The over 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our modern atmosphere is nearly twice our average for the past 800 thousand years. For that entire duration, the Flora, fauna and funga of our world have co-existed in relative stability, if not always harmony. That’s a lot of time for things to develop habitual relationships, such as a rose with that perfect red to turn a honeybee’s eye. Or when the first wolf disowned his pack and cast his fortunes in with the human race. Our last two centuries have seen a greater deviation in Earth’s atmospheric system than any seen in the last 2 million years. This includes the Ice Age, which ended a mere 11,500 years ago. It is in the period after the glaciers receded that our race has had its great success. All of our recorded history, every war, every brilliant discovery has happened in that recent slice of time. We call it the Anthropocene epoch, “the time of humanity”.
Now it seems that just as we’re getting going that our time might be running short. Not only do we have global warming caused by carbon dioxide pollution, we have the massive loss of topsoil caused by current farming techniques. The oceans are acidifying and pure toxins from sewage to oil spills are killing our reefs and sterilizing our river deltas. Over 75 percent of our table fish have life cycles intricately involved in the brackish ecosystems of river deltas. At least 3 billion people rely on ocean protein every day. Our entire system is going to collapse if we don’t intervene. The bad news is that our lifestyles and beliefs about the world have led us to this juncture. The good news is we have the technologies and human power to face this challenge. What is most lacking is the will.
In order to fix a problem, any problem, you must first recognize it as such. Too many of our thought leaders still either deny or prevaricate about the need to do anything about our ecological issues. Continued profiting on the market as it is, remains the default plan for scores of politicians and even some clergy. There is a belief that this planet was made for us and given to our enterprises to use as we see fit. That somehow, it can sustain and absorb whatever insult we might inflict upon it. Such nonsense facilitates the continuation of childish behaviors, like littering, selfish hoarding and kicking the can of action down the road. It surrounds us in the media and even in some texts of philosophy and religion. It is the idea that we are separate, and above, this world that we walk upon. And since this pinion is demonstrably untrue, it will never serve us and merely conceals the one understanding we need: We are a part of the ecosystem that sustains us, never separate, and definitely not above it. Our problem is our ability to deny that there is a problem. This has been done with the very power we have seized from the world around us.
A petri dish is a closed, disk shaped, glass container used in laboratories. The dish is partially filled with a nutrient media, inoculated with some bacteria or microbe, and sealed with a fitted lid. This allows the safe culture of potentially dangerous organisms. It is a tiny, sealed ecosystem and provides all needs, air, moisture, food and protection from the elements, for a time. The first generations in the dish have a veritable Eden to explore, conquer, and consume. Here we have a tiny demonstration of unbridled growth in a perfect environment. But with each successive generation there is less untouched surface, more pollution from the excretions of the prior epochs. Finally, the entire dish is fouled and the microbes feed upon each other as they fight to grow upward at the margins, attempting an escape from fate. But there is none. This is what continual unrestrained growth leads to. We are consuming Petri dish Earth and still prescribe more growth, more consumption and more profit as the solution to our predicament. Or some do.
11,500 years is one half of one percent of humanity’s lifespan. That’s it, if we continue to ignore this urgent predicament. There’s no reset button, no trapdoors, no cheat-codes, just the future we make for ourselves from this point in history onwards. How would we choose if we felt we could?
There is no endgame to the endless pursuit of profit and power. We need to work together to save the planet that supports all life. In this manner, we save ourselves and those structures that are in harmony with a sustainable future. This lesson, given by our first planet, is a needed wisdom if we wish to travel to and successfully settle the next.
Originally published in The Flume, April 26th, 2022