Here on Earth: A New Beginning

  • Tim Flannery
Allen Lane/Atlantic Monthly Press: 2011. 336 pp/288 pp. £14.99/$25 9781846143960 | ISBN: 978-1-8461-4396-0

Many recent books about the fate of life on Earth muse on fragility, tipping points and crises. But some writers see a more hopeful future for the planet. Without ignoring the monumental threats posed by humans, interdisciplinary studies may be offering reasons to be cheerful about the resilience of life in the face of change, and our chances of surviving this and the next century. Australian palaeontologist Tim Flannery's Here on Earth follows in this optimistic vein.

By tracing the great shifts in Earth's geochemical and biological systems through time, he argues that life generates ever-more-sophisticated responses to varying planetary conditions. In particular, he notes, “from the most intense competition for survival, cooperation has emerged”. Such natural transformations hold lessons for future challenges. He develops his theme through parallel accounts of the history of Earth and of life, harnessing an impressive mix of research in geology, chemistry, biology, palaeoanthropology and sociology.

Flannery moves deftly through some difficult science. Early in the book, he espouses British environmentalist and chemist James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis that life stabilizes the planet and makes it habitable. He explains how chemical cycling during the Precambrian era — the first 4 billion years of Earth's existence, until 542 million years ago — led animals, including humans, to develop the ability to absorb and store poisonous elements such as mercury, cadmium and lead. He explores how the early evolution of life built the atmosphere; and how continental drift and mid-ocean hydrothermal vents known as black smokers maintain the salinity of the sea for marine life.

The slaughter of mammoths in the Siberian tundra effectively destroyed the productivity of this terrain.

Flannery then switches to human evolution and migration through Australia, Asia, Europe and the Americas, focusing on human ancestors' impacts on the land. He shows, for example, how the slaughter of mammoths in the Siberian tundra effectively destroyed the productivity of this terrain. Tundra plants must be eaten for the carbon they contain to be recycled, otherwise they simply freeze and the nutrients are locked in. Mammoths were the greatest eaters of this modest plant cover, bulldozing the snow aside with their baroque tusks and redepositing the digested remnants as copious urine and droppings, which fertilized the land. With the demise of the mammoths, the tundra's productivity also declined.

Yet human behaviour in prehistory, and in non-industrialized societies today, was not always environmentally destructive. Flannery relates how Australian Aboriginal people learned that nutrients were recycled when vegetation was burnt in small patches — in contrast to the vast interior deserts created by mechanized agriculture on the continent today. Through taboos over eating certain rare species, indigenous New Guineans effectively preserved local biodiversity.

Central to Flannery's optimism is cooperation, including that between humans and the environment. He looks to insect colonies — sometimes termed 'superorganisms' because they can act as one unit — in which individual members follow pheromone messages to fulfil tasks that meet group objectives. Comparing insect communities to human societies, Flannery shows how cooperation has increased the lifespan and benefits of modern humans compared with our ancestors, who — although they were able to tackle almost any task — had short and painful lives.

Flannery acknowledges our persistent efforts to destroy Earth and ourselves: nuclear proliferation, agricultural spraying with toxic weed killers and insecticides, persistent organic pollutants and industrial effluent of metals and carbon dioxide. The narrative in each case of big business, disease and death, research and eventual regulation has been told many times, but rarely as thoroughly and dispassionately. The biggest threat of all, Flannery contends, is overpopulation.

Yet he agrees with United Nations estimates that humans will self-regulate at about 9 billion individuals by 2050, thanks to rising standards of living and decreasing family size. Improving economies will also strengthen people's reasons to invest in their future. As individuals and corporations stop “discounting the future” by taking a reckless view of their own and their community's survival, they will adopt more sustainable lifestyles, in which conspicuous consumption is mocked rather than admired. In support, Flannery notes the rise in the number of democratic countries from 40 to 123 in the past 50 years, the beginning of international negotiations about sustainability and the rise of the Internet and mobile phones, which make secrecy hard to maintain.

Despite the tendency for people to ignore the inevitable, and to become immune to doom-laden prophecies, Flannery believes that humanity will act before New York, Shanghai and London sink beneath the waves. A combination of effective recycling of carbon back into the soil, rewilding of vast areas and natural stabilization of human populations could present a long-term model for survival. It is a clear and rational proposal. However, many futurists would deny his optimism: reversing levels of current carbon usage, for example, would require an unimaginable change in cooperative behaviour worldwide.

Although some might quibble about his reliance on speculative concepts such as Gaia, Flannery's command of evolution, environmental chemistry, civilization and human motivations strengthens his case. His buoyant futurology is a hopeful counterpoint to the short-term denial and inertia of so many current decision-makers.