Demythologizing Environmentalism

This paper was presented at MTAConf 2020.

On a friend’s recommendation, I recently found myself reading Ishmael,¹ a best-selling novel by Daniel Quinn, in which one man’s encounter with a gorilla in captivity leads him on a protracted Socratic dialogue about humanity’s relationship with its environment. It was a thought-provoking and insightful read that left me troubled, not only by its implications but also by its assumptions.

The book points out that many of our attitudes towards history and human civilization are the result of deep-seated anthropocentric narratives, and uses the interesting dichotomy of leavers versus takers to contrast prehistoric humanity’s attitude towards nature from that of its successors. It posits that humanity’s relationship with nature was in a state of relative balance during pre-agricultural times, and that it has been out of balance ever since.

While Ishmael has doubtless made tremendous contributions to our environmental discourse, I believe there are significant problems with its premises that echo many common attitudes in the green movement, and that will need to be corrected if we are to come up with viable solutions to the pressing and very real environmental challenges we face. We will only be able to understand and solve these challenges by factoring in the impact of technological transformation.

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These fallacies are not new. They perhaps reached the height of their popularity when Jean Jacques Rousseau argued that humanity was more noble in its youthful state than when fully civilized.² His views contrast dramatically with those of his contemporary, Thomas Hobbes, who claimed that life in a state of nature was “nasty, brutish and short.”³ The same debates continue today, with environmentalists on one hand adopting a closed-loop zero-sum calculus while neoliberals and technophiles on the other seem nearly oblivious to the side effects of their creature comforts.

New discoveries in paleoecology challenge the myth of the noble and balanced ecology of the hunter-gatherer. Recent research published in the journal Science indicates that large-bodied mammals, once plentiful on all habitable continents, and particularly important for their disproportionate influence on ecosystem structure and function, were all but wiped out in the latter Quaternary period, primarily due to hominin activity.⁴ Research in Australia has shown similar megafauna extinctions after the arrival of humans on the continent.⁵ Other research indicates that prehistoric pastoral activity may have led to the creation of the Sahara desert.⁶ Satellite imagery shows numerous “desert kite” rock formations in the Middle East, where prehistoric hunter-gatherers would trap big game by the thousands, eventually leading to the devastation and extinction of several species.⁷ Far from being in balance with nature, prehistoric humanity wrought changes in its environment on a level that rivals or even exceeds those we’re experiencing now when considered in proportion to its population size.

Recent research has also shown that population growth rates of hunter-gatherers rivaled that of early farming societies, leading some to theorize that agriculture presented an increase in the complexity and diversity of human sustenance methods but not necessarily an immediate improvement, at least in the beginning.⁸ Each generation of increasingly intelligent hominids seems to have faced both challenges and opportunities presented by its unique adaptability. As a saying apocryphally attributed to Einstein goes: “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.”⁹

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This same principle applies to present questions of population growth, environmental catastrophe and human adaptability. An important contribution of transhumanist thinking to these questions is summarized in Ray Kurzweil’s law of accelerating returns.¹⁰ Experts have often been insufficiently aware of this law when theorizing about potential solutions to the aforementioned questions.

In the early nineteenth century, Rev. Thomas Malthus theorized that overpopulation was the cause of many problems in the developing nations of Europe, including poverty, malnutrition and disease.¹¹ He argued that resources tend to grow linearly, while populations tend to grow exponentially, eventually outstripping the “carrying capacity” of their respective habitats and leading to what came to be known as a Malthusian catastrophe. Being a priest and man of strict Victorian sensibilities, Malthus recommended “moral restraint” as the solution to this conundrum, continuing a long-held tradition of experts prescribing impractical cures for human problems. He failed to consider the ways in which food production technologies would improve to meet the increased demand of an exponentially growing population.

More recent researchers have made similar mistakes. In 1968, Paul Erlich, an entomologist at Stanford University who had observed population crashes in insect swarms, claimed that human population growth rates spelled inevitable catastrophe. In his bestselling book, The Population Bomb, Erlich proclaimed “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. … hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death,” and “nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”¹²

These warnings captivated the popular imagination, with dystopian science fiction like the 1973 film Soylent Green, in which an autocratic future American regime plagued by food shortages secretly supplements public rations with the processed bodies of the elderly; or even reactionary works like Saturday’s Warrior, in which Mormon families are ridiculed for maintaining relatively large families despite overpopulation worries.

