Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #41 "nature is fragile" with Fred Pearce

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Bad Idea #41 "nature is fragile" with Fred Pearce · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

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The evidence is that nature is resilient, it's adaptive, it
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evolves. Nature's been going for hundreds
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of millions of years, whereas we've not.
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And some of the discourse around native species and invasive
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species worries me slightly because it's not a million miles
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away to having that applied to human immigrants, and some of
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the far right groups use exactly this kind of language.
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Well, I think a good Anthropocene will require us to
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be more aware of tipping points and the scary side, for sure.
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If we want to have relatively predictable climate systems,
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relatively predictable ways of growing our crops and ecosystems
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that we know and love keeping going, we have to make some
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accommodations that we've not been very good at making.
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That includes giving space for nature.
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Welcome to saving the world from bad ideas.
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I'm Mark Linus and I've had a few bad ideas in my time.
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I used to go out in the night time to destroy GMO crops and I
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also posed nuclear power. But then when I looked at the
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science I found I got it wrong. Oops.
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I've learned the hard way that none of us are right all the
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time. So now I'm here to challenge the
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assumptions that we all too often take for granted because
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the future depends on us getting it right.
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Well, hello and welcome to another episode of Saving the
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World from Bad Ideas. My guest today is Fred Pearce,
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who's a veteran writer and journalist about everything
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environmental. Fred, welcome and I hope you
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don't mind me calling you veteran.
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No, I use it myself a lot now. OK, good.
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I mean, I actually, I grew up reading your stuff in the, in
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the New Scientist and without, you know, being too fawning.
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It was one of the things, you know, reading, reading your,
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your writing was one of the things that inspired me to
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become an environmental journalist and campaigner.
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So thanks for all you did. Pleasure to, you know, you keep,
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I keep writing been doing it for over 40 years now, so you know.
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Yeah, no sign of no sign of retirement then.
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Well, I'm half retired, but no, I, I, I keep my hand in.
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Well, you seem to produce a book every six months and I so I
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don't know how you have the energy because it makes me feel
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like retiring just seeing, seeing your own level of
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productivity. And actually you're newest book
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is called despite it all, a handbook for environmental
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hopefuls. And it's sort of occurred to me
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it's almost like an antidote to all your other books, Fred, and
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that they're called things like when the rivers run dry and fall
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out, a journey through the nuclear age from the atom bomb
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to to radioactive waste. So it's it's good to have
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something optimistic in your, you know, in your, what would
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you say library. I'd like to be, I like to be
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perverse. I mean, I wrote Fallout, which
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is actually a very even handed guide to the nuclear debate.
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I wrote that because everybody is on one side or the other.
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So I thought what was needed was somebody in the middle where I
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was when I was writing The New Wild, which is about alien
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species and and our fears about messed up environments.
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Everybody seemed to be on one side fearing the end of
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biodiversity. So I wanted to take a not a
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perverse, but take a fairly strident opposite position
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saying, well, actually nature is doing pretty well.
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Maybe it's us that's in trouble. Well, actually that's a very
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nice segue to your bad idea that, Well, the bad idea that
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you're combating, not your own bad idea, but we're saving the
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world from bad ideas. And the bad idea that you're
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saving the world from you. You suggested yourself to tell
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you a writer because you had something nice and pithy and
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it's nature is fragile. Yeah.
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So in, in some ways, yeah. I mean, it sounds, it sounds
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trite almost, but actually it's not.
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It's really profound because it's it's actually a challenge
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to the kind of one really the core tenets of of environmental
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thought, isn't it, that we have to defend nature.
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Nature's fragile. It's being harmed by humans in
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irreparable ways. And actually, that's something
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you take on quite strongly in this book.
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We have this idea or we have the remains of an idea.
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The nature is somehow perfectible, and you have what
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people call climax ecosystems or pristine ecosystems or
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rainforests and what have you as somehow perfected and
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unchanging. Ecologists quite a lot use a
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metaphor about ecosystem being like like an aircraft, and if
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you take out one widget, it might, might the plane might
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crash. So if you take out one species
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from this ecosystem, it might crash and the sense of, you
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know, something imperiled because it's inherently unstable
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and anything could take it out. Whereas the evidence is, is
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quite the contrary. The evidence is that nature is
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resilient, it's adaptive, it evolves.
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You know, nature's been going for hundreds of millions of
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years, whereas we've not. And I think that has important
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implications for how we think about nature because a lot of
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conservation is couched around the idea that we need to protect
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what we have and that change is bad.
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Almost any change in in an ecosystem is seen as somehow a
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result of human interference and is bad.
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Whereas the ecological science says, well, actually nature does
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quite a lot of turnover on its own account, irrespective of
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climate change or anything else, anything that humans are doing
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is just naturally evolves. Species come and go.
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There's what they call species turnover.
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And it's quite a large element of of what happens in the
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natural environment. And if we have that picture of
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nature, then change isn't bad. Change is actually an example of
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ecosystems that are functioning well, are doing what they should
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do, are adapting or changing, evolving and moving on, rather
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than being something stuck in one place and in in danger of
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being destroyed at any moment. So, and that kind of means, I
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think, or potentially it means that if we have conservation can
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spend all this time trying to protect a few highly endangered
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species or species that appear to be on the edge of on the edge
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of disappearing. And I'm not sure that's right.
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I mean, yes, I don't, I don't really want to see species
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disappear, but that's a kind of human construct, really.
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I don't think the ecosystem cares if a few species give out
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because it's always got new ones coming in.
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If we really care about about nature and about the natural
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environment and its future in a pretty messed up world, let's
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face it, you know, humans have done a lot of damage.
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I'm not denying that. We need to help it to evolve,
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help it to change. So we ought to be protecting it.
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Protecting it's, it's, it's, it's dynamism if you like,
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rather than trying to protect some sort of ecosystems in
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aspic. So I think, I think how we think
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about nature, whether we think of it as fragile or, or quite a,
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quite a dynamic dynamic entity, as real, as real impacts about
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how we do conservation. And I think we shouldn't be
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doing conservation. We should be thinking about how
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we can help the planet and ecosystems thrive.
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But I think it means that we do it in a different way.
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Yeah, another word you hear a lot is, is balance.
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You know, the nature's never delicate balance somehow.
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And I guess this feeds through into discussions about the
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whole, the system and tipping points and things.
