Climate change, peak oil, 4GW, social decay, ecological collapse, economic collapse, pandemics of new and old diseases … The doomsters seem to have taken control of our newspapers, as the list goes on and on, raising the question “How can civilization survive until next week?”
Imagine picking up the morning paper, coffee cup in hand. You open it and see nothing but good news. The headline story tells of a cat rescued from a tree. No stories about decaying social systems (social systems, like fruit, begin to decay after creation). No accounts of problems caused by increased wealth — no disruptive social changes, no new pollutants (replacing the old ones, like from burning coal and horses in the streets). No wars.
Would this be a good thing? No. It would mean that you died and are now in heaven. Resource scarcity, climate change, war, social instability … these represent the condition we call “life.” For thousands of generations humanity has confronted these problems as we climbed from scavengers to become the dominant species on this planet.
But what about the pollution of our environment, brought about by industrialization and increasing wealth? This is largely a myth in today’s developed nations, and a passing phase in the emerging nations. Consider life in the capital city of an emerging nation…
The city itself is overwhelmed, engulfed by changes with which it has not learned to cope, and which are scarcely understood. Some were inherent in the trebling of the population, some consequences of industrialization. Particles of grime from the factory smokestacks produce impenetrable smog which reduces visibility to a few feet … Much of the city stinks. The city’s sewage system is at best inadequate and in the poorer of neighborhoods nonexistent. Buildings elsewhere are often constructed over cesspools which, however, have grown so vast that they form ponds, surrounding homes with moats of effluvia. … And the narrow, twisted streets are neither sealed nor asphalted. People lock their windows, even in summer, but they have a lot to keep out: odors, dust…
This is London circa 1880 (a slightly altered quotation from William Manchester’s biography of Churchill, The Last Lion).
These ills were not cured by elevating the consciousness of its people, but by increasing their income. Wealth has changed London in the first half of the twentieth century as it changed Singapore in the second half (In Ian Fleming’s 1955 novel Moonraker, MI6’s secret agent 0011 vanished into the “Dirty half-mile” of Singapore; today Singapore citizens consider US cities as crime-ridden holes compared to their well-run city-state).
But at least in the simpler times of Victorian England they lived closer to nature. Their food was less-processed, what we call “organic”, since the modern agrochemical industry was yet unknown, with its artificial preservatives, colorings, and other adulterants. In fact this meant (again quoting Manchester) that…
The groaning tables on Victorian Christmas cards groaned beneath platters of food that would be condemned as unfit by modern health officials.
In one sense the people of Victorian England lived even closer to nature than those in modern China and India.
In 1842 a royal commission found that the average professional man lived thirty years; the average laborer, seventeen. By the year of Churchill’s birth {1874} about fifteen years had been added to these…
Pushing back on the many doomster nightmares is like pushing back on a cracking dam, as these stories multiply — driven by our fears about the future of our rapidly changing world (just like fears in the 1950’s of world conquest by the commies, or the even more bizarre — to us — fears of our 19th century ancestors). Past progress provides many Americans with little confidence about the future.
As an exercise we can examine one doomster fear, seeing the complex reality under the simplistic agitprop (like any mass movement, these have a heavy political component). Since Peak Oil suffers from over-exposure, the new hot doomster meme is Peak Water. Like peak oil, this is a valid concern grossly exaggerated by the media.
Water is scarce in several ways.
- Poor people lack clean water. Lacking clean water, adequate food, and basic public health infrastructure defines poverty. (Most of America’s poor have clean tap water, obesity is their most common illness, and excess consumption of drugs/alcohol their greatest public health problem. Real poverty, the third world kind, is of a different nature).
- Poor nations tend to seriously pollute their water, unable either to afford primary sewage treatment or to enforce regulations on agricultural and industrial emissions.
- The above two factors are exacerbated by rapid growth in population and/or industry (e.g., India and China).
