It's not just the climate, people

Recently, WIRED magazine printed an article that listed several environmentally destructive activities that do not directly affect the Earth's climate and may therefore be continued without consequence1. Thankfully, this rather foolish article also ran with a counterpoint by Alex Steffan of Worldchanging.com that pointed out that the single-problem, mechanistic thinking that spawned WIRED's article is the same sort of thinking that got us into this climate mess in the first place2. The real 'inconvenient truth' is that as long as environmental issues (and most other political issues, for that matter) are treated as discrete problems to be addressed by mechanistic, independent solutions, society will merely continue to move closer to an ecological collapse. A myopic focus on cutting carbon emissions may help to reduce the severity of the inevitable climate shift, but it won't help supply the world's growing population with clean freshwater, slow the catastrophic rate of bio-homogenization, or address any of the other major ecological issues that our society faces. Carbon is only one of six different elements that make up 95% of the Earth's biomass, and we are severely altering the natural cycles of all six of them. Instead of trying to 'fix' our environmental situation with piecemeal technical innovations, each specific to a single issue, we need to stop for a moment and consider all our actions in the context of what we've learned about the Earth's biosphere thus far. In short, we need to restructure ourselves into a sustainable society.

Grand Challenges in Environmental Sciences ...Read this FREE online!Full Book | PDF Summary
Fortunately, some of this work has already been done. For instance, the National Research Council, in a 2001 report, identified a series of 'Grand Challenges' that need to be addressed within the environmental sciences in order to produce research that will lead to effective decision-making (see the inline box for more information on this report). The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment also released a report (The State of the Nation's Ecosystems) that identifies water quality, biodiversity and land use change as critical issues in addition to climate change. Finally, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, initiated by the United Nations in 2001, identifies a wide range of critical environmental issues facing humans around the globe.

The global scope of many of the environmental problems facing society brings up another important issue: environmental gradients, and therefore problems, transcend political boundaries. This means that much of the effective policy work will need to take place in the international arena, and that domestic policies must be shaped with a global perspective. The United States in particular needs to learn a bit more about international cooperation and sustainable development. The current president is merely a symptom of a larger problem in the U.S.; people pay more attention to the private lives of actors and athletes than they do to the global community. American decision-makers need to acknowledge that we are neither the most advanced nor the most important nation, particularly in the realm of environmental protection, and begin working with other nations to develop a more sustainable global society. Several European nations have environmental policies in place that are far beyond those of the U.S.; leadership in the realm of sustainable development is really no longer an option for the United States. Even if the Bush Administration hadn't set environmental policies back several decades, the U.S. would still be trailing behind much of Europe, largely because of an issue of timing--nations such as the United Kingdom have already reached their threshold, and have been forced to adopt more sustainable practices. Rather than learning from this experience, U.S. policy-makers seem content to continue down the same path, knowing full well that the inevitable destination is a national environmental crisis. As the United States is currently one of the largest producers of Carbon and other pollutants, as well as one of the largest consumers of natural resources, internal environmental policies will exert direct influence on the global environment.

The Kyoto Protocol3 is an excellent example of the problem with American thinking. Many thought that the Protocol would inevitably collapse without the backing of the United States4, and that Bush's short-sighted decision doomed international efforts to reduce emissions. More recently, I had a chance to ask Barack Obama's environmental policy advisers whether Obama would consider re-entering the protocol if elected. They replied that the U.S. would not re-enter the protocol, but would instead, in keeping with our status as the world leader, draft a new treaty for everyone to sign. Evidently, the fact that Kyoto, as of 13 May 2008, was ratified by 181 different countries and that the U.S. is the only nation with no intention to ratify5 has no bearing on the issue of world 'leadership'. In other words, the rest of the world was more than ready to adopt the measures outlined in the Protocol without the backing of the United States. Other examples of environmental leadership outside the U.S. include recycling programs, water quality standards and land use planning. This is not to say that the U.S. cannot make a meaningful contribution to global environmental policies, simply that this contribution must be tempered by the knowledge that many of the necessary steps are already being taken elsewhere, and that no one nation's agenda should dictate global environmental policy.

The myriad of environmental and related social issues facing humanity can only be addressed if we are willing to approach them as part of a complex system that transcends political and economic boundaries. Single-issue solutions will not prevent an ecological collapse; a sustainable role for humanity in the Earth's biosphere requires systematic policies that acknowledge the complex relationships between different elements in the system.

1. 1. http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_intro
2. 2. http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/sb_carbon
3. 3. http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php
4. 4. e.g. Bush's Shift Could Doom Air Pact, Some Say, Andrew C. Revkin, 17 March 2001, New York Times
5. 5. http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/status_of_ratification/items/2613.php