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Technological innovation has been the primary factor in mitigating these concerns. In 1898, addressing the Royal Academy of Sciences, Sir William Crookes admonished his fellow scientists to research diligently methods of mass producing “chemical manures,” claiming that “England and all civilized nations stand in deadly peril of not having enough to eat.”¹³ World population at this point was roughly 1.6 billion. Subsequent invention of the Haber-Bosch process, by which ammonia used in fertilizer continues to be produced on an industrial scale, has allowed the population to increase four-fold since then. Dr. Edward Berkelaar, professor of chemistry and environmental studies at Redeemer University College, eloquently summarizes the importance of this invention:

[It] has been called by some the single most important piece of technology developed in the twentieth century, even more important than flight or computers… . We are now quite dependent on nitrogen fertilizer to feed the world’s 7.3 billion people.

Vaclav Smil has estimated that approximately 40% of the world’s population is fed by nitrogen fertilizers; put another way, approximately 40% of the nitrogen in our bodies has flowed through a chemical fertilizer plant operating the Haber-Bosch process on a large scale. Where population densities used to hover around four or five people per hectare of good arable land, the use of nitrogen fertilizers and modern cultivars of major crops enables 15 to 20 people to be fed per hectare of arable land.¹⁴

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Proportionally monumental innovations in human food production are occurring today. New methods of vertical farming are enabling food to be grown using no soil and 70-95% less water than traditional farming methods, in sealed environments without pests or pesticide, where renewable energy sources and LED lighting provides precisely tuned frequencies of light required for optimal growth, plant needs are managed by machine learning algorithms, fertilizer is provided by aquaponics, and harvesting occurs adjacent to where consumption happens, eliminating wasteful shipping.¹⁵ Vertical farming can also significantly reduce the amount of land required for agriculture and contribute to urban renewal.¹⁶

Even more amazing technological breakthroughs are coming in the field of lab-grown foods. George Monbiot, producer of the recent documentary film Apocalypse Cow, describes astounding changes made possible by precision fermentation:

Just as hope appeared to be evaporating, the new technologies I call farm-free food create astonishing possibilities to save both people and planet. Farm-free food will allow us to hand back vast areas of land and sea to nature, permitting rewilding and carbon drawdown on a massive scale. It means an end to the exploitation of animals, an end to most deforestation, a massive reduction in the use of pesticides and fertiliser, the end of trawlers and longliners… .

Not only will food be cheaper, it will also be healthier. Because farm-free foods will be built up from simple ingredients, rather than broken down from complex ones, allergens, hard fats and other unhealthy components can be screened out. Meat will still be meat, though it will be grown in factories on collagen scaffolds, rather than in the bodies of animals. Starch will still be starch, fats will still be fats. But food is likely to be better, cheaper and much less damaging to the living planet.¹⁷

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RethinkX, an independent think tank that analyzes and forecasts the speed and scale of technology-driven disruption and its implications across society, makes some astounding predictions in its recent survey, Rethinking Food and Agriculture 2020-2030:

We are on the cusp of the deepest, fastest, most consequential disruption in food and agricultural production since the first domestication of plants and animals ten thousand years ago. This is primarily a protein disruption driven by economics. The cost of proteins will be five times cheaper by 2030 and 10 times cheaper by 2035 than existing animal proteins, before ultimately approaching the cost of sugar. They will also be superior in every key attribute – more nutritious, healthier, better tasting, and more convenient, with almost unimaginable variety. This means that, by 2030, modern food products will be higher quality and cost less than half as much to produce as the animal-derived products they replace.

The impact of this disruption on industrial animal farming will be profound. By 2030, the number of cows in the U.S. will have fallen by 50% and the cattle farming industry will be all but bankrupt. All other livestock industries will suffer a similar fate, while the knock-on effects for crop farmers and businesses throughout the value chain will be severe.

This is the result of rapid advances in precision biology that have allowed us to make huge strides in precision fermentation, a process that allows us to program microorganisms to produce almost any complex organic molecule.

