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100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Over the course of recent centuries and more especially during the last 50 years or so, deforestation, increased use of soil, and the combustion of fossil fuels had released vast quantities carbon dioxide, methane and other gases into the atmosphere. The accumulated effect has been a constant increase in air temperatures. This was translated into the melting of the Arctic Sea and Greenland ice sheets at ever increasing rates, with the growing threat of rising sea levels, the release of methane gas from the permafrost, and more frequent extreme weather conditions in the form of hurricanes, flooding and droughts. The changes would if allowed to continue lead to famine, war and massive migration from the most affected regions. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The facts were there, in reality there was little hope of achieving the objectives set, as five years after the conference, only the EU fulfilled its promises. The US had backed out of the agreement, Russia had done absolutely nothing, and at best the other signatories had accomplished nothing more than a little window dressing. According to one scientist, trying to reverse the trend would be like trying to turn the Titanic on a dime. The consequences for 300 million people would be severe flooding at least once a year by 2050, as glaciers and the polar ice caps melted. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Nature had always dealt with changing climate, whether it was caused by celestial or geological events, how it would deal with the disruptions to the biosphere in the Anthropocene remained to be seen. To exactly what degree humanity was causing climate change was still an open question, however, humanity's impact on the biosphere was beyond all doubt, it was there to see, wherever one looked the effects of the Anthropocene were clearly visible, in the mountains, in the seas and rivers, in the forests and meadows, in deserts be they ice or sand, and in the atmosphere that surrounds us, even in near space, the thermosphere, filled with more than half a century of orbiting space junk. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | So much for science and macro considerations, which nevertheless concerned each and every living person, who, individually, could do little to reverse the situation, though perhaps Sir Patrick Kennedy, with his vast wealth, could. Kennedy, a British subject, whose bank, a triumvirate, with one of its headquarters and many of its prized assets in the City of London, had a vested interest in the UK and its economy, though most of its capital lay offshore spread through its multiple structures. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat was in fact a citizen of the world, as not only did he hold a British passport, he was also a proud Irishman, naturally possessing an Irish passport, in addition he held a resident permit of HKSAR, that is Hong Kong, his declared home, even though he spent a great part of his year jetting out to the units of his far flung banking empire and his many distant homes. His wife, Lili, now held Irish citizenship, having forfeited her Chinese passport, as China did not recognise dual nationality and having Hong Kong citizenship was potentially problematic. As CEO of the INI Banking Corporation, he should have been happy with the UK's withdrawal from the EU, which would certainly benefit his bank, a model of global capitalism, even though personally he was against leaving. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He was therefore one of a small group of capitalists who stood to gain much from Brexit, whatever its form, starting by shorting the pound. In fact the bank's London base was only loosely tied to the British economy, as were the investment funds it managed. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat was one of the mega-rich, he was living proof that the wealth of the world was held by an ever shrinking number of rich individuals and corporations, who used their huge financial power and knowledge to circumvent taxes through the offshoring bases they controlled. Using profits to concentrate their power through buy-backs, to become transnational entities controlled by a narrow group of individuals, and without the kind of traditional bonds of the past to a region, a country, or even their own workers, and whose deep down loyalties were to themselves alone. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was, according to John Francis, a derivation of the economic theory developed by the Chicago School in the 1930s, at the University of Chicago. Amongst its most notable proponents were Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke. Its principal concept was based on the idea that free markets best allocated resources in an economy and that minimal government intervention was best for economic prosperity. Thus, by extension, the only purpose of corporations was to maximise profits. It reminded Pat Wolfe of what he had been told by his lawyer back in the 70's when setting up a company in Luxembourg. Pat had fumbled his reply when Maitre Tresch asked the routine question as to the object of the company. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Mr Wolfe,' announced Tresch, pronouncing the w like a German, and wearing a deadpan expression, 'there is only one objective of a business entity, and that is lucrative, otherwise you need a non-profit making association or a foundation.' Pat Wolfe, one of the close circle of friends that formed the Clan, never forgot the lesson. Profits, profits and profits. The rest was window dressing, and anyone who got that wrong was in for a shock. It was the iron law of capitalism. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The growth in the size and numbers of those transnational entities in London had progressively dissociated a large part of the City's business from the mainstream of the British economy. The City was the centre of a globalised capitalist system, where much of the capital it controlled was not owned by the British ruling classes or the institutions they had traditionally controlled. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The British ruling classes, once great capitalists with national, imperial and global interests, had been replaced by global capitalism, controlled by galaxy of offshore institutions, vehicles or whatever, including--sovereign wealth funds, transnational pension funds, hedge funds, multinational corporations, and mega-rich individuals, to mention a few, without dwelling on the many forms of tax avoidance structures, corrupt and criminal organisations, not forgetting a broad spectrum of dictators and the like with their families. Today, London was a centre where world capitalism conducted its business, not where British capitalism conducted the world's business. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | International capitalism was found wherever one cared to look in the UK, the nation's main airports owned by Spanish investors, the automobile industry sold off to German and Indian businesses, utilities like water, gas and electricity own by foreign investors, nuclear power plants built by the French, civil aircraft built by Airbus, jet fighters built by international consortia, aircraft carriers with French technology, wherever one looked it was the same story. Brexit was part of a malaise, a weak state and the state of the political parties that had governed the UK for more than a century, through two world war, the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR, the UK's accession to the EU, and now the misguided exit under the troubled leadership of those same political parties. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | They had overseen the slide of British economy, the transformation of a great industrial nation to that of a second rate power, dithering and blundering decisions, short-term gains, both financial and political, oblivious to the pain suffered across a region that had once been the industrial heart of an empire and now to a large extent an aided rust belt, whilst the powerful and the governing elite ran the City and sought to turn the UK into a low tax zone, like a larger version of Singapore or Hong Kong, on Europe's doorstep. One journalist described the political vision as that of a delusional, revivalist, banana monarchy. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Amongst the City of London's best performing businesses were the major oil companies, the leaders in carbon emissions, fossil fuels were their raison d'etre, though they now projected a green image of their shift to renewable energies. Reality was very different, from Petronas in Malaysia backing Formula One and Motorcycle Grand Prix racing, to Exxon's huge developments in Mozambique. The oil companies would be pumping out oil and gas for the next half century at ever increasing rates, exactly as BP's annually published previsions for the future announced. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The facts were there, the 20 biggest oil producers had no other serious ambition than to produce more and more hydrocarbons, opening new fields in virgin territories--the jungles of Amazonia, the Siberian Tundra, the Artic and Africa, and fracking in many developed countries. The biggest emitter of greenhouse gases was Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Aramco, which had been responsible for more than 4% of all emissions during the period between 1965 and 2017. Such state owned companies, few of which were well-known to the general public, with the exception perhaps of motor sports sponsors like Petronas or Petrobras, were part of the vital economic development plans of many developing countries and their peoples through the exploitation of fossil fuel reserves. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Collectively these companies now accounted for the production of more oil and gas than privately owned energy corporations such as Exxon, BP and Shell. The value of the world's production of oil and gas in 2019, was nearly 90 trillion dollars. That's 3% of the global economy and only covering the value of oil and gas pumped from wells. After shipping, refining, advertising, sales and distribution that figure rose to over 5%. New economies were not only driving the demand for oil and gas, they were also emerging as major producers, especially Brazil, Russia, India and China, all of which had little short term interest in forgoing the benefits of the revenues from fossil fuels or their use. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | There were a few exceptions like Norway's Equinor, but only small rich countries like Norway could afford the luxury of a greener vision of the future. Feeding the teeming billions was more important than how they would die, and besides there were more mouths where they came from, those billions that fed the egos of power hungry leaders and national prestige, in a world where numbers still counted. It was not a passing lack of accountability, it was realpolitik in a dog eat dog world. Indian and Chinese leaders never failed to mention their 1.4 billion strength, size counted on the geopolitical chessboard. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Enlightenment would only come through development and development would only come from economic force--driven by energy, and fossil energy would be the only low cost easily accessible source of power for decades to come. The finger pointing blame game was a luxury that only the rich and well informed could afford to play from their comfortable armchairs. Without the production of Saudi Arabia's Aramco, Russia's Gazprom and the National Iranian Oil Company, the government's of those countries would be broke, which was almost the case of Iran following the sanctions imposed by the US. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Today, OPEC countries accounted for an estimated 90% of known reserves and produced nearly half of the world's oil and gas, those countries were beyond the influence of save the planet campaigners, and their role would grow in the close future, for the simple reason their national governments' revenues depended to a large degree on the royalties derived from their continued production of hydrocarbons. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The strategies of those companies were shrouded in a thick veil of national secrecy, whilst their commitments to the Paris agreements were nothing but empty promises, but the same could be said of the major Western oil companies, whose real objectives were hidden behind an opaque screen of green fumistry designed to confound their enemies with promises of a transition to cleaner energy. Asking desperate governments, like that of Venezuela's Madura regime, for transparency, beggared belief considering they were supported by equally doubtful friends, notably Russian and Iran, making change an extremely difficult task. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Continuing on the same path only brought the what scientists called the Sixth Great Extinction closer. If the tragedy were a fiction, it would require the efforts of Batman, Superman and Captain Marvel combined, to turn the tables and save the planet from the forces of evil that were plotting its destruction. John recalled how we were all conditioned by self-interest, and by extension national interest. We consumed fossil fuels to generate our electricity, fill the tanks of our cars, kerosene for the planes that transported us to the sun, diesel to drive the combines that harvested the grain to feed the animals that put the food on our tables whose dejections produced the methane that contributed to global warming.. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Even if climate change was invisible to most people, environmental pollution was everywhere, as Liam Clancy discovered when he visited Delhi eighteen months previously. It was sad to say, humanity and its numbers were the victims and at the same time the source of the problem, everywhere, from mindless overconsumption in the great cities of the developed world, to Delhi's overcrowded miserable third world slums. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Liam's first visit to India hit him like a shock and not merely psychological, it was also physical, starting with his eyes, smarting from the pollution, then his nose, followed by an irritation that picked at his throat. He recalled how his driver had struggled to advance through a tangle of vehicles under the metallic blue haze that hung over Delhi like a leaden dome. After an impossibly long journey from the airport the driver announced they were finally approaching the hotel which lay in the heart of New Delhi. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Liam despaired as he observed cows ruminating on the central separation of the Outer Ring under the Nehru Place Flyover near Kalkaji Mandir metro station. They crawled past the so-called residential colonies and enclaves with their leafy streets and upmarket low rise apartment buildings, some unfortunately facing the polluted ring. The wooded avenues perpendicular to the ring in the Safdarjung Enclave in South Delhi and Green Park were the homes to vast multimillion dollar residential complexes that formed a startling contrast with the dwelling places formed by greasy tarpaulins under the footbridges. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Liam like the rest of the Clan was booked into the Imperial nearby to Connaught Place. Built in 1931 it was an elegant colonial style hotel, from where, according to John, they could easily visit the many historical sites of New Delhi. The luxury of the hotel was incomprehensible when he observed the huddled masses of poor, dirty, grimy, children, young mothers with infants in their arms, begging on the ill light pavements of Delhi, or on construction sites, all breathing the poisonous fumes produced by the monstrous snarl of traffic chaos, in a country that planned to put a man into space and bought advanced jet fighters to ward of its real or imagined enemies. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In spite of that, or because of that, India could boast an impressive growth rate of 7.5% as it plunged into a catch up race with China. The recurring questions asked by visitors to India was that of the advantages or disadvantages caused by a couple or more centuries of British colonisation? The traces of which were still visible. Of course the rule practised by all civilisations was always to the advantage of the coloniser, from the earliest civilisations to the start of the 20th century, and Britain's colonisation of India was no different. During the long period of British rule in India, per capita income stagnated and industry collapsed, at the same time little was done done to eliminate recurrent famine and widespread disease. