**6. Illusions persist**

People who live in industrialized nations have commonly supposed any future beset with pervasive scarcity was "merely theoretical." Problems of scarcity were projected to some future time, to some other place, or to some different social stratum than our own. Almost non-existent was public awareness of the fact, or of its human significance, that in nature an environment's suitability for a particular use can be diminished by overuse. Recognition of that fact was obligatory for ecologists; it should have been equally so for sociologists (Odum, 1975).

Natural systems have limits of tolerance that produce a bundle of interacting constraints on human action. Most sociologists have been as reluctant as people in other walks of life to confront this fact. These constraining influences from nature's systems are pressing people and nations toward zero-sum competition. Over the past century, we humans have brought upon ourselves an era of carrying capacity deficit. Collective behavior theory achieved by sociological studies has advanced enough to show us the social dilemmas and structurally conducive conditions for targeted hostility we can expect in such circumstances. After centuries of economic and social development which we regarded as progress, mankind now faces sharp reversal, making revolutions likely within nations, and wars over access to scarce resources likely between nations. People have been slow to recognize the vulnerability of ecosystems and the seriousness of pressures that overload them, but such awareness may be an essential basis for a critical ability needed to protect us from panic and

Our societies have already inflicted by customary collective activities significant changes to the physical and biological world upon which human lives and activities depend. These have rendered continuation of present patterns of sociocultural allocation of valued goods impossible. Distribution norms that were long taken as normal will inevitably be challenged. Sociologists should ask, among other things, whether such challenges are likely

Distribution standards that were formerly workable and prevalent but are becoming increasingly infeasible and obsolescent will continue to have their adherents. Cultural lags (Ogburn 1922) may be expected, so outmoded standards will continue to express themselves in unrealistic expectations. This will multiply tensions and value conflicts between social classes, or between other distinguishable identity groups—and between the living and the unborn. Indeed, some of the tension and violence occurring within the most recent half century or so should not have surprised us. It has been known for some time that future resource shortages would occur. As early as the first decade of the twentieth century, President Theodore Roosevelt warned of the need for conserving natural resources, and nearly five decades later in 1952, President Truman's Materials Policy Commission, headed by William S. Paley, acknowledged that the United States had a "Gargantuan . . . insatiable" appetite for materials, so even that long ago there was scarcely a metal or mineral fuel for which the quantity Americans had used since the beginning of World War I had not already exceeded the total previous cumulative use by all nations (Wyant, 1982: 368-369). Ever since Western societies began to industrialize and became increasingly dependent upon using

People who live in industrialized nations have commonly supposed any future beset with pervasive scarcity was "merely theoretical." Problems of scarcity were projected to some future time, to some other place, or to some different social stratum than our own. Almost non-existent was public awareness of the fact, or of its human significance, that in nature an environment's suitability for a particular use can be diminished by overuse. Recognition of that fact was obligatory for ecologists; it should have been equally so for sociologists

from resort to catastrophic violence.

**6. Illusions persist** 

(Odum, 1975).

to involve violence. With what consequences?

nonrenewable resources, eventual scarcity has been our destiny.

Middle-class people in North America, having little or no warning by sociologists, went on escalating their energy consumption. This, together with political tensions in a part of the world from which we were increasingly obtaining an indispensable portion of the fuel we consumed, made scarcity "real" at last. To our astonishment we found that our own daily lives were affected by geophysical facts and far-away turmoil (Peachy and Lerner, 1981: 454).

Much public discussion of current troubles seems persistently oblivious of this finite planet's ecological constraints. Familiarity with the ecological concept of carrying capacity remains rare. Therefore people at large, and sociologists to a shocking degree, do not yet comprehend the full range of social, political, and economic implications of our transition from a condition of carrying capacity surplus to carrying capacity deficit.

Carrying capacity is a term denoting the amount of use of a particular kind that an environment can endure more or less perpetually without impairment of its suitability for that use (Catton, 1983). Any user population, animal or human, imposes a load upon the environment that supports it. Loads may temporarily exceed carrying capacities, but when they do, environmental degradation *from overuse* has to undermine carrying capacity, and this leads sooner or later to some form of load reduction—either a reduced number of users or reduced per capita intensity of their use of the environment. These points are true even when the environment in question is an entire planet.

For several centuries after Europeans got over supposing the world was flat, and began to discover land masses in another hemisphere, the New World's existence (and its "newness") powerfully shaped history and human expectations. An unanticipated abundance of resources invited exploitation. Although the term "carrying capacity" had not yet been coined, the thrust of history in those centuries was predicated upon what seemed a vast carrying capacity surplus. Eventually there was an industrial revolution―which hastened conversion of carrying capacity surplus into carrying capacity deficit, while *seeming* to magnify abundance.

Mankind must now struggle to come to terms with an unfamiliar situation―the replacement of a marvelous but temporary carrying capacity surplus by a deepening carrying capacity deficit. The deficit has resulted from exponential human load expansion during the past several centuries, due both to population increase and technological progress. Human societies have been undergoing great change in recent decades. Sociologists attempting to describe and explain contemporary social change (Nordskog 1960; Etzioni and Etzioni 1964; Noble 2000) have largely neglected the influence of a possible transition from carrying capacity surplus to deficit. These concepts have been deemed "not social" and thus outside the domain of sociological thought. Their exclusion from a conventional sociological vocabulary, however, does not diminish their effect.

