Barbapapa's Christmas Present Is Deeper Than We Realize

The 1982 children’s picture book “Barbapapa’s Christmas Present” has extraordinarily deep content.

Or rather, maybe we’ve just been shallowly pacing back and forth in front of an observation that’s been common knowledge for 40 years.

Let me lay this out in detail.

The book’s content can be summarized as follows. Santa brings presents to the Barbapapa family’s house. Barbapicture’s present is a set of African animals. But the Barbapapa family’s house is in a cold place. Blankets and warm clothing aren’t enough, and the animals start to freeze, so Barbapicture, who is good at inventing things, builds a mechanism for generating power and heat. First they try hydroelectric power, but it’s too cold and the river freezes. Next they try wind power, but there are days without wind and they get stuck. Solar power fares no better. Finally they switch to human power and everyone keeps pedaling. Everyone gets exhausted. Right at the point where someone says, “I know—if pedaling keeps you warm, why not have the animals pedal themselves?”, Barbapapa steps in and gives them a talking-to. Let’s send them back to Africa, he says. They return the animals safely to nature in Africa, and in the end Santa gives them a new present—animals that can live even in cold places—and everyone lives happily ever after.

The Barbapapa household is fundamentally eco-conscious and dislikes destroying nature and using fossil fuels, and this shows up in many other works too. They flee off-planet with animals to preserve biodiversity, or fight for-profit corporations that destroy the environment. This particular story delivers the lesson that what matters is coexisting skillfully with nature, not altering it.

Turning to the present day, there’s a strong faction that keeps pushing renewable energy. Advancing energy diversity is unquestionably meaningful for ensuring sustainability, and as an engineer I find it very interesting and worthy of respect, but even so, I think the “imposition” that comes from drawing a sharp line between “good” and “evil” here is extremely strong.

We need to curb massive consumption of fossil fuels. That’s true. They’re a finite resource. We should control CO2 emissions. That’s true. CO2 has several sides to it. For example, it brings about a greenhouse effect, but it also raises crop yields. Global warming is happening. We should be careful. That’s true. But the claim that anthropogenic effects dominate over natural effects (such as the increase and decrease cycles of sunspots, or the state of atmospheric aerosols, which vary on cycles of hundreds or tens of thousands of years) in both cooling and warming seems like an overreach based on a few cherry-picked pieces of circumstantial evidence. Incidentally, the IPCC’s AR5 apparently reported that aerosol variation from cosmic rays, and its associated effect on radiative forcing, was smaller than originally estimated. I read the source material, but unfortunately, since I’m not a professional, I couldn’t fully understand it—though the current state seems to be that opinions differ.

That said, I do agree that humans should do what humans can do.

I think a tone around this level is a genuinely fair perspective. And yet, aren’t there many people in the world who believe the naive and extreme views that:

• if CO2 emissions go to zero, warming will stop
• fossil fuel use should go to zero
• we should switch entirely to renewable energy

are “the globally agreed-upon correct answer”?

I’d like people to think about this a bit more calmly.

Warming has been much talked about in recent years, but looking just at temperature, it was cold around 1960, and we know the medieval period was much hotter than now. The same goes for the Jomon period. But I can’t think of anything resembling a crisis for humanity that occurred because of temperature in those eras. In fact, when it gets warmer, human mortality rates go down. Warm climates are also said to produce good harvests, which may have contributed to the shift toward settled agriculture. The same goes for sea level rise. Purely from a human standpoint, it would be a problem if Tokyo sank, but during the Edo period, areas around what are now Koto, Taito, and Chuo wards were underwater. Polar bears are predicted to have been increasing in number for the past several decades (since an accurate headcount isn’t possible, the method is apparently to estimate from several subpopulations, but for some reason the official figure is now listed as Unknown, even though the report clearly states “estimated at 26,000.” That part remains unclear). https://polarbearscience.com/2015/11/18/iucn-red-list-says-global-polar-bear-population-is-22000-31000-26000/ Sika deer cause both material and human damage, and shouldn’t they rather be designated as pest animals?

The top greenhouse gas is water vapor, but the mechanism by which clouds naturally form still isn’t sufficiently understood, and none of the many simulations have yet been able to accurately represent the facts. So the situation still calls for a great deal more discussion, research, and accompanying verification. Thinking fairly about it, nature carries a high degree of uncertainty, and even when humans feel arrogantly capable of controlling it, we start to get a sense of just how difficult that actually is. That seems to me exactly the message conveyed in “Barbapapa’s Christmas Present.” At first you think, “That’s a great idea!” but once you try it, you find problems and side effects, and it falls apart. And gradually things head toward putting the cart before the horse.

