Category Archives: Short Form

The Future Will Not Take Care of Itself

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David P. Turner

January 20, 2025

Earth system scientists tend to think a lot about the future.  Their simulations of Earth’s near-term future  ̶  based on projections of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions  ̶  suggest dramatic changes in the climate that will stretch our human capacity to adapt.  For the purposes of climate change mitigation, their assessments indicate that the current trajectory of climate warming could be moderated significantly by collective action to reduce emissions.

Neoliberal economists on the other hand do not think much about the future.  According to neoliberal economic theory (and practice), the future will take care of itself.  Individual purchasing choices within a free market economic system will purportedly bring any negative aspects (externalities) of economic activities under control and correction.  Therefore, governmental interference in the economy is the road to ruin.

If Earth system scientists are right, and neoliberal economists are wrong, humanity is in big trouble.

A neoliberal economy is a free market economy  ̶  one in which supply and demand reign supreme (i.e. market fundamentalism).  Associated public policies include limited taxation, limited governmental regulation, antagonism to organized labor, private ownership of common resources, and cheap credit to promote investment.  The liberal part of the term refers to concern for individual freedom from governmental control, hence favoring little regulation and low taxes.  The neo- part refers to the widespread adoption of hyper-liberal economic policies around the world beginning in the 1980s (e.g. the Reagan and Thatcher administrations).  Besides insuring individual freedom, the theoretical upside of neoliberal economics is strong growth in gross domestic product (GDP) and this “rising tide lifts all boats”.

However, with respect to the future global environment, neoliberal economics has two long-term pernicious effects.  The first is that the neoliberal stance against regulations and taxation allows capitalist entrepreneurs to avoid paying the environmental (and social) costs of production.  CO2 emissions into the atmosphere – a global commons – from the combustion of fossil fuels for energy is an iconic example.  CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere in the course of energy generation, but the costs of the emissions  ̶  in the form of current and future impacts of climate change on human welfare (e.g. sea level rise)  ̶  are paid by people subject to climate-related disturbances the world over.  Failure to link fossil fuel combustion to its negative environmental impacts hinders the necessary societal effort to reduce emissions.

A second flaw of neoliberal economics is that the prized growth of the economy places increasing demands on natural resources, e.g. the atmospheric capacity to cleanse itself.  The neoliberal assumption is that resources are unlimited if the price is right.  But on our densely populated planet, many natural resources are being overused and degraded.  In the cases where neoliberal economists do demonstrate concern for the future of the environment, the policy response is usually to put the burden for mitigation on the consumer. If someone is worried about climate change, they can buy an electric vehicle, and anyone not worried about it can buy a gasoline vehicle.

A primary alternative to neoliberal environmentalism is to include corporate and public institutions as responsible parties in addressing the negative environmental consequences of the economy on the environmental commons.  These bodies operate at the scale required and have the resources to study the future and plan appropriately.  Although state capitalism is perhaps not something to be emulated uncritically, China has recently demonstrated that if you want to rapidly reduce gasoline consumption, the government can intervene in many ways to make it happen without wrecking the economy.

Environmental sociologists refer to the process of Ecological Modernization (EM) as a path to governance where environment problems are addressed through policy changes and technological improvements, all in the context of modest economic growth.  EM is not revolutionary systemic change to the capitalist economic system.  It is more like continuous tinkering with policy (e.g. tax policy and pollution standards).  EM is a form of cultural evolution that follows the model of biological evolution.  Just as genetic variation provides the basis for natural selection in biological evolution, various policy alternatives provide the basis for political decisions in cultural evolution.  Of course, it helps to have public forums, informed citizens, engaged politicians, and forward-thinking leadership.

Here, I’ve referred to the future-oriented aspects of Earth System Science and Neoliberal Economics.  However, there is another whole discipline  ̶  Future Studies  ̶  that explicitly concerns itself with caring about the future.  One of its common topics is scenarios for the human enterprise on Earth, be it self-induced environmental change beyond our ability to adapt, toxic political systems leading to collapse of civilization, or establishment of a sustainable, high technology, global civilization.  Whether Future Studies is more at home in the Social Sciences or the Humanities is debated, but it is certainly a form of post-normal science, i.e. the practitioners commonly derive conclusions about public policy from their analyses.

