The Catastrophe No One Talks About

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Long before the death of last Northern White Rhino  in wild, there was the Dodo. A large flightless   bird that roamed the coastal woods of Mauritius,  an island off of Madagascar. But in 1598, the Dodo   faced a world ending threat: the arrival of white  Europeans, who were hungry for resources to fuel   their emerging capitalist nations. With guns and  axes, Dutch sailors carved up the Dodo’s habitat,   leaving few safe havens for the bird. Out in the  open, with no where left to hide, those birds that   didn’t die from the destruction of their habitat,  were killed by the barrel of Dutch guns and cooked   in Dutch kettles. By 1662, the last Dodo perished.  The Dutch colonizers had driven the species into   extinction. And the beastly bird of Mauritius  soon faded into myth. Sadly, this is a common   story. One that’s been unfolding and accelerating  over the last four centuries. Life on Earth as we   know it is dying. A mass extinction event–the  likes of which this planet has only experienced   five other times–is now occuring. Today, we’ll  explore the underlying forces driving this   catastrophic die-off. We’ll journey from the  fur-trappers of the North American colonies,   to the agro-industrial feedlots of Brazil, all the  way to the machines of industry. This is the story   of the Sixth Extinction. A story of it’s dark  roots and the manifold ways we might reverse it. This video is sponsored by Brilliant A simmering catastrophe: While Dutch sailors were hacking apart   the Mauritian coastine for wood and Dodo meat, the  English and French were across the ocean sinking   their claws into the lush landscapes stewarded by  the people of Turtle Island, which is now called   North America. The violent colonization of North  American capitalists, who were eager to ship wood,   minerals, and food back home to their growing  nations, was not only devastating for those who   were already living there, but these extraction  regimes were also disastrous for the natural   world that had grown abundant under the watchful  eye of the Indigenous farmers, fishers, hunters,   and communities. The waters of the northern  Atlantic are a perfect example of this. In   his book The Mortal Sea, environmental historian  Jeffery Bolster, explains that before European   colonial presence, the coastal ecosystems of  North America teemed with gargantuan fish and   lobsters. Journals of sea captains from the late  1500s like Charles Leigh, reported that they   encountered “the greatest multitude of lobsters  we ever heard of.” While another report in 1602   from sailor John Bereton claimed that the boat's  crew had fished so much Cod in five or six hours   “that [they] had pestered [their] ship so with Cod  fish, that [they] threw numbers of them ouer–boord   again.” But, with the continued expansion of  white European settler-colonialists throughout   the 1600s this all changed. Fish population and  size dwindled, and forest habitats were clear-cut   and demolished. The colonists viewed the landscape  as an infinite resource to harvest, develop into   monocropped farmland, fish up, and sell back to  European markets. As the flood of white bodies,   axes, and guns permeated Turtle Island throughout  the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, European   colonists violently replaced various forms of  Indigenous land stewardship with commodity-based,   profit-oriented systems. One early European  invader, James Rosier, quite bluntly reveals this   commoditizing worldview, when he refers to the  abundance of life in North America as the “profits   and fruits that are naturally on these Ilands.”  And environmental historian William Cronon points   out in his book Changes in the Land that “timber  products were among the earliest ‘merchantable   commodities’ colonists sent back to Europe to  repay their debts to financial backers.” He   goes on to write that “In 1621, when the Pilgrims  made their first shipment home…the ship’s hold   was… ‘laden with good clapboard as full as she  could stow.’” As a result of this transformation   from stewardship to commodification, the flora  and fauna of North America suffered catastrophic   losses. Bisons were hunted to near extinction,  the passenger pigeon, which once darkened the   sky with its numbers, ceased to exist by 1914,  and the Ivory Bill Woodpecker, which once found   its home in the coastal woods of the American  South was logged out of existence. But no animal   is more emblematic of this new relationship with  the land than the beaver. From the late 1600s to   the early 1900s, the beaver population plummeted  from an estimated 60 million to just 100,000,   all because back home in Europe, fur lined tophats  were the hottest fashion. Instead of understanding   and recognizing the beaver as a crucial species in  many North American ecosystems, French, English,   and Dutch fur traders developed a massive market  that only saw the animals as commodities. Beavers   were just living pelts, waiting to be trapped,  skinned, and sold for a profit. But luckily for   the beaver, the fur-lined top hat eventually  faded out of fashion, and populations were   able to somewhat stabilize. But, unfortunately  for the Indigenous people of Turtle Island,   as well as the North American flora and  fauna, the settler-colonial Europeans,   with their extractivist and commodifying economies  were here to stay. This destruction at the hands   of early settler colonial economies is just a  taste of what’s to come. Today we face something   bigger. Today we’re on the precipice of one of  the largest extinction events in Earth’s history. What’s the Sixth Mass Extinction? The reality of life on Earth is that all   species will face extinction. From the earliest  single cell organisms of the Eoarchean era to   the Stegasauras of the late Jurassic period, flora  and fauna fade into extinction as other life, more   suited to the ecosystem’s niche takes its place.  