The Gathering Storm: A Treatise on the State of the World From 1998 to 2008

Jim Swann practiced architecture in Chicago at Swann and Weiskopf for 30 years before moving to Bellingham in 1992. His book on human rights and the environment, “Human Rights and the Ecological Imperative” is available for $15. Please contact Mr. Swann at jimswann@hotmail.com for a copy.

Editor’s Note: Whatcom Watch published part of Mr. Swann’s book “Human Rights and the Ecological Imperative” as a series in July, August and September 2004. The next few months, we’ll publish Parts VIII and IX as a series. The chapters deal with the ecological imperative.

“The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.”
    — Alfred North Whitehead

This treatise has been a strenuous task for me. I have said what I set out to say about the state of the world, perhaps not as clearly or beautifully as I would have liked, but hopefully, sufficiently clear for others to understand. That is as much as I can do.

I have spent all of my life thus far in what those in charge termed “the century of progress,” a century in which commerce coupled with science and technology were to lead us to the promised land. The curtain is soon to close on this drama, but we seem to be no closer to the Promised Land. In fact, the land we see has been much abused since the curtain first opened, the goal still somewhere far off.

We have been building bigger cities (Lewis Mumford called them megalopolises in “The Culture of Cities”) with bigger buildings, with higher speed automobiles and infinitely better communication systems. Our cathedrals have been corporate headquarters, our engineering feats the great dams and bridges, our agora the shopping mall, and our contribution to better living, the suburbs and the slums. Much of this has been accomplished with the help of our battleships, our automobiles and the resources of others.

But our contemporary cathedrals speak mainly to corporate profits and externalized costs. Too many dams speak to a shortsighted view of nature versus modern infrastructure. Our bridges are big and beautiful, but they are products of the automobile’s rationale to decentralize and have helped spawn untold miles of asphalt and ubiquitous suburbs, not to mention shopping malls and strip shopping centers with their expansive parking lots.

We have helped create vast slums and industrial wastelands, some too toxic to correct. Our communication systems are miraculous, but what we communicate is hardly worth the environmental cost. Looking back, of course, it is easier to see our mistakes. Looking ahead and attempting to correct them is much harder.

Few countries today are at the same place politically, industrially, educationally or socially. None have all the answers, let alone those who are currently leading us into the new millennium. From the earliest prehistoric swap, trade and commerce have always led the way to further integration and assimilation. Today is no different. With the help of science and technology, this integration is happening much faster than ever before.

But scientists are also currently focusing on the bigger picture and are beginning to discover what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong. It is this picture which will soon hopefully dominate our actions, for these have to do with whether we collectively will continue to be earth’s dominant species.

I believe it will become apparent to even the most recalcitrant ideologists, who only change course in the face of overwhelming calamity, that indeed we are approaching such a calamity. The symptoms are already here. It is only a question of which symptoms will manifest themselves first and with sufficient impact to change those hard-core mindsets.

As the 20th century draws to a close, we are discovering all the flaws, which our “progress” brought along with its great accomplishments. Most of these side effects were ignored or downgraded as of minor import. It is only recently that we have been forced to face some of their impacts: the ozone hole, global warming, polluted lakes and streams, disappearing forests, depleted aquifers, the rapid extinction of species, et. al.

Nor was it clear to most that while progress was bringing material success to a few rich nations, it was concurrently increasing poverty in others. Nor was it clear that once poor countries opted for our material progress, the increasing side effects of their efforts would accelerate the deterioration of everyone’s mutual environment while concurrently increasing the spread between haves and have-nots within nations. Such were and are the current realities that drive events.

It has also become increasingly clear that while official colonialism is at an end, economic colonialism is alive and well. Nor have human rights or democracy taken hold in much of the world where petty dictators, leftover colonialists and religious fundamentalists still hold power. These, in turn, are courted and supported by the democracies and their transnational corporations for the mutual exploitation of the former’s citizens and/or natural resources.

The disservices of our acts are beginning to exceed the services. Trouble is coming out of the closet. If there is little or no basic change in our directions, attitudes or mindsets, we are collectively in for disasters. But the realistic potential for major institutional changes to happen in the near future is slim. Therefore, we are going to suffer a period of painful readjustment in which the incipient failure of our current mindsets and actions will force us to seek new answers. The longer this process takes, the more painful it will be.

Science and technology will need to focus on eliminating the dangerous side effects of all services. Primary among these is the need to replace fossil fuels or prepare to do without. I suspect that Amory Lovins’ “soft energies” will not alone suffice, nor will organic farming solve the world’s food needs until population stabilizes and consumption abates.

The democracies, though currently flawed, will need to focus on undoing the damage left over from colonialism, the Cold War, and current economic colonialism, by reining in their own predatory corporations, dismantling WTO, and joining with the U.N. to initiate an international plan for eco-stability.

