AA piece of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field breaks off and crashes into Lake Argentino, April 2019. This ice field is melting at some of the highest rates on the planet as a result of global warming.
In May 2019, the UN released a new report on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The results were stark: 1 million species at risk of extinction. Nowadays, more food, energy and materials are being supplied to people around the world than ever before, but we are pushing nature too far. We are undermining nature’s ability to continue to provide ecosystem services, and we are irreplaceably threatening its many other contributions, too, from water and air quality to a sense of place, culture, identity and well-being. Bob Watson (b. 1948), the scientist leading the UN project put it bluntly: ‘We are eroding the very foundations of economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.’
Ecosystem services is a term used to describe the various benefits humans obtain for free from the natural environment: clean drinking water and the pollination of crops, for example.
BA forest fire in the municipality of Tatumbla, Honduras, March 2019. Although human activities tend to spark such fires, rising temperatures leave forests drier, meaning they are more likely to burn.
Environmentalists are sometimes mocked for shouting about current and impending crises, but this really is one. In fact, it is several. It is the seas, the air and the soil, with global warming cooking it all, threatening not only the safety of humans, but also that of hundreds of thousands of other species.
This chapter outlines the various environmental catastrophes, which, although not always obvious to the naked eye, are unfolding all around us.
To start at the top, physically speaking at least, our atmosphere is being invaded by carbon. We know this because we have been tracking atmospheric carbon dioxide since it first became clear it was a problem, in the late 1950s. A research project was set up in Hawaii by geophysicist Charles David Keeling (1928–2005) and an almost continuous record of the accumulation of carbon dioxide has been kept ever since. The work is now led by his son, Ralph (b. 1959), and the data it provides are known as the Keeling Curve.
A‘Keeling curve’ data on atmospheric carbon dioxide for 2018/2019 (above), and the full record since 1958 (below). The full record presents a zig-zag pattern, resulting from plants in the northern hemisphere releasing CO2 every autumn as they die and decay.
BA cattle carcass in a ranch on the border between Paraguay and Argentina. The photo is from summer 2016, when the region experienced its worst drought in almost two decades.
Back in March 1958, records show 315 parts of carbon dioxide for every million parts of atmosphere (ppm, or parts per million) and the figure has been rising ever since. In May 2019, it passed the 415-ppm mark for the first time. A little over 400 parts per 1 million might not sound like much, but it is enough to tamper with the basic planetary chemistry our lives rely upon.
Carbon is especially good at trapping heat from the sun. As it blankets the Earth, it keeps us just that little bit warmer. It is a member of a group of so-called ‘greenhouse gases’. We need these gases, otherwise it would be unbearably cold, but the atmosphere is too full of them, so the Earth is becoming too hot. Methane and nitrous oxide are also key players, but they only cause about 20% of the problem, and the contribution of other gases such as hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons is even smaller, less than 5% of the total. The term ‘carbon dioxide equivalent’ is used as a way to discuss greenhouse gases together.
Greenhouse gases are all gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect, the process that occurs when gases in the Earth’s atmosphere trap the sun’s heat.
Carbon dioxide equivalent describes the global-warming potential of a greenhouse gas, as compared to carbon dioxide. It means that even though each bit of methane, for example, warms more than each bit of carbon dioxide, the gases can be discussed together.
AFirefighters use helicopters to tackle a forest fire in Korskrogen, Sweden, 2018 (above), and grass on fire in Iskitim District of Novosibirsk Region, in Russia’s Western Siberia, 2017 (below).
From paleoclimatology studies, we know that temperatures and carbon dioxide levels have varied over time, but such studies also reveal how extreme recent changes have been. For example, the last time carbon dioxide levels were as high as they are currently, conifer trees grew at the South Pole. More pertinently, sea levels were 20 metres (65 ft) higher, and average global temperatures were 3°C or 4°C (5.4°F or 7.2°F) warmer. This occurred during the Pliocene epoch, between 5.3 million and 2.6 million years ago.
A few degrees Celsius might seem a small amount, but when we are talking about average global temperatures, every fraction of a degree matters. The difference between a 2°C and 1.5°C (3.6°F and 2.7°F) increase, for example, is the difference between having no coral reefs and having about 70% of them.
