The Independent: "The planet's future..."

[GliderGuider]

The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'

An effort on the scale of the Apollo mission that sent men to the Moon is needed if humanity is to have a fighting chance of surviving the ravages of climate change. The stakes are high, as, without sustainable growth, "billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse".

This is the stark warning from the biggest single report to look at the future of the planet – obtained by The Independent on Sunday ahead of its official publication next month. Backed by a diverse range of leading organisations such as Unesco, the World Bank, the US army and the Rockefeller Foundation, the 2009 State of the Future report runs to 6,700 pages and draws on contributions from 2,700 experts around the globe. Its findings are described by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the UN, as providing "invaluable insights into the future for the United Nations, its member states, and civil society".

The impact of the global recession is a key theme, with researchers warning that global clean energy, food availability, poverty and the growth of democracy around the world are at "risk of getting worse due to the recession". The report adds: "Too many greedy and deceitful decisions led to a world recession and demonstrated the international interdependence of economics and ethics."

Although the future has been looking better for most of the world over the past 20 years, the global recession has lowered the State of the Future Index for the next 10 years. Half the world could face violence and unrest due to severe unemployment combined with scarce water, food and energy supplies and the cumulative effects of climate change.

But the authors suggest the threats could also provide the potential for a positive future for all. "The good news is that the global financial crisis and climate change planning may be helping humanity to move from its often selfish, self-centred adolescence to a more globally responsible adulthood..."

The last paragraph is where I pin my remaining hopes. There is a chance that a new, more benign human civilization will emerge over time, but only if the current cultural assumptions change. Given how entrenched those assumption are at every level of thought and behaviour, it will probably take a collapse of some sort to dislodge them.

BTW, "sustainable growth" as it is normally used is one of those obstructing assumptions. The only growth that is sustainable in the strictest sense is limited to activities that do not consume stocks of either resources or energy. Something tells me that when these people use the term "sustainable growth" they are not talking about ever more ingenious ballet performances...

[pscot]

1. Hopeful, but not optimistic

I don't see any sign that our atavistic impulses are abating. I think they're hard wired. They're what make the damned human race such a cosmic pain in the ass. Shakespeare had us pegged. There's that scene at the end of Lear, where Goneril is looking for a volunteer to go murder her sister, and one of the guards steps up. "If it be man's work,"he says,"I'll do it." Boy, howdy, that's us. Right down to the bottom. Civilization has put on a veneer of domestication upon us, but we'll get over it in a hurry, once the pressure starts to build.

[GliderGuider]

2. Nature vs. Nurture

It's absolutely true that humans start from a basis of biologically evolved neural wiring that is relatively fixed. Cultural development than adds non-physical social layers on top of that wiring. Those social layers are malleable within very broad limits. On the personal level that malleability allows for both Gandhi and Hitler, while on the group level it allows for both skinheads and the Forgiveness Project, modern Scandinavia and Stalin's Russia. All those people have very similar evolved neural wiring. The polar opposite behaviours they exhibit spring from, and are all equally supported by, the cultural stories that comprise our civilization.

Because we live in it, we tend to define civilization (by which we of course mean our civilization) as a good thing and the lack or civilization as a bad thing. However, we conveniently ignore the fact that the Germans of 1936 were just as civilized as the Canadians of today (for example). It's clear to me that civilization itself does not automatically confer "goodness", no matter what we are conditioned to think when we read the word "civilized".

Our behaviour towards our planet suffers from the same variability. The stories of our civilization are capable of supporting ecologically sensitive behaviour, and we are seeing more and more of that occurring. However, the stories that have been guiding our actions for the last few hundred (or few thousand) years, have been anything but benign towards other species or the planet itself. I think it's important to recognize the overwhelming role that culture has played in fostering that toxic disregard. While humans may be wired for competition, status-seeking and reproduction, it's obvious from individual and group examples that our evolutionary urges can be shaped and channeled in very different directions towards good or evil by the cultural riverbanks of civilization.

If we acknowledge the reality that culture shapes behaviour, and the possibility that cultures can change (and do so very rapidly to accommodate widely differing goals), then it makes sense to put a lot of attention towards making positive cultural change a reality, rather than just saying, "It's in our genes." To make a positive cultural change we need to do two things. First, we must reduce the stranglehold that our toxic cultural stories of competition, hierarchy and dominion have on our personal and social behaviour. Unless we can do that, more benign paradigms will have no chance to bloom. Second, we need to spread the message that these healthy paradigms exist, that they can make a difference, and that the moral imperative is to adopt them.

[Terry in Austin]

3. Survival of the fittest

I agree, we're not nearly as hard-wired as a lot of the stories would have us believe. Even Darwin's famous dictum has been bent to convince us that our fate is sealed by our beastly nature.

This "law of the jungle" narrative comes out of the popular interpretation of Darwin's work on evolution. However, evolutionary advantage from competition is only half of the story -- just as often, advantage comes through cooperation.

"Fit" is usually interpreted as "strong," as in "only the strong survive." All too often, it's a rationalization for dominance.

The fact is, it would be biologically more accurate to restate the slogan as "survival of the fittingest." Successful adaptations are simply those most suitable to the situation -- i.e., the most fitting. Sometimes, these might indeed entail greater capacity for violence and dominance; other times, better cooperative strategies are what fits the bill. It just depends on the situation.

One way or another, it seems likely that humanity is facing some sort of "bottleneck" very soon, where civilization as we know it will be greatly stressed and probably transformed as a result. There are many ways that could go.

You've got your "Mad Max" scenarios at one end of the range of possibilities, but I think there are some good possibilities at the other end. Hard times could just as readily bring about a cooperative ethic that I believe could have a very healthy effect on the way society evolves.

If things are stark enough to where your best bet for food, clothing and shelter is to participate well in a group that's managing to provide them for its members, then the "survival of the fittest" imperative becomes something like "cooperate or die." It seems that this would lead to a society that's much more, well, social.

I think it's much less likely that individual survivalist types would prevail through extended scarcity and de-industrialization. Arguably, it was exactly the abundance of industrialization that made possible a life where individuals are able to provide for all their needs on their own. They've had all those petroleum-based "energy slaves" working for them, after all, relieving them of any need to gather in cooperative groups.

Take away the petro-slavery, though, and it seems more likely that those who hunker down together and organize their lives along more or less collective lines will be the ones with the best chance of getting by.