HOW SHOULD WE ACT IN LIGHT OF AN UNSUSTAINABLE FUTURE?
Supper Club Talk,
Feb. 2015
Lynn A. Brant
The road to my brother-in-law's house in western North
Carolina is very narrow and twisting. On
one side is a steep bank of rock and on the other side is a steep drop-off into
a stream. Merely getting off the
pavement in places would send the car over the edge. I attend closely to my driving on this road,
which is unlike any in Iowa. A texting
teen would come to a bad end in short order.
If we were to stop the vehicle in a moment of time as it
travels along this road we would see that the car is always headed either into
the bank or over the cliff. But I have
traveled this road many times without disaster.
I am able to anticipate the curves and turn the steering wheel just the
correct amount to be able to stay on the road.
I use this road as a metaphor for humanity's travel through
history. Looking ahead at any one
moment, society might appear to be headed toward certain catastrophe such as in
the spring of 1940 when the Nazis were in the process of destroying Europe,
during the McCarthy era when free speech and democracy were in jeopardy, and
during the Cold War when nuclear annihilation seemed almost certain. We continue down this twisting road as we see
a dysfunctional Congress in Washington and war-torn countries in the Mid-east
doing their best to destroy civilization.
But even if we negotiate the curves presented by Iraq, Syria, and the
Ukraine, we have even greater threats ahead that might well bring on a global
catastrophe ending civilization. The
direction in which we are headed at any one moment is unsustainable, and
whether we negotiate the tricky curves in the future depends upon the decisions
and good luck of many people.
Josef Fox was a teacher of philosophy and humanities at the
University of Northern Iowa. He was also
a member of this Supper Club. After Fox
died, Tommy Thompson put together a collection of his writings into a slim
volume entitled A Faith in Reason. Included in Fox's book is an essay entitled,
"The Present Predicament of Mankind" written in 1973. According to Dorothy Grant's history of The
Supper Club, Fox also gave a talk here by the same title in 1975. The predicament he describes is that faced by
the world of increasing population, decreasing resources, and environmental
degradation.
Of course, Joe Fox was not the first to speak of these
dangers in the 1970's. The Population Bomb by Ehrlich, The Closing Circle by Barry Commoner,
and The Limits to Growth by The Club
of Rome, among others, were in circulation at the time. Many people thought these warnings were
nonsense, but many others, including myself, thought these ideas were spot
on. My own writings in support of this
general view of things appeared in one environmental impact statement I was
helping to write at the time and in at least one of my journals.
Over the intervening forty years, civilization has made it
around the curves on that twisting road.
No great global catastrophe has yet destroyed our culture, we have not
run out of resources, and we aren't choking on each other's waste. In many ways we have partially cleaned up our
pollution and have increased our immediate supply of natural resources, such as
natural gas, but many of the dangers of the 1970's, sometimes in a new guise,
are still with us. We still have a
predicament.
Recent articles in the scientific literature point out the
predicament of unsustainable trends that are ignored by economists and national
governments that pay more attention to GDP growth than to environmental
issues. The problems are well documented
in scientific studies. *
In 1970 the world's population was about three and a half
billion people. Today there are over
seven billion and approaching nine or ten billion by 2050 and 10 to 12 billion
by the end of the century. What level
will it reach? The trip down that road
in North Carolina started in an agile sports car, then it shifted to an SUV,
and now it is becoming a lumbering bus.
More and more people are along for the ride. **
Many resources, such as minerals, energy sources, and
agricultural commodities, have been extended and increased through new
discoveries and new technologies. Newly
discovered deposits of minerals and new technologies to extract them have kept
humans from running out of these materials.
Oil and gas are now produced from shale deposits once considered
uneconomic. Hydraulic fracturing is
making the United States less dependent upon foreign sources. Wind turbines spin to light our streets and
power our electronic devices. Increases
in agricultural productivity have produced so much food that we are now using
it to make fuel.
The world is much richer than it was in 1970. People in many parts of the world are
consuming more metals, more energy, eating more meat, and living in larger
houses. The impact of the population
growth is intensified by this growing demand of each of these persons who also
want to drive cars and live the good life.
And who has the right to deny these people the things that many of us
already have. That trip along that
metaphorical road in North Carolina not only now has more passengers, but the
bus is going faster and faster.
In 1970 towns were still spraying DDT to control mosquitoes
and farmers were still using it to control other pests. Bald eagles were in decline because the
pesticide was making their eggshells too thin, and DDT was showing up in human
milk. Spray cans were using chlorofluorocarbons
(Freon) to make them work destroying the protective ozone in the
stratosphere.
