March 17 2014 The Guardian newspaper

NASA-Funded Study: Industrial Civilization Headed for 'Irreversible Collapse'?

Natural and social scientists develop new model of how 'perfect storm' of crises could unravel global system

This Nasa Earth Observatory image shows a storm system circling around an area of extreme low pressure in 2010, which many scientists attribute to climate change. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.
Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:

"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."
Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with "Elites" based largely in industrialised countries responsible for both:

"... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels."

The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:

"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."

Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.

Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:

".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature."

Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that "with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites."
In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners", allowing them to "continue 'business as usual' despite the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how "historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases)."

Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that:

"While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing."

However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation.

The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth:

"Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."

The NASA-funded HANDY model offers a highly credible wake-up call to governments, corporations and business - and consumers - to recognise that 'business as usual' cannot be sustained, and that policy and structural changes are required immediately.

Although the study is largely theoretical, a number of other more empirically-focused studies - by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for instance - have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a 'perfect storm' within about fifteen years. But these 'business as usual' forecasts could be very conservative. 

Do Bees Have Feelings? - Obama Caves to Republicans - Republican Voter Suppression - Peak Oil - Melting Polar Ice Releases Toxins - Racial Wealth gap Grows- Africa Drought Worsens - US Never Planned to Capture Bin Laden - more

- Do Bees Have Feelings?

It’s... an important [question] with implications for how we should treat not just bees, but the great majority of animals. Recently, studies by Geraldine Wright and her colleagues at Newcastle University in the UK have rekindled debate over these issues by showing that honeybees may experience something akin to moods.

- Republican Voter Suppression

More dirty tricks from Wisconsin's Scott Walker, who first passed a voter ID/suppression law requiring photo IDs at the polls [a law which would effect democratic voters] and then started closing DMV offices where residents - oddly, mostly Democrats - could get them, while at the same time expanding hours in Republican areas.

- The Scourge of 'Peak Oil'

When demand for oil consistently surpasses supply, experts warn that our lives will look "very differently".

"Peak oil is the time when the world's production reaches the highest point, then starts back down again," Whipple told Al Jazeera. "Oil is a finite resource, and [it] someday will go down, and that is what the peak oil discussion is all about."

There are signs that peak oil may have already arrived.

- Melting Arctic Ice Releasing Banned Toxins, Warn Scientists

The chemicals seeping out as temperatures rise include the pesticides DDT, lindane and chlordane as well as the industrial chemicals PCBs and the fungicide hexachlorobenzene (HCB). All of these are know as persistent organic pollutants (Pops), and are banned under the 2004 Stockholm convention.

Pops can cause cancers and birth defects and take a long time to degrade. Over past decades, the low temperatures in the Arctic trapped volatile Pops in ice and cold water. But scientists in Canada and Norway have discovered that global warming is freeing the Pops again.

- US Squandered £21 Billion on Private Contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq

Waste, mismanagement and poorly conceived projects mean the United States could have lost more than 15 per cent of the total given out in contracts and grants.

- A surprising war on leaks under Obama

When President Obama took office, federal employees who had exposed wrongdoing or were considering doing so had reason for hope. Eight years of the Bush administration's relentless retaliation against whistle-blowers had ended, and Obama spoke encouragingly of transparency and due process.

Since then, the administration has taken some positive steps for whistle-blowers, most notably in (unsuccessfully) advocating legislation to protect them and in loosening the government's grip on public information. However, its treatment of national-security and intelligence whistle-blowers - arguably the ones we need most - has been brutal. It has pursued multiple prosecutions of such whistle-blowers on espionage charges.

- UN Urges 'Massive' Action on Horn of Africa Drought

An estimated 3.7 million people in Somalia -- around a third of the population -- are on the brink of starvation and millions more in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda have been struck by the worst drought in the region in 60 years.

Officials said at Monday's meeting the UN has received about $1 billion (696 million euros) since first launching an appeal for the region in November 2010 but needs a billion more by the end of the year to cope with the emergency.

- Obama Administration Delays Smog Rule Amid Pushback From Industry and Republicans

The latest delay comes as major industry groups, many Republicans and some conservative Democrats are pressuring EPA and the White House to scuttle the rules.

- Study Shows Racial Wealth Gap Grows Wider

There's long been a big gap between the wealth of white families and the wealth of African-Americans and Hispanics. But the Great Recession has made it much worse — the divide is almost twice what it used to be.

