Timeline of Collapse
by Jason GodeskyCollapse is inevitable. We know this; it’s a basic function of civilization. A civilization that doesn’t collapse is like a fire that doesn’t burn. As we saw in the Thirty Theses, the question is not if our civilization will collapse, but when. Steve Lagavulin’s “Timeline for Unfolding Crisis of Mankind” was one of the first attempts to piece together a timeline of the collapse we are expecting, and I could copy his caveats almost verbatim here. Predicting the future is frought with peril. Predicting specifically which factor will deliver the coup de grace is almost impossible. This exercise is possible only because there are so many factors converging in a very short time frame, that the probability of at least one of them exerting sufficient stress to end our civilization becomes very, very high.
First, we need to understand that collapse is not a future possibility, but a present reality. Though it is by no means perfect, the map I used in thesis #26 is still useful:
A peer polity system must stand or fall as a system (see, “We All Fall Down“), so collapse in the modern world is always met with an influx of energy from more densely complex areas to prop it up. This can be seen in the influx of investment in the former USSR, the current involvement of the United States in the Middle East and Central Asia, the efforts of the UN and various other international organizations in central and western Africa, the meddling of the United States in Latin America, and the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. In Collapse, Jared Diamond makes convincing arguments that we should consider Montana and Australia as well in a state of collapse, propped up only by the modern peer polity system.
As we can see in the map above, there is very little left of the world that is not in collapse, propping up everything else. The process of collapse is, at present, quite advanced. All it needs now is one last pressure to push the whole system over the edge, and there are a number of such factors lining up for the next decade.
Let’s take a look at each of those factors, and see why it is that a consistent timeline begins to emerge from each of these factors.
Peak Oil
In thesis #18, we discussed how Peak Oil could be a factor in collapse. Namely, if the depletion rate is too high (Stuart Staniford of the Oil Drum guessed “too high” to be anything over 11%), then there will be insufficient time for society to adapt. A massive depletion of energy is a massive depletion of complexity, and such a self-reinforcing, catabolic process continues until civilization is gone.
In “Peak & Crash” we discussed the significance of a report that Kuwait’s oil reserves are, in fact, half of what was previously reported. As Jeff Vail explained, this suggests that all of OPEC’s reserve estimates were doubled. That suggests that, rather than peaking now, we should have peaked some time ago. How have production numbers remained so high? Vail suggests water injection and water flood techniques to raise the pressure in the wells.
The problem with this is that when a field who’s production rate has been artificially sustained beyond the half-way point finally does begin to decline, its rate of decline tends to be very, very high. 10-18% has been suggested (by Simmons and others) as the decline rate for fields that have been pressed to the limits with injection technologies. This is critical, because while Peak Oil may be a quite manageable problem at 2% depletion, 10%+ depletion means that world production will fall by half in less than 7 years.
Using the peak of the North American oil supply in 1971 as a model, we might expect a decade from peak until we start to really feel the pinch, but if this is correct, we can expect depletion rates in great excess of the 11% that Staniford estimated as the threshold of collapse. With half as much petroleum in 2013, we would be facing the first rumblings of collapse by 2010, unmistakable signs by 2015, and by 2020, civilization’s global hegemony would be broken, with only a few, much reduced cities holding out.
Global Warming
Though civilization prides itself on its divorce from the natural world, all life remains dependent on our ecology–even human life. Civilization is even more at the mercy of the elements than other modes of human culture. The precarious nature of agriculture (see thesis #9) makes the civilized food supply utterly dependent on a very small number of closely-related, fickle cereal grains that require very precise parameters of temperature, soil, acidity, rainfall, etc. Those parameters are about to change drastically.
We have recently broken a sort of “tipping point” regarding global warming, as we discussed last August with, “Siberia’s Permafrost is Melting.” An increasing number of scientists are now saying that it is too late. The warnings sounded since hte 1970s went unheeded, and now the globe is warming under its own feedback loop, regardless of what we do.
WHO concluded that 160,000 people die from the effects of global warming every year, and they expect this number to double by 2020–with 3,000-4,000 in the U.S. alone. By 2015, Mt. Kilimanjaro will no longer have an ice cap. Rising sea levels could wipe out most of our cities (which tend to be on coasts, or at the very least, rivers) as the polar ice caps melt.
The frequency of extreme rainfall events (EREs) will increase between 30 and 110 percent (depending on the region) by 2015. The increase in torrential rains cause significant damage to ecology, agriculture, human habitat and infrastructure (houses, schools, hospitals, shops, public utilities, sewerage, roads, bridges… ). EREs disrupt all human activities and result in loss of topsoil, human and animal life. In other areas, it will be severe drought that is the problem.
The full effects of global warming will continue to unfold over the centuries to come, but we are already seeing the first effects, as with the extinction of the Gulf Stream and the resulting hurricanes in the Gulf and bitterly cold European winter. We can expect these effects to intensify, and to even be joined by other problems, such as “water wars.” We are already seeing the first troubles with global warming, and they will continue to escalate until they reach levels that threaten the very survival of our civilization, probably in a timeframe of 2010-2025.
