Easily the best article to date in Unherd’s ‘Apocalypse’ series.
An amusing and disturbing piece of satire that is frightening because of the insight that the corporate world will coopt every popular movement, whether it be the environmental movement or the social justice movement, for its own ends. We’ll somehow end up paving the world in expensive concrete for the sake of the environment.
It’s also noteworthy that the dividing line between our current reality and this rather exaggerated description of how the environmental apocalypse eventually came about is uncomfortably thin. The technocrats are certainly eager to foist increasingly complex ‘solutions’ on us that will ultimately exacerbate the problem.
As the author suggests, good old ecological complexity will likely save us in the end. We really don’t understand the environment we’re trying to fix and it will ultimately assert its own balance whether or not that’s to our liking.
I imagine my grandkids playing checkers by candlelight after a hard day helping bring home the harvest. The word ‘internet’ an archaic term found in books regarded more as mysticism than history.
If we continue with the level of complacency that you demonstrate, your grandkids will not be able to enjoy an eco-system that will allow them to reap a harvest.
If this is happens it will part of evolution like the Permian-Triassic extinction (80% fauna killed, 30m years to recover) or the Cretaceous extinction (76% fauna killed, arguably still in recovery) All this really means is that Homo Sapiens is NOT the master of the universe, or even Earth, but a tiny droplet in the water fall of time. If we evolve to control our destructive instincts we can last till something else makes us extinct, if not we will do it ourselves. Earth, however, and life upon it will carry on regardless. Eco-NSDAPers are a statistically higher risk to our existence than say nuclear holocaust, though qualitatively the risks are same in terms of outcome. I suggest we unite to give the ecos the same treatment we gave their founding fathers back in 39-45, including the bit where the Red Army enters Berlin (but in Islington, Portland O.R and Brighton, Sussex instead)
If this is happens it will part of evolution like the Permian-Triassic extinction (80% fauna killed, 30m years to recover) or the Cretaceous extinction (76% fauna killed, arguably still in recovery) All this really means is that our species is NOT the master of the universe, or even Earth, but a tiny droplet in the water fall of time. If we evolve to control our destructive instincts we can last till something else makes us extinct, if not we will do it ourselves. Earth, however, and life upon it will carry on regardless. Eco-NSDAPers are a statistically higher risk to our existence than say nuclear holocaust, though qualitatively the risks are same in terms of outcome. I suggest we unite to give the ecos the same treatment we gave their founding fathers back in 39-45, including the bit where the Red Army enters Berlin (but in Islington, Portland O.R and Brighton, Sussex instead)
Jonathan Ellman
2 years ago
A couple of flaws in this. Firstly, the environmentalists are not selling their souls to an elite class of corporates. The environmentalists are the corporates, that’s what environmentalism is. It’s what unites environmentalism with the rest of wokeism. Secondly, Kingsnorth misses the conflicts between global power blocks: the USA, the EU, China, India, Russia, etc. These conflicts will undermine corporate, wokeist environmentalism and competition will continue to drive progress just as it always has.
War is the father of all.
Unless we can understand that our eco-system is actually the source of all our money, then we shall continue to destroy what was a healthy ecological balance some sixty years ago. Indeed I agree that unless the overdeveloped countries can acquire some understanding and humility then we are likely to end up fighting over the dwindling resources. Pride comes before a fall.
Sixty years ago, “ecological balance” was set to starve humanity. That’s where the likes of Paul Erlich were correct.
What happened instead was the Green Revolution, where Earth is not only supporting double the population, but they are living better and longer. This would not have been possible had we succumbed to the eco catastrophist view.
Brendan O'Leary
2 years ago
My dystopia would be based on these axioms:
There is no wealth to funnel if nobody is creating wealth.
Environmentalism is an indulgence of the richest countries.
Richest countries are cleanest countries.
They also have slowest reproduction rates.
Destroying wealth causes environmental degradation.
Our environment is the underlying source of all our wealth. We have been exceeding the bio-capacity of our Earth for more than 50 years. It is becoming very ugly, this article implies that we shall live to see the 23rd century. If we attempt to continue with the economic growth paradigm, most of us are unlikely to survive to the end of this century.
Irrelevant.
Few of us on this forum are likely to survive until the end of this century in any circumstances.
Explain precisely how “we” exceeded your assumed bio-capacity of “our” Earth in 1971?
Economic growth is precisely the thing that allows Environmentalism, an indulgence not afforded to poor societies.
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago
Ever since I first came came across Greens (they didn’t call themselves Greens but that was the values package) in my student days (coincidentally over the Greenham Common nuclear protests stuff), I have yet to scratch the surface of a Green, and not find a Marxist inside.
