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catastrophes [2019/03/09 11:40]
Richard Greeman
catastrophes [2019/03/16 21:52] (current)
admin
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 Dear Colleagues! A new subject, Collapsology,​ is all the rage in France. Multiple major disasters, catastrophes and system collapses seem inevitable today, indeed are already happening. As future historians we need to face them squarely. We haven’t yet. Even some of ecosocialists of 20 years standing have been complicit in denial out of fear of provoking despair, fatalism and passivity. ​ Dear Colleagues! A new subject, Collapsology,​ is all the rage in France. Multiple major disasters, catastrophes and system collapses seem inevitable today, indeed are already happening. As future historians we need to face them squarely. We haven’t yet. Even some of ecosocialists of 20 years standing have been complicit in denial out of fear of provoking despair, fatalism and passivity. ​
  
-“For decades, the climate movement has suffered from a debilitating self-inflicted wound: the assumption that “we can’t tell the public the truth” about the urgency of the crisis, or the scale and speed of the necessary solution. Many climate scientists joined forces with professional “climate communicators” and corporate philanthropies to decree: Fear doesn’t work as a motivator! Only hope “works,​” so let’s keep things positive and promote gradualist policies like carbon pricing! https://​truthout.org/​articles/​its-possible-to-face-climate-horrors-and-still-find-hope/​+“For decades, the climate movement has suffered from a debilitating self-inflicted wound: the assumption that “we can’t tell the public the truth” about the urgency of the crisis, or the scale and speed of the necessary solution. Many climate scientists joined forces with professional “climate communicators” and corporate philanthropies to decree: Fear doesn’t work as a motivator! Only hope “works,​” so let’s keep things positive and promote gradualist policies like carbon pricing! ​((https://​truthout.org/​articles/​its-possible-to-face-climate-horrors-and-still-find-hope/​))
  
-The Collapsologists,​ typically scientists who have finally ​realised ​the interconnectivity (Complexity) of multiple systems and stepped out of their disciplines to create an interdisciplinary study, are all calling for one thing: “a new narrative,​” a way to comprehend what is happening to us and imagine a path forward. In other words what we are doing. Imagining plausible scenarios.+The Collapsologists,​ typically scientists who have finally ​realized ​the interconnectivity (Complexity) of multiple systems and stepped out of their disciplines to create an interdisciplinary study, are all calling for one thing: “a new narrative,​” a way to comprehend what is happening to us and imagine a path forward. In other words what we are doing. Imagining plausible scenarios.
  
 As historians of 2120, our task is to face the worst; and yet also come up with a possible survival scenarios. Such  scenarios, far from discouraging,​ would give our readers something to hope for and work for.  As historians of 2120, our task is to face the worst; and yet also come up with a possible survival scenarios. Such  scenarios, far from discouraging,​ would give our readers something to hope for and work for. 
  
-These scenarios fall in our history text at the intersection of Catastrophies ​and HOW we somehow survived them), which is the most difficult and important part of our narrative. If planetary emergence does take place in the future, it will be on a planet rapidly collapsing, which will exacerbate the conflict between the eight billion who toil and the eight billionnaires ​who own half the world’s wealth. This is the point we must develop.+These scenarios fall in our history text at the intersection of Catastrophes ​and HOW we somehow survived them), which is the most difficult and important part of our narrative. If planetary emergence does take place in the future, it will be on a planet rapidly collapsing, which will exacerbate the conflict between the eight billion who toil and the eight billionaires ​who own half the world’s wealth. This is the point we must develop.
  
 If there is indeed a 1 in 100 chance for there to be historians in 2120, this emergence must have transpired by around 2030, while there was still a chance for a united humanity to stop pollution and start massive remedial action to mitigate its results. Some “tipping points” perhaps had already been reached by 2030.  If there is indeed a 1 in 100 chance for there to be historians in 2120, this emergence must have transpired by around 2030, while there was still a chance for a united humanity to stop pollution and start massive remedial action to mitigate its results. Some “tipping points” perhaps had already been reached by 2030. 
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 Our working hypothesis: that there MAY be one chance in 100 or 1000 that a world made up of just, egalitarian societies did emerge and survive the multiple catastrophes now impending. This “ecotopian bet” is now elaborated [[ecotopian-bet|here on our Wiki]]. Our working hypothesis: that there MAY be one chance in 100 or 1000 that a world made up of just, egalitarian societies did emerge and survive the multiple catastrophes now impending. This “ecotopian bet” is now elaborated [[ecotopian-bet|here on our Wiki]].
  
-The challenge for our paradoxical enterprise is to develop a scenario of global collapse and catastrophe with a “happy ending,” as it were (since we are still here in 2120). The negative part of our collective task will be easy: borrow from the best descriptions by authors of dystopian sci-fi which abound and adapt them to our own. If we subvert whole paragraphes ​or more we can put them in quotes and attribute them to a “contemporary” journalist by the name of (the real 2019 author).+The challenge for our paradoxical enterprise is to develop a scenario of global collapse and catastrophe with a “happy ending,” as it were (since we are still here in 2120). The negative part of our collective task will be easy: borrow from the best descriptions by authors of dystopian sci-fi which abound and adapt them to our own. If we subvert whole paragraphs ​or more we can put them in quotes and attribute them to a “contemporary” journalist by the name of (the real 2019 author).
  
 As you may recall, in 2017 we collected an excellent library in the Dropbox of articles on impending catastrophes to document our THEN about ecocidal capitalism. Alas, some of the direst predictions of two years ago have been surpassed by reality (following “Greeman’s Curve”). By changing the tenses of their predictions into the past, our technique was to give them the power of objectivity. As you may recall, in 2017 we collected an excellent library in the Dropbox of articles on impending catastrophes to document our THEN about ecocidal capitalism. Alas, some of the direst predictions of two years ago have been surpassed by reality (following “Greeman’s Curve”). By changing the tenses of their predictions into the past, our technique was to give them the power of objectivity.
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 What about the “happy ending?” To my mind, excluding divine or extraterrestrial intervention,​ the the most credible basis for human survival is what Kropotkin called Mutual Aid. So we must imagine how Mutual Aid, cooperation,​ human decency, etc. emerged in the face of disaster. We can elaborate our narrative based on examples such as New Orleans, Occupy Sandy, and other historical and international instances where communities spontaneously organized effective mutual aid in disaster situations while authorities did nothing or imposed violent repression and mistreatment of victims.  ​ What about the “happy ending?” To my mind, excluding divine or extraterrestrial intervention,​ the the most credible basis for human survival is what Kropotkin called Mutual Aid. So we must imagine how Mutual Aid, cooperation,​ human decency, etc. emerged in the face of disaster. We can elaborate our narrative based on examples such as New Orleans, Occupy Sandy, and other historical and international instances where communities spontaneously organized effective mutual aid in disaster situations while authorities did nothing or imposed violent repression and mistreatment of victims.  ​
  