Today we no longer manufacture either DDT or CFC's. Eagles are back and the ozone layer is
beginning its slow recovery. We have
partly resolved acid rain by controlling sulfur dioxide from our power plants,
and many other pollutants we once dumped into the global commons are no longer
released. However, our environmental
degradation continues as we pollute with new substances such as neonicotinoids
which may be causing as much damage as DDT did.
We are also extracting resources in ways that do more environmental
damage. Many of these newly discovered
resources are in places, such as the bottom of the sea, that involve impacts
upon systems never before affected. For
instance, there is great need for the sand found in northeast Iowa and adjacent
states to extract oil and gas using hydraulic fracturing (fracking). And the need for greater amounts of
fertilizers and pesticides to obtain maximum yields in our farm fields is
creating new and greater impacts upon the oceans. Meeting the demand for all these resources to
keep billions of people alive and in relative wealth is increasing damage to
the planetary ecosystem.
In an impact statement I helped write in 1974 for a power
plant that would burn a railroad car of coal every five minutes, I mentioned
the threat that all that carbon dioxide would have on the climate. I was way ahead of the times. Only a few technical books and the occasional
article in Science ever mentioned
global warming at that time. The hot
summer of 1988 and the first mention of this topic in the press was a long way
in the future.
Now the glaciers are melting at an accelerating rate, sea
levels are rising, and weather patterns are shifting. I doubt Joe Fox mentioned global climate
change as part of the "predicament" in his talk to the Supper Club
back in 1975. Although a warming planet
is unlikely to kill us off, it does add stress to the systems that maintain
human welfare.
Joe Fox probably didn't mention another problem I have heard
or read little about. In fact, the
technological optimists of the world wouldn't recognize such as a problem at
all. I am referring to what I shall call
"technological dependency".
Technological dependency started early in human history. When our primitive ancestors started to move
into colder climates and had to rely upon foods that needed cooking, they were
dependent upon the technology of building and maintaining fire. This technology helped the people spread
across the globe and certainly helped them increase their numbers. And of course, fire also enabled these early
people to accomplish other tasks as well.
The evolution of technology, for the most part, whether it
is building fire or employing medicine to fight off the latest communicable
disease, adds to our comfort, pleasure, safety, and general well-being. Agriculture is an example. Growing crops and domesticated animals
increased the carrying capacity of the landscape. Many more people could live within a given
area by growing crops than they could by just hunting and gathering. Growing paddy rice can support as many as
1,000 people per square mile.
But as any Iowa farmer knows, agriculture sometimes
fails. Too little or too much rain,
early frosts, insects, and disease can all reduce, or in some cases, destroy
the crop. Crop failure has put a lid on
population growth for millennia, and it often leads to starvation, poverty,
war, and other nasty things.
The industrial revolution brought forth new machines to grow
and harvest larger crops, to carry them to distant markets, and to successfully
store the excess for use in leaner times.
Because of world trade, Iowa corn doesn't feed just Iowans, and the
people in this state also eat from the tropics and all the rest of the
world. A failed crop in one place can be
met by the crop in another. In addition
to supplying the world with greater amounts of food, modern technology and
engineering have improved sanitation, medicine, and safer childbirth that have
all allowed the world's population to soar, and it continues to grow at a high
rate. Africa is supposed to quadruple
its population this century.
The seven billion people alive on the planet right now owe
their life, wealth, and comfort (those having wealth and comfort) to an
integrated set of high-tech systems that provide food, employment, and all the
rest of the things needed for such a life.
For each billion more people added to the earth we need to solve many
more problems through even greater advances in science and engineering. In my analogy, this is steering the vehicle
around those curves on that North Carolina road. But therein lies another problem. Each of these advances in technology
increases our dependence upon those advances.
Ever increasingly complicated systems depending upon other configurations
of technology to hold them together makes for a shaky foundation for the
billions of people on the planet.
Once in Maine I was touring lighthouses and I asked,
"Why do you still have them when nearly every boat is equipped with
GPS?" "What if the GPS system
fails?" was the answer I got. That
made sense to me. I know I don't want to
be out in the dark along the coast of Maine without navigational aids. At another time, I was listening to a speaker
from Iowa State University about precision agriculture that depends upon GPS to
steer tractors and administer the correct amount of seed and fertilizer so our
land can "feed the world". I
asked what would happen to precision farming if the GPS system failed. "Oh, that wouldn't happen", was the
answer I got. Hmmmmmm!
