I doubt the first person to dig a small hole, chuck some seeds in it, water, weed, and come back to harvest, thought their actions would help – over the next 12 millennia – prop up over 100 billion lives, found 10,000 cities, and inform innumerable cultures.1 Even more doubtful is that they considered they would contribute to the total collapse of world order.
Such is the precipice on which humanity now finds itself. That is, if we aren’t already heading over it. At some point in the future, cue mass starvation, displacement, conflict, and all manner of other not at all fun things. And humankind’s measures it invented to feed itself are what will get it there.
These include: degrading soil health with synthetic inputs, inventing extremely water-reliant plant varieties and farming systems, and levelling important ecosystems to make way for crops. All being methods that consume the planet’s precious natural resources and support systems, while significantly contributing to a warming planet. This we can distill into one thing: exploiting and sacrificing what keeps the planet alive for what keeps humanity alive. A doctrine which, as we’ll eventually find out, will fail too.
Below the paywall: Why humanity can’t learn from its goddamn mistakes, where to drink craft beer in Munich, how to survive the end of human civilisation, and more besides.