Survive- The Economic Collapse

by Piero San Giorgio

  Our economic and cultural system is in an advanced state of bankruptcy; in a world that will soon be short of resources, it will be increasingly incapable of responding correctly to problems it generates. Our culture and society, following the example of the Mayans, the Romans, the Vikings of Greenland, and many others, has become dysfunctional just before its collapse. The paradox of the present system is that, in order to maintain itself, it needs to develop personalities and cultures incapable of making it function over the long term. Now, what works is what constructs a civilization and helps it survive: foresight, wisdom, intelligence, discipline, rigor, rectitude, courage, honesty, compassion, and generosity. We are in dire need of these qualities, and, above all, we need leaders of men. But I fear that our culture does not produce any of those anymore. . .

  So we are unable to count on anyone but ourselves. As usual.

  *

  Matthew has no more money.

  He lost the job his uncle found for him through personal connections. It’s so bad that getting up early every morning is hard. He knows he is spending too many nights playing video games, but he can’t help it—the new *BodyKill VIII* is just too cool! Thirty-two years old, Matthew lives with his parents, and that annoys him because they are always getting on his back. Sometimes he’d like to take a girl out, but he is way too shy. And besides, girls like guys with plenty of money and a big car. For him, fun means chatting online with other gamers or going to smoke joints with his buddies.

  But what he really dreams of is one day becoming a rapper. That would be really gangsta! He’d be loaded and get the chicks. But as for the pressure of always having to work and earn money, he’s really had it with that. What’s worse, his parents didn’t even pay for his vacation in Ibiza this year, the assholes! They’re taking it easy. They had cushy jobs with the government, and they always knew how to live: vacations by the sea, skiing, and everything. If the bastards would only croak, or, at least, go rot in some retirement home, he could get their money—if there’s any left. An only child, Matthew was always spoiled, especially by his four grandparents, then by Brigitte who married his maternal grandfather. Well, he’s not going to sell everything he has on eBay. That would not be cool! But he really needs money for new clothes. And what is going on out there with the supermarkets empty and everything falling apart? He knows his father has a gun in his room. If they stop him from getting what he deserves, he’ll blow them all away.

  Unforeseeables

  <
  come on and spread a sense of urgency.

  and pull us through.

  and pull us through.

  and this is the end.

  this is the end.

  of the world.

  muse

  musicians

  _apocalypse please

  /2003/

  This is a chapter for which I shall certainly be considered paranoid! But since the principle of this work is to reflect on the world situation, without any a priori assumptions, I’m willing to accept that. Paranoia, at least, has the merit of allowing us to imagine the unimaginable—and this is useful, for sometimes the unimaginable plays dirty tricks on us.

  The problems we are going to be confronted with are serious. It is our own fault that they have arisen. They are all a question of human nature. We are collectively the cause, and we can do something about them.

  But something unforeseeable may also happen that escapes us, that throws in our faces all the hidden consequences of our culpable insouciance.

  Nature has some surprises for us.

  In itself, this is nothing new.

  The problem is the risk of a collision between natural and industrial catastrophes.

  And this is new.

  Ordinary natural events have not always been anticipated by the designers of our production and distribution systems: hurricanes, floods, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, earthquakes, etc. If the effects of these events can be serious, their impact, up to now, has been local. Since the Fukushima disaster, we have begun to realize that such events can have a whole new dimension when they crash up against our already unstable industrial systems.

  Our entire system has been conceived as if there were no need to worry about extraordinary natural events with long-term consequences.

  I am speaking here of very rare natural events that are able to cause total destruction within an area extending up to hundreds of square kilometers and engender climatic changes on a global scale lasting several years. They happen perhaps once in 1,000 years: small meteor or comet impacts, large volcanic eruptions, or unusual solar activity.

  Our whole industrial system rests on the idea that these events are so rare that they can be considered outside the realm of possibility.

  Except. . .

  Except that being very improbable does not mean it’s impossible.

  The most worrisome risk of collision between natural and industrial disasters lies, however, elsewhere. It lies in the ill-considered manipulations of living things.

  The Return of the Repressed

  Modern medicine is one of the most magnificent human conquests. Our species has overcome pain and sickness. We have eliminated polio, smallpox, the plague, cholera, typhus, tuberculosis; we know how to treat the great majority of infectious diseases as well as a large number of rare diseases. Even cancer is no longer always fatal. In spite of the illnesses we provoke by our own behavior, we can take satisfaction in the progress we have made.

  We even have a tendency to consider ourselves omnipotent in the face of micro-organisms. And yet the illnesses they cause can return quickly if the magnificent sanitary structure we have built goes missing, or if it is no longer accessible to everyone.

  Viruses and bacteria are not going to give up so easily. They are plotting their revenge.

