Transition beyond 2012

Excuse the length of this post but the subject simply warrants it. Read on and share your thoughts.

The doomsday predictions are back in circulation. This time it is based on the Mayan Calendar, which talks of December 12, 2009 as the end of the world as we know it. Will it be an asteroid delivering the dinosaurian fate to mankind? Or towering waves unleashed by uncontrolled climate change? Sony will release its popular genre film 2012 this winter based on such an apocalypse.

Doomsday deniers have scorned the many scenarios spawned by the industry as a mere excuse for sitting back and doing nothing. They are supremely confident that the human race will ride the rough waves on the boats of science and technology.
But some optimists have interpreted this as a time of reawakening, a beginning of a spiritual era, of a collective consciousness. A transition.

Transition is also a world we believe in. Transition to more efficient, less wasteful ways. Transition to new and clean energy sources.

Whether things will come to a grinding halt on December 12 or no, there are indications plenty that choppy seas await us. Population piles up. Food production goes down. Water is going beyond our reach. Climate change adds on biceps with every passing day. And viruses are getting stronger. Do we really need more evidence to show how unsustainable we are?

Whether cosmic forces will play their hand or we will bring it on to ourselves, remains to be seen. If not December 2012, sometime very soon. Unless we halt in our tracks and make a change. A visible change.

For this we need to accept some things. One, that resources are limited whether it be fossil fuels or water or fertile soil. Is it not better to wean away before we run out of these? Two, that we are but a small line in the web of life that connects all living things and resources. That is how it has evolved.

Take for instance, the fate of Zabbaleen, a Coptic Christian community of recyclers who reside in Cairo, Egypt. Their main profession is collecting and disposing of the city's waste through reusing and recycling materials and feeding food waste to livestock - mainly pigs.

Due to the outbreak of swine flu the Egyptian government ordered the culling of the country's pigs. A majority of these pigs were raised by the Zabbaleen and used in the first stage of recycling the thousands of tons of organic waste generated daily in Cairo. The future of these garbage collectors is now unclear as they have lost an integral part of their garbage disposal system.

Wars will become more frequent s nations try to stockpile crucial resources which were hitherto exported under a globalised economy. A draft report by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium. Other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year, far below global needs.

China mines over 95pc of the world’s rare earth minerals, mostly in Inner Mongolia. The rare earth family are hard to find, and harder to extract.

Terbium is a key ingredient in low-energy light-bulbs. Neodymium that enhances the power of magnets at high heat and is crucial for hard-disk drives, wind turbines, and the electric motors of hybrid cars. Cerium and lanthanum are used in catalytic converters for diesel engines. Europium is used in lasers. Any modern day gadget, ipod, mobile phones, computers, lap up rare earth minerals. The Chinese move is not an attempt to get the rest of the world on its knees, as much as hoarding for its own growth.

Nations will be forced to take stock of their own welfare as critical resources become scarce. Wars and famines will follow. How soon? 2012? Write in to say what you think we need to do? About energy, about food, climate change, water…