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You know, if you, if you push too far, then the whole system
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will tip and crash. And you know, that's central to
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the kind of planetary boundaries analysis that where there's sort
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of a, a hard limit. And if you push too, too far
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beyond that, then it'll the the system can tip into a totally
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different state, which is which is much worse presumably than
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the the current one that we're living in.
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Do you take issue with that? Or is that is it just a matter
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of scale? No, I don't.
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I think. I think those tipping points are
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there. You know, I've been wandering
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around the edge of the Amazon rainforest watching how climate
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change and and deforestation beyond a certain point can begin
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to trigger changes in in rainfall patterns and the
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droughts get longer. And at a certain point, the
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rainforest as an entity probably won't survive because, you know,
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it's not getting enough rain. And there are tipping points and
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there are positive feedbacks in in that loop.
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So now there, I mean, they're real, if you like, dangers in
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there. But I guess you could say, and
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people talk about a tipping point beyond which the
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rainforest might turn into into Savannah, sort of Savannah
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Woodlands, a sort of drier forest system.
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Well, that's true. And I don't, I don't want that
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to happen. But on the other hand, that too
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is nature responding, if nature is, you know, responding to a
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changing climate by changing the, the, the nature of, of the
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species that thrive. So at at a sort of meta level, I
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mean, you can, I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I don't want to see the
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demise of the rainforest. Certainly not.
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But you can see that as, if you, if you think of it as, as nature
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responding to rather than being destroyed by what we're doing,
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then I think there's virtue in that.
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I mean, again, that that's, that's verging on the being
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perverse, I think. But I think it's a reasonable
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way of looking at things. And yes, there are tipping
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points in ecosystems. There are tipping points in, in
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planetary systems, you know, the, the jet stream and the
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ocean circulation system and, and certainly the ice systems,
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which are very vulnerable to tipping points.
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So those are there, but they're tipping points into a new regime
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rather than a tipping point in into total destruction, at least
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so far as nature's concerned. They could have profound
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consequences for us, Sure, if sea, if, if an ice sheet goes
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and sea levels rise by, you know, significant amounts,
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they're already rising. If they start rising faster,
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that has serious implications for human society.
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Kind of nature will cope with it.
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You know, nature cope with asteroid hits and all sorts in
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the different distant past. It's got a pretty good track
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record of keeping going. Yeah, I guess it depends what
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your baseline is, right? Yeah, that's a fairpoint.
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You mentioned the rainforest. Yeah.
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I mean, the rainforests weren't anything like their current
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extent during the ice ages. Well, that wasn't that.
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Sort of refugee areas, yeah. Right, right.
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So these tipping points have been crossed before and then
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crossed back. But I guess the the baseline
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that is considered desirable is the Holocene.
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So this period, high temperature since, since the retreat of the,
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of the ICS. And you, you hear a lot of
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discourse from environmental, you know, Earth system
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scientists saying we're now leaving the Holocene and we're
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entering this new, potentially scary and dangerous era called
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the Anthropocene, which is where humans have have a sort of not
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quite a guiding hand, but certainly a major influence on
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all of the major, on all of the important biogeochemical cycles
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of the planet. And you kind of bookend your
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story with, with the Anthropocene, wondering whether
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we can have a good Anthropocene and whether it isn't
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necessarily, you know, qualitatively, qualitatively a
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bad thing. So talk to us about the good
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Anthropocene, what that might mean.
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Well, I think a good Anthropocene will require us to
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be more aware of tipping points and the the scary side for sure.
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If we if we want to have relatively predictable climate
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systems, relatively predictable ways of growing our crops and
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ecosystems that we we know and love keeping going, then yeah,
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we have to make some accommodations that we've not
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been very good at making. That includes giving space for
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nature. Nature is going to be much more
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able to adapt and evolve if if it's given room to do it.
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So that means retreating from areas where we can.
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We're always already doing that on quite a large scale.
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Much of Europe is abandoning a farmland on really quite a large
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scale, especially in eastern and southern Europe.
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And that's giving space back to nature.
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And we can see the effects of that with wolf packs returning
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across Europe. You know, they were hiding out
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in, in sort of Russia and the Carpavian mountains for a long
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time, but now they're spreading across the Alps and moving into
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Spain and, and so and so forth. They'd be in Britain if it
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weren't for the for the Channel. So, you know, we need to give
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nature room to do that. We we need to respect natural
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systems. I'm not a sort of Luddite in
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thinking that we need to, we'd abandon all our ecological
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ideas, but we need to do it in AI, think in a way which is more
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realistic and practical and more relevant to where we are.
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So rather than trying to protect supposedly pristine ecosystems,
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which, well, they're not pristine, doesn't really exist.
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I mean, ecosystems are constantly changing and fluxing
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for one reason or another, internal dynamics included.
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So recognize that nature is something that keeps moving on.
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People talk quite a lot now about novel ecosystems,
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ecosystems which are a mixture of what you might call native
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species. Of course, nothing's very
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native. We had nothing native during the
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Ice Age in Britain. It was all gone.
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We were covered in ice. So everything, nothing is that
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native, but, you know, relatively native and other
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species that are moving in. And novel ecosystems I would say
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are an example of, well, some people would say that, oh, this
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is dreadful. It's not pristine nature.
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It's it's sort of horrible. I would say this is nature
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adapting. This is nature evolving.
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This is species that can thrive, thriving.
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And sometimes those species have been brought in by humans and,
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and that can create its own problems.
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But very often it's natural movement of species.
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I think if, if we're going to accommodate or if we're going to
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help nature through a period of rapid climate change, which
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we're we're still going through and I'll be going to go go
12:39
through for a few decades yet, whatever we need to be able to
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help species move to keep up with the changing climate.
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So that seems to me a, a perfectly sensible thing to be
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doing, but one which rather clashes with ideas about
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protecting pristine or native or or unchanging ecosystems.
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So we've got to be more practical.
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We've got to be more sensible. I think I'm the pragmatist in
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this. And some of the discourse around
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native species and invasive species worries me slightly
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because it's not a million miles away to having that applied to
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human immigrants. And some, some of the far right
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groups use exactly this kind of language.
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They do so it it you know, and I'm not being facetious.
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I think this is actually a relevant point.
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And the sort of the knee jerk reaction of needing to eliminate
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invaders and get rid of non natives I think is sort of
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related to this because it's about concepts of purity and,
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you know, and belonging and things like that.
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I think it relates very directly.
