Big Bang vs Big Bust

[Stinky The Clown]

There is evidence of worsening global warming. At the very same time, there is evidence of decreasing oil supplies and, some at the edges say, perhaps no more than a decade or two remaining (at curent use rates).

What I wonder today is if the two might cancel each other out. Reduced oil consumption leading to a safer environment. To be sure this simple equation ignores the many, many other issues (many **very** painful) that would arise as a fallout from either peak oil or global warming.

But man-o-man .... to think of it .... dual catastrophies ...... or simultaneous symbiotic cures.

(edit to add the words 'some at the edges say' to make it clear that I am only citing, not postulating)

[Deja Q]

1. 20 years' worth of oil? Cool. Why is America being dismantled then?

[Stinky The Clown]

2. Please see the update to my OP

[Uncle Joe]

3. I believe there is plenty of oil left to destroy life as we know it,

and coal will kick in where the oil leaves off, not to mention the tar sands in Canada. My understanding is, the tipping point of irreversible catastrophic global warming is ten years.

[petronius]

4. Hey - no sex threads!

Your idea is logical; however, I think the 20 years of oil is a major underestimation, and it probably wouldn't matter from a GH perspective - there are still huge amounts of coal available. Of course, with more coal burning we might also greatly increase sulfate aerosol output, which tends to counteract GHG warming, but that cure is as bad as the disease...

[ecoalex]

5. We're obviously at the point of no return.

There's oil for another 50 years, just harder to get, coal will last longer.It's time to finally use oil for plastics etc, not fueling cars. Bring back the electric cars, and clean up coal emissions.mercury isn't just in the fish, it's in the soil, birds all wildlife and humans too. mercury pollution in the East will be a major health problem soon.

[Peace Patriot]

6. The World Wildlife Fund estimates 50 yrs to planetary DEATH, at present

rates of consumption, pollution, extirpation of species, deforestation and other impacts. In ADDITION to pouring pollutants into the atmosphere, our industrial civilization has, over the last hundred years, damaged or destroyed 80% of the planet's forest cover, with impacts on the atmosphere, weather, fresh water supplies and biological diversity. The U.S. contributes approximately 25% of these impacts, and, under the Bush junta, is not only doing nothing to mitigate them, is fast undoing whatever environmental regulations the people had put into place in the previous decades. Its corporate oil war in the Middle East has also greatly exacerbated the problem in multiple ways--directly, from dramatic oil spills and burnings of oil wells, increased use of fossil fuels for military air, sea and ground transport, and ground pollution from depleted uranium and other toxics, but also indirectly by devouring financial resources that might have been used, for instance, to fast-track alternative fuel development, or for re-forestation of the Middle East, or cessation of logging/conversion of the Amazon (or cessation of logging/conversion in our own Pacific Northwest).

The use of oil as the engine of our economy--for fuel, and for plastics and other manufacturing processes--is only one factor in this complex syndrome of planetary death. And global warming is only one symptom of the disease. If we stopped using oil tomorrow--and did not start using something worse like coal--it would have a positive effect, but that alone cannot reverse global warming or the fast-paced decline of the biosphere. It will take an intense, visionary, new, cooperative international effort on prevention of atmospheric pollutants AND other mitigations on many fronts to save planet earth. And it is by no means fully understood what we have done to our planet or how to fix it. It is an enormously complex global environmental system, on which we have inflicted enormous changes in a very short space of time (the last 100 years of industrialization)--vast pollution, vast losses of forest ecosystems, vast losses of species, vast losses of coral reefs and ocean fisheries, fast-paced melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers, and so on. Understanding it is rather like the problem of predicting weather that generated the "chaos" theory. Cause and effect are related in unexpected and mystifying ways. A tiny change in one place can multiply exponentially and result in an enormous change in another part of the world. If we wipe out a species of butterfly here with pesticides, we may have set the stage for loss of an entire species of birds and its ecological function (say, carrying seeds around) somewhere in South America, where ranching has already destroyed habitat. Or, pollution from an ocean tanker based in Singapore may inflict the final blow on a sensitive salmon species in the Pacific Northwest, causing ripples of ecological harm throughout the salmon's landbased spawning habitat, already impacted by logging. National boundaries are meaningless. Understanding our immensely complex biosphere and addressing impacts across borders is essential.

