The War to End All Wars
Yes, today (November 11, 2018) is the Centenary of the Armistice that ended World War I. But this post is not about that (in)famous monument, the war, to human hubris and the stupidity that led to the extinction of millions of lives. No, I’m concerned with another “war to end all wars.” That also involves the topic of extinction, the one which threatens human life — -NOW.
Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its report on the threats of climate change. Disease, drought, famine, the drowning of coastal population zones around the world due to rising sea levels, megastorms, the creation of massive populations of climate refugees, the destruction of infrastructure — -all come from our capitalistic dreams of “win-lose” interactions with one another, and a deliberate avoidance of environmental accountabilities in our social, political and economic decision-making. Some say that the IPCC Report (2018) was too conservative in assessing the threats to the environment stemming from carbon-dioxide emissions, leading to increased methane releases from the melting of permafrost and the heating of the oceans.
Yet, the report varies only marginally from the threat assessments of more radical environmental scientists. Whether we drown by 2050 or 2080, the point is that humanity, and many other species, are in the middle of the Sixth Mass Extinction, which could easily lead to the destruction of life-supporting habitats around more than 90% of Earth.
The new “War to End All Wars” involves the following:
- MASSIVE international efforts to remove carbon-emissions from our transportation and transportation modes.
- MASSIVE changes in housing and job creation.
- MASSIVE changes in the activities of the Military-Industrial Complex to shift from hydro-carbon-based programs to cyber-security using far fewer humans and more, MUCH more, diplomacy based on an understanding of the common threat facing all Mankind.
- MASSIVE education programs and technology-transfer programs that will benefit those in the Third World and get them away from overpopulation and environmental threats.
In the abstract, it’s relatively easy to write about these things, but it’s quite another to take positive, consistent measures to do something meaningful.
The American midterm elections did not quite produce the Democratic tsunami for which progressives had hoped, but, nonetheless, there are a number of major changes now in the offing for America’s body politic. We have women, people of color, non-Christians, members of the LGBTQ community, and First Nations people now in positions of political power and influence throughout the country. With their leadership and courage, they can create a new kind of non-military “draft” to get people who claim to share family values and a desire to leave a legacy for generations to come to join our “War to End All Wars,” by fighting for environmental justice and a decision to grow into a new life to preserve humanity and all the currently-threatened species.
If we don’t take care of Mother Earth, she won’t take care of us.
With that said, we need to declare war on greed; on short-sighted lust for political power that does not include everyone in society; on false schisms of “us” versus “them”; and on the view that we can take more than we give. An out-of-balance life kills us, individually, and threatens us as a species. If we do not aggressively return to the wisdom of living moderately and in harmony with Nature (including living harmoniously with one another), then we will have written the epitaph on Humanity’s grave.
