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100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | ---|---|--- # 7 # A FEMINIST MOVEMENT IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL Paris morning when Camille and Anna met for lunch near the Marche d'Aligre. The sound of children's voices echoed from the garden square opposite La Salle a Manger, a small restaurant on rue Antoine Vollon. The trees were green and the temperature was a balmy 25 degrees with a slight breeze swaying the branches. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The story of Marche d'Aligre, one of the oldest markets in Paris, went back to the 17th century, when the district attracted furniture makers many of whom came from Germany and the Low Countries, commissioned by the court of Louis XIV during the building of the Chateau de Versailles. It was now a mixture of gentrified residences and working class apartments, a fashionable district, where Parisian bobos and North African immigrants mingled in the street market, each frequenting their own cafes and restaurants, where menus offered anything from a couscous at 10 euros to matured beef at 70 euros a kilo. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | On the other side of the square, Camille's elegant Haussemanian apartments overlooked the spring greenery, a convenient two minutes from the market where a kaleidoscope of scenes met Anna's eye, so different from her home in San Sebastian. They passed a street organist, stallholders selling bric-a-brac, second-hand books and clothes, the open air fruit and vegetable market to the 19th century covered market. Past the sidewalk cafes, situated between quality bakers, butchers, wine merchants and cheese shops, that overflowed with chattering locals mixed with tourists taking a pause to enjoy an expresso, cappuccino, a beer or soft drink, watching the colourful comings and goings. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Parisian life was far from its troubled outer suburbs and regions, where change was already felt, where militant movements played havoc with Macron's centrist government and where yet another round of demonstrations was planned that same afternoon--this time it was a feminist movement. An easy decadence reigned in Macronie, as certain media commentators had named their world. Paris was different from London, its twin--a city where its population had been banished from the centre. Paris intramurous was alive with its dense population, its quarters and villages, though beyond the peripherique--a circular freeway that separated the city from its inner suburbs, many so-called cities had been transformed into no-go zones where a vast new population struggled to forge an identity. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | After lunch they headed towards Saint Michel where the march was due to start. The temperature had risen to a very pleasant 27 degrees, strangely the streets seemed half-deserted of traffic. Past Notre Dame, wounded, but still alive. On the corner between boulevard des Gobelins and boulevard Arago, they heard the sound of loudspeakers, the banging of drums, slogans shouted as the marchers already en route approached. The cortege was dense and crowds of onlookers thronged around the Esplanade Leo Hamon where several avenues converged. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The marchers paused for some reason as the antiriot police regrouped and moved in different directions. Without realising it, they and the crowd of onlookers around them, were encircled by a battalion of CRS, Republican Guards. They were trapped, unable to advance or retreat. Suddenly the tension rose several notches, the cortege concertinaed, a loud explosion rang out, spooking the crowd, resonating off the buildings, some kind of firework. An order rung out, 'Helmets!', the CRS geared up for trouble. The marchers started to move again. The two women, ringed in on all sides, had no choice but to follow the cortege towards place d'Italie. The crowd was dense, certain looked tough, others wore masks, there was little doubt there would be trouble. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Soon clouds of tear gas filled the sky, the acrid fumes bringing tears to their eyes. They slipped through an opening and made their way towards rue Mouffetard where they found a cafe to wipe their tears and get something to drink. 'That's really toxic,' complained Camille. 'Did you know that as you exhale your breath contains 40,000 parts per million of CO2,'said Anna. Camille looked at her, surprised by the question. 'That's 100 times more than in the air around us,' said Anna. 'Like the exhaust from your car, and there's over seven billion of us doing it, plus our pets and domestic animals.' Camille wondered what it had to do with the demonstrators. 'The climate, emissions!' 'Oh, I get you.' Anna smiled she was relieved that her French was not that bad. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Well where did it all start, I mean CO2 emissions, apart from humans that is,' asked Camille. Anna hesitated, 'Well, in 1712,' she said recollecting the story, 'if I remember rightly it started with an English blacksmith, named Thomas Newcomen, who built a kind of steam engine in Dartmouth, that's in England, he designed it to pump flood water from a coal mine in Staffordshire. 'Soon other mine owners were queuing up to buy his steam engines. They were driven by coal, brought by sailing ships from the north of England, where coal mine owners soon became interested in the new invention.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Anna told her it was not long before smaller, more efficient engines were built with wheels to run on rails to carry coal from the mines to the ships. These engines were soon powering passenger trains, steam ships and mills manufacturing all kinds of goods. It was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which changed the lives of billions of human beings and the planet on which they lived, to the point scientists and philosophers saw it as the start of a new geological event--the Anthropocene. The Industrial Revolution took place in England, where coal was readily available. The importance of coal was it produced produced ten times more energy per kilo than wood, a raw material man had used for fire since the dawn of humanity. Camille wiped her eyes, she was lost. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Well the energy locked in wood and coal was derived from the energy received from the sun, the former by living trees, the latter from dead plant matter buried, accumulated and fossilized in the earth countless millions of years before man's existence. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'That's subject to the iron laws of thermodynamics,' she insisted. 'The first is simple--energy cannot be destroyed or created, the second--the irreversibility of natural processes, more complicated, but can be explained by the fact that heat energy cannot by converted 100% into mechanical energy, that is to say the energy that cannot be converted into work, this 'waste' energy, known as entropy, is discarded for example into the atmosphere, part of which is our CO2 and is the cause of the greenhouse effect. Then thirdly residual entropy, but I won't go into that.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Newcomen's invention was therefore the source of wealth, the growth of population and climate climate change, giving birth to the Anthropocene, perhaps the beginning of a new evolutionary process, the end of evolution by natural selection, which after 3 billion years gave birth to mankind, human civilization and extraordinary change. 'Thank God we'll be getting out of Paris,' sighed Camille who hadn't understood much of the thermodynamics lesson, technical stuff wasn't her field. | | ---|---|--- # 8 # COLLAPSOLOGY |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | ALL OF A SUDDEN PAT KENNEDY WAS talking about collapsology. John wondered what he had been reading, who he had been talking to. Collapsology was a new science, a school of thought, or to John's mind, a pseudo science, one that had attracted a lot of new adepts, especially from Save the Planet movements and the ecosphere. The origin, as far as Pat's interest was concerned, commenced when his team had hauled aboard Las Indias, the treasures from the wreck of the Espiritu Santo, a Spanish galleon, off the coast of Colombia the previous year, amongst the treasures was an extraordinary Maya mask. The mask, carved out of jade, led Pat Kennedy to Guatemala and Belize and the discovery of the Maya and their demise. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Of course his interest in archaeology went further back, but the Maya and the collapse of their civilisation had raised many more questions in his mind, not just from an academic point of view, but as a reference, a tool, one that would allow him to interpret the future. How would today's society evolve, how would his life be affected by change, and in particular that of his banking empire, the existence of which hinged on the continued prosperity of the modern world. It was not a simple question of economics, dollars and cents, but how different crises could impact civilisation--natural events, war, disease, famine and societal change. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The development and collapse of the Maya in the Southern Lowlands of their world--over a span of approximately 1,400 years, was a field of study of great interest, as parallels were drawn by many specialists who linked the collapse to the depletion of natural resources. Models had been developed relating to the state of the Maya lands, populations and workers, many of whom were engaged in intensive agriculture and the building of monumental palaces, cultural and religious centres. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The causes were probably due to an accumulation of factors, which Pat linked to collapsology, a school of thought developed by Pablo Servigne and Raphael Stevens in 2015, who were in a sense whistle blowers and warned of a convergence of crises--climatic, ecological, biological and economic, which together formed the spectre of imminent systemic collapse. Climate change, pollution, the sixth great extinction, were the plagues that had descended on the planet, and were seen by collapsonauts as precursors of the coming disaster. It was an idea that was starting to take hold in the popular mind, and the growing possibility that it could happen soon. A movement was born and soon collapsonauts as they were called were alerting the world to the urgency of changing its ways. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The seriousness of the hypothesis was underlined by an article that appeared in Nature--one the most renowned of scientific journals, that commenced with the heading: 'New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding.' With little effort John found an article published in October 2019, written by Scott A. Kulp and Benjamin H. Strauss of Climate Central, a group of scientists who researched and reported the facts on climate change. They concluded that up to 630 million people lived on land below projected annual flood levels for 2100, and up to 340 million for mid-21st century, versus roughly 250 million at present. They estimated one billion people now occupied land less than 10 metres above current high tide lines, including that 250 million below one metre. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | This was based on the fact that the global mean sea level rose 15 centimetres in the 20th century as a result of climate change, and it would rise 50-60 centimetres more by 2100 unless 'sharp, immediate cuts to carbon emissions were made'. More precisely, between 1900 and 1990 sea levels rose between 1.2 millimetres and 1.7 millimetres each year on average. By 2000, that rate had increased to about 3.2 millimetres each year and the rate in 2020 was estimated at 3.5 millimetres a year. In a worst case scenario that figure could be as high as 2 metres by the end of the century, exposing coastal populations to grave risks. The methods used DEM--digital elevation models, was based on high precision airborne and satellite measurement systems. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The consequences meant coastal communities worldwide would have to prepare themselves for much more difficult futures than anticipated today. Recent work suggested that the rise of sea-levels this century could force large-scale migration away from unprotected coastlines, redistributing population densities and putting great pressure on inland areas. Worst still another article entitled: 'Climate tipping points--too risky to bet against', concluded kairos was imminent. The loss of the Amazon rainforest or the West Antarctic ice sheet, previously thought to be a low possibility, were now more probable and could cause long-term irreversible changes to the planet's biophysical system with dramatic consequences for humanity. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The authors, six very serious scientists, led by Timothy M. Lenton of the Global Systems Institute in the UK, concluded, we were in a climate emergency, as the tipping point could be passed by just 1°C and 2°C of warming, despite the goal of the 2015 Paris agreement to set limits to well below 2°C. They believed ice collapse was already near tipping point in the West Antarctica, the East Antarctic and Greenland. It seemed like an alarmist report, on the other hand, damage to Australia's Great Barrier Reef was ongoing and very visible, and would represent a profound loss of marine biodiversity and the livelihoods of countless people. The same went for the Amazon rainforest, where the tipping point could occur at a loss of just 20% of forest-cover. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | These changes could destabilize the West African monsoon, triggering drought in Africa's Sahel region, drying the Amazon, disrupting the East Asian monsoon and causing heat to build up in the Southern Ocean, which in turn would accelerate Antarctic ice losses. An existential threat to civilization was taking shape, a dark shadow over the future of humanity, a state of planetary emergency, as the clock ticked away, only seconds from midnight and doomsday. Little wonder Pat was drawing up his options, he had nothing to lose and everything to gain, he instinctively sensed danger, and trusted his instinct which had paid off more than once. | | ---|---|--- # 9 # ORIGINS |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | WHEN HUNTER-GATHERERS LIVED in the climatic climax forest, they lived in community with the plants and creatures around them, a state of perfect equilibrium. But when they invented better tools, little-by-little that equilibrium was upset as men remodelled the world around them, assuring their families of more and better food, clothing to protect them from the elements, building homes to shelter them at night and protect them from predators. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | At some point, early human ancestors invented fire, and in burning wood they released the energy stored in that wood into the atmosphere, which was of little consequence, since in prehistoric times the total number of humans on the planet did not exceed about one million, and their impact on their environment was negligible compared to natural forest fires and volcanic activity. When hunter-gatherers turned to agriculture, around 10,000BC, the population of the planet grew as farmers started to produce a surplus of food. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | At first growth was slow, then with the dawn of civilisation, which appeared in the Middle East about 6,000 years ago, it accelerated, and by the time the Roman Empire was established the population of the planet had reached 300 million. With the Renaissance, there was a spurt in growth, then with the 19th century Industrial Revolution, it went ballistic, and a century later with the Consumer Society population, growth became exponential. Today, when we burn 3 litres of gasoline in our family car the by-product of combustion is in the order of 10 kilos of CO2 and other emissions, since the carbon present in the gasoline combines with the oxygen present in the atmosphere. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | That multiplied by the world's 1.2 billion vehicles, in 2020, 98% of which are powered by refined petroleum, each burning on average 1,500 litres of fuel a year, adds up to some 6 billion tons of CO2 and other emissions per year. By 2040, the number of motor vehicles on the roads of our planet will reach 2 billion, according to institutions, such as the IEA. The role played by our atmosphere is that of maintaining the temperature of the planet at a level that sustains the flora and fauna living on it by capturing the sun's rays. If the quantity of CO2 rises then so will the temperature, which is what is happening when the carbon stored in fossil fuels is released into the atmosphere during combustion. As our population continues to grow and living standards rise, the more CO2 we produce. