Tag: environment

The Killing Fields of Aotearoa/New Zealand

Just as Britain lead the world out of the evils of slavery in the 19th century, Aotearoa has the opportunity to lead the world out of the dark age of extraction and into an era of inter-species harmony. The choice, ultimately, is whether we will continue to be a hunter-killer state, or finally become the peaceful, harmonious society we claim to be.

The Hunter-Killer State and the Illusion of Species Supremacy: Re-imagining Aotearoa’s Relationship with the Living World

Globally, Aotearoa New Zealand is marketed as a pristine, peaceful utopia. It is the “clean, green” paradise of  the ‘Lord of the Rings’, a nuclear-free haven, and a progressive society nestled in a breathtaking natural environment.

But this carefully curated branding masks a dark, systemic reality. Beneath the rolling green hills and the pristine marketing campaigns lies a society deeply structured around violence, domination, and killing.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the government’s recent $2.7 billion defense package to purchase five MH-60R Seahawk “Romeo” helicopters. This purchase is not merely a military upgrade; it is the ultimate, multi-billion-dollar manifestation of a national psyche addicted to violence. From the slaughterhouses that drive our export economy to the poisoned forests of our biodiversity projects, and our eager enlistment in foreign wars, New Zealand is not a peaceful nation. It is a profoundly violent one.

But to truly change this, we must look beyond the policies and confront the philosophical root of our violence: our arrogant  and foolish belief in human supremacy.

The $2.7 Billion “Hunter-Killer”: Servicing Empire Over the Pacific

The MH-60R Seahawk is a premier “hunter-killer” helicopter, heavily optimized for Anti-Submarine and Anti-Surface Warfare. It is a weapon of war, designed to track and destroy enemies in the deep ocean.

Yet, the New Zealand government justifies this recent exorbitant purchase by claiming it will help with Pacific Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR). This is a profound deception. The MH-60R’s cabin is packed with mission computers and weapons systems, not optimized for carrying bulk disaster relief. With only five air-frames, NZ may only ever have one or two fully operational at any given time—leaving almost zero surge capacity for a major Pacific cyclone.

If the government genuinely cared about Pacific civil defence, they would have purchased heavy-lift, utility-focused aircraft like the Boeing CH-47F Chinook or the utility variant MH-60S “Sierra”. But we didn’t buy those. We bought hunter-killer choppers. Why? Because New Zealand has a long, sycophantic history of enthusiastically joining UK and US wars of aggression. The MH-60R ensures the Royal  New Zealand Navy  can act as a subordinate, interoperable asset for the US and Australian navies to  thwart  a mythical  Chinese invasion thereat. It is a tool of empire, bought with money that could have been used to genuinely protect the Pacific.

The Slaughterhouse Economy: Millions of Lives, Objectified as “Products”

We know that  those exposed to  military violence abroad, bringtheir violence and trauma home with  them This militarism abroad mirrors our violence at home. The foundation of New Zealand’s rural economy is built on the industrialized killing of sentient beings. Each year, the agricultural sector slaughters tens of millions of animals. While the industry uses sterile, bureaucratic language to  desensitize the  public to  the terror and cruelty they inflict —referring to living, feeling individuals as “stock,” “meat,” “carcasses,” and “products”—the reality is visceral and brutal.

Recent scientific consensus has thoroughly dismantled the Cartesian illusion that animals are unfeeling automatons. The 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness formally acknowledged that non-human animals possess the neurological substrates of consciousness. Research has proven that cows experience grief, pigs possess complex problem-solving skills and emotional depth, sheep  and even bees recognize human faces. They have full cognition, social structures, and a desire to live.

Yet our legal and economic systems maintain a staggering cognitive dissonance. While the NZ Animal Welfare Act was amended in 2015 to formally recognize animals as “sentient,” this very same state sanctions their mass slaughter. Below is a table illustrating the sheer scale of this killing over a recent five-year period (excluding the additional 100+ million poultry killed annually):

The methods of this killing are inherently violent: captive bolt guns, electrical water-bath stunning, and ex-sanguination. We normalize this daily, systemic bloodshed because it lines the pockets of big business and the export economy.

The “Pest” Paradigm: Militarizing Conservation

This culture of killing extends deep into our native bush. New Zealand’s biodiversity sector is dominated by a lethal paradigm: the obsession with killing introduced mammals to save indigenous birds.

Under the banner of “Predator Free 2050,” the state sanctions the killing of roughly 8 to 10 million  possums annually, alongside millions of rats, stoats, and ferrets. We use military tactics—bombing the forests with 1080 poison, which causes a slow, agonizing death by internal organ failure, and deploying steel-jawed leg-hold traps.

This approach relies heavily on the sanctification of the hunter and the trapper as the heroes  of our natural  environment. But it requires a massive, willful blind spot. The NZ biodiversity movement rarely acknowledges the root cause of indigenous species decline: humans and our actions. The destruction of native habitats through rampant deforestation for grazing and dairy conversion, and urban sprawl is the primary driver of extinction.

Yet, rather than addressing the unsustainable expansion of the human footprint, or transitioning to true re-wilding, the conservation establishment defaults to endless culling. We are attempting to bomb, poison, and trap our way to ecological health, just as we buy hunter-killer helicopters to strafe our way to geopolitical relevance.

Beyond Human Supremacy: The Inherent Equality of All Life

To break this cycle of violence, we must dismantle the philosophical foundation that makes it possible: anthropocentrism: the belief that human beings are the supreme rulers of the Earth, and that all other life exists merely as a resource for our consumption. That  belief is a destructive fiction and the key driving force for humans destruction of our natural  environment globally.

The reality of our shared existence demands the recognition of the inherent equality of all living beings. This does not mean that a human, a cow, or  a kauri tree are exactly the same; it means that their right to exist, to flourish, and to live free from unnecessary suffering is of equal moral weight. A pig is the center of its own universe, just as a human is. A possum, a rat, and a kiwi all possess an inherent value that is entirely independent of their utility—or perceived detriment—to human beings or our prioritising of one species over another because of our conservation ideology.

When we view the world through the lens of inherent equality, the language of “pests,” “stock,” and “resources” dissolves. We recognize that we are not the masters of the web of life, but merely one strand within it. The violence we inflict on the slaughterhouse and forest floor  is directly derived from the arrogant  and foolish delusion that we are somehow separate from, and superior to, the natural world.

