On Living in a Finite World – we are in a Doom Loop.
When we look out across the sea or up into the sky, our Earth looks infinite. This is a dangerous illusion, a delusion. Our Eath is finite
When this iconic image of spaceship Earth was published, it was clear that our planet is finite. An inconvenient truth,[1] soon forgotten and ignored.
We have known about the science of greenhouse gases for close to 200 years, and yet we consistently fail to take action at the scale necessary to halt, let alone begin to reverse global warming. We continue to emit greenhouse gases and to heat our planet. We have created gyres of waste plastic in our oceans, and plastic has entered our food chain.
Economics was described by Thomas Carlyle in 1849 as “the dismal science,” although used in a different context, the epithet endures because it is dismal. Way back in 1833, the English economist William Forster Lloyd had argued that on common land, herders making an individually rational decision to put more cattle on the common would destroy the collective resource. What is advantageous to the individual is disastrous for the collective group. Over a century later, the American ecologist and microbiologist Garrett Hardin coined “The Tragedy of the Commons”. The problems we fail to confront are not new.
Garrett Hardin eloquently described the commons problem in a paper in Science[1] in 1968.
“Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit – in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”
Coincidentally in the same year the first full-disk image of Earth from space was taken by a person, probably by astronaut Willaim Anders. The image is reproduced above[2].
Hardin’s paper has been cited nearly 60,000 times and is widely read. Hardin was writing about a problem which was identified by Aristotle two millennia ago: "That which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common”.
Tourism and The Doughnut Economy[3] explores the problem of defining sustainability, climate resilience and the consequences of business as usual. The review concludes
“The IPPR and Chatham House report published in February 2023[4] draws attention to the "doom loop": the consequences of the climate crisis and the failure to address the causes "draw focus and resources from tackling its causes, leading to higher temperatures and ecological loss, which then create more severe consequences, diverting even more attention and resources, and so on." Climate policy is still predominantly focused on delivering incremental sector-by-sector change, which has proven inadequate. Vested interests and power imbalances are holding back action. …
Today's generation of leaders in politics, finance, and tourism have choices. The future of our species requires that we take responsibility, make the right moral choice, and speed the transition to clean aviation. The greenhouse gases we emit now will blight the future of our children and grandchildren.”
In 1864, in a letter to then-Secretary of War Edward Stanton, President Abraham Lincoln wrote, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” And yet, evasion continues. “Business as Usual” remains the dominant neoliberal consensus.
Economists pursue their ‘dismal science’ with models which casually exclude the externalities. The costs of negative externalities, and most externalities are negative, are borne by our environment and inflicted on all of us. The polluters rarely pay the full cost of their negative externalities - and positive externalities are very small by comparison.
At the Climate COP 29 the 1.5 degrees Celsius Target agreed in Paris in 2015 (Probably Died) on November 5th. Next year’s COP 30 could be the last time America attends. Dodds and Straus hope that “ the remaining responsible governments – in a coalition of the still-willing – can creatively and cooperatively configure a strategy to minimize the damage, and constructively move forward for the common global good, together.”
We need hope, but is this clutching at straws? As this graph shows, we are making very slow progress.
There are declarations and statements of intent, and some are reducing emissions, but collectively, we are irrationally continuing to increase our emissions.
The Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism[1] launched at COP 26 three years ago, has now been signed by some 850 organizations, a declaration of intent to halve emissions by 2030 and reach Net Zero as soon as possible before 2050. Last week at COP29 in Baku, there was, for the first time, a Tourism Day. 52 countries and eight non-state actors endorsed a proposal for Enhanced Climate Action in Tourism.[2] Another declaration of intent. Declarations of intent may or may not lead to action. Either way, as the graph above shows, there is not enough action
Storms and floods, droughts and wildfires come and go from the headlines. They have become the new normal. Tim Smedley writing in The Guardian last year[3] pointed out that water is finite and that climate change is merely redistributing it, “in England, 28% of groundwater aquifers, the layers of porous sand and rock that hold water underground, and up to 18% of rivers and reservoirs, have more water taken out than is put back in.” The Met Office[4] reported in 2020 that “rising temperatures and increasing instances of drought events could, on the current trajectory, reduce the amount of water available in England by 10-15%,
Flooding, storms, droughts and wildfires can easily be dismissed as extreme weather events, and many scientists are reluctant to claim climate change as the cause. However. Stefano Materia, a climate scientist at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, points out, “Droughts and floods are the two sides of the same coin.” Changes in atmospheric circulation and global temperature rise “means more energy, more water pressure, more instability – all ingredients fuelling terrifying storms when atmospheric conditions are favourable.” [5]
In the worst-hit areas of southeastern Spain, 500mm of rain fell in eight hours. The rain fell onto ground, parched by two years of drought and baking heat. and ran straight off. 224 people died.[6] This is the highest death toll from a weather event since 209 people died in floods in Romania.
