Between a Rock and a Hard Place

We use the saying, ‘Caught between a rock and a hard place,’ to indicate a difficult situation, often one in which we are faced with two possibilities, neither of which is desirable.

We have been faced with such uncomfortable choices for millennia it seems, as the saying comes from Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, composed around the 8^th or 7^th century BCE. At one stage during his travels Odysseus must pass between a fearsome cliff (rock)-dwelling man-eating monster and a treacherous whirlpool (hard place.)

Now, twenty-seven or twenty-eight centuries after Homer was writing, we might need to rephrase the saying. It is becoming apparent that humanity is going to be caught between the sea and a hot place.

The Sea

Most of us are aware of the danger of sea-level rise over the near-term. Currently some 270 million people live on land that is less than 2m above sea level. By 2100 that number is expected to exceed 400 million. Although, by then, most of those 400 million will have had to move because of sea-level rise. The NASA Earth Observatory predicts a rise of between 0.6m – 1.1m by the end of the 21^st century.

Of the top 20 cities (by population) at risk of severe sea-level impact, 15 of them are in Asian countries. One of those nations, Indonesia, is already taking steps to shift its coastal capital of Jakarta (with the dubious distinction of being labelled the ‘fastest sinking city in the world’) to a new site – some 2,000 km NE of Jakarta to Nusantara in Borneo, where the location is hillier than the alluvial plain on which Jakarta sits.

Another country at severe risk of sea-level rise is the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. The flattest country on Earth, the country has an average elevation of just 1m above sea level. A sea-level rise of just 45cm would see the nation lose 77% of its land area.

Sea-level rise is one half of the dire situation.

The Hot Place

Two years ago a group of scientists from China, USA, UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Uruguay published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal calling attention to a vastly increased land area that would be too hot for human inhabitation by 2070.¹

Presently humans live in a climatic envelope where the Mean Average Temperature (MAT) is around 11^o C to 15^o C with a small number living in a MAT of around 26^o C.

Very few, if any, humans live in an area with a MAT of 29^o C or greater. This is hardly significant at present as only 0.8% of the Earth’s land surface experiences such conditions, concentrated mostly in the Sahara.

However, according to this research, by 2070 the area experiencing a MAT of 29^o C or greater is projected to be 19% of the Earth’s surface. That is twenty-four times as much land area as now! That is massive!

Most at risk will be nations in central Africa, parts of the Indian sub-continent, SE Asia. Northern areas of Australia, and much of the Amazon basin.

How many people will this affect? Huge numbers. Around 350 billion, or one-third of the projected global population.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that currently there are 103 million forcibly displaced people in the world, a figure that has risen significantly in the past decade.²

The world has trouble coping with this number now. How will the world cope when this number is increased by a factor of 10 or more?

Notes:

1. Xu, Kohler, Lenton, Svenning, & Scheffer, Future of the Human Climate Niche, PNAS May26, 2020, Vol 117, no. 21

2. Refugee Data Finder on UNHCR website accessed 2 November 2022.

Zoe's Children - Heat Waves

In late July 2022 Seville, in southern Spain, suffered with a heat wave. The city had only recently introduced a 3-tiered measurement for heat waves, with 3 being the most severe. This heat wave attained the Tier-3 category. The heat wave was also the first in the world to be given a name (like tornados, hurricanes, typhoons etc) – an indication that the authorities in Seville expect to have other heat waves deserving of a name.

This heat wave was given the name Zoe.

In mythology, Zoe is known amongst the Greek Gnostics as having a fiery breath. Zoe certainly breathed fire over Seville and the rest of Spain during the month. Indeed, the whole of Europe underwent severe heat waves, resulting in an estimated 12,000 + deaths between June and August.

Other cities are also implementing heat wave categories and considering naming them (in an alphabetically backward manner) as has Seville.

Heat waves raise the risk of stroke, kidney and heart problems, as well as directly causing heat stroke and dehydration in people.

And, scenarios such as this will only get worse. The latest IPCC¹ report (finalised in February 2022) noted that there will be a “very likely increase in length, frequency, and/or intensity of warm spells or heat waves over most land areas.”

Ominously, the authors of that IPCC report were “highly confident” of the “very likely increase” in south-west, south, and east Europe. Seville is almost as far south-west in Europe as it is possible to get!

Seville, Spain, and Europe are not alone. Severe heat waves have occurred in Australia, many parts of South America, India, Pakistan, the U.S., China, and Japan – since the beginning of 2022.

Heat waves do not affect human populations only. We know that heat waves can cause mass die-offs amongst some animals (birds and mammals in particular.) Even for surviving members of species heat waves have a tremendous cost. Heat waves can damage the DNA of nestling birds in the first few days of their lives, meaning that they may die younger and produce less offspring.²

What can we expect after Zoe?

Zoe’s children will birth more frequently. Zoe’s children will live longer, and Zoe’s children will be more brutal.

The name Zoe means life. Zoe’s children are more likely to take life, than to give it.