Sociologists who want to clarify and explain future social actions must acknowledge three converging trends that have put humankind in much deeper peril than is generally understood. First, there are many more humans inhabiting this planet than it can sustain. Second, technological advances of recent centuries have made gigantic and prodigal the per capita resource appetites of people and their per capita environmental impacts. Third, even though, as the symbol-using species, humans conceivably could do better at anticipating future circumstances and planning ahead, the general evolutionary heritage of *Homo sapiens*

Sociology's Neglect of Ecological Context 171

untrustworthy―and perhaps so malevolent that eventually "any action" in opposition to the enemy "is justified, including 'pre-emptive' aggression" (Peachey and Lerner, 1981: 453-454; cf. Klapp, 1972: 158). These expectations appear to have been born out in the conduct of

Ecological knowledge is fundamental to understanding the lives, the opportunities, and the limitations of humans (and of human societies) in a world shaped by and comprising geological and meteorological features and billions of non-human organisms—i.e. the real world. The environment we inhabit, with all its given biological, chemical, and physical characteristics, often tremendously influential, has changed enormously in recent times.

To anticipate and explain the catastrophic changes set in motion by twentieth-century progress, and its division of the human world into "overdeveloped" and "underdeveloped" societies, sociologists must begin at last to see sociology itself as an excessively circumscribed treatment of processes requiring a fundamentally ecological worldview. If sociological thought becomes less anthropocentric it will be better prepared to understand

It is time for sociologists to emancipate themselves from certain assumptions that have been imbedded too deeply in the surrounding modern culture. Human lives depend on adaptively using the planet on which we evolved. Not all major changes in human ways of using it have been actual progress. This might have been easier to see if academic departments had not become too large and unwieldy, so that sociologists and anthropologists largely drifted apart into separate disciplinary organizations. Sociologists mostly focused their attention on "modern" societies and their components, and largely lost interest in non-literate peoples, in hunter-gatherer societies. We knew, as taken-for-granted background, that some people especially in hunter-gatherer societies had long ago discovered ways of "managing" local ecosystems (and begun planting and harvesting crops and herding consumable or otherwise useful animals). We assumed this was an important step forward. We assumed it was a permanent achievement, that could be just accepted as a given fact. Pre-agricultural societies became the province of anthropologists, and ceased to

Ecologically speaking, those early people had taken steps to ensure local portions of nature would more reliably provide nutrition for the human species, perhaps to the detriment of local populations of other competing species. We never doubted that advancement by *Homo sapiens* from foraging to farming was advantageous, and if ever superseded it would be by

With the industrial revolution, however, some *Homo sapiens* became committed to reliance again on natural resources *not* subject to annual renewal by humanly managed processes of reproduction among domesticated resource species. Industries and the general public in modern societies seemed to suppose *rates of discovery* of previously unfound deposits of iron ore, coal, petroleum, etc. were equivalent to *replenishment* of stocks being drawn down by our extraction efforts (which we conventionally called "production," even though nature, not human effort, had *produced* the substances we were taking out of the Earth). As long as

Human societal actions have wrought much of the change.

recent U.S. wars.

future reality.

**8. Return to foraging** 

interest most sociologists.

another advancement.

continues to impede foresight. Like other species evolved by natural selection, we adapt to *existing* circumstances, not to future conditions our adaptations may be creating.

In the 1980s, global economic recession appreciably reduced effective demand for various resources (despite continuing growth of world population and continuing aspirations for modernization among "underdeveloped" countries). A so-called "oil glut," following soon after the OPEC-embargo-induced shortages, tempted many to resume old illusions that scarcity is not inherently the destiny of industrialism. To avoid self-deception in this matter, it was important to recognize that filled storage tanks and falling oil prices in no way reflected any increase in the stock of crude oil contained in Earth's crust. People (apparently including even the majority of sociologists) too easily forgot the nonrenewable nature of petroleum and many other resources still required by conventional human activities. Demand for various non-renewable natural resources was only slightly (and temporarily) abated then or by subsequent economic recessions. We allowed ourselves too often to disregard the interdependent ecological limits upon a populous Earth's capacity to serve human needs in three ways―as home, supply depot, and disposal site (Dunlap and Catton 2002).

Oil depletion may hit soonest and hardest (Deffeyes 2005), but as a political science PhD and former Foreign Service officer William Ophuls (1977: 9) tried to tell the world some years ago, scarcity is no longer merely a problem with incidental short supply of some isolated commodity. It takes "a new and more daunting form" that he called "ecological scarcity." The modern world must address not just "simple Malthusian overpopulation and famine," he wrote, "we must now also worry about shortages of the vast array of energy and mineral resources necessary to keep the engines of industrial production running . . ." In this changed world, he said, we must also be concerned "about pollution and other limits of tolerance in natural systems, about such physical constraints as the laws of thermodynamics. . . ." (Greer, 2011; Heinberg, 2003, 2011). Unless sociologists take such "non-sociological" constraints into account, the sociology discipline is likely to cause its adherents to misconstrue future events and draw erroneous conclusions about social changes observed in decades ahead. Advice they might offer to policy-makers could thus be seriously counterproductive (Catton, 2009).
