Seven Years to save the Planet
July 2008
Review of Seven Years To Save The Planet: The Questions And Answers by Bill McGuire (2008 paperback, Weidenfeld and Nicolson).
In Seven Years To Save The Planet, hazard research scientist Professor McGuire argues that to avoid the Earth reaching a tipping point from which it may never recover, we need to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Failure to make sufficient reductions by July 2015 will result in climate change wreaking havoc on the planet. In McGuire’s view, the planet will be assailed by a series of events so catastrophic that one needs to go back 65 million years when the dinosaurs were wiped out for a parallel. Floods, rising seas, disease, super storms and wildfires along with famine and war and conflict over increasingly scarce resources will bring misery to millions around the world. Citing research by the United Nations, McGuire identifies 158 flashpoints where wars could be fought over water resources. Gargantuan hurricanes and typhoons half the size of the US will swirl across vast areas, causing devastation wherever they go. In addition to these direct consequences, climate change could also trigger calamitous natural events within the Earth's crust, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.
Before McGuire is dismissed as being yet another eco-alarmist, it should be pointed out that he has impeccable scientific credentials for sounding the alarm. It’s his job. McGuire is professor of geophysical hazards at University College London and director of the university's Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre and has advised the Government on threats posed by natural events from asteroids to tsunamis. I would just quibble with the title of the book. It should be titled ‘Seven years to save human civilisation’. The planet will survive the eco-catastrophe to come. The human species might not.
Professor McGuire's book was published at the same time as a group of distinguished finance, energy and environment experts produced a report calling for a New Green Deal. The report was aimed at Britain, but the argument that we need a concerted plan to tackle the "triple crunch" of credit, oil price and climate crises applies internationally. The report also warns that (from July 2008) we have only "100 months, or less, to stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before we hit a potential point of no return".
As Professor McGuire argues: "If we are to have any chance of avoiding dangerous climate change, global greenhouse gas emissions must fall by between 50 and 80 per cent by 2050.
"To do this, they must stabilise by 2015 and fall thereafter. Even this may not be enough. The latest science says that without actively extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, even a 90 per cent cut will not prevent dangerous climate change.
"If we fail, we will be living in a hothouse world of economic chaos, social breakdown and environmental degradation. More specifically, it will be a world in which wars will be fought over water rather than oil while migrations on a biblical scale, driven by expanding deserts and rapidly rising seas, will destabilise entire regions. We will also be in a world in which giant typhoons rampage across the Pacific, the Amazon rainforest vanishes to be replaced by grassland, and never-ending drought grips much of Africa, South Asia and China. Sadly, it will also be a world that none of us would wish to live in but one which, by our inaction, we are forcing our children and grandchildren to inhabit."
The problem is one of perception. Climate change is so incremental as to be invisible, human psychology normalising abnormal events and patterns to such an extent that we fail to hear the alarm and respond. What appear to be small rises on the temperature charts accumulate and manifest themselves as major global events of melting icecaps, increased storm activity, heatwaves and droughts and floods, extreme weather inflicting misery on millions. The planet is now within 1C of its hottest temperature for a million years. If we burn all the fossil fuels that Mother Earth in her wisdom has kept under her skin, the planet could suffer a 13C increase in temperature.
In his book, Professor McGuire details the devastation and horror to come if humankind carries on with politics and business as usual and thus fails to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.
McGuire gives a list that ought to be familiar by now. But it’s worth repeating. There is a tendency for some people to think that a problem has gone away if it is no longer mentioned.
WATER
The United Nations has identified 158 international river basins across East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia as potential flashpoints where governments may battle to ensure an adequate supply of water for their citizens, agriculture and industry. Conflicts between nations is entirely predictable. Already, India's £200 billion river diversion project which will divert the flow of the Brahmaputra has angered the Bangladeshis. Tension has arisen along the Nile Basin as a consequence of Uganda secretly draining millions of gallons of water from Lake Victoria.