The harsh reality of climate change is that we already have no choice but to mitigate losses from here on.
Official temperature records have been teetering around 1°C (1.8°F) of global warming for the last few years, and we have been feeling the impact of a gradually warmer world for a lot longer. This is one of the reasons it is so problematic when politicians and campaigners talk about ‘catastrophic climate change’ as a point we might hit in the future. It is already catastrophic for some people.
1°C (1.8°F) of global warming refers to the rise in the Earth’s temperature since pre-industrial levels (c. 1850), which was reached in 2015. The Earth’s temperature is set to reach 1.5°C (2.7°F) by 2030–50.
BNot everywhere experiences the impacts of climate change in the same way. As this map shows, when temperature (signal) is measured relative to the amplitude of local variability (noise), there is more perceptible warming in some parts of the world compared to others. Compared to the Arctic tropical regions have a smaller temperature increase, but temperature variability in these areas is also small and therefore the effects can be more dramatic. Additionally, some countries have more resources to tackle the impacts of climate change than others. As campaigners for climate justice point out, those countries still benefiting from the legacies of colonialism get off relatively lightly, whereas many of the nations they invaded are the hardest hit.
A major impact of climate change is that seas get bigger as they warm. Rising sea levels swallow land; they also contaminate fresh water sources and leave the land salty. This is already forcing people to relocate. The Marshall Islands – a chain of low-lying volcanic islands and coral atolls in the central Pacific Ocean – lost a fifth of its population to migration between 1999 and 2011, with climate change a clear driver. The Maldives – 1,200 islands across a submarine mountain range 805 kilometres (500 mi) from the tip of India – hit headlines in 2008 when the former president, Mohamed Nasheed (b. 1967), set up a fund to buy new homeland elsewhere. One of his successors then tried to build a new island by pumping sand onto shallow reefs. It is not only islands that are at risk. Bangladesh could lose more than 10% of its land to rising seas in the next few decades, displacing 18 million people. Researchers exploring property prices in Miami point out that those who can afford to choose buy on higher ground, leaving poorer residents to navigate flood risk as best they can.
APeople from Bedono village, Indonesia, use a bridge to escape flooding, June 2017. Formed of more than 17,000 islands, Indonesia is at particular risk of rising sea levels, with many small islands only 1 metre (3.2 ft) above sea level.
BThe ruins of a hotel in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast. The photo is from summer 2018 after the hotel was destroyed by rising sea levels.
CFlooded homes near Lake Houston, Texas, USA, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. It is estimated that Hurricane Harvey resulted in total costs of $125 billion, second only to Hurricane Katrina ($161 billion).
Inside the seas themselves, coral bleaching is one of the most visually dramatic effects of warming waters, even at a global increase of 1°C (1.8°F). As their environment heats up, corals expel the algae (known as zooxanthellae) that live in their tissues and give them their colour, along with the ability to gain energy via photosynthesis. If ocean temperatures rise by just a degree or two over a few weeks, corals turn white, leaving a ghostly skeleton behind. If conditions remain for long enough, the coral dies. Mass coral reef bleaching events have become five times more common over the past 40 years, with the proportion of coral being hit by bleaching each year rising from 8% in the 1980s to 31% in 2016. Despite covering less than 0.1% of the ocean floor, reefs host more than a quarter of all marine fish species, in addition to many other marine animals. The reefs also provide food, protection from flooding and money via tourism, directly supporting more than 500 million people worldwide, including communities such as those in the Maldives who also have to contend with rising sea levels.
Coral bleaching refers to the whitening of coral as they expel the algae that give them their characteristic colours. Bleached corals are not dead, but they are at a higher risk of mortality.
Even a small rise in average global temperatures increases the chances and severity of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, heavy rainfall, drought and hurricanes.
AAs temperatures peak in New York City, USA, people cool off in fountains. Joyful images like these are frequently used to portray heat waves, masking the spike in summer deaths that often accompany them.
Such weather phenomena occur anyway, which makes blaming climate change problematic, but each fraction of a degree Celsius global warming makes them worse, and more likely.