This report concludes:
Unless global energy consumption is reduced rapidly–by no later than June 2006–to about 60 exajoules (6E+19 joules) or less each year (this level is about 13 percent of total global energy consumed in 2005 and is equal to the total energy consumed in the year 1910), the runaway positive feedback loops for the destruction mechanisms … (ozone holes, global heating, extreme climatic events, toxic pollution, resources depletion, war, unethical behavior, and disease pandemics) pass the point of no return, overwhelm and destroy the life support systems. Nearly all major cities (cities with a population of about 1 million or more) become mostly uninhabitable by 2015.
Mass Extinction
As we saw in thesis #17, we are already in the midst of the most severe mass extinction in the history of the planet. By 2014, it is expected that 50% of the species in the rain forest will remain. By 2015, the tipping point will be breached, and only 45.9% will remain–less than half. In 2012-2015, only 10% virgin rain forests will remain, leaving only 50% of rain forest species. This is a vital threshold in the process of mass extinction, because most of the earth’s species–and most of the earth’s oxygen–comes out of the rain forests. Breaching this threshold threatens escalating cascades of extinction and critical ecosystem failure that could even threaten the survival of our species.
Synergy
The most insurmountable crisis we face is not any one of these factors in isolation, but the fact that they compound one another. The first major U.S. city to collapse, New Orleans, evidences how this works. Hurricane Katrina entered the Gulf of Mexico as a weak Category I hurricane, but the hot waters of the Gulf (heated by the extinction of the Gulf Stream, due to global warming) turned it into a massive Category V that broke New Orleans’ levees and submerged most of the city beneath the brackish, polluted waters of the Gulf. It also shut down Gulf oil production, which is also where most of the United States’ refineries are found–and where our foreign imports come in. This exacerbated the energy situation, prompting Europe to open its strategic oil reserves for the U.S.–leading to Europe’s energy problems during the bitter winter that followed, and increasing their own death toll as political tensions between Russia and Ukraine led to parts of Europe losing heat in the lethal cold. Finally, the loss of the United States’ major port on the Mississippi backed up grain exports, which will likely result in significant famine in months, or even years, to come.
So we see the intricate patterns in which these problems interweave, reinforce, and ultimately make a single crisis that is far more formidable than the sum of its parts. Yet, even the synergistic crisis of civilization is set by the same timeframe as its constituent elements. All of them are problems right now. All are escalating. All reach significant thresholds, inflection points, or crisis levels in the general timeframe of 2012-2015. All become insurmountable by 2020.
No Longer a “Possibility”
Collapse is no longer a future possibility, but a present reality. By 2012-2015, we can expect this reality to be patently obvious. By 2020, civilization will be in full-scale collapse. Individual cities or carved-out fiefdoms might persist for a century or more, just as in most collapses where a few pockets struggled on for some time. But by 2020, we can confidently expect civilization’s global hegemony to be permanently broken. There may be pockets that remain, but they will also be relatively easy to escape. Large expanses will be unclaimed, and the pockets that remain will be incapable of asserting any claim over them. Those spaces will open up, where humanity will be able to live freely.
The scars of civilization will ultimately heal. The albedo effect that once balanced global warming is now diminishing as the ice caps melt, but once a thick girdle of desert has been roasted about the earth’s middle where everything is dead and only lifeless, white sand remains, won’t that be another albedo effect? The earth was once a snowball, and life was able to temper that. Life finds a way.
The key for any would-be survivor will be adaptation. As our climate zones shift pole-wards, we’ll need to migrate with them. New growth forests pop up relatively quickly, and air quality rises almost instantly. We’ll live to see the beginning of the earth’s healing. We won’t live to see the granduer of old growth forests again, and it will be centuries before the process of global warming we’ve kicked off is righted again, but we will see better days–even if we won’t see perfect days.
The key is to divorce ourselves from civilization. The Tribe of Anthropik has adopted a “deadline” of 2010, and so far, everything is on schedule, and we remain confident that we can meet that deadline. That is a good thing, because every new piece of news simply confirms again that the Maya calendar might have something to it, after all.
I admire this piece of work, especially your distinction between “civilization’s global hegemony” and “pockets of civilization.”
Ran Prieur made a similar argument as well. It’s not against collapse.
Comment by aksum — 22 February 2006 @ 3:38 PM
“The key is to divorce ourselves from civilization. The Tribe of Anthropik has adopted a “deadline” of 2010, and so far, everything is on schedule”
Does the deadline of 2010, include throwing off the shackles of paid employment at that point?
Also do you view the 2010 year, as the last bit of time before things become to crazy to straddle primitivism with modernity?
I would agree with you that 2010 would be a good estimate of when people should seriously make more primitive living a full-time reality. This is the proverbial leap of faith that will probably prevent much more than the 1% (you often mention)of people from managing the collapse.
It’s kind of like bungie jumping off the titanic, civilization even when crumbling quickly still appears mighty in its breadth and power (even if secretly impotent to its own demise), but you still have to time the jump off, if you wait too long you go down with the ship, if you leave early you look crazy–and may not have the equipment you need to truly survive & thrive (i.e. Skills & Survival Knowledge).
