August 31 2022
CLOSE TO COLLAPSE?
“It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all, and comes to us bundled with several others in an anthology of comforting delusions.”
Those of the opening words of David Wallace-Wells’ book The Uninhabitable Earth.
Global Heating is accelerating so fast that conditions, estimated even as late as last year to happen 30 years from now, are creating havoc today: now, 2022.
And next year? If the unusually long-lasting La Nina becomes the more likely El Nino, warming weather will become an even more of a burning burden. It’s no longer “Slouching Towards Gomorrah”, it’s “Galloping towards Armageddon”.
Take China.
The extreme heat there is snarling power supplies, threatening crops and setting off wildfires. Where will China secure the food supply to feed its 1.3 billion people? Crops have been reduced world-wide, and that dreaded Middle Age scourge of famine is making a sudden appearance. China, with 20% of the world’s people, has seen a straight 60 days of pure hell, pumping dry the Yangtze River, cutting off its hydro-electric capacity, while depriving it of adequate food supplies.
Other global perils include: mounting geopolitical volatility; fragile supply chains; political dysfunction; digital disruption, with the result that the accelerating effects of climate change, suddenly causes the entire world to see the “end of abundance”.
Should I mention Pakistan: 1,000+ dead and 33 million displaced by floods? 33 million: Canada’s entire population!
COLLAPSE, the book.
I have a book with the simple title, COLLAPSE, written by Jared Diamond, a professor at the UCLA. He writes:
“Just as in the past, countries that are environmentally stressed, overpopulated, or both, become at risk of getting politically stressed, and of their governments collapsing. When people are desperate, undernourished and without hope, they blame their governments, which they see as responsible for or unable to solve their problems. They try to emigrate at any cost. They fight each other over land. They kill each other. They start civil wars. They figure that they have nothing to lose, so they become terrorists, or they support or tolerate terrorism.”
Pakistan is a good example of such a situation, but not the only one: Iraq too.
Close to Collapse?
Soaring temperatures (Iraq is enduring 120 degree heat that has fried the country’s electrical grid), the depletion of natural resources, flooding, droughts, the worst one in 500 years is devastating Western, Central and Southern Europe and is expected to see a decline in crop yields of 8 or 9 percent, power outages, wars, pandemics, a rise in zoonotic diseases and breakdowns in supply chains combine to shake the foundations of industrial society.
And then there is “The Arctic”. It has been heating up four times faster than the global average, resulting in an accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet and freakish weather patterns. The Barents Sea north of Norway and Russia is warming up to seven times faster. Climate scientists did not expect this extreme weather until 2050.
“It is worse, much worse, than you think.”
When I survey my small holdings in rural Eastern Ontario, then I must admit that, were the entire world like my immediate environment, collapse would be far from my mind. My garden has yielded a bountiful crop of green beans. My red beets needed two reseedings before the third one took root with plenty of produce to come, and my potatoes look glorious, assuring sufficient supply till the next crop comes due. My fresh tomatoes are unequalled in taste.
But there also is Revelation 18:
“All the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries, and the merchants grew rich, …and weep because in one hour your doom has come.”
I am sure that the situation today, the circumstances portrayed in the last Bible book, are being implemented now. Jesus told us to look at the world around us and read the signs. (Matthew 24: 33).
Today we live in a totally integrated world. Even in my little corner, the air is polluted: there is no escape. The earth is like a living body. It needs clean air, clean water, clean soil to function properly. All are lacking.
Does that mean that we are “Close to collapse?”
It seems to me that collapse is occurring in several sections of society. The Western world is quickly aging, burdening the health system, while environmental degradation comes with increasing physical hazards. The entire economic sector depends on natural resources, quickly vanishing. Climate Change already causes infrastructure deterioration. A realistic assessment indicates major adjustments are needed yesterday.
Are we close to Collapse?
Forewarned is forearmed.