“Nature” is facing massive ecological disruptions through pollution, poisoning, disruption of chemical cycles, deforestation, over-fishing, intensive agriculture, massive fires, and so on, as well as through climate change.
Nature will adapt. It will change; nature always changes. Vast numbers of creatures are already going extinct or are extinct, or are moving to new places, so the evidence for massive change, happening now, is pretty high.
However, humans probably cannot kill off the entire biosphere. Even with nuclear war, some of the planet and its life will remain. We can change Nature, perhaps impoverish nature (for a long while) but probably will not exterminate it.
More narrowly a more useful focus is whether, with all these changes in ecology, human life will be able to continue and progress the way that it is already doing.
The answer is probably not. Massive weather fluctuations, storms, floods, droughts, water shortages, food shortages, sea level rises, etc. will make huge challenges for human societies. We humans will probably not adapt quickly enough to maintain large scale civilisations. We probably won’t die out as a species, but that is a matter of hope – plenty of individuals will die early if we don’t adapt.
Partly, this failure to adapt will occur, if it occurs, because powerful and wealthy people do not like change as it threatens both their power and wealth.
Those elites benefit from, and have largely initiated, the politics and economics that are causing the problems, so it is hard for them to face the uncertainty of complete change. They can (and do) spend heaps of money convincing people that nothing is happening, that we play no role in what is happening, that there is nothing we can do, or that things will get better.
They may well think that they can survive, and it is just us ordinary folk that will suffer. Some forms of capitalism encourage the idea that it’s every ‘man’ for themselves, so it is possible.
Consequently, we cannot passively rely on economic or political elites to adapt societies for us. We have to participate in, and agitate for, the adaptation ourselves. And that involves admitting the possibility of change, and facing the fear, grief and other forms of distress together with others, as things pass away, and organizing with others to do something constructive. Even small changes in your personal life are a start towards this. Small changes mount up.
We may not have enough time. But if we give up, and let the uninterested elites triumph, then we will not have enough time.
Tags: 'nature', Anthropocene, complexity
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 
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