Some people talk about peak energy (or oil) supply. They expect high prices and more demand than supply. Other people talk about energy demand hitting a peak many years from now, perhaps when most of us have electric cars.
Neither of these views is correct. The real situation is that we right now seem to be reaching peak energy demand through low commodity prices. I see evidence of this in the historical energy data recently updated by BP (BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015).
Growth in world energy consumption is clearly slowing. In fact, growth in energy consumption was only 0.9% in 2014. This is far below the 2.3% growth we would expect, based on recent past patterns. In fact, energy consumption in 2012 and 2013 also grew at lower than the expected 2.3% growth rate (2012 – 1.4%; 2013 – 1.8%).
Figure 1- Resource consumption by part of the world. Canada etc. grouping also includes Norway, Australia, and South Africa. F Soviet Union means Former Soviet Union. Middle East excludes Israel. Based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015 data.
Recently, I wrote that economic growth eventually runs into limits. The symptoms we should expect are similar to the patterns we have been seeing recently (Why We Have an Oversupply of Almost Everything (Oil, labor, capital, etc.)). It seems to me that the patterns in BP’s new data are also of the kind that we would expect to be seeing, if we are hitting limits that are causing low commodity prices.
One of our underlying problems is that energy costs have risen faster than most workers’ wages since 2000. Another underlying problem has to do with globalization. Globalization provides a temporary benefit. In the last 20 years, we greatly ramped up globalization, but we are now losing the temporary benefit globalization brings. We find we again need to deal with the limits of a finite world and the constraints such a world places on growth.
Energy Consumption is Slowing in Many Parts of the World
Many parts of the world are seeing slowing growth in energy consumption. One major example is China.
Figure 2. China’s energy consumption by fuel, based on data of BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.
Based on recent patterns in China, we would expect fuel consumption to be increasing by about 7.5% per year. Instead, energy consumption has slowed, with growth amounting to 4.3% in 2012; 3.7% in 2013; and 2.6% in 2014. If China was recently the growth engine of the world, it is now sputtering.
Part of China’s problem is that some of the would-be buyers of its products are not growing. Europe is a well-known example of an area with economic problems. Its consumption of energy products has been slumping since 2006.
Figure 3. European Union Energy Consumption based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015 Data.
I have used the same scale (maximum = 3.5 billion metric tons of oil equivalent) on Figure 3 as I used on Figure 2 so that readers can easily compare the European’s Union’s energy consumption to that of China. When China was added to the World Trade Organization in December 2001, it used only about 60% as much energy as the European Union. In 2014, it used close to twice as much energy (1.85 times as much) as the European Union.
Another area with slumping energy demand is Japan. It consumption has been slumping since 2005. It was already well into a slump before its nuclear problems added to its other problems.
Figure 4. Japan energy consumption by fuel, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.
A third area with slumping demand is the Former Soviet Union (FSU). The two major countries within the FSU with slumping demand are Russia and Ukraine.
Figure 5. Former Soviet Union energy consumption by source, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy Data 2015.
Of course, some of the recent slumping demand of Ukraine and Russia are intended–this is what US sanctions are about. Also, low oil prices hurt the buying power of Russia. This also contributes to its declining demand, and thus its consumption.
The United States is often portrayed as the bright ray of sunshine in a world with problems. Its energy consumption is not growing very briskly either.
Figure 6. United States energy consumption by fuel, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2014.
To a significant extent, the US’s slowing energy consumption is intended–more fuel-efficient cars, more fuel-efficient lighting, and better insulation. But part of this reduction in the growth in energy consumption comes from outsourcing a portion of manufacturing to countries around the world, including China. Regardless of cause, and whether the result was intentional or not, the United States’ consumption is not growing very briskly. Figure 6 shows a small uptick in the US’s energy consumption since 2012. This doesn’t do much to offset slowing growth or outright declines in many other countries around the world.
Slowing Growth in Demand for Almost All Fuels
We can also look at world energy consumption by type of energy product. Here we find that growth in consumption slowed in 2014 for nearly all types of energy.
Figure 7. World energy consumption by part of the world, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.
Looking at oil separately (Figure 8), the data indicates that for the world in total, oil consumption grew by 0.8% in 2014. This is lower than in the previous three years (1.1%, 1.2%, and 1.1% growth rates).
Figure 8. Oil consumption by part of the world, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.
If oil producers had planned for 2014 oil consumption based on the recent past growth in oil consumption growth, they would have overshot by about 1,484 million tons of oil equivalent (MTOE), or about 324,000 barrels per day. If this entire drop in oil consumption came in the second half of 2014, the overshoot would have been about 648,000 barrels per day during that period. Thus, the mismatch we have recently been seeing between oil consumption and supply appears to be partly related to falling demand, based on BP’s data.
(Note: The “oil” being discussed is inclusive of biofuels and natural gas liquids. I am using MTOE because MTOE puts all fuels on an energy equivalent basis. A barrel is a volume measure. Growth in barrels will be slightly different from that in MTOE because of the changing mix of liquid fuels.)
We can also look at oil consumption for the US, EU, and Japan, compared to all of the rest of the world.
Figure 9. Oil consumption divided between the (a) US, EU, and Japan, and (b) Rest of the World.
While the rest of the world is still increasing its growth in oil consumption, its rate of increase is falling–from 2.3% in 2012, to 1.6% in 2013, to 1.3% in 2014.
Figure 10 showing world coal consumption is truly amazing. Huge growth in coal use took place as globalization spread. Carbon taxes in some countries (but not others) further tended to push manufacturing to coal-intensive manufacturing locations, such as China and India.
Figure 10. World coal consumption by part of the world, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.
Looking at the two parts of the world separately (Figure 11), we see that in the last three years, growth in coal consumption outside of US, EU, and Japan, has tapered down. This is similar to the result for world consumption of coal in total (Figure 10).
Figure 11. Coal consumption for the US, EU, and Japan separately from the Rest of the World, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy data.
Another way of looking at fuels is in a chart that compares consumption of the various fuels side by side (Figure 12).
Figure 12. World energy consumption by fuel, showing each fuel separately, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.
Consumption of oil, coal and natural gas are all moving on tracks that are in some sense parallel. In fact, coal and natural gas consumption have recently tapered more than oil consumption. World oil consumption grew by 0.8% in 2014; coal and natural gas consumption each grew by 0.4% in 2014.
The other three fuels are smaller. Hydroelectric had relatively slow growth in 2014. Its growth was only 2.0%, compared to a recent average of as much as 3.5%. Even with this slow growth, it raised hydroelectric energy consumption to 6.8% of world energy supply.
Nuclear electricity grew by 1.8%. This is actually a fairly large percentage gain compared to the recent shrinkage that has been taking place.
Other renewables continued to grow, but not as rapidly as in the past. The growth rate of this grouping was 12.0%, (compared to 22.4% in 2011, 18.1% in 2012, 16.5% in 2013). With the falling percentage growth rate, growth is more or less “linear”–similar amounts were added each year, rather than similar percentages. With recent growth, other renewables amounted to 2.5% of total world energy consumption in 2014.
Falling Consumption Is What We Would Expect with Lower Inflation-Adjusted Prices
People buy goods that they want or need, with one caveat: they don’t buy what they cannot afford. To a significant extent affordability is based on wages (or income levels for governments or businesses). It can also reflect the availability of credit.
We know that commodity prices of many kinds (energy, food, metals of many kinds) have generally been falling, on an inflation adjusted basis, for the past four years. Figure 13 shows a graph prepared by the International Monetary Fund of trends in commodity prices.
Figure 13. Charts prepared by the IMF showing trends in indices of primary commodity prices.
It stands to reason that if prices of commodities are low, while the general trend in the cost of producing these commodities is upward, there will be erosion in the amount of these products that can be profitably produced, and hence, that can be purchased. (This occurs because prices are falling relative to the cost of producing the goods.) If, prior to the drop in prices, consumption of the commodity had been growing rapidly, lower prices are likely to lead to a slower rate of consumption growth. If prices drop further or stay depressed, an absolute drop in consumption may occur.
It seems to me that the lower commodity prices we have been seeing over the past four years (with a recent sharper drop for oil), likely reflect an affordability problem. This affordability problem arises because for most people, wages did not rise when energy prices rose, and the prices of commodities in general rose in the early 2000s.
For a while, the lack of affordability could be masked with a variety of programs: economic stimulus, increasing debt and Quantitative Easing. Eventually these programs reach their limits, and prices begin falling in inflation-adjusted terms. Now we are at a point where prices of oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium are all low in inflation-adjusted terms, discouraging further investment.
Commodity Exporters–Will They Be Next to Be Hit with Lower Consumption?
If the price of a commodity, say oil, is low, this is a problem for a country that exports the commodity. The big issue is likely to be tax revenue. Governments very often get a major share of their tax revenue from taxing the profits of the companies that sell the commodities, such as oil. If the price of oil or other commodity that is exported drops, then it will be difficult for the government to collect enough tax revenue. There may be other effects as well. The company producing the commodity may cut back its production. If this happens, the exporting country is faced with another problem–laid-off workers without jobs. This adds a second need for revenue: to pay benefits to laid-off workers.
Many oil exporters currently subsidize energy and food products for their citizens. If tax revenue is low, the amount of these subsidies is likely to be reduced. With lower subsidies, citizens will buy less, reducing world demand. This reduction in demand will tend to reduce world oil (or other commodity) prices.
Even if subsidies are not involved, lower tax revenue will very often affect the projects an oil exporter can undertake. These projects might include building roads, schools, or hospitals. With fewer projects, world demand for oil and other commodities tends to drop.
The concern I have now is that with low oil prices, and low prices of other commodities, a number of countries will have to cut back their programs, in order to balance government budgets. If this happens, the effect on the world economy could be quite large. To get an idea how large it might be, let’s look again at Figure 1, recopied below.
Notice that the three “layers” in the middle are all countries whose economies are fairly closely tied to commodity exports. Arguably I could have included more countries in this category–for example, other OPEC countries could be included in this grouping. These countries are now in the “Rest of the World” category. Adding more countries to this category would make the portion of world consumption tied to countries depending on commodity exports even greater.
Figure 1- Resource consumption by part of the world. Canada etc. groupng also includes Norway, Australia, and South Africa. F Soviet Union means Former Soviet Union. Middle East excludes Israel. Based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015 data.
My concern is that low commodity prices will prove to be self-perpetuating, because low commodity prices will adversely affect commodity exporters. As these countries try to fix their own problems, their own demand for commodities will drop, and this will affect world commodity prices. The total amount of commodities used by exporters is quite large. It is even larger when oil is considered by itself (see Figure 8 above).
In my view, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 occurred indirectly as a result of low oil prices in the late 1980s. A person can see from Figure 1 how much the energy consumption of the Former Soviet Union fell after 1991. Of course, in such a situation exports may fall more than consumption, leading to a rise in oil prices. Ultimately, the issue becomes whether a world economy can adapt to falling oil supply, caused by the collapse of some oil exporters.
Our World Economy Has No Reverse Gear
None of the issues I raise would be a problem, if our economy had a reverse gear–in other words, if it could shrink as well as grow. There are a number of things that go wrong if an economy tries to shrink:
- Businesses find themselves with more factories than they need. They need to lay off workers and sell buildings. Profits are likely to fall. Loan covenants may be breached. There is little incentive to invest in new factories or stores.
- There are fewer jobs available, in comparison to the number of available workers. Many drop out of the labor force or become unemployed. Wages of non-elite workers tend to stagnate, reflecting the oversupply situation.
- The government finds it necessary to pay more benefits to the unemployed. At the same time, the government’s ability to collect taxes falls, because of the poor condition of businesses and workers.
- Businesses in poor financial condition and workers who have been laid off tend to default on loans. This tends to put banks into poor financial condition.
- The number of elderly and disabled tends to grow, even as the working population stagnates or falls, making the funding of pensions increasingly difficult.
- Resale prices of homes tend to drop because there are not enough buyers.
Many have focused on a single problem area–for example, the requirement that interest be paid on debt–as being the problem preventing the economy from shrinking. It seems to me that this is not the only issue. The problem is much more fundamental. We live in a networked economy; a networked economy has only two directions available to it: (1) growth and (2) recession, which can lead to collapse.
Conclusion
What we seem to be seeing is an end to the boost that globalization gave to the world economy. Thus, world economic growth is slowing, and because of this slowed economic growth, demand for energy products is slowing. This globalization was encouraged by the Kyoto Protocol (1997). The protocol aimed to reduce carbon emissions, but because it inadvertently encouraged globalization, it tended to have the opposite effect. Adding China to the World Trade Organization in 2001 further encouraged globalization. CO2 emissions tended to grow more rapidly after those dates.
Figure 14. World CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, based on data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.
Now growth in fuel use is slowing around the world. Virtually all types of fuel are affected, as are many parts of the world. The slowing growth is associated with low fuel prices, and thus slowing demand for fuel. This is what we would expect, if the world is running into affordability problems, ultimately related to fuel prices rising faster than wages.
Globalization brings huge advantages, in the form of access to cheap energy products still in the ground. From the point of view of businesses, there is also the possibility of access to cheap labor and access to new markets for selling their goods. For long-industrialized countries, globalization also represents a workaround to inadequate local energy supplies.
The one problem with globalization is that it is not a permanent solution. This happens for several reasons:
- A great deal of debt is needed for the new operations. At some point, this debt starts reaching limits.
- Diminishing returns leads to higher cost of energy products. For example, later coal may need to come from more distant locations, adding to costs.
- Wages in the newly globalized area tend to rise, negating some of the initial benefit of low wages.
- Wages of workers in the area developed prior to globalization tend to fall because of competition with workers from parts of the world getting lower pay.
- Pollution becomes an increasing problem in the newly globalized part of the world. China is especially concerned about this problem.
- Eventually, more than enough factory space is built, and more than enough housing is built.
- Demand for energy products (in terms of what workers around the world can afford) cannot keep up with production, in part because wages of many workers lag thanks to competition with low-paid workers in less-advanced countries.
It seems to me that we are reaching the limits of globalization now. This is why prices of commodities have fallen. With falling prices comes lower production and hence lower total consumption. Many economies are gradually moving into recession–this is what the low prices and falling rates of energy growth really mean.
It is quite possible that at some point in the not too distant future, demand (and prices) will fall further. We then will be dealing with severe worldwide recession.
In my view, low prices and low demand for commodities are what we should expect, as we reach limits of a finite world. There is widespread belief that as we reach limits, prices will rise, and energy products will become scarce. I don’t think that this combination can happen for very long in a networked economy. High energy prices tend to lead to recession, bringing down prices. Low wages and slow growth in debt also tend to bring down prices. A networked economy can work in ways that does not match our intuition; this is why many researchers fail to see understand the nature of the problem we are facing.
There are NEGATIVE WAVES with Highway Eddy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyh-JpWdGmQ
and then there are POSITIVE waves:
http://fcnp.com/2015/06/30/the-peak-oil-crisis-the-buoyancy-solution/
There was more news last week concerning the Rosch Innovations Kinetic Power Plant generator that I wrote about several weeks ago. You will recall that this device makes electricity by using the force of buoyancy. Floats in a column of water are filled with air at the bottom and are pushed to the top by buoyancy, which drives an electric generator that pressurizes the floats and produces excess energy. As compared with other possible sources of cheap power, this technology is simple to understand; cheap to make; requires no fuel; leaves behind no pollution, and operates 24 hours a day. Of course, “too good to be true” is what many are saying. This is clearly a claim of “perpetual motion” and as anyone who has been exposed to the laws of physics knows is impossible.
The problem for the skeptics, however, is that in so far as numerous independent observers who have actually looked at the technology up close can tell – it works
http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/legendary-homesteader-scott-nearing-zmaz03onzgoe.aspx
“I assume that ardent endeavor to discover the ideal, and to embody it in individual and collective life, develops the bone and sinew of body, mind and spirit.”
— Scott Nearing, in The Making of a Radical, A Political Autobiog
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/49273.Helen_Nearing
The value of doing something does not lie in the ease or difficulty, the probability or improbability of its achievement, but in the vision, the plan, the determination and the perseverance, the effort and the struggle which go into the project. Life is enriched by aspiration and effort, rather than by acquisition and accumulation.”
― Helen Nearing, The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living
Helen Nearing, The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living
That is a very misleading title Michael…. they were not living a self-sufficient life at all. Hence I see no point in quoting or reading it.
This Is How You Turn Cow Fart Gas Into Energy http://bigthink.com/design-for-good/this-is-how-you-turn-cow-fart-gas-into-energy
Alas we are saved! By cow flatulence!!!
Someone like YOU would bring FARTS as a solution.
As far as the Nearings you admit you have failed to read any of their writings and refuse to do so, so in that regard negates your opinion.
That’s not true…. I did read an interview with Scott Nearing … the one that I pasted earlier …
About how they used concrete and electricity and a pick up truck… and many of the other trappings of BAU
Why would I need to read anything else? If everyone lived like them that would change absolutely nothing — they were 100% plugged into BAU — they were in love with BAU — just like the rest of us
So I am not going to read a book about ‘the good life — a life of self-sufficient living’
Because it is total bullshit. I repeat – it is total bullshit.
Scott Nearing can make himself feel good by telling us about his organic garden — and the green brigade can read about what he did… and they can feel good too…and they can emulate him (but I don’t know why you would not use a chain saw — if you are going to use a pick up truck then you might as well use a chain saw no? — either you are stupid or can’t afford the chain saw… take you pick … because doing without is not saving anything)
This is just more koombaya — he was just another communist hippy who truly did not have a clue
I already know how to plant a garden and make compost and step on a shovel…. I enjoy working in the garden…. I don’t need to read a book to tell me about the joys of this — and to tell me that I am somehow making the world a better place by doing these things…. because I am not.
Feel free to explain to me how Scott Nearing was saving the world by example.
