Approaching the Planetary Tipping Point?

Finally, a decade or so after the path-breaking IPCC 4th Assessment Report that confirmed anthropogenic climate change (see article), a new report and multi-disciplinary research project (The Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology) is focusing on the likely global biological effects of climate change (see article). The primary outcome of the group’s launching conference is a warning from “A prestigious group of scientists from around the world . . . that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation. . . . Studies of small-scale ecosystems show that once 50-90 percent of an area has been altered, the entire ecosystem tips irreversibly into a state far different from the original, in terms of the mix of plant and animal species and their interactions [read: severe reduction in productivity]. Currently, to support a population of 7 billion people, about 43 percent of Earth’s land surface has been converted to agricultural or urban use, with roads cutting through much of the remainder. The population is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2045; at that rate, current trends suggest that half Earth’s land surface will be disturbed by 2025. To [one of the authors] Barnosky, this is disturbingly close to a global tipping point.” Unfortunately, the global system has a number of tipping points. We are approaching some of them. We may have already exceeded others. Share of disturbed land area is only one.

This on-going study is welcome and long overdue and will likely produce a wealth of knowledge and increase our predictive capacity. Finally, it focuses society on the key deleterious effects of climate change instead of the epiphenomenon of physical changes, i.e., sea level rise, warming temperatures, destabilized climate, the normalization of extreme weather events, etc. The key effects of climate change will most likely include at least severe reductions in the productivity and life support capacity of the biosphere, that is, the primary and only regenerative economy of the planet upon which the human economy is utterly dependent for crucial, non-substitutable resource inputs. In the worst case, climate change could cause biospheric systems collapse. Although conditions in some places may worsen and those in other places may improve, the overall contraction in systemwide productivity is highly likely. In addition, the timing differentials of environmental effects and the capacity of the human economy to respond, the associated massive destruction of capital in the human economy, and the unsuitability of other, non-climate aspects of local geography for quickly adapting agricultural production for instance, may result in more uniform negative economic consequences for the human economy.

The Environment as Model Regenerative Economy

Ironically, although both economies produce the goods and services required to sustain life, the human economy has the unintended side effect of destroying the biosphere's regenerative productive capacity, and therefore, ultimately itself/ourselves. As 21st century passengers on spaceship earth, we are/will witness our sanity/ingenuity or folly/incapacity to redress humanity's unwitting destruction of the very economy that feeds and nurtures it. Doing so will require mimicking the regenerative economic principles and processes of nature as a regenerative economy in ever more productive and symbiotic ways. The profit-path for transforming the human economy into a regenerative one with 100% ecological integrity is on-going innovation of human economic processes, tools, and materials using ecological integrity as the design parameter. The smartest businesses and communities have been pursuing this path for the past 20+ years, and it has yielded economic and sustainability premiums. The extent and pace of this innovation needs to quicken./1/

Science Unwittingly Undermining Action?

The study will advance knowledge of the details of climate change’s biological effects and enhance predictive capacity. These results could be useful subsequently for medium-term mid-course corrections if humanity undertakes the effective 100+-year collaborative mitigation program. However, the framework and language of science continue to make the topic and issues less likely to motivate effective policymaking, which needs to occur now. In addition, they do not empower and enhance society’s capacity to create the future, instead of forecast it. Creating the future has different imperatives and ways of using knowledge for action than forecasting, problem solving, and problem avoiding. The research program immediately draws the obvious implications to agricultural economic disruption, and makes mention of ultimate results such as, "we are going to see some effects that will seriously degrade the quality of life for our children and grandchildren."

However, the provisional language of science and its never-ending search for additional certainty, combined with society's mistaken notion that action (policy, legislative, public, private) requires ultimate certainty delays action needed now. Instead of 100% certainty appropriate for knowledge production, policy action needs to respond differently to uncertainty, particularly for low probability/high consequence outcomes. Sustainability practitioners have already developed this standard approach of decision science into decision support tools for sustainability, such as with the precautionary principle.

