Urgent need to wake up to the demands of the environment

Humans are notoriously, if understandably, self-centred. It takes long years of education to teach children to consider the needs of others, and even then the struggle between narcissism and altruism continues unabated.

At present, we live under economic conditions, known as neo-liberal consumer capitalism, that promote self-interest rather than consideration of others. Unfortunately, since the 1970s, when the oil crisis precipitated the return to liberal economic principles that are predicated on the primacy of the market, this practice has not only promoted unprecedented economic growth on the part of developed economies, but concomitantly has caused the gap between the rich and the poor worldwide to widen.

Most importantly for all living creatures on the planet, however, it has accelerated and deepened a process of environmental degradation that, if recent scientific investigations are to be taken seriously, has reached alarming proportions. At least, these findings should ring alarm bells on the part of every responsible citizen, and even more importantly, should galvanise people into action aimed at averting a disaster too colossal and devastating to imagine.

There have been attempts to imagine it, of course, such as the popular film The Day after Tomorrow, where the first half-hour or so sketches a scenario where an unexpected sequence of causal events unfold so rapidly that it catches humankind completely unawares. This happens because, given the complexity of all the natural factors that co-exist at any given time, the precise causal sequences in a situation where changes in natural conditions are initiated in a sustained fashion are unpredictable.

Judging by the assessment of various scholars, including Joel Kovel (in The Enemy of Nature) and Jared Diamond (in Collapse) this part of the film rings true, in so far as the complexity of nature — a complexity that humans have probably not fully grasped — is such that catastrophic events could indeed unfold in an unexpected manner and at a rate with which humans cannot cope.

Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, which has earned him a (shared) Nobel Prize for Peace, emphasises similar considerations, and, together with the growing literature on the phenomenon of climate change, is a stark reminder that time is running out for the only living species on the planet that is in a position to do something drastic to change the course of events for its own and other living species’ sake — namely humanity.

When even mainstream news media start paying regular attention to this issue, it is a sure sign that we are dealing with something that occupies a centre-stage position of importance. Already in the September 2004 edition of National Geographic, with the subtitle “Global warning — Bulletins from a warmer world”, ample evidence is provided that there is reason to be very concerned about the reasons for the melting of ice in the polar regions and of Kilimanjaro’s snows, as well as about the drastic effects that the increasingly warmer global climate is having on various species of animals, from Adélie penguins to caribou and coral — not to mention the threat it poses to millions of people living in low-lying areas such as parts of Bangladesh, where even a modest rise of the ocean level could be disastrous.

More recently another publication, Time magazine, has dedicated two issues to the looming threat of environmental disaster, albeit in more optimistic vein. In its April 9 edition, TIME suggests “51 things you can do to make a difference”, ranging from opening windows of homes instead of switching on air conditioners to using compact fluorescent light-bulbs.

The October 29 issue features a section on “heroes of the environment”, including Al Gore, Prince Charles (who has turned out to be a “pioneering eco-farmer”), Kenyan Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai (who is responsible for planting millions of trees), the green car Toyota Prius design team and Richard Branson (a tycoon with an unusual sense of responsibility towards the planet). When mainstream journals such as these devote the larger part of an edition to the ecological crisis, alarm bells should be ringing loudly.

What could South Africans learn from these “global warnings”? For one thing, that chaos theory is profoundly right in claiming, according to the famous “butterfly effect”, that any change brought about in complex systems reverberate throughout the system, no matter how long it takes. And the effects of human interference with nature — stretching back to the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century — are showing themselves more graphically, and disturbingly, every day.

Instead of wasting energy on the pointless pursuit of more wealth and power, at the cost of the environment, humanity should start putting the interest of the latter first. In the process, they would also be acting in the interest of future generations, as well as of other living beings.