DECEMBER 1 2013
A PEEK INTO A FUTURE WITH PLENTY OF PEAKS
We live in interesting times, perhaps the most intriguing period ever. Even though, for the last 7 decades, ever since 1945, the world has dramatically changed, many more changes are coming, none for the better.
Before the World War 1914-1945 – which killed Ten Percent of the people who were alive in 1900, more than 100 million, mostly men – almost all people had a rural connection. My grandparents worked only with real horse power. The horse was a friend of the family, and all their cows had names, were part of the larger household. The chickens enjoyed so much freedom that sometimes they became a road hazard. Now most people live in cities, cows have computer chips, extensions of the robot milk machine, and chickens? Don’t ask.
Oh, the good old times in my youth!! Yes, I mean that. No I am not nostalgic: then times were much better than for today’s young people. In my youth we created our own entertainment, played games of our own invention, often outside, and there were plenty of jobs. I saw how my parents and grandparents, in spite of the dirty Thirties, lived in tranquility, had real community, lots of visiting with friends, enjoyed home-made music and acting, were members of choirs and brass bands, enjoyed a viable church life and often had group outings on the bike.
The Oil Change
Oil changed all that, heralding the onset of alienation: it made God disappear. Jacques Ellul, professor of law in Bordeaux, France, in his master piece The Technological Society explained how people do only things for which they are emotionally ready. The pre-war society was not mentally prepared for the passivity that is now so prevalent. Perhaps the killing fields of Europe had such a psychological impact on people that they became conditioned to welcome the oil economy, which has dominated the world ever since. Shooting and bombing, seeing people maimed, undergoing incarceration in concentration camps, observing how the European Jewry was eliminated, experiencing the physical destruction caused by warfare, perhaps spiritually prepared people to embrace the carbon-laden community, the eco-killing society that is now on the verge of eliminating us all. Only highly extreme events are able to evoke our emotions, soon forgotten. By and large we are beyond deep-rootedness, incapable to engage in heartfelt empathy. It reminds me of Jesus complaining “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.” (Matt. 11: 17).
Perhaps society has always suffered from lack of empathy. Paul, in his letter to the Romans (Rom. 13: 11), complains that “the hour has already come for you to wake up from your sleep.” That’s one reason why the bible is still relevant, because the people are still asleep and the preachers, by and large, fail to rouse them, even though “salvation is nearer than when we first had faith”, to continue that same text.
Today’s attitude reminds me of Rev. Martin Niem?ller (1892 -1984) who was a prominent Protestant pastor in Germany. As an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler, he spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. He is best remembered for the quotation:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.
In connection with our present planetary predicament here’s my variation:
Climate Change first hit the Maldives, but I did not speak out–
Because where I live, the sea is far away.
Then a tsunami hit Fukushima, but I did not speak out–
Because I don’t live in an earthquake prone area.
Then a super typhoon hit the Philippines, but I did not speak out–
Because no hurricanes have ever been reported here.
Then Climate Change hit us all, and there was nobody left to speak for me.
Fundamental changes.
In my lifetime the world’s population has more than tripled. The world economy expanded some 15-fold, energy use increased 20 times and industrial output expanded by a factor of 40. Nothing even remotely like this has ever happened before in a finite earth. If I were to draw a graph then every item mentioned would go straight up. The higher it goes, the more fragile the expansion: it is not like a mountain that has a broad base and were the top is as solid as its footing. No, here the climb up has only one basis: the cosmos-killing production of oil, gas, coal. Solar and wind power play no part in the energy game, or better, energy gamble. In the last 60 years we have used ten times more energy than our forebears did in the millennium preceding 1900.
It is on that shaky foundation that we have built on 21st century existence. No wonder matters are back firing.
There is a beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes:
What has been is what will be,
And what is done is what will be done;
And there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See this is new?”
It has been already, in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
Nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to happen
Ecclesiastes 1: 9-11
These words are now out of date. There is something new under the sun: it is the story of environmental change around the world. Humans, under the obedient guidance of the Great Satan, have been the willing allies of his Imperial Majesty, the Prince of this world – as Jesus labelled him.
We delight in the possession of new gadgets. People get stabbed on Black Friday in the USA, the day after Thanksgiving there, celebrated just last week. They are there to grab one of the new toys that need no imagination or personal know-how, except some technical manipulations, tools that keep us from personal interaction, from eyeball-to-eyeball exchange.
Of course, there have been a lot of unparalleled prosperity and advances in science and medicine, in transportation and communication. Still all this comes at an ultimate cost: Climate Change. We, all 7.1 billion of us human beings, have managed something no previous generation could ever accomplish, thanks to oil: we have upset the balance of the earth.
