Cascade Of Catastrophes

"ecology of fear"

Luke 23:42 “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Earthquakes, floods, wildfires, riots, plagues, toxic contamination, swarming invasion of locusts, rodents, predators, alien invasive species, are events that occur with periodic frequency, as violent ruptures across the world. Also as repeating spectacles across thousands of movies and works of fiction. The disasters, epidemics and invasions which bash civilization also provide all the necessary actors for the economy of “disaster fiction”. Now classified as “climate fiction”. Our deepest anxieties, existential threats and duality that coagulates into an “ecology of fear”.

Stable habitat and human projects are getting increasingly undermined, by not just extreme climate events but an entire range of human constructs as well. His so called “kingdom” is besieged by a “great unraveling” they say? Every forthcoming disaster with a higher body count, greater distress and even higher economic loss, actuating upon a chain (sequence) of more frequent and destructive encounters. A ‘cascade of catastrophes’ if you will, especially visible within megacities around the world. All such 20th century symbols of economic, industrial and liberal “paradise”.

What may appear as small events or changes are also driving variables or inputs which are eventually magnified by feedback loops, that can produce highly disproportionate or unpredictable outcomes. The landscape upon which every megacity is constructed, incorporates layers of destruction, extermination of wildlife as well as a range of ecological graveyards. The limitless vertical and horizontal expansion, the outrun of mass urbanization is eventually dealing with severe “Eco-punches”. Be it Los Angeles or Mumbai or Shanghai, ecological disasters and degradation outweighs every economic, structural and political change. The sinusoidal curve of ‘boom and bust’ that impacts millions of people grappling with deep anxieties of an existential order in this post-liberal era. That “ecology of fear” in reality and in fiction, a collapse in slow motion, from lofty utopian designs based on self-innovating technology and cheap energy. Manifest destiny, higher consciousness and what not.

Without doubt, Los Angeles and California play a central role in America's fantasy life. Not just based on Hollywood or Silicon Valley or the “sunkissed” progressive lifestyle, but the entire surrounding regions of Los Angeles, that symbolizes the ultimate urban future for the entire world to aspire. Well, so it did till the end of the 20th century. The seismic instability (tectonic plates) upon which Los Angeles is constructed and its relationship to the rest of California is a great example of human exceptionalism. The colonial history of California is packed with violent malaise, mass extermination of wildlife and desperate social struggles between ever new immigrants and settlers. Thousands of projects that ordained one form of sacrifice or another, wiping out Grizzly Bears, Mountain Lions, Coyotes, Wolves, Eagles, Vultures, Rats and on occasion even plague bearing Squirrels, Boars and Badgers. The grid-based purification of the prior ecosystem (Californication) whereby the urbanization of Los Angeles, San Fransisco, San Diego, San Gabriel and Santa Monica took place, 1880 till the end 1999.

“The urbanization of the Los Angeles area takes place during one of the most unusual episodes of climatic and seismic benignity since the inception of the Holocene.” (Mike Davis, Ecology of fear, Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster, 1998). By the mid-1990s, Seismologists concluded that the entire region’s population was living on top of more than 50 faults, stacked up to the vast corridor of the San Andreas Fault. In retrospect, Los Angeles’ transformation into a bastion of capitalist success occurred within stable periods of ecological peace and national triumph. In any case, California’s current economy is valued just a little below Japan’s. Gigantic as the economy and prosperity that we monitor so closely, as ecologically fraught is its continuity, given the disaster prone foundations of modernized southern California. Every new generation that has thrived within, has also carried on with “disaster amnesia” akin to a person living in Mumbai or Tokyo or Shanghai. But, why has Los Angeles been destroyed?

Los Angeles has been destroyed no less than 140 times, in Hollywood movies, disaster fiction novels and comics, over and over again since the early 1900s. From “Yellow Peril” to “Japanese Inquisition” to “Communist Infiltration” to “Nuclear Annihilation” to “Alien Invasions” Los Angeles provides itself as the epicenter of disaster fiction, actuating as major entertainment for almost a hundred years now. The disaster fiction economy specific to Los Angeles ties into the power of Hollywood. It extends from white survivalism to multi-species inception to ethnic revivalism to racism, xenophobia and ever ridiculous visions of future societies. California itself a kaleidoscope of American myths, fantasy, imagery, technological power, yet rooted to the underlying knowledge of collapse, the anxieties of impending doom. At the end of the 1990s, writer, political activist and ecologist, Mike Davis expanded on the nature of impending crisis within California as “the deepest anxieties of a post-liberal era—above all the collapse of American belief in an utopian national destiny… future events of extreme intensity whereby the notion of utopia itself would diminish giving way to general scarcity.”

