Last Week in Collapse: August 6-12, 2023

The world is on fire. This is not a drill.

Last Week in Collapse: August 6-12, 2023

This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter bringing together some of the most important, timely, useful, depressing, ironic, amazing, or otherwise must-see moments in Collapse. A dispatch from a world on fire.

This is the 85th newsletter. You can find the July 30-August 5 edition here if you missed it last week. Thank you for subscribing to the Substack.

Svalbard is melting twice as fast as the Arctic, shedding ice—and methane—at alarming rates. In the Antarctic, scientists are concerned that Antarctica may soon function as a heat sink for the ocean.

Source.

Scientists confirmed what you probably knew: last July was the hottest month on record. Wildfires also burn in Spain & Portugal. Wildfires burn in Canada. Wildfires burn in Greece and beyond.

All this air pollution gradually increases antibiotic resistance, resulting in more untreatable infections. And the UN warned that the “world is likely to face major disruption to food supplies well before temperatures rise by the 1.5 °C target.” Aren’t we at +1.4 °C already? Aren’t we experiencing global food crises now?

We are trapped in a deadly energy doom loop: humans need energy to survive, and to outcompete each other—this leads us to use finite resources, and export the consequences—but these consequences blowback on us despite our confidence. Grain famines on the horizon, hydropower reduced by persistent droughts... Our CO2 levels are on track for a mass extinction event next century and there is no off switch.

Sweden has committed to building 10 nuclear power plants over the next 20 years. It’s part of a plan to double energy production by 2043. What could possibly go wrong? In a rare moment of optimism, American scientists achieved “net energy gain” in a fusion experiment for the second time… And a “fifth force of nature” has been (almost) identified in the world of physics, based on the observations of sub-atomic particles called “muons.”

Apparently Death Valley has a tipping point, and it’s behind us; heat-tolerant species special to the area are being killed off by heat and drought. Centuries-old trees are dying from drought in Germany. New heat records in Japan, China, India. Dhahran, on Saudi Arabia’s east coast, hit 57.8 °C {136 °F}—at night!

Irish farmers can’t harvest their wheat because of recent flooding. More hail & flooding in Italy. Marine heat wave in New Zealand. Wildfires in Hawai’i killed 80+ and displaced 2,000+ in the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century.

The Antarctic has an annual thinning of its ozone layer, but this year it’s thinning…faster than expected. Scientists think it’s because of the Tonga eruption in early 2022. Read more here if you’re interested.

Good news: apparently some corals were growing in the ruins of the Great Barrier Reef over the past year, and coral mass was slowly trending up. Bad news: bleaching killed the coral and now the recovery is over. Meanwhile Sydney’s water is becoming more polluted, and climate change is blamed for it. Coral bleaching off the coast of Central America is at the highest alert level.

Hundreds of Iowa cattle dropped dead in the overwhelming heat & humidity. Ain’t nothing that can be done; you can’t air-condition millions of cows. The current herd of American cattle is the lowest in 52 years: about 29M cattle in total.

An insurance crisis is looming in Australia, where insurance premiums rose 14% in 12 months. As prices become unsustainably high, more and more people cannot afford them; this puts a risk on the entire insurance system, which functions on a large number of dispersed policy-holders. In parts of the world without insurance systems, or just people who can’t afford it, their livelihoods will simply be wiped out by the first disaster.

——————————

Americans and Brits are turning away from meat substitutes like “Beyond Beef.” Tunisian bakeries protested a ban on subsidized flour which would affect 1,500+ bakeries. Food production accounts for one third of annual, human-made, greenhouse gas emissions across the world.

The disaster-prone World Scouts Jamboree was finally canceled not because of the incredible heat waves in South Korea, but by the coming Typhoon Khanun. Japan hunkered down for the rainstorm and evacuated tens of thousands of people to safer spots. Khanun killed a handful of people and triggered mudslides in China.

COVID: The E.G. 5.1 variant, codenamed “Eris,” is now the dominant COVID variant in the United States. Does it matter anymore? The battles for vaccination are over, current infection data are non-existent; the virus won. How many times have you heard someone talk about Long COVID recently? God help us for the next pandemic…

Eris has becoming the dominant variant in Ireland and elsewhere.

2,300+ cholera cases in one month in the post-War Amhara region of Ethiopia. Locusts, dengue, worms, hunger, cholera, measles, and conflict in the same place. Do you imagine Collapse in your first-world country getting worse than this?

In 2020, fewer than 1,000 people worldwide died from cholera. This is shaping up to be the worst cholera year in 20+ years.

Experts are confirming that H5N1—bird flu—is endemic in North America now. Fortunately the virus is not easily transmissible to humans and is not yet contracted H2H (human-to-human). The UK is opening a vaccination research facility to prepare for a future “Disease X” that might one day ravage the globe. Conspiracy theories about this new building have already burrowed into the corners of the earth.

Spain is sourcing drinking water from the sea—desalinated, of course, from a facility operating at full tilt. The market for desalination plants is expected to double in the next 10 years. I expect it will outperform expectations.

Chinese cargo freight is way down from last year, leading to manufacturing shortages all over…yet a 21-day wait time (154 vessels) has appeared at the Panama Canal, which is trying to conserve water by lowering its draft & daily transit capacity. Western economies are going to find out if their service sector can sustain their economies. Meanwhile world oil production is the lowest it’s been in 2 years. And higher food prices are going to endure in the UK, in Türkiye, and beyond. Rice is at 15-year highs.

——————————

A Chinese Coast Guard ship fired a water cannon at a Philippine convoy bringing resupply goods to some contested Spratly Islands, which both states claim. In military terms, some think this is a major escalation. Meanwhile, an American show of force in the Persian Gulf—two warships & 3,000+ seamen—arrived to intimidate Iran, which has allegedly prepared drones and missiles in response.

41 migrants died in a shipwreck, only a few hours after leaving Tunisia. A big wave overturned the boat; 4 survived. In Myanmar, another shipwreck killed at least 23. Meanwhile, an anti-corruption Ecuadorian candidate for President was assassinated 10 days before their primary.