4 Matching Annotations
- Aug 2023
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link.springer.com link.springer.com
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While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied (e.g., climate change, biodiversity loss, population growth), the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
- for: climate change - evolutionary causes, cultural evolution - unsustainability, unsustainability
- definition: Anthroecological theory (AET)
- This theory proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering
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In AET, this process results in a species that is prone to niche construction and ecosystem engineering, and the scale of these processes continues to increase as the population rises. This increasing scale coupled with human propensity for niche construction leads to human unsustainability
- for: for: ecological collapse, overshoot, progress trap, progress trap - cultural evolution, ultra-sociality, Lotka's maximum power, gene culture coevolution
- key finding
- paraphrase
- In AET,
- multi-level selection acting on the genome and
- occurring in concert with selective and non-selective mechanisms acting on culture and technology
- results in a species that is prone to
- niche construction and
- ecosystem engineering,
- and the scale of these processes continues to increase as the population rises.
- This increasing scale
- coupled with human propensity for niche construction
- leads to human unsustainability
- In AET,
- paraphrase
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for: gene culture coevolution, carrying capacity, unsustainability, overshoot, cultural evolution, progress trap
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Title: The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability
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Author: Brian F. Snyder
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Abstract
- Summary
- Paraphrase
- 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.
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In addition to states of socio-ecological crisis and socio-ecological collapse, human populations have spent much of the remainder of our post-paleolithic history in a state of unsustainability
- for: unsustainability
- humans have spent much of the remainder of our post-paleolithic history in a state of unsustainability
- for: unsustainability
Tags
- evolution of our polycrisis
- progress trap - cultural evolution
- cumulative cultural evolution
- progress trap
- Brian F Snyder
- gene-culture coevolution
- quote - evolutionary causes of climate crisis
- key finding
- Anthroecological theory
- key finding - AET
- conscious cumulative cultural evolution
- human niche construction
- key finding - unsustainability
- quote - climate change - evolutionary cause
- unsustainability
- cultural evolution - unsustainability
- AET
- The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability
- evolution of the anthropocene
- niche construction
- evolution of polycrisis
- progress trap - gene culture coevolution
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