Category Archives: Civilization

Global Warming and the Fate of Global Civilization

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Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

“Climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying,” says the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on August 9, 2021. Prepared by the IPCC Working Group I, Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis is a sequel to a special report of the IPCC released back in 2018, Global Warming of 1.5°C. While the 2018 report had already warned us of the threat of global warming, the latest report contains a far more serious message for all of us, for every region of the world is being affected by “widespread, rapid, and intensifying” climate change.

As its subtitle, the Physical Science Basis, suggests, the latest IPCC report incorporates observations made by scientists about changes in the Earth’s climate in every region and the whole climate system. As for the phenomenon of global warming, the latest report says that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900. Based on improved observational datasets, the report finds that global temperature, averaged over the next 20 years, is expected to reach or exceed 1.5 °C of warming, which will bring about increased heat waves, longer warm seasons, and shorter cold seasons. The report contains a serious warning that human activities have the potential to determine the future course of climate, carbon dioxide (CO2) being the main driver of climate change.

As a biological species, we humans live in the natural environment called the Earth, which is the space of our interaction with climate. Our existence as a species had long been under the influence of climate change until the Industrial Revolution. What is revolutionary about the Industrial Revolution is that it ushered in a new phase of human history in which we humans have acquired power to influence climate with the kind of activities that relies heavily on the use of energy and technology.

To the extent that human activities are behind climate change that is “widespread, rapid, and intensifying,” the climate crisis that the IPCC report points to is the crisis of civilization that guides our activities as citizens of the world. The crisis of civilization can escalate itself into its destruction and death, for, as Will Durant points out, “Civilization, like life, is a perpetual struggle with death.” (Our Oriental Heritage, Fine Communications, 1997, p.218) Destruction and death come to civilizations, Arnold Toynbee tells us, when they fail to meet changes confronting them: “Civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet.” (Civilization on Trial, Oxford University Press, 1948, p. 56). In fact, it was Arnold Toynbee who predicted as early as 1948 that industrial civilization, or secular Western civilization, which has come to engulf the whole world since the Industrial Revolution, was headed for destruction.

What historians such as Will Durant and Arnold Toynbee are telling us is that civilizations come and go. In fact, the crisis of civilization we face today is far more serious than other crises we have seen in history in that the secular Western civilization Toynbee talks about is global civilization that engulfs every region of the world. The climate crisis in the world today is therefore a global crisis as it is a manifestation of the crisis of global civilization. This is the reason why we will have to address ourselves in earnest to the question of what measures need to be taken by individuals, social groups, nations, and international organizations if we are to avert the crisis of global civilization headed for destruction and death, and start building a new civilization that will maintain a sustainable relationship with the natural environment.

What is civilization in the first place? A simple yet suggestive definition given by Will Durant is: “Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation.” (Our Oriental Heritage, p.1) Durant’s definition suggests that civilization is a social system in which human activities of cultural creation are promoted through maintenance of social order. Note, however, that the pursuit of cultural creation is not possible without proper provision of the basic necessities of life, which comes from economic activities in the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Thus, civilization can best be considered as a social system defined in the space of interaction among the three subsystems of culture, economy, and polity, where culture may be defined as the set of all human activities related to the creation and dissemination of ideas and symbols, economy as the set of all human activities related to the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and service, and polity as the set of all human activities related to the creation and maintenance of laws and regulations for social order. Civilization is an open social system in that it exists in the space of interaction with other social systems and the natural environment.

As an open social system consisting of the three subsystems of culture, economy, and polity, the crisis of civilization comes about when the crisis developed in one subsystem is transmitted to other subsystems, which is bound to happen sooner or later. As for the crisis of global civilization that confronts us today, we can trace it back to the Industrial Revolution when human activities started to be guided by a worldview that treats nature as an instrument that could be exploited for the benefits of humans. That exploitative worldview was transmitted to economy where increasing the material standards of living has become almost the sole purpose of economic activities, and to polity as well where increasing the material standards of living, translated into GDP growth, has been adopted as the mail goal of political activities.

If the climate crisis is the crisis of civilization reflected on all three subsystems, what can we do if we are to avert the crisis from escalating itself into destruction and death of global civilization? It is comforting to see an increasing number of scientists and thinkers, business leaders and policymakers, and concerned citizens around the world who are waking up to, and making suggestions to avert, the climate crisis. Some suggestions are technical like the “carbon dioxide removal” by the IPCC, which removes CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it in geological, terrestrial, or ocean reservoirs. Some business leaders and policymakers express their support for this IPCC suggestion, as it will expand economic activities—and profit opportunities—for those firms related to the carbon dioxide removal.

