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Humanity has a lot of problems these days. Climate change, increasing economic inequality, crashing biodiversity, political polarization, and a global debt bubble are just a few of our worries. None of these trends can continue indefinitely without leading to a serious failure of our civilization’s ability to maintain itself. Taken together, these metastasizing problems suggest we are headed toward some kind of historic discontinuity.

Serious discontinuities tend to disrupt the timelines of all complex societies (another name for civilizations—that is, societies with cities, writing, money, and full-time division of labor). The ancient Roman, Egyptian, and Mayan civilizations all collapsed. Archaeologists, historians, and systems thinkers have spent decades seeking an explanation for this pattern of failure—a general unified theory of civilizational collapse, if you will. One of the most promising concepts that could serve as the basis for such a theory comes from resilience science, a branch of ecology (the study of the relationship between organisms and their environments).

Why Civilizations Collapse: The Adaptive Cycle

Ecosystems have been observed almost universally to repeatedly pass through four phases of the adaptive cycle: exploitation, conservation, release, and reorganization. Imagine, for example, a Ponderosa pine forest. Following a disturbance such as a fire (in which stored carbon is released into the environment), hardy and adaptable “pioneer” species of plants and small animals fill in open niches and reproduce rapidly.

This reorganization phase of the cycle soon transitions to an exploitation phase, in which those species that can take advantage of relationships with other species start to dominate. These relationships make the system more stable, but at the expense of diversity.

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The battle for the future of farming: what you need to know

November 22, 2018

The battle for the future of farming: what you need to know

It is widely agreed that today’s global agriculture system is a social and environmental failure. Business as usual is no longer an option: biodiversity loss and nitrogen pollution are exceeding planetary limits, and catastrophic risks of climate change demand immediate action.

Most concede that there is an urgent need to radically transform our food systems. But the proposed innovations for more sustainable food systems are drastically different. Which we choose will have long-lasting effects on human society and the planet.

Suggested innovations in food systems can be broadly understood as either seeking to conform with – or to transform – the status quo.

The future of farming is ours to decide. Raggedstone/Shutterstock.com

A technological future

Some want to keep the agriculture industry as close to existing practices as possible. This is true of the increasing number of corporate and financial actors who seek to solve the food crisis by developing new technologies. These technologies are envisaged as being part of what is being called the “fourth industrial revolution” (4IR). The “answer” here is thought to lie in a fusion of technologies that blurs the lines between physical, digital and biological domains.

For example, the World Economic Forum is currently supporting agricultural transitions in 21 countries through its “New Vision for Agriculture” initiative. This initiative supports “innovation ecosystems” to re-engineer food systems based on “12 transforming technologies”. In this imagined future, next generation biotechnologies will re-engineer plants and animals. Precision farming will optimise use of water and pesticides. Global food systems will rely on smart robots, blockchain and the internet of things to manufacture synthetic foods for personalised nutrition.

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Durable Goods

October 26, 2018

Durable Goods

Ed. note: The post below is a transcription of Post Carbon Fellow Stephanie Mills’ remarks at the 50 year anniversary of the publication of the Whole Earth Catalog.

Gratitude to Mother Earth, ground of being. Gratitude to Stewart and Ryan and their colleagues for realizing this event. Gratitude to Stephanie Feldstein for her partnership tonight.

The image was taken this summer in a stand of old growth White Pine saved in 1973 from the chainsaws by a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens. The flowers are Bunchberry and Canada Mayflower. Gratitude to all those beings.

Stewart, master of compressed utterance, asked for five minutes on the last and next half-centuries: More than a tweet, less than a tome.

Fifty years is an eyeblink. Yet despite many good faith efforts at every level to prevent waste and ruin, the growth of industrial civilization has ravaged the Earth, depleting soil, water, and biodiversity, contaminating oceans and the atmosphere.

In 1968 Paul and Anne Ehrlich dropped The Population Bomb. There were about 3.5 billion of us then, over seven billion now. Contraceptive means improved, while political calculation, cultural conservatism and patriarchy hampered their widespread adoption.

