Take control of our Lives

Another scientific report finds capitalism could lead to the possible end of human life on the planet. Research published in Science and Anthropocene Review, featured the work of scientists from countries including the US, Sweden, Germany and India and be presented in seven seminars at the World Economic Forum showed the economic system was “fundamentally flawed” as it ignored critically important life support systems.

“It’s clear the economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and people of my daughter’s generation will find it increasingly hard to survive. History has shown that civilisations have risen, stuck to their core values and then collapsed because they didn’t change. That’s where we are today.”

Researchers spent five years identifying these core components of a planet suitable for human life and found that humans are “eating away at our own life support systems” at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has found.

Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded “safe” levels – human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertiliser use. All of these changes are shifting Earth into a “new state” that is becoming less hospitable to human life, researchers said.

The changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human civilisation has advanced significantly. “There are no signs they are slowing down,” said Prof Will Steffen of the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the lead author, “When economic systems went into overdrive, there was a massive increase in resource use and pollution. It used to be confined to local and regional areas but we’re now seeing this occurring on a global scale. These changes are down to human activity, not natural variability.”

“We are clearing land, we are degrading land, we introduce feral animals and take the top predators out, we change the marine ecosystem by overfishing – it’s a death by a thousand cuts,” he said. “That direct impact upon the land is the most important factor right now, even more than climate change…It’s fairly safe to say that we haven’t seen conditions in the past similar to ones we see today and there is strong evidence that there are tipping points we don’t want to cross,” Steffen said. “If the Earth is going to move to a warmer state, 5-6C warmer, with no ice caps, it will do so and that won’t be good for large mammals like us. People say the world is robust and that’s true, there will be life on Earth, but the Earth won’t be robust for us. Some people say we can adapt due to technology, but that’s a belief system, it’s not based on fact. There is no convincing evidence that a large mammal, with a core body temperature of 37C, will be able to evolve that quickly. Insects can, but humans can’t and that’s a problem.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) first signaled a scientific consensus on the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in its 1990 report. Since then, global production of greenhouse gases has increased by 40%. According to climate scientists, after decades of dithering we are now beginning to run out of time. In a report in November 2011, the International Energy Agency calculated that – without significant political action – we will pass the point of no return in 2016. After that date, the volume of greenhouse gases already lingering in the atmosphere may be too high to prevent climate change reaching catastrophic levels.

Despite this urgency, we appear to have become more relaxed about the issue. Various studies have suggested that media coverage of climate change – and environmental issues more generally – has declined precipitously since 2009/10. Vicky Dando has compared the British press reporting of two risks – climate change and terrorism. She found that coverage of terrorism has remained fairly high since 2001, while attention given to climate change has declined markedly since the relative high point between 2007 and 2009. This decline has been a steady and consistent, with more than a five-fold decrease between 2007 and 2012. Richard Thomas has recently compared two full years of broadcast news (the 10pm weekday flagship bulletins on ITV and BBC) in 2007 and 2014. He tracked the coverage of more than 30 topics and issues and found that while the attention given to the economy has increased significantly, environmental issues have almost disappeared. In 2007, the percentage of news time devoted to environmental issues was 2.5% on ITV and 1.6% on the BBC. By 2014, this had dropped to just 0.3% on the BBC and 0.2% on ITV.