ABSTRACT
Life on Earth is an endless experiment. Yet, to paraphrase Aldo Leopold, humans have become Earth’s master tinkerers without really understanding all the parts and the ways that they interact. The Earth has been in existence for 5 billion years, but the human species has been in existence for only 3 million years. For the other 99.94% of the Earth’s existence, humans were not involved in this grand experiment. Over the last 10,000 years (the agricultural revolution), the human population has increased from about 5 million to approximately 6 billion (Goudie 1994). It took 3 million years for the human population to increase from its beginnings to 5 million and it took only another 10,000 years for the human population to then increase 1,200 times over. If estimates of a population of 11 billion by the middle of the twenty-first century are realized, this will place a staggering burden on the Earth’s capability to support the human species. Humans have the intelligence and creativity to develop tools and technology which can help alleviate our burden on the planet, but we still do not seem to have the wisdom to know how to use this creativity.