In Valencia, 130,000 people protested about the failure of the government to issue flood warnings, chanting, "We are stained with mud; you are stained with blood". The City Hall was smeared with mud, and the king and queen and the prime minister were pelted in Paiporta with mud. Locked into four or five-year electoral cycles, we appear incapable of taking action to protect the interests of future generations. Having procrastinated and pursued business as usual, we now have to rapidly reduce emissions to avoid worse consequences and adapt to the consequences of the damage we have done. Back in 2006, nearly two decades ago, the Stern Review estimated that without action, the cost of climate change would be at least 5% of global GDP each year and could be as high as 20% or more.
On Remembrance Sunday, November 10th, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, wrote in The Times[7], that the “rules-based international system” established after the two world wars was “under immense strain” in a “new era of competition and contest that will last for decades.” He concluded his article “Let us recommit ourselves to do whatever it takes to defend their legacy, for our benefit and that of generations to come.” A rare reference to our responsibility for future generations.
Coincidentally, Sarah Harvey’s Booker Prize-winning Orbital is ‘book of the week’ on Radio 4
Sarah Harvey has nailed it. She writes about what the astronauts see as they look down on our planet:
“One day they look at the earth and they see the truth. If only politics really were a pantomime. If politics were just a farcical, inane, at times insane entertainment provided by characters who for the most part have got where they are, not by being in any way revolutionary or percipient or wise in their views, but by being louder, bigger, more ostentatious, more unscrupulously wanting of the play of power than those around them, if that were the beginning and end of the story it would not be so bad. ….
The hand of politics is so visible from their vantage point that they don’t know how they could have missed it at first. It’s utterly manifest in every detail of the view, just as the sculpting force of gravity has made a sphere of the planet and pushed and pulled the tides which shape the coasts, so has politics sculpted and shaped and left evidence of itself everywhere.”[8]
[1] One Planet Sustainable Tourism Programme (2021) – Glasgow Declaration: a Commitment to a Decade of Climate Action
[2] https://www.unwto.org/news/tourism-makes-history-at-cop29-as-50-countries-back-climate-action-declaration-for-sector#
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/jun/15/drought-is-on-the-verge-of-becoming-the-next-pandemic
[4] https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/blog/2023/climate-change-drought-and-water-security.
[5] Reported in The Guardian31’10’24. There is more here on the BBC Website https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58073295
[6] This video reminds us of the consequences
[7] https://www.thetimes.com/article/9f869e06-1720-499f-8f2a-f00f8219d5d1
[8] Harvey, Samantha. Orbital: Winner of the Booker Prize 2024 (p. 75
[1] Hardin, G., 1968. The tragedy of the commons: the population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality. science, 162(3859), pp.1243-1248.
[2] By NASA - https://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/gallery/Apollo/8/Hasselblad%20500EL%2070%20mm#AS08-16-2593https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/36019/earth-viewed-by-apollo-8, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115500813
[3] Goodwin H (2024) Tourism in a Finite, Climate Challenged World Tourism Panel on Climate Change
[4] Laybourn, L., Throp, H. and Sherman, S., 2023. 1.5° C–dead or alive? The risks to transformational change from reaching and breaching the Paris Agreement goal. IPPR and Chatham House available to download:
https://www.ippr.org/files/2023-02/1676546139_1.5c-dead-or-alive-feb23.pd
[1] A 2006 American documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former vice president of the United States Al Gore's campaign to educate people about global warming.