PLANETARY HEALTH WEEKLY

Neither the Biodiversity Crisis nor Climate Change are hoaxes or the result of some left-wing conspiracy, whatever the absurdist wing of certain political parties would have you believe. They both need to be taken very seriously indeed. Ignoring the science is a road to disaster, especially when it is based on wilful ignorance. Nature is implacable, however inconvenient this may be. Just look at that an early English king called Canute who famously discovered it when he tried to turn back the rising tide.

I think the problem humanity has in dealing (or not dealing) with the these existential problems is that none of the three dominant groups in contemporary society – politicians, businessmen/women and administrators – are well equipped to contribute. Very few of the influential members of these groups have any scientific training, and not only tend to see scientific fact as an optional consideration when determining policy, but seem particularly susceptible to nonsensical theories which contradict known and tested scientific fact.

Why is this? Politicians (as opposed to statesmen) are primarily concerned with power; getting it, holding on to it and wielding it – far too frequently exclusively for their own benefit. Scientific advisors tend have little influence; unpopular advice is rarely tolerated under any political colour. Those leaders of business,in this late-capitalist world, pursuing growth and maximising profits seem frequently unconcerned about the damage they cause – either upstream or downstream from their operations. Administrators are all too readily driven by bureaucratic rules within whichever political system they are functioning – and far too frequently fail even this. Once again, inconvenient scientific findings tend to be ignored, unpopular research budgets cut. Few individuals in these three groups seem at all concerned at leaving the planet a better place, or even following the medical maxim ‘do no harm’; the disturbances to both climate and environment that scientists have identified are apparently regarded as of secondary importance. There are some voices in the global media raising questions, but holding power to account seems mostly to have gone out of fashion, partly due to the aggressive hounding – even assassination, of critical journalists by political regimes across the world.

The accelerating changes in the global climate have been caused substantially by burning fossil fuels as promoted by business leaders and the politicians they have bankrolled. Why? Because both groups benefited from maintaining the status quo, and fossil fuels were amazing until suddenly…they weren’t. Recent findings show that the oil industry has been well aware of the dangers decades ago but chose to ignore them and suppress their own research information. The subterfuge had no effect on Nature of course; it just means that correcting our errors is going to be more difficult, if possible at all after certain planetary boundaries are breached and the climate continues to change.

Deforestation of the world’s tropical forests continues unabated, in spite of evidence of longtime and wide-ranging effects which will cost far more to fix the longer reforms are delayed. The vast Amazon Forest has been decimated by a combination of misguided (and often illegal) business enterprises and an inadequate regulatory framework. Warnings by scientists about damage to the biodiversity and the water/nutrient cycles have been ignored. Drought is now widespread not only in the Amazon basin but further south in the agricultural zones of South America as far as the pampas of Argentina. A new report in the scientifc journal Nature suggests that for much of the Amazon basin a tipping point may already have been reached and some changes are irreversible. Data assembled by the Resilience Institute in Stockholm suggest that other planetary tipping points are being approached and may well have already been breached.

The need to change a lot of the ways humanity behaves on our one and only Earth are well understood, but obstruction and resistance from all three dominant groups is making it difficult to feel optimistic about the future. While ‘pledges’ and targets for the remote future proliferate, serious planning and action to achieve some of the relevant objectives are rarely seen. Far more often are excuses to explain why some of these pledges can’t be met, or cost too much and must be delayed. Why is it that proposed actions seem always to be reduced, rather than increased? I look forward to the day when I hear a politician say that he/she has not been ambitious enough, and that he/she is now working towards bigger goals, as opposed to cutting back? While just a few corporate leaders are adopting sustainable policies, far more are seen to be engaged in greenwashing, while at the same time planning more growth.

In a new report the Center for Climate Integrity has revealed that companies in the plastics industry have known for decades that ‘recycling was not a viable plastic waste solution’ but have continued to this day to promote it as a genuine solution. ‘The companies have lied’ says Richard Wiles one of the authors. This is another example of a failure of business leadership and regulation. Why is it that administrators constantly trying to justify the inadequacies of regulation by finding and bribing or lobbying for loopholes?

In spite of regulations, most watercourses in the global north (and many in the global south) are disgracefully polluted by industrial waste, agricultural runoff and, frequently, untreated sewage, in spite of appropriate and well-meaning regulations. The River Wye in England has been declared virtually dead due almost entirely to illegal dumping of nitrogen-rich waste from chicken farms, yet the UK Environment Agency far from ensuring compliance seems only engaged in finding excuses and exceptions – almost anything to avoid actually applying the regulations, in case big business is inconvenienced.

When the inevitable results of the implacability of Nature ever gets recognised what are urgently needed are practical ideas that can gain political backing in our increasingly fractious world – and there are some. One is the proposed Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) which will be implemented in UK from 2025. ‘EPR is a policy tool which requires producer to be responsible for the full net cost of managing packaging they place on the UK market at the end of its life’. This legislative instrument is the result of a waste strategy published in 2018 so the timescale of seven years can hardly be called rapid. It is perhaps unsurprising that only now, very late in the process that has industry has fully engaged with the need to replace unnecessary plastic packaging with biodegradable alternatives such as wood and fibre. The key innovation I think is getting industry to accept its responsibility – in an age where the assertion of rights seems to take precedence over assuming responsibilities this would be a major step forward. Perhaps the negotiators attempting to develop the international plastics treaty could learn from this initiative? But always keep in mind the experience of King Canute – whether or not he actually believed he could stop the tide was not the point. What was shown even in the tenth century was that trying to ignore Nature was a non-starter, and so began a more realistic approach to living on planet Earth.

Edward Milner, London, UK