- Republican Climate Change Deniers and Tea Party Funders the Koch Brothers are Busy Suppressing Votes and Strangling Democracy

Koch Slime Knows No Bounds Dept: It seems the ever-helpful Koch Brothers'  Americans for Prosperity was kind enough to send out absentee ballots to Democratic voters in Wisconsin for upcoming recall elections against six GOP state senators. But in a mysterious "typo," the forms tell voters to return them by Aug. 11. The election is Aug. 9. Wisconsin Democrats have filed a complaint; now, we are too.

- Bin Laden Raid 'Was Strictly to Kill Him'

The raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan was a mission to kill him, and there was ''never any question'' he would be captured alive, one of those directly involved has claimed.

- Special Comment: The Four Great Hypocrisies of the Debt Deal

Retreat, Surrender, Can He at Least Plead?
by Ralph Nader
Published on Tuesday, August 2, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

The headlines came quickly after President Obama concluded the deficit-debt deal with the Republicans Sunday evening. There were few shades of gray. The New York Times editorial was titled "To Escape Chaos, a Terrible Deal: Democrats won almost nothing they wanted except avoiding default."

It was truly, as the Times pointed out, "a political environment laced with lunacy." But don't blame it all on the Republican "mad dogs" on Capitol Hill playing chicken with the economic plight of the American people and its wobbling economy. It was President Obama who surrendered.


In one of the most inept episodes of Presidential-Congressional relations, Mr. Obama managed to give the Republicans more than they expected and leave the Democrats with less than the Republicans offered. The Republicans never expected Mr. Obama to give in entirely on tax increases on the wealthy, on the reviled oil industry giants and other corporate tax escapees. The Republicans even agreed to $800 billion in new revenue over ten years. Obama fumbled the ball day after day, and with the August 2 debt ceiling deadline looming, he fell to the extortionists.

Unlike Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush II, who routinely expected and got debt ceilings raised without conditions.

President Obama's disaster began months ago when he agreed to tie raising the debt ceiling to a grand bargain with the Republicans regarding deficits and revenues instead of demanding a debt ceiling raise while he was caving on extending Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. That immediately gave the "fanatic" Republicans a veto power over the "establishment" Republicans in Congress. And fanatics don't blink. Especially those fanatics who, elected last year, say they don't care about being re-elected.

So Obama accepted about $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade, got no revenue producing tax increases and therefore made it nearly impossible to create a public works jobs program to uplift a sliding economy.

With economic indicators registering more trouble in recent days for American workers, Mr. Obama has no cards left. Interest rates cannot be driven any lower by the Federal Reserve. He didn't get even a renewal of the extension of unemployment benefits.
Consumer spending - 2/3rds of the economy, is stagnant. Without consumer demand, new investment is sluggish. Unemployment is rising, and without jobs, workers can't increase their consumer spending. State, local and federal government spending cannot increase under the yoke of the just agreed-upon cuts. The weaker dollar may increase exports a little, but the U.S. still has a continuing massive trade deficit, especially with China. Europe's financial problems will curb orders of U.S. goods and services.

So what can Mr. Obama do? He can propose a public works program, paid for by the tax increases on the wealthy and the corporations. Both are getting richer. The large corporations are reporting very good second quarter profits further disconnecting their affluence from that of their workers and labor in general. He could, if he wanted, make a very strong case for repairing America's infrastructure and bring the soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan, as a majority of the American people and the most mayors of our cities desire.

First, however, he has to take the offensive by showing that the bulk of the deficits since 2002 were caused by the Bush tax cuts, mostly for the wealthy, and Bush's two wars. Obama also has to hold the Republicans accountable for their hostage-taking of the American economy so they cannot impede public works proposals in an election year.
Amazingly, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he was quick to compromise from the get-go. Consequently, he painted himself into a corner. So, since he is not a leader, maybe he can become a pleader.

Given that non-financial companies are sitting on two trillion dollars of inert cash and other liquid assets, maybe he can appeal to these companies to disgorge ten percent in immediate special dividends to their long-parched shareholders who are, after all, their owners. Loosening the executive locks on this hoard of money would provide $200 billion for more likely spending in the market place. Companies like Apple, Google, Cisco, Intel and Microsoft alone are sitting on well over $200 billion cash. To these coddled, indentured U.S. companies he can invoke President John F. Kennedy's challenge--"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Second, he can plead with those very profitable corporations that have benefited from the government bailout, or pay little or no federal income taxes, to voluntarily contribute to a public works fund.

Companies like GE, Verizon, Exxon Mobil, Boeing, IBM, Wells Fargo, DuPont, American Electric Power, FedEx, Honeywell, Yahoo, United Technologies as a group made $171 billion in U.S. profits over three years and paid zero federal income tax with a $2.5 billion negative advantage. And that, says Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, is "just the tip of an iceberg of widespread corporate tax avoidance."

