Thirteen: Society and Nature
Recall the debate between Chair Patterson and Robert Keyhoe on lead. Today, we acknowledge Patterson’s work, and note that lead is dangerous to human beings, whether handling it in the factories or coming out of a car exhaust. And Robert Keyhoe…well, tends to be viewed as a villain in the story. What is often omitted from history is that Robert Keyhoe’s work with the Ethyl Corporation gave rise to a specific paradigm: or set of knowledge and ideas within a field. In this case, the field was public health and regulation of enterprise, and the paradigm is sometimes called the Keyhoe paradigm. Keyhoe believed that industries had a responsibility to continually study their products, so that they might be able to detect the possibility of a problem, and remedy that problem. He was suspicious of external government regulation of industry. This model of corporate citizenship, as it is sometimes called today, places the full responsibility for a product or process in the hands of those who manufacture and distribute it. Importantly, it follows that the standard position is that industry can continue to produce a product until it can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that severe harm is being done.
The Keyhoe paradigm still holds sway in some parts of social space-time. In others, however, particularly in Western Europe, another paradigm has emerged: the precautionary principle. This is an idea that emerged out of the work of Ulrich Beck and others, that unless, and until, it was well-known what the risks and consequences of a certain product of process were going to be, that product or process should be politically resisted. If the risks of a new product or process are not well understood, unknown, or hold the potential for severe long-term effects, it was not prudent to go forward. You can probably easily envision problems with both perspectives. On one hand, if you hold true to the Keyhoe paradigm, it is possible that industries will opt not to follow through with their responsibilities as “corporate citizens.” A rather egregious case of this is chronicled in Oreskes and Conway’s (2010) work Merchants of Doubt. Industries could lie to the public about the dangers at hand, or pay a handful of scientists to sow doubt. Science always leaves room for doubt—but companies with substantial resources and a lot to lose, including tetraethyl lead, oil, smoking, and more, can “merchandise doubt,” to confuse the public about risks associate with their product and delay regulation.
On the other hand, however, the discussion of risk in the previous chapter implies that sometimes it is difficult to quantify exactly what risks are being undertaken. The precautionary principle might make it difficult for new and innovative products and processes to come into use, because, if taken far enough, the precautionary principle implies something that none of us can really ever know for sure. How can I know whether the food I am eating or the chemicals I am unintentionally ingesting today will have effects on the people who will be alive a thousand years from now? Life implies, on some level, some risk as we confront hazards, some of which are unknown, and it is often difficult to know what the future brings. But what happens when we know, albeit within an often wide margin of error, what the future is likely to bring? That is the case with environmental sociology: in this chapter I want to talk a bit about what the future holds according to the highest-quality scientific evidence currently available, as well as the suite of ideas that have been discussed, among scientists, policymakers, and publics, regarding what to do about the possible risks incurred in the future regarding the activities of the present. Environmental sociology as a discipline brings us face-to-face with some of the biggest questions, asking anew the relationship between human beings and the non-human world, and between what is known, what is hoped for…and what is feared.
In order understand new ideas, we sometimes need a new language in which to express ourselves. One of the first words that comes to mind is the word Anthropocene. There is at present a debate raging among scientists across multiple disciplines as to whether the Anthropocene, the “age of man,” might define a new geologic era. According to the best current scientific estimates, the earth is about four and half billion years old. The dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic era, a time sub-divided into three periods: the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous period. At the end of the Cretaceous period, the dinosaurs were killed off by a meteorite, and the Cenozoic era began, the era of mammals, and the era in which we still live. That was about 66 million years ago.
The most recent epoch in natural history is called the Holocene, beginning about ten thousand years ago. The earth’s climate warmed, the glaciers retreated, and, in the wake of these developments, some human beings in some regions “settled down,” trading hunting and gathering for farming and ranching. According to evidence gathered painstakingly by scientists across multiple fields, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, often referred to as one of the leading factors in keeping the planet warm, has never in this period risen above 350 parts per million. But today’s measurements are over 430 parts per million, fully 23 percent more carbon dioxide than has ever been in the atmosphere in tens of thousands of years. The best available evidence indicates that this added carbon dioxide is the result of human industry (as are some of the other powerful gases, such as methane), and it is accumulating faster than any known earth process can absorb it. Though scholars argue about when the Anthropocene began—perhaps it was some six thousand years ago with the methane released by widespread rice cultivation, another gas that warms the planet with higher concentrations—there is little remaining debate about the role that carbon dioxide plays in regulating the planet’s average temperature, a fact first established in the late nineteenth century.
