The Last Fight – Last Resort

When I read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in 1968, I was a kid; I did feel an unpleasant feeling of wrongdoing, but it was not fear; and of course all that was taking place in another country than mine, and I merely tried to bury the thought. When the Club of Rome issued their report in 1972, I did not read it; still, a few newspeople did, and merely laughed at it. I laughed along: I already had rolled over to the mainstream non-thinking. When Gro Brundtland issued her report in 1987, for the world to read, I did not even notice, nor did I notice the creation of IPCC. I was way too busy working hard, obtaining results and keeping everybody happy, thinking everyone was somehow doing the same, only a little slower. Already I had put all politicians in the “useless” box, and thought it was not grave, as the people who were really running the show probably were doing their best, like me. Probably, eh?

And then came the Earth Summit in 1992. Then again came this faint feeling of wrongdoing; it all sounded very complicated, and the depth of the issues never seemed to fit with the shallowness of the decisions; still, I could see that all nations, all governments were aware of the problem. Which problem?

 

It was only in 2006, when I went back to school for an M. Sc. in environmental sciences, that I discovered the size, complexity and number of intermingled problems; and only even later did I discover why we were not even trying to address them. I summed up these problems in 5 categories; but believe me, they are many. Any single one of these problems will prove difficult to come by; all together, they are lethal. The current civilization is a goner; the human species may survive, but the odds are poor.

 

Then what to do? Our global political system has proved unable to address any problem; it actually worsens them every day. But at least it makes apparent who really are the decision makers on this planet. Forbes keeps tags of the 2500 billionaires our humanity has created; these guys (and a few girls) really can answer YES to the three questions:

- Can you make any decision freely?
- Can you make it happen tomorrow morning ?
- Will your decisions impact a large size of humanity?

None of these people are elected; no-one can fire them. Together, they own 50 % of the world. They make 99 % of important decisions, those which will have an actuel impact on a large part of humanity. They can do it.

Do what? Bury the CO², that’s what. CCS already is a mature technology; applying it to all single-source large plants is technically easy, and we can slash by half all industry-related CO² emissions within 10 years. Then we can turn all gasoline cars into electric cars in ten years, while we build many more CCS-fitted power plants to feed them, and slash the rest of CO² emissions by half again in another ten years. And yes, suddenly humanity has a future again. How do we do this? Go see these 2500 people and beg, plead, pray for their contribution. And then things will go in a flash.

What if they say no? I cannot write the answer to this question, but I am sure you can guess. It has to be done in the year 2020.