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Sociology Paper

Creating an Ecological Society:

Toward a Revolutionary Transformation

By

Fred Magdoff & Chris Williams

(September 18, 2016)

Introduction …3

Part One: Why An Alternative is Essential

1. The social and ecological planetary emergency…11

2. Capitalism and the socio-ecological crisis…31

3. Capitalism vs. the biosphere…61

4. Capitalism’s effects on people …106

Part Two: Is an Ecological Society Possible?

5. Humans as part of nature …148

6. Does “human nature” prevent system change? …161

7. Equality as biological fact …188

Part Three: Learning from Nature

8. The biosphere: cycles of life …201

9. Developing resilient socio-ecological systems …217

10. Ecological approaches to fulfilling human needs …233

Part Four: Toward a New Society

11. Characteristics of an ecological society …263

12. Revolution—Creating an ecological society …285

Introduction

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things;

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare.

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

—P.B. Shelley

At some time in the future, should archeologists still exist, they may look at the rubble of a large 21st century city or other physical remnants of today’s world and wonder, as Shelley’s traveler surely would, what cataclysm struck that civilization. What caused such utter destruction, as occurred in the land of the “king of kings”? Without sweeping, systemic changes, the ominous trends in the world—ecologically the most momentous being global climate change, but additionally pollution of the seas, fresh water, soils, air and people; soil erosion; biodiversity loss; use of renewable resources faster than replenishment; and the depletion of nonrenewable resources—are unstoppable.

Over the last decade, a multitude of social and ecological events and trends have brought many to the conclusion that there is something fundamentally wrong with the global economic system; people are once again discussing the problems of “capitalism.” Deep social and ecological problems abound: from the continuing growth of extreme inequalities of income and wealth, the persistence of poverty and hunger in a world of plenty, systematic discrimination by race and gender, increased warfare and the alarming evidence of climate change and the ecological crisis: extensive and extended drought across many areas of the world, melting permafrost and glaciers, ocean acidification, coral reef bleaching, prevalence of drought, greater intensity and variability of storms, and rising sea levels. Increasing numbers of people are realizing that business as usual, whereby society is oriented toward profit maximization as the motor driving economic expansion, and predicated on the need for endless growth, takes us on a clear pathway to planetary destruction.

Compounding this grim reality, social and economic trends show relentless movement toward further social deprivation and inequality. One family in the United States, the Waltons (owners of Walmart) have more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of the population.[endnoteRef:1] According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), there is a “long-term trend towards higher inequality” in its thirty-four member countries.[endnoteRef:2] [1: Mark Bittman, "Is It Bad Enough Yet?,” The New York Times (December 13, 2014). ] [2: Federico Cingano, “Trends in Income Inequality and its Impact on Economic Growth”, OECD Social, Employment and Migratin Working Papers, No. 163, OECD Publishing (2014), accessed December 15, 2014 at http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/5jxrjncwxv6j.pdf?expires=1418733800&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=3F0FED609726DDA471660F05968BB5D1. ]

The renewed emphasis on capitalism lying at the root of our ecological and social crises is welcome. Nonetheless, the solutions proposed are limited to a call for reforms within the system: reduce and limit the power of corporations, impose rigorous environmental regulations, reform the criminal justice system, reduce funds for defense departments, raise taxes on the rich and corporations, gradually phase out fossil fuels for electricity generation and many other worthy changes—all of which we favor and need to be fought for as excellent first steps (as opposed to the many false solutions proffered as answers, such as relying on market mechanisms, technology or geoengineering).

Ultimately however, if we are to truly resolve our multifaceted and profound socio-ecological crisis, the entire system needs to be discarded and a new society created. The political power of capital and the governments it controls is immense, and there is no interest among capitalists to even moderately reform the system that so richly rewards them. Were a government to come to power bent on major social and ecological reforms, why not go further? As British economist Joan Robinson wrote in the 1930s, “…any government which had both the power and the will to remedy the major defects of the capitalist system would have the will and the power to abolish it altogether…”[endnoteRef:3] [3: Joan Robinson, “Review of R.F. Harrod, The Trade Cycle,” Economic Journal 46, no. 184:691-93 (December 1936). ]

To chart a different course socially and ecologically, the changes required are so far-reaching as to necessitate a completely new way of relating to each other, to other species, and to the rest of the biosphere. How and on what basis should economic decisions on investment and distribution be made, and how should production be organized and carried out? More fundamentally still what is the purpose of production, what are the goals of society?

