A violent future

Barnaby Drake
I AM of the opinion that the whole planet is facing a very violent future. It has already started and the writing is writ large upon the wall.

Initially climate change will see that we face more storms and hurricanes, the temperatures will both rise and lower to greater extremes. We will experience more floods and more droughts. The seas will rise and inundate low-lying areas. We are seeing it right now, but still there are doubters and denialists and we are still only at the start of this. Another few parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and another degree of global warming will make what we have now seem like a walk in the park. Yes, it is gloom and doom, but I fear it may be true. Better to be prepared than not.

Exploding populations will see to it that the fight for resources will escalate. Food shortages due to famine and over-population will make whole nations desperate. Already a large part of the world is no longer able to feed itself and is dependent on aid, when they can get it. Those countries which normally supply this aid are finding other uses for their crops, such as synthetic fuel, and when they are also faced with climate change and reduced food production, it is the poor and dependent countries that suffer most. Currently Africa is the most affected by this, but that could change in the not too distant future. So far the solution has been increased armaments and genocide from their own rulers, which although denied, has been encouraged by the superpowers in their desire to increase their own profits and GDP by the sale of armaments and death. By and large, the Western world sits by and watches these tales of disaster unfold and make no moves to curtail this, unless of course, there is that other commodity involved – OIL.

Suddenly the West develops a conscience and without consultation with the people who live there, rush in to protect these poor citizens from inappropriate dictators, terrorists, religious extremists and evil foreign influence, offering them instead a long ongoing war, destruction of their country, a political vacuum, followed by a selected representative government and – wait for it – Democracy. Meanwhile, Mugabe, a far worse dictator in Africa where there is no oil, gets away with genocide, and despite imposed sanctions and travel restrictions, his wife physically attacks reporters in Beijing! Back home in Zimbabwe, where the infrastructure has collapsed due to neglect, and water is polluted, the people die of cholera in their thousands. Thousands more die of starvation and Aids.

But Zimbabwe is not alone in this. It is an unfolding story in many parts of the world. To a very large percent, this has been caused by misrule and dictators resorting to heavily arming their protective armies and police forces and subjecting their citizens to an uncompromising military rule. The arms dealers are literally making a killing! It wouldn’t be too bad if something could be done to restrict this trade, but the fact is that all the largest manufacturers are the five nations that sit on the United Nations Security Council. They mouth ‘Peace’ while promoting war. Many are the civil wars throughout the world, and guerrilla bands, ‘Freedom fighter’ and other resistance or potential new dictators, all armed to the teeth, wander through many of these countries, resulting in mayhem and even larger arms sales and armies. In these situations, food production can virtually disappear, and what little there is left, belongs to the man with the gun.

Despite medical advances in the more ‘civilised’ countries, disease is becoming more widespread throughout the world. Some of it is man-made due to his practices, such the insistence on spraying carcinogenic chemicals, contamination of food, pollution of the air and water, all in the chase for wealth, but as living standards decrease in the third world and population increases, more and more plagues emerge that affect greater numbers of people. Every person when undernourished or under stress is a breeding ground for a disease which can easily spread, and we are now talking of pandemics that can affect the whole world’s population. Bird Flu, eboli, legionnaire’s disease, to name but a few, and they are now becoming highly resistant to antibiotics.

Water is the next resource that is ‘drying up’. Soon, it has been predicted, there will be water wars. Where rivers flow through one country to another, and the source country uses more of the resource than the neighbouring countries deem they should, this can lead to wars, but with the decreasing rainfall in many areas and increasing drought, first come, first served is the philosophy. With glaciers retreating, which are a major source of water in many South American countries, they do not look upon their neighbours who dry up the rivers in a very friendly light, and many of the world’s major rivers are already reduced to a mere trickle of their normal supply. We have the same problem here with the Murray-Darling, where even different states in the same country can’t agree on allocations.

The world’s money crisis can only exacerbate these problems, and despite positive spin, the only solutions proposed so far have been more of the same. ‘More of the same’ means we are eating into the world’s resources at an alarming and unsustainable rate. We are causing problems for future generations by our greed, but this is a difficult train to stop. Despite rhetoric, no-one is prepared to drop their current life-style and will strive to continue in this vein, and with it will come more deprivation and violence.

Yes, it is a very violent future we are facing, and I cannot hear the Charge of the Light Brigade coming to rescue us.