{"id":280242,"date":"2024-11-18T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2024-11-18T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=280242"},"modified":"2024-11-13T05:22:06","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T05:22:06","slug":"2084","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/11\/2084\/","title":{"rendered":"2084"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Big Brother – Photograph by Christopher Anderson\/Magnum Photos<\/p><\/div>\n

The World as It Might Be (or Do I Mean Might Have Been?)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

12 Nov 2024 <\/em>– Honestly, what would George Orwell have written about this planet of ours, four decades after that ominous year 1984 passed from his fiction into history?<\/p>\n

And yes, in case you think that, as in his novel 1984<\/a><\/em>, published in 1949, a year before his death and just as the Cold War (a term he was the first<\/a> to use in an essay<\/a> in October 1945) was getting underway, our world, too, seems to be heading for a nightmarish future, I suspect that \u2014 were he capable of returning to this planet of ours \u2014 he wouldn\u2019t disagree with you for a moment. Phew! Sorry for such a long, complicated sentence, but little wonder given the way our world is now tying itself in knots. Yes, just last week, with the election of climate-change denier and (to steal from Orwell) our very own Big Brother Donald Trump as president of the United States (again!), we just paved the way for an instant all-American nightmare. Still, even without him, the world was anything but peachy keen.<\/p>\n

As a matter of fact, we live in a country on the brink of who knows what, on a planet on the brink of\u2026 well, yes, who has any idea anymore? One thing, however, is obvious (even if not to The Donald, who plans to \u201cdrill, baby, drill<\/a>\u201d on day one back in the White House): it\u2019s getting hotter by the year<\/a> (after year<\/a> after year) in every sense imaginable, as heat records are broken<\/a>, week by week, month by month around the world<\/a>. After all, 2024 is expected to be the hottest year in human history, beating out 2023 for that record, and yet, all too sadly, it\u2019s not likely to hold that record for more than a year. As Kristina Dahl, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out<\/a> recently: \u201cThe latest scientific data shows a devastating scientific duality: not only is 2024 slated to be the hottest year on record to date, but it could also be one of the coolest years we\u2019ll see in the decades ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yikes!<\/p>\n

War, War, and More War<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just consider that, so many thousands of years after we humans first began making war on each other, we\u2019re on a planet that seems to be going down big-time in ways Orwell couldn\u2019t have imagined. And no matter its state, we just can\u2019t seem to stop ourselves from, or even evidently stop wanting to make war again\u2026 and again\u2026 and again.<\/p>\n

At this point, in fact, at least three thoroughly nightmarish, seemingly never-ending conflicts are being fought (and fought and fought) on this planet of ours. There is, of course, the war in Ukraine that began with Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s painful decision in February 2022 to invade that country. More than two and a half years later, with perhaps 200,000<\/a> or more deaths and the destruction of significant parts of Ukraine, it seems as if that particular war is in a nightmarish slog of endless devastation leading who knows where or to who knows what end (including, possibly, the first use<\/a> of nuclear weapons since August 1945, something Orwell was already thinking about in that Cold War essay of his only months after the U.S. nuked the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II).<\/p>\n

And oh yes, only recently, a third country, also nuclear-armed like the Russians, and its leader, like Vladimir Putin, also willing to threaten<\/a> the use of such weaponry, decided to directly enter the fray. I\u2019m thinking, of course, about the neighboring state of North Korea. And don\u2019t be confused by that \u201cneighboring.\u201d After all, that country\u2019s only about 4,500 miles<\/a> away from Ukraine, but it\u2019s certainly a neighbor of Russia\u2019s, right?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Whoops, sorry about that! After a glance at a map, I realize that I must have meant a neighbor of China, which is indeed a neighbor of Russia, which is more or less the same thing. Under the circumstances, why shouldn\u2019t North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have sent 8,000<\/a> to10,000<\/a> of his crack troops to more or less the other side of the planet (or do I mean the universe?) to help an atomic near-neighbor? And I certainly have no right to be critical of such a decision, since in this century my own country has dispatched its military endless thousands of miles away to fight (losing) wars<\/a> in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n

Of course, whatever my country did, what\u2019s now going on in Ukraine should still be the definition of a nightmare first class, a war without end that only seems to be growing more severe. But perhaps when compared to what\u2019s now taking place in the Middle East, it might have to be seen as a nightmare second class. After all, another nuclear-armed country, Israel, in response to a horrifying terror attack on its citizens by the Palestinian group Hamas on October 7, 2023, has spent more than a year (14 months!) devastating and decimating just about anything left standing, including human beings, in the tiny Gaza Strip. It has by now killed tens of thousands<\/a> of Palestinians, including staggering numbers<\/a> of children, destroyed most of the infrastructure there, promoted famine, and well\u2026 honestly, that\u2019s just a start, since Vladimir Putin\u2026oh, sorry, my mistake, I meant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been spreading the war on Gaza in a thoroughly \u2014 yes! \u2014 devastating way to Lebanon (where, forget the growing numbers of dead, more than 1.2 million<\/a> Lebanese have been displaced from their homes and turned into refugees in next to no time at all). Meanwhile, he\u2019s been going face to face, or perhaps I mean bomb to bomb and missile to missile \u2014 and keep in mind that most of those bombs and missiles come from my own remarkably generous country, since Israel is<\/a> \u201cthe largest cumulative recipient of U.S. military aid since World War II\u201d \u2014 with Iran. And who knows where that set of wars may, in fact, go from here (though undoubtedly, nowhere good), or where else in the Middle East the Israelis might still want to expand their military campaigns.<\/p>\n