Scientists often talk about climate change weighting the dice towards dangerous weather. Again, even at 1°C (1.8°F) global warming, we see various impacts. A study in 2018 of some of the most destructive recent hurricanes – including Katrina (2005), Irma (2017) and Maria (2017) – concludes they were significantly boosted by climate change, as warmer seas ratcheted up rainfall by 5 to 10%. Even Britain, which is relatively insulated from the worst impacts of climate change, suffered a peak in summer deaths in 2018 during an especially hot summer. The Met Office later confirmed that this heatwave had been made about 30 times more likely due to global warming.
Prolonged periods of hot, dry weather can be especially dangerous, as crops fail and land becomes more prone to wildfires and flooding. One of the reasons the floods in Zimbabwe in 2017 were so bad, for example, was because heavy rainfall followed devastating drought. Some cities in the USA are experimenting with drone-based LED displays to replace 4th of July fireworks; the risk of a spark spreading is just too high.
The crisis is deepening. As NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel notes: ‘Climate change is not a pass or fail issue’ that is game over when we hit a particular point. It would have been easier to tackle climate change if we had started more radical action in the 1980s and 1990s, but we did not, so now will have to do, and it will be far easier than ignoring the issue until the 2040s.
BA woman enjoys a cooling water spray on the banks of the River Seine, Paris, on 25 July 2019. A temperature of 42.6°C (108.7°F) was recorded that day in Paris, France, the highest ever recorded there.
CCool water at a cooling centre in a Salvation Army homeless shelter in Northern California, USA. Access to cooling for vulnerable and precariously housed people will become an increasing challenge for cities in the future.
Until the end of 2015, many international climate discussions focused on keeping global warming to less than 2°C (3.6°F). There were even protest signs calling for policies to keep to 2°C (3.6°F), as if this were somehow a safe limit. But 2°C (3.6°F) was never ‘safe’; it was more a line some scientists warned we really should not cross because the risk of tipping points increases. Yet politicians grabbed onto this figure as the first stage of negotiating a deadline, as if we had agreed that 2°C (3.6°F) was not ideal but we could probably work around it.
Tipping points are irreversible changes in the climate system. For example, cutting down a sufficient amount of a rainforest could tip the whole forest into a drought, leading to all of it dying.
The 2015 Paris climate talks finally acknowledged this issue, arguably way too late, and upped ambition, looking again at the possibility of keeping global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F). As a result the UN commissioned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to report on the feasibility of this aim, which was published to some global outcry in October 2018. The message was clear. It is possible to achieve this target, but it will require radical social change like nothing we have seen before. Occasionally, a well-meaning think tank points towards other forms of rapid transitions: ATM machines, the shift from coal gas to natural gas, the uptake of smartphones. It is cheering in a way, but none of them come close.
The 2015 Paris climate talks led to the Paris Agreement, a global commitment to reducing climate change. In 2017 President Trump withdrew the USA’s participation.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was founded in 1988, and is a body of the UN made up of scientists from around the world to advise on climate change. Thousands of scientists and other experts contribute to its reports.
AArchitects of the 2015 UN climate talks in Paris, France, (left to right, Christiana Figueres, Ban Ki Moon, Laurent Fabius and Francois Hollande) raise their hands to celebrate the historic agreement.
BUS Secretary of State John Kerry holds his granddaughter, Isabelle Dobbs-Higginson, as he signs the Paris Agreement, in the United Nations General Assembly Hall, April 2016.
We are now in a position where we are trying to keep global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) with an exceptionally sharp deadline, all the time managing the impacts of the climate change we have already caused. We may well have to survive the best we can at 2°C (3.6°F), or higher, while fighting to stave off any further rise.
Scientists estimate we should hit the 1.5°C (2.7°F) marker sometime in the 2030s or 2040s, although it could be a little earlier, or a little later. We will not feel the impacts of this straight away. It takes a while for glaciers to melt and for sea levels to rise. Likewise, species extinctions and crop failure will most likely happen after repeated seasons of poor weather, and although the extra heat increases the risks of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, it is difficult to assess exactly when they will commence, or how hard people will be hit.
CProtesters gathered near the White House within minutes of President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord, June 2017.
A world at 2°C (3.6°F) global warming is substantially more dangerous than one at 1.5°C (2.7°F). Just that half a degree on the Celsius scale is the difference between an ice-free summer in the Arctic every 100 years and one at least every 10, with insects and plants almost twice as likely to lose half their habitat.
