Earth's Sixth Great Extinction Period
The ultimate victims of US-style globalization, the rise of the majority global middle class, and the climate change both considerably accelerate
As a rule, I’m not into bemoaning externalities when it comes to human progress. There, I most definitely recognize a hierarchy of life where humanity sits on top. So, knowing that US-style globalization has reduced more extreme poverty around the planet and created more shared wealth in decades — compared to previous centuries of European colonial rule that did neither, I am entirely grateful for our impact on the global economy (fostering its growth and evolution) and — by extension — what that economy has done for humanity.
But costs must likewise be recognized and addressed.
At the very least, their proof must find acceptance.
For a while now I have found that the average person trusts animals more than other people. So, when scientists go on and on about climate change, too many people simply blow them off, insisting, in large part, that the changes being seen aren’t that profound, or they’re part of a normal variation, etc.
The same deniability happens with humans interpreting the altered climate directly. Yeah, it’s strange, but it’s not that strange. This often works mentally because, the truth is, what is happening isn’t as crazy or notable as where it’s happening. None of this weather is unprecedented when the entirety of our planet is considered. Rather, it’s the geographic shifting that is most compelling.
So, when I sell strategic understanding along such lines, I get a bit farther with people.
But what really moves them in an undeniably sort of way is when you peg that climate velocity (shifting of climates across landscapes) to species migration. Once you mention that, light bulbs go off across the audience. Why? People don’t trust science and scientists — maybe, but they inherently trust animals. It’s just hard to argue with animals’ decisions to move in response to shifting climate. It’s easy to understand and it’s compelling.
Once you establish that fact, then talking about humans doing the same becomes a lot more mentally accessible, in a sort of Oh, I get it! way. Grandma didn’t want to be cold any more in Wisconsin so she spends her winters now in Arizona. Everybody gets that.
Once you've tapped their faith in animals, then you can really open up the argument decisively with the estimate from biologists (more trustworthy, it seems, that climate scientists because of their closeness to animals) that climate change is forcing upon all species an evolutionary speed roughly 10,000 times the norm.
Then you hit them with the reality that that speed requirement yields three pathways/outcomes:
Animals adapt fast enough (virtually impossible except for the tiniest species)
Animals move in concert with climate velocity (much easier to sell because the average person has seen or heard about species showing up all over places where they’re normally never found)
Animals simply die (the loss of biodiversity that most people blow off and yet feel some genuine complicity in when that loss is associated with human-triggered climate change).
That last path, more than anything, defines the Anthropocene Era, as in Anthropocene equals the Sixth Extinction Era, which gets me to the following reference found today on CNN.com: Five graphics that show some of the biggest threats facing the natural world.
In many ways, it’s a misleading title, because they’re all the same threat of extinction and they’re all profound consequences of the Great Acceleration of activity, production, consumption, etc. triggered by US-style globalization and the subsequent rise of a majority global middle class.
The five stories are:
Loss of biodiversity (really the summary of the others)
Loss of forests (subset of #1 and a driver of species extinction)
Problem of plastic (environment ruination like #2)
Pollinators under threat (species loss triggering further losses)
Birds dying off (species loss).
The graphics are solid. Here are some:
What all such charts get at is that larger externality called the Sixth Extinction Era, until recently known as the Holocene Extinction but increasingly being redefined as the Anthropocene Extinction — an estimate that keeps growing in magnitude.
When I say, in America’s New Map, that being American is the most important identity any of us will ever know, I’m talking about this sort of impact upon the planet.
When the United States set in motion what would eventually become globalization, no one involved in propagating that economic ruleset had any idea they were initiating a new geological era. But in making the world ultimately safe enough for a global middle class to emerge, American-style globalization did just that: transforming so much of our environment as to elevate humanity to Earth’s prime geological force …
Like evolution on steroids, climate change demands that all species— including us—adapt to environmental shifts that used to unfold over hundreds of thousands of years but now proceed in mere decades. Asking animals and plants to speed up their evolution ten thousand times is a nonstarter for most. That means a stunning number of species are disappearing across Earth’s current and sixth mass extinction era—due to human activity …
We [Americans] are simultaneously our own unique species and the single most accurate projection of globalization’s endlessly fractured, frequently polarized, multicultural future. Being deeply proud of participating in this world-steering experiment, I would not have it any other way. Life here carries more potency simply because, in the grand scheme of human history, being American is the most important identity any of us will ever know.
That train of logic is how I attempt to get audiences to connect themselves to our planet’s future — not by shaming them (because I see the creation of the majority global middle class to be humanity’s greatest achievement and we can claim that crown far more than any other nation in history) but by explaining the benefit/cost sequence of US-style globalization. I want Americans to understand just how stunningly powerful our nation has been when it comes to shaping our world because we need to re-embrace such ambition when it now comes to both mitigating (well underway), and adapting to (not truly underway), climate change.
The clustering of climate change, demographic aging, and the emergence of a global majority middle class is unprecedented in human history: three structural changes to the world system that, even if they were to singularly unfold, would constitute a world-shifting development. So, when all three appear and interact across the next half century or so, we can expect revolutionary changes across the board.
As history greatest and most consistent revolutionary force, I like America’s odds in any such future. Much work to be done and we’re the most experienced and most adept at making it happen.