With the world in tow we now enter the decade starting with the soccer world cup on our knees
Let’s face it, for a while there South Africa had me fooled. I thought this damned country was going to make it happen. We seemed poised – with our mineral resources and growing economy, and certainly our coal energy supplies – to ride out this next wave of global malaise. While America sukkeld, we saw mineral prices shoot through the roof. But then we started sukkeling too: it turns out we will start what Kunstler calls
The Long Emergency period in an even worse position than the war wearied USA.
The word ‘recession’ will soon be a cliché. The Long Emergency is essentially a period of worldwide contraction, where the limits to growth are realized, where food (for human beings), fuel (for transport to and from suburban sprawls) and energy supplies (electrification of that suburban sprawl) become concomitantly unaffordably expensive. In plain language, increasing numbers of people, including the conventional ‘Middle Class’ of Western society, will no longer be able to afford the costs of living. In even plainer language: there will not be enough to go around.
$90 oil is now a baseline average infecting the economic mechanism. Where house prices begin to lose value (as suburbia becomes less affordable), all bets are off in all dispensations that have invested so heavily in suburbia, in property. China, whose growth seems to many to be good, simply has reached adolescence too late. It will not find enough fuel to transition its populace into the lifestyle they are aiming for. They are struggling now to find the resources, scouring the world, especially Africa. When countries cannot themselves survive depletion, they will forget about trade, try to survive and either diminish, or strike out.
The world has experienced a supernatural period of growth lubricated, cushioned, unleashed by the potent energies we’ve harnessed from millennium’s worth of solar stores: fossil fuel oil. It has allowed our species to explode over this planet from around a billion a century ago, to close to 7 billion, a 7 fold increase. As excess demand for food, fuel and generic energy becomes the norm, so the number of economic losers will begin to climb.
We return from this background sketch, to our domestic scenario. How will South Africa fare in the Emergency scenario of a world facing the stranglehold of depletion? For a while we seemed to be poised very well. We are isolated from the larger military powers of the world. And until recently, seemed energy efficient at least in terms of keeping the lights on. We could possibly have bought our way out of trouble, selling coal to the Chinese, and enjoying their protection from other large military powers. Japan for example imports something like 90% of its energy; but Japan is also the world’s most energy efficient country, with advanced rail transit systems. As South Africa begins to develop one small urban rail project, the lights have begun to flicker. We are told they will continue to flicker for the next 7-8 years.
We now have to focus on finding ways to cope with a local emergency, we’re focusing already on survival, rather than having the luxury of brokering deals with nations that need our resources.
Unfortunately, this period coincides with the opening chapter of The Long Emergency. The introduction to this period has been the incredible peaks seen in affluence, peaks in stock exchanges. If it seemed like the world was awash in oil, if it seemed like we had never grown faster, or to such an extent, well this is exactly what Peak Oil presents. Our planet at Peak Capacity. Unfortunately, the curve takes us irrevocably down from there. Permanent Decline. The Infinite War. A war that will not end during our lifetimes. It is inevitable that we will see the lobbing of nuclear weapons, and all countries participating in global terrorism. Who will be the last man standing? Which country will emerge relatively unscathed? Not this one.
With a population already ravaged by rape, and murder, with a one party government more appalling and far more corrupt than the bullshitting Bush administration, we can expect the rule of law to diminish rapidly here, and for the demoralization and Africanisation of South Africa to go into high gear. Those who engineered the phrase ‘one settler, one bullet’ will return to centre stage. The number of jobless and poor South Africans will dwarf the ‘haves’. This trend will be paralleled worldwide, but South Africans will experience this in a chronic context. AIDS, poverty and crime will morph the majority of the populace into roving, rampaging, spectacularly self destructive mobs. Looting and burning will be common place. Our President will either endorse this ‘final overthrow’ with incidental ‘Machine Gun’ performances, or will attempt, unsuccessfully, to oppress and resist it. All Presidents in the era to come will be tragic figures: Brown, Obama, Zuma.
The solution to these dire circumstances will be (what may seem an ineffectual response) setting up organic, self sufficient systems: farms able to grow locally, households connected directly to local streams and crops. Secure, walkable communities. Given the state of flux, this will require massive resources and some time to procure and develop, and naturally, any and all surviving camps will be targeted by an overwhelming majority of economic losers. Also, most people – used to the ‘something for nothing’ mindset – will be more motivated to make war and take what they can from others, than to work on farms.
In this highly destructive, highly chaotic downward plunge, ordinary people without homes or jobs, will wonder how it all happened. The already stressed and disenfranchised human population will then have to deal with the inevitable bird flu pandemic, as attention is focused away from culling H5N1 infected chickens towards culling humans. During all this bloodletting, we will blame governments, we will blame our leaders, but more and more people will die unabated.
In the end, we became too many, and too many became too greedy. What happened to us is simply what happens to any species reaching overshoot: there is a crash. Ours will be spectacular. We will see a great culling not only in South Africa, but everywhere. Nuclear weapons will cut down the human race like wheat. Our number will plummet to below the billion number margin, to some hundred million, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere. Endless war will create massive pollution and radioactive contamination, and the climate of the world by then will have deteriorated obviously, becoming an interminable drain on what little motivations our species have to continue living.
For now it is appropriate in South Africa to remind ourselves how we engineered fate to be even less kind (to us) than the rest of the world. Don’t laugh: the dismantling of a world number one rugby team in favor of political chauvinism demonstrates a lack of will to succeed. A focus not on reality, but on personal politics at the expense of success is always risky. It’s also shooting yourself in the foot. This is symptomatic of a widespread delusion. It is this corrupt attitude of personal enrichment at the expense of the natural interest that causes the country to no longer be able to function: not having the capacity to keep the lights on is only one crisis South Africans currently endure. There are many others besides. We have lost the chance to come together as a unified community, we had a chance once upon a time, but I doubt whether there were enough of us whohad it in us to really accept and care about one another in this country.
Racism, religion, riches – will be used to target and terminate large groups of people. Blacks will prey on whites, in the US, the opposite, tribalism especially religious tribalism will be rife right around the world. There will be a ferocious baying for blood. It will be a terrible and systematic slaughter, probably taking place locally in schools and sports stadiums. The carnage in South Africa will reach epic proportions, but this will be echoed elsewhere as the bloodlust gathers momentum in other countries too.
David Bullard once said: “How can you NOT make a success of South Africa?” Indeed. But we have not, and now, cannot. Where to from here? I’m guessing an island state like the Seychelles, Mauritius, Reunion, New Zealand or Australia. But millions of others from here and abroad will make similar choices, and upon arrival we will fight each other over the scraps. The world was not enough. Or perhaps there was a hole in human beings we did not listen to, and have since spent lifetimes pouring our brokenness into the world. We now cover full circle, circumnavigating the great abyss created by our avarice, our vast ignorance. The circle opens like a dark volcano, and the dreamers fall into it, the nightmare and its engineers finally fulfilling its destiny. Let’s be clear that the austerity we face is one we have collectively authored, and as such, it will be an utterly bleak epilogue for our species on this planet.
Ps. I hope I'm wrong and that I won't be the one saying, 'Told you so.' If I am wrong it's good for everyone (including me). If I'm right, shit is on the cards. Unfortunately, I don't believe this to be a question of right or wrong, optimism or pessimism, negative or positive. I believe it to be a matter of logic.
