Convergence of Catastrophes, page 3
The system is holistic and interactive, which explains the acceleration of the arrival of the breaking point, since a multitude of crises converge at the same moment, without anyone being able to treat them separately.
1. Toward the Collapse of the Terrestrial Ecosystem
It is Already Too Late
The planet Earth is not in danger. She has millions of years to recover. It is the human species that, by degrading the ecosystem, is putting itself at risk. Nothing will be done to stem present developments, and it is already too late. The prognosis is negative.
While the human population keeps growing at a pace commensurate with the greed of ‘development’, ecological resources and capacities continue to crumble. Let us briefly summarise the breaking points.
1) Emissions of greenhouse gases are going to provoke uncontrollable climate disruptions. Their rapidity will surpass our capacity to adapt to them. Global warming, rising ocean levels, the multiplication of cataclysms (floods, droughts, localised deep cold spells, etc.) are going to be added to all the other factors of destabilisation discussed elsewhere.
2) The exhaustion of natural resources. Reserves of petroleum, natural gas and coal will not last long in the face of ever-growing needs and costs. ‘Renewable energies’ cannot make up the difference. Humanity lives today as though it were the beneficiary of the resources of four planets. Add to this generalised deforestation, desertification of entire areas and the accelerated shrinking of fishing and agricultural reserves. These last problems are provoked by uncontrolled pollution and the intensive exploitation of soil and marine reserves. Let us not forget the stagnation or degradation of drinking water, through the triple effect of an exponential increase in water usage, the pollution of water tables and growing drought zones. The bill must be paid very soon.
Extensive famines are likely to result from these phenomena. These disasters will be added to other lines of catastrophe and will make them worse.
3) Pandemics. AIDS will probably turn out to be only a first warning. It has not been controlled and continues to progress at a steady pace. It is possible that it will explode suddenly, especially if a giant crisis occurs before preventive measures can take effect. We are beginning to see the emergence of many new contagious diseases, both viral and bacterial, whose strains mutate easily and which are resistant to all known antibiotics (the result of their overuse): powerful new forms of plague, cholera, tuberculosis, and previously unknown pathologies as well.
The demographic explosion of the human species over the past century is due to the reduction in mortality — especially infant mortality — caused by the progress of medicine and hygiene. But this tendency is in the process of reversing itself. ‘Science’, which is believed to be omnipotent, will be dialectically bypassed and negated by the consequences of its own powers. A demographic implosion in the course of the Twenty-first century is certain.
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A global civilisation that destroys its planetary capital has no chance of surviving. Oddly, the Earth’s population, on the whole, has followed the Western logic of pursuing the indefinite maximisation of wealth, which is, however, contrary to the ancestral wisdom of India or China, which is based on a cyclical view of history.
The planet Earth is simply not capable of answering the needs of an excessively large humanity that always wants more. Notions of ‘justice’ and ‘injustice’ are no longer relevant. Morality is disappearing in the face of physical obstructions, while ideologies are stuttering in the void. One can always say that the peoples of the global South have a ‘right’ to the same liberties as those of the North and that it is unjust that they cannot take advantage of them. But this purely moral discourse will change nothing in the Earth’s capacities. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (about 1850) the Earth’s resources have been exploited by humanity at a pace that is much too fast. The breakdown will take place, by successive shocks, beginning in 2010-2015.
How Times Have Changed!
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued a warning on 2 July 2003: ‘The Earth’s climate is breaking down’. The tone is alarmist and novel for an organisation characterised by extreme prudence and scholarly reserve. Extracts from its latest report: ‘Recent scientific evaluations indicate that, since mean temperatures continue to increase from climate change, the number and intensity of extreme events ought to increase.’ The year 2003 and the decade 1993-2003 have turned out to be the warmest in Europe since the existence of meteorological records 200 years ago. In the United States, in May 2003, a record number of tornadoes (562) caused 41 deaths. In Asia, monsoons, cyclones and floods are putting their fragile economies in danger. The report also says, ‘New analyses of short-term climate developments indicate that for the northern hemisphere the rise of temperatures in the Twentieth century has been the highest of every century in a thousand years.’ Not only are temperatures rising, but the rate of increase is speeding up. In the past 143 years the warmest have been 1998, 2001, 2003, and each year beats the record of the preceding one.
The WMO predicts, in no particular order, the end of winter sports in Europe (with massive loss of snow) about 2015, sub-Saharan climate in Spain beginning in 2020 with the possibility of a Mediterranean climate in Sweden, the drying-up of the Loire valley, lack of drinking water, and so on.
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Two studies, published by American and Australian researchers in March 2004, tell of an alarming increase in the worldwide emission of greenhouse gases, due in large part to the burning of fossil fuels. One more warning bell rings amidst the general indifference.