Our primate brains may not be particularly well designed to think in terms of the global spatial scale and the multigenerational temporal scale.  Nevertheless, we find ourselves in the Anthropocene era and we must accept our responsibilities for deliberately acting at those scales.  Dogmatically clinging to market fundamentalism will not do the job.

The Anthropocene is Not Formally a Geological Epoch  ̶  So, What is It?

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David P. Turner / April 3, 2024

A surprising outcome emerged from the March meeting of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (within the International Union of Geological Sciences).  The surprise came in the form of a vote regarding the official status of the Anthropocene concept, with a majority of the subcommission members voting against a proposal to identify the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch.

The term Anthropocene was originally inspired by the observation that the impacts of the human enterprise on Earth’s environment  ̶  notably a rise in the atmospheric CO2 concentration  ̶  have begun to rival those of the background geologic forces.  Since divisions of the geologic time scale are generally associated with major changes in the global environment, naming a new epoch was a reasonable suggestion.

The formal proposal to do so came from the multidisciplinary Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), which has deliberated on the issue for the last 14 years.  The AWG proposal specified that the Anthropocene be named a new epoch, with a beginning point in the early 1950s.  Its stratigraphic marker was to be a layer of chemical residues from post-World War II nuclear weapons testing. 

The Vote

The vote against designating the Anthropocene as a new Epoch was a surprise because the proposal had been made with a strong scientific foundation and had a lot of support.  The decision against the proposal was not because the Anthropocene is geologically insignificant, but rather because the Anthropocene concept is highly significant to many disciplines besides geology.  In the last 20 years, the concept has received widespread attention in both academia and popular media.  Indeed, the term has taken on a life of its own, a life outside the staid world of Quaternary Stratigraphy.

The term Anthropocene has come to signify a rupture in human history  ̶  the end of a time when the biophysical environment was mostly a background to the march of human progress.  The rupture is evident from a suite of global indicators, ranging from oil consumption to the rate of deforestation, that all began rising dramatically in the last 100 years.  The word Anthropocene now has broad cultural significance; it implies that humanity has acquired a new responsibility to self-regulate, or face its own demise from a self-induced inhospitable environment. 

The negative vote within the subcommission was also based on a more technical issue about whether, considering that humans have been altering the environment at many scales for many thousands of years, the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch could be narrowed down to the early 1950s.

An alternative proposal, with considerable cross-disciplinary support, is to designate the Anthropocene a geologic “event”.  This term is used in the geosciences to reference a wide variety of Earth system changes or transformations.  Designating something as an event does not require the kind of formal approval process associated with designating an epoch.

The Scope of the Anthropocene Event

Despite this quasi-downgrade to Event status, the Anthropocene has really just begun and will ultimately have a massive impact on the Earth system.  The Anthropocene Event, as we will call it here, will eventually push the global mean temperature up 2-3 oC or more, a range associated with the early Pliocene Epoch 3-5 million years ago (Figure 1).  Because of human influences on the atmosphere, Earth may well miss its next scheduled glacial period (as prescribed by the Milankovitch solar forcings).  

The graphic is a time series plot going back 5 million years ago showing the trend in global mean temperature.

Figure 1.  The geologic record of global mean temperature, with projections to 2100.  The x-axis units differ by panel.  The graphic is adapted from work by Glen Fergus.

What is also quite extraordinary is that the Anthropocene Event is concurrent with the origin of a whole new Earth system sphere – the technosphere.  This term refers to the accumulation of human artifacts  ̶  including buildings, transportation networks, and communication infrastructure  ̶  that now cloaks the surface of the Earth.

From an Earth system science perspective, the parts of the Earth system are its spheres, i.e. the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere and biosphere interact with each other over geological time to determine the state and dynamics of the Earth system.

The biosphere (defined by geochemists as the sum of all life on Earth) is of particular interest here.  The biosphere did not exist early in Earth’s history, but after the origin of life and its proliferation around the planet, the impacts of the biosphere on Earth’s energy flow and chemical cycling became profound (e.g. the oxygenation of the atmosphere).

Now the technosphere, a product of human history, has joined the biosphere as an active force on the surface of the planet.  Like the biosphere, it has mass and uses energy to maintain itself and grow.  It has become a significant factor in the global biogeochemical cycles.  Unlike the biosphere, the technosphere has not been around long enough to become well integrated with the rest of the Earth system, e.g. it largely does not recycle its own waste. 