Extinction and replacement are the consequences   of evolution. But across the course of Earth’s  history, there have been punctuation points. Five   moments in time that have been catastrophic  for life. Five mass extinction events where,   over the course of roughly three million years,  the diversity of species dramatically declined,   the most famous of which was the mass die-off of  dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And we are now   living in the sixth one. For reasons we’ll dive  into soon, plants, animals and general life on   earth are dying-off at rates far higher than  normal. With evidence pointing to extinction   rates as high as 1,000 times the usual background  pace. Which means, as researcher Gerardo Ceballos,   explains, “What we've lost in 100 years would  have been lost in 10,000 years in normal times.”   Indeed, the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Living  Planet Index, which averages together the change   in abundance of over 5,000 species worldwide,  found an average decline of 69% in population   since 1970. While this number is pretty limited  in its scope, it still gives us a glimpse at   the potential extinction event we’re now facing.  According to a 2019 U.N. report, over 1,000,000   species will be threatened with extinction over  the next few decades. And even if some species are   able to thrive, the absence of just one keystone  animal, plant, or insect could send a chain   reaction of extinction through a local ecosystem.  This interconnected reliance of local biomes is   most famously exemplified by the gray wolf, which  was hunted out of Yellowstone National Park in   the1930s. The absence of the wolf triggered a  cascade of consequences. Elk populations, free   from their apex predator, exploded in numbers,  which meant that one of their primary food   sources, willow trees, declined dramatically. The  lack of these trees, which are also a food source   for beavers, meant fewer beavers and natural  dams along the banks of Yellowstone’s rivers,   leading to a transformation in the very way  rivers flowed. This is called a trophic cascade   and reveals both how interconnected an ecosystem  is and how vulnerable it can be to the loss of   just one keystone species. So when the IPCC  reports that “3 to 14% of species…will likely   face very high risk of extinction at global  warming levels of 1.5°C, increasing up to… 3 to   48% at 5°C,” this could have vast ripple effects  across Earth’s habitats. But mass extinction   doesn’t just mean catastrophe for the millions of  species eradicated from their ecosystem, it also   spells disaster for human economies and social  organization. Because after all, our systems   of production–our economies– are built on the  foundation of thriving and biodiverse ecosystems.   So, when those ecosystems collapse, whether  through the domino effect of the disappearance   of a keystone species or through more general  extinction, we are greatly affected. The absence   of pollinator insects means the absence of crops  in fields. The lack of kelp and mangroves along   coastal waters means increased floods and fewer  fish, the absence of the wolf means more deer   and more disease. And that’s just the tip of the  iceberg. We’ve built our world, our agriculture,   our cities around a specific structure of the  natural world. So, when that structure begins   to crumble. When species die-off, when ecosystems  unravel, our way of life suffers. So in order to   keep things from unraveling even further, we  need to understand why this is all happening. Why is everything dying? The legacy of European colonial resource   extraction is alive and well in the Brazilian  Amazon. There, trees that are home to a diverse   range of animals and insects are slashed and  burned to make room for industrial soy farms and   ranches. This Amazonian deforestation is eerily  similar to what we witnessed in the colonies   along the Atlantic coast of North America. Land  dramatically changed from one of forest or wetland   to one of a single crop or single animal. In  short, we are terraforming the Earth. There   are multiple drivers of the growing extinction  rates we’re witnessing today and at the top of   the list is land-use change. Or the transformation  of habitat into a vastly different shape, to the   point where a species is not able to adapt to  their new environment. We can see here that land   use has dramatically increased since the 1700s,  and always at the bleeding edge of the frontier   is agriculture. According to the U.N. Food and  Agriculture Organization, agricultural land   takes up almost half of all habitable land, and  is responsible for 90% of deforestation and 70%   of the world’s freshwater use. And that sustained  transformation of ecosystems into landscapes more   suitable for industrial agricultural systems  has spelled disaster for biodiversity. Species   are being pushed to extinction because of land use  change, and the last decade of deforestation along   the edges of the Amazon rainforest are a perfect  microcosm of this. As a result of habitat loss,   over 10,000 species of plants and animals risk  extinction. But land use change is just of the   drivers forcing extinction, climate change is  another, and could yet prove to be the most   consequential if temperatures continue to rise  over the next century. Whether it was intense   volcanic activity, rapid growth of plants, or  impact dust from an asteroid blocking out the sun,   the last five mass extinctions were all  precipitated due to shifts in climate.   