Search the archive.

It is perhaps surprising, then, that there is little scholarly merit in the notion that a short-term reduction in access to food increases the probability that conflict will break out. This is because to start or participate in violent conflict requires people to have both the means and the will. Most people on the brink of starvation are not in the position to resort to violence, whether against the government or other social groups. In fact, the urban middle classes tend to be the most likely to protest against rises in food prices, since they often have the best opportunities, the most energy, and the best skills to coordinate and participate in protests.

Accordingly, there is a widespread misapprehension that social unrest in periods of high food prices relates primarily to food shortages. In reality, the sources of discontent are considerably more complex – linked to political structures, land ownership, corruption, the desire for democratic reforms and general economic problems – where the price of food is seen in the context of general increases in the cost of living. Research has shown that while the international media have a tendency to seek simple resource-related explanations – such as drought or famine – for conflicts in the Global South, debates in the local media are permeated by more complex political relationships.

But ecologists and conservationists have grossly overstated the fragility of nature, frequently arguing that once an ecosystem is altered, it is gone forever. Some ecologists suggest that if a single species is lost, a whole ecosystem will be in danger of collapse, and that if too much biodiversity is lost, spaceship Earth will start to come apart. Everything, from the expansion of agriculture to rainforest destruction to changing waterways, has been painted as a threat to the delicate inner-workings of our planetary ecosystem. The fragility trope dates back, at least, to Rachel Carson, who wrote plaintively in Silent Spring of the delicate web of life and warned that perturbing the intricate balance of nature could have disastrous consequences.22 Al Gore made a similar argument in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance.23 And the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment warned darkly that, while the expansion of agriculture and other forms of development have been overwhelmingly positive for the world's poor, ecosystem degradation was simultaneously putting systems in jeopardy of collapse.24 The trouble for conservation is that the data simply do not support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of collapse. Ecologists now know that the disappearance of one species does not necessarily lead to the extinction of any others, much less all others in the same ecosystem. In many circumstances, the demise of formerly abundant species can be inconsequential to ecosystem function. The American chestnut, once a dominant tree in eastern North America, has been extinguished by a foreign disease, yet the forest ecosystem is surprisingly unaffected. The passenger pigeon, once so abundant that its flocks darkened the sky, went extinct, along with countless other species from the Steller's sea cow to the dodo, with no catastrophic or even measurable effects. These stories of resilience are not isolated examples -- a thorough review of the scientific literature identified 240 studies of ecosystems following major disturbances such as deforestation, mining, oil spills, and other types of pollution. The abundance of plant and animal species as well as other measures of ecosystem function recovered, at least partially, in 173 (72 percent) of these studies.25 While global forest cover is continuing to decline, it is rising in the Northern Hemisphere, where "nature" is returning to former agricultural lands.26 Something similar is likely to occur in the Southern Hemisphere, after poor countries achieve a similar level of economic development. A 2010 report concluded that rainforests that have grown back over abandoned agricultural land had 40 to 70 percent of the species of the original forests.27 Even Indonesian orangutans, which were widely thought to be able to survive only in pristine forests, have been found in surprising numbers in oil palm plantations and degraded lands.28 Nature is so resilient that it can recover rapidly from even the most powerful human disturbances. Around the Chernobyl nuclear facility, which melted down in 1986, wildlife is thriving, despite the high levels of radiation.29 In the Bikini Atoll, the site of multiple nuclear bomb tests, including the 1954 hydrogen bomb test that boiled the water in the area, the number of coral species has actually increased relative to before the explosions.30 More recently, the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was degraded and consumed by bacteria at a remarkably fast rate.31

Of course, there are ecosystem services like carbon sequestration and flood control that provide clear benefits to society, and this can sometimes justify protecting ecosystems as a whole. But as for the role of species diversity and abundance in enabling these services, the evidence is mixed. In some cases, such as with carbon sequestration, a greater diversity of plants can be a boon. But non-native, generalist species can often support an ecosystem service just as well as native species. Simplification of ecosystems can sometimes enhance service provision; this is the essence of agriculture. And for ecosystem services like flood protection and water quality, there is no clear relationship with biodiversity. A tree canopy and some undergrowth will do just fine in many cases. Even in cases where biodiversity enhances ecosystem function, like primary productivity, it might not improve the service, if there is no human demand for it.