Five Pillars for an Inter-species Aotearoa

To transition from a Hunter-Killer State to a society of inter-species harmony, we must move beyond identifying its failings and illogicality  to creating a new reality. New Zealand has the geographic isolation, the wealth, the innovation  and the progressive heritage to pioneer this shift. Such  a new paradigm  could look  something like the following…

1. The Parliament of All Beings: Expanding Legal Person-hood

New Zealand is already a global pioneer in the “Rights of Nature” movement, having granted legal person-hood to the Whanganui River (Te Awa Tupua) and Te Urewera. But we have stopped halfway. We must expand this legal framework to grant person-hood and inherent rights to all sentient species and ecosystems.

Imagine establishing an “Ecological Parliament” of equals. Just as the Whanganui River has human guardians to speak for it in court, every major species—the kiwi, the kauri, the honeybee, the cow—would have legally appointed, ecologically trained guardians. Their sole mandate would be to veto legislation, economic projects, or agricultural practices that harm their species’ right to flourish. This shifts our legal system from protecting human ‘property’ to protecting ecological kinship and inter-connectivity.

2. From the Slaughterhouse to a  Laboratory of Caring

The argument against ending animal agriculture is always economic: “We need the export revenue.” But this assumes we cannot innovate our way out of the slaughterhouse. New Zealand has world-class agricultural science and a highly skilled rural workforce.

We must redirect the billions in agricultural subsidies away from the meat and dairy export model, and invest heavily in new strategies like plant protein based agriculture, fruit and nut  tree proteins and precision fermentation using food-forest,  permaculture  and organic principles.

Our farmers wouldn’t be forced out of business; they would be retrained and subsidized to become “ecosystem stewards” and bio-technologists. NZ could transition from being the world’s slaughterhouse to the world’s “Laboratory of Caring,” exporting high-tech, cruelty-free, climate-positive food systems and proving that a vibrant rural economy doesn’t require a bloody foundation.

3. Healing the Hunter-Killer Psyche (Eco-Psychology)

We cannot change our external policies without addressing the internal, psychological conditioning that makes us comfortable with killing. New Zealand’s cultural identity is heavily tied to the “Hunter” (the bloke with the rifle and his pig-dogs  in the bush), the “Warrior” (the ANZAC mythos), and the “Conqueror” (the pioneer clearing the bush).

We must integrate ‘Eco-Psychology’ into our education system and public health initiatives. We need to actively deconstruct the “toughness” associated with killing animals and fighting in foreign wars, replacing the “Hunter-Killer” archetype with the “Cultivator-Healer” who  understands humanity’s  interconnection with the rest of the natural  world and our own dependence on it for our own  survival.  True inter-species harmony requires humans to heal their own disconnection from nature and their own internalized violence.

4. Aotearoa as the World’s First Inter-species Sanctuary

In 1984, New Zealand took a massive geopolitical risk and declared itself a Nuclear-Free Zone. It was mocked by superpowers at the time, but it ultimately became our greatest point of national pride and remains so to  this day. It is time to expand this legacy into an “Inter-species and Ecological Peace” Declaration’.

New Zealand should formally declare its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and landmass a “Sanctuary from Speciesism and Ecological Violence.” This would mean legally banning the importation of products derived from ecologically destructive practices, banning lethal conservation methods (like 1080 and leg-hold traps) on all public lands, and refusing to participate in international military alliances that project violence into the Pacific. It would be a beacon to the world, proving that a modern nation can choose coexistence over conquest.

5. Technological Symbiosis and Non-Invasive Conservation

Our current conservation model relies on brute force: poison, traps, and bullets. The future model must rely on deep listening and technological symbiosis. Instead of spending millions on helicopters to drop poison, we must invest in AI-driven bio-acoustic monitoring networks, drone-assisted native seed dispersal, and genetic research into disease  and predator resistance for native birds like the kiwi and kākāpō.

We must use technology to understand and facilitate nature’s own resilience, rather than using technology to bombard  nature into submission. In this new paradigm, we  can move from being the arrogant “managers” of the forest to its humble “students.”

Re-wilding the Budget and the Mind

New Zealand likes to look in the mirror and see a peaceful, progressive, nature-loving nation. But a society that slaughters 22 million sentient animals a year, poisons  and destroys its own forests, and eagerly spends billions on weapons of war is suffering from a profound moral sickness.

True environmentalism and true peace require us to lay down our weapons, our traps, and our poisons. We must abandon the arrogant illusion of human supremacy and embrace the inherent equality of all living beings.

Just as Britain lead the world out of the evils of slavery in the 19th century, Aotearoa has the opportunity to lead the world out of the dark age of extraction and into an era of inter-species harmony. The choice, ultimately, is whether we will continue to be a hunter-killer state, or finally become the peaceful, harmonious society we claim to be.

New Zealand’s Rapidly Deteriorating Marine Environment

A Submission to the New Zealand Parliament’s Select Committee on a proposed Amendment to the NZ Fisheries Bill.

Concerns Regarding the Fisheries Amendment Bill,  and Recommendations for Sustainable Fisheries Management.

Introduction

The New Zealand Government, through Fisheries Minister Shane Jones, frames the Fisheries Amendment Bill  as an ‘efficiency and productivity’ exercise—cutting red tape, giving industry “certainty,” and boosting seafood export value.

In reality, the Bill represents a systematic dismantling of safeguards at precisely the moment they are most needed.

Key concerns include:

  1. The completely inadequate timescale for consultation on  an issue that  is vital to New Zealanders and our marine world.
  2. Concentration of power:  The Minister gains greater authority to set catch limits independent of scientific advice, with the ability to rely on industry self-reported data rather than robust independent assessment.
  3. Erosion of oversight:   On-board camera footage—recently proven effective at exposing massive under-reporting of discards—would be exempt from the Official Information Act, with fines up to \$50,000 for sharing footage. The Minister can also allow operators to switch cameras off.
  4. Reduced accountability:   Legal challenges to fisheries decisions would be restricted to a 20-working day window, severely limiting judicial review that has historically held Ministers accountable to the Act’s sustainability purpose.
  5. Weakened environmental protections:   The Bill introduces more flexible, longer-term (up to 5-year) catch limits with minimal review, reduces penalties for exceeding catch limits and taking undersized fish, and effectively incentivizes destructive bottom trawling over cleaner methods.
  6. Privatization of a public resource:   Quota owners would gain ability to stockpile entitlements and delay catch reductions even when stocks are depleted, shifting the burden of ecological degradation onto the public while profits are exported—seafood exports average under \$6/kg, little of which benefits domestic consumers.

This proposed amendment occurs against a backdrop of well documented dramatic ecological marine decline. The Ministry for the Environment’s  ‘Our Marine Environment 2025’  report and other official data, note the following negative impacts:

Overfishing:   12% of assessed fish stocks (19 of 152) are over-fished or depleted, with 5 stocks collapsed. Bycatch continues to kill protected species—15 Hector’s dolphins in 2023/24 alone, thousands of seabirds annually, and tonnes of protected coral.