I’ve never bungie jumped personally, but I think by 2008, the ‘writing will be on the wall’ for those who know how to look through the fog of anesthetic lies promoted by the majority.
Comment by Bubba — 22 February 2006 @ 3:40 PM
Rather, it makes a distinction between “total” collapse and certain “surviving” pockets which may persist.
Comment by aksum — 22 February 2006 @ 3:41 PM
2010 is when we want to be independent of civilization, so that the only thing we rely on civilization for, is the money to pay the robbery that civilization demands, i.e., taxes, hunting and fishing licenses, etc. That probably means no more full-time employment, but it will probably require some kind of income flow to continue. But at that point, if the income flow stops, it’s probably because our only need for it stopped, too.
To my mind, a few broken pockets was just implied by the very idea of collapse, but I could tell from responses I’ve gotten that not everyone shares that view.
To my own thinking–if it’s a tiny city a thousand miles away that can’t touch you anymore, why does it matter?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 February 2006 @ 3:54 PM
Of course it doesn’t. That’s why I think arguing about surviving pockets is a ridiculous debate.
Comment by aksum — 22 February 2006 @ 3:57 PM
Unless, of course, you’re close to those surviving pockets. Pompous dictators with egos that out weigh their actual power by many times are only amusing when viewed from a distance.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 22 February 2006 @ 4:18 PM
Algorithm to escape pompous dictator who happens to be in your backyard:
1. Start walking.
2. At the end of the week, stop.
3. Enjoy the view. You are now further than Pompous Dictator’s armies will ever be able to march.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 February 2006 @ 4:24 PM
Jason,
You have mentioned before that Anthropik has a timeline for being free of civilization. If this exists as a document would you be willing to share that with the rest of us.
Jimfive
Comment by JimFive — 22 February 2006 @ 4:28 PM
2006: We have a schedule of primitive skills classes lined up for the whole year. By autumn, we’ll have graduated “advanced primitive skills,” which is always a good start. We’ll be going fishing in the spring, and by fall, we’ll be hunting. My New Year’s resolution: Get on the paleo diet, and before the year is out, kill and eat some animal.
2007: Year-long primitive skills course. School as yet undecided.
2008: Buy land. Begin living off of it.
Two years slack time, in case we fall behind schedule; or, two years of living off our land with a safety net.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 February 2006 @ 4:34 PM
Brief clarification: I think that specific major fields and probably some of the major Middle East oil producers as a whole are already well past peak, with their current production only propped up by various technologies to include injection. In general, if one accepts that OPEC’s mysterious reserve increases in the ’80s were spurious, then I think tht puts the world’s liquid hydrocarbon production as a whole right about AT peak, not well past it. The precise timing and nature of the peak will only be clearly evident in hindsight. However, none of this impacts the general argument here, because the end result is still a sudden and unexpectedly sharp dropp-off in production in the very near future…
Another factor that might be worth consideration is the fulcrum of public awareness. It’s like one person on a balance beam: you can slide your weight very close to the center and have no effect, but the moment that your center of mass passes the fulcrum the entire system swings dramatically in the opposite direction. Or, from a more academic perspective, it’s when a system shifts from one attractor to another. What I mean by this is that our system of global economy depends on the fundamental assumption that growth will continue. This is necessary for all aspects of our lives that involve finance, loands, credit, currency, inventory–in short, all “modern” economic activity. If the majority of the population of the world involved in this modern economy suddenly understood what is outlined in Jason’s article, that alone would be sufficient to shut down the system immediately. No one gives a loan if they thing that the person won’t have the ability to earn money to pay it back. No one buys a corporate bond or keeps money invested in the stock market if they think that it will be worth less in the future than it is now. Our entire way of life is predicated on investing in the future, on the assumption that this is rational due to the expectation of growth. When such activity is no longer “rational,” it stops, because whatever problems there may be in economic theory, it remains true that people do what they **think** is rational (which, of course, has no necessary link to reality, and is really more an issue of psychology). So as these events unfold, they will very gradually slide the center of mass of public awareness ever closer to the fulcrum of the balance beam. At some point, it is possible that the collective inividual awareness of this reality will be the actual force that will shut down the system, not the realization of any of the separable and substantive factors behind that realization. Sure, those substantive factors are, as pointed out, quite capable of causing that collapse on their own. IF public awareness crosses that fulcrum before any of the substantive factors cause enough stress on the system, the system will still shut down. This is relevant because it means that collapse can happen before there is any sufficient combination of substantive causes. Personally, this seems pretty unlikely given the hypnotized state of the public at present, but history–and chaos theory–teach us that we should never underestimate the potential for a sudden, systemic shift. There have, after all, been times when it didn’t take a weatherman to tell people which way the wind blows…
Comment by Jeff Vail — 22 February 2006 @ 8:48 PM
[]
Wonderful post, Jason.
Just to respond to Jeff’s point, why do you think the long term (10 year) Fed interest rate just will not go up, no matter how much the Fed tries to push it up…eh?
It will come soon enough, my friends. I tend to think that it will be slow and it will be painful.