It’s hard not to observe, for instance, that while populations of wild species have been thoroughly depleted in places like Europe, whose landscapes have been deeply transformed for millennia, Europeans are, overall, healthy, well-fed, and enjoy high living standards. Meanwhile, the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations are often found in tropical regions rich in biodiversity, such as the Congo Basin. Furthermore, we all seem to be doing just fine without the megafauna that went extinct even before the emergence of agriculture, at least in part due to human pressures.

The interesting question is whether any of the planetary thresholds other than CO2 could also portend existential risks. Here the answer is not clear. One boundary often mentioned as a concern for the fate of global civilization is biodiversity (Ehrlich & Ehrlich, 2012), with the proposed safety threshold being a loss of greater than 0.001% per year (Rockström et al., 2009). There is little evidence that this particular 0.001% annual loss is a threshold—and it is hard to imagine any data that would allow one to identify where the threshold was (Brook, Ellis, Perring, Mackay, & Blomqvist, 2013; Lenton & Williams, 2013). A better question is whether one can imagine any scenario by which the loss of too many species leads to the collapse of societies and environmental disasters, even though one cannot know the absolute number of extinctions that would be required to create this dystopia. While there are data that relate local reductions in species richness to altered ecosystem function, these results do not point to substantial existential risks. The data are small-scale experiments in which plant productivity, or nutrient retention is reduced as species numbers decline locally (Vellend, 2017), or are local observations of increased variability in fisheries yield when stock diversity is lost (Schindler et al., 2010). Those are not existential risks. To make the link even more tenuous, there is little evidence that biodiversity is even declining at local scales (Vellend et al., 2013, 2017). Total planetary biodiversity may be in decline, but local and regional biodiversity is often staying the same because species from elsewhere replace local losses, albeit homogenizing the world in the process. Although the majority of conservation scientists are likely to flinch at this conclusion, there is growing skepticism regarding the strength of evidence linking trends in biodiversity loss to an existential risk for humans (Maier, 2012; Vellend, 2014). Obviously if all biodiversity disappeared civilization would end—but no one is forecasting the loss of all species. It seems plausible that the loss of 90% of the world’s species could also be apocalyptic, but not one is predicting that degree of biodiversity loss either. Tragic, but plausible is the possibility of our planet suffering a loss of as many as half of its species. If global biodiversity were halved, but at the same time locally the number of species stayed relatively stable, what would be the mechanism for an end-of-civilization or even end of human prosperity scenario? Extinctions and biodiversity loss are ethical and spiritual losses, but perhaps not an existential risk.

India-Pakistan Ties These developments have the international community worried about the possibility of an all-out conflict, which would seriously challenge security in the Asian subcontinent. However, there also prevails a popular narrative that the elites in both countries use the flare-ups to serve their political agenda. A recent book, written by the former intelligence chiefs of India and Pakistan, goes further and claims that the governments sometimes accommodate each other. At times Pakistan has even allowed India to drop a couple of bombs at harmless places in Pakistan, just to satisfy the Indian public’s opinion. Since the violent 1947 partition of British India in India and Pakistan, both countries have pursued policies that diametrically oppose each other. Pakistan’s military even owes its powerful role in politics to the popular “desire” for competing/defeating India at any cost. The majority of Pakistanis see the military as the only powerful institution that can compete with India. To secure the popular votes, all the political parties in Pakistan currently seem to be on the same anti-Indian page. The scenario is not much different in India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is said to have ignited anti-Pakistani sentiments in light of the upcoming elections. Prestige Competition In India and Pakistan, it is the popular sentiment to undermine the other that determines policies. After the recent incident in Kashmir, one can easily notice an ongoing prestige competition on social media, engaging people in all classes from both countries. Even during times of peace, the nations are electronically belittling each other; be it during a sports event or because of a victory in the technological field. A recent visit of the Saudi Crown prince to both countries started a debate about which of the states was more respected by the visitor. This prestige factor has always been present in India-Pakistan relations. After India conducted five nuclear tests in 1998, Pakistan responded with six tests to satisfy the nation psychologically and to prove to the world that “we are no less than India.” This act was in line with the local idiom “Pagg Uchi ho jaye” (the turban must stay high) and implies that Pakistan’s policies revolve around acquiring prestige, with India as a reference point. Humiliation over Elimination It is also worthy to mention that it is humiliation and not elimination that matters in India-Pakistan relations. The two each need their counterpart alive, just to let the other down again and again, and to prove their superiority to the international community. For this reason, the obvious numerical and military might of India is persistently challenged by Pakistan in spite of having lesser capabilities, which always hurts India’s prestigious stance. India suffers from an “I am not respected” syndrome, while Pakistan feels it is not given a proper status. Naturally, when both countries feel they have proven their prestige, tension starts to de-escalate. This appears to be the current stage the states are at after Pakistan returned the Indian pilot the country captured. This is why clashes never lead to the point of no return, despite having had three major wars and several armed conflicts. Even during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, India captured over 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war only to return them safely after India’s prestige had been satisfied. Both nations will continue to compete with the purpose of maximizing their prestige against each other, but it is not likely they will eliminate each other. India and Pakistan need each other as a part of their psychological integrity. Because an all-out conflict would endanger the other’s existence, this is a questionable scenario.

