Book Review: Here on Earth

By Tim Flannery

Published by The Text Publishing Company (2010)

Reviewed by Stephen Keim

Here on Earth is sub-titled An Argument for Hope. The book contains many insights which are informative and relevant to the present debate on loss of biodiversity and anthropogenic climate change. Flannery points out that Charles Darwin’s publication of his ideas concerning the mechanism of natural selection through The Origin of the Species in 1859 was co-opted by conservative thinkers to justify socially destructive policies. Similarly, the more recent ideas of Richard Dawkins, developed and presented in his book, The Selfish Gene, have provided grist for the mill of those who favour trickle down economics and other policies which treat the less fortunate as deserving of their lesser fates.

Flannery contrasts the reductionist vision of Darwin with that of Alfred Russel Wallace who had independently identified natural selection as the mechanism by which organisms evolved. Wallace, a product of working class Wales, was a social progressive. His view of nature was holistic and he had a greater sense of the way in which ecosystems depended on contributions from their component parts, living and non-living, to produce their astonishing complexity. The lesson that Flannery draws is that Wallace’s vision of cooperation and mutual independence is a more salutary guide to future human conduct which needs to find a way by which the human species can live in harmony with and in support of the earth’s systems on which our continued existence, ultimately, depends. The Darwinian vision, in contrast, has reinforced what Flannery calls a frontier vision which has, for 50,000 years, trampled on nature and natural systems in order to win the title of “the fittest” to inherit a dying planet.

Another insight developed in Here on Earth is the notion that ideas1 operate like genes in that they compete with one another and reproduce themselves in the brains of humans so that successful ideas can spread through the human populace triumphing over ideas of lesser merit. Flannery points out that, because humans are, at least partially, rational beings, ideas can triumph over our genetic inclinations. He gives, as an example, the fact that people choose to have fewer children in order that they can have more comfortable lifestyles when their genes would urge that they continue to reproduce to maximise the genes’ chances of spreading even more widely and successfully.

The lesson that Flannery would have us draw is that, by adopting ideas which favour the long term health of Earth’s systems on which life depend, humans can collectively change the destructive course which they have, to this point, pursued. He develops the argument by drawing further on the idea cooperation in nature albeit as a result of the competition driven process of natural selection. In this regard, he draws on the insights of evolutionary science that teach us that multicellular animals including humans are, themselves, examples of symbiotic cooperation. This can be seen at two levels. First, our physiological functioning is dependent on the presence of large numbers of bacteria which contribute up to 10 per cent of our body mass. Second, our very cells contain, as essential components, parts which, at an early stage of evolutionary history were free standing microbial organisms. Chloroplasts, the organelles of plant cells which conduct photosynthesis and are, therefore, the source of the majority of captured solar energy on which our lives and societies depend, are former cyanobacteria that reside in plant cells as part of a symbiotic relationship. Similarly, mitochondria, the power plants of the cells in our bodies are considered to be former proto-bacteria who operate in a similar symbiotic relationship with the rest of the cells in which they reside.

Flannery then turns to what he calls super-organisms. He describes the way in which termites, ants and other insects operate great metropolises in which individuals have specialised functions; cooperate and communicate with one another; and act in many ways like the cells of a multi-cellular organism so that the ant colony, perhaps, containing billions of individuals may be considered as a single organism, albeit, a super-organism. Flannery, in developing his argument for hope, develops the proposition that, by cultural evolution, using ideas (mnemes), the human population of the world can (and does) operate as a single organism, another form of super-organism.

The argument for hope has to be contrasted with much of the book that sets out the history of humans and their “frontier mentality” by which they have, for the most part, laid waste to the environment on which their lives and well-being has depended. Flannery chronicles this history in a telling manner, not only graphically developing the threat of climate change, but also dealing with other threats posed and destruction wrought by humans. These include the threat of toxic chemicals. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is updated with details of the thankfully forestalled destruction of the ozone layer by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Flannery also describes the almost incidental near annihilation of vultures in India by the traces of otherwise harmless Voltaren compounds in cattle and other carrion left by veterinary treatment of those animals while they were still alive.  

