Who is We? - redux

2/21/24 – How do I responsibly describe human impact?

Is this subsistence farmer in India part of “we”?

Hello everyone:

My plan for this week, inspired by last week’s essay on the threat to Atlantic Ocean currents, was to do a deep dive on the array of global tipping points. Not just the dark environmental ones that lurk ahead in the warmer world, but also the bright sociopolitical ones that are brewing as we rise to meet the challenge.

But as I thought about what I wanted to say, I found myself crossing my own tipping point. After a year of mumbling to myself about it, I’ve finally started working on a podcast/read-aloud of the Field Guide for subscribers who want the option to listen rather than read. It’s been a bit of a challenge so far, and I’m still tinkering with it, but I hope to roll it out next week.

Coincidentally, if you want to hear me mumbling into a microphone somewhere else, the latest episode of the famed food podcast Gastropod has dropped, with me talking about the history of Antarctic cuisine.

For this week, please enjoy this (updated) piece from a year and a half ago - when I had fewer than a quarter of my current subscribers - on the question of who “we” are when I talk about what “we” have done.

As always, please remember to scroll past the end of the essay to read some curated Anthropocene news.

Now on to this week’s writing:

I’ve been thinking about the word “we” this week, and it strikes me as one of the most powerful words in the English language. With a mere two letters “we” conveys love and contains family (We are one), strengthens friendship or rivalry (We stand together/we stand apart), instills pride and patriotism (We the people), and elects politicians or generates revolutions (Yes we can).

It suggests threat to the bullied (We’ll get you) but offers hope to the lonely and grief-stricken (We can help). And “we” rouses a sense of belonging – perhaps the most vital emotion experienced by our intensely social species – in all of us.

“I” may be the vital self, but “we” is its context.

We – that’s you and I and the other humans alive right now – are living in what is arguably the most important time to exist in human history. I say this not because of the incredible strides made to enrich, improve, and prolong human life in the past century or two, but because of the footprints those strides have made. Millions of species are dying under our feet. The Earth is trampled.

Now, right now, decisions we make and the policies we enact seem likely to sharply define the quality of life on Earth - including human life - in the decades and centuries ahead.

That this moment is a crux in both human and natural history is both terrifying and hopeful. We know what to do, for the most part, but we need to act against what for centuries has been falsely described as our own best interest. There’s no precedent for the scale of what needs to be done, but it can be done.

Anthropocene civilization and culture are forms of human theater that take place in the real world, which is defined by ecology and physics and the sciences that lie between them. Whatever dramas occur in the theater, however fascinating they may be to us, matter less from an ecological perspective than whether they make our species more or less fit to exist within the limits of the small planet that birthed us.

We like to forget that beyond the theater doors we are still constricted by ecological principles and physical laws. Our evolutionary fitness seems very much in question, given the rapidly intensifying stresses our “ecological Ponzi scheme” has been putting on the web of life which continues, uncertainly, to sustain us.

We have a lot to do, and a lot to admit to.

But who is the “we” in we?

I think we’re all aware that a wealthy minority of people in a wealthy minority of nations have been, and still are, largely responsible for most of the damage. As Bill McKibben, our great climate sage, once wrote in a post titled What Planet Do I Live On?, “It’s a deeply unjust planet, because the people who caused the temperature to rise are not usually the people who suffer the most from that rise.”

In another post about catastrophic floods that covered a third of Pakistan in the summer of 2022, McKibben wrote that

there’s no doubt that the people of Pakistan are not to blame for their tragedy. On average each Pakistani is responsible for about one fifteenth as much carbon dioxide as each American, and even that is fairly recent. Over the whole span of the fossil fuel era, America has produced a quarter of the earth’s greenhouse gases; Pakistan, with about 220 million people, produces about one half of one percent of the world’s emissions. And yet, before the flooding, they suffered through a savage springtime heatwave; urban temperatures reached 121 Fahrenheit in a place where, as of 2018, there were fewer than a million air conditioners.