An exceptional discovery and a disaster fiction very rarely coincide. Way ahead of Independence Day (1996) or 10.5 Apocalypse (2006) the movie ‘Day Of The Animals’ released in 1977, is one such remarkable example. A terror trail based on the depletion of the ozone layer and a band of eagles, vultures, rats, coyotes, dogs, bears, snakes and mountain lions collectively taking revenge on human beings! The movie from way back then, in retrospect appears like a verdict that was placed upon future generations, the ones to face current mass extinction, pandemic, riots, police violence, drought, wildfire or a forthcoming tectonic shift and economic meltdown. Swap one for another, or place them on parallel timelines. Los Angeles resembles a “detonator landscape” not just in cinema, but reality too. A topography upon which natural disaster and class struggle become one and forever. California will burn, for numerous reasons and not just climate change. The de-funding of LA Firefighters, water robbery by the super-rich or the rise in extreme fire events, plus many other factors together unravel realities, a cascade of catastrophes that are way beyond any “robust emergency planning and policy” (Governor Gavin Newsom, 2021 California Fires).

Like the mid-20th century status of New York, the city of Mumbai too “never sleeps”. Mumbai in a nutshell is the “financial heartland” of India, home to Bollywood as well as a symbol of preposterous overshoot. The density of everything makes Mumbai a megacity with visibly no limits to growth. No limits to movement and acquisition. What started out as a small colonial tradeoff between the Portuguese and British in 1535 CE, has grown a thousand times over, first as Bombay (1780-1995) then as Mumbai, unleashing itself over a 180 kilometer radius (6380 sq kilometers) that is currently nesting more than 26 million people (some argue higher). The human footprint of Mumbai exceed that of small nations like Portugal, Vietnam or Guatemala. Outdoing existing real-estate values across the world, Mumbai recently made news yet again, when the American corporation BlackRock purchased an office-complex worth more than 220 million USD. For decades urban planners, politicians, the business class and the architects have hastened construction projects that are constrained by water on three sides of the megacity. The effect of this geography, for some people is how Manhattan was a century ago, and hence follows a similar trajectory of real-estate capitalism to continuously build upwards and smaller, across the sea and over land that is but temporary.

The building and transit hysteria of Mumbai that never stops proliferating upon land, one that will cease to exist in the coming future. Submerged partially or completely, due to gradual rise in ocean levels, melting glaciers, polar ice sheets and flash floods. More than half of what is known as Mumbai is standing upon reclaimed land - a huge expanse of embedded rocks, stones and earth to be precise. Upon such a “city afloat” on many things ecologically insane, that include thousands of high-rise societies, more than a hundred skyscrapers and hi-tech business districts, small clustered housing projects, gigantic slums and all the major transport lines. The incoming “Eco-punch” not only deals with the loss of housing, livelihood and infrastructure, but also economic prosperity, wealth and ultimately loss of lives of the poorest and economically weakest people of Mumbai.

While the collapse and abandonment is yet to come, the current breakdown is visible within the existing fabric of life. As seen in the degeneration of healthcare and sanitation, air and water quality, efficiency of hospitals, availability of doctors and disaster relief services. It takes about 2 hours in a taxi, to cover a distance of just 18 kilometers within central Mumbai. This “financial heartland” is basically running into multiple supply crises, social disorganization, rising mental health problems, political conflicts and possibly extreme natural disasters. A majority of the population (Mumbaikars) is too caught up, either in the act of survival or watching cricket and tinsel town trash. Regardless a great unraveling is on its way for the “financial heartland” of India.

Mumbai is typical of a megacity with an incredible wealth gap, that cannot be objectively wiped out, given decades long depopulation or an ecocide within rural India. Mumbai is an endgame of sorts, where a very rich minority has subsidized globalization and capitalism, has the power to create grandiose and idiotic movies, generate even higher returns on capital, but without laying any claim on behalf of the groups excluded from the very benefits of international trade, cheap labor, construction, housing and healthcare. 6% of Mumbai’s population sleeps on the roads and roughly 16% of children below 12 suffer from inadequate nourishment.

Objectively speaking cities like Mumbai, Los Angeles, Santiago, Dhaka and Mexico City to name a few, share common threats but not of a common scale, to measure the “ecology of fear”. Each megacity is prone to a set of incoming disasters, be it earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, storms, floods, droughts and heat waves. Furthermore man-made hazards such as air, water and soil pollution, accidents, fires, industrial explosions, sinking land levels, disease and epidemics, socio-economic crises, riots, police violence, terror attacks, nuclear accidents as well as war, germ and nuclear warfare. I really doubt as to all that is an outcome of ecological overshoot or entirely based on the “ecology of fear”. The future of Mumbai like any megacity will be defined by new modes of survival, coping mechanisms, diminished in scale and material prosperity by the end of this century.

