Hear the Call

 Have you ever stood alone in the wilderness, where the only sounds that break the silence are the breathing of the forest or the distant roar of the sea? Have you ever felt an unspoken kinship with the world around you amidst the rustling of leaves or the crashing of waves - a sense of belonging to a greater existence that thrives beyond the bustle of our busy lives? Reflect for a moment on this connection, this intimate dance with nature. Has it ever stirred within you a deeper calling, a quiet insistence that the natural world is not just a backdrop to human activity, but a living, breathing partner deserving of respect and care?

This call recognizes that every creature, every plant, every microorganism, and the ecosystems they inhabit possess an inherent worth, irrespective of their utility to humans. It's a call that echoes the innate value of life in all its diverse forms, challenging us to look beyond our anthropocentric worldviews.

It urges us to see past mere numbers and species lists, to understand that biodiversity is not just a resource to be managed or conserved for human benefit, but a complex tapestry woven from innumerable threads of life, each significant in its own right. These myriad forms of life, with their intricate interdependencies, craft the richness of the natural world, from the vastness of the ocean's depths to the kingdom within a single droplet of dew.

It asks us to embark on a quest for harmony—a desire to reclaim our place as respectful participants in nature rather than as domineering conquerors. It implores us to recalibrate the scales and to tread gently upon this Earth, our shared home, to fundamentally shift our sense of self and our values in favor of an ecological self, one that inherently recognizes our interconnectedness with the living world. We are invited to ponder the sacred essence of life itself.

Imagine the fulfillment that courses through us when we plant a tree whose shade we know we may never sit under. This is the essence of intrinsic action—it is doing right by nature for its own sake, nurturing a bond with the Earth that goes beyond what can be measured or quantified. It's an acknowledgment of a shared existence, intrinsic motivation that fosters a deep sense of purpose and connection with all forms of life.

This satisfaction is not just psychological—it's a profound realization that our smallest gestures towards the earth echo our understanding of its sacredness. The call urges us to defend and protect—it invites us to feel the pulse of the living world in our veins, to hold it dear, and to act in ways that affirm this fundamental truth of connectedness. Our intrinsic actions become our silent oaths to the continuity of life, a solace to our spirits, and a testament to the capacity for humanity to live harmoniously within the greater ecological community. By embracing intrinsic action, we honor not only the external ecosystems that sustain us but also the internal ecosystem that is our conscience—a timeless, gratifying alignment with the heartbeat of the world.

To plant a garden that nurtures biodiversity, to choose a lifestyle that treads lightly upon the earth, to engage in community action not for accolade but for the sheer rightness of the act—these deeds forge a deeper satisfaction, the kind that external rewards can never kindle.

Empathy, too, plays its part. When we gaze upon the natural world not as a stranger, but as a family member, our actions are no longer just decisions, but gestures of love and protection. This empathy extends beyond our human kin and unto the furthest reaches of life—an acknowledgment that we are all interwoven into this great, intricate web of existence.

And then, there's moral responsibility: the cognizance that our choices imprint upon the generations to come and the environments that cradle them. To act in accordance with the call is to accept a guardianship over the planet, a trusteeship solemn and profound. It is about living today with the foresight of tomorrow's hindsight—choosing a legacy of stewardship and respect over one of neglect and exploitation.

Motivation, when sparked by one's own value system and empathetic connection to life, radiates a purpose so profound that it transcends the mere act. It animates our spirits with an unbreakable resolve, fortifying our journey through the oncoming storms of change with a courage that is rooted, deep and true, in the very essence of what it means to be human. It brings a peace that descends when our actions are in sync with a profound respect for Earth’s myriad inhabitants; the happiness that bubbles up from living a life of deliberate simplicity and purpose.

The intrinsic reward of aligning with the call taps into something ancient, a primal and undiluted joy. It's the profound sense of 'rightness' that fills us when picking up trash along a riverbank, restoring a swatch of wetland, or whispering gratitude to the trees canopying above—a gratitude for the air they gift, the life they support. This joy stems from knowing that every small gesture is a verse in the grand ode to life, each one a stitch in the healing of the world's ailing fabric.

This spiritual dimension is not confined to traditional religious contexts; rather, it is a universal thread, capturing an essence of connectivity that binds us to the living tapestry. It's a daily communion with the natural world, a meditation upon our shared breaths with all that grows and glows, crawls and calls.

Listen then, to the symphony of those who have walked this path, to the testimonies of transformation that shine like beacons. Envision the man who built a sanctuary in his backyard, inviting butterflies and bees to flourish, finding in their dance a mirror of his own renewed vibrancy. Consider the woman who turned from consumer to conservator, who now delights in the art of repurposing, in the sanctuary of sustainable living, and feels a richer wealth for it.

Within these stories of alignment with the call, we uncover a common thread – the realization that we are not just protectors of the environment, but kin to it, woven from the same material, dancing to the same rhythms. This alignment is where the cerebral melts into the spiritual, where advocacy transforms into communion, and where action evolves into an enlightened existence—a life cradled by a love so palpable for this planet that each breath becomes an inhalation of joy, each step a signature of our deepest-held convictions.

