The Last Refuge

[ecosophia]

I was delighted yesterday to learn from a reader that CounterPunch, one of the leading periodicals of the radical Left in the US, took the time out of its busy schedule to post a fine tirade by one Craig Collins insisting that modern industrial civilization won't decline -- it will collapse. What's more, it did me the courtesy of citing me as one of the leading figures among those wrongheaded people who suggest that our civilization will end the way every other civilization in human history has ended. 

Yes, I found this delightful, for two reasons. First -- well, do you recall Gandhi's famous quote? "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." For many years now the radical Left has treated the ongoing decline of industrial civilization as a temporary irrelevance, just another set of proofs that late capitalism was about to fall over dead to be replaced by some imaginary socialist paradise or other. More recently, a certain amount of shrill mockery has come from the radical Left when the reality of decline gets pointed out -- the phrase "declinism" got a certain amount of use in that context. Now, though, they're fighting; the next stage will follow in due time. 

You might be surprised, dear reader, that an article in a publication such as CounterPunch would insist on sudden collapse rather than, say, rallying yet again around the shopworn fantasy of proletarian revolution or what have you. You might be surprised, for that matter, that Collins proceeded to trot out the same talking points that apocalyptic fantasists have been using to insist on the imminence of sudden collapse since long before I started writing about the ongoing decline we're in. (Those of my readers who've been around since the days of The Archdruid Report already know all of Collins' four arguments well enough to repeat them in your sleep.) Still, that's to be expected at this point in the historical cycle. 

The reason why Collins and so many other people insist that we have to collapse -- we can't possibly decline like every other civilization in human history -- is that the ongoing reality of decline challenges the core act of faith at the heart of the modern mythology of progress: the belief that our civilization is unique and thus can ignore the lessons of history. (All four of Collins' arguments predictably boil down to exactly this:  "But we're special!")  A sudden cataclysmic collapse leaves the fantasy of progress intact; in a sick way, it can even feed into that fantasy -- "Look at us, we've progressed so far and so fast that we can even destroy ourselves!"  The process of decline that's going on all around us right now, by contrast, drives a stake through the heart of the fantasy and shows that despite our toys, we're following a historical arc that was old when bronze was the latest thing in high tech. 

There's another factor at work here, though. Follow the trajectory of apocalyptic fantasies through the history of ideas and you'll find that down through the centuries, in the Western world, belief in apocalypse is an admission of defeat. Social movements that are on the upside of their arc convince themselves that the world will improve, especially once they take control of as much of it as they can; it's when those hopes are blighted and the arc slopes downward that daydreams of imminent doom exert a potent emotional attraction. It's not quite true to say that it's all over for the American radical Left but the shouting, but it's heading in that direction -- and those of my readers who've watched the way that so many supposed liberals have rallied around the senile gerontocracy in DC in recent years, ditching their ideals right and left in order to concentrate on hating a populist movement that's actually improving the condition of working class Americans...well, let's just say that this latest bit is definitely writing on the wall. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

And don't forget that the Chinese were drilling for petroleum and natural gas 2000 years ago or that so many of the technologies we take for granted were invented by the Romans, the classical Chinese or the medieval Arabs. I remember watching news coverage a while back of flooding in southern France. There were modern bridges washing out left and right, while ancient Roman bridges survived with barely a scratch. Heck, it was the Romans who invented concrete more than 2000 years and constructed many of their greatest buildings from it.

Like the Book of Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun.

[ecosophia]

What's more, Roman concrete is considerably stronger than ours!

[(Anonymous)]

Why don’t we still use the Roman recipe for concrete?

[ecosophia]

Good question. I don't happen to know the answer.

[(Anonymous)]

According to Wikipedia, the technology was lost and had to be redeveloped in the 18th century. It's likely there are a lot of finer points which we still haven't figured out.

[jpc_w]

The written recipe for true Roman concrete was lost with the Roman Empire, and was only rediscovered in the last five years.