E. Otwell // Source: Carbon Brief analysis of figures from the Global Carbon Project, CDIAC, Our World in Data, Carbon Monitor, Houghton and Nassikas (2017) and Hansis et al (2015)

You can see the global inequity well illustrated in the graphics above. In the upper chart (“By Income Group”) in the first graphic, which is a 2016 snapshot of emissions, we see that the wealthiest 16% produced 38% of global CO2 emissions and that the poorest 49% produced just 14%. In the chart below that we see, in terms of regions, that North American and European emissions were 34% of the global total despite having only 15% of the world’s population.

In the second graphic, which is a portrait of cumulative emissions throughout the fossil fuel era, the top 20 emitters are shown. As McKibben noted, the U.S. is in a league of its own, despite having a small fraction of the world’s population. (Look here for a great interactive visualization of U.S. emissions.)

We should pause to imagine how little CO2 has been produced by the other 175 nations not listed here.

You will not be surprised to hear that Greta Thunberg is acutely aware of, and especially sharp-tongued about, all of this in her book, titled appropriately enough The Climate Book. It’s worth quoting her at length (note that she has updated numbers):

The world has a fever. And a fever is usually a symptom of something else, like an infection, a disease, or a virus. The climate crisis is also a symptom or a result, if you will, of a much deeper sustainability crisis. In other words, it is not the increasing average temperature that is the root cause of the problem. Rather it is the fact that we are living way above our means, exploiting people and the planet. Or, more accurately, a small number of us are doing this.

Absurd inequalities divide the world. The richest 10% cause 50% of our CO2 emissions. The wealthiest 1% are responsible for more than twice as many emissions is the entire poorer half of the world, according to a 2020 report from Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Humankind has not created this crisis — it was created by those in power, and they knew exactly what priceless values they were sacrificing in order to make unimaginable amounts of money and to maintain a system that benefited them.

Climate chaos, as Greta says, is just one symptom of the Anthropocene and one result of long-term, widespread inequities. The same inequities have driven habitat loss, ozone depletion, and the contamination of living communities from mining and agriculture and industrial production, among the long litany of planet-stressing activities.

A handful of wealthy nations, first to grab the prize in the unsustainable production of fossil fuels, increased their populations, intensified their affluence, and developed a host of resource-hungry technologies. They then either exhausted their own resources or found that they could simply force developing nations to part with theirs at low cost and high consequences. (There are countless examples - mines and rainforest lumber come to mind - but perhaps the most bizarre was the 19th century British scavenging of tons of bones from battlefields and cemeteries around its global empire as a source of phosphorus for its nutrient-deprived farms at home.)

Which means that there’s an ugly truth about the cumulative CO2 emissions and habitat loss ascribed to many developing nations. The cascade of harms to the natural world in poorer countries are often the responsibility of the wealthy nations shopping at a discount for those resources, or simply taking them by political, economic, or physical force.

Look above in the second graphic at the bars for Brazil and Indonesia, for example. The dark green segments represent emissions from land use and forestry. But the rampant destruction of rainforest for timber or to create space for palm oil plantations and cattle grazing is not being done for local markets. It’s for those of us in countries who can afford to pay others a cut-rate price to ravage their own lands.

This inequity is still playing out in many ways, of course, and it complicates the necessary global response to the climate and biodiversity crises. Just to cite one current example, there’s the question of whether it’s ethical to encourage a natural gas boom in Africa. (Side note: we need to stop calling it “natural” gas, which is an advertising fiction. Call it methane gas, because it’s mostly methane, or fracked gas, since much of it is derived from fracking.) Gas burns cleaner than coal, but it’s still a very dirty fossil fuel and, when leaked unburnt (which happens constantly in vast quantities), it heats up the atmosphere 26 times faster than CO2.

