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The Burning Of Earth

Paul Olson
UNL Professor Emeritus

A sort of historical proverb says that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Of course, Nero would have had no fiddles since they were invented more than a millennium later. What is more probably — though possibly also inaccurately — alleged is that Nero set fire to Rome and sang exultingly as the great old city went up in flames. Suetonius has the story as follows:

[H]e showed no... mercy to the people or the walls of his capital. When someone in a general conversation said: “When I am dead, be earth consumed by fire,” he rejoined “Nay, rather while I live”…[U]nder cover of displeasure at the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets, he set fire to the city so openly that several ex-consuls did not venture to lay hands on his chamberlains although they caught them on their estates with tow and firebrands… For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs… [Huge numbers of dwellings, houses of ancient Roman leaders, older temples and antiquities were destroyed.] Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas, and exulting, as he said, “with the beauty of the flames,” he sang the whole time the “Sack of Ilium [Troy],” in his regular stage costume. Furthermore, to gain from this calamity too the spoil and booty possible, while promising the removal of the debris and dead bodies free of cost, [he] allowed no one to approach the ruins of his own property; and from the contributions which he not only received, but even demanded, he nearly bankrupted the provinces…

This story appears fabricated partly because we deem it impossible that a ruler could burn his own capital. We might deem it even more impossible that he could sing the fictions of Troy’s burning even as he scorched Rome. But it is not so improbable when we consider that the rulers of the United States have been setting the stage for burning the world for about half a century. I speak not of nuclear holocaust but of global warming.

A few columns ago I wrote of the threat of the nuclear industry to Nebraska’s environment. (I plan later to write of the pollution created in Nebraska’s soils by the conventional military plants left over from World War II and later wars.) However, such pollution pales beside the wastage of the planet posed by global warming. The Rome that is burning is our planet. Prominent members of our military, using scientific consultants, now tell us that we must stop it, while our president tells us that we do not know whether we or nature make the heat. The president says this in spite of the 100 percent consensus of scientific studies saying that we are lighting the fires.

President Bill Clinton, though now an advocate of attention to and action on global climate change, was little better while president. He made a speech about it. Nobody paid any attention so he quit. Reagan and the Reagan Administration regarded people concerned about green things to be insane enemies of progress. Reagan pooh-poohed the idea of global warming and spent a token sum on research into it. Before Reagan, Carter concerned himself about our consumption of fossil fuels. He didn’t know or care deeply about global warming then, but OPEC had put the squeeze on him and us by jacking up oil prices. However, even as early as Carter, Congress passed a “National Climate Act” in late 1978 which established a National Climate Program Office to monitor global climate change. The history of the last 40 years, save for a brief period in Carter’s ’70s is — for the most part as Spencer Weart documents — a history of scientific (albeit piecemeal) vigilance and governmental and business indifference and destruction (see Spencer Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming and also Weart’s shorter book by the same name published by the Harvard University Press).

Though we do not have emperors so learned as to sing of the burning of Ilium while they scorch our planet, we do have leaders on the religious right who have seen the signs of global warming as either fictional or evidence of the coming ‘endtime.’ They sing their ditties. The Tim LaHaye group (see my February 2006 “Marketing the Apocalypse”) that has an ‘in’ with the White House believes that the burning of the earth is a prelude to the Rapture. Evangelicals from James Watts to Tom Delay have told us that environmental and global warming ‘spiritual’ concern is just bull. (Fortunately recently 85 religious leaders, including evangelicals, have said that global warming is real and responsible citizenship requires action against it). Still the Tim La Hayes and the Tom Delays of the world sing on. Too ignorant to know Homer and Troy, they reenact Suetonius’ Nero by singing the “End Times” musical anthem while applauding the earth’s burning. Our president does virtually nothing.

But the forces in American culture that despise talk of global warming as a danger, whether they are composed of neo-cons or religious rightists, are also strong believers in the military path to glory. They can ignore that ‘left-wing extremist’ Al Gore — ignoring his Southern roots and his membership in the New Salem Missionary Baptist Church — but they may find it harder to ignore National Security and the Threat of Climate Change issued by the government- financed Center for Naval Analyses, a think tank overseen by a military advisory board consisting of ten of our most distinguished admirals and generals and issued under their imprimatur. The “FINDINGS” of the report stated in the executive summary read like a hippy’s nightmare, e.g.:

Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security. The predicted effects of climate change over the coming decades include extreme weather events, drought, flooding, sea level rise, retreating glaciers, habitat shifts, and the increased spread of life-threatening diseases.