There are significant differences when it comes to how many millions of people will be exposed to flooding and drought too. At 1.5°C (2.7°F), the global population exposed to flooding in coastal areas by the end of the century will be 60 million a year and the population exposed to severe drought will be 132.5 million. At 2°C (3.6°F) as many as 72 million people living in coastal areas will be exposed to flooding and the global population exposed to severe drought will rise to 194.5 million. The population exposed to severe heat increases significantly too. At 1.5°C (2.7°F), 14% of the population will face a severe heatwave at least every 5 years and 50% of the population will face one every 20 years, while at 2°C (3.6°F) the population affected rises to 27% and 70%, respectively.
ASeverely drought-affected land in Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia. The 2018 drought there was the worst in living memory.
BLocal residents fill containers with drinking water from a municipal tanker in Kolkata, capital of India’s West Bengal state.
CA diver explores coral bleaching in French Polynesia. One of the reasons for keeping to 1.5°C (2.7°F) warming is that beyond this, we would likely lose all coral reefs.
Between 2°C (3.6°F) and 3°C (5.4°F), we can expect the very last of the coral reefs to disappear, bringing a chain of species down with them. People who rely on these reefs will suffer, although by then they will have had several metres of sea level rise to contend with, so might have moved anyway. This could happen by the middle of this century, or earlier. We’re already grazing 1°C (1.8°F).
The risk of reaching tipping points goes up after 2°C (3.6°F), too. Individual changes will impact on other parts of the climate system, causing irreversible, and sometimes unpredictable, damage and hastening the speed of global warming.
There’s a point, for example, at which the Amazon rainforest could reach a level of no return, robbing us of not only its vital biodiversity, but also an essential carbon sink. Rainforests produce their own rain as plants lose water when they breathe. But increased levels of carbon dioxide mean that plants do not have to breathe so often, which means less water is released and the rainforest’s supply of rain decreases. Add deforestation, wildfires and persistent drought from global warming and the rainforest dries up. Indeed, at some levels of destruction, the Amazon could start adding carbon to the atmosphere rather than help keep it out.
A carbon sink is a natural system that sucks up and stores carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Marine and terrestrial ecosystems, including trees, oceans and soils, currently sequester around 5.6 gigatons of carbon per year (i.e. about 60% of what we emit).
AAn iceberg that broke away from the Upsala glacier, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, is seen floating in Lake Argentino from a tourist boat, April 2019.
We could see tipping points in the Arctic too. Massive ice sheets in West Antarctica and Greenland could disintegrate irreversibly, condemning us to several more metres of sea-level rise for centuries to come. The Greenland ice cap alone contains enough water, were it to melt, to raise sea levels globally by around 7 metres (23 ft). More worryingly, the Arctic tundra contains large deposits of the oft-forgotten greenhouse gas methane, which could be released as it melts. Clathrates are currently kept in place by a mix of temperature and water pressure, but it is estimated that they contain twice as much energy as all the fossil fuels combined. Warm the Arctic enough and they could be released, emitting catastrophic quantities of methane in the process. This could all come sooner than expected. In summer 2019, an expedition in the Canadian Arctic found permafrost outposts there thawing 70 years earlier than predicted.
Clathrates are icy, lattice-shaped chemical structures, sometimes known as ‘the ice that burns’, which contain gas under high pressure. When they come to the surface, the gas is released with a hiss and pop. If ignited, they burn.
Climate science is not a precise art. We do not know exactly what will happen at any given point, but we do know with very high levels of certainty that as the world warms, extreme weather events will get worse. The European heatwave in 2003, which killed 30,000 people, could become an annual event. Hurricane rainfall could increase by a third, while wind speeds could be boosted by as much as 13 metres per second (25 kn). After years and years of difficult weather conditions, crops will fail and many people will starve.
Those that can will move. Those than cannot will be left behind. There have been headlines about more than 140 million climate migrants by 2050. In truth, climate migration is hard to calculate because it is one of the many ways in which climate impacts will mix with our reaction to them. If we build flood defences and develop more drought-resistant crops, for example, the need for migration will be lower.
