Storm’s fury (The day the Earth was lost) By Wolverine Stryker, Buffy Nielsen, Louie Lane, Luc San Pedro, Victoria Woodbridge, Vernon Sam, Amanda Griffith, Andy Bowman, Silvero Bowman and Nelson Holyfield LAPLAND, FINLAND -- What if Storm, amplified by Jean Grey’s vast telekinetic powers, destroys the Earth to teach us a lesson? What permanent ratkaisu (solutions) should be put in place for the world to survive thereafter? Lock in the North Pole and the interlocking countries of northern United States (US) and Canada; Greenland and Iceland; northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia as primary impact areas; the rest of continental America, Scandinavia, Europe, Far East and all other regions below the Arctic circle winding up at 40 degrees latitude (secondary); and Caribbean, North Africa, Gulf, South Asia and South Far East (tertiary), lattitudinally ending up at the Tropic of Cancer passing by Mexico’s Sierra Madre, Sahara desert, Rub al Khali sands and Mount Everest; and vertically spanning the Kuril-Kamchatka trench 10,500 meters below sea level, and the 29,029 feet world’s highest peak; assuming all other variables constant. Duration: one day. Lo and behold the Magnet, ghoulish and pallid in its apocalypse, unmodulated by the harshest howling winds of 180 kilometers per hour swirling in a strange counterclockwise direction, and jarred by giant bolts of lights that thunder all over the polar caps, simultaneously connecting with all other lights as to create celestial columns and arches, illuminating a greater part of the hemisphere as Storm (Ororo Munroe, heiress to the Rain Queen of Balobedu as portrayed by Halle Berry) levitates to the top of the world after jumping out of the X-Men’s fighter plane rear, stoic, dervish, fearsome as the high-altitude, high-speed thundercracks and shockwaves around her in an electrifying but horrifying show of her body’s electromagnetism, thereafter commanding the fiercest lightnings in breaking the glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland frozen sheet, at the same time making the ocean boil agitatedly in one glare of her solid white eyes, causing the floes to quickly liquefy. Panic ensues as Jean, holding back the instantaneously cooled waters within the perimeter with the help of their monitors, swathes nature’s wrath onto the low-lying rannikko (marina) areas of Kirkenes, Vardø and Longyearbyen (Norway); Nuuk (Greenland); Churchill, Nanisivik, Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik (Canada); Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Labytnangi, Tiksi and Pevek (Russia); and Barrow and Prudhoe Bay (US), engulfing and destroying almost everything in their immediate vicinities – tundras, boreal forests, polar bears, seals, walruses, ships around the basin, pipelines, industrial facilities, observation centers, shipyards and Arctic natives; subsequently initiating chains of dire consequences unparalled in history as 2,000 years of thawing is compressed in one day, aggravated by two preset killer quakes caused by the subduction of plates (reminiscent of the Indian ocean catastrophe that killed 230,000 people in 14 countries) before sea level in many regions subsided to 86.4 meters (assuming 40 percent of global melting comes from the Arctic of the total 216 feet, 5,000 years and 80 degrees “National Geographic” December 2013 estimates). Welcome to waterworld, a devastating landscape of shrinked continents and crushed territories, with a “huge swath of eastern England, most of Denmark, the entire eastern seaboard of [US], Bangladesh and a huge chunk of China” lost beneath the sea, Egypt’s Alexandria and Cairo swamped by the intruding Mediterranean, and the “Black Sea join[ed] up with the Caspian Sea[.]” In various cities lie the face of death from the billions of cadavers and debris scattered everywhere; washed out seawalls, slabs, buildings, towers, palaces, domes, chateaus, barns, ski resorts, market halls, horse race tracks, oil rigs, windmills and dikes; floating cars, industrial vehicles, ships and freight containers; submerged underground cities, railway stations, malls, mausolea, breweries, cisterns or drainage channels, theaters, ice cream factories and other constructions other than mines, dams, wind turbines, shipbuilding yards, ocean borers, energy pipelines, canals, silos, aqueducts, bridges and levees; paralyzed satellite transmission centers, Silicon valleys and airports; hazardous materials spills and nuclear radiation incidents; and ghost towns, burning tires, mass hysteria and civil unrest. That’s aside from fish kills and hapless fauna (bisons, flamingoes, camels, caracals, badgers, wolves, puffins, crocs, green lizards, etc.); ravished taigas, cloud forests, karsts and montane woodlands; smothered deltas, gorges and fjords; and landslides, avalanches, liquefaction and many other calamities. Ensuing relief with (where applicable) water trucks/barges, “rehab water schemes,” slow sand filter stations and rail water delivery points; medical tents manned by German and Norwegian physicians (color coded like the Chinese and Finnish), medical supplies, first aid, ambulances, CPR and trauma counseling; non-medical (EHI) items and cash-for-work programs; 9/11, makeshift police outposts, emergency response teams and robot investigators in radioactive nuclear power plants; Oxford, UN