Professor McGuire anticipates that the first water wars will be fought in the Middle East, as tensions surrounding an increasingly scarce resource rise between Israel, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinians.
"Within five years, water scarcity could come to a head, with violent consequences," he warns.
DISEASE
The increase in temperature around the world will be accompanied by the march of insect-born killer diseases from the tropics into temperate zones. Even today, malaria kills an estimated 1.5 million people every year. With temperature rises, malarial mosquitos could be breeding in Britain, much of Europe and the US by 2050. And malaria is only one of a number of insect-born diseases that threaten future generations. Others include dengue fever, West Nile virus, encephalitis and yellow fever. McGuire warns that by 2100 more than 180million Africans will be dying from diseases associated with climate change. So what’s news? For decades, those in the affluent parts of the world have stood idly by and watched poor Africans starve to death. They put it down to nature. We know that famine is a result of international trade relations and economic arrangements. The point to be made here, however, is that there will be no way that any part of the world will be able to insulate itself from climate problems.
ENVIRONMENTAL REFUGEES
It is estimated that the number of environmental refugees has overtaken the number of refugees from war. There has already been some 50 million climate change refugees. However, the impact of rising temperatures is likely to force up to a billion people from their homes.
"By the middle of the century, climate change will have driven 150 million people into neighbouring areas and across borders, triggering social volatility, racism, resentment and bitterness among indigenous populations," McGuire claims.
WILDFIRES
Global warming is creating tinderbox conditions and devastating fires in many areas around the world. Already, we have seen tundra infernos in the high Arctic and forest fires across the Mediterranean and California. Australia is also threatened. These are merely precursors to the vast conflagrations to come, fires that will burn endlessly across wide areas, pouring ever greater amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and thus extending and entrenching climate change conditions.
BIODIVERSITY
According to scientists like E.O. Wilson, we are in the middle of the sixth great extinction in Earth’s history, courtesy of human action. Species are currently being eliminated at a rate that is a thousand times faster than at any time in the past 65million years. It is estimated that by 2050, a quarter of all land plants and animals may be extinct. The Andean slopes and the lowland Brazilian rainforests account for less than one per cent of the planet's surface but 44 per cent of all vertebrate species. These are biodiversity hotspots and are at greatest risk. Warming waters are throwing the intricate food chains out of balance, threatening whales, seals and penguins. The acidification of the oceans as a result of more carbon in the atmosphere is further threatening life in the seas. For health and medicinal reasons alone, the loss of biodiversity is a loss to us all.
HEATING
Global heating makes for a hothouse Earth, with many areas – states like California in the US, Australia, southern Europe and much of Africa - suffering heatwave conditions. Encroaching deserts and depleted water supplies will wreak havoc across the Mediterranean, whilst drought and famine will ravage Africa. According to McGuire, crop yields in Africa could plummet by 70 per cent as a result of increased temperature. In coming decades, the Sahel region and southern Africa could be 30 per cent drier, putting the lives and livelihoods of some 250 million people at risk.
FAMINE
Even today, one in eight people on the planet do not have enough to eat. It is estimated that by 2050 the global population will stand at nine billion. Climate change combined with population increases will place an intolerable burden on the land and agriculture. Professor McGuire estimates that a 3C rise in global temperatures will result in drought, hailstorms, floods and increased pest numbers causing crop yields to fall, putting 400 million people at risk of famine.
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE
In 2006, the British economist Sir Nicholas Stern warned that climate change could plunge the world into a new Great Depression. Professor McGuire’s warning is stronger. The energy shortages, civil strife, drought, famine and plummeting natural resources that will accompany climate chaos will cause the integrated global economy to cease functioning. The wheels of commerce will come crashing to a halt. The costs of endlessly repairing and rescuing the infrastructure will be prohibitive. Governments will be bankrupted and insurers will be unwilling and unable to pay.
