NickBlack.com

I know. The oil. The gas. The arctic, the albedo effect. The thermohaline. 386 ppm. 8 billion starving refugees by next week. I know. I spent years trying, unsuccessfully, to get a major documentary on peak oil made for PBS (American Public TV). I’ve met and interviewed most of the serious peak oil ecologists and geologists. Last night I sat watching Fora.tv (“the world is thinking”, oh really?). An hour long presentation on a tiny web screen by Dan Miller called A Really Inconvenient Truth. Yes, it is worse than Al Gore dared tell you. Yes, I already knew everything Dan had to tell me, as would most of the eco-oilers I know. We are like some goth punk death cult, avid for the new terror numbers of ice melt, storm surge or oil field decline.

Then, because of an unavoidable social context, I watched the penultimate final of X Factor. I watched for a while in sneering disbelief at the demented Karaoke of these guileless kids and Simon, their gurning svengali, all lit up like the Nuremberg Rally. I saw the crowds, crowds of 20 million – crowds for which any politician would sell their soul – cheering and screaming for their Stacey or Olly or little Joe. Every single ambulatory person in these kid’s hometown was on the street. This was the democracy they’d always wanted, the chance to vote on something they really cared about. The aspirational Viagra of instant celebrity, not just of the kids, but them, the hometown crew who have never ever known anyone on the telly before and now their hometown exists, and they exist, because of X.

And then the terrible truth dawned on me. We, the Collapse Literati, are doomed to write our pitiful blogs and make our tiny webscreen docs of impending Apocalypse to no avail whatever, unless we are simply entertaining ourselves. Al Gore had to train a legion of “Town Hall” speakers to spread the Inconvenient Truth. You see Simon Cowell wrestling with how to get his message out? No you don’t. Because one of the fundamental things about the human cognitive system is that it doesn’t like a downer. It likes up and preferably cute. It prefers bright lights shining on a perfect cleavage to earnest old men talking geology. I’ve watched for years as some of the most informed scientists and commentators on earth have put on their best suit and teeth to bore the living beejesus out of believers decked out in white people rasta hair and greenpeace fleeces, sitting on hard chairs in dank halls. For all the difference it made they could have been shooting heroin in the lavs.

The Association for the Study of Peak Oil, or ASPO, (pronounced Asspo, not a moment of marketing genius), began in 2000. Colin Campbell should be given the Nobel Save the Goddamn World Prize. I love these guys. They have done their best to make the world sit up and look at the oil horror movie coming to a planet near you. And Mike Ruppert, lovely guy, with his Collapse documentary. I hope it makes it to theatres. But do you for a moment think it’s going to have the impact, or the box office, of Roland Emmerich’s 2012? No, it won’t because neither Colin or Mike look as good as Amanda Peet in underwear.

My species likes stories where 5 good looking people save the world, or sing us to an anodyne consumer coma, or best of all, show us the perfect kitchen. They don’t like to be told no, you can’t have that, no it’s bad for you, no it will destroy the atmosphere and your children and grandchildren, forevermore, will live in a boiling desert next to a dead ocean. They don’t like to be told that now we’ve burned all the easy oil and had a damn good time whizzing up and down those freeways, it’s over and we may have to share the expensive stuff that’s left with everyone who didn’t get their go in a Cadillac yet, like the poor people from those countries we go to on holiday. How the hell is Cheryl Cole the hair extension replicant going to make that sound bouncy? Not even Cheryl could pull it off. (Yeah Cheryl, pull em off, nice one innit. Sorry. No disrespect intended.)

So we’ll have to lie.

We are never going to sell the great ruminant herd out there on the shopping Serengeti the idea that we’d better grow up and get responsible and treat the earth like the fragile little Christmas tree ornament it is. People don’t want to hear about efficiency, or cutting down, or organic carrot soufflé, or wearing a woolly over their lingerie because of green morality. Never going to sell.

So we’ll have to lie. Here we go.

We are moving into an unimaginable future of free energy, space exploration, bio and nano engineering, and artificial intelligence embedded throughout our lives. War, want, pestilence and decay will be things of the past. Old age and decrepitude will be remembered like images from a Breugel painting. Social networking will enable us to solve humanity’s problems in completely new ways. With 350,000,000 people working on a problem, be it poverty or middle east conflict, facebook will vote on the most democratic solution – X factor style. You can be part of the greatest experiment in history: to re-engineer the whole planet in 3 decades.