Commission on Human Rights and UN Childrens Fund relief camps, bunk houses, portable latrines and mattresses; football stadia evacuation centers; satellite phones, solar cells, radios, gen sets for sale and free mobile phone charging; Plumpy’Nut (peanut-based paste in a plastic wrapper for treatment of severe acute malnutrition), pretzels, cash and choco (for kids) subsidies, emergency clothing and Ben cards; and reception, information, entertainment (Justin Bieber, Lionel Richie, Bob Geldof, Beyonce and other celebrity visits), and family reunification services – may not be enough. This is the biggest crux of Storm’s upheaval: When would we learn? When all is lost and what remains are the modern-day Neil Armstrongs, X-Men and few billions of inhabitants? When politics is no longer the issue but the survival of humans? When the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) can no longer handle the situation, with their representative offices worldwide swamped with distress calls from governments? When money is already useless because banks are closed, there are no more buyers and sellers, and looting (groceries, water, rubber shoes, apparel, medicines, vegetables, electrolytes, etc.) and hoarding (rice, wheat, medicines, lumber, oil, fuels, adobe, etc.) instantly become a way of survival? It dawns on us that that it is no longer the deluge because we can’t do anything about it but what remains, and the new forests – above the new sea level and those below it – are our only refuge, and we mean those that can be found in both land and sea (coral reefs. etc.), but excuse the latter first for obvious reasons. Differentiated in various latitudes and regions, they serve the same purpose: sustain life even if they are not equally important, with valuation relative to their economies of scale, functions, government thrust/s, market demand (i.e. AIDS cure), stewardships and third party risks, or run the risk of another Tuvalu or Sierra Leone where conservation cost is more than the operational expense in maintaining Australia and New Zealand for one year. To hell with all patrimony then because we can’t allow emotions to run high, with natives going to Queen Elizabeth II, EU, UN, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, etc. for either sympathy, mileage or both, but without the funds for lobbying. Rather, a clinical and staid approach, or what would justify conservation funding other than correlated goals? The most significant of them all? Tertiary impact zone rainforests which receive the greatest amount of sunlight and home to 50 to 90 percent of the world’s species, with Southeast Asia’s more than 600 million acres or 243 million hectares dwarfing all others within, with those adjoining taken in as a whole because their global contribution make them difficult to ignore, but not discounting the possibility that other cures or solutions might come from other biomes, like Russia and Canada’s taigas having the biggest impact on carbon dioxide levels. Since most diverse, these woodlands attract both opportunities and risks, justifying businesses’ (Unilever, Kellogg, Starbucks, Pepsi, Tim Hortons, Nike, Zara, Cadbury, Nestle, Canada’s Canfor and West Frazer Timber, etc.) sponsorship of conservation efforts for a long, long time. More than showcasing the world’s finest biodiversity, their protected areas (PAs) function as a habitat for all our needs, and one wonder drug, industrial high grade sap or super chemical alone might be enough justification on top of their multiplicities of protective functions including ozone defense. That’s aside from vested interest groups like rebels, logging concessionaires, wind instruments and textile manufacturers, diamond miners and wildlife hunters who have stakes in either the forests or their patrol communities. Problem is, their systems are crude and Eastern, conservation at no additional cost on governments, with lots of unnecessary dynamics from the purchase of updated satellite imagery through UN Development Programme (UNDP) New York, ground validation, technology transfer to conservation departments cartographers, land use plan, zoning, monuments, construction of forest patrol stations, security of UN volunteers, rehabilitation and temporary management of captured wildlife, extraction of endangered flora, PA access during rainy season, mapping of communities, inventory of indigenous species, apprehension of forest products, mining, drilling, habitat fragmentation, conversion to agricultural lands, sustainable livelihoods, communist pass, impenetrable tribes, government regulations, implementing agency/ies terms of reference, political accommodations, and Venezuela and Philippine PAs’ most outrageous and elaborate establishment steps, as opposed to Vietnam or Bangladesh’s simple backdoor approval. Assessment? Too much talk, too many devils’ advocates, when at the end of the day, what matters most are the agreed deliverables, with many special zones failing. On the contrary, are the EU and UN asking too much or are we? If both are, why were our systems not made realistic and timed in the first place? Why were they made Eastern in character when it would mean eternity? To protect other interests or provide ethnic chic? And after conservation projects are adjudged “failure,” when would we learn our lesson that only small initiatives (kylä level) worldwide have succeeded, and that big ones always end up bluff or flop? Why are there still pick-up initiatives, at times bigger in scale and magnitude, when nothing has significantly changed other than frontline operations? Which means the same inexperienced democracies, dictatorships, socialist and totalitarian regimes, with monarchies gaining the upper hand in the battle to save the environment, and all that lobby groups have to do is pay the incumbent and executive orders are already out in 24 hours. On the other side of the globe, PA fast approval trend is observable in advanced societies, monarch enclaves and “big impact areas” (Finland’s 60,000 lakes, Iceland’s 200 active volcanoes, etc.), the afterthought of which is that why do we allow frail democracies, plutocracies, parliaments and other regimes to insist on their either overtly bureaucratic, autocratic or out-of-this world systems and procedures? The conclusion is that it is not the form of government but how effective its systems are, which explains the flak on the see-through populist administrations of Mexico, Burma, Germany and Italy, and the Islamic states of Bangladesh and Syria where people surround you right away. It follows that we cannot allow ordinary people to run special projects or know their real funds lest latter be squandered fast, which is a reality in developing economies. That’s aside from their power needs, if any. On a macro perspective, even if tropical rainforests are not as productive as taigas, they are needed to address not just local but other needs, implying the need to make artificial forests (urban parks, private botanicals and plantations like China’s 500,000 square kilometers Green Wall to keep the shifting sands of Gobi at bay), never mind if invasive species are introduced in them like West Indies’ monarch butterfly from Australia, and southeast US’ kudzu vine from Japan. The character might be different, but do we have other options? In effect, so long as they contribute to their bigger, specific or intended functions, let them be. The primal PAs can handle the rest, with fenced areas outside the multiple use and buffer zones for lumbering, boat building, commercial tourism and other uses. It’s a choice between life now and in the distant future and given a trade-off between the two, we need to make separate plans if only to stave off the present crisis. There is no other way, and there is not much difference in the new dynamics because Europe has been doing it, albeit with mixed results, precisely why the other side of the globe is being protected because it is the only way the world will survive. That’s before promoting corridors and integrating PAs into wider landscapes and seascapes, and regional networks and transboundary PAs because “[u]nderstanding connectivity for different species is complex; understanding connectivity for species distribution patterns under climate scenarios is even more so. While scientists can test [traditional] effectiveness … in enabling species movement [i.e. through camera traps, sand traps (and) genetic testing], it is far more difficult to test whether or not a corridor would be effective in [allowing] the maintenance of ecological processes, species movement and ecosystem services under future climate scenarios.” Meanwhile, “[t]ransboundary collaboration is an inherently complex process involving many actors, issues and agenda. It may be difficult for multiple countries, or even (just) two countries, to agree on a specific set of objectives for the designation and management of a transboundary area and/or a regional network,” but it can be done. To be effective in it however requires more than just ministerial agreements but high-level will of governments to remove physical fences, and coordination between border guards and security services (Russia and China, and Russia and Mongolia) that are barriers to the migration of flagship species (Argali sheep, saiga, etc.). Oceans included, because while 12 percent (%) of the land already receives some protection, former only has 1%. Hopes are therefore high for the “31 new Mission Blue Hope Spots across the globe to massively scale up the level of marine protection that experts consider necessary for a sustainable future,” giving oceans a breather from anthropogenic activities that they may recover and flourish. This on top of 19 other areas in the last four years, a number of which either have “formal protection” or the lack of it. Thus, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) assistance commitment because “networks of marine PAs maintain healthy biodiversity, provide carbon sink, generate oxygen, preserve critical habitats and allow low-impact activities like ecotourism to thrive.” All these before we could even think of artificial barriers like the Delta Works of Netherlands, Thames Barrier (UK), New Orleans Barrier (US), Eider Barrier (Germany), St. Petersburg Dam (Russia) and New England Hurricane Barrier (US). Or the economy thereafter because “the once fabled northeast and northwest passages will reduce shipping times and cost by as much as half, bringing China and Japan much closer to Europe and North America’s east coast.” That’s aside from Arctic’s vast reserves of fossil fuels and minerals becoming more accessible, and they are much larger than Alaska’s oil fields and