The field of ecological research and reporting is a part of the basic human urge to engage the world through reason and a quest for understanding. It is not about seizing control of society’s urges and services and limiting the freedom of anyone, but rather about making sure we have the information we need to make the best choices, then advocating for those choices, when inertia and custom stand in the way of better health — for individuals and in the manner in which human individuals respond to their social and natural environments.
Ecology is the study of what surrounds, what encompasses our everyday activities, it is economics that looks to a broader picture that includes all of the resources and services on which the more limited “economy” depends for its very existence. There is a mischaracterization of ecological science as a vague and ideologically motivated quest to control or rein in corporate enterprise or human behavior generally, and that unjust mischaracterization is a distortion promoted by interests that seek to avoid having to acknowledge or live up to any greater responsibility to the social or natural environment — even where those responsibilities are already written into existing law.
In short, ecology is a study of the balance that might or might not exist among natural systems, and so by definition it must take into account human behavior. Efforts to impede the expansion and the dissemination of the facts brought to light through ecological science are attempts to work against the human interest inherent in finding ways to interact sustainably with the natural systems that provide humanity with a climate and a landscape favorable to civilization, and in concert with which civilization has been built.
If we lose touch with that problem of how to balance ecological sustainability with human need and ambition, then we risk forfeiting any future benefit from our present activities to the unwinding of complex and often delicate natural systems that provide the Earth with a certain natural systemic cohesion that allows civilization to exist at all. If we are not good stewards of the natural resources we seek to exploit, the costs of exploitation will be more than we, in our small corner of the natural calculus of energy distribution, can afford.
Arguments against ecological science often tout the notion that “nature finds a way” or “nature is too big to be destroyed by human activity”. This is true, of course; nature will go on. But whether it goes on in a way that allows us to keep exploiting natural resources —which include clean water, stable climate systems, and temperature ranges useful to agriculture, storm protection and construction— as we need to, as a species, is another matter altogether.
Nature’s going on, it’s post-industrial phase, might not be conducive to human civilization as we know it. It might, in fact, require sacrifices on a scale we cannot imagine, with entire river systems disappearing, whole regions giving way to comprehensive desertification, and the acceleration of what is already the 6th great mass extinction known to human science.
The way nature survives might present in human terms the collapse of the global food supply, water shortages on a scale never before seen, wars over water, grain, forest and even air resources, and the migration of tens or even hundreds of millions of people whose biological needs respect no political borders. Each of these scenarios has already begun to unfold on the microcosmic scale, and efforts to prevent their contagion to the global level are among the most complex ongoing negotiations in which governments are now engaged.
Climate destabilization is a process that has been seen before in the Earth’s long history. In the past, the destabilization of global climate systems has been brought about by meteor impact, volcanic eruptions, and other cataclismic events. It is thought that slow-growing systemic phenomena —like over-consumption of plant-life by mega-fauna or the chemical differentiation of oceanic waters due to geological activity, over time— have also played a role in altering global climate patterns.
But in the last 300 years, no single factor has played a greater role in altering fundamental elements of balance and resilience —like the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) or ozone (O3) in the atmosphere or the natural elasticity of river systems and the vast ecosystems dependent on them— than human industry. This has been demonstrated by the most advanced scientific measures of chemical composition and variation available in today’s technologies, and it is for that reason that ecological science continually points the way toward more responsible, more sustainable resource-exploitation models.
There is no reason for high-profit businesses, like the multinational petroleum extraction and distribution firms, to take an adversarial posture toward such science, because like all science, ecology helps point the way to what will become the most useful and profitable activities under a new energy-exploitation paradigm. If those firms pay attention, they can capitalize on the work of ecological scientists by building a future that works better, is more efficient and in which high-profit enterprise does not promote the degradation of basic natural services and systems or the cost fallout involved in combatting the effects of climate-destabilizing behavior.
- Article from The Hot Spring Network
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