Ch. 10: Environment, Climate, and Space

In the movie Children of Men, it is the year 2027 and no child has been born for 18 years. Huddled masses search for a new home, and civil order is tenuous. While the story of the movie is the quest of a miraculously pregnant women to sanctuary, the true mystery is the cause of the demographic crisis.

Perhaps real-life society is headed in the same direction. We already have the migration crisis. Less visibly, testosterone levels have been plummeting, decreasing male fertility. One meta-study estimates the decline in the sperm count among men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand between 1973 and 2011 at around 50% to 60%.[138] This decline can come from the most unexpected of sources. For example, A.M. Devine noted that the very high temperatures of Roman baths (for example, the caldarium is estimated to have had a temperature ranging from 50°C to 55°C[139]) likely inhibited the fertility of male Romans, given that exposure to high temperatures has a detrimental effect on male fertility.[140] Only could think that the introduction of central heating and hot showers is having a similar effect in our modern age. However, dogs seem to be suffering from a similar fertility decline[141], and they are not known for being partial to hot showers or baths. The cause is thus far more complex than that channel identified by Devine, and may lie in the radical changes in our diet and the environment.

10.1 The Decline of Food

We are all familiar with global warming and its effect on the climate. But other consequences could be even more threatening. Consider the fact that rising CO2 emissions are reducing the nutritional value of food. Certain grains and legumes have lower levels of zinc, iron and protein when grown in an environment with the predicted CO2 levels of 2050.[142] Why this happens is not precisely known. One possibility is that as plant growth accelerates, nutrient uptake does not do so at the same rate, meaning that the percentage of nutrient content falls. However, this effect may not exist in northern, colder climes.

This would chime with another result showing that nitrogen fertilisers decrease the concentration of vitamin C in various fruits and vegetables such as potatoes, tomatoes and citrus fruits, while at the same time increasing the levels of vitamin B1 and carotenes in plants.[143]

In the animal domain, for cows that produce more milk than average, the fat and protein percentage thereof tends to be lower.[144] It may thus be a general case that as we increase the volume of production of anything, its nutritional content falls. Therefore, to get the same amount of nutrients, we would simply need to eat more or to eat healthier. As people tend not to change diets quickly, the visible cost of this could be obesity.

As should be clear by now, there are numerous unknowns. We will only prevail over this uncertainty if we undertake large-scale surveys or experiments, yet we see little appetite for the latter among the political classes. In the absence of firm data to say otherwise, the suspicion usually falls on chemicals added to food, such as pesticides and herbicides. To avoid them, a shift to organic food would be necessary.

But organic food takes more farmland to produce, and is therefore more expensive. One way would be to restructure farm subsidies to favour the production of organic food. A first step in this direction would be to put a definitive cap of €40,000 on all subsidies to an individual farmer. The money thus saved can then be shifted to organic food. Such a measure would garner the approval of the European public: 87% of European citizens are in favour of subsidising farmers for practices more beneficial to the environment and climate.[145]

However, it remains an open question as to whether there would be enough farmland to feed our population with just organic food. A shift in food preferences may also be required, so that people eat food which requires less land to produce. But how can this be done, when culture is so persistent?

One possibility is to integrate this mission into the Metasophist Youth Fellowship. Patrick McNamara, an associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Boston University, outlined how a high level of the chemical dopamine – partly a function of diet – is associated with higher levels of creativity.[146] A type of project then would be to ask several teams to devise a new type of dish that can boost dopamine and creativity, subject to one or more constraints such as cost and type of ingredient.

Those with a keen mind for agricultural science would also have much to contribute to this project as the nutritional content of food is highly dependent on soil characteristics. For example, British soil used to lack selenium, a mineral that can help prevent infertility, heart disease and cancers of the prostate, colon, lung and breast.[147] One could even consider making joint teams of those interested in agriculture and cooking. The resulting dishes they devise could then be put to some type of competition, and we could see which dish attracts the best reviews and also contributes to higher levels of creativity and cognitive performance.

