There is another answer as well to the Fermi paradox, and that is that intelligent life may have existed on other worlds, but is there no more having gone extinct, just as we are about to.170 That is the subject of the next chapter.
170 A. Frank (et al.), “The Anthropocene Generalized: Evolution of Exo-Civilizations and Their Planetary Feedback,” Astrobiology, vol. 187, 2018, pp. 507-518; B. Specktor, “Climate Change Killed the Aliens, and it Will Probably Kill Us Too, New Simulation Suggests,” June 6, 2018, at https://www.livescience.com/62750-climate-change-killed-aliens-easter-island.
html.
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We are in for a period of sustained chaos whose magnitude we are unable to foresee.
-Dennis Meadows171
[T]he coming years will prove increasingly cynical and cruel. People will definitely not slip into oblivion while hugging each other. The final stages in the life of humanity will be marked by the monstrous war of all against all: the amount of suffering will be maximal.
-Pentti Linkola172
The world oil production peak represents an unprecedented economic crisis that will wreak havoc on national economics, topple governments, alter national boundaries, provoke military strife, and challenge the continuation of civilized life. At peak, the human race will have generated a population that cannot survive on less than the amount of oil generated at peak – and after peak, the supply of oil will decline remorselessly. As that occurs, complex social and market systems will be stressed to the breaking point, obviating the possibility of a smooth ride down from the peak phenomenon.
-James Howard Kunstler173
After four decades of developing an interpretation of history out of my theories of size, I come to the same conclusion as Charles de Gaulle, who confided to André Malraux shortly before his death that in all his years of highly successful leadership he knew of not a single problem that had ever been solved – or ever would be. And the same applies to the problem of excessive size. Not that is could not be solved. Of course, it could. But it never wil . “Men,” as Hesiod wrote twenty-eight centuries ago, “will go on destroying the towns of other men”; and looking around me 2,800 years later gives me little reason for hope that it will ever be otherwise.
-Leopold Kohr174
171 Dennis Meadows, quoted from M. Mukerjee, “Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return?” Scientific American, May 23, 2012, at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apocalypse-soon-has-civilization-passed-the-environmental-point-of-no-return.
172 Pentti Linkola, Can Life Prevail? A Radical Approach to the Environmental Crisis (Integral Tradition Publishing, 2009), p. 157.
173 James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Atlantic Books, London, 2005), pp. 24-25.
174 Leopold Kohr, The Breakdown of Nations (E. P. Dutton, New York, 1978), pp. 223-224.
ChaPter
3
endgame – our Journey
to the end of the night:
Why the CoLLaPse of CiviLiZation is inevitabLe
Col apseology: Is Earth Already “Fucked”?
Leading british scientist Sir Martin Rees, in his book Our Final Century? (2003),175 states that “humanity is more at risk than at any earlier phase in its history” and he believes that “the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that our present civilization on Earth will survive to the end of the present century.”
There is considerable literature, too immense to summarize ful y here, which indicates that Rees is too optimistic in his Bayesian probability (personal probability estimate) and that the probability of the destruction of modern civilization, if not the human species and perhaps life on Earth itself, is greater than fifty-fifty.176 The late Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), physicist, believed that the fate of humans on Earth is sealed already by the socio-political and environmental problems which we face, and that the probability of survival will be increased by abandoning Earth and seeking other planets and space colonies.177
175 Martin Rees, Our Final Century? Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-First Century?
(William Heinemann, London, 2003).
176 Donald A. Collins, “Heading for a World Apocalypse? Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies, vol. 35, no.1, Summer, 2010, pp. 242-254.
177 “Stephen Hawking’s Warning: Abandon Earth – or Face Extinction,” at http://bigthink.
com/dangerous-ideas/5-stephen-hawkings-warning-abandon-earth-or-face-extinction.
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Brad Werner in his paper “Is Earth Fucked?” (his actual title), delivered to the American Geophysical Union in 2012, used a numerical computer model of human-environment interactions, and concluded: “the dynamics of the global coupled human-environmental system within the dominant culture precludes management for stable, sustainable pathways and promotes instability.”
Along similar lines Motesharrei (et al.) used a mathematical model (Human and Nature Dynamic Model, (handy), based on predator-prey models, to model the human population as a
“predator” and nature as “prey.”178 With economic stratification, col apse “within decades” was difficult to avoid because the elites/the rich consume resources until col apse occurred. Similar conclusions have been reached by a limits to growth study by Graham Turner, who concludes from a survey of the scientific literature on resource depletion that on a business as usual scenario the world is already on the cusp of col apse with the first stage of col apse already beginning, and with death rates rising from 2020 onwards.179
What is “col apse”? Jared Diamond has defined col apse as “a local drastic decrease in human population numbers and/or in political, economic, or social complexity.”180 Butzer and Endfield give a “broader, integrative” definition of “social col apse” as representing a “transformation at a large social or spatial scale, with long-term impact on combinations of independent variables: (i) environmental change and resilience; (ii) demography or settlement; (iii) socio-economic patterns; (iv) political or social structures; and (v) ideology or cultural memory.”181 Col apse, real y is the end of the 178 S. Motesharrei (et al.), “Human and Nature Dynamics (handy): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Col apse or Sustainability of Societies,” Ecological Economics, vol. 101, 2014, pp. 90-102.
