The General Crisis

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Crisis

The Thirty Years' War, which devastated much of Europe 1618–1648, is one of the events some historians have associated with the alleged General Crisis.

The General Crisis is a term used by some historians to describe an alleged period of widespread regional conflict and instability that occurred from the early 17th century to the early 18th century in Europe, and in more recent historiography in the world at large.

Definitions and debates

Since the mid-20th century, some scholars have proposed widely different definitions, causes, events, periodisations and geographical applications of a 'General Crisis', disagreeing with each other in debates. Other scholars have rejected the various concepts of a General Crisis altogether, claiming there was no such generalised phenomenon connecting various events due to a lack of linkeages between the events and widely shared commonalities in their character, and that generalised historical concepts such as the 'General Crisis' may be unhelpful in education.

• Economic crisis in Europe: The origin of the concept stems from British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm in his pair of 1954 articles, "The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century", published in Past & Present. Hobsbawm regarded the 17th century as "a necessary phase of economic crisis required by the progress of modernity".
• General Crisis in Western Europe: British conservative historian Hugh Trevor-Roper modified Hobsbawm's concept and coined the term 'General Crisis' in a 1959 article entitled "The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century" published in the same journal. Hobsbawm discussed an economic crisis in Europe; Trevor-Roper saw a wider crisis, "a crisis in the relations between society and the State". Trevor-Roper argued that the middle years of the 17th century in Western Europe saw a widespread breakdown in politics, economics and society caused by a complex series of demographic, religious, economic and political problems. In the "general crisis", various events such as the English Civil War, the Fronde in France, the climax of the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire and revolts against the Spanish Crown in Portugal, Naples and Catalonia were all manifestations of the same problem. The most important cause of the "general crisis", in Trevor-Roper's opinion, was the conflict between "Court" and "Country"; that is between the increasingly powerful centralising, bureaucratic, sovereign princely states represented by the court, and the traditional, regional, land-based aristocracy and gentry representing the country. He saw the intellectual and religious changes introduced by the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation as important secondary causes of the "general crisis". Trevor-Roper argued that the 'violent socio-economic struggles and profound shifts in religious and intellectual values' of the 17th century were caused by the formation of modern nation-states.
• General Crisis involving global climate change: Subsequent historians interested in the General Crisis include Geoffrey Parker, who has authored multiple books on the subject. Initially, Parker (1997) broadly followed the concept of Trevor-Roper, but in 2013 he expanded the concept to argue there was a global General Crisis, exacerbated by the global climate change known as the "Little Ice Age".

There were various controversies regarding the "general crisis" thesis between historians. Some simply denied the existence of any such crisis. For instance, Hobsbawm saw the problems of 17th-century Europe as being social and economic in origin, an emphasis that Trevor-Roper would not concede. Instead, he theorised that the 'General Crisis' was a crisis of state and society, precipitated by the expansion of bureaucratic offices in the sixteenth century. Unlike the other two, Parker put an emphasis on climate change.

Alleged patterns

Some historians such as Hobsbawn, Trevor-Roper, and Parker, have argued the 17th century was an era of crisis, although they differed about the nature of this crisis. Today there are scholars who promote the crisis model, arguing it provides an invaluable insight into the warfare, politics, economics, and even art of the seventeenth century. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) focused attention on the massive horrors that wars could bring to entire populations. The 1640s in particular saw more state breakdowns around the world than any previous or subsequent period. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the largest state in Europe, temporarily disappeared. In addition, there were secessions and upheavals in several parts of the Spanish Empire. In Britain there were rebellions in every part of the Stuart monarchy (Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Scotland, Kingdom of Ireland, and British America). Political insurgency and a spate of popular revolts shook the foundations of most states in Europe and Asia. More wars took place around the world in the mid-17th century than in almost any other period of recorded history. The crises spread far beyond Europe; for example Ming China, the most populous state in the world, collapsed.

China's Ming dynasty and Japan's Tokugawa shogunate had radically different economic, social, and political systems. However, they experienced a series of crises during the mid-17th century that were at once interrelated and strikingly similar to those occurring in other parts of the world at the same time. Frederic Wakeman argues that the crisis which destroyed the Ming dynasty was partly a result of the climatic change as well as China's already significant involvement in the developing world economy. Bureaucratic dishonesty worsened the problem. Moreover, the Qing dynasty's success in dealing with the crisis made it more difficult for it to consider alternative responses when confronted with severe challenges from the West in the 19th century.

Climate change

The General Crisis overlaps fairly neatly with the Little Ice Age whose peak some authorities locate in the 17th century. Of particular interest is the overlap with the Maunder Minimum, El Niño events and an abnormal spate of volcanic activity. Climatologists such as David Rind and Jonathan Overpeck have hypothesised that the three events are interlinked. Across the Northern Hemisphere, the mid-17th century experienced almost unprecedented death rates. Geoffrey Parker has suggested that environmental factors may have been in part to blame, especially the global cooling trend of this period. David D. Zhang et al provide a detailed analysis here.

Demographic decline

See also: Second plague pandemic, Deluge (history), and Great Famine of 1695–1697

During this period there was a significant decline in populations particularly in Europe and China. The cause for this demographic decline is complicated and significantly unproven; but Parker claimed that war, climate change and migration are the main factors that contributed to this population crisis. War ravaged Europe for almost the entirety of the century with no major state avoiding war in the 1640s. Some states saw very few years of peace; for example Poland only saw 27 years of peace, the Dutch Republic 14, France 11, and Spain only 3. An example of the impact of war on demography in Europe is Germany, whose population was reduced by approximately 15% to 30% in the Thirty Years' War. Another factor for the demographic decline in Europe was the spate of climatic events that dramatically affected the food supply and caused major crop failure in the marginal farmland of Europe. During this period there was a drop of 1–2 °C, which coincides with the Maunder Minimum and frequent, large spates of volcanism which acted to drop temperatures enough to cause crop failures in Europe. Crop failures were met with a wave of urban migration that perpetuated unsustainable urban populations and caused in some areas a Malthusian crisis. Although in some areas the early stages of the subsistence crises were not necessarily Malthusian in nature, the result usually followed this model of agricultural deficit in relation to population.

