Move over chief health officers and surgeon generals. There is a new cop on the beat. The Planetary Health Authority.
No, this is not a new Star Trek character. This is a real position. A “Planetary Health Authority”. Now before you think: well, that’s just a fancy name for a geologist or maybe a climate change “tsar” (it’s amazing how modern democratic institutions are not shy about using terms like “tsar” to label their officials, isn’t it?) - no, the Planetary Health Authority is a Medical Doctor. This has taken the Gaia Hypothesis to new heights. What does one study, exactly, in Planetary Medical School? Are there classes on Iron Core physiology? How to take lava samples to be sent to solar system pathology? What exactly should one prescribe for an Earthquake and if it’s above magnitude 6 are there specialists that planets suffering from ill-health can be referred to?
As I sat down today to continue reading, research and writing on the next ToKCast episode about the physics of heat and work I saw a hashtag trending on Twitter. It was #EndangerdGen and I thought for a moment that while there can be more put into publicising the sacrifices of veterans of World War 2 on social media, that describing them as an “engagered generation” was possibly a little lacking in sensitivity. But no: the hashtag was not for recognising the declining population of heroic survivors of those freedom fighters who stood against authoritarianism but rather about the youngest people of all. The world has never been more wealthy, more healthy and more safe for a youngster and, globally life expectancy continues to rise and yet the youngsters are now being told they are endangered.
Who would promote such a message? Well the first 3 tweets I could find about this hashtag came from the same source: Melbourne’s Monash University. In some polls, Monash is ranked at the very top of Australian Universities. So quite the backing of a certain idea. But the official account of Monash University was linking to a piece in the newspaper The Guardian. So here we have a respected institution of tertiary learning linking to a respected (or at least well known) newspaper. Here’s the tweet:
Well if, as the Tweet is saying “Experts weigh in” on this #EndangeredGen and “The Guardian” has something to say about it, let’s take a look. The article was here: https://www.theguardian.com/monash-university-the-endangered-generation/2022/may/17/wake-up-call-are-we-really-endangering-the-next-generation but just incase anything should happen to it, let’s take a screenshot of the article itself:
So, it’s an advertisement. “Paid for by Monash University”. Now that’s curious. And quite some chutzpah! Construct a marketing tweet but link to what seems to be an article in the Guardian - but actually? It’s just your own advertisement. And it is these institutions - the universities and the main stream media - that are all about “misinformation” and “disinformation”. Could you imagine the uproar if it was not Monash University but instead British Petroleum? And the Tweet was not about how endangered the next generation was but rather about how wealthy and healthy and safe from a hostile environment the next generation was all because of fossil fuels? And now imagine that the Tweet linked to a web address that was the New York Post (or in Australia, The Daily Telegraph) or the Spectator giving the impression it was a news article. But there, in the fine print, was the admission it was a paid advertisement? The tweet would not only be deleted the accounts of both BP and the offending media outlet would be indefinitely suspended. The new US Disinformation Board would be top of the agenda once again and the singing tiktokker who was to head the operation offered a healthy dose of smelling salts to reinvigorate her so as to come down heavily on the kind of propaganda that endangers the ability of the citizen to navigate the mire of misinformation online.
But never mind all that because nothing that Monash University is saying in their article, I mean advertisement, counts as misinformation or disinformation in this age of information and pessimism. The late 90s and 2000s ushered in an information age. But that was to label literal information. The modern information age is correct information. It’s approved information. And how is information approved as information (rather than its evil Loki-like twins mis and dis-information) - well it’s approved as such by authorities. We need authorities to be able to certify information as reliable, trustworthy and accurate. How else could this possibly work?
Such authorities will of course be university academics - that goes without saying. The most highly credentialed “experts” in their field. The ones who are able to predict the future by looking into their crystal balls modelling complex systems with their supercomputers. It is not important that you understand how it is done, you should trust the experts when they say it can be done. After trust the experts is a heuristic you have been inculturated with at school. And by the media. And, well, an expert is just a certain kind of authority anyways. An elected official - a politician - is basically just someone who listens to the experts and acts on expert advice. To do otherwise would be irrational. It does raise the question as to why there is any need for the elected class of politicians at all. Surely it would be far more streamlined if we just lets the experts decide. They would not have to explain (and presumably dumb down) their careful crafted and technical scientific theories and predictions for a group of people who are largely only expert in things like law, political science, business (in some cases), unionism and community organisation (in more) and education (in many more still). But for now we seem to be stuck with this pesky “democracy” thing and so the best we can do is vote in people who, before elected, profess their agreement with expert opinion - especially on the most important problems. Like the science of catastrophic climate change.