Sixties temblors of revolutionary change cracked a few foundations. In 1972 from the Club of Rome we got a world systems model forecasting industrial civilization’s inescapable limits to growth. In 1974, Congress heard of M. King Hubbert’s curve mapping the limits to oil production, the end times for a petroleum-driven global infrastructure. Big business as usual has continued. Critical thresholds have been crossed. A late-breaking discussion of degrowth is underway but yet to reach a wide audience.

A half-century ago we thought about living more responsibly. “Access to tools” enlivened possibilities of household, homestead, village, and neighborhood self-reliance. There was hope of stalling the Apocalypse Juggernaut. There still may be.

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How to Green the Desert: Europe’s Heatwave and Some Holistic Suggestions

September 19, 2018

HOW TO GREEN THE DESERT: EUROPE’S HEATWAVE AND SOME HOLISTIC SUGGESTIONS

In the Northern Hemisphere, the balance of light is turning ever more towards darkness as we approach the Autumn Equinox. This is following a summer which in many places was unusually hot and dry^{(1, 2)}. This is perhaps not unexpected; climate change scientists have been predicting extreme temperature spikes for a number of years^(3).However, it seems that a lot of farmers were nevertheless unprepared and many crops have been lost⁽²⁾. Such occurrences can be seen as unfortunate; but can also serve as lessons for us. When you look at the factors exacerbating aridity, it seems clearer than ever that industrial farming is ill-equipped to deal with adaptation. This article will explore a little what happened in the heatwave, particularly in the UK and look at an example of a permaculture site which survived unharmed.

Dry continent

Throughout Europe, rainfall in the summer of 2018 was so low that many places were reported as having droughts. While some of the affected areas of the drought were wild places, such as the forest fires which swept through the coniferous forests of Norway and Sweden in June and July⁽⁴⁾, the main losses were from the farming industry. Both Lithuania and Latvia declared national states of emergency in July^{(2, 5)}. Germany and Poland were reported as experiencing severe losses in wheat production⁽²⁾, with many farmers in Germany resorting to destroying their crops since they did not have the resources to continue watering them⁽²⁾. Many cattle farmers, such as in the UK, had to use their winter supply of animal food to feed their cows⁽⁶⁾, since the grass had all withered and dried, creating a temporary solution and more problems in the months to come.

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Insects are disappearing. Why should we care? What can be done?

April 10, 2018

Insects are disappearing. Why should we care? What can be done?

Insects are disappearing. Remember how in the ’90s when you went for a drive down a country lane on a summer evening, you’d end up with hundreds of splatters on the windscreen? No more does that happen. Your car is no longer like a 1 ton moth collecting sheet. That’s not to draw a parallel between vehicles and insect roadkill, although hold that thought.

We are seeing fewer insects in everyday life, whether you realise it or not. Studies suggest insect numbers have declined by around 50%.

A pygmy locust preserved in amber, named after Sir David Attenborough Photo: Electrotettix attenboroughi Heads & Thomas. Sam W. Heads. CC BY 4.0.A world ever more incompatible with life for those on six legs

When we talk of modern wildlife science some may think of wonderful discoveries, à la Sir David Attenborough and a community of scientists and researchers around the world. These advances should not be discredited. Since the 1970s we have also got better at monitoring our wildlife, and subsequently observed the scale of the problem we’re facing.

The modern world has become ever more incompatible with life for those on six legs.

Insects are by far the largest group of hexapod invertebrates. Insects include ants, bees, and flies. Of the planet’s creatures, it’s reckoned 90% of species belong to the class Insecta.

“The current state of our wildflide in this country, and globally, is approximately catastrophic. We are losing biodiversity at a rate that is of geological proportions.” David MacDonald, of the University of Oxford, refers to the fact that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event – the Anthropocene epoch.