Ocean warming:   Sea-surface temperatures around New Zealand have risen 0.16–0.34°C per decade since 1982, warming faster than the global average. Marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent, intense and longer-lasting, with 2022 setting records causing both  marine species loss and shifting of migratory patterns

Acidification:   Ocean acidity has increased ~30% since 1750, with measurable increases off Otago. This threatens shell-forming species and disrupts food webs negatively impacting fish  nutrition.

Sea level rise:   Accelerating coastal inundation and erosion, compounded by vertical land movement in some areas, resulting in the elimination or reduction of many fish  breeding grounds.

Invasive species and habitat destruction:   428 non-native marine species have been identified in NZ waters, with outbreaks like  Caulerpa  algae spreading across 1,500+ hectares. Bottom trawling continues to bulldoze seafloor habitats.

Extinction risk:  More than half of indigenous marine invertebrate species are threatened or at risk.

Bottom Trawling: The long-term impacts of bottom trawling in New Zealand and the Southern Pacific represent a systematic  and catastrophic degradation of irreplaceable deep-sea ecosystems.  The combination of extreme physical destruction, centuries long destruction of marine habitats and in many cases irretrievable loss, and climate feedback effects is resulting in  permanent biodiversity loss.  Scientific  evidence confirms that protecting climate refugia and  high-vulnerability habitats—particularly seamounts—is essential to  prevent ecosystem collapse and maintain long-term fisheries  productivity, yet current management trends are moving in the opposite  direction.

This  Bill treats fisheries primarily as an export industry to be deregulated, while official reports confirm the marine environment is under compounding pressures from climate change, overfishing, habitat destruction and pollution. The timing is particularly damaging given that camera data revealed a 1,000%+ increase in reported snapper discards and 950% increase in kingfish discards once monitoring began—proof that the industry cannot be relied upon to self-regulate.

The Bill weakens transparency, scientific oversight, and public participation at the exact moment when marine ecosystems require stronger precautionary management and climate-resilient planning. Thus these ‘reforms’ do not represent “modernization”—they represent a privatization agenda that  locks in irreversible ecological damage for short-term commercial gain.

Key Concerns and Proposed Alternatives

1. Tiered Information Framework for Setting Catch Limits (Low-Information Stocks)

The Bill proposes a tiered framework for setting Total Allowable Catch (TAC), where for low-information stocks, the TAC only needs to be ‘not inconsistent’ with the objective of managing the stock at or above Maximum Sustainable Yield. This approach risks over-fishing and depletion of vulnerable or data-poor fish stocks, as management decisions are unable to be based on robust scientific evidence.

This could lead to the plundering of unknown stocks, with potentially irreversible ecological consequences.

Recommendation: The Precautionary Principle  be applied to all data-poor stocks. Instead of allowing higher catch limits, management should default to significantly lower, more conservative catch limits until robust scientific data is available to demonstrate sustainability. Any increases in catch limits should only occur when supported by comprehensive and peer-reviewed scientific assessments.

2. Multi-Year Catch Decisions

The Bill allows the Minister to set TACs for up to five consecutive fishing years . While the stated purposes is  to provide certainty for the industry, this provision introduces reduced flexibility to respond to rapid environmental changes, climate impacts, or unforeseen declines in fish populations. Such extended decision cycles could delay necessary adjustments to protect struggling stocks, potentially leading to collapses that are difficult to reverse.

Recommendation: We recommend implementing Adaptive Management with Frequent Reviews. Catch limits, especially for stocks vulnerable to environmental shifts or those showing signs of stress, should be reviewed annually or more frequently. Decision-making processes must incorporate real-time data and ecosystem indicators to ensure timely and effective responses to changing marine conditions.

3. Relaxed Rules on Discards and Returns

The Bill creates new circumstances under which commercial fishers are permitted to return or abandon fish or other aquatic animals . This relaxation of rules risks increasing the mortality of non-target species (by-catch) and juvenile fish, which are often discarded. This practice not only wastes marine resources but also masks the true impact of fishing on marine ecosystems and hinders accurate stock assessments, making effective management impossible [3].

Recommendation: We call for Mandatory By-catch Reduction and Full Accountability. The government should mandate the widespread use of best- practice by-catch mitigation technologies (e.g., seabird scaring devices, turtle excluder devices, selective fishing gear). In addition, all caught fish, regardless of size or species, must be landed and fully accounted for to ensure accurate data collection, minimize waste, and provide a true picture of fishing impacts [.

4. Confidentiality of Camera Footage

The Bill proposes new provisions that explicitly exclude on-board camera recordings from the Official Information Act 1982 and impose significant penalties for unauthorized release. There appears to be no valid reason for this change, other than  to decrease  public scrutiny of illegal  activities.

This measure represents a substantial reduction in transparency and public accountability of commercial fishing operations. It prevents independent verification of fishing practices, by-catch events, and compliance with regulations, increasing distrust among the public and environmental stakeholders at a time when  all  parties need to be working more collaboratively.

Recommendation: We urge the Committee to ensure Full Transparency and Public Access to on-board camera footage. While noting some issues around commercial sensitivity, this footage should be accessible under the Official Information Act, with redactions only occurring where absolutely necessary. Public oversight is crucial for building trust in the monitoring system and ensuring that fishing practices align with sustainability goals.

5. Revised Judicial Review Window

The Bill introduces a significantly shortened timeframe for challenging fisheries management decisions, requiring any legal challenge to be made within 20 working days of the decision being notified. This extremely short window severely weakens legal safeguards for environmental protection and public participation, making it nearly impossible for environmental organizations and the public to mount effective legal challenges against potentially unsustainable decisions.

Recommendation: We advocate for reasonable  and appropriate Judicial Review timeframes. It is essential to maintain adequate timeframes for judicial review, allowing sufficient time for legal preparation and ensuring that decisions can be properly scrutinized fortheir environmental impact and adherence to legal and scientific requirements.

6. Risks and Opportunities Related to Bottom Trawling

Bottom trawling is widely scientifically recognized for its devastating environmental impacts, including habitat destruction, by-catch, and disruption of marine ecosystems.

The Fisheries Amendment Bill, in not explicitly addressing bottom trawling with the proposed  new regulations, creates an environment where bottom  trawling and its devastating impacts on  the marine environment and fish  stocks, will  continue and could even incentivize this incredibly destructive practice through  the relaxation of camera footage processes and by-catch  rules.

