Peter G. Cohen | October 6, 2009 - 9:44am (Smirking Chimp) -- Terrorism is a minor threat to the United States; climate change threatens the survival of civilization.
We have expended vast amounts of energy, lives and money in pursuit of al Qaeda with modest results. We could have purchased a lifetime of oil supplies for the money spent on trying to conquer Iraq. The oppressive regimes of the Middle East still control the oil, and some still fund the Madrassas whose teaching of the Koran indoctrinates innocent children to become suicide bombers.
It is critical that we face the fact that we can no longer afford this endless attempt to dominate world resources. We have exhausted our troops, our equipment, our treasure and our international political capital. We must get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as possible, and do what we can to repair the dreadful damage our wars have done in the region.
Climate Change
The immediate threat to the United States and to civilization is the burning heat of climate change. With an almost endless supply of fossil-based heat and energy over the last 250 years, we have been able to transform the landscape, develop and accelerate all forms of transportation and communication, entertain and feed ourselves to the point of obesity. And enjoy luxuries unknown to all but wealthiest courts of empires past.
Now, with relatively little warning, we find that we have so polluted the atmosphere that we are threatened by fires and heat waves, droughts and fierce storms, advancing deserts and tropical diseases. The world food supply is suffering from climate changes that wither crops in some areas, while drowning them with floods in others. Melting polar ice caps are causing the oceans to rise; port cities, low islands and luxuriant delta agricultural areas are already experiencing the rising waters. And these effects are happening faster than scientists expected.
Meanwhile, most of the world is continuing business as usual. In northern Canada developers are investing billions and clearing an area of the Boreal forest the size of Florida to access the oil sands. The oil is of poor quality, uses a great deal of water for extraction, and produces two barrels of toxic waste for every barrel of not very good oil. The effect is that we are destroying the carbon sink of the forest in order to access more carbon fuel. In Indonesia tropical forests are being cut and burned in order to plant palm oil plants to produce biofuels. In the Amazon the forests are being destroyed to grow soybeans for cattle feed.
Here in the United States, we still allow developers to pave over good agricultural land for homes and malls. We are bulldozing the tops of mountains to access coal and burning trainloads of it every day to feed our electrical generators. We are decades behind Europe and Japan in the development of high speed rail that could replace some of the jet planes thrusting tons of CO2 into our skies.
Climate Change
We know the threat of global warming and that the cost of dealing with it now is far less than the cost of trying to contain it later.
As ice melts and oceans rise, millions of people will be displaced, their low-lying fields under salt water. Where will they go? Will their higher neighbors accept the hungry refugees? Or, will they help the people displaced by drought and expanding deserts, already happening in China and Sub-Sahara Africa? Drought, devastating storms and floods are driving up the price of food grains worldwide. A UN report in April 2009 found world food prices high and food emergencies in 32 countries.
Scientists tell us that we are approaching the limits of what can be done to increase food production. As oil becomes more expensive, irrigation pumps and farm tractors will cost more to operate; these costs will add to the price of food grains. People in poor and undeveloped countries will suffer the most. Crop scientists estimate that it will take more than a decade to develop varieties of wheat that can resist the devastation of Ug99. USAID, responsible for most of our nation’s foreign agricultural, health, economic and humanitarian assistance programs, has increased its budget for next year to two tenths of one percent of the military budget!
The living world is dying
The biosphere itself, all of the living organisms and their environment, is in serious decline. Scientists reveal that we are in the process of losing half of the Earth’s species at the rate of some 30,000 a year.
The food supply and species loss are indicators of the condition of the biosphere. Many areas of the ocean that once were roiled by vast schools of fish and other sea creatures, are now empty of life. We have been slow to notice the devastation we have made, and slower still to end the use of carbon fuels, the primary cause of diminishing the once awesome abundance of Life on Earth.
We do not know what additional losses will be caused by global heating, food shortages or the loss of species as they interact with chemicals, radiation and other threats to life in the years to come. It is because we do not know the full effects of these agents that we should be doing everything possible to reverse the downward trend as quickly as possible.
“According to models, we could cook the planet by 4 degrees centigrade by 2100. If this happens, the ramifications for life on Earth are so terrifying that many scientists contacted for this article preferred not to contemplate them, saying only that we should concentrate on reducing emissions to a level where such a rise is known only in nightmares.” - Gaea Vince in New Scientist, 28 Feb., 2009.