Watermelons – Green on the outside and Marxist Red in the middle. It is truly amazing how protesters turn to profiteers even amidst that ideology. Absolutely fed up of middle class and millionaire psuedo Marxists. There are quite a few in my area – one millionaire publisher acquaintance, defending Corbyn, said he was voting for him because , “we need a little bit of Marxism for a while”. The naivety was breathtaking; my reply was , “YOU NEVER GET A LITTLE BIT OF MARXISM!”
Yup, Watermelons all of them, green on the outside red in the middle.
Ian Morris
2 years ago
I know this is really boring but there is no climate crisis. Oh dear what will we write and think about now? We are in a warming period in the earth’s cyclical evolution, that’s all. Please just read the facts. The books can be really boring, full of tables and graphs, sadly unlike Al Gore’s sensationalism. But if you respect truth rather than a good story you know what to do.
What book(s) would you recommend that best present the data supporting the theory that the earth is in a cyclical warming phase?
I certainly find the idea that the current climate change is due to a natural process to be more frightening than if its caused by human activity. There’s nothing we can do about cyclical warming and we’ll just have to adjust our life styles.
Try “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” by Steven E. Koonin . The politics of the climate movement get in the way of the science. We observe that population declines as income rises so the population bomb is unlikely as long as world growth continues improving. Forecasts of doom as resources decline have always been wrong as technology improves – beyond the entertainment world.
“There is no climate crisis” by David Craig is excellent. Also try. “The real Inconvenient truth” by M.J. Sangster, “Human caused Global warming “by Tim ball and “Inconvenient Facts” by Gregory Wrightstone
Good comment, although I see things slightly the other way round, i.e. Marxism is hip fascism.
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
Why write these? A few days ago we had Bret Weinstein doing one….I just do not get this sort of article – next one where we become underground dwellers in billion strong cities as the surface is radioactive, or soilent green, or whatever – but it is just disaster porn, and that does not do it for me.
I do love a good dystopias though, because they have such intelligent looks on existence, they cause reflection on the human condition, on existence, on what is Ultimate, and some are great literature.
If you haven’t already, try Asimov’s ‘Caves of Steel’ and later works. Plenty of underground cities and robots, but, thankfully, no weirdly shaped extra terrestrials.
It is an important article, but it fails to recognise the reality of the situation that we are in. The author is mistaken to imagine that humans will live to see the end of the 21st century let alone the dawn of the 23 century. He fails to grasp the reality of the escalating climate and ecological collapse. Even with the recent dramatic pictures of devastating floods in nearby Europe he is clearly unaware of the reality that is unfolding daily. He is unable to admit that human suffering is an essential part of the story which is playing out right now. He will come to wish that his prediction ‘England now looked like the fourteenth century’ might be possible, but I’m afraid the ecological balance that we enjoyed all those years ago will never return in our lifetimes. Especially if we choose to continue with the lack of understanding that is displayed in this article and its readers. #Degrowth #UnitedAspiration
If the scenario he envisages were to play out, it strikes me as infinitely naive to imagine pacifist Amish and hippies inherenting the world. 14th century England’s peace was after all the product of the feudal system upheld by the monopoly of violence emanating from those grim Norman castles. That certainly didn’t sprout out of the ground like so many fey willow trees.
His scenario fails to recognise how badly damaged our eco-system is now. We began exceeding Earths biocapacity over 50 years ago, consequently ecological collapse has commenced with escalating extinction rates. COVID is a symptom of ecological collapse, we are part of the Sixth Mass Extinction.
Quite -back to nature red in tooth and claw – one would not want to be alive when this starts happening – let alone wish that on your grandkids ! It seems many have not read enough history – when law and order breaks down the psychopaths and just plain evils come out to play in THEIR new world – and the rest of us will be the defenceless sheep…………….
Rob Britton
2 years ago
It seems that China, and the way it does thing, is providing the blueprint for how the West deals with “eco fa5cism” as evidenced by the way the West followed the lockdown script on how to deal with Covid. The only problem is that Western societies are typically democracies so something clearly has to give.
You are right that something needs to give. The public need to change their awareness and attitudes, we have an apocalypse unfolding and both the author of this article and the majority of the readers treat the destruction of our only habitable planet by our own species as some kind of joke. It is time for a reality check, #Degrowth #UnitedAspiration
The novel could be written in a different, much more pleasing, way …but it already has been! This afternoon I finished reading a beautiful novel called This is Happiness, by Niall Williams. It’s background story is the coming of electricity to a little village in remote Ireland, and the intuition some had that ‘being connected’ would change a way of life which for all its inconveniences offered a sort of freedom preferred to, well, what we have now. Niall Williams, a recent discovery, is such a pleasure to read, in a world where we seem to be drowning in negativity.
