Climate Conundrums: What the Climate Debate Reveals About Us

Society.

I

Humans and nature

1

Are humans distinct from nature?

I sometimes dream that I am the first human to capture fire. My clan of 20 lives at the base of a small mountain in what is now East Africa, perhaps 200,000 years ago. Our existence is very simple, gathering edible plants and hunting game with spears. Much of life is about survival: avoiding predatory animals and enduring droughts. My clan fears fire almost as much as lions and hyenas. It appears from nowhere and roars toward us without warning. The clan believes that angry spirits start fire, using the clouds to crash lightning down on the earth. Children are the most vulnerable—they cannot outrun it. I am barely past childhood myself, but I have heard many stories about those lost to fires.

One day, while gathering berries on the mountainside, I come across the remnant of a small fire. It is slowly dying, having destroyed only a single tree. I am startled. Preoccupation with the berries allowed me to get quite close before noticing. Near my feet, a stick burns at one end. The other is untouched by the flames. I stare intently, for what seems a long time, fearful that the fire will jump at me. Then something I can’t explain compels me to approach closer. Perhaps it is because my bravery is heightened, having helped kill my first lion the previous day. Several friends taunted the lion to approach them, while I hid in the bushes. As it lunged, I anchored the base of my spear in the ground and impaled it. Having survived this harrowing rite of passage, the slowly waning fire seems surprisingly tame.

Emboldened, I pick up the untouched end of the stick. I hold it aloft, fire at the far end. It should hurt, but it does not. I reach for the fire with my free hand, but the hotness stops me. I wave the stick in the air. The fire stays attached. For some reason I cannot put the stick down. Nature seems to be speaking to me personally, revealing one of its great secrets, for a purpose I will never understand. With considerable caution, I carry the stick down to the valley where our cave is located and place it on the ground. My clan first scatters from fear but then slowly returns, gathering in awe. Nobody has ever held fire before, but here I am doing so—and I am still alive. The fire stays in place and does not hurt them either.

My imagined event is likely a reasonable reflection of what must have occurred so long ago. Perhaps it happened just once and the knowledge spread from one clan to the next. Maybe it transpired independently in many clans. The details don’t matter, other than to the extent they illustrate the importance of this milestone. It is hard to emphasize how much the human world—and along with it all of nature—changed as a result. Starting in small clans, but ultimately in larger and larger communities, nature became less fearsome, more predictable, and less variable. Humanity would never be the same.

This simple dream, when translated to the reality of societal progress, was a watershed in civilization’s development. The domestication of fire transformed humans—both individually and as groups—in two fundamental ways. The first of these is humans’ physical interaction with nature. With fire, we were able to establish new physical barriers between nature and ourselves—what I will call physical moats. It is easy to see how such moats work. Fire provided several moats. For the earliest humans, fire’s warmth kept seasons and weather at bay. Its light banished the dark. Animals that preyed on us began to stay their distance. Food with bacteria that killed us was suddenly nourishing. Eventually, people learned how to use fire at larger scales. We burned forests and fields to clear them for agriculture. We used it to defend our cities and attack those of our enemies. Clans banded together because of this, furthering civilization’s reach.

Equally important to its physical impact—and often ignored—is how fire changed our perception of the human role in nature. This is reflected in what I call psychological moats. Psychological moats reduce nature’s impingement on our daily lives, as with their physical brethren allowing us to distance ourselves from nature. When every minute of your day is filled with fear that you might be eaten, or that a storm could descend suddenly and strand you away from shelter, or that the food you are eating might make you ill and vulnerable, other thoughts fade in significance. Each of us modern humans has faced this at a micro level many times: stuck outside in the cold with a long walk home or in the open during a lightning storm. Literature often builds on this theme—man versus nature—to create compelling story lines. But when we get past a storm, we go home to where nature once again fades into the background. Until fire arrived, our distant ancestors did not have this luxury. Fire allowed them to spend less time being concerned about nature, which created more time to ponder the functioning of their clan, and even to pursue art. Psychological barriers to nature enabled humans to focus resources on the development of society, and so humanity advanced.

