This is the second of my two-part conversation with historian, novelist and essayist Ronald Wright, the award-winning author of nine books, including the influential, A Short History of Progress.

In Part 1 we talked about why Wright sees North Americans as the greatest “villains” when it comes to climate change and why society has fallen into what he calls, “The Progress Trap.”

In Part 2, we discuss why the solution to problems caused by technology isn’t more technology, and the false argument that the environment and the economy are in conflict. 

Jim Hoggan: You talk about society’s attempt to fix problems with more technology and why that’s not the answer to the big environmental challenges we face today. Can you explain your argument?

Ronald Wright: A lot of people want to believe that to solve the issue of climate change we just need to keep on inventing, to keep on letting progress rip, and that the solution will be found with perhaps a new source of power, such as fusion energy, or a new way of manufacturing or new ways to produce food, such as genetic modifications. A lot of people want to believe that the solution for the problems caused by technology is more technology.

While some technological advances offer partial solutions, such as greater efficiency, many of the new, untried technologies can be dangerous because we don’t understand the potential consequences. For example, we can’t foresee what might happen if genetically modified organisms get out and wipe out the natural diversity on which we truly depend for all of our food and medicine. Or, what if Nano technology was to get out of hand and we have self-replicating Nano machines?

It’s a sort of science fiction nightmare, but it’s not all that far-fetched if we don’t exercise a precautionary principal. Even though, in theory, we may be able to keep expanding our technologies, even if they are safe – which is a big if – we certainly cannot continue the way we have been. We are on one earth, which is only so big, and can only produce so much of the basic necessities of life. By this of course I don’t mean iPhones, but the necessities of life that we take for granted, namely clean air, land and water.

JW: Do you think it’s misinformation or a resistance to change that prevents society from not repeating its past mistakes?

RW: I think we are seeing both of those things at play in our own society. We are seeing great reluctance to face up to the fact that the party is over. Also, we are seeing cynical manipulation on the part of people who are absurdly wealthy to share any of their wealth. For example, just look at the changes in tax structure over the past 30 years, and the income spread in income between a CEO of a major American corporation and a shop floor worker.

If you look at any economic indicator you will see a vastly expanded gap between rich and poor both within countries and between countries. All of this has happened very recently. We see fabulous amounts of wealth in a few hands and almost a third of the human race living in dire poverty.

I think that is the greatest tragedy that the lesson of the 20th century. When I was a kid growing up in England you never saw beggars on the street. Of course, now you go to London you see beggars on the streets everywhere, and this is happening at a time when we have more wealth per head than ever in the history of the world. There really is no excuse for these huge disparities between obscene wealth and desperate poverty.

If we stopped the higher levels of consumption from getting out of control, there is enough for everybody to squeak through in a sort of modest prosperity, modest decency of life. The problems are political. They are problems of distribution.

JH: Do you have any particular thoughts on the way the environment is discussed today in Canada?

RW: I think the most troubling thing is the way in which our present Canadian government positions it: That we have to balance the environment with the economy. It’s as if the economy is a good thing on one side and the environment is something on the other that, if we deal with it, will drag down the economy. Of course that is absolute nonsense.

One of the absolutely clear lessons of history and archeology is that a healthy economy depends on a healthy environment. There is no economy without a sound environment beneath it, sustaining it.

The problem is that with our rapid technological advance, we have found ways to get more and more out of the environment and make it seem as though human prosperity is detached from natural systems. Of course, the reverse is true. What we’ve been doing by these very sophisticated means of extracting things is actually taking out stuff that can never be replaced.

Here’s one very simple example: a lot of the irrigation in North America, particularly in the United States, depends on the use of fossil water with these great underground aquifers. These aquifers are not water that is being replenished to any large extent. It’s called fossil water because it’s been there underground for a very long time. The levels of these aquifers are falling at an alarming rate. I think most predictions now suggest that there’s really only another 30 years of water left in much of the American west. Once it’s gone it’s gone. That’s the end of it.

That is an example of how technology appears to create prosperity because you pump up this water and suddenly you can produce more food or golf courses or whatever you happen to be using it for. But, in actual fact, all you are doing is plundering nature. I think that’s where we have to make the distinction: There is nothing wrong with exploiting nature through technology. That’s something human beings have always done.

My point is that it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t start eating into the capital of nature. We can live on the interest of nature, like we do from a bank.

JH: Do you have any thoughts on how we move from the thinking of the plunderer to a new thinking of where you draw the line?

RW: I think that it is very difficult and it’s part of our animal human nature to sort of gobble up everything in front of us, rather than leave it for a rainy day. The tar sands are a very valuable and useful resource, but it makes no sense to gobble them up quickly with all the consequences of pollution and the problems of supply and demand and the huge economic and political distortions they’ve introduced in this country. It should be done slowly and wisely.

What’s more, the corporations who are making all these vast amounts of money from the tar sands should be taxed should have to pay royalties. Right now, the royalty rates are laughably low. We are descending into the condition of a petro state – our political system is bought and paid for by big oil and the companies essentially have a license to plunder and only paying token amounts to the public purse that’s not acceptable.

One thing that can be done is introducing full-cost accounting in any measurement of economic progress. That means you have to include all benefits arising from natural systems.

JH: Are you at all hopeful that we can extract ourselves from these progress traps?

RW: The degree of hope I have goes up and down from day to day. I think our situation is very serious, but I don’t think it’s hopeless. Even if we do think it’s hopeless some of the time, we still have to act on the assumption that it isn’t too late. If we give up, we’ve lost the plot. If we stop trying to deal with our problems, the problems have won. When that happens, we’re done for.  

JH: What is your message about the environment?

