Earth in Human Hands
Page 25
It seemed as though the Fourth Assessment, released in 2007, hit especially hard. It came at a time when climate change was very much on the radar, at least among those people not fully occupied with simply trying to stay alive another day. The question had already been raised to the highest levels of public consciousness, and the Fourth Assessment gave an unambiguous answer. It stated that “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and is “very likely” (greater than 90 percent probability) due to human activities. This release caused a huge splash. Around the world, it generated a moment of focused attention on this problem.
Given what I know about how hard it is to get even a small group of scientists to agree on exact wording, and how hard it is to forge an international agreement that has any teeth at all, I have been inspired by the substantive depth of these papers. The fact that a document can be so thoroughly vetted and still say anything meaningful at all is nothing short of amazing. It is the product of the collective intellectual and diplomatic exertion of thousands of scientists working to forge a consensus statement on a complex, highly loaded subject on which our understanding of many of the most salient aspects is still shifting. There has never been anything like it. History will look very kindly on this effort, perhaps even as one of the greatest achievements of our time—not because it is scientifically flawless or beyond reproach in any other way, but because it has allowed the global scientific community to find a voice and speak coherently, and thus has focused the world’s attention on the climate change that humanity is causing.
Another event that, after some time, may stand out as one of these moments of noöspheric awakening is the international climate agreement forged in Paris in late 2015. It has been praised as a historic and promising breakthrough in global cooperation and also criticized as an insufficient Band-Aid slapped on the festering wound of climate change. Both these views are potentially correct. When nations come together to acknowledge and address an issue of global concern, it creates an opportunity to move our global actions from inadvertent changes of the third kind to intentional changes of the fourth kind. The Paris Agreement is clearly a necessary step in the right direction, but will it be sufficient? Right now it’s too early to tell. To know for sure, we would have to accurately predict the interaction of two horribly complex nonlinear systems: the physical climate system and human cultural/political dynamics. Simple linear extrapolations would suggest it is not enough. Even if all the commitments made in Paris are honored, it looks as though it will not keep the world from experiencing more than 2 degrees Celsius of warming—a dangerous prospect. Even with our most sophisticated models, this amounts to, at best, an educated guess, even if we assume the climate system will not pass any hidden tipping points that send it hurtling faster toward an unsafe state. Yet history shows us that human culture can also experience tipping points, sudden and surprising phase changes of awareness and action. These are even harder to predict. If the Paris Agreement turns out to be an initial step in an accelerating series of actions, facilitated both by evolving values and technological breakthroughs, then it may come to be seen as a significant point in our turn toward the mature Anthropocene.
Regardless of the trajectory of the climate and other changes we are inducing, it is encouraging that there is now more broad discussion of our role on the planet. The news on any given day can be scary, but the trend over the last few decades is toward global awareness and action. We are slowly waking up.
A Good Anthropocene?
There are those who are strongly opposed to any suggestion that the Anthropocene can be regarded as in any way a positive development for humanity, or for Earth. A raging debate has sprung up among scholars and environmentalists over whether there is, or can be, such a thing as a “good Anthropocene.” It’s an argument that has been simmering for a while, but it heated up in late 2014 after Andrew Revkin wrote a piece in his New York Times blog, Dot.Earth, entitled “Exploring Academia’s Role in Charting Paths to a ‘Good’ Anthropocene.” He even put “good” in scare quotes, indicating that he knew it was a loaded word. The response was intense. In a blog post entitled “The Delusion of the ‘Good Anthropocene’: Reply to Andrew Revkin,” Australian author and ethicist Clive Hamilton wrote that “the ‘good Anthropocene’ is a failure of courage, courage to face the facts.” Hamilton writes very eloquently on the danger humanity has gotten itself into and the need to change our economic and political systems to meet the crisis. He does not take kindly to any wording that hints at optimism, or anything less dire than acknowledgment of an impending, inescapable apocalypse.
New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert responded by tweeting: 2 words that probably should not be used in sequence: “good” & “anthropocene.” When I saw this tweet, it caused me to wonder, “Why not?” What else would you wish for? If there can be no “good Anthropocene,” what can there be? What is so bad about trying to turn the Anthropocene in a direction we won’t regret, or will regret less? Are you saying there is no Anthropocene? Or that it simply must be bad?
The “good Anthropocene” debate has been productive in refocusing attention on the wider moral and cultural dimensions of a potential human role in managing Earth. The downside is that it easily becomes polarized into a simplistic thumbs-up or thumbs-down on humanity. That binary thinking that plagues us: we’re good or we’re bad. As the Johnny Mercer song goes, “Don’t mess with mister in-between.”
Some are suspicious that somehow the whole notion of a good Anthropocene is a plot to get us to accept global warming. Whereas I see it as the opposite: as an attempt to get us to own up to the role we are now playing. Nobody can credibly deny that we are in a time of rampant human influence on Earth. Defined in this crude way, the Anthropocene obviously exists, so why insist it must be bad. What do you propose? That we convince everyone to feel bad about their rotten species? Beyond this, I can see little point. The point is to work for a good Anthropocene.
