Is there an ecological crisis?

As I said in my previous posting, there is a clear divide between those who deny the existence of an ecological crisis, on the one hand, and those who assert that the inhabitants of planet Earth face an ecological crisis of unprecedented proportions. On both sides there are scientists — at least people who claim that they are scientists — something that causes no little confusion on the part of the public, given the way that we have been taught to respect scientific judgement. Which so-called scientists do we trust?

In the final analysis, however, one must make up one’s mind, which is no easy task, by using as many sources of information as possible and exercising independent thinking and judgement. As for myself I have made up my mind to believe and trust those thinkers, writers, scientists and activists who are trying their level best to convince the rest of us that time is running out as far as being able to do anything about the looming ecological disaster is concerned. Quite apart from the question, whether one can be sure that they are right, there is this consideration (reminiscent of Pascal’s famous “wager” concerning God’s existence): what if they are right and we don’t do anything?

One of the most convincing thinkers when it comes to taking seriously the possibility that civilisation as we know it could “collapse” globally, unless we do things “right”, unless we learn from the mistakes of other civilisations that have “collapsed” irreversibly, is Jared Diamond, whose prize-winning Guns, Germs and Steel paved the way for the book I have been alluding to eponymously, namely Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

Focusing on the beautiful state of present-day Montana, in the US, he shows that all the ingredients for a collapse are present in that state — those that would accelerate such a collapse, as well as those that could, if they were pursued and expanded, prevent a collapse. In this way one is put in a position to understand that Montana is a microcosm of planet Earth and that the things that need to be done there are the same things that should be done everywhere on the planet (including, not working against nature when it comes to allowing forests to grow naturally, instead of interfering by thinning out underbrush and smaller vegetation in forests; not allowing toxins to leach into rivers and lakes from mining operations).

Diamond’s painstaking elaboration on the reasons why earlier societies failed — such as that on Easter Island or the Mayan civilisation — brings to light that in every case the people concerned underestimated the long-term effects of their environmental destruction, especially that of life-giving vegetation like forests. In the chapter on Easter Island, where palm trees were systematically cut down to the very last one (for religious reasons, unbelievably — for transporting their gigantic rock-hewn statues to the sites where they were erected, to “placate the gods”), Diamond says that he wonders what went through the mind of the men who cut down the very last tree on the island. One could say the same of people who knowingly release toxic waste of various kinds into life-giving rivers.

Another uncompromising ecological thinker, whose work I respect because of its thoroughness and clarity of vision, is Joel Kovel, whose book, The Enemy of Nature acted as a kind of wake-up call when I read the first edition about five years ago. If one reads Kovel’s book against the backdrop of the insights gained through Diamond’s Collapse, that human depredation of nature has historically led to the implosion of several civilisations, it becomes increasingly clear that such depredation has been occurring, for decades now — but in accelerating fashion, from about 1970 — not merely in isolated areas of the planet, but globally. Moreover, and this is the crux of The Enemy of Nature (subtitled The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?), the current, globally dominant economic system, known as neoliberal capitalism, is largely to blame for the speed with which ecological degradation is occurring, because of its uncompromising commitment to (economic) GROWTH at all costs.

To be sure, the (dirty) industrial activity of communist and socialist countries contributed significantly to the pollution of the Earth, as well as to climate change through carbon emissions, but the differentiating factor between these economic systems and capitalism is precisely the latter’s unrelenting pursuit of “growth”. Just how shortsighted this is, Kovel points out, should be clear to anyone who understands that human economic growth cannot occur indefinitely within a finite biosphere. And yet, most companies treat natural ecologies as if they are a smaller part of human economies!

I have mentioned climate change and carbon emissions. Kovel remarks that when the first edition of his book appeared in 2002 there could still be honest disagreements among scientists about the relation between carbon emissions and potentially catastrophic global warming, but that, when the second edition appeared in 2007, this could hardly still be the case. There is virtual consensus among scientists worldwide that the industrial-economic behaviour of humans is largely responsible for the runaway warming of the Earth’s biosphere. And those denialists who point at the vacillation between periods of hot and cold climatic conditions in the history of the planet, conveniently overlook the fact that those oscillations have, as far back as scientists can determine, always remained between certain extremes, but that more recently — as Al Gore has argued in his book, Earth in the Balance, as well as in the film, An Inconvenient Truth — the upwards swing of the thermometer has gone off the chart, as it were, and is still rising.

Hence, to return to the question, whether there is an ecological crisis facing humanity, it seems to me that the answer is an emphatic yes! There is overwhelming evidence, moreover, that it has been of human making, through the blind pursuit of an economic system that turns everything into resources for the sake of growth and the generation of material wealth. Kovel reminds one of the remarkable fact that, in 1970, growing anxiety about the deteriorating condition of planet Earth resulted in a new ecological awareness and a new politics.

On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day was proclaimed, and has been commemorated on that date every year since then, to affirm human dedication to the preservation of the non-human environment. Shortly afterwards, in 1972, one witnessed the extraordinary event of some of the world’s power-elites (the so-called Club of Rome) issuing a “manifesto” pertinently and clairvoyantly called The Limits to Growth. Sadly, Kovel observes, since that time growth has, instead of slowing down, only accelerated. He provides the following list regarding the impact of human economic activity on the planet between 1970 and 2000 (imagine what it is today!) whatever kind of impact it might be:

— The human population had increased from 3.7 billion to 6 billion (62%).
— Oil consumption had increased from 46 million barrels a day to 73 million.
— Natural gas extraction had increased from 34 trillion cubic feet per year to 95 trillion.
— Coal extraction had gone from 2.2 billion metric tonnes to 3.8 billion.
— The global motor vehicle population had almost tripled, from 246 million to 730 million.
— Air traffic had increased by a factor of six.
— The rate at which trees are consumed to make paper had doubled to 200 million metric tons per year.
— Human carbon emissions had increased from 3.9 million metric tons annually to an estimated 6.4 million — this despite the additional impetus to cut back caused by an awareness of global warming, which was not perceived to be a factor in 1970.
— As for this warming, average temperatures increased by 1 degree F — a disarmingly small number that, being unevenly distributed, translates into chaotic weather events (seven of the ten most destructive storms in recorded history having occurred in the last decade) and an unpredictable and uncontrollable cascade of ecological trauma — including now the melting of the North Pole during the summer of 2000, for the first time in 50 million years, and signs of the disappearance of the “snows of Kilimanjaro” the year following; since then this melting has become a fixture.
— Species were vanishing at a rate that has not occurred in 65 million years.
— Fish were being taken at twice the rate as in 1970.
— Forty percent of agricultural soils had been degraded.
— Half of the forests had disappeared.
— Half of the wetlands had been filled or drained.
— One-half of US coastal waters were unfit for fishing or swimming.
— Despite concerted effort to bring to bay the emissions of ozone-depleting substances the Antarctic ozone hole was the largest ever in 2000, some three times the size of the continental United States; meanwhile, 2 000 tons of such substances continue to be emitted every day.
— 7.3 billion tons of pollutants were released in the United States during 1999.

These figures speak alarmingly for themselves, but it took Kovel a book of more than 300 pages to place them in the interpretive framework that indicates what their effect has been so far, what their likely long-term effect will be, and what there is that humanity can do to lessen the impact of climate change on the Earth (including human society). That will be the topic of another post. Suffice it to conclude this one by pointing out that even a mainstream journal such as National Geographic issued a special edition on climate change in 2004 titled “Global Warning: Bulletins from a Warmer World”, where human industrial activity was implicated in no uncertain terms. (To be continued.)