Yes...but!

September 1, 2008

Home > Columns >Yes...But! Year 8-43

Nature is acting up. Gustav is affecting us here through higher gas prices and higher amounts of gases are melting the ice in the Arctic. The warmer it gets the more frosty the relations between Canada and Russia, both claiming large junks of frozen real estate that is shrinking by the day.

Apparently there’s lots of oil there, just as there is in the Gulf now gutted by Gustav. The irony is that the ability to access this fiery fuel is both caused and hindered by global warming, and when the oil wherever is retrieved, its burning will heat up the planet even more.

Oil has a tendency to invoke strife. A recent article in “Foreign Affairs” has the telling title of “Blood Barrels” subtitled ‘Why Oil Wealth Fuels Conflict.” The scarcer the stuff get, the greater the urge to use force.

In the cold Arctic it isn’t only Russia and Canada that are at odds: Norway, Denmark and the USA also are eager to grab the treasures hitherto hidden under permafrost, which, as so much in our world, is not permanent anymore.

Russia clasped an iron grip on Georgia- where oil too played a factor – and now maintains that half of the Arctic Ocean is its rightful inheritance. They are putting down sonar nets and arming icebreakers to bolster their demands. Harper is also busy asserting Canada’s claim to the Arctic treasures, and will make it an important plank of his election platform.

The stakes are high. The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources calculated that the territory claimed by Moscow could contain as much as 586 Billion barrels of oil. Compare this to Saudi Arabia with 260 billion barrels. The world’s current consumption is about 30 Billion barrels per year.

The melting ice turns my eyes to water as well. If the Arctic is a barometer by which to measure the earth’s health, these symptoms point to a very sick planet indeed.

In a sense history is repeating itself. Climate Change scientists have recently found material in ice-core samples which indicate that the Arctic once hosted all kinds of organic material, the raw material for fossil fuels. This indicates that it was, at one time, tropical in nature, which probably was true for the Antarctic as well.

I have a book “From Atlantis to the Sphinx” subtitled, “Recovering the lost wisdom of the Ancient World.” There the author, Colin Wilson, suggests that thousands of years before the civilizations of ancient Egypt and Greece emerged, the Antarctic was an ice-free, very advanced continent whose inhabitants traveled the known world, and whose intimate knowledge of science, mathematics and astronomy was passed on by descendants who escaped to Egypt and South America in the sudden great ice-age. Will it now suddenly go the other way?

It was the knowledge of these refugees that enabled them to move stones weighing a thousand tons, to drill a granite coffin with an accuracy that still baffles modern engineers and to hollow out stone vases whose long necks will not even admit a child’s finger.

In the Bible - Genesis 6 - there is a curious reference to ‘sons of God’ who intermarried with the beautiful women they spotted on the earth. They are called the Nephilim. Perhaps they were the survivors of the mysterious Atlantis civilization. This is pure speculation, of course, but still very intriguing, suggesting that we know very little of what happened in very distant times.

Another fascinating aspect is that, according to the Aztecs, civilization dates back to 20,238 BC and they anticipate its end, in violent earthquakes, on December 24 2012. Four more years??

What is certain is that, if we want to preserve the Good Earth we have, our approach to living has to change. Last week a report in the Washington Post suggests that we have 7 years to turn our wasteful ways around. Most certainly the next USA president will have his hands full. He’ll not only have to make up for 8 lost years of environmental neglect, but also deal with a half-trillion-dollar federal deficit, a recession and a national housing crunch, a looming health-care crisis, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and diplomatic showdowns with North Korea and Iran.

The great handicap for all rulers today is that they, before anything else, will have to deal with Climate Change and Commodity Depletion. By and large factors beyond our control will rule us, witness Gustav and Hannah. Matters such as the melting icecaps both at the North- and the South Pole and the plight of our parching planet will have to become a priority for all politicians everywhere, as all eyes will be focused on the ice at the Arctic and Antarctic and ever more powerful hurricanes.