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The Science of a Vanishing Planet

March 28, 2018

The Science of a Vanishing Planet

Dorothea Lange Gravestone St. George, Utah 1953There are numerous ways to define the Precautionary Principle. It’s something we can all intuitively understand, but which many parties seek ways to confuse since it has the potential to stand in the way of profits. Still, in the end it should all be about proof, not profits. That is exactly what the Principle addresses. Because if you first need to deliver scientific proof that some action or product can be harmful to mankind and/or the natural world, you run the risk of inflicting irreversible damage before that proof can be delivered.

In one of many definitions, the 1998 Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle says: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”

Needless to say, that doesn’t easily fly in our age of science and money. Cigarette makers, car manufacturers and oil companies, just to name a few among a huge number of industries, are all literally making a killing while the Precautionary Principle is being ignored. Even as it is being cited in many international treaties. Lip service “R” us. Are these industries to blame when they sell us our products, or are we for buying them? That’s where governments must come in to educate us about risks. Which they obviously do not.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb -of Black Swan and Antifragile fame- has made the case, in his usual strong fashion, for applying the Precautionary Principle when it comes to GMOs. His argument is that allowing genetically modified organisms in our eco- and foodsystems carries unknown risks that we have no way of overseeing, and that these risks may cause irreversible damage to the very systems mankind relies on for survival.

Taleb is not popular among GMO producers. Who all insist there is no evidence that their products cause harm. But that is not the point. The Precautionary Principle, if it is to be applied, must turn the burden of proof on its head. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Monsanto et al must prove that their products do no harm. They can not. Which is why they have, and need, huge lobbying, PR and legal departments.

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Nations Won’t Reach Paris Climate Goal Without Protecting Wildlife and Nature, Warns Report

March 24, 2018

Nations Won’t Reach Paris Climate Goal Without Protecting Wildlife and Nature, Warns Report

Sierpe river mangrove forest in Costa Rica

The Paris Climate Agreement and several other United Nations (UN) pacts “all depend on the health and vitality of our natural environment in all its diversity and complexity,” said Dr. Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of the UN-backed organization behind the report. “Acting to protect and promote biodiversity is at least as important to achieving these commitments and to human well-being as is the fight against global climate change.”

The report comes from the efforts of more than 550 scientists in over 100 nations, corralled by an organization often dubbed “the IPCC for biodiversity.”

Much like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assesses the state of research on global warming and its impacts, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) reviews the best-available science on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to human well-being.

Climate Change not so Great for Wildlife

Three years in the making, the study concluded humans are causing the planet to lose species at such a rapid clip that the resulting risks are on par with those presented by climate change. On top of being unfortunate for those species that no longer exist, these losses also endanger people’s access to food, clean water, and energy, according to the report.

“We must act to halt and reverse the unsustainable use of nature or risk not only the future we want but even the lives we currently lead,” Robert Watson, current IPBES chair and former IPCC chair, told The Guardian.

In addition, by 2050, the report found that under a “business as usual” scenario for greenhouse gas emissions, climate change could jump ahead of other threats, such as habitat loss and change in land use, as the primary cause of extinctions in North and South America.

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Normalizing Extinction

March 7, 2018

Normalizing Extinction

Photo by Brian Gratwicke | CC BY 2.0

Several years back I had the good fortune of traveling through the rainforest in a remote part of Panama. Along the way I stayed in a small cabin at an ecolodge with the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea just steps away. There were no roads, televisions, or internet access, and no phones or electricity except in the main house. Out back was a trail that meandered through a dense forest brimming with tree frogs, sloths, iguanas, leaf cutter ants, and countless species of birds hopping from branch to branch. Just a couple feet into the water and I counted dozens of bright orange sea stars. And at night the sea shore came alive with biolumeniscent dinoflagellates, who would respond to my flashlight signals in short bursts of blue-green neon and the canopy was a cacophony of countless species in song. The abundance of life in that tiny corner of the world crowded out most signals of modern civilization.

