Julius Csotonyi, Canadian Museum of Nature
Remains of camels have been found on Canada’s northernmost Ellesmere Island, located within the Arctic circle adjacent to Greenland. These skeletons have been dated back to the Pliocene geological epoch of 3.5 million years ago–an era that saw a global atmospheric carbon concentration of about 400 parts per million (ppm), which is the level the current world has just surpassed.
Reprinted from AlJazeera English, 2 May 2013
@ FAO Somalia
Almost 260,000 people, half of them young children, died of hunger during the last famine in Somalia, according to a UN report that admits the world body should have done more to prevent the tragedy.
The toll is much higher than was feared at the time of the 2010-2012 food crisis in the troubled Horn of Africa country and also exceeds the 220,000 who starved to death in a 1992 famine, according to the findings.
“The report confirms we should have done more before the famine was declared,” said Philippe Lazzarini, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia.
“Warnings that began as far back as the drought in 2010 did not trigger sufficient early action,” he said in a statement.
Half of those who died were children under five, according to the joint report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
“Famine and severe food insecurity in Somalia claimed the lives of about 258,000 people between October 2010 and April 2012, including 133,000 children under five,” said the report, the first scientific estimate of how many people died.
Children toll
Somalia was the country hardest hit by extreme drought in 2011 that affected over 13 million people across the Horn of Africa.
“An estimated 4.6 percent of the total population and 10 percent of children under five died in southern and central Somalia,” the report said, saying the deaths were on top of 290,000 “baseline” deaths during the period, and double the average for sub-Saharan Africa.
Lazzarini said that about 2.7 million people are still in need of life-saving assistance and support to rebuild their livelihoods.
Famine was first declared in July 2011 in Somalia’s Southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions, but later spread to other areas, including Middle Shabelle, Afgoye and inside camps for displaced people in the war-ravaged capital Mogadishu.
In Lower Shabelle 18 percent of children under five died, the report said.
During the famine, it was feared that tens of thousands had died, whereas the report now shows more people died than in Somalia’s 1992 famine, when an estimated 220,000 people died over a year.
Famine implies that at least a fifth of households face extreme food shortages, with acute malnutrition in more than 30 percent of people, and two deaths per 10,000 people every day, according to the UN definition.
Mark Smulders, a senior economist for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and one of the authors of the report, said the area had suffered one of the worst droughts in over 50 years in the whole of Africa.
“Livestock were dying,” he told Al Jazeera. “People simply did not have access to food, and purchasing power went down.”
Somalia, ravaged by nearly uninterrupted civil war for the past two decades, is one of the most dangerous places in the world for aid workers and one of the regions that needs them most.
However, security has slowly improved in recent months, with fighters linked to al-Qaeda on the back foot despite launching a deadly bombing campaign.
At the time, most of the famine-hit areas were under their control, and the crisis was exacerbated by their ban on most foreign aid agencies.
‘Catastrophic political failures’
The aid agency Oxfam said the “deaths could and should have been prevented”.
“Famines are not natural phenomena, they are catastrophic political failures,” Oxfam’s Somalia director Senait Gebregziabher said in a statement.
“The world was too slow to respond to stark warnings of drought, exacerbated by conflict in Somalia and people paid with their lives.”
More than a million Somalis are refugees in surrounding nations, and another million are displaced inside the country.
Next Tuesday, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and British Prime Minister David Cameron will co-host a conference in London to discuss how the international community can support Somalia’s progress.
More than 50 countries and organisations are due to take part.
Oxfam said leaders should “ensure that this was Somalia’s last famine” by helping generate jobs and “ensuring trained, accountable security forces”.
The UN declared the famine over in February 2012.
This is a reprint of Prof. Andrew Glickson’s 3 May 2013 article on Countercurrents (“No Planet B: The global CO2cide 400 ppm milestone”) that examines the recently surpassed global atmospheric carbon concentration of 400 parts per million. For full references and figures, please consult the original PDF essay.
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On the 29 April, 2013, NOAA recorded a CO2 level of 399.50 ppm (Figures 1 and 2) (http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/), signifying a return to atmosphere conditions of the Pliocene (5.2 – 2.6 million years ago). This followed a rise from 394.45 ppm to 397.34 ppm (March 2012 – 2013) at a rate of 2.89 ppm per year, unprecedented in the recorded geological history of the last 65 million years (Figure 3).
Pliocene temperatures – about 2 – 3 degrees C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures, resulted in an intense hydrological cycle, ensuing in extensive rain forests, lush savannas (now occupied by deserts), small ice caps and sea levels about 25 meters higher than at present (Figure 4).
Life abounded during the Pliocene. However, regular river flow conditions such as allowed cultivation and along river valleys since about 7000 years ago, and temperate Mediterranean-type climates allowing extensive farming, could hardly exist under the intense hydrological cycle and heat wave conditions of the Pliocene.