Not negativity, complacency. The apocalypse is real and it is happening now. Most people are complacent like yourself, saying give me a nice story to read, don’t tell me the truth. Which is why we have newscasters everywhere including Unherd failing to inform their readers that actually humanity is unlikely to see the end of the current century let alone the dawn of the 23rd. #Degrowth #UnitedAspiration
Not sure what all the fuss is about. It was much hotter in the 1920s and 1930s than it is now. There have been times in the earth’s history going back over millions of years when it has been much hotter and much colder than it is now. Similarly there have been times when the percentage of C02 has been much higher than now. It’s rather unlikely that these earlier climate changes were caused by burning fossil fuels
Yes, we do of course have many environmental problems: resource depletion and plastic pollution perhaps being two of the most serious. But isn’t there a lot of sloppy thinking around, blaming everything on “Carbon Emissions”. During the history of the world C02 has varied from very high to very low levels. This could not possibly have been caused by humans as there were no humans around. So how come it’s all our fault now? Have natural forces subsided giving way to anthropogenic emissions? There may be some evidence in history that changes in CO2 concentration have lagged behind changes in temperature. This rather suggests that temperature change drives CO2 change and not the other way round.
Barbara, when your hair is on fire please, go to the sink, pour a glass of water and put the fire out. Then, when it cools a bit, try thinking about things in a cool rational, common sense way.
John Riordan
2 years ago
Well I don’t agree with most of this, but the parts which recognise that modern corporate environmentalism is actually just Fascism, yes, that part’s definitely true. And we might well be headed for the dystopia predicted here, just not hand in hand with capitalism, because capitalism has never been an enemy of the planet: why do you think conservatives are capitalism’s best political friends, and where do you think the word “conservative” comes from?
There’s an ongoing bright future ahead of us in which we really do all get flying cars, live past 150, and do it all in an advanced, clean energy economy in which everything is reused, recycled, and we tread ever more lightly upon the planet’s finite resources. It’s not some pipe-dream: we’re headed there now. The obstacles are not technological: with present-day molten salt reactor technology, we can both create clean nuclear power and at the same time clean up those dangerous 20th century uranuim waste stockpiles. We’re producing more food on less land all the time, and returning more land to the wild as a consequence. Forests are growing not shrinking, and the only definite effect of all our CO2 emissions, so far, is that more vegetation is growing on those parts of the planet that previously could not support as much plant growth.
The obstacles to this bright future are political: we have a growing authoritarianism in the West which sees economic progress as an false promise and personal liberty as an enemy of a collectively-conceived version of society. This is not some abstract concern: it is already doing obvious damage to our politics today, and if not stopped will do a great deal more.
Earl King
2 years ago
Certainly depressing. China goal of gathering up every resource it needs for global domination is well on its way thru its Belt and Road initiative. When those countries fail to pay back the loans…China takes whatever value it can scoop up. This will likely lead to war somewhere. China will not have the military to control its far flung empire much like Rome finally collapsed. This of course will concurrently be during the decline of the US Empire….Probably sometime in the next 79 years. Empires fall. That is lesson of history.
Thank you Paul for a great article. Some of the comments remind me a bit, of folks on the Titanic who refused to believe there could be a serious problem. This reaction to defend the status quo has played out in history over and over again so that you could say it is “boring”.
Cheers.
sandy
A lot of what he says of course makes sense and is of course even wearily predictable. But I’m not sure his crypto-anarchist take on things is a very good guide to what is going to happen when everything collapses. Human history suggests what happened in Somalia in recent years is a more likely model for a world that has crumbled.
Last edited 2 years ago by Ferrusian Gambit
steven russell
2 years ago
‘The machine stops’ by E.N. Forster is a book that we read in our english literature class when I was in school in 1984, and it was written in 1909. It is a story about a dystopian world where everyone live in individual cells underground, and it has an uncanny similarity to what is happening today with social media, and what is also happening with the climate, it sums up our world perfectly. Very spooky. I recommend it to anyone who can get a copy.
I am saddened that you don’t recommend that we actually get a grip and change our foolish behaviour to maybe mitigate the situation. #Degrowth #UnitedAspiration
I don’t know what you are expecting me to recommend exactly.
We were just talking about books that were written that were covering the subjects that that we are concerned about now. As for changing our behaviour, isn’t that what a lot of us are trying to do now? What are you doing?
So, we’re reducing our impact and you’re writing poems. Okaaaaayyy.
Jonathan Weil
2 years ago
Somehow I missed the bit where several billion people died, amidst an ecological collapse that makes our current one look like a sick day at the zoo, as a result of our retreat back to the fourteenth century…
Yes. The idea that it’d happen while preserving wifi and good dentistry merely adds to the stupidity of the concept.
