(Still) birth of a global civilization

In the mid-90s a certain Robert Muller wrote: The Birth of a Global Civilization. Like my youthful self, this former Assistant-Secretary-General of the UN, was a strong advocate of a world government. When globalism was still an ideal, not a swear word. The naming and solving of problems that cross national borders, for example the broken thermostat of the planet, is no longer so good. The mega-market scorching the environment and social rights is not keen on the left. On the right there is a murmur about cultural Marxism, feminists, Muslims, Jews and George Soros. The world, everyone agrees, squeaks and squeaks. Even for the incorrigible optimist, it is not clear whether we "make it". This invalidated positivo knows: if we survive the climate crisis, it is necessarily about more than survival. For two reasons, this state of emergency - let's call a chicken a chicken - and our response to it, carries a transformational germ.

Technology

A civilization that feeds, warms, and relocates itself with renewable resources is better. Full stop. Not only because of that small detail: the absence of possibly unpleasant billions in mortality; survivors who bombard each other from tactical dune buggies for the last drops of gas / water. No, imagine a city with the clean air and idyllic silence of the farm country. Imagine a Europe where half a million people a year don't die prematurely from the effects of air pollution. Imagine an Arab world where Western countries do not support or overthrow dictatorships for the sake of energy supply; talked about dune buggies. Or a Europe that is not put under pressure by the US and Russia to buy gas from one or the other.

Renewable energy is almost by definition more locally operated less centrally. The consumer has more levers. Technology to make houses and apartments energy-neutral is already there. Electricity from solar or wind via its own roof or a neighborhood grid is more difficult to monopolize than the billions of expensive mining, refining, transport and sale of fuels. (The preservation of that centralist strangle model is, moreover, the secret reason why automakers and oil companies like to palpate about the simple-sounding but hard-to-handle and pock-expensive hydrogen.)

Politics

We ended up in politics in the previous sections because it is so inextricably linked to technology. But the current crisis continues. Simply switching to a climate-neutral global economy between now and 2050 is not enough to save things. Firstly, because we may not achieve that unambitious goal. Secondly, because there is already too much CO2 and methane in the atmosphere. Much more than oceans and forests can absorb.

Managing the coming period of global disasters (Jerry Bruckheimer fans, rejoice!): Ultra-hurricanes, mega-fires, crop failures, famine, tsunamis, and –ahem- disappointing ski seasons, will require unprecedented coordination. Not by peeling the governor, or some other confederal entity, but on a global scale; all 8 to 10 billion souls, 193 UN states. Wereldoorlog la World War Two, Independence Day, depending on the metaphor in you.

At the same time, we will have to take particularly drastic measures in the very short term to actively remove excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The fever must go down. The most obvious and least risky technology has been around for 385 million years: trees. Mass reforestation, not to make fucking wood pellets out of it, but just to be forest. Not to save the orangutans (apparently too few people care), but ourselves. According to a recent calculation, 1.2 trillion trees could neutralize human emissions over the past 10 years. A multiple of these to temper the disasters. Where do you put them? What thrives in the Sahara? Who pays? Also important: how are we all going to consume massively less?

I firmly believe that the coordination, the unified political will to survive that we once saw to combat the evil of the Nazis, will be there again. We are lazy beasts, but often perform surprisingly well with a gun to sleep (no, not that way, Nick Balthazar). Just as the digestion of that conflict produced a better, though still imperfect, international system, humanity that survives the ongoing global climate disaster will be a humanity leaving a radically different world to the next generation: more peaceful and greener in the most literal sense. For the first time, a world civilization worthy of the name.