{"id":215925,"date":"2022-07-04T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2022-07-04T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=215925"},"modified":"2022-07-01T03:30:47","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T02:30:47","slug":"panorama-a-compilation-of-situational-acute-and-chronic-global-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/07\/panorama-a-compilation-of-situational-acute-and-chronic-global-challenges\/","title":{"rendered":"Panorama: A Compilation of Situational, Acute, and Chronic Global Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Limits of Human and Nature Life-Form Survival<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/em>The straw that broke the camel\u2019s back\u201d \u2026 an undesirable event that makes it apparent a burdensome load can no longer be tolerated without collapse!<\/p>\n

Introduction:<\/strong><\/p>\n

29 Jun 2022 – <\/em>For decades, the straws of human struggle and suffering have been added to World\u2019s back. Each adding to a burden exceeding limits of human and natural endurance and survival. Like thousands of others, I rejected the lies and propaganda of those in power seeking to mollify and calm the visibly apparent collapse of the World, as yet new straws were added for personal benefit of those individuals and nations whose wealth, power, and position enabled them to act with egregious disdain and contempt of the consequences of their actions \u2013 the \u201cExtinction of Life on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like thousands of others across the World, empowered only by word and voice, I have written and prophesied like Cassandra, daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of ancient Troy, sister of the noble hero Hector, gifted by Apollo with the powers to predict the future, yet ultimately denied acceptance of her words, regardless of their accuracy. And so, I write once again to call attention to the dire situation facing the world as its essential life resources are exploited, destroyed, and cast aside in favor corporate, military, and nationalistic profits, ideologies, and interests bent on the limited survival of a chosen few.<\/p>\n

With little hesitancy, Secretary General, of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, spoke of a coming global crisis in starvation, an unprecedented global hunger crisis impacting hundreds of millions of people, most in developing nations, because needed resources for agriculture (e.g., seeds, fertilizers, arable land, energy, workers, harvesting and distribution systems) are currently unavailable. He called for a reintegration of Russia and the Ukraine into the food production network, tragically a most unlikely response.\u00a0 (https:\/\/www.un.org\/press\/en\/2022\/sgsm21350.doc.htm<\/a>) Global starvation, of course is only one of a spectrum of challenges, constituting a historic burden to the World. Yet another \u201cstraw\u201d heaped upon a World mired in accumulating crises.<\/p>\n

A Panorama of Global Challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am writing this article on a panorama of global challenges with the specific purpose of increasing knowledge, consciousness, and urgent attention to the global context of our lives our lives today, especially with respect to their pressing severity, frequency, and resistance to solution.<\/p>\n

What is at stake in this moment of time is the question of the \u201cSurvival of Life on Earth!\u201d This is not hyperbole! I am not a Luddite! I am, like so many others, acutely aware of the perilous consequences of the many rapid, dislocating, and destructive changes occurring across the world today.<\/p>\n

Life on Earth is experiencing a spectrum of challenges eluding control. Most of these challenges are a function of anthropogenic (human) origin, exacerbation, and perpetuation. When combined with the many natural challenges the World is facing, the spectrum of Global Challenges<\/strong> reveals the destruction of human and nature resources required for sustaining life.<\/p>\n

Under the pretext of normal and acceptable progress and evolution in emerging technological advances, changes in the social formation, and essential Western nation cultural values, political priorities, and noble intentions, Global Challenges<\/strong> exceed our capacity to prevent the \u201cExtinction of all Life on Earth,\u201d from the most microscopic, to that of every vast expression.<\/p>\n

Widespread pollution and destruction of ocean, atmosphere, and Earth, resources for financial purposes, has sealed the World\u2019s fate. Anthropogenic failure to acknowledge Earth\u2019s complex resources, raises the prophetic reality of \u201cEschatological\u201d end times. Historical predictions, prophecies, and realities. (e.g., cyclical, linear, messianic), proposed across time and location in past centuries, are now visible and apparent.<\/p>\n

Figure 1 displays the range of anthropogenic destruction of nature and civilization over the course of the presence of modern human species \u00a0in the last 50,000 years, especially the last eleven thousand years when humans moved from a hunting\/gathering species to collective agricultural and societal forms of survival creating awe-inspiring civilizations which rose and collapsed from internal and external limitations.<\/p>\n

While there is debate between environmental sciences, who favor the termed \u201cAnthropogenic Era,\u201d and geological sciences who\u00a0 favoring more scientific terminology consistent with past practices (e.g., \u201cHolocene\u201d), it is no longer questioned humanity\u2019s evolutionary rise from primate roots to tribal, societal, and civilization levels, brought with it a destructive impulse threatening to extinguish all forms of existing life. \u00a0Tragically, this harsh reality denies and erases the magnificence of humanity\u2019s achievements in advancing noble knowledge, wisdom, and moral codes. There cannot be any doubt of humanity\u2019s creative talents and abilities, yet these must be weighed against the consequences of Life\u2019s demise and destruction.<\/p>\n

Figure 1: Anthropogenic Destructions\u00a0 <\/strong>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