There are no magic words. We are not at the center of any universe or even of our very own solar system. We are not even of primary importance here. We are but bit players in an ongoing complex drama and we must learn our part or be eliminated from the play. Let us hope somehow we will muddle through.

“Carbon dioxide levels rise. Mercury climbs. Oceans warm. Glaciers melt. Sea levels rise. Sea ice thins. Permafrost thaws. Wildfires increase. Lakes shrink. Lakes freeze up later. Ice shelves collapse. Droughts linger. Precipitation increases. Mountain streams run dry. Winter loses its bite. Spring arrives earlier. Autumn comes later. What in the world is going on?” — National Geographic, Sept. 2004

 Let me briefly review some of the current reports on “the state of the world” which will highlight my urgent comments. Here are three in some detail. The Meadows Group, whose first Limits to Growth study (1972) was sponsored by the Club of Rome, has just completed an update: “Limits to Growth — a 30-Year Update” by the late Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows.

With the help of other U.S. and foreign scientists, and using system dynamics theory and a computer model called World 3, they present 10 different scenarios from 2004 to 2100. While the first study 30 years ago was both misunderstood and maligned, their projections have stood the test of time. This gives their current projections much credence. What makes this study unique is that “it presents the underlying economic structure that leads to these problems.”

And what does it find these problems are? … “We are drawing on the world’s resources faster than they can be restored, and we are releasing wastes and pollutants faster than the earth can absorb them or render them harmless. They are leading us toward global and economic collapse — but there may be time to address these problems and soften the impact.”

That’s the big picture. The particulars are presented on graphs and charts, most of which describe a story of “overshoot,” which translated means we are living unsustainably, driven by economic exponential growth. The Meadows Group concludes on this note:

• As the earth’s limits are approached, and especially as they are exceeded, there are unavoidable trade-offs between the number of people the earth can support and the material level at which each person can be supported. The exact numerical trade-offs are not knowable and they will change over time as technology, knowledge, human coping ability and the earth’s support systems change. The supportable population and living standard may move up or down. But the general implication of the trade-off will remain the same: more people means less material throughput for each person — or a higher risk of collapse.

• The longer the world economy takes to reduce its throughputs and move toward sustainability, the lower the population and material standard that will be ultimately supportable. At some point delay means collapse.

• The higher the society sets  its targets for material standard of living, the greater its risk of exceeding and eroding its limits.

From this computer modeling analysis let us go to a straightforward photo/narrative approach via the National Geographic Magazine in their September 2004 issue. The article is entitled “Global Warming — Bulletins from a Warmer World,” which consists of 75 pages of pictures and type vividly describing our changing biosphere and the direct impact it is having on us. National Geographic has targeted climate, both historic and current, to detail what is transpiring today and what it portends for tomorrow.

The first signs of trouble occurred in the 1990s as greenhouse warming became apparent. Tropical seas increased water vapor energy going into the atmospheric system with temperature increase. As a result, storms increased and droughts lasted longer. Scientist named these climate changes “el Niño” and “la Niña” and their impact was made worse through deforestation, loss of wetlands, and urban infrastructure.

 “What do we get when we compare hundreds of thousands of years of climate data from glaciers, caves and coral reefs with projections modeled by the world’s most powerful supercomputers? Factor in a heavy dose of greenhouse gasses, and you get a harrowing forecast.”

— National Geographic

What you get, according to National Geographic, are many drastic events from melting glaciers to new deserts, to dying species, dead forests and displaced humans. It is not a pretty picture. It pinpoints how human activity, even beyond the burning of fossil fuels, is hastening warming. Finally, National Geographic confesses, “even our scientists cannot accurately predict what may happen in the future. There are too many random factors.”

Next let us look at a recent best seller, a book by Jared Diamond, an internationally respected author and scientist in evolutionary biology and biogeography, holder of several scientific awards. The book is titled “Collapse — How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.”

He begins by listing eight critical categories which, in each specific case, have had major/minor roles in the failure or success of the society: deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems, overhunting or fishing, water management problems, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth and increased per capita impact of people.

Using several examples from past societies, he diagnoses how some failed while others prevailed. Looking at his list of eight it is not too difficult to imagine why present day societies in Africa or the Middle East have already collapsed or are in the process of collapsing, although, we need to add the adverse impact our more complex societies have had on theirs, e.g. colonialism, slavery and resource extraction.

He also adds four additional categories, which are critical today: energy, the photosynthetic ceiling, toxic chemicals and atmospheric changes. These focus on today’s energy sources (fossil fuels and nuclear), maximizing photosynthesis for plants and forests, utilizing toxic chemicals in spite of their known ill effects, and the resulting atmospheric and oceanic changes resulting from past and present human acts. His analysis is thorough and professional. His outlook is not too optimistic,;here’s an example:

“Even if the human populations of the third world did not exist, it would be impossible for the first world alone to maintain its present course, because it is not in a steady state but is depleting its own resources as well as those imported from the third world… What will happen when it finally dawns on all those people in the third world that the first world standards are unreachable for them, and that the first world refuses to abandon those standards for itself?”

