Prologue of Collapse

Collapse

Penguin Books 2005

ISBN 978-0-670-03337-9

Jared Diamond

This is a book about societies that have collapsed – ancient and modern – and a few societies that did not collapse.

Diamond claims that these collapses are relevant today.

He notes various factors contributing to collapses, but tends to focus on environmental issues. He offers a “five-point framework of possible contributing factors”:

1. Environmental damage caused by people.

2. Climate change – today caused by people, in the past by natural factors.

3. Hostile neighbors who prevail when a society becomes weak – maybe because of one of the other factors.

4. Friendly neighbors who become unfriendly or weak and no longer support the society (maybe the formerly friendly society has been weakened by other factors)

5. How a society responds to its problems. Are they smart, perceptive, honest – or the opposite?

Diamond notes that there are two principal techniques employed by science to study societal problems – comparative method and natural experiment. The former technique compares similar aspects of societies; the later changes limited numbers of variables while holding others unchanged. Diamond employs the comparative technique.

The book is divided into four parts.

Part 1 consists of a single chapter that examines present-day Montana.

Part 2 examines ancient societies that failed and a few that succeeded. They include:

· Easter Island – ecological and population collapses caused by isolation and inward directed competition.

· Pitcairn and Henderson Islands – collapsed when environmental problems caused collapse of friendly trading partners (islands also had environmental issues)

· Anasazi and Mayan societies – collapsed for a variety of interrelated issues - environmental problems, population increases, climate change.

· Three societies that did not fail – Tikopia, New Guinea highlands, and Japan.

Part Three examines four modern societies - Rwanda, Dominican Republic/Haiti, China, and Australia.

Part Four sums up lessons and examines reasons. He lists four reasons why societies fail to solve problems…

1. Failure to anticipate problems

2. Failure to perceive problem once it arrives

3. Failure to attempt a solution

4. Failure of solution

In this part he also notes 12 aspects of environmental problem, examines the roles of big business and globalization.

C20 of The Great Disruption - Guess Who's in Charge

(Obviously we are in charge.)

This is the final chapter in the book.

It starts with a story.

Gilding imagines he is sitting in a cafe in Amsterdam in 1938 with his friend Pieter. Across the canal is the Frank house where Anne is now nine years old. Pieter, echoing the opinion of other smart people of the time, says that he believes in a few years Germany will violate Holland's neutrality, occupy most of Europe, kill maybe six million Jews (including the little Frank girl across the way) in a war that will eventually claim fifty million civilian and military lives. He further speculates that the US will not get in the conflict until the last moment - when the issue is very much in doubt.

Although Pieter feels the danger is obvious he doesn't see the possibility of any action taken anytime soon - even in Europe which will be affected first. The political leadership is not there; neither are the people.

As the now depressed 1938 Gilding cycles home, he wonders what he should do. That night he discusses the situation with his wife. They agree; it can't be that bad. Surely the leadership would do something. They decide to wait and see what happens.

Modern day Gilding's point is that the leadership is us. Business leaders (many of whom Gilding regards as smart, moral people) are limited. Political leaders (many of whom who are smart and moral; many of whom who are idiots and immoral) are also limited.

It's easy to give up. Gilding quotes this from the poem Common Sense by Paul Williams...

On the edge of the dream
we face our deepest doubts.
Now that it all is almost real
a terrible fear of success takes hold
and we grab desperately, uncontrollably, for failure.
One last chance to get off easy.
Who among us really wants to save the world,
to be born again into two thousand more years
of struggle?
How much sweeter to be the doomed generation,
floating gently on the errors and villainy of others,
towards some glorious apocalypse now…
Hallelujah! It's not my fault --
Bring on the end times!


Gilding's final point is this.

We need to get past stuff. We need to live happy, meaningful lives, not lives dominated by empty consumption.

Further, we need to talk and act - to get involved, even get mad - but as Gilding notes (maybe hard for some of us) not to get crazy. We need to follow the examples of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King.

C14 of the Great Disruption - Elephant in Room


The elephant is growth.

The Great Disruption is just the beginning.

Even after we have...
  • awakened to the climate crisis
  • gotten on a war footing
  • fixed the climate crisis (because we are good at war)
  • suffered the disruptions caused by shifting to renewable energy sources (necessary to fix the climate crisis)
  • reaped the economic opportunities created by shifting to renewables
  • celebrated the cool new technologies invented to implement the shift
...we will still have to deal with material growth.

