Element 6

 

 

The chemical element carbon seems to have a bad press these days; people dream of becoming carbon neutral and achieving net zero carbon emissions; they wish to transition to a post-carbon economy and, in the meantime, worry about the size of their carbon footprint (a term popularised by a $250 million ad campaign by BP in an attempt to convince individuals that they too were responsible for greenhouse gases and that it was unfair simply to point the finger of blame at the fossil fuel industry).*

But carbon, despite what eco-evangelists may believe - and unlike suphur, obviously - really isn't diabolical in nature (it is produced within stars, not the burning pits of Hell). 

 

In fact, thanks to its universal abundance, unique diversity of organic compounds, and a rare ability to form polymers in the terrestrial temperature range, carbon is sometimes referred to as the king of elements and serves as a basis for all known life. 

 

The human body, for example, is composed of about 18% carbon and green plants (which are 45% carbon) can't get enough of the stuff, using it as they do to photosynthesise vital organic compounds. 

 

Thus, I don't imagine our vegetal friends are too unhappy that - thanks to human activity - there's now more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there used to be (and before anyone starts wetting their pants about global warming, it's worth remembering that if it wasn't for CO2 and other GHG trapping the sun's heat so that it doesn't escape back into space, the oceans would be frozen solid).

 

Of course, no one's saying that the warmer it is, the better it is; I'm not denying a significant rise in global temperature could be problematic (even for plants - who can only suck up and store so much extra carbon dioxide). I'm simply pointing out to those who mistakenly think of carbon as an evil pollutant which makes the environment dirty and impure, that this isn't the case.  

 

As always, things are complicated - and not helped by those who wish to moralise everything.  

  

* See Mark Kaufman's essay 'The Carbon Footprint Sham' on the digital media and news website Mashable: click here. 

 

 

Two Inconvenient Truths

Poster by Stanislav Petrov 

deviantart.com 

I: Habitat Heterogeneity Leads to Greater Biodiversity 

According to the ecologist and evolutionary biologist Chris D. Thomas, paradise hasn't been lost because we never had it to begin with: "The harmonious coexistence of humans and the rest of nature in the distant past is a romanticized and largely fictional notion" [59].

Thus it is that the relationship between man and nature remains an often violent one, involving environmental destruction and species extinction. Having said that, human beings have also (inadvertently perhaps) created a "world of new opportunities for those animals and plants capable of seizing them" [59].

Already I can hear the obvious objection from the green lobby: There were once huge areas of land covered by dense forest. Animals and plants wouldn't need new opportunities if only we conserved what remained of these primordial environments.

And, yes, it's true, ancient woodland does contain a great number of trees and many rare species.

However, it's only by converting it into a mixed landscape consisting of a patchwork of forest and various human-created habitats, that the number of species significantly increases: "This is because new species move into human-created habitats faster than the previous residents of the region die out." [67]

This, obviously, is an inconvenient truth for those who oppose all deforestation, for example, and dream of protecting pristine nature as they imagine it. But it's a truth, nevertheless, that if you want to maximise the number of animals and plants, then accelerating habitat heterogeneity is the way to go.


II: Life Prefers Warm and Wet

To say that the world's climate is getting hotter is to state a scientific fact. But to claim that global warming will prove catastrophic for life on Earth is a moral and ideological interpretation of that fact - and a misinterpretation too. For most animals and plants like it warm and wet and will exhibit enhanced physiological performance if the global thermostat is nudged up a degree or two.

Of course, there will be climate change casualties; "at least 10 per cent of all species that live on the land are expected to perish, and possibly double this number" [78]. But the rest - being naturally more dynamic and adaptable - are likely to survive and prosper by migrating, if necessary, to where the conditions best suit them.

Conservationists may not like it, but life is chaotic and in a state of constant flux. Nothing has ever stayed the same and as soon as you begin to think on grand timescales you realise that species are essentially nomadic: "Biological communities are transient. ... That is how species survive climate change. They move around. ... Any attempt by humans to keep things just as they are is utterly pointless." [84]

Thanks to human activity, it's going to get warmer. And wetter. Warmer and wetter than it has been for three million years. But, amazingly, around two-thirds of the species that researchers have studied in recent decades have already wised up to the fact and "shifted their distributions in response" [91].

At the present rate of movement, within just a few centuries we will have a "new biological world order" [92] as subtropical species, for example, move into the temperate zones and former inhabitants of the temperate region "try their luck in the polar world" [92-3]. And this will very likely increase biodiversity, even if the total number of species on Earth is likely to be lower.

I'm not trying to pick a fight with Al Gore or cause Vivienne Westwood to get her knickers in a twist by pointing out this inconvenient truth concerning global warming; I'm not even advocating that we should stop thinking seriously about climate change and its likely consequences.

I'm simply saying - in agreement with Chris Thomas - that we need to accept the reality of the world we live in and encourage the movement of so-called invasive species "because botanical and zoological world travellers will form the basis of the world's new ecosystems, just as they have when the climate has changed in the past" [94].

See: Chris D. Thomas, Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction (Allen Lane, 2017). All page numbers given in the text refer to this work. 

To read a related post to this one - on biodiversity in the Anthropocene - click here.  

On Biodiversity in the Anthropocene

The London Underground Mosquito (Culex molestus)

When you read reports about global warming, the destruction of the natural world and accelerated rates of extinction, it's easy to think that there are no winners other than ever-proliferating humanity and that even our malignant success as a species is unsustainable and will thus be relatively shortlived.

