A new United Nations human development report suggests that our species faces a dire future of its own.
The big picture: The COVID-19 pandemic, which arose from nature but is in any case a catastrophe caused by humans, is the most recent sign that we are firmly in the Anthropocene, a new era in which humans are the most powerful force on Earth. . What comes next is about us.
What is happening: The 2020 Human Development Report, released earlier this week, marks the 30th year in which the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has assessed the holistic state of humanity.
- The short version: not good, as COVID-19 illustrates the pressures we have exerted on the planet: pressures that have “grown exponentially over the last 100 years,” as UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner writes.
- Beyond the direct costs of the pandemic, COVID-19 has reversed human development, with social mobility declining and social instability increasing.
- Climate change, the clearest and biggest challenge posed by the Anthropocene, continued to accelerate, with 2020 likely to fall as the hottest year on record.
Note: The danger and promise of the Anthropocene are seen more clearly in the case of existential risks, those catastrophic dangers that threaten the future of human civilization.
- While we have always faced rare but powerful cosmic threats like asteroids, today “the dominant risks to their survival come from humanity itself,” writes existing existential risk researcher Toby Ord.
- But the same power that carries existential risks in the form of nuclear war or bioengineering pandemics means that “humanity’s future is largely under the control of humanity,” as long as we are willing to take those risks more seriously than we have so far. .
The summary: For better or worse, we will be the authors of our own future.