People will most likely move though, as will other species. The emergence of the ‘pizzly’ or ‘grolar’ bear, a cross between grizzly and polar bears, is a good example. The two species should not share habitats, but as sea ice melts, they are increasingly finding themselves in the same spaces, and mating. As the Washington Post headline put it drily: ‘Love in the time of climate change.’ A similar shifting of species could also have played a role in recent outbreaks of Ebola, as bat populations were forced to move, bringing the disease with them. The growth of mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria, is especially worrying.
BBoth polar and grizzly bears are shifting location as global warming changes their habitats, with ‘pizzly’ or ‘grolar’ bears being reported, the result of the two species mating.
CPolar bears feeding at a garbage dump near the village of Belushya Guba, northern Russia. Conflicts with ice-dependent polar bears will increase as the Arctic ice melts.
ADry and polluting weather over the city of São Paulo, south east Brazil. Dry air makes it difficult to disperse pollutants, which impairs air quality in large urban centres.
BActivists stage a ‘die-in’ in a protest over poor air quality in Paris, France, summer 2019. Public Health France believes air pollution in France is responsible for 48,000 premature deaths a year.
If global warming creeps up to 3°C (5.4°F), 4°C (7.2°F) or even 5°C (9°F) or 6°C (10.8°F), we can expect more of the same to more extreme levels. There are more alarming tipping points then too. For example, at around 5°C (9°F) the carbon dioxide levels could get so high clouds might break up, so they no longer shade the surface, ratcheting global warming up to 8°C (14.4°F). Even at this point, there will most likely be humans on Earth, just fewer of them, living harder lives. What the hotter options might look like, and how close we are to them, depends on when we take more action and how climate pressures might combine with other problems. As earth systems scientist Myles Allen puts it: ‘I don’t think we’ll make it to five degrees. I’m far more worried about geopolitical breakdown as the injustices of climate change emerge as we steam from two to three.’
For many, there are more immediate environmental crises than global warming. They cannot breathe.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 91% of the world’s population lives in places where air quality levels exceed safe limits. Every year, there are 4.2 million deaths caused by outdoor air pollution, with another 3.8 million due to household exposure.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the UN concerned with international public health. It was established in 1948, and its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland.
The problem is partly caused by pollution from cars, trains and aeroplanes, but agriculture, mining and other industrial processes also contribute, as does the burning of fossil fuels directly in the home, which many people in the world still rely on for heat and light. It is an issue that affects countries both rich and poor, although as with any environmental problem, it is the people who are already struggling with other problems who are most at risk. London might have addressed its own coal habit years ago, eradicating its ‘pea-soupers’ with the Clean Air Act of 1956, but Londoners still rely on coal, in a way. Many of the products we carry around were produced by a coal-powered plant in another country. We have just offshored the problem to other peoples’ lungs. In addition, the richer, coal-free cities continue to have issues with pollution: gushing, invisibly but violently out of the back end of most cars. Doctors also warn about the indoor pollution caused by cooking, deodorants and the fact that people are still opting for the aesthetic of an open fire, even when (unlike much of the rest of the world) they have an alternative.
The Clean Air Act (1956) was passed in the UK after London’s Great Smog of 1952. It included regulation of both domestic and industrial smoke emissions and introduced ‘smoke control areas’.
CA woman wears a mask and filter in Beijing, China, December 2015. The Beijing government had just issued a ‘red alert’ with much of the city shrouded in heavy pollution.
Size matters in all of this. Your nose is pretty good at filtering out anything nasty you might breathe in. If you blow your nose and it is dirty, that is a sign that your body is protecting you. Unfortunately, smaller PM-tens and PM-twenty-fives – tiny particles capable of entering the bloodstream and penetrating deep into lung passageways – get through. These particles not only aggravate asthma and other breathing problems; they also affect our hearts and brains, resulting in more strokes, heart attacks, depression and dementia. Worldwide, outdoor air pollution accounts for 29% of all deaths and disease from lung cancer, 24% of all deaths from stroke and 43% of all deaths and disease from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
PM-tens and PM-twenty-fives are particles with a diameter of less than 10 microns (PM10), including fine particles of less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5).
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is the name for a group of lung conditions that cause breathing difficulties, for example emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Symptoms include breathlessness, a chesty cough with phlegm and wheezing.