Diamond does not leave us with this bleak outlook alone. He pictures the world as a polder, a great interdependent community, and points to the Dutch whose precarious country (below sea level) has made cooperative citizens of everyone. He points to other countries, which have made decisions for critical change, saving themselves from collapse. He admonishes others, ourselves included; “We don’t need new technologies to solve our problems; while they can make some contribution, for the most part we just need the political will to apply solutions already available.”

And Diamond adds, “We must supplement typical short-term political thinking with long-term planning.” Finally, he leaves us with this quote by Winston Churchill:

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I must also include Howard and Elisabeth Odum’s last book, published in 2001, “A Prosperous Way Down,” before closing this discussion. With their ecomacroscopes and sound science they present the big picture, one of ever repeating cycles of growth, climax and decline, of universal pulsing from microscopic organisms to stars and galaxies.

They see our current fossil fuel economy already beyond its peak and heading down (in 2001), its fuels becoming scarce and more costly to retrieve. They outline four stages of growth/anti-growth: (1) growth, (2) climax and transition, (3) descent, and (4) low energy and restoration.

At stage (2) “diversity and complexity increase. Species with symbiotic, co-operative relationships develop. There is more organization. Organisms divide their tasks rather than compete … . A mature urban economy is similar to a mature ecosystem with many kinds of occupations, specialties and organizations … . Regulations help eliminate destructive competition.”

At stage (3) “assets decrease, either because the pulse of growth has used up the storage of available resources or because there is a surge of destruction by the pulse of a larger scale. By one means or another, the developed system has to adapt to coming down … . From the chronicles of history, coming down can be gradual or catastrophic.”

The Odums hope for the gradual option and spend the latter part of their book focused on the how of it. Briefly, they tell us, it leads to a return to a solar energy-dominated society, stage (4), but with a wiser understanding of our relationship to our bio and geo spheres to assist us… and a long wait for the next growth cycle. While the authors don’t point to that “pulse of a larger scale,” global warming with its macro impacts appear to fit the description. It is also clear that many parts of our world are already in stage (3) and their descent can best be described as catastrophic.

Finally, the Odums do not find sufficient energy sources to prevent stage (4). They concede some soft energies will provide local help, e.g., geothermal, wind and biomass, but they are skeptical regarding the potential net energy from some sources like hydrogen and solar technologies.

They wrote: “The trend of substitution of one fuel for another continues toward more use of natural gas, but the proven fuel reserves are not increasing. Because 71 percent of the whole earth empower (the energy of one kind used up to create a product or service) comes from fossil fuels, global consumption eventually has to be reduced to less than one-third of its current level.

“The developed nations that depend on nonrenewable resources for 80–90 percent of their energy will eventually have to reduce their populations and/or their living standards by 80–90 percent. However, with reduced populations we can look forward to a new but smaller agrarian economy. Green again, enriched with knowledge developed in the (past) fuel equals a rich century of complexity.

“Net energy evaluation of alternative energy sources shows the fallacies in many alternative energy sources claimed capable of replacing fossil fuels. Solar technology, hydrogen technology and fusion do not yield as much energy as they use. Other sources are too limited in quantity.” They offer some hope for hydroelectric, geothermal, and wind power locally.

The Meadows Group does not agree with the Odums’ conclusions regarding the lack of energy. They leave us with the hope of redesigning our current inefficient and polluting industries, but retaining the need to reduce population and consumption to avoid “overshoot.”

The Meadows Group Wrote: “Current atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are far higher than they have been for 160,000 years. Whatever the consequences  might be, there is no question that humanity’s emissions of greenhouse gases are filling up the atmospheric sinks much faster than the planet can empty them. There is a significant disequilibrium in the global atmosphere, and it is getting exponentially worse.

“The processes set in motion by this disequilibrium move slowly, as measured by human time scales. It may take decades for the consequences to be revealed in melting ice, rising seas, changing currents, shifting rainfall, greater storms, and migrating insects or birds or mammals. If human beings decide they do not like these consequences, it may take centuries to undo them.

“The pollution emissions we have discussed in this chapter are not a sign of progress. They are a sign of inefficiency and carelessness. As industries realize that, they are finding ways to reduce pollution emissions by rethinking manufacturing processes from beginning to end, using ‘clean technology’ and precautionary pollution prevention.”

The Odums are concerned about the coming short supply of energy and our need to adjust by shrinking population and consumption to fit circumstances. The Meadows Group believes we can accomplish this and avoid overshoot by efficiently designing industry, saving energy in the process and also reducing population. They see no shortage of energy. Neither group seems too concerned about the rest of the world. §

Next Month:

The ozone hole, dimming the sun, biodiversity and sequestering.