3.5: So, How Did We Get into This Mess?

To address that question, let us review the steps in our model. The primal step in creating human security was Step 1: creating an environment conducive to human existence. The key human step was learning to harness energy, particularly energy for food and warmth and later to develop and use various technologies, and to progress. Today’s globalized society is based on a philosophy of competition, economic growth, technological progress, credit, and consumption. It is complex, characterized by high levels of material consumption (or aspirations to such an economy), institutions such as governments, universities, banks, churches, militaries, effective health care, generally secure food supplies, rapid communication and transport. Much of today’s living is enabled by advanced technologies combined with abundant amounts of cheap, fungible, transportable, energy. In today’s globalized society with its complex institutions and scaled-up industries, energy remains our most critical resource, but we are particularly addicted to one form of it: fossil fuels. What is their story?

Fossil Fuels – A Faustian Bargain

Fossil Fuels – The Good

For primitive humans, energy was what came from the sun. In this state, food was opportune, temporary, and unlikely to be stored, and humans lived a hunter-gatherer existence. Later on, fire was tamed and wood and biomass became early sources of energy. Over time, the development of agriculture enabled some semblance of food security. Fixed communities became more common and, while most people were hunters or farmers, merchants and priests and other forms of human occupation evolved. As technologies were developed and improved, and new lands found and exploited, humanity developed well organized societies and civilizations. Initially, their footprint was small and the Earth could easily meet their needs.

Civilizations, like the Roman, Greek, Mayan, Indian and Chinese civilizations, evolved, grew, and ultimately faded away. In all instances, available energy was a central factor in sustaining these civilizations. Some civilizations failed when resources became scarce, or there was local climate change such as drought, or a major catastrophe and a subsequent failure to adapt (Diamond, 2005; Tainter, 1990). For the civilization involved, this was a major disaster, but the effects were mainly local. This contrasts with today’s global environmental crisis where the whole Earth is affected by human action and everyone is, or soon will be, affected, by the consequences, no matter where they live or how they live. The difference has been caused by the global use of the fossil fuels (FF) coal, oil and natural gas, which are the non-renewable, decayed, and sequestered products of forests that grew millions of years ago.

Over the last 200 years human society has been increasingly defined by the use of these fossil fuels. The qualities of fossil fuels enabled the rapid expansion of the industrial revolution and most of the improvements in living standards that followed (Cottrell, 1955). Today, fossil fuels energize virtually all forms of transport; they drive our industries, fuel our power plants, drive our economy, and are used to make the tens of thousands of chemicals and products in daily use. Global food production, and population growth, has increased dramatically largely because of fossil fuels that enabled the creation of the fertilizers and pesticides needed to grow crops and the fuel to run farm machinery and deliver crops to market. These fuels enabled the development of a society encouraged to consume more and more, and to throw away, not repair. They have facilitated globalization and the outsourcing of manufacture to lands with cheap labor and marginal environmental protection. We are addicted to them.

Fossil Fuels – The Bad

However, all is not good. The benefits of fossil fuels come with at least three nasty blowbacks: global warming, air pollution, and environmental pollution in general from (mainly) fossil fuel derived synthetic chemicals. Each poses serious threats to ecosystem health and integrity, to human health, and to human security.

Global Warming

To grasp why global warming and fossil fuels are linked and pose such a significant problem, we need to know a bit about how the Earth keeps its temperature at a level suitable for humans. When burned, fossil fuels release carbon dioxide (CO₂) to the atmosphere. This is a greenhouse gas, as are methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, water vapour and some fluorocarbons. Normally, these gases trap enough heat from the sun to maintain average global temperature at a level suitable for human life and progress. Before the industrial revolution, when fossil fuels were not used, atmospheric CO₂ was maintained at an average concentration of around 280 ppm. But after fossil fuels began to be used, the release of CO₂ was faster and greater than Earth could recycle and its concentration rose in the atmosphere and the oceans. Atmospheric CO₂ levels are already nearing 410 ppm and are rising at ~20 ppm per decade. This excess of CO₂ has led to more heat being trapped on Earth and thus today’s mean global temperature is about +1.0°C above preindustrial levels, and it continues to rise at about 0.2°C per decade. This rate of temperature increase is 10 to 20 times faster than rates documented during post ice-age recovery warming and has never been experienced by humans. By about 2040, global mean temperature will be +1.5°C above preindustrial levels. If we continue to burn fossil fuels at current rates, by 2100 global temperatures could be +4°C above preindustrial levels (Anderson & Bows, 2011; New et al., 2011; Bowerman et al., 2011; Betts et al., 2011). Human societies cannot tolerate four degrees and even today, when the temperature is only +1°C, the consequences of global climate change are obvious, far-reaching, uncertain, unprecedented, seemingly becoming more rapid, and for all intents and purposes, permanent; +1.5°C is yet to come (IPCC SR1.5, 2018). Chapter 9 focuses on climate change in greater detail.