  Two factors are working in their favor. First of all, the enormous growth of the human population and its density in cities offer a large number of human bodies for these organisms to develop and reproduce in. Second, by being exposed to antibiotics, bacteria end up becoming stronger, as is the case with Salmonella, E-coli, Campylobacter, etc.

  Mutations and variants are being observed in illnesses such as AIDS and SARS, and even Mad Cow disease. Viruses are found which pass from animals to people by mutation, like H1N1, H5N1, or other flu viruses. We will have reason to regret the allergic effects and weakening of the immune system caused by pesticides, pollutants, and hormonal disrupters.

  This is not trivial. Spanish flu killed over 40 million people in the world in 1918 and 1919. That is far more people than died in the First World War. In 1348, more than 30 percent of the European population died following a particularly virulent outbreak of plague in urban areas. Seventy-eight percent of the world now live in slums, without toilets, without running water, without sewers; new illnesses are quickly going to find fertile ground for development. According to the WHO, a global epidemic is entirely possible.

  In June 2001, the U.S. government conducted a simulated epidemic as an exercise: Operation Dark Winter. It tested the resilience of the American health and hospital system in the case of a national epidemic. Results showed that the whole system will quickly collapse. In the simulation, the virus was not contained; in only four days, it had propagated itself beyond the nation’s borders, provoking the same chaos around the world. This is because developing a vaccine takes time. In any case, the hospitals would quickly run out of beds and caregivers, the doctors themselves being among the first to get sick, as the recent movie Contagion and the zombie flick 28 Days Later vividly and realistically portray.

  If such a virus were let loose in nature by an enemy state or a terrorist organization, the effects would be devastating. A totalitarian state or its elites, afraid of losing their status or simply wanting to reduce a population that consumes too many resources, could use a virus against its own people. It’s a scenario that cannot be ruled out. After all, if dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot coul
d give the order to kill a part of their own population, what assures us that it would be different today? The commanders could choose to have vaccinated in advance those they designate for survival.

  Paranoia on my part, no doubt, but another reason to keep an eye on The Power That Be.

  At a certain time and in a certain context, paranoia is a survival instinct.

  *

  Chris knows God will triumph.

  It is his duty as a believer to lead God’s struggle for his brothers, humiliated and under occupation around the world. He had a revelation during his last trip home, and he has since developed contacts with other believers in the neighborhood where he lives.

  He doesn’t trust in the methods of his brothers and sisters. Assassinations, arms, and explosives seem paltry to him. He has other plans.

  His job in a biological research lab is very useful for him. Chris has worked hard in the lab of his research center. He has studied virus samples taken from Asian poultry. He got lucky: he quickly found a very aggressive form of the virus, but with a long incubation period. This allows for very effective propagation, especially since the virus can be transmitted both through the air and via fluids. Chris doesn’t think the virus will be deadly, exactly. He will know soon, since he cannot avoid exposing himself to it for long. He has accumulated a large quantity of the virus in test tubes. He is expecting to release it by brushing some of it on the door knobs of the hotel rooms he plans to visit in the next few weeks. He will also deposit a little in the airplanes he’ll take. He’s run up his credit card rather badly, but it’s worth it. He’s going to be doing a lot of traveling on his next two-week vacation: London—Paris—Madrid—Miami—New York—Atlanta-Los Angeles—Vancouver—Montreal—Brussels—Frankfurt—Munich—Milan—Moscow—Zurich—Amsterdam—London.

  God is Great!

  Hopes

  <
  éric zemmour

  journalist

  /2011/

  <
  serge latouche

  economist

  /2001/

  <
  graeme taylor

  researcher

  /2011/

  <
  sheik ahmed zaki yamani

  oil minister

  /2010/

  I gladly admit it: what you have been reading up to now has not been very uplifting . . . Is there hope? Could humanity avoid the fates I’ve discussed in the past hundred pages? (I wouldn’t be an honest researcher if I didn’t consider the possibility.) Human beings are resourceful and inventive. Awareness can provoke positive cultural change and this, if added to reforms and technological advances, could pull our chestnuts out of the fire.

  However, we must be clear-sighted and look at possible solutions rigorously and objectively. There is nothing worse than systematic optimists—those who think that every problem has a simple solution requiring little effort. I call them the Just-do-its. Such optimists talk a lot about what one can just do, without defining who this “one” is: The rich? The poor? City dwellers? Public authorities? And through what means? You often hear that “one” could do this or that, if one really wanted to—that one could feed 12 billion people, that it’s enough to use Canadian oil, or oil that hasn’t been discovered yet (but which surely exists off the coast of Alaska, Brazil, or the Falkland Islands). We just have to develop cold fusion, a hydrogen-based economy, use tidal energy, capture electricity from lightning; we just have to convert to all solar power, or all wind power; we just have to change the kind of light bulbs we use, ride bicycles, etc. Just do it!

