This is a long article but of some interest for pursuing a metabolic model
for the ecology. Certainly this is
indicated by all the data that is accumulating today.
It is my opinion that it is necessary for every watershed to be
ecologically managed by all the stakeholders through a stakeholder’s council with
the authority to manage the ecology.
This geographic component is not
addressed in this essay but it is both ecologically important and natural but
also politically important in terms of organizing a human response.
This is still a good attempt to
structure our response to the problems of managing our world but makes the
usual error of assuming top down control as useful. A bottom up system can solve this.
Ecological Civilization
by Prof. Fred Magdoff
Global Research,
January 9, 2011
Given the overwhelming
harm being done to the world’s environment and to its people, it is essential
today to consider how we might organize a truly ecological civilization—one
that exists in harmony with natural systems—instead of trying to overwhelm and
dominate nature. This is not just an ethical issue; it is essential for our
survival as a species and the survival of many other species that we reverse
the degradation of the earth’s life support systems that once provided
dependable climate, clean air, clean water (fresh and ocean), bountiful oceans,
and healthy and productive soils.
There are numerous
ways to approach and think about the enormous harm that has been done to the
environment. I will discuss the following: (1) the critical characteristics
that underlie strong ecosystems; (2) why societies are not adequately
implementing ecological approaches; and (3) how we might use characteristics of
strong natural ecosystems as a framework to consider a future ecological
civilization.
I. Ecological Principles: Learning from Nature
The study of ecology
developed as scientists began to understand how natural systems functioned.
Scientists quickly realized that they needed to think and study in a
multidisciplinary fashion—there was no way to comprehend the full complexity of
such systems by focusing on one particular discipline or sub-discipline. In
fact, even after intense study, it is usually impossible to understand fully a
highly complex system—with interactions and positive and negative feedback
loops—to the extent that you can accurately predict all the results that will
occur when you intervene in some way. Frederick Engels described this
phenomenon well, over a century ago in 1876:
Let us not…flatter
ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such
victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first
place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places
it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the
first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor, and elsewhere,
destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing
along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they
were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When
the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so
carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing
so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they
had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs
of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to
pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons….Thus
at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a
conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that
we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and
that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over
all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.1
Learning to “know and
correctly apply” the “laws” of nature has progressed greatly since Engels’s
time. Although we must always proceed with caution when working with complex
ecosystems (as Engels warned, there may be unforeseen consequences), much has
been learned about how natural systems operate, about the importance of the
interactions of organisms among themselves and with their
physical/chemical/climatic environment. There are fragile natural ecosystems
that are easily disturbed, and may become degraded as a result of slight disturbance.
However, many natural ecosystems are strong, able to resist significant
perturbation and/or quickly return to normal functioning following a
disturbance. Natural disturbances of an ecosystem may be sudden—a wildfire
started by a lightening strike, huge winds generated by hurricanes, floods,
etc.—or gradual, as with changes in long-term precipitation trends. More
resilient systems are better able to adapt to long-term gradual changes as well
as sudden ones.
Metabolism and Metabolic Connections
The term metabolism is usually used in
reference to the work done inside an organism or a cell as it goes about its
normal operations: the building up of new organic chemicals and the breaking
down of others, the recovering of energy from some compounds, and the use of
energy to do work. But a critical part of the metabolism of a cell or large
organism is the exchange of materials with the environment and other organisms:
obtaining energy-rich organic molecules and individual elements necessary to
make all the stuff of life, including oxygen, carbon dioxide, nutrients (such
as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium), and water. Without access to
these resources outside itself, an organism would run out of energy and die.
Plants and animals, as well as fungi and most bacteria, need to be able to
obtain oxygen from the atmosphere or water in order to live. In addition, all
organisms must rid themselves of waste products such as carbon dioxide that can
be toxic if allowed to accumulate inside the organism. Thus, metabolism
involves not only processes internal to the organism but also a continual
exchange of materials between an organism and its immediate environment—the
soil, air, water, and other organisms. (See Figure 1.)
Almost all organisms
use the energy derived from sunlight—either producing it themselves by
photosynthesis or feeding on plant material or organisms that have themselves
fed on plant material. However, organisms, from the “simplest” bacteria to
mammals, interact with one another and with the chemical and physical aspects
of their local environment. The waste of one cell—or the whole organism
itself—becomes food for another. And many organisms contain other organisms,
either inside or on their surfaces, most living in a mutually beneficial, symbiotic
association. The huge number of bacteria inside the human gut (as there are
inside those of other animals) plays an important part in our metabolism and
assists in the normal functioning of the body.
Soil is not just a
medium for supporting plants so they can grow upright. It is also composed of
minerals, gases (atmosphere), water, decomposing organic material, and
literally millions of organisms such as fungi, bacteria, nematodes, earthworms,
and so on, all continually interacting and providing resources to one another.
There is a strong metabolic interaction between plants and soil. Plants, as
they grow, provide food for many soil organisms, as material produced by
photosynthesis in green tissue is translocated to the roots and exuded. (See
Figure 1, which outlines some of the main metabolic connections in a natural
ecosystem in which humans are part.)
