Lima 2014: Climate Change, Humans Remain The Same – OpEd

Ultima ratio, ratio prima – but not from Lima… Thus, let me report, Of Nearly Everything: From Copenhagen, Durban, Rio+20 to Lima 2014, the conclusion remains the same: We need principles and accorded actions as this is the only way to tackle the grave problems of this planet. We are lacking the elementary consensus in the Bretton Woods institutions, on Eastern Europe and Ukraine, on the WTO Doha Development round, on a nuclear non-proliferation (and NPT), in the IPCC, on the post-Kyoto negotiations, and finally on the alarming state of environment. Ergo, on a global scale we fundamentally disagree on realities of this planet and the ways we can address them.1

I am neither moralizing & idealizing nor agonizing. The world based on agreed principles and commonly willing actions is not a better place. It is the only way for the human race to survive.

Already some years ago, I noted in my writings (and in my lectures) that the confrontational nostalgia and academic inertia keeps recycling the Cold-War rhetoric, although the Soviet Union has disappeared from the geopolitical map over two decades ago. Hence, if these practitioners and thinkers are so fascinated with the simplified either with us, or against us logics – let’s keep it then! Adjusted to reflect our today’s realities (or as the grand Wiz of the EU, Jean Monnet used to say: if you have an unsolvable dilemma – enlarge the context), it would state as follows: either your socio-economic and politico-military policies and practices are for this planet and the very survival of human race or you are against the planet and every form of life inhabiting it.2 What we have recently witnessed in MENA (including the unmentioned and unmentionable) and elsewhere, is highly disturbing and rather discouraging: as if the confrontational nostalgia, perpetuated by the intense competition over finite resources, in lieu of a real, far-reaching policy-making has prevailed again.3

We falsely believed, throughout the 20th century, that the nuclear holocaust will put an end to the entire human race. No! It will be a slow, nearly-unnoticed, gradual but steady construction of the global gas chamber (filled by the green-house gas emissions). And, this is not an environmental alarmism as the environmental nihilists, or to say lobbyists would like to water it down. The way we extract, produce, transport, distribute and consume, the way we keep all this running on a blind obedience to hydrocarbons, and finally the way how we do reflect, contemplate and study on all that (and live in denial of it), inevitably takes us right into the environmental holocaust.4

What we euphemistically call Climate Change is actually a brutal war against nature. It is a covert armed conflict since we are predominantly using the so-called monetizing-potent ‘technologies’ instead of firearms in our hands. (For this purpose hereby, the army units are replaced by the demolition-man of other name; ‘transnational corporations’.) This armed insurgency is waged against most of what is beautiful and unique on Earth – on the planet that gave us time and space enough to survive as species and to evolve as cognitive life. Thus, the known sustainability matrix of 3 maximums (of good, of species, and of time) becomes the maximum species, minimum time, and the maximum harm.5

Intentionally or not, it is a synchronized attack: We are steadily and passionately polluting our public sphere with the diverting banalities manufactured by the so-call social networks, reality shows, ‘celebrities’ and the like – trivializing the contents of our lives. At the same time, we are massively contaminating our biosphere (waters, lands, air and near outer space) with non-degradable and/or toxic, solid or aerosol, particles radiation and noise – irreversibly harming our habitat. We pollute the time as well, turning it into cross-generation warfare’s battlefield: Our dangerous patterns might seal off the fate for untold number of generations and sorts of species to come. No wonder, our corrosive assertiveness has (time-space) parallels: acidifying of oceans and brutalization of our human interactions, as well as over-noising both are just two sides of a same coin. What is the social sphere for society that is the biosphere for the very life on earth: the (space/time – content/form) frame we live in all.

Therefore, our crisis cannot be environmental, as it was never a financial – our crisis must be a moral one. This is a cognitive deficit crisis, which we would love to eagerly spend in a limbo of denial!

Are we intentional in persistently spreading climate-change denial? Has the human race already passed the point of no return of its survival? Frankly, we do not know! Very sincerely, we do not care!

In every OECD country, an ordinary plumber (with just a few years of formal education and of no expectation pressure) is of a considerably better income then the university professor or the hospital doctor with a higher medical specialization (both of the huge societal responsibilities and both with over two decades of studies through the rigorous selections). Per average, the bank clerk (with under- or Matura level) of any banking entity in the EU states earns 14 to 16 salaries annually (basically, creating no new value for the society), but is nearly – per definition – protected by a life-long employment contract. At the same time, the majority of the EU double-PhD top researchers (per definition, creating a new value for the society) have comparably lower total annual pay, and many of them are just happy to win a 2 to 5 years research contract with the murky hope that the funding might be extended.6

Nearly all football players in the European Premier League, as well as the Formula I drivers (essentially the modern age gladiators, usually with a little to no formal education whatsoever) have individually higher yearly income than many key research institutes in the OECD states can afford to spend annually. Besides the superficial entertainment (enveloped in the ovations of masses on a brink of collective orgasm à la Mussolini parades), it is actually a triumph of brutal competition or competing brutality (football) and a massive exhaustion of hydrocarbons (Formula I) – what added value do they create to be so disproportionately overpaid?7

Some may contra-argue by stating that the present-day football celebrates the sports and a healthy life though the triumph of the physical strength of a sportsman. The Antique Greece has celebrated its athletes, and nearly worshiped the contesters and winners of the Games paying a tribute to the all-mighty Olympus.

