Column - Rewriting our rules for survival

AS in previous years, 2017 was welcomed with a big bang. To revellers nothing can go wrong. They were upbeat and had every right to feel so. After all 2016 was a big disappointment despite the promises of scientific progress and technological advances. The talk now is about the so-called 4th industrial revolution with the rules to be re-written yet again. Whether it is for better or worse it is not certain. And it looks like no one really cares.
Why do I say so? Put simply: are we done with the global mess consequential to all the previous industrial revolutions put together? Not so according to scientists at Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York since each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally according to records dating back to 1880. Further analyses of ground-based observations and satellite data by Nasa, two key climate change indicators – global surface temperatures and Arctic sea ice extent – reportedly have broken records through the first half of last year. It used to be 2015. Now there are indications that 2017 can be the third hottest year on record.
Enter Donald Trump with his infamous 2012 tweet: "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive" which was retweeted more than 100,000 times! More recently, he said: "There is still much that needs to be investigated in the field of 'climate change'." So will he be rewriting the rules on climate change given the way he is engaging with China.
More than that Trump vowed to roll back President Obama's signature effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, known as the Clean Power Plan, and to scrap a litany of other "unnecessary" rules, especially those imposed on the oil, gas and coal sectors.
The person whom his administration seems to be relying on for this would in all likelihood be a well-known climate-change "sceptic" – Myron Ebell. Allegedly he "has argued for opening up more federal lands for logging, oil and gas exploration, and coal mining, and for turning over more permitting authority to the states" and "urged the Senate to vote to reject an international climate accord signed last year (2015) in Paris." The accord sets targets to reverse the worst effects of global warming, which nearly 200 countries agreed to in December 2015.
Allegedly Ebell is actively colluding with a conservative policy group that once received considerable funding from ExxonMobil (the CEO is tipped to be the next US secretary of state). Ebell is not a trained scientist and has long questioned the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is fuelling unprecedented global warming.
Be that as it may, ultimately there is little difference between Obama and his successor when it comes to the need to (re-) write the rules. As early as 2015, Obama in his State of the Union Address openly declared: "China wants to write the rules for the world's fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and businesses at a disadvantage. Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules." In many ways this is exactly what Trump aims to do. It is to make America great again, not the world, less still the Earth for sure! Unfortunately, the gullible among us are often misled (think TPPA).
Under the circumstance therefore discussion on the 4th industrial revolution is another red herring. Especially if it is out of context to the deeper implications of an emerging "new epoch" that pointedly blames human failures to redirect all the previous industrial revolutions which now threaten the very existence of the entire planetary inhabitants.
Indeed an international expert group has recently endorsed that the epoch could be traced as early as 1950s "to be defined by the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear bomb tests" to which the French president acknowledged in February last year with respect to the three decades of nuclear tests in French Polynesia causing clear damage to health and the environment.
But scant attention is given to this and it is overshadowed by industrial juggernauts that keep on rolling with greater superstructure being created in the name of the "faceless" STEM (academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics).
Given the increasing carbon dioxide emissions (among others like methane) and sea level rise since mid-20th century, the reality of a global mass extinction of species is well on the way thanks to institutionalised greed, deceit and corruption. In all, the current epoch of some 12,000 years of stable climate since the last Ice Age during which human civilisation developed and flourished is about to be disrupted, if not collapsing, even before the century ends as forecasted by some studies.
That being the case what use then is another industrial revolution that seems to further threaten the very essence and purpose of being human. In other words, lest we, as global citizens, adamantly insist on rewriting the rules for our own planetary survival, we will soon become architects of our own demise – which as it stands today is not only predictable but predicted.
With some four decades of experience in education locally and internationally, the writer believes that "another world is possible". Comments: letters@thesundaily.com