But as with any trip like this, I eventually had to return home where the reality of “The Great Dying” is everywhere. Like climate change, the Sixth Mass Extinction, is not a hyperbolic, political trope. It is in fact the death of most complex forms of life on earth at our own hands. And by all accounts, with mass die offs of bees, coral, salmon, frogs and beyond, it is in full swing. Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction makes this plain:

“If we assume, very conservatively, that there are two million species in the tropical rainforests, this means that something like five thousand species are being lost each year. This comes to roughly fourteen species a day, or one every hundred minutes.”

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Half-Earth or Half Solution? E.O. Wilson’s Solution to Species Loss

February 21, 2018

Half-Earth or Half Solution? E.O. Wilson’s Solution to Species Loss

Credit: David Barnas

Credit: E.O Wilson Biodiversity Foundation

*Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. Published by Liveright / W.W. Norton in March 2016 (ISBN 978-1-63149-082-8)*

Despite my somewhat snarky title, which is based on my assessment that Half-Earth is missing a key strategic component, E. O. Wilson’s book is engaging and even inspiring. Wilson makes a compelling case that our planet is facing serious and accelerating species loss, that human beings are the primary cause of this phenomenon, and that, most importantly, we are capable of doing something about it.

The first three-quarters of the book describe the problem we are confronting. Wilson provides the reader with a comprehensive and vivid description of the loss of species in general on the planet and moving, vivid descriptions of the loss of particular species such as the rhino. Readers who have not previously been steeped in the fields of ecology or biology will find the writing here not only accessible, but deeply engaging.

Rather than just take on this or that environmental problem, Wilson looks at the whole planet and sees it through the ecosystems that comprise the natural world. He explains basic but critically important things, such as how complex ecosystems depend upon the interrelationship of a wide variety of plant and animal species. This work is deeply rooted in the scientific literature, and Wilson draws the reader in with vivid descriptions of the natural world.

I was particularly impressed with the way in which he explains his assessment of the extent and pace of species loss, the impact of recent and current conservation efforts, and the basis for optimism in the struggle against species loss. His quantitative reasoning will be accessible to even the math-phobic and his conclusions reinforced by his vivid narrative descriptions of various natural processes.

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The Flavour of Good Farming

January 26, 2018

The Flavour of Good Farming

Earlier this month, I was at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, where I was thrilled to be immersed in lively discussion about the power of sustainable food production systems to change the world for the better. Real farming holds the promise to restore lost biodiversity to the rural landscape, preserve critically endangered breeds, sequester carbon, reduce exposure of plants and animals to antimicrobials, pesticides and antibiotics, and secure the future health and vitality of the soil.

But there was one important element missing, and for a conference all about better food production, it was particularly striking. Flavour was absent from the discussion.

The sustainable food movement’s relationship with gastronomic considerations is problematic. No one would deny that ecologically and morally reprehensible farming systems can be optimised to provide hyper-palatable, nutritionally-bereft foods whose only appeal – other than its cheapness – is to the brain’s natural proclivity for the compelling combination of salt, sugar and fat. At the other end of the economic spectrum, haute gastronomic culture, with its £1000 bottles of wine, smacks uncomfortably of elitism.

But hiding within this emotional tangle is an opportunity to re-valorise farming that is ecologically scrupulous, biodiversity-enhancing and demanding of exemplary animal welfare through a conversation about great flavour. Critically, this is a strategy to extend the attraction of these farming systems and their potential social impact far beyond the realm of already-converted eco-warriors. If we care about increasing the reach of sustainable farming, it is our moral duty to address, and ultimately bridge, this rift between the sustainable food movement and the importance of flavour.

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The Menacing Insect Omen

December 27, 2017

The Menacing Insect Omen

The world is experiencing a massive loss of insects. In turn, this threatens ecosystems with utter total collapse, and, by way of direct association, loss of human civilization. Zap, it’s over! Insectageddon!

