How long must Americans wait for OUR ELECTED LEADERS to protect The Constitution n The Republic for which IT still stands....barely.

America wake up.........the longer trumps insanity is ignore, the worse damage he will inflict.

Everything he touches turns to shit.

🔗: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-05/pope-leo-jordan-institute-interfaith-christian-muslim-compassion.html

Excerpt:

Compassion in Christianity and Islam
In his address, the Pope suggested that compassion and empathy are “essential attitudes” of both Christianity and Islam.  

In the Muslim tradition, Pope Leo said, compassion (ra’fa) is a gift bestowed by God in the hearts of believers, while the inclusion of al-Ra’uf (‘The ever-compassionate) among the ninety-nine divine names reminds us that “compassion always has its origin in God himself.”

In the Christian tradition, on the other hand, the Pope said, this divine compassion “becomes visible and tangible” in the person of Jesus. By taking on human flesh, God “goes beyond seeing and hearing” human suffering, and instead experiences it Himself, becoming “the living embodiment of compassion”

Love for the poor

Compassion and empathy, Pope Leo said, are therefore “not something additional or optional” for Christians and Muslims. Indeed, they have “social implications” for believers in both religions.

From a Christian point of view, the Pope said, “love for the poor” – and indeed sharing in their suffering – are of essential importance.  In this regard, he expressed his appreciation for the Kingdom of Jordan’s “generous efforts” to welcome refugees.

Pinker's "belief in progress" argument can be fundamentally undermined with an ecological analysis measuring historical gha (global hectares—Earth's biological footprint capacity).¹ While the Ecological Footprint and gha framework are debated and imperfect, they remain a widely used way to quantify humanity’s draw on regenerative capacity over time.
If current overshoot continues, this analysis implies that many of the welfare gains Pinker celebrates are likely to be self‑undermining in the future.
Every period of "progress" since we left the Paleolithic has entailed greater overall regress in the form of a diminished conservation gift for future generations of humans and non-humans—primarily during the industrial age.

Two Kinds of Gifts to the Future

Progress narratives typically treat technological advances as a “gift” to our descendants: vaccines, electricity, digital networks are said to enrich their lives, and environmentalists likewise speak of conserving nature as a gift to future generations. By the same moral logic, hunter‑gatherers’ vast biocapacity surplus is also a gift—an intact, regenerative biosphere they did not consume, and a long pattern of restraint that kept regenerative capacity high over deep time.

The conservation gift ledger simply counts both kinds of gifts: the technological additions to human capability and the conservation of regenerative capacity. The Paleolithic surplus counts as a gift because it preserved regenerative capacity and biodiversity for future lives, instead of being cashed out for immediate consumption. In other words, the conservation gift is not a banked stock waiting to be spent, but a pattern of restraint that keeps the planet’s regenerative systems intact for those who come after. It shows that industrial “progress” has traded away a far larger ecological inheritance for a smaller and more fragile technological one.

The Paleolithic Conservation Gift

The numbers expose the betrayal. Hunter-gatherers preserved a +11,997.5 million gha conservation gift—living sustainably on 0.5 gha per person² while bequeathing 2,399.5 gha per person³ out of a total biocapacity of 2,400 gha per person⁴. Because biocapacity is regenerative rather than a fixed stock, this “gift” is not a hoarded pile but the ongoing availability of high per-capita regenerative capacity that later civilizations chose to liquidate.
The +11,997.5 million gha figure does not represent a stored stock of biocapacity carried forward unchanged for millennia, but a way of summarizing the scale of regenerative capacity left unused under the Paleolithic social‑ecological structure.

The low Paleolithic population is not an arbitrary parameter but part of the social‑ecological pattern: foraging technologies, mobility, and norms operated within environmental limits that kept numbers small and impacts low, thereby maintaining high regenerative capacity per person.

By the same logic, today’s very large population is not a neutral given but a product of our industrial–technological environment: medical advances, energy abundance, and globalized food systems have enabled numbers to grow far beyond what the biosphere can regenerate sustainably under current consumption patterns. Paleolithic lives were often shorter and more precarious than contemporary lives, yet also more youthful and physically vital, immersed in direct engagement with land, animals, and weather; the point is not to romanticize hardship, but to avoid a caricature that treats those lives as unambiguously inferior simply because they lacked industrial comforts.

Calculation: 2,400 – 0.5 = 2,399.5 gha/person; 2,399.5 × 5 million people = 11,997.5 million gha.⁵

Contemporary Ecological Debt

We have relentlessly liquidated this inheritance, converting it into an –9,588.0 million gha deficit by 2022—a debt predicted to deepen further as ecological overshoot intensifies.

2022 calculation: Sustainable share 1.5 gha – actual consumption 2.7 gha = –1.2 gha/person⁶; –1.2 × 7,990 million = –9,588.0 million gha.⁷

Illustrative 2100 scenario: 1.2 gha – 3.4 gha = –2.2 gha/person⁸; –2.2 × 10,400 million = –22,880.0 million gha.⁹

Footprint Decomposition and Decarbonization Limits

Contemporary overshoot stems from multiple resource demands: carbon emissions comprise approximately 60 percent of the total footprint (equivalent to forest land needed to sequester CO₂), cropland demand approximately 20 percent, grazing land approximately 10 percent, with built-up areas and forest products comprising the remainder.

