LIVES IN ECOLOGY John Scales Avery September 12, 2019 INTRODUCTION1 We face an ecological crisis The Industrial Revolution marked the start of massive human use of fossil fuels. The stored energy from several hundred million years of plant growth began to be used at roughly a million times the rate at which it had been formed. The effect on human society was like that of a narcotic. There was a euphoric (and totally unsustainable) surge of growth of both population and industrial production. Meanwhile, the carbon released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels began to duplicate the conditions which led to the 5 geologically-observed mass extinctions, during each of which more than half of all living species disappeared forever. Industrialism and the rapid development of science and technology have given some parts of the world a 200-year period of unbroken expansion and growth, but today this growth is headed for a collision with a wall-like barrier - limits set by the carrying capacity of the global environment and by the exhaustion of non-renewable resources. Encountering these limits is a new experience for the the industrialized countries. By contrast, pre-industrial societies have always experienced limits. The industrialized world must soon replace the economics of growth with equilibrium economics. Pre-industrial societies have already learned to live in equilibrium - in harmony with nature. It is assumed by many people in the industrialized North that if the de- veloping countries would only learn mass production, modern farming tech- niques and a modern lifestyle, all would be well. However, a sustainable global future may require a transfer of knowledge, techniques and attitudes in precisely the opposite direction - from pre-industrial societies to highly in- dustrialized ones. The reason for this is that the older societies have cultures that allow them to live in a sustainable way, in harmony with nature. This is exactly what the highly industrial North must learn to do. This book reviews the lives and thoughts of some of the women and men who have addressed the crucial problems of ecology and sustainability that we are currently facing. I have tried to let them speak to us in their own words. We need their voices today! 1This book makes use of articles and book chapters that I have previously written on subjects related to ecology, but a great deal of new material has been added. 1 Contents 1 INDIGENOUS PEOPLES 7 1.1 Learning to live in harmony . .7 1.2 Luther Standing Bear . 11 1.3 The earth is our mother . 19 1.4 Crimes against indigenous peoples . 24 2 SAINT FRANCIS 41 2.1 The life of Saint Francis . 41 2.2 Canticle of the Sun ............................... 43 2.3 Canonization . 44 2.4 A prayer of Saint Francis ........................... 44 3 HENRY DAVID THOREAU 55 3.1 Harmony with nature . 56 3.2 On the Duty of Civil Disobedience . 65 4 JOHN MUIR 67 4.1 The life of John Muir . 67 4.2 Places named after John Muir . 78 4.3 National parks in the United States . 78 5 JOHN TYNDALL AND SVANTE ARRHENIUS 91 5.1 John Tyndall . 91 5.2 Svante Arrhenius . 98 5.3 The Keeling curve . 101 6 RACHEL CARSON 107 6.1 From child author to marine biologist . 107 6.2 The Sea Around Us . 111 6.3 The Silent Spring . 113 6.4 Overuse of pesticides and the insect apocalypse . 117 3 4 CONTENTS 7 JANE GOODALL 121 7.1 Growing up with a love of animals . 121 7.2 Africa, Leakey and the search for early human behavior . 121 7.3 The Gombe research project . 123 7.4 Roots and Shoots, and the Jane Goodall Institute . 127 8 HUMAN ECOLOGY 133 8.1 Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich . 133 8.2 John P. Holdren . 137 8.3 Barry Commoner . 141 8.4 The global food and refugee crisis . 146 9 WANGARI MAATHAI 169 9.1 The life and work of Wangari Maathai . 169 9.2 Illegal burning for palm oil plantations . 175 9.3 Jair Bolsonaro's attack on the Amazon rainforest . 176 9.4 Growing populations and forest loss . 180 9.5 Desertification and soil erosion . 181 9.6 Forest drying and wildfires: a feedback loop . 182 9.7 Degraded forests are carbon emitters . 182 9.8 Replanting forests . 183 10 POPE FRANCIS I 187 10.1 From Argentina to Rome . 187 10.2 Pope Francis addresses the climate emergency . 188 10.3 Pope Francis meets Leonardo DiCaprio . 197 11 JAMES HANSEN, BILL MCKIBBEN, AND AOC 201 11.1 Understanding the atmosphere of Venus . 201 11.2 350.org . 202 11.3 The Climate Movement: What's Next? . 202 11.4 Bill McKibben . 204 11.5 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez . 207 11.6 Realities of climate change . 