A Canticle for Leibowitz, 2020 redux
61 years ago, A Canticle for Leibowitz imagined that humanity would slowly progress to the stars, each step punctuated by a dark age brought on by a nuclear apocalypse. In Walter M. Miller Jr’s dark vision, only through the efforts of a small band of Catholic monks would we preserve the knowledge to rise from the ashes.
In 2020, the only thing lacking in Miller’s novel is the sheer variety of methods we’ve conjured to bring on a new dark age. Nuclear apocalypse looks quaint in comparison to some of the ways we could return ourselves to savagery.
I’m not talking about asteroids or supervolcanoes — some natural disasters are still beyond our ability to prevent, even with Bruce Willis around — but the new ways that our own stupidity conspires to destroy us.
1 Anthropogenic Climate Change. If I have to explain that anthropogenic means man-made, then you’re already too stupid to understand the rest of this rant.
For most of the 40 years since alarm bells began to ring about global warming, the industries responsible for the problem have been recruiting self-satisfied contrarians, conspiracy theorists, and the plain lazy to shill for them instead of taking action.
We could have gradually moved to a low carbon economy, now a zero carbon economy won’t be enough to reverse the warming. Weather patterns have undoubtedly changed, and that’s encouraging other fools to unilaterally attempt sketchy geoengineering projects that may cause as many problems as they try to solve.
2 Antibiotic Resistance. Big Western appetites need big meat, and what better way to boost the size of our animal protein than stuffing it full of the same antibiotics we rely on to prevent infection in surgery? While we’re at it, let’s hand out those drugs like candy to anyone with a mild virus, because at least it looks like we’re doing something and it’ll shut them up until the body deals with it on its own.
What do you mean, common bacterial agents evolved resistance to our most powerful drugs, and we haven’t spent any money developing new antibiotics? There was no way to see that coming. Except for those pesky scientists who said it would happen.
OK, we’ll just have to wash our hands more and hope that works, like we did before penicillin. Less than a century ago.
3 Anti-vaxxing. Of course smallpox was a blight that killed billions, and polio was probably a nasty bug, but that’s nowhere near as important as the homeopathically unlikely chance that the MMR jab will make little Harry autistic.
It took little more than a decade for lying former doctor Andrew Wakefield to join forces with quack-remedy gurus and crystal peddlers to convince a gullible but significant minority that vaccines are dangerous.
Poor education and the Daily Mail’s criminally lax editorial supervision are partly to blame, but the rot set in decades before. Thalidomide was a genuine mistake, but the reaction was calculated stupidity that has been followed by the pharmaceutical industry ever since, when it should know better.
The end have isn’t just the harm done along the way, it’s a widespread lack of trust in vaccines when we really need them to combat a global menace. It won’t be the last one. Own goals for everyone.
4 Race war. My ancestors literally wandered into the promised land aoens ago, when homo sapiens walked into Europe and gained a huge geographic advantage over everyone else. Since we got out of Europe, white Europeans have been rubbing our advantage in the faces of people of colour, and how we hate being reminded about it. Just look at people who get more angry about statues of racists being torn down than they do about actual racism.
Racial tension is already toxic in many parts of the world, and in 2020 America is shaping up for a conflict that could become either civil war or genocide (and I don’t think white people are the ones in danger). Where the USA goes, the UK follows, dragging Europe down with us.
5 The death of cooperation. The 20th Century is often remembered for its world wars, but it also lead to the formation of the United Nations, the European Union, the WTO, NATO, the WHO and fledgling economic and political unions across the global South. Despite many imperfections, they allow common sense to rise above rhetoric, foster social progress, encourage peace, promote civil society, decrease poverty and advance science, technology and the arts.
These wonderful, flawed organisations have long been under attack by those who stand to gain the most from their absence: libertarians, neo-conservatives, charismatic nationalists, demagogues, arms dealers, religious fundamentalists…the enemies of reason who have a role in almost all of these potential catastrophes.
The rich and powerful always think they’ll survive any calamity and come out on top. Global cooperation is the force most likely to prevent global calamity, but it’s also the force most likely to result in a more equitable world, and that’s the last thing these folks want.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that A Canticle For Leibowitz offers them no more comfort than anyone else. Humanity will fall and rise together, again and again, and I for one am happy to leave an indestructible, eternal shitlist blaming Trump, Putin, Dacre, Murdoch, Johnson, Zuckerberg and their ilk, in case their heirs crawl, cockroachly, from the glowing ruins of the 21st Century.
