On The Way To Armageddon: 
Could We Make A Detour?

Prof Lovelock: 'Only nuclear power can now halt global warming'

Lovelock’s assertion that "Only nuclear power can now halt global warming" [Independent UK, May 24, 2004] is what Ed Regis (Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition) calls turn of century’s "great wave of fin-de-siècle hubristic mania." The Professor can be forgiven for his tardiness: He is 84.

Lovelock proposes that a massive expansion of nuclear power is the only thing that "can now check a runaway warming which would raise sea levels disastrously around the world, cause climatic turbulence…"

He says he is concerned by "two climatic events in particular: the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which will raise global sea levels significantly, and the episode of extreme heat in western central Europe last August, accepted by many scientists as unprecedented and a direct result of global warming." He is right to be concerned.

As well, "climate change is speeding, but many people are still in ignorance of this." Unfortunately, he is right on target on this one, too.

Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, says: "Climate change and radioactive waste both pose deadly long-term threats, and we have a moral duty to minimise the effects of both, not to choose between them."

"[A]s of the end of 2000 the world counted 438 reactors with a total of 350 GW, less than 8 percent of the projected nuclear capacity. They produced about 17 percent of the world’s electricity or about 7.5 percent of its commercial primary energy, far behind oil (40%), coal and natural gas (25% each). Nuclear power accounts for only 2 to 3 percent of the world’s commercial final energy consumption." http://www.greens-efa.org

As well, Lovelock fails to consider the issue of time frame: It would probably take 15 to 20 years to even double the projected nuclear capacity from 8 to 16 percent (increasing to 5 percent the nuclear share of world’s commercial final energy consumption) without taking too many shortcuts with devastating consequences (the Chernobyl disaster, the Three Mile Island incident, and many recent near misses in Japan and elsewhere spring to mind). By then, however, the rising sea levels will have inundated most of the existing reactors.

How would Lovelock propose to solve the civilization’s mobility dilemma that we have created in the last 100 years? (About 600 million cars are registered worldwide, as well as millions of trucks and busses, thousands of trains, planes, boats ... and millions more are being manufactured). What is Lovelock proposing, cars running on nuclear powered batteries? [How about nuclear-powered jets flying over Washington DC?]

Soon the additional demand for oil fueled by the increase in the number of vehicles on the roads and planes in the air would render the nuclear conversion ineffective. The only thing to show for a fleeting moment of madness would be a bigger pile of radioactive waste, which no one knows what to do with.

Global Warming is not the disease; it's a symptom, albeit the most serious symptom of a cancer caused by industrial civilization. Prescribing more nuclear power (even if physically possible) as a cure to the civilization's cancer is tantamount to treating a smoker’s lung-cancer by switching her over to a different brand of cigarettes.

According to Lester Brown (Earth Policy Institute) the world experienced the fourth consecutive harvest shortfalls in 2003. Last year’s shortfall of 105 million tons (5.4 percent of the total world consumption) was "easily the largest on record." The world’s carryover stocks of grain are at their "lowest level in 30 years," amounting to "dangerously low level of 59 days of consumption." The minimum level needed for food security is considered to be 70 days of consumption. Meanwhile, 74 million people will be added to the world population in 2004. (www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update40_data.htm).

Based on the United Nations projections, by 2015 nearly 1.4 billion people in up to 48 countries will face severe water shortages, while the water quality continues to deteriorate globally from pollution and rising temperatures.

World oil production is about 80 million BPD [barrels per day] and the projected demand for 2015 [a conservative estimate] is an unsustainable 135 million BPD. The New Oil-Rule Economy will replace the "old" economy in the very near future. A single company/organization will have a monopoly on about 80 percent of "economically recoverable" global oil reserves. It will dictate "production", pricing, and delivery (and will even decide on the end user - who may or may not buy the oil). How much is too much for a barrel of oil, $40, $240, or $4,000? Soon, the current monetary system will be of no value.

The world spent about 1,500 billion dollars on military last 12 months. The US share of spending is about 1,000 billion dollars, or 52 cents in every dollar of Federal Funds (current military spending 29 percent; Iraq and Afghanistan 4 percent; past military 19 percent, including national debt created by military spending) while 35 million Americans live at or below the federal poverty level.

All around us we have created a garbage quicksand. We are sinking rapidly in a quicksand of 57 trillion pounds of materials that is turned into waste annually. Of course, there is a price to pay: The Sixth Great Extinction is looming.

To avert extinction we need an ecological revolution. We must unlearn, rethink, undo, and re-do all human activities re-mapping a sustainable path within the framework of eco-centrism.

Unless the dynamics of our civilization pertaining to our morality, militarism, mobility, consumption, and our perceived ideas about possession and waste are reversed rapidly, this writer believes, the "final" war (which is being fought over the control of resources) would, in the very near future, enter its next sinister stage – a global thermonuclear holocaust.

How else could you prevent anyone in China, to quote but one example, from eating a square meal a day, or owning a car, or the gasoline to drive her car?

We must begin a new chapter in human evolution, one that rejects wars for control over the oil, food, water supplies, and other resources.

But how do we do it? Is there a "single" solution that would avert an all-out nuclear war, prevent further militarism, check global warming, stop consumerist madness, reduce CO2 emissions by more than 80 percent, reduce acid rains, minimize toxins in the land, air, and sea…?

Yes there is: The zero-oil principle - a moratorium on oil extraction.

Freeze the oil. Seal the oil wells, cement them, or otherwise make it impossible to pump out any oil for 50 years.

Stopping the flow of oil globally is a drastic measure, of course, and cannot be easily implemented. Freezing the oil has far-reaching socio-economical implications; it will create great upheavals. The consequences of the zero oil-principle, however, would be far less devastating than the remaining alternatives: the inevitable global thermonuclear war, and the global warming.

A moratorium on oil production can only be reached through global consensus among governments; it would require an unprecedented level of cooperation among the "representatives" of nations.

The existing resources need to be redistributed fairly; populations must be readied to assume new challenges; lifestyles will be changed dramatically; communities would have to learn how to produce their food (and renewable power) locally, be sustainable, and learn to do more with less.

Unfortunately, this author does not believe such levels of cooperation could possibly develop between the world governments anytime soon.

We must, therefore, rely on "we the people." We need non-violent volunteer organizations to develop and promulgate a new, unified value system based on an eco-centrist economy at war speed, employing creative ways and means of stopping the flow of oil globally to avert The Sixth Great Extinction.

If we choose life, that's a price well worth paying for.

By: Harry Saloor  [May 31, 2004]

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