The Elephants In The Planet

We usually say “the elephant in the room” but I chose elephants in the planet to signify two things: first, we still live in separate rooms (countries) on this planet; and second, in each of these rooms there is a different elephant (sometimes more) that we like to ignore.  And, of course, the future of real elephants depends on how we handle our metaphorical elephants.

World leaders have met 26 times since 1995 to agree on how to protect the climate.   This week’s meetings in Glasgow are the most critical thus far as all the evidence points that unless serious action is taken earth’s climate will warm more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above its pre-industrial level by the end of the century. 

Climate, however, is not our only concern.  We also have to protect biodiversity which has declined at alarming rates.  The protection of climate and biodiversity is essential to a healthier and livable planet.  Pursuing both, it will come down to passing from one world to another.  On one side, we have millennia of human life that has prioritized human gratification regardless of its harmful effects on the rest of natural life and the earth’s climate that sustains it.  To abandon this path will take a radical technological and cultural transformation on part of the human race.  On the other side, there is the promise of a safer world in which, however, daily life can be only imagined in all its aspects and wrinkles.

We know what we need to do from a technological standpoint to move from one to the other world.  We need to drastically reduce the emission of carbon dioxide, methane and other harmful substances.  We also need to raise our sense of responsibility to the rest of the natural world.  For these things to happen we have to reduce the human footprint on the earth.  Our footprint includes where we live, how we travel, and what and how much we produce and consume.  That’s where I believe the greatest challenges lie.  These challenges are the elephants in our rooms we need to consider.

The first challenge we face in reducing the human footprint on the planet is population growth.  Thankfully, two factors are helping in this regard.  The first is the dramatic decline in infant mortality across the globe so that we no longer need to have many offspring as insurance against premature death.  The second factor is control of birth rates thanks to more education and the use of contraceptives.  But while lower birth rates have brought better living standards to overcrowded poorer countries, they have raised anxieties in developed nations with below replacement birth rates.  Since our global population is way past what experts consider to be its sustainable level (no more than 3 billion) we need to turn our attention away from population growth to its distribution by adopting more open immigration policies.  This, of course, is a red flag to nationalists, meaning it’s one of our elephants in the room

The second elephant is over-consumption fed by the culture of consumerism.  It has two dimensions.  One is our desire to over-satisfy existing needs (Veblen’s “conspicuous consumption”).  Bigger houses, bigger and more cars, more clothes, more extravagant recreation activities.  The other dimension is the creation of new needs.  To satisfy new needs we often utilize new technologies that further expand the human footprint.  Consumer demand is the bulk of the GDP of all countries and economic policies rely on boosting consumer demand to grow the national income.  The consumption problem will not abate in the future as billions of people from second and third world countries ascend toward a middle-class income level and are influenced by the global reach of consumerism projected by affluent countries.  And over-consumption has an attendant problem: wealth seeking, which itself generates activity that increases the human footprint. 

The third elephant is the need for global collaboration.  To this end, we need to move from the concept of the national common good to the concept of the global common good.  But as difficult it is for individual citizens to prioritize the national good over their personal good it is equally difficult for countries to temper their nationalist interests in the interest of the global common good.  Maintaining the great forests of the earth and reducing pollutants and planet-warming chemicals requires a global response because environmental degradation does not respect national borders.  The developed countries which were the early climate abusers have to shoulder more of the cost of climate protection so that less developed countries can improve their wellbeing.  There is no guaranty that all major countries will attain this enlightened spirit of cooperation.  Domestic political rivalries often trip the most ambitious and determined efforts to serve climate-related priorities.  The US is a case in point.  Here the profit interests of the fossil fuel industry and its political collaborators have stymied Congress from ratifying international climate treaties.  In China, the preoccupation with ensuring the ability of the Communist Party to deliver prosperity to the Chinese people is their domestic obstacle.  In Russia, the huge dependence of its economy on fossil fuels makes the country less eager to contribute to climate efforts.

Finally, there is the elephant of how we want to treat and interact with the rest of natural life.  In this regard, there is a dark possibility we have to account for.  What if after we attain a net-zero state we feel more empowered to expand the human presence and activity beyond the current boundaries.  Our history shows we use technological advances for both good and evil.  What would that do to other species?  What if we manage to counter the negative climate effects of deforestation by other means, ignoring biodiversity concerns?   Along with other species this will further contribute to the demise of those of our fellow humans that still choose to live in their tribal and indigenous customs and ways of life.  They have already suffered a lot in the name of explorations, conquests, and economic exploitation of their lands.  And yet they are the sole source we have to find how we lived in the distant past and our sole way to learn how humans cope and live in harmony with nature.  We make every effort to preserve antiquities and artifacts and we build museums to house our Picassos and Cezannes.  Don’t we owe the same and more to our human past life surviving in the Tribes and Indigenous People of our Planet?*

 * With our typical overconfidence in the universality of our values, modern humans have all along assumed that indigenous people wish to be brought up to our way of life.  That’s a falsehood.  To this day, indigenous people around the world remain indifferent to the comforts of modern life and refuse to be assimilated and change their ways of living.