Uncertainty and the Backyard Steward
Imperfect knowledge should not undermine good-faith choices.
Life is uncertain. Humans are imperfect.
These truths, often discussed in the realms of religion and philosophy, are no less important for those of us acting to protect and preserve natural systems.
In our times, skepticism of experts runs high. Much of this skepticism isn’t skepticism at all; it’s a cynical attempt to undermine experts whose work may threaten entrenched business interests or people reluctant to change their habits.
But just because bad-faith arguments are made against climate scientists, say, or evolutionists, doesn’t mean we should ignore the fact that science is imperfect.
The philosopher Richard Rorty noted that science is an endeavor dedicated to describing the world with increasing precision. The implication of this view is that scientists at times get things wrong—or at least less right than possible. The difference between science and religion, however, is that the latter often defends a frozen worldview whereas good scientists question their own theories or those of others—if not in an attempt to refute them, then in an effort to further clarify their ongoing description of reality.
For backyard stewards, the most salient example of this distinction is the debate over climate change, where a small minority of voices has managed to undermine the urgency of what scientists (including some scientists who work for oil companies) have been observing since at least the fifties. I’m not going to engage in that debate today except to say that the concerns of mainstream climate scientists have increasingly been borne out and, to the degree they’ve predicted events, these things have come to pass sooner and with more intensity than they said they would. In other words, accused of being hysterics, they have for the most part been too cautious.
Here are a few studies that caught my eye in the past six months:
June 2023: A group of scientists issued a rather technical report entitled “Earlier collapse of Anthropocene ecosystems driven by multiple faster and noisier drivers” (Nature Sustainability). Their layman’s summary, offered on the phys.org website, is more urgently entitled “Ecological doom-loops: Why ecosystem collapses may occur much sooner than expected.” It notes that “Around the world, more than 20% of ecosystems are in danger of shifting or collapsing into something different” and “These collapses might happen sooner than you'd think.” “This means an ecosystem collapse that we might previously have expected to avoid until late this century could happen as soon as in the next few decades.”
October 2023: The UN University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) issued its “Interconnected Disaster Risks Report” outlining six environmental tipping points. It defines a risk tipping point as “the moment at which a given socioecological system is no longer able to buffer risks and provide its expected functions, after which the risk of catastrophic impacts to these systems increases substantially.” Not all these risks concern the environment, but they all affect human welfare. They are: accelerating extinctions leading to ecosystem collapse; groundwater depletion risking food supply; mountain glacier melting leading to declines in freshwater availability; space debris interfering with satellite functionality; unbearable heat; and an uninsurable future.
October 2023: A study was published in the journal Scientific Data and reported on by phys.org under the title “New climate maps predict major changes in vegetation by end of century.” “Specifically, researchers anticipate an area roughly the size of Argentina, the world's eighth largest country, or 2.6 million km2, to transition from polar to cold climates by 2071–2099 under the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP)2-4.5 scenario, which assumes greenhouse gas emissions will approach zero by the end of the century. Additionally, 2.4 million km2 is projected to shift from cold to temperate, 1.1 million km2 from cold to arid, and 2.8 million km2 from temperate to tropical regions.”
November 2023: “Global Warming in the Pipeline” (Oxford Open Climate Change) argues that “under the present geopolitical approach to GHG emissions, global warming will exceed 1.5°C in the 2020s and 2°C before 2050. Impacts on people and nature will accelerate as global warming increases hydrologic (weather) extremes.”
Are these studies absolutely correct? Only time will tell, and we probably don’t have enough time (on our current trajectory) to know for sure. Of course, we backyard stewards are attempting to bend that trajectory. Sometimes, however, we may get it wrong.
An article entitled “When Well-Intended Environmentalism Backfires” in Reason magazine observes that the benign intentions of environmentalists sometimes turn out to be counterproductive or worse. The author notes that poorly designed or placed bat houses can cook bats to death; that honey bees introduced by nature lovers often outcompete native bees; that reduced ship pollution is contributing to global heating; that a rush to deploy electric vehicles in China has led to more rudimentary EVs being abandoned before they can have a positive impact on the environment; and that single-species tree plantations often do more harm than good.
The article’s title may suggest motivated reasoning more than reason, but it concludes sensibly enough:
For some, these unintended consequences will elicit schadenfreude; for others, despair. But there is a silver lining in these revelations, which is that we learn something new every day, month, and year about what kinds of eco-stewardship produce good results as well as what those results cost. While government bodies are not Bayesian actors, individuals and private firms can be. At the human scale, we can react and adapt to new knowledge, avoid or abandon well-meaning disasters, and make choices that have a positive impact on our local ecology.
Indeed, neither the cynical nor the best intentioned always get it right, but there is a deeper context to all this, one hit upon beautifully in a short essay by Erik Jampa Anderson, author of Unseen Beings: How We Forgot the World is More Than Human. His opening paragraphs are worth quoting in full:
In an article published last year in the Scientific American, contemplating developments in our search for extraterrestrial life, Andrea Gawrylewski writes: “Given the math, it seems impossible that we humans would be the only living things in the cosmos.”
At first glance, this comment may seem perfectly innocuous – even profound. But at a time when humans are orchestrating the sixth mass extinction on our planet, the fact that we could casually refer to ourselves as the “only living things in the cosmos” is alarming. We needn’t step outside of the circles of our world to find other forms of life – after all, Homo sapiens are only one of millions of species who inhabit this planet. We are not, and have never been, alone.
Naturalists—and those who respect the work of naturalists—know that we have never been alone and that our very existence depends upon the fabric of non-human life around us.
Yes, the scientists may be wrong about a thing or two. No, that’s not an excuse for any of us to wait.
Do the right thing, so far as our best guess goes. If our best guess changes to a new best guess, do that right thing. Waiting for perfection is not a rational option.
Native chuparosa (Justicia californica) flowers happily near the pool in our desert home:
