Peace, Global Warming, Ecological Overshoot, and Resource Wars

In addition to the usual threats to world peace, a number of other destabilizing factors affect human society: global warming, ecological overshoot, and resource wars. These factors are interactive and often have positive feedback loops, making the effects worse than linear extrapolation indicates. Peace will more likely be achieved if: (1) empathy markedly increases for members of the human species and compassion grows for the other life forms with which humans share the planet, (2) immediate steps are taken to eliminate the ecological overshoot that threatens the biospheric life support system upon which survival of the human species depends, (3) strong, immediate action is taken to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gases responsible for global warming and other types of climate change (e.g., changes in rainfall patterns, increased storm intensity), (4) humankind finds ways to begin taking measures immediately for significantly diminishing global inequities in resource distribution, (5) humankind stabilizes its population level and resource consumption to a sustainable level, and (6) the success of the above actions is judged by a marked reduction in or elimination of resource wars.