Many of the
microorganisms close to roots provide organic chemicals that support healthy
plant growth. All plants also take up nutrients such as potassium, phosphorus,
magnesium, calcium, and nitrogen. Some plants, such as legumes, which function
symbiotically with bacteria inside the plants, supply energy-rich products of
photosynthesis to the bacteria, which in turn supply the plant with available forms
of nitrogen. When plants or plant roots die, they become food for fungi and
bacteria that then become energy sources for organisms such as nematodes that
then become food for other organisms further up a complex metabolic foodweb of
life. (A foodweb is
the term now used in place of food chain—because organisms are connected in
complex, branching ways and not in an orderly, ladder-like chain.) Although
plants make their own energy-rich compounds using the sun’s energy to power
photosynthesis, the essential inorganic compounds that plants take up from the
soil also participate in the foodweb. As organisms feed on dead plant material,
they use energy contained in the residue for their life processes and, at the
same time, convert nutrients in their food into forms that can be used by
plants in the future.
Plants living in the
same ecosystem are frequently connected to one another metabolically. The
release of available nitrogen from a legume can, for example, be taken up by a
neighboring grass plant. The threads of fungi (hyphae) that help plants take up
water and nutrients frequently connect one plant to another. In addition, some
plants provide resources and refuge to insects that attack insects that feed on
other plants.
Plants and soils are
important participants in the hydrologic cycle. Plants take up water from soil
and use some for growth, while most water evaporates from leaves, returning to
the atmosphere to fall back to Earth again as rainfall. Precipitation may
filter into the soil and be stored there for plants to use, or it may percolate
down to recharge the water table. If the soil is open and porous and has a
cover of organic mulch, a high percentage of rainfall can infiltrate.
Conversely, if soils are compact and have no surface organic mulch and few
plants, rainfall tends to run off the land, eroding soil as it flows.
There is also an
intimate and important metabolic connection between plants and higher animals,
as animals feed on plants (or other animals that fed on plants), using
nutrients from the soil and solar energy that have been stored in plants. In
the living and reproducing processes of animals, energy is used to do work, and
nutrients are returned to the soil as waste materials. There are strong
animal-to-animal metabolic relationships, as carnivores, omnivores (humans
included), parasitoids (insects that parasitize other insects), etc. go about
their normal lives.
Humans create forms of
metabolic interaction with the earth in many ways—agricultural systems,
fishing, mining, production and use of industrial commodities, production and
utilization of transportation systems, heating homes and cooking, disposing of
solid waste (garbage), changing the landscape to accommodate road construction,
etc. However, in this section, we include only human metabolic relationships
with the earth as they are expressed through the consumption of food and
excretion of bodily waste. This allows us to focus on what can be learned from
natural systems.
Strong Natural Ecosystems
The continuity of the
natural soil-plant-animal metabolic connections is critical to maintaining
strong ecosystems. And within the soil, the metabolic interactions of the great
diversity of organisms help provide the nutrients and stimulating compounds
that are essential for growing healthy plants as well as enhancing infiltration
of rainfall and storage capacity for water for later use by plants.
A number of
characteristics can be thought of as pillars supporting strong natural
ecosystems. These have been described as follows:
- Diversity. A great biological diversity, both above ground and in the soil, characterizes many strong natural ecosystems in temperate and tropical regions. The metabolic connection between so many organisms provides biological synergies, nutrient availability to plants, checks on disease or insect outbreaks, etc. For example, competition for resources and specific antagonisms (such as antibiotic production by some soil bacteria) among the multitude of soil organisms usually keep soil borne plant diseases from severely damaging a natural grassland or forest. And a great diversity in species aboveground (plants and animals) and in the soil, some with overlapping niches or functions, means that if one is harmed by a disease or insect, there are frequently others that promote the continuity of ecosystem functioning.
- Efficient Natural Cycles through Closely
Linked Metabolic Relationships. Efficiency of natural systems’ natural
cycles is arrived at through close biological interactions and
associations and biological synergies. Tight energy and nutrient
flows—with little wasted or “leaking out”—are characteristic of strong
natural systems. Because of the wide variety and great populations of
organisms and their many natural niches in soils and on the soil surface
and the presence of significant quantities of stored solar energy in crop
and manure residues, energy flows efficiently, as organisms consume
organic residues and one another. Natural ecosystems with healthy soils
and diverse plant species also tend to be efficient in capturing and using
rainfall and in mobilizing and cycling nutrients. This efficiency in use
of nutrients, energy, and water helps to keep the ecosystem from “running
down” through the excessive loss of energy and nutrients (and topsoil)
and, at the same time, helps maintain the quality of the groundwater and
surface waters. Precipitation tends to enter the porous soil, rather than
run off, providing water to plants and recharging ground water, slowly
releasing water to springs, streams, and rivers.
- Self-Sufficiency. A consequence of diversity
and efficient natural cycles is that natural terrestrial ecosystems are
self-sufficient—requiring only inputs of sunlight and rainfall. Natural
ecosystems run on current and recently past solar energy (stored as soil
organic matter). The sun’s energy, captured by green plants, is then used
by many organisms, as fungi and bacteria decompose organic residues and
are then fed upon by other organisms, which are themselves fed upon by
others, higher up the foodweb.