A multitude of struggles have arisen around the world, attempting to stop the damage and reverse negative ecological and social trends. However, many of the activists involved in individual important struggles, are often not clear on the need for revolutionary change to end “business as usual”, in fact to ‘end business’. The heart of the issue is not simply to put a brake on capitalism and slow down the train of destruction but to derail it and build a completely new train. Across the globe, we are in the midst of a return to an era of social rebellion, revolt and revolution. Our purpose in this book is to stoke the theoretical fires by setting forth some ideas for understanding the roots of our socio-ecological crisis lie in our economic system; that we have much to learn from history and nature about how to reorganize our economy and society; that there is nothing inherent in humans that prevents us from living in a society free of want, free of competition and war, free of oppression, inequality and in closer harmony with nature.

Underpinning the arguments made here is the assumption that capitalism, by its very nature, is inherently anti-ecological and anti-social. An unplanned economic and social system, propelled by the single over-riding aim of maximizing profits, one which must continually expand in order to function, gives capitalism the attributes of a globally degenerative system. Whenever presented with a choice of short-term profit maximization versus long-term ecological sustainability, the dynamics of the system prevent offsetting profits in exchange for environmental stability. A logical corollary of this is that capitalism is therefore also anti-human and anti-life. Oceans of poverty and human misery surround tiny islands of stupendous wealth. Simultaneously, those tiny islands of wealth accumulation, concentrated in the hands of a small portion of the population, are not only responsible for the surrounding oceans of poverty and inequality, but simultaneously require the relentless exploitation of larger and larger quantities of energy and other resources.

Where do we want to go?

`Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. `Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

`I don't much care where--' said Alice.

`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

—Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)

A few years ago, Fred was speaking to a professor of environmental studies at a liberal arts college in the Midwestern United States. The professor agreed with Fred’s contention that a whole new system, having new ways of relating to each other and the environment, was needed. But the environmental studies professor went on to explain that he did not talk to his students about it because any such change was so far off that he felt it was more important to talk about what might be done within the system in the near term to make things better. Finding out that systemic change was necessary, the enormity and long-term nature of the project might discourage his students and immobilize them. Fred’s response was that if we don’t begin thinking about what a new society might look like, how it might be organized, how it might work, and how it might be brought into existence—and start talking it over with others, especially young people—it will put off the project to the indefinite future. Any other response is not only politically dishonest and counter-productive but it guarantees delaying precisely the kind of change the professor agreed was vital. If young people don’t fully comprehend the depth of the crisis, its systemic nature and the magnitude of the required changes they will not be in the struggle as a life-long commitment. Knowing the extent of change required can help avoid demoralization, or getting sucked back in to the realities of simply trying to survive in an unjust system.

This is the crux of the issue— if we can’t even imagine a different way of interacting with each other, the economy, and the resources we use and depend upon, then the struggle for a just and ecologically sound world recedes into the realm of utopian fantasy. And without a vision for a plausible, genuine alternative, people understandably set their sights on reforms that will never add up to the immense changes that are needed.

But what could replace capitalism? What might a truly ecologically sound and socially just society look like? Is such a thing even possible? If so, of what would the basic organizational, economic and ethical principles underlying such a society consist? And what are the forms of resistance, practices and approaches needed to replace capitalism and start anew?

Considering the state of the world today, one might wonder how can we even dream of a world based on social justice, allowing the fulfillment of each individual’s human potential, while at the same time stopping and then reversing the scourge of ecological destruction wrought by human activities. Needless to say, it is not a simple question and there can be no simple answer. We view this book as a way to expand upon, extend, and deepen a discussion about permanent, revolutionary solutions.

To bring about social change, we need to think through, discuss and debate how to create a society in which the economy’s entire purpose is to equally satisfy the needs of all people, as well as the biosphere, the stability of which our long-term existence, as well as that of all other species, depends. And most fundamentally, act on that knowledge. A return to the type of social upheaval that has periodically wracked and overturned societies across the globe will be required. Broad fights against various unfair or cruel aspects of human society are sometimes extensive enough to launch speculation about the complete reorganization of society. To take just one example, the social tumult of the 1960s generated by the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the United States, but feeding off anti-colonial struggles in Africa, India and elsewhere, re-launched a general questioning of society by tens of millions of people around the world. But building a totally new system implies the eradication of the entire old system. And this will require even greater struggles, capable of bringing the continuation of capitalism itself into question.

