Web of life unravelling, wildlife biologist says

[GliderGuider]

24. The constraining factors are are human behavior and time.

Human beings appear to have evolved an asymmetric decision-making ability regarding growth. Pro-growth decisions are very easy. De-growth decisions on the other hand are very hard - to the the point that in some domains they appear impossible.

It's actually easy to see why this is so, if you look at H. sap as a living organism like any other. Life has two fundamental evolutionary (genetically encoded) directives: to survive and to reproduce. Survival entails finding more energy than the organism needs at the moment, because future shortages are likely. Excess reproduction is similarly built into the genetics of all life in order to account for predation, disease and resource shortages.

All species evolve various means to facilitate both of those prime directives. The human evolutionary advantage has been the brain. Our analytical, problem-solving brain evolved as a limit-removal mechanism in service of those two fundamental goals of life. Both those goals result in growth if no external limits are encountered. For most species, the limits are inherent in the various competitions that form the basis of natural selection. Humans have been able to defeat every limit we have encountered on our climb to becoming the planet's apex predator.

Because of the requirements of evolution through natural selection, humans have not evolved any significant limit-acceptance ability. It's clear why this happened - any such ability would have worked against the evolutionary program, and would have eventually resulted in the extinction of the species.

Faced with a choice between accepting a limit to further growth or seeking to remove it, we always try to remove it. We have been supremely successful at doing that.

Unfortunately, one of the other bits of evolutionary baggage we have been dragging along is the fact that evolutionary competition is a zero-sum game. If our species is to win, our competitors must lose. That has made it very hard for us to care about the damage we are doing to other species and the planet. Our evolutionary heritage has not equipped us with the ability to care about the fate of other species, for one simple reason. Such empathy would require us to restrain our own growth and let them win. Down that path lies extinction, and the nature of life dictates that we cannot take that road.

The fact that our brains can conceive of us living in balance with other life has tricked us into believing it's possible for us to actually do so. As the planetary limits swam into clear view after 1970 or so, we decided that our collective failure to act on that realization represents a cognitive or moral shortcoming. It's nothing of the sort. It's just the way living organisms function. The same brains that make it possible for us to recognize the damage we are doing, have made the damage inevitable and have rendered us incapable of stopping it.

We are living out the climax of a planetary-scale Greek tragedy. We can see it coming, but we have neither the ability nor the time to change course.