Not that it matters much, because sand is non-renewable in our civilization's timescale.

[(Anonymous)]

The recipe was lost, they only knew roughly what the ingredients were, but modern engineers are working on it, or so I read in an engineering magazine.

[(Anonymous)]

Here's an article that may hold the answer

https://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/15190/The-Secret-Ingredient-in-Ancient-Roman-Concrete-is-Seawater.aspx


JLfromNH

Roman concrete

[(Anonymous)]

We don't use their recipe because we haven't been able to reconstruct it. Courtesy of one of the many science magazines, or perhaps Smithsonian, exact one forgotten.

[deansmith]

I was reading about Roman concrete a while back and if I remember right, the answer to that is we're not sure and can't figure out how they made it.

Concrete

[(Anonymous)]

Roman concrete used pozolanic ash (a kind of vulcanic ash)on its composition. There is not enough pozolanic ash for all the conctrte that is used in the world.
Whispers

[(Anonymous)]

The method and principle of its making were lost. Efforts to recreate the recipe have borne some fruit, however (eg http://www.romanconcrete.com/romanconcrete.htm) and chemical understanding is growing (eg https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/06/04/roman-concrete/ and https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40494248). Perhaps we'll rediscover it before too long, and then value it more responsibly this time round.

[(Anonymous)]

I've read that since we now put reinforcing steel in concrete that over time it actually ends up harming the concrete causing it to weaken and crack.

Concrete and rebar

[(Anonymous)]

You may be thinking of the recent problems with bridges built without coated rebar. The salt slurry that is now commonly used (starting in the 1950s)for ice/snow clearance weakens the steel webbing of rebar and can created collapse situations. Epoxy coated rebar was introduced in the 1970s.

But this still leaves a lot of older concrete bridges.

[peter_van_erp]

Reinforcing steel always rusts eventually. The rusted steel expands, cracking the concrete. The cracks allow more salt, water and air in. More rust, etc, etc. Epoxy coated rebar is an attempt to get around that problem, but the epoxy has been found to have damage in field handling, reducing its effectiveness. I suspect there will be no reinforced concrete structures from our time 1,900 years hence, but the Pantheon will still be around, and the Hoover Dam will probably make it.

[(Anonymous)]

It is made using a kind of volcanic material known as Pozzolana, making it a locally appropriate material unlike the universal appeal of Portland cement. The reason is cultural, not technological.

[(Anonymous)]

I thought we lost their recipes, many of their techniques, etc. ?

Additives to Concrete

[(Anonymous)]

I am trained in architecture, and my husband is a civil engineer. My understanding of the current inferior concrete is - that it is mostly caused by the numerous different additives used to make it have a higher or lower slump, slower or faster curing times to meet construction deadlines, or change the temperatures at which it can be installed. Concrete has a lot of different stuff in it now than it used to. I live in an older neighborhood in NE Minnesota. When walking our dogs, our husband and I look for the date that is often stamped in the sidewalk concrete. There are several sidewalks that are in great shape over a hundred years old. There are many newer sidewalks that are less than 10-15 years old that are crumbling. The "get 'er done" mentality of public construction seems to have degraded the infrastructure considerably in the past 30 years.

[robertmathiesen]

Because until very recently the recipe was a mystery, and even now we're not sure whether it's been figured out correctly, more than a millenium after the last people had died who knew how to make Rioman concrete.

[(Anonymous)]

Roman concrete wasn't actually stronger but it lasts much longer because they didn't put iron "reinforcements" into it. These steel bars rust and expand breaking the concrete around it. This takes 50-100 years so that's the lifespan of modern concrete.

However modern concrete is slowly eroded by saltwater and the Romans had a formula which isn't. DARPA has a reward for anyone who can recreate this type of concrete.

A blog post where I got this info:
https://rootsofprogress.org/cement-redux

James

[(Anonymous)]

Ol' Bab here.
When I was a teen, vacationing in Bermuda, I overheard a discussion about why the hospital on the US airbase there had been abandoned. Seems the contractor had used seawater instead of fresh to make the concrete. Perhaps 1947?
Memory does not hint at whether the cement or the rebar failed first, but I do recall that the buildings that could be seen from the public road looked fine.

