Where We Are Now: A House of Cards

"The harsh unpalatable truth as of now tells us that the majority of people in the rich world are broadly content with our greed-driven society." - Jonathan Porritt, [Resurgence 235, p.18]

"[Since 1946] there have been steady decreases in the percentage of Americans who say that their marriages are happy, that they are satisfied with their jobs, that they find a great deal of pleasure in the place that they live.... Money consistently buys happiness right up to about $10,000 per capita income,... after that point the correlation disappears (ital. au.). " - Bill McKibben ["Deep Economy", p. 36]

ECOSHIFT will not dwell long on the problems that humanity and the Earth are facing; they have been thoroughly described in many other places for anyone who is sensitive enough to be aware. For instance, Ed Ayres, in "God's Last Offer" documents the four rapidly rising trends of carbon dioxide, consumption, species extinction, and population, together with the immense control of people's lives by megacorporations. Here I only need to point out the really significant issues and make some comments on them in order to demonstrate the necessity for The Great Turning and for Ecoshift.

Energy

The dependence of the very core of human society on energy from oil means that our current affluence is a house of cards. There is a very real possibility that as oil runs out, the house of cards will come tumbling down. Major changes in how humans behave will be required; major choices will need to be made. ECOSHIFT discusses how some people and groups are already making changes, hoping to show the way to a new and better world. On the other hand, there is a good possibility that humanity will postpone facing its problems until it is too late, with extremely seriously consequences. We are already seeing that rich nations are willing to go to war in order to maintain their oil supplies.

I will return to the subject of energy later in the Energy Choices chapter.

Climate Change

This rise in CO₂ is affecting the energy balance of Earth's atmosphere and surface by what is called the "greenhouse effect", causing the temperature of Earth's atmosphere to rise.

Because of its importance, I'll describe how the so-called "greenhouse effect" works. (Note: that name is really a misnomer because the warmth of a greenhouse is caused more by the glass or plastic keeping out colder air than by the radiation effect that is described here.) Two kinds of radiation, or radiant energy transfer are involved. Solar radiation comes from the sun and is about half "light" that our eyes can see and half near infrared radiation that we can feel as heat but cannot see. The other radiation is "terrestrial", "longwave", or "far infrared" radiation that is emitted by all atoms at the Earth's surface or in its atmosphere, including you and me. (This is like the radiant heat from a hot electric stove, which we see part of as red light.) The atmosphere and Earth's surface absorb most of the solar radiation that reaches Earth; the rest is reflected into space. The absorbed solar radiation warms the Earth and us. But at the same time, Earth's surface and atmosphere are emitting longwave radiation into space. In order to keep the temperature of the atmosphere constant, the gain of solar radiation from the sun must be exactly offset by the emission of longwave radiation into space. The atmosphere and the air we breath is mostly made of nitrogen and oxygen molecules, which are transparent to both solar and longwave radiation and play little role. However, other molecules in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide (CO₂), water, and methane, absorb and emit radiant energy. Change in their concentrations changes the transmission of longwave radiation through the atmosphere and thus the emission of longwave radiation from Earth. Rising concentration of CO₂ (and methane) means that more of the longwave emission from Earth's surface is absorbed by the atmosphere and reradiated back to the surface. This reduces the amount of longwave radiation emitted into space and causes the atmosphere and Earth's surface to warm.

So rising CO₂ means that air temperature is going up.

Very serious climate and weather changes are in store for us as a result of our fossil fuel burning, but our recognition of the severity of the issue has been slow in coming. Ross Gelbspan pointed out in "The Heat Is On", that through the late 20th century the media, which loves to present all issues as 50-50 splits between two sides, repeatedly quoted the same handful of scientists who denied anthropogenic global warming in contrast to the thousands of scientists who accepted it as fact and urged action. Two eight-year Presidential administrations, both Democratic and Republican, largely ignored the issue. Before he ran for Vice- President, Al Gore wrote "Earth in the Balance", a good account of the global warming problem. Then as Vice-President and Presidential candidate he said virtually nothing about it. Only since leaving politics has he produced an excellent film on all the climate effects that are likely to happen, An Inconvenient Truth, for which he won a Nobel Peace Prize. The denial of the issue by the Bush administration is documented by Mark Bowen in "Censoring Science". Finally by 2008, the twin problems of rising temperature and declining oil have generated public discussion and initial responses.