Uncertainty in Knowledge Production Vs. Action

For knowledge producers, the limited uncertainty remaining, if any, that climate change is human made, implies that it is likely human made, but to keep an open mind. However, for policy makers, legislators, business executives, community leaders, and others of action, the implication is that we should act as if we have 100 percent certainty because the consequences of inaction will be dire and there is a limited time available to respond effectively. In brief, inaction will be too costly and too dire (think Great Recession with no possibility of bailout, x100+).

This confusion over how to interpret uncertainty and act in relationship to it in different spheres of social action has confused society in other ways. That mitigation will be less expensive (even least cost) and that it will be more advantageous to incur the costs sooner rather than later is certain, NOT uncertain. That the required economic transformation will produce a better, equitable, and wildly more prosperous human economy is certain, NOT uncertain. The only UNcertainty is whether there will be sufficient time remaining to take evasive action and whether humanity will muster the political will to do it. Without action now, we will not be able to reverse quickly enough the slowly responding bio-physical-chemical processes involved in the climate system or we will allow them to change to a point where reversal, recovery, and a soft landing are no longer possible.

The Challenge to Institutional Intelligence

Curiously, the political challenge of climate change is the least addressed, but possess the most potential value. Fundamentally, the climate change predicament challenges humanity's intelligence at a societal or institutional level. One could interpret climate change simply as an unforeseeable event. This interpretation positions society for the least likely and most insufficient response. If the resulting response had the power to solve the climate change problem, it would likely not enhance society's capacity for problem resolving, system management, and stewardship sufficiently so we would be able to avoid creating "unforeseeable" predicaments.

Alternatively, humanity could understand climate change as a fundamental blind spot of its institutional intelligence, undertake the required learning, and undertake a program of on-going innovation and design at an institutional level, just as it does in the economy, to enhance its institutional problem-foreseeing, problem-avoiding, system problem-resolving/stewardship capacity. If humanity undertakes such institutional innovation, then we may truly emerge from this challenge smart enough for our children, grandchildren, and theirs to inherit a human society in the biosphere that is not only ecologically sustainable, but also wildly more symbiotically productive economically. Thus, the challenge of the planetary tipping point may well represent humanity’s final exam, as Buckminster Fuller liked to say. We will emerge with the societal intelligence required to create, survive, and thrive in an ecological-economically sustainable global society in the biosphere or not. How we understand the nature of this challenge will be our defining moment because understanding informs action.

Creating Vs. Predicting a Sustainable Future

Now, one could argue that there is insufficient evidence to think that society’s sustainability response to date has sufficient momentum to become the effective response needed in the limited time remaining to move us from our false-prosperity, business-as-usual, climate and sustainability catastrophe scenario. However, the capacity to create our future instead of simply predict it requires that we believe that our sustainability impulse will expand sufficiently to be effective in the face of the plethora of constraints,  but that we work unceasingly to increase the certainty of success. Those actions to increase certainty are exactly the actions required for success. I suggest that we work unceasingly on this path until the results of sustainability success become clear.

Notes:

/1/ This argument of environment as regenerative economy and therefore a valuable heuristic model for a creating a sustainable human economy and society is the essential thesis of a cluster of scholarship, including and most centrally, Natural Capitalism by Amory and Hunter Lovins and Paul Hawken; The Necessary Revolution by Peter Senge, et. al.; Biomimicry by Janine M. Benyus; Cradle to Cradle by William McDonnough; John Todd and his living machines; Buckminster Fuller, all his work; and many other primary and secondary authors. The essential formulation of the profit-path driver of the transformation being the use of ecological integrity and zero or net positive/restorative environmental impacts as the design parameter for the on-going economic innovation in materials, processes, principles, products, and services of the producers in the economy is found most visibly in The Necessary Revolution and the whole systems, strategic sustainability planning method of The Natural Step.