-Mutual aid springs up naturally in revolutionary situations, as many of us have experienced,​ whether in 1968 or 2011 or in other such risings. This feeling of generosity and exaltation, of belonging and freedom, has been called by George Katsiaficas “the Eros effect.” Again, for the purposes of our narrative, we can quote the feelings of partipants ​in such risings and import them into our narrative to give realism and make believable the power people feel and demonstrate at such moments in history.+Mutual aid springs up naturally in revolutionary situations, as many of us have experienced,​ whether in 1968 or 2011 or in other such risings. This feeling of generosity and exaltation, of belonging and freedom, has been called by George Katsiaficas “the Eros effect.” Again, for the purposes of our narrative, we can quote the feelings of participants ​in such risings and import them into our narrative to give realism and make believable the power people feel and demonstrate at such moments in history.
  
 Can we do this together? ​ I hope we at least give it a try.  For openers I was inspired to write a very rudimentary outline for a narrative about global collapses with a happy ending: survival - thanks to mutual aid - of a peaceful, cooperative global society. It is intended as a skeleton of sorts, and I invite you to fill it out and add new limbs. My hope that we can get together and elaborate a collective narrative (perhaps less intimidating than asking a each of you to invent a scenario). ​ Can we do this together? ​ I hope we at least give it a try.  For openers I was inspired to write a very rudimentary outline for a narrative about global collapses with a happy ending: survival - thanks to mutual aid - of a peaceful, cooperative global society. It is intended as a skeleton of sorts, and I invite you to fill it out and add new limbs. My hope that we can get together and elaborate a collective narrative (perhaps less intimidating than asking a each of you to invent a scenario). ​
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 Our method is as always: use our [[https://​www.dropbox.com/​s/​5ai5zlelu297nru/​_Catastrophes-Sources_3-24-19.docx?​dl=0|readings]] to appropriate descriptions,​ scenes, analyses from good authors and adapt them to one limb or another of the skeleton. you are invited to add pieces to the draft that follows here, either by editing this page (don’t forget to add your name), or adding them in the [[https://​www.dropbox.com/​sh/​zif075bo6a90p45/​AAAkxmyE9XAcwBldEeG1Hb7wa?​dl=0|Dropbox]],​ or emailing them to [[mailto:​AnotherWorldNYC@gmail.com|AnotherWorldNYC@gmail.com]]. Our method is as always: use our [[https://​www.dropbox.com/​s/​5ai5zlelu297nru/​_Catastrophes-Sources_3-24-19.docx?​dl=0|readings]] to appropriate descriptions,​ scenes, analyses from good authors and adapt them to one limb or another of the skeleton. you are invited to add pieces to the draft that follows here, either by editing this page (don’t forget to add your name), or adding them in the [[https://​www.dropbox.com/​sh/​zif075bo6a90p45/​AAAkxmyE9XAcwBldEeG1Hb7wa?​dl=0|Dropbox]],​ or emailing them to [[mailto:​AnotherWorldNYC@gmail.com|AnotherWorldNYC@gmail.com]].
  
