Planet Earth crossroads

Excerpt

Scientific American magazine dedicated its September 2005 special issue to the exploration of Crossroads for Planet Earth in which the world and the human race are examined for opportunities of unique turning points that can be used for the formation of the best of all possible sustainable worlds. The spread of topics includes the climax of humanity, human population grows up, can extreme poverty be eliminated?, sustaining the variety of life, more profit with less carbon, the big potential of small farms, public health in transition, economics for a full world, and how should we set priorities? The editors use a perspective derived from Jared Diamond’s recent book Collapse to set the stage by asking if this current civilization will repeat actions of past civilizations that could not or would not recognize means of change to avoid or change unsustainable ways of living. Science is identified as a major component of the current civilization that could enable us to use the consequences of past nonsustainable decisions of past civilizations to support a period of unprecedented global prosperity. Clearly, science is one of several factors including moral values that could enable the decision making that leads to these objectives. A sampling of articles from this issue follows: Sci Am 293(3) 2005 …