A: The Earth has got hotter
In the next few days the aeroplanes will be lining up to carry (not ferry, that was the only long distance transport before aeroplanes) the c.50,000 humans attending this COP back to their home nations, all around the spinning mass of rock which is Earth. No doubt there is great anticipation for the next COP when surely the solution to the crisis on Earth will be found, and of course another great gathering of talking around ‘the table’, hearing latest research, eating and drinking, and of course buying things from local traders to show support for the global market we all now inhabit. Probably no delegates will be walking home, except for the local Belem civic leaders, and that does not dent the c.50,000 who will be setting off, jetting off, in aeroplanes, disrupting the atmosphere and adding a great burden to the the crisis of the natural world, who does not use aeroplanes, or air con, or imported food and drink, or digital tech, or electrical appliances.
If a quick sketch on the back of an envelope was made, and of which this writer is such a great believer and user of, of the balance of global causation of this crisis, how would this look? The indigenous peoples who do not consume out of their local area, and do not need fridges, cars, and who observe the dictatorship of Helios the whole year round, and of natural water supply and simple biology, they would be on the bottom line – in the doodle. Above that, in the middle band, how about dividing two categories of broadly speaking, the consumers and the producers?
Because China and India did not appear at this party gathering, they are put as baddies, and of course the USA is nothing but a baddie for all the leftie leaning political and social media and young people in the west. So those two huge blocks of jurisdiction were not there, and no doubt have many black marks allocated to them for that. But if the picture was switched around and producers who are blamed for this increasing CO2 and all the rest of the measurable collapse were on the righthand side and it was the consumers who were on the left, so Consumers = Production, then where does the balance of crisis causation lie?
Because within the atmosphere is really all one unit, so a rising temperature will eventually affect everything, because the natural world is not confined or contained within one jurisdiction’s opinion, or behaviour, where is this crisis generating? People will say ‘the Industrial Revolution’ and yes sure, it did set off some pretty unnatural processes, although the initial coal and steam industry was still very localised because of the manual work involved, by men, like shovelling coal into the engine of a steam train, or pulling coal up from deep underground, and using water at useful places where it was running downhill from gravity meant the power was already there to enable the industrial processes.
Using electricity in industry was a different scale altogether, and a different scale of damage to the natural environment, which the human has only as its survival, just like all other species. But now, in the last few decades, the mating of industry and digital, well, if that is put alongside the measurable crisis to life conditions, surely the correlation is too clear to ignore.
If the ‘bad’ producers were behind the = sign instead of in front as the causation, and not the west opinionating about who is doing the damage, if consumer power was the measure, where does that come from? Since New Labour opened universities to all, and with the result every local college, tech college, tiny institution and even uni’s which had never existed in any form sprang into existence in the ‘UK’ like mushrooms after a spring rainfall, how many air flights are taken each year ferrying, in the modern sense of that word, international students to and from the ‘UK’? How many giant container tankers full of goods are being transported from China each week to ….. not France or Portugal or Spain, but to the ‘UK’? How much food is produced in regions which need their water and manpower to survive themselves, into the ‘UK’ requiring masses of power for cold storage and preservation to ensure perfection in supermarkets? How many Brits are now taking several air flights a year to hot countries, or even to see the Arctic ice before the last snowflake melts? Beyond the Consumer = Producer equation there is even another quick sketched line above – the absolutely absurd. With the USA now facing really difficult questions about borders and consumption and some sense of responsibility coming back into view, is it the ‘UK’ which sits at the peak of the digital era pyramid, alone and absurd?
If a global scientific conference cannot or will not start at the absolute baseline, what is the point? The baseline has not gone away and there is further to fall the higher we go. Modern belief in science and ‘human rights’ to have consumer goods of 2025 which many young people have only known in their lifetime, it does not change facts in any way, only increases the divergence. Even the Emperor must be saying now, ‘Guys, can’t you see, I have no clothes!!’ But that point has passed, until the big digital collapse, and then no one will be looking to another COP to save the world.
