The basic intertwined elements of the human environmental predicament, as documented by the scientific community, include loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, climate disruption, toxification of Earth, and increased probability of pandemics and resource wars (possibly nuclear). These problems are outlined with special emphasis placed on aspects largely unrecognized by decision-makers, and on the two most-ignored drivers, population growth and overconsumption by the rich. This is put in the context of closing key parts of the “culture gap” – the chasm that has developed in the last century or so between what even the most educated people know and the information possessed by our entire society. That gap that has proven especially troubling when elected officials and other leaders have almost no knowledge of environmental science.
Political and social systems around the world clearly are not responding to the need to change humanity’s collective behavior. Thus the academic effort to solve the human predicament has shifted from the biophysical to the social sciences, and led to the founding of the Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB). Its ambitious aim is to alter civilization’s course and avoid a global collapse.
The urgent need for behavioral change can clearly be seen in efforts to address climate disruption, which have so far not yielded significant results. Responding appropriately will require an urgent revision of humanity’s energy mobilizing systems and other GHG-releasing activities. It will also necessitate, among many other long-term adaptations, a continual reworking of water-handling infrastructure to adjust to changing precipitation patterns vital to agriculture as well as massive modifications of human settlements as sea levels rise.
Whereas at least climate disruption is on the political agenda, most of the other issues are not, and public understanding of what drives environmental deterioration is minimal.
Results/Conclusions
The MAHB hopes to provide a basic mechanism to achieve a redirection of collective behavior by 1) exposing society to the full range of “inconvenient truths” regarding population-environment-resource-ethics-power issues, 2) sponsoring a broad global discussion of the human predicament involving the greatest possible diversity of people and focusing on human goals and assembling a vision of a sustainable future, and 3) trying to close crucial parts of the culture gap. The MAHB differs from other millennial assessments in seeking input from both the scholarly community and the general public on how to organize itself, and it will remain open to such input.
