Convergence of Catastrophes, page 4
Latouche looks upon ‘growth’ as a wicked witch. Growth is exhausting the environment, but without it the economy will collapse. So we are caught in the jaws of the trap: ‘The least slow-down is a catastrophe: unemployment increases and there is no more money for culture or the environment.’ The world is therefore condemned to a dramatic flight forward.
His solution is ‘de-growth’ that is, in fact, a reprise of the theme of ‘zero growth’ of the very prescient Club of Rome[26] in the 1970s. His basic idea was: ‘We must live better with less. Growth involves enormous indirect costs, including increasing traffic, pollution, stress and therefore medical costs. So de-growth relies on questioning the set of beliefs on which the system rests: progress, science, the economy.’ De-growth therefore extols a lifestyle that is rustic, neo-communitarian, and based on localism (producing where one consumes) and drastic economies of energy. In short, it is a revolutionary model, breaking completely with what is practiced everywhere in the world.
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This suggestion is really very old, since the American hippies had already formulated it in the 1960s. The problem is, whatever its theoretical relevance, such a suggestion has absolutely no chance of being concretely followed or applied. Even poor countries aspire to only one thing: Western-style consumption and growth!
Professor Serge Latouche is aware of this fact, but he gets tangled up in contradictions when he responded in an interview in Libération (26 September 2003) according to the Third Worldist vulgate.
Question: ‘How do you apply the concept of “de-growth” in developing countries?’
Answer (embarrassed): ‘De-growth cannot obviously be applied in societies that do not know growth. We of the West know that, if the Chinese and the Indians follow our example and everyone buys a car, the planet will be a bloody mess. But what right do we have to forbid them access to the same things we enjoy? Let us offer another model for the rest of humanity and rediscover that happiness can be created by consuming infinitely less.’
We are flabbergasted by the utopian naïveté of this emeritus professor. So we are going to convince the Chinese and Indians to renounce mass consumption and adopt a ‘green’ lifestyle by setting a good example? Ridiculous! Here is the rationalist illusion of ‘pedagogism’, an illusion with deep roots in Leftist culture. This ecologist mentality is shared only by a fraction of the Western bourgeoisie who, moreover, do not even practice their own recommendations!
In all the countries of the South, the consumerist dream and desire for ‘development’ are very strong. Professor Latouche’s model of ‘de-growth’ and all the analyses that lead to elaborating it certainly do not lack insight. But a society of this kind will not be imposed by human wisdom (which has never existed) nor by ‘democracy’ (which is always useless in emergencies), but by constraint, which will come from political tyranny or — the more likely case — from a generalised catastrophe. Professor Latouche predicts the latter case with impressive insight.
History teaches us that humans do not change their civilisation after deliberation, or by their own willpower, but in the wake of chaos that they themselves have provoked.
Violent Climate Change is Going to Provoke Geopolitical Earthquakes
For an ever-growing number of scientists, climate change due to increased warming of the atmosphere (due to the emission of greenhouse gases) may well be much more radical and rapid than predicted. It will probably have major geopolitical consequences. The climatic upheavals that we are soon to undergo will be much harsher than any we can imagine. The predictions are so precise and unsettling that Pentagon planners are worried and are including global atmospheric warming in their strategic calculations, according to an investigation by the American business magazine Fortune.[27] The author tells us, “The threat that has riveted their attention is this: global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point.” The phenomenon has already started: 1997-2003 have been the warmest years on record. The oceanic-atmospheric system, on which the climate depends, could tip over into failure, like a ship rocked by the waves that capsizes without warning. If this scenario occurs — and the probability is becoming more and more likely — societies will not have time to adapt and the world’s geopolitics will be turned upside down.
Core samples from the deep glaciers in the Arctic have shown that sudden catastrophic climate changes, occurring within a few years, have already occurred in the past.
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Paradoxically, global warming may translate into Siberian winters in Europe and North America, because of the interruption of the warm current of the Gulf Stream caused by the meltdown of the ice packs, which will be followed by torrid summers. Right now we are experiencing increasingly mild winters, but this situation will not last. The northern hemisphere may also experience — in fact, it has already started — repeated hurricanes and giant forest fires as well as a series of floods and dramatic droughts. The ‘temperate climate’ of Western Europe may not last for long.
Satellite photos by NASA of the glacial cover at the North Pole show that between 1970 and 2003 there has been a reduction of 30 per cent in the ice pack. The same situation has been reported for the glaciers in high mountain ranges. David Stipp writes in Fortune, ‘Over the past decade, data have accumulated suggesting that the plausibility of abrupt climate change is higher than most of the scientific community, and perhaps all of the political community, are prepared to accept.’[28]
The 2002 annual report of the American National Academy of Sciences confirms these sombre predictions. In the same year at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Robert Gagosian, Director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, warned politicians from the entire world that it was necessary to take account of the major consequences of coming climate change. These ‘politicians from the entire world’ care only about votes . . . The majority of scientists are no longer asking if climate catastrophe will take place during the Twenty-first century, but when.
