Sleepwalking Toward A New Ecology - Experiencing The Great Acceleration

The pace of ecological change is quickening and I see little sense of urgency to address the negative consequences that are unfolding. The increasing speed of change is a direct consequence of two interacting drivers – resource use and climate change. The long standing processes of human use of natural resources and resulting habitat degradation have increased in scale and impact as our population has continued to explode. Adding to this, as defense analysts have argued, climate change is both a primary driver and amplifier of change. Collectively these factors are driving worldwide ecosystem change at a pace and scale far exceeding any previous period of change in the history of our planet.

Will Steffen and colleagues recently published updates of the famous “Great Acceleration” graphs, which showed major socio-economic trends in resource use from 1750 to 2000. It is no surprise that none of these crucial trends show any evidence of slowing over the last decade (Steffen et al., 2015, Anthropocene Review 1-18). Although the starting point remains an issue for academic debate (Zalasiewicz et al., 2014, Quaternary International 1-8), there is little doubt that we have entered a new geological epoch whose hallmark characteristic is the impact of humans. The scientific community has declared this to be the Anthropocene epoch (my personal preference was for the term Homogeocene, but this never gained traction).

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All ecologists and natural historians who have lived more than few decades are painfully aware of numerous local habitats that have degraded beyond recognition in our lifetimes. Quite independent of the effects of climate change, we are watching these changes unfold so quickly that destruction can be essentially overnight. The legendary botanist, Alwyn Gentry, witnessed the now classic example of the loss of dozens of endemic species as a consequence of a single episode of logging at Centinela Ridge in Ecuador in 1978. This scenario is being played out with increasing speed on land and in marine habitats all over the globe as the Sixth Extinction ensues. Climate change significantly amplifies this steadily increasing loss.

Although ecologists and conservationists have long understood these trends, it is disturbing to me that our institutions and government agencies seem to be clueless about how to manage such change. Simply put, we should be vigorously engaged in proactive adaptation. It seems logically axiomatic that proactive adaptation is far less disruptive and costly than is reactive adaptation. The water crisis in California is a case in point. For well over a decade, general circulation climate models have projected prolonged decadal drought for California and the American Southwest. For many years, the booming agriculture and population growth of the state have been on a collision course with dwindling water resources. Recently, NASA data have shown that California has one year of water reserves above ground. The implications of this for human and natural systems are extreme. Had proactive adaptation been implemented a decade ago, this situation would be much more manageable and much of the pain of conservation and likely rationing could have been avoided.

EDIT

http://environmentalcentury.net/2015/03/29/sleepwalking-toward-a-new-ecology/