(Of course, then again, I’ve always been one of those people who would rather cut something off in five seconds instead of enduring a ten or twenty year pain…)
If we get 5% of the population understanding this set of problems and 1% of them able to integrate the set into a world view, then we have accomplished something…eh?
Kudos to you.
[]
Comment by Prof. Goose (TOD) — 22 February 2006 @ 9:30 PM
The Fed can’t set the rate on 10-year issues. All they can do is buy or sell those issues to influence the price & rate, and in the process influence the money supply. So if they really, really want to drive up the rate, they’ll buy all they can at spot price. This will send the money supply through the roof, vastly devalue the dollar, and may in itself be the trigger event in global economic collapse. So the Fed’s ability to drive up the 10-year rate is constrained at least to some degree by the bounds of people’s expectations about the growth of the US economy making good on the time-value-of-money that is represented by such long-term rates.
People buy bonds because they think it’s a good investment–very few (only for the sake of avoiding all-ness statements) are consciously trying to lose money. So if they believe that in the very near future the US government will be completely insolvent, along with all other governments, they won’t buy bonds at 5% or 500%. That’s a pretty extreme belief–and one that I don’t think is yet warranted if you define “very near future” as a couple of years. But if and when that belief is the standard view…
Comment by Jeff Vail — 22 February 2006 @ 11:06 PM
I have been generally impressed with the level of analysis that takes place on this site and in particular the application of Tainter’s interpretation of a civilization’s lifecycle to explain our current situation. What happenned with this piece? I don’t believe Tainter would sketch out a timeline anywhere near as dramatic as what you have submitted. Your assumption of a catabolic collapse centerring on Peak oil is a bit of a stretch as even a cursory review of ASPO projections indicate that this is unlikely. Maybe its time to get out your copy of Collapse of Complex Societies, turn down the heat a bit and rebake this one.
Mark
Comment by Mark — 22 February 2006 @ 11:36 PM
Mark, Tainter’s theory actually was that collapse occured on such a dramatic timeline. Tainter defined collapse as something that occured that was sudden and “no more than a few decades.”
As for a catabolic collapse, that was a theory invented by John Michael Greer, a man who pointed out that Tainter’s model regarding the timeframe was not entirely true. Tainter believed that all historical collapses were sudden. Greer pointed out that there were exceptions (like the fall of Rome) and that not all collapses were sudden–others occurred over a period of centuries. That is, some collapses were sudden, others took longer. He also pointed out the difference between a maintenance crisis and a catabolic collapse, and sometimes, those crises work together in a collapse.
Also, the timeline of collapse is subjective on how you define collapse. Consider the Mayan collapse. The book “1491″ believes it collapsed between 800 and 840. John Michael Greer say 780 and 910. Jared Diamond put the dates between 760 and 910. Yet those people define collapse differently, and to their definition, that was when collapse occurred.
Comment by aksum — 22 February 2006 @ 11:44 PM
End your book with these positive ideas and sales may help Anthropik’s goals.
Comment by Rick Larson — 23 February 2006 @ 12:11 AM
Hey –
I wrote the following bit at IshCon… the stuff in “–” is from there and is only going to be understood by those who have read and understood Greer’s paper. Please skip it, all it does is lay the foundation for what I’m saying.
–
Greer critiques Tainter’s model of collapse, and rightfully so, for not including an accurate portrayal of the timeframe of a collapse. But Greer fails to adequately propose an alternative model for the timeframe of collapse. Since Tainter’s attempt at including a timeframe in his general model is flawed, I wonder if we could establish a number of criteria that would help us examine the timeframe in which a civilization would collapse. I think it would be important to distinguish between a maintenance crisis and a depletion crisis when determining this timeframe. Another good guideline seems to be how far past the point of diminishing returns each facet of complexity is. Greer notes that all resources are not created equal:
Thus, the extent of a particular society’s dependence on a resource is one factor, while the replenishment rate of that resource is another factor. It would seem that a depletion crisis involving a critical resource without a high replenishment rate would make for a much swifter collapse. The two strategies Greer outlines for societies that have reached the end of their anabolic cycle are as follows:
1. “… move toward a steady state in which C(p) = M(p), and d(R) ≤ r(R) for every economically significant resource. Barring the presence of environmental limits, this requires social controls to keep capital stocks down to a level at which maintenance costs can be met from current production, and maintain intake of resources at or below replenishment rates.”
2. “… attempt to prolong the anabolic cycle through efforts to accelerate intake of resources through military conquest, new technology, or other means. Since increasing production increases W(p) and increasing capital stocks lead to increased W(c), however, such efforts drive further increases in M(p). A society that attempts to maintain an anabolic cycle indefinitely must therefore expand its use of resources at an ever-increasing rate to keep C(p) from dropping below M(p). Since this exacerbates problems with depletion, as discussed above, this strategy may prove counterproductive.”
It seems obvious that those societies that attempt to prolong their anabolic cycles as long as possible without returning to a steady state will collapse more quickly. The more successful a society is at extending its anabolic cycle, the less opportunity it has to return to a steady state, due to resource depletion. Thus, this is also a good guideline for determining the timeframe of a collapse.
