The impact one person can have on the planet

The other day I started http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x261017">a thread about the impact humanity is having on the planet. In it I ended up quantifying the conceptual equation I=PAT using proxies for the Affleunce and Technology terms. I showed that it was possible that our species is now having (1000x100x100,000) or 10 billion times the impact on the planet that our hunter-gatherer forebears did 12,000 years ago.

As I was out walking my dog in the crisp fall sunshine this morning, the implications of that number suddenly struck me. It means that one average human being alive today has the same impact on the planet as the entire human race did just 12,000 years ago. Each one of us has the same impact as 5 million or more of our ancestors. An entire species-worth of impact is compressed into each of our lives.

A number of understandings fell out of that realization.

The first was a renewed sense of the sheer scale of the predicament we're in. I am responsible for more impact on the planet than every human being alive 12,000 years ago? How humbling is that

Hard on the heels of that awareness came a renewed sense of just how obvious it is that nibbling around the edges of our problem in one domain or another can't bring us back into a sustainable balance with the planet. Whether it's eating local food, switching from fossil fuels to solar or wind power, recycling and composting, reducing the power of corporations or educating women in the value of family planning, none of them, alone or together, are large enough to offset the sheer magnitude of the impact of everything we are doing to the planet.

The third understanding was that we are where we are, and as usual the best thing we can do as individuals is to become fully aware of and responsive to our immediate conditions. Don't worry about trying to control the systems we live in, or trying to ensure an outcome that seems "better" - at least not any outcome that's more than about an hour in the future. After all, if the ultimate consequences of a system as simple as a Paleolithic stone hammer can be so utterly unpredictable as to result in modern civilization, what chance do we have of gaining full dominance over systems as complex as those we have developed along the way? To draw an analogy, the best we can do is the equivalent of a hunter-gatherer making a decision not to use their stone hammer to bash out the brains of the person that's bugging them right now. If we can simply do that, the future will take care of itself as it always has.

I'm not talking here about giving in to despair, or eating up all the goodies before the party's finally over. I'm talking about developing a rational, responsible, ethical awareness of our situation and our actions in the moment, and making choices that we believe will do more good than harm. I'm talking about the paradox of having complete faith in the face of a situation that's demonstrably out of control. I'm talking about accepting that the situation has always been beyond our control, and the most we can ask of ourselves is to live our lives as fully as possible fully in the face of that eternal uncertainty.

A major factor in the approach I'm inviting you to consider is not taking life too seriously. I find that taking things too seriously has far more impact on me than on the rest of life, and I suspect that's a pretty general human insight.

If every household in the United States replaced just one roll of virgin fiber toilet paper (500 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 423,900 trees :-)

Your conclusion, "Each one of us has the same impact as 5 million or more of our ancestors".

Coming as it does on the heels of having seen you fail utterly at modeling "peak oil" and energy usage, I'd suggest you find another hobby that is more suited to your abilities.

Individuals can't solve it; government won't solve it; corporations are making the problem worse, in many cases.

All you can do is live an ethical life and not get too bent out of shape, like some people here.