Pakistan's top nuclear scientist sees "very dim" chances of a nuclear war with neighboring India despite mounting tensions between the two arch-rivals in recent months.

"I won't say a zero chance but there are very dim chances of a war between the two neighbors involving nuclear arsenal despite escalating tensions," Samar Mubarakmand, a former chairman of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), and head of a team of the scientists that conducted six "successful" nuclear tests in remote Chaghi district of southwestern Balochistan province on May 28, 1998.

Following India’s revocation of the special status for Kashmir, there was a lot of brouhaha over the risk of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. While neither country sees eye to eye over a lot of issues and have engaged in several armed conflicts in the past, the risk of a nuclear exchange between them remains very low at best. There are a number of factors which ensure that the two neighbors will not be coming to nuclear blows any time soon.

The first and most important factor being that both countries have democratic governments which are beholden to the people and there are numerous checks and balances in place to ensure that extreme decisions like that of one to use nuclear weapons will not be taken unilaterally and casually. Democratic governments generally tend to have a greater degree of accountability and responsibility.

Militarily, diplomatically, politically or economically, achieving anything by force is out of the question. As former Army chief General V.P. Malik said in a conversation with me earlier this month on ThePrint’s ‘Off The Cuff’, it isn’t possible today to achieve any of our territorial objectives, PoK or Aksai Chin, by military force. Besides the capability question, any such adventure would immediately run into global disapproval and force a ceasefire earlier than you can advance a few miles. For clarity, these are my words, not his.

Where do we go from here then? And how did we get here in the first place?

It isn’t. And it’s important to understand that it isn’t. Taken at rational face value, the feeling that the planet is just years away from sliding beyond  invites . At the same time, the perception of an imminent climate cliff seemingly rules out long-term planning in favor of emergency measures, skewing discussion of climate policies in ways that .

Looking ahead, the key message that the scientific community and climate advocates should reinforce is that  over . There is no tipping point beyond which Mother Earth wrestles control of the whole climate system away from human beings and proceeds to punish us for our sins.

There's plenty to feel good about, they say: Huge strides towards fighting climate change, decades of work that have led to other environmental disasters being averted – and the reality that hope can help fuel the actions needed to keep tackling the climate crisis.

“People assume that in the 50 years since the first Earth Day we’ve made no progress. That we’re in a worse position now than we were in the 1970s, that there’s no point to environmental action,” said Hannah Ritchie, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom who studies sustainability in relation to climate change.

First, the good news: climate scientists, as a whole, are not warning us to prepare for the apocalypse. The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—a group of hundreds of scientists working with the United Nations to analyze climate change research from around the world—names many serious risks brought on by the warming of our planet, but human extinction is not among them.1

“If I had to rate odds, I would say the chances of climate change driving us to the point of human extinction are very low, if not zero,” says Adam Schlosser, the Deputy Director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and a climate scientist who studies future climate change and its impact on human societies.

Industrial-scale GMOs perpetuate climate change, say critics

Many scientists and environmental campaigners don't agree that GM crops can promise food security or help fight the climate change-induced extreme droughts and floods that are decimating agriculture.

However, GM seeds are produced primarily by only a few large companies who own the intellectual property for the genetic variations. A transition to GM crops would closely align global food production with the activities of a few key companies. From an economic standpoint, that poses a risk to long-term food security by creating the potential for a single-point failure. If that company failed, then the crop it provides would not be available to the people who depend on that crop.