Notes:

1. IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

2. Eastwood, Connallon, Delhey, Peters, Hot and dry conditions predict shorter nestling telomeres in an endangered songbird: Implications for population persistence, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 13 June 2022.

 

Body Count (Book Review)

Body Count summons up images of mortuaries, body bags,

scrolls of war dead, and morbid “bean counters.”  It could easily be a depressing, even fatalistic, read.  Yet Body Count: how climate change is killing us¹ is highly readable, even engaging.

Paddy Manning’s 2020 book is set very much in an Australian context, yet the theme, and message, has global reach.

During the southern hemisphere summer of 2019/20 Australia experienced one of its most devastating bushfire seasons.  3,500 homes were destroyed, 34 people died directly, and a further 445 died of smoke inhalation.  Over 18.6 million hectares of land and bush were burnt, and estimates of over one billion animals killed.

Manning begins his book here, amidst the blackened, charred ruins of people’s lives.  Interviews with survivors and relatives of victims give the tragedy a personal, sometimes eerily surreal, presence.

Were these fires caused by climate change?  Or was climate change an exacerbating factor?  Some of Manning’s interviewee’s say ‘yes,’ some say ‘no,’ and others ‘don’t know.’  Such is the problem of attributing single events like this to climate change.  Manning’s scientific references suggest a strong link between climate change and the likelihood of more events such as these bushfires.  Climate change, he says, may not be the cause of a particular event, but it does make the chance of these events significantly greater.

Manning follows these opening chapters with chapters tracing heatwaves, floods, and disease in Australia over the past few decades.  All of these, according to Manning and his meticulous research, have been exacerbated by climate change.

Although Manning cites research and the expert voices of relevant scientists, it is the voices of those affected that give the book its poignancy.  He tells the story of a father and son killed attempting to flee the fires.  He interviews a man devastated by the loss of his wife and two children drowned in flooding.  Manning introduces us to the term thunderstorm asthma, and allows us to glimpse the effect of having their father die from this illness for his two children.  These, and at least a dozen other stories, are brought to life (and death) in Manning’s absorbing style.

As Manning was writing this book the coronavirus pandemic swept the world.  This was no coincidence Manning tells us.  Coronavirus, and other pandemics like it, are symptomatic of the same human-induced ecological breakdown.  Furthermore, his research suggests that climate change is likely to worsen the incidence of pandemics. 

Is there any hope then?  Manning titles one of his chapters that way – Hope.  Reading the chapter however, I did not get a sense of hope.  Rather the chapter gives a sense of wasted opportunities, of prevarication of the part of governments and politicians, and the active campaign of business leaders to misinform the public about the realities of climate change.

Perhaps hope is unhelpful anyway.  Hope suggests that someone, sometime in the future, is going to invent something that will make everything okay.  Manning does not address this specifically.  However, if he does offer any hope, he offers it in his final paragraph.  Hope lies:

“In the way families and communities pull together in a crisis… and that ordinary Australians will help and inspire each other through the tough times to come.”

Indeed, this can be said of communities throughout the world.

1. Paddy Manning, Body Count: how climate change is killing us, Simon & Schuster, Cammeray, NSW, Australia, 2020.

A Warning Shot?

"The Triumph of Death" - Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The topic of the day, week, month, seems to be COVID-19.  This post doesn’t intend delving too far into this particular pandemic.  Rather I intend taking a longer timeframe and a Earth/Nature centred perspective.

Let’s begin this story some 2 million years ago when Homo Habilis began roaming the Earth, followed by Homo Erectus around 1/2 million years later. 

Our direct ancestors (Homo Sapiens) appeared around 200,000 years ago. 

For most of that 2 million year history we lived in cooperation with nature.  We were nomadic or semi-nomadic, living as part of nature – not separate from nature. 

Then, around 10,000 years ago we began domesticating plants and animals.  This led to settlements, rising population, inter-tribal rivalry, and, most significantly, the beginnings of our (western) disconnect from nature.

As time went on that disconnect widened and the rift between us, as humans, and nature was made deeper with the scientific and industrial revolutions, both of which shifted our understanding of the Earth to one of linear, mechanistic causality.

We can see the result of this disconnect all over the earth: deforestation, soil loss, habitat loss, species extinction, water pollution.

Mother Earth Warns Us

Since we began that disconnect Mother Earth has been warning us that our path was in error.

We have seen the effects of our disconnect from nature in the way we treat each other - wars, racism, sexism, colonialism, violence.

We have seen the effects in our own lives – anxiety, depression, addictions, suicide, consumerism.

The warning shots have been there from soon after we began our disconnect 10,000 years ago. 

Evidence from Sweden suggests an early plague was responsible for a decline in Neolithic populations in western Eurasia.¹

The first recorded instance of a pandemic was during the Peloponnesian Wars in the 5th century BC.  Thought to have been typhoid fever, the virus passed over the Athenian Wall whilst Spartans lay siege and ended up killing 2/3rds of the Athenian population.

Since then there have been the Antonine Plague, the Cyprian Plague, and the Justinian Plague in the first millenium of the Current Era.

We listened to none of these.  Instead, we continued to build more and more, and attempted to “rule the world” through various empires.

