Light the fuse

Not the great New Zealand mobilisation novel

An early work-in-progress dedicated to helping,
circuitously, precipitate the Great Mobilisation

Dare to be wise!
Kant

Chapter 13

Beyond-urgent Great Mobilisation

Contents
author Cimino
work-in-progress published 20250613

When you believe in things
That you don’t understand
Stevie Wonder, 1972

Mobilisation to Meet Putin’s Genocidal Hypermasculinity: That dictators and tyro dictators can, in the Great 3rd Millennium Polycrisis, wage war at will is a sorry measure of a world so deeply dysfunctional it is unwilling to illegalise bloody national and regional rivalries, to salvage the survivable climate upon which every living thing is dependent. Here, just a few of the Ukrainian servicewomen prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice thanks to the depraved dictatorship of serial plagiarist Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Sadly, the ~250 000 killed to date pale in comparison to the polycrisis lives lost already, and the billions the polycrisis puts at risk. image Irregular Warfare Initiative

After the better part of a lifetime, that its utterance seldom evokes so much as  a suppressed guffaw, still surprises Cimino:

It’s bad luck to be superstitious.

Having coined the witticism in his youth, Cimino doesn’t doubt dozens have come up with the wisecrack verbatim, or close-to, since—or before, for that matter. For him it remains one of life’s enduring little mysteries it is not frequently heard, much less that it is not a robust, universal declaration of rationality. Superstition about  superstition, he allows, may have played a part. Be that as it may, Cimino steels himself and deliberately assigns the 13  cachet to this chapter, named for the Great Mobilisation itself, and the beyond-urgent imperative for it.

Scientifically, it is indisputable that anthropogenic global heating is increasingly jeopardising a survivable climate. Those of the opinion that that statement is debateable will need to argue their case elsewhere—Chapter 13 , indeed Light the Fuse itself, is about what the Great Mobilisation might look like if  it is to make a blind bit of difference as to how the Great 3rd Millennium Polycrisis plays out … which supposes of course history records that, by 2025, too many tipping points had not already been crossed to render any scale of mo­bi­li­sa­tion moot. Nor is Cimino’s near-future novel, much less this chapter, a place where the litany of suffering that might all to easily await mostdeliberately “most”, as opposed to “much”, for the interim of humanity is examined—that appalling duty is left to other authors to inflict. This book, and chapter in particular, is about the blood, toil, tears and sweat that is the cosmically unique duty and distinction of immediate gen­er­a­tions to discharge, to salvage the indescribable beauty and complexity of this patent, potential heaven on Earth.

If China, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Israel, the United Kingdom, Russia, and other assorted states were known to all be poised to launch, within the ensuing few days, all their nuclear missiles pre-emptively or in retaliation, following, for example, a great escalation of the war started by Netanyahu and Trump, there can be little doubt that some form of global mobilisation would ensue. If it could be established as a fact that anthropogenic global heating was the equivalent of the first of those missiles having already been stealth-launched, slingshot unerringly towards their most-populous targets, via non-interceptable trajectories around the sun, there is a reasonable probability that climate-polycrisis mobilisation would ensue, at scale and at pace. The irony is that, inevitably, many businesses would unfairly profit—through a combination of right-place-right-time and corruption. However, the rising-sea-level of climate-polycrisis-mobilisation will lift all boats capable of contributing. Currently, it is not thought to matter what increases economic growth, so long as economies grow, and global economy grows. Setting aside that economic growth for economic growth’s sake is has resulted in the Great 3rd Millennium Polycrisis, the beyond-urgent imperative to prioritise icecap-melting-emissions reduction, and to make that  the economy—the intelligent, as opposed to stupid, economy, stupidJames Carville’s 1992 Clinton-campaign slogan “The economy, stupid” is over-ripe for refashioning to convey the stupidity of having the economy civilisation’s master rather than its result—and is what caused the Great 3rd Millennium Polycrisis.

Dr James Hansen, in his most recent communication regarding his draft Sophie’s Planet  Chapter 10 – The Venus Syndrome & Runaway Climate, states:

It is incumbent on us to help define the research that is needed to better assess the threat of shutdown of ocean overturning circulation and large sea-levelsorry, Dr James Hansen, sea level, when used in the term sea-level rise, should absolutely be hyphenated rise because of their irreversible nature.

Hansen has almost never been guilty of climate-alarmism. Indeed, he has long held that he and his climate-scientist brethren have been guilty of the exact opposite sin: scientific reticence. Hansen holds that scientific reticence is handicapping scientists in their duty to communicate the urgency for radical emissions reductions. Far too much leeway is thus inadvertently being provided to decision makers to practice career-advancing/safeguarding incrementalism.

It is monumentally ironic, therefore, that Hansen, labouring to complete his follow-up, second layperson book, is walking back a 300-year-hence scenario in which Planet Earth’s oceans have been evaporated into space: the abovementioned Venus Syndrome. It is, however, a distinction without a difference, long term. Critically, 500 years or a millennium or more, if the habitability of Earth is foreshortened by a billion years, those few generations of Homo sapiens sapiensas opposed to Homo sapiens, to acknowledge Homo sapiens idàltu, and to avoid the more cumbersome alternative of ‘anatomically modern human being’, and for sheer cussedness responsible, never mind this gen­er­a­tion of blinkered, market-economy decision-makers, must not be given any excuse to equivocate on their profound responsibility to humanity’s only attainable planet. Happily, for the sated self-interested billionaire and destitute malnourished child, the Great Mobilisation only requires the purposeful to replace purposelessness. Indeed, given that presently, the world’s most powerful, purposeless/populist leaders seem to be able to agree on nothing except the putative inevitability of war between the west and the rest, the overwhelming mass of humanity, rich and poor, will fare hugely better, short and long term.