These changes will produce human social disasters on an unimagined scale:

Projected climate change will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many Asian, African, and Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states.

Unlike most conventional security threats that involve a single entity acting in specific ways and points in time, climate change has the potential to result in multiple chronic conditions, occurring globally within the same time frame. Economic and environmental conditions in already fragile areas will further erode as food production declines, diseases increase, clean water becomes increasingly scarce and large populations move in search of resources. Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism, and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies.

The U.S. may be drawn more frequently into these situations, either alone or with allies, to help provide stability before conditions worsen and are exploited by extremists. The U.S. may also be called upon to undertake stability and reconstruction efforts once a conflict has begun, to avert further disaster and reconstitute a stable environment.

The group observes that projected climate change will add to tensions even in stable regions of the world. The U.S. and Europe may experience mounting pressure to accept large numbers of immigrant and refugee populations as drought increases and food production declines in Latin America and Africa. Extreme weather events and natural disasters, as the U.S. experienced with Hurricane Katrina, may lead to increased missions for a number of U.S. agencies, including state and local governments, the Department of Homeland Security, and our already stretched military, including our Guard and Reserve forces.

According to the report, climate change will further extend the proclivity of the world’s desperate populations toward the use of terror as large numbers become refugees, immigrants, especially in regions where climate change contributes to shortages in water and food: i.e. Africa where much oil is found; Asia where sea-level rise will displace millions; and the Middle Eastern oil strongholds where shortages of water and sea-level rise will increase problems.

For our part of the world, no good news either. Aside from increased immigration pressure from South and Central America, changes in climate will pressure our Plains water resources:

Drought and decreased rainfall is projected to also affect the central southern U.S. That could have significant impact on food production and sources of water for millions. The High Plains (or “Ogallala”) aquifer underlies much of the semi-arid west-central U.S. The aquifer provides water for 27 percent of the irrigated land in the country and supplies about 30 percent of the groundwater used for irrigation. In fact, three of the top grain-producing states — Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska — each get 70 to 90 percent of their irrigation water from the Ogallala aquifer. Human- induced stresses on this groundwater have resulted in water-table declines greater than 100 feet in some areas. This already difficult situation could be greatly exacerbated by a decrease in rainfall predicted for the region.

The positive recommendations of the report to the U.S. military are fairly banal: integrate climate change into military strategies, work to stabilize climate change, partner with others to stop climate change, work with underdeveloped nations to handle climate change, adopt innovative technologies, look at the military effect of rising sea levels.

The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse.

No talk of reducing military expenditures to increase expenditure on alternative energy research or reduced energy consumption or carbon sequestration. No talk of moving the U.S. to first among nations in the percentage of our national income that we give in no-strings-attached aid to other countries in jeopardy from global warming. No penance for the U.S. for its environmental sins. In looking at a military report, we have to be thankful for small favors.

For all that, the Center for Naval Analyses study reminds peace people that to care about peace is also to care about conservation. Denmark’s energy consumption has remained stable for 30 yeas through its charging high prices for energy, its use of insulation and conservation, it recycling every possible source of energy, its massive development of wind, and its use of public power cooperatives to develop energy supplies. The average Dane uses less than half as much electricity as the average American and in a country where the standard of living is higher than ours on most indices and the life expectancy about the same.

We can take little comfort in George Bush’s singing the “End Times” anthem while the planet burns. Too much is at stake. As we struggle with obdurate greed and invincible ignorance, we ought to think of William Butler Yeats’ two Chinese figures carved in stone, contemplating World War II’s and all other tragic events. They possess a sense of tragic joy in facing our world’s pain: “Two Chinamen, behind them a third, / Are carved in Lapis Lazuli, / Over them flies a long-legged bird, / A symbol of longevity; / The third, doubtless a servingman, / Carries a musical instrument. / Every discoloration of the stone, / Every accidental crack or dent / Seems a water-course or an avalanche, / Or lofty slope where it still snows / Though doubtless plum or cherrybranch / Sweetens the little half-way house / Those Chinamen climb towards, and I / Delight to imagine them seated there; / There, on the mountain and the sky, / On all the tragic scene they stare. / One asks for mournful melodies; / Accomplished fingers begin to play. / Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, / Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.”

We will need moments of solace like that of the two stone Chinamen as we face the enormous ignominy of our time, but we will have to come down and work with the Danes.