northern Russia’s gas fields, justifying the scrambling countries’ claims in its economic zones under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, add major countries like Germany, France, UK, China, India and Japan pressing to get in. Or the world after, if any, from Scandinavia curbing around the Baltic Sea, Alaska to Norwegian Sea, then lattitudinally down to the mountain ranges of Pyrenees, Alps and Carpathians, Central Siberian plateau, Mount Kinley and Greenland’s fishing village of Ammassalik? What will happen to Reykjavik’s trawling industry, Lapland’s hydroelectric projects, Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, southern Wales’ dark Mynydd Du, Cologne’s open-pit mine, Antwerp’s petrochemicals, Luxembourg City’s moselle wines, Zurich’s banks, Monaco’s harbor, Mont Blanc, Tuscany’s farms, Corinth Canal between the Gulf of Corinth and the Aegean Sea, Bucharest’s gymnastics, Budapest’s parliament houses by the Danube River, Prague’s International Spring Festival, Casablanca’s King Hassan mosque, Sahara’s Libyan desert dunes, Suez Canal, Hawaii’s attractions, Montreal’s St. Lawrence Seaway, Vladivostok’s fleet and port, Kabul’s wool and sheepskins, Damascus, Nabulus National Water Carrier, Kuwait City’s spectacular water towers, Mecca’s Kaaba shrine, Tokyo’s electronics and Seoul’s fashion? From economy to culture, foreign relations to politics, everything is vague for now, and we can only imagine what will happen to crucial indexes of the new world. What would Arctic’s new geography and territorial boundaries be? Would there be merger of countries? How about vegetation, precipitation, ocean currents, carbon dioxide absorption, storm frequency, and animal species diversity, ranges and distribution? What will happen to the different claims? Would there be changes in Finland’s history long influenced by its neighbors Sweden and Russia? Or Norway whose inhabitants were formerly Vikings who sailed to Greenland, Iceland and North America? Or other Nordic states as well as Baltic republics? What would the geopolitics be (languages, religions, currencies, types of government, dependencies, population trends, etc.)? Or industries other than maritime – North Atlantic and Greenland’s fishing for cod, herring, capelin and haddock; North Sea’s oil and oil products, natural gas and ships; Sweden’s vehicles, machinery, iron and steel; Finland’s firs; Denmark’s meat, fish and dairy products; US East Coast’s microchips and New York bourse, UK’s net bubble and service industries, Ireland’s livestock and dairy products, Alexandra and Cairo’s automobile assemblers and manufacturers, and United Arab Emirates’ luxury villas? What would be the designs for new infrastructures (depth of foundations, insulation specs, etc.)? How about transportation long dominated by ships and choppers, or the proposed underwater train that will connect Bering strait with the Russian continent? Surely, even entertainment and literature would change: No more Santa Claus, Swan Lake, Mickey Mouse, Holiday on Ice and many other icy tales. As for Lapland and by large Finland, what will happen to our Midsummer Festival (Juhannus) to celebrate summer solstice? Also Vappu, saunas (the province’s greatest contribution to humanity), temperature that fluctuates from -50°C in winter to 30°C in summer, Kemi’s worlds largest snow castle, and Luosto’s only open amethyst mine in Europe? Storm knew all these lessons all along. As headmaster in the Xavierville academe after Professor X died, she knows that “wherever [they] may go, they must carry on his vision of a world united” because latter is “full of fear, hate and intolerance,” brainwashing minds with subliminal racism, anti-Semitism, “diversity,” LGBT, red scare and subculture. If not, the purpose of establishing the X-Men from the ranks of Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Division X, forerunner of the bolt-away group, would be defeated, leading to lawlessness, world war and even mutants’ Armageddon. Deluge after, the high-altitude, high–speed convergence of thundercracks and shockwaves now moves up, vaulting Storm into altitudes higher than Mount Everest, accompanied by a haze of rollers that insulate her from any harm, and tracked by same howling winds that dissipate as latter part ways up. As it do, the bolts abruptly stop and clouds give way to the first of summer’s suns, except the wiry demigod who stays airborne and stolid for a few minutes of sad reflection before Nightcrawler takes her out of the brightening sky, back to the fighter plane with the hope humanity would wake up to the realization that if natural regeneration would take eons, better protect primeval forests or create artificial ones, realistic and with new sets of rules, specifically to address global warming first before exploring, tapping and maximizing their other uses. These might lead to extinction of some species but so long as humans are not adversely affected, then so be it. There would be changes naturally, but isn’t it the same as the evolution of man from apes to sapiens? More than anything else, it is human survival that matters most, and it has its trade-offs. Before the planet perishes or the continents drift, humans first will be killed. What will you choose between the two?
Posted on: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 08:06:24 +0000