What To Do
The greatest driver of this threat is the one least talked about: the growing number of humans is overwhelming the resources and recuperative powers of the living world. While we are discussing the need to drastically cut our carbon output by the year 2050, the population is estimated to increase from the current 6.8 billion people to 9.1 billion by that date. With the acreage under cultivation declining and attacked by drought, spreading deserts, storms and flooding, how are we going to feed 2.3 billion additional human beings? The threatening tragedy of starvation and millions of half-starved men, women and children roaming in search of food could disrupt all efforts to preserve order and the fair distribution of the food grains and other commodities that remain. The result could be chaos.
We can either ignore this threat and continue with our wars and business as usual, or we can have an intense, worldwide campaign of information and persuasion over the next forty years that will work to limit the size of families everywhere to one or two children. The more we can restrain world population, the more able we will be to distribute the remaining food, and the better we can care for women and their children. Fewer people, rich or poor, need less energy, produce less CO2 and can help to return the Earth to a more moderate, livable climates.
In the meantime, we need a crash program for developing and teaching methods of agriculture that require less water, fertilizer, energy and chemicals, while we work to end topsoil loss and improve the long-term structure and fertility of our depleted soils.
The Energy Change-Over Agency
To control carbon dioxide in the atmosphere we must rapidly reduce the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal. The challenge is to increase wind, solar and other alternatives while we reduce fossil fuels so that there is a smooth transition from one to the other, allowing our homes and factories to continue to work. At the same time, we must create high-efficiency transmission lines to move power from the prime areas for wind and solar to to the cities, where most people live and work. To do all of this efficiently, we need an Energy Change-Over Agency to plan and facilitate this critical transition.
For all their efforts, most of the Congress lacks the technical and scientific background to achieve the best results with a minimum of unexpected side effects. Also, they are subject to intense financial pressure from the fossil fuel industries and others to compromise their legislation to preserve the status quo. An independent Change-Over Agency, dedicated solely to planning the change, would have the independence, authority and long-range vision to design better solutions and monitor their effects. The Agency would provide the Congress with a series of the best possible change-over plans for enactment into law.
The Biosphere
The preservation of the remaining species is primarily a matter of preserving sufficient area and quality of their habitats. Large land mammals require larger preserves. Here in the U.S. only a few small areas of the original prairie grasses remain. They may be important as future sources of food for humans and animals. It is important that they be preserved and protected from extinction. The preservation and replacement of tropical forests is essential to preserve the many species they contain and the chemical balance of the atmosphere. This may require an international effort to assist the nations involved in preserving their forests.
Fighting the Right War
To be effective quickly, most of these projects require a far greater investment of talent, money and energy. The more than 600 billions of dollars we spend on the military annually are useless against rising temperatures, droughts, storms and the flooding of low-lying areas.
After years of warnings, we have yet to reduce the greenhouse gasses that cause climate change, even though they are a far greater threat than any likely attack on the United States. Right now we are experiencing the loss of water and cultivated land. Why are we thinking of spending billions to install anti-missile systems in the Middle East? Is it because the anti-missile business is one of the most challenging, expensive and profitable areas in the whole military-industrial complex? We cannot afford such expensive and unnecessary luxuries. We urgently need the brains, energies and money that we are investing in imaginary future wars, to solve the immediate problems of making alternative energy systems that will replace the burning of fossil fuels that are threatening our food supply and the future of life on Earth.
The Big Threat
Climate Change is the Big Threat. With rapid mobilization and investment we can minimize global heating and the chaos that will accompany it. And, while doing so, we will be developing a new energy industry and the production of energy systems that are urgently needed by our people and others around the world.
It should be obvious that we cannot afford the very costly effort to dominate the world and solve the urgent problems of global heating at the same time. If we seriously invest in our nation, in limiting global warming and in preserving the amazing biosphere, we can lead the world away from the threatening climate catastrophe to a more secure future.
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About author
Peter G. Cohen, artist and activist, was on a troopship bound for Japan when the bomb was detonated over Hiroshima. In the 1950's he prepared materials for SANE's campaign to end bomb testing. In 1966 he was the first chairman of the Lehigh Pocono Committee of Concern. In 1968 he was an independent peace candidate for congress. In 1969-'70 Peter was Exec. Dir. of the New Democratic Coalition of PA and on staff for McGovern in 1972. He is the author of www.nukefreeworld.com, a websight designed to inspire anti-nuclear action. He now lives in Santa Barbara, where he can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
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