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I mean the language is the same, the rhetorical devices of the
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same aliens and so on. But also I mean the counter
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argument is is equally there. Just as I think you you could
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make a very good case and I would make the case that in
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human society, migration of human is good.
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It brings in new dynamism, new ideas, new approaches, new
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entrepreneurial spirit, if you like.
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It's generally very good for communities to have people
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coming in from outside and and rethinking things and I think
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the same much the same applies in nature.
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Species coming in can stir things up.
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Yes, sure, they're causing change, they're causing
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development, but it's often very productive.
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And there's some very good examples of where ecosystems
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have been thoroughly messed up through either through, you
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know, rampant deforestation or toxins or whatever.
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And it's the newcomers, it's the that move in that are able to
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restore that because you find that quite often find that
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native species, well, they'd be more or less wiped out.
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And you've got this sort of almost, almost at a wasteland
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waiting to be recolonized. And the new colonists will often
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be species coming in from outside.
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So I think the parallels between, if you like human
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society needing to evolve and and innovate and change and
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respond by bringing in outside ears, outside ideas and outside
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people, I think must. The same applies to ecosystems.
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And it depends how you how you then count biodiversity as well.
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And this this pertains to that. I think you refer to this in in
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your first chapter that in the UK at least, which we typically
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think of as as having high rates of biodiversity loss.
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Actually, if you count all of the invasive species, the the
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actual biodiversity in terms of numbers of different species is
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probably getting higher. But that means you have to do
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things like Japanese knotweed and grey squirrels.
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I mean, what is that a real number?
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Well, it, it, it's a perverse effect.
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I mean, you could, you can demonstrate loss of biodiversity
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if you simply ignore all the newcomers.
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And that's literally what what, what happens in much of British
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and not just British species counting.
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If anything comes in from outside, it's regarded as alien,
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it's regarded as invasive, and indeed is regarded in law as
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something which should be got rid of.
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You know, we're, we're supposed to be getting rid of these
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newsweeks. Well, if you, if you count the
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species that disappear as reducing biodiversity and don't
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count the species that show up as increasing biodiversity,
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you're going to constantly get decline.
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You can't get anything else. Mathematical impossibility if
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you, if you discount all, all the newcomers.
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And that literally is, is is what ecosystem counting often
16:01
does. And that is, I think that's bad
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ecology, it's bad science, and it's bad conservation as well.
16:08
And oddly, some some of the species which are in decline or
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even extinct in one part of the world suddenly have a great
16:13
flourishing where they are considered invaders in a totally
16:16
different part of the world. Yeah, species.
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Species move around, whether brought by humans or or not, and
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they find new ways of living, only moving from one continent
16:24
to another. They maybe didn't have a chance
16:26
of being in that continent and they suddenly got there and
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they're either diabetic. I mean, we have to remember that
16:30
most invasive species don't last very long.
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They die, die out because they don't, you know, life's not
16:35
conducive for them. Some of them do at least in the
16:38
short term cause 'cause havoc because you know, there's
16:41
nothing to eat them or whatever and they just reproduce and
16:43
reproduce. Usually that's a self limiting
16:45
fact and, and things settle down after a while.
16:48
But they can cause short term problems and we have to be aware
16:50
of that. But a huge number of species
16:53
just sort of turn up and show up and, and they get adopted not by
16:57
ecosystems themselves, but also by humans.
16:59
And we have to remember that, you know, I mean rabbits, so you
17:02
can't get much more sort of symbolic of sort of British
17:06
countryside as, as sort of rabbits wandering.
17:09
Well, you know, until 1000 years ago, we didn't have rabbits.
17:12
Rabbits were brought in to be farmed.
17:15
And after we decided we didn't like rabbit meat very much or we
17:18
were going to start eating other stuff, the rabbits were sort of
17:20
let go. And then now across the
17:22
countryside. And the more rabbits there are,
17:25
the more rat, the more Raptors there are, you know, they're,
17:29
they're intrinsic part of, of our, of our current ecosystem.
17:33
Or, you know, it's a mess around ecosystem, but it's a rural
17:36
ecosystem nonetheless. But they're not native.
17:38
You go back 1000 years, they weren't here.
17:40
I would guess that perhaps one day we'll we'll treat the grey
17:43
squirrel in a similar light that that may take a while, but you
17:47
have to if you think about grey squirrels and red squirrels, I
17:49
mean the bizarre feature of that is the red squirrels where they
17:53
survive, survive in woodland of non-native conifer trees, firs
18:00
and so on. Whereas the incoming grey
18:03
squirrels like native deciduous woodland.
18:06
So there's kind of, you know, that that doesn't add up to, you
18:10
know, dealing with pristine ecosystems.
18:12
It's the invaders that like the native vegetation and the native
18:15
species likes species like the like the invader vegetation.
18:19
Well, you know, that's how nature, nature, nature doesn't
18:22
have these categories. And where we introduce them,
18:25
they could often do more harm than good.
18:27
You mentioned rabbits, and this is a pretty poor segue, but
18:29
Breeding Like Rabbits has a chapter on the human population
18:33
bomb, as was. Yeah.
18:35
And again, this is sort of a, you know, was a foundational
18:38
tenet of the environmental movement.
18:39
You know, Paul Ehrlich's book The Population Bomb, which you
18:42
refer to, had this notion that, I mean, it said in the first
18:46
page, didn't it, the hundreds of millions of people going to die,
18:48
meaning in I think the 1970s, or at least. 1980s, he said.
18:52
In 80s OK and the population bomb, as you put in the chapter
18:56
title is being is being defused. So tell us a bit about kind of
19:00
human population dynamics and and what's really shifted, I
19:03
mean, during the space of of your career and covering this?
19:06
Well, for almost the first international conference I went
19:09
to was the UN population conference in Mexico City in in
19:12
1984. And then the talk was all about,
19:15
I mean, well population had been doubling very every 30 years.
19:19
I mean, it was not unreasonable to be scared about the rise in
19:22
human numbers. Some were there were very
19:24
draconian attempts to do something about this, the most
19:27
notorious of which is China's one child policy.
19:30
And the architect of that policy, you know, forced
19:32
sterilizations, forced abortions, and the rest of it
19:35
was given the UN population prize at that event.
19:38
So it was those draconian, you know, human rights violations on
19:43
a huge scale. Policies in the name of
19:46
demography and defusing the population bomb were were all
19:50
the rage and were were accepted in the international discourse.
