A Major Reason
Why We Don't Deal
With Climate Change
by Rick Doble
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The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks
While people believed they were superior to the animals,
they also wanted to live in harmony with the animal kingdom.
they also wanted to live in harmony with the animal kingdom.
It's hard to change something that has worked well for thousands of years but today we find ourselves in just that situation.
The origins of our current climate crisis go back as far as 12,000 years ago (see next section). This is when the human relationship to nature changed.
12,000 years ago humans began to think that they were separate from the natural world and that they were superior to nature and the animal kingdom. Up until that time, for millions of years, they thought of themselves as part of nature. But then, instead, they began to think of themselves as a species who could rule and engineer nature to their advantage.
Unfortunately, in the effort to make a human environment that was comfortable for us homo sapiens, we did not grasp the larger picture, i.e., that we were still part of nature and if we got too big we could affect the forces of nature herself.
Yet this was not a major problem until about 100 years ago when the Industrial Revolution took over and gave this way of thinking a power it never had before.
LEFT: Ancient Egyptian agriculture
RIGHT: The Atomic Bomb, 1945
Who could have imagined that the technology of agriculture, such as in ancient Egypt, would lead to the splitting of the atom thousands of years later?
The Industrial Revolution leveraged this attitude toward nature (so to speak) so that the force of human culture and technology became at times more powerful than nature herself. For example, it is estimated that humans now move more soil and dirt than natural forces. Plastic waste has begun to have an effect on the huge oceans. Coral reefs, where many fish spawn and whose structure protects coastlines, are dying. Large numbers of species are going extinct. And the list goes on and on.
But -- and here is the problem -- we have been reshaping our own man-made environment to suit our needs for a long time (see next) without there appearing to be any consequences. So it is hard to change our attitude and our relationship to the larger global environment.
Part of the problem is that it was hard to identify cause and effect. Scientists who claimed that greenhouse gases would lead to global warming found it difficult to make a clear case, for example, because it happened over years and weather often changed at random. At the same time, businesses and governments rejected the scientific findings because it would be too expensive to make the necessary changes such as eliminating pollution from automobiles. And some industries, such as the coal industry, could be ruined.
It is difficult to alter something that has worked well and that we have been doing for this many years. Yet this problem is like no other. Things we do today may affect us for hundreds if not thousands of years or forever, such as the likely melting of much of Antarctica which will not only lead to a sea level rise but also change the ocean currents. In this summer of 2023, people experienced a month of record temperatures over 110 (F) degrees, for example, in the American West that almost doubled the previous record. Huge wildfires in Canada, Europe, and Australia were rampant. And all this could become the norm.
So now we are locked into the age-old battle of our emotions and old habits vs. reason and science.
Yet there is a bit of good news also. We now have the technology to deal with some of these problems and our ability to predict the consequences of our actions is quite remarkable with new computer models.
Hurricane Katrina August 28 2005 (NASA)
Both the frequency and power of hurricanes have increased due to climate change. However, our ability to predict their direction and impact before they make landfall has greatly improved.
DEEP HISTORY
There is a new movement in history called 'deep history' that looks back and considers the past over a much longer time span. This is one of those situations.
After three or so million years, humans went from being nomadic hunter-gatherers who lived in small tribes to sedentary farmers who lived in solid permanent houses in villages with large numbers of people. This is known as the Neolithic period which began about 12,000 years ago.
Farming allowed people to have a more predictable way of life. At the same time, Neolithic societies developed a number of new technologies such as pottery, weaving, and the domestication of animals -- all of which gave humans more control over their lives.
But this also signaled a basic change in the human relationship with nature. We no longer accepted the environment as we found it. We changed the environment, for example, by growing crops rather than foraging for food. We would continue to change and 'upgrade' our man-made environment for the next 12,000 years right up to today.
So now we live in a friendly man-made environment with comfortable homes, central heat and air conditioning, all-weather roads, automobiles that let us travel quickly and safely, and closets full of clothes along with freezers full of food, plus antibiotics that kill bacteria that used to kill us.
But don't take my word for it. Here is a summary from a comprehensive study of the Neolithic.
From the abstract:"The Neolithic Revolution was ultimately necessary to the rise of modern civilization by creating the foundation for the later process of industrialization and sustained economic growth."Weisdorf, Jacob L. (September 2005). "From Foraging To Farming: Explaining The Neolithic Revolution" (PDF).
Journal of Economic Surveys. 19 (4): 561–586. doi:10.1111/j.0950-0804.2005.00259.x. S2CID 42777045. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 July 2018. Retrieved 12 June 2023.
While many commentators have correctly linked the emergence of successful Neolithic farming to the eventual rise of civilization due to surplus food that allowed civilizations to take hold, few have gone into much detail.
Neolithic farming was not simple, it was sophisticated and used new ways to engineer nature. It was a well-developed and thought-out technology. From choosing which wild crops to grow and when to plant plus finding strains that were easier to harvest, to the domestication of these crops that resulted in far greater yields, to preparing the soil, to harvesting, to storing grain in hermetically sealed containers that could keep grain for years, the Neolithic Revolution was a lot more than just putting seeds in the ground.
But even this detailed list of technical accomplishments does not tell the whole story. This list shows they had taken the full leap to shape and engineer nature to suit their needs and to believe they had the skills and the intelligence to do so.
