Evolutionary Catastrophe (1975)
We all agree that the existing process of rapid growth in world population and production cannot go on for very long, and is not sustainable, especially in so far as it is so dependent on fossil fuels and exhaustable high-grade ores. ... Evolutionary sustainability is the capacity of a system to continue evolution, as a process of increasing complexity and "value" in the genosphere or the nooshphere, know-how sphere, in spite of, or perhaps even because of, catastrophe. The first great evolutionary catastrophe was the creation of the present atmosphere though "oxygen pollution" by the first anaerobic organisms. They did not survive it, but evolution did, and developed the more efficient oxygen breathing organisms.
"Growth, Sustainability, and Adaptation" TV talk Nov. 11 '75 for the Edison Electric Institute TV show.
Back to we have a two-deck spaceship (1975)
On to models from celestial mechanics vs evolutionary systems (1975)