“COLLAPSE MANIFESTO 1.3 RD1
Published on 11/10/2020.
An animal disappeared today, the last of its kind. It was a mammal that only existed in that valley, now turned into a soybean field. Someone said the blame lies with CO2 and not the excavators.
Energy is running out, but no one seems to see it. Another activist was imprisoned today; they just want to create chaos, they say. Politicians have plans, money, and investments for the coming years. There’s nothing to worry about, they say, yet the numbers don’t add up for me.
“Cursed kid,” someone said at a protest, “don’t you have anything better to do?”
I am more aware of what’s coming than most people, but I don’t feel special. Knowing it serves no purpose beyond seeing it coming. If I’m wrong, people will call me a conspiracy theorist catastrophist, and if I’m right, no one will be there to thank me for the warning.
I don’t want the internet to stop working; I like computers and having a phone. I’ve studied to understand these machines, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not my decision. This is not a fight against something; it’s just analyzing inputs to predict outputs. Technology is ending while devouring the planet.
Neither the “green new deal,” nor hydrogen, nor ecological parties have a solution beyond a crude attempt to perpetuate and legitimize the system. Money has other plans to keep grinding life and generating wealth until the last day.
Most complex life will disappear in the coming years. Entire ecosystems shaped by day and night, by winter and spring for millions of years will no longer be there tomorrow. Elephants, turtles, lions, and orangutans that appeared in children’s books will return only to be remembered one last time.
The Great Barrier Reef is dying; the oceans will stop producing enough oxygen soon, and that’s bad, very bad. But we want to mine the seas to continue making chips and cars.
We worry that Manhattan or the Netherlands will flood, but not that we won’t have oxygen or water to drink.
Temperatures will rise not by one or two degrees, but by 3, 4, or who knows because we don’t know. We don’t know how far we’ve gone. Data says life will have a hard time in the next 50-100 years, but what’s important is that the economy grows by 2%.
Digging a hole with supplies and a shotgun is pointless; you would only prolong your suffering. When you come out of your hole, there will be nothing to eat or hunt.
Degrowth will be mandatory, unavoidable. We’ll have 1 out of every 10 things, not because someone mandates it or because you voluntarily choose to have less. It will be dictated by the laws of thermodynamics, the energy return rate. It’s not enough to decrease and have fewer cars, shared and electric, or fewer online shopping packages, or less internet. It means we won’t have many things we consider essential, as simple as that.
There are few chances to avoid it because it means not having, not traveling, not consuming, not building, not waging wars, all countries working together, eating meat only once a week or a month, and fruits and vegetables in season that don’t come from the far reaches of the planet. Not manufacturing more than necessary to live and have a dignified life, but that’s not what they want. Some want us to have more and the more “committed” ones want us to have a few less, but they don’t consider not having.
I am the 21st-century Cassandra. My crime is wondering where things come from, how they are made, the materials and energy needed, the mines and their waste, the rivers and the necessary water.
CO2 is not the problem; it’s the effect of the cause that generates the problem.
I don’t wish for the world to collapse, nor will I do anything to make it happen. I am simply aware that it will happen… that it is happening, and I would like this collapse to be as painless as possible… I am a collapsist, enter my world.”
