Guardians of Earth

April 22, 2021 was Earth day.  On this occasion, President Biden summoned to a teleconference forty world leaders (read Earth’s greatest polluters) to opine about the damage we do to our planet and how to save it.  So, you would be inclined to think that humans really hold planet Earth to great regard and in the good old tradition of humans they have even set aside a day to celebrate their hospitable cosmic abode.  Of course, we know there is considerable gap between professed concern and real action.

The truth is that if it were not for environmental scientists and activists around the world, state governments would do very little in this regard.  The fact that scientists and activists have such a hard time to move the needle is the ingrained attitudes and beliefs most of us have, which dispose us toward mistrust and denial.  After all, as a species, we have had a pretty good life so far.   We have been taught to believe that Earth with its animals, plants and other resources is ours to enjoy as far as our desires and ingenuity, respectively, dictate and enable us.

At the same time, we need to acknowledge that taking real meaningful action to arrest, let alone reverse, environmental and climatic damage means to alter our lifestyles in dramatic ways, something for which we are not yet ready, either economically or culturally.  Opinion polls that show majorities of the public to be concerned about environment degradation and climate change do not readily translate to votes in favor of pro-environmental platforms.  This will happen when the public becomes educated enough about these matters so that there is a cultural transformation in societies around the world.

To effect this cultural transformation about the natural environment, we first need, in my opinion, to battle beliefs that have made us inured to understanding our responsibilities.  I will address a few I have identified through my own education on the topic.

The first, I will call “It’s Nature’s Way.”  This is the belief that the earth has gone through many environmental cycles and yet here we are still standing.  Since these cycles (prior to the modern one) occurred with no interference from humans, they must represent, the belief goes, a natural phenomenon and makes little sense to fight it.  This is false.  Currently, the atmosphere contains 410 CO₂ parts per million (with more ppm signifying warmer temperature). This metric stood at 600-1400 ppm about 50 million years ago.  Afterwards, the earth gradually cooled, as CO₂ fell to 400 ppm around 3.2 million years ago, and then to 280 ppm about 127,000 years ago, a CO₂ content that with very little variation lasted until the Industrial Revolution.*

Thus, the earth had entered a cooling period when our hominin branch appeared and it stabilized at around 280 CO₂ through our life as homo sapiens, until CO₂ started to climb the last two centuries.  The new era of warmer climate is one our species has not previously experienced over a long period of time and, therefore, we have no idea what it portends for us.  That is, it may not be our natural environment.

There is also another part in the “It’s Nature’s Way” belief.  This belief is based on the correct premise that nature is indifferent to how and which species survive.  From about 250 to 65 million years ago the dinosaurs ruled the earth.  They were ferocious eating machines that, among other things, they suppressed the evolution of mammals.  Following their extinction, there was an explosion of mammalian life, of which an offshoot is us.  Today, we are the dinosaurs.  We exterminate, suppress, and regulate the lives of other species.  There is though a huge difference between dinosaurs and modern humans.  We have the capacity to understand and evaluate the impact of our behavior on nature.  Unless we conclude that, by virtue of evolutionary forces, we are enslaved to behave with selfish indifference to the rest of nature, we have no morality-based excuse to act this way.  Privileged with the capacity for awareness and appraisal we should also consider other options than the selfish exploitation of our planet and its life. 

The other cultural belief that explains our attitude toward nature is “Humans Are Unique.”  Since ancient times, philosophies and religions have celebrated the human uniqueness in reasoning, emotions, and sentience (felt experience).  But this dichotomy between human and non-human has started to crumble under the overwhelming evidence that comes from animal studies.  What we have been learning is that humans lie on a continuum in regards to cognition, emotion and subjective experience that includes a lot of other animals.  Hints and traces of these started in early life and evolved with a greater footprint in more recent animals and finally to us. 

In the recent Oscar Awards, My Octopus Teacher won for best documentary feature.  It is the story of an octopus off the shore of South Africa that “befriends” a diver over the course of its remaining life.  It is one of many examples we have where we see demonstration of some human traits in other animals.  As Peter Godfrey-Smith (author of Metazoa: Animal Life and The Birth of the Mind) writes, what we now know about animals should compel us to give them some deserved consideration in how we treat them.  And one cannot walk away from reading Frans De Waal’s Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves without feeling a deep appreciation and bond with our animal neighbors on planet earth.

So, if a warmer climate may be unnatural to us; if our reasoning capacities establish an ethical obligation to the planet; and if we start to know we are part, not outside, of the animal spectrum, then we need to move toward a culture that is friendly to life, biodiversity and co-existence.

When evolution gave us the large and complex brains that enabled us to move up a notch in the continuum of reason and emotions, that was a gift with strings.  It made us capable to feel, understand, and achieve a lot more than other living organisms; but it also gave us the capacity to sense our responsibilities to nature.  Whether we like it or not, evolution made us the Guardians of Earth.

 * From “The Dark Secrets of the Earth’s Deep Past, Peter Brannen, The Atlantic, March 2021.