WeCoexist.Earth explained

I previously had an ecommerce site called Buy Sustainably, which sold sustainable products for consumer use. I wound that site up when I moved back to New Zealand from the United Kingdom and when I came to start a new site I realised that sustainability, while a very important part of the environmentalism, didn’t cover the whole picture.

The word that seemed more all-encompassing was coexistence. The reasons why are too many for one blog post, but here’s a start. To coexist is the state of existing at the same time or in the same place, and more importantly, existing in harmony.

And here’s why I don’t think we are coexisting with our planet anymore. When modern humans evolved about 315,000 years ago they lived alongside the planet and all the other species living on it. Then about 10,000 years ago we started living in villages and agriculture was born, and a little less than 300 years ago we began to industrialise and things really started to change.

In those three centuries a lot has changed. The global population has exploded from 600 million in 1700 to 8 billion today, world GDP has increased over 150-fold, and the time taken to cross the Atlantic Ocean has fallen from at least 6 weeks to a matter of hours.

But all that progress has come at a cost. We are currently using 1.75 times the resources the planet can regenerate in a year, when we were in ecological credit as recently as 1970. 96% of the mammals on Earth are now humans and livestock. A football pitch sized area of the Amazon rainforest is cleared every minute. We are no longer using the planet’s resource sustainably, and as a result can no longer claim to be living in harmony (or coexisting) with the planet and all the other species who call it home.

They say a picture paints a thousand words, so if you need a little more convincing then take a look at the following images.

Deforestation

Climate change

Biodiversity loss

Pollution

Plastic waste

Given we are reliant on the Earth’s ecosystems and natural resources for our own survival this plainly cannot continue. We may think we are coexisting with our planet and its environment, but the reality is we are overpowering it. There is no ecological balance anymore. It should be obvious to us all that we need to learn to do more with less for future generations to enjoy the same standard of living as we do today. And that is the other element of coexistence - we need to learn to live in harmony with one another, as well as the planet. We only have one Planet Earth so we are all in this together, we will succeed or fail as a species.

We are citizens of this planet, not just consumers of its resources. We need to start acting as such, for the future of Planet Earth, and of our own species. We also need to demand change from our governments and corporations. It’s not too late. There are actions we can all take today that will make a difference.

So there you have it - WeCoexist because we need to get back to a state of coexistence, or living in harmony, with the planet and all the other life on it, and .Earth because this is a global problem and requires us all to contribute to the solution (although not equally, more on that later).