These advances are now being combined with an entirely new model of production we call Food-as-Software, in which individual molecules engineered by scientists are uploaded to databases – molecular cookbooks that food engineers anywhere in the world can use to design products in the same way that software developers design apps. This model ensures constant iteration so that products improve rapidly, with each version superior and cheaper than the last. It also ensures a production system that is completely decentralized and much more stable and resilient than industrial animal agriculture, with fermentation farms located in or close to towns and cities.

This rapid improvement is in stark contrast to the industrial livestock production model, which has all but reached its limits in terms of scale, reach, and efficiency. As the most inefficient and economically vulnerable part of this system, cow products will be the first to feel the full force of modern food’s disruptive power. Modern alternatives will be up to 100 times more land efficient, 10-25 times more feedstock efficient, 20 times more time efficient, and 10 times more water efficient. They will also produce an order of magnitude less waste.

Modern foods have already started disrupting the ground meat market, but once cost parity is reached, we believe in 2021-23, adoption will tip and accelerate exponentially. The disruption will play out in a number of ways and does not rely solely on the direct, one-for-one substitution of end products. In some markets, only a small percentage of the ingredients need to be replaced for an entire product to be disrupted. The whole of the cow milk industry, for example, will start to collapse once modern food technologies have replaced the proteins in a bottle of milk – just 3.3% of its content. The industry, which is already balancing on a knife edge, will thus be all but bankrupt by 2030.

This is not, therefore, one disruption but many in parallel, with each overlapping, reinforcing, and accelerating one another. Product after product that we extract from the cow will be replaced by superior, cheaper, modern alternatives, triggering a death spiral of increasing prices, decreasing demand, and reversing economies of scale for the industrial cattle farming industry, which will collapse long before we see modern technologies produce the perfect, cellular steak.¹⁸

As we couple these predicted disruptions in energy, land and water usage and food production with demographers’ predictions about global population decline after a peak of roughly ten billion people as nations develop,¹⁹ it seems that it may be possible in the near future to greatly reduce our environmental impact and turn the tables in favor of reduced carbon emissions, increased carbon capture, vastly increased areas of wilderness and conservation, habitat renewal and even species de-extinction.²⁰

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In sharing these trends, I wish to emphasize that none of these predictions will come to pass automatically without human ingenuity and diligence. Indeed, it is precisely due to such diligence and ingenuity that the trends I’ve shared here are beginning to manifest themselves. A critical factor in our success will be our ability to reframe the tired and increasingly inaccurate and polarizing narratives of certain destruction on the one hand versus consumption-as-usual on the other, and to share this awareness with others so that they can do more to contribute towards and anticipate these changes.

We stand at a turning point in the history of our planet. Will we take part in these new discoveries and promote their adoption, or will we resist them? Religious transhumanists in particular have theological support for scientific discovery and technological advancement as a type of divine revelation:

How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might [someone] stretch forth [their] puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.²¹

Mormons believe that scientific discoveries are also part of God’s Latter-day revelation. There are no clear distinctions between spiritual and scientific knowledge. “All things are spiritual” to God,²² and our spiritual salvation is inextricably tied to our physical well-being. Elder James E. Talmage spoke eloquently of this holistic conception of revelation:

Some of the latest and highest achievements of [humanity] in the utilization of natural forces approach the conditions of spiritual operations. To count the ticking of a watch thousands of miles away; to speak in but an ordinary tone and be heard across the continent; to signal from one hemisphere and be understood on the other though oceans roll and roar between; to bring the lightning into our homes and make it serve as fire and torch; to navigate the air and to travel beneath the ocean surface; to make chemical and atomic energies obey our will⁠⁠—are not these miracles? The possibility of such would not have been received with credence before their actual accomplishment. Nevertheless, these and all other miracles are accomplished through the operation of the laws of nature, which are the laws of God.²³

Agency and voluntary involvement is another critical component of this work. God will not save us from catastrophe if we persist in our willful destruction of the planet and refuse to develop more efficient ways of living.

Verily I say, [people] should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; for the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as [people] do good they shall in nowise lose their reward. But [those who] do not anything until [they are] commanded, and [receive] a commandment with doubtful heart, and [keep] it with slothfulness, the same [are] damned.²⁴

The wealth of resources at our disposal on the earth and in our solar system is truly staggering, if we will use them intelligently and responsibly. Let us be wise stewards of this abundance, using it carefully and sharing it humanely.

