Last Week in Collapse: October 22-28, 2023

Earth has a terminal fever and there is no cure. A raft of reports signals that we will not escape this doomspiral.

Last Week in Collapse: October 22-28, 2023

This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter bringing together some of the most important, timely, useful, depressing, ironic, astonishing, or otherwise must-see moments in Collapse.

This is the 96th newsletter, and at 3,300+ words, the longest one yet. You can find the October 15-21 edition here if you missed it last week.

It has come to my attention that there is someone else in the Collapse community who has basically been plagiarizing this newsletter, rewording a few sentences, and passing off this content as his own monthly newsletter on another platform, for money. It is obviously a lazy rebrand of Last Week in Collapse. I am choosing to leave this writer anonymous at this point. I have no problem with people sharing this newsletter—and I encourage all dissemination of Collapse news—but please don’t plagiarize my efforts here. You can just link to the Reddit post or share the Substack and give your readers free access, instead of paywalling my work for your profit. Notwithstanding another writer who had permission to temporarily syndicate LWIC, this newsletter is only posted in two places: r/Collapse, and here on my Substack. Enough said on this point, for now. My apologies is this announcement feels petty.

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As Israel prepares its ground invasion of Gaza, fears grow that Hezbollah could bring Lebanon and Iran into this growing War. The results would be terrible for everyone. The United States would certainly join a conflict if it includes Iran. Iran produces about ⅛ of the Middle East’s total oil extraction (25% of Saudi’s production), which funds 70% of the government. Yet Israel is interfering with GPS signals near Lebanon already, preparatory measures for an expected attack. Hezbollah militants may not be able to restrain themselves.

Israeli bombings continued in Gaza all week long. Some strikes were made in Syria by Israel, and by the U.S.. The current death toll for Palestinians is over 7,000 with no end in sight. The EU is calling for a stop to the fighting so more aid can come into Gaza, which has also been starved of electricity. But for Israel, their ground incursion is just beginning. Within 3 weeks, this War left more dead than 6 months of War in Sudan. The UN is passing resolutions but these are not doing much to stop the fighting.

Source.

The War in Sudan has displaced 5.6M people so far, one of the widest humanitarian disasters of 2023. However, both sides are meeting in Jeddah to arrange an agreeable settlement of the War. Some analysts think it’s all about money.

Almost two months after a pair of earthquakes struck Morocco, thousands of survivors are still not getting any aid. In a real Collapse, nobody is coming to save you. Poverty across Africa is forcing girls to drop out of school to work and become mothers.

A think tank released a 125-page report, the “Women, Peace and Security Index” for 2023. Denmark placed #1, Afghanistan last.

Russia struck a post office in Kharkiv, killing 6 and injuring 16 more. Russian losses during last week’s Avdiivka offensive have been massive, with thousands of soldiers reportedly dead in one week, all to hold the ruins of a Donetsk city (pre-War pop: 30,000). U.S. intelligence says Russians are shooting their own troops if they fall back. War.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released a mid-year report indicating there were about 114M forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of September, about half of whom were internally displaced, half refugees. Better add another 2M from Gaza to the count.

China replaced its defence minister and its foreign minister last week. Mental illness is being blamed for a vicious mass shooting in Maine that killed 18 and wounded many others.

Fighting flared up for the first time in months in eastern DRC, where M23 militants seized the town Kitshanga, and are fighting in another nearby area. An ISIS affiliate active in the region also reportedly massacred 26 in the eastern DRC. The Congolese President is canceling the UN mission because they were ineffective, and ordered them out by year’s end. M23 fighters also killed a Kenyan soldier, the first Kenyan slain in the force this year. A different UN mission is also leaving Mali amid worsening political & security problems.

Kitshanga, from 2013

Also from 2013

Drug and corruption-related shootings across Mexico killed 22+ people in one day, about half of whom were police. In one attack, in Guerrero state, a government convoy was ambushed, killing 11 police and a security official.

Italy’s PM is struggling to keep her promise to manage migration influxes. Meanwhile, one of the Spanish Canary Islands “is becoming Lampedusa” due to large numbers of arriving migrants. Pakistan is giving its last warning to illegal immigrants within its borders, mostly several hundred thousand Afghans. Deportations are set to begin on November 1.

Tensions continue growing between Taiwan and China. The strategic ambiguity of the situation has left all actors operating in uncertainty over Taiwan’s future.

