February 4, 2012
Framework for a Response to global Warming
Levels of Consciousness:
In Latin, it was called genius seculi – genius, meaning “the guardian spirit,” seculi, “of the age.”
Persian poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207-1273 C.E.) knew that different periods in the history of humans have their typical genius seculi, and that one must ever thrive to have the most encompassing, unitary view. He saw his own age as dividing human behavior into categories of right and wrong, and wrote:
Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in
that grass,
the world is
too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each
other”
do not make any sense.
In 1769, translating genius seculi as Zeitgeist, German philosopher Johann von Herder (1744-1803) specified its meaning as the general mood, ambiance, morals and socio-cultural direction of an era.
German-American physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) noted that the type of problems humans have, are associated with a particular way of thinking. He observed:
“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them.”
Studying development, 20th century psychologists realized that in all its aspects, development occurs in stages (levels):
Jean Piaget (1896-1980), described the stages of the cognitive line,
Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), those of needs,
Clare Graves (1914-1986), those of values,
Jane Loevinger (1918-2008) those of the self-concept,
Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987), those of morality,
Carol Gilligan (1936-), those of moral development in women.
In his 1977 book, The spectrum of consciousness, American philosopher Ken Wilber (1949-) postulated that consciousness has a range from sub-conscious to self-conscious to super-conscious, and that as it develops, it expands through stages, taking with it the lines of development. The average level of consciousness in a population is typical of that particular age in human history. Our age, for instance, emphasizes our own self, our ego.
Problems of our Age
Water – The Jordan River: Water availability is a typical problem of our age – aggravated by global warming.
In 1948, Jewish immigrants to the Middle East arrived in an already water-stressed region. In 1953, Israel started a project to divert water from the Jordan River, provoking a predictable reaction from Syria and Jordan, which then themselves initiated a water diversion project from tributaries of the River.
The 1967 Six-Day War not only quadrupled Israel’s territories, it also changed the hydrological balance of power in the Middle East. Before the War, Israel controlled less than 10 percent of the Jordan River watershed. After the War, it had military control of the Golan Heights (the catchment area of the Sea of Galilee), and full control of the entire Jordan River watershed. (In 1981, Israel would annex the Golan Heights outright). In addition, Israel controlled the three aquifers under the West Bank [the Mountain (Yarkon-Tanninim), the Nablus-Gilboa, and the Eastern Aquifers]. At present (2010), the Jordan River and the Mountain aquifer supply Israel with two-thirds of its water consumption.
Ariel Sharon, then General and later Prime Minister (2001-2006),
was explicit about water as a vital aim of the War:
“People generally regard June 5, 1967, as the day the Six-Day War began. That is the official date, but, in reality, it started 2 ½ years earlier, on the day Israel decided to act against the diversion of the Jordan River. While the border disputes between Syria and ourselves were of great significance, the matter of water diversion was a stark issue of life and death” (Solomon 2010, p. 402. Wikipedia “Jordan River,” p. 3).
In his 2006 book, When the Rivers run dry – what happens when our water runs out? Fred Pearce concludes:
“The 1967 Six-Day War is perhaps the first water war of the modern age,
since it left the Jordan Basin almost entirely under Israeli ‘hydrological
rule’” (Pearce 2006, p. 187. See Welzer 2008, pp. 79 and 198).
At present (2010), the water consumption of the Israelis is 330, and that of the Palestinians is 60 liters per capita per day. The World Health Organization puts the minimum amount of water required daily at 100 liters per capita per day.
Water scarcity is looming, even for the Israelis. The flow of the Jordan River into the Dead Sea has been reduced by 98 percent (from 1,300 million to 25 million cubic meters per year). Both the principal aquifers on which Israel relies (the Mountain Aquifer, which it shares with the Palestinians) and its own Coastal Aquifer, are rapidly being depleted.
