If all the residents of North America and Western Europe cut their per-capita energy consumption in half over the next 20 years (not likely) and the rest of the world held per-capita consumption steady at their current, frugal levels (also not likely), total energy consumption will remain the same. A 50-percent reduction in the developed world will not be sufficient to outweigh population increases in the developing world, even if the increasingly affluent residents of developing countries don’t increase their energy consumption.

Someone’s going to object to my evidence. Maybe it will take 75 years to reach 10 billion population. Maybe the planet can accommodate 12 billion frugal human beings. The rate of population growth is not the issue. Any growth at all creates the same ultimate dilemma. Sure, we might figure out ways of accommodating 10 or 15 or 20 billion people in a crowded world. But why would we want to?

If ultimately we must control our population, why not plan for a rich, healthy planet?

What if we decided, by mutual consensus, that a stable worldwide population of 4 billion people is our goal? Could we then live on a planet with clean air and water, plenty of food for everyone and the environmental resilience necessary for us to prosper through the inevitable environmental fluctuations – the next ice age, for instance? Could we restore habitats now teetering on the brink of destruction?

Couldn’t we create a sustainable healthy planet just because we decided to?

We could take this philosophically, I suppose. A few decades or a few centuries after we disappear there will be a healthy planet here. Or we can see it fatalistically. The damage we are doing is part of a natural process. Our awareness doesn’t change that essential fact. We can even salve our guilty consciences by resorting to the geologic perspective. Eventually this planet will suffer some sterilizing galactic calamity. Scientists tell us our sun will, eventually, burn out.

But it’s not our nature to sit around complacently waiting for the asteroid, not while we have this miraculous opportunity to preserve and enhance our planet. Just as we once visualized the first irrigated field, invented the first wheel and dreamed of machines that fly, we can visualize the earth as a beautiful and productive garden where millions of species thrive. Then we can build it.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that we, as a species, are training our attention on the middle of the decreasing-circumference curve in which we find ourselves. We are not visualizing the successful outcome – a healthy planet. Conservation has captured the human imagination lately and some great new inventions have come from this new fascination – the gas-electric hybrid engine; photovoltaic solar energy, wind-powered electric turbines, the hydrogen fuel cell. This is cool stuff. But it’s stopgap stuff.

The best product of our fascination with conservation is that it has captured people’s imaginations. And it’s the key component in a new human philosophy that values other living things. If we consume less, we leave more room for our biological neighbors. That’s a great thing.

On the other hand, short-term thinking distracts us from the underlying problem. At current rates of population growth, there will be 10 billion people on the planet in about 60 years. When there are 10 billion people on the planet it won’t matter what they drive or if they’ve all committed to vegan diets. The planet will be under human assault in a battle where everyone loses. We could hit that guardrail.

In one sense it’s a terrific time to be human. We’re here to meet our biggest challenge so far – bigger than bipedal locomotion; bigger than the domestication of plants and animals; bigger than the invention of the wheel. We’re here to confront our own biology, the essential nature that tells us to keep reproducing and expanding. If you could view the entirety of human experience from the dawn of our evolution to the present, if you could pick the human century you’d like to witness first-hand, you might choose this one. I think I would. I would want to watch us tackle this problem.

The suffering, if we don’t get it right, will not be humanity’s alone. Already we’ve destroyed thousands of species. In just the last few years Africa’s Western Black Rhinoceros, Europe’s Pyrenean Ibex, Costa Rica’s Golden Toad and North America’s Pearly Mussel have, so far as we can tell, passed into oblivion as humanity has destroyed their habitats. The scientists of the World Conservation Union estimate that 99 percent of recent extinctions and currently threatened species have been or will be destroyed by human activities. Conservation International reports that, as of the middle of 2008, a plant or animal species was becoming extinct every 20 minutes.

Extinction is normal, of course. The vast majority of species that ever lived seem to have disappeared somewhere along the line. What’s not normal is the rate of extinction. The rate of extinctions has been accelerating since the beginning of the 20^th century and we’re responsible.

It’s no great tragedy that any particular species becomes extinct, unless of course it’s us. Generally, it has been part of nature’s way and each extinction opens opportunities for other species.

The greater tragedy is the fact that we’re taking a healthy, resilient and rich natural habitat – the only planet we know where life thrives – and degrading its ability to support life. New species can’t evolve fast enough to replace the diversity we’re destroying, even if we hadn’t made the habitat inhospitable. We’ve inherited the best planet in the known universe, only to squander it. And if we don’t change course soon, the planet could very well end up unfit for human habitation or at the very least damned uncomfortable.

Now is the moment when our uniquely objective perspective and our enterprising intellect are engaged in what may be the most important challenge faced by our species so far.

Other species have damaged their habitats or lost them to environmental disaster. The dinosaurs, the Saber-toothed Tiger and the Woolly Mammoth died out. Many species routinely go through periods of catastrophic population collapse and reestablished themselves in some new biological equilibrium. Lemmings spring to mind. But none of them, so far as we know, are consciously aware of the natural forces at work. They couldn’t conceptualize the fact that their own reproduction, their natural consumption and expansion, played a part in causing the pain of their population’s collapse.

Nature has lots of tools at her disposal for controlling species that cause habitat damage. Famine and disease are her most potent weapons, effective and unpleasant.