Cycling of nutrients
from soil to plant to animal and back to soil is essential for an ecosystem to
be stable and resilient. There are low levels of nutrients, such as nitrates,
that come along with rain and are deposited as dust settles. Other nutrients
then become available as soil minerals dissolve. But, to a great extent,
nutrients cycle and energy flows efficiently within the system. As organisms
decompose dead plants and animals, nutrients are recycled at the same time that
energy stored in the food source is utilized. The essential nutrient, nitrogen,
needed for making proteins, is provided by a number of species of bacteria
(free living as well as those living symbiotically on or in plant roots) that
are able to convert nitrogen gas in the atmosphere into amino acids, directly
usable by plants, and to release mineral forms of nitrogen that plants can also
use.
- Self-Regulation. With plants and animals
filling the numerous niches aboveground, many species are able to exist
side-by-side, for instance, in grasslands. But they metabolically interact
with one another and are intimately connected. Because of the great
diversity of organisms present, outbreaks (or huge population increases)
of diseases or insects that severely damage plants or animals are uncommon.
For example, a particular beetle that feeds on plants may encounter
numerous other species that keep its population from getting too high—“a
variety of predatory bugs and beetles in the foliage of the plants, and
pathogenic nematodes and fungi that inhabit the soil attack pupating
adults below ground.”2
Animals have many
systems to defend themselves when under attack by other organisms, including,
in mammals, their own immune systems. But plants also have a number of defense
mechanisms—some stimulated or induced by soil organisms—that help protect them
from attack by fungi and bacteria. There are also organisms that prey on (or
lay their eggs in) insects that feed on plants. Amazingly, plants being eaten
by plant-feeders (herbivores) send out chemical signals that recruit the
specific organism to attack the particular plant-feeders.3
- Resiliency through Self-Renewal. Disturbances
occur in all ecosystems, natural or not. The stronger ecosystems are more
resistant to disturbances and are able to bounce back quicker.4 Such
resiliency is the “bottom line” characteristic of strong and stable
ecosystems, with other characteristics contributing to the ability for
self-renewal. Seeds stored in the soil, which germinate after a fire are
an example of the self-renewal of plants.
Are There Lessons to Learn from Bees?
The natural world
contains many interesting examples that may have some analogies in human
activity. For example, when beehives grow too large, bees swarm to a temporary
location. Scouts go out in different directions and then report back by
performing a dance that provides information about the location scouted and its
conditions. Other bees congregate around the original scout they think has
selected the best site. When enough bees agree on one of the locations, the
entire swarm then goes off to build a hive there.5
When a large enough
number of bees agree about a site, they end up selecting the best one. There is
an analogous situation with humans. People in groups, provided with the
necessary information, tend to make better decisions than individuals making
decisions for the group. A diversity of people (backgrounds, skills, outlooks)
allows a group to evaluate issues better. Because they are, as a group,
involved in the decision-making process, they feel more ownership of the
decision and a desire to help implement it.
II. Why Are Societies Not Applying Ecological
Knowledge?
With every day that
passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these laws and getting to
perceive both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our
interference with the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the
mighty advances of natural science in the present century, we are more than
ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote
natural consequences at least of our day-to-day productive activities. But the
more this progresses the more will men not only feel, but also know their
oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and
unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, man and nature, soul and
body.
—Frederick Engels,
18766
Although the science
of ecology was born in the nineteenth century, it developed only gradually over
the years. During this process, our understanding about the functioning of
natural systems and the interaction of organisms with the environment has
deepened. How can we reconcile this growing knowledge with the accelerating
pace of environmental destruction? The answer is that nearly the entire world
is now part of a global capitalist system, which is, at its heart, an
anti-environmental economic/social system. Having accumulation of capital
without end as its motivating force and only goal, capitalism creates
environmental havoc locally, regionally, and globally.
As Engels explained:
As individual
capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the sake of the
immediate profit, only the nearest, most immediate results must first be taken
into account. As long as an individual manufacturer or merchant sells a
manufactured or purchased commodity with the usual coveted profit, he is
satisfied, and does not concern himself with what afterwards becomes of the
commodity and its purchasers. The same thing applies to the natural effects of
the same actions. What cared the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down
forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient
fertiliser for one generation
of very highly profitable coffee trees—what cared they that the heavy tropical
rainfall afterwards washed away the unprotected upper stratum of the soil,
leaving behind only bare rock!7
These words are, if
anything, more critical today than when Engels wrote them. The accumulation of
capital, the driving and motivating force of capitalism, leads naturally to
many consequences that harm the environment. The system proceeds
assuming—contrary to all evidence—unlimited resources (including cheap energy)
and unlimited natural “sinks” for wastes generated.
Human activity breaks
or greatly alters the metabolic connections discussed above and tends to
impoverish and weaken the ecosystem, making it function less effectively and
with less resilience. Although human-induced metabolic disturbances and rifts
occurred in the precapitalist era—for example, the cutting down of forests in
the Mediterranean region thousands of years ago led to accelerated runoff of
rainfall, soil erosion, and the drying of springs in the dry season—the logic
of capitalism and the technology it developed, along with the increased number
of people on Earth, led to much greater and more intensive disruptions in the
natural cycling of matter, affecting not only local and regional ecologies, but
global ones as well.