19:53
Well, what's happened since is well, we the China experiment
19:57
wasn't repeated elsewhere and indeed the Chinese have watched
20:00
it now. But what's happened is, is that
20:03
couples that women have drastically reduced the number
20:06
of children that they have for perfectly reasonable personal
20:09
reasons. I mean, if you, if you want to
20:11
look at it on the sort of big scale, I mean essentially what
20:13
happened is, is that through the 20th century.
20:17
Public health regimes and medical practice improved so
20:20
much that most children got to grow up.
20:22
But 100 years ago they didn't. If you wanted to like produce
20:26
two children to to produce the next generation if you like, you
20:30
probably had to have four or five.
20:32
And that's exactly what people did.
20:33
It was a very rational decision. Plus people in rural areas.
20:36
Children were very useful on the farm.
20:37
And there are lots of reasons why children were an economic
20:40
asset from from a young age. Well, we're in a different world
20:43
now. Most children now get to grow
20:45
up. You don't need to have 4.
20:47
And it took a while for people to kind of clock on to this.
20:50
And it's that there was a period, the period of, if you
20:53
like, the population bomb, when people were still having four or
20:56
five children and they were all getting to adulthood and having
20:59
their own children. And that's when population
21:01
growth peaked. Now we're past that.
21:03
The average round the world, I'm not just talking about the rich
21:07
world or Europe or anywhere, the average round the world is now
21:10
about 2.3, I think slightly under 2.3 children per woman,
21:14
which is effectively the replacement level.
21:17
Much of the world. Huge areas of Europe and East
21:19
Asia are particularly well below that.
21:22
Singapore is below one child per woman.
21:24
So the large, large parts of the world which are going to see
21:27
declining populations and the rest of the world, Africa is
21:30
still a stand out to some extent.
21:32
But as Africa urbanizes, children cease to be an economic
21:36
asset because they're not on a farm, if that once they're in
21:39
cities, they need to be educated and you know, they're not going
21:43
to be an economic asset until they get a job when they're, I
21:45
don't know, 15 or 16 or whatever it is.
21:47
So the economics of, of having large families is, is very
21:51
different as well. And in that environment, couples
21:54
are making sense of women and making sensible choices about
21:57
about having much smaller families.
21:59
So for all those kind of reasons, which have to do with
22:01
humans making individual choices about, about their lives, rather
22:05
than if you like the population police coming in and telling
22:07
them what they can and can't do. The population bomb has been
22:10
defused now, right now because of the previous high birth rate
22:15
there, there is a large cohort of, of women and, and, and men
22:19
as well in in their instead of child bearing age.
22:22
So we've got to, if you like, there's kind of be a kind of
22:25
time lag before the decline in fertility, stable population.
22:30
But by the second-half of this century, we're going to have a
22:33
stable population. It may well we're over over
22:35
8,000,000 now. It may get a billion now make it
22:38
to 9 or perhaps 10, but we're not going to go beyond that.
22:41
And that's, you know, I, I don't know if you call it profoundly
22:45
good news, but it's certainly stabilizing force for human
22:49
impact on the planet. I think now we have a much
22:51
bigger consumption bomb issue than we have a population bomb
22:54
issue and of course this politics.
22:56
Yeah, well, let's move on to that.
22:58
You talk about peak stuff in the next chapter.
23:00
Yeah, it sounds like the consumption bomb is also being
23:02
diffused. Is that not the?
23:03
Case well, well, two things are going on I think which are
23:05
reducing the footprint of the average human on the planet in
23:10
in in some respects at any rate, sort of materials modern
23:14
technology systems are a lot more efficient.
23:17
We get a lot more bang for our buck.
23:19
We get more product from using similar amount of materials and
23:23
indeed similar amount of energy. And we're a much more efficient
23:26
society in that respect than we were even 20 or 30 years ago.
23:30
In the UK, for instance, the amount of the per capita
23:33
consumption of materials, which includes everything from
23:37
building materials to textiles to, you know, coal, I suppose
23:40
is, is quite drastically down from what it was 20 years ago.
23:44
And that's a, a phenomenon that we're beginning to see around
23:47
the world. Modern technology is better at
23:50
producing our stuff. We're still asking for more
23:52
stuff still globally. But the the second factor is
23:56
that to some extent humans are making individuals in the rich
24:01
world are making fewer demands. Our view of ourselves is subtly
24:06
changing. Marketing people have remarked
24:08
on this quite a lot, probably more than anybody else.
24:11
We don't kind of demand more stuff so much now as more life
24:15
experiences. So rather than sort of buying
24:18
another car every three or five years, we're more inclined to
24:22
kind of spend our money on the gym or going to a better
24:24
restaurant or taking yoga classes or their sort of
24:28
lifestyle experiences, which seem to be, as I said, this is
24:33
conjectural a bit. But where they seem to be
24:35
increasingly how we measure the quality of our lives.
24:39
It's also notable we drive less, something which quite surprised,
24:43
surprised me. But since about 2005, almost all
24:47
rich world countries, people have been driving, including the
24:49
US, which is the sort of car economy on stilts, really.
24:55
Even there, they're driving less, using public transport
24:58
more where it's available. And sometimes just because we're
25:01
the way that we use digital systems and our phones and so
25:04
on, we need to travel less because we can do you know, we
25:06
commute less because we can work from home.
25:09
You know, we can, we can see granny on the on the phone.
25:11
We don't necessarily have to drive 100 miles to go and see
25:14
her every weekend, you know, whatever it is.
25:17
So in our lifestyle, what the, the wider point I'm making is
25:21
that our lifestyles are changing in ways that are sometimes
25:24
subtly less harmful for the for the, for the planet.
25:28
And that is becoming, I think, a global phenomenon.
25:31
Even in China, they're finding that the addiction to cars is is
25:35
abating a little. Well, it makes sense for
25:37
literally all stuff. I mean, take a refrigerator.
25:40
The difference between having no refrigerator on a refrigerator
25:42
is enormous. Like you can you can suddenly
25:44
store food and you don't have huge amount amounts of wastage
25:47
to refrigerators. You know, that's a bit difficult
25:49
to fit in and three or four and it gets it would get to be a
25:52
real problem. So it's not like humanity's, you
25:55
know, demands for material stuff was always going to be in
25:59
sociable and increase. So I think that was sort of
26:02
obviously a myth really, if if people had understood that.
26:04
And it makes sense really to then move on to intangible
26:07
lifestyle type factors, as you say.