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Reducing the human population of our planet should be our first priority, ZGP, but it comes with a conundrum. If we were to reduce the population rapidly, for example cutting births by 50%, so as to avoid the doomsday predictions made by scientists and economists, then the population would start to age rapidly, the older decile would start to die quicker, with the result there would be fewer and fewer workers available to feed and care for the non-productive population. Now, this is not a simple hypothesis, we only have to look at Japan to observe the effect of falling births and the problem of caring for a rapidly ageing population. Japan's solution has been technology and more notably robotisation, which raises the question of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and humanity's future place on our planet. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | As for the rest of the planet, countries and continents, like India and Africa, have not the resources of Japan. Thus population reduction for a large part of the planet is a non-starter, as is the idea that closing down a couple of dozen polluting mega-businesses would solve the problem of global warming, though it would occupy the time and minds of a good number of disorientated eco-warriors and Champagne socialists in London, New York or Paris when they are at loose ends on Sundays. Of course those eco-warriors like to go for big business and the rich, they are easy targets. Anyone pointing a finger at overpopulation and the developing world were seen as apologists for eugenics and all kinds of other evils. Population control has been and is taboo. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Of course the rich could clean up their game and big business could cut back on fossil fuels, but change of technology is long. Clean nuclear fusion technology is still decades away and has been in development for more than half a century. Replaceable energy required new storage technologies and vast investments, not forgetting the budgetary needs of oil producing nations for whom oil and gas exports are synonymous with survival. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | As it stands, oil and gas rich nations are poised to pump an additional seven million barrels a day into the market over the next decade to meet the needs of developed and developing nations. A projection that was in total contradiction with the objectives of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had targeted a rise of 1.5ºC or less through a planned reduction in carbon emissions. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Those against fossil fuels saw producers pumping more barrels out of the ground for more profits, but what would happen if they stopped, was there an alternative, and if there was could it provide the energy needed to pull two or three billion poor people out of their misery, and, provide for the two billion additional mouths to feed over the next two or three decades as the world population grows to 10 billion? Should we stop pumping or face extreme climate disruption--heatwaves, duststorms, hurricanes, forest fires and floods? Was that the price to pay to save the poor from hunger? |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Was it possible to introduce sufficient renewable energy sources to offset the need for greater fossil fuel production and reach zero emissions by 2050? Who knows? The fact is no one is really interested, considering the top 50 fossil fuel companies plan to produce a total of 225 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent during the period leading up to that point in time. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The capitalist system was driven by growth and profits, it was perfectly natural as capital is derived from profits and growth meant future profits and capital to invest. It perpetuated a system described by economists over the last two centuries, from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, Keynes and Galbraith, and the oft quoted favourite of modern media intellectuals, Thomas Piketty, who focused his theme on wealth and income inequality. Save the Planet luvvies spent their time pointing at multinational business--energy firms, pharmaceutical giants and big tech firms, it was easy, words cost nothing, media appearances were worth their weight in gold. As comedian Ricky Gervais quipped at a Golden Globes award ceremony: 'If ISIS started a streaming service you'd call your agent wouldn't you.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Action was much more difficult, feeding the hungry in distant lands even more so, considering the US and Europe could not even protect their own homeless, the downtrodden and poor in their great cities. It wasn't for the want of trying--communism, socialism, nationalism and all the other isms had failed. Why? That is difficult to say. The rich and the poor, the weak and the strong, were part of nature. Oh yes, you can complain, but that's the way it has always been, and probably will be, in spite of Marx and other philosophers' suggestions to the contrary. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | For one thing there has always been too many people, because it was always better to have more than too few. In early human families the loss of a young man or woman was a disaster for a small family group. In agricultural society hands counted, and over the course of the industrial revolution factories demanded more and more labour, even child labour. Today, now that the labour needs of agriculture have shrunk to a fraction of those in the past, factories have become automated and computers run our society, is it not time to reduce the number of humans and take advantage of the bounty knowledge and technology offers us? |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The New York Times liked describing big oil and big anything as ruthless new versions of robber-baron capitalism, but the so-called victims were happy in their air-conditioned gas guzzling SUVs with their connected GPS navigation systems and smartphones. It was a Faustian pact and the price to pay was high, starting with climate change, and according to some the individual the loss of freedom. John Francis warned Pat the world economy was sleepwalking into a new financial crisis. He was echoing the words of the former Bank of England governor Mervyn King, who had headed the bank at the time the last economic crisis broke in 2008. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Little had changed since then and the risk of another economic and financial crisis threatened the fragile stability of Western democracy and its financial system, weakened by low interest rates, low growth and increasing political turmoil as politicians were caught in a cycle of indecision and electoral revolt that seemed to be spreading like wildfire. From Hong Kong to the Middle East, from London to Washington, and from Mexico to Chile. A situation that gave force to Mervyn King's phrase, 'Ripples on the surface of our politics have become breaking waves as the winds of change have gained force.' Words that were heavy with meaning as the spectre of stagnation threatened the planet. The least unforeseen event could bring the system to a skidding halt. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was time to imagine something different, to abandon the worn idea of perpetual growth, which, to John Francis, was based on consumption and an evergrowing population, a system that was deeply flawed and very clearly unsustainable. He believed in the unlimited possibility of new technologies, which promised a better life for men and women, but refused the unrestrained growth of populations which would eventually submerge the planet under its own mountain of waste and result in the wanton destruction of the natural environment. He believed in Cornucopia and the kind of self-discipline that allowed each and everyone to share the benefits of our world and enjoy longer and better lives. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Over the course of the last decade, vast swathes of forest have been cut down, replaced by sugar cane, oil palm plantations and soya bean crops, to produced pulp and paper, and to raise cattle. For what? To feed hundreds of millions of men, women and children in Asia and South America and to provide them with school books and newspapers. Hadn't Europeans and Americans done the same thing? Reports fell with increasing frequency on John's desk at the Fitzwilliams Foundation that spoke of agribusiness as the principle cause of deforestation in countries like Brazil. Those reports rarely spoke of the one billion or so chickens, the dozens of millions of pigs, raised, slaughtered and consumed in the UK alone each year, and in each and every other developed country on a proportional scale. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | And demonising men like Bolsonaro made for a good distraction and better press. | | ---|---|--- # 10 # ST KYRIL KYRIL KYRISTOFOROS HAD BROUGHT WITH him a memory stick containing his successful documentary film Rainforest which he invited Pat and his friends to view at their leisure. Kyristoforos was looking for a new project and talked about the Amazon rainforest, the fate of which had become the centre of attention of a host of eco-warriors and fellow travellers of all ilks, including luvvies concerned about their image, and politicians campaigning for re-election. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat saw it differently. A project that fitted in with his own plans, a platform from which he could cultivate relations with the leaders of the countries that converged in the Amazon lowlands adjoining the Andes would be of interest. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Later that evening, when Anna and Dee returned home, they joked Kyristoforos was more that a little Christ-like in appearance and in manner--Hollywoodian, smooth, good looking, in a word commercial. He had exuded benevolence, preached for the poor, for Africa, the climate, though they noted he had omitted one theme which he usually reserved for more radical followers--capitalism. He empathised with the downtrodden, it was easy after all he would never be one of them, he was God, whose son had sacrificed his life for them, not difficult considering with a snap of the fingers he could rise again, and he did. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Dee was a rationalist and when it came down to hard reality, he saw Brazil and its leader facing the problems of economic governance in a resource rich land, where the future promised great things if managed with enlightened vision. Bolsonaro was not a demon, he was the democratically elected leader of a sovereign state, chosen by a majority of voters to lead them to the future he promised in his electoral campaign. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The Brazilian president had many things in common with Pat Kennedy. He did not belong to Brazil's elite class. Born in 1955, he commenced school in a small town near Sao Paulo, then at high school he became an army cadet, like many boys of his age and background in Brazil, he then attended military academy and graduated in 1977. He served in the Field Artillery Group, in the Mato Grosso do Sul, then entered the Army Physical Training School in Rio de Janeiro, before serving in a Paratrooper Field Artillery Group with the rank of captain. Contrary to the image projected he never reached a higher rank and his career was neither glorious nor that of a strong-arm right-wing oriented colonel. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The event that marked his otherwise unremarkable career was his denunciation of poor pay and conditions in the army in the press, which got him 15 days detention. This was followed by a rocambolesque affair in which he was accused of planning to plant bombs in military units. At first found guilty, he was then acquitted by the Brazilian Supreme Military Court. By that time he was 33 and it was time for a new career. In 1988 he was elected as a city councillor in Rio de Janeiro, then two years later to Congress, where he remained until 2018, a period during which he represented up to seven different political parties in Brazil's turbulent political system. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Then with 30 years as an elected representative of the people behind him he could argue he was an eminently experienced candidate for presidential office. Bolsonaro's platform was based on conservative values and law and order, in a vast, rich, multiracial and historically turbulent country, where for many Brazilians crime and corruption were part of daily life, where poverty affected a large part of the population, where inequality was rife, where the favelas of its great cities contrasted with the gated residences of their wealthy districts. He was remarked in 1993, when in a speech in parliament he declared: 'We will never solve our serious national problems with this irresponsible democracy'. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He made enemies and was victim of an attempted assassination--stabbed in the lower abdomen by a protester who claimed to be a supporter of Lula during a political rally in Juiz de Fora. With his formative years as a trained soldier, he was inevitably marked by discipline, this together with his conversion to the evangelical Assembly of God. His baptism in May 2016, in the Jordan River in Israel, made for a rather upright personality with rigid views on behaviour and life in general, disapproving of more fashionable views on sexuality, drugs, human rights and climate change, opting for law and order as his principal platform, to combat rising criminality and violence. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat Kennedy's own fulgurant rise was anything but predestined. It would have surprised those who saw Sir Patrick's imposing figure standing at the head of a powerful international banking corporation, to learn he had followed a similar path to many of the world's other 2,000 plus billionaires, most who owed their success to a serendipitous rise from ordinariness to the summit of human possession. John liked to tell that those who believed success was due to hard work and intelligence they were wrong, though he admitted it helped. Pat had worked hard, and not only was he intelligent, he was as sharp as a fox, with more lives than a cat. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | His good fortune was to have met Michael Fitzwilliams, a banker, at the head of an old family controlled establishment in Dublin, who had recognised not only Pat's talents, but also that indefinable quality that few possessed, he was blessed with good fortune, landing on his feet whatever the situation, call it what you like, but Pat always came up smelling of roses. Michael instrumentalised Pat's Karma to his own ends, unconsciously perhaps, in any case what Michael had not foreseen was his own fall and tragic end, which left the way open for his second in command, Pat Kennedy, to succeed him. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat's likes, men such as Jack Ma or Mark Zuckerberg, had certainly many qualities, but nothing that justified their incredible good fortune. It was clear, hard work had nothing to do with getting very rich, otherwise there would be countless billionaires. By now many of you know Pat Kennedy, Sir Patrick to the media, a mega-rich capitalist living in Hong Kong with his wife Lili and their two children, that's when he wasn't jetting around the planet on business, or meeting the powerful on his yacht. What separated him from most other bankers was the fact he owned a large chunk of his bank, the INI Banking Corporation, he was not just an appointed CEO. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat had come a long way in a couple of decades, starting in Limerick, Ireland, where he grew up, the only child of a modest Catholic family. At that time the Catholic Church, the clergy and superstition reigned in many Irish homes. If one thing had marked Pat Kennedy, it was his schooling in Limerick City, where as a young lad he had attended a school run by the Christian Brothers, an education that was now a fading memory, as the few Brothers that remained were frail old men who had long ceased to serve their vocation--that of providing an 'Irish' education. The order, which had wielded extraordinary power, was now less than a shadow of itself, the dying vestige of an Irish order that had struck terror into many a boy's heart. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat never forgot the serious beating he took for something he didn't do, administered by one of the Brothers. Their saving grace was the fact that in spite of their terrible reputation they had fought for Ireland and of the 15 heroes who had been executed for leading the Irish Uprising in 1916, seven had once been Brothers. Hadn't Eamon de Valera, Ireland's first president, said his country, 'owes more than it probably will ever realise to the Christian Brothers.' Perhaps, in any case many a famous Irishman owed his education to the Brothers, even James Joyce, who attended the O'Connell Christian Brothers' School on North Richmond Street, be it for a short period, before going on to Belvedere College in 1893. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | In more modern times the Irish writer Colm Toibin, who hailed from Liam Clancy's hometown, Enniscorthy, went to the Christian Brothers. The congregation was founded by an Irish merchant, Edmund Rice, to provide a Catholic education at the beginning of the 19th century, after it had been outlawed in Ireland, with the accent on an explicitly Catholic and patriotic education, one which went far in forming Irish identity. Pat was lucky he had not been a boarder, one of those lads who were woken at 7am for mass, followed by a spartan breakfast, though lunch was somewhat more substantial with potatoes and meat, and supper just as frugal as breakfast. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Sex, not to mind sexual abuse, was a taboo subject at home in those days, though in the dormitories there were dark murmurings and certain prefects were best avoided, however Pat had never had any personal experience of that kind of abuse, and apart from the occasional unexpected whack, he saw his time at the Brothers, in retrospective, as a useful though hard passage that served him well once he started out on life away from home, though he never forgot the fear that reigned during his early years nor the unnecessary brutality he witnessed. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He described himself to his friends as a lapsed Catholic, though his character was marked forever by his religious upbringing, and whilst he respected the sanctity of the Church, he no longer believed, with a few exceptions that is, which he explained to himself as superstition. The traces were still there, Pat did not drink, did not run after women, was generally free from sin, though he did have one or two vices. The first, if it could be called a vice, was his insatiable curiosity, the second was money, rather the pursuit of wealth, which was a good quality for a banker, as was the absence the aforementioned sins. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat Kennedy was nominal head of what the press had baptised the 'Clan', a group of friends linked by their Irish origins and their wealth, which according to John, had increased by around 20% in 2019. Collectively theirs was worth more than the wealth of many small nations, that could however boast of their numbers, but who needed mouths to feed today? The Clan counted no more than dozen members and their families, who like Pat were concerned about their future in a troubled world, not their immediate future, but just in case, like an insurance policy. They had often spoken of the dangers that could threaten their way of life, one they had had the good fortune to have inherited, worked for, or attained by pure serendipity. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The idea of a safe haven germinated, one far from the multiple dangers that stalked the world, and in particular their kind, the wealthy. Together with John Francis, Pat envisaged a number of scenarios, analysing and eliminating those that did not hold up to their survival criteria. Finally two were retained, including the proposal put forward by Tom Barton, a site in the Colombian Andes, far from the outside world, bathed in the eternal spring of the Altiplano. A new city unlike those smart wired models imagined by hi-tech futurists, who gave more thought to flying cars, gadgets and entertainment, than where energy and water came from, or food production and waste management. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat named their project Salvator Mundi, a city closer to those of the ancient world, perhaps Pompeii or Knossos, cities rich in culture, of human dimensions, but with more humanity than modern society, with theatres, forums, baths, gardens, libraries, art and where, in spite of humanist dreams, inequality would not yet be totally banished and in all truth would probably never be. Mens sana in corpore sano, Pat liked to tell himself |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The idea of being followed by cameras everywhere would perhaps work in an authoritarian society, but that is not what they wanted, their idea was to improve society, eliminate poverty and inequality, one where peer pressure ensured social order, like in small island societies, such as Palau and Micronesia in the Pacific, where it was coupled with easy living, plenitude and stability. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | What harmed the quality of life was overpopulation, numbers greater than that which a given set of rules and a fixed ecosystem could sustain. With creeping pollution and the erosion of natural resources--water, animal and plant life, and the uncontrolled growth of populations, many ancient societies had been unable to resist the shock of cyclic climatic change, as archaeological and paleontological evidence had shown time and time again. Pompeii and Knossos were destroyed by natural phenomena, but the disappearance of other cities and brilliant civilisations was now linked to the unsustainability of resources, as climate went through its perpetual cyclic changes, bringing with it drought and famine. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The most renowned was that of the Bronze Age and the rise of Mesopotamian civilisations, the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires, which like other defunct civilisations--the Khmers with their capital at Angkor Wat, the Maya, and that of the Indus Valley, were hit by natural events, namely climatic variations, evidenced by destruction layers--uncovered by archaeologists, some independent of human action, others witnessing strife linked to the social upheaval, when civilisations were unable to meet the challenge caused by changes in their natural environment accompanied by persistent droughts that hastened socio-economic pressure and the subsequent stresses that led to war and migration. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat was unfamiliar with the term destruction layer, but it wasn't difficult to imagine and Anna Basurko filled him in on the principals of archaeological stratums. Destruction meant fire, looting, wanton killing, bones, broken artefacts, abandoned weapons and occasionally gold, silver and jewellery lost or forgotten in the panic caused by earthquakes, eruptions or enemy pillage. These were the signs of collapse or invasion, especially when higher layers carried evidence of different cultures, identified by pottery and other recognisable vestiges. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The evidence was there and it was massive at countless archaeological sites from Greece to Egypt and the Black Sea to the Indian Ocean, leaving a trail of Bronze Age death and destruction spread over a period of one and a half centuries, as was confirmed by pollen in sediment cores from the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee that pointed to periods of severe drought which coincided with dates linked to the start of collapse. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was a grim warning of what was to come, when the next cycle of change commenced, whether it was caused by mechanistic events--solar activity variations, orbital eccentricity, volcanic eruption, or ahistoricism--the tendency to be unconcerned with history or historical events, on the part of governments coupled with uncontrolled human activity, all of which could lead to climatic events in the form of extreme weather and rising seas. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | As the boundaries between scientific disciplines overlapped and merged, biologists, geologists and atmospheric scientists worked together to unravel the complex history of the planet, new scientific thinking emerged and warned environmental and evolutionary change occurred much more suddenly and faster than that enshrined in gradualist orthodoxy, the theory which had dominated scientific thought over the two previous centuries. Only those prepared would survive. Pat's bank, INI, ran itself, as do most large organisations, societies that functioned with mindless determination, like the termite colonies on the plains of Africa. His role was that of a figurehead, looking into the distance, steering his business empire through the reefs and shoals that stalked the unwary, a steady hand at the wheel. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | He saw his role as having his finger on the pulse of the world, not pouring over balance sheets and reports, he had shovels full of managers and accountants to do that, good men and women. He was the captain of a leading multinational investment bank and financial services institution, headquartered in Hong Kong, a well oiled machine, providing services to countless clients, businesses, as well as caring for the wealth of privileged high worth individuals through its private banking arm, investing in the future through a network of branches spread across Asia, Europe and the Americas. | | ---|---|--- # 11 # THE DISINHERITED |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'THERE ARE MANY DISINHERITED peoples struggling for survival across the globe,' HG told Camille. 'They're not poor, they're culturally rich, living in harmony with the natural world, not some kind of noble savages. Harrison's girl, HG, as Scott Fitznorman and her friends called her, was a long time supporter of IWGIA, the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, an NGO founded in 1968 to defend the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin. In the 19th century, HG's family had founded the renowned trading company Harrison's at Kota Kinabulu in Sabah, then part of Raja Brooks' curious empire on the north-east point of Borneo. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | HG was very familiar with the struggle of ethnic minorities in Borneo, herself she counted Kadzans amongst her very mixed ancestry. North Borneo was now part of Malaysia, a modern country, where the last tragic nomadic people, the Batek, were forced from their lands by the greed of miners and loggers. Their homelands in the forests of Peninsula Malaysia, south of the Thai border, had been put to the chainsaw to make way for oil palm plantations and manganese mines. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The few remaining Batek hunter-gatherers had told HG the tragic story of how their lands had been encroached on, transformed by loggers, their forest destroyed, their environment poisoned, and how they had then been forcefully transferred, sedentarised in slum-like settlement areas by government, living in misery and the loss of their traditions and way of life. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The Batek were one of the tribes of Malaysia's 200,000 indigenous Orang Asli, the 'original people', who lived in Peninsula Malaysia, an Australo-Papuan people, a vestige of the very first wave of peoples to leave Africa, who arrived many thousands of years ago, a distinct, indigenous people, different from the Malays who arrived in more recent history, or the Chinese and Indians introduced by the British colonial authorities to work in their tea and rubber plantations. The Batek were hunter-gatherers who had lived in symbiosis with the natural environment, like the Indians of Brazil, or the peoples of Niu Guini, and like many such peoples they were victims of forced relocalisation and were prey to religious movements. 'What constitutes a people?' asked Camille. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Well you'd have to ask Levi Strauss or Noam Chomsky,' replied HG. 'They're Jews?' 'Yes and the Jews have spent 3,000 years trying to figure out who they are.' 'They're dead?' 'Who?' 'Strauss and Chomsky....' 'You could ask Dan Briscoe,' said HG in a more tender tone. 'He's an ethnologist-anthropologist. Irish, Jewish by the way. He's with the Fyssen Foundation here in Paris, studied at University College, London.' Camille looked interested. 'Lives in Paris, not far from Bastille, near you in the 12th arrondissement, that's when he's not off somewhere studying the last hunter-gatherers, at the other end of the world--isolated tropical forests, South America, Equatorial Africa or South East Asia.' 'Oh.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Yes, we should never forget Darwin's words, Homo sapiens are very much part of the natural world, and perhaps our brains are simply not designed to solve the problems facing us now. Have you read The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy?' 'No.' 'Well, an alien civilisation builds a supercomputer named Deep Thought to calculate the 'Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything', which took 7½ million years to compute.' 'And what was the answer?' '42.' '42?' 'Yes, 42, then Deep Thought pointed out that the answer was meaningless because the beings who instructed it never actually knew what the question was.' 'I see. Perhaps AI would know what it meant.' 'Perhaps.' There was a silence. Then both they laughed. 'We can met Dan if you like.' 'Why not.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | * * * Camille expected to meet some old fogey, instead Dan Briscoe not only looked like Brad Pitt, he was also charming, and with the same kind of soft Irish accent as Liam's. 'Soon there will be no more original peoples,' he told Camille and Pat Kennedy, 'they will disappear, forgotten in muddy rubbish strewn villages, dressed in recycled clothes, probably evangelised, unemployed, dependant on handouts and suffering from all the diseases of civilization after their homelands have been turned over to loggers, miners and plantation owners. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'On the other hand,' he added more positively, 'many are attracted by civilisation, and who are we do condemn them to reservations, tourist attractions. Life in the forest is hard when food is scarce, when illness or accidents strikes. Then, when the forest people meet with civilisation, they inevitably covet its advantages, food, tools, clothes, medicines and education.' Camille described Kyril's project, along the lines of Al Gore's documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, which had been a planetary success in 2006, part of the former American Vice President's campaign to educate people about global warming. Pat remember the media hype, but at the time he had had other things to worry about than the state of the planet. 'It grossed more than 50 million dollars,' she told Pat. 'And its budget?' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'One and a half million.' Pat raised his eyebrows. 'He presented it more than one thousand times at conferences.' 'Who?' 'Al Gore.' 'But you can't do the same thing, I mean about the climate.' 'Kyril's film won't be about the climate.' 'So he told me.' 'That's good, it's about the Indians, the indigenous people of the Amazon. He's still looking for sponsors.' 'Yes, that's what I understand?' he said innocently. He'd watched Rainforest, twice, and he'd been impressed. 'It's a great opportunity, on the footsteps of Casement.' 'Why not,' he replied. 'Let's speak with him again.' | | ---|---|--- # 12 # THE ANDES A WEEK LATER THEY MET Kyril again for dinner when he outlined the plan for his documentary film on the indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest, the uncontacted peoples. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat and Kyril were on the same wave length, they knew that time was short, politicians paid lip service to the pleas of ecologists and scientists. Leaders such as Macron liked to organise conferences, make declarations, proclaim themselves as reformers, but action was less than slow, especially when the next elections were in view. On the question of sponsorship Pat Kennedy agreed, on one condition--exclusivity. Liam Clancy would have the role of executive producer with his firm Cinestudios. Kyril its director. And Matt Halder its producer--his firm, Zyborg Filmstudio, based in Cologne, had produced Kyril's successful documentary film, Rainforest, which had made a deep impression on Pat. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was rare that Kyril met men of vision, and Kennedy was one, and even rarer, one of those who had the means to pursue their ideas. As Kyril expanded the theme of his film, he explained to Pat his idea was not simply to show the lives of the Amazon's Indians today, but to explore their past and the mysterious traces of a lost civilisation, one that had existed in a region now covered by dense rainforest. Kyril's plan was to film each sequence in locations that corresponded to historical context, tracing the story of the various indigenous peoples, from their arrival on the South American continent to their present day existence. 'I've a preliminary list of locations,' he said pulling a sheet of paper from his inside pocket, 'look, here's the map.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat's eyes light up as he saw the triangle traced between Brazil, Peru and Colombia. An expedition that would certainly provided some of the answers linked to his Doomsday project in the Cordillera to the north. 'Why not,' replied Pat almost nonchalantly. 'It's our responsibility to provided answers, how the Indians survived, we to have to learn how to survive, and where.' Kyril wasn't sure what Kennedy meant by survive, but he nodded enthusiastically. Their discussion wandered, from the Amazon forest and the fate of its indigenous peoples, veering to collapsology, a subject Pat had recently discovered, the study of the collapse of modern civilization and what could succeed it, the need to return to basics. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Kyril spoke of his Foundation Gaia and its centre in the South of France--his agroecological project and invited Pat to visit it. 'Is that near Sophia Antipolis,' asked Pat. 'Yes, why do you ask?' 'We have a research centre there--LifeGen. I'm planning to visit it soon. A visit to Gaia would fit in well after the DiCaprio thing in Saint Tropez,' Pat said looking at Camille to help him. 'Ah, you're invited to the gala,' Kyril exclaimed. 'Yes,' Camille returned eagerly. 'We're invited to the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation's gala in Saint Tropez.' 'Wonderful we'll all be there together.' 'What will you call it?' asked Pat abruptly switching subjects Kyril shrugged, he hadn't given that question much thought. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'Indians, that will catch the imagination of the public,' said Pat, already imaging a dramatic Apolcalypto style poster from Mel Gibson's film of the Maya. Kyril didn't miss the sense of Pat's words, he was already on-board. 'Let's do that Pat, an excellent title.' Pat smiled. It was a done deal. 'How do you suggest we organise ourselves then?' Kyril asked. 'Well first set up a meeting with Matt Halder at his studios in Cologne, then the planning, logistics and script. Perhaps Camille could act as coordinator, what do you think Camille?' Liam nodded in approval, turned to Camille, who was bursting with enthusiasm, took her hand, 'A great opportunity, and why not Anna for the historical background, they both speak Spanish.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Liam was more down to earth, if it pleased both his friend and mentor, Pat Kennedy, and Camille, then why not. And Anna would look after Camille, he reassured himself. * * * Pat veered back to collapsology and survival, asking Kyril about his thoughts on the subject, what kind of realistic measures he suggested. Kyril lifted his hands, lowered his voice and replied, 'Find a place far from the eye of the storm.' 'Where,' asked Pat. 'In the mountains ... far away.' 'Where?' 'The Andes, that's where our documentary,' he paused, then added, 'Indians, will commence, where they lived before the apocalypse, the arrival of the Spanish.' Pat was suddenly very alert, this was interesting. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'With the arrival of the Conquistadors, who needed slaves and the farmland of the Altiplano, the Indians fled south, retreating as the Spanish settlers pushed further along the Cordillera where the climate agreed with them, until finally they found shelter in the impenetrable equatorial rainforest where their enemies could not and dared not venture.' Kyril told him of his research on the indigenous peoples of Brazil, where some 300 tribes lived, almost one million people, a mere half of one percent of the vast country's total population. Their homelands situated almost exclusively in the Amazon Basin, spread over 690 territories, 13% of Brazil's land mass. Though only half of the Indians actually lived in their homelands. 'By the way Pat, how well do you know Brazil?' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'To be honest, I've only visited Brazil a few times, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, quick visits, business. Amazonas is new too me, though I've travelled in the south of Colombia,' said Pat omitting the details of his past perilous adventure. 'Well I don't have to tell you it's a big country, really big,' Kyril said. He reminded Pat of a few facts, that Brazil was the fifth largest country in the world, after Russia, Canada, China and the US, about 8.5 million square kilometres, a population of more than 200 million people, the density about the same as that of Russia, which when compared to Europe or China, meant Brazil was almost empty, though in 1900 it had been less than a mere tenth of that. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'As you know Pat, Amazonas is covered by equatorial rain forests.' Pat's detailed knowledge was vague. 'And the Amazon's upper reaches, that's where we'll film Indians, is where most of the uncontacted peoples live, where the rainforests overlap into Colombia and Peru. 'Most of tribes are small, the largest is the Guarani, about 50,000 people. The smallest consists of just one man,' he said with a sad smile. 'Those with the largest territory are the Yanomami, about 20,000 people, whose territory is about as big as Ireland's.' 'Are they dangerous,' asked Pat as images of his trek into the jungle flashed through his mind--when he was unwittingly caught up with Colombian army in a raid on drug traffickers factories 20 years earlier. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | 'No,' replied Kyril, who avoided mentioning poison arrows and other risks, but insisted on the fact that it was the Indians who were in the greatest danger. 'Are they the uncontacted peoples?' 'No, not necessarily, many live their traditional way of life and have some contact with the outside world. The others have no contact at all, they reckon there's about a hundred or so groups of really uncontacted peoples, very small groups, in the Putumayo region of Colombia, or Acre in Brazil, near the border with Peru, a lot of them are nomadic, like the Kawahiva, who are just a few dozen.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The uncontacted peoples lived entirely off the forest and rivers and were traditional hunter-gatherers, nomadic, moving on from time to time, but also cultivating small clearings in the forest, gardens, to grow food and medicinal plants, mostly manioc, sweet potato, maize, bananas and pineapples, they used branches and palm leaves to build their homes and make their everyday objects. The forest was their ancestral home and their knowledge of its topography, fauna and flora, was extraordinary, providing them with means to satisfy all their needs. They gathered roots, nuts, berries, fruit, medicinal plants, honey and insects. They hunted wild animals, including peccaries, tapir, monkeys, and birds like the curassow using blowpipes or bows and arrows, the darts and arrowheads tipped with poison. * * * |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | When the first European colonists arrived in 1500, the population of what is now Brazil, was, according to some estimates, as many as 11 million, in about 2,000 tribes. In the century that followed almost 90% were wiped out, mainly by diseases. In the following centuries, countless others died, genocide on a huge scale, many were enslaved in rubber and sugar cane plantations, their lands stolen. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Today, those still remaining were fighting to regain control over their lands. Their problem lay in the fact Brazil was one of the two countries in South America that did not recognise ownership of tribal lands. In fact as far as the law was concerned the indigenous peoples were still considered minors and subject to widespread prejudice, even in government circles, where economic policies conflicted with tribal rights, contributing to the loss of their homelands and their way of life in symbiosis with the natural forest. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Unfortunately the Indians were victims of industrial man's expansion and conquest of the natural world. The expansion of agriculture and livestock raising in Brazil was a logical continuation of agricultural man's expansion into new territories, a process that had been going on for more than 12,000 years. The march towards agriculture was not predestined, animal husbandry and tillage demanded a constant and hard effort compared to the three or four hours required each day by hunter-gatherers to find their food. Marshall Salons pointed out that the only societies in human history that lived in relative abundance were those of the hunter-gatherers. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | This was illustrated today by the hard lives of smallholder settler farmers, working their land on the frontiers of Brazilian 'civilisation', in comparison with those tribal peoples who still live in harmony with the forest. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The dawn of the Anthropocene came with the founding of the first agrarian societies in the Mesopotamia region of the Middle East, before the birth of the first civilisations. A new era in the history of our planet was born, one in which the impact of human activity indelibly marked the ecosystems and the climate of the planet, transforming the flora and fauna, domesticating species of economic value and exterminating the rest, clearing forests and creating new domesticated species. It was in fact a process that commenced much earlier, when Homo habilis and Homo erectus learned to make tools and to use fire some hundreds of thousands of years earlier. Fire enabled man to predigest edible plants and grains, the more indigestible types were digested by birds and animals, which were in turn killed, cooked and eaten. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Over this time span, earlier human species evolved into Homo sapiens, a single species that came to dominate the planet, modifying it to their own ends and in doing impacted almost every other living species of plants and animals. The world had entered an era of accelerated change, when the creatures living on it would be confronted with a profoundly changed environment accompanied by extreme climatic conditions, phenomena barely understood by scientists, a time when man's very survival was in doubt. Human beings had infested the planet, like microbes in a laboratory dish, enjoying favourable conditions at first, multiplying slowly, then exponentially, and finally, when all available food was expended, the culture would collapse, die, as nature's natural regulatory cycle went into action. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Over the past forty of fifty years the human population had doubled, at the same time what was produced and consumed had increased six fold. Such growth was unsustainable. The environmental equilibrium that human society had enjoyed to the present was now on the verge of collapse and no serious scientist could deny it. Was this the start of terminal collapse? It was a question men like John Francis had been asking for many years. From his place at the head of the Fitzwilliams Foundation, he'd observed the evidence piling up. Would we face the same fate as the Roman, Maya or Khmer civilisations. 'Perhaps,' he told Pat. 'I'm too old, but you're not ... and our children are certainly not.' |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | If it were the case, then what would come after? Past experience had shown there was little unlearning, or going back to living in caves, but a kind of rebooting, resetting the system, in a smaller world. A new way of living, replacing consumerism and capitalism, and from Pat's viewpoint, it was his duty to his children to prepare for it. The global economy was doubling every 23 years, and accelerating, the future would arrive in the blink of an eye. It would need a superhuman effort to counter climate change, to reduce carbon emissions, replace fossil fuels, reduce consumption. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | The alternative was the onset of extreme stress followed by disorder, strife and collapse. As it stood the population would rise by nearly one third over the next three decades and producing food to feed them would be extremely challenging to say the least, requiring considerable energy to sow, fertilise and harvest, with more and more arable land, an impossible task, bringing extreme migratory pressure to bear on both the rich and poor nations. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Pat saw the world as nature's evolutionary laboratory, trial and error, birth and death, an endless cycle of rise, conquest and collapse. A constant Darwinian struggle, where America was challenged by China, Russia was trapped in its sombre recurring history, the Middle East caught in a never ending whirlwind of competing civilisations--Jews, Muslims, Arabs, Iranians, East and West. To him the present cycle would end with the collapse of globalisation, and from its ashes something else would rise. What exactly, he didn't know. He looked to his friend John Francis for guidance, but John was getting old. | | ---|---|--- # 13 # COLOGNE |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | LIAM AND CAMILLE CHECKED INTO the Excelsior, just a walk across the esplanade from the Koln Hauptbahnhof --Cologne's main railway station where they'd arrived on the Thalys from Paris. It was the fastest way of getting there, barely three hours, even the company jet would have been a hassle, as for travelling by road it was out of the question. With France on yet another strike, it was a good moment to catch up with their friends in Germany for a weekend together, before they got down to serious business, the preparation of Indians with Matt Halder and his team. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It reality it was in part Camille's baby, after all she had introduced Kyril to Pat Kennedy, and her enthusiasm had gone a long way in persuading Pat to back the project under the patronage of his bank. Besides Liam being executive producer, he was Pat Kennedy's protege, he was one of Pat's outstanding successes, and Pat had big plans for his future, one that was already assured by Liam's own successful business ventures. Indians would tell the story of Amazonian ethnology, the history of its different peoples and the social crisis facing present day rainforest dwellers, those confronted by modern predatory society. Most of the film would be shot in Amazonia, edited and produced in Cologne. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Camille admired the Dom, Cologne's magnificent Gothic cathedral, from the window of their suite where they had just enough time to install themselves before their friends, Gisele and her husband Matt, picked them up for lunch and a visit to the ancient cathedral. It wasn't Camille's first visit to Cologne and Liam suspected she was perhaps a little jealous of Gisele, one of his exes with whom he had spent a romantic interlude in the Caribbean. He pulled her leg, amused at the idea. He now saw Gisele as a good and close friend, though he had to admit to himself they had had some memorable moments together, including the Christmas they had spent four or five years earlier in Cologne and their getaway to the Schwarzwald. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | It was in fact Gisele and Matt who had introduced them to Kyril, after Matt's company Zyborg Filmstudio had produced Rainforest. |
100-seconds-to-midnight.epub.txt | Matt Halder was also a collector of ethnic art and a patron of Cologne's Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum. His grandfather had been a collector at the time of the Deutsches Kolonialreich, an empire that possessed vast territories in Africa and the Pacific. A large part of the collection had been bequeathed to the museum by Matt's father, though some of the most precious works still adorned the family home in the gentrified Belgisches Viertel, to the west of the Innenstadt, near the park, a stylish residential district where the ornate neogothic architecture, favoured by the city's wealthy bourgeois at the end of the 19th century, had miraculously survived the allied bombs of WWII. |