Roman philosopher Lucretius wrote that humans have a particular blind spot: we are unable to prepare for a crisis greater than anything we have dealt with before. When trying to anticipate a worst-case scenario, we rely on what we already know. We lack the ability to anticipate more catastrophic outcomes. I learned about the Lucretius paradox from John Vaillant in his book Fire Weather, where he writes about the failure of humans to comprehend the coming fire epoch in a rapidly heating planet. I feel like Lucretius as I try to make sense of the reports I am reading about the impending “Super” El Niño that is beginning to move in the Pacific. The story of this impending meteorological upheaval has been largely overlooked as the media focuses on the war in Iran, the daily deluge of MAGA chaos and the burning of Europe and North America. What can we expect from this so-called “Super” El Niño? Even scientists seem to be at a loss for words for what they are tracking in terms of the meteorological shifts taking place in the ocean. Some are warning of a looming “humanitarian crisis” that could impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, has written that the rising temperatures in the Pacific are so far off the chart that they will blow away any previous “Super” El Niño by a “truly mind-blowing margin.” That phrase scares the shit out of me. The worst El Niño on record hit in 1878. It upended weather patterns from Brazil to Africa, from Southern Europe through India and Asia. The 1878 El Niño caused widespread crop failures, floods and epidemics on a global scale. In parts of the planet, crops were scorched by intense drought. In other zones, the rain hit with such a ferocity that entire regions were washed away. Weather upheaval caused the death of 50 million people around the world. This represented as much as three to four percent of the global population. Follow-up weather chaos between 1896 and 1900 caused mass famines and widespread outbreaks of cholera, plague, and malaria. As many as 30 million died. Mike Davis, in his book Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño, Famine and the Making of the Third World, writes that these events were so catastrophic that they broke apart many social/political systems and left large parts of the world susceptible to the rise of gunboat diplomacy and the emergence of what became known as the Third World. So, if the El Niños of 1878/1899 represent the previous worst-case scenarios, what will this fall bring? It is still too early to say. But the world is very vulnerable and totally unprepared. Global leaders are distracted by a series of political, climatic and economic shocks — many of them self-inflicted. We are like the three little pigs hanging out in a straw house. The war in Iran, climate fires across North America and Europe, the political chaos of Trump — would be a serious test of global resilience at the best of times. But now these issues are beginning to lay across each other like terrible ley lines. So let me lay out four areas where global leaders have left us dangerously vulnerable. The Strait of Hormuz and the Fertilizer CrisisWe are now six months into a needless war that has shut the Strait of Hormuz. So far, the political and media focus has been on the price of oil. We have been fed a false sense of security with the lie that as long as the price at the pump remains within reason, the impact of the war can be absorbed. What is being ignored is the massive backlog of fertilizer products. A good part of global agriculture depends on fertilizer from the Gulf states. Half of the world’s sulphur passes through the Strait of Hormuz. For nitrogen, it is 35%, and for ammonia, 30%. As far back as May, Máximo Torero, the chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), was warning of massive food shocks from a shortage of fertilizer and the impacts it would have on rising food costs. The FAO identified Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Sudan, and Sub-Saharan Africa as the most vulnerable. Even then, it was feared that global food prices could jump 15 to 20%, resulting in widespread famine. Those kinds of massive spikes in food prices are enough to result in riots and overthrow governments. And that is without factoring in further catastrophic impacts from a Super El Niño. A Planet on FirePerhaps one reason government and media are not paying attention to the coming season is that everyone is scrambling to handle unprecedented climate fires across much of Europe and North America. The focus has rightly been on the mass fire evacuations and the devastating smoke, but equal attention should be given to the unprecedented drought is seriously impacting food production. The UK is already sending out warning signals that this season’s drought is compounding years of increasingly poor yields. They are now actually warning about impending food shortages. Gavin Lane, the president of the Country, Land and Business Association, told The Guardian that bad weather is putting severe strain on British agriculture.
In the global south, heat stress is affecting the health of poultry, cattle and pigs. The number of days when it is simply too hot to work may rise to 250 per year in much of South Asia, tropical Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Central and South America. And this is without the impacts of El Niño. The planet is clearly damaged from the existing climate crisis. We are now stumbling into the great unknown with severely weakened resiliency. Regulatory SuicideFamine was only part of the global crisis of the previous Super El Niños. The unstable weather led to serious outbreaks of parasites and epidemics. The 19th century lacked the sophisticated medical and scientific monitoring systems that were built up through the latter part of the 20th century to protect public health. Those systems are being torn apart by MAGA ideology. Regulatory oversight and scientific expertise have become a political punching bag, and it is having a serious impact on public health. Already, we have seen the inability of the United States to respond effectively to outbreaks of Ebola, hantavirus, measles, salmonella, and cyclosporiasis because of the gutting of programs that kept the public safe. Much of the rest of the world relies on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for the top-line research to deal with serious global outbreaks. We are making ourselves blind as the wolf arrives at the door. The Marine Super Spreader EventIt is reported that over 1500 ships are sitting idle in the Strait of Hormuz and the hulls of these ships are accumulating a vast array of microbes, algae and invasive invertebrates. A new scientific report is warning that once these ships begin to move between their home ports around the globe, they risk bringing with them a catastrophic spread of invasive species. They warn that the world is vulnerable to a bio-invasion of “super-spreaders.” Again, such super-spreader events could be seriously exacerbated by meteorological upheaval. What impacts will it have? No one has a clue. Me and LucretiusI put off writing this essay for some time. The enormity of what might happen seems so great. Equally concerning is writing about the unknown without sounding hysterical. Like Lucretius, I have no idea what a “mind-blowing” climatic event could look like. I hope that I am wrong. My dream scenario is that if anyone stumbles across this article in a year, they will shake their heads and wonder — what the hell was that guy so amped up about? In the meantime, I am going to stock up on essentials just in case. I urge you to take precautions too. If any photos or images on this site are under copyright, please let us know and we will provide appropriate credit. This content is used in accordance with applicable copyright laws, including “fair dealing” under Canadian law and “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, for purposes such as criticism, comment, and news reporting.Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance.
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