June 7 2015
SLEEPWALKING into UNPRECEDENTED, ALL-ENCOMPASSING COLLAPSE
Christopher Clark wrote a book with the title The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. In it he traced how mutual misunderstandings and unintended signals led to a war that nobody wanted but nevertheless happened. The war caused another war, 1939-45. The after effects of both conflicts still live on witness the current chaos in the Middle East which might yet be the catalyst for something even bigger. The two wars inflicted hundreds of millions of casualties.
Today we are in a somewhat similar situation, except that the stakes are stupendously higher: instead of casualties in the hundreds of millions, now the fate of the entire world is in the balance, imperiling the lives all of the more than Seven Billion humans that live on the earth plus all that lives and moves and has a being.
Below follows an article sent to me by my youngest brother in the Netherlands and written by Dr. Jan de Boer. I fully share the pessimism or rather the sober-minded view of this academic.
The remainder of this article is a free translation from the Dutch, interspersed with some personal observations where indicated. By the way, Dr. Jan de Boer is head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics Division of the Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam.
“COMMENT TOUT PEUT S’EFFONDRER”
(My comment) “I better translate that. In Canada we have two official languages but for many French is as foreign as Dutch – well not quite since Quebeckers speak French all the time. ‘HOW EVERYTHING CAN COLLAPSE’ is what it means.”
The French phrase is a title of a book written by two French scientists, Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens. These two men predict that the collapse of our civilization can no longer by prevented and will take place sooner rather than later.
Of course we have heard all this before. More than forty years ago (1972) Dennis Meadows wrote a report for the Club of Rome – the entire report is available free on the web, just look for “Limits to Growth”. Looking back into history we learn that civilizations arise, shine and die. That also applies to our situation. Dennis Meadows investigated five important developments: accelerated industrialization, enormous growth in population, wide-spread malnutrition, rapid disappearance of irreplaceable natural resources and degradation of the environment. The model may have been incomplete and far from perfect, but the fundamental issues dealt with in the report were so important that the conclusions were utterly relevant.
They were:
1. If the current trends in growth in the world population, in industrialization and climatic deterioration, in food production and depletion of natural resources continue without change, then the limits to growth in this earth will be reached within one hundred years. The most likely result will be a sudden and uncontrollable decrease in both population and industrial capacity.
2. It is possible to alter growth trends and to shape a situation where ecological and economic balance can endure far into the future. This condition of world-wide equity would have to be shaped in such a way that the primary material needs of every person can be satisfied and every person has an equal opportunity to develop his or her individual possibilities.
3. If all countries decide to aim for that second outcome instead of the first, the possibility of success would be greater the sooner it is implemented.
My comment: “The book LIMITS TO GROWTH was a rude awakening for me when I first bought it in 1972. That same year I read another book dealing with life after death, a Dutch one with the title “STERVEN…. EN DAN?” (After death…what?) Both totally changed my outlook on life. The first one convinced me that we live in a finite world. The second told me that life after death is not in heaven but in the New Creation. If there ever was a turning point in my life, it was in 1972. Subsequently in 1975 we relocated from urban St. Catharines, Ontario to rural Tweed, some 300 km to the north-east, 200 km from both Toronto and Ottawa where I bought 20 hectares of mixed vegetation and built an energy efficient dwelling.”
Back to de Boer.
The book – Limits to Growth – caused quite a stir in the world but the vested interests prevailed with the result that generally speaking the world having eyes lost the ability to see, and having ears was no longer able to hear the cries of creation (blinded by the idol of economic growth, I might add).
More comments: “the ‘eyes and ears’ are the exact words of Psalm 115. The rulers of this world – like true fanatics – lost their way but redoubled their efforts.”
The opportunity to avoid a general, world-wide – collapse and with it the demise of the entire human civilization has not been grabbed. On his 2011-12 European tour Dennis Meadows was more pessimistic than ever: “It is too late for a lasting development, we must prepare ourselves for unimaginable great crises: it is of the utmost importance to establish small flexible systems, or do what I prescribed in my book: “Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future.” We will survive as a human race but the question is for how many and under what conditions.
Now more than 40 years after the publication of LIMITS TO GROWTH the authors of COMMENT TOUT PEUT S’EFFONDRER present a very readable, well documented and scientifically responsible analysis of our current situation in the world. Their basic conclusion is that
we have reached the limits.
The French authors show with numerous examples that we never will experience the ‘normal’ situation of the preceding decades. The motor of our carbon-driven-industrial society, consisting of the marriage between energy and money, is sputtering and is about to quit altogether. We have reached the limits.
The era of the surplus of cheap fossil fuels is coming to an end witness the expensive energy from unconventional fuel, such as Canada’s tar sand fuel obtained at great environmental expense. Having renewable energy – which also requires a lot of energy to manufacture- basically does not alter the picture.
All these circumstances point to the impossibility to regain the economic growth of yesteryear which will deliver the fatal blow to an economic system that is based on growth to pay for social benefits and debts which will never be repaid.