To embrace the call is to tap into a vein of emotional and spiritual fulfillment that runs deeper than any river, and as eternal as the mountains—anchoring our ephemeral human experience within the enduring legacy of the living Earth.

Yet, even the most steadfast can find themselves shadowed by doubts and challenges. The colossal scale of climate change, with its vast and complex problems, looms large, and the contribution of any single individual can appear, at times, as a mere whisper against a storm. In this sobering light, we must confront the daunting truth that the ark of environmental change cannot be lifted by our hands alone.

But let us remember that there is power, undeniable and potent, in each environmentally conscious choice we make, in every seed of sustainability we plant, irrespective of its immediate impact on the grand tableau. In a world craving for change, the transformation of one life still sends ripples through the collective consciousness, and these ripples have a way of merging into waves.

It is here, in the recognition of our own agency and the potency of our personal narrative. Through individual acts of environmental stewardship, we not only cultivate an ecologically harmonious lifestyle for ourselves but also lay the paving stones for others to follow. In the quietude of personal conviction, we discover that the smallest actions carry within them the blueprint for a grander vision—a world where each gesture of respect for the Earth nourishes the roots of global transformation.

Thus, while we acknowledge the critiques and the complexities of championing a greener Earth, let us also reaffirm our belief in the cascading impact of individual efforts. Each of us can strive toward an existence that honors every facet of the planet we call home—asserting, through the power of personal example, a profound truth: every step toward ecological balance, no matter how solitary it may seem, is a solid stride toward a future enriched with the fruits of harmony.

The tapestry of life—a vibrant, pulsing thing—wraps the globe in a silent plea for attentiveness and care, germinating the seeds of individual change that can collectively breathe vitality back into the world's wilted corners. It invites us to look inward, to consider the deep-seated convictions that spur us into motion, and to cherish the intrinsic actions that manifest them.

In this spirit, let us heed the call to action—an invitation to reflect upon our daily choices, our beliefs, and our silent promises to future generations. Look upon your life as a canvas of possibility, each brushstroke an opportunity to enact change through simplicity, through conservation, and through a heartfelt alliance with the natural world. Let us rise above disheartenment and instead, embrace the inherent power of our deeds, no matter the scale.

May we move forward with a resolve as resilient as the ancient forests, as purifying as the mountain streams, and as boundless as the skies above—empowered by the knowledge that in caring for the Earth, we are truly caring for ourselves. In the delicate balance of the ecosystem, as in the whispers of our own spirits, lies the affirmation that to live in harmony with this planet is to touch the very essence of what it means to be alive.

 

 

 

 

 

We Can't Get There From Here

The thing about deciding to write a story set in the future is what to make of the present and how it creates a trajectory of plausible events, scenarios, and themes projected into the future. At the moment, dystopian futures seem to be the most likely setting. This shouldn't come as a surprise, given the gap between the promises made to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the results achieved. Every year, representatives of the world's nation-states gather to confirm that something must be done to stop the planet from sliding towards global climate catastrophe, while emissions increase every year.

In what has been hailed as a landmark agreement, 196 parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in December 2015 signed the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change that aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To achieve this, GHG emissions must peak by 2025 at the latest and fall by 43% by 2030.

That ain’t gonna happen. We can’t get there from here.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2023 will already be the hottest year on record, with September 2023 being the hottest September ever. The Copernicus Climate Change Service also reports that on two days in November 2023, the global average temperature exceeded two degrees above pre-industrial levels. Finally, ahead of COP 28 in Dubai, the United Nations released a "chilling" report stating that the world is heading for a temperature rise of around 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, even if countries fully implement their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) or action plans to reduce emissions of planet-warming gases.

Obviously, something is amiss. It’s as if the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing. Or maybe it does and doesn’t give a shit. For example, the United States is on pace to extract a record 12.9 million barrels of crude by the end of 2023, which is more than double what was produced a decade ago.

Here’s the thing.

We can’t get anywhere near the GHG emission targets as stipulated in the Paris Agreement as long as we remain in the existing global political economy. Following four hundred years of imperial conquest and the war that was supposed to end all wars, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of creating a peaceful global order. It failed to do so. Less than thirty years after its birth, the world was plunged into an even greater bloodbath, the Second World War. Out of the ruins, the United Nations took over the mandate of the League of Nations and sought to become the center where member nations could work together to solve international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian nature. As could be expected, it is failing miserably in the fight against catastrophic climate change.

The problem arises from the fact that the UN is a collection of sovereign nation-states that retain the right to govern themselves without external interference. As a result, the member nations can choose to simply ignore whatever UN resolutions they feel impinge on their right to self-determination, such as the USA’s desire to increase its oil and gas production, regardless of what this means for the likelihood of meeting agreed upon GHG emission targets. The same goes for the other major climate change culprits, China and India.

The crux of the problem is that the sovereign nation-state is a historical anomaly, born on European soil and then transplanted to the rest of the world with disastrous consequences. As an organizing principle, it came into being in a world that no longer exists.

Looking back, it's worth remembering that the rise of the nation-state coincided with the expansion of corporate capitalism and imperial conquest. This was because the return on investment was greatly enhanced by the capture of natural resources, and then emerging markets on foreign soil. In other words, corporations and nation-states co-evolved because they needed each other to expand their reach, economic power, and profits. For example, the rise of the British Empire was made possible by the unscrupulous practices of the East India Company, imitated by the Dutch and the VOC (United East India Company), and perfected by the Americans with their numerous corporate giants ranging from Coca-Cola, General Motors, Exxon Mobil to Microsoft and Apple.

