Norm
Two and a half years ago I got diagnosed with cancer. I was in the middle of
working on a book for Pluto Press the theme of which was the interaction
between different kinds of crisis (not my own!). Global warming,
resource-depletion, neoliberalism. This idea was (a) to try to decide how
serious the problems of warming and energy depletion really are, based on
the science. (Hardly original!) And (b) to try to assess the effectiveness
or not of policy responses by the so-called 'international comunity'. John
Gray's book, to which John Bunzl refers a lot, had just been published. I
was interested in such things as whether carbon sequestration schemes could
slow the rate of emissions, whether Kyoto stood a chance, whether neoliberal
'globalism' was part of the solution or part of the problem. And how big
really are thge oil reserves, and anyway does it matter if fossil fuels run
out? We have alternatives, right?
Just as I was getting into close combat with my own dragon, the Asian
Meltdown began and oil prices hit the deck. It looked again like the
doomsayers got it wrong, but by now I was too far into my personal physical
meltdown to keep track of things. By March this year, after most of the
usual treatments they give you, I seemed to have beaten the dragon back, for
the time being anyhow. I came out of the tunnel and looked around, and found
that even in that incredibly short space of time, historically-speaking,
most things had got noticeably worse and nothing got better. The smoke and
ash from burning rainforest covered half of South East Asia. The incidence
of drought, flood, record temperatures, Polar ice-shelf disintegration, grew
so that you bgarely noticed the reports any more. Like people stopped
noticed the plague bell during epidemics. You can have the feeling that
you're stuck on the front of a runaway loco chasing towards a precipice.
Wherever you look, incredible things are happening and no-one notices. The
gamblers are enjoying themselves in the saloon cars at the rear of the
train. The rest of us are hanging on to what we've got, in the teeth of the
gale. In the US and a few other places, a huge consumer boom keeps people
quiet. The film Gladiator ought to stand as an icon for our own era of bread
and circuses staged by mad rulers.
The coral reefs are collapsing, the ozone holes are growing, the world ocean
is quietly turning into a bath of dilute carbonic acid, the great carbon
sinks of the rainforests and the northern tundras are shot, the Arctic
ice-sheet is disappearing, there is a mass extinction umparalleled since the
dawn of the Cenozoic. Well, I don't need to go on, you know all this.
Inertial momentum behind demographic change will mean there will be 9
billion humans, and maybe up to one bilion of those, according to so
demographers, will live in North America. If there is a shortfall, it will
be because of the AIDs plague.
Daniel Defore (I think it was) said you can 'find a deal of ruin in a
nation'. There are always disasters. But this moment is unique, not just in
the history of our species, but of the geological history of trhe planet.
What we're doing here on Crashlist is (a) trying to keep notes about what's
going on (not even snapshots, because the whole kaleidoscope is too big and
variegated to do more than register fleeting impressions) and (b) look for
the underlying patterns.
The situation is serious enough to merit a non-frivolous approach and that
is what I try to encourage. Everything we say and do here should reflect the
gravity of the subject matter. When I fell ill, way back in 1998, you still
had to argue with Rush Limbaugh, Julian Simon and their ilk. There are not
many global warming denialists left, and they don't have much credibility.
Equally, no-one any more is arguing that oil production is infinite, or that
'oil is as renewable resource' as oil-industry guru and renowned economisty
Morris Adelman was still babbling way back then. Today, even the US
Geological Service, famous for the crazed optimism of its conclusions, which
usually seem to stand in stark defiance to its own science, does not deny
that an Oil Peak is coming. The question is when, not if, and what effects
will there be. To answer this question requires more than geology or
economiss, it also requires world-system thinking, it requires geopolitical
analysis. The future will be one of environmental chaos, climate change,
population pressure and energy and water-famines. But in many parts of the
world the future is already happening.
Mark
----- Original Message -----
From: "Norman Mikalac" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2000 8:52 PM
Subject: Re: [CrashList] Re: Communist Internationalist Position on
Immigration and Travel
> for a new member, please tell me what is the "Crash"?
>
> thanks for your help.
>
> norm
>
>
> Mark Jones wrote:
> >
> > Nestor wrote:
> >
> > >. Do you mean that in the fantastic
> > > situation in which capitalism was overthrown in, say, France alone,
and France
> > > was let along that path, the French socialist government would enjoy
the
> > > brutal expoliation of the Third World in the same way the bourgeois
government
> > > does?
> >
> > And don't get into this either. This List is not about French socialism
or French
> > capitalism, it is about the Crash.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
> > To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
> > http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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