Slo-Mo

A friend suffered from downed trees and frightening moments during the latest wave of tornadoes and high winds to hit the Midwest. We were talking about how, in an era of global warming, the apocalypse can arrive as a series of slow, minor aggravations rather than a big world-shattering boom. Broken social scenes may characterize our slow demise more than mushroom clouds.

Then it suddenly hit me: In an era of instantaneous communications and 24/7 awareness of others via twitters and emails and blogs, global trends and crises of all types are moving in sl0-mo. Francis Fukuyama was half-right in his End of History rant. After the cold war and regional ethnic struggles, there's history all right, but sudden paroxysms of violence or confrontation are rare. When in the 21st century have we seen the times of the French Revolution, or 1848, or 1968, when decades of history take place in a single week? Instead, we have slow crises in Zimbabwe or Thailand or Ukraine or the Czech Republic that take months to unfold. Even when a natural disaster hits China or Burma, results and responses can take weeks when instantaneous responses are virtually required. And, as Michael Klare pointed out in an article on the latest oil wars, consumers were hit with a sudden wham during the 1973 oil embargo, but the arrival of peak-oil pricing comes with the aching inevitability of the frog placed in a pot of water that is slowly brought to boiling point.

One political factor that brings on this slowness is the transparency that results from a real-time global communications network. Dictators used to massacre large groups of people with impunity. Now, even a closed society like Burma can't implement a crackdown on fewer than a dozen people without the world knowing in a matter of hours. Authoritarian leaders are wracked with indecision these days, and that of course if a good thing.

But there may be some kind of natural response that the planet is providing to all the 24-hour party people. As we get to be more hyper-aware of the human universe, we lose sight of very slow natural processes. And our over-attention to the human news around us may increase our pathology. Nature somehow may be giving us oscillatory rhythms around some unknown clock, telling us to slow down, reminding us that no matter how finely and quickly we slice this universe around us, the trends driving human behavior will not suddenly explode or shatter before our eyes. Or maybe this is the natural slowing down experienced just before the tipping point - the last few grains of sand added to the pile arrive with excruciating slowness, before the inevitable high-speed avalanche begins. I sure hope it's the former.

Addict's Last Gasp

Environmentalists may not be planning concretely for living in a world where the North Pole icecap is completely melted, but oil explorers certainly are. Foreign Affairs magazine had a deeply disturbing article by Scott Borgerson in its March/April issue, warning the U.S. that if it didn't ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty, it risked losing oil concessions to Russia, Canada, and the Scandinavian countries -- concessions located directly under what is now the polar ice cap.

We have to give credit to Borgerson for believing in global warming and indicating that an entirely melted ice cap would represent grave consequences (a completely-inundated Florida peninsula, for example). But he is sanguine and maybe very realistic in saying that the oil deposits under the North Pole are likely as large as the remaining recoverable resources in Saudi Arabia. This means that oil companies will want to drill off the north coasts of Alaska, Canada, Russia, and Greenland, and that ships will begin regularly using an ice-free Northwest Passage to transport that oil.

Since oil has gotten us into this melting mess to begin with, its over-use should serve as a warning to transition quickly to renewables. Taking advantage of an ice-cap melt by seeking to pull still more oil from the ground seems equivalent to a heroin addict telling himself that one last binge before seeking treatment won't hurt anyone. And given how modern culture uses its resources and how modern oil companies (and nations) behave, Borgerson's scenario seems like the most likely one in our energy future. How scary.

James Woolsey, Al-Jazeera, Pinon Canyon, and more

Oct. 4 was one of those everything at once days. Producers from Al-Jazeera called at 6 a.m., wanting input for a "50 years after Sputnik" story. The results are below.

Meanwhile, former CIA Director James Woolsey was in town to speak at Colorado College and The Broadmoor on his new "going green" mission. While his intentions may be good, the man still works for Booz Allen Hamilton and such questionable organizations as Committee on the Present Danger and Project for a New American Century. Protesters were on hand at Shove Chapel to pass out these excellent "playing card" flyers designed by Eric Verlo. What was impressive is that the audience was happy to see the protests, and most of the protesters went into the speech (without being hassled by security), and let Woolsey make his points without shouting him down. No one was tasered. This is how freedom of speech was supposed to work. Woolsey made the predictable points about "tipping points" in climate change, but I kept thinking how the Oct. 2 finding on North Pole polar ice seems to indicate we already passed the tipping point.

Elsewhere on the CC campus, the Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition, which is challenging the US Army's desire to add several million acres to Fort Carson in southern Colorado, had an organizing meeting with a standing-room turnout, comprised mostly of students. Maybe CC is awakening from its slumber after all!

And speaking of standing room, we had a board meeting of First Steps Spirituality Center down the street, where Rev. Leanne Hadley and Fred Michel recounted their trip to the ESCAP conference in Florence, where their session on integrating spirituality with psychosocial models of child development got standing-room only crowds. Even the agnostic/atheist rationalists in the group were praising Leanne for developing models of spirituality to present at a scientific conference. This woman is not only amazing, her work is going to be cited for decades to come.

If all days were this overwhelming, I'd fall over.