“Copenhagen was a failure”. Huge pains were taken to reach a global agreement of the greatest industrial-political dimensions according to the slogan “two degrees non plus”. The end of the coal, petrol and gas ages was going to be just as revolutionary as the end of the steam engine had been. What motivated the parties concerned was the fear of the planet’s own dynamics. After all, there is a good chance that the planet will regulate itself and thereby cut deeply into the habitat of expanding homo sapiens – “sapiens”.
Based on historical experience, it does not seem such a good idea to try and find a solution based on contracts. Pacta sunt servanda! And if not? Technological advance has shown itself to be more long-lived – the age of the windmills lasted 3,000 years during which many empires came and went. Consequently: it seems more promising to design and apply new CO2-neutral civilization techniques than to talk about certificates.
Let us go back another step: during the last 450 million years, – independent from man – the earth was both an ice planet and a desert. That means the planet has no subtle self-regulatory mechanisms at all. Nothing is going to keep it in the current state of balance between the two polar ice caps.
Natural history is full of huge events: what is the Mediterranean today was a dry valley until the Gibraltar dam broke… As little as 4,000 years back, that is in historical times, the Sahara was still full of water and greenery … 450 million years ago, volcanoes liberated the earth from its ice shield… Consequently, we would have to introduce air pockets and climate engineering in order to force the entire system to bend its knee before the civilization process. Desert Tec on a global scale.
The short evolutionary history of homo sapiens shows several narrow escapes of mankind. Catastrophes forced populations to separate and we almost got extinct. Evolutionary spoken, however, everything took place in rather friendly conditions so far. What we witness today are small shifts in climate that cause shifts of population. Ethnic groups that used to be alien in each others’ eyes are shoved on top of each other and have to be integrated – which is definitely a great task and should be the real goal of politics.
What should we think of a planet politicians want to tame with its “two degree goal”? Is it simply unsuitable for mankind? Are the Mosaic religions correct, after all, when they let the history of civilization begin with the expulsion from Paradise? Have they got it right about the first sin and the enlightenment – that is: with self awareness and the breaching of the last border of evolution? With the necessary deliverance as a last consequence that must not be thought just in terms of eschatology, but also very real as: “the field shall be full of scrub and thorns”.
Let us go back a step now that it is Christmas time and remember that the planet has been producing new forms of life for 4 billion years without interruption. Through its perspiration, it has been spraying the universes with life in the form of complex molecules all the time (unfortunately, I am not familiar with any research on this hypothesis).
And even though we have not succeeded in finding extraterrestrial life so far, the earth does not cease to give and sow life. If only the word “paradise” were not used in an otherworldly and transcendental context by all religions and thereby worn out as a suitable term! Well, I will use it regardless, because it includes everything – and I dare to postulate the thesis:
Paradise is here on our planet. It happens in our concept of the evolutionary enlarged present since the end of the last great, allegedly exogenously induced planetary catastrophe.
Under this light, Copenhagen was a huge evolutionary step – just as the US president Obama said. Homo sapiens “sapiens” does not only regard and admire his EGO. Instead, he also takes notice of his COUNTER EGO: the planet that would not be able to think without the EGO. Just like I (EGO) would not be able to live without the COUNTER EGO.
wl
(Translated by EG)
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