British environmental scientist James Lovelock sensed that something was seriously wrong with human consciousness. How else could his peers report horrifying things so calmly? The polar ice caps are melting, they said, 3,000 species go extinct every year, the world’s large fish stocks have plummeted by 90 percent in the past century, and we’re turning the planet into a microwave oven. Business as usual.

In a series of books that have made scientific and spiritual waves, Lovelock warned that until humans start thinking about the Earth as a system dependent on the health of its parts—until biologists sit down with sociologists, economists, fishermen and their mothers to generate integrated solutions to drastic environmental problems—we’re screwed.

Lovelock’s talk at CSU-Monterey Bay last fall led campus organizers and the Big Sur Environmental Institute to host a symposium on April 30, bleakly titled “Earth’s Environmental Crisis and the Fate of Humanity.” About 100 people drifted in and out of the audience, filling and emptying the rows of chairs in slow pulses throughout the afternoon.

I missed the first several presentations but arrived just in time to hear Manuel Carlos, a CSUMB cultural anthropology professor, announce that hard-partying American tourists, cancerous resort developments and sexually challenged Mexican men are pushing sea turtles to the brink of extinction.

Adult female turtles navigate back to the place they were born, seeking the electromagnetic field that imprinted them as hatchlings, to lay their eggs. Increasingly, those places are fouled by littering tourists or pillaged by Mexican men who believe that eating turtle eggs boosts their prowess in bed, Carlos said.

He flashed a photo of a turtle looking for her nesting site, now a golf course.  

The next presenter was Pierre Chomat, a former French petroleum manager who turned green and wrote a book titled Oil Addiction. He put up a graph showing that, even if we ramp up coal, natural gas and nuclear energy production, we’re looking at an impending oil shortage beginning around 2010 and growing over time (a theory called “peak oil”). An audience member asked if renewable energy technology and conservation efforts could stave off this fate. “I don’t believe that anything can change the date,” Chomat said in a thick French accent with a tight smile.

CSUMB philosophy professor Josina Makau then explained how we as a species have managed to behave so stupidly. People generally view nature in one of three very different ways, she said. The “communion” belief system sees the Earth and its inhabitants, including people, as equal and interconnected. The “stewardship” view embraces a hierarchy—God controlling Man controlling Nature—but holds that humans have a moral obligation to take care of the resources we’re entrusted with. The “conquest” view sees nature as an “alien force” that must be controlled to serve humanity, a goal best achieved by quashing any sense that this world is sacred.  

“Abandoning the quest for conquest isn’t easy,” Makau said. “Just read the PATRIOT Act.” Then she squeezed her eyes shut and put out her palm as if to stop a flying tomato. “Just kidding!”

What, then, of the fate of humanity? No single discipline can address all of these problems, Makau noted, but we now have the tools to link activists together like never before. A paradigm shift toward a greener way of life is beginning, she said. “I can actually feel the movement.”

But there is backlash from those who stand to profit from the status quo, from those who’d rather not open their eyes to a devastating reality, from developing countries that feel they should be free to exploit resources for economic gain, just as the United States has for centuries. “I don’t want to make the assumption that we are positioned right now for moral leadership,” Makau said, noting that the US still hasn’t ratified the Kyoto Protocols.

Last to speak was Christopher Potter of NASA, who described satellites photos showing how humans have changed the planet. Deforestation, urbanization and air pollution—likely driving ever-more natural catastrophes—have revised Earth’s portrait from space. He flashed the famous Mauna Loa graph showing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rising dramatically since the 1960s.

By then, I felt even more depressed. I noticed with some bitterness a plastic water bottle and a lipstick-smeared disposable coffee cup at the feet of the woman behind me. The garbage can outside the lecture room was stuffed with plastic bottles and aluminum cans, with nary a recycling bin in sight.

Bravely attempting optimism, Potter added that we can try to bring CO2 levels down by planting trees, using renewable energy and sequestering emissions underneath the Earth’s surface.

“NASA’s not gonna get you off the planet anytime soon,” he said dryly. “I can guarantee that.”