What is a Man-Made Disaster?
Man-made disasters abound almost everywhere, but most of us cannot "see" them because we are "blind" to this destruction. Without a sense of reality regarding ecological overshoot, many people turn a blind eye to the destruction taking place daily in cities and towns (and plenty of rural or remote places as well) throughout the world. Joni Mitchell's famous song Big Yellow Taxi comes to mind. But seriously, how often does one happen to be driving somewhere and see what once were fields and forests being leveled for some new housing addition or shopping center or roads or other infrastructure?
It's also interesting as I began thinking about writing this article what disasters in particular came to mind. There are literally countless small towns which were once inhabited throughout the world which have either been moved to safer locations or turned into ghost towns most frequently due to mining or extraction of some sort. Nowadays, some towns are being moved due to sea level rise (SLR) or climate change, an indirect effect of mining and extraction. The first three that came to my mind were Centralia, Pennsylvania; and Picher, Oklahoma; and Hanford, Washington. [Also see this book review by Alice Friedemann about Hanford.] Surprisingly, none of those were featured in the collection of worst man-made disasters globally; not even on the list of the 25 worst ones. There were several different lists available including these three here and here and here. If one looks at just the worst disasters in the US, the Picher, OK, disaster shows up. Looking at a list of disasters in the US, the sheer number of mining disasters is quite poignant. Speaking of mining disasters, how about a human-caused volcano?
The one detail that one notices after a while is that most all of these disasters involve technology and technology use. While mining/extraction is part and parcel of practically every single disaster or the reason why a disaster was so destructive, it should also be noted that said mining and extraction was actually required for most of these disasters to have happened in the first place. For instance, ALL transport accidents listed could not have happened without technology use. ALL industrial accidents could not have happened without technology use. ALL manmade disasters could not have happened without technology use. This kind of reminds me of how ironic it is for people to talk about how human ingenuity will be able to "save the day" when it comes to the predicaments we face. One could quite possibly extrapolate that our development of technology is responsible for the massive destruction of every one of these disasters, as without said development, the danger and destructive outcomes would have been either eliminated entirely (not possible to begin with) or the level of disaster could have been far less devastating without the systems of infrastructure we have employed throughout the entire globe. This is because technology harnesses far more energy and resource throughputs than we would ever be able to conquer on our own individually.
Once one considers methane emissions as a consequence of development of technology use (and also something which cannot be avoided with regard to the extraction of fossil hydrocarbons and metals and other mineral resources), one can't help but realize that climate change was always going to be tied to technology use from the start. Just developing agriculture and making land use changes by cutting down massive forests across the globe for room for crops meant small changes in climate and weather patterns even before the industrial revolution. Once we began monocultures, we were necessarily taking land which once supported many different species of plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi and replaced that diversity with one type of plant species to serve our purposes. While this seemed like a good idea at the time, we were blind to the consequences of ecological overshoot that would follow as a result.
When I started this blog, I was actually hoping to be able to document improving changes society was making in response to the challenges put in place by ecological overshoot. While I have noticed a few changes that provide a bit of brightness, the overwhelming majority of changes have been negative and these negative changes qualitatively render our general trajectory unchanged despite any positive advances. I constantly see articles hyping different types of batteries or battery chemistry, fusion power, nuclear energy (most often thorium modular reactors), and on and on, but these articles almost always leave out the mining and extraction required for such ideas along with the necessary pollution required for their manufacture and operation and the requirement for today's fossil hydrocarbon-fueled infrastructure for the operation and maintenance of this equipment. The sad truth is that none of it can be made sustainably because its purpose is to extend civilization, which is, itself, unsustainable.
Unless and until global societies come to the same conclusions I and many others have come to regarding the unsustainability and reduced resilience that civilization and technology use create and begin promoting powering down, reduced technology use, and an abandonment of civilization, ecological overshoot and its symptom predicaments will continue marching upwards. If humans don't learn now from the collective mistakes we have made with regard to technology use and civilization and continue to attempt to maintain civilization, then this outcome is guaranteed. As harsh as that reality is, I don't see an alternative as long as advanced technology use is not done away with. Our advanced technology is going away whether we want it to or not anyway, so it really is only a question of whether we want our species (and millions of other species) to go along with it or at least try to voluntarily reduce it before that takes place. More and more as time moves forward, I continue to see that thinking that our species is going to turn a corner soon and behave in a rational way rather than to continue rationalizing our behaviors instead is nothing more than denial of reality.
That realization led me to write these articles to explain what is going on and where we are as a species in an effort to more comprehensively provide a sort of "road map" to help others navigate this complex set of predicaments. Of course, few people really want to know the truth. It is a bit much for most people to contemplate and each of us sees more than enough of what is going on around us as it is.
So, getting back to man-made disasters, what separates them from natural disasters? The degrees of separateness are beginning to disappear as symptom predicaments of ecological overshoot continue escalating. What once was categorized as a "natural disaster" caused by a weather system such as a tornado or hurricane is becoming blurred as these weather systems are becoming more and more dangerous and it is apparent that human-caused climate change plays a large part of making them far worse than they would have otherwise been. Much of this has to do with the Clausius-Clapeyron equation and the temperature rise which has contributed to it, causing a multitude of other inconvenient predicaments as well, such as isostatic rebound, which contributes to increased earthquakes and volcanic activity. As one can see, while there ARE still natural disasters which humans had no hand in, our attempts to control the environment around us (an effort to reduce or remove negative feedbacks which once kept our numbers in balance with the rest of nature) continue to have an increased effect on the rest of the biosphere as well. This makes many disasters which previously were classified as "natural" to be seen from a different viewpoint. For example, our increased vulnerability to solar flares and coronal mass ejections are a result of our use of electrical and electronic technologies, making these types of disasters man-made even if the cause is a totally natural occurrence. The only reason natural occurrences like this have any effect on society today is because of our built infrastructural systems, which we have become utterly dependent upon. The same is now true with regard to computer-driven energy use ramping up emissions through AI, robotic systems, cryptocurrencies, and even just run-of-the-mill datacenters.
Update 6-21-23: Speaking of man-made disasters, I have a brand new one to share. A heartbreaking new video about the tribulations of a farmer in Michigan uncovers PFAS pollution loading on a mind-boggling level, and when one takes into consideration that this is happening globally due to PFAS (just one among many pollutants in our atmosphere) now in rainwater, the entire food supply is threatened. The same set of circumstances in the video going on with the chrome plating company is happening globally due to energy and resource decline. Most all companies are trying to figure out how to trim costs and boost profits.
So, in conclusion, man-made disasters are on the increase in an exponential fashion, and even disasters which once would have been considered "natural" are becoming more and more "man-made," and we are increasingly suffering from the consequences of our built environment around us collapsing in on itself due to its inherent fragility. A new article asks the question if we should stop using the term "natural disaster" and I think that this is a prudent idea.
I often refer to an article by Peter Russell which reminds me of the requirement to stay focused, calm, and grounded in Living Now (original article, "Blind Spot" here). This is exceedingly difficult to do in today's fast-paced world. Remember this as a part of Living Now: Don't postpone joy!
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