Hereâs the thing: Most environmental catastrophes humans have ever or are currently creating can be fixed. Itâs not just a matter of âoh no, things are ruined, and maybe we can stop the degradation so that things donât get any worse, but weâre stuck with how things are.â There are some things we canât do, like bringing back extinct species. But there are a lot of other things we can definitely do, many of which are being done right now. The problem is that most of our willpower and effort is spent on bullshit tiny things that wonât solve the problem (individual recycling, etc.) and not on the large-scale things that can and will make a large-scale difference.
Ice caps are melting? Guess what! We know how to make ice. Itâs not that hard. Designing mostly-automated robot ships to go to the poles and rebuild the ice caps is well within our current technical capabilities. We just need to fund it.
Deforestation on a massive scale? Destruction of other biomes? Guess what! We know how to plant trees. We know how to plant grasslands. We know how to take barren, lifeless land and turn it back into a viable biome. Itâs not that hard. In a lot of cases, if thereâs neighboring areas where that biome still exists, all you have to do is dump a few tons of biomass (plant clippings, food waste, etc.) on the barren land and stand back and wait. The biomass will provide nutrients and keep the topsoil from blowing away, and the plants and animals from the neighboring biome will move in. In two decades, even if you donât do anything besides dumping the biomass on it, you wonât be able to tell what was the barren area and what was the still-existing biome.
Coral reefs dying? Now, coral reefs are a bit more fragile than most biomes, but guess what! We still know how to replant/rebuild them, and in fact are working on that in places affected by coral reef die-off! And weâre learning how to do it better every day.
Desertification? Guess what! We know how to turn desert back into green space. Theyâre doing it on a large scale in China and sub-Saharan Africa. There are several different techniques, none of which are even very technology-intensive. It takes money and time and labor, but itâs perfectly doable. We know this because weâve done it.
Plastic in the ecosystem, particularly in the ocean? Guess what! Thereâs a lot of people working on this, both on âhow to remove plastic from the oceanâ and âhow to reuse/recycle it more efficiently.â And the techniques are improving by leaps and bounds every year. This is a solvable problem. These are all solvable problems.
So if youâre crushed by the weight of the coming environmental catastrophe ⌠donât be. These are all solvable problems! We can stop things from getting worse, and we can fix the things weâve broken. The issue is political, not practical.
On the political side, of course, is the need to tighten up environmental regulations across the globe. (Whatâs the statistic, that 90% of pollution is caused by 100 corporations?) And then of course, we need to fund these programs on a large enough scale.
In some ways the political aspect is the hardest, but consider this: we are at a tipping point. Things are changing about the way politicians talk about climate change and ecological degradation. More ordinary people are concerned about this, which means more pressure on politicians. One of the ways that things are changing is that peopleâeven conservativesâare starting to talk about âjob opportunities in new green fieldsâ and switching the conversation so that itâs not ârainforest vs. jobsâ makes political action a lot more possible. And no, itâs not going to happen on its own, but it can happen.
This is a solvable problem.
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