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One of the most respected Pentagon planners, Andrew Marshall, who has specialised in ‘threats to national security’ since 1973 and is a theoretician of anti-ballistic missile defence, and Peter Schwartz, a consultant for both Shell and the CIA, with help from climatologists, have published a highly alarmist report for the Pentagon.[29] The report concludes with speculation that something spectacular might occur around 2020. Let us summarise the principal warnings of this report that are relevant for a catastrophe scenario.
Median temperatures are going to fall five degrees in the northern hemisphere in America, Europe and Asia, but increase six degrees in southern Europe and the southern hemisphere, from 2010 to 2020. Agriculture all over the northern hemisphere will be handicapped by hurricanes and flooding rainstorms. Rising ocean levels due to the melting of the ice cap, combined with frequent storms, may make a number of cities and towns on the coast of northern Europe unliveable and lead to their evacuation, especially in Holland. Giant tornadoes and dust storms are going to become more frequent in the American South and Midwest.
Climate upheavals will have the most serious consequences in Third World countries and the global South, which may increase the gap between rich and poor countries. Droughts, deforestation, the end of regular monsoon seasons and the flooding of coastal plains (phenomena that are already happening) will produce famines, scarcity of drinking water and massive displacement of populations. These in turn will lead to a general destabilisation, which will take the following forms, according to this report, which the Pentagon addressed to the White House:
1) Famines and uncontrollable epidemics may occur in all the countries of the global South, leading to the ruin of their agriculture, starting in 2010.
2) We can expect massive immigration larger than what we are experiencing today into the northern countries with unsustainable pressure from impoverished and starving masses.
3) China in particular will be affected by climate upheavals, especially by the risk of extreme flooding. The report predicts the destabilisation of the most heavily populated country in the world. There are similar risks for India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh, which will become uninhabitable as a result of rising ocean levels.
4) Russia, which is in a demographic coma, but possesses significant natural resources, may experience relentless immigration pressure from all its southern neighbours. More generally the flow of refugees will increase tenfold everywhere on the planet, posing unsolvable problems and provoking civil wars.
5) All these phenomena will lead to nuclear conflicts in Asia, but also elsewhere, and ‘nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable’.[30]
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This report addressed to the Pentagon also predicts a certain number of disturbing scenarios, all based on peoples’ vital need for access to resources that are increasingly scarce (food from farming or fishing, drinking water and fossil fuels).
1) North America (United States and Canada) is trying to create a bloc impermeable to massive immigration, following a fortress logic. It is also jealously preserving its water resources, of which it is depriving Mexico and Latin America, which are themselves subject to drought.
2) The same fortress logic might animate all Europe and Russia to join together to dam up the explosive migratory floods of refugees from Africa and Asia. In both these cases the pressure of facts would sweep away the morality of human rights and re-establish the morality of ‘every man for himself’.
3) The rapid climate catastrophe, plus the decline in petroleum reserves, will provoke ‘aggressive wars [that] are likely to be fought over food, water, and energy’.[31] In the atmosphere of planet-wide generalised insecurity beginning from 2010, Korea (now reunified), Japan, Iran, and others, will possess nuclear weapons. Old ways of thinking will change as fast as the climate.
Neither the market nor technological progress will be able to handle this giant crisis, which will be fuelled even more by the rise in power of the Islamic countries. The archaeologist Steven A. LeBlanc, who teaches at Harvard and is cited in the report, noted that, in the past, wars for scarce resources were part of the human condition. In the near future we are going to return to this archaic situation, where armed conflicts caused the disappearance of 25 per cent of the population. His research shows that each time in human history when there was violent climate change — especially after the last glaciation — war became the only solution to appropriate scarce resources.
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The recommendations of the Pentagon report are astonishing. They first of all castigate the delaying of the political and scientific communities in admitting the emergency, as well as their disregard for the fact that it is human activity that is rapidly changing the Earth’s climate.
It suggests, without putting too much faith in it (because it is already too late), taking every care to study and halt the phenomenon. It recommends survival measures that are to be adopted without second thoughts for the moral consequences (‘no-regrets strategies’), even if they are violent, pragmatic and cynical, and even if they break with the ideology of human rights, in order to assure at all costs the security of North America, as well as its access to food, water, and energy, and its ability to defend itself against waves of immigrants fleeing climate catastrophe.
