Recently, a friend of mine sent along a link to a post on the blog Nature Bats Last (what a great name for a blog!), asking me to forward this post to my son (which I did). A couple of days later, my son sent me an email asking if I’d read the piece, and how depressing it was. Well, it took some time, but I finally sat down last night (after finishing filling out financial aid forms for my college-bound son this week) to finish reading this very long and heavily referenced post.
To save you the trouble of reading the whole piece (which I encourage you to do anyway), I’ll summarize it in two words – we’re toast. The post, by Guy McPhearson, explains that there is overwhelming evidence, mostly unknown by the public, that climate change is accelerating, unstoppable, and will wipe us, and most other life on the planet, out within 20 years or so. That’s right – irreversible climate change will cause an extinction event in most of our lifetimes!
Now this is serious stuff. I intend to do a lot of research over the next few days and weeks to find out if McPhearson’s essay is serious and worth pursuing. But in thinking about climate change, whether the result is mass extinction or just some inconvenient weather, it occurred to me that there’s another concept, process, thing that has many parallels to climate change. You guessed it – cancer.
In both cases, it’s hard to diagnose the situation before it’s too late. In both cases, there are lots of people (scientists of high respect and knowledge) telling us there is a threat to our lives from it. In both cases, we are told that lifestyle changes can possibly avert the calamity, but also that lifestyle may not matter, since the problem is systemic (the agricultural system, heavy use of pesticides and toxic chemicals, proximity to industrial facilities, TV, racism, etc. for cancer and emissions of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases by industry, farm animals, pipelines, etc. for climate change). The cost of dealing with the problem for both cancer and climate change is enormous, and for both, the costs rise exponentially if we ignore the problem at first and try to treat it later. Both problems cause terrible pain and hardship to many people around the globe, attacking those well off and poor indiscriminately. In both cases, we have studied the problem for years, but seem to only vaguely understand the process and how to prevent it.
Although we are a resourceful and imaginative species, we may not be able to solve the mysteries of cancer or climate change. Both fields of research have made huge advances in recent years, and we certainly understand both better than we did last century. But in both cases – cancer and climate change – the processes at work are complex and involve the very basic processes that keep people (and other species) and the entire Earth biosphere alive and evolving. To understand and affect these processes to our benefit (or at least continued existence) will take tinkering with the system itself – a god-like enterprise.
Though cancer will do many of us, our pets and other plants and animals in, it appears it is not a near-term extinction threat. Maybe climate change is. Like with a particularly virulent form of cancer, maybe there is no cure for climate change. And perhaps the thing to do is something like hospice, where we make the patient – in this case the Earth and its living systems – as comfortable as possible while we wait for the inevitable. But I suspect that our natural curiosity, imagination and of course desire to stay alive and continue to move ahead with this experiment of life will propel us to try to solve the mysteries of both cancer and climate change, and maybe prevent both from taking their toll.
I hope so.
Had a great conversation with Brother Watt yesterday about this post and his latest (on goats and much more). We came to the conclusion that we have to keep trying to save the world, even if the pundits say there’s no hope. In that regard, there’s a few things of interest I’ve found recently: a Living On Earth segment with a debate about geoengineering, a TruthOut post critiquing steady-state economist Herman Daly (one of my heroes, at least up to now), and a book about changing our ways to save the world. Food for thought…
Are we toast? That seems to be your perennial question, one that often prompts a conversation in which I feel argumentative. The “conclusion” we usually reach — about continuing to work with the hope of healing — has yet to keep you from returning to that question. A few days after that first comment you sent me an email with a link to another article that says we’re toast. The author suggests the best people can do is learn how to die.
Maybe you and I should stop arguing over toast. Instead let’s explore your idea about offering hospice care to a world that’s dying of cancer. Have you ever provided such care to a friend or family member? If so, how would you extrapolate from that personal experience to the planet?
