“IMAGINING OTHER…”
‘Protecting
the Planet’, & ‘Wellcome to the Science of Protecting the Planet’
(WEA courses)
Introduction:
a dawning of awareness
Return
to Index page
SUMMARY:
1.
Overview: how concerns have developed: industrialisation
to 20th century:
1.1Humans and the
environment from earliest times #overview
1.2
Industrialisation (dark satanic mills; sewage and health) #industrialisation
1.3 Twentieth
century: air pollution, smog (interactions), Clean Air Act 1955 #air pollution
1.4 “Silent
Spring” (1962): chemical residues, the food chain #Silent
Spring
1.5 “Limits to Growth” (1972): computer model of
the earth as a system: #Limits to Growth
(i) limits,
(ii) interconnections in a whole system - population,
resource depletion, production of food, and of goods, land, pollution,
(iii)
#feedback loops
(iv) #
exponential growth.1.6 Edward Goldsmith and Robert Allen published ‘A
Blueprint for Survival’ in the magazine The Ecologist in 1972. #Blueprint
1.7 1980s: ‘acid rain’ (remedies...) #acid rain
1.8 The ozone layer and CFCs – 1987 Montreal
Protocol #ozone
2. This and other
examples also illustrate:
2.1 The unexpected
consequences of new inventions and chemicals #unexpected consequences
2.2 The need for
the “precautionary principle” #precautionary principle
2.3 The problem
of time delays before corrective action reverses damage, #time delay
2.4 The need
for international action. #international
action
3. They also
raise the question: what is it about our society that has led to environmental
damage?
We will return to
this question of ‘causes’ when we look at specific current instances, but here
is a brief summary of some #causes:
3.1Industry (factories,
mining, power stations)
3.2 Modern
technology and chemicals (fridge coolants, pesticides)
However, in my
view there are two fundamental causes which I shall deal with throughout this
course:
3.3 Our way
of thinking about ‘nature’ and the natural environment
3.4 Our ideas
about economics, and especially what we mean by ‘value’
Other underlying
causes we need to think about are:
3.5 Population
growth - see Update (5)
3.6 Consumerism
3.7 Growth,
profit and other aspects of our economy. See 5. Below.
4. New ways of
thinking: Summary of Key Concepts: #new thinking
4.1 Ecology and the ecosystem -
living things interacting with each other & with their environment: #biodiversity à #balance
and stability; non-hierarchical interdependency. [Also see Updates] #ecology [See,
for more detail, Species decline and
biodiversity]
Examples
of inter-dependency, including the #wood-wide-web
4.2 A world
model: the planet as balanced, closed ecosystem – #spaceship earth
4.3 The Gaia hypothesis (James Lovelock 1979):
earth as self-regulating system [see 6. Updates] #Gaia
5. Economics, business,
& the environment: #economics and business
5.1 Monetary values: how to put a price on quality
of life? air, sea, rivers: free? #value
5.2 ‘Externalities’/residuals - the market’s limitations.
6. Updates:
Update
(1) Aug 2019, Ecosystems and ecological breakdown from UK Youth
Climate Coalition.
#ecosystems
Update
(2)
Demonstration of how environmental awareness is developing very quickly (in
some places!) #growing awareness
Update (3) The argument that we need new language to
reflect the reality of ‘global heating’ and ‘the climate crisis’ #new language needed?
Update (4) ‘#Gaia 2.0’
Update (5) Population growth
OTHER BOOKMARKS:
Topics:
#acid rain #Blueprint for Survival #Club of Rome #feedback #industrialisation #ozone layer #sewage #Silent Spring
Key concepts:
#ecology #economics and business #exponential growth #externalities #Gaia [see also Updates] #Limits
to Growth
NOTES:
1. Overview: how concerns have
developed: from industrialisation and into the 20th century:
[see Updates for recent growing concern]
1.1 Humans have always affected their environment,
especially since they settled on the land. (Nomadic peoples and
hunter-gatherers have a more balanced relationship with the land). Agriculture
needs the clearing of trees, and many places we think of as “natural” such as
the Lake District, in Britain, and even the Sahara Desert,
are in fact man-made!
However, note the time-scale below, and remember how recently we have
used agriculture and industry – we have affected the environment without
realising how short the time-scale of our existence is:
5.2 million years ago first hominids emerged in East Africa
2.6 million years ago first stone tools
2.3 earliest Homo genus
1.175 million – 350,000 Homo erectus
250,000 – 28,000 Neanderthals
200,000 Homo sapiens appears as a species in Africa
90,00 years ago modern humans reach Near East,
then rest of world
72,000 y.a. first use of fire to modify stone
tools, 70,000 y.a. earliest
decorated stones
50,000 y.a. modern humans reach Australia
40,000 y.a. cave art begins, modern humans
reach Europe
12,000 y.a. modern humans reach Americas
10 – 11,000 y.a. farming begins
in Middle East
7,500 farming reaches Europe
6,200 y.a. earliest known city in Middle
East
200 years ago industrialised society emerges.
In other words, industrialised society has existed for 0.000027% of the
time humans and their ancestors have been in existence. Or: 8 generations out
of 300,000.
(From
Natural World, Winter 2009)
1.2 However, once industrialisation got
under way, factories and railways altered the landscape dramatically, and began
to cause what we think of as pollution. William Blake, the 18th century
English poet and artist, who wrote the words of “Jerusalem”, complained of the
“dark satanic mills” where cotton goods were produced.
