The Dominant Animal

Human Evolution and the Environment

Protected: Epilogue

Chapter Summary

Will the story of today’s human dominance echo that of past civilizations that collapsed, such as the Roman Empire, the Mayans, and the Khmers? We may now have reached a turning point—after increasing our numbers, diverting the planet’s resources, and reshaping its environments—of a progressive destabilization of the global systems that sustain us. At the same time, a millennia-long trend of flowering and differentiation of cultures may be reversing as a few dominant cultures swamp and supplant hundreds of traditional cultures and languages.

The world community now faces and must address multiple interconnected dilemmas encompassing population, resources, poverty, equity, and environment. Possibly looming in civilization’s future are conflicts over increasingly scarce resources, collapses of agricultural and natural ecosystems from overexploitation, losses of ecosystem services, and changing climates, potentially followed by severe economic disruption, famine, and massive migrations. Technology is no panacea, being unable to address issues of power or quality of life, but it will be needed to help resolve many of the dilemmas. More than technology, social change is needed, leading to a cooperative spirit for addressing the dilemmas—one that is likely to emerge only through addressing the problems of global equity.

Keys to solving our plethora of problems may ironically turn out to be two advances that have contributed to them: global trade and communications. More equitable arrangements for the trade and distribution of food, along with more emphasis on consumption of food grown locally and support for agriculture in developing regions, could both reduce inequity and improve sustainability. The shift toward a multipolar political system, replacing the United States as the lone superpower, could mean increased competition and conflict over resources, or it could lead to a more cooperative and stable system.

Communications also have changed greatly in recent years as satellite TV reception and the Internet have become available to people everywhere, and information is disseminated from multiple sources with diverse viewpoints. This presents new opportunities to address global problems and reach consensus on their solutions. Indeed, such a consensus on many of them has been developing among members of the international community over decades through a series of United Nations conferences. Unfortunately, educational, economic, and bureaucratic obstacles, abetted by powerful opposition from various vested interests, stand in the way of implementing the solutions. Global communications can either help or hinder progress.

Our globalizing civilization needs to seize the opportunities presented by enhanced communications to explore conscious evolution and try new ways of organizing societies to cooperate in addressing the human predicament. The central goal is to figure out how society should evolve, and whether and when problems of scarcity and equity can be solved within a biophysical steady state. Setting practical goals on how to live and organize ourselves is essential, even though success is not ensured. Addressing these questions while dealing with the consequences of overshooting Earth’s capacity to support our civilization will not be easy, but delay in doing so forecloses options for a better future. The qualities that allowed us to become the dominant animal could help us create a sustainable future for ourselves and the rest of the living world.

Key Terms

  • Battery chickens
  • Biophysical steady state
  • Environmental refugees
  • Lingua franca

Discussion Questions

  1. What role do you think global trade and revolutions in communication will play, positively and negatively, in developing a more sustainable world?