Yes...but!

July 7 2008

Home > Columns >Yes...But! Year 8-35

What have a G-string and the G8 in common? Read on.

This week the G8 meets in Japan. Look at the participants: dead-duck Bush, Stephen Harper, deep down in the polls, UK’s Gordon Brown and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy both extremely unpopular at home, the Italian and the Japanese PMs just new at the job, while only Angela Merkel of Germany has a comfortable lead. Her country is the only one intensively involved in new ways of renewable energy.

These 8 heads of state are in the land of the Rising Sun to discuss the unrelenting heat from our solar system. Officially the meeting is all about the Environment. Actually they don’t give a hoot about that subject. What really interests them is Oil, the more the better. That’s why a new war is brewing, perhaps the War to end all Wars: our Fossil fueled Economy versus nature-based Ecology.

It’s not easy to be a participant in the Oil Economy today: those in the money market face firings, thanks to greedy banks and investment firms; those in the transportation industry, whether in the air, on the road or on the factory floor, all experience drastic cutbacks; those in the service industries see plunging sales, and even Starbucks is suffering. So what is a person to do when the choice is between the Economy and Ecology. Who will win? I can tell you right now that it isn’t the economy.

Here’s why. First some back ground. Both concepts have Greek roots. “Eco” in both words comes from oikos, the Greek word of ‘household’. In Eco-nomy the ‘nomy’ part comes from the Greek ‘nomos’ meaning ‘law’ or ‘custom’, ‘something that regulates’, so that, following closely the Greek meaning, economy basically means "the management of one’s household".

The word ‘ecology’ was coined in the 1860's by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Its second root is ‘logos’ meaning "logic, word, study of" (as in sociology, biology, etc.). In modern English, it now means "study of (Nature's) household". So you could say that Economy and Ecology are related.

As is often the case where there is war between close relatives the conflict is more brutal. We see it in the Israel-Palestinian ordeal, where both are Abraham’s offspring; we saw it in the American and Spanish Civil wars; we often see it in religion as well.

As the economy suffers, people will clamor for more relaxed environmental policies, even though Climate Change disasters are much more frequent, in the form of floods, drought and tornadoes.

This G8 meeting is again in Japan, famous also for another conference: there the Kyoto Protocol was forged in 1995. In that ancient Japanese city, the world’s nations solemnly promised to cut Green House Gases by 5 percent below 1990 levels before 2012. Canada set an even more ambitious goal: it promised to reduce them by 8 percent. Well, we aren’t quite there yet: so far we are more than 30 percent above that goal, in spite of Stephane Dion naming his dog after this treaty.

Since then something else has popped up, something not at all in the cards 13 years ago. Last week the New Scientist reported a survey of oil industry experts, which found that most of them believe global oil supplies will peak by 2010. If they are right – and all signs point that way – the war between Ecology and Economy will only intensify, as the only substitutes for oil are coal and nuclear. A sudden loss of oil means that we face, in the words of the US Department of Energy in 2005, a “crisis unlike any yet faced by modern industrial society”. So will the fight now get really dirty, with highly polluting coal as the only immediate alternative, causing more heavenly havoc?

Had we really taken Kyoto seriously, had we looked ahead and recognized that oil is a finite resource with a definite expiry date then the war between the Oil-based Economy and the Nature-based Ecology would have only been a skirmish, only a minor conflict. But with our male superiority complex - real men drive SUVs, race on ATVs, Snowmobiles and Seadoos, and ride on lawnmowers in puny yards - Kyoto was doomed from the start. Also our federal authorities couldn’t care less, giving toxic tax concessions to Tar sand development, so much that Canada is second-last in Climate Change ranking, while we had promised to be ahead of everybody.

Now our leaders see coal as the only alternative. Yet abandoning oil or coal signifies only temporary economic dislocations, while ensuring life. More coal or oil guarantees global disaster. It reminds me of Deuteronomy 30:15: “See I set before you life and prosperity, death and destruction.”

If only we had looked closer to the workings of Nature's household: Ecology. However, in possessing the magic of oil, we ignored that we are completely dependent upon a healthy Nature. Any child knows that everything, including economics, depends on the environment as the ultimate source of all of life.

So what has a G-string in common with the G8?

A G-string is part of a strip tease, the stage just before total nudity. The G8 leaders are already naked, emperors with nothing on at all, puppets with no real power to change, witness the complete collapse of Kyoto.