http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004020.html(Quick recap: Influential environmental scientist James Lovelock recently wrote an editorial for the Independent that said, in effect, we're all screwed. Environmentalist & design guru Bruce Sterling disagreed rather vehemently. This is futurist Jamais Cascio's take on both of 'em. Links to the previous are in the article.)
As much as the Gaia concept helped to spur the consideration of the planet as a system of systems, I must admit to a great deal of sympathy for Bruce's take. Lovelock was once a highly-regarded environmental scientist, but little of that shows in this essay. Instead, he joins the list of apocaphiles, strenuously denying that humans can do anything else but wallow in their own filth and destroy the planet (or, as he describes it, put Gaia into a "morbid fever" for 100,000 years). He expresses great dismay that we've come to this state, but offers neither solutions nor solace, choosing instead to detail some of the awful ways that billions of us will die.
I really dislike apocaphilia.
Apocaphiles tell us that our fate is pre-determined, and that any attempt to avoid it is doomed to failure. They're not simply defeatist, they're positively offended by any suggestion that we might figure out a way to avoid disaster. People who believe that we'll muddle through are accused of having their "heads in the ground;" people who try to change our behavior are derided as "unrealistic;" and people who look for tool-based solutions are castigated for trying for a "techno-fix." The only allowable opinion is that we are lost. There's a distinctly Calvinist flavor to apocaphiles, as they revel in laying out the doom we face because of our own sins, be they environmental, sociological or technological. Ironically, the apocaphile refuses to admit to any human ability to avoid this fate -- we can bring it about, but we can't prevent it, either because the time to do so has long past (i.e., we've left the Garden of Eden) or because we're too greedy/foolish/short-sighted/power-hungry to do so (i.e., we're mired in Original Sin).
I dislike apocaphilia because I believe that deeds can make a difference.
I also dislike apocaphilia because it presumes to predict the future. The truth is, we simply cannot know if we are, in fact, doomed. We may be -- but there's a damn good chance that we aren't, at least if we make an effort to change global conditions. And that, ultimately, is what makes me so irritated at doomsayers: the denial of our ability to make a difference. Tell people over and over that there's nothing that they can do, and eventually they'll start to believe you, making the negative outcome inevitable. I would much rather try to change things for the better and fail than to lie back and just let the world collapse around me.
Lovelock tells us that billions of us will die, that it's too late to stop the end of the world. I say that such an outcome is a choice, one that we need not make.
(Emphasis mine -JN)
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