Why are we Committing Ecological Suicide?
Our Growth seems to now be a Cancer that is Promoting Death and Depression and Denial
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem
Years ago a friend committed suicide. I was young and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Later my wife, who is a mental health Nurse, helped me learn that depression is main cause of suicide and the depression is often because of either being overwhelmed or unresolved trauma which they cannot face and heal from. In this state of seeing living without joy suicide looks like a good option. While reading more about this I learned that the modern approach to trauma is not to see Trauma as the event but rather to see that Trauma is our RESPONSE to the event, so we cannot only blame external events for our suicide. With all this in mind how about we try to figure out why it is that Canada, and Industrial civilization in general, seems to be committing suicide. Why is that our culture has lost belief in itself? What trauma has made us say “Sorry” at every turn?
Let’s start by looking at the particular type of suicide used in the title – Ecological Suicide: [8]
Paenibacillus sp. bacteria modify the environmental pH to such a degree that it leads to a rapid extinction of the whole population. Modification of the pH is more pronounced at higher population. Right now I feel that humanity and the above bacteria are acting much the same way.
As an example of cultural suicide, I will just highlight some recent news headlines that appear to me humanities version of bacteria changing the pH of their environment.
Canada’s living standards alarmingly on track to be the lowest in 40 years [4]
As sea levels rise DeSantis signs bill deleting climate change mentions from Florida state law [5]
Canada leads Australia into mass unemployment [12]
Scientists Confirm Microplastics Now Detected in Human Testicles [13]
Oil sands production has increased 1.3 million b/d during the past decade and is expected or keep rising by another half million barrels to 3.8 million b/d by 2030 [6]
The research even indicates a decline in the proportion of Canadians who believe climate change is real and caused by human activity. [10]
Half of the species of plants and animals currently in existence will die out by 2050. [15]
‘Huge increases’: Economists sound alarm over impact of Canada population growth on housing market [11]
Australia’s leaders are “those who would open the gates of hell and lead a nation to commit climate suicide.” [14]
While researching this paper I came across a new term which is a variant of Ecological Suicide, called Species Suicide but this time the term does not refer to bacteria – it refers to us. species suicide, a phrase that originally referred to a potential nuclear holocaust but is now increasingly cited in Anthropocene discourses to account for continued carbon emissions in the face of catastrophic climate change. Thinking of our non-reaction to the climate emergency a writer in Australia in 2020 said this: “the response of Australia’s leaders to this unprecedented national crisis [in the fires that year 34 people died] has been not to defend their country but to defend the fossil fuel industry, a big donor to both major parties” [14] Sure sounds like our leaders have their heads in the sand and are in denial about how bad life is getting for regulars folks and especially bad for the other species that are either going extinct or whose populations are collapsing.
Yes, the planet got destroyed, but for a beautiful moment
we created a lot of value for our shareholders. – Tom Toro
There are many smart and sensitive people who can see that we are committing suicide, in ways far more serious than the headlines above. For example, a theologian Brian McLaren just published the book “In Life After Doom”. “In it he engages with the catastrophic failure of both our religious and political leaders to address the dominant realities of our time: ecological overshoot, economic injustice, and the increasing likelihood of civilizational collapse. McLaren defines doom as the “un-peaceful, uneasy, unwanted feeling” that “we humans have made a mess of our civilization and our planet, and not enough of us seem to care enough to change deeply enough or quickly enough to save ourselves.” [1]
Another writer of Science fiction novels had a chat with a Scientist friend who said this about our current state of affairs: “In this corner, the biosphere. We’ve spent a solid year higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius; we’re wiping out species at a rate of somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 annually; insect populations are crashing; and we’re losing the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, no matter what we do at this point. Alaska pox has just claimed its first human victim, and there are over 15,000 zoonoses expected to pop up their heads and take a bite out of our asses by the end of the century. And we’re expecting the exhaustion of all arable land around 2050, which is actually kind of moot because studies from institutions as variable as MIT and the University of Melbourne suggest that global civilizational collapse is going to happen starting around 2040 or 2050.
