Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. This May, the United Nations released a
Speaker 1: report based on thousands of scientific studies, saying that a
Speaker 1: million species are at risk of extinction. It said that
Speaker 1: humans were altering the natural world at a quote unprecedented pace.
Speaker 1: This is something that Elizabeth Culbert has been reporting on
Speaker 1: for years. She's a staff writer at The New Yorker
Speaker 1: and the author of the twenty fifteen Pulitzer Prize winning
Speaker 1: book The Sixth Extinction, which is all about biodiversity loss
Speaker 1: as a result of the human impact on the environment. Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for being here with us. I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about biodiversity from a range of perspectives,
Speaker 1: and I want to start with the question of what
Speaker 1: biodiversity is. It's a kind of catchy phrase, and we
Speaker 1: all feel bad when we hear that biodiversity is endangered.
Speaker 1: But what do we mean when we actually say biodiversity. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. I think that in its most
Speaker 1: basic sense, you know, biodiversity refers to the variety of
Speaker 1: life on Earth, and a sort of shorthand is often
Speaker 1: how many species there are on Earth, and the fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is, we don't know how many species
Speaker 1: there are on Earth. They like to use that estimated
Speaker 1: number of eight million, right, Yeah, I mean there are
Speaker 1: all sorts of numbers that get thrown around because you know,
Speaker 1: we've only sort of named and identified, you know, around
Speaker 1: a million species, so people have to sort of extrapolate
Speaker 1: from that based on, you know, the rate at which
Speaker 1: you're discovering new species. Things like that. We do know,
Speaker 1: don't we that? However, many species there are a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of them are insects. Right. When people is that
Speaker 1: eight million number, they tend to say five and a
Speaker 1: half million or insects. And even if you accept that
Speaker 1: as a total projection, they're saying that substantially more than
Speaker 1: half of the species in our biodiversity measure are in
Speaker 1: fact insects. Yes, the vast majority of species on Earth
Speaker 1: are invertebrates, so you know, animals without a backbone, and
Speaker 1: of those, the biggest group are insects. Yes, definitely. So
Speaker 1: when we talk about the number of species on Earth,
Speaker 1: no matter what it is, as you point out, or
Speaker 1: even what order of magnitude it is, it's likely that
Speaker 1: you know, a great, great proportion of that will be insects.
Speaker 1: So can I ask a follow on question? That's it's
Speaker 1: a little philistinish, I fear, but I actually think it,
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you about it. And it's this,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about these vast numbers and then we
Speaker 1: talk about decline, what is the thing that we're supposed
Speaker 1: to be so panicked about, right, if we were to
Speaker 1: go from eight million species and I understand it's not
Speaker 1: a real number to seven million species, what is it
Speaker 1: it's inherently so worrisome about that observation on its own. Well,
Speaker 1: I think there are a number of different ways to
Speaker 1: answer that question. And the first one that comes to
Speaker 1: mind is if you're eliminating you know, a million species,
Speaker 1: that's an indicator that something very very serious is going on.
Speaker 1: And if you're a living organism, you know, like a human,
Speaker 1: you might wonder, you know, why, why is that happening?
Speaker 1: And how is it going to impact you know, my species,
Speaker 1: because it's pretty unlikely that you're getting rid of, let's
Speaker 1: just say, even an eighth of the species on Earth
Speaker 1: with no impacts. Now, if you want to look at it,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of what does this mean to me?
Speaker 1: What are those million species mean to me? Right now?
Speaker 1: I think the answer that you could give is you
Speaker 1: just don't know. You know, human life, though we live
Speaker 1: in this sort of a lot of manufactured habitat most
Speaker 1: of us, most of the time, we're still absolutely vitally
Speaker 1: dependent on the biological world, biological geochemical cycles, which we're
Speaker 1: screwing around with very very dramatically right now, and that's
Speaker 1: why we're seeing these very high extinction rates. And which
Speaker 1: species we actually depend on, which species are absolutely crucial
Speaker 1: to human life, we don't know, But you wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to screw around with it to the point that you
Speaker 1: find out and realize, oh, that that was the one
Speaker 1: that was really crucial. So can I follow on that too? Though?