Recognition of
problems that arise as metabolic rifts occur commonly brings about
interventions to counteract the effects, or attempts to shift the problems
around. But the result more often than not, as Engels pointed out, is the
emergence of unanticipated secondary and tertiary effects, many of which are
extremely detrimental. The effects of both the ecological rifts and their
attempted remedies are local, regional, and global. Hence, there are numerous
examples of severe degradation, if not the actual breaking of
soil-plant-animal-atmospheric metabolic relationships. (See Figure 2 for rifts
during development of cities and capitalist agriculture; Figure 3 for
consequences of interventions to try to deal with rifts; and Table 1 on the
entire set of disturbances and their consequences.)
Rifts in Nutrient Cycles (see [a] in Figures 2 and 3)
A number of
nineteenth-century observers were concerned with an aspect of capitalism that
is still a problem today, though in an increasingly egregious form—the breaking
of the cycle of nutrients from soil to plants and farm animals to humans and
back to soil, with all its ramifications. For example, Marx wrote in Volume I
of Capital:
Capitalist production
collects the population together in great centres, and causes the urban
population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance….[I]t disturbs the
metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e., prevents the return to
the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and
clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for
the lasting fertility of the soil.8
Until the discovery of
phosphate deposits and the practice of making the phosphorus in them more
available to plants, one of the sources of phosphorus for European agriculture
became the bones of former soldiers—which were harvested from the Napoleonic
battlefields and burial grounds. The quest for nutrients to replenish soils in
the later part of the nineteenth century led to “guano imperialism,” as
countries competed to capture islands rich in this natural fertilizer.9 Peru
Figure 1.
Soil-plant-animal-atmosphere metabolic interactions
Imported Chinese laborers
(“coolies”) worked on the guano islands, extracting this valuable fertilizer
for export to the global North. Undernourished, physically beaten, choking on
dust, they labored as beasts of burden under conditions, as noted by Marx,
“worse than slavery.”10 Today
huge quantities of nitrogen fertilizer are produced by the Haber-Bosch process,
while large amounts of potash and phosphorus minerals are mined and treated.
The use of increasing amounts of energy (especially for nitrogen production) by
the Haber-Bosch process, as well as by mining and processing of phosphorus,
causes great ecological disturbance and pollution.
The metabolic rift of
people removed from land that produces their food continues unabated with the
transfer of large populations from rural areas to cities. This phenomenon that
began in earnest with the British land foreclosures that forced peasants off
the land between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries continues today with
modern foreclosures, as farmers in Latin America, Africa, and Asia are forced
off the land and migrate to cities that hold few jobs for them. Most enter the
“informal economy” and struggle for existence.11
In the second half of
the twentieth century, another rupture of nutrient cycling occurred as large,
integrated capitalist firms concentrated beef cattle feedlots, poultry
production, and hog operations near slaughtering facilities. This overwhelmed
the supplies of locally grown feed sources, forcing the importation of feed,
mainly corn and soy, from hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. This had two
effects: the depletion of nutrients on grain farms (forcing them to purchase large
amounts of commercial fertilizers) and the accumulation of mountains of manure
on animal farms (causing water pollution due to the excess level of nutrients).
A further accentuating
factor was caused by a change in crop rotations. Perennial forage legumes and
grass-legume mixtures were once a central part of farm rotations. The multiyear
hay and pasture crops produced numerous positive effects. One of these was that
the nitrogen remaining from the legumes could be supplied to following crops of
grains such as corn or wheat. Tractors replaced animal traction, beef cows were
increasingly raised in large feedlots, and dairy cow numbers per farm grew.
Many former dairy or mixed crop-livestock farms were converted to mechanized
crop farms, often raising only grains and soybeans. These “cash grain” farms
had no use for rotations containing perennial legumes to feed as hay or to
pasture animals—because they had no farm animals. Nor did their neighbors.
Thus, many farms stopped producing their own nitrogen (from legumes) for grain
crops and were thereby compelled to purchase large amounts of nitrogen
fertilizer—produced with massive amounts of energy, usually natural gas.
(Although soy, an annual crop, is a legume, it leaves little nitrogen available
for a following grain crop.)
Fiugre 2.
Interferences in soil-plant-animal-atmosphere metabolic interactions
Rifts in the
Circulation of Organic Matter and the Carbon Cycle (see [a] and [f] in
Figures 2 and 3)
When discussing soil
organic matter, keep in mind that, as with all organic compounds, it is
composed of carbon-rich substances. In fact, there is about three times more
carbon stored in soils in the form of soil organic matter than is in the
atmosphere. Agricultural practices affect how much carbon is stored in soils as
organic matter and how much is released back into the atmosphere as carbon
dioxide. When forests or grasslands are converted to agricultural production,
there is usually a great loss of organic matter from the soil, as plowing and
other disturbances accelerate the use of stored organic matter by organisms.
This accelerated microbial metabolism leads to massive carbon dioxide emissions
into the atmosphere. Once soil organic matter is very depleted (see below), the
soil may stop being a net source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
In addition to
influencing nutrient cycling, the separation of humans and farm animals from
the land that grows their food contributes to the break in the
soil-plant-animal-human organic matter cycle. Decreased return of organic
residue to the soil means that less food is provided to soil organisms. This
occurs not only because manure and human waste are not returned to the field
but also because of the more simplified agroecosystems that eliminate
soil-building perennial hay crops from rotations. Although some crop residues
remain in the soil in these simplified systems, organic matter declines or
remains low, and organisms have less food, reducing the population and
diversity of soil life.
