And good riddance to 2020!
With the COVID-19 vaccines starting to make it to peoples' arms there has been heard an audible sigh of relief, understandably so. But what is behind that relief is the belief that with immunity we, societies, can get back to normal before too long. Numerous commentators have, over the last several weeks, described various scenarios for how that might be accomplished. But one thing they all share in common is what they mean by "normal." Remember normal.
For some people that just means going back to not wearing masks and not social distancing, to be together again with family and friends; a thought especially poignant at this time of year. For most, however, normal means letting capitalism and markets cut loose, make up for lost time in profit-taking, consumerist behaviors return, and get the economy growing again. Yet these are the very things that contributed to the pandemic in the first place. All of that economic activity meant people mingling and traveling, spreading the initially silent virus all the while. Perhaps most people think this particular virus is a once-in-a-hundred-year event, so going back to all that social activity will be OK, at least for a hundred more years. This is a fallacy. At the population size of humans and the increasing interactions with wild animal populations (providing greater probability of another zoonotic event) due to invasion of previously undisturbed environments, new potential pandemics may actually become a recurring experience. At least until the human population size decreases sufficiently.
I don't know where to start regarding this 'getting back to normal' thing. My blunt assessment is that it isn't going to happen. Or at least it won't fully happen and for a variety of reasons. When I say 'fully' I mean as things were just before the pandemic caused major lock-downs and the economies took major hits. Once COVID-19 infection rates fall below a certain threshold and governments reopen shopping and travel it may for a while seem that we are back to some semblance of normal, but that will be for a minority of people in the better off societies. Beauty salons and bars may reopen, but for a large proportion of economic sectors it is likely to remain sub-normal. The reason is that the pandemic wasn't actually the cause of many dysfunctions in the capitalist/consumerist economies. The seeds of those dysfunctions had already been planted and had already started to sprout. The pandemic merely exposed and, possibly, amplified them. Take the brittleness of the various supply chains that broke and have only been somewhat repaired by exposing workers to the virus. While for wealthy nations the disruptions seemed to have been minor and short lived. The run on and stockpiling of toilette tissues was a bit of an overreaction, perhaps. But it did show that these delicately managed chains could be broken and hard (and expensive) to repair.
The world, looked at as a system of interconnecting component subsystems and each of those as comprised on interconnected sub-subsystems and further deeper into the structure, provides a quasi-stable environment for all subsystems when each and all are performing their functions well. The global human social system (within the Gaian supra-system) has not been a team player with all the other subsystems, the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and the biosphere as major subsystems. And that is because the components of the human social system, namely the major institutions, the economies, and the governments have not been team players. And that is because the major subsystems of those, namely we sub-sapient human beings do not act wisely, which means knowledgeably, morally, strategically, and systemically. Hence, when something like a pandemic hits the flaws are illuminated.
Major flaws in education systems, financial systems (unless you are one of those believers in the so-called Modern Money Theory where governments can print as much money as they need to keep consumers buying stuff and debt is meaningless), and a host of other social subsystems showed and continue to show strains.
We still have a way to go before a significant number of people are vaccinated and we have evidence of widespread immunity. So more problems are likely to show up. We, in the US and other countries, are in the so-called 'third wave' of mounting infections and our rates of infection and hospitalization are still on the rise as of this writing. Death rates seem to have stabilized and even declined somewhat as the medical establishment is learning more about how to treat the most endangered people. Unless the vaccines are truly effective, once lock downs are lifted again, will we see a fourth wave?
More than half of the people in the US and many people around the world were relieved to see Trump lose the White House. They may be forgiven for also breathing a sigh of relief, looking for an end to the criminal shenanigans of the president and his cronies. But, just as the disruptions in our various social institutional subsystems were not caused by the pandemic, racism and inequitable capital and income distributions were not caused by Trump, his presidency, assisted by Republican senators, merely exposed and amplified them. He seemed to condone overt racist behaviors bringing the likes of the Proud Boys and KKK out from the shadows. His failure to address police killings of Black people, like George Floyd, and so many others, sparked a resurgence in equity movements like Black Lives Matter and mass protests around the world against inequities and racism. Now that Trump is out there is a sense that Biden and Harris will attend to this unconscionable situation and we can move more rapidly toward justice and equity. [Book recommendation, as much for a more holistic accounting of slavery and Jim Crow in the US as for the arguments for reparations for slavery: Darity, William A., Jr. & Mullen, A. Kristen, (2020) From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.]
Trump's tax cuts mostly benefited the already rich and corporations. This, however, was simply an extension of the program of right-wing neo-liberal capitalists such as the Koch brothers and the ideology of Milton Friedman and many more who firmly believed that social Darwinism was the right way to think about who got rewarded and who didn't, who was the fittest in the law of the jungle. Long before Trump we were moving inexorably toward producing the kinds of wealth and income inequities we see now. [Book recommendation, with a really insightful recounting of the history of the right's confiscating the airways and making up 'truth' to bend the already angry conservative working class toward their ideologies, paving the way for Trump to get as many votes as he did. Andersen, Kurt (2020). Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, A Recent History, Random House, New York.]
