A Drop in the Bucket

 We are not asked whether we want to be born or when. We are born into an operating world system with all its assumptions, beliefs, and operations of that time.  We love to look back and mesmerise about how life was in those days. What did we do? What do we do now? Then and now we start with a premise and see how it fits in the current operating system. Isn't this what we do in the Memoirs class? 

Some premises are time dependent, such as: "It's been 10,000 miles ago that my car was serviced, so I better make an appointment". Others not so much, such as premises I want to focus on here. 

Increasing the ability of human beings to live longer, healthy, fulfilling lives. Do you agree with that?  

I want to leave this world a better place than when I entered it. A pretty general premise, but don't we all want that? What do I mean with better? For example:

Is animal testing for medical research good? Does that make the world a better place? Most people, including myself, would say YES.

1. While we have no desire to make animals suffer, we prioritise the countless human lives that animal testing saves. WHY?
2. ... because our primary moral goal in this context is some version of advancing human flourishing; for humans to live healthy lives. 

There are scientists who evaluate animal testing as immoral even though they know it has been very beneficial to human life. WHY?

1. ... because they believe a higher moral standard than saving the lives of human beings from disease is the moral goal and standard of animal equality. The basic idea of animal equality is that it is morally wrong to interfere with mother nature. 
2. Even though they know animal testing for medical research has methodologically proven to benefit human health, the lesson here is that they know they are pursuing anti-human policies. 
3. Animal welfare can mean pro-human concern with the welfare of animals, such as unnecessary cruelty, which I think every human being agrees with. In practice it can result in supporting the whole animal-equality agenda including opposition to animal testing for medical research. Animal welfare is used as a disguise making it look like a pro-human goal. 

This explains many of the times in history, when human beings who should have known better, supported and enacted viciously anti-human policies, such as slavery, racism, religious dictatorship, communism, and Nazism. An example is racism which spreads the assumption that killing or subordinating non-preferred races is not anti-humanism because those other races have somehow scientifically proven to be inferior and therefor not truly human. Nazism in Nazi Germany supported the extermination of Jews, not because it was unaware that extermination would kill many people, but because its goal and standard was the opposite of human flourishing: the triumph of one group of people, Aryans, and the subjugation of Jews and other non-Aryan groups.

This is exactly what is going on today with our knowledge system's evaluation of anti-human energy elimination policies. regardless of what you believe about the impact of rising CO2 levels in the future. Today you must acknowledge that human beings are flourishing more than 200-300 years ago, or even longer. This is expressed more or less as follows: 

"Fossil fuels have made the world a better place to live, including a place where we are far safer from climate, but tragically in the future, their negative side effects will be so adverse that it's worth depriving billions of people of fossil fuels' massive benefits." 

That would be a coherent claim, but it is not what today's knowledge system, especially its designated experts, tells us. It treats today's world, including climate, as being in a horrible state due to fossil fuels, being gas, oil, coal, and nuclear power. Antonio Guterres, head of the UN, has told us: "our war on nature has left the planet broken, and the consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, including towering economic losses."  

Factually, the planet has been afflicted far less by human suffering than ever. We have experienced unprecedented economic gains over the years. Is human health better in the Western world than, say Kenia or Uganda? Is water safer to drink in most Western countries than in Ethiopia? 

Every winter we would drive to Servaus, Austria for a ski vacation. I had learned the basics on a high school outing, but Servaus was more sophisticated with a cable car and ski lifts. I did not notice it then, but later realised that we always went around through Belgium and France instead of straight through Germany. Occasionally, Germany would come up in a conversation and that is when my mother spoke pretty negative, because of what Germany did to us during WW II. When we lived in Venezuela, we had a German doctor because my parents were not confident with local doctors. She did not like it he was German! She would not talk about the war, but the consequences of that time were obvious if the subject came up. Of course there is a difference between Germans and Nazis, but I did not think about it like that, then.

Fast forward two generations: her grandson, my nephew, had a hard time finding his niche in the computer world in the Netherlands and found an opportunity in Germany. To him, WW II was an event you learned about in history class at school. Germans were fine people, as far as he was concerned. His parents, my sister- and brother-in-law, enjoy visiting him, especially in October during the beer fest. How does the attitude toward another country change in two generations? I am sure there are American families in the same boat, if you consider they lost a loved one during WW II. I guess the USA is geographically further removed from Germany, so was not as close to the heart.  What about the French who had fought with Germany for generations over the border between them? How Germany took the border area in WW I and the French got it back (with allied help) after WW II. You hear how the European Union is not only a Union to operate economically but also became a deterrent of conflicts among the European countries. 

