Impending collapse

At the middle of the 13th Century BCE the major civilizations of the Mediterranean and of Mesopotamia were thriving. There were well established trade routes that extended from Afghanistan to Mycenae. The leaders of the major cultures regularly exchanged gifts, and married the daughters of other leaders. There was an interconnected web of relationships that served to keep conflict to a minimum.

But at about the turn of the century most of the major civilizations of the region collapsed. The Egyptians blamed the destruction on invaders who arrived by boat on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean whom they called the “Sea Peoples.” And yes, there were invading forces who ravaged many of the cities that were destroyed. We have a written eyewitness account from the city of Ugarit that describes the arrival of marauders by sea who killed the city’s residents and burned the entire city.

And yet, not all of the destruction of this era was caused by humans. Some cities were destroyed by earthquakes. It also appears that climate change had produced a long drought. Perhaps the marauding invaders were really just refugees from calamities that happened further west.

This is still a subject of active research– even after more than a century of archaeological investigations. But the emerging picture seems to be of a number of separate catastrophes that resulted in a perfect storm of disruption– a crash that is now known as the Bronze Age Collapse.

Today we are confronted with a global climate change that is driven by the human use of fossil fuels. It is like a 10,000 mile long freight train that is moving at half a mile an hour. It’s advance is slow, but when it hits it will demolish everything in its path.

There are estimated to be more than 400 million people living in regions that are less than 10 feet above sea level. As sea levels rise, those people will be forced to move. They will become refugees– a modern version of the Sea Peoples.

But the climate change we are experiencing won’t just result in sea level rise. It will also make much of the planet too hot for farming, too hot for work, too hot for recreation. It will increase the likelihood of devastating storms. And it will increase the numbers and sizes of fires.

One of the worst consequences of the Syrian Civil War that began in 2011 was the displacement of several million Syrian refugees. They were not well received. In fact many people in Europe and the United States felt threatened by the influx of foreigners. But the impending refugee crisis that will be caused by rising sea levels will be a hundred times worse– and the resulting fear and resentment will likely be ruinous.

Another problem that has recently emerged is that of Artificial Intelligence. While its boosters are promising a bold new future of massive productivity gains, there is the distinct possibility that AI could displace more jobs than it creates. In fact Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei said that AI could displace entry level jobs and create a permanent underclass of the underemployed and unemployed.

It seems as if we are confronted with a perfect storm of calamities that threaten to cause a global collapse– very similar to what brought the Bronze Age to a devastating demise.

And yet something else is happening. There is a major energy revolution going on all around the world. Pakistan now produces more than half its electrical energy from renewables. Spain is at about 55%. Portugal is over 75%. California is now over 62%. And Texas– the world capital of “Drill baby, drill!!” is at about one third. Cities all over the world are revising zoning laws to allow apartment dwellers to install solar panels on their balconies. There is a massive, worldwide rush to adopt renewable energy solutions, despite the efforts of business and government leaders who are heavily invested in market doctrines of the past.

And why is this happening? It’s because the costs of renewables are now lower than the costs of coal and gas in most markets. More than 100 coal fired power plants were permanently closed during Trump’s FIRST term of office– because those plants were just too expensive to operate. The logic of the market is the chief instrument that is destroying the fossil fuel market.

Just think about it. Suppose you have an oil well in northern Alaska. You’re pumping out product like mad– but most of your customers probably don’t reside in Alaska. So you’re going to have to ship your product to your customers. But before you can do that, you’re going to have to ship it to a refinery to be turned into products– like heating oil and gasoline– that your customers can use. So you have to pay for shipping once to the refinery, then you have to pay for the refining process, then you have to pay to ship it a second time from the refinery to your customer.

Now imagine that your brother has a wind farm in Montana. He’s got a one time expense of installing his windmills, and another one time cost of connecting them to the electrical grid. But after that, his maintenance costs are minimal. In the long run renewables are just cheaper to operate.

Even with renewable energy sources the world must still confront a huge installed base of fossil fuel powered automobiles, trucks, trains, and planes. But EV sales are rapidly increasing in some parts of the world as the Iran war drives oil prices higher.