-**//RG Catastrophe Draft 3/8/19//**+**//RG Catastrophe Draft 3/14/19//**
  
-=== The Great Collapse === +=== 1. The Great Collapse ===
-  +
-The Great Collapse marked the dividing line between Then and NowIt was the global crucible in which our cooperative,​ egalitarian,​ peaceful and democratic societies was forged. Although it entailed the suffering and death of billions of humans along with other creatures, many of which went extinct, in retrospect we are obliged to look upon it as a “fortunate fall.” Global warming, the result of carbon capitalism’s accelerating injection of greenhouse gasses into the earth’s thin atmosphere, was approching its irreversable tipping point. If it had continued for another decade, we would not be here now, studying our planet’s history while struggling together with all our collective energy to survive and mitigate the damage, which we know will last for centuries. +
-  +
-The Great Collapse, as you already know, was not a single event, but rather the culmination and concatination of a number of intersecting crises: including the energy crisis, the climate crisis, the ecological crisis, the economic crisis, social crises, the crisis of government legitimacy, all of which had reached their limits. Disasters and catastrophes abounded, each aggravating others. There were tornados, wildfires, floods, nuclear accidents, food and energy shortages. Climate refugees fleeing zones of flood, fire and unlivably hot temperatures carried with them epidemic diseases which spread among the inhabitants of more clement zones. Famine weakened the resistance of whole populations,​ aggravating inequality between rich and poor. +
-  +
-  +
-The global crash in the value of securities destabilized the international financial system. Fortunes in paper profits and fictitious capital vanished overnight, wiping out years of headless, unregulated speculation. Banks closed their doors as crowds of depositers rushed to withdraw their savings. For want of credit (and customers able to pay) factories and businesses closed their doors, provoking mass unemployment and a rapid decline in production. This financial collapse did have one positive effect: carbon emissions fell back to 20th century levels +
-  +
-Inequality, already severe, became stark as the rich retired behind the militarized walls of their gated communities or fled to their well-stocked and well-defended estates in insolated zones. +
-  +
-In many areas, basic services like electricity,​ water, and health care collapsed. Existing governments proved largely incapable or unwilling to provide disaster aid to the victims. States were reduced to their basic function in class society: armed repression, defending the status quo against opposition by oppressed populations and rival states (or proto-states). When governments did send troops to disaster areas, their assignment was to “preserve law and order” and “protect property” by shooting “looters” rather than to help the locals by providing food, shelter and medical aid. +
-  +
-This phenomenon had been observed as early as 20?? After Hurricane X  created a disaster in the already poor island country of Haïté, when (fill in details: ate more than the brung, spread epidemics, installed a dictator) and after Hurricane X in New Orléans, La. (USA) DETAILS. As early as 20??, a contemporary,​ the journalist Naomi Klein, had theorized this process of militarization followed by privatization as “Disaster Capitalism,​” and the tendency became more pronounced in the 2020’s as disasters became more frequent and governments more authoritarian. +
-  +
-As a result of generalized government incompetence,​ brutality, corruption and indifference to their suffering, great masses people around the world began to lose faith in their authority. Especially where evidence of governmental responsibility for and complicity in provoking disasters was leaked and went viral. +
-  +
-For example, an experimental virus was being tested by the CIA in Africa and a few “subjects” escaped and the epidemic spread, while the authorities conspired to cover it up until it was too late. This phenomenon reminded historians of the AIDS tragedy, which a more than century ago ravaged millions and eventually lead to the self-organization if the whole Gay community unleashing a powerful social force. (We are fortunate in having among our Future Historians Sam, who, at a spry 180, is both a social epidemiologist and a good writer, to help us elaborate this particular scenario.) +
-  +
-Famines, like epidemics, became planet-wide catastrophes,​ which ultimately lead to a planetary response. Sporatic, local food riots led to cooperative self organization against the market system that speculated while people starved. Debt strikes (instead of suicides) broke out among peasants ruined by need to buy seeds from corporate monopolies and barred from using their own seeds as peasants have for millenia. Industrial farmers too had been driven to bankruptcy and suicide by the high cost of petrolium-based fertilisers,​ pesticides and other chemical inputs. Monsanto was attacked and shunned, money-lenders were rooted out. +
-  +
-These and other catastrophes began to be seen by the victims as the responsibility of the powerful, the rich, the multinational corporations and the governments. Their own suffering and that of their neighbors forcibly opened their eyes. The ruling class, the 1%-ers, were perceived responsible for provoking disasters, mishandling them, and profiteering from them. The 99% of ordinary folk on the land and in the towns were increasingly disaffected and held in check only by pro-system media propaganda and ultimately by security forces, which included hi-tech surveillance of whole populations and persecution of journalists,​ whistle-blowers and agitators. +
-  +
-=== “Heaven in Hell” – Mutual Aid and the Eros Effect === +
-  +
-Whether under conditions of famine, epidemic, flooding, fire or drought, when disasters struck, ordinary people all over the world reacted more or less the same way: by showing compassion and helping each other, neighbors and strangers joining together to save what could be saved. ​ Almost everywhere, informal networks spontaneous sprung up providing food, shelter, medical assistance, transportation. Acting locally in response to immediate needs, neighbors appropriated whatever materials necessary to save lives, feed the children and care for the injured. +
-  +
-An ethos of mutual aid and solidarity, charity and human decency, caring and sharing emerged in almost every disaster community. Networks formed between communities as aid flowed in from the outside. Individuals who did not see themselves as particularly courageous or generous, found themselves taking enormous risks to save the lives of stranger. People emerged from their previous isolation and felt themselves part of a community, no longer alone, protecting and protected. Common suffering and common struggle created powerful bonds among previous strangers. They discovered new strengths and capacities within themselves, and shed their guilts and inhibitions. Together, they felt a sort of exultation, a sense that their lives had a meaningful purpose, a kind of joy in the midst of sorry and struggle. +
-  +
-This contageous exaltation, as has been observed throughout history during revolutionary periods. Karl Marx, writing about the Communards of revolutionary Paris in 1871: [“storming the heavens, forgetful of…” FIND QUOTE] The classic French sociologist Emile Durkheim called it “collective effervescence.”+
  
