Humanity's Close Calls
A cursory reading of 20th century history reveals a pattern of repeated civilizational brushes with catastrophe, avoided only by sheer luck and the decisions of a few unlikely individuals.
A commonly cited historical “victory” for environmentalist movements, and a purported source of hope in our potential to avert total climate catastrophe, is the “rescue” of the ozone layer in the 80s:
Overall, the ozone hole has shown signs of healing since 2000, which is predominantly attributable to phasing out ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol. At the same time, the extent of the ozone hole is strongly driven by stratospheric temperature, with warmer temperatures leading to a smaller ozone hole, such as in 2019 (for more information, visit the website of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service).
However, this is not directly attributable to anthropogenic climate change, since greenhouse gases generally have a cooling effect in the stratosphere, while they contribute to global warming in the troposphere. This stratospheric cooling has a positive effect on ozone recovery with the exception of the polar regions. Here, very low temperatures can lead to an increase in the formation of polar stratospheric clouds, which facilitate ozone depletion. The ozone hole can also be periodically influenced by volcanic eruptions, increasing the stratospheric particle load and thereby depleting ozone. This partially explains those occasional years during which the ozone hole is comparatively large, e.g. in 2015 (27.9 million km²).
Ian Angus’ Facing the Anthropocene discusses the ozone issue, finding that this particular aversion of disaster is no cause for optimism, nor has it been entirely averted:
Ozone loss seems to have peaked in the Antarctic in 2006, and in the Arctic in 2011. The ozone layer will not recover until all CFCs are gone, a process that is likely to take most of the twenty-first century to complete. It has been estimated that by 2000, ozone depletion had caused well over a million cases of skin cancer and between ten and twenty thousand early deaths. Many thousands more will die before ultraviolet radiation returns to pre-CFC levels….
Even with the chemistry as it was commercialized, it was far from inevitable that the disaster threatened by CFCs would be identified and stopped in time. If Joseph Farman had not continued measuring Antarctic ozone despite the absence of practical applications, if James Lovelock had not spent most of a year measuring CFC levels in order to prove a point about atmospheric circulation, if Sherwood Rowland had assigned a different project to his new research assistant—these and many other contingencies could have led to a very different outcome.
After reviewing the history of CFCs and the ozone layer, Paul Crutzen commented, “I can only conclude that mankind has been extremely lucky.”
That’s true—but “luck” in this case depended on capitalist profit. DuPont supported an international ban only because CFC profits were in steep decline and more profitable alternatives were nearly ready.
An often-overlooked aspect of the climate issue is the massive time and space scale of our collective environmental destruction. The chemicals that deplete ozone persist for generations, a longevity which is difficult to take into consideration when short term profits are the most important dimension of any normative decision and we are taught to externalize long-term ramifications. Until tipping points are reached and climate breakdown accelerates significantly, the process is just gradual enough that it is easy to maintain blindness—each new generation sees the world of their youth as the baseline, but they were born into an already-degraded world. Being aware of this lengthy process requires a conscious purpose and environmentally considerate upbringing, which is unfortunately out of step with the goals of industries in control of our future. Ignorance is profitable, awareness is not.
CFCs are not the only chemicals that persist, with disastrous results:
For many of us, the call to “save the whale” is a cause we are sympathetic to. But too often, the practical steps we need to take to get there – whether it’s reducing climate change, ship strikes, noise or sonar – stump us. Those last few might appear complicated at first glance and would affect our way of life too much (not true), and tackling the first one has us dilly-dallying on the world stage. But what about chemical pollution, an issue very much in our self-interest?
It is imperative that we understand that whales are the canary in the coalmine for our relationship with chemical pollutants. Too many “forever chemicals”, or PFAS, still persist in nature, nicknamed as such because they barely degrade. PCBs are one such chemical, and despite them being banned 40 years ago, killer whales are still dying in our waters from PCB poisoning. So deadly is the long-term impact that researchers suspect it is responsible for the crash in the birthrate we have seen in our only resident UK killer whale pod – the “West Coast Community” – which hasn’t had a calf born in 25 years.
Legacy chemicals are the gift that keeps on giving, and by the time we understand what they do to the environment, wildlife and our health they are already in the system – so we can’t afford to dawdle. That’s why our heel-dragging on plastic pollution is so frustrating – it’s everywhere and found in everything from salt to human lungs. Terrifying preliminary research is now linking plastics to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and infertility in men.
These forever chemicals are not only impacting the non-human biosphere:
Nearly 60% of children’s textiles labeled “waterproof”, “stain-resistant”, or “environmentally friendly” that were tested as part of a new study contained toxic PFAS substances known as “forever chemicals” due to their persistence in the environment.
Among products checked were clothing, pillow protectors, bedding and furniture.
“It’s definitely a concern because these toxic chemicals can make their way into children’s bodies,” said Laurel Schaider, one of the study’s authors.
PFAS, or per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of more than 9,000 compounds typically used across dozens of industries to make products water-, stain- or heat-resistant. They’re in thousands of everyday consumer products such as stain guards, cookware, food packaging and waterproof clothing.
One (arguably beneficial) long term consequence of the ubiquity of chemicals in our daily lives:
A cocktail of chemical pollutants measured in people’s bodies has been linked to falling semen quality by new research.
Chemicals such as bisphenols and dioxins are thought to interfere with hormones and damage sperm quality, and the study found combinations of these compounds are present at “astonishing” levels, up to 100 times those considered safe.
