environmental ethics

Zen and the Art of Dissatisfaction – Part 19

/ Mikko Ijäs / Jätä kommentti

Pandora’s Livestock: How Animal Agriculture Threatens Our Planet and Our Health

The following post explores the interconnected crises of biodiversity loss, industrial animal agriculture, and climate change, presenting a comprehensive argument about humanity’s complex role in environmental degradation. Drawing from works by Bill Gates, Risto Isomäki, and others, the text combines ecological science, epidemiology, and cultural history to examine both systemic failures and potential paths forward. The post highlights how deeply entangled environmental destruction, pandemics, and human psychology are — while also questioning whether our current cognitive limits allow us to grasp and act upon such intertwined threats.

Originally published in Substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-166887887

The destruction of ecological diversity, the shrinking habitats of wild animals, and the rise of industrial livestock production represent grave violations against the richness of life — and profound threats to humanity’s own future. These issues go beyond climate change, which is itself just one of many interconnected problems facing nature today.

The Decline of Biodiversity and the Rise of Climate Complexity

In How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021), Bill Gates outlines the sources of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. Although many factors contribute to climate change, carbon dioxide (CO₂) remains the dominant greenhouse gas emitted by humans. Gates also includes emissions of methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases (F-gases) in his calculations. According to his book, the total annual global emissions amount to 46.2 billion tons of CO₂-equivalent.

These emissions are categorized by sector:

  • Manufacturing (cement, steel, plastics): 31%
  • Electricity generation: 27%
  • Agriculture (plants and animals): 19%
  • Transportation (planes, cars, trucks, ships): 16%
  • Heating and cooling: 7%

This classification is more reader-friendly than the Our World In Data approach, which aggregates emissions into broader categories like ”energy,” comprising 73.2% of total emissions. Agriculture accounts for 18.4%, waste for 3.2%, and industrial processes for 5.2%.

According to Statistics Finland, the country emitted 48.3 million tons of CO₂ in one year, with agriculture accounting for 13.66% — aligning closely with Gates’ method. However, Finnish author and environmentalist Risto Isomäki, in How Finland Can Halt Climate Change (2019) and Food, Climate and Health (2021), argues that the contribution of animal agriculture to greenhouse gases is severely underestimated. He points out its role in eutrophication — nutrient pollution that degrades lake and marine ecosystems, harming both biodiversity and nearby property values.

Animal farming requires vast resources: water, grains, hay, medicines, and space. Isomäki notes that 80% of agricultural land is devoted to livestock, and most of the crops we grow are fed to animals rather than people. Transport, slaughter, and the distribution of perishable meat further exacerbate the emissions. Official estimates put meat and other animal products at causing around 20% of global emissions, but Isomäki warns the real figure could be higher — particularly when emissions from manure-induced eutrophication are misclassified under energy or natural processes rather than livestock.

Antibiotic Resistance and Zoonotic Pandemics: The Hidden Cost of Meat

A more urgent and potentially deadly consequence of animal agriculture is the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and new viruses. 80% of all antibiotics produced globally are used in livestock — primarily as preventative treatment against diseases caused by overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. Even in Finland, where preventive use is officially banned, antibiotics are still prescribed on dubious grounds, as journalist Eveliina Lundqvist documents in Secret Diary from Animal Farms (2014).

This misuse of antibiotics accelerates antibiotic resistance, a serious global health threat. Simple surgeries have become riskier due to resistant bacterial infections. During the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly half of the deaths were linked not directly to the virus but to secondary bacterial pneumonia that antibiotics failed to treat. Isomäki (2021) emphasises that without resistance, this death toll might have been drastically lower.

Moreover, the close quarters of industrial animal farming create ideal conditions for viruses to mutate and jump species — including to humans. Early humans, living during the Ice Age, didn’t suffer from flu or measles. It was only after the domestication of animals roughly 10,000 years ago that humanity began facing zoonotic diseases — diseases that spread from animals to humans.

Smallpox, Conquest, and the Pandora’s Box of Domestication

This shift had catastrophic consequences. In the late 15th century, European colonizers possessed an unintended biological advantage: exposure to diseases their target populations had never encountered. Among the most devastating was smallpox, thought to have originated in India or Egypt over 3,000 years ago. Spread through close contact among livestock, it left distinct scars on ancient victims like Pharaoh Ramses V, whose mummy still bears signs of the disease.