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Be that as it may, it is worth remembering that under the Mughal Empire, which the British replaced, the population stood at 160 million in 1700, that now stands at 1.4 billion, which is an entirely Indian feat, as is the number of cows, estimated to about 300 million, contributing more to global warming than the vehicles the animals obstruct. Perhaps the Brits should claim reparations and apologies from Rome for five centuries of colonisation that led Europe to the dark ages. Or, better still, seen from the standpoint of Liam and his friends, Irish men and women, why shouldn't Dublin claim compensation from London for 800 years of occupation and oppression by the English crown. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | That was a philosophical question and in Delhi, on that particular day, their immediate concern was shopping--for clothes, the dress code included saris for the ladies, sherwanis for the men, and churidars for both. In the meantime they all headed off on a joyfully exotic shopping spree seated in a luxury air-conditioned people carrier, its smoked windows to hide them from the wretched street dwellers. Pat O'Connelly compared themselves to bloated overfed aliens visiting another world, gawking out at street urchins making back flips, their faces painted with large princely black moustaches, once an indicator of social class, at a time when untouchables were forbidden facial hair. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Even in developed countries the evidence was everywhere, for those who looked a little closer, in the form of garbage incinerators, which had not existed in the days of their grandfathers when packaging and waste were on a much more modest scale. One only had to look at the freeways, motorways, autobahns, autoroutes and autopistas, overflowing with endless convoys of heavy-goods vehicles carrying products in each and every direction on the pretext of free trade. Pat Wolfe remembered the first motorways in England, almost empty of traffic. He also remembered garbage collection, mostly waste food--potato peelings and the like, with almost no packaging. Waste paper and old clothes were collected by rag merchants for recycling. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was another world, not as beautiful or happy as that of Steven Zweig, but nevertheless a world of yesterday. * * * The Fitzwilliams Foundation prided itself on its independence, unlike certain others, those funded by the oil and petrochemical industries that paid biased scientists and researchers to publish alternative theories that scorned environmental change. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | BP was more open in that its published forecasts spoke of the change from fossil fuels to renewable energy--nothing very new, but it did predict fossil fuels would continue to be the driving force supplying the world's energy needs for the foreseeable future, and since the demand grew, due to increased living standards and population growth, the needs would continue to grow at a faster pace, consuming even more coal and oil, and though the percentages varied slightly, the result was an enormous demand including that for coal, especially in India and China in absolute terms. That information was publicly available, for anybody with an internet connection, from BP--the horses mouth. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat Kennedy's friend Bernard Looney, a fellow Irishman from Kerry, was CEO of BP, and his energy company's reports were clear, barring a Black Swan event, or an extraordinary breakthrough in science, oil and fossil fuels in general would continue as the primary source of energy for decades to come. The chances of achieving the objectives agreed at the Paris conference were almost zero, unless existing fossil fuel consumption was halted, a pipe dream, given the energy companies intention to accelerate production and investment. According to their own estimates those same companies would spend some five trillion dollars over the coming decade for the development of new reserves of fossil fuels. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The United Nations body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was founded with the goal of providing the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change, although it did not carry out related research or monitor climate itself, instead it reviewed published scientific reports produced by leading climate scientists, to provide governments with objective views of climate change, in order that they consider the risks related to natural, political and economic impacts. However, there were many critics, more or less objective. Some said the risk was exaggerated, other said it was understated, certain criticised the methods, but whatever the viewpoint, the evidence of a dangerously over polluted planet was visible for all to see, and largely due to over population. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Overpopulation together with the exhaustion of readily available resources had been at the root of the downfall of many past civilisations, which John described as self-destruction. It was as though a natural built-in timer cut in, as it did in all species, whenever uncontrolled growth occurred, like lemmings running over cliffs. To a certain degree climate change had become a political plaything, as political leaders vied to be greener than green, an effect that was visible at the UNFCCC's Paris Agreement in 2015, where IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report was central in the discussions. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The needs of humanity were such that the objectives of ecologists were impossible to meet. One only had to look at the privileged elite, that one percent of the world's population, very vociferous when it came to giving lessons, but who spent a good part their time jetting between continents on business, or to homes far from the unwashed crowds. John Francis was the first to admit the Clan was amongst the growing number of the mega-rich who saw the use of private jets as part of their daily lives. They had become addicted to their jets as others had to their iPhones. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Private jet travel for the rich, celebrities, entertainers and those who ruled the world of business and finance, had become an indispensable accessory, even if they produced up to 40 times as much carbon per passenger mile as regular commercial flights. The demand for new private jets grew at a phenomenal pace, some 700 new aircraft a year, a huge market worth 250 billion dollars over the decade to come. Like those of Pat Kennedy's Clan, the rich could fly from Hong Kong to London or Panama non-stop, in comfort with work and sleeping spaces for passengers and crew. Private jets had become the new status symbols of oligarchs and their like, as had yachts and mega-homes. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Men like Pat Kennedy travelled by jet almost weekly, clocking up many hundreds of thousands of kilometres each year in their planes, which were often like second homes, generating 1,600 tons of carbon annually. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Capitalism, consumerism and growth were driving the planet. Long live capitalism. Communism was dead. Russia, China and their satellites--with the exception of Cuba and North Korea had seized on consumerism to drive their economies to satisfy, pacify, the masses, and in the case of China theirs was a remarkable success, flooding the world with manufactured goods, transported by road, rail, sea and air. Consuming vast quantities of steel, aluminium, copper, fibres, plastics and oil in the form of fuel and petrochemicals, to build factories and manufacture throwaway goods, to produce energy and fuel transport, to build infrastructure, roads, bridges, railways, seaports and airports. Growth, growth and more growth. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was a never ending process with banks and investors providing credit for profit and so perpetuate the cycle, to fulfil the promises of politicians and leaders, contributing to the gathering storm that threatened to submerge the planet under a mountain of plastic, enveloped by a pall of poisonous gases, bringing climate change nearer and nearer, faster and faster, ecological breakdown and the collapse of civilisation as we know it. Wishful thinkers thought it could be stopped, but John Francis was convinced it was like Topsy. For him the Extinction Rebellion was a nice salve for well-thinking public figures and concerned middle-class activists, but could the world's poor and hungry be sacrificed on the altar of a righteous ecological movement. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Capitalism was like the rogue elephant, in the disguise of fossil fuel, and like Topsy, it would require a powerful and terrible electric shock to put it down. Evidence had shown that fossil fuel companies represented one of the principle driving forces of environmental collapse, and knowingly so, given the relentless growth of the world's oil, gas and coal consumption, unequivocally linked to every aspect of the pollution that threatened the continued existence of modern society. Since 1965, the top 20 companies have been responsible for 35% of all energy-related carbon dioxide and methane, 480 billion toxic tons. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In addition to the well-known household names, were Aramco, the Saudis national oil and gas company, and Gazprom its Russian equivalent, the world's two biggest producers of fossil fuels, the principal earners of the dollars that kept their countries afloat, which in the interest of maximal production overlooked costly environmental issues. Activists hurried to point out that humanity was now paying the price for these polluters, but they always omitted to say humanity had benefited from a century of remarkably cheap energy. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | If at the beginning of the 20th century, a satellite image could have been taken of the earth, it would have shown a dark picture, today as humanity approaches the end of the first quarter of the 21st century that image is different, it shows a bright sparkling world, one where humanity has emerged from the darkness of the past. But at what price? One of the Clan, Jack Regan, who had spent his life in the engineering business, told Liam, how each barrel of oil generated the same amount of energy as the physical effort produced by the man pulling their rickshaw--for the equivalent of 40 hours every week, for three years, that is to say 6,240 man hours of hard physical effort. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The market price of that barrel (160 litres) at the time of writing was 60 dollars, that's 20 dollars a year for their Delhi rickshaw driver, less than 40 cents a week, one cent an hour. It didn't require a rocket scientist to realise their rickshaw driver, living in Delhi would be dead from starvation after a week or so with that kind of wage, given the food budget for one person per week was 25 dollars, in a city where uncooked white rice was priced at 40 cents a kilo. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The fact was never in human existence had men possessed such abundant cheap energy, which rendered brut muscle force valueless, and as long as fossil fuel remained so cheap and abundant it would not and could not be replaced. It was why the hand pulled rickshaw had disappeared, it was why we had abundant and affordable food, heat, light, transport and clothing. It was why big fossil energy corporations were not about to go out of business, especially when the world's demand for oil and gas was almost insatiable, and until that changed, the energy industry would continue to invest in the production of those fuels. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The progress of new alternative technologies was slow and would continue to be slow, because of high investment costs, and, the low price of conventional fossil fuel, which had proved to be much more abundant than imagined a couple of decades back, when pundits forecast a 'peak oil' scenario, an event that had been consistently pushed forwards to a future horizon. At the same time prices, measured in constant dollars, had, apart from a few spikes, remained cheap, and as a result the world had stumbled into the trap of addiction, the unlimited supply of cheap energy, which was suddenly eating into the lungs of the planet like a growing cancer. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Objectively, like all addictions, tobacco, alcohol and drugs, it was the quantity that did the damage, not the harm caused by one man's needs, but that multiplied by billions of human beings and the animals that lived with them. | | ---|---|--- # 7 # A WALK IN THE PARK JOHN, AS HE TOOK HIS TWO CHILDREN on a weekend walk across the river in Battersea Park, realised for the first time in his life, and very tardively, the meaning and pleasure of parenthood, a simple and natural pleasure that all human beings could experience. Hadn't the rest of the world the right to do the same? Of course, but population control didn't mean no children, simply less he reasoned. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Ekaterina had already left for South America with the others, that is Camille and Anna, 'trailblazers', said Pat, to reconnoitre the selected sites and make the preparations for Kyril's film, which according to John's mind, was an adventure trip into the Amazon. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | John had encouraged Ekaterina, she deserved a break from her gallery, especially as it was now running smoothly. She had engaged a young Finnish au-pair to care for the children, Matilda, who spoke fluent Russian and excellent English, though the latter was with an American accent. Matilda was also from a Russian Orthodox family, as were a minority of Finns, not that she was religious in any special way, but Ekaterina felt it was part of her own culture, something she wished to pass on to her children, even though she had not much time for the popes of the Orthodox Church. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The Amazon was ecologically fashionable, making the headlines, with Greenpeace accusing commercial forestry and big agribusiness companies of 'destroying our children's future by driving us towards climate and ecological collapse'. They spoke of transformative changes in agriculture, words that had little meaning in the villages of Amazonia, the Philippines, Indonesia or the Congo. Whose children? Ours? Theirs? Brazil's? thought John looking at the blond locks of his own two children, Alena was twelve, her brother Will nearly three--who was happily waving at the birds from his stroller, pushed by Matilda. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Greenpeace as usual spoke of urgency, crisis talks, but never mentioned population control policies, there were always two discourses, the good and the bad, one for the rich and the other for the poor, John thought. He was one of the rich, the very rich, very privileged, but he also enjoyed the simple pleasures of life, a relaxed Sunday with his children. How many Africans could enjoy such a simple pleasure, those whose lives consisted of grubbing the earth for their next meal. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | John was sure the world was on the brink of tectonic change, he had asked himself what would happen when the poorer two thirds of the world's population started to consume resources at the same rate as the richer countries, something that was already happening. A simple glance at China's development over the previous three or four decades was telling, as more meat, fish, oil and gas, together with all the other resources consumed to sustain its population as they pursued growth through industrial output. If the poorer populations were to consume as much as the rich, then the resources needed would have to be multiplied by five, the equivalent to a population of more than 30 billion. It was what scientists called the Anthropocene conundrum, survive or bust! |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The problem lay in the fact that modern societies taught those who lived in them to strive for more, be winners, not losers. Unless the loop of consumer capitalism--never-ending growth, ever-rising production, non-stop consumption, and an endless stream of mouths to feed, was broken, the planet would inevitably strike back, wreaking a terrible vengeance on humanity, one that would vie with that of the Book of Revelation's seven plagues. The world needed another model. John had his ideas, Cornucopia, one that was more egalitarian, where the distribution of wealth was shared in a workless society where procreation was a reward for positive contribution to the community. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | That was John's theory, an elite, followed by a mass of happy obedient citizens, content with enough--not more, free of drudgery, happy to exist with what wise deciders chose for them, consuming less energy--wind and solar power, a brave new, but smaller world, regulated by AI. Why not? Yes, why not, but the route would be hard and filled with perils. A revolution, a transformation of the society we know, a new concept of work, or non-work, consumption, or non-consumption. Such ideas were anathema to mainstream political thought and economics, to boot brave new world ideas were seen as anti-libertarian concepts, the stulifying of the individual. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | How the collapse of society as we know it would come about was both easy and hard to predict--war, economic collapse, revolt, social disintegration, disease, cataclysmic natural disaster, the rise of AI, or a combination of all. But would the end come in a catastrophic event--a Vesuvius-like explosion spewing hot ash and sulphurous fumes over Pompeii, or a slow decline--like that of the Roman Empire? | | ---|---|--- # 8 # THE INCAS |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | THE POPULATION OF THE small city of San Jose del Guaviare was some 20,000 or so souls. It was the capital of the Department of Guaviare and lay on the south bank of a broad and winding river of the same name. To the north, it was connected by road to Bogota, to the south, across grasslands and sparse secondary forest, to the village of Calamari, beyond which the unsurfaced road went nowhere, fanning out into narrow trails that were swallowed by the vast forest of the Chiribiquete National Park. The department covered over 16,000 square kilometres, the home to de-isolated groups of the indigenous Nukak people. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was the first location for Indians advanced production team, who set up their base in a lodge on the south edge of the town, put at their disposal by the national park authorities for the duration of their stay. The next day after an early breakfast, the small group led by Ernesto Montaldo, gathered before the lodge. There was Matt Halder, Alfonso, Kyril, Anna, Camille and Pat O'Connelly, accompanied by two park rangers. After a few moments three rather rugged looking slightly worn Toyota Land Cruisers pulled into the driveway of the compound, Ernesto gave the signal and they climbed in and the small convoy set off. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Their plan for was to reconnoitre a site near Nuevo Tolima. Ernesto had selected three sites, all located within a couple of hours from San Jose. The first and the closest lay just 25 kilometres or so to the south-west, which he suggested could set the scene for the introduction to Indians. At Serrania la Lindos the road bifurcated onto an unsurfaced trail past rock formations called Ciudad de la Piedra, turning right they continued until they reached their destination, a protected archaeological site. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | They left the Land Cruisers with the drivers and continued on foot to the Mesa that towered above them, following behind Ernesto they made their way towards an area of denser vegetation that concealed the foot of the cliff. There they climbed a steep and narrow slope until they reached a natural shelter under the rock face, where, raising their heads, their eyes met with an astonishing panorama of ochre glyphs spread over a wall 30 metres long and 10 metres high. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The enigmatic glyphs depicted vampires, snakes, birds, tapirs, jaguars, dancers and hunters in a variety of graphic styles, stick characters, barely sketched silhouettes and almost lifelike figures, which according to Ernesto, were the works of several different cultures, extended over thousands of years, some of which on surfaces that had been plastered over and reused many times. Ernesto explained the work was that of a culture, or cultures, that had existed in distant prehistoric times, but most surprising was the knowledge that the descendants of those same peoples still lived in the same forests. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | They were peoples whom Jair Bolsonaro described as being like '... prehistoric men with no access to technology, science, information, and the wonders of modernity.' He went further by adding, 'Indigenous people want to work, they want to produce and they can't. They live isolated in their areas like cavemen.' Perhaps that was true, but it shocked a certain number of people, who may or may not have been familiar with the needs and wants of the indigenous peoples. It was certainly true that hundreds of thousands of the forest peoples continued the way of life they had lived for millennium, and it was not for outsiders to criticise them. On the other hand, many of them wanted the gifts, toxic or not, of modern civilisation, and that was their choice. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Most Americans and Europeans knew as little of Brazil as its leader knew of them, as one journalist remarked, Bolsonaro had never heard of Boris Johnson, so what! What Brit had heard of Bolsonaro before his election as leader of the fourth largest nation on earth. * * * That evening after an early diner, Anna sat on the veranda of the lodge watching the lights of the passing cars on the road beyond the compound, when a muddy SUV turned into the driveway and pulled up before the lodge. An old man stepped out, spotted Anna and made his way to the veranda. 'Buenas noches.' His Spanish would have sounded local to the others, but Anna detected an accent. He introduced himself as Rudi Dietl and announced he'd learnt of Matt Halder's arrival in San Jose. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | As they spoke Matt appeared and hearing Dietl speak recognised a fellow German and presented himself. 'Halder,' he said formally holding out his hand. Dietl replied the newcomer with equal German formality. They shook hands and Matt invited him to join them inside where it was cooler. Dietl gladly accepted and followed them to the lounge where a waiter served them cold beers. Dietl introducing himself as an ethnologist, formerly with the Max Plank Institute, now studying the language and traditions of the Nukak people. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The Nukak, he informed them, was a group of hunter-gatherers, who numbered around 500, living in small groups between the Guaviare and Inirida rivers, in south-east Colombia, who had avoided almost all regular contact with outsiders. They made headlines as an unknown people when a group of about forty of them emerged from the jungle one day at Calamar, a settlement not far from San Jose, carrying their blowpipes and darts coated with curare manyi, a poison made from plants. Matt asked him if would like to meet Ernesto, who at that moment was tied up on some other business in San Jose. 'No,' Dietl replied a little hastily. 'Would you like to help us?' he asked more carefully, sensing a problem. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Naturally,' he replied, then adding cautiously, 'there is something else, something I'd like to keep between us.' 'I can leave you together if you prefer,' Anna offered. 'No, no, please, you may be of help.' Looking around as if to assure himself they were alone, he placed his woven shoulder bag on the table. Then carefully withdrew a small dark green stone object, which he announced had been given to him by one of the Nukak men, it was a kind of flute. 