Land – The Sudan: Sudan is the third largest country in Africa. The Nubian Desert in the north is subject to sun-blocking sandstorms. The western region is semi-arid. In 2011, Sudan’s population (including South Sudan, which seceded in July 2011), was 45 million, up from 12 million in 1960. One third of the population is under-nourished, and 17 percent live on less than $1.25 per day. Infant mortality (2008-2010 average) is 72 deaths per 1,000 live births – ten times that of the United States (7 deaths per 1,000 live births). Life expectancy is 55 years. The capital city, Khartoum, is 80 percent slums. At any one time, one third of the population in Khartoum has diarrhea. Expansion of the desert southward (at 2.5 kilometers per year), deforestation, decreasing soil fertility and the receding water table are major problems.
A British colony since 1889, Sudan gained its independence in 1954. Since 1983, civil war and famine have killed 2 million and displaced 4 million. In 1989, Colonel Omar al-Bashir took power in a coup d’état and still rules today. In 1993, the United States declared Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism.
In 2003-2004, conflict in Darfur, Sudan’s western region, killed up to 400,000 – weapons being mostly provided by China. Since 2008, President al-Bashir has been under indictment by the International Criminal Court for genocide in Darfur, accused of arming the (mostly) Arab nomadic tribesmen (the Janjaweed) to drive out the (mostly) black African farmers. There is evidence that al-Bashir has embezzled $9 billion.
In his 2008 book, Climate wars – why people will be killed in the 21st century, Harald Welzer observes:
“Sudan is the first case of a war-torn country where climate change is unquestionably one cause of violence and civil war” (p. 12).
In 2009, Lumumba Di-Aping, Sudan’s chief climate change negotiator, represented the G77 group of developing countries at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN-FCCC), in Copenhagen, Denmark. Not only did Di-Aping remind the West of its colonialism and slave-trade, he reminded it of its gas chambers. On the occasion of a proposal by the United States that industrialized countries create a fund of $100 billion a year to finance the adaptation of developing countries to climate change, Di-Aping threw the gauntlet:
“(The Copenhagen Accord) is asking Africa to sign a suicide pact, an
incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic independence of a few
countries. It is a solution based on the
same values that funneled six million people in Europe into furnaces.”
The Western delegates remonstrated, but the G77 Group knew that $100 billion a year is far below the minimum of $250 billion annually which the United Nations calculates is necessary to help poor countries adapt to climate change. They also knew that in the world’s $60 trillion economy, even the $250 billion a year would hardly count as a redistribution of wealth.
A higher Level of Consciousness:
What would happen if we met the international community in the “field” Rumi sees beyond ideas of right and wrong, where not duality, but unity prevails? What if we stepped up on the ladder, and saw the panorama of humanity as one species among countless species which have lived on Earth, more than 99.9 percent of which have become instinct? What if our focus were a decrease in human suffering rather than an increase in gross domestic product? What if we took it upon ourselves to bring our population in balance with Earth’s available resources, rather than let nature do it brutally and haphazardly, mainly by killing the innocents?
Gautama Buddha (c.486-c.411 B.C.E.) taught the doctrine of paticca samuppada (“dependent co-arising,” or “origin in interconnectedness”) – what we would call today co-evolution. Acharya Nagarjuna (c.150-c.250 C.E.), founder of Mahayana Buddhism, saw no isolated entities, separate from each other, with essential natures or essences. He saw only relationships, only inter-dependence. The Chinese avatamsaka (“Flower Garland”) sutra of Mahayana Buddhism describes the universe as made up of an infinite number of realms mutually containing each other, “one great scheme of interdependency.” The symbol is Indra’s net, the net which Indra, the lord of heaven, has over his palace, and which stretches to infinity in all directions. At each node of the net is a jewel which in itself has no substance. Each jewel derives its existence only from its reflection of all the other jewels in the net.
We, in the West, and increasingly globally, have chosen Midas’ touch rather than Indra’s net as our principal metaphor. In Metamorphoses (“Transformations”), the Greek poet Ovid (43 B.C.E.-c.17 C.E.) describes how Dionysus, the god of grape harvest and wine, in return for a favor, offered King Midas anything he wished. Midas asked that whatever he touched turn into gold. The King put his new power to the test and rejoiced. He touched an oak twig and it turned into gold. He touched a stone and it too turned into gold.
“So Midas, King of Lydia, at first swelled with pride when he found he
could transform everything he touched into gold. But when he beheld his food grow rigid and his drink harden into golden ice, he understood
that the gift was a curse.”
