Resource
Wars
By Emily Spence
20 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Resource wars are totally understandable
and predictable. They've been transpiring for millennia because practically
everything alive needs to steal energy, directly or indirectly, from
something else to continue to exist. This transfer of energy, usually,
involves killing.
Imagine this happening on the African plains, for instance. There a
leopard trounces on a gazelle. Sometimes before he manages to haul her
carcass off to some high tree limb to secure it solely for himself,
a voracious mob of hyenas, lions, wild dogs and/or vultures will amass
to rob it from him. As a result, all of his energy expended in the chase
will be for naught. Not only will he lose his meal, he'll be weakened
from the hunt and more in need of energy provision than ever. Yet if
he still has a sufficient reserve of strength, he'll repeat his prior
pursuit with a successful outcome or, if not, gradually become so feeble
that he'll become the next supper.
At the same time, there are reasons that terms, such as "lion's
share" and "pecking order," developed. Usually and regardless
of the species involved, the biggest and strongest (or, in the case
of humans, the most brutal and cunning) individuals survive and thrive
"high on the hog" at the expense of others. As onerous as
this might seem, it's all par for the course. (Forget the "Bambi"
view of nature. Some of Hobbes pronouncements, Animal Farm, 1984 and
Lord of the Flies are a bit more on the mark.)
Meanwhile, human resource wars, likewise, have gone on since time immemorial.
Two of our current ones, to secure oil for the US in the Middle East
and northern Africa, are merely emblematic of practices that are occurring
everywhere else across the globe despite that painful and unjust deaths
result. Yet, this ongoing pattern of gain for some at the expense of
others is hardly new and the ways that it sets up are nearly always
the same.
For example, humans both create and take away habitats when housing
developments, built in rural areas, displace other species such as bears,
moose and many other life forms. We, also, compete with others for food
sources. For example, depleting the oceans of fish ensures that a large
number of whales and other animals die of starvation, and, when they
die before producing offspring, ensures limits on successive generations
of their kinds or cause extinction as is, by some scientists, predicted
to take place for up to one quarter of all species during the next fifty
years.
In a similar vein and while they poison the land, air and waterways
-- use of herbicides and pesticides, simultaneously, helps limit other
species from harming our crops, gardens and lawns. Thus, we try to support
some types of life on which we depend while cutting away at others in
order to do so.
A very common example of this involves removal of complex eco-niches
to increase farm spreads. Other times, though, we simply take the bounty
from an area (such as clear-cut forestry practices exemplify, and which
leaves a ruined landscape barely capable of supporting any life in its
wake).
All this considered, life can seem a savage, violent process involving
innumerable victors and losers. Moreover, it is obvious that this warfare
isn't only played out between species as it, also, takes place within
all them. As such, a group of people classifying themselves as being
similar (based on having the same skin color, religion, cultural background,
nationality, genetic propinquity or some other identifying marker) competes
with other groups to obtain plunder.
So, in a manner of speaking, the African plains anecdote is perfectly
apt to explain humans VS. human competition. Adversarial gangs on city
streets duplicate competing wolf packs. Meanwhile, Palestinians VS.
Israelites and Shiites VS. Sunnis are just modern versions of Athenians
VS. Spartans, the Hatfields VS. the McCoys and so on. As such, the Crusades,
American Indian Wars, World Wars, the Spanish Inquisition, Conquistador
excursions, Roman Empire campaigns, former Apartheid in South Africa
and our current battles all follow the same underlying theme. One population,
carefully and methodically, denigrates another one and justification
is, thus, built to decimate the rivals in order to security a territory
or something in that territory exclusively for one's own bunch.
There is, though, a big difference between earlier times when this contention
occurred and now. This is because human population growth has outstripped
the earth's carrying capacity to handle our onslaught of other species.
In short, we simply haven't let them sufficiently replenish themselves
(through procreation) to handle our increasing consumption. Likewise,
our greedy and clever capacity to use just about everything that we
come across has roughly the same effect. As such, whole interactive
environmental and human social systems have reached the breaking point.
Consequently, quite a few researchers on the topic predict dire ultimate
outcome.*
Indeed, bees provide a perfect model for this happening. ** This is
because many plants, that both humans and other species use for food
and shelter, are exclusively dependent on bees for pollination. So,
if the bee collapse syndrome worsens, a huge number of other species
will fall like dominoes in a branching or web-like (rather than linear)
chain.
Add to this outcome the facts that our oceans are, at least, seventy
percent devoid of life ***, global warming is taking an increasing toll
on multitudinous locations (as is occurring in Australia with its water
paucity) and, despite our warfare, the human numbers are expected to
continue to expand. In the face of all of these impingements, how will
our environment and our economic systems remain intact?
The Looming Danger
All the above in mind, our capitalist system simply needs to be revamped
and done so ASAP. This is because its inherent design entails our species
fighting for supplies and using up ever bigger collections of resources
(consisting primarily of other species and nonrenewable commodities)
to sell particular products to an ever expansive population of consumers
at prices as high as possible above the costs of manufacture.
At the same time, its most central purpose is to maximize profit for
upper management at the expense of everything and everyone else (meaning
the environment from which their provisions ultimately derive, the measly
paid workers and the overcharged purchasers who have been manipulated,
by advertisements, into thinking that they just have to have new fashions,
face wrinkle cream, an ego-enhancing luxury car and/or whatever else
is coveted in order to be happy). What a racket!