List of Global Challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a previous article, I composed a list of Global Challenges<\/strong>, summarizing and categorizing well-know and self-evident problems accruing across present times. (i.e., Marsella, 2022). In my prior article, I was initially more concerned with the human mind\u2019s pursuit of meaning by its capacity to accommodate disparate information, yielding acceptable beliefs and actions.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, lost in this process was the very list of Global Challenges<\/strong> I had compiled as a trope for my existential explorations. It was only after, I recognized I had stumbled across a far more important issue for our times, and that was the magnitude and consequences of the Global Challenges.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a result, I began collecting, collating, and organizing global events and forces occurring within a condensed period of time to reveal the immense burden the challenges are imposing on individual, societal, and national survival. Each day seems to bring a new or augmented past challenge, and with a sense of uncertainty, confusion, and panic. It is too much to grasp and understand, bringing with it despair, chaos, and a helplessness the limits of human coping have been exceeded, and \u201cend times\u201d are near.<\/p>\n

The compiled list of \u201cGlobal Challenges, <\/strong>which follows is overwhelming in their scope and magnitude, raising to a new priority and call for action, the most important challenge humanity faces, \u201cExtinction of Life on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

While daily attention is given to the many crises and disasters humanity faces, \u201cExtinction\u201d looms as the most critical. Within the last decade, there has been a dramatic increase in interest and publications about extinction, much of it stimulated by the publication of Elizabeth Kolbert\u2019s (2014), Pulitzer Prize Award volume, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. <\/em><\/strong>Kolbert\u2019s publication reminded the Humanity of the Earth\u2019s past extinctions, their sources, and the many current disasters threatening a \u201cSixth Extinction.\u201d Kolbert writes:<\/p>\n

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us<\/em>. (Kolbert, 2014, opening).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Robert Burrows and Anita McKone (2016), in an essential article, entitled \u201cLife on Earth Is Dying\u2019\u201d <\/strong>(Transcend Media Service<\/em>, December 12, 2016), write:<\/p>\n

The human onslaught to destroy life on Earth is unprecedented in Earth\u2019s history. Planet Earth is now experiencing its sixth mass extinction event and Homo Sapiens is the cause. Moreover, this mass extinction event is accelerating and is so comprehensive in its impact that the piece meal measures being taken by the United Nations, international agencies and governments constitute a tokenism that is breathtaking in the extreme. You and I are on the brink of driving to extinction some of the most iconic species alive today.<\/em> (Burrows, 2016)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

James Lovelock, called one of the most brilliant minds of our time, \u00a0proposed a captivating hypothesis in two of his books: The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & The Fate of Humanity\u00a0<\/strong>Paperback \u2013 June 5, 2007 NY: Basic Books, Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence (The MIT Press)\u00a0Hardcover \u2013 August 27, 2019.\u00a0 <\/strong>Lovelock suggested the Earth is a living planet, characterized by complex ecological interconnectedness in which all parts impact the whole, yielding an organic planetary existence.<\/p>\n

Each day, there are \u201cChallenges of the Day,\u201d ranging from gun violence to romantic problems among banal celebrity lives. Too often, \u201cChallenge of the Day,\u201d has pushed other critical challenges aside. For example, Russia-Ukraine headlines, morph into economic issues of recession as consumer prices rise because of transportation, manufacturing problems, and supply lines. This is followed by the reality of mass starvation, especially in Africa and parts of Asia. This is followed by the perennial and enduring problem of violence, guns, and mass murders in the USA. The tragic Uvalde School massacre of 19 children and two teachers, became the focus of world attention, as nothing could bring comfort to shattered hearts and minds.<\/p>\n

Within the span of a few weeks, my compiled List of Global Challenges <\/strong>had grown to Brobdingnagian proportion, characterized not only by number, but also by complexity and resistance to change. While many public and private (NGOs) have evidence admirable efforts to resolve entries, the harsh reality is people and the world are hurting. Amanda Gorman, USA Poet Laureate\u2019 words, offer balm for our pain and suffering at this time when \u201ceverything hurts.\u201d \u00a0Amanda\u2019s moving poem is presented at the end of this article.<\/p>\n

While there is a \u201cChallenge of the Moment, occupying attention,\u201d there is also an \u201caccumulation burden\u201d of Global Challenges<\/strong> constantly lurking in the background context.\u00a0 This has critical implications for human stress and wellbeing, effective problem solving, and risks of extinction of all life on Earth. It is a harsh reality, but a reality nevertheless.<\/p>\n

Of special note is the complex interaction and inter-relationship of the Global Challenges. <\/strong>Too many Global Challenges<\/strong> are dismissed \u201cintentionally\u201d by government, corporate, and military interests, keeping citizens in the \u201cdark\u201d about what is occurring, lest protests arise adding to the Challenges. <\/strong><\/p>\n

In many nations, protests now assume the form of national \u201cpopulism\u201d for governmental support, which is, in reality, denial, distortion, and a delusional reality. Humanity, through ignorance, greed, passivity, reliance, and acceptance, of unwarranted trust in corrupt public and private institutions, has forged its own demise, and the likely demise of other forms of life.<\/p>\n

Because of their wealth, power, and position, some human elites may survive, by constructing alternatives to life on Earth. For example, elite corporate technocrats (e.g., World Economic Forum, Davos Cabal) believe a self-sufficient \u201cStar-Wars\u201d community in outer space will offer a solution for the privileged to survive. There are plans afoot to build a nuclear reactor on the Moon to support a human community. Their sins will follow them!<\/p>\n

Global Challenges List:<\/strong> (Alphabetical Order)<\/strong><\/p>\n