But if those climatic shifts occurred over the  course of thousands, if not millions of years,   our current emissions rate is accelerating that  climate transformation to the scale of hundreds   of years. Changes in global temperatures that  quick can spell disaster for ecosystems. It forces   animals out of their normal geographic zones,  causes weather events like droughts and floods   in locations ill equipped to deal with that kind  of weather, and creates unadaptable conditions.   As a recent IPCC report notes, climate change  is already having world-shaking consequences:   “Approximately half of the species assessed  globally have shifted polewards or…to higher   elevations (very high confidence). Hundreds  of local losses of species have been driven by   increases in the magnitude of heat extremes (high  confidence), as well as mass mortality events on   land and in the ocean (very high confidence) and  loss of kelp forests (high confidence).” In short,   changing temperatures and climates will drive  species to extinction around the world if left   unchecked. And those that are left alive after  habitat loss and the pressures of climate change   must face the added threat of over extraction.  Much like the Dodos of Mauritius or the gray   wolves of Yellowstone, species extinction can  be directly driven by the barrel of the gun   or the snare of the net. Fish species around  the world, like Yellowfin Tuna, are threatened   because of our insatiable appetite for extraction  of certain species. We’re seeing this everywhere   from the trade of ivory decimating the Northern  White Rhino population, African Forest elephants   on the brink of extinction for their tusks, or  Pangolins hunted for their scales in medicinal   products. But at the heart of all of these factors  that are driving extinction isn’t human nature.   It’s not our inherent hatred of other species  that is driving an increased extinction rate,   but instead our economic system. Our mode of  production. Yes, that’s right, it’s capitalism. What’s really at the root of extinction?  To uncover the root cause of the sixth mass  extinction we need to travel once again back to   the fur trappers of North America. It’s here along  the banks of rivers dammed up by beavers, that   fur trappers took part in an early instance of  capitalist commodification of the natural world,   and in doing so the drove a species to the brink  of destruction. While there was certainly more at   play, like shifting climates or the introduction  of new diseases, many roads lead to the emergence   of the European market economy throughout  the North American landscape as a key driver   of ecosystem change. Prior to the capitalist  commodification of natural resources– transforming   the very trees and animals into goods to be  refined and sold for money– Indigenous communities   employed a range of tactics and land interventions  that, while still impacting the landscape,   did so in a way that minimized their footprint.  As the author of a recent paper on the impact   of precolonial communities on North American  landscapes, Elizabeth Chilton, notes, “[Indigenous   North Americans] thrived under changing forest  conditions not by intensively managing them but   by adapting to them and the changing environment.”  It was only with the introduction of monocultures   of European seed strains, animals, and industrial  logging that fed production across the Atlantic,   that we began to see the decline of species on  a broader scale. As Cronon put it in Changes in   the Land, “​​New England ecology was transformed  as the region became integrated into the emerging   capitalist economy of the North Atlantic.  Capitalism and environmental degradation went   hand in hand.” Because, under capitalism we face  an unresolvable contradiction. In order to live,   we need the natural world, with all of its  wonderfully complex and life-giving ecosystems,   but inside a mode of capitalist production, we  must also extract, subjugate, and destroy that   natural world to make a living. One of the  foundational characteristics of a capitalist   economy is the production of goods for exchange  value rather than use value. In other words,   we’re producing materials not based on necessity  or how well they work, but primarily for how   much the product can sell for on the market. As a  result, under capitalism we’re driven to extract,   produce, and accumulate far above levels that  are needed to satiate the conditions to thrive,   because it is profitable to do so. In the real  world, this looks like the global meat market that   deforests vast swathes of the Amazon rainforest  because we’ve transformed animal agriculture   into an industrial machine. In order to squeeze  maximum value out of a cow, animal agriculture,   which used to look like a collection of small  ranchers and herders before capitalism, has now   become mechanized, consolidated, and homogenous.  