What if the Biosphere Can Reverse the Ecological Crisis?
We can trust the biosphere.
[L]ife organizes itself in networks, and these living networks are inherently regenerative, creative and intelligent. – Fritjof Capra
Our one and only home is on fire.
The Stockholm Resilience Centre has mapped the biosphere’s ecological crisis as the sum of nine planet-scale ecological crises (the “Ecological Crisis”) created by humanity’s “overshoot” of “planetary boundaries” …
People everywhere are witnessing & experiencing the devastating symptoms of human beings’ collective destruction of the biosphere’s regenerative capacity.
And it’s getting worse.
As of 2023, human beings’ destruction of the biosphere’s regenerative capacity has crossed 6 of the 9 “planetary boundaries” studied by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, with a recent warning that a 7th planetary boundary (for ocean acidification) soon will be crossed …
What if the biosphere as a whole can reverse the Ecological Crisis as a whole?
The “planetary boundaries” are extraordinarily useful for comprehending the scale and interconnectedness of the planet’s ecological crises.
The “planetary boundaries” do not work, however, as “goals” or “targets” for reversing the Ecological Crisis because the planet’s living biosphere does not think or act or operate according to human-defined “planetary boundaries.”
Instead, the biosphere thinks and decides and operates on an extremely simple principle of meeting the physical needs of all living beings, including human beings.
The biosphere is constantly and consistently thinking and caring about meeting the physical needs of all living beings, including the physical needs of every human being.
The biosphere (in deep green) thinks and cares deeply about each and every human-created things-we-extract flow out of the biosphere (in orange) and each and every human-created pollution flow into the biosphere (in orange) that is creating the planet’s Ecological Crisis …
Every moment of every day, the biosphere is sensing, thinking about, deciding and acting with respect to each and every such human-created things-we-extract flow & pollution flow in a way that meets the physical needs of all living beings, including human beings.
Every moment of every day, the biosphere is employing its intelligence – hard-wired into the biosphere through hundreds of millions of years of evolution – to repair the damage to its regenerative capacity from the human-created things-we-extract flows & pollution flows.
Every moment of every day, the biosphere is employing its intelligence to repair that damage and regenerate itself to meet the physical needs of all living beings, including human beings.
If the biosphere did not think or care about the physical needs of every living being, you would not be here reading this.
Ecologist Fritjof Capra summarized this reality – that the biosphere thinks and decides and acts on an extremely simple principle of meeting the physical needs of all living beings – as follows:
[L]ife organizes itself in networks, and these living networks are inherently regenerative, creative and intelligent.
In other words, the biosphere is a self-organized, self-regenerating organism, and we are part of that organism.
To reverse the Ecological Crisis, we can trust the biosphere. When we trust the biosphere, we allow the biosphere’s natural intelligence to reverse the Ecological Crisis.
The biosphere knows far better than us how to reverse the Ecological Crisis. It has ways and intelligence we know not of.
We are all co-creators with the biosphere. We are meant to create in partnership with the biosphere. The biosphere provides not only the means for reversing the Ecological Crisis, but also has evolved us with problem-solving capacities and simple & strong emotions for making decisions that allow the biosphere to reverse the Ecological Crisis.
Our path for reversing the Ecological Crisis can be a path of joy and inspiration. We’re allowed to make our decisions through feelings. What gives us joy? What gives us excitement? When we follow that path, in the words of Joseph Campbell: “the universe will open doors where there were only walls.”
When one trusts the biosphere, one allows the intelligence, creativity and regenerative capacity of the biosphere as a whole to reverse the Ecological Crisis as a whole.
My aim – in writing Solving the Eco-crises – is to shift you out of the old paradigm of fighting and into a new paradigm of trusting and co-creating with the biosphere for reversing the Ecological Crisis.
Want to learn more about actually reversing the Ecological Crisis?
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Thank you for reading and aloha!
P.S. I cross-posted this article on Medium for greater reach.