The following essay was written under extreme emotional pressure from the voices of inner demons, devils…and their angel brethren. Being editorial taskmasters these inner voices have additionally asked that all quotes from my previous writing life be in bold-italicized script and all titles, sub-titles, and headings in bold script (non-italicized).
“To Your Unconcerned, Your Sceptical, Your Unconvinced, and Your Non-caring Fellow Human”
“We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own: they are transmitted to us, trained into us”
My subconscious mind recently approached my conscious mind with an inconvenient truth, that made my conscious mind want to run and hide, or at least eliminate the needle in my ribs, unable to locate the throat, eyes, nether-regions…or any painfully vital region of my sub nemesis. The conscious reporter inside of me decides to search out the facts I would use to dismantle the razor’s edge of my inner-nemesis’s inconvenient truth and allow me to convince my subconscious mind of the validity of my emotional pleas. Here is what I found out.
Earth, the blue-green jewel we currently reside on, is essentially an energy system normally in equilibrium. By this I mean the total amount of energy of the planet Earth has for billions of years been essentially in a constant state. Where the amount of energy leaving the planet’s system has essentially been equal to the amount of energy entering the planet’s system, thus creating energy equilibrium and the appearance of constant total energy contained within the Earth’s energy system. This equilibrium state in the total energy allowed a temperature range in which the elements essential for the formation of life on earth were possible. If we had been a fly on the wall of time, with a life span of billions of years, we would see life begin in the primordial waters of early Earth, evolve into a myriad of exotic, diverse and wondrous life forms, each with a specific niche within the ecological system to fill, live and eventually die in a continual struggle between life and the harsh universe. Life on Earth would flourish for billions of years before we would see the effects of mankind’s evolution from the apes on the planet, before we would begin to see the changes human ‘progress’ has made to the surface of our mother Earth.
The flicker of time since mankind first came swinging down out of the trees in Africa and planted it’s feet and knuckles on the glass plains of history is un-noticeable on the geological time scale of Earth, when it is compared with the total age of the planet. Yet the changes man’s brief stay on Earth have made to the viability of the planet as a cradle of life and the energy equilibrium of the planet have in recent years been immense and of far greater concern to the people tasked with studying the energy fluctuations in the planet’s energy equilibrium, changes in our environment evoking an emotional response in those unable to disengage their mind from the fear induced by the inconvenient truth of our current situation on Earth. The facts the scientists have accumulated seem to point to drastic changes in our planet, changes that a disheartening percentage of my emotional fellow man regards as normal to the environment of Earth. Facts collected over an infinitesimal period of geological time certainly, yet facts none the less, which is far more then the emotional detractors of global warming bring to the discussion table. When the time comes to make a decision, logic still dictates the choice must be made with available facts, not emotional pleas from the conscious mind. I am addicted to the conveniences of this century, yet I sometimes long for the simple life I once had. Emotions leading human thought down pathways of denial to emotional conclusions concerning the issue of global warming, before they have taken a truly honest look at the available facts. “The truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. The truth is the only thing that can set us free; embracing the truth is our salvation.
Big lies, little lies, well-intentioned lies, bad-intentioned lies, convenient lies and inconvenient lies; right now the individual who exerts control over my personal choice is lying to me, telling me the easy answers to the question. Global warming?
“A truth is not hard to kill…a lie told well is immortal.” The undiscovered lie can close a thousand minds before the truth has spoken a word. The very design, intention of a lie, makes it more palatable for the emotional mind. The easy answer to the question of global warming is a ‘convenient lie’ I tell myself to keep the facts concerning global warming at arms length. ‘The scientists are always changing their conclusions; they don’t really know anymore then me. There is no global warming; the weather is the way it has been for millions of years. It’s all part of the normal weather cycle of the Earth, the weather just seems more chaotic than normal. Those who have witnessed the most say, it’s all part of an age old cycle.’ Fortunately as more scientists add additional data to the debate surrounding the question of global warming it’s becoming apparent to more and more people that something is horribly wrong with the Earth’s energy equilibrium.
No question has as much importance to life on planet Earth as the subject of global warming, but the answers will not be easy ones. Since the question has become one of the viability of life on our little spaceship, how will we respond to the changing environmental conditions we made within? The important question is not whether life will survive, for life always finds away, always adapts, and evolves, to the changing environment within which it finds itself. The important question to humankind is whether we as a species have the necessary evolutionary strength to adapt to the changes we ourselves are making to our planets environment. To look beyond the needs of our own existence and stimulation, to the responsibility we all inherited from earlier generations. Whether we admit it or not the survival of humankind has gone beyond the personal desire, responsibility we all feel to reproduce and pass on our genes to the next generation. The conditions on the Earth will soon make it impossible to pass on individual genes without the full support, involvement of the entire human race in the battle we are currently fighting to preserve the Earth in the form we need it to be in for human life to continue to exist on Earth. We can go back to destruction of life after we learn how to allow life to propagate. The individual and group choices we make effect the Earth every day of our life whether we want to admit it or not. Responsibility and fault are useless endeavours until we learn to make the individual choices necessary for us to solve the problems associated with global warming, and responsibility and fault isn’t the same thing as consequences. Consequences becoming more apparent to the experts everyday, as the results of decade long experiments are finally tabulated, the results evaluated, correlated against previous data.
