The counsequences of climate change and resource scarcity will result in increasing social upheaval over the next two decades. In countries like the US, China and Russia, the response by government is likely to be heavy handed and authoritarian - which makes this an important issue for progressives to follow and discuss.

::::::::

There is much written about the causes and consequences of climate change including extreme weather events which are already occurring, and anticipated rising sea levels, melting ice caps, and mass extinctions. There is also a lot written about the immediate steps mankind must take to avoid unmitigated disaster.

Less is written about the irreversible events that are already in the works, based on the one degree Centigrade of global warming that has already occurred. The reality is that if we miraculously reduced CO2 to pre-industrial levels overnight, it would take 50 to 100 years to undo the damage we have already done.

Not much is written, either, about the extensive resource shortages that are anticipated in both the developing and the developed world over the next two decades. Nor the implications for military and population control planning. Both Richard Heinberg, of the Post Carbon Institute, and international affairs and military analyst Gwynne Dyer have written quite coherently on the subject. Heinberg, in his 2004 book Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post Carbon World and his 2010 book Peak Everything; and Dwyer, in his 2009 book Climate Wars.

Heinberg mainly addresses how central government is likely to manage an increasingly restive population in a time of widespread water and food shortages. Dwyer is more concerned about Pentagon and British military planning for what they regard as inevitable "climate wars" triggered both by competition over scarce water and food and by an epidemic of failed states. (In Dwyer's view, countries become failed states for one reason: their inability to feed their population).

Both Heinberg and Dwyer have excellent YouTube presentations regarding their work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybRz91eimTg&feature=related is a talk Heinberg gave in New Zealand in 2007.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRUfwIJL0HU is a brief talk by Dwyer regarding his book Climate Wars.

http://archive.richardheinberg.com/museletter/186 on Heinberg's website also provides an excellent summary of social control options.

I strongly recommend people check these sites out, as this is an extremely important issue for American progressives to follow and discuss. In New Zealand we already have our own Civil Collapse Strategy Group as part of Transition Towns New Zealand (see http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz/node/2784). Unfortunately I don't see anything comparable happening in the US.

We're Out of Everything

Personally, as a strong civil liberties advocate, I am most interested in Heinberg's work around resource scarcity. Partly because I share his concerns about the fascist, gulag style government likely to be implemented in many Western democracies. And partly because he goes into greater detail about what ordinary citizens can do to prepare for the crisis.

Heinberg admits he is more concerned about resource scarcity than climate change. He says it's obvious that people aren't scared enough of climate change to do anything about it. And it's not just oil and natural gas we're running out of. He cities a number of credible studies revealing that in the next 15-20 years, we will also be out of coal, uranium (there will still be coal and uranium in the ground but extracting it will be incredibly expensive), rock phosphate (needed for industrial agriculture), fresh water, topsoil, grain, fish, arable land, minerals and precious metals (including Indium and Gallium, which are needed to make solar panels).

Goodbye Southern California

Heinberg makes it clear that vast urban centers in dry areas like southern California will simply not exist two decades from now. For two reasons. Owing to dwindling fresh water supplies everywhere there will be no way to supply drinking water to millions of people between Los Angeles and the Mexican border. And because of skyrocketing fuel costs, no one is going to transport food 5,000 miles (as they do now) to feed them.

Major Social Upheaval is Inevitable

He also emphasizes that public dialogue needs to move beyond changing lightbulbs and carbon taxes to the major social upheaval that no longer be avoided as well as options for managing it. We all know damn well the ruling elite has been discussing it at least since 2000. That's one good thing about Republicans. They seem find it much harder to conceal what they're really up to.

Heinberg lays out three broad societal changes that need to occur as fossil fuels become prohibitively expensive: de-mechanization (replacing fossil fuel driven machines with human and animal labor), de-urbanization (moving people closer to their resource base) and a total infrastructure revamp - replacing our existing infrastructure with one that isn't dependent on machines and fossil fuels.

The Role of Government in Managing Societal Change

Heinberg sees three possible routes that government will take in managing this massive societal change:

Option 1: Feudal fascism

This involves forced movement of people away from cities into prisons and work camps (and slavery), which will involve continual surveillance of the rest of the population. It will be instituted by whipping up popular support for strong law enforcement and military intervention during a period of massive unemployment, homelessness, food shortages and resulting instability and chaos.

Heinberg already sees evidence the world's most powerful countries (the US, China and Russia) have selected Option 1 and are already moving in this direction. Referring, presumably, to the continuing attack on civil liberties in all three countries. As well as the continuing impetus to incarcerate minorities, dissidents and now debtors, as well putting them to work for private industry. (see http://www.opendemocracy.net/charles-shaw/essential-reading-on-us-prison-industrial-complex).