Conflicts and wars

Examples which have been given for general crisis and state breakdown during this period include:

• The Kipper und Wipper, an economic crisis in the Holy Roman Empire (1619–1623)

Criticism

No consensus on the occurrence of a general crisis has been established amongst scholars. Some scholars contend that the arguments in favour of a 'general crisis' in the 17th century do not stand up under scrutiny. For example, Danish historian Niels Steensgaard (1978) pointed out that the Dutch Republic was enjoying an economic expansion – known as the Dutch Golden Age – at the time of the alleged crisis. Anthony F. Upton argued in 2001 that violent popular protests were endemic in European societies, and such violent unrest was "generally directed at specific local problems, and did not challenge the legitimacy of the established order". Although protests in the 1630s and 1640s "rose to unusual levels" in some regions, Upton wrote: "Historians have attempted to see in the wave of unrest a 'general crisis', and the debate on this continues. The main factors arguing against linkage are the reality that the disorders remained specific to local circumstances, even where they coincided in time: they did not coalesce into broader movements. Above all, the demands of the rebels did not challenge the legitimacy of the rulers, but sought restoration of customary norms". Upton claimed that very few actually challenged monarchy as an institution, although many nobles preferred a different dynasty with themselves in power (for example, the Portuguese Restoration War (1640–1668) simply sought to replace the House of Habsburg with the House of Braganza). Almost all of the French princes leading the Fronde (1648–1653) were horrified by the execution of Charles I in 1649, which they regarded as regicide; unlike the majority of English rebels, they never became republicans.

Victor Lieberman argued in 2003, later corroborated by Geoff Wade and Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, that Anthony Reid's "Age of Commerce" Thesis, using Maritime Southeast Asia during the "General Crisis" as a framework to explain Mainland Southeast Asia at this same time, failed to properly address the increased political and economic consolidation and high economic growth of the Southeast Asian mainland states (Siam, Burma, Vietnam) during the 17th through 19th centuries, whose trade connections with China have been argued as to have negated any possible effects of the European departure from the region during the 17th and 18th centuries, therefore the region experienced a relatively calm 17th century in comparison to contemporary regions.

In 2000, Denis Shemilt used the terms "Industrial Revolution" and especially "General Crisis" as examples of historiographical concepts that are easy to teach adolescent schoolchildren, as they can easily make generalisations about seemingly unconnected events when tasked to do so. However, it will be harder for them to challenge the validity of such a generalised concept once they have been exposed to it, because that requires gathering detailed knowledge of all local events associated with the generalisation, and then judging whether they reasonably match up with it, or "to criticize the General Crisis concept as a category mistake, a promiscuous lumping together of phenomena more different than similar". Therefore, historians need to be careful in constructing such generalised concepts, so that the resulting narratives are not just meaningful and understandable, but also reasonably accurate.

Habitat conservation

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_conservation

Tree planting is an aspect of habitat conservation. In each plastic tube a hardwood tree has been planted.

There are significant ecological benefits associated with selective cutting. Pictured is an area with Ponderosa Pine trees that were selectively harvested.

Habitat conservation is a management practice that seeks to conserve, protect and restore habitats and prevent species extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range. It is a priority of many groups that cannot be easily characterized in terms of any one ideology.

History of the conservation movement

Further information: Conservation movement

For much of human history, nature was seen as a resource that could be controlled by the government and used for personal and economic gain. The idea was that plants only existed to feed animals and animals only existed to feed humans. The value of land was limited only to the resources it provided such as fertile soil, timber, and minerals.

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, social views started to change and conservation principles were first practically applied to the forests of British India. The conservation ethic that began to evolve included three core principles: 1) human activities damage the environment, 2) there was a civic duty to maintain the environment for future generations, and 3) scientific, empirically-based methods should be applied to ensure this duty was carried out. Sir James Ranald Martin was prominent in promoting this ideology, publishing numerous medico-topographical reports that demonstrated the damage from large-scale deforestation and desiccation, and lobbying extensively for the institutionalization of forest conservation activities in British India through the establishment of Forest Departments.

The Madras Board of Revenue started local conservation efforts in 1842, headed by Alexander Gibson, a professional botanist who systematically adopted a forest conservation program based on scientific principles. This was the first case of state conservation management of forests in the world. Governor-General Lord Dalhousie introduced the first permanent and large-scale forest conservation program in 1855, a model that soon spread to other colonies, as well to the United States, where Yellowstone National Park was opened in 1872 as the world's first national park.

Rather than focusing on the economic or material benefits from nature, humans began to appreciate the value of nature itself and the need to protect it. By the mid-20th century, countries such as the United States, Canada, and Britain instigated laws and legislation in order to ensure that the most fragile and beautiful environments would be protected for posterity. Today, with the help of NGO's and governments worldwide, a strong movement is mobilizing with the goal of protecting habitats and preserving biodiversity on a global scale. The commitments and actions of small volunteer associations in villages and towns, that endeavour to emulate the work of well known Conservation Organisations, are paramount in ensuring generations that follow understand the importance of natural resource conservation.

