murmurations

The notion of a population of individuals (a school of fish, a herd of buffalo, a country of citizens) as a biological unit is both commonplace and foreign.  A murmuration of starlings appears cognitive in direction and nimble intent. A school of fish is similarly responsive, exhibiting behavior of a disconnected whole.

As citizens, it is harder to visualize, say, an electorate with similar coherence.  We don't dart and wheel with anything like synchronization. We assert individuality, free will, diversity of opinion.

An electorate is a richly variegated murmuration of citizens, and the current electorate is different from any known to any citizen now voting.  This is perhaps always the case, but fair to say never more than today?

Both sides feel an existential threat from the other.  Sinusoidal polls characterize similarity to the past, implying predictive power.  Intimations of tortured legal pressure, Machiavellian machinations, and intimidation and violence proliferate.

Whence goeth our strained murmuration?

A thought experiment regarding the ecological future of the earth

The stability of climate on Planet Earth is defined by an aggregate of geologic, meteorologic, and ecologic influences. The “set state” of this aggregate changes over time as the interplay of these inputs varies.  Early plant life generated oxygen necessary to support aerobic species and paved the way for the development of organisms able to sequester and expend ever-larger amounts of energy. Ice ages, meteor impacts, warming stages, volcanic activity, and wholesale rearrangements of continents reconfigured the face of the planet. Life emerged from the oceans. Extinctions occurred and life evolved.

Humankind is the culmination of this trajectory, and has come to dominate ecologic change. The industrial revolution accelerated this trend by virtue of unprecedented oxidation of carbon fuels, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, resulting in retention of heat from the sun (the greenhouse effect taught in every biology or ecology class for at least half a century).

We see then that the earth has always been changing, is always changing.  The new thing is the realization that humankind is the source of the bulk of that change, and the speed at which the change is taking place. As individuals having free will, we can choose to weigh evidence, make choices, act in concert to alter the otherwise inexorable change that may compromise our very claim on existence.

There is a strong sense of injustice in the attending social calculus.  The poor will shoulder the greatest dislocation and suffering.  The rich will insulate themselves more easily from the perturbations.  At least for a time.

But notions of justice are only relevant in the social contexts that we, as a species, bring to the discussion.  From a planetary, or solar-systemic, or universal perspective, it is not a factor.  Planet Earth cannot be attributed with consciousness, let alone values.  [We must acknowledge a small minority that disagrees about this - let them do their own thought experiment).

The earth does not need a lawyer, as the laws of physics and chemistry and biology do not admit a jurisprudence based on rights and values.  There is an external reality that governs the trajectory of the future. We needn’t (indeed, cannot) rely on conflicted social and political systems to adjudicate it. One can even argue that the catastrophic collapse of civilization is in the best interests of the planet in the long term.  Witness the extraordinary resurgence of a healthy ecosystem in the restricted area of the Chernobyl meltdown… the removal of people from the area has fostered a vigorous resurgence and vitality.

Human efforts to reduce the rate and amplitude of climate change take place within political systems. Centralized authoritarian control demarcates one end of this spectrum, and democratic rule the other. In each, industries and public interest groups are often at odds, each asserting rights, projecting values, and challenging the case of opponents.

The value of protecting the earth - supporting species diversity, mitigating disruptions among vulnerable populations, and preserving habitat for non-human species is in actuality supporting the rights of specific populations to enjoy stasis, to resist change that is not in their interests.  This goal is laudable and worthy of support, as the disruptions of climate change seem already to be among us, and come with severe threats to social and economic stability.

But it should not go unrecognized that to curb these disruptions also comes at a great short-term cost.  The short-term consequences of limiting climate change involve foregoing economic development for tens or hundreds of millions of people (think China, India, Africa). The long term goal may indeed be worth great sacrifice, but democratic political systems are not well-structured to favor the long-term over the short-term.  

Ironically, the current archetype of authoritarian centralization of power (China) evidences a stronger understanding of the importance of balancing economic disruption and climate disruption than the western democracies and Africa.  The model of centralized power pays obeisance to both the urgent demand for social stability as well as their future well-being, and policy is focussed on balancing these opposing forces. The jury is not in as to whether China will succeed in this balancing act, even if their commitment is real.

But imagine the resistance to far-sighted climate change policy in, say India, now the world’s most populated nation state.  You cannot be elected, let alone re-elected, in any democracy on a platform of deprivation -- suffer now, that future generations (mostly in other nation-states) will benefit. Few voters check the deprivation box on the ballot.

The political structures of the world’s most powerful democracy are currently so crippled by internecine conflict that value-laden policy predicated on protecting a world vulnerable to climate change is beyond expectation.  Democracy is for the here and now, not the what-if when. The inconvenient truths are insufficient currency to purchase a future that favors the climatic status quo.

Gnashing our teeth about the injustice of the rapid disruption we are experiencing is wasted effort. Conservation of resources is always good policy, but it doesn’t scale in a world where the few have already vastly exploited The Commons, and the many are hungry, thirsty, and eager for their share.

The alternative is to express values in your personal choices and actions, but don’t be surprised (or offended) when others don’t adopt these values. Instead of investing the scarce resources of our ingenuity in adjudicating the rights of the planet, or even encouraging the virtue of others, Invest in mitigation. Innovate greater efficiency, anticipate disruptions, reduce negative impacts.  Rely on politics to mitigate outcomes rather than tilting against the windmills of change.

Of course, it is possible that the tipping point is now beyond mitigation.  In that unhappy future, the only consolation may be that a post-civilization world will allow Planet Earth to heal its wounds without its most contentious species.