Some years ago, I discovered that I am not able to worry about more than one thing at a time. When two disasters struck simultaneously, each kept displacing the other in my mind and rational coping mechanisms broke down, leaving me feeling helpless.
How much worse it is for the poor people of Ukraine: fear of bombs and rockets, fear for the survival of their menfolk and children, worry of how to get food and water and where to escape to, utter fear of the immediate and long-term future. The way for its victims is to plan positively to survive, be it to arm themselves and fight, to escape elsewhere, or to stay put as best they can and pray. Easy to say, but a choice that would be unimaginable for us. Remote from it, we cannot know what we would do.
All of us now are confronted by three separate and extremely serious worries – the Ukrainian tragedy, the pandemic and climate change – and most of what I have written over the last two years has been aimed at understanding how these issues may affect us and how we can best protect ourselves, both individually and collectively. It is very easy to regard them as three separate problems and to get confused or hopeless, to fail to develop a coping strategy for all of them as we concentrate on one, or even to try to ignore them all. But what if they are all part of the same problem? Could there be one positive strategy that would confront all of them together? I think there is.
Warfare
Biology explains why warfare is the default position between the tribes of humans. It comes from the basic urges to reproduce and to find the resources needed to support the growing population, which we now recognise to be food, water and energy. As children fight over toys, and dogs over a bone, so adults fight over land that provides these resources. War is a logical consequence of pressures that drive the less fortunate to migrate to places of better opportunities – such migration is often a prelude to major hostilities. But war is also a major cause of migration.
On a small scale, political and civil unrest is another response to inequalities within a tribe. Civilisation brought our remote ancestors together into cities and nations, but there seems to be a limit to how many can co-exist for prolonged periods without tension and secession. That limit is marked by a transition from dependence on and love of one’s land to suspicion of others and nationalism. This is most dangerous and far-reaching when some humans assume that they are superior to others, that their gods are better than those of others, and that their way of life should be exported. This leads to conquest, exploitation and slavery, to Genghis Khan, Alexander, Napoleon, Hitler. Now we are seeing it manifest in Putin.
Our own hands are not clean; my childhood pride in the British Empire as having brought enlightenment and economic benefit to benighted parts of the world did not survive adolescence when our near miss in withstanding Hitler’s tyranny gave us a glimpse of reality but an alternative source of pride in Britain.
Pandemics
The current pandemic is giving us an object lesson in biology at a remotely earlier level in evolution. The war in this case has been (and still is) for survival of the latest mutant of the coronavirus. The original mutant came from human interaction with wild animals and was highly infective and very virulent, especially in those with lowered immune defences such as the elderly and people with chronic disease or obesity. It spread worldwide from humans crowding together in cities and travelling widely and rapidly.
Alpha and other variants proved even more infective, but all were almost eliminated by the delta variant. By this time, human ingenuity had produced some treatments that saved many lives and vaccines were beginning to be deployed. These together with natural infections have given us in the UK a measure of so-called herd immunity, allowing the emergence of omega and its more recent minor variants which are highly infective despite immunity. These seem less virulent, particularly in the fully vaccinated, and behave more like a nasty cold virus (which is the more natural status of the common coronavirus). It is now likely that we shall have to live with this variant indefinitely and learn how to do so.
Climate change
The fundamental requirements of biological species are to reproduce and to survive. Mankind’s brain and physical attributes have allowed us to become the dominant species on the planet, to the extent that we understand how we have adapted and what we need to do to survive. This understanding allows us to develop treatments and vaccines for diseases but also led to us recognising that the Earth’s resources are limited and that these will limit the size of our population. We can no more continue a trajectory of perpetual growth by running down the resources on which we depend to the point of altering our entire environment, than can a population of pandas survive the loss of all eucalyptus trees or polar bears the loss of ice in the Arctic. This understanding of biology allows us to know how we have dominated all other species save micro-organisms and gives us the option of planning to maintain this position.
Our understanding of the biological forces at work and their basis in physics, mathematics and chemistry allows us humans to use judgement to predict the likely consequences of any actions that we take to control them. Even before such scientific understanding, in the time of the Roman Empire, it was possible to suggest that plagues, warfare and bad governance held apocalyptic threats to the human way of life.
