Editor’s note: The dominant global culture (“industrial civilization”) is built on resource extraction and forced conversion of habitat to exclusive human use, and this has serious consequences.
Both global warming and the ongoing mass extermination of life on the planet (which has been deemed “the sixth mass extinction”), as well as other ecological crises (aquifer depletion, toxification of the total environment, ecosystem collapse, oceanic dead zones, etc.) are symptoms of humanity’s broken relationship to the planet. In plain terms: this way of life is killing the planet.
Today’s article reminds us that these crises are deeply interlinked, and so are solutions. While we are a revolutionary organization, every small step in the right direction also matters. And as a biocentric organization, we are in favor of actions to protect the natural world rather than putting our faith in technological Bright Green Lies.
By Tara Lohan / The Revelator
Mass extinction lurks beneath the surface of the sea. That was the dire message from a study published in April in the journal Science, which found that continuing to emit greenhouse gases unchecked could trigger a mass die-off of ocean animals that rivals the worst extinction events in Earth’s history.
The findings serve as just the latest reminder that climate change and biodiversity loss are interconnected crises — even if they’re rarely addressed in tandem by policymakers.
Toward that point, the Science study came with a dose of hopeful news: Action to curb greenhouse gas emissions and keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius could cut that extinction risk by 70%.
Additional research published in Global Change Biology offers another encouraging finding. The study, by an international team of scientists, found that not only can we do better at addressing biodiversity issues — we can do it while also targeting climate change.
“Many instances of conservation actions intended to slow, halt or reverse biodiversity loss can simultaneously slow anthropogenic climate change,” the researchers wrote in the study.
Their work looked at 21 proposed action targets for biodiversity that will be the focus of this fall’s international convening of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, China — a meeting delayed two years by the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers found that two-thirds of those biodiversity targets also support climate change mitigation, even though they weren’t explicitly designed for that goal. The best opportunities to work on these crises together were actions to avoid deforestation and restore degraded ecosystems. Of particular focus, the study found, should be coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrass and salt marshes, which can store large amounts of carbon and support a diversity of animals.
A pelican enjoys a perch in a mangrove stand in the Galapagos. Photo: Hans Johnson (CC BY 2.0)
Also important is restoring forests and woodlands, but doing so with native species is critical. Planting monocultures of nonnative trees won’t boost biodiversity, the researchers point out, despite such endeavors being incentivized as a climate change solution.
Another target is reducing runoff into rivers, lakes and coastal waters from excess nutrients — including nitrogen and phosphorus — that cause algal blooms and oxygen-depleted waters. This eutrophication, combined with warming, may increase greenhouse gas emissions in freshwater bodies, in addition to harming fish and other animals.
Expanding and connecting the network of protected areas is another mutualistic target. Globally, we’ve protected about 15% of land and 7% of marine habitats. But we need to bump those numbers up considerably. As the researchers behind the Global Change Biology study put it, “There is a substantial overlap of 92% between areas that require reversing biodiversity loss and the areas needing protection for enhancing carbon storage and drawdown.”
Working on these issues in tandem can help boost the benefits.
We’re also spending large sums of money in all the wrong places. The study lists the reduction or elimination of subsidies that are harmful to biodiversity and the climate as “one of the most important and urgent reforms.”
We spend 10 times more on subsidies for environmentally harmful practices than on biodiversity conservation, the researchers note. Brazil, for example, spends 88 times more on subsidizing activities linked to deforestation than on those that may help stop it.
Other target areas to boost biodiversity and climate work include recovering and conserving wild species; greening urban areas; eliminating overfishing; reducing food and agricultural waste; and shifting diets to include more plant-based foods and less meat and dairy.
And, the researchers say, we need to “mainstream” the issues together — embedding both climate and biodiversity targets and metrics into policy, business and consumer practices.
Understanding these issues should start early, too. A study of school curricula in 46 countries found that fewer than half addressed climate change, and a paltry one-fifth referenced biodiversity. Both these subjects should be covered more and integrated together, the researchers say.
It’s not possible, after all, to tackle one crisis without addressing the other.
To fight climate change, we need fully functioning ecosystems with healthy populations of native plants and animals.
“And climate change is damaging this capacity,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, a study coauthor and climate researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. “Only when we succeed in drastically reducing emissions from fossil fuels can nature help us to stabilize the climate.”