Can’t say I’ve ever provided hospice care to anyone, but I certainly know some who have. In thinking about your reply, Watt, I realize that as the “patient” with “climate change” (as a fatal disease), humans and the rest of the life on the planet are not yet at the stage of needing hospice care. There are countless trillions of organisms out there, most of which are doing fine, and in no need of medical attention at this time.
However, I came to realize, in wanting to personalize the issue, analogous to cancer, we’re in the stage where we’ve been diagnosed with the disease, and given at least a few decades (maybe many more) to live. Our reaction to the diagnosis has largely been denial, as it has been with many people I know that have cancer and other life-threatening diseases. “I’m fine,” they say, and they are certainly afraid of the possibility of an early death, and well, maybe the doctor was wrong, or as in the case of Steve Jobs, maybe it’s possible to overcome the disease with meditation, natural supplements, acupuncture and other “alternative” treatments.
As time has gone on, our reaction has started to shift from denial to acceptance of the possibility that we “have it”, but uncertainty as to what to do to shake it off. Unlike other environmental problems, this one, like cancer, is systemic, since it involves our whole culture, and its reliance on fossil fuels. We can’t just turn off our culture, and so we feel confused as to what to do.
Taking a cue from cancer treatment, the path becomes more clear. I’ll use my own case, with a slightly different disease, to illustrate, and then add in some examples involving cancer. I got hepatitis C from a blood transfusion I had during a spinal fusion operation when I was a teenager. It was diagnosed when blood tests several years later turned up astronomical liver enzyme levels. At the time, there was no treatment available, so I was told to stay away from alcohol, live clean, and keep my immune system healthy (good advice for everyone, it seems). Over 20 years later, after many years with only slightly elevated liver enzymes, all of a sudden, they shot up again. This time, treatment was available, but was very expensive, and very unpleasant, with no guarantee of success. But I was relatively young, in good health otherwise, and Group Health was willing to put me into a trial to test a new version of the treatment, so the cost to me was nothing. I took their offer, and after a year of treatment, though I felt terrible for much of that time, the treatment worked, and (knock on wood), the disease hasn’t reverted, which it often does, in the case of hepatitis C and cancer.
I know some people in this area who haven’t been as lucky with cancer treatment, and have died, after lengthy battles, over years, with the disease, I also know some people who are still alive because of their treatment, and who have a good chance of staying that way for a while.
So, in the case of global warming and climate change, we need treatment. We’re past the stage of prevention, and though we seem to be doing fine now, there are signs that the disease is spreading, with many millions of people affected by violent storms, rising seas, drought and other manifestations of climate change. There is no indication that governments, corporations or even most of us are interested in doing anything to lower CO2 emissions, the main cause of the problem. We don’t really know if the disease can be stopped even if we do lower CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but the experts tell us that that is the only hope to avoid catastrophic (i.e. runaway) climate change, where the average global temperatures rise so much that the whole system “melts”, sort of like Venus.
The interesting thing to note is that individual action doesn’t really affect the progress of the disease. So if I buy a Prius, have only one car for our family, live in a small house, eat local foods, etc., it doesn’t mean that CO2 emissions go down at all. It’s very possible that at the same time, another person on Earth is increasing their contributions of greenhouse gas emissions, and my contribution towards a solution is nixed. CO2 emissions have continued to rise globally. So we need to look elsewhere for the “cure”.
We need to reduce emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases drastically in a short period of time to have any hope of reducing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and averting runaway warming. In light of the unlikely sudden reversal of our culture and activities, we need to use a series of treatments that may or may not work, but have to be tried. These include the capture and conversion of CO2 on all power plants, transportation devices and other machines that use fossil fuels; the use of nuclear power and other energy sources that may be environmentally poor choices, but at least don’t spew CO2; and at least attempting geoengineering (blocking the sun so as to cool the planet), even if these methods may produce disastrous (but not extinction-level) results.
