Petri Lahtinen
In our previous blog post, we examined certain views and solutions to an environmental crisis such as the anthropogenic climate change that can be counted among the so-called environmental approach. In this text, I will present another alternative approach to which I will refer to here as an ecological approach. It should be noted, however, that there are manifold of alternative concepts at play, some of which include terms such as strong sustainability, sustainable development, deep ecology, and ecological realism. Furthermore, it must be stressed that there is a large spectrum of ways to perceive our relationship between nature and anthropogenic disruptions in ecosystems. Thus, the dichotomy between two approaches is still crude and yet, in a short genre such a blog post certain simplifications serve the purpose of legibility. Even though in this text several terms are being utilized, for the sake of simplicity I will refer to the approach shared by them as ecological. This text is a part of discussion related to climate change, but it should be emphasized once again that environmental problems do not constitute a single and coherent phenomenon. Instead, there are qualitatively different environmental problems in the world. Thus, climate change is only one environmental problem that affects other societal and natural phenomena by complex networks of interaction. In the end, the greenhouse gas emissions are only one type of emissions that are being generated in certain restricted conditions. The same does not apply, for example, to the biodiversity loss and unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. From an ecological perspective nature is manifold and therefore, environmental problems and their causes are miscellaneous.
In the centre of an ecological world view, an idea often occurs according to which nature and society (or culture) are inseparable from each other. The idea rejects the heritage of Judeo-Christian tradition, Cartesian dualism, and Bacon’s instrumental concept of nature as well as postmodern philosophical view that claims that ‘nature’ in itself does not exist, but it is rather a discursive and social construction. Instead, the ecological approach holds the view that nature precedes humans, surrounds us, and continues its existence even after we are gone; even though human activity has devastating effects on nature, nature has been, is still, and will be in the future as well a whole spontaneously coming into being and transforming. Despite this, the ecological approach recognizes the unique responsibility of humankind as the instigator of environmental crises. One method of responding to the aforementioned dualism is the so-called material monism that can be comprehended in two ways. On the one hand, societal and natural can be viewed to be of the same matter, but they do not possess significant qualities that would distinguish them from each other. This would be monism of both matter and qualities. On the other hand, the issue can also be approached by perceiving the societal and natural to be of the same matter and yet, they have considerable and distinctive qualities. This, in turn, would be what we call the monism of matter and dualism of qualities. From an ecologically constructive perspective, one could argue that both nature and society are of material substance but, however, they cannot be equated with each other and yet, they cannot be separated from each other. Therefore, nature and society are materially intermingled with each other, but at the same time they should be kept apart as analytical categories when we try to comprehend the increased power of human systems and relationships or individuals to influence, change and destroy nature. The only method of securing the possibility to remove the causes leading to ecological depletion is to maintain an analytical distinction of this kind that illustrates how the qualities of society intermingle with the qualities of nature.
When pursuing solutions for the network of current, simultaneous ecological problems, the ecological approach aims at forming a comprehensive and extensive method of examining and covering nature in itself. This approach is coined as ecological realism and its theoretical framework is founded on critical realism, historical materialism, deep ecology, eco-phenomenology, and strong sustainability. To sum up, according to ecological realism, humans are part of nature and one species among other. Nature, on the other hand, exists independently of humans and things occur in nature regardless of humans and their existence. Thus, the existence of nature is not dependent on humans whereas humans are dependent on nature. Ecological realism boils down to three basic assumptions: first is the equality and dependency prevalent in nature. This means that the ecosystems of Earth are finite, and the parts of respective ecosystems are dependent on a larger whole. Since humans are solely one species among other, nature as a whole is more important than humans. Humans are a part of their own ecosystem and thus physically dependent on the network of ecosystems that constitute the biosphere and the whole of nature. The second basic assumption is the historicity, materiality, and specificity of humans. Here the fact is recognized that the history of humankind has developed by interaction with the natural processes of Earth and the biosphere that have set the frames of reference and limits to the human development. What makes humans special in comparison to other species is the advanced production of tools. Even though non-human animals utilize different sort of tools as well, humans have specialized in assembling tools from different parts as well as in producing tools that serve the purpose of producing other tools. Agency and the concept of naturalness as well as right to existence constitute the third and final basic assumption within ecological realism. It is understood that human actions have consequences and effects both on itself and society as well as on other nature; this phenomenon can – and should – be evaluated critically. As humans are active agents capable of moral self-reflection, our actions should be examined with relation to the rest of nature; other species have the right to natural and dignified life as well.