Speaker 1: I hear the argument and it sounds like it's an
Speaker 1: argument from uncertainty, right It says something like, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of species. Anytime you're losing a high percentage of
Speaker 1: what's out there in the world, things could go terribly awry,
Speaker 1: and we just don't know how that might be the case.
Speaker 1: So you know, why not try to mitigate and avoid
Speaker 1: the things that are causing this decline in species? If
Speaker 1: that's the argument I tell me first time, I getting
Speaker 1: it right. Well, I mean that's I could offer you
Speaker 1: another argument, and that would simply be an ethical argument.
Speaker 1: I suppose what gives humans, you know, we obviously have
Speaker 1: the ability to eliminate a lot of species. What gives
Speaker 1: us the right, as it were, to do that. I'd
Speaker 1: like to talk about both of those, if it's if
Speaker 1: it's okay with you. They both seem super important. The
Speaker 1: first is a kind of human centric argument, right, you know,
Speaker 1: we should care about these features of our world because
Speaker 1: we might really be in trouble if we don't. The
Speaker 1: second is an argument from morality or from ethics, not
Speaker 1: humans focused in the same way that says, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't assume that just because we're the humans, we
Speaker 1: have the right to do all these things that we
Speaker 1: have the capacity to. So I think those are both
Speaker 1: super interesting and important. I'd love to talk about both them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on the uncertainty argument, this seems to me kind of
Speaker 1: different than the argument with respect to say, climate change,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, the other very pressing environmental issue
Speaker 1: of our moment. There there's overwhelming evidence that rising temperatures
Speaker 1: are going to transformative and transformatively bad effects on huge
Speaker 1: numbers of human beings in the pretty near foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: And that sounds like, as you know, you're looking for
Speaker 1: clarion calls to action. That sounds like a pretty powerful one.
Speaker 1: It's human focused, and it says things are getting bad
Speaker 1: in the following set of ways with respect to the biodiversity.
Speaker 1: Isn't the uncertainty argument slightly mitigated by the history of
Speaker 1: big extinctions? I mean, you call your book the six Extinction,
Speaker 1: because there are five massive prior extinctions, and those all
Speaker 1: took place, and they were caused by disasters into typically
Speaker 1: of various kinds. Of course, they led to big changes
Speaker 1: in the nature of the biodiversity that was out there,
Speaker 1: but we don't know for sure that we would be
Speaker 1: the dinosaurs as it were, right, I mean. And the
Speaker 1: question then becomes, if we're balancing at the human level
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of competing interests, the main one, as
Speaker 1: far as I can make out, is the size of
Speaker 1: a population, because the report suggests that the most significant
Speaker 1: of the various things that's leading to the decline and
Speaker 1: biodiversity is just how many people we have and growing
Speaker 1: food for them and eating animals and fishing for fish,
Speaker 1: and the range of other features that come with having
Speaker 1: so many people. So if we're trading off human values
Speaker 1: like the population against uncertainty, isn't that sort of different
Speaker 1: than the climate change context, where you know that we're
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble, and we're in a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble very very soon. Well, I want to see
Speaker 1: if you if you accept the idea, you know that
Speaker 1: we're causing a mass extinction, a spasm of extinction, you know,
Speaker 1: potentially on the level of these mass extinctions of the
Speaker 1: path the most recent one of which you know, it's
Speaker 1: believed was caused by an asteroid impact. That's the event,
Speaker 1: the End Cretaceous extinction, which did in you know, not
Speaker 1: just the dinosaurs, which were a dominant form of life
Speaker 1: on land, but also lots of other major groups of organisms,
Speaker 1: and also opened the door for us, not totally coincidentially,
Speaker 1: our little rabbit like rodent like ancestors. Yes, absolutely, But
Speaker 1: even if you were a bird or a small mammal,
Speaker 1: kind of shrew like mammal which lived through the End
Speaker 1: Cretaceous extinction and eventually did give rise to us, I
Speaker 1: don't think that the End Cretaceous extinction was an event
Speaker 1: you would have wanted to live through. It's not the
Speaker 1: kind of world you would have wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: bequeath to your shrew like children. I think that the
Speaker 1: defining characteristic of a mass extinction is a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of bad shit going down and cascading effects
Speaker 1: that would affect all groups. So yes, some made it through, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But to take the kind of view sixty six million
Speaker 1: years later, it's easy to sort of sort of blithely say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, that doesn't look so bad from a distance
Speaker 1: of sixty six million years, But I think I look bad.