179 G. Turner, “On the Cusp of Global Col apse? Updated Comparison of The Limits to Growth with Historical Data,” Gaia, vol. 21, no. 2, 2012.
180 Jared Diamond, “Ecological Col apses of Past Civilizations,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 138, 1994, pp. 363-370, cited p. 363.
181 Karl W. Butzer and Georgina H. Endfield, “Critical Perspectives on Historical Col apse,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no.10, 2012, pp. 3628-3631, cited p.
3628.
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world as we know it. However, we won’t “feel fine,” contrary to the band R.E.M.182
Media commentators and journalists ridicule those who propose that there are ecological limits to economic growth and that the world may be rapidly approaching such limits with respect to environmental sustainability183 from water,184 soil,185 food resources186
and other variables such as biodiversity187 and human population growth. In June 2019, the UN Population Division had a further revision of its demographic statistics: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2019 Revision of World Population Prospects. The populations of some African countries were thought to be certain to at least more than double, with Africa’s population of an estimated 1.3
billion in 2020, exploding to 4.3 billion in 2100.188
However, Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute, using computer modelling, predicted a col apse of society on a business-as-usual scenario.189 A catastrophic col apse of the global food supply would occur due to human population expansion and
ecological destruction. Commenters on this study took comfort that its predictions were based on “things” continuing as they are, but they chirped, people will change their behavior. It is argued in this book that they will not and in fact people will consume more, not 182 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA_CndlBu0g.
183 M. Wackernagel (et al.), “Tracking the Ecological Overshoot of the Human Economy,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 99, no. 1, 2002, pp. 266-271.
184 S. Postel, Pil ar of Sand (W. W. Norton, New York, 1999).
185 D. R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (University of California Press, Berkeley, 2007).
186 L. R. Brown, “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” Scientific American Magazine, April 22, 2009, at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=civilization-food-shortages.
187 S. Pimm (et al.), “The Biodiversity of Species and their Rates of Extinction, Distribution, and Protection,” Science, vol. 344, 2014, pp. 1246752-1 – 1246752-10.
188 UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2019 Revision of World Population Prospects, (United Nations, New York, 2017), https://population.un.org/wpp/.
189 Global Resource Observation, Climate Change, Resource Scarcity and Conflict, (Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, September, 2014), at http://www2.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/
home/microsites/global-sustainability-institute.html.
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less and economic globalization will accelerate resource depletion, producing increasing environmental degradation and catastrophic shifts in the planet’s ecosystems.190
Further, Lloyd’s Emerging Risk Report, Food System Shock (2015), points out that global agricultural production needs to more than double by 2050 to meet food demands by expanding populations and rising affluence, but this makes food systems vulnerable to food shocks such as water stress, climate change, globalization and political instability. Climate change and related impacts could lead, they say, to wide-spread economic chaos, food riots, civil unrest and terrorist-style attacks.191
Intellectuals from the optimist camp also attack the very idea of such pessimism which cal s into question the fundamental basis of our present techno-industrial society: there are no limits to growth, technology and economics will ultimately solve all problems and humans are “special,” not just another vicious animal species.
Thus, French philosopher Pascal Bruckner sees the Western world as flirting with the trendy idea of apocalyptic angst which is chic and “cool” for the chattering class.192 According to Bruckner, non-European people,
are likely to receive our professionals of environmental faith with polite indifference. Billions of people look at economic growth, with all the pol ution that accompanies it, to improve their condition. Who are we to refuse it to them?
190 J. Zalasiewicz (et al.), “Colonization of the Americas, ‘Little Ice Age’ Climate, and Bomb-Produced Carbon: Their Role in Defining the Anthropocene,” The Anthropocene Review, vol. 2, no. 2, 2015, pp. 1-11.
191 Lloyd’s Emerging Risk Report, Food System Shock: The Insurance Impacts of Acute Disruption to Global Food Supply (2015), at https://www.lloyds.com/~/media/files/news%20
and%20insight/risk%20insight/2015/food%20system%20shock/food%20system%20shock_
june%202015.pdf.
192 Pascal Bruckner, “Apocalyptic Angst of the Western World,” The Weekend Australian, April 21-22, 2012, p. 20.
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According to other intellectuals, the West would not in the future be able to stop the Asian dragons, even if it wished to, for societies such as China are set to eclipse the declining West and consume like there is no tomorrow – because there will not be.