Humanity’s fight against tyranny, oppression and exploitation, has ebbed and flowed ever since inequality became the organizing principle of social systems based on agriculture, industry, and class stratification approximately 10,000 years ago. At the high points of these struggles, people begin to generalize from a particular fight, to start to question broader societal issues and raise the consciousness of millions of people. One of the many hundreds of possible examples, the struggles and victories of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States is instructive. It was radicalized with the birth of the Black Panthers, propelling people to broaden their activism: to protest the war in Vietnam and the oppression of women, and inspired the birth of the modern Native American, gay rights, and environmental movements. The fire of revolt spread. In 1968, the whole world, including from behind what was known as the Iron Curtain, was aflame. Although significant gains were made, the capitalist system was preserved and the ruling classes in the West and in Eastern Europe, the U.S.S.R., and in China survived. Despite the failure of earlier revolutionary attempts at the complete reconstitution of society on the basis of human equality, fraternity and solidarity, people still yearn for alternatives to the deadening stultification, crass materialism, exploitation, poverty and deprivation side-by-side with fabulous wealth, and environmental damage—including to planetary life support systems.

One thing on which we can depend is the reemergence of widespread resistance, rebellion and revolution. We can already see this reemergence in the struggles of people across the globe, often in conditions of extreme repression, Resistance in Tunisia sparked a revolt in Mubarak’s Egypt that began in January 2011 and spread like wildfire to other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. After decades of U.S.-sponsored repression and dictatorships, the people of Latin America are perhaps at the forefront of reimagining what is possible, and attempting to put some facets of a fairer society into practice. The various struggles in Latin America that have been so internationally inspirational are under attack by internal conservative forces, as well as from abroad. Ongoing struggles in Greece and Spain, as well as the hope generated by hundreds of thousands of people inspired by the Arab Spring, brought people to the streets of the United States under the banner of Occupy Wall Street, and point to further glimmers of hope through social rebellion that constantly appear throughout the world.

As we write this in the second decade of the 21st century, there are a number of indications that many people are beginning to understand that the variety of struggles for social justice: for unions, the minimum wage, Black Lives Matter, equal pay, against gender violence, environmental justice and a host of other issues, as well as ecological sanity: against gas and oil pipelines, tar sands exploitation, fracking, mountain top removal, and the decline and extinction of species, are all part of the same struggle. The September 21, 2014 Peoples Climate Change March in New York, with some 400,000 people in a huge outpouring of hope, had neighborhood groups, unions, indigenous groups and First Nations, a wide variety of environmental groups, and many unaffiliated people completely new to protesting out on the streets of New York. It is no exaggeration to write that social and environmental struggles are exploding across the world, many for the first time more conscious of how the two issues are two sides of the same coin.

There are people in many parts of the world that are exploring—in ways large and small—different approaches to relating to one another, to the economy, and to the natural resources required for the production if things we need to stay alive, such as food and housing. Some are instituting self-directed democratic political and economic relationships at a local level. The building and experimenting with alternative models or ways of behaving toward society, other people, and the economy has a history as long as capitalism but can provide insights into how alternatives might work.

As much as we might be able to see the germs of a new society in some of these experiments and take inspiration from them, the fact that these small islands of worker cooperatives, communes, and communities have always existed amidst the ocean of capitalist social relations indicates that they are not able, in and of themselves, to fundamentally alter society on a larger scale.

What we are proposing is the need to go far beyond small-scale experiments, and reinvent the whole of human society, from the bottom up: a reinvention of society or, more properly defined, a socio-ecological revolution. This type of transformation will require the active participation and involvement of the majority of the population of the planet to bring to fruition. There are hundreds of millions of people who live more traditional lives on the margins of capitalist social relations, with markedly different value systems. Indeed, with about one in seven humans, 1.3 billion people directly dependent on forests for their daily survival, there are many people from whom we can gain ideas about different, non-monetary ways of relating to one another and other species.[endnoteRef:4] [4: Michael Marshall, “1.3 Billion Rely on Forests to Survive,” New Scientist, Issue 2865 (May 15, 2012). ]