In addition, the nuclear weapons tests undertaken by both the Soviet Union and the United States beginning in the mid-twentieth century have left behind radioactive materials, particularly Strontium-90, that will in some cases take at least tens of thousands of years to break down. This, coupled with the seeding of the atmosphere with large amounts of surplus carbon dioxide, are changes that mean that human beings are now impacting the planet on a geologic time scale. Even if no more nuclear weapons were ever detonated, and no more carbon dioxide emitted, the changes that have already been made to the planet by humans rival those that occur during natural processes, and will endure for a long, long time. Hence, the Anthropocene, the age of Man. The concept of an “Anthropocene” must be distinguished from anthropocentrism, a belief that humans occupy a privileged position relative to other life forms, the planet, and the universe. This is a view that has been challenged by scientific findings over the past few centuries—the universe older and larger beyond imagination. At the same time, humans are utterly connected to, and dependent on, the non-human world in surprising ways. Environmental sociology is a way to begin to “connect the dots” in this broader sense. Nearing the final chapters of this book, I am “zooming out,” building toward some of the deepest and most enduring questions human beings have asked throughout recorded history (and likely before). I would argue that the study of sociology ultimately is an avenue to a more complex understanding of the interrelated parts of humans, the living world, and the broader cosmos in which societies are embedded.
Perhaps one of the most profound, and potentially alarming, finding in recent history is the realization that humanity’s industrial and agricultural processes are having profound effects on the rest of the planet. One of the central concerns that has emerged out of the study of human impacts on the rest of the earth is anthropogenic climate change, the finding that human activity is, over time, destabilizing the earth’s climate. The earth’s climate has always changed—ages of ice, of volcanic ash, of lush tropical forests and massive deserts—all have been known to our world in the distant past at different times and in different places. This raises three different questions: how do we know that human activity is causing climate change? Much as with smoking, studying climate takes place in the messy, complicated “real world.” And much as with smoking, some of the debates surrounding climate change have profound political and moral underpinnings, and repercussions. According to Pew Research Center studies, in the U.S. in particular, there are major partisan differences on attitudes toward climate change. Republicans and Democrats are widely divided on whether climate change is a serious problem.
Global warming or climate change? Global warming refers to the average global temperature increasing annually. That is, if you took the temperatures of every weather station throughout the planet (along with satellite and other data) and compared the temperatures on the planet twenty years ago to those today, the earth is, on average, warmer. Global warming is a more specific claim above average temperatures on earth. I am reminded of the bad statistics joke: my feet are in the oven and my head is in the freezer, but on average I am the correct temperature. When the earth’s average temperature goes up, this affects different places, well, differently. It is possible, for example, for the global average temperature to increase, even if you had a particularly harsh winter in your hometown. The earth is warming, on average, and this is changing the climate, but that won’t affect everyone the same way at the same time.
Yet I have not answered that question: how do we know? Many newspaper articles and public outreach programs focus on a consensus—about 97 percent of scientists believe the earth is warming due to human activity. This is misleading, however—is science really conducted by opinion poll? Once upon a time, many learned people thought the earth was the center of the universe. No, consensus alone does not a scientific truth make. What scientists who study complex phenomena, whether the risks of smoking or institutional discrimination or any other number of phenomena that involve complicated sets of variables that cannot be easily controlled for in a laboratory or other setting, aim for is consilience, a convergence of evidence. In other words, really complicated phenomena require many lines of evidence. Over time, these lines of evidence begin to point in a similar direction. There are always unanswered questions, matters worthy of dispute. Science is never really finished in this sense—error is always possible. However, if enough lines of evidence begin to point in the same direction, even if they are, individually, not particularly strong, they tell a story. It’s actually the same as the case with studying group-level average differences. One difference doesn’t mean discrimination is occurring, but it raises new questions to answer. And if group level disparities are found over and over again between similar groups across many aspects of society, it raises questions about how the society is organized, and what kinds of institutional and structural factors are leading to these disparities by race, class, gender, and more appearing in a lot of places over and over again.
