The 2084 Precept

by Anthony D. Thompson

  "The ships?" asked Jeremy.

  "Yes. Actually, the only ones I know a little bit about are cruise ships, floating hotels, but they will serve as an example. These ships are far more polluting per passenger-kilometer than airplanes. Add to that the fact that many passengers fly to and from their departure and arrival ports, and you have a double pollution effect. Most of these ships run on bunker fuel, the cheapest and dirtiest of fuel oils, and they discharge about 800 million liters of oily bilge water per year into the oceans. They also produce over 6 billion liters of sewage per year, 30 billion liters of polluted water (from showers, galleys, laundries and so on) and 100 thousand liters of hazardous wastes including, for example, used cooking oil. They also poison the atmosphere with untold amounts of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from their engines. And there are hundreds of these cruise ships travelling around our oceans. Non-stop."

  "And all of this is merely because some of you prefer to spend your vacation time in a hotel which floats, rather than in one which doesn't?"

  "Yes, that is correct. There is no other reason whatsoever. But to all of this we have to add the numbers of untold thousands of freighters, tankers, warships, ferries, research and exploration ships, fishing fleets, private yachts and so forth. I am afraid I am unaware of the statistics for them all. Not that it matters. The effect of all of these activities is catastrophic. We are turning our oceans into stinking, deadly swamps and we are poisoning millions of fish and ocean mammals every year. And even the Arctic ice will have completely disappeared long before I am dead."

  "And nobody is doing anything about this either?"

  "No, Jeremy. Certainly there are the blind optimists. And there are the elected clowns as usual with their international conferences, their platforms for arguing and arguing and arguing. In fact they have been holding meetings and muttering to each other for decades, but they can't agree on anything, or at least not on anything effective, and so everything has got worse and worse and continues to get even worse than that. The usual."

  "Hmm…could we move on to air, do you think?"

  "Our atmosphere? Yes indeed. Our atmosphere, which by the way is 78% nitrogen, is very thin. There is actually no definite boundary between our atmosphere and outer space, but something called the Kármán line is generally accepted as the limit, about 100 kilometers from the planet's surface. In other words, you could drive up there in a car and arrive in under an hour. Except you can't of course because of gravity. But that part of the atmosphere in which we could actually survive is only about 10 kilometers thick; in other words you could drive up there and also drive back in around 10 minutes. Not that we could survive at all if we weren't lucky enough to have our magnetic fields and a layer of ozone in our atmosphere which filters the sun's deadly ultraviolet rays. Without that we would all be dead. But—I don’t know whether you can believe this, Jeremy—we are destroying that as well."

  "What is ozone?" Jeremy asked.

  "Ozone is something which is produced when ultraviolet light strikes two-oxygen atoms and splits them into individual atoms. These two types of atom combine and absorb up to 99% of the sun's ultraviolet light which is highly dangerous to exposed life forms on our planet. The ozone layer is in our stratosphere, only about twenty to thirty kilometers from the planet's surface."

  Jeremy took off his jacket, hung it on the back of a chair. Adjusted his tie, walked over to the window and stared out at the boring view of the building opposite.

  "Fortunate," he said.

  "Fortunate indeed. So…not content with the highly intelligent activities I have already spoken about so far this afternoon, Jeremy, we are at the same time pursuing another highly intelligent activity, namely, we are knowingly and consciously undertaking the terminal destruction of our planet's lungs. Our planet's very thin and fragile lungs."

  "It doesn't surprise me," said Jeremy. He is perhaps reaching the stage where nothing can surprise him anymore.

  "I'll start off with the deforestation of the planet," I began. "We have already made great steps in this direction and, as usual, we are accelerating our activities still further. For example, in the past three decades alone we have destroyed 70% of all the forests in Asia. Three decades to decimate forests which have been around for over 50 million years. And if we want to take South America, over 20,000 km2 of rain forest are destroyed in Brazil alone each and every year. Each year. 20,000 km2, Jeremy. This is mainly achieved through thousands and thousands of man-made fires, all easily visible as a myriad of red points on our satellite photography. Fire, you see, is the easiest and cheapest way in which to turn these areas into agricultural land."

  "I believe it," said Jeremy. Could it be that Jeremy had advanced from his lack of surprise and indifference to the glorious and wondrous world of cynicism?

  "Yes, well, Brazil is only an example. Colossal deforestation occurs around the globe, North America, you name it. In fact, the country currently releasing more carbon dioxide through deforestation than any other country on the planet is Indonesia. And apart from destroying our atmosphere, we are also destroying the habitats of our planet’s poor, helpless animals and birds, including truly magnificent animals such as the South American jaguar and the Siberian tiger. The habitat destruction also makes it easier to hunt them and these are therefore the next ones slotted to become extinct, the latest victims of the human extermination factory. For example, Jeremy, China has a growing appetite for tiger parts used in making tiger bone wine and traditional medicines and, at $10,000 a carcass, it is not surprising that around 40 of the few remaining tigers are killed each year. Illegally of course; the birdbrain law to prevent the killing is as usual ineffective, flap, flap."

