Happy Vernal Equinox - 2020: A Black Swan Trigger for the Collapse

Might the SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus be the black swan event that puts us past the tipping point? The virus itself, and the disease it causes, Covid-19, is certainly dangerous in its own right (though the actual death rate is not really known because we don't have accurate data on the actual number of cases) I wouldn't worry about it decimating the population. Rather what concerns me is the so-called 'knock-on' effects or the cascade of disruptions to our very brittle economic (and political) systems. Yesterday I went to Costco for some supplies (not toilet paper thank you) and was a little taken aback at the empty shelves where some of my favorite items could generally be found. Our global economy and distributed production/supply chains are vulnerable to disruptions. Like people not working in order to avoid contacting those with the virus. As we have seen over the past week, whole countries and most of the states in the US are ordering lock-downs and self-isolation to "flatten the curve", i.e. prevent the kind of spikes seen in China and now Italy. If people don't work, the work doesn't get done. If the work doesn't get done many people don't get paid, and then they don't buy stuff or pay their rents. The economy comes to a grinding halt.

Unfortunately the way our global means of production and distribution are so strongly interdependent, and thus brittle, if you break anything you break everything. Once this virus begins to subside you cannot just restart everything. We will be lucky if this ends in a 'simple' depression.  But I really don't think that is going to be the playbook. The Great Depression was ended not so much by the onset of WWII but by the fact that we had access to cheap oil and coal to power the reconstruction of industry. WWII just provided the impetus to reconstruct industry rapidly and at the scale that took place. We do not have the luxury of having access to cheap energy now.

Watching Evolution in Real-time

Humans have, for a very long time, been able to subvert the processes of natural selection that have keep all prior animal populations in check. We have occasionally met with a plague disease that had a temporary impact on the population counts but all of these experiences occurred when populations were separated by distances that kept the diseases from spreading as a global pandemic. Today, globalization and extreme personal mobility has eliminated that checkpoint. We're now learning that the coronavirus is likely to have been transmitted widely before the outbreak in Wuhan, China. The virus has been incubating for a time longer than usual for the flu. And the symptoms of Covid-19 for most people look like colds of mild flu. Thus even when it was starting to show itself we were already behind the eight-ball. The experts are still trying to understand the epidemiological dynamics but one thing is clear, it will take extreme measures to get people to change their behaviors to provide the needed isolation. Just this morning Governor Jay Inslee announced restrictions on large assemblies which will kill a lot of concerts, ComiCon, and other events.

Which leads to another, even less well understood, phenomena that will put severe pressure on even the uninfected. The response to coronavirus is almost certainly going to drag the economic system into depression as mentioned. There is likely to be a complete collapse of the financial system since most businesses as well as most households, and the governments of the world are now deeply in unsustainable debt. Capitalism, even the Chinese version, cannot survive for long without the artificial monetary support having been given by the credit markets. Look at what has been happening to the smaller oil and gas fracking operators who have been depending on debt to keep going. Many (and by the time this is published, perhaps most) will fold for lack of cash. Their operating costs far exceed the price they get for the oil they pump. Say goodbye to the American energy self-sufficiency.

The global, capitalistic economy is an entangled mess of supply chains and labor services. As such it is primed for a domino take-down. It is brittle and resilience or adaptation to the new economic realities would come at a great price for energy, just when we have entered the peak of global production.

And then, on a slightly longer time scale (but within the lifetime of young adults living now) there is the spectre of radical climate chaos. Note that in spite of all of the talk of the last two decades, the greens claiming the potential of transitioning to renewable energy, and the UN insisting that all we need to do is reduce our carbon emissions, neither the energy production of so-called renewables, nor the reductions in carbon emissions have even begun to meet the promise.

These three forces, along with a host of consequent sub-forces will provide the selection that will check human growth and consumption. And that is a good thing in my opinion.

It looks like humanity might have reached the point at which the Earth will finally reign us in.

