When the Black Death struck Europe in the Middle Ages, the fundamental values that held society together broke down. Husbands and wives abandoned each other and mothers abandoned their children. This void of ethics that overtook the population is described in Boccaccio’s The Decameron, considered a masterpiece of Italian prose and a documentary of life during that time. The book describes the sense of hopelessness that spread throughout the world, because it did not matter what stature one held in life or what one did or did not do to avoid the disease, all were subject to its lethality. Some implored their God in vain while others pursued a carpe diem spirit in an attempt to grab the last bit of pleasure from life when they were able. The common explanation for the indiscriminate devastation wrought by the Black Plague was God’s punishment for human wrongdoing. Nothing in human behavior has changed since then and I believe the ecological overshoot that man finds himself in today, manifested most prominently as climate chaos amongst a myriad of other threats, will cause humans to question the futility of life and their existence just as did those victims of the bubonic plague. A recent study has found that climate chaos is indeed worsening neurological diseases and mental health disorders. Another study found that people are denying climate change as a form of self-deception necessary to maintain their psychological health.
Since those Dark Ages, mankind has developed the ability to accurately track and predict our own demise. Vast networks of satellites and other data monitoring tools are informing us that the planet is becoming increasingly more inhospitable for the vast majority of life on Earth, yet we plod onward, ignoring another plea by the world’s scientists. A reassessment of the Limits to Growth Study and its World3 model using different calibrations was done 6 months ago and the results are the same, which is to say that humanity is still following business-as-usual and heading for collapse within the next two decades:
…the model results clearly indicate the imminent end of the exponential growth curve. The excessive consumption of resources by industry and industrial agriculture to feed a growing world population is depleting reserves to the point where the system is no longer sustainable.
All the expertise and modern technology we possess will not be coming to save us; there is no techno-fix or deus ex machina remotely scalable to the planetary crises we face. Emergency atmospheric geoengineering schemes won’t save us at this point. Can’t we just suck the 900 billion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere that we have spewed since the beginning of the industrial revolution? No. It bears repeating that the spiking Keeling curve is non-reversible on human timescales.
“We sadly continue to break records in the CO2 rise rate,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 program at Scripps. “The ultimate reason is continued global growth in the consumption of fossil fuels.” ~ May 8, 2024
The rate of ocean warming has nearly quadrupled since the late twentieth century, doubling since 1993. In the last twelve month, ocean heating has been on a tear, shattering records consistently. The world is currently undergoing the fourth global coral bleaching event on record, the second in the last decade, and the Great Barrier Reef is suffering its worst bleaching event in recorded history. This year’s hurricane season will likely be a record-breaker. The oceans are starting to release all that thermal energy we have been unceremoniously dumping into them. At one time, oceans seemed like an endless sink for the emissions from humanity’s nonstop consumption of fossil fuels, but that appears to be coming to an end. The world’s rivers are warming and losing oxygen even faster than the oceans. In contrast to those grim stats, humanity is set to consume more resources in the next 30 years as we have since the dawn of civilization. We have already consumed the future and are now, as they say, eating the seed corn.
We have breached tipping points and set in motion positive feedback loops that are accelerating non-linear ecological changes. Six of nine major planetary boundaries have been broken. Our unintended and haphazard experiment with complex Earth systems will unleash a Pandora’s box of deadly consequences. The current rate of CO2 change is unprecedented for the past 50,000 years. We have already passed the 1.5C warming threshold set by the Paris Agreement to prevent the irreversible and worsening effects of climate change. A recent study warns that as we add more and more CO2 to the atmosphere, its potency for warming is stronger at higher atmospheric concentrations than an equivalent increase at lower atmospheric concentrations. The polar regions are warming four times faster than the rest of the planet and have been undergoing fundamental changes to their ocean/ice system which will affect all life on Earth. An ice-free Arctic is just around the corner. In a warming world, pathogens will be looking for ways to exploit the fast-changing environment, potentially creating the next global pandemic for people or destroying our food supply. The tree line, as well as animals, are expanding northward as the climate heats up and the ice melts. Nearly a third of all tree species are now endangered by our radically changing environment. The clear blue waters of Alaskan rivers are turning orange and rusty brown by the heavy metals being released from melting permafrost. The oceans are also turning green due to the shift in phytoplankton population from warming waters.
