Earlier this month, we released a page on Prismatic Planet that discussed the concept of population ecology and how species exist on a series of spectra that play into population strategies. We initially wanted to talk to how humans factor into these models, but as we researched, it became apparent that the topic deserved its own post, so here we are! If you haven't read our post on populations, you might want to give it a read before continuing here. It won't make this post unreadable, but we will make some call-outs to topics covered on that page in this analytical/philosophical view of human population. Okay, so...humans...where do we factor into population ecology? How have we, as a species, grown to dominate this planet? No other species comes close to the magnitude of impact we have on the planet given our population size. That isn't to say there aren't larger populations. Ants, for instance, far outnumber us, but their strategy plays to that attribute. Humans, arguably, shouldn't be as populous as we are. Let's take a look. We definitely seem to be situated in the K-strategist, S-Curve representation, but either we haven't hit any density-dependent challenges, or humans don't seem to belong in these models. In any of our ancestors' lifetimes, there hasn't been any environmental need to change our population strategy. All shifts in population environment, from a human perspective, are highly societal. Cultural. We don't change or move because we have to. We do so because we want to. This thought process makes it seem like humans are special. And, to be fair, we kind of are. But just because we seem to have an edge over other species on the planet doesn't mean we get a first-round by on the rule set. We just happened to solve them before they became clear, tangible ceilings. The thing is, we have actually run into these challenges, but we don't really see them as having been challenges. Let's talk it out. If humans didn't hit the agricultural revolution, we would have been limited to hunting and foraging, limiting the ceiling of our population. The idea here being that the natural world only puts out so many resources humans can consume. When humans first thought to "not wait for nature" and do it ourselves, we pushed our ceiling. If we didn't hit the industrial revolution, we wouldn't have been able to traverse the world, effectively locking human civilizations to the areas local to themselves. In this time we learned how to travel wide and build to the sky, making more space for the more mouths we needed to feed, pushing our ceiling ever higher. Without changing our practices to make the most of our space on this planet, we would not be able to feed and shelter the number of people that currently live on Earth. In retrospect, every time humans have been posed a ceiling by their environment, humans restructure themselves and, at times, restructure the planet to accommodate a larger population density. One of the more interesting parts to us is that these challenges found answers well before they posed any real stress on the human population. Maybe this can be seen as proactive, maybe just lucky. It could also be that humans of those times were solving for these future problems, but, today, through sheer optimism and our species' incapability of thinking in geological time (note to self, great topic for future posts!), we just don't see it that way. Fast forward to today, and in our digital revolution, we're as spread out as humans likely can be on this planet, finally reaching leveling points for local human populations for first-world countries, and actively working to improve the survivability and adaptability of communities across the world. Essentially, where population health is relatively stable, humans are naturally not producing as much offspring. Our species has started to find an equilibrium for population density on the Earth, and that will stabilize as health systems flourish in communities across the world. We're getting there. However, in getting there, we have long held onto systems and practices that have, while not overstaying their use for humanity, have lasted (and frankly grown) to points that the planet cannot sustain. This is our strategy's trade-off to our species' success. We rely on the practices invented by our ancestors centuries past, while only meagerly improving upon how they impact our home, with the trade off of mass production to meet our growing global footprint. This is exponentially worsened by a consumer mentality that devours the current culture of humanity, producing way beyond the actual needs of our species. What we've done to accommodate humanity thus far, on the practices we have for as long as we have, is astounding. Yet, also, extremely terrifying. Humans are finally facing a density-dependent challenge of space. Not only that, we're faced with another that recurs when a species dominates the planet, a climate challenge. And at a scale never before seen, only fully realized by the kind of defiance that our species has shown the Earth. We have, for seemingly the first time, hit a ceiling that is looming above us. As with our past actions to accommodate our population density, humanity needs to recognize what we face, and once more, redefine how we interact with the planet to ensure we and, in truth, the remaining life on Earth, have a place to call home. This is a unique chapter for humanity. We've grown tremendously through our remarkably short time on this planet, redefining how we interact with the planet to write population strategies that no other species on the planet has been capable of accomplishing. The challenge of a climate ceiling is a daunting one, and unfortunately one that we have to tackle as it is actively impacting us, a truly new thing that humanity has to deal with. However, we've always overcome our challenges. So long as we act with our species and our environment in mind, as we've done in past revolutions (and it truly has to be a revolution), there's always hope for us to continue living here, alongside our wondrous home. ~ And, as always, don't forget to keep wondering ~
0 Comments
Since this is a first post: hi, I'm Jon Michalik. I'm a human on a planet called Earth. This planet flies through something we call the universe, and it stays in the same relative spot thanks to a big anchor known as a star, which we call the Sun. On this big blue marble, we have a lot of things. Among these things, a surprising amount of them can move all on their own. Among the things that move, an even more surprising amount of them live, breathe, and think. And among even those things is a group quite astonishing. Things that can dream. I'm in that group, the things we call humans. We're capable of some pretty awe-inspiring things. Or, at least, I think so.
