Ecological unconsciousness and climate change

Ecological unconsciousness and climate change

With the advent of industrialization in the West, especially between the 19th and 20th centuries, there was that social phenomenon that goes by the name of urbanism (or urbanization) which led a large part of the world’s population to large population centres.
Even if this phenomenon has characterized various epochs of the evolution of the organization (or disorganization) of society, in the last decades of human history it has assumed, in some ways, worrying proportions.
Suffice it to say that there are now over 30 cities with over ten million inhabitants (scattered throughout the world) and, according to UN estimates, by 2030 there will be more than 40 in the world.
Cities like Tokyo with 38,140,000 inhabitants, like New Delhi with 26,454,000 inhabitants or like Shanghai with 24,484,000 inhabitants, dwarf “poor” New York with “only” 18,609,000 inhabitants.
Most of these cities are aggregates of concrete, technological networks and infrastructures that have erased ancient habitats and left contact with nature out of people’s lives.
Thus the evolution, often uncontrolled or uncontrollable, of the situations and movements of movement towards certain urban areas, with the intensification of the population density and of productive and commercial settlements, has produced, especially starting from the second half of the twentieth century, very extensive agglomerations, called megacities, which caused two parallel phenomena:

– a loss of humanity’s ethical relationship with Nature;
– a loss of ecological and economic value linked to the loss of biodiversity.
In the light of the understanding we have of biodiversity today, it is as if humanity had followed its own ecology, completely detached from that of Nature.
Indeed, we know that it is precisely biodiversity that makes our planet unique and that guarantees the survival of life itself on Earth.
Unfortunately, with the urbanization process, a consequence of an economic and industrial system not polarized towards nature, the climate scenario is also changing with an unprecedented challenge that threatens the variety of animal and plant species. In such a difficult context, many species will not be able to successfully adapt to climate change. According to official estimates, one million species will be at risk of extinction by 2050.
In this regard, a study recently published in the scientific journal Nature reveals that the productivity of biodiversity in nature increases the biomass and consolidates the stability of the ecosystem, while at the same time constituting one of humanity’s best defenses against extreme weather events. A richer vegetation and fauna contribute, in fact, to the richness of the soils and seas and prevent catastrophic phenomena caused by climate change such as long periods of drought, torrential rains, hurricanes.
The authors of the study were researchers at the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Michigan; the authors reached these conclusions after comparing the results of 67 studies conducted around the world, in which data from over six hundred thousand sampling points were collected. All work carried out entirely in the field: on meadows, in forests, in fresh and salt water environments.
It is evident that “the variety of life forms on Earth is a reliable parameter for its future health”, as stated by marine ecologist Emmet Duffy, of the “Smithsonian” environmental research center in Edgewater and first author of the publication. Indeed, in all the ecosystems analyzed by the researchers, greater biodiversity went hand in hand with a more thriving ecosystem. “If we want to keep Earth’s ecosystems functioning and productive, we need to conserve their biodiversity,” added Casey Godwin, a co-author of the research and a fellow at the University of Michigan.

Without going into the complexity of the role that biodiversity gives to the stability of the planet, also in climatic terms, it is evident that the current trend of urbanization of the planet and loss of biodiversity represents an unprecedented catastrophe, perhaps greater than the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Various global strategies have moved in this direction, including the so-called Agenda 2030 and, recently, the Nature Restoration Law of the European Union, which is, in fact, the law on the restoration of nature and an integral part of the European Green Deal and of the European biodiversity strategy.
The Nature Restoration Law aims to create a legislative framework necessary for the recovery and conservation of European ecosystems, in line with the Union’s climate objectives and agreements signed internationally.
Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle to achieving these objectives is linked to the structure of global (and therefore also European) financial systems and, therefore, to the current economic model which is strongly hinged to a cause and effect system (investment and return of the same) not connected with the needs of nature.
In this way the finance system is linked almost exclusively to large financial groups which have no (at least immediate) return from economic systems linked to ecology.
To get out of this very risky impasse (which sooner or later will drag horses and riders with it) it is necessary that this socio-economic metastasis be eradicated by Politics.
Which is easier said than done.
It is an urgent challenge that obliges us to protect our common home, without which there is no finance and no economy, and therefore no civilization.
We can compare finance gone mad like the meteorite which (albeit with different dynamics) is dragging our planet and all its living beings to mass extinction.
And here a dutiful reference should be made to the Encyclical “Laudato Sì”, the only global document of integral economy and ecology which outlines the guidelines, not only for a full awareness for the future p.v. but also for the entire world politics.
Unfortunately, the debate we are witnessing in most of the political agendas of nations (including Italy) travels on completely different patterns and, in some cases, even dangerously in the process of involution.
Let us remember that the difficulty in taking this challenge seriously is linked to an ethical and cultural deterioration, which accompanies the ecological one.
Society has become individualistic, an individualism that has multiple origins but is deeply connected to a ruthless and ethically unnatural liberalism.
The danger of that individualistic ethics which is placing the human even more out of the natural.
Human individualism contrasted with those models of altruism, generosity, solidarity typical of biodiversity, the true essence of nature.
It is for this reason that we must have the courage to open a different common front, which questions the current model of “progress”, the current misguided political debate, the responsible acceptance of a large part of the population, the irresponsible silence of media and the main communication systems.
As written in my 2015 book (Like the Titanic?), we are all in the same boat and there are no lifeboats because the only lifeboat in existence is planet Earth itself.

Guido Bissanti