Wake Up And Smell The Roses
©2007 White Feather

Every day, I check in with an online forum that allows free discussion between anthropologists, ecologists, geographers, sociologists - it's really interesting if you're into that sort of thing! but recently there has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about the meanings of knowledge and theory, going all the way back to Marx and Darwin and including some of today's most critical thinkers - I won't bore you with all of that. The point though is that most of the academics that I am listening too are taking one of two sides, either to probe deeper into the theory, or to declare that the WHOLE ecosystem of the world, governments, churches, business and academia, and the environment, is broken.

It is this last point that is important, because most academics and applied academics from the above list, read between the lines of the scientific community, regarding the knowledge produced about global warming, more deeply than most of us. What they see is that we have between 5 and 20 years to definitively do something about the environment before it is actually TOO LATE - until it is irreversible. That time frame, again, is 5 to 20 years, with most of the cleverest of these people thinking that it is realistically 10 years from now. I will say this differently:

IF WE DON'T DO SOMETHING TO STOP AND REVERSE HUMAN CONTRIBUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING IMMEDIATELY IT WILL BE TOO LATE TO SAVE THE PLANET AS WE KNOW IT.

This is not a doomsday warning like "the end of the world is nigh", for the world will continue, and many animals and plants will survive. Maybe even some humans will survive. But if we do nothing the only good news will be that Mother Earth will have a hell of lot fewer people to sustain with her natural resources! That's not even funny.

So it bothers me when I read an article like one I saw yesterday claiming that Big Business is pressuring the Bush administration to put into place laws that will cut carbon-based emissions by 60-90% by 2050. First, because that's a lot further out than 5-20 years, and second, because their motives are nothing to do with saving the planet, but as they themselves claim, IF there is such a law, then people will have no choice but to use different products, fuels, filters etc. And these big businesses are the ones who have invested over the last 50 years or so in developing these products, but have kept them under wraps. It is only for profit - like that will count a lot when there is no human world left to sustain a market economy! I remember a small example. In the early 1980s I interviewed a young PhD from South Africa for a programmer's job (he was way too qualified). His doctoral thesis had been based on a simple "bolt-on" device that could, at that time, be built commercially for less than £50. Bolted on to a petrol engine, it allowed a car to drive on water. It worked, it was efficient, it was clean, it was cheap, and the car ran for hundreds of miles on a tank of water! Although he was overqualified and I couldn't hire him, he didn't need my job though: in my last correspondence with this brilliant young scientist, Esso had just offered him $30 million to shut-up.

Here in France, we have strikes all the time. People are in the streets for larger pensions when they retire, higher minimum wages, fewer hours, longer vacations, more jobs for the young - all the normal things that bother society. These normal people are so wrapped up in their normal issues that they can't see the real problem even when it is placed right under their nose. Sure, in the run up to the French presidential election, the candidates talk "green", but that's only a little aside to get a few extra votes.

My wife returned from work yesterday and asked why I looked depressed, and I explained the essence of this blog to her - but as she said, she didn't have time for thinking about this. I am not in the least criticising her, or the strikers. But unless we can make everyone, and I mean everyone - I couldn't care whether they are white, black, brown, yellow, short, fat, thin, or what passport they carry, or what God they pray to - take the time to listen, those 5 to 20 years will pass in the blink of an eye. And it will be too late.

Academia calls the problem "Global Environmental Sustainability". We are at the point of no return, and I, as a student of knowledge, like the other academics, see the problem, but cannot yet see the solution. Nevertheless, I am now a lot less concerned about what happens if I can't pay the mortgage, or about how much pension I will theoretically have when I can legally retire in 14 years.

I have a daughter who disowned me in a bout of hatred two years ago. The reasons are personal and are not for discussion, but a few days go, out of nowhere, she somehow through the miracle of technology, found some of my recent environmental blogs. She sent me a vicious letter full of hatred, and in this letter, she accused me essentially of being a totally lost soul who was going to rot in hell because I cared more about the environment than about my "own flesh and blood". Unfortunately, she is right - I DO care more about our planet and the 6 BILLION people who share it with many more billions of innocent animals and plants, than I do about a presently unfixable relationship with my own flesh and blood. I am not, though, suggesting that we ignore our own flesh and blood, quite the contrary, I am suggesting, pleading, that we love them enough to do whatever it takes to ensure that they have a life in 20 years. I would encourage as many of them as possible to become extreme activists in environmentalism and to study subjects that can help the world rather than subjects that can theoretically make a lot of money. If the world's ecosphere is broken, who will care about lots of money?

If the major governments of the world were brave enough tomorrow, to ban ALL use of petroleum products and coal, immediately, I would support that measure no matter how difficult it would be. I could care less about what Bush cited as the reason for pulling the US out of Kyoto - bad for American economy. Such a measure would hurt my emotions because the only way I would be able to visit my three incredible young boys in Arizona would be to take a sailboat across the Atlantic and then walk or horse-back ride 2,500 miles to get to see them. But I would do that if I knew that it would ensure a viable, sustainable future for them. Hopefully there is a less-draconian solution that this, but we won't know until we all wake up and smell the roses - before there are no roses left to smell, and no people left to smell whatever is left to grow.