ABSTRACT
Modern climate change is a symptom of the much larger syndrome of a single-species high-energy pulse. Unlike other animal species, Homo sapiens was able to improve energy supply to the body allowing for the development of larger and more complex brains, out-compete all other mammals and establish a single-species dominance. With the recent access to new energy sources and technologies, humankind modified the physiology of the Earth’s life-support system to an unprecedented extent. By changing major flows, including carbon, water, nitrogen, phosphorus, and energy, by several orders of magnitude, and by creating new flows, it reduced most limitations to population growth such as predators, sicknesses, and limitations to food, dwellings, and other resources and this initiated an explosive growth of population and human wealth. As a side effect, the Earth’s energy imbalance has increased at least seven orders of magnitude resulting in global warming and unprecedented rapid climate change. Humanity’s modern impact on the Earth’s life-support system is comparable to that of a virulent virus on the organism of a host animal, and there is a chance that its action will render large parts of the planet unfavorable for Homo sapiens to thrive.
