Humans should not lower their voices, but fully assume their role as a geological force and bend the planet to their will, says geologist Manuel Sintubin (KU Leuven). In his climate essay We, Earth he advocates a positive view of people and the climate problem.
“From the point of view of the Earth, man is an expression of nature, just like a bacterium, an oak or a polar bear,” writes geologist Manuel Sintubin in his climate essay We, Earth. A geological and ecomodernist perspective on climate change. “All that man does is an expression of nature in action, even when we seem to destroy nature. Because from an earthly perspective, we are not destroying nature, we are just changing it.”
We are changing so much that, according to some scientists, we are living in a new era: the Anthropocene, in which human influence is felt everywhere. “Man has become a weapon of mass destruction,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently at the International Biodiversity Summit in Canada. “We are a virus with shoes”, the late Bill Hicks already knew. In his essay, Sintubin opposes this misanthropic view of humanity and focuses on progress optimism and a belief in human ingenuity.
From the terrestrial perspective you advocate, climate change and the disappearance of species are nothing out of the ordinary. Doesn’t that smell like putting the problems into perspective? Because in both cases it is precisely the human perspective that counts: how do we keep the planet pleasant for us?
“From a purely terrestrial perspective, what we are experiencing is indeed an unremarkable, short-lived crisis. Slogans such as ‘save the planet’ are nonsensical in that respect: this is not the planet’s problem, but our problem.
“So relativism is indeed somewhat ingrained in geological thinking. A species like the polar bear, the symbolic victim of climate change, has not always existed and will not always exist. Climate change is timeless. This has become a standard argument of climate skeptics. But it is not my intention to put the problems into perspective. That is not the essence of my message.”
Then what?
“When we look at the history of our planet, it is important to realize that life on Earth, the so-called biosphere, has helped shape it. Two billion years ago, blue-green algae already started to change the atmosphere by pumping oxygen into it. There is no such thing as a static planet suitable for life. No, life itself makes that planet habitable. This is because every star, including our sun, gets brighter during its life cycle and therefore radiates more energy. Life that does not take matters into its own hands under those circumstances and change the atmosphere dies out.
“That is an essential insight. It teaches us that what man does is nothing but what the blue-green algae did. However, we now realize what we are doing and what the consequences are.”
How does this insight translate into the approach to environmental and climate problems?
“It comes with a great responsibility. We must realize that we have become a geological force, and that we determine the future of the planet, for better or for worse.
“I find that realization too little in classical ecological thinking. That places man next to nature and considers everything that man does as bad. That image of man as a plague or a cancer to the planet is not mine. It expresses a wish to return to a world where man lived in harmony with nature. But that world is not coming back, and never existed. According to ecomodernism, people should not take a step back, but just get to work.”
“We are like gods and need to get good at it,” quotes ecomodernist Stewart Brand. For the time being, this is not going very well, whether you consider humans to be part of nature or not.
“He has a point, although I don’t think the comparison with gods is ideal. We are rather an apprentice wizard who started with a planetary experiment and learns by trial and error. Moreover, the situation we are in at the moment is not an end point. We are going through a period of transition, and it is up to us to make it a ‘good Anthropocene’. That may seem like pride, but it’s just taking our responsibility.”
What exactly does this ‘good Anthropocene’ mean?
“For me, that is an ideal image of the world in the 22nd century. The world population will then have been shrinking for some time. I hope that the majority of people will then live in green, urban agglomerations, surrounded by extensive, biodiverse nature. Our economy will be decarbonised and use far fewer materials. And we will be cooling the climate again.”
Are you confident that you will be able to remove carbon from the air on a large scale?
“We have already done that, albeit in a lurid way. After the Europeans set foot in South America, successive epidemics killed some 55 million people, about 90 percent of the then population. The result was that more than 50 million hectares of agricultural land fell fallow and became wild again.
“The carbon that was stored in the process ensured that the CO2levels decreased by seven to ten parts per million and the climate cooled by about 0.15 degrees Celsius.”
Is that possible without genocide?