There are some very good actions advocated by this article, such as protecting and restoring native ecosystems and species. However, overall this is just another Milquetoast article from The Revelator, a very disappointing publication from the Center for Biological Diversity, which in turn was formed by Earth First!ers from Arizona and New Mexico. Specifically:
Global warming/climate change is an existential problem that could, in the worst case scenario, wipe out all life on Earth (as we recognize “life”). However, it is not a root cause of anything, and people forget that humans are causing many other massive problems that are as bad or worse than global warming/climate change. One of those problems is ocean acidification, which is caused by unnatural human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). An Australian study from 15-20 years ago showed that if humans continue to emit CO2 at the current (at that time) rate, the Earth’s oceans would devolve by 200 million years, and there would no vertebrate life left in them. So even without warming the oceans, humans’ unnatural CO2 emissions are killing the oceans. Then there’s gross overfishing, etc.
The bottom line here is that there are far too many people on the Earth, and almost all of them are living so unnaturally and harmfully that we’re destroying the planet and all the life here. You could spend your entire life making a list of all the symptoms of this, like global warming/climate change, but what’s needed is fixing the root problem of people’s attitude toward life. If we don’t do that, the Earth and all the life here will continue on this death spiral until either humans make themselves extinct or we wipe out all or most life on Earth.
Well said.
Jeff’s point is closely related to mine: All of the ecological actions scientists advocate will finally amount to nothing, unless we reduce human population — which is unlikely, unless we also abandon capitalism and its demand for perpetual growth, in favor of an economics that rewards the production of true necessities, rather than maximum sales and profits.
As both Jeff and I have said here before, we need a global one-child policy for about 200 years, which would systematically reduce human population to around 300 million. And if that became habit forming, doing so for 300 years could cut our numbers to about 70 million, which could produce the true definition of sustainability.
As it is, we’re simultaneously poisoning and degrading the planet, with a systematic depletion and exhaustion of all the resources industry requires for its survival. At the current rate, most of the world’s aquifers will be dry in another decade or two, we’ll lack the raw materials to make steel and concrete, the ocean fish that coastal peoples depend on will be gone, the topsoil to grow the rest of our food will be lost, and the forests, meadows, wetlands, and seas that are vital to all species will be gone.
In other words, we can either make a few sacrifices and reduce population by design, or keep up the greed and plunder, and nature will cut our numbers the hard way — by starvation, resource wars, and the total and irreversible collapse of civilization.
And, regrettably, more and more scientists are predicting the latter: A 2019 report by an international panel of scientists said that up to 700 million “food refugees” (i.e., people running from starvation) will be on the move by 2050. A 2020 article in Scientific Reports warned of a 90% chance that civilization will collapse irreversibly within 20-40 years. Alternatively, the U.N. recently reported that the collapse of civilization could be triggered by simultaneous crop failures in any five of our leading agricultural regions — a possibility that seems quite likely, given the combination of droughts, aquifer depletion, increased megastorms, wildfires, and whatever other surprises nature might have in store for us, in its inevitable reaction to human excess, overuse, and abuse.
As for those who say we can’t survive without a growth economy, let me simply point out the mathematical certainty that we cannot survive WITH a growth economy! Permanent industrial growth on a non-growing planet is the global equivalent to metastatic cancer. We will run out of resources and die.
DGR co-founder Derrick Jensen famously said that “We could, but we won’t.” His point was that we know HOW to prevent global, collective suicide, but we lack the will to do it — because that would require cooperation and sacrifice, which most of us won’t accept, because our greed and bullshit religions tell us that we can and must have all the excesses we can imagine.
In reality, Marx was on the right track, when he said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” — the key word here being “need,” as opposed to “greed.” All that we really NEED to survive well is healthy food and water every day, basic clothing and shelter, and loving relationships.
To get back to a reduced and livable population, the most obvious sacrifice is that a declining population would lack the manpower to provide today’s level of elder care. So, to some extent, those too old or ill to care for themselves would have to accept reality and die gracefully — as has always been the case, in every species but our own.
Secondly, we would have to give up such frivolous luxuries as air travel, air conditioning, motor vehicles, gadgets and gizmos like electronics, and most of the other things we have today, because we’re conditioned to want them, but have no real need for them. Examples include everything from world trade to clothes that are made to impress someone, rather than to protect us from snakes, thorns, and excess heat and cold.
All the trappings of cities, in other words, must go, and we must return to village life, where everyone knows everyone else, and we work together from a need to cooperate, rather than from an itch to get rich.
Our luxuries must be redefined as things like long hugs and kisses, friendly dogs, dried fruit, a cup of tea before bed, and an occasional community festival — without fireworks.
Well said, Mark.