Courageous Conversation: A Systems View of Sustaining All Life on Earth with Dr. Tom Hay

Dr. Inger Anderson, Executive Director of the UN Environmental Programme addressed the UN in 2020 with the following words:

"That we even need to utter the phrase “Sustaining All life on Earth” at all should ring alarm bells.

We have long assumed that nature will provide for us no matter what. For too long we have seen the living world as an endless, inexhaustible resource for us to tap.

But the veil is falling. Human activities are pushing the natural world’s limits to breaking point, placing the well-being of all life on earth, including our own, in grave peril.

The warning signs are all around. Forests destroyed by wildfires, glaciers melting at alarming speeds, the mass extinction of species, the dying of coral reefs. The very ecosystems that feed and water us – that are so essential to life on earth – are collapsing as the natural world unravels around us.

Beneath the surface of our seas and oceans there are profoundly unsettling changes taking place.

Global heating is causing the world’s oceans to warm at an alarming rate. These changes are disrupting one of the world’s most important food baskets, which provides one-fifth of the world’s population with its supply of protein.

We are quite literally suffocating our oceans.

To change course will require a revolution in perspective. The natural world must inspire more than just awe. We must return to a time when we understood how the living world sustains humanity.  And we must begin to see the natural world as deeply interconnected web of living systems.

The beauty of this understanding is that the same is true in reverse. By tackling the damage done to one part of the system we can begin to reverse the damage done elsewhere.

This is the work. We are in the business of arresting the destruction of the natural world so that we can, “Sustain all life on Earth”, including our own. We need to set targets that are ambitious, implementable, inclusive, measurable, and financeable.

Dr. Tom Hays expands this conversation with a systems perspective of earth's sustainability. Click below, listen and become smarter.