American’s Existential Problem – and the World’s

earth

2012 World Bank Report

“Without quick action to curb CO2 emissions, global warming is likely to increase by 4 degrees Centigrade (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above today’s normal during the 21st century and that is dangerously close to the temperature of 6 degrees Centigrade above normal that initiated the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago when 96%* of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrates were wiped out.”  *(current estimate 81%)

 

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We will begin with a quote from Christopher Clugston in his book Blip.  (reference below)

Our species Homo sapiens is exceptional, but not exemptional, and is subject to the same natural laws that apply to other Earth species.”

The 2012 World Bank report captioned above confirms his observation. Because of our CO2 emissions, recent temperatures in the Arctic have been the highest in recorded history. Methane release there has begun. Ocean waters throughout the planet are warming. Ice is melting at a record rate in the Antarctic.

These last words from my new book: Overcoming the Threat to Our Future speak to our conundrum.

“Can we change? Do we psychologically neurologically have the ability by means of some sort of ‘Religious Experience’ to overcome this thinking imperfection and replace it with a new form of synchronous thought and behavior that can establish for Homo sapiens coexistent unity and interactive equilibrium with all life and nonlife on the planet?“

Many are beginning to understand the seriousness of this question. They are beginning to recognize that our continuance on Planet earth will require recognition of an underlying “implicate” planetary/cosmic order. (David Bohm) And they are beginning to understand that we are not now living in an integrative harmonious relationship with that order.

These many are also beginning to understand that Homo sapiens survival on Planet earth will call for a transition into a new form of thought and behavior that will call for change in those presuppositions underpinning the validity of past and present political, economic, social, religious and philosophical thought.

This essay will further define the problem and offer a new way of thinking through it. First a geologic reality:

Massive methane reserves exist below the Arctic land areas and Arctic Ocean floor. Scientists say combined they represent more than the amount required to cause another Permian extinction event. These reserves exist in the form of methane hydrates trapped in a frozen state. As temperatures there rise from CO2 emissions, the Arctic surface ice is melting and darkening Arctic land mass is being exposed to the warming sun. (Albedo effect) Methane gas is now beginning to bubble up. As adjacent Arctic waters (Trenches) there warm, temperatures are rising beyond the in-water methane hydrate freezing point. Methane is now beginning to bubble up. (In October 2019 Russian scientists studying Arctic waters found the most powerful ever methane jets shooting up from the seabed to the water’s surface) Both on land and in the trenches this will soon cause a “methane hydrate feedback loop” to kick in. After a 2 C degrees (3.6 F) rise, it will accelerate. (Our civilization is approaching that 2 C figure) Many scientists are telling us that there will then be a runaway increase in methane as a result a feedback loop. Global temperatures will rise rapidly. During the Permian extinction, after 6 C degrees was reached the ocean surface waters throughout the planet reached more than 40 degrees Celsius. (104 degrees Fahrenheit) That led to near total planetary life extinction.

Now to David Bohm’s “Implicate Order” vs “Human Disorder’” The Bohm theory is that nature inherently tends toward implicate order and a higher form of inseparable quantum interconnectedness. Our species these last several thousand years has been moving progressively in a direction toward a higher level (form) of consciousness and we among all species have been singularly enfolding into some sort of inseparable quantum interconnectedness. However, the reality today is that we are now living at odds with inseparable quantum interconnectedness.

The good news is that many today are aware of the need to move away from the danger lurking before us and they are now demanding change. Also, our civilization at this stage has the technical ability to make the necessary change.

The worrisome news is that there is confusion intellectually as to an understanding of the political, economic, social, religious and philosophical reconfiguration required. Also worrisome is that among academically perceptive intellectuals and the general public there is no uniformity of thought as to methodology of achieving end result, no broad all-inclusive world-wide reconstructive cohesive thought. All discussion becomes stuck in the mire of the narrowness of endless scientific and other debate obscured by optimism bias argumentation. As a result, desire for change has only limited political power.

Even in areas of academia there is narrowness from endless debate. This has become most obvious in the social sciences of psychology, sociology and economics. Many of these academicians lean toward what is called “social Darwinism.” It places humanity in societal motion that becomes an explanation and even justification for the release of our neurotic psychotic impulses. Human behavior is all social mechanical. Deeper universal meaning and purpose as a controlling force is left out of the equation. David Bohm’s “implicate” cosmic and planetary order has no meaning. Leave that to the religionists and philosophers they say. Let them argue back and forth as to what is or what is not beyond the brain cage, what is morally right or morally wrong, what is cosmic. Here on earth it is all simply a matter of biological and social survival of the fittest.

These social scientists dismiss any greater purpose for the existence of man/woman. They say that socially we are the way we are because we are the way we are. We are no different than wind-up clocks. Find the faulty part and you have found the problem. Fix that part and you have solved the problem.

And as for the economists, strangely enough there is a hint among some, even to include those in the atheist camp, of Adam Smith’s market forces being “the hand of God” working its beneficence on all of human society. This faux religious spirituality can be found in prominent economists teaching in business schools in America the likes of Harvard, Wharton and the University of Chicago; also among prominent economic journalists. For these “Economic Social Scientists” the Capital Market system is given close to inherent godly status. The dark psychotic/neurotic side of human behavior is given limited or no recognition. The need for economic activity to align itself with a cosmic and planetary order is given no recognition.

This failure in the social sciences to respond is now being exacerbated in America where there is a “Hard Paranoid Right” turning its back on biosphere reality. At the extreme are the Christian evangelicals who say: Not to worry, the Apocalypse is soon to come, it is all in GOD’s plan. And that “plan” they say even includes sinful Donald Trump, our American President. Their reasoning; after the fall of Babylon in 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus the Great (like Trump sinful) freed exiled Judeans and allowed them to return to Judah. Trump they say is another Cyrus the Great. He is GOD’s plan; divine intervention.

