Apocalypse Soon

Collapse is Always Just Around the Bend

By Richard Martin, 1-06-06

	All it takes is a little nudge.

IBM announced yesterday it would freeze its pension program starting in 2008, meaning that new IBMers after that time will no longer receive pension benefits based on length of service -- everyone who works there will see their retirement plans shifted to a 401K-based program. "The effective deactivation of one the nation's biggest pension plans," commented The Wall Street Journal, "marks a significant milestone in the gradual but persistent shift away from traditional, defined-benefit plans at major U.S. corporations."

For some reason this struck me as congruent with the first book I've bought in 2006: Jared Diamond's Collapse, a masterful look at how and why societies and civilizations decline and fall that includes an examination of a present-day dairy farm in Montana. Diamond's basic thesis is that societies that are by nature improvident and out of synch with the natural world are ultimately self-extinguishing, and that this happens less because of natural disaster or bad fortune, but because of decisions made by otherwise reasonable human beings.

Westerners used to be on intimate terms with disaster and reverse. It used to be in their blood, like an affinity for altitude, a loathing of fences and a curious pleasure in the smell of big, wet dogs. Whether it was a big flood, a disastrous harvest or a livestock die-off, apocalypse for the first couple of centuries of life in the Rocky Mountain West was always just around the corner.

Not any more. Now we expect the oil to keep flowing, the weather to be fierce but not quite catastrophic, the cows to thrive and the economy to grow in perpetuity. Disasters like the Great Blizzard of 1886-87, which drove many cattle barons into bankruptcy when their cattle froze in the pastures, seem unthinkable even as news stories of global climate change, bird flu pandemics and road-to-ruin government fiscal policies bombard us.

The account of the blizzard by Laura Ingalls Wilder is worth quoting at length:

"November 16, the storms hit Montana and Wyoming and spread eastward. They returned intermittently until Christmas when there was a short respite from the storms. On January 9, a blizzard lasted for ten days and the temperature went down to -43°C (-46°F). On Jan 28, another blizzard raged for three days nonstop. By this time, thousands of cattle had frozen to death; others came into towns and raided trash and ate tar paper from the sides of shanties. Those settlers who lived in thin-walled shanties froze to death; those in thick-walled sod houses had a better chance for survival."

Have you noticed that the price of gold hit the $500-an-ounce mark at the end of the year, its highest level since the record highs of 1980? The run-up, pointed out Newsweek economic columnist Robert Samuelson, has been fueled by commodity funds, hedge funds and wealthy individuals, driven by fears of "inflation, financial crisis, terrorism, general global disorder."

There is, of course, a dark appeal to notions of apocalypse, something that draws us to the idea that this modern culture might be swept away by some titanic force. It's not only born-again Christians who have made the "Left Behind" novels so successful. (Have you noticed that the drama and interest of those books, as the title of the series makes clear, is with the sinners left behind at the Rapture, not with the chosen who ascend to the side of Jesus? When apocalypse comes, it's always the sinners whose fate enthralls us.)

One of the lessons of Jared Diamond's work seems to be that sometimes only a subtle nudge is needed to push a settlement, a city or a civilization past the point of return, to where collapse is inevitable. What would it take? Another five-degree rise in the average temperature, flooding low-lying coastal cities? Mass numbers of out-of-work, ill retirees with no pension plans? A global flu epidemic? A terrorist attack that sinks an oil tanker in the Straits of Hormuz, blocking oil shipments and sending the price of a barrel of oil to $200 a barrel?

It used to be that we took the prospect of disaster in stride. The cattle would die, but we would rebuild the herd. The gold would run out, but we'd move along, open a general store, learn to repair farm machinery, whatever. People would get old and sick, but we'd find a way, as a society, to take of our own.

Is that still true? It's hard to imagine otherwise on a beautiful sunny Friday afternoon in Boulder. But as the Led Zeppelin song says, it kinda makes you wonder …

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