Earth's life-carrying capacity is stretched beyond resilience

I recently wrote about how humanity's greatest success, the industrial revolution credited with immensely improving the quality of life for humans, has turned and become a climate-harming force.

Thee miraculous production capacity that the industrial revolution heralded for humankind is now recognised as the key driver of climate change through anthropogenic climate change.

Due to this factor, the earth's life-carrying capacity has been stretched beyond its resilience and it is giving us warning signs of its exhaustion.

The climate events such as the frequent prolonged drought being seen in the Horn of Africa, and cyclone Freddy in the southern Africa region are harbingers of the worst signs of life carrying capacity of the earth to come if humanity must continue on its destructive path unperturbed as we seem to be.

Our commodity-laden dreams, desires, and ways of live cannot be provided for anymore by earth in the same way. The illusion that earth is in trouble is misplaced. We humans, and other lifeforms are in trouble. Earth will be fine. We might not be, unless we find ways to be other than what we are.

Unless we name our anthropocentric way of being on earth, our committed economic expansion and growth destroying everything on our path while at it, as a fundamental problem and start to address that.

Let's stop our destructive thinking that ignoring the crisis has some effect on the planet. It does not. Unless humans accept the fact that our life is tied together with the life of the planet, the environments, the soils, the ecosystems, the water systems, etc there is hardly any hope for the human race, and several other lifeforms.

For the digestive systems of the politico-economic infinite growth beast we have contracted and so vehemently defend will eat us all for lunch.

The writer is the Director Oxfam Kenya