–
So to review, in plain english this time: the timeline of collapse seems to be determined by :
1. whether it is a maintenance crisis or a depletion crisis;
2. the rate of depletion and replenishment of key resources;
3. how far past the point of diminishing returns each aspect of complexity is;
4. whether the society attempts to prolong the anabolic cycle of growth, as opposed to using resources to maintain a steady state; and
5. the cultural and political factors that make catabolic collapse difficult to contemplate, avoid, and mitigate.
What this means for civilization does NOT look good. If we look at these criteria and apply them to the system we’re currently in, we instantly come up with a number of signs that the collapse will happen very quickly. First of all, industrial civilization’s dependence on oil and other fossil fuels is complete, and at the present moment we’re depleting those at a phenomenal rate. Secondly, these resources have a replenishment rate on the order of geological time. Third, the structure of the economy is such that it will forever throw all of its efforts toward the attempt to prolong the anabolic cycle, and none toward the attempt to achieve a steady state economy. (Illustration: No corporation strives to not make a profit. They are legally bound to put profits above all else.) Also, given the structure of our political system, no politician in their right mind would dare try to solve systemic problems. This is political suicide. (And even if they were to try, their efforts would simply be undone when they were voted out of office. e.g. Jimmy Carter) As Greer notes, “Cultural and political factors may also make efforts to avoid catabolic collapse difficult to accomplish, or indeed to contemplate.” Nearly all of the institutional ingenuity and creativity of civilization is geared toward the goal of perpetual expansion.
All of this points to the conclusion that civilization will collapse very quickly when it does. Unfortunately, it also points to the conclusion that civilization will try its damnedest to keep expanding until it has simply reached every limit there is. This will likely exacerbate the problems of increasing climate instability, catastrophic losses of biodiversity, and so on.
For those who are still having a hard time understanding what I’m getting at, I’m just agreeing with Jason that it’s going to happen quickly (at least in America). I’m thinking on the order of a decade to two decades.
This is all intellectual wankery and estimated guessing, though. When it comes down to it it’s just something I’ve spent a long time learning about that can be useful.
Anyway, that’s all for now. I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, Jason.
- Devin
Comment by Devin — 23 February 2006 @ 1:46 AM
The Mayan had lots of calendars but the one that was used in daily life was the Tzolkin which had a 260 day cycle, made up of 13 numbers and 20 symbols. Your name was the same as the name of the day you were born on, which was also your function in the community.
A year and a half ago I encountered a system that was developed by Carl Calleman and Ian Lungold. This is a different system than presented by Jose Arguelles. In the Calleman system there are nine cycles, each one which is 1/20 the length of the previous cycle, but the same amount of change occurs in each cycle. The first cycle started 16.4 billion years ago, the sixth at 5116 years ago with the start of patriarchy. We are currently in the eighth cycle which started Jan 4th 1999 and ends Feb 10th 2011. The ninth cycle is only 260 days long, but will still experience the same amount of change as each of the other cycles.
Overview Of Mayan Calendar has some charts and tables that make this easier to see. In addition within each cycle there is a similiar pattern concerning when the old starts to break down, which directs the creation of the new, so that when the old does collapse it makes way for the new. Evolve or die is happening at each level depending on the core issue: the fifth was about art and culture, the sixth was about law, the seventh about power, the eighth about ethics, and the ninth about co-creation. A very elegant timetable that continues to be on schedule. This isn’t about waiting for a final date, but about going through a process of acceleration leading up to that date. I think these guys are on to something.
Comment by ov — 23 February 2006 @ 4:52 AM
Hmm, back to the Mayan Calendar again? Coincidences may be a scientific rarity, although they certainly still exist. 2012 appears to be a solid estimate at this point, although 2015 & 2010 both are probably pretty good as well, since we will have to see how things fall into place within the next few years. Civilization is so complex, and that its much more likely to fall hard, quicker than many might assume. Although again we need to define, collapse, since 1st world countries are more likely to go through a brief stage similar to what 3rd world countries are dealing with, limited food/water, armed gangs (govt’ or non govt) etc.
I’m a fan of the predictive power of facts that exist currently, and basing predictions on those–although they are in a flux. Sufficient hurricane activity & a couple Civil wars, and the time frame for all this moves up significantly, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Gulf Coast–and Blam, things begin to look more like 2008 as a collapse year. We will see, best to keep your eyes open, ears to the ground, and mind on attaining skills & adaptibility/mobility.
Comment by Bubba — 23 February 2006 @ 10:03 AM
Mark,
I part ways with Tainter in the application of his model. Tainter argues that we cannot collapse, because we are part of a peer polity system, so no one polity can collapse. That is true, but peer polity systems have collapsed before–they just do so as a peer polity system, rather than distinct polities. I wrote about this in, “We All Fall Down.” So, naturally, Tainter and I are not going to agree on much of anything regarding application after that.