26:09
So this this. Yeah.
26:10
And there's, you know, this, there's good evidence that
26:12
that's what's happening. And I'm not saying that there
26:14
doesn't at a global level, a global level, there are so many
26:17
people who don't have the basics that we've got quite a long way
26:19
to go there. But it is nonetheless evidence
26:22
that we, if you like, the consumption bond doesn't have to
26:26
keep exploding. There are limits to what we
26:28
actually are going to want. Well, and and and is is is there
26:31
enough stuff on the planet for everyone to have a decent
26:34
quality of life or do we have to all give up stuff in in the rich
26:37
world? Well, it's not, it depends what
26:39
you mean by stuff in, in terms of materials.
26:41
Well, we are, as I said earlier, we're using materials much more
26:44
efficiently in manufacturing and in yeah, in our in our lives
26:49
generally. So that is kind of keeping a lid
26:52
on things most times when I mean, I'm, you know, for the
26:55
last 50 years, I've constantly heard about materials about to
26:59
run out. Well, long before that actually
27:01
happens. People say, oh, you know,
27:03
that's, that's a shortage on things get expensive and
27:06
substitutes are found. So we're quite, you know, we
27:09
have to be, we have to keep innovating for sure.
27:12
We can't sort of sit back and say, say it will all happen, but
27:15
I think there is, we are still hugely inefficient in the way
27:18
that we use so many resources. I've written a lot over the
27:21
years about water and, and how we, we're, we're drying up some
27:26
of the world's great rivers and, and destroying them through dams
27:30
and, and extraction. The way we misuse water is just
27:34
quite stunning. The biggest use of water is
27:37
irrigating crops and most of the most of the water, it never gets
27:40
anywhere near the roots of crops.
27:41
It's evaporated into the air or it's soaks underground.
27:45
Well, if it soaks underground, we can pump it up again and use
27:47
it again perhaps, but if it doesn't get too poisoned.
27:50
But our, in general, our use of water is so inefficient that
27:55
there's huge, Ben huge potential to do things better.
27:59
And I think if there's going to be a good Anthropocene, it's
28:02
going to rely a lot on redoubling our efforts to do
28:05
that. It's already happening.
28:07
We're pushing it at open door because there's the cost of
28:10
materials goes up, manufacturers naturally want to use them more,
28:14
more efficiently and they want to recycle their waste products
28:16
and and so on. We're now hearing about how rare
28:19
metals are getting needed for our digital tech are, are now
28:23
being mined from from waste chips.
28:25
You know, that's happening on on a wide on quite a wide scale, I
28:29
think. So we're going to, you know,
28:30
we're going to get better at that kind of thing, better at
28:32
recycling, better at managing our waste and indeed,
28:35
eliminating our waste. Right.
28:37
And and moving to a circular economy where these metals can
28:40
be just used over and over again and new generations of batteries
28:43
or electric cars or whatever it happens to be.
28:44
Absolutely. I mean, that's, you know, it's
28:46
work in progress, but you know that I think that's, that's
28:48
where we're headed. And if we're going to have a
28:50
good Anthropocene and not really mess things up, then that's how
28:53
we how we are going to go. And those kinds of things would
28:55
be demonized as techno fixes by the previous generation of
28:59
environmentalists, maybe, which was always a pejorative term.
29:01
You have a chapter on that too, and saying that they can work.
29:05
And, you know, there's some pretty obvious and very well
29:08
known examples like the rise of renewables.
29:11
I mean, the clean tech transformation is well underway
29:14
now thanks to the massive drops in the price of solar PV and
29:17
batteries and so on. And but you're also long enough,
29:21
sorry, I was going to say, you're also long enough from the
29:23
tooth to remember previous problems like acid rain and the
29:26
ozone layer, which are also resolved with techno fixes.
29:27
And I think that's a sadly to be a lesson.
29:29
When you're writing on this for 40 years, you tend to look
29:31
backwards occasionally and it can be useful.
29:33
Yeah. I mean, absolutely.
29:35
I mean, when I was first doing writing on international
29:38
environment issues, acid rain was was top of the agenda.
29:41
We had the Volts turban in in in Germany where all the trees were
29:44
dying. It was never quite that bad, but
29:46
they were in a pretty bad way. And we have the ozone hole now.
29:49
We don't hear much about either of those now because in, in
29:52
they've been broadly technically fixed.
29:55
So I mean, it's just that if you like for, for, for new readers
29:59
who want to start here, yes, technical fixes can and do work.
30:02
Now, the politics about doing that can be fraught.
30:06
Manufacturers whose products turn out to be very dangerous
30:09
are remarkably adept at persuading the world that it
30:12
that wasn't the problem. And you know, we have to be
30:14
politically astute, astute and honest enough to address the
30:18
problems rather than up to one side.
30:21
Notoriously, the manufacturers of CFCS, which are the main
30:25
destroyer of the ozone layer, said for years and and indeed
30:29
their their host governments, the US and the UK in particular,
30:33
happily agreed with them that no, the science was very unclear
30:36
and there wasn't a problem. You'll have heard the same story
30:39
and the story of climate change until they developed technical
30:43
alternatives, which they could then launch on the world.
30:46
And in, in a great moment at the Montreal Protocol meeting in
30:49
1987, if I, ICI and DuPont turned up and said, oh, by the
30:54
way, we, I know we used to say that, that our CFCS weren't a
30:57
problem, but now we've got substitutes.
30:59
So now we're willing to recognise that they probably
31:02
were a problem and their host governments signed up to the
31:05
Montreal Protocol. And that was a tipping point
31:07
moment where we sold that. So it's not just the technology,
31:11
it's undoubtedly the politics. And we, we can never take our
31:14
eyes off that as regards climate change.
31:17
I mean, I went to the, sorry, sorry to go backwards again, but
31:19
I went to the Earth Summit in 1992.
31:22
There we, that was where they signed up to the climate
31:25
changing convention. You know, this great moment,
31:28
fabulous, fabulous. Everybody pulled together and
31:30
said we've got to do something about all these environmental
31:32
problems. They then walked away a bit, but
31:34
they said it. And at that time, wind power,
31:37
well, wind power was just a few turbines on a hill in, in
31:40
California. Solar power was so expensive, it
31:44
had been developed principally for for powering satellites in
31:47
space. It was so expensive that nobody
31:49
was dealing in that on any scale.
31:52
And electronic vehicles were nobody was talking about them at
31:54
all. And yet look where we are now.