Had Hansen, in his repurposed Planet of the Apes  scenario, rather than citing the boiling-off of the oceans, used the much more immediate prospect of the rapid shutdown of the oceans’ overturning circulation—which could occur within decades—he would’ve retained his otherwise unblemished record for being bang on the money, invariablyreplace with link to mainstream article, once relocated. Money, of course, is the problem, or at least the sanctimonious withholding of it for non-neoliberal pursuits. That an economic doctrine could be allowed to deny working climate scientists the resources needed to comprehensively answer the most urgent climate-heating questions, and to adequately communicate the answers, or provisional answers and further questions is preposterous. Hansen, in his draft chapter:

The runaway climate threat and danger of passing a point of no return are taboo with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc), the organization that we should expect to be most protective of the rights and the future of young people. This reticence of ipcc is a cause for concern, which deserves to be pointed out and vigorously debated. We have presented evidence that the millennial time scale of ice sheet changes in the models that ipcc relies on are much slower than indicated by real-world data, even when ocean and ice sheet changes are driven by very slowly changing paleoclimate forcings. Specifically, paleoclimate data, global modeling, and ongoing ocean and ice sheet observations raise concern that rapid shutdown of the ocean’s overturning circulation could occur within decades, which can affect ocean/ice sheet interactions and the rate of sea-levelas above, sea level, when used in the term sea-level rise, here, has been hyphenated to conform with standard formatting and Mahurangi Magazine style rise.

Climate-science research costs, globally, possibly  have been calculated, but, in all probability, not. If the us$219 million the United States’ noaa spent in 2024 on climate research, against the us$1.7 trillion spent on research and development by the oecd countries—in 2022—is the slightest indication, the amount spent globally is an appalling paltry 7795.5th part, more or less. On the upside, this means that the opportunity exists for a little country to make a very big difference—potentially, a rare actual  case of from little things big things grow. If it were to appreciate and regain its Enlightenment heritage, that little country could be—deserves  to be—Aotearoa.

New Zealand—to use the country’s sole, officially recognised name—has had its heroic moments. Not least of all, these include pioneering, first indigenousbut male only suffrage, then that of a country’spreceded only by the state of South Australia women, making Aotearoa the world’s first full democracy. Aotearoa, then, could wrench the world’s attention away from war-mongering by mobilising to quickly establish itself as the powerhouse of icecap-melt science and practical icecap-melt-minimisation solutions. New Zealand’s geographic, West Antarc­tica-icecap-adjacent location, long since, has positioned it as the  strategic supplying airport for McMurdo Station, used by scientists studying the imminently-probable apocalyptic disintegration of Thwaites Glacier.

Wantonly destroyed by Russia during its unprovoked invasion, the world’s heftiest cargo aircraft—the six-Ivchenko Progress-engined Antonov An-225 Mriya—could air-lift a diesel–electricit might equally be diesel–hydraulic, but, aside from the compelling alliteration, diesel–electric at least holds out the hope of in-motion-charging locomotive. As a twofer, including to demonstrate democratic solidarity with Ukraine, Aotearoa could support the creation of its eight-engined Antonov successor, and its seasonal operation between Christ­church and McMurdo. While Christ­church’s longest runway falls a trifle short of ac­com­mo­dat­ing even the An-225, much less its previously proposed successor, neither the city nor its airport has a long future so close to sea level. Ōtautahiwas its, disputed, former Māori name employed for the new Christchurch—which is due for review, given it is ungazetted these 175 years, rebuilt farther inland, at a long-term-sustainable elevation at least 65 metres higher than the present, multiply problematic site. In its immediate aftermath, when writing about the Christchurch crisis wasted, Cimino had no inkling of the circumstances in which he’d one day be terrorised into relocating considerably closer  to the big one, the Alpine Fault.

Be as the preceding may, just as with the subsequent wasted covid-19 crisis, Christchurch, voted for more-of-the-same directionless neoliberalism. Christchurch, per se, of course, can’t be faulted—any more or less than Aotearoa as a whole can be—for failing to fire the unrepentant pampered priest­hood of neoliberal economists. Unchallenged and unrepentant in its aftermath, the global economic crisis should have led to its priest­hood being defrocked en masse. ‘The economy’ neoliberal economists are allowed such sway over is stupidly committed to the growth-for-growth’s-sake consumer civilisation that is destroying itself any prospect of a survivable climate…

 

Gaza Grotesque: In the perfect vacuum left by this dysfunctional civilisation’s failure to face the Great 3rd Millennium Polycrisis, this paving-over-a-genocidal-atrocity utopia proposed by Netanyahu is being provided succour by Biden, Modi, and von der Leyen. rendering Archpaper | pm Office of Israel

 

Finally, hideously, there’s mega-megalomania Adam Toose begins his Chartbook  #284 with:

I have to admit, when I first saw the image, I thought it must be a hoax.

Subtitled “the surreal geoeconomic imaginary of Netanyahu’s ‘economic peace’”, Adam Toose describes a Netanyahu megamobilisation vision of Third Reichian utopianism. It would be hard to invent a counterfactual that better underscored the imperative for humanity to embrace the necessity of comprehensively responding to the Climate Polycrisis, with every ounce of goodness and mercy humans are hard-wired to deliver.
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