A decade to meltdown

This summer millions of tons of rock snapped off the Eiger mountain and rumbled down on the slopes and valleys below. It was just another immediate and local example of the effects global warming.
The permafrost that held the mountain together melted and the whole thing crumbled. More will follow, for certain. Fortunately, it had been forecast: people took notice and so nobody died. But the bigger, more global effects of global warming are being forecast too, and in contrast nobody seems willing to listen. Soon enough, within 10 years some say, we will have passed the point at which anything can be done. So why aren’t we all more concerned?
There are as many concerns as there are weblogs, but four themes dominate the environmental debate. The first is global warming. Any remaining doubt about whether human activity was driving the temperature surge was dispelled by results from Antarctic ice cores. We’ve dumped vast amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. There is no precedent for what is happening as a result.
In 15 years, it is forecast that we will reach tipping point, the stage at which there is no going back. By 2100, carbon will have reached levels not experienced on earth for 24 million years. Back then the planet was covered in a warm soupy sea. By 2100, average temperatures will be almost six degree warmer than now. Not good – if the Atlantic flows change Ireland will be as cold as Labrador.
An end to the ice sheets?
And even these projections may be an underestimation. Melting permafrost in Siberia’s bogs is yielding five times more methane than forecast. Vast amounts of carbon dioxide are locked in the earth’s frozen zones. The ingredients are there for a catastrophe.
Polar ice will melt, cities will submerge. New Orleans after Katrina will seem like a picnic in the park by comparison. And if glaciers melt, the vast civilisations that depend on their meltwaters will starve. I am thinking of those whose lives are based around the Indus, the Ganges, the Mekong, the Yellow River and the Yangzi. That’s about four billion people.
Other effects will include new and lethal infections. Who knows, for example, what’s locked up in Siberian permafrost? And if a runaway effect happens, the earth could go the way of Venus – a methane-wrapped inferno.
One could go on, but you get the point. And we have ten years to turn the ship around, no more. Can it be done? Unlikely, I think. Richard Lovelock, originator of the Gaia Principle, now believes the die is cast and that all we can do is try to make the next phase of the earth’s life as palatable as possible. It’s hard to see hope.
There is another major theme to the environmentalists’ concern: our collective dependence on oil and coal. We’re using them up, and fast. We’re approaching ‘peak oil’, the point at which more than half the earth’s reserves are used. We should be worried about dependency on fossil fuels even if they didn’t drive global warming. That they do makes it even worse.
Pessimists believe that we’ll never break our dependence and when the oil runs out we’ll revert to living in rural settlements, rarely venturing more than 20 kilometres, eating local produce, and starving when the crops fail. Optimists argue that alternative sources of energy are out there – and sustainable ones at that.
Some are controversial, like nuclear power. Others aren’t. I love the idea of ‘Wavebob’, an idea developed by Clearpower Technology. It translates sea movement into electricity (http://www.clearpower.ie/cleartech.html). And there’s others: hydro-electrics, solar power, wind power, tidal power and biomass.
But these only work where there’s maximum efficiency of use. I also like the idea of just replacing fossil oil with bio-fuel. We already know about using rapeseed oil for diesel. And it’s good, especially here. But Jatropha curcas, or the physic nut, is a much more efficient source of fuel.

Nightmare in the tropics
It grows in tropical and semi-tropical countries, wet and dry. While other plants yield oil, Jatropha oil is inedible and so is the only one which gives a high yield of extractable oil from the seeds to a relatively low price for the raw oil (try www.tropilab.com/biodiesel1.html).
Mali already fuels its motors with Jatropha biodiesel. Southern Spain could probably fuel all the cars in Andalucia with what it could extract from widespread planting in its half-desert south. Meanwhile, nanobots that convert sun to energy will be available in less than a decade – deserts could become the new energy empires. Temperate zones like ours could grow trees and become carbon sinks, assuming they stay temperate. Rain forests could be re-grown and staffed by local tree-keepers, people who maintain the earth’s lungs…
You don’t even have to go that far. By-products of Ireland’s dairy industry can be turned to ethanol and cars can run on it. Ditto sugar beet. And all these are carbon neutral – the carbon emitted is absorbed by the next crop. A conversion kit will be on the market soon to adapt cars to run on a mix of petrol and ethanol and I’ll be signing up as soon as they come.
The third theme that preoccupies environmentalists is pollution. It’s a bit forgotten at the moment as we contemplate the thought that the end may indeed be nigh. But pollution hasn’t gone away, you know. Every year a vast cloud of shit rises up over Asia – dust, smoke, acid rain… like the Great Wall, you can see it from space. It’s just a more concentrated version of what’s everywhere that humans now live. We’re poisoning ourselves and our fellow travellers on the planet. We gotta clean up.
The fourth theme is water. It will spark the next world war, they say. It’s why Israel has seized parts of the Lebanon and Syria. Seventy per cent of the Litani river in Lebanon goes to Israel. And Turkey and Iraq could go to war over the Euphrates. We can’t live without it. The world is full of it, but it’s not always in the right places.
All over the planet and in different ways, the strain is showing. Our environmental future is no longer some rumbling threat away off in the distance. The Eiger has crumbled. There’s no time to lose. Humans have five years to plan and five years to execute. After that it’s too late. We all have a part to play. Let’s go!