Something extraordinary is happening. You can feel it in the air. But it’s not what you think it is. I am not talking about an imminent Armageddon following the return of Jesus Christ to Earth in a “rapture” moment, or the Taylor Swift “Eras” tour. I am not referring to the genocide in Gaza that could easily erupt into a regional conflict at any time, reactions to the re-emergence of Donald Trump as the Republican’s Presidential candidate, the cascading failures of a global monetary system based on compounded debt, nor even the the A-bomb film Oppenheimer nuking the walking-talking-doll movie Barbie at the Academy Awards.
I am suggesting a phenomenon that will have us scrambling to re-write textbooks and re-examine the most deeply-embedded of our hypotheses concerning human identity and purpose. And if that is the case you will already have realised that this is not a topic for the nightly television news!
We are living through and contributing to a defining moment in geological time. As incongruous and as unlikely as it seems, the human species has become a force of nature, reshaping the Earth’s surface and the natural processes upon which all life depends. Unlike fateful events of a transitory nature this intervention actually does change everything! Not necessarily for the worse as many claim, although the final outcome is far from certain and probably will be for some considerable time.
Scientists have realized this is happening from closely observing a set of life-critical interdependent developments over decades. For example, carbon and nitrogen cycles are both accelerating – in the latter case by almost 150 per cent. The oceans are acidifying and warming faster than predicted. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, an ocean current system responsible for redistributing warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic, is at risk of collapsing. Sediment flows in the world’s great deltas, home to hundreds of millions of people, are eroding faster than they can be replaced.
But there are other effects that we can see with our own eyes. Seasons are shifting. Water supplies are threatened by retreating glaciers. Extinction rates are higher than normal. Massive wildfires are raging on almost every continent. The Arctic ice shelf is melting, puncturing the permafrost and allowing vast stores of methane to leak into the atmosphere for the first time… Need I go on?
Curiosity and a sense of responsible stewardship oblige us to enquire into the source of such shifts. It is actually quite simple. We have become the Creator, architects of our own evolution, not only at a nanoscale level of genetic and cellular manipulation but at the macro level of geological shifts. In effect humanity’s disruption, modification and acceleration of natural processes is triggering the age of homo sapiens. The Anthropocene age is beckoning and there are consequences to consider.
The evolutionary clock is ticking loudly. As hard as we might try we cannot wind back the hands. Returning to a more reassuring or comfortable past is morally untenable as well as an impractical illusion. Instead we must learn to live wisely with our creation. At a minimum this means safeguarding the continuing viability of life-nurturing systems - such as clean air and pure water; halting the rampant despoilation of natural ecosystems, prioritizing our most critical needs (like nutritious food, love and happiness) more prudently and transparently; enhancing environmental, social and institutional resilience; harnessing new technologies responsibly; and creating an ecology of mind grounded in appreciation, abundance, sufficiency and collaboration.
Simply put, it’s time to let go of the past - and with it the fears, superstitions, protocols and practices that constrain human potential and set us against each other – to design a future capable of generating sufficient health, well-being and prosperity for all 8 billion of us. That objective will be impossible to achieve through incremental or cosmetic change, or fiddling at the fringes of the existing paradigm. We need an archetypal metamorphosis: a suite of profound transformations that will shift human praxis from competition to cooperation, from economic growth to well being, from inequity to integrity, from despair to hope and from inward-looking interests to planetary stewardship.
I find the idea of genuine transformation inspiring. We see transformation in nature when a larva turns into a pupa before metamorphizing into a butterfly. On one hand it sounds simple and obvious. Indeed it is. But in order for us to accomplish a panarchical metamorphosis of such ambition and scope we will need to set free a wave of societal innovation, the audacity of which is unprecedented. For what I am proposing is nothing less than an awakening to a conscious evolution where human purpose and intent are reconceptualized at their most axiomatic levels. At the same time a transfiguration of this nature would presumably offer profound alternatives to the commonly held view (a fusion of biological and digital life forms) proposed by some overly-enthusiastic technocrats as the most probable future for our species.
Consciously designing a world that can comfortably house nine or even ten billion people will require all the ingenuity, empathy and environmental sensitivity we can muster. For what I am suggesting is nothing less than a renaissance of the human soul, humanity, and the civilisational ethos unlike anything we have previously imagined.
