The Numbers We Can't See

I remember when I first grasped the true scale of human impact on Earth. It wasn't watching a dramatic documentary, seeing a melting glacier, or seeing a polar bear perched on a tiny iceberg. It was staring at a single number in a research paper…

25%.

That's the proportion of Earth's biological productivity—all the energy plants capture through photosynthesis—that humans now appropriate for ourselves. One species takes a quarter of the planet's biological output.

Let that sink in for a moment.

As an ecologist, I've spent decades studying how living systems interact. But this number stopped me cold. We discuss climate change, deforestation, and biodiversity loss as separate issues. Yet here was a single metric that captured our collective impact…

Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP).

Think of Earth as a solar-powered factory. Plants are the workers, converting sunlight into usable energy—the foundation for all life. In 1910, humans took about 13% of this annual production. By 2005, we'd doubled our share to 25%. That's like moving from being a minority shareholder to a controlling owner of Earth's biological productivity in less than a century.

HANPP is expected to grow modestly to between 27% and 29% by 2050. However, scenarios involving a significant increase in bioenergy production could see HANPP rise to as much as 44%

But here's what truly fascinates me. We don’t see this number or what it means.

Walking through a supermarket, do you see the quarter of Earth's biological productivity on the shelves? Sitting in traffic, do you consider that humans and their livestock now make up 96% of Earth's mammalian biomass? These numbers are staggering, yet they remain invisible to most of us.

Why?

Part of it is scale. Our brains evolved to handle immediate, local threats—not global, systemic changes. We're brilliant at spotting a snake in the grass but terrible at seeing slow, large-scale transformations.

Another factor is what we might call the 'normality trap.' Each generation accepts its version of Earth as normal. A supermarket full of food from six continents seems natural to us, and yet it would appear miraculous to our great-grandparents.

But there's something else at play.

There is willful blindness. In reviewing research on this topic, the evidence is that we actively avoid seeing these numbers. They're too big, too challenging to our worldview. When faced with evidence that our success might be undermining the very systems that support us, we look away, scroll past, and switch apps.

This isn't just psychological curiosity—it's a crucial barrier to addressing our environmental challenges. We can't solve problems we refuse to see.

So what's the solution?

This is where being a mindful sceptic becomes essential. It means combining rigorous, evidence-based thinking with the awareness to see what's right in front of us. It means asking uncomfortable questions and staying present for the answers.

Here's what this looks like in practice:

Question the invisible by identifying the hidden systems and resources flowing through your daily life. What underpins your morning coffee, your commute, your lunch?

Seek evidence by gathering reliable data on how humans shape these systems. When you read about environmental impacts, follow the numbers back to their source.

Stay curious by exploring how everything connects. Each environmental challenge links to another - follow these threads and see where they lead.

Think long-term by playing out current trends into the future. What might your city, your food supply, your local ecosystem look like in twenty years?

Remain mindful whenever uncomfortable facts make you want to look away. That urge to scroll past difficult truths? That's exactly when we need to pay attention.

The good news??

Young people are leading the way. They're combining digital savvy with systems thinking to address these challenges. They see what many of us have trained ourselves to ignore.

The numbers don't lie. We've become an extraordinarily successful species—so successful that we're now a dominant force in Earth's biological systems. The question isn't whether this is true. The question is: what will we do now that we can see it?

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