During the Anthropocene Event, the technosphere could be destroyed or self-destruct by various mechanisms, or could come into a stable state of sorts with the rest of the Earth system, in which case it might last quite a long while. 

The Role of the Anthropocene Event in Cultural Evolution

Transition to global sustainability will require the emergence and evolution of a global culture, i.e. a globally shared set of beliefs and practices.  The Anthropocene Event is a concept that can help anchor a robust integration of human history and Earth history.

Transdisciplinary investigations covering a wide range of issues associated with managing the human enterprise on Earth  ̶  including  aspects of the social sciences, humanities, and biophysical sciences  ̶  may hinge on having this shared reference point. 

The Right Call

In light of the need for broadly unifying concepts related to global environmental change, I think the geologists made the right call.  The Anthropocene has become a politically potent idea and deserves the widest possible attention in the domains of scholarship, education, entertainment, and advocacy.

This post was featured on the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) web site.

Carbon Cycle Consequences of Vegetation/Climate Mismatch

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David P. Turner / September 15, 2023

Planting a tree should include a species selection process that factors in projected climate change over the lifetime of the tree.  Image Credit.

Equilibrium between vegetation and climate refers to the state in which the species and ecosystem type best adapted to a particular area actually occupy that area.

At a geologic time scale, Earth’s climate is always changing and as climate changes, the best adapted species for a given geographical area likewise changes.  However, for a variety of reasons, the arrival and establishment of the best adapted vegetation may lag behind the climate change.  Biogeographers refer to vegetation/climate disequilibrium in this case.

Note that achieving vegetation/climate equilibrium may take hundreds to thousands of years, so the faster climate is changing, the less likely it is that the vegetation will remain in equilibrium with it.

The Holocene Epoch (from about 11,000 B.P. to present) was characterized by a relatively stable climate, and global vegetation has mostly equilibrated with the climate.  But now we have entered the Anthropocene epoch in which anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are driving a high rate of climate warming.  Consequently, long-lived vegetation is beginning to fall out of equilibrium with the climate over wide swaths of the terrestrial surface (albeit that humans have already massively altered global vegetation).

As the disequilibrium gets greater, forests in particular become more stressed and vulnerable to disturbances such as insect outbreaks and fire.

The incidence of fire is already increasing around the world because of climate change and we can expect that trend to continue.  For example, my simulations of vegetation change in the Willamette Basin (Western USA) project a several fold increase in the incidence of forest fire in coming decades as the climate changes.

The carbon cycle consequences of a growing vegetation/climate disequilibrium are significant.

1.  More fires mean more direct emissions of CO2 and more woody residues (dead trees), which will eventually decompose and emit CO2.  Local photosynthesis (CO2 uptake) is reduced in recently burned areas until the vegetation leaf area recovers.

2.  Forests stressed by climate change are increasingly vulnerable to pests and pathogens.  As with fire, associated damage to trees reduces growth and may cause mortality, and the residual dead trees gradually decompose and return CO2 to the atmosphere.

3.  Climate change is increasing Vapor Pressure Deficits (the drying power of the atmosphere), which tends to reduce stomatal opening and hence reduce photosynthesis and uptake of CO2.  Plant species are adapted to a specific range of VPD and can die when VPDs exceed their tolerance.  Interestingly, the increasing concentration of CO2 from fossil fuel emissions compensates to some degree for VPD-induced stomatal closure because CO2 diffusion into the stomata increases as the concentration gradient between leaf exterior and interior rises.  The net effect of these opposing factors varies geographically depending on many variables.

The global impact of increasing disequilibrium between vegetation and climate on the carbon cycle is concerning because it will likely reduce the current terrestrial carbon “sink”.  At the global scale, the net effect of biological carbon sources and sinks on land is a carbon uptake equivalent to about 29% of fossil fuel emissions.  Much of that carbon accumulation is in wood and soil.  The effects of vegetation/climate disequilibrium may reduce the current rate of land-based sequestration, which would leave more fossil fuel-based CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.  The annual increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased in recent decades (Figure 1), mostly because of increasing fossil fuel emissions.  In the absence of strong emissions reductions, any draw down of the terrestrial sink will tend to further increase that annual uptick in concentration.

