Climate Change - the Good News
Sir David Attenborough warns that 'the moment of crisis has come' in efforts to tackle climate change, as the BBC launches a year of special coverage on the subject.
So where is the good news in this moment of crisis? James Lovelock gives us a clue:
'In Gaia we are just another species, neither the owners nor the stewards of this planet.'
Climate change forces us to face up to the fact that we are not the 'superior species on the final rung of the evolutionary ladder' and when it comes to the idea that we might be the owners or stewards of the planet, Lynn Margulis is unequivocal:
'The human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable -
the rhetoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it.'
Symbiotic Planet p143
So, if we're not superior and we're powerless, where does that leave us? Lovelock explains:
Our future depends much more upon a right relationship with Gaia
than with the never-ending drama of human interest'
James Lovelock : 'The Ages of Gaia' p14
We won't find solutions in the 'never ending drama of human interest', for as Sir David himself says, 'We've been putting things off for year after year'. For Lovelock there's only one course of action, finding a 'right relationship with Gaia'. And this is the first bit of Good News, because Gaia, 'in all her symbiogenetic glory' (LM) has been evolving, emerging and complexifying for 3,600 million years, so when it comes to running a planet, she has form!
There's yet more Good News. Thanks to the vision of Lovelock and Margulis and the work of Earth System scientists like Tim Lenton and Andy Watson, we can identify crucial features and dynamics of the Gaia system and begin to address how we might apply these insights to solving the climate crisis and designing future humansystems which are inspired by the aim of finding this 'right relationship with Gaia'.
These features and dynamics of the Gaia system include:
- humans are 'permutations of the wisdom of the biosphere' (LM), so we are 'naturally Gaian'
- organisms and their environments are deeply interconnected and inseparable; 'there is no really convincing way to say where life ends and the inorganic realm of non-life begins' (LM)
- Gaia functions at all scales, from the microcosm to the planet, and all scales are equally important for the functioning of the whole; 'all organisms today are equally evolved' (LM)
- symbiosis, co-operation and networks are the driving forces of evolution, not just competition; 'Life is social. You and I are composed of a collection of organs and tissues; the organs are made up of billions of living cells, each of which can also live independently' (JL)
- recycling is a fundamental dynamic; 'Gaia, the living Earth far transcends any single organism or even any population...the Gaia system recycles matter on the global level' (LM)
- 'self-regulation emerges as the system evolves' (JL)
- 'we are in mute, incontrovertible partnership with the photosynthetic organisms that feed us, the gas producers that provide oxygen, and the heterotrophic bacteria and fungi that remove and convert our waste. No political will or technological advance can dissolve that partnership' (LM)
The historian Yuval Noah Harari asks why it is that humans run the world, and explains that it's because we are the only species that can co-operate flexibly in large numbers. Add to this our ability to invent stories and you have the potential for what Harari calls 'fictional realities', stories that lots of people agree on and co-operate with but which have no objective reality. Amongst these 'fictional realities' he includes religions, human rights, states and nations, politics, companies and corporations, and the most powerful of all, money. Money is the only fictional reality that everyone believes in. Harari goes on to observe that the future of 'objective realities' such as forests and rivers and the survival of other species now depends on the actions of fictional realities.
Whilst these observations are vital in our understanding of how we created the problems we are facing, they don't go far enough. What the climate change crisis makes absolutely clear is that human's don't run the world and that, conversely, the future of the fictional realities, of the 'never-ending drama of human interest', actually depends on the actions of the 'real reality' of the planetary system we call Gaia.
In their book 'Revolutions That Made The Earth' Tim Lenton and Andy Watson, both Professors of Earth System Science, offer this advice:
'...in its long history, the Earth system has undergone several cataclysmic upheavals...the planet is in the midst of yet another upheaval...this time we are the irresponsible organisms, equivalent to the cyanobacteria, about to change the planet forever...we are a technically adept but dangerously naive species...but we have foresight, we know what harm we may do and how we can prevent it...our best hope now is to embrace revolution and intervene more in the Earth system, to close the recycling loops we have opened, and restore stability...' p 412
The Good News is that, knowing now how Gaia works, we can embrace the revolution and restore stability, but only if we see the shortcomings of the fictional realities that have created the problems and get beyond the political and economic barriers which are the product of our imaginations alone. We have to face up to revolutionary ideas such as recycling the accumulated global wealth, which at the moment is in the hands of a few, in order to fund a rapid transition to zero carbon emissions. Whilst this might be an anathema to 'fictional economics', it could also be a vital first step towards achieving a 'right relationship with Gaia'.
The best news of all might be that this is not only a revolution of behaviour to solve specific problems but also a revolution in how humanity sees itself in relation to the rest of the natural world, to the planet 'that takes care of us', a revolution which leads to humanity coming of age as species within the Gaia system and through which we realise our true potential as 'permutations of the wisdom of the biosphere'.
© Peter Horton 2020 gaiascompanyco@gmail.com