We may romanticize the planet without human influence. Even if that were our wish, however, we’d be ordering something that is not on the menu. Our choice is over what kind of human-influenced Earth we will have. We may lament this truth, but we no longer have the option to choose not to be geological change agents. So let’s get over that, because we do have options as to how to be geological change agents. How to do it right—that should be our concern. So rather than yearn for some innocent days of yore, we need to take stock of where we are now and proceed, with eyes open, into the future.
How, then, do we reconcile the valid horror at what we’ve done, at what we’ve awoken to find ourselves doing, with the hopeful, optimistic, resourceful spirit that will serve us best in changing course? Here I find it helpful again to differentiate between the proto-Anthropocene and the mature Anthropocene.
If the Anthropocene is seen solely as the pattern represented by what we have done so far (the proto-Anthropocene) and we simply project that pattern into the future, then yes, it is “bad.” If the Anthropocene is what we can, should, and must do, applying our awakening awareness of planetary processes and human influence to the problems at hand, curbing the worst trends and finding a way to live well with the Earth (the mature Anthropocene), then it can be “good.”
Does just the fact that we’ve altered Earth make us inherently evil? You would have to detest so many life forms if that were the case. What actually distinguishes us from other creatures who’ve changed the world and caused mass extinctions is that we alone have the potential to prevent ourselves from following through on foreseen disaster. Might we even become a big plus for the biosphere? I would say that the cyanobacteria, despite their many victims, ended up improving the world. They enabled oxygenic life and habitable continents. We, too, can improve the world, even learn to protect and ensure life’s future. Let’s work toward that. So, while some environmental philosophers have written about the Anthropocene as a topic of fear or shame, I see it instead as a hopeful step, albeit one we’re still trying to achieve.
Where does our need to preserve wilderness come from? Is it for “the environment” or ourselves?* Several writers have proposed that we have a psychological need for wilderness, or at least for wildness. I know I do, but this comes in part from a privileged youth running wild in New England forests and on Cape Cod dunes. We didn’t go to church or temple, but our yard was adjacent to a protected bird sanctuary, so right out back was “the woods,” an expanse of wetland swamps and dense, ferny New England forest, where my brothers and I explored what seemed an infinite vastness. It was not virgin forest, and this added to the enchantment, for there were ancient artifacts to stumble across: the occasional old farmer’s stone wall running incongruously straight through some tangled, disorderly thicket; or the decaying hulk of a 1940s vintage car, a treasure to be explored, played in, and left to rust in peace.
Those woods also provided streams for our hydrologic projects. Building dams out of rocks, sticks, leaves, and mud was a favorite activity. At one point, new ditches started appearing that had apparently been dug illegally in order to try to drain the woods (protected wetlands) so they could be developed. Our dam building became not just fun but principled, which made it more fun. Of course, this protected sanctuary surrounded by suburbia was a far cry from actual wilderness, but I did get a big early dose of wildness. I wish it for every kid.
As an adult set loose in the mountains, I have been able to wander realms free of any obvious human stamp. In thirty years of living in Arizona, California, and Colorado, I hiked and rafted through plenty of places that felt much as they must have hundreds or thousands of years ago (although my nylon backpack, hi-tech boots, and Neoprene raft, not to mention the occasional contrail stretching high overhead, were a dead giveaway). As much as I have one, the wild western coasts and high mountain valleys are my temple.
So I find myself naturally sympathetic with the frequent appeals to the spiritual value of wilderness that come from one corner of the new debate roiling the environmental community. The skirmishes over a “good Anthropocene” have added fuel to a long-raging battle within conservation over which values and goals should guide our interactions with the rest of the world.
The current flare-up has divided the conservation world into two camps. In one corner are the ecopragmatists, or ecomodernists, who ask: since the human-altered aspect of our landscapes is obviously not going to disappear, how do we find ways to integrate it more successfully with ecosystems? They believe we should acknowledge that we are now managing planet Earth, and that our best way forward is to intensify our use of technology in order to reduce our land usage. They see farming, energy extraction, forestry, and settlement as activities that can be made more efficient, and thus compressed into smaller areas, to allow the rest of the world to heal. By increasing agricultural yields, moving toward more centralized and powerful energy sources, and continuing the concentration of population into cities, we can relieve pressure on natural landscapes. Ecomodernists also emphasize economic growth, including expanding energy use, particularly in developing countries, as of prime importance for both moral and environmental reasons. They are unashamed to promote human needs first, believing that smart development will both ease poverty and preserve nature. For example, if people have electricity and well-heated homes, they don’t need to pollute the air and deplete the countryside with fires from wood and dung. Alleviating poverty also leads to falling birth rates, which cascades to help innumerable environmental problems, including climate change. The ecomodernists are blatantly optimistic, believing that within the next century, human impact on the environment will peak and poverty can be ended. They also believe that nature will be in better shape, that the world will be greener and wilder. This point of view was asserted in “An Ecomodernist Manifesto,” published online in April 2015 by eighteen prominent academics, authors, and scientists.11
On the other side are traditional conservationists, who are generally horrified and offended by the notion that humanity is in any way managing the planet. They feel that wilderness is intrinsically, spiritually valuable for its own sake, and that our increasing intrusions into its realm are a desecration. They are more interested in restraint than growth. They believe that we need to scale back our technological impacts and that our main goal should be to protect what is left of wilderness from human intrusion. The traditionalists are decidedly more pessimistic about the prospects for positive human interventions or technological solutions.12 One of the main tensions between the two sides is over economic development. The traditionalists accuse the ecomodernists of a willingness to trash wilderness in the service of economic gain. The ecomodernists accuse the traditionalists of valuing trees more than people, of a willingness to sacrifice the lives and well-being of poor people in order to protect a vanishing illusion of unspoiled nature.13
Many traditional conservationists are deeply suspicious of the idea of the Anthropocene. They see the word itself as an illegitimate claim on power. To them it is not just a neutral name for a geologic epoch, but code for a threatening and dangerous agenda. They describe their enemies in this war as the proponents of the “Anthropocene worldview.” Some writers have caricatured a belief in the Anthropocene as synonymous with cheerleading for development, celebrating human hegemony over Earth, and believing that human needs justify destroying other species and that technology and capitalism will just take care of everything, so there is nothing to worry about. Of course this is a straw man argument, a cartoon view of the Anthropocene and ecomodernism constructed for the purpose of knocking it down.
