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Another American War – Look Out Earth
by Jim Miles
True to the American manner of meeting challenges and desiring to overcome them, a recent Time magazine cover led off with the title “How to Win The War On Global Warming” [1].
Accompanying that article, the UN Secretary-General demonstrated his Washington consensus credentials with a commentary titled “The Right War.”[2]
If the American history of war is to be considered, earth itself is in trouble.
The “war on drugs” has been an ongoing fiasco, with billions put
into various corners of the world mostly causing death and destruction
between different factions killing each other off and – in the
homeland - leading to the incarceration of millions of people – mainly
black. The current global war on terror is also a moral and financial
fiasco, expected to ultimately cost 3 – 5 trillion dollars just from
Afghanistan and Iraq alone.
Bryan Walsh, the ‘specialist’ who
put the presentation together, starts off the article with the
jingoistic militancy so common to American attitudes, “Americans don’t
like to lose wars – which makes sense, since they get so little
practice with it.” And shortly after Walsh pretty much exalts in the
idea that “those [shooting wars] are the kind at which the U.S.
excels.” How ridiculous can one get as an introduction to an article
on global warming? Oh sure, the Americans whomped poor little Granada
to prevent its socialist hordes from attacking America, and they
performed splendidly in Panama against their former partner Noriega
(although the estimated three thousand killed would not think so). As
for the lack of practice at losing, they are certainly making up for it
in Iraq and Afghanistan against a ragtag band of militias protecting
their home territory, while at the same time causing mass environmental
and societal damage along with hundreds of thousands of deaths. And
what of Vietnam, a war resulting in an estimated three million Asian
deaths, a mined and polluted countryside, not to mention that it was an
out and out loss?
The other aspect of that comment, the
scarier aspect, is the amount of destruction and lack of foresight into
the ramifications of their actions that seems to play no part in
American decision-making. As an analogy, perhaps the U.S. could win
the war against carbon and global warming (a dubious prospect at best)
but after that then what? I ask that question because global warming
is not the problem, but a serious symptom of an overall greater
problem.
If it is to be war, Walsh gets one thing right, that
“by any measure, the U.S. is losing” and “if America is fighting at
all…it’s fighting on the wrong side.” To fight the war Walsh envisions
technology as our hero combined with the economics of carbon
capping/trading. While this might slow down carbon emissions, it
certainly does not stop it and several warnings have already been
issued that we need to do much more than slow the level of increase, we
need to reverse it. For all his technological proposals the effect
will not be “that overall carbon levels fall” but perhaps the more
modest gain that the rate of increase will decrease. I would be
delighted if I was wrong and technology saved the day but technology is
simply a tool in the hands of people, who besides producing too much
carbon, are themselves too many and consume too much. That is the
overall greater problem.
Bin Ki-Moon supports Walsh by reversing
the causality of global warming. He sees global warming as the problem
and when solved many other problems “from poverty to armed conflict”
will be solved along with “a more peaceful and prosperous one [planet]
too.” Darfur is used as the example of climate change causing war and
conflict…but then one needs to ask where did the climate change come
from? Another argument is that “security everywhere depends on
sustainable development everywhere.” In certain respects Ki-Moon is
correct, by solving global warming we solve other problems. But
solving global warming means eliminating one symptom created by other
greater problems and a simplistic technological fix of the symptom is
neither sufficient nor possible.
The latter comment leads back
to the real source of the problem – that of too many people demanding
way too much of the earth’s resources…and the U.S. is by far the
biggest culprit in this. If everyone lived at the economic consumptive
level of the U.S., we would require up to nine more earths (depending
on source) in order to sustain that lifestyle. Sustainable development
is an oxymoron – earth is finite and can only support so many people
according to the consumptive demands of the people, or more correctly,
demands created in the people by the propaganda of advertising that
promotes all the consumption.
Further tying the two articles
together, Walsh refers to an April International Monetary Fund study
that concluded “smart carbon cutting policies could contain climate
change without seriously harming the economy.” Are we to trust this
part of the Washington consensus that through its trade laws and
international agreements has produced some of the worst agricultural
production records in countries that have been coerced into unprotected
trading with the fully subsidized agricultural producers of the U.S.
and Europe? Haiti is no longer self-sufficient in rice thanks to the
heavily subsidized American imports and currently has had food riots
because of the price and lack of availability.
No, as I have
indicated before, that while global warming is a serious problem, it is
a symptom of a much greater problem, the problem of too many people,
too much consumption. And it is the nature of that consumption, the
high-energy costs, the economic and social costs, the environmental
degradation caused by the extraction of resources (food or raw
materials) that is the base of the problem.
To truly help the
environment the people of world who blithely consume far more than
their share of it will need to minimize their consumption. That
ultimately would be where any American “war on global warming” will
fail: the big corporations make their billions of dollars on
consumption; the consumers are so immersed into their lifestyles that
they may not be capable of making the considerable adaptations
necessary to curb global warming.
The obvious leading from that
is that war itself is a sign, a ways and means, of this drive to
control and consume resources almost as a capitalist-imperialist
necessity to keep the wealth flowing to the heartland from the many
hinterlands now under U.S. military-economic control. So the solution
to global warming is not carbon capping/trading/capture.
Ban Ki-Moon
does get part of it right at least rhetorically recognizing the
relationship between the economy and the environment: “if the
challenges of poverty alleviation, environmental stewardship and the
control of climate change are not tied together – any solutions…will at
best be a band-aid.” It goes even further than that.
The solution to
global warming is a change in the culture of consumption, the culture
of corporate greed and propaganda (advertising) that creates the false
‘need’ for so much ‘stuff’. A major part of that corporate greed is
its military alliance that supports it throughout the world with over
eight hundred military installations and hundreds of thousands of
military personnel serving in seventy per cent of the world’s countries [3].
Without a greater awareness of all the relationships
between global warming as a symptom, and environmental over-consumption
and over population as the underlying cause, an American “war on global
warming” is sure to be another fiasco.
It is a complex situation, one
that will not be solved by simply reducing carbon emissions, indeed one
cannot ‘simply’ reduce carbon emissions as there are too many other
parameters to the problem.
We need to solve the problem of
over-consumption, of wealth disparities, of wealth allocation, of using
the militaries to enrich corporate/political elites. We need to
redesign the trade structures of the world, and eliminate the
imposition of unequal agreements between the consumers and the
producers.
A more peaceful planet will come through achieving a more
equitable one, a less greedy one, one in which all inhabitants can
share the resources and then participate more fully in through
enriching cultural activities. Otherwise, another American war,
another series of disasters.
[1] Walsh, Bryan. “How to Win The War On Global Warming”, Time. April 28, 2008. pp. 27-38.
[2]
Ban Ki-Moon. “The Right War – The U.N.’s chief on why a greener planet
would be a more peaceful one.” . Time. April 28, 2008. P. 39.
[3]
“US 'extremely concerned' over Iran,” Friday April 25, 2008. Al Jazeera
English.
(using Pentagon sources).
Jim Miles is a Canadian
educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book
reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is also presented
globally through other alternative websites and news publications.
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