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The Threatening
Dangers
Reflections by
comrade Fidel
It is not an
ideological issue related to the definitive hope that a better world
is, and should be, possible.
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It is a known fact that the homo
sapiens has existed for about 200 thousand years, which is no more
than a tiny span of the time passed since the emergence of the first
basic forms of life on our planet approximately three billion years
ago.
The answers to the unfathomable mysteries of life and nature have
fundamentally been religious. It would be senseless to pretend
otherwise and I am convinced that it will forever be this way. The
deeper science delves into the explanation of universe, space, time,
matter and energy; the infinite galaxies and the theories of the
origin of the constellations and the stars; the atoms and the
fractions of them that made possible life and its briefness; the
more questions man will have in search of ever more complex and
difficult rationalizations.
The more involved human beings are in the quest for answers to such
deep and complex endeavors related to reason, the more significant
the efforts will be to release them from their enormous ignorance on
the true possibilities of what our intelligent species has created
and can still create. Living and ignoring it is tantamount to a
complete denial of our human condition.
However, something is absolutely certain: very few even imagine how
close we might be to the extinction of our species. Nearly twenty
years back, at a World Summit on the environment held in Rio de
Janeiro, I brought up this danger before a selective audience of
Heads of State and Government who listened with respect and interest
albeit unconcerned for a risk they perceived to be centuries or
perhaps millenniums away. They certainly felt that science and
technology plus a basic sense of responsibility would suffice to
tackle the problem. That important summit happily concluded with a
great photo-op of distinguished characters, including the most
powerful and influential. There was no danger whatsoever.
Hardly anyone talked about climate change then. George Bush senior
and other dazzling leaders of the North Atlantic Alliance enjoyed
victory over the European socialist camp. The Soviet Union was
dismembered and in ruins. A huge amount of Russian money ended up in
the Western banks, its economy broke up and their defensive shield
vis-à-vis NATO military base was dismantled.
The former superpower that had contributed the lives of over 25
million of its people to World War II was left with only the nuclear
power capability for a strategic response, something it had been
forced to create after the United States secretly developed the
nuclear bomb that it dropped on two Japanese cities when the
adversary, already defeated by the irrepressible advance of the
allied forces, was unable to fight.
Such was the beginning of the Cold War and the production of
thousands of increasingly destructive and accurate thermonuclear
weapons capable of annihilating the population of the planet several
times over. Nevertheless, the nuclear confrontation continued while
the weapons grew more accurate and destructive. Russia does not
resign itself to the unipolar world that Washington intends to
impose. Other nations such as China, India and Brazil are emerging
with unexpected economic strength.
For the first time, in a globalized world full of contradictions the
human species has created the capacity for self destruction. This in
addition to unprecedented cruel arms such as chemical and
bacteriological weapons: like napalm and white phosphorous used with
total impunity against the civilian populations, the electromagnetic
weapons and other forms of extermination. No place on earth or in
the sea, no matter how deep, is beyond reach of the current means of
war.
It is known that tens of thousands of nuclear devices have been
produced, even portable ones.
The greatest risk stems from the judgment of leaders with such
decision-making power that mistakes or madness, so common in human
nature, could lead to unspeakable catastrophes.
Almost 65 years have passed since the explosion of the first two
nuclear artifacts due to the decision of a mediocre individual who
was left in command of the rich and mighty American power after
Roosevelt’s death. Today, eight countries are in possession of such
weapons –most of them obtained with US support—while several others
have the technology and the resources to manufacture them in a very
short time. On the other hand, terrorist groups alienated by bigotry
could also resort to them, the same way that terrorist and
irresponsible governments would not hesitate to use them given their
unrestrained and genocidal behavior.
The military industry is the most prosperous of all and the United
States of America the largest exporter of weapons.
If our species can escape the abovementioned risks, there is still a
greater one or at least less unavoidable: climate change.
The population of the world today is seven billion, and soon, within
40 years, it will be nine billion. This figure is nine times what it
was barely 200 years ago. I dare assume that in the days of ancient
Greece the figure was about 40 times lower all over the planet.
What’s amazing in our times is the contradiction between the
imperialist bourgeois ideology and the survival of the species. The
need for justice among human beings is no longer the issue; this is
not only possible but unwavering. The issue now is the right and the
possibility of survival of the human species.
The farthest the horizon of knowledge expands to previously unknown
limits, the closer humanity is brought to the abyss. All sufferings
known so far are hardly a pale reflection of what could lie ahead of
humanity.
Three events occurred in only 71 days that humanity cannot overlook.
On December 18, 2009, the international community sustained the most
important setback in history as it tried to find a solution to the
most serious problem threatening the world at the moment: the
necessity to urgently put an end to the emission of greenhouse gases
which are causing the gravest problem that mankind has faced until
today.
All hopes had converged on the Copenhagen Summit after years of
preparation following the Kyoto Protocol that the government of the
United States, the most contaminating country in the world, had
lightly decided to ignore. The rest of the world community, 192
countries, --this time even the United States included-- had
committed to promote a new agreement. The American attempt at
imposing its hegemonic interest was so shameful that in violation of
the most basic democratic principles it tried to force unacceptable
conditions on the rest of the world anti-democratically resorting to
bilateral arrangements with a group of the most influential United
Nations member countries.