This process did not stop with fire’s discovery. Over the millennia, we have built moat after moat, protecting ourselves and enabling greater productivity. With each moat we build, nature becomes ever more distant. We become less physically connected, not as routinely impacted by nature’s many challenges. Our distancing from nature, both physical and psychological, has been a hallmark of societal advance. It is why in the title to this chapter I ask the question Are humans distinct from nature? The question can no longer be viewed as academic. Today, we already act as if nature is something distinct from the human species and external to society. As our interaction with nature expands to where we can actually alter it irreversibly on global scales, both the physical and psychological elements become increasingly critical. The two are curiously reinforcing: our physical moats give us the means to irreversibly change nature, our psychological moats the inclination to do so.

The climate debate bears much responsibility for renewing interest in how humans interact with nature. Attention to the topic has waxed and waned over recent centuries, going back to the Enlightenment and before. Each time it reemerges in philosophical or cultural circles, the relationship evolves as a result. The latest wave appeared in the 1960s with the rise of environmentalism. The climate debate has reenergized this discussion about the intersection between humans and nature, driving it to far deeper levels than ever before.

There is good reason. Today, humans are for the first time knowingly altering nature at a global scale. I should probably repeat that, perhaps in all caps this time, but I will ask you instead to just reread the last sentence. Hopefully the message will stick as you progress through the book. Despite our long history altering nature at local and eventually regional scales, it is only in the last century or so that technology has advanced to where we can deliberately alter the entire Earth. Only in the last few decades have we recognized that we are actually doing so. I believe this is a profound watershed in human history.

Like America’s pioneers, crossing the Rocky Mountains to start new lives, we stand at a divide across which we shall never return, looking for the first time at a future that until recently was unimaginable. In that future, civilization will find itself increasingly altering Earth as a whole, unable to restrain itself and forced to manage the consequences. Civilization’s relentless march toward greater sophistication, more energy use, improved knowledge, and finer skills makes this so. All of our efforts to reign in greenhouse gas emissions, to save polar bears, and to reinvigorate ocean fisheries will not halt that march.

You may argue I am wrong, that we can refrain from most of the feared climate impacts. You might point out that we crossed the divide once with ozone depletion and stepped back, eliminating human influence and restoring nature. Perhaps we can do the same with greenhouse gases, limiting emissions and stopping our alteration of global climate. The reality is more complicated. Ozone loss and global warming are only the first two signs that our increasingly complex civilization has evolved to a point where it can routinely alter nature at global scales. More will appear: a few during this century, many others the next.

You may also claim that if we make changes to our energy usage, or to our cultural habits, or to our economic systems, we will coexist peaceably with nature again. I argue it is impossible to return back across the divide and live forever in a society where humans avoid altering nature in any substantial way. A worldview that argues for not proceeding across the divide at all, for whatever merits it may have, is simply unrealistic. The human footprint is too extensive and enormously resistant to being downsized. Even the waste heat from our energy use is becoming large enough to have a measurable, though very small, impact on global temperature. We may be able to win some battles, as we have with ozone (and we still can with global warming), but civilization’s progress will eventually leave us too many battles to fight. We won’t win them all.

To avoid such a future, society will need to eliminate or tightly manage today’s capabilities for global influence on nature. It must also ensure that new capabilities of the sort do not arise as civilization progresses. I believe such self-constraint is an unrealistically tall order for modern society. Our options as we cross the divide are more limited than many people would like. We can choose our path as we progress down it toward this future of growing human influence, but we cannot retreat back to the other side.

One of the most important aspects of the climate debate is how well it illuminates this tremendous divide, spotlighting the dramatic contrast between past and future. Because of the debate, there are few people today who are not at least somewhat aware of our situation. Perspectives on its importance vary widely, spanning a spectrum strongly concentrated at the two ends. On one end is the belief that a global human imprint on nature risks deep and lasting problems, from species loss to human suffering. To these people, all human influence is negative and should be avoided. On the other end is the belief, held by many with equal conviction, that humans could never overcome nature in such a way—that what we are seeing cannot be actually happening. To them, evidence suggesting such change is occurring casts doubt on the very science that tells us so. In many cases, they believe any real influence is largely beneficial anyway.