Values of natural habitat

See also: Environmental Economics

Natural habitats can provide Ecosystem services to humans, which are "any positive benefit that wildlife or ecosystems provide to people." The natural environment is a source for a wide range of resources that can be exploited for economic profit, for example timber is harvested from forests and clean water is obtained from natural streams. However, land development from anthropogenic economic growth often causes a decline in the ecological integrity of nearby natural habitat. For instance, this was an issue in the northern Rocky Mountains of the US.

However, there is also the economic value in conserving natural habitats. Financial profit can be made from tourist revenue, for example in the tropics where species diversity is high, or in recreational sports which take place in natural environments such as hiking and mountain biking. The cost of repairing damaged ecosystems is considered to be much higher than the cost of conserving natural ecosystems.

Measuring the worth of conserving different habitat areas is often criticized as being too utilitarian from a philosophical point of view.

Biodiversity

Habitat conservation is important in maintaining biodiversity, which refers to the variability in populations, organisms, and gene pools, as well as habitats and ecosystems. Biodiversity is also an essential part of global food security. There is evidence to support a trend of accelerating erosion of the genetic resources of agricultural plants and animals. An increase in genetic similarity of agricultural plants and animals means an increased risk of food loss from major epidemics. Wild species of agricultural plants have been found to be more resistant to disease, for example the wild corn species Teosinte is resistant to 4 corn diseases that affect human grown crops. A combination of seed banking and habitat conservation has been proposed to maintain plant diversity for food security purposes. It has been shown that focusing conversation efforts on ecosystems "within multiple trophic levels" can lead to a better functioning ecosystem with more biomass.

Classifying environmental values

Pearce and Moran outlined the following method for classifying environmental uses:

• Direct extractive uses: e.g. timber from forests, food from plants and animals
• Indirect uses: e.g. ecosystem services like flood control, pest control, erosion protection
• Optional uses: future possibilities e.g. unknown but potential use of plants in chemistry/medicine
• Non-use values:
  • Bequest value (benefit of an individual who knows that others may benefit from it in future)
  • Passive use value (sympathy for natural environment, enjoyment of the mere existence of a particular species)

Impacts

Natural causes

Habitat loss and destruction can occur both naturally and through anthropogenic causes. Events leading to natural habitat loss include climate change, catastrophic events such as volcanic explosions and through the interactions of invasive and non-invasive species. Natural climate change, events have previously been the cause of many widespread and large scale losses in habitat. For example, some of the mass extinction events generally referred to as the "Big Five" have coincided with large scale such as the Earth entering an ice age, or alternate warming events. Other events in the big five also have their roots in natural causes, such as volcanic explosions and meteor collisions. The Chicxulub impact is one such example, which has previously caused widespread losses in habitat as the Earth either received less sunlight or grew colder, causing certain fauna and flora to flourish whilst others perished. Previously known warm areas in the tropics, the most sensitive habitats on Earth, grew colder, and areas such as Australia developed radically different flora and fauna to those seen today. The big five mass extinction events have also been linked to sea level changes, indicating that large scale marine species loss was strongly influenced by loss in marine habitats, particularly shelf habitats. Methane-driven oceanic eruptions have also been shown to have caused smaller mass extinction events.

Human impacts

Humans have been the cause of many species’ extinction. Due to humans’ changing and modifying their environment, the habitat of other species often become altered or destroyed as a result of human actions. The altering of habitats will cause habitat fragmentation, reducing the species' habitat and decreasing their dispersal range. This increases species isolation which then causes their population to decline. Even before the modern industrial era, humans were having widespread, and major effects on the environment. A good example of this is found in Aboriginal Australians and Australian megafauna. Aboriginal hunting practices, which included burning large sections of forest at a time, eventually altered and changed Australia's vegetation so much that many herbivorous megafauna species were left with no habitat and were driven into extinction. Once herbivorous megafauna species became extinct, carnivorous megafauna species soon followed. In the recent past, humans have been responsible for causing more extinctions within a given period of time than ever before. Deforestation, pollution, anthropogenic climate change and human settlements have all been driving forces in altering or destroying habitats. The destruction of ecosystems such as rainforests has resulted in countless habitats being destroyed. These biodiversity hotspots are home to millions of habitat specialists, which do not exist beyond a tiny area. Once their habitat is destroyed, they cease to exist. This destruction has a follow-on effect, as species which coexist or depend upon the existence of other species also become extinct, eventually resulting in the collapse of an entire ecosystem. These time-delayed extinctions are referred to as the extinction debt, which is the result of destroying and fragmenting habitats. As a result of anthropogenic modification of the environment, the extinction rate has climbed to the point where the Earth is now within a sixth mass extinction event, as commonly agreed by biologists. This has been particularly evident, for example, in the rapid decline in the number of amphibian species worldwide.

Approaches and methods of habitat conservation

Adaptive management addresses the challenge of scientific uncertainty in habitat conservation plans by systematically gathering and applying reliable information to enhance conservation strategies over time. This approach allows for adjustments in management practices based on new insights, making conservation efforts more effective. Determining the size, type and location of habitat to conserve is a complex area of conservation biology. Although difficult to measure and predict, the conservation value of a habitat is often a reflection of the quality (e.g. species abundance and diversity), endangerment of encompassing ecosystems, and spatial distribution of that habitat.

Habitat Restoration

Habitat restoration is a subset of habitat conservation and its goals include improving the habitat and resources ranging from one species to several species The Society for Ecological Restoration International Science and Policy Working Group define restoration as "the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed." The scale of habitat restoration efforts can range from small to large areas of land depending on the goal of the project. Elements of habitat restoration include developing a plan and embedding goals within that plan, and monitoring and evaluating species. Considerations such as the species type, environment, and context are aspects of planning a habitat restoration project. Efforts to restore habitats that have been altered by anthropogenic activities has become a global endeavor, and is used to counteract the effects of habitat destruction by humans. Miller and Hobbs state three constraints on restoration: "ecological, economic, and social" constraints. Habitat restoration projects include Marine Debris Mitigation for Navassa Island National Wildlife Refuge in Haiti and Lemon Bay Preserve Habitat Restoration in Florida.

