for: gene culture coevolution, carrying capacity, unsustainability, overshoot, cultural evolution, progress trap

Title: The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability

Author: Brian F. Snyder

Abstract

• Anthropogenic changes are accelerating and threaten the future of life on earth.
• While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied
  • climate change,
  • biodiversity loss,
  • population growth
• the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
• Anthroecological theory (AET) proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is
  • multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering.
• Here, we integrate this theory with
  • Lotka’s Maximum Power Principle
• and propose a model linking
  • energy extraction from the environment with
  • genetic, technological and cultural evolution
• to increase human ecosystem carrying capacity.
• Carrying capacity is partially determined by energetic factors such as
  • the net energy a population can acquire from its environment and
  • the efficiency of conversion from energy input to offspring output.
• These factors are under Darwinian genetic selection
• in all species,
• but in humans, they are also determined by
  • technology and
  • culture.
• If there is genetic or non-genetic heritable variation in
  • the ability of an individual or social group
• to increase its carrying capacity,
• then we hypothesize that - selection or cultural evolution will act - to increase carrying capacity.
• Furthermore, if this evolution of carrying capacity occurs - faster than the biotic components of the ecological system can respond via their own evolution,
  • then we hypothesize that unsustainable ecological changes will result.