31:57
Even five years ago, everybody said you were it's all very well
32:00
to have the resist renewable energy, but what do you do when
32:03
the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow?
32:04
We don't have any efficient means for storing this energy.
32:08
Well, over the last five years, 10 years perhaps, the Chinese
32:11
have been developing battery systems and they're still
32:13
working on the very hard. So the cost of batteries is
32:15
coming down as well. It's quite extraordinary the
32:18
extent to which the Chinese, who get pilloried a lot in the West
32:21
for many things, and some of them quite justified, have
32:25
really pioneered the green tech. As the 21st century goes on, I
32:28
think we're going to see them. Well, they're already selling
32:31
the war around the world, but they are going to dominate even
32:34
more in the energy sector. And the words of Donald Trump
32:37
trying to bring back coal are going to look pretty stupid.
32:40
Well, they they look pretty stupid already, I think.
32:42
Yeah, but I mean stupid not just in in environmental terms, but
32:46
in economic terms. I mean, basically he's he's
32:49
destroying America's ability to compete with the Chinese in that
32:53
in what will be a a huge market, indeed already is a huge market.
32:57
And it's not just the Chinese now the the Indians who've I've
33:00
been to climate conferences over over a good few years where the
33:04
Indians, even above the Chinese were pilloried as the people
33:07
trying to expand coal. And they were the, the Indians
33:10
will turn up in international conferences and say, how dare
33:13
you say we can't develop by expanding our coal resources to
33:16
develop our economy. But actually the the Indians are
33:20
now on a very fast scale developing solar power.
33:23
And they're working more on solar power than coal even.
33:26
So even even behind their rhetoric, they are moving fast
33:30
into low carbon technologies because it works, it's cheap,
33:35
it's very adaptable. You don't have to have a big
33:37
power station which which takes a few years to build.
33:40
You can do it incrementally and there are issues about about
33:44
land availability for, for wind and solar power.
33:48
That's undoubtedly that's going to be a huge issue in the in the
33:51
coming years. But it's happening and it's
33:54
happening in all the places though at where we often we're
33:56
inclined to blame for causing the global problems.
33:59
I wonder. Whether you could describe the
34:01
Chinese as sort of authoritarian eco modernist?
34:05
Yeah, I think, I think that's that's a very good way of
34:07
describing them, yes. Well, OK, you you you mentioned
34:10
eco modernism in in in the tech fix chapter and as as one of the
34:15
original co-authors of the come on this manifesto.
34:18
That wasn't, you know, China wasn't what was meant to happen.
34:21
It was meant to be a sort of more democratized vision of a
34:25
future where where human innovation and Genuity could
34:28
help solve these problems in a way which still allowed
34:30
ecological restoration and human flourishing at the same time.
34:33
What I mean, you came to a couple of our conferences.
34:35
What was your take on it then and now?
34:37
I found it bracing and invigorating and challenging in
34:42
some cases. And I can't say that I but I
34:45
mean, I think that I think that the, the drift of it is right.
34:48
Is that the the ways forward and not backwards, if you like.
34:51
I don't know that there are supply side solutions.
34:54
It's not. We don't all have to put on our
34:56
hair shirts and, and reduce our energy consumption forever in
35:00
order to save the planet. There are technologies that
35:03
allow allow us to do things orders of magnitude better with
35:07
orders of magnitude reduced impact on the planet.
35:10
And they're not all going to happen because as we've seen in
35:15
the last two or three years, the Silicon Valley Titans are not
35:19
always, always on side for all the things that we might want
35:22
them to be on side with. But it is there, it is possible.
35:26
The technology is there. As I think I said earlier, the
35:29
issues are more about the policy making and the political
35:32
background to it. You know, some things have gone
35:35
far enough that I think they'll happen anyway and I think low
35:37
carbon energy is one of those. I think we're beyond the tipping
35:40
point for that because the technology is just so cheap.
35:43
But in other areas, probably there is more of a challenge.
35:46
Yeah. And you can't discount the
35:47
politics because the process seems to be, if you take your
35:50
example from the Earth Summit onwards, the politics or even
35:53
even with the Montreal Protocol in the ozone, the politics then
35:56
drives the technology, technology change, which then
35:59
drives economics, brings down the price and then makes the
36:02
politics easier in turn. The technologists need to, as I
36:05
think they did when green technology is making its great
36:08
breakthroughs in, in the West in perhaps in the, in the 90s and
36:12
the noughties and more recently perhaps in China, there was a
36:15
confidence that there was going to be a market for this stuff
36:18
and people wanted to invest in it and it got going ahead.
36:21
And you're right that if the, if the political rhetoric changes,
36:24
then people get cool on that. Luckily, I think on, on
36:28
renewable energy, we, we kind of got beyond the tipping point
36:30
before the, the, the sort of political reaction took hold.
36:35
But my sense is that political reaction reaction may be
36:37
relatively short lived, but maybe I'm just being over
36:40
optimistic there. There is certainly still
36:42
potential for us to wreck the world and screw everything up.
36:44
I'm not, you know, the by the title of my book is despite it
36:48
all and, and the all is still there.
36:50
I mean, there's still an awful lot that can go wrong, but the,
36:53
the point of the book really was to was to encourage, well, first
36:57
of all, to say that pessimism is disruptive.
37:00
It narrows your horizons. It means that you don't embark
37:03
on things. It means that you kind of just
37:06
retreat into yourself. Whereas optimism allows you to
37:09
look for potential, look for things that will work, push at
37:12
the open doors. So a lot of the book is barely
37:15
about about pushing it open doors, whether it's encouraging
37:20
nature to expand and develop and and adapt and generally make
37:25
good in in the world that we've been messing up and also
37:28
encouraging the tech fixes that we need.
37:31
So that's kind of what the book's about.
37:33
As I say, the despite it all absolutely recognises the the
37:37
really severe straits that we're in in many respects, but it also
37:42
wants to maximise the chance of or our ability to understand
37:46
that there are solutions there. And, and a really important
37:49
dimension of the book, I thought was your discussion of the role
37:52
of indigenous peoples and, and you know what, you might, how
37:55
you might characterize those traditional societies.
37:57
I mean, it's important to remember that people living in
38:01
the Amazon rainforests, you know, they, they are modern,
38:04
they are living in the modern age.
