Abstract
The idea of an integrated environment in which living beings and inorganic materials evolve in harmonic relationship has always accompanied man. Nothing else expresses the different versions of ‘creator of heaven and earth’ that we have developed. However, the small vicissitudes of everyday life frequently set us on fire and hide the global framework from perception.
Until after World War II (1939–1945) the recognition of the planet as a sphere was a scientific and irrefutable fact but had not permeated the social imagination, and especially that of ‘decision makers’, in terms of a ‘finite thing’. The dominant thinking rested on the fantasy that natural resources were endless and, of course, the mode of production and use of materials should be linear (extract, transform, consume and discard).
This notion was challenged by the British economist Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993), who in 1966 published The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth. In this essay, Boulding used the metaphor of the ‘Earth spacecraft’ to emphasize the boundaries of the planet, both in resource extraction and in the capacity of assimilation of waste. The author begins by proposing a ‘process of modifying the nature of the image that man has of himself and his medium’. This transition occurs from an awareness in which human beings virtually developed on unlimited planes to one in which the notion of ‘Spherical Earth and Closed Sphere of Human Activity’ began to prevail. Thus, the economy of the future should evolve into what he called the ‘astronaut’s economy’, in which the Earth has become a single spacecraft, with finite reserves of everything, due to its extraction and pollution, and in which, therefore, man must find his place in a cyclic ecological system that is capable of continuous reproduction of material forms in a spiralized process, mobilized by technological evolution, with the recognized exception of the use of energy provided by the Sun.
Shortly thereafter, in 1969, Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) resumed the metaphor in his book Manual of Operation of the Spacecraft Earth, arguing that the planet participates in an endless journey, manned by all living organisms that inhabit it, and that the last crew member who had joined it was Homo sapiens (the human being). This journey is fed with energy that the mother ship (the Sun) sends us through photosynthesis and guarantees the food chain. It introduces the interesting idea of a common destiny (we have to be all or we will not be any) and also a concern: the ship came without its instruction manual. That fully designed machine must be operated, maintained and permanently repaired.
This integrated vision consolidated over time. Thus, James Lovelock (born 1919) published in 1979 his famous Gaia theory, named in homage to the goddess who personifies the Earth in Greek mythology, in which he argues that Planet Earth as a whole (biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and earth) is a single living, self-regulated multicellular organism that tends to an unstable and essentially interconnected balance. The components vary according to the very conditions of the organisms that make them (‘The World of The Margaritas’) and therefore the resulting evolution is the result and consequence of this interconnection.
The concept of integration was strongly supported when Edward Lorenz (1938–2008) formulated in 1972 what is known as the butterfly effect: ‘Should a butterfly’s flutter in Brazil cause a tornado in Texas?’ Lorenz explained that by asking this question he tries to demonstrate the idea that dynamic, complex and interconnected systems exhibit unpredictable behaviours by which small or negligible events in the beginning can eventually produce broad and divergent effects at the systemic level. These ideas started the chaos theory.
Then, on a 21st-century night, a virus-infected bat was killed and consumed in a city in central China and world chaos began: half the planet was paralysed. It is a good opportunity to reflect on what the role of humans would be in making the spacecraft continue its journey.
In 2000 Paul Crutzen (born 1933) proposed that we are protagonists and witnesses of a new geological age that he calls the Anthropocene, recognizing the significant global impact that human activities have had on terrestrial ecosystems. This era would follow the so-called Holocene, the current time of the quaternary period in the history of the planet, begun after the last glaciation more than 10,000 years ago. The Anthropocene’s beginning would be marked by the start of the First Industrial Revolution (late 18th century), and its acceleration from the aftermath of World War II, in which there is an increasingly intensive use of natural resource extraction.
Agree or not with this characterization, the fact is that there are a number of signs showing that ordinary practices have been and still are attacking the physical and natural limits of the planet. From this perspective was elaborated the concept of ‘planetary boundaries’ presented in 2009 by Johan Rockström, former director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and a team of 28 scientists. They identified nine processes that regulate the stability and resilience of Planet Earth and estimated quantitative consumption limits within which life can continue and develop. Exceeding these limits increases the risk of major, abrupt and irreversible environmental changes.
The processes involved are: (1) the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, (2) sea acidification, (3) decrease in ozone layer, (4) changes in land use, (5) overall freshwater consumption, (6) load of atmospheric aerosols, (7) loss of biodiversity, (8) disruption of phosphorus and nitrogen cycles and (9) contamination caused by fugitive chemicals.
It should be noted that according to recent studies by the same scientists, four out of the nine processes (the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, biodiversity loss, phosphorus and nitrogen cycles and land use change) already exceed the proposed safety values.
In addition, in May 2019 the United Nations Global Biodiversity and Ecosystem Assessment Report concluded that more than 1,000,000 animal and plant species are threatened with extinction, and soil degradation has caused a 23% reduction in overall soil productivity, which means not only a loss of biodiversity but also a threat to food security, thus confirming that in some dimensions we are ‘playing with fire’.
Concerns about the lack of a global response to climate change have also been growing in a number of sectors. In November 2019, more than 11,000 scientists from all over the world declared that we are facing a climate emergency, but many deciders are still looking the other way.
An environmentally healthy planet is the necessary condition for healthy living organisms.
A robust environment and public health are global public goods that must be safeguarded to protect life, economy and peace, even more so in pandemic times.
Only coordinated global action can attain these critically important objectives.
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic presents conflicting signs. The almost massive respect for the suggestions and recommendations of the World Health Organization was accompanied by dispersed national responses, and in some countries by criteria differences never shared between national and state governments. The similarity of the measures taken does not ignore the fact that they were basically national and non-regional or less global measures, showing the need for greater efforts by decision makers to articulate and coordinate actions.
The ongoing gradual exit from the high-risk stage of contagion offers us an opportunity to improve our collective responsiveness. The pandemic pressures world leaders to emerge from self-imposed isolation and use available institutions such as the United Nations, G20, Regional Alliances, and national governments to generate ties of interaction, commitments and collaboration to find the global solution. If we were able to establish effective international agreements after World War II why could we not do it now? Let us remember that the lack of global agreements after the 1929 economic crisis led to the cataclysm caused precisely by such conflagration, and that the pandemic will spread as long as there are no global (preventative vaccines) or individual (tested drugs for treatment) barriers to prevent its dispersion and effects.
Let’s remember that pandemics are both a sanitary and a socioeconomic phenomenon, not only because they injure the economic system but also because they force the direction of resources to strengthen the sanitary system as well as to support the less-favoured social groups all over the world.
If we establish basic coincidences in ‘what should be done’, the debate is transferred to ‘how’, on the basis that such a systemic institutional solution must be accompanied by a change in economic paradigm. The linear economic system (extract, produce, consume and discard) that predominates today (in lieu of a circular economy) is in effect supported both by those who use the state as the sole decider and those who embrace the market, and has compounded the challenges facing those who seek effective recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The circular economy and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IND 4.0) will dominate the discussion in the short and medium terms, the first as a response and central actor of paradigmatic change and the second as an inevitable fact that will characterize our life.
IND 4.0 will provide the technological, economic and social framework in which the circular economy can flourish or wither. If IND 4.0 does not depart from known business models in the linear economy and instead usher in a circular economy, it will accelerate overexploitation of resources and pollution.
Recognition of the critical character of the moment we are living in will encourage the search for global solutions for the Earth spacecraft to continue its journey by restoring the corresponding equity among all its crew members.