What can be done to correct this situation? In the first edition of this book, this chapter discussed the issue of peak oil, a situation where fossil fuel production peaked and then rapidly declined to near zero. While still possible, the more urgent situation is that we must rapidly stop burning fossil fuels, even though supplies remain. But, since fossil fuels play such a huge role in human society, it seems sensible to ask the questions: (1) “Is global warming that big a problem?” and (2) “What will we do if we can’t use fossil fuels for energy?”

For question 1 the answer is yes. Anthropogenic global warming is an existential threat to human society and possibly the human species; it is the first such threat in human history. It also poses a threat to other forms of life and to the functioning, but not the existence, of Earth. Its effects include ocean acidification (AMAP, 2013) and warming, sea level rise (Jevrejeva et al., 2018), loss of insect life (Lister & Garcia, 2018), loss of sea life (WWF, 2016; McCauley et al., 2015), diminished mammal diversity (Davis et al., 2018), ocean dead zones (Breitburg et al., 2017), and water and food insecurity (Flörke et al., 2018; Ritchie et al., 2018; Turral et al., 2011; Betts et al., 2018).

Each of these consequences affect how humans live, how they grow food, work, and maintain their health, and how their economies and societies function. A steady diet of these effects leads to, amongst other things, mental distress, societal unrest, and political instability (Smith & Vivekananda, 2007; Natalini et al., 2015; Bellemare, 2014; Lagi et al., 2011; USGCRP, 2016). While many of these are principal consequences of global warming, some are also due in part to other biophysical and societal factors acting together to lead to general insecurity. These effects are explored and detailed more completely in intermittent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (e.g. IPCC, 2007; IPCC, 2012), the most recent being a report detailing the potential effects of a rise in mean global temperature of 1.5°C (IPCC SR1.5, 2018).

While the mechanisms of action are varied and complex, all of these effects are caused directly or indirectly by the use of fossil fuels. Five self-reinforcing human processes have been identified as causes of overshoot: economic growth, population growth, technological expansion, arms races, and growing income inequality (McMichael, 1993; Furkiss, 1974; Coates, 1991; Daly & Cobb Jr., 1994). These are explored more completely in later chapters of this book. However, it is clear that whatever causal mechanisms have been identified, we must stop burning fossil fuels. But this is hard to do.

Answering question 2—replacing fossil fuels—is much harder. In 2016 fossil fuels provided 86% of global energy consumption. The rest was provided by nuclear and hydropower (11.2%) and wind, solar and other renewables (2.8%) (World Energy Council, 2016.). Nuclear power is non-renewable energy and has significant waste management issues; the rest (hydroelectricity, solar [thermal and photovoltaic], wind, and tidal energy) are renewable; but their use leads to, likely eventually solvable, major problems of energy storage and integration into the electric grid system management. As well, most renewable energy sources are best used in static situations, such as power stations, and not in transportation. Unfortunately, these other energy sources are unlikely to replace fossil fuels quickly or completely (Heinberg & Mander, 2009; MacKay, 2009). Therefore, we must choose between continuing to use fossil fuels, (the Business As Usual or BAU approach), and thus likely face a 4°C world in about 80 years, or we must soon start a transition to a simpler, lower energy, less consumptive, lifestyle.

Yet for some reasons we dawdle, we continue with business as usual. Since the 1990’s, there have been conferences organized annually by the United Nation that specifically address issues relating to climate change. They are called the Conference of Parties (COP), the most recent one (COP24) was held in Katowice, Poland. Unfortunately, in the end, promises are made, targets set, but everything is aspirational and little happens. Numerous other climate conferences and commissions have suffered similar fates. There have also been scientific ‘warnings’ such as the Scientific Consensus on Maintaining Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century (Barnosky et al., 2014) and the World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice (Ripple et al., 2017; [first warning UCS, 1992]); all to little apparent effect. This chapter does not explore the reasons for this inaction, save to say that strong economic and political forces appear to be acting against any effective global action to reduce emissions. This occurs even in the face of obvious global warming and environmental catastrophes such as drought, extreme flooding, unprecedentedly destructive forest fires, sea level rise, food and political insecurity, examples of which all happened in 2018 and all of which had global warming as an important factor in their genesis (Herring et al., 2018). It is possible that there will be some attempt to significantly reduce fossil fuel use, but the time frame is governed more by politics than by science.

Global warming is the poster child for what happens when a planetary boundary is exceeded; in this instance, the ecosystem process of thermoregulation is impaired. Two other planetary boundaries that are also closely related to fossil fuel use are air pollution and chemical pollution, each of which — independently — pose major problems for human and environmental health and security but not at quite the same level of danger. The degree to which they are transgressing their boundaries is unknown because we cannot measure the levels of pollution globally, but they seriously harm both humans and the environment, and threaten environmentally based human security. This chapter does not explore these issues in the depth they require. We discuss them briefly to raise awareness of their role in influencing human security. A closer look at the connections between ecological integrity and human health will be taken in Chapter 17.

Air Pollution

Air pollution is defined as an excessive amount of ambient particulate matter. Biomass, used mainly in developing countries for heating and cooking, and fossil fuels, used globally for nearly everything, account for about 85% of airborne particulate pollution (Landrigan et al., 2017). In 2015, air pollution (ambient PM_2.5) was the fifth-highest ranking global mortality risk factor (Cohen et al., 2017). In adults, air pollution can cause ischemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, lung cancer, and stroke. In children it can cause asthma and can affect a child’s normal development. There are other forms of air pollution as well; e.g. acid rain, which have a strong environmental effect, especially on aquatic organisms.