  Besides the possible defiance of the laws of physics assumed by these expressions of hope, such arguments are often heard from the lips of amateurs, journalists, and activists—but rarely scientists, geologists or engineers. In a supposedly secular world, faith in the goddess Technology and the god Progress allows all alarms to be brushed aside with a wave of the hand.

  Will scientific progress bring us miracle technologies? It is improbable a priori for two reasons: the first is that discovery is by its nature uncertain; the second, more fundamental reason is that the problem is only secondarily technological. It resides first of all in our social, economic, and political organization.

  Long-term considerations are absent from our global cultural system. Industrial agriculture, the systematic neglect of resource renewal, the political contempt for regulating births . . . none of this has to do with technological limitations. The horizon of economic calculation stretches to a dozen years at most. . . . Beyond that, predictions are no longer incentives. As for the calculus of democratic politics, it is limited to election cycles: didn’t former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney say, swaggeringly, “our way of life is not negotiable?” How can you get voters to accept a permanent rise in agricultural prices in order to prevent a crisis whose full extent is not yet known? How can you get companies to forego easy profits in order to guarantee the sustainability of the economy in 20 years? How can you get consumers to see that their lives would be improved by changing their behavior?

  And yet it has only been 10 generations (1750) since the world was governed largely by absolute monarchs, and slavery was normal. Globally, almost no one knew how to read or write, and, to a great extent, life was nasty, brutish, and short. We have changed. So, we will be able to change again.

  Is this a pipe dream?

  Social changes often begin with technical innovations that create new political, economic, and social dynamics. Firearms eliminated the advantages of the aristocracy on the battlefield; railroads allowed regions tucked away in the interior of continents to become developed; the Internet allowed the creation of new communication networks beyond the media controlled by large economic groups, and put people and businesses in touch around the world.

  Societies also change because new ideas appear. Historically, religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam have tried to raise men above tribalism and ancient morals; nationalist, revolutionary, and separatist movements—which have united the masses in common projects, or even the ecological movements of our day—emerged as soon as the need for new meaning was felt. “Nothing in the world is more powerful than an idea whose time has come” said Victor Hugo.

  Another World is Possible?

  We can appeal to various sources of energy as a substitute for oil. Theoretically, there is a great number of these, but the possibilities they offer are still limited.

  Coal is available in relatively large quantities. It is quite polluting, contributes to the greenhouse effect when burned, and its extraction involves releasing methane.

  Natural gas, which consists essentially of methane, propane, and butane, would make a good transitional source of energy. Natural gas is easy to get out of the earth and easy to transport, but dangerous if care is not employed in handling it. This gas is often used for heating, fertilizer production, for improving petroleum extraction, and for making synthetic gasoline (although that process requires a lot of energy). World reserves of natural gas will also start to go down between now and 2050.

  Nuclear energy is costly and problematic because of the treatment and storage of nuclear waste, and because of accidents. Since the first nuclear reactor was put in service in 1957, 9,000 tons of radioactive waste have been produced; and though this is, on the whole, a rather small quantity and volume of material to manage, no one wants it buried near them. This energy cannot be substituted for oil or the consumer products currently derived from oil. However, in the short term, nuclear energy could be a transitional solution, since a uranium atom produces 10 million times
as much energy as the combustion of an equivalent amount of coal, and two million times as much as its equivalent in oil. So it is a useful energy that for a few decades longer (until the uranium runs out) can furnish electricity without producing greenhouse gases.

  Nuclear fusion is often cited as a future “miracle energy”— clean and limitless. In reality, besides the fact that it has never been realized under anything approaching normal terrestrial conditions, its production would require enormous quantities of energy. Nothing escapes entropy.

  The situation with hydrogen is even worse. Hydrogen has extremely low molecular density; therefore, it’s voluminous. It is also strongly corrosive. So, for stocking and transporting it, you must liquefy it under high pressure, seal it up perfectly, and never have an accident with it on pain of producing a spectacular explosion. And since there are no hydrogen mines, it must be produced by dialysis, a more expensive process in terms of energy than the energy it produces. This is also a question of entropy. . .

  There are more realistic hopes in concentrating on renewable energy, furnished by wind, sun, vegetables, and the soil.

  Woods, carefully managed, could be an excellent source of combustible energy and construction material. Badly managed, you get massive deforestation.

  Biofuels derived from beets, maize, potatoes, sugarcane, etc. have weak yields and require dedicating agricultural land to their production.

  Solar energy, although promising, has a limited yield and requires, for the construction of solar panels, materials that are becoming rare.

  Hydraulic energy is more competitive, very efficient and clean, but it requires a heavy investment. Dams need regular maintenance in order not to fill up with sludge and become useless after 30 years or so.