Environmental Collapse and Political Reform

“Political cynicism is so pervasive as to discourage people from even looking to the political sphere for solutions”

BY LYNN MCDONALD

Earth Day came and went in April with ever more worrisome warnings of species and resource depletion, global warming and environmental pollution. As we marked Environment Week June 4 to 10, Ottawa was preoccupied with Canada's cancellation of its commitment to the Kyoto Accord and tinkering with Senate reform. Why are we not acting on what we know to be real and serious fundamental problems concerning our health and indeed survival on this planet?

From ordinary warnings of decline, there is now a “collapse” literature predicting environmental destruction on a scale to result in massive extinctions and societal collapse. Most of this writing includes recommendations for reform - how we can mend our ways and avoid collapse if we act now.

It's worth pondering the weight as well as the number of these contributions. Some were commissioned by respected organizations and draw on the work of leading scientists, e.g., the United Nations' World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, 1987; the Science Council of Canada's Canada as a Conserver Society, 1977; and the Royal Society of Canada's Planet Under Stress, 1980. Some are by eminent people, e.g., Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring, 1962, and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, 1997, which won a Pulitzer Prize.

Ronald Wright's Short History of Progress was commissioned as the Massey Lectures for 2004. It optimistically gives advice for reform before it's too late: “We have the tools and the means to share resources, clean up pollution, dispense basic health care and birth control, set economic limits in line with natural ones.” If we don't, says Wright, we will enter “an age of chaos and collapse that will dwarf all the dark ages of our past,” and this before the 21st century grows very old. “Now is our last chance to get the future right.”

Some steps have been taken in response to these warnings over the years. “Round tables” were established in Canada after Our Common Future. Tougher laws on pesticides were brought in by many countries after Silent Spring. Warnings about the thinning of the ozone layer resulted in controls over ozone-depleting substances. Acid rain was taken seriously enough to result in curbs on emissions in cars and power plants. But on the Kyoto Accord — only a modest first step for environmentalists — Canada never moved to action at all and is now using its status as a “producer” of fossil fuels to justify lesser action.

Diamond explains why people fail to take needed action in his 2004 book, Collapse: How Human Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The reasons include failure to anticipate problems (e.g., rabbits brought into Australia), failure to notice when problems develop gradually (did anyone notice when the last tree went on Easter Island?) and the “tragedy of the commons,” when what is advantageous for a few (e.g., catching fish) becomes disastrous when pursued by many (depletion of the resource).

In my view, the key to any reform is political change, although we need also to engage everything from our personal consumer habits, beliefs and values to institutional change in the global economy. Wherever we begin, change will inevitably involve the political process: legislation, taxes, subsidies and regulations are required to accomplish many of the things that must be done. A consumer boycott cannot go far enough, and corporations legally must serve their shareholders.

There are at least three great obstacles to political reform: vast private interests (meaning profits to gain in the here and now), technical (what to do is not obvious if we seek fundamental change and not just tinkering) and motivational (political cynicism is so pervasive as to discourage people from even looking to the political sphere for solutions). People have heard that “government is the problem” so often that many spontaneously go one step further to “all politicians are crooks.” Both become justifications for political apathy. Yet what are the alternatives? One dollar, one vote instead of elections and governments responsible to the people?

Democratic control over decision-making is itself a legacy of the 18th-century Enlightenment, achieved with years of struggle and sacrifice. “Sovereignty of the people” was subversive in regimes with divine-right kings. Universalism admitted everybody, regardless of race, religion and even (in time) gender, a radical notion when only the (male) nobility and great landowners had any say in political decisions.

Governments, of course, make mistakes with short-sighted legislation and tax policies. In Canada, we actually encourage wasteful energy use with subsidies for fossil fuel extraction and nuclear power. Agricultural policy favours poor environmental practices. None of these measures came out of nowhere, of course, but private corporations, local communities, unions, etc., demanded them and governments obliged.

The time frame for political decision-making is all wrong. Governments are accountable to voters every four or so years in typical democracies. But the decisions that need to be taken to stop environmental damage and safeguard our long-term future tend to have immediate costs that make the action unpopular, to put it mildly.

No Canadian or provincial government heeded the warnings of declining fish stocks, documented over decades of overfishing. When the 1982 Kirby Report called for substantial restructuring of the Atlantic fisheries, it was fought. The jobs (created by government subsidies) were needed. A government that made a drastic reversal in the long-term interest of future yields would likely be defeated and any measures already introduced would be reversed.

Governments cannot act (for long) against the wishes of their constituents. It's not that “government is the problem” but that solutions, especially drastic ones, have to have concerted public support or they will be undone. Governments must lead in finding solutions on our behalf, but we must look at changes in values and beliefs and how we run the economy, as well as political change.

Prof. Lynn McDonald is a University professor emerita in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.