If you're reading this, you're probably in that group, too. If not, I hope you'll stick around anyways, though I apologize in advance that this site is geared toward humanity. See, humans have this home, and it's pretty great. The planet I mentioned earlier (Earth) is this bustling orb of vigor and life. Everything here was built with the stuff of stars, changing and evolving over time to the point it is now. Looking out my window, now is a pretty interesting time. It's full of massive structures called buildings to hold people and their things. It's covered in long concrete and asphalt roads to ride our metal boxes that move by making tiny repetitive explosions. It's full of lights to illuminate any shadow. When I look inside my window, it's pretty interesting too. It's full of glass that can show me facts and opinions to any question I could possibly think up. There's a furry creature here called a dog that makes me smile all the time. There's loads of boxes that hold discs of information I can project onto glass, showing me worlds that only exist in our imaginations. This might sound kind of weird, but of all those things I could see, there's one thing I couldn't. Earth. This isn't to say that the planet isn't there. When I look out my window, it's definitely there. We (humans, that is) have just changed it. Significantly. Or at the very least, we've built so much on top of it that it's hard to recognize it anymore. When I walk done the street and I see a field with trees, I see the park, not the woodland. When I walk to the store, I see the unused trench, not the wetland. When I drive down a country road, I see the preserve, not the forest. What feels weirdest to me, though, is when I do see other life, it's only plants and animals. I don't know their names. It's like they're not a part of my world. Only decor in passing. I've thought about this feeling a lot lately. This feeling of living in a world that is built on top of something I don't know. How we, as the dreamers, keep building on that foundation, slowly deteriorating it without even realizing it. That the more we build, the more abstract our home becomes. The less we have to interact with the foundation we built upon. The less we have to coexist with the things we share this planet with. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I don't think I'm alone in this thinking. I don't think I'm alone in wondering what humanity's relationship with this planet is. We've gone so far beyond what this planet was intended to hold regarding our species that it's hard for us to consider ourselves as much a part of it as the plants and animals alongside us. We've distanced ourselves such that we only know some base words, not the purpose, the function, the story of our world. It's because of this feeling that I started volunteering with my local arboretum. It's because of this feeling that I've started to learn about the plants that enrich the areas around me. It's because of this feeling that I'm learning more than just words, but the stories of how everything lives on this planet. It's because of this feeling that I'm starting this website. I want to both help myself and as many people around me learn our place on this planet. I want to know how the things we as humans do impact the world around us. I want to know why plants and animals move and interact the way they do with each other around the Earth. I want to learn the names of the many things around me that humanity, at large, may have forgotten. I want to care about our home. And the best way I've learned to care is to learn in general. This planet is full of names and experiences and stories waiting to be found, if only we can see past the abstractions we've built and interact with our foundation once again. I want to share the things I learn and find with you, and encourage you to learn and find your own things to share. Together, we can understand our home enough to foster it and ensure we can live on and alongside it eons to come. So...hi, I'm Jon Michalik. I'm a human, one of the dreamers in a place called Earth. Let's learn together and embrace our prismatic planet. Let's see what wonders await us. ~ And, as always, don't forget to keep wondering ~ |
AuthorPrismatic Planet wants to get excited for the planet, raise awareness of its inhabitants, and get smarter about Earth. Archives
April 2024
Categories |