Carol Brewer describes the human world
People who are environmentally or ecologically literate do need to know something about what it is that science can tell us about environmental problems. But they also need to know something about the limits of what science can tell us about solving environmental problems. There are limits in part because, when we learn about ecology, when we learn about environmental science, there is always a social context. Solutions about consumption and distribution of resources to people on this planet have a personal aspect, but they’re also very much centered in the social and political realms.
And this is one of the real challenges for scientists. The models that we have in our society for consumption are based on the idea that more is always possible. In reality that’s an economic model and not an environmental model. So solving the problem of the fair distribution of resources and quality of life for everyone on this planet is a bigger problem than what ecologists by themselves can resolve.
Without a doubt the first starting place is education, I think that it’s really important to tell people about the services that we accrue from a healthy, functioning environment. And I believe that education about the environment starts in learning something about our own neighborhoods, our own backyards, and our impact in the places that we live. It involves understanding something about our ecological footprint, that is, how much of the Earth’s resources we use as individuals, particularly in the context of what other people around the world are using.
Complete transcript of our interview with Carol Brewer
_Carol Brewer is Co–Principal Investigator and Education Director for the National Ecological Observing Network. She is also a biology professor at University of Montana, studying both plant biology and science education._
Earth & Sky is fortunate to work with hundreds of scientists each year, who help us create our daily radio programs, and who are actively engaged in the process of sharing visions and solving 21st century problems. Earth & Sky asked these experts to help us describe the Human World of the 21st century.
Dear Dr. Carol Brewer:
The splendid and vital work in which your are engaged deserves special commendation.
You report our society now is functioning on the basis of ideas from an economic model of the seemingly endless increase of per capita consumption. Two questions follow.
1) In a finite world is the ‘reality’ of an economic model based upon unrestrained, ad infinitum consumption REAL?
2) Given the current scale and rate of growth of absolute global human population numbers, is there any basis whatever in biophysical reality for concluding that the small planet we inhabit, thanks to God, can be treated much longer as if this Earth is an ever-expressive cornucopian-like teat at which the human species can eternally suckle?
Thanks for considering these questions.
Dear Dr. Brewer,
Please imagine, just for a moment, that we are at the seashore observing a particular ocean wave, watching it move toward us where it crashes at our feet. The wave is moving in our direction; however, at the same time, there are many, many molecules in the wave that are moving in the opposite direction, against the tide. If we observe that the propagation of the global human population is like the wave and the reproduction numbers of human beings are like the molecules, it may be inaccurate for the decline of the latter to be looked at as if it tells us something meaningful about the rising tide of the former.
Although widely shared and consensually validated, abundant demographic data of an overall decline in the number of newborns joining the human family annually need not blind us to the other, equally well-established data pointing out the global population of human species is skyrocketing now and expected to reach 9+/- billion people during the lifetime of some of us who are living now. Consider, if you will, the world population is like the wave that is moving toward us and the reproduction numbers are like molecules in the wave that are moving against the rising tide of humanity.
Propagation data of the human species and the numbers of the human births in many places worldwide are pointing in different directions. Each year we notice a decline in the number of newborns worldwide as the absolute global population numbers of humanity rapidly increase.
Thank you.
Does it ever appear to you as if today’s politicians and other leaders of unbridled, rampant and seemingly endless economic globalization of our small planetary home are in hot pursuit of a fool’s errand and, furthermore, have determined to take the rest of life-as-we-know-it along for a short and destructive, death-defying, God-forsaken ride?
Hello Steve! And yet these leaders say that one of their goals is to “spread democracy,” do they not? And if democracy is real, then we the people must have our say as well. I agree with Carol Brewer, who wrote in the beautiful piece above “Without a doubt the first starting place is education. I think that it’s really important to tell people about the services that we accrue from a healthy, functioning environment … “
If people knew how intimately linked we humans are to planet Earth, we would not allow our leaders to engage in, as you say, “unbridled, rampant and seemingly endless economic globalization …” for such a thing is not advisable, or even possible, in a finite world.
