Knowing systems and the environment

The logic behind the 'environmental concern' is seemingly impeccable, and evidence in its support increasingly irrefutable: Through our activities as an ever-expanding and ubiquitous population of human beings, we are despoiling and degrading the environment of the world about us, while depleting it of its finite resources at an ever increasing rate. This is not only threatening our own well-being and that of future generations of our own species, but also the stability and sustainability of particular biotic communities across the planet, as well as the integrity of the biosphere as a whole. The organization, functions and hierarchical organization of the long-evolved 'natural eco-systems' in which we are embedded as but one component species are all now at very considerable risk. Such could be the level of the malignancy here that it could lead to a loss of hierarchical control across the entire 'systems-of complex systems' by which 'nature' is seemingly organized, with the prospect of 'sudden and catastrophic failure' (Pattee, 1973) on an unimaginable scale. Ironically and tragically, much of this circumstance represents the unintended consequences of the developmental processes of modernization that we had come to claim as our greatest achievement as a specie s. This should dictate the need for a critical reappraisal of our whole techno-scientific, neo-liberal approach to the idea of progress and 'betterment' and for us to be much more reflexive about how we should be living our lives in the context of the impacts that we are having on our environment (Beck, 1992).