The States that make up the international organization were invited
to sign a document that is no more than a travesty, a document that
relates purely theoretical future contributions to curb climate
change.
Barely three weeks had passed when at sunset on January 12, Haiti,
the poorest nation in the hemisphere and the first to put an end to
the horrible slavery system, was hit by the greatest natural
catastrophe in the history of this part of the world: a 7.3 degrees
in the Richter scale earthquake only 6.25 miles deep and very close
to its coastline struck the capital of the country where most of the
dead or missing people lived in fragile houses built with clay. A
mountainous and soil-degraded country of 16, 875 square miles where
wood is practically the only source of domestic fuel for nine
million people.
If there is a place on Earth where a natural catastrophe has become
an enormous tragedy that place is Haiti, a symbol of poverty and
underdevelopment, where the descendants of Africans live who were
brought by the colonialists to work as slaves for white masters.
The event came as a shock to the entire world; people in every
corner of the planet were shaken by the filmed images that seemed
almost incredible. The injured, bleeding and moribund, crawled among
the dead asking for help while the lifeless bodies of their loved
ones lay under the debris. According to official estimates, the
number of lethal victims exceeded the figure of 200,000.
The country was already occupied by the MINUSTAH forces sent by the
United Nations to restore the order subverted by Haitian mercenary
forces that instigated by the Bush administration had undertaken
actions against the government elected by the Haitian people.
Several buildings that sheltered soldiers and commanders of the
peacekeeping forces collapsed, too, adding to the painful toll in
human lives.
The official reports estimate that, aside from the dead, about 400
thousand Haitian were wounded and several million, almost half the
total population were affected. It was a real test for the world
community that after the shameful Danish Summit had the duty to show
that the rich and developed countries could be capable of tackling
the threats of climate change to life on our planet. Haiti must be
an example of what the wealthy nations should do for the Third World
countries in light of climate change.
You can believe it or not, challenging the data –in my view
irrefutable—of the most serious scientists of the world and the
overwhelming majority of the most knowledgeable and honest people
worldwide, who think that at the current pace the planet is warming
up, the greenhouse gases will rise temperature not only by 1.5
degrees, but up to 5 degrees, and that the medium temperature is
already the highest of the past 600 thousand years, long before the
existence of human beings as a species on the planet.
It is absolutely unthinkable that nine billion human beings who will
inhabit the world by 2050 could survive such a catastrophe. There is
still the hope that science may find a solution to the energy
problem that today forces to consume in 100 more years the remaining
gas, liquid and solid fuel that it took nature 400 million years to
create. Perhaps science can find a solution to the energy required.
The crux of the matter would be to know how long it would be, and
how costly, before human beings can cope with the problem, which is
not the only one since many other non-renewable minerals and grave
problems demand a solution, too. There is one thing we can be sure
of based on everything known until today: the closest star is four
light-years away from our Sun, at a speed of 187,500 miles per
second; maybe, a spaceship could cover that distance in thousands of
years. The human beings have no other choice but to live on this
planet.
It might seem unnecessary to deal with the subject if only 54 days
after the disaster in Haiti, another incredible earthquake, 8.8
degrees in the Richter scale, with its epicenter 93.7 miles
northwest of the city of Concepcion and 29.6 miles deep, had not
caused another human catastrophe: this time in Chile. It was not the
most severe in the history of that sister nation, for it is said
that another one in the past reached 9 degrees, but this time is was
not only a seismic event.
But, while in Haiti they waited for hours the occurrence of a tidal
wave that never happened, the earthquake in Chile was followed by a
huge tsunami, which showed up in its coasts almost thirty minutes or
an hour later, depending on the distance and the data that are still
not accurately known, one whose waves made it as far as Japan. If it
had not been for the Chilean experience in facing earthquakes, its
sounder constructions and larger resources, the natural phenomenon
would have taken the lives of tens of thousands or perhaps hundreds
of thousands of people. Yet, it did cause about one thousand fatal
victims, according to official reports, thousand of wounded and
maybe more than two million people sustained material damages.
Almost the entire population of 17, 094,275 people suffered terribly
and still endure the consequences of the earthquake that lasted more
than two minutes, its repeated aftershocks and the moving scenes and
suffering left behind by the tsunami along its thousands of miles of
coastline.
Our Homeland fully sympathizes with and morally supports the
material effort that it is the international community’s duty to
make in favor of Chile. The Cuban people would not hesitate to do
for the fraternal Chilean people anything within the extent of its
capabilities from the humane point of view.
I think it is the duty of the international community to objectively
report the tragedy sustained by both peoples. It would be cruel,
unfair and irresponsible to fail to educate the peoples of the world
about the threatening dangers.
Let truth prevail above selfishness and the lies used by imperialism
to deceive and confound the peoples!
Fidel Castro Ruz
March 7, 2010
9:27 PM
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