The Fall of Man

Part II chapter 8

Chapter 8

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the silhouettes of impending catastrophe were gathered unmistakeably like four horsemen on the horizon. A thick mire of carbon dioxide swirled, invisible but potent, high in the atmosphere. With each passing day it trapped more and more of the sun’s rays against the red-raw skin of the planet. With every new month another public fanfare announced a record high temperature; another warning of accelerated warming. The cycle of seasons became more and more erratic; each act of god more vengeful than the last. And as the planet’s midriff turned slowly barren and more of the poorest nations starved, so the seas continued their steady rise. But none of this calmed our consumption of energy or sated our voracious appetite for oil.

The global peak in oil production slipped by undetected, nestled amidst a series of crests and troughs, wars and embargos. However, the impact of its passing was titanic. Steady increases in fuel prices caused by a dwindling oil supply were compounded by the instability of the regions where the remaining oil was located. In Britain, the petrol station exchanges that Noah witnessed back in 2010 soon escalated into predictably violent squabbles and public confrontations. In a matter of months, the nation’s forecourts would be stained with blood.

Over the course of the next few years, the proportion of the Western population that could afford to drive plummeted. As the nation’s cars ground permanently to a halt, the value of our homes came to be driven almost entirely by location. Suburban out-of-town developments began an inexorable downward spiral through lack of investment or maintenance, the same choke-hold that asphyxiated towns and villages across South Wales and the north of England following the decommissioning of coal mining. Estates located furthest from public transport became slums and un-sellable ghettos. Mile after mile of low density, low rise family housing was abandoned as suburbia became a graveyard for vehicles that could not be driven and for homes that couldn’t be lived in.

The young and able-bodied evacuated first, leaving behind them decrepit and low-wage communities. Anyone failing to make the migration to a town or city inevitably became stranded in their suburban home; unable to afford enough heating, cooling or transportation to survive, while the infrastructure of shops, schools and even roads slowly crumbled and collapsed around them.

So began the exodus back to towns and cities. As coal and natural gas followed suit, domestic heating bills inevitably rose alongside the cost of petrol. There was a scramble to address the energy efficiency of the nation’s homes, but poor design and sloppy construction severely limited their potential for improvement – it is difficult to imagine anything less efficient than millions of detached homes spread at low density across sprawling suburban estates. The number of families living below the fuel poverty line tripled overnight. With increased hardship came higher mortality rates, especially among the young and the old. For the first time in modern history, there was a significant reduction in the average lifespan, right across developed western society.

In Britain, we spent most of the twentieth century moving our homes, shops, hospitals and offices out from town centres, and onto commuter routes. The planning process - designed to protect our towns and cities - played a pivotal role in their stagnation and downfall through museum-like ossification of the ‘historic’ – the old and the outdated. Meanwhile, urban redevelopments created themed monocultures – suburbs, cafe quarters, leisure parks and business districts - and stamped out any vitality and diversity that towns once thrived on.

The need to correct the mistakes of the last hundred years, to address a badly built and geriatric building stock, and to re-make our existing town and city centres in a dense, sustainable fashion, left only one option. It was necessary to start again – to demolish and redevelop almost our entire unnatural habitat. In this fierce new climate, any place not capable of independently supporting human life in all its forms had to go…