If you hate the summer heat, you could build a wind farm, run your air conditioner full blast, generate a pile of refrigerant waste that becomes a disposal headache, and before that becomes a problem, just move to the countryside. Among anthropogenic warming effects, the most vicious one is the urban heat island effect. Please, by all means, move to the countryside, where there’s plenty of greenery and soil. Global rainfall as a whole may be increasing, but region by region it’s increasing in some places and decreasing in others. If you dislike rain, you could just live somewhere it’s decreasing. Incidentally, according to data presented by the IPCC, Japan falls into the decreasing category. If you’re worried about fossil fuel consumption, carrying an eco bag (made using plenty of good-quality petroleum) is one option, but how about making use of the home delivery services from supermarkets that have become popular recently? Rather than individuals crowding into the supermarket one by one, consolidated deliveries are both more eco-friendly and better for the economy.

On climate change: just as the old saying went “earthquakes, thunder, fires, fathers,” natural disasters have long been objects of fear, and at the same time a symbol of things that can’t easily be dealt with. These days some people focus attention on climate engineering, or geoengineering (and of course, as an engineer, I’m interested in it too), but shouldn’t we fundamentally understand that nature is something that can’t be controlled? In other words, isn’t what we should be doing to hold nature in awe and prepare accordingly, on the assumption that an earthquake might happen, lightning might strike, a fire might break out, a tsunami might occur—that is, to reflect deeply so as never again to commit the folly of building a nuclear power plant right on the coastline? I don’t have accurate source information on whether the claim that budget for reinforcing levees against river flooding has been cut and redirected to renewable energy development is true, but if it is a fact, it’s an extremely foolish idea. Balance matters in everything.

That said, the opposite view—that nature is subordinate to humans and therefore should be controlled—traces back to Francis Bacon in the 19th century, and to the postmodernism advocated by figures like John Dewey. Rousseau and Marx, who came afterward, basically agreed with that view too, and parts of their thinking get cited even in debates over the merits of biotechnology, which represents a prime method of surpassing nature.

But I can’t help thinking Barbapapa is much wiser.

For example, one form of climate engineering involves controlling aerosols through aerial spraying to keep albedo at an appropriate level, blocking sunlight moderately in order to cool the earth. This is theoretically possible, but since the effects of the spraying itself on future generations aren’t well understood, if it were actually put into practice, ethical and governance problems would arise there. What a hassle. Why aim for such a roundabout solution (though as an engineer, I do find it interesting)?

But the same thing can be said about cutting CO2. There is no research result that guarantees a comfortable future for us as a result of cutting CO2. All that exists is the fact that CO2 gets listed as one among many greenhouse gases, and the observation that the increase in CO2 and warming seem to correlate over the past 150 years. That’s it. Warming will not actually stop even if CO2 emissions reach zero. This can be read from the fact that even taking the minimum value across the various scenarios in the IPCC report, temperatures in 2100 are still higher than now. Everyone knows from experience that large capital investment creates not just costs but also problems of disposal and reuse. Decisions to pivot toward capital investment need to be made carefully. But do people really believe we can get by on that one single set of measures, when the reports themselves say that in the end, warming won’t stop?

Why do we create an atmosphere of “as long as we just do this, we’ll be fine”? Why doesn’t a fair understanding take hold? Why does no one say, “Let’s send them back to Africa”?

There’s quite a large gap between the attempt to cherish what already exists and the attempt to subjugate nature. And if you push that further, you need to clearly draw the line between natural human desires and unnatural ones. For instance, should we think, “If we’re preparing for the coming food crisis, we shouldn’t have more children,” or should we think, “No, no—having a growing family is one of the fundamental joys of being human, so restricting that is unnatural” (incidentally, I’m a father of four)? What always comes up in this kind of debate is that there’s no point in getting nostalgic about it. Saying “things were better in the old days” doesn’t change the fact that the world has already changed. It’s long been understood that forcing people into needlessly austere living isn’t something humans are capable of, and the attempt to draw a line of “good” and “evil” there is futile.

Barbapapa’s wisdom surpasses ours.

We’ll surely go on challenging various kinds of “unnaturalness” from here on, reflecting on each one as we go and building on it bit by bit. So what we should be careful about isn’t avoiding unnatural acts, but never forgetting to reflect.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2022/02/868/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.