The biosphere is the part of earth where life is present. It equals but a humble fraction of earth’s mass (0.00008%) but is quite naturally of vital concern to us living beings. Interactions between living and non-living matter are defined as ecosystems. Over 3.7 billion years in formation, the biosphere (also called ecosphere) includes all ecosystems on earth.
Studies of ecosystems are typically reserved for specialists and geeky citizen scientists, while the general public may be more interested in the economy and sports events.
This weekend a study warning of mass extinctions at sea, if emissions aren’t cut, was bumped back to page A17 in the Saturday issue of New York Times.
News of ocean acidification and ecosystem collapse typically don’t make headlines. The dominant culture shrugs its shoulders at the news of certain reptiles going extinct. Pandas get a bit more sympathy, presumably because they’re cute to us fellow mammals, but we don’t seem to think we depend on the web of life anymore.
Recovering a sense of reality, I recently spent a weekend with ecologists at the Northeast Natural History Conference where I felt the stirrings of an ecological civilization. Dr. Douglas Zook, the Director of the Global Ecology Education Initiative at UMass/Boston emphasized in his plenary presentation ‘A Pathway to Essential Biospherism’ that we must weave our way back into the web of life if we aim to survive as a species.
As a species we’ve only been on the stage of life for less than a manicure, Prof. Zook theatrically exclaimed during his plenary lecture at NENHC, stretching out his hand and showing the little bit of time we humans have walked the earth by pointing to the callus at the tip of his middle finger while giving his arm from shoulder to fingertips as the timeline for the evolution of life on earth.
What a mess we’ve made of things in this very short time!
The Anthropocene, the geologic era in which humans have irreversibly altered the environment and atmospheric content, may indeed be short-lived. We have come close to exhausting our vital resources, including the ongoing degradation of our life-sustaining photosynthetic ecosystems. Professor Zook proposes biospherism as a viable systemic change.
Ecologists understand that the biosphere has built-in regulatory feedback loops and self-regulates towards sustainability. The biosphere is a closed system that recycles everything and organisms that don’t reciprocate and harmonize with others in the chain of connections simply aren’t viable.
Capitalism insists on infinite growth while relying on finite resources and is a dead end on the evolutionary tree. The colonial mindset, particularly well suited for capitalism, is the main driver of climate disruption.
We must recognize that our current political ideologies and systems of governance driving depletion and pollution aren’t a good fit for our continued survival among other beings in the biosphere.
The climate crisis isn’t a problem to be solved, it’s better viewed as a human predicament and our story is in need of a life-sustaining paradigm shift. In order to adapt to and mitigate the changes in climate, we must first change our thinking. The dominant culture has been trapped in a cognitive error fed by false ideologies for a couple of hundred years now with catastrophic consequences.
The self-obsessed and false narratives constructed by white, cis-gendered males who scripted our thinking with phrases such as “We (humans) are the lords and possessors of nature” and “I think, therefore I am” or “The world is made for man…” have caused tremendous damage and devastation.
Friends of nature were burned at the stake in the dark middle ages, and The Doctrine of Discovery led to unimaginable cruelty in the conquest of land from natives.
Indigenous cultures have lived for thousands of years intimately with land and non-human beings, they instinctively have an ecological mindset. They are a good fit for the biosphere. An estimated 370-500 million individuals or less than 5% of our world’s population count as indigenous peoples and they steward more than 80% of what’s left of our world’s biodiversity.
We on the other hand have distanced ourselves from our ecosystems in the way we live. We’re sheltered from weather in temperature-controlled housing, we forage for food in the supermarket and rely on electricity, not daylight.
We may think we’ve extracted ourselves from the biosphere with the help of technology, but in truth we are dependent on each breath and we can’t make oxygen with machines. Our normalized extractive behaviors are jeopardizing millions of species’ continued survival in this century alone, including our own.
Take as much as you want and more, give nothing back and waste the rest. This throw-away mindset hasn’t led us to happiness, as evident with WHO stating depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide.
Biospherism in stark contrast to capitalism is inherently reciprocal, inclusive, equitable and sustainable. Ecological civilization becomes possible when we adopt a regenerative mindset and start giving back to nature, not just extract resources from earth.
At the NENHC I met Richard Stafursky, the originator of the “Species’ Forest Model,” who instead of selling his property for profit, gave 80 acres back to nature in Massachusetts on the sole condition that there be no trails built for humans through the woodlands.
To ensure our own viability we must start repairing the fabric of life and return large portions of land and sea to nature, so that the living world can recover and regenerate and perhaps it will sustain us in return.
Late ecologist Edward O. Wilson (1929-2021) founded The Half-Earth Project with this mission to conserve half the land and sea to safeguard biodiversity and support the viability of our species.
A sustaining cure to the current crisis comes from realizing the cognitive bias leading us to think we’re superior to other living beings. Thinking we’re separate from others is indeed an optical illusion. We’re completely dependent on each other and all living beings and non-living things that together compose the ecosystem.
We may be the first species on earth cognizant and aware of the possibility of us causing our own extinction. This does give us the evolutionary advantage to learn from our mistakes and change our behaviors. We must in this defining moment look to our indigenous relatives for guidance.
Instead of claiming ownership over people, land and other resources, we must shift our mindset towards stewardship. Biospherism begs us to replace dominance and aggression with humility and receptivity. It’s a viable approach to living.
We must all care deeply about our ecosystems, our lives depend on the health and well-being of the biosphere.
Please connect with Hildur at revhildur@gmail.com. Hildur guides nature-based mindfulness and meditation at the Mindful Connection of Long Island, Merrick and Sol Center, Port Washington http://www.sol.center.