At their worst, some ecomodernists do live up to this stereotype. They can be so enamored of technical innovation as a way to solve our global problems that they sometimes advocate that we can ignore natural limits or suggest that there are no real physical limits that cannot be overcome by our inventiveness. They often reject the notion that overpopulation is a problem because, in their view, the idea that Earth has a finite carrying capacity is a myth.14 They seem to relish, even delight in, tweaking the noses of the environmental and scientific establishments. They undercut their own effectiveness with hectoring diatribes against those whom they judge to have the wrong shade of green, tweeting antagonistic rants such as “The sky may be the best waste dump we can imagine!! Nobody lives in the sky! If our shit has to go somewhere, why not there?”15 This is not “modernism” but a call to the prescientific era, when we thought the world was infinite and imperturbable, when we could just throw things “away” and they would stay there forever, and when the sky seemed like some azure dome hanging above and separate from the world. This is just wrong. “Nobody lives in the sky”? Actually, we all live in the sky. The sky is simply the atmosphere, which is finite and increasingly subject to modification by human industrial activity. As I write in my book Lonely Planets, “The Earth has many lands but only one atmosphere, and we are all in it together.”
One need not go to such alienating extremes to make a compelling case for a pragmatic, technology- and innovation-friendly approach to our environmental challenges. Yet true pragmatism must include dealing with reality, and you cannot simply wish the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb effluent, or any other aspects of our planet, to be infinite. So the radical technophilic approach (“To hell with limits—We’ll just invent new mathematics and new laws of physics!”) is not any more reality-based than an extreme technophobic approach in which all new technologies are rejected.
The ecomodernists offer up their own straw man caricature of the traditionalist’s viewpoint, accusing them of a naïve attachment to completely nonexistent pristine wilderness, and of ignoring the real world, and the needs of struggling people, in favor of romantic nostalgia.
When you pit these two opposing straw men against each other it seems like a vast difference in worldview. People love a fight, love an enemy, to feel righteous, to rally troops and raise funds. Beyond the bluster, however, this is largely a trumped-up debate, an ep
ic battle of straw on straw. The truth is that the traditionalists have long been evolving in a direction that largely aligns with the ecomodernists. When you listen to the most thoughtful voices on either side, you discover that there is much common ground. When they are not busy ridiculing and caricaturing each other, both sides are actually saying many of the same things. Many of the traditionalists do in fact recognize that there is a continuum of wildness, from the most distant, roadless almost-wilderness to—I don’t know—downtown Newark? Yet they still argue strongly for the preservation or expansion of the most untrammeled areas.16
If we drew a Venn diagram for these supposedly opposing philosophies, and blur out the extreme voices on either side, in the rather large area of overlap you would find the outline of a wise approach for application of human technical ingenuity in promoting the health and longevity of our indivisible wild and human Earth. You would find many shared concerns and ideas, and a few interesting substantive differences.
One honest disagreement is over how resilient nature really is. The ecomodernists emphasize that nature adjusts and recovers. They can point to numerous success stories where this resiliency is on display, where disaster zones have grown from the brink back into lush, diverse biomes. There are so many important and inspiring stories of restoration.
Part of the backdrop of my youth was the Charles River, a scary toxic mess running through our town in suburban Massachusetts toward Boston Harbor. Five years before I was born, an article in Harper’s described it as “foul and noisome, polluted by offal and industrious wastes, scummy with oil, unlikely to be mistaken for water.” When I was old enough to walk, I was being warned to stay away from it. In the early 1960s, cleanup efforts began. Now, though it is still not perfect, it is swimmable and improving, on its way to being again fully healthy for children and other living things. It is undoubtedly true that ecosystems, if not pushed too far, have shown an amazing ability to bounce back.