  "Yes…but you mentioned your satellite photography. What do your politicians do when they see the photographic proof of all of this?"

  "They do the same as they always do, Jeremy. They spend decades holding meetings and muttering to each other, creating a few agreements here and there to do something about it at some point in time in the future—on those few occasions when they can agree, that is, and without of course the agreement of certain major powers in any case—and then they all get up, highly contented, extremely self-satisfied and feeling oh, so very proud of themselves, a job well done old chap, and pollute their way back again to their various homes around the planet, where is my monthly salary please."

  "The same as usual. O.K.," said Jeremy. "But what I don't understand, they must surely be aware of what is happening to your atmosphere—your very thin atmosphere as you correctly described it?"

  "Oh yes, they are aware, and that is the paradox. The clowns are in possession of all the scientific data regarding the exploding populations and the effects of industrial pollution, deforestation, travel, transport and so on and they know exactly what is happening. They drown in the billions of fresh statistics that are fed to them and their minions each and every year."

  “Such as?”

  “Such as official forecasts which state that this will be the planet’s warmest year ever since recorded human knowledge. Such as the Arctic ice will completely disappear within a decade or two. Such as there are 420 million fewer birds living in Europe than there were just twenty-five years ago…and so on.”

  "You also mentioned travel and transport?"

  "Oh yes, those as well. We now have over 1 billion land vehicles on the planet. Of these, an average of 150 million are underway at all times, day and night, burning fossil fuels, polluting the atmosphere."

  "Now that is a huge amount of pollution. Non-stop, did you say?"

  "Non-stop. Permanently. Day and night. And at the same time, Jeremy, there are over 40 million airplane flights per year; that is over 100,000 flights per day; more than one flight per second. In other words, there are between 10,000 and 15,000 planes in the air at all times, massively polluting our excruciatingly thin atmosphere, without pausing for breath if you will forgive the pun. From this purpose alone, we burn one billion liters of ker
osene each year and create 650 million tons of carbon dioxide. And much of this is totally unnecessary. We transport football teams across continents to world championships, European championships, South American championships, African championships, and even 'friendly' test games go intercontinental. In addition to the national teams, we also do this for individual club championships: you name it, football teams, handball teams, basketball teams, volleyball teams, hockey teams, cycle-racing teams, squash teams, badminton teams, swimmers, skiers, ski-jumpers, tennis players, track athletes, horses and their riders, Formula I drivers and their cars, truck racers and their trucks, rally drivers and their cars and/or their motorbikes—I would need half an hour to give you a complete list of everything, Jeremy, including chess tournaments. And all of that is accompanied by thousands of trainers, managers, mechanics, medics, and others—and of course, masses of spectators, family members, T.V. crews, journalists and so on. And this is all multiplied by the U21 teams, the U19 teams, the U17 teams and—believe me, Jeremy—the U15 teams."

  I paused. Is there anything else? Oh yes, there is plenty. The money is good. I'll give him his money's worth every time.

  "We also transport tons of chicken feet from, for example, the U.S.A. and Europe to China."

  "Chicken feet?"

  "Yes, we would normally throw them away here but the Chinese like them. Whether it's the poor Chinese, because chicken feet don't cost much, or whether it's because they are a delicacy there, I am not quite sure. But someone figured out that there was business to be done, so there you go. Same as the turtles."

  "The turtles?"

  "River turtles, Jeremy. The Chinese like them as well. So much, in fact, that they have just about killed off all of the turtles to be found in their rivers and so the U.S.A. does them the favor of selling them tons and tons of turtles every year, so that they can continue to enjoy their turtle soup. But we pollute the air with thousands of other ridiculous transport activities, Jeremy. It would really take me a lot of time to mention them all, the ones I know about, that is. So, if I may, let me turn to another very major item. Manufacturing plants. Industrial air pollution."

  "O.K., O.K., Peter, presumably that is getting out of control as well. I think I have the overall picture well enough, thank you. Do you think you could just round off the subject with a brief summary of what you are all doing about it, or at least trying to do about it? I appreciate that you have told me about what you are not doing, but someone must be doing something, surely, something effective?"

  "We are doing virtually nothing, Jeremy. We can't even take the first few baby steps, like stopping car and truck racing. It would be easy enough you might think, surely our species has a few thousand other things with which to amuse itself? Non-polluting things? But no…the answer is no."

  "But you are aware of how thin and fragile your atmosphere is, and that there are now over 7 billion of you humans polluting it?"

  "Yes, we are aware. Some of us, anyway, and certainly those in charge, the elected clowns. They have made a draft of another of those useless agreements I told you about. They have decided that it would be a good idea to limit our activities in order to prevent the increase in our planet's temperature from exceeding an additional 2 degrees. Not to prevent any further increase, mark you, let alone—heaven forbid—to reduce it. But the whole thing is useless and laughable anyway. The agreement is due to be ratified in the year 2020, by which time, at the current accelerating pollution and population rates, we will have exceeded the intended limit before the agreement even comes into effect. If it ever does of course—that is yet another of those 'agreements' in which certain major polluting countries are refusing to participate."