Later, especially in large towns such
as London, the amount of sewage (i.e. waste) produced
became a problem. We might notice here that there is a tendency for humans not
to deal with problems until they become really serious: thus, it was only when
people became ill, and the smell of the open sewers (running down
the middle of the streets!) and the river Thames became a problem for the
Members of Parliament (next to the river) – only then were plans made for
underground sewers.
1.3 Another kind of pollution that arrived with towns and
cities was air pollution (see further details later).
The smoke from factory chimneys became so thick, that at times visibility was
reduced to a few feet. The mixture of fog and smoke (especially when they
reacted with sunlight: photochemical smog) came to be called
“smog”. Again, when it was realised that large numbers of people, especially
the very young and the elderly, were suffering from asthma and other lung diseases
as a result of the air pollution, then legislation was passed:
the Clean Air Act of 1956 in Britain. (A similar act was passed in the United States in 1970).
The other salient point to be emphasised as
something that was learnt from the phenomenon of smog was that often combinations of
chemicals are more dangerous than each one separately. Thus smog was actually
caused by a mixture of otherwise fairly harmless gases, but which when exposed
to sunlight, became dangerous – photochemical smog. These interactions are
an important part of the phenomenon of pollution.
1.4 The
next step in our gradual realisation of the scale and complexity of problems of
pollution came in 1962, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s
“Silent Spring”. She noticed that there were less
birds than there had been, and she traced the decline to the increased use of
chemical pesticides, especially DDT – which was used very widely indeed. It was
soon realised that chemicals used to spray crops or to remove weeds were not
disappearing, but remained in the bodies of the insects, animals and finally
humans that ate the crops. Thus, also, the idea of the “food chain” was
accepted as important in understanding our interaction with the environment.
1.5 In
the 1970s another publication – the report of the “Club of Rome” which was called “Limits to Growth” took the debate another
step forward. The Club of Rome comprised a group of industrialists and
scientists who had studied the interactions in the global environment between
human population growth, increased industrialisation, increasing demand for
food, and the consequent pollution and resource depletion. This report made a
number of fundamental points:
(i) There are limits to many
resources, such as coal, minerals and oil, and at some point in the future we
are going to exhaust these resources
(ii) Each element in the relationship between humans and their
environment needs to be studied in relation to the whole – as
each affects other elements. The whole is an ecosystem... (see #ecology at 4.1 below).
Thus, obviously, population growth leads to more pollution, and growing more
food leads to a scarcity of land; but also reducing pollution means a growth in
population – so a faster use of resources.
(iii) Another way of describing these interactions is to think of feedback loops
– as when you place a microphone to near a loudspeaker, and the sound from the
speaker goes through the microphone, back through the speaker, and so on – the
result is a horrible whining or hum!
More recent examples of feedback:
Now that we are aware of climate change (see later), there are some
striking examples of feedback.
Carbon dioxide, CO2, is a ‘greenhouse gas’ –
that is, a gas that acts like the glass of a greenhouse, and traps warmth
(which would otherwise have escaped into space).
We have produced more CO2 since the industrial revolution began, as we
have burned fossil fuel (coal, gas and oil). This is increasing the average
temperature of the earth... but the oceans, soil and trees absorb half the CO2
that humans produce. Acidification of the oceans brings its own problems (see
later...), but if tropical forests die from excessive warmth or dry weather, there
will be less absorption of CO2. Thus more CO2 fills the atmosphere (if we don’t
stop producing it!) and more trees will die...
Also the polar ice-sheets reflect nearly 80% of sunlight – if they melt
the water reflects less heat, so warming increases leading to more melting of
the ice. As if this were not enough, the Siberian tundra (frozen ice containing
vegetation) is thawing, and releasing methane previously trapped in the ice.
Methane is four times a more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Thus, again,
the atmosphere will heat up more, and more tundra will melt releasing more
methane.
(iv) The kind of growth pattern
that many natural phenomena (such as increases in population) follow is what is
called exponential –
that is, the rate of growth increases
as time goes on. This is a dangerous
process, since we tend not to realise there is a problem until too late in the
day. For example, weed on the surface of a pond may be
growing exponentially – if so, it will take some time to cover half the
pond, but then only a fraction of that time to completely cover the pond and suffocate
the living
creatures in it.
There were some unexpected results from this study:
in particular, it was suggested that if we only apply solutions to single
problems (e.g. pollution, or population control) we will in fact make the
overall situation worse!
The broad conclusion many people drew from this
report was that economic growth could not go on the way it had so far. The idea
of a ‘no-growth’ or ‘zero-growth’ economy was discussed, along with ideas for
recycling. As a letter in the Guardian April 14th 2017 put
it (reflecting my own experience): ‘I and my colleagues teaching general
studies in FE spent some enlightening weeks with our students exploring the
validity of the proposals. I also wrote to my MP asking what the
government’s attitude was; I got a nondescript reply.’ (Ted
Clark, Leamington Spa). I’m not sure I had many deep discussions
about zero-growth, but we did start to challenge the dominant ideas about the
economy, consumption etc.
1.6 A Blueprint
for Survival (1972)
In the magazine The Ecologist (still being
published today, jointly with Resurgence, and edited by Satish
Kumar), Edward Goldsmith (father of one-time MP Zac
Goldsmith!) and Robert Allen foresaw the breakdown of the life-support systems
of the planet unless something drastic was done. Their proposals were more
radical than the Limits to Growth, in that they argued that only small decentralised and largely
de-industrialised communities would be viable. They drew on their beliefs
about tribal societies, which were human scale, had low-impact technologies,
successful population controls, sustainable resource management, holistic and
integrated worldviews, a high degree of social cohesion, physical health, psychological
wellbeing and spiritual fulfilment for their members. (Wikipedia)
The statement was signed by a number of scientists
including Sir Julian Huxley, Sir Frank Fraser Darling, Sir Peter Medawar and
Sir Peter Scott.