Although in the eyes of the United Nations each member nation remains sovereign, in the realpolitik of the 21st century, the power of big money rules the nation-state. People elect their representatives, but big money calls the shots. In this political economy, the role of government is limited to providing the physical and social infrastructure that allows for commerce, as measured by each nation’s GDP, to grow and to keep the locals happy enough to continue working at their soul-sucking jobs that create incredible wealth for those at the top.

Indeed, when it comes to the power of big money to accumulate capital, nation-states and their governments have become a hindrance. So much so that huge corporations now register themselves in the jurisdictions that have the lowest corporate taxes. Likewise, their shareholders whisk their portions of the earned profits to offshore tax havens located in the "nations"—in reality, former or current colonies, like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands—in order to take advantage of the low or zero-income taxes, strict secrecy laws, and easy access to global financial markets.

In a sense, the legal fiction we call the corporation has evolved to the point where it no longer needs its host, the nation-state, and in the process has dragged its shareholders to live and function on a different playing field from those parties limited to toiling away in the landlocked nation. As a result, big money is free from the physical and social constraints normally experienced by most people.

Therein lies the problem. The global economy was built and continues to grow on the basis of extracting and burning fossil fuels from geographical locations located in spaces governed by nation-states in their various forms: democratic (Norway), pseudo-democratic (Canada, USA, UK, and Australia), family dynasties (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates) and the despotic (Venezuela and Russia). However, the companies that grew and prospered while protected by their national interests, British Petroleum, Shell, and Exxon Mobil, have become cash cows for private investors living in their havens, soon to be armed lifeboats, around the world.

In short, climate change creates catastrophic weather extremes that have the biggest impact on people living in land-locked nations with no means of escape, but limiting the probability of their occurrence means reducing the enormous wealth created by the global fossil fuel economy. Without oil and gas, the global economy will collapse, and with it, the revenue streams that flow to the richest .001% of the earth’s population.

Let’s not kid ourselves. The ultra-rich are not going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Instead, they will organize media events like COP 28, a global conference on fighting climate change, hosted by the oil-exporting United Arab Emirates and presided over by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who is currently the chief executive officer of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, at which the keynote speaker was King Charles, the hereditary monarch and head of state of the UK, a nation that has recently approved yet another coal mine, expanded oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, and delayed a ban on the sale of fossil fuel-powered vehicles. WTF? It’s like hosting a Weight Watchers meeting at an all-you-can-eat buffet where the guest speaker is the CEO of McDonald’s.

This does not bode well for the future.

The other thing to bear in mind is that the power of big money has an institutional lock on the way the world's political economy operates. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the so-called end of history, there are no alternatives to the way life is organized on the planet, notwithstanding the continued existence of indigenous communities in the remaining isolated bio-diverse regions where, for one reason or another, corporate invaders are not allowed to exploit the natural resources there.

So, it looks like humanity, or at least most of it, is royally fucked.

As I sit down to start my next novel after Christmas, I can only foresee a future setting in which the current global industrial consumer civilization collapses, leaving behind a few scattered individuals trying to pick up the pieces of what remains, while trying not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Inevitably, my audience will be dispersed in space and time. Hopefully, my grandchildren will read the novel and say that Grandpa’s heart was in the right place.

 

 

 

Living On A Different Planet

 

Something is off. I can feel it, and I’m not the only one.

There’s something fundamentally wrong. It’s not at the periphery. It goes much deeper than that.

It’s as if a huge crack has emerged at the foundation of Western civilization, threatening to bring the whole thing crashing down.

There are no quick fixes.

It's about how we imagine reality and our place in it.

The modern sense of reality has been long in the making and has come to dominate the planet and all other ways of being on Earth. It was born on European soil, took root in the minds of many, and guided the great enterprise of imperial conquest, the slave trade, the rise of the nation-state, the industrial revolution, a world at war, the great acceleration, the information revolution, globalization, and climate change.

Some would have us believe in its narrative of progress: of humans moving from dank caves, huddled around fires, to finally finding their place among the stars. Others would invoke the myth of Icarus, the boy in Greek mythology who soared high above the sea on wings of feathers and wax, but, ignoring his father's warning, flew too close to the sun, which melted his wings and sent him plummeting to his death.

Perhaps, reaching for the stars in itself is not an act of hubris, but the way we have chosen to place ourselves above nature, separate, almost god-like in the way we are changing life on the planet is, and we do so at our peril.

Humanity is experiencing an ontological conflict: two groups of the same species living on a different planet. On the one hand, we have those who believe that a Judeo-Christian God gave humans dominion over the earth and all the creatures in it, based on the idea that humans are superior and possess a God-given right to control and exploit nature for their own benefit, implying that humans are distinct, totally separate, with man being the measure of all things. Later, with the rise of rationalism in the 17th and 18th centuries, nature became viewed as a machine, to be measured, analyzed, and manipulated by humans. By the 21st century, this worldview has come to dominate and direct what takes place on the planet.