For exceptionally good new dishes that are devised, the Fellowship could be used to train a broad swath of people in their preparation as cohorts could have to prepare common meals themselves. If individuals partake for three months in the Fellowship, then they would become used to both the preparation and consumption of new types of food. Such a programme could allow the regeneration of food culture.

Of course, old food culture needs to be cherished as people like it, and there is no point in devising new dishes that would be rejected for being too strange. In this sense, a truly good food would blend the ingredients of the future with the forms of the past.

But organic food will not be a panacea. While it could mitigate problems causes by chemicals and nutritional properties, it will never be as good as it was before the advent of global warming due to the negative effect of CO2 on nutrition. This problem must be solved, but how?

10.2 The Failure of Climate Change Prevention

The weakness of mind of modern Western society is epitomised by the issue of global warming. People are universally aware of the issue. The consequences, while difficult to forecast precisely, are widely foreseen to be bad. However, despite their cost, no effective battery of solutions has been devised or implemented.

Even worse, a large amount of attention is devoted to the phony debate over whether climate change is man-made or not.

But what can be done? Even if everybody in the West agreed that global warming was man-made, and radically reduced CO2 emissions, we would not be saved from global warming. This is because there are other countries in the world who would burn that carbon, and the West no longer has the power to compel them to pursue a policy we favour.

China, Russia, and India will not reduce their CO2 emissions if this means constraining their economic development. Some may assert that Western countries are the largest emitters, and therefore countries like China should not be the focus. Such information is outdated. Today, China emits more CO2 than the United States and the European Union combined.[148] China also emits more CO2 per person than the European Union.[149]

And while many have heralded the loudly publicised Chinese move away from coal consumption, they have been relatively ignorant of the fact that once these plans are decommissioned in China, they are often sold to mainly African countries. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, China is funding over 25 percent of the 399 GW of coal plants currently being build outside China.[150] In comparison, the US had about 1,100 GW of total utility-scale electricity generating capacity at the end of 2019 – indicating that the number of new coal plants is around 36% of the US electricity supply.[151]

An additional concern is that even as counties begin to move away from consuming fossil fuels, the price will fall due to the drop in demand. This could make it financially more attractive for a country to “defect” and consume more fossil fuels.

Some may counter by saying that renewables will become so cheap the all countries will be able to adopt them. Indeed, the cost of solar power has fallen by around 90 percent since 2009, while the cost of wind power fell by around 38 percent.[152] This is especially positive for Europe, which relies on imports from the Middle East and Russia. But even under optimistic scenarios of renewable energy deployment, fossils fuels could still account for around 50% of the overall energy supply in 2050.[153] And, finally, even if emissions could be reduced to zero, the total stock of CO2 diminishes quite slowly. According to a highly-cited study, after twenty centuries 20 to 40 percent could remain in the atmosphere, enough to substantially impact the climate for thousands of years.[154]

Despite this, many put an almost religious faith in international agreements to contain CO2 emissions and thereby solve the problem. First, such faith ignores the issue of the outstanding stock of CO2 in the atmosphere. Second, they are probably incorrect to even believe that emissions will be contained. False hope may arise from the apparent success of the Kyoto Protocol, whereby most signatories successfully cut emissions and met the targets they committed to. But despite this, overall global emissions increased by 35 percent since 1997[155], and that this increase was due to many countries – such as China, India and the US – failing to adopt binding targets or even to ratify the Protocol.

The latest hope is the Paris Agreement. However, this agreement doesn’t even aim to prevent global warming, but to contain it. Under Article 2 of the agreement, the objective is to limit the increase to 2°C and pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.