As an example of how pollutants can change when
exposed to the environment, acid rain is formed when gases in the air dissolve
and make the rain acidic. The main ‘culprit’ here is sulphur, in
coal. Sulphur dissolved in water makes sulphuric acid. In Scandinavia and Eastern
Europe, lakes have been made so acid that the fish die (with consequences for
whatever or whoever normally would eat the fish); trees have been killed; and
in cities, buildings begin to crumble as the acid eats away at the stonework.
The added complication here is that the gases from chimneys are carried away in
the wind, and the acid rain formed is most likely to fall on distant countries
– so, more and more these days, there is an international dimension
to the problem. It seems inevitable, if we are going to deal with this problem,
that it cannot be left to business and industry alone, but government and
international bodies must be involved.
- acid rain is now known to affect the oceans
(Green World 65, Summer 2009, and National Geographic website):
- pH indicates the alkalinity of water – 7 is
neutral, i.e. anything below 7 is acidic, and above 7 is alkaline or
base. The pH of the ocean’s open water has been 8.2 for millions of
years, now (since burning fossil fuel for couple of centuries) it is down to
8.1 or 8.05 (8.1 is 25% more acidic), and this damages coral reefs,
& microscopic life at the base of the food chain;
– acidity goes down to 1,000 metres and in some places to 3,000 metres –
ocean makes up 99% of planet’s living space – plankton control the carbon
cycle, nitrogen cycle and part of the oxygen cycle – 3.6 billion yrs ago
plankton began to produce oxygen, hence life could develop – every second
breath we take is of oxygen from plankton; also plankton makes less calcium in
more acidic water – we don’t know what effect this will have, though coral reefs (home to rich diversity of life) are
dying
- acidification could lead to mass extinction: the previous 5 such
events were all accompanied by acidification (last time, 65 m yrs ago, the
dinosaurs died out – probably the gases came from a meteor strike). [Alanna Mitchell, author: The Hidden Ecological Crisis of
the Global Ocean, pub: Oneworld.]
We cleared up a lot of the problem in 1980s by switching from coal to
gas (little sulphur), catalytic converters (reduce nitrogen), scrubbers in
factory chimneys, and this led to an 80% cut in acid rain. In the early ‘80s,
3m tonnes SO2 were emitted p.a. in Britain. But the sea is acid in places,
and China has dirty emissions and acid rain, so it is still a
problem…
Pre-industrial levels of SO2 were 280 ppm by
volume, and by mid-century this is likely to be doubled to 560 ppm – plankton makes less calcium in more acidic water – we
don’t know what effect this will have.
1.8 Case Study: The Ozone
Layer:
This is a thin layer of ozone gas, high in the
atmosphere (in the stratosphere, about 30 miles up) that protects us from 95%
of the sun’s harmful ultra-violet radiation. Ozone (O3) is formed
when ultra-violet light reacts with oxygen (O2) – as it does so, the
ultra-violet light is absorbed. At ground level it is a pollutant that is
harmful to our health. However the thin layer in the stratosphere protects us.
Some years ago, in the 1980s, scientists noticed
that the layer had a hole in it over one of the poles. The layer is being
destroyed by gases used in industrial production, air-conditioning, and refrigerators.
The main offender is CFCs
(chlorofluorocarbons – introduced in the 1920s), but carbon dioxide and methane
have a similar effect. CFCs are also used in aerosols, in processes that
involve “foam blowing”, and in fridges. When they are exposed to ultra-violet
light they break down into components such as chlorine, which then in turn
attack the ozone, breaking it down to oxygen again. Incidentally, CFCs are also
greenhouse gases (which we will explore when we deal with climate change.)
If the protection we get from the ozone layer is
reduced, then there will be more cases of skin cancer as a
result. Again, this problem has been known about for since the
1970s, and some changes have been made: the United Nations passed the Montreal Protocol
in 1987, as a result of which CFCs have being phased out. (Substitutes have
been identified and put into use, but even here there is controversy over their
safety). Like other aspects of our self-regulating planet, the ozone layer is
able to replenish itself naturally, and scientists are watching for this.
However, as with many natural phenomena, there is a “time delay”, and,
according to the National Geographic (August 2003) there is still no evidence
of ozone levels going back up in the lower stratosphere, where most ozone is to
be found (some evidence of decreases in the upper stratosphere were reported).
Oct 2017. BBC News – rising global emissions of
some chlorine-containing chemicals could slow the recovery. Used in
paint-stripping, PVC, e.g. dichloromethane.. these chemicals are short-lived but are still getting to the
upper atmosphere. China a particular source.
2. This and other examples
illustrate:
-
the unexpected consequences of new
inventions and chemicals: I believe very strongly in the “precautionary principle” i.e. any innovation in
technology should be carefully tested for safety and environmental damage
before being implemented. Of course, this might mean slowing down the rate of
change and innovation, but given the danger of reaching a “tipping point”
beyond which changes become irreversible, surely precaution makes sense?
- the problem of time
delays before corrective action reverses damage,
- and, again, the need
for international action.
3. They also raise the
question: what is it about our society that has led to environmental damage?
We will return to this question of ‘causes’ when we
look at specific current instances, but here are some initial explanations that
clearly follow from the examples above:
- industry (factories,
mining, power stations etc that were developed during the industrial
revolution)
- technology and modern
chemicals (fridge coolants, pesticides)
However, in my view there are two fundamental
causes which I shall deal with throughout this course:
- our way of thinking
about ‘nature’ and the natural environment
- the values underpinning
our economics
Other underlying causes we need to think about are:
- population growth
- consumerism
- growth, profit and other
aspects of our economy.