But, actually, there are other animals who are doing OK and might even be said to be thriving in this age that some term the Anthropocene ...

Mosquitos, for example, are well-adapted to life in cities; illegally dumped waste and poor sanitation means lots of stagnant water in which to breed; whilst millions of people and their pets all conveniently packed into one place means a constant supply of warm blood on which to feed.  

Other insects doing just fine thanks to human expansion and activity, include bedbugs and cockroaches. But it's not just creepy-crawlies that will enter the evolutionary future alongside man. Larger animals also find shelter, warmth and plentiful food in urban environments. It has been pointed out that if a rat was to design its own ideal home, it would pretty much resemble the system of sewers we've built for them.

And in the UK, thanks to current forestry practices and the eradication of natural predators, the number of deer is at its highest for a thousand years, with some one-and-a-half million frolicking in the woodlands and suburban gardens (just ask my sister about her plants).

Even when we poison the lakes and pollute the rivers, the cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae as they are commonly known) come up smiling; eagerly exploiting the increased nitrogen levels that result when fertilisers applied to farmland are washed into the waters. 

Finally, it's worth giving a big shout to the cephalopods; for species of squid, cuttlefish, and octopus are also making the most of present conditions. Whilst not entirely sure why their numbers are rising, scientists think it's likely due to the fact that the oceans are warming - thanks to human activity - and because we're significantly depleting the numbers of those animals that usually prey on the above.

In addition, celaphopods are natural suvivors; highly intelligent and extremely adaptable creatures who have been around for approximately 480 million years (cf. the pitiful 200,000 years chalked up by modern humans).  

In brief: although some like to imagine an apocalyptic future in which the earth is devoid of all life apart from human beings and their parasites, there is evidence to suggest that things won't be so grim; that large scale and drastic changes to the environment can, in fact, give evolution a real kick up the arse, resulting in new and more resilient species (often as the result of hybridization).

Of course, there probably aren't going to be any charismatic megafauna outside of zoos and conservation areas, but the process of natural selection will almost certainly ensure the survival of life at some level and in some form. Indeed, to return to our friend the mosquito, a sub-species has been discovered living in the London Underground of all places; while you mind the gap and worry about saving the whale, she pierces your skin and drinks ...    


Notes 

Those interested in this topic might like to see the recently published book by Professor Chris D. Thomas; Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction, (Allen Lane, 2017). 

For a fascinating interview with Prof. Thomas on the Vox news site (Dec 15, 2017) click here.

Ecosexuality Contra Necrofloraphilia (How Best to Love the Earth)

Black and Pink Floral Skull design 

sugarskullbedding.com

I greatly admire Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle for endeavouring to think ecosexuality and questions concerning broader human culture within a nonhuman and inhuman framework. And I fully approve of their attempt to encourage people to form connections with not only other life forms, but also inanimate objects, be they real or virtual, natural or artificial. 

But this isn't as easy as perhaps they imagine. For it's not just a question of sharing space and sharing affection with the things that you love, it's also a question of establishing a zone of proximity and entering into some kind of strange becoming. And it means abandoning all anthropocentric conceit and all traces of vitalism which posit life as something more than a very rare and unusual way of being dead.      

What I'm suggesting is that ecosexuality must shed itself of its moral idealism and become a more daringly speculative and perverse form of materialism. For the fact is, the earth, however you wish to metaphorically think it - as mother, as lover, or both - simply doesn’t care about the life that it sustains. Rather, it is massively and monstrously indifferent; just like the rest of the universe.  

In attempting to make an eroticised return to the actual, ecosexuality is ultimately fated to discover that it’s not an affirmation of life, but a form of romancing the dead; i.e., necrophilia. Thus it's really not a question of how to make the environmental movement sexier and full of fun, as Stephens and Sprinkle suggest, but queer-macabre in a deliciously morbid manner. And if you genuinely want to indicate the ecological entanglements of human sexuality then you must sooner or later discuss death as that towards which all beings move and find blissful unity in an orgiastic exchange of molecules and energy. It's death - not sex - that is radically (and promiscuously) inclusive.   

As for the 'twenty-five ways to make love to the earth' listed by Stephens and Sprinkle, which include dirty talk, nude dancing, skinny dipping, recycling, and working for global peace, if this is the best they can do at constructing a green lover’s discourse or an ars erotica then, to be honest, I’m deeply disappointed; all the multiple pronouns in the world don’t lift this above banality. 

One might - provocatively - suggest that there are other, more explicit, more obscene, ways of loving the earth; that our ecosexual relationship is actually a violent, mutually destructive type of amor fou in which the earth displays her passion with volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and earthquakes and we, in turn, display our virility through displays of power; mining for coal and drilling for oil, deforestation, dredging the seas, the erection of hydro-electric damns and nuclear plants, accelerated species extinction, etc. 

Perhaps it’s these things that turn the earth on – mightn’t global warming be a sign of arousal?

See: Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, ‘Ecosexuality’, essay in Gender: Nature, (MIHS), ed. Iris van Der Tuin, (Schirmer Books, 2016).

Note: This text is taken from a much longer commentary and critique of the above essay by Stephens and Sprinkle (emailed to the authors on 23 Nov 2016).