Equally, the old Greeks largely encouraged and celebrated, promoted and (financially) supported its philosophers and scientists. It was the age when the consciousness blossomed, wisdom flourished and knowledge triumphed – the theoretical basis of all essential technological breakthroughs, that occurred in the course of subsequent centuries up to nowadays, are in fact originating from the Ancient Eagan world. Ergo, the Classic times knew about the important equilibrium between an intellect and human body.8 Modern Age has forgotten, disregarded, abandoned, betrayed and tacitly ridiculed this evolutionary wisdom.

Irrespective of our wrongly placed priorities (and passionately sustained craving to re-channel and discourage, to derail and denounce any serious debate, far too often by hiding behind a superficial entertainment), of our obscure and encouraged greed and incompetence, of our silencing, of all our residual or imposed ignorance and arrogance, and of our paramount and loud anti-intellectualism, the real facts are immitigable and are inexorably defeating:

• There is not a single peer-reviewed international journal that has published even one scientific article in last 30 years, which reports on factual evidences that any organic (marine and continental biota) or inorganic (soil, glaciers, water, polar caps, etc) system is doing better on this planet.
• There has not been a single RE or UN report in last 30 years that credibly denies a worrying increase in severity and frequency of “natural” catastrophes worldwide.
• Finally, there is not a single internationally recognized medical journal that has not been constantly reporting on an alarming increase in skin-cancers, respiratory and allergy related diseases for the past 30 years.

We are drifting, dissolving and retreating on all levels and within each and every organic or inorganic system. For the grave, burning planetary problems, our human race needs an urgent and lasting consensus which presupposes bravery, virtue, vision and creativity. All this will not result from fear of coercion, or from further military (nuclear) confrontations, but from the universally shared willingness to accord our common planetary cause. Cognitive mind can do it all.
First published by www.moderndiplomacy.eu

Endnotes:
1. Additionally, we fundamentally disagree on a role to be played by technology, even on a very definition on what should be considered as technology. Technology is not a state-of-art of science; technology is a state of mind! It is not a linear progression in mastering the natural science disciplines, but a cognitive, emphatic cluster–mastering of the critical insight.
2. As H. G. Wells once said in a different context: It is clearly the universe or nothing!
3. Sagan, the great Cosmic Fugue’s storyteller, claims: “Up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perception awaits us. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic, religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars”.
4. It is not only that our energy appetite is increasing. In a peak-time of what we call the ‘technological age’, our inability to achieve any global energy efficiency is widening as well. According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), the total Primary Energy Supply (PES) in 1973 totalled at 6.107 Mtoe while the global Final Energy Consumption (FEC) for the same year totalled at 4.672 Mtoe. Still over 90% based on fossil hydrocarbons but already doubled in less than 40 years, the PES in 2010 was at 12.717 Mtoe while our FEC scored only 8.677 Mtoe. Ergo, we greedily demand more to burn but also to waste.
5. The Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) headed by former UN Secretary General Kofi has stated in its Report the following: „Climate change is responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and affects 300 million people annually. By 2030, the annual death toll related to climate change is expected to rise to 500,000 people, and economic cost rocketing to $ 600 billion.” Usually the confidential reports of the reinsurance industry leaders such as Swiss RE or Munich RE are less optimistic and more realistic than this one of the GHF.
6. However, ignorance is bliss: In 2010, the GHF that authored such an indispensable report: Human Impact Report – Climate Change: The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis, has shut down for lack of funds. The organization was unable to raise enough cash to stay afloat “because of the global economic crisis. On 31 March 2010 the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs announced that the Forum was over-indebted and obliged to cease its activity.
7. Finalists of different TV primetime tirades (so-called Reality shows) that mushroomed in the last decade are receiving generous paychecks and enormous media coverage. This is the way how these anonymous nobodies are overnight becoming prominent celebrities, societal roll-models with the wide influence, unquestionable authority and respect in the blink of an eye. In this constellation a subtle, yet message is clear: the education and to it related creativity, innovations, patents, and discoveries – notably a regular career path based on a diligent creation of new value for the entire society appears as a choice for the misfortunate youth, as the last resort for the failed segments of society.
8. As Plato claims, the famous philosopher from Miletus Thales’ saying Νοῦς ὑγιὴς ἐν σώματι ὑγιεῖ – Healthy Soul in a Healthy Body (or in Latin: Mens sana in corpore sano).

References:

1. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UN FCCC/1992/84, GE.05-62220 (E) 200705 and the Kyoto Protocol to the UN FCCC of 1998, UN Office of Legal Affairs;
2. Final Document: Durban Climate Summit 2011, The Climate Institute;
3. IEA (2014), World Energy Outlook 2014, OECD – IEA Publications
4. Sagan, C. (1980), Cosmos Random House, NY /Carl Sagan Productions Inc. (page: 109)
5. Global Humanitarian Forum (2009), Human Impact Report – Climate Change: The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis, GHF, Geneva
6. Dresner, S. (2002), The Principle of Sustainability, EarthScan London
7. Smith, L.C. (2010), The World in 2050 – Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, Dutton (by Penguin group)
8. Bajrektarevic, A. (2004), Environmental Ethics, Lectures/Students Reader, Vienna (IMC University Krems), Austria