4. The improved awareness of
the problems affecting the environmental has led to new ways of thinking:
Summary/recap of key
concepts:
The science of ecology deals with living
things interacting with each other and with their environment. We can
study the ecology of any area – a pond, a river estuary, even parts of our
bodies (since bacteria etc live on our skin!). The area studied acts as an
ecosystem. What scientists have observed, and which gives a scientific basis to
some of the points made above, is that there is widespread interdependency
between the different elements in an ecosystem. This corresponds to the point
made above about food chains.
A recent article by Robin McKie (Observer10th July 2016) illustrates this in a number of ways, including how otters can help absorb carbon dioxide – when the population of sea otters declined, then the crustaceans which formed their foods increased, and they in turn destroyed the kelp forests – which are important for absorbing CO2. The article deals with ‘trophic cascades’ – the effects via the food chain on other components. This can be top-down (as here) as well as bottom-up. The other discovery noted is that killer whales began to feed on otters when their own food (whales) was diminished by whaling...
Update,
May 2020: Another astonishing relationship has recently
been discovered, between acacia plants and ants. The ants live on and in the
stems of the plants, and when the plant is threatened the ants send out an
acidic liquid that stings and scares off the predator. They have even been known
to attack large predators such as giraffe!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8383577.stm
On the other hand, in order to stop the ants eating the
flowers on the plant, it produces a chemical the ants cannot stand, keeping the
ants off the flowers!
Jan 2020. Biodiversity –
extraordinary inter-dependence: Another example of the
incredible inter-relationship between different living things - ants and
aphids:
The pale giant oak aphid (stomaphis
wojciechowskii) has only recently been discovered. It
is looked after by brown ants (lasius brunneus): The ants build structures on the trees out of
mosses, lichens and the exoskeletons of beetles. These act as a ‘barn’ to keep
the aphids in, where they are milked to extract sugary water for the ants. If
the aphids are disturbed, the ants move them down the tree to their underground
shelters – they carry the little ones in their jaws. They keep the aphids
underground in severe weather, and march the aphids up the tree when summer
comes. The ants are classified as ‘nationally notable’ and the aphids are probably
rare, as there have only been a few locations where they have been found.
(Patrick Barkham, 25th Jan 2020).
Update June 2020. The ‘wood-wide
web’: https://www.ecowatch.com/trees-communicate-2646209343.html?rebelltitem=7#rebelltitem7
How trees and fungi benefit from each other...
Two important lessons can be learned
from ecology:
(i) The more elements in a system, the more likely it is that the whole system will stay in balance. [This is argued differently by Lord May of Oxford – see update below]. This is because a degree of “redundancy” is built in i.e. elements can take over the function of others when needed (as in a sophisticated electrical circuit, or in the human brain!). Thus, diversity, especially biodiversity, makes for stability, and therefore for survival. We can apply this principle to economies and human communities as well, I believe. Any country that relies on only producing one or two agricultural products (as was the case with Cuba and sugar) is vulnerable when either the price of that product falls, or someone finds a substitute (as with sugar beet). In addition, should the crop succumb to a disease, then the producers have no alternative to fall back on. On the other hand, if you are producing a variety of crops (or goods or services!) then should one fail you can always substitute another.
Update, May 2020. Obituary of Lord
May of Oxford who was chief scientific advisor to the government 1995 – 2000, says
that in his book Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems he ‘showed
mathematically that in a system with multiple species competing for resources,
the more species there were, the less stable was the system as a whole. This
theoretical challenge provoked numerous field studies, concluding that diverse
systems were generally more stable in the real world, but that stability
depended critically on the nature of the relationships (such as predator and
prey) within the community. Even diverse environments, such as rainforests and
coral reefs, can still be highly vulnerable to changes they have not evolved to
withstand.’
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/29/robert-may-bob-may-lord-may-obituary
(ii) More unexpectedly, there is not the same hierarchical arrangement in ecosystems that we have developed in our human, social systems. Just because mammals are more complex living creatures, it does not follow that they play a more important part in the survival of the system as a whole. We could even argue that the “humblest” forms of life, i.e. bacteria, are the most important, as without them most other life-forms would disappear.
Update: a recent book: The
Self Delusion, by Tom Oliver, argues – using scientific evidence – that we
ourselves are not separate individuals but parts of a physical and cultural
ecosystem. Our bodies are made of atoms and molecules that have existed
elsewhere, we are occupied by bacteria (38tn cells are bacteria and fungi – a
larger number than the other cells in the body). Our brains are a collection of
pathways (a ‘connectome’...) always being shaped by
the world around us. As Susan Greenfield puts it – identity is an activity not
a state. We need, he argues, to re-think our sense of identity in order to deal
with the problems that face us now – especially the ecological problems!
Review of The Self delusion by Richard Kereridge:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/18/the-self-delusion-tom-oliver-review
and an article by Tom Oliver: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/16/the-age-of-the-individual-must-end-tom-oliver-the-self-delusion
(See also The
environmental movement and philosophies).
4.2 WORLD MODEL: THE PLANET AS ECOSYSTEM – SPACESHIP
EARTH
Another fundamental principle (pointed out by the Club of Rome report
see Meadows et al 1972) comes from the application of ecosystems thinking to
the whole planet.