The climate crisis is only a symptom of the underlying problem. We live on a finite planet with finite resources. We can have spiritual growth, intellectual growth, moral growth - but not unlimited material growth. Physics doesn't work that way.

Gilding acknowledges that...
  • The transition from material growth will be very painful. Economic growth is the foundation of our market-based system. It is the standard by which we judge our economy and our governments.
  • For most of the 20th century our market-driven, growth based system did work. A lot of poor people moved into the middle class. A lot of middle class people became rich. (And a lot of poor people stayed poor or got poorer.)
  • Even today the market based system still seems to be working. But this is a mirage. As our visible wealth increases, our hidden social and environmental costs increase even faster. At the macro level we are losing rather than gaining wealth. Like the overextended homeowners of the 2008 financial crisis we are living in the midst of a giant Ponzi scheme that is about to go bust.
However, even if we could have unlimited growth (which we can't) it would not make people happy. Over a certain level of income (about $15K/year for individuals, $60K/year for families) studies indicate that additional income does not correlate with increased happiness. There is passing satisfaction at the moment money is spent but no lasting pleasure. The new thing becomes the old thing. People do get satisfaction from making more money than their peers but it is not the absolute income that matters only the difference compared to somebody else.

And although some rich people claim that raising the wealth level for rich people also raises the level for poor people - at least allowing them to move into the 15K "happy bracket", research shows that increasing inequity within a society degrades the quality of life for all citizens. Gilding will elaborate on this in a future chapter.

C13 of The Great Disruption - Shifting Sands

Gilding says change is coming and we'd better be prepared and resilient. This is true for individuals and institutions - private and public.

He notes four aspects of change to be especially aware of...

1 - Physical impacts of climate change on security and economy

There will be food shortages, supply shocks, price volatility - regardless of our response. Contributing factors include:
  • Industrial agriculture. It depends on nitrogen fixation which depends on carbon which is nonrenewable. It can run out.
  • Integrated, just-in-time food chains. Although efficient - delivering low-cost food across the globe, such systems are also vulnerable. Transportation failures, terrorist attacks, etc. could leave some ends of chain with only four days of food on shelves.
  • Increased competition for food as countries like China and India become more wealthy.
  • Less land available for farming.
  • Competition between crops gown for food and for biofuel and other industrial uses.
Shortages and disruptions will create unrest and instability, especially in poorer countries. (Weathers' note: I think this has already happened - playing a role in Arab Spring. See http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/food-price-threshold/)

2 - Shifts in economic competitiveness

There will be winners and losers as The Great Disruption occurs and countries put their "war plans" in effect. If what Gilding says will happen, happens, the oil producing countries and the oil industry will be losers. So will the coal industry. Generally all those who deliver carbon based energy will suffer. However, those who develop and provide energy from renewable resources (solar, wind, hydro, etc.) will prosper.

Gilding sees the most interesting competition taking place between the US and China. The Great Disruption is closer to happening in China due to the greater environmental damage that has already taken place. Consequently China is closer to implementing it's own war plans. It is hitting the "physical limits of its economic growth model". Gilding quotes Tom Friedman (the Flat Earth guy):

"Yes, China's leaders have decided to grow green - out of necessity because too many of their people can't breathe, can't swim, can't farm and can't drink thanks to pollution from its coal- and oil-based manufacturing growth engine. And, therefore, unless China powers its development with cleaner energy systems, and more knowledge-intensive business without smokestacks, China will die of its own development."

China is seriously pursing a low-carbon economy. So are India, Brazil and South Korea.

Gilding thinks China might win the competition with the US because it is not wedded to a market-based economy. Further, its government, less burdened by the need to observe Western democratic freedoms, might be more efficient. It might respond faster to the problems.

3 - Loss of moral authority

Countries, systems and economic models that win the economic war started by The Great Disruption will have increased moral authority over those who don't. For the latter two thirds of 20th century that war was won by the West - by the US in particular. This might not be true in the 21st century.

4 - Reaction of "victims"

Some small low-lying countries and some entire regions will cease to exist - disappearing under water or sand. Even if the causes of global warming were ended today, the effects have momentum and will continue for decades. Gilding sees reparations being sought by individuals, groups, regions, countries. Some redress will be pursued in courts of law. Some in the streets.

C12 of The Great Disruption - Creative Destruction on Steroids

In this chapter Gilding attempts to answer those who ask, "How will all this happen? There is so much cheap coal in the ground, so much natural gas - even petroleum - how could people simply give that up?"