Moreover, a large proportion of those affected by malnutrition are small farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, where use of GM crops is less common. Since attitudes toward GM crops tend to correlate with education levels and access to information about the technology, there is a concern that sub-Saharan African farmers may be hesitant to adopt GM crops. More generally, public perception of GM foods is plagued by concerns of safety, from the potential for allergic response to the possible transfer of foreign DNA to non-GM plants in the area. None of these concerns are backed by evidence, but they persist nonetheless.

Green technology is at the forefront of many climate conversations, from electric cars, to solar energy batteries, to the burgeoning interest in carbon capture. Though sometimes well-meaning and useful, green technology is only one piece of the greater climate solutions pie. A narrow focus on green technology as a panacea for the climate crisis can obscure the importance of immediate political action and social change.

Before I joined the climate movement, I, like many Americans, saw the climate crisis as just a scientific problem. This made sense to me because it was scientists who, through decades of research, linked carbon emissions to global warming. So, if scientists identified the problem, then science and technology could get us out. If we had new energy sources, more efficient cars and could capture carbon, our problems would be solved, I mistakenly once thought. However, framing climate problems as a science issue is a strategic misplacement of responsibility that benefits the corporations that profit from the perpetuation of the status quo. This framing is a strategy meant to displace the burden of responsibility for action from fossil fuel companies, polluting industries and acquiescent politicians, all of which are to blame for the climate crisis’s root causes.

It is well-documented that patent systems fail to adequately incentivize green technology.80 This is due in part to the inherent market failure for inventions directed toward solving “common pool”81 issues, like reducing greenhouse gases. Because there is no direct economic incentive to reduce greenhouse gases, the market fails to provide an adequate innovation incentive.82 Since the value of a patent largely depends on the market demand for the underlying technology, patent systems fail to offer adequate incentives where market demand does not exist.83

Even when a market exists, the patent system fails to properly incentivize green technologies due to positive externalities.84 Positive externalities exist when some portion of the benefits created by a technology “spillover”85 to third parties;86 that is, when not all the benefits are internalized by the business that created the technology. When deciding whether to invest in a particular green technology, a profit-maximizing business will likely focus on the technology’s direct costs and benefits rather than the additional benefits conferred to third parties.87 This results in suboptimal investment because the actual value of the benefits of the technology—commercial plus social—was not properly considered.88 If the market fails to capture the social value of a given technology, the technology is unlikely to attract an optimal amount of investment concomitant with its actual value.89 Thus, the value of a patent on the technology will also be suboptimal.90

The analysis reveals that the patent system is far from an optimal incentive mechanism in the environmental domain, and thus, it cannot be trusted to adequately promote the development of climate change technologies. In various contexts—ranging from upstream innovation to green end-products—it appears that the reliance of patents on the market in rewarding inventors, coupled with other factors, may lead to a systematic failure of the patent system to adequately promote innovation in this field. Notably, the inherent limitations of a market-based platform discussed in this Article cannot be addressed by amending patent doctrine or revising the patenting process.

One other parameter that may dilute the signal of social value produced by a market-based platform for incentivizing innovation is the inability of consumers to pay for various innovative products and services. This is often pointed out in discussions regarding distributive implications of the patent system, as its reliance on the market may result in undersupplying production for the poor, particularly when the rich and the poor have different needs.186 This problem is evident, for example, in the global health field, where due to the poor’s limited ability to pay, very few medicines are developed for diseases that affect them but have little or no impact upon the rich.187

Inability to pay may surely dilute the signal of social value produced by the patent system in the context of green innovation as well. Some low-income consumers may not have the means to pay for eco-friendly products, even if they would otherwise have wanted to.188 The same goes with respect to developing countries, in their capacity as consumers of innovative goods. This may be highly problematic in regard to solutions that are particularly required to address the needs of poor populations.189 Indeed, in light of “extremely heterogeneous local conditions,” different countries may have different needs for technological solutions that would enable them to participate in the global effort to mitigate climate change and adapt to its consequences.190 For instance, countries may differ from each other in terms of the availability of certain alternative energy resources.191 As another example, a country with a greater reliance on the agricultural sector may be in dire need of various solutions that enable adaptation to increasing temperatures, which are less of a concern for other, more industrial countries.192 To the extent that a developing country, in a need for such an innovative solution, does not have the means to pay for it, then, if we rely on private markets—such a solution may never be developed.193 Sure enough, due to the global nature of climate change, this may ultimately have a detrimental impact on the entire planet.194