Climate scientist, science communicator, and evangelical Protestant Katherine Hayhoe co-authored a paper in 2015, “Learning from Mistakes in Climate Research,” which showed that, after correcting for errors in math and method, all published scientific papers which address climate change show that it is happening due to human activity. But these are questions for natural scientists, not social scientists. Sociology can assess what ideas, beliefs, and assumptions are involved in discussions of climate change. Some might be concerned that defining the problem with great severity permits national, global intervention in the lived lives of individuals—much like smoking, there is a fear made manifest that climate change brings to the fore the need for strong and far-reaching regulation of industry. Policy has uneven effects on people and groups, as I’ve already shown. Others might see climate change as the latest in a long line of travesties connected to a system of economic and technological growth that is not sustainable, that is headed for inevitable crisis or collapse.
Think about your everyday life: maybe you, like me, are not a “morning person,” and yet, like most Americans, have to get up early, you adapt, perhaps with a hearty breakfast, juice, coffee, a hot shower, or some brisk exercise. You could also, however, mitigate the uncomfortable effects of having to get up to an alarm every morning, by working second or third shift, by starting your own business (in a field that doesn’t “do mornings”), or entering a profession that provides some flexibility in your schedule. When facing a potentially serious hazard that is coming into increasing focus, there are really two options: adaptation, meaning that humans can learn to live with the effects, and can adjust their ways of life to compensate for the hazard, and mitigation, human beings can adjust their behaviors to reduce or eliminate the sources of the hazard.
In addition to the distinction between mitigation and adaptation strategies, a topic central to the relationship between human beings and nature has always been growth. There are three dimensions of growth discussed in environmental sociology, dating back to the now-famous 1972 “IPAT equation,” typically expressed I = PAT, where ‘I’ refers to environmental impact, and P, A, and T refer to population, affluence, and technology. A society with high levels of affluence (A) will use more resources than a society with a lower levels. More people (P) means more demand for resources, and more gadgets (T) means more strain on natural resources. Adaptation, mitigation, and the three dimensions of growth provide a baseline from which to begin to examine perspectives on the relationship between nature and the social world.
You have probably heard the term “green” as shorthand for how environmentally concerned people are. Some people might be called “green”; we “think green,” and businesses can “go green.” In a shorthand way, it becomes possible to differentiate between those who are not green, bright green, and dark green. Those who are not green are not explicitly concerned with environmental degradation. People who might be called “bright greens” for short are concerned about the environment but are optimistic that the challenges posed can be solved within existing social systems and institutions. “Dark greens” are less optimistic and are more willing to embrace more radical approaches.
The first category, the not-greens, let’s call them adaptationists. They are, as a group, not particularly concerned about climate change or about other environmental problems or assign them low priority; they argue for adaptation and not mitigation. They might be less willing to entertain regulation by governments of industry and commerce and might prioritize economic growth over environmental concern. I am sitting at a computer writing this environmental sociology textbook. I am in an air-conditioned building, and there is a lamp illuminating my workspace. All of these require energy, and when it comes to energy, there is, it might be said, no such thing as a free lunch. We burn coal to create electricity, and we burn oil to drive to work. Even “green” energy has environmental impacts, and energy demand is going up, not down, with more technological innovation. This, adaptationists might argue, is not going to go away any time soon. Adaptationists might also talk about the global political arena from a specific international relations perspective called realism. In realism, states exist in constant insecurity in relation to one another. If a state appears weak on the international stage, another state might view this as an opportunity for various forms of bullying or exploitation. The problem, then, becomes: who goes first? If the United States adopts environmental regulations and controls that weaken its military or industrial capabilities, and the other powerful states do not follow suit, this might become a problem later.
Furthermore, adaptationists might offer an argument drawing upon history. If sea levels rise, or areas become too hot and dry, people can relocate. People have, after all, been moving around the planet since there have been people—humans are a species of wanderers, of nomads. It is only in the last ten millennia or so that we began to “settle down” in villages to cultivate crops, the blink of an eye on a planet four and a half billion years old. Though it is unfortunate that some might have to relocate, that climate change might displace millions of people, mass migrations are nothing new.