We live in a carefully balanced, closed system – that
is, the only extra resource that enters the system is sunlight, otherwise
everything else (water, air, land, plants, minerals) is finite. The
different elements within the system - population, resource depletion,
production of food, and of goods, land, pollution, interact in complex ways. When
‘man’ first reached space, and could see the planet from a distance we became
more aware of how fragile and vulnerable we are – like a spaceship floating in
a hostile environment.
Another consequence of the Limits to Growth publication was a questioning
of the whole basis of our economic system: the necessity for growth. Some
economists argued for ‘zero growth’ – others based their analysis on Marxist
ideas, criticising the drive for profit.
Recently, John Vidal has written of 7 dangers –
we are trashing the planet: the 7 are: hyper-consumerism, corporate power, the
car, population, soil, inequality, poverty... and they are
interconnected (in much the same way as the Limits to Growth model
demonstrates)
In the late ‘70s, James Lovelock (a scientist who
worked for NASA on the question of how to identify life on other planets) came
up with the radical observation that the earth (the atmosphere, the seas, the
earth’s crust and all the life on it) is a self-regulating system (see Lovelock
1979, etc). It is amazing that life exists at all, given the very special
conditions that it needs; moreover, the earth seems to maintain itself in
balance – plants, microbes, water and air all interacting and re-adjusting themselves to keep a steady set of environmental conditions.
The simple view of evolution is that each species is competing with others for
survival, and those that find a niche in which they
can flourish are the ones that survive. Lovelock pointed out that if this is
all that is happening, then each species would tends to create an environment
that eventually would collapse. Instead, a complex range of life forms has
evolved, all interacting with each other and with the physical environment –
and a balance has been maintained. There is no one mechanism that does this –
rather, a large number of different phenomena and processes.
The example given above, of feedback mechanisms,
seems to be part of the picture. (The following notes are from an article by
Tony Osman – source unknown I’m afraid). Thus we need
first to note that the temperature has only varied by a small amount in the
3,500 million years since life first appeared. This ‘small’ variation
nevertheless meant that we moved from ice age to warm periods – but it is
within a range that is suitable for life.
When we look at how the temperature changed we find, for example, that the earliest atmosphere must have been rich in CO2 (warming the planet) – since the sun was not so hot then and otherwise the temperature would have been well below freezing. Life emerged, and then the earliest life forms began to absorb the CO2 (as plants do – then animals as they eat the plants) – with the result that the earth was is danger of cooling too much. Carl Sagan and others have suggested that life must have produced another greenhouse gas – possibly ammonia – that then warmed the planet. Perhaps also darker forms of life absorbed the sunlight. And living creatures give off CO2. So collectively the earth’s temperature was kept in balance.
Another interesting example is isoprene in trees – which makes trees flammable, but seems to have no other purpose. Yet when forests burn, the result is an increase in biodiversity as light reaches the seeds of plants that had been stopped from growing in the dark forests!
Sunlight produces phytoplankton in the sea. The
green plankton produces a chemical – dimethyl
sulphide – that forms sulphate in the atmosphere, which produces clouds, thus
cooling the sea and reducing the amount of phytoplankton produced! An aspect of
global warming that we will be dealing with revolves around these
plankton being produced in excessive amounts...
Lovelock was not suggesting that there is anything
like a god maintaining the earth (even though Gaia was the name of the Greek
earth goddess), but some have rejected his theory because it seems
metaphysical. Lovelock always maintains that he is giving a scientific
description of how the earth system works.
It was also not Lovelock’s intention to suggest
that we need not do anything to protect the environment: if we humans do enough
damage we could upset the whole system, and complex life forms like our own may
be more vulnerable - while other living things may well be able to keep the
balance. The human race, then, surely has a responsibility to itself to take
care!
Update: Gaia and James Lovelock: June 2012 interview where he defends
nuclear power and fracking (!) he argues we need fracking because methane is
better than coal; suggests politics here works like a self-regulating system,
the parties balancing each other out; the greens are a religion... Lovelock
says he is influenced by EO Wilson in that the mega-city is the way of the
future (seems to have little sympathy for those who fall out because of
competition etc), sustainable development is ‘meaningless drivel...’
5. ECONOMICS, BUSINESS & THE ENVIRONMENT: THE
PROBLEM WITH ECONOMICS
5.1 MONETARY VALUES
One of the challenging criticisms that the green movement,
and ecology, have thrown up is that conventional economics is unable to help us
understand the environment. At all sorts of levels, the value-system of
economics is inappropriate.
In economics we put a value on all kinds of “productive” activity, and the GDP of a country will go up with any increase in the number of people working, or the amount of work being done – in other words creating pollution may well improve a country’s GDP!! If many people are sick, and we have to employ more nurses and doctors to deal with them, this in fact puts up the GDP! (All this is the flip side, as it were, of a point made by Keynes: when urging governments to intervene to help lift their economy out of a recession, he said that the state could employ two groups of people, one to dig holes and others to fill them in – so long as the workers were being paid, the economy would begin to grow again. This is because with their purchasing power these workers would then want to buy other goods, and this would stimulate production!)
Putting a value on nature?
In two recent pieces in The Guardian, George Monbiot
and Patrick Barkham discuss this issue. Barkham recommends (‘Put a price on urban trees and halt
this chainsaw massacre’) that councils try to calculate the value of their trees
before cutting them down. There has been controversy
in Sheffield over the council’s cutting down of 50 mature trees. One
of the old elms is home to a colony of a rare butterfly species, the
white-letter hairstreak.
