ENVIRONMENT

Two areas we will be monitoring for the Environment

1.  Higher shorter term impacts within environment (Next five years or sooner targeted)

2.  The gaming of the environment

3.  Peoples perception of the environment for organizations

DETACHED OBSERVATION STATEMENT #1

>   Human society is completely dependent on the continued functioning of the biosphere in which it evolved.  Humans require stable supplies of breathable air, fresh water, productive soil, food, energy, raw materials, and functioning ecosystems.

Agriculture can degrade soils and deplete nutrients; withdrawals can reduce rivers and groundwater; fossil-fuel combustion changes the climate and ocean chemistry; mining and resource extraction disturb land and generate waste; industrial chemicals can accumulate in ecosystems; and plastics persist in soils, waterways, oceans, and living organisms. From a detached perspective, the environment is therefore not separate from the human economy—it is the physical system that supports it.

The mathematical concern becomes more important when human population, consumption, production, and technological capability grow rapidly.  Humans tend to think linearly, yet compounding growth means that a system increasing by a percentage each year adds progressively larger absolute amounts over time.  Each doubling adds as much as all previous growth combined.  Environmental pressure does not automatically grow exponentially in every category because efficiency, recycling, substitution, regulation, and technological improvement can reduce impacts; however, when total consumption grows faster than those improvements, the amount of extraction, waste, pollution, and ecological disturbance can increase at an accelerating rate.

Physics places another constraint on this system. Humans cannot extract, transform, transport, or consume energy and materials without losses: energy conversions produce waste heat, mining produces tailings and disturbed material, manufacturing creates by-products, combustion produces emissions, and products eventually become waste. Technology can greatly improve efficiency and reduce the amount of waste produced per unit of economic value, but it cannot make physical processes completely free of energy use, material inputs, or waste.

DETACHED OBSERVATION STATEMENT #2

>  The environment often sits lower in the human decision hierarchy than more immediate needs such as energy, resources, food, employment, economic growth, money, and financial stability.

This statement is understandable from a survival standpoint: humans first seek the energy and resources required to live, then build economic systems to organize their production and distribution.  Environmental protection often becomes a secondary consideration because many of its benefits and costs occur over longer periods of time, while economic pressures are immediate.

When modern economic and accounting systems were developing, individual humans and organizations had far less ability to observe the cumulative environmental effects of their activities.  There were no satellites continuously monitoring forests, oceans, atmospheric gases, ice, water systems, or land-use change, and scientific measurement of global systems was much more limited.  A factory, mine, farm, or city could therefore impose environmental costs that were largely invisible to the decision maker and absent from the financial statements used to measure economic success.

Human society has since expanded enormously in population, consumption, industrial capacity, energy use, transportation, agriculture, mining, and material production.  The environmental consequences have expanded with it: 

soil degradation

groundwater depletion

air pollution

plastics

chemical contamination

biodiversity loss

ocean change

greenhouse-gas accumulation

waste, and ecosystem disruption

species loss and more...

What once may have appeared local or insignificant can become systemically important when billions of people and millions of organizations repeat similar activities over decades.

Traditional accounting, however, still does not fully capture many of these effects.  A corporation may record the cost of fuel, labor, machinery, and raw materials while much of the resulting pollution, carbon emissions, ecosystem damage, waste disposal, water depletion, or long-term health impact remains outside its balance sheet.  If every organization were required to recognize the full environmental consequences over which it has meaningful agency, the economic cost of many products, services, and business models would look very different.

The fact that a cost does not appear on a corporate balance sheet does not mean the cost disappears.  It is transferred somewhere else - to governments, communities, healthcare systems, future consumers, other businesses, ecosystems, or future generations.  In economic terms, many of these effects are externalities: costs created by an activity but not fully paid by the party creating them.

The deeper issue is therefore one of measurement.  Human economic systems are highly developed at measuring money flows, but far less complete at measuring losses in soil quality, clean water, ecosystem resilience, atmospheric stability, biodiversity, or future environmental capacity.  A financial system can therefore show economic gain at the same time that the underlying physical system supporting that economy is being weakened.

