End of the world as we know it

[Margaret Swedish]

Here is the challenge that keeps me awake nights. We are in ecological overshoot. The Earth can sustain indefinitely the consumption and waste of the US for half a billion people. We need 1.4 Earths to sustain current levels of human consumption and waste. We need 4-5 additional planets if we intend for everyone on Earth to aspire to the US way of life. We will add 2-3 billion people to the planet in the next 40 years.

This is the very definition of non-sustainability. We are beyond overshoot, beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. Unless we can figure out how to live in a way that vastly reduces the ecological footprint of the human to get back within the means of one planet -- and to do that in a way that can make possible a dignified existence for the additional 2-3 billion people to come and the 2-3 billion who now live on one or two bucks a day, we will find ourselves in a morally and ecologically destructive mode of being within this generation.

So, how can we, within our local bioregion, begin to construct a way of life that can bring us back within the capacity of one planet, while addressing realities of poverty, injustice, economic inequities, and depletion of the 'resources' needed to sustain rich and biodiverse life for the generations to come after us?

Margaret