While the environmental approach directs its focus almost solely on the future, the ecological approach is interested in the historical heritage that has led the world to the present moment governed by complex ecological crisis and conflicts. The most important elements are the factors of economy, growth, production, and consumption i.e. the key elements of capitalism. Already back in 1972 The Club of Rome released a report called The Limits of Growth that made the central observation that infinite economic growth is not physically possible on a planet that has finite resources. Currently, an unanimity prevails within the ecological approach that behind the anthropomorphic climate change there is a type of society that is based on a form of capitalism that has been made possible by fossil fuels i.e. fossil capitalism. While examining the present from a historical perspective, it is discernible that humankind has caused climate change by locating, extracting, and burning fossil fuels as an incessant project for two centuries. Enabled by these resources, fossil capitalism has been constructed on agent networks formed by capitalist corporations that serve the purpose of making financial profit out of fossil fuels. It has been possible to arrive at this situation since there is an underlying idea of universal energy behind matter. This, in turn, has led to the interpretation of matter itself primarily as a source of energy that has permitted viewing fossil fuels as utilizable resource.
Resource in itself should be understood as a concept through which humans process and comprehend the world. However, as one-dimensional the concept is based on a simplistic and linearizing mode of thinking that humans use to split up and itemize the material world into seemingly easily manageable pieces and movable parts. When fossil capitalism is examined as a global phenomenon, the reality marked by it can be characterized as totally mobilized and productivistic society. In such society there prevails a conscious project to mobilize everything and to harness everything in existence to pursue utility. Then nature is perceived instrumentally as a storage of resources and raw materials that serves the multifaceted technical and economic pursuits of humankind. Since from a historical perspective fossil fuels were available more and more all the time, confidence was born that there is no need to worry over the availability of energy.
This confidence in fossil fuels facilitated new kind of calculation that was disconnected from the issue of the regeneration of natural resources. At the same time, climate change caused by the overuse of fossil fuels has affected energy economy from another direction: ironically all the known reserves of fossil fuels cannot be utilized if we want to avoid such ecological changes that will eventually lead to the collapse of societies. It can be justifiably argued that present-day societies are cripplingly dependent on fossil fuels: not only do they enable current industries and energy economy, but they are insidiously connected to many other sectors of life. For example, along with industrial agriculture the majority of agriculture is completely reliant on nitrogen fertilizers in which one essential component is hydrogen, the essential source of which is still currently natural gas.
The ecological approach tackles the history, idea, ideology, and world-view of fossil capitalism since the approach views these factors to be the most significant obstacles when pursuing a sustainable and ecological life in the present moment. Current and especially future generations have inherited a situation whose inertial force would have required adaptation a long time ago. Because of the lack and delay of this adaptation, the possibilities in the future will become constantly narrower. If the environmental approach can be accused of being falsely optimistic about technology in places, there are extremely pessimistic visions of the future prevalent within the ecological approach. Generally speaking, the ecological approach citing actual depletion of nature and planetary limits views that the transition towards a scarcer reality will happen sooner or later, one way or another. The previously mentioned report The Limits of Growth already predicted the collapse of societies by the year 2050. In 1990 Bill McKibben published a book called The End of Nature that anticipated that climate change would also mean the end of nature, and similarly many ecological ideologies understand capitalism to mean the end of the world. To quote philosopher Mark Fisher, we can analyse Western societies being permeated by the so-called capitalist realism. What is meant with the concept of capitalist realism is the pervasive atmosphere and wide-spread experience that not only is capitalism the only possible political and economic system, but also that it is impossible to imagine a coherent alternative to it. Poverty, famine, and war can be presented as inevitable parts of capitalist realism whereas the hope for eliminating these modes of suffering appears easily as naïve utopia. In the pessimistic future scenarios, current societies collapse, and this destroys the conditions for well-being for the majority of the population. This means that societies have not had time to develop adaptability or sufficient reactivity. In another scenario, current societies continue the current lines of progress as long as possible; the inevitable collapse will be avoided to the best of one’s ability by outsourcing misery from the wealthy to the poor and the growing problems will be contained by constantly more open strong measures. Inequality will increase (as a result of which the confidence in authorities will diminish and violent conflicts will get increasingly common) and climate change will worsen even though greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced from 2030s onwards. This outlook appears in the updated report of the challenges of Earth and humankind by the Club of Rome released in the fall of 2022 titled Earth for All.
