Start thinking in terms of complex systems and Barry Commoner’s four laws of ecology which are rephrased below..
The original formulation:
- Everything Is Connected To Everything Else
- Everything Must Go Somewhere
- There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
- Nature Knows Best
Reformulated they can become
- Everything is connected to everything else.
- Everything is systemically complex and interacting at some level or other.
- Hardin adds, as a corollary, that “We can never merely do one thing.” Most actions will have multiple effects, most of which we ignore.
- All processes produce ‘by-products’ which have to go somewhere (usually on this planet).
- If they don’t support life they probably harm it. Commoner states: “In every natural system, what is excreted by one organism as waste is taken up by another as food,” and “The absence of a particular substance from nature, is often a sign that it is incompatible with the chemistry of life.” Not thinking about this is a major cause of illth production
- Acting requires energy, materials and consequences, which affects affecting ecologies.
- Action does not come out of nowhere, with no cost. Commoner writes: “Because the global ecosystem is a connected whole, in which nothing can be gained or lost and which is not subject to over-all improvement, anything extracted from it by human effort must be replaced.”
- It also points to physical entropy – every built object and organisation requires energy use to maintain.
- Nature does it best.
- Commoner writes: Most “major man-made change in a natural system is likely to be detrimental to that system.” It also implies that nature may be able to fix ecological problems better than humans, although the idea of maladaptive systems needs to be kept in mind.
So with these principles in mind we might need to:
Realize there are no humanly produced externalities to the human world. If we poison and destroy the world we are poisoning and destroying ourselves. Everything Is Connected To Everything Else. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
It should be recognised that some recyclable products can be produced in such quantities that they overwhelm the recycling capacity of the economy or the planet, becoming pollution. CO2 is a good example.
Phase in laws to stop all forms of production, organisation, activity, business or agriculture from harming the environment whether it is producing greater profits or not. This will not be easy, and it will have unintended consequences, but its a guideline to aim towards.
Prohibit dumping into the sea.
Phase in laws that insist that organisations and production which harm environments remediate them as soon as possible. Make sure the business puts money aside as the project continues, so that they can’t escape the costs through bankruptcy. If the land cannot be remediated then stop the production. This again will be resisted. The fact that it is resisted shows something about the systems we have in place. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
Remediation should involve restoring the ecology to as close as possible to its previous levels of complexity. Planting a monoculture of grass or trees is not remediation. Planting and abandoning the planting to die, is not remediation. Nature Knows Best
Companies will almost certainly try and pull out before they face the costs and leave the taxpayers with the costs, hence the phase in, to allow them to adapt, and start remediation. However, even if they just stop the harm that will be good. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
Stop massive deforestation, and any further cutting of non previously cut forests. That should follow from the attempts to stop ecological harm.
Stop dispossessing people from their land. This is far commoner than we might think.
Reduce pollution and make the waste from all operations recyclable by ecologies or economies. This also should follow from stopping ecological harm.
Scrap the production of objects (intentionally or unintentionally) which cannot be processed, back to their initial components by existing bacteria, or other natural processes, or which are poisonous to humans.
it might be useful to encourage laws which make it compulsory for the input to factories and businesses to include the output, to give them an incentive to clean up the output. Everything Must Go Somewher
Stopping pollution is more important than financial compensation, but such compensation should be payable to those who have been damaged by pollution.
Make sure there is a fund so that polluted communities can afford to deal with those that pollute them, and get recompense.
This list of things implies:
- Reduction of GHG emission especially from agriculture and burning fossil fuels..
- regenerative agriculture or regenerative ecology to fix soils and ecologies, as similarly to natural processes as possible.
- Scrapping meat feedlots unless the pollution can be controlled and diminished
The aim is to stop activity which destroys or harms life on the planet and disrupts the planetary cycles.
The worse climate change gets, the more expensive it will be to stop making the climate even worse.
Tags: climate change, complexity, ecology, solutions
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