“Our civilisation will be just as fragile as those before”, The Age, 16/6 (reproduced below). An excellent article pointing out that our modern civilization could go the same way as others before us in history (the ancient Romans, Mayans, those in India and so on) due to resource depletion, environmental damage, greed and hubris. The current situation is unique in that the Earth has never had to cope with the sheer mass of 7 billion people before, nor the immense amounts of waste produced in the form of plastics that will persist for millennia. Our methods of storing information on digital media are fragile and are unlikely to last as long as those of the ancients, who carved their writings and art on stone.
We think of ourselves as more enlightened and aware than previous civilizations, but humans seem to repeat the same mistakes over and over again in history without learning from the past, and we are still doing it. It is a frustrating and avoidable cycle, but one we as a species seem locked into, in our current stage of evolution. Perhaps this is because we do not live that long and so can’t plan for the long-term future centuries or millennia away.
Our civilization will be just as fragile as those before
Geoff Strong
June 16, 2009 – 12:00 a.m.If it is true all good things must end, I wonder what will be our end. Having stood in the remains of Rome, ancient Greece and the ruined cities of Sri Lanka and India, I have reflected on the fantasy of their invincibility and the truth of their temporary might.
The artefacts of once wondrous civilizations draw me to the one thought: if there are archaeologists in the future, what conclusions will they draw about us? What will there be of value or magnificence in our lives to study?
Most believe this to be the most remarkable civilization ever – yet it could also be one of the most temporary. Technical prowess aside, it is the first with a truly global reach. Its common thread is the business activity that has spread tentacles to most parts of the planet.
But the past year has taught us the hubris of thinking this economic system will survive regardless. Is it unthinkable to wonder whether the whole of our global civilization can fall?
Many of us who grew up in the shadow of nuclear annihilation of the Cold War used to dwell on it all the time. Spike Milligan wrote a satirical play later made into a film entitled The Bed Sitting Room set in post-apocalyptic London nine months after World War Ⅲ. “World War Ⅲ, the Nuclear Misunderstanding, lasted for two minutes and 28 seconds – including the signing of the peace treaty.”
Even Britain has decayed before. As a Roman province its population was thought to be four million, yet after the Norman conquest, the Domesday book of 1086 records a population of less than two million.
Now that the main nuclear annihilation threat comes from the lunatic regime in North Korea, other horsemen have taken the lead in the apocalypse gallop: pandemic disease, economic famine and climate change pestilence.
We forget climate change is not just about a rise in temperature. Victoria’s trauma of Black Saturday in February was as much due to wind as to heat.
The increased power of moving air recently made an impact on one of our civilization’s most potent symbols. During one of the storms to hit south-east Queensland in recent months, a man was killed when a sheet of glass fell from a Gold Coast high-rise building, such was the force of the wind. If there was ever a symbol of the global business civilization, it is the high-rise. Like the pyramids of Egypt and the temples of Greece and Rome, the high-rise is the architectural representation of deepest beliefs – in our case money and the organisations needed to accumulate it.
Some may say they are our temples to greed. They were certainly the real and symbolic target chosen when jihadists attacked the West via the New York World Trade Centre in 2001.
Yet as the storms demonstrate, it takes less than attack by fuel-loaded aircraft to show their fragility. Just as tourists crawl over the skeletal remains of ruined temples and the unearthed pathways of old towns, will there one day be tours to the bony remains of our high-rise cities?
Most of us now feel global warming caused by our species is likely to change this planet into a place more hostile to humans.
Melbourne is growing rapidly and running short of water. We will have to rely on huge amounts of greenhouse-generating electricity for desalination and a similar amount to pump water through the north-south pipeline.
A testament to the importance of water is one of the most wonderful abandoned cities in India, Fatephur Sikri, near Agra. Its magnificent buildings were constructed by Mughal emperor Akbar and served as his empire’s capital from 1571 until 1585, when it was vacated due to an inadequate water supply.
Our civilization also seems to operate in ever-decreasing circles of endurance. Just as we seek to shorten the time it takes to do anything, we seem happy to accept decreasing lifespans of anything we create. At 70 years old, our timber house has lasted twice as long as a builder acquaintance told me is expected from a house built today. New raw-earth housing estates are smothered with brick-clad homes, many dressed up with mock columns and pediments.
But even more alarming is the fragility of the knowledge stored in the way we like to do it now – digitally. Fragments of stone writing from ancient Sumeria or Egypt still give us an understanding of their world. But try getting information from an ancient computer system, such as an early Apple – less than 20 years old but now useless.
What will an archaeologist, a thousand years from now, make of the millions of CDs, DVDs and computer discs unearthed as they sift through the remains of our rubbish tips? The mathematical and electronic wizardry that helped them make sense to us will be long gone.
Geoff Strong is a senior writer.
“Population and Sustainability: Can We Avoid Limiting the Number of People?”, Scientific American, 10/6. Feature article in the June 2009 Special Edition. It concludes that empowering women with access to education and family planning will help slow population growth.
Collected letters:
Population fallacy
IT IS a fallacy that we need high population growth to sustain our economy. Denmark has a stable population of 5 million, with a low birth rate and immigration rate. Its unemployment rate is the lowest in the European Union and is lower than Australia’s. The country exports more then it imports, its GDP per capita is similar to ours, and it provides a high level of foreign aid. In Australia we use population growth as an excuse to destroy our environment, our amenity and our democratic processes.
– Jennie Epstein, Little River, 15/6
Dreams shattered, all for Mr. Nice Guy
Your article (Insight, 13/6) portrays Planning Minister Justin Madden as Mr. Nice Guy. Fair suck of the sauce bottle. “Harry” is responsible for the destruction of Marvellous Melbourne, given his fixation with fast-tracking high-rise, high-density developments to accommodate the huge influx of migrants and students, and to make jobs for the construction industry.
His supporters point to European cities as successful examples of high-density living but fail to mention that those city fathers have always provided public gardens for the wellbeing of their citizens.
While our parks, gardens and golf courses are progressively alienated for yet more sports stadiums and housing developments, we are brainwashed into believing that we can no longer dream of owning a house on a quarter-acre block with the Hills hoist and a vegie garden out the back. We have to be content with living in high-rise human warehouses or outer-suburban, featureless gulags. Why should we forgo our dreams just because Madden and his boss, Premier John Brumby, support unsustainable levels of migration to the state and adhere to the fallacious belief that all growth is good?
– Lewis Prichard, Hawthorn, 16/6
“12yo pregnancy: ‘DoCS should have done more’ ”, ABC News, 16/6. In my view the girl should be forced to abort; she is far too young to undergo the stress of pregnancy. The affair is a ridiculous farce; children’s and teenagers’ “rights” are too lenient in Western society.