211 12 NAOMI KLEIN 231 12.1 From mall-junkie to environmentalist . 231 12.2 Naomi Klein on the urgency of the Green New Deal . 235 12.3 The Sunrise Movement . 238 12.4 The Extinction Rebellion . 242 CONTENTS 5 13 HELENA NORBERG-HODGE AND MAUDE BARLOW 245 13.1 Ancient futures . 245 13.2 Maude Barlow: water as a human right . 252 13.3 The global water crisis . 257 14 SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH 265 14.1 Family background and childhood . 265 14.2 Career at the BBC . 269 14.3 Disaster! . 275 14.4 Climate Change, The Facts . 278 14.5 Sir David testifies in Parliament . 279 15 AL GORE 283 15.1 An Inconvenient Truth . 283 15.2 Climate change denial in the mass media . 285 15.3 Showing unsustainable lifestyles in the mass media . 289 15.4 Alternative media . 289 16 GRETA THUNBERG 295 16.1 Greta Thunberg's TED talk . 295 16.2 Only immediate climate action can save the future . 298 16.3 Worldwide school strike, 15 March, 2019 . 302 16.4 The World Meteorological Organization's report . 309 16.5 Only 12 years left to limit climate change catastrophe . 309 16.6 COP24, the climate summit in Poland . 310 16.7 The UK declares a climate emergency . 320 16.8 Understatement of existential climate risk . 321 16.9 The 2018 IPCC report . 326 6 CONTENTS Chapter 1 INDIGENOUS PEOPLES 1.1 Learning to live in harmony We need to learn from long-established cultures The era of colonialism has left the industrialized countries with a rather arrogant attitude towards other cultures. Although formal political colonialism has almost entirely vanished, many of the assumptions of the colonial era persist and are strongly supported by the mainstream mass media. Like biodiversity, cultural diversity is an extremely valuable resource, and for similar reasons. A large genetic pool gives living organisms the flexibility needed to adapt to changes in the environment. Similarly, cultural diversity can give humans the flexibility needed to cope with change. In the changed world of today (changed by the invention of thermonuclear weapons and by the extraordinary growth of global population and com- merce) we urgently need to learn to live in harmony, in harmony with ourselves, in harmony with nature, and in harmony with other members of our species. We can do this if we draw on the full human heritage of cultural diversity. We can draw not only on the knowledge and wisdom of presently existing societies, but also on the experiences and ideas of societies of the past. • The Pythagorean concept of harmony: In the ancient world, the concept of harmony was developed to a high level by the Pythagoreans. The Pythagoreans used the idea of harmony to understand medicine, music, mathematics and ethics. • The concept of harmony in Chinese civilization: Chinese civilization is very ancient, and it has made many extremely important contributions to the cultural heritage of the world - for example, the invention of paper, ink, printing and the magnetic compass. Agriculture began in China as early as 6,000 B.C. The art of working in bronze was developed in China during the Shang dynasty (1,500 B.C. - 1,100 B.C.) and it reached a high pitch of excellence in the Chou dynasty (1,100 B.C. - 250 B.C.). 7 8 LIVES IN ECOLOGY In the Chou period, many of the cultural characteristics which we recognize as par- ticularly Chinese were developed. During this period, the Chinese evolved a code of behavior based on politeness and ethics. Much of this code of behavior is derived from the teachings of K'ung Fu-tzu (Confucius), a philosopher and government of- ficial who lived between 551 B.C. and 479 B.C.. The \Golden Rule" was known to K'ung Fu-tzu, but was formulated in a negative way: \Do not do to others anything that you would not like them do to you". The rational teachings of K'ung Fu-tzu were complemented by the more mystical and intuitive doctrines of Lao-tzu and his followers. Lao-tzu lived at about the same time as K'ung Fu-tzu, and he founded the Taoist religion. The Taoists believed that unity with nature could be achieved by passively blending oneself with the forces of nature. On the whole, politicians and scholars followed the practical teachings of K'ung Fu-tzu, while poets and artists became Taoists. The intuitive sensitivity to nature inspired by Taoist beliefs allowed these artists and poets to achieve literature and art of unusual vividness and force with great economy of means. The Taoist religion has much in common with Buddhism, and its existence in China paved the way for the spread of Buddhism from India to China and Japan.