But according to the International Energy Agency, 600 million people in Africa have no access to electricity while 970 million (mostly women and girls) burn dirty wood fuels in their kitchens. Shouldn’t the people in African nations be allowed to develop economically with some of the cheap and abundant fossil fuels that Europeans used?

Ethically, yes, but that’s an answer within the human theater. Outside it, in the world of ecology and climate physics, the answer (ideally) is no.

And anyway, development of gas reserves in Africa are unlikely to actually serve many African people. History suggests otherwise, certainly, since Nigeria is the largest producer of oil in Africa but few Nigerians benefit from it. In fact, oil has been a “resource curse” for the nation, which suffers from an entrenched multidimensional poverty. Most future gas production would be exported to Europe, say critics. The Times quotes Mohamed Adow, a Kenyan climate campaigner:

“Attempts to expand gas production in Africa are not being done to tackle energy poverty but for export, largely to rich, energy-hungry countries in the Global North,” he said. “This dash for gas is to make a quick buck whilst countries in Europe face a short-term energy squeeze.”

multidimensional poverty in oil-rich Nigeria

So, given the gross inequities in this profit-driven, resource-squandering civilization which has run the ecological Ponzi scheme and generated its impacts, the “we” in “we are ravaging the Earth” is mostly a wealthier minority. That minority, we should admit, includes me and you and most of my readers. Heather and I live a quiet, low-budget artist life in a small Maine town, but we’re still stratospherically wealthy compared to the 58% of humanity living on less than 10 dollars per day.

Looking closer, though, it’s clear that there’s a minority within the minority. Much of the responsibility rests on the grotesquely wealthy and on the shoulders of those in business and government who shape policy. Most of us in the developed world merely go along to get along with the shape of the world we’ve been given. We are both trapped and complicit.

As a writer focused on the era of cumulative and ongoing human impact we’re calling the Anthropocene, how do I honestly attribute blame for the past and present while fairly apportioning responsibility for the future? Every week I’m writing about what “we” have done and putting humans on the hook for the dark synergy of crises impacting life on Earth. For all its linguistic power, “we” is a broad brush that does not offer much nuance.

Knowing all this, I’ll admit to a slight inner wince each time I write that “we throw lit matches everywhere amid the community of life,” or that “we are reshaping and diminishing” the world, or that “we are, though a combination of ignorance and arrogance, driving microbial evolution.” Each week I offer up another hot take on “we,” because any conversation about the Anthropocene is about “we” and “the world,” however you might define either of the terms.

I’ve been aware of the risk from the beginning of this Field Guide, and made a point early on of addressing it:

…grotesque inequities notwithstanding, nearly everyone now participates in the Anthropocene to one degree or another. There’s no avoiding it, particularly as once-poor nations create wealth and a consumption-driven middle class. From our perspective, the ongoing impacts of slavery and colonial despotism and deliberate impoverishment are all too obvious, as is the unfairness of blaming subsistence farmers alongside ExxonMobil. But from the vantage of a coral reef it little matters whether its obliteration occurs because of American CO2 emissions or a poor Filipino fisherman's stick of dynamite. The victim of a victim is still a victim.

the result of dynamite fishing, Philippines

So is "we" a convenient fiction that glosses over the inequities? Or is it an awkward truth that admits that the blame is radically unequal but still shared? As developing nations increase their populations, affluence, and technology, are they still largely innocent or are they accomplices arriving late to the crime scene?

If they're on track to make the same mistakes and cause the same harm, then isn't it enough for me to note their historical innocence even as I include them in the ongoing "we" that’s transforming the planet?

Again, the measure of truth here is made not in the theater but outside it.

