Abstract
This chapter audits the situation in which contemporary humanity finds itself. Backed when appropriate by current statistics, it considers world population dynamics, the processes and impacts of globalization, characteristics of the neoliberal economy and the state of the supporting natural environment. It ends by introducing the important IPAT identity, which indicates the factors creating environmental impact.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Transdisciplinarity indicates a transcendence of disciplinarity, although it certainly does not mean the obliteration of perspectives deriving from the conventional academic disciplines’ (Robertson 2001, 458).
- 2.
The former retain their headquarters in a country of origin and expand internationally, whereas the latter have shifted headquarters from their original homeland.
- 3.
See the blistering critique in the edited readings of Davis and Monk (2007, ix) which opens by asking ‘toward what kind of future are we being led by savage, fanatical capitalism?’ Or, to reframe the question, ‘What do contemporary “dreamworlds” of consumption, property and power tell us about the fate of human solidarity?’
- 4.
Accessed June 2019 at https://truthout.org/articles/co2-levels-hit-415-parts-per-million-for-first-time-in-over-3-million-years/ Climatologist, Eric Holthaus, also a journalist for the Seattle-based Grist magazine, is quoted as saying, ‘we don’t know a planet like this.’
- 5.
Demographic ‘sanity’ suggests the onset of zero population growth (ZPG) allied with a steady-state economy. The reference is not directly to the 52 percent reduction in sperm counts among unselected western men from 1973–2011 reported in a systematic review undertaken by Levine et al. (2017)—though this finding could also have future demographic relevance.
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Wadley, D. (2020). Population, Globalization, the Market and the Environment. In: The City of Grace. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1112-7_1
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