2015 life , philosophy , poetry 13 Comments

It is beauty, in all its forms, life as it is lived, that makes me shed tears...

Early sunset in the woods. Credit: Linda Bergqvist

Is it all for naught, we ask. This cold and uncaring universe goes against our feelings, our wants and dreams of purpose and meaning. And yet we are nothing but a burst of energy in a void of matter, a blue dot, an experiment, a random process. All ideas of intention and free will is but semantics. Yes, it is hard to accept. But I do not feel less today than yesterday because of my realisation.

Life is simply a philosophy of the absurd, a futile search for meaning and clarity in a world devoid of God, eternal truths or values. As such, are we condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task, is there no way out?, you ask. According to Albert Camus “The struggle itself [...] is enough to fill a man’s heart”, for what is life if not a series of experiences, of day by day living? So it is for the blue whale, the orangutan, and the arctic fox. We are not so special as we have come to believe.

Upon insight, people react differently, some with sadness others with slackening life force or caring due to denial or intentional forgetfulness. But we don't have much of a choice but to accept the absurd and create a meaning of our own. No wonder that such a great number of humans today suffer from mental illness since they have nothing left: no nature, no culture, no community, no language...nothing that creates identity and thus meaning in our uncaring world.

We want to live and survive and yet if we continue on like today we will likely self-destruct. Prior generations only had to worry about one existential problem at a time (last time it was nuclear proliferation) but our current dilemma is the result of multiple converging crises, all life-threatening. Deforestation, ocean acidification, antibiotic resistant diseases, peak oil, ecosystem collapse, freshwater scarcity, resource conflict, economic collapse etc.

Most people are not convinced we are in the midst of a collapsing global society, but a few of us are. And so if we follow the reasoning of Camus we have three different options, either 1) suicide, 2) nihilism, or 3) revolution. Of course number 3 should be everyone's option. Unfortunately 1 million people die each year from suicide, that's one in every 40 seconds, and WHO estimates it will increase to about one in every 20 seconds by 2020. And there are plenty of people in the nihilism camp, I would say a majority, but I can find few in the revolutionary segment. At least here, in northern Europe. But perhaps we are late, as we see movements in Greece, Spain and Portugal towards self-determination and decentralisation of decision-making.

From ecology we know that crisis creates opportunity in otherwise rigid systems difficult to change. The question is one of timing, to see the window of opportunity and seize it. Of course, this will play out differently depending on scales and places. So far we have not reached a critical tipping point in social behaviour. But there is a great tension, a rising worry, more disorder as entropy exacts its vengeance.

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Mass Migration of all Species
10/28/2015 biocapacity , climate change , conflict , limits , migration , natural resources , politics , refugees , species 0 Comments

Migration is a response to a changing environment

When soils become eroded, fresh water scarce, landscapes deforested, the air polluted and climate unstable, species either adapt, move or go extinct. Because the climate is changing so rapidly most species have a hard time adapting to new conditions. Evolution would have to occur 10,000 times faster than it typically does in order for most species to adapt and avoid extinction. And so they move instead, along with the shifting climatic zones. According to a 2011 study, species are now moving to higher elevations at a rate of 11.1 meters per decade and to higher latitudes at an average of 16.9 kilometres per decade.

Life cycle events like mating, blooming and migrating that follow seasons are also changing. Mismatches in timing of births and food availability will inevitably lower population sizes of many species while pests and pathogens thrive due to warmer temperatures. Even if some species are able to migrate there are still many hinders (cities, high-ways etc.) on their way to territories where the competition for food will be tough. Highly specialised species and those who already live in the most northern regions might go extinct. For example, many Arctic species like the caribou, arctic fox and snowy owl are losing their habitat and the food they depend on at a rapid pace.

From having been almost extinct in Sweden, some 15 years ago, the arctic fox may be on its way back, but only due to support feedings and a return of lemmings. Credit: TT

Human mobility and Conflict

Human population mobility is not that different. For many of the poorest people of the world mobility is sometimes the only adaptive strategy available. Most sub Saharan African countries are finding it difficult to cope with existing climate stress, not to mention future climate change. Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and storms have a direct impact on human migration patterns while long-term changes such as desertification and deforestation can lead to declining living standards that indirectly pushes people to move. Already at +0.85°C warming, since pre-industrial times, we see a drastic increase in the number of displaced people.