He says that in Wandsworth, where the council
wants to spend £45,000 from the Heritage Lottery on rejuvenating Tooting Common
by removing an avenue of mature chestnuts with ‘sleek young lime trees’,
residents commissioned an expert Jeremy Barrell, who
says first that a variety of trees is better because of the diseases that are
spreading, and second that the best thing to do would be to trim the old trees,
remove a few, and add a variety of new ones. Barrell
uses a calculation called Cavat (similar to a method
used by surveyors for housing). By this method the Sheffield trees
(in Chestnut Avenue) are worth 2.6m, while the new trees would only be
worth £50,000 – £100,000. If big tees are replaced by
saplings, the trees lose their beneficial effects on flooding alleviation and
reduction of pollution.
An American method of calculating value – i-Tree
– could be used; this gives a value of £133m to London’s trees.
These methods are known as ‘ecosystem service’ arguments, and some
criticise them because they are reductive and cannot include such ‘intangibles’
as the positive effect on mental wellbeing, or ecological diversity. ‘Nature
will always be the loser in any cost-benefit crunch’ some people say. But to
convince a council, this may be the best way.
On the other hand, in a polemical piece, George Monbiot
rejects the idea of quantifying the value of nature:
Economics of the Friedmanite variety (Milton
Friedman) argues you can ‘leave it to the market’ but ‘Hurricanes do not
respond to market signals. The plastic fibres in our oceans, food
and drinking water do not respond to market signals. Nor
does the collapse of insect populations, or #coral reefs, or the #extirpation of orangutans from Borneo.’
He goes on to say that there are two problems with ‘monetising’ the
environment: one is, as Barkham says, there are
things which cannot be given a price (human beings, species, ecosystems);
the other is that environmental crises erupt unpredictably – like hurricane
Irma (Sep. 2017). Monbiot goes a step further and
points out that Keynesian economics also fails to deal with the environment,
since it depends on constant production and growth – whereas, as I will argue,
the planet’s resources are not limitless. I will deal with arguments about
‘growth’ and the environment elsewhere...
He concludes: ‘The environmental crisis demands a new ethics, politics and economics.’ I couldn’t agree more!
Valuing Water:
In a ‘round table’ discussion (Guardian 13th Sep
2016, Katherine Purvis report) the problem of water shortages is discussed:
‘The panel was unanimous that, at present, water is not valued in the way it
should be. Lack of awareness from industry, agriculture and domestic users was
suggested as a likely cause.’ Where there has been drought people
realise the value of water – otherwise they don’t. So, ‘Valuing Nature’ – a sustainability consultancy – says we need to
‘understand the value of water in terms of the
cost of delivering it in socially equitable, environmentally sustainable and
economically beneficial ways.’ That is, understanding the total cost would
lead to more effective investment.
Other points made here were: ‘Agriculture is the
largest consumer and the largest polluter of water’ (Paul Reig,
World Resources Institute) but ‘it’s difficult to ask farmers to pay for water
when they struggle to make a living due to market crises of the commodities or
crops they produce.’ (Precisely!)
This is the crux of the problem, I would argue: the
environment needs to be protected and scarce natural resources need to be
valued, but the market is a mechanism that only works with regard to things
that have a price. Private property has a price or value, but public goods
don’t. This needs to change!
5.2 EXTERNALITIES
One way of demonstrating that economics is not able
to put a value (or price) on the essential parts of the
environment: air, water, sunshine is that economics treats the natural
environment as a “free” resource: it belongs to no-one and so no-one will seek
costs, or sue anyone, if it is damaged.
In economics, “costs” to the environment, such as a
polluted river incurred alongside but not in the production process, are
actually called “externalities” or “residuals”. (See Mishan
1967)
An article by John Breslaw
(in John Barr (ed.), The Environmental Handbook, London: Ballantine/Friends of the Earth, 1971, 83—93, p.)
the argument is taken still further: there are two fundamental processes in the
economy – inputs and outputs. Outputs are the residuals (sewage, trash, CO2 and
other gases, radioactive waste etc). ‘The environment has a limited capacity to
absorb wastes without harmful effects. Once the ambient residuals rise above a
certain level, however, they become unwanted inputs to other production
processes or to final consumers. The size of these residual is in fact massive.
In an economy which is closed, the weight of residuals ejected into the
environment is about equal to the weight of input materials, plus oxygen taken
from the atmosphere.’ This is a shock when you think about it, but his main
point is that the market process breaks down when faced with this situation.
Surely this attitude to the natural environment as
‘external’ encourages the attitude of irresponsibility that is at the root of
most environmental problems? The air is not in fact “free”, and it is
encouraging misuse of it to regard it this way. How ironic, that because the
air belongs to us all, it is counted as of no value! We have a situation then
where, in the end, we can only deal with the costs of pollution when the state
steps in and sets fines or penalties for pollution.
It has also often been pointed out that the conventional
economic measures such as GNP do not measure the quality of life. Not
many people want to live in a noisy, dirty, ugly industrial environment where
illness is widespread as a result of pollution – yet such conditions may well
be counted as part of a high GNP! Some attempts have been made to
find alternative measurements, such as a Measure of Domestic Progress (MDP),
suggested by the New Economics Foundation – this measure would “factor in the
social and environmental costs of economic growth, and the benefits of unpaid
work such as household labour, that are excluded from GDP”
Finally, economics cannot put a value on life itself,
for example when someone is killed, other than by calculating the amount of
production that was lost by the death! What an insult to the relatives of
someone who has been, say, killed at work, to be compensated in terms of the
value to the workplace! The problem is that if we use money as the measure of
value, this means that the value of something lies in what we can exchange it
for, not in any intrinsic (or “use”) value. Both Aristotle and Karl Marx
believed that problems would follow from disregarding use value in this way.