“The business of procuring the necessities of life has been shifted from the wood lot, the garden, the kitchen and the family to the factory and the large-scale enterprise. In our case, we moved our center back to the land.”
“The store customer, who comes home with a package under his arm has learned nothing, except that a ten dollar bill is a source of power in the market place. The man or woman who has converted material into needed products via tools and skills has matured in the process.”
When you are faced with food that has been sterilized, fumigated, hydrogenated, hydrolyzed, homogenized, colored, bleached, puffed, exploded, defatted, degermed, texturized, or if you don’t know what has been done to it, the safest rule is not to eat it.”
NEARING: We were merely living in a very simple way, and because we had no money and we grew our own food, cut our own wood and built our own houses, made our own clothes, that sort of thing. Not from any great idealistic purpose but because that was the way things were with us
Well, I suppose that is ENOUGH to POVE YOU WRONG
When you are faced with food that has been sterilized, fumigated, hydrogenated, hydrolyzed, homogenized, colored, bleached, puffed, exploded, defatted, degermed, texturized, or if you don’t know what has been done to it, the safest rule is not to eat it.”
One of the most ignorant statements I have ever read.
I suppose he does not understand that the reason people eat food produced in this manner is because we have 7B mouths to feed and without the green revolution we would have had epic famines across the planet long ago…
So his answer is that we all grow food on our organic farms using concrete and pick ups and electricity (but no chain saws…)?
Or is it we all spend $5000 per month eating at Whole Foods?
Scott Nearing surely had good intentions… but he was a bloody fool.
He romances about a world that cannot exist. He wants to live in the 1700s – but with all the trappings of BAU.
I leave you in your world of worship of this wanna be third world villager with a single question:
He drove a pick up truck — how is that in any way a sustainable lifestyle?????
You are so out of it I can NOT even deal with you any longer. You without a doubt have a mental problem. Of course, of course, GAS was FREE back then genius!
When I was a child it was FREE! If it was not they would not have used it and would have been just fine.
They went childless deeming it a social service! They already saw what was ahead.
For MOST of their long lives the did without electric. Only in his 90’s did they hook it up to their new stone house they built at their advance age in Maine because it was basically Free.
What a jrk you really are Dead end Eddy
“Only in his 90’s did they hook it up to their new stone house they built at their advance age in Maine because it was basically Free.”
So are you saying that if electricity were available/free when they first moved to their land they would have used it then too? (what about the concrete – and pick up truck?)
Let’s not stop there — if someone were to have given them a Ferrari — a Lear jet — a winter house in Barbados — I assume that they would have graciously accepted those FREE gifts and lived extra large?
Are you saying that the Nearings were just like everyone else…
They too aspired to the wonders of BAU — but were unable to realize them because they did not have the means to do so beyond the pick up truck, concrete and electricity?
If only we had know this we could have taken up a collection for them to buy them a Tesla while they were still alive.
It is the epitome of hipsterism to farm organically and drive a Tesla… major green cred for that — that pretty much would have qualified them for Sainthood Status in Sustainable Living!
However the judges may not have been too keen on the concrete thingy…. concrete is very bad for the environment…
“However the judges may not have been too keen on the concrete thingy…. concrete is very bad for the environment…”
That’s why you should use Hempcrete, it is carbon negative – absorbs more carbon that is produced in making it. Soaks it up like a sponge.
Of course, Hemp, like soy and some other plants known for being rich in nutrients, suck a lot of nutrients out of the soil, so that will all be locked away inside your floor and walls, but if you have some extra soil you don’t mind depleting and are really worried about CO2, it is an option.
If you are referring to my mockery of Scott Nearing then ya — a bit unfair as he is not alive to defend his use of concrete, pick up trucks, electricity and various other accoutrements of BAU that he readily made use of….
While at the same time claiming he was running a self-sufficient show.
What’s really unfair is he has to rely on incompetent groupies to defend him….
Highway Eddy, let us come back here fifty or more years from now and do the SAME to you. We can make attacks on all that YOU failed to “measure up” on in terms of unforseen faults and failures in your own actions and predications that you are unaware which transpire in the future. But I suppose you will still insist it does not matter because after all you admit you are the “problem”. What a cop out if there ever was one.
The whole premise to attack this couple for nit picking actions, most of which were very late in life , we will see how you fair in advances age, is not only unrealistic but unjust.
I was being sarcastic in terming “it was free”. Read Paul Goodman’s introduction to Living the Good Life”‘ , that will set you straight.
I am certain that if the Nearing were here today at your age they would NOT be using a truck or concrete or rebar, but living in a Yurt, which by the way, I, myself, had the pleasure to sleep in at the invitation of Helen Nearing , who was a close friend to Bill Copperwaite of the Yurt Foundation in Machais Maine. I suppose we can continue and discard all his of his life’s work too because he died while driving an automobile in the dead of winter at age 83!
He spent his whole life dedicated to the same’ sane simple living
“Those who guide us, who inspire us, having gone our way before, are now partners with us in building a better world. Any success we have is theirs as well as ours. To copy or imitate them should be only the beginning–the apprentice stage of life. It is fine to think, ‘what will a Shaker do? What would Scott Nearing have said? What would Gandhi have thought?’ These are good exercises for the mind, a way of weighing ideas and contemplated actions, valuable so long as we do not follow anyone blindly.
“Only by standing on their shoulders can we build a better world, but we should use the wise as advisers, not masters.”[10]
“Each of us tries to live in the best way we know how. I want to contribute to the problems of the world as little as possible. I really believe we must find simpler ways to live or society will collapse.
“Those who guide us, who inspire us, having gone our way before, are now partners with us in building a better world. Any success we have is theirs as well as ours. To copy or imitate them should be only the beginning–the apprentice stage of life. It is fine to think, ‘what will a Shaker do? What would Scott Nearing have said? What would Gandhi have thought?’ These are good exercises for the mind, a way of weighing ideas and contemplated actions, valuable so long as we do not follow anyone blindly.
“Only by standing on their shoulders can we build a better world, but we should use the wise as advisers, not masters.”[10]
“Each of us tries to live in the best way we know how. I want to contribute to the problems of the world as little as possible. I really believe we must find simpler ways to live or society will collapse.”
These might be good ideas generally, but they’re not going to be nearly enough. The current beast is a beast of an altogether different order altogether.
This is a fictional response I could REALLY respect.
FE. I knew the Nearings well. They had huge hearts. They always tried to do what was right for the planet. I feel angry when you ignore their positive behaviors and emphasize their behaviors that used fossil fuels. Have you considered that your disdain for simple lifestyles might be a product of your luxurious lifestyle?
As I have stated previously — I am certain that they had the best intentions….
But they are no different than someone who buys a Tesla — and believes they are doing what is best for the planet — they simply do not have the slightest clue — do they think that the Tesla grew on a tree? Or do they realize massive amounts of fossil fuels went into the manufacture of that ‘green’ machine? I am not sure….
Unless you completely unplug from BAU — no electricity – no concrete — no pick up truck — no steel tools — no using the roads — no going to the doctor — not ever stepping into a retail shop — or onto an airplane …
Then I am so sorry — but you are not saving the planet.
You are as much a part of the problem as the rest of us … who gives a damn if you make a few token gestures…. you either unplug or you shut your hole because you have absolutely no right to criticize others
That is why I have no time for the Nearings — just as I have no time for the Tesla drivers….
I am sure they are nice people — bu they are clueless fools.
“Each of us tries to live in the best way we know how. I want to contribute to the problems of the world as little as possible. I really believe we must find simpler ways to live or society will collapse.”
I think simple living is great. I try to do it as much as I can It will not prevent collapse. Nor will it prepare most for collapse. Michael I asked you once before but my post was deleted. Apparently Name calling is allowed for the optimists but not the pessimists by the moderator. I will ask again why do you have such a strong response to FE? Why do you call him names? FE simply has addressed behaviors that are clearly dependent on fossil fuels. FE has lived all over the worlds and within large pieces of humanity that does not fit a western model. So have I. Humanity can be quite nasty. Tucking away in a tiny bit of paradise created in large by fossil fuels is certainly desirable but it is not an achievement. It is a indulgence, We know nothing but indulgence. Do I have more respect for a yurt dweller than a Hamptons resident? Yes much more so but lets not fool ourself both are indulgences its only a matter of degree. What I do not respect is individuals who resort to name calling to justify their unresolved emotional issues.
The insults don’t bother me — in fact I expect them — because my commentary smashes people’s Koombaya worlds… and their big brains compel them to defend their indefensible positions by lashing out …
I am actually pleased when intelligent people respond in this way to my arguments (rather than attempting to counter with facts)…
Because it means my facts are good and logic sound — i.e. I get another notch on my belt
http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000v3ImLU1nt_A/s/750/750/0482.jpg
What is the most stable growth?
No Growth!
From the words of Masanobu Fukuoka
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/94171.Masanobu_Fukuoka
As far as “insults” are mentioned, what goes around comes around.
Koombaya Highway “dead end” Eddy
Sell, Sell, Sell
With China’s equity market dominated by retail investors, who account for an estimated 80 percent of stock trading, it’s no surprise that violent swings in the market have grabbed the attention of social media users in the mainland.
Cases that meet legal standards will be immediately investigated, seriously cracked down upon according to law, and those suspected of a crime will be resolutely transferred to the police for investigation,” he said. Meanwhile, the China Financial Futures Exchange has suspended 19 accounts in the past month for short-selling, sources told Reuters.
The market is now down about 28 percent from its June 12 peak, firmly in bear market territory, despite intensifying efforts by authorities to shore up investor confidence. The market closed down 5.8 percent lower on Friday
One can profit on the way up or the way down
Cheers!
Have you seen this post:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/guess-what-happened-the-last-time-the-chinese-stock-market-crashed-like-this
Im sorry Gail, that article in its essence draws a primary causal relationship in between China stock market crashing and the subsequent financial events of 2007 2008. Unlike your superbly reasoned arguments I would place this in the ‘hopeful doomer” catagory.
Alan Price Sell Sell
Sell, sell, sell, sell everything you stand for
Tell, tell, tell, tell all the people that you care for
Running here, running there
Keep it moving, sonny, don’t despair
Because the next one will be, the next one will be, the next one will be, the best one of the year
This is a perfect example of how the comments section of this blog have plumbed new depths of idiocy.
Masanobu Fukuoka was much better known out of Japan than in Japan. The Japanese had little use for his farming methods which cannot feed too many.
Masa received an award from Philipinnes, which was funded by – the Rockefeller Foundation. Near the end of his life, he tried to get aid from china because nobody in Japan would fund him.
He was no stranger to BAU.
Well I would ask you this FE. Having observed that individuals decide what they want to do (behaviour), and then find a paradigm to enable it- do you believe you are an exception? Do you believe that you alone are able to form a true representation of the relationships in the world using the same tools (brain , words) as someone else?
Amazing how the kinetic energy of that bullet turned into momentum, momentarily countering gravity on the body it encountered instead of smashing through tissue. The bullet must have gained mass during its flight. Definitely a first.
I have explained my position at length so I will not go any further wasting my time on this.
I found this forum when looking for research on the feasibility of steady state economies roughly two years ago. I have learned a great deal from the articles and from some of the other contributors.
This is by far the best platform for discussion of financial crisis and its causes.
But what is happening of recent is that the comments are being overrun by what I call the Koombaya crowd…. pan banging, drum thumping wishful thinkers who, like Sarah Palin, believe in making statements that have absolutely no basis in fact….
They run at the mouth … then foam at the mouth when facts are presented that demonstrate that they are completely wrong.
And not only that — when their positions are destroyed they insist on restating them over and over and over.
Note to the world: there is no such thing as renewable energy — EVs will not save the world — thorium produces no nett energy… we do we have to keep discussing these failed technologies over and over and over…
I am not sure where these people have come from — how they found FW — perhaps posting the articles on Zero Hedge has attracted the rabble from there? Or did an article end up on peak prosperity aka koombaya.com
The host of this site gives her time free of charge to write incredibly well-researched articles which are mostly ignored or not understood – by many of the posters — as demonstrated by their inane comments that fly completely in the face of the articles.
Fine to disagree — but don’t give us opinions — give us arguments…. (I’ll bet the peanut gallery is murmuring ‘aren’t those one and the same?’ — um… they are not… )
I do not profess to have all the answers— nowhere close — that is why I remain here — because for every 100 comments that are based on nothing more than Koombaya — there a few that are absolutely outstanding.
I’m still on the fence Fast Eddy regarding whether there will be a collapse as bad as you state in your posts. I’m not sure if the next recession can be stopped in its tracks and we just carry on like we’ve done previously or if we really go to ‘hell in an handcart’ in a very quick timescale.
I’ve been aware of peak oil since learning about it at school in the 1990s and was really woken up when I watched ‘Collapse’ with Michael Ruppert about 5 years ago. I’ve always felt since around the early 2000s that something just didn’t feel right about the way the world was and how much ‘progress’ there has been in my lifetime. I was born in 1979 and although I’ve seen some technological improvement I feel like the world is just stumbling from one crisis to the next. Maybe it’s always been this way but the way I see it is this.
If you compare say, 1950 to 1980 or even 1959 to 1971 and then you compare 1985 to 2015 or 1999 to 2011 can anyone say we’ve seen the same amount of radical technologies and innovations in the latter 2 time periods to the earlier ones?
Does the slowdown in innovations mirror the increasing cost in obtaining energy and the increasing difficulty in maintaining our infrastructures whilst at the same time having to provide goods and services for an ever increasing population?
I always thought when I was a kid that the future would be better then the past and we’d be leading more carefree lives. How wrong I was!
I also came across this site by chance actually. I think Gail does a lot of good detailed work and have recommended the site to some others (although they are mainly the head in the sand types so maybe they won’t bother).
You are close grasshopper, close to the truth. Keep asking the right questions 🙂
I gave you reasonable facts and arguments why you are in error. I accept your surrender and am satisfied that you will stop in bashing the lifestyle that Helen and Scott Nearing professed in “How to Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World”
Their objectives were such
Economic depression free independent living.
Hygienic in order to improve their health by home grown organic food
Social and Ethical liberate and dissociate from cruder forms of exploitation, the plunder of the planet, the slavery of man and beast , the slaughter of men in war and animals for food.
My friends I can not urge you enough to get hold of a copy of their classic work. Still valid today as it was back when published
Simplicity, serenity, utility and harmony are not only value in life, but they are important ideals, objectives and concepts which a deeper after the good life might reasonably expect to develop in a satisfactory natural and social environment
Save your money (and a tree) and just watch this:
Reading up about Nearing on Wiki, it is clear that he was a good and principled, man who actually made considerable sacrifices having come from a very secure and privileged family.
That he was duped by the Soviet Union -believed it to be the ideal egalitarian society in the making – is all of a piece with that kind of inexperienced intellectual idealism, so many fell into that trap in the 1920’s. Mind you, the Soviets were very adept at showing their best face to visitors seeking information and all too willing to be convinced.
Sort of like how many people believe renewable energy will save the world….duped…. and all too willing to believe the bs….
Scott Nearing was a professor of economic before moving to the countryside to avoid the evils of the big city. He was more about economic oppression and freedom and less about ecology.
He was also a communist — which makes him clueless with respect to his understanding of human nature.
Seems he got just about everything wrong. Remind me again why I even know his name? What exactly did he accomplish?
You are correct about his background, but if you read Living the Good Life they do stress the value and need of ecology. To be honest, during their era it was not a hot topic and they were pioneers to bring the issue of ecology to the reading public. As a matter of fact, Mother Earth News featured a question/answer forum column in their magazine during the 1970’s and still going back to read their responses.
Highway Eddy, being a so-called Socialist/Communist in the early 1900’s was not taboo in the United States, but a symbol of being a “Progressive” minded individual. President FDR even admitted he copied most of their platform for his “New Deal”. The tax rates on thgw very rich was upward to 70% when FDR was in office and they were doing just fine.
Now NPR featured a story that 80% of the wealth is concentrated by only 400 families and the top 1% control 99% of the wealth. Now you can understand why communism is attractive concept to the have nots. On the other hand you, you probably can NOT understand holding those FREE Bernanke Bucks in your pocket you worked so hard for (sarcasm)
But… but …. he drove a pick up truck….. he is part of the problem…. just like you … and me….
I’d like to hook up electrodes to your skull and monitor your brain activity to see what is happening when you read the above statement. I bet a lot could be learned from that
This is exactly why I rarely post on peak oil websites any longer, because often I end up defending one of my post’s and it can drone on for innumerable posts, until one day I wondered; How is this possibly benefitting me? I don’t earn anything. There’s no prize. It’s just an exercise in futility because no one changes their mind. In fact, the argument itself helps to solidify each poster’s position and the longer it goes on the more entrenched those positions become. So now I mostly just read other people’s posts and since I’m not posting anywhere near as much I’m getting a whole hell of a lot more accomplished in my business and life. Word to the wise.
Exactly how I feel, Stilgar. Dead End Eddy has made this comment forum his own “chat room” and injects banter and insults. Any partial solutions to the crisis we are facing is rejected out of hand and we are charged as fools. I believe he needs to ‘get out’ more from his little safe NZ haven. Remember that back in the 1970’s those that sought to go “back to the land” had a failure rate of 90% plus within 5 years. I have little doubt that Dead End Eddy will be in that group.
What I am trying to do is drive off fools so that this forum can again be a place for high level discussion of serious issues. The problem is that fools do not realize they are fools…
‘Whoever wants to stop hearing from fools had better stop talking to himself.’
That may be the best and next approach… but I am not so confident it will work.
What many people fail to realize is that King James hired only the best wordsmiths to create a handy reference guide used by the PTB to help refute & neutralize any and all who questioned authority.
So, for instance, we have negative connotations embedded in common passages that re-enforce the notion that select individuals who puzzle through the pieces are in effect ‘fools’. That is, because the population of awareness is so tiny, they must necessarily be isolated, and thus end up “talking to themselves”.