38:05
They often use modern, you know, very up-to-the-minute
38:08
technologies as well. You have an example of a group
38:10
in Brazil who are using digital mapping to, to defend their
38:13
forests and also their their role in ecological protection,
38:16
which, you know, they used used to be thought by
38:19
conservationists that it was better to get rid of all the
38:21
people and build a fence. Yeah.
38:22
And now it's you can see very clearly if you look at a map of
38:24
Pasilla. The places where the forest is
38:26
most intact are the indigenous reserves.
38:28
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's just so obvious.
38:31
It's, it's not just in, I mean not indigenous communities who
38:35
have their, their, if you like, their, their own cosmology and
38:40
their own, their own traditions, but even more regular rural
38:44
communities. If they have control over their
38:46
environments, they will generally protect them quite
38:48
well. The problems tend to come when
38:50
outsiders come in and I include among that sometimes
38:53
environmentalists who try to dispossess some of their land
38:57
either in the name of mining or indeed in the name of
38:59
conservation. And I think when people have
39:01
their land taken off them, they tend not to think about
39:04
protecting that land in any for, for the use of future
39:07
generations because they have no expectation that they will have
39:11
access to that land in future generations.
39:13
So they take, they take a very short term view about, you know,
39:16
they'll, they'll wreck the forest because it's not theirs.
39:19
But if the forest is there, then they probably won't wreck it,
39:21
wreck it because they want it for the future generation and
39:24
they know more about probably about the ecosystem of that
39:27
forest and most people from outside.
39:29
So I, I do think with the best will in the world, I'm sure, but
39:33
many environmental groups have done more harm than good by
39:38
essentially taking land off rural communities, whether
39:42
indigenous or not, and putting a fence around it and sending the
39:45
people off to, to, you know, ghetto in a city somewhere or,
39:48
or wherever, or just camping up by the side of the road.
39:51
As you can see in many areas of Africa where people have been
39:55
taken out of their forests. It's highly destructive
39:58
socially, but it's also a very short sighted environmentally
40:01
because you'll end up creating battles over resources and a
40:05
whole range of actors who have no interest because they have no
40:08
responsibility for the long term protection of those assets.
40:12
So yeah, I mean, I, I, and we need to recognise that and we
40:16
need to look at that. We need to look at not just the
40:18
knowledge. That Indigenous and other rural
40:21
communities have of their resources, which are undoubtedly
40:25
in practical terms better than outside scientists very often,
40:29
but also, if you like, the ethics that goes with it, the
40:31
notions of commonality. We talked today about global
40:35
Commons that have been destroyed, and we're talking
40:37
about the oceans and the atmosphere, These things that
40:39
nobody owns that are absolutely vital to everybody.
40:42
And how do you've come up with systems of managing those?
40:45
And the political systems that we've got don't seem terribly
40:47
good so far. They're all, you know, we need
40:50
to keep working at it, but they're not terribly good.
40:52
So maybe sometimes we need to look back at the local Commons
40:56
and how they are managed by local communities.
41:01
And the argument is that when local communities have control
41:03
over their land, they're remarkably good at managing
41:05
them. So, I mean, this brings us to
41:08
another environmental nostrum that I think is is very
41:12
damaging. The idea of the tragedy of the
41:14
Commons, the idea developed in the 1960s by by the American
41:18
ecologist Garrett Hardin, whose politics are very scary, but
41:22
we'll leave that out, who just felt that where a resource was
41:26
commonly owned, it was doomed to destruction.
41:30
And his argument, which I can see is that if, if there was,
41:34
if, if it was, I'd say commonly owned, if it was not owned by
41:37
any individual, then everybody would ransack it for what they
41:40
could get out of it. Because everybody, you could
41:44
make, you know, you could make money out of it, you could do
41:46
well out of it. And everybody shared in the
41:48
downside. So you had to grab what you
41:51
could while the resource was still there.
41:54
And that applies, it was applied a lot to grazing lands, commonly
41:57
owned grazing lands, applied to rainforests being destroyed,
42:01
applied to unground water reserves where, you know, bigger
42:04
pump, you've got more water you can get out and and you can take
42:07
more and more and more fisheries as well until it's all gone.
42:10
Fisheries are another very good example.
42:11
Yes. And yes, that happens where
42:14
there is no ownership and no collective responsibility.
42:17
That can happen. But in the real world of, as the
42:20
economist Eleanor Ostrom got a Nobel Prize, got a Nobel Prize
42:24
for pointing out, in the real world, mostly where communities,
42:29
whether they're pastoralists or or indigenous people in the
42:33
rainforest or whoever they are, whether wherever they have
42:37
control over their resources, they have local systems of
42:40
management that protect those resources, and they're
42:43
remarkably good. So I think we need to learn that
42:45
lesson that we can have common ownership of resources, but we
42:49
have to have find the means of doing it.
42:52
And how we manage the common ownership of the atmosphere is
42:55
probably still up for grabs because of the UN processes are
42:59
are not going terribly well. The technology is doing fine,
43:02
but the politics is awful. So that's work in progress.
43:05
But I, I, I think one reason for highlighting the importance of
43:09
indigenous communities in the way that they protect their
43:12
natural landscapes was not just just to show that it is the
43:15
case, but also to try and learn some lessons perhaps about about
43:20
how in on the global scale we can learn something from how
43:25
they manage local commonly owned resources in our management of
43:29
the global Commons. Let's talk, you know, to to
43:33
complete this conversation, which has been absolutely
43:35
amazing about rewilding, that sort of ecological restoration,
43:39
which is self willed in a way, in that it's about species and
43:45
ecosystems, you know, basically coming back by themselves in
43:49
areas of land which have been spared because we're no longer
43:51
using it for farmland or whatever.
43:53
And sometimes it's a driven process.
43:54
You have species being introduced which would have been
43:57
there as native species in the judgement of some.
44:00
And you've got, I don't know, some really, really good
44:03
examples of it. And it strikes me that's one of
44:06
those things that actually all greens agree on.
44:07
Now, whether you're an eco modernist or an eco Malthusian,
44:10
pretty much everyone agrees that rewilding is good, right?
44:12
So, and so there's something positive about it, something
44:15
pragmatic, which which actually does bring us all together.
44:17
It's something which is happening and which you know,
44:20
can, can, can only be to the good really in terms of the the
44:24
restoration of the natural world.
44:25
I think, I think that's true. I mean, there are different ways
44:27
of going about it and I've waded into this debate a little bit.
44:31
I mean, you can see rewilding on in one form.
