A range of responses to apocalyptic news

A well trodden path of despair and hope

I came across a jarring report this week. It was the announcement in The Guardian of a new review called The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. When I read the newspaper article about the report, I was shaken and depressed. I read that biodiversity is falling faster than at any other time in human history, 100-1000 times faster than in the geological record. Degradation of coral reefs, forests, and other ecosystems are rampant, and have at times led to irreparable damage. Our demands on nature are 1.6 times what nature can regenerate in any given year. Even the emergence of pandemic diseases, like COVID-19, are largely driven by the destruction of nature. And what’s even more frightening, the widespread and deep loss of biodiversity is not to be fixed nearly as easily as climate change. We can address climate change within our capitalist system, using existing economic structures such as taxes, tariffs, subsidies and technological advances. But addressing the biodiversity crisis, and inherent fresh water, fresh air, soil etc crises, will require systematic changes in how we consume. All of us, at all levels, will need to change our behavior. And we need to do it urgently.

The despair that I was throw into wasn’t particularly rational on my part. I already knew about the crises described in the report. I’ve researched and read and written about them for years, and summed them all up in my book. I’ve even come up with a new way to present the myriad of global crises we face with the Planetary Wheel figure in A Drop of Grace. That figure lays down the destruction of our eight essential natural resources in a way that make the dire state of the natural world inescapable. I know that things are dire.

Yet it was different to hear someone else stating it. Perhaps it was shocking because the lead author is a world renown economist, or perhaps it depressed e because it was stated in a report commissioned by the UK government. But I’ve inkling, it’s just hearing it from someone else that made it more real for me. I haven’t seen many such over arching analyses that fold in economics, the environment, and how to fix it all It is one thing for me to spout my catastrophe theories and solutions from my idealistic vantage point. But quite another to read someone else’s dire warnings about it, no matter how similar they are to my own.

I’ve hit similar low spots in my 20 years of climate research. I’d work happily, most of the time, deep into my codes and datasets. Then once in a while some story would bring the horror of climate change into sharp focus. I’d be overcome with sadness and worry. And it’s strange to observe how quickly I manage to put the monster back into a box. I know everyone’s response to such dire news is different, but I have found a similar sequence of responses to these episodes of despair. After the shock has faded, I feel compelled to do more in my own life. This time round, I started dimming my computer screen to save energy, eating crumbly old bread heels, and switching off lights fanatically (more fanatically than usual, I should probably say). And following the usual pattern, I then reacted to my personal action plan by feeling ineffectual in the face of the monstrosity of the problem. But within a week of the first shock, I shrug off that despondency and settled back into my usual state of concern, action, and conviction in the efficacy of personal action.

This journey through despair, a frantic drive to act, ineffectual despondency and back to hopeful activist put me in mind of my readers. Perhaps reading my book or newsletters sends some people into despair, or perhaps you leap directly to overwhelmed or perhaps straight into action.

But if you are still feeling despondent or ineffectual, I wanted to remind readers and myself that action is always the best cure. Being proactive, even in the face of global problems, miraculously calms these worries. When we get active, in whatever small manner, we’ll find that so many people are working to protect the environment. We learn new patterns with more positive impacts. And it feels right to be addressing environmental problems. I think we all know that the average American or Brit’s consumption patterns are bloated and unhealthy and acting to reduce our own negative environmental impacts feels good, just like working out or eating well. What’s more, it gives us a purpose outside of ourselves as we change our patterns in consideration of other life. And furthermore, as I’ve argued many times, our consumer choices send out ripples in social, political and manufacturing worlds.

One of my actions this week was to dive into the Review itself. I’ll just give you a quick overview. Dasgupta’s Review is actually a really interesting read, to my surprise. I expected dull economics talk. But the first few pages were a well written and fascinating overview of how we’ve fed ourselves over the millennia, followed by a mini-lesson in the history of economics and then an overview of the state of the biosphere. From this gathering of threads, Dasgupta weaves a comprehensive picture and scolds mainstream economics for not accounting for the loss of our natural, or indeed, our social capitals. He suggests we need to stop measuring success as a growing GDP. From a purely economic standpoint, GDP is a flow and does not account for losses to the system of supporting resources, such as fresh air or a stable climate or human health. From a moral standpoint, prioritizing GDP does not address wealth inequality, nor social or intergeneration justice. Finally, from a survival standpoint, the report summarizes that there is an urgent need to address the loss of biodiversity across a variety of scales to simply protect our future. Rather than measuring GDP, the review claims that we need to prioritize human, and consequently nature’s, well-being. Shocking idea.

Beyond changing how we measure economic success, Dasgupta offers three other critical and urgent steps to protect biodiversity. First, we all need to learn about and connect with nature. We will thus be driven to protect the natural world. Second, we need to address our food production. We need to stop the overconsumption of products which damage the natural world, especially beef and pork. Third, we must increase protected areas and work to reduce human population.

This all made me feel far more uplifted. The Review lays out steps we can take. It acknowledges problems and issues, but sees a way forward. So do I. I hope you feel similarly hopeful and will continue sending out as many economic and social signals as possible to our friends, families, government, and manufacturers that we demand a world that values nature. Whether your motivation is to protect humanity’s future, to protect the livelihoods of people living in extreme poverty, to protect God’s creation, or to protect the swallowtail butterfly, let’s never doubt that it will be our collective actions which spur the transformation to a caring society. In hope and optimism.