Deborah
Here and now, as you put it Deborah, we are “having our say.” It is absolutely vital to the future of life that our thought and behavior not be coopted or silenced by the ruling masters of the universe, who adamantly seek dominion of the natural world and everything that is in it.
Dear Deborah,
Please let us work now to share certain understandings about democracy. Seldom has humanity been granted a greater gift from God than democracy. That is not in question; however, the realization of democratic principles in practical reality depends upon an adequately informed electorate. And there is the rub, I suppose. Scientific knowledge and inconvenient truth that do not support the activities of the ruling masters of the universe are regularly suppressed. Discussion is focused upon what rich and powerful people want everyone else to understand about ‘reality.’ The observable fact that the natural world is real and an invention such as the human economy is artificial is glossed over as trivial. Scientific data that are recognized to be politically incorrect, economically inexpedient, socially unsuitable, incompatible with religion and at odds with primary cultural beliefs are obscured and denied. An adequate understanding of the real natural world upon which ALL life depends for its very existence is routinely subordinated in daily news reports to ubiquitous sources of information about the artificially designed, man-made economy.
And what of the responsibilities of scientists to good science? If vital scientific data is not acknowledged or else hidden away from people, then at least one inevitable result is an uninformed electorate that cannot determine what to do with the realistic expectation of moving forward ably and providing a good enough future for coming generations. Such a situation is not an example of democracy, as I understand the gift; but something else called by that name. Also, the silence embedded in such circumstances is unacceptable to scientists, I suppose.
Take the case regarding the unexpected scientific data from Dr. Russell Hopfenberg and Dr. David Pimentel on human population dynamics. Whether due to hysterical blindness, willful deafness, seeming apoplexy or some ‘reason,’ silence cannot be countenanced from those who comprehend the potentially profound implications of these data. Whatsoever is real about the world we inhabit will eventually become conscious and understandable to humanity…if life as we know it is to most assuredly go on.
My concern is this: the failure to rigorously and skillfully examine as well as to carefully interpret/critique the best available scientific data regarding certain “overgrowth” activities of the human species could precipitate the massive extinction of biodiversity, the degradation of global ecosystems, the reckless dissipation of limited resources and, perhaps, the endangerment of humanity.
Thanks always for many remarkable achievements to you, Jane Goodall, R.K.Pachauri, Caroline Ash, Paul Stern, Nafis Sadik, Carolyn Brewer, Shawki Barghouti, Ken Caldeira, Jerry Glenn, Joel Cohen, Jesse Ausubel, E.O.Wilson, Jared Diamond, Wolfgang Lutz, Harry Rosenberg, Roberto Peccei, Ernst von Weisaecker, Neville Ash, Walt Reid, Stan Bernstein, Jeff and Sonia Sachs, Anne and Paul Ehrlich, Gretchen Daily, Ashok Khosla, Dee Boersma, Stuart Pimm, Norman Myers, Jeffrey McKee, Achim Steiner, Paul Hawken, Ruth Engo, Jane Lubchenko, Walter Kistler, John McRuer, Franz-Josef Radermacher, M.H.King, Ricardo Diez-Hochleitner, Amory Lovins, Ted J. Gordon, Jack Alpert, David Kennedy, Lester Brown, Werner Fornos, Richard Benedick, Hania Zlotnik, Richard Bilsborrow, Barbara Entwisle, Richard Grossman, Stan Becker, Humam Ghgassib, Talat Halman, Joe Baker, Albert Bartlett, Jan Juff, Joe Romm, Tim Palmer, Chris Flavin, Jonathan Porritt, the late Jack Parsons, John Guillebaud, the late Garrett Hardin, the late J.N.”Ding” Darling, Hamdallah Zedan, Bruce Alberts, David Blockstein, Carl Pope, Amy Coen, Ellen Carnevale, Howard Zinn, Jane Menken, Jean Krasno, John Rowley, Mark Collins, Jon Hutton, Michael Sohlmann, Stephen Hawking, Pentti Malaska, Thoraya Obaid, Sashi Tharoor, Adil Najam, Richard Cincotta, Patrick Burns, Jamal Saghir, Jean Francois Rischard, John Seager, Philip Seligman, Gustavo Fonseca, Ben Mayalang, Janet Larsen, Vandana Shiva, Wolfgang Sachs, Ralf Fuecks, Reah Janise Kauffman, Jack Caldwell, John Cleland, Peter Raven, Peter Vitousek, Bill Rees, Nicholas Stern, Partha Das Gupta, the late Pope John Paul II, Geoff Dabelko, Jan Janssens, Raoul Weiler, HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal and the Dalai Lama.
