The future makers
The Past
I used to be an environmental scientist, with an arguably successful and largely satisfying career as a researcher and university lecturer. My specialty was the clash between land-based production systems (agriculture, forestry, grazing etc) and nature conservation, and the quest to find ‘the balance’ and genuinely sustainable land use. Initially my concerns focused on local scale issues like weeds, erosion, salinization and local species extinction as a result of land clearing. But as my career progressed my attention was inevitably drawn to the greatest environmental problem of them all — climate change.
In the early 2000’s I began to work directly with climate change specialists, firstly on assessing the impacts of climate change, then on considering ways to adapt to climate change. I had direct access to the best research available and the message was positively terrifying. Back in 2005 we were on track for 6ºC of global warming on our business-as-usual ‘worst case’ scenario. An unthinkable prognosis. We’d had Kyoto (1989). We’d had the Rio Earth Summit (1992) and Al Gore was about to release An Inconvenient Truth (2006). Governments would surely do something to prevent this. Surely?
But ten years later it was still business as usual. Nothing had been done, not really. In 2013 the conservatives won power in Australia. Within days the Commonwealth Department of Environment website was sporting the new banner “OPEN FOR BUSINESS!”. And in 2014, delivering on one of their key election promises, they abolished the new [very effective] [better-late-than-never] Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. I simply couldn’t take it anymore. So I left science, escaped to live alone in the forest and tried to work out what the hell I would do with the rest of my life.
What I didn’t know then, but came to realize with the passage of time, was that I was grieving and deeply depressed. Everything in my life and everything in the world as I knew it seemed wrong. Incomprehensibly wrong. Insanely wrong. Unjustly wrong. I was consumed by anger and grief and disappointment, and disbelief that humanity could be so stupid. That I could be so stupid. I was wracked with guilt. After all I had been a scientist working in the same institutions that were sounding the alarms, but it took even me fully ten years to hear them. I had blindly played the same mindless planet-destroying game that every one else was playing. That’s what life was about wasn’t it? Career. Houses. Cars. Overseas holidays. I saw myself as a success because I flew all over the country every week ‘tackling environmental problems’. The growing realization that I was absolutely complicit in the destruction of the Earth’s life support systems — which I professed to love and protect — was personally devastating. I didn’t know what I could do, but I knew I couldn’t do ‘it’ any more. So I sold up and escaped to the forest, lived in a tent and tried to work it all out.
What followed was an amazing journey of self-discovery and healing. (I tell part of that story here.) But the greatest weight, the debilitating grief and anger, proved immovable. Despite an utter transformation in my inner self and my way of living, I was still consumed by a dark force that prevented me from fully embracing life. I came to realize it was despair. And then one day in May 2019, in a simple but utterly profound experience, the despair lifted. And it has never come back.
That moment was the planting of a fruit tree. A black sapote to be specific. It was the first tree I planted in to a new orchard I was developing on the forest property on which I was living at the time. Having dug a hole I removed the sapling from its pot and cradling the root ball gently in my hands I lowered it into the ground. As the back of my hands touched the earth in the sides of the hole I felt an incredible energy course through my being. In that moment I seemed suddenly connected to the whole universe and all of time. As if I had plugged a cord into a power socket. I completely lost my consciousness of the present and was transported in time to a future 20 years hence, or 30 years hence. And in that future I could see this tree fully grown, bearing fruit, and there were people I did not know picking the fruit. And I could see myself like a ghost still crouched holding the root ball in my hands, somehow part of this now mature tree, and somehow directly connected to these unknown people picking the fruits.
And in that moment, and it was literally just a moment, something deep inside me shifted. Like plate tectonics. The bedrock of my soul somehow cracked and readjusted, releasing the immense pressure it had been holding. And suddenly I was at peace.
In the minutes that followed I puzzled over what had just happened to me. I was aware I suddenly felt different, that I had just had an incredibly profound experience. But I had no idea why. Planting a tree was no big deal to me. I had planted over 15,000 during my career. So why now? Why this particular tree? And then that small voice inside me that always seems to have the answers when I am quiet enough to listen whispered: “You just saw the future. There IS a future.” And THAT was the realization that changed my life. There IS a future. My despair disappeared.
The future
“And this is my calling: to plant those things that will bear fruit in that future. To plant now the things that will be sorely needed 20 years hence, 30 years hence. Yes trees of course. All manner of fruits for humans and non-humans alike. But so much more than trees. So much more!”
My journal entry, 12 May 2019
Possibly the greatest lesson I learned as an environmental scientist was that the barriers to solving the vast array of environmental issues we faced were not technical, they were socio-economic. As scientists we knew what the problems were and we knew how to solve them — from a technical point of view. But the solutions were rarely, if ever, implemented because they were not deemed ‘economically feasible’ or ‘socially acceptable’. Basically any proposed solution to a problem that didn’t make as much — or more — money as the current system that was causing the problem was rejected. The much lauded ‘triple bottom line’ approach — where business, social and environmental outcomes were all meant to be considered, proved to be a farce. Because the first hurdle to pass was always the business bottom line, and any solution that had a whiff of a negative outcome for business didn’t see the light of day, no matter how good the social and environmental outcomes were. Business (aka making money) was sacrosanct. A sacred cow that must never be harmed — no matter what. And this rule applied to all environmental problems from the smallest weed infestation, to the greatest endangered ecosystem.