The third scenario within the ecological perspective is the most optimistic and it is the other presented in Earth for All. In this scenario, governments all around the world come to realize the fact that excessive inequality is one of the most significant threats to the stability of societies. Through progressive taxation, the inequality will be weakened as public expenditure will be directed towards education, healthcare, and the creation of employment. At the same time, basic income will be implemented in several countries. Extreme poverty will lessen also in the Global South as the economies of these countries will grow rapidly by the introduction of clean energy. On a world-wide scale the report pictures the greenhouse gas emissions having reduced 90 percent from the current amount by 2050, while the population growth stops at 8.5 billion people. In its report The Club of Rome recognizes the fact that a vision of the future such as this requires significant and massive global action to come into realization: first, the current models and structures of economy must be dismantled to advance equality. Second, global food production must be shifted away from Western industrial agriculture towards forest farming, crop rotation, and compost fertilization. At the same time, instead of meat consumption humans must transition towards a plant-based diet. Similarly, in energy consumption a shift to clean energy must be implemented: energy must be preserved by using such energy sources as solar and wind energy as public electric transportation will be reinforced and recyclable raw materials are utilized in the production of new products.
The more outspoken and radical theoreticians and advocates of the ecological approach emphasize that in the third scenario societies must build different conditions for the adaptation to scarcity. Thus, it is also possible to acquire time for societal changes as well as technological development. Technology here does not refer exclusively to so-called high technology but also to the development of technological practices understood as lower technology where it is reasonable and practical. In the ecological approach, central practical means of avoiding environmental crisis are different methods of restoring nature. This means restoring and reviving important agent networks relative to biodiversity such as aiding the bases of pollinators into new growth and increasing carbon sinks in the form of reforestation projects for example. To protect the current carbon sinks the forest laws must be reformed so that they for example forbid clear-cuttings entirely – especially in peatlands. Similarly, there should be more attention paid to forestry in order to produce more high-quality and long-lasting products in which the carbon remains. Alongside with the alternatives to the industrial agriculture presented in the report of the Club of Rome, phenomenon known as permaculture is prominent within the ecological approach. In the context of food production, this refers to ways of planning that aim at developing sustainable methods of food production by imitating and utilizing nature’s own processes. The planning principles of permaculture are thus based on the observation of natural ecosystems and recognizing the regularities appearing in them. Applied to food production, these principles are used while pursuing systems that are both productive and renewable. At the same time, they take into account the special characteristics of the given environment and are capable of adapting to changes occurring in them. Previously, permaculture has been associated especially with food production but nowadays its methods are utilized also in energy production, housing, and organizing economic activity.
