Landmine in the Present

This is not Fallujah.  Nor is this anywhere in the Middle East or any other high-conflict, war-torn area.  This is the epicenter of our future world, today.  Of course I am speaking of Northeast Asia.  Granted, tensions among these neighboring countries are not as low as they should be; but then again no one has knives at one anothers throats.  Aside from the unsavory mix of memories regarding past war-time atrocities that tend to receive the most lip-service today, there is also the sloppy bowl of spaghetti politics that currently exist wherein conflicting ideologies and future objectives are disjointedly tied up amongst themselves and set at a low boil.  Then there is the whole North Korean issue, but that is more of a red herring - in my honest opinion - than anything else at this particular moment.  That said, what if there existed an invisible landmine, buried by no-one following WWII and forgotten by everyone?

Yesterday was a beautiful day; on paper.  Blue skies with a high of 18 degrees, Spring finally peaked out from behind the changing room curtain, much to her chagrin.  You see, the atmosphere was saturated with poison smog laden with ultra-fine and fine dust.  However, that was not enough to stop people from breaking out of their winter caves to enjoy the nominally great weather enmasse.  Only a few or so individuals could be seen wearing any mask let alone the very specific mask that I was wearing that prevents one from inhaling the fine and ultrafine particulate matter.  Maybe this is because no one watches the news.  Or because the news seems to downplay the deadly seriousness of this ish.  Or maybe it has more to do with the fact that unless you live up on the 18th floor and can see the extent of the stagnant effluvium stretching out for kilometers and kilometers around, nothing really looks amiss from ground level other than the fact that things are a bit hazy when you look out into the distance.

Looking ahead...who does that anymore?  Live in the moment, man.  YOLO.  The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.  And other pea brained, dimwitted, cowboy-ish American sentiment parroted around the world seem to explain why this is so.  But let's think forward a bit, shall we?  As all the Kurzweilian Village Technolidiots are apt to do, let's suppose the course we are on is unalterable.  Populations will continue to grow, albeit at lower rates due to the lowered birth rate in this part of the world.  Still the base population will be massive with several densely populated megalopitan areas.  Consumption growth will follow at either an equal, slower or faster rate depending on the trajectory of per capita GDP.  The crude, polluting factories of today that share much of the blame in terms of creating and accelerating the production of domestic and regional pollution will no doubt be substituted in favor of hi-tech factories that spew forth less pollution quantitatively, but will instead add a richer diversity of heavy metals to the atmosphere.

One need look no further than Suwon City, home to massive Samsung Electronics semi-conductor plants to get an indication of our future. It's not so much the direct pollution from such factories that is such an issue, although to be sure it can be at times,¹ but the sum total of related externalities from the conglomeration of staff and workers required to run such operations and their own externalities such as energy consumption and transportation emissions, that when scaled up to meet the future trajectory of Chinese growth and global demand should give everyone reason for pause. To be sure the endemic energy shortages that South Korea experiences every summer and 30~40% of the toxic smog plaguing Seoul as of late have their origins in the insane cooling demands of the factories and citizenry as well as the clogged arteries of Seouls transport system and it's own factories dotting the eastern coastline respectively.

Like yesterday and the pardox of the deadly nice weather, the impact of the shitty smog isn't always readily apparent. It begins with the unseen inocuous self-limiting of behavior by a minority who are keen to the potential ramifications of staying outside too long and/or not wearing a mask. Slowly but surely awareness will grow and spread. People, most likely infants and young children, will develop respiratory or skin related diseases at higher rates than average or worse, be born with certain defects similar to those born to mothers who smoke through pregnency. Unfortunately many will need to be personally affected before they feel the need to take action.  Maybe it will happen on one of those early, unseasonably hot stretches of spring or early summer.  A week straight of dangerous levels of yellow sand tainted fine dust smog lingering past its usual early spring schedule will imprison the citizenry, bringing their collective anger to a boil. Then on the fifth or sixth day something will just snap and a hitherto unimaginable violence will be unleashed upon the Chinese embassy. In self-defense numerous Koreans will be shot dead and the anger will both intensify and be redirected inwards at the South Korean government due to their impotence in dealing with the problem for so long...

Possibly, but who is to say how things will unfold? That, however, is the nature of old forgotten landmines. No one knows that they lay here or there until it is too late. This, to be clear, is not owing to mans inability to predict the future nor is the essential unknown that is wrapped around the future and its impregnability to speculation to be blamed. No one wants to know because no one wants to admit to the possibilty that such a deadly future feature is already embedded in their collective present. Fuck the cowboys and their myopic concept of an unpredictable future that they in turn interpret to mean that they have full license to make a shit show out of the present. It's not about the future, it's about the right now and the landmine we are all blindly burying.

¹ http://m.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20130215000728