In other words, industrial globalization operates out of a system that
harms the landscape, inhumanely preys on lower income workers (i.e.,
~ $1.50/ day salary per worker to make WalMart jeans in Nicaragua) and
takes advantage of the middle class (i.e., the jeans are sold for ~
$30.00/ pr. in stores). Meanwhile, the obvious outcome of this combination
is assured -- huge windfalls being reaped by the (often nonworking)
stockholders and owners of transnational businesses.
However, the Waltons (the WalMart family, with its assets consisting
of $77.9 billion in 2006) are not alone in perpetuating this unconscionable
pattern of extracting ever more goods from an overwrought earth while
oppressing many people. Exxon-Mobile, Nike, Disney, Gap, Starbucks and
ever so many other companies and their gluttonous owners, clearly, follow
suit.
One needs just to follow the money trail to see who is involved and
with which business conglomerates. **** In any case, the whole backdrop
is hardly a means for creating a sustainable future!
Meanwhile and most worrisome is that most people are dependent on this
capitalist model to provide for their livelihoods and majority of income,
as well as, indirectly, their food, clothes, homes, energy to drive
to and from places of work and more benefits. So what will we use if
the last remaining stands of trees are cut down for fuel, toilet paper,
advertisement flyers and new kitchen cabinets? (Conversely, what will
the workers reliant on wood products do when they are told that they
cannot cut the last few remaining forests?) How will we stock our cabinets
if the last fish are plucked from the oceans and farms are all but finished
due to the effects of global warming, bee collapse syndrome, Avian bird
Flu, Mad Cow Disease, Swine Vesicular Disease and other factors? (Conversely,
what will the displaced workers do, who once worked in food provision
organizations?) What will happen when the oil, coal and many other major
energy sources simply disappear? (Conversely, what will happen to the
workers in this latter area of commerce?) Last although not least, what
will happen to all of the immigrants, streaming like a huge colony of
ants across the globe, while utterly desperate to stay alive as they
flee regions that can no longer support them due to an unbearably heated
climate, terrestrial ruin, resource wars, lack of work and other causes?
How will additional employment be found for them, let alone everyone
else who has been displaced out of jobs due to resources curtailment?
All the same, we already see mass migrations taking place. They are
voluminously fanning out across the Middle East, Europe, the Americas
and Asia. Immense throngs of people are on the move -- are so because
the alternative is to simply stay in place and die from starvation,
lack of potable water, warfare and disease.
In the end, we have to ask about what we going to do in light of these
interconnected grave dilemmas. Are we going to quit pretending that
all is, basically, well while continuing to go about life as usual in
our labor, play and other aspects of daily activity? Are we going to
start recognizing that our current economic patterns (relative to consumption,
over-breeding and a drive toward ever greater self-serving wealth) are
hurling the whole world on a disastrous course for our and other species?
Are we going to collectively start realizing that we have to better
learn to cooperate to address pending severe global crises? If not,
we know what will happen. The perilous results are all but assured...
We will just about all of us, except for the voracious multimillionaire
and billionaire pillagers, wind up like the exhausted, spent leopard
trying to muster his resolve to have "one more go at it."
Assuredly, that outcome is simply and thoroughly unacceptable! This
in mind, it's imperative that we find an alternative way forward and
do so soon!
Plainly put, we, individually and collectively, are faced with a choice
in terms of the way that we want to proceed ahead in life. While not
entirely mutually exclusive, their orientations are, basically, dissimilar.
In short, do we want to expand our exploitation of nearly everything
around us for wanton self-gain, and regardless of the awful toll that
our actions exact on others? Is it all right to proceed in such a fashion
as long as we, ourselves, get everything that we could possibly desire
since it's all, in any case, a vicious dog eat dog world? Instead, do
we want to engage in a sense of community, mutual uplift, inclusiveness,
tolerance and protection toward multitudinous forms of life? Do we care
about our responsibility to be good stewards toward each other and the
earth, in general, so we can pass the world as a healthy intact surrounding
to subsequent generations? Will we begin to better recognize the underlying
interdependence, which all life requires for its continuance?
At times, it staggers the imagination to consider the bowels of depravity
into which people, individually and collectively, can sink in a self-serving,
rapacious desires to control, destroy and/or own all. At the same time,
it greatly amazes that this orientation can exist along side of unrestrained
expressions of extreme self-sacrifice, unbreakable compassion even in
the most dire circumstances and extraordinary outpourings of tenderly
rendered care. How contradictory the two directions are!
In the end, it is up to each and every one of us to decide the type
of world we want to help foster. What version of the future do we want?
Although there is not much, there is still time to mend our ways. So,
let's all of us choose to work harder to redirect ourselves and the
earth onto a more positive course. The one that we, currently, have
just can't endure.
* A rather thorough and grim depiction is presented in: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July06/Santos31.htm.
** The phenomenon is described simply and well at: http://www.orble.com/colony-collapse-syndrome/.
*** An overview of this and related matters can be found at: http://earthwatch.unep.net/oceans/index.php.
**** Please refer to:
http://www.jobseducationwis.org/
274%20The%20400%20Richest%20Americans.doc.
Emily Spence lives in Massachusetts and deeply cares
about the future of our world.
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