Silvaculturalists must have a long planning horizon and some have already begun to factor in vegetation/climate equilibrium in their tree planting prescriptions.  They use spatially-explicit projections of climate change from global and regional climate models, along with studies of tree species’ distribution based on historical climate.  Given the high certainty of long-term climate change, anyone who plants a tree in the coming decades and centuries  ̶  for wood production, climate change mitigation, or various other good reasons  ̶  should attempt to account for projected climate change over the lifetime of the tree.

Figure 1.  Mean annual carbon dioxide growth rate.  Bars are the decadal averages.   Image Credit NOAA.

The Green Pill

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David P. Turner / August 18, 2023

The pill metaphor – taking a pill as a route to altered consciousness – has been around in popular culture for some time (e.g. The Jefferson Airplane song White Rabbit).  The metaphor was used as a central theme in the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix.  In the movie, rebel leader Morpheus offers the hero Neo a choice of 1) a blue pill, which will put him back to sleep about the existence of the Matrix (a computer simulation of human existence in which all humans are unconsciously embedded), or 2) a red pill, which will keep him awake to the existence of the Matrix and allow him to step outside it and join the gang of revolutionaries who are trying to destroy the Matrix and save humanity.

The pill metaphor is catnip to social commentators, and many pill colors (and interpretation of those colors) have been expounded (you can search by pill color in The Urban Dictionary).

Here, I want to introduce my interpretation of a pill variant known as the green pill.  Taking the green pill awakens the partaker to the human predicament in terms of our relationship with the global environment.  Earth system scientists have shown that the human technological enterprise (the technosphere) is rapidly altering the Earth system – notably the climate and the biosphere – in a way detrimental to a sustainable human future.

Despite being a part of the technosphere, most humans are barely aware of it as a thing with structure and function.  As with the biosphere (the sum of all life on Earth), the technosphere has a throughput of energy (mostly fossil fuels at this point) and a cycling of materials (albeit poorly developed at this point).  Humans participate in the technosphere, but do not fully control it (e.g. our difficulty in reducing fossil fuel emissions).  Pervasive development of socio-ecological systems at all spatial scales, and continued work on building institutions of global environmental governance, provide a pathway to a better managed technosphere.

Taking the metaphorical green pill means becoming aware of yourself as a part of the technosphere, and accepting that big changes (non-violent in origin) are needed in our values and in how the technosphere operates (e.g. a global renewable energy revolution).

As more of us take the green pill, we will strengthen the movement to redesign the technosphere into  something more sustainable.

Earth Day 2023 and Global Solidarity

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David P. Turner / April 16, 2023

Earth Day 2023 (April 22) is the 53rd anniversary for this annual gathering of the global tribe.  Historically, it has been an opportunity to protest the decline in environmental quality and to envision a sustainable relationship of humanity to the rest of the Earth system.

So, let’s review three environmental trends of particular concern in 2023 and three pointers to the possibility of a sustainable Earth system.

Three concerns.

1.  2023 is shaping up to be an El Niño year.  Ocean circulation in the equatorial Pacific Ocean will slow, which means less heat removal to the ocean interior by downwelling water in the western pacific and less delivery of cool upwelling water in the eastern Pacific.  Global mean temperature will tick up a bit beyond the usual expectation.  There is speculation that 2023 will be the warmest year on record.

2.  Sea ice extent will continue to decline at both poles, which is part of the snow/ice albedo positive feedback to global warming.

3.  Greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to rise.  The annual increase in methane concentration is especially worrisome because the increase has been relatively large in recent years, a consequence of rising emissions from both the global energy sector and biosphere sources.

Three trends to be hopeful about.

1.  The International Energy Agency recently reported that 2023 will mark a step-change upward in the public and private financing available to support the global renewable energy revolution.  The official theme of Earth Day 2023 is “Invest in Our Planet”.

2.  The proportion of land and ocean area in some sort of biodiversity protection status continues to rise.  A 2022 UN biodiversity conference set a goal of 30% by 2030.

3.  Stratospheric ozone continues to regenerate in response to the global regulatory process associated with the Montreal Protocol.

There are endless issues within countries and between countries for humans to argue and fight about.  But recent anthropogenically-driven changes in the global environment are something we all have in common, and something that must be addressed collectively.