LCarey Rowland
2 years ago
“The weak shall inherit the earth”. . . fulfilled, makes one wonder what other statements of the crucified/risen One are far more relevant to real life than most denizens of civilization care to admit.
Chauncey Gardiner
2 years ago
Well done.
Best thing I’ve read this Saturday — maybe this week. And I read a lot.
Zorro Tomorrow
2 years ago
Why do Unherd repeat articles with 3 month old comments?
Andrew Fisher
2 years ago
I know this article is satirical in nature, but clearly the author buys in wholesale to the narrative of impending ecological doom. Why can’t people educate themselves, before coming up with this absurd, almost fact free doom mongering? It is almost complete rubbish, not even supported by the IPCC reports.
Read Hans Rosling. People on the Earth today live better than at any previous time, people are astounded when told that Africans today have better life expectancy for example than Europeans in 1900. There are exceptions, but that is the big picture, and to my mind it verges on the criminal that so many intellectuals simply don’t want to recognise this in any way, because it appears to feel so much better to, oh so fashionably preach doom, as humans have always done. Oh, and this has been largely achieved by capitalism and free trade, both very much out of fashion today. If we don’t know how we got to reach our achievements, how can we ever learn to build on them?
I wish we actually had some brave volunteers to live in small band societies as Homo Sapiens lived for 95% plus of our time on the planet. THAT is the true alternative. And it has some upsides, such societies are more equal (though with big differences between the roles of men and women!), children much experienced and mature, capable of being functioning members of the society much earlier, diet could be good, no obesity, people fit and healthy (except of course for the inevitable disease). BUT no phones, radios, modern medicine, book, electric power, heating, transport etc etc. Life expectancy would be much lower. In truth very few people, even in such band societies, wish to forego modern aids to living when given the choice.
We have never, since the dawn of agriculture at least, and even before – (humans caused mass extinctions in many places) – lived ‘sustainably’ with the planet. Human ingenuity has nonetheless solved almost every problem it has encountered, and will continue to do so. As it does, new problems will continue to emerge (as the comment about battery power shows).
The desire for a problem free, egalitarian ‘end state’ utopia is perhaps understandable, but to dwell on that extremely unlikely outcome too long (much more likely to become a dystopia anyway) is an avoidance of real choices and is fundamentally childish.
You mean,Yes! Magazine, situated in one of the richest parts of the richest country, home of multi-billionaires such as Bill Gates, and operating on the stolen land of the the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes? Do you see what I mean about Environmentalism being an indulgence of the richest?
Barbara Williams
2 years ago
You are mistaken to imagine that humans will live to see the end of the 21st century let alone the dawn of the 23 century. You fail to grasp the reality of the escalating climate and ecological collapse. Even with the recent dramatic pictures of devastating floods in nearby Europe you are clearly unaware of the reality that is unfolding daily. You are unable to admit that human suffering is an essential part of the story which is playing our right now. Just because your home town hasn’t had a direct hit you feel immune. You will come to wish that your prediction ‘England now looked like the fourteenth century’ might be possible, but I’m afraid the ecological balance that we enjoyed all those years ago will never return in our lifetimes. Especially if we choose to continue with the lack of understanding that you display.
Humans have managed to survive for many years and likely will survive many more thousands. True enough we have seen entire civilizations vanish because of resource constraints caused by the lack of technology – the Mayans come to mind. Yet Mayan humans survived to meet the Spanish and collapse again only to rise again. While suffering and struggle are human like all animals, we suffer less than our forebears as a result of modifying our world. Not too long ago we predicted an atomic extinction (might still happen) but even that aftermath we can hope that electricity won’t need reinvention. Given our 10’s of thousands years of evolution as many other species arose and fell, we still have a way forward.
Pictures of flood markers in German towns,as indeed you see in the Netherlands,clearly show that flood levels had been much higher at some points in the past. The same is true of events in other parts of the world. The doomsday cult always choose the figures that suit their theories.
Easily the best article to date in Unherd’s ‘Apocalypse’ series.
An amusing and disturbing piece of satire that is frightening because of the insight that the corporate world will coopt every popular movement, whether it be the environmental movement or the social justice movement, for its own ends. We’ll somehow end up paving the world in expensive concrete for the sake of the environment.
It’s also noteworthy that the dividing line between our current reality and this rather exaggerated description of how the environmental apocalypse eventually came about is uncomfortably thin. The technocrats are certainly eager to foist increasingly complex ‘solutions’ on us that will ultimately exacerbate the problem.
As the author suggests, good old ecological complexity will likely save us in the end. We really don’t understand the environment we’re trying to fix and it will ultimately assert its own balance whether or not that’s to our liking.
