A strange frame through which to view the global climate situation is to see the human despoiling of the planet as a perfectly natural¹ phenomenon, comparable as such to the cyanobacterial-caused oxygen revolution, or “Great Oxidation Event,” which began with the evolution of cyanobacteria circa 3.5 Ga (billion years ago) and culminated in the rise of atmospheric oxygen circa 2.3 Ga. In this event, oxygen as O2, hitherto a rare compound in the ocean and atmosphere, became a major chemical component in the biosphere and was toxic to much of the bacterial life present on Earth at the time, and likely produced a global extinction event of much of the world’s early microbial life that required anoxic conditions to flourish (though it’s hard for us to judge the scale of the devastation as microbial organisms don’t fossilize well). Cyanobacterial evolution brought a novel method of energy production into existence in direct contrast (and conflict) with the anaerobic processes dominant at that time——in essence, crafting a new niche on the basis of the technology² of photosynthesis, with no regard for the toxic byproduct of their molecular machinations³. If one dons these lenses to view our current circumstance, allowing all the necessary caveats (for example: unlike cyanobacteria, our technology is external to the organismal body; we are pulling the energy sequestration of past ages (fossil fuels) into one overwhelmed present; etc.), then the industrial revolution appears as but a high speed version of the cyanobacterial overturning of life on the basis of toxifying one’s environment with a chemical byproduct that, for all we know, will one day be the breath of some future biotic assemblage, much as oxygen now is for us. Morally speaking, the two atmospheric revolutions can be made to appear equivalent. The only higher ground that the cyanobacteria hold over us is that we should know better.

With this frame in mind, if you’re willing to entertain it, we can get to the real core of the reason I think this is so interesting. If we are able to at least entertain the thought that the industrial revolution and our current onslaught of the atmosphere’s integrity is but another chapter in atmospheric evolution, then what is the proper way to view our theoretical “taming” of the global climate, i.e., getting a handle on our emissions and finally mastering global climatic equilibrium? Is this when we finally deserve to call ourselves human and no longer simply animal? For we would have, at that point, tamed the myopic self-indulgence that had historically driven the evolution of the biosphere, when species before blindly worked in the pursuit of self-interest. And if we come to achieve that global climate stability (no easy feat), wherein climate is kept precisely at some agreed upon pre-industrial average (and take as an assumption that humanity continues to persist for tens of thousands of years), do we enforce this equilibrium point on through the distant future despite the fact that over geologic time climate should naturally wobble significantly? And what is that climatically “locked-in” Earth, philosophically speaking? Is that the end of Nature——when we build the planetary thermostat? And what shall we do in the long run of human occupation with say, the next turn of the Milankovitch Cycle⁴? Do we allow such climate flux? I expect we won’t——the last ice age saw glaciation as far south as the present-day location of the cities of Chicago and Rome. I imagine we would counteract this natural flux, so as to prevent all of this world’s culture north of, say, 40° latitude (essentially all of Europe, for example) from being quite literally wiped off the face of the Earth. But that climatic “wobbling” over time was a driving force of evolution, creating new circumstances for life to take advantage of——in effect bending and shaping life on Earth like a blacksmith at the anvil. So what happens to life when it’s left to essentially stagnate under the unchanging circumstances of that fixed world?

None of this writing is to suggest that we sit back, content to justify our planetary despoiling as natural and therefore acceptable. We certainly must not turn to the natural for any moral guidance, as this would release many demons from society’s collective funeral pyre. For now, our task obviously is to get our emissions under control, because the result of not doing so will be painful enough as to make any philosophical considerations to the contrary meaningless. This is a question we must seriously entertain only once we finally come to leave the energy of past ages to rest peacefully in the bowels of the Earth. I see thermostat Earth as our world’s inevitable outcome (though as things are going now, we won’t actually achieve it until substantial destruction is dealt to this globe’s wild and human communities alike). I write this simply to speculate on the relation between us and the Earth, and to note that eventually we are going to play a role that has never before been played on this planet: the role of consciously-controlled thermostat, and that strikes me as both fascinating and terrifying. Over geologic history, a sort of thermostatic equilibrium has been maintained by the cumulative work of all the planet’s organisms in tandem with each other. This equilibrium was subject to wobbling as forces from within (periods of intense volcanism) and from without (Milankovitch Cycles) perturbed the relative stability of that equilibrium, and then the world would go through changes and life would adapt to account for the new situation, in a sort of dynamic dance involving trillions together upon the stage. In the future, that planetary harmony may be maintained by a combination of but a few thousand carbon sequestration centers and power plants that vary their respective uptake or output of CO₂ in order to keep us right where we determine we want to be (perhaps 0° above pre-industrial?). As nice as that might sound, it’s actually a much less robust way of maintaining stability than when all of life itself is involved in finding some sort of harmony. What happens when those facilities fail? Will the rest of the world’s organisms still have the evolutionary know-how to take back the reins?

¹natural here is being used in a purposefully controversial way, to provoke thought. What we discern as natural (usually used in contrast to artificial, i.e. of human origin) is inherently an issue of what frame we are hoping to utilize. There are two overly simplistic conceptions that are normally applied to the question of the natural: 1) the natural is that which exists independent of the actions of our species——that which would still be taking place in the cosmos even if we had never come into the picture; and, 2) everything is natural, including humankind and all of its artifacts and technologies. I hope to dispel this binary dichotomy and instead place these two conceptions of the natural as poles on opposing ends of a spectrum of consideration. We must be able to work with either of these contrasting ideas, as well as everything that falls in between.

²technology may seem a strange word to use for a description of the photosynthetic structures found within cyanobacteria. I like it. For one thing, just look at a diagram of a cyanobacteria cell——it’s like green, fleshy nanotech. Furthermore, the use of this word breaks down the boundary separating the structures that evolved mindlessly and the structures that minds (themselves evolved) crafted mindfully. In the end there is a convergence between, say, photosynthetic tissue engineered by evolution and photovoltaic cells engineered by humankind. Obviously we must admit primarily of the significant differences between these structures, but once that’s behind us, we can allow our minds to play with the enticing similarities. These forms emerged from very different processes to play similar roles in the grand scheme of the biosphere, and that’s cool.

³for machinations—see technology above.

⁴Milankovitch Cycles are variations in the Earth’s orbit and axis of rotation, as well as the interplay between the two, that over the course of time are believed to contribute to changes in the Earth’s climate, producing effects such as ice ages.