Gradual to intermittent advents of Pleistocene ice ages over the last 2 million years allowed many species to adapt to changing conditions. Abrupt warming events, such as the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, occurred during glacial periods (Figure 3). Extreme shifts in state of the climate exceed the rate to which many species can adapt.
The basic laws of atmospheric physics and chemistry and the behavior of past atmospheres indicate changes in the level of atmospheric greenhouse gases constitute a key parameter determining the current trend of the terrestrial climate. Concomitant rates of SO2 release, mainly from coal burning, have regulated changes in temperature. Increases in SO2 release about 1950 and 2001 are responsible for slow-down of temperature rise (Figure 5).
The current CO2 ppm/year rise rate of ~3 ppm/year surpasses any recorded since the last 65 million years of Earth history. High CO2 and temperature rises occurred about ~55 Ma ago. At that stage release of methane drove a CO2 rise of near-1800 ppm and a temperature rise of about 5 degrees C over 10,000 years, namely a rate of 0.18 ppm/year and 0.0005 degrees C/year (Zachos et al. 2008; http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7176/full/nature06588.html).
The K-T asteroid impact of 65 Ma-ago resulted in a rise of more than 2000 ppm CO2 within about 10,000 years, namely ~0.2 ppm /year. This triggered a temperature rise of about 7.5 degrees C, namely 0.00075 degrees C per year (Beerling et al. 2002 http://www.pnas.org/content/99/12/7836.full) (Figure 3). Calculations by these authors suggest a release of approximately 4500 billion tons of carbon from impacted carbonates and shale, ignited bushfires and ocean warming.
The consequences of the current rise in greenhouse gases is manifested by enhancement of the hydrological cycle, with ensuing floods and of heat waves (http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/; http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate_Committees?url=ec_ctte/extreme_weather/index.htm).
Open-ended combustion of known fossil fuel reserves (Figure 6) would lead to atmospheric CO2 levels of ~800 to 1000 ppm CO2, high degree to total melting of the polar ice caps, sea level rise on the scale of tens of meters and disruption of the biosphere on a scale analogous to recorded mass extinctions (http://www.astrobio.net/interview/2553/under-a-green-sky).
Carbon emissions may be self-limiting. It is likely that, before atmospheric CO2 reach 500 ppm, disruption of fossil fuel-combusting systems by extreme weather events would result in reduction of emissions. On the other hand the extent to which amplifying feedback processes (methane release from permafrost and Arctic sediments, bushfires, warming oceans) would continue to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere is uncertain.
Preoccupied with short-term economic forecast, daily A$ exchange rates, share market fluctuations and, sports results, with some exceptions (http://www.theage.com.au/national/greenhouse-gases-in-new-danger-zone-20130428-2imjm.html) the accelerating rate of atmospheric CO2 seems to hardly rate a mention on the pages of the global media.
There are few signs the extreme danger the terrestrial biosphere and the oceans are driving the global community to undertake the urgent large-scale measures required to attempt to arrest current trends.
In Australia the language has changed, from “the greatest moral issue of our generation”(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqZvpRjGtGM) to hit-pocket controversy over a “carbon tax”, a meningless 5 percent reduction in local emissions that overlook the export of hundreds of million tons of coal, ending up in the same atmosphere.
It is not clear whether the recent IPA anniversary celebration (http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/04/05/abbott-bolt-rinehart-fawn-in-the-ipa-court-of-king-murdoch/),attended by the likely next prime minister, the world’s media moguls and mining magnates, as well as an archbishop, was concerned with the future of the Earth’s climate.
In professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber’s words stated in Doha “overriding everything else the 1st Law of Humanity: Don’t kill your children!” (http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/in-short/files/Schellnhuber-keynote-COP18-state-dinner-Doha.pdf).
There is no planet B.
This is the final movement of Gustav Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde” (The Song of the Earth), entitled “Der Abschied” (The Farewell). It is conducted by Otto Klemperer with the New Philharmonia Orchestra; the soloist is Christa Ludwig (1966).
A previous post on this site communicated some of Theodor W. Adorno’s comments on the work as a whole: that the Lied recalls a “melancholy hope for other stars, inhabited by happier beings than humans,” given that “the earth that has grown remote to itself is without the hope the stars once promised.”
I feel differently than Adorno about the work: the Chinese motifs (unique for Mahler), taken together with the instrumental and vocal beauty and juxtaposed with the content of the accompanying text (itself based on poems written by Meng Haoran and Wang Wei, who lived during the Tang dynasty [7th to 10th centuries CE]), are to me suggestive of a celebration of life and the world’s beauty: against Adorno, and whatever Mahler may himself have said in self-deprecation[1], the magnificence of the work reflects present and future hopes rather than mere past ones.
Doubtless, the movement deals centrally with questions of loneliness and death (“Birds sit motionless on their branches. The world is slumbering! It grows cool in the shade of my fir-trees. I stand and await my friend, I wait for him for our last farewell”), but this emphasis should not be taken in any sort of Heideggerian fashion. Instead, consider the final words of the movement’s text, themselves apparently added by Mahler himself to the original two poems which served as the basis of the song:
“The beloved Earth blooms forth everywhere in Spring, and becomes green anew! Everywhere and endlessly blue shines the horizon! Endless… endless!”
