thresholds, with abrupt and possibly irreversible impacts upon the planet's life-support functions (UNEP 2012). Planetary boundaries provide a framework to study these phenomena, by defining a "safe operating space for humanity with respect to the Earth System" (Rockström et al. 2009a). Planetary boundary studies seek to set control variable values that are a safe distance from thresholds of key biophysical processes governing the planet's self-regulation to maintain conditions conducive to life (Rockström et al. 2009b). This builds upon landmark efforts by Meadows et al. (1972) to first define global limits to growth. Their prediction that key resource scarcities would emerge has proven remarkably accurate (Turner 2008), albeit delayed – but not avoided – through the advent of computer technology. Ecological and economic warnings since at least Malthus have called attention to economies' dependence upon natural resources. The observation that near-exponential growth of human population and economic activity cannot be sustained, far from being disproven, is more valid than ever (Brown et al. 2011). Those who deny limits to growth are unaware of biological realities (Vitousek 1986).

The initial planetary boundary exercise identified nine global-scale processes, including climate change, rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial and marine), nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, freshwater, land use change, chemical pollution, and atmospheric aerosol loading (Figure 1). Preliminary safe planetary thresholds were established for seven of these, and three – rate of biodiversity loss, climate change, and the nitrogen cycle – were found to have already surpassed such a threshold (Rockström et al. 2009a). Many such changes occur in a nonlinear, abrupt manner; others are more incremental and subtle. Yet both types of change threaten the viability of contemporary human societies by diminishing or destroying ecological life-support systems. If one or more of these boundaries are crossed, it could be "deleterious or even catastrophic" as nonlinear, abrupt environmental change occurs at the continental to planetary scale (Rockström et al. 2009b).

Here an ecologically rich revision to the planetary boundary framework is proposed – in the tradition of political ecology, not ignoring politics – to set the threshold of how many intact terrestrial ecosystems are required to sustain the biosphere. It is not possible to carry out controlled experiments upon our one biosphere to know at what point collapse occurs. We are thus left with observational studies and synthesis papers regarding what is known about ecosystem collapse at other scales. This paper first reviews what is known about biodiversity and old-growth forest loss, abrupt climate change, and ecosystem collapse as ecological systems are diminished at lesser scales. Next, the critical phase shift seen as landscapes percolate from nature surrounding humanity, to small reserves surrounded by human works, is presented as analogous to outcomes for the biosphere, whose terrestrial ecosystems are after all simply a large-scale landscape.

The remainder of the paper synthesizes these findings regarding ecosystem loss and thresholds in loss of ecosystem connectivity into a rationale for recognition of a 10^th planetary boundary in regard to terrestrial ecosystem loss. It is suggested that some two-thirds of Earth’s land surface should be protected totally (44%) or partially (another 22%) to avoid biosphere collapse. Given current best estimates are that approximately one-half of Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems have already been lost, the discussion centers around biocentric policy measures required to protect and restore terrestrial ecosystem connectivity in order to maintain global ecological sustainability.

Figure 1: Proposing a Terrestrial Ecosystem Loss Planetary Boundary. Currently nine planetary systems are recognized as providing a safe operating space for humanity, as long as boundaries are not exceeded. It is thought three systems (denoted with +) have already surpassed their boundaries. This paper proposes a Terrestrial Ecosystem boundary of 66% ecosystem land cover (44% as intact natural ecosystems and 22% as agro-ecological buffers) to avoid biosphere collapse. Best estimates are that about 50% of terrestrial ecosystems have been lost; thus this boundary has been surpassed too, albeit full impacts may not yet be realized due to time lags (adapted from Rockström et al. 2009a).

Coming Soon: the rest of this journal article as published mid-2014, including these headings:

Biodiversity and Old-Growth Forest Loss, Abrupt Climate Change, and Ecosystem Collapse
Percolation Theory and Landscape Connectivity
Terrestrial Ecosystem Loss as a Planetary Boundary
Biocentric Discussion on Achieving Global Ecological Sustainability

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