This newsletter looks at issues and events through the prism of the endgame. The endgame is a chess concept. In the endgame only a handful of pieces are left on the board. Few moves remain. Victory or defeat is close. Player options are limited and diminishing. The importance of the pieces still on the board has changed (e.g., the pawn has a new significance and the king may have to be used aggressively). Zugzwang is a particularly important aspect of the endgame. Zugzwang exists when a player’s only available move is one which will worsen his position.
Swim for shore
It breaks your heart. The natural world is disappearing. Biodiversity is collapsing. We are facing the so-called “Sixth Extinction.” It’s not just an economic or political issue, or a scientific problem. It’s a moral and aesthetic catastrophe. We’re destroying forms of life that are as entitled to exist as we are. We’re destroying much of the world’s extraordinary beauty. We’re destroying it for good. There’s no coming back from extinction.
The Sixth Extinction would be the first extinction caused by human activity. It will be our fault. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has described Humanity as a weapon of mass extinction. A principal cause of what is happening is, of course, climate change. Other major reasons are habitat loss, pollution, unsustainable harvesting, and the introduction of invasive species. We humans did all of that. The Fifth Extinction, 66 million years ago, had nothing to do with human activity. It was caused by the impact of a giant asteroid hitting the Yucatán Peninsula. “Humans” had not yet arrived on the planet.
The WWF 2022 Living Planet Index reports that wildlife populations have on average declined 69% since 1970. At least one million plants and animals are threatened with extinction, including about 30% of mammals. About 2% of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and fish are already extinct.Monitored freshwater populations have declined 83% since 1970. Every year we lose about 10 million hectares of forests. And so it goes.
What do we do? Do we cling to the wreckage? Or do we swim for shore?
We swim for shore. We may drown before we get there, but we must swim nonetheless. There is some reason for hope, just a smidgen. A handful of species have already been saved from extinction, at least for the time being (the Iberian lynx, for example, and the California condor). It can be done.
They are swimming for shore at the 15th UN conference on biodiversity in Montreal (COP15), being held as I write this. 196 countries (with China in the chair) are trying to negotiate a new global biodiversity framework. The slogan is “30X30.” The hope is that at least 30% of the Earth's land and ocean area will be designated as protected areas by 2030. But the broad concept of 30X30 by itself is not enough. The introduction of invasive species must be addressed. Pesticide use must be reduced. Plastic waste must be controlled. Environmentally harmful government subsidies must end (e.g., tax breaks for clearing the Amazon rainforest so that beef cattle can graze).
There’s much in the way. There are six big issues. The first is the overwhelming magnitude of the problem, so huge and complex that you might be excused for just giving up in despair. The second is selfish behaviour by individuals contrary to the common good, a widespread economic behaviour often described as “the tragedy of the commons.” The third is what Mark Carney has “the tragedy of the horizon,” the disregard for unrepresented future generations. The fourth is the political difficulty that democratic governments have, faced with parts of the electorate that dissent, in taking strict and sweeping steps. The fifth is world disparities in economic development and the unwillingness of developing countries to do anything that will impede their own economic growth. The sixth is the absence of powerful international institutions able to compel international cooperation.
We will see what comes from COP15. It is hard to be optimistic. In 2010, the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity set 20 targets to try and slow, then halt, the loss of biodiversity (the “Aichi Targets,” named after Aichi, Japan, where they were agreed). None of the 20 targets have been completely achieved. Six have been partially achieved. The other 14, such as eliminating subsidies that are driving biodiversity loss or halving the rate at which natural habitats are being lost, have been completely missed.
In my 2020 book Nothing Left to Lose: An Impolite Report on the State of Freedom in Canada, I asked: “How much freedom will we have when fires sweep across our country, the seas rise relentlessly, the animals die, and the beauty of nature is gone?” In the three years since I wrote that, little has been done and the catastrophe has compounded. There is more wreckage than ever. Swim for shore. Swim for your life.