-This effervescence ​not only spreads through communities ​but jumps from one community ​to others across national ​and cultural boundries. In the wake of the international wave of radical uprisings ​of 1968, the contemporary historian George Katsiaficusdubbed this phenomenon ​(borrowing ​phrase ​from Marcuse) “the ​Eros Effect.” [insert quote] In 2009, the writer/​activist Rebecca Solnet published ​book whose title prefigured ​the dominant ​social ​phenomenon ​of the Great Collapse and of our own surviving ​societies: A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disasters+//​Introduction//:​ The Great Collapse, as you already know, was not a single event, ​but rather a concatenation and culmination of a number of intersecting crises: including an energy crisis, a climate crisis, an ecological crisis, a refugee crisis, a financial crisis, a food crisis, myriad social crises, and crises of inequality, government legitimacy, continuous wars, nuclear proliferation - all rapidly reaching their limits. Disasters and catastrophes abounded, each aggravating the others. There were unprecedently violent tornados, widespread wildfires and floods, nuclear accidents, food and energy shortages. Climate refugees fled zones of flood, fire and unliveably hot temperatures,​ carrying with them epidemic diseases which spread among the inhabitants of more clement zones and became pandemic. Famine weakened the resistance to disease of entire populations,​ while blatant inequality between rich and poor aggravated tensions.  
-  + 
-[Develop here the reversal ​of accepted wisdom: ​that humans ​are basically competitiveegotistical ​and mean/ Quote Kropotkens Mutual Aid as the key to Evolution ​and Pablo Servigne ​the Collapsologist ​on the same subjectDevelop examples narratives ​of Mutual Aid in disaster.] +Global warming, the result of carbon-capitalism’s accelerating injection of greenhouse gases into the earth’s atmosphere, was approaching an irreversible tipping point. Had it continued for another decade, we would not be here now, students and teachers, studying our planet’s history while at the same time struggling with all our collective energies to survive the results and mitigate the damage. A struggle you were born into and know will last for centuries. 
-  + 
-Develop how the pre-Collapse work of ecologists developing new forms of permaculture ​and the gains of the Green New Deal both were important ​for laying ​the groundwork ​for future transformationGive them full credit.]+The Great Collapse marked the dividing line between Then and Now. It was the global crucible in which our cooperative,​ egalitarian,​ peaceful and democratic societies were forged. Although it entailed vast suffering and the deaths of billions of humans along with the extinction of many species, in hindsight we are obliged to look upon it as a “fortunate fall.” Not only did the Great Collapse prevent accelerating Climate Chaos from exploding into total apocalypse, it released the human powers of caring, solidarity and mutual aid from which today’s societies emerged. 
 + 
 +The global crash and collapse in the value of securities destabilized the international financial system. Fortunes in paper profits and fictitious capital vanished overnight, wiping out years of heedless, unregulated speculation. Banks closed their doors as crowds of depositors rushed to withdraw their savings. For want of credit (and of customers able to pay) factories and businesses closed their doors, provoking mass unemployment and a rapid decline in production. This collapse of capitalist production and trade did have one positive effect: carbon emissions fell back to pre-20th century levels for an extended period, long enough that mitigation efforts could get under way and fossil fuels could be phased out almost entirely. 
 + 
 +In many areas, basic services like electricity,​ water, and health care collapsed. National governments proved largely incapable or unwilling to provide disaster aid to the victims. Inequality, already severe, became starker as the rich retired behind the militarized walls of their gated communities or fled to their well-stocked and well-defended estates in isolated zones. States were reduced to their basic function in class society: armed repression, defending ​the status quo against opposition by oppressed populations or rival states (and proto-states). When governments did send troops to disaster areas, their assignment was to “preserve law and order” and “protect property” by shooting “looters” rather than to help the locals by providing food, shelter and medical aid. 
 + 
 +=== 2. Disaster Capitalism vs. Self-Help === 
 + 
 +This pattern had been observed as early as 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit the iconic American city of New Orleans, Louisiana. The storm had provoked disastrous flooding when the levees were overwhelmed by accumulated rainwater, and it was later revealed that poor planning on the part of corrupt local government and blunders by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were responsible.  
 + 
 +Immediately there were extensive reports of lootingviolence, shootings of rescue personnel, murder and rape, and snipers taking potshots at rescue helicopters. Reports circulated of gangs roving ​the cityshooting police officers and survivors. All of these reports were later proven false. Violence there was: racist violence on the part of white vigilante snipers who murdered at least 18 Black flood survivors. Ironically, instances of looting were later found out to have been carried out by a small number New Orleans Policemen ​(half of whom had fled the city as the storm approached).  
 + 
 +Meanwhile, the remaining survivors had been struggling, sometimes with considerable heroism, to help their neighbors, many of them elderly people stranded on the roofs of their flooded homes. Reported instances of "​looting"​ were in fact survivors scavenging necessary supplies such as food, water, clothing, and shelter. ​  
 + 
 +The arrival of the National Guard did little or nothing to aid the survivors while in effect criminalizing the survivors'​ own efforts at helping each other. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) proved ridiculously incompetent. During the recovery, under cover of the emergency, monied interests took control of the city’s reconstruction,​ driving poor and Black residents out of their historic neighborhoods,​ further gentrifying the historic French Quarter, and privatizing the school system and other public goods. 
 + 
 +By 2007, the journalist Naomi Klein had theorized this process of militarization followed by privatization as “Disaster Capitalism,​” and the tendency became more pronounced throughout the early 21st century as disasters became more frequent and governments more authoritarian. In 2010, for example, ​devastating earthquake had struck the already poor island country of Haiti. Although citizens and NGOs around the world immediately sent material and financial aid, the U.S. Army dominated the U.N.-sponsored mission, prioritized security, and turned away planes full of medical aid from the overburdened airport in order to bring in more soldiers and military equipment.  
 + 
 +Some of the soldiers arrived already infected with cholera and failed to contain their wastes, provoking an epidemic among the weakened, undernourished Haitians. Little was done to rebuild Haiti’s fragile infrastructure (housing, hospitals, roadsand financial aid was diverted into projects like a luxury hotel for aid workers. U.S. military occupation propped up the dictatorial,​ kleptocratic regime which had tyrannized Haiti for generations,​ tolerating the Tontons Macoutes death squads, outlawing the popular opposition, and frustrating the poor masses’ yearning for real democracy. Haitians'​ suffering became still worse in 2016 when Hurricane Matthew leveled entire communities and caused an upsurge in the ongoing cholera epidemic. 
 + 
 +During the Ebola epidemic in Africa in 2119, attacks on two treatment centers operated by Doctors Without Borders led the group to close them, and brought a scorching and highly unusual self-assessment by a Dr. Liu, who included her organization among those that had fallen short. She urged medical teams to treat Ebola patients ​as humans and not as a biothreat.” She blamed not the communities,​ but the responders, for failing to win people’s trustLocal residents "hear constant advice to wash their hands, but nothing about the lack of soap and water,” Dr. Liu said. “They see their relatives sprayed with chlorine and wrapped in plastic bagsburied without ceremony. Then they see their possessions burned.” 
 + 
 +Another physician from Doctors Without Borders, Dr. Vinh-Kim Nguyen, wrote: “Early in the epidemic, we witnessed armed agents forcibly bringing patients in for treatment. In population already traumatized by violence and forceful responses to numerous crises, such tactics fuel distrust of responders, which prompts patients to flee and spawns violence.” Dr. Nguyen also noted that when Ebola teams were accompanied by security forces, they were met with fear and distrust, especially of forced vaccination. But when the security forces were absent, people would actually ask to be vaccinated. “The lesson is clear: Guns and public health don’t mix,” he wrote. But the lesson was never learned by governments. 
 + 
 +Many other examples could be cited as this pattern persisted through the next decades. Observing generalized government incompetence,​ brutality, corruption and indifference to their suffering, great masses people around the world began to lose faith in authority - all the more as evidence mounted of governmental responsibility for and complicity in provoking disasters. Such revelations spread widely and quickly across ​social ​media on the Internet. (Since the Internet was originally designed to permit the U.S. military to maintain communications in case of war and mass destruction,​ it actually remained largely operational throughout ​the Great Collapse.) 
 + 
 +The Great Pandemic, which eventually wiped out over a billion people, was widely blamed on the U.S. when it was discovered that the CIA had been testing an experimental virus in Africa. Apparently a few of the victims escaped ​and the virus spread, while the authorities conspired to cover it up until it was too late. This phenomenon reminded contemporary commentators ​of the AIDS tragedy, which in the late 20th century ravaged millions while media, medical and government elites remained indifferent. That epidemic eventually led to the self-organization of the Gay community, unleashing a powerful social force. //(We are fortunate in having among our Future Historians Sam Friedman, who, at a spry 180, is both a social epidemiologist and a poet, to help us elaborate this particular scenario.)//​ In any case, under the then-operative market system, there was little incentive for pharmaceutical companies, which spent billions annually lobbying to preserve their monopolies, to invest in research on epidemic diseases, which mainly affected poor people who could seldom afford the cost of patented remedies. Research concentrated instead on sexual enhancement,​ esthetic improvement,​ longevity, and transhuman devices sold to the rich at a profit at inflated prices. 
 + 
 +The pandemics were a catastrophe of planetary proportions. In their wake, famine also developed into a planet-wide catastrophe,​ and this ultimately led to a planetary response. Sporadic, local food riots gave rise to cooperative self-organization against agribusiness monopolies that hoarded and speculated while people starved. Debt strikes (instead of suicides) broke out among peasants ruined by the need to buy seeds from corporate monopolies and barred from using their own seeds as peasants had done for millennia. Industrial farmers too had been driven to bankruptcy and suicide by the high cost of petroleum-based fertilizers,​ pesticides and other chemical inputs. Monsanto was attacked and shunned, money-lenders were rooted out.  