Climate is warming in general, and particularly in the Arctic. Winters are shorter, glaciers are melting, permafrost is melting, Arctic ocean ice has lost 40% of its volume and 15% of its area since the 1960s. Throughout North America ice cover on lakes forms a week later and melts a week earlier than 50 years ago. In my Gulf of Maine bioregion winter outdoor recreation (skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, ice fishing) is endangered and fall foliage color may be threatened. Predicted future temperatures change the climate of my home city, Boston MA, to the 20th century climate of Washington DC or even Atlanta GA. Optimists believe that humans are smart enough to adapt and adjust without major problems, but Hurricane Katrina was a warning that more pessimism is warranted. The most worrisome possibility is that changes will not be gradual, but that one or more thresholds may be crossed that create very rapid change. The West Antarctic ice sheet is grounded below sea level and could melt rapidly, thus quickly raising sea level by as much as 5 meters (15 feet). Warming in the Arctic may cause the Gulf Stream to shut off suddenly. The result probably would be very rapid cooling of Europe and warming of eastern North America. How many other thresholds are there that we do not understand?

Consumerism and Globalization

Globalization creates many problems:

• "Buy cheap" seems to be a mantra of the consumer culture. But in the new world of corporate globalization, low prices mean that many people involved in producing and selling something are being underpaid. Most goods are now made in the poorer countries of the world, where the workers can be paid the lowest wages possible. Sales people are underpaid and overworked. We need to start realizing that "cheap" means that somebody, someplace, is getting ripped off. This issue is taken up again in the Socially-responsible Investing chapter and the Ecojustice chapter.
• Globalization involves world-wide transportation of goods. Food, raw materials, parts, and products are transported thousands of miles before they reach the buyer. This transportation is based on oil and thus is part of the house of cards. More on transportation is in the Energy chapter and the Food chapter.
• Much of the production of the "consumer" culture is not consumed at all, but becomes trash, which is a problem to get rid of. Waste disposal is a major problem that is discussed further in the Three R's chapter.
• The global consumer culture requires huge amounts of minerals, energy, and land for food and fiber. Separation of the geography of supply of these Earth services from the geography of their consumption enables a disconnect of the consumer from the environment of the producer. Consumers know little about the sources of the goods they consume and care little about the land and people that produce them. The consequences of this problem are discussed further in the Ecojustice chapter and the Conservation Biology chapter.

The message is finally getting across to some corporations that the consumer culture as it now operates cannot be sustained. The time is coming soon when it will have to change. I'll take up this again in the Sustainability chapter.

So-called "Natural Resources"

The term "natural resources" describes all those materials that are supplied to humanity by Earth's systems. The term is anthropocentric because it implies that all of the natural world exists for humanity to make use of. We will see toward the end of ECOSHIFT, especially in the Deep Ecology chapter, why ecocentrists like me do not like to use the term. However, there is not yet a good ecocentric replacement that is widely understood, so I put "natural resources" in quotes when I feel obligated to use it. A term along the lines of "Earth's bounty" is needed.

Ecosystem Destruction and Species Extinction

Permanent destruction of a natural landscape by an off-road vehicle!

Now, most of the Earth's surface has been modified by humans. (We are even extending this damage to extraterrestrial surfaces!) Agriculture and forestry have destroyed whole ecosystems. At a more local scale, land and related water systems have been badly damaged by mining. Some species of plants and animals have been harvested by humans to the point where the species is nearly or completely wiped out. Many other species have been severely affected, perhaps in unknown ways and by unknown amounts. We are in the midst of one of the Earth's great extinction crises. This one is caused by us. It is fair to say that humanity has destroyed in a few years what creation took billions of years to create.

In addition, humans have for centuries transported species from one place to another and from one ecosystem to another. An "invasive exotic" is a plant or animal species that was not originally present but is becoming a dominant feature of an ecosystem. Ecosystems. extinctions, and invasives are covered further in the Conservation Biology chapter.

Speaking as an ecosystem scientist, I can say that we know precious little about how ecosystems operate. Yet humans are dependent on these systems not only for the basics of food, fuel, water, housing, and health, but also for the many frills of affluence. We manipulate or unintentionally alter systems that we only superficially understand. Biological systems are exceedingly complicated. Many different components interact in many ways. So we do not and possibly can not know what long-term effects will be produced by the addition or removal of any given species or the alteration of physical and chemical characteristics. We are messing with the products of evolution/creation and we don't know what we are doing.

Population

World population is now 6.3 billion and is increasing by 80 million every year. In spite of some reduction in birth rates, world population will increase by at least another 3 billion and hopefully, though not assuredly, will be stable after that. Globalization is encouraging all peoples to desire a more affluent standard of living. But Earth is already overtaxed; Earth systems cannot support affluence for billions. The Population chapter and the Sustainability chapter examine this controversial issue in more detail.

These are just some of the world's problems that relate to humanity's current presence and role on Earth. The role of Ecoshift and ECOSHIFT is to describe possible paths to solutions, recognizing that the problems are so pervasive and deep that fundamental changes will be needed.