Poor air quality is part of the climate story, too. Numerous sources of air pollution, from coal plants to car engines, are also producers of high carbon dioxide emissions. Many of the key players in air pollution (ground level ozone and methane, for example) are also powerful greenhouse gases. Act on climate change, and we will all breathe easier.
AGlobal map showing levels of exposure to concentrations of suspended particles measuring less than 2.5 microns in diameter. Such small particles are dangerous because they can enter the bloodstream and penetrate deep into lungs.
BAlthough plastic is a relatively recent invention, only really being mass produced from the middle of the 20th century, it has been estimated that there are now more Lego people on earth than actual people (and they will outlive us all).
CA NASA researcher stands looking at ice melt in Greenland, 2008. When soot darkens glacier regions, it lowers their ability to reflect heat, warming the ice and speeding up melting.
Soot, or black carbon, is a particularly bad offender. As it works its way around the water cycle, through clouds and rain or snow, it can settle on top of ice, darkening its previously gleaming white reflective surfaces. Just as a black T-shirt gets hot on a sunny day, the darkened ice holds the heat, speeding up glacier retreat and thinning in mountainous regions and the Arctic.
To make matters worse, in the mountains between France and Spain, it is raining plastic. It might look like the same rain that has poured down for generations, but this is something different, something new and man-made.
That plastic has been polluting our waters is a well-established fact.
AA crab stuck in a plastic cup, the Philippines, 2019. The photo was taken as part of a Greenpeace exploration, where plastic waste was found between, beneath and on corals.
Well before politicians started making a show of carrying reusable coffee cups a couple of summers ago, oceanographers have been warning about piles of plastic trash. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was discovered in 1997, and predicted by scientists as early as 1988. It was not until 2019 that plastic was found in rain and air though, in the seemingly pristine Pyrenees, 120 kilometres (75 mi) from a city.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, is a collection of marine litter that spans waters from the west coast of North America to Japan.
A study in 2017 found microplastics in 83% of tap water samples globally, as plastic that is used and disposed of as drinks bottles, single-use contact lenses, microbeads in toothpaste and clothes degrades and makes its way into waterways. When water was sampled in the USA – from taps in places such as Congress buildings, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s HQ or Trump Tower in New York – the figure was as high as 94%.
Microplastics are small plastic pieces less than 5 mm (1/5 in.) long, either because they were made this small, or they have degraded.
At least 8 million tonnes (8.8 million tons) of plastic end up in our oceans every year, making up 80% of all marine debris. Some researchers even refer to ocean plastic as our ‘seventh continent’. Marine species ingest or get entangled in this plastic, resulting in injury or even death. According to the UN, marine plastic pollution has increased tenfold since 1980, affecting at least 267 species, including 86% of marine turtles, 44% of seabirds and 43% of marine mammals.
Human-produced noise can be a problem too. Whales, fish and other marine life rely on a rich soundscape of rumbles, pops, chips, grunts, bubbles, knocks and clicks. Add our own noises into the mix – from ships, or sonar to explore for oil and gas – and you risk disrupting their ability to find food and mates or to avoid predators. Some blasts of noise can even directly kill marine life.
Humans also extract a lot from the oceans. We might have curtailed the whaling industry, but the number of overfished stocks has tripled globally in the past 50 years, with the UN classing about a third of the world’s fisheries as being pushed to their limits. We extract oil and gas from the seabed, too, and some metals. As we deplete the easier-to-reach sources, industries are increasingly moving into new areas, including remote regions with fragile ecosystems and unique biodiversity, hence recent controversies about drilling the Arctic or Amazon Reef.
BThe Ocean Cleanup uses a parachute sea anchor and large cork line to capture both visible plastics and microplastics from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in October 2019. Some environmentalists have raised concerns that such systems also capture marine life.
The possible growth of deep-sea mining is particularly concerning, not least because the deep sea remains relatively understudied. There is so much about life there that we are yet to discover, which makes it hard for us to properly assess risks and work out how best to safeguard the environment. The desire to drill the deep sea is driven partly by the market for electronic devices, but also by materials needed for so-called ‘clean energy’, such as solar panels and batteries. Fossil fuels pose the largest threat to the health of the seas, but clean energy is not without its impacts. It is vital that large renewable energy infrastructure (offshore wind, for example) is responsibly sited.