Details to follow. Stay tuned.

In Michael Caine’s new film Harry Brown, he plays an elderly ex-marine forced by the violence on his London housing estate to become a vigilante, killing the drug dealers and thugs that have made life impossible. It’s a grim depiction of modern Britain, and will resonate in the rest of Europe and the US. If the Elephant and Castle area of London, where the film is set, were a small state, would it qualify for the Failed State Index published every year by Foreign Policy? When we talk about collapse are we using data at too low a resolution? Suppose we started thinking about collapse at much higher resolution. Instead of measuring nation states, what about failed cities, failing counties and states (in the US sense of states). Would you rather live in one of the shining new developments in Bangalore or in the Toxteth area of Liverpool, recently cited as the most deprived area of Britain? Is Bangalore part of the developed world, and is Liverpool a failing city in the post development world? By only thinking in terms of collapsing nations we are getting a very skewed idea of the real condition of our global civilization. Not that it’s very encouraging even at nation state resolution. The interactive map in the Failed States Index 2009 is chilling.

The Failed States Index measures 12 indicators: Demographic Pressures, Refugees/IDPs, Group Grievance, Human Flight, Uneven Development, Economic Decline, Delegitimization of the State, Public Services, Human Rights, Security Apparatus, Factionalized Elites, and External Intervention. The British Department for Communities and Local Government used generally similar metrics: Crime, Education, Housing, Health, Income etc., and the ones that don’t directly apply, like Delegitimization of the State, would be applicable to the Elephant and Castle if we thought to ask. The US uses much the same metrics in its urban analysis. Does anyone really believe that those gangstas in Harry Brown consider for a moment the existence of legitimate governance in their lives? Maybe we’re measuring much the same things and what we’re seeing is that failure is occurring in a much more nuanced way than we imagine. I don’t have anything like the resources to collect and collate the kind of data sets to make an interactive map at the resolution of cities and counties, but I’m willing to bet it would show us a very different picture of the state of play. My point is that while we look at the Failed States Index it’s tempting to ignore the real condition of the so called rich countries.

If we can imagine a higher resolution world map of socio-economic and ecological conditions what detail might we see? On the one hand we’d see places in the developed world that are slipping out of development. They are becoming feral: once part of the domesticated planet, now slipping back to the wild. Basic infrastructure gone, population declining, local resources used or scattered, education and health of the remaining population retreating, mafia organizations replacing legitimate governance, post industrial pollution leaving some areas too toxic to live in or reclaim.

Although below the public radar, there are plans to manage this decline in many countries now. There is an acceptance that it is impossible to reverse this and it’s better to manage it. Look at the work of Karina Pallagst at UC Berkeley and SCiRN. It’s all about shrinking cities. But what does it say about the era of ‘progress’ we’ve believed for the best part of a century. Unlike previous eras in which cities shrunk and populations declined, the populations of the US and Europe aren’t declining. Rome’s population collapsed from around a million at the peak of its power, to 20,000 in the 14th Century. But a lot of that was centuries of famine topped off by the Black Death. There is (as yet) no Black Death in the US, so where are the new centres of population? What happened to the people from Flint, Michigan, from Detroit, from Baltimore?

They’ve moved to the US southwest – an ecological desert without the water and other resources to support anything like the present population after peak oil. Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in America. The same demographic shift is true in Europe. What were once thriving industrial cities in the north of France and England, for example, are now drifting towards wasteland. Property values have collapsed, people have left, then buildings are abandoned and set on fire. The result is that more and more people gravitate towards the larger cities: London, Paris, Hamburg, Munich etc. All of this internal migration starts to look startlingly like the FSI’s Internally Displaced Persons category. Any number of international agencies are sounding alarm bells about mass international migration, and internal migration in the developing world as a result of conflict and climate. I haven’t seen much in the way of alarm at the collapse in the formerly industrial developed world.

My point is that the pattern of collapse we are seeing in the developing world is increasingly mirrored in the developed world. We are thinking about collapse in a “them over there in those other countries” kind of way. It is partially a function of the way we gather data and partially because the political elite of the developed world has to maintain a media storm of positive spin, which is getting more difficult every day in the face of the facts. What we are actually seeing is an increasingly fragmented world map of wealth and resource distribution, with little reference to national boundaries. What is problematic is that I don’t see any sign in the developed world of alarm at this fragmentation.