In the near term, the growing incidence of extreme weather events associated with anthropogenic climate change negatively impinges on the quality of life of a vast number of people around the planet.  On a decadal time frame, sea level rise will come to displace hundreds of millions of people.  At the scale of a century or more, on-going climate change may set off a cascade of positive feedback mechanisms that will drive the Earth system to a new state inimical to an advanced, high technology, global civilization (the Icarus Scenario).

There are many impediments to becoming a global “we” that will work collectively on global environmental change issues.  But Earth Day, as the largest recurring secular celebration in the world, is an occasion to think anew and commit to opportune joint initiatives.

We’re Going to Need a Bigger Power Supply and It Better be Renewable

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David P. Turner / March 1, 2023

Developing and maintaining AI-based conversational beings ̶ such as ChatGPT ̶ will significantly increase global energy demand. In the interests of global sustainability, that additional power must be from renewable sources. Original graphic (Monica Whipple and David Turner).  Image Credits: Circuitry, Wind Farm, Solar Panels, Pylons.

When the sheriff character in the original “Jaws” movie first sees the giant shark, he exclaims to the captain “You’re gonna need a bigger boat”.

An analogous statement regarding the energy requirements associated with the coming proliferation of conversational virtual beings (based on Artificial Intelligence) is that the technosphere is going to need a bigger power supply.

By virtual beings I mean all the digital, language-capable, denizens of the emerging metaverse (broadly defined), including chatbots (like ChatGPT), AI-assisted search engines (like Perplexity AI), and AI-based residents of Meta’s visor-enable virtual reality world.  Coming down the line are speaking holograms, and holodecks (as in Star Trek).

The process by which these advanced digital creatures learn to speak is based on development of neural networks that are trained with a large body of textural information (like Wikipedia, books, and an array of content available on the Internet).  Training means determining statistical relationships between the occurrence of different words in the training text, which the algorithm then uses to formulate a response based on keyword inputs (queries).

Training a large language model such as ChatGPT requires a hefty input of computing power because it involves extensive trial and error testing.  Chatbots affiliated with AI-assisted Internet searches use not just a pre-trained language model but also integrate the search output into their responses.  This kind of processing will be energy demanding (perhaps 5 times greater than for a standard search), which will add up considering the billions of searches made per day.

If these virtual beings were only going to be used by a minority of people (such as now visit Meta’s colony in the metaverse), the power draw would be minor.  But, very likely, their seductive appeal will be so great (albeit with an occasional hint of menace) that they will become a standard feature of ordinary life.  Just in the field of education, there is vast potential for inspiring and informing students using dialogic Chatbots.

Efficiency in training and operation of these virtual beings will no doubt increase, but industry specialists see a booming rise in electrical energy demand as their use expands.  Note that electrical power demand for electric vehicles, and to power the broader trend towards electrification of heating and industry, will also rise significantly in the coming decades (a good thing!). 

The overshoot model argues that global energy consumption should be reduced rather than expanded because of the many negative environmental externalities (unaccounted for damages) caused by energy production  ̶  from both fossil fuel and renewable sources. 

However, at least for electricity, that seems unlikely given the burgeoning energy demand in the developed world noted here, and the aspiration to raise standards of living in the developing world.

Since 66% of global electricity production is still based on combustion on fossil fuels, any increase in electricity consumption will tend to result in more greenhouse gas emissions and more societal problems with climate change.  The obvious conclusion in that new energy demand must be met by nonfossil fuel sources like hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear fission.  Companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Meta that are building the metaverse will experience huge increases in energy consumption in the near future; they should be held to their commitments to run on carbon neutral power sources.

New energy technologies that could contribute to a clean global power supply in the coming decades include geologic hydrogen and solar energy from space.  These sources, however, will require long-term investments in research and development.

The global renewable energy revolution is off to a good start and has a bright future, but it will require steady political pressure to 1) stop building new fossil fuel burning facilities, 2) replace aging fossil-fuel-based infrastructure with renewable sources, and 3) build new renewable energy sources that can accommodate the increasing demand that is surely coming.