We don't know how often they occur but there have been
extreme outbursts of the sun throwing gigatons of material toward the
earth. In the 19th century there was an
outburst that would today bring down the electrical grid, mess up a lot of
electronic systems, and might fry the GPS satellites. Without an electrical system, our way of life
would, at least temporarily, come to an end.
Manufacturing and communications would cease and without GPS there would
be a lot of lost motorists on the highway.
Precision farming would be temporarily set back, but lobstermen might
continue to find their way home. But it
need not be an extreme solar outburst.
Last September one disgruntled contractor set a fire in an air traffic
control center that disrupted air travel across the nation. If the actions of just one person could do
that, think what a global economic meltdown or a nuclear war would do.
But perhaps the greatest long-term threat of all is the loss
of biodiversity. We are in a period of
mass extinction greater than at any time since the dinosaurs were wiped out
some 65 million years ago. Can the human
species continue to live and prosper in an ever-diminishing global ecosystem? As someone once made a comparison to a person
flying in an airplane as it flew thousands of feet above the ground and
watching rivets come out of the wing.
Surely the loss of one or a few rivets would not cause the wing to fail
and lead to a crash, but how many can be lost before catastrophe occurs? We have no idea what the answer is to that
question. We simply do not understand
what vital role each species plays in global ecosystems. Yes, many have a bit part in the play and are
not missed when they disappear, but some or some number of certain groups are
vital. Our domination of the planet is
driving many species to extinction.
First it's the big cuddly things, but as time goes by the ones that we
don't notice - and might be most important - disappear to never return. That increasingly crowded, lumbering bus in
North Carolina is going faster and faster, but now the road is getting
narrower. How long can we keep it on the
pavement?
In light of these dangers, I think humankind has a
predicament - a predicament somewhat different from the one Joe Fox described
in the 1970's but a predicament nevertheless.
And I think the dangers are real, and that our civilization, as we know
it, is in great peril.
Of course, there have always been pessimists like myself,
and their worst projections usually don't come true. However, sometimes they do. I'm sure there were pessimists in 1914 as The
Great War broke out, and then in 1941 Admiral Yamamoto warned that if Japan
went to war with the United States his country would be defeated and
"reduced to absolute poverty".
Many Jews in Europe were not pessimistic enough to imagine what would
happen to them as the Nazis came to power.
On the other hand, optimists make the world move forward, solve
problems, and lead to greater welfare of humanity. Some think the problem of too many people
will cure itself - as it most certainly will do, the question is how will that
happen. Some want to engineer solutions
to technical and environmental problems, and I expect many of these efforts
will be successful. However, can we negotiate
the next curve, and what will we find around that next corner?
In 1977 and 78 I did fieldwork for my doctoral thesis in the
mountains south of Helena, Montana. The
mountains were covered by a forest, dating back to the last big fire, and
dotted by sedge meadows where glacial ponds once glistened in the sun. About the only evidence of human activity,
other than the narrow gravel road crossing the mountains, were the small
diggings by prospectors in their search for gold, but even those were nearly
obliterated by the intervening century.
Hardly anyone but a few hunters in the fall would wander this land. In 2011 I revisited the site. The narrow road was widened for logging
trucks, some stream crossings had new bridges made of concrete, the trees had
been mostly killed by the bark beetle infestation, and loggers were removing
their dead trunks. The landscape
appeared dead, brown, and littered by no-trespassing signs placed around the
old mining claims. I was somewhat
heart-broken.
After a time to reflect, I began to look at the landscape in
an entirely different way. I started to
think like a geologist. What I saw in
2011 was just the present configuration of that landscape. Some 12,000 years ago the land was barren and
rocky. Glacial ice covered part of the
area, and no trees grew there. After a
while, the glaciers melted and dwarf birch trees grew around the ponds that
were becoming filled with new life in the warming climate. Eventually the pine forest moved up out of
the valleys to blanket the hills. Fires
reduced the forest to ashes untold times.
A mountain in Oregon where Crater Lake now stands blew its top and
covered my research area with volcanic ash.
What a mess that must have made.