Unfortunately, actually changing course and correcting the wrongs may not come to fruition. Unless Biden gets a majority in the Senate (and even then some conservative Democrats may not always go along with his proposals) he may be blocked in some attempts to heal the wounds. And the very fact that the wounds have been so fully exposed may be problematic in and of itself. Trumpism, as some commentators note, will not likely go away after January 20th. There is likely to be a continuing anger among his supporters who still believe the election was stolen. We should look for continuing clashes among demonstrators and most likely violence (as already witnessed in DC).
Again, these anomalous events, the pandemic and Trump's election and failures to do the job of president, only exposed the previously somewhat hidden dysfunctions in social interactions. And owing to the sharp and deep political divides, the festering wounds, I seriously doubt (and hope to be proven wrong) that Joe and Kamala will be very effective in providing the healing salve. Any continuing social unrest will have another negative effect on our ability to pay attention to some even greater problems.
Of course, on top of it all remains our global threats from climate chaos, severe weather disruptions, rising sea levels, droughts and floods, and all other knock-on effects from our continuing emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and oceans, as well as our continuing destruction of natural carbon sinks such as the Amazon rain forest. Our patterns of activity show no signs of changing to the better. Even if the US reenters the Paris Climate Accord, and Joe promises to do so, we already know that that Accord does not really do enough to achieve the goal of reducing emissions sufficiently in time to avert a rise in global average temperature above 2 degrees centigrade, the temperature above which all sense of climate normality is lost. It is going to take something far more drastic to force actions by the nations that might lessen the long-term damage. But there are a growing number of researchers and commentators who doubt that there really is anything we can do at this point to achieve that goal. They note how the various symptoms, such as loss of ice or the irreversible conversion of the Amazon into a wasteland, are now showing signs that they are worse than originally thought and that their rate of change is accelerating faster than the models had predicted.
And let us not forget the energy situation.
Over the years I have spent no few words addressing the relation between the economy and the availability of free energy, that energy component of the raw produced energy, such as in oil, that can do useful work (and trivial work such as building yachts!) I've warned that an economy based on increasingly using up finite stores of fossil fuels to power the bulk of work is headed for a major crash when the cost of extracting diminishing quantities exceeds the value of the free energy and the enterprise is basically shut down. That would deprive economic activity of more than 80% of its energy. Reports from energy and financial analysts indicate that this is what is happening right now. The fracking boom provided a brief respite from peak conventional oil. The sluggish economic recovery and diminished demand for fuels and electricity somewhat delayed the onset. But fracked wells are expensive and show signs of depletion. Drilling companies are shutting down operations because they cannot find funding for new drilling. And the above-ground supplies, which had been in surplus due to low demand, are now running down. In other words, we may be on the brink of a drastic collapse in the fossil fuel industry and that would mean a further and more dramatic crash of farming and supply chains that depend on transportation to keep things moving. "Buy local" is about to take on a whole new meaning.
As I have pointed out before, climate mitigation and adaptation are going to need a tremendous amount of energy just at a time when our energy supplies are dwindling. Not only will we not have enough for "normal" consumption, what we do have will likely be rationed (if available at all) and what we can muster will be directed toward adaptations such as moving coastal populations inland as we figure out that we have to abandon major coastal cities. We will also have to figure out the moral thing to do with respect to climate refugees from low latitude regions such as Central America and the MENA area as they will increasingly seek economic and climate-caused violence relief. Its already happening and it will only increase and worsen. The only viable destinations for these people are the upper mid latitudes of Eurasia and North America. Population densities are gong to get really high, at least until racial and ethnic violence breaks out in full swing (it already has broken out in scattered incidences globally). We might even expect good ole class warfare to turn violent as it has at various times in history.
Let me close this cheery Solstice message as I have so many before with a plea to my sapient readers to choose your next moves wisely. Buying an all electric vehicle or starting a modest compost heap will not be sufficient actions. Starting a permaculture community (at least 40 adults) in areas where we expect to have somewhat stable climate for a few years to come, might, with some good luck, make a difference for your personal future and that of your offspring (Note: I encourage truly sapient couples to have at least two children if your living in a safe(ish) environment; we need to have a future population of sapients to carry on!) There are no guarantees of success, ever. But you can improve your chances by making the right moves while there is still time. Believe me, if I were a little younger and in good(ish) health, I would be right there. In my advanced age and condition I wouldn't be very useful. Its all I can do to work our little vegetable patches where we live! But I will take solace in knowing that there are many people who have seen the writing on the wall and have already organized sustainable communities around the world.
Good luck to everyone.
George
PS. Hope you get a chance to see the Great Conjunction tonight, Jupiter and Saturn aligned. Don't know if it portends anything but it should be spectacular.
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