 + 
 +In less than two decades, between pandemics and famines, the world population of 8 billion humans was, according to our best estimates, reduced by more than one-half. One result of the horrific die-off was that unemployment,​ the Iron Law of capitalist economics, fell nearly to zero for an extended period - for the first time in the Industrial Age. The scarcity of labor put working people at a relative advantage in dealing with their employers, encouraging them to demand better wages and conditions; to struggle and to win as they grew more aware of their strength.  
 + 
 +Historians noted that a similar phenomenon had taken place at the close of the Middle Ages, when the Black Death wiped out large swathes of the European population. In the aftermath, peasants gained the upper hand against feudal landowners and forced an end to serfdom in the north and west of Europe. Although some of the more dramatic peasant revolts, such as that Wat Tylor and John Ball in England, were put down, the overall result was a major weakening of landlord power and a temporary flourishing of peasant communities among those who had survived the plague. Ruling elites later resorted to enclosure of common lands and witch-hunts to break the power of the peasantry and especially that of women; these in turn facilitated the rise of capitalism, a new form of oppression. 
 + 
 +Pandemics, famines and other catastrophes began to be seen by the victims as the responsibility of the powerful, the rich, the multinational corporations and the governments. Their own suffering and that of their neighbors forcibly opened their eyes. The ruling classes, the 1%-ers, were perceived as responsible for provoking disasters, mishandling them, and profiteering from them. Worldwide, the 99% of ordinary folk on the land and in the towns and cities were increasingly disaffected and held in check only by pro-system media propaganda and ultimately by security forces, which made use of high-tech surveillance of entire populations along with the persecution of journalists,​ whistle-blowers,​ and agitators.  
 + 
 +There was increasing tension, indeed conflict, between the attempts at self-help, self-organization,​ and mutual aid that recurrently accompanied the outbreak of disaster situations, and the conduct of the military and civil authorities that imposed themselves by violence, often hampering rescue and reconstruction efforts, and everywhere imposed the interests of private property to the detriment of human rights, indeed of human survival. ​  
 + 
 +This glaring contradiction transformed every catastrophe into a struggle not only against suffering but against authority. Despite government and commercial censorship and propaganda, the evidence of this contradiction circulated through Internet platforms and alternate media and became part of planetary consciousness,​ paving the way for the eventual emergence of a global uprising of the billions against the billionaires of sufficient strength to overwhelm them and their paid mercenaries and lay the basis for new, democratic, egalitarian ​societies ​to arise among the wreckage of the old. 
 + 
 +=== 3. Didn’t They See Collapse Coming? === 
 + 
 +Why did the Great Collapse take so many people by surprise? Although academic specialists ​in various fields like climatology,​ geology, economics, agriculture,​ sociology, politics and even finance (a few old Marxist critics) were warning about impending crises ranging from over-leveraged financial bubbles, to melting icecaps, rising oceans, extinction of coral reefs, peak oil, inequality, global conflicts, homeless refugees, ethnic strife and famines, there was little interdisciplinary study of the myriad ways in which each of these crises would interact with, and frequently aggravate, each other.  
 + 
 +The planetary consciousness that humanity was dealing with the crisis of a complex, interconnected system only dawned slowly. Around 2000, the term “Anthropocene” began to be used to mark a new geological epoch in which human activity had begun to have adverse consequences on the entire earth system - above all on the atmosphere, such that mounting levels of carbon dioxide from the worldwide burning of fossil fuels threatened to touch off uncontrolled heating of the planet to levels incompatible with human life. But the term “Collapsology” – the study of the interaction of collapsing systems in various fields – did not come into usage until about 2015
 + 
 +Nonetheless,​ by the early 21st century, most of informed world opinion was aware of the impending climate chaos due to growing carbon emissions, despite the massive denial campaign of petroleum lobbies and the governments they controlled. World conferences were held, pious resolutions to voluntarily reduce carbon emissions were endorsed by all nations (with the exception of the biggest polluter, the U.S. under the Trump administration). But carbon emissions continued to rise every year, and few effective measures were taken despite the near-unanimous predictions of climatologists and increasing agitation among citizens’ groups - above all, starting in 2019, strikes and mobilizations of school-age children and youth outraged at what they judged as the criminal indifference on the part of older generations. 
 + 
 +As early as the 1970s, scientists working for the petroleum giant Exxon had been warning management in private memos about global warming. The scientists’ modeling correctly predicted ​that if oil and gas consumption continued to increase it would eventually lead to climate chaos. Their predictions were ignored and their research was suppressed for decades, only becoming known in 2010, thanks to the nonprofit organization Inside Climate News. 
 + 
 +As the editors of //The Wall Street Journal// commented at the time: “More damagingly, the company set a model for the rest of the industry. Today, scientists who say the exact same thing are ridiculed in the business community. Exxon, rather than change its business plan, chose the path of disinformationdenial ​and delay – just like the tobacco industry faced with the evidence of cancer.” 
 + 
 +But the petroleum interests were to prove far more powerful than the tobacco lobby. They dominated a number of authoritarian,​ kleptocratic petro-states from Saudia Arabia to Russia. They also strongly influenced the U.S. and NATO governments,​ dictating foreign policy including military action to protect the oil giants’ overseas interests. They were at the nexus of the “military-industrial-complex” – the “deep state” of U.S. imperialism. Thanks ​to their predominance over other economic sectors (like manufacturing ​and retailing), they continued to benefit from huge government subsidies and arcane tax privileges, all the while reaping fabulous profits.  
 + 
 +The Big Lie of the half-century 1970-2020 was the denial of Anthropogenic (human-generated) Climate Disruption (ACD). This big lie was propagated by the fossil fuel industry, whose profits, indeed whose very existence, were immediately threatened, if the truth should come to light and be acted upon.  Having dismissed their own truthful scientists, Big Oil hired bogus “climate specialists” to undermine fast-accumulating reports by commissions of highly respected scientists. Carbon corporations had also long dominated the media through “sponsoring” and pre-censoring radio and TV shows through commercials. The fabricated “controversy” over ACD permitted governments to continue to claim that the danger was still unproven. 
 + 
 +So although by the early 21st century the visible effects of global warming (droughts, floods, forest fires, melting icecaps and glaciers, rising seas) could no longer be hidden, ruling elites by and large stuck to the Big Lie that global warming and catastrophic climate change were unproven. Indeed, some claimed that it was a myth cooked up by a conspiracy of liberals, left-wing scientists and/or the Chinese. Although the climatic tipping point was known to be a life and death, existential question for the future of humanity, the evidence of independent scientists was not taken seriously enough, and their conclusions were given lip service at best by world leaders. Instead, in the name of “economic growth,” they continued to enable more fossil fuel production, to stall on implementing even the feeblest attempts to limit it (e.g. the Paris agreement), and to fight bloody wars over the domination ​of petroleum-rich countries ​in the Middle East and elsewhere.  
 + 
 +As Adolf Hitler asserted in //Mein Kampf//: “The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.” The “conspiracy of expert liars” in the case of climate change included the petroleum corporations,​ the governments and the mainstream press who had been suppressing or obfuscating the truth – although the facts had been “nailed down” for over half a century.  
 + 
 +Like Hitler’s Big Lie about the responsibility of the Jews for Germany’s humiliating defeat in WWI, big petroleum’s climate denial lie was backed up by bullies who intimidated potential truth tellers. For example, under capitalism the geology departments of the major research universities were largely funded by petroleum money, and so professors were hardly encouraged to speak out on the necessity to stop burning oil if they who wanted to keep their jobs and their grants. Similarly the major media, dependent on advertising revenues from petroleum and related industries (auto, highway construction,​ agrobusiness,​ shipping), were roped into the climate-denial “conspiracy ​of expert liars.” So it is hardly an accident that although in the early 21st century weather reporting filled up more than 20% of news broadcast time in the U.S., TV “meteorologists” avoided such tainted “politicized” expressions as “global warming” ​and the “greenhouse effect” and devoted almost no air time to the causes ​of the increasing climate chaos whose consequences they were describing.  
 + 
 +As for the U.S. government, oil states continued to dominate Congress, and the White House had been controlled by oilmen since at least LBJ (1963). In 2017 Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson was named President Trump’s first Secretary of State, and Oklahoma oil-lobbyist Scott Pruitt ruled the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt, who made his career as a paid “expert liar” ​for the oil companies and who was apparently not very bright, apparently actually believed climate denial, and so he once naively proposed a “public debate” on the forbidden topicPruitt’s great idea was promptly quashed by the Trump White House, as such a public debate would have been a “damaging spectacle, creating an unnecessary distraction from the steps the administration had taken to slash environmental regulations.” ​ Any such public debate would inevitably have implicated the military, a major consumer of petroleum, whose primary mission had long been to protect (and if possible expand) U.S. petroleum interests around the world and whose massive budget depended on serving the global interests of the petroleum lobby. 
 + 
 +=== 4. What Was It about Oil? === 
 +   
 +Why did these powerful leaders, special interests, and institutions conspire to lead the planet to self-destruction by any means necessary, including war and fake news? Alas, there is only one possible answer to this question: to preserve the wealth and power of that fraction of the capitalist 1%-ers whose wealth was tied up in carbon deposits beneath the soil.
    
