During human history on earth, there were typically 275 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Low levels of carbon dioxide have coincided with ice ages over the past 400,000 years. Only once in that period, 325,000 years ago, did carbon dioxide reach 300 parts per million, coinciding with a hot climate then. There are now 390 parts per million (ppm), with the extra carbon dioxide having been produced by the industrial revolution beginning in the late 18th century– coal-burning factories, railroad engines, etc., and then with the addition of gasoline-driven automobiles and coal- and gas-powered electricity plants in the 20th century. That is, we already have more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than in any time during the past nearly half-million years! In geologic time, if we go back hundreds of millions of years, there were often as much as 1500 parts per million of C02 in the atmosphere; but the world was steamy swamp then, with average surface temperatures as much as 20 degrees higher than they are now and much higher sea levels. Homo Sapiens Sapiens is only about 120,000 years old as a species and evolved in relatively low-carbon, low-temperature conditions. We don’t know how well the species would adapt to radical climate change. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, trapping heat from the sun in the atmosphere that would otherwise radiate back into outer space.
Scientists such as James Hansen have concluded that 390 ppm of carbon dioxide particles in the atmosphere is too much for a sustainable earth comfortable for human life, and that we need to reduce the amount to 350 ppm. The world is currently adding 2 ppm of carbon dioxide per year, so that in 2020 if that rate does not increase we will be at 410. As we approach 450 ppm, James Hansen’s projections suggest large-scale and potentially catastrophic climate change (global warming is only part of the effect–some places may become much colder; the point is that the climate will change dramatically). See Hansen’s important new book, Storms of My Grandchildren.
A large danger is that there may be sudden tipping points and positive feedback loops for climate change. Thus, reduced emissions of some gases may strengthen the ozone layer over the South Pole in coming decades, removing the wind protection from the Antarctic and allowing a rapid melting of the ice shelves. Or, the melting of Arctic tundra at the earth’s other pole may rapidly release trapped carbon dioxide and methane, accelerating climate change. These are dangers, not certainties, but very dangerous dangers that it would be wise to guard against. Sudden climate tipping points appear to have been common in the earth’s past.
But that over time a lot of extra human-generated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause the average surface temperature of the earth to rise– all other things being equal– is basic physics. Despite the climate-change-denial industry paid for by the oil and gas corporations (and therefore adopted along with Darwin-denial as a dogma by the American Republican Party), this conclusion is not in dispute among serious scientists.
So back to terrorist hypocrisy. Here are the ways al-Qaeda causes global warming and climate change:
1. Bin Laden wants to take over Saudi Arabia and pump its oil for himself and his movement. Use of petroleum and natural gas puts more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and is a major source of climate change. In short, Saudis who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Saudi Arabia produces about 11% of all the petroleum pumped in the world every day. Al-Qaeda would not reduce exports significantly, since it would want the income they generate to pursue its political projects.
2. The attacks of September 11, using airplanes full of jet fuel and destroying skyscrapers and buildings, were–quite apart from being monstrous acts of mass murder– among the largest discrete man-made events causing high carbon emissions in this century.
3. Bin Laden told London-based journalist Abdul Bari Atwan in 1996 that he would like to embroil the US in a war in the Middle East so that he could do to the US what the Mujahidin had done to the Soviets in Afghanistan. Hint: Provoking large-scale wars involves lots of use of aircraft carriers, tanks, and fighter-jets, as well as bombing strikes– all of which spew large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Since 9/11 was intended to provoke the Afghanistan War, Bin Laden is single-handedly responsible for among the biggest high-carbon set of events in the twenty-first century. Not only is war itself a significant source of extra greenhouse gas emissions because of vehicle use and explosions, but it wounds and maims large numbers of people. While harming people is bad enough, and is the real tragedy, it is also true that extra health care is carbon-intensive. (In the US, the health care industry accounts for about 8 percent of the American carbon footprint.)
4. Al-Qaeda-linked groups such as al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ are responsible for hundreds of bombings in Iraq, which release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Some attacks targeted refineries and pipelines and so were responsible for very large amounts of greenhouse emissions. They have also destroyed automobiles and buildings; not only is burning such things pollution-producing, their replacement generates carbon emissions from factories. In addition, al-Qaeda-linked groups have hijacked chlorine trucks and used them as bombs; chlorine contributes to the depletion of the ozone layer. Bin Laden’s 9/11 attacks were intended to bring the US military into places like Iraq, and succeeded. In 2008 Oil Change International estimated of the Iraq hostilities that “The war is responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) since March 2003. To put this in perspective, CO2 released by the war to date equals the emissions from putting 25 million more cars on the road in the US this year.”