But the modern worldview, though dominant, has not eliminated other ways of being in the world. There are those who do not believe that humanity is above and separate from nature. On the contrary, they do not share the anthropocentric belief that humans are the center of the universe, entitled to disregard and devalue other forms of life and the ecosystems that sustain them. Rather, as the keystone species on the planet, humans have a duty of care to ensure that life, in all its myriad forms, thrives in the present and for future generations.

It is the presence or absence of this duty of care that creates a fundamental conflict between those who subscribe to the modern worldview and embrace a rapacious desire to extract as much wealth as possible from the world's natural resources with a devil-may-care attitude toward the consequences of their actions, and those who would impose limits on human behavior in order to exercise humanity's collective responsibility to ensure that life flourishes.

It appears that, for now, the desire to be free of all constraints and the belief in freedom’s guarantee of a better life, manifesting in unencumbered individuals trading freely in free markets, has won the day. Surprisingly, philosophic beliefs dating back to the Enlightenment, when there were less than a billion people on the planet, have remained essentially intact. Attempts to redirect a small portion of the extracted wealth to support the ecosystems and the people who dwell in them are met with savage attacks that seek to demean and denigrate anyone who dares to suggest that a redistribution of this wealth is in order. So powerful are the voices and interests that protect and advance the global industrial-consumer way of life that nothing, including the dissenting opinions of the international scientific community, will stop them from cranking up the global thermostat (now at 422 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere), which will render many parts of the planet inhospitable for both human and other-than-human life.

It is as though we are held captive in a prison of our own making while smoke and fire creep closer and closer, threatening to engulf the inmates and those who keep the prison running. Clutching the keys to the gate, the overseers are deaf and blind. Undeterred, they follow the orders on how to create an ever-expanding global economy. Their rationality prevents them from responding to the warning signs. They are like men made of tin, unable to feel the suffering of others because they have no hearts and refuse to imagine how things could be different.

The algorithms of wealth extraction churn on, and as expected, the biosphere, which supports all life, continues to degrade.

As I watch this sad spectacle unfold in slow motion, I wonder if Daedalus ever lived to rue the day he attached the wings made from wax and feathers upon his son. His neglect of his duty of care led to a tragic result. Likewise, our collective neglect of our duty of care for future generations is the stuff that tragedy is made from. 

What If We Are the Bad Guys?

I started watching the adaptation of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See on Netflix. I loved the novel and am enjoying the series. One thing I've noticed is that it's pretty obvious who the bad guys are. They wear Nazi uniforms and go around killing people.

There is a young Nazi soldier who must be a good guy because he refuses to reveal the location of the young blind girl who is now broadcasting on a radio frequency he used to listen to as a child. When confronted by a fellow soldier to reveal his secret, he responds by killing the evil Nazi and disposing of his body.

Nazis make great bad guys since there is little, if anything, they can do to redeem themselves in the eyes of the reader or viewer. Eventually, however, time moves on, and we need to look for other bad guys who come and go depending on the latest twist in the world of global politics. Russians and Serbs seem to have caught on because of their nasty accents. Arab terrorists also fit the bill, followed by Latin American drug dealers.

But what if the bad guys cannot be identified with a specific geographic location? What if the bad behavior is shared by billions of people? What if readers figure out that they are the bad guys? Will they keep reading?

It’s easy to portray the good guys. Make them victims and show them engaged in acts of kindness. Not so easy for the bad guys when the gang includes almost everyone I know, including myself.

I was born during the Great Acceleration. Houses were cheap. Cars were cheap. Gas was cheap. And life was sweet if you happened to be a white person living in North America. As I grew up, we were treated to what seemed to be a never-ending series of new consumer products and upgrades to existing ones.

I'm old enough to have started watching broadcast programs on a black-and-white television, then in color, to have the choices expanded with the advent of cable and VCRs, and finally to have been replaced by streamed programs distributed over the Internet.

Although I have chosen not to own a car, I have been a frequent flyer, taking advantage of cheap flights and visiting more than twenty-five countries around the world. In other words, I have been part of the problem, a member of the dinosaur-sized ecological footprint club.

Imagine the following scene from an American movie. It's Thanksgiving, a time of year when family members make the pilgrimage back to their parents' house for the traditional meal. Except this year, the youngest daughter has decided not to attend. She says she can't justify making a trip that will spew more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The rest of the family is appalled. How can she be so disrespectful to the sanctity of the family? What's her problem? Is showing her East Coast friends how woke she is more important than being with her family?

I seriously doubt a scene like this would make it to the big screen in movie theaters or the smaller screens scattered around the house. It cuts to the quick. There is a problem most families avoid talking about. How is our North American lifestyle contributing to the climate catastrophe now underway? Instead, let's deny that a problem exists. Let's vilify someone so we can all enjoy our gluttonous feast and give thanks that we're not sweltering in 50-degree heat nor ass-deep in floodwaters.

Scenes like this raise doubts about what the hell is going on. No doubt some viewers would interpret the scene as not supporting the dubious claim that there is something wrong with the daughter, but that there is something wrong with the family, something wrong with the way they live.

