Last time we wrote on this thread, both I and my correspondent were disconsolate over the state of the world. So it’s interesting how reading a short review of three books in NewScientist (4 July 2015, paywall) by Fred Pearce:
In On The Edge, Claude Martin, former director of environmental group WWF International, remembers that back in the 1980s, forest biologists like him warned that the loss of pristine rainforests was driving tens of thousands of species to extinction. Yet it wasn’t so. His magisterial review of the state of those forests concedes that the “pessimistic projections”, which assumed that species would be lost as fast as forest area, have proved false.
Most species in these habitats survive even in the face of rampant deforestation. Puerto Rico lost 99 per cent of its primary forests but just seven bird species, and today has more species than before, he says. And thanks in part to reseeding by alien species, old forests are starting to grow again. …
Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, can also see the light in unexpected places. Nearly a decade ago, in The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, he cast fighting climate change as a trillion-dollar challenge that required shared economic sacrifices today to save our children from wild weather and rising tides in the future.
Now, he writes, the need for “burden-sharing” is passing. Clean technologies are often as cheap as burning fossil fuels: “Much of what is necessary on the low-carbon front is also very good for growth, development and poverty reduction.” …
In End Game, academics Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly eloquently lay out the ecological perils we face, deftly showing how they might segue into food and water shortages, disease, resource wars and mass migrations. “Life would go on, but there would be a lot more losers than winners,” they write. But they, too, conjure good news from the crisis. Their subtitle, “Tipping point for planet Earth?”, refers not just to nature’s potential implosion under human assault, but also to positive tipping points in human responses.
Like nature, we can fight what once seemed inevitable. As the authors explain, family sizes have become radically smaller, defusing population bombs; rich societies are reaching “peak stuff” as people spend spare cash on “experiences rather than things”; agriculture can become far more efficient; and recycling can both end pollution and stem resource shortages.
Maybe it was the fact that I was sitting at a drive-in movie theater when I read this tri-book review, but I found it refreshing and that feeling of gloom ‘n doom at the back of my mind went away for a while. The emotional reaction to learning that Nature is flexible enough to recover and continue from most of our assaults is interesting, and also a refreshing counterpoint to the Pope’s recent lament concerning our poor stewardship of the planet – which is to say, we can kill ourselves off and Nature Life will continue.
Religious considerations aside, a moral system for agnostics & atheists must deal, in a most fundamental way, with the question of Life: is it worth living? Does it have inherent value? If we accept an absolutist position that life is valuable, what are we to make of prey / predator relationships? How about overpopulation situations, where cannibalism (amongst rats) is observed?
Without answering those questions here, I at least affirm a moderate position on life – not human life, but all life. Noting that life consumes life as a natural evolution of life, I also note cross-species affection – humans and their pets, elephants and dogs, horses and cats are all well-known examples. To believe that Life will survive, with or without humanity, is something … to live for.
