Suffolk Humanists at the Friends Meeting House, Colchester, on 16th February 2006. Report of a talk by Jules Pretty, FRSA, FIBiol, Professor of Environment & Society at theUniversity of Essex, by Peter Davidson

Professor Prettys talk was on sustainable development. He began by focusing on the general theme of human development, then assessing what the world looks like now, and trying to get a balance about how things might change, not only over a long period of time, but over the next forty years or so. In his view, there are some crises, such as oil shortages and rising sea levels, that are current or imminent, and that must be addressed as a matter of urgency, regardless of arguments over whether the cause is human behaviour.

For five million years, humankind was a species of hunter-gatherers and remained so until only 100,000 years ago, when we started co-operating in bigger settlements. These grew to bigger groupings or civilisations with recognisable cities appearing, such as Babylon and Ur in Mesopotamia, now part of Iraq. These evolved to what might be termed mega-cities in the present. However, the modern industrial age began only six to eight human generations ago, compared with the 300,000 generations that preceded it. If we were to fit the last five million years into one week, the industrial age would be represented by the last three seconds. Our experience of an industrial environment, rather than an agricultural or hunter-gatherer environment, is very recent.

So how has human evolution shaped us, and how are we now shaping the environment?

The biologists report that we have had five mass species extinctions. In Professor Prettys view, we are now in the sixth, due to human behaviour. As well as species extinction, there is language extinction. About one-half of human languages have disappeared. Another half will disappear by about 2020, along with their associated cultures, such as those in South America and Papua New Guinea. The language extinction is tied into the culture extinction, and it is culture extinction that is the impending crisis, because it progressively removes the world of cultural literacy; knowing how to cope in a wide range of environments.

Professor Pretty used photographs to show remnants of earlier civilisation decay, drawing initially on well-known examples, such as the remains of Inca settlements in South America. His commentary drew attention to