Speaker 1: That's that's not the argument, But go on, okay, But
Speaker 1: also to say, well, you know it takes your you know,
Speaker 1: you pay your money, you take your chances. We're the
Speaker 1: dominant organism. Now we might come through this extinction event
Speaker 1: still of the dominant organism. I don't think any biologist
Speaker 1: on the planet would say that would be a good
Speaker 1: debt to make. But that's not I mean, to be
Speaker 1: completely you know candid, that's not that I don't think
Speaker 1: is the strongest version of the argument. I mean, the
Speaker 1: strongest version of the argument is something like this, we're
Speaker 1: involved in a world of constant trade offs. We have
Speaker 1: a lot of people on the earth. Those people need
Speaker 1: to eat, and even if all they're eating is fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables, they need agricultural in order to do that.
Speaker 1: If we significantly changed the degree to which we're relying
Speaker 1: on agriculture and other things to raise food, if we
Speaker 1: could do that in some way, they would still let
Speaker 1: us affordably feed all these people that we have. That
Speaker 1: would be one thing. But we don't actually have the
Speaker 1: full capacity to do that yet. Well that's a that's
Speaker 1: a hardy I mean, you could say you're damned if
Speaker 1: you do, you're damned if you don't. I mean, we
Speaker 1: rely very, very heavily on you know, the health of
Speaker 1: our soils, pollination services that are delivered for free by
Speaker 1: lots of those insects that we were talking about. It's
Speaker 1: not clear that you can do without those and feed
Speaker 1: you know, eight billion, going on nine billion people. Totally
Speaker 1: fair point, but it's a tradeoff situation. You know, reducing
Speaker 1: population substantially, which was the view of all thoughtful educated
Speaker 1: people a century ago. We don't think that's ethical anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, we're beyond that kind of eugenics phase. We
Speaker 1: we accept the world's population for what it is, and
Speaker 1: so then we're in a world of trade offs and
Speaker 1: how do how do we make those trade offs against uncertainty.
Speaker 1: The extinction of the Cretasius tertiary boundary that we were
Speaker 1: talking about was an asteroidal extinction. It wasn't human caused.
Speaker 1: This one is human caused, and to some extent, it's
Speaker 1: the result of humans making decisions that are designed to
Speaker 1: serve the interest of humans. They may be the wrong decisions,
Speaker 1: we may be getting it totally wrong, but they are decisions,
Speaker 1: for example, with respect to growing things that humans have
Speaker 1: made the judgment are necessary to keep us going. You're
Speaker 1: trading off, on the one hand, supporting human life against
Speaker 1: on the other hand, the uncertainty of the consequences of
Speaker 1: the decline. Yeah, and I think that is exactly what
Speaker 1: we're doing. We're doing it unconsciously, and I also want
Speaker 1: to say we are quite possibly doing it very unwisely.
Speaker 1: What looks like a good trade off in the moment
Speaker 1: right in twenty nineteen, which looks like a good trade
Speaker 1: off to us right now, is that a good trade
Speaker 1: off for our kids? Is that a good trade off
Speaker 1: for our kids kids? I mean, these are questions that
Speaker 1: you know, unfortunately from purely scientific, biological and even you know,
Speaker 1: probably ethical view are unanswerable, but I think they have
Speaker 1: to be factored in. One other point that I want
Speaker 1: to make, and I think it's pretty important, is as
Speaker 1: we eat higher and higher, and as more and more
Speaker 1: of us, you know, eat higher and higher, as it were,
Speaker 1: on the food chain, we're using more and more calories
Speaker 1: to produce our own chloric intake. So I don't think
Speaker 1: it's at all true that you know, land use decisions
Speaker 1: are straightforward. They're very very complicated, and they you know,
Speaker 1: have to do with not just feeding eight billion people,
Speaker 1: but how we're feeding eight billion people. For sure. I
Speaker 1: don't dispute that for a moment. I wanted to turn
Speaker 1: out to this ethical argument that you raise, which is
Speaker 1: different from the where you know, we're playing dice with
Speaker 1: our future. It's the argument that, as you put it,
Speaker 1: humans have the capacity to have a you know, an
Speaker 1: unpresented effect on the environment. That's why you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people think we're already in the anthropasy and
Speaker 1: age defined geologically as the time that humans are having
Speaker 1: an impact on the earth. But we shouldn't. We don't
Speaker 1: have as you put it, the right to do that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you hold that view, but I'm
Speaker 1: actually really curious to hear whether you do, and if so,
Speaker 1: to hear a little bit more about why you think that. Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think from a obviously, humans are one
Speaker 1: species out of let's just say eight million, right, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the history of human consciousness, as it were,
Speaker 1: has been a kind of widening circle of our concern
Speaker 1: and I think that, you know, we may look back
Speaker 1: at this particular moment when we kind of blithely did
Speaker 1: in a lot of species, and a lot of species
Speaker 1: I want to say that are very very close relatives
Speaker 1: of ours. I mean, you know, orangutangs, gorillas, chimps are
Speaker 1: all very highly threatened right now. So we are doing
Speaker 1: in you know, species, a very high level of consciousness.