It stands to reason that the world we are creating will need to operate in different ways from the one which so effortlessly accommodated two billion people at the end of World War II. In 1945 the world seemed relatively empty and free. Today it is raucous, overflowing, and subdued. We have to adopt ecological design criteria and alternative governance methods; invent more aligned, responsive and adaptive institutions based on an appreciation of the need to conserve our common wealth; find smarter ways of producing life’s necessities by working with nature rather than against it; establish an economy in which prosperity is decoupled from corruption and motives of greed or self-interest - all the while embedding efficiencies to ensure that our planet can continue to provide abundantly for us all and not just the privileged or wealthy few.
In that context it is vital we seek to transform how we think - about our relationship to the planet and to each other. This will demand a shift in individual and collective consciousness. That, you see, is the extent of the task facing us. That is the essence of what we mean when we talk about metamorphosis.
To comprehend the dynamic complexities entailed in such a transformation we can use the carbon cycle, which I referenced earlier, as a typical example of the entangled nature of the issue. You are probably already aware of the claims being made by our leading climate scientists. But I will restate some relevant statistics if only to ensure you are up-to-date with the most recent science.
According to the International Energy Agency, greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount in 2022, reaching the highest carbon output in recorded history. Not even the financial crisis, thought by many observers to be the most serious global recession of the past 80 years, or the more recent pandemic, have done much to curb rising emissions. The eminent economist Nicholas Stern, noting this fact, stated that the heating resulting from increased emissions "will disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, leading to widespread mass migration and conflict."
Today, the global average surface temperature is approaching 1.5° Celsius above pre‑industrial levels, prompting exteme weather events and the faster extinction of species. Johan Rockstrom’s Stockholm Resilience Centre estimates that six out of nine critical planetary boundaries have been breached, thus putting at risk the safe operating space to which we have all become accustomed. The situation is now critical - virtually impossible to keep the rise in global temperatures to within 2° Celsius. Many scientists believe this to be the tipping point before exponential feedback loops lead to abrupt, asymmetric and potentially irreversible changes to the climate system.
I confess that I find this news terrifying. As the room for maneuvering contracts by the day, urgent action is still not forthcoming – even when it comes to the relatively less painful implementation of energy efficiencies through reduction and recycling. Instead, the reverse seems to be happening.
One can argue that the significance of climate change in international policy debates is being taken less seriously than it was a few years ago, mostly as a result of intensive lobbying and fear mongering from certain sectors of the business community. Meanwhile developed nations have really only managed to reduce carbon emissions by importing goods from countries like China. All of this is a recipe for disaster - at least without a shift in consciousness….
It is worth repeating here that it is not just global heating caused by increasing amounts of carbon in the air that is of concern but how the climate is intricately linked with other life-critical systems. For example, we are witnessing an unprecedented rise in the cost of staple foods like rice, grains and potatoes. Food is getting ridiculously expensive as successive grain harvests fail. Unless urgent action is taken to reform the global food system the cost of these staples will more than double within 20 years, forcing many more millions into poverty. Half of that increase will be directly caused by global heating while the remainder will be the result of a combination of factors including the war in Ukraine, soil erosion, a scarcity of arable land and water for irrigation, price gouging by the large retail chains, and access to affordable energy.
But let us step out of our linear thinking habits to connect ever more salient data. If we pause to examine the entire contextual system of human behaviour in the environment over a period of several hundred years (the panarchical relationship) the picture of impending problems becomes much more evident. Take the sum of around thirty environmental trends (including ocean acidification, worsening oxygen levels in large cities, loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, desertification, falling water tables, declining fish stocks, or methane venting from melting icecaps) and we can plot exponential deterioration over at least the past 75 years. It is clear our species is changing how nature works. There is no other feasible explanation I find acceptable.
When I was born there were just under two billion people on the planet. Late last year the figure hit eight billion. By the end of the century it is likely to exceed ten billion. In spite of such ballooning population growth our desires and behaviours have not changed one iota. We still aspire to become more affluent than our neighbors. We still rely on technology to solve our problems. We still wait for a crisis before we act. We still delegate responsibilities to others less capable than ourselves.
