Pablo Servigne - Another End of the World is Possible

7 7. Le Petit Robert, Les mots nouveaux du Petit Robert (15 May 2020). https://bit.ly/3dS3Zt4

8 8. European Environment Agency, ‘Climate change and its impact in Europe’ (EEA, 2020). https://bit.ly/3f7xuHJ

The idea of a possible collapse no longer seems to worry us much. These days, the realization that global disasters are already happening is more and more widely accepted, as is the understanding that along with them comes the possibility of a global systemic collapse.

The monumental shocks caused by Fukushima, by the successive waves of refugees in Europe, by the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, the large-scale disappearance of birds and insects, the Brexit vote and the election of Trump have seriously ruptured the sense of peaceful continuity that had been reassuring so many of us.

One of the barriers that stops us from accepting this idea of collapse is the caricature that has been made out of it. When we think of collapse, scenes from Hollywood disaster films rush up in front of us, feeding the vision of a single, unavoidable event that will suddenly annihilate everything with which we are familiar. We fear such a moment much as we fear the moment of transition from life to death in our own dying.

This is to forget that there are other, worse things about death. There is its anticipation, having to see others die, or seeing oneself suffer in the eyes of others. The collapse of our civilization will not be a single event or catastrophe, but a series of disastrous events (cyclones, industrial accidents, attacks, pandemics, droughts, etc.), taking place against a backdrop of equally destabilizing gradual changes (desertification, the disruption of the seasons, persistent pollution, the extinctions of species and of animal populations, and so on).

We envisage the collapse of what we call ‘thermo-industrial civilization’ as a process taking place in many different locations. It has already begun, but it has not yet reached its most critical phase, and we cannot say how long it will continue. It is both distant and close, slow-moving and fast, gradual and sudden. It will involve not only natural events, but also (and especially) political, economic and social disturbances, as well as events at a psychological level (such as shifts in collective consciousness).

This is no longer a Nostradamus-like prediction, nor is it yet another reason for a passive or nihilistic attitude. ‘Collapse’ is not a fashion, or a new label. However, this is likely to be a period that historians or archaeologists of future centuries will comes to label and to look upon as a coherent whole, or which future intelligent species will regard as a quite specific historical event.

If you think that we are exaggerating to get your attention, just remember what two climate scientists were saying in 2011 at a conference in Oxford about climate goals for the twenty-first century (and keep in mind that greenhouse gas emissions are directly proportional to economic activity). They recommended the following: The emerging countries had to start reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, then maintain this decline at 3 per cent annually. The developed countries had to reach their peak emissions in 2015 and then decline by 3 per cent annually. 1If these very ambitious goals were reached (and we already know that they are not being reached), then the world will have one chance in two to stay below an average temperature rise of 4°C by 2100 … which would already be monstrously catastrophic on a global scale. In 2017, BP and Shell were planning (internally, without informing their shareholders, let alone the public) for changes of the order of +5°C average by 2050. 2

In recent history, there is no example of a society which has been able to reduce its emissions by more than 3 per cent over a short period. Such a reduction would cause an immediate economic recession, unless it had itself resulted from a collapse like that of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s or that of Venezuela after 2016.

For the Earth’s non-human population (fauna, flora, fungi and micro-organisms), the rise in temperature will mean mass slaughter. Some populations will just keep shrinking. Whole species will disappear forever. Populations of amphibians, of insects and birds in the countryside, of coral reefs, mammals, big fishes, whales and dolphins … The last male northern white rhinoceros of the North died in 2018, joining the list of imaginary animals which illustrate the stories we read at night to our children.

All these numbers about catastrophes are easily accessible, and the aim of this book is not to add to them. What interests us here is the change of attitude and of conscious awareness within society in recent years.

One landmark was in 1992, at the Rio Summit, when more than 1,700 scientists signed a common text warning humanity about the state of the planet. 3At the time, this was a new and even embarrassing development. Some 2,500 other scientists responded by warning society against the ‘emergence of an irrational ideology that opposes scientific and industrial progress’. 4Twenty-five years later, 15,364 scientists from 184 countries co-authored a letter explaining that without swift and radical action, humanity would be threatened with extinction. 5There was no response to this letter. There is no longer any debate. But what is the nature of the silence that followed? Paralysis, exhaustion, lack of interest?

Among the ruling elites, tongues speak more freely, if discreetly. When any of the three of us speak these days in political and economic circles, we are struck by how people no longer question the facts. In public, though, scepticism has given way to feelings of powerlessness, and often to a desire to find ways of escape.

Many of the richest people in the world are barricading themselves inside ‘gated communities’, luxurious and highly secure residential enclaves. 6They are also leaving the big cities: in 2015, 3,000 millionaires left Chicago, 7,000 left Paris and 5,000 left Rome. Not all of them are just seeking to evade taxes. Many are genuinely anxious about social tensions, terrorist attacks or the anger of a population increasingly aware of injustices and inequalities. 7As Robert Johnson, the former director of the Soros Fund, told the Davos Economic Forum, many hedge-fund managers are buying farms in remote countries like New Zealand in search of a ‘plan B’, and have private jets at hand, ready to take off and fly them there. 8Others have built, away from prying eyes and on every continent, gigantic and luxurious high-tech underground bunkers to protect their family from whatever disaster might happen. 9

All this illustrates what the philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour has described as an act of secession by a very well-off category of the population. Aware of the risks and of what is at stake, they are seeking to save their skins without worrying about the fate of the rest of the world. 10To take up his metaphor of a plane and the difficulty of coming to land back on earth, we have entered an area of heavy turbulence. The lights have come on, the glasses of champagne are falling over, existential anguish is returning. Some people open the portholes, see lightning flashing across a dark night sky, and close them again immediately. At the front of the aircraft, some first-class people can be seen putting on their golden parachutes. But what are they going to do with them? Will they jump out into the storm? The economy class passengers then turn to the crew and ask for parachutes, knowing full well that their request is not going to be met. All that they are offered in response is a snack, a movie, some duty-free liquor …