In response to all of this, the last COP was held in a petrostate and was presided over by the CEO of an oil company; the next COP is pretty much the same thing. We’re headed for the cliff, and not only have we not hit the brakes yet, we still have our foot on the gas.” [2]
Swallow, swift and house martin populations halved in 10 years in UK [16]
What I have mentioned is but a taste of the ways we are committing suicide. Underlying all the particular bad choices humans are making it feels to me like we no longer believe in ourselves, and by ourselves I mean us a collective culture – especially here in Canada. Now for me the issue is not the “bad news” per se – but the fact that we are doing anything to maintain life – and by life for the sake of this essay I mean the vibrant life of our culture and the planet we rely upon to survive. What do we do when yet another species goes extinct? Nothing. What do we do when our young dies of Opioids? Nothing. What do we do when Quebec passed Bill 96 which is unconstitutional? [9] Nothing. What do we do when, yet another toxic chemical is shown to cause cancer or ADHS or autism in our kids? [3] Nothing. Well, not quite nothing, but it’s all only window dressing to keep the system and those making off of it happy. Our best and brightest and most caring and most sensitive know the reality that we are committing suicide in oh so many ways. But can they do anything to stop it? No. Let’s pretend a leader of a country tried to stop this suicide; could he/she? Not a chance. All the “choices” our current industrial culture is doing seems just like what bacteria do when they commit ecological suicide. Are we no brighter than bacteria? Time will tell. But it sure likes the time is fast approaching when the nasty side effects of over population and over consumption make ecological overshoot and collapse obvious to everybody. And for those you who say “why me? Why now?” I reply: “If not now, then when?
In the meantime what can you and I do? We need to write a new story of who we are and what matters. In that story human beings are not superior to Nature but are are part of it. In that new story pathological sociopathic and short sighted behaviour is not rewarded. In that new story all we do today is measured by its impact on the future. We write that story in how we live now. We get to choose to be part of the dying society that now exists. We got to be part of writing the story of a way of life that instead of choosing to commit suicide by its over focus on individualism and materialism and worship of “shareholder value” when entire ecosystems are annihilated, we choose a way of life that uses our head AND our hearts. To do that we can read books like “The Master and his Emissary”. [7] To do that we can grow our own food. To do that we must prepare for power failures and economic turmoil and interruptions to our food supply. To do that we can help a neighbour or a community organization. To do that you can admit that the current way we live is a death force and is destroying itself and other non-human life on the planet. To do that you can help any younger people see how wonderful life is when we are not alone and not plugged into our cell phone and Facebook page and virtual reality all day long. I dream that the wisdom of Indigenous people, the wisdom of St. Francis and the Buddha and Jesus, the wisdom of climate scientists and ecologists and all spiritual visionaries would be welcomed into every heart. I dream that we stop voting for the Liberals or Conservatives and choose anybody who has the courage to say NO to BAU. [business as usual] I dream that SUVs and Trucks are no longer the top sellers in Canada.
I know its a dream. But its a good dream. The alternative is the bad dream we are living now. I would call the direction that his bad dream we are mostly living in a nightmare. But we get to choose. We get to choose the dream we live out every single day.
References
1. https://store.cac.org/products/life-after-doom
2. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt/
3. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/
5. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/15/politics/desantis-bill-climate-change-florida/index.html
7. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/02/1
8. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0535-1
9. https://legaljournal.princeton.edu/bill-96-a-violation-of-english-speaking-rights-in-quebec/
10. https://energymixweekender.substack.com/p/canadians-arent-listening-to-climate
12. https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/05/canadas-leads-australia-into-mass-unemployment/
13. https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-confirm-microplastics-now-detected-in-human-testicles
note: higher levels of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic correlated to a lower sperm count in the animals.
15. https://weapedagogy.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/ecological-suicide/
The individualist free-market system encourages all to pursue short-run growth without regard for long-term consequences. The Frankenstein’s monster that we have created in the form of corporations is running on its own steam, pursuing profit without any social responsibility. Without making radical changes, we cannot avoid the complete “Collapse” that Jared Diamond has so graphically warned about.
Appendix
And here is a concrete, non climate issue: the spread of invasive species because of global trade and no real efforts to stop the spread of invasive species and wreck havoc where they move – in this case the culprit is the lowly termite. Invasive termites dining in our homes will soon be a reality in most cities. [Attribution: Cacor Canada. May 18, 2024]
With climate change continuing its relentless march, the world faces not only rising temperatures and extreme weather but also an insidious threat to our homes: invasive termites, and the bill could be steep–invasive termites currently cost over US $40 billion annually. In a new study published in Neobiota, Ph.D. student Edouard Duquesne and Professor Denis Fournier from the Evolutionary Biology & Ecology lab (Université libre de Bruxelles) unveil the unsettling reality of invasive termites’ potential expansion into new territories. Their research reveals that as temperatures rise and climate patterns shift, cities worldwide, from tropical hotspots like Miami, Sao Paulo, Lagos, Jakarta, or Darwin to temperate metropolises like Paris, Brussels, London, New York, or Tokyo, could soon find themselves under siege by these tiny yet destructive pests.
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