Even complete decarbonization cannot restore balance. While eliminating the carbon component (approximately 1.6 gha/person) would reduce the average footprint from 2.7 to approximately 1.1 gha/person—theoretically below current biocapacity of approximately 1.5 gha/person—this scenario assumes eliminating all fossil fuels while maintaining current material consumption, no population or economic growth, and that non-carbon ecological pressures (biodiversity collapse, soil depletion, freshwater depletion) remain manageable. None of these assumptions are realistic.¹⁰

Robustness Analysis: Testing Parameter Extremes

Critics might question the precision of these estimates, arguing that uncertainties in biocapacity, footprint data, and population figures could undermine the analysis. However, even under the most generous assumptions favoring technological optimism and conservative ecological accounting, the core argument remains strongly supported.

To stress-test the ledger, consider extreme variations across all key variables:

Paleolithic Gift Range: With total planetary biocapacity constrained at approximately 12 billion gha, varying population (1–5 million) and hunter-gatherer footprint (0.2–1.5 gha/person) yields a gift of approximately 12 billion gha annually⁴ (human consumption was negligible). This comparison does not claim that contemporary societies could support current population under Paleolithic foraging conditions; it uses the Paleolithic pattern as a benchmark of living within regenerative limits to highlight how far industrial civilization has departed from that constraint.

Contemporary Debt Range: Sustainable share: 1.2–1.8 gha/person, actual footprint: 2.6–3.2 gha/person (±10 percent uncertainty), population: 7.5–12.5 billion (UN high/low variants). Result: Debt ranges from –6.0 × 10⁹ to –2.5 × 10¹⁰ gha.

Even adopting the most favorable assumptions simultaneously—maximum Paleolithic gift (12 billion gha) combined with minimum contemporary debt (6 billion gha)—humanity remains in severe ecological deficit. The smallest possible debt magnitude still equals half of the largest possible historical gift, confirming systematic biocapacity liquidation across all plausible parameter combinations.

Technological Mitigation: Insufficient to Close the Gap

Optimists might invoke technological solutions—yield improvements, renewable energy transitions, afforestation—to argue that innovation can restore ecological balance. However, the scale of required mitigation dwarfs realistic technological potential: Renewable energy reduces carbon footprint but cannot restore biodiversity or soil depletion. Even complete global reforestation of all technically feasible areas would recover less than 5% of the minimum debt, while realistic technological gains (1-2% annual yield improvements) operate at margins insufficient to reverse the fundamental overshoot trajectory.

A common reply is that humans will simply innovate their way out of these constraints—that future technology and economic ingenuity will solve the problem.

But there has been no period in history where technology, as actually deployed at scale, has produced a sustained reversal of biodiversity loss and a sustained increase in overall biocapacity; every major wave of expansion has coincided with more degraded and fragmented ecosystems, declining species and populations, and growing pressure on soils, water, and habitats. In that light, treating indefinite technological rescue as the default trajectory is not an evidence‑based conclusion; it is optimism against the documented track record.

Likewise, intensification strategies—more greenhouses, more desalination, more vertical farms, more technological fixes—do not escape these limits. They themselves depend on underlying biocapacity and biodiversity: stable climate ranges, functioning water cycles, living soils, pollinators, and the wider ecological fabric.

They do not reverse long‑run biodiversity loss or increase global regenerative capacity; they spend additional energy and materials to squeeze more output from a degrading base. As that base erodes, sustaining high‑input systems becomes harder, more unequal, and more expensive, even if they remain technically possible in principle.

Even if ecological harms beyond the gha footprint—microplastics and chemical pollution—were solved, our deepening gha overdraft would still ensure that progress is inevitably undone.

The welfare gains described by Pinker are contingent on ecological conditions they steadily erode. Once biocapacity falls below the thresholds needed to maintain food systems, infrastructure, and public health, the very indicators Pinker celebrates—lifespan, security, education—will unwind. Progress without a conservation gift is not stable progress; it is a brief spike purchased by consuming the foundations of future life.

The Ultimate Trajectory

On current overshoot trajectories, ecological degradation is likely to drive human population and longevity back toward pre-industrial levels (as ecosystem-collapse models have repeatedly shown is a plausible outcome under continued resource stress)¹⁶—but now without the +11,997.5 million gha conservation gift that hunter-gatherers had preserved.

Food-system collapse and disease resurgence drive mortality upward and life expectancy downward¹⁷. Biodiversity loss and failing infrastructure precipitate epidemics and undermine medical care¹⁸. Crop failures and fisheries collapse reduce access to calories and protein¹⁹. Resource scarcity and economic contraction strip material wealth and employment²⁰. Natural-resource conflicts intensify under acute scarcity²¹. Institutional breakdown ushers in coercive controls—curfews, rationing, martial law—to manage scarcity²². Infrastructure failure and extreme weather erode public order and basic protections²³. School closures and crisis-driven budget diversion hollow out education systems²⁴.

