https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01352-0
"The world has entered an era of increasing ecological scarcity and rising
environmental risks. Since 1970, 75% of terrestrial and 66% of marine
environments have been altered by human use, climate change, pollution, species
loss and invasion. Some 14 out of 18 global ‘ecosystem services’ have declined,
including the stability of the climate, the numbers of pollinators and quantity
and the quality of fresh water1. The average size of wildlife populations has
plummeted by 73%.
How economies respond to these issues will be crucial to their prosperity and
sustainability. If nature is valued, and a high price is placed on its
exploitation and use, scarcity can create incentives to innovate and
substitute. For example, as the cost of converting forests, wetlands and
grasslands to farmland rises and fresh water becomes scarce, it becomes
increasingly attractive to use agricultural methods that consume less land and
water. But if economies choose to continue exploiting or polluting nature, for
instance by converting forests to agricultural land, extracting minerals from
the sea bed, dumping plastics in the ocean and expanding fossil-fuel reserves,
then the costs for humanity and the environment will soar.
So far, countries are choosing distinct approaches. And two trends are
emerging: some nations are ignoring the damage to nature to keep the costs of
resources and pollution artificially low, whereas others are embarking on a
competitive race to dominate green innovation and markets.
Here, I describe those trends and make the case that, in the long run, the
green-technology race is likely to prevail. But the result of this competition
might be more prosperity at the expense of less sustainability, unless it is
accompanied by global cooperation to solve shared environmental risks."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