A conversation has begun that, until this point, has been difficult to have: if the current system is not sustainable, then what type of system is needed, with what characteristics, principles, social relations and methods of production, and with what values? This question was raised in “The Next System Project: New Political-Economic Possibilities for the 21st Century” written by Gar Alperovitz, Gus Speth, and Joe Guinan.[endnoteRef:5] One of the goals of their project is “…to radically shift the national dialogue … to awareness that what must be changed is the nature of the political-economic system itself.” We wholeheartedly agree and have written this book precisely with that in mind. [5: Gar Alperovitz, Gus Speth and Joe Guinan, The Next System Project: New Political-Economic Possibilities for the 21st Century, NSP Report 1 (March 2105), accessed July 9, 2015 at http://thenextsystem.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/NSPReport1_Digital1.pdf. ]

If we begin from the premise that there is an existential ecological and social crisis, rising to the level of a global calamity that threatens the continuation of much life on earth and the stability of the entire biosphere, the logical questions are:

· What is causing the crisis and what are the short and long-term effects?

· How could we overturn the current destructive system and replace it with an ecologically sound and socially just system?

· What would such a new system look like?

In attempting to answer these questions, we have divided Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation into four parts.

Part One: The social and ecological planetary emergency (Chapters 1-4) outlines where we are today, the severe social and ecological problems facing humanity, the systemic cause of the crises and the ecological and social consequences. We examine capitalism’s role in creating and exacerbating these crises and the effects on humans and the rest of the environment.

Part Two: Is an Ecological Society Possible? (Chapters 5 to 7), surveys and evaluates supposed obstacles that are commonly said to prevent changing our economic system to an entirely new one—that our relationship to nature has to be one of domination, our inherent “human nature” prohibits transformation to a different economic-social system, and that the supposedly innate differences among groups of people of different ethnic origin, race, class, nationality, or gender make an equitable society impossible.

Part Three: Learning from nature (Chapters 8 to 10) discusses basic ecological concepts, the characteristics of relatively stable and resilient ecosystems and how some aspects of these might apply to human society, and a selection of ecologically sound technical practices for provisioning human needs.

Part Four: Toward a New Society (Chapters 11 to 12) delves into how an ecological society could be organized—basic principles, practices, how it might operate and how we might bring such a society into existence.

It is essential to have a vision, a clear project for the future, to aspire to a higher, more complete, fully democratic and cooperative form of social organization, and to convince people that a genuine alternative exists. As the anti-globalization slogan of the late 1990s put it: Another World is Possible. If we talk about the failings of the current system, then people naturally ask—well, what is the alternative? We need to have an accessible and coherent answer to that question and a compelling, hopeful vision of the future. This book is a contribution to that vision.

Acknowledgements

Our personal and intellectual debts in relation to this work are too vast to acknowledge in full. However, we would like to thank especially Hannah Holleman, Penny Gill, Jan Schultz, Ruth Perry, George Bird, Elise Guyette, Will Fritzmeier, and Phil Gasper who offered feedback on various chapters or the entire manuscript.

We would also like to acknowledge the support of those at Monthly Review and Monthly Review Press, especially Michael Yates and Martin Paddio. Some of our close friends, colleagues, and students have contributed to our understanding of ecological issues in ways that have impacted this book: including John Bellamy Foster, Brian Tokar, and Ian Angus.

Part One: Why An Alternative is Essential

Chapter 1: The social & ecological planetary emergency

Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

—George Orwell[endnoteRef:6] [6: George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, (1946). ]

Climate change is a social justice issue. With the climate crisis, as with the economic crisis, governments have prioritised the interests of those who caused the problem, despite the consequences for ordinary people. We are not “all in it together.” An increased understanding of this has led the climate movement both to grow in size and to adopt more radical slogans.

—Suzanne Jeffrey[endnoteRef:7] [7: Suzanne Jeffrey, Up against the clock: Climate, Social Movements and Marxism, ISJ Issue 148http://isj.org.uk/up-against-the-clock/ ISJ 148 (Winter 2015). ]

We live in a world that is slowly disintegrating: organisms ripped from their ecosystems, ecosystems destabilized, increasingly detached one from another, the nightly news often a maelstrom of malevolent weather events, as global climate is sheared from its stable mooring of the last 12,000 years. On occasion, you can almost hear the death rattle; a deep sigh of pain and exhaustion as another species winks out of existence.

