Climate change critics seize on uncertainty of global temperature warming to insist that nothing is really changing. But temperature is only one indicator of the effects of industrial society expansion. Industrial societies became resource-intensive consumption societies, underpinned by mining, extraction, manufacturing, and disposal. Industrial agriculture displaced small-holder, diversified farms. People urbanized and suburbanized. We developed service industries. But all depend on ubiquitous energy. Cutting energy supplies by half would instantly snap us to attention. Imagine Manhattan with hand-cranked computers and elevators; we have to concoct more imaginative solutions than that.
Slowly creeping “environmental impacts” could be as drastic. None can be projected with precision, and it easy to think that only one factor will change while all others remain the same. Nature’s complex feedback loops make this unlikely, the watch list is too long for any individual to monitor constantly, and newly discovered risks keep lengthening the list. Here is a very short list:
- Bee disappearance, probably due to pesticides, herbicides, or over-stress of hives trucked to farms for pollination services, but root causes are still uncertain. Bees are vital to many fruits and crops. Frog and bat disappearance gets less attention because their value to humans seems to be mostly insect predation. In general, of all biological species, including some unknown, can we unwittingly exterminate something vital to our welfare in a circuitous way?
- Nitrate fertilizers contaminating river deltas and estuaries and emitting nitrous oxide (now the most prevalent ozone depletion agent — the ozone hole is still there). But without nitrate fertilizers, we could not feed the world today, so this is a major problem.
- Water allocation and efficient use in draught-prone areas (irrigation is a major use for it).
- Endocrine disruptor effects on both animals and humans. Reproductive, developmental, neurological, and immunological system impairments have been observed from small concentrations of various chemicals, and new ones enter the environment each year. Standard toxicity tests are not run on all of them, and long-term endocrine disruption by slowly accumulating molecules (like PCBs) is difficult to foresee. Just the effects of mercury in the ocean (and ocean tuna) are not well-known, but what is known is not good. (Mercury in pregnant women can trigger deficient formation of fetuses; could it induce autism, etc?) Is it possible for humans to die out because they make either themselves or their sources of food unable to reproduce?
What is unknown or uncertain is more cautionary than vivid disasters from rising oceans. That is what prompted the core concept of Compression; using a lot less of everything. All consequences of profligate resource use can never be known, but most are diminished if we use lot less. There is no point sugar coating this. It changes basic premises of market systems, while requiring more “entrepreneurial” competence and imagination than ever . The sooner we accept this the better; quality over quantity always.