Reading Response # 1

Considering the extremely high stakes of environmental deterioration as expounded by authors such as James Speth, or detailed in documents such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), it is hard for a non-expert like me to understand why not enough ameliorating measures have been implemented. It is also hard to comprehend why so many environmental issues were allowed to escalate to the critical point that they have reached.
It is hard to think of excuses after realizing that important observations began to develop a more robust consciousness for environmental issues among scientists as early as the latter part of the 1970s (Speth, 2004). However, the fact that rigorous scientific reports like the MA in 2005 still point out to alarming deficiencies “to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems” (MA, 2005, p. v) reveals that those observations were not properly harkened.
As the MA shows by containing a Summary for Decision-Makers, a large part of most solution-achieving processes falls on the hands of politicians and other important socioeconomic entities. Since most measures need to be implemented through both national and international policies and institutions, political actors play an essential role in achieving environmental solutions. Unfortunately, as the MA suggests, decision-makers lack awareness of “the threats posed by the degradation of ecosystem services” (MA, 2005, p. 20).
To that lack of awareness I would also add that there is a general lack of interest not only among decision-makers, but also among the general public (who is also a victim of insufficient or incorrect information). Humans’ seemingly inherent shortsightedness for large time-spanning events, like global warming, biodiversity impoverishment, and other environmental ills, appears to be largely responsible for this lack of interest.
Like someone trying to watch day turn into night at dusk only to be suddenly surprised by nocturnal darkness, people can find it hard to give serious consideration to environmental issues until they are being directly, and in many cases irreversibly, affected by them. In the meantime, they tend to be more preoccupied with more immediate concerns such as security, employment, and welfare. Those interests are the main drivers of political action, thus relegating other, more “invisible” issues like ecosystem deterioration and its effects on human well-being. Additionally, outside of certain social circles who often hold modest political clout, people generally lack at least a conscious understanding of “ethical duties” to the environment (Speth, 2004, p. 24) or a recognition of its “intrinsic value” (MA, 2005, p. v), as represented in artistic expressions such as Martin Buber’s “I Contemplate a Tree”, in which a man discovers himself and the tree to be siblings in nature.
Beyond alarming statistics and estimates, it is this lack of significant popular motivation to thwart the threats to biodiversity and ecosystems that constitutes, in my opinion, the main environmental question that has yet to find an answer.