But when you observe the political inaction in regard of humanitarian disasters such as AIDS, such as Darfur, I share your concern that it bodes very little hope to see any action on our carbon addiction.
So. On driving up the urgency by memes, I think the only logical conclusion (for me) after this very good series of comments is: we're damned if we do, and we're damned if we don't.
I think it is very hard to disentangle these two. the clearcut-n-plough model of agriculture does a lot of carbon releasing in its own right, alters climate (makes it hotter and/or drier) by reducing tree cover and rainfall; the petro-intensive technology required to support this style of ag on an industrial scale and the "global system" whose longhaul trade justifies the overcapitalisation needed to acquire and feed the petro-intensive technology, are also deeply complicit in the warming scenario.
large-scale loss of jungle in other words is intimately connected with cash cropping and long haul (fossil intensive) trade. the resulting agricultural pattern is liquidationist, relying on heavy irrigation and (very quickly as the biotic windfall of the newly-ploughed forest duff is soon liquidated) fossil-intensive "amendments". heavy irrigation makes further demands on the rivers and underground aquifers which are being starved of rainfall and snowmelt by the warming and drying. in other words the entire industrialised, global-system approach to agriculture looks like a positive feedback loop for accelerating climate change, and a desperate race into steeply diminishing returns.
so I don't think one can point to one piece of it and say, "well this anthropogenic climate shift isn't due to carbon release from cars or chimneys so it doesn't count" -- when it's part and parcel of one seamless, consistent and deeply misguided model of ag and commerce... (i.e. without the cars and chimneys, the clearcutting would not be happening in the first place.) ...a model in which "success" is measured by the ability of middlemen and usurers to accumulate cowrie shells, rather than by the ability of the land, water, and weather systems to sustain the human enterprise of culture and society.
I would be really delighted if I could persuade you (Nomad that is, but anyone else who is listening) to read Alf Hornborg's The Power of the Machine which has been engaging my brain intensely for the last few weeks. a whole different way of looking at core/periphery dynamics, energy flows, and paradigm change. could be interesting to discuss. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
But now I see you're way ahead of me. I'm completely with you that the carbon driven industry is undeniably the foundation for change in agriculture - also in Africa - and its inevitable repercussions on the climate. I've lamented also about the reducing role of the nomadic tribes and the governmental failure to integrate them within nature reserves - but governments get most of their revenue from agricultural founded trade, and so the circle continues. So it's not even "just" environmental - there is a big social imprint to it which is equally lamentable.
However. We're in agreement on the fundamental cause. But slicing up the problem in little boxes to better study direct and indirect causes and effects is part of my academic training, so I'll have to reiterate that I'd be interested to hear what the direct cause is of Kilimanjaro's receding glaciers. Because just pointing at carbon is a little too vague to get your articles published and quench my wriggling need to know brainlobe.
And I'll be on the lookout for Hornborg - will give a beep when I've got it. I just had my birthday, but Sinterklaas is coming into town soon.
reductionism as an intellectual strategy helps us to break down the world into bits small enough for our methodologies to address and our brains to digest... but it also feeds the increasingly dangerous illusion that the world is in fact small enough for our present methodologies to address and our brains to digest. in other words, as always, the model gets mistaken for the reality (much as the graven idol is mistaken for the divinity?). there's a fetishistic aspect to reductionism... well anyway Hornborg will address this at length when you get around to him :-)
one of the many painful (and potentially lethal) ironies of "carbon consciousness" is that the push for "bio fuels" is driving even more of the net-negative, carbon-dumping game of factory ag. cf clearing of rainforest for sugar plantations in S Am and oil palm plantations in Pacific Asia... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
