“It is now five minutes to midnight on the doomsday clock, reflecting the fact that we are closer to assuring the obliteration of our species than we have been at any time since the early eighties. We are rapidly approaching a tipping point, where we will either transform our violent, exploitative global system into a peaceful, cooperative one, or enter a catastrophic decline”.

That’s the introductory blurb to Evolution’s Edge, an important new book by Australian activist Graeme Taylor and recently published by New Society Publishers.

Hi Graeme, thanks for agreeing to an interview.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
Tell us a bit about Graeme Taylor.  You’re an activist, an observer of social patterns.  Give us a picture of that.

GRAEME TAYLOR:
Since I was a child I have found it difficult to accept that we live in a world where there is simultaneously great abundance and terrible hardships. I have never understood how many people can be indifferent to the suffering of other humans and other creatures—for example the fact that today a hundred species will go extinct and a billion people will not have enough to eat. After all, it is not so difficult to feed a hungry child or save an endangered species—we have the resources and we have the technology—all that is lacking is the compassion and the will.

In my book I answer this question by saying that human society is still evolving. While we are still dominated by a destructive and violent economic and political system, a more sophisticated and peaceful society is now emerging. The challenge that we face is to ensure that our competitive consumer society is rapidly transformed into a cooperative conserver society before it destroys the environment, a catastrophe that would end most life on Earth and destroy advanced human societies.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
It seems surreal that only one year ago we had an Australian prime minister, John Howard, who was a climate change skeptic who refused to sign the Kyoto protocol, believed nuclear power and coal technologies were going to be Australia’s answer and was so willing to blindly follow George Bushes every whim I became embarrassed to be Australian.  How did you feel under the Howard regime?

GRAEME TAYLOR:
Bush and Howard sincerely believe that everyone in the world should live like Americans. The problem is that we would need four more planets worth of resources for everyone to consume like Americans. So although everyone in the world is being sold the American lifestyle, it isn’t going to happen. Instead we are rapidly degrading our environment and heading towards environmental, economic and social collapse.

It was terrible to have Bush and Howard in control and to know that they had no idea of what they were doing. Their ideas may have had some relevance in the1960s when the world still had a stable climate and plenty of cheap resources, but they are dangerously irrelevent in the twenty-first century, when we live in a world of rising global temperatures and scarce resources.

However, having Rudd and Obama in power still doesn’t make me feel safe. At least they realize that the danger of climate change is real—and they listen to real scientists. But I am not sure that they understand the need for a complete transformation of society and the replacement of the old mechanistic model of reality with a systems-based (holistic) model. Making minor improvements to our destructive system will not be enough to avoid disaster. We need to quickly make a paradigm shift and start respecting and caring for each other and the environment or it will be game over for the human experiment.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
Queensland is one of Australia’s biggest states and was a major grower for this country.  We’ve been watching dramatic climate change throughout Australia.  What have you been seeing up there?

GRAEME TAYLOR:
The long drought has begun to wake people up to the fact that climate change is real. Now that the rains have come we are having a temporary respite, but unless we reverse climate change the long term trend is that Queensland, like most of Australia, will get hotter and drier each year. The result will be the end of the Great Barrier Reef and most fisheries, the tropical rainforrests, and most farming.

The positive side is that we saw how most people are willing to change their behaviours when they realize that there is a problem. When asked to, most people in Brisbane sharply reduced their water consumption. It shows that there is real hope for the future—Australians are not selfish or stupid and they will rise to the challenge and do the right thing when they can see that it is necessary.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
I was recently shocked to learn how the human race has wiped out 80% of the world’s biodiversity, setting us up for potential extinction under increasing global warming.  Could you explain biodiversity, what practices destroyed it, and why it puts us at risk?

GRAEME TAYLOR:
Biodiversity describes the millions of different species that make up the web of life on Earth. These range from miniscule viruses and bacteria right up to the largest whales. The different species need each other to survive—for example flowering plants can’t reproduce without the help of pollinating insects, and pollinators can’t survive without flowers. Even the climate depends on the existence of millions of healthy and diverse species: plants keep the global temperature stable by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and produce the oxygen we breathe. Since all our water, food, energy and other resources come from the natural world, we cannot survive without healthy environments.

At this point humans haven’t wiped out most of the other species on the planet, but we will if we keep on cutting down tropical rainforests, polluting rivers and lakes, and destroying coral reefs and other ecosystems. In the last 30 years the quantity of non-human life on Earth has declined by 30% and hundreds of thousands of species are now on the road to extinction.