Furthermore, when essential resources become increasingly scarce or costly tensions rise and conflict can break out. In Syria a devastating drought forced millions of farmers to abandon their fields in search of alternative livelihoods in the city. And when food prices spiked in 2008 and 2011, along with oil prices, food riots and civil unrest broke out in a number of countries where people spend a large part of their income on food. Some of these conflicts have turned into full on wars which further reinforces migration.

People on the move

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) some 26.4 million people have been displaced by disasters (geophysical and weather related events) every year since 2008. The likelihood of being displaced by disaster today is 60% higher than it was in the early 1970s. The number of displaced people from natural disasters spiked during the strong El Niño years of 1997/98 which does not bode well for this winter and next year, with a similarly strong El Niño now taking shape. Losses from natural disasters and conflict increasingly outpaces the adaptive capacity of a growing number of people around the globe who are forced to relocate permanently. According to UNHCR, one in every 122 humans are now either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum. The number of conflicts have increased during the last decade and 15 newly erupted or reignited conflicts have broken out since 2010.

Shows total people of concern (refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced, returnees, stateless,
and others of concern to UNHCR) in 15 countries as of 2014.
Based on UNHCR - Global Trends 2014: World At War

The conflict in Ukraine together with 502,500 people crossing the Mediterranean and the large number of Syrians in Turkey (1.59 million) has lead to a doubling of refugees in Europe between 2013-2014, according to the UN Refugee Agency. While Germany and Sweden accepted the biggest volume of asylum seekers the largest proportion of refugees are located in Turkey and the Russian Federation.

Earth to humanity

Most people in Europe, and elsewhere, are currently focused on issues of immigration with endless political debates and moral outrage in mainstream media. People think that we are experiencing a political crisis but it's much worse than that. Migration is only a symptom of the real underlying predicament - limits to growth in a finite world. As long as society tries to grow its population and economic activity we will continue to experience mounting social and ecological stresses, for example in form of: increasing inequality, disruptive climate change, mass migrations, hunger, epidemics etc. These pressures are warning signals that indicate overshoot, this is a fact, and yet we refuse to talk about limiting population growth or downsizing our economy (i.e. lowering our energy per capita consumption).

Irreversible change in carrying capacity means that a return to their homeland will be impossible for many refugees. Since ecological deficit is a global phenomenon, millions of ecorefugees will be seeking new locations. But very few places will have the biocapacity necessary to take them in without undermining their own ecological capital. Are there any lifeboats (nations) in suitable condition to accept ecorefugees on a long-term basis?

If we have a quick look at different country's biocapacity as measured by the ecological footprint network we can see that Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, Russia, Latin America and parts of southern Africa still have (in theory) the ecological capacity to host more people. While most countries located around the equator are in serious overshoot. However, not all countries are in overshoot for the same reasons, for example, the UK is a tiny country in landmass and have to rely on imports for pure survival while the US has plenty of land and could in theory support itself but not with current per capita over consumption.

Green indicates ecological credit and red indicates ecological deficit.

Accepting limits

Eventually, resource depletion and biophysical stresses will grow so large that the economy and population will have to contract. This view is based on scientific evidence of population dynamics in a closed natural system. We can always hope for the best, but we better prepare for the worst, like any prudent risk manager would.

As most people probably have noticed by now, there is very little real wealth generation in today’s economy. Most of the economic activity these days consist of wealth transfers, from the poor and the middle class to the financial elite. This is why we see such huge and widening gaps between rich and poor (80 people own 50% of all global wealth). When the resource pie isn't growing anymore then one person's gains will always imply another ones loss, it's a zero-sum game.

Absent abundant, cheap energy (especially oil) the economy cannot grow and more people go broke and become excluded from the marketplace. Only the rich will be able to afford to keep on over consuming. Our society has tried to “paper over” this problem by piling up ever more debt (borrowing purchasing power from the future), but we have now reached a level when people cannot or are unwilling to take on more debt. And this is also why we see falling commodity prices, there just isn’t enough demand. Instead we have debt deflation. In time, depressed commodity prices could lead to falling supply which in turn could be devastating for food production and transportation. All the while pollution is growing and climate change becomes more severe.

Meanwhile, in Europe, social unrest and political extremism is on the rise once again. The so called “refugee crisis”, however, is neither temporary or political in nature. Ideologies like left or right-wing doesn’t matter anymore, only those who accept ecological limits and those who don't. We are simply too many people on a planet with a limited amount of natural resources and unstable climate. Now we have to share what’s left of the Earth’s riches, and people do not like it. Especially not the rich.

