It is 1 PM the first Sunday of the new year. Guy and Harumi sit, facing at oval ends of the long, antique mahogany table ideal for Sunday seminars. It is of smoothly aged brown wood that can be enlarged to 4 meters long and 1 meter wide, by sliding it out from its center. It is part of a set with upholstered high-backed chairs that probably dated from the 1870s and could have been in Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence.
A number of Seminarans young and old are attending. Guy, a slim, blond, slightly under 1.7-meter-tall fellow in a black, open-at-neck shirt and tan work pants with large side pockets, stands at head of table, ready to begin, Harumi stands at the table's other end, a remarkably preserved but almost starvation Giacometti stick figure with skin so closely applied to her bones that her face has a skeletal appearance, which those who know her say befits her age. Among the attendees are the elderly neuropsychiatrist, Dr. Stan, who sits to Guy's left along the table's length and on his left is his menage-a-trois Brenda and Joe Pro the painter, and on their left, and next, the child of the three, whose father no one is sure of but whose name is Freddy, and who also paints but in his case buildings and rooms. Across from them is Rabbi Moyshe in beanie cap yarmelka and wearing Jewish religious sideburns and long black vest and jacket, and to his right Mr (Dr.) and Mrs. Irving Goldberg, Mrs being the former Lorna Greenberg and next their teenage cute daughter Grace. Then down the table on the same side and to Harumi's left is the Italian pizza store owner Nicola, who as usual has delivered an order of pizza & pasta and stayed for the seminar and is dressed in his spaghetti-stained white uniform. On Harumi's right is a 22-year-old Japanese exchange student, Miss Junko, and her Japanese-Bangladeshi boyfriend Jun.
Guy begins "Okay folks, welcome to the first seminar of 2016 and also our first seminar in Manhattan. Considering the subject I think it appropriate to comment that, despite our pleasant, affluent surroundings, the world of 2016 is on the way to becoming a total mess and is heading - excuse the doomsday scenario - for the end of humanity as we know it due to a runaway hot house effect of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."
He is interrupted by Nicola's "Whatta da cause?"
Actually, Guy had asked Nicola to interrupt with that question.
"Thank you, Mr. Nicola. Now if you have read the newspapers and looked and listened to radio, TV, and the Internet you will hear them all talking about Global Warming from the burning of fossil fuels which makes it sound like it's a relatively simple question of stopping fossil fuels." Guy stops and looks around and then says.
"Has anyone ever heard of 'the elephant in the room'? "
Dr. Stan raises his hand and is recognized and says. ''Doesn't it mean something that ought to be very, very obvious and important to everyone but that no one would like to talk about so strongly that most people are not even aware of what the elephant actually is."
Guy picks up on that "Dr. Stan you got it!"
Miss Junko jumps up impatiently "Well tell us what is this elephant?"
Guy flashes a signal to Harumi who presses a button and the screen behind Guy lights up in showing
A general hissing of breathes ensues as the Seminarans inspect the graph of the world population change since Year Zero.
"What you are looking at, folks, is the real elephant and right now it is in this room. Note the upper curve on the right side of the graph has become nearly a straight line up." He stops.
"Now about the elephant. It is true that the proximate cause of the present Global Warming is industrial and individual fossil fuel burnings, especially driving cars and running electrical motors which continues to up the carbon dioxide and methane gases in our atmosphere, giving the so-called greenhouse effect that allows heat- wave radiation from the sun to input on the Earth's surface but does not allow the radiation to be reflected away sufficiently to keep a stable equable temperature. But the source of the problem is not so much burning fossil fuels it is the nearly 20-fold increase in numbers of people on Earth since Year Zero. And it is not just the numbers; it is that the human of today, now just starting year 2016 since the industrial revolution started in the 1700's, has had a rapidly accelerating per capita burning of fossil fuels. In the industrialized countries like the USA, Japan and western Europe many families use two personal cars, and many persons fly millions of miles, and the electricity that runs every aspect of our society is pouring out tons upon tons, at a rapidly increasing rate, of carbon dioxide. Also the burgeoning population especially in newly developing areas is deforesting the world to find places to live and to burn wood for fuel."
Guy is interrupted by the young Bangladeshi-Japanese, Jun; ''My dad comes from Bangladesh, which is a big "newly developing area," you may be referring to. What has clearing the forest so people in Bangladesh and other such places can live in a civilized manner like we here in New York or Tokyo; what has that got to do with Global Warming? And, by the way, everyone in Bangladesh, or almost everyone burns wood for fuel. Isn't that better than coal or oil or gas?"
Guy smiles inwardly "I think Jun knows better than I the answer to his question but I thought that maybe some of you here do not so I asked him to ask me about that. The carbon dioxide, of course, is produced by people breathing out, and by burning fossil fuels and also by burning non fossil fuels all of which have carbon that get oxidized to the dioxide. But there has been a natural cycle whereby the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is sort of "breathed in" by plants, which range from the smallest germs to the huge California trees and it is used by the plants to produce their living tissues which are too often now becoming the carbon fuels we humans are carelessly and excessively burning. And in the process, the CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and replaced by our life giving oxygen. But now the exponential growth of the population requiring treeless living space has reduced and continues to reduce Earth's forests dramatically adding to the carbon dioxide pollution and global warming. And it is a pure population growth effect."
Brenda who has sat with mouth almost open through Guy's presentation now joins in.
"Gotcha point, Mr Guy".