The biggest danger comes from global warming. Most species (including flowers, trees, insects, fish, birds and animals) live within narrow temperature ranges. When the maximum temperature rises and/or the amount of rainfall changes, they must move to a more suitable environment or die. The problem is that it is not easy for forests and other ecosystems to migrate to cooler or wetter areas—especially if there are deserts, mountains or oceans in the way. And if the plants die the insects that live on them die, and the birds that eat the insects starve, and so on. For this reason it will only take two or three degrees of global warming to kill off up to a third of all the species that are alive today.

Worse, if we don’t quickly reverse global warming, the permafrost in the Arctic will melt and release billions of tons of methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas. At this point global warming will probably become irreversible, causing average global temperatures to rise by over six degrees celcius by the end of the century, a temperature that will wipe out 90% of the species on Earth, make it impossible to grow most crops, and destroy human civilizations.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
That is plenty scary but on the optimistic side we can all begin making changes, using less, thinking about the products we buy.

I’ve started growing organically as well as processing all my organic waste to restore nutrition to the soil.  I was shocked to read that the World Earth Summit in 1992 found the mineral levels of most countries in the world had been depleted by around 75% since the 1960 an 70s and 55% in Australia.  We spent decades sending our organic waste out with the trash to go to landfills.  Do you think the decreased mineral levels of our soil and all foods resulting from it, could be linked with huge increases in childhood allergies, cancers and developmental delay?

GRAEME TAYLOR:
Most of the food that we eat comes from industrial farms where large quantities of fertilizers and pesticides are used to raise fields planted with one type of crop. While this reduces the amount of labour required to grow food, it also destroys the natural biodiversity of the soils, which means that vital nutrients aren’t being replaced. In addition the food is polluted by the pesticides, which build up in our bodies.

Most of  fertilizers and pesticides are made from fossil fuels. One of the positive sides of the rising cost of oil (and prices will go through the roof in a few years as increasing shortages develop) is that farmers will not be able to afford chemical inputs and will have to go back to healthier, organic forms of agriculture.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
I’m in a semi-rural outer suburb of Melbourne in one of the last places in Victoria with reasonable rainfall.  I’ve started water farming because without water, none of the food I’d grow will flourish or even survive and our water prices are climbing yet we can get water from the sky.  Yet I see we lose all our storm water down drains and back out to sea and have water flushing toilets which flush away litres of purchased water with ever flush.  What do you think of that situation?

GRAEME TAYLOR:
We live in a crazy society where the first response to a shortage is to find a way to produce more rather than  find a way to use less. All over Australia governments are spending billions to build energy-intensive desalination plants. Not only will this cost consumers more, but the power for the desalination will come from polluting coal-fired generating stations. We will get more water, but we are making a deal with the Devil—in the end it will cost us our planet and our children’s future. Although a much cheaper solution would be to reduce water consumption, there is a reason why businesses and governments do not support this approach. How can businesses make more selling you less?

DONNA WILLIAMS:
Since learning about the impact of meat production on global warming I’ve reduced my meat intake to around once a week.  If I were vegan I could even produce my own fertilizer instead of flushing it off to treatment plants.  What’s your view on the meat and dairy industries?

GRAEME TAYLOR:
I am a vegetarian, not because I think that it is immoral to kill animals (I kill and eat plants), but because I think that it is cruel and immoral to raise pigs, poultry and cattle in crowded, filthy factory farms. But apart from the morality of factory farming, there are three other reasons why people should eat less animal products, and then only eat free-range eggs and meat. The first is health reasons: you’ll be healthier if you eat free-range foods and live longer if you are a vegetarian (vegans live longest). The second is that the world’s cattle produce more greenhouse gases than cars and trucks: we won’t be able to stop global warming unless we reduce meat consumption. The third is that we could feed all the hungry people on the planet if we stopped eating meat because half of the world’s grain production is used to feed livestock. Because it takes between two and nine kilos of grain to produce one kilo of meat, the more rich people eat meat, the more poor people go hungry.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
Our culture pities those struggling in the Third World, yet we are more fixated on whether we have the right brand of clothing and whether we’ll get the latest gadget this Cashmas.   Would money solve the poverty in the Third World or is it more about how that money is used and the mentality behind it’s distribution which makes the difference?

GRAEME TAYLOR:
Our global economy is unsustainable because humans are currently using 30% more resources each year than the natural world can replace. For this reason Australians and other people living in rich countries have to cut back on consumption. At the same time, many people in the world lack  essential goods and services—adequate food, shelter, sanitation, transport, education, health care, etc. These people will need a larger share of the world’s resources if they are to survive. So a fairer redistribution of resources is necessary.