Black Death (a bubonic plague) in 1350 killed approximately 1/3rd of Europe’s population.  We know too of pandemics such as Smallpox, the Great Plague of London, Cholera, the Russian, Spanish, and Asian Flus.

Did we listen to any of these?  No, we went blithely ahead with the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and other disconnecting ventures.

More recently we have witnessed HIV/AIDS, H1N1, and Ebola.

Still no heed did we pay.  We continued along a path that was now highly fixated upon technology.  If there was a problem (such as a pandemic) then our techno-fix abilities would solve it.  And in the solving of perceived problems, all we did was create more (and often bigger) problems.

All of these, apart from Ebola, are thought to have started in Eurasia – the crucible of western civilisation and the place where we began our disconnect from nature.

Is Gaia sending us warnings?  Yes, she is, and she has been for thousands of years.

There is mounting evidence to show that environmental degradation (deforestation, wetland loss, biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse …)and exploitation are major contributing factors in the outbreak of these pandemics.^{2, 3}

Perhaps COVID-19 is the latest warning shot across our human bows.

Will we listen and take heed this time?

Notes:1. Rascovan et al, Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline, in Cell, December, 2018.
2. World Health Organisation, https://www.who.int/globalchange/environment/en/  accessed 17 March 2020
3. Nava et al. The Impact of Global Environmental Changes on Infectious Disease Emergence with a Focus on Risks for Brazil, ILAR Journal, Vol 58 Issue 3, 2017.

Crisis? What Crisis?

“In times of crisis we come together to help each other and make things better.”  We heard this statement recently in regard to the severe bushfires devastating homes and dreams in New South Wales, Australia.

Similar words have been heard following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  Undoubtedly, a Hindi language version would have been heard following the North India floods of June 2013.

But what if we don’t think there is a crisis?

Like the story of the frog in the water that is slowly brought to the boil, are we also unaware of just how hot the water is becoming?

Yet the three real-life scenarios mentioned above should give us a hint that something more than isolated, one-off events are occurring.  What links Australian bushfires, hurricanes in the Caribbean and Indian floods?  Two words: Climate Change.

Australian Greens MP, Adam Bandt, succinctly and unambiguously observed (following a day of fiery devastation) that “this is what global warming in Australia looks like and it’s going to mean more fires happening more often and some of them more severe when they happen.”

Bandt could easily have been talking of any country in the world.  He could also just as easily replaced the word fires with the words hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, drought or heat-waves.

That’s the real crisis.  Yet, for some reason, we are not coming together to help each other (let alone the planet) and make things better.

We are still driving vehicles for thousands of km each year, often with just one occupant.  We are still heating our homes using energy from coal.  We are still purchasing vegetables, fruit and groceries that have been transported from thousands of km away, often from the other side of the globe.

Importantly too, we are still letting our politicians, business leaders and policy makers off the hook.  We are not demanding the accountability necessary of them.

A Poignant Image

In 1975, the progressive rock band Supertramp released an album titled Crisis? What Crisis?  The cover of that album showed a man wearing dark sunglasses sitting in a deck chair underneath a beach umbrella. 

Meanwhile in the background grey factories are belching fumes into the atmosphere and all around him is ruination.  A more poignant illustration of our avoidance of the crisis around us would be hard to find.

A few lines from that same album are also worth quoting:

“Well, I just don’t know the reason
I don’t know what to say
it just seems a normal day
and I’ve got to live my own life
I just can’t spare the time."


PS.  I'm presently seeking feedback on this blogsite.  Please take a moment to fill in the brief survey with Survey Monkey.  The link is at the top of the page on the right.  Thank you.

Of Earthquakes and Earthquotes

Today (22 February 2013) is the second anniversary of a massive earthquake hitting the city of Christchurch, New Zealand.  I was living there at the time.

We live on a living, breathing, moving planet.  It moves beneath us, with earthquakes and volcanoes being the surface manifestation.  It moves around us, with tornadoes and floods being the manifestation.

Yes, the earth may make our lives difficult or even traumatic.  But it is the earth that sustains us, gives us the ability to live.  We must similarly sustain the earth. 

So today, in honour of the Earth I wish to offer some Earthquotes:

“Our task must be to free ourselves … by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it’s beauty.” – Albert Einstein

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” – Dolly Parton

“We are all visitors to this time, this place.  We are just passing through.  Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love… and then we return home.” – Australian Aboriginal Proverb

“The major problems of the world are the result of the difference between the way nature works and the way people think.” – Gregory Bateson

“To see the world in a grain of sand, And heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.” – William Blake

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not.” – Dr Seuss

“Humans did not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it.  Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.” – Chief Seattle

As I remember a day on which the earth moved terribly, we can also reflect on what moves us and what we can do.  Events around us can paralyse us so that we can think of nothing to do, or the enormity of the task can perplex us so that we end up doing nothing.  Thinking of those impasses leaves me with one more quote:

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase.  Just take the first step.” – unknown

In memory of 181 people who died in the Christchurch earthquake, 22 February 2011.