It is far from certain that the Paris Agreement will obtain its rather weak target. Such international agreements have no enforcement mechanisms, and if a country does not like it then it can always leave, without penalty. Indeed, the United States has already taken this route. But even if the agreement does work, the level of warming would still be unacceptable. Even today, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global mean temperature has already increased by about 0.8°C.[156]

And what have been the consequences of this? Glaciers are already melting: using NASA data, researchers calculated that the 4.3 trillion tons of ice which has already melted could cover the United States 0.5 meters deep.[157] In Russia, melting permafrost has allowed methane to explode into the air inland and to bubble up from the depths of the oceans. As methane captures up to thirty times more heat in the atmosphere than CO2, it was for a long time assumed that the release of methane in such a manner would accelerate global warming. However, recent research indicates that the same process which increases methane emissions also results in more nutrient-rich cold water coming up to the surface.[158] This nutrient-rich water induces a higher rate of CO2 absorption by photosynthesising plankton. So even though there is a greenhouse effect from the higher methane levels, the cooling effect due to the higher CO2 absorption is supposedly two-hundred and thirty-one times greater than the warming effect.

This example illustrates an important point: the process of climate change is fundamentally unpredictable, due to the complexity of nature. For every amplifying factor there may be a mitigating factor. A typical feedback mechanism in this vein would be that as CO2 levels increase, plant growth accelerates, resulting in more CO2 being absorbed from the air.

Two points, however, are clear: global warming will continue, and it will be unpredictable. Given the risks for civilisation, such a situation cannot be tolerated.

While this is a challenge for our civilisation, similar challenges have been faced before. Indeed, Toynbee wrote that Egyptian civilisation arose through the taming of the Nile delta, in response to the desiccation of the Sahara. Similarly, the desiccation of Afrasia forced the founders of the Sumeric civilisation to tame the jungle-swamp of the lower valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

It is essential to note that these successful responses to past climatic changes involved gaining more control over the environment. Other people responded to the same changes above by migrating. While some Egyptians tamed the delta, others migrated to South Sudan. But this did not result in the rise of a knowledge-producing civilisation. For us Westerners, there is nowhere to migrate to, no escape from the hot reality, the dawn of which we have only begun to experience. The frontier is settled. Just like the Egyptians, we must gain more control over our environment – and though it is not often mentioned, many have given thought to the modern equivalent, known as geoengineering.

10.3 Geoengineering as Solution

Advocates of the geoengineering approach are usually quietened rapidly by those who support mitigation who believe, probably correctly, that if citizens become aware of other solutions to climate change, they will be less likely to support costly policies to reduce CO2 emissions today. But there are very strong arguments for why geoengineering should be at least researched.

Risks of Geoengineering

First, according to David Victor, a professor of law at Stanford, some geoengineering solutions are so cheap that they can be deployed unilaterally by a single country.[159] One example of this is the idea of pumping sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere; such particles would combine with water to deflect incoming solar radiation. Such a scheme would mimic the cooling effect that has been produced by volcanic eruptions.[160] If climate change proceeds unchecked, and a country like Bangladesh finds itself in a perilous situation, it is likely that they would deploy such a solution unilaterally given that it would be both financially possible and profitable for them to do so.

However, there would almost surely be harmful and unpredictable side-effects, such as acid rain and hazy skies, making this a potential source of international conflict. Thankfully, there is a better plan.

The Sunshade Proposal

A less intrusive approach worth considering is a sun shade, as proposed by Roger Angel.[161] The idea here is to put a sort of parasol between the earth and the sun that is capable of blocking out 1.8% of the heat emitting from the Sun.

Such a sunshade would be constructed by placing a cloud of autonomous drones in space, each around one-gram in weight and around one-meter in diameter. The total mass of this sunshade would be about 20 million tonnes. With modern technology, launching this would be prohibitively expensive;  the current cost of launching a kg into space is around US$22,000.[162] Angel proposes reducing this by using electromagnetic propulsion to help the “flyers” escape the Earth’s orbit, followed by ion propulsion thereafter to transport them to the desired point between the sun and the Earth. He calculates this would reduce the transportation cost to US$50 per kg, with a total cost of a few trillion dollars. With a development and deployment schedule of 25 years, this would cost less than 0.5% of annual global GDP.