In the context of food production, it is evident that current consumption of animal products cannot continue. The production of present-day animal protein has been made possible solely by fossil fuels once again: they have maintained the use of such fertilization and pesticides methods which, in turn, have freed up cultivated areas and increased yield so that food can be wasted in animal production: most of the animal protein used by humankind can be perceived specifically as a wastage of nutriment, energy, and other prerequisites of production. According to Worldwatch Institute, food production at its worst might generate more than 50 % of the greenhouse gas emissions. This sort of end result is reached by calculation that combines, among other things, clearing of forests for fields and pastures producing feed, keeping animals alive, greenhouse emissions born out of breathing, rumination, and faeces of livestock, slaughter and productization of animals, and the transportation, storage and production of final products. It is important to highlight here that animal products do not exclusively refer to meat products but rather to all foodstuffs of animal origin including dairy products for example. Nevertheless, within the ecological approach there is some disagreement whether vegetarianism is sufficient action regarding the change in food consumption or whether people should take up vegan diet. Arguably vibrant rural areas need a harmonious co-existence of humans and domestic animals to remain vigorous. Yet, there is no denying that the scale of current animal production is too large and that it both worsens climate change and weakens nature’s biodiversity. To make matters worse, in many countries the subsidy systems do not favour small-scale production. Alongside with small-scale production foodstuffs of animal origin should be more expensive and their general consumption should decrease significantly.
Generally, behind the practical actions of the ecological approach the pair of concepts, restoration and rewilding are mentioned. The latter is a progressive approach to conservation that aims at letting nature take care of itself and enabling natural processes to repair damaged ecosystems that have become one-sided due to human activities. Actions of this kind would include the restoration of grazing animals and restarting impoverished food chains. Restoration, in turn, means restoring natural areas best to one’s abilities to the state in which they were before a serious anthropogenic disruption. The two concepts intermingle at times, but the central difference here, to put it bluntly, is that rewilding does not pursue restoring nature in all cases since natural processes are not always predictable. Here as well there has been disagreement between these two approaches within the wider movement of the ecological approach: some are in the opinion that nature in itself is not in need for protection but rather humans should leave it be. When wide-scale human disruptions in Earth’s ecosystems are ceased, nature is able to “fix” itself in the long run. Of course, it is evident that certain ecosystems because of human activity can be never to return to their prior state, boglands turned into peatlands and dammed waters being few examples of this. Another option to restore nature is through human intervention i.e. biomanipulation. Among the previously mentioned reforestation projects, this would include transplantation (transporting organisms to new areas in the hopes of generating naturally reproducing bases), clogging ditches and restoring riverbeds to a state preceding log driving. By and large, restoration is viewed as a lighter option to nature conservation and a participatory method of reviving ecosystems.
While pursuing effective environmental action the ecological approach demands, above all, that societies first acknowledge the historical and structural factors that have led to a network of different and simultaneous ecological crises, and second, to transition immediately towards an alternative societal organization. The first thesis to be accepted is that economic thinking that bolsters up and justifies growth is based on the false assumption of infinite abundance. The finite nature of resources, raw materials, and nature’s common good as well as planetary limits and climate tipping points clearly demonstrate that infinite growth is impossibility. Second, it is evident that the unequal distribution of wealth is one of the most significant root causes of a global crisis such as climate change. We find ourselves in the contradictory situation where the Westerners have more wealth than ever while millions suffer from material poverty. At the same time, the world’s richest percent have approximately a 175-times bigger carbon footprint than the poorest 10 percent, and, for example, the emissions of the wealthiest percent in the United States of America, Luxembourg, and Saudi-Arabia are 2000 times bigger than those of the poorest citizens in Honduras, Mozambique, and Rwanda. In such a world where contradictions between the peaks of wealth and the conditions enabling the human existence reach a catastrophic intensity, the ecological approach views that only radical reforms and ways of reorganizing are effective to protect nature. Therefore, many solutions outline a comprehensive redistribution of wealth: if the wealth of the richest 1-10 percent would be expropriated, it would dispose almost half of the current emission at once and finance the global transition manifoldly. While renouncing the benefits and wealth gained thus far the concern with equality and avoidance of inequality must be highlighted as key issues of both national and international politics.
