The Tale of the Anthropocene: Choose Your Own Adventure!
What would an environmentally sustainable world with all of us on board look like? Is it a world that we would want? Can humanity achieve the wisdom to overcome evolutionary traits that have led us to the brink of potential disaster? This brief introduction to the debate will present how scholars are split on these questions. Many are indicating that an equitable, sustainable world may not be pleasant, and that humans are not evolutionarily adapted to the challenges we currently face. The transition, though possible, will not likely be easy and will require imagination, vision, and the efforts of all. Tonight we’ll start calculating what creating a sustainable world might involve. Humanity currently lives in a fantastic, nearly magical, world powered by fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have powered unimaginable transformations of human society including massive gains in food production, improved sanitation and health care, greater expansion of knowledge, rapid transportation, global communications, and abundant goods and services. Since 1950, the global economy and material consumption have been growing exponentially (the “great acceleration”), and the economic paradigm of GDP growth has been considered an unquestioned good. However, serious trade-offs are associated with the current growth-oriented economy, including diminishing renewable and nonrenewable resources, increasing rates of environmental degradation, and growing social inequity. Furthermore, despite decades of exponential growth, the problem of poverty still exists. Thus, the grand challenge for humanity in the 21st century is to increase the standard of living of the 80% of the world’s population that lacks the basic requirements to lead a fulfilling and dignified life, while at the same time reducing the environmental degradation of Earth. To do so will require changing the purpose of our economic system from growth to well-being and having the richest 20% of humanity accept the concept of “shrink and share” whereby degrowth is used to improve equity.
Prof. Brannon Andersen currently is on sabbatical as a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Ecology, Agronomy, and Aquaculture at the University of Zadar. At home in the United States, he is professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, as well as an adjunct professor in the School of the Environment at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. Prof. Andersen’s scholarly work focuses on understanding the nature of the human relationship with planet Earth, from perspectives of both environmental transformation and achieving sustainability. He holds degrees in geology from Texas A&M University (B.S.), Miami University in Ohio (M.S.), and Syracuse University in New York (Ph.D.). He has held the Henry and Ellen Townes Chair of Science at Furman University (1998-2000), and was named a South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities Teacher of Excellence (2008) and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Distinguished Undergraduate Research Mentor (2010). He is co-author of over 25 journal articles/book chapters and over 110 abstracts, and has been awarded over $2 million dollars in external grants.