'Carved out of lydite,' he said, 'a kind of stone. It was found in an area called Serrania la Lindos.' 'I see, that's near Nuevo Tolima,' said Anna. 'That's right.' 'Does this have any particular significance?' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Well, it's very strange. Firstly, it's a valuable archaeological object, secondly, there's no reason for it to be here, in this region, I mean Serrania la Lindos, which is about 15 kilometres from here, or anywhere else in Amazonas for that matter.' 'It's not my field,' Matt said looking to Anna. 'Perhaps it was brought here,' she volunteered taking the box shaped flute in both hands. 'Looking at it, I'd say it's pre-Columbian, definitely not from here. If I remember rightly, lydite is very hard, difficult to carve, to make holes like these,' she said pointing to the neat holes in the flute. 'Do you know exactly where it was found?' 'Not precisely.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Anna, as an archaeologist, knew that the most important factor relating to a find was its horizon, knowing precisely where an object was discovered, its context with the site. 'Have any other objects been found?' Dietl looked uneasy, hesitant. Then he seemed more determined. 'First,' he said glancing around again, 'I would like your word this information will be kept secret. If ever word got out the site would be flooded with looters and black marketeers, those who feed the international black market with stolen pre-Hispanic treasures. Here, you have to remember, was a war zone until very recently. Arms are everywhere, with people who know how to use them. 'It's why I don't want the Institute of Anthropology in Bogota involved, at least for the moment.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | They nodded their approval, even though Anna thought to herself that would be complicated 'I'm counting on your word,' he said hesitantly, then, fumbling in his shirt pocket, he pulled out a small plastic envelope. He carefully withdrew a small wad of tissue paper and unfolded it. Inside was a small object. At first glance it looked like the cap of a beer bottle. He placed the open wad on the table, then leant back into the rattan armchair. Anna and Matt leant forward. There in the folds of the paper lay what looked like a gold medallion with a raised warrior-like figure in the middle surrounded by a circle made of small pieces of turquoise. They hesitated, then Anna gently pressing on the edge of the paper flattened it for a better view. 'Beautiful.' 'Who made it?' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'That I don't know, but it was found at the same site, Serrania la Lindos, in the ground.' 'What is it?' asked Anna. 'At a guess I'd say it was an earring, probably Peruvian, Pre-Inca,' said Scott Fitznorman, who appeared behind them, startling Dietl. 'Don't worry,' Matt reassured the old man with a smile, 'Scott's one of us.' Dietl was not reassured and quickly picked up the earring. 'Please, I promise no one else will be involved, but Scott Fitznorman is one of our specialists, you can trust us,' said Matt quickly, adding, 'Anna, make sure no one else comes out.' Dietl hesitated a moment, then replaced the earring on the table. 'Possibly from the Moche pre-Inca period, that's in Peru, about a thousand kilometres west of here.' 'Moche?' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'A civilization that flourished in the coastal valleys of northern Peru, when Rome ruled the ancient world of the Mediterranean,' said Scott. 'A civilisation,' murmured Anna, 'sometime between 100BC and AD700, which, if I remember rightly, was succeeded by the Chavin and then the Chimu civilisations.' The Moche had flourished in what is today the Peruvian Department of Lambayeque, where thousands of archaeological sites have been discovered. Their most famous pyramid, the Huaca del Sol, the Temple of the Sun, in the Moche Valley, was built with 130 million bricks, moulded from four million tons of clay, comparable though not as old as Cheops, on a site of six hectares. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The Moche developed their art with an extraordinary degree of styles, with naturalistic and brilliant murals, ceramics, and metalwork, making their civilisation one the most resplendent in the pre-Columbian world. 'But what's it doing here?' asked Anna pointing to the earring. 'Trade or something like that,' replied Scott, 'the Moche would have travelled into the tropical rain forests for all kinds of exotic goods that didn't exist in their desert kingdom, animals like boa constrictors, jaguars, parrots, toucans, and monkeys, some of which figure on Moche ceramics and jewellery.' 'With whom did they trade?' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Well as we know,' said Scott, 'from recent archaeological discoveries, parts of the Amazon rainforest, believed to have been uninhabited, had been home to a long gone civilization, buried and forgotten in the overgrowth of the jungle.' Dietl nodded in agreement. Scott explained how Pre-Incan civilisations built settlements on the fringes of the forest, parts of which were colonised, as was evidenced by traces of mounds, roads and what appeared to be ditches, which, thanks to satellite images, confirmed extensive pre-Colombian settlement dating back 3,000 years or more. 'They would have certainly been in contact with the people of the forest, who supplied them with goods in exchange for pottery, stone artefacts and jewellery,' he surmised. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Archaeologists believed as many as one million people may have lived in those settlements and what is seen today as primary rainforest is in fact abandoned cultivated land, not visible on the ground. Many of the settlements were strategically built, fortified enclosures, earthworks and geoglyphs, marked by megaliths, evidence of flourishing communities and the sanctuaries that they used to observe the stars, determine seasons, civic and ceremonial centres, as in other known ancient civilisations. Beneath the dense vegetation of the Amazon forest, pottery shards, charcoal and other objects were found, the vestiges of distant peoples. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | These discoveries caused archaeologists to re-examine preconceived ideas of the Amazon being a vast empty quarter, empty of the human species that is. On the contrary between the settlements and the forest many millions of people lived across the vast region, undoubtedly exchanging goods with the peoples of the Andes to the west and to the north. 'What happened to them?' asked Anna. 'Well the Mochicas lived in the north of Peru on the arid Pacific coast. There they dug canals to irrigate their crops, built palaces, temples and huge adobe pyramids,' Scott hypothesised. 'It was dry, very dry, and it was certainly climatic fluctuations that destroyed the delicate ecological balance that sustained their way of life.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Their territory spread through the valleys of the Jetepeque Lambayeque rivers, where Sipan and Pampa Grande are located. They developed copper metallurgy and metalworking of which some magnificent examples had been found in the tombs of their rulers, including that of the Lord of Sipan, discovered in 1987, by the Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, a spectacular hoard of golden treasure rivalling that of Carter and Carnarvon's in Egypt. The Mochicas mastered the techniques of rolling, gilding, embossing and casting, and that of alloying metals--gold, silver, copper, lead, tin and even mercury. Those early civilisations evolved into the Incas, whose empire covered all of Peru and what is now Ecuador. The former a vast country twice the size of Texas and two and a half times greater than France. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | More than half of Peru lies to the east of the Andes in the western Amazon basin, covered by dense forests, where just 5% of its present day population lives. From their capital, Cusco, the Inca, ruled some 10 million subjects, speaking over 30 different languages. It was a rich city of 150,000 inhabitants, where the pyramidal temples were covered in gold and precious stones, a sight that astonished the first Europeans who marvelled at its architecture and riches. Their empire was covered by a network of roads totalling more than 40,000 kilometres in length. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The above image is an impression of the last Inca Emperor Atahualpa in his regalia, who was captured in the Battle of Cajamarca in 1532. Atahualpa was later executed in Cajamarca on the order of the conquistador Francisco Pizarro. The following year the Spaniard entered and occupied the imperial capital of Cusco and sealed the fate of the Inca Empire. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Peru was also the home to the oldest city in the Americas, the Sacred City of Caral-Supe, the foundation of which dated from 2500BC. The vestiges of the city lies 350 kilometres to the north of Lima, in the Supe Valley, near the Pacific coast. It was first surveyed in 1905 by a German archaeologist, Max Uhle. However, it was not until several decades later did a full-scale archaeological excavation take place, which revealed a vast city complex. The natural formations that mark the site are in fact stepped pyramids, the seat of a complex society with its ritual edifices. In 2000, carbon 14 analysis revealed that Caral dated back to around 3000BC. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | South America and lost civilisations had attracted explorers and adventurers for centuries, in search of the mythical city of Eldorado, starting with the Spanish. In more recent times it was an Englishman, Colonel Percy Fawcett, who ventured into the Amazon forest in search of 'Z' a legendary lost city, which he believed existed somewhere in the uncharted depths of the Mayo Grosso. Fawcett disappeared without a trace, never to be heard of again, leaving behind one of the great exploration mysteries of the 20th century. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He called the Amazon, 'the last great blank space in the world' and made several exploratory expeditions into its uncharted territories, starting in 1906. His exploits made headlines around the world, and in 1916 the Royal Geographical Society awarded him its prestigious Gold Medal for his mapping exploits in the Amazon. Fawcett was fascinated by a Portuguese fortune hunter's 1753 account of a jungle metropolis built in stone of great size and grandeur, and little-by-little became obsessed with seeking out his modern day Eldorado, which he called the city of 'Z.' In 1925, Fawcett was 57 when he set off with his son into the unexplored Mato Grosso in search of Z, accompanied by native guides and pack animals. Forging through the jungle at 15 to 20 kilometres a day. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | His last despatch was dated May 29, 1925. Some said he was dead, others claimed he had gone native and was living in the jungle, or that he was being held prisoner by a tribe of cannibals along the Xingu River. In any case he disappeared without trace never to be heard of again. | | ---|---|--- # 9 # THE HOUSE OF THE GODS IT WAS LATE MORNING when the low clouds lifted and a cluster of monolithic tabletop mountains emerged from the emerald green canopy of the jungle. 'Tepuis,' announced Diaz, 'that's what they are called by the Indians, the house of the gods.' The formations stood 550 metres above the floor of the equatorial forest, 800 metres above sea level, with almost vertical cliffs, topped by a savannah-like vegetation, a unique biotope. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was under their sheer rock faces the first hunter-gatherers to arrive in the region left their trace with one of the greatest concentrations of cave paintings in the Americas. Some 75,000 Palaeolithic paintings, covering the façades of the caves and niches in the rock, 100 metres above the forest. 'Their discovery made anthropological history,' Diaz told them. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | After a march along a jungle trail, enveloped by an astonishing array of flora and fauna, they reached the foot of the rock face. It took another half hour of effort to climb to the shelf, where pausing to get their breath, they discovered the spectacular prehistoric panorama of paintings that decorated the Cerro Azul. A dense and varied mural composed of ochre figures--men, animals and plants, almost 100 metres long and 20 metres high, painted by Neolithic man. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | As they watched the monkeys swing through the canopy in the jungle below, they realised nothing had changed since the time when those ancient men had painted the same kind of monkeys on the rock face. The figures and handprints reminded HG of the paintings she had seen in so many other places, messages across time, from the distant past, from forgotten worlds, where men had once lived in harmony with nature. Thirty years had passed since Carlos Castaño-Uribe, an anthropologist of the Universidad de los Andes and his companions discovered them. At that time the war with the Farc raged and any further expeditions were impossible. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Since the peace agreement with the Farc, the risks were of a different nature, the invasion by big business, and according to Diaz, the pressure caused by the general colonisation by landless campasinos, which he told them promised an apocalyptic future for Colombia's national parks, the habitat of the indigenous peoples, and their treasures. Kyril was marked by the extraordinary similarity not only with the rock paintings in France, but also those of South Africa, Libya, and Indonesia where the latest discoveries included a limestone cave on the island of Sulawesi, where paintings showing human figures hunting animals were dated back 44,000 years. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The images of the Cerro Azul depicted a group of part-human, part-animal figures, known as therianthropes, hunting tapirs, sloths, capybaras, herons, monkeys, turtles, sting-rays, deer, and what appeared to be giant sloths which were generally considered to have already been extinct 11,000 years ago, as well as the enigmatic representations of what were believed to be spears or ropes. The Sulawesi examples of human and animal interactions dated from the Upper Palaeolithic and predated those of Europe by 20,000 years. Sean Cinnsealaigh, from Maynooth University's Department of Anthropology, in Ireland, explained the theory that the painting of anthropomorphic creatures suggested an ability to imagine the supernatural. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The rock paintings recalled those Scott Fitznorman had seen in the Lubang Jeriji Saleh cave in the East Kalimantan province of Borneo, depicting wild cattle, painted with ochre, one of which seemed to have a spear protruding from its flank. Borneo's rock art included thousands of paintings in limestone caves, which were first described by a French explorer, Luc-Henri Fage, and dated to around 40,000 before present. In addition there were the ubiquitous hand stencils, made by spraying ochre paint from the mouth over a hand pressed against the wall. A uranium series analysis was used to fix the date on the calcite crusts formed over the oldest paintings in Borneo, which bore a remarkable resemblance with those in Brazil, when Palaeolithic man started depicting his world. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It confirmed the idea figurative art had emerged in South America at about the same time as it had in Southeast Asia and Europe--where the walls of the Chauvet caves in Ardeche, in France, were covered with charcoal images of horses and rhinos, about 30,000 years old. The oldest rock art found in Spain was associated with Neanderthals, at Caceres, and dated by a uranium-thorium method to more than 64,000 years ago, whilst in South Africa a piece of rock was found bearing an ochre geometric form estimated to be 73,000 years old. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Human beings evolved in a broad ranging habitat where the climatic conditions generally remained within a relatively narrow temperature band. Over time Neanderthals adapted to extreme cold in Europe, whilst in Africa man adapted to a warmer climate. It was in fact easier to survive the cold than extreme heat and humidity once man mastered fire and learned to use animal skins for clothing. 