This means that as farmers and ranchers cut down   the edges of the biodiverse Amazononian habitat,  they are replacing them with just a couple of   species of soybean for animal feed and cattle for  meat. Meat-packing giants like JBS, who know that   more product sold means more profits in their  pocket, push industrial ranching companies like   AgroSB to gobble up millions of acres of land at  any cost. And often that cost is the destruction   of ecosystem, which leads to habitat loss and  species extinction. In short, the endless cycle of   accumulation under capitalism, wherein capitalists  make profits, plug those profits into even more   labor and extraction to make even more profits,  is untenable for the natural world. The end   result of this cycle of accumulation is climate  chaos and species extinction. A common response   to this is that capitalism can’t possibly be at  the heart of the Sixth Mass Extinction because as   long as humans have roamed the earth, we’ve been  driving animals extinct. While that is, indeed,   partly correct, it’s a little bit like comparing  apples to oranges. It’s true that early humans in   the Neolithic era did hunt megafauna like the  Mammoth and the ground sloth to extinction,   but it’s important to note that these were much  smaller blips on graph of extinction. The rate   and scale of extinction we’re facing today  is larger than the megafauna extinctions of   the neolithic era. In addition, these extinctions  were not necessarily a case of eradication but of   replacement. As conservation biologist Ian Rappel  notes, “In many cases…the ecological roles of   these large animals were subsequently taken up by  human beings themselves as they pushed and pulled   at local ecosystems to generate their own social  metabolism through the controlled use of fire,   shifting agriculture and the proactive management  of woodlands, tundra and savannah.” Early humans,   then, essentially became their own megafauna in  their ecosystems, becoming essential stewards   to the land. What we are witnessing today is not  that. It is the mass eradication and displacement   of habitat, the mass extraction of the natural  world driven by capitalism’s need to commodify   and produce. Human nature did not drive ranchers  and soybean farmers to slash and burn the Amazon   rainforest, the hunt for profits did. The guns of  poachers that drove the Northern White Rhino to   extinction did so in pursuit of the riches those  tusks would bring. And the continued expansion,   extraction, and burning of fossil fuels powering  the climate crisis pushing millions of species   to the brink has been propelled by the pursuit  of padding the wallets of those in power. So,   as plants and animals die, we must not blame  human nature. That’s both ahistorical and ignores   the fact that there are countless ways to live  with, instead of against, the natural world. So,   to reverse the sixth mass extinction we  must grapple with our mode of production. How To Reverse the Sixth Mass Extinction: If the stories of the peregrine falcon, the  bald eagle, or the Iberian Lynx can be anything,   they should be a balm to the doom we’re facing.  All three of these species faced down the surety   of annihilation, and were guided back to  from the brink. What gives me hope is that   the Sixth Mass Extinction is not set in stone.  What we do right now, tomorrow, or a year down   the line will have vast ramifications for  not only us humans and our descendants,   but for millions of species of life on this  planet. But to do the work we must first figure   out effective ways to avoid the biodiversity  collapse we’re beginning to witness today. One   of the more pervasive capitalist “solutions”  to the sixth mass extinction and habitat loss   more generally is the concept of “ecosystem  services.” Popularized by the United Nations   Millennium Ecosystem Assessment published in 2005,  the idea of ecosystem services is to identify and   often quantify the ways in which the natural world  benefits humans. Or in other words, calculing the   goods and services that nature provides to humans.  The idea behind ecosystem services is that,   in defining and putting monetary value on the  intangibles of ecosystems like disease control,   water filtration, or oxygen production, capitalist  markets and decision makers will be much more   likely to understand and protect biodiverse  habitats. Indeed, this is exactly what scholar   activist Vandana Shiva did to block limestone  mining in India’s Mussoorie hills in 1982. She   spent months researching the impact limestone had  on water security and found “that the mountains   and the aquifers and the limestone did a better  job just being as they were then when they were   mined.” Shiva submitted her findings and together  with pressure from activists successfully blocked   limestone mining operations in the Mussoorie  hills. While successful, this is ultimately   a stop-gap approach. A method of harm reduction  that might be effective in the very short term–   but is susceptible to being overturned,  because it ultimately capitulates to the   capitalist mode of commodifying nature. It still  envisions habitat and ecosystems as commodities   that service a capitalist market, and if for some  reason the spreadsheets reveal its more profitable   to extract than preserve, capitalists will do  just that. This means that while we are trying   to reduce the harm of capitalism we also need to  envision ways that hack at the rotten roots of the   Sixth Mass Extinction. And no, land and habitat  conservation is not enough. Indeed, the mindset of   conservation–or the act of protecting ecosystems  from human intervention– is ahistorical.   