Flannery also updates his earlier book The Future Eaters showing how the advance of humans to all corners of the world brought numerous extinctions, especially, of the larger and fiercer animals who, previously, had little to fear from predators. He also chronicles how overfishing; forest clearing; and other poor management practices continue to devastate species and natural systems across the planet.

While hope is an essential emotion for success in any project, it is a hard argument to make when history, so graphically, points to many causes for despair. A key part of Flannery’s attempt to generate hope is unconvincing. The history of humankind suggests that the earth’s human population is a very different super-organism to the example provided by termites and ants. An ant colony has unity of purpose.2 Hard-wired behaviour ensures adherence to that purpose. In contrast, human ideas and behaviour are forever in tumult and unity of purpose will always be a hard won gain. The history of ideas also suggests that bad conduct has triumphed over noble ideas for much of the time.   

Recent history also suggests that considerable money and power is devoted to ensuring that actions to save the planet will not be taken if such actions threaten the profits of those who profit from the planet’s destruction. Big tobacco spent huge resources over decades to ensure that it could continue to profit by poisoning its customers with cigarettes. Guy Pearse3 has documented how the techniques of big tobacco, and often the same PR organisations and individuals, have been used to spread similar deception disputing the truth about climate change. Jane Mayer has profiled in the New Yorker the extent to which the Tea Party, the apparently grass roots conservative movement in the United States, is really a piece of astro-turfing by oil billionaires, Charles and David Koch, who benefit from the Tea Party’s opposition to effective action against climate change and any other form of regulation that may assist the environment. George Monbiot draws on other evidence of astro-turfing in the development of the Tea Party including that revealed in Taki Oldham’s film, (Astro) Turf Wars. Monbiot also describes one of the techniques used by those who organise fake grass roots action is to train people to pollute public debate on the internet by inserting reactionary propaganda into blog sites on a mass scale.

Monbiot has also graphically documented the way in which anti-climate change “experts” continue to use unsupported and previously discredited claims to pursue a debate that only benefits those who make profits from destroying the ecosystem processes on which our long term survival depends. Monbiot has successfully called geologist, Ian Plimer.4 He has recently taken on a new critic of the environment movement, Stewart Brand. And journalist, David Rose, previously a mouthpiece of the movement to go to war in Iraq, has been shown by Monbiot to be relying on claims attacking the scientific case on climate change of the same unsupported and dubious status as the arguments previously put forward by Plimer.

Here on Earth is an excellent book. The perspective it brings of an earth that has systems by which it maintains its ability to support a complex biosphere is both exciting and enlightening. The recounting of 50,000 years of an accelerating destruction of those systems by our species is a terrifying call to arms. Even the message of hope that, if enough of us are convinced that we can and must act, we can change this history is both valid and important.

However, if those who wish to save the planet allow those who wish to profit from its destruction to continue to sow doubt and opposition without calling them to account for their actions, many of which are carried out covertly, we and the planet are doomed.

The tragedy is that those, like Pearse and Monbiot and Oldham, who do call the astro-turfers to account, are almost alone among journalists, writers, filmmakers and academics outside the scientific community. Arguments for hope do not triumph either by magic or by merely expressing them. There is an ugly politics out there determined to make them fail.  People who support unworthy mnemes are prepared to fight dirty with their huge resources to make sure that their mnemes succeed.

I urge to read Here on Earth but I also urge you not to ignore that ugly politics that is opposed to every worthwhile idea therein.

Footnotes

1. Popularised by Dawkins as “memes”. Flannery prefers the Greek spelling: “mnemes”.
2. For a literary dramatization of the mind-set of ants, see The Book of Merlin, the posthumously published last book of TH White’s The Once and Future King.
3. See High and Dry: John Howard, climate change and the selling of Australia’s future, 2007.
4. For example, see here and here.