His answer is that he doesn't know exactly how it will happen. But he is certain that it will happen because it must. There will come a time in the not-to-distant future when it will become obvious that we cannot continue down this same road - that something must be done to stop the slide past a one or two degree C rise in temperature over pre-industrial levels.

Confession - Reading my own views between Gilding's lines I thought he meant that there would be an ecological/economic Pearl Harbor that would force people into action the way the real Pearl Harbor forced people into action at the start of WWII. This event - I reasoned - would almost but not quite push humanity over the brink. I was wrong. What Gilding seems to be saying is that government (or at least The Market) will take action simply because it must, because the science will become so obvious. Businesses that takes action will prosper; those that don't will fail.

Gilding says, "... it is clear government has to act, so they will. That action must result in dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions, and the science says that must result in the decline of coal and oil, followed soon after by gas. There are no realistic scenarios where this can be achieved if we wait past 2015-2020, unless we decide to go past two degrees (centigrade) of warming. Given that all the world's major governments have agreed not to, the logic of the economic risk flows pretty easily."

One can only hope that this circular chain of cause and effect actually transpires.

Gilding himself seems unsure because he says the future will characterized by by "dramatic and discontinuous change" (implying non-linear events - Black Swans) - whether we go over the edge or just get close. The difference seems to be the kind of planning we can do. If we go over the edge and "the economy collapses under the weight of climate and sustainability impacts" no planning will be possible - the level of chaos will be too great.

However, given that the latter scenario means things will pretty much go to hell anyway, Gilding doesn't dwell on it. Instead, assuming that government and/or business will pull us back from the brink, he talks about what will happen to various industries, especially coal and oil.

It is a near certainty he says that in a new economy dedicated to limiting global temperature rise to 1 (or even 2) degrees C above pre-industrial age level, coal and oil will be out. According to the German government funded Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in 2024 we will have dumped all the CO2 in the air we can. Any more CO2 will increase the risk of going over the edge of climate disaster to greater 20% - one in five.

So, assuming governments and business act, such a catastrophe will not be allowed to happen, which means that fossil fuels can longer be burned after a few more years. (He discusses carbon-capture and storage - CCS - as a way to continue to use coal. Although he sees no reason not to investigate this technology he doesn't think it will prove economically competitive compared to renewable energy sources.)

It is less certain what fuel or technology will replace fossil fuel. Gilding doesn't think it will be nuclear because of problems with waste, terrorism and supply limits. He thinks it will be some combination of various renewable energy sources - hydro, solar, wind, geothermal. Right now, except for hydro, none of these technologies is much beyond the prototype stage. He believes that the economics of one or a combination of these approaches will be proven.

However, in the end, he points out, it is not about economics. Things will change. We will either go off an ecological/economic cliff - in which case, the change will happen to us. Or we will become the active agents of change.

C11 of The Great Disruption - Austrian Economist

Point One - If you believe that The Great Disruption will really happen and that a "one-degree war plan" is necessary then you should do something - should get started with the war.

Point Two - According to the Austrian economist Joesph Schumpeter, markets are engines of creative destruction - "a process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."

Although Gilding compares The Market (my emphasis) to a rain forest he doesn't extend the metaphor to explicitly say that markets are instruments of economic natural selection. Therefore, making the analogy for him - companies, like living organisms, change in response to changes in the environments in which they function.

However...

In natural systems changes are due to random DNA mutations - which either provide advantage or disadvantage in constantly changing environments. If an advantage is forthcoming the organism survives to pass on its DNA; otherwise the organism fails and becomes an evolutionary dead end.

In economic systems changes are made more-or-less consciously by business people in response to changes in The Market - the business environment. When changes work, the business makes money - it prospers. When changes don't work, the business loses money - it fails.

Point Three - Given Point Two, the way to change business and fight the one-degree war is to change the environment in which business operates. Change The Market and at least some businesses will implement the changes necessary to make money. Businesses that adapt will prosper, those that don't will fail.

In the case of the one-degree war, the aspect of The Market most subject to change and control is the regulatory environment. Change that in ways that favor the war and business will follow; it has no choice - like any organism, living or otherwise, business has to play by the rules of the environment.

Of course the present national environment of which the business environment is a part is decidedly anti-government, anti-regulation. That will not change until The Great Disruption creates a wake-up Black Swan event.

(What if Rick Perry is President when the Black Swan event happens?)

C10 of The Great Disruption - The One-Degree War

Accepting the belief (the hope?) that a Pearl Harbor level ecological/economic event will cause The Great Awakening (without triggering disastrous climate feed-back loops), the next step is come up with an action plan. What should these newly agreeing parties do?

