Collapse – What happened and where did the people go?

When you speak of the collapse of a civilization people imagine either a sudden, violent end, like Pompeii, all life snuffed out in an instant, or a gentle decline with the population dwindling toward poverty and genetic unsustainability.

The reality is much grimmer. Evidence indicates that civilizations collapse rather suddenly, but not instantly. Several systems which had been providing for the basic needs of the population abruptly fail. The result is a drawn out, violent scramble for basic resources – food, water, energy, etc. In the Mayan collapse 90% to 99% of the population disappeared. The remainder of the population fled into the wilderness and was absorbed by other groups. In most cases the systems had been pushed to the tipping point and some outside event, like drought, disease, or invasion crashed the systems. In some cases, the Anasazi for example, larger groups left when the collapse became inevitable. They moved out into the wilderness, merging with other, simpler societies and survived.

For us, fleeing to the wilderness isn’t a viable option. There isn’t enough wilderness left to actually support viable populations, and there are no remaining societies we could join. The collapse of a global civilization like ours would result in waves of violent competition for ever scarcer resources, cascading through global population centers until humanity was diminished to the point that the remaining people could survive on the simple resources they could find. Perhaps humanity would survive, perhaps not.

So, where are we on the path to collapse? How close to the tipping point are the systems that provide our food, water, energy? What happens if one of these basic systems collapses?

The End Of Everything

Watching the news lately I’ve been struck by the shortness of the life of any particular topic. They constantly serve up a new crisis of the moment, complete with stunning video, moving eyewitness stories, and pithy headlines. What is missing is any ongoing coverage of real issues. They show up once in a while, have their 15 seconds in the spotlight, and then disappear. The real issues aren’t News, they are Olds and not being sexy or heart rendingly tragic they fall out of the public eye. So we go blithely through our day, regaled by stories of the latest superstar scandal, or senseless tragedy, knowing at a subconscious level that there are bigger issues beneath the noise, but rarely being reminded of them.

The things that are not in the News in any meaningful way but continue to have real impact on everything include;

• Human population growth continuing at an exponential rate
• Consumption of resources increasing at an exponential rate
• New carbon being pumped into the atmospheric systems at an ever increasing
rate
• Available fossil fuel energy resources decreasing
• Deforestation increasing, particularly in fragile rainforest areas
• Biodiversity on land and in all the bodies of water on the planet decreasing
at a faster rate than any time since the extinction of the dinosaurs
• Food systems becoming more and more fragile, more prone to spreading food
borne illnesses, and producing less diversity and lower nutritional quality
• Soil degradation from erosion, buildup of toxins, nutrient loss, and
development for human habitation increasing
• Economic cycles getting shorter and shorter with wealth being built on
credit and products with ever decreasing functional life
• Potable water decreasing

These are the Olds. On going problems we can’t seem to fix that bubble beneath the News. As disturbing as their absence from public discussion is, I found this second list more disturbing. It is from the book Collapse by Jared Diamond. In this book Mr. Diamond looks at various peak civilizations that failed, collapsed, disappeared and the reasons for their collapse. He found the following things contributed to or caused the extinction of the Easter Island, Anasazi, Maya, Norse and other civilizations.

• Deforestation and habitat destruction
• Soil problems – erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses
• Water management problems
• Over hunting
• Over fishing
• Effects of introduced species on native species
• Human population growth
• Increasing percapita impact of people

His list and the list of things that aren’t in the News are disturbingly similar. The truly disturbing part is that while the civilizations Mr. Diamond described were peak civilizations rivaling any now in existence, they were all relatively contained in their own geographic region. Their collapse was a loss to humanity, but there were plenty of people around to rebuild and continue the species. Now we find a civilization that has become global and that is facing the same kinds of problems the led to the demise of all the great civilizations from the past. These are not new problems, but the situation for humanity is more tenuous. When this civilization collapses who will survive and where will they go?