Climate Holism vs. Climate Reductionism
The study of complex systems and emergent properties eventually led to the coining of the term holism to refer to the idea that systems (biological, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) and their properties should be viewed as wholes, not as collections of parts. The science of ecology, which is the study of the relationships between organisms and their environments, is an inherently holistic enterprise: ecologists study whole ecosystems that emerge from, but cannot be reduced to, the sum of their living and non-living components. Other scientific disciplines (notably medicine and industrial agronomy) have historically tended to plow a much more reductionist furrow.
Both reductionism and holism can be useful pathways to learning and understanding, but problems arise if we insist on using one approach only, or if we misapply that approach. Ecologists tend to think that’s what we in modern society do in searching for “silver bullet” solutions to problems in health care and environmental management rather than attempting to understand whole systems. The reasons for this reductionist bias have to do with the ways science developed from its philosophical foundations in the writings of Bacon and Descartes, and with the fact that commercial “silver bullet” products rooted in a reductionist approach to solving problems can be quite profitable for industries and investors (even when they don’t work well), while holistic recommendations often require change in the behavior of individuals or society as a whole.
These two philosophical predispositions also shape our responses to climate change. The reductionist school of thought sees climate change as resulting simply from the technical problem of carbon emissions. If we reduce the crisis in this way to its simplest component cause, then we are drawn to certain kinds of solutions: why not continue burning fossil fuels, but capture and sequester the carbon? Why not produce more energy from nuclear reactors, since the nuclear cycle itself yields no carbon emissions? Why not build machines to suck carbon from the atmosphere? If we do these things, surely we can maintain our current economy and way of life with minimal disruption. Most policy makers and economists (i.e., most “serious people”) see climate change this way, and even some solar and wind energy advocates are drawn along.
A holistic view of climate change starts by understanding its relationship to a complex of disorders that increasingly plagues the global ecosystem, including soil degradation, desertification, the decline of life in the oceans, species extinctions, deforestation, and water and air pollution. All proceed, in one way or another, from human population growth, economic expansion, and the ever-increasing use of fossil fuels. Once humans began burning coal, oil, and natural gas, these concentrated, then-abundant sources of energy supercharged the economic processes by which other natural resources are extracted and turned to waste. Further, as agriculture was industrialized and sanitation improved, population grew, thus increasing the scale of the problem. Climate change was just one of the predictable results. Therefore even if we deal with global warming through technical strategies that reduce carbon emissions, much of the rest of this complex of problems will continue to worsen until we deal with its systemic causes, or until it overwhelms the biosphere and human civilization.
= new reply since forum marked as read