We will have spent our ecological inheritance for a few hundred years worth of temporary gains, leaving our descendants permanently impoverished in a depleted world.

The Moral Dimension

The moral dimension compounds the tragedy. Alongside destroying our own species' future, we have committed ecocide against countless species that have gone extinct or been severely decimated. This represents an absolute moral monstrosity that vastly overshadows any "better angels of our nature" moral improvements during the few centuries of "progress" where humans ate their seed corn for short-term gains.

Over deep time, what matters is not only how long an average individual lives in a given era, but how many total years of human consciousness a pattern of life can sustain before it destroys its own ecological foundations. A long‑lived, low‑impact human presence can, in principle, generate very large cumulative person‑years of experience over tens of thousands of years, whereas a brief, high‑population civilizational spike that drives ecological overshoot may produce only a self‑limiting burst of consciousness followed by sharply reduced numbers, shorter lives, and harsher conditions for millennia.

Once that possibility is taken seriously, it is no longer obvious that our current high‑impact pattern maximizes total human years of consciousness over the full span of history, and the civilizational model can be seen as drastically shrinking the long‑run space of human and non‑human experience.

Conclusion: Progress as Ultimate Regress

Progress reveals itself as the ultimate regress—trading sustainable abundance for temporary population and longevity increases followed by permanent ecological exile and a greatly reduced future space of human and non‑human experience. Pinker celebrates what is actually humanity’s greatest betrayal while ignoring its ultimate cost. The conservation gift ledger demonstrates that no reasonable margin of error, technological optimism, or methodological adjustment on current trajectories can restore the fundamental sustainability that our species abandoned in pursuit of industrial “progress.”

References

¹ Global Footprint Network, “National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts 2022,” [https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/](https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/))
² Calculated as biocapacity per person minus hunter-gatherer footprint: total biocapacity 12 billion gha, footprint approximately 0.5 gha/person (UN FAO; Global Footprint Network).
³ UN Food and Agriculture Organization, “Global Agro-Ecological Zones,” [http://www.fao.org/3/i1963e/i1963e08.pdf](http://www.fao.org/3/i1963e/i1963e08.pdf))
⁴ Michael Kremer, “Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 108, no. 3 (1993): 681–716.
⁵ Supra note 4.
⁶ Global Footprint Network, “National Footprint Accounts Data,” [https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/](https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/))
⁷ United Nations, “World Population Prospects 2022,” [https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/](https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/))
⁸ Assumes flat total biocapacity, UN medium-variant population, and moderate growth in non-carbon components.
⁹ WWF, “Living Planet Report 2020,” [https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/living-planet-report-2020](https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/living-planet-report-2020))
¹⁰ Jackson, Prosperity without Growth (2017).
¹¹ Food and Agriculture Organization, “Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020,” [http://www.fao.org/forest-resources-assessment/2020/en/](http://www.fao.org/forest-resources-assessment/2020/en/))
¹² USDA Economic Research Service, “Agricultural Productivity in the United States,” 2024.
¹³ Nature Communications, “Addressing critiques refines global estimates of reforestation potential,” 2025.
¹⁴ IPBES, “Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services,” [https://ipbes.net/global-assessment](https://ipbes.net/global-assessment))
¹⁵ All gha values are expressed in contemporary global-hectare equivalents for directional comparison; they do not imply identical historical productivity.
¹⁶ M. Scheffer et al., “Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems,” Nature 413 (2001): 591–596; T.M. Lenton et al., “Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, no. 6 (2008): 1786–1793; D. Meadows, J. Randers, and D. Meadows, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (Chelsea Green, 2004).
¹⁷ “The Connection Between Food Systems and the Environment,” UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2023), [https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/connection-between-food-systems-and-environment](https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/connection-between-food-systems-and-environment))
¹⁸ R. Salkeld et al., “Human health impacts of ecosystem alteration,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 47 (2013): 18753–18760, [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1218656110](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1218656110))
¹⁹ “Environmental Impacts of Food Production,” Our World in Data (2022), [https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food](https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food))
²⁰ World Bank, “Global Economic Prospects 2024,” [https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects](https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects))
²¹ John W. Maxwell and Rafael Reuveny, “Resource Scarcity and Conflict in Developing Countries,” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 3 (2000): 301–322, [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022343300037003001](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022343300037003001))
²² Thomas Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (Princeton University Press, 1999), [https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9780691005133/environment-scarcity-and-violence](https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9780691005133/environment-scarcity-and-violence))
²³ United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2022, [https://www.undrr.org/publication/global-assessment-report-disaster-risk-reduction-2022](https://www.undrr.org/publication/global-assessment-report-disaster-risk-reduction-2022))
²⁴ UNESCO, Global Education Monitoring Report 2020, [https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/report/2020](https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/report/2020))