U svome obraćanju u Parizu 7. prosinca 2015. – samo dan nakon velike pobjede francuske ekstremne desnice –, glavni tajnik UN-a ponovno je upozorio svjetske vođe: “Više od jedne milijarde ljudi u čitavome svijetu živi bez električne energije. Gotovo tri milijarde ljudi ovisi o zagušljivim, opasnim tradicionalnim gorivima za kuhanje i grijanje. Isto tako, pristup modernoj, pouzdanoj, povoljnoj čistoj energiji od presudne je važnosti za iskorjenjivanje ekstremnog siromaštva i smanjenje nejednakosti… Sat otkucava prema klimatskoj katastrofi.” Uglađeno ignorirajući unutarnju francusku politiku, kao i čvrste dokaze o klimatskim promjenama, svi međunarodni nihilisti, profesionalni optimisti i drugi čuvari statusa quo nazvali bi to ‘ekološkim alarmizmom’… ili političkim alarmizmom – isto je… Kakvo je stvarno stanje našega planeta?
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Devedesetih godina prošloga stoljeća odvijala se zanimljiva rasprava između dvojice istaknutih znanstvenika: Carla Sagana, astrofizičara i Ernsta Mayra, evolucijskog biologa. Radilo se o pitanju svih pitanja – ima li tamo vani inteligentnog života? Sagan – bliži matematici i brojanju zvijezda i svjetova koji im pripadaju – tvrdio je da od bezbroj planeta koji su poput našega, život na mnogima od njih sigurno buja. Nemalo njih, tvrdio je, zasigurno su razvili napredne oblike živih bića. Mayr je – s druge strane – tvrdio upravo suprotno. Za njegov pesimizam zaslužna je njegova profesija, a ne karakter koji je bio živahan i optimističan poput Saganovog: Ono što je biologija za prirodne znanosti, to je povijest za humanističke – prostorno-vremenska linearna priča o prošlosti uz projiciranje, ili ponekad uz neizbježne posljedice, naše budućnosti. Kao što nas profesor Naom Chomski na divan način podsjeća na ovu epizodu, Ernst Mayr uzeo je naš matični planet kao ilustraciju svojih tvrdnji.
Takozvani biološki uspjeh vrsta može se mjeriti njihovim brojem, ustrojstvom i izdržljivošću. Vodeći se ovim trima parametrima, prof. Mayr ističe da su najprilagodljiviji sustavi oni koji provode brze (ne-kognitivne) mutacije koje uzrokuje bilo koji pritisak ili promjena iz okoliša (npr. različite bakterije, bića zarobljena u fiksirani ekološki prostor, poput šišmiša ili nekih morskih živih bića), te čak preživljavajući i velike krize, uključujući i kataklizmičke događaje. No, idemo li naviše u skali onoga što smatramo inteligentnim životom, sustavi postaju manje prilagodljivi i oskudniji brojem, ustrojstvom i izdržljivošću. Dolaskom do vrha (kako smo klasificirali vrh inteligencijske piramide), od nižih sisavaca do viših primata, majmuna i ‘homo sapiensa’, vrste pokazuju tendenciju disoluciji – prema sva tri biološka parametra. Po Mayrovom proračunu, prosječni životni vijek visoko inteligentnih vrsta iznosi samo oko sto tisuća godina. Od milijardi vrsta koje su naseljavale (i koje još uvijek naseljavaju) naš planet, mi smo – zajedno s drugim visokim primatima – kasno došli i temporalna smo “slučajnost”. On to pripisuje našoj inteligenciji, ističući ju kao ‘smrtonosnu mutaciju’ – ne blagoslov već prokletstvo. Njegov zaključak je intrigantan: što je veća inteligencija, veća je vjerojatnost samouništenja, prelazeći krivulju početnog razvoja.
Uistinu, naše financijske i političko-ekonomske politike i prakse stvaraju globalni pritisak na nas i na sve druge vrste. Zasigurno, u dubini i strukturalno, riječ je o krizi naše spoznajnosti. Zar želimo dati Mayru za pravo našim globalnim džihadom protiv spoznajnog uma?
