Mark Cocker

To Hell in a handcart — again

The more we know about environmental damage, according to Michael McCarthy’s The Moth Snowstorm, the more of it we seem to do

Despite the offer of joy proposed in the subtitle, this is a deeply troubling book by one of Britain’s foremost journalists on the politics of nature. Michael McCarthy was the Independent’s environmental editor for 15 years, and his new work is really a summation of a career spent pondering the impacts of humankind on the world’s ecosystems.

The case he lays bare with moving clarity in the opening chapters is compelling stuff. Essentially he argues that the world of wild creatures, plants, trees and whole habitats — you name it — is going to Hell in a handcart as a consequence of what he calls ‘the human project’.

The cultural response to the various well-documented losses inflicted over the 20th century by industrial capitalism and socialist command economies alike has been two basic environmental arguments. The first is sustainable development, which is an optimistic vision of growth but managed within the safe boundaries of the Earth’s natural systems.

More recently environmentalists have presented a harder-headed set of arguments under the heading ‘ecosystems services’. The argument runs that nature provides a suite of crucial benefits and functions. If we were to manufacture these artificially, they would cost us eye-watering sums of money. Pollination, for instance, is a prerequisite for the entire human diet, but is performed for us free of charge by hosts of insects. It is calculated that if we had to stump up for the work of the bumblebee or pollen beetle we’d have to find €153 billion annually. By placing monetary values on parts of nature we’ll come to appreciate what is at stake and, theoretically, work to sustain them.

McCarthy suggests that for many reasons, centred on the fundamental short-term selfishness of us all, both philosophies are doomed. In two case studies he maps out how we are eroding the very basis of life on Earth.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in