New Zealand is:

  • The only country in the South Pacific that still allows bottom trawling on seamounts
  • The only country whose vessels have bottom trawled in the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) regulatory area since 2019.
  • One of only seven countries still conducting bottom trawling in international waters

Recommendation: We urge the Committee to incorporate specific measures to address bottom trawling. These should include:

  • Ban all bottom trawling by New Zealand fishing companies in the medium and long  term.
  • In the short term ban Bottom Trawling on Seamounts and Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs): Explicitly prohibit bottom-contact gear on seamounts and other identified VMEs to protect unique and fragile deep-sea habitats
  • Provide regulatory or financial incentives for fishers to transition to long-lining, potting, or other low-impact methods that minimize seabed disturbance and by-catch.
  • Mandatory Habitat Impact Assessments: Require comprehensive environmental impact assessments (EIAs) specifically for bottom trawling activities before any multi-year catch limits are set or renewed.
  • Public Transparency of Trawl Impacts: Ensure public access to camera footage of trawling operations to maintain transparency and accountability.
  • Spatial Closures for Recovery: Utilize management procedures to establish and enforce no-trawl zones in areas identified as critical habitats or those requiring ecological recovery.

7. Impact of Climate Change on Fisheries Management

Concern: New Zealand’s marine environment is rapidly  experiencing significant impacts from climate change, including rising sea temperatures, marine heatwaves, and shifting fish distributions.

The current Bill, with its emphasis on multi- year catch decisions and a tiered information framework that can be permissive for data-poor stocks, is ill-equipped to respond to the rapid and unpredictable changes driven by climate change. This lack of adaptive capacity risks exacerbating the vulnerability of fish stocks and marine ecosystems].

Recommendation: The Fisheries Amendment Bill must explicitly integrate climate change considerations into its core framework. This includes:

• Climate-Adaptive Catch Limits: Mandate that all catch limit decisions (TAC/TACC) explicitly account for climate change projections, marine heatwave data, and observed shifts in fish populations.

• Shorten Review Cycles for Vulnerable Stocks: Require annual or more frequent reviews for stocks identified as climate-vulnerable or those showing significant range shifts, moving away from rigid multi-year decisions.

• Protect Climate Refugia: Prohibit destructive fishing methods, such as bottom trawling, in areas that serve as thermal refuges or critical habitats for species displaced by warming waters.

• Dynamic Management Areas: Develop mechanisms to adjust management boundaries quickly as fish stocks shift their geographic ranges, ensuring that newly arrived or displaced stocks are not over-exploited due to outdated management zones.

Conclusion

The New Zealand Fisheries Amendment Bill, in its current form, contains provisions that threaten the short,  medium  and long-term  health and sustainability of New Zealand’s marine environment.

We believe that a truly sustainable and prosperous seafood sector depends on robust environmental protection, scientific integrity, and public trust.

We respectfully request the Committee to give due consideration to these concerns and recommendations.

When the Last Tree Falls

The vital importance of humans connecting to nature: for themselves and for the planet

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
—John Muir

Muir’s century-old observation now reads like a medical prescription. A growing body of research shows that regular contact with living, biodiverse ecosystems is a non-negotiable pillar of human health—and the fastest way to make people care about the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.

This post unpacks (1) what happens to our bodies and minds when we lose everyday nature, (2) how collapsing ecosystems ricochet back on us, and (3) the personal and collective actions that turn concern into meaningful response.

As the world’s rapidly expanding human population increasingly no longer lives in proximity to our living world- but instead is surrounded by concrete, tar and walled environments, and enclosed within self-defined technological walls of social media, AI and self-selected ‘entertainment’, we are losing both our vital connection with the rest of the natural world we are intrinsically part of, along with our unconscious understanding of its importance to us.

In doing so, we become less and less aware how the natural world is shrinking inexorably year by year, decade by decade, day by day, and what that means for both ourselves and our world, in terms of our wellbeing and our very survival.

Each new generation of humans normalise a poorer natural baseline, lowering conservation ambition and stabilising acceptance of biodiversity loss as the ‘norm’. Along with those changes of what is ‘naturally normal’, cultural definitions of ‘nature’ shift over time ( e.g. Wordsworth’s early 19th century poems vs. today’s TikTok hiking videos).

Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease, and where fresh water is in problematic supply.

As climate extremes intensify with climate change, the impacts of both floods and droughts are magnified from loss of tree cover.

The 30-Minute Cure: How Daily Green & Blue (aquatic)Time Rewires Us

DomainEvidence-Based Benefits of Frequent Nature Contact
PhysicalLower cortisol, heart-rate variability, blood pressure; stronger immunity (natural killer-cell activity up 50 % after a 3-day forest trip) .
MentalReduced risk of depression, anxiety and ADHD; restored “directed attention” capacity (Attention Restoration Theory) .
SocialHigher empathy, pro-social behavior, lower crime rates in neighborhoods with tree cover .
Spiritual / CulturalSense of identity and belonging, especially for Indigenous and rural communities tied to specific species and landscapes .

Dose–response sweet spot: Two hours per week in green or blue spaces (parks, coastlines, riverbanks) delivers optimal well-being gains .

The Flip Side: Nature-Deficit Disorder

When that contact disappears, we see the inverse—rising obesity, Type-2 diabetes, myopia in children, loneliness, and eco-anxiety. Urban populations already spend 90 % of their time indoors; in lower-income areas, unequal access to safe nature is a new axis of health inequity. Little data is available on the impact of nature deprivation in the Global South.

In countries where daily life is entangled with nature (smallholder farming, forest reliance), disconnection manifests differently—often as loss of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) rather than park visits.

What Biodiversity Loss Actually Costs Us

Biodiversity is the planet’s operating system. Every lost species is a deleted line of code.

Every living thing: every individual fish, every insect, every bird every mammal, has its own intrinsic worth. Its ‘value’ is simply in its existence.

A. Health & Medicine

  • 70 % of anti-cancer drugs are natural or bio-inspired; 60 % of all new infectious diseases are zoonotic and surge when habitat edges fragment .
  • Traditional medicine—used by 80 % of people in developing countries—depends on intact ecosystems .

B. Food & Water Security

  • Pollinator decline already threatens crops worth US $235 billion annually .
  • Wetlands loss (35 % since 1970) has left >2 billion people with declining water quality and rising water-borne disease .

C. Climate Stability

  • Forests, peatlands and mangroves store more carbon than all human emissions from 2009–2018 combined. When biodiversity unravels, these sinks flip to sources, accelerating extreme weather that in turn wipes out more species .

