Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
cies, where people, politicians, corporations, and even nonprofit organizations get ahead by prom-
ising immediate rewards, usually in the form of more economic growth. If none of these can organ-
ize a proactive response to long-range threats like climate change, the actions of a few individuals
and communities may not be so effective at mitigating the hazard.
This pessimistic expectation is borne out by experience. The general outlines of the 21st-century
ecological crisis have been apparent since the 1970s. Yet not much has actually been accomplished
through efforts to avert that crisis. It is possible to point to hundreds, thousands, perhaps even mil-
lions of imaginative, courageous programs to reduce, recycle, and reuse—yet the overall trajectory
of industrial civilization remains relatively unchanged.
Human nature may not permit the Lean-Greens' message to altogether avert ecological crisis, but
that doesn't mean the message is pointless. To understand how it could have longer-term usefulness
despite our tendency toward short-term thinking, it's helpful to step back and look at how societies'
relationship with the environment tends to evolve.
The emblematic ecological crises of the Anthropocene (runaway climate change and ocean
acidification, among others) are recent, but humans have been altering our environment one way or
another for a long time. Indeed, there is controversy among geologists over when the Anthropocene
began: some say it started with the Industrial Revolution, others tag it at the beginning of agriculture
some ten thousand years ago, while still others tie it to the emergence of modern humans thousands
of years earlier.
Humans have become world-changers as a result of two primary advantages: we have dexterous
hands that enable us to make and use tools and we have language, which helps us coordinate our
actions over time and space. As soon as both were in place, we started using them to take over
ecosystems. Paleoanthropologists can date the arrival of humans to Europe, Asia, Australia, the Pa-
cific Islands, and the Americas by noting the timing of extinctions of large prey species. The list of
animals probably eradicated by early humans is long, and includes (in Europe) several species of
elephants and rhinos; (in Australia) giant wombats, kangaroos, and lizards; and (in the Americas)
horses, mammoths, and giant deer.
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People have also been deliberately re-engineering ecosystems for tens of thousands of years,
principally by using fire to alter landscapes so they will produce more food for humans.
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Agricul-
ture was a huge boost to our ability to produce more food on less land, and therefore to grow our
population. Farming yielded storable food surpluses, which led to cities—the basis of civilization.
It was in these urban social cauldrons that writing, money, and mathematics emerged.
If agriculture nudged the human project forward, fossil-fueled industrialism turbocharged it. In
just the past two centuries, population and energy consumption have increased by more than 800
percent. Our impact on the biosphere has more than kept pace.
The industrialization of agriculture reduced the need for farm labor. This enabled—or
forced—billions to move to cities. As more people came to live in urban centers, they found them-
selves increasingly cut off from wild nature and ever more completely engaged with words, images,
symbols, and tools.