- Both rich and poor nations suffer groundwater pollution from agricultural chemicals. Farm interests have political power in many developed nations exceeding the numbers of farmers or farmings economic role (largely due to “rotten boroughs”, like the outsized representation of heartland states in the US Senate). This is, of course, a far more serious problem in emerging nations (see this story about India).
- Water demand exceeds supply in many areas, even in developed nations, usually due to mispricing it. The demand for under-priced goods almost always exceeds the supply. Aquifers (large ground water reservoirs) are being drained — much like global oil reserves. (such as the Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains)
- Water is physically insufficient in a few areas (e.g., Saudi Arabia, a desert with one of the fastest growing populations on Earth).
None of these appear terminal for either humanity or the global ecosystem. Most of these will probably work themselves out.
-
Growing wealth will allow fantastic reductions in pollution by emerging nations, even greater than seen in the US and Europe during the past 50 years.
-
As water becomes scarcer, political and pricing mechanisms in developed nations will force more rational use and continually reduce pollution.
-
Exhaustion of aquifers will force development of other agricultural resources (e.g., currently idle land, aquaculture), or changes in diet (e.g., Americans eating less meat, which would improve our health).
Thanks to GI Wilson, who suggested this subject and provided many links to valuable information about it.
For more on this subject
“Keeping It Clean“, Chemical and Engineering News (23 April 2007) — Note the concern about arsenic contamination of drinking water. A real but hardly a new problem, since arsenic occurs naturally in the Earth’s crust. For more on arsenic see this USGS publication.
FM posts about shockwaves, things we worry about:
- Peak Oil Doomsters debunked, end of civilization called off
- There is no “peak water” crisis, 19 June 2008
- We are so vulnerable to so many things. What is the best response?, 30 December 2008
- About our certain doom from the Yellowstone supervolcano, 11 January 2008
- My nomination for a top priority shockwave, 19 January 2009
- A serious threat to us – a top priority shockwave – a hidden danger …, 20 January 2009
- What about all the hype, the extreme warnings, about swine flu?, 3 September 2009
Afterword
Please share your comments by posting below. Per the FM site’s Comment Policy, please make them brief (250 words max), civil, and relevant to this post. Or email me at fabmaximus at hotmail dot com (note the spam-protected spelling).
For information about this site see the About page, at the top of the right-side menu bar.
For more information from the FM site
To read other articles about these things, see the FM reference page on the right side menu bar. Of esp interest these days:
- About America – how can we reform it?
- Financial crisis – what’s happening? how will this end? – see section 7: “Theft pretending to be solutions”
- Good news about America, a collection of articles!
Posts about the American spirit, the American soul:
- America’s Most Dangerous Enemy, 1 March 2006
- Diagnosing the eagle, chapter IV – Alienation, 13 January 2008
- Americans, now a subservient people (listen to the Founders sigh in disappointment), 20 July 2008
- de Tocqueville warns us not to become weak and servile, 21 July 2008
- A philosphical basis for the Batman saga, 23 July 2008
- The American spirit speaks: “Baa, Baa, Baa”, 5 August 2008
- We’re Americans, hear us yell: “baa, baa, baa”, 6 August 2008
- The intelligentsia takes easy steps to abandoning America, 19 August 2008
- Symptoms of a fever afflicting America’s culture, 5 November 2008
- All we have to fear is our optimism, 12 November 2008
- The corruption of a nation is usually hidden, but sometimes becomes visible, 21 November 2008
- The war for America’s soul, 23 December 2008 — Our changing attitudes to “It’s a Wonderful Life”
- This crisis will prove that Americans are not sheep (unless we are), 8 January 2008
- About security theater, a daily demonstration that Americans are sheep, 25 January 2009
- We close our eyes to torture by our government. The Brits are stronger., 9 April 2009
- Sources of inspiration for America’s renewal, 23 April 2009
- Are we citizens? Or peasants?, 21 May 2009
- A famous guest speaker visits the FM site to tell us that we are not weak — we are strong, 8 June 2008
- A great artist died today. We can gain inspiration from his words., 26 June 2009
- A wonderful and important speech about liberty, 23 July 2009
