Climate change, oil storage burning and water flood. Photo: jean schweitzer

We live in what various religions have aptly called a Creation, at the root of which there is assumed to be a Divine power. People of various cultures espouse different concepts which often cause local or regional strife as people vie against one another to defend their own spiritual worldview.

The physical system in which we live quite obviously preceded our individuality and developed millions of species, one of which is our own. The life-support system to which we belong is called Nature (the biosphere). Continuous studies have overwhelmingly impressed scientists with the conviction that we, as a species, “live by holding hands” with many other species.

Many faiths have emerged, and for centuries each faith has basked in its own assumption of correctness and unique blessedness. Unfortunately what has been referred to as “illusions of central position” have bred intolerance, hostility, savagery, even warfare.

Adding to the confusion of multiple nationalities and religions on Nature’s wonderful, life-supporting planet Earth, there has developed a primarily materialistic religion focused on an invented Deity called Wealth, with social status dependent on the acquisition of as much money as possible. Billionaires are the equivalent of Cardinals in this monetary religion, although no substitute papacy has yet appeared. (Although something similar may be found on Wall Street.)

One might think that as a democracy we would ponder the inescapable reality that everything about us is, at some level, a Creation. We would realize that humanity’s activities have become blindly hostile to the health of the planet. Earth is being recklessly vandalized by political and industrial dodos who steadily shred its life-supporting integrity. (I refer to these foregoing powers as dodos because dodos were originally heavy flightless birds of Mauritius which became extinct because they were unable to contend with a changing environment.)

The recent book Fools Rule by William Marsden, argues with substantial evidence that Prime Minister Harper’s government is a tool of the oil industry, and that its role at the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change was to block a consensus on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Marsden’s view that Harper is acting as a political tool of the oil industry — an opinion shared by many environmentalists — also raises the possibility that the entire Greenland icecap may be ready to slide into the ocean, thereby causing a 23-foot rise in ocean levels. This grim prospect alone, with its inevitable catastrophic repercussions, shows the urgent need to make serious efforts to avoid further global warming.

The fundamental biological ignorance displayed by most political leaders is shocking. The corporate god keeps attracting more worshippers (customers), even at the risk of destroying the planet.

Pondering how our government can be so obtuse as to call itself a democracy, I consulted my Webster’s Dictionary. It confirmed my view that a strong commitment by citizens and voters is vital to the functioning of a democracy. Glancing down the page, I noted the word “demonology” and found that word highly descriptive of how government and its corporate masters have substituted demonology for democracy.

The definition of demonology explains why politicians doff their hats and dutifully reduce corporate taxes. The definition starts by citing the year 1597, and then reads: “a catalogue of enemies (the liberal creed at that time put Big Business in its ‘catalogue of enemies.'”)

It is ironic that, even in a dictionary “democracy” and “demonology” should be so close. Demonic expectations are often spectacularly obvious in the collusion between Big Business and Big Government. The maiming of 60 per cent of Earth’s ecosystems mentioned by the UN Millennium Report reveals dramatic evidence of our leadership’s march toward extinction.

Take the tar sands, for example. Two eminent sources, England’s Royal Society and Earth Policy Institute, have called for a prompt freeze and then reversal of human CO2 production. World on the Edge by economist Lester Brown states unequivocally that “if ministries of energy cannot quickly cut carbon emissions, the world will face crop-shrinking heat waves that can massively and unpredictably reduce harvests.”

Brown also points out that “if ministries of agriculture and forestry cannot get together to restore tree cover and reduce floods and soil erosion, grains harvests will shrink immensely even in major producing nations.”

Rapidly melting glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau feed rivers such as the Indus, Ganges, Yellow and Yangtze, which support irrigated lands in dire need of their water. China is the world’s leading wheat-producing nation, India is second, the U.S. next, and then Russia. A leading Chinese glaciologist, Yao Tandong, frets that glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau are melting at an alarming rate. If melting continues, he expects there will ultimately be an ecological catastrophe. And, of course, if the Greenland glacier does slip into the ocean, major rice growing areas in India will be inundated.

It does seem that carrying on with the tar sands folly represents great sickness of thought arising from uncontrolled greed that has fuelled the developmental fanaticism of government and industry. Money-serving leadership blithely ignores Earth’s own catabolic and anabolic mechanisms demonstrating that human behaviour has driven us to a crisis. We invite extinction by revoking Earth’s age-old method of storing carbon compounds safely underground by unearthing them and dumping them into the atmosphere.

