SAINTS PRESERVE US

A Gaia Old Time

Decades ago I borrowed a book from my father’s library because its spine intrigued me. Its title was ‘Rats, Lice and History’ and it had nothing to do with the movie ‘Willard.’ The author was Hans Zinsser, a medical doctor and bacteriologist. From it I learned that many outcomes in human history were in part dictated by natural forces too small to discern until their symptoms manifested. It’s no mean feat to catch an opposing army with its pants down, wracked by dysentery. 

Many years later and perhaps because of the similar rhythm of its title, I read Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ which expands upon Zinsser’s premise of disease as destiny. The winners when tribes of humans come into conflict militarily or otherwise have usually been cleverer in managing and exploiting their natural resources; that know-how in turn generates superior technology. If a group possesses a surplus of staples as the result of refined agricultural practices and animal husbandry, its members have the leisure means to explore other endeavors whatever they may be. Technological leaps become self-perpetuating. Let’s make iron weapons! Let’s make internal combustion engines! Future cost is incalculable.

Between those books I’ve read two others that relate. ‘Fourth Horseman’ by Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk was my introduction to Gaia theory: essentially everything organic and inorganic inside our planet’s atmosphere bubble is in some way connected. Cause and effect. And if you’re at all like me you can render yourself near paralytic as you jiggle and jounce other strings like synchronicity and quantum probability. Fishing in the dark. Our world is a complex place.

Because Gaia posits Earth as a super-organism, Nikiforuk argues convincingly that it must from time to time cull its most annoying and prominent parasite. In his view documented methods include epidemics of bubonic plaque, tuberculosis, influenza and AIDS. Nothing personal. The implication though is clear: in the eyes of Gaia the billions of us are persistent yet inefficient slackers when it comes to eradicating ourselves by other means although God knows we try hard enough with the tools at hand.

The feel-good book of the four is a suicidal misanthrope’s wet dream: ‘The World Without Us’ by Alan Weisman. In cosmic terms humanity’s existence on our home planet is a blip. Should we disappear, Nature will reclaim her realm surprisingly quickly in the aftermath. The warranties on our infrastructure, parts and labour, and the machines that operate and maintain it are void in the event of apocalypse – it’s a bit like that unnerving ‘civil war’ clause in your home insurance policy. Humankind could become a cold case with some shreds of scant trace evidence left in the solar system’s dossier. Meanwhile, our self-regulating biosphere will continue its evolutionary journey. What’s another extinct species in the great universal scheme of things?

News this week continues to suggest Gaia has another weapon in her arsenal to rid herself of us. Hurricane Michael juiced up to a devastatingly powerful category four storm by sucking energy from overly warm ocean waters smashed into the Florida Panhandle like a fist. High above the Medicine Line Canada lit up like Neil Young on a bender. The country’s largest oil refinery located in New Brunswick blew a gasket. Irving Oil officials admitted to media outlets there’d been an ‘incident.’ The black tornado cloud was something of a tip and not a particularly anonymous one at that. North of Prince George, British Columbia, a major natural gas pipeline blew up. Unsurprisingly, people noticed the orange column of flame. These types of explosive carbon emissions, sudden, are tricky for any government to tax no matter its ideology. Alarmingly, these disasters constituted just another couple of business days in North America.

Lost in the destructive winds, horizontal driving rain and billows of poisonous charcoal smoke was a report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There was no news in it, the experts just pointed at the writing on the wall. Cataclysmic climate change abetted by our dependency on fossil fuels is occurring faster than computer models have predicted and may be unleashed upon us before the halfway mark of this century. Special interest groups’ social media hashtags will be meaningless in the wasteland.

Traditionally, when rival powers play nuclear poker one of them blinks because ‘mutually assured destruction’ isn’t a terribly attractive option. Gaia does not play poker; Gaia will not blink; Gaia will be just fine without us. Celebrity entrepreneur Elon Musk, he of the James Bond villain name and characteristic megalomania, believes humanity’s future lies out in space, on Mars. I haven’t placed a lot of faith in him, stable as he appears to be.

The UN study suggests that though we’re all a little late to the climate catastrophe crisis meeting, that potential jury-rigged and eventual long term solutions lie in the hands of the leaders of wealthy countries. There are no easy fixes to a complex threat in this era of strident populism on either side of the political divide. Confronting climate change will require a bipartisan political will of steel. Those summoning the courage to stand in the firestorm will expend careers’ worth of political capital. Things never end well for martyrs. And so we are left with an existential dilemma staring down the powers that be because working to ensure the future of humankind is a really bad career move.         

Copies of my new novel The Garage Sailor are still available and ready to ship. Get aboard at Megeoff.com.