Toward Sustainability with Justice: Are Human Nature and History on Side?

Techno-industrial society is inherently unsustainable with root causes being both biological and cultural. Individual and group behaviors that were adaptive in pre-history have become maladaptive today. Despite 40 years of organized environmentalism, two world summits on environment and development, repeated warnings by scientists and the emergence of ‘sustainable development’ as a mainstream mantra, global society is still driving toward ecological disaster and geopolitical chaos. The daily news is spiked with stories of accelerating climate change and its immediate threats to fisheries, agriculture, coastal cities, etc., while biodiversity losses, land degradation and tropical deforestation irreversibly disrupt natural life support functions. Meanwhile, despite unprecedented economic growth and wealth creation, almost a third of humanity still lives in material poverty and the income gap both between and within countries is widening. The world presently has the wealth, human capital and natural resources to execute a smooth transition to global sustainability out of mutual self-interest, yet we do not act. Further delay may result in critical resource shortages that shift the survival advantage to those nations that ultimately choose to make war in their exclusive self-interest. To avoid the descent into chaos, the world community must acknowledge the true (human) nature of our collective dilemma and act consciously to override the innate socio-behavioral predispositions that block collective action. Only then will we be able to develop the international institutions, treaties and other legal instruments necessary to reduce our ecological footprint, avoid shortages and share the global commons more equitably.