In addition the physical, exponential and linear expansion of our civilization has irreparably damaged the complex natural system upon which our way of life is based. There the limits have already been breached. The warming of the climate and, especially, the collapse of biodiversity, indicate severe difficulties not only in the food supply but also in the social -, commerce-, and health systems: resulting in massive relocations of populations, in armed conflicts, epidemics and famines. All these symptoms are already plainly visible.
Finally the ever more complex systems on which we rely for food, water and energy require an ever expanding energy supply. These infrastructures as such are interdependent and are extra vulnerable because of their aging conditions with the result that small interruptions can imperil the stability of the entire world-wide system. Their rippling effects can cause disproportionate damage.
Here are a few statistics illuminating the absurdity of our civilization living on a planet that is tiny and has limited possibilities:
1. A GDP (Gross Domestic Product) say of China with an annual growth of 7 percent means economic activity that doubles every 10 years. After 50 years this indicates a volume of 32 times the current Chinese economy, involving a volume of almost 4 times the entire current world economy.
2. A person born in the 1930’s has seen the world’s population increase from 2 billion to more than 7 billion. In the course of the 20th century the consumption of energy has grown by 1400 percent, the mined industrial minerals increased by 27 times and the building materials by 34 times.
3. An average increase in the temperature of the climate with 4 percent means that it will rise 10 degrees on the continents. Take note: NASA is of the opinion that we are well on the way of a planetary increase of 6 percent.
4. Scientific research has shown that 90 percent of the biomass of large fish has disappeared since the Industrial Revolution.
The time has come to prepare ourselves for a different society if we want to avoid a total catastrophe.
The three aforementioned factors: the approach of the limits to growth, the exceeding of these limits and the growing complexity are irreversible and in combination can only lead to a catastrophe. In the past the numerous collapses were limited to a number of isolated regions. (I might add that this was well described by Jared Diamond in his book COLLAPSE.)
However the globalization of our civilization has been accompanied by systemic global risks with the result that for the first time in human history a collapse of an immense, almost global scale can be predicted.
That collapse will not take place at once, but, depending upon regions, cultures and, naturally the environment, will occur with various speeds and develop and be expressed in different ways. When? In 10 years, 20, at most 50 years. Both authors are convinced that the present generations will see this happen. I too am of that conviction.
In our carbon-based – industrial societies only a very few people can survive without a supermarket, a credit card or a gasoline station. When in a civilization the majority of the population no longer has a direct contact with system EARTH (soil, water, wood, animals, plants, you name it) then these people are totally dependent on the artificial structure that maintains it. When that same structure, still growing, still powerful but also ever more vulnerable collapses, something that is totally inevitable, that simply means that the very lives of innumerable many cannot be guaranteed.
No wonder both authors propose that now is the utmost time to prepare ourselves for a responsible transition to the approach of a much different society of the future. This transition is the implicit acceptance of the demise of our carbon-fuel dependent industrial society and the promotion of new small ‘low-tech’ systems, independent of any other model or configuration.
This so necessary transition will temporarily have two systems, one that is dying and one in a state of being born, possessing a positive vision of the future, a prerogative for mobilizing both the people and their creativity.
Regarding the collapse of our carbon-based industrial society, both authors are doomsayers, yet optimistic for the future, perhaps, however, not in their hearts to avoid coming through as being too pessimistic. They understandingly want to generate hope and confidence in a different but livable future.
That also is the weakest and not really plausible part of the book. Jan de Boer – the author of this book report – is convinced that the transition from the carbon-based industrial society to a different community will be completely catastrophic as in densely populated and urban areas the vast majority of the population will perish through hunger, internal strife and sicknesses aggravated by radiation from the inability to maintain the nuclear power generating stations.
Perhaps we may share with Dominique Bourg in hoping – and certainly no more than that – that in that tumultuous chaos there may emerge some small determined ecological clusters able to maintain sanity, not unlike the monasteries in the early Middle Ages when the Roman Empire disintegrated and massive tribal movements ensued. Perhaps from there a new more egalitarian and environmentally respectful society may emerge.
My final comments:
We are indeed sleepwalking into the final judgement. The Bible has foretold all this, especially in Matthew 24 and most of Revelation. Repeatedly it warns to ‘come out of the system lest becoming victims (Rev. 18:4). The Bible has a very realistic view of humanity: our nature has never changed. The people of the world will always seek the short term benefit, guided by the Great Adversary whose sole aim is to destroy God’s creation. I believe that those who see creation as God’s work of art and dearly love it – just as God does (See John 3: 16) – will be part of the New Creation that Jesus will usher in.
A little book by Naomi Oreskes of Harvard and Erik M. Conway of the California Institute of Technology with the title of THE COLLAPSE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION says essentially the same, even though there the timeline is set in a more distant future. So does Paul Ehrlich.
More about that next week.
See also my book “Day without End,” free on the web.