And it is indeed said to be a catastrophe. Whether the catastrophe is already happening or whether it is about to begin and is right around the corner - we don’t know. The “catastrophic climate change” headline does not go into details. But the important thing is to keep repeating the mantra that it is a catastrophe and so one is entitled to catastrophise and catastrophise to to a degree and to a level of detail that would make the dominionist religious fanatic blush with their tall tales of end times fire and brimstone literally falling from the heavens as the day of judgement is upon us.
But this is not that. Don’t compare some ludicrous religious myth with the science. There is a very good reason why one set of prophesies predictions are challenged by respected media outlets journalists and reporters and others are not. There is a difference between the science and silly doomsday end time scenarios.
But haven’t the experts made precise and details predicts over the decades and been proven false? No. You must not understand science and modelling. There is room for error. The central theory is correct and each year as our computer models become more precise we can refine our predictions and see why we made some errors over the last few decades.
In other words, each time one set of predictions from those who insist the world is going to be destroyed by climate change in short order (just you wait! Just you wait…!) proves false, or the time comes and goes when the famine should have killed millions or the rising sea levels should have wiped out cities or (in the case of our Australian experts) the drought should have seen all the major dams around Sydney run dry decades ago (and instead there have been record floods) -each time those predictions turned out false there is not need whatsoever to revise the underlying theory. The theory is sound and as such precise predictions about disaster are too.
It is right and reasonable to double down in these cases. Respectable academics and journalists who report their musings should in these cases, argue it’s even worse than we thought. So, perhaps there was no drought (“I don’t think that’s what Dr Flannery was really saying in context” might be a good way to get around this - “but the floods are a result of climate change and mean we need to tax the “big polluters” more so they pay their fair share”.
There was no famine - but it’s coming and it’s going to be even worse. No place has been inundated by rising sea levels and no populations displaced by the melting of the polar ice caps but…just you wait. It’s going to be far worse and faster than any of us can imagine. This is Generation Endangered! Tell them “it’s possibly too late” to save you, your friends for the world but just maybe if there are some few survivors of the inevitable apocalypse and you’d like to have the best chance of being among them there may be some rituals that might appease the gods authorities. Convert to veganism firstly, because farming causes methane and didn’t you know methane is even worse than carbon dioxide for global warming? And on carbon dioxide: vote for policies that eliminate fossil fuels as fast as possible (immediately is best, but within a handful of years is bearable. But no longer). The wealthy cause more pollution and destruction than anyone else so vote for redistribution where you can and perhaps for governments more closely in touch with cultures that themselves have a deep understanding of “land” and “the place of people in a natural environment”. Wealth is suspect. The pursuit of profit is absolutely a sin and powered by fossil fuel burning, carbon dioxide generating dirty energy. And what do we do with sinners? We can leave that to the authorities, but we should know which way we’re voting. Just maybe, even if we cannot save ourselves - at least those who have brought the great evil and the anger of the Earth upon us, will finally get their just desserts.
In such a world where people are, astonishingly, still allowed to freely choose more or less how to live their lives in Western countries, people are still choosing not to do what is right for the planet. People are still eating meat. People are still driving cars with combustion engines. People are still voting for parties that say “we can’t get to net zero emissions by 2030.” This world of so-called “freedom” is a world of “freedom to commit suicide and murder everyone around you”. Such a disastrous disconnect between what we know for certain about what THE science is telling us WILL happen and what people are allowed to choose is everything that is wrong with the world. Covid taught us something. It taught us that if the crisis comes, then we can act rationally. We can stop with this ridiculous idea that non-experts are in the best position to decide what is best for the safety of people (and the environment). For once, the officials authorities experts with actual relevant credentials and political perspectives and medical degrees were front and centre and able to keep us safe and healthy and for once, finally those who disagreed were put in their rightful place. Kept at home and off the streets and, of course, silenced while there as far as possible to help stop the spread of their mis and disinformation. If there’s one thing worse than the spread of a respiratory virus, it’s the spread of misinformation. And in both cases there needs to be a way to inoculate people against it.