On June 24th 2012, the last surviving member of Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni exhaled for the final time. In the place made famous as the evolutionary laboratory that gave Charles Darwin his insights into the central theoretical premise underlying the entire science of biology, Lonesome George, last survivor of a subspecies of giant tortoise, expired quietly over 600 miles (1000 km) off the coast of Ecuador on the Galápagos Islands. An incredible beast that Chris had the good fortune to see in the flesh many years ago, the giant tortoise weighed in at over 200 pounds and was 5 feet long. The final representative of his sub-species, George was only approximately 100 years old and therefore essentially in the prime of his life: giant tortoises can expect to live well into their second century.

No one knows exactly why George died. Perhaps he just got tired of being the last of his kind. A little before George was born the ramifications of another extinction, one deliberately carried out by the US government via the army facilitating the mass slaughter of bison to undermine the livelihood of Plains tribes and reduce their ability to resist[endnoteRef:8] was expressed in human terms by Hunkpapa (Sioux) resistance leader, Sitting Bull: “A cold wind blew across the prairie when the last buffalo fell—a death-wind for my people.”[endnoteRef:9] As Sitting Bull recognized, so it is becoming more evident today: how intertwined humans are with the natural world—the essential connection between the social and the ecological. As societies across the world become ever more unequal and prone to fracture, so too do the ecological systems we depend on to stay alive. This double-sided crisis is no coincidental accident. [8: David D. Smits “The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883” The Western Historical Quarterly 25(3):312-338 (Autumn, 1994). ] [9: Quoted in Donald L. Fixico, “The Struggle for Our Homes,” In Jace Weaver (ed), Defending Mother Earth: Native American Perspectives on Environmental Justice, Orbis Books, New York, 37 (1996). ]

The symbolism of this particular irrevocable loss goes well beyond the sad little note scrawled on a blackboard on Santa Cruz Island, location of the Darwin Research Station that was home to George, “We have witnessed extinction. Hopefully we will learn from it.”[endnoteRef:10] [10: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/science/death-of-lonesome-george-the-tortoise-gives-extinction-a-face.html ]

It’s analytically critical to locate the history of George and his species within the panoply of human culture and knowledge. What was the human cultural, scientific and biological significance of this species whose population had been greatly reduced by its encounter with rapacious colonialism? In fact, the species contributed directly to scientific discovery and a theory that underpins our understanding of the whole of biology, namely Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

So numerous were the giant tortoises when the Spanish first landed on the islands in the 16th century that they named them after the creatures. The shape of their shell reminded the Spanish of their saddlebacks. The islands thus became known as the Galápagos archipelago, from the Spanish for “saddle.” Three centuries later, in his diary entry of September 15, 1835, Darwin noted what, “seemed to my fancy like some antediluvian animals”, which “of course been greatly reduced.” Darwin went on, “It is said that formerly single vessels have taken away as many as 700”, though giant tortoises were still abundant when he made his visit.[endnoteRef:11] On October 8th, Darwin describes himself and the ship’s crew as living “entirely on tortoise meat” and that “young tortoises make excellent soup”, but he nevertheless found “the meat to my taste is indifferent.”[endnoteRef:12] [11: Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle: Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World: 334-5, Modern Library, New York (2001). ] [12: Ibid. 336 ]

Almost inevitably, surrounded by these animals in all their diversity and island-to-island variation in form, as the great scientific observer that he was, giant tortoises form part of Darwin’s earliest written musings on natural selection as the process through which organisms change over time:

When I recollect the fact that [from] the form of the body, shape of scales and general size, the Spaniards can at once pronounce from which island any tortoise may have been brought; when I see these islands in sight of each other and possessed of but a scanty stock of animals, tenanted by these birds, but slightly differing in structure and filling the same place in nature; I must suspect they are only varieties. The only fact of a similar kind of which I am aware, is the constant asserted difference between the wolf-like fox of East and West Falkland Islands. If there is the slightest foundation for these remarks, the zoology of archipelagoes will be well worth examining; for such facts would undermine the stability of species.[endnoteRef:13] [13: http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Chancellor_Keynes_Galapagos.html ]

The key phrase, “such facts would undermine the stability of species”, written down for the first time in his notebooks of the five-year voyage of the Beagle, point toward a theory that only emerged in print two decades later. But as immediately recognized by the other revolutionary giant of the 19th century, Karl Marx, the importance of Darwin’s Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, could not be overestimated. According to Marx, Darwin’s book was an “epoch-making work” that formed “the basis in natural history for our view”, because it undermined the god-centered view of creation and gave life science a firm theoretical foot on solid materialist ground.[endnoteRef:14] [14: Quoted in Ian Angus, “Readings From the Left” ]

Giant tortoises have existed on earth for 10 million years, yet it took humans less than the lifespan of one to complete the extermination of all of George’s subspecies. In contrast, Homo sapiens have walked the earth for approximately 200,000 years, a mere 2 percent of that time. In the world as it currently exists, the extinction of this subspecies leaves us not with the question, “will we learn?” but rather, “what species will be next?”