Gilding and his friend Professor Jorgen Randers, one of the authors of the Club of Rome's The Limits to Growth (and recently The Limits toGrowth: The 30 Year Update) propose an action plan for the next 100 years.

The first action - likely undertaken with or without a plan - will be to reduce greenhouse gases. Climate warming will probably be seen as the cause of the Pearl Harbor style ecological/economic event. Given that the definition of this event includes the capacity to rouse the old order to action it therefore follows that the old order will be roused and will act.

Since greenhouse gases are responsible for warming the question arises: how much warming can be allowed? What should be the goal? The current consensus is that two degrees centigrade rise over pre-industrial revolution levels can be allowed - not because it is "safe" but because it is the best we can do politically.

Gilding disagrees. Quoting Winston Churchill, Gilding says we must do "what is necessary" - not just what is politically expedient. A two degree rise is likely to produce great damage and disruption. A one degree cap is safer. Gilding thinks this will be politically feasible given the impact of The Great Awakening (that results from The Great Disruption).

Estimates are that the Great Awakening Event will occur sometime around 2018 (no one knows for sure - it could be next year in 2012 or it could be 2028 - although if the latter, even more damage will have been done). In any case, using a 2018 as an arbitrary starting time, Gilding says that the following actions need to occur in the time frames indicated...

Years 1 -5 (2018 - 2023) Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50%. Not only will this begin to clean up the atmosphere and start the cooling process it will shock our political and social systems into action. Following are some specific goals recommended for the first five year period:
  • Cut deforestation and other logging by 50%
  • Close 1,000 dirty coal power plants
  • Retrofit 1,000 other coal power plants with carbon capture and storage
  • Ration electricity and increase gas mileage
  • Erect a wind turbine or solar plant in every town (if only for psychological boost)
  • Create huge wind and solar farms in suitable location
  • Ration use of dirty cars to cut transport emissions by 50%
  • Strand half of world's aircraft
  • Capture or burn methane
  • Move away from climate unfriendly protein
  • Bind one gigaton of CO2 in soil
  • Launch a government and community-led "shop less live more" campaign (hard to imagine old order sanctioning this)
Years 5 - 20 (2023 - 2038) Move world to net zero climate emissions. Requires technological and social innovation

Years 20 - 100 (2038 - 2118) Achieve a stable climate and a sustainable economy. Reverse emission; remove CO2 from atmosphere.

Obviously all this seems impossible. Gilding says to look back the changes brought about WWII. (One struck me. Four days after Pearl Harbor the government ordered a halt to the production of private vehicles. )

C9 of The Great Disruption - When the Dam of Denial Breaks

In the last chapter Gilding moved from despair to hope by believing that we have the power to prevent The Great Disruption from becoming The Great Collapse.

He believes that in the near future, an ecological/economic Pearl Harbor will break us out of denial and despair, move us to the Great Awakening.

Note: Re-reading this and other chapters I see that it is I who predict an ecological/economic Pearl Harbor, not Gilding. The response by people and government that he believes must happen will result from a tipping point of awareness - when it becomes obvious (to intelligent people of good will?) that we are heading toward a cliff and something must be done. He thinks that after-the- fact this awareness might be attributed to an economic Pearl Harbor - a single black swan event - but probably not at the time. That will be magic.

The implication is that this black swan event must be bad enough to convince even anti-government conservatives that action is necessary. It will require death, destruction and economic disruption. But it must stop short of triggering ecological feed-back loops that result in total climate collapse.

In other words we will have to be lucky - if you can call a Pearl Harbor style event luck. That is what Gilding requires you to believe.

So, in this spirit of belief...

After the event occurs (maybe it will be a series of lesser events symbolized by one dramatic Pearl Harbor event) the "dam of denial" will break. We will move to a war-time footing.

Action will take place on two fronts. The old economy and systems will react first. Driven by a vested interest in maintaining established ways, yet aware now of the extent of the problem, this part of our society will fight the initial tactical battles. Spending great sums of money, expanding the power of government, the old order will attack the problem of greenhouse gas emission, or whatever it was that pushed us to the edge. Such actions might even create a period of financial growth.

Gilding believes that in this war-like atmosphere, almost anything can be accomplished - at least in the short term. However, he thinks that the old order will not willingly give up the idea of continued growth. The old order will accept that continued material consumption cannot go on, but will believe (as it believes now) that material growth itself can continue - maintained by new technologies and efficiencies. The old order will argue (as it argues now) that we are basically a greedy, competitive species and that this style of economy suits us best.

