Water and Energy, the Basis for Human Society: Are They Globally Sustainable through the 21st Century?

摘要

Suppose we want to design a system for resource management so that human beings and human civilization can survive over the next thousand years. If the only constraints are the permanent biogeochemical processes which link the major planetary systems of the planet Earth―Hydrosphere, Atmosphere, Lithosphere, and Biosphere―and that system must function and evolve so as to sustain the human species at no less than its present level of "civilization," indefinitely, what will be the design criteria for such a system? The answer to this presumptuous but necessary question must be found. It is our great good fortune that the human species evolved over cosmic and evolutionary time on a small planet not far from a medium-sized star in a vast, cold, and expanding universe. We are not alien residents. We were born here. We belong here. We already live on the largest inhabitable "space station" in the known universe. Space-travel fantasies that envision our long-term ability to mimic earthlike conditions in humanmade micro-environments during generations-long interstellar voyages remain just that for now― fantasies. We are here, on the planet Earth, now and during the foreseeable future. We must learn to acknowledge this simple fact and accept it. We must make this cosmic perception the core of our human creativity. We must learn to live within our means―the resources of our planet.