THE FUNDAMENTAL ILLUSION AND ITS OPPORTUNITY COST

Human history is basically a relationship between the two most complicated life systems on Earth: Human society and Nature. What ensures our survival is whether we are living in balance with Nature or not. We are all at a critical point in time. We've evolved to be the leaders of our biological community but we are misleading. We are causing the devastation to the very foundation of our life system that has given us birth. And in a sense we are ultimately committing suicide.
Homo sapiens is an incredibly young species. But in the last century, we've dramatically increased our impact on planet Earth. We are becoming increasingly destructive and causing extensive damage to our climate and all other natural systems. This is mainly due to the fundamental illusion that most of us have that people are separate from nature. Most of our attitudes are based on selfishness based on the economic situation we have which in turn is based on the politics which we have. We live in a human-created environment where it's very easy to think we're different from other creatures.
After the industrial revolution, nature was converted to a resource and that resource was seen as, essentially, eternally abundant. This led to the idea and the conception behind progress which is, limitless growth, and limitless expansion. This is in fact putting a heavy burden on our Ecosystem.
While we weren’t looking we've created one of the biggest problems facing all of humanity: Climate change. This has been largely due to the massive amounts of CO2 we dump into the air and water. Our actions have shifted the natural chemical balance into a world several degrees warmer. We have witnessed, in recent years the highest average temperatures in recorded history. One of the most serious consequences of our actions is global warming brought about by rising levels of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. The danger is that the temperature increase might become self-sustaining. Drought and deforestation are reducing the amount of carbon dioxide recycled into the atmosphere. And the warming of the seas may trigger the release of large quantities of CO2 trapped on the ocean floor. In addition, the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets will reduce the amount of solar energy reflected back into space and so increase the temperature further.
There's an ocean crisis also. And the upshot is that we've taken too much out of the ocean, we've put too much into the ocean, too much pollution and we're wrecking the edge of the ocean. We've lost 90 percent of most of the big fish in half a century, so we're turning to deeper areas, further areas offshore. So between overfishing and by-catch, we're really removing millions, of animals from the ocean every year. Many of them don't even become food for humans. They just are wasted.
Seventy countries in the world no longer have any intact or original forests. In many cases, the forest will not grow back. That land is converted to grassland. But in the case of rain forests, we have seen firsthand that when those trees are removed, no, they do not come back. The land becomes extremely dry and the nutrient cycling that those trees used to do is no longer functioning. What that leads to next? Deserts...
Thus we face a convergence of crises all of which are a concern for life. The problem that confronts us is that every living system in the biosphere is in decline and the rate of decline is accelerating. This fact was established beyond any doubt during the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment by UN, a four-year study, the biggest ever done of ecosystems around the world.
So where does all these things leave us? What can we people do about it? It is high time that we stopped talking and started acting to save our unique blue planet, because as one environmental ad says, we have only one Earth and it's not like we can go shopping somewhere else.