Transition to a Better World for All Beings

Ways to Speed it Along

There are some very positive developments taking place in the world just now. First, as I reported on last week, trends suggest that human population is going to peak sooner and lower that previously predicted. Second, humanity is now making a lot of progress scaling up renewable energy, in both electricity generation and electric vehicles and transportation options. Rather than plunge right on with the “however” I invite you to take a moment to actually celebrate this good news. There is much to feel hopeful about in these civilization-reshaping trends.

OK, now for the “however”. Certainly, a rapid transition to lower-carbon energy sources is a critical step in slowing the acceleration of global climate change. However, our predicament is more complicated than climate change and the solution far deeper than getting off fossil fuels. The very difficult truth is we have built a modern civilization and global economy that consumes more energy and stuff than the planet can provide. Humanity is literally attempting to live outside the laws of physics.

Renewable energy products and electric vehicles all require metals that are mined from the Earth and large-scale mining is one of the most destructive technologies ever created. The rapidly growing demand for renewable energy has created something of a wild west in the pursuit of rare earth minerals and metals such as lithium and cobalt. The resulting mining operations are chewing up and polluting forests, rivers, and irreplaceable wild places. Often, the largest deposits of these materials are located in places where environmental and labor laws are very weak or non-existent. The Democratic Republic of Congo provides seventy-percent of the world’s cobalt, a metal used in lithium-ion batteries. Amnesty international found children as young as seven working in those mines. The West African nation of Guinea is home to over half the world’s remaining Western Chimpanzees; it also contains vast deposits of bauxite. The current mining boom is wiping out sensitive habitat, decimating the chimp population and destroying the rivers, drinking water and food sources of the local villagers.

Most recently, mining companies have begun eyeing the ocean floors for rare minerals such as cobalt, manganese and nickel. Oceanographers, biologists, and conservationists warn that deep-sea mining could cause extensive and irreversible damage including widespread pollution, decimation of fish populations and obliteration of marine ecosystems. Some testing for deep-sea mining has already begun and early signs show these operations could also have devastating effects on whales and dolphins. The fact that such a destructive, extractive assault against nature is even being considered makes my heart ache. Environmental Justice Foundation provides terrific information about the importance of protecting the oceans from deep-sea mining.

We can’t mine our way out of the ecological crisis we’ve created. More important than scaling up renewables is scaling back humanity’s overall impact on the living world. This is going to require a very hard look at income and resource distribution and a far more global-citizen oriented approach to redistribution, getting more of us off the fringes of poverty or excess and into the wellbeing zone of enough. That’s a wildly unpopular topic in political circles in wealthy nations but it is a condition that I truly believe humanity is moving toward. I believe our sense of self-preservation and the rolling ecological crises will move us in that direction until eventually we realize there is in fact improved quality of life for all of us when all of us have enough.

The sheer number of humans is going to begin dropping in the next twenty-five or thirty years. In the meantime, it seems rather obvious to me that we should focus every bit of effort we can on preserving what’s left of nature, restoring habitats and species wherever possible, recycling like maniacs, and continuously rethinking our needs and wants and what “development” actually looks like.

Preserve What’s Left:

At this point, given the vast scale of damage humans have already inflicted upon the rest of nature, every single remaining, relatively unscathed ecosystem and habitat should be off-limits to human expansion or extractive activities. In the western, growth-addicted worldview, all human expansion is called “development”. That is one of the clearest examples of the anthro-arrogance imbedded in this worldview. Development is about making something better, stronger, more advanced. Mining companies are pursuing “development” of deep-sea mining operations. Destroying ecosystems in the pursuit of more and more material consumer products is not development, but rather degradation.

By the way, the Surfrider Foundation, Greenpeace and many others are working on petitions and actions to put a halt to deep-sea mining. Here is a link to one petition in case you want to add your name. Action matters -- based on public input the state of Washington recently permanently banned deep-sea mining.

Restore and Rewild Everywhere Possible:

There is now ample evidence proving nature heals when humanity gives it a chance. Restoration of degraded ecosystems and habitat and recovery of threatened species is a top priority for a livable, thriving planet. Taking restoration to scale will require scaling-back human activities in some places, but as I’ve noted before, we don’t have rights to the entire freaking planet.

An oft-overlooked argument for wide-scale restoration of wildlands and wildlife is that these lands and beings provide tremendous carbon sequestration services. Recent studies show that healthy populations of just nine species, such as sea otters or gray wolves and various species of whales, could lead to the capture of approximately 95 percent of the amount of CO2 needed to be removed annually to ensure global warming remains below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Larger vertebrates do this through foraging, trampling, upturning and aerating soil and dispersing seeds all of which leads to healthier forests, wetlands and grasslands that capture more carbon. Certain whale species capture food at depths and release nutrients in shallower areas which increases production of phytoplankton, an important ocean carbon sink. More on this topic can be found in this article from Mother Jones.

For me, an even more important argument for the restoration of wild places and species is love. Most humans love nature, the beauty, the stillness, the mystery, even if we don’t know how to show it very well. Rewilding not only heals the planet, it also revitalizes our own human spirit. As author and cultural historian, Thomas Berry, notes, “A degraded habitat will produce degraded humans. If there is to be any true progress, then the entire life community must progress.” Now that’s what I’d call development.

Recycle Like Our Lives and Livelihoods Depend On It (they might):

Finally, recycling needs to be made mandatory, much, much more accessible and much more aggressive and effective. Governments and industry need to adopt large-scale electronics reuse and recycling programs. Governments should require mandatory obligations for battery recycling and collection, and manufacturer responsibility for end-of-life take-back and recycling programs.

Materials recovery and recycling should be treated like a critical industry receiving incentives and investment. As far as I’m concerned, at this point, in a world awash in human trash, the only mining that makes genuine sense is the mining of landfills.

As we weather the transition to a saner civilization we’ll come to realize there is in fact improved quality of life for all of us when all of us have enough – all humans, all beings.

Happy Earth Month. After all, every day on a planet named Earth is Earth Day.

Much love,

Cylvia

PS.  As I was preparing this article I came across a piece from Charles Eisenstein that I find spot-on, beautiful and compelling. Here is a link.