Identifying priority habitats for conservation

Habitat conservation is vital for protecting species and ecological processes. It is important to conserve and protect the space/ area in which that species occupies. Therefore, areas classified as ‘biodiversity hotspots’, or those in which a flagship, umbrella, or endangered species inhabits are often the habitats that are given precedence over others. Species that possess an elevated risk of extinction are given the highest priority and as a result of conserving their habitat, other species in that community are protected thus serving as an element of gap analysis. In the United States of America, a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) is often developed to conserve the environment in which a specific species inhabits. Under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) the habitat that requires protection in an HCP is referred to as the ‘critical habitat’. Multiple-species HCPs are becoming more favourable than single-species HCPs as they can potentially protect an array of species before they warrant listing under the ESA, as well as being able to conserve broad ecosystem components and processes . As of January 2007, 484 HCPs were permitted across the United States, 40 of which covered 10 or more species. The San Diego Multiple Species Conservation Plan (MSCP) encompasses 85 species in a total area of 26,000-km2. Its aim is to protect the habitats of multiple species and overall biodiversity by minimizing development in sensitive areas.

HCPs require clearly defined goals and objectives, efficient monitoring programs, as well as successful communication and collaboration with stakeholders and land owners in the area. Reserve design is also important and requires a high level of planning and management in order to achieve the goals of the HCP. Successful reserve design often takes the form of a hierarchical system with the most valued habitats requiring high protection being surrounded by buffer habitats that have a lower protection status. Like HCPs, hierarchical reserve design is a method most often used to protect a single species, and as a result habitat corridors are maintained, edge effects are reduced and a broader suite of species are protected.

How much habitat is needed

A range of methods and models currently exist that can be used to determine how much habitat is to be conserved in order to sustain a viable population, including Resource Selection Function and Step Selection models. Modelling tools often rely on the spatial scale of the area as an indicator of conservation value. There has been an increase in emphasis on conserving few large areas of habitat as opposed to many small areas. This idea is often referred to as the "single large or several small", SLOSS debate, and is a highly controversial area among conservation biologists and ecologists. The reasons behind the argument that "larger is better" include the reduction in the negative impacts of patch edge effects, the general idea that species richness increases with habitat area and the ability of larger habitats to support greater populations with lower extinction probabilities. Noss & Cooperrider support the "larger is better" claim and developed a model that implies areas of habitat less than 1000ha are "tiny" and of low conservation value. However, Shwartz suggests that although "larger is better", this does not imply that "small is bad". Shwartz argues that human induced habitat loss leaves no alternative to conserving small areas. Furthermore, he suggests many endangered species which are of high conservation value, may only be restricted to small isolated patches of habitat, and thus would be overlooked if larger areas were given a higher priority. The shift to conserving larger areas is somewhat justified in society by placing more value on larger vertebrate species, which naturally have larger habitat requirements.

Examples of current conservation organizations

The Nature Conservancy

Since its formation in 1951 The Nature Conservancy has slowly developed into one of the world's largest conservation organizations. Currently operating in over 30 countries, across five continents worldwide, The Nature Conservancy aims to protect nature and its assets for future generations. The organization purchases land or accepts land donations with the intention of conserving its natural resources. In 1955 The Nature Conservancy purchased its first 60-acre plot near the New York/Connecticut border in the United States of America. Today the Conservancy has expanded to protect over 119 million acres of land, 5,000 river miles as well as participating in over 1000 marine protection programs across the globe . Since its beginnings The Nature Conservancy has understood the benefit in taking a scientific approach towards habitat conservation. For the last decade the organization has been using a collaborative, scientific method known as ‘Conservation by Design’. By collecting and analyzing scientific data The Conservancy is able to holistically approach the protection of various ecosystems. This process determines the habitats that need protection, specific elements that should be conserved as well as monitoring progress so more efficient practices can be developed for the future.

The Nature Conservancy currently has a large number of diverse projects in operation. They work with countries around the world to protect forests, river systems, oceans, deserts and grasslands. In all cases the aim is to provide a sustainable environment for both the plant and animal life forms that depend on them as well as all future generations to come.

World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was first formed in after a group of passionate conservationists signed what is now referred to as the Morges Manifesto. WWF is currently operating in over 100 countries across 5 continents with a current listing of over 5 million supporters. One of the first projects of WWF was assisting in the creation of the Charles Darwin Research Foundation which aided in the protection of diverse range of unique species existing on the Galápagos’ Islands, Ecuador. It was also a WWF grant that helped with the formation of the College of African Wildlife Management in Tanzania which today focuses on teaching a wide range of protected area management skills in areas such as ecology, range management and law enforcement. The WWF has since gone on to aid in the protection of land in Spain, creating the Coto Doñana National Park in order to conserve migratory birds and The Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the world's largest protected wetlands. The WWF also initiated a debt-for-nature concept which allows the country to put funds normally allocated to paying off national debt, into conservation programs that protect its natural landscapes. Countries currently participating include Madagascar, the first country to participate which since 1989 has generated over $US50 million towards preservation, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Gabon, the Philippines and Zambia.