Where the advocates of the environmental approach and technological giants belonging to world’s richest percent such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates have placed their faith in the capability of technology to solve climate change while maintaining current models of growth and economy, the ecological approach is far more critical towards the omnipotence of technology. Ecologists regard this sort of thinking according to which the human innovativeness will solve all environmental problems as one-dimensional technocracy; it passes over the manifold material and ecological preconditions of life and culture. Technology is not able to detach societies and their economies from the nature’s capital since factories, machines, different systems, and technology in itself – all built by humans – can never completely replace those natural resources and processes that a consumption society destroys. At its worst, a devout faith in technology will lead to an idea that in the future it would be possible to produce clean technology to solve the damage done to the ecosystems thus far, on the one hand, and to release people from the obligation to act sustainably today on the other hand. The popularity of techno-optimistic thinking is based on the lulling albeit false idea that individuals, communities, and societies would not have to change their current values and attitudes or actions and structures. The ecological approach, however, is not completely technophobic but rather it perceives the meaning of science and technology differently from the environmental approach: inventiveness and innovations should be dictated by necessity and scarcity instead of their development leaning on consciously wasteful market competition and enormous governmental investments done during crises. In a broader sense it should be meditated upon in what kind of world and for what science is being practiced and technology developed. Similarly, as economy and politics should be separated from each other more clearly, science that responds to environmental problems and takes the material preconditions of life into consideration requires autonomy.
In recent years there has been a lot of discussion about the so-called green transition that usually means making the world emission-free. Yet, this solution although gaining popularity has been deemed as questionable from the ecological perspective: even though zero emissions are naturally a positive thing regarding moderating climate change, it creates problems in other ecosystems of Earth if the transition assumes the current models of production and consumption to remain somewhat the same. Making current production and transmission of electricity alone emission-free would demand a huge amount of raw materials i.e. metals and minerals. The electrification of transportation, for example, would require significant amounts of nickel, lithium and cobalt that are needed in the production of batteries. Building the energy production on wind and solar power, in turn, demands considerably more copper and zinc than the production of the same amount of energy would call for in the case nuclear energy or fossil fuels. Furthermore, the mining of minerals from the soil has already caused massive environmental damage. Similarly, hydrogen has been considered the clean and inexhaustible fuel of the future. Yet, the extraction of hydrogen from water by electrolysis using electric power involves an immense amount of electricity. Let us take a look at an illustrative example: replacing the current consumption of oil in Finland with fuels produced from hydrogen would double the electricity consumption of the country. Likewise, nuclear power has been regarded as one credible alternative to replace fossil fuels. Nuclear power plants are no longer considered as unstable, and the possibilities of a nuclear disaster are being downplayed: the Chernobyl disaster is comprehended as the end result of Soviet incompetence and corruption, and at the same time, it is conveniently being collectively forgotten that the more recent Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred in an extremely developed industrial nation. Along with natural catastrophes and human errors, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine has illustrated that nuclear power plants are easy targets in military conflicts as attacking them directly or near-by is an effective way of creating an atmosphere of fear. In addition, the efficiency of nuclear power is questionable as well: an average nuclear reactor produces de facto three million kilowatts of heat in a day but only third of this can be transformed into energy.
Neither hydrogen nor nuclear power can replace the current energy consumption permitted by fossil fuels: in Finland replacing the consumption of oil alone, for example, would necessitate around 2500 uninterruptedly all-year functioning nuclear power plants whereas the replacement of China’s entire energy consumption, in turn, would demand 4000 nuclear power plants. At the same time claim of power plants based on renewable energy for additional capacity is so massive that it constitutes a significant problem connected with land areas. Similarly, the mining of uranium demanded by nuclear power plants is an issue of land use and the final disposal of nuclear waste generated as a side product is a challenge of its own. Additionally, the transportation and processing of uranium in practice calls for an extensive use of fossil fuels as yet. All these are serious environmental risks and replacing the energy consumption permitted by fossil fuels would require a construction of an infrastructure that is impossibility both temporally and materially. At a closer inspection, the green transition proves unsustainable in the long term. It does not suffice that the share of renewable forms of energy is increased but first, the intensification of energy and raw material usage of all current processes is essential. Yet, in the long run the use of energy and material intensity of economies must be reduced as a whole.
