The same pattern has been repeated throughout history. Take for example the rise of the Islamic Empire in the seventh century and its rapid expansion that encouraged enormous intellectual ferment throughout Asia, and North Africa, only to succumb to a growing conservatism reflected through dogmatic religious-inspired ideology. Or consider the Ming Dynasty, a period of great intellectual and inventive ferment in the history of China when fleets of ships struck out across the Indian Ocean to discover Africa. Here too, a staid conservatism turned China inward until it was forced to confront the 19th-century threats of European nations with their advanced military technologies.
I point to these historical examples as evidence that in our global struggle to deal with COVID-19, and the existential threat that is climate change, there is a growing anti-intellectual, anti-science movement afoot. And unlike our past histories, this anti-intellectual and anti-science outburst is enjoying all the benefits of the technological revolution that has produced the Internet, global telecommunications, social networks and more.
Did the anti-intellectual, anti-science age begin with the election of Donald Trump? Or is his rise to become President of the United States a symptom of a creeping resistance to scientific research and intellectual discussion? Some argue that the problem lies with scientists and intellectuals who are seen by average people to be elites. And some would argue that big businesses, particularly energy companies, are fueling and feeding anti-science views.
There is no doubt that we live in a disinformation age. The Internet is the medium by which social media spreads its content and is proving to be an effective purveyor of anti-science and anti-intellectual ferment.
Probably the best illustration of this can be seen in the acceptance or lack thereof of the science behind the vaccines being developed and delivered to combat COVID-19. When I was a youngster, before I could go to school I was subjected to a bunch of vaccines to deal with diseases past scientific discoveries had found ways to prevent. I’m talking about measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, whooping cough, and more. When I was in high school, we lined up to take the cure to prevent polio and hepatitis. The acceptance of the science behind these preventives saw little in the way of a backlash. If there was an anti-vaxxer movement it didn’t have the Internet as a medium for the spread of its misinformation rhetoric.
But that is no longer the case. Today, the Internet and social media feed persuasion susceptible people who are threatened by authority and by the potential of them losing control of their own personal narrative. Those who feed them anti-vaccine, and anti-science rhetoric can manipulate audiences to believe vaccines cause autism. In banding together through the online world, what were once quite separate islands of anti-intellectual and anti-science thought, now find commonality within a tribe.
In the United States, the anti-science, anti-intellectual movement is now identifiable through the grifters who make money feeding the tribe and through politicians who tell stories to spread fear and doubt. In the U.S., the Republican Party has served to become home to the anti-science tribe. In Canada, the movement appears to be congregating within the Conservative Party.
The same kind of anti-science thinking is compounding our response to anthropogenic climate change. The “religion” behind the movement to inhibit a significant response to the existential threat of global warming is largely being led by the fossil fuel industry. The anti-science response goes back to the information that companies like ExxonMobil chose to keep from the public even though its own laboratories had established a definitive link in the 1970s between the burning of fossil fuels and rising global temperatures and seas. Fossil fuel propagandists lined up pre-Internet to seed print media and the airwaves with their side of the story in the face of a growing scientific awareness of the causes of global warming. Think tanks like the Heartland Institute were created to challenge indisputable science and spread disinformation. The strategy by the industry was the same as that adopted by Big Tobacco in the face of the link established by science between smoking and cancer.
So is the rise of anti-science and anti-intellectual discourse a prelude to the end of civilization as we know it? The Romans didn’t see it coming. Nor did the Chinese Empire. Sometimes, even the brightest headlights shining into the dark of night do not dispel our fear of what we don’t know and don’t understand. And as we seek ways to allay our fears, we are easily persuaded by those who with quick answers backed by no evidence, feed our existing tribal assumptions and beliefs.
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As Ukrainians die from Russian missile strikes and the shelling of their cities, those who gather in bomb shelters are likely also having to deal with the spread of the latest COVID-19 Omicron variant which is running rampant around the planet. How do you combat a pandemic while your hospitals are targeted by a hostile military? It is practically impossible for Ukraine’s health system to deal equally with war injuries and the virus.
Another consequence of Russia’s special operation is being felt in countries dependent on Ukraine for food. In a recent statement, the Executive Director of the United Nations’ World Food Program, David Beasley, noted that the war is putting 283 million on the planet at food risk and 45 million in immediate danger of famine. This is happening in countries that have depended on Ukraine for food staples including North and Sub-Saharan Africa, and countries in the Middle East.
The fight to mitigate climate change is also a victim of this Russian aggression. Both Canada and the United States, as well as other fossil-fuel producing countries, are being encouraged to produce more coal, oil, and natural gas to offset the sanctioning of Russian energy resources. Meanwhile, Russia is still mining and pumping fossil fuels, finding alternate markets for its products. That means more greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are entering our atmosphere and contributing to global warming.
And as if to make our lives in the 21st century even more precarious, Russian leaders keep the threat of nuclear war in the public conversation. Very early in the special operation, Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, raised the spectre of a World War Three with atomic weapons being used not only on the battlefield but potentially as retaliation against nations helping Ukraine.
Yesterday, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, repeated this warning noting that Western assistance to Ukraine was turning into a proxy war between his country and NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the defensive pact including countries from North America and Europe. No longer a special action, Lavrov, referenced the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 as being a comparable moment in history, when the United States and the former Soviet Union took the world to the brink of a nuclear war. Lavrov condemned NATO countries for supplying Ukraine with defensive antitank weapons, drones, and armour to fight off the current Russian offensive in the south and east.
Ending Russia’s special operation now will not resolve three of four challenges. Russia’s aggression has set back our dealing with the latest COVID-19 variant. Besides Ukrainians killed by Russian bombs, shellfire, guns and missiles, there will now be victims of a broken healthcare system unable to treat those weakened by war and more susceptible to the virus.
Many experts believe that Russia’s aggression will speed up the conversion of the world’s economy from fossil fuels to low and zero-carbon energy alternatives. But realistically, before that and until well after the war ends we will see a rise in global GHG emissions from offsetting coal, oil and gas producers.
If Ukrainian farmers are unable to attend to fields, care for and harvest crops, and ensure that what is produced gets to market from a country severely disrupted by war, nations facing food insecurity and dependent on Ukraine for staples will see little relief for the foreseeable future without finding new sources of supply.
There is no immediate fix for Europe to replace Russian fossil fuel production. Finding alternative sources will require building a new import infrastructure. This could take several years requiring both ends of the supply chain to invest in the build. Europe likely will experience energy rationing next winter and may have to rethink its carbon-reduction plans. Germany in particular, the most Russian energy-dependent country on the continent, will need to consider energy alternatives which may require the reopening of coal mines, and continuing to use nuclear power plants that were to be decommissioned by years end.
But as for the nuclear threat Russia is brandishing over the rest of the world, this has to stop and it is the Russian people who need to act. How can Russians let their leaders take them on this thermonuclear destructive path? No one from Ukraine or from NATO is threatening nuclear war in response. The devastation of Hiroshima and Nagaski can never be forgotten. That’s what makes the Putin-Lavrov comments and threats so heinous.
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