But people don't want to feel guilty, so they're not inclined to consume entertainment that evokes feelings of moral failure. Film and fiction distributors don't readily support such artistic visions. There's more money to be made in offering escape. Life is hard enough without being reminded of what lies ahead. The band plays on while the women and children scramble for the lifeboats.

I wonder if we have entered a new epoch of artistic expression. I remember studying Renaissance poetry, the Victorian novel, and 20th-century American literature at university. Perhaps my grandchildren will be able to recognize the film and fiction of the early Anthropocene period.

Living and Writing in the Anthropocene

I don't need to imagine a dystopian future. The Anthropocene epoch is already here. Extreme weather events are happening right now where I live in South America. Right now, there is a severe drought in the higher altitudes of the Andes in Ecuador and Colombia, the Amazon basin, and it extends further south into Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, and Uruguay, and north into Panama, where the Panama Canal is drying up, causing a severe reduction in the number of ships passing through the canal, and also in Mexico, particularly Mexico City, where officials have begun to restrict water use as freshwater reservoirs continue to shrink.

How does this affect me?

The lack of rain has lowered the production of hydroelectric power where I live, leaving the Ecuadorian government no choice but to impose rolling blackouts throughout the country, which means that I am currently without electricity for two hours in the early afternoon every day.

Fortunately, my laptop is charged, and I can use the time to get back into a writing routine. For me, it's an inconvenience that I can easily take advantage of. Others are not so lucky. For them, the loss of electricity means a loss of income in a country where the average person earns only $6000 USD per year.

On the coast of Ecuador, we only have two seasons: the rainy and the dry. At the end of the last rainy season, it took almost two extra months for the savannah-like climate to return. A surplus of rain brought floods to my city, turning the normally dry vegetation into vast swaths of green.

We were warned that the onset of El Niño, the cyclical warming of the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean, now intensified by global warming, could bring extreme weather conditions. Drought and its impact on power generation were predicted. Fortunately, the early onset of heavy rains in the Andes has brought some relief, but what worries us now is the possibility of diluvial rainfall in the coming months, such as California received during the winter of 2022-23.

In fact, climatologists are warning that there is a good chance that this year's El Niño could bring catastrophic flooding the likes of which we haven't seen since 1998, when floods destroyed crops, roads, and bridges, caused landslides, soil erosion, and water contamination, and were responsible for 300 deaths and the displacement of more than 30,000 people.

Right now, the sea level is fifteen centimeters higher than normal, and the water temperature is three degrees warmer than average along the coast of Ecuador, which doesn't bode well for the immediate future. Reading this in a report, I couldn't help but think of Hurricane Otis, which recently devastated Acapulco, Mexico. In less than twelve hours, Otis went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane, becoming the strongest storm on record to hit the Pacific coast of Mexico, taking dozens of lives and causing billions of dollars in damage.

I have reason to be concerned. I have reason to feel a twinge of eco-anxiety, but given the potential impact of El Niño on my life here in Ecuador, I feel remarkably calm. I guess all those years of watching news reports of catastrophic weather events in distant places have numbed me to the possibility that I could become a victim of climate change.

Until it happens to you, it's someone else's problem. In other words, if you don't realize that you're in harm's way, you'll just go on living your life like everyone else around you.

Ay, there’s the rub.

Those of us fortunate enough to have been born in the global North tend to take our collective comfort for granted, as if we had an inalienable right to live our lives in the lap of luxury, the right to indulge in the spoils of five hundred years of imperial conquest. However, as historical climate patterns enter an unstable, perhaps chaotic phase, there is no escape on the planet from the vagaries of the emerging hydrological cycle, which swings wildly from one extreme to another, making once-in-a-century weather events a regular occurrence.

At present, those with the most to lose are pinning their hopes on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to find a lasting solution to the most serious global threat since the deployment of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Despite annual meetings of the COP, the UNFCCC's supreme decision-making body, no binding agreement has emerged to curb the production and burning of fossil fuels. As a result, greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere and global warming is accelerating.

With no viable solution on the horizon, it appears that the New Global Order has adopted the survival of the richest as its modus operandi, both within and between nation-states. Nations in the global South are being devastated by changing weather patterns due to the consumption patterns of those in the North. Calls for financial aid to respond to the economic and humanitarian disasters caused by extreme weather events are heard, but not acted upon. Having already been stripped of much of their natural resources during centuries of wealth extraction, first by Europeans and then by Americans, the poor nations of the global South are ill-equipped to meet the challenges of life in the Anthropocene.

Similarly, the treatment previously reserved for the colonized is now being applied to the population within the rich nations. Inflated asset values are driving up the cost of living for those who must work to live. In order to maintain a middle-class lifestyle, many are forced to increase the number of hours they work as side hustles become pervasive. Those "essential workers" who are unable to increase their income face the unenviable choice of paying rent and utilities or buying food. Worse, as affordable housing becomes scarce, the poor are forced to live out of their cars and vans or on the streets. No wonder life expectancy in the U.S. is declining, especially for people of color and those without college degrees.