We, on the other hand, can conceptualize our effect on the environment and we might, if we wish to, avoid the suffering Nature will inflict.

And we could restore the astonishing garden into which we were born – the Earth.

I can’t think of a more inspirational goal.

 
In July of 2007 I nearly killed myself. I didn’t do it intentionally, but I almost died from a terminal case of poor visualization.

That’s right, poor visualization almost ended my life.

The motorcycle is a beautiful machine. In motion it is graceful, yet it defies the physical senses. When a motorcycle carves through a corner it solves a ridiculously complex equation involving speed, the rider, the road, the tires and a thousand other elements that allow the motorcyclist and motorcycle to lean into the corner at an angle that appears — in video or photographs — perfectly impossible. Until the rider gets used to it, it doesn’t feel any more plausible than it looks.

The decreasing-circumference curve is the bane of the inexperienced rider. In the mountains, curves are not always symmetrical. If you enter a turn with a gentle arc and that arc gradually becomes smaller, then you are in a decreasing-circumference curve. This presents a serious problem when you enter the corner too fast and then discover it closing down on you. It’s your classic rookie error, and I made it.

There’s only one way out and slowing down is not an option. To brake a motorcycle in a high-speed corner is disastrous. You’ll lose traction and lay the machine down on its side. So the experienced rider leans deeper into the irrational angle and holds his intent. He visualizes a successful outcome. He experiences the exhilaration of successfully testing his own courage and skill against the laws of nature.

I, on the other hand, lost my nerve. Rather than visualizing myself – and the motorcycle – carving our way out of our predicament I became trapped in a tentative state of mind in the middle of the turn. I let fear take over. Even though I was following two other riders who had successfully negotiated the corner, even though logic dictated that I could follow those other riders, I lost my confidence. I just couldn’t see myself completing that turn at that speed. I couldn’t visualize it and, for lack of a clear mental picture, I became trapped in the curve. Instinctively, I tried to slow the motorcycle down. In an automobile that would have been precisely the right answer. On the motorcycle it was a bad decision and could have been disastrous. The motorcycle and I went sideways, bounced off a fortuitous guardrail and I went down in the middle of the road at about 45 miles per hour.

I walked away after ruining a good helmet and about $1,000 worth of excellent protective clothing. Well, “walked” might be inaccurate. I hobbled away. It was about a year before I healed up completely.

Naturally I did a lot of reflecting about how the accident could have been avoided.

The most obvious answer to that question is, of course, “Don’t ride motorcycles.” My wife and a number of friends have brought this simple solution to my attention repeatedly. Duly noted.

But as I considered the lessons I took from the experience – while massaging the deep bruises on my legs, arms and torso – it dawned on me that our species is, in a manner of speaking, right in the middle of a decreasing-circumference curve. Global climate change has created a worldwide sense that if we don’t do something soon we may have messed up our environment for the long term. We’re moving fast toward some form of environmental reckoning.  The path we are on necessitates a change in attitude.

At the moment we have our attention trained on conservation, effectively the middle of the curve. Instinctively, we want to slow down our personal consumption.

A wreck is imminent if we just follow our instincts.  Voices around the globe are calling for us to, “Slow down!” But we’re in the middle of a bunch of phenomena we don’t know how to interrupt. We are focusing our attentions in the wrong place. Motorcyclists, mountain-bikers, skiers and steeplechasers all learn the same lesson: When you have a lot of forward momentum you have to train your attention beyond the short-term challenges. You need to be thinking ahead. You need to form a picture of yourself successfully negotiating the coming obstacles. You have to visualize the successful outcome. Your reflexes and, hopefully, some previous visualization are taking care of the ruts under the tires of your bicycle. Your attention should be trained on the area where you will arrive in the next few seconds. Your mind visualizes the best route and your body begins making adjustments in your approach.

If you focus on the intermediate obstacle, you’re likely to hit that obstacle.

It’s recently occurred to me that I don’t hear anyone describing the world in which we want to live 20 years from now. Almost no one, it seems, is visualizing the successful outcome. We’re too busy arguing about where to drill for oil.

As far as we know, there is only one species in the universe capable of conceptualizing its own impact on its habitat. That’s us.

If we are defined by our capacity for objective thought, then we are now living in one of the definitive moments in human history. Our ability to conceptualize our own role in nature defines us as human beings. Our capacity for creating solutions to complex problems is the primary factor in our success as a species. In the Judeo-Christian Bible we defined ourselves as human beings when we ate the fruit of the “Tree of Knowledge” and spontaneously realized we were naked. In a phrase, we became self-aware.

Today we have to face the challenge of solving the definitive human riddle. We are aware that we have an impact on the environment. We are aware that our population has been growing exponentially. We are aware that no species can expand infinitely on this finite planet. With this awareness comes responsibility. We are capable of moderating our impact on the planet. We are capable of conceptualizing a sustainable human habitat and executing a plan to create that habitat. Yes, we face complex problems. But we’ve solved complex problems before. Perhaps the more vexing puzzle is how to defeat our biological programming — the programming that, in the words of the Judeo-Christian Bible, tells us to “go forth and multiply.”

It’s a good thing we enjoy solving puzzles.