Of all the potential geoengineering solutions, this is probably the most promising because it does not interfere radically with the planet’s ecosystem. Unintended consequences could thus be minimised; the solution should not be worse than the problem. However, if this were to be implemented, the cost would need to be shared by the international community, or a significant part thereof. It is difficult to see countries committing to this anytime soon. And by the time the willingness shall manifest, it may be too late for the 25 year time-frame outlined by Angel.

But such an insurance policy is definitely needed. What can be done today in Europe and the West to ensure that if a solution were needed, we would quickly be able to build it and finance it?

A New Space Policy for the West

In general, doing anything in space suffers from a few problems. Getting material out of Earth’s gravitational field is extremely expensive. Manned space missions are even more expensive because of the need to ensure that the essentials of life are on board, along with added safety requirements. Lastly, any large space mission would require significant amounts of energy, raw materials, and expertise. Given the pressures already faced by our environment, it is unwise to place an extra load on it which the construction of such a space shade would necessitate.

A fruitful but perhaps speculative way forward has been identified by some scientists at the NASA Kennedy Space Center including Philip Metzger, who find that it may now be possible to start a self-sustaining and self-expanding space industry at low cost.[163] According to them, this could be achieved with as little as 12 metric tons of equipment landed on the moon over a span of twenty years. This teleoperated equipment would gradually come to operate autonomously and expand to the asteroid belt.

Developments they cite that have made this possible include robotics and additive (3D) manufacturing, along with the discovery of large quantities of hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon in lunar polar ice.

The authors predict stupendous growth for such robotic space industry. As the industry would grow due to the free resources of space, within a few decades it could dwarf the entire industrial capacity of the planet Earth.

The benefits of this for our environment and prosperity could be considerable. First, robotic space industry could build space based solar power (SBSP) satellites, freeing our industry from dependence on Middle Eastern oil and Russian gas, allowing us to drastically cut our CO2 emissions in the process. No longer would we need to pummel the Earth in search for fossil fuels or rare earths. Many other types of space-based projects would become feasible as robotic space industry would nearly eliminate the launch and construction costs. The construction of our space shade could become trivial.

Some would object to this plan on the grounds that it would give the West too much power. I don’t consider that a problem. But it raises a serious question as to whether such a project would be in accordance with international law, and whether we should cooperate with other countries. The Outer Space Treaty, which entered into force in 1967, states that “Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all states”. International law thus places no restriction on this project.[164]

Politically speaking, it could be a useful opportunity to initiate an international alliance of those who reject the rising supremacy of China and other authoritarian states. To that end, other countries who agree with the Metasophist inspiration of the project could be invited to become shareholders.

This could be the origin of a new alliance who would seek to invest in common projects that should yield a positive return. This positive return would then be used to supply global and spatial public goods. For example, if the project worked, this alliance would be able to ensure secure supply of natural resources, removing a critical dimension of state insecurity and a key cause of war.

Endnotes

[138] Hagai Levine et al. “Temporal trends in sperm count: a systematic review and metaregression analysis”. In: Human Reproduction Update 23.6 (2017), pp. 646–659. URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/humupd/dmx022

[139] Le caldarium, la partie la plus chaude des thermes. https://www.guide-piscine.fr/guidedessoins/equipementsprofessionnels/lecaldariumlapartiela-plus-chaude-des-thermes-254_C. Accessed: 30-04-2019

[140] A. M. Devine. “The Low Birth-Rate in Ancient Rome: A Possible Contributing Factor”.  In: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 128.3/4 (1985), pp. 313–317.  ISSN: 0035449X. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41233558

[141] Richard G. Lea et al. “Environmental chemicals impact dog semen quality in vitro and may be associated with a temporal decline in sperm motility and increased cryptorchidism”. In: Scientific Reports 6.31281 (Aug. 2016). URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep31281

[142] Myers, S., Zanobetti, A., Kloog, I. et al. Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition. Nature 510, 139–142 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13179

[143] A. Mozafar. “Nitrogen fertilizers and the amount of vitamins in plants: A review”. In: Journal of Plant Nutrition 16.12 (1993), pp. 2479–2506. URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/01904169309364698

[144] Lactation curve. http://www.groupe-esa.com/ladmec/bricks_modules/brick01/ co/ZBO_Brick01_6.html. Accessed: 30-06-2019

[145] Europeans, agriculture and the CAP, Special Eurobarometer 440, European Commission, Brussels.

