Of
Far-Reaching Dilemmas
And Provisional Remedies
By Emily Spence & Jean-Louis Robert Turcot
25 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
A large number of people who
we know are glum, worried and perhaps even severely pessimistic. Their
orientation is not altogether unreasonable. Indeed, it would seem unrealistic
to not react as they do given their understanding of various monumental
events impacting the world and the appallingly harmful outcomes that
arise on account.
For example, one of them, in NY, worries that her home is close to the
ocean and several feet above sea level. She wonders about the way that
the topography will change as waters rise from arctic meltdown. She
also frets that this is not a good time to sell her house due to the
residential market slump.
Furthermore, she blames the latter occurrence, ultimately, on our government
and big business. After all, how can many average Americans pay for
their mortgages when their jobs keep disappearing overseas and their
wages keep lowering due to competition? How can they afford to buy all
of the clothes, household items and lots of other goods made overseas
when the overall US wealth has increasingly flown to the most affluent
economic set while everyone else is slipping in a downward spiral to
have less? How can income be generated in America to purchase all sorts
of products when a huge portion of them are being made by foreigners
in huge sweatshops with salaries of a dollar or two per day?
Meanwhile, the underlying facts ARE disturbing. This following assessment
succinctly explains the general state of affairs: "The United States
is the richest country, and in 2000, the mean wealth was $144,000 per
person. In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population
owned 71% of the wealth, and the top 1% controlled 38%. On the other
hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth. [1]"
As such, it just seems that some people cannot distinguish between avarice
and the number of assets that constitute one's simply having enough.
(To gain a more replete overview of this financial disparity and excess,
please look at information provided at reference two [2].)
In relation, one has to wonder about the fantasy land that President
Bush must have visited when he, recently, stated that the US economy
is robust. How can it possibly be strong when, according to creditcards.com,
the average household credit card debt in the US was a whooping $9,300
in 2004 and one can assume that, especially with the housing foreclosures,
overall debt has sharply increased since then?
Certainly, this is the case: "Household debt has risen particularly
fast over the past decade in the United States. The outstanding amount
of household financial liabilities increased from 89% of personal disposable
income in 1993 to 139% in 2006, an unusually large rise by historical
standards. Although similar run ups occurred in other OECD countries,
the increase was particularly substantial in the United States. [3]"
Add to this that the US government owes a staggering $9.02 trillion
USD [4] and, all considered, there seems a huge financial disaster just
waiting to tumble in upon us all (except, of course, the utmost wealthiest
class). So, is it any wonder that the whole economic system is falling
like a line of interconnected vertical dominoes wherein each individual
segment pushes over the next and the next? No wonder that the reverberations
are being felt throughout the world and the dollar is being shunned
like a harbinger of bad tidings.
On top of these monetary concerns, many people have further ones about
the Iraq conflict, an unethical never ending battle for which the underlying
motive always was control of oil reserves. Far worse than its fiscal
price tag (over $453,000,000,000 to date for the US alone) is the outrageous
cost in human life involving the deaths of more than 1,062,000 men,
women and children [5], the acute human suffering, the severe social
impact from the ongoing and massive migration surge of Iraqi citizens,
horrendous related environmental damage, as well as the widespread devastation
relative to housing, water supplies, electrical grid, infrastructure,
jobs, medical aid, food stocks and other basic provisions on which life
in Iraq, literally, depends.
Further upsetting to many persons is the sense that the ME warfare could
spread given the many various contentious factions involved in resource
and related clashes. Meanwhile, the fact that war funds are not used
for human uplift in lieu of vicious annihilation is, obviously, outrageously
despicable and immoral [6].
Meanwhile, the global peril caused by greenhouse effects and humankind's
rapacious rape of nearly all worldwide environments, likewise, has many
people distressed. From such a frame, conclusions derived from related
studies are greatly disturbing. For example, especially so are the ones
stemming from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), a body of research
compiled by 1,300 investigators from ninety-five nations over a four
year period. (It comprises of the most comprehensive analysis of current
planetary conditions ever undertaken and resulted in a detailed report
compiled by World Resource Institute (WRI) and approximately thirty
partners.) To see a summary of findings, please go to the links at reference
seven [7] from which one can note that the ultimate supposition is that
human actions endanger the Earth's capacity to adequately maintain future
generations.
If this isn't sufficiently gloomy by itself, the 2007 research by the
UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) offers further
grave information. It is that greenhouse gases, with a ninety percent
certainty to be caused by our too great reliance on fossil fuels, are
driving cataclysmic level of climate change. These, in turn, will introduce
other grim perils of which many are already irreversible [8].
