From rainforest revival and green technology to social changes, the age of humans is not necessarily a one-way ticket to eco-disaster, argue three new books

Will more of the world’s cities share Singapore’s future vision of itself? (Image: Suzanne Lee/SGIA/Panos Pictures)

OPTIMISM is in the air. Some environmentalists are shrugging off their perennial doom and gloom, and daring to think the possible – that we are not done for. After half a century of despair since the publication of Silent Spring, The Limits to Growth and The Population Bomb, the green shoots of ecological redemption can sometimes be seen between hard covers. It is a welcome relief.

In On The Edge, Claude Martin, former director of environmental group WWF International, remembers that back in the 1980s, forest biologists like him warned that the loss of pristine rainforests was driving tens of thousands of species to extinction. Yet it wasn’t so. His magisterial review of the state of those forests concedes that the “pessimistic projections”, which assumed that species would be lost as fast as forest area, have proved false.

Most species in these habitats survive even in the face of rampant deforestation. Puerto Rico lost 99 per cent of its primary forests but just seven bird species, and today has more species than before, he says. And thanks in part to reseeding by alien species, old forests are starting to grow again.


The Anthropocene geological epoch, it turns out, is not a one-way trip to ecological disaster. Nature clings on and fights back: the trick is to find ways to help. That means cosseting the vast amount of nature that persists in logged and degraded forests that conservationists traditionally snub as not “pristine”. And it also means embracing people who were once seen as enemies of conservation.

Martin notes that peasants and indigenous forest dwellers, who his own staff at WWF once demonised as the prime agents of forest destruction, are often nature’s best defenders – better even than conservationists like him. They need more powers to control their lands, he says, rather than having outsiders moving in to “protect” nature from them.

Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, can also see the light in unexpected places. Nearly a decade ago, in The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, he cast fighting climate change as a trillion-dollar challenge that required shared economic sacrifices today to save our children from wild weather and rising tides in the future.

Now, he writes, the need for “burden-sharing” is passing. Clean technologies are often as cheap as burning fossil fuels: “Much of what is necessary on the low-carbon front is also very good for growth, development and poverty reduction.”

Last year, fewer countries were tied to legally binding international targets for cutting carbon emissions than for almost two decades. Even so, a record 60 per cent of new investment in electricity generation was spent on renewables. Fixing climate change, Stern says, is no longer a “zero-sum game”. There is no burden to share; played right, everyone can win.

The trouble is that many people haven’t noticed. Too many governments pump trillions of dollars into subsidies to prop up uneconomic fossil-fuel industries, and then turn up at international negotiations convinced that every cut in carbon emissions they concede will be a defeat for their national interests. Stern doesn’t say so, but it may be that the language of burden-sharing at the core of UN climate talks is becoming part of the problem rather than the solution.

In End Game, academics Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly eloquently lay out the ecological perils we face, deftly showing how they might segue into food and water shortages, disease, resource wars and mass migrations. “Life would go on, but there would be a lot more losers than winners,” they write. But they, too, conjure good news from the crisis. Their subtitle, “Tipping point for planet Earth?”, refers not just to nature’s potential implosion under human assault, but also to positive tipping points in human responses.

Like nature, we can fight what once seemed inevitable. As the authors explain, family sizes have become radically smaller, defusing population bombs; rich societies are reaching “peak stuff” as people spend spare cash on “experiences rather than things”; agriculture can become far more efficient; and recycling can both end pollution and stem resource shortages.

Political will has produced major changes for the better before, they note. Slavery mostly ended in the 19th century, and the 20th century brought a green revolution that doubled global food production in a generation. Now we know the challenges for the 21st century; we just need to act.

Stern interestingly dissects how we have had successes against such evils as smoking, leaded petrol, drunk driving and HIV. Fighting climate change may be a bigger challenge, but he says that “big change can happen very quickly once [societal] tipping points are reached”. The tide turns quickly when technology, economics, morality and politics line up. One day, he predicts, “the low-carbon world will become… normal”. The unanswered question is whether we get to our tipping point before nature gets to its own.

The unanswered question is whether we get to our tipping point before nature gets to its own

None of the authors are complacent. As Barnosky and Hadly put it: “The world really is poised to roll in one of two different directions.” But Stern believes we can defeat climate change on “a wave of low-carbon innovation, growth and prosperity”. And Martin, despite the disappearance of so many forests, refuses to be labelled a pessimist. “I abhor statements that pretend all is lost,” he says. “They are wrong.”

On The Edge: The state and fate of the world’s tropical rainforests Claude Martin Greystone Books

Why Are We Waiting? The logic, urgency, and promise of tackling climate change Nicholas Stern MIT Press

End Game: Tipping point for planet Earth? Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly Harper Collins

This article appeared in print under the headline “Green shoots of hope?”