THE TRIPLE CRISIS AND RESOURCE WARS
“It's always too late!”
By Eda Uca-Dorn
Recently, Mike and I attended a groundbreaking conference at George Washington University , in Washington D.C. , on “Confronting the Triple Crisis: Climate Change, Peak Oil, Global Resource Depletion.” We found these crises to be profoundly connected to the cause of anti-war/nuclear abolition work and so thought it important to share with you some of the overarching themes of the event.
1. Time is not on our side .
If we allow the Earth's temperature to increase a total 2 degrees Celsius we will face an unprecedented global disaster in which the poorest people in the world will face the greatest hardship. If we do not significantly reduce our carbon emissions by 2015 and global carbon emissions by 80% in the next 45 years, we have a very poor chance of preventing that rise in temperature.
Once the temperature increases by 2 degrees Celsius, we will not be able to reverse the damage by lowering our carbon emissions. It will become a runaway train. To date, the temperature has already risen 1 degree and scientists are shocked by the speed at which the planet is responding to the heating. (Jim Hansen, NASA climatologist, is adamant that an increase of just 1 degree Celsius will lead to a devastating sea level rise.)
The kind of immediate impact we must make is beyond the holy and necessary efforts of single persons or communities. The very infrastructure of energy in this country must be changed. There is no serious plan in the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions today. Please see www.greenpeace.org/ for more information.
2. We cannot shop our way out of the problem.
While there was no unanimous solution presented by the 60 speakers, who came from 16 countries, many did say that capitalism , which assumes a limitless cornucopia of natural resources and values unlimited growth, is the fourth crisis. Many of our solutions come from within the capitalistic framework and therefore exacerbate the problem.
So-called green goods are no less destructive to the Earth in the “materials economy” (the path a product takes from dust to dust) than regular goods, and the market for “eco-friendly” products has only perpetuated our devastating exploitation of natural resources and third world peoples— not to mention the filling of landfills. For example, some of the materials that make a Prius come from Ontario's disastrous Sudbury nickel mine. Rather than waste an enormous amount of energy in transport and leach more natural resources from the limited Earth, it makes more sense to buy a good used car or, better yet, use your bike. For more on this, see Li-Hing Mui's YouTube video, “Greensumption,” and Ann Leonard's website (upcoming - for a fantastic 18-minute movie on our throwaway economy ) www.thestoryofstuff.org .
3. The biofuel/agrofuel/ethanol solution
is no solution.
Last year 20% of U.S. corn went to producing ethanol. It met 1% of U.S. fuel needs.
When one counts the total energy output of ethanol production it becomes clear that it takes, conservatively, one gallon of gasoline to produce a gallon of ethanol. Further, corn is one of the most water intensive and soil erosive crops, also requiring the highest amounts of herbicides and pesticides.
It takes 450lbs of corn to fill a 25-gallon tank or provide enough calories for one person to live for one year. The vulgarity of feeding corn to cars instead of people should be clear to any of us. If you would like to know more about this, check out “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor” by C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer in Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007. (I would be happy to mail it to you Luddites who won't google.)
4. There is no clean coal or nuclear solution.
Despite the ad campaigns, both coal and nuclear power continue to be environmentally destructive and expensive. Both industries are exploiting the Iraq war by suggesting they hold some potential of U.S. energy independence from oil.
5. The struggle of indigenous peoples is
the struggle of the whole of creation.
Indigenous peoples, who are the gatekeepers of the last pristine places on Earth, are being hounded to give up their land so that corporations and governments can steal the last of the Earth's finite resources. As they are forced out of the territories, we lose not only their spiritual and cultural contributions to the human family but also give up the Earth's last defenses against human destruction. For example, the rainforest, which is the heart of the planet, provides one-fifth of the water, 25-30% of all species, and is the pump of moisture and warmth for the planet. There are 400 indigenous groups that live in the Amazon and they are rapidly losing their land to “development” and deforestation. If we lose 40% of the Amazon, it will reach a tipping point where it can no longer maintain itself against total deforestation. Deforestation currently accounts for 20-25% of carbon emissions globally. To learn more about the struggle, read the historic, newly passed, non-binding U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (The only countries that did not sign the document were the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They all share in common the presence of indigenous peoples on their lands.)
6. Climate change is one of the most pressing anti-war/nuclear abolition issues of the day.
The Pentagon already said in 2003 in a (leaked) top-secret report to Bush that climate change is the greatest potential threat to U.S. resource security. According to the Pentagon, global warming will create mass famine and drought, which will lead to endemic conflict over resources such as water. The Pentagon projects that nuclear conflict will be a part of this scenario.
Many of the speakers at the teach-in believe that instead of powering down, the government has been pursuing (prior to this administration) and will pursue (after this administration) a “last man standing,” homicidal world war mentality. And, they are building nuclear weapons to be “smaller, safer, and more usable” in order to win the resource wars to come.
Sisters and brothers, I was deeply grieved by the conference but will leave you with what John Passacantando of Greenpeace shared: It's always too late. It was too late for slavery, it was too late for women's rights, it was too late for Vietnam, but still we must persist. Do not give in to despair. We are, after all, often persuaded to despair by the same parties that only just recently encouraged us into disbelief of the problem. So do not despair, but engage in the work you do with love for doing the right thing.