Climate Change, Peak Oil, Resource Scarcity, Pollution, Overpopulation, Political-economic Corruption, or Fear – Which will get us first?

There’s a lot being said about climate change, peak oil, and other looming catastrophes. Let’s be honest, none of these is helpful and all are potentially dangerous to life as we know it. Some years ago I moved from climate sceptic/denier to climate change warrior, after I investigated and discovered the reality of the threat. Corruption in the financial markets and in our democracies is also quite dangerous, as we have experienced in the current recession caused by crooked bankers and their bought politicians. But where climate change is a long-term threat, and we can stagger along for some time bearing the weight of the banksters, only peak oil looks very likely to deal a mortal blow soon.

Let’s go through these threats one-at-a-time.

Climate change

In brief, we are adapted to this climate, meaning everything from our agriculture to the countless cities at sea level, and any significant change is potentially catastrophic. Many vital crops stop growing above certain temperatures, and even the small amount of climate change we have seen so far is causing droughts and crop failures. A sea level rise of 1m (~3 feet) will displace 100 million people – and the latest projections are for a sea level increase of that magnitude this century. If temperatures rise sufficiently, and we are not doing anything to stop it, most of humanity and most species will be wiped from the face of the earth.

But devastating as climate change will ultimately be, it is not an immediate threat to us personally or to civilisation. (If you live in one of the developing countries, this is not true; bad things are happening now. The slaughter in Darfur was caused in part by the drying up of Lake Chad, which in turn was partly caused by global warming.) The major damage is expected to begin in 40-50 years, as displaced people move into crowded areas and turf wars begin, as water becomes in short supply and water wars begin, as many people realise their lives are going to be destroyed and they get angry about it.

Still, we are wired to respond to immediate threats that we can experience with our senses, and climate change has not passed that threshold yet for most people. They might be able to grasp the danger if it was presented graphically and if there were not paid fossil fuel company shills spreading misinformation and lies.

Pollution

Here I’m going to lump in everything from ocean dead zones (caused largely by excess agricultural chemicals) to acid rain to the hole in the ozone layer. All are bad news and contribute to the breakdown of the web of life that sustains us. Some we have actually taken constructive action on. None of the remaining are immediate threats, nor will be perceived as such.

While cancer rates and the number of children with asthma are believed to be directly tied to pollution, neither threatens to cause a mass collapse or revolt.

Overpopulation

Population becomes overpopulation when that population lives unsustainably. Population overshoot is certainly fatal; it has brought down civilisations in the past that exceeded the carrying capacity of their local environment. It is also a very sneaky problem, because everything can appear fine one year followed by utter collapse and a die-back the next year. There is a famous and chilling story of reindeer on St. Matthew Island that illustrates this. No doubt the ‘denier’ reindeer were saying right up until the end, “Everything is going great! Our population continues to expand, and our GDP (in the form of new reindeer, moss eaten, and poop produced) has just set another record!”

In our case, we have exceeded the ability of the entire Earth to support us, at least in the manner we currently live. We are burning through ‘natural capital’ to keep the party going; we are like the person who appears to be living the high life but in reality is financing it all on credit cards. Sooner or later, the credit is gone and the bills come due.

Many have said that the ‘real problem’ we face is simply too many people: If there were only 100 million humans, we could all live like Americans. However, there are 6.5 billion of us and population is expected to peak at 9 billion around 2050, assuming one of the other limits mentioned in this article doesn’t slow us down first. The real problem is that we are living beyond our ecological means and this has caused most of the other problems.

Resource Scarcity

We are burning through the finite resources of the earth at a fantastic rate and in very short-sighted ways. We expend enormous amounts of energy to dig up various metals, for example, use much more energy to make them into something useful to us – and then re-bury them. Again, though, except for one particular resource, none of the lithium or uranium or topsoil or other natural capital we are drawing down is going to bring civilisation to a crashing halt soon.

Peak Oil

This brings us to oil, that one ubiquitous resource without which our civilisation will end abruptly, and most of us will live much diminished and shorter lives. The reason is that oil is literally in everything in one form or another; our society is utterly dependent upon it. Our food is utterly dependent upon it.

Once we have extracted half of all available oil, rather obviously supply begins to decrease. A reduction in supply means an increase in prices, and because demand is rising, those price increases are going to be sharp and devastating. There was a pre-recession spike up to $147 per barrel, and the price now sits around $80 per barrel, or four times what it was just a few years ago.

It appears that we have hit peak oil, or will very shortly. It had to happen at some point; there was only so much oil.

Because demand for oil is increasing while supply is decreasing, the price of everything containing oil in any form – which is virtually everything – will rise. And because oil is fundamental to our civilisation, any reduction in supply must either be replaced in some way or accompanied by a scaling back of civilisation. As there are no viable replacements for oil and because we have not taken steps to ‘get off oil,’ there is going to be a nasty crash that few will escape.

Fear

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: pointing out real threats is not scaremongering. Crying wolf is OK if there really is a wolf. Riding across the region warning people “The British are coming!” is the right thing to do if it’s true. And if climate change, peak oil, and other problems are real, then only a fool calls facing up to reality scaremongering.

Fear will not kill us. It can paralyse us, but that would be no different than our current state, in which we are not responding to legitimate threats. Fear can also galvanise us to action. If you see a bear charging toward you, fear would be a normal and even useful reaction as your body is flooded with fight-or-flight hormones.

Right now we face multiple crises but we dismiss them as problems. Climate change really is that bad. We are consuming the finite resources of the earth and shitting out pollution into our air, our water, and our soil. we have built our civilisation on oil and have not prepared to live without it. Consequences are to be expected. And while some people see this, many do not.

Fear is a legitimate emotion to feel when one looks at the future for your children – even for yourself. If peak oil is now, could this recession be due to high oil prices? Could this be a permanent recession because the price of oil is only going up from now on?

Peak oil has begun and we have not prepared at all. We should rightly be feeling angry at those who have deceived us about the dangers we face, and at our supposed leaders. They have betrayed all of us.

We need to begin a crash program to ‘get off oil’ immediately. We are in a predicament, which is different from a problem because problems have solutions. Predicaments may not. Turn your fear into anger and do something useful with it.

We face a legitimate crisis: the end of the age of oil.

Suggested books if you want to learn more

You would be wise to educate yourself about the reality of these problems. Do not take the word of politicians or talking heads, many of whom are paid by vested interests like the oil companies. Don’t believe me, for that matter, until you do your own investigation back to original, i.e., scientific, sources. I am confident that when you do, you will agree that I am representing reality fairly.

The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age well describes the problem of peak oil, which is our most pressing threat.

Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (New Society Publishers) discusses the realities mentioned above, namely that as a result of living unsustainably we now face shortages: peak oil, peak fish, peak topsoil, and so on.

Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming is an in-depth, impeccably sourced dissection of the lies spewed by vested interests to protect their profits at everyone’s expense.

Happy reading. If you don’t know, you cannot prepare. And if you are not prepared, your chances at surviving a downturn, setback, or collapse of any sort are greatly diminished.