Diana Liverman surveys
the debate over the “commodification
[?commoditisation] of nature” and the related question of how to put a price on
environmental services, in an article published in the Annals of the
Association of American Geographers – 94 (4).. As she points out, the
pro-market view regards putting all aspects of the environment on to the market
as the best solution to environmental damage – whilst opponents believe this
would lead to pillaging and damage to indigenous peoples. (See
further under Solutions, later).
*************
Update (1) Aug 2019, Ecosystems and ecological breakdown from UK Youth Climate Coalition. #ecosystems
Update (2) Demonstration of how environmental awareness is developing very quickly (in some places!) #growing awareness
Update
(3) The
argument that we need new language to reflect the reality of ‘global heating’
and ‘the climate crisis’ #new language needed?
Update
(4)
‘#Gaia 2.0’
Update (1)
Aug 2019, Ecosystems
and ecological breakdown from UK Youth Climate Coalition. https://theecologist.org/2019/aug/27/system-change-youth-activism
Ecosystems
- defined as ‘all the living things in an area and the way they affect
each other and the environment’ - are central to how the natural world
functions.
They depend on
something referred to as ‘dynamic equilibrium’ for stability. That is to say,
through constant rebalancing, a stable ecosystem can thrive.
The threats to balance in an ecosystem may be a natural disaster or the spread of disease, for example, but are also human interference and habitat destruction. Around the globe, human activity threatens the fine balance of the ecosystems that all life on earth, including our own, depends on.
Unfolding
Throughout history these ecosystems have been impacted, devalued, and devastated by human influence, as have the human and animal lives which directly depend on them.
The scale of this damage has increased in line with an industrialised, and increasingly powerful global society, and in the past century catastrophic and at times irreversible changes have taken place.
However, only relatively recently have large numbers of people in the Global North become actively engaged with the issue.
To those not directly impacted, widely available media on social networks, news articles, documentaries — such as the widely-acclaimed Netflix series ‘Our Planet’ — have brought the reality of ecological breakdown home to an audience of concerned viewers.
Images of bleached coral reefs devoid of life, seabirds dripping in oil, and walruses crammed onto tiny remnants of ice sheets demonstrate the severity of currently unfolding ecosystem impacts.
Spark
This societal shift in understanding is having implications in the political sphere, with grassroots social movements such as the UK Student Climate Network’s #YouthStrike4Climate and Extinction Rebellion gaining increasing prominence.
This has been coupled with headline-dominating reports from the UN climate change panel (IPCC), which highlights the urgent requirement for action, now crystallised in the common-place use of the term ‘emergency’.
In this spirit, our parliamentarians in the UK have brought the climate and ecological crisis to the House of Commons a number of times in the form of debates and interventions, while voting to pass a symbolic parliamentary climate emergency motion. However, much more still needs to be done.
Furthermore, 2019 has seen a spike in reporting on unfolding environmental damage, with climate and environmental issues polling at their highest in terms of societal concerns in the UK.
Disasters and extreme weather can be the most obvious forms of climate change, and spark conversations in the social and political worlds.
Destroyed
Examples of this include the extreme water shortages in the cities of Chennai, India and Cape Town, South Africa, home to millions and millions of people. Thousands more of these disasters, particularly in the Global South, don’t even make it to our headlines.
Hurricanes and tropical storms become more ‘energetic’ as the planet warms, and have devastating impacts on humans and nature.
The impact that they have is not just due to the warming planet however, but is also due to the relative poverty and emergency structures in place where they land. Partly due to this, the same hurricane can have a deadly impact as it lands in Haiti, and continue on to the USA to inflict only material damage to buildings.
As this blog series progresses, we will continue to explore the interaction between the ‘ecosystems’ (the natural world) and the ‘political systems’ of our world, showing how they are in fact a single, global system. The current, dominant political system, not only devalues nature, but also values certain lives over others.
It’s easy to get lost in all of the headlines that spell out devastating and often unimaginable global destruction. A lot of the media doesn’t really break down the on-the-ground situation, how our ecosystems that comprise the natural world are being destroyed, so we’re going to try and do our best at just that.
Political
Life on Earth is currently experiencing the 6th mass extinction event in its history. The previous event occurred around 66 million years ago, wiping out around 75 percent of all species on earth. Shockingly, a #2018 report found that since 1970, humans have wiped out 60 percent of animal populations on Earth.
The primary direct cause of this destruction is the clearing of forests and other habitats to make way for agriculture (especially beef, and cereal crops) and for the production of commodities such as palm oil and rubber.
The unsustainable use of habitat destroying and non-discriminant fishing techniques are also emptying the seas of fish, while agriculture is polluting the soils and waters with chemicals.
So though climate breakdown is having an increasingly deadly impact on our ecosystems, it is not alone, but sits among other leading causes such as agricultural practices, resource extraction, and air and water pollution.
The natural world is threatened by all of these, all of them are worsened by human activity, and so all interact with our ‘political system’.
Jeopardise
Meanwhile, other industries such as fossil fuels and fashion sectors are also having immense impacts on ecosystems as companies compete to extract and harvest resources. As a result, UN’s Global Assessment Report states that “nature and its vital contributions to people” are “deteriorating worldwide”.
But what does that mean to young people across the world? We can live without nature right? WRONG.
Nature’s contributions to human life are invaluable and often irreplaceable. Whether it’s the air we breathe, the water we drink or the food we eat, we need the natural world. We are part of the natural world, not outside or above it — and like all life on Earth, we depend on it for survival.
So when we talk about nature, the natural world and how it sustains life on
the planet, these are referred to as ‘ecosystem services’. As defined by the UK National
Ecosystem Assessment:
Put in these terms, it seems obvious that we can’t do without them, and we certainly shouldn’t be doing anything to the natural world that may jeopardise such services.