FLOODING
Whilst droughts and desertification will make some areas look like sub-tropical landscapes, rising seas, floods and extreme weather events will plunge other areas under water. A rise of just 1.5 metres in sea-levels would result in some 58,000 sq kilometres of land disappearing under the waves in the US alone, with southern states bearing the brunt of the flooding. In Europe, the Netherlands will fight a losing battle against rising tides whilst a large section Britain's coastline will be submerged under water. In fact, low-lying areas all over the world are at risk, Bangladesh, Egypt and China. It should be remembered that many of the world’s biggest cities are built in coastal areas. New York, London, Sydney, Shang Hai, all threatened.
SUPERSTORMS
Adverse weather has been responsible for 600,000 deaths and half a trillion pounds worth of clean-up bills since 1980. Gigantic hurricanes, typhoons half the size of the US, bigger tornadoes and more powerful storms are all set to hit in the future. "A few decades from now, a tornado slicing through the suburbs of Birmingham, as happened in July 2005, might hardly make the news headlines," argues McGuire.
McGuire’s message is clear: "Whether it is seven years to save the planet or 100 months, the point is, with emissions accelerating, we have to act now.
"To tackle the problem the world needs to be on a war footing with climate change the enemy.
"Economic considerations have to be subordinate. If we don't act now, in the decades to come there will simply no longer be a functioning global economy."
Wise words, but the capital system isn’t wise. Subordinating economic considerations to social and moral imperatives amounts to a political programme that international socialism, backed by the organised working class, failed to achieve over the course of a hundred years and more. Capital responds only to its own accumulative logic, not to human rationality, social justice and ecological sense. Against that systemic rationality, reason is not enough. The exploiting class are deaf to any reason but the endless expansion of own money and power.
There is an old syndicalist poem called ‘Know your enemy’ which makes the point well:
“He does not care what colour you are,
provided you work for him;
he does not care how much you earn,
provided you earn more for him;
he does not care who lives in the room at the top,
provided he owns the building;
he sings the praises of humanity,
but knows machines cost more than men;
bargain with him he laughs and beats you at it;
challenge him and he kills;
sooner than lose the things he owns,
he will destroy the world.”
Front cover Workers’ Control Ken Coates and Tony Topham ed 1970
Sooner than abandon the capital system, the capitalists will destroy the world. They are despoiling the planet. They have been doing this for some time now. Societies are unravelling, states are being undermined, economies are being bankrupted and the planet is being ravaged. All to keep the moribund capital system afloat.
What we need to do now is to engage in the construction of ecological forms of community within which social and moral life can be sustained throughout the new barbarism that the capital system is already inflicting upon. This would be to build the new ecological society within the hollow shell of the old society as it fades into history.
It is time to leave the cave of illusion and live by what Descartes called the ‘light of nature’. We leave the world of Becoming and finally enter the world of Being. “Green is the golden tree of life.” (Goethe). But life doesn’t last forever. Appreciate it while you can.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
(Robert Frost)
Sad? Only if you fail to appreciate the green and the gold when you have them. "Quien teme la muerte no goza la vida." "He who fears death cannot enjoy life" (Spanish proverb).
Sustainable Living By the Light of the Sun. In the words of Taoism, we need only "stand still in the light." Illumined by Heaven, the source of the inner light, we do not pit ourselves against nature, only flow with its grain.
Martin Heidegger writes of one ‘in whom shone the Light of Being.’ That could be all of us: ‘Nature’s first green is gold.’
By the light of the Sun, we see the ultimate reality that lies beyond the senses in the cave of illusion. The natural law is more than biological imperatives but is the way by which we see nature through the eyes of innate moral reason. The moral law is planted within each and all of us. Affirming the commonness of the highest end, we are all capable of apprehending the nature of the good through the natural light of truth. Descartes argued that we need to train the cognitive faculties so as to achieve intellectual illumination through the use of the ‘light of nature’. It’s time to turn round and turn our faces forwards to the brand new Green day that is dawning. The Age of Ecology is upon us. This is ecology as a moral ecology, not just biological imperatives and natural necessities but a conscious purpose as to how we relate to and live with Nature.
"The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall USE my time." (Jack London).