-=== Dual Power === +Why, since they were so rich and powerful, didn’t they ever reverse the course of denial ​and domination they chose in the 70s and invest their capital ​in renewable energy sources? The answer is that their vast wealth took the form of fossil minerals ​in the groundwhose value could only be realized when they were burned. At the pump a gallon ​of gas may have been worth two or three dollars, but in the ground it was  worthless. As with all commodities under capitalism, ​the value of carbon deposits was based on what financiers called “futures” – the expected price they would bring when brought ​to market at some future timeIf governments had made the decision to save the planet by converting to renewable energy before it was too late, that “future time” of sales and profits would never have come. The buried minerals would have become what economists called “stranded assets.” Their monetary value, on which the wealth ​and power of the petroleum corporations depended, would rapidly have sunk and with it the price of petroleum shares. Petroleum shareholders would soon have been as broke as the owners of buggy whip factories the year after Ford introduced the Model T. 
-  +
-Transport workers commandeered trains ​and trucks to help move it. Then governments ​and the powerful would intervene violently with ‘aid’ in the form of armed repression as in Haïtito defend ​the private property ​of the rich and prevent ​the people from appropriating ​the resources necessary ​to survive. +
-  +
-Conflict ​and dual power developed [SECTION TO DEVELOP] +
-  +
-=== Mutiny ===+
  