I imagine my grandkids playing checkers by candlelight after a hard day helping bring home the harvest. The word ‘internet’ an archaic term found in books regarded more as mysticism than history.
If we continue with the level of complacency that you demonstrate, your grandkids will not be able to enjoy an eco-system that will allow them to reap a harvest.
If this is happens it will part of evolution like the Permian-Triassic extinction (80% fauna killed, 30m years to recover) or the Cretaceous extinction (76% fauna killed, arguably still in recovery) All this really means is that Homo Sapiens is NOT the master of the universe, or even Earth, but a tiny droplet in the water fall of time. If we evolve to control our destructive instincts we can last till something else makes us extinct, if not we will do it ourselves. Earth, however, and life upon it will carry on regardless. Eco-NSDAPers are a statistically higher risk to our existence than say nuclear holocaust, though qualitatively the risks are same in terms of outcome. I suggest we unite to give the ecos the same treatment we gave their founding fathers back in 39-45, including the bit where the Red Army enters Berlin (but in Islington, Portland O.R and Brighton, Sussex instead)
If this is happens it will part of evolution like the Permian-Triassic extinction (80% fauna killed, 30m years to recover) or the Cretaceous extinction (76% fauna killed, arguably still in recovery) All this really means is that our species is NOT the master of the universe, or even Earth, but a tiny droplet in the water fall of time. If we evolve to control our destructive instincts we can last till something else makes us extinct, if not we will do it ourselves. Earth, however, and life upon it will carry on regardless. Eco-NSDAPers are a statistically higher risk to our existence than say nuclear holocaust, though qualitatively the risks are same in terms of outcome. I suggest we unite to give the ecos the same treatment we gave their founding fathers back in 39-45, including the bit where the Red Army enters Berlin (but in Islington, Portland O.R and Brighton, Sussex instead)
A couple of flaws in this. Firstly, the environmentalists are not selling their souls to an elite class of corporates. The environmentalists are the corporates, that’s what environmentalism is. It’s what unites environmentalism with the rest of wokeism. Secondly, Kingsnorth misses the conflicts between global power blocks: the USA, the EU, China, India, Russia, etc. These conflicts will undermine corporate, wokeist environmentalism and competition will continue to drive progress just as it always has.
War is the father of all.
Unless we can understand that our eco-system is actually the source of all our money, then we shall continue to destroy what was a healthy ecological balance some sixty years ago. Indeed I agree that unless the overdeveloped countries can acquire some understanding and humility then we are likely to end up fighting over the dwindling resources. Pride comes before a fall.
Sixty years ago, “ecological balance” was set to starve humanity. That’s where the likes of Paul Erlich were correct.
What happened instead was the Green Revolution, where Earth is not only supporting double the population, but they are living better and longer. This would not have been possible had we succumbed to the eco catastrophist view.
My dystopia would be based on these axioms:
There is no wealth to funnel if nobody is creating wealth.
Environmentalism is an indulgence of the richest countries.
Richest countries are cleanest countries.
They also have slowest reproduction rates.
Destroying wealth causes environmental degradation.
Our environment is the underlying source of all our wealth. We have been exceeding the bio-capacity of our Earth for more than 50 years. It is becoming very ugly, this article implies that we shall live to see the 23rd century. If we attempt to continue with the economic growth paradigm, most of us are unlikely to survive to the end of this century.
Irrelevant.
Few of us on this forum are likely to survive until the end of this century in any circumstances.
Explain precisely how “we” exceeded your assumed bio-capacity of “our” Earth in 1971?
Economic growth is precisely the thing that allows Environmentalism, an indulgence not afforded to poor societies.
Ever since I first came came across Greens (they didn’t call themselves Greens but that was the values package) in my student days (coincidentally over the Greenham Common nuclear protests stuff), I have yet to scratch the surface of a Green, and not find a Marxist inside.
Watermelons – Green on the outside and Marxist Red in the middle. It is truly amazing how protesters turn to profiteers even amidst that ideology. Absolutely fed up of middle class and millionaire psuedo Marxists. There are quite a few in my area – one millionaire publisher acquaintance, defending Corbyn, said he was voting for him because , “we need a little bit of Marxism for a while”. The naivety was breathtaking; my reply was , “YOU NEVER GET A LITTLE BIT OF MARXISM!”
Agreed. It’s no different from saying that we need a little bit of Nazism for a while. Absolutely disgusting.
Yup, Watermelons all of them, green on the outside red in the middle.
I know this is really boring but there is no climate crisis. Oh dear what will we write and think about now? We are in a warming period in the earth’s cyclical evolution, that’s all. Please just read the facts. The books can be really boring, full of tables and graphs, sadly unlike Al Gore’s sensationalism. But if you respect truth rather than a good story you know what to do.
