Threats to Bioreserves

Abstract
Eight global crises – human economy, climate change, exponential human population growth, ecological overshoot, biotic impoverishment and the reduction of biodiversity, renewable resource depletion, energy allocation, and environmental refugees – affect each other and affect and are affected by the biosphere. Some, perhaps all, are close to tipping points that, if tipped, will result in irreversible change. And yet, no sense of urgency is apparent. If any one of the eight interactive crises passes a tipping point, it will probably act as a threat multiplier for the remaining crises. Both politicians and the average citizen believe that priorities can be established for these interactive crises, but such an option is not viable for a highly interactive system. Polls indicate that most people place economic growth as the highest priority for human society, even though the highest status should be given to the master biospheric life support system to which all other systems are subordinate. Key Words:Resource depletion, Energy, Environmental refugees

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it. - James Albert Michener The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers; he’s the one who asks the right questions. -Claude Levi-Strauss 1. Tipping Points Most complex ecological and social systems have one or more tipping points beyond which change is irreversible (e.g., Catton 1982). Passing a tipping point in any one of the eight, complex systems (human economy, climate change, exponential human population growth, ecological overshoot, biotic impoverishment and reduction of biodiversity, renewable resource depletion, energy allocation, environmental refugees) would produce a ripple effect in the other seven and probably throughout the entire biospheric life support system (Solomon et al. 2009).

Reducing risk in the context of the eight interactive global crises would be a difficult undertaking even if

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