Is such pleading just Pollyannaish? Maybe. But it will resonate with the American people's sense of injustice. Those feelings of indignation can reverberate and cause members of Congress to start remembering who sent them to Washington. Last I heard, corporations don't have a single vote.

Sean

Super Bowl Selling Materialism and Military; Climate Change Ignored by Media; Scientology Fake; Peak Oil Acknowledged by US and Saudis; US Still Backing Dictators; Huffington Post/AOL Merger Bad

- The Planet Keeps Warming, But U.S. Media Interest Cools

...there has been a "steep slide" in climate reporting this year, Columbia Journalism Review’s science blog noted. Few major corporate news media outlets even planned to send reporters to Cancún [to the climate talks]; as Washington Post lead environmental writer Juliet Eilperin told Observatory, "It feels like there is absolutely no momentum…. What will there even be to cover in Cancún in terms of public policy or reader interest?"Setting aside the oddness of an often-reactive news media predicting the (lack of) news, if a meeting of the world’s nations upon which the fate of the Earth potentially hinges isn’t a story, what is?

- It Ain't Just Mubarak -- 7 of the Worst Dictators the U.S. Is Backing to the Hilt

Embattled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, whose regime has received billions in U.S. aid, has been in the global media spotlight of late. He's long been "our bastard," but he's not alone.Let's take a look at the other dictators from around the planet who are fortunate enough to be on Uncle Sam's good side... 

- Basis of Scientology Proven False

As I reported in the article, I discussed Hubbard’s war record with Tommy Davis, the spokesman for the Church of Scientology. He said that "if it was true that Hubbard had not been injured, then "the injuries that he handled by the use of Dianetics procedures were never handled, because they were injuries that never existed; therefore, Dianetics is based on a lie; therefore, Scientology is based on a lie".

- WikiLeaks Cables: Saudi/US Officials Acknowledge 'Peak Oil' Approaches

The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.

- Vermont Governor Lays Out Details for Single Payer Pathway

[The Governor of Vermont] released the legislative details of how to move the state to a single payer health care system, with the first steps beginning this summer.

- Obama’s Deal with the US Chamber of Commerce is Disaster for Workers

I've been watching (and occasionally trying to deal with) the Chamber for years, and all I know is it has a deep, abiding belief in cutting taxes on the wealthy, eroding regulations that constrain Wall Street, cutting back on rules that promote worker health and safety, getting rid of the minimum wage, repealing the new health-care law, fighting unions, cutting back Medicare and Social Security, reducing or eliminating corporate taxes, and, in general, taking the nation back to the days before the New Deal.

- AOL and HuffPo. The loser? Journalism

That's borne out by a memo from AOL Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong on where his company's journalism is going. It's fairly chilling reading, ordering the company's editors to evaluate all future stories on the basis of "traffic potential, revenue potential, edit quality and turnaround time." All stories, it stressed, are to be evaluated according to their "profitability consideration."

- The Left Built Huffington, and We CanTear it Down Too

Socialite Arianna Huffington built a blog-empire on the backs of thousands of citizen journalists. She exploited our idealism and let us labor under the illusion that the Huffington Post was different, independent and leftist. Now she’s cashed in and three thousand indie bloggers find themselves working for a megacorp.

The Stink in the Super Bowl
by Robert Shetterly
Published on Wednesday, February 9, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

"Part of the main plan of imperialism… is that we will give you your history, we will write it for you, we will re-order the past…What’s more truly frightening is the defacement, the mutilation, and ultimately the eradication of history…"
--- Edward Said

It would be hard to imagine any ardent advocate of the military/industrial complex not reveling in what the Super Bowl has become --- a veritable marketing orgy of violence and consumption --- advertisers spending millions per minute to pander to our desire to own more stuff while fighter jets roar overhead reminding us of how the right-to-stuff is protected. Why must a football game become a vehicle for materialism and the power that defends it?  I like football, played it pretty well in high school, and still think that in spite of the performance enhancing drugs & obscene salaries, the game itself is one of the few more or less honest of our mass cultural diversions. But the integrity of the game itself drowns in the toxic soup of values being dished up.

However, I have no need to belabor what should be obvious to anyone.
Instead, something far more insidious was presented to the world minutes before the opening kick-off. A short video, 111 seconds, narrated by the actor Michael Douglas, portrayed The Journey of American History --- its culmination being Super Bowl XLV.

