Can we imagine a world where we leave half the earth to the natural environment and use the other half for ourselves? Can we change history and protect the Indigenous, the vulnerable, and the very poorest in society?
Mark Maslin is a Professor of Earth System Science at University College London. Maslin is a leading expert in understanding the anthropocene and how it relates to the major challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. He has written a number of books on the issue of climate change, his most book is How to Save Our Planet: The Facts.
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Share with us some of those facts and solutions.
MARK MASLIN
I think the most important thing is realizing how much impact humans have had on the planet. For example, did you know that we move more rock and sediment than all the natural processes put together? We also have created enough concrete already to cover the whole world in a layer that's two millimeters thick, and that includes the oceans. We have also created and make something like 300 million tons of plastic every single year, which we know ends up in our rivers. It ends up in our oceans. And we've also found that microplastics have been found in human blood. So this is the impact we're having all around the world. We've also cut down 3 trillion trees, that's half the trees on the planet. We have doubled carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We've increased methane by about 150%, which has led to a warming of the planet of about 1.2 degrees Celsius. And If you weigh the land mammals, 30% of that weight is us humans. There are 8 billion of us, and I have to say a few of us could lose a few pounds, but 67% of that weight is our livestock. And just 3% is those wild animals. So in less than 5,000 years, we've gone from 99% being wild animals to less than 3%. That's how much impact we humans have had on the planet.
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You refer to our geological age using terms such as the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene. Could explain these terms and how they relate to one another?
MASLIN
We are so powerful as a planetary species, not individually, but collectively, that we have had that impact, that we have changed the geological destiny of the planet through changing the environment, changing the climate, and changing the evolutionary destiny - because we're already causing lots of extinctions - but also lots of new organisms to be evolving. And we are creating them in labs as well.
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In a lot of your writings, you imply that a capitalist mindset is to blame for a lot of the climate change issues we face today. And some of your articles proposed two ideas to combat the negative effects of capitalism: the universal basic income or UBI, and Half Earth. Could you explain these ideas and how they act as a solution to the problem of climate change?
MASLIN
EO Wilson suggested that we had to think about the world as a place that we share. And he said: Look, we always seem to need a lot of stuff. So why don't we leave half the earth to the natural environment and allow all the natural processes that we need, and then we use the other half for ourselves. And it's an interesting concept because it says to economists and to the capitalist system: you cannot use all of it. You have to leave half of it to allow the systems to produce clean air, clean water, and allow for biodiversity and ecosystems to restore themselves.
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The Chicago School in the 1970s said: Capitalism has been doing really well. What we need to do is take their training wheels off and get rid of regulation, because they believed this would lift everybody out of poverty. That didn't happen. What happened was, if you don't regulate markets, suddenly all of that money goes to the top. So I'm going to give you an example of how skewed our global system is. There are currently eight billionaires in the world, and they're all white males who own the same wealth as the bottom 4 billion people. That suggests that neoliberalism has not worked.
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And what's very interesting is that at the moment there is this mass movement of people to our cities, making them megacities. And so we are actually depopulating the rural areas. So the very strange thing is that the Earth, it's becoming a wilder place. And therefore there are so many opportunities where people are leaving to go to the big cities where we can rewild, we can reforest, and we can bring back nature to actually keep those services that we absolutely rely on.
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What about other economic philosophies that seem to work within the system of capitalism, asserting that it is unrealistic that our society would make the transition from a capitalist mindset to any other sort of economic mindset.
MASLIN
Economic growth in particular areas, when it comes to developed countries, economic growth in the US does nothing for the average person. It doesn't improve their health, doesn't improve their circumstances, doesn't improve their education. It just goes to the top 1%.
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As you think about the future and education and the kind of world that we're leaving for the next generation, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?
MASLIN
I think that young people should understand our history. And I think this is incredibly important. So it is sometimes very difficult to talk to young people in the UK about relations with other countries. Because they don't have the history, they don't understand the colonial history. They don't understand where the British Empire slaughtered people or imposed draconian measures or actually had huge impacts on different societies. And I think if you understand where your society has come from with all the good and bad bits, you can then say: Okay, now I understand where we are situated. I can understand where economics has come from. I understand that neoliberalism was an effort to try and lift everybody out of poverty, but it hass failed. So for me, it is understanding where we've come from, understanding the struggles, and understanding why the poorest, vulnerable people and Indigenous people are always at the front end of any conflict or crisis. And therefore thinking about how do we actually deal with this current crisis in a way that those people are not adversely affected for the first time in history? Can we actually change history and protect the Indigenous, the vulnerable, and the very poorest in society? And therefore, because we have actually read our history and learn from it, can we actually understand how to move on and not repeat the mistakes of the past?
All images courtesy of Mark Maslin.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Callie Cho with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Callie Cho.
Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
