Advanced and Rational Societies Can Commit Environmental Suicide

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Wed, 8 Jun 2005 22:17:33 -0400

Advanced and Rational Societies Can Commit Environmental Suicide

 

 

 

 

Don't Be Fooled: Advanced and Rational Societies Can Commit

Environmental Suicide

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/060805EC.shtml

By Johann Hari

The Independent UK

 

Wednesday 08 June 2005

 

The way our economy is structured actually encourages

environmental destruction.

 

When Tony Blair flew to Washington on Monday to discuss the rapid

changes to the earth's climate caused by man, it is a shame he could

not make a pit-stop on Easter Island. True, it is several thousand

miles out of the way, and the carbon emissions from the flight would

have been a further act of ecological destruction - but Easter Island

is the most vivid illustration of the stakes human beings face.

 

The grimacing statues of Easter Island have - over the past 2000

years - witnessed the purest example in history of human beings

committing unwitting environmental suicide. The story is startlingly

simple: the human settlers on the island - living in perfect isolation

from the rest of the world - systematically destroyed their own

habitat. In a burst of over-development, they cut down their forests

much faster than they could grow back. The result? At first, the

island was plunged into war as different groups scrambled to seize the

remaining natural resources for themselves. They turned on their

leaders and staged revolutions, enraged that they had been misled into

such a disaster. They even toppled some of their famous statues,

symbols of the despised former chiefs. And then - finally - they were

left with nothing. They went slowly mad, committed mass cannibalism,

and almost completely died out.

 

In his chilling new book Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail

or Survive, the Pulitzer-prize winning geographer, Jared Diamond,

describes how some of the most advanced civilizations in history -

like the Maya - committed ecocide without realizing it. " What, " he

asks, " were Easter Islanders saying as they cut down the last tree on

their island? " He dryly wonders if they said - as George Bush

effectively does now - " Jobs not trees! " , or " Technology will solve

our problems; never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood. " Perhaps

they said, " We need more research, not scare-mongering! What are you,

some kind of anti-Easter Island fanatic? "

 

It's a cute analogy, but the world of Bush and Blair is an

infinity away from these pre-modern disasters, isn't it? I would like

to think so - but, according to the world's leading climatologists, we

must stop kidding ourselves. Ecocide has happened before to advanced,

rational societies, and it can happen again. They warned yet again

this week that we seem to be five minutes away from environmental

midnight, and are now on-course for the most rapid increase in global

temperatures since the last Ice Age.

 

And Easter Island is salient for another reason. When the

Islanders' environment collapsed, they had nowhere to go; they were an

isolated island cut off from the rest of the world. Now - for the

first time - we have a global society where we are all dependent on

each other. There are no alternative environments, no human

settlements beyond the reach of the decisions we make. If our

environment collapses, the human game is up. As Diamond puts it: " For

the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline. " In

this sense, we are all Easter Islanders now.

 

Of course, the ultimate fate of the islanders is only the most

extreme possible end-game for global warming. (Even the Pentagon,

however, has mapped out the possibility of this scenario unfolding

globally in the 21st century, in a report leaked last year). More

likely is that environmental damage - unless it is reversed now - will

cause a drastic fall in living standards and rapid shifts in the way

we live. It is a recipe to Make Poverty the Future.

 

Yet the Easter Islanders were not incomprehensibly mad. Like all

societies that unknowingly commit collective suicide - from the Maya

to Norse Greenlanders - they became afflicted with dozens of symptoms,

each of which seemed understandable at the time. They might sound

familiar. One is simple denial. They said: surely it can't be this

bad? Doesn't it always work out in the end? Aren't we decent people?

This mentality is common in Bush' s Republican Party, with swathes of

oil cash and bogus research to reinforce it. Another problem is

group-think: if everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't I? Why should

I be the one who has to stop?

 

But the biggest common factor in past ecocides has been the

pursuit of short-term " rational bad behavior " arising from clashes of

interests between people. For example, one logging company decides to

destroy great chunks of the Amazon, on the grounds that if they don't,

some other logging company will. It seems rational, but it places the

transitory and fragmentary interests of the individual or group ahead

of the long-term interests of us all. Destroying forests leads in the

long-term to a hideously irrational outcome for the world at a time

when we need all the carbon sinks we can find.

 

The way our economy is currently structured actually encourages

this environmental destruction. Try finding out how to get from London

to Edinburgh: you'll find that the most environmentally disastrous

form of travel (flight) is the cheapest, while the least damaging

(train) costs a fortune. This model is now spreading across the world.

 

So what can we do? Despair would be foolish, and a gift to the

environmental vandals; the solutions are all around us. For example,

the British government has announced that the G8 summit will be

" carbon neutral " : the 4000 tonnes of carbon dioxide released will be

counterbalanced by the planting of trees in Africa that will absorb

the same amount.

 

It's a smart gesture, but if the Prime Minister really wants to

deal with climate change, he should introduce legislation to make all

our air travel carbon neutral. It's simple: if you want to get a

flight, you should also have to pay the cost of the carbon debt you

are building up by paying for trees in Africa.

 

Some environmentalists call this " true cost economics " : instead of

only paying the market price, you also pay the environmental price for

your actions. This would roughly double the cost of air travel. Yes,

that would be a pain, but dealing with runaway climate change will

cause far more grief.

 

It will take dozens of tough political decisions like this to fend

off disaster, but whenever these ideas are put to the Prime Minister,

he says they are morally attractive but " politically impossible. "

Can't he see this is a classic example of " rational bad behavior " ? The

British government is currently making plans for a massive expansion

of flight-paths and airports, and last year, this country's carbon

emissions actually rose. We are still trapped in a destructive

mindset, never mind the even-worse Americans. Recriminations against

Bush aren't enough: we have been living beyond our environmental means

for too long as well.

 

The long and winding road to Easter Island is far from inevitable;

but every day we carry on polluting, we step further into the shadow

of those dark granite statues.

 

http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/060805EC.shtml

 

 

 

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can

change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - -

Margaret Mead

 

 

Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question:

is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience

asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must

take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular- but

one must take it simply because it is right -- Martin Luther King Jr.