The reason I enjoy this forum is to help eliminate any/all residual attachment to the past and really focus on how the next moves unfold. I don’t know why Paul continues to engage with true fools – that is, any/all who can’t comprehend the human project is going to do a complete re-trace, perhaps all the way back to nomadic tribes if they can somehow adapt to nuclear radiation.
As for me, and any others who are really paying attention, this summer is turning out to be the ultimate big “reveal”. Whether the PTB pull of neutralizing Greece (and the rest of the PIIGS) will set in place the mechanism for the next 50-100 year: that is, in a nutshell, devaluation.
Since devaluation benefits those first line with new money (because it spends like old money before the inflationary effects are widely spread), who do you think gets paid first if one is interested in maintaining continuity of government? Gee, do you think the military, police & media and any others with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo?
So, if the PTB can successfully launch this next phase, then it becomes a mechanistic process of merely front-running these policies for the conceivable future – at least as long as most people here are still around.
“What I am trying to do is drive off fools so that this forum can again be a place for high level discussion of serious issues.”
If the financial system collapses, leading to the spent fuel ponds blowing, leading to everyone dying of radiation poisoning, what possible serious issues could there be to discuss?
Since we are all going to die no matter what happens then what is there to discuss – ever?
If that is the case, why are you such a jerk about it all? Give it a rest or at least some slack. You can’t predict the future as far as the sequence of events, time, place, speed, ect.
per Heisenberg, you can predict the position but not the speed, and vice versa. of course, this only holds at the quantum scale.
http://richardmannion.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Meth+cooking+knowledge+to+beard+ratio.+Heisenberg+Level+_9f2095c8a3c8654899b284d6dbbc7f0a.jpg
MORE LIKE THIS
img
…
in theatre
Sorry that was IMG
pee wee herman
in theatre.
“Since we are all going to die no matter what happens then what is there to discuss – ever?”
Under normal circumstances, even though we die, we leave the world to future generations. As a result, discussing the long term consequences of our choices, matters. If you believe that we are going to destroy all complex life on Earth, then discussing anything becomes pointless.
More like you think you are playing in Romper Room, kiddo
“It’s just an exercise in futility because no one changes their mind.”
While sometimes the opposing person will change their mind, I think it is more useful to think of it as a debate than an argument; it is not the one person you are countering that is going to be potentially influenced, but the hundreds or thousands of people who are looking at a conversation from outside of it, and do not have any emotional attachment to either side.
Stilgar…. that’s pretty much what this site is about these days …. you can line up the facts and you get a mouthful of sand in reply… I am not sure what the options are — blowing a frustration gasket and calling the peanut gallery Sarah Palin clones seems to achieve nothing — the wall is too thick to penetrate…
Welcome to the club SW. The truth is, no one individual can figure out how 7.3 billion individuals will actually respond to environmental stimuli in a world full of such chaotic diversity. There’s simply too much happening in the realm of “unknown unkowns” and the “unknowable” for any kind of accurate predictions to be made across energy, finance, economy, social, geo-political spectrums.
Still doesn’t stop people clinging to their ideology, dogma, beliefs, then arguing about it until death. You can however guage levels of psychological trauma by observation.
As far as saving money, just pick up a copy at your local public Library.
For someone that refuses to read it and passes judgement, seems to me of a small mind or outlook. After all, even back then they stressed that in no way are they professing to “solve all the world’s problems”. As far as the pick up truck is concerned, did it grow their food for them?
Your last statement can be answered by reading the complete book. It will clear up a lot of your misunderstanding.
MJ, my reply to this comment was placed up thread.
Which was answered
You really do not get it….and you will never get it
Fine, you’ll get the message when you enroll in the College of Hard Knocks, wise guy.
I’m afraid the L,L,L degree won’t be doled out to you.
Don’t get it?
Pick up a copy of Scott Nearings ‘ “Making of a Radical”
Thanks for that suggestion.
I doubt that Scott Nearing ever made the self-sufficient claim. I think this is an argument about a statement he never made. It is more statement someone here made.
He did write a book with that title:
The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living
http://www.amazon.com/The-Good-Life-Nearings-Self-Sufficient/dp/0805209700
Kinda like someone saying they ride their bike to work and buy all their grocery at Whole Foods.
Seriously — I think the Nearing groupies need to:
http://www.hannahshopeministries.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/white-flag.jpg
“That’s why you should use Hempcrete, it is carbon negative – absorbs more carbon that is produced in making it. Soaks it up like a sponge.”
Does this carbon negative analysis include the cost of transport? I assume the cost of the lime ovens is also included? 5% of the compressive strength of concrete. So you could go to like a 120 to 1 sand to portland cement ratio and produce the same compressive strength. With carbon footprint of transport is lime (“hemp crete”) still the lower carbon footprintr choice? What applications would you use such a low compressive strength “hemp crete” for?
I see lime being toted as a green solution for exterior plaster. all it needs to work is a 4 foot roof overhang, usually steel…
Tom Whipple is a very nice person. He is easily convinced that the latest invention will save the world, however.
You too are a very nice person. Gail, all is not gloom and doom as Highway Eddy likes to preach. Perhaps there are some partial “solutions” that are feasible and not just one silver bullet. I agree with your premise, but there is some hope in the horizon.
If you want a puff of this
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ol0cqA6bjGs/SYgh53aVjjI/AAAAAAAAAXs/dDDQKntStIY/s400/hope-bong-743955.jpg
Click here http://www.peakprosperity.com/
Click here,
Negative Waves Highway Eddy
http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/p/stay-negative-be-a-jerk/
I’m taking my cold fusion powered electric airplane to my cabin in the woods of Canada. No worries.
But than you can join highway eddy and just add to the bigger problem!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-30/europe-will-soon-impose-border-controls
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Whatever “survival” means, it won’t involve a financial solution. Finance is the problem, not the solution.
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More the plunge protection story… if the PBOC doesn’t step in … China blows up….
This is an excellent message to the people — pile back in to the perpetual economic motion machine — stocks will always go up — we have your back — you can never lose….
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-30/when-pboc-went-all-china-stocks-see-biggest-intraday-swing-23-years
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/current-oil-price-slump-far-224314744.html
That’s a great summarization article regarding oil price history in relation to dollar value and other factors up to the present.
Now why would anyone in their right mind fund this? You might as well put your bills in a pile and set fire to them
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/06/crowdfunding%20greece.jpg
I agree, Fast Eddy. They fail to comprehend the total amount of indebtedness pushing this situation to the brink. But whomever put that idea together will certainly never return any of the money, building him or herself quite a nice retirement golden parachute. There’s always someone right there to take advantage of every desperate situation.
Don,
http://www.geofflawton.com/fe/80968-when-industry-goes-permaculture
You must have seen this. Maybe others haven’t. It’s one example of how technology TODAY can make some kind of difference. But it’s very much not my thing. Except insofar as it shows that you can improve soil and grow food in an industrial space.
Now, with the same kind of sophisticated engineering knowledge brought down to third world standards with next to zero BAU dependency, we might be approaching something I could get behind. It requires a far better understanding of culture too.
If new technology can *quickly* get us to where old technology can take over, then work itself out of a job, I’d support that. 🙂
Artleads
Yes, I saw it.
I have conflicted emotions about these sorts of things. Too complicated to talk about here.
Don Stewart
I’ve been bothered by permaculture, but only recently have come to some idea as to why. Despite its brilliance, it is an uncritically “progressivist” (word) European program. It leaves out the cultural stories of the place. Its supposed neutrality to story is itself a story. In that sense, it shares some of the sins of European colonialist ideology that has taken over and spread havoc throughout the world.
Dear Artleads
Let me suggest a slightly more optimistic frame for looking at permaculture practice. When David Holmgren rides the train, he amuses himself by recreating the story of the landscape he sees out the window. For those who understand, there are many tell-tale signs.
One way to frame the issue is that David is reconstructing not only the ‘natural’ history of the land (volcanic eruptions, erosion of river valleys, climate change, etc.) but also the human impact on the land (fire, rabbits, plowing, etc.).
I submit that what David is doing is a very deep ‘story of place’. Will Bonsall (who I do not think labels himself a ‘permaculturist’) does the same thing on the land he has farmed now for more than 40 years in Maine. Will’s primary integrative analytic is energy production and energy use, as well as the production and recycling and exporting of minerals and topsoil.
When Will looks at his land, he still sees traces of the effects of mold-board plows.
I said that Geoff Lawton’s video was too complicated to discuss here. Without discussing it, let me just add that Geoff has made videos about reshaping suburban lots, about urban agriculture, and rejuvenating the water power in Holyoke, Massachusetts. It’s true, I think, that Geoff and other permaculturists usually start with the physical layout and the biological environment, rather than the human culture. No matter the human culture, if you have trees entirely shading your suburban yard (a common situation here), you won’t be successful with gardening. In other words, the human culture has to fit into the physical and biological culture…not the other way around.
I don’t live in Minnesota, where the winters are extreme. When I look at successful adaptations in my own neighborhood to the prospect of Limits to Growth, they tend to be very small and very simple…the Twelve by Twelve heated by body heat, with an integrated outdoor living area. Going to bed when it gets dark, but having a candle. Is a Twelve by Twelve a reasonable solution in Minnesota? I don’t know. I think igloos were about the same size. But I will also agree that talking about Twelve by Twelves and Igloos will get you thrown out of exclusive clubs.
Don Stewart
“No matter the human culture, if you have trees entirely shading your suburban yard (a common situation here), you won’t be successful with gardening. In other words, the human culture has to fit into the physical and biological culture…not the other way around.”
The whole idea of suburban yard is part of the story I alluded to, although I suppose you’re trying to find a simple example to help me understand.
I’m the world’s worst student (one of the reasons I don’t take to learning any system), and know just about nothing. So excuse wrong terminology. The !Kung in southern Africa suck moisture out of the sand with a reed. Aborigines everywhere eat a variety of strange things. Often for tens of thousands of years. Insofar as it’s possible, I’d start with these cultures. They don’t need scientific European permaculture experts to tell them how to provide their food or where not to grow trees. They have a completely different way of knowing the land. As the founders of permaculture understood, if not necessarily well enough (or not entirely in the way I’m concerned with). It became for them scientific, unquestioned, one-size-fits-all relative to climate and topography. So no, I respectfully disagree with your statement above. I would start with the stories, whatever they are, and work out from there. Thinking about this last night, I remembered the phrase: There’s no thinking that isn’t class thinking. It isn’t just a question of impersonal science. Impersonal science is a story laden with issues.
Artleads
You are tarring with a very broad brush. You might want to check your facts, first.
Bill Mollison, who founded Permaculture along with his student David Holmgren, had spent an awful lot of time studying how aborigines and other ‘primitie’ people did things. He also studied how Nature worked.
Yes, his methods were ‘scientific’. If you reject the scientific method, then I suppose you have no more interest in what Bill Mollison and David Holmgren found as a result of their research. It’s the difference between the stories the ancient Greeks made up to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies, and the stories we now believe as a result of many years of hard cosmological data and research.
I don’t recommend any fundamentalist position. But you have to make up your own mind.
Don Stewart
“You are tarring with a very broad brush. You might want to check your facts, first.”
I agree. My ignorance is astounding. But the point is to see the intention behind the stumbling mess I’m making. Nothing is working, and the smart money says nothing CAN work given the hole we’re in. A related problem of the Western mindset is the requirement for the individual to get it right all by themself. I’m saying it’s more appropriate to see the effort as a group one. So you are very informed and I’m the opposite. Neither of us will get anywhere alone. And unlikely as it is that we’d do better collaborating, the chances of success are marginally better there.
“Bill Mollison, who founded Permaculture along with his student David Holmgren, had spent an awful lot of time studying how aborigines and other ‘primitie’ people did things. He also studied how Nature worked.”
Yes. I vaguely remember reading that decades ago. But since the time of their study, the planet has become exponentially more damaged. They are part of the European hegemonic system. They bewail the ecological ignorance of a subsection of of that hegemonic system, while not (to any significant degree that I can see) delving into the social, poliotical and psychological underpinnings of the system. To do that, they would have to be revolutionaries, and that would bring them into sharp opposition with BAU. ,
“Yes, his methods were ‘scientific’. If you reject the scientific method, then I suppose you have no more interest in what Bill Mollison and David Holmgren found as a result of their research.”
Apart from it being mildly insulting to suggest that I reject science :-), I’m surprised that you think this is my point. What I see instead as scientifically well founded is the massive decline in the environment since (and despite the founders’ efforts) my becoming aware of permaculture 30 years ago. Maybe society doesn’t work the way they see it. You can’t just teach people to be better stewards of the land, apparently. You have to integrate said stewardship within a system that honors the psychological trauma of the global south that has turned China and India into leading monster of environmental destruction within those identical 30 years. Maybe that takes social and political science too. And soft sciences like cultural anthropology. None of this is clear. The West has done a hatchet job on the minds and lands of the global south. I don’t see permaculture doing anything to counter that.
“…the difference between the stories the ancient Greeks made up to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies, and the stories we now believe as a result of many years of hard cosmological data and research.
I don’t recommend any fundamentalist position. But you have to make up your own mind.”
I’m not sure where the fundamentalist position lies. But I’m only interested in not doing all that has unsuccessfully tried before, while hoping for a different outcome.
IMO, the third world is new global standard. Western science and technology must fill in the gaps, not lead the way. This is apparently a very difficult concept for westerners to grasp.
Nearly impossible. Technology is the very air we breath here in the west.
Someone quite a while ago suggested that instead of us sending people in the Peace Corps to Africa to tell them how to do things, we should have sent folks over to learn from them. We didn’t see thing that way, though.
I’d hate to have to say that it’s too late now…
Dear Gail and Artleads
You are being too pessimistic about the ‘reverse learning’ from Peace Corps and other outreach programs.
I know a number of Peace Corps veterans who say they learned more than they taught.
The local guy who builds Twelve by Twelves was an ‘economic development Christian missionary’ in South Africa. He found that the pagan villages were more fun than the Christian villages. Came back with different ideas about things, and has helped any number of people live very simple lives with small footprints.
Don Stewart
I don’t think any great effort has been made to disseminate what the volunteers learned from the Peace Corps, though.
To a significant extent, the Christian missionary approach was heavily overlaid with more use of fossil fuels–better medical care, better access to clean water, better toilet facilities. They also tried to do away with customs that would help keep population down, such as killing the weaker of two twins. A major impact of the Christian missionary movement was to help population rise (but not the farmland or other resources needed for higher population). I have relatives who were involved with this missionary effort.
Gail
The Christian missionary I know has done a lot of publicity around here, on his own. He has also made some mortal enemies. If you read Twelve by Twelve, you will learn about some of his work, but I don’t think you will hear his name mentioned. He built the Twelve by Twelve for the pediatrician, which the author lived in for several months.
He so irritated the town of Siler City that he was essentially run out of town. Siler City is no garden spot, but when the missionary bought an old house and fixed it up and rented it to young people, the city came after him for any little infraction. They also refused to let the young people keep chickens, when there were chickens in backyards all around them.
He is one of the leaders of the local Habitat, and the community college has a program building houses which are pretty minimally over code for poor people to purchase.
He has started several intentional communities.
He was one of the early students of Bill Mollison, and teaches permaculture at the community college.
He shows slides from his time in South Africa. In the lecture, he points out things he learned, and says that the South Africans taught him more than he taught them.
When he returned from Africa, he and his wife bought an old, run-down farm. They turned it into a permaculture show-place, with amazing deep soils where red clay had been before. He did it all on a very modest budget.
The pagan village in South Africa taught him a lot about communal celebration, and his permaculture classes start with some group singing. Makes an amazing difference.
Of course, he is only one man. If, like you, I was only reading about this, I might not be very impressed. But I know the man, and I know how many lives he has touched.
Don Stewart
Sounds like a fine man.
http://blackville.nbed.nb.ca/sites/blackville.nbed.nb.ca/files/bravo.gif
“To a significant extent, the Christian missionary approach was heavily overlaid with more use of fossil fuels–better medical care, better access to clean water, better toilet facilities. They also tried to do away with customs that would help keep population down, such as killing the weaker of two twins. A major impact of the Christian missionary movement was to help population rise (but not the farmland or other resources needed for higher population). ”
Excellent points! Not to mention getting women away from breast feeding (which contributes to population control). Aborigines were highly knowledgeable about plants that restricted pregnancy. It is my understanding that in the broad scheme of things, the missionaries came first, and through a very subtle and potent mix of benefit and mental conditioning, primed the natives for the full exploitation by the merchants and power brokers who succeeded them. Land was taken away, as continues to be done today.
Another extraordinarily disempowering trait of the European is to appropriate all that he learns and present it as his own. Don apparently has no idea about the psychological effects of the European power system. Extolling the virtues of a single missionary who did good things seems not dissimilar to extolling the virtues of a slave owner who taught his slaves to read, and then glossing over the institution of slavery altogether.
Artleads
‘Don apparently has no idea about the psychological effects of the European power system. Extolling the virtues of a single missionary who did good things seems not dissimilar to extolling the virtues of a slave owner who taught his slaves to read, and then glossing over the institution of slavery altogether.’
Since you don’t know this man, I will make up an apology for you, having spoken in ignorance.
Don Stewart
Unless you’re a revolutionary, and unless you’re a traitor to your race/class/civilization and system of privilege, you might as well stay home.
I think we can only guess, push essences around. I doubt that anyone knows what to do in this great adventure of life.
Given the power to do so, I’d ban missionaries altogether. But I don’t know if that would be better or worse than leaving them alone. I can only say what I would do if given the choice. It’s the missionary system that I’m against. I’m not concerned with what a solitary missionary does.
Paul, some of your recent comments have led me to believe you don’t understand the basic process by which devaluation can be achieved. For example, you keep stating the obvious that debt levels cannot continue to increase ie relative to the underlying productive asset base. You then use argument as the foundation to build your case that the system will therefore collapse.
