2012 – It’s only a Myth

Today, as Canadians thanked their veterans for their sacrifices during the World Wars, Korea, UN Peacekeeping duties, and Afghanistan, similar ceremonies took place throughout the world. In a historic event in Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy noted that not only did French children cry for their lost fathers, but German children also cried for exactly the same reason.

Now that we have reconciliation and peace between the great foes of the twentieth century, we can look forward to a bright and peaceful future, where no child need cry for a lost father or mother. Or can we?

Coming up is the next Hollywood blockbuster (at least, that’s what they hope), 2012, which, if the trailers are anything to go by, will be the disaster “gorefest” to end all. The marketing for this movie has raised the standards for sheer greed, and makes drug companies look like responsible corporate citizens in comparison. It even includes a website (owned by Sony) purporting to be the “Institution for Human Continuity”, which offers a lottery for places in a (mythical) bunker for when the end does come.

Well, barring the unforeseen, the idea that the world will end in 2012 is pure unadulterated bunk. The world will not end in 2012, even if Canada wins no Olympic medals in the London Olympics. The world, at least as we know it, will end around 2032!

As you read this, remember that we have used up roughly half the world’s oil and gas reserves. By the time 2032 rolls around, oil prices will be sky-high, and gas for your car (if available) will be severely rationed.

US and Canadian governments (i.e. you and me, taxpayers) have just pumped billions of dollars into the empty financial gas tanks of the major North American automakers. Why? Because if GM, Ford and Chrysler did cease production, the effects on the economy and unemployment would be too frightening even to think about. It would have a ripple effect throughout the western world. Not only would auto workers themselves be out of work, so would people in every other industry even remotely concerned with the automobile – oil company workers, tourism workers, insurance brokers, manufacturing companies dependent upon the roads to transport their goods and raw materials…. And this is just the beginning; what’s going to happen to our economy when no one has any gas to pump into their GM/Ford/Chrysler gas guzzler?

But wait, there’s more bad news. Fertiliser, needed for food production to feed our ever growing population requires huge quantities of oil and gas. Without fertiliser, crop yields will go down. Farmers will be short of Diesel to fuel their tractors, which will drive down production even more. Trucks and trains won’t be able to carry the crops to market. Forget about only eating food grown within a hundred miles, because cities like Toronto, New York and LA need more than a hundred mile radius to feed themselves, and in any case, how do you transport food even 100 miles without fuel? And what happens in winter, when nothing grows?

Add to this mix the climate change caused by the CO₂ we will have dumped into the atmosphere while burning off all our oil and gas? What’s going to happen if the prairies become dust bowls? What will happen when politically unstable countries like Iraq, Iran, or Pakistan, to mention just a few, cannot grow food for their populations? Before the First World War, Germany was one of the most educated and advanced countries in the world. After a few years of near starvation, they saw one of the vilest, most psychotic dictators in world history as their only salvation. If an intelligent, industrious people like the Germans can let themselves be drawn down this path, what’s going to happen in more volatile regions?

The only readily available energy in the future will be electric, and it will have to come from renewable resources, i.e. wind,  hydro and solar. If we are to survive 2032, we must start making the transition now. We need to tell folks like Bill Murdoch, MPP, who is calling for a moratorium (read “ban”) on wind farms where to go. A few people might get headaches from the noise from an industrial-sized wind farm, but a lot more people die every year from the smog from coal-fired generators.

We need to replace the yellow HPS street lights with LED equivalents, here in Cornwall, and everywhere else. We need to electrify our railroads, like they are in Europe, and scrap diesel locomotives. We need to get rid of diesel and natural gas busses, and go back to trolley busses and streetcars. But for this to work, we need the generating capacity. We need to tell the businesses who hide behind the “Clean Coal Coalition” and their website (americaspower.org) that we don’t need their lies, greed and deception. Their message is like the tobacco companies telling us cigarettes aren’t addictive and don’t really cause cancer.

The climate we are changing will be the enemy in our next great war, when it takes its revenge. But President Sarkozy will be wrong in one aspect. German and French children, Canadian, American and British children, and children everywhere, won’t be crying for their dead parents. When this war is over, there will be no children left to cry.

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