Kriza spoznajnog deficita
Od Kopenhagena, Durbana, Ria+20 do Pariza COP 21, naš zaključak ostaje isti: potrebna su nam načela i usklađeno djelovanje, budući da je to jedini način ophođenja s teškim problemima ovoga planeta. Još uvijek nismo postigli konsenzus oko Bretton Woods institucije, Tobinove porezne inicijative, oko Svjetske trgovinske organizacije i pregovora iz Dohe, o ograničavanju nuklearnog oružja, o migrantima, Bliskom istoku i ‘mantri’ smjenjivanja režima, o IPCC-u (Međunarodni panel o klimatskim promjenama), o pregovorima nakon onih u Kyotu, te na koncu, o alarmantnom stanju okoliša. Dakle, na globalnoj razini u bitnome se ne slažemo o onome s čime se naš planet suočava kao ni o načinima našega odnošenja prema tome. [K tomu, u bitnome se ne slažemo o ulozi tehnologije. Kada govorimo o tehnologiji ne radi se o umijeću znanosti nego o stanju uma! Ne radi se o linearnom napretku u svladavanju disciplina prirodnih znanosti, nego o zajedničkom postizanju kritičkog uvida.]
Niti moraliziram niti idealiziram i očajavam. Svijet utemeljen na dogovorenim načelima i zajedničkim voljnim djelovanjem nije bolje mjesto. To je samo jedini način da ljudska vrsta preživi.
Klimatske promjene – brutalni teror nad prirodom
Mi sebe postavljamo u središte materijalnog svijeta – koji percipiramo kao svemir mrtve (i linearne) materije. Zato, ono što eufemistički nazivamo (antropogenim) klimatskim promjenama, zapravo je brutalni rat protiv (žive) prirode. To je prikriveni oružani sukob, jer umjesto vatrenog oružja dominantno koristimo takozvane tehnologije koje stvaraju zaradu. (Zbog toga su u ovom slučaju vojne jedinice zamijenjene ‘uništivačima’ drugačijeg naziva: ‘nadnacionalne korporacije’.) Ova oružana pobuna usmjerena je protiv većine onoga što je lijepo i unikatno na Zemlji – planet koji nam je dao dovoljno vremena i prostora da preživimo kao vrsta te evoluiramo kao misleći život. Tako, poznata matrica održivosti triju ‘maksimuma’ (dobra, vrste i vremena) postaje ‘minimum’ vrsta, ‘minimum’ vremena s ‘maksimalnom’ štetom.
Namjerno ili ne, to je sinkronizirani napad: neprestano ali predano onečišćujemo javnu sferu preusmjeravanjem pažnje na banalnosti koje stvaraju takozvane socijalne mreže, ‘reality show-ovi’, ‘zvijezde’ i slični – trivijaliziranje sadržaja naših života. U isto vrijeme teško onečišćujemo biosferu (vodu, zemlju, zrak i bliži svemir) nerazgradivim i/ili toksičnim, čvrstim ili aerosolnim, radioaktivnim česticama i bukom – nepovratno nanoseći štetu našem staništu. Onečišćujemo i vrijeme, pretvarajući ga u preko generacijsko ratno polje: naši opasni obrasci ponašanja mogli bi zapečatiti sudbinu nebrojenih generacija i vrsta koje imaju doći. Ne čudi onda što naša korozivna asertivnost ima (vremensko-prostorne) paralele: acidifikacija oceana (pojava kiselosti oceana) i brutalizacija ljudskih odnosa, kao i njihovo zaglušivanje, samo su lice i naličje. Ono što je društvena sfera za društvo to je biosfera za sami život na Zemlji: (vremensko-prostorni – sadržajno-formalni) okvir u kojem živimo.
Izgleda da svoj prostor (linearno posjedovanje) plaćamo našim vremenom (budućnošću). Stoga, ova kriza ne može biti ekološka, kao što nikad nije bila ni financijska ili sigurnosna (rat teroru) – ova kriza nedvojbeno je moralnog karaktera. To je kriza spoznajnog deficita, koju proživljavamo u muci poricanja!
Πάντα ρει (panta rei)
Priroda se ne mijenja. Promjena (kao kozmička konstanta) sama je priroda. Ipak, čak je i Heraklit znao da ta sila nije eruptivna i destruktivna (eksplozivna, izgarajuća i polarizirajuća), nego uvijek postupna i konstruktivna (holistička, inkluzivna i implozivna).
Propadamo, povlačimo se i nestajemo na svim područjima i unutar svakog organskog (morskog i kopnenog) ili anorganskog (tlo, ledenjaci, voda, polarne kape, itd.) sistema. Za ozbiljne, goruće (ugljikovodične) probleme planeta, ljudska vrsta treba hitan i trajan konsenzus koji podrazumijeva hrabrost, izvrsnost, viziju i kreativnost. Sve ovo neće nastati iz straha od prisilne (kozmetičkim preinakama društva, strogošću, financijskom luđačkom košuljom) daljnje militarizacije naših društava koju uzrokuje ubrzano sučeljavanje s onim što zovemo ‘ratom protiv terora’, nego iz univerzalnog pristanka svih da se uskladi zajednički planetarni cilj. Sve to može učiniti spoznajni um.