Rare Conservation

Rare has been in operation since 1973 with current global partners in over 50 countries and offices in the United States of America, Mexico, the Philippines, China and Indonesia. Rare focuses on the human activity that threatens biodiversity and habitats such as overfishing and unsustainable agriculture. By engaging local communities and changing behaviour Rare has been able to launch campaigns to protect areas in most need of conservation. The key aspect of Rare's methodology is their "Pride Campaign’s". For example, in the Andes in South America, Rare has incentives to develop watershed protection practices. In the Southeast Asia's "coral triangle" Rare is training fishers in local communities to better manage the areas around the coral reefs in order to lessen human impact. Such programs last for three years with the aim of changing community attitudes so as to conserve fragile habitats and provide ecological protection for years to come.

WWF Netherlands

WWF Netherlands, along with ARK Nature, Wild Wonders of Europe and Conservation Capital have started the Rewilding Europe project. This project intents to rewild several areas in Europe.

World Scientists' Warning to Humanity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Scientists%27_Warning_to_Humanity 

The "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity" was a document written in 1992 by Henry W. Kendall and signed by about 1,700 leading scientists. Twenty-five years later, in November 2017, 15,364 scientists signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice" written by William J. Ripple and seven co-authors calling for, among other things, human population planning, and drastically diminishing per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat, and other resources. The second notice has more scientist cosigners and formal supporters than any other journal article ever published.

First publication

In late 1992, the late Henry W. Kendall, a former chair of the board of directors of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), wrote the first warning, "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity", which begins: "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course." A majority of the Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences signed the document; about 1,700 of the world's leading scientists appended their signature.

It was sometimes offered in opposition to the Heidelberg Appeal—also signed by numerous scientists and Nobel laureates earlier in 1992—which begins by criticizing "an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress, and impedes economic and social development." This document was often cited by those who oppose theories relating to climate change.

In contrast, the UCS-led petition contains specific recommendations: "We must, for example, move away from fossil fuels to more benign, inexhaustible energy sources to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of our air and water. ... We must stabilize population."

Second Notice

In November 2017, 15,364 scientists signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice" written by lead author professor of ecology, William J. Ripple of Oregon State University, along with 7 co-authors calling for, among other things, limiting population growth, and drastically diminishing per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat, and other resources. The second notice included 9 time-series graphs of key indicators, each correlated to a specific issue mentioned in the original 1992 warning, to show that most environmental issues are continuing to trend in the wrong direction, most with no discernible change in rate. The article included 13 specific steps humanity could take to transition to sustainability.

The second notice has more scientist cosigners and formal supporters than any other journal article ever published. The full warning was published in BioScience and it can still be endorsed on the Scientists Warning website.

2019 warning on climate change and 2021 and 2022 updates

In November 2019, a group of more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries named climate change an "emergency" that would lead to "untold human suffering" if no big shifts in action take place:

We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency. To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems.

The emergency declaration emphasized that economic growth and population growth "are among the most important drivers of increases in CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion" and that "we need bold and drastic transformations regarding economic and population policies".

A 2021 update to the 2019 climate emergency declaration focuses on 31 planetary vital signs (including greenhouse gases and temperature, rising sea levels, energy use, ice mass, ocean heat content, Amazon rainforest loss rate, etc), and recent changes to them. Of these, 18 are reaching critical levels. The COVID-19 lockdowns, which reduced transportation and consumption levels, had very little impact on mitigating or reversing these trends. The authors say only profound changes in human behavior can meet these challenges and emphasize the need to move beyond the idea that global heating is a stand alone emergency, and is one facet of the worsening environmental crisis. This necessitates the need for transformational system changes and to focus on the root cause of these crises, the vast human overexploitation of the earth, rather than just addressing symptom relief. They point to six areas where fundamental changes need to be made:

(1) energy — eliminating fossil fuels and shifting to renewables;
(2) short-lived air pollutants — slashing black carbon (soot), methane, and hydrofluorocarbons;
(3) nature — restoring and permanently protecting Earth's ecosystems to store and accumulate carbon and restore biodiversity;
(4) food — switching to mostly plant-based diets, reducing food waste, and improving cropping practices;
(5) economy — moving from indefinite GDP growth and overconsumption by the wealthy to ecological economics and a circular economy, in which prices reflect the full environmental costs of goods and services; and
(6) human population — stabilizing and gradually reducing the population by providing voluntary family planning and supporting education and rights for all girls and young women, which has been proven to lower fertility rates.

At the 30th anniversary of the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, a second update to the climate emergency declaration concluded that "We are now at 'code red' on planet Earth".

2022 warning on population

In October 2022, Eileen Crist, William J. Ripple, Paul R. Ehrlich, William E. Rees, and Christopher Wolf all contributed to the Scientists' warning on population, published by Science of the Total Environment as "part of the ongoing series of scientists' warning publications," to address the negative impacts of population size and growth on the climate and biodiversity, which they posit "continues to be ignored, sidestepped, or denied." It calls for two actions that, if heeded, will stop population growth before the end of this century. Firstly, the authors issue a global appeal to all adults to have no more than one child as part of the transformative changes needed to mitigate both climate change and biodiversity loss. Secondly, the warning urges policy-makers to "implement population policies with two key female empowerment components," primarily improving education for young women and girls and providing high-quality family-planning services to all. It emphasizes that "the combination of institutional support to plan one's child-bearing choices and educational attainment, including enhanced opportunity for higher education for women, yields immediate fertility declines." It also posits that a sustainable human population, which according to environmental analysts is "one enjoying a modest, equitable middle-class standard of living on a planet retaining its biodiversity and with climate-related adversities minimized," is between 2 and 4 billion people.