What book(s) would you recommend that best present the data supporting the theory that the earth is in a cyclical warming phase?
I certainly find the idea that the current climate change is due to a natural process to be more frightening than if its caused by human activity. There’s nothing we can do about cyclical warming and we’ll just have to adjust our life styles.
Try “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” by Steven E. Koonin . The politics of the climate movement get in the way of the science. We observe that population declines as income rises so the population bomb is unlikely as long as world growth continues improving. Forecasts of doom as resources decline have always been wrong as technology improves – beyond the entertainment world.
Thank you.
“There is no climate crisis” by David Craig is excellent. Also try. “The real Inconvenient truth” by M.J. Sangster, “Human caused Global warming “by Tim ball and “Inconvenient Facts” by Gregory Wrightstone
Thank you.
Watch Tony Heller on Youtube
Or Mallen Baker to debunk him and get a more balanced world view.
Fascism, and newly hip Marxism? As in the past, dystopias will allow both dark twins to fight it out, this time over a green mantle.
Good comment, although I see things slightly the other way round, i.e. Marxism is hip fascism.
Why write these? A few days ago we had Bret Weinstein doing one….I just do not get this sort of article – next one where we become underground dwellers in billion strong cities as the surface is radioactive, or soilent green, or whatever – but it is just disaster porn, and that does not do it for me.
I do love a good dystopias though, because they have such intelligent looks on existence, they cause reflection on the human condition, on existence, on what is Ultimate, and some are great literature.
‘Brave New World’
‘1984’
‘Marching Morons’
‘Space Merchants’
‘Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy’
‘Animal Farm’
please add any…..
If you haven’t already, try Asimov’s ‘Caves of Steel’ and later works. Plenty of underground cities and robots, but, thankfully, no weirdly shaped extra terrestrials.
Thanks for the tip. I remember reading some of this stuff in high school. I’ve been meaning to revisit it.
It is a series on apocalyptic thinking. Therefore it is the third one of a series.
Riddley Walker
What is the distinction between ‘disaster porn’ and the dystopian literature in your list?
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Alastair Reynolds has some interesting takes on the future of humanity in the Revelation Space series.
Watch any Mad Max movie and you will see a more likely picture
‘We’ by a Russian author, Evgeny Zamyatin. It predates ‘Brave New World’. Well worth the read.
It is an important article, but it fails to recognise the reality of the situation that we are in. The author is mistaken to imagine that humans will live to see the end of the 21st century let alone the dawn of the 23 century. He fails to grasp the reality of the escalating climate and ecological collapse. Even with the recent dramatic pictures of devastating floods in nearby Europe he is clearly unaware of the reality that is unfolding daily. He is unable to admit that human suffering is an essential part of the story which is playing out right now. He will come to wish that his prediction ‘England now looked like the fourteenth century’ might be possible, but I’m afraid the ecological balance that we enjoyed all those years ago will never return in our lifetimes. Especially if we choose to continue with the lack of understanding that is displayed in this article and its readers. #Degrowth #UnitedAspiration
E.M. Forster‘s “The Machine Stops”.
If the scenario he envisages were to play out, it strikes me as infinitely naive to imagine pacifist Amish and hippies inherenting the world. 14th century England’s peace was after all the product of the feudal system upheld by the monopoly of violence emanating from those grim Norman castles. That certainly didn’t sprout out of the ground like so many fey willow trees.
His scenario fails to recognise how badly damaged our eco-system is now. We began exceeding Earths biocapacity over 50 years ago, consequently ecological collapse has commenced with escalating extinction rates. COVID is a symptom of ecological collapse, we are part of the Sixth Mass Extinction.
More importantly, I would add, it ignores what human nature leads to in those circumstances.
Quite -back to nature red in tooth and claw – one would not want to be alive when this starts happening – let alone wish that on your grandkids ! It seems many have not read enough history – when law and order breaks down the psychopaths and just plain evils come out to play in THEIR new world – and the rest of us will be the defenceless sheep…………….
It seems that China, and the way it does thing, is providing the blueprint for how the West deals with “eco fa5cism” as evidenced by the way the West followed the lockdown script on how to deal with Covid. The only problem is that Western societies are typically democracies so something clearly has to give.
You are right that something needs to give. The public need to change their awareness and attitudes, we have an apocalypse unfolding and both the author of this article and the majority of the readers treat the destruction of our only habitable planet by our own species as some kind of joke. It is time for a reality check, #Degrowth #UnitedAspiration
Now write the novel.
The novel could be written in a different, much more pleasing, way …but it already has been! This afternoon I finished reading a beautiful novel called This is Happiness, by Niall Williams. It’s background story is the coming of electricity to a little village in remote Ireland, and the intuition some had that ‘being connected’ would change a way of life which for all its inconveniences offered a sort of freedom preferred to, well, what we have now. Niall Williams, a recent discovery, is such a pleasure to read, in a world where we seem to be drowning in negativity.