He feels upper middle class families in all three countries will strongly support Option 1 to protect their homes, gold and food from the starving masses. He likens the scenario to Blackwater opening fire on unarmed destitute civilians after Katrina, but on a much larger scale.

Option 2: The Eco Deal

Here Heinberg offers Susan George's vision of "Environmental Keynesianism (see her essay at http://www.globalnetwork4justice.org/story.php?c_id=313). Like Option 1, this scenario also envisions a strong central government. However it theoretically operates more democratically, and like the New Deal, creates work programs to rebuild infrastructure. Heinberg gives the example of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a vast New Deal social experiment accompanying the damming of the Tennessee River, in which thousands of Americans were moved into new experimental communities. I think the example is a good one, as this model sounds a lot like what Obama's good buddy Zbigniew Brzezinski is proposing in terms of benevolent government that improves efficiency by foregoing democratic processes.

People often forget the downside of the TVA namely that thousands of people were forced to participate in this experiment against their will. And that the creation of a large, somewhat brutal security network was necessary to police it a network run between 1950-58 by former Nazi war criminal Werner von Braun.

Under this Green New Deal, a strong central government would provide the finance capital to build public transport systems, super-insulate millions of homes and commercial buildings; develop distributed renewable energy systems; and reorganize agriculture on biointensive, organic model creating millions of jobs along the way.

George proposes to finance this massive capitalization by taxing speculative currency exchange transactions and eliminating tax havens in the Caribbean and elsewhere. She points out that half of all world trade passes through off-shore tax havens and that their elimination would automatically increase tax revenues by $250 billion dollars.

George states that the only way to bring about a Green New Deal government is to build a very powerful populist movement demanding it as no western democracy under the thumb of multinational corporations will agree to it voluntarily.

Option 3: Bottoms Up

According to Heinberg, this is a vast expansion of existing grassroots and local government activity to revamp local infrastructure to become more self sufficient in providing for basic food and energy needs. However he argues against adopting this approach prematurely. He feels we need to continue to try to arrive at national and international solutions even if our ultimate goal is a society organized according to local and bioregional principles.

Heinberg's main argument against adopting Option 3 in large industrialized countries is that most communities in North America and Europe are ill equipped to provide even the most basic services (food, water, power, security) without the support of complex regional and national systems. A breakdown in these services would likely lead to social unrest, leading whatever central government that remains to implement Option 1.

Nevertheless he believes that some areas of the world (including parts of the US) will be forced to go for Option 3, especially in places where the electrical grid and communications collapse. He points out there was also a foretaste of this after Katrina, when it was up to local citizen groups and what remained of state and local government to rescue stranded families and provide emergency food and shelter.

He also lays out one scenario in which some countries initially respond to scarcity with a law and order clampdown then as it becomes clear they don't have adequate resources to maintain a massive repressive apparatus, this gives way to local bioregions looking after themselves. And another in which countries start with a more democratic Green New Deal, only for scarcity to get so extreme it leads to social unrest that can only be quelled by heavy-handed authoritarianism.

The Punch Line

Heinberg's 2007 presentation concludes with the clear message there will be no soft landing. Even though it's not considered acceptable to say so in polite society we are in for hard times. The hard truth is that for decades human beings have been consuming beyond the limits of what the natural world can provide.

Scaling back drastically to live within those limits will be difficult and will require sacrifice. However it won't be impossible. There are numerous examples of societies pulling off a rapid coordinated response in reaction to a crisis. Heinberg points to the massive civilian adaptation in Europe and the US during World War II and in Cuba after the Soviets cut off their oil imports.

He also sees an upside to the coming crisis, in that it will force human beings to call on intangible assets such as community, cooperation, interdependence and altruism - that have been systematically devalued as a result of a perverse fixation to accumulate possessions.

And finally he stresses the urgency of concerned citizens getting involved in one of the thousands of grassroots organizations focused on relocalization, sustainability and energy transition including Transition Towns, the Relocalization network and other city and region-specific initiatives that are springing up all over the world.

Authors Website: http://www.stuartbramhall.com

Authors Bio:
I am a 63 year old American child and adolescent psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. I have just published a young adult novel THE BATTLE FOR TOMORROW (which won a NABE Pinnacle Achievement Award) about a 16 year old girl who participates in the blockade and occupation of the US Capitol. I also have a new non-fiction ebook REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE and a 2010 memoir, THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE describing the circumstances that led me to leave the US in 2002 to start a new life in New Zealand. My memoir won an Allbooks Review Editor's Choice Award. I have a political commentary blog at my website.