I am amazed how we human beings adapt to changes. We still read and see a lot more of WW-II events relative to other wars. We say that people living in the 1930's and 40's are dying, and we want to get the last thoughts directly from them. Why can't we say the same of prior and more recent wars? 

Recently Marise was asked to tell the story of her parents' hiding place during WW II in the Netherlands. She went deeper into the mishandling of Jews and referred to today's increase in anti-Semitism. In her presentation she had a group of WWJC residents, reading diaries from people who survived the war. One of the residents was born in Germany right after the war. His family emigrated to the United States when he was a boy. He does not talk about the war, but offered to be a reader in a presentation about the war atrocities his countrymen performed in a neighbouring country only one generation prior.  What if you, an American, is asked to share statistics and embarrassing actions taken by slave owners, 1-2 centuries ago, while at the same time producing a Constitution and Bill of Rights? Yes, I am comparing apples to oranges here, because black people were considered property, and even sub-human at that time. What about slavery in Bible times? That is like comparing apples to grapes... 

In the mid 1950's we were taught about slavery in 5th-8th grade in Social Studies class,  but I never connected the contrast between the Bill of Rights and slavery. Idealism is an American strength. Except for the war of Independence, the civil war and some Indian wars, America had no wars on their continent. Europe has had many, and still has the Russian-Ukrainian war going on today!  

We so easily play the blame game, but forget to set it in context to the time period those atrocities and wars took place. When separated by only one generation, it must hit close to home.

 When we hear that "experts" have concluded that we must eliminate fossil fuels, that appears extremely compelling and trustworthy. We most certainly need to study the negative side effects of fossil fuels such as increased heat waves, droughts, wildfires, etc.

But we cannot make good policy decisions about these side effects if we don't know the benefits that will be lost when we eliminate those fossil fuels. Benefits such as affordable foods, clothing, shelter, and medical care. What about the uniquely cost-effective property of fossil fuels? What about the billions of people who have no, or few energy sources other than their own human energy? Don't we have a moral obligation? What about the relative negatives of fossil fuel energy? We need fossil fuels to construct all the windmills, and mining for materials to build electric cars and all the equipment used for environment preservation. 

Whether you believe that side effects of fossil fuels are eminent, and caused by human contributions, creating climate change so that we need an alternative soon, or whether you do not believe that human contributions are a major factor, is irrelevant. 

We need to look at both sides and what reality is showing, in say, the last fifty years. In this article I want to look at energy experts, who they are and where does our "knowledge system" fit in all this?

We have scientists in all kinds of fields; environment, weather patterns, nuclear power, biology, water management, medicine, and many more. We only hear from scientists dealing with side effects and the urgency to do away with fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal. How "renewables" such as wind and solar power will replace fossil fuels. 

Before all this scientific research reaches the common man, and women, like you and me, there is a knowledge system that interprets the research and puts it in language understandable to six-grade level. These are the "experts", either scientists or people closely related to them; people who write in The Guardian, or Newsweek, The New York Times, and many more. John Holden, President Obama's top science adviser had a particularly dire prediction. Paul Ehrlich, a close collaborator, in 1986 wrote:

"As University of California physicist John Holden said, it is possible that carbon-dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020." Yet, climate disaster deaths reduced by 98% between the 1920's and the 2000's. 

Our knowledge system is broken. We get to hear only one side, which often does not matchup with reality.

The current weather patterns through-out the United States seem devastating: fires in California and New Mexico, heat in New York and flooding in southern Florida. Where are our weather patterns headed?

I found an interesting graph in the book: Fossil Future, by Alex Epstein. The graph comes from Scripps Institute of Oceanography referring to World Bank Data. They keep records of disasters and their impact. Disasters such as floods, droughts, storms, and extreme climate related disasters. This graph is about Climate Related Disaster Deaths, between 1920-2000. Since 1920, climate related deaths have decreased by 98% in the world! Let that sink in: 98% decrease in climate related deaths... 

This means that our knowledge system ignores the massive life-or-death benefits of fossil fuels, but it has a track record of being 180 degrees wrong about the supposedly catastrophic side effects of climate danger, which in fact has dramatically decreased; by 98% with related deaths. How is that possible?

We humans have the capacity of building: dams, canals, dikes, increasingly safer and taller buildings, drinking water facilities, hospitals and all the equipment in them. Imagine trying to build a 25 story building with purely solar and wind generated energy. That includes building the trucks, cement plants, manufacturing of steel. Once the building is completed, should we ensure electricity, water, heating, using only solar and wind power? 