This is where the second front of the war comes in. Knowing, as Gilding knows, that the laws of physics do not allow unlimited material growth in a finite world, some people will coalesce around a new economy and style of living. This new order will fight the strategic long term battles - over a period of 40 or so years. It will move us past consumerism and stuff.

C8 of The Great Disruption - Are We Finished?

In this chapter Gilding turns a corner, moving from despair to hope. But it is not an easy move to make.

Our attitudes have to change. According to Gilding, we must...
  • Accept that things are going to get really bad. People are going to suffer. (The "new normal" unemployment rate of 9% is just a start. So is $3.50 gas and $10 dinners.) People will die. We have to prepare ourselves - physically, economically, psychologically. It will be like a world war.
  • Drop our old ideas about how change occurs - understand that change generally does not happen slowly, in a planned manner, but fast - in this case, as a series of really bad black swans.
  • Evolve a new set of values, politics, personal expectations. We have to shed our ethic of consumerism. (See asides below for Homer-Dixon's views on values.)
  • Accept the idea that we are not saving the planet, only ourselves - our species. Although we might wipe out 50% of present day biodiversity, in a 100 million years (a moment in the life of a planet) Earth will have long moved past us. It will get along just fine.
Gilding says that despair is a legitimate reaction to what is going on. He notes that some experts in this field - including James Lovelock author of The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning and Clive Hamilton who wrote Requiem for a Species - believe we are not smart enough to come back from the Fall, that it is too late.

Gilding does not agree. He believes that the despair and hopelessness evidenced by the writers above (and until 2008 by himself) is step two in a three step process...
  1. The first step is denial which itself has two substeps. Initially we don't believe what is happening. Then, we enter what Gilding calls "denial breakdown". We more or less believe the science, acknowledge that it makes sense but do not believe the full implications. Or, we accept the implications but do not yet feel the impact - do not move from intellectual understanding to emotional understanding. (Gilding says climate deniers and antiscience skeptics can be ignored; they will be overcome by events.)
  2. The second step is despair. We begin to sense what is really going on. We see the species lost - the animals starving, dying - children starving, dying. We see a generation of underemployed, drifting young people (our children, grandchildren?) every one a potential Mad Max - and us the wandering guy in Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
  3. The final step is acceptance,what Gilding calls the Great Awakening (a term coined by Professor Jorgen Randers). This happens when we move past grief - when we start to do something - when we understand that many of the drifting young people mentioned above can be productively engaged in saving our species. Stuck as we are between denial and despair there is nothing practically we can do to prevent The Great Disruption. But we can change what happens on the other side - whether we collapse, as described in Jared Diamond's Collapse, or whether we transcend.
Gilding says that the trick to moving past grief into acceptance and action is the belief that we can actually solve our problem (again, not prevent the Disruption but manage what follows). Although it might seem that we are doomed, Gilding points to our history of waiting until last moment to act in the face of imminent disaster.

He uses WWII as an example. Although there were clear indications in 1933 that Hilter was a threat to world survival, people in the US and Britain remained in denial and despair until the last minute. The crisis was well underway before leaders like depressed Winston Churchill, grandiose Franklin Roosevelt, and monstrous Joesph Stalin finally rallied their people into action unimaginable before the war. We did not prevent the war but we did save civilization from Hitler. Gilding sees that same level of action in response to The Great Disruption. We can't stop the war but we can win it. (The recent last minute resolution of the debt crisis could be viewed as another example of a last-minute save.)

Gilding says that a single event might be viewed (at least in retrospect) as the ecological/economic Pearl Harbor that calls us to action (an ad hoc black swan).

ASIDES

Military people already warn about the risks of collapse...
  • Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni said, "The 2007 report concluded that climate change would act as a threat multiplier by exacerbating conflict over resources, especially because of declining food production, border and mass migration tensions, and so on - increasing political instability and creating failed states - if no action was taken to reduce impacts."
  • Thirty three retired generals and admirals wrote in April 2010 report to the Senate, "climate change is threatening American security... it exacerbates existing problems by decreasing stability, increasing conflict, and incubating the socioeconomic conditions that foster terrorist recruitment. The State Department, the National Intelligence Council, and the CIA all agree, and are planning for future climate-based threats."
  • A secret 2004 Pentagon report noted, "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life... once again, warfare would define human life."
Paraphrasing Hunter-Thompson on values in The Upside of Down...
  • We need to move beyond strictly utilitarian values which only express our likes, dislikes. This gives rise to our consumer oriented culture. Consumed by consumerism, we become less resilient, more vulnerable to unexpected non-linear events.
  • We also need to move beyond the unthinking, politically oriented notions of fairness, right and wrong which often passes for spiritual belief. This too leaves us rigid, vulnerable to non-linear events.
  • We need to move into the realm of spiritual and existential values that are “compatible with the exigencies of the natural world”.
  • According to Homer-Dixon, such values recognize that