Environmental angst may well be a potent symbol of the alleged decline, decay and fall of the West – or alternatively, a reflection of the decadence of Western intellectuals and universities, not naming anyone in particular. However, such angst, whatever its social cause, does not merely by its alleged existence demonstrate that there is no rational, scientific basis for believing that modern techno-industrial civilization is immune to col apse. Indeed, pursuing this idea to its logical conclusion, we should conclude that the cultural decadence of the West premise presents a piece of evidence for the col apse thesis explored in this book. I explain further.
Mark Steyn in American Alone (2006)193 said that “much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive the twenty-first century and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries.” America stands alone to preserve civilization (and neo-liberal capitalism of course), and if America fails then “much of the map is reprimitivized”
and a New “Dark Age” will occur. But, in Steyn’s later book, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,194 he is pessimistic about America’s future, seeing America as facing the same fate as Europe unless a radical 11th hour movement away from Big Government and the oppressive ideologies of centralist control occur. This form of cultural pessimism arises essential y from seeing neo-liberal market forces being frustrated by centralist control, and the pessimism about civilizational col apse is contingent on that assumption. As ecological limits are approached, financial col apse becomes likely without cheap fossil fuels to maintain the system. Rising energy costs and availability ultimately leads to financial col apse. Tim 193 Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (Regnery Publishing, Washington DC, 2006).
194 Mark Steyn, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon (Regnery Publishing, Washington DC, 2011).
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Morgan in a Tullett Prebon Strategy Insights publication, sees the coming economic crisis as due to a “perfect storm” of economic mismanagement, resource depletion and rising costs.195 Thus, matters are much worse than even in Mark Steyn’s worst neoliberal nightmare.
Apart from economic liberty considerations, Steyn’s pessimism about Europe’s survival is based on development of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis,196 which sees fundamental incompatibilities and tensions between Western liberalism and Islamic fundamentalism. Steyn and others197 predict a transformation of Europe into “Eurabia” due to massive Islamic immigration (e.g.
Germany’s 2015-2019, Syrian “refugee” intake), high Islamic migrant birth rates and Europeans having below replacement level fertility rates.
The grooming rapes of British children in Rotherham, right through the UK and Northern Europe, the sexual assaults, rapes and bashings ( taharrush gamea and taharrush el-ginsy: collective
harassment and sexual assault) on New Year’s Eve 2016 at Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Bielefeld, Vienna, Salzburg, and also in Sweden and Finland, and many other assaults, rapes, murders and tortures, could be seen as an indication of how well immigration is performing. Some see this as a “colonization of Europe,” if not the end, or col apse of Europe, by demographic swamping.198
US President Donald Trump predicted that the influx of migrants could lead to the “end of Europe,” a prediction also made for Germany 195 Tim Morgan, Perfect Storm: Energy, Finance and the End of Growth, Tullett Prebon, Strategy Insights, Issue 9, 2013 at http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2013/01/Perfect-Storm-LR.
pdf.
196 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1996).
197 Mark Steyn, Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech and the Twilight of the West (Stockade Books, 2009).
198 Frank Salter, “Germany’s Jeopardy: Could the Immigration Influx “End European Civilization”?” January 15, 2016, at http://www.eurocanadian.ca.
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by Thilo Sarrazin, Deutschland schafft sich ab ( Germany Abolishes Itself), (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2010). Contrary to Obama, two-thirds of all migrants are male and young. Due to
the age, the influx in Germany could cause a cultural transition within one generation.199
Along similar cultural conservative lines are the works of Lee Harris,200 Patrick J Buchanan,201 John Derbyshire,202 Thomas W.
Chittum203 and Morris Berman.204 Berman sees a Dark Age, a time of cultural and moral decay, “cultural disintegration” and “spiritual death” occurring. He believes that col apse is inevitable, being built into “the process of civilization itself.”
Col apse is especial y evident in America, Berman argues, because of: (1) accelerating social and economic inequality; (2) declining marginal returns with respect to the investment of effort in organized solutions to socioeconomic problems; (3) declining levels of literacy and general intellectual awareness in the population and (4) spiritual death i.e. the dumbing down of culture. Thus, in America the top one percent of the nation owns more than the bottom 90 percent, 11 percent of young adults cannot locate the United States on a world map, 45
percent of the US population believe that space aliens visited the Earth,205 69 percent of under 30 years olds do not know basic facts of US history—such as America declaring its independence in 1776—and 199 Adorján F. Kovács, “Wahrheiten zur Flüchtlingskrise,” (“Truths about the Refugee Crisis”), The European Magazine, December 28, 2015, at http://www.theeuropean.de/
adorjan-f-kovacs/10622-einwanderung-oder-zuflucht.
200 Lee Harris, Civilization and Its Enemies (Free Press, New York, 2004), The Suicide of Reason (Basic Books, New York, 2008).
201 Patrick Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? (Thomas Dunne Books/ St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2011).
202 John Derbyshire, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (Crown Forum, New York, 2009).
203 Thomas W. Chittum, Civil War Two: The Coming Breakup of America (Lexington and Concord Partners, Ancon, Panama City, distributed in the USA by American Eagle Publications, Inc. 1996).
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