Habitat quality is widely used as a key indicator in the evaluation of regional ecological security and resilience of ecosystems. The continuous specter of urbanization, road construction, waste generation, sewage and air pollution invariably impacts protected areas as well as places deep within the hinterland. As economic activity shoots up, what goes down is overall “habitat quality”. Relentless urban growth has not only wiped out biodiversity of native species, and the distance between protected areas and cities, but is now predicted to shrink dramatically in many parts of the world, including Eastern Asia, more specifically the East and South China Sea. All the megacities along the coast. The Shanghai metropole which nests more than 25 million people, is a massive hub of the Chinese economy. The hyper-accelerated growth of the city during the last forty years is now fraught with ecological damage. “Shanghai, Hangzhou and Changsha are experiencing shifts within landscape patterns and increased landslides caused by urban sprawl and construction in less than 40 years.” (Nature.com 2023). As a megacity, Shanghai has the highest urbanization level in China, steadily equating to a tragic loss of biodiversity and a “fragmentation trend, a continuous decline in the species and native wildlife.”

But the economic acceleration that created millions of jobs and much touted prosperity is now flattening out, in inexplicable ways to the ones who are fighting the hardest. Recently a record 2.6 million young Chinese showed up for 39,600 government jobs in South China provinces. New studies find a clear decline in fertility rates, reaching below “replacement levels“ throughout big cities within China. Except volcanic eruptions, several areas of Central and South China have recorded increasing incidents of typhoons, floods, droughts and sandstorms, forest and grassland fires and red tides, while urban areas show “a rise in rodent disease, respiratory ailments and water pollution”. (Earth.Org).

China’s “cascade of catastrophe” is felt in the existing water pollution crisis. Apart from Shanghai and Beijing, other major cities studies reveal extremely contaminated water. In Beijing, almost 40% of water is polluted to the extent that it is essentially undrinkable. In Tianjin, northern China’s principal port city and home to 15 million people, a mere 5% of water is usable as a drinking water source. China’s “ecology of fear” comes about clearly, yet without the need of any disaster fiction, as “80% of groundwater from major river basins is “unsuitable for human contact”. This is just one of the dangerous self-feeding mechanisms that has dealt yet another “Eco-punch” to China's long-term economic prospects. It is highly improbable that Chinese industrial socialism and planned growth are ecologically viable models for the rest of the world, facing as many threats and loss of past exuberance.

Surely you are aware of many more “cascades of catastrophe” within your country, around your city or habitat. As of now the ecological and social degradation at a global scale is limitless, in terms of understanding and measure. But there is a limit to how far such cultural and technological formulations and fantasies can take us, in the search for or denial of material alternatives. Certain level headed ecologists are convinced that most megacities will not survive to see the end of the 21st century. The enigma of technology solutions that aim to clean up the environment are not the concern here, as much as Fossil-Fuels that are fundamental for the survival of every megacity, thus becoming major sources of CO2 emissions. In this aspect megacities like Dubai, Tehran, Baghdad and Riyadh are also an outcome of the relentless drilling of “black gold” and the dehumanization of foreign labor.

This growth versus survival conundrum is ecological, social and political. Regardless, we can be sure that the incoming future will keep a lot of human beings tied up in disaster management, leading to a vastly reduced ecological footprint. Habitat conservation and resilience of ecosystems within a megacity (and around) is a vanishing prospect. At best, an ecological fantasy suited for smaller cities and towns. Questions of continuous material supply, land shortages, ecological and social disruptions, are willy nilly besieged by violent top-down politics and solutionism.

The “ecology of fear” eventually rests upon the eternal connection between the natural and the social, in terms of dealing with incoming disasters. Plagued at the same time on multiple fronts, as a species, the apprehension or mass anxiety about the future is rooted in the past, that was full of uncertainty (chance) as well as diversity (of life). Both of which we have effectively failed to understand and protect, as modern urbanized beings. The megacities are an outcome of intensive use of fossil-fuels and are bound to collapse over time, without continuous energy. While we prolong this form of civilization we risk more and longer disasters, be they “heat waves/droughts, melting permafrost, methane releases, water shortages, failing agriculture, local famines, rising sea levels, increased flooding (and eventual loss) of certain coastal cities, mass migrations, collapsed economies and geopolitical chaos”(William Rees, 2022). The panic or dismay that has set in globally across generations is far greater than the measures and mantras that the world is putting up currently to mitigate the “cascade of catastrophes”. 

Now its a bit late and I am tired, of the paradox of apocalyptic narratives. Invariably appealing but so often proven wrong. All such “ecologies of fear” be they religious, artistic, cinematic or scientific, formalized or fuzzy, are willy nilly telling us that global disaster “is near, even at the doors” (Matthew 24:33). Worse, that this time it is real. More than a real possibility, it is already an “inescapable reality”. The verdict may be still silent for many, never-the-less many others are already dealing with it, some dying from it, all the while new ones beings born into the same world…

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