Why the Environment Always Loses to the Powerful. And What’s the Solution?
The powerful do not want us to think straight or to know what the real environmental stories are. But here is the solution.
In this article, you will learn:
The two most important environmental issues that you’ve never heard of
Whether you can trust the media to report accurately on environmental issues
How to get away from the media long enough to have an intelligent dialogue
Recently, I wrote this article about endangered species.
How to Protect "Endangered" Species Before They Become Endangered
My main point is that if we want to protect species, we should strive to protect their habitat. By the time a species is endangered, it may be too late to save them. And by the time a species is endangered, they have long since been denied the opportunity to perform their ecological functions over most of their range. Beavers, prairie dogs, owls and woodpeckers all perform vital ecological functions. Preventing the entire species from being eliminated is really not the goal, is it?
The trouble is that keeping a species population from falling to zero is a clear and quantifiable goal. Humans are suckers for clear and quantifiable goals. What gets measured gets managed.
We are measuring the wrong things
If I could wave a magic wand and make anything happen, I would have humans create more space for ecosystems. But that’s hard to quantify.
We talk about Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as if it is the economy. We forget that it is only one measure of the economy, and that the economy is only one indicator of human well being. So GDP becomes equivalent to quality of life, even though GDP includes things that do not equate to quality of life, like environmental toxins.
We talk about 415 parts per million of carbon dioxide as if this is THE indicator of whether we have a healthy biosphere. We obsess on it because it is measurable, and we forget the myriad indicators of ecological health that are not readily measured.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide has become the measure of environmental health, to the point where we are not monitoring the ill effects of projects and activities thought to be renewable.
Every year, countless tons of wood from North American forests are burned in British and European power plants, all because this process is deemed to be renewable and clean.
So quantifying can be deeply problematic. Reducing everything to a number can be foolish and myopic.
And yet, we need a way to measure progress and success.
How to measure success
Here’s what I propose: let’s measure success by the quantity and quality of space we dedicate to ecosystems.
Let’s measure success by the ratio of acreage ecologically managed to acreage harmfully managed.
The idea is that if we are losing forests to the proverbial chainsaw, then we are going in the wrong direction. And it doesn’t matter how much we pretend to decarbonize as long as we are losing forests to the chainsaw.
What’s really missing from the environmental picture?
Why are we losing forests to the chainsaw? Partly because “We The People” do not have the power or authority to say no to oligarchs.
The other reason we are losing forests to the chainsaw is that we have bought into the false notion that we can decarbonize while growing the economy.
We have overestimated the degree to which solar, wind and electric vehicles will decarbonize our energy system.
We have overestimated the degree to which we can decouple energy from carbon emissions.
Notice that while we roll out renewable energy, carbon emissions continue to rise year by year.
How can we decarbonize the economy?
If solar, wind and electric vehicles were decarbonizing our energy system, you would expect carbon emissions to be going down.
And yet carbon emissions continue to rise. Why?
Because GDP continues to rise. GDP correlates to energy production. GDP and energy consumption are further correlated to the total quantity of materials flowing through the economy, sometimes called materials throughput.
Materials throughput includes the materials that come to use from farming, forestry and fishing, as well as mining. It’s hard to lower carbon emissions, while continually increasing the materials flowing through the economy from farming, forestry, fishing and mining.
What does exponential growth look like?
When you grow the economy by about 2.5% per year, then the economy doubles about every 30 years.
Try doubling the economy every 30 years, while at the same time lowering carbon emissions. If you (hypothetically) succeeded in reducing your carbon emissions by half, but then doubled your energy output, then you’d be right back in the same place.
Besides, there is a tremendous hidden cost to these so-called renewable technologies. If you want to know how much ecological damage they are doing (e.g., deforestation and water pollution), then look at the price tag. In most cases the price of something is a nearly perfect indicator of the ecological damage, because all those dollars are flowing into a worldwide economy, with worldwide supply chains.
A new Tesla is absolutely loaded with electronics. And nobody knows where all the materials came from. What we do know paints a picture of pollution, slavery and deforestation.
Can the modern industrial economy ever be green?
The modern industrial economy is green only in the vivid imagination of its proponents.
So we need better measures of ecological health. We need to stop fooling ourselves and stop allowing others to fool us.
