Future generations need a flourishing ecosystem
Climate tipping points are imminent. Climate extremes will overwhelm us with increasing frequency as politicians continue to shirk the challenge of addressing their underlying causes.
We live in a world of eternal growth, where standards of living are expected to rise unfailingly. But growth comes at the expense of the environment: old-growth forests depleted for agriculture, mammalian extinctions, fish stocks depleted, and ever-greater pollution – carbon accumulating in the atmosphere, plastics choking the seas.
Humanity may be our planet’s dominant species, but we are just one element of its ecosystem. We are changing the balance of that ecosystem through our self-interested activities; by taking from nature faster than nature can replenish itself we are undermining the world for future generations. We must protect our environment because we, and they, depend on it. We have to rein in the demands we place on that ecosystem, allow it to flourish again – or else we will, by default, prioritise our immediate standards of living ahead of leaving a healthy world for future generations.
Tipping points will change our environment irrevocably; climate extremes will become the norm. Life will no longer be about ‘standards of living’; it will be a battle to survive.
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