However, I suggest you first check your assumptions. Since all values are simply a reflection of whatever illusion is currently ‘in vogue’, then asset/capital valuation is merely a function of (managed) public perception. This of course is the so-called “confidence” to widely revered by all central planning authorities.
OK, so since we know debt cannot continue to increase much further relative to the underlying asset base, then one of two things must necessarily occur:
– default the debt *deflation*
– increase asset/capital basis *inflation*
Right now, we are still seeing incremental moves towards the second option; an excellent example are the ‘bail-in’ provisions that achieve both by eliminating depositor liabilities while increasing capital bases. And yet, we still haven’t arrived at the stage where shit gets real, namely the wholesale inflation of asset/capital by fiat.
Back in the 30s, the Fed played this gambit very well by have the US federal government outlaw private gold holdings. After they had collected as much private stock as possible at the bargain prices of $20/oz, they then (not so arbitrarily) revalued gold to $35 – almost a 2:1 devaluation of money.
So what type of revaluation can we expect today? Note that I’m a huge fan of media propaganda, and love watching it being deployed against the helpless “average man”. Who’s to say that worship of the central state, the all giving, all munificent, entity that bestows wealth to the citizenry, doesn’t manifest itself in the recognition that global institutions have significant ‘goodwill’?
Goodwill is used all the time as a matter of course in corporate transactions. Keep your eyes peeled for incipient suggestions that Western states don’t enjoy the same kind of valuation. Once the people are ready to accept such a conclusion, then any manner of monetary devaluation can be achieved simply by establishing goodwill values on the asset side of the ledger.
Do you see how this works? The PTB aren’t stupid; rather, they are quite bright. While the great masses of men were directed towards useful, productive ‘work’, they are trained in the art of governance. A key part of that is knowing how the monetary game works, how populations seek safety & conformance, and how the state plays a central part in establishing stability.
States can easily manage inflation; a 2:1 devaluation might not even necessitate more draconian measures of rationing, wage/price controls, etc. As we move more towards a 10:1 devaluation, then the usual tricks of targeting external/internal enemies in which to direct attention so that more drastic measures can be implemented will be unveiled.
A guy like you who understands 99% of what we’re seeing needs to drop the ego bit and embrace the complete game. From that vantage point, it’s quite trivial to watch the parade go by while pocketing whatever coin you can collect in the meantime.
The problem is that the underlying assets needed to pay off the debt aren’t there. No matter how you try to disguise the issue, it doesn’t go away. We know historically that governments have collapsed. This may happen again. We can think about band aid solutions that have worked on smaller versions of this problem in the past, but I doubt that they ever prevented the collapse of civilization. I am not convinced that they will work now either.
B9 – what you are failing to understand is that this is all moot — all these financial tricks are not relevant any more than a magician’s slight of hand is relevant …
They are palliatives…..they are band-aids on stumps of the arms and legs of a man who has been blasted apart by a cluster bomb….
Because the economic system is based on our ability to continue to extract oil from the ground cheaply and easily.
If we can’t do that then we are screwed.
Devaluing might buy a bit of time (I doubt it) — other tricks beyond QE ZIRP etc might buy a bit of time as well…
But at the end of the day the very foundation BAU — civilization – industrialization … is gone…. kaput …. over… done…. destroyed… finished…. without cheap oil we implode
There will be no pieces to pick up. There will be no reset — partially or otherwise.
There is no way to ‘play this’… there are no hedges … no shorts … no collapse-proof investments
I believe it is you who is failing to grasp the reality of the situation.
I have plenty of friends in the banking and legal professions and they too believe that what is coming is going to be an epic event — but all of them are also looking at this as an opportunity (one made a huge amount of money on a Citi bet in 2008 — he’s licking his chops waiting for the next crash…)
They insist that the Fed will simply rejig the formula and we’ll be back on track…
That is their version of Koombaya….
Not a single one of them will acknowledge that this is an intractable problem (they believe we will somehow work this out — like we always have….)
HOW HIGH OIL PRICES WILL PERMANENTLY CAP ECONOMIC GROWTH For most of the last century, cheap oil powered global economic growth. But in the last decade, the price of oil has quadrupled, and that shift will permanently shackle the growth potential of the world’s economies. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-09-23/how-high-oil-prices-will-permanently-cap-economic-growth
BUT WE NEED HIGH OIL PRICES: Marginal oil production costs are heading towards $100/barrel http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2012/05/02/983171/marginal-oil-production-costs-are-heading-towards-100barrel/
I believe they (and you) will all be profoundly disappointed.
Gail, while debt doesn’t actually go away, the effect of a 10:1 devaluation would essentially reduce any outstanding balances to de minimus levels. For example, a person with 100k of debt and 100k of assets would afterward have the same 100k of debt, but 1m of assets. The effect is nothing more than having creditors accept a 90% haircut, except capital reserves aren’t hit as in a true ‘credit event’.
The only way we have deflation is if the system runs out of control. Why would the PTB allow the system to achieve such a state to occur since they have every resource at their disposal to manage staged inflation? Again, all it takes are emergency powers to enact rationing, wage/price controls, etc and voila, the deed is done.
Paul, unlike your friends, I don’t have any faith in a long-term (or short-term) solutions to our predicament – on this we agree 100%. However, I also disagree that FFs are necessary to maintain the banking system; BAU, sure, banking, no. I keep saying this, but either I’m a lousy communicator, or people simply aren’t grasping what I’m saying.
Once more: the traditional mechanism of paying debt forward and effecting ever increasing credit balances was based on underlying economic growth in productive labor, capital & assets. In other words, BAU. However, with the advent of peak oil, this existing model will no longer work. This is what Gail writes about, and what everybody here grasps.
So we have two possible outcomes:
– collapse
– re-invention
To bet on collapse is to believe there aren’t any possible solutions, that the model will not function unless it operates along traditional lines. However, and this is a huge however, I believe that properly managed expectations can help the PTB re-invent what debt, money, production, wealth, etc actually mean at a very core level.
The trick is to artfully deploy proven propaganda techniques that help shape public opinion and actually determine which debates will be allowed in the first place. The way it is done is to cordon off certain words, to re-define or edit existing narratives, to ostracize and condemn thoughts & beliefs that don’t conform with the “new reality”.
The people will be led to willingly embrace their new feudalism if it is offered with the promise of safety & comfort. Every year, devaluations can be implemented that will successively impoverish the populace, but they will not budge for fear of retribution, of being castigated and cast out of the security of the flock.
I’m 100% behind this, if for no other reason it’s exactly what the Romans did. It’s how the PTB manage the masses; there aren’t any real tricks or revelations – nothing has changed. The key to success is to watch the techniques & mechanisms of how debt loads are successively devalued.
How long do you think it will take the kinks to be worked out before this is adopted as the new banking model? Once this is underway, FFs, growth, BAU, etc will become completely irrelevant. Banking will simply be reduced to a complex mechanism for managing ever diminishing public expectations.
i think the disconnect here is that I do not understand what your post-collapse world looks like.
Perhaps you could elaborate
Do you think that in the near term we will see a collapse of the global economy and financial system? Do you think billions will starve and die? If so how do you survive this? What measures are you taking? How do you ‘play’ this (specifics please — are you shorting the markets – buying gold — buying other hard assets — setting up an organic farm — buying guns and ammo)
In the not so near term:
– will there be global empires?
– will there be oil – electricity?
– will there be a global economy?
– will there be elites that enjoy most of the comforts and technologies that BAU presently provides?
Is the not so near near term 10 years from now — 100 years — 1000?
I fear you are not factoring in the time scale regarding your two outcomes options.
Collapse doesn’t require doing anything, and it’s the most likely since we are making no plans to prepare for collapse. It’s just a fingers crossed option ot leave it to Nature.
Re-invention requires a plan [or two]. How likely is that? We might start a plan when the collapse version shows the whites of its eyes. Even that’s no guarantee. Then there will be arguments about how to engineer a re-invention, and all the while praying BAU stands to serve us long enough to allow implementation. That I fear is just wishful thinking.
Personally, I think the first thing most of the 7B of us should do post-collapse is to realize that that the industrial system that allowed us to be brought into existence in the first place and in some small sense at least “needed” them for its survival, is no more. In that sense, they should realize that they are now completely superfluous and a tremendous drag on a biosphere that is severely overpopulated with a single invasive species – THEM! The best path forward then is an orderly and compassionate elimination of said species members in LARGE numbers, not stupidly trying to figure out how to make their continued existence and procreation “sustainable,” which is in any case by definition impossible.
“Why would the PTB allow the system to achieve such a state to occur since they have every resource at their disposal to manage staged inflation? ”
Well I see both inflation and deflation. Places like michican or pennsylvania have no jobs outside of the universities and hospitals. Hamburger is $4. If I have $100,000 of debt and $4 of assets a $20 loaf of bread means? You could be right but IMHO it is far from assured. There has to be income to afford these assets like houses. If you just give people money for assets than there is hyperinflation. The people who live in economic dead zones have no source of income inflated or otherwise. They cant afford assets or commodities at their current pricing. A $20 loaf of bread doesnt work well for them. Look at prices on craigslist. look at prices on e-bay. Deflation not inflation.
Hence my prediction for rationing, wage/price controls, travel restrictions and media support. Similar to soviet Russia and … US/UK during WWII. (Actually, and Xabier can probably confirm, the UK had price controls in effect well into the 50s.)
I am not sure what there will be to ration… the USSR barely had anything to ration even though they were resource wealthy and partially plugged into BAU.
There will be no factories, supply chains, or anything of the sort post collapse — there will most definitely be very little food — because without oil and gas there will be no way to grow and transport food… I understand that less than 2% of all ag land is farmed organically….
With these wildfires, there will be millions of acres of virgin land to farm in Alaska, with a fresh topping of nitrates to boost growth. Once the factories, airplanes, cars and power plants all shut down, the world will quickly heat up 2 to 4 Celsius, making farming in the far north quite a bit more practical. Most of Alaska is well above sea level, right?
Did you read that on the back of a cereal box? Or did it come to you in a dream?
if in doubt — just make up some absurd theory — and hit submit…
http://blackville.nbed.nb.ca/sites/blackville.nbed.nb.ca/files/bravo.gif
At one time I reckon the ratio to useful thoughtful comments to nonsense on FW was about 1:10
Now it must be closer to 1: 100…
Since precision of language eludes you, I have no idea which “that” you are referring to. Probably half of that 100 is you.
over 2 million acres burnt in Alaska so far:
http://akfireinfo.com/2015/07/02/alaska-wildfires-surpass-2-million-acre-mark/
As for warming, the continental United States warmed 1 Celsius in the 3 days after 9/11, although it seems there is dispute if the lack of contrails is the sole cause:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/05/911_contrails_study_challenged.html
Aren’t the value of assets determined by other people’s debts? For example, if debt is devalued to 1/10 of its current level, no one can now buy your property, unless its value is 1/10 of what it was. So the value of your house drops as well.
Insurance companies take the money you send them, and use it to buy bonds–other people’s debt. If these are all devalued to 1/10 of their current value, the insurance company won’t be able to pay you, even if you think you have an annuity with the company.
This right now is all about private debts [at the moment]. Public debts are mostly misinformation clogged up because in reality they are both debts and assets at the same time Whose depends on which accounts each side is in at the Reserve,
private debts are likely to need a Debt Jubilee. That is spelled out in this video by Steve Keen;
All debts are someone’s asset and someone else’s liability.
WOW. You don’t say!
John, excellent post. Thank you.
Gail, you are 100% correct. If you hold financial instruments instead of real assets, then your net wealth will drop by 90% in a 10:1 devaluation. However, portfolios comprised of real assets will simply be re-balanced to reflect the new prices.
Of course, nothing will have really changed except that creditors will be taking a 90% haircut. That means insurance companies, investment groups, pension funds and any other entities that gets stuck ‘holding the bag’. Too bad they weren’t as smart – actually, as powerful – as the banks which originated the loans and then sold them into the marketplace for investors (dupes) chasing yield.
This is simply the way of the world: you’re either the hunter or the prey. The bankers figured this game out a long, long time ago. They know they can easily manipulate prices with inflationary policies, then either sell actual indentures to gullible 3rd parties, of if they get stuck, offload them to quasi-public entities.
Isn’t that the key motivation for creating a central bank? Sure, it’s sold as a benefit to government to have a ‘lender of last resort’, but actually, isn’t the reverse true? That is, private banks have a bag holder of last resort?
What’s going down with the ECB is the same thing that went down the Fed, and is the same thing that went down when Jackson killed the 2nd central bank. He was right then, and people are right today, when observing that banks privatize profits and socialize losses. Same shit, different century.
Dear Xabier
Relative to poetry. Jane Hirshfield points out the difference between the feelings stirred by poems and the thoughts prompted by science. The new cosmologies had and continue to have revolutionary impacts on the way we think about the universe. But once we accepted the notion that gravity controlled the movement of the heavenly bodies, it was no longer surprising. It becomes part of the mind that we no longer pay attention to.
A good poem, on the other hand, plays on our feelings. A poem starts out one way, and then goes through what Hirshfield calls a ‘door’ and leads us in a different direction. Two examples:
Groucho Marx made up the joke: ‘Outside a dog, a good book is a man’s best friend….Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read’.
Hirshfield’s point is that there is more going on here than just thinking about darkness inside dogs. We are led to subtle thoughts about ‘the coming darkness’.
A second example is Robert Frost’s poem:
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only for an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
As Hirshfield remarks, Frost was not feeling like the practical farmer he was, but feeling like the human farmer who could perceive a transient beauty in both the cycle of light during the day and also the transient beauty of newly emerging life. The arc of the poem is from celebration of ‘gold’ to a final rueful acceptance that ‘nothing gold can stay’.
Hirshfield claims that we cannot remember a succession of feelings. We can only ‘re-feel’ them. Which means that a poem (or song or movie or joke or painting or play) which leads us through a succession of feelings is ‘new’ every time we experience it.
I think that is one reason why we are willing to spend more money on finely bound books of poems (and other media which orchestrate feelings). Holding the fine binding and feeling the texture of the paper and noticing the beauty of the fonts becomes part of the ‘feeling path’ through the work of art.
Reductionists and Genetic Determinists will likely never understand this. Poets and Systems Thinkers will understand it.
Don Stewart
Dear Don
Bravo!
Encore!
Plunge protection kicks in to save the day! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-30/chinese-stock-futures-rise-on-government-support-speculation
PPT team membership may be an area of growing employment!
So are High Frequency Trading Jobs!
(list of said jobs on indeed.com…)
http://www.indeed.com/q-High-Frequency-Trading-jobs.html
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-29/greek-supermarkets-begin-resemble-those-venezuela
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/06/athens%20super%202_0.jpg
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2015/06/athens%20super%201_0.jpg
Then what?
Next stop “Best Gore” ?
French Economy In “Dire Straits”, “Worse Than Anyone Can Imagine”, Leaked NSA Cable Reveals
Moscovici who served as French finance minister until 2014 and then became European commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, used some very colorful language, i.e., the French economic situation was “worse than anyone [could] imagine and drastic measures [would] have to be taken in the next two years”.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-29/french-economy-dire-straits-worse-anyone-can-imagine-leaked-nsa-cable-reveals
NOT available in the MSM…
And the same would apply for every single country on the planet….
China Markets in Freefall:
In the last 2 days, PBOC has thrown everything at the ponzi-fest they call a rational market. An RRR cut, a Benchmark rate cut, a rev repo rate cut, a CNY50 Bn rev repo injection, a stamp duty cut, IPO halts (cut supply), and last but not least permission to speculate with a reassurance that shares on a solid foundation.
The outcome of all this policy-panic – CHINEXT (China’s Nasdaq) is down another 6% today (down 25% in 3 days) and aside from CSI-300 futures, all other major Chinese indices are in free-fall.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-29/strap-china-crashing-again
Pingback: Nem exportações, nem crescimento! | PINN
We could draw the line at the US border with Mexico, using our military to beef it up, and use the vast expanses of oceans on all other sides to protect us (Arctic, Atlantic, Pacific). (Canada becomes a trapped asset, like Aunt Maude in the backseat.) We could use our mighty military to secure the oil routes and camp out in the ME to insure those assets continue to flow our way. Meanwhile, using the old saw that “the best defense is a good offense”, we could divert any challenges by using our CIA-military advisors to rouse the rabble in hotspots elsewhere as a strategic manuver.
Hold it, that’s gotta be Plan A.
You’re kidding, right? That’s BEEN the plan since 1980, at least.
Yup, I jest. (Attempting to inject humor in unhumorous material.)
You Joker , you!
By the way, I love the image of Canada as Aunt Maude getting trundled around in the backseat of the US rambling wreck on it’s way to an inevitable cliff yet unknown. Poor Mexico and its Central American neighbors were, alas, reduced to mere roadkill along the way. What a story!
LOL the plan has been to remove the border between Mexico and Canada. There are only about 1 billion people NA and SA…one giant economic region with our navy to protect…sorry to inject some seriousness there!
I’m seeing a extraordinary amount of hurt when I scan the zero hedge headlines this morning … this serves to peel back any bit of complacency as one realizes that one wrong step here could be catastrophic….
For those who believe we get a slow descent and skid across the runway with no wheels ripping through the grass and mud and coming to an abrupt stop — rather than pointing the nose and screaming at 90 degrees into the tarmac….
It is important to note that when this breaks — (and it will break… not sure what the trigger is — but it will likely involve string pushing — perhaps the Chinese markets continue to tumble and the central bankers are unable to stop the plunge…. or the bond market explodes and again the central banks cannot stop the rout….) — the tools that were deployed in 2008 — QE ZIRP massive stimulus …. have been used up….
