The Collapse of Western Civilization by Naomi Oreskes

Author:Naomi Oreskes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2014-05-01T16:00:00+00:00

Epilogue

The former state of Florida (part of the former United States) In one of the many paradoxes of history, the inhabitants of late-twentieth-century Florida were engaged in a grand project to save an enormous sea-level wetlands region known as the Everglades from urban growth and the diversion of freshwater to urban and agricultural use. Yet even the low-end estimates of twenty-first century sea-level rise rendered this effort pointless due to inundation; what actually happened cost Floridians both the Everglades and many of their major cities.

As the devastating effects of the Great Collapse began to appear, the nation-states with democratic governments—both parliamentary and republican—were at first unwilling and then unable to deal with the unfolding crisis. As food shortages and disease outbreaks spread and sea level rose, these governments found themselves without the infrastructure and organizational ability to quarantine and relocate people.

In China, the situation was somewhat different. Like other post-communist nations, China had taken steps toward liberalization but still retained a powerful centralized government. When sea level rise began to threaten coastal areas, China rapidly built new inland cities and villages and relocated more than 250 million people to higher, safer ground.1 The relocation was not easy; many older citizens, as well as infants and young children, could not manage the transition. Nonetheless, survival rates exceeded 80 percent. To many survivors—in what might be viewed as a final irony of our story—China’s ability to weather disastrous climate change vindicated the necessity of centralized government, leading to the establishment of the Second People’s Republic of China (SPRC) (also sometimes referred to as Neocommunist China) and inspiring similar structures in other, reformulated nations. By blocking anticipatory action, neoliberals did more than expose the tragic flaws in their own system: they fostered expansion of the forms of governance they most abhorred.

Today, we remain engaged in a vigorous intellectual discussion of whether, now that the climate system has finally stabilized, decentralization and redemocratization may be considered. Many academics, in the spirit of history’s great thinkers, hope that such matters may be freely debated. Others consider that outcome wishful, in light of the dreadful events of the past, and reject the reappraisal that we wish to invite here. Evidently, the Penumbra falls even today—and likely will continue to fall for years, decades, and perhaps even centuries to come.

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