Perhaps it will be another primordial leviathan, this time of the deep. Chris had the further good fortune to spend some time helping to conserve a species listed as “critically endangered”: Leatherback Turtles. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s oldest and largest nature conservation organization, which compiles the Red List of Threatened Species, places “critically endangered” one category away from “extinct in the wild.”

Relics of a distant and long-ago past, colossal behemoths of the unfathomable abyss, leatherbacks put to shame by a factor of 10 even giant tortoises, having existed on earth practically unchanged for 100 million years. Next to leatherback longevity, Homo sapiens pale into temporal insignificance. Mature leatherbacks can be over 6 feet long, 4 feet wide and weigh anything up to a ton. They can swim down to depths of 3,600 feet – over three times deeper than a nuclear submarine, change their body temperature to cope with the cold and the pliant leatherback shell they are named for allows them to survive the immense pressures found at such depths.

To sit on a dark tropical beach in the middle of the night, up close to an egg-laying mother, listening to the heaving power of her gargantuan lungs, gazing at such a prehistoric creature of evolutionary perfection, is a deeply affecting moment of natural wonder. How much will humanity lose if in the near future nobody has the opportunity to absorb the power of such an experience?

We don’t precisely know an individual leatherback’s lifespan, but we do know that organisms that make the “critically endangered” list are likely to be extinct within 10 years. We might wipe out this ancient species before we even find out how long they live. Along with thousands of others that are being driven to extinction by the priorities of an economic and social system based on relentless expansion and propelled by profit, the question naturally arises: what is the most effective way to save these magnificent animals and, by extension, humans?

Using leatherback turtles as a lens to illuminate the intertwining of the social and ecological crisis brings these issues into sharp focus. With a population decline of more than 90% since 1980, leatherbacks are threatened with extinction for a number of interlocking reasons all ultimately related to how our economic system operates.

The current biodiversity crisis, whereby species are being driven to extinction at rates up to 1000 times greater than the geological statistical norm, is simply one aspect of a global ecological crisis. Where previous ecological crises were local or regional, humans are now changing the whole biosphere, from the chemical composition of the atmosphere to the acidity of the oceans to the toxic chemicals contaminating soils, water, air, and organisms worldwide, how land is used (by, for example, destruction of vast areas of tropical and boreal forests), to the average temperature of the entire planet. Where before we wiped out individual species, now we threaten vast swathes of biota.

Particularly since the Paris Climate Agreement in December of 2015, many have begun to ask, are we too late? What does science tell us about our current situation and how bad is it likely to get? The 32-page international agreement signed in Paris by government representatives and world leaders from 194 countries, recognizes that human-caused climate change represents “an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet” and to address that threat, “deep reductions in global emissions will be required.” Nevertheless, the Agreement notes “with serious concern” the:

significant gap between the aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.[endnoteRef:15] [15: Adoption of the Paris Agreement, Conference of the Parties Twenty-first session Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. ]

Unfortunately, despite these fine words and the contradiction within them, and even finer ones stating that “Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity,”[endnoteRef:16] there is no mechanism in place to achieve these lofty – and urgently necessary – objectives. [16: Ibid. ]

We know with some precision, from temperature records stretching back into the 19th century, the world has already warmed by an average of 1.8 0F (1 0C) and, even if we stopped all production of fossil fuels right now, today, we are already locked in to at least another 1.8 0F (1 0C) of average warming. The amount of warming guaranteed if the Parties to the Paris Agreement do everything they say they’re going to – a big if – the world is on track for a truly catastrophic warming of up to 7.2 0F (4 0C), which will make the planet unrecognizable to any human who has lived on it during the last 10,000 years. For the last 20 years scientists have estimated that the extra energy we have been putting in to the atmosphere through trapping more greenhouse gases, 80 percent of which are a result of producing carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, is equivalent to exploding four atomic bombs every second since 1998—over 2 billion nuclear detonations.[endnoteRef:17] [17: John Cook, “Four Hiroshima Bombs Worth of Heat Per Second,” Skeptical Science (July 1, 2013). ]

