January 21, 2010: Collapse
Collapse is a documentary, and a very sparse one at that. A single interviewee sits in a half-darkened room and talks for an hour and a half, with photos and news clippings supporting his stories and his claims.
The discussion is about the inevitable collapse of society as we know it, if things continue the way they are. Peak oil is a convenient concept on which to hang the narrative, but it’s just a symptom of the unsustainable way we produce our food, make our homes comfortable, and keep ourselves “healthy”. It all relies on crude oil, and oil won’t be affordable at its current levels forever. Michael Ruppert has devoted many years, since his retirement as an LAPD police officer, to bringing to light the inevitable collapse of society as we know it. An exponentially growing world population obviously cannot continue at its current pace, and there will be a lot of casualties. The simple reality is that most of us won’t make it once the energy influx of cheap oil runs out.
Is this all true? It really is hard to say with any specifics, and in all but the most severe projections, most people who are alive today will be able to finish their lives before a collapse on the scale of what Ruppert predicts here. This long-timeline view is what makes the point so difficult to make with people – we really do tend to think short-term as a general population, but as a result we seem to be able to pull together and get through most crises somehow. I certainly wouldn’t argue that the earth can sustain 6+ billion people in their current lifestyles, but the twin possibilities of gradual lifestyle change and gradual technological improvement can drag this decline out for a long time.
One of the points Ruppert makes, which I think is very important though not often considered, is that this collapse will NOT happen overnight. We won’t run out of oil one day, and then be stuck back in the dark ages. The price of oil will gradually increase, and fewer and fewer people will be able to afford the related products, and conflicts will arise. A related and no less important observation is that people won’t die off quickly. We are not likely to see mass population decreases due to natural disasters or human conflicts, but rather a long decline of people’s health, over several years, leading to eventual starvation and death. It’s not pleasant to think about and I hope that social systems will adjust in time, but they may not manage, and in any case the burden of overpopulation must leave some people cut off in the end.
For Ruppert’s part, it seems he has given all he can to this fight. We see the tattered remains of his life, as he lives alone in a rented house with his dog, any family long since left by the wayside as his obsession took over. Even as a gruff former cop, he is clearly passionate about the situation, breaking down into tears when talking about one of the more despairing points, and this is absolutely to be expected when someone cares this much about something.
Should we be looking out for just ourselves and our own lives, or should we be changing for the sake of the future of humanity on earth? There’s some serious inertia working against anyone pushing for change, and people don’t tend to make major shifts without a catastrophe to force it. It all kind of makes the prospect of working until retirement a bit scary, since retirement may be spent in chaos, triggering regret for not taking advantage of the years before the collapse to experience the world before its decline.
Short term thinking will get us.
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