However, sharing the wealth will not by itself solve the world’s problems. Not only are trillions of dollars a year wasted on conspicuous consumption, but trillions are wasted on warfare, subsidizing polluting industries and other environmentally and socially damaging projects. Our destructive economy is driven by a destructive culture. We will only be able to create a sustainable world with ethical and sustainable values.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
We’re worried about the credit crunch, the collapse of modern capitalist economies and their multinational conglomerates.  We’re worried about overpopulation and scenes of crop failure and starving populations and we know we’re next.  We’re worried about global warming and we know we’re the polluters.  We are seeing extinction and yet we’re expanding, cementing and killing to do so.  Yet we’ve got religious fanatics worried about keeping all possible foetuses  from day one of conception, extending life even of those who are past wanting it.  One fifth of our adults still smoke cigarettes which pollute air, clothes and hair, reduce health, leach 100s of dangerous chemicals into our waterways and kill our birds and fish and impoverish the smoker whilst supporting trillionaires.  We’re still driving and advertising gas guzzlers the majority of which take children to suburban schools within a city block.  Is our ‘normality’ a systemic en-masse mental illness?  Where do we begin to find rationality, logic, practicality?

GRAEME TAYLOR:
Yes, we live in an insane world where violence and greed are glorified, where the governments of the world can come up with a few trillion dollars in a month to bail out rich bankers but cannot find a few hundred billions to save the environment or end poverty and disease. In this competitive, fear-based culture it is not surprising that  25% of Australians suffer from depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses each year—after all,  mental illness has been described as a logical response to an insane situation.

The way out of our collective insanity is to come together around a vision of a peaceful, healthy, cooperative world. Constructive action is the way to overcome depression, develop friendships and build communities.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
Since the materialistic 80s, we began to close the doors on our neighbors and in some households electronic entertainment and mediums mean that we can be virtual strangers in our own households.  At the same time the lust for 5 minutes of fame has children and teens assaulting their peers for a moments shock factor on You Tube.  Yet it seems co-operative communities may be a big part of how we may need to survive.  How on earth do we start taking those steps when much of what we’re currently investing in is gearing us to higher levels of social paranoia and materialistic possessiveness, expectation for instant reward, hedonism and indulgence, and a a viral social apathy?  Pardon my existential angst, but, go on, inspire me.
GRAEME TAYLOR: I agree that we are surrounded by a consumer culture that is infecting our kids with violence and selfishness, but that is only part of the reality of what is going on. Not only is there more destructive change in the world each year, there is also more constructive change. In his book Blessed Unrest Paul Hawkens describes the hundreds of thousands of different organzations around the world who are working for social change. Never before have there been tens of millions of people working to build a better planet. This is why there is real hope. Now everyone needs get involved. Together we can heal the world!

DONNA WILLIAMS:
In your own words, tell us a bit about your book.  What practical help could it offer us and why should skeptics and the most apathetic read it.

GRAEME TAYLOR:
Evolution’s Edge explains not only why the collapse of our destructive global system is inevitable, but also why holistic ideas, values and technologies are giving birth to a new type of sustainable planetary civilization. Rapid transformation is possible once we make a paradigm shift in the way we relate to nature and each other.
This is not only a time of great dangers, but also a time of great opportunities. The brink of catastrophe is also the edge of evolution. Unless we rapidly transform our unsustainable global system, major ecosystems will fail and our children will inherit a dying world. But if we act now, we can prevent disaster and create a peaceful and prosperous future. The choice is ours.
Evolution’s Edge outlines the vision and values needed to unite a global movement for constructive change. Full of transformative ideas and tools (and beautiful color illustrations), it is an optimistic and practical guide to a better future.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
Where can people learn more about your work?

GRAEME TAYLOR: I am the coordinator of BEST Futures, a family research project developing ideas and tools to support sustainable global outcomes. We have developed illustrated presentations to explain the historical evolution of human societies and why we are now in a period of rapid evolutionary change. These presentations are available at www.bestfutures.org. And of course you can buy my book or ask your library to order a copy. (Evolution’s Edge: the Coming Collapse and Transformation of Our World is available from your bookseller or online at Amazon.com.)

DONNA WILLIAMS:
Thanks for the interview.

Warmly,

Donna Williams, Dip Ed, BA Hons.
http://www.donnawilliams.net