The Bears are coming! Not the Chicago Bears, I mean the Spanish Brown bears. Spanish naturalists are pointing to warning signs never seen during the recorded history of Europe in the modern age. Naturalists at the La Fundacion Oso (The Brown Bear Foundation) in Spain have reported in recent years incidents of Brown bears in Spain’s northern mountainous regions being spotted foraging in the winter season, when all normal bears are slumbering. Mainly females with cubs, naturalists say the warming trend makes it worthwhile for the females to stay awake, and forage for nuts and berries in the mild winters. These are the first bears to stop hibernating in Europe the naturalist point out and only a handful of the 130 Brown bears known to exist in the region have been recorded foraging in winter, but that increased signs of bear activity has been seen in the last three years and they would expect to see more if the warm winters continue.
Russian scientists have been reporting lately that Siberia’s frozen tundra, frozen for thousands of years, is melting due to the unusually warm winters. Making soviet scientists apprehensive as they look out onto the tundra and view lakes forming as the environment changes before their eyes. They point out that large areas of the planet are currently covered by permafrost and that the melting of such areas releases additional gases, mainly carbon dioxide and methane that will add to the problems associated with the release of greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental experts tasked with studying the world’s deserts report that currently about 40% of the world’s land is presently categorized as desert, that this percentage is increasing in areas where deserts already exist and where they haven’t been recorded before. This has concerned authorities naming 2006 the international year of deserts and desertification, to help raise worldwide concern for the problems of desertification to the world’s eye. Add to this the 30% of the Earth’s agricultural farmland that has been abandoned in the last forty years due to overuse and one sees a picture of diminishing returns for our human ‘progress’. Estimates arrived at by scientists point to another 200,000 square kilometres of land on the Earth becoming an unliveable wasteland every year due to human processes.
The accelerating pace of loss of the Earth’s biodiversity and biological productivity is increasing as the human population increases; this is hardly a tenable situation if left unchanged. Ocean scientists tasked with recording the great ocean currents, called the Conveyor Belt, have recorded a lessening in the Gulf Stream current by as much as 30% in recent years. The world currents help to redistribute water and heat, and the lessening will have important consequences if the currents continue to decrease in volume.
The loss of the white snow-caps of mount Kilimanjaro is a few years’ away Chinese scientists say, something that has never been seen in human recorded history. Man has looked at the majestic peaks of mount Kilimanjaro for thousands of years and marvelled at the beauty that is soon to be gone forever. In a short time they will be memories seen only in treasured pictures or the minds of humans old enough to have lived when snow still graced the high peaks of mount Kilimanjaro. The current melting of the once permanent bodies of ice around the Earth has scientists concerned, they estimate that at current rates of melting of the worlds large ice bodies, a rate that is not going to change anytime in the near future, the worlds major bodies of ice like the Antarctic, the Greenland ice sheets and the Larson B. ice sheets will be totally gone in fifty years. This would have catastrophic consequences as scientists estimate that forty percent of the world’s population obtains the drinking water necessary for human life to continue from bodies of ice located around the planet. In addition the loss of these large bodies of ice would raise the average water level around the world by twenty feet, making large areas of the planet suitable for species living in a water-habitat, but untenable to human habitation. Scientists point to the current breaking up of ice shelves that have been permanent in recorded human history and the formation of water lakes in the northern ice shelves as they are heated from below. Indian and Chinese scientists have recently formed a joint team of dedicated Earth scientists to study and map the glaciers existing in the Himalayan mountains to compare against previous estimates and data collected in previous years. Pointing to the data obtained by studying the evidence left in the ice of glaciers around the world, Earth scientists say the planet has never been this warm during the lifetime of the rapidly disappearing glaciers they study. The scientist point to current trends in the pattern of continual increases year to year in the formation of tornados, hurricanes, and storm, trends producing unusual flooding patterns in areas that have in the past been subjected to flooding and in areas on the planet that have not been traditionally use to floods.
The consequences of the pattern of warming the Earth is going through has additional consequences other than the redistribution of water the scientists say and many of these will become increasingly apparent as time passes and humans continue the activities producing global warming.
Biologists, ecologists, and scientists studying the dynamics of evolution are ringing the warning bell also. Pointing to the changing ecological conditions of species in specific geological niches on the Earth, such as remote mountaintops, where the effects of global warming are be expected to be seen. Scientists point out the apparent disappearance of whole species of frogs, and their replacement with species better adapted to the changing conditions in these mountain top habitats. They point to species moving into geological niches they normally wouldn’t inhabit in response to the changes in the Earth’s environment by global warming and replacing species that only survived in these geological niches because of their geological isolation or adaptation to colder conditions (Check out Charles Darwin’s blog for his latest alterations to his theory of evolution and his thoughts on the current evolution occurring on the Earth). Hardly a surprise considering that life adapts, changes and ultimately survives. In the battle for survival on the planet Earth, some species are thriving in the current trend of global warming. While others have already been thrown on the evolutionary scrape pile. The question is whether mankind has the evolutionary adaptability nature requires of species able to survive as global warming continues to increase and have greater and greater effect on the energy equilibrium of Earth.