I cannot see how there can be a rescue this time…. when the markets (and sheeple) realize this — there will be pandemonium… chaos… fear…
And then the electricity will go out …and the troops will come out of the barracks … and martial law will be imposed…. but within weeks that will fall apart… and the Great Global Famine and Die-Off (aka The Nightmare) will begin.
Of course there will be no internet within days of the market collapse so we won’t be able to discuss this — you can however print out my predictions and pin them to the wall in advance…
“For those who believe we get a slow descent and skid across the runway with no wheels ripping through the grass and mud and coming to an abrupt stop…”
It seems like that from the standpoint of the financial situation of countries degrading until one or another blows a fuse, like Venezuela and now Greece. Each year more will get added to the list until eventually it will come home to roost in the US. But even that description above it’s pretty bad as store shelves empty and panic sets in regarding people’s deposits.
The idea of a sudden worldwide economic collapse (nose into the tarmac) seems less likely now as the peripheral weaker countries are in strong descent while the developed countries are in a slower degrade mode. I actually think US GDP will be on the order of ~3% in the 2nd qtr., that is if California is any indication because things are popping here.
Nonetheless, I think Eddy’s right, in that there’s a strong chaos variable implied in all the various market calculations out there these days based on the simple fact that there’s simply too many “unknown unknowns” (to borrow a famous Rumsfeldian term) out there for the current masters of the universe to even begin to calculate where we’re headed next. That uncertainty is currently only being hedged by the certainty of US/Western military/police superiority, which most still (perhaps falsely?) perceive as impregnable, and by the largess of the OOTF, whose “print like there’s no tomorrow, because there damn well may not be” mantra remains one of the true constants in post-2008 western capitalism orthodoxy. And GDP is not a term I even bother listening to anymore anyway. I’m not sure what it’s actually measuring in the first place, and I damn sure don’t trust the measurements that went into it in the second.
Things were ‘popping’ everywhere up until they were not in 2008 as well….
That’s the way these things always play out — in spite of evidence of massive bubbles — everyone believes ‘this time is different’ — the twats at cnBS and Boomberg trot out ‘experts’ who explain to us exactly why things are different this time …. then someone pisses in the pool and the party is over….
In that respect… the current situation is no different — other than this is the party to end all parties…
OOTF has put on a massive show — unlimited coke/E/heroin/pot/crack/champagne/wine… lobster/caviar/steak — we’ve got Prince followed by Neil Young followed by Sting followed by Led Zeppelin followed by Madonna then the Chili Peppers then Beyonce and on and on ….
The bubbles are gargantuan — like nothing ever seen before — powered by trillions of dollars of printed money — 0% interest rates….
But make no mistake — what appears to be prosperity — recovery — is nothing of the sort — OOTF is throwing a wake … and they are throwing every last bit of cash at making this the grandest wake in history…
Because they know — this is the end of the road —- there is not point in holding anything back for the future…. because there is no future.
Not sure California is such a good example of ‘popping’ — seems to me like that state is on the verge of total collapse
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2015/06-overflow/20150626_mead4.jpg
Glad to see you making a stand. I’ll take the opposing bet – there will be no Grexit, no default, no fallout. Rather, there will be a devaluation – the specific mechanism chosen from a menu of options.
World-wide political leadership and global banking interests are committed to inflation. It’s what they know, what they can control, and falls easily within the purview of the state to manage & control.
Deflation is a super high-risk maneuver, and to what end? To gain even more wealth & control? What about the interim when there’s a high chance of plans going awry?
Nope, the easy way out is simply to devalue the outstanding loan balance(s) and begin the credit creation game anew. Once it’s proven to work with Greece, then plans will be firmly underway for the other PIIGS. At the end of long stair-step process, I predict we’ll eventually see a global 10:1 devaluation.
It’s the only way institutions like the IMF, World Bank, ECB, and the TBTF banks stay alive. They need to remain present if they are to retain front-row seats for the global economic descent.
Deflation in a capitalist matrix growth economy is an emergency one time only event, so I agree. Greece will be papered over one way or another (yet again), or else it will initiate the great collapse. But I don’t think we’re quite there yet. There’s still a few resources at the bottom of the barrell yet to be exploited.
I have no idea what is going to happen with respect to Greece — but what I do know is that OOTF is almost certainly still in control of the narrative
So if they let Greece out of the union then it will be cause it serves a purpose…
Just as letting Lehman go created a moment of extreme fear — giving OOTF the justification to roll out a massive stimulus programme — with full support of the sheeple…. (the sheeple like rats are so easy to convince…)
But ultimately there is going to be a deflationary collapse — mathematically I cannot see how there cannot be.
In spite of trillions of dollars of stimulus there are no jobs being created… unemployment across the world is horrendous.
Labour participation in the US is at a record low…. grads cannot afford houses….cars…. to get married … because they are not able to find good jobs…
Corporate earnings are feeling the pinch … eventually they will let people go…. that is an absolute certainty.
If people do not have jobs they cannot afford to buy much — which leads to more layoffs — and that = deflation… no ifs ands or buts about it…. when demand craters deflation follows.
Eventually OOTF will not be able to plug all the holes in the damn…. or one of the holes just explodes from the pressure of the water (China is a good example of how this might play out — if the PBOC cannot turn that market around then we are done — that is your Black Swan).
What cannot continue — will stop
I’ll make the same bet that – no Grexit. The current due $1.73 IMF payment ( €240 billion total) seems like small chump change compared to past bailouts. The larger game afoot is centralized control.
But stair-step descent? Definitely we are mid-collapse so there appear to be a lot of compensation. But we have not rounded out to the top and have yet to approach the point when all models (including the mental ones we all have) fail to predict and the chaos reign begins. So it is an important question, cascade or seneca cliff?
From a larger perspective, how far has the financial reality departed from the physical reality? If money is like an energy token and debt is money from the future then I guess that when there is no more money to extract from the marginal temporal future, the system will stop. If a loan cannot be paid back with interest (future profits), then the current system stops. When the letters of credit freeze up, the system will halt. Credit seems to act like electricity, supplying both “work” and “information” to the economy engine. Does that mean that another system can quickly replace it? I am not sure. The next system will be based closer on a harsher reality. The effects may vary greatly with some countries fairing better than others.
Speaking of: You may recall from last year, Paul, I think you put up a list of countries as most likely to fail – with Russia and Japan at the top (around November timeframe) and I countered with China and Saudi Arabia. I am pleased thus far with my bet and would pick the same today.
Oh the scare is not just on ZH its on CNBC too. Time to promote some grexit fear to get some sellers for what the 46th time? If grexit was to happen a volkswagon would cost $200,000. Germany needs the PIGS actually more than the PIGS need Germany. Kabuki theater.
Interesting how a week of relatively god news, such as the families of victims of the South Carolina shootings forgiving the shooter (human potential for transcendence), SCOTUS defending Affordable Care Act (human compassion) and marriage equality (human rights), can cool the commentary here on OFW. I think this evinces the importance and actual existence of substantial levels of hope, pride and dignity we all maintain with respect to the future of humanity and our prospects for changing the broken BAU paradigm. We are ready to rebuild from the ground up and from the top down until we meet in the middle like the railroads in Promontory Utah. The economy is dead! Long live the humans!
Yes it has been an exemplary week for humans… we finally all just getting along… we have overridden our DNA and are being kind to one another … we are not competing for scarce resources…. we are not at each others’ throats… we are sharing ….
Koombaya my lord… koombaya….
Take a look around you mate — the violence is picking up — and it will reach a crescendo just as we go off the cliff, BAU collapses… and 7 billion rats are left scurrying around putting bullets into each other and slicing each others’ throats in an epic battle for the crumbs left behind.
The hate and violence is old news. DNA is not the problem. Our consciousness is the problem. We have no natural enemies (perhaps a microbe or two). I guess that is what you mean – our own worst enemy? What can I do to change that consciousness?
See my earlier comment on this.
Changing our ‘consciousness’ is a) impossible and b) if it were — we would quickly be added to the long list of extinct species.
Without our instincts + big brains we’d still be cowering in the dark in the forests — without fire and spears — waiting to be picked off by the next predator
We are kings of the jungle — because we evolved to be…. you may not like the result …. but I guarantee you — there is no changing the beast.
I’d only differ in saying that our opportunity to change our consciousness/thinking has long since passed. I disagree that it would have necessarily made us extinct, as our brainpower has clearly made us capable of exercising dominion over our earthly domain, while still not destroying both it and us in the process. That we haven’t done so is certainly a tragedy, for us at least, but hardly inevitable.
The traits that make our societies successful are the same ones that bring about total and final collapse. That is the paradox.
Actually, I’ve never felt more hopeless in my entire life. But I think I’m coming to terms with it as the new normal. We who were born in the middle of the 20th century in America have had it pretty good most of our lives, which as it turns out is an historical anomaly of the highest degree. We’re about to get a taste of what the US state has been dishing out to the rest of the world in our names for all these years, and it ain’t gonna go down well for most of us at all.
Instead of watching the Oxfam commercial on the teevee —- we get starring roles!
I’ve got an idea for a reality Tee Vee show…. take away the food …. electricity … cars…. all machinery… clean water…. police…. and watch what happens to 300 million people (most of whom have weapons and ammo)….
I think it might be a hit among the millennials in 5-20 years! I think we boomers and post-boomers are going to take the brunt of some serious millennial wrath once they all realize the ship’s going down. Poor kids! But make no mistake, they would have made the same choices we did, and in fact are making them as we speak. The capitalist nightmare is fatally seductive to all who gaze upon it.
Imagine the shock and horror when The Facebook goes off the air!
That will be a ‘we’re not in Kansas anymore’ moment.
Hi James,
Agree 100%, although I don’t feel as hopeless as I did a year ago (moving onto the acceptance stage of grief). I just turned 50 in April and you’re right about us living through the best of times. We reaped both the previous generations exploitation of wealth and then some.
We’re about to get a taste of what the US state has been dishing out to the rest of the world in our names for all these years,… Yep, we’re seeing it in Greece and soon everywhere else. I have to say my Soc 101 class instructor droned on about the exploitation of South America but I did not pay attention and a friend lent me a copy of Confessions of a Hitman (of which I only read a portion…is this fiction? I thought).
I draw a parallel to our current times to pre-WWI. The weapons that had been developed and perfected against the tribal primitive hordes of Africa were finally used against fellow Europeans. Before the war, no one thought the war would last more than a few weeks. The picture of the young British solders, cheerful to do their generations duty, marched off to war with chivalry as their moral guide post.
Now, we have economic/financial weapons of war perfected and developed for enslaving vast nations with debt slavery. It is difficult how they could be ever used against our own people…like the young solders, we march to defend the current system with a cheerfulness based on several generations of positive economic growth. So it is written! So it is prophesied! By the great traditional economists of our time. This hardship cannot last more than a few years, and soon we will back on top toward ever 2% growth (and doubling ever 35 years).
*sigh*
FE
What is your timeframe for collapse?
Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.
Paging the immortal Yogi!
The Grexit soap opera is now catching fire as Puerto Rico has also admitted they are bankrupt and can’t pay on their debt. This morning Italian and Spanish bonds are crashing. Not something the Central Banks want. Then you have the Chinese stock market crashing and spilling over into Japan.
Nice start to the week ! 🙂
And the Swiss markets are crashing as well.
Fast Eddy,
this may be of some interest to you:
“NORTH AND SOUTH HEMISPHERE END UP WITH SAME ATOMIC RADIATION CONTAMINATION, BUT IT TAKES SIX MONTHS TO GET THERE”
http://agreenroad.blogspot.fr/2013/12/how-northern-and-southern-hemisphere.html
Linked by Ron Patterson (in http://peakoilbarrel.com/are-we-headed-for-global-warming-collapse/#more-8266) but he is “not at all confident that six months is correct however”.
Yep — if there is no way to manage the fuel ponds then there is no safe haven — we are looking at a situation far worse than an all out atomic war…
Because when fuel ponds blow the amount of dangerous materials is many thousands of times greater than that contained in a war head…. and they continue to spew death for decades….
I don’t see George Soros or any of the other key players moving into the hood…. they would know that is futile….
In any event… one couldn’t ask for a more pleasant place to pass the last months …. it’s ‘winter’ and pushing towards 20 degrees again today — with brilliant bright sunshine!
China’s tech-heavy high beta ‘Nasdaq’ – is down 5-6% today, 19% in 3 days, and 33% from highs in early June…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-28/chinese-double-rainbow-rate-cut-fails-reignite-rally-grexit-fears-weigh-global-marke
Rate cuts are not working!!!
Where’s that plunge protection team?
Quick OOTF — step in and buy buy buy!!!!
Push that goddamn string harder!!! It has to move!!!
They’ll soon implement the ultimate negative savings rate by simply seizing your entire account as punishment for your being so stupid as to leave it there. Nice racket while it lasts.
Lol! Fast Eddy abandoned us? /US?! Which one?
Having fun in the meantime… what a scandal!
3. Once the fuel is uncovered, it could become hot enough to cause the metal cladding encasing the uranium fuel to rupture and catch fire, which in turn could further heat up the fuel until it suffers damage. Such an event could release large amounts of radioactive substances, such as cesium-137, into the environment. This would start in more recently discharged spent fuel, which is hotter than fuel that has been in the pool for a longer time. A typical spent fuel pool in the United States holds several hundred tons of fuel, so if a fire were to propagate from the hotter to the colder fuel a radioactive release could be very large.
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/making-nuclear-power-safer/handling-nuclear-waste/safer-storage-of-spent-fuel.html#.VUp3n5Om2J8
4. According to Dr. Kevin Crowley of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, “successful terrorist attacks on spent fuel pools, though difficult, are possible. If an attack leads to a propagating zirconium cladding fire, it could result in the release of large amounts of radioactive material.”[12] The Nuclear Regulatory Commission after the September 11, 2001 attacks required American nuclear plants “to protect with high assurance” against specific threats involving certain numbers and capabilities of assailants. Plants were also required to “enhance the number of security officers” and to improve “access controls to the facilities”.
Dear Gail and Finite Worlders
Gail and BW Hill are two people who both think oil prices are going to be too low to support an increase in production. Here is an excerpt from a current comment by Hill
http://peakoil.com/business/peak-demand-is-the-new-peak-oil/comment-page-1#comment-150058
“Price versus volume”??? That is P versus Q; a P/Q curve. For the last 100 years as price has increased so has demand. That is backwards for a Demand curve. It is time to throw out the Supply\ Demand nonsense. It has not worked for a century! It is also time to throw out the rest of the industry, Polly Anna, cheerleader junk. Petroleum is NOT about barrels, it is about energy, and the Laws of Nature say very definitively that there will be less and less of it from petroleum as time progresses. Since the energy from petroleum is a key component for the economy, there will be less, and less economy.
The price is going down;
http://www.thehillsgroup.org/depletion2_022.htm
and the economy is following it! For the energy from petroleum to remain level production would have to increase by 2.3 mb/d per year. At $60/ barrel that is not going to happen!
Don Stewart
Humans — rats… same same…. http://metro.co.uk/2015/06/27/rats-dream-about-the-places-they-want-to-go-apparently-5268544/ (rat Koombaya…)
The “pope” did not call for a reduction in the human population, only that poverty might be spread more evenly. He wants to limit production but not people. There would be more and more people and no more to spread around. People would get poorer and poorer.
Eventually the “pope” would still need to make a decision about whether to limit the human population or to crash the planet. Then he might realise that his “charity” would need to be radically rethought, it might even look quite different.
There is more to sustainability in a finite world than sonnets to frangrant flowers of “equality”.
“Would you like to see the Pope on the end of a rope – do you think he’s a fool?”
Black Sabbath.
If the “pope” had it his way and poverty were equally shared, and there were more and more people and not more produce to go around, then eventually there would not be enough food per person to keep anyone alive. Everyone would be equally poor and everyone would die together.
The “pope’s” message is “let the poor die!” Or rather “let them ALL be poor and let them all die!” That is his “charity”. Satan’s mask is slipping with this encyclical. It is better and more “charitable” to just let the poor die than to make everyone equally poor and to have everyone die. Selection is necessary for the survival of the species.
The first thing I though when I walked into the Pope’s house was … how many poor people around the world gave their money that could have been used to feed their families to the Catholic church to build this abomination.
I love the design of this deckchair. It profoundly “speaks” to me.
http://www.everettpotter.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Titanic-Deck-Chair1.jpg
I like the nice lean butt padding (looks like a simple flexible fabric weave) meant for a person who was likely 100lbs or more lighter on average than today. And yet, their same sense of human invincibility lives on today.
That was meant for the deck chair on the titanic pic posted earlier that seems to have subsequently disappeared.
It got caught in the spam filter, and I think I accidentally lost it, sorry. (I think the spam filter thought you were selling deck chairs.)
Unfortunately, I agree with you. Sharing poverty is equally works reasonably well in times of plenty. It doesn’t work well when there isn’t enough to go around. Then, someone must get left out, or all starve together.
This conundrum is well examined by Prof Al Bartlett in his seminal talk:
Love Bartlett! He puts our current dilemma in terms even an Evangelical Christian Conservative could understand, if they’d only bother listening.
Note to part 1: I like the way that he says “most people dont have a CLUE!”
Part 2/1: Interesting, when they asked the council members to suggest a rate of population growth for the local community, not one of them opted for less than the national average and all but one chose higher. A hard fact may be that it is more feasible to get communities to compete and even to fight, in order to lower the population or to achieve sustainability, than it is to get them to cooperate. People naturally want more not less and any “plan” to achieve sustainability may need to take that basic human fact into account, as “disturbing” as the implications may be. But are the alternative consequences not worse? A hard ethical dilemma. A social “philosopher” should never mistake his own “kind” dispositions for those of the general population.
As I’ve posted a few times previously…. humans are not much different than rats…
We insult rats when we say ‘they breed like rats’ — because there are more humans than rats on the planet http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question96500.html (and we are far more destructive vermin)
We’ll react just like rats when our ship sinks…
http://blog.chron.com/fanblogtexans/files/2013/10/rats-sinking-ship-380×198.jpg
Yes, What are people LIKE! What ARE THEY LIKE!