Perhaps what we will see as the financial crisis continues is a truly new world order in which the old divisions of developed vs developing world give way to a fragmented map of rich pockets surrounded by vast areas of poverty and decline – like the medieval republics of post Roman Europe as famine and war take their toll and populations decline. Only this would be on an unimaginable global scale. Maybe we’d better start imagining it.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that it will be Mass Migration by itself that initiates the move to military governments in the West. It was Lester Brown’s recent article in Scientific American, in which he put forward his idea that failing states may be what causes civilization’s collapse, that made me realize that as the failure rate continues to accelerate the pressure of mass migration may be the earliest catalyst for the end of democracy in the West. As he points out, the pressures of desertification, water shortages, collapsing fisheries, famine, civil war and overpopulation etc., are already impacting states in the developing world to a far greater extent than the West. Some military planners in the US are coming to the conclusion that these pressures will pose a greater threat than terrorism and drugs. So assume that the stream of the dispossessed continues, climate continues toward chaos, population continues to explode, and the technological basis for a military state already exists in the US and Europe. Then how robust are our vaunted democracies?

We in the West have assumed for a long time that democratic government is our inalienable right, fought for over centuries by heroes of liberty. We also assume, somewhat more questionably, that it is by definition the ne plus ultra of political evolution and therefore the ultimate aspiration of people the world over. There are a number of problems with these ideas; mostly that they aren’t true. Democracy is notoriously fragile and there is nothing inalienable about it. Its progression in Europe, beginning (more or less) in 6th century BC Athens, has been sporadic. Athenian democracy fell to Alexander’s monarchy, the Roman republic to Octavian, the first Emperor in 31 BC. It wasn’t until the 18th century that anything we understand as a democracy re-emerged. Since 1960 the great majority of nation states self identify as democracies. This is a little like asking people if they are honest. The majority of the world’s population lives under regimes that are corrupt, incompetent or worse. For example Zimbabwe, Colombia, and Turkmenistan consider themselves to be democracies. Francis Fukuyama famously announced in “The End of History”, that liberal democracy had won the day as the peak of socio-political evolution. It is possible he may have been over optimistic.

In his new book, “From Democrats to Kings: The Brutal Dawn of a New World from the Downfall of Athens to the Rise of Alexander the Great”, Michael Scott makes some chilling comparisons between the current situation and those that caused the collapse of Greek democracy: crippling economic downturn, uncontrolled immigration and unpopular wars. In other words, emergencies that overwhelmed the ability of democracy to adapt fast enough. Sooner of later a powerful elite takes control. Much the same story could be told of the rise of fascism in 20th century states. When democratic governments fail authoritarian/military governments tend to be the default. It’s hard to see what makes the present crisis different, except the scale of the problem is global rather than local. Given the fact that western governments have thus far failed completely to make any effective changes regarding either climate or resource depletion it’s reasonable to imagine that if there is, as Kunstler calls it, a long emergency, then Democracy will fail and be replaced by more authoritarian regimes.

The Pentagon, NATO, and the military establishment in Europe are well aware of the challenges and there is now a significant defence literature dealing with Peak Oil, Climate and Migration. Some of the scenarios being investigated by military planners are bolder than others, and include the prospect of taking control of more than just the states they are charged with defending. In his award winning paper entitled “Imperialism 21: Hedging and Abandoning History”, Lieutenant Commander Joey Dodgen wrote:

“As far-fetched as it sounds, the advantages captured through colonial or imperial ventures would be numerous, including, but certainly not limited to, resource control and forward military basing…Economic imperialism is crucial to securing resources, maintaining favourable trade, and calming America’s business market amidst the daily turmoil of global terrorism. Economic imperialism is of no less importance to the United States than military imperialism.”

The attitude is understandable, even if on the basis of our performance in Iraq and Afghanistan, unlikely to be crowned with success. The Pentagon is tasked with defending the “American Way of Life” or at least the integrity of the developed countries, and it will do so to the best of its ability. The same stance is true of European military and intelligence. They are clearly expecting to deal with an increasingly chaotic environment and are examining ways to succeed. So the stage is set; the technological triumvirate is in place and there is no reason to expect that as the 21st century progresses the West will not become increasingly militarized.

So the answer to the last question of the Rare Events post, “At what point are people scared enough of the influx to want what is essentially a military government?” is that they won’t be asked. Our responses to the Drug War and Terrorism have already laid the groundwork for such a transition. All that would be required is the continuation of the current crisis until a permanent state of emergency can be declared. We will likely adopt a far harsher view of mass migration as conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Mexico, India, and a host of lesser failing states continue to deteriorate.