And there is another major movement happening. People are rebelling against oligarchs. Victor Orban was booted out of office despite having almost total control over the Hungarian government. Donald Trump’s second term launched a coup against the U.S. constitutional order based on the battle plan spelled out in the Project 2025 handbook. And now, one and a half years later, Trump’s economy is veering toward stagflation, his tariffs are a flop, his war of choice in Iran has resulted in a stalemate, and his brazen corruption has revolted all but the most committed MAGA loyalists. In Russia, Vladimir Putin is losing the war he launched against Ukraine in February of 2024. The Russian people are experiencing fuel shortages, and the Russian economy is faltering. Putin’s regime is teetering.

These problems– climate change and the faltering of oligarchy in Russia and the United States– are directly related. When Trump abducted President Maduro of Venezuela he was very clear that he expected the United States to simply take Venezuela’s oil. “To the victor go the spoils,” he said. The current kerfuffle over a Texas company’s alleged rights to oil exploration in Greenland are clearly part of a ploy to grab as much of Greenland’s oil as possible. The GOP is largely funded by the fossil fuel industry, so it has every reason to defend the old economic order. And it has shown every commitment to continue doing so.

Just imagine what world politics would be like if fossil fuels were not a major factor in the global economy. The shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz wouldn’t be a problem. Climate change would be slowing, or stopping, or perhaps even reversing. The urge to grab another country’s oil resources wouldn’t be a factor in global politics. And the influence of countries that have relied chiefly on oil revenues would begin to decline. It would be a very different world.

As for the adverse effects of Artificial Intelligence, public outrage is building around the world over the construction of massive data centers. They are slurping up water– at a time when drought is affecting much of the world’s population. They are consuming huge amounts of electricity. And many of them are being built with their own power plants using… fossil fuels.

The public is also alarmed at the threat to jobs that Artificial Intelligence poses. AI apologists claim that AI will create at least as many jobs as it destroys. Yes, the construction phase of a new data center will create new construction jobs over the short term. But once a data center has been created it will require very few staff to operate it. In fact most of the monitoring of a fully built out data center can be done remotely.

And we can see clear evidence from the stock market as to what business leaders think about AI. The market has been going up at a time of increasing inflation and falling employment. Why? It’s because CEOs have been told that the wonders of AI will allow them to cut costs by replacing many of their workers with AI agents. They view AI as a cheap way to realize short term profit gains.

The public is beginning to catch on to this bit of legerdemain. Did anyone ever VOTE on the idea of replacing human workers with AI agents? NO! And people the world over are now beginning to realize what the AI stakes really are.

Civilization has collapsed before, and it can collapse again. We have many threats, but this time is fundamentally different from the time of the Bronze Age. People have more awareness of what is happening. Yes, climate change moves slowly. But people are experiencing it directly now. The Aral Sea has been shrinking for decades. Lake Mead is at its lowest level ever. Water shortages have forced Washington State to restrict surface water usage in its eastern half. Fire and hurricane seasons are longer, and the damage they do is much greater than it was a few decades ago. People around the world know that climate change is real, regardless of how many times Trump claims it is all just a Chinese hoax.

And this particular form of climate change is something that humans can actually do something about. We can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. And not only can we do that, but doing so will actually be cheaper in the long run! That is something that just wasn’t true of Bronze Age climate change.

The AI frenzy is very much like the Dot Com bubble. That was a bubble built purely on hype– and it crashed the world economy. This bubble will likely do the same, for the simple reason that the technology companies pushing AI have yet to find an AI product that masses of users actually want. It seems very likely that this bubble is about to burst.

Wealthy and powerful persons are doing everything they can to push the world toward oligarchical control. Russel Vought has declared that we are in a “post-constitutional” era. The seeming glee with which the GOP has supported all of Trump’s fascist policies is clear evidence that they fully approve of Project 2025.

And yet the American public– indeed, the global public– is resisting fascism. And the world economy is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels, despite the best efforts of the ultra rich to preserve the present order.

This is the battle of our time. It’s a battle on three major interdependent fronts: climate change, oligarchy, and Artificial Intelligence. We can look back to the Bronze Age to see what levels of destruction are possible. But each of these fronts in the present battle are amenable to human resistance. And the resistance is building.

Big oil missed a huge business opportunity

Climate change is forcing businesses to change. In the automotive industry there is now a massive effort underway to develop complete product lines of battery powered all-electric vehicles, apparently with the goal of one day eliminating all gas powered cars. That would certainly help to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But I’m not so sure that it’s what consumers actually want.