The warning also advocates for combatting poverty, patriarchy and overconsumption by the affluent, and calls for a global wealth tax to be levied primarily against "wealthy nations, industries and people who have benefitted the most from humanity's massive-scale historical and contemporary use of fossil fuels" in order to expand "clean sanitation and water availability, food sovereignty, and electrification via renewables." It stresses that poverty alleviation must include the provision of basic public services, in particular healthcare and education.

Other scientists' warnings

Georgian, Samuel; Hameed, Sarah; Morgan, Lance; Amon, Diva J.; Sumaila, U. Rashid; Johns, David; Ripple, William J. (2022). "Scientists' warning of an imperiled ocean". Biological Conservation. 272: 109595. Bibcode:2022BCons.27209595G. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109595. S2CID 249142365.

Wiedmann, Thomas; Lenzen, Manfred; Keyßer, Lorenz T.; Steinberger, Julia K. (2020). "Scientists' warning on affluence". Nature Communications. 11 (3107): 3107. Bibcode:2020NatCo..11.3107W. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-16941-y. PMC 7305220. PMID 32561753.

Merz, Joseph J; Barnard, Phoebe; Rees, William E; Smith, Dane; Maroni, Mat; Rhodes, Christopher J; Dederer, Julia H; Bajaj, Nandita; Joy, Michael K; Wiedmann, Thomas; Sutherland, Rory (2023). "World scientists' warning: The behavioural crisis driving ecological overshoot". Science Progress. 106 (3). doi:10.1177/00368504231201372. ISSN 0036-8504. PMC 10515534. PMID 37728669

Global catastrophic risk

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_catastrophic_risk

A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction or permanently and drastically curtail humanity's existence or potential is known as an "existential risk".

In the 21st century, a number of academic and non-profit organizations have been established to research global catastrophic and existential risks, formulate potential mitigation measures and either advocate for or implement these measures.

Definition and classification

Scope–severity grid from Bostrom's paper "Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority"

Defining global catastrophic risks

The term global catastrophic risk "lacks a sharp definition", and generally refers (loosely) to a risk that could inflict "serious damage to human well-being on a global scale".

Humanity has suffered large catastrophes before. Some of these have caused serious damage but were only local in scope—e.g. the Black Death may have resulted in the deaths of a third of Europe's population, 10% of the global population at the time. Some were global, but were not as severe—e.g. the 1918 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 3–6% of the world's population. Most global catastrophic risks would not be so intense as to kill the majority of life on earth, but even if one did, the ecosystem and humanity would eventually recover (in contrast to existential risks).

Similarly, in Catastrophe: Risk and Response, Richard Posner singles out and groups together events that bring about "utter overthrow or ruin" on a global, rather than a "local or regional" scale. Posner highlights such events as worthy of special attention on cost–benefit grounds because they could directly or indirectly jeopardize the survival of the human race as a whole.

Defining existential risks

Existential risks are defined as "risks that threaten the destruction of humanity's long-term potential." The instantiation of an existential risk (an existential catastrophe) would either cause outright human extinction or irreversibly lock in a drastically inferior state of affairs. Existential risks are a sub-class of global catastrophic risks, where the damage is not only global but also terminal and permanent, preventing recovery and thereby affecting both current and all future generations.

Non-extinction risks

While extinction is the most obvious way in which humanity's long-term potential could be destroyed, there are others, including unrecoverable collapse and unrecoverable dystopia. A disaster severe enough to cause the permanent, irreversible collapse of human civilisation would constitute an existential catastrophe, even if it fell short of extinction. Similarly, if humanity fell under a totalitarian regime, and there were no chance of recovery then such a dystopia would also be an existential catastrophe. Bryan Caplan writes that "perhaps an eternity of totalitarianism would be worse than extinction". (George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four suggests an example.) A dystopian scenario shares the key features of extinction and unrecoverable collapse of civilization: before the catastrophe humanity faced a vast range of bright futures to choose from; after the catastrophe, humanity is locked forever in a terrible state.

Potential sources of risk

Main article: Global catastrophe scenarios

Potential global catastrophic risks are conventionally classified as anthropogenic or non-anthropogenic hazards. Examples of non-anthropogenic risks are an asteroid or comet impact event, a supervolcanic eruption, a natural pandemic, a lethal gamma-ray burst, a geomagnetic storm from a coronal mass ejection destroying electronic equipment, natural long-term climate change, hostile extraterrestrial life, or the Sun transforming into a red giant star and engulfing the Earth billions of years in the future.

Arrangement of global catastrophic risks into three sets according to whether they are largely human-caused, human influences upon nature, or purely natural

Anthropogenic risks are those caused by humans and include those related to technology, governance, and climate change. Technological risks include the creation of artificial intelligence misaligned with human goals, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. Insufficient or malign global governance creates risks in the social and political domain, such as global war and nuclear holocaust, biological warfare and bioterrorism using genetically modified organisms, cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism destroying critical infrastructure like the electrical grid, or radiological warfare using weapons such as large cobalt bombs. Other global catastrophic risks include climate change, environmental degradation, extinction of species, famine as a result of non-equitable resource distribution, human overpopulation or underpopulation, crop failures, and non-sustainable agriculture.

Methodological challenges

Research into the nature and mitigation of global catastrophic risks and existential risks is subject to a unique set of challenges and, as a result, is not easily subjected to the usual standards of scientific rigour. For instance, it is neither feasible nor ethical to study these risks experimentally. Carl Sagan expressed this with regards to nuclear war: "Understanding the long-term consequences of nuclear war is not a problem amenable to experimental verification". Moreover, many catastrophic risks change rapidly as technology advances and background conditions, such as geopolitical conditions, change. Another challenge is the general difficulty of accurately predicting the future over long timescales, especially for anthropogenic risks which depend on complex human political, economic and social systems. In addition to known and tangible risks, unforeseeable black swan extinction events may occur, presenting an additional methodological problem.