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Swedes fear environmental destruction and North Americans corruption
10/26/2015 fear , politics , public opinion , Sweden , US 0 Comments

What do people in Sweden and the U.S. fear most?

It's always fun to compare results among countries, especially when it concerns cultural attitudes. So when I happened to find the american version of top 10 fears, that I just published a post about on my Swedish blog Resurstoppen, I simply had to make a comparison.

Based on data from: SOM-institutet

Now, I am biased since I think ecosystem destruction and climate change poses much bigger threats to humanity than terrorism or cyber warfare. This is the sane position most rational individuals would take, I think. If we don't have clean drinking water or a stable climate then why bother worrying about anything else really. However, most people worry about things that are more regional or national in scale than global. That's just human nature.

Based on data from: Wilkinson College of Arts

Real or imagined threats?

Anyway, let's go through some of the topics listed in the two diagrams and assess the threats, the risk they pose, i.e. how likely and with what potential impacts (serious, medium, low).

Threat 1. Environmental destruction/Climate Change

Human engineering has left a mark on 83 per cent of the planet. At the time of the Roman Empire Earth held about 1000 billion tonnes of carbon in living biomass (plants and animals) but since then humans have consumed about half of that, leaving only 550 billion tonnes of carbon in biomass. This probably means that we have destroyed at least 50% of terrestrial ecosystems. A limit that many scientists believe we should not pass since it could trigger a state shift in the biosphere. As for climate change, given a climate sensitivity of about 3C for doubled CO2e, atmospheric concentration of CO2 must be reduced from its current 400 to 350 ppmv, to maintain the relative Holocene climate stability within which civilization has evolved. In other words, this threat is very likely and with serious consequences.

Threat 2. Government Corruption

The US have long expensive political campaigns that are privately funded by big corporations that thus have power over decision making. Elected officials spend 30-70% of their time on fundraising. The financial and fossil fuel industry (among others) have spent billions on lobbying for the removal of critical regulations (i.e. regulatory capture). It's basically a case of legalized corruption. Institutional corruption has eroded trust which makes the country socially unstable. And we have seen an increase in protests and uprisings due to police corruption. In Sweden we don't have those kinds of problems, sure some corruption occurs, especially in the construction sector and some municipalities. So this is a likely threat with medium consequences for americans but not for Swedes.

Threat 3. Terrorism

A U.S government report stated that only 17 americans were killed worldwide as a result of terrorism in 2011, including deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to some sources a U.S. citizen is 35,079 more times likely to die from heart disease or 33,842 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack. In Sweden there have been no deaths from terrorist attacks, as far as I know. In any case people are much more likely to die in a car crash. In other words, the threat from terrorist attacks is low and very unlikely.

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Predatory Militarism on the Rise
10/19/2015 collapse , conflict , energy , global , nuclear , politics , scarcity , Sweden 2 Comments

IT IS 3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT Doomsday Clock. The Bulletin

Responses to resource scarcity

Throughout history, different societies have opted for different “solutions” to energy scarcity and collapse. Some might try to adapt to this new socioeconomic reality (Cuba 1990s), others may protect the elite at the expense of the general population (North Korea 1990s), while some may turn to external aggression and predatory militarism (Japan 1918-45) (Friedrichs, 2012). Predatory militarism is, according to Friedrichs, the result of desperation and temptation to gain resources through military means. In the Japanese case, the element of desperation prevailed. In the 1930s Japan started its aggressive military campaigns against China in attempts to prevent fuel starvation and external dependence on strategic resources. However, ironically this predatory militarism instead lead Japan to become increasingly dependent on importing critical commodities (oil) from the US (about 70-80% of gasoline). So when the US put in place a trade embargo (1941) Japan started looting oil from Borneo, Sumatra and the East Indies. And we all know what happened after that. In short, Japan tried gain critical resources from other countries, prompted by the potential of fuel starvation, which lead them to scrap free trade policy and to radicalise a strategy of predatory militarism to secure access to energy.