A passage from Ephesians might be helpful to them:

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

(Paul, Ephesians 6:12, NRSV)

Then we have the American nonreligious others captivated by alternative meta-narratives grounded on “climate conspiracy theory.” And then we have those Americans who are not sucked in by any of the above. They simply have no interest.Even more worrisome is the fact that power in America remains in the hands of a capitalist neo-liberal autocracy in control of the echo chamber. These Americans have chosen not to comprehend the need for an Homo sapiens integrative planetary cosmic relationship. Their sole objective is to keep a firm grip on their power. It is clear to them that an acknowledgement of ecological reality would lead to political, economic, social and religious institutional changes that will spell their end.

All of this has left America entrapped in a social stalemate unable to envision a broad political understanding of solutions to the ecological problem.

It is not just an American problem. It has been a human problem from the beginning of our Sumerian Egyptian Age. The configuration was then and continues to be is autocratic. At its core is a fixed political, economic, social, religious and philosophical template consisting of a small number of people with wealth and power at the top and a very large number of disenfranchised under them.

That template leaves humanity today facing a harsh reality: Without world-wide change in thought and behavior at all levels of society Homo sapiens will soon be facing, as outlined in the World Bank Report, irreversible Biosphere tipping points that could lead to a sixth extinction.

So here are the questions humans throughout the planet should be asking: Can we find a way of thought and behavior that respects Nature and the Planet and assures our continuance? Can we accomplish this within the next ten or at most twenty/thirty years?

It is not clear that humanity in a unified form is capable of a social/geo-political response to these questions.

So if the answer is NO, here is the turn of the turn of the century scenario:

Vast quantities of methane having been released in the Arctic will continue. Oceans will have risen six feet or more placing major coastal population centers under water. Acidification will have destroyed much of the fish and crustacean food stock. Weather patterns will have devastated much of world agricultural production. Deindustrialization will continue in steep decline due to depletion of the earth’s nonrenewable natural resources. (metals and nonmetallic minerals) There will be massive starvation and death throughout the globe bringing down population to less than one billion. Those economically and politically advantaged humans who have been able to escape the contagion will be living away from the harsh climatic conditions in areas of the planet that remain temperature and resource habitable. In the marginal areas survivors will be left living in isolated communities. Some will be living in self-contained enclosed structures like Buckminster Fuller tetrahedron domes.

Even space stations just above the earth housing humans and capturing the Sun’s energy are a possibility, although they remain in the realm of science fiction with inherent problems of their own. We must keep in mind the fact that biologically we are earth creatures gravitationally.

By the turn of the century, irreversible tipping points will have begun. Homo sapiens extinction will be under way.

 

Bio

David Anderson brings together a wide range of interests in his writings, namely; theology, history, evolutionary anthropology, philosophy, geopolitics, and economics. He has written four books. The fourth just published is about a necessary geo political, social, religious, economic paradigm shift for human survival.

http://inquiryabraham.com/new-book.html

Sources

The breach of the Paris climate accord  Climate Change by Dr Andrew Glikson November 25, 2019

https://countercurrents.org/2019/11/the-breach-of-the-paris-climate-accord

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The New York Times:

World Powers Vowed to Cut Greenhouse Gases. They’re Still Rising Perilously.

“Countries agreed to rein in emissions in an effort to avert climate catastrophes. They’ve failed, according to the latest United Nations report.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/climate/greenhouse-gas-emissions-carbon.html

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UN report calls for “radical transformations” to avert global climate catastrophe

by Bryan Dyne

“The United Nations Environment Program issued its tenth Emissions Gap Report, which highlighted the stark failure of the 2015 Paris Agreement to curb global greenhouse gas emissions and halt global warming. Even if countries hold themselves to their emissions pledges from four years ago, the report warns that global average temperatures will still increase to 3.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and Earth will be increasingly hostile to human life.”

https://countercurrents.org/2019/11/un-report-calls-for-radical-transformations-to-avert-global-climate-catastrophe

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The Choice Is Ours: Extinction or Rebellion? in Counter Solutions — by Simon Whalley November 27, 2019

“Due to capitalism’s rapaciousness, our species is hurtling towards ecocide at a frightening pace….If we must blame historical deaths on socialism, communism or fascism, then let’s be honest with ourselves and blame capitalism for ecosystem collapse, extinctions and mass starvation. But, let’s not forget that as we stay silent and act like children, while children act like adults, that we too are to blame.”

https://countercurrents.org/2019/11/the-choice-is-ours-extinction-or-rebellion

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Nov 26, 2012

By Chris Hedges (Excerpt)

“The 84-page document; ‘Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided,’ was written for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics and published last week. The picture it paints of a world convulsed by rising temperatures is a mixture of mass chaos, systems collapse and medical suffering like that of the worst of the Black Plague, which in the 14th century killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s population.”

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/stand_still_for_the_apocalypse_20121126/

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Captioned quote above from World Bank Report

John Scales Avery

Collected Essays

Chapter 9 Avoiding Extinction Part III

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“If we don’t Slash Coal, Oil use 8%/yr., the Earth is heading for a Calamitous Temp. Rise of nearly 6° F.”

12/03/19

https://www.juancole.com/2019/12/heading-calamitous-nearly.html

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“Industrialization as we know it today will be in steep decline due to the depletion of the earth’s nonrenewable natural resources.”

Christopher O. Clugston,  Blip

BookLocker St., Petersburg, Florida 2019


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