One Of These Days - Echoes

For this blog I wish to focus on the Royal Society Proceedings of 'Can a collapse of global civilisation be avoided?’. This was a discussion on the causes of historical collapses of civilisations, and probable outcome of an interconnected, global-civilisation. 

"The human race will eventually die of civilisation" ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

With the impending "doom" of “unnecessarily environmentally damaging technologies and socio-economic-political arrangements to service Homo sapiens’ aggregate consumption", we face a challenge only matched by our inter-connectivity (internationalism?) that may prove the saving grace of globalisation. Facing these "Malthusianist" calamities (Robert Zubrin labelled), our "poor choices of technologies" and continued reliance on fossil fuels (Prince Charles termed 'an act of suicide on a grand scale’), Ehrlich and Ehrlich say "dramatic cultural change provides the main hope of averting calamity". Technology can reduce, not just increase, carrying capacity. Do we look to the stars? Or to people?

With a projected 9bn people by 2050, Earth's life-support systems are being disproportionately despoiled with each addition. Beyond the issues of food supply, broader geopolitical issues may even lead to collapse. The case of nuclear energy has been central to this debate since WWII. Even a regional (e.g. India-Pakistan tensions) nuclear war would resonate globally (not just on the climate). Environmental-refugees will rise with climate change (sea-level rise, natural disasters, famines etc). The toxification and acidification of land, sea, and air will strain our production and resources further, diminishing capacity, adding to epidemiological risks. Resource wars will exacerbate geopolitical tensions.

The net result of the combination of the mixture of science (double-edged sword) and the ‘‘free market’’ is that today;

(1)   More than enough food to make all seven billion of us fat, yet every day about a billion people go hungry and malnourishment directly or indirectly kills tens of thousands of children

(2)   Developing countries export more food than they import. The majority of exports destined for wealthy developed countries where obesity is arguably the most pressing public health problem (US, Europe).

(3)  Food production, process and distribution is increasingly centralised by a few multinational corporate giants, who justify through “scientific progress” expanding genetically-engineered monoculture that are inefficient and less effective that small, diversified, ecologically sound and socially sustainable, highly productive, locally controlled indigenous agricultural systems (Lappe et al. 1998; Gliessman 2000; Lappe & Lappe 2002; Nestle 2002;Manning 2004a, 2004b; Pimentel et al. 2005; Pollan 2006; cited by Cabin, 2007).

Can evermore powerful and sophisticated science save us? Will socio-political momentum mobilise quick enough to reverse the entrenched economic paradigm? Agro-ecological and growing internationalism is showing signs of tremendous progress, and awareness is spreading globally with education. Social cohesion with sound science can push through the political traction needed to enforce control mechanisms on rampant and dangerous economic (and other) activities to diminish destructive modus operandi. In the Anthropocene the romantic view of preservationist principles is delusional. A synthesis of wise-stewardship (the measure of all things is utility to humans in the broadest and wisest sense of utility) and intrinsic worth (there exists sets of objects which have intrinsic worth regardless of their instrumental value to humans), can save our planet. It is well within our capacity to begin remedying our Earth, and should we abandon her when she is "just right"? 

"Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices" ~ Jean-Paul Sartre