Disruption of the
Hydrologic (Water) Cycle (see [d] and [e] in Figures 2 and 3)
Numerous practices of
capitalist development—such as concentrating people in large cities, raising
animals on factory farms, over-pumping water from aquifers for irrigation,
clearcutting of forests, and mountaintop removal for coal mining—have caused a
significant alteration in the hydrologic cycle in ways that have degraded local
and regional ecosystems.
The enormous amount of
water being pumped from aquifers—mainly to irrigate crops—is having a
significant effect on the global hydrologic cycle. “People are drawing so much
water from below [ground] that they are adding enough of it to the ocean
(mainly by evaporation, then precipitation) to account for about 25 percent of
the annual sea level rise across the planet.”12 In important
agricultural areas such as northwestern India, northeastern China, northeast
Pakistan, California’s central valley, and the Great Plains of the United
States, waters are being pumped from aquifers in such excess that water tables
are falling rapidly, threatening continued irrigated agriculture. With much of
the water for irrigation coming from the world’s rivers, some rarely reach
their normal outlets—for example, China’s Yellow River, the Colorado River in
the United States and Mexico, and the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers in the Middle
East. Although damage occurs to life in the estuaries, most of the water used
for irrigation is transpired by plants and evaporated from soils and is then
returned as rainfall.
As simplified
agroecosystems develop, and less land is devoted to perennial hay/pasture
crops, less organic matter is returned to soils (see “organic matter cycle
above”). As organic matter decreases, soil structure deteriorates, and water
infiltrates more slowly into the soil. Use of heavy equipment, especially when
the soil is wet, causes compaction. Under these conditions, a significant
portion of rainfall, especially from intense storms, runs off the land, causing
soil erosion that takes organic matter-enriched topsoil. Plants thus become
more dependent on irrigation, even in humid regions.
Figure3. Reactive
interventions and primary consequences
Clearcutting, the
quickest way to make money from forests, leaves the soil without trees to
intercept rainfall and lessen its impact. As roots die, their ability to hold
onto soil decreases. Surface organic matter may also decrease, enhancing
erosion. In large tropical rainforests, water vapor lost to the atmosphere by
transpiration from tree leaves travels downwind and returns to the forest as
precipitation. The loss of large areas of tropical rainforest greatly reduces
this continual cycling of water—with more running off into streams and rivers.
As cities and suburbs
and shopping centers grow, and streets are paved, there is less exposed soil
for water infiltration. This results in larger runoff volumes during rains,
less recharge of local aquifers, and less streamflow during periods of low
rainfall.
Rifts in the
Interactions among Organisms (see [b] and [c] in Figures 2 and 3)
Simplified
agroecosystems (few crops [with homogenous genetics], short rotations,
eliminating hedge and tree rows) in place of forests and grasslands, and
removing animals from crop farms cause decreased plant/animal diversity
aboveground and diversity of organisms belowground. There are fewer habitats
for wildlife and for beneficial organisms in and around fields. Within the
soil, the decreased quantities and variety of organic matter return leads to
decreased soil organic matter levels and decreased diversity and organism
activity. As plant, soil, and animal biodiversity decreases, outbreaks of
insect pest and diseases become more common (less self-regulation), inducing
the use of increasing amounts of pesticides. (An interesting experiment in China
Interventions to Try to Bridge Metabolic Rifts—Or
Transfer the Problems Elsewhere
Faced with the
problems associated with severely degraded metabolic relationships, the main
responses have been as follows (see also Figure 3): (1) transport food and feed
large distances to cities and to where farm animals are concentrated, routine
use of antibiotics in animal feed; (2) apply large amounts of fertilizers on
crop farms to deal with the rift in the nutrient and organic matter cycles; (3)
use pesticides to overcome insect, weed, disease, and nematode pests that
develop with simplified systems (monocultures, poor rotations, and depleted
soil organic matter); (4) use extra irrigation water to deal with decreased
ability of soil to allow rainfall to infiltrate and to store water for plants;
(5) transport water from water surplus regions long distances to where aquifer
and river water is depleted.
The interventions then
have the unintended effect of water pollution by nutrients and pesticides, and
contamination of farmer, farm worker, and food with pesticides and development
of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. More and more interventions are needed to
obtain reasonable crop yields from soils depleted of organic matter, with low
amounts of biological diversity, and greatly simplified aboveground
agroecosystems.
The Complexity of Ecological Disruptions
Marx emphasized the
loss of “the lasting fertility of the soil” as a result of the net export of
nutrients, as people moved (or were forced to move) to cities during the early
phase of capitalist development. This created what he called an “irreparable
rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism
prescribed by the natural laws of life itself.”14 But many of the
large-scale agricultural systems are inefficient at cycling nutrients for other
reasons, as well. Huge amounts of nitrogen fertilizer are lost in growing corn
on most farms, as nitrate leaches into ground water, which then contaminates
streams and rivers. (Significant amounts of phosphorus also tend to be lost from
these systems, along with sediments in surface runoff and erosion.) Excess
nitrate from the corn grown in the U.S.
Midwest is believed to be the primary cause of the low-oxygen (sometimes called
“dead”) zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River .
