Apocalypse now

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has published its 6^th Assessment Report, with gloomy predictions and recommending a stop to carbon dioxide emissions. It is much the same as their five previous reports, but with a rising level of urgency. Just a few days earlier, a study of North Atlantic ocean currents signalled that they are slowing down and may change their patterns completely. This complex system (AMOC) carries hot surface sea water north from the Tropics, while cold sea water flows down to replace it. This circulation is being slowed down by the masses of fresh water from melting ice and permafrost rushing into the Arctic Ocean, whose principal outlet is into the North Atlantic. As this melt-off does not contain salt, it is lighter than sea water and stays on the surface, and pushes back the hot surface current coming from the south. And that pile-up is slowing down the whole process. If the hot currents no longer circulate, heat will accumulate in the Tropics and colder conditions will affect Western Europe. Both weather patterns will be seriously modified towards more extreme events.

The IPPC has declared unequivocally that global warming is the consequence of greenhouse gas emissions, largely due to the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. The affect of rising temperatures on sea levels and atmospheric phenomena is computer-enhanced speculation, and actual meteorological disasters are more precocious than predicted, as is the rate of melting ice in both polar regions. It is happening now, instead of in a few decades. However, there is one aspect of the subject that is seldom mentioned. There is a lapse of time between the increased presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and their complete warming effect. This delay is estimated to last at least ten years, and possibly as much as thirty years, depending on the sources of information. So that the droughts and floods, the hot and cold that the planet is experiencing today are caused by emissions that occurred one, two or three decades ago. And those decades are just when emissions accelerated, from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, from forest fires and Arctic methane leaks, and the oceanic absorption of carbon dioxide is slowing because of saturation, and could be reversing from carbon sink to carbon emitter, like the Amazon forest. There has been a 10% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide just this century, whose effects have yet to be felt. Meanwhile, emissions continue to rise, governments are showing their incapacity to organise a turnaround, and most of humanity would not survive very long without cooking, heating, cooling and transportation, all of which depend directly or indirectly on carbon combustion.

Fifty years of negation, corruption and disinformation have brought life on planet Earth to a cliff edge, a dead-end with no way out except a desperate and futile scramble back against the flow. The climate refugees from the South are a prelude to mass movements everywhere, as ecosystems collapse from the stress of persistent droughts, repeated floods, extreme temperatures and rising sea levels. The urgency expressed by the IPPC report seems to have surprised, but it is quite insufficient and, as some have noted, there is no mention of the overriding rule that only profit determines human endeavours. There is criticism of government ineptitude in reducing fossil fuel combustion, but the system that functions exclusively for profit is ignored, as though its influence on governmental actions was not preponderant. By taking governments to task instead of the system, the report absolves it and guarantees its perpetuation, until its own mechanisms ultimately fall apart.

The planet is subjected to fires and floods, and a growing number of people are the victims of governmental and/or criminal ultra-violence. Survivors are seeking refuge elsewhere, but safe havens are becoming rare and far less welcoming, and ever more millions are camping on the margins of society. In all this darkness, stock markets - the NYSE in particular - are cavorting enthusiastically from record highs to record highs. The signal should be, all is well, the future is bright, but the causes are not at all reassuring. Central banks have been transforming debt into cash on an astronomical scale, and that fresh money has gravitated to the stock markets. And it has inflated other prices as well, from housing to goods and services. The central bank alchemy of transmuting future incomes into past ones can only be a short term strategy, but once started it is difficult to stop. The debt cycle showed its limits in 2008, and monetary creations took up the relay to keep spending above income and insure profits. A decade later and no end in sight, colossal reserves of cash are piling up with nowhere safe to go, as everyone knows the financial bubble is close to bursting point.

Capitalism based on interest and profit must have perpetual growth to accumulate those benefits. Its nature is imperialistic and it strives to be hegemonic. Monopoly is its guiding star. In the past countless empires have built themselves on plunder, overreached and fallen. But their expanse was limited by slow transport and communications. Relays of runners or horsemen might average ten miles an hour, while troops and wagons might average twenty odd miles a day. Things accelerated with large sailing ships and again with steam power, and soon after with the telegraph, internal combustion engines, radio, etc. The reach of empire became global, and the empire of capitalism holds the world in its grip. There is no escape and no other model to turn to, just small pockets of resistance on the verge of extinction. Past empires have fall and humanity has moved on to new ideas and different imperial dreams. Today's capitalist empire is so overwhelming that its breakdown, like climate disruption, will spare no one. The IPPC's wakeup call may be better than nothing, but it carefully avoids the real cause behind the destruction of the planet's complex ecosystem. Private profit is always detrimental to the wider well-being.