“Humanity cannot sustain unlimited growth in a finite world, a physical law of life on Earth that we ignore at our peril.”
We wanted to share this fantastic article which reminds us that climate change is one of the primary assaults on biodiversity, but by focusing on it solely, we risk massive unrelated biodiversity loss from factors which could be addressed more directly, and oftentimes more easily.
While this piece focuses almost entirely on land-based ecosystems, the ocean is subject to the same categories of challenges. There are human-caused affects on the biodiversity of the ocean from mining, fishing, unsustainable recreation and development, fertilizers/pesticides/chemicals and sewage runoff. These have relatively straightforward steps which can be taken to address and alleviate them.
This article reminds me of a mind-opening two-part podcast series about recycling from Planet Money. If you haven’t heard it, I recommend checking it out here. In it we learn that one of the first big boosters of recycling was the plastics industry, not because they cared about recycling, in fact by their own estimation it wasn’t something that was economically viable or which would make much of an impact. Rather, they supported it because it eased some of the push back that the plastics industry was feeling at the time. While recycling never gave an easy out to plastics production from an environmental perspective (it’s energy intensive, many of the chemicals still end up in the environment, etc.), it allowed for more plastics production and use under the guise that recycling was a realistic option which only needed more time and individual support to have the desired effect. When China stopped accepting US recycled waste in 2019, there was a shock to the system which has continued to this day, with many cities that still collect recycling actually sending it to the trash or incinerating it. The justification I heard when I found out that this was happening in New Orleans was that there was the hope that eventually a way to recycle would be figured out, and that they didn’t want to get people out of the habit of separating their trash, even if it was all being sent to the same place currently.
How does this relate? Because I am worried when industry and development interests push our focus somewhere relatively amorphous, such as focusing on climate change, when actual solid steps could be taken now to address biodiversity and ecosystem loss more directly. I think we need to be aware of the possibility that climate change is its own form of recycling. Something that can be used to distract us while concrete harms continue on under our noses.
All of this being said, it's important to also state that we completely agree with the International Coral Reef Society’s assessment which says that climate change must be part of every conversation about the long-term future of the health of the ocean. Their reports also point out however, that there are many equally important additional challenges that must be addressed. Our response to the challenges facing complex bio-systems must not be single-pronged or black and white, they must also be diverse; it's not one of the other, it's all the above.
Below are a couple favorite quotes from the article, linked below, which we encourage you to read and discuss with your friends and family.
“I’ve come around to the idea that a lot of the diversity of life on Earth may be incompatible with human ambitions and aspirations. On the other hand,” he told me, “I can be very optimistic about climate because ultimately humanity is going to deal with carbon pollution. It’s an issue for our well-being. We can solve it by building machines and making money. That’s obvious in the Inflation Reduction Act. … But with the biodiversity crisis, you can’t solve it with machines, and it involves constraints on our making money. And history shows we aren’t very good at constraint.”
Ashe suggests that conservation biologists cease the empty claims about “saving the planet” with climate mitigation and start speaking truth: There is at present no plan, in any country, anywhere, on a global or national scale, to address extinctions, biodiversity crash, and habitat loss. The dismal reality is that with a green build-out, we will be saving not the complex web of life on Earth but the particular way of life of one privileged domineering species that depends for its success on a nature-ravaging network of technological marvels. Only once this truth is understood can honest decisions be made about what kind of world humanity wishes to inhabit in the age of ecological disorder.
Addressing Climate Change Will Not “Save the Planet” (theintercept.com)