“The incident teaches us how we can cool down the climate in a period of one to two generations with so-called negative emissions. We can do that today by ensuring that we can return as much agricultural land as possible to nature, for example by eating less meat and increasing productivity. In addition, we also have to invest much more in technology to reduce CO2 from the air so that we can deploy it on a large scale.”
According to some critics, negative emissions are mainly an excuse for not having to reduce emissions quickly.
“We don’t have the luxury of excluding techniques. It seems that we will cross the threshold of one and a half degrees of warming before the middle of this century. If we want to limit warming to one and a half degrees or two degrees, we will have to cool down the climate anyway.
“But the most important message must of course remain that we must move towards net-zero emissions as quickly as possible and that every molecule of CO2 that you do not emit is one that you should not remove from the air afterwards.”
You argue for dialogue and collaborations between classical ecologists and ecomodernists, but often talk contemptuously about ‘our green friends’ on Twitter. Will that ever be okay?
“I am sometimes frustrated with the caricature that is being made of ecomodernism, and because I see little rapprochement among the classical ecologists. In essence, we want the same thing: to reduce emissions to zero as quickly as possible and a world in which there is more room for nature. But our vision of the role of humans and the path towards it differs fundamentally.”
The social system change advocated by ecologists is, you say, a gamble we cannot afford. Aren’t the technological solutions you rely on also a gamble?
“That’s true. But I assume that technological innovation can go much faster than social change.”
Won’t that eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy? The more often people hear that system change is unfeasible, the less realistic that becomes?
“Yes, but of course the reverse also applies. The more we say that we do not need technologies such as nuclear energy or genetic engineering or that they are coming too late, the less likely it is that there will be a lot of investment in them.
“As an exact scientist, I mainly believe in technology and innovation. Others believe more in the malleability of man. The future will show who is right and we may end up somewhere in the middle.”
In the climate debate you insist on the importance of adaptation. Making emission reduction a priority now, you say, is ‘verging on criminal.’ Shouldn’t we just do both, adapt and reduce emissions?
“Yes, but you can only spend a euro once. It bothers me when, after a disaster such as the floods in the Vesdre valley, you hear that it shows that we need to reduce emissions even faster. So you don’t prevent the next water bomb with that. Now that we are already experiencing the consequences of warming, I think the balance should tip in favor of adaptation.
“However, adaptation is still too often portrayed as combating symptoms or ‘mopping up with the tap open’. While the intention is precisely to ensure that you do not have to mop.”
You point out that, contrary to what many think, natural disasters are not increasing, but are actually decreasing.
“That is because we are increasingly successful in assessing risks and preparing for them. But there is still a lot of work to be done, especially in the global South. Consider, for example, the enormous devastation caused by the floods in Pakistan.
“However, we should not make the mistake of concluding from this positive evolution in the number of victims that there is no problem at all, as, for example, the Danish environmental skeptic Bjorn Lomborg does.”
Like Lomborg, you do oppose alarmism in the media. But where is the line between sketching what might lie ahead and alarmism?
“Personally, I don’t see the added value of proclaiming how bad it can get. We know it doesn’t look good but we can do something about it. And we know what to do. I think the time of the ‘warners’ is behind us. It is now up to the ‘solvers’.”
The transition we are facing takes effort and money. Isn’t it helpful, then, to know what disaster we are trying to avert?
“I doubt that the message that their grandchildren will experience x or y percent more heat waves really motivates people. I think it is important to also bring positive messages. I can therefore be very annoyed by the accusation that nothing is happening. Until recently, a business as usual scenario put us on track for a warming of 5 degrees or more. Today we are heading for about 2.5 degrees of warming by the end of the century. It’s not enough, but we’ve already made huge strides.”
As a geologist, how do you view the idea of using geo-engineeringlarge-scale intervention in natural systems, to influence the climate?
“That is, of course, really playing wizard’s apprentice. I’m not in favor of it. Which doesn’t mean I think we should never do it by definition. It is an emergency brake that we can pull as a very last resort. This does imply that we have to experiment on a small scale with techniques such as dispersing sulfur particles in the atmosphere that reflect sunlight, and that we have to think about international agreements on this. I see geoengineering as a tool in our coffin that we should leave there as long as possible.”