My writing needs to remain rooted in the real world, while also consistently noting that where the blame is greatest so is the responsibility. When I talk about the need for population decline, I should be clear that the U.S., Europe, and other more developed countries should lead by example. When I describe the quandary between environmental necessity, racial justice, and economic justice regarding the provision of affordable clean energy to nearly a billion people in Africa, I have to acknowledge the colonialism, corruption, and corporate malfeasance that prevented fair energy distribution in the first place, and admit that some gas production and distribution may be necessary in the interim. When I describe the absolute necessity of stopping deforestation, particularly in the remnant rainforests of the world, I need to point first and foremost to stopping the upstream demand for that deforestation.

And so on. As a writer, I don’t know how to get around the “we” as I talk generally about human impact on the fate of life on Earth. I could, every time I want to say “we,” specify that I mean mostly the wealthy capitalist societies and especially the policy makers in the current and former colonial powers and imperial nations. But that kind of language becomes ungainly and awkward pretty quickly.

And more than that, as my long quote above indicates, I think saying “we” is the right thing to do. In the nearly three years I’ve been writing the Field Guide, I haven’t changed my mind on this.

From the perspective of most other species – and the more we consider their perspective the healthier civilization will become – the human cultural truths about colonialism and corporate greed don’t matter as much as the consequences. Coral reefs, rainforests, and migratory bobolinks care less about fossil fuel policy then they do about the greenhouse effect, ocean acidification, habitat loss, and the unraveling of ecosystems along the path lit by the memorial flares of extinctions.

That said, there is no cure for the Anthropocene that does not include racial justice. As the seas rise no one should drown because they’re moored to the cruelties of the past. Clean, efficient energy systems and healthy, complex ecological communities must be available at the front door of all human communities. The language necessary to get us from here to a better world should reflect this human reality, even if the use of “we” is traumatically unfair.

The pragmatic use of “we”, then, notes what has been done but focuses on what must be done. The “we” of the past and present may be a wealthy minority, but the “we” of the future is all of us. We’re all needed to repair or at least ameliorate the future. Everyone has to help clean up the mess. In a swamped ship at sea, it’s all hands on deck, even if the fault lies with the dumb white guy on the quarterdeck.

Finally, I should be clear that there’s no reason for the theater of human culture to be so abusive or so ignorant of the natural world beyond our doors. A paper entitled “People Have Shaped Most of Terrestrial Nature for At Least 12,000 Years” makes an excellent case for a profound truth, one that we should all learn as quickly as possible. The damage caused in the modern Anthropocene is not to pristine ecologies but to better-managed ones. Humans have long shaped the world, but in this new cultural experiment we’ve forgotten how to do it with rationality and empathy:

Human societies have been shaping and sustaining diverse cultural natures across most of the terrestrial biosphere for more than 12,000 years. Areas under Indigenous management today are recognized as some of the most biodiverse areas remaining on the planet, and landscapes under traditional low-intensity use are generally much more biodiverse than those governed by high-intensity agricultural and industrial economies. Although some societies practicing low-intensity land use contributed to extinctions in the past, the cultural shaping and use of ecosystems and landscapes is not, in itself, the primary cause of the current extinction crisis, and neither is the conversion of untouched wildlands, which were nearly as rare 10,000 years ago as they are today. The primary cause of declining biodiversity, at least in recent times, is the appropriation, colonization, and intensifying use of lands already inhabited, used, and reshaped by current and prior societies.

I’ll be writing much more someday on the necessity of shifting more of the planet back into Indigenous management. For now, though, just remember that we have a long, long history of living within the natural world rather than in opposition to it.

We can do it again.

Thanks for sticking with me.

In other Anthropocene news:

From the Post, a self-explanatory graphic on environmental policies that its Climate Coach column updates weekly:

From Reasons to be Cheerful, a fascinating and (to me) eye-opening article on the possibility of using free-ranging wild horses to reduce fire risk in wilderness areas. They are native herbivores, unlike sheep and cows, and they spread the seeds of native plants while also becoming food for large predators like the mountain lions they co-evolved with. It’s an upbeat and beautifully-illustrated article. Highly recommended.

