Evolution’s Edge
“The world is sleepwalking its way to the edge of catastrophe.… The Doomsday Clock of climate change is ticking ever faster towards midnight.” Prince Charles
Is it good enough to hope that everything will turn out fine? Would you take the people you love on a trip if you knew that you might run out of fuel, water, food and shelter? Would you still take the trip if you knew that the risk of disaster was one per cent, or 10 per cent, or more than 60 per cent? At what point would you make other plans?
The reality is that you are already taking a journey with all your family and all your friends. We are all on ‘Spaceship Earth’, and the crew is warning that the life-support systems are breaking down. But the officers aren’t listening. Like the officers of the Titanic, their main concern is making the ship go faster. Whenever the lookouts and engineers call in warnings, they brush them away. There is nothing to worry about; the ship is indestructible; there are no limits.
What will you do? This is not a hypothetical question.
We now face the greatest challenge in the history of our species. Sea ice, glaciers and permafrost are melting faster each year. The earth has lost its ability to maintain a stable temperature. Runaway global warming now threatens to extinguish most life on earth and end human civilisations.
This crisis is being driven by our unsustainable global economy. The problem is that limitless economic expansion is not possible on a finite planet. The danger is that our growth-based global system will collapse as critical resources become scarce and major ecosystems fail. The hope is that new ideas, values and technologies will enable us to avoid disaster and create a better world.
We are quickly approaching a tipping point where we will either transform our violent, exploitative global system into a peaceful, co-operative one, or begin a disastrous decline. Using evolutionary systems theory, Evolution’s Edge explains how societies evolve, and why rapid, non-linear change is not only possible but inevitable.
Although our future is threatened, Evolution’s Edge is an optimistic book. It explains why the next level of civilisation has already begun to emerge and how we can support this evolutionary process—the transformation of our unsustainable consumer society into a sustainable conserver society. The coming decades will be a time of transition: while we now have the ability to destroy our world, for the first time in history we also have the capacity to evolve a peaceful and sustainable planetary system.
The fate of the world is in our hands. This is not only a time of great dangers, but also a time of great opportunities. The brink of catastrophe is also the edge of evolution. If we fail to transform our unsustainable global system, our descendants will inherit a dying world. But if we act now, we can create a peaceful and sustainable planetary civilisation. The choice is ours.
We are the products of hundreds of thousands of years of caring, courage and commitment. No generation before us has ever failed in their duty: we will not fail now. Humanity has never before been so skilled or had so many resources. We know the problems and we know the solutions. We can and will prevent disaster, build a better world, and give our children and grandchildren a future filled with life and hope.
Graeme Taylor is the coordinator of BEST Futures and the author of Evolution’s Edge: The Coming Collapse and Transformation of Our World. (New Society Publishers 2008. 320 pages, 64 full-colour illustrations.)
Evolution’s Edge won the Gold Medal for the book “Most likely to save the planet” at the 2009 Independent Publisher’s Awards (the world’s largest book competition). It was also a finalist in Foreword Magazine’s competition for “Environmental Book of the Year” and was shortlisted in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards for “Science Writer”.
Graeme Taylor will be speaking at the GREENhouse at this year’s Woodford Folk Festival.
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