We’ve examined a number of possible factors contributing to collapse, of which Peak Oil is only one. If Peak Oil were the only factor, I wouldn’t be nearly so certain. What makes the case sufficiently strong to make such a bold claim is the fact that we are facing so many crises, simultaneously, that all reach significant inflection points, or cross significant thresholds, all in the same, short time frame of 2012-2015. As Aksum already pointed out, “suddenness” is part of Tainter’s definition of what “collapse” means. In short, if Peak Oil, global warming, or mass extinction are going to have any role in collapse, then that collapse must reach crisis levels in 2012-2015, and occur suddenly. If it does not, then Peak Oil, global warming, and mass extinction will have nothing to do with it, and we’ll collapse at some later time due to an entirely different set of factors. But for all of the factors we’ve considered here, they are factors if and only if they happen quickly, and soon.
Now, when looking back, historians often note a long period of decline prior to actual collapse, but you’ll note that contemporary records, while generally giving some hint of decline, generally consider their civilizations stable and secure. If there are historians to look back at our current crisis, I think they might trace our “decline” all the way back to 28 June 1914–the day that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot in Sarajevo. The result of World War I (and World War II–the two conflicts were so closely related one could almost consider them a single war with a brief “time-out”) was the dissolution of the European empires. Such a breakdown of political power into smaller units is one of the most important signs of collapse, like the division of the Roman Empire. The following Cold War, as Tainter described, created a peer polity system with only two peers; the end of that saw the further dissolution of political power into successively smaller units. So, in many ways, the period from 1914 to the present resembles the periods of decline noted in many previous civilizations.
That said, I think Greer’s most significant contribution is the idea of catabolic collapse as an equal and opposite process to anabolic growth. We understand how our society is compelled to grow as much as possible, and we understand how this is a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Catabolic collapse as a similarly self-reinforcing feedback loop, and thus a process that accelerates itself, makes it easier to understand how collapse happens so suddenly.
This is the situation we face. To address Jeff’s point, collapse is always, ultimately, a question of investment. Infrastructural problems push us closer to that point, but in the end, collapse is always caused by whatever it is that convinces a sufficient threshold of society that further investment in complexity will no longer produce a sufficient return. Like a run on a stock, the more people stop investing in complexity, the less attractive investment becomes, and the more people will stop investing in complexity, until no one is willing to ivnest in any more complexity, and collapse has run its course.
In the coming years, we face major crises, any one of which may prove insurmountable, all reaching a head in the same, short time frame of 2012-2015. It is difficult to even imagine a scenario under which further investment in complexity will be an attractive option to anyone, even as soon as 2020. Under these circumstances, what other possibilities are there?
ov,
I’m not an astrologer, but the coincidence of the Maya calendar is slightly unsettling. I’m not going to delve into ancient prophecies, since prophecies only ever make sense in hindsight, I simply took note of it as an interesting conclusion–not because it should be a consideration in any actual analysis.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 23 February 2006 @ 10:26 AM
“The ninth cycle is only 260 days long, but will still experience the same amount of change as each of the other cycles.”
So if the 10th cycle is a little under a week, and the 11th cycle is just about 16 hours long, the 12th cycle will be roughly 45 minues long, the 13th cycle will be a bit over 2.5 minutes long, the 14th cycle will be about 15 seconds, and the 15th cycle will be just over 4/5ths of a second, and…
Holy fuck-grabbins. That’s a lot of change.
Is it ever stated exactly where the cycles of change END?
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 23 February 2006 @ 1:03 PM
The Singularity!
Comment by Jason Godesky — 23 February 2006 @ 1:06 PM
How can a decline coinside with exponential growth?
The period you describe, from 1914 all the way to the 1970s was a period when our energy consumption and all its correlates grew exponentially. Was the US Civil War of 1861 a sign of decline? It freed the slaves and turned most of them into share-croppers.
Weren’t colonies of European Empires freed in the same way?
If people stop investing, what exactly are they going to do next?
Will the surviving pockets of civilization be still constrained by MAD doctrine? Many of them will retain some long-range weapons with highly destructive power.
Genetic modification of staple crops may provide the cereals with better resilience and enable agriculture with GM plants to continue even as climate changes. Similarly, genetically modified bacteria may provide proteins.
If pockets of civilizations survive, and some of them are big enough to be able to concentrate on the most fruitful least mature remaining branches of research (perhaps biotechnology), it is not clear that you will be safe from them.
Comment by _Gi — 23 February 2006 @ 1:20 PM
As we saw in thesis #15, agricultural production has been past the point of diminishing returns forever, the marginal returns for sociopolitical control was already in decline between 1914 and 1967, the marginal returns on technological innovation peaked in the 1800s, and, as quoted from Tainter in that article, “while U.S. per capita product increased 75 percent from 1950 to 1977, weekly work hours declined by only 9.5 percent.”
At the same time, we can point to any number of statistics from the Late Roman Empire that would seem to indicate growth, as well, but diminishing marginal returns is a different question from that of absolute productivity.
Take a look at any of the previous collapses that have occurred. That’s what will happen next. Every solution need not necessarily be met by an increase in complexity; other problem-solving strategies do exist.
