By now, Canada has abandoned any hope of controlling a significant percentage of the fires raging in remote areas of the country and is simply allowing them to burn themselves out. Such areas are relatively unpopulated, but they do house numerous indigenous communities whose lands have been destroyed and who have been forced to flee, perhaps permanently. Were this a one-time event, you could certainly say that Canada still remains an intact, functioning society. But given the likelihood that the number and extent of wildfires will only increase in the years ahead as temperatures continue to rise, Canada hard as it might be to believe can be said to be on the verge of becoming a failed state.
The floods in China: While American reporting on China tends to focus on economic and military affairs, the most significant news this summer has been the persistence of unusually heavy rainfall in many parts of the country, accompanied by severe flooding. At the beginning of August, Beijing experienced its heaviest rainfall since such phenomena began being measured there more than 140 years ago. In a pattern found to be characteristic of hotter, more humid environments, a storm system lingered over Beijing and the capital region for days on end, pouring 29 inches of rain on the city between July 29th and August 2nd. At least 1.2 million people had to be evacuated from flood-prone areas of surrounding cities, while more than 100,000 acres of crops were damaged or destroyed.
It's not that unusual for floods and other extreme weather events to bedevil China, causing widespread human suffering. But 2023 has been distinctive both in the amount of rainfall it's experienced and the record heat that's gone with it. Even more strikingly, this summer's climate extremes forced the government to behave in ways that suggest a state at the mercy of a raging climate system.
When flooding threatened Beijing, officials sought to spare the capital from its worst effects by diverting floodwaters to surrounding areas. They were to "resolutely serve as a moat for the capital," according to Ni Yuefeng, the Communist Party secretary for Hebei province, which borders Beijing on three sides. While that might have spared the capital from severe damage, the diverted water poured into Hebei, causing extensive harm to infrastructure and forcing those 1.2 million people to be relocated. The decision to turn Hebei into a "moat" for the capital suggests a leadership under siege by forces beyond its control. As is true of Canada, China is certain to face even greater climate-related disasters prompting the government to take who knows what extreme measures to prevent widespread chaos and calamity.
These two events strike me as particularly revealing, but there are others that come to mind from this record-breaking summer. For example, the Iranian government's decision to declare an unprecedented two-day national holiday on August 2nd, involving the closure of all schools, factories, and public offices, in response to record heat and drought. For many Iranians, that "holiday" was nothing but a desperate ploy to disguise the regime's inability to provide sufficient water and electricity - a failure that's bound to prove ever more destabilizing in the years to come.
Entering a New World Beyond Imagining
Half a dozen years ago, when I last discussed Jared Diamond's book with my students, we spoke of the ways civilizational collapse could still be averted through concerted action by the nations and peoples of the world. Little, however, did we imagine anything like the summer of '23.
It's true that much has been accomplished in the intervening years. The percentage of electricity provided by renewable sources globally has, for example, risen significantly and the cost of those sources has fallen dramatically. Many nations have also taken significant steps to reduce carbon emissions. Still, global elites continue to pursue strategies that will only amplify climate change, ensuring that, in the years to come, humanity will slide ever closer to worldwide collapse.
When and how we might slip over the brink into catastrophe is impossible to foresee. But as the events of this summer suggest, we are already all too close to the edge of the kind of systemic failure experienced so many centuries ago by the Mayans, the ancient Puebloans, and the Viking Greenlanders. The only difference is that we may have no place else to go. Call it, if you want, Collapse 2.0.
Copyright 2023 Michael Klare
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