Most people fall between these extremes. But few share a view of the reality I perceive—that crossing the divide is inevitable and civilization will need to choose a course down the other side, carefully managing our global influence on nature as we proceed. On one end of the spectrum are those who believe we can avoid crossing, on the other are those who think our crossing will be uneventful. Neither perspective helps us prepare for where I believe we will really need to go. Neither prepares us for the ongoing, deep interaction with nature that is an inevitable consequence of societal advance. Whether you prefer to think our advance is desirable or regrettable does not matter. It is where we are most likely headed.

The threat of nuclear annihilation gave us the first hint that humanity and nature could intertwine at such global scales. So far, the best means for avoiding this annihilation has been the oddly effective strategy known as mutually assured destruction: two nations, to the exclusion of Earth’s other inhabitants, agree to finish off all civilization (and much of nature) rather than let one side win out in a disagreement. What may have worked during the Cold War seems a troubling prototype for solving future, global-scale problems. Some may say it nevertheless demonstrates that society can develop solutions—we just need to work them out for emerging issues such as climate change. I think not. Avoiding annihilation during the Cold War had a remarkably simple solution: don’t push the button. Succeed with this one (admittedly weighty) rule and it is as if the problem never existed. In many ways, nuclear war was child’s play compared to what we face. The past quarter century of acrimonious debate illustrates just how messy and complex the climate change issue is. We’ve learned the hard way that no single button can vanquish it. Perhaps worse, climate change is merely the first of our problems; subsequent global-scale issues are likely to be as complex or more so. The Cold War lesson—simple restraint in button pushing—won’t resolve these issues. As we will discuss later, climate change is not a one-time problem with a one-time solution. Our growing global influence on nature presents far more complex and challenging issues than even those clamoring for climate action recognize. Society’s traditional problem-solving tools are simply insufficient to address emerging global-scale problems. Failure to recognize this critical contemporary constraint on civilization’s further advance will have enormous consequences.

This book is built around my thoughts about the situation we face in crossing the divide. I believe that the lessons from climate change will be deep and lasting. Our crossing is not just a transient event that will be largely forgotten in a decade or two. Will it rise to a level of importance comparable to the capture of fire? Only time will tell. Whatever your beliefs about climate change, the debate has motivated us to think more deeply, not just about nature but also about broader issues regarding the human condition. These range from the relationship between science and religion to the ethics of using engineering to alter the planet irreversibly. The remainder of the book addresses this unanticipated fallout from the climate debate, beginning with this first chapter on the complex and rapidly evolving relationship between humans and nature. On one level, our 10 conundrums are interesting and timeless questions themselves. On another, they give us a framework for exploring society’s deepest contemporary issues and for seeking the connections among them. What will emerge, as we proceed through our 10 topics, is a troubling story about the foundations of human thought itself and about the resulting implications for society’s fate.

Human history provides helpful insight into how we arrived at today’s perceptions of nature. Though capturing fire reduced vulnerability substantially, nature remained central to daily human life for a very long time. The success of hunting continued to be critical. Early humans depended on nature’s cooperation to provide abundant animal populations and good weather for productive hunting. We know this from the extensive use of animal depictions on pottery, weapons, and artistic items prior to the end of the last ice age. Over time, humans became less dependent on nature’s control of animal populations and more reliant on our own ingenuity in tool making and societal organization for a successful hunt. Eventually, around the end of the last ice age 10,000 or so years ago, even this gave way to agriculture and animal domestication. We again see this transition in ornamentation. Whereas older items focus on the natural environment, more recent ones pay greater attention to the social environment. In his book How Ancient Europeans Saw the World, Peter Wells documents the manner in which this occurred over the period from 2000 BC onward for our European ancestors. Primitive traditions dominant in Europe at the time gradually merged with more advanced capabilities brought by the Roman Empire. Eventually, for many civilizations, even animal ornamentation became stylized in forms such as dragons and unicorns, reflecting society’s fears and dreams more than nature’s reality.

The emergence of writing, somewhere between the sixth and fourth millennia BC, gives us the first direct insight into human perceptions of nature. Early on, nature’s workings were commonly attributed to divine forces and often described through stories with gods as the characters. By the time of the Greeks, perspectives on nature had become quite sophisticated, though many of the traditional stories persisted. Aristotle viewed all nature—from rocks to people—as a sort of life form itself, each thing in nature being imbued with qualities and purpose that guided its present and future. His perspective influenced much of subsequent Western thinking about nature, though his was not the only view. Other Greeks, such as Democritus, believed nature should be viewed in a more simple way, absent of qualities such as purpose.