[146] Patrick McNamara. “The god effect”. In: Aeon (Aug. 2014). URL: https://aeon. co/essays/the-dopamine-switch-between-atheist-believer-and-fanatic

[147] Andrew Purvis. “It’s supposed to be lean cuisine. So why is this chicken fatter than it looks?” In: The Observer (May 2005). URL: https://www.theguardian.com/ lifeandstyle/2005/may/15/foodanddrink.shopping3

[148] Matt McGrath. “China’s per capita carbon emissions overtake EU’s”. In: BBC News (Sept. 2014). URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29239194

[149] Ibid.

[150] Melissa Brown and Tim Buckley. “IEEFA China: Lender of last resort for coal plants”. In: Institute for Energy Economics and Financial analysis (Jan. 2019). URL: https://ieefa.org/ieefa-china-lender-of-last-resort-for-coal-plants/

[151] U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Electricity explained: Electricity generation, capacity, and sales in the United States”. In: (Mar. 2020). URL: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricityintheusgeneration-capacity-and-sales.php

[152] Xiaojing Sun. “Solar Technology Got Cheaper and Better in the 2010s. Now What?” In: Green Tech Media (Dec. 2019). URL: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-pv-has-become-cheaper-and-better-in-the-2010s-now-what

[153] Kingsmill Bond, Angus McCrone, and Jules Kortenhorst. “The Speed of the Energy Transition: Gradual or Rapid Change?” In: World Economic Forum White Paper (Sept. 2019). URL: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_the_speed_of_the_energy_transition.pdf

[154] David Archer et al. “Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide”. In: Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 37.1 (2009), pp. 117–134. URL: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100206

[155] Silvio Marcacci. “Was the Kyoto Protocol a Success or Failure?” In: (Dec. 2011). URL: https://cleantechnica.com/2011/12/29/was-the-kyoto-protocol-a-success-or-failure/

[156] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report: Summary for Policymakers. URL: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessmentreport/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf. Accessed: 2018-05-21. 2014

[157] NASA Mission Takes Stock of Earth’s Melting Land Ice. URL: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-036. Accessed: 2018-05-21. 2012

[158] John W. Pohlman et al. “Enhanced CO2 uptake at a shallow Arctic Ocean seep field overwhelms the positive warming potential of emitted methane”. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114.21 (2017), pp. 5355–5360. URL: http://www.pnas.org/content/114/21/5355.abstract

[159] David G. Victor. “On the regulation of geoengineering”. In: Oxford Review of Economic Policy 24.2 (2017), pp. 322–336. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23606647

[160] How Volcanoes Influence Climate. URL: https://scied.ucar.edu/shortcontent/how-volcanoes-influence-climate. Accessed: 2018-05-21

[161] Roger Angel. “Feasibility of cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near the inner Lagrange point (L1)”. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103.46 (2006), pp. 17184–17189. URL: http://www.pnas.org/content/103/46/17184.abstract

[162] Advanced Space Transportation Program: Paving the Highway to Space. URL: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/astp.html. Accessed: 2018-05-21

163Philip T. Metzger et al. “Affordable, Rapid Bootstrapping of the Space Industry and Solar System Civilization”. In: Journal of Aerospace Engineering 26.1 (2013), pp. 18–29. URL: https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/%5C%28ASCE%5C%29AS.1943-5525.0000236

[164] Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. URL: http://www.unoosa.org/pdf/gares/ARES_21_2222E.pdf. Accessed: 2018-05-21. 1966