The Black Score
A footnote to The Collapse of Western Civilisation
Science fiction writers construct an imaginary future; historians attempt to reconstruct the past. Ultimately, both are seeking to understand the present. In this essay, we blend the two genres to imagine a future historian looking back on a past that is our present and (possible) future. The occasion is the tercentenary of the end of Western culture (1540-2093).
So begins The Collapse of Western Civilization, a short and brutal story by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway published in 2014. The premise, as described above, is a historian writing from three hundred years in the future to describe what the hell went wrong. It’s a tragedy in two acts, starting with the Period of the Penumbra (1988-2073) followed by the Great Collapse and Mass Migration (2073-2093). A third chapter examines some of the reasons for this sad turn of events (title: Market Failure). There’s even a great little interview with the authors at the back of the book.
It is impressive how much Oreskes and Conway fit into 52 short pages. Here are some highlights:
In the early 2010s legislation is passed that limited what scientists could study and how they could study it, beginning with a bill known as the Sea Level Rise Denial Bill. Conway and Oreskes note this bill was “passed by the government of what was then the US state of North Carolina (now part of the Atlantic Continental Shelf).”
Fast forward to 2025 and we have the US National Stability Protection Act, which led to the imprisonment of more than three hundred scientists for unduly alarming the public.
Oreskes and Conway spend some time discussing how science shot itself in the foot, via focusing on small and solvable problems rather than hard (‘untractable’) but important ones, a belief in the inappropriateness of speaking outside one’s area of expertise combined with a focus on narrow topics which precluded understanding of the bigger picture, and an excessively stringent standard for accepting claims of any kind, including threats (the 95% confidence interval comes in for a hammering - later on so does the idea of gas as a bridge to renewables).
We reach an atmospheric doubling of CO2 by 2042, which eventually leads to a warming of 3.9 degrees. We have water and food rationing, one child policies, depopulation, crop failure, food riots, mass migration, disease outbreaks and the start of negotations between US and Canada for the creation of the United States of North America, “to develop an orderly plan for resource-sharing and northward population relocation.” Things go considerably downhill after this.
The International Aerosol Injection Climate Engineering Project starts pumping aerosols into the air to reduce temperatures, shaving a cool 0.4 degrees Celsius from global temperatures over a few years. Unfortunately it also causes the shutdown of the Indian Monsoon, leading to the abrupt cancellation of the program and a period of charmingly titled termination shock, which involves a rebound in temperature of 1 degree Celsius in 18 months after the cessation of the project.
Arctic summer ice is gone by 2060 and massive thawing of permafrost leads to an effective doubling in atmospheric carbon over the next ten years. Poor old Carl Sagan has a runaway feedback loop of warming named after him - an additional 6 degrees Celsius on top of the 5 degree rise that has already occurred, for anyone keeping score.
The Great Collapse refers to the large scale melting of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets over two decades from 2073-2093, together contributing 7m to sea level rise, disclocating 20% of the global population (hence the other part of the name of this period, the Mass Migration).
Just when you think things can’t get any worse, we get a Second Black Death as a byproduct of the mass migration. And a final species extinction rate of 60-70%. “Suffice it to say that total losses - social, cultural, economic and demographic - were greater than any in recorded human history.”
There is almost a happy ending around 2090, with the discovery (or development) of a lichenized fungus with a huge appetite for CO2 that ended up spreading like wildfire and setting the planet on a path to “atmospheric recovery”. Over the 22nd Century things calm down a bit as “survivors in northern inland regions of Europe, Asia and North America, as well as inland and high altitude regions of South America, were able to begin to regroup and rebuild.” We know that China and Asia did relatively well (the word ‘relatively’ is doing a lot of work here!) because our historian is writing from none other than the Second People’s Republic of China.
Instead of a fairytale finish though, we get a gut punch in the last line: the human populations of Australia and Africa were wiped out.
Apologies for the spoilers, but I can assure you there is plenty more detail and the book is well worth the read. Other than being more than a little bit troubled by the book, I found myself wondering how fire might fit into this story.
Lo and behold, I just came across the following draft, apparently given the ol’ heave ho by the editor, and I don’t blame them really. But I’ll let you be the judge.
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One of the more extraordinary aspects of the collapse of Western civilisation was how it consigned otherwise catastrophic events to mere footnotes.
To wit, the Black Score fires (score is an archaic word meaning twenty). Over a period of about 20 years - some argue 19, others 22 - from roughly 2055 to 2075, a series of wildfires gripped the planet’s forests, grasslands and flammable vegetation.