Lack of historical precedent

Humanity has never suffered an existential catastrophe and if one were to occur, it would necessarily be unprecedented. Therefore, existential risks pose unique challenges to prediction, even more than other long-term events, because of observation selection effects. Unlike with most events, the failure of a complete extinction event to occur in the past is not evidence against their likelihood in the future, because every world that has experienced such an extinction event has no observers, so regardless of their frequency, no civilization observes existential risks in its history. These anthropic issues may partly be avoided by looking at evidence that does not have such selection effects, such as asteroid impact craters on the Moon, or directly evaluating the likely impact of new technology.

To understand the dynamics of an unprecedented, unrecoverable global civilizational collapse (a type of existential risk), it may be instructive to study the various local civilizational collapses that have occurred throughout human history. For instance, civilizations such as the Roman Empire have ended in a loss of centralized governance and a major civilization-wide loss of infrastructure and advanced technology. However, these examples demonstrate that societies appear to be fairly resilient to catastrophe; for example, Medieval Europe survived the Black Death without suffering anything resembling a civilization collapse despite losing 25 to 50 percent of its population.

Incentives and coordination

There are economic reasons that can explain why so little effort is going into existential risk reduction. It is a global public good, so we should expect it to be undersupplied by markets. Even if a large nation invests in risk mitigation measures, that nation will enjoy only a small fraction of the benefit of doing so. Furthermore, existential risk reduction is an intergenerational global public good, since most of the benefits of existential risk reduction would be enjoyed by future generations, and though these future people would in theory perhaps be willing to pay substantial sums for existential risk reduction, no mechanism for such a transaction exists.

Cognitive biases

Numerous cognitive biases can influence people's judgment of the importance of existential risks, including scope insensitivity, hyperbolic discounting, availability heuristic, the conjunction fallacy, the affect heuristic, and the overconfidence effect.

Scope insensitivity influences how bad people consider the extinction of the human race to be. For example, when people are motivated to donate money to altruistic causes, the quantity they are willing to give does not increase linearly with the magnitude of the issue: people are roughly as willing to prevent the deaths of 200,000 or 2,000 birds. Similarly, people are often more concerned about threats to individuals than to larger groups.

Eliezer Yudkowsky theorizes that scope neglect plays a role in public perception of existential risks:

Substantially larger numbers, such as 500 million deaths, and especially qualitatively different scenarios such as the extinction of the entire human species, seem to trigger a different mode of thinking... People who would never dream of hurting a child hear of existential risk, and say, "Well, maybe the human species doesn't really deserve to survive".

All past predictions of human extinction have proven to be false. To some, this makes future warnings seem less credible. Nick Bostrom argues that the absence of human extinction in the past is weak evidence that there will be no human extinction in the future, due to survivor bias and other anthropic effects.

Sociobiologist E. O. Wilson argued that: "The reason for this myopic fog, evolutionary biologists contend, is that it was actually advantageous during all but the last few millennia of the two million years of existence of the genus Homo... A premium was placed on close attention to the near future and early reproduction, and little else. Disasters of a magnitude that occur only once every few centuries were forgotten or transmuted into myth."

Proposed mitigation

Multi-layer defense

Defense in depth is a useful framework for categorizing risk mitigation measures into three layers of defense:

1. Prevention: Reducing the probability of a catastrophe occurring in the first place. Example: Measures to prevent outbreaks of new highly infectious diseases.
2. Response: Preventing the scaling of a catastrophe to the global level. Example: Measures to prevent escalation of a small-scale nuclear exchange into an all-out nuclear war.
3. Resilience: Increasing humanity's resilience (against extinction) when faced with global catastrophes. Example: Measures to increase food security during a nuclear winter.

Human extinction is most likely when all three defenses are weak, that is, "by risks we are unlikely to prevent, unlikely to successfully respond to, and unlikely to be resilient against".

The unprecedented nature of existential risks poses a special challenge in designing risk mitigation measures since humanity will not be able to learn from a track record of previous events.

Funding

Some researchers argue that both research and other initiatives relating to existential risk are underfunded. Nick Bostrom states that more research has been done on Star Trek, snowboarding, or dung beetles than on existential risks. Bostrom's comparisons have been criticized as "high-handed". As of 2020, the Biological Weapons Convention organization had an annual budget of US$1.4 million.

Survival planning

Some scholars propose the establishment on Earth of one or more self-sufficient, remote, permanently occupied settlements specifically created for the purpose of surviving a global disaster.Economist Robin Hanson argues that a refuge permanently housing as few as 100 people would significantly improve the chances of human survival during a range of global catastrophes.

Food storage has been proposed globally, but the monetary cost would be high. Furthermore, it would likely contribute to the current millions of deaths per year due to malnutrition. In 2022, a team led by David Denkenberger modeled the cost-effectiveness of resilient foods to artificial general intelligence (AGI) safety and found "~98-99% confidence" for a higher marginal impact of work on resilient foods. Some survivalists stock survival retreats with multiple-year food supplies.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is buried 400 feet (120 m) inside a mountain on an island in the Arctic. It is designed to hold 2.5 billion seeds from more than 100 countries as a precaution to preserve the world's crops. The surrounding rock is −6 °C (21 °F) (as of 2015) but the vault is kept at −18 °C (0 °F) by refrigerators powered by locally sourced coal.

More speculatively, if society continues to function and if the biosphere remains habitable, calorie needs for the present human population might in theory be met during an extended absence of sunlight, given sufficient advance planning. Conjectured solutions include growing mushrooms on the dead plant biomass left in the wake of the catastrophe, converting cellulose to sugar, or feeding natural gas to methane-digesting bacteria.