Of more immediate concern is the effect of mass migration on those states nearby failing states – contagion. It is happening all across Africa as one state fails and as populations become displaced they are naturally moving into neighbouring states, themselves already fragile. Recent analyst meetings and war games in the US have concluded that the next 20 years of climate and ecological degradation will produce catastrophic events, including storms, migrations, droughts and pandemics, which will require US military intervention.

I believe that the economic collapse of the West will make such expensive interventions impossible in the future and that the developing world is close to a tipping point, after which recursive feedback effects will overwhelm the developed world’s ability to place failing states on life support – they’ll be on life support themselves. Which leads me to think that we will be taking more of a defensive position as our politicians give up on the idea of bombing the world into democracy and focus on maintaining order at home. Which brings me to my next topic: Fractal Collapse.

In thinking about the possible military response to the increasing mass migrations from failing states it’s not necessary to invoke science fiction scenarios. It’s closer than you think. The infrastructure for military government is already well established in most of the West. Well before rafts of Somalis were drifting across the Mediterranean annoying sunbathers and the Italian Coastguard, police tactics and surveillance were becoming ever more military. There is more surveillance in Britain on a daily basis than the Stasi or KGB dreamed of in their wildest flights of authoritarian fancy. Estimates run at over 4 million cameras. There are 32 within sight of George Orwell’s flat in Canonbury Square. As Open Europe’s recent paper “How Brussels is watching you – the rise of Europe’s surveillance state” makes plain, Europe is in the process of following Britain’s lead, and no democratically elected body has the right to veto it.

Another aspect of this militarization is the rise of SWAT, that is to say Special Weapons and Tactics, policing. SWAT began in Delano, California as a response to protests by Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers Union. It’s interesting that this was a response to what was essentially a migration issue: the treatment of Mexican farm workers. SWAT teams are now taken for granted all across America and, although the acronym SWAT isn’t used, increasingly the same squads are in place in Europe. It is now routine for members of these police teams to be trained by and with members of special forces, including Delta Force and SEALS. Of course it is a natural career choice for those leaving those same parts of the armed services. Never mind for the moment the rise of private ‘executive security’ – I don’t mean the fat guy in uniform standing at the door of the supermarket. I mean Blackwater (now Xe, LLC), ESTS, etc. These are the same guys. There is a vast informal network of former special forces personnel employed in all these organizations. You think they didn’t keep each other’s email and phone numbers when they left the service? The lines that have traditionally separated soldiering and policing have now all but disappeared.

The third arm of this militarization is a function of computing. Before the advent of the network and the titanic server farms that store petabytes of data it was simply impossible to collect and analyse data on the scale necessary to implement a database state. Yes, it’s true the Stasi was credited with having nearly 100 miles of files, but it was a scrapbook compared to what Google can do, never mind the NSA. For example, there seems to be little information published on the byte size of the UK DNA database, NDNAD, but it is said to hold the records of 5 million people, or 7% of the population. Perhaps most impressive is the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute’s World Trace Archive database of all the DNA sequences published by the science community. In January 2006 it hit a billion records, was 22 terabytes and doubling every 10 months, so I assume it’s getting pretty big by now. You get the idea.

The point here is not that databases are by definition part of some global conspiracy, but that they allow previously unimagined levels of personal data to be held by governments and corporations, neither of which have a particularly great record in this regard. In the UK, this week’s news is that millions of phone contract records were stolen and sold to rival mobile phone companies, by employees of T-Mobile. The list of incompetent or dishonest data security breaches is legendary. But it is now past the point of recall. Privacy is history and it would be idiotic to assume that should a more military government come to power under the pressures of resource shortages, depression and climate chaos, it would not seek to use databases for its own purposes.

So the answer to two of the questions posed in my last post seem to be straightforward. What kind of government does that call for? Probably more military than we imagine right now. What does it look like and how would it happen? It looks remarkably similar to life now, and all it takes is some ‘emergency’ – whether it is from terrorism or economics or climate is irrelevant. The infrastructure is there: the combination of surveillance, combat policing and the database state form the critical technological triumvirate for an emerging military response to ecologically driven mass migration.

The third question, ‘at what point are people scared enough of the influx to want what is essentially a military government?’ is not quite so easy.