The decline of technogenic civilization: Sufficient development strategy

Abstract

The first quarter of the 21st century was marked by global instability. Sharp climate changes, biodiversity loss, exponential population growth, a lack of natural resources and living space, environmental pollution form a complex of current global issues that pose a threat to the humanity’s future. The article demonstrates the destructive nature of the established consumer vector of development, which underlies the modern economic model, and also reveals the negative aspects of scientific and technological progress that led to the global environmental crisis. Overcoming these negative trends presupposes the choice of new strategies for socioeconomic development, which are based on its alignment with the laws of evolution of the biosphere. The achievement of a secure future implies the preservation of natural ecosystems considering their ability to self-repair disturbed processes within the economic capacity of the biosphere, since its excess leads to a violation of the biological cycle of energy and matter, and to the ecological imbalance in the biosphere. Taking into account the patterns of conservation of natural ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole, the authors propose the strategy of sufficient development, and determine related implementation measures. They include development of environmentally safe technologies and the approval of a new humanism as a necessary condition for achieving a secure future. The authors argue there is a need in the radical revision of value orientations in order to achieve a secure future. This revision presupposes redirecting people from the anthropocentric orientation in relation to nature to the bio-anthropocentric orientation, which takes into account the need to preserve nature and the spiritual world, and preserves the moral foundations of the development of society.

Keywords:

natural environment, strategy of sufficient development, future of mankind, ecological crisis, new humanism