Human Nature

I must confess I have been very disappointed in Homo sapiens. We don't deserve the species name, sapiens. We are not very sapient [A Theory of Sapience] (perhaps we should have the species name, 'pre-sapiens' or even 'pseudo-sapiens'). Except for a very few people we could consider as 'wise,' the vast majority of human beings have proven to be quite foolish, and there is evidence that human intelligence and ability to learn and reason about complex issues has actually declined over the past 5,000 to 10,000 years (average braincase sizes have declined by several hundred cubic centimeters - our brains are smaller than our ancestors'). The choices we make on average have been inexorably leading us collectively down a path of increasing over complexity and increasing dysfunction in all of our major (and many minor) institutions.

We are now witness to the rise of truly massive selection forces and seeing natural selection in real-time.

I don't hate humanity. The species evolved as circumstances dictated. We became sentient, then established a foothold on the shore of sapience. We evolved tremendous intelligence and creativity. But we failed to evolve the full promise of sapience which would have provided a self-monitoring (for individuals and societies) and regulating capabilities to keep us from making the choices that led to over-consumption and unrestricted growth. While there have always been a few wise people who have observed and warned us of the dangers of our hubris, since the vast majority of humans were not sufficiently minimally sapient they did not pay attention or heed the warning. And here we are today.

Consequences

I still won't try to predict what will happen exactly; after all a black swan, by definition, is unpredictable. But, I am confident this doesn't end well for most of us. Some of us, including me likely at this point, in the pandemic. But many more are going to face conflict, expulsion from homelands due to climate changes, starvation (same cause), increasingly destructive weather events, and the list goes on. In the end, only a small population of either lucky or wise enough humans will survive. There is still the full cataclysmic scenario of complete extinction, say if the methane bomb goes off (or nuclear bombs). I still don't think it will get to that. My sense of timing tells me that this coronavirus and its demolition of the global capitalist, consumerist economy has come just in time to provide the necessary negative feedback to prevent a full on cataclysm. Of course, for those of us who will face which ever scenario it will certainly seem cataclysmic. But, this is just nature restoring balance so life can get a fresh start, with or without a species of Homo.

In the meantime, try to enjoy the springing forth of life this Vernal Equinox. What else is there to do?

I appeared on a couple of podcasts on this particular subject this last week: Collapse Chronicles at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXUgegZkI-0 and the Doomstead Dinner at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JtSyT2Zhxo

Comments

[RE]

The video discussion with George, Ugo Bardi, K-Dog and myself can also be found on the Diner YouTube Channel at CollapseCafe.com.

RE

[Gray]

At first I thought that the reduction in carbon emissions in concurrence with northern springtime carbon uptake by plants would cause a reduction in CO2 levels and promote cooling. Then I realized that a large reduction in atmospheric aerosols may have the opposite effect..

Oh my. I really don't know much at all.

[Molly Radke]

THANK YOU for this typically brilliant post. Without ANY inclination to flatter myself, I have to say that this information is pretty EXACTLY what I've been thinking of late.
Alas. Stay safe, my GOOD man!

[Shawn]

I don’t claim that we will recover completely, but it seems that even as it is depleting, there is a vast supply of cheap-enough fossil fuels/relatively free energy to power back up some version of global civilization. There is also exists vast amounts of fossil energy “embedded” in the built infrastructure and intellectual capital that can sustain goods and services creation and transport for the near future.

That said, my guess is we quickly become more regional, politically and economically, including moving to a multi-polar world as the U.S. hegemony diminishes or collapses. We start moving down from the top of the curve of peak car, peak air travel, peak eat-out-at-a-restaurant, peak work out at a gym, peak eating out of season foods flown from Chile. Etc. Retirement “savings” are vastly diminished, or at least the purchasing power of such notational savings is diminished. The U.S. will have a difficult adjustment when “shale” oil production begins to rapidly diminish. It will not be pretty.

There is a double tap scenario is this however. We broadly recover as outlined above, but then a second black swan event in the next 5-10 year occurs, delivering an even heavier blow than COVID19. Pick your poison: crop failure due to weather pattern changes, electric grid failure by various means, another pandemic, war; cyber or the good old fashioned kind. Etc.

[Aaron McCammon]

Here's your problem simplified my man.. you're seeing yourself as a number. As a piece on a checkerboard.

You're than just a number. We're not born to be fodder for economics.

[Aaron McCammon]

*more than*