Koalas are functionally extinct in south east Queensland not because we didn’t know how to save them but because business is sacrosanct.
The Great Barrier Reef will die within your lifetime not because we didn’t know how to save it, but because business is sacrosanct.
We have already locked in possibly as much as 3.8ºC of global warming not because we didn’t know how to avoid it, but because business is sacrosanct.
Sorry folks. Paper straws won’t save us. Solar panels won’t save us. Elon Musk won’t save us. These are all just examples of solutions that pass the as-long-as-it’s-good-for-business test. The real solutions — like keeping the coal in the ground, like not deforesting the Amazon — don’t. There’s no way round it. Because business is sacrosanct.
Modern industrial society is a monster of our own creation that we fed and grew to a point where it became our master and consumed us. Past tense. We have already been consumed. Like the tragedy of the RMS Titanic, the ship has already hit the iceberg and is sinking — even if the music is still playing and most people in First Class haven’t yet worked out what’s going on. Talk to the people in Steerage, they are up to their knees in water already. And the ship’s Engineers are in a panic about the lack of life rafts. Slowly but surely the ship is going down, and pretty soon the tilt of the deck will become undeniable to all. If you can’t see that breaking global temperature records year after year for the past two decades is evidence that the deck is already tilting I think you need to get your sense of balance checked!
I do not believe that the planet is doomed, that life on earth will end, or that human’s will go extinct. The planet, and life, and humanity will continue. But I do believe that the world as we knew it is gone and that we have entered a period of rapid and catastrophic change. Catastrophic for humanity, and catastrophic for possibly the majority of species with which we share the Earth. But I use the term in the sense of its Greek origins of ‘overturning’. Yes ‘collapse’, but collapse and re-organization, not collapse and oblivion.
Like the Titanic tragedy some will survive. (Yes, likely those privileged enough or clever enough to get to the life rafts first). Some lucky ones will be plucked from the icy waters. But many, possibly most, will perish. The first to perish (and let’s be honest — they are already perishing) will be the poor who get locked in the lower decks because . . . well, because that’s just how privilege works right? It will be a tragedy of epic proportions, a period of unimaginable loss and suffering. And our best responses will be insufficient to avoid it. But life will go on. There IS a future. And it is what we do now that determines what that future will be. (Of course, just as it has always been).
Like all analogies, my Titanic comparison isn’t perfect. And I think the key difference between the story of the Titanic and the unfolding tragedy of the Anthropocene is what happens to the survivors. Because unlike 1912, there will be no port of New York for the survivors to disembark in, change their wet clothes and get on with their business-as-usual. The Titanic was a local relatively small scale event. The survivors were able to return to a world that was essentially the same as the one they had left in Southampton. Traumatized of course, no doubt. But the system that supported them was still in tact and they could get on with their lives. It will not be so in the case of our present tragedy. Our support system, the Earth’s life support systems, are changing at a pace and in a way that is unprecedented in human history. Maybe not in the Earth’s geological history (which is why I am confident life on Earth will continue), but almost certainly in the time we humans have inhabited the planet. This catastrophe, this upturning, will be global in scale. Certainly some places will change more significantly than others, but nowhere will be the same. Not environmentally, not socially, and certainly not economically.
So this brings me back to my fruit tree. What exactly do we need to plant now to prepare ourselves for what is coming? What are those things that will be sorely needed 20 years hence, 30 years hence? Obviously since my fruit tree epiphany I have spent many hours pondering this question. And while I am far from having satisfying answers, I do have some ideas.
Back when I was a scientist battling environmental problems I realized that the barriers to progress were not technical, but social and economic. This led me to begin to study people’s behavior and values, and from there human culture, and from there psychology (particularly evolutionary psychology), and from there human evolution itself. Like a geologist I began digging through the layers in an attempt to understand origins and the processes that led to the current landscape. And as much as I admire people like Elon Musk for their evident passion and skills, I do not believe the answer will be found in space, or in technologies. I believe it is found in our past, our evolutionary past. And moreover I believe that everything we need is already written into our DNA. The answers are in nature, and specifically in our human nature. We just need to rediscover what that nature really is.
For most people human history starts about 10,000 years ago. It is the history of “civilization”, the history of agriculture, the history of wars and conquest and empires. And if you’ve had a ‘western’ education you’ll have learned about Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome, the rise of the European colonial powers, and the great wars of the 20th Century. But you’ll not have been taught about the history of the indigenous peoples of Australia, or the Americas, or — well let’s face it — anywhere in the ‘global south’. Those peoples, those cultures, only appear as the subjects of colonization. Barely a footnote to the history of modern western civilization. That’s the narrative we’re taught and pretty much accept without question. That, we understand, is what it means to be human. But human history is so much richer than this, and indeed began long before this. Long before even the oldest continuing culture on earth (Australia’s indigenous peoples) began at least 60,000 years ago.