The insurance industry, the backbone of the global economy, is beginning to buckle: “I believe we’re marching toward an uninsurable future.” As is typical of our modern-day society, the hypocritical insurance industry is heavily invested in fossil fuels while simultaneously warning about the looming destruction from climate change. Billion dollar disasters are increasing while the time between such disasters is decreasing. This continual rebuilding that needs to be done more often would be another doom-loop cycle for our crumbling civilization, considering the carbon emissions required in such repair and reconstruction. Compound extreme weather and climate events, combinations of two or more extremes (hazards) that occur concurrently or sequentially, are also increasing and expected to grow many fold over in the future. These compound weather events will inevitably create a perfect storm that will one day permanently destroy supply chains and economies by acting as a constant disruptor to stability. It would have the same effect as a monster cyclone, or hypercane, traveling the globe in perpetuity, waxing and waning in strength but never dying, and leaving a path of destruction wherever it roamed. A stable climate no longer exists to support the reconstruction of what once was. Walden Thoreau’s words seem very prescient today: “What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” With corporations also gobbling up single-family homes to monopolize the real estate market in America, we can officially say that the American dream of owning a home is dead. George Carlin always said you had to be asleep to believe anything about the American Dream.
I have been hearing about the need to abandon fossil fuels since President Carter put solar panels on the White House 45 years ago. I am still waiting for the techno-optimists to explain to me how they will save us from this new age we have created, known as the Pyrocene or Age of Fire; rest in peace, Holocene. We could also call our modern-day clusterfuck the Plasticene or Age of Plastics. Scientists are finding the stuff in every nook and cranny of the planet, including Antarctic krill, men’s testicles, and throughout the human body. If you drive a vehicle, you are contributing to the primary source for microplastics in the environment, tires, which account for 78%. Just as they lied about their knowledge of the catastrophic effects from burning their fossil fuel products, so too did the oil and plastics industry lie about their greenwashing fraud called recycling.
I never get an adequate, rational answer to our conundrum, because there is none. ChatGPT provides no better insight than the techno-optimists. The problem of a planet overrun by humans will resolve itself in short order and be recorded in the geologic fossil record after we put a cherry on top of this fossil fuel orgy, flattening the planet into a glass parking lot with nuclear weapons. That is another part of human nature that we will never escape…warfare. We seem to be one twitch away from WWIII and the next Stone Age. In fact, there are nearly 200 armed conflicts raging around the world right now, the largest number in decades. This marked uptick in violence could be an ominous sign of a violent new era. From the 2023 Armed Conflict Survey:
“The accelerating climate crisis continues to act as a multiplier of both root causes of conflict and institutional weaknesses in fragile countries…”
We are on the verge of authoritarian rule as global conditions break down and people embrace centralized solutions. Xenophobia will grow and borders will be shut down, sources of food and energy will be fought over and secured, and rationing of resources will be enforced.
Illustration by Mark Bryan
After studying our ecological overshoot for several decades, I have some observations that must be accepted as fact:
“Renewable” energy is not displacing our massive fossil fuel consumption at all, but only serving as a small addition to the total global energy consumption.
“Renewable” or alternative energy, such as solar and wind, is dependent on fossil fuels for its manufacture, installation, maintenance, and eventual disposal.
The so-called “Energy Transition” away from fossil fuels is pure techno-hopium and will never materialize.
The general public and many scientists don’t understand the math and physics involved in transitioning a $100 trillion global economy, dependent on hydrocarbons, to intermittent alternative energy sources.
No such “Energy Transition” can be accomplished without radical reductions in resource consumption. This is antithetical to the basic biological urge for expansion by most organisms, including humans, and current trends illustrate this behavior. We also keep finding more ways to consume evermore energy. On top of this, the World Bank is urging faster economic growth for emerging economies in order for them to repay mounting debts.
Governments are ill-equipped to deal with industrial civilization’s complex polycrisis because effective solutions would undermine economic growth.
The latest deadline to ‘save the planet’ is now two years from now, according to a UN Climate Change official. No doubt another arbitrary date given to justify someone’s job and department budget. According to Global Footprint Network’s calculations, humans have been in overshoot for over half a century. Others would say that we have been in overshoot since the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago, surviving only by mining the Earth’s soils. Like fossil fuels, the vast nutrient store of soils represents a unique one-time gift that has been squandered by agricultural erosion. Without petroleum and arable soils, the Earth will only support perhaps 5% of the present global population, as it did before the advent of agriculture. Considering that we are being constantly blindsided by faster-than-normal and worse-than-expected findings from scientists, I suspect there are far less food harvests left for us than we think. Hotter temperatures and pollution are hastening the destruction of topsoil. Our temporary extension of Earth’s carrying capacity for humans is coming to an end. Once Earth’s life support systems start to unravel, the grotesquely inflated human population will crash. In the meantime, “Memento moriturum; maxime faciunt vitae!”
The state of the planet is getting considerably worse. I feel like the 2030s will be the decade when the wheels start coming off this ride of industrial civilization. Until I speak to you all again, please enjoy those blue skies and store-bought food while they last. And remember, industrial civilization is a heat engine and it will suddenly break one day!