Finally, human beings have been able to solve many problems in recent decades with new technology. The development and proliferation of technologies might ultimately lead to a solution to global climate change in the form of geoengineering, a deliberate effort to modify the earth’s climate system and bring it under human control. In other words, if the earth’s climate is changing, and this will have unfavorable long-term consequences, why not just change it back to how it was, or even, change it to something even more hospitable? Many proposals exist to engineer the earth’s climate. Some, such as massive replanting of trees to absorb carbon dioxide or painting the roofs of buildings white in order to reflect some of the Sun’s rays back into space, seem relatively “down to earth.” Others include seeding the atmosphere with sulfate particles, gigantic orbital mirrors to reflect sunlight away from the planet, seeding the ocean in order to promote massive algae blooms in order to absorb more carbon, or even steering a NEO (near-earth object) such as a large asteroid or comet in a way that will permit the use of gravity to shift the earth’s orbit. Some seem like science fiction; most are vastly expensive and incur dire unintended potential consequences. Still, there is great appeal for many in the possibility of human beings gaining technological control over the earth’s climate, which is not limited to the adaptationists, and indeed, if the planet’s climate becomes unstable rapidly, causing great human suffering, such proposals would seem quite tempting even in the face of unknown future consequences.
We could think of the adaptationist family of perspectives as a sort of baseline to which the rest of the positions can be compared. The second group actively identify as ecomodernists, a group that might be called “bright green” or, in some more pejorative terms, “luke-warmists.” Ecomodernists take climate change and environmental degradation seriously, but they as a group tend to make several arguments that line up with one another. Humans, they might declare with optimism, are intelligent, resilient creatures capable of facing this challenge, and perhaps even benefiting from it. Ecomodernists have faith in the growth of economic, technological, and social powers of human beings as a means to correct environmental problems. Political reform might be called for, but market forces are also in play. Renewable energy such as wind and solar can become cheaper than coal, oil, or gas through innovation. Nuclear power, despite “bad optics” from very few major accidents, is statistically far safer for both human beings and the planet than fossil fuels. Laboratory-grown meat, once a science-fiction proposal, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a way to gradually replace land use change associated with raising livestock (a major source of greenhouse gas emissions). Innovation means resources can be used more efficiently, and recycling programs can be expanded, while at the same time an increasing amount of economic growth becomes linked to intellectual property and information rather than industry. Space travel may produce a bounty of new opportunities for both innovation and gathering of resources. Together, these efforts would have the effect of permitting continued economic growth with decreasing environmental consequences. Another advantage of ecomodernism is the sort of comprehensive, “big tent” approach to environmental concern that starts with individual lifestyle changes (such as recycling, using public transportation, conserving energy, and eating less meat) and crosses into the social, including communities, states, and global action. For some ecomodernists, the Anthropocene might actually be a good thing, allowing for a world in which human beings—and in some cases, other living things—might reach an unprecedented level of prosperity. Environmental concerns are viewed as an opportunity, not a crisis.
A somewhat “greener” perspective, and one that has both a long history in environmentalism and basis in biology, is the neo-Malthusian perspective. In order to understand this perspective, I will talk about one of its namesakes, a scholar and religious leader named Thomas Malthus, who lived at the turn of the nineteenth century. Malthus argued that human beings had a tendency to reproduce faster than the means by which they could feed themselves, resulting in episodes of starvation and death on a massive scale. In short, the neo-Malthusian perspective maintains an emphasis on population growth as a central component of environmental degradation. More people equals more resources, and that’s even more the case in a globalized society in which persons expect standards of living to continue to rise. Neo-Malthusian thought spans many policy recommendations, some of which involve the empowerment of women with regard to reproduction, and the spread of contraception. In a sense, since it is well-established that industrial modernity seems to lead to parents, on average, having fewer children, there is still a sense of hope in modernity to be found here. Additionally, many demographers are convinced that the human population will level off around the beginning of the twenty-second century and may even begin to decline if current trends continue. Many societies, including the United States (not controlling for immigration) are already experiencing negative population growth. The current goal of many in this paradigm is zero population growth, a move toward a stable human population size, along with, in some cases, a transition away from a “growth economy” and toward a “greener economy.”
