photo: European Environment Agency (click on photo for site)Humans have changed a lot of things. Of these, there are some things that should be changed, like poverty, like monarchy. But the relentless pursuit of development has had its ramifications on the environment. Considering that the environment is the pillar of our very existence, blessing us with clean air, water, sufficient food, and good land to farm and build, that's probably something we don't want to change.
Shock and awe
It is a proven biological and social concept that the more gradual a change, the better humans and wildlife alike are able to adapt to the change and the felt impact of the change is therefore reduced. We see this all the time - in the wild, most animals have been able to survive the gradual transition from the ice age to today, while the dinos were all wiped out with a sudden temperature drop due to a giant meteorite; and in more civilised society, we've been able to cope with a gradual tripling of oil prices, but thai stocks plummeted after the sudden, unexpected (and bird-brained) institution of capital control measures.
For the past couple of hundred of years, ever since the industrial revolution kickstarted our pollutive and eco-unfriendly ways, our world's climate and environment has been changing - but gradually. Now, there's a kind of delayed-feedback mechanism here, hence the gradual change: if you slash and burn a football-sized area of forest today, you're not going to get a football-sized patch of barren land tomorrow, or even a month later.
The trouble is that the damage we did, and are still doing, to the environment has increased exponentially - so, logically, the wounds the environment's going to show will also increase exponentially. That goes to say, this change we're talking about isn't going to be gradual any longer.
To exacebate the situation - notice that we're haven't been getting the proportionate amount and scale of feedback from our inputs to the environmental system. For example, carbon dioxide levels since the industrial revolution have gone way off the scale (almost 3 times the natural fluctuation of the past million years). One, that isn't any gradual change; Two, remember delayed-feedback? We may not feel the full impact of this now, but it's sure to come back to haunt us.
So that's pretty much a time-bomb on our hands. And we're already seeing a sneak preview of it exploding:For one, the five hottest years on record have occured within the last 7-8 years, we've seen deadly heatwaves in europe; The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season is the most active in recorded history (with memorable monsters like Katrina) and also the most devastating (causing at least 2,280 deaths and US$100 billioin in damages).
Since it's neither insignificant nor gradual, is highly visible and dramatic, and (best of all) hits people where it hurts most - in terms of dollars and cents and human lives, it's going to have a whopping felt impact. That's just a sneak preview, the tip of the iceberg - and Bush is already having problems dealing with it. When the shock and awe really starts, the environmental movement will not only infiltrate every level of politics, but also cause the masses to join today's few sore-throat, lost-hope environmentalists in creating an unprecendented amount of ground support. That's when we'll really have to sit up and do something about it.
Capitalist self-regulation
Elementary economics tells us that any economic system self-regulates to balance supply and demand - if supply goes down, price goes up, therefore demand tends to go down. As our fossil fuels and other natural resources gradually get depleted, supply will tend to go down (the production of several OPEC countries are already falling below their quota due to drying-up oil fields - and let's not talk about overstated oil fields yet). Hence the price of natural resources will go up, and in fact, the oil price has tripled and stabilised at almost that level - and it seems unlikely to head south in future.
This means two things: Firstly, businesses and governments alike will reduce their consumption of pollutive fossil fuels natural resources, so pollution would tend to go down. One visible example of this is the aircraft industry, in which "fuel efficiency" is the buzzword - aircraft manufactors are going to great lengths to reduce fuel consumption, for example by using expensive composites - such that the airbus A380 has nearly the same fuel consumption as the old Boeing 747.
Secondly, green technology would appear much cheaper in comparison, hence higher adoption of green technology, and increased funding for green R & D is likely. And this, for sure, is a good thing, since green technology not only reduces consumption of natural resources but attempts to be environmentally-friendly in every way, hence promoting environmentalism even more, and reduces the damage we do to the environment
Also, it is becoming increasingly obvious that many things we take for granted - like the environment's capacity to absorb pollution, water resources, fertile soil... are finite, but self-replenishing resources, since pollution and other damage to the environment are having more and more visible ramifications - e.g. in the form of desertification and/or land degradation when unsustainable farming methods are used. Hence some form of governmental regulation will - eventually - surface to ensure that we do not the damage we do the environment and the self-replenishing resources (i prefer not to use the term "renewable") do not exceed its ability to recover from our damage and replenish those resources and hence is sustainable, and will not deplete these resources or irreversibly damage the environment. And this is what we have seen in international fishing quotas, and sulphur dioxide emission treaties (sulphur dioxide emissions has actually decreased).
Economic agendas may be a distraction from the environmental one, especially in countries like China, but only a temporary one. The environment is one irreplaceable pillar of any economy - whether in terms of providing water, electricity, or fertile land for farming. If the environment collapses, so will the economy. When this happens, or hopefully, before this happens, people will care about the environment, and take steps in that direction
But will it be too late?
When we talk about damage to the environment, there is a point of no return: Do enough damage to the environment fast enough, and it will be irreversably wrecked, with no capability to repair itself. The principle is similar to that on wildlife: wildlife can adapt to changes in the ecosystem, but if the change is big enough and fast enough, that species just goes extent.
So the question is whether we have crossed that point of no return. Only time will tell. Judging from the scale of the damage to the environment, and the fact that we only started this havoc business during the industrial revolution (only slightly over 200 years ago), one thing's for sure - that point of no return isn't very far away, if we haven't crossed it yet. But to be pessimistic is to be defeatist. The human race has every reason to be optismistic and take steps to ensure that we do not cross that point, beyond which, the capacity of Earth to support life, and our very own existence, is to be questioned.
It starts with you and me. Now or never.
Recommended reading / viewing: The inconvenient truth (movie or book) (Al Gore's educational campaign on global warming)