Concrete

[(Anonymous)]

Not an architect, but a personal interest of mine!

So, from I've read it's mostly down to costs - modern (portland) cement is cheaper to make, it dries hotter and sets much much faster, and you need to use far less actual cement. Roman cement can take up to six months to set (or rather, to gain a significant percentage of its ultimate strength), whereas portland cement sets in hours and dries in weeks. Roman concrete contained up to 65% cement (and about 35% light stone), whereas modern constructions have the reverse numbers; 11% Portland Cement and 67% aggregate and 22% air and water‍. So less cement used also equates to cheaper building costs.

The Romans did not use reinforced concrete - most modern constructions are dependant on the strength of a lattice-work of metal rods worked into the concrete. This allows for skyscrapers and the like - modern constructions.

What tends to utterly destroy modern structures is concrete-rot, when the metal bars within the reinforced concrete become exposed to the elements, then start to rust and expand, pushing the concrete apart and cracking it through. Once this process starts it is self-reinforcing as more and more water can get to the metal through the cracks.

Modern concrete structures have a lifespan between 30 to 100 years. They are made with this in mind. They are cost-optimized for construction, not longevity. Any kind of concrete hardens out further when given time - many surviving Roman constructs have had thousands of years - but especially Roman concrete exposed to seawater, as it creates tobermorite crystals within the concrete that prevent cracking and tearing.

Investors would rather have a building up in a few weeks/months made as cheaply as possible, that can then house profitable businesses or homes for a few decades before crumbling down.

(Actually it's quite like why modern statues are poured concrete rather than sculpted from natural stone - the old method is in many ways superior, but it has become unaffordable. On that note, many "brick" streets are also poured concrete nowadays, with a press with a brick-shaped imprint being run over it to imitate brick. Actual brick roads are mostly found within the old city centers here, and these bricks are carefully taken out, the road evened, and the bricks relayed. It has also become customary to add a single layer of bricks on the outside of a concrete building to imitate the, older, quality brick constructions... anyway, moving on.)

Now I'd argue this attitude is not helping our current global predicament, but I think it is an inescapable effect of capitalism. It's a short-term-thinking system (usually only up until the next financial quarter). It's much like how we no longer print encyclopedias anymore, but have all the information online - when our civilization winds down, most of our buildings will disappear utterly within a century, like a dream suddenly ending and falling apart. Quite poetic, really.



Finally, though we know the ingredients of Roman concrete through lab-analysis, we don't actually know the recipe, i.e. we'd need to experiment quite a lot before we'd be certain we truly recreated it. I'd personally love too see beautiful structures erected that will still stand millenia from now!

- Brigyn

[(Anonymous)]

In my previous comment, I forgot to include the ancient Greeks, who were amazingly inventive, especially when it came to technics during the Hellenistic period. Hero of Alexandra, who lived during the first century CE, has long been credited with inventing the first steam engine and the first coin operated vending machine, among many other things. Archimedes of Syracuse, who lived a few centuries earlier, is said to have invented a magnifying glass capable of setting the hulls of enemy ships afire by concentrating the Sun's rays upon a given spot, arguably the worlds first directed energy weapon. He had a huge number of other inventions and scientific discoveries to his credit.

Indeed, the inventions and discoveries of the ancient Greeks had a huge impact on the Romans and the Arabs, who built upon their work. I was astounded when I was doing some research on ancient discoveries to find that the ancient Chinese were building automata, early ancestors of the robot, more than 3000 years ago and that the Hellenistic Greeks, the Carthaginians and the Romans were building huge ships nearly as large as the fabled Treasure Ships of Admiral Cheng Ho more than 2000 years ago.

It's really quite sobering when you think about it and certainly puts paid to the idea that the Faustian Culture is something oh-so-special.