Speaker 1: We can you know, you can get into the question
Speaker 1: of also, you know, whether we make a distinction, whether
Speaker 1: this ethical argument even allows for a distinction between conscious
Speaker 1: creatures and unconscious creatures, And perhaps it doesn't, but I
Speaker 1: should point out that we are sort of doing in
Speaker 1: you know, our evolutionarily our very closest relatives, and I
Speaker 1: don't think we're going to look back on this. I
Speaker 1: don't think that, you know, humanity, whatever you know becomes
Speaker 1: of us, is going to look back at that. That's
Speaker 1: going to look like a crime. That's going to look
Speaker 1: you know, not less necessarily crimes against humanity, but crimes
Speaker 1: against humanity's closest relatives. I'm super fascinated by this line
Speaker 1: of line of thought. I always have been, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of environmentalism takes some part in
Speaker 1: this kind of mode of thinking that we ought not
Speaker 1: to have this effect on the world, not just because
Speaker 1: we're causing pain, not just because we're eventually having you know,
Speaker 1: terrible effects, as you said, killing off our closest cousins,
Speaker 1: but more broadly, that somehow we shouldn't be so focused
Speaker 1: on human consciousness. And I guess my question, and this
Speaker 1: is something I've always struggled with myself. So it's not
Speaker 1: like I think there's some magic blood answer to it is,
Speaker 1: what about the our observation that, although of course we
Speaker 1: do image far out of proportion to all other species,
Speaker 1: that no other species seems to exercise this kind of
Speaker 1: concern for making sure that they take into account the
Speaker 1: interests of other species, or even other individuals of the
Speaker 1: species I mean all species. But that just seems like
Speaker 1: another kind of you know, human sallipsism. To be honest,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is meant to say that what would
Speaker 1: be salapsistic would be assuming that because humans uniquely have
Speaker 1: the ability to think of the interests of others, therefore
Speaker 1: it must be that the correct ethical way to be
Speaker 1: is I think of the interests of others. This is
Speaker 1: the question from meant to be from the other side, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's one way to look at it.
Speaker 1: But I think that once again, the history of you know,
Speaker 1: the last you know, five hundred years or whatever from
Speaker 1: you know, turning from a geocentric to a heliocentric world
Speaker 1: should be sort of questioning trying to decenter humans. And
Speaker 1: we are faced with this really interesting situation and board knows,
Speaker 1: you know, if I had the answer to this, I
Speaker 1: would be happy to impart it. I don't, but I
Speaker 1: certainly think that all of these things are worth questioning
Speaker 1: pretty profoundly at this particular moment in time. And so
Speaker 1: we're faced with this really interesting two divergent trends as
Speaker 1: that were here. One this as I say, d centering
Speaker 1: of people, you know, we're descended from a common ancestor
Speaker 1: with chimps. The Sun does not revolve around the Earth.
