When Joni Mitchel sang the immortal lines “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot” in 1970, it was really only the start of the creeping destruction of our natural world. Since then the change has accelerated at an incredible rate. Whereas, we had lush fields full of life, trees containing myriad insects and birds, all living together and cooperating, we now have large barren platforms of concrete. The pursuit of progress in it’s insatiable appetite, has taken more and more and more. It happens slowly enough that the average human doesn’t notice. Occasionally you will hear the screams and shouts of someone who gets it. Who understands that once something is lost, it doesn’t come back. We truly do live in paradise. Imagine for a moment, standing on any other planet in our solar system, if you could. If it was rocky, you would see a barren, lifeless mass of rock and sand. If it were a watery or gassy planetoid, you might see a bit more activity but not the trees and plants, the birds and insects that we see here. The utter beauty of flowers of many different colours and scents. This is the only planet that we know of, that harbours such life. In the film Don’t Look Up, Leonardo DeCaprio’s character, right at the end, says the line “We really had it all didn’t we” and we do. If you believe in life on other planets, which to be fair, is pretty much a mathematical certainty. They would look at what we have here, and be in wonder. The breadth of life on this lump of rock, water and mud is extraordinary. Why are we so eager to pave it all over and turn it into a parking lot?
Where are we and how did we get here?
As human beings it is often a good idea to take a step back and ask the question, “what is this all for?” I have been doing that quite a bit recently much to the detriment of my mental health. Looking at the ever increasing climate crisis and the general feeling of dissatisfaction that many people experience, what is the root cause of all of this? Maybe the question is, where did it go wrong for humanity? It is generally difficult to point a finger at exactly the point where things went wrong. There are many contenders and they probably all have a strong argument in favour of them. For me, one of the key moments in time that changed the human experience for the worse was the start of the industrial revolution. Mechanisation of all sorts, held the promise of reducing the burden on humans. Of delivering us more leisure time, more time for the arts and humanities. Did it?
The industrial revolution, arguably started in Britain in the 1760’s with an automated means of spinning yarn using steam to power machines. It is without contention, that this increased production. Who benefited from it though? The transition was fairly fast, with highly skilled professions being “simplified” with mechanisation. Slowly the skilled artisan’s and craftspeople were put out of work as the cheaper mechanised methods took over. People who lived in the villages were forced to a large extent to move into cities to work in smoky and often dangerous conditions in factories. Who was the benefit for? I think it is fairly clear and not really contentious to say that the already wealthy, benefitted the most from mechanisation. They were able to produce larger quantities of goods for a much smaller cost per unit. The promised increase in leisure and reduction in burden on the workers, was not to appear. Instead, there were horrific working conditions for many people.
As time went on, the disparity between rich and poor increased. The lifestyle and culture of the people changed. Many elements of life which had existed for centuries, died out. People started to be seen as commodities and resources to exploit. Their sole purpose was to work the machines. There had always been rich and poor but generally, rich landowners were kinder to their tenants than the factory owners were. It was in their interests to be so. The disparity increased. Business will always head towards the cheapest method of achieving whatever it does. That is it’s purpose. To create wealth for the owner. Humans are used as a means of achieving that but are secondary to profit.
So where has this all lead us? We currently live in a consumption machine. Everything related to the economic system is about consumption. Humans are intrinsically creative and artistic. There has always been a deep need in humans to express themselves in different ways. In the current culture, humans are not seen as individuals, they are seen as “consumers”. your purpose as a human is to feed the consumption machine. The machine is the only thing that matters. I think it is quite telling how the term “Human resources” has become popular in business. What do you do with resources? You exploit them. Personally I do not see myself as a resource, I see myself as a human being. If you look at political policy over the last hundred years, you will see a strong trend towards benefitting industry over people. There have of course been times when the tide has gone in the other direction but those tend to be short lived. As a population, we have been distracted by shiny things. We have been given mortgages, pensions, insurance, credit cards. All to feed the machine and tie the population into keeping it satiated. It is difficult to get out now even if you wanted to. Imagine for a moment how difficult it would be if you wanted to live a peaceful life, off the land. It is near impossible today. The Matrix films were a metaphor for this state of being. We are not even aware that we are the batteries, feeding the machine. It is almost invisible to us. We are told that certain frivolous things are important, when in reality, they are not at all. We become desensitized to our situation by burying our minds in TV shows and entertainment.
Why have we not reversed the trend of climate change. These things are all related at a fundamental level. We have known about climate change for over one hundred years. the first record of the link between co2 and climate was published in 1896 by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius. It started truly hitting the public consciousness around forty years ago. If we had made changes then, we could have achieved a slow migration away from fossil fuel use and put money into developing clean alternatives. Why did that not happen? One answer really, cost. It was cheaper to continue using fossil fuels. The consumption machine must be satiated and so the already rich, became richer as our ecosystem slowly became worse. We are now in a situation where the co2 content of the atmosphere is the same as it was in the Pleistocene period, over three million years ago. At that time the global average temperature was 4 degrees higher than now. If that same temperature was applied to today, it would cause massive water shortages, super storms, drought, agricultural failure and famine. These would cause an obvious consequence of mass migration away from the areas closest to the equator. There are an unsettlingly high number of climate models which predict a 4 degree increase would cause the uninhabitable area to extend as far north as the middle of France. Not even going into the myriad interconnected systems which are too complicated to model which are likely to collapse in this event. Ultimately, all of this is happening because the already rich, wanted to be a bit richer for a bit longer.
So what is the solution to this? I am not sure there even is one at this stage. We are going to experience an unstable planetary system for at least the next one thousand years, whatever we do. Planetary systems take time to adjust. The only feasible way of making the changes that are needed to prevent a mass extinction at this point is the dismantling of the consumption machine and it’s related products. It is going to be extremely painful for people who have known nothing else for their whole lives. But do we even have a choice? If we do nothing, civilisation will inevitably collapse and life on Earth will be put at extreme risk from both the weather and the more than four hundred and fifty nuclear power plants that would cease being maintained. Financial systems that are predicated on continual growth, cannot survive in a situation where they are being forced to shrink due to loss of land area and increased population density. Not even going into the collapse of the fragile worldwide supply chains as weather and food scarcity cause them to buckle.
Maybe the answer for the long term survival of human beings, is to go back to a simpler culture. Living in small communities that are living off the land in some sort of balance with nature. We would lose our access to shiny toys but maybe in a further hundred or so years, we could work out a way to restart civilisation in a clean and sustainable way. Maybe we could even develop systems that promote our artistic and creative sides rather than a never ending need for things. Maybe that is the future that humans want. Maybe that is the future than humans need.