Extinction scientists point to statistics indicating that species are currently disappearing at a rate one thousand times the normal rate of extinction seen in species since they started recording such data, and point out the inherent interdependence all species have with one another and the obvious consequences of mass extinctions to all life on the planet. Whole ecosystems are disappearing at an alarming rate; these include the world’s coral reefs that are bleaching, putting the world’s fish species in jeopardy as a large percentage of the world’s fish species live among coral reefs.
Medical specialists point to the increase in human disease, the return of diseases once thought eliminated, with a renewed vigour and ability to resist the medical techniques originally used to supposedly eliminate them. Many scientists think our own remedies could have caused the proliferation of old and new human pathological diseases.
In the future human progress will be seen as the greatest natural disaster planet Earth has experienced to date, if we manage to change our lifestyle and survive our own ‘progress’, we may learn how to live in harmony with the gift we have received and then abused. Wondering if the current trends may have an as yet unseen connection with the trend of global warming and the spread of infectious diseases. Scientists studying the energy cycles of the Earth point out that while it is true the normal cycle of energy fluctuations of the Earth has continued. The levels of carbon dioxide, believed to be responsible for the majority of the warming, have continued to rise year to year along with the average temperature of the planet. Other indicators believed to be messengers of continued global warming have also continued to steadily rise year to year as average planetary temperatures continue to escalate. This takes steam from detractors argument that it is a cyclic thing, it can hardly be cyclic if the indicators always rise and there is no highs and lows in the supposedly normal cycle. This goes against the very definition of a cycle and indicates the normal cycle is being altered in some way.
Humans around the Earth are rallying to the defence of Mother Earth, mobilizing human creativity in the battle for survival of life on Earth. The ratification of the Kyoto accord in 1997, currently over 50 industrialized countries have signed the agreement, has lead to a decrease in over all greenhouse emissions. This is despite the United States, China and India, the three countries currently producing the highest rate of greenhouse gases, refusing to sign the Kyoto accord to reduce greenhouse by 5% of 1990 levels by 2012. Environmental scientists, professionals, and concerned human beings around the world have been meeting and talking to try to find solutions to the problem of global warming. American states and cities have begun rebelling against their own government’s environmental policy by starting programs meant to meet the crisis of global warming head-on. Menlo Park, California, has implemented plans like the Cool Cities Pledge, and the Climate Change Task Force. While in Chicago they have started the Chicago Climate Exchange in an attempt to put planned controls in place to alleviate problems associated with global warming. Americans across the country, like Al Gore, have joined together to ring the warning bell concerning the Inconvenient Truth surrounding the emotionally charged subject of global warming. Across the planet people are waking up to the results of human choice in the past two hundred years and rising up together to face the crisis effecting more and more of our lives every day.
Shuffling my feet in discomfort at the feeling of fear these facts brought to the surface of my conscious mind, I looked across the room at the pictures on the wall of relatives I had never met and others I had recently met for the first time. Of the children they hope to have, the lives they wish for their children and hopefully all children of the world. The words of the voices within me worked wonders, the voices would say of my suddenly realisation of the truth.
Looking into the mirrored surface of my patio window at the fear on the face of the man in the window, I realised, “He had arrived at the point where presently the illusions would cease and he would have entered upon the realities of life, and God help the man that has arrived at that point.”
Grabbing hold of the little sanity left within my grasp, I realise that the best thing I can do to help the Earth hopefully begin recovering from the effects of global warming. Is to re-evaluate my life in the face of the cold-hard facts about our, my, style of life on this blue-green, okay maybe slightly brown, ball of stardust and start by making the changes to my life that are required of all humans if human life is to be more than a forgotten footnote at the bottom of page 2,897,518 of the Extinct Species of the Universe. Learn to control the emotions of fear, anger, despair, helplessness flooding into my conscious mind and ignore the emotional pleas of those without the strength to take a realistic look at the facts. We must keep faith with the facts, drive the whole length of the road to human survival and not suddenly stop by the side of the road because ‘the policies implemented in the country have reduced emissions, or we have made strides to control the problem’. We must keep the wheel steady, stay between the lines to our goals of clean air, clean water, healthy food and continued life for all species on Earth if we are to reach our goals. Individually we must take responsibility for respecting ourselves enough to seek out the answers our subconscious mind is screaming at us. The truth is waiting to be discovered just beyond the emotional pleas of your conscious mind.
Become one of the environmental soldiers rising to the task of making the necessary changes in the life style we live. Strive to control the emotions tearing at your soul as you mourn the necessary loss of a lifestyle that is now correctly seen as a crime against Mother Earth. And, “A crime preserved in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom super cedes all other forms of law.” The necessary changes to our customs will affect our comfort, most likely, yet with time, if humankind survives the effects of its own ‘progress’, these changes will become custom also. To begin changing today, “Make it a point to do something everyday that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.” I leave you with this one final point. When the final toll is taken in the end, if you weren’t part of the solution, you were the problem.
Warren Hayashi