Evolutionary suicide? A matter for survival

Global climate change has rightfully catapulted to the top of the political agenda in Australia as the drought and the water crisis continues unabated. Much has been said and written about the implications of climate change but relatively little has been said about the link between climate change and global security, particularly the nexus between climate change and nuclear war. This is curious because the Government, and others, are presenting nuclear power as the solution to climate change.

All agree that what is at stake in the climate change debate is the very terms of future human survival perhaps going all the way to the very survival of the species itself: if so we are presented with interesting paradoxes of evolutionary biology which we might call evolution's challenge.

The Pentagon has developed the nexus between climate change and nuclear war. As far as are aware there are no Hippie or Bolshevik cells in the Pentagon so when the US Department of Defence draws a link between droughts and nukes we should at least sit up and take notice.

The Pentagon focused on what is referred to as abrupt climate change where the world's climate changes significantly and rapidly. As the report pointed out there exists evidence to suggest that such a scenario is an increasing possibility. Abrupt climate change could occur because of feedback loops, that occur in systems that are highly-interdependent such as the Earth’s climate system particularly dangerous are positive feedback loops that explosively amplify smaller initial changes, and because of the collapse of the thermohaline circulation. Both of these factors are related.

In the meantime the world's "carrying capacity" is facing a sustained challenge. The Earth's carrying capacity refers to the ability of the planet's ecosystem to support the human population. For instance, the world's demand for oil and water is going to substantially increase but supply will face a hard time keeping up. Climate change, especially abrupt climate change, will stretch the planet's carrying capacity to it very limits.

Through history humans have fought wars over scarce resources. The Pentagon pointed out (PDF 411KB) that as the Earth's carrying capacity comes under further strain "it seems undeniable that severe environmental problems are likely to escalate the degree of global conflict".

But we are also increasingly living in what strategic analysts have pointed out is a "second nuclear age". The idea is that the "first" nuclear age reflected the bi-polarity of the cold war while the second nuclear age is to be an age characterised by nuclear multi-polarity.

In the mathematics of game theory two-player games, which form the basis of formal models of nuclear deterrence, are much easier to play than n-player games where the number of players are greater than two. In fact n-player games are most complex so we are now heading towards a future characterised by many nuclear weapon states which implies more complex non-linear interactions and thereby a less stable world.

In "international relations theory" this is reflected in Ken Waltz's argument that a bi-polar international system is much more stable than a multi-polar one. A nuclear world is unipolar only when one state has a monopoly on nuclear weapons or on a first strike capability. Absent these two conditions we have multi-polarity.

Another development in the second nuclear age is the looming renaissance in the use of nuclear energy. It would seem that growth in nuclear power will occur in both the developing and developed world. There is a clear connection between the "second nuclear age", the renaissance in nuclear energy and climate change.

This is a potentially catastrophic mix. In the words of the Pentagon report (PDF 411KB), "in this world of warring states, nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable" also "existing hydrocarbon supplies are stretched thin. With a scarcity of energy supply - and a growing need for access - nuclear energy will become a critical source of power, and this will accelerate nuclear proliferation as countries develop enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to ensure their national security."

Abrupt or not, climate change will have serious consequences for the globe's carrying capacity. This will lead to greater international conflict precisely when the world is rushing headlong into a second nuclear age of proliferating nuclear weapons and nuclear technology. It is doubtful whether that other precarious species, the globe's nuclear non-proliferation regime, would be able to survive in the face of this sustained pressure.

Jared Diamond has pointed out that complex societies in the past have collapsed because the carrying capacity of their local ecosystems was stretched to breaking point. It is quite possible that our own fragile system of international society will also collapse into a radioactive ash for precisely the same reason. The system of international relations created after the end of the Thirty Years War seems unable to meet pressing global challenges.

Australia has both rejected the Kyoto Protocol, thus serving as an important barrier to its becoming a binding global legal regime, and is embarking on a major increase in the volume of uranium exports in response to the world's nuclear renaissance. This is a double whammy.

This is also toxic because we are not dealing here with distant future problems. As a Friends of the Earth study (PDF 644KB) correctly pointed out, "unless decisive action to halt global carbon emissions is taken in the next decade, it may simply be too late and the trigger point for irreversible, dangerous climate change will have passed. Even stringent actions after that time will not be able to stop a climate system charged with strong feedback mechanisms running away from our capacity to control it."

A distant Martian observer may be looking on in bemused detachment. Here we have a seemingly intelligent species that has created a system of industrial civilisation that contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction because the tenets of modern economics are in conflict with the laws of ecology. The system of international relations that overlays the global economic system is unable to implement the sort of solutions necessary to deal with the problem.

According to the "modern synthesis" of evolutionary biology the unit of natural selection is the individual organism, if not individual genes. This opens up the theoretical possibility that some adaptive traits have been allowed to develop in evolution that are great for individuals but problematical for a given species as a whole. Theoretical biologists have extrapolated upon this insight in highly complex mathematical models that attempt to demonstrate the possibility of "evolutionary suicide".

This refers to an individual adaptation that would be so problematical for the species as a whole that it would lead to its extinction. This would be a fascinating paradox but it is seldom appreciated that that sometime rather annoying species, Homo sapiens, may provide the best illustration of the concept. Our higher intelligence has left us with the means to destroy ourselves. The capacity for scientific knowledge, whatever its origin, is no adaptation, but individual egoism and self regard is. This combination is deadly.

In the philosophical study of knowledge, epistemology, there appear a number of "problems of knowledge". This interface between human knowledge and survival may be termed "Russell's Problem", for Bertrand Russell. He was, it turns out rightly, throughout his life interested in human folly and the threats to survival that they pose, especially in the context of nuclear war.

In an important review paper (PDF 64KB) on the idea of evolutionary suicide it is stated that evolutionary suicide "is most likely to occur as a result of individual selection in the case where part of the costs involving a trait are borne by other individuals". In economic theory such a characteristic is called an externality and war is just one such externality. Cheney and Bush aren't paying for the war in Iraq, either in blood or money, but many others are. There are many externalities like that and they can be vicious.

The paradox opened up by evolutionary suicide would be most interesting in the case of Homo sapiens. This is because we may very well be responsible for the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth due to habitat destruction.

If so, we would have the interesting case of an adaptation for individuals of one organism that threatens not only its own existence but countless other species as well. Evolution by natural selection, operating at the level of the individual, would not be chosen by any self-respecting engineer as the guiding principle for the propagation of life.

For our Martian this would all be a matter for intellectual contemplation. For us it is a matter of survival and the choices we make now could be decisive. In which case we are presented with another paradox. Of all the generations of Homo sapiens that could prove decisive for the future of the species, given the possibility of evolutionary suicide, it just so happens that ours is it.

If John Howard and George Bush are our answer to evolution’s challenge then we are in deep trouble.