When Spanish conquistadors reached the Aztec Empire in 1519, smallpox killed over three million people. Similar destruction followed in the Inca Empire. By 1600, the Indigenous population of the Americas had dropped from an estimated 60 million to just 6 million.

Europe began vaccinating against smallpox in 1796 using the cowpox virus. Still, over 300 million people died globally from smallpox in the 20th century. Finland ended smallpox vaccinations in 1980. I personally received the vaccine as an infant before moving to Nigeria in 1978.

From COVID-19 to Fur Farms: How Modern Exploitation Fuels Pandemics

The SARS-CoV-2 virus might have originated in bats, with an unknown intermediate host — maybe a farmed animal used for meat or fur. China is a major fur exporter, and Finnish fur farmers have reportedly played a role in launching raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) farming in China, as noted by Isomäki (2021).

COVID-19 has been shown to transmit from humans to animals, including pets (cats, dogs), zoo animals (lions, tigers), farmed minks, and even gorillas. This highlights how human intervention in wildlife and farming practices can turn animals into vectors of global disease.

Are Our Brains Wired to Ignore Global Crises?

Why do humans act against their environment? Perhaps no one intentionally destroys nature out of malice. No one wants polluted oceans or deforested childhood landscapes. But the path toward genuine, large-scale cooperation is elusive.

The post argues that we are mentally unprepared to grasp systemic, large-scale problems. According to Dunbar’s number, humans can effectively maintain social relationships within groups of 150–200 people — a trait inherited from our village-dwelling ancestors. Our brains evolved to understand relationships like kinship, illness, or betrayal within tight-knit communities — not to comprehend or act on behalf of seven billion people.

This cognitive limitation makes it hard to process elections, policy complexity, or global consensus. As a result, people oversimplify problems, react conservatively, and mistrust systems that exceed their brain’s social bandwidth.

Summary: A Call for Compassionate Comprehension

The destruction of biodiversity, the misuse of antibiotics, the threat of pandemics, and climate change are not isolated crises. They are symptoms of a deeper disconnect between human behavior and ecological reality. While no one wants the Earth to perish, the language and actions needed to protect it remain elusive. Perhaps the real challenge is not just technical, but psychological — demanding that we transcend the mental architecture of a tribal species to envision a truly planetary society.

References

Gates, B. (2021). How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. Alfred A. Knopf.

Isomäki, R. (2019). Miten Suomi pysäyttää ilmastonmuutoksen. Into Kustannus.

Isomäki, R. (2021). Ruoka, ilmasto ja terveys. Into Kustannus.

Lundqvist, E. (2014). Salainen päiväkirja eläintiloilta. Into Kustannus.

Our World In Data. (n.d.). Greenhouse gas emissions by sector. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

Statistics Finland. (n.d.). Greenhouse gas emissions. Retrieved from https://www.stat.fi/index_en.html

Zen and the Art of Dissatisfaction – Part 16

/ Mikko Ijäs / Jätä kommentti

Ancient Lessons for Modern Times

“It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.”
— Ansel Adams

In a world increasingly shaped by ecological turmoil and political inaction, a sobering truth has become clear: humanity is at a tipping point. In 2019, a video of Greta Thunberg speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos struck a global nerve. With calm conviction, Thunberg urged world leaders to heed not her voice, but the scientific community’s dire warnings. What she articulated wasn’t just youthful idealism—it was a synthesis of the environmental truth we can no longer ignore. We are entering a new era—marked by irreversible biodiversity loss, climate destabilisation, and rising seas. But these crises are not random. They are the logical consequences of our disconnection from natural systems forged over millions of years. This post dives into Earth’s deep past, from ancient deserts to ocean floors, to reveal how nature’s patterns hold urgent messages for our present—and our future.

Originally published in Substack https://substack.com/home/post/p-165122353

Today, those in power bear an unprecedented responsibility for the future of humankind. We no longer have time to shift this burden forward. This is not merely about the future of the world—it’s about the future of a world we, as humankind, have come to know. It’s about the future of humanity and the biodiversity we depend on. The Earth itself will endure, but what will happen to the ever-growing list of endangered species?

The Sixth Mass Extinction: A Grim Reality

Climate change is just one problem, but many others stem from it. At its core, our crisis can be summarised in one concept: the sixth mass extinction. The last comparable event occurred 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs and many land and marine species went extinct, and ammonites vanished. Only small reptiles, mammals, and birds survived. The sixth mass extinction is advancing rapidly. According to scientists from the UN Environment Programme, about 150–200 species go extinct every single day.