What I saw in that beautiful landscape in 1978 was only one
configuration of that mountain. In 2011
I saw another configuration; one where the beetles and loggers had destroyed
the forest. But just as the
configurations of earlier times when fires, volcanic eruptions, and prospectors
brought about change in the landscape, time will erase the configuration of the
beetle destruction too. A thousand years
from now - perhaps after human folly totally removes us - the road will have
washed out, the concrete bridges will have crumbled, and the forest will grow,
burn down, and re-grow a few times. The
configurations of form, processes, and materials come and go. Nature is ever-present. The Helena Mountains have seen a parade of
configurations, and eventually even the configuration of the mountains themselves
will pass.
It's not as though we are the first to alter the earth in a
major way. The landscapes of Europe and
Southeast Asia were greatly changed many centuries ago by the people living
there. The earliest Native Americans,
within a short time of their arrival on these two continents, annihilated the
megafauna of the Americas that apparently rivaled that of Africa. Iowa, with its corn and soybean fields, is
nothing like it was a few centuries ago.
And early European settlers in eastern North America found a landscape
very different from what it had been a few centuries earlier when the Native
Americans were busy farming and altering the land. The "untouched wilderness" these
Europeans saw was what grew up after disease wiped out the natives a century or
so before. Our present population is not
unique in changing the planet, but there are now seven billion of us wielding
technology that is so much more powerful.
The configuration of the world today is unlike anything that has ever
come before.
We need not worry about saving the earth. The earth will go on with or without us. Our worries should be about saving the
habitability of the planet. The present
configuration of the earth includes seven billion human beings with many more
billions on the way. It also includes
bits of wildness and species of plants and animals we care about. Configurations of nature we see in our
national parks and other places give us pleasure. Our very existence depends upon a
continuation of certain configurations that permit agriculture, forestry, and
living spaces for these billions of people.
But global configurations are changing. Crowding more and more people onto the planet
is bringing forth great change as we convert our landscape into what amounts to
a human feedlot. The inadvertent change
we are bringing to the climate will make it harder to maintain this
feedlot. The earth has seen much warmer
temperatures in the past, but there weren't ten billion people trying to make a
living back then. The combination of
climate change, over-crowding, pandemic disease, religious tribalism, and
nuclear war will likely some day reduce the human population to a fraction of
the present numbers.
On the other hand, by dint of wise actions, we may solve our
greatest problems facing us in the early part of the 21st century. It need not turn out badly. In any case, the human predicament in the
future will be of a different character.
Whatever the case, the present direction we are headed down that
twisting road is not sustainable.
Now, I ask the members of this Supper Club, how should we
act in the light of this unsustainable course we are on? I suggest that simplistic actions such as
driving a Prius and recycling our tin cans is not enough. Our individual impact upon the earth is far
greater than actions such as these can mitigate.
Some of the biggest blunders made in history have been when
human actions did not account for changing configurations. For instance, the nineteenth century military
tactics failed to work in 1914 when warfare introduced machine guns. And the Maginot Line designed with WW I in
mind failed horribly in WW II. Getting
rich by borrowing money to buy more stocks, that worked so well in 1928, did
not work so well at the end of 1929. I
argued against the coal-fired power plant proposed for Waterloo because the old
model of building more coal-fired plants to sell ever-increasing amounts of
power was out of date. Waterloo city
leaders couldn't see that, but economic events overtook the situation, ending
the planned facility. Today coal-fired
power plants are being shut down and wind farms are springing up. We need to face up to the present dangers of
the present configuration in new and creative ways. Going on as if having 25 grandchildren and
pretending this is to be celebrated, as Mitt Romney has done, is not facing the
dangers of the present configuration.
I am suggesting, along with many others in the scientific
community, that doing business as usual in light of a rapidly-growing human
population, destruction of biologic diversity, increasing technological
dependence, as well as pollution, warming climate, and resource depletion will
lead to disaster for civilization. We
need to greatly alter our view of where we are going and how we intend to get
there.
How should we act?
* Dasgupta et al.,
and McNutt, Science, 19 Sep 2014.
** Gerland et al., Science,
10 October 2014
POSTSCRIPT: My
pessimism was a topic of part of the good-natured discussion after this talk to
which I would like to add this comment.
We sat there in a Cedar Falls restaurant in the comfort of
the warm room on a cold night outside with the knowledge that we can go home to
a warm house, full refrigerator, and not have to worry about being awakened in
the night be a creditor about to throw us out onto the street because we have
no money or some military action that will threaten our lives. Optimism regarding the future is easy in this
setting. Unfortunately, most of the
world's population does not live in such wealth and comfort. The misery created by extreme poverty,
political power struggles, religious fanaticism, and such are not that of a
pessimist, but rather are facts of the world we see only dimly from our sheltered
lives.