Thursday, May 2, 2013

Audrey Clark — Biologist Paul Ehrlich gives dire prediction for global civilization

“I believe and all of my colleagues believe that we are on a straightforward course to a collapse of our civilization.”
VTDigger
Biologist Paul Ehrlich gives dire prediction for global civilization
Audrey Clark

Technology running ahead of our ability as a species to adapt to emerging challenges arising from it.
After an hour-long talk about all the reasons why a collapse of civilization is likely and how hard it will be to prevent, Ehrlich offered one iota of hope: “If there’s any reason for hope, it’s that we do have a history of showing that human beings, human societies, in relatively recent times can change extremely dramatically, extremely rapidly.” 
Ehrlich went on, “For some reason — we don’t fully understand it — when the time is right, you can get dramatic, dramatic changes, which indicates to me that there’s a chance that when the time is right, we can change the way we behave towards each other and towards our environment and it can happen very very rapidly. I think … your main challenge is to find a way to ripen the time.”



1 comment:

Nobody said...

“The first place I think that we ought to be concentrating if we’re going to solve the problem and avoid a collapse is to rework the entire agricultural system..."

Yep. That's the main problem. The way we produce most food now is directly leading to our demise. A good soil scientist/ecologist that's been around long enough to see what's been happening will tell you what's up. Debasement of the foundation of civilization (healthy, productive, living soils and ecosystems) never goes well.

Permaculture can save us. Will we embrace it?