Speaker 1: There's revolves around the Sun. So we're one planet among
Speaker 1: you know, millions and potentially billions, So we're pretty small
Speaker 1: aspects in the universe as it were. But then we're
Speaker 1: also one of the lessons of the last generation or
Speaker 1: so has been Wow, we are having a really significant
Speaker 1: impact on this one planet that we as humans call
Speaker 1: home and on everything that shares it with us, and
Speaker 1: that shares an evolutionary history with us that you know,
Speaker 1: we now know goes back almost four billion years. So
Speaker 1: those are pretty heavy numbers in both directions. They sort
Speaker 1: of point and conflict directions, and the fact that we
Speaker 1: have not found as satisfactory way of working our way
Speaker 1: through them is unfortunate because this damage is permanent. You know,
Speaker 1: when you get rid of the species you have, you
Speaker 1: have permanently cut off its evolutionary possibility. So we're really
Speaker 1: screwing with the evolution of life. And once again, this
Speaker 1: goes way beyond you know, our kids and our kids kids.
Speaker 1: It goes to the future of all life on Earth,
Speaker 1: you know, forever. I love the way you put that
Speaker 1: that there's a deep contradiction between two two different insights,
Speaker 1: one that we're just another species and the other that, boy,
Speaker 1: we're not just another species. We're having this disproportionate impact
Speaker 1: when it comes to screwing with evolution. To use your phrase, um,
Speaker 1: are you a believer that that's always a bad thing?
Speaker 1: I mean, I assume that you're in favor of all
Speaker 1: kinds of ways that we tweak evolution that make us
Speaker 1: better off as as humans, from you know, from antibiotics
Speaker 1: on down. You know, I'm not I don't want to say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, screwing with evolution is some you know, you're
Speaker 1: right as you say, every time you know, you um,
Speaker 1: you know, step on that you know, aunt or whatever
Speaker 1: you've on some level, obviously everything is always you know,
Speaker 1: screwing with you know, other organisms all the time. But
Speaker 1: I think we very rarely knowingly and consciously and happily
Speaker 1: cut off entire limbs of the evolutionary tree. And that
Speaker 1: sort of brings me back to our closest relatives. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of human cousins around at one point.
Speaker 1: We know more and more about different you know, sort
Speaker 1: of human species or subspecies. The Neanderthals, the nencipents, their
Speaker 1: doubtless others out there that no longer exist, quite probably
Speaker 1: because of us. And we are also looking at getting
Speaker 1: rid of great apes. If you just look at the
Speaker 1: future of the evolution of consciousness, right, if we consider
Speaker 1: those to be the animals of the highest you know, consciousness,
Speaker 1: we are potentially creating a world where consciousness you know,
Speaker 1: will not arise again, or will not arise for a
Speaker 1: very very very long time, and you know, take a
Speaker 1: very very different form, quite likely at that point. But
Speaker 1: it just so I understand. Are you saying that if
Speaker 1: those other higher primates continue to exist in and in
Speaker 1: larger numbers, that there would be the possibility of the
Speaker 1: of a repeat in the evolutionary process in which consciousness,
Speaker 1: at least of the human type it would evolve another time,
Speaker 1: another time around. No, I'm not necessarily saying that, although
Speaker 1: that is that is certainly possible. I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: if you consider you know, our great ape you know
Speaker 1: cousins to be conscious, and I certainly think that most
Speaker 1: you know, animal behaviorists would that consciousness itself would continue
Speaker 1: to exist. There would be other species of apes that
Speaker 1: would eventually arise they would not necessarily be humans. They
Speaker 1: would be other things. They would be you know, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily be have any more or less consciousness, you
Speaker 1: know than a gorilla does. Now let's just say, but um,
Speaker 1: that would be a possibility, that would bevolutionary possibility that
Speaker 1: was open. If you do away with all the species
Speaker 1: of great apes, as we are, you know, pretty much
Speaker 1: on our way to doing right now, then you're just
Speaker 1: cutting off that evolutionary possibility. And I'm simply using this
Speaker 1: example once again of apes because I think that it,
Speaker 1: you know, there are a lot of other evolutionary branches
Speaker 1: that are being you know, cut off for a whole genus,
