A lynchpin of modern thought is that we operate in equilibrium. We like to think that our economies and political rationale operate in equilibrium, but we tend to neglect our effects on nature. The world has a fragile environmental balance that has been made evident by many recent weather shifts and rapidly developing animal extinctions. We have to observe that our actions are creating an imbalance in our environmental equilibrium and that our planet will account for those shifts in attempt to balance our global ecosystem.
In order to adjust to the human impacts on the world, our environment will change dramatically to account for the sheer amount of human interference. As McCully suggested in Chapter 10, sea levels are rising and are making efforts to develop and preserve lands immensely difficult or impossible. What we have to realize as a species is that we have had success in altering our environment to suit our lifestyles and population, but that success may be qualified and short-lived. We can build homes and preserve beaches, but we cannot systematically preserve below sea-level cities from global sea surges in the long-term, let alone over the approaching decades.
One day, even if it takes hundreds of years from now , we will obtain an equilibrium between our species’ progress and the environment we inhabit. We already acknowledge that our current population, without accounting for continuous growth, is unsustainable. With resources being reaped around the world, whether they be oil fields, aquifers, rainforests, or mines, we are running out of time and space to keep our societal structure operating. Increasing scarcity and decreasing amounts of unused lands are already putting pressure on our sustainability and global stability.
Modern history has been written in accord with wars and treaties and has been dotted with remarkable events of human conflict. As we move toward the era of globalization and international collaboration, humankind as a whole is facing a new kind of conflict that has been proving more ominous and consequential by the day. Climate change is a dire problem that will have imminent and pronounced effects on our way of life. Only time will determine how we react to the impending changes and crisis. It is important to realize that we are not immune to pronounced changes in our environment when it factors into our survival as a species.
