“The damage has been done and it can’t be fixed, so we might as well focus on making sure we get a righteous government.” This statement was made to me by a career right winger (1) in justification of President Trump’s “had to” nullification of so much of the US’s existing environmental protection regulation in the light of climate change and global heating and (2) in Africa as a non-US citizen non-US resident.
This bizarre event I’ve chosen to demonstrate just how far we’ve travelled from the basics of life on Earth and how detached from our global community we’ve become.
Abraham Maslow, a Twentieth Century psychologist, known for his seminal 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation”, posited his “Hierarchy of Needs” as a motivational psychological construct. The Hierarchy model comprises a five-tier construct of needs, ranging from the most basic physiological, to the most complex individuation. Although there is little scientific basis for this theory – a shortcoming admitted by Maslow himself – the logical among us will be able to envision its sense of progression if not by cognitive machinations, then by personal experience.
From air, water, food and shelter to self-actualization. Once one level is satisfied, one “graduates” to the next level and so on, through Safety, Love and Belonging, to Esteem and, finally, to Self-actualization. The latter is a process intended for people to use their abilities and resources to the fullest effect (Couture et al., 2007).
It’s probably logical to assume that one cannot possibility possess these “abilities and resources” without fulfilling the preceding levels of need. A hungry person will not have resources enough to do his or her best.
Yet we’re experiencing such a cognitively dissonant (in the true sense of the term) world view in present times that the example cited above ably demonstrates those who play-act a weird version of self-actualization while their air, food and water burns and is poisoned.
It doesn’t get more ironic than that.
It has been sixty million years since the previous mass extinction, and they endure for tens of millions of years. It’s not as if this “suddenly’ came upon us, nor will be over like a lanced boil.
And here we are, opining election results, race, gender and corruption issues as if political leaders, equality and morality will get us through. All the while in a desperate endeavour to be oblivious to that most basic of threats, an incinerating planet. How will ineffectual leadership and morality stave off the heat, the cold, the starvation and water shortages?
What we’re seeing, in fact, is blanket denialism of the impending, global and massive threats to Maslow’s most basic bottom-tier needs – air, water, food, shelter – in favour of “intellectual masturbation”, as the expression would have it.
As the world cremates, its people post humorous memes and pat cats – blindly leaving the responsibility for their safety, and the persistence of their species and their habitat (and, for that matter, Earth’s life in general) in the hands of self-serving politicians and Big Commerce.
However, it’s clear that political leadership is fallacious and that the only solution is to repossess our power and place a workable, successful anarchic community in place. There is not time to “develop” this, we need to implement in haste. Our populace, which satisfies itself in petty indulgences: the internet, materialism, recreation and outward appearances will have to realize that we will all have to assume the role of survival warriors.
Within the context of Mr Maslow’s guidance, we need preservation of our basic survival elements, and to shore up our defences against the climatological tsunami to come.
There’s little concern that global heating, terminal levels of toxic pollution, finite single crop or single-species factory farming, riverine deforestation, fossil fuel and cobalt- and lithium-based electricity storage – to name but a few environmental degradations (or, should I say, desecrations) that pose an imminent Earth-wide threat to the foundations of each our own need hierarchies.
One of the starkest symptoms – here and now in Africa – of environmental decimation is enforced population migration. Prolific in most areas of Africa, war, famine, hostile nature and poverty has forced millions of the continent’s people to relocate, decimating the routes they travel and the productivity at their new settlements, and rendering their camps and compound environments nonarable.
These people, and indigenous people of the Amazon, Chinese people living along rivers and Indian slums of megaloptic proportions are the initiations of the erosion of life through destruction of its most basic elements, physical, employment and biological security – as per our dear friend Maslow’s second level of Safety needs.
The causes are not directly political however; what people fail to realize is that it is not the work of climate activists to prevent a mass extinction but to mitigate it. Take a look at these facts:
The first biotic crisis, the Ordovician-Silurian extinction – also the second most severe extinction – took place 444 million years ago and this event killed an estimated 85 percent of all species and lasted for 10 million years.
- 61 Million years later, the second event, the Late Devonian extinction occurred, 383-359 million years ago
- and at least 70% of all species at the time became extinct. This event lasted for 20 million years.
- Then, 108 million years later, the third biotic crisis, the Permian–Triassic extinction event – 252 million years ago – was Earth’s largest extinction, killing 90% to 96% of all species, and it took 30 million years to regenerate vertebrate species.
- 50 million years later, the Triassic–Jurassic extinction – the fourth mass extinction – took place (201,3 million years ago) and 70% to 75% of all species became extinct. This one lasted for 18 million years.
- Again, 135 million years later, the fifth, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event occurred, decimating 75% of all species and lasting approximately 79 million years. It’s interesting to note that the Jurassic extinction – the one with which we are most familiar, was not the most recent.
- That was about 65.5 million years ago, so the one we face now is not a sudden and surprising prospect.
Three things can be drawn from this: (1) on average, 25% of species survived these events, (2) the biotic crises took millions of years to recover from and (3) never in the history – and pre-history – of our Earth has humankind been so well resourced as to so be able to maximize the chances of its species, in survival and even to thrive at it.
And the only way, we can develop a social force strong enough to mitigate (not “prevent” it) a planet-wide extinction is to throw aside our governments and, each in our own way, make the effort necessary to survive.
Our governments have failed us. We have failed ourselves by voting them into power and, in so doing, given away our own power – of decision and of action and, in so doing, abdicated our responsibility for our survival.