The Chief Health Officer knows what is best. They understand more than others what it takes for individuals and communities to be healthy. It’s there in their title: the chief of the health officers. They are concerned primarily with health. And if they say close the gyms and restrict shopping hours is best for health, then that is what’s best for health. And anyone who disagrees is obviously wrong. Now that’s all very well for a pandemic. But what about when the pandemic is over? How can we ensure that people with actual knowledge and understanding of The Science can still have authority?
What about a Planetary Health Officer? I am going to unpack The Guardian’s Article Monash University’s advertisement a paragraph or two at a time - because it is worth understanding all of this. This mixture not merely of science and non-science but science and nonsense. And how a worldview really does shape how one interprets facts. Let’s begin at the beginning.
Fans of the Lord of the Rings movies will know that “The World is changed” is how the series began. It is nothing but a vacuous truism. It is everything that is wrong not with climate science or even concerns about climate change but rather with the political ideology that is behind so much of what is said about climate science and climate change. There is only one constant in the climate and that is that over long timescales it changes. With or without people it changes. With people and with or without the burning of fossil fuels the climate would change. But if you can make the case change is bad, knowing full well change is unavoidable (but you don’t say that quiet part out loud) then you are on a winning political streak. Each year things will change - the climate will show evidence of change and you are proved right and hence: Vote 1 to slow the change.
In another branch of the multiverse - in another world - where for whatever reason human beings discovered nuclear physics far sooner and all our electricity is now generated either by fission or fusion and it has proceeded for centuries without major accident - there would still be climate change. The Earth eventually would either cool or heat up because this is what happens. And then we would still need to do something. Whether that something is terraform to heat or cool the Earth in some way so as to make it more hospitable for us may be an open question. But this is what we should want to do: to change the climate inn response to natural (and or) man made climate change. We change the climate in our houses and cars. Why not the planet? We neither want sea levels to rise nor fall. Perhaps in some places like Greenland and Russia it would be better if things were a bit warmer. It would be good if we could do that. Maybe the Middle East and parts of Africa and the centre of Australia could do with some cooling. It would be good if we could do that too. Maybe one day we will. Whatever the case “The World has changed” is no great insight. But this is what a centre of higher learning is offering first up to entice us to attend. Deep stuff.
Now as for the rest of that paragraph if you have been indoctrinated into anti-human pessimism then you will read that sentence that labels the Great Acceleration a period of a dramatic surge in population, wealth, movement, energy use, telecommunications and production as nothing but a great evil. It portends disaster to you. For an optimist - this is amazing and these are some of the indicators of why things have indeed gotten better. And they have gotten better. The paragraph asks “Is it irrevocable?” And that might as well be applied in retrospect to the question of our improvement. The improvements morally, scientifically, technologically - the improvements for ourselves and the planet. The planet used to be a death trap everywhere and almost all the time for everyone. Now: civilisation makes it inhabitable and in a few - still delicate admittedly in the cosmic scheme of things - places there are signs of resilience. Structures where people and their animals are protected.
In other words: every decade there are catastrophic weather events, treatment-resistant disease and sociopolitical unrest. When has it ever been otherwise? Well actually it is a little different now: all of those things cause less damage than they ever have before. A reasonably mild winter in Europe in the past would wipe out large percentages of the population. Now: we have heated indoors. Treatment resistant disease? At least now we have treatments at all. Does anyone really think medicine and virology and “treatments” are in decline? Sociopolitical unrest? We have just exited a century where the globe went to war with itself twice and before that history is a catalogue of nation against nation and tribe against tribe almost continuously. This last decade has been safer, healthier and happier than any before. Are our children endangered? Less than ever before and some reasons for that include: the burning of fossil fuels to have accelerated the construction of our built environment cheaply and our capacity to travel and share ideas and products more than ever before, the powering of a knowledge economy that means those children are at less risk of disease than ever before and in a society where war and revolution though always a threat have diminished to the point of being morally unacceptable, happily, to an increasing majority of people. People understand history and how bad it was - at least to some extent - and we know, unlike our ancestors - just how bad it can get. It is not unthinkable that nuclear war could still happen and it is not impossible that democracies could be overthrown by tyrannies - but so many more of us at least have Netflix (or Youtube) where we can actually see what happened during world wars and in nuclear conflict and what violent revolutions can do. We learn. We improve. Things are getting better. But things can never be perfect or unproblematic.