Započnimo globalni rat protiv terora – ali ovaj put – protiv terora globalnog ekološkog holokausta koji je uzrokovala kriza spoznajnog deficita.
S engleskog preveo: Hrvoje Vranješ
Literatura:
1.Ki-moon, B. (2015), Remarks to the opening of the High-Level session of the COP21, December 7, 2015, UNIS (Office of the Spokesperson of the UN SG) 2.Chomsky, N. (2010), Human Intelligence and the Environment, University of North Caroline, Chapel Hill (Paper) 3.Sagan, C. (1980), Cosmos Random House, NY /Carl Sagan Productions Inc. (page: 109) 4.Dresner, S. (2002), The Principle of Sustainability, EarthScan London 5.Smith, L.C. (2010), The World in 2050 – Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, Dutton (by Penguin group)Izvor: PCNEN / Prometej.ba / Modern diplomacy
Tekst koji se izvorno pojavio u Modern Diplomacy Magazinu 8. decembra 2015, do sada je objavljen u dvadesetak zemalja na četiri kontinenta svijeta. S engleskog originala Ecological Globalistan – Political Terroristan preveo: Hrvoje Vranješ
Ecological Globalistan – Political Terroristan
From Paris (COP 21), Of Nearly Everything
Speaking in Paris on December 7, 2015 – only a morning after the landslide victory of the far right French political party, the UN Secretary General again reminded the world leaders that: “More than 1 billion people worldwide live without electricity. Nearly 3 billion people depend on smoky, dangerous traditional fuels for cooking and heating. Access to modern, reliable, affordable clean energy is equally important for ending extreme poverty and reducing inequality… The clock is ticking toward climate catastrophe.” Politely ignoring the domestic French politics, as much as the climate change hard-evidence, all international nihilists, professional optimists and other status quo conservators would call it ‘environmental alarmism’… or political alarmism – the same… What is really the state of our planet?
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Back in 1990s, there was a legendary debate between two eminent scientists; Carl Sagan, astrophysicist and Ernst Mayr, evolutionary biologist. The issue was the question of all questions – is there anyintelligent life out there? Sagan – closer to mathematics, and the counting of starts and worlds attached to it – argued that out of all the innumerable planets like ours, life must flourish at many of them. Quite a few of them, he claimed, must have developed advanced forms of living beings. Mayr – on the other hand – argued the opposite. His pessimism was coming from his profession, not from his character that was as vivid and optimistic asSagan’s: What is a biology for natural sciences, that is a history for human sciences – spacetime-lined story of the past with a predicament, or sometimes an inevitable consequences, for our future. As prof. NaomChomski beautifully reminds us of this great episode,Ernst Mayr took our mother planet as an example to illustrate his claim.
The so-called biological success of species could be measure by their number, configuration and durability. By all three parameters, prof. Mayr stressed, the most adaptive systems are those conducting fast (non-cognitive) mutations caused/triggered by any environmental stress (e.g. varieties of bacteria, creatures stuck in a fixed ecological niches, like beetles or some sea biotas), and surviving even larger crisis including the cataclysmic events. But, as we go up the scale of what we assume as intelligence, the systems become less adaptive and scarcer by number, configuration and durability. Arriving to the top (as we classified a tip of the intelligence pyramid), from low mammals to higher primates, apes and Homo sapiens, the speciestend to image a rarifying picture – by all three biological success parameters. By Mayr’s account, the average lifespan of upper-intelligence echelons is only around 100,000 years. Out of billions of spices that have inhabited (and quite some still inhabiting) our planet, we – along with other higher primates – are late arrival and temporal ‘accidents’. He attributes this to our intelligence, labeling it as a ‘lethal mutation’ – not a blessing but a curse.Mayr’s finding is intriguing: The higher the intelligence, the more likely to end up in self-destruction, past the transitioning on a curve of initial development.
Indeed, our environmental, financial and politico-economic policies and practices is creating the global stress for us and all other species. Deep and structural, this must be a crisis of our cognitivity. Do we want to prove Mayr right with our global Jihad against cognitive mind?