'What determines man's survival when the climate warms,' Kyril warned them, 'is the wet bulb temperature, which measures the combined effect of temperature and humidity, not just the ambient air temperature.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was a scientific fact, human beings, like all mammals, produce metabolic heat generated by the normal functioning of their bodies. Any surplus metabolic heat was evacuated to the surrounding air by radiation, convection and sweating, which helps us maintain our bodies at a constant temperature of 37oC. If the ambient air temperature is above our body temperature, it stands to reason it becomes more difficult to evacuate heat. That's where sweating takes over, when the resulting evaporation of water cools the body, as long as the wet bulb temperature remains below 35oC. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | However, when the wet bulb rises above 35oC and the dry bulb is at body temperature, the humidity present in the air is 85%, and evaporation cannot take place. In these conditions the body temperature rises rapidly and death occurs within a few hours. 'This explains why people living in desertic conditions can stand higher temperatures,' said Kyril, 'because the air in that kind of climate is very dry, which means it has a greater capacity to absorb our sweat.' The danger was greatest in regions, which included North America, Europe and the East Coast of China, where wet bulb temperatures, driven by human activity, were rising fastest, and where, according to research by the American Geophysical Union, by mid-century, all summers would have wet bulb conditions that exceed historical records. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In recent prehistoric times, in certain regions of the planet, such conditions also occurred due to natural and cyclic climatic change, this no doubt contributed to the collapse of early civilisations when conditions became untenable for man, beasts and crops, which was doubtlessly the case on the Pacific facade of South American and parts of the Amazon basin. * * * Since 1978 over 75 million hectares of Amazon rainforest had been lost to the chainsaw, in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana. 'The media has bounced around all kinds of figures concerning deforestation of the Amazon rainforest,' John explained, 'generally accompanied by scare stories of the dramatic effects it could have on the world's climate. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'But, if you look at a map you can see less than half of Brazil is covered by the Amazon rainforest. So you have to be careful. Of course you can see,' Kyril added pointing to a map he'd looked up on his iPhone, 'deforestation is huge, but it is not only in Brazil, look at Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru.' The rate of loss had in fact declined in Brazil after reaching an annual 27,000 square kilometres in 2004. In 2019 it had fallen to under 10,000 square kilometres, still too much considering the pledges made by governments to reverse deforestation and restore trees. The plan to stop world deforestation by 2030, was further away than ever, especially in Latin America, South East Asia and Africa, homes to most of the world's tropical forests. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The problem was accentuated by a vicious circle, climate change contributed to the drying of forests and fires, which in turn released more CO₂ and increased warming. In many countries deforestation was caused by charcoal production, rapid urbanisation in Africa had increased the demand for charcoal. In Madagascar, the Caribbean--especially Haiti and the Dominican Republic, forests were being destroyed at a frighteningly high rate as populations exploded and their only source of cooking fuel was charcoal. It was Africa's most used source of domestic energy, the charcoal economy was a booming business with tree cutters, charcoal burners, transporters, middlemen, agents and financiers were all engaged in literally chopping down the world around them to feed more and more mouths, with demand expected to triple by 2050. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Deforestation in fact was driven by demographics, food demands, agriculture, cooking needs, which contributed 30% of CO₂ emissions, compounding climate change, a phenomena that would take centuries to reverse. | | ---|---|--- # 10 # ANOTHER CRISIS LOOMS PAT KENNEDY WAS HAVING MORE and more difficulty in shaking off the feeling that Hong Kong's future hung in the balance. It was a question that returned almost daily, not only had the protest movement been riding the tiger, but the demonstrators were putting the territory's future as a financial centre in peril. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Certain analysts were convinced Hong Kong was headed for a financial crisis, and not just any cyclic adjustment, but a fully fledged banking crisis. The same kind of meltdown Ireland had experienced during the financial crisis of 2008, when its major banks collapsed, causing the government to step in with a rescue plan and many bankers ending up before their judges charged with multiple financial crimes, manipulation and unprofessional behaviour. After seven months of anti-government protests, the economy was suffering, though strangely enough financial markets had remained stable. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Stocks were trading at near all-time highs, interbank borrowing rates had seen modest increases, and the Hong Kong dollar had even strengthened within its trading band against the US dollar with deposits stable. Not only that but the city's historical indicator, property, was as buoyant as ever. So where was the problem? he asked as if to reassure himself. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It didn't take much reflection, the answer lay on the other side of the border to north, the Mainland where the economy was slowing for the first time since the onset of the global financial crisis. China was facing the transition from an export driven economy to a home based consumer economy, complicated by an ageing population, and against the background of an ongoing trade war, which wasn't about go away, even if Trump was not re-elected. It wouldn't take much to push China's economy into recession with serious consequences for INI. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat remembered how Michael Fitzwilliams, his mentor and predecessor, had avoided the worst of the Irish banking crisis through diversification, and how he himself had engineered the merger with the Amsterdam Bank, since absorbed, and then opening into Russia with Sergei Tarasov, and lastly Hong Kong where he now headed the financial empire he had helped build and inherited. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat's passion for history had taught him many things and perhaps the butterfly effect was a good metaphor for explaining certain phenomena, the idea that small causes can result in great changes, in for example the weather. Edward Lorenz, an American mathematician and meteorologist, was the founder of modern chaos theory, focusing on the behaviour of dynamic systems, highly sensitive to initial conditions, popularised by the idea that the effect of a butterfly flapping its wings could result in a tornado some weeks later in some very distant place. The same thing applied to history, who could have thought the fall of the ancient city of Byzantium would profoundly change the history of Europe and the world for the next six centuries to come. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | When the stronghold, the last vestige of the ancient Roman Empire, was captured by the Ottoman Turks, the cord that linked the Orient to the West--the Silk Road, was cut. An event of huge historical importance, one that launched the age of discovery with Vasco da Gama setting out to discover an alternative route to India and the Spice Islands. The explorer was followed by Columbus and Magellan, then the conquistadors, Cortes and Pizarro, who marched on and conquered the Aztec and Inca empires It was the reason why, half a millennia later the exploration of space had started in earnest, why China was laying the foundations for its Belt and Road Initiative, why the great powers raced to be the first to develop AI, and why Trump targeted Huawei. |