In Canada, we need a government ministry charged with taking the first steps toward restoring planetary health — a Ministry of Reforestation and Soil Restoration — instead of the present Ministry of Forestry which blindly facilitates deforestation.

With those things in my mind, I was pleased to see that World on the Edge proposes, in a chapter on Saving Civilization, a series of Earth Restoration Goals, with estimated costs involved for the U.S.

First among the proposed U.S. Earth restoration goals is tree planting at an estimated cost of $23 billion. This figure I suspect might rise considerably as the small number of trees (about 675) planted per acre in what have been labelled tree farms by industries and forest ministries is far less than the two or three thousand trees per acre advised by the eminent forester Gifford Pinchot. He pointed out that too few trees per acre would result in weak wood produced by too rapid growth. I suggest that this first goal, which would strongly promote carbon storage, could be a world-serving action that might be sponsored by a group of billionaires wishing to show appreciation for the real source of their wealth.

A second Earth restoration goal would entail protecting topsoil on cropland. The estimated cost for this would be $24 billion. A new report which “reveals how Monsanto’s Roundup is actually threatening the crop-yielding potential of the entire biosphere” suggests that immediate action to abolish Roundup is far overdue. Roundup has a destructive effect on soil mycelium, which are interwoven fungal threads [hyphae] that lie in soil masses and are essential to soil health. The worldwide mycelium is technically the largest organism in the world.

Earth Restoration Goals also include restoring rangelands ($9 billion), restoring fisheries ($13 billion), stabilizing water tables ($10 billion), and protecting biological diversity ($31 billion). For the U.S., the total cost of Earth restoration goals would be $110 billion.

Another $75 billion would be allotted for basic social goals such as health care and education. In this regard, strong action to reduce human population increases is overdue. Lester Brown suggest that $21 billion in funding from “industrial and developing countries (would provide) a universal family planning and reproductive health program.”

The grand total would be an annual expenditure of $185 billion. This amount of would be 28 per cent of the annual military budget of the U.S. which comes to $661 billion per year.

Obviously, similar goals and proposals are needed in Canada to restore this country’s ecological health. Such efforts would replace our earth-destroying economy with an earth-restoring economy.

There is historical evidence which we continue to ignore that civilization has perhaps repeatedly risen and then collapsed from technological heights because of a lack of foresight and wisdom. Consider the findings at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, by Dr. Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey and by Richard Leakey in Kenya. These archaeological fossils indicate that primitive humans inhabited the planet two million years ago. Tools found in Vallonet caves in France, though primitive, indicate an age of one million years. Cave paintings inscribed thousands of years ago in France and Spain reveal modern-seeming people wearing “robes, belts, coats, and hats, and show men with clipped beards and moustaches.”

The last two chapters of The Bermuda Triangle, by Charles Berlitz, a 1974 bestseller, are philosophical in tone and present much evidence that human civilization waxed technologically and destroyed itself perhaps more than once. At the bottom of a 1947 archaeological “core type” excavation in Iraq, through various levels of primitive and more advanced cultures, Berlitz points out that at the 1,600 foot level, “a floor of fused glass was revealed, similar to nothing else except the desert floor in New Mexico after the blast which inaugurated the present atomic era.”

Referring to ancient India, author Berlitz comments that ancient Indian philosophers believed that atoms were in continuous movement. They spoke of the relativity of time and space, of cosmic rays, radiation, the law of gravity and other things we think are unique to modern technology.

India’s famous Mahabharata, a 3,500-year-old, 200,000-verse poem concerning cosmic creation, religion, prayers, history and legends, contains among its verses “what seems to be a firsthand view of atomic warfare.”

A single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame, as bright as ten thousand Suns, rose in all its splendour….it was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas [the enemies it was used against].

….The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Their hair and nails fell out; pottery broke without any apparent cause, and the birds turned white. After a few hours, all foodstuffs were infected….to escape from this fire, the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and all their equipment….

[That mighty weapon] …bore away crowds [of warriors] with steeds and elephants and cars and weapons as if these were dry leaves of trees…borne away by the wind…they looked highly beautiful like flying birds…flying away from trees…

Perhaps, if enough of us became aware of these and other apocalyptic quotations from the Mahabharata, it might help mobilize a greater global campaign to avert a similar collapse of the current “civilization.”

Bob Harrington’s latest book, Testimony for Earth, explores 11 principles that we must follow if we are to save this planet. It is now available at www.hancockhouse.com, or telephone 250 265 3356 for autographed copies, $23.pp. This article first appeared in the June 2012 issue of CCPA Monitor.

Photo: jean schweitzer/Flickr