The massive weight of human-made things
Here’s another part of the untold story: anthropogenic mass. Anthropogenic mass is the total mass of human made objects, including roads, bridges, buildings, bridges, toys, vehicles and weapons.
Just think about everything you’ve ever shopped for and everything it takes to deliver it to the store. And then add everything that is bought by governments and corporations. Now think of everything it takes to deliver everything everywhere in our massive and growing economy.
When my grandparents were born around the turn of the 20th century, anthropogenic mass was 3% of biomass. In this context, biomass is the total weight of all living things on earth.
Add two world wars. Add America’s zealous post-WWII pursuit of the world’s largest war machine. Add air travel and airports. Add automobiles--virtually nonexistent at the time of my grandparents’ birth. Add an interstate highway system that delivers goods all day every day nationwide. Put all this together and you get exponential growth such that anthropogenic mass is now 100% of biomass.
See this excellent website:
https://anthropomass.org/
.
So now, all the anthropogenic mass in the world is equal to all living things in the world. All human things in the world are equal in weight to all living things. This is unprecedented in history.
Is this progress?
We don’t stop to think about whether this is progress. Or if it is “progress,” maybe it is more akin to the progress of a disease.
That’s okay. I’m not here to throw you on a guilt trip. I’m just trying to be honest. The least we can do is to stop lying to each other.
Anthropogenic mass continues to grow at about the rate of economic growth. If it grows at 2.5% per year, then it will double every 30 years. With 75 years left in this century, and with anthropogenic mass doubling every 30 years, we can expect it to be double twice and be four times as much by the end of the century.
Thus, we are crowding out nature. There’s no room for nature to even breathe, let alone thrive!
Taking control of the public conversation
This is one of those opportunities to shift the burden of proof. The burden of proof is on those who think we merely need to “decarbonize” and then everything will be sustainable.
The story of anthropogenic mass that doubles every 30 years is one of the great untold stories among environmentalists.
We don’t hear about this because the powers that (shouldn’t) be will not allow this to become common knowledge. There’s too much at stake for them. If this were common knowledge, then the entirety of modern industrial society would be called into question.
What is the most important environmental issue?
In recent years, carbon emissions have been the number one environmental news story. The problem is fossil fuels. The solution is (so-called) renewable energy.
The powerful industries that control our society are not calling for us to organize society around the care of nature. They are not calling for us to place limits on the wealthy and the powerful. They are not calling for us to make those simple changes that would be good for nearly everyone. I’m talking about limitations on pesticides and microplastics. I’m talking about limitations on transoceanic shipping. I’m talking about limitations on war.
These activities are too profitable for the lucky few. They are not going to change voluntarily. There are more of us than there are of them. In theory, we could be more powerful. But in practice we are not.
Regenerative agriculture
If we organized society around nature, we would replace a rapacious and destructive agricultural system with Regenerative Agriculture.
This may require more people to be farmers and less people working for defense industries. But how many people working for defense industries would like to get out of the cubicle and work on a regenerative farm?
We need to create opportunities for such people to make that transition, especially those who want to do so and would enjoy the opportunity to work outdoors growing food.
The “science” of defense
By the way, defense currently receives half of all public funds dedicated to science. 50 cents of every scientific dollar goes to the business of war, according to Clifford D Smith, author of The Tragedy of American Science.
In other words, the science of war is big business, with big people making big money. Insofar as they control the channels of communication, it is in their interest to make sure we focus on making weapons, rather than figuring out how to grow healthy food at scale.
Much of what farmers grow is not even food. This is not a criticism of small family farmers, who are doing the best they can. They are locked into a system that is both wasteful and counterproductive, the system which serves the interest of a few companies at the expense of taxpayers, consumers, farming communities and the environment.
Courses are the best medium of communication
That’s why I believe in courses as a medium of communication. It is a good way to build community in a way that is free of the noise and the interference associated with other media. It is also a way to build genuine relationships.
In the upcoming Water & Climate course, we will discuss important issues free from interference from the powerful industries that tend to dominate the public conversation.
Check out the Water & Climate course, starting in July.
Water & Climate - Biodiversity for a Livable Climate
https://bio4climate.org/course-offerings/water-and-climate/?blm_aid=26405
The untold story of how water drives climate change … what climate models miss about the power of water.
