In his 2005 book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,” Jared Diamond listed three indicators that a society was going to collapse. He based his findings on a study of three historical societies: the Pueblo civilization in Chaco Canyon between 850 and 1250 CE, the Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica from 250 to 950 CE, and the Viking settlers in Greenland from 984 CE to sometime in the 1400s.
Each of these societies was large and prosperous, but collapsed completely.
The first indicator of pending collapse is a persistent pattern of environmental change for the worse. This can take the form of drought, wildfire, flooding, an increase in excessive heat, or even (in the case of the Vikings in Greenland) increasing cold.
This is currently happening planet-wide. Climate change is causing worsening environmental impacts each year. There are many example of this.
The second indicator of pending collapse is when existing modes of agriculture and/or industrial production aggravate the crisis. Around the world, industrial processes are still heavily dependent on energy derived from burning fossil fuels. This behavior not only aggravates the climate crisis, it is the cause. Agricultural practices not only depend on fossil fuels, but they are also often highly wasteful of ever more scarce water resources.
We could have started sooner
Diamond’s third indicator of pending civilizational collapse is when the elites, the decision makers, fail to abandon harmful practices and adopt new means of production. The second wealthiest oil company in the world, ExxonMobile, knew as early as the 1970s that their products would lead to global warming with “dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.” They spent millions lying to the public in order to continue business as usual.
Faced with increasing heat waves, China has decided to increase it’s use of coal – the worst carbon polluting fuel – to keep the air conditioners running. This, of course, will only make the problem worse.
The summer of 2023 has been record-breaking. More than 1000 wildfires in Canada have already burned a total area the size of Alabama. The toxic smoke has spread across both Canadian and American cities, and record amounts of carbon dioxide has been released into the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, record rainfall in China has created flooding that destroyed more than 100,000 acres of crops and forced millions of people to relocate. Record heat and drought led the government in Iran to declare a 2-day “holiday” in August which closed all schools, factories, and public buildings. The real reason was that the government could not supply enough water and electricity to the country during the heat wave.
Who is trying to solve the problem?
In the United States, the Democrats are the only political party to do anything about this existential threat. Jimmy Carter had solar panels put on the roof of the White House in 1979. Ronald Reagan had them removed in 1986. Al Gore tried to tell us about the “Inconvenient Truth” of human-caused climate change in 2006.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward Markey introduced their “Green New Deal” plan to tackle the climate crisis and create millions of good-paying, union jobs in February of 2019. The Republicans said “no deal”.
Fortunately, parts of the plan were incorporated into President Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” which passed in August 2022. Every single Republican in the House and the Senate voted against the bill.
Who is making things worse?
Unlike the examples in Diamond’s book, which were large, but still local, events, the collapse we are heading for now will be world-wide. The fires, floods, starvation, and disease caused by the increasing heat will probably lead to desperate mass migrations, domestic violence, and wide-spread death.
We cannot avoid the disaster because it has already begun. If it hasn’t affected you yet, you are fortunate. But if we continue to ignore the problem, it will come to everyone sooner or later. Our only hope now is get to work immediately and try to minimize the damage over time. President Biden and the Democratic members of Congress are trying to do this.
The greatest single barrier to climate action is, and has always been, the American Republican Party and their Big Business fossil fuel friends. There are many reasons to vote against the current batch of wacky, dysfunctional, fascist, pro-Putin, anti-Constitution, Republicans. Somehow, most American members of the LDS faith remain blind to all of those reasons.
But, surely, the role of the Republican Party in supporting those whose profit-taking may soon lead to the utter collapse of human society, world-wide, is a good reason to reconsider who you vote for.
Sources:
Michael T. Klare, “We are witnessing the first stages of civilization’s collapse,” The Nation, August 22, 2023.
Michael Klare, “Collapse 2.0,” TomDispatch.com, August 17, 2023. (Same article as above, after intro).
Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Penguin, 2005.
Michael T. Klare, All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, Metropolitan Books, 2019.
G. Supran, S. Rahmstorf, and N. Oreskes, “Assessing ExxonMobile’s global warming projections,” Science, January 13, 2023.
David Biello, “Where Did the Carter White House’s Solar Panels Go?” Scientific American, August 6, 2010.
Al Gore, “An Inconvenient Truth” (film), 2006.
I’ve read this book by Jared Diamond and three others as well as seen a speech of his at the Univ. of Utah. When I read his books and heard him, it was amazing how spot-on he was and how he backed it up with facts and logic. Of course, people who disagree have thousands of excuses and justifications for not believing but they are doing so at their own peril. The sad thing is that it took years for these things to happen in smaller societies sometimes two or three generations and it will be like that with us. But, it is happening and it won’t be reversed by magic, wishing it away, or a testimony.
Interesting that D&C 1 has a “voice of warning to all people” (verse 4) and refers to judgement of everyone “according to his work, and measure every man according the measure which he has measured his fellow man” and refers to both to “breaking the everlasting covenant” and that part of the gospel is to establish “mine everlasting covenant.” That covenant has been explored in detail independently by both Hugh Nibley and Margaret Barker.
“The covenant of peace, the eternal covenant, the covenant of loving kindness, is the most fundamental idea in the Bible, and yet has been almost completely neglected. Isaiah’s warning that his people of unclean lips would lose the gifts of spiritual sight and discernment (Isa.6. 9-10) is the most-quoted Isaiah text in the New Testament. The original vision saw all creation and human society bound into one great web which is the net of the Lady Wisdom. Breaking those bonds brings disaster. The covenant of peace is based on love which leads to right judgment, right action, and peace. Wisdom rather than knowledge is the key to upholding this covenant, and it is sustained by self sacrifice that enables healing. It is the covenant we celebrate and renew at the Eucharist.” (Barker, The Temple and the Covenant of Peace” Rome, 2019).
“One of the best known teachings of the Jews is that when man (Israel in particular) falls away from God, all nature becomes his enemy. Modern revelation confirms this: when the people became wicked in Enoch’s day, “the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, … and the rivers of water were turned out of their courses; and the roar of lions was heard out of the wilderness…” Just so, the great lawlessness and plagues will come over all creatures of all the earth…: Where people refuse the gospel, according to Brigham Young, “the land will eventually … become desolate, forlorn, and forsaken,” as nature refuses her bounties.” (Nibley, “Subduing the Earth” in Nibley on the Timely and Timeless” 94).
The wickedness includes exploitation of nature, regardless of the long term cost, quick profits at the expense of long term sustainability and harmony. The current environmental crisis is a matter of reaping what has been sown. The solution is repentance, which, in Maga world, is for other people.