Without doubt, one solution for the ecological collapse is to try to
encourage stronger interest in limiting population growth, as fewer
people leads to less use of fossil fuels and other goods. Another is
to curtail individual resource consumption.
Regarding this last point, John James, one of the writers for Crisis
Coalition, Incorporated (http://www.planetextinction.com/) located in
Australia, remarked, that he, on an ongoing basis, is trying to influence
selected politicians; provides for 100 % of his electric needs from
solar power, has his own water supply, operates a gas/petrol car while
saving for an electric car that can be charged from his own solar cells,
as well as possesses forty fruit trees and a veggie garden big enough
to feed fifteen. At the same time, he uses no air conditioners and generates
his heat during cold periods from his own wood.
While the above measures are constructive and admirable, many of them
likely could not work for city dwellers as a method to shrink personal
eco-footprint. (Presently, approximately 2.5 billion people live in
cities, and it is expected that, in thirty years, this number will double
to 5 billion.) Therefore, we need a somewhat different model to address
such a widespread need. In short, we need one in which John's self-sufficiency
is expanded to include public utility offerings, that avoid reliance
on fossil fuels. (Sixty-seven percent of electricity in the US currently
originates from fossil fuels [9].) In addition, other items, such as
vehicles, could piggyback off of this alternative provision.
For example, there are cars right now that have traveled 3,000 miles
at sixty mph on solar power alone, no batteries. At night, drivers rest
and, when the sun comes up, the electric engines are ready to go. No
fossil fuel, no emissions of any kind, no biofuels, no ethanol, methanol,
alcohol, or any other propulsion force other than good old sol is required!
At the same time, the total energy required for the entire United States,
hypothetically, could be garnered from a single 100 X 100 mile (10,000
square miles) array of solar collectors deployed in the Great Basin
Desert in Nevada. Of course if that isn't enough, the Great Basin Desert
is only one of many potential locations that could be used in the US,
although it alone is possibly many times larger than the solar collecting
capacity required.
In the evening when the sun goes down, so could much of the population
then delimit use. Yet for those who would want to keep on working or
playing, energy could be obtained from trans-ocean power lines connected
to similar grids in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and elsewhere or
from storage batteries. With solar collectors, the Sahara alone could
probably generate ~ 100 times what is needed for the entire planet.
For home heating and cooling, one could simply plug into the ground
grid. In addition, our running heat exchangers connected to it would
not add a single molecule of greenhouse gases to the air in the same
way that they wouldn't when we would plug cars, deliver trucks, trains
or anything else into the grid. Oh, and we haven't sufficiently tapped
into wind, tidal power, geothermal energy, nor any other benign power
sources yet. All the same, why should we when the sun's energy, alone
shining on the planet, is estimated to be about 10,000 times greater
than our collective human need?
That's just a start in terms of ways that humanity could solve some
problems affiliated with global warming, provision of many more jobs,
income generation and other troubles that, directly or indirectly, impact
all of our welfare. So, why go to war for oil? There's really none (and
never was) unless, of course, we like giving money to providers of armaments,
oil companies and grotesquely affluent reserve owners.
Moreover, why think, as touched on lightly above, that there can't be
adequate job provision in all countries when, without doubt, setting
this massive solar plan in the works would offer a staggering array
of employment opportunities? In addition, let us remember, if this scenario
seems impossibly large scale in operation to pull off, the programs
that arose in relation to The Great Depression, the aftermath of WW
II and many other major catastrophes. In other words, it could be set
to start if there is sufficient will, financial backing, technical support,
training and manpower applied to the task.
In this sense, it does not have to only represent a wild science fiction
tale. Besides, if we don't get the provision quite right initially,
we can keep on trying as, let's face it, we ARE running out of oil,
coal, gas, wood and other finite options while, all the same, the human
population and its demand keeps exponentially growing.
If global warming were the only potential calamity facing our species,
and providing that Hawking's foreboding of Venus-like temperatures does
not come to pass, we could theoretically avoid some of the consequences
of climate change by applying human ingenuity towards benign energy
usage. Even present technology, combined with a massive input geared
towards rapid construction of energy alternatives, could probably reduce
greenhouse gases to a level that would substantially decrease the likelihood
of human extinction happening anytime soon.
However, the threats to humanity are greatly increased by the way that
we continue to treat people everywhere on the planet. We wage war in
our own backyards against one another by evicting each other from our
foreclosed homes as if we were cattle stock on the range. Meanwhile,
only the strongest, in terms of rising to the top of our financial hierarchies,
reach a level at which survival is better guaranteed by the accumulation
of wealth, and are, thus, protected from ending up on the streets.