There are hundreds of these low-oxygen zones around the world, the largest of
which occurs in Europe’s Baltic Sea . A
smaller, though significant, amount of soil nitrogen is converted to nitrous
oxide and diffuses into the atmosphere where it is a potent greenhouse gas, and
also destroys ozone in the stratosphere.
The need to use so
much fertilizer results from losses of nutrients in runoff, the leaching and
volatilization in inefficiently designed systems, and separation of people and
animals from the land that produces their food. One consequence of continuous
loss of nutrients from soil is the need to import fertilizers on crop farms,
with severe environmental cost in terms of mining disruption and energy use.
Production of nitrogen fertilizer is especially energy intensive. Approximately
1,200 m3 of natural gas is needed to produce one metric ton of anhydrous
ammonia fertilizer (equivalent to about 1,700 kg of N).15 Approximately one
third of the energy used to grow a crop of corn in the U.S. Midwest is
used to produce, ship, and apply nitrogen fertilizer. And every ton of
phosphorus as fertilizer, after acid has been added to the rock to make it more
soluble, results in five tons of waste, which contains radioactive substances
and leaches highly acidic water. In addition, the world may be close to “peak
phosphorus” extraction, after which phosphorus will be more expensive and
difficult to obtain. The lack, or prohibitively high cost, of phosphorus
fertilizers may turn out to be one of the largest disruptions in the world’s
agriculture.
As discussed above,
the changes in agricultural practices accompanying agricultural intensification
go far beyond the issue of the depletion of soil nutrients and suggest
ramifications for other metabolic connections.
Another critical issue
is the abysmal treatment of labor in capitalist agricultural systems. Migrant
workers, especially those from other countries, have few rights and are
frequently treated as virtual slaves. Farm laborers and their families are also
commonly heavily contaminated with pesticides. Conditions of labor on large
agricultural plantations, mainly in Africa, Latin America, and Asia , are usually the most exploitative. Workers are paid
very low wages, violence or immediate firing is used to stop unionization, and
pesticides (many banned in the rich countries) are used freely, with severe
health effects.
Groundwater may be
contaminated with pesticides, as well. For example, Costa Rica Britain
from Costa Rica
The Wider Metabolic Rifts Engendered by Industrial
Production/Consumption
We have discussed
almost exclusively natural systems and the causes and consequences of disturbed
metabolic relationships that have occurred with the introduction and growth of
capitalist agriculture. A full discussion of degraded metabolic relationships
and other problems associated with the industrial/service economy in general is
beyond the scope of this paper. However, we must at least note that industrial
mining and refining of raw materials and production of commodities, with profit
as the sole aim, result in significant environmental problems, such as: (1)
numerous toxic chemicals are used (polluting human bodies and the rest of the
ecosystem); (2) carbon dioxide and other pollutants are emitted by power plants
and oil refineries; (3) nonrenewable resources are depleted and renewable resources
are undermined and even depleted; (4) the land itself is destroyed in such
ventures as “mountaintop removal” in the mining of coal; (5) the massive
production of unneeded commodities for a small minority of the world’s
population (and persuading them to buy them), while not meeting the basic needs
for a larger portion of humanity.
The characteristics of
capitalist economies derive from the motive force—the accumulation of capital
without end.18 As
Richard Levins has explained, “Agriculture is not about producing food but
about profit. Food is a side effect.”19 The same could be
said about the production of almost anything, or the provision of any service
in a capitalist system. Capitalism, in its pursuit of accumulation of capital
as means to further accumulation, “ad infinitum,” engages in extreme forms of
both the division of labor and the division of nature. The result is to
simplify and degrade them both, creating metabolic disturbances and rifts
between human beings and nature and rupturing the entire social metabolism.
Table 1. Consequences
of Degradation or Rift in Metabolic Relationships
III. Creating an Ecological Civilization
Capitalism is
incompatible with a truly ecological civilization because it is a system that
must continually expand, promoting consumption beyond human needs, while
ignoring the limits of nonrenewable resources (the tap) and the earth’s waste
assimilation capacity (the sink). As a system of possessive individualism it
necessarily promotes greed, individualism, competitiveness, selfishness, and
an Après moi le déluge philosophy.20 Engels suggested
that “real human freedom” can be achieved only in a society that exists “in
harmony with the laws of nature.”21
Although it is
impossible to know what future civilizations will be like, we can at least
outline characteristics of a just and ecologically based society. As a system
changes, it is the history of the country and the process of the struggle that
bring about a new reality. However, in order to be ecologically sound, a
civilization must develop a new culture and ideology based on fundamental
principles such as substantive equality. It must (1) provide a decent human
existence for everyone: food, clean water, sanitation, health care, housing,
clothing, education, and cultural and recreational possibilities; (2) eliminate
the domination or control of humans by others; (3) develop worker and community
control of factories, farms, and other workplaces; (4) promote easy recall of
elected personnel; and (5) re-create the unity between humans and natural
systems in all aspects of life, including agriculture, industry,
transportation, and living conditions.
An ecological society
is one that will need to be the opposite of capitalism in essentially all
aspects. It would: (1) stop growing when basic human needs are satisfied; (2)
not entice people to consume more and more; (3) protect natural life support
systems and respect the limits to natural resources, taking into account needs
of future generations; (4)make decisions based on long-term societal/ecological
needs, while not neglecting short-term needs of people; (5) run as much as
possible on current (including recent past) energy instead of fossil fuels; (6)
foster the human characteristics and a culture of cooperation, sharing,
reciprocity, and responsibility to neighbors and community; (7) make possible
the full development of human potential; and (8) promote truly democratic
political and economic decision making for local, regional, and multiregional
needs.
