LOOKING BACK TO THE FUTURE

The emergence of climate change as a central political issue around the world ,along with growing concern 4 the environment more generally ,has raised the chalenge to achieve sustainability as a high order social goal .yet over the 20 y..since the publication of the landmark brundtland report on sustainable devolepoment,humanity has moved further away from sustainability in many importent aspects,particularly at the global scale.this peaper provides an overview of the current understanding of how the human environment relationship has evolved through time ,analyzes the quest 4 sustainability in contemporary society.,& briefly explores the implications of this analyses 4 the trajectory of the human enviroment relationship in the 21 century.the focus is on earth systems perspective .exploration of the human-environment relationship through time shows a fundemental switch about 200 yrs ago .,when human socity shifted from being largely the recipient of changes in earth system functioning to becoming aglobel geophysical force itself,revaling the great force of nature in magnitude.contemporary human societies are now on ademonstrably nonsustainable trajectory,especially with regard to climate change ,with no sign at the global scale of any change in trajectory.