Civilization: Is It Worth the
Trouble?[1]
George M. Woodwell
I n 1946 the world faced the
troubling thought that the new weapon that had destroyed two Japanese cities had
raised the potential stakes in warfare to mutual annihilation. John Sloan Dickey left a high position and a brilliant
career in the Department of State to take the presidency of Dartmouth College. He opened that first post-war year with an
address to the College under the title: “Cassandra Sits in High Places Today”. We
have been successful now over nearly seventy years, albeit at prodigious
expense, in preventing another intemperate use and restricting the hazard,
however menacing, to mere threat. Meanwhile, a host of other changes have
occurred in fact that have moved the world as a whole several increments toward
the devastation we once envisioned as uniquely associated with a global nuclear
catastrophe.
Today’s daily
global news is a triumvirate of major crises of government, economics, and
environment. A world that was until recently thought to be large enough to
sustain virtually any experiment in government or industrial economic
development has suddenly proven vulnerable far beyond expectations or wishes of
political or economic leaders. The crises are linked through environmental
failures in ways that tax our best minds and assure that we are building a
potentially new world of misery and
chaos.Worse, the changes are rapid, accumulating, and potentially irreversible
in time of interest to those now living.
Seven billion of us today, nine billion tomorrow, are entering a new
world that is increasingly unattractive.
There is
nothing subtle about the changes that are bringing this new world. They are Hurricane
Katrina, strengthened by a super-heated Gulf of Mexico to the point of
destroying New Orleans; BP and its
pollution of the Gulf of Mexico, the largest single pollution event in history
and one of the most devastating; the destruction of the boreal forests of the
Athabasca Tar Sands of Alberta for oil to drive the global fossil fuel-based industrial world; the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters that
each removed thousands, possibly ten thousand, square miles of land from safe
human occupation; the sacrifice zone of
the Southern Appalachians where coal has been mined, the mountains pushed into
the valleys and the land left barren, useless in agriculture or as habitat for
people, the streams poisoned with
acid; the Bhopal Accident in central
India that killed outright in one evening
2-3,00 Indians in December, 1984; the heat of summers that raises the
death tolls of nations such as France and Germany in 2003 to a total of as
many as 30,000; similar heat and drought is said to have killed 50,000
Russians in 2010 when fires in the boreal forest kept Moscow under a cloud of smoke for weeks; and
they include the lives of thousands of substantially enslaved Mexican and other workers trapped in menial jobs in a
poisonous industrial agriculture in the
US for a lifetime. These are corporately generated waste lands, waste waters,
and waste lives , sacrifices to a totalitarian trend in a political-economic
system that is destroying itself while undermining the life support system of
the planet and corrupting the purpose
and potential of a rich and advanced civilization.
The entire
earth is caught in this corporate scramble for profits. It is most conspicuous
in dealing with fossil fuels. The raw materials are drawn from publicly-owned
resources, extracted from the earthly crust using various techniques that
affect the sites in various ways, often profoundly. Easily available oil and
gas supplies have been exhausted. Newer supplies are sought now at greater
depths and by new techniques such as high pressure fracturing to release both
oil and gas from tightly-packed shales. This ”fracking” involves serious
contamination of large quantities of water at great depths and on the surface
as well as destructive surface activities. Hazards from spills are serious and
spills are common as occurred in a deep water oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.
Coal mining on the surface devastates extensive areas as does the surface
mining of tar sands and oil-bearing shales. Those areas can usually never be
restored, at least in time of interest to us.
They, too, are industrial sacrificial zones, impoverished, even poisoned
in the extreme, that are released into public care, well off the accounting
records of the industries. Profits, of course, depend on avoiding as many
costs as possible. Costs that can be pushed into the public realm increase profits.
But then
there are the wastes produced in the use of the coal, oil and gas.. The wastes
are primarily, but not only, carbon dioxide and methane. These two gases are
accumulating in the atmosphere and, through the warming of the earth, poisoning
the world. The effects also are not part of the financial accounting of the
industries. And the industries, aware of
the problem, want to keep it that way and have worked diligently to deny any
problem. Meanwhile profits accumulate
and government, ever sensitive to the sentiments of business and run by
politicians whose re-election hinges on money to run political campaigns,
sustains the process. But the product, a degraded global biosphere, is clearly
not what one might call sustainable use of the biosphere. The climatic
disruption is especially acute in the Arctic where there are large deposits of
organic matter accumulated over thousands of years in tundra soils and in
marine sediments of the coastal zone. The thawing of the Arctic increases the rates of
decay of all organic matter and potentially releases the methane accumulated
through slow decay over thousands of years. The total amounts available are prodigious, enough to overwhelm any human
potential for controlling the crisis of global climate.
