Are we seeing the beginning of the end of this global civilisation?

Why is global civilisation likely to fail?

1. Addicted to cheap energy Tens of thousands of years ago mankind's energy came from the food we ate. With the domestication of animals, we harnessed the energy in the food that our domestic animals ate and at about the same time we discovered fire and were able to use the heat from burning wood to warm ourselves and cook our food. From about the twelfth century we progressively harnessed an increasing amount of energy from wind and flowing water; then, in the nineteenth century we started using steam engines to enable us to use the energy stored in fossil fuels. From then the price of energy has more-or-less steadily fallen and our consumption steadily increased. "All the energy in crops grown today–along with plants consumed by livestock and trees harvested for pulp, paper and other wood products–comes to roughly 180 Exajoules, or about 20 percent of world energy consumption." Scientific American, p45, August 2011. Mining requires large quantities of petroleum and will therefore slow as petroleum prices rise; even if coal is seen as a substitute for petroleum (at the cost of higher rates of greenhouse carbon dioxide production) the cost of mining the coal will be higher in the future. Modern farming is energy intensive, because of the machinery used and the heavy use of fertilizer, the manufacture of which is also energy intensive. The energy cost of food packaging, preparation, transporting foods long distances is also very high. Scientific American (January 2012) estimated the energy consumption of the food industry as percentages of the total U.S. energy budget: U.S. Energy Budget Spent on Food Food packaging, preparation, refrigeration, handling, sales and service 5% Agriculture 2% Food transportation 2% Food processing and manufacturing 1% The same article stated that ten times the fossil-fuel energy goes into foods grown in the USA as is available from those foods. The declining supply of petroleum will force food prices up.

   We are running out of petroleum, the evidence is suggesting that peak petroleum production has past, yet governments and industry are taking little action.
   
   
2. With declining petroleum supplies cheap energy is finished. With the end of cheap energy will come the end of cheap mining. The world's richest shallow mineral deposites have been mined-out. The deposites that are being mined now are generally deeper and/or less concentrated. They therefore require more energy to mine than shallow, highly concentrated, deposites.
   
   
3. Climate change will cause massive disruption, environmental disasters, mass migrations and wars; yet not a single government is doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas production; most are doing next to nothing. For every one degree Celsius rise of temperature above the norm, wheat, rice and corn yields fall by 10 percent (Scientific American, May 2009). Yet denial of climate change abounds.
   
   
4. Water supplies are coming under increasing pressure. More and more water is needed to maintain agricultural production, but most of the world's water resources are already over-exploited.
   
   
5. While world population continues to rise world food production seems to have peaked and be on the decline. This decline will accelerate as fertiliser prices rise with shrinking petroleum supplies and more land is used for energy production to replace the petroleum that is going to be harder to get and the coal that we must try not to burn.
   
   
6. Population growth has stopped in China and the Developed nations. This had to happen some time, but it has resulted in several forms of disruption: aging populations having to be supported by a diminishing work force in the West, and a gender inequality in China, among others.
   
   
7. An increasing number of states seem likely to fail; perhaps because of reduced access to food, increasing corruption and the rise of fundamentalist Islam in states with Muslim majorities or substantial Muslim minorities.
   
   
8. There is an increasing gap between rich and poor in most of the world. This is resulting in an increasing level of disillusionment among the poor, which, in turn, is leading to a less cohesive and stable society (consider, for example, the riots in the UK in August 2011). No governments seem willing or able to reverse the trend in financial inequality.
   
   
9. The ultimate cause for the failure of this civilisation is the dominance of short-term, emotionally-based and ill-informed decision making. Science and technology has given humanity power over our environment, but humans are driven largely by emotions. At a time when rationallity and an understanding of science and the knowledge that science has made available to us is increasingly essential, the majority of the world's people seem to be turning to religion and other superstitions and away from science, ignorance seems to be increasing.

Our civilisation is unsustainable

1. Habitats are being destroyed at record rates.
   
   
2. Wild foods, especially fish stocks, are being destroyed; trawling is damaging the sea-bed.
   
   
3. Biodiversity is being lost at record rates.
   
   
4. The area of land available for food production, and the remaining land's productivity, is decreasing due to:
   • Soil lost to erosion;
   • Fertility lost following declining levels of plant nutrients and soil carbon;
   • Soil productivity is being destroyed by salinisation due to the build-up of natural salts from irrigation water and reclaimed sewage water;
   • Land is being taken out of production for the construction of housing and roads, etc.
   • Productivity in a number of areas is declining because of declining rainfall (with climate change), in some areas previously productive land is turning to desert;
   • Coastal land is being lost due to rising sea levels, this is particularly important in the world's great river deltas (which have some of the world's most furtile land);
   • Land-use is being changed from food production to fuel production.
   
   
5. Our civilisation is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, particularly petroleum, yet the supply is declining.
   
   
6. Fresh water resources are greatly over-committed, and in many areas are declining due to climate change. Water is being drawn from many of the world's major aquifers at rates much greater than they are being recharged by natural processes; many are failing or will begin failing in the near future. Much of the world's food production depends on irrigation, but the water available for irrigation is decreasing.
   
   
7. Humanity is approaching the 'photosynthetic ceiling'. Soon there will be little photosynthetic capacity on earth that is not dedicated to man's direct use.
   
   
8. A huge range of chemicals are being released into natural environments with unknown long-term effects.
   
   
9. Alien species: weeds, pests and pathogens that humanity has spread around the world are having a steadily increasing effect.
   
