Crisis or Climateric?

In an address in 1978 at Stanford University Eric Ashby put the issue in the following way:

I do not underestimate the perils threatening industrial society, though I think that some of the people who warn us about environmental crisis have got their perspectives wrong. Indeed, I think they are wrong to call it a crisis at all. A crisis is a situation that will pass; it can be resolved by temporary hardship, temporary adjustment, technological and political expedients. What we are experiencing is not a crisis, it is a climacteric. For the rest of man's history on earth, so far as one can foretell, he will have to live with problems of population, of resources, of pollution. And the seminal problem remains unsolved: Can man adapt himself to anticipate environmental constraints? Or will he (like other animal societies) adapt himself only in response to the constraints after they have begun to hurt?¹¹

Adaptation to a climacteric does not imply the prospect of a clear, constant, or coherent course to the future. The world will need to learn its way into a new paradigm. Mankind is an adaptable species, but adaptation may take many forms depending upon circumstances, human learning, and perceptions. Adaptation offers a road to survival, but may lead to an impoverished or degraded quality of life as well as to higher and sustainable levels of existence.¹² Anticipatory adaptation to unmanageable changes in the geosphere-biosphere (e.g., global climate change) depends heavily upon timely assessment of environmental trends and action toward preferred or, at least, achievable outcomes.

A profile of the late 20th century reveals contrasting trends. It has been a positive period of steady advances in science and technology coexisting with negative impacts by humanity upon its environment. It has been an age of revolutions-conceptual, religious, political, industrial, and institutional. Yet certain basic assumptions have remained dominant. Among these has been belief in the destiny of humans to grow in numbers, in material economy, and in power to dominate, exploit, and reshape the planetary biosphere-and perhaps even to colonize other worlds. A human habitat without limits has been widely and persistently assumed, despite demonstrable evidence that this vision is an illusion.