And if all of that isn\u2019t enough for you, or this deeply battered planet of ours, then don\u2019t forget Sudan, where a devastating civil war<\/a> has been raging for a year and a half, killing untold tens of thousands of Sudanese, displacing<\/a> eight and a half million more of them from their homes, and causing a brutal famine<\/a> affecting millions that could destroy an inconceivable number of lives. And like the horrifying conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, that war between two local military factions shows not the slightest sign of ending any time soon.<\/p>\n

So, three devastating regional wars on one small planet. If that isn\u2019t distinctly an achievement of sorts for a humanity that continues to arm itself to the teeth, then I\u2019m not sure what is.<\/p>\n

Planetary War<\/strong><\/p>\n

And sadly, all three of those wars, which have essentially nothing to do with each other \u2014 you seldom see even two of them, no less all three, in the same news coverage \u2014 are distracting us remarkably well from what might be considered the real, or at least the most devastating war on Planet Earth. I\u2019m thinking, of course, of the war that, thanks to us, this planet is now waging on \u2014 yes! \u2014 us.<\/p>\n

After all, even where there hasn\u2019t been horrific war-making, all too often there have been other kinds of devastation. Take Spain recently, where in the neighborhood of the city of Valencia, a year\u2019s worth of rain fell<\/a> in eight hours in a stunning weather event leading to floods that killed hundreds<\/a> and destroyed much property. Consider that a reminder, amid humanity\u2019s seemingly unending wars (and our unending ability to keep on waging them), that thanks to the greenhouse gases we humans, especially the two great global powers, the United States and China, are still pouring into the atmosphere at \u2014 all too sadly \u2014 a record pace, this planet is essentially responding by making war on us. (And don\u2019t forget that our wars and the militaries that fight them are another devastating way we humans have discovered to pour yet more greenhouse gases<\/a> into the atmosphere, heating this planet further, and the U.S. military, even when not at war, remains a gigantic emitter<\/a> of such gases.)<\/p>\n

While my country is historically the greatest producer<\/a> of greenhouse gases ever, in our own moment it\u2019s fallen into second place to China<\/a>, which (despite its impressive investment<\/a> in the production of green energy) continues to<\/a> increase its use of coal, in particular, pouring yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in a fashion never before seen on Planet Earth.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that we haven\u2019t been warned, not just by scientists, but by the weather itself. And you don\u2019t have to be in Spain to notice it. After all, if you live in the southeastern United States, you\u2019re not likely to soon forget the devastation<\/a> caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton, after they revved up while passing over the record-hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico, before clobbering Florida and the Southeast. And that\u2019s just one example among so many, including for instance the stunning fires<\/a> that swept across Canada in the summer of 2023 (and again in 2024), sending devastating clouds of smoke<\/a> south into the United States.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it, whether we\u2019re talking about fire, drought, floods, unprecedented storms, or so much else, we increasingly live on a different planet. After all, in 2023, the average global rise in temperature hit<\/a> 1.48 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Worse yet, by July of this year, it had hit<\/a> the ultimate 1.5 degree mark that the 2015 Paris climate accord set as the level not to be reached by the end of this century 12 (yes, 12!) months in a row. Worse yet, scientists are now talking about<\/a> a possible devastating rise of 3 degrees or more by century\u2019s end. With that in mind, just imagine what future hurricanes are going to feel like when they sweep across parts of this country.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Liberty Maniacs<\/p><\/div>\n

In short, while we humans have anything but given up our old ways of making war on ourselves, it seems that we\u2019ve found a new way of doing so as well, and if that isn\u2019t dystopian, what is? I suspect that George Orwell would be stunned by the planet we now seem to be on and the climate-denying president<\/a> Americans just sent back into the White House to create an all-too-literal hell on Earth.<\/p>\n

And given all of that, I wonder what this planet could prove to be like in 2084, if we don\u2019t change our habits, whether it comes to making war or burning fossil fuels? Will we still be slaughtering each other on a planet that could be truly experiencing truly devastating weather in ways we may not yet be able to imagine? It\u2019s hard even to dream (as in having a nightmare, of course) of a future in which neither those recent hurricanes, nor the flooding in Spain will seem all that disastrously out of the ordinary, anything but \u2014 and that\u2019s assuming none of the nine countries on this planet that have already gone nuclear (or others which may be heading in that direction) decide to atomize the planet instead.<\/p>\n

Now, mind you, it\u2019s also possible that (thanks to some miracle) by 2084, we humans will have figured out how to truly green ourselves and this planet, leaving all those greenhouse gases to the history books, along with our endless centuries of increasingly devastating war-making.<\/p>\n

But given our past and the recent American election, I wouldn\u2019t count on it.<\/p>\n

Honestly, who would have guessed that we humans might prove capable of making Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/em> seem like an upbeat fantasy a century later when, whatever wars might then be underway, the planet itself could prove to be a genuine hell on earth?<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the truth of it all: it shouldn\u2019t have to be this way.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project<\/a><\/em> and the author of a history of the Cold War, <\/em>The End of Victory Culture<\/a>. He runs <\/em>TomDispatch<\/a> and is a fellow of the Type Media Center. His sixth and latest book is <\/em>A Nation Unmade by War<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 tomdispatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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