5. Al-Qaeda and its Taliban partners in Pakistan have committed large bombings, including the destruction of the Marriott in Islamabad, which release enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, and have provoked Pakistani military action in Swat and South Waziristan employing armored vehicles and artillery and US unmanned drone strikes– all of which release large amounts of carbon.
6. Al-Qaeda affiliates in Indonesia blew up a nightclub in Bali, the Marriott in Jakarta, and set off a bomb outside the Australian Embassy. Not only are bombings themselves high-carbon events, but they provoke military and paramilitary responses that use extra fuel and so produce more carbon dioxide.
7. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula set off large numbers of bombs in Saudi Arabia in 2003-2006 and provoked Saudi military and paramilitary responses, all of which released a great deal of extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Al-Qaeda attempted to blow up a major Saudi oil facility at Abqaiq, which would have spewed out enormous numbers of carbon particles.
8. Al-Qaeda attacks in Yemen have provoked air strikes and bombings from the Yemeni government. Both the terrorist bombings and the government response they provoke release substantial carbon into the atmosphere.
9. Al-Qaeda attacks on airliners have forced airports to scan baggage and passengers, using much more electricity to do so than in the past. Electricity is typically generated by coal- or gas-burning plants, and both spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The closest thing you might get in today’s world to Gandhists and followers of Martin Luther King, on a practical plane, are the campaigners in West Virginia against shearing off mountaintops for coal mining. Coal mining should be illegal, much less destroying the environment to do it.
As for obeying the law, the point of Satyagraha, nonviolent nonresistance, is precisely to take public action against unjust laws. They aren’t all just, and if corporations can buy politicians at will, as SCOTUS just affirmed, then there will be more and more unjust ones. If you stack the deck against the people in Congress, the people will just have to find other ways to protect themselves.
Coffee houses, surgical techniques, algrebra, some key institutional developments in universities and hospitals, all from Muslim science. Not to mention optics, astronomical advances (some think they influenced Copernicus), etc.
I don’t know if Muslims invented it, but Franz Rosenthal showed that smoking pot was a big part of medieval Muslim popular culture (the Qur’an forbids date wine but doesn’t say anything about pot, though many clerics forbade it by analogy. Like most clerical prohibitions, a lot of people paid no attention.)
Aljazeera Arabic is reporting that Duran Safi, an insurgent leader of the Hizb-i Islami in eastern Afghanistan, has rejected talks with the Karzai government.
Meanwhile, Sonia Verma explores the issue of how likely the insurgents in Pakistan are to open talks with the Kabul government. The most promising negotiations might be with Gulbadin Hikmatyar, the leader of Hizb-i Islami or the ‘Islamic Party’ in eastern Afghanistan. It is unlikely that Mullah Omar, leader of the Old Taliban in Quetta, will take part in talks, and even if he did, she says, he does not seem in firm operational control of the Taliban commanders, some of whom openly say they will defy him if he makes the wrong decision. Siraj Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani network in North Waziristan and south Afghanistan, will also likely not talk.
Money graf from Verma’s fine piece:
‘According to an unclassified report by Task Force Kandahar, only 30 per cent of insurgents fight for money. The rest take up arms because of tribal allegiances or for “other reasons,” an amorphous category that encompasses everything from revenge to land disputes. Just 10 per cent fight for religious reasons, according the analysis.’
Obama complained about hyperbole on the Republican Right, such that the health bill, which is similar to Republican proposals of the early 1990s when Clinton was trying to overhaul health reform, is depicted as a Bolshevik plot to impose big government.
My own view is that pundits and politicians are writing off Obama prematurely. He is likeable, which counts for a lot in politics. People forget now that Reagan had a deep recession, was forced out of Lebanon, and was ridiculed for saying that trees cause pollution, but he trounced Mondale. Clinton failed to pass health care reform, but he trounced the dour Dole. Inside the beltway policy wonks don’t include the likeability index in their prognostications, but it was on full display in the president’s back-and-forth with Republicans at Baltimore on Friday.