The implications for this Article’s analysis are clear. Ultimately, if individual consumers cannot be trusted to make choices that align with environmental concerns, then the patent system, being predicated on market demand, certainly cannot be trusted to produce signals which are sensitive enough to environmental outcomes. For lack of sufficient demand, the system is likely to under-incentivize investment in R&D projects that may lead to the development of climate change technologies or other green products. At the same time, by reflecting consumer preferences that do not fully account for environmental considerations, the patent system may also provide an inflated incentive to develop consumer goods with a relatively high environmental footprint.184 This may be unfortunate both in itself and in terms of opportunity costs: R&D is resource-intensive, and as resources are scarce—allocation matters. Inasmuch as the patent system incentivizes development of new carbon-emitting products, it may further divert resources away from other more socially valuable activities, including the development of greener products.

As briefly noted above, this may ultimately have an impact not only on downstream development of green consumer products, but also on incentives to engage in R&D of more upstream technologies, the demand for which derives, at least to some extent, from the demand for end-products. After all, absent significant demand for electric cars, why would companies invest significant resources in R&D that aims to improve performance of rechargeable batteries or other components embedded in such cars?185

Even outside the realm of pure basic research, the more upstream a research project is, the less likely it is that the patent system would provide adequate incentives to pursue it.99 While the results of upstream research endeavors might be the subject of market transactions, the potential consumers of such results are not “end users” (businesses or individuals), but rather “research users” who may engage in follow-on R&D that could ultimately lead to the development of commercial applications.100 The more removed an R&D project is from commercial applications in terms of time, concept, number of development stages, and amount of follow-on R&D needed to produce such applications, the higher the uncertainty regarding the market value of such project is likely to be. The market value of an upstream R&D project is dependent upon future demand for its results by potential downstream inventors—which is based, in turn, on the likely expectations of such inventors for profits in the markets for commercial applications. At the early point in time when a decision whether to invest in an upstream project must be taken, there are simply too many unknown parameters. Such parameters include, inter alia, the volume and type of follow-on research projects that may evolve; the likelihood that such followon projects would lead to the development of commercial applications; the time it may take until such applications are developed, produced, and commercialized;101 the level of financial gains that such applications may ultimately yield; and the division of profits between the parties. Facing such high levels of uncertainty, an upstream researcher is not likely to be able to form any solid expectations regarding the profitability of his or her project. In such circumstances, when market signals are far from clear, the incentives provided by a market-based platform may not be adequate.102

One other factor that contributes to the uncertainty in these situations is transaction costs. In order to receive a share of the profits resulting from downstream applications, an upstream researcher must enter licensing deals with follow-on researchers. Unfortunately, the ability to enter such transactions is far from guaranteed. In fact, licensing deals between cumulative inventors often entail high transaction costs.103 As a result, it is quite possible that certain potential downstream uses may never take place.104 This makes it even more difficult for upstream researchers to rely on the ability to generate profits from follow-on R&D projects in deciding whether to pursue an upstream research endeavor. For this reason, as well, while a prospect of profits may exist in regard to an upstream research project, it is often too uncertain and remote to adequately incentivize investment in such an endeavor.105

To begin, a market-based platform cannot be expected to provide adequate incentives for the production of nonmarket goods.89 When a research project is not directed towards an invention that could be commercialized, the exclusive rights conferred by patent law are essentially irrelevant.

One important context where this inherent limitation of the patent system is evident is basic research—research carried out for the advancement of scientific knowledge without a specific practical application in view.90 Thus, those who pursue basic research generally do not do so in order to gain market profits.91 In fact, the results of basic research are often too abstract in order to have an appropriable market value.92 Thus, as stated by Richard Nelson: “It seems clear that, were the field of basic research left exclusively to private firms operating independently of each other and selling in competitive markets, profit incentives would not draw so large a quantity of resources to basic research as is socially desirable.”93 It is therefore easy to understand why basic scientific research is commonly funded directly by governments outside the patent system.94