"Without Water, Revolution"

From Without Water, Revolution by Thomas L. Friedman on The New York Times:

THIS Syrian disaster is like a superstorm. It’s what happens when an extreme weather event, the worst drought in Syria’s modern history, combines with a fast-growing population and a repressive and corrupt regime and unleashes extreme sectarian and religious passions, fueled by money from rival outside powers

"The drought did not cause Syria’s civil war", said the Syrian economist Samir Aita, but, he added, the failure of the government to respond to the drought played a huge role in fueling the uprising. What happened, Aita explained, was that after Assad took over in 2000 he opened up the regulated agricultural sector in Syria for big farmers, many of them government cronies, to buy up land and drill as much water as they wanted, eventually severely diminishing the water table. This began driving small farmers off the land into towns, where they had to scrounge for work. [...] "State and government was invented in this part of the world, in ancient Mesopotamia, precisely to manage irrigation and crop growing," said Aita, "and Assad failed in that basic task."

For more about the invention of government to manage irrigation and granaries see Ecowar the book pages 13-14.

The best jobs in Hasakah Province, Syria’s oil-producing region, were with the oil companies. But drought refugees, virtually all of whom were Sunni Muslims, could only dream of getting hired there. "Most of those jobs went to Alawites from Tartous and Latakia," said Zakaria [Zakaria, teenager], referring to the minority sect to which President Assad belongs and which is concentrated in these coastal cities.

"We could accept the drought because it was from Allah," said Abu Khalil [cotton farmer, smuggler and Free Syrian Army commander], "but we could not accept that the government would do nothing." Before we parted, he pulled me aside to say that all that his men needed were anti-tank and antiaircraft weapons and they could finish Assad off. "Couldn’t Obama just let the Mafia send them to us?" he asked. "Don’t worry, we won’t use them against Israel."

For more Syria see Ecowar the book page 24 and click the Syria-tag on this present blog. Also, I have linked to about 40 articles about Syria from the twitter account.

There is a preview of the book on the book website that includes page 13.

For the youth

[Wikipedia]

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George W. Bush is painting too many puppies

My brain was going into my feet from reading Salon.com (not The Onion) / George W. Bush’s art teacher says he’ll “go down in the history books as a great artist”.

He has painted "more than 50" puppies!?

However, after posting this breaking news to Facebook, a friend of mine pointed out the cosmos in this chaos. It's been 23 years in the making...

    Too many puppies are being shot in the dark Too many puppies are trained not to bark at the sight of blood that must be spilled so that we may maintain our oil fields Too many puppies, too many puppies

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Review: EARTH WARS - The Battle for Global Resources

"If the Earth wars were a sporting contest, here's how the half-time score might stand at the beginning of 2012..."

Georff Hiscock concludes his near 300 pages factual account of who owns the world with a surprisingly relaxed "scoreboard":

• 1st: USA 10 points
• 2nd: China 8p
• 3rd - 4th: Europe, Japan 6p
• 5th - 6th: Russia, India 5p
• 7th: Brazil 4p
• 8th - 10th: Mexico, Canada, Australia 3p
• 11th - 14th: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE 2p
• 15th - 22nd: South Korea, Indonesia, South Africa, Nigeria, Turkey, Iran, Central Asian republics, Mongolia 1p
• Vietnam, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile and some African countries also in 1st division but still no points

EARTH WARS is a concise business report on the current deals in global energy and metals production as seen from down under. It also mentions the main water disputes but does not go into details on food production controversies. It is a treasure trove of information and numbers on especially Asian contracts but often the most important situations from other important continents such as South America or Africa are mentioned as after little more than afterthoughts at the end of chapters.

It's business report like writing is it's strength and it's weakness. The "bullshit factor" is one of the lowest I have ever seen. In many ways this book is just pure reporting. However, at times it is a tough read. And occasionally I wonder if I better run double checks on some numbers: Having been flipping through numerous skeptical blogs, articles and books earlier, I am of the impression that repository estimations and future extraction plans are not always that crystal clear. Did Hiscock leave out some valid doubts somewhere?

To get an impression of what the book offers you can look at the contents on page "v". Or you can take a glance at the 27 lists in it, because the chapters are very much structured as walk-throughs of those lists. So, "Exhibit 3.3" is a top ten of Russian oil and gas companies (no. 1 is Gazprom) - well that part of chapter three is an ordered sequence of paragraphs briefing on the owners, sizes and belongings of those companies. Pretty much.

One gem of the book is it's quite detailed second chapter on "geographical flashpoints". This chapter contained the bulk of the info I needed for my "contested resource territories" map published yesterday (take a look!).

The book hardly takes into account climate change. That may seem weird, but actually Hiscock barely bother predicting the future. Which is actually quite a relief. As such, it is fair enough not to mention projected environmental impacts decades into the future. The demand for renewable energy, however, is mentioned. Compared to the focus on the business as usual going on with fossil energy the demand for renewable energy looks depressingly weak.

If I had used it for my own book, it would certainly be on my list of recommended reading. It's not for everyone, though. Those other books are typically more into storytelling (like witnessing pollution in Nigeria or dictatorships in South America) or typical popular science (past societal collapses, influence of climate change on geopolitics). Normal books. Geoff Hiscock's book is a business book that doesn't dream and doesn't imagine anything.

Either way, there is absolutely no reason to doubt a fierce global business war is raging over our natural resources. That much is very clear after Hiscock's documentation. As documentation of this situation the book is a very valuable contribution. But it's not exactly edutainment.

 
Geoff Hiscock (2012): EARTH WARS - The Battle for Global Resources at Google Books, book website.

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Call for moratorium on extraction in contested territories

As can be seen in this recent infographic by Information is Beautiful and The Guardian, we need to leave about 86 percent of known fossil fuel resources in the ground to stay within our carbon budget and hopefully avoid raising global temperatures by more than two degrees Celsius. Still exploration and extraction continues unabated.

However, some resources are in undergrounds below contested territories. Not only are these hydrocarbons in ecologically responsible excess - they also risk causing the spilling of human blood even before they make it to the consumer. The below map points out twelve such territories.



Dear leaders and peoples of Argentina, Denmark, Canada, China, Great Britain, India, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, Norway, Philippines, South Sudan, Sudan, USA, Vietnam: Please agree to leave these resources alone. Show the world your will to lead on climate change and peace. Designate these contested territories as protected natural reserves.

And dear signatories of the Kyoto Protocol, please consider compensating these countries for their good will with CO2 quotas.

Update: This post is now a petition at AVAAZ. Perhaps the most ambitious (naive) petition in the history of internet petitions. Please sign and advertise.

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