April 29, 2021
Background
On April 19, 2021, at a press conference about climate change, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres said that “we are on the verge of the abyss.” The evidence supporting his conclusion is overwhelming. Increasingly severe storms, droughts, wild fires, rising seas, and mass extinction of thousands of species are already taking place. The good news is that most, if not all world leaders agree that our species must come together immediately to tackle this relentless threat. The bad news is that what they say they’re willing to do is simply not enough.
Reality
Let’s put things in perspective. Like slow-moving magma, climate change threatens to destroy the world as we know it over a period of decades. In contrast, the threat of nuclear war resembles a category 30 hurricane. Indeed, the danger of war with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea is higher than ever. NATO’s slow-motion expansion to the Ukraine, an existential threat to Moscow, predictably led to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea, Sebastopol, and its military facilities. China, a civilization thousands of years old and a great power over the centuries and in different epochs, is in the process of reasserting its heritage. In its eyes, that includes, as a matter of right, an Anschluss with Taiwan, ownership of much of the South China Sea, and premier technological prowess. Meanwhile, Iran’s nuclear program, if consummated into nuclear weapons and ICBMs, would challenge America’s dominance over the Persian Gulf’s oil resources and threaten the very existence of Israel, its arch foe. In this case the issue is whether Iran can permanently rather than temporarily be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and ICBMs. In addition, other simmering, unresolved conflicts such as between China and India and India and Pakistan, all nuclear armed and with a history of wars between them, could at any time flare up into all-out wars. At a minimum, either conflict would likely cause a nuclear winter and destroy civilization as we know it. Obviously then, it is nothing short of a preposterous fantasy to believe that a unified global response to climate change led by China and the U.S., the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, can be compartmentalized in the absence of an agreed-upon permanent structural framework that prevents anyone from seeking to forcibly dominate the world now or in the future. Fortunately it is not impossible.
A Blessing in Disguise
Our technological knowhow has far outstripped our spiritual maturity. Our quest for dominance, to have others do unpleasant, back-breaking, poorly-paid work so we and our descendants can indefinitely live privileged lives, in no way differs from what the Sea Peoples, Genghis Khan, Rome, the Mayans, and many other war faring civilizations did. The difference is that they did not have the means to destroy the world; we do. In that sense climate change could be a much needed catalyst to bind and contain that trait. For example, humanity might create a system based on a universal currency, possibly Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) for all nations based on their per capita contribution to the production of green hydrogen from seawater, rather than on military prowess. Countries with abundant capital but with limited sunshine could invest in countries with abundant sunshine and seawater but with limited capital. Thus, an agreed-upon universal formula would allocate SDRs to each country. The hydrogen would be used to generate electricity and to power vehicles; it would also create a new source of pure water to relieve over-stressed aquifers and disappearing glaciers, fight desertification, plant trees and crops, and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. More importantly, it would preempt companies with the rights to high-tech means of energy generation such as cold fusion, anti-gravity, anti-matter, from forming cartels akin to today’s OPEC.
Deeds, not Words
This suggestion would reveal the true desire for cooperation and commitment by all nations to halt the rapidly worsening effects of climate change, eliminate disputes over control over the world’s energy supplies, create a framework for equal purchasing power, and greatly reduce the ability (and reason) of all nations to spend untold amounts of money on weapons and war.