From the Guardian, reforestation in the southeast U.S. is largely responsible for slowing the effects of global warming in that region. Colonization and settlement in the eastern U.S. led to widespread loss of forests, but those have partially regrown as people moved into cities and patterns of land-use changed. Trees and forests cool the area around them through shade and transpiration (pulling water out of the ground and releasing it as vapor). The “warming hole” in the southeast has been a mystery until now. Reforestation is essential for the Earth’s future, not merely for its cooling effects but for remaking the global water cycle, because a less-forested planet is a hotter one.

In related news from Alpha Lo at the Climate Water Project, some really interesting research over many years has shown how vital forests and the water cycle are for triggering the onset of the rainy season in the Amazon and Congo rainforests, and for avoiding drought in the U.S. Midwest.

From Bill McKibben at The Crucial Years, a thoughtful essay on the deep unease and anxiety felt by the younger generations in a world heading inexorably into crisis because leadership is failing to act. “We only get one life,” McKibben writes, and

The thought that young people are having to live theirs under this shadow—damaged by the climate crisis even before its fully hit them—should give all of us real pause. There’s a generational theft underway: of water and ice and coral, but also of security and ease.

From the UN Environment Program, a new groundbreaking report from the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals lists the litany of threats to threatened and endangered migratory wildlife and makes recommendations on how to improve their fate. The bad news is that many of the already-threatened or endangered migratory species are slipping closer to extinction; the good news is that we know what to do – more rewilding in larger contiguous areas, less toxic agriculture, better-regulated hunting and fishing, etc. – and we know that whatever we do to benefit migratory species will also benefit us. Articles by NPR and PBS provide excellent summaries.

From the Post, not all conserved lands are equal. Shape matters as much as size. Squiggly or punctured conservation areas have more edge habitat shared with humans, and wildlife often doesn’t do as well in those edges as they would in the center.

Also from the Post, do you want a more eco-friendly pet than those carnivorous cats or dogs? Don’t want to contribute to the pet-food industry, which emits as much greenhouse gases as the Philippines? How about getting a bunny, which one owner describes as “like having a vegan cat.”

From the Atlantic, “A Climate Reckoning is Coming for the Next U.S. President,” an article that explores how this larger reality will shape the four years that will land in the lap of either Trump or Biden. I think the experts the author interviews are too optimistic about how even a riled-up public witnessing climate chaos will affect a Trump administration, given the comprehensive plan in place to gut the government’s ability to respond to any environmental issue. But it’s worth reading nonetheless.

From the Guardian, the promising future of hemp as a carbon-sequestering building material. Known commercially as hempcrete, the hemp-lime mixture has excellent insulative value and is nontoxic and long-lasting. Growing hemp captures up to 15 tons of CO2 per hectare (6 tons per acre). Moreover, hemp can “capture more than twice its own weight in carbon – twice as fast as traditional forestry.”

Also from the Guardian, a comprehensive analysis of methane emissions from waste dumps around the globe find enormous quantities of the greenhouse gas escaping into an already rapidly-warming atmosphere. 20% of global methane emissions come from unmanaged decomposing waste, 40% from the fossil fuel industry, and 40% from cattle and rice paddies. The good news is that if a serious effort to cut methane emissions from these sources would make a huge difference in short-term planetary heating. For landfills/dumps, it can be as simple as covering the area with a layer of soil and letting bacteria consume the methane.

From Vice, the unsurprising but still infuriating news that Shell’s massive “carbon-capture” plant in Alberta, paid for by hundreds of millions of Canadian tax dollars, is emitting 50% more greenhouse gases than it’s capturing. The difference in annual emissions is the equivalent of 1.2 million cars.

I should probably be posting more video news items here. Readers do seem to click on them more. Here’s a really eye-opening one from permaculture expert Andrew Millison about the UN World Food Programs marvelous Great Green Wall work in Senegal, “holding back the Sahara Desert”: