Only War can Save Us Now

When Senator John McCain ridiculed Navy Secretary Ray Mabus by stating, “You are the Secretary of the Navy, not the Secretary of Energy,” over his efforts to shift the Navy to a "Green Fleet," I was  glad I hadn't voted for him for President. Mabus had the right idea about using the military to address the energy-cum-climate crisis, he just didn't take it far enough. In fact, the military can be excused for burning through our last drops of oil, as long as they do it for the sake of stopping egregious greenhouse gas pollution that could soon kill us all.

A Green friend of mine seemed a little perplexed when she heard that my background included diplomas from two war colleges. She asked, "what do you study at a war college?" to which I tritely replied, "how to make war.  A useful skill ... if you happen to find yourself in one." In terms of our current plight, the problem with war is not that it is the epitome of wasted energy, but that it is undertaken for the sake of feeding our energy addiction. Any power that threatens a fossil-fuel dependent economic paradigm is who we tend to fight.

We have come to the point that the only thing that will save the current crop of humans from widespread die-off is a rapid reorientation to reducing our collective carbon footprint and reversing whatever damage we can. Perhaps even more urgently, we need to exclude the built environment from squatting on the most sensitive ecological areas and half of the earth's landmass. Short of going to war, that all involves too much self-imposed hardship. Make a war out of it, and patriotic fervor overcomes that chariness.

No other human enterprise is as effective as war in eliciting heroic activity by vast numbers of participants. War is the only institution capable of commanding great numbers of people to willingly endure suffering for the sake of victory. All the Green solutions put forth for overcoming our climate crisis involve widespread physical hardship, which can only be self-imposed through a warring mentality. (Geoengineering solutions' appeal is their supposed avoidance of hardship, but they carry potentially catastrophic risk or are unsustainable.)

The war we need is not the pitiful "War on Climate Change" of past administrations. Almost nobody joins a war so ephemeral. War must have physical objectives and culminate in the breaking of an enemy's will. War can be fought in cyberspace, but it has its foundation in meatspace. It must be carried out militarily, not by a loose-knit gaggle of volunteers.

Game theory would probably help in planning the War Against Climate Pollution. Just as we had to do all the second guessing required to prevent a nuclear war and understand how to execute one, we should model actions, effects, and reactions of forcing other countries' hands in an effort to prevent runaway greenhouse gas emissions. Game theory would also show us how much fossil fueled power we could cede in winding down our own emissions as others relinquish theirs.

Diplomacy should lead in attempting to resolve causes of excess pollution. Information exchanges and economic arrangements should also be set up before resorting to military action. After sufficient warning, military actions, if necessary, should be initially strategic and carried out with cyber weapons to, for example, shut down production at a plant producing HFC's.  If the violations don't cease, kinetic attacks could be used. Bloodshed should be avoided as much as possible. Strong arming is the main approach.

Targeted infrastructure would include coal power plants, oil refineries, concrete plants, fertilizer factories,and other point sources of pollution. What we are interdicting here are actually weapons of mass destruction, when you consider how greenhouse gas emissions added to the current inventory may push temperatures past the level of human tolerance. We should avoid taking on countries having the ability to fight back in any serious way. Escalation is not what we want. It detracts from the real goal - stopping pollution.

However, such a self-righteous war on pollution from the U.S. will not last unless we begin taking a stand on reducing our own emissions. We have to stick to the Paris Agreement, ratified, rejected, or not. The military can stay strong for as long as needed to complete the mission, but they too will have to diminish once things settle down and other great powers dispense with their own ambitions. As the world burns, the folly of dominance and colonialism will become evident. There is no need to fear dominance by China or Russia. Any incursion on their parts would be short-lived as distance becomes more tyrannical with the elimination of U.S. oil exports and the end of global trade. Ultimately, the only way to win this war is to lose the same things we seek to deny others.

Once we have stopped reliance on fossil fuels, everyone can then carry on with their decidedly more physically demanding lives, sharing stories around the TLUD of how they fought and won in the war against the Polluters. Their young listeners will look to the day when they can match these deeds of glory by pushing out the Squatters.

Strong Words that Could Start a Revolution

In Laudato Si, Pope Francis uses strong language to raise the alarm of our existential crisis, prescribes some corrections, and upbraids some common behaviors and mentalities that aggravate the problem. I pulled out those I could find with their source paragraphs indicated for context:

59.  periods of deep crisis which require bold decisions 

61.  things are now reaching a breaking point, due to the rapid pace of change and degradation 

64.  Christians in their turn “realize that their responsibility within creation, and their duty towards nature and the Creator, are an essential part of their faith”. 

66.  human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself. 

67.  we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.  

79.  The work of the Church seeks not only to remind everyone of the duty to care for nature, but at the same time “she must above all protect mankind from self-destruction”. 

 90.  we should be particularly indignant at the enormous inequalities in our midst, whereby we continue to tolerate some considering themselves more worthy than others.

111. generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm. 

114.  the urgent need for us to move forward in a bold cultural revolution. Science and technology are not neutral;

159. Intergenerational solidarity is not optional, but rather a basic question of justice, since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us.

 185.  water is a scarce and indispensable resource and a fundamental right which conditions the exercise of other human rights. This indisputable fact overrides any other assessment of environmental impact on a region.

186. If objective information suggests that serious and irreversible damage may result, a project should be halted or modified, even in the absence of indisputable proof. 

194. It is not enough to balance, in the medium term, the protection of nature with financial gain, or the preservation of the environment with progress.  

197. A strategy for real change calls for rethinking processes in their entirety, for it is not enough to include a few superficial ecological considerations while failing to question the logic which underlies present-day culture. 

208. Disinterested concern for others, and the rejection of every form of self-centeredness and self-absorption, are essential if we truly wish to care for our brothers and sisters and for the natural environment.

224. it is no longer enough to speak only of the integrity of ecosystems. We have to dare to speak of the integrity of human life, of the need to promote and unify all the great values.  

229. We have had enough of immorality and the mockery of ethics, goodness, faith and honesty. It is time to acknowledge that light-hearted superficiality has done us no good. 

Since we need a cultural revolution, where else might it begin than with the leader of something like one-sixth of all people on the planet? Could we take these ideas and spread them to others, igniting a revolution? Francis takes a strong tone in this encyclical. I would like to use these ideas as principles with which to challenge even strangers on behaviors and lifestyle choices that are counter to the Franciscan revolution. Realizing basic limits of my cultural understanding, I would restrict my scolding to others of my generation (Boomers), and take a more respectful or patronizing tone with those of older and younger cohorts. It will be interesting to see where this leads.

Dining In

Taking the Drawdown list at face value, the 100 measures listed are potential candidates for reducing my family's carbon footprint (including biochar, #71, which occupies so much of my time). Many of the measures do not pertain to someone in my situation. I am owner of only 1 acre, mostly forested, on a hillside in a temperate climate zone. Yet, there are some I can pursue that, right or wrong, are ranked even higher than biochar.

The first is: "#3 - Reduced Food Waste." For our family, there is some room for improvement with this. I am trying to eat what I grow and what I preserve, but sometimes the bounty is too great. I need to give more food away, at least until the quality of my produce will allow me to specialize and sell at farmers' markets. Mushrooms may be the ticket. Oyster mushrooms seem most promising, since I might soon be able to clone great quantities. Foods we don't eat go to composting (#60), so we don't truly waste any of it.

Related to #3 is the next measure on Drawdown's list: "#4 - Plant-Rich Diet." This is a most welcome requirement. I recommend retirement as early as possible, since I have found it allows time for lots of cooking, but even if you can't afford to retire yet, I recommend making cooking a priority. I can hardly stand to eat out anymore; restaurant food is either so disgusting or too expensive, or both.

I say this because last year I discovered a handy feature in some of the cookbooks my wife has purchased over the years, but had never been put to use. The "Taste of Home" annual recipes
have a special index based on ingredients. It makes it easy to find a recipe that contains what you have on hand. No longer do I bother with questionable online recipes which offer such searches. I just grab one of the dozen "Taste of Home" books on our shelf and find a kitchen-tested recipe that gives me something to look forward to every day. Adding any missing ingredients to our shopping list allows us to buy them anytime we happen to be in a supermarket. As the pantry fills with staples, less and less shopping is needed to make whatever recipes are chosen. By selecting recipes containing produce that we grow, we are able to enjoy amazing food at affordable prices while also achieving measure #3.