And, it is entirely possible that the rest of his term will see substantial job creation, which is what will really matter to voters. As it is, the economy grew by nearly 6% in the fourth quarter of 2009, and if that sort of growth continues, lots of people will be back to work.
‘Saudi Arabia’s economy depends on oil exports so stands to be one of the biggest losers in any pact that curbs oil demand by penalizing carbon emissions. “It’s one of the biggest threats that we are facing,” said Muhammed al-Sabban, head of the Saudi delegation to U.N. talks on climate change and a senior economic adviser to the Saudi oil ministry. [...] Climate talks posed a bigger threat, Sabban said, and subsidies for the development of renewable energy were distorting market economics in the sector, he said.” ‘
It will be interesting to see if the oil and gas corporations directly come after Green candidates in November and shape Congress in their image. I don’t think that is the Saudis’ style, but it is that of Exxon-Mobil and other energy giants. (The Saudis tend to lobby already-elected high officials behind the scenes rather than doing grassroots work, and in that way are the opposite of the Israel lobbies).
The other thing is that some Saudis have an interest in green energy, including the oil minister. Look up the Empty Quarter on google if you want to guess why. And, Saudi Arabia is moving forward with solar-powered water desalinization plants, which if they can be built and operated economically, might save the arid Middle East from decades of further warfare (Israel-Syria-Jordan, Yemen, Turkey-Iraq, etc. are all looming water wars waiting to happen if there isn’t such a breakthrough).
So it is not actually in the Saudis’ interest to prevent the USG from throwing research money at solar energy, since they will be able to produce a lot of it and continue to get rich from energy production, and because they need it themselves for effective water plants of the future.
But if I disagree about the supposed Saudi threat to US Green candidates, I acknowledge the justice of the anxiety. Justice Alito mouthed disagreement when President Obama pointed out that the Supreme Court had opened the door to international corporations to intervene in US politics. He made this gesture because the Court has not formally ruled on whether foreign corporations have US first amendment rights of “speech” (i.e. of making propaganda infomercials and paying for them to be shown on US television). But most US corporations have plenty of foreign stockholders and partners. And, you wonder about the American corporations who are based in the Caribbean as a tax dodge? Are they ‘American’ persons?
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown may have called the London Conference on Afghanistan for domestic political purposes, as a sort of publicity stunt. But the nearly 70 nations that gathered there unexpectedly took advantage of the meet to plot out a NATO exit strategy. Of course, how realistic it is remains to be seen. The London conference saw as many plans put forward for dealing with the low-intensity war against the Taliban there as there were countries in attendance. And, even while it was being held, major fighting broke out in the Pashtun city of Lashkar Gah. And in the Pakistani port of Karachi, Taliban attacked a NATO truck convoy. Since Afghanistan is landlocked, Karachi is serving as the major port for the war effort.
Karzai also offered to open talks with the top echelons of the Old Taliban of Mullah Omar in hopes of bringing them in from the cold. While Karzai has been talking to some elements of the insurgency (including Gulbadin Hikmatyar of the Hizb-i Islami or ‘Islamic Party,’ one of Reagan’s old ‘Freedom Fighters’ now incorrectly lumped in with the Taliban), he wanted the London conference to give him the resources to make them an offer they couldn’t refuse.
NATO was generally very unhappy at Karzai’s mention of “15 years”, and instead began speaking of 2011 as the beginning of a withdrawal of NATO troops, with the expectation that over time more and more of Afghanistan’s provinces would be patrolled by the Afghan military without foreign assistance.
US President Barack Obama’s plea for an extra 10,000 NATO troops to committed is falling on deaf ears in Europe. The NATO military commitment to Afghanistan is widely unpopular in most countries. Canada has said it would bring its troops home by 2012. France says it will send no more troops to Afghanistan and criticized Karzai’s 15-year timeline. Germany is sending only 500 more troops. The Dutch may pull out their 2000 troops soon. Obama is highly unlikely to get his 10,000 quota from NATO, though that piece of the troop escalation was key to his plan.
What he’ll get instead is increasing NATO troop drawdowns
There is an emerging Indo-American suspicion of the Karzai reconciliation plan, and a NATO-Pakistan-Afghanistan convergence of interest in it.
Some say that with the US withdrawal from Iraq ahead of schedule, Washington will be willing to take on Afghanistan itself if NATO is not willing to commit to a long-term mission. But Afghanistan is a big, craggy country armed to the teeth, and US resources are not what they once were.
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