It is a serious and important question.
Math means little. Did you see kims new outfit OMG.
Another great video that explains things very well:
Truly sad and sadness entered through the heart and taken apart for nth time as surreal as it seems that it can be this real to blow apart this thing so fragile, this whisper of truth, this spark of hope now gone scattered among the strands of violence that lanced our short time on this sweet mound of dirt under the swaying tree and gentle breeze.
Good video.
But…
There has always been someone in control — whether it was the village chief thousands of years ago — the king of a territory — and emperor … we have always willingly given up our freedom in exchange for security of a community — with a leader…
The only difference in the last few hundred years is that control has been centralized by the money lenders…. with the Owners of the Fed (OOTF) the pinnacle of that control structure.
You want to control the masses? Control the reserve currency — then you can buy everyone off… You need a politician on board for the Iraq War — reward him with 6 figure speaking contracts if he plays ball.
Need a General to help out — just pass along word to one of the military industrial complex companies that they need to hire that General at 500k a year when he retires…
Nothing new here — money talks — and only a fool turns down OOTF — because they’ll see you out on your ass if you don’t get on the team.
Where the presenter goes wrong is that he fails to attribute the enormous wealth that has been amassed in the past 150 years to the harnessing of fossil fuels….
Fossil fuels can do far more work than human slaves — don’t need to be fed — don’t get sick — and don’t revolt…. so for 150 years or so the yoke has been somewhat loosened on humans…
But now that the oil slave is used up — so we are seeing a revision to a tightening yoke…
And without oil — if there are any survivors — there will be no central control going forward — the masters will be local and they will rule through violence…
Same as it ever was….
Definitely missing a few elements we would like to see to that story line. As we have talked about (last year!), this is one of the reasons I see the return of slavery. It is avoidable. It will be upon the masses before they know it. It may be under-productive, but with all the extra billions…not a problem. I don’t know the mechanism of how this will happen, but is like a a 500 lb anvil perched on a paper mache scaffold.
Alt, each creature person _is_ an integral quantum of power. The will to power _is_ the essence of reality. Intelligence and “virtue” feed into that stream, or rather flow from that torrent. We have all enjoyed life more or less but if the economic developement of civilization wiped out the weakest 95% then 95% of us would be gone. Hard and “sad” but true. That is metaphysics and the internet for you.
peace
Reality is a unity but it is twofold. It is a torrent and a stream.
.https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2533&v=PbO9V3VKInQ
I listened to the Bartlett video several times through again (I’ve listened to it several times before as well) at work today, as it’s one of those videos you can easily listen to in the background while still working effectively. It truly is one of those amazing lectures that can have a profound effect on even common people when they truly absorb it. But of course, as he was quick to point out, when he pointed out some of the rather simplistic mistakes politicians made to them, they were quick to dismiss him out of hand. You can’t fix stupid, as they say, and even worse, you can’t fix blind trust in a system that is clearly leading us over the cliff in fairly short order.
Dear Gail and Finite Worlders
For those who are receptive to thoughts seldom expressed on this site, I recommend two things:
First, read Albert Bates essay on the Pope’s Climate Change Encyclical (which is about much more than 2 degrees C):
http://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-gift-of-clear-mind-laudato-si.html
Second, pick up Jane Hirshfield’s book Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. Take a look particularly at chapter 7, Poetry and the Constellation of Surprise.
As I have said before, surprise is a very fundamental factor in human behavior. When some object is moving in our visual field, we make a prediction about where it will be in the next instant, and then respond if it is not where we predicted it would be. Surprise lasts at most half a second. But profound surprises have the power to move human behavior.
On page 207 Jane summarizes some of her findings in the chapter she has just written. ‘I began these considerations believing the transcending knowledge of poems is a singularly human liberation: that poetic epiphany, by loosening the psyche from the grip of expectation and purposeful pursuit, is a capacity of knowing entirely unique to our own kind. I still think this is so: if there is a poetry of dolphins, ravens, and elephants, it is not like ours. But something else seems possible as well—that the opposite is also true, that the peculiarly human phenomenon is the grip held on the heart by goal-seeking, end-wedded purpose, and that what good poems restore us to is something close to what is meant by ‘animal joy’. They allow us to see the leaf’s passage from gold to green and mourn neither; to taste an oyster for both the history of rapacity and its salt. Poetry’s surprisingly purposeless purpose, now as in Homeric Greece, is to restore to us the amplitude and exuberance of the Ithakan journey, even while knowing that inside a dog it is dark.’
(The obscure references above will become clear as she explicates several poems which illustrate her points.)
A few random quotes:
Consenting to the world we are given is what we do.
A ritual must be passed through with the whole body.
Against gravity and entropic loss, a poem proposes the levitation of fine excess and gratuitous beauty.
Against transience, art provides a witnessing endurance: against the stringencies of survival, it offers the moment’s dalliance.
As evolution’s creatures, we align with goal attainment, self-protection, and the useful. The part of art which is art, and not device, unshackles us from usefulness almost entirely. It emplaces us far into those impractical conditions, that nonetheless feel to us somehow essential: laughter, contemplation, wonder, tears.
In this way of multiplicity and music, poetry instructs in the navigation of essentially unnavigable circumstances and truths. We are going to die; we live now. We are solitary; we are connected to the beloved, to weather, to (perhaps) the divine. We despair; we hope.
Now for a sort of summary from my perspective. Much of the language Albert uses to dissect the Encyclical could be lifted from Capra and Luisi’s book, or a scientific analysis of pollinators and the profound threat humans pose to our own food supply, or to the abuse that humans have heaped on our gut bacteria and the dire consequences of our ignorant and greedy behavior. Capra and Luisi are fans of a ‘spiritual’ approach to life, which is pretty close to what Jane Hirshfield is talking about. Capra, Luisi, and Hirshfield have all studied Buddhism, although I don’t think any of the three treat it as a religion. The pope comes at things from the standpoint of both spirituality and religion…and as Albert notes, may make some mistakes in the name of religion. Whatever distinctions we may make between these four individuals, there is a great deal that they have in common.
I have sometimes written about conflicts and emergent properties: we can have a soil food web where everything is eating everything else, but the emergent property is something that looks like cooperation. Hirshfield addresses the issue of Eden vs. The Real World by offering us the transcendence we can sometimes achieve through art. Religion frequently offers us the promise of a better world after death. Spirituality is closer to Hirshfield.
Don Stewart
Starving people will not be able to eat poetry….
Can’t eat gold or silver but maybe it’ll pay for a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli.
True. But when things get difficult poetry can help one to get through it.
‘December stillness,/Crossed by twilight roads,/Teach me to travel far, /And bear my loads.’
By Siegfried Sassoon, the WW1 poet, who saw things in the trenches that most of us cannot begin to imagine, in scenes of utter devastation.
Better to draw some encouragement from something like that, than get one’s knickers in a twist about what ever is coming: after all, life has never been either very safe or particularly nice for most of our ancestors. If wars didn’t get them, disease did.
My great-grandfather served in the trenches from 1915 to 1918, (including battle of the Somme) and I won’t disgrace his memory and example by either getting in a state or discouraging and depressing others. Even if the lights go off and the food runs out.
Don
Much sense in all of that.
http://fortune.com/2015/01/23/mcdonalds-us-sales-slide/
As we can see… the masses are rejecting the fast food and instead going to The Promised Land for goodness…
Or not… US Obesity Rate Reaches Record High — the Stats May Shock You http://www.popsugar.com/fitness/Obese-Americans-Outnumber-Overweight-Study-Says-37764598
Every once in a while i’ll get an in&out cheeseburger with fries, but the rest of the time it’s healthy organic produce, fruits and vegetables and mostly dishes we prepare ourselves. People for some reason think fast food is a regular staple, but those places are not concerned with health or longevity. They’d stuff someone with pure lard if it made a buck.
My pet peeve is with the kids menu in most non fast food restaurants — for some reason the adults usually get to choose from relatively healthy options but the kids are left with deep fried fish sticks and chips… or a hot dog and fries..
Let’s see whats happening over at i-Koombaya …. http://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/93299/joel-salatin-pursuit-food-freedom
Yes — we should all be free to have $10,000 per month food budgets so our families can enjoy only tasty organics purchased from Whole Foods — otherwise known as ‘The Promised Land’
http://www.leshistorymonth.org/1/wp-content/uploads/whole-foods11.jpg
I think it’s the lighting in Whole Foods that gets people to pay more. Go in there sometime and look up at all the lights. I mean they’ve got that place lit up like a art gallery.
It’s like Starbucks, high prices and all atmosphere.
The coffee joint equivalent of a posh restaurant for the masses?
They should play Haydn string quartets LOL
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-28/top-german-politician-blasts-nuland-carter-fk-us-imperialism
What he really means if F&%$# OOTF….
That is what China and Russia are attempting to do… because they see OOTF as weak … vulnerable….
A very interesting view of the Pope’s encyclical:
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2015/06/21/canticle-of-the-sun/
Outstanding!
It’s surprising where water can come from sometimes. Obviously you would avoid building in a known flood plain. That does not seem to deter developers if there is a chance of profit.
The water authority’s current “straws” glean water from 1,050 feet and 1,000 feet. Lake Mead hovers around 1,075 feet Wednesday — leaving the first straw just 25 feet away from pulling in air.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-26/leaking-las-vegas-lake-mead-record-lows-we-have-change
They’re keeping it plateaued at 1075 by accelerating the flow down from Powell.
I’ve been tracking this in the Lake Mead Watch on the Diner.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/forum/index.php/topic,2356.msg78861.html#msg78861
Mead probably won’t drop below 1050 before 2016.
On the other hand, folks in the Upper Basin above Mead who get their water from Powell may run into problems sooner depending how fast they are draining Powell.
RE
The Colorado River is over-allocated. Someone thought that there would be more water there than is actually the case. They must have found a handful of wet years to base their forecasts on.
Poor Greece!
What happens when far lefties play with game theory? They have a self-righteous tantrum as they lose – when everyone was trying to help them.
“What happens when far lefties play with game theory? They have a self-righteous tantrum as they lose – when everyone was trying to help them”
Wait till industrial civilization playing with economic game theory comes to a end. Then youll see some real tantrums. Everyone trying to help Greece, Goldman Sachs , The Troika which lenders whoops I mean helpers am I missing?.
Yes I quite agree. We all lose in the end, death is inevitable, but that has never stopped us gloating at failure. Perhaps we learn something from it.
“help them”..??
Are you kidding? Who in the world is helping Greece? Nobody.
Instead, we’re all passively watching how this David Vs Goliath type of fight will unfold. Except this time Goliath (aka the Troïka, backed -or steered- by TBTF banks) is cheating all the time.
As Raul Ilargi Meijer says, it resembles “a schoolyard bully giving his victim the choice between a punch in the stomach or a blow to the head. Read for example:
http://www.theautomaticearth.com/2015/06/oxi/
Latest example:
the Eurogroup refuses to delay their ultimatum (set on 30 June) by one week, thereby undermining the referendum planned for the 05 July.
If the decision is already taken, what will the Greeks vote upon?
What does that tell us about Democracy in Europe?
Officil press-release: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015/06/27-eurogroup-statement-greece/
The greek situation seems to culminate. Strategically not very bright duo Tsipras-Varoufakis now calls for a referendum about european support programme which is effect ending in few days this month, in fact they could have done it (call it) months ago. Now, IMF said the plebiscit would not be valid/effective anyway, lol.
Simply, both sides desperately want to square a circle. The west wants to keep Greece inside EU/NATO orbit, also punish the current government, and obviously suck some more blood out of these fictious loans. While the greek .gov wants to stay on easy support line from the west and inside Eurozone.
What a joke or rather slow motion collapse scene as seen from the first seats.
“Why The Greek “Bailout” Failed… Explained With Cats”
https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/CIb4AMuWUAAQyts.mp4
http://the-future.beforeitsnews.com/gold-and-precious-metals/2015/06/why-the-greek-bailout-failed-explained-with-cats-2647608.html
Greece is like watching a train crash in slow motion. The only redemption is the LOL punch line. I wonder if Greeks still think that it was a good idea to cook the books to get into the EU. They enjoyed the party while they could but there is always the morning after.
I rather thought the referendum was an amusing (although futile) stroke….
OOTF tells us constantly that they support democracy around the world (which is total rubbish — they are constantly undermining democracies — as they should — there can be no koombaya of democracy in the zero sum game of a finite world) — so the Greek leaders have called them out on this ….
Since the negotiators can’t agree — let’s put this to the people —- let’s handle this in a democratic fashion!
OOTF does not like that — OOTF strikes back through its minions in the MSM:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-28/democracy-dangerous-its-not-greek-grandmas
I cannot see how Greece can get away with this — OOTF will either kick the can by cutting some sort of deal — or smash the upstarts (like they did Papandreao and Berlusconi when they tried same)
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” probably as apt today as for the Trojans.
it tells us that no big decisions are ever made by the people — which of course means there is no democracy…
And I agree with that — because the people are about as smart and easily manipulated as rats…
If I were to tell the sheeple that I can guarantee a new car in each of their garages — a 20 hour work week — and 0 taxes …. and you told them this was not possible …. I’d be voted in… hey – maybe Europe does have democracy after all!!
“No one pretends that control by an uber-elite is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that such a system is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.” Fast Eddy 6/29/2015
I think we’ll be taking that last hypothesis of yours back into the lab for further testing in fairly short order. The current form of the current global uber-elite system has only been in place about 25 years now, so I don’t think it’s proven itself yet in the least.
I believe the uber-elite have been in control for at least as long as the since this statement was made:
“I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, … The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply.” Nathan Rothschild
I was referring to this below. I think it’s the traditional American cop-out, and I also think it’s simplistic and wrong. Dead wrong.
“Indeed, it has been said that such a system is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”
Greece is in and will remain in. If Greece was to go out it would mean at the very least a split of the euro currency between north and south. That would put a Volkswagon at about $150,000. Germany moans but kicking Greece out would be economic suicide for them. Greece knows this. The kabuki theater is about Greece trying to get the mostest, Germany trying to give the leastess and both pretending that grexit is a option.
Dear Stefeun and Artleads
I’m getting into the spirituality and sociology part of Capra and Luisi. Too early for sweeping statements, but I find this snippet interesting:
‘On the one hand there are social institutions designed for specific purposes, such as making money for their shareholders, managing the distribution of political power, or spreading religious faith. At the same time, organizations are communities of people who interact with one another to build relationships, help each other, and make their daily activities meaningful at a personal level.’
How one might go about designing a large organization which can simultaneously accomplish both sets of objectives is a mystery to me. At the present time, I think that the dominant paradigm in business is to automate the second set of concerns right out of existence. Machines don’t concern themselves with such nonsense!
The book quotes some statistics from CEOs who have significantly reorganized, and find that most of them have been disappointed by the results, and spend a lot of time dealing with unanticipated fallout.
The conclusion of the book is a quote from Vaclav Havel:
‘The kind of hope that I often think about….I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation…Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.’
Don Stewart
Mr. Havel, the man of principles? haha.
Yes it is true he was a playwright of some talent, chiefly upgraded or shall we say lifted up by the performances of very potent actors of the “absurd drama scene” in the 1960s era. Later as a member of tiny top circle of western sponsored disident elite, that guy was a joke, he talked about environmentalism and personally drove 3ton Benz 4×4 around the city. He also talked about principles and cheated not only on his spouses but the gullible public as well, as he preached about the dream of third way, something between rough capitalism and progressive socialism. In practice though, he cashed out with the help of dubious characters as soon as possible in the early 1990s dozens of mega$, and so on..
Don,
I agree that search for power and wellness of people seem to be antagonistic, and that today the balance has definitely gone to the former (to the expense of the latter), as one could expect in transition periods.
With respect to hope, I think that hope for realistic targets can be a very powerful mover, but that otoh hope for fanciful goals can do much more harm than good. How do we distinguish is not always clear…
Stefeun
The quote from Vaclav Havel is interesting, in light of your comments about ‘hopeless hope’. While Havel always got good press in the US (as I remember), I also heard that he was not universally admired in central Europe.
I think that there is something rather sad about Mobus and Kalton and Capra and Luisi. Mobus says he is giving up his tenured university position because higher education in the US has become untenable. Luisi is part of the same system in Italy, and Ugo Bardi referenced Mobus’ article and seconded the motion. I asked Mobus if broad focus education of the type represented in the two Systems Science books could survive in the environment he describes, and he said “no’.
Capra and Luisi describe some ‘broad focus systems initiatives’ in Europe as models for ‘educating the leaders we desperately need for the future’, but then warn that both programs now have ‘new leadership’. A plausible conjecture on my part is that as things get tougher, focus will narrow rather than broaden.
The University of North Carolina has been here longer than the United States Constitution. The original goal was ‘the education of leaders’ and the state constitution provides that ‘it shall be free to students to the extent possible’. But the current political leadership sees it as ‘job training’ which should make a profit.
Liberalism is having a hard time surviving.
Don Stewart
Much of education is about social reproduction. Sounds like the rich of North Carolina setup a college to train their children to continue to be the rich of North Carolina. Let’s not get to sentimental about the “liberal” past.
edpell
Let’s be appropriately cynical, but not overly cynical. Of course, no women or black people need apply back in 1777. But they did make it tuition free…not like Harvard or Princeton or Yale.
And through the 1990s and into the new century you would see it in a list of ‘elite universities’. It always attracted lots of out of state students. The Odums taught ecology here.
At the present time, the state legislature, newly Republican, is trying to pass a law taking sales tax revenue away from Raleigh and Charlotte and give it to the backward and solidly Republican rural areas. If Republicans were capable of embarrassment, they might wonder why the ‘liberal’ parts of the state are doing so well and the ‘conservative’ parts are doing so poorly.