44:34
It's trying to put back together what we had in the past.
44:37
So if you like, it's more gardening than rewilding in my
44:39
view. You say, well, you know, 200
44:42
years ago or 100 years ago or before Europeans showed up in
44:46
North America or whatever your time frame is.
44:48
That's a bit arbitrary. But anyway, let that by.
44:51
That's what we had before. So let's try and recreate it.
44:55
And well, you could do that a bit.
44:56
I mean, you can help reconstruct Prairie ecosystems in the
45:00
American Midwest by bringing back the Buffalo and, and they
45:03
will do some of that work for you.
45:04
But the alternative way, if you like, is to is not to prescribe
45:09
what you want, but just to stand back and see what happens.
45:12
And broadly speaking, I think we probably need to do more of the
45:14
latter, not least because nature rarely does what we expected to
45:18
do or wanted to do. There are some good examples of
45:20
trying to recreate past systems. There's there's the famous
45:23
example of the Dutch polder where they tried to recreate a
45:27
European pre industrial ecosystem and they landed up
45:29
with lots of animals dying and and animal rights people didn't
45:33
like it and they had to abandon the whole project.
45:35
Things can go wrong when you try and dictate what nature does.
45:39
So I think, I mean, you know, probably most people in inhabit
45:44
somewhere in the middle of that debate.
45:45
But at the I think we need to head more towards the towards
45:49
the rewilding by standing back and letting, letting, letting
45:53
nature see what it does. Nature is probably rather better
45:56
at deciding what is going to work in the modern world than we
45:59
are in changing climate and pollution regimes and so on.
46:04
Nature's pretty good at adapting and evolving, and I think we
46:06
should maximize its chance of doing that successfully.
46:10
And yeah, we can. OK, sometimes we can introduce
46:12
species. We know that some species that
46:15
were in the environment in the past were particularly critical,
46:18
critical for the development of ecosystems, apex predators and
46:22
that kind of thing. There's no harm in trying to
46:24
reintroduce those, though sometimes the effects may be a
46:27
bit unpredictable. But, you know, let's try that
46:30
out. I'm not saying we should, we
46:31
should stand off totally, but I think there should be a
46:34
presumption that we don't know best, that probably leaving it
46:38
to nature is, is the right way to do work rewilding.
46:41
But yeah, let's I, I think we can, we can agree that rewilding
46:44
is good for sure. Well, if I can ask you to kind
46:47
of sum up the situation with regards to biodiversity and
46:52
species loss, I mean, are we beginning to turn a corner here?
46:56
You talk about the Iberian lynx rebounding tigers in India.
47:00
Of course there's whale populations.
47:03
I think humpback whales now beginning to get back to what
47:06
was pre industrial whaling historic abundance.
47:08
You know, are we getting somewhere here or is, you know,
47:12
reading the Red List, it still seems depressing every year.
47:14
Will these species which are critically endangered,
47:18
optimistic or pessimistic here? I'm reasonably optimistic,
47:21
actually. I think we are.
47:24
I mean, yes, species are still disappearing, but as I said
47:26
earlier, you know, there's a constant turnover of species in
47:29
particular places, but on the planet as well, we are going to
47:32
lose species and some of those that we don't need to lose and,
47:36
and I would prefer that we keep them, but some of the some are
47:38
probably going to disappear anyway.
47:40
We can look to as, as some botanists and indeed some
47:45
zoologists have been looking at is is how new species turn up.
47:49
Hybridisation of species is a constant in nature.
47:53
Nature is constantly coming up with new species.
47:55
And there's evidence, preliminary evidence, but
47:58
evidence that evolution is going into OverDrive currently because
48:02
there are more ecological niches and spaces being created in a
48:05
natural environment that new species or hybrid species can.
48:09
It can evolve and adapt and move into.
48:11
So we're going to see some, you know.
48:14
Yeah, we're going to see some high profile losses.
48:17
We're also going to see high profile recoveries.
48:19
You mentioned a few of them are the wolf.
48:20
Wolves moving across Europe are a great example and another
48:24
great example of if you like the call of the wild, if I can put
48:27
it that way. So in the long run, I'm
48:29
reasonably optimistic. Yeah, there's there's going to
48:31
be some species that we love that we're going to lose and we
48:34
will regret that and no harm in regretting that.
48:37
And I think we should try and minimize it.
48:39
Nature in the on the big scale probably doesn't care too much
48:42
about those things, but we but we certainly do.
48:45
It'll improve our love of nature, sure, if we if, if, if
48:48
we can try and protect some of those.
48:50
But let's not lose sight of the bigger picture, which is we need
48:53
to help nature in the round to recover and adapt and evolve.
48:59
And right now it shows every indication that it's up to the
49:03
task. So yeah, in that respect, I'm an
49:06
optimist. Yeah, well, you end the book
49:07
very relatedly with a quote saying so Can I be an optimist
49:10
despite at all? Yes, I believe I can.
49:13
The worst could still happen, but doesn't have to.
49:15
Pessimism is for the fetus. I have faith in humanities,
49:18
ingenuity and collective will. End of quote.
49:20
And I have to say I I share that faith.
49:22
And I think if you don't, you're sort of a slightly more
49:26
miserable person than you he might be.
49:28
It also makes it harder to get out and do do things and to to
49:31
try and build a better future in in pragmatic ways.
49:34
Well, I think if you're an, if you're a miserablist and A and a
49:37
complete pessimist, then I think you're on the wrong side of the
49:40
solution because you're not, you know, you're not helping really.
49:43
I mean to, I mean to be fair, we to be fair, we need pessimists
49:47
to point out the problems, but we absolutely need optimists to
49:50
come up with the solutions. Absolutely.
49:52
Well, the book's called, Despite It All, a handbook for
49:54
environmental hopefuls. Is it published now, Fred?
49:56
It is published as of as of yesterday.
49:59
Speaking on a Friday. The whatever the date is, it's
50:01
now out. Yes.
50:02
It's the 13th of February, so yes, it'll be out by the time
50:06
you by the time you hear this. Yeah, it was.
50:08
In which case I can I can exclusively reveal it was
50:10
published on the 12th. Fantastic.
50:13
I've I've so much enjoyed this conversation and learned a lot,
50:16
Fred. So thanks again for for being
50:18
such such an inspiring writer for so long and I wish you luck
50:22
on your next book. Thanks very much for your work
50:24
Mark as well. Thanks so much for listening to
50:30
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