It is becoming increasingly apparent in the world, obvious to say the least, that the dominant life form on earth is the human being, Homo sapiens sapiens. How wise we really are remains to be finally answered, but to argue our relative dominance in contemporary global ecology is fairly absurd and represents a form of ideological denial of basic realities. Our ecological dominance is expressed in many ways. The manner of gravest concern is of course the rapid destruction and interference of natural ecosystems at many different levels, and what can be called the phenomenon of global circumscription by the human species. Circumscription is usually looked at from of the standpoint of the environment impinging upon human society--to look at circumscription as human society impinging upon the environment is to case a new light on an old problem, and to invert our sense of place and complacency in the world. The idea that increasing degrees and frequency of human circumscription of human systems, that human systems will continue to become more involuted with increasing growth.

We do not know what the carrying capacity of the natural earth is for human population. We are cresting seven billion people already. Carrying capacity largely depends upon our relationship to our environment and our capacity to manage both the environment and ourselves within it. But regardless of our management systems, systems theory determines that an increasing volume of human population, whatever the level of average consumption, etc., will result in increasing depletion of resources of the global system, and, in the long run, destructive consequences for natural ecosystems. There is no way that we can sustain a global ecosystem in a healthy state for the long run no matter what methods and techniques we might adopt to mediate this relationship.

The greatest likelihood of human systems in the future are that they will become increasingly self-destructive and destabilizing unless effective control structures can be developed that permit the sufficient mediation of human conflict. Beyond decrying an imperative for dramatic family planning and birth-control policies, internationally orchestrated, coupled with effective human development programs that are capable of raising the standard of living for most people and education people and providing them the necessary opportunities to escape the world prison of poverty, we must ask what measures can be taken to best contain the situation. Of course, no one has a complete answer to these difficult problems but this does not mean that we should ask and try to answer the necessary questions to get the job done right.

Beyond a rapid transformation to a hydrogen-solar based energy economy and the colonization of space, the most direct and effect means of forestalling these processes would be the broad-based institutionalization of programs geared at curtailing human population growth in non-destructive ways, educating people effective to live as global citizens in a responsible and enlightened manner, and the enforcement of temporary global moratoriums on a variety of human activities that have had the most destructive effects on the global environment. This would include a large number of fishing enterprises, deforestation and lumbering enterprises, particularly in tropical regions, and postponement of development and building projects, especially in peripheral zones where the relative degree of ecological impact would be the greatest.

Of course, the achievement of these kinds of programs would take a degree of collective will and government responsibility, across the board, especially by the leading powers, that has not yet been demonstrated in any serious manner. It is largely up to governmental agencies to set the tone and determine the climate of leadership in creating a sustainable human global ecology. Efforts toward achievement of such collective sustainability of and by the human population should not be construed as marginal or hostile to the collective order or sense of well being of established society, but as an intrinsic and necessary part of this order.

This consideration leads to the formulation of a doctrine of universal natural rights and responsibilities. We must understand that such a doctrine is human-based and centers upon human behavior and relationships with the world. Natural rights are not intrinsic to nature, they are what human beings, as stewards and parts of this world, must adopt and grant to the world. They are primarily aimed at the regulation of human behavior and the determination of the intrinsic value of non-human natural resources, including the holistic resource of global and natural ecology.

Basically, a doctrine of universal natural rights and responsibilities are an extension of the doctrine of human rights and responsibilities. I have undertaken to list such a doctrine in a permanent section below. I emphasize this doctrine as an extension of universal human rights because I believe it provides a meta-ethical platform for guiding the conduct of human affairs in a global context, and it provides therefore the necessary foundation for the reconceptualization and reconfiguration of the collective human relationship with its world. 

We can not any longer afford to treat the world and the natural environment as a fetish, as a possession, that is ours to do with as we please. Our sense of dominance and power over nature should not be allowed to continue unrestrained by own moral capacities for exercising judicial constraint and symbolic capacities for transcending our own natural limitations.

General Systems Essays, Vol. II