Coal-burning power plants are a major source of air pollution but they are being phased out in many parts of the world, because of the need to reduce CO₂ emissions. Using fossil fuels for transport is also a significant source of air pollution. Regulatory initiatives have played a major role in reducing the health burden of air pollution, particularly from transportation. In the US, a recent study showed that improvement in air quality between 1990 and 2010 resulted in up to 38% fewer deaths than if air quality had remained unchanged (Zhang et al., 2018).

Chemical Pollution

Chemical pollution lacks any standard measure to assess its effects, and the effects on humans and the environment are considerably harder to assess (Diamond et al., 2015). In part, this is because of: 1. difficulties in measuring exposure, 2. difficulties in measuring effects, 3. our ignorance of what to look for, 4. their presence in the environment in the form of unknown, unmanageable, and unmeasurable mixtures of chemicals,and 5. their overwhelming importance in society. Regardless of this high level of ignorance we do know that chemicals are a significant source of human illness and death (Prüss-Ustün et al., 2011; Grandjean & Bellanger, 2017). The environment is also clearly affected. A good example is the association of systemic pesticide use and the collapse of insect populations (van Lexmond et al., 2015; Malaj et al., 2014).

Chemical pollution independently poses very serious problems for humanity and clearly threatens environmental stability. Currently, there are over 140,000 chemicals on the global market (UNEP, 2013). Many come directly or indirectly from petroleum and are generically called petrochemicals; they account for 90% of total feedstock demand in chemical production today (OECD/IEA, 2018).

Chemicals include plastics, food additives, pesticides and fertilizers, household chemicals, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, construction materials, electronic products, shoes, clothes, nanoparticles and many others.

We depend on chemicals to maintain our lives, to clothe and feed us, to make us more attractive, to treat our illnesses, build our homes and run our businesses. However, as good as they are, their production, use and disposal has resulted in chemical pollution throughout the globe. Chemical waste is found in the deepest parts of the oceans (Jamiesonet al., 2017), in freshwater ecosystems (Malaj et al., 2014), and in polar regions (Letcher et al., 2010). Pollution is not an inevitable consequence of chemical use; some chemicals contaminate the environment but do not apparently harm it. In some cases, contamination may shift to pollution if and when we learn what to look for, or how to measure it. We do know that many of the synthetic chemicals released into the environment cannot be metabolized into simpler compounds because no metabolic pathways exist to break them down to safer end-products. Thus, they stay in the environment and can pollute it. They get into animals and plants and may affect their metabolism, their health, their ability to reproduce, to forage, and to live.

For example, relatively common chemicals called endocrine disruptors can affect the normal endocrine metabolism of many forms of life, including humans (Bergman et al., 2013; Gore et al., 2015; Trasande, 2019). The effects of these can manifest at any age but are particularly dangerous at the earliest stages of development of the organism. At that time even very small exposures to a chemical can have major long term adverse effects. Health issues associated with endocrine disruptors include neurodevelopmental delay, autism, cancer, adult diabetes, thyroid function, infertility, and feminization. These health issues lead to considerable economic costs. A recent study done in Europe suggested that the health costs due to inadvertent exposure to endocrine disruptors was approximately €163 billion (1.28% of the EU GDP) (Trasande et al., 2016; Grandjean & Bellanger, 2017). A similar study done in the US found even greater costs.

The effects documented in these studies usually relate to humans; we lack the knowledge or resources to more systematically explore how the natural world is affected. We do know that chemical pollution has resulted in loss of biodiversity, lowered bird and insect populations, and affected the ability of many organisms to thrive (Halden et al., 2017; EEA, 2012).

Plastics are another chemical family having both major positive and negative qualities. First made in the early 1900’s, their production became widespread in the late 1940’s and now their production exceeds most other man-made products. In 1950, global plastic production was ~2 million metric tonnes (Mt); in 2015, it was ~ 380Mt. At that time, about 8300 Mt of virgin plastic had been produced in total and about 6300 Mt of plastic waste had been generated, nine percent was recycled, 12% was incinerated (which often releases toxic materials) and 79% was in landfills. By 2050, it is estimated that about 12,000 Mt of plastic waste will be accumulating (Geyer et al., 2017).

A key aspect of plastics is that while their human use may be as short as a few seconds, their environmental existence lasts centuries. Plastics do not degrade at all or only very poorly. Often, they just break down into smaller particles which eventually make their way to oceans where they can be ingested by ocean life (Gallo et al., 2018). In the ocean, they can then affect the health of animals mechanically, by strangling them or by blocking their intestines. Plastics can degrade into smaller and smaller particles, called microplastics, which can enter the cells of organisms and act as vectors for chemicals that have become attached to the plastic. Hence, they transfer their toxicity to an organism. The problem of plastic pollution is so massive that it is predicted that by 2050 there will be more plastic bits in the ocean than there are fish. Recently, microparticles of plastic have been found in human faeces.