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| Online here |
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Taking the highlighted bits above, bolded below, in David Dodwell’s article, one by one:
⧫ “… changing the planet forever — and not for the better”.
Yes, for the better!
I live in Hong Kong.
I can imagine living in Hong Kong before we humans changed it. Say in the 16th century, when there were a few humans around Tong Luo Wan or present day Aberdeen on Hong Kong island. Fisher folk. We’ve found mounds of shells from the oysters they ate. Would I time travel to then? Sure. I’d love to have a look, who wouldn’t? Would I want to live there? No way. I can live in the armchair air-conditioned comfort of today, enjoy oysters from many more places than just Tongluo bay, and not just oysters but other seafoods as well and the best of the best of foods from all over, and shopping in lovely malls and sailing to lovely islands and hiking in lovely hills and… but no need to go on. Except to mention our fabulous health care, so we live to our 80s, vs those fisher folk who lived to their mid thirties, and heaven help them if they had dental problems.
So, no, I don’t in the least agree with the “not for the better” change in the world. We are immeasurably better off than our forebears. We live longer, healthier lives, in immeasurably more interesting — better — places. (Scholars like Steven Pinker agree).
⧫ “… 500,000 years from now, … humans are likely to be long gone, exterminated by the global warming triggered by our orgy of carbon dioxide generation and environmental destruction.”
I don’t for one minute agree we’ll be gone in 500,000 years, let alone “well before” (see below).
Whether our warming is fully, or partly, “triggered” by human carbon dioxide emissions is still not 100% decided. In any case, use of “orgy” is rather too emotive. For my taste.
“Environmental destruction” is worst in the poorest countries. Everywhere in the west, and even in China and much of Asia, as they have got richer they have reversed destruction. Poor counties need to get rich so they too can preserve their environment. Getting rich means having energy. Some of that can be renewables. Some will be fossil fuels because of their speed, price and convenience.
What’s more: global warming and higher carbon dioxide emissions have led to big increases in greening of the earth, according to a NASA study:
From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25 [2016].
Change in leaf area 1982-2015. Source: NASA
⧫ “Humans set about destroying the balmy equilibrium …”.
No, we did not. We didn’t “set about” destroying anything. We did “set about” changing our immediate environment, cutting down trees, tilling fields, planting crops and all the rest of it. And then the Industrial Revolution and all that horrible stuff. But it was not done to “destroy“ the planet. What a calumny! It was to change it for our greater flourishing. Sure, in the process we go things wrong. Usually — almost always — when we mucked up, we changed tack. Think whaling. Think atmospheric nuclear testing. Think the ozone layer. Think the move to renewables now.
The phrase “balmy equilibrium” betrays ignorance of longer-term climate fluctuations that were far more dramatic than the warming we’ve experienced in the last 70 years.
⧫ “Evidence of homo sapiens dates back at least 315,000 years to Morocco …”.
Granted.
That means we’ve survived nearly half a million years on the planet — a changing planet even then and since — when for all of that time we had little control over our environment. And yet now, today, with much more control over our environment— housing, air conditioning, travel, food production— Dodwell expects that when the aliens come in 500,000 years we will be “long gone”! How so? By sitting on our bums and waiting for the heat to strike us down, like the infamous frog in the warming pot? We can’t move? We can’t go to higher latitudes? We can’t climb the Himalayas? We can’t air condition?
⧫ “Stability of the Holocene epoch was pushed horribly out of equilibrium.”
No. Not based on long-term data. The Holocene has periods warmer than today, let alone earlier epochs:
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| Some times in the Holocene far right, warmer than today |
Just my preference but I’d do without so many adverbs. Like “horribly”.
⧫ “The human population explosion, and our insatiable lust for consumption, has created landfills worldwide…”.
The term “Population explosion” goes back to the days of the first, and still most (in)famous, catastrophist, Paul Ehrlich in the 1960s. Surely by now Dodwell knows that our population will peak soon and then decline and that population decline, not “population explosion” will be our pressing problem.
Unless, of course, you hate Homo sapiens, in which case that’s good news.…
“insatiable lust”… Really, David! “…landfills worldwide…” In the richer west, rubbish is now being burnt to produce energy. Less so in poorer countries.
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| "Waste to energy plants successful in Europe" |
⧫ "…massive collapse in wildlife and natural biodiversity.”
No. The opposite is the case. There have been five mass extinctions, none due to we Homo sapiens, and now there is a mass increase in the number of identified species:
…the IUCN has estimated that just 0.8 per cent of the 112,432 plant, animal, and insect species within its data set have gone extinct since 1500. That’s a rate of fewer than two species lost every year for an annual extinction rate of 0.001 per cent
⧫ “…changing our planet forever…”.
Whaaa? “Changing” and “forever”. They don’t seem to go together. As the Chinese say it’s a 自我矛盾, Zìwǒ máodùn, a self-contradiction.
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¹ I added a “Declaration of interest” to declare that I am pro human. I like Homo sapiens.
Many on the environmental Left are anti-human. People like David Attenborough and George Monbiot are explicitly so. They think Homo sapiens are a kind of virus on the Earth, that mother Gaia would be better off without us. I think David Dodwell is anti-human though that may be unfair, as he’s not explicitly said so. He’s certainly a catastrophist. As are most who comment these days. It’s all over the media, everywhere. Everyone a catastrophist.
But I’d like to encourage the idea that when writing about the environment and the future of the planet, we acknowledge if we are pro or anti-Homo sapiens.
If someone is not just a catastrophist, but also anti-human, then I’m going to read with that in mind. It has a twist.
My view is that we, Homo sapiens, are a part of nature and are the only ones we know that are able to apprehend the full beauty of the universe. We may well be the conscience of the universe itself. We are precious. And if pressed I’d say we’re more precious than other life forms because of that. Which it ought to without saying, but can’t, that that does not mean we ought not treasure all other living things, even the f-ugly ones like slugs and stone fish.