-But the majority of security forces ​were recruited from the ranks of the massesunderpaid ​and mistreated ​by their officersordered ​to kill their own kind in order to protect ​the property ​of the absentee owners ​of sweatshops ​and luxury appartments.+Naturally ​the carbon interests ​were desperate. For them – and for the military industrial complex which they dominated – there was no turning back. They could only go forward into increased petroleum production, taking their profits at once while leading the rest of the world like lemmings over the cliff of climate catastrophe. From a business point of viewthey could have no thought for the human future. Only for petroleum futures. Hence the need to keep repeating the same Big Lie of climate denial.  
 + 
 +The Petroleum lobby was able to dominate the world not only because oil (and coal of course) was indispensable for transportation and industry, it also dominated the plastics industry (polluting the oceans with indestructible plastic bags and other such waste) and, most fatally, agriculture. For the industrial agriculture that produced more than half of the world’s food supply in the early 21st century was totally dependent on petroleum-based fertilizers,​ having turned the exhausted soil into a container for ‘inputs’ (fertilizer,​ chemical insecticides,​ pesticides) spread ​by gigantic petroleum-powered farm machinery.  
 + 
 +The petroleum lobby was thus intimately linked with the agro-chemical industrywhich produced the pesticides, developed genetically-modified seeds, and which through the enforcement of “intellectual property” rights created a monopoly of seed stocks, which for thousands of years had been set aside by peasant from their harvests to plant for the following year's crop. Monsanto and other such companies sent scientists to gather the native knowledge of peasant farmers around the world and then patented these seeds to prevent ​their original possessors from planting them without buying them from the Corporation! So that under patent laws adopted by government they lobbied, it became a crime to plant your own seeds on your own land. 
 + 
 +=== 5. Feeding the World === 
 + 
 +Fortunately for our survival, petroleum-based industrial agriculture only produced half what people ate. The rest of the world, the so-called “underdeveloped” world, was still largely dependent on peasant agriculture,​ mostly carried on by women, who cultivated the land, fed their families, and brought the rest of their produce to local market-places. Moreover, ​in the industrialized countries, aware consumers had begun rejecting the bland, fattening, unhealthy commercial diets, creating a market for so-called “organic,​” untreated food. At the same time, there were movements among young people to go back to the land, become farmers using organic methods, and distribute their produce through non-commercial networks and consumer cooperatives. In China as well, where famine had been chronic throughout every dynasty including that of Mao Tse-tung, desert lands were being brought back to life through ​the use of Permaculture methods. 
 + 
 +Slowly but surely, despite the cut-throat competition of billionaire supermarket corporations which purchased vegetables cheaply at wholesale markets ​and resold them at ten times the cost, the so-called “slow food” and and “buy local” networks continued to grow. These networks, and the surviving traditional peasant farms, laid the groundwork for the food system we have today. For with the collapse of the petroleum and chemical-based globalized industrial agricultural and distribution system, humanity was able to build on that basis in the face of global famine. 
 +But why was there famine in a world where in a country like the U.S., half the food purchased ended up as garbage? ​ Why hunger in poor countries where food was produced and exported in great quantities?​ 
 + 
 +[Here we summarize the arguments of Frances Moore Lappé’s “10 questions about world hunger” transformed into the past. We then borrow texts describing today’s (2019) efforts at permaculture,​ local food, etc and extrapolate. We give this movement full historical credit for setting the example and laying the groundwork under capitalism, spreading its methods as the crisis deepened, and in a position to transform itself into a new global way of feeding humanity in the crucible of the Great Collapse] 
 + 
 +A hungry world fell back into mixed peasant agriculture,​ organic, permaculture and multi-crop farming began developing all over, from traditional peasant lands to urban gardens. Paradoxically,​ fewer acres under intensive cultivation began producing larger quantities and variety of foodstuffs than monocrop industrial methods on huge farms. The supermarkets,​ having been systematically looted, were razed. Their parking lots were dug up and transformed back into farmland. ​ The countryside and villages began repopulating,​ as much more intensive human labor was required in agriculture. Animal traction replaced oversized petroleum-driven machinery, and animal waste (as well as human) replaced petroleum products as fertilizer. 
 + 
 +=== 6. The Paradox of Petroleum: Peak Oil and Debt Slavery === 
 + 
 +[Summary to be developed]: Geologists estimate that what was known in the 21st century as "peak oil" had been reached by about 2007. By then, half of the known, easily accessible petroleum deposits in the world had already been used up in the frenzied race for industrial growth. This meant that each new barrel of oil would, over time, cost increasingly more to produce, using unconvential methods of extraction such as refining oil sands, fracking shale oil, and drilling in the deep ocean. All of these entailed enormous damage to the natural and built environments.  
 + 
 +Setting aside huge costs which the oil companies, protected by government “regulation” were able to “externalize” (and which we are still struggling to restore), the net result of peak oil was rising costs, so that it required more and more energy to recover and refine each new barrel, thus making petroleum-based sources more costly than non-polluting sources like wind and sun. But wind and sun are free, while the wealth and power of the Petroleum/​Military/​Industrial/​Agrobiz complex depended on a near-monopoly on energy extraction and distribution. So as the world heated up, capitalist governments continued to subsidize oil instead of cheaper ecological alternatives.
    