It takes 8 to 10 hours to charge a Tesla at 220 volts. The Tesla Supercharger can recharge a Tesla battery up to a 220 mile range in about 15 minutes. Imagine trying to travel cross-country with an all-electric car. A trip from Seattle Washington to Miami Florida is about 3300 miles by car. That would require 15 stops at a Tesla Supercharging station, with a 15 minute wait at each. If the only charging stations you can find along the way are wired for 220 volts, then you will have to spend 8 to 10 hours at each stop. That just doesn’t seem like something most road travelers would want to do.

What if there were another option– one that doesn’t produce carbon dioxide and that therefore doesn’t contribute to global warming, but one doesn’t require ridiculously long times to refuel? In fact such an option is available, right now, in the current marketplace. It’s hydrogen. The Toyota Mirai uses fuel cell technology that is powered by hydrogen and which produces nothing but water as its waste product. And it only takes five minutes to refuel.

The nation’s oil companies have one major advantage over any automotive manufacturer that dreams of replacing gas powered cars with all-electric cars. Oil companies have thousands of gas stations all across the country. Many, of course, are franchises, but all could quickly add hydrogen refueling stations. Consumers are already adapted to the pattern of refueling at a gas station. A five minute stop to refuel, with maybe a quick trip into the company-owned convenience store for a few snacks– and you’re back on the road again. That’s not a pattern that a battery powered all-electric car is ever likely to support.

The nation’s oil companies have known for a couple of decades that climate change was going to destroy their businesses. If they had been smart, they could have sided with the early developers of fuel cell technology (NASA has been using it for 50 years) to build a nationwide infrastructure that would support hydrogen powered cars with their existing gas station infrastructure. Doing so would have ensured the survival of their industry far into the future.

But instead the oil companies did everything they could to trick the American people into believing that climate change isn’t real, or that it isn’t caused by humans, or that it isn’t nearly as bad as tree-huggers claim. The cost was that they completely missed out on what was certainly one of the greatest business opportunities of all time.

It’s going to get a lot worse

Climate change is going to affect those nations of the world that are least able to contend with it. The people of those nations will be beleaguered by rising temperatures, extended droughts, rising sea levels, and ever more powerful storms.

In the United States, most of the state of Florida will eventually be submerged. At present rates, and with the present lack of concern about the future, the ocean’s waters are expected to rise four to eight feet by the end of the century. The highest point in Miami is about seven feet above sea level. So the likelihood is that most of Miami will be submerged by the end of this century. That means that trillions of dollars of real estate equity will be wiped out. The homeowners who lose their properties will become refugees. The United States has the resources, though not necessarily the will, to absorb many millions of climate change refugees.

But similar catastrophes will play out in slow motion all around the world, but the developing countries where they will strike with greatest severity won’t have the resources to absorb millions of displaced refugees. And where will those refugees go? They will head for the richest countries in hopes of gaining entry to a better life.

The refugees that fled the Syrian civil war inundated Europe and precipitated a massive wave of anti-immigrant fervor. In the United States Donald Trump fueled anti-immigrant sentiment with a torrent of hateful and misleading rhetoric. The people of Central and South America who left their homes and headed toward the United States were fleeing violence in their home countries.

But the Syrian civil war was partially fueled by a drought that was the worst in 900 years (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kw77v/the-drought-that-preceded-syrias-civil-war-was-likely-the-worst-in-900-years). And the violence in Central America follows a drought that created massive food shortages across the region (https://climateandsecurity.org/2019/04/17/central-america-climate-drought-migration-and-the-border/).

These problems are all going to get worse. Climate change assures that. The nations of the world could make herculean efforts to prevent global average temperatures from rising more than another degree Centigrade or so. But at present the world’s leaders are not demonstrating the necessary resolve.

More and longer lasting droughts will mean more refugees. More flooding will mean more refugees. More refugees will fuel more anti-immigrant sentiment. All of this will inexorably lead to more calls for limits on immigration, for tighter and more expensive border security, and for limits to the rights of asylum seekers.

Climate change assures us that refugees will flee poorer countries in ever greater numbers. And where will they go? They will naturally gravitate to the rich nations. And those rich nations will do everything they can to protect themselves from a massive influx of poor, homeless foreigners.

