Come Hell and High Water: Scientists Indict Capitalism

In 2009, the prestigious research journal Science published a surprising article called "Looming Global-Scale Failures and Missing Institutions" in which an international team of eminent biologists, climatologists, ecologists, and economists reviewed the long list of current global problems and came to an ominous conclusion: "Energy, food, and water crises; climate disruption; declining fisheries; increasing ocean acidification; emerging diseases; and increasing antibiotic resistance are examples of serious, intertwined global-scale challenges spawned by the accelerating scale of human activity. They are outpacing the development of institutions to deal with them and their many interactive effects."

The frank article is accompanied by an illustration, with arrows showing the many connections between "Global drivers," like rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration, increasing per capita resource use and nuclear proliferation on one hand, and "Unwanted outcomes" for the Climate, Ecosystem, Human Health, and the Economy on the other (see Figure 1.1). For dispassionate scientists, these are fighting words. Interestingly, the illustration also shows a silhouetted crowd rising up, and raising a giant pair of scissors, seeming to cut these ties. The article amounts to an indictment of capitalism by the important section of the professional class engaged in the hard sciences, as the tough standards of science push them up against the realities of market externalities and US policy. Their conclusions are highly relevant for an understanding of what's happening to the natural systems we count on.

ANTICLIMATIC CLIMATE

A central point of the article is the interconnectedness of the various "global-scale failures," and their tendency to combine in unexpected ways. A good example is climate change, which influences several "unwanted outcomes." Consider its effect on biodiversity — the presence in different ecosystems of the rich variety of organisms that naturally occur in different environments. Studies point to the "many benefits" biodiversity provides to environmental systems, including "increased community stability, increased resistance to invasive species, and higher resistance to diseases." But besides these important benefits to the ecosystem, biodiversity also provides enormous economic benefits, including "material goods (for example, food, timber, medicines, and fiber), underpinning functions (flood control, climate regulation, and nutrient cycling), and nonmaterial benefits such as recreation." A good deal of recent research shows biodiversity has continued to decline (see Chapter 5). But some recent studies suggest that its loss due to climate change may be reduced by simple geographic variation. In other words, plant and animal species may be able to partially adapt to a warming regional climate by moving uphill to cooler temperatures, or to greater latitudes where temperatures tend to be lower.

Sounds good, but here the different "global drivers" interact in an unexpected way. The research also suggests that this adaptive ability is itself weakened by the very widespread reduction of available habitat, due to another "global driver," growth of urbanization. Habitat has shrunk to the point that "Over 75% of the Earth's terrestrial biomes now show evidence of alteration as a result of human residence and land use." Their conclusion is that the ability of biodiversity to resist climate-driven decline through migration depends on the character of the developed areas around the remaining habitat fragments — that is, farms are somewhat more conducive to the migration of animal species than paved urban sprawl. Given that urbanization is a classic feature of capitalist development, it's not surprising to find it interacting with another driver, climate change. The article closes by noting ominously that "conservation will require a whole new definition of what is 'natural.'"

While climate change has come to be seen as a controversial issue in the US, among scientists it is considered well-demonstrated. One of many typical articles in the scientific journals summarizes recent research, finding that "Over the past 50 years, human influences have been the dominant detectable influence on climate change ... There is no doubt that the composition of the atmosphere is changing because of human activities, and today greenhouse gases are the largest human influence on global climate ... Anthropogenic climate change is now likely to continue for many centuries." One important dynamic affecting this conclusion is the presence of "feedbacks" — parts of the climate system that are both affected by global heating and reinforce it themselves. Examples include water vapor, which is a greenhouse gas — it contributes to the trapping of energy from the sun, without which life as we know it would not exist on Earth. But as the planet warms due to CO2 emissions, warmer air can hold more water vapor, reinforcing climate change. Likewise with another feedback mechanism, snow and ice cover. Warming reduces the size of glaciers and snow packs, revealing the darker soils and rocks beneath. Soil has a lower albedo (reflectiveness) than snow, and it absorbs more heat, like a black shirt on a sunny day. This traps more energy, which snow and ice would have reflected back into space. These and other feedbacks aggravate climate change, and make the whole picture somewhat more unpredictable —...