Humans or nature?

Jeffrey David Sachs, American economist, shares his concern about  human destruction of the habitat of other species and how this is leading to a massive extinction of plants and animals in his book 'Common Wealth'. Are humans entirely responsible for the megafaunal collapse?

Humans can be described as ecosystem engineers because since we have arrived, we have made many changes. In fact, the Palaeolithic era, which occurred 2.6 million years ago, are linked to major megafauna extinctions. It is unclear whether humans were responsible or if it was climate induced. According to an interesting journal, A D Barnosky et al. Science 2004, only rarely have island megafaune been demonstrated to go extinct because of environmental change without human interaction. Overkill of slow breeding pret is more likely when hunter populations become large. Another study by Flannery in 1989 also claims that there is a strong correlation between the arrival of humans in Australia and the extinction of megafauna in the Late Pleistocene.
On the other hand, in J L Gill et al. Science 2009, there is a link made regarding climate change causing major megafaunal extinction. Pollen can be used as a proxy for climate change as it is extremely resistent to decay. This study uses a fungus called 'Sporomiella' and found that they were scarce in the the Holocene era and coincided roughly with the Bolling Allerod period. This means that the decline in megafaunal could have been caused by the warming of the earth. An article in The Guardian raises awareness of how 'Scientists have 'limited knowledge' of how climate change causes extinction'. 
In fact, its interesting that recent studies including, Hopper et al. 2012, reveals that biodiversity loss is a major driver of eco system change. However, before we must identify what actually causes extinction to resolve this never ending debate!

Philosophy and Climate Change

It's interesting to see that philosophers are also concerned with climate change and the ethics behind it. Philosopher and economist, John Broome, raises his concerns about the uncertainty of the climate change effects in the future and the need for Governments to take action. He rules away the idea of utility maximisation, taken from welfare economics, as a means of deciding whether actions should be taken. In his book, 'Counting the Cost of Global Warming' (1992), he argues, "

I do not think the decision-making process can be simply a matter of calculating expected utilities and then going ahead. The problem is too big for that, and the uncertainties - particularly the historical uncertainties - too extreme." Typically, welfare economics uses a cost benefit analysis when deciding whether to pursue policy options, but there lies a lot of difficulty when placing a value on the cost of climate change.

 

As a philosopher, Broome states the idea of justice to future generations of correcting pollution because there is a mutual advantage. In fact, I agree completely with his ideology and Governments should work together to correct this for the whole of society. Another idea of Philosophy which comes into pollution is incommensurability. This means that two ideas can not be compared to one another. For example, protecting nature and human welfare are incommensurable because they are both not better than one another and also not equal to each other, so in this situtation is it not a duty to act in a way which is correct and ethical? 

China's Carbon Emissions and Urbanisation

China is the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter

In 1980, less than a fifth of China's population  lived in cities. New data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that out of China's 1.35 billion people, 51.3% lived in urban areas by the end of 2011. Nobel prize winner, Sir William Arthur Lewis, develops a link between urbanisation and economic development. He says that as economies develop they move from rural areas to urban areas to acquire higher paid jobs in industries. This can explain the sudden boom in China's urbanisation, which has required a large amount of deforestation adding to the greenhouse effect. At the same time, China's industrial emissions of CO₂ have grown phenomenally since 1950, when China stood tenth among nations based on annual fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions. 1950 is also the proposed time of The Great Acceleration! An interesting journal by Simon J Price claims that land use change by humans has, " modified the landscape through excavation of rock and soil, generation of waste and creation of artificial ground." The major land use change is urbanisation and development of industry. This change has been taking place well before even the Holocene, but its been most significant after the Industial revolution, which is due to exploitation. Data from US Environmental Protection Agency shows that  economies, such as, US, Europe, Japan (developed) and China (developing), contribute the most globally. Can we create a link between economic development and greenhouse gas emission? Yes, because development of economies means jobs and houses are needed, which leads to deforestation and building of industries.