And here is one of the more dystopian paragraphs in the entire advertisement. A “leading authority” in “planetary health”. I guess Professor Tony Capon is a very nice person. But this insistence on the word “authority” is always and everywhere to be regarded with deep skepticism. Now there are two reasons for this:
The epistemological. When “authority” is used a sort of synonym for “expert” - in other words to label someone as being in possession of knowledge allowing them the expertise (or authority) to claim to know or more precisely to be deferred to on particular matters we are in a world of Platonic “Justified True Belief”. The only reason to regard someone or other as an authority when it comes to science or knowledge claims more broadly “He’s an authority of 17th century French poetry” for example - is because someone somewhere is seeking to justify that this person’s claims are either true or more true (more reliable) than the claims of someone else with less authority. But that entire way of thinking is misleading. It is misleading because none of that knowledge they have obtained over howsoever many years prevents them from making errors or even of making just as many errors as anyone else especially in places where there are significant unknowns. As Popper remarked “While differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.” So even experts are “infinitely ignorant” about infinitely many things. As we all are. They do not have “authority” over knowledge nor are they authorities in knowledge. It is the wrong standard. As Popper also wrote: “I wish to replace...the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: How can we come to detect and eliminate error?” - Karl Popper, 1960 “Knowledge without authority” That is what expertise is about. It is about a methodology more than anything else. Does one understand the methodology used in that field of expertise to allow error to be detected and eliminated? Popper wanted to remove authority from the entire conception we have of knowledge. There are no infallible sources. So there should be no knowledge “authorities” because we can all make mistakes -we are all error prone - we are all fallible.
The moral. Increasingly there are experts who claim authority in both the sense I mention above but also in the more political sense. They regard their expertise as a claim of literal authority over their fellow citizens. Never did we see more of this than with public health “experts” over the last few years. There, they were literal authorities: designated by the state as something between an elected official and a law enforcement officer. They were able to regulate on a whim and although, technically speaking, could be overruled by the politician, the culture rapidly descended into one where the media and even the people themselves wanted the politician to grant additional powers and authorities to the health bureaucrats because they knew best because it was the science. Put aside that there were many unknowns the health authorities knew what to do. In a culture where individual freedom was already under threat the very words “individual” and “freedom” became pejoratives for “people who wanted to kill grandma” or people who did not care or my favourite “lunatic libertarian”. Never mind that none of these lunatics ever intended to break down the door of vulnerable grandma - the lunatics just wanted to be able to do what they judged - in a world of unknowns - might make them (via their own immune systems) more resilient. You know: going outside into the fresh air (where there was said to be no transmission) and into the sunshine (which was said to be hostile to the virus and improved vitamin D production) and lift some weights at the gym (which had never before been said to be unhealthy - but the opposite). But no: none of this was permitted because if one group of us was to suffer the consequences of an erroneous theory like: stay inside out of the sun and on the couch with delivered food - then all of us will suffer in exactly the same way by making the same decision. There can be no control group! Control groups are immoral. We have the authority. And now there are Planetary Health Authorities.
Now the Planetary Health Authority is only an authority in the first sense so far. But does anyone think there are not those who pine for a Global Planetary Health Authority (Office?) staffed by Planetary Health Officials and Headed by a Chief Planetary Health Officer? Now the first one I have encountered - Professor Tony Capon - says that these challenges to planetary health will affect not only our physical but also mental well being. Now that is fortunate because “mental well being” is so elastic a concept as to include any new deviation from what is said to be normal by…mental health experts. It could very well be the case that subscribing to the wrong ideas could be a sign of poor mental health.
