THE ROLE OF EARTH SCIENCE IN FOSTERING GLOBAL EQUITY AND SUSTAINABILITY

The concept of economic equity was originally conceived as a subset of free market allocation of scarce resources. However, placing equitable natural resource use in the context of sustainability adds the concept of time, and issues; for instance, the extent to which our actions today will affect future generations -- is earth resource use today equitable with respect to humanity in the future?

Earth science has a fundamental role in addressing such questions.

Time is a nearly ubiquitous component of earth science -- time in big chunks. However, at least two noted scientists, writing on various aspects of sustainability and human nature, have stated that humans intrinsically lack the capacity to deal with the long time frames involved in addressing sustainability, and cite evolutionary factors in support of this contention.

Taking the existence of earth scientists as evidence to the contrary, an alternative case is made that human capacity to deal with long time frames is cultural rather genetic. One of the present obstacles to grappling with issues involving long-term equitable and sustainable resource use is due simply to under-representation in society and culture of the basic concepts of 1.earth history, 2.the origins and functioning of the biosphere, and 3.human origins as a subset of earth history. As our understanding of human culture and its creation becomes clearer, the reasons for this lack can be traced to the omission of early introduction of these essential cultural concepts -- the origins of the earth and biosphere -- fundamental to human existence, and inseparable.

The window of opportunity for learning language is well recognized, and to some extent that window applies to the development of individual culture as well.

A clear sense of the interconnectedness of humans now with humans in the future, and human interdependency with the global biosphere, may in fact be essential for attainment of equitable and sustainable use of natural resources. Earth science has a key role in equipping society with these perspectives.