At the center, at the heart, of the Neolithic Revolution was a radically new view about our relation to nature and the animal kingdom. We now believed we had both the ability and the right to rule the natural world with the help of the gods. We could build a man-made world using the resources found in nature.
I believe this new mindset was essential to the Neolithic Revolution and it came first. And it is this mindset that has continued to this day.
While many commentators have made the connection between the Neolithic and the rise of civilization and even the link between the Neolithic and the Industrial Revolution, the connection has been about technology and not the Neolithic mindset.
I believe I am the first person who has suggested that we go this far back in time and focus on the Neolithic mindset as a principal reason why we are reluctant today to deal with climate change. I believe it is the origin of our contemporary attitude.
This mindset, that ignored the environmental consequences of our technology, has continued to this day and made it hard to deal with the many things that must be done to combat climate change. This attitude has been with us for a very long time, and like trying to teach an old dog new tricks, changing this will be difficult.
WAS THIS NEOLITHIC MINDSET A MISTAKE?
No, this mindset was not wrong. We are highly intelligent beings who can invent and create technologies. We would not have developed our civilizations without this sense.
But 12,000 years ago no one ever imagined we would develop such a sophisticated technology that we could put men on the moon or split the atom. Or that there would be 8 billion people on the Earth, or that we could manufacture an almost complete man-made environment.
And it was not wrong to think of ourselves as separate from the animal kingdom. We are the only animal that walks upright, has language and writing, and invents technologies.
BUT (you knew a but was coming) today we are at a crossroads. We must make a radical change just as the Neolithic cultures made a radical change. We must develop technologies and energy sources that do not affect the global environment.
THE SPECIFIC PROBLEM
The primary problem is that we have been successful at creating our man-made environment but the bi-products and side-effects have not been considered. Also, our increasing population has started to encroach on natural areas such as the Amazon jungle that need to remain natural as it is important for the world's ecology.
People need to believe that there is a real and immediate danger to the Earth's ecosystem, our way of life, and our civilizations.
Louis Pasteur in his laboratory
File:Albert Edelfelt - Louis Pasteur - 1885.jpg
There are examples of major mindset changes in the past that could be helpful. Perhaps one of the best examples is the 'germ theory of disease'. In the early 1800s, most doctors and health professionals thought the idea of microscopic germs causing illness and death was ridiculous. Then Louis Pasteur was able to positively prove that bacteria could be responsible. Today, of course, we all accept this idea and just about everything manufactured is germ-free.
Now with climate change, we must accept there is a serious problem and do something. Already we can be reasonably sure that we have done irreparable damage to the world's overall environment. Yet today we must prevent any more damage from occurring.
DEALING WITH CLIMATE CHANGE
Like any difficult problem, this will need to be dealt with in stages.
The first stage is to recognize that we have a number of attitudes that make up our old mindset which have prevented us from understanding the seriousness of the problem.
Here is a definition of the word 'mindset'
mindset:
the established set of attitudes held by someone.
Oxford Languages
In other words, a mindset is made up of attitudes and it is those attitudes that need to be identified.
The second stage is to consider how to deal with our attitudes, and how to make us aware of these long-held beliefs and their drawbacks.
The third stage is to begin work based on what is possible and to convince people that this work is necessary. This effort may need to be a grass-roots effort as our political systems have been reluctant to take the lead.
The fourth stage is to begin in-depth studies of what to do in the long term. At this stage, we would design things that would benefit future generations but whose benefits we might never see. This has been called cathedral thinking -- as most people who worked on building cathedrals never lived long enough to see the completed structure.
AFTERWORD
DIRECT EVIDENCE
OF THE NEOLITHIC MINDSET
THAT WE INHERITED
The Neolithic Revolution occurred across the globe starting around 12,000 BP (before present) to about 4,000 BP. It happened in the Levant in Africa, in China, in India, in Mexico, in South America, and eventually in Europe. So this mindset, this break from nature, happened in many cultures and belief systems.
As best as we can tell, from the technology and the behavior of Neolithic people, this radical change in thinking described in this blog-article happened from the beginning. But it was not until myths and religious texts were written down years later that we have actual statements that directly express this sentiment. Here are two examples.
In this example from the Judeo-Christian tradition, humans rule (dominion means to rule).
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.Gen.1 Verse 26 - Bible, King James Version
This same idea was expressed in other cultures and other faiths. Here is an example from Mesopotamia from the famous Warka Vase.
The Warka Vase
LEFT: Full photo of the vase
RIGHT: Detailed photo of each level.
The vase offers a complete view of the Sumerian view of the world. On the bottom are water and plants, next up are animals, then people, and finally the gods that the people can relate to by giving offerings. It is the first time a culture placed humans in a position in the divine order.
"Warka vase, a slim alabaster vessel carved [with these images]...from bottom to top with: water, date palms, barley, and wheat, alternating rams and ewes, and men carrying baskets of foodstuffs to the goddess Inanna accepting the offerings."
The votive Vase of Warka, from Warka (ancient Uruk), Iraq. Jemdet Nasr period, 3000-2900 BCE. The Iraq Museum, Baghdad.
NOTE: There was another important reason that Neolithic societies were separate from hunter-gatherer societies. They had a new concept of linear time rather than the immediate time of hunter-gatherers. I have written about this in detail. See the following article.
Neolithic Concepts of Time
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