When considering the
characteristics of strong ecosystems to explore those of strong economic/social
systems, there will be overlap—some vital traits clearly belong to more than
one “characteristic” or “pillar.” Nevertheless, the analytical separation of
these traits/characteristics helps provide a basis for organizing our thoughts
on the issues involved. An ecological civilization will depend on creating
appropriate human social-ecological metabolism, so that society can perpetually
meet human and environmental needs. The discussion below is not meant either to
be a complete outline or a blueprint, but rather to stipulate some of the
crucial characteristics of an ecological civilization.
Self-Regulation
Decisions are made—to
as great an extent as possible—at the level where the effects will be most
felt. Self-regulation in this sense is democratic self-governing and needs to
occur at the workplace, community, multi-community, regional, and multiregional
levels, so that major political and economic decisions are in the hands of an
empowered populace. A system of economic and political democracy provides
better identification of, and solutions to, problems. This system will require
a public that is well educated, informed about alternative possibilities,
interested, and encouraged to participate in making decisions. Although local
inhabitants know their area and needs best, people must have the knowledge and
analytical skills to make informed decisions. An embryonic example of this is
the system of community councils in Venezuela
The labor and
production process governing the human-social metabolism with nature is
collectively organized and controlled. Farmers and workers in factories and
offices—together with their local communities—control their workplace. People
will be encouraged to participate in leadership, while a system also needs to
be established for regular review of persons in authority at all levels of
society—and easy removal, if necessary. All decisions will take into account
the meeting of basic human needs and the allowance for the full development of
human potential, while maintaining or recreating the healthy
local/regional/global environment essential for healthy humans and the rest of
life.
Diversity
It comes in many
forms—diversity of opinions and talents (because people have different
backgrounds and experiences). It can also apply to the details about how
communities and regions are organized—as long as all are dedicated to similar
goals. Diversity provides significant strengths and security, and adds to the
community socially and culturally, as well as economically. Better decisions
are made by taking into account the thoughts of people looking at the same
issues through different lenses. Diversity of opportunities for education,
recreation, development of particular interests strengthens the community and
society. Biological diversity is encouraged through more complex agriculture
cropping systems that emphasize building healthy soils, and through better
integration of less disturbed (“natural”) areas within agricultural and urban
landscapes.
Efficient Natural Cycles through Closely Linked
Metabolic Relationships
The concept of
capitalist efficiency—simplification of production processes, producing with
the least amount of (and most unskilled) labor possible, lowering labor and
other costs to reap maximum profits, using less gasoline to travel more miles
in your car—will be replaced by ecological concepts of metabolic efficiency in
the cycling of materials and energy that permit the sustainability of the
civilization. These rely on synergies that develop among people living in
cooperation with each other (instead of in competition and individualist
isolation) and with nature (instead of attempting to overwhelm and dominate
it). Social metabolism, or human interactions with each other, is analogous to
the metabolic interactions among nonhuman organisms (microorganisms, plants,
insects, other animals) in natural systems. Working fewer hours—if everyone
participates to produce life’s needs—means that people will have more time to
spend with family and community. And stronger communities are developed when
individualism, consumerism, and competition are replaced with cooperative ties
among people, as the communities develop procedures and systems for meeting the
basic physical, cultural, and recreational needs for everyone.
Principles of
ecological design will be used for agriculture, construction, manufacturing,
and assisting recovery of damaged ecosystems. Living in cooperation with nature
leads to tightly coupled nutrient, energy, and water flows, and to maintaining
the functioning of natural cycles and flows. A regenerative agriculture based
on ecological principles is an agriculture that works with nature, instead of
against it, to create and maintain healthy and diverse habitat in and around
fields and in productive soils.22 Raising animals on
farms where their feed is produced allows for efficient nutrient cycling and
synergies of better crop rotations, while reducing dependence on processed
mineral deposits (for phosphorus and potash) and exorbitant use of energy to
produce nitrogen fertilizers. This also provides a purpose for growing
perennial forage legumes and grasses more widely as feed for ruminants. If no
industrial waste or other contaminants are allowed to degrade the usefulness of
human sewage, we can rely on the efficient cycling of nutrients from human
waste back to the land that grows our food.
People will, to as
great an extent as possible, live near where they work, use public mass
transit, and eat food produced in reasonable proximity to their homes. People
will work fewer hours, because, with all unnecessary jobs (for example in
advertizing and other parts of the sales effort, and much of finance, real
estate, and insurance) eliminated, it will not take that much work to produce
the basic needs of society. But everyone who can work will have a job.
An ecological
civilization cannot be based on private automobiles as the main, or even a
significant, transportation system. No matter how fuel efficient cars and
trucks become, the use of buses and trains for the main regional transportation
systems will be more energy efficient. A less car-dependent society will use up
fewer materials, cause less disturbance, and use less land for road
construction and all the businesses connected to an automobile culture (such as
McDonald’s drive through restaurants). Luxury commodities will not be produced,
and products will not come in the elaborate packaging now used, which
overwhelms the earth’s landfills. People will live in homes designed to be
attractive and comfortable but also to be energy efficient and to take
advantage of natural heating/cooling possibilities.