The Australian researchers of the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) have verified a disturbing increase of CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, which are held responsible for global warming, during 2002 and 2003. 18.4 billion tons were released into the atmosphere in 2002 and 17.1 billion in 2003, a 40 per cent increase over the 13.3 billion tons released on average annually in the course of the last ten years. These results have been confirmed by the American NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), which has noted a sudden increase in the concentration of CO2 in recent years. Marc Gillet, Director of the Observatoire National sur les Effets du Réchauffement Climatique (ONERC), estimates that ‘it would be very troubling if similar rates of increase were verified over a longer period’.
Let us recall that since 1800 the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 36 per cent, which has probably never been seen before in the history of terrestrial ecology. Three-quarters of CO2 emissions are generated by fossil fuels (natural gas, petroleum, coal) and the rest are the consequences of deforestation and the multiplication of giant forest fires, such as those that have recently taken place in the United States, Indonesia and Australia. So, because of the uncontrolled economic growth of Asia, especially China, whose coal reserves are considerable, we can expect a significant increase in CO2 emissions, from increased burning of petroleum and coal. Asian countries are not bound by the Kyoto Protocol[20] to any commitment to reduce their CO2 emissions.
Do not worry, however. This insane race of economic growth will end suddenly in the course of the Twenty-first century because of the climatic cataclysms they are going to provoke, but also perhaps by the exhaustion of petroleum resources that is appearing on the horizon.
Countdown to the Climate Bomb
The Earth is threatened not only by localised, short-term climactic events (heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, etc.), but by epochal climate change more violent than any other in the past. The evidence is piling up: glaciers in meltdown everywhere in the world, droughts in Africa, tropical heat waves in Europe, the construction of man-made islands in the Maldives to counter the rising ocean, the break-up in the Arctic of the largest glacier platform, which is 3,000 years old, and so on. All this is small potatoes compared with the near future, especially the depletion of the ozone layer, which inhibits plant growth and can accelerate deforestation and falling agricultural yields.
It is too late to react, since the lifespan of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is measured in centuries. Even if we were to stop today or were to drastically reduce all greenhouse gas emissions, we would not escape an accelerated global warming due to the gas emitted in the Twentieth century. At any rate, nothing is being done to stop the process and emissions continue to increase at an exponential rate from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the American refusal to reduce industrial pollution and the impressive growth of Asian economies.
Granted this, it is very probable according to our general catastrophe scenario that the emission of pollutants is going to stop suddenly in the neighbourhood of 2020, but not voluntarily! It will be the direct consequence of the giant economic crisis and the collapse of the industrial societies. All the same, even after the global catastrophe, which will see a gigantic technological (and demographic) regression of the entire human species, humans will have to confront frightful climate conditions, the legacy of millions of tons of pollutants emitted over two hundred years.
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The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), an international scientific organisation formed in 1988, which relies on the scientific expertise of the entire world, has published three reports since 1990, each more troubling than the previous one. The IPCC estimates that the Earth’s temperature could increase by 1.4°C to 5.8°C by the end of the Twenty-first century. Jean-Marc Jancovici is a graduate of the École Polytechnique, the leading French expert on climate change, and the author of L’effet de serre[21] and L’Avenir climatique.[22] He estimates that temperatures may rise even higher and may increase by 10 degrees in two centuries!
He wrote in the journal Terre Sauvage in February 2004: ‘Twenty thousand years ago, in the last ice age, the median temperature of the Earth was about 10°C, while today we have reached 15°C. And yet we had ice three kilometres thick over Scandinavia, an ocean lower by 120 metres and an arctic steppe in France. Five degrees more means quite simply an epochal climate change that would bring temperatures unknown since man’s appearance on Earth. With ten degrees more, it is even possible that we would reach temperatures unknown since life existed on Earth!’
In addition, this change would occur at a fantastic speed, which would prevent any adaptation. Jancovici estimates that this climatic cataclysm will compromise the survival of part of the human species and will probably entail the emergence of totalitarian regimes. In fact, confronted with dramatic change of this nature, democratic regimes are impotent: ‘Tocqueville[23] already explained, more than 150 years ago, that democracies are short-sighted and are not systems well adapted to long-term challenges. . . . He explained perfectly how democracies bring individualism and mass consumption. Democracies can respond to immediate threats, like war. But do democracies exist that are capable of dealing with an insidious but irreversible danger? This is an open question.’
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Jancovici, who is an engineer, thinks, with a certain forced optimism, that an emergency solution would include a drastic reduction in our levels of consumption, as well as strongly increased use of nuclear energy (a source that does not emit pollutants), as well as underground carbon gas storage systems. He has no faith in wind power, which is specious, not only because of its exorbitant cost, but also because of the very low output of the new windmills when compared to the demand for electricity. He explains, ‘Our social project ought to include an explicit will to seize the problem head-on and adapt everything (transportation, housing, industrial activity, budgets, use of free time, individual acts, etc.) accordingly, which is far from being the case today. This would require political courage, but also great efforts by consumers and we are all consumers. . . . The bad news is that there is no panacea that we can simply apply to correct the problem, while continuing to consume as we do today. To speak frankly, the tragedy is that even the lifestyle of a supermarket cashier or a factory worker is not sustainable today.’