RW: My message is: Look at the past, at these wrecked societies. The more we understand from archeological research, the clearer it becomes that almost all of these wrecked societies fell because of over expanding and over exploiting their environment. So, we’ve got this information about what human beings tend to do, they create messes that either get out of hand or because of belief systems they will not deal with.

Let’s look at that past and learn from it.

Read Part 1 of this interview, Locked in the Progress Trap: Interview with Ronald Wright.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Ronald Wright, the award-winning author of A Short History of Progress, says North Americans are the greatest “villains” when it comes to climate change. While Europe has put forward some serious money and strategies to try to combat it, Canada and the U.S. are dragging their heels.

Wright’s comments are particularly noteworthy after Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver’s recent visit to Europe, where he tried to sell Canada’s approach to oil sands to a skeptical audience. Europe is considering imposing a tax on Canadian bitumen because of its emissions.

I sat down with Wright on Salt Spring Island, B.C. to talk about why society can’t seem to change its way of thinking. He blames what he calls, “The Progress Trap.”

This is the first of two parts of my conversation with Wright. Read Part 2 here. 

Jim Hoggan: Why, despite mounting evidence and calls for urgent action from experts in the atmospheric, marine and life sciences, are we doing so little to address environmental problems like climate change, the declining health of our oceans and mass species extinctions?

Ronald Wright: I think we in North America are among the greatest villains in coming to grips with these issues. The Europeans have put forward some very serious money and serious proposals. They are working towards a 20 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 (from the original benchmark back in the 1990s) and propose spending $90 billion euros a year – the kind of money the Iraq war cost the USA each year.

They have also said that if other countries get on board they will go to a 30-per-cent cut and even more funding. This hasn’t happened because of a lack of will from other countries, including Canada and the U.S. There’s a denial amongst many of our leaders, an absolute inability to face up to the fact that there are limits to the human impact. It goes against the cultural grain of North Americans who are used to the idea that the future is always going to be bigger and better and wealthier, and that they are going to have more stuff than in the past. Those days are over.

JH: Why do we resist change like this?

RW: There are two things: First, there’s a cynical propaganda campaign extremely well funded by the people who have a vested interest in hydrocarbons. Second, there is a very willing audience among people who don’t care, don’t know the facts, or can’t be bothered to look at them. People want to believe that they can just go on expecting the high consumption North American lifestyle forever, because that’s kind of American – and Canadian – dream they were promised.

Of course there are those who realize there is a problem, but enough people have been stampeded by the propaganda that climate change is a “hoax,” or a socialist conspiracy to constrain the high consumption lifestyle of North Americans, or a problem that’s so far down the road we needn’t worry about it.

JH: Winston Churchill said, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Is that what we’re facing here? Are we not paying attention to the lessons of history when it comes to the impact of overstressing the planet?

RW: In A Short History of Progress I looked at the pattern of civilizations’ rise and fall throughout history. Many civilizations who thrived and achieved brilliant things, such as the Sumerians or the Maya, eventually fell victim to their own success. This is what I call a “Progress Trap,” which happens when technological innovations create conditions or problems that society is unable to foresee – or unwilling to solve.

An example is irrigation systems. This was a terrific idea for the Sumerians, allowing them to grow food in the desert. However, as time went on, irrigation led to a build up of salt in the land. Eventually, over a few centuries, the Sumerian fields began to turn white from salt. After about a thousand years, their crop yields fell to only a quarter of what was possible in the fields they started with. Large parts of southern Iraq had to be abandoned, and still haven’t recovered.

That is one example, but I think we can be sympathetic in the Sumerians’ case because they couldn’t have foreseen the consequences before it was too late. But in our case, we do know what’s going to happen to the planet as the climate warms and destabilizes. We have an overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion and computer modeling that shows it. We don’t have the excuse of ignorance or lack of technology.

Where I see the similarity today with these ancient civilizations is in the behaviour and denial of the elites – the political leaders – people who should be the decision-makers just hoping the problem will go away.

The ancients tended to respond by saying “the gods are angry so we need to build bigger temples.” In other words, magical thinking. Our version of this is the widespread belief that the problems caused by rampant growth and technology will be solved by more of the same.

JH: How do people respond to A Short History of Progress – this idea of too much progress? Is it a difficult concept for people to accept?

RW: It is. The success of Western society has been based upon developing new inventions quickly, harnessing them and producing wealth. Yet, we ignore the fact that not all progress is good. In fact, some kinds of progress are very dangerous. Nuclear and germ weapons, for example. Or efforts to make patented GM crops with a “terminator” gene – an invention that could wreck the food chain.

Even if things merely keep going as they are a few more decades, there’s no way that nine billion people, which is the latest population projection by mid-century, are going to be able to live like Canadians or Europeans do now – simply because the by-products of our industrial activities are overwhelming natural systems. We are trashing the planet, stealing from our children’s future. The idea that growth is infinite is the Big Lie of our times. Yet we still believe it because we find it extremely hard to shed the idea that progress is an inherent good.

I saw my role, when I wrote A Short History of Progress, as being the person who says, “The building is on fire.” I don’t necessarily know how to put the fire out, I’m not a fireman, but I smell fire. That book was really a way of saying, “Look, this is the pattern of the rise and fall of civilizations through history; if they don’t deal with their problems, if they over expand, if they wear out their welcome from nature, they end badly.”

We’re now in this situation where we are running beyond the capacity of nature to sustain us, and, for the first time in history, we’re doing it everywhere at once. Not only are we drawing down resources, but we’re damaging natural systems and polluting every corner of the world. Too many of us are taking too much. But I don’t believe our problems are hopeless, yet. It’s very late but not too late. We still have one last chance to get the future right.

**In Part 2 of the conversation, Wright talks about the false argument that people can only support the environment or the economy, and not both. He also explains why he hasn’t given up hope that society can change to stop runaway climate change.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.