Humans as a species have long been integral parts  of the landscapes, using controlled burns, roving   agriculture and spreading seeds through foraging.  Indeed those that still maintain a stewardship   approach to the land, foster habitats containing  80% of the world’s current biodiversity. So,   while we need conservation in the short term, we  also need to be working towards an anti-capitalist   mode of production that seeks a co-thriving  of both the natural world and human economies   in the long term. One blueprint for a long-term  approach comes from authors Drew Pendergrass and   Troy Vetesse, who envision a Half-Earth Socialism  approach to the Sixth Mass Extinction. For them a   planned economy that focuses on minimal impact on  the land, while also setting aside, rewilding and   then stewarding 50% of the Earth for the natural  world to thrive, is the optimal path away from   climate chaos and species extinction. Or there  are the imaginings of Solarpunk. Cities and towns   were the way in which our technologies and our  livelihoods are completely enmeshed with nature,   so that we don’t have to destroy a forest in  order to have reliable shelter and food on   the table. These threads have two necessary  ingredients. First, the transformation of an   economy from one of exchange to one of use–and  in doing so minimizing our collective impact on   the world–and second, blending the line between  humans and nature, in a way that recognizes the   role humanity has always played as a part of, and  not separate from, our sorroundings. But to build   a future that fosters a harmonious relationship  with the natural world, we first need to end our   system of global capitalism. A mission that the  many of the countries of the imperial periphery   have recognized and enshrined into the words  of the Cochabamba Peoples Agreement in 2010.   There they write “Humanity confronts a great  dilemma: to continue on the path of capitalism,   depredation, and death, or to choose the path of  harmony with nature and respect for life.” So,   to prevent the fate of the Dodo, the Northern  White Rhino, from infecting life around the world   we must struggle for a world beyond capitalism.  A world rich not with profit but with life,   a world that embraces the interconnectedness of  humans and nature. A world worth fighting for. A world that will certainly have a much  smaller animal agriculture industry. Because,   the unfortunate fact is that animal agriculture  within capitalism not only is driving   land use change, but also climate change.  Which is why next month’s video dives into the   hard questions of animal agriculture, and asks  questions like whether we should all be vegans   or not. And if you don’t want to wait a month,  you can watch that video right now if you’re a   Nebula subscriber, because I put all my videos  up on Nebula a month before they go on YouTube. Meanwhile we need biologists and ecologists  researching developing solutions to the looming   biodiversity crisis. People who are steeped in  practices of analytical and scientific thinking.   Which is why I’ve always loved Brilliant.org.  Brilliant is a website and app that uses visual,   hands-on approach to help build those next  generation of scientists that can help us   better understand the crisis we’re facing.  Because with Brilliant you learn by doing.   You can play around with interactive puzzles  and games that make difficult to understand   concepts like quantum mechanics actually fun to  learn. Their courses are laid out like a story,   and broken down into awesome visual pieces and  interactive puzzles so that you can tackle them   a little bit at a time. Like Brilliant’s wonderful  course on scientific thinking. Understanding the   foundations of the scientific method is essential  to forging a renewable future, and Brilliant has   made grasping the concepts like intuitive and fun.  This little interactive bridge puzzle helps you   understand the importance of experimentation while  you engineer the optimal structure across the gap. This type of interactivity is peppered all  throughout Brilliant’s thousands of lessons,   and there’s something for everybody —  from foundational and advanced math to AI,   data science, neural networks and more. So,  to get started for free– for a full 30 days–,   visit to brilliant.org/OCC or click  on the link in the description,   and the first 200 of you will get 20% off  Brilliant's annual premium subscription.
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Channel: Our Changing Climate
Views: 382,344
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Keywords: Video Essay, Environment, Climate Change, Our Changing Climate, OCC, extinction, sixth extinction, sixth mass extinction, mass extinction, biodiversity collapse, biodiversity extinction, capitalism collapse, capitalism extinction
Id: RreXcPsTqkk
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Length: 25min 41sec (1541 seconds)
Published: Fri Jun 30 2023
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