We are having even more impact on land. Every second, more than 1 hectare (2.5 ac) of tropical forests is damaged or destroyed. Over half of the tropical forests worldwide have been destroyed since the 1960s, and a further 3.7 million hectares (9.1 million ac) of Europe’s forests have been damaged by the actions of humans. In 2015, research estimated that 15 billion trees are cut down each year, and that the global number of trees has fallen 46% since the start of human civilization.
AAn aerial view of deforestation in the Amazon from illegal mining in Peru, 2019. It is estimated that illegal gold mining has caused irreversible ecological damage to more than 11,000 ha (27,182 ac) of forest.
BA burned trunk in an illegally deforested area in Brazil, 2009. In 2019, the Brazilian government came under international criticism after reports that deforestation in Brazil’s portion of the Amazon had soared to over 88%.
CGraphs showing the increasing use of grazing land (left) and cropland (right) from 1600. Trees felled to provide the land can significantly contribute to global warming and biodiversity loss.
The UN estimates that more than 1.5 billion hectares (3.7 billion ac) of natural ecosystems has been converted to croplands, with crop or grazing lands now covering more than a third of the Earth’s surface as we have cleared forests, grasslands and wetlands, including some of the most species-rich ecosystems on the planet.
The impact of this can be seen in the quality of the world’s soil. A handful of dirt might not have the glamour and charisma of a polar bear, panda or any of the other endangered species highlighted by charities, but it is crucial to our survival. Half of the topsoil on the planet has been lost in the past 150 years, and the soil that remains is diminishing in quality, compromising our ability to grow food. Fertile soil is being lost at the rate of 24 billion tonnes (26.4 billion tons) a year, largely due to intensive farming.
AMembers of the Guardians of the Forest, an armed militia formed by the Guajajara tribe to protect the Araribóia Indigenous Reserve, Brazil, from loggers attempting to fell hardwood trees.
Without vegetation to anchor the soil, the earth can simply be swept away. In addition to polluting rivers and streams, degraded land loses some of its ability to hold water, thus increasing flood risks. The breakdown of land can have significant psychological impacts, too. Land is identity for many people, as our personal surroundings shape memories, traditions and beliefs. As soil is lost, so too are sacred places and rituals, traditional cultures, even languages. In the process, we also forfeit knowledge, including, inevitably, techniques to manage land that could have helped us tackle the problems in the first place. Research shows that deforestation rates are two to three times lower when forests are managed by indigenous people.
These actions are hurting human health, and we are bringing down other species with us. More than 500,000 species have insufficient habitats for long-term survival. We could well be looking at driving more than 1 million to extinction.
According to the Red List, the proportion of species currently threatened with extinction averages around 25% across the many animal and plant groups, on land or in waters. This includes more than 40% of amphibian species, almost a third of reef-forming corals, sharks and shark relatives and more than a third of marine mammals. These statistics include only those which can be reliably counted. For all that we are brilliant at dominating the planet, we still have some catching up to do with regard to studying it. Much of nature still hides from our sight, even if it is increasingly difficult for it to hide from our impacts.
The Red List, or the Red List of Threatened Species, was founded in 1965 as a way to keep track of threatened species. It provides criteria to evaluate extinction risk and also the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant and animal species.
BMarine scientists study the leatherback turtle, Florida, USA. Counting nests and eggs monitors the health of this endangered species.
AWorkers hang freshly harvested banana bunches in Ecuador, one of the world’s largest banana exporters. Although over a thousand species of banana have been recorded in the wild, most sold in the West belong to same subgroup of the species, and are nearly identical genetically. This makes them highly vulnerable to disease.
What is more, nature is becoming less diverse. When it comes to plants and animals that we have domesticated, we are losing whole varieties and breeds as we stick to an increasingly smaller set of options. This poses a serious risk to global food security, as a less diverse set of crops is more vulnerable to disease. It also limits our ability to develop new crops that might be more resilient to climate change.
And then there are the bees. Beekeepers have long known that bees sometimes disappear. A so-called ‘disappearing disease’ has been recorded since the mid-19th century; periodically, the bulk of worker bees disappear, leaving behind their queen. But this was a reasonably rare occurrence. Then, in the winter of 2006–07, beekeepers in the mid-Atlantic and Pacific Northwest reported bees disappearing at alarmingly high rates. The phenomenon was renamed Colony Collapse Disorder and environmental campaigners, scientists and policy-makers around the world started to explore why it was happening.