Yes. “Humans are now changing Earth systems to such an extent that it will affect the wellbeing and lives of people into the future.” FOR THE BETTER. And ever since we first evolved we have done this. First slowly and next to not at all but since the Enlightenment we have changed “Earth Systems” for the better and for the better ever faster with every year. Things will happen in the natural environment absent us. There will or would be catastrophes like wild fires and floods that cause “loss of biodiversity”. But the thing is: if you care about this biodiversity thing then the only thing that can do anything to maintain it in some way that people want is people. Life evolves and ecosystems evolve because the environment changes. There have been mass extinctions and minor extinctions and the overwhelming majority of them happened before people ever existed and they’re still happening with or without people but apparently now that we exist every single extinction or “loss of biodiversity” because it occurs with us on the planet must be because of us on the planet. But there is no reason to think this is true. Sure in some cases that might be the case. But Pandas can be helped by us to reproduce and save their own species and they don’t. But this anti-human pessimism blames us. For literally everything that happens on Earth. Major weather event? Human caused climate change. Loss of some species? Humans at the root of that somewhere. New pathogen resistant to treatments? Humans using the one thing that keeps those pathogens at bay: antibiotics (so now there’s an anti-antibiotic movement). “Problems are soluble” is not a tenant in the belief system of adherents to anti-human pessimism.
So now we are medicalising the globe. The patient is the planet and we are going to need G.Ps (General Planetists) as well as specialists to ensure we are living “in balance”. What is this about being “out of balance”? Is that medicine? It sounds more like alternative health. Maybe we will have planetary medical science and also alternative planetary medicine too? An entire industry of homopathic remedies national governments can sign up for to recalibrate waterways that might be in disequilibrium or perhaps the continental chakras need realignment?
All of those things have been improved and all of them by “escalating energy use and carbon emissions”. Speaking of being in or out of balance there is never any attempt to balance the scales here. This water use, energy use and carbon emissions: is there any upside? Does the calculation include any positive impact of those things? It’s as if humans are out there just wilfully burning seams of coal and burning forests, letting all of the runoff go straight into the ocean and for no good reason. I notice world population gets a mention there - but it’s just that those things have “an impact on world populations” - but is that up or down? Well it will depend on which part of the agenda you’re pushing. If you want to emphasise the present destruction humans are engaging in when it comes to other species: say that the planet is overpopulated. If you want to scare the kiddies into subscribing to your ideology: say that they’re endangered or that populations of people overseas are being threatened. As for the availability of food and hygiene and all those things - they have improved without hardly any backwards steps for centuries. Yet here the implication is and the reading the pessimist takes away is: those things are getting worse. As if sometime in the past it was better. Or would be better only if we did the one thing that gave us accelerating improvements in all those things. Namely: accelerating progress fuelled by cheap energy and wealth creation.
This has been said for decades. These are the prophesies they have always made and have always turned out refuted but as I have observed this has no affect but a doubling down. Here is a neat little list of 50 years worth of climate change “predictions” that have turned out completely false: https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/ Always precise with the dates and always just around the corner. Now perhaps modern doomsayers are wising up: they’re not putting precise dates on their prophetic musings anymore. So that way they can get away with finger wagging without possibility of ever being falsified. But they’re still purporting to be doing science.
And of course we’ll see “more pandemics” unless we can find a solution to eliminating dangerous viruses and bacteria. It is another vacuous assertion about what happens with humans and viruses. It is catastrophising.
Well we can’t stop all development! Haha! How generous of him. Sustainable development. Here we just need to invoke that marvellous observation from David Deutsch in his chapter from “The Beginning of Infinity” which is titled “Unsustainable”. When someone passionate about environmental activism invokes the term “sustainable” it has this curiously ambiguous meaning. On the one hand it can be: to provide something with what it need - in the case of humans to provide people with what they need to sustain them. But what we need is for things to change and rapidly. Because the environment is changing rapidly. And we are changing rapidly. And the universe is in a constant state of flux. The fundamental truth of reality that is: things change means that if we want not adapt to the change - if we want to sustain ourselves - then we need to change rapidly. So sustainable development must mean rapid progress for us. The only development that is sustainable in the long run is cheap, efficient and rapid and I would also say free and open ended and multi-pronged so that we can test many different ideas and approaches simultaneously rather than having one approach centralised for any given issue. But sustain also means “keep things the same” and so sustainable development - what they mean by that is slow and not changing or not changing much - so that we don’t damage or impact other things. But that is a disastrous plan. Because there is an impact coming from a place we do not know - the problem not looked for or unseen until on a quiet Tuesday afternoon BAM - another tsunami or asteroid or virus or Earthquake or nuclear disaster or terrorist event or more likely still a thing no one thought could be an existential threat. And the only way we can be resilient in the face of such a thing is to have rapid progress - rapid development. Not wishy washy hand wringing precautionary principle slowed down progress that is parochially concerned either about one’s local or global environment. We need a cosmic perspective on these things because our home is the universe and we need to be ready for it. And we can be if we build wealth and progress much faster.