These are the conditions that paved the way for Donald Trump to win the U.S. presidency, for Bolsonario to become president of Brazil, and for Boris Johnson to become the Prime Minister of Great Britain. But climate change assures us that this problem will be far worse in the future. The natural impulse of world leaders will be to protect national interests and to defend against the incursions of refugees. And the simplest and easiest way to accomplish those objectives is by invoking martial law.

President Trump has shown future despots the way. Inflame nationalist fears. Warn of the ill intent of refugees. Denounce them as immoral and depraved. Declare a national emergency– or several. Divert funds to defending border security. Do everything you can to limit or remove the civil rights of immigrants, migrants, and asylum seekers. Accuse anyone who stands in your way of disloyalty. And inundate the electorate with an avalanche of lies and obfuscation.

There is only one possible defense against such an attack on democracy, and that is vigilant resistance. It means calling out the lies of our leaders and retorting with the truth. It means standing up for the rights of climate refugees, and for people made homeless by war and famine. It means telling the public again and again that it was our own lassitude that brought us to this extreme and that we only have ourselves to blame. And above all it means not giving up. The problem of climate change can be solved. Yes, it’s too late now to prevent the loss of large regions of human habitation. But the problem of human caused climate change is self-limiting, to an extent. When the numbers of human beings to succumb to the ill effects of climate change are so great that only a few humans remain on earth, those who remain will be less able to produce the greenhouse gasses that make climate change the great terror of our time. Humanity will survive, though many millions are sure to be ruined, financially, physically, or spiritually by the depredations of climate change.

Written 2019-09-29.

Orderly Abandonment

The world is on track for a four to eight foot rise in sea levels by the end of this century. (The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells, pg. 59.) The highest point in the Miami city limits is about seven feet above sea level. The Mayor of Miami recently had huge pumps installed to push water out of downtown during days of high tides. But that won’t save the city in the long run. The land on which Miami is situated is resting on a bed of limestone– which is porous to water. Miami could never build a seawall high enough to keep the oceans out.

The average elevation of New Orleans is one to two feet below sea level. When Katrina hit the storm surge inundated the Ninth Ward to such a depth that most houses were covered to their rooftops. And these are only two of the coastal cities in the United States that are destined to become uninhabitable when the waters rise.

We all know that American political and business leaders are too selfish and cowardly to call for the prevention of climate catastrophe. Some have argued that snowfall is proof that the world’s climate isn’t getting hotter; others that the climate has changed many times in the past and that therefore it’s not a human problem to solve; others that even if the climate is warming and humans are responsible for some portion of it, global warming is a problem that humans cannot solve because it would cost too much.

These various arguments all have an element of truth, but they are all completely wrong in the broader context of the present scale of climate change. Yes, it does indeed continue to snow in many parts of the world today– but that’s an example of weather, not of climate. Yes, the climate has warmed dramatically many times in the past, and often due to massive increases of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gasses) being injected into the atmosphere. What’s different today is that the carbon that is being spewed into the atmosphere is for the first time being produced by processes that are under human control. Yes, the costs of addressing the changing climate are likely to be immense. But the costs of doing nothing will certainly be even more immense. The loss of massive regions of human habitation will inevitably result in the liquidation of trillions of dollars of real estate value. That will inevitably result in the impoverishment of millions of property owners all around the world. The vast majority of those property owners will become refugees who will be forced to flee to more habitable regions of the planet, thereby creating what is certain to be history’s largest and most violent mass migration.

The time to have saved Miami and New Orleans– and the many other low lying great cities of the world– would have been 40 years ago. There would have been ample time then to develop long term plans that could have minimized the effects of climate change. But we are well past that point now. We are now at a point where it is too late to save low lying cities like Miami, or sweltering regions of the world like sub-Saharan Africa. Our best option at this point is to plan for the orderly abandonment of the regions we know cannot survive rising sea levels and burning heat. Step one of such a plan would be to halt all new construction and refurbishment of existing structures in these regions– immediately. Step two would be to disallow the resale of any existing buildings that rising waters or excess heat have rendered unusable. And step three would be to sell off buildings for scrap as they become unusable. These steps at least offer the possibility of limiting the scope of financial ruin that will inevitably engulf those who own property in hazardous regions. Such a policy may seem cruel, but at least it would be more honest than to hope for a salvation that has virtually no likelihood of materializing.

Written 2020-02-02.