Not negativity, complacency. The apocalypse is real and it is happening now. Most people are complacent like yourself, saying give me a nice story to read, don’t tell me the truth. Which is why we have newscasters everywhere including Unherd failing to inform their readers that actually humanity is unlikely to see the end of the current century let alone the dawn of the 23rd. #Degrowth #UnitedAspiration
Not sure what all the fuss is about. It was much hotter in the 1920s and 1930s than it is now. There have been times in the earth’s history going back over millions of years when it has been much hotter and much colder than it is now. Similarly there have been times when the percentage of C02 has been much higher than now. It’s rather unlikely that these earlier climate changes were caused by burning fossil fuels
Check out this recent article, ecological collapse is well underway and COVID is just a symptom. We wreck our environment, which means money loses its purchasing power. Society is right on track for a global collapse, new study of infamous 1970s report finds | Live Science
Yes, we do of course have many environmental problems: resource depletion and plastic pollution perhaps being two of the most serious. But isn’t there a lot of sloppy thinking around, blaming everything on “Carbon Emissions”. During the history of the world C02 has varied from very high to very low levels. This could not possibly have been caused by humans as there were no humans around. So how come it’s all our fault now? Have natural forces subsided giving way to anthropogenic emissions? There may be some evidence in history that changes in CO2 concentration have lagged behind changes in temperature. This rather suggests that temperature change drives CO2 change and not the other way round.
Barbara, when your hair is on fire please, go to the sink, pour a glass of water and put the fire out. Then, when it cools a bit, try thinking about things in a cool rational, common sense way.
Well I don’t agree with most of this, but the parts which recognise that modern corporate environmentalism is actually just Fascism, yes, that part’s definitely true. And we might well be headed for the dystopia predicted here, just not hand in hand with capitalism, because capitalism has never been an enemy of the planet: why do you think conservatives are capitalism’s best political friends, and where do you think the word “conservative” comes from?
There’s an ongoing bright future ahead of us in which we really do all get flying cars, live past 150, and do it all in an advanced, clean energy economy in which everything is reused, recycled, and we tread ever more lightly upon the planet’s finite resources. It’s not some pipe-dream: we’re headed there now. The obstacles are not technological: with present-day molten salt reactor technology, we can both create clean nuclear power and at the same time clean up those dangerous 20th century uranuim waste stockpiles. We’re producing more food on less land all the time, and returning more land to the wild as a consequence. Forests are growing not shrinking, and the only definite effect of all our CO2 emissions, so far, is that more vegetation is growing on those parts of the planet that previously could not support as much plant growth.
The obstacles to this bright future are political: we have a growing authoritarianism in the West which sees economic progress as an false promise and personal liberty as an enemy of a collectively-conceived version of society. This is not some abstract concern: it is already doing obvious damage to our politics today, and if not stopped will do a great deal more.
Certainly depressing. China goal of gathering up every resource it needs for global domination is well on its way thru its Belt and Road initiative. When those countries fail to pay back the loans…China takes whatever value it can scoop up. This will likely lead to war somewhere. China will not have the military to control its far flung empire much like Rome finally collapsed. This of course will concurrently be during the decline of the US Empire….Probably sometime in the next 79 years. Empires fall. That is lesson of history.
Latest prediction by MIT is that the economy will collapse in 2040 https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/32348/20210719/mits-1972-prediction-societal-collapse-updated-economic-devastation-century-schedule.htm?fbclid=IwAR2qJPeP1GE8Uktn9iIXvBp7wm_gjwge0QJCKVx8jvUlK6mJ-q3S7AuZ1hk
Thank you Paul for a great article. Some of the comments remind me a bit, of folks on the Titanic who refused to believe there could be a serious problem. This reaction to defend the status quo has played out in history over and over again so that you could say it is “boring”.
Cheers.
sandy
A lot of what he says of course makes sense and is of course even wearily predictable. But I’m not sure his crypto-anarchist take on things is a very good guide to what is going to happen when everything collapses. Human history suggests what happened in Somalia in recent years is a more likely model for a world that has crumbled.
‘The machine stops’ by E.N. Forster is a book that we read in our english literature class when I was in school in 1984, and it was written in 1909. It is a story about a dystopian world where everyone live in individual cells underground, and it has an uncanny similarity to what is happening today with social media, and what is also happening with the climate, it sums up our world perfectly. Very spooky. I recommend it to anyone who can get a copy.
I am saddened that you don’t recommend that we actually get a grip and change our foolish behaviour to maybe mitigate the situation. #Degrowth #UnitedAspiration
I don’t know what you are expecting me to recommend exactly.
