Saving Our Planet
In the long view, the human relationship with forests has been one of brutal destruction, but even it carries elements of slow hope. In the Middle Ages, there was no shortage of timber in most parts of the world, and few saw cutting down forests as a problem. Yet in 1548 the people of Venice estimated that an important timber supply would last only 30 years at their current rate of usage—but different forest management would make it possible to meet the demand for many centuries to come. The idea of preserving resources came out of a concern for the future: a fear of using up resources faster than they could be replenished(补充).
Economic interests were at the core of this understanding of trees and forests. It would take more than three centuries before scientists began to understand that timber production is not the only, and possibly not the most important, function of forests. The late 19th and early 20th century saw an increasing recognition that forests serve as habitats for countless animal and plant species that all rely on each other. They take over protective functions against soil erosion and landslides(塌方); they make a significant contribution to the water balance as they prevent surface runoff; they filter dirt particles, greenhouse gases and radioactive substances from the air; they produce oxygen; they provide spaces for recreation and they preserve historic and prehistoric remains. As a result, forests around the world have been set aside as parks or wilderness areas.
Recent years have seen a big change in our view of forests. Peter Wohlleben's book The Hidden Life of Trees (2015), an international bestseller, suggests that trees can warn each other of danger through a "wood wide web" of roots and fungi(真菌). They support each other through sharing of nutrients and information, and they even keep ancient stumps alive by feeding them solutions of sugars. Such insights have made us aware of deep ecological relationships between humans and the more-than-human world.
Awareness of ecologies is a recent phenomenon. It was not until the 1940s that the concept of the "environment" embracing all living and nonliving things developed. In the 1970s, the term "environment" gained currency, becoming widely adopted in the English and Romance languages, and as "Umwelt" ("surrounding world") in German. The emergence of the idea led to the rise of environmental agencies, regulations and environmental studies, and to environmental science as new, integrated academic disciplines. It was in 1956 that the very first bachelor of science in environmental studies was awarded, at the State University of New York College of Forestry at Syracuse. Since the 1970s—with the rise of "environmentalism"—environmental studies programmes have sprung up at hundreds of universities. There is (slow) hope in the fact that scholars from many different disciplines have adopted the term "environment" over the past decades. They are exploring intricate connections within and between complex ecologies, as well as the impact that human environment-making (through techno-industrial, economic and other manipulative developments) has had on the biosphere.
The rise of the idea of the environment and a scholarly understanding of ecological processes has influenced new technologies and also politics. We have come to ask questions about vulnerability and risk, world ecologies, and the relationship between nature and power. The search for an adequate response to climate change occupies centre stage in international diplomacy.
Social and environmental activists, scientists and indigenous groups have called the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2015 insufficient, weak, or compromised. To some extent, they are right: climate change has already destroyed tens of thousands of livelihoods, and the situation will worsen in the near future for millions of mostly poorer people, who will join the ranks of those who have already been displaced by climate change and extreme weather events. But the Paris Conference nevertheless marked a historic step toward the recognition of the need for action on climate change, the cutting of carbon emissions, and world cooperation. There were 195 nations that came to the table in Paris and agreed to limits on emissions. Historically, nothing comparable had happened prior to this. Before the 20th century, a handful of scientists had been interested in the theoretical relationship between greenhouse gases and climate change, but only the empirical evidence accumulated since the late 20th century established a clear connection between the burning of fossil fuels and a vastly accelerated rise in global temperatures.
The current crisis is not the first that humans have encountered, and a look at the struggles with pollution in recent history reveals transformations that once seemed unimaginable. The "London fog" that came to define the capital through British novels and thrillers is in reality smog or smoke, a legacy of industrialisation. After a century of ignorance, London was hit by the Great Smog of December 1952—the worst air-pollution event in the history of the United Kingdom which caused the deaths of approximately 12,000 people. Shortly thereafter, public initiatives and political campaigns led to strict regulations and new laws, including the Clean Air Act (1956). Today, London has effectively reduced traffic emissions through the introduction of a Congestion Charge Zone in 2003, and an Ultra Low Emission Zone in 2019.
Scientific evidence that we are living in an era of climate change, resource exhaustion and potential ecological disaster is overwhelming. How do we motivate a public exhausted by never-ending scenarios of doom and disaster, when the challenges seem so huge and so impossible to solve? Statistics about extinction and the gloom of decline will not in themselves get us out of our often self-created ecological traps: instead, they are more likely to result in paralysis and inaction.
We need stories and histories of change and transformation: ecological stories that make us confront the fact that human power is potentially destructive, and that the survival of our species on this planet depends on the preservation of soil and water, and the habitats and ecological systems.
It is time that we showed successes and accelerations in ecological awareness, action and restoration: stories that include past successes and future visions about the rise of urban gardening and of renaturalised riverscapes, of successful protests against polluted air and water, of the rise of regional markets and slow food, and the planting of trees around the globe, of initiatives and enterprises that work towards ecological restoration. The reality of ecological curses seems far greater than the power of the hopes left at the bottom of Pandora's box. But if we believe that nothing can be changed, then we are giving up our opportunity to act.
Today's saving powers will not come from a deus ex machina(解围之神). In an ever-more complex and synthetic world, our saving powers won't come from a single source, and certainly not from a too-big-to-fail approach or from those who have been drawn into the whirlpool of our age of speed. Hope can work as a wakeup call. It acknowledges setbacks. The concept of slow hope suggests that we can't expect things to change overnight. If the ever-faster exhaustion of natural resources (in ecological terms) and the "shrinking of the present" (in social terms) are urgent problems of humans, then cutting down on exhaustive practices and working towards a "stretching of the present" will be ways to move forward.