D. Positive Impacts of Human Skin Contact with Soil

Regular, safe skin contact with biodiverse, uncontaminated soil—gardening, barefoot walking, forest play etc, rewilds the human microbiome, trains the immune system and supports mental well-being.

1. Immune-System Maturation
Finnish daycare study: children playing on forest-floor (soil-rich) yards had more diverse skin & gut microbiota and stronger immune regulation two years later. Nature 2024
2. Anti-inflammatory Response
Urban adults handling microbially-rich indoor potting soil for one month showed ↑ plasma IL-10 (anti-inflammatory cytokine) and ↑ skin bacterial diversity (Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, etc.). Environment International 2024
3. Immediate Skin Microbiome Boost
Just two minutes of rubbing hands with soil & plant materials produced an instant increase in skin microbial richness (Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, etc.) that lasted several hours. Frontiers 2025
4. Gut Microbiome Support
Mice exposed to non-sterile soil developed higher gut microbial diversity than those on sterile soil, indicating that dermal/oral transfer of soil microbes reaches the intestine. NIH PMC 2019
5. Vaccine Response Enhancement
Adults with daily soil-moss skin contact mounted stronger cell-mediated responses to pneumococcal vaccine (higher IFN-γ, IL-17), suggesting soil exposure can improve vaccine efficacy.
Nature 2024
6. Mental-Health & Stress Reduction
Soil bacterium Mycobacterium vaccae triggers anti-neuroinflammatory pathways, lowers stress hormones and may improve mood via the gut-brain axis. New York Times 2024

E. Mental & Cultural Resilience

  • Coastal or forest communities displaced by fires, floods or coral bleaching lose livelihoods and ancestral stories, triggering inter-generational trauma .

Turning Contact into Commitment: The Feedback Loop That Matters

Every exposure to a thriving wild patch biophilically primes the brain. Here’s how to restore that effect:

Personal Practice

  1. Micro-dose daily: 10 minutes of exposure to tree canopy or moving water (even street trees count).
  2. Citizen science: Log birds, insects or plants on iNaturalist—data that feeds real conservation maps.
  3. Nature journaling: Sketching or photographing a leaf or shell deepens attention and memory encoding.

Community Action

  • Green prescriptions: Doctors in the U.K., New Zealand and Japan now write “green prescriptions” alongside statins . National pilots of green prescriptions in Scotland (2021) and Canada (2022).
  • Schoolyard biodiversity: Converting asphalt to mini-forests improves test scores and doubles local insect diversity within three years .
  • Urban rewilding: Pocket meadows, living walls and daylighted streams cool cities, cut AC demand and give residents daily wildlife encounters. Barcelona’s “Green Axes” programme is a great initiative.
  • Biodiverse botanic parks where people of all ages and ability can explore and learn about our natural green world.
  • Plant native trees in your own backyard- replace that lawn you mow!

Policy & Economy

Why the biodiversity decline matters for climate action

PathwayMechanismEvidence
Environmental behaviourHigher NCI (Nature Connection Index) predicts pro-environmental choices (diet, transport, donations).Martin et al., 2020, J. Environ. Psychol.
Biophilic policy supportIndividuals with strong nature connection are 2× more likely to back ambitious conservation funding.Mackay & Schmitt, 2019, Conserv. Lett.
Psychological resilienceNature connection buffers eco-anxiety; enables sustained activism.Whitburn et al., 2020, Climatic Change
Feedback loopShifting baseline syndrome: each generation normalises a poorer natural baseline, lowering conservation ambition.Papworth et al., 2009, Trends Ecol. Evol.

A Thought Experiment

Imagine the last dawn chorus on Earth: no birds, no insects, just human-made noise.
Now rewind the tape. Plant one native tree outside your window this month. Spend 30 undistracted minutes beside it each week. Listen.

Your nervous system will notice the difference within days.
Your neurons will start lobbying your choices.
And the planet will register one more caretaker.

When we experience how nature heals us, we finally understand that healing nature is self-defense.

References

Richardson, M., Dobson, J., Abson, D. J., Lumber, R., Hunt, A., & Young, R. (2020) Nature connectedness in decline: Evidence from 5000 English adults 2013-2019. People and Nature, 2(3), 821–835. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10146

Richardson, M., Hunt, A., Hinds, J., Bragg, R., Fido, D., Petronzi, D., … & White, M. P. (2019) A measure of nature connectedness for children and adults: Validation, reliability and associations with well-being. PLoS ONE, 14(7), e0218641. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218641

7 Consequences of Biodiversity Loss for Humans: gaiacompany.io.

WWF: How does Biodiversity loss affect me and everyone else? Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease, and where fresh water is in irregular

Royal Society: What is the human impact on biodiversity? How do humans affect biodiversity? · Deforestation. · Habitat loss through pervasive, incremental encroachment such as that caused by urban sprawl.

thrivabilitymatters.org 2023/04/14: How do humans affect biodiversity? The Importance Of Contact With Nature For Well-Being. Spending time in nature, or mingling with a natural element has tremendous effects on physical, mental, social and spiritual wellness.

United Nations Foundation 2023/05/18: How Biodiversity Loss Harms Human Health. A higher risk of infectious outbreaks is just one of the many repercussions of biodiversity loss on human health.

Biodiversity loss can have significant direct health impacts if ecosystem services no longer meet societal needs.

World Health Organization (WHO) 2023/10/12: Climate change is directly contributing to humanitarian emergencies from heatwaves, wildfires, floods, tropical storms and hurricanes.

Mental Health Foundation(U.K.): How connecting with nature benefits our mental health. Research shows that people who are more connected with nature are usually happier in life and more likely to report feeling their lives are worthwhile.

US EPA impacts to human health: Climate Change; City of Chicago: Overview – Temperature Impacts – Air Quality Impacts – Extreme Events – Vector-borne Diseases – Water-Related Illnesses – Food Safety and Nutrition – Mental Health – Populations of Concern – Other Health Impacts.

American Psychological Association 2020/04/01: Nurtured by nature. Exposure to nature has been linked to a host of benefits, including improved attention, lower stress, better mood, & reduced risk of psychiatric disorders.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Climate Change and Human Health | US EPA: This includes increasing the risk of extreme heat events and heavy storms, increasing the risk of asthma attacks and changing the spread of certain diseases .

LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY: THE BURGEONING THREAT TO HUMAN HEALTH: O Adebayo · 2019 · Mencionado — the loss of biological biodiversity appears to affect significantly human health.