Industrial production
of human needs will necessarily entail some disturbance of natural systems,
just as agriculture does. But care must be taken to minimize negative effects
of such practices, along with mining. Production systems will be based on
“cradle-to-cradle” concepts, where easy reuse of materials or structures is
built into the original product.23 Extreme forms of
both the division of labor and the division of nature that create rifts within
life itself will be avoided.
Self-Sufficiency
Complete
self-sufficiency is neither possible nor desirable for all regions and all
communities. However, self-sufficiency with regard to many needs, such as food,
water, housing, and energy should be a goal toward which communities and
regions strive. In this way, most of the knowledge and skills needed for
providing the basics reside within the local community or group of neighboring
communities. Self-sufficiency may include using relatively small-scale local forms
of renewable energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, or hydro instead of
relying on energy generated at large facilities far away (“green” or not) and
depending on long-distance transmission. Community-based food systems
(production and distribution) based on an agriculture that relies on ecosystem
strengths and close nutrient cycling, will run as much as possible on current
energy.
Again, this does not mean that all communities
and regions should be completely self-sufficient (for example, it makes no sense
for all communities to produce their own buses or refrigerators). Rather, they
should strive toward that goal—especially for the basic foods. Redundancy in
peoples’ skills and in production facilities enhances self-sufficiency.
Resiliency through Self-Renewal
The degree of
resiliency and self-renewal depends on how well all the traits discussed above
have been developed and incorporated into society. Community and regional
social structures and economies that can better withstand adverse events and
recover quickly will be more sustainable. The characteristics, or pillars,
discussed above—self-regulation, self-sufficiency, diversity, and efficiency
through closely linked metabolic relationships—all contribute to creating a
resilient society. Community and regional structures and economies based on
these characteristics should be able to withstand adverse events and recover
more quickly through a process of self-renewal. Global cultural interchange and
cooperation (made more viable because it will be between mutually
self-determining communities that are not in competition with each other) also
enhance resiliency.
It is inconceivable that capitalism itself will
lead directly to an ecological civilization that provides the basic needs for
all people. However, building an ecological civilization that is socially just
will not automatically happen in post-capitalist societies. It will occur only
through the concerted action and constant vigilance of an engaged population.
Notes
- ↩ Frederick
Engels, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man,” in
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25 (New York:
International Publishers, 1975), 460-61.
- ↩ Lindsay
Turnbull and Andy Hector, “How to Get Even with Pests,” Nature.
466 (July 1, 2010): 36-37.
- ↩ A
more detailed description of plant defense mechanisms can be found in
pages 77 to 81 in Fred Magdoff and Harold van Es, Building Soils
for Better Crops (3rd edition), http://sare.org/publications/bsbc/bsbc.pdf.
n
- ↩ Fred
Magdoff, “Ecological Agriculture: Principles, Practices, and
Constraints,” Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 22,
no. 2 (2007): 109–17.
- ↩ Peter
Miller, “Swarm Behavior,” National Geographic, July 2007;
Thomas D. Seeley, Honeybee Democracy (
- ↩ Engels,
“The Part Played by Labour,” 461.
- ↩ Ibid.,
463.
- ↩ Karl
Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), 637.
- ↩ John
Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, “Liebig, Marx and the Depletion of Soil
Fertility: Relevance for Today’s Agriculture,” Monthly Review 50,
no. 3 (1998):32-45.
- ↩ John
Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, The Ecological Rift (
- ↩ George
Packer, “The Megacity: Decoding the Legacy of
- ↩ “Groundwater
Use Increasing Sea Level Rise,” a description of Bierkens, M.F.P. et al.
in “A worldwide view of groundwater depletion,” Geophysical
Research Letters, http://seaweb.org/news.
- ↩ Youyong Zhu,
Hairu Chen, Jinghua Fan, Yunyue Wang, Yan Li, Jianbing Chen, JinXiang Fan,
Shisheng Yang, Lingping Hu, Hei Leung, Tom W. Mew, Paul S. Teng, Zonghua
Wang, and Christopher C. Mundt, “Genetic Diversity and Disease Control in
Rice,” Nature 406 (2000): 718-22.
- ↩ Karl
Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (London: Penguin, 1981), 949.
- ↩ Clark
Gellings and Kelly E. Parmenter, “Energy Efficiency in Fertilizer
Production and Use,” Encyclopedia: Efficient Use and Conservation
of Energy, vol. 2, http://eolss.net/ebooks.
- ↩ Felicity
- ↩ Ibid.
- ↩ For a more
detailed discussion, see Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, “What Every
Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism,” Monthly Review 61,
no. 10 (March 2010): 1-30.
- ↩ Richard
Levins, “Why Programs Fail,” Monthly Review 61, no. 10
(March 2010).
- ↩ “Après
moi le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist and every
capitalist nation. Capital therefore takes no account of the health and
length of life of the workers unless society forces it to do so.” Karl
Marx, Capital, vol. 1, 381.
- ↩ Frederick
Engels, Anti-Dühring, in Marx and Engels, Collected
Works, vol. 25 (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 106.
- ↩ Magdoff,
“Ecological Agriculture: Principles, Practices, and Constraints.”
↩ William McDonough
and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle (New York
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