Who knew that saving the planet could be so enjoyable?!!

The Coming Scramble for Survival

Necessity is the midwife of devolution. Invention's mother is running out of resources, so she is reverting to the tried and tested. Her next brood will be a passel of low-tech survival tools. System design and implementation takes about a decade and that is about all the time we have before nature puts her foot down (if the rate of Arctic sea ice melt is a reliable leading indicator). The rate of ocean warming will increase promptly after the ice is gone. Coastal cities will experience a markedly more rapid increase in flooding events. It will finally become clear to the man on the street that we haven't done what it takes to turn the tide and cannot spend another decade working on it. The new systems that we could have had ready to withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere will not be available in sufficient quantities to prevent a great die-off. Suffering will move people to act individually and locally and one of the only negative CO2 tools available to the average Joe will be the biochar that they can make on their own. Enduring the diminished resource future will, however, carry the built-in solution of doing less of what has long been damaging the climate. 

Below, a list from Drawdown.org shows 71 solutions before it gets to biochar, about one-third of which are scalable to the human individual level. Collective activity won't entirely cease and the ultra-wealthy will still be able to command some sizeable projects, but beyond what takes place in the next few years, there won't be much civic initiative to avoid the continuation of today's burgeoning apocalyptic chain-of-events. Debt levels keep rising and all it will take is a crisis for everything to collapse in a way that will take a century or more to heal. Some places "get it" more than others, though, so living in a state governed by the cognoscenti may allow some of today's heroes to continue a more efficacious collective fight against global warming into the next saeculum. If so, a few people may survive to perpetuate the human species.

1 Refrigerant Management 2 Wind Turbines (Onshore) 3 Reduced Food Waste 4 Plant-Rich Diet 5 Tropical Forests 6 Educating Girls 7 Family Planning 8 Solar Farms 9 Silvopasture 10 Rooftop Solar 11 Regenerative Agriculture 12 Temperate Forests 13 Peatlands 14 Tropical Staple Trees 15 Afforestation 16 Conservation Agriculture 17 Tree Intercropping 18 Geothermal 19 Managed Grazing 20 Nuclear 21 Clean Cookstoves 22 Wind Turbines (Offshore) 23 Farmland Restoration 24 Improved Rice Cultivation 25 Concentrated Solar 26 Electric Vehicles 27 District Heating 28 Multistrata Agroforestry 29 Wave and Tidal 30 Methane Digesters (Large) 31 Insulation 32 Ships 33 LED Lighting (Household) 34 Biomass 35 Bamboo 36 Alternative Cement 37 Mass Transit 38 Forest Protection 39 Indigenous Peoples’ Land Management 40 Trucks 41 Solar Water 42 Heat Pumps 43 Airplanes 44 LED Lighting (Commercial) 45 Building Automation 46 Water Saving - Home 47 Bioplastic 48 In-Stream Hydro 49 Cars 50 Cogeneration 51 Perennial Biomass 52 Coastal Wetlands 53 System of Rice Intensification 54 Walkable Cities 55 Household Recycling 56 Industrial Recycling 57 Smart Thermostats 58 Landfill Methane 59 Bike Infrastructure 60 Composting 61 Smart Glass 62 Women Smallholders 63 Telepresence 64 Methane Digesters (Small) 65 Nutrient Management 66 High-speed Rail 67 Farmland Irrigation 68 Waste-to-Energy 69 Electric Bikes 70 Recycled Paper 71 Water Distribution 72 Biochar 73 Green Roofs 74 Trains 75 Ridesharing 76 Micro Wind 77 Energy Storage (Distributed) 77 Energy Storage (Utilities) 77 Grid Flexibility 78 Microgrids 79 Net Zero Buildings 80 Retrofitting

Desertification Matters

It seems that Greece has led western civilization into the first turning of our next saeculum; into a time of calm and lassitude. According to Anne Applebaum,

The protracted Greek crisis has led to apathy, exhaustion and a deep conviction that all politics is corrupt. There isn’t huge enthusiasm for any political projects right now.

