Collapse

 

Collapse 2.0 Michael Klare  August 18, 2023 ScheerPost ·         What a 2005 Bestseller Tells Us About Climate Change and Human Survival.     In his 2005 bestseller Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, geographer Jared Diamond focused on past civilizations that confronted severe climate shocks, either adapting and surviving or failing to adapt and disintegrating. Among those were the Puebloan culture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, the ancient Mayan civilization of Mesoamerica, and the Viking settlers of Greenland. Such societies, having achieved great success, imploded when their governing elites failed to adopt new survival mechanisms to face radically changing climate conditions. …. Precursors of Collapse When do we know that a civilization is on the verge of collapse? In his now almost 20-year-old classic, Diamond identified three key indicators or precursors of imminent dissolution: a persistent pattern of environmental change for the worse like long-lasting droughts; signs that existing modes of agriculture or industrial production were aggravating the crisis; and an elite failure to abandon harmful practices and adopt new means of production. At some point, a critical threshold is crossed and collapse invariably follows. Today, it’s hard to avoid indications that all three of those thresholds are being crossed. To begin with, on a planetary basis, the environmental impacts of climate change are now unavoidable and worsening by the year. To take just one among innumerable global examples, the drought afflicting the American West has now persisted for more than two decades, leading scientists to label it a “megadrought” exceeding all recorded regional dry spells in breadth and severity. As of August 2021, 99% of the United States west of the Rockies was in drought, something for which there is no modern precedent. The recent record heat waves in the region have only emphasized this grim reality. https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/18/michael-klare-collapse-2-0/

 

Make P G & E a Public Utility

The potential bankruptcy of the California utility whose negligence likely plays a role in California’s wildfires is an opportunity for the public to gain control of the state’s energy destiny

Cal Fire found that three separate wildfires across the state in 2017 were caused by PG&E, and the utility could be liable for up to $12 billion in damages from more than 800 civil lawsuits., Mario Tama/Getty Images

There is strong evidence that the wildfires raging through California right now—killing at least 80 people, with at least an additional 1,000 missing as of November 18—have been sparked at least in part by the large investor-owned monopoly utility, PG&E. Further, PG&E’s apparent negligence and its consequences aren’t new. Cal Fire found that three separate wildfires across the state in 2017 were caused by PG&E, and the utility could be liable for up to $12 billionin damages from more than 800 civil lawsuits. With that backdrop, PG&E teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, and the California Public Utility Commission is now thinking of breaking up the utility. But the commission shouldn’t stop at breaking up PG&E. The public should take it over. That, in fact, is what should be happening with investor-owned utilities across the country: move them out of the hands of corporate power and into democratic, local control. PG&E is notorious for taking the money it receives from ratepayers and not putting adequate amounts of that money into its energy infrastructure. But it does pay its CEO, Geisha Williams, handsomely: $8.56 million in 2017, as devastating fires hit PG&E’s service area and as the utility was found negligent for a 2010 gas explosion that killed 8 people.