The United States is working on a new atomic Bomb, and it’s not exactly clear why. Russia simulated a nuclear strike last week in a preparedness drill. The Kremlin is less alarmed than the West that China is building up its nuclear capabilities with the launching of a nuclear-capable submarine and the construction of hundreds more warheads by 2030.

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The IEA (International Energy Agency) has released a 355-page report about the World Energy outlook for 2023. The prognosis is mixed: expecting fossil fuels to peak before 2030, celebrating the growth of China’s renewable energy sector, yet the global surface temperature continues to climb. The full report has 100+ great graphs.

”Fossil fuel prices are down from their 2022 peaks, but markets are tense and volatile…the global average surface temperature is already around 1.2 °C above pre-industrial levels, prompting heatwaves and other extreme weather events, and greenhouse gas emissions have not yet peaked. The energy sector is also the primary cause of the polluted air that more than 90% of the world’s population is forced to breathe, linked to more than 6 million premature deaths a year…” -selections from the executive summary

Was this image dump too much?

In order for the EU to meet its emissions targets, it will have to cut its pollution rate by more than 3x, according to a 32-page report released on Tuesday. It’s almost time to move the benchmarks and start again.

Another report out of Brussels, this one 98-pages long, paints a dim picture of sustainability. Five EU countries are planning not to meet the binding targets agreed upon. The report includes country-specific assessments if you want to explore specific states’ progress—or lack thereof.

Climate scientists discovered undersea currents below the Antarctic ice shelf that better explain overturning circulation patterns around crevasses. The full study explains it better than I can. Another study claims that Antarctic meltwater is flowing out from beneath the ice sheets faster than expected, contributing to ice loss feedback loops. Another study indicated that Arctic cyclones are becoming stronger and longer-lasting. Yet another study concludes that rapid Antarctic ice melting is inevitable, and its impacts on sea level will not go unnoticed. Arctic permafrost may unleash toxins when it melts.

The annual report “State of the Climate 2023” came out last week, and this one is only 10 pages. Climate scientists are freaking out over the feedback loops, the crossed thresholds, the tipped points. June-August was the hottest period in recorded human history, and by mid-September earth experienced 38 days with an average temperature above 1.5 °C. And I don’t even want to talk about 45M acres burned in Canada this year—so far. That’s an area larger than the size of Sulawesi, Indonesia’s fourth-largest island, or more than twice the size of the Ireland island.

”Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.”

The Oil company Chevron is buying Hess Oil for $53B USD, in a stock deal that positions Chevron as one of the world’s top energy firms. Just a couple weeks ago, Exxon bought another oil company for almost $60B USD.

Hurricane Otis struck Mexico, bringing 165 mph (270km/ph) winds. It intensified to 80 mph winds (128kph) within 12 hours and grew to a Category 5 storm in less than 24 hours, making it the fastest-growing storm ever. The storm killed at least 27 people and devastated the infrastructure of Acapulco (pop: 1M).

In Bangladesh, Cyclone Hamoon killed 3 and sent hundreds of thousands to shelters. Category 5 Cyclone Lola slammed Vanuatu. Scientists are exploring other factors, such as thunderstorms, for why storms can intensify so quickly.

Iran claims that no water is coming from Afghanistan’s side of the Helmand River, and it’s been like this for a month. The Taliban are reportedly blocking river water from flowing down to Iran amid a fierce drought. Iran is also facing drought and wildfires on its border with Iraq.

Drought is also being felt in inner Brazil, where river levels have dropped concerningly, revealing old rock carvings. The Rio Grande, shared by Mexico and the United States, is projected to remain at crisis levels for the near future. Saguaro cacti are dying from heat in the Sonora Desert.

India is preparing for its largest geoengineering experiment ever: building a vast, 15,000+ km network of canals and reservoirs, in order to move water from wet areas to drier agricultural regions. By redirecting large amounts of water, moisture levels will change, with downstream impacts on temperature, evapotranspiration, cloud formation, and rainfall.

Climate change impacts wildlife differently depending on what sex they are. In some species, the temperature determines what sex a baby animal will be. Volcano eruptions are being examined to determine their historical and future impact on El Niño.

The 154-page Forest Declaration for 2023 was released, and it confirms what we already know: efforts to stop deforestation by 2030 are impossible (unless we run out of forests by then), forest emissions are growing, biodiversity is dying, rainfall is decreasing.