In October 2017, headlines warning of an ‘insect apocalypse’ started to appear all over the Internet: a loss of three-quarters of insects was claimed, threatening the entire collapse of nature. This was a slight overstatement. Researchers had looked at data from insect traps in 63 different nature reserves in Germany over a 27-year period. The weight of insects they were collecting had dropped by a terrifying 77%. This was incredibly concerning, but not the same as all insect populations, everywhere, dropping to a quarter of what they were. The UN report of May 2019 suggests what the data highlight is a conservative estimate of 10% of insect species threatened with extinction.
The sheer diversity of insects makes them incredibly difficult to study. There are more species of ladybirds than mammals, for example. There are more types of weevil than fish. So far, scientists have managed to describe about 1 million insect species, but there are so many more they have not yet logged. And it is hard to measure something you have not identified. Reports of the death of insects might well have been overstated, but that does not mean we should not be worried. Some 75% of food crop types rely on animal pollination, including coffee and chocolate, which are vital to some economies.
BBeehives before and after colony collapse disorder. In the winter of 2006–07, beekeepers in the mid-Atlantic and Pacific Northwest US reported bees disappearing at alarmingly high rates. Over a decade on, it is clear bees in the US are still struggling, but less so than before, and they appear to be doing better in other parts of the world, such as Europe.
Did we sleepwalk into all this environmental damage? It is a tempting thesis, but rather a questionable one.
Slogans such as ‘Exxon Knew’ and ‘Shell Knew’ have become familiar refrains of environmentalist campaigns in the past few years, pointing to various internal reports in the 1970s and 1980s. But climate change was never hidden from the general population. James Hansen (b. 1941) famously warned Congress about climate change in 1985, and this was widely covered by the mainstream press. Moreover, he was not the first, by a long way. Roger Revelle (1909–91) was briefing politicians in DC on global warming in the 1950s. Lots of people knew.
As far back as 1856, US scientist Eunice Foote (1819–88), experimenting with how the sun’s rays interact with different gases, wrote: ‘An atmosphere of that gas [carbon dioxide] would give to our Earth a high temperature.’ She was largely ignored, possibly because she was a woman. When her research was published in a scientific magazine, it was under the rather dismissive title ‘Scientific Ladies’. Similar research was undertaken by Irish physicist John Tyndall (1820–93) a few years later and presented at the Royal Institution in London, UK, in 1859 at an event chaired by Prince Albert. When he published his book on heat in 1863, it was a best seller. Climate change is not a small bit of hidden science. It has been part of the mainstream for more than 150 years.
AJohn Tyndall’s apparatus for measuring the heat absorption of gases. Tyndall experimented with a range of gases he thought could be in the atmosphere, establishing in the 1850s that both water vapour and carbon are what today we would call greenhouse gases.
BJohn Tyndall lecturing at the Royal Institution, London, UK, 1870. Sadly, there is not a photograph of Eunice Foote on record. She was wealthy enough that one might have been made during her lifetime, even if history temporarily allowed her to be forgotten, and historians hope to find one soon.
Also in the 19th century, German philosopher Friedrich Engels (1820–95) warned of the environmental impacts of capitalism, critiquing the short-term thinking of Spanish coffee planters in Cuba who burnt forests to fertilize crops. Further back, there is the British philosopher Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), who taught at the East India Company’s college. Malthus argued against more utopian thinking of the time, believing any improvements in society would only increase population and thus also the number of mouths to feed. He maintained that some of the population at least would inevitably be pulled back into poverty as conditions got better. Malthus’s ideas have continued to be extremely influential, although controversial. You can trace them through the history of eugenics, including the influence this had on both family planning and conservation movements.
Eugenics is a philosophy aiming to engineer the human population by promoting particular genetic groups above others. The modern understanding is often seen as linked to white supremacism.
Without doubt, it is time for us to take greater responsibility. We know we hold power, so how can we use it well? How can we shape human behaviour to benefit the planet? Chapters 3 and 4 will explore the options we have for positive change.