Prices are going to rise, probably exponentially, over the next few decades. The reason for that's simple: everything, more or less, has been artificially cheap. The costs of everything from carbon to fascism to ecological collapse to social fracture haven't been factored in — ever, from the beginning of the industrial age. But that age is now coming to a sudden, climactic, explosive end. The problem is that, well, we're standing in the way. Umair Haque writing in Medium
The beginning of the failure of our climate system, which is the one that we just happened to have evolved in, will be "sudden and cataclysmic," in a blunt warning from the World Economic Forum. That is a tough pill to swallow, but swallow, we must. The age of consequences is here, and the ramifications of climate breakdown are not going away anytime soon. Neither will the economic and social collapse that is bearing down on us. There are too many people that devour the earth's resources like a weedwhacker through the biosphere to escape ramifications. Loss of nature will usher in an extinction crisis comparable in some ways to past great dying events.
Reflect on 2021 as the good ole days as the years pass with increasing ferocious and horrifying climate catastrophes year after terrifying year, decade after dreadful decade. That looming pummeling we will endure, whether from floods that have inundated China's agriculture and energy sources or the shortages of fire retardants in the United States as the world transitions into the pyrocene, will test the resilience of our civilization. Drought and flooding are causing rising food insecurity worldwide, civil unrest will likely result, people will fight to locate food, and the military used to restore order.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972 conducted a study predicting the collapse of society in the 21st century. The study was ridiculed by many, while pundits were outraged that the research ever saw the light of day.
Today, one of the world's top accounting firms gave the 1972 analysis a "stunning vindication." (The KPMG research, analysis, and study can be found here.)
Vice writer Nafeez Ahmed explains:
The study represents the first time a top analyst working within a mainstream global corporate entity has taken the ‘limits to growth’ model seriously. Its author, Gaya Herrington, is Sustainability and Dynamic System Analysis Lead at KPMG in the United States. However, she decided to undertake the research as a personal project to understand how well the MIT model stood the test of time.
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Herrington’s new analysis examines data across 10 key variables, namely population, fertility rates, mortality rates, industrial output, food production, services, non-renewable resources, persistent pollution, human welfare, and ecological footprint. She found that the latest data most closely aligns with two particular scenarios, ‘BAU2’ (business-as-usual) and ‘CT’ (comprehensive technology).
“BAU2 and CT scenarios show a halt in growth within a decade or so from now,” the study concludes. “Both scenarios thus indicate that continuing business as usual, that is, pursuing continuous growth, is not possible. Even when paired with unprecedented technological development and adoption, business as usual as modelled by LtG would inevitably lead to declines in industrial capital, agricultural output, and welfare levels within this century.”
Climate impacts and milestones previously presented as occurring by 2100 are happening today and are only beginning to unleash their fury on Earth. For decades, we’ve been misinformed on the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, played down by fossil fuel interests embedded in all significant planetary discussions on the climate.
Misinforming on the climate crisis is a kinder word than the consensus deserves. The Fossil fuel industry is still spreading climate disinformation in the leadup to COP26. Their violent allies in the nationalist movements across the world catapult the pro-carbon propaganda for them.
Glasgow is already dropping topics too dicey for the faint of heart and too threatening to the rich and powerful. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are not even bothering to attend. The Saudi Arabia Oil Ministry is lobbying with “Phrases like the need for urgent and accelerated mitigation actions at all scales” should be eliminated from the report.” Countries like these will argue for carbon capture as Greta would say, blah, blah, blah.
I read the below excerpt a while ago in Scientific American on why we have been fed a crock over the years on the jaw-dropping pace of climate change. This excerpt explains why some scientists have underestimated the mind-blowing changes we now experience.
How does (climate science) this lead to underestimation? Consider a case in which most scientists think that the correct answer to a question is in the range 1–10, but some believe that it could be as high as 100. In such a case, everyone will agree that it is at least 1–10, but not everyone will agree that it could be as high as 100. Therefore, the area of agreement is 1–10, and this is reported as the consensus view. Wherever there is a range of possible outcomes that includes a long, high-end tail of probability, the area of overlap will necessarily lie at or near the low end. Error bars can be (and generally are) used to express the range of possible outcomes, but it may be difficult to achieve consensus on the high end of the error estimate. Micheal Oppenheimer, Naomi Oreske, Dale Jamieson, Keynyn Brysse, Jessica O'reilly, Matthew Shindell and Milena Wazeck -Authors: Discerning Experts: The Practices of Scientific Assessment for Environmental Policy
And, here we are in a canoe bobbing on the whitewater rapids of the Niagra River, the roar of the waterfall uncomfortably close and, we have no paddle.
Here we are is not a good place to be. I recently discovered the writings of Umair Haque. He is an interesting guy and is famed as one of the most brilliant “doomer” headline writers. The content in his articles isn't shabby nor untruthful.
Excerpts from his The Future of the World Economy is Perma-Crisis:
We are now transitioning to a new economy. Usually, when people like me say that, it’s for the sake of an overblown portrait of a utopia. Let me assure you, I don’t mean it that way. We’re transitioning to a new economy of shortage, inflation, and stagnation — for the stuff we’re accustomed to having plenty of, and buying thoughtlessly. It’s going to be a deeply painful transition.
What’s behind it? And what does it really mean?
