Education for Understanding Science and the Earth System for Long-Term Sustainability

Abstract

Within our human society, we are facing a challenge of complex interacting problems that has the potential to affect us in our lifetime, and will certainly determine the quality of life for our children in the future. It is now clear that human activity affects our global environment in ways that we did not think or imagine as being possible only a few years ago. It appears that these impacts will affect the general quality of life, and more specifically, the availability of energy, minerals, and other natural resources, as well as the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink. How is it that this human species, with its ever-expanding complexity of technological innovations, its great powers of discovery, and its new developments in the exchange of knowledge finds itself attempting to understand these interactions between our many human systems and our physical, biological, and geological natural systems? A consensus is building that we must take steps to not only understand this system but develop new life patterns that will assure we and our future progeny will interact, eco-evolve and integrate our activities for a sustainable world.