Charles Darwin was influenced by Thomas Malthus in his own work. It is established that when a species experiences population growth beyond the resources available to sustain it, famine, plague, and large-scale death often follow. Populations cannot live beyond the available resources, and this idea, for neo-Malthusians, can be applied to human beings as well. However, some (many ecomodernists) have argued that we have already, as a species, transcended these limitations with innovations in agriculture, food production, and infrastructure scarcely imaginable in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Whether these can be sustained indefinitely with a large population, on a planet in rapid climate change, is another matter.
Next along the “green spectrum” are the eco-Marxists. I have implied elsewhere in this book that Karl Marx would “haunt us” throughout. Not only did Marx in some ways anticipate the environmental consequences of capitalism, but many have argued that in order to face climate change, a new economic system will be required. An economic system built on unlimited growth is simply incompatible with a planet that does not have infinite resources, or an infinite capacity to absorb the negative impacts of industrial capitalist modernity—the second contradiction of capitalism. In short, eco-Marxists argue that climate change cannot be tackled within the capitalist economic system. Dealing with climate change and other environmental issues will require a global restructuring of economies and economic relations between human beings, perhaps in the wake of a global political movement. Much as Marx noted that capitalism’s tendency toward monopoly, and consolidation of wealth, might “do capitalism in,” some eco-Marxist thinkers might argue that the current concerns about climate change represent another great contradiction in the capitalist system. The tendency here is to envision an economic system that distributes resources—and risks—more justly than the current system, perhaps a more socialist system rather than an overtly capitalist one.
Finally, the “dark green” perspective, sometimes called de-modernists. The reality of our modern society, and standard of living, is that it incurs a great cost to the environment. Consider what I mentioned earlier with regard to computers, air conditioning, or the like. The way in which things are done, the technologies with which we conduct our lives, are incompatible with the long-term survival of the earth’s ecosystem, argue de-modernists. Thus, it is technology, and a society that has become dependent on its continued growth, that is the problem. De-modernists might argue, for example, that the widespread use of electricity is not compatible with a sustainable biosphere. Electricity requires a great deal of energy use and transfer, a great deal of material infrastructure, and growing demand will only put increasing pressure on the planet. Air conditioners keep us cool in the summer, but also we burn coal and other fossil fuels at a dramatically more rapid rate to keep those air conditioners on, accelerating the problem with the technologies designed to adapt to it. Such cycles are pointed to by writers such as Paul Kingsnorth as reasons why collapse is all but inevitable in a civilization that has chosen this route. We as a society need to move toward a simpler life that is more in harmony with the natural world—assuming it is not already too late. Some in this school of thought will advocate taking action against the existing system, using sabotage or political mobilization. Others advocate withdrawing from the system, in favor of living “off the grid” or going “back to the land,” moving away from, and severing ties with, a system perceived to be headed for collapse.
The goal of sociology is understanding, seeing how people make sense of big and complex hazards like climate change; how people respond differently to hazards based on their worldviews, (and how the ways people see this hazard can help make sense of others). These positions with regard to the relationship between human beings and the natural world are profoundly different. All are worth taking seriously in attempting to understand environmental sociology, more broadly, and in understanding how human beings relate to the rest of the biosphere. In the next section, then, I will turn briefly to concerns that are related to climate change but pose a new set of problems that environmental sociologists are attempting to better understand.
Image Credit: Lake Bemidji State Park, taken by author
Important Words
Adaptation
Adaptationist
Anthropocene
Anthropocentrism
Anthropogenic global warming
Climate change
Consensus
Consilience
Corporate citizenship
De-modernist
Eco-Marxist
Ecomodernist
Geoengineering
Holocene
Keyhoe paradigm
IPAT equation
Mitigation
Neo-Malthusian
Paradigm
Precautionary principle
Realism
Zero population growth
Sit With It: Big Questions
Connect what you have read and learned here to the previous chapter. How are issues related to the environment connected to how we assess and respond to risks more broadly?
How can bringing race, class, and gender into conversations regarding environmental issues, and policymaking around risk more broadly, assist in making sense of how both hazards and policies might affect groups of people differently?
What is the difference between consensus and consilience, and why is that important in the context of science conducted outside a controlled laboratory setting? How does this connect to the theories and practice of sociology?