They might also ponder the question of whether ‘taxing the rich people in Raleigh and Charlotte’ to give to the poor people outstate isn’t, somehow, socialist?
Don Stewart
Hi Don,
I find some posters, very much including you and Gail, to be helping us get to a single outlook. I think there is only one way to go. Generally comprising the collective synthesized ideas on this blog and others. So here’s my quick take on that one way:
– Overpopulation is not the clear culprit.
– We need a very large population of workers to grow wood for fuel and to plant trees for carbon sequestration..
– We need to reconfigure (not rebuild) cities, so as to accommodate the bulk of the growing human population and foster innovation.
– Urban food and biodiversity production need to be a major roll of cities.
– Nuclear power needs to be separated from other energy sources, and used for essentials, such as new forms of cheap energy.
– Whereas the low hanging fruit of fossil fuel energy is gone, the low hanging fruit of behavioral change is still to be explored.
As always, I’m incapable of putting these in systematic order–showing why, and how they must, fit together.
– Nuclear power needs to be separated from other energy sources, and used for essentials, such as new forms of cheap energy.
> How do you continue to generate nuclear power without oil? How do you mine the materials that go into making a nuclear plant … what about replacement parts? How do you maintain the massive grid that is required to deliver the electricity from your plant to where it’s needed? How do you manufacture all the things that you would use the power for e.g. fridges, phones, radios teevees….
What’s that music…. come closer…. a little closer…. can you hear it? Hang on … let me turn up the volume a little….
“– Overpopulation is not the clear culprit.”
Lets just say that statement is true hypothetically.
If overpopulation was the clear culprit.
Would your belief system allow you to accept the truth?
Children?
Grandchildren?
I consider children one of the most beautiful things on the planet.
I consider procreating with no restraint one of the most sinful things on the planet.
In my experience the ability to accept overpopulation as mankind’s greatest sin is inversely proportional to the amount of humans one has spawned.
http://blackville.nbed.nb.ca/sites/blackville.nbed.nb.ca/files/bravo.gif
” Overpopulation is not the clear culprit.”
Ahh how should i put this- oh nevermind
– “We need a very large population of workers to grow wood for fuel and to plant trees for carbon sequestration..”
Hmm which will be greater once the oil is not around the burning or the growing, gee I wonder. Lets see ill just go out and plant some trees that i grew myself from pine cones and expend 3000 calories doing so, calories provided by the space aliens.
“Urban food and biodiversity production need to be a major roll of cities.”
lots of food in the cities- taste like chicken. The word need is a interesting one. What you describe does not exist. It is still imaginary even if they “need” it. What you describe is imaginary.
It is not possible to implement what you describe while the oil still flows or after it stops. While the oil still flows it provides food. After it stops the means are not there to implement alternatives. Limiting our spawning and reducing the need for resources is a action that is easily implemented by any of our species who chooses to do so right now. Both actions have the same effect in regards to resource shortages and human consumption Why would one not choose a very effective and easily achieved action instead of talking about unachievable imaginary ones?
Do you have a garden? Is “major roll” going to put his hands in the dirt? When did he get promoted to major?
–”Nuclear power needs to be separated from other energy sources, and used for essentials, such as new forms of cheap energy.”
As FE pointed out how can it be separated when every aspect of its existence came from and is sustained by fossil fuels?
“Whereas the low hanging fruit of fossil fuel energy is gone, the low hanging fruit of behavioral change is still to be explored.”
Now in this I still hold hope. The possibility for humans to change their behavior exists. They could stop pillaging every resource and life form they encounter and they could stop procreating like bunnies who popped a blue pill. Improbable but possible. However I see not the slightest indication that behavior will change prior to collapse. Not the slightest. Your writings are a excellent example.
“While the oil still flows it provides food. After it stops the means are not there to implement alternatives. ”
Why can’t alternatives be enacted while there is still oil? Isn’t it a choice whether they are enacted or not?
“It is still imaginary even if they “need” it. What you describe is imaginary.”
Nothing imagined, nothing achieved.
“Limiting our spawning and reducing the need for resources is a action that is easily implemented by any of our species who chooses to do so right now. ”
It seems to be a choice. Unless you get appointed major too.
“As FE pointed out how can it be separated when every aspect of its (nuclear) existence came from and is sustained by fossil fuels?”
Hmmm. Well, let’s at least get rid of the notion of building NEW nuclear plants. So need for new fossil related materials there.
“However I see not the slightest indication that behavior will change prior to collapse. Not the slightest. Your writings are a excellent example.”
My writings are an excellent example of what?
“Do you have a garden? Is “major roll” going to put his hands in the dirt? ”
I have gardened every summer for the past 30 years…whenever I was lucky enough to have access to a tiny patch of soil.
Why can’t alternatives be enacted while there is still oil? Isn’t it a choice whether they are enacted or not?
> What are the alternatives?
Nothing imagined, nothing achieved.
> I have a dream…. I imagine a land of milk and honey…. of solar panels growing on trees… a land where humans just get along … everyone drives a Prius (I drive a Tesla though)…. we all drink Starbucks low fat lattes … we all shop in Whole Foods… everyone lives forever… there is no pollution … and this land is called —– Koombaya….
Hmmm. Well, let’s at least get rid of the notion of building NEW nuclear plants. So need for new fossil related materials there.
> You are very clever… yes we could just not build any new plants – I never thought of that!!! Because of course the existing plants last forever…. they never need repairs… no need for new parts… the grid also will never break so no need to worry about that… Built to Last! Ram Tough!
Please read what I write re nukes before mischaracterizing it.
(Like this June 27, 2015 at 7:50 pm post just below)
So what are you doing here. You post a lot. What’s the point?
“Why can’t alternatives be enacted while there is still oil? Isn’t it a choice whether they are enacted or not?”
What is it with you and “choice”? They wont be enacted for the very simple reason that there are no real alternatives and the faux alternatives are costly.
“Nothing imagined, nothing achieved. ”
Achievement is generally achieved by hard work. The worship of idea and conception is a disease.
Most of the work occurs during implementation when problems arise and are debugged or the concept proves to be unfeasible. Many unfeasible ideas have been pursued for far too long squandering resources by the disease of idea worship. Yes achievement starts with a idea but that idea must have its roots in good soil or it is a waste. The main achievement occurs in implementation. I just imagined that Hugh Hefner is going to give me a call and ask me to take his role in the playboy mansion. Arnt I special arnt I creative!.
“Hmmm. Well, let’s at least get rid of the notion of building NEW nuclear plants. So need for new fossil related materials there”
Whoa. Wernt you advocating nuclear power in your earlier statements as a alternative? Now its shut em down? I agree shut em down. Shut down the photovoltaic factories and the battery factories too. Use the energy to try to contain the existing nuclear waste. See I have a vivid imagination too.
“It seems to be a choice. Unless you get appointed major too. ”
Do you consider “choice” to be a physical law? Nice subtle characterization of my avocation for limiting ones spawning with authoritarianism.
“My writings are an excellent example of what? ”
Your writings are a excellent example of refusal to advocate the actions that are possible while advocating actions that do not exist. This is a excellent example of why humans wont change their behavior they place notions about “choice” and “rights” above the real actions that exist to change.
Choice as we know it exists only because of fossil fuels. This is our choice. Find calories to consume or die.
“I have gardened every summer for the past 30 years…whenever I was lucky enough to have access to a tiny patch of soil.”
Kudos to you. Points subtracted for attempting to garner sympathy with “access” and “tiny” victim ploy.
So what are you implement with your hard work? BTW, please read what I write re nukes before mischaracterizing it.
(Like this June 27, 2015 at 7:50 pm post right below)
The alternatives basically don’t “work” well enough. They require our whole fossil fuel system that we have now. At best, the act as a small extension to it. But once fossil fuels fail, the system as a whole fails–for example, the electric grid fails. The only way they can continue to work is temporarily (until they degrade, or the devices they use break) if someone can figure out a way outside of the current system to use them. For example, if someone could use a solar panel to operate a water pump for irrigation, this would work as long as the pump worked. (A simple wind powered setup would probably be cheaper and have less problems with harmful chemicals in its making, though.)
It is my understanding that a normal electricity powered irrigation pump cannot be converted to be powered by solar panels…
One would need to have a specialized solar compatible pump….
Not even with an inverter–as long as the inverter lasts?
“It is my understanding that a normal electricity powered irrigation pump cannot be converted to be powered by solar panels…”
Its all about the start amps the amps the pump pulls when it first gets turned. How high does the water need to get pumped? And yes they make low start amp pumps but they have less capacity. Myself I think some water is better than none.
“Now in this I still hold hope. The possibility for humans to change their behavior exists. They could stop pillaging every resource and life form they encounter and they could stop procreating like bunnies who popped a blue pill”
We should work on that! and the fact that we know where overpopulating leads give us the choice to stop doing it whereas bunnies do not know.
Trouble is, the inflection point of opportunity for enacting such simple but effective measures is now at least 100 years back in the rear view mirror. It would still be nice to at least make a token gesture toward implementing that kind of sanity again to prove that we’re worth saving, but let’s be honest. Does anyone truly believe that even something as small as that is ever going to happen?
“It would still be nice to at least make a token gesture toward implementing that kind of sanity again to prove that we’re worth saving…”
I’d say, not just a token effort. But dealing with such entrenched complexity, it wouldn’t take a results-oriented effort either. I see it more as ritualistically doing the best we can, leaving the outcome to a “higher” power. A matter of faith. There has never been a situation where it’s possible to know (scientifically) that the entire planet is imperiled. Given the unprecedence of this situation, I don’t claim to know what humans might or might not do to change. The pope’s encyclical message seemed like the greatest step toward change that I’ve ever seen. The first step in a journey of a thousand miles.
“But dealing with such entrenched complexity”
What you are trying to change is the very DNA of the human species… DNA that is coded to force us to scratch and claw and kill if necessary — to compete in order to survive…
We in the west do not seem to understand this because we have very cushy lives — we don’t worry about where our next meal comes from — but make no mistake — we are competing — our military machines have done the job for us — and we have lived large on the booty of war (i.e. the resources that we pillage from the losers)
You think the Tutsis and Hutus were brutal? Well just wait to see what happens when our cushy lives go down the toilet…. we are capable of the same behaviours — because we are of the same species…
Believing that we can change is utter nonsense… you are suggesting that we ‘just get along – share – not compete’… if we did that we’d very quickly go the way of the Dodo bird….
Imagine training a lion in Kenya not to compete…. he’d feel pity for the injured gazelle and not kill and eat it…. but the hyenas would tear it to shreds…. the lion, because he refuses to compete for food would soon weaken and the hyenas would be feasting on the lion …
What people don’t seem to get is that we are no different than rats — or lions — or any other animal…
All animals are hard coded to compete because this is the key to survival… we are at the top of the food chain because we are the most vicious beasts with the biggest brains which allow us to compete and win … we compete not only with animals lower on the food chain — and with each other
We are exquisite cunning beasts — far more dangerous than a shark, or lion or bear —- perfectly evolved to dominate in a finite world…
There is no Koombaya…. there can be no Koombaya… there is no place for Koombaya in a finite world…. you compete or you die.
“There is no Koombaya…. there can be no Koombaya… there is no place for Koombaya in a finite world…. you compete or you die.”
I’d only modify that by adding that if you’re the species that’s evolved to have the biggest brain, then there’s only Koombaya if you agree to limit your numbers and be the caretaker for your species, all the other species, and the environment that you share. Koombaya was always at least theoretically possible for humans, but we simply chose to reject it. No, it wouldn’t have been easy and would likely have represented an evolutionary leap, but the facts are facts. We had the intelligence and the opportunity to reject the allures of easily available fossil fuel energy, but we simply didn’t do it. It seems like such a simple decision now in retrospect, but of course it wasn’t for those of us who had to make it at the time. Perhaps we’ll get another bite at the apple the next time ’round?
I don’t see that as being a choice… our biological imperatives are to survive and reproduce…
And just like rats… if the barn is full of grain we will multiply … and then once we eat all the grain … we die back…
Our big brains ultimately work the same way as small brains — but because we are so clever we have been able to keep adding food to the barn by harnessing the one-off finds of oil and gas…
And now we have 7 billion of us — the barn is empty… and the soil is ruined…
Rats would do surely the same thing — they just don’t know how….
I think it’s Kentucky where two new nuke plants have been approved. Seems like advanced lunacy to me, but so does nearly everything about BAU (which I quite admire, BTW).
I understand that nuke plants are outlandishly expensive, so will those nuke plants ever be completed? If I’m following OFW remotely accurately, there will be economic hell to pay before plants could even get halfway constructed.
Meanwhile, we have a couple hundred (?) existing plants waiting to explode, with VERY inadequate planning or oversight for them. I believe Gail implied (wondered if?) cheap coal could be liquefied using nuclear energy for the process. The implication is for a very limited targeted use of nuclear. Using their existing energy to leverage safer and cheaper energy, perhaps using that safer and cheaper energy to substitute for the nuke energy and even help decommission plants. (If I got that all wrong, I trust I’ll be corrected.)
We must think of strategic ways to avoid killing the planet without also killing the economic system (which will also kill the planet, especially if we run out of power to do basic management or decommissioning of nuclear plants.) Screw Kumbaya. I’m just assuming that most people would rather live than perish.
Maybe it’s Tennessee and not Kentucky.
I think high population is definitely a problem, and cities will be very difficult to deal with. Disease transmission will be a problem, as will many other things–lack of jobs, inability to provide fresh water, difficulty in removing wastes, lack of surplus from the farms to feed the cities, etc.
Nuclear power is a problem of its own.
It won’t be the first time!
We often refer to (ca) 250 million years as being the length of time necessary to build up the stock of fossil fuels we’re currently burning. But before 250M years ago, there was already quite a big stock of coal, oil and gas in the ground. What happened?
“It now looks as if the greatest mass extinction on Earth – 250 million years ago – was caused by fossil fuel burning.”
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 27th May 2015
http://www.monbiot.com/2015/05/27/a-prehistory-of-violence/
One of the links provided by G.Monbiot describes the mechanisms in detail:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pollution-part-2.html
“Why the US recycling industry is feeling down in the dumps”
Falling oil prices, a strong US dollar and a weakened Chinese economy are combining to make the global business of recycling less profitable than ever.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/27/recycling-unprofitable-oil-china-dollar
“In fact, almost every facility like it in the country is running in the red. And Waste Management and other recyclers say that more than 2,000 municipalities nationwide are paying to dispose of their recyclables instead of the other way around.”
“And Waste Management and other recyclers say that more than 2,000 municipalities nationwide are paying to dispose of their recyclables instead of the other way around.”
That pretty much sums up the futility of attempts to go ‘green’
I suspect that in a lot of places — the stuff in the blue box — gets tossed into the river….
I read a book some years ago about how the mafia in Italy bids on contracts for toxic waste — and wins the contracts — because they don’t dispose of the waste properly rather they dump it on vacant land in the countryside or into the ocean….
If they are paying to recycle materials, it tells us something about how the energy flows are working out. We need to use more energy than we are gaining, at least when all of the types of energy (human, oil, gas, coal, etc. ) are included.
Why Is The EU Forcing European Nations To Adopt ‘Bail-In’ Legislation By The End Of The Summer?
by Michael Snyder • June 5, 2015
“Are they expecting something to happen? As you will read about below, the European Union says that any nation within the EU that does not enact “bail-in” legislation within the next two months will face legal action. The countries that are being threatened in this manner include Italy and France. If you fast forward two months from this moment, that puts us in early August. So clearly the European Union wants everything to be squared away by the end of the summer. Is there a reason for this? Are they anticipating that something really bad will happen in September or thereafter? Why such a rush?”
http://michaelsnyder.mensnewsdaily.com/2015/06/why-is-the-eu-forcing-european-nations-to-adopt-bail-in-legislation-by-the-end-of-the-summer/
Demand Destruction of course is the key effect here.
You have to remember the synergy between the Energy Extraction Industry and the Banking Syndicate. Call it the Rockefeller Connection. The TBTF Banks create the credit to buy the Energy. As long as the energy appears infinite, they can create infinite credit. Once the energy no longer appears infinite, they no longer can create infinite credit.
So what occurs once you can’t issue infinite credit out anymore? Somebody has to be triaged off the credit bandwagon, and of course it’s all the weakest countries pushed off the Titanic first here. As they get pushed off, demand in the country falls as fewer people all the time have access to credit to buy the products (access to credit comes in the form of jobs for the end consumer).
First access to credit goes to the biggest Energy companies. They have loaded up on debt, but since the end consumer is losing access to credit, they cannot pay off the debt the Energy companies accrue here. Eventually, even the big energy companies will lose access to further credit, at which point is is Game Over for the system. The products will simply disappear from the market, they won’t be available at ANY price.
How long will it take? Depends much on how the triaging is done and what the geopolitical consequences of that are. Obviously already it is causing increasing warfare in the marginal countries first triaged off the credit. You also have the derivatives problem, which threatens to blow up even the largest of the TBTF Banks at any moment.
If they can keep BAU running even at the centers of credit creation on Wall Street, the City of London, Hong Kong, Singapore etc for more than another 5 years I will be astounded.
RE
Debt? Energy Companies?
Can you give an example?
http://www.wamhoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Graph-4.png
http://i.blogs.es/280dfd/bis-petroleum-and-debt-growth-in-debt/2560_3000.jpg
@RE – I was surprised initially – thinking about this, it may be sensible to partition the Oil and Gas sector into conventional and unconventional. The conventional plays have lots of free cash flow and it makes sense for them to issue debt (or equity) to Insurance companies and pension funds, so up to 20 percent of assets as liabilities – some liabilities are just the normal flow of business, is expected. The unconventional ones will always be playing catchup.
