The Hindu Business Line : ‘Carbon dictatorship’ may be essential for our survival

How to keep the Earth from heating up fast? Let’s form an Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control, suggests Tim Flannery in The Weather Makers ( www.penguin.com). We may need such an agen cy, he reasons, “if big coal, big oil and their allied interests continue to prevent the world from taking action to combat climate change.”

The commission, which can grow from the Kyoto Protocol, may have to use the oceans as a tool to regulate the Earth’s thermostat, says Flannery. “This will require new international cooperation on the use and ownership of the global oceanic commons.” It is quite probable that the commission would be deeply interested in agriculture and land use because of the importance of soils as carbon sinks.

Don’t be surprised if the regulatory body were to mobilise an international armed force for use against recalcitrants. “Perhaps they will wear green helmets rather than blue,” the author parodies.

In due course, we can expect that more and more planetary processes will interest the commission, from hydrogen to nitrogen, from carbon to water vapour. “Some commissioners might begin to feel like the boy who plugged the dyke with his finger, only to find the leaks breaking out all around him. They will surely realise that, while the human population remains so large, the stream of new issues threatening climate security will be endless.”

So? Somebody would suggest a focus on the root cause of the issue: ‘the total number of people on the planet’! With such a move, the Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control (ECTC) will have transformed itself into “an Orwellian-style world government with its own currency, army and control over every person and every inch of our planet,” reads a snatch in the chapter titled ‘2084: The Carbon Dictatorship?’

A frightening scenario? May be, but it may become essential for our survival, argues Flannery, drawing a parallel from history. “Not 250 years ago, wild lads from the Scottish highlands who knew nothing of the English language, money or trousers, drove the cattle that were their only wealth to English market towns so they could purchase a few luxuries such as gunpowder and salt.”

The modern citizen has swapped the freedom that the wild highlanders enjoyed, “for stable government, three square meals a day, easy transport, and the sophisticated machines that tell us about climate change.” We have relinquished further freedoms in order to confront dire threats, observes the author.

Similarly, to combat the current problem of climate change too we may have to cede just enough power to a higher authority, counsels Flannery. ‘Time’s Up’ he urges in another chapter. Stiffen the resolve of your government in respect to climate change by using the power of your vote, he advises. “As Alfred Russel Wallace said over a century ago, ‘Vote for no one who says ‘it can’t be done’. Vote only for those who declare ‘It shall be done’.”

The future of biodiversity and civilisation hangs on our actions, exhorts Flannery. “We are the generation fated to live in the most interesting times, for we are now the weather makers.”

Ideas that hit you like a hurricane.

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‘Carbon dictatorship’ may be essential for our survival

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