The superficial explanation goes like this. Covid wrecked the global economy. It caused a huge drop in demand, so manufacturers made less stuff, and retailers ordered less stuff. Meanwhile, huge distribution bottlenecks emerged, as the world went into lockdown. Bang. What do you get? A solid few years of pain, via shortages of basics.
All that’s true, but it’s only part of the story — the introduction. What’s really going on here is something much deeper.
Our civilisation’s systems are beginning to fail, and as they fail, the things we once took for granted are going to go into shortage, ever more severe, and prices for them will skyrocket.
Covid cause what’s known as a long term shock. Two, in fact. One on the supply side, and one on the demand side. Suddenly, milliions were laid off. And factories went idle. None of that’s easy to undo.
The effects of Covid alone are going to linger for the rest of this decade. How do I know that? Well, because Covid’s not over. We can pretend like it is, like Britain and America are doing, sure. But in both of those countries, the effects of Covid are still catastrophic. America’s having a 9/11 every two days.
The poor world is the global economy’s factory floor. And because we haven’t vaccinated the planet, the effects of Covid are very simple: there are labour shortages. China can’t make nearly enough stuff to satisfy the West’s hungry maw anymore in an age where pandemic precautions have to be taken. The correct thing to do, for the sake of the global economy, not to mention human life, but who cares about that, would have been to vaccinate the planet, fast — instead of give Big Pharma patents for vaccines it didn’t create. This combination of mismanagement, greed, and indifference is now backfiring on the West: shortages are squarely an effect of labour and production and distribution shortages in the rest of the globe.
Now fast forward a decade. It’s not Covid anymore — it’s climate change that’s the apocalypse du jour. What effect does that have? Take what Covid’s done, and multiply it by an order of magnitude. What goes into shortage as a result of climate catastrophe? The better question is: what doesn’t? Food does, as harvests fail. Staples like milk do, as farms are abandoned to the heat. Fresh air does, as smoke fills the sky. Go ahead and take a hard look at how you need a battalion of air purifiers to live in Northern California. Then there’s water — all the droughts to come from the intensifying heat. The American West is already in drought — what happens when the water runs out, as it will in the next decade or so?
Everything is Suddenly Getting More Expensive — And Why It Won't Stop.
Umair gives examples of shortages from climate change. Relentless flooding in China over the summer and the idiocy of Texas building a weak energy grid that collapsed with a climate change enhanced freeze event where the production of microchips came to a screeching halt. More proof, you ask? Taiwan shut down its factory because of drought - the production of chips requires a lot of water. In Japan, their facility burned to the ground. China flooded yet again and is not noted in Umhairs article as it occurred after publishing.
Those who have cats remember the after-effect of the Texas power failure as being the cause of a severe cat food shortage. I still find partially empty aisles in grocery stores for all kinds of food and non-food items. The climate crisis threatens everything we have taken for granted.
The “chip shortage” is something that the world doesn’t really grasp yet, in its full importance and magnitude. It is the first climate catastrophe related shortage to hit us at a civilizational, global level. In a world of stable temperatures, guess what, we’d probably still have microchips to power our cars and gadgets and AV studios, because factories wouldn’t be losing power or be so parched they don’t have enough water. But they are — and so we do have a microchip shortage that has been caused by climate change, aka global warming.
That’s the first such catastrophe, but it won’t be the last. The chip shortage is just the tip of the immense shockwave rolling down the volcano. It’s just the first burning rock soaring through the ash-filled sky. Today, it’s chips. Tomorrow? Well, some of the things that are already becoming more and more costly to produce are steel, food, and water. That is because all those things rely on energy, and energy is getting more expensive.
Why is energy getting more expensive? The short-term answer is: Covid. Gas producers are hesitant to turn on the taps because they’re afraid that Covid will send the world into lockdown again. But that’s not the real answer. The real answer is that even if they begin to produce more gas, energy prices will go on rising over the long run.
Why? Because right about now, energy is vastly underpriced, like it has been since the beginning of the industrial age. When you buy a gallon of gas, who pays for the pollution, the carbon it emits, which heats the planet? Right about now, nobody does. But over the next few decades, someone’s going to have to. Because we are going to need to use that money to rebuild all the cities and towns and systems and factories wrecked by flood and fire and drought and plague.
Who’s that somebody going to be? Well, it’s probably not going to be energy companies. It’s probably going to be you, since they’re powerful, and you’re powerless.
As the price of energy rises, the price of everything has to rise, too. Because the dirty truth is that our civilisation is still about 80% dependent on fossil fuels. The problem isn’t the electricity grid, as you might think. It’s that making things like steel and cement and glass still use gas. The world has just one fossil fuel free steel factory so far. But our civilisation depends fundamentally on all these things. Without them? We go back to living medieval lives. All our steel and glass and concrete skyscrapers, factories, universities, cities, towns — kiss them goodbye.
I have barely scratched the surface of what we are likely to face. Much of the human impacts are still unknown. We should expect the unexpected.
All of us will be getting poorer and hungrier as impacts intensify. The fossil fuel industry needs to feel some pain, and soon, we will be; it's only fair.
The writers in Climate Brief work to keep the Daily Kos community informed and engaged with breaking news about the climate crisis worldwide while providing inspiring stories of environmental heroes, opportunities for direct engagement, and perspectives on the intersection of climate activism with spirituality politics arts.