Every Coin Has Two Sides
It's practically impossible to avoid the news of ecological crises (plural) these days. I'm not talking about Russia strangling Europe this winter by cutting gas flows. That will be a politically-made crisis. I'm talking about the epochal droughts afflicting the entire planet. You know it's bad when river flows in Europe are so low that the Rhine can't sustain commercial traffic; when the Tiber water levels in Rome are so low that the foundations of Roman bridges from the times of Nero are exposed.
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| Resurfaced remains of a bridge in Rome’s River Tiber, in July.Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg |
But you know it's next level bad when the literal "hunger stone" appears in the Czech Republic --an inscription from 1619 at the bottom of the Elbe river that says "If you see me, then weep"
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At some point, the terraforming of an entire planet into a global farm for human consumption, with a third-world backyard where a dwindling presence of wildlife gets harassed by first world's tourism, was bound to reach a breaking point.
Huu ni utalii au usumbufu wa wanyamapori?? pic.twitter.com/6D7buScNFB
— Sir. Kasale M Mwaana (@KasaleMwaana) August 7, 2022
Is it time to panic? Are we finally in the planet's final throes?
Reality is created by the gatekeepers of the collective narrative. They are specific information bottlenecks that control and shape the prevailing narrative that pervades the global imagination. We humans are incurable suckers for a well-woven narrative. I've argued in the past that the atomization of media (where an every man's Joe can potentially become a global influencer and have the capacity to shape narratives a la Joe Rogan) has "democratized" those bottlenecks and created potential millions of information gatekeepers. The hyperconnected world created in this context has become a planetary village where billions of people cry at unison when Notre Dame catches fire, and one where millions are deceived into believing fairly clean elections are stolen.
When talking about the state of the planet, the counternarrative to the facts depicting ecological collapse states that we should be aware of (even celebrate) the decoupling of human economic growth from the actual resource consumption to produce it. After all, the aggregate levels of six common air pollutants in the US declined 77% since 1970 despite the fact that GDP grew by 285% since then. In the UK, particulate emissions decreased by 75% between 1970 and 2016 (and main polluting chemicals by 85%). The US has reduced its total CO2 emissions by more than 13% since 2007. Andrew McAfee of the MIT reminds us that the US produced 55% more crops between 1980 and 2015 while using 18% less water for irrigation, and 7% less cropland. We just need to keep doing more of that elsewhere, with the help of technology and the right regulatory incentives.
Clearly, using dramatic imagery, like an ancient carved stone travelling from the 17th Century to inform us we should cry because we've broken the planet, or footage of terrified wildlife accosted by dozens of well-meaning millionaires who just want to re-connect with nature, are excellent vehicles to convey the predicament of the state of our planet. But facts are facts. And they should be as persuasive as (one could arguably say even more than) any other information vehicle to deliver the message: we're progressing, life standards are improving, and increasingly with a more responsible footprint. We have a shot at avoiding catastrophe.
Of course, the narrative that sells its argument in the most vivid, convincing way, wins. But what's the prize, really? What is it that both sides are competing for?
They're competing for human perception. Which, on a geological scale, means nothing. Regardless of who wins the narrative war, Earth will go on, as George Carlin brilliantly said, with or without us puny humans. No matter how much meaning we infuse to a video of an emaciated polar bear, the hard reality is that the planet, as a closed system, just... is. It does not (cannot!) care about my feelings towards that Costarrican sea turtle with the straw on its nose. Earth might harbor the biochemical and meteorological conditions for us humans (and millions of species) to thrive in (and die), but it has no teleological purpose for us. This is independent from how special we arrogantly perceive ourselves to be. Evolution is nothing more than a gene tournament in the knockout stages played on Earth Stadium. That’s it. Earth has no dog in that fight.
If we happen to shit on our drinking pool because it feels good to do so (or because our generation isn't the one to pay the price for doing it), we only have ourselves to blame.
Techno-optimists like to highlight the part of the story that allows us more wiggle room to keep our resource-intensive lifestyle. Clearly, they're team human. Environmentalists despair about the unbalances we've brought upon on the conditions that allow us to survive (sometimes anthropomorfizing "mother Earth" in the process). Obviously, they're team earth. What's unintendedly perverse about this position, is that it intrinsically means (in a way) rooting against humans.
Because, ultimately, you can't have your Earth and eat it too.
In the end, both are human interpretations of the same shared reality --opposite sides of the same consciousness coin. We want to keep doing what we've been doing (the comforts of modern life are too damn good), but we can't keep doing it, or we'll all die. And, entitled little shits that we are, we want it both ways. So we churn out accommodating narratives that fit our wanted outcome. Physics be damned.
The funny thing of it all is that, in the very, very end... we will all be dead anyway, regardless of which team you rooted for. And, funnier still, that, is a liberating thought.
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