George Monbiot, Cormac McCarthy And Pushing Others Down "The Road" Ahead Of Us

[hatrack]

EDIT

Cormac McCarthy's book The Road considers what would happen if the world lost its biosphere, and the only living creatures were humans, hunting for food among the dead wood and soot. Some years before the action begins, the protagonist hears the last birds passing over, "their half-muted crankings miles above where they circled the earth as senselessly as insects trooping the rim of a bowl". McCarthy makes no claim that this is likely to occur, but merely speculates about the consequences. All pre-existing social codes soon collapse and are replaced with organised butchery, then chaotic, blundering horror. What else are the survivors to do? The only remaining resource is human. It is hard to see how this could happen during humanity's time on earth, even by means of the nuclear winter McCarthy proposes. But his thought experiment exposes the one terrible fact to which our technological hubris blinds us: our dependence on biological production remains absolute. Civilisation is just a russeting on the skin of the biosphere, never immune from being rubbed against the sleeve of environmental change. Six weeks after finishing The Road, I remain haunted by it.

So when I read the UN's new report on the state of the planet over the weekend, my mind kept snagging on a handful of figures. There were some bright spots - lead has been removed from petrol almost everywhere and sulphur emissions have been reduced in most rich nations - and plenty of gloom. But the issue that stopped me was production.

Crop production has improved over the past 20 years (from 1.8 tonnes per hectare in the 1980s to 2.5 tonnes today), but it has not kept up with population. "World cereal production per person peaked in the 1980s, and has since slowly decreased". There will be roughly 9 billion people by 2050: feeding them and meeting the millennium development goal on hunger would require a doubling of world food production. Unless we cut waste, overeating, biofuels and the consumption of meat, total demand for cereal crops could rise to three times the current level. There are two limiting factors. One, mentioned only in passing in the report, is phosphate: it is not clear where future reserves might lie. The more immediate problem is water. "Meeting the millennium development goal on hunger will require doubling of water use by crops by 2050." Where will it come from? "Water scarcity is already acute in many regions, and farming already takes the lion's share of water withdrawn from streams and groundwater." Ten per cent of the world's major rivers no longer reach the sea all year round.

EDIT

It seems to me that we are already pushing other people ahead of us down The Road. As the biosphere shrinks, McCarthy describes the collapse of the protagonist's core beliefs. I sense that this might be happening already: that a hardening of interests, a shutting down of concern, is taking place among the people of the rich world. If this is true, we do not need to wait for the forests to burn or food supplies to shrivel before we decide that civilisation is in trouble.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2201594,00.html

[kestrel91316]

1. One word: FAMINE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine

[Nihil]

2. Not so much "the rich world" but "the richest people of the rich world"

> I sense that this might be happening already: that a hardening
> of interests, a shutting down of concern, is taking place among
> the people of the rich world. If this is true, we do not need
> to wait for the forests to burn or food supplies to shrivel
> before we decide that civilisation is in trouble.

IMO, a bit part of the reason behind the dumbing-down of the general public,
the FUD spread about science vs religion and the control of the mass media
is precisely to allow the self-declared elite to continue on their planned
path with minimal hassle from the "useless mouths" around them.

:scared:

[Delphinus]

3. That sounds like a book that

would REALLY send me over the edge.

I was reading a small excerpt yesterday of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" and was so disgusted with what we, humanity (Ha!), have done to other humans I thought about blowing my brains out.

[ramapo]

4. Sounds wonderfully depressing

Once I recover from reading When the Rivers Run Dry, I'll consider reading this one. We all take our abundance of food for granted. There is so much for so little and it is so easy to get. The real possibility that the situation could flip is a true nightmare.