Impact of Contact With Nature on the Wellbeing and Nature Connectedness Indicators After a Desertic Outdoor Experience on Isla Del Tiburon by G Garza-Terán · 2022 · Cited by 23 — Results show that both wellbeing and Nature Connectedness are positively influenced by performing activities out in the natural environment.nih.gov2024/05/24

Climate change impacts on health across the life course: The climate crisis results in new disorders such as eco-anxiety and solastalgia. Older people also experience adverse brain effects

Effects of Climate Change on Health – CDC: The health effects of these disruptions include increased respiratory and cardiovascular disease, injuries and premature deaths related to extreme weather .

UC Davis Health2023/05/03: 3 ways getting outside into nature helps improve your health. Research continues to show that being outside and experiencing nature can improve our mental health and increase our ability to focus.

Arizona Health Sciences2023/04/03: A look at the cost of climate change on human health. The evidence is clear – climate change is having a negative effect on our physical and mental health.

ScienceDirect: Natural environments improve parent-child communication by T Cameron-Faulkner · 2018 · Cited by 84 — In this study, natural environments influenced social interactions between parents and children by increasing connected, responsive communication.

The global human impact on biodiversity F Keck · 2025 · Mencionado por 37 — We show that human pressures distinctly shift community composition and decrease local diversity across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems.

Benefits for emotional regulation of contact with nature by ML Ríos-Rodríguez · 2024 · Cited by 15 — Exposure to natural environments, such as parks, forests, and green areas, is often linked to a decrease in stress, anxiety and depression.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: Climate change impacts –

Climate change impacts our society in many different ways. Drought can harm food production and human health. Flooding can lead to spread of disease, death, …

Universidad Veracruzana: Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. The impacts of diversity loss on ecological processes might be sufficiently large to rival the impacts of many other global drivers of environmental change.

Friends of the Earth2020/09/23Importance of nature. For children and adults alike, daily contact with nature is linked to better health, less stress, better mood, reduced obesity – an amazing list ..

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Climate Change Impacts on Health | US EPA Climate change can disrupt access to health care services, threaten infrastructure, and pose physical and mental health risks.

United Nations: Five ways the climate crisis impacts human security

United Nations University2024/05/16: Understanding Humanity’s Role in Biodiversity Loss Losing species threatens our well-being. As we lose species, our ecosystems also lose genetic diversity.

Science Mission Directorate2024/10/23: The Causes of Climate Change – NASA Science. The greenhouse effect is essential to life on Earth, but human-made emissions in the atmosphere are trapping and slowing heat loss to space.

ScienceDirect: Modelling human influences on biodiversity at a global scale–A human ecology perspective M Cepic · 2022 · Mencionado — Globalised human interventions cause most biodiversity losses.

gaiacompany.io

7 Consequences of Biodiversity Loss for Humans – Gaia

1. Food Insecurity · 2. Health Impacts · 3. Loss of Medicinal Resources · 4. Reduced Ecosystem Services · 5. Economic Losses · 6. Climate Instability.WWFHow does Biodiversity loss affect me and everyone else?Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease, and where fresh water is in irregular …Royal SocietyWhat is the human impact on biodiversity?How do humans affect biodiversity? · Deforestation. · Habitat loss through pervasive, incremental encroachment such as that caused by urban sprawl · Pollution such …thrivabilitymatters.org2023/04/14The Importance Of Contact With Nature For Well-BeingSpending time in nature, or mingling with a natural element has tremendous effects on physical, mental, social and spiritual wellness.United Nations Foundation2023/05/18How Biodiversity Loss Harms Human HealthA higher risk of infectious outbreaks is just one of the many repercussions of biodiversity loss on human health. By disrupting the delicate …WHO2025/02/18BiodiversityBiodiversity loss can have significant direct health impacts if ecosystem services no longer meet societal needs. Changes in ecosystems can …WHO2023/10/12Climate change – World Health Organization (WHO)Climate change is directly contributing to humanitarian emergencies from heatwaves, wildfires, floods, tropical storms and hurricanes and …Mental Health FoundationNature: How connecting with nature benefits our mental healthResearch shows that people who are more connected with nature are usually happier in life and more likely to report feeling their lives are worthwhile.US EPAimpacts to human health – Climate Change – City of ChicagoOn This Page: – Overview – Temperature Impacts – Air Quality Impacts – Extreme Events – Vectorborne Diseases – Water-Related Illnesses – Food Safety and Nutrition – Mental Health – Populations of Concern – Other Health Impacts — Overview The impacts of climate change include warming temperatures, changes in precipitation, increases in the frequency or intensity of some extreme weather events, and rising sea levels. These impacts threaten our health by affecting the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the weather we experience. The severity of these health risks will depend on the ability of public health and safety systems to address or prepare for these changing threats, as well as factors such as an individual’s behavior, age, gender, and economic status. Impacts will vary based on a where a person lives, how sensitive they are to health threats, how much they are exposed to climate change impacts, and how well they andAmerican Psychological Association2020/04/01Nurtured by natureExposure to nature has been linked to a host of benefits, including improved attention, lower stress, better mood, reduced risk of psychiatric disorders and …U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyClimate Change and Human Health | US EPAThis includes increasing the risk of extreme heat events and heavy storms, increasing the risk of asthma attacks and changing the spread of certain diseases …nih.govLOSS OF BIODIVERSITY: THE BURGEONING THREAT TO HUMAN HEALTHpor O Adebayo · 2019 · Mencionado por 28 — While the loss of biological biodiversity appears to affect significantly human health, it has also been opined to be a significant threat to the attainment of …nih.govImpact of Contact With Nature on the Wellbeing and Nature Connectedness Indicators After a Desertic Outdoor Experience on Isla Del Tiburonby G Garza-Terán · 2022 · Cited by 23 — Results show that both wellbeing and Nature Connectedness are positively influenced by performing activities out in the natural environment.nih.gov2024/05/24Climate change impacts on health across the life course – PMCThe climate crisis results in new disorders such as eco-anxiety and solastalgia. Older people also experience adverse brain effects from the …CDC2024/02/29Effects of Climate Change on Health – CDCThe health effects of these disruptions include increased respiratory and cardiovascular disease, injuries and premature deaths related to extreme weather …UC Davis Health2023/05/033 ways getting outside into nature helps improve your healthResearch continues to show that being outside and experiencing nature can improve our mental health and increase our ability to focus.UArizona Health Sciences2023/04/03A look at the cost of climate change on human healthThe evidence is clear – climate change is having a negative effect on our physical and mental health. The scale of the impact is vast, with …ScienceDirectNatural environments improve parent-child communicationby T Cameron-Faulkner · 2018 · Cited by 84 — In this study, natural environments influenced social interactions between parents and children by increasing connected, responsive communication. These …NatureThe global human impact on biodiversitypor F Keck · 2025 · Mencionado por 37 — We show that human pressures distinctly shift community composition and decrease local diversity across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems.nih.govBenefits for emotional regulation of contact with natureby ML Ríos-Rodríguez · 2024 · Cited by 15 — Exposure to natural environments, such as parks, forests, and green areas, is often linked to a decrease in stress, anxiety and depression.National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationClimate change impacts – NOAAClimate change impacts our society in many different ways. Drought can harm food production and human health. Flooding can lead to spread of disease, death, …Universidad VeracruzanaBiodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. Nature PDFThe impacts of diversity loss on ecological processes might be sufficiently large to rival the impacts of many other global drivers of environmental change.Friends of the Earth2020/09/23Importance of natureFor children and adults alike, daily contact with nature is linked to better health, less stress, better mood, reduced obesity – an amazing list …U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyClimate Change Impacts on Health | US EPAClimate change can disrupt access to health care services, threaten infrastructure, and pose physical and mental health risks.Naciones UnidasFive ways the climate crisis impacts human security | United Nations1. Climate change intensifies competition over land and water · 2. Climate change affects food production and drives up hunger · 3. Climate change forces people …United Nations University2024/05/16Understanding Humanity’s Role in Biodiversity LossLosing species threatens our well-being. As we lose species, our ecosystems also lose genetic diversity. This often negatively impacts the …Science Mission Directorate2024/10/23The Causes of Climate Change – NASA ScienceThe greenhouse effect is essential to life on Earth, but human-made emissions in the atmosphere are trapping and slowing heat loss to space.ScienceDirectModelling human influences on biodiversity at a global scale–A human ecology perspectivepor M Cepic · 2022 · Mencionado por 62 — Globalised human interventions cause most biodiversity losses.

