Climate, Gods and sinners
Some years back, as a conference on climate change in Delhi was dragging beyond deadline, I brought in mythology to wake up the audience. I made the point that ancient people and aborigines have always seen the weather as an expression of the moods of the gods. Remember that the king of the Gods (Indra, Zeus or Jupiter ) was the one that controlled the rain and the thunderbolt.
On Saturday 1st May 2010, the manager of the Grand Ole Opry theater in Nashville entered the famous building with a canoe, floating seven feet above what would have been your head if you would have been sitting in the front row.
Floods in Pakistan affected 20 millions people and in late 2011 hundreds of factories were flooded in Bangkok. Droughts are packing refugee camps in East Africa and the Dust Bowl is returning to th USA where, on the other hand, a record number of tornadoes ripped through the Middle West. The cost of food is soaring. Impoverished South European nations once more struggle in the summer of 2012 against blazing forest fires.
These and other weather events reported by the National Geographic and others have pushed the cost of weather disasters in 2011 above 150 billion dollars. The insurance industry sees a pattern of losses that is extraordinary. 19 countries set national records for heat waves in 2010. Is that all?
Nope.
The ice sheets of the poles melt at a speed higher than predicted by the experts of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Alexandria, New York, Tokyo … do you know the number of large coastal cities in the world today?
What does this tell us about the mood of the gods?
This is the one question modernists will not ask! Climate change and AIDS is their world and they shall rather go down with it than question their own life style or modes of productions. So the gods are saying, “be my guest”.
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are trapping heat. They are the steroids pushing climate towards the extremes of the system.
The modes of production and the mood of the gods are on a collision course. The human made shift in Earth’s climate is the law of karma that carries fate and retribution towards chaotic disintegration.
Post modernists fail to grasp that our planetary system is one holistic, integrating model where dharma (morality) binds the physical and the spiritual planes in a single collective, evolving organism. Breaking these bonds destroys the potential for evolution.
This is the script for this century and beyond. The escape routes of technology cannot take us out of the model but merely increase the entropy of the system, buying us short time dollar benefits and good old bad faith. Apple is the tour leader on the escape route but it exploits workers in China and cheats customers with short-lived batteries sewed in iphones that are built in a manner they cannot be repaired. It is called programmed obsolescence. There was a limit to the “zenitude” of Jobs. I guess he has now a different standpoint.
When poverty returns in societies not culturally prepared to the virtues of scarcity, violence is in the air but violence is unpleasant. Rather, can we change the business world from inside, through evolutionary learning, teaching corporations how to generate wealth without destroying values?
Efforts are under way but the jury’s still out on whether the new reform minded generation of entrepreneurs can help our civilization bringing the desperately needed adaptation to the emerging scenarios.
In the meantime satellites see that the earth’s surface is putting more moisture in the atmosphere. Chances for extreme weather events are going nowhere but up.
“Cupiditas radix omnium malorum est”. Being proud of the sin is not, admittedly, the best way to please the gods. The Christian legacy is part of the global map we must take into account. According to this worldview, sinners are forgiven provided they repent. But are we capable of repentance?