Speaker 1: let's us say, is disappearing, or there's only one species
Speaker 1: left in the genus and it's disappearing. I mentioned apes
Speaker 1: because I think people have an emotional reaction to them,
Speaker 1: and if they thought of a world without great apes,
Speaker 1: and they think of that evolutionary possibility being closed off,
Speaker 1: that would have some you know, emotional connection that you know,
Speaker 1: if I tell you about this, you know, genus of
Speaker 1: I was just out in Nevada, and I you know,
Speaker 1: was met saw. I don't know what word you'd use
Speaker 1: encountered a you know, a fish that's the last fish
Speaker 1: in its genus because we've been soaking the wall are
Speaker 1: out of the Nevada Desert, so all the other species
Speaker 1: in this genus are gone. I don't think that has
Speaker 1: as much, you know, kind of connection to people, but
Speaker 1: it's it's another way in which you know, we are
Speaker 1: we are cutting off that evolutionary possibility. Can I ask
Speaker 1: about what we can do? I mean, what are the
Speaker 1: real world doable things that could substantially reduce the harm
Speaker 1: that we're doing to to biodiversity that's out there in
Speaker 1: the world. Well, I think that, you know, the basic answer,
Speaker 1: probably the first order answer would be gets back to
Speaker 1: that question of land use that we were discussing. I mean,
Speaker 1: if we did not cut down the rest of the Amazon,
Speaker 1: cut down the rest of the rainforest in the Congo,
Speaker 1: you know, these big big still extant and you know,
Speaker 1: relatively intact what are called biodiversity hot spots. The tropics
Speaker 1: is where most of the diversity of the world exists.
Speaker 1: There's you know, historical reasons for that. The tropics have
Speaker 1: been have had a fairly stable climate for a long
Speaker 1: time and had the ice ages and the temperature, fluctulating,
Speaker 1: all things which are bad for a species continuation. Right
Speaker 1: There's just been a long history of life evolving under
Speaker 1: relatively stable conditions in that you know, that's one theory,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a pretty popular theory. That's why, that's
Speaker 1: why there's so much biodiversity in the tropics right now
Speaker 1: as opposed to in temperate zones like you know, where
Speaker 1: you and I live, where you know, there was ice
Speaker 1: covering this area for you know, until twelve thousand years
Speaker 1: ago or so. So obviously everything that's repopulated where I
Speaker 1: live in western mass has has arrived re arrived in
Speaker 1: the last twelve thousand years. So if we you know,
Speaker 1: sort of got together as as it were, and decided, okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's leave those parts of the world as intact
Speaker 1: as possible, that would be one way to really probably
Speaker 1: make a pretty big difference, not to stop this losses
Speaker 1: by any stretch of the imagination, because there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of other factors at work, including climate change, which that
Speaker 1: report which you alluded to, you know, talked about becoming
Speaker 1: a major driver of extinction. It probably is not yet
Speaker 1: a major driver extinction, but it's it's it's looming very,
Speaker 1: very large. So another you know, point that I guess
Speaker 1: I would make getting back to this question of you know,
Speaker 1: climate change is something we can all see as a
Speaker 1: threat to you know, life as we know it for humans.
Speaker 1: A lot of the things that we would try to
Speaker 1: do for our own good would also probably although not necessarily,
Speaker 1: because there are ways to combat climate change that would
Speaker 1: have very you know, very significant land use change component
Speaker 1: that would probably not be good for other species but
Speaker 1: might be good for people. So that's another potential trade
Speaker 1: off there. But it's also possible that there are ways
Speaker 1: to mitigate climate change that would have a big impact
Speaker 1: on the rest of the species of the planet too.
Speaker 1: So there are there is in some senses, we're not
Speaker 1: pitting our interests against those other species, but we actually
Speaker 1: have a confluence of interest there. Elizabeth, you said something
Speaker 1: that really grabbed me when you said that if we
Speaker 1: could protect these tropical biodiversity hotspots, and you mentioned the
Speaker 1: Amazon rainforest and the rainforest in the Congo, that we
Speaker 1: would go some significant way towards reducing our attack on biodiversity.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, you know, just by thinking
Speaker 1: about this issue a little bit and reading your book.
