Interstellar Insights: Exploring Climate Change Archetypes
Are you a Cooper or a Donald?
Christopher Nolan's movie Interstellar presents a compelling picture of a future earth being decimated by a combination of blight and storms that are destroying humanity’s dwindling food supply. While, as you might guess, most of the story takes place in space, multiple scenes take place on an earth where the majority of the population survives by farming in the inhospitable environment.
It’s in one of these early scenes where the protagonist, Cooper, and his father-in-law, Donald, have a brief, but revealing conversation that lays out their perspectives on humanity’s plight:
Cooper eventually goes on to pilot the mission that looks to find a new suitable planet for human life while Donald stays at home with his grandchildren, watching them struggle to eke out a living in the increasingly desolate landscape.
The scene itself, while incredibly short, powerfully demonstrates Cooper's thirst for exploration, innovation, and invention while revealing the older Donald's sad memories of the excessive consumption that brought about this mess in the first place.
Donald and Cooper, while not dissimilar characters, represent two sides of the environmental response coin.
One Dilemma: Two Approaches
There are two general approaches when it comes to reducing the damage humans inflict on the environment and mitigating the worst effects of climate change.
On the righthand side, you've got science, technology, and other advancements designed to accelerate the energy transition and reduce carbon emissions through human innovation. The fictional Cooper, a former NASA pilot, would find these ideas appealing as they utilize science to push the envelope of what is possible and find ambitious, innovative solutions to environmental problems.
On the lefthand side, you have efforts dedicated to reducing the overall need and demand for material things. These ideas are more in line with Donald’s character who, in the excerpt above, laments the proliferation of gadgets and ideas that drove the energy demand, waste, and ecological destruction that created the ravaged earth they inhabit.
Although a fictional work, Interstellar’s depiction of these two approaches to environmental issues is relevant to the urgent problems we face now as humanity deals with soaring land and ocean temperatures. In fact, the two approaches personified by the characters Cooper and Donald can be found in two scientists who, in the 1950s, began espousing their own solutions to the environmental challenge of the time - food security.
The Wizard and the Prophet
In 2018, Charles C. Mann published a book on two key 20th century scientists who shaped the technologies and narratives around agricultural production and conservation. Due to their differing approachs to solving global shortfalls in food production, Mann dubs them The Wizard and the Prophet.
Norman Borlaug - the wizard of the story - was an agricultural researcher whose work in developing disease resistant strains of grains led to enormous growth in wheat production in the middle of the 20th century. He has been called the "father of the green revolution" for his contribution to growth in global wheat output, with some even crediting him with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.
Borlaug's research was significant not only for the incredible impact it had on global grain yields, but for inspiring a new "technology-first" approach to solving the world's troubles. If you subscribe to this worldview, you might believe that, given enough time and resources, humans can engineer their way out of any sticky situation, whether it be related to food security, water availability, or even climate change.
At the other end of the spectrum is William Vogt, the prophet of the story.
Building off the success of his book "Road to Survival" which argued that humanity must stay within certain limits in order to avoid upsetting the delicate balance that nature had created, Vogt bounced around various environmental and conservation organizations espousing a variety of environment-first ideas. Credited with laying the groundwork for the modern day environmentalist movement, it was Vogt's thoughts around conservation and reducing the need and demand for natural resources that served as a counterweight to Borlaug's science-first approach.
By taking Borlaug and Vogt and placing them along the archetype framework and then adding other, more contemporary (and perhaps recognizable) figures such as Elon Musk and Greta Thunberg, it begins to take on more shape.
Supply and Demand
While each side only contains three people, by placing figures from the past (Borlaug and Vogt), present (Thunberg and Musk), and even fictional worlds (Donald and Cooper) into these environmental “buckets” it becomes easier to see the two main forces that are driving us towards a sustainable future.
The people-focused, demand-side individuals look to cut demand for raw materials, electricity, food, and water through planning and effective resource allocation. Those on the technology-focused, supply-side seek to alleviate environmental pressure by improving technological yields, whether that be through greater energy efficiency, renewable technology, or stronger strains of grain.
This analytical device does not capture the nuance of people’s beliefs and there is certainly ample room in between the two extremes, but its purpose is two-fold:
Illustrate the fact that sustainability is more than just a technology play
Highlight the fact that supply-side, technology-driven advancements tend to receive the most press, coverage, and attention
Key Takeaways
The Green Equilibrium
Regardless of where you personally sit on the environmental archetype scale, there is no way humanity can innovate its way out of this climate problem through technology alone. Reducing demand, whether for fossil fuels, critical minerals, consumer goods, or water, is enormously effective at reducing emissions and curbing environmental destruction caused by mining and deforestation.
Too often we focus on and celebrate the technological advancements to the detriment of demand-side reductions that are just as critical to overall sustainability. This must change and more efforts are needed to help begin to move society away from unsustainable levels of demand and consumption.
Less is More
In Jason Hickel’s book, Less is More, he argues that we must move away from outdated metrics such as GDP because they don’t capture any of the externalized costs of doing business. There are very real costs to mining and refining raw materials and then turning them into finished products, even if they are ostensibly for “green” consumer goods such as solar panels, electric vehicles (EVs), and batteries.
Reducing demand and consumption is an incredibly difficult goal, but one that is nearly impossible if we continue to use the same measuring sticks to determine success. If our goals are health, happiness, and prosperity, then a new set of metrics and goals is needed to properly define and measure them.