I’m impressed by Dr. Brewer’s consideration that what scientists are saying about sustainability often falls on deaf ears. In talking with Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich, he related that changing people’s “hearts and minds” of how we relate to our life-support systems provided by Earth will be crucial to avoiding disaster. Perhaps, as Ehrlich believes, our values are shaping our planet, and those will change, by necessity.
Dear Jorge,
Thanks for your comments, especially with regard to talking with Dr. Paul Ehrlich.
Over the past several years, one hope to which I have held is this: Paul R. Ehrlich, Ph.D., would examine and report his findings to the scientific community with regard to the scientific evidence on human population dynamics from David I. Pimentel, Ph.D., and Russell P. Hopfenberg, Ph.D.
Because you have the good fortune of having your efforts to communicate with Dr. Ehrlich accepted by him, perhaps you would help many of us who share Paul Ehrlich’s universal wish of “avoiding disaster” by imploring him to BREAK THE SILENCE concerning this outstanding research that appears to indicate two things: 1) global population numbers of the human species can be understood as a function of food supply and 2) Earth’s carrying capacity for human organisms is determined by food availability.
When Paul receives this humble request, please extend my deep appreciation to him, Jorge.
Tonight at Columbia University Professor E.O. Wilson is speaking on the topic, Sustainable Development: Can It Save the Creation? Circumstances make it impossible for me to be there, as I would like; but I wish that all of us acquainted with Earth & Sky could hear from this great scientist.
He has already stated that the human overpopulation of Earth is the ROOT CAUSE of other seemingly “primary” global challenges looming ominously before humanity; that the current scale and anticipated rate of global human population growth will give rise to problems which will literally “dwarf” the major thrusts of power politics and economic globalization with which many too many masters of the universe appear to be malignantly preoccupied.
Incidentally, several years ago, perhaps in the Spring of 2002, Dr. Wilson, Dr. Paul Ehrlich and Dr. Lester Brown were members of a panel at a CONFERENCE ON ECOSYSTEM HEALTH in Washington, D.C. In the question and answer period that followed their stellar presentations, another top rank scientist in the field of Conservation Biology asked each of the three panelists to comment specifically on a 2001 article, Human Population Numbers as a Function of Food Supply, regarding apparently unforeseen research from two outstanding scientists, Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel. Although Lester Brown made no comments, E.O. Wilson and Paul Ehrlich reported an awareness of the this scientific evidence and commented. Perhaps there is someone in the Earth & Sky community who recalls the remarkable responses of Dr. Wilson and Dr. Ehrlich regarding a potentially new biological understanding of human population dynamics.
Thanks always for God’s gift of good science as well as the unwavering integrity of top rank scientists.
Dear Dr. Brewer and Deborah,
From my humble vantage point, it appears that science can most assuredly help humanity to understand, confront and overcome whatever looming global challenges exist, but only if scientists retain a certain confidence in good science by carefully, skillfully and rigorous examining the best available data and reporting findings.
Human and environmental health could literally be on the verge of becoming endangered by actively ignoring good but unwelcome scientific research and, instead, adhering unreasonably to outdated, widely shared and consensually validated preternatural beliefs about the way the world works and the “placement” of the human species within the natural order of living things.
At least to me, it appears that what is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially suitable, religiously orthodox and culturally prescribed is now predominant in a human commmunity that needs to recognize and accept that certain longstanding beliefs could have been demolished by UNCHALLENGED scientific data from outstanding scientists regarding the unsustainability of unrestrained and increasing per human consumption of scarce resources of a relatively small planet; untethered, seemingly infinite economic globalization in a finite world; and unbridled growth of the human species in the planetary home we are blessed to inhabit.