[1] From the Wikipedia entry on the Lied: ‘Mahler also hesitated to put the piece before the public because of its relentless negativity, unusual even for him. “Won’t people go home and shoot themselves?” he asked.’
In Wayne Price’s newly published The Value of Radical Theory: An Anarchist Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy (AK Press, 2013), his seventh chapter is entitled “Socialism or Barbarism?” Therein, Price discusses Rosa Luxemburg and Marx and Engels, among others, on the question of the prospects for social revolution vs. collective destruction and the suicide of humanity. In this discussion, Price also presents Murray Bookchin’s brief, simple, and witty counter-positioning of the historical alternatives, one that was previously unknown to me, which I share here:
“Anarchism or annihilation.”
“Extinción 2,” Santi Armengod
A most happy birthday today for Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), communist militant, feminist, and uncompromising critic of militarism and imperialism! Author of various works and essays, including The Accumulation of Capital, Luxemburg represented a key figure within the most radical strains of Marxism at the time of the Second International; a trenchant student and critic of European imperialism, she theorized the hegemonic negativity of capitalist rule as stemming from the historical dissolution of indigenous communism (statist and non-statist) as prosecuted by the superior weaponry and brutality of European colonialism throughout most of the world’s regions. Within her analysis of proletarian movements against the prevailing system, RL emphasized the importance of spontaneity from below, and she looked to the mass-general strike (as seen e.g. in Russia, 1905) as the principal means of abolishing the rule of capital. She was heavily involved with organizing against the total brutality of World War I, and was imprisoned for this reason for 2.5 years during the course of the war. Following her release in November 1918, she worked with Karl Liebknecht and the Spartakusbund to provoke a popular revolution in Germany at war’s end, one based on soldiers’ and workers’ councils. For these efforts, she and Liebknecht were murdered by proto-fascists on the orders of the ruling Social Democrat government in early 1919.
In her own words:
“Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht!” (“World-history is the world’s tribunal!”)
“Socialism or barbarism!”
“Tomorrow the revolution will… announce with fanfare, to your terror: I was, I am, I shall be!”
Also this day marks the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. While less enthusiasm is here expressed for him as compared to the historical memory of RL, his life and rule cannot be separated from the socialist tradition. Many legitimate grounds exist on which to criticize him, but his practical contributions to struggle against capital and empire in the twenty-first century should not be overlooked or readily dismissed.
The Arabic reads “Farewell, comrade.”
This is the fourth (or fifth, depending on conduction and interpretation) movement of Dmitry Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 3, known as the Первомайская (“First of May”). This movement is the finale, entitled “Первое, в первое мая” (“First, on the first of May”). It is set to the words of poet Semyon Isaakovich Kirsanov, defending and advancing May Day, revolution, and the resistance of the Russian people.
For me it is reminiscent of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s words, from Humanism and Terror (188): the movement is a reminder that
“the human world is an open or unfinished system…. [T]he same radical contingency which threatens it with discord also rescues it from the inevitability of disorder, and [so] prevents us from despairing of it.”
As reported on Common Dreams last week:
“Wild fires continue to rage across Australia Tuesday and temperatures have become so hot the country’s Bureau of Meteorology was forced to add a new color—deep purple—to show areas that have exceeded all-time heat records.
Previously the Bureau’s heat index was capped at 48°C (118.4°F), but now recorded temperatures of over 50°C (122°F) have pushed the limit of the scale to an unheard of 54°C, which is equivalent to 129°F.”
Furthermore, an 11 January interview on National Public Radio with Dr. Karl Braganza, who manages climate monitoring at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre, reveals that temperatures in south-central Australia have reached such extremes that roads have been found to be melting, and gasoline evaporating.
This is Carlos Santana’s “Peace on Earth… Mother Earth… Third Stone from the Sun,” off his 1990 album Spirits Dancing in the Flesh.
“Hey everybody
Let’s lend a hand
‘Cause there’s no tomorrow
Unless we take a stand
I see the future
Slipping away
So I feel the need
To make a better way”
The clip below, from the recently released documentary Chasing Ice, is footage of the largest iceberg calving ever filmed–a total loss of 7.4 km³ off Greenland’s Ilulissat glacier, taking place over the course of a few hours.
Chasing Ice is directed by Jeff Orlowski; it focuses on the work of environmental photographer James Balog (National Geographic) to bring attention to the problem of the melting Arctic, as follows from capital-induced climate change. Following an expedition to the Arctic in 2005 that dispelled his previous denialist views, Balog went on to found the Extreme Ice Survey, which monitors glacier retreat in Greenland, Iceland, the Alps, Canada, and the Andes.
The images recorded in the video clearly speak for themselves.