Microplastic particles are also being found everywhere from human blood, lungs, and placentas to the deep sea bed and freshly fallen snow. We have inundated the world with poison and not even considered the short term damage it can cause, let alone the lasting impacts over generations. Our ability to think in these terms is simply nonexistent; that we’ve managed to survived this long is a testament to the aforementioned luck and happenstance. But this luck is not objective, it is as Angus noted shaped by our interests and, increasingly, our influence on the world itself. The dice is loaded—hotter temperatures increase the likelihood of deadly heatwaves, for example.
Another issue with dire environmental consequences is the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which in addition to pollution and significant monetary costs, has resulted in almost two dozen separate instances of narrowly avoided Armageddon:
It’s easy to forget that there are roughly 14,000 nuclear weapons out in the world, with the combined power to extinguish the lives of around three billion people – or even the extinction of the species if they triggered a nuclear winter. We know that the prospect of any leader intentionally detonating one is extremely remote; after all, they would have to be mad.
What we haven’t factored in is that it could happen by accident.
All told, there have been at least 22 alarmingly narrow misses since nuclear weapons were discovered. So far, we’ve been pushed to the brink of nuclear war by such innocuous events as a group of flying swans, the Moon, minor computer problems and unusual space weather. In 1958, a plane accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb in a family’s back garden; miraculously, no one was killed, though their free-range chickens were vaporised. Mishaps have occurred as recently as 2010, when the United States Air Force temporarily lost the ability to communicate with 50 nuclear missiles, meaning there would have been no way to detect and stop an automatic launch.
Despite the staggering cost and technological sophistication of modern nuclear weapons – the US is expected to spend $497bn (£379bn) on its capabilities between 2019 and 2028 – the historical record tells its own story and shows just how easily the safeguards we set up can confounded by human error or curious wildlife.
The hero of one of these stories, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces named Stanislav Petrov was simply in the right place at the right time:
Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Union's Air Defense Forces, and his job was to monitor his country's satellite system, which was looking for any possible nuclear weapons launches by the United States.
He was on the overnight shift in the early morning hours of Sept. 26, 1983, when the computers sounded an alarm, indicating that the U.S. had launched five nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
"The siren howled, but I just sat there for a few seconds, staring at the big, back-lit, red screen with the word 'launch' on it," Petrov told the BBC in 2013. …
After several nerve-jangling minutes, Petrov didn't send the computer warning to his superiors. He checked to see if there had been a computer malfunction.
He had guessed correctly.
"Twenty-three minutes later I realized that nothing had happened," he said in 2013. "If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it. It was such a relief."
As Petrov himself later stated, “That was my job. But they were lucky it was me on shift that night.” We were all lucky. That is the problem: our survival should not hinge on luck of this magnitude and rarity. Far from being rewarded for his world-saving bravery, Petrov was punished for disobeying orders and died in relative obscurity in 2017. Had someone else been there that night in 1983, this blog would probably not exist, nor would much else. His treatment ensures that the next time a similar incident occurs, the right decision is unlikely to be made.
These near-misses do not inspire confidence in our collective ability to avoid problems that are more pernicious, slow-moving, and deadly, because our survival thus far has been the exception that proves the rule.
Another almost-missed disaster happened recently in Mexico, where the extremely dangerous greenhouse gas methane was released in large quantities due to likely equipment malfunction:
Mexican state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos released thousands of tons of methane gas into the atmosphere from an oil and gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico last December, research published on Thursday by the European Space Agency (ESA) showed.
Invisible and odorless, but much more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide, methane is considered a major driver of global warming.
Two satellites recorded images of methane plumes during one "ultraemission" event between Dec. 8 and Dec. 27, the report found.
Researchers led by Itziar Irakulis Loitxate from the Polytechnic University of Valencia calculated about 4,000 tons of methane were released during that time.
Over those 17 days, Pemex - as the company is known - emitted a quantity of methane equivalent to 3.37 million tons of carbon dioxide or 3% of the country's annual CO2 emissions. …
"These are the first detections made from satellites," Irakulis Loitxate told Reuters. "Without the monitoring approach described in the paper, similar events would remain invisible and unaccounted."
How many similarly destructive events have taken place without our knowledge? If we hadn’t discovered this leak, would it have ever been addressed?
Are we passing climate tipping points we are incapable of recognizing? A whopping 4,500 high temperature records were broken in the US in May, according to NOAA:
For many, it may feel like more of the same. More than 4,500 warm temperature records were broken at weather stations across the country in May, according to records from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In Millinocket, Maine, a record high of 90 on May 13 was 14 degrees higher than the previous record.
In Wallace, Kansas, an overnight low of 70 on May 12 was 15 degrees warmer than the 119-year-old previous record.
Globally, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Service announced this week that last month was the fifth warmest May on record, pointing out that all of the globe’s warmest Mays have occurred since 2016.
Such higher temperatures continue to create critical situations for people and wildlife, in terms of drought, heat and wildfire.
If we keep rolling high stakes dice, it will eventually result in a loss, and we are currently undertaking a program of loading those dice to favor horrifying outcomes. How long before our luck runs out for the rest of us, as it has already done for millions of people throughout the world suffering from climate-induced famine, natural disasters, and heat? The gamble now is placing our hopes in technological solutions such as carbon capture, which flatly do not exist yet and would need to operate at a scale governments are not even pretending to acknowledge. Will we wait around for an infinitesimally unlikely climate savior, or begin the process of saving ourselves in a reliable and consistent way by supporting a green communist revolution in worldwide, the only safe and fair option for everyone now living and those who will follow?