Insect populations around the world are under massive attack and dropping like… well… like flies. The negative implications run very deep, indeed, especially for the foundation of ecosystems, and thus for the survival of all life. Ironically, insect death equivalence becomes human extermination as ecosystems crumble. It’s already happening, and the evidence is compelling, in fact, overwhelming. What can be done has no ready answers, although begrudged solutions are out there, like stop pesticides and industrial-scale monoculture crop practices.

“Scientists cite many factors in the fall-off of the world’s insect populations, but chief among them are the ubiquitous use of pesticides, the spread of monoculture crops such as corn and soybeans, urbanization, and habitat destruction. A significant drop in insect populations could have far-reaching consequences for the natural world and for humans.” (Source: Christian Schwagerl, What’s Causing the Sharp Decline in Insects, and Why It Matters, Yale Environment360, July 6, 2016)

Many, many studies of insect loss are extant; nevertheless, the issue is seldom, if ever, mentioned by mainstream journals or press.
Therefore, in toto, society is at risk uninformed of inherent dangers behind anthropogenically driven biodiversity loss. It is unimaginable that this escapes far-flung public focus, as well as a strong universal mandate to fix the problem.

In contrast to and dissimilar to global warming COPs (Conference of Parties), which have already captured the world’s attention; there are no conferences of parties to fix this most immediate threat of insect loss and ecosystem collapse, which spells the death knell of society, as it stands.

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What Will It Really Take to Avoid Collapse?

December 20, 2017

What Will It Really Take to Avoid Collapse?

Fifteen thousand scientists have issued a dire warning to humanity about impending collapse but virtually no-one takes notice. Ultimately, our global systems, which are designed for perpetual growth, need to be fundamentally restructured to avoid the worst-case outcome.

For a moment, the most important news in the entire world flashed across the media like a shooting star in the night sky. Then it was gone. Last month, over fifteen thousand scientists from 184 countries issued a dire warning to humanity. Because of our overconsumption of the world’s resources, they declared, we are facing “widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss.” They warned that time is running out: “Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory.”

This is not the first such notice. Twenty-five years ago, in 1992, 1,700 scientists (including the majority of living Nobel laureates) sent a similarly worded warning to governmental leaders around the world. In ringing tones, they called for a recognition of the earth’s fragility and a new ethic arising from the realization that “we all have but one lifeboat.”

This second warning contains a series of charts showing how utterly the world’s leaders ignored what they were told twenty-five years earlier. Whether it’s CO₂ emissions, temperature change, ocean dead zones, freshwater resources, vertebrate species, or total forest cover, the grim charts virtually all point in the same dismal direction, indicating continued momentum toward doomsday. The chart for marine catch shows something even scarier: in 1996, the catch peaked at 130 million tonnes and in spite of massively increased industrial fishing, it’s been declining ever since—a harbinger of the kind of overshoot that unsustainable exploitation threatens across the board.

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Dying Ecosystems

December 11, 2017

Dying Ecosystems

Photo by Richard Allaway | Public Domain

Earth’s ecosystems support all life, though collapsed ecosystems would be like stepping outside of the international space station not wearing a space suit. Pop! Bam! Gone!

A recent academic study about signals of ecosystem collapse throughout history fits the space suit analogy. Terrifying truth is exposed: The all-important biosphere is sending out warning signals of impending crises… worldwide. It does not seem possible that ecosystems collapse and life dies off. That’s too hard to believe… but, what if it does collapse?

“The Earth’s biodiversity is under attack. We would need to travel back over 65 million years to find rates of species loss as high as we are witnessing today.” (James Dyke, The Ecosystem Canaries, Which Act as Warning Signs of Collapse, The Guardian, Aug. 19, 2016).
“Biodiversity increases resilience: more species means each individual species is better able to withstand impacts. Think of decreasing biodiversity as popping out rivets from an aircraft. A few missing rivets here or there will not cause too much harm. But continuing to remove them threatens a collapse in ecosystem functioning. Forests give way to desert. Coral reefs bleach and then die,” Ibid.
It’s already happening! Imagine flying in an aircraft while watching the rivets pop, one by one. At some point in time screaming overrides thinking. But, thank heavens; we’re not quite there yet.
Scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland studied 2,378 archeological sites and discovered that every society for thousands of years gave early clues to its own demise. Of course, demise happened precisely because those early warnings were ignored, while thinking: “it’s impossible, can’t happen.”