At the same time, we need to adopt a whole new set of environmental rules and regulations, in every country, state, region, city and town, that makes the production of greenhouse gases uneconomical.
Then, we can see if the radical treatments have any effect. I’m going to stop there, but just wanted to end with the admonition that while all this is going on, we can keep the “immune system” of the Earth going stronger if we continue the battle to save habitat, reduce toxics use and try to reduce both the unequal distribution of resources and the population of humans.
In short, we need to treat this disease — climate change — like we would cancer that is not yet obvious, but is already at a stage where metastasis is beginning, and is definitely life threatening. Even if we deny we have the disease, and feel fine right now.
In thinking further about this, I wonder if human developments are like tumors, and with their spread, the Earth is experiencing a “disease” something like cancer. Perhaps global warming is something like a fever; basically more like a symptom than the disease itself. The fever is caused by our civilization – its use of fossil fuels – and the fever is going up with continued and growing use.
But the fever is only one symptom of the disease. As we pave over more and more of the planet for our settlements and industry, other effects can be seen. Even without full-blown climate change, species are dying off at a much greater rate than any time in the last few thousand years, mostly from habitat degradation. So for those species, the disease has killed them, and in the context of the planet, some of the subsystems (like tissues or organs in the body) are gone. The tumor of human civilization has destroyed those “tissues”, let’s say.
Now, we can see that the cancer has progressed, but is still not to the point of killing off the “body” – in this case the planet – or even close. In a cancer patient with advanced cancer, the body becomes weak, things just don’t work, one loses a lot of weight, and there’s lots of pain. There’s huge suffering, and everyone around can see that’s true.
Do we really want to get to this stage of the disease? Can we avoid it?
Can rabbinic sermons help heal creation? Scientific studies say yes, absolutely. So can turning off the lights, driving less (in more fuel-efficient cars), and crunching healthy snacks while speaking with friends over the phone about how to improve this website. Please tell me those are carrots and not Fritos®, Bob.
More nuke plants, or contraptions to block the sun? Not according to the aforementioned studies, which are written on my heart. Better to share family recipes for chicken soup, well-spiced with personal stories. Your second comment is full of tasty medicinal broth. Thank you.
The financial industry is notorious for using human-health metaphors to pitch their schemes for socialized corporate growth. When big banks want government bailouts to cover bad bets, taxpayers hear many references to the dreaded spread of contagion. In reality, the kind of growth they’re pushing is probably the leading contributor to climate change. Changing public perception of growth is key to healing the planet. So say the scientific studies.
A link in your first comment led me to an article that mentions Kenneth Boulding, an economist who spoke to a class I took while a student at the University of Colorado. I’ll never forget what Boulding said about GNP.
“As a number, GNP is like body weight,” he said. “You really can’t assess it’s value out of context. When you are young, an increase in weight is likely due to the healthy maturation of muscles and organs. At a certain point, however, growth may not be a sign of good health. It could be fat, or cancer.”
I’m intrigued by the wiki listing for this man, who combined a solid reputation as an economist with an interest in poetry, mysticism, interdisciplinary philosophy, and systems theory (plus, he was a Capricorn).
“Boulding emphasized that human economic and other behavior is embedded in a larger interconnected system. To understand the results of our behavior, economic or otherwise, we must first research and develop a scientific understanding of the ecodynamics of the general system, the global society in which we live, in all its dimensions spiritual and material. Boulding believed that in the absence of a committed effort to the right kind of social science research and understanding, the human species might well be doomed to extinction. But he died optimistic, believing our evolutionary journey had just begun.”
Boulding sounds cool. I’ll look him up. I heard an interview with Pete Seeger on Living on Earth the other day, and Pete mentioned a friend of his who had a bumper sticker that read “There’s no hope. But I could be wrong.” Kind of sums up my take on climate change.
Today on Democracy Now, there was a segment on the 6th extinction. Looks like the cancer has spread far already. Healing, yes.