Speaker 1: I don't think I sufficiently took on board until you
Speaker 1: just said it that in a way, this all may
Speaker 1: be more doable, or much of this may be more
Speaker 1: doable than we tend to think when we face major
Speaker 1: environmental challenges, in the sense that, although they are obviously
Speaker 1: very strong practical, logistical, and political challenges associated with reconfiguring
Speaker 1: institutions to protect indigenous people, who often are the people
Speaker 1: who live in these biodiversity hotspot zones, Nevertheless, if you
Speaker 1: could achieve a lot of this by protecting a handful
Speaker 1: of identifiable areas on Earth, that seems a lot more
Speaker 1: doable than sort of a global transformation in either population
Speaker 1: numbers or in the way that food is grown, or
Speaker 1: even in human diet. I mean, there may be lots
Speaker 1: of great reasons to all of those things, and I
Speaker 1: don't dispute that, but when I think about the biodiversity challenge,
Speaker 1: when you're read the UN report, or at least it's
Speaker 1: it's summary, it sounds as though, oh, my goodness, you
Speaker 1: know this is happening, It's inevitable. There's nothing that we
Speaker 1: could really do substantially about it that would actually be doable.
Speaker 1: But this seems a little more doable. This seems within
Speaker 1: the realm of the reasonable, and it also seems like
Speaker 1: it could be done without imposing tremendous costs on the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. Is that slightly more optimistic? Take
Speaker 1: that I just took away from what you said at
Speaker 1: all credible? Or do you actually feel the pessimism that
Speaker 1: I previously felt and that I think I took away
Speaker 1: from your book, If you'll forgive you saying so, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I however, somewhere between the two, I mean.
Speaker 1: Ed Wilson has a fairly recent book called A Half
Speaker 1: Earth where he sort of proposes putting aside, you know,
Speaker 1: half of the land on Earth for for other species.
Speaker 1: And that sounds, you know, like an awful lot. But
Speaker 1: you know, when you look at these pretty intact places
Speaker 1: like the boreal forest of Canada, the Amazon, the tropical
Speaker 1: rainforest in parts of Africa, you could you could imagine it.
Speaker 1: I think you can imagine, as you say, doing that
Speaker 1: now that requires us to think totally differently about the
Speaker 1: world's It requires, you know, transnational agreements. Unfortunately, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no body and in fact, they very awkwardly acronymed ipb. Yes,
Speaker 1: was you know sort of designed to be the inner
Speaker 1: Governmental Panel on Climate change for biodiversity, to have some
Speaker 1: group that was looking at this from an international perspective. Now,
Speaker 1: do they have any clout? You know, that's a very
Speaker 1: very good question. Well, is there any talk of an
Speaker 1: international treaty regime, for example, comparable to or connected to
Speaker 1: the climate change treaty regime, which, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: topic for another day. Of course, the great challenges that
Speaker 1: even that treaty regime faces. But is there any movement
Speaker 1: out there for a kind of treaty regime that would say, look, yes,
Speaker 1: substantial wealth transferred to the countries that house these biodiversity
Speaker 1: hotspots in exchange for much stricter protection of those zones
Speaker 1: with international monitoring if necessary, and guarantees not to turn
Speaker 1: that or allow that land to be turned into farmland,
Speaker 1: and again paid for. I mean, this would be more
Speaker 1: expensive for the local people. And I'm the last person
Speaker 1: to want an arrangement to disadvantages the local people. And
Speaker 1: says that, well, because biodiversity hotspots are where you live,
Speaker 1: you have to continue to live in poverty. That seemed
Speaker 1: to me personally at least, exactly the wrong way to
Speaker 1: go about it. But you can imagine a relatively as
Speaker 1: these things go, straightforward treaty arrangement where the rest of
Speaker 1: the world pays and gives advantages to the countries that
Speaker 1: are the hosts of the hotspots and they make certain commitments.
Speaker 1: Is anybody talking about that? I mean, it seems logical
Speaker 1: in light of what you've said. Well, there there is
Speaker 1: a companion treaty to the Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Speaker 1: It's the Convention on Biological Diversity. It doesn't get nearly
Speaker 1: as much pressed, but it does exist. Admit, I've never
Speaker 1: heard of it until this moment, so you're right, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: So go on, and what does it say? You know,
Speaker 1: it is one of these very it has very high
Speaker 1: aspirations for how we're going to you know, preserve biological diversity,
Speaker 1: but it has, you know, no teeth. I think it
Speaker 1: would be a platform that you could work out international
Speaker 1: transfers of wealth, as you say, but I as far
Speaker 1: as I know, those are not happening now. One way
Speaker 1: in which that is happening is with you know, these
Speaker 1: sort of forest credits that people are using as in
Speaker 1: connection with you know, climate change, right as offsets climate offsets.
