h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Not many people appreciate the magnitude of what I call the 'Environmental Challenge'. The realization that our very living environment is in danger – at least in danger of nor remaining a wonderfully comfortable and welcoming environment to ourselves and many other living things – is something that has yet to penetrate the awareness of the average citizen of our planet. Once one grasps this idea, the first reaction is one of extreme and deep horror. Understanding, learning about, seeing the damage we are doing to our own and only home can be close to soul-destroying. And yet … there is a different, positive side to the whole affair, and it is this: the Environmental Challenge, by its very magnitude and profoundness, is the very thing that can unify humanity and spur us into truly tackling and actually solving our biggest problems!

This is the thing I've realized many years ago: we cannot solve our environmental problems without solving many – indeed all – of our other major problems, too! The issue at stake is our environment, the space in which we live. That also touches upon the ways in which we live – the ways, the styles of life, that are open to us. It is the ways we live that have produced the disaster. There is no element that can be completely separated from the rest. The Earth as a whole is indeed a whole: there are no absolute borders and barriers between one part and another, it all functions as a single system in which the parts interact with each other, like gears that mesh. We've been fouling up the gears while expecting the machinery to continue to work! When we look at why we've done this, the answer comes back to us: it's because we've been greedy, arrogant, irresponsible and short-sighted. If we fix this, we fix the source of our environmental problems – but notice, that if indeed we become less greedy and arrogant, more responsible and far-sighted, we will also be solving so many of the other problems we've been contending with!

The very same attitudes and actions that harm our planet, also harm other people, our societies, ourselves. We can't solve our environmental problems without also solving our other major problems. No element of life can be left out of the picture – everything impacts the environment in some way or other, negative or positive. We can't solve the big problem without solving all the smaller problems that constitute it. We will have to look at politics and economics. What will be the effect there of less greed and arrogance, of greater responsibility and far-sightedness? Don't you think that the result will be political and economic systems that are not only more benign to nature, but also to other people? But we can't ignore other factors. Our political systems as a whole need to be fair, but we can't leave everything to the system. Also as individuals we need to take up the challenge to become less arrogant and greedy, more responsible and far-sighted. We're challenged to look at our society, our culture, and build new values by looking at life from a bigger perspective. Now in this, there must be no fear of what we might lose, but eager anticipation for what we might gain! So we need to involve human psychology also. We need to broaden our minds to imagine what human beings might be, what they have the potential to be. This is part of the environmental challenge: seeing beyond the past and the present, to the truly limitless possibilities of the future. A life truly in harmony with our environment will also entail harmony with other human beings, full harmony with ourselves, and this will transform human life, everyday life, in currently unimaginable ways – all for the good.

Understanding that we are all, together, facing a threat to the Earth, our only home, and thus to our own lives and futures, can bring us together like probably no other crisis or challenge can. A full understanding of what is at stake, will almost immediately bring to an end so much of our present petty bickering. We absolutely will have to unite across the barriers we've drawn when it comes to religion, nationality, race, political orientation, or anything else. Again, some people may feel afraid when they think of that, afraid that what they hold most dear, would be at risk. But what you hold most dear is already gravely at risk! If the living environment of the Earth deteriorates much more, then life here will become a hell for all of us, for our children, for our children's children, for generations of people of the future. And aren't they themselves, the people of the future, our progeny, in which our hopes reside - are not they indeed what we hold dear, even what we should hold most dear? What is worse – the hell we imagine for people who believe differently from ourselves, or the actual hell that our very own planet might turn into for everybody, irrespective of beliefs, if we mess it up?

Coming together and cooperating across the lines of belief, of ideology, of every difference we consider crucial, will instead make it easier for us to share our ideas and messages with each other. Surely if we are not physically at war with each other, it will be easier to talk with each other. Working together at an absolutely vital project – will that not enable us to see the good in each other, to appreciate each other, to be able to learn from each other? And our ideas – if they are sound, then what threat need we feel from other ideas? And if they are not sound – is it then not better for us to find that out and to change them? Working together to meet the environmental challenge will enable us to see the good in each other, to understand and appreciate each other. We need absolutely as many people as possible to be involved – we can't afford to exclude anyone for frivolous reasons.