" Twenty times more people and each person using 20 times more fossil fuels so producing a 400 times rate of CO2 and not only producing but by the deforestation stopping the recycling removal of the CO2 and here we are today with the Greenland and Antarctic Ice melting and New York City facing more and worse Hurricane Katrina's"
"So what should we women do?" Brenda asks. "Stop having more babies? Don't we have to reproduce order for r perish before other cultures or religions like the Mormons and Muslims who are having 15 to 20 babies per woman?'
Guy replies, "OK, I got you. First, I always like to reinforce the idea that, as a generalization, each person today should have his or her replacement children and not more. That means for one couple, 2 children. However, I am against absolute rules or laws because 1) They evoke bad opposition, 2) they do not work well, and 3) from a eugenics standpoint there may be a reason for a particular couple or a person to have many good children." He stops and smiles: "But that is another kettle of fish."
Dr. Stan interrupts "Or can of worms."
"Very good, Stan"
Rabbi Moyshe interrupts. "But what has all this got to do with Hitler and the Nazis?"
Guy gets serious. "Look, Rabbi, what I am going to say may upset you but, bear with me and let me develop my point. We all know Hitler was a monster anti-Semite whose policies caused the Holocaust that ate up 6 million Jewish plus many others. Terrible enough, it is only part of the story but today in 2016 can some few of us also begin to see that a long range effect of Germany losing World War 2 was an unforeseen consequence I am now showing.
"Now I want to fill you in on Adolf Hitler. But just points relevant to my idea. He obviously would have tested high on IQ, but just having a high IQ should not mean a person is a good leader. Also he had no more than a grammar school education. The rest was self taught which explains much of his failure. And he was a real artist." Harumi flashes a Hitler landscape:
Postcard by Adolf Hitler, circa 1908
"I cannot believe that, that mass murderer could paint something so beautifully" says Rabbi Moyshe. "But if you say so ?"
"It's authenticated."
"But what point?"
"To help partly explain the paradoxes." Guy stops. Then starts again. "Now listen and I tell you why Hitler was a key, a potential nodal point for Earth!
Into the shocked silence, Guy presents his thesis without interruption, as follows.
"Adolf Hitler was a genius at demagoguery. It means he could unite many different points of view into one unitary plan for the future. That is what he did with Germany. Consider the situation for Germany; they had disastrously lost World War 1." He stops and considers.
"But first let me say why the Earth lost when the German's lost World War2."
"It is paradoxical because I do agree that by all standards Hitler was a moral monster but I also agree with the viewpoint that the Earth would be a better place than it is today, from the standpoint of the future of humanity and the Earth's flora and fauna, had Germany won World War 2, which they came very close to winning, and the key moment was in late 1940. At that time Germany controlled all of Europe from Norway's northernmost fiord to the Italian heel." He pauses and chuckles: "Not Benito Mussolini; I mean Italy's geographic heel." The room, heretofore ultra serious, erupts in manic laughter as Guy struggles to control himself. He continues: "Hitler's fatal mistakes then were: first, not trying to make peace with England which he could have had he really wanted it to by withdrawing German troops from newly conquered France and that Rudolph Hess’s abortive flight suggests he might have been toying with; the second mistake was attacking the USSR which was at that time Germany's natural ally. And finally, the third mistake was allowing Japan to go ahead and attack Pearl Harbor, which he knew about and could have stopped with a word. At one swoop, Hitler converted a sure win of the world for the Nazis into a losing 2-front war which he provoked by attacking his natural ally the USSR, and converted World War 2 into a sure victory for America by allowing the Japanese attack of 7 December 1941 which changed the USA from an isolationist majority that would have elected Lindbergh president in 1944 into a united nation to defeat the Germans and Japanese under the US President FDR.
"The paradox was that Hitler's demagogic genius allowed Germany to be in its almost certain win position in 1940 yet his crazy, hyper romantic, artistic Napoleonic complex prevented Germany from achieving its almost win.
"Also the Nazi anti-semitism is a paradox. It brought them to power in 1932/33 as a tremendously potent issue among the German electorate; yet its being carried to the insane extent it was, lost Germany thousands of talented Jewish citizens and turned world opinion strongly against the Nazis.
"Retrospectively, the ideal situation would have been that after the Nazis consolidated power by 1935, they would lighten up on the anti-semitism and turn it into an anti capitalist idea, and allow German Jews honorary Aryan status, as they did in special cases. But Hitler was out of control.
"Ideally had I been a Nazi in the late 1930s I would have worked to assassinate Hitler because once he had set Germany on its path by 1935 he was not only of no further use, he was a definite drag that made for what became the cause of the German defeat.
"Had Germany won World War 2, we would not have the massive overpopulation we have today; Africa and Arabia would have remained in European hands and these would have been German hands that would have the natives clueless and low-population, China would have cooperated with Japan to rule Asia, and the USA would probably have been obliterated by a German Pax Atomica. Ideally Germany should have made a peace in 1940, which it could have by offering to return France to its single nationhood; and then they could use the next 5 years to develop the Atom bombs which with Werner von Braun's intercontinental rockets would have suddenly ended the USA ".
So goes the seminar, which you have the gist of above. As mentioned, seminars are meant to start one's thinking and not to supply final answers. Also keep in mind that all of us have two aspects of potential understanding: our personal survival and the survival or our species and the Earth. Even if you are Jewish, still try to answer the question posed here in terms of human survival and keeping Earth the good place it is for all the animals.
For next chapter, click 18.16 A Manhattan Apartment
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