First Published in Artvoice
September 2012
Biodiversity and Climate
Change Part 1
Its the Economy Stupid!
By Jay Burney
Climate
change is rampaging our planet, our region, and our communities like an
unstoppable freight train that has gone off the tracks. We are no longer looking at a
“predicted” future of possible highly variable extreme weather conditions and
catastrophic events. That future is here now.
The
impacts do and will continue to effect each one of us. Our pocketbooks and our
health will bear the scars.
Climate
change is challenging our very ability to survive as a species.
In
early August, NASA released a study co authored by Jim Hansen, the Director of
the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. This study uses statistical analysis
of recent heat and drought events, and extreme weather patterns and concludes
that climate change has arrived, is here on a disastrous global scale, and is
worse that we thought.
The
science has been clear for a decade. The changes in atmospheric gasses which
now include nearly 400 ppm of CO2 is increasing about 2ppm per year. These
increasing emissions are due to human activity and this activity is causing a
rapid escalation. Climate scientists estimate that a healthy and stable
atmosphere needs to be reduced to 275 ppm. Currently we are not even slowing down global emissions
although according to a new report issued by the US Energy Information
Administration, in 2011 due to factors such as a poor economy and a glut of
cheap natural gas US energy related carbon emissions declined by 2.4%.
The
debate about what causes climate change is also over. The endless and obfuscating natural v. humans activity
debate must be put behind us. If you do not understand that your head is buried
somewhere other than deep in the sand.
We
must solve the most serious issue that has faced our species. To do that we need to intelligently
characterize and continue to identify how human activity has caused climate
disaster. Most importantly we must
find ways to change our ways.
The Role of Biodiversity
The
evolution of life on earth coincides with the evolution of the atmosphere. Over the millennia, nature,
biodiversity, and earth’s ecosystems and atmosphere have undergone ongoing
substantial adjustments. At every level vital exchanges between energy and life
effect the atmosphere including how gasses are stored and released.
Biodiversity
is fundamental to the way our atmosphere has evolved, -and to its
stability. Life, collected in the
oceans, forests, savannahs, wetlands and literally all of the bioregions of the
planet interconnect, interact, and interdepend upon each other. E.O Wilson, the famed Harvard biologist
says that “nature achieves sustainability through complexity”. A stable atmosphere champions life,
including the relatively recent rise of the human species. Biodiversity makes us unique in the
universe.
The
downside is that has humans have risen to the top of the food chain, we have
come to dominate and transform ecosystems at every level. One of the primary consequences is
vanishing biodiversity. EO Wilson
says, “each millimeter, each acre, each square mile of natures ecosystem that
is destroyed is a nail the atmospheric coffin”.
Human Dominion Over Nature
Human
fecundity, and our alleged ability to reason have been the foundations of our
belief in human primacy on the planet. That may be a temporary adjustment. Many
scientists are now recognizing that we are experiencing an extinction event on
this planet, The Holocene Extinction,
that rivals any previous extinction episode.
Generally
accepted practices of human culture tend to view the earth from an essentially
anthropocentric point of view. This centers on the belief that the earth is
here to serve humans rather than humans are actually a part of a complex
interdependent ecosystem. This
intellectual achievement by humanity centers around a fundamentally political
failure that pits things like mainstream monotheistic religious beliefs and
economic hegemony, -and against science. The resulting conflicts have been
consequential. It is a mismatch.
Science wins. Humans and their paradoxical and often corrupting political
philosophies are on the way out.
We
cannot afford to think of the environment as something to be conquered but
rather we must understand that our lives depend on our own healthy
relationships with ecosystems. That means fundamentally, we must defend
biodiversity.
The Kaya Identity
Decades
ago, Japanese energy economist Yoichi Kaya explained that human caused CO2
emissions are explained by four factors: population, economic
activity, how we obtain our energy, and how we use that energy. His resulting
“Kaya Identity” ( Emissions=GDP x Technology) is a formula that has been a way
to both recognize and predict carbon emissions, and to find ways to reduce
these emissions. Economic activity, translated in the formula as GDP,
externalizes by tradition, fundamental environmental values. This egregious
miscalculation has lead to a false hope that we can still work within the
economic systems that have championed consumption and destruction of habitat.
This path has lead to climate disaster by forcing
us to decide that we can only address the almost singular issue of “how we
obtain our energy” while ignoring the results of expanding GDP on biodiversity
and habitat loss. This strategy is not working.
The Kaya Identity Redux
Emissions=GDP-Biodiversity
x Technology
It’s the Economy, Stupid
Until
now the discussions and arguments have been filled with political obtusities.
Science almost always takes a back seat to economic growth.
We
have been through decades of failed global summits and conventions including
Kyoto, Rio, Johannesburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen and many others with the focus
ostensibly on sustainable development and climate change. One of the problems
is that the term sustainable development is clearly an oxymoron. Another
problem is that the primary concern of virtually every world leader that has
attended any of these events is not the environment, but instead the concern is
economic growth and the GDP.
According to our global leadership, sustainability is about the economy
and not about the relationships between environment, society, and the economy,
with the environment being the real bottom line. This is where the train has gone off the tracks.
Externalities v. Value
Our
generally accepted economic system declares natural resources to be
commodities. The costs and values of the ecological services that these systems
provide such as atmospheric balancing and clean water are externalities. In
other words a forest is measured by its value in board feet and its ecological
services values are marginalized. The real costs and consequences of harvesting
our ecosystems are “external” and are not the responsibility of the political
entities that are profiting from exploitation. Instead the costs of water
treatment facilities and health care associated with environmental degradation,
are passed on to the public while the measured consumer economy grows without
the bother of accounting for environmental loss.
The
political economic systems that we have intentionally deployed are directly
responsible for eviscerating earth’s ecosystems.
Why the Energy Equation is
Not Enough
How we obtain and use our energy is very
important. The focus on renewable energy strategies is consequential, but
identifying energy sources without taking into consideration consumerism,
growth, and the externalities of the value of biodiversity and costs of habitat
loss, and the social consequences of all of the above flies in the face of
sustainable problem solving.
Certainly
a focus on “greener” energy and a “green economy” has its merits, but can
anything that promotes consumer growth that ignores the basic reality of the
value of biodiversity succeed? Can
we stop this careening train?
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