Biocentrism (Kaitiakitanga): the only future we have

Bill Mollison , the brilliant developer of the concepts and actions of permaculture once said; “We are not superior to other life-forms; all living things are an expression of Life. If we could see that truth, we would see that everything we do to other life-forms we also do to ourselves. A culture which understands this does not, without absolute necessity, destroy any living thing” .

Biocentrism in environmental ethics emphasizes that all living things have intrinsic value and moral standing. It extends moral consideration beyond human beings to encompass the entire biosphere. This perspective suggests that every living organism, whether sentient or not, possesses a right to exist and be protected. 

Such a human culture, is able to live, sustainably alongside its fellow species. Able to acknowledge that all species are part of the web of life that also supports humans. Without that web, humanity, and most other current species, will inevitably die.

Anthropocentrism: the belief that human beings have superiority over nature has driven 6000 years of human’s ecological destruction, biodiversity loss, and now climate crises. This worldview contrasts sharply with Indigenous perspectives (like kaitiakitanga) and emerging ecological ethics that argue for biocentrism (all life has intrinsic value) or ecocentrism (whole ecosystems matter).

Anthropocentrism’s drivers appear to be derived from humanity’s view that the attributes that humans have- particularly the capacity to manipulate his/her environment, make humans a superior being to all other species on the planet. Our self-defined view of what is superior is derived from our own attributes; rather like an elephant determining that it is superior to all other species because it can reach high places with its trunk.

However our “superior” capacity to manipulate our environment is also our downfall; through 4000 years of manipulation of the natural world around us we have progressively destroyed the living world we rely on to survive.

Many like to think that if we did not have capitalism, we would somehow return to a world where humans could co-habitat in sustainable peace with other species – however it is clear that capitalism is simply one of many manifestations of anthropocentrism. Our belief in our inherent superiority allows us to consider capitalism and the pursuit of ‘wealth” by exploiting and destroying other living things as though that had no cost, as a sane objective.

6000 years ago, humanity’s anthroprocentric view of the world did not impact on the rest of the natural world as it does now. There were perhaps 7 million humans in the world, mainly hunter/gatherers who made use of the environment around them, but whose capacity to create systemic damage to the living world was limited in scale. As our capacity increased to not only defend ourselves against more ‘naturally’ efficient predators but also to kill and destroy other living things, so did the human population. Within two thousand years , the global human population had exploded to 160 million. In 2025 the global human population is estimated at around 8.2 billion people. Most humans now live in towns and cities ( what the Romans called ‘civis” – or ‘civilisation’). Surrounded by an inanimate world of asphalt and concrete we have lost our link with the rest of nature. We do not see its value because we cannot see it- except perhaps to see it as ‘entertainment on a hiking trip in the ‘wilds’.

Many of the world’s religions, particularly but not exclusively, the Abrahamaic religions of Judea, Christ and Mecca instruct their followers to believe in humanity as superior beings before their god.

Perhaps part of that wanton destruction has been because humans not only do not understand the inter-relationships between living things, but are also largely oblivious to the living things around us- the insects, the microbes, the fungi, the birds and mammals that help sustain our lives. We do not see how we are ourselves inextricably woven into that intricate web of life.

This sense of superiority has also led humans to become largely compassion-less for the suffering of others- except perhaps for those people and other animals that we focus our attention on and value for whatever reason. e.g. Cats, dogs, dolphins, whales are somehow living things to be valued- but sheep cattle, rats mice can be killed mercilessly; they do not suit our purposes. Or, as in New Zealand, humans may decide that this living animal is to be exterminated because we value this other living species – it is perhaps cuter, more indigenous, more suitable, more useful for exploitation.

Like most other species on earth, humans do not have the capacity to view the world long-term. We are oblivious to the ever encroaching tide year by year of concrete and asphalt into the living world, or of the one more old growth tree cut down to make way for ‘progress’. We cannot see what we have so tragically lost and the many lives we have destroyed.

If we are to save this planet from ourselves, we must re-learn how to value ALL living things; to see their beauty, their intrinsic value , their importance- and to act with compassion to all living things.

Without that compassion, we may continue to find fine and ultimately futile ways to lower our carbon footprint while we continue to destroy the rest of the living world, but we are nevertheless simply hastening our species’ (and many others) demise.

We can start now. Instead of our media pushing us to buy more and more ‘things’, or to travel here or there-we need our media to begin displaying how it is to become interlinked with our world. To grow trees in every back garden and park, to teach young people that they do not need to be ‘somebody’ important- but instead to be kind and caring to all, to learn how to be at ease with what we have; to ‘need’ less.

Politicians need to understand that GDP is a meaningless piece of garbage that does nothing to improve human’s quality of life and certainaly nothing to sustain our living world.

