Climate Change and Civilisation
Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 10:51 am
From a blog post I wrote today:
@!~AODI'd have to say that it was reading Neil Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" which did it for me. That book outlined the reason for the dominance of European culture over all others in today's world was not due to any inherent racial superiority, nor the fortune of 'great leaders', but due simply to the favourable geography of Europe which led to the historical developments that it did, or at least favoured them -- such as the development of firearms and the creation of the capitalist economic system.
But this idea led me to take it one step further. If the success of European culture could have been attributable to a favourable geographic placement, then what was it that ultimately determined the shape and nature of human history? It was, of course, the nature of the global climate. Allow me to give an example: the global climate sets the initial geographic conditions -- such as rainfall, temperature means, plant types, distribution of animal species, biodiversity, &c. -- which must in turn, lead to some human populations favouring a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, while others favour an agricultural civilisation. It's the same ethos which has caused the rise of many, say, river-based empires in which social hierarchies are determined by control of river floods and agricultural organisation -- examples are ancient China and Egypt.
If we look at numerous historical patterns, we can see the influence of the prevailing climate. For example, the Little Ice Age -- from about the 13th - 17th centuries, corresponds with the complete dissociation of what remained of the Roman Empire (including the Byzantine Empire) -- which itself may have been on decline due to an incapacity to grow sufficient agricultural crops to feed its population. It corresponds with an increase of feudalism, regionalism, the spread of warlordism and banditry, Viking invasions, Mongol migrations, the Black Plague, and the entrapment of society in a superstitious religious paroxym that saw demons, witches and ghosts in all corners. That is, while specific events in human history have many, complex causes, the harsher global climate set the tone of human society -- harsher, grimmer, and more desperate in response to the greater difficulty of making a living.
Looking further backwards, we see the beginnings of human agricultural civilisation around 10,000 BC. Why 10,000 BC? Because this date corresponds with the end of the last glacial epoch -- the Younger Dryas. The warming climate would have made hunting and gathering based upon following large animal migrations (in combination with overhunting) less efficient for many peoples, especially those around the middle east, where the earliest records of human agriculture exist, since large animal migrations are usually triggered by large seasonal variations in temperature and plant cover. Contrarily, agriculture based upon arid-tolerant semiannual grains such as barley, millet and wheat, would have become more important to increasingly sedentary peoples. Now, agriculture must needs require a substantial organisation of human society -- there must be coordinated labour efforts during the growing seasons, the construction of communal granaries, and efforts at providing crops with required irrigation. It is these primaeval driving forces which prompted most agricultural civilisations to develop as they did, and we do not see evidence in the paeleontological record of human beings having done so before, during the Ice Age -- we instead see a wide diversity of hunter-gatherer cultures across the world.
Well, given such knowledge, what can we say for our present civilisation? It is characterised by growth during a period of very favourable climatic stability; the agricultural successes made in the last two hundred years have contributed to a massive explosion of human population. This increase in a global labour force has corresponded with higher demand, and an increase in the tempo of economic activity in order to fulfill the needs of 6.3 billion individuals. Yet, for every economic, scientific, and social advance brings a rise in human populations -- fewer people are dying early, more people are becoming affluent, more children are born. This population is set to double by mid-century at latest.
And all these changes are attributable to a favourable climate. I would even venture to say that the present climate is the reason why technology has progressed the way it did.
However, human civilisation as it is, is teetering on the edge of a knife, juggled by a wily and capricious juggler. We know from geological records that the climate has changed abruptly before, and that it can do so again. It is a scientific fact that human beings are changing the climate. We know from our knowledge of meteorology that any perturbation of a dynamical, chaotic system such as the global atmospheric patterns, can lead to drastic and unpredictable changes. And, most worrisome of all, evidence that these changes are already well underway is coming up all the time.
Here is the dire conclusion to which I have come: that the climate is posed to change abruptly within the next century. History has shown us that climatic changes -- often those for the harsher -- tend to correspond to declines in civilisation. And I am terrified to imagine what will happen when these two forces: a ballooning human population, effulgent upon its own economic inertia, and a collapsing global ecosystem incident upon a drastically changing climate, come into intersection. An ecological and social crisis is fast approaching, one which will set the tone for all life on earth for next million years or so.
These forces have such inertia, are so massive, that it is nearly impossible for a single person to comprehend them all at once -- the burden is immense. We are being swept away in a tidal wave of change. But the burden is upon US to make the decisions that determine whether or not life survives on this planet.
I am desperate to find an answer to this question, this most fundamental question of all time: how can human civilisation reconcile itself with a climate that is fast becoming inhospitable to all life? How can human civilisation survive the coming century? Or does it deserve to survive at all?
Say civilisation collapses at the mercy of the climate. Then we shall start all over at the beginning again, and in a world of a much harsher climate, what shall be the tone of the civilisations which develop ten thousand years hence? Will we end up making the same mistakes, unto an already-deprived world? Might that not shatter a fragile, recovering ecosystem forever?
Here we come to the central tenet of my thoughts nowadays: How can the Ecocide be averted?
This question fills the core of my being. Every day I am searching for a way to answer it.
I am open to suggestions.
I even own a copy. I did see the series that Jared Diamond did, though. It was a mixed bag. To be honest, he overemphasized guns, germs, and steel. There's no doubt that all these things had a huge impact on history, but to focus solely on them is to oversimplify things.