SCIENCE
Exceptionalism or Kinship?
Predictive modeling of progressive Global Warming
Corporate interests profit enormously from the ‘throwaway’ consumer society and promote the endless expansion of economic growth. This cannot possibly succeed, because fossil fuels and key industrial resources are running out. Furthermore, the biosphere can no longer support our levels of exploitation. To irreversibly damage or diminish it is biologically insane. Why is the human species driven—or manipulated—towards self-destruction?
The philosophy of exceptionalism, which supposes that the special status on Earth of humanity lifts us above the laws of Nature, takes one of two forms. The first is secular: don’t change course now, human genius will provide. The second is religious: don’t change course now, we are in the hands of God, or the gods, Earth’s karma, whatever...Every species is a masterpiece of evolution, exquisitely well adapted to the niches of the natural environment in which it occurs. The surviving species around us are thousands to millions of years old. Their genes, having been tested each generation in the crucible of natural selection, are codes written by countless episodes of life and death. Their careless erasure is a tragedy that will haunt human memory for ever [1].
Most of us find it deeply disturbing to contemplate the degradation of nature and the extinction of innumerable species on our planet. Our instinctual feeling of kinship and love towards nature and other species is termed biophilia [1]. Our global society needs to acknowledge the existence and implications of the mass extinction spike. Professional biologists share a unanimous view: climate warming and habitat destruction are creating such a spike, and right now. There will not be a second chance to save the Earth’s great ecological habitats and systems.
A sense of genetic unity, kinship and deep history are among the values that bond us to the living environment. They are survival mechanisms for ourselves and our species. To conserve biological diversity is an investment in immortality [1].
1. Edward Wilson [2003] The Future of Life