Weird Timing

So on Tuesday I publish a post on the need to start acting in harmony to save the Earth from man-made or natural catastrophes, and on Friday Sir Richard Branson announces the Virgin Earth Challenge: a $20M prize for the inventor of a device / technology that can counter-act global warming.

Now, ignoring how bizarre the timing of this is, I also noticed on Friday a tabloid headline claiming a £250M global lotto was being planned. The Times published this article on it today.

So the prize for saving the Earth is $20M, but the prize for buying a lotto ticket is £250M. I find this difference very telling, if slightly amusing in a "how perverted our value system has become" kind of way.

Anyway, when I first heard of the Virgin Earth Challenge, two things struck me:

1. Global warming is a symptom of a bigger issue, so any "solution" cannot be just about scrubbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, but must include something to address the cause: basically a major planet-wide socio-political change, with a program of education aimed at multiple levels (governments, multi-national conglomerates, small/medium businesses, Joe public, children etc.) spanning many years, possibly even generations, until a more balanced and harmonious (co-)existence with our planet has become part of the collective psyche of our species.
2. The man-made planet-wide climate disruption is not just due to global warming. There is also Global Dimming to be taken into account. Basically this is an effect where small particles in the atmosphere reflect sunlight back into space, and surprise-surprise is increasing due to pollution. The really worrying aspect of this is that it is masking the full effects of Global Warming, and vice versa: reducing one without the other is likely to have a very profound and damaging effect on the planet. So the real challenge is not just to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, but to detox the atmosphere itself, and return it to the kind of composition it had prior to the Industrial Age. This is a much more complex task.

I have to admit, I was very pleased to read in the full article about the Virgin Earth Challenge that Sir Crispin Tickell, a member of the overseeing committee said:

"We should not think that technology will be the only solution. We need to realise that this is a societal problem. This is the beginning of a period of transition and we can't expect it to happen tomorrow. We need to start thinking differently as a society."

Well said!!!

He also called the Virgin Earth Challenge "a symbolic gesture".

Wouldn't it be great if this symbolic gesture spurred other multi-millionaires/billionaires or multi-billion dollar organisations to sponsor similar planet-saving Challenges?

Who will be the first to sponsor a greater understanding of super-volcanism (e.g. the super volcano that is Yellowstone Nation Park), a thorough survey of the skies for Near Earth Objects, etc etc.

Who knows?!

Maybe, given the weird timing of things recently, I will wake up one day next week to hear that Bill Gates is donating $1B to the formation of a Centre for World Peace and Harmony: a place for cross-cultural education, a place for research into solutions for planet-wide problems, a place for diplomacy.

Sounds an awful lot like the Season 1 opening sequence of Babylon 5:

It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the
Earth-Minbari war. The Babylon project was dream given form.

It's goal: To prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call; home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanders. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night.

It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace.

This is the story of last of the Babylon stations.

The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.

I can't help thinking that we are the planet's current last best hope for survival, and that we need a last best hope for our own survival.

Point of no return (revisited)

In the "Bodies..." posting of his Great Adventure, the Maltese Donkey said:

And no doubt with the population requirements, and export, they have to increase efficiency of agriculture like everybody else, which can lead to pollution runoff.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we are creating an artificial environment around us, which is too brittle to sustain the continued growth and evolution of our own society / species.

The above quote is a perfect example of this short-sightedness, which will result in the self-stablising evolutionary principle leading to humanity's extinction.

The Point of No Return is upon us, yet as a species we are doing too little too late to avert this.

Where ever you look today you see adverts for Personal Growth courses, Lifestyle Changing seminars, the latest set of DVDs from Life Coach gurus such as Tony Robbins etc.
It would seem that despite our success as a species, our lives have become hollow and meaningless, and we are searching for something with which to connect, to feel whole again.

Again this is evidenced by the growing number of fringe religious movements, and the rise of "pop" spirituality that is so fashionable these days.

While some of these have a valid place (and some are dangerous or misleading "instant fixes"), the problem is more fundamental than that: it is not a "personal" loss of the individuals that comprise the species that is at the heart of this, but a species-wide loss of connection / understanding of our unity with our environment, our origins, and our purpose.

In essence, the species as a whole needs a Lifestyle Change, to allow us to reconnect with Nature and our Role on this planet.

Humanity as a species, has a singular position on this planet, in that we are the only species to combine industry, intelligence and creativity to such a degree that we can either destroy most life on this planet, or save it.

We are unique amongst the millions of species with which we co-habit, in that we are reaching out to the stars, and exploring beyond the confines of our Earthly abode.

Make no mistake, there will be a mass-extinction event soon, in cosmological timescales, either of our own making, or otherwise. The evidence suggests these are regular phenomena, and part of the natural process of evolution, and that we may be on the cusp of one now.

However, currently, Humanity is this planet's last best hope to minimise the effect of these, or to avert them.

But only if we step up to the challenge, by putting aside out petty tribal, xenophobic differences, and act in harmony, in our and the planet's best long-term interests.

It may seem a bizarre segue, but the 90's SciFi series Babylon 5 (probably my all-time favourite SciFi series) dealt with this. Though it only became apparent in the last two series, you can see the seeds of it right from the start. It's a masterpiece rivalled only by The Matrix, in terms of having layers upon layers of hidden meanings and interpretations.

The bottom line is: If we don't step up to the challenge, we are already extinct, and are merely fertilizer for the next species to achieve a similarly unique position during the next round of evolution.

And with us goes the vast richness of our culture and heritage: Mozart, Bach, Van Gogh, Turner, Da Vinci, Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Dickens etc etc all gone. Forever.
And obviously other species will be wiped out too.

Surely we owe it not only to them, but also to our own ancestors, and for the sake of that which is good and that which we value of our Human culture and heritage to rise up and grasp the Destiny that is offered to us, and protect this fragile Earth for as long as we can?