The video consisted of a quick series of icons, both events and people, from our history, each one meant to strike a chord of collective pride, courage, triumph or suffering. In quick succession we saw in black and white the Statue of Liberty, suffragists marching, an image from the Dust Bowl, a landing craft at D-day, John Lennon’s image on a peace poster, JFK at his inaugural saying, "Ask not….," MLK, Jr. intoning, "I have a dream…," Rosa Parks, the Challenger lifting off, someone pick axing the Berlin Wall, the floods of Katrina, FDR speaking, Muhammad Ali gesticulating over a downed opponent, Ronald Reagan smiling, Lindbergh, the flag raising at Iwo Jima, a similar flag raising at 9/11, Amelia Earhart, Ray Charles, the moon landing, a scene from the Depression …. I’m sure I’ve missed a few.
]
Michael Douglas’s minimal narration began by saying that this was our journey. And after Dr. King’s image, Douglas picked up the theme of the dream, our dream & our belief in that dream. With the images of 9/11, he said that this was our darkest day…. But the flag as still there! He said, "We never give up. How could we?"

And then the video shifted to the teams in the Super Bowl. Douglas said that tonight we are united in the journey of these teams as quick images of chicken packers in Green Bay and a steel mill in Pittsburgh flashed by. Douglas said that dreaming and believing have brought us to this moment of collective celebration and that that is Our Journey. 

That’s our journey? It began with the Statue of Liberty? Not with the genocide of Native Americans, slavery and the crucial assumption that nature was to be feared, conquered and exploited? If I claim that I am telling you about my journey, and tell you only the good parts, what have I told you? What have we learned about the nature of journeys?

If I tell you that my darkest day was the time I was victimized and fail to mention the time I victimized someone else, what do you think I have learned from my experience?

More importantly, the video portrayed a series of American moments and heroic people and equated them with the Super Bowl as though they are all on a continuum of social progress and equally indicative of our finest character. In the parlance of our time, it was simply a portrayal of connecting the dots: Statue of Liberty, suffragists, FDR, D-day, JFK, Rosa Parks, MLK, Jr. … Super Bowl. All on the same line, of equal weight. If this is the trail of dots we need to follow, it’s a trail that leads us deeper into the dark woods, not out of it.

Obviously the Super Bowl is an excuse to celebrate materialism and militarism. Weren’t those two of the "triplets" (the other being racism) that Dr. King identified as being the forces that were destroying the values of this country and leading us to spiritual death?
Many of the dots in that time line figure one way or another in the struggle for some kind of justice. How does the Super Bowl do that? It does, but only if you consider the real triumph of this country not its democratic values but its economic system, capitalism. And you can’t tell the difference.

In his "I Have a Dream" speech, Dr. King described the American Dream as consisting of the "riches of freedom and the security of justice." The blatant message of Super Bowl is the freedom of riches and the justice of security.  Very different things.

People, like many of our students today, who know little history except for the façade of history, and people, like many students today, who have not been taught to think deeply, would accept the message of Michael Douglas’s version of our journey. Without any critique, it felt good.

Who wrote that script for him? 

Clearly its intent was to equate the apotheosis of violence and consumption with the struggle for social justice. Its intent was to drain the real courage and meaning of our most important and most necessary social struggles by equating them with corporate power --- corporate power being the same force that did and does impede social and economic justice. The video’s intent was to show that the behavior and interests of Halliburton are on the same moral timeline as the behavior and interests of Rosa Parks.

We generally think of imperialism, as Edward Said was when he made the comment above, as the military/economic process of one country exploiting another. Imperialism, though, is the same within a country. Propaganda and false history, combined with poor education and a corporate press, are used to subjugate people to the benefit of their own powerful elites. It stinks. It stinks in Iraq and it stinks in Wichita.

Douglas said, "We never give up. How could we?" Give up what? Fighting for justice or fighting for profit?  His choice of words reminded me of another person who asked the same question. Dorothea Lange went into internment camps in the western US during WW II where our government had imprisoned Japanese Americans. She photographed what was being done to these people in the name of the freedom of security. She went to bear witness. Most Americans had no idea nor wanted to. Fear justifies most anything and denies the consequences. After being there & witnessing this crime against humanity, Dorothea Lange said, "This is what we did. How could it happen? How could we?"

What is our journey?

I know little about Michael Douglas except that he is a fine actor and that he recently survived a bout with serious throat cancer. I suspect that both of those factors made him a good choice as the narrator for this bit of dangerous propaganda. Conquering a deadly disease tends to add credibility to one’s professed integrity. But with this video he was helping to proliferate a cultural cancer that is destroying us all.

I noticed that he was sitting right behind George Bush and Condoleezza Rice in the luxury boxes.

Sean