Global catastrophic risks and global governance

Insufficient global governance creates risks in the social and political domain, but the governance mechanisms develop more slowly than technological and social change. There are concerns from governments, the private sector, as well as the general public about the lack of governance mechanisms to efficiently deal with risks, negotiate and adjudicate between diverse and conflicting interests. This is further underlined by an understanding of the interconnectedness of global systemic risks. In absence or anticipation of global governance, national governments can act individually to better understand, mitigate and prepare for global catastrophes.

Climate emergency plans

In 2018, the Club of Rome called for greater climate change action and published its Climate Emergency Plan, which proposes ten action points to limit global average temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Further, in 2019, the Club published the more comprehensive Planetary Emergency Plan.

There is evidence to suggest that collectively engaging with the emotional experiences that emerge during contemplating the vulnerability of the human species within the context of climate change allows for these experiences to be adaptive. When collective engaging with and processing emotional experiences is supportive, this can lead to growth in resilience, psychological flexibility, tolerance of emotional experiences, and community engagement.

Space colonization

Main article: Space and survival

Space colonization is a proposed alternative to improve the odds of surviving an extinction scenario. Solutions of this scope may require megascale engineering.

Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking advocated colonizing other planets within the Solar System once technology progresses sufficiently, in order to improve the chance of human survival from planet-wide events such as global thermonuclear war.

Billionaire Elon Musk writes that humanity must become a multiplanetary species in order to avoid extinction. Musk is using his company SpaceX to develop technology he hopes will be used in the colonization of Mars.

Moving the Earth

Main article: Moving Earth

In a few billion years, the Sun will expand into a red giant, swallowing the Earth. This can be avoided by moving the Earth farther out from the Sun, keeping the temperature roughly constant. That can be accomplished by tweaking the orbits of comets and asteroids so they pass close to the Earth in such a way that they add energy to the Earth's orbit. Since the Sun's expansion is slow, roughly one such encounter every 6,000 years would suffice.

Skeptics and opponents

Psychologist Steven Pinker has called existential risk a "useless category" that can distract from real threats such as climate change and nuclear war.

Organizations

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (est. 1945) is one of the oldest global risk organizations, founded after the public became alarmed by the potential of atomic warfare in the aftermath of WWII. It studies risks associated with nuclear war and energy and famously maintains the Doomsday Clock established in 1947. The Foresight Institute (est. 1986) examines the risks of nanotechnology and its benefits. It was one of the earliest organizations to study the unintended consequences of otherwise harmless technology gone haywire at a global scale. It was founded by K. Eric Drexler who postulated "grey goo".

Beginning after 2000, a growing number of scientists, philosophers and tech billionaires created organizations devoted to studying global risks both inside and outside of academia.

Independent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) include the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (est. 2000), which aims to reduce the risk of a catastrophe caused by artificial intelligence, with donors including Peter Thiel and Jed McCaleb. The Nuclear Threat Initiative (est. 2001) seeks to reduce global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical threats, and containment of damage after an event. It maintains a nuclear material security index. The Lifeboat Foundation (est. 2009) funds research into preventing a technological catastrophe. Most of the research money funds projects at universities. The Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (est. 2011) is a US-based non-profit, non-partisan think tank founded by Seth Baum and Tony Barrett. GCRI does research and policy work across various risks, including artificial intelligence, nuclear war, climate change, and asteroid impacts. The Global Challenges Foundation (est. 2012), based in Stockholm and founded by Laszlo Szombatfalvy, releases a yearly report on the state of global risks. The Future of Life Institute (est. 2014) works to reduce extreme, large-scale risks from transformative technologies, as well as steer the development and use of these technologies to benefit all life, through grantmaking, policy advocacy in the United States, European Union and United Nations, and educational outreach. Elon Musk, Vitalik Buterin and Jaan Tallinn are some of its biggest donors. The Center on Long-Term Risk (est. 2016), formerly known as the Foundational Research Institute, is a British organization focused on reducing risks of astronomical suffering (s-risks) from emerging technologies.

University-based organizations included the Future of Humanity Institute (est. 2005) which researched the questions of humanity's long-term future, particularly existential risk. It was founded by Nick Bostrom and was based at Oxford University. The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (est. 2012) is a Cambridge University-based organization which studies four major technological risks: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, global warming and warfare. All are man-made risks, as Huw Price explained to the AFP news agency, "It seems a reasonable prediction that some time in this or the next century intelligence will escape from the constraints of biology". He added that when this happens "we're no longer the smartest things around," and will risk being at the mercy of "machines that are not malicious, but machines whose interests don't include us." Stephen Hawking was an acting adviser. The Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere is a Stanford University-based organization focusing on many issues related to global catastrophe by bringing together members of academia in the humanities. It was founded by Paul Ehrlich, among others. Stanford University also has the Center for International Security and Cooperation focusing on political cooperation to reduce global catastrophic risk. The Center for Security and Emerging Technology was established in January 2019 at Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service and will focus on policy research of emerging technologies with an initial emphasis on artificial intelligence. They received a grant of 55M USD from Good Ventures as suggested by Open Philanthropy.

Other risk assessment groups are based in or are part of governmental organizations. The World Health Organization (WHO) includes a division called the Global Alert and Response (GAR) which monitors and responds to global epidemic crisis. GAR helps member states with training and coordination of response to epidemics. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has its Emerging Pandemic Threats Program which aims to prevent and contain naturally generated pandemics at their source. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has a division called the Global Security Principal Directorate which researches on behalf of the government issues such as bio-security and counter-terrorism.