A few weeks ago the 19th Climate meeting took place, under the auspices of the United Nations. The Nineteenth! Every other year the experts gather from all over the world in the thousands at considerable expense to the climate to hammer out a climate pact. Somehow the fuel for airplanes is exempted from the carbon count: of course: all these government and UN officials can only come by flying machines, the highest polluting agents in the world. In none of these 19 meetings, from Kyoto in Japan to The Hague and now in Warsaw, anything has ever been accomplished. In the meantime pollution has accelerated, and is still peaking. Finally a UN official has admitted that the goal of a temperature increase of 2 degree Celsius is now impossible: it will be more than 3.6 degree Celsius, which in reality means Hell on Earth. The Ice Age came about when the temperature dropped that much.
Peak Oil?
Peak Oil? Not by a long shot. I know I predicted Peak Oil more than 10 years ago. I was wrong. The high price of oil has unleashed new supplies: the highly frightful fracking folly. The US energy department said North America will add 1.5 million barrels per day (m b/d) of oil supply this year, mostly from shale, and 1.1m b/d next year. This new supply is coming just as Iraqi Kurdistan opens a new pipeline to Turkey. Iraq’s output crashed to 2m b/d over the summer as al-Qaeda attacks reached a crescendo, but Baghdad claims output is poised to recover. The International Energy Agency expects Iraq to triple supply to 6 million b/d by 2020. And now the world’s energy companies under the guise of US diplomacy have concluded a new accord with Iran. The Saudis are furious: not only will this lower the price of oil world-wide, but also the people in Tehran worship Mohammed in a different way than the Saudis do, and that is dangerous: the smaller the religious differences, the greater the fury . The tinder-box Middle East is in the grip of a Sunni-Shia civil war comparable in ideological ferocity to the clash between Catholics and Protestants in early 17th Century Europe. There too both parties worshiped the same God, but in a slightly different way. That war lasted Thirty Years from 1618-1648 and devastated Central Europe. The Saudis need a high oil price – a minimum of $100 per barrel – to keep its restless population from revolting. The Iran agreement is nothing else but appeasing capital. The West needs growth – even when the fate of the Earth is at stake. According to one report issued for the Warsaw conference, just 90 corporations worldwide are responsible for two-thirds of the greenhouse gas buildup over the past 200 years that is driving global warming. These corporations—mainly giant oil and gas monopolies and coal mining companies—cling to their profit interests in the face of threats to the survival of the human race.
Interesting times, anybody?
We live in interesting times. We face the final battle: the forces of life, including the ecosystem, are being transformed into forces of death. The monster Typhoon Haiyan is only one of the first tragedies. Nature and global elites seek to exploit the planet’s last drops of blood and its repressed masses are joining to make the days of descent squalid and terrifying.
In these extreme times we will have to navigate our way. In our current world full of peaks, we have to find security. If there is no radical change – and it does not look that way – we will be forced to choose how we will die, whom we will cling to, what we will risk. Wisdom is required. Where will our allegiance lie? Who will be our God? Will it be Capitalism? Or will it be the Maker of Heaven and Earth? It reminds me of the prophet Elijah on the Mount Carmel when he cried, “If the Lord is God, follow him; but is Capitalism is God, follow it.” The choice is stark: Life or Death.
Is there a peak in our Future?
There already are lots of peaks. In a sense it now is Peak Everything. We already have peak population. The fact that we have growing pollution means that we use up more air than the atmosphere can absorb. Wide-spread unemployment means that we have more people than the labour market can absorb. Low return on money means that we have more money than the economy needs. Polluted water means that we have Peak clean water. Peak everything means that we are in for a long period of decline, going down-hill, affecting our financial systems, food supplies and personal welfare. All this will also severely affect our personal psychological coping mechanisms.
Yes, we are in for a dangerous period of adjustment, until we have learned to live within the Earth’s resource limits, which will only arrive in the New Creation. Better get ready.
In my 15 years of blogging, I have mentioned that if China can manage to grow without endangering its population, there is hope for the world. That is not happening. True, China’s economy is still growing rapidly, more than doubling in size every eight years. China consumes more than twice as much coal as it did a decade ago, the same with iron ore and oil. It has quadrupled its highways, and has almost five times as many cars. It also has unprecedented pollution problems, affecting water and air, endangering billions of lives. China has no alternatives to coal to fuel its industrial machine, meaning that pollution there will grow unabated.
China is as vulnerable as a china teacup, which, when dropped, shatters into a thousand pieces. That will happen to China. The same holds true for the entire world economy: built on the shaky foundation of ultra-polluting carbon fuel. In a world of Peak Everything, be prepared for the worst.
Starting in 2014 I am planning to write a series on “How then shall we live?”, trying to combine the Creation Word with the Written Word, something I have advocated for some time. What we need is a Creed for the Cosmos, a New Creation theology.