Carbon

Earlier today I received a lengthy essay on the crisis of responsibility, entitled "No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood". The essay deplored the tendency in modern society to shuffle off responsibility for collective action. It was primarily directed at financial regulators, politicians, economists, bankers and all those individuals whose collective actions (and inaction) plunged the global economy into recession.



It might, however, also have been directed at all of us who, through inaction, are plunging us into rapid and irreversible climate change. While numerous models of change and consequence exist, what is unarguable is that climate change is upon us, and that humanity probably still, just, has the power to curb its excesses.

There is an often-repeated wisdom that Africa will be particularly affected by climate change. I find this a little bit hard to understand – it seems to me that, just as in the recent economic turmoil, wealthier countries will bear a much higher cost, though I acknowledge that superior material and technological resources may lead to greater resilience. Having said that, one cannot but think back to the chaos caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, to the droughts and fires which are destroying so much of Australia, and wonder that a movement in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide from 0.03% to 0.04%, (of 100 parts in a million), could result in climate change so destructive that it threatens human life on earth. Yet this is what our scientists tell us and, in general, scientists rarely make professional statements that are unsupported by rigour, research and evidence. The climate change campaigning website http://www.350.org/ actually proposes that 350 parts per million (0.035%) is the maximum level of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere at which life – as we currently know it – can continue without major irreversible change.

To understand the carbon cycle, it is hard to think of a better introduction than the final chapter of Primo Levi’s astonishing autobiography, The Periodic Table. Levi’s spare and scientific style is shown to great effect in the 21 element-episodes which comprise this wonderful book. The final chapter is simply entitled Carbon and it charts the progress of a single atom of carbon. Critics consider this chapter heavy-handed and fanciful: it is anything but. As Levi says “It is possible to demonstrate that this completely arbitrary story is… true. I could tell innumerable other stories and they would all be true….. The number of [carbon] atoms is so great that one could always be found whose story coincides with any capriciously invented story”. The atom is present in limestone (calcium carbonate] – itself an ancient product of the continuous calcium cycle in the oceans – it is then liberated through roasting in a lime kiln as a carbon dioxide molecule; it whirls around the world in the atmosphere for 12 years before being captured through photosynthesis; it is converted into glucose, consumed, digested and released once again as carbon dioxide. The cycle continues.

In the narrative, other facts emerge. Levi remarks that carbon exists in the atmosphere in tiny quantities - 0.03% at his time of writing - and from this impurity proceeds all life on earth. He comments briefly on the miraculous nature of photosynthesis – chemistry at the minuscule atomic level in which the carbon atom is freed from its pair of oxygen atoms and converted into organic compounds which support the chain of life.

The chapter which immediately precedes Carbon is entitled Vanadium. In truth, the metal Vanadium is tangential to the story, which focuses on the subjects of responsibility and acceptance so brilliantly dealt with in If This is a Man and The Truce. In Vanadium, his search for the obscure compound Vanadium Napthenate led Levi to make contact with a German scientist who –during Levi’s imprisonment in Auschwitz – had briefly been his employer as a chemist attached to an IG Farben Buna rubber factory near the concentration camp. They exchange letters but, before they can meet, the scientist dies. Levi is therefore unable to tell him that it is not enough to be honest, unarmed and a non-participant:-

“In the real world the armed exist, they build Auschwitz, and the honest and unarmed clear the road for them: therefore every German must answer for Auschwitz, indeed, every man, and after Auschwitz it is no longer permissible to be unarmed”.

No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.

As a postcript, I am glad to report that in our own small way at African Agricultural Capital we have decided – with the support and advice of the Uganda Carbon Bureau – to become a carbon-neutral organization. This entails a detailed estimate of the carbon produced from AAC’s organizational activities, followed by the purchase of offsets through financing carbon uptake projects – either through increased energy efficiency, reforestation or other qualifying projects.

But it is not enough.