Facing the fallout

For the last four decades, we have been hearing that many countries are concerned about the degradation of natural systems on which humanity relies. They promise to pursue sustainable development, protect biological diversity, prevent dangerous interference with the climate system, and conserve forests. However, surprisingly, the world has not become much more environmentally sustainable despite decades of international agreements, national policies, state laws, and local plans. Now, an attempt has been made to answer the question: why is finding environmental solutions difficult?

Primarily, environmental problems were scientific and technocratic in nature, but now these problems have become practical issues of politics. The debate has become subsumed within broad philosophical and theological questions of ‘state versus market’ and ‘science versus faith’. Though human beings are suffering badly due to the degradation of natural systems, and the potential for serious negative consequences for all humanity is more well-known than ever before, the debate about the future of environmental protection has now become a divisive ‘hot-button’ campaign issue. Being ‘green’ is equated to being ‘liberal’, and ‘conservatives’ are expected to denounce ‘conservation’. Every major news magazine, television network, and newspaper has given pollution extensive coverage in recent months. Much of this coverage reminds me of my personal responsibility.

Every time I use my personal car instead of mass transport, the engine exhaust pollutes the atmosphere; the offshore oil wells and tankers that provide gasoline for the car pollute the water and beaches and destroy plant and animal life; the highways upon which I pass through, the car pollutes the scenery of our country and contributes to urban sprawl. Every empty package I dispose of contributes to the problem; we are being engulfed in a sea of metal, glass, and plastic. My luxurious lifestyle, such as the use of air conditioning, large houses, laundry-washed clothes, consumption of public supply drinking water for bathing, flushing, gardening, staying in luxury hotels, particularly in hill stations and sea shores, traveling by flight, and many more, is being maintained by exploiting nature. Our political leaders also promote this lifestyle as upliftment of society without considering any adverse impact on the environment and its serious consequences in the next 25 years. But I do not want to consider any threat to my lifestyle in the future.

In this context, it may be mentioned that I am always motivated to avoid threats. If I see any person suffering from corona or any other contagious disease, I will take all precautions at any cost to protect myself. If I step into the street and see a bus bearing down on me, I jump back. If an unknown dog is growling outside my front door, I must stay inside. Though we are motivated to avoid threats to our existence, it is really very hard to act on climate change because it involves a combination of factors that make it hard for us to get motivated despite knowing the serious threat in the future. We overvalue benefits in the short term relative to benefits in the long term. Our tendency is to overeat in the present, despite the problems of obesity and other diseases in the future. To manufacture cheaper products, companies generally ignore developing new processes to limit carbon emissions. Governments also save money today by relying on methods for generating power that involve combustion rather than developing and improving sources of green energy, even those that are more cost-effective in the long run. So, ignoring climate change in the short term has benefits both to individuals and to organisations because many effects of climate change are distant from us.

People conceptualise things that are psychologically distant from them (in time, space, or social distance) more abstractly than things that are psychologically close. Weather disasters that are probably a reflection of climate change (like wildfires or extreme storms) generally happen far away from the place where people like us are living. Thereby we simply treat it as an abstract concept that doesn’t motivate us to act as forcefully as specific ones do.

At present, the actual situation is that humanity has overreached in its pursuit of affluence. We have altered more than 75 per cent of the world’s ice-free land. Over half of the planet’s habitable surface is now used to produce food, with wildlands constituting less than 25 per cent of Earth. In the last hundred years, 90 per cent of large fish have been removed from the sea, with 63 per cent of stocks overfished. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from industry, agriculture, and deforestation have increased significantly since 1970. Humanity’s ecological footprint has exceeded the Earth’s capacity and has risen to the point where 1.6 planets would be needed to provide resources sustainably. The biodiversity index has fallen by more than 50 per cent as the populations of other species continue to decline.

In addition to our personal responsibility, this can be attributed to political failures because governments can’t or won’t implement effective policies. One example is large extractive industries, like mining, being the dominant player in an economy. This occurs in developed and developing countries, but the latter can face extra difficulties enforcing policies once they are put in place.

Now there is an emergent need to initiate a serious discussion about values among peers. The idea that options in the present are more valuable than options in the future is an evaluation. The word "evaluation" contains the word "value" in it — meaning it assumes a set of values. If we choose to enrich our lives in the present at the cost of the quality of life of future generations, that is a choice of values that we rarely like to make explicitly. We have to be willing to look in the mirror and say that we are willing to live our lives selfishly, without regard to the lives of our children and grandchildren. And if we are not willing to own that selfish value, then we have to make a change in our behaviour today.

Views expressed are personal