What the rentier and the salaried classes have in common is an aversion to loss that prevents any meaningful reduction in the burning of fossil fuels. For the rentier class, global economic growth, which is predicated on fossil fuels, must continue in order to maintain the desired return on investment and increase the accumulation of financial wealth. For the salaried class, the transition away from fossil fuels can only be tolerated if there is no loss of material comfort. Together, both classes conspire to keep the industrial consumer civilization in place, allowing only marginal changes, such as the addition of renewable energy sources to the ever-increasing fossil fuel energy supply.  Consequently, we see a few electric vehicles on the road, a few solar panels on houses, and a few wind turbines in the distance, times whose presence gives the false hope that things are about to change, but in reality, there is little if any hope that humanity can prevent catastrophic global warming from taking place.

These are the in which we live.

As a writer, I feel the need to capture in a story my experience of watching a civilization collapse. I don’t think a post-apocalyptic tale will do. There is too much still in play, and future generations will want to know:

“What were you thinking?”

“How could you turn this beautiful planet into a living hell?”

“For what?”

“So, a few of you would never have to work and could enjoy the finest things that money can buy?”

“And you let them?”

“Your crimes against the future of humanity will never be forgotten.”

“May you find your just reward in the afterlife. May you feel the pain of those whose lives you have destroyed.”

 

It's good to feel my creative juices flow again. To return to the flow. 

The Lost Souls of Guayaquil

Spectacularly creative and emotionally gripping. The Lost Souls of Guayaquil is an original and thought-provoking novel about life, death, and what defines us in between.

This masterful piece of magic realism is intimately tied to class struggle, political violence, and social inequity. The straightforward narration is visceral, personal, and richly layered with cultural detail, bringing scenes and characters to believable life. The depth of detail depicting the spiritual and healing practices found in Ecuador is immersive and fascinating, while the author's intensely journalistic tone will leave jaws dropped with the sheer power of the prose.

This surreal plunge into the past and beyond is difficult to put down -- or forget.

Order Here

It's The End Of The World As We Know It

First, there was the plague. In February 2020, the Coronavirus pandemic seized the planet, disrupting normal life, and taking more than five million lives and counting as it spread despite humanity’s best efforts to limit its reach. Then, there was fire. In the summer of 2021, in the paradisal setting of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, Canada, the temperature rose to 49.6 degrees Celsius as a heat dome settled upon the Pacific Northwest. The day after the record high was set, the village of Lytton burst into flames, destroying more than 90% of the buildings in the village. Houses on the adjacent Lytton First Nation reserves, home to the Nlaka’pamux people who have resided on the territory for thousands of years, also burned to the ground. Hundreds of people in the province died from heat-related illness; more than a billion sea animals were cooked alive; and crops were destroyed – the cherries were roasting on the trees Then came the floods. In November 2021, an atmospheric river drenched the region that had just survived the summer wildfires. More than a month’s rain fell during 24 hours, causing massive flooding, and forcing the evacuation of the entire population of nearby Merrit, British Columbia, with approximately 8,000 residents. Vancouver, Canada’s largest port, was cut off from the rest of the country; the principal roads and rail lines had been washed away. 

Burned to the Ground: The Canadian village incinerated by record temperatures (watch video)

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/jun/08/burned-to-the-ground-the-canadian-village-incinerated-by-record-temperatures

Suddenly, there were thousands of climate change refugees looking for shelter. In a weird twist of fate, a nearby Seventh Day Adventist Summer Camp and Conference Center, aptly named Camp Hope, offered to take in some of Merrit’s refugees. In case you are wondering, The Seventh Day Adventists are a Protestant denomination that strongly believes in the sanctity of the Sabbath and the imminent second coming of Jesus, in other words, a doctrine that incorporates a strong belief in the end of days as spelled out in the bible. A few weeks earlier, Camp Hope had taken in refugees from the Lytton First Nation reserves. As a result, Camp Hope became the meeting place for displaced people from both Indigenous communities and the descendants of the European settlers who made their way onto what had been exclusively Indigenous land.

You have to think at some point in time, there would be an exchange, some type of communication between these two forsaken groups. I would love to have been there. A clash of civilizations. Competing narratives trying to make sense of what had just happened. I imagine someone from the Nlaka’pamux band lashing out at one of the beleaguered, white residents from Merrit, saying something to the effect, “Look at us. We tried to warn you. But you wouldn’t listen.” And a Seventh-Day Adventist handing them both a pamphlet explaining how these types of natural catastrophes are a warning of the second coming.

Personally, I don’t think it’s necessary to cite scripture to understand what’s happening, although the idea of the apocalypse certainly appears to be in play. Instead, we can look to science to give us an explanatory narrative, which unfortunately might be even more frightening than end-of-days scenarios we have previously known.

In short, we have left the Holocene geological epoch, the period of time after the last ice age in which the planet’s climate warmed and remained stable for approximately 10,000 years, giving rise to human civilization. Some time ago, we entered into the Anthropocene epoch, the period of time in which human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet's climate and ecosystems. That of course came about with the invention of the steam engine, giving birth to the Industrial Age and the corelating burning of fossil fuels to propel the economic expansion.

With the increase of CO2 released into the atmosphere due to the burning of coal, oil, and gas, scientists correctly predicted that this would have an effect on the environment: higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere would increase its greenhouse effect, eventually leading to global warming. The particulars, how much and how fast, have been the subject of intense debate, but the underlying principles to why the planet could expect global climate change if we continued to indiscriminately dump trillions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere were sound.