From a biological point of view, human history began around 5–6 million years ago with the emergence of Homo sapiens. From the loins of Ardipithecus came three very closely related species: humans, bonobos and chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are quite widespread and as a result are readily accessible and relatively easy to study for a wild animal. Bonobos on the other hand have a much more restricted distribution and unfortunately for researchers are limited to areas within the Democratic Republic of Congo that for some decades were too inaccessible and far too dangerous to enter. So the research on bonobos lags behind that on chimpanzees. While late 20th century researchers believed that humans were most closely related to chimpanzees (which you probably learned from Animal Planet), the most recent research suggests that our human ancestors were actually more like bonobos, and indeed that Ardipithecus herself was probably also more bonobo-like than chimpanzee. The distinction is important because chimpanzees are very different to bonobos. Chimpanzees have a competitive, aggressive, violent, patriarchal society. While bonobos enjoy a cooperative, nurturing, peaceful, matriarchal society.
Let me say that again — our closest relatives on the family tree enjoy a cooperative, nurturing, peaceful, matriarchal society.
It can’t be ignored that the standard narrative of western history (agriculture-civilization-conquest) and the chimpanzee research (competitive, aggressive, violent, patriarchal societies) seem to match very nicely. The story seems compelling, and explains all manner of unsavory behavior in the standard narrative of civilization.
But there are other narratives, you probably just haven’t heard them. Because they are the hidden narratives of the indigenous peoples conquered by the heroes (and villains) of western history. History is, after all, written by the victors. Those hidden narratives are all too often eerily reminiscent of the research currently emerging from bonobo studies. They’re stories of cooperative, nurturing, peaceful, often matriarchal societies. They’re the narratives of peoples and societies which you have probably never heard of, but which all existed or still exist and were documented to greater or lesser extents by ‘western’ explorers, missionaries and anthropologists. Peoples who in the case of Australia did far less damage to the Earth in 60,000+ years of habitation than the colonists managed to do in barely two centuries. Peoples who expressed their humanity in vastly different ways to what the dominant global culture now does.
My point is that what it means to be human might not be what we’ve been taught, or for many of us might possibly be something we’ve never even experienced. It is certain that humans possess instincts to be much more cooperative and loving than our contemporary society suggests we are. And it’s absolutely possible that the dominant culture — that incomprehensibly, insanely, unjustly wrong system we have built — is an aberration. A cancer-like variant of humanity that built sailing ships and guns and overtook the world, but which will eventually kill its host and bring about its own downfall. It may be that better ways of living, saner, more just, and more sustainable ways of living have been with us all along, not only manifest for millennia in the myriad indigenous cultures wiped out in the march of the all-conquering ‘western’ cultural cancer, but actually written in our DNA since the times of Ardipithecus.
Einstein famously said that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. And this has never been truer than with the monumental problems that now confront us. So what will be sorely needed 20 years hence, 30 years hence, is a different understanding of what it means to be human, a different vision of human society, a different set of values, and the skills to maintain that vision and those values through a period of unprecedented turmoil, loss and suffering. The current system will bring about its own downfall. In our pursuit of profit through efficiency we have engineered a complexly interconnected global system with frighteningly little resilience. Just one global energy crisis, one climate-induced global food crisis, or one global financial crisis could trigger a cascade of collapse. Global pandemic anyone? And when it happens it will likely happen fast and hard, much like the Soviet Union did after 1989. Unfortunately for us this particular fall will occur within the context of runaway climate change, which will not only exacerbate the consequences of the collapse, but which will make recovery from it all the more challenging. Like much of the Australian continent this summer, business-as-usual will be baked by drought, burned to a crisp by wildfire, then drowned in a deluge. The version of humanity required to recover from this catastrophe will not be the same version of humanity that led us into it.
Fortunately crises tend to bring out the best in people — evidence I believe for the bonobo-like instincts we have written in our DNA. When calamity strikes, like the recent bushfires in Australia, or the 2004 tsunami in SE Asia, or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, something incredible happens in the aftermath. People rally together and take care of one another. They co-operate in ways not witnessed before the calamity. They share scarce resources with total strangers. They show deep empathy for the suffering of others and are moved to help, often at great risk to themselves.
When calamity strikes humans quite naturally express a form of humanity that the present dominant culture actively suppresses. Generosity? Empathy? Sharing resources? These things are bad for business! Kindness and compassion? You can’t make money from those — or at least not as much money as you can if you’re a greedy power hungry asshole. Business demands that dog eat dog, not dog helps other dog find food. But when calamity strikes business and money become pretty much irrelevant. What is suddenly invaluable, indeed essential to survival, are the instincts humans universally recognize as the best that is in us. A best that has always been in us. The instincts that evolved in us long before the greedy power hungry assholes hijacked the agenda. This is the humanity that we will need to survive the Anthropocene. And this is the humanity that we need urgently to nurture in ourselves now for the sake of the next generations. Because it is the next generations that will face the full force of the catastrophe.
Don’t wait for the calamity to strike. Be now the kind of human that you’re going to need to be when it does. Plant now the trees that will be desperately needed 20 years hence, 30 years hence.