Cognitive deficit crisis
From Copenhagen, Durban, Rio+20 to theParis COP 21, our conclusion remains the same: We need principles and accorded actions, as this is the only way to tackle the grave problems of this planet. We are lacking the elementary consensus in/on the Bretton Woods institutions, on the Tobin tax initiative, in the WTO Doha Development round, on nuclear non-proliferation (and NPT), on migrations, on the Middle East and ‘regime change mantra’, in the IPCC, on the post-Kyoto negotiations, and finally on the alarming state of environment. Ergo, on a global scalewe fundamentally disagree on the realities of this planet and the ways we can address them.[1]
I am neither moralizing, idealizing nor agonizing. The world based on agreed principles and commonly willing actions is not a better place. It is the only way for the human race to survive.
Climate Change – a brutal terror against nature
We place ourselves in a centre of materialistic world – this,of what we perceive as a universe of dead (and linear) matter. Therefore, what we euphemistically call (anthropogenic) Climate Change is actually a brutal war against (living) nature. It is a covert armed conflict, since we are predominantly using the so-called monetizing-potent ‘technologies’, instead of firearms in our hands. (For this purpose hereby, the army units are replaced by the demolition-man of other name; ‘transnational corporations’.) This armed insurgency is wagedagainst most of what is beautiful and unique on Earth – on the planet that gave us time and space enough to survive as species and to evolve as cognitive life. Thus, the known sustainability matrix of 3maximums (of good, of species, and of time) becomes the minimum species, minimum time with amaximum harm.
Intentionally or not, it is a synchronized attack: We are steadily and passionately polluting our public sphere with the diverting banalities manufactured by the so-call social networks, reality shows, ‘celebrities’ and the like – trivializing the contents of our lives. At the same time, we are massively contaminating our biosphere (waters, lands, air and near outer space) with non-degradable and/or toxic, solid or aerosol, particles radiation and noise – irreversibly harming our habitat. We pollute the time as well, turning it into cross-generation warfare’s battlefield: Our dangerous patterns might seal off the fate for untold number of generations and sorts of species to come. No wonder, our corrosive assertiveness has (time-space)parallels: acidifying of oceans and brutalization of our human interactions,as well as over-noising both of them,are just two sides of a same coin. What is the social sphere for society that is the biosphere for the very life on earth: the (space/time – content/form)frame we all live in.
Seems we pay our space (linear possessions) by our time (future). Therefore, our crisis cannot be environmental, as it was never a financial or security (war on terror) – our crisis must be a moral one. This is a cognitive deficit crisis, which we eagerly tend to spend in a limbo of denial!
Πάντα ρει (pantarhei)
Nature does not change. Change (as a cosmic constant) is a nature itself. Still, even Heraclitus understood, this force is never eruptive or destructive (explosive, combusting and polarising), but eternally gradual and constructive (holistic, inclusive and implosive).
We are drifting, dissolving and retreating on all levels and within each and every organic (marine and continental biota) or inorganic (soil, glaciers, water, polar caps, etc.) system. For the grave, burning (hydrocarbon) planetary problems, our human race needs an urgent and lasting consensus which presupposes bravery, virtue, vision and creativity. All this will not result from fear of coercion (social haircut, austerity, financial straitjacket), from a further militarization of our societies caused by the accelerated confrontations called ‘war on terror’, but from the universally shared willingness to accord our common planetary cause. Cognitive mind can do it all.
Let’s start our global war on terror – but this time – on the terror of a global environmental holocaust caused by our cognitive deficit crisis.
Anis H. Bajrektarevic
Vienna, 08 DEC 2015
Author is chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies, Vienna, Austria. He authored three books: FB – Geopolitics of Technology (published by the New York’s Addleton Academic Publishers); Geopolitics –Europe 100 years later (DB, Europe), and the just released Geopolitics – Energy – Technology by the German publisher LAP. No Asian century is his forthcoming book, scheduled for mid next year.
References:
- Ki-moon, B. (2015), Remarks to the opening of the High-Level session of the COP21, December 7, 2015,UNIS (Office of the Spokesperson of the UN SG)
- Chomsky, N. (2010), Human Intelligence and the Environment, University of North Caroline, Chapel Hill (Paper)
- Sagan, C. (1980),Cosmos Random House, NY /Carl Sagan Productions Inc. (page: 109)
- Dresner, S. (2002),The Principle of Sustainability, EarthScan London
- Smith, L.C. (2010),The World in 2050–Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, Dutton (by Penguin group)
[1] Additionally, we fundamentally disagree on a role to be played by technology, even on a very definition of what should be considered as technology. Technology is not a state-of-art of science; technology is a state of mind! It is not a linear progression in mastering the natural science disciplines, but a cognitive, emphatic cluster–mastering of the critical insight.