During this period of civilization’s growth, perspectives on nature varied (and they still vary) extensively between East and West and from one religion or philosophy to the next. Eastern and Western art reflected very different views of nature, characteristic of their contemporary thinking. Chinese art two millennia ago celebrated nature’s inherent aesthetics; Western art only began to relinquish its religious bent and focus on nature in the 1500s. The mysticism of nature, including efforts to understand the natural state of humans, has been a deep part of Taoism since the fourth century BC. What is common between East and West is the recognition that the human relationship to nature is quite complex and even mysterious. For common people, not exposed to written thought or art, the relationship was probably far simpler—much as it had been since the capture of fire. Until recent times, improvements to clothing and shelter over the centuries were perhaps the two biggest advances providing them distance from nature.

In the last 1,000 years, two fundamental changes have occurred in how we view nature. The first came about as a result of the Renaissance and the scientific method that arose through people like Galileo and Isaac Newton. The idea was simple: nature is not governed by magic. This idea took hold mostly among educated people at the time. For common people, a nature perceived to be run by magic held sway far longer. The second change appeared during the Enlightenment of the 1700s, when great thinkers were reexamining many aspects of human existence. Their idea was a bit more subtle, but every bit as revolutionary: nature is intrinsically valuable, just for being nature. To them, nature was an aspiration, not just a source of resources and fear. Ironically, transforming it from reality to aspiration may have further distanced it from us. As an aspiration, true nature became something we dream of but rarely experience.

Our perceptions of nature, formed over the course of human history, will continue to evolve. The moats our ancestors built remain with us today, shielding us from nature’s detrimental impacts and making it easier to access Earth’s resources without considering consequences. Climate change, and the debate it engenders, accelerates this process. As will be seen in the remainder of this chapter, our relationship with nature faces critical challenges in the coming decades. New moats will be built, old ones perhaps destroyed. Our perceptions will evolve, possibly in radically new directions. Our relationship with nature a century hence will be very different from what it is today.

Present human perception of nature is built from the foundation of this long history. The ways we think as individuals, and the manner in which society interacts, are influenced in many subtle ways by how we view nature. Without a doubt, society’s accelerating access to knowledge distances us from nature more than it brings us together. Thunder and lightning awed people when they were thought to be the voice of the gods. Today, they disturb golf games and garner attention only as entertainment or scientific fodder. Our weather forecasts nowadays are created with computers and delivered through our phones. As recently as a century ago, looming storms could only be anticipated using our intuition. Our lives sometimes depended on that sixth sense.

In 1888, 500 or so people perished in Nebraska during a surprise winter storm. Many of them were schoolchildren walking home when the storm suddenly descended. The morning had started mild, a relief from days of cold, relaxing peoples’ normal concern about weather risks. Even experienced farmers, who chose to walk to distant fields during the morning, did not make it home. Their natural intuition failed them. The event was so traumatic to those who lived through it that it became known as the Children’s Blizzard. Modern forecasts, delivered over mobile phones, would have saved them all. Today we feel it to be progress when our old intuition is replaced with snowflake icons; their appearance on our phones has the power to prevent such tragedies.

Given examples like this, it is not clear we still need intuition. Improved knowledge has begun to undermine our reliance on instinct. For many people, that instinct may be lost already. Yet improved knowledge can also confuse us and increasingly overwhelms us. Nature is complicated. It has more pieces and parts than we could possibly count; for every one we uncover, five more seem to show up waiting to be understood. The oceans are only beginning to be explored. New species emerge from jungles regularly. Climate is among these overwhelming topics. When the importance of Earth’s ecology was first widely promoted in the 1970s, few thought climate was anything but the dullest of research topics. Then we learned that humans might be influencing it, that our chlorofluorocarbons can degrade the ozone layer and alter global atmospheric processes, and that Earth’s climate history was far from stable. On the one hand, this exposure of our ignorance reinforces our primitive notion that nature is unfathomably vast and complex. On the other hand, it also demonstrates that nature’s vastness is ultimately comprehensible. Either way, belief in nature’s simplicity, and the ability of human intuition to understand it, is increasingly hard to