It seems that humanity is still in the phase of being consumed by inter-country squabbles that distract us from addressing our common and serious challenges. That’s why it is useful to occasionally look at the bigger picture.
In a recent article in the New York Times, Ezra Klein worries that many adults are reluctant to have children because of the threats their offsprings will face due to climate change and overall environmental degradation. He makes the case for parenthood by reminding us that not much into the distant past the majority of people lived in poverty and disease and their offsprings had limited potential for a better future. Thus, in comparison, we have a better world in which we can bring children. The problem with this thought is that two centuries ago we had little idea what the advent of the industrial age and the resultant intensified exploitation of natural resources would eventually do to climate and the ecosystem. Now we do know that without changes in human behavior the future, science tells us, is bleak.
Until advances in medicine and health care cut drastically infant mortality, high birth rates were the only defense against ending up without children. Reducing infant mortality and extending the human life far beyond what was natural back then also increased the human footprint on the planet with all its adverse consequences for the environment. Klein does not ignore the challenges but he takes hope from the accelerated replacement of fossil fuels by renewable sources of energy. And he is emphatic on the need to start educating school-age children about the climate and the environmental threats we face.
In a very hopeful development, despite all the political divisions in Washington, Congress is poised to enact the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. This will be the greatest pro-nonhuman species law since the Endangered Species Act passed during the Nixon administration. This is definite progress as we come to realize that humans and other species co-habitate this planet, and that humans, thanks to our superior intellect, are, so to speak, the planet’s designated custodians.
The third piece that I found inspirational is The Green Imperative a book written by Victor Papanek in the mid-1990s, as the urgency to act on the environment was starting to gather steam. Papanek was a renowned designer who dedicated his career to promoting smart and eco-friendly products and solutions. From packaging to the manufacturing process and all the way to the end product, Papanek believed that we should prefer options that wasted as little of the irreplaceable resources we take from the environment. Most importantly, for Papanek the design and making of products and structures came with an ethical obligation to do good for the environment.
Making the changes that are necessary to protect the planet’s ecosystem requires that we have some sense of the factors that impact the environment. In that connection, I have come up with a simple multi-factor model that seems, in my non-expert’s opinion, to capture the dimensions of our problem. According to this simple model, the human impact on the environment can be explained by focusing on four factors and their multiplicative relationship:
Human Population times Volume of Human Needs and Wants times Volume of Matter Used times Energy Spent.
I doubt that we can control or reduce our negative impact on the environment if we continue to increase any of these factors without taking offsetting actions in the others. To achieve this, we must be cognizant of the influence of religion, politics, economic structure, biology, and technology. For example, population is influenced by nationalist and religious ideas. But policies favoring population growth must be balanced by policies that allow the other three factors to reduce the harm of human population growth on the environment.
Economic systems and structures that see no problem with the infinite growth of needs and wants, that is, insatiable consumerism, also face the same problem. Firm competition that puts no limits in the acquisition of advantages by using designs and usage of materials that are appealing but hurt the environment is also counter to a strategy of environmental sustainability. Finally, unrestricted energy use from all sources of power generation while we allow the other three factors to grow is also a dead-end from an environmental standpoint.
The above approach of capturing the human impact on the environment demonstrates that we have to perform a very delicate balancing act among competing ideas and beliefs as well as pragmatic realities. To get on an environment-friendly trajectory, it is important we come to accept as our common goal the sustainability and even betterment of the natural environment. Our big challenge is to not only accept that goal but also to adjust human activity to serve this goal. This is no different from the use of goals to guide political, economic, business and a whole lot of other areas of human life. Even religions use goals (like the salvation of the soul) to guide human behavior.
Programmatically (that is, as a program of action) to achieve environmental goals, it may not be necessary all countries act the same way on all the factors that affect the human impact on the environment. What is of importance is we all, individually and collectively, aim for the same goal of doing no harm to planet earth, i.e., its environment and its species.
To do this, we need to rely on constructive behavior on an individual and national scale. Just like religious and secular beliefs shape individual behavior from a moral standpoint, the same can be done for ideas that aim to be environment-friendly. That’s where the education of the public, and especially of young people, becomes important, since it is knowledge about and empathy for our planet and all its species that can guide each one of us toward planet-friendly lifestyles.
This is not a project of a few countries alone. We need cooperation across nations. The magnitude of the environmental project is enormous, both in terms of the risks it holds for humans and our obligation toward the other species. That’s why I think our current inter-country squabbles seem to be trivial compared to the big project we all face.
To apply what Benjamin Franklin said about the dangers of discord among the American rebels, we can also say “We must hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
Let's Reason 
George, I can’t agree more. In the grand scheme of things, squabbles or politics, whether domestic or international, matters very little in face of the immense environmental challenges faced by all. We already see the looming threat of an existential crisis (the historic droughts, heat waves, wild fires, diseases, etc). We are all in this sealed bubble together with finite resources. And sadly, some folks don’t seem to realize that, and are still trying to get more and more for themselves. Much needs to be done to reduce population growth, curb our insatiable appetite of needs and wants, and cut down on the use of fossil fuel and non-renewable energy. The key is education, to let more people know and act responsibly; to let businesses do the sensible things and not purse profits at all costs, and to let governments stop the insanity of in-fighting and out-fighting, and do something.
LikeLike