Years ago I read somewhere that if you write a book and want it to sell well, put a picture of Hitler on the front cover! That wasnt the only reason I mentioned Hitler in the title but I did want your attention! Ive decided to post a series of blogs about Global Warming because the more I read about it the more I realise that it is the Biggest Issue of our time - it is truly a greater threat to the future of mankind than anything that's ever happened in human history - Hitler included - yet as I write those words I hear a voice inside me saying "you're an idiot". Maybe I should do what Rene Rivkin is reported to have done whenever he thought about getting some exercise -just have a lie down and wait for that panicky feeling to pass.Maybe that's what you re thinking too, but consider these words from "Climate Wars" by Gwynne Dyer, a book only just published that I bought on Saturday:
"Runaway climate change threatens to sweep away our stable, familiar world and replace it with a terrifying chaos of famine, mass migration and war that could cut the human population to a fraction of its present numbers by the end of this century"
This book isn't a discussion of the science of climate change but an analysis of what will happen as result of it. Take Pakistan and India for example - a 2 degree world temperature rise (which is not an extreme scenario) will reduce Indian food production by 25% leaving a quarter of a billion Indians without food.(This happens because a greater part of India will become too hot to grow crops) So to increase production elsewhere they might extract much more of the water from the rivers that pass through India to Pakistan, and then what will Pakistan do? These two countries are nuclear powers and they've already been to war over petty border disputes.
Their neighbour Bangladesh will be literally disappearing under the sea, creating 60 million homeless starving people - who is going to feed them and where are they going to go? Similar problems of starvation, disease and mass migration will happen in Africa and central America- these 
people are going to head north - so there'll be border disputes and wars. How will Europeans deal with millions of starving Africans wanting food? Put up walls to keep them out? Share what they have? They wont have the money to buy it! Maybe they'll just take it, figuring its the West thats created much of this mess, now they can pay for it.
people are going to head north - so there'll be border disputes and wars. How will Europeans deal with millions of starving Africans wanting food? Put up walls to keep them out? Share what they have? They wont have the money to buy it! Maybe they'll just take it, figuring its the West thats created much of this mess, now they can pay for it.Frankly I get the feeling that chaos and disaster are almost inevitable because politicians and big business and much of the popular media don't yet take it seriously enough - an obvious example is everyone grizzling about petrol prices and politicians promising to keep them down, reassuring everyone that their lazy polluting dependance on cars wont have to change. And yet what possible reason can there be for anyone to own a Hummer, a grotesque example of western materialist excess if ever there was one - or even a 4 wheel drive? Surely thats exactly where we are going to have to start? The reality is that pain and restrictions and sacrifice and massive alterations in our lifestyle and expectations about the future are inevitable - they may be forced upon us by an unfolding calamity or else we could move now to embrace radical change and perhaps save the world- like our parents generation did when Hitler threatened the free world with Nazi destruction. Its a big call but I think thats where I am headed. I'll write more about it in the next few blogs.....
1 comment:
hi Dave, finally took a minute to experiment and find which button to click to comment. why cant the damn thing say click here to comment instead of 'x comments'? and theres this SIGN IN at the top - thought i had to do that, then realized it was to access a blog i had allegedly created.
so went back and randomly clicked on this 0 comments bit.
this IS relevant! we have so little time in the modern so-called sped-up world. so little attention energy for the important stuff. we find it hard to see the tree for the leaves, let alone see a whole damn wood. and if the wood is MOVING, like fangorn did, we can only hope it's moving towards the sarumans of this world, and their Hummers...
But if you dont believe in walking trees or Gaia moving to redress the imbalance, the next question is going to be which part of saruman's empire do you attack first? i guess tolkien's answer was to get rid of the Ring, that is, the root of all the evil. But in this case Saruman is US, writ large, and we can defeat him not by breaking his staff or destroying the ring of ultimate power which he lusts for, but by changing the way he sees the world.
So, i see the environmental transformation of consciousness as our real hope. but it has to go deep, and be a true conversion, as in, we need to have a real faith, that living in harmony with the web of life is better, morally and existentially. That is a return to the Mother. we need to rediscover that we are each 'a child of the universe' (remember that song - the Desiderata?) and then we will act accordingly. Plato argued that virtue is, or comes down to, Knowledge. if we know we are harming ourselves by doing evil, we will desist.
but we are too busy pushing the wrong buttons on the internet,trying to remember our passwords and looking for the best deals on cellphones, to re-connect with our deeper selves and Gaia, the web of life.
x peter harris. ps: see applesofaeden.com for my own fantasy about a better world and what it might look like to be connected to the mystical whole, and to revere the goddess...:)
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