How Can We Save the Planet? By Saving the Humans First

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Apocalypse Never" by Michael Shellenberger. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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How can we save the planet? What’s wrong with most of the current solutions?

Though it’s become widely accepted that climate change is real, the questions still remain of what steps we should take to fix the damage and whether they’ll be enough. In Apocalypse Never, Michael Shellenberger explains why he thinks most initiatives are misguided and provides his own proposals.

Read more to learn Shellenberger’s analysis of the climate problem and to discover the fix he thinks we need.

Saving the Planet (Including the Humans)

The core of existential environmental dread revolves around the idea that humans are actively killing the planet. Shellenberger concedes that some degree of concern is legitimate, and certain measures should be taken to prevent a crisis. So, how can we save the planet from any future doom? In order to remove a certain level of panic from the environmental discussion, Shellenberger addresses the issues and misperceptions around the mass extinction of species, the loss of rainforests, and the amount of non-degradable waste such as plastic that we release into the environment.

Conservationists warn that species are now going extinct faster than at any time in the past several million years. Authors who characterize this as the “Sixth Extinction” argue that mass extinctions are not only humanity’s fault but that they also endanger the human race’s survival by toppling the delicate natural systems on which our civilization depends. However, Shellenberger claims that alarmist extinction rate projections are based on a flawed “species-area model” developed in the 1960s that made faulty assumptions about how much habitat is needed for species to survive.

Human Activity as the Cause of Mass Extinction

The author of The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert, compares the present rate of species loss to that of five other mass extinction events that we know of in Earth’s history, of which some were sudden, while others were gradual. In all cases, over 75% of species on the planet were wiped out by environmental changes that occurred too quickly for evolution to adapt. Kolbert and others like her argue that human-driven climate change is creating a similar crisis through habitat destruction, ocean acidification, and the disruption of native ecologies by invasive species that humans transplant.

The Species-Area Relationship model that Kolbert and many biologists use to predict species extinction rates (and that Shellenberger objects to) is a mathematical relationship between the size of a habitat and the number of species it ought to support. The model isn’t as static as Shellenberger suggests but undergoes revision and refinement to integrate new data as it emerges. The fact scientists continue to question and study the model’s assumptions and implications doesn’t invalidate it as a predictive tool in the field of ecological conservation.

Deforestation

Shellenberger says that habitat loss and declining species populations are more important metrics to consider and that they aren’t the result of “evil corporations” but of the actions of people simply struggling to survive. In Brazil and the Congo, rainforests are disappearing in order to make room for farmland and to use the chopped-down trees for fuel.

A misunderstanding that Shellenberger speaks to specifically is the idea that rainforests are vital to providing the planet’s oxygen and removing carbon dioxide from the air. Forest ecosystems actually consume as much oxygen as they produce. And, while plants do store carbon, they don’t to the extent that many activists claim.

Shellenberger contends that more efficient use of already-cleared lands can halt civilization’s march into old-growth forests that are in most need of conservation.

Plastic in the Oceans

Of equal or greater concern are the oceans, where wildlife is endangered by the vast amount of plastic waste that gets eaten by birds, fish, whales, and marine turtles. Though much of the plastic comes from torn and discarded industrial fishing nets, a great deal more finds its way there by land from countries without strong waste management infrastructures.

Shellenberger notes that the invention of plastic resulted in the cessation of the widespread slaughter of animals such as elephants and tortoises. Today there is a push toward bioplastics, but the alternatives to petroleum-based plastic aren’t necessarily better for the environment. Bioplastics require more water, farmland, and energy to produce than normal plastic, and are harder to reuse and recycle. In those respects, green alternatives can be a step in the wrong direction. The environmental cost of petroleum plastic is actually less than our other current options.

The Environmental Impact of Plastic Waste

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman explains that because plastic doesn’t biodegrade, even if we were to stop production today, the plastic we’ve already created will eventually find its way into every corner of the ecosystem. Forces of erosion will eventually break plastic down into smaller and smaller pieces that can be easily transported by water and air—and ingested by microbes and plankton. Because plastic is such a relatively new invention, its long-term effects on the environment have yet to be fully determined.

Shellenberger’s views on plastic’s benefits go against environmentalists’ concerns about the enormous amount of plastic waste produced every year, though progress has been made in finding ways to organically break down and recycle certain types of plastic. Bioplastics also don’t break down in landfills—they only degrade in industrial composting facilities. In their overall lifetime, bioplastics have a greater carbon footprint than single-use plastics and add nothing of value to composted soil. At present, the only actionable way to mitigate endless plastic waste may be a cultural shift toward reusable containers and packaging.

How Can We Save the Planet? By Saving the Humans First