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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
The idea of creating a new environmental movement based on the threat we pose to our own progeny rather than animals or the wilderness is not proposed as a simple change of rhetoric -- though massive TV advertising of this message would be necessary. Creating a new movement focused on investing in our grandchildren and future generations will require much more: a major psychological shift for a movement that basically sees people as the major problem, the "cancer" threatening other species on earth.
Many of us, including me, joined the environmental movement partly as a way of avoiding messy one-on-one relationships. Deeply hurt as children, we have tended to withdraw from close interactions with people other than our family or those who think like us. We often find greater satisfaction in our work, nature or spiritual pursuits than we do in hanging out with people, and we feel closer to animals than to the average human beings around us. It is this psychology that explains the fact that our calendars, TV ads, and conferences feature nature and animals more than human beings.
This aversion to deep and meaningful one-on-one human interaction is understandable, and it is as common in politics, business, journalism and the arts as it is in environmental circles. But it may be that only as those of us who care about the environment can rediscover the love for humanity that was so poignantly squelched within us as kids will we be able to meaningfully communicate with the millions of Americans who are more willing to invest in their grandchildren than animals or parks.
Not everyone will agree with this proposal. But whatever the debate about the future course of our movement, it must begin with an obvious fact: our present approach cannot succeed and we badly need a change.
Human life is flourishing today compared with 100 years ago, if the most basic measure of human life is the number of humans times the number of years lived. Longevity, education and access to education are up, while infant mortality, slavery and outright starvation are down. We no longer face the kind of world or superpower wars that killed nearly 100 million people in the 20th century -- however serious ongoing local wars and terrorist threats. Women and minorities have made tremendous progress. Colonialism is dead. There is vastly more democracy, social justice and social welfare today than in the year 1900.
One of the few major areas of life in which we are incomparably worse off than a century ago, however, is the environment. People alive in 1900 did not even dream that a century hence the very biosphere that sustains human life would be under assault.
Of course, this is not the environmental movement's fault. On the contrary: Our movement has won innumerable victories and the planet would be far worse off without us. But we have been overwhelmed by events. We built our movement by persuading politicians to spend money on such short-term, tangible benefits as preserving wilderness and creating national parks; cleaning up rivers, toxic dumps, air quality and water; or saving lovable species. People could see the benefits of their expenditures.
But today we face a threat that no generation before us has confronted. The biosphere on which life depends is threatened by the combined impact of global warming, biodiversity loss, ocean and coral reef pollution, chemical contamination, water aquifer depletion, and deforestation.
These threats endanger future generations far more than ourselves. Saving them by making the massive long-term investments needed to preserve our biosphere will not yield as many immediate benefits. There will not be new national parks for us to drive to, or lower cancer rates from less toxic fumes, or lovable species we have saved to stock our zoos.
It will cost significant money in the short run to combat global warming by subsidizing new renewable industries, raising fuel-efficiency standards, and creating electric, hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles. Combating biodiversity loss, ocean pollution and other biospheric threats will cost even more. As Amory Lovins, Paul Hawken and others have so brilliantly shown, such investments will create whole new industries and millions of jobs over the long run, and they will power our economy for decades to come -- much as early '60s subsidies for computer chips have driven our economy. But like all other investments, they will shift money from current consumption.
This fact lends itself to the kind cheap demagoguery exhibited by Trent Lott, who might have displayed the roomier Toyota Prius hybrid auto that gets 52 miles to the gallon rather than a tiny purple one-seat car. Self-serving and short-sighted politicos like Lott and our president will always be able to show that the costs of meeting long-term threats like global warming far outweigh the short-term benefits.
Saving the biosphere is thus largely a political issue. Although the vast majority of Americans consider themselves pro-environment, most do not vote that way. Nor can we count on corporations to save us by adopting pro-environmental measures on their own. Even the Ford Motor Company, run by strong environmentalist William Ford, fights fuel-efficiency standards, pushes SUVs, recently dropped its electric car program, and is far behind the Japanese in producing hybrid cars.
Only if we create a new political movement that can reach and inspire vast new constituencies to vote for the environment can we succeed in pushing corporations and politicians to do what is necessary to save the biosphere.
Whether we can do so depends on the answer to a deep biological, psychological and spiritual question: whether our evolutionary past dooms our future. E.O. Wilson, in his seminal article "Is Humanity Suicidal?" presents convincing arguments that humanity is incapable of acting long term, primarily because our evolution has favored short-term over long-term thinking. But he also refers to counter-evidence indicating that people can think beyond their immediate needs.
Our generation will determine which point of view is correct -- and it is clear that we have no choice but to fight our short-term evolutionary impulses. The threat to the biosphere means that our species will prosper over the long term only if we who are alive today are capable of thinking long term.
