by Gar Smith
When the Year 2000 rolls around, the lives of the world's indigenous jungle- and desert-dwellers may continue without the slightest disruption. But for anyone living within ten feet of an electric socket, Y2K has the potential to really "level the playing field." If electric systems fail and fossil fuel falters, the United States of America could experience an instant and prolonged decentralization.
San Francisco got a taste of Y2kollapse on December 8, 1998 when a "simple human error" blotted out power to as many as a million people. The outage only lasted seven hours but the outrage - and the six-figure lawsuits - continue to simmer.
On February 20, 1998, the lights when out in Auckland, New Zealand - and stayed out for 17 days. Radio broadcasts (powered by gasoline) urged inner city residents to flee the city and find lodging in nearby cities. Entire businesses abandoned Auckland for good. High-rise buildings became unusable for most (and a prison for some). The noise and fumes of thousands of gas- and diesel-electric generators overpowered Auckland's darkened central business district.
In Auckland, the wealthiest survived in relative comfort. It was the poor who sweated it out in dark rooms and stench-filled streets - through more than two weeks of sweltering heat. Any Y2K-related problems are likely to hurt the poor more than the rich - at least in the short run.
In the US, the richest one percent of the population (which controls 28 percent of the country's wealth) will be safely ensconced in their guarded retreats in the Poconos or offshore in Barbados. Their underground fuel tanks are already topped off: Their larders are stocked. (For the super-rich, hoarding is a matter of habit.)
Civil Society or Civil Strife?
If civil society breaks down, the battle will not be between these super-rich Haves and the Have-Nots but between the Have-Littles and the Have-Mores.
In the widening debate about Y2k, the urban poor have been ignored - except by the right-wing survivalists who are buying land in the deserts, woods and prairies in fear that rioting will break out in the cities "when the welfare checks stop coming."
While it's nice to envision every middle-class family on Earth planting survival gardens and producing their own "off-the-grid" solar- and wind-generated-power, also picture this: You are desperately cold and hungry in a dark and threatening world - wouldn't you be drawn toward the one home that stands apart, aglow in the light of electric bulbs?
What has been missing in most Y2K discussions is the issue of "survival equity." People with more money have more opportunities to prepare for disruptions of power, fuel, food and cash. If, when the lights go out, some people are hungrier, colder and more desperate than others, the results will not be pretty.
Even if welfare checks (and paychecks) do arrive on time, it won't matter if there is no food in the markets. Every US city should begin to stockpile emergency supplies of food and water in convenient community centers so that urban residents will not be forced to chose between becoming refugees or contestants in a war for daily survival. This kind of contingency planning would also prepare communities to survive disruptions caused by earthquakes, floods, fire and tornadoes.
The Federal Government should organize this effort. In fact, it already has. During the Cold War, the US created a nationwide system of Civil Defense Shelters filled with drums of drinking water and barrels of survival biscuits. These shelters were, of course, incapable of protecting our parents from nuclear attack. But they could help to protect our children from Y2K or climate-change disruptions.
It's not enough to "get to know your neighbors." For years, an American underclass has been forced to survive through acts of petty crime, illicit commerce and violence. If the lights go out, civil society must finally solve the problem of massive unemployment or face the consequences.
If the power grid fails, there will be much useful work to do - hauling goods, moving the disabled, caring for the ill and elderly, creating post-Y2K technologies. You don't just call on the National Guard: When an emergency crosses normal political borders, everyone becomes a member of the National Guard.
Come the millennium, the currently unemployed may have lots of company. As one Y2K commentator put it: "If you aren't doing some kind of work that was being done in 1945, you're going to be out of a job." Can you repair shoes? Fix a manual typewriter? Build a house? Operate a mimeograph machine?
Like the threat of being hung in the morning, contemplating Y2k scenarios certainly serves to "focus the mind." One realization is that electricity is not an essential commodity. What would a post-Y2K solar-panel power? Light bulbs? (Why not go to sleep when it gets dark and rise with the sun?) Televisions? CD players? Power tools? Forget electric heat and self-defrosting refrigerators. Electric bikes and wheelchairs, however, do make sense.
Critical physical needs include food, water, clothing and shelter - electricity isn't critical.
Electricity will be essential, however, for the functioning of civil society. Electricity (from renewables, one would hope) could maintain regional - and possibly national and international - communications. We will need reliable sources of information. We will need to experience any disruption as a community as well as individuals. Radio broadcasts would most likely fulfill this need. But remember: Once the batteries are dead, boomboxes may as well be footstools. (During the San Francisco blackout, Earth Island was able to follow the emergency using a hand-cranked radio that also was powered by a photovoltaic cell.)
The Rich-Poor Gap
For thousands of years, closing the gap between rich and poor has been a fundamental goal of enlightened government. Y2K could provide a sobering reality check on our progress.
In the US, the typical US executive earns 85 times more than the average worker. Globally, the machinery for transcending poverty - the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - has also failed to deliver. In the last 25 years, the debt of the developing world has surged from $100 billion to $1.4 trillion - a 14-fold increase.
On the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, it is worth remembering that the UN Charter contained a plan to close the rich-poor gap. The Economic and Social Council was created "to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all people."
Today, more than one billion people live on less than a dollar a day. Thirty years ago, the richest 20 percent of the world controlled 70 percent of the world's income. Today, they hold 83 percent.
In his classic text, Ecology and Our Endangered Life-Support Systems, Eugene P. Odum, of the University of Georgia's Institute of Ecology, places the rich-poor disparity at the top of his short list on "worrisome gaps that must be narrowed if humans and the environment, as well as nations, are to be brought into more harmonious relationships."
A sustainable society will require more than alternative sources of energy and community organizing. It will also demand social justice. Lacking social justice - and "survival equity" - the most efficient solar panels might simply wind up being torn from suburban roof tops to build shelters for the homeless.
The growing concentration of natural resources, wealth and political power in fewer and fewer hands is both ecologically unsustainable and fundamentally anti-democratic. If the Y2k glitch pulls the plug on the 21st century, it will add a troubling new dimension to the power struggle of the next 100 years.
Y2K and "Survival Equity"