Shift
However, as demonstrated previously, we’re destroying nature at such an alarming rate that our ecosystems, and the services they provide are very much at risk. Though we can understand ecosystems to exist in a state of flux, change at this rate outstrips many species’ ability to adapt.
These species and ecosystems have intrinsic value (meaning that they have value regardless of the outside world, there is something within them which gives them value). However the role they play in human systems can be described through such services, to help us understand how systems can interact.
In the next blog, the sociopolitical systems we inhabit are explored further, allowing us to dissect the relationships between the two.
One system, our economic system, based upon continuous growth through the extraction of resources from the Earth, is putting dangerous stress on the ecosystems supporting life on our planet.
It’s even framing the very way we refer to nature, through phrases such as ‘ecosystem services’. Ensuring that balance can grow, that the natural world isn’t destroyed beyond repair, and that all life and all lives are valued, will require a shift in our economic, political and social modes of organising, in other words, system change.
This article
This article has been written by members of the UK Youth Climate Coalition for The Ecologist.
Demonstration of how environmental
awareness is developing very quickly (in some places!):
From
one day (Weds. 26th) in June 2019 in the Guardian:
1. Southern Water faces prosecution, and has had a
penalty of a £3m fine, and £123m to be paid to customers as compensation, after
failures at sewage treatment sites that polluted rivers and beaches. (Julia Kollewe)
2. Al Gore warns that the global economy needs a
fundamental upgrade to become more sustainable, and to survive the ecological
crisis and widening social divides. (Jilian Ambrose)
From annual report of Generation Investment Management (founded 2004). Rising
use of fossil fuels and unsustainable food and meat production are accelerating
the climate crisis while driving a global healthcare breakdown. Global obesity
levels are rising in line with a growing global appetite for meat and packaged foods.
The growing divide between rich and poor risks encouraging populist politics
and geopolitical instability.
3. Biffa Waste Services Ltd has been convicted of
illegally sending contaminated materials to China (claiming it was paper).
Seven 25-tonne containers were stopped from leaving Felixstowe. Environment
Agency is prosecuting the company. Sentencing has been deferred to September 27th.
(Sandra Laville)
4. A study has shown that government action can cut
air pollution – early deaths in the UK linked to air pollution have fallen by
half between 1970 and 2010. But air pollution is the number one environmental
health hazard, causing as much harm as alcohol. Cleaning up power stations
(sulphur dioxide fell sharply) and vehicles, contributed (small particles and
NO2 – EU regulations helped). But ammonia from farms is still a major hazard. Published by Environmental Research Letters. Charging
vehicles to enter city centres is effective, government research shows – though
govt says should be only last resort... Enabling people to walk, cycle and use
public transport – also cutting down on meat consumption – would help health
and the climate crisis. (Damian Carrington).
5. France is failing to deliver on its promises to
cut emissions – from France’s independent advisory council on climate (HCC).
Paris needs to tackle car use, and building renovation. Rate of decrease of
carbon emissions needs to triple by 2025 to meet target of net zero by 2050. No
real decrease in emissions from transport in the last 10 years. (Angelique Chrisafis)
6. Meanwhile Europe faces hottest June on record,
due to climate crisis. (Jon Henley).
7. Plastic pollution is forming a kind of crust on
rocks on the Portuguese island of Madeira – researchers call it ‘plasticrust’ – blue and grey patches looking like melted
plastic, first spotted in 2016, and since have been spreading. Made of
polyethylene... (AP Lisbon).
8. Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur
on extreme poverty and human rights warns the world is increasingly at risk of
‘climate apartheid’ where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger while the rest
of the world suffers. Alston’s report to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) says
measures being taken to tackle climate crisis are ‘patently inadequate’ and he
condemns Trump for ‘actively silencing’ climate science. Positive developments
are: legal cases taken against states and fossil fuel companies, also Greta
Thunberg’s activism and Extinction Rebellion. Developing countries will bear an
estimated 75% of the costs of the climate crisis, despite the poorest half of
the world’s population only causing 10% of carbon dioxide emissions. (Damian
Carrington).
The
argument that we need new language to reflect the reality of ‘global heating’ and
‘the climate crisis’:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/16/urgency-climate-crisis-robust-new-language-guardian-katharine-viner
-
new terminology needed!
Update
(4)
‘Gaia 2.0’ – a term devised by Tim Lenton (Exeter Uni and Bruno Latour (Sciences Po). Humans are in control of ‘the system’ (which was originally self-regulating).
Update (5)
Population growth.
Following Guardian editorial 24th July 2020, there were letters
from:
- Alastair Currie of Population Matters arguing for
smaller families because increased population and consumption would lead to
‘even more profound challenges including crashing biodiversity, hunger, poverty
and worsening climate change.’
Joe Williams, dept of geography Durham Uni, and Caitlin Robinson, dept of geography and planning,
Liverpool Uni: Malthus’s predictions never transpired
because he ‘ignored the role of technology in increasing resource use
efficiency’, but he also ‘overlooked the fact that there are huge inequalities
in resource consumption, and it is these inequalities that are to blame for
crises such as famine’. Wealthy countries have often used population as a way
of blaming developing countries for environmental problems. But per capita
emissions are the only morally defensible way of measuring environmental
damage, and a report in India 1991 called out ‘environmental colonialism.’
‘Global Justice Now rightly describes the overpopulation debate as fuelled by
eugenics and racism.’
- Martin Pask from York
cites The Spirit Level by Wilkinson and Picket. Inequality needs dealing with!