Speaker 1: If you if you don't cut down your rainforest, you
Speaker 1: know will pay you, and that kind of sort of
Speaker 1: counts as a climate change mitigation effort. So that is
Speaker 1: one arena, you know, where where there is money changing hands,
Speaker 1: probably not a great deal of money, but a certain
Speaker 1: amount of money changing hands. I want to sort of
Speaker 1: just close by asking if you see there being some
Speaker 1: spots for hopefulness. If you don't, that's that's totally fair.
Speaker 1: Um I you know, I'm reacting to the possible moves
Speaker 1: of treaty and regulation because if you can identify a
Speaker 1: handful of big bad actors, it's humanly possible to pressure them.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it always works, but it's always at
Speaker 1: least there's a path forward that you can imagine, you know, following.
Speaker 1: You can name and shame, you can put pressure, you
Speaker 1: can try to produce a regulatory regime, and those you know,
Speaker 1: again they're no guarantees, but they seems a little hopeful.
Speaker 1: But are there other points that you would think of,
Speaker 1: as you know, gee, looks like a way forward, This
Speaker 1: looks like a possible success or a replicable success. Well,
Speaker 1: I think in theory there are, but all of the
Speaker 1: problems that we're looking at environmental problems cannot be solved
Speaker 1: without some kind of international framework, or cannot not even solved.
Speaker 1: I'm not even talking about solving them, cannot be mitigated
Speaker 1: without some kind of you very very serious international cooperation
Speaker 1: and as you suggest, probably transfer of technology, transfer of wealth.
Speaker 1: But we are not willing to do that right now,
Speaker 1: and we are moving in exactly the opposite direction. We
Speaker 1: have a moment of resurgent nationalism when when we look
Speaker 1: back at this, at this moment which I unfortunately believe
Speaker 1: will be looked at as a moment of just extraordinary
Speaker 1: heedlessness and madness and consigning you know, future generations to
Speaker 1: some pretty bad stuff that we didn't have to consign
Speaker 1: them to had we gotten our act together earlier or
Speaker 1: right now. I think that the fact that we are
Speaker 1: seeing this resurgent nationalism at a moment when international corporation
Speaker 1: you know, really couldn't be more pressing. Will that be
Speaker 1: looked at as a coincidence or will that be looked
Speaker 1: at as you know, part of this this human package
Speaker 1: of not being willing to face up to the facts
Speaker 1: until it's you know, screamingly too late. Well, we humans
Speaker 1: are better at collective action than any other species, and
Speaker 1: we can do a lot more with it, and we
Speaker 1: can do a lot more bad things with our collective
Speaker 1: action any other species. And so we're sort of we're
Speaker 1: our distinctive features as a species are are definitely at
Speaker 1: the heart of the challenge we faced a biodiversity. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, thanks for having me. Elizabeth Colbert offers
Speaker 1: us an extremely cogent and extremely depressing account of our
Speaker 1: current moment. The problems we face are clearly international, and
Speaker 1: if we want to avoid massive extinctions, they demand solutions.
Speaker 1: It's not like we don't have the technology of international
Speaker 1: governance available. We know what that technology is. It's called treaties.
Speaker 1: It's called trees with teeth that can actually be enforced
Speaker 1: and that will make governments preserve the environment. Unfortunately, we
Speaker 1: are also in a moment of profound skepticism via nationalism,
Speaker 1: of exactly the kind of international cooperation that would be
Speaker 1: necessary if we were actually going to take on the
Speaker 1: problem of the collapse of biodiversity. What comes next, I guess,
Speaker 1: is nothing good unless we're able to turn things around
Speaker 1: and begin to re examine the tools that actually let
Speaker 1: governments compel each other to do things to preserve the environment.
Speaker 1: Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Lydia Jean Coott, with engineering by Jason Gambrell
Speaker 1: and Jason Rostkowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme
Speaker 1: music is composed by Luis GERA special thanks to the
Speaker 1: Pushkin Brass Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg and Mia Lobel. I'm
Speaker 1: Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter at Noah
Speaker 1: R Feldman. This is Deep Background