A comment on Sustainability and Global Warming

You’ve heard it all before: Ice caps are melting, the oceans are heating up and within the next few decades many animals will become extinct. All in all, a big bunch of bad news. Of course we are fully to blame, with all our nasty fossil fuel burning power stations, which in the end will be responsible for the extinction of the human race…or is that really true?

In Al Gore’s recent film, An Inconvenient Truth, we see pictures of glaciers and ice sheets 30 years ago and then today. Audiences gasp as they see just how much ice has disappeared. But is this really due to us? The problem is that if you’re going to understand anthropological climate change (caused by humans), you first have to understand natural climate change. The fact is that over the last 60 billion years the Earth has been heating up and cooling considerably. If we take the last 2 million years (known as the Quaternary) we can see that the Earth has been alternating between glacial and interglacial periods (lots of ice and then very little ice). No prizes for guessing then that we are in the middle of an interglacial. These are periods of time characterised by melting ice, and guess what…global warming!

It is this global warming over the last 20 000 years since the last ice age (glacial) that has enabled the Earth to sustain human life. So, given the temperature graphs for the last few thousand years, how can we begin to analyse the extent to which global warming is natural, and the extent to which we are causing it. The truth is that it isn’t really of much relevance.

You see, the main problem is with our perspective. Humans have never been good news for the Earth. In the short time humans have been around, they have had a massive effect on the Earth. We do not fit into a natural food chain; we do not live within a natural ecosystem and therefore we are the equivalent of a virus/cancer on the Earth (very similar to what Agent Smith says in the Matrix). That’s not true I hear you cry, but look around you-our idea of nature is an area of cultivated land, covered with one species of cow, with fences and walls, and perhaps the odd windy road. When was the last time you saw ‘real unadulterated nature’? (Probably on 'Walking with dinosaurs'). Now of course this all sounds very depressing, but it is the necessary background on which to base our thinking.

Living in perfect harmony with the environment may be impossible, but achieving the best balance possible should be our aim. In other words, minimising the impact we have on the Earth. This way, we are managing cause rather than effect. This is where our current approach goes wrong-we look at the effect we are having and then decide what to do. There are two main flaws with this approach. Firstly, as I have mentioned, it may be the case that some of the effects we are seeing are natural and not a result of human activity, and secondly there may be problems which are equally as important but less evident currently, which are paid no attention.

The solution? Global footprints. This is no new idea of mine; it is a widely known but not largely recognised method. Basically it involves considering the effect we have on the Earth by measuring it as a footprint, left on the Earth. For example a carbon footprint is often measured as the amount of trees that it would take to absorb the CO2 released by us. The focus is therefore on limiting the overall effect you have on the Earth. There are various ways of calculating such footprints, and the results are often very scary

So how is this approach different? Well it calls for an understanding that global warming, ecosystem management, water management, agriculture, pollution, waste, deforestation, land use, development, diversity, food production, energy sources etc all require consideration..

For example, current thinking is that burning fossil fuels = bad, hydroelectricity = good, because there are no emissions. But few people stop to consider the negative effects of building a dam, on habitats, local climate, water distribution, etc. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea-but it is important to take every impact into consideration.

The Keyword here is sustainability. Sustainable development is defined as ‘Development that meets the needs and aspirations of the current generation without compromising the ability to meet those of future generations.’ This definition is as old as me, so how comes in 19 years it has not been implemented on a macro scale? Sustainability is about limiting our effect on the environment, and managing social footprints too (the effect we are having on peoples lives i.e. Exploitation of 3^rd world).

So forget the hype and drama. What we need to do is change our lifestyles to minimise our global footprint, and then leave the Earth to do what it will.