Our Biological Future

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Exam 3 #13

The further one looks into the future, the more likely one is to be wrong.

Speaker Notes:

At what point does thinking about the future become fantasy?

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Reading Assignment

Chapter 55.
The opinions expressed are mine, Dennis Nyberg, BioSci, UIC.
There is both an individual future and a collective future. The collective future has hierarchical levels: family, region, nation and the entire world. Collective futures have big impacts on individual futures.

Speaker Notes:

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Apocalypse now!

The prediction of the end of the world has a long human history.
- Götterdamerung, the collapse of the empire of the gods – a Teutonic myth
- Coming of the messiah
To those humans that believe in unending economic progress, it might be disturbing that so many religions expect GOD(s) will end life as we know it.

Speaker Notes:

The end can be viewed as a new beginning.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Cycles versus goal –life views

Most ecological models assume that abundances and fluxes stay the same or are in cycles.
Sustainability, where inputs = outputs, is a natural idea to ecologists.
Movement toward a goal/finish line is not natural to ecologists, but it is to developmental biologists and doctors.

Speaker Notes:

What does sustainable mean to you?

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Ecological view of future

Sustainability is a concept natural to ecologists.
Sustainability supposes that people can live in harmony with animals and plants indefinitely. There are cycles of births and deaths, but the system continues to function, with constant population sizes of all species.

Speaker Notes:

Can you think of a culture that was ‘sustainable’?

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Sustainability vs progression

An individual is clearly not sustainable in an unchanging state.
Ecosystem properties are tend to return to function even after significant events that eliminate species, even including the mass extinctions.

Speaker Notes:

Progression through a series of states is characteristic of an individual’s life.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Ecologists as prognosticators

Ecologists and other scientists are now sounding a warning about the future of biodiversity.
Human economic activities impact the whole earth- global change.
- Atmosphere and ocean temperature rise
- Entry of compounds into the biosphere
- Loss of biodiversity thru extinction of species

Speaker Notes:

Humans have only recently come to the realization that economic activity has changed the earth.

What is biodiversity?

Catalog of the differences among different levels of biological organization from alleles to ecosystems.
The differences are almost limitless and a predominant theme of biologists is ‘stop change, we don’t even know what is there’.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Speaker Notes:

Consequences of biodiversity loss

People change the world in many ways, but
Life goes on…
After all kinds of bad events of disasters the nature of life is regroup and go on.
The extinctions on the south pacific islands had consequences, but there were still people there.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Speaker Notes:

Threats to biodiversity

Habitat conversion (commonly called loss) to improve usefulness to humans.
- Agriculture
- Residences & commercial
Loss results in spatial restructuring called fragmentation.
Changes in biogeography (exotic species)
Exploitation (direct harvest of wild species)

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Speaker Notes:

Why is biodiversity important?

Notice that this experiment suggests low levels of biodiversity are sufficient for a high level of function.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Speaker Notes:

Biodiversity and stability

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Less change with more species, but not a whole lot of difference.

Speaker Notes:

The human condition –how do we think and act?

The easily seen is thought to be important, while the unseen is not thought about.
Selfish –oriented to individuals rather than long term or collective goals.
Great differences in ability to appreciate and understand, but IMO the next slide portrays our greatest weakness.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Speaker Notes:

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UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Attraction to the irrelevant

Humans individuals are powerfully attracted to events, such as entertainment, that have low relevance/importance to the collective future of human culture and our long term survival as a species.

Speaker Notes:

Resources that individuals devote to staying alive is an example of ‘attraction to the irrelevant’. The survival of an individuals has much meaning to the individuals friends and relatives but it has little, if any, importance for human culture.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Medicine as irrelevant

Public health is significant and is relevant to culture, but saving lives isn’t.
There is no shortage of people. The large amount of resources put into medicine is more about the economic interests of hospitals, doctors, pharmacists and drug companies than about people collectively.

Speaker Notes:

Many of you hope to make a living in the health care field.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Economic view of future

Is the value of our biological future ‘priceless’?
Money brings value to the present.
- Economics can evaluate future value in the present using money. Economics can be used to place a dollar value on future biological attributes such as clean water, species, etc.

Speaker Notes:

Economic evaluations maybe unstable, as in situations of hyperinflation.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Money trivializes our biological future

Human’s natural tendency is to devalue the future (because individuals die?).
By valuing ‘ecosystem services’ or other biologically necessary attributes economics suggests that the future has some value in the present.
My view is that the only value of the future capacity to sustain life is in the future at the time it actually sustains life.

Speaker Notes:

The selfish perspective is pervasive in humans. Some individuals can empathize with the populations rather than themselves. For such individuals actions that degrade the future are unethical.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Two parts of human nature

Biological man – that part of us that focuses on individual function.
- Sex, food, privacy
- Children
Cultural man –collectively humans have been able to learn to use great amounts of resources. I assert that human economic activity is a collective or cultural activity- not a biological attribute.

Speaker Notes:

Biological man would have little impact on the earth (at present population sizes). Economic man has a huge impact on the earth not only through economic activities but also through war and other hostilities with other groups.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Alternatives: Stay the same or change?

Culture can’t stay the same any more than you could stay the same age indefinitely.
Progression is part of life, but there are many ways of progressing.
The test crash dummies continue to accelerate until they hit the wall. Because most individuals focus on present, there is a likelihood we will hit the wall very shortly after we see it.

Speaker Notes:

Species only last a short fraction of evolutionary time.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Reasons to believe our political future is bleak I

Democratic governments (perhaps in other forms as well) have politicians who reward constituencies even when those rewards are contradictory to long term collective benefits.
The democratic system has worked well during the period in which intellectual developments enable the exploitation of stored (=non-renewable) resource, which has generated more resources than can be effectively utilized.

Speaker Notes:

The way to get more personal resources is to spend collective resources rapidly. Going to the moon is a prime example of heavy spending or resources that when asked for a justification uses the ‘spin offs’ as the benefits.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Reasons to believe our political future is bleak II

As long as resources have been expanding thru the use of non-renewable energy (gas and oil), the ‘economic pie’ is expanding and people come to expect the pattern will continue.
Politicians are selected to have a ‘rosy’ view and are unlikely to fix a situation prior to being aware the situation is collapsing.

Speaker Notes:

‘tax cuts’ are the most obvious example. While reducing the collective stability they appeal to humans selfish nature and seem to be a necessary mantra of modern politicians.

Exam 3 #13

UIC BioS 101 Nyberg

Conclusions – possible outcomes

Human ingenuity is great. Up to the present there have been setbacks, i.e. world depression, but people have solved the problems, even those they created.

The world has been so interconnected, integrated and modified globally that, unlike in the past, there will be no place to go to when the collapse due to resource limitation comes.

Speaker Notes:

Is it possible to disassemble an economic whole into smaller parts that can still function?

What will the future look like? You are likely to be involved in those decisions.