ABSTRACT
This book is about something obvious – but overlooked and ignored. Many of us sometimes experience a moment when the scales drop from our eyes and we experience an ‘Aha!’ moment. We then see something we should always have seen. My hope is that this may happen here. This book is about the fact that humans are ecologically, bio-physically, psychologically and spiritually dependent on the Earth. It is obvious to anyone who has studied ecology, or spent time close to the natural world – yet our society acts as if it is not so. Thereby hangs a tale. How are we dependent on Nature, and in what ways? What services do ecosystems provide to us? What happens when we go too far, when we push ecosystems beyond their limit? How can we assess the impact we have on the Earth’s ecosystems? How can we learn to live sustainably within the biophysical limits that the Earth imposes? Other books have sought to address this in part, yet the message is either still unclear, or we are in denial about it. It may well be both, and we shall discuss this. This book seeks to show how humans are pushing the Earth’s ecosystems beyond their safe limits. Yet human civilization is rooted in the natural world and is reliant upon it. A recent TV series claimed proudly that Earth was ‘The Human Planet’, yet this is just human hubris. Earth is not the human planet, it is the planet on which humans evolved. Humans do not run the life support systems of planet Earth, Nature does. We ignore this truth at our peril, but sadly also at the peril of many of the family of life we share this world with.