Not all first turnings feel so jaded. Our last one was a time of buoyant confidence and coming together. That was after Johnny came marching home from World War II. Greece must have ended that cycle much the same as they are this one: exhausted and apathetic.

Perhaps their repeated defeat is partly a consequence of a longer-term problem: loss of arable land. I've never been to Greece, but can attest from my week touring nearby Croatia that the impoverishment of the soil on what had once been productive farms is widespread and grievous to behold. Both countries have declared themselves to the UN Convention on Combating Desertification (UNCCD) to be affected by desertification. Almost all the other countries in Southern Europe have done so, as well.

Both Italy and Spain have experienced political turmoil this year. Perhaps they will go the way of Greece as things shake out. Climate change deserves some credit for pushing desertification, but mostly, socio-economic factors are to blame. Desertification usually occurs over centuries, while the secular cycle takes less than a century. The end of a saeculum can come with a triumph or a defeat. Desertification only makes the latter more likely.

With the U.S. crisis coming to a head as the end of our 4th turning approaches, we aren't bound to the fates of Southern European states, but desertification from climate change on top of other factors is afflicting some of our key economic regions. Like Europe, we will have states that dry up and crumble and others that emerge relatively victorious. We saw a similar dynamic play out at the end of the Civil War.

The rain may fall on the just and unjust alike, but climate change is not an equal opportunity dispenser of rain. Desertification is not the only factor affecting the fate of civilizations, but it will eventually bring down and break apart any nation, especially those that ignore it. 

The Greatest

Environmental protection and restoration are the highest calling a person can have. Ministers administer and kings reign, but environmentalists serve the embodiment of God in all of his earthly creation. Those who would be greatest must be the servants of all creatures; they must be environmentalists.

Caring for the environment benefits both non-humans and humans. When, in the course of restoring nature, dilemmas arise over sacrifices for nature's sake, it could be that society has departed from the way. Remedial actions that seem harsh to humanity may be part of a necessary retreat from something that is even harsher to non-humans. Ultimately, a return to Eden would benefit humans more than any other outcome.

The world is being so overrun by enough clueless, heedless, and competitive people that little Edens will not be enough to save most of us from a mounting onslaught of disasters, insults, and injuries from Gaia's reactions. Universal repentance over diet , transportation, and work (in sum, modern life with all its negative consequences ) would have to occur for the world to avoid such tribulation. If we manage to repent over our unsettledness and downshift to a pastoral lifestyle, then perhaps we could still include a bit of meat in our diets with climate-smart agriculture.

Whatever measures we wind up taking to survive the anthropocene, it seems that cities should become virtual prisons and that only environmentalists and their subjects should be allowed to roam freely and keep property outside those confines. Environmentalists should be as angels keeping watch over the realms outside the domain of heavy human settlement. Suburbia should be returned to nature or sold to farmers. Farmers should all be lovers of the Earth, unlike the deriden rednecks who see the earth as a thing to be conquered.

The numbers of people in cities vs. the countryside are not as important as the personal qualities that suit an individual to be in one or the other domain. Current policy in the U.S. is to drive down the number of small farms through an incentive system that favors industrial (read "redneck") farmers who exploit the impoverished land. Disincentivizing industrial agriculture would be the first step toward reducing farm sizes and populating the countryside with environmentalists. May it be that the new Farm Bill leans that direction (though I see no indication that it will).

It should come as no surprise that environmental restoration is not an especially lucrative occupation, yet one may be deeply enriched by it. Depending on how close one is to the natural world, this connection can offer resources aplenty. With such knowledge, self-reliance is attainable (even self-actualization).

I would be sadly myopic were I to claim the title of Environmentalist. I can barely call myself a Master Gardener and a Master Watershed Steward, but, among those whose efforts directly deal with eco-systems, Environmentalist rightly belongs to the likes of those who restore landscapes and rivers to wild conditions. I merely have experience in making healthy soil, growing plants and fungi, and keeping runoff in check. It's a start, but with my few remaining years, my contribution may fall far short of that of the greatest among men.