A Glimmer of Hope

T Vijayendra

The world has suddenly turned toxic in the last few years! People are seeing atrocities like Gaza for the first time. Black clouds signalling and impending World War III are hovering on the horizon. Things have taken such a dark turn even the most opti­mistic souls in the world are losing hope and the end of the human story appears imminent.

In the 20th century, progressives would always give the example of Cuba as a source of hope. This writer personally thinks Cuba is still a source of hope. But now there is another source, at least in India -it's called COVID!

On the evening of 24th March 2020, the Government of India ordered a nationwide lock-down for 21 days, limiting the movement of the entire 1.38 billion (138 crore) population of India as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 pandemic in India. It was ordered after a 14-hour voluntary public curfew on 22nd March, followed by enforcement of a series of regulations in COVID-19 affected countries. The lock down was put in place when the number of confirmed positive corona-virus cases in India was approximately 500. Upon its announcement, a mass movement of people across the country took place, described as the largest since the partition of India in 1947. According to ob­servers, the lock-down had helped slow down the growth rate of the pandemic by 6th April to a rate of doubling every six days, and by 18th April, to a rate of doubling every eight days. As the end of the first lock-down period approached, state governments and other advisory committees recommended extending the lock-down. The governments of Odisha and Punjab extended the state lock-downs to 1st May. Maharashtra, Karnataka, West Bengal, and Telangana followed suit. On 14th April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended the nationwide lockdown until 3rd May, on the written recommendation of governors and lieutenant governors of all the states, with conditional relaxations after 20th April for those regions where the spread had been contained or was minimal.

On 1st May, the Government of India extended the nation­wide lock-down by a further two weeks until 17th May. The Government divided all the districts into three zones based on the spread of the virus-green, red, and orange-with relaxations applied accordingly.

On 17th May, the lock-down was further extended until 31st May by the National Disaster Management Authority.

The lock-downs helped release a tremendous amount of anti-development creativity among the Indian masses -such as has never been seen in the World! The response from Nature was even more amazing! What was the reason behind this? In truth it was the centuries of repression as well as people's movements against development that led to it. Now the million-dollar question is whether the lock-down conditions can be repeated? If yes, there is a glimmer of hope!

So, what were the lock down conditions? The answer in one sentence: The Complete Collapse of Capitalism!

Now are there reasons to hope for this collapse to happen again? There are good reasons to hope for a permanent collapse or implosion of capitalism.

Resource Depletion
Human society uses natural resources for its survival and reproduction. Other living beings depend directly or indirectly on plant resources which are renewable. In addition to these, human beings also use non-renewable resources including minerals such as coal and petroleum and metals such as gold, silver, copper and ironl. They are considered non-renewable because their quantity is fixed and the more people use them the less is left of them, to use.

For industrial societies, petroleum and coal are the basic sources of energy and their depletion can spell doom for their way of life.

Now, there is a law of extraction of these non-renewable resources. It was first discovered in the case of oil by M King Hubbert and is called, 'Peak Oil'. It says that when half the resources are extracted (taken out), then the production will start falling. That is, the peak of production occurs when half the oil is taken out. It applies to a particular well, to a region, to a country, and to the whole world. Today, everybody knows that it applies not just to oil but to all mineral resources. Scientists have calculated the peak year for almost all the important minerals. And, the overwhelming majority of them will peak before 2030, starting with oil! The data is almost accurate and might differ only by a few percentage points, but the fact remains that the years of industrial society as it exists are numbered and the end will come in a decade or so. The collapse of industrial society will be a 'never before' event because that will be the end of the historical process of ever-increasing wealth that human society has seen in the last few thousand years.

The champions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution such as the World Economic Forum say that the sun is a never exhausting resource and that solar energy and wind can easily replace fossil fuels. The record so far is dismal because the dependence on fossil fuels has not decreased. This year USA, UK, and Germany are bringing back coal plants due to a sharp reduction in energy supplies, particularly natural gas, following the Ukraine war. Both solar and hydro power too need a lot of metals. Solar needs copper and some rare earths all of which are in short supply and will be increasingly so.