Pockets of civilization are not capable of exerting economies of scale, because they’re pockets. They will no longer have dominion to import their energy needs from any place they like, so they won’t be able to maintain that level of technological complexity. Their resources will be insufficient even to “tread water,” as it were, much less “push the envelope.” The pockets in question will be less Blade Runner, and more Mad Max.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 23 February 2006 @ 2:35 PM
“The Singularity!”
I would like it to be known by all that I physically fell out of my chair laughing when I read this response.
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 23 February 2006 @ 3:10 PM
If you walk for a week away from Thunderdome, you will not be safe mostly because no one can walk away alone.
Your prescription for evading a pocket of civilization is suicidal for almost anyone who accepts it as an individual. Only a tribe can walk away from Thunderdome and live. And if you want to know what happens when a whole tribe decides to leave the kingdom, you should probably re-read Exodus.
Comment by _Gi — 23 February 2006 @ 3:16 PM
Please, not faith in GE to save us.
If you look into the GE thing you’ll find that there is not a single invention that works properly. There is massive propaganda to the contrary but it is just that - propaganda. The reason for this is simple, the scientists know very little about how genetics work. They know enough to force some results but there are always unintended side effects.
We should actually be very worried about GE - the bumbling approach of corporate scinetists has the potential to wipe out all life on earth. And I am not exaggerating.
Try http://www.gmwatch.org or http://www.i-sis.org.uk for further info if you doubt me
Comment by Aaron — 23 February 2006 @ 3:35 PM
Right, walking away from thunderdome would be difficult without a tribe. You need someone to watch your back, and take night watches so the Leather chaps wearing folks, and Tina Turner’s clansmates don’t gank you in your sleep, or make you a slave.
Comment by Bubba — 23 February 2006 @ 4:23 PM
Why is it suicidal for someone who walks away alone? I mean, exactly how is it impossible?
Comment by planetwarming — 23 February 2006 @ 8:20 PM
I am still scared of the Iran oil bourse. I have read elsewhere on the internet saying “Beware the Ides of March.” If the dollar being the only currency traded for oil wasn’t important, then why did we go to war over it? Why is the Federal Reserve not showing how much money they print in March? And if the US believes that it needs to stop this bourse, Iran can simply sink a few tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and I think I read that they set up tankers there preventing any oil from getting out of the Middle East which would cause a global depression I think I read. And this timeline also underestimates the elite’s wanting to continue their power and having a strategy- demand destruction, as I have read theories like this from places like From the Wilderness.
Comment by planetwarming — 23 February 2006 @ 9:20 PM
Most people even those with good survival skills become very depressed alone in months. People need other people sometimes. Additionally, if one intends to feed oneself with what one hunts, one will not eat every day no matter how good a hunter. People who don’t eat every day are not happy people or healthy people. Accidents happen during the normal course of life, and for a soft city-state dweller accidents and illness in the wilderness are to be expected. If nobody is around to help one when one cannot move, one dies. If one is immobilized or weakened for any reason in the wilderness and nobody is around to help one recover, one most likely dies. A forager tribe of one is doomed. An individual left alone in the wilderness may survive the first winter with proper training, but his chances of living a normal life-span are much less than my chances of winning the lottery twice in the same year. The prisoners spend ten years on our death rows, but no one denies that they are sentenced to death. An individual left alone in the wilderness have a greater chance of dying that a prisoner on death row, and nature’s appeal process does not take ten years. So it follows that walking alone into the wilderness without a plan to meet others for mutual help is the same as a death sentence.
The very famous fictional persona (perhaps based on real events) to survive alone for decades was Robinson Crusoe. Note that he was not a forager, he was a farmer, and his luck was unbelievable. If one wanted to be a farmer, one needn’t leave the city state in the first place.
Comment by _Gi — 23 February 2006 @ 9:22 PM
The main reason I think the biotechnology and genetic engineering will have an unpredictable and perhaps large effect, is precisely because it is an immature branch of technology. As many people observed, immature technologies tend to improve exponentially until the easy stuff is all discovered.
Witness computer technology which just maturing now.
If hacking the genes ever becomes as easy as hacking computers, and we are moving in this direction, there is no telling what kind of benefits and horrors will be created. This seems like one wildcard in the collapse calculations which effects are very difficult to predict. Note, that the original message simply questioned the safety of any group anywhere if any leftover state still had the resolution and resources to push this research.
Comment by _Gi — 23 February 2006 @ 10:07 PM
Getting out of one of these proto-cities alone, that’s certainly do-able. The problem is surviving on one’s own. Humans are social animals. Try Into the Wild for an account of what happens when humans forget that and try to go solo. Lone wolves die alone.
Now, getting out of the city, not so hard. Living outside the city, that’s where you need a community. So, either escape with a few of your closest friends, or count on hooking up with some band once you get out.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 24 February 2006 @ 10:21 AM
That second might be my plan if I do not meet up with the people I want to before it happens. I guess I can try to urge whoever I’m with to join me, like my coworkers or acquaintances. I don’t know how effective that would be because it probably wouldn’t happen all in one day and they would probably want to go to the people they know. I have been trying to find people. I just wonder if I won’t be with them in time. If the timeline is right, I should be okay though. I don’t know if I’ll be near any of my friends at that time. Hopefully, I will be. I’ve been travelling around a lot and it’s been hard to establish any new long term bonds with anybody new. But I think that will change and I will be able to be where I want this year. I don’t want to live alone. I have heard of Into the Wild and what happened to the guy.