Record heat in the first half of 2016 brought the world close to the 1.5 0C maximal limit declared dangerous by world leaders in Paris just six months previously. With land and sea temperatures averaging 1.3 0C higher than the 20th Century average, the UN observed, “Arctic sea ice melted early and fast… June 2016 marked the 14th consecutive month of record heat for land and oceans. It marked the 378th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th Century average. The last month with temperatures below the 20th Century average was December 1984. [emphasis added]”[endnoteRef:18] July 2016 set a record for the warmest month ever recorded, marking the 15th consecutive month of record heat. Then August 2016 became the 16th consecutive monthly record, and tied July as the hottest month ever recorded. [18: “2016 on pace to be hottest year ever as climate change trends reach ‘new climax’– UN,” (July 21, 2016), UN News Center website, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=54520#.V9cAcTth10t. ]

It is estimated that most of the excess heat generated by global warming is being absorbed in the world’s oceans—some ninety percent.[endnoteRef:19] This is changing habitats, with negative effects on coral as well as other marine plants and animals, while others migrate to cooler waters. It is also believed to be contributing to the extreme rainfall events, with more water evaporated from warmer seas and warmer air able to hold more water vapor. [19: Tim Wallace, "Oceans Are Absorbing Almost All of the Globe’s Excess Heat," The New York Times (September 12, 2016). ]

Increasing temperature in the arctic, greater than increases at mid-latitudes, has, over fifty years, led to sea ice vanishing from an area twice the size of Alaska, with the remaining ice 50% thinner. The last nine years have been the lowest Arctic Ocean sea-ice extents measured, with February 2015 the lowest in 37 years of satellite data. In a classic example of a positive feedback loop, warming Arctic waters lead to more ice melt, which exposes more dark sea, which absorbs more heat, which melts more ice, and so on.

Melting of the gigantic Greenland Ice Sheet is as dramatic as the disappearance of Arctic Ocean sea ice—over fifty percent of the surface was melting during the summer of 2015, contributing to the 36th consecutive year of global glacier loss. Cumulative melting in Greenland through July 2016 was near the amount for 2015.

Warmer ocean waters and melting glaciers are causing sea levels to rise. Saltwater intrusion resulting from rising sea levels has caused damage to low-lying coastal agricultural soils such as in Bangladesh and the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Damage is also already regularly experienced on parts of the Atlantic Coast of the United States, and not just during storm surges.

Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding—often called “sunny-day flooding”—along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too.

These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water.[endnoteRef:20] [20: Justin Gillis, “Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun,” The New York Times (September 3, 2016). ]

The coastal flooding problem is especially severe in and around Norfolk Virginia (and the entire Chesapeake Bay region) and southern Louisiana, where the land is sinking as sea levels rise.

According to geologists, we have now entered a new epoch in geological time, the Anthropocene, or the Age of Humans. Ways of measuring when a new epoch began and the Holocene, the one we’ve been in since the last ice-age ended, all center around extremely long-term impacts. These impacts include things such as climate change due to elevated levels of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion, plastic pollution, overriding the natural cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus by human production of these plant nutrients for agriculture, irradiation of the atmosphere from nuclear weapons testing, and causing the 6th Great Extinction, potentially wiping out up to 75 percent of currently existing species, as an article in the journal Science makes clear:

Although Earth still retains most of the species that were present at the start of the Holocene, even conservative estimates of extinction rates since 1500 CE are far above mean per-million-year background rates, with a notable increase from the 19th century onward. Current trends of habitat loss and overexploitation, if maintained, would push Earth into the sixth mass extinction event (with ~75% of species extinct) in the next few centuries, a process that is probably already underway.[endnoteRef:21] [21: Colin Walters et al., “The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene” Science 351 (6269):137- (January 8, 2016). ]

As the article goes on to note, the most significant reason for mass extinction is due to land-use changes and the restriction of “wild” nature to smaller and smaller areas, “The terrestrial biosphere has undergone a dramatic modification from 1700 CE, when almost 50% of the global ice-free land area was wild and only ~5% was intensively used by humans, to 2000 CE, when the respective percentages were 25% and 55%.”