Our relationship with Earth needs to change quickly

Humans have done a remarkable job making an unholy mess of the Earth. We consume too much, replace virtually nothing, expend resources recklessly and spoil the very things that sustain our lives and civilisation. This didn’t start with the nuclear age or the industrial revolution or with the mass consumption of fossil fuels, although the last few hundred years have seen more degradation of the environment than the previous 4,000 years combined. It seems to be a part of our very nature to do this and we have been doing it for as long as gatherings of humans emerged as primitive societies.

How do we know? We learn about these early societies by digging in their waste tips. Caves offered shelter and a protectable space where humans could congregate in relative safety. Habitation could continue over generations. And in the best caves there was plenty of room in the back to throw all the refuse generated by the cave’s inhabitants. Digging in these dumps reveals the animals early humans ate by what bones were recovered. It showed whether tools were used to cut meat and strip it away from bones, revealed by tell-tale scoring. And the refuse sometimes provided glimpses into practices in early settlements such as cannibalism. How? Tool-scoring marks on bones, crushed heavy bones to extract marrow and charring from cooking fires.

While conditions inside the cave must have been fairly ripe, the overall impact on the wider environment was negligible. Even early humans managed to hunt many species into extinction but the impact on the planet still amounted to virtually nothing. It took the industrial age and a rapidly increasing population to break into the big time when it came to wrecking the planet. While early humans might have taken woolly mammoth off the menu, there was plenty of other game to substitute so there were no apparent implications. But our more recent ability to impact on resources on a planetary scale has left us with a situation where not only have we fouled our nests, we have poisoned our food, defecated in our water supplies and made the atmosphere toxic. The growing world population needs what the planet has to offer in terms of resources now more than ever, but we are using them up and wasting them or polluting them just as quickly.

Technological fix

Of course we are getting all of the resources for nothing, and the Earth has plenty more to give with the right technological fix, right? The newly formed Irish Forum on Natural Capital would beg to differ. Launched late last week it hopes to convince people that these resources come at a cost.

It is not about having to give money to Irish Water, it is about recognising that the planet’s water resource should be considered finite and therefore worth protecting. It is taking account of the costs associated with being careless with fresh water supplies, for example leading to the need to run expensive desalination plants. It is about finding ways to prevent damage to soil caused by a combination of irrigation, fertiliser use and over-cropping.

The forum involves academics, public and private sector bodies and NGOs all led led by Jane Stout, professor of botany and a principal investigator in Trinity College Dublin's school of natural sciences. The forum has given itself two years to pull together a strategy that will encompass four areas, policy, business, communications and research. It will seek to inform government and its agencies and the private sector that the services being provided by the planet do not come free of charge and that they require support if they are to be sustained.

Research from 2008 put a conservative value on the physical and biological resources provided by Ireland alone at €2.6 billion per year. This includes air, water, mineral resources, fossil fuels and all living things.

Looking at the environmental damage caused by human activity per year on a global scale, the study suggested these costs stood at €6 million million (trillion) minimum. And if things don’t change then costs could spiral to €26 million million a year by 2050.

Dividends

Yet if you put a little money in to keep the planet right then there are dividends, the forum argues. The world’s collection of natural parks generates spending worth more than €545 billion per year, while investment in the parks cost just €9 billion, a 60-fold return, the forum says.

It is not that the forum wants us to live in wattle homes and do without electricity, smart televisions and all the mod-cons, it is only pointing out that maintaining the Earth’s capacity to provide services will depend on careful husbandry and some degree of investment. Government, public bodies, and the private sector must take these ideas on board when developing public policy and corporate strategy.

It must be said that the Earth doesn’t really care what we do, life does not make it orbit the Sun and if the atmosphere or climate changes, so be it. There will be no cavalry riding over the hill to rescue us if we make the place uninhabitable.