A UN-backed prediction of mass extinctions also suggests a revisioning of the ‘good life’ away from material-based economic growth.
Last week in Paris, more than 100 nations signed onto a massive study on the future of the Earth’s ecosystem. The study’s key forecast, based on years of research: About an eighth of plant and animal species face extinction, many “within decades.”
Yet beyond the shock of this “grim” estimate, the report also offered ways to regain an equilibrium between humans and nature. Its first recommendation: transform humanity’s diverse “visions of a good life.”
Different societies, it acknowledged, have differing ideas of how much either material or spiritual “components” determine the quality of existence. The report suggests people adopt a vision that does not “entail ever-increasing material consumption.
