I spent most of Tuesday, when I usually write this column, waiting in line for the first of two vaccinations. After that, and feeling a bit sore and queasy, I decided to get into bed and read. I couldn’t decide whether I should read about the challenge that superstring theory held for the cagey pas de deux of general relativity and quantum mechanics (together they’re considered to be the foundational pillars of 20th century physics), or about the social impact of war on human consciousness. Seriously, this is what I get up to when left to my own devices. And just by the way, if anyone tells you they understand quantum mechanics, call the people at Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital. That shit is just impossible….

The after-effects of the vaccination include dizziness and “flu-like” symptoms. It may explain my initial choices of books to read. I couldn’t concentrate. I settled, instead, on reading news reports from around the world.

First, I read Amartya Sen’s carefully crafted piece on what the British Empire achieved in India. Then I read about the latest US military budget – and “related work on nuclear weapons” – which is more than $750-billion. This represents one of the highest levels of spending since World War II; higher than the war on the Vietnamese people or President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup of the 1980s. The $750-billion is also about three times the size of China’s military spending, the article said.

Later I read a report of record-breaking temperatures in the Canadian town of Lytton, British Columbia, approaching 50°C. Temperatures in the upper Midwest of the US were “unbearable”, a couple of friends said, via email. Last month it was reported that heat waves across India have steadily increased, and, most recently, the state of Andhra Pradesh was especially devastated by soaring temperatures.

Between increased spending on war, much of it on nuclear weapons, clear patterns of a global climate crisis and gross mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic – a veritable global health crisis – I have become convinced, if I had not been before, that our collective stupidity will destroy human life on Earth within this century if we don’t make drastic progressive changes, if we continue to ignore science, perpetuate and ramp up global politics as a zero-sum game and forget about the common good.

Stupidity on the rise

There is a growing possibility that humanity will wipe ourselves out in a nuclear disaster, that a horrendous climate catastrophe could destroy biodiversity or food crops; or an asteroid, like the one that killed off the dinosaurs, will smash into the planet and kill us all. A lot of that may be caused by human stupidity.

For one, it is as if we have not learned any lessons about the destructive power and durable, intergenerational health consequences of nuclear disasters. The big problem is that we ignore science. Too many people share faith-based logic; eschatological thinking that we’re all going to die (when god decides), so why bother with “saving” the planet, or “god” gave us the planet to use its resources.

Others simply play with bad science, or ignore the data on the climate crisis.

A growing number of people have come around to thinking we should colonise Mars, which is conceivable, in the sense that we can think on it or imagine it, and it’s probably a good idea. With the current state of technology and the scientific knowledge we have, the colonisation of Mars may well happen by the end of this century.

Bear in mind that Mars is an extremely hostile and, for now, uninhabitable planet. Much more research has to go into colonisation. The ability to completely terraform Mars (turning it into a green space similar to Earth), is probably hundreds of years away. While we should go to Mars, and probably will do so in the next two or three decades, what we can say with some certainty is that such a journey will be a one-way trip for any traveller. We have to listen to the scientists.

It’s not outlandish to suggest, as did Gerard O’Neill, that in the grand scheme of things we are an extremely rare intelligent civilisation, which by nature means that we will explore new frontiers. We should be cautious, though. There may well be life on Mars (probably microbial, maybe more than that – we don’t know yet), which means we have ethical obligations about preventing the transference of our diseases to another planet. In theory, then, we can and probably should explore and land on Mars. I’m just not sure the bureaucrats and policymakers are keeping up with scientific developments at a sufficiently compatible rate. That may be the single most important contribution to our own destruction – especially when it comes to nuclear weapons.

Would you give a known murderer a loaded pistol?

There’s a disingenuous selective morality at play in the politics of nuclear arms. Let me get this out of the way. The world would be a safer place without nuclear warheads. So, it’s safe to say that the US and Russia have the largest nuclear warheads, and China and India are catching up.

As explained above, the US is spending more money on its military and its nuclear programme than any other country. But there is an insidiousness about the US approach to nuclear armaments. Washington would turn a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear stockpile (see The Third Temple’s Holy of Holies: Israel’s Nuclear Weapons by US Lieutenant-Colonel Warner Farr), but fight like hell to prevent Iran from developing its nuclear programme. I am pointing out only the selective morality, here, and not voicing support for nuclear armaments. (And who made the US the world cop, anyway?)

Let me take a look back at a speech by Amartya Sen (yep, the guy I mentioned at the start). When India acquired nuclear warheads, Sen was somewhat outspoken about the country of his birth acquiring such destructive weapons. In one speech, (delivered in the context of India-Pakistan rivalry) Sen quoted the Indian polymath, poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore’s (1861-1941) distaste for the acquisition of military power, If, “in his eagerness for power”, Tagore said in 1917, a nation “multiplies his weapons at the cost of his soul, then it is he who is in much greater danger than his enemies”. In subtle terms, he seemed generally opposed to nuclear warheads.

What Sen could not answer was “where and when” – the time and place – that he protested against US nuclear arms. The issue of US nuclear arms is not to be scoffed at. This is the only country that has actually used nuclear bombs, against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is the country that has been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Questions abound. Do you give a well-known and habitual killer a loaded weapon? But if the US is the world cop, who polices the US? In this area we seem to have surrendered, intellectually.

Global climate crisis

The only thing we can do, in the short term, is try to contain the global climate crisis. On this there is (thankfully) a growing consensus – whether this is because of “strange” weather in Texas, Canadians and people in the US Pacific Northwest experiencing unusually hot weather, or monsoons in south and southeast Asia wreaking more havoc than previously.

This United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change graphic shows projected climate change from 2081-2100.

Next to getting states to disarm – which would be impossible – making the right policy decisions on the climate crisis, considering the common good and the next generations of people on Earth, and finding the next frontiers “out there” require that we listen and learn from scientists. I should add that scientists don’t know everything (yet), and they would be the first to admit that, but enough is known about our planet and we are learning more and more about Mars with every lander we send there.

Not everyone may agree on whether Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are nice people, but they are making significant moves to explore the possibility of colonising Mars. One wishes they would spend the same amount of money on fighting climate change and paying more taxes. (Musk is especially miffed by California’s taxation, hence his move to Texas.) Their taxes could go a long way to help states encourage more progressive (and aggressive) policies to deal with the global climate crisis, although Musk’s Tesla initiative gives the impression that he is making progressive moves.

Right now, however, China and India should address their carbon emissions. We are a long way from the pollution and environmental damage caused by US industrialisation and the pesticides used by Washington to kill off malaria in states like South Carolina. China and India and a host of industrialising countries don’t have the policy space that the US had, and used since the slavery era, to pollute and contaminate.

Sadly, we have to turn to global initiatives like the United Nations Climate Change Conference of which, almost without fail, the US, in particular, has been most scornful, while China and India have asked for the same policy space that the US had when that country industrialised.

“Developed countries should bear the historical responsibilities of climate change and lead the emission cut while providing funds and technology to developing countries for better responding to climate change. On the other hand, developing countries should take action in the framework of sustainable development,” Chinese delegation chief Xie Zhenhua told the Climate Change Conference.

Either way, the US began cleaning up its act after it became a developed country, then pulled up the ladder, as it were, and expects China, India and other developing countries to follow a different path to development. Altogether, there seems to be no agreement on how to proceed with the climate crisis.

And so, while South Africans still have to decolonise everything – we are not allowed to call this stupidity or intellectual genius – the world is facing a set of crises that require hard thinking, less performativity and less stupidity. DM