DECEMBER 15 2013
THE GAME IS OVER. CARPE DIEM.
| Last week I saw a picture, taken in the Arctic on December 3, showing methane rising from the Arctic Ocean and entering the air we all share, the methane count reaching as high was 2425 parts per billion. On November 9 that level exceeded 2661 parts per billion (ppb). In the past this count has always been quite low because methane is locked in the permafrost, which now no longer is ‘perma’nent.
Methane, (CH4), is a much more potent greenhouse gas than Carbon Dioxide (CO2). While CO2 levels are counted in ppm (parts per million), and methane in ppb they are directly comparable because in their lifespan methane has an influence on the weather more than a 1000 times stronger that the global warming mass of a cloud of CO2 of the same mass. |
Huge methane clusters are positioned deep below the Arctic Ocean surface holding vast amounts of this lethal gas. Just one part of the Arctic Ocean, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS), contains 1700 Giga tons of CH4. A Giga ton is a large amount, a bit more than 11,000,000,000 regular tons. A sudden release of just 3% of this amount could add over 50 Gt of methane to the atmosphere, and experts consider such an amount to be ready for release at any time, because the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. The amount of carbon stored in hydrates globally is now estimated to be 63,400 Gt, according to a recent calculation by Klauda & Sandler, enough to incinerate the entire earth.
| Just let those figures sink in for a moment as the methane moves up and out. The total methane mass in our atmosphere right now is 5 Gt –Giga tons. The 3 Gt that has been added since 1750 accounts for almost half of all global warming.
Imagine what kind of warming would take place if the methane in the atmosphere suddenly grew by 1100 percent: its impact would threaten to destabilize sediments under the Arctic Ocean and trigger further methane releases. Such a positive feedback would cause the world to heat up, not gradually, not a fraction of a degree at a time, but with a sudden leap. The Big Bang in reverse. What happened in Warsaw put the icing on the cake of Global Warming. There in Warsaw, Poland, the COP 19 – which stands for the Conference of the People – met. This is the 19th time the UN convened somewhere in the world to come to a solution on Climate Change, also known as Global Warming. It’s better called the 19th COP-OUT. Last week I read an analysis on what really happened there. Harald Welzer, 55, who teaches social psychology at Flensburg and St. Gallen Universities in Germany, was my guide here. His most recent book is “Selbst denken. Eine Anleitung zum Widerstand” (“Think for yourself: A Handbook for Resistance”). I found his essay in Der Spiegel, a German weekly. I will present the gist of his remarks, interspersed with my comments, paraphrasing and editing. Frightening stuff
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He writes: “When the United Nations Climate Change Conference wrapped up in Warsaw the weekend before last, it did yield a result despite what most observers and disappointed NGO representatives believe. The unofficial result was that the world in general has stopped any efforts to do anything about global warming. In other words, climate change has been definitively removed from the global policy agenda. It has been given a free hand thanks to Capitalism.”
He continued: “The intense concern over climate change triggered by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports in 2007 and widely popularized by Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” has disappeared. At that time even Angela Merkel made an appearance in the Arctic as the “climate chancellor,” decked out in a red all-weather jacket.”
Here’s what really happened there. The United States’ lack of interest in an international treaty was camouflaged by its argument that gas extracted by fracking is more climate-friendly than coal, even though a recent report discovered that much more methane escapes by this process than originally stated. In Japan, the Fukushima disaster and resulting phase-out of nuclear power has provided those responsible with an excellent argument for why the country now needs to burn more coal in order to stay economically competitive. And Australia, Poland and Russia have never really grasped why global warming should stop anyone from burning everything the oil rigs, mines and pipelines have to offer in the first place. China? The world’s largest polluter? Its dirty coal will keep our Dolla(d)ramas stores stocked so that we can save a few pennies. Canada? That country calls its tar sand derived oil ‘ethical’ because its Prime Minister is an unbeliever as far as Climate Change is concerned.
Capitalism has triumphed
The people promoting Capitalism are of the opinion that technology will come to the rescue: “of course we will find a technical solution to this problem,” is the reasoning of the executives of the oil and coal companies, exhibiting the typical hubris of the rich. That the world will grow warmer by three, four or five degrees Celsius has become of secondary importance. The primary goal is the growth in national economies which require an ever-growing dose of energy so that their business models are to continue functioning. Seen in that light all scientific projections are mere theories. Business and clever software will find a fitting solution.
