From a speech at the 2012 China Environmental Press Awards (yes, there is one) in Beijing on April 10 by Jonathan Watts, the Guardian environment reporter who spent nine years in China covering everything from pollution protests to species extinction:
During the past few years, I have come to fear that the United Kingdom and China may be bookends on the most spectacular burst of development ever seen in human history. The carbon-fuelled, capital-driven model of economic growth, which started in my country 200-odd years ago, has spread across the planet and is now, I believe, reaching its apex here.
We may well be blessed and cursed to be witnessing the era of “peak human” – at least in material terms. That is a huge and alarming prospect. It will require a complete readjustment of expectations.
We may indeed be reaching the era of peak human — but peak in a lot of wrong things: selfishness, consumption, pollution and climate change to name a few. Possibly, we will evolve out of this into a new kind of human, that understand the planet’s limitations, and has adjusted its world view and its actions accordingly.