Of what possible use is it to imagine the end of civilization or even of the species? Is this kind of imagination simply a pessimistic indulgence or can it contribute to "green" and other positive results?
When I was a child, my family's pastor used to elbow into almost every sermon an admiring reference to "St. John languishing in exile on the rock-bound, sea-girt island of Patmos." (What island is not sea-girt? I wondered, dangling my little legs over the pew.) He was referring to the author of the grisly Book of Revelations, the dominant Western source of apocalyptic imagery.
We chuckle at cartoons of robed men on city sidewalks carrying placards that claim, "the end is nigh," and at bumper stickers that declare, "in case of Rapture, this car will be driverless" (which sounds more dangerous than DUI). Since St. John's fiery prose, there have been many predictions of the end, including the modern cult studied by social psychologist Leon Festinger in When Prophecy Fails (1956).
Those who see danger tend to accuse others of "denial," of "refusing to listen." Perhaps a tincture of denial has given humans an evolutionary advantage. Speaking positively, psychologists refer to "optimism bias." Most of us tend to imagine that things will turn out better than they do, a common mental pattern studied by such authors as Tali Sharot. While this trait arguably encourages enterprises, some of which succeed, it may also, on occasion, blind us to the possibility of avoidable loss, even terminal loss.
In A Year to Live (1997), Stephen Levine asks readers to pretend they have the awful privilege of knowing when they will die (in 52 weeks) and challenges them to review their historiess honestly and to live abundantly in the remaining time. As my wife and I know, from working through Levine's book with another couple, the result is not despair, but an enhancement of life.
During the Cold War, Joanna Macy gave us Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (1983). Before writing on ecology, on general systems theory and on hope, Macy taught that a fuller life, including activism, could be approached through uninhibited expression of the deep feelings that led us to be concerned. More recent examples are the grief work of Carolyn Baker, author of Sacred Demise (2009) and Collapsing Consciously (2013) and of Francis Weller, author of Entering the Healing Ground (2012).
Still, it's going against the grain to ask people to imagine extreme loss. Unlike some so-called primitive groups, our society is not set up for it, apart from isolated workshops. According to both Baker and Weller, working through grief requires the support of a community and the additional safety of a ritual container. For all its virtues, U.S. culture is based more on individuality, the frontier and risky enterprise, than on mutual support and safe space.
Nonetheless, a growing number of observers of climate change and other trends foresee disaster. We can describe them as collapseniks, a term with a suffix derived from Russian in honor of Dmitri Orlov, who grew up in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) and emigrated to the U.S. An engineer, sailor and writer, Orlov believes that his adopted country will descend into collapse, and that the U.S. is less well prepared than the country where he was raised. If we define collapsenik as an observer who is conscious of the possibility of economic, political and social collapse and who believes collapse is worth considering, then Orlov has a parade of company, of which I will give chronological highlights at the end of this piece.
There are big differences among collapsenik authors and even in a single author at different times. A spectrum exists, from those who feel we could avoid the worst of climate change by changing our ways substantially ("we're sleepwalking toward disaster but could conceivably wake up") to those who believe our species is doomed ("it's already too late"). For example, scientist Guy McPherson has come to believe that, as a species, we are headed toward "near term extinction" (niftily abbreviated as NTE).
While pessimists predict NTE, optimists envision the triumph of a progressive politics that would render climate change survivable, perhaps shifting us toward a steady-state economy, slowing what Elizabeth Kolbert calls the sixth extinction of species, and fostering a network of local and democratic institutions. An optimistic scenario would resonate with what Macy, expressing hope, now calls "The Great Turning."
In contrast, McPherson argues that it's already too late for adequate reform: humans have inadvertently created feedback loops that will keep making the situation worse. For example, the release of methane caused (in part) by warming of the shallow Arctic ocean and the Siberian and Canadian tundra, will cause more warming because methane is a greenhouse gas even more dangerous than CO2. And so on.
Humans don't have a very good record of predicting the future, in spite of various divinatory schemes. Whether developments are technological, political or economic, we have proceeded without reliable forecasts. Given the surprises inherent in complex systems and in technical development, nobody can show that we face certain demise, though we can discuss probabilities.
Could we learn to regard collapse not as a firm prediction but as a scenario worth exploring? After all, the Pentagon has contingency plans for events that are less likely and less devastating.
To return to our initial question, what could be the use of taking seriously a scenario of collapse, especially the views that argue that it's already too late or that changes could help, but probably won't be made? If we feel grief at what seems to be happening, instead of simply seeming smug in a prediction of certain doom; if we invent ways to lessen the turbulence and create the best that is possible in the new circumstances, if we live intensely instead of habitually, then the scenario of demise might seem no worse than knowing that, as individuals, we each will die. Meanwhile, what are we capable of?
According to Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell (2010), disasters can bring out the best in people. If the scenario of the collapseniks plays out, we will have opportunities to discover what kind of gardens we can create in the ruins of our present society. So what is the gift? That by responding fully to the scenario, we can meanwhile live more intensely and organize the elements of a society that, under new conditions as they develop, would work.
Now here are the promised examples of some writers who are aware of the possibility of collapse and who, in various cases, are sketching alternatives. Pioneering studies include Donella H. Meadows and her colleagues' The Limits to Growth (1972), William R Catton Jr's Overshoot (1980), Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth (1982), Bill McKibben's* The End of Nature (1989), "assessment reports" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 1990, plus 1992, 1995, 2000, 2007 and 2014), World Scientists' Warning to Humanity* (1992, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists), and Tom Hartmann's Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight (1997).
These are followed by such early 21st century books as Tim Flahherty, The Weather Makers (2001), Chris Hedges' War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), Richard Heinberg's The Party's Over (2003), Jared Diamond's Collapse (2005), James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergncy (2005), Clive Hamilton's A Short History of Progress (2005), Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe (2006), George Monbiot's Heat (2006), IPCC assessment report (2007), James Lovelock's The Revenge of Gaia (2007), John Michael Greer's The Long Descent (2008).
And in the past five years: Fernando (FerFAL) Aguirre, Surviving the Economic Collapse (2009), Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton's A Nation of Farmers (2009), Hamilton's Requiem for a Species (2010), Chris Martenson's The Crash Course (2011), Guy McPherson's Walking Away from Empire (2011), Dmitri Orlov's Reinventing Collapse (2011), Paul Gilding's The Great Disruption (2012), David W. Orr's Down to the Wire (2012), IPCC assessment report (2014), Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction (2014), and the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, Climate Change: Evidence and Causes (also this year). (With a few exceptions, I have listed only the first book in which each author shows a pervasive awareness of collapse.)
In addition, apart from the writers already listed, many of whom write blogs, you can find many provocative personal and organizational websites, some of which publish several writers, such as Arctic News* (Sam Carara), Climate Progress (Joe Romm and others), Collapse of Industrial Civilizatio* (xraymike 79), Collapsing into Consciousness (Gary Stamper), Culture Change (Jan Lundberg), Dark Mountain Project (Paul Kingsnorth), Grist, How to Save the World (Dave Pollard), Our Finite World (Gail Tverberg), Radio Ecoshock (hosted by Alex Smith), Speaking Truth to Power (articles gathered daily by Carolyn Baker), and Yale Environment 360 (edited by Roger Cohn Sr.).
We should be swayed not by the growing number of collapseniks, but by the evidence these writers bring and by the awkward fact that some countries are already in collapse: for example, Argentina. Chris Martenson has an interview about the situation there. His source has written a book about one solution: get the hell out! Unfortunately, insofar as the potential problem is global, where would we go?