On one of the first days of class, we discussed climate doomism – which means pretty much what it sounds like:
It is inevitable that the world is going to end due to our usage of resources.
Dagomar Degroot, associate professor of environmental history at Georgetown University, provides a more academic definition in his article “Our planet is not doomed;” doomism “holds that greenhouse gas emissions are soaring beyond control, that runaway heating will continue even if emissions decline, and that ecosystems, then societies, will collapse once heating exceeds thresholds that will soon be reached.”
Source: giphy.com
Or so it would seem.
Degroot goes on to explain that Earth’s demise is not quite as imminent as it’s made out to be and that there is indeed hope, as long as we make the right adjustments.
But I would like to challenge the implications of doomism altogether.
In fact, I challenge on the grounds that ecosystems will not collapse if we run out of resources, that they will not cease to function. At least from nature’s point of view, anyway.
Simple, deductive reasoning helps piece together the idea that if we no longer possess the means to survive, we probably won’t survive. But all because we lose the ability to sustain ourselves doesn’t mean that the rest of the world will suffer the same fate. There are countless instances of the world experiencing changes that it has adapted to, including:
- The Dinosaurs
A classic example. When the meteor came and caused their extinction, life still persisted; creatures like alligators and turtles managed to survive through that time and still exist today. Even after a catastrophic event such as that, nature recovered itself and evolved. A study at the University of Alaska Fairbanks determined that it only took about two to three years for life to return to the meteor’s impact point, but up to 300,000 years in other places; the restoration time varied depending on different biological factors such as the amount of water circulation in the area.
This shows that it doesn’t matter how terrible the damage; the earth will work to repair itself, no matter how long it takes. As Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park says, “Life finds a way.”
- Natural Disasters
Then come events that the world deals with daily. Fires, landslides, and floods, to name a few, are all occurrences that cause some sort of disruption to the environment they target. Plants may die, animals may be displaced from their homes, and the land itself might be altered. However, that doesn’t stop life from regenerating.
Ash from wildfires serves as fertilizer and aids in the growth of new vegetation, and the levels of soil that were made unbalanced during a landslide reorient themselves. After a flood, the changed quality of the dirt after its intake of water allows for different plants and organisms than what previously lived in the area to prosper. The word natural has the same stem as nature; nature will naturally take care of itself.
- Water Rerouting
This one may seem like it should fall into the last category, but this example is slightly more personal and less noticeable. There was a creek close to my house that I played by when I was younger, and I would build bridges on it by placing logs across the banks. After months of time away from the creek, I went back to see that one of the bridges had gotten completely washed away because the creek rerouted. In this case, water had overpowered the manmade bridge in order to change its course, demonstrating that nature will continue doing what it needs to do, regardless of the obstacles.
Therefore, it is not what happens to the environment that determines whether it will survive, it is whether it is given the opportunity to adapt. It follows that the survival of humanity depends on our ability to change after all the changes we are making to the earth. So, whether the world “ends” is more a question of whether it will end for humanity, not everything.