-The national ​guard and other constabulary ​would be ordered to repress and kill in defense of a hated system which was seeming ​to start crumbling. Their loves and relatives were among those they were ordred ​to repress, and they also feared being murdered in revenge. They began first to look away or play dumb and finally to go over to the side of the community and pitch in with disaster aid and relief, keeping their weapons and access to materialLocal national ​guards ​stood off against government enforcers, creating a standoff situation where there was little actual violence+Rapidly, petroleum inputs became too costly for the profitable fertilization of small farms, and peasants became debt-slaves to the money-lenders and banks who represented Agrobiz. Even the massive factory farms linked with the vast international supermarket chains and petroleum-based transportation systems that delivered their products were affected. Competition forced them to keep their prices as low as possible, and many went bankrupt or were absorbed by their competitors. ​The fortunate side of this squeeze was that it gave the price and quality advantage to the networks of small, local, organic farms that were developing everywhere.  
-  + 
-A hungry world fell back into mixed peasant agricultureorganic, permaculture and multi-crop farming began developing all over, from traditional peasant lands to urban gardens. Paradoxially,​ fewer acres under intensive cultivation began producing larger quantities and variety ​of foodstuffs than monocrop industrial methods ​on huge farmsThe supermarketshaving been systematically lootedwere razed. Their parking lots were dug up and transformed back to into farm land The countryside and villages began repopulatingas much more intensive human labor was required in agriculture. Animal traction replaced oversized petroleum-driven machineryand animal waste (as well as human) replaced petroleum products as fertilizer.+=== 7. “Heaven in Hell”: Mutual Aid and the Eros Effect === 
 + 
 +Whether under conditions of famine, epidemic, flooding, fire or drought, when disasters struck, ordinary people all over the world generally reacted more or less the same way: by showing compassion and helping each other, neighbors and strangers joining together to save what could be saved. ​ Almost everywhere, informal networks spontaneously sprang up to provide food, shelter, medical assistance, and transportation. Acting locally in response to immediate needs, neighbors appropriated whatever materials were necessary to save lives, feed the children and care for the injured.  
 + 
 +An ethos of mutual aid and solidarity, charity and human decency, caring and sharing emerged in almost every disaster-stricken community. Networks formed between communities as aid flowed in from the outside. Individuals who did not see themselves as particularly courageous or generous found themselves taking enormous risks to save the lives of strangers. People emerged from their previous isolation and felt themselves part of a community, no longer alone, both protecting and protected. Common suffering and common struggle created powerful bonds among previous strangers. They discovered new strengths and capacities within themselves, and shed their guilt and inhibitions. Together, they felt a sort of exultation, a sense that their lives had a meaningful purpose, a kind of joy in the midst of sorrow and struggle.  
 + 
 +This contagious exaltation had been observed throughout history in revolutionary periods. During the European peasant wars of the 15th through 17th century and the 19th century Taiping Rebellion in China, it had taken the form of religious ecstasy. Karl Marx had described the Communards of revolutionary Paris in 1871: [“storming the heavens, careless of …” [Help CAN’T FIND QUOTE] ​ The classic French sociologist Emile Durkheim labeled this contagious feeling “collective effervescence.”  
 + 
 +This revolutionary effervescence showed itself capable not only of infecting individual communities but of leaping across ​national ​and cultural boundaries. The contagion of democratic revolutions of 1848, known as “the Springtime of nations,” had spread from Paris across all Europe within days, thanks to the new connectivity of the day: the telegraph and the railroad. And in 1968, in the wake of an international wave of radical uprisings, the contemporary historian George Katsiaficas dubbed this phenomenon (borrowing a phrase from Herbert Marcuse) “the Eros Effect.” [insert quote] In 2009, the writer/​activist Rebecca Solnit published a book whose title prefigured the dominant social phenomenon of the Great Collapse and the nature of our own surviving societies: //A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disasters//​. 
 + 
 +[Develop here the reversal of accepted wisdom that humans are basically competitive,​ egotistical and mean - law of jungle lie to bolster capitalism’s inhumanity. Show how Darwin’s ideas of natural selection were distorted by Huxley and especially Spencer, to stress competition and reinforce the negative view of human nature propounded by Hobbes and the atomized economic individual of Locke at the beginning of the modern era. Then quote Kropotkin’s //Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution//​. Modern 21st century biological research now proves him right, with discoveries of complexity, interrelation and mutual support of every organism from bacteria and mushrooms to trees and humans. Quote from work of Pablo Servigne the Collapsologist on the same subject. Develop examples narratives of Mutual Aid in disasters.] 
 + 
 +Workers were still doing their jobs in emergency situations to help others live, land was taken over and cultivated, available food was distributed. Stockholders’ interests, corporate profits, and the stock market itself were things of the past. Who would bet his wealth on a dead horse? Who would bet his life on a collapsing system? 
 + 
 +Split in ruling classes. Many decent technicians,​ officers, engineers and managers broke ranks with their their peers and joined in as volunteers in disaster relief, bringing with them their skills and experience. Likewise, firefighters and medical personnel pitched in with the communities they lived in, and no longer respected the official hierarchies. 
 + 
 +=== 8. Dual Power === 
 + 
 +[Needs much development] 
 + 
 +Transport workers commandeered trains and trucks to help move people out of and relief supplies and personnel into disaster zones. Communities spontaneously requisitioned and took over resources needed for disaster aid.  
 + 
 +Then governments and the powerful would intervene violently with ‘aid’ in the form of armed repression as in New Orleans and Haiti, to defend the private property of the rich and prevent the people from appropriating the resources necessary to survive. 
 + 
 +Conflict and dual power developed [SECTION TO DEVELOP BELOW: dual power. Develop how the pre-Collapse work of ecologists developing new forms of permaculture and the gains of the Green New Deal both were important for laying the groundwork for future transformation. Give them full credit.] 
 + 
 +Money was no longer the issue, since the global financial collapse. The value of stock certificates and money itself were blown away in the general panic. Middle-class people had run to withdraw their savings and found the bank doors closed. Over-extended banks and other highly leveraged financial institutions found themselves bankrupt and collapsed. 
 + 
 +The 1% had nothing left to defend their wealth but the loyalty of their own servants and security personnel, who were increasingly reluctant to risk their lives and kill their countrymen and women for worthless money and uncertain prospects. The majority of security forces had been recruited from the ranks of the masses, underpaid and mistreated by their officers, ordered to kill their own kind in order to protect the property of the absentee owners of sweatshops and luxury apartments.  
 + 
 +[What about countries like Egypt with mass armies of poorly-paid,​ uneducated, peasant soldiers, where the officers as a group owned large amounts of the country’s wealth.] 
 + 
 +The national guards ​and other constabularies ​would be ordered to repress and kill in defense of a hated system which was beginning ​to crumble. Their loved ones and relatives were among those they were ordered ​to repress, and they also feared being murdered in revenge. They began first to look away or play dumb and finally to go over to the side of the community. They went over as whole units, for the soldiers understood that if only a few of them mutinied, they would be found and shot. Soldiers assemblies allied themselves to community assemblies. They would pitch in with disaster aid and relief, ​while keeping their weapons and access to military materiel 
 + 
 +Soon self-organized militias and local national ​guard units defending their own communities ​stood off against ​mercenaries and elite units of government enforcers, creating a temporary stalemate in which there was little actual violence, ​given the inevitable consequences ​of deaths ​on both sidesIn such situationsgroups of unarmed women might intervene, approach the government troops, and try to win them overWith the exception of elite unitshigh-paid mercenary specialistsfanatical ideological militias, they were often successful. 
 + 
 +=== Notes ===
  
-See also Sam Friedman'​s contribution[[friedman-noah|The Fable of Noah We!]].+What about geoengineering?​ Under such circumstancesbut only if under the control ​of a planetary federation of democratic, egalitarian communities and on the advice of the best scientists, some forms of geoengineering would inevitably be discussed (starting with planting trees) and might be effectiveCan we imagine ways in which certain techniques might be tested?
  
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catastrophes.1552149647.txt.gz · Last modified: 2019/03/09 11:40 by Richard Greeman