Since 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has charted the progression of temperature and sea level rise worldwide and made estimates of their likely increase over time, estimates expressed as probabilities. In general, the tone of these reports has become increasingly confident as to the consequences of our use of fossil fuels, especially as the early predictions have proved over the three decades to have been underestimates. It is clear from the recently published report that we can no more delay action. All use of fossil fuels must cease within the next decade at the latest.
The consequences of rising temperature are now obvious to all – sea level rise, floods, storms, heat waves, crop failures, drought, migration, land disputes. I am afraid that these will all get worse even if we succeed in eliminating fossil fuel use, as latent heat in the planet will raise temperatures further; if we do not succeed, the consequences are unimaginable but will lead to the end of civilisation. What is happening in Ukraine gives us a glimpse of this apocalypse.
The common factor
I wonder if you now see the common factor in mankind’s pathway towards apocalypse. It is our own behaviour and our attitude to the environment in which we live and with which we must co-exist – we are dependent on it and it on us. This leads to us wanting more, from cheaper petrol for our cars and food for our tables to more power for our nation. This natural selfishness has historically been countered by recognition of collective responsibility, for our families, our neighbours, our compatriots. This has developed into our distinctive codes of ethics, often formulated into religions or national laws, and our different takes on government from dictatorship to democracy.
It is not coincidence that the major religions all preach peace and care for one’s fellow humans, nor that tyrants justify their tyranny by proclaiming that they are bringing their enlightened views to the unenlightened. Nor is it surprising that extreme political views to the left or the right end up in the same tyranny, as we saw with Hitler and Stalin.
If this argument that the common problem is our relation to our environment is accepted, our response must be directed at ourselves. I suspect that every reader of this essay can respond in a positive manner to the challenge. Let’s look at this in relation to the war in Ukraine.
Lessons of Ukraine
This war is closely analogous to the start of Hitler’s war and history suggests that such men, driven by fanatic beliefs, cannot be stopped save by defeat or death. In a nuclear age, total war has been regarded as unimaginable but if Putin is driven into a corner it could happen. We have put our hopes on sanctions, which will affect some of his close associates but will be worse for those poorer Russians who believe he is a god. However, as sanctions are our best hope of stopping the war, they must be effective; this will affect us as well.
Behaving like a cornered wolf, seeing the casualties mount, Putin is relying increasingly on bombs and rockets, more costly to him than the lives of his soldiers. Revenues from coal, oil, gas, wheat and metals are now paying for his weapons. Our contribution towards saving Ukraine is simple. Firstly, we must cut our use of oil and gas (and coal), and reduce our reliance on meat which is a very inefficient means of getting calories from agricultural produce. Such action is also necessary to combat climate change; we must delay no longer.
Secondly, we are already seeing price rises, related to Covid effects and Brexit. This will increase with war-induced shortages of raw materials and is likely to get worse. We need to lead more sustainable lives, to stop wasting so much food, clothing and other products. Rationing of a range of commodities may become necessary if the war is prolonged, so we need to develop an appropriate mindset about purchases.
Thirdly, the war is driving millions of Ukrainians from their homes. Many of us with rooms to spare will have offered accommodation, at present not taken up because of the bureaucratic incompetence of government. If the war is prolonged, many will never get home, so we shall all need to find ways of helping them to be assimilated. But with migration comes spread of infection and Covid is still extremely prevalent. Whatever governments pretend, they do not control viral reproduction or mutation, and we need to continue effective hygiene, including mask wearing in public places.
Thankfully, a further round of vaccination of the vulnerable is about to start and I would urge everyone who is offered a shot to take it up. This vaccine almost always keeps you out of hospital even if you catch the virus.
Conclusion
To return to our three worries, we only need to consider one: our own adaptation to the new environment of war, epidemic and climate change in which perforce we live. It will be less comfortable, more stressful for most of us, than the one we have lived in since the late 1950s, but our lifestyles will be healthier. We will continue a route to free us from use of gas and oil, to eating less meat, and throwing away less waste material. We will take more exercise, preferably not requiring electric treadmills, and breathe less polluted air as we walk to the shops without, I hope, the need to take our ration books again. It will not solve any of our problems, but it will give us a positive approach to our worries, helping us to achieve adaptation and leading towards a more secure future for all.
Anthony Seaton is Emeritus Professor of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at Aberdeen University and Senior Consultant to the Edinburgh Institute of Occupational Medicine. The views expressed are his own
By Anthony Seaton | 23 March 2022