Meanwhile because of this non-inclusive way of thinking, we protect
each other from each other with an ever larger array of extraordinarily
effective weapons, which have now become a threat to everyone across
the Earth. In this sense, it is not global warming, nor the menace of
a nuclear war that is the looming danger to our species. Instead, it
is the way we continue to think, and subsequently act.
In this sense, we are our own worst enemies, and, unless we change the
way we think with respect to what survival implies, we will be much
more vulnerable to any potential species-ending event than we would
be if we only and simply were to take better care of each other. In
this vein, were innumerable dollars, that are spent every day on producing
ever more weapons and making lavish war preparations, spent on finding
and developing alternate energy sources, global warming scenarios would
be reduced proportionally. Likewise, if the multitudinous troops practicing
war maneuvers every day were deployed to fight the extremes of poverty,
we could truly become the species which much of the world claims we
are -- a very special, almost divine kind.
In this broader sense, every single person who merely considers his
own and his own family's needs on this planet is as responsible for
global warming and the hazard of human extinction as much as every Bush-like
individual... Perhaps this last statement is a bit over the top. All
the same, we collectively have to somehow face the fact that our ways
of thinking have created this mess and, if we are as caring and intelligent
as many would claim that we are, we should be able to change something
that will permanently help us to avoid our own propensity to mess things
up for each other.
All considered, let's simply face the facts. While symbolic tribalism
in sports bouts are all well and good for those who like boxing matches,
football and other forms of competition wherein two sides are pitted
in rivalry, it is high time that we get rid of the opposition arising
from nationality, skin color, religious differences, ethnic and cultural
background, along with other divisions that keep us in permanent antagonistic
contention. Especially this is needed as worldwide resources dwindle
even further. Otherwise, warfare is, more than likely, to escalate between
the haves and the have-nots, the well-to-do and the unjustly disenfranchised
rest.
This all in mind, we should, on a practical level, prepare for the diverse
effects of global warming. These include limiting our consumption of
all sorts of products and buying locally made goods as much as possible
as these do not rely on shipping, which uses fossil fuels. Doing so
also requires our encouraging government officials to also prepare,
which means our pressing them to develop plans for alternative energy
supplies. Similarly, we should prompt further others to make necessary
changes and, finally, we should accept that hard times are ahead.They
are simply unavoidable at this point.
However, we are a resourceful species. If we start to change our ideology
in needed ways to support ourselves collectively, we can begin to put
into motion the plans necessary to wean off of fossil fuels, stop our
warring over resources and find a way to cooperate for mutual benefit.
After all is said and done, let us reflect on Albert Einstein's thoughts:
"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe,"
a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts
and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for
us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few
persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this
prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this
completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part
of the liberation and a foundation for inner security." If we can
keep this outlook in mind, perhaps it will not be too late, in the end,
to save ourselves from ourselves.
[1] This data derives from: Distribution of wealth - Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth).
[2] Information on this topic
is provided at: Google Answers: wealth in the US (answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=2050),
Oxford Scholarship Online: Income and Wealth (www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/eco),
Wealth and Income Inequality in the USA (multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03may/may03inter),
Wealth Distribution in the U.S. : Houston Indymedia (houston.indymedia.org/news/2003/07/14100.php),
United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States),
The World's Billionaires - Forbes.com (www.forbes.com/2007/03/07/billionaires-worlds-ri),
The Forbes 400 richest Americans - Forbes.com - MSNBC.com (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6082174/)
and http://www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza/diag/what.html.
[3} This quotation is from: Economic survey of the United States 2007
(www.oecd.org/document/51/0,2340,en_2649_201185_3).
[4] This figure was obtained
from: United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States).
[5] Assorted information
concerning the war dead is at: Just Foreign Policy - Iraqi Death Estimate
(http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/
iraq/iraqdeaths.html).
[6] An overview of this subject
is provided at: Cost of War - National Priorities Project (costofwar.com/index-world-hunger.html).
[7] Summaries and updates
can be obtained at: Post Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: From Assessment
to Act... (www.wri.org/biodiv/project_description2.cfm?pid) and Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment - Wikipedia, the free encycl... (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Ecosystem_Asses).
[8] Details are located at:
IPCC WG1 AR4 Report (ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html) and
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Wikipedia, the f... (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on).
[9] Please access figures
at: Where Does Electricity Come From? - Environmental Defense (http://www.environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm?contentID=774).
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