  "Again," said Jeremy.

  Amazing, isn't it? Frankly, and maybe no-one would agree with me, but if you were to relegate all participating birdbrains to a secure, padded and sound-proofed meeting room in an institute of their choice for the mentally ill, and place them under the chairmanship of, say, a mixed Iranian/Syrian/North Korean coal miners' association, the results would not be much different.

  "Yes. Again," I replied. "And so here we are still in the springtime, and we have already emitted another 14 billion tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere since the beginning of the year."

  "Did you say 14 million or billion?

  "Billion, Jeremy. 14 billion tons."

  "In just a few months?"

  "In just a few months."

  "And you know that your atmosphere is only 100 kilometers thick." Jeremy sighed. He was sounding somewhat bewildered again. "Amazing. Interesting. Extraordinary. Well…I think I have enough data on this section to do my research on, and so perhaps we could call it a day. Enough is enough, as you say."

  "No Jeremy," I said. "With all due respect, enough is not enough. There is more."

  "Not enough?"

  "Not enough, because we do not only pollute our planet and its atmosphere. Oh no. We don't stop there."

  "Alright, Peter. Tell me, tell me."

  "Well, we worked out how to deal with gravity and we can now orbit our planet, reach our one and only moon, and in fact send devices to other planets, even to the end of our planetary system and beyond. And what does that mean? It means that in less than 50 years, we have, in our usual inimitable fashion, created a vast junkyard up there, 12,000 detectable pieces of scrap—detectable being a length of 8 centimeters or more—all zooming along at speeds of between 15,000 and 30,000 kilometers per hour. Not to mention the much larger number of undetectable pieces, all orbiting at the same speeds and therefore, irrespective of how small, equally capable of causing severe damage to a spacecraft, a satellite, or even the International Space Station which is orbiting at a height of around 350 kilometers."

  "And what exactly are these pieces of junk?"

  "These pieces of junk are an estimated 7,000 tons of abandoned rocket stages, dead satellites and all kinds of miscellaneous scrap, including scrap left over from destructive 'tests' of anti-satellite weapons and chance collisions. Our scientists have determined as a mathematical fact that some of the smaller pieces of debris will continue to hit the larger objects and smash them into hundreds of pieces, thereby exponentially increasing the probability of more such events. An accelerating chain reaction, in effect, threatening hundreds of satellites and anything else that dares to venture out there."

  "And so what are you doing about it?"

  "You would think, Jeremy, wouldn't you, that we would at least stop doing things to further aggravate the situation. But you would be wrong. Only recently, we fired a rocket into space to destroy an old weather satellite. The Chinese this time, testing a newly-developed anti-satellite weapon. The test was successful and created over 1,000 new pieces of debris. At a height of about 800 kilometers, which means that the debris will remain in space for thousands or even millions of years."

  "Garbage creation without garbage collection," said Jeremy.

  "Yes, and you had better hope that we never discover how to travel throughout our galaxy, let alone to other galaxies. It wouldn't take us long to turn the whole universe into a huge, glorious, stinking, human-style shithouse."

  "It sounds as if indeed it wouldn't," said Jeremy. "That is, in between taking time off now and again to kill each other and presumably any other species you might happen to chance upon as well. But then, that is not of course going to happen."

  "Maybe not, but it might."

  "No, Peter, it won't. Either you manage to improve yourselves, mutate into a benevolent and caring species which will accordingly respect its environment and everything else, or the Governing Committee will take the necessary steps. In fact, it may do so anyway, in spite of what I might recommend. And even that will depend on whether we ever get to meet your U.K. prime minister, not to mention your world powers."

  He certainly had everything worked out in his head. Did he make it all up as we went along, or had he created this whole delusion and all of its multitudinous details in advance? An int
eresting query, sure enough, and one which is beginning to preoccupy my neurons from time to time.

  Let me help him further along the delusional trail.

  "And how long do you think it will take for your committee to reach a decision?" I asked.

  "Oh, I think they will decide within the next three weeks or so. That's quite fast for us. We live about fifteen times longer than you do—an average of around 1,200 of your planet years compared to, say, 80 years in your case."

  "You live for 1,200 years! Well…and if you don't mind my asking, Jeremy, how old are you at this moment?"

  "I am only 28 years old. Extremely young, still a student."

  "And so you only have another 1,172 years to go?"

  Jeremy smiled. "More or less, yes; but then I, like you, will die."

  You sure will, I thought to myself, and in your case while still believing that you've got over 1,100 years to go. He must have spent years developing this fantasy. I can imagine the psychiatrists drooling with delight when they eventually lay their hands on him again. If they ever manage to, that is.

  "O.K.," I said, "so back to your Governing Committee. It could take a decision tomorrow if it wanted to?"

  "It could, but it won't. My professor tells me they prefer to wait and see if we have any success in getting the world's powers together."

  "So that is at least is a small measurement of achievement? A brief delay?"

  "Yes, Peter, but it doesn't get rid of the urgency in any way. In which regard, do you think we could have our meeting on the fifth agenda item fairly soon? The day after tomorrow, for example?"