Civilization
stands on a triumvirate of systems that must function together complementing
one another in the interest of public welfare. They are:
1. A Governmental System that assures the
human birthright to clean air from the first breath forward throughout a lifetime, clean water, food and a place to thrive in peace and safety. That
latter, peace and safety, has been protected
in every culture by some form of the golden rule well known in our own legal culture as the Principle of Sic Utere. Sic
utere tuo ut alienum non laedas. Use
what belongs to you in such a way as to protect the interests of others.
In the
nominally democratic nations we elect, from the public, individuals to work in government to set the rules under which we live in
equity with one another, have equal
access to resources, and to protect the
public welfare in general. (Some
nations operate outside such norms with a “bunch of thugs in power”. These ABOTIP
nations are outlaws, not models.) Protecting corporate profits at the expense of human morbidity and mortality is not
forthrightly a governmental purpose.
2. An Economic System that offers the tools
for negotiating the necessities of life in a finite world. The economic
system requires firm regulation by government
to deflect the persistent dream that the free market is adequate to protect human rights and common property
such as air, water, and land as well as human
aspirations. It is essential to realize and accept that the purpose of business
is profit, not human welfare. Many fail to realize that the free market system
has produced slavery persistently in the past and produces it in the present when allowed. It has also produced a
chain of corporate disasters, all fed by greed.
It is entirely possible to establish corporate interests and businesses that serve, and are required
to serve, the public welfare. J.G. Speth in his recent book America
The Possible (Yale 2012) treats the topic in detail. He points to the lax regulation of corporate purpose by
pointing to a corporation chartered in Virginia under the title: “License
To Kill” with the purpose of using tobacco to kill 400,000 people a year.
3. An Environmental System that is intact and
functional in maintaining a biosphere
that is self-sustaining and stable as the habitat of all life. Such an objective requires continuous insights from
science as to what is functional and what is not.
These
requirements seem simple enough as the core expectations of civilization. But
they are not now met, locally or globally. And the New World entrained and
already emerging promises far more difficulties than we have seen so far….as
the basic laws of a biophysically limited Earth
are compromised to accommodate political and economic interests.
The core
failure here is the corruption of
governmental purpose by political and economic interests largely focused
on profits. The growth of the corporate culture now dominates. It has grown so
large and wealthy as to constitute what
the political philosopher Wolin at Princeton has called “inverted
totalitarianism” . The Citizens United decision of the U.S. Supreme Court only
closes the loop and reinforces the trend. It has put the government in the
hands of corporate interests whose primary purpose is financial profit, not the
public welfare. Corporate interests argue in self-interest that poisoning the world is a small issue,
necessarily secondary to profits, for, of course, if profits fail, so does the
business.
Can we
change this course from a cascading disaster to a New World we can admire and
enjoy with pride as we pass it on to our children?
We can.
1.
The Wolin insight defining the inversion of structure as corporate
totalitarianism is appropriate and, once identified, must be corrected. It is a
fundamental change, essential in an ever tighter world. Money must be taken out
of politics and the core purpose of
government restored. Sic utere applies at all levels.
2. In a finite world the basic laws of
biophysics are immutable. We can return to
recognizing and defending the physical, chemical and biotic integrity of
the biosphere. Several big changes are necessary, two immediately:
a. Reverse
the trend in climate and return over the course of the next century to the 1900 level of heat –trapping gases in the atmosphere, about 300 ppm carbon
dioxide.. (It can be done as I show below.).
b. Correct
trends in industrial activities that lead to chemical corruption of the biosphere. (Close industrial and municipal cycles to
contain wastes specifically to preserve the physical, chemical and biotic
integrity of the biosphere.) There can be no more sacrifice zones, giant mines,
or callous industrial corruption of atmospheric or marine chemistry as we bring
the fossil fueled age to an abrupt close.
What will
it take to reverse the climatic disruption?
At this late date it is a major challenge for a world that has so long
steeped itself in the indulgence that nothing need be done. Now, with a world crisis underway, the change
is the only sensible course.
