By the
pond The next
war: over the fate of the earth
By ARTHUR JONES
The major conflict of the early
third millennium will be the battle for the earth. It will be waged -- if we
may generalize -- between materialists and environmentalists.
In the initial analysis -- which is where we are now -- it is a
war within each of us. It is still largely an internal conflict about what
values we hold versus what values we ought to hold; a battle between our
material desires and satisfactions, and our deeper -- possibly buried --
convictions about nature and the integrity of creation.
The combatants are on opposing hills. Environmentalists are
struck by scientific assertions regarding deteriorating ecological conditions
and fear the consequences. Materialists feel free to ridicule the fear because
the consequences are as yet unknown.
Botanist Sir Ghillean Prance, director of the Royal Botanic
Gardens at Kew, England, writing in The Tablet at the time of the
Brazilian forest fires, asks, Why do we wait for such events before we
think of the environment? With our continuously rising population, our focus on
economic growth and excess prosperity, we are changing the environment at an
unprecedented rate. As a biologist, I truly fear that we are approaching the
point where the biological systems that sustain the earth will
collapse.
Materialist Ben Wattenburg, in effect, replies. Writing about
economic doomsayers in The Washington Times, he relies on
mans intellect to provide substitutes for nonrenewable
resources. He would undoubtedly include Prance among his Malthusian
runaway environmentalists.
Arguing against Malthus
States Wattenberg, Malthus (the 19th century social thinker
who urged moral restraint population control and believed
population would outrun resources) has proved to be wrong about resources. They
can and do often grow far beyond the slowpoke arithmetic model he offered.
Computer-chip speed has been doubling every 18 months, thats a geometric
progression. The advent of tractors, new seeds, mass irrigation and
fertilization send food production rocketing.
There are plenty in the environmental field who would welcome the
opportunity to explain to Wattenberg what else has been sent rocketing by the
advent of tractors, new seeds, mass irrigation and fertilization. The
disappeared farmland cannot grow increased yields of wheat from new seeds;
reduced seed variety due to the commercialization of seeds threatens plant life
on which the world depends for 60 percent of its food.
The pope agrees with the materialists -- theres plenty of
food to go around. But, the pope adds, share it. Dont let necessities be
subject to the profit motive, the pope begs. That doesnt go down well
with materialists.
Environmentalists see the entirety of natures biodiversity
threatened. Among vertebrates alone, the World Conservation Union sees one in
four vertebrate species in serious decline. Indeed, we can actually
see the popular wildlife of the world, the elephants and rhinos of
Africa, the tigers and Great Pandas of Asia, the plumed birds of the islands
dwindling in numbers. Even materialists -- perhaps especially materialists --
have contributed to the World Wildlife Fund.
Building blocks at risk
Unseen, however, is the fate of the millions of microscopic
building blocks of the Earths life web, facets eliminated by toxic waste,
tourism or ignorance. As one who has written extensively on marine
biotechnology, I am convinced that a polluted ocean that kills marine life is
also depriving the next century of new sources for drugs and antibiotics.
Unknown are the consequences of all this loss. And that lets the materialists
off the hook.
The environmentalists are at a disadvantage because the results
are not yet in. Sure, the frogs are disappearing, as are bees and pollinating
insects. Clean air, clean water, clean rivers are disappearing. Fish are
disappearing to the point where governments have banned certain catches. But
what does it add up to?
The scientific cautionary tales are many but not understood in
the aggregate. There isnt yet a big picture. It could well take the
ecological Chernobyl implied in botanist Prances remarks to enable us to
explain our dilemma to ourselves.
There is a parallel between the economic world and the natural
world. Perhaps it helps explain why materialists dont worry when species
disappear. The economic world, too, dangles on finer and finer threads and
fewer of them. The economic ecosystems are in decline.
As there are fewer strains of wheat or rice to rely on -- if and
when an ecological Chernobyl strikes -- so everything in the capitalistic world
comes down finally to the rule of two or the rule of
three. Only because it cant yet come down to the rule of
one.
End result of capitalism
Everyone who took Economics 101 knows that the end result of
capitalism is monopoly or, where monopoly is impossible, a comfortable duopoly
or oligopoly. The polite fiction is that even where only two or three are
gathered in profits name, competition remains. That fiction is shattered
whenever a new lower cost competitor appears, quickly to be bought up, denied
access to the distribution network or otherwise put out of business.
If the survival of two or three works for the economic world,
materialists posit, why shouldnt it be good enough for the natural world?
This would be consistent with Wattenbergs thesis that mans
intellect is on hand to solve problems or dispose of unfortunate
by-products. In other words, let the frog take care of itself.
Materialists play the same game of chicken in their own lucrative
world that theyre prepared to play in the environmental world. The
prospect of credit failure due to First World consumer saturation is as serious
a threat to the economic system as flood saturated land is to the agricultural
system, to take one example. Nuclear failure is on hold, not eliminated, to
take another.
But the materialists are first to insist on fallback scenarios
and contingency plans. Yet the same intellect does not make room for the
necessity of similar farsightedness in the environmental/ecological realm. A
healthy fear of unknown consequences is not always unwarranted. Its
sometimes called wisdom.
If materialists refuse to be as farsighted over biodiversity
preparedness as they are for business risks, there must be something else at
stake.
There is: profits.
To acknowledge threats to the environment is to acknowledge that
something ought to be done. But to do that requires acknowledging the need for
ever greater regulation, greater oversight, an interruption of
capitalisms freedoms.
So the battle at this initial stage is being fought on several
fronts, including negotiation, agitation by proxies and politics.
Negotiation starts when capitalism, backed against the wall,
says: Tell me whats needed and Ill fix it. The fix then becomes
part of the cost of doing business. A classic example is ISO 14000.
International standards
The 52-year-old International Organization for Standards in
Geneva is a grouping of 130 worldwide national standards bodies. One of the
agreed standards, ISO 14000, is an agreement on environment management. It
concerns industrial and manufacturing processes. It means, in effect, that
manufacturers cannot produce their exports cheaply by cutting costs the easy
way -- dumping foul liquids in rivers, belching poisonous smoke into the air.
They sign on to ISO 14000 as a pledge they are meeting these international
standards. Taiwan is a classic example of a country pouring hundreds of
millions of dollars into environmental cleanup to meet ISO standards.
The proxy agitators are usually columnists and talking heads,
academics and scientists. The Wattenbergs and the Prances. Their attacks on
each other are not so much ad hominem as between warring special interests.
Finally, there are the political battles over money and property
rights whose outcomes are dependent entirely on access to government support.
An example is West Virginia where the coal companies are slicing the tops off
thousands of acres of mountains. They dump the debris in the valleys, foul the
water as the dust clogs the air, they buy up the housing, close down the towns,
haul away the exposed coal seam, and then haul ass to the next mountain and
begin again. To critics the coal companies can always cite Isaiah 40 about
every hill made low -- or, if that doesnt satisfy the critics, refer them
to West Virginias governor and his pick as head of the state Division of
Environmental Protection. Theyre both former coal company executives.
Theres little doubt who is winning most of those current
battles.
Why, in the next century, does it have to be war?
Capitalisms first criterion is: Tell us what to do and well
fix it. Just dont try to change the system. War will be declared
the moment environmentalists link up as a political-economic force that starts
from something other than profits.
Call that system distributivist, democratic socialist or
something else, it will be the opening shot in the third millennium war over
the fate of the earth.
Arthur Jones is NCR editor at large.
National Catholic Reporter, December 11,
1998
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