For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves. Therefore, if [anyone] shall take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not [their] portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, [they] shall, with the wicked, lift up [their] eyes in [regret], being in torment.²⁵

Verily I say, that inasmuch as ye do this, the fulness of the earth is yours, … whether for food or for raiment, or for houses, or for barns, or for orchards, or for gardens, or for vineyards; yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of [humanity], both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul. And it pleaseth God [to give] all these things unto [humanity]; for unto this end were they made to be used, with judgment, not to excess, neither by extortion.²⁶

Quinn, Daniel. Ishmael: A Novel. Bantam; Reissue edition (May 1, 1995). ↩
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind. 1755. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11136/pg11136-images.html#id00029. ↩
Hobbes, Sir Thomas. Leviathan, Or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil. Chapter XIII. 1651. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3207/pg3207-images.html#link2H_4_0115. ↩
Smith, Smith, Lyons and Payne. “Body size downgrading of mammals over the late Quaternary,” Science vol 360. 20 Apr 2018. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6386/310. ↩
University of Exeter. “Humans Implicated In Prehistoric Animal Extinctions With New Evidence.” ScienceDaily, 12 August 2008. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080811200028.htm. ↩
Wright, David K. “Humans as Agents in the Termination of the African Humid Period.” Frontiers in Earth Science, 26 January 2017. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2017.00004/full. ↩
Bar-Oz, Zeder, Hole. “Role of mass-kill hunting strategies in the extirpation of Persian gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa) in the northern Levant.” Anthropology, 18 April 2011. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3088574/. ↩
Zahid, Robinson, and Kelly. “Agriculture, population growth, and statistical analysis of the radiocarbon record.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 26 Jan 2016 113 (4) 931-935. https://www.pnas.org/content/113/4/931. ↩
Attribution research for this quote: https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/7751/did-einstein-say-we-cannot-solve-our-problems-with-the-same-thinking-we-used-to. ↩
https://www.writingsbyraykurzweil.com/the-law-of-accelerating-returns. ↩
Malthus, Thomas. “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” J. Johnson publisher, London: 1798. http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf. ↩
Erlich, Paul R. The Population Bomb. Sierra Club / Ballantine Books: 1968. ↩
Walton, John R. “Reviewed Work: Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food Production by Vaclav Smil” Environment and History Vol. 8, No. 4 (November 2002), pp. 489-491 White Horse Press. https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/epdf/10.3828/whp.eh.63826850399481. ↩
Berkelaar, Edward. “Nitrogen Regained: Fertilizer, Explosives, and Waterfalls” 1 Nov 2015. https://www.redeemer.ca/resound/nitrogen-regained-fertilizer-explosives-waterfalls. ↩
“Vertical Farming Infographics.” Association for Vertical Farming. https://vertical-farming.net/blog/2017/11/22/vertical-farming-infographics. ↩
Kandros, Mariya. “The Promise and Peril of Vertical Farming.” Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, 10 Aug 2018. http://economyleague.org/providing-insight/regional-direction/2018/08/10/the-promise-and-peril-of-vertical-farming. ↩
Monbiot, George. “Lab-grown food is about to destroy farming---and save the planet.” The Guardian. 8 Jan 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/08/lab-grown-food-destroy-farming-save-planet. ↩
RethinkX authors. “Food and Agriculture Executive Summary.” https://www.rethinkx.com/food-and-agriculture-executive-summary. ↩
Rosling, Hans. Factfulness. Flatiron Books: 3 Apr 2018. ↩
Shultz, David. “Should we bring extinct species back from the dead?” American Association for the Advancement of Science, 26 Sep 2016. https://www.science.org/content/article/should-we-bring-extinct-species-back-dead. ↩
Doctrine and Covenants 121:33. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ↩
Doctrine and Covenants 29:34-35. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ↩
Talmage, James E. Articles of Faith, p 222-223. ↩
Doctrine and Covenants 58:27-29. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ↩
Doctrine and Covenants 104:17-18. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ↩
Doctrine and Covenants 59:16-20. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ↩

Footnotes