About global warming, I read a book that followed these characters from Neanderthals to the future called Isle of Woman by Piers Anthony. In the different chapters, it advanced a new period of time in history but stuck with the same characters and flowing storyline. At the end, people traded in bullets and no one trusted anyone new because they were liable to kill them and eat them and the Earth was all scorching and desert because of global warming but then they settled down and farmed cockroaches to eat.
Comment by planetwarming — 24 February 2006 @ 11:26 AM
Didn’t anyone see “Logan’s Run”?
Comment by sr — 24 February 2006 @ 12:30 PM
If one counts on finding a band accepting of a lone former city dweller, one will have to plan on walking much more than one week.
Comment by _Gi — 24 February 2006 @ 4:26 PM
Well, I’m going to do what I can to make sure I’m not alone. I also have to work on getting primitive skills.
Comment by planetwarming — 24 February 2006 @ 5:04 PM
There are many tales of mountain men who survived for years, alone, in the wilderness.
Then speaking towards the 1914 date, where collapse of this oil-fueled civilization begins, correlates directly with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. This Act did replace gold as a medium of exchange.
One should know that investment capital was restricted by how much gold the investor had. But the Act disconnected the medium from gold by allowing an independant Central Bank to expand the money base through credit. This credit is the capital that is responsible for financing wars (not many were willing to risk their capital (gold) on war), and also, all the infrastructure leading towards the overuse of land and resources.
One the Mad Max comment, did anyone notice how madmaxers obtained food out of that desert as it was? Me thinks the proper movie to refer to is The Postman.
Comment by Rick Larson — 24 February 2006 @ 11:05 PM
Where do you live planetwarming?
Comment by Rick Larson — 24 February 2006 @ 11:07 PM
Like planetwarming, I would actually like to meet up with like-minded people. Anybody in the Boston area??
Comment by slomo — 25 February 2006 @ 12:21 AM
“The Singularity!”
Don’t be too quick to dismiss the effects of exponential change. There is still a chance, albeit tiny, that something like the theorised Singularity could arrive before our society collapses, or before the technologies that would make The Singularity possible destroy us anyway.
Comment by Michael — 25 February 2006 @ 1:04 AM
I’ve noticed that people alone on desert islands seem to fair much better psychologically than people surviving alone in mountanous and forested regions. I wonder why this is?
Anyone here read the story of Tom Neal? His book is online here. For anyone contemplating a life surving alone, or just interested in how someone could survive cut off from civilization, I really recommend reading his story, An Island to Oneself. Its a wonderful tale and tugs at the heart of anyone with a wish to escape.
Comment by Michael — 25 February 2006 @ 1:19 AM
Oh, exponential change would be very significant. But technology is not subject to exponential change. Rather, it is subject to diminishing returns. The “Singularity” is one of the most facile bits of inanity I’ve ever come across, not because exponential change wouldn’t be significant, but the completely unfounded assertion that technology follows anything like an exponential curve.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 February 2006 @ 2:19 AM
“A year and a half ago I encountered a system that was developed by Carl Calleman and Ian Lungold.”
Funny, this system is remarkably similar to Terrence McKenna’s fractal timewave theory he developed in the 70’s. The really strange thing is that McKenna developed this theory and chose Dec. 22, 2012 as the date when the rate of change was infinite before he ever heard of the Mayan calendar (so he claims at least, and to his credit “The Invisible Landscape” makes no mention of the Maya).
The only real difference is that his theory didn’t really divide the timeline into 9 periods, but rather a fractal continuum converging on the date 2012.
btw, he originally developed his theory as an interpretation or mathematical extrapolation of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching. (I think DMT and Psylocybin played a large role in the inspiration too)
I wonder if the researchers you mention were inspired by his works. If they came to the same conclusions completely independently, it would make them that much more convincing, but it seems unlikely that serious researchers would be unaware of McKenna’s work.
I’m not saying I buy the theory, but it seems a lot more convincing now then when I first heard it.
Comment by limukala — 25 February 2006 @ 3:51 AM
Oh, and for the record, I always assumed the exponential change was more cultural than anything.
Comment by limukala — 25 February 2006 @ 3:52 AM
I’m not saying I buy the theory, but it seems a lot more convincing now then when I first heard it.
I buy into it less than I did 4 or 5 years ago. Mostly because (1) I spent some time trying to understand the methodology and I could not make heads or tails of it [I’ll add that I’m well-trained mathematically, so this is at least a failure of McKenna’s writings to communicate the methods]; and (2) I’ve read recently a personal anecdote that McKenna didn’t completely believe it himself, but that the sales of his software “payed the bills” [still trying to remember the forum on which I read that].
It’s only when I read articles like this one at Anthropik that I think there is something to the 2012 thing after all.
Comment by slomo — 25 February 2006 @