We were just talking about books that were written that were covering the subjects that that we are concerned about now. As for changing our behaviour, isn’t that what a lot of us are trying to do now? What are you doing?
Check out my concept of a United Aspiration Work involving the United Nations – Poems For Parliament
So, we’re reducing our impact and you’re writing poems. Okaaaaayyy.
Somehow I missed the bit where several billion people died, amidst an ecological collapse that makes our current one look like a sick day at the zoo, as a result of our retreat back to the fourteenth century…
Yes. The idea that it’d happen while preserving wifi and good dentistry merely adds to the stupidity of the concept.
“The weak shall inherit the earth”. . . fulfilled, makes one wonder what other statements of the crucified/risen One are far more relevant to real life than most denizens of civilization care to admit.
Well done.
Best thing I’ve read this Saturday — maybe this week. And I read a lot.
Why do Unherd repeat articles with 3 month old comments?
I know this article is satirical in nature, but clearly the author buys in wholesale to the narrative of impending ecological doom. Why can’t people educate themselves, before coming up with this absurd, almost fact free doom mongering? It is almost complete rubbish, not even supported by the IPCC reports.
Read Hans Rosling. People on the Earth today live better than at any previous time, people are astounded when told that Africans today have better life expectancy for example than Europeans in 1900. There are exceptions, but that is the big picture, and to my mind it verges on the criminal that so many intellectuals simply don’t want to recognise this in any way, because it appears to feel so much better to, oh so fashionably preach doom, as humans have always done. Oh, and this has been largely achieved by capitalism and free trade, both very much out of fashion today. If we don’t know how we got to reach our achievements, how can we ever learn to build on them?
I wish we actually had some brave volunteers to live in small band societies as Homo Sapiens lived for 95% plus of our time on the planet. THAT is the true alternative. And it has some upsides, such societies are more equal (though with big differences between the roles of men and women!), children much experienced and mature, capable of being functioning members of the society much earlier, diet could be good, no obesity, people fit and healthy (except of course for the inevitable disease). BUT no phones, radios, modern medicine, book, electric power, heating, transport etc etc. Life expectancy would be much lower. In truth very few people, even in such band societies, wish to forego modern aids to living when given the choice.
We have never, since the dawn of agriculture at least, and even before – (humans caused mass extinctions in many places) – lived ‘sustainably’ with the planet. Human ingenuity has nonetheless solved almost every problem it has encountered, and will continue to do so. As it does, new problems will continue to emerge (as the comment about battery power shows).
The desire for a problem free, egalitarian ‘end state’ utopia is perhaps understandable, but to dwell on that extremely unlikely outcome too long (much more likely to become a dystopia anyway) is an avoidance of real choices and is fundamentally childish.
For anyone who is really interested in how society might mitigate the massive ecological imbalance that humanity have created over the last 60 years then this article will be of interest What Does An Ecological Civilization Look Like? – YES! Magazine (yesmagazine.org)
You mean,Yes! Magazine, situated in one of the richest parts of the richest country, home of multi-billionaires such as Bill Gates, and operating on the stolen land of the the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes?
Do you see what I mean about Environmentalism being an indulgence of the richest?
You are mistaken to imagine that humans will live to see the end of the 21st century let alone the dawn of the 23 century. You fail to grasp the reality of the escalating climate and ecological collapse. Even with the recent dramatic pictures of devastating floods in nearby Europe you are clearly unaware of the reality that is unfolding daily. You are unable to admit that human suffering is an essential part of the story which is playing our right now. Just because your home town hasn’t had a direct hit you feel immune. You will come to wish that your prediction ‘England now looked like the fourteenth century’ might be possible, but I’m afraid the ecological balance that we enjoyed all those years ago will never return in our lifetimes. Especially if we choose to continue with the lack of understanding that you display.
Humans have managed to survive for many years and likely will survive many more thousands. True enough we have seen entire civilizations vanish because of resource constraints caused by the lack of technology – the Mayans come to mind. Yet Mayan humans survived to meet the Spanish and collapse again only to rise again. While suffering and struggle are human like all animals, we suffer less than our forebears as a result of modifying our world. Not too long ago we predicted an atomic extinction (might still happen) but even that aftermath we can hope that electricity won’t need reinvention. Given our 10’s of thousands years of evolution as many other species arose and fell, we still have a way forward.
Check out this very recent article – Society is right on track for a global collapse, new study of infamous 1970s report finds | Live Science
Incoherent claptrap.
Pictures of flood markers in German towns,as indeed you see in the Netherlands,clearly show that flood levels had been much higher at some points in the past. The same is true of events in other parts of the world. The doomsday cult always choose the figures that suit their theories.