Here is
what can be done now.
The annual
accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere is between 4 and 5 billion tons. That
is the amount to be removed from current emissions to stabilize the atmosphere
at the present carbon dioxide concentration now approaching 400 ppm. That
residue, 4-5 billion tons of carbon, is
about 50% of the total annual release of
10 billion tons as shown in the table below. It can be removed, reduced
to zero, within a few years by global action in. The first step is clear and
simple: stop further deforestation of primary forests, globally. Such a step
desirable in any case for these forests are one of the earth’s great wonders.
They have many functions in running the biosphere and should be passed intact
to our successors.
Second,
reforestation of normally naturally forested zones to the extent of 1-2 million
square kilometers will store a billion tons of carbon annually. Again, there is
nothing but good for the world in such a change. That leaves at most 1,5-2.5 billion tons of carbon to be removed
by reducing the use of fossil fuels immediately, a 20-33% reduction on a global
basis. It can be done almost immediately
by firm steps in conservation without great harm to any aspect of human welfare
and with many immediate advantages.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Emissions of
Carbon into the Atmosphere Annually
~10
Components Burning Fossil Fuels: ~8.5
Deforestation: ~1.5
Residue accumulating in the Atmosphere Annually 4-5
NB
about 50% of total emission is absorbed into
oceans and terrestrial vegetation..The
residue
accumulates and is the current problem.
Potential for Correcting
Stopping deforestation: ~1.5
Reforestation: 1-2 million. sq km
1-2
Residual to be removed from fossil
fuel emissions now to reach
stability now: 1.5 – 2.5
or
20-33% of the remaining 7.5
emissions under the
least
favorable assumption.
Table 1. Annual
Global Carbon as Carbon Dioxide in billions of tons of Carbon.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Such a step
will meet the objective agreed to by all the nations in the 1992 Framework
Convention on Climate Change .The Convention has been ratified by all nations
including the US, so it is universal law.
But we must
go farther almost immediately to return over the next decades to the approximately
300 ppm carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that existed in 1900, only slightly
above the 280 ppm that had existed for 800,000 years before we started the
current excursion of atmosphere and climate. That means an abandonment of
fossil fuels starting immediately and extending over the next very few decades
with the objective of
reducing the atmospheric burden. Speed it important to
deflect the Arctic carbon bomb whose fuse is already burning. There will be
pains in such a transition, environmental, economic, and governmental pains.
But the alternative is an open-ended, accelerating disruption of the earth with
all the sequelae of drought, storms, heat, hunger, disease, sea level rise,
civil unrest and human misery. The New World, if we reach for it effectively,
will be a treasure.
The
transition will entail:
-An
immediate shift away from fossil fuels toward energy conservation and renewable sources of energy using
technologies already available.
-Immediate
steps to produce conveniently available solar powered hydrogen as a way of
storing energy and moving it around.
-A massive
program to put solar hot water panels on every roof nationally and around the
world to provide hot water for all purposes including heating needs.
-A parallel program with solar electric panels
and simple technologies for using the power.
- Developing fleets of solar
charged small electric vehicles for
short-distance travel including
commuting.
- Develope local agricultural
production along with local markets for food.
- Institute major programs for
closing municipal cycles of water, wastes and energy.
The possibilities are infinite and the pleasures, too, But the core
change is in recognizing that the biosphere is, first, a living system, the
product of evolution just as the rest of all life. And it requires our close
attention and care.
I came on a book by Diane Dumanoski
recently. She wrote, “For some, including the
distinguished physician and science essayist Lewis Thomas, the picture taken of
Earth from the moon left little doubt that it was a living whole that inspired
reverence and wonder: [Lewis Thomas
wrote) ‘Viewed from the distance of the
moon, the astonishing thing about the Earth, catching the breath, is that it is
alive. The photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the
foreground dead as an old bone. Aloft floating free beneath the moist, gleaming
membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising Earth, the only exuberant thing in
this part of the cosmos… It has the organized, self-contained look of a live
creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun’.
“It is absurd:” she wrote “to insist upon the
sanctity of humans while denying the sanctity of this larger life that enfolds
us. Of the overarching process that gives the Earth its green vitality and has
done so for a longer time than the human mind can conceive, is there not
sacredness as well in the living Earth?”
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