The IPCC suggestion actually embodies the engineer’s mentality that sees the possibility of a technical solution to every problem in the world around us. However, the climate crisis has already gone beyond any technical solution, and requires a fundamental change in the worldview that guides human activities in all subsystems of global civilization. It is clear that the worldview that has guided human activities in industrial societies for the last couple of centuries can no longer save global civilization. The kind of worldview we need now is one that will treat the natural environment not as an instrument to be exploited but as a space of constructive and cooperative interaction among all living and non-living systems, including humans. What is needed, in other words, is for all of us to wake up again to the oneness of all things in the universe.

Climate Change: From the Agricultural Revolution to the Industrial Revolution—and to the Spiritual Revolution

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Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

While there have been many revolutionary events in the history of humanity, the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution stand out for the widespread change and transformation they triggered in the way we humans interact with the natural environment in conducting our lives. As a matter of fact, climate change has a lot to do with these two revolutions: the Agricultural Revolution was induced by climate change, whereas the Industrial Revolution was the beginning of induced climate change by human activities.

The Agricultural Revolution took place in the region known as the Fertile Crescent in the Western Asia. During the Ice Age, this area was home to hunter-gatherers who lived mainly on bison and horses roaming around on the vast grassland. Starting around 13,000 BCE, the Ice Age began to recede and went through successive periods of warming. This warming trend, along with increased rainfalls, led to an expansion of forests, creating an unfavorable living environment for these animals our hunter-gatherer ancestors depended on as their food. Faced with the critical food crisis, our hunter-gatherer ancestors chose to settle down and live in the expanded area of forests.

Then, starting around 9,000 BCE, the Western Asia—and most of the Northern Hemisphere—saw the return of the Ice Age known as the Younger Dryas. The waves of cold climate led to diminished forest areas, forcing our hunter-gather ancestors to move around in search of alternative food to replace the diminished crops of nuts such as almonds and chestnuts. It was during this period of desperate search for alternative food that our hunter-gatherer ancestors stumbled upon wild barley and wheat. The Agricultural Revolution was thus triggered by a desperate response on the part of our hunter-gatherer ancestors to climate change in the natural environment around their habitat.

The Agricultural Revolution was behind the birth of what we now call “civilization.” As one authority on the subject of civilization puts it, “In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply. The cathedral and the capitol, the museum and the concert chamber, the library and the university are the façade, in the rear are the shambles.” (Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, p.7) With the Agricultural Revolution, the food supply for our farming ancestors became more reliable compared with other sources of food, for harvested barley and wheat could be stored for later consumption.

If the Agricultural Revolution was induced by climate change, the Industrial Revolution reverses the role of humans in our relationship to the natural environment. Now it is we humans that induce climate change with the revolutionary change and transformation in the way we conduct our lives. Since the second half of the eighteenth century when the Industrial Revolution started in England, the world has witnessed the rise of a new global civilization called the “industrial civilization.”

The extent to which civilization exerts its influence on the natural environment depends on the use of tools and technologies. The Industrial Revolution, while bringing about increases in the material standards of living—at least, in the industrial part of the world—ushered in an era of massive change and transformation of the natural environment with the application of ever-powerful tools and technologies in the extraction of natural resources and the production of goods and services.

The pursuit of increasing material standards of living has led to our increasing dependency on coal, oil, and other material resources in the natural environment. Indeed, what scientists call the “Carbon Age” in human history may be said to have its beginning in the eighteenth century with the Industrial Revolution when the mode of production—and the mode of life itself—became increasingly dependent on the use of energy generated by carbon extracted from Earth. The Industrial Revolution thus marks the beginning of human-induced climate change caused by an ever-increasing emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Industrial civilization has thus led to a new type of climate change—global warming and extreme weather patterns, including heat waves, violent hurricanes and typhoons, and widespread forest fires. While the Agricultural Revolution was triggered by climate change in the specific region inhabited by our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the Industrial Revolution triggered climate change that now covers the entire globe. This is the reason why climate change we face today requires a global solution.

International organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have embarked on initiatives to confront the global climate change such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. While such initiatives are encouraging in reminding us of the need for joint efforts to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, we must go beyond international or intergovernmental organizations if we are to find our way out of the climate crisis we face in the world today. This is so because climate change is a transnational phenomenon that does not honor national borders or political boundaries.

If climate change is a transnational phenomenon, what is needed is a transnational solution, which can only be called the Spiritual Revolution in view of the changing relationship between climate and humans in the history of civilization. While going through the agricultural Revolution in solving the problem of food supply and the Industrial Revolution in solving that of energy supply, we humans have come to take it for granted that Nature is an instrument that can be exploited for the production of goods and services to increase our material standards of living. What is needed is, however, awareness that Nature is a complex system of connections and interactions among all living and non-living systems. And that complex system called Nature is actually a fragile system that can be easily destroyed—just like civilization, as another authority on the subjects of civilization reminds us: “Civilisation … is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed.” (Kenneth Clark, Civilisation, p.3) Whether we can save civilization we have inherited from our ancestors depends crucially on whether we will come to collective awakening to the role we humans play in the evolution of that fragile system called Nature. After all, civilization was, has been, and will be the generous gift from Nature.