A Case Study in Decentalized Decarbonization of the Power Sector

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Figure 1.  Design for a decarbonized utility scale electrical power facility.  Image credits: solar array, electrolyzer, hydrogen storage, hydrogen fuel cell, power grid

David P. Turner / November 11, 2022

National governments the world over have made political commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly in the next few decades.  Because the generation of electricity, i.e. the power sector, is currently one of the largest anthropogenic sources of CO2 emissions (due to its reliance on coal and natural gas burning power plants), a great deal of research and investment is directed towards power sector decarbonization.

There are many pieces to the technical puzzle of how to decarbonize the power sector, and the optimum answer will differ depending on location and available resources.  But generating electricity while avoiding fossil fuels altogether is entirely feasible.

In that regard, I was happy to see news of a funded power project that nicely weaves together many of the critical components needed to deliver carbon-free electricity at grid scale (Figure 1).

The facility in this case is being built in French Guiana by a consortium of private firms.  The exciting thing to see is the co-location and integration of five key power generation components:  (1) an array of solar panels, (2) an electrolyzer to produce hydrogen, (3) a hydrogen gas storage capability, (4) a hydrogen fuel cell that generates electricity, and (5) a short-term battery energy storage system.  Functioning together, these components will provide a 24/7 baseload supply of carbon free electricity (10,000 households worth).

The solar array collects sunlight.  Most of the energy is fed into the local electricity grid, but a portion is directed to the electrolyzer to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.  The hydrogen gas is stored on site.  At night, the hydrogen is supplied to the fuel cell generator.  The short-term battery storage system helps maintain a steady flow of energy as needed.

This kind of facility largely solves the intermittency problem for renewable solar energy.  Its design could be adapted to other renewable energy sources with an intermittency problem, notably wind energy farms.  Excess hydrogen could potentially be transported to other locations by pipeline or in liquid form.

Successful operation of the facility (slated to open in 2024) will provide a model that potentially could be scaled up and widely adopted.  Since garnering the political will and financing for renewable energy development is still a significant challenge, the completion and operation of this power plant would send of strong signal about the feasibility of decarbonization to government, industry, and sources of investment.

News that this facility is actually under construction inspires the feeling that the global we (such as it is) can indeed accomplish a needed renewable energy revolution.

More Blows to Humanity’s Self-image

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heliocentric universe
Cellarius’s chart (1661) illustrating a heliocentric model of the universe, as proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus.  Image Credit.

David P. Turner / October 2, 2022

Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud are credited with delivering major blows to humanity’s self-image. They didn’t do it on their own of course, but their ideas were notably illuminating.  Here, I revisit their insights and discuss two additional blows of that type rendered in more recent years.  Awareness of the human limitations implied by these blows may help save us from our present environmental predicament.

Copernicus (1473 -1543) established that – contrary to Church dogma – Earth rotated on its axis and revolved around the sun.  Humans could no longer maintain that we are living at the center of the universe.  The scientific discipline of astronomy has gone on to reveal how remarkably tiny this planet really is in the context of an immense universe.  Knowing that we live on a small planet points to biophysical limits on our current demands for natural resources.

Darwin (1809 – 1882) elucidated the theory of biological evolution, and the corresponding fact that Homo sapiens originated the same way every other animal species on this planet did – through natural processes.  We were no longer a special creation of an omnipotent, benevolent god who dictates our aspirations and values.  Ironically, though, humanity is coming to have a kind of dominion over the Earth even without the hand of god.

Freud (1856 – 1939) suggested that unconscious processes within our brains have a substantial influence on our thoughts and emotions.  He turned out to be wrong in many respects, but his primary insight had merit.  We are not even in full control of our own minds.  Contemporary cognitive science aims to understand (1) the function (adaptive significance) of specific mental processes, (2) the representations and algorithms by which those processes are implemented, and (3) the underlying neurobiological mechanisms.  Insights along those lines may help modify our destructive impulses.

The two recent blows to our self-image come from a biologist and an atmospheric chemist.

In the 1970s, Harvard professor E.O. Wilson (1929 – 2021) fostered the development of the new discipline of sociobiology – the study of animal social behavior.  He applied its concepts to Homo sapiens, as well as to ants (his favorite object of study).  What he asserted (albeit in the face of raging controversy) is that humans have significant genetic influences on our thinking and behavior.  Our capacity for altruism (self-sacrifice) and jealousy are notable example of traits which evolution has likely shaped.  As with the first three blows, this realization forces us to question our spontaneous motivations and actions (e.g. our acquisitiveness).