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Major study shows species loss destroys essential ecosystems

December 7, 2017

Major study shows species loss destroys essential ecosystems

Long term research by German ecologists proves that loss of biodiversity has “direct, unpleasant consequences for mankind.”

Two days ago, C&C published a reply to a biology professor who shrugged off species extinction as unimportant because evolution will replace the lost organisms. This report, adapted from a Technical University of Munich news release, thoroughly confirms our view that he was dead wrong.

Due to its breadth, the Jena experiment proves for the first time that a loss of biodiversity has negative consequences for many individual components and processes in ecosystems.

How serious is the loss of species globally? Are material cycles in an ecosystem with few species changed? In order to find this out, the “Jena Experiment” was established in 2002, one of the largest biodiversity experiments worldwide. Professor Wolfgang Weisser from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) reports on two unexpected findings of the long-term study: Biodiversity influences almost half the processes in the ecosystem, and intensive grassland management does not result in higher yields than high biodiversity.

An ecosystem provides humans with natural “services”, such as the fertility of the soil, the quality of the groundwater, the production of food, and pollination by insects, which is essential for many fruits. Hence, intact ecosystems are crucial for the survival of all living things. What functional significance therefore does the extinction of species have? Can the global loss of species ultimately lead to the poorer “functioning” of ecosystems? Professor Weisser from the Chair for Terrestrial Ecology at the TUM has summarized the findings of the long-term “Jena Experiment” in a 70-page article in the journal Basic and Applied Ecology.

“One unique aspect of the Jena Experiment is the fact that we performed our experiments and analyses over 15 years”, explains Prof. Weisser. “Because the influence of biodiversity is only visible after a delay, we were only able to observe certain effects from 2006 or 2007 onwards — i.e. four or five years after the beginning of the project.”

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What, Me Worry? Humans Are Blind to Imminent Environmental Collapse

November 20, 2017

What, Me Worry? Humans Are Blind to Imminent Environmental Collapse

Accelerating biodiversity loss may turn out to be the sleeper issue of the century.

Nature can’t compete with human activity overtaking the Earth. Photo by Ben Chapman, Creative Commons licensed.

A curious thing about H. sapiens is that we are clever enough to document — in exquisite detail — various trends that portend the collapse of modern civilization, yet not nearly smart enough to extricate ourselves from our self-induced predicament.

This was underscored once again in October when scientists reported that flying insect populations in Germany have declined by an alarming 75 per cent in the past three decades accompanied, in the past dozen years, by a 15 per cent drop in bird populations. Trends are similar in other parts of Europe where data are available. Even in Canada, everything from casual windshield “surveys” to formal scientific assessments show a drop in insect numbers. Meanwhile, domestic populations of many insect-eating birds are in freefall. Ontario has lost half its whip-poor-wills in the past 20 years; across the nation, such species as nighthawks, swallows, martins and fly-catchers are down by up to 75 per cent; Greater Vancouver’s barn and bank swallows have plummeted by 98 per cent since 1970. Heard much about these things in the mainstream news?

Too bad. Biodiversity loss may turn out to be the sleeper issue of the century. It is caused by many individual but interacting factors — habitat loss, climate change, intensive pesticide use and various forms of industrial pollution, for example, suppress both insect and bird populations. But the overall driver is what an ecologist might call the “competitive displacement” of non-human life by the inexorable growth of the human enterprise.

On a finite planet where millions of species share the same space and depend on the same finite products of photosynthesis, the continuous expansion of one species necessarily drives the contraction and extinction of others.

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