In addition, solar power requires vast amount of vacant land surface to capture sunlight. Already humans are using more than 90% of earth's resources, stealing them from other species. This will further erode the share of other species. Similarly, wind energy takes up a lot of air space, endangering birds. And this is leaving aside the massive waste disposal problem posed by renewable energy, which has already begun to show.

There is a theoretical argument also. It essentially says that these alternative energy sources-solar, wind, nuclear, Hydrogen etc all are meant to produce electricity. But the infrastructure needed to produce them and use them (transmission and distribution) are all based on fossil fuel and other metals that are peaking. In other words, while the alternative energy sources are 'feasible' they are not 'viable'!

In the short term, even renewable resources cannot help people because industrial capitalist society has used them at a rate higher than the rate of their natural reproduction. That is, it has cut more trees than the number of new ones that are growing; it has used more water than is being replenished naturally, and so on. Water tables all over the world are falling. It will take decades to drastically reduced extraction for these resources to get back to the status of 'renewable'. In fact, the capitalist system has mined them in the same way that it has mined non-renewable resources.

While there is a window of a few years before resource depletion triggers a collapse, global warming does not give the society any window!

Global Warming
This has received maximum attention in the media due to the recent IPCC report which has drawn everyone's attention to the gravity of the situation. "If we are to stay below 1.5°C global warming, emissions have to peak no later than 2020. Emissions must also be cut by half by 2030, and to net zero by 2040. We need an immediate emergency response by policymakers, businesses, and civil society, aimed at an unprecedented transformation of all sectors of society. It's time to act!" Well, the world has passed that dead­line of 2020.

The levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are the main drivers of climate change. They are measured in 'parts per million (ppm)' and the safe levels are considered to be a maximum of 350, ideally less. They have hit a new record high, the UN said, warning "The window of opportunity for action is almost closed." Today (May 2023) it is 424 ppm! It is probably more correct to say that the window of opportunity for action is closed. No government is actually prepared to reduce emissions. In fact, this year they have been busy with wars which only increase emissions. A group of scientists have claimed that people are moving towards a temperature increase of 3.2 degrees centigrade and have asked the scientific community to launch global civil disobedience!

Ecological Degradation
The year 2022 saw some of the worst effects of ecological degradation due to climate change. Europe has seen the worst drought in 500 years. Both the USA and China too are facing drought in large areas. Now these are huge areas and include most of the 'developed countries' as well as some of the 'food baskets' of the world. Pakistan has faced huge floods involving 30 million people. In India too, large parts of the country have faced floods.

Growing Inequality and Social Unrest
The Annual Oxfam report points at growing inequality in the world. These inequalities continue to create protest move­ments all over the world. These movements are against the livelihoods crisis and the steep rise in the price of essentials brought on initially by the Covid-19 pandemic and the crippling lock-downs that followed, and exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Global warming, coupled with resource depletion, ecological disaster, growing people's movement, and wars among capitalist nations can together trigger a collapse of the entire global system.

Already Sri Lanka and 27 other small countries are going through a process of collapse. In 2023, people are witnessing huge strikes in UK, France and Netherlands against inflation and for higher wages. In coming years many other small and medium sized countries will follow suit, and then the bigger countries too may fall down like Humpty Dumpty. The recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank shows that the collapse has begun. It is logical to conclude that capitalism can neither solve these problems nor can it outlive them. People need to work towards alternatives without delay.

Chomsky once said that that for too long the indigenous people have borne the burden of saving the Earth. It is time that other people shared it. Well for the last few years a lot of evidence is coming that other people are indeed joining them!

In true anarchist fashion, many people are ignoring capitalism and the state and have taken to 'off grid living', rebuilding their lives on their own, particularly in rural areas.

So, is there a hope?

Yes. Capitalism is tirelessly searching for a source of energy which will last forever. But this is a hopeless enterprise. On the other hand, many ordinary people are getting back to the land, and reviving the health of renewable resources. If the rest of the world joins them in minimising economic activity like during the lock-down period except, this time, voluntarily then humanity has a fighting chance at survival.     

July 4, 2025

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Vol 58, No. 14 - 17, Sep 28 - Oct 25, 2025