Pulling out all the stops on global warming

D. VanThournout
11-25-05

I have always resisted (or at least viewed with strong misgivings) the notion that we are just waiting for the techno fix that will save us from global warming. I especially dislike solutions that require using even more technology to solve problems that technology got us into in the first place. Although it is possible that we can use fossil fuels hybridly, so that whenever we do use them there is some huge "environmental" payoff so to speak... which means you can't personally use any because you have feet... and work in the garden like the rest of surviving humanity. Recently however, I have had cause to reconsider...

I still feel very strongly that the solution must be affordable and available to everyone. Hybrid cars for $45,000.00 and houses that are super efficient but cost $250,000.00 don't quite fit the bill. I recognize that it is traditional that new technologies take a while to reach the masses but it is important to get this transformation to renewable energy moving more quickly. Profits be damned. This is going to take all of us doing everything we can. We need to redesign our communities around people instead of our cars.

In " Boiling Point", Ross Gelbspans recent book, he has laid out a fairly comprehensive plan (much like the plan that took big tobacco down) that if implemented would at least slow global warming. In an analysis of the phenomena that was the peoples fight against the big tobacco lie, Kale Lasn points the way for further societal change in his book entitled " Culture Jam". The only difference I see between big tobacco and big oil is that more people are going to be affected by global warming and therefore more people could (theoretically at least) be more quickly inspired to action and be brought to bear upon the solution. This is an important variable since we don't have 30 years we have 10 perhaps.

In reality, it will take everything the human race has in it to confront global warming. In doing so we will have solved nearly all of our problems. We may need to understand life on this planet at the very genetic level just to keep it all alive. We will become so much a part of this place. In our belief in the idea that the earth was a gift from god and so is our "dominion" we placed ourselves outside of it. But what we are seeing is in fact we are actually not separate but an integral part of the earth. Because of this mistaken belief of our separateness we carelessly damaged our container and we are only now perhaps sinking back into the algae and clay from whence we came. Life is more fragile than we could ever possibly understand as conquerors.

Nothing less than the World Energy Modernization Plan which calls for reducing the carbon emissions by 70% immediately and pulling out all the stops as if humanity depended upon it will solve the problem.

Because of things like the Siberian Tundra thawing and releasing mega amounts of instant warming in earths atmosphere, I believe we will need to conserve at pre-industrialization levels (agrarian life) while continuing to pursue megalithic corporations (and their techno fixes) to make them give back what they've taken from our children and their children's children. This will take the form of them investing their billions in profits in real change such as is represented in renewable energy technology. There will be a competition between the mega corporations as to who can come up with the best carbon sequestration technologies, improvements on renewable energy etc. There could also be a great diversification of energy production here on earth. This would perhaps forever change the political landscape in Washington. The change we need requires that the American grassroots catch fire and burn all the way to Capitol Hill.

Another point I'd like to make concerning our fighting the onslaught of global warming is this; we don't raise our children with the knowledge that they will be "successful", we just do our best. Many of them "fail" in our own eyes. They never turn out quite the way we tried to make them... but we do what we can to give them what they need to be "successful". Why would we approach global warming in any other way? Certainly in trying to stop global warming we may not be entirely "successful". But not trying at all certainly would be a failure.

see www.heatisonline.org for possible solutions.

One thing I feel to be true, if you want world peace, the solution to global warming, renewable energy, will do more to help create a more peaceful world than our military could ever hope to accomplish. We currently pour over $400 billion a year down the rat hole of the military industrial complex. That budget would be best spent ensuring there was a future to fight for in the first place.

If your concern is jobs and poverty, again, in confronting global warming we will be creating the biggest economic boom in the history of industrialization.

See; World Economic Boom

If your concern is health care? Global warming is going to be the nemesis of healthcare. Stopping it will reduce diseases by re-reducing insect borne diseases. Climate warming is extending the range of many insect borne diseases and also increasing the number of insects that can carry those diseases. Global warming is possibly setting the stage for the next pandemic.

There is not a single issue disconnected from the over arching issue of climate change driven by global warming and the fossil fuels causing it. If even the peace activists and the environmental activists began coordinating their efforts, we would reach our "tipping point" and action would be seen.

The World Energy Modernization Plan is a comprehensive plan that we as concerned (and united) citizens could systematically approach.

Where will we get the funding?

By creating a tax known as the tobin tax (See the Tobin tax; http://www.ceedweb.org/iirp/ ) The tobin tax is a tax upon currency exchanges. The advantage of the Tobin Tax is to help stabilize world currencies while also developing a fund from which loans for developing renewable energy resources could be disbursed.

"Foreign Exchange-Transaction Levy (FEL) - Transactions on the global foreign currency market amount to about US$1.5 trillion per day. A minuscule tax on these transactions would generate large funds for international purposes. The Tobin tax (a form of FEL originally designed to have a stabilizing effect on international financial markets), at a rate of one quarter of a US penny on the dollar, would generate roughly at US$200 billion, annually, while favorably impacting global markets." -- taken from "Boiling Point" by Ross Gelbspan

Another interesting point that Ross made in his book is that we need not only to stop using middle eastern oil but help the middle east itself (and their other potential customers) find another way to support themselves besides oil revenues (clue: desert, sun water, desalinization, hydrogen). At the same time it is really the only way America can reclaim the title of "shining hope of the world" in the eyes of the third and fourth worlds. We will need to share all technological advances that improve the efficiency of renewable technologies throughout the world community. It would be reprehensible to do otherwise.

So, to recap. It will take us forcing corporations into being part of the solution as well as widespread conservation of energy on the part of consumers by changing the way we live perhaps... Reducing our dependence upon cars as is being done in Europe and even some large American cities for instance. Mass transit, living close to the earth in sustainable communities, rethinking your place here not as apart from but as a part of life. What you use and what you do and what you say are very important. Speak up, and do your best. We're all counting on us as the force that changes this world for the better.

The threat of global warming is the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced. It will take nothing less than ALL OUR SOLUTIONS to save our civilization.

D. VanThournout

Contact the author at DVanThournout@thedeprogrammer.com

© : TheDeProgrammer.com 2004  Fair Use Granted

The following was taken from www.heatisonline.org:

Highlights of World Energy Modernization Plan:

I. The elimination of national subsidies in industrial countries for fossil fuels and the provision of equivalent subsidies to develop and deploy renewable and highly efficient energy technologies and job retraining for displaced workers in the fossil fuel industries.

II. The adoption internationally of progressively more stringent Fossil Fuel Efficiency and Renewable Content Standards as a complement to the emissions "cap-and-trade" system embodied in the Kyoto Protocol. This strategy could be of use to individual nations as well.

III. The elimination of regulatory barriers which impede competition and support wasteful, inefficient high-carbon technologies in order to create freer competition in energy according to the criteria of cost, efficiency and low-carbon content.

IV. The creation of a World Energy Modernization Fund using the revenues from a tax on international currency transactions or other comparable revenue sources to finance the development and transfer of climate-friendly (renewable, high-efficiency and low-carbon) technologies to developing nations.

V. The creation of a new agency or the authorization of an existing agency under the Kyoto Protocol to facilitate a rapid transition to climate-friendly (renewable, high-efficiency and low carbon) energy facilities worldwide through transfer of technologies and expertise according to principles of equity, sustainability and competitive energy markets.

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