We have gone far past some of the boundaries within which humans can safely operate, says environmentalist Mark Lynas.
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“Nature no longer runs the Earth. We do,” says Mark Lynas in the introduction to his new book, The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans. In this self-declared “radical manifesto”, Lynas asks whether we are “rebel organisms designed to destroy the biosphere, or divine apes sent to manage it intelligently and to save it from ourselves”. On picking up the book, I first thought the idea that we’re in charge might be hard to sell to New Zealanders whose lives have been devastated by the Christchurch earthquake or who’ve suffered damage from the snowstorms, tornados and hailstorms that hammered the country recently.
“Nature can still give us a good kicking,” acknowledges Lynas on the phone from his home in Oxford, “but in terms of the longer-term global perspective, humans are very definitely in charge. It’s up to us what temperature the planet is at in the longer term; it’s up to us what the acidity of the entire oceans is; it’s up to us what species survive on this planet. So, while earthquakes, tsunamis and things like that can be calamitous disasters in the short term, they don’t really stack up against the totality of human influence.”
The God Species is based on the premise that there are “planetary boundaries”, or limits to human activities, within which humanity can safely operate. At an international meeting in Sweden in 2009, which Lynas attended, a group of scientists came up with nine planetary boundaries: for biodiversity, climate change, nitrogen, land use, fresh water, toxics, aerosols, ocean acidification and the ozone layer.
We have yet to reach some of the boundaries, but we are well beyond others, such as those for climate change and biodiversity, which need urgent action, they say. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, currently 391 parts per million and climbing 2ppm a year, need to be brought back to 350ppm. With biodiversity – essential for ecosystems to function properly – we need to reduce the extinction rate to 10 species per million a year, down from more than 100 species per million at present.
What’s radical about this idea, and Lynas’s book, is that the planetary boundaries concept does not imply any limits to human population growth or economic growth. Instead,as Lynas says in The God Species, “it seeks to identify a safe space in the planetary system within which humans can operate and flourish indefinitely in whatever way they choose”. We can do this, says Lynas, by becoming more efficient in the way we use resources. “We have to close the cycle of the economy so that we’re not constantly bringing resources in from the outside and then disposing of them.”
The solutions Lynas proposes will be challenging to many of the people he calls “traditional greens”. Lynas endorses genetic engineering, nuclear power and urbanisation, eschews organic farming (mostly) and says we don’t need the back-to-basics approach favoured by many greenies. Instead, he says, we need technological solutions, such as finding ways to store the output of renewable energy sources, to genetically engineer our most important food plants to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, to eliminate coal as a way of generating electricity in power stations, and to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere. And we can get there through a smart mixture of innovation, investment and regulation.
Getting the strong political leadership needed to set the standards is the first step, Lynas says. For a start, he proposes an additional half a per cent on sales taxes, to be funnelled into biodiversity protection, “because as we consume the Earth’s resources, we also need to pay for their upkeep”. For the private sector, Lynas is in favour of carbon trading schemes and payments for the protection of forests under a UN scheme to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
One danger of this sort of “technofix” solution is that individuals become complacent and, rather than making positive lifestyle changes, wait for governments and industry to act. But Lynas says anyone who cares about the climate should act now by offsetting all their carbon emissions each year, and not just those emissions from flying.
But given that governments have to take the lead on all these issues, an individual’s biggest impact could be in his or her political choices. “It’s important that people vote for a government that is going to be strong on reducing carbon emissions. Along with biodiversity protection … protecting the oceans and the terrestrial flora and fauna is a job that’s never done, and it’s something that I think New Zealand could also still improve on.”
But he resists associating these ideas with one political camp or another. “We need to challenge this pervasive feeling that to be an environmentalist you need to be left-wing … I don’t see any reason why the need to protect our planetary system has to be a political football between the left and the right.”
In the 1980s, scientific and political recognition that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer – that we had crossed the ozone layer boundary – led to an international agreement to phase out the production and use of CFCs. This was “humanity’s finest hour”, says Lynas. Now it’s up to us whether the governments and the people of the 21st century have the guts to act on the other planetary boundaries.
THE GOD SPECIES: HOW THE PLANET CAN SURVIVE THE AGE OF HUMANS, by Mark Lynas (Fourth Estate, $36.99).
SUNSHINE AND COCONUTS
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By mid 2012, 93% of Tokelau’s energy will come from solar power and the other 7% from coconut oil, says the territory’s leader, Foua Toloa. Tokelau’s islands reach only 5m above sea level and will be one of the places most affected as sea level rises as part of the planet’s response to the burning of fossil fuel.
SOLAR STORM DANGER
When SirTrack stopped receiving signals from the lost emperor penguin Happy Feet on September 9, the first reports suggested it was because intense solar flare activity was disrupting satellite signals. Once satellites started receiving other signals, scientists realised something had happened to either the penguin or his transmitter, but it was a reminder of how vulnerable our satellite communications are to solar activity. In a recent New Scientist article, Californian geophysicist Yuri Shprits claims a major solar storm could generate enough damage to the protective layer of plasma, or charged particles, that surrounds the Earth to raise radiation to levels that could kill satellite activity for up to a decade.
DIAMOND PLANET
Australian astrophysicist Matthew Bailes gained international media attention after his team’s discovery of a “diamond planet” was reported in Science in August. The ultra-high-density planet, orbiting a pulsar some 4000 light years from Earth, is made of crystallised carbon, or diamond, they believe. But Bailes says although their discovery is exciting, it “isn’t that important”. He compares the international media excitement over his team’s discovery with what climate scientists face when they make a discovery. “Sadly, the same media commentators who celebrate diamond planets without question are all too quick to dismiss the latest peer-reviewed evidence that suggests man-made activities are responsible for changes in concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere.”