The fifth blow is truly aimed at the whole of humanity.  Around 2000, atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen (1933 – 2021) helped consolidate a wide array of observations by Earth System Scientists concerning the baleful influences of humanity on the biosphere and the global environment.  He suggested that we have entered a new geologic epoch – the Anthropocene. 

In the scientific Anthropocene narrative, humanity has become the equivalent of a geologic force; we are now capable of significantly altering the global biogeochemical cycles.  This shocking realization and consequent shift in worldview have been characterized as the “second Copernican revolution”.

Unfortunately, we are altering the global environment in a way that may ultimately be self-destructive (e.g. by inducing rapid global climate change).  Our self-image must therefore include the conclusion that we are an existential threat to ourselves.

Recognition of the Anthropocene epoch places a new responsibility on each of us as individuals, and a new responsibility on our species as a whole, to begin managing ourselves – and to some degree begin managing the Earth system – in support of global sustainability.

The prescription for better integration of the human enterprise (the technosphere) with the Earth system requires that humanity become aware of itself as a social entity, having agency at the global scale, before it can learn to self-regulate and reintegrate with the Earth system.  Awareness of the five blows covered here introduces an element of humility to this project of understanding ourselves as a planetary phenomenon.

Environmental Reglobalization

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David P. Turner / April 24, 2022

Globalization refers to the increasing interconnectedness of individuals and social groups everywhere on the planet, and to the increasing inability of any particular social group to isolate itself from outside influences.  The process has geopolitical, economic, cultural, and environmental dimensions. 

In this post, I am particularly interested in how globalization, and its follow-on stages of deglobalization, and reglobalization, impact the global environment (Figure 1).

three stages of globalization
Figure 1.  Three sequential phases of globalization.  Neoliberal globalization from around 1980 to 2008 was based on maximizing profits by way of free trade within a global capitalistic system.  More recently, nationalistic deglobalization is characterized by a reassertion of national borders and reduction in flows of trade goods, financial capital, and immigrants.  Environmental reglobalization is a potential way forward in which the necessity to collectively address global environmental change issues provides a basis for global solidarity.  Image Credits: Neoliberal Globalization, Nationalistic Deglobalization, Environmental Reglobalization, Composite (D. Turner).

Despite globalization’s significant detrimental impacts on the global environment – notably a large stimulus to growth in the global Gross Domestic Product and associated greenhouse gas emissions – it has also had significant beneficial effects on the global environment, e.g. progressive environmental standards have been widely promulgated, and a global environmental governance infrastructure has begun to function.

However, globalization is currently in retreat, and any possible environmental benefits from it are in jeopardy.  Causes of the current wave of deglobalization include: 1) the economic suffering imposed on workers in the most developed countries by globalization of the labor market (which has inspired efforts to reduce imports of manufactured goods), 2) the psychological shock of juxtaposing very different cultures (e.g. secular vs. religious) made possible by modern transportation and communication technology (hence leading to revivals of xenophobic fundamentalism), and 3) the political benefits to autocratic leaders from rousing nationalist fervor (hence leading to outbreaks of war, as in Ukraine).

The rise of nationalism and deglobalization is associated with a retreat from global environmental change issues, e.g. the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement by the Trump administration in 2017, and the anti-environmental policies of the Bolsonaro administration in Brazil.  That kind of nationalism shirks responsibility for planetary scale problems and in practice is a false nationalism.  It ultimately endangers all nations on Earth as the global biophysical environment deteriorates and ecosystem services to humans are lost.

Reformed globalization (reglobalization) is a new concept that could help overcome the dangers of deglobalization.  Reglobalization would include stronger national and international efforts to reduce economic inequality and to extend the benefits of globalization more uniformly.  It would mean a wide recognition that we live on a crowded planet, which must be managed collectively to insure continued delivery of nature’s services.  Indeed, global environmental change issues could be the major driver towards an era of greater global unity.

With respect to the environment, reglobalization would include stepped-up green-tech transfer to developing countries for mitigation of climate change, stronger institutions of global environmental governance, and a revived commitment by individuals, institutions, and nations to global sustainability.

Environmental reglobalization will likely not have the prodigious force of the neoliberal globalization wave that began in the 1980s.  Rather, it must be cultivated based on wide public awareness, active civil society organizations, and wise political leadership.