Even if such a scenario of voluntary conservation and responsibility takes place, it would not be enough to halt climate catastrophe. And it will not take place. Nobody is ready to lower or even moderate private levels of energy consumption, and especially not in the ‘developing countries’ of the Third World. Despite the rise of ‘Green’ parties — self-proclaimed ecologists, who seem to be neo-Trotskyites more than defenders of nature — the governments of the world care nothing for the questions we have just discussed, except for issuing declarations or organising ‘seminars’, or else elaborating timid treaties that are never ratified.
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We are going to see the climate bomb explode. It will join the ranks of all the other problems and make them worse. A traditional society, based on rather simple technology, was resistant to climate risks, if only because of agricultural independence and cultural diversity. On the other hand, contemporary civilisation, which is highly specialised, hyper-technological, globalised, dependent on high-speed transportation flow, psychologically ultra-sensitive to every disturbance (even small ones), is very fragile when faced with crises. The media only exaggerate the panic. The networks of production and transportation, on which we rely for all our supplies, are interdependent and so incapable of responding to a violent shock, especially a climatic one.
Let us recall, we have had warning signs: the two hurricanes of December 1999 that swept France, the repeated floods in the south of France, the unseasonable (although moderate) snowfalls that paralyse traffic, the heat wave of 2003 that upset the political order,[24] and so on. But these pinpricks will open gaps in the social edifice and are insignificant compared to what probably awaits us.
How will our society react in perhaps less than twenty years, if Western Europe begins to experience winters like Siberia’s (because of the melting of the Arctic ice cap that will entail the end of the warm Gulf Stream), followed in spring by torrential rain which will cause flooding, then in summer by drought and Sahara-like heat, without forgetting terrible autumn hurricanes? These will no longer be a question of ‘accidents’, but of a new status quo for the climate. It is likely that these phenomena will have grave repercussions on the economic, psychological and political equilibrium in a society as fragile and oversensitive as ours.
It is impossible that the managers and political elites of today’s Europe, who are marked by weakness in decision-making and an astonishing human mediocrity, as well as a total lack of concern for the long-term — in short, by a lack of character — will understand or can handle such a situation.
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Violent climate disasters are obviously going to increase all the other ‘lines of catastrophe’, especially in the countries of the global South, since they will pay the highest price. Certain areas could become almost uninhabitable when devastated by drought, heat, and rising ocean levels, which will only intensify mass immigration to the North, and which will be increasingly mismanaged and contribute to major disruptions.
Confronted by Global Warming, the Utopias of the Ecologists
Because of greenhouse gas emissions, especially CO2, the warming of the atmosphere is already beginning to cause significant climate disasters. According to Jean-Marc Jancovici, engineering advisor and President of X-Environnement, ‘the consequences could be catastrophic and irreversible’. In fact, the difference in temperature between the glacial era and today was only 5 degrees. Back then the median temperature was only 10 degrees; now it has become 15 degrees in 10,000 years. If the greenhouse effect and global warming continue (and they will), the Earth’s temperature will rise by 5 degrees in a century or even slightly less: what took 10,000 years to happen before will now happen in less than 100 years. The resulting shock and climactic cataclysms that follow will be of an unprecedented ferocity. We are seeing only the tip of the iceberg.
The failure of the ‘Kyoto Protocol’ that aimed at reducing the emission of pollutants, which was especially due to short-sighted American egoism, shows us that absolutely nothing will be done. Worse yet, even if by a miracle these emissions were stabilised or reduced, temperatures will continue to rise because of past pollution. So we know for a certainty that in the next twenty years these emissions will increase considerably, because of the unchecked industrialisation of the developing Asian countries, which care absolutely nothing about environmental matters.
European ecologists are proposing derisory measures — and will they follow their own suggestions? — for instance, reducing personal consumption, riding a bike instead of driving a car, taking the train instead of the airplane, eating natural tomatoes instead of greenhouse ones, reducing meat consumption, and so on. Even if these suggestions were voluntarily adopted by a large proportion of people in developed countries (which is unthinkable), these ‘economies of energy’ would change absolutely nothing in the state of the planet. Here again it is too late. In the Twenty-first century we are going to confront a climate shock worse than any mankind has ever experienced. And this ‘line of catastrophe’ will only be one among many others . . .
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Let me cite an example of the utopian character of the ecologists. Their excellent diagnosis is exceptionally clear, but they still believe that ‘solutions’ are possible: Serge Latouche, Professor at the University of Paris-Sud (Orsay), published a remarkable book in May 2003, Justice sans limite.[25] His diagnosis is that ‘the Earth is at the end of its tether’. He views himself as a catastrophist (as do I), because he believes in the ‘pedagogy of catastrophes’. For my part, I do not believe in it. Humans are incorrigible. For Latouche, ‘the society of growth engenders catastrophes’. He says, ‘Our mode of consumption, and by ours, I mean Europeans, would require two to three planets, if it were to continue at the same pace. The way Americans consume would require eight planets! And all this works only because the countries of the South are content with a tenth of the planet!’