Some scientists label the 1950s as the point in time in which the Great Acceleration occurs, a period of time in which the consumption of material goods begins to skyrocket worldwide as the planet’s inhabitants yearn and aspire to North American levels of consumption. In 1958, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was approximately 310 parts per million (ppm). Today (Nov. 17, 2021), the concentration was measured at 414 ppm, an increase of a mind-boggling 33% in only sixty short years, a blink of an eye in geological time.

As could be expected, the planet has warmed up since the dawn of the industrial age, approximately 1.2 degrees Celsius and that has already brought on cataclysmic climate change: glaciers in retreat, polar ice caps melting, extended periods of severe drought, unprecedented wildfires in North America, Europe, and Australia, increased atmospheric disturbances, grasslands turning into desserts, and ocean acidification leading to the death of coral reefs, to mention a few.

It’s not as if the leaders of the countries in the Global North had not been forewarned. As early as 1957, scientists in the United States sensed the potential scale of the problem that global warming presented – human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future – and decided to build a site to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide near the summit of Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii, 11,500 feet above sea level. For ten years, they collected data, and Presidents were informed of the potential risks of global warming. Finally, in 1979, at the request of President Jimmy Carter and the National Academy of the Sciences, the Climate Research Board was convened to assess the future climatic changes resulting from man-made releases of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The Board reached a stark conclusion in its report: Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. The Assessment predicts that based on current rates of CO2 emissions (emission rates have increased significantly since the publication of the report) the global surface of the earth will warm 2 to 3.5 degrees Celsius, more so at higher latitudes, sometime during the twenty-first century.

During the 1980s, the Americans and the rest of the world dithered when it came to reducing CO2 emissions. Instead, attention was focused on the problem of atmospheric pollution caused by the release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) normally emitted by refrigeration, solvents, and aerosol sprays that were reducing the level of ozone in the atmosphere (remember the hole in the ozone layer), thereby allowing a dangerous level of ultraviolet light to reach the earth, potentially causing unprecedented levels to skin cancer to appear. Here was a problem that was much easier to fix. To their credit, representatives from around the world were able to negotiate an agreement, the Montreal Protocol, to reduce the use of CFCs, and the threat to human health was successfully mitigated. Yet, such an agreement, although showing that international cooperation to solve a global environmental problem was possible, did nothing to abate the increasing extraction and burning of fossil fuels globally.

There was a ray of hope in 1988 when NASA climate scientist, Jim Hansen, appeared before a Senate Committee and reported that there was undeniable evidence establishing the link between an increase in global surface temperatures and the greenhouse effect. The signal had emerged from the noise and the world took notice. That same year the United Nations established the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which was tasked to periodically provide reports concerning climate change, drawing upon the peer-reviewed scientific research papers from around the world. A few years later (1995) the United Nations sponsored the first annual global conference about climate change held in Berlin. Some twenty years later, it appeared that some progress had been made at the level of discussions: during the 2015 conference in Paris, an agreement was struck to provide a global framework to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius while pursuing efforts to limit the warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In some people’s minds, the Paris Agreement represented a potential pathway to avoid catastrophic climate change. A glimmer of hope – perhaps, but in reality, despite all the talk, more CO2 was being dumped into the atmosphere than ever before.

Looking at the data compiled and presented by Barry Saxifrage in the following charts concerning the consumption of oil, gas, and coal, it is clear that the global burning of fossil fuels has actually increased dramatically since 1990.

 As measured by the metric, tonne of oil equivalent (toe), a metric used to compare different sources of energy (a Mtoe is a million toe and a Gtoe is a billion toe), the level of consumption of all fossil fuels combined rose from 7.1 Gtoe in 1990 to 11.7 Gtoe in 2018, a staggering increase of 65%. As could be expected, the acceleration of the global fossil fuel burn would show up in the CO2 atmospheric measurements at the Mauna Loa observatory: from 1990 to 1999 the annual mean of atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased 1.50 parts per million (ppm) per year; from 2000 to 2009 the annual mean increased 1.97 ppm per year; and from 2010 to 2018 the annual mean increased 2.40 ppm per year. This acceleration should be more than a cause for concern because the trend raises the specter of catastrophic climate change.

 

 

Looking at the global fossil fuel burn from a longer historical perspective, we discover that more than 80% of the CO2 emissions dumped into the atmosphere occurred after the Great Acceleration in the 1950s, and more than 50% since 1990 when the threat of global warming had become well known in the political corridors around the world.

No wonder the youth of today look at the UN-sponsored conferences on global change with cynicism. In their eyes, the world’s politicians have been co-opted by the multinational fossil fuel corporations, and both are engaged in a concerted effort to greenwash the future, which will certainly be bleak for future generations if the present trends continue.

For example, the latest global conference held in Glasgow in 2021, COP26, confirmed that such meetings were, in the words of the world-renown, young activist, Greta Thunberg, little more than “blah, blah, blah.”

And she’s right.

The take-a-ways from COP26 included more hollow pledges committing governments to future actions that have no compliance measures to ensure that the reductions in the burning of fossil fuels will be met; a laughable recognition that the burning of fossil fuels is linked to climate change; and the failure to put into words the commitment to “phase out”, not “phase down” the burning of coal.