One analogy described it well: imagine you’re in a plane, and parts begin to fall off. The plane represents the entire biosphere, and the falling bolts, nuts, and metal plates are the species going extinct. The question is: how many parts can fall off before the plane crashes, taking everything else with it?

Each of us can choose how we respond to this reality. Do we continue with business-as-usual, pretending nothing is wrong? Or do we accept that we are in a moment of profound transformation, one that demands our attention and action? Do we consider changes we might make in our own lives to steer this situation toward some form of control—assuming such control is still possible? Or do we resign ourselves to the idea that change has progressed too far for alternatives to remain?

The Carbon Cycle: A System Out of Balance

Currently, humanity emits around 48.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, which ends up dispersed across the planet. The so-called carbon cycle is a vital natural process that regulates the chemical composition of the Earth, oceans, and atmosphere. However, due to human activity, we have altered this cycle—a remarkable, albeit troubling, achievement. Earth is vast, and it’s hard for any individual to comprehend just how large our atmosphere is, or how much oxygen exists on the planet. This makes it difficult for many to take seriously the consequences of human activity on climate change.

Nature absorbs part of the carbon dioxide we emit through photosynthesis. The most common form is oxygenic photosynthesis used by plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, in which carbon dioxide and water are converted into carbohydrates like sugars and starch, with oxygen as a by-product. Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air, while aquatic plants absorb it from water.

In this process, some of the carbon becomes stored in the plant and eventually ends up in the soil. Decaying plants release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. In lakes and oceans, the process is similar, but the carbon sinks to the bottom of the water instead of into soil. This all sounds simple, and it’s remarkable that such a cycle has created such favourable conditions for life. Yet none of this is accidental, nor is it the result of a supernatural design. It is the product of millions of years of evolution, during which every organism within this system has developed together—everyone needs someone. We should view our planet as one vast organism, with interconnected and co-dependent processes that maintain balance through mutual dependence and benefaction.

A Planet of Mutual Dependence: The Wisdom of Plants

Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia explores this interdependence beautifully in his book The Life of Plants (2020). Coccia writes that the world is a living planet, its inhabitants immersed in a cosmic fluid. We live—or swim—in air, thanks to plants. The oxygen-rich atmosphere they created is our lifeline and is also connected to the forces of space. The atmosphere is cosmic in nature because it shields life from cosmic radiation. This cosmic fluid “surrounds and penetrates us, yet we are barely aware of it.”

NASA astronauts have popularised the concept of the overview effect—the emotional experience of seeing Earth from space, as a whole. Some describe it as a profound feeling of love for all living things. At first glance, the Sahara Desert and the Amazon rainforest may seem to belong to entirely different worlds. Yet their interaction illustrates the interconnectedness of our planet. Around 66 million years ago, a vast sea stretched from modern-day Algeria to Nigeria, cutting across the Sahara and linking to the Atlantic. The Sahara’s sand still contains the nutrients once present in that ancient sea.

In a 2015 article, NASA scientist Hongbin Yu and colleagues describe how millions of tonnes of nutrient-rich Saharan dust are carried by sandstorms across the Atlantic each year. About 28 million tonnes of phosphorus and other nutrients end up in the Amazon rainforest’s nutrient-poor soils, which are in constant need of replenishment.

In Darren Aronofsky’s 2018 documentary, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield describes how this cycle continues: nutrients washed from the rainforest soil travel via the Amazon River to the Atlantic Ocean, feeding microscopic diatoms. These single-celled phytoplankton build new silica-based cell walls from the dissolved minerals and reproduce rapidly through photosynthesis, producing oxygen in the process. Though tiny, diatoms are so numerous that their neon-green blooms can be seen from space. They produce roughly 20% of the oxygen in our atmosphere.

When their nutrients are depleted, many diatoms die and fall to the ocean floor like snow, forming sediment layers that can grow to nearly a kilometre thick. After millions of years, that ocean floor may become arid desert once again—starting the cycle anew, as dust blown from a future desert fertilises some distant forest.

Nature doesn’t always maintain its balance. Sometimes a species overtakes another, or conditions become unliveable for many. Historically, massive volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts have caused major planetary disruptions. This likely happened 65 million years ago. Ash clouds blocked sunlight, temperatures plummeted, and Earth became uninhabitable for most life—except for four-legged creatures under 25 kilograms. We are descended from them.