Are there other forms of generating power? Yes, there is nuclear power, and maybe other forms are still being developed. Yet there are 3 billion people who have almost no access to energy sources, other than human power. Babies in Gambia die because there are no ultrasound machines or incubators available.

What are the benefits of fossil fuels? Oil, gas, coal

1. Fossil fuels continue to be the dominant force (80%), and have the ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy in a world where far more energy will be needed going forward, especially with 3 billion  lives having almost no energy.
2. Low-cost, reliable energy empowering us to improve lives has radically under appreciated benefits, including transforming our environment into one that is un-naturally clean and un-naturally safe from climate danger. The world has continued to become a better place to live. 
3. While rising CO2 levels came with growing use of low-cost, reliable fossil fuel energy have a warming impact, they are not as catastrophic. Ingenious human beings, empowered by fossil-fueled machines. We have irrigation machines to counter drought, heating and air-conditioning machines that counter harmful temperatures, and so on. 

Are there side effects of the use of fossil fuels? Of course there are. It is irrelevant to me whether you believe the use of fossil fuels should be drastically cut back because the consequences in the near future will be drastic and climate change is caused by human kind, or whether you do not believe that. The fact is that 80% of energy is produced by fossil fuels and 3% is furnished by solar and wind power.  But to get to that 3%, fuel generated power was needed to build that equipment. Electric cars are fine, but they still need fossil fuel powered equipment to build them and we still need fossil fuel powered equipment to generate electricity to operate those cars. 

How come we are so enamoured with the need to replace fossil fuels? Based on what evidence? What does reality show us?

Those are questions to address another time.

Olda asked us how we handled retirement. He's not quite there yet, but sees some changes coming up at his work, and wondering how that will affect the family's future. Lida asked us how we got to go to the mission field in the Czech Republic at an older age, and how did we accomplish being there for 7 years? She and her husband are looking into going on the mission field themselves, at about the same age as when we went. Pavlina, the mission's administrator, interviewed me on how we got to minister for the Christian football club Ambassadors in Prague and what else did we do when we lived in Pisek?

Olda and his family came to visit us in California about 8 years ago and asked me to organize an RV rental for a trip through the western United States. He picked us up from the Vienna airport this May and we stayed with them for a week in a village close to Brno. Lida was one of the first ladies we came to know in 2002 when we came to Pisek. She is very good in English and picks up another language easily. During those years, we went through ups and downs in life together, common and not so common. It was through her that we connected with Olda for the RV camping trip in the West. Lida was going to Pisek at the end of our week stay, so we got a ride instead of using public transportation, which we are very familiar with, but would have been a challenge with our luggage and at our age. 

After a week in Pisek, we planned to visit Misha and Thomaš, a Czech missionary couple in Poděbrady, a town 30 miles East of Prague where the Ambassadors mission started in 1989. Misha's mother was the translator for the team back then and eventually became a Christian believer. Going to Poděbrady from Pisek is do-able with public transportation, but takes a lot of time. We were to catch a flight from Prague airport to Amsterdam that evening, so time, our age, and with luggage would be a challenge. Olda offered to drive to Pisek, pick us up at the end of the week, and take us to Poděbrady. He arranged for a few business connections in Prague, since he would be there anyway. Tomaš would drive us to the airport, after we had a nice lunch together. 

During these two weeks, it hit me! I had limited activities with Ambassadors Football during those 7 years. I helped with children's practices in a Prague school gym every Friday, assist in the planning and execute football camps every summer, and support annual planning. Not very much in my opinion. I had little to do with the spiritual goals of the mission, which you would think someone went on the mission field for. Aside from the football ministry, we also did two conversational English classes / week in Pisek, through the church as outreach. Contrary to the American assumption, that missionaries go out and see how many believers they can make, it is about making friends and providing support. Support can be financial, but is not limited to that. The local church has to do the reaching out. If the missionary can help with teaching conversational English, that is great. The way we live our lives is much more important for other people to see. And they see it!

The light came on! That is what we have done in those 7 years. Czech people now ask us how we did it; how we live today and what it takes to get there. Nobody asked us about our theology. Pavlina wanted to know what the Ambassadors Football club did in those years and I have many pictures and video clips, but she also wanted to know how we made it to Czech, and why. She will send me a copy when she finishes editing. Doing the mundane jobs does have a purpose, even when we don't see it at that time.