The Seventh UU Principle

RESPECT FOR THE INTERDEPENDENT WEB OF ALL EXISTENCE OF WHICH WE ARE A PART

Our planet is an immensely complex system of interacting systems, affecting and being affected by our atmosphere, hydrosphere, land, biosphere and heliosphere. The complexity is beyond human comprehension.

⦁ Species

⦁ 1.9 million named animal species on earth, plus several million unnamed

⦁ Somewhere between 10 million and a billion bacterial species

⦁ A really lot of viruses (2x1031)

⦁ Global climate

⦁ Solar output

⦁ Distance from sun

⦁ Reflectivity of earth’s surface

⦁ Water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and particulates in atmosphere, in turn influenced by temperature, release or storage by oceans, soil, plants, algae, cows, cars & volcanoes

⦁ Oceanic flows

The system has allowed (despite a few hiccups) the development of increasingly complex and diverse life forms over the past 3.6 billion years. Currently the system provides us with extensive ecosystem services, which allow us and all other living organisms to survive on this planet.

⦁ Supporting services (needed for production of all other ecosystem services)

⦁ Nutrient cycling

⦁ Soil formation

⦁ Oxygen cycling

⦁ Water cycling

⦁ Photosynthesis

⦁ Provisioning services

⦁ Food

⦁ Clean, neutral pH, low salinity (2.5%), accessible (1% of that 2.5%) water

⦁ Lumber

⦁ Fuel

⦁ Regulating services

⦁ Carbon sequestration

⦁ Climate regulation

⦁ Waste and pollutant decomposition

⦁ Pest and disease control

⦁ Flood control

⦁ Cultural services

⦁ Violence reduction

Estimated cost of reproducing the most essential ecosystem services on Mars for 1 person for 1 year is $12 billion (SpaceX) to $21 billion (NASA). Price excludes transportation.

Our planet’s ecosystem services possess a remarkable degree of dynamic stability (Ellen’s term, not generally recognized). Like a sailing vessel, the ecosystem services oscillate from an upright position when pushed, but those oscillations gradually diminish over time – until the next push, when the process starts again from a slightly different place on the water. And like a sailing vessel, they can be tipped over with sufficient force.

Tipping points

⦁ Extinctions

⦁ Great Oxygenation Event of 2.4 billion BCE (fundamentally self-induced)

⦁ Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event of 66 million BCE (probably an impact)

⦁ Currently 100-1000 animal extinctions per million species per year (before humans evolved, <1 animal extinction per million species per year)

⦁ Less globally remarkable

⦁ Plato (@400 BC) recognized deforestation leads to drying of springs

⦁ 500 years of Atlantic Cod fishery collapsed in 1992

⦁ Last 100 miles of Colorado River has not reached the sea consistently since the 1960s

⦁ C. difficile in patients treated with antibiotics

Anthropocentrism / Human Exceptionalism

⦁ People tend to act as though they were cats

⦁ Dog to person: ‘You give me food and water, you provide me with shelter, you clean up after me – you must be a god!’

⦁ Cat to person: ‘You give me food and water, you provide me with shelter, you clean up after me – I must be a god!’

⦁ Abrahamic religions are strongly anthropocentric, placing humanity at the center of all concern, and attributing human qualities to non-human beings such as God(s).

⦁ According to Genesis 1:26-27, God said ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’

⦁ The Qur’an says pretty much the same thing, but includes the stars, which were created to help us navigate.

⦁ Humanism. “Any system of thought or action concerned with the interests or ideals of people … the intellectual and cultural movement … characterized by an emphasis on human interests rather than … religion.”- Webster’s Dictionary

⦁ “Over the course of ⦁ human history, we have been successful in cultivating our faculties, shaping our development, and impacting upon the wider world in a deliberate fashion, quite distinct from ⦁ evolutionary processes" - Sandy Starr

⦁ Hinduism appear less anthropocentric. R’ta is the sense of fundamental order and balance in the universe, more fundamental than the Hindu gods, that sees the animal and the human world as one continuum.

⦁ Pantheism is the belief that the Universe (or Nature as the totality of everything) is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God.

The behaviors caused by our beliefs about our place in the interdependent web of our existence have profound implications. Where do we stand?