The pattern is that each of the corporate entities inflicting harm at the various stages of an impact denies responsibility and fights off any regulation. The pesticide manufacturer, the corporate logger, the clothing retailer that hires the tanker to deliver cotton from Uzbekistan to sweatshops in Cambodia, and the oil giant that supplies the fuel, each eschews responsibility for the CHAIN OF EVENTS that creates a serious impact. This situation--really, the heart of the problem (global corporate lack of accountability) can only be addressed by, a) strong local environmental movements that are able to influence their governments, and b) international cooperation to pressure corporate predators and make then accountable, and to create sustainable, life-enhancing and ecologically viable local economies.

Unfortunately--tragically--the Bush junta has fostered alienation, hostility and non-cooperation between the U.S. and other nations, and among other parties that could have been cooperating on environmental initiatives by now (such as North and South Korea, and Israel and her Middle Eastern neighbors), and has jacked up all tensions in the world, such that a country like Venezuela, with a good democratic government, has to worry about being attacked by the U.S. and has to spend resources on armaments. As for the final blow to earth's biosphere--the use of nuclear weapons on even a limited basis (see Carl Sagan's "The Cold and the Dark")--we all know about those possibilities in the current saber-rattling political environment. The Bush junta claims to be concerned about it, but is, in every way possible, making things worse.

Further, the Bushites have gotten the U.S. into a very bad position, vis a vis China, for instance, as to the U.S. (if it were so inclined) pressuring the planet's other great polluter, China, toward planet protection--given that China holds much of the paper on the enormous new U.S. debt (incurred by the Iraq war and tax cuts for the rich). All of this could possibly change dramatically if the American people are able to restore democracy in the U.S. and effect regime change on its own shores, but it will nevertheless take time to repair international relations and to join and initiate efforts at planet stability and reversal of the damage.

Throwing the oil cartel off our backs is only the beginning. Quickly converting to 100% non-polluting alternative fuels is step 2. This needs to start IMMEDIATELY. And a creative new vision of a "green" earth must be formulated and begun now, and is going to take a hundred years at least, given the complexity of the problem, and the NEW national and international policy changes that must occur. But is this not a better project for the human race than killing each other over the last oil reserves, fueled by our religious disputes and plain greed and selfishness? What good are our religions, anyway, if they don't HELP us overcome these destructive impulses?

People are deeply scared, at the profoundest level of their beings, is my read on things. Our DNA, our FUTURE as a species, the entire human enterprise, is at risk. Some get panicky-greedy. Others revert to "ol' time religion" for comfort and reassurance. Some are "in denial"--denial so strong that they want to "kill the messenger," the scientists (who are ALSO, it should be noted, the engineers of environmental pollution and destruction). Bad, powermongering, greedy people stir up bigotry and war. We have never faced such a thing as this, CONSCIOUSLY--our own entire annihilation as a species, this time at our own hands. Humanity has certainly been threatened from time to time. And individual tribes and races have faced extirpation. But never all of us entirely, forever, by our own wrong decisions. If people seem a bit crazy, this may be why. It is a unique EXISTENTIAL problem. Do we continue to exist, or do we do ourselves in?

The U.S. is a critically important player is how the human race answers that question. And there is no use whining about our current plight in that regard. ("We're fucked!"--how often I see that here at DU!). How do we re-gain control of our government, and our fate? Election reform, for one. (Join the Absentee Ballot voting protest this fall--boycott the rigged machines. Throw a big monkey wrench into the rigged system--MOUNTAINS of Absentee Ballots!) What else?