Under Coronavirus 19 (COVID 19)
lockdown, all by myself, reflecting on what many are compelled to do under the
lockdown, the full force of a calamity dawn on me. What ordinarily laws generally
fail to do, calamity succeeds. Washing of hands with soap under running water.
Using alcohol-based sanitizers. These are not new things at all. These are things we have been told over and
over again to do. They have been part and parcel of the upbringing of many a
person. Many do not stick with these practices! These ought to be personal
hygiene practices, and indeed a way of life. And it is the lifestyle of some.
But for this calamitous event of COVID 19, many would not have given a damn
about these personal hygiene practices. Today, because of COVID 19, everywhere,
washing of hands with soap under running water is a common sight. Because of
COVID 19 social distancing of 1 meter or 2 meters is ongoing (it should rather
be termed anti-social distancing because normally, socially, we are closer to
one another than that distancing). The point being made here is that calamity
as agent of change- epochal change- is more potent!
The doctor who raised the alarm that
coronavirus was coming was silenced by some China authorities. Dr. Li Wenliang was
an ophthalmologist in Wuhan, the epicenter of COVID 19 was among the first to
raise the alarm in December, 2019. He
himself was claimed by COVID 19. If the voice of that doctor had been
appreciated and heeded, COVID 19 might have been nipped in the bud.
Unfortunately it took the calamity of COVID 19 and the doctor’s death for the world
to sit up reactively, rather than proactively! Calamity of COVID 19 prompted us
more than the activism of Doctor Li Wenliang! The coronavirus pandemic when it
passes, would have left in its trail a form of epochal change- the world will
not be the same again!
The world generally agree that planet
Earth is undergoing climate change. As the Earth undergoes climate change,
certainly the natural environment undergoes climate change too, as the natural
environment is an integral part of planet Earth. Climate change does not make
the natural environment as habitable and life-sustaining as it should be. There
is a fear of extinction. Some experts are even saying planet Earth is
undergoing extinction. The situation has spawned many environmental groups and
persons who are speaking up. The cause of climate change is global warming, and
global warming is as a result of too much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
particularly carbon dioxide. The way out is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions
according to anthropogenic climate change apologists. How is the reduction done?
The reduction is done by a shift from the use of carbon-generating fossil fuel
to the use of renewables. Renewables do not generate carbon, and cannot be
depleted. An example is solar radiation.
The shift from fossil fuel to
renewables on the scale envisaged and required, and to ensure sustainability,
must be epochal. Some measure of shift has been achieved in this epochal
process. The two forces behind the shift are environmental activism and
calamity. Environmental activism brings pressure to bear on the powers that be
to hopefully effect an epochal change in climate change. Green Peace and other environmental
groups and what they do are examples of such activism. Calamity act as a rude-awakening
tool with far-reaching effects. Activism hardly brings epochal changes,
calamity does trigger epochal changes. Calamity do act as catalyst for
activism. Let us look at the oil crisis of 1973 as one such calamity that gave an
epoch-changing boost to the shift from fossil fuel to renewables.
1973 OIL CRISIS
The 1973 oil crisis started in October
1973 when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries used oil as a
weapon (embargo) against countries that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis
by the end of the oil embargo in March
1974 oil price had increased by nearly 400% from $3 to nearly $12 around the
world.
From https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-04-17/from-oil-crisis-to-energy-revolution-how-nations-once-before-planned-to-kick-the-oil-habit/
take a listen to this: The oil crisis of 1973 is interesting because it forced
us to examine energy use and efficiency, encouraging accelerated innovation and
research into renewables. It also brought the acute nature of our dependence on
fossil fuels into sharp relief for governments, industry and individual users,
as well as their finite nature. It was
resonant also, because it was around this time that the American geophysicist,
M. King Hubbert, had accurately predicted the peak and long-term decline of
conventional oil production in North America.
Altogether, this encouraged changes in
behaviour alongside state sponsorship of alternatives, with the birth of energy
conservation laws and governmental and non-governmental organisations to
monitor use. We are seeing similar moves today, with climate change pushing
governments to reduce fossil fuel use, so it is worth looking at some of the
huge shifts that happened in the 1970s to understand what is possible. The OPEC
members who created the oil crisis inadvertently gave the rest of the world a
life-saving head start in the struggle to avoid, or at least mitigate, the
threat of catastrophic climate change.
DENMARK
From the same foregoing source in
paragraph 2 of the preceding section I inform you of what the oil crisis did
for Denmark: Denmark became a pioneer in developing
commercial wind power during the 1970s, and today a substantial share of the
wind turbines around the world are produced by Danish manufacturers and
component suppliers. To encourage investment, families were offered a tax
exemption for generating their own electricity locally. Some families bought
their own turbines, but most purchased shares in cooperative-owned community
wind turbines. In 2015, wind power produced the equivalent of 42.1% of
Denmark’s total electricity consumption. The cooperative model has spread to
Germany and the Netherlands.
SWEDEN
Again from the same web address in
paragraph 2 Sweden reacted to the oil crisis thus: In Sweden, the oil crisis,
coming on the back of environmental legislation, resulted in the wood pulp
industry reducing its fossil fuel use by 70%. Most of the shift came from
developing biofuels. Initially, reductions in oil consumption and improvements
in energy conservation were accomplished by relatively small measures, but
long-term research and development (R&D) was required to push technology
development further. The need for international competitiveness played a role
too, as the government encouraged inter-firm and state-firm collaborations
toward the “greening” of the industry.
STEPPING UP SHIFT TO RENEWABLES
I have just given you just two
examples of the changes the 1973 oil crisis, a calamity, effected worldwide. The
changes the 1973 oil crisis triggered can be said to be the initial stages of
what environmental activism continues to clamor for. Where activism is failing
should calamity step in to succeed as the oil crisis did, unfortunate as it
sounds? And indeed as coronavirus 19 is doing?
The goal of climate science and
activism, I believe, is to forestall terminal calamity by containing and taking
advantage of the ongoing climate calamities, and thereby preventing them from
degenerating into a total planetary extinction!
Depending on the scale and extent of
calamity, calamity may provoke man to do what they are feeling reluctant to do
now. The 1973 oil crisis open the way for the epochal application of
renewables, what climate change is doing to planet Earth should provoke man to
accelerate the renewables epochal change. Melting glaciers, rising mean
temperature and losses of species are some of the current calamities that
should have spurred man on to advance even further into the age of renewables.
Must man wait till the current
calamities and their scope, which are serving as warning signals, degenerate
into terminal calamities when it would be too late for man? The ongoing climate
change is associated with extinction, the sixth mass extinction. The sixth mass
extinction is also known as Holocene extinction or Anthropocene extinction. The
sixth mass extinction is said to be ongoing. What if man did not survive the
sixth extinction? With the other extinctions man was not around, but we are
around today to raise instrumentalities to know that they did occur.
Who will record the sixth mass extinction
after it has wiped out man? Certainly not man! Remember we are in the process of rapid species
losses!
PARTING SHOT
Activism has its place in bringing
about change to fix problems, but calamity triggers immediate and far-reaching
change to bring about a fix. The Chinese doctor who raised the COVID 19 alarm
was silenced, however when COVID 19 struck as it did, the alarm gained
attention, and processes to get a fix triggered.
THE 1973 oil crisis triggered and initiated
epochal renewables change. The climate change planet Earth is currently
undergoing is giving man enough calamities from which they can and must garner
compulsion to further the advancement of the renewables era, before it is to
late!
The use of renewables in global
dimensions, as a way of life, should facilitate the sustenance of a clean and
balanced natural environment!
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