I have no doubt that unless excessive consumption is outlawed, which is highly improbable, marketing companies will continue in their narrow-minded quest of getting us to buy more and more stuff from manufacturers being urged to produce more and more goods, a large proportion of which will be thrown away. The truth is there for all to see. Yet even now, against such dire scenarios, politicians and industry lobbyists in each of the great powers are eyeing up extraordinary and risky ways to extract the world's last remaining reserves of fossil fuels in the name of corporate profits and economic development.
How can this be? If it was simply the storyline to the latest Tom Cruise “Mission Impossible” outing we would applaud such fantasy and gasp at the implausible stunts. But this is real. No repeated denials or political posturing is going to make this all vanish. Science is telling us that nature has limits and that we need to dismantle the fossil fuel industry (as it is currently structured) as fast as we possibly can. We cannot win a battle against nature. Yet we persist, choosing to ignore science, preferring the hubris of inaction and denying the risk to future generations and to the poor who have few means to protect themselves from the impacts of a changing climate.
It appears we are not fully awake to this reality but sleepwalking. Sleepwalking towards a crisis that is of our own making and that might still be avoided – if only we were more sensitive to the dangers and could see the wisdom of changing our minds about how we choose to live our lives.
Nor is being awake the only issue of course. As I have said repeatedly, changing our minds entails a shift in consciousness so that we perceive the systemic nature of the risks confronting us with greater clarity and can take appropriate and rapid corrective action. Only then will we be in a position to transcend potentially catastrophic consequences. Given the implacable nature and recklessness of those who continue to pollute the atmosphere I wonder if this is really possible, especially in view of the increasing urgency of our predicament, given that individual epiphanies must necessarily occur along with any collective shift of consciousness.
After the farce at the COP28 climate change talks in Abu Dhabi (and in spite of scientists warning us that climate change poses the greatest threat to our species in its history, that we are running out of time, and that we may even be facing the prospect of our own extinction) it is clear that many political and business leaders are inept at dealing with complexity. Moreover the majority are ill-prepared to tackle intertwined issues that would loose them votes or profits. Statesmanship and governance have become lost arts. Disregarding autocrats, and the existence of ingrained corruption in most sovereign states, nearly all representatives of the modern world-system are either unwilling or incapable of putting aside self-interest for the common good. Meanwhile public awareness has led to frustration and protest. More attuned to the truth, yet distressed by its existential nature, communities around the world are increasingly opting to vent their anger and frustration in civil unrest and protest.
But if we are bemused regarding the underlying causes of climate change, concerned by the lack of clarity concerning the potential impact of continuing fires, droughts and floods on our lifestyles, and puzzled by the lack of concerted and coherent government action, at least let us be clear about one thing. We the people, social witnesses to official dithering, are no longer the revolutionaries. Nor for that matter are the scientists, environmentalists or outliers urging societal transformation via a shift in awareness.
In this instance the real radicals are the political and industry militants, together with their benefactors, the owners of capital, who refuse to relinquish their financially-driven motives, who willingly go to any lengths to protect their collapsing ideology, and who absurdly insist that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy aimed at bringing down capitalism. In due course this open defiance of rationality, coupled with a reluctance to put the common wealth before individual profits, must stop. Through inaction and hubris these radicals are pilfering the prosperity and viability of future generations. They are now the anarchists and their selfish sedition must not be allowed to succeed.
But how can we overcome such a compelling force when most of the investment capital required for securing even easy gains (e.g. the rapid advancement of energy efficiencies in conjunction with the deployment of proven renewable technologies) is stashed away in the vaults of governments and corporations fixated on quick profits and gratuitous homage to obsolete economic theories?
For me the real crisis facing homo sapiens is not climate change per se, nor any of the resulting effects articulated above, but the erroneous set of assumptions about human nature that condone excessive production and consumption at a time when the impact of such behaviours on those who do not have access to similar resources and opportunities are self-evident. Most of these assumptions, with their emphasis on individual self-interest and competitive materialism, were laid down during the 18th century Enlightenment. They have been taken, incorrectly as it happens, as fundamental to human endeavour ever since. Indeed these beliefs are trotted out with tedious regularity as the primary defence and rationale for globalisation. It is worth examining how these assumptions are flawed in today’s context.
