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Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida demonstrated what happens when concrete reaches the end of its useful life.
Every year, the world pours enough concrete to build a wall 88 feet high and 88 feet wide girdling the globe at the equator. The varieties in concreting, as you see here, are proof. In just two years — 2011 to 2013 — China poured more concrete than the United States did in the entire 20th Century. Manufacturing cement — the product that makes concrete out of water, sand and gravel — is the third largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions in the world; if it were a country, it would be the world’s fourth worst polluter. Increasing demand for, and scarcity of, sand for both concrete and fracking has created a vicious global competition that in some respects resembles the worst of the drug cartels for violence, ruthlessness and lawlessness.
Now the bad news. Concrete has a life span. Salt, water and heat degrade it until at some point it can no longer be the road or the bridge or the high rise or the dam it once was. If nothing is done to replace or repair it, it fails. And people die.
Now the really bad news. Most of the infrastructure of the United States is made of concrete, and most of that concrete is at the end of its life span. If you want to see what that looks like, go to Surfside, Florida and look at the pile of rubble that used to be the Champlain Towers. The pile of rubble that demonstrates perfectly the nature of the rapidly approaching concrete crisis.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers:
- Nearly half of America’s 617,000 bridges are 50 years old, or older, and 46,000 of them are structurally deficient.
- 40% of the country’s highways are rated in poor or mediocre condition. Many of them in urban situations are impossible to close down in order to rebuild them.
- 2,300 dams rated as high hazard — meaning that any failure would be catastrophic — are also rated as deficient.
Which brings us to the really, really bad news. There is no logical way that the local, state or federal governments in this or any other country are going to find the political will to raise and spend the money necessary to fix this problem. For half a century and more, especially since the advent of the Reagan Era, the standard operating procedure has been to kick the can down the road. Now both the can and the road are just about used up.
Furthermore, should by some miracle the money appear and the work start, just the manufacturing of the cement needed would by itself accelerate global climate change, whose existential threat to the civilized world and its concrete infrastructure is just now ramping up. The industry is frothing with announced breakthroughs and advanced plans for making “green” concrete, without all those nasty emissions; they have all the credibility of the coal industry’s bragging about “clean” coal.
Most articles and speeches written about the intractable threats gathering around industrial civilization conclude with the craven statement that dramatic action has to be taken soon if this crisis — whether the concrete crisis or the global warming crisis of any of the many others — is to be avoided. Almost none of them conclude by telling you the truth: that the time when this crisis could have been avoided is long past, and we’re in for it now.
There’s a good book about concrete’s partner-in-crime, iron and steel — to include steel rebar:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609454-rust
Thanks, Tom. I always appreciate your truth-telling.
Good summary of out current state of affairs. Too bad 99.99% of the people told about this will deny that it’s a problem or they will give (sell) you hopium that there is a solution coming. Just a question about how soon the most devastating effects will start to manifest themselves (apart from hurricanes, tornado’s, heat waves and firestorms that are already here)?
You just answered your own question. It has already begun,
I live in a wood-frame apartment building that is approaching the century-mark in its age. I wonder what shape all these concrete-based apartment complexes will be when they are 100 years old?
Indeed. If they are anywhere near the coast, or built on sinking or moving (i.e. barrier island) land, I dooubt that any of them will make it.
Important observations of course, but what alternatives, or by what means do you propose we search for alternatives?
Before we can identify an alternative we have to look the problem squarely in the face. Human population everywhere will be drastically reduced and industrial activity virtually wiped out in the coming crash. But as I explained in my book Brace for Impact, while it will not be possible to save everyone, it will be possible to save anyone; by which I mean that anyone willing and able to face reality right now, and make the changes and learn the skills necessary to survive, can probably do so and participate in the building of a new order.
The response I usually get is, “Well I live in a high rise in New York City, what am I supposed to do?” And my response is, if that is where you are when the crash comes, you are going to die. The other objection is, “Not everybody can move to the country.” Which is right, of course, and accompanies the understanding that not everyone can survive.
I have taken to keeping a vacuumed sealed large can of coffee around for when you cannot get coffee anymore because of climate change, then inevitably there will come a time when I might find myself in that last one or two weeks of existence and I can haul out that now rare coffee and my camp stove and a saved propane canister and say nonchalantly to my wife “Hey wouldn’t a cup of coffee go good right now?”
Good attitude!
Name your patio “Titanic” and sit out in the deck chairs enjoying your cup-a-java.
Not quite to that extent, but a key reason I keep a french press and ground coffee. Used it recently during a power outage. (I have emergency kits for both the vehicle and home. Pulled out the little stove).
Just an open-ended rhetorical question I’m sure many here have been asking. I’ve got 10, 20, 30+ years left. Given the decade by decade projections in the same timeframes, (a) what will my near end of life years look like, and (b) will these climatic changes hasten my demise?
Again, to borrow from Natalie Merchant and Katell Kienig:
(Gulf of Araby)
If you could hold the frozen flow of New Hope Creek
And hide out from the one they said you might meet
And if you could unlearn all the words
That you never wanted heard
If you could stall the southern wind
That’s whistling in your ears
You could take what is, what is, what is
To what can never be
Better still If you could grew yourself a coffee tree. They like reasonable warmth and humidity and water and no frost alas not north of about 35N!
That’s a wonderful story. I read it twice
“In just two years — 2011 to 2013 — China poured more concrete than the United States did in the entire 20th Century.”
Let that stat sink in. Also, let this sink in as well, if you’re an American, Afghanistan is going to have a high speed rail line before the United States does. Kabul to Paris is on the drawing boards in Beijing, which means, by the end of the decade, the Taliban will be hopping on bullet trains to spend the day shopping in Parisian boutiques.
Because that’s how Chinese imperialism works. In lieu of droning your weddings and your funerals, they build one billion dollar HSR train stations in the middle of your war torn capitols.
Excellent post. You’re right. We really need to do something about this global climate warming stuff, before it’s too late! … lol …
There’s an interesting article on this evening’s MSNBC page, “Coordinated crime sprees force retailers to close stores, limit hours”. This is not a new phenomenon. It used to be called ‘flash mobbing’ and was pretty much limited to poorer inner-city neighborhoods. But now the problem is expanding at an alarming rate and knows no geographical or social boundaries. The authorities have no answers.
Apparently, as material shortages loom, logistical systems of all sorts falter and the climate becomes our enemy, societal breakdown follows – in a hundred little ways, and some, not so little.
I grew up near the George Westinghouse bridge, which carried US Rt. 30 east. The bridge was said for a time to be the world’s longest concrete arch span structure. It opened in 1932; seems to me it should be nearing its sell-by date.