It is necessary in a free society that there is inequality across population groups when it comes to healthcare and everything else. Here is why: a new treatment or medical procedure has to be invented. This invention or creation costs money because scientists need to conduct research to discover that it works. In order to pay these scientists the first people to get the treatment will pay a high price and that higher price goes into funding more research. It is the same way that new mobile phones are the most expensive. Rich people buy them first and this goes into funding the next round of improvements. The only alternative to this is to take away the incentive to create and make money and give everyone the same thing. So one kind of government made mobile phone. One kind of government treatment. Uniform for everyone with very slow progress and only at a rate the government authorities deem is safe or valid.
Also it’s good to hear the planetary health officials will be able to tell us what to eat and drink. Again: a planetary health authority will be able to rubber stamp what it is safe to eat and no longer safe to eat. Who wouldn’t want to go to Monash university and be trained in planetary health sciences? You could be an authority on climate, medicine, nutrition - just about every aspect of a person’s life. You can be a guardian not only of people alive today but have intergenerational impact.
Holistic. In the same way that if you’ve fallen off your bike and broken your leg it’s not necessarily the case you need to orthopaedic surgeon to repair that broken femur - no, you want the holistic medical team there taking time to fully assess everything from a multidimensional perspective. Now - to prevent future falls off your bike we just need to check your eyes and ears and perhaps prescribe less high calorie soft drinks because you may have been “unbalanced” due to carrying that additional chronic obesity.
Well, get out of their way if they agree with this doctrine. Woe betide that actual optimistic young person who wants to go against the grain here and argue for an optimistic future where we do not need to control our fellows for fear they are vectors of disease and sources of pollutants contributing the catastrophic global climate change. How far out of the way will academic get to make space for a place on the podiums of the universities for the young person who will say that we need more people and we need to encourage young profit driven creative entrepreneurs who want to work for a deregulated society where they can take risks experimenting with scientific and medical technology to produce more widgets more cheaply? What about the genuine optimist who takes from the pandemic not the message that “we can come together and act together as a society with purpose” and that it is this that we can take further but rather that we can foster individuality and respect and honour those who disagree with the mainstream and who see another way of improving society and the planet. Not through sustainable development but rather by recognising that nothing is sustainable except for rapid progress and if the progress we have is too slow - slowed down by concerns about sustainability and the environment then we will be overtaken, ultimately, by the very environment we are seeking to preserve in some sort of present form. We are the most valuable entities known in the universe. The environment is little more than our resource for us to construct the world around us. If we lose sight of this and instead come to think of us as the danger and the environment in need of protection RATHER than the other way around then we really will be lost. For now that doctrine of protect the environment for we humans are dangerous - is just the most prominent academic dogma. But it has not yet caused a dramatic change in the way industry, business and the average person on the face of the planet behaves. But it is having an effect. For now though too many people realise the environment is a danger. And we need protection from it. We need protection from natural disasters, viruses, bad ideas that motivate the bad behaviour of others and goodness knows what else around the corner. Our impulse to survive and improve STILL directs out behaviour and still it overcomes pessimistic anti-humanism that would seek to diminish and reverse progress. But it will not necessarily remain this way.
The universities might be lost to a large extent on this point. They might be centres of furthering the indoctrination of the young to continue this cycle of despair and dismay. But with any hope there can be some new way forward here outside the mainstream education system where perhaps young people can learn optimism and work on actual fundamental progress.
The Planetary Health Authority