In his topical book The Empathic Civilization US economist and futurist Jeremy Rifkin is unequivocal about this issue. Human beings, he says, are naturally empathic. It is built into our biology. Yet most of our assumptions and hence our business, social and governance institutions, are founded on an entirely different set of cultural and behavioural norms. Namely, that we are intrinsically competitive. “In 19th century Europe this impulse regarding human nature was mindlessly embraced by the newly-conceived sovereign states where they were commonly perceived as autonomous agents entangled in a relentless and never-ending battle with other sovereign states in the pursuit of material gain and the protection of its citizens.”
Rifkin notes that recent discoveries in neuroscience and child development (for example mirror-neurons - nerve cells that enable human beings and some other species to feel and experience another's situation and emotions as if they were one's own) pose a credible challenge to these long-held assumptions. The detection of mirror neurons suggests we are social and empathic creatures after all and that we constantly seek intimate participation and companionship with our fellows. This view also happens to reinforce observations made by Russian zoologist Pyotr Kropotkin who, barely 25 years after Darwin’s pioneering work, observed cooperation within and between species in the icy tundra of Siberia. Such discoveries overturn many of our previous beliefs concerning human motives. The growing scientific evidence that we are a fundamentally empathic species has profound and far-reaching consequences for society.
Uppermost in any ontological re-framing of the human condition, Rifkin postulates, is the proposition that human evolution can be measured not merely by the expansion of supremacy over nature “but also by the intensification of empathic connection to a broader diversity of living beings.” Throughout the sweep of human history we have seen successive technology revolutions leading to increases in economic prosperity. They have also brought about shifts in consciousness, which has then led to further technological advancement… This cycle has also been accelerating. Contemporary scientific breakthroughs, including the application of large language models for example, have the potential to change paradigms in decades rather than over centuries.
Once again Rifkin’s assessment is precise. “Forager-hunter societies relied on oral communications and their consciousness was mythologically constructed. The great hydraulic agricultural civilizations were, for the most part, organized around script communication and steeped in theological consciousness. The first industrial revolution in 19th century Europe was managed by print communication and ushered in ideological consciousness. Electronic communication became the command and control mechanism for arranging the second industrial revolution in the 20th century and spawned psychological consciousness.”
Like Rifkin I have no doubt that today’s distributed and decentralised technologies, peer-to-peer social media and the potential for renewable open source energy, will create an opportunity for human civilisation to transcend current dilemmas by virtue of the most momentous evolutionary step we will ever have taken. By abandoning parochial self-interest and embracing an appreciative understanding toward the diverse richness of life we will step into a new epistemology (a biospheric consciousness) where the depth of social intimacy and interaction will become both the primary design principle and central nervous system for a new pangaian society.
With good fortune and foresight that giant step might also steer the human narrative away from fear and resentment to one of hope and inclusion. In an age where information frequently overwhelms us, where faith has been torpedoed by its own institutions, where we can design, manufacture and acquire more or less anything we can imagine, and where our access to a range of mind-blowing experiences is virtually unlimited, we lack just one thing: an overriding sense of relevance.
Why have we been given the skill to invent technologies that enable instant communication and constant connectivity? Where is the real added value? Is it just to be entertained or to hasten commercial exchange? Surely not. But what additional benefits are created, over and above material gain? What (if anything) in all of this nourishes the human soul or our deep desire for empathy through connection? What is the transcendent purpose that extends beyond mere tribal or religious affiliations and national identity to embrace the whole of humanity? And how should we engage with this?
Along with these unknowns there are also reasons to be optimistic. Transcending the purely human-centred worldview and world-system can help create a new more-than-human ethos in which the rich and diverse variety of relationships comprising the planet’s life-sustaining forces can harmonise and come into a new equilibrium. I call this ecority – a portmanteau word combining ecology and integrity.
Ecority is a new paradigm for a new age. Ecority can transform our world, moving us beyond the disconnected, self-interested and utilitarian ideals that burden our daily lives with matters of ultimate inconsequence. It can rise above the state-dominated geopolitical mess we have fashioned, and the wars imposed upon us by the self-styled masters of the universe, to allow new forms of planetary governance to evolve. Above all it can restructure our lives to become more collaborative, empathic, and loving.