Ocean Acidification: A Silent Threat

In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Sixth Extinction, American journalist Elizabeth Kolbert writes about researcher Jason Hall-Spencer, who studied how underwater geothermal vents can make local seawater too acidic for marine life. Fish and crustaceans flee these zones. The alarming part is that the world’s oceans are becoming acidic in this same way—but on a global scale. The oceans have already absorbed excess CO₂, making surface waters warmer and lower in oxygen. Ocean acidity is estimated to be 30% higher today than in 1800, and could be 150% higher by 2050.

Acidifying oceans spell disaster. Marine ecosystems are built like pyramids, with tiny organisms like krill at the base. These creatures are essential prey for many larger marine species. If we lose the krill, the pyramid collapses. Krill and other plankton form calcium carbonate shells, but acidic waters dissolve these before they can form properly.

There’s no doubt modern humans are the primary cause of the sixth mass extinction. As humans migrated from Africa around 60,000 years ago to every corner of the globe, they left destruction in their wake. Retired Harvard anthropologist Pat Shipman aptly dubbed Homo sapiens an invasive species in her book Invaders (2015). She suggests humans may have domesticated wolves into proto-dogs as early as 45,000 years ago. On the mammoth steppes of the Ice Age, this would have made humans—accustomed to persistence hunting—unbeatable. Wolves would exhaust the prey, and humans would deliver the fatal blow with spears.

Hunting is easy for wolves, but killing large prey is risky. Getting to a major artery is the most dangerous part. Human tools would have been an asset to the wolves. In return, wolves protected kills from scavengers and were richly rewarded. Since humans couldn’t consume entire megafauna carcasses, there was plenty left for wolves.

Why did some humans leave Africa? Not all did—only part of the population migrated, gradually over generations. One generation might move a few dozen kilometres, the next a few hundred. Over time, human groups drifted far from their origins.

Yet the migration wave seems to reveal something fundamental about our species. Traditionally, it’s been viewed as a bold and heroic expansion. But what if it was driven by internal dissatisfaction? The technological shift from Middle to Upper Palaeolithic cultures may signal not just innovation, but a restless urge for change.

This period saw increasingly complex tools, clothing, ornaments, and cave art. But it may also reflect discontent—where old ways, foods, and homes no longer satisfied. Why did they stop being enough?

As modern humans reached Central Europe, dangerous predators began to vanish. Hyenas, still a threat in the Kalahari today, disappeared from Europe 30,000 years ago. Cave bears, perhaps ritually significant (as suggested by skulls found near Chauvet cave art), vanished 24,000 years ago. Getting rid of them must have been a constant concern in Ice Age cultures.

The woolly mammoth disappeared from Central Europe about 12,000 years ago, with the last surviving population living on Wrangel Island off Siberia—until humans arrived there. The changing Holocene climate may have contributed to their extinction, but humans played a major role. Evidence suggests they were culturally dependent on mammoths. Some structures found in Czechia, Poland, and Ukraine were built from the bones of up to 60 different mammoths. These buildings, not used for permanent living, are considered part of early monumental architecture—similar to Finland’s ancient “giant’s churches.”

Conclusion: Ancient Wisdom, Urgent Choices

The planet is vast, complex, and self-regulating—until it isn’t. Earth’s past is marked by cataclysms and recoveries, extinctions and renaissances. The sixth mass extinction is not a mysterious, uncontrollable natural event—it is driven by us. Yet in this sobering truth lies a sliver of hope: if we are the cause, we can also be the solution.

Whether it’s the dust from the Sahara feeding the Amazon, or ancient diatoms giving us oxygen to breathe, Earth is a system of breathtaking interconnection. But it is also fragile. As Greta Thunberg implores, now is the time not just to listen—but to act.

We need a new kind of courage. Not just the bravery to innovate, but the humility to learn from the planet’s ancient lessons. We need to see the Earth not as a resource to be consumed, but as a living system to which we belong. For our own survival, and for the legacy we leave behind, let us make that choice—while we still can.

References

Coccia, E. (2020). The life of plants: A metaphysics of mixture (D. Wills, Trans.). Polity Press.

Kolbert, E. (2014). The sixth extinction: An unnatural history. Henry Holt and Company.

Shipman, P. (2015). The invaders: How humans and their dogs drove Neanderthals to extinction. Harvard University Press.

Yu, H., et al. (2015). Atmospheric transport of nutrients from the Sahara to the Amazon. NASA Earth Observatory. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov