Environment and Infrastructure

Infrastructural politics work in developed countries, thus I assume this poses no real challenge. If a Meta Constitution can be devised, covering infrastructural inter-social politics will be technical problem that can be solved by lawyers and politicians. Some democratic scheme that is as localized as possible (since infrastructure is often a local problem, the according policies should be local) will do the job.

Protecting the environment is another matter completely. This works only thoroughly in countries that already have removed most of their natural environments and replaced them with cultivated land. And even those care little about the havoc wreaked by palm oil plantations or their CO2 emissions for that matter. I think we'll barely escape to fry, drown or poison ourselves. Hopefully we'll also manage to not blow ourselves to smithereens. But if mankind survives, Gaya will have taken major blows. We'll shortly have exhausted much of the world's forests, fishing grounds and fertile land. We might get by, but we'll extinguish 90% or more of the world's species in the process. This is no pessimism, it is an extrapolation of a development that goes on for millennia already. And there is no sign of its stopping.

So what can be done? I think it is not possible and not even preferable to save the environment while many people starve or die of nasty diseases. Environmental protection cannot be enforced on people in any kind of social organization that I would like to live in. So the problem of saving the environment is one of feeding and educating people.

No problem there. Let's just spend a trillion dollars on nourishment and education of the world. Each year. The first hundred billion will easily cover the nourishment problem, UNO estimates more like thirty to fifty billion yearly to quench hunger. The remaining 900 billion could probably cover enough education to get even environmental protection in place in a decade. Oh and the world would be a much better place. A trillion each year. That is economically quite possible, it is the amount the world spends on weapons each year. OK, I know it is utterly ridiculous to expect people will stop killing each other and instead start feeding and educating each other. It mostly worked in western Europe, but even if we pushed hard the development in the rest of the world would probably take decades. It will hopefully happen eventually, but Gaya will look rather ragged by then.

So I propose something else. Unknown species cannot be revived. Incomprehensible ecosystems cannot be rebuild. Actually it looks as if ecosystems cannot be rebuild at all. But as long as we do not know what we loose, we should try our best to close no doors that we cannot open again. We should lobby our governments to spend a couple of billion to research biodiversity, to deep freeze samples of every species we can get hold on and to study ecology while it is still there to study. Then maybe at least some parts the Biosphere can be rebuild (probably in a very different fashion from now) once we decided on the survival of mankind.

Let me elaborate this a bit. If you are an environmentalist: you do a great job (hopefully), but you are going to loose most of the battles. There is no chance in hell, we'll preserve even fifty percent of the current biodiversity even through the next fifty years. Biodiversity is very likely of significant value to mankind so we should start some desperate measures as well. This work is already in progress but more money should be spend on it. It would for example suffice to relocate the funds on fusion power research to biodiversity and ecology research. We would gain granted value in exchange for something that is not proven to work at all ... or even very likely to work in the foreseeable future. OK we don't have to abandon fusion power, the point is we are not talking terribly much money. Think Human Genome Project. A similar effort on a similar timescale would get the job done.

In the meantime capping total emissions and use of natural resources would suffice. The scheme of trading emission concessions looks very promising. But all that is worthless as long as the masses don't care for the environment. It is again a problem of education. The measures are there, the political will is not. I think this will eventually change by itself. As soon as neo liberalism and its formidable propaganda machine (see section 5.1.1.3) are not the overly dominant system anymore, such things will change automatically. I assume that humans like nature, enjoy it very much and are willing to preserve it if they are not subject to massive propaganda that says otherwise. And if they are not busy starving.

Environmental destruction is a symptom of our social problems. Once we solve the social problems, the environmental problems will vanish. Sadly most of the environment will vanish before we get a grip on politics, so we should try desperately to save what we can.