  1. Energy and the laws of thermodynamics play a key role in our survival.
  2. Certain kinds of connectivity are dangerous.
  3. Many natural systems (including all adaptive systems) behave in a non-linear manner. In the words of Nassim Taleb we live in Extremistan.

  • We need to move from a growth imperative to a resilience imperative.
Signs and portents seen late at night on CNN
  • Drought is killing people in the Horn of Africa. Thousands of people are on the move. Last night I had to turn away from a picture of starving child held by its mother. The mother was dressed in a dirty robe that had once been colorful. The child was a skeleton covered in skin, a delicate little drum, its ribs a marimba. Although it certainly doesn't matter to the mother and child if the drought is the result of climate change, maybe it is. Maybe an obscene black swan waddles among the corpses.
  • Big Oil is digging oil sand in the Canadian wilderness. Tremendous amounts of energy are needed to extract the oil from the sand. Tremendous quantities of greenhouse polluting gases are being released. The landscape looks like the surface of the moon. Maybe Hunter-Dixon is right. Maybe Peak Oil has happened and we are now forced to the bizarre and extreme in our search for energy.
  • Jabbering crowds throw bodies off a bridge in Syria - the bloody corpses whirling gaily through the air to flop in the water beside their dead companions. The Arab Spring moves into late Summer. I once read or heard somebody say that rising food prices had something to do with this.

C7 of The Great Disruption - The Road Ahead

Although details of the future can't be predicted, Gilding thinks the outline is clear. Our complex, growth-addicted culture cannot survive as is. The end might have begun in 2008 or it might not happen until next year in 2012. But it will happen. Growth will stutter to a stop. After that civilization will either...
  • Stabilize and evolve to a higher plane (Gilding's belief).
  • Or become much much simpler (e.g., it will collapse like the cultures described in Jared Diamond's book Collapse).
The fall of a system (ecological/economic) resembles the end of a human life. Gilding's friend Dr. John Collee describes it this way...

"Every patient with an incurable illness will ask how long they have to live. The answer goes something like this: 'No one can say how long you may live, because every individual is different, but focus on the changes you can observe and be guided by those. When things start changing for the worse, expect those changes to accelerate. So the changes that have occurred over a year may advance by the same degree in a few months, then in weeks. And that is how you can judge when the end is coming.' "

"Planet Earth, being a web of complex self-regulating systems, operates very much like a human body. Terminal illness gives us the template for most forms of ecological collapse. One set of changes initiates another, and so on in a downward cascade of negative feedback until the whole system falls apart."

Like the terminal patient we must look for certain signs. Gilding says to look for an accelerating cascade of...
  • Ecological, social and economic shocks driven by climate change.
  • Increases in food prices due to demand and lower output.
  • Diminished water supplies, fisheries, agriculture resulting from damaged ecosystem - further increasing prices.
  • Increased oil costs as peak oil happens (if it has not already happened).
  • Falling stock markets driven by fear and uncertainty.
Does all this mean the world is coming to an end? Gilding says not necessarily - but it does mean we (or the children and grandchildren of those of us approaching senility) are in for a ride.

Weathers asides

A theme in Gilding's book and in other recent books read by the semi-sober Thinking Men's book club and social organization is the nonlinearity. In the real world events are not neat. They start slowly and end fast - stuttering to a stop. This was the theme of Nassim Taleb's Black Swan book, which I obsessed over in...

http://bookreportz.blogspot.com/2009/05/black-swan-impact-of-highly-improbable.html

A less obvious theme but one that seems obvious to me is complexity. In the process of getting where we are we have become complex. According to Thomas Homer-Dixon in his book The Upside of Down, complexity has left us rigid. In another fit of obsession I wrote this...

(Regarding us - Homer-Dixon says human societies adapt to resource scarcity by becoming more and more complex, more connected and interdependent. We squeeze every last bit of efficiency out of our systems, until there is nothing left to squeeze. In the process we loose resiliency, become fragile, subject to disruption. )

in this...

http://bookreportz.blogspot.com/2011/04/upside-of-down.html