Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0261

by belter • 3 years ago

71 29 3 years ago

sgu9992• 3 years ago

Based on an adaptation of the evolutionary traps concept to a global human context, we present results from a participatory mapping. We identify 14 traps and categorize them as either global, technology or structural traps. An assessment reveals that 12 traps (86%) could be in an advanced phase of trapping with high risk of hard-to-reverse lock-ins and growing risks of negative impacts on human well-being.

Good, I was feeling a bit too positive today.

RandomLensman4• 3 years ago

Hypothesizing doom is always easy, no need to feel too bad about it.

hkt3• 3 years ago

Measuring doom is hard, and there are an awful lot of people trying to work out exactly how bad things are and if they can be salvaged. No need to be too flippant about it.

FrustratedMonky4• 3 years ago

Can we summarize by saying the human animal also has a boom-bust cycle in growth, overpopulating an area, running out of resources, and dying off?

flir• 3 years ago

FrustratedMonky4• 3 years ago

It's the smell.

I must get out.

CapitalistCartr• 3 years ago

"It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure."

palata2• 3 years ago

Maybe a big difference with other species is that we know about it, we have been talking about it for decades, we know what we need to do to minimize the casualties (use less energy, do less with less), and instead of working on improving the situation, we actively work on making it worse.

We read about those issues in the morning, complain about them making us anxious, and proceed to get excited about 5G, AI and SpaceX in the afternoon.

Phlogi• 3 years ago

I fully agree, we even know the reasons why we're not acting, but then...

RetroTechie• 3 years ago

If there's 1 thing I've learned from browsing through papers such as this one over the last few years:

It's the social / political aspects that are THE stumbling block for effective action. Not technical, logistical or even economic ones.

Read: technology won't get us out of this "polycrisis". Nor is it the #1 cause or enabler.

It's people. Their priorities, ethics, behaviour & how groups of people interact. Given the history of that, it's kinda hard to be optimistic about humanity's future imho.

hkt3• 3 years ago

No, because this is unprecedented and within our means to control if we have the will to do so. One hopes we're slightly more forward thinking than other species, although hope is a double edged sword.

NickM• 3 years ago

Well, frankly, no, that’s not a summary of the article at all.

codeulike• 3 years ago

They seem to define Trap as "situation with high risk of hard-to-reverse lock-ins and growing risks of negative impacts on human well-being"

Here's the list:

global traps

1. simplification - increasing specialization produces simplified sub-systems that are vulnerable to shocks

2. growth-for-growth - institutional lock-ins drive pursuit of growth at the cost of well-being

3. overshoot - continued material growth leads to overshoot of Earth system tipping points

4. division - unstable selection for global human cooperation increases risk of international conflict

5. contagion - global connectivity increases the risk of large-scale contagion, e.g. of infectious diseases

technology traps

6. infrastructure lock-in - complex material infrastructure becomes maladaptive, e.g. owing to sunk costs

7. chemical pollution - capacity to produce complex or persistent compounds that can cause long-term harm to humans and ecosystems

8. existential technology - technological arms-races drive the evolution of existential technology, such as weapons of mass destruction

9. technological autonomy - reliance on automation can backfire if systems become misaligned to human needs

10. dis- and misinformation - digitalization can amplify spread of mis- and disinformation e.g. destabilizing democracies

structural traps

11. short-termism - favour of short-term over long-term benefits reinforces other traps and promotes conflict

12. overconsumption - separation of production and consumption facilitates overconsumption

13. biosphere disconnect - separation of human settlements and ecosystems reduces awareness about their benefits

14. local social capital loss - digitalization can lead to loss of local social capital through reduced interaction and echo chambers

sgu9992• 3 years ago

9. technological autonomy - reliance on automation can backfire if systems become misaligned to human needs

Our economical system is already by and large autonomous and misaligned to our needs, there are humans in the loop but they view the world through symbols. I'm not sure a radically more autonomous technological agent would make any difference...

timschmidt• 3 years ago

I find that humans struggle to stack more than some limit of abstractions around those symbols through which they view the world. This necessarily limits the breadth of their understanding. I hope that automated systems can be engineered to better handle deep dependency chains of abstractions to better sort out complicated topics.

tesdinger• 3 years ago

The elephant in the room is that people do not care about the continued survival of humanity

Anthropocene traps that challenge global sustainability

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