Suspect even most very smart people — even the majority in the life sciences — do not understand how tightly intercoupled ecosystems and human life are on earth.

They imagine that humans are at some stage of transcendence of global ecosystems, when in reality due to our numbers we are more closely tied than ever. There is no way climate change is not going to be so close to apocalypse that quibbling over the differences will be just that — quibbling. But it’ll be the kind of semi-apocalypse that humans are bad at dealing with. That is, a long-term one.

Just an estimate, but I think about 99.5% of people have no idea how ecological systems and processes function and how fragile they can be, and how resilient at the same time in the wrong direction. Heck, probably 99.5% of people have no idea there are even such things as ecological systems and webs.

But what should make you worry all the more is that I suspect less than 20% of people who should know, don’t. Those being scientists in related fields.

I’d not be surprised that if in the future the surviving human historians when accounting for the decline of our civilization point to extreme specialization and weird math obsession rather than directly to climate change as the cause of the demise.

We’ve been told it’s not important that there are people who attempt to understand entire systems in toto as I always try to do. I think this is just a variant of neoliberalism attempting to banish real systems thinkers from understanding it and any other important system.

Because if you can understand it, you can change it. Or fight those who have already harmed it for their own profit.