Equally, current models of economy have not discovered functional solutions to promote ecological restoration. Nowadays especially in the context of big enterprises the concept of carbon offset appears frequently. From the ecological viewpoint, the issue remains that market economy perceives natures still primarily as capital and a form of wealth. In reality, big enterprises can simultaneously maintain high emission levels and commit to climate treaties as long as these companies support the founding of nature reserves or reforestation projects that are believed to recover and sinking carbon dioxide the same amount as the emissions of the company are. Exchange of this kind is realized with carbon credits created for financial markets. Yet, for example the plantation of trees to avert climate change would require an area of proximately 700 million hectares. At the same time, the current compensations acts take place often in areas inhabited by indigenous people; this destroys conditions of these people to live a natural life. Compensation deals are not sustainable solutions by themselves either: usually the already destroyed, previously diverse forests are replaced with homogenous and fast-growing plantations such as eucalyptus and acacia. In the worst case, a plantation of this kind could even increase the CO2 emissions since the already existing vegetation must be cleared out of the way for the plantation. To crown it all, most of the planted trees are cut down after a few years to produce products such as paper and charcoal. Here all the carbon dioxide sunk into the trees returns quickly into the atmosphere. Thus, it is clear that leaving issues of environmental protection for the financial sector and markets to decide based on their economic value eventually leads to a catastrophe from an ecological perspective.
The most notable challenge while pursuing a socioecological or sociocultural reorganization from an ecological perspective, is fossil capitalism and its dismantling. Sustainable economy i.e. how production and consumption in societies are organized ecologically calls for comprehension about nature. From an ecological standpoint, the volume of fossil fuel usage is simply unsustainable, and since in the near future there is neither quantitatively nor qualitatively equivalent energy source the global energy budget and consumption must be reduced. Ending fossil economy, however, demands extreme and unparalleled global determination that includes significant technological, economic, political, and cultural changes. What makes things worst is when our current situation is perceived as capitalist realism, in which capitalism is assumed as the only functional political and economic systems. Thus, it should be evident that diplomatic and democratic actions do not suffice in overcoming fossil capitalism. Instead, the ecological approach calls for radical if not revolutionary actions. Yet, it should be noted that societal change cannot occur so that first the world-views and values of people are changed and then the change would follow in the material organization of societies as well. Valuation is not part of the inner programming of humans that could be realized in any given environment. Instead, societies where certain values are viable must be created. Most of all, during ecological crisis a mode of thinking is needed that does not perceive nature as a reserve of resources and raw materials or commodity. Ecological realism does not offer detailed suggestions of operations models for economy or politics, for example, but rather it provides a frame for economic and political action inside which choices and solutions pursuing sustainable solutions can be made.
While striving for sustainable societies, there must be a widespread revolution between economy and politics: politics must be separated from the leash of economy and obsessions and sanctions related to growth must be broken. Generally speaking, assumptions controlling economic and politic actions must change. These assumptions that are in need of changing include the narrow concept of resource, the inexhaustibility of nature, and the blind faith in the omnipotence of science and technology. Similarly, in the name of the previously mentioned autonomy of science, politics and economy should be separated more clearly from science and research. Instead of innovations generated by expansionary economic policy and market economy, we need tools of thinking and research that help us to understand scarcity in different situations and regarding different resources. Even though the ecological approach calls for radical changes in the name of sustainability and preservation of life, it approaches greater changes at a grass-root level: we must start from public education and societal activity that must be carried on persistently. Major players are needed in all places where the material foundations of societies are shaped. Social movements call for critical and professional parties that simultaneously promote the justice of human life and ecological well-being. At the same time, we need theoreticians and researchers providing tools of thinking, strategic education, and practical solutions on the one hand, and activists working in governments and public sectors that can influence policymakers by consulting the agents of environmental movements, academic world, and civic organizations on the other hand. Most of all, the ecological approach requires the spirit of rebellion that is based on, among other things, autonomy and self-sufficiency, meaningful work, a living connection with nature, and communities living in harmony with nature that have adopted a sceptical and negative attitude towards totalizing expansion and growth tendencies of various centres. In the end, the biggest obstacle before the transition towards a scarcer but more sustainable life is the ego. Renouncing the inherited situation and privileges achieved demands making sacrifices while we pursue meaningful compassion and empathy with the non-human nature from an ecologically sustainable perspective.
References
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