Viewpoint by John Scales Avery *
A new report, published March 14, 2021 in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal Ambio [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-021-01544-8] points out that humanity harms itself against destruction unless we have the collective wisdom to quickly change course.
The article was written as part of the preparation for a meeting with Nobel Prize winners to discuss the state of the planet. The virtual meeting will be held April 26-28, 2021.
A stable economic system is necessary because neither population growth nor economic growth can continue indefinitely on a limited land. No one can claim that exponential industrial growth is sustainable in the long run except by refusing to see more than a short distance into the future.
Of course, it is necessary to distinguish between industrial growth and the growth of culture and knowledge, which can and should continue to grow. Qualitative improvements in human society are possible and desirable, but resource use and pollution-producing industrial growth reach their limits, both due to ecological constraints and due to depletion of petroleum, natural gas and other non-renewable resources, such as metals. The threat of catastrophic climate change makes it imperative for us to stop using fossil fuels within a very few years.
Entropy is a measure of disorder. Our current economic system is one-way and entropic: resources with low entropy are transformed into waste with high entropy, a one-way process. However, a process must be cyclical to be sustainable in the long term, such as growth and renewal of a forest.
In his apostolic appeal, “Evangelii Gaudium” Pope Francis said: “In our day, humanity is experiencing a turning point in its history, as we can see from the progress in so many areas. We can only praise the steps taken. such as health care, education and communication.
“At the same time, we must remember that the majority of our contemporaries barely live from day to day, with serious consequences. A number of diseases are spreading. Many people’s hearts are gripped by fear and desperation, even in so-called rich countries. The joy of living often fades, the lack of respect for others and violence is increasing, and inequality is becoming clearer, it is a struggle to live and often to live with valuable little dignity.
Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit to protect the value of human life, today we must also say “you shall not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that is not news when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points – this is a case of exclusion.
Can we continue to stand on when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today, everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the strongest, where the powerful feed on the powerless. As a consequence, lots of people are excluded and marginalized: without work, without opportunities, without any way to escape. “
Social epidemiologist Professor Richard Wilkinson has documented how societies with less economic inequality do better than more unequal societies in a number of areas, including increased life expectancy, mathematical performance, literacy, confidence, social mobility, along with reduced infant mortality, murder, imprisonment, adolescence. , obesity and mental illness, as well as drug and alcohol dependence.
We must also remember that, according to economist John A. Hobson, the fundamental problem that led to imperialism was an overly unequal distribution of income in the industrialized countries. The result of this unequal distribution was that neither the rich nor the poor could buy back the total production in their society. The income of the poor was insufficient and the rich were too few in number. Thus, governments were forced to look for markets in the less developed parts of the world.
When the UN was founded in 1945, the purpose of the organization was to abolish the war institution. This goal was built into many of the articles of the UN Charter. As a result, many war units around the world were renamed and became the Department of Defense. But the name itself is a lie. In a time of nuclear threats and counter-threats, the population is not protected. Ordinary citizens are just hostages in a game of power and money. It’s about greed.
Why is war constantly threatened? Why is Russia threatened? Why is war with Iran threatened? Why light the flames in the conflict with China? Is it to “protect” civilians? Absolutely not! In a thermonuclear war, hundreds of millions of civilians would die horribly everywhere in the world, even in neutral countries. What is really protected is the profit of the arms manufacturers. As long as there are tensions; as long as there is a threat of war, military budgets are secure; and the profits of arms manufacturers are secure. The people of several “democracies”, such as the United States, are not ruling at the moment. Greed regulates.
As Professor Noam Chomsky has pointed out, greed and a lack of ethics are built into the structure of companies. By law, the CEO of a company must be fully motivated by the collective greed of the shareholders. He must maximize profits. If the CEO abandons this solitary pursuit of corporate profits for ethical reasons, or for the sake of humanity or the biosphere or the future, he (or she) must be fired and replaced by law.
The threat of catastrophic climate change requires swift and dedicated action by the global community. If we do not quickly switch from fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy, we will reach a tipping point after which uncontrollable feedback loops can take over, leading to a human-caused sixth geological extinction. This may even be comparable to the Permian-Triassic event, during which 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates became extinct.
Arctic sea ice is melting at an ever faster rate due to several feedback loops. One of these feedback loops, called the albedo effect, is due to the fact that white snow-covered sea ice in the Arctic reflects sunlight, while dark water absorbs it, raises the temperature and leads to more melting.
Another feedback loop is due to rising temperatures causing more water to evaporate. The water vapor in the atmosphere acts as a greenhouse gas and raises the temperature further.
If we take into account long-term effects, by far the most dangerous of the feedback loops is the melting of methane hydrate crystals and the release of methane into the atmosphere, where its effects as a greenhouse gas are about twenty times as great as those of CO2.
When organic material is transported out into the oceans by rivers, it decomposes to form methane. Methane is then combined with water to form hydrate crystals, which are stable at the temperatures currently present on the seabed. But if the temperature rises, the crystals become unstable and methane gas bubbles up to the surface.
The concern with methane hydrate deposits on the seabed is the enormous amount of carbon involved: about 10,000 gigatons. To put this enormous amount into perspective, we can remember that the total amount of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions since 1751 has only been 337 gigatons.
Hope for the future comes from the exponential growth of renewable energy. Governments and banks must support this growth, and they must end the support they give to fossil fuel companies.
In the future, ecology must be incorporated into economic theory. The human economy is part of the global environment rather than the opposite. Human society cannot prosper while the environment suffers. Economists must recognize this. We need a new economic system, which has both a social conscience and an ecological conscience.
Note: This article was originally published by TMS Weekly Digest on April 5, 2021: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2021/04/ecology-and-economics/. Other books and articles on global issues by the author can be found at the following links: https://www.johnavery.info/ | https://wsimag.com/authors/716-john-scales-avery |