A good example of the wrong paradigm can be found in Greenland where the exact opposite happened. There the temperature dropped some 1500 years ago. The Vikings left Greenland – which had been really green – in part because they clung to animal husbandry despite practically having to carry their cows out to pasture in the spring, because the lack of winter feed had left the animals too weak to walk. The Vikings would have just needed to come up with the idea of eating fish instead, but to them that seemed as inconceivable as renouncing the idea of growth does to nations today. The Vikings believed they could not live without cows, just as we believe that a high quality of life rests on expanding the resource sector.
New Race for Survival
The Warsaw refusal to set limits to CO2 emissions has set off a new race: which part of the globe, in this world of boundless resource exploitation and unfettered pollution, will manage to remain the least affected by Climate Change. Economically powerful societies here have a considerable head start over those who embraced capitalism later or have the misfortune of being located in the wrong part of the world. These are the so-called “failed states”, where their inhabitants have little legal protection or where there are no obstacles to ravage land, water and raw materials of all kinds: they will suffer the most.
In these circumstances we can expect that the search for minerals will intensify as they become harder and harder to find. The scarcer a resource, the greater the unmet demand for it, and thus the higher the asking price, and the more we, consumers, will pay for the end product, be that oil or iron or food products. The greater the demand, and the smaller the supply, the more favorable the conditions are becoming for the suppliers. Scarcity is thus, in principle, good for business.
The capitalist economy, in fact, has had great success with this principle. No other economic system in history has generated and distributed more wealth in such a comparatively short a span of time. However, this expansion taking place in a finite earth, will sooner than later begin to consume itself.
A fanatic is a person who has lost direction and redoubles his effort.
What each country is aiming for is to extract as much oil and gas as is possible. ‘People in the know’ know that The Game is up, and so the fuel-fanatics redouble their efforts to get to the last drop of oil or chunk of coal. That “Earth Summits” and “Climate Conferences” to save the planet keep on happening, even though none of these have ever resulted in real change, let alone to a reversal of the trend: they are mere window dressing. Every nation is out to keep its economic advantage. The US cannot possibly fail to exploit the ‘fracking’ advantage. Canada cannot possibly fail to exploit the tar sands. China and Australia cannot possibly fail to exploit their coal fields. Failure to do so would be an impediment to growth. So nothing ever changes. Carpe Diem: seize the opportunity to create an economic advantage.
This also applies to the Climate Fighter. All these global gatherings, all these climate research institutes, all these concerned scientists have a vested interest in Climate Change: it gives them jobs, prestige, a public forum, but none of that will reduce CO2 emissions: on the contrary they even contribute to their annual increase, because they are part of the larger system.
Is there another way?
Capitalism, according to Schumpeter, thrives on ‘creative destruction.’ It constantly needs to invent new ways to entice customers to do away with the old and embrace ‘the new and improved’ version of something useless. This axiom has now led to ‘creation destruction’ and we have been eager participants in this ultimate game, ultimate in the sense that it is testing – and now exceeding- the limits of the earth.
It’s an entirely new ball game. The first thing we must do is to analyze what we have been doing and still are doing. It is no longer business as usual, neither can we give up and claim that our little effort does not amount to anything anyway. It does, because our personal salvation is at stake.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer starts his book Creation and Fall with the remarkable words: The Church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end. Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am to do a new thing.(Isaiah 43: 18-19).
That simply means that we need now a new way of thinking and a new way of living. The church needs a new m. o., a different ‘modus operandi’, in line with what Bonhoeffer writes. Forget about the old. Preaching has to be recast. The old truths no longer work. We have heard it all before and the main result has been to turn off the young people. Sermons must focus on what is the come. Of course we need church services. Of course we have to pray and sing and encourage each other. Of course we need bible readings. All these have become more necessary than ever, but we have to use the Written Word as an introduction to and nourishment for preparing ourselves more and more for the Created Word, that solid firmament on which we now live and whose newness is near. Hebrew 5: 14 tells us that ‘solid food is for the mature.’ If we are not mature by now we will never learn, after all the church is in the business to make people grow and be an instrument to make all things new. That includes the practical day-to-day consumption of food and business and energy saving ways, and healthy life style, a way of living that can ease our transition to the New Creation, the End of which Bonhoeffer speaks. The church has to counter the destructive ways of Capitalism which professes that “the lust for money is the source of all good,” totally opposite to the words of Scripture.
The Game is up. The methane monster is the newest and ultimate menace. Once it explodes, the Day is here. Carpe Diem really means: Seize the Day. Carpe Diem really means that we must embrace the Day of the Lord’s coming, make it our own, totally identify with it and live accordingly.