From a detached observer's perspective, this creates a fundamental accounting problem: human society can record the benefits of extraction and production immediately while postponing, distributing, or ignoring part of the environmental cost.  Those costs remain real regardless of whether they are formally priced.  Ultimately, someone - or the larger society - absorbs them.

DETACHED OBSERVATION STATEMENT #3

>   Math and physics win:  a growing population and rising consumption cannot indefinitely increase pressure on finite water, food, energy, soils, oceans, and other natural systems without consequences.  Human survival depends on maintaining a livable planet, and no economic system, technology, belief, or narrative can permanently override the physical limits of the environment that supplies the resources and conditions required for life.

Human society can grow, consume, and transform its surroundings much faster than the human brain and its intuitions evolve, making it easy to underestimate environmental change that compounds gradually and then becomes difficult to reverse.  

But the underlying math and physics are nonnegotiable:  warmer air can hold roughly 7% more water vapor per degree Celsius of warming, greenhouse gases alter Earth's energy balance, ice melts when sufficient heat is added, groundwater becomes more expensive to obtain as water tables fall, degraded soils require more inputs to maintain productivity, fisheries decline when harvest exceeds reproduction, and warmer oceans expand while land ice loss raises sea level. 

Heat and humidity also have physiological math limits, so as wet-bulb conditions rise, some places become increasingly difficult for humans to work or live safely without cooling, increasing pressure to adapt or migrate. The same logic applies across glaciers, water, food, oceans, and ecosystems.  

Humans can debate the meaning of the numbers, delay responding to them, or construct narratives around them, but they cannot negotiate with the physical relationships the numbers describe.  Humans want control and certainty, it is difficult for individuals and groups to give this up to math.  However, math wins.

DO:  Because human society has a difficult time adapting to fast change due to the overall human brain understanding of this complex world and as a society, not able to make changes quick enough, being able to adapt to change on this and many fronts will be a top skill.  Just like debt, EROI, resource quality, etc., math will continue to win.  As such, expect more disorder that is not planned or understood.

Advice from a Universe Detached Observer:

What would be some possible advice from a detached observer giving good tips to human society.  Here are a few possibilities:

-  You live in a vary narrow band that makes life possible.  Learn more about it so you do not jeopardize your existence.

-  Make the previous statement a larger part of your overall human education system.

-  You live with limited perception to understand the world and the universe.  Use math as your guide and heir on the side of caution if unsure about the results of your actions (this one can be added to the AI section)

There are a lot of good people in the world who spend a lifetime understanding parts of the earth and the human livable planet.  These voices will be added in the sections below or within our other content.  

Areas of the environment that will be on our radar here at ApproachAvoid.com:

Temperature Anomalies

Human built infrastructure

Impacts to personal survival - food, water, shelter

Species change

Insurance price and risk

Droughts, fires, and multiple large events

Breathable Air

How people and other species adapt to changes

Permafrost melt

Ice melt

Fish movements away from warmer waters

Earths carbon sink

Ocean changes

AMOC

Biodiversity

Microplastics

and more...

ENVIRONMENT

There is a reason the Environment is lower on the list.  It is not because of it's importance - as it should be front and center.  In a world that is Exponential AND nearing/hitting important tipping points, forward thinking on the Environment is vital.  However, the human brain focuses on the 'here and now' and how to survive In the Moment.  Thus, the Environment will remain lower on the hierarchy for the time being.  In 2025, we will be watching:

     - The Speed of Change in Global Temperatures and Environmental Impacts

     - Innovations that can slow the coming changes

     - Major Tipping Point Changes

     - Ongoing Research

Important>  Since we think in a linear fashion, there will be constant surprises in all of these categories in the years ahead.   Research that is published in areas of the Environment is already in the PAST (In an exponential world, it is important to reflect on this).  Also, science is conservative (which generally means things can be Understated - especially for policy) and since the Environment is lower on the hierarchy and does not make money, the research can/will be downplayed.

Websites to consider if you would like to learn more:

Probable Futures.org

This site allows you to see the impacts of changing temperatures and other impacts on a local scale.  

2025 US and World Environment Watch

WMO confirms 2024 as warmest year on record at about 1.55C above pre-industrial level

After Millenia as carbon dioxide sink, more than one-third of Arctic-boreal region is now a source

Humans Have Crossed 7 of 9 ‘Planetary Boundaries