Dionysus heard Midas’ pleadings, and extinguished his power. A chastened Midas retired to the countryside to worship Pan, god of nature, the wild, creativity, and rustic music.
The problems which face us today, from global warming to overuse of all our resources, the extinction of species at 6,000 times their natural rate, the occurrence of peak oil production in 2005, the risks inherent in technologies such as the production of nuclear energy, the extraction of oil from tar sands, geo-engineering of the Planet, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology, are based on King Midas’ level of consciousness.
Life cannot survive in isolation. There is no individual life apart from other forms of life. There is only one biosphere, and it consists of the interpenetration of all life. It is the only biosphere we know of in our universe. We have it on loan. We are now destroying it. How to save it?
References
Levels of Consciousness:
Rumi, Jalal ad-Din. “Great Wagon – Extract from a Poem”
http://www.wretch.cc/blog/nt30807a/7431238. Accessed 02/05/12.
Think Exist. Undated. “Albert Einstein Quotes.”
http://thinkexist.com/quotation. Accessed 02/05/12.
Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Updated in 2012. Accessed 02/05-08/12.
“Johann Gottfried Herder.”
“Rumi.”
“Zeitgeist.”
Wilber, Ken. 2006. “The many Names of the Levels of Consciousness.”
Problems of our Age:
Water – The Jordan River:
Brown, Lester, 2011. “Aquifer Depletion.” Encyclopedia of Earth. March 22.
http://www.eoearth.org/article. Accessed 02/05/12.
Darwish, Adel, 1994. “Water Wars – Water, the next major Conflict in the Middle East. Lecture, Geneva Conference on Environment and Quality of Life. June.
http://www.mideastnews.com. Accessed 02/07/12.
Lendman, Stephen. 2008. “Drought – Israeli Policy threatens West Bank Water.” July 17.
http://rense.com/general82/drought.html. Accessed 02/05/12.
Qtaishat, Tala. 2008. “Jordan River – from RA Workbook Assignment for Rangeland Resources and Watershed Management Course.” North Dakota State University. Spring.
http://wiki.resalliance.org/index.php. Accessed 02/05/12
Solomon, Steven. 2010. Water – the epic struggle for wealth, power, and civilization. New York, N.Y.: Harper/Perennial. Pp. 401-403.
Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Updated in 2012. Accessed 02/05-08/12.
“Golan Heights.”
“Golan Heights – Map,”
“Jordan River.”
“Jordan River – Map.”
“List of Aquifers.”
“Six-Day War.”
“Six-Day War Territories, Map.”
“War over Water.”
“Water Politics.”
“Water Politics in the Middle East.”
Land – The Sudan:
Brookings, 2012. “When to indict? International criminal Indictments, Peace Processes, and humanitarian Action. Paper, dated April 2009.” (Jacqueline Geis and Alex Mundt). February 5.
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/04. Accessed 02/05/12.
IndexMundi, 2011. “Sudan demographics Profile 2012.” July 12. (Source is the CIA World Factbook).
http://www.indexmundi.com. Accessed 02/05/12.
Marsden, William. 2011. Fools rule – inside the failed politics of climate change. Toronto, Canada: Random House/Knopf.
This book is an excellent analysis of the causes for the failure of international negotiations on global warming mitigation. It juxtaposes the scientific facts about global warming with the lack of motivation of countries, such as the Arctic Five, which stand to gain from a warmer climate. See pp. 69-78 for the role of Sudan in the 2009 (Copenhagen) UN-FCCC negotiations.
NationMaster, undated. “People Statistics – Population, 1960, by Country.”
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop. Accessed 02/15/12.
Southern Sudan Commission for Census Statistics and Evaluation, Central Bureau of Statistics, Sudan integrated Food Security Information for Action, 2010. “Food and Nutrition Security Assessment in Sudan – Analysis of the 2009 national Baseline Household Survey.” Khartoum, Sudan. August.
http://www.fao.org/sudanfoodsecurity. Accessed 02/05/12.
United Nations Human Settlements Programme. Undated. “The State of the World’s Cities, 2006/7 – The urban Penalty: the Poor die young.” Nairobi, Kenya.
http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/media center. Accessed 02/05/12.
