“We are not facing an environmental crisis. We are facing an economic system that treats a living planet as disposable inventory. Adapt the system — or become the fossil layer that proves we refused to.”
- adaptationguide.com
Steer or Die: The Economy Is Devouring the Planet That Feeds It
By A.G.
Let’s stop pretending this is abstract.
Either the global economy transforms itself — radically, structurally, immediately — or we gamble with civilizational collapse.
That is not activist hyperbole. It is the core message of a new report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), presented in Manchester. The scientists are unusually blunt: continued destruction of nature is not just an environmental tragedy. It is a systemic economic risk. A financial stability risk. A human survival risk.
In plain English: adapt — or risk extinction. Possibly our own.
The 40% Collapse Nobody Is Pricing In
Since 1992, global “natural capital” — the total value of what nature provides: soil, air, water, forests, biodiversity — has declined by roughly 40 percent.
At the same time, the world economy has ballooned.
This is not growth.
This is liquidation.
We are converting living systems into quarterly earnings. And the bill is coming due.
Stephen Polasky, one of the scientific leads of the IPBES study, says it plainly: biodiversity loss ranks among the greatest threats to the economy. Every company — even those that believe they are “far removed” from nature — depends on raw materials, water, pollination, stable climate systems, functioning ecosystems.
No soil. No food.
No water. No industry.
No biodiversity. No resilience.
Yet in 2023 alone, an estimated $7.3 trillion in global financial flows directly harmed nature. Of that, $2.4 trillion were environmentally destructive subsidies.
Governments are literally paying to accelerate ecological breakdown.
Let that sink in.
The Perverse Incentive Machine
Here is the bitter truth Polasky articulates: for many businesses, it is still more profitable to destroy biodiversity than to protect it.
Companies rarely pay the true cost of ecological damage. Externalities remain external. Nature remains “free.” Meanwhile, investments in ecosystem protection often don’t generate competitive returns.
We have engineered a system where ecological vandalism is rational.
And then we act surprised.
The real challenge, Polasky says, is overcoming the false belief that governments and companies must choose between environmental protection and economic prosperity.
That belief is not just wrong. It is suicidal.
An economy that undermines its ecological foundation is not pro-growth. It is cannibalistic.
Why Biodiversity Slipped Down the Risk Rankings
The World Economic Forum’s latest Global Risk Report shows biodiversity loss sliding down the priority list of business leaders and experts.
Why?
Because geopolitical confrontation now dominates the headlines. Multilateralism is cracking. Trade wars. Regional conflicts. Strategic fragmentation.
And then there is the United States.
Under President Donald Trump, climate and environmental protections have been openly undermined at both national and international levels. Sustainability coalitions have hemorrhaged members. The Net Zero Banking Alliance has lost nearly all major financial players — including BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.
When the biggest capital allocators walk away from net-zero commitments, that is not a footnote. That is a directional signal.
The market is reading it.
Paper Victories, Forest Realities
Yes, there have been formal achievements.
The UN High Seas Treaty entered into force in January. Brazil, with support from Germany and others, launched a new tropical forest protection fund. Efforts are underway to integrate climate and biodiversity strategies.
On paper, progress.
On the ground?
Nearly 11 million hectares of forest are still destroyed every year worldwide. Rainforests in Brazil continue to be cleared, largely for agricultural expansion. At the latest climate conference, governments failed to agree on a binding roadmap to end deforestation by 2030.
Ambition without enforcement is theater.
Europe Is Backpedaling
The European Union, long positioning itself as a sustainability leader, has begun watering down key measures.
The Supply Chain Act? Softened.
The Deforestation Regulation? Eased.
Environmental laws? Under review to “reduce bureaucratic burden.”
Translation: political pressure from industry is winning.
Reducing paperwork may help quarterly compliance reports. It does not restore collapsed ecosystems.
Data Exists. Accountability Doesn’t.
The IPBES authors stress that tools and methodologies now exist to measure corporate impacts on biodiversity.
Yet fewer than 1 percent of publicly reporting companies disclose meaningful information about their ecological footprint.
Financial institutions cite familiar barriers: lack of reliable data, models, and scenarios. Overlapping regulatory frameworks. Complex compliance requirements.
Polasky describes the dysfunction clearly: companies spend more time decoding competing reporting standards than implementing real change.
This is what technocratic paralysis looks like.
We do not lack intelligence.
We lack alignment between incentives and survival.
Mapping the Invisible Chains
The new IPBES report is designed to help companies integrate biodiversity risk into their management systems.
But the task is complex. It often requires combining multiple metrics. It demands mapping supply chains far beyond direct suppliers — into the murky depths of global production networks.
Who cleared the forest that grew your soy?
Who polluted the river upstream of your mineral source?
Who extracted the lithium powering your ESG-labeled portfolio?
Supply chains are global. Responsibility is diffuse. Accountability evaporates.
Conveniently.
Indigenous Knowledge, Ignored Too Often
The report was compiled over three years by around 80 scientists and private-sector experts from 35 countries — in consultation with representatives of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
That matters.
Indigenous communities protect a disproportionate share of the world’s remaining biodiversity. Yet they are often marginalized in the very economic systems driving ecological collapse.
We extract their knowledge. We exploit their land. We rarely share power.
That contradiction is unsustainable.
The Real Choice
Let’s strip away the diplomatic language.
The IPBES message is binary:
Either the economy evolves beyond extractive addiction,
or it undermines the biophysical systems that make civilization possible.
This is not about hugging trees.
This is about maintaining oxygen, rainfall, soil fertility, pollination, disease regulation, climate stability — the invisible architecture of life.
You cannot securitize a dead ocean.
You cannot hedge against total ecosystem failure.
You cannot insure extinction.
The economy is a subsystem of the biosphere. Not the other way around.
If that hierarchy remains reversed in policy and capital allocation, “growth” will continue — right up to the point where it collapses under its own ecological debt.
Adapt — Or Become the Fossil Record
We are at an inflection point.
The 20th century treated nature as an infinite warehouse and waste sink. The 21st century is discovering the limits — in fire seasons, crop failures, collapsing fisheries, and destabilized climate systems.
The IPBES report does not scream.
It does something more unsettling.
It calmly explains that the foundations are eroding.
The question is not whether the economy can survive without biodiversity.
It cannot.
The question is whether we are capable of redesigning the economy before ecological feedback loops redesign it for us.
Adapt the system.
Or become a case study in planetary overshoot.
History is full of extinct species.
For the first time, one of them may have quarterly earnings reports.
yours truly,
Adaptation-Guide