Worrying Trends 2015

Countries prone to military solutions like the US and Russia seems to have followed a Japanese-style strategy of predatory militarism.The US (and NATO) involvement in the Middle East to secure access to oil by military force is a clear example of this. We also see a worrying trend of potential US involvement in the South China Sea, as well as China’s use of its military power to secure oil and gas in Central Asia. However, it seems unlikely that China will stray further than that in terms of military force, instead they have been making trade deals with Iran and Russia for oil. China will probably hesitate to anger the US which has a much stronger military than China, but the country may become increasingly desperate for more energy as its population continues increasing while demanding reductions to coal pollution. I am more concerned about what the US might do next. Since 2001 the US have been in constant warfare, and for no benefit of the people of those countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan) or the countries receiving all the migrants from these war torn regions. Then we have Russia's invasion of Ukraine (or support of separatist movements as some like to call it), to secure the flow of natural gas, and now its involvement in Syria. This shows signs of major geopolitical instability in the oil rich Middle East and in Europe due to global scarcity of energy, and an escalating power play between NATO and Russia over "what's left".

October – Outlook from a Swedish perspective

On the military side of so called strategic deterrence we have seen an increase in military drills in our neighbourhood. During the summer both NATO and Russia conducted naval exercises in the the Baltic Sea. Now, during the fall, drills have intensified both in Russia, Belarus, and on NATO territory. Both naval and air forces have been deployed to show “might” on both sides. However, it is on the nuclear side of the deterrence strategy where most activity have been going over the last couple of months. It is likely that Iskander with nuclear capability is located in Kaliningrad and that the US has started to upgrade their capability with the new B61 nuclear bombs for fighters at German, Italian and Turkish air bases. At least according to credible Swedish commentators. Furthermore, the UK has voiced a wish to join NATO:s exercises on nuclear escalation (i.e. in the case of transitioning from conventional weapons to high alert for nuclear weapons deployment).

Credit: WikiCommons

The Russian intervention in Syria has increased the likelihood of confrontation. Perhaps not intentional but the risk of unintended consequences, with potentially catastrophic results, getting out of hand has risen. Russian rocket launches from the Caspian Sea was, according to most experts, a demonstration of power for mainstream media and the domestic audience back home. But because the robotics system, similar to Iskander, can launch both conventional ammunition as well as nuclear this illustrates a serious upper hand that Russia has gained in terms of tactical and potentially mid range weaponry. It is, however, yet unclear if the images shown were real or potentially tampered with. The propaganda war between Russia and the West has reached such high levels that it's becoming increasingly difficult to know what is actually going on down on the ground.

For Sweden this escalation of tension between NATO and Russia is very troublesome, especially since exercises have been occurring on and around our borders. We don’t really have any defence to speak of and so popular support for joining NATO is increasing in Sweden, a similar trend is visible in Finland. Experts over here are mostly concerned with the unpredictability of Russia, which is very good at hiding its true intentions and preparations. The larger issue, however, is the political confusion over Russian statements and lack of insight into Kremlin's actual behaviour. The West’s analysis of Russia have been wrong all along and there has been little focus on the actual geopolitical consequences on the ground. This is of course a consequence of the whole propaganda war going on and the increasing inability of the government to solve complex problems.

Furthermore, there is very low public support for NATO and military interventions in Europe, which probably annoys the hell out of US "diplomats". Few soldiers have been mustered in Europe and the few who are in service are not ready for combat. Most Europeans don't want to get involved with either Russia or the US, but if they have to chose, well, Russia supply almost all of Europe's natural gas and oil so… yeah… I think you know the answer.

As for other European countries turning to the predatory strategy we have seen some of that in terms of the nuclear powers (France, the UK, Italy) engagement in the Middle East. It is unclear what these countries may do under pressure, any large-scale military response inside Europe seems unlikely, but then again, history has shown that any liberal democracy can turn into an authoritarian military machine when conditions turn really ugly. The current economic crisis and hardship for people in southern Europe could perhaps lead to extremists rising to power again if there is another major economic blow (which looks like it's on its way now with the global economic slowdown). Even here in Sweden I see a trend towards people voting for the Sweden Democrats (far right wing) in pure frustration over the current government's incompetence. Of course, the problem is not so much political as it is a resource problem but most people don't see the connection. And so on and on the debate goes, generating more irrational political behaviour, which in turn angers the public even more.

Despite all these worrying signs in our close proximity our dear politicians, here in Sweden, have not been able to come to any agreement about funding emergency preparedness and response. So we are basically helpless if there is a conflict in our neighbourhood and will have to rely on Finland and other countries to help us out. Or perhaps we would simply hope that there is nothing of value to Russia and NATO here, we have no oil, coal or natural gas.