What is more telling are the actions undertaken by the governments of the world leaders who try to pass themselves off as climate change warriors. In the case of Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, his government bought the Trans Mountain pipeline so to continue with its construction it would triple the amount of tar sand oil, one of the most destructive carbon-intensive and toxic fuels on the planet, to be exported from Alberta. The pipeline runs across British Columbia, a province that has just been hit with two climate change catastrophes in less than six months. In a similar vein, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, has lent his support to the building of the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, slated to be the longest in the world, bringing even more oil to global markets, in order to increase France’s economic presence in the region. Finally, the American President, Joe Biden, proud of the green energy proposals in his Build Back Better plan recently signed into law, failed to halt the approvals for companies to drill for oil and gas on U.S. public lands – more than 2000 permits were approved during his first six months in office – and his administration opened up more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to auction for oil and gas drilling only four days after the close of COP 26 in Glasgow, a lease sale that has the potential to emit more than 500 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

Here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter how many new clean energy resources we develop to fuel our vehicles, heat our homes, and light our buildings as long as we continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere. Adding new CO2 at the present rate increases the greenhouse effect and, as a result, increases global warming, regardless of how much of our energy needs are met by renewable resources.

As the following chart demonstrates, the growth in the available amount of clean energy is woefully insufficient to match our energy needs as compared to the global fossil fuel burn.

As Saxifrage’s chart shows, the energy obtained from renewables and nuclear power did increase significantly from 1990 to 2018, from 1.0 Gtoe to 2.1 Gtoe, an increase of 1.1 Gtoe. However, the energy obtained from burning fossil fuels in absolute terms increased from 7.1 Gtoe to 11.7 Gtoe, an increase of 4.6 Gtoe. Thus, the increase in energy obtained from the burning of fossil fuels was four times greater than the increase in energy obtained from renewables and nuclear power. Moreover, the gap between the two categories of energy use has risen from 6.1 Gtoe in 1990 to 9.6 Gtoe in 2018. This is cause for concern since the global demand for energy is returning to pre-pandemic levels, thereby re-establishing the historic trend of the use of energy from burning fossil fuels far outstripping the use of energy from other sources. 

According to Saxifrage, “it is just another form of climate denial to expect clean energy to force fossil fuel burning to fall — let alone fall all the way down to zero as required to avoid a climate crisis.” I agree. It is also another form of climate denial to expect carbon sequestration technology or geoengineering interventions to counteract potential catastrophic climate change without severely reducing the global fossil fuel burn.

So, either we eliminate the use of energy obtained from burning fossil fuels – an extremely disruptive change, requiring fundamental changes to the way we lead our lives and organize our societies – or we continue along our present collective path, leading us to the possible extinction of the human species as the planet’s atmosphere morphs into one that no longer supports human life.

Such a scenario makes me think about the pamphlets the Seventh Day Adventists were handing out to the climate change refugees in Camp Hope, British Columbia. If I could rewrite the story in the pamphlet, I would say that we were all born into something like the Garden of Eden, but we were not cast out. On the contrary, those of us lucky to find ourselves in paradise never learned when enough is enough, and we let our desire to have more and more get the better of us, and we chose to ignore the warning signs that we were destroying the garden. Moreover, we decided to build a wall around a portion of the garden and began to transfer the wealth from outside the walls inside, leaving the people who lived outside of the walls to live on the impoverished soil. Those living inside the fortress blamed the poorer people for their plight, saying that they deserved their misfortune because the outcasts were liars, and cheaters, and refused to help themselves.

I would also change the part that deals with the apocalypse. In the biblical version, as prophesized in the Book of Revelation, the apocalypse depicts the complete destruction of the world preceding the establishment of a new world and heaven. In my version, the destruction of human civilization is not a prelude to a better life. Rather, the massive die-off of humans is simply a stage in the evolution of the planet: the dominant species on the planet became too numerous and greedily devoured as much of the planet’s natural resources as it could, destroying the habitat that made its life possible on earth, and putting into play planetary forces out of their control that over time brings about the extinction of the species. Humans may be warm-blooded and capable of performing advanced cognitive feats, like putting a man on the moon, harnessing the tremendous energy contained within a single atom, or writing a symphony that elicits tears of joy, but when it comes to our collective intelligence, we are like the dinosaurs that used to be the dominant species and met their demise as a result of climate change.

The other thing that calls into question our collective intelligence is that unlike the biblical version, where the coming of the end of days is revealed, and the hidden information about God, the real nature of our lives and the spiritual world is made known, humanity knows very well what will bring about its demise, but chooses to do little or nothing to change the path it’s on.

The scientific evidence available to all doesn’t lie. The message is clear: stop extracting and burning fossil fuels!

Yet, we continue on this path as if there were no tomorrow. Consequently, I feel like I am a character in a science fiction film in which humanity learns that there is an asteroid hurtling toward the earth and will destroy the planet upon impact. However, in this movie, there are no heroes that save the day. As well, the cascade of natural disasters unfolds in what appears to be slow motion. This movie doesn’t last two hours; it runs for decades, perhaps for centuries, slowly grinding towards its inevitable conclusion: the end of the world as we know it.