Things began with what at the time was the only ever quadruple dip La Niña, a four year period of unprecedented vegetation growth over much of the planet, particularly in arid and semi-arid areas. This was followed by the hottest and driest four year period on record (a record broken three times in the next 15 years), creating dieback on a previously unseen scale.
The Black Score fires came not in one hit, not in one fire or fire season, but in series, in waves. The first wave of fires (2055-2056) was met with confidence as well-oiled fire management machines rolled into action, sharing and deploying resources and utilising best practice techniques. The usual set of inquiries followed. By the third wave (2063-65) it was clear that the response was failing. The fourth wave (2069-75) delivered the knockout blow.
There was a collapse in our systems for suppressing fire. Volunteer numbers fell off a cliff. Forever fires became the norm, burning for days, weeks and months. Smoke was an ever present feature of the landscape. As had been warned, overlapping fire seasons placed an unbearable strain on the system. Jurisdictions became unable to share resources at state, national and international levels, not just because of the spatial scale of the fires, but also their extended duration.
Community recovery also collapsed as suburbs, towns and villages faced fire after fire. Dislocation and withdrawal, which had been happening anyway, accelerated in the worst-affected areas.
Mega-fire became a widely understood term, denoting a fire of at least one million hectares in size (about 2.5 million acres).
The proportion of the flammable landscape that burnt each year began to climb. On a global scale, in the early 21st century, figures of 1-2% were common. One of the shocking facts at the time of the Black Summer fires of 2019-20 was that over 20% of the temperate forest biome in south-eastern Australia was burnt that year, in contrast to the previous record for that biome of about 4%, and for any biome of about 12%. By the end of the Black Score, almost every forested biome on the planet had recorded at least one year where more than 25% of the area had burnt.
Figures for non-forested areas such as grasslands were lower, but still unprecedented, sending total global burned area in excess of 30 million square kilometres (3 billion hectares) during the early part of the Black Score. This was in contrast to annual figures of three to five million square kilometres during the early part of the century. The 30 million square km figure was surpassed two more times during the period, culminating in the first ever 50 million hectare season in 2074, where many individual biomes were virtually completely burnt.
As had also been widely predicted, vegetation shifts proceeded apace. A kind of ecosystem ping pong played out between rainforests, dry forests, woodlands and grasslands. Fire-tolerant species thrived and then wilted in the furnace of constant heat and fire.
Although few areas were spared, some of the greatest human impacts came in cities surrounded by dense vegetation. A new sub-field of industrial smoke pollution studies opened up as factories, chemical plants and settlements came into contact with fire fronts and ember storms, producing exotic and toxic cocktails of gases and particulates. Meanwhile the long underfunded field of paleofire studies had an absolute field day, literally, with the amount of fire allowing widespread validation of charcoal and ash production and deposition models. Smoky skies hung over ashen earth and pavements.
Initially scientists diligently tracked these and other impacts such fire severity, house loss, the health burden of wildfire smoke and fire-sensitive species affected. They were soon overwhelmed by the volume of fire.
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The above were my loose, rough, poorly researched, non-footnoted dot points. Is this scenario realistic? I don’t think so. Hyperbolic? Possibly. Irresponsible? Geez I’m just a humble writer, will you give me a break? Will it come true? Almost certainly not. Will it get you thinking? I hope so. How far outside the bounds of normal, of natural variability can we go? What could unprecedented come to mean?
Writing The Black Score underscored for me how, to some extent, the fire problem was never actually about fire. Just as there are no natural disasters, fire is not a one person play. It is part of an ensemble cast and derives much of its power from other actors on the global stage i.e. us humans. One thing that is still in our power is rewriting the script and taking that annoying climate change character out of the cast. It never tested well with audiences anyway.
The Black Score... very scary!
And thanks for the review of The Collapse of Western Civilization - I went and found a copy and read it. Terrifyingly graphic, and impressively researched.
A couple of observations - I reckon the authors put too much blame on scientists for failing to make people realise the facts. Were scientists at fault for ‘allowing’ Big Tobacco to delay significant govt action on smoking for decades?
The authors also make excuses for politicians as being ‘under the spell’ of false free market beliefs. Politicians by and large know exactly which side their bread is buttered on.
Interesting they posit that 300 years into the future we remain in vigorous discussion on whether, now, ‘decentralisation and redemocratisation’ may be considered. But no specific mention of the fate of capitalism. In the story it was the powerful centralised government of China that was able to take actions in the face of (an emergency). So maybe Trump is on the right track with his moves toward dictatorship! (No he’s not, I’m joking)
Quite disturbing. However, what the authors said governments achieved by silencing scientists via legislation, we have achieved either through ignoring them or denial.
Another thoughtful read - thanks!