   
10. Problems due to climate change:
    • Rising ocean temperatures are causing coral reefs to die, sea ice to melt and sea levels to rise.
    • Rising temperatures on land are causing declines in agricultural productivity.
    • Mountain glaciers are retreating; this is particularly serious for those rivers that have their sources in the Himalayas and are heavily relied upon for irrigation in South and East Asia.
    • Positive feed-back effects are beginning, for example the release of methane from arctic permafrost and the decline in snow and ice cover will increase the greenhouse effect.
    
    
11. World population continues to rise, especially steeply in many poorer states.
    
    

12. Economists and governments still believe that a growing economy is the only healthy economy, while the absurdity of this argument is obvious to anyone capable of seeing that one finite planet is incompatible with permanent exponential growth.

    The environmental impact of the average person is increasing, due to rising living standards. For example, people with more money to spend are demanding more meat, the production of which is more environmentally expensive than vegetable-based foods.
    
    
13. The oceans are becoming more acidic (their pH is falling) due to increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (with climate change). This is detrimental to all those oceanic invertebrates that have calcium carbonate skeletons, such as corals, molluscs and many planktonic species.
    
    
14. Forest is being cleared and not replaced. (Diamond was well aware of this problem, but did not include it, as an individual item, in his dozen.)
    
    

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15. Modern mechanised agriculture requires large quantities of cheap (petroleum) fuel; in some cases the energy in the crops produced is little greater than the energy consumed to raise the crops. To be sustainable agriculture must produce crops containing far more available energy than is consumed in the total production process. (See energy return on investment.)
    
    

16. Morocco has control of about 40% of global phosphate reserves. Most of this phosphate is actually in Western Sahara, a nation that was annexed by Morocco in, I think, the 1990s. The UN has made efforts to allow the Sahrawis a referendum on the sovereignty of Western Sahara, but the Moroccan government is not moving. Morocco has a poor record on human rights. China has the second largest phosphate reserves on earth and just as poor a record on human rights as does Morocco.

    Phosphate supplies for the production of fertiliser are running out. Phosphorus is one of the three most important plant nutrients; without phosphorus fertilisers the "Green Revolution" in agriculture would not have been possible. Scientific American (June 2009) called the world's phosphate supply "a looming crisis" and said that if action is not taken now "future agriculture will collapse".
    
    
17. The populations of most countries are aging. Apart from the aged, the proportion of the populations of Western nations in particular who are incapable of, or unwilling to, work is increasing (single mothers, disabled, unemployable, etc.) This is placing an increasing load on the shrinking proportion of the population that has to support the economies.
    
    
18. Superstitions and fundamentalist religions, particularly Islam, are gaining an increasing grip on the world's people at a time when what is needed is a carefully thought-out and reasoned response to the problems listed here. How many people are expecting a non-existent god to fix all our problems rather than taking action themselves?
    
    
19. Pollinating insects are in decline. Honeybees, in particular, are suffering badly in many countries from colony collapse disorder. (While the cause of CCD is not fully known, it seems to be due to "multiple factors [that] interact to weaken the hives, making them susceptible to a range of pathogens and viruses." [New Internationalist, Sept. 2009]) Some of the causes of the decline of pollinating insects are: the clearing of native vegetation, with its enormous variety of flowering species; monoculture agriculture, which all flowers at the same time resulting if feasts alternating with famines for the insects; and widespread use of agricultural chemicals, insecticides in particular. Without the pollinating insects, many plants are less able, or unable, to reproduce.
    
    
20. Man is now artificially producing more nitrates (as fertilisers) than are produced naturally, with the result that the natural nitrogen cycle has become unbalanced. Nitrates and phosphate being washed off farmland and from sewage are causing algal blooms and consequent 'dead zones' in the coastal waters of many parts of the world.
    
    
21. The present careless use of antibiotics is causing micro-organisms to develop resistance. Antibiotics are, for example, routinely added to some animal feeds because it produces slightly faster growth rates.
    
    
22. The ozone layer that protects the earth's surface from damaging ultra-violet light has been damaged. Production of the worst of the gasses that have caused most ozone loss have been controlled by the Montreal Protocol, and there is cause for optimism; but no room for complacency.
    
    

23. People with access to enough land to significantly supplement their needs will do so, but modern city and suburban blocks are so small that their owners will not have this option.

    Our mega-cities are not compatible with a declining supply of petroleum. Carting food and other materials from where they are produced into cities, and carting wastes out, requires a lot of fuel. As the loss of petroleum makes our present form of mechanised agriculture less viable and as food prices rise due to shortages, more labour will be required to maximise food production; that labour is living in the wrong place at present. Modern cities and suburbs have been developed to suit the private car.
    
    
24. The private car, as it is, is incompatible with declining petroleum supplies and the need to reduce greenhouse gas production; its use must be greatly reduced if societies are to become sustainable, but there is no indication of reduction as of 2009. Changing to electric vehicles of similar power to current petroleum-fuelled models will no much help, going to much lower-powered and lighter vehicles might be viable.
    
    
25. We are travelling too quickly. The speeds that we travel at present in cars, aeroplanes, and probably even high-speed trains is unsustainable because we are approaching the end of oil and producing too much of several greenhouse gasses. Energy is about to become much more expensive, both in financial and environmental terms, and we are going to have to learn to use it more economically and rationally.
    
    
26. The gap between rich and poor is widening. Even in the great democracies, the wealthy are gathering to themselves a steadily increasing share of political power (by controlling who gets into government and then controlling what those in power do – consider the lack of government action on climate change while the great majority of informed voters want action), leaving a declining amount of power to the less well-off. As in the past, a point will be reached at which those near the bottom of the heap will demand a more balanced spread of wealth and power.