United States Government, Department of State, Bureau of African Affairs. 2012. “Background Note – Sudan.” January 10. Accessed 02/05/12.
Welzer, Harald. 2008. Climate wars – why people will be killed in the twenty-first century. Translation from German, 2011, by Patrick Camiller. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity.
With a background in the history of the Jewish Holocaust, Welzer analyses the multiple causes of violence, among which global warming will figure increasingly prominently. Welzer emphasizes that a society can change quickly – 10 years in the case of the German Reich. For Sudan, see pp. 11-12, 61-65, and 78. For water, see pp. 78-80 and 198.
Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Updated in 2012. Accessed 02/05-08/12.
“Darfur – Map.”
“List of Countries by infant Morality Rate.”
“Lumumba Di-Aping.”
“Omar al-Bashir.”
“South Sudan.”
“Sudan.”
“The War in the Soudan.” This is a U.S. poster depicting British and Mahdist armies in battle, produced to advertise a Barnum & Bailey Circus show, entitled “The Mahdi, or, For the Victoria Cross,” 1897. The caption of the poster reads, “Scene, 3rd War in the Soudan, with terrific Encounters, Assaults, naval Combats, and war-like Episodes.”
A higher Level of Consciousness:
Crundwell, Mark, and Cameron Dunn. 2011. The little book of shocking eco-facts. London, U.K.: Fiell.
I found the format of this book not conducive to discerning the causes of our destruction of nature.
Deffeyes, Kenneth. 2010. When oil peaked. New York, N.Y.: Farrar. Straus and Giroux/Hill and Wang.
I found unhelpful Deffeyes’ recommendations for geo-engineering the planet:
“How about a fleet of supersonic passenger aircraft plowing through the stratosphere, burning high-sulfur jet fuel? . . . Removal of carbon dioxide by photosynthesis in the shallow ocean is limited in some places by a shortage of iron as an essential nutrient. The suggestion is to add iron . . . Chemical or physical extraction of carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere . . . Suitably managed, contrails (condensation trails) from aircraft could help reflect incoming solar radiation” (p. 94).
Hallett, Steve, with John Wright. 2011. Life without oil. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus.
This book focuses on one of the major problems of our age – life after world peak oil production (2005):
“The planet has only two centuries of oil to offer, and the first is complete” (pp. 113. See also p. 122).
“Of the 80 million barrels of oil consumed worldwide per day, nearly 60 million are used for transportation” (p. 170).
Ophuls, William. 2011, Plato’s Revenge – Politics in the age of ecology. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
I found the solution to global warming presented in this book, not compatible with democratic goals:
“Wisdom and virtue do not arise spontaneously in human beings . . . so morality must be institutionalized and inculcated by a polity dedicated to fostering and upholding society’s norms and mores. The polity’s role is to govern” (p. 129).
“Since social conditioning is already pervasive and controls human behavior unconsciously, we must strive to do it more consciously, compassionately, and responsibly” (p. 145).
“The new politeia will derive its authority from a spiritual and ethical philosophy that performs the essential function of religion” (p. 160).
Pinker, Steven. 2011. The better angels of our nature – why violence has declined. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Group.
Pinker does not consider global warming a major problem.
Ponting, Clive. 1991/1992. A green history of the world – the environment and the collapse of great civilizations. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Group.
Summarized in Francoise Hall, 2007. “Balancing Demand and environmental Degradation.” October 14. P. 98. [The natural rate of extinctions is 0.5 species per year. The present rate (2006) is 3,000 species a year].
Thiele, Leslie. 2011. Indra’s net and the Midas touch – living sustainably in a connected world. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
This book is a thesis about systemic thinking. The title is beautifully chosen – Indra’s Net vs. Midas’ Touch.
Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki. Updated in 2012. Accessed 02/05-08/12.
“Avatamsaka Sutra.”
“Dionysus.”
“Extinction”
“Gautama Buddha.”
“Greek Mythology.”
“Huayan School.”
“Indra’s Net.”
“Metamorphoses.”
“Midas.”
“Ovid.”
“Pali Canon.”
“Pali Literature.”
“Pan” (god)
“Satyr.”
“Theravada.”
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