The environmental challenge will spur us on to improve the education of our children, so that they can learn as much as possible, for surely we can't solve everything in one generation. We will need to love our children, to earn their trust, much better than we're doing now. They will need to see that we care about them and the world we hand over to them. But they, too, will have to take responsibility. Even though they will inherit problems not of their own making, they in turn will either solve or fail to solve those problems – and whatever they fail to solve, they will bequeath to their children in turn. The environmental challenge will spur us on to be better parents, better guardians of the full heritage we will pass on to our children. It spurs us on to be more loving, to take far greater care, to be much more considerate and responsible.

An absolutely vital element of the environmental challenge will be that we humans need to become responsible about how many children we're having. This touches a very tender spot in the human psyche. It involves issues of trust and security. Having many children gives us a sense of security, but having few children can do the same, if doing that means that those children we have, can be much better taken care of. Saying that there are too many people on the world or too many children being born, doesn't mean that I don't like people, or don't like children – it is because I DO like people, and children. I want that there should be enough room for all, enough food and water for all, enough meaningful deeds for all to do, and enough wild spaces and animals and plants so that the wild, natural Earth remains a viable and balanced system – because we all depend on it.

The environmental challenge will of course and to a vast extent involve science. It will put great pressure on science, to come up with answers. Once again we need science that is not arrogant, greedy, short-sighted or irresponsible. Humility is the first requirement. We must face up to the fact that science is not everything, that whether it is for the good or not, depends on what use we make of it. We dare not alienate potential allies. Science is not absolute truth: science is an approach towards reaching the truth, but that will likely forever fall short of the absolute truth. Still it is enormously valuable and important. We must not alienate people who are somewhat suspicious of what science, or scientists, say. Scientists instead must learn to be suspicious of what they themselves say – indeed, the best scientists already are! But in science, as in practically everything, the first step towards knowledge is realising how little you actually know. In dealing with the environmental challenge, we are dealing with the most complicated things in the known universe: living beings, living systems – and also living minds. There needs to be a respect, a reverence, for the magnitude of what we're dealing with. Unlike in any other branches of science, when it comes to the sciences of the living world, of nature, of animals and plants, the very subject that science is studying, is in danger of disappearing. Physicists don't have to worry that protons, electrons, space, time, electric fields and forces, or anything else involved in their science is going to stop existing … but scientists trying to study animal or plant species, or their interactions in compex ecosystems will lose the actual sources of the knowledge they're studying, if those species go extinct, or those ecosystems stop existing or functioning. The sphere is diminishing before our eyes – and it is the sphere which comparatively we still know the least of, and also the one that is most vital to know about, for the sake of our own existence also.

Scientifically we need to better integrate our different kinds of understanding in different fields. A part of the problem is how sciences split into different branches which are then treated as if they don't have much or anything to do with each other. This has not only been bad for the environment, but also bad for science. Part of the response will need to be a re-unification of science, with clarity being gained about how aspects of any branch can affect any or all of the other branches. I am certain that better study of nature and of living things is going to yield insights into our studies of non-living things. If we understand nature and ecology better, and the kind of harmony that exists there – or that should or could exist there – we will learn much of value about our human systems of economics and politics. Personally I'm even certain that understanding mind, life and ecology will yield otherwise-impossible insights into physics and chemistry.

To bring all this to a close: the environmental challenge is the most profound challenge we are facing at the moment – if we don't solve it, then the solution to any and all our other problems will be moot. If we lose the place in which we comfortably exist, and the conditions that enable us to exist comfortably, and that also enable us to be a society and to collectively search for the truth, then we lose pretty much everything, we lose what it means to exist and to be human – there's nothing that we can gain, that can make up for such a loss. We stand to lose our very selves – worst case scenario, since we are just one species, and if any species can go extinct, then humanity, too, can go extinct. So here we have the challenge, here we have the opportunity to take it on, or to ignore it. And what I hope I show is, that if we take the challenge on, and actually work towards solving our environmental problems, it is going to do far more for us than any other project we've previously been involved in. We will have to come together as people, to unify and to harmonize, and we will also need to bring our ideas and our systems together and to harmonize them. It is indeed the one, great challenge, that can do for us what nothing could do before, that will spur us on to truly achieve what we are able to achieve, and to realize what we are capable of becoming. So this challenge, dire as it seems, catastrophic as things will be if we fail, may yet be the best thing that's ever happened to us! So … let's not fail. Let's understand what is required, let's grasp the challenge with both hands, let's do our best.