Politicians also need to be educated to understand the vital importance of bringing an end to anthroprocentrism; that given the destruction we have caused, we must now become true guardians of the natural world or ‘kaitiaki’ as New Zealand’s Maori say. We must make more and more of our living world legislatively sacred -that all of nature itself has rights or ‘personhood’, like the sacred Whanganui River in New Zealand.

Links

Introduction to Permaculture Bill Mollison Tagari Publications Tasmania, (2011) Page 1

Understanding Our Collapsing World- https://open.substack.com/pub/predicament/p/understanding-our-collapsing-world

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/14/rights-of-nature-laws-gaining-momentum

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/intrinsic-value-ecology-and-conservation-25815400/

https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-319-09483-0_41

The Sacredness of Life

Life on our planet is a complex and often invisible intertwining of organisms; each  one dependant on many others for its survival.

The World Wildlife Fund states that half the planet’s wildlife population has vanished since 1970 as a result of human activity.   52 percent of Earth’s mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish disappeared over those 50 years, 40% of all insects species and 60% of birds are declining globally.

And those figures do not take into account the total populations of the different species of birds, insects and wild mammals that are being killed off or starved from lack of natural habitat. When did the moths last bang themselves against your lighted nightime windows?- when did the smashed insects last cover your windscreen with their bodies on that last holiday in the natural world?- when did you last see the huge flocks of birds that used to be everywhere?

That absence may seem of no  consequence (or even a relief!) to many humans (especially those who live in  urban spaces) but in  fact  we are all reliant on the multiplicity of other species for our survival-whether it be for pollination for our food, the birds that spread the seeds of life, the Mycorrhizal fungi  that  ensure plants and trees grow healthily, or the many predators and ‘pests” who keep life in  balance.

We need to  revive our lost understanding of our linkage to all other life on this planet. Not just  the species that humans ‘like’; our native fauna and flora and our pets, but ALL life. We must begin again to look and listen with respect and compassion to the living world around us and help  rebuild the natural  world that  sustains us. We are perilously close to cutting the remaining  threads that bind us to life on Earth.

Acknowledging that human ‘growth’ is in fact creating more dead spaces, (more concrete sealing over the soil, more trees felled, and fewer wild spaces to name just a few of our nature destruction options) . Planting trees, reviving diverse habitats and nurturing all other species  with compassion are just some of our key steps towards a better and sustainable world.

‘Cant Find My Way Home’

The heading for this post comes from one of the great compositions by Stevie Winwood and the UK band ‘Blind Faith’ in 1969.

It perhaps symbolises in 2024, the journey this human world is travelling and its likely future…

A world where pointless and savage wars in West Asia, Ukraine and Africa are spurred on by the quest for power and profit and where infantile ideologies predominate.

And a world where climate change continues its seemingly inexorable march towards a planet destroyed through the pure blind stupidity and ignorance of our ‘world leaders’.

Never before have we all been able to witness the savage brutality of a war of genocide in technicolour- never before have we seen Western media and politicians proselytising so blatantly for that inhumanity. An oh so stark reminder of the difference between Western weasel words about ‘freedom and democracy’ and their support of mass-murder when it profits them.

A reminder too that this has been the Western theme for 500 years of colonial exploitation of more vulnerable populations- that these centuries of exploitation are, in the immortal words in 2022 of EU’s blatantly racist and furiously stupid foreign policy chief Josep Borrell,  the reason why Europe and the West is a garden and the rest of the world (in his view), a jungle.

To support this meme, our Western mainstream media continues to idolise the fiction of Western supremacy in all things. As the evidence that this is no longer the case continues to pile up, Western media have resorted to ever greater contortions and lies to support that meme. The recent violence in Amsterdam between Israeli and Dutch football fans – characterised as ‘antisemitism’ is just one of many examples.

Time and time again we have seen European (and U.S. ) political leaders make decisions based on an outdated and irrelevant ideology which ignores all rationality and the reality of the situation.

The most telling, and likely deadly, example of this, is their farcical contortions to prove to their electorates that they doing something about climate change when they are in fact doing worse than nothing. There are no reductions in CO2 emissions, and the hype about the electrification of energy and transport is just that- electrification is not substituting for coal or oil, it comes as an addition to the continuing use of high rates of coal and oil burning.

Our ‘civilisation;’ is locked into endless ‘growth’ (an awful word given that economic ‘growth’ is the total opposite of true organic living growth) – a paradigm that is destroying the planet, but from which we apparently have no wish to escape from.

While climate and environmental scientists have long been steadily ratcheting up their estimations of the devastating impacts of global warming and biodiversity to the living fabric of our world, it is only now that economists from the ‘Network for Greening the Financial System’ are beginning to estimate the true fiscal costs to climate warming- something that could and should have been done 50 years ago, as it would have provided some leverage for real change in this money obsessed world. In the latest estimates economists estimate that global GDP will contract by 33% by 2100 from a 3C rise in global average surface temperatures. That 33% reduction in global GDP is almost certainly a huge underestimation of the real fiscal costs of global warming.

That ‘canary in the coalmine’ early warning system for economies, the cost of insurance, is already rising rapidly as a result of the rapidly increasing unpredictability of our climate systems.

We still do not know for certain what is going to happen to global sea currents and sea level rise as a result of ice melt , but early indications are that there will be a complete collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) within a few decades. When that collapse occurs, not only will much of the Northern Hemisphere become much colder, but the Southern Hemisphere will warm much much faster.

If that’s not enough, the 1972 bestseller Limits to Growth (LtG) authors (70 years ago) concluded that, if global society kept pursuing economic growth, it would experience a decline in food production, industrial output, and ultimately population, within this century. Recent remodelling of that study indicate ‘a halt in welfare, food, and industrial production over the next decade or so, which puts into question the suitability of continuous economic growth as humanity’s goal in the twenty-first century.’

And then we can go to the annual farce of the COP global conferences: the pretence that global leaders are in fact doing something about climate change, when in fact they are doing less than nothing- actively promoting more oil and gas exploration and consumption because endless ‘growth’ on a finite planet is a logical and sensible thing to do -isn’t it?

To hold everything together, so that we don’t lose our trajectory and deviate from accelerating over the climate change cliff, our mainstream and social media incessantly promotes consumption and the vital importance of the constant expansion of each country’s mythical GDP.

Have we completely forgotten our way home?

_______________________________________

References

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/08/climate-breakdown-will-hit-global-growth-by-a-third-say-central-banks

Click to access climate-emergency-final-report.pdf

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39810-w

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jiec.13084

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/editorial/editorial-cop29-climate-summit-is-indeed-like-a-dark-joke-given-the-lack-of-buy-in-from-world-leaders/a131893267.html