The Spectre of Shortages
In the journal Ecologist,[32] economist David Fleming predicts that ‘to be sure, the planet’s crude oil resources are going to last for a few more decades yet. However, the struggles over access and profits between countries and multinational corporations are already becoming fiercer.’ On the basis of recent geological research he writes, ‘Then, in the middle years of the decade 2010-2019, production by Middle East OPEC itself will start to fall, and decline will also set in for the combined total of both oil and gas. . . . It can be expected to do so in, or shortly after, 2010. That will be the start of a sellers’ market, putting the producers in control. The consequences will be devastating. . . . Brief breakdowns in the supply of fuel can be survived; with sustained interruptions, however, the global market economy would cease to exist.’ In Fleming’s opinion, this is the cause of American neo-militarism: ‘America’s determination to take military action to prevent the Middle East being closed-off as a reliable seller of oil can be thus be better understood as a case of self-defence.’
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What should we think of ‘renewable energies’? Opponents of nuclear energy regularly explain to us that, in order to avoid a situation where abandoning nuclear power leads to the construction of hyper-polluting fossil fuel-burning power plants (petroleum, coal and natural gas), we must turn to ‘renewable energies’, an expression repeated like a mantra. Unfortunately, the facts are stubborn. The largest wind power factory in the world, which is under construction in Tasmania and equipped with 79 giant windmills with three blades each, the Vestas V66 built in Denmark, will produce 130 megawatts (MW) of energy, or forty times less than a single French nuclear power plant with four reactors of the Cattenon or Nogent-sur-Seine type (5,200 MW). And these wind power farms, which occupy enormous areas of land, can be built only on a very small number of sites, which enjoy powerful and regular wind.
What about solar panels? To reach the electricity-producing power of a single average nuclear reactor (900 MW of the Cruas-Meysse brand) would require the land surface of an entire French province! What about the ‘marine current turbines’ built by the English? The ones planned for the Severn estuary near Bristol will produce . . . a single megawatt and, at full power, 50 MW. In this case, too, the sites where they can be constructed in the world are few. The passive four helix pylons are buried in the estuaries of rivers, and tied to generators that are themselves connected to underwater electrophoretic cables. The ratio of energy produced to total cost is 60 per cent lower than with nuclear power. Therefore renewable energies can only provide backup energy.
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A major problem for which it is hard to see a solution is the problem of ‘blue gold’, that is, drinking water, the shortages of which are beginning to be felt. In 2025 the Earth will contain 8.3 billion inhabitants (an increase of 45 per cent over today). There will not be enough drinking water for this population, because resources are disappearing, especially as a result of massive pollution but also from the growing droughts caused by climate change in the countries of the global South.
Conflicts and wars for the control of hydrologic and water-bearing basins can be predicted, as the WHO has done. Consider Lake Chad that has gone from 25,000 km2 to 2,500 km2 because of desertification. The privatisation of water and attempts to corner the market in water by business interests will only make matters worse.
Of the water on this planet, only 2.5 per cent is fresh water, but the majority of it is frozen or too deep. Only 0.007 per cent of the total is accessible to humans. Between 1900 and 2003, water consumption has multiplied seven times, or twice the rate of population growth, and 70 per cent of the water is used for farming irrigation. Currently a fifth of the world’s population does not have access to water. This proportion can only increase.
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The Earth is about to have a shortage of water. Already, in Italy, Greece and Spain, there is a serious drought problem and a shortage of fresh water, especially for irrigation. The pollution of groundwater and rivers is compromising the food supply everywhere and is making the use of ‘blue gold’ more and more expensive. With worldwide demographic growth, the shortage of water is going to become a deadly weapon.
Today more than one and a half billion individuals live without access to clean water. In 2025 this number will be 3 billion, spread over 52 countries, not only in Africa and the Middle East, but also in Pakistan, China, India, and elsewhere. In order to feed their growing populations, governments are furiously developing agriculture (deforesting and polluting). This is making matters worse, since agricultural activity uses up aquatic resources.
The fourteen largest Indian rivers and 75 per cent of the Chinese river network are so seriously polluted that fish can no longer survive in them. 25 per cent of Bangladesh’s inhabitants absorb arsenic every time they quench their thirst. Here is the frightening fact: today there is just as much water on the Earth as there was 2,000 years ago, but the human population is thirty times larger.
‘Water wars’ are inevitable. They are a significant factor in the potential wars between India and Pakistan or Israel and its neighbours. Water is one more factor destabilising the global system, that it will not be possible to contain.
Examples of Ecological Disasters
In 1995 a report of the highly official Security Council of the Russian Federation warned that the Russian population was menaced by an ‘ecological disaster’. Poorly buried radioactive waste, polluted groundwater, decimated forests, and so on, can provoke ‘degeneration of the population’ in the Twenty-first century, if these threats are not halted. Nine years later there is no reason to think that they have been. The report noted, ‘Russia is threatened by very real ecological terrorism’, which could well cause nothing less than ‘the progressive extinction of the Russian population’ in the course of the Twenty-first century. The report continues, ‘Optimism for the future is sinking, disease is increasing and there are reports of a growing number of birth defects.’ Add to this the demographic coma into which Russia is falling and which I shall discuss elsewhere.