I wonder if at some point remaining oil production won’t be essentially nationalized, either directly, by having the military itself do it, or by funneling money directly from federal coffers into a designated national oil company(s). That would seem to me the only option left at some point to ensure continuity of service for the handful who will be fortunate enough to continue to drink from the well at that point.
They may try this for a while, but it won’t last long.
Refineries and distribution only work at large scale. There will be road maintenance problems, pipeline transmission problems etc. Then you start to run into hard limits of EROEI.
Besides, before it gets there, just about everywhere on Earth will be in some type of resource/food/water war.
RE
i don’t see that as being possible.
Let’s say you ordered engineers and other workers to remain on the job no matter what.
What about the massive infrastructure that supports oil extraction — you need the factories that make the parts to continue working — you need the global supply chain — you need incredibly complex refineries —- you need the grid to distribute the energy — you need universities to continue to train engineers — you need a functioning financial system
Energy extraction is an incredibly complex business — we are long past the days of scooping oil from surface ponds….
Essentially you need a fully functioning BAU for the energy industry to exist.
I haven’t thought it all the way through, but I imagine it would only work after you triaged major portions of the economy and populace. I could imagine the US government eventually defaulting on the dollar altogether, then doing a corporate reorganization of sorts, claiming sovereignty over a slice of the eastern seaboard, with current military bases across the US being either abandoned in the smaller cases, or kept on as satellites in the case of the bigger ones. A new currency would then be circulated among the lucky few invitees on a work only basis. No more transfer payments or social safety net of any kind. Everyone would either be an owner or owned by one. Former US citizens who weren’t brought on board would almost certainly be restless and destitute, at which point the population reductions could begin in earnest. Limited remaining oil stocks imply limited numbers of end users to me, so it becomes an exercise in scaling down the 7B (most of whom don’t have much access now anyway) to whatever number works, such that all the infrastructure and brainpower to continue a new form of BAU remains intact. It would be a tremendous undertaking and I’m not sure it could ever be made to work, but then again, at some point, what other choice will they have. And of course, all of this overlooks the confounding effects of Climate Change, but that’s something that’s going to have to be dealt with either way too.
I type all of this while listening to local new anchors debate the pros and cons of the growing use of “selfie sticks(!!!)” in public.
James – I would expect that there are 10’s of thousands of unique parts in one of these refineries…. from computers to specialized valves….
The parts would come from factories all over the world — germany china etc….
It will not be possible to manufacture and transport these parts to where they are needed…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Anacortes_Refinery_31911.JPG
Same issues with maintaining the grid:
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2012/05/grid-substation-iStock_18332202XSmall.jpg
I do not see how it is possible to continue to operate any of this without a fully functioning BAU … you need global supply chains… factories… and finance….
It either all continues to operate or it all goes down the drain.
Let me add a little more negativity — for those who think that we can just start farming in our back yards post collapse — keep in mind — the hose will not deliver any water — so assuming you have seed stock… already decent soil … and know how to grow food…. oh — and you have enough food stockpiled to get you to your first crop — how will you water your little garden?
I’ve never believed in the garden your way back to sustainability mantra either. Far too little land (much of which is now worthless) and far too many people, just for starters.
I have discovered that there are also a lot of competitors for garden output. We think rabbits are eating a lot of bean and sweet potato leaves. I am not quite sure what is eating blueberries. A person needs to use stored energy in various forms (such as fences and netting) to reduce losses to other species.
Unfortunately, when the neighbours are hungry (because they don’t have a garden and will have no food post collapse)… netting and fences won’t keep them out… and one would need a substantial garden to feed even a dozen neighbours…
I suppose that’s where the guns and ammo come into play … (but then they will also have guns and ammo)
Or the idea of living where there are no neighbours… or the neighbours are all growing stuff…
Even without the competitors — living off the land without Wally’s World will be a huge challenge… particularly in places with long winters…
Eating pumpkins, potatoes and cabbage all winter has a certain lack of appeal…
I have thought of that. Note lack of huge effort to fix my problems.
That makes perfect sense….
The odds of surviving the collapse are very slight … and does anyone really want to live a life eating boiled potatoes and pumpkins all winter long… without any BAU conveniences like electricity and running water and washing machines and grocery stores and fridges….
I am certain that anyone making it through — will wish they hadn’t.
“I have discovered that there are also a lot of competitors for garden output. We think rabbits are eating a lot of bean and sweet potato leaves. I am not quite sure what is eating blueberries. A person needs to use stored energy in various forms (such as fences and netting) to reduce losses to other species.”
There is a lot of competition for calories period in the natural world whether in flying or crawling insects that want to dine on your flesh or otherwise. I thought the cartoons where the buzzards circle over you in the desert were a joke until I spent some time in one. Buzzards circling everyday
And my poops! The dung beetles omost had them consumed by the time I could wipe. Calories dont just sit in the natural world. If there is stored energy a life form evolves to use it. Maybe we evolved because of fossil fuels.
Thanks! We definitely evolved because of the availability of calories of some type, including calories we could burn first using sticks, and later using fossil fuels. I keep writing about how cooked food allowed our bodies to change-bigger brain; smaller teeth, jaws and gut.
The catch is that a lot of the wealth of governments indirectly comes from oil companies. Its value comes from being cheap, so it can be taxed heavily. Once it is high priced, and because of this adding little value to the economy, the method of getting taxation indirectly from it goes away.
We end up with a situation where governments are the poor ones. They have, directly or indirectly, gotten most of the prior tax revenue from taxing cheap to extract oil, or the profits gained by cheap to extract oil. These governments are not in a position to bail out oil companies.
http://blackville.nbed.nb.ca/sites/blackville.nbed.nb.ca/files/bravo.gif
Here’s a nice one from Bloomberg.
Can U Spell C-R-E-D-I-T C-O-L-L-A-P-S-E?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-18/next-threat-to-u-s-shale-rising-interest-payments
“Our cash flow easily covers interest costs, and we expect to continue maintaining our investment-grade credit rating as commodity prices recover,” said Warren Henry, a spokesman for Oklahoma City-based Continental.
Almost $20 billion in bonds issued by the 62 companies are trading at distressed levels, with yields more than 10 percentage points above U.S. Treasuries, as investors demand much higher rates to compensate for the risk that obligations won’t be repaid, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“Credit markets have played a big role in keeping the entire sector alive,” said Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd., a consulting firm in London.
So far this year, S&P lowered the outlook or downgraded the credit of almost half of the 105 U.S. exploration and production companies that it rates, according to a May report.
Bold mine.
Hey Warren, what happens if/when commodity prices DON’T recover?
These are the dimwits in charge. This will not turn out well.
RE
RE,
one funny -or absurd- thing is that this additional part of interest rate due to risk, is included in GDP calculation.
So, the worst the situation, the better for growth. Isn’t that fantastic?
(learned that one week ago in a video -in French- by Paul Jorion)
it gets crazier by the day…
I suppose all those punters enjoying the high yields on this garbage reckon that OOTF will bail these dogs out if it goes sideways….because failure to bail them out would = collapse of the economy and this investment is moot in light of the economic nuclear chain reaction that would be set in motion…
The Crash of 2015: On Track, Behind Schedule
By Tom Lewis | June 22, 2015
“The dominoes are toppling, just as we have been expecting for nearly a year now, but slower than we thought. The fact-resistant strain of humans (Thank you, Borowitz Report) now in charge of the world are trying to use vast amounts of money to counteract gravity, and, counterintuitively, succeeded in slowing the dominoes’ fall. But not for long.(…)”
Full post: http://www.dailyimpact.net/2015/06/22/the-crash-of-2015-on-track-behind-schedule/
This is the scenario with shale industry as first falling domino.
We have several other candidates…
Good article – thanks
There are an amazing number of people who don’t get it. In fact, I can think of a couple of relatives of mine who have immense faith that their savings, plus the miracles of compound interest, will lead to many, many prosperous years ahead. They get angry with me if I suggest that there could be a problem with their reasoning.
Painful experience from my perspective as well.
More from the “Alice through the Looking Glass” world of derivatives
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/lehman-says-related-cos-barclays-rigged-deals-2015-06-24
“With the help of complicit dealers,” Lehman said in its filing, a financial adviser to LCOR was able to get market participants to not put a price on the contracts, meaning nobody wanted them.”
“In an amended complaint filed Tuesday with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, Lehman said that after it collapsed in 2008, LCOR Alexandria LLC–a firm partially owned by Related–sought about $6.7 million from Lehman to close out a derivatives contract, even though Lehman was actually the one owed about $42 million.”
Lets scale up that arguement, just in case there are widespread bankruptcies sometime soon. You might think you are owed $830Tn of derivatives, be willing to settle for $420Tn, but after the lawyers have done their “complicit” thing you might be handed a bill for $67Tn. Maybe derivatives should be banned – they do not add value – and there would be savings in all the lawyers fees. Hold that thought, while I get back to oil and GDP:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-29/insane-debt-chart-explains-why-chinese-qe-inevitable
“In order to continue leveraging, PBoC has to make sure that: (a) there is no sharp correction in any of the key asset prices; (b) at least some asset prices are appreciating; and (c) there is no further contraction in nominal GDP. This requires a combination of exceptionally stimulative monetary and fiscal policies as well as trust that a country is not yet in a liquidity trap and that it is capable responding to stimulus in safeguarding nominal GDP. The game is no longer about reaching 7% real GDP growth but avoiding zero nominal GDP. The same dynamics are playing out in Europe. The battle is between politicians who have not yet grasped that deleveraging is no longer feasible, and the ECB, which is fully onboard. Whether Greece is allowed to exit does not alter the basic argument that the numbers do not work, unless leveraging continues.”
Sooo … if oil production _ever_ shrinks what happens to GDP?
Aaaand …. derivatives …. leverage par excellance 😉
A person can see the reason for requiring “bail ins” by depositors rather than “bail outs” by governments. If banks are going to be look like they continue functioning, their problems must be moved to depositors.
I agree with what you say about the synergy between energy extraction and banking. Without banking, few would be able to afford energy products. In fact, I agree with pretty much all you have to say here.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-26/tsipras-announce-referendum-live-feed
Didn’t work out so well the last time a Greek leader tried this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_proposed_economy_referendum,_2011 OOTF quickly replace him with a minion from Goldman Sachs.
Surely Greece cannot be allowed to tip the card table over…. the can surely will be kicked again….
Could this be first steps in the right direction?, at least in paper:
hope?
“Prosperity without growth” by Tim Jackson
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/23/properity-without-growth-tim-jackson
“The last chapter of the book looks at opportunities for achieving “a lasting prosperity”. They are many and varied, and most of them – unsurprisingly – start from the grassroots. High on the list is the need for us all to consume less “stuff” and to seek a type of prosperity outside the conventional trappings of affluence: within relationships, family, community and the meaning of our lives and vocations in a functional society that places value on the future.”
He does not seem to understand that consuming less stuff would be that we would be consuming no stuff very quickly because we would collapse the economy and the factories that make the stuff would close.
It’s a simple formula: buy less stuff = people get laid off = more people buying less stuff because they have no money = more people get laid off …. and so on until we get a complete collapse of the global economy…
These green clowns seriously haven’t got the slightest clue — they just spout nonsense without thinking things through — and if you point out the problems with their grand plans …. they get angry and shout ‘you think you know it all’
I won’t be buying the book.
I agree on your reasoning. In the other hand we know for sure that consuming more is not the answer either we will run out of resources and factories will close as well due to resource scarcity, in the first case economy will collapse and it will take the way of life we have developed since the industrial revolution began, on top of that we get a darker picture when we consider overpopulation and struggle to meet our basic needs such as food, water, shelter and health care. But the same system we are following is making this worse, having children in the developing nations is cheaper and the more population you have turns into more labor willing to get pay less in order to secure a job, which in turns keeps prodcution cheap and increase its volume, as those families want the way of life set by the developed nations they will turn from cheap labor pool into avid consumers which is what is happening.
if we consider human labor in the energy mix, thinking that even if a human is not energy we still get a job done for a bargain (considering labor wages and living conditions close to slavery by western standards in the poor nations or cheaper living and wages in developing countries) and that work can be quantified in oil barrels or any other type of energy measure we, can think of people as machines that use a renewable source of energy which is food and the basic resource “water”. but we are not machines right, we have other needs or wants that escalate accordingly to the emotional, intelectual and even the trascendental level that makes us humans. We should focus on securing the basic material needs for which it makes perfect sense to me to reduce or even stop consumption even if that means we are ought to rethink (and collapse to some extend) what we call economy. And this idea is far from being an ultimate soulution but I fairly belive it points in the right direction. I might be wrong and I am open to constructive crticism and I also belive many minds think better than one.
And therein lies the problem — if we stop or even slow consumption — we collapse….. if we continue to consume we collapse.
That’s the ultimate Catch 22.
There is no way out. There are no solutions.
I don’t see how this can be spun as anything but an imminent nightmare…
Only for saps. Homo Superior will do just fine.
Into which may we evolve, those who survive The Bottleneck. And good luck to them!
Hi Miguel,
One other POV. I like trying to harmonize as many POVs as possible, BTW.
So I see the continued tightening of the noose toward control as long as possible. I also can’t imagine TPTB being worthy of too much awe and respect. All the Byzantine complexity of the system they constructed leads to their own destruction. I suspect it had to go the way it has. I suppose it’s been heading this way since the Renaissance, with a huge bump since The Enlightenment. But all this and a handshake only get us to extinction. So I can see the sense of looking for a way out, even if the (left brain) smart money is on the futility of doing that. TPTB have it entirely wrong. The bottom has fallen out of the bucket they’ve been using to carry water from the well.
I don’t necessarily believe that our population is too large. A rational assumption is that we need all the laboring hands we can get to grow food and plant trees. And there sure as sure are lots of idle hands around.
Some forms of BAU are no different from slavery. The prison industrial system is one of them. I also believe in trying to keep economic viability going throughout the system. So why can’t the prison industrial system not be replaced by people planting trees and growing food? Of course, those who understand our death-dealing economic system can think of a thousand reasons why that can’t be done. But so far their arguments have not sunken in for me. If keeping the economy going depends on slavery, we might as well call it quits sooner rather than later.
I also believe, and have been saying, that a rational economic system requires the reconfiguration of cities (not the rebuilding of them) so that they can support many more people. The work required to do that would be almost limitless.
It is often said that there is no energy to do anything but wait around for the end and for death. Yet, wood still can be produced for energy…if somebody would figure out how to cultivate wood. Starting a long time ago. Just from a physical standpoint, there seems to be plenty of space to grow wood trees.
Coal is still quite plentiful and cheap (though nasty).If I’m following Gail’s reasoning, nuclear plants that are now waiting to explode could go to liquefying coal, which in the end would make for a cheaper source of energy than now prevails.
If, as Gail suggests, we need to look at where energy resources come from, there ought to be a way to convince a majority that we’d be better off living within our resource means. Unless the majority are more daft than I think, they will conform to necessary adaptations to their lifestyles.
As Don keeps saying, it’s not just more stuff that people want; it’s also the activation of “neurotransmitters and hormones.” There are those to be had by substituting behavior for stuff where feasible. The low hanging fossil fuel fruits are gone, but low hanging behavioral fruits have not even been considered.
I believe there will be pushback to all my BS. That’s the way I learn.
“I don’t necessarily believe that our population is too large”
You do understand that the only reason we have 7B+ people on this planet is because the Green Revolution — which is primarily a result of applying chemicals made from oil and gas and electric irrigation pumps — allowed us to grow a lot more food.
The collapse will kill the green revolution …. but we will still have 7B+ mouths to feed.
And over population is not a problem – are you serious?
I was taken aback when I heard Geoff Lawton condone a large population, and I’ve been wondering what he meant ever since. I believe now that Geoff is talking about a large army of permaculture workers, who will at least know how to grow good (non chemical) food for themselves and comrades. If “leaders” have any interest in saving themselves, they might get people like Lawton to advise them.
So Let us ignore hunger and obbesity…There is a billion people who are not getting the fruits of the green revolution and every day they are fewer as they get killed by hunger. While in the opposite pole now we have more deaths cause by obesity than hunger. Should we consider food waste in rich nations we could let them choose by dying of hunger or obesity. And both parties loose when the whole thing collapses which is undeniable. While overpopulation is an issue is not the root of the problem, despite we have been able to understand that we play a role in nature in physical terms, we have decided to workaround those physical boundaries trashing the planet in the process.
population reduction is neccesary, changing on our relationship with food is a must.
If our predecesors were able to discover new continents using wooden vessels and the wind as engine just to mention one feat… we have huge potential but we are not using it for the best.
We have to STOP POPULATION GROWTH!! Nothing else is as important as this.
We cannot “feed the world” because it’s not the world that’s hungry, it’s some of the BILLIONS of excess humans who go to bed hungry each night.
We cannot “feed the world” by going vegan either, that will just allow us to feed even more people putting us right back on square 1 & in even more trouble.
We can’t conserve out of this mess, we can’t help the poor by exploiting their poverty.
Slave labor may be cheap for the capitalist but slave labor isn’t going to ever be a “consumer” of what their producing & if the developed world is also impoverished, just WHO is their intended “consumer”?
This race to the bottom they have forced the working class into is the pits & it’s also a dead end. With poverty growing, production will decline & the economy collapses.
The uber rich can only consume so much, they alone, cannot support capitalism.
Can’t these capitalists see where this path is leading? Poor people are not going to be buying their products no matter how cheap the labor was producing it.
China is feeling the effect of “free trade”, now that we have reached bottom & the middle class is mostly the working poor, China is seeing a decline in orders for it’s exports.
China has covered up much of it’s farmland & more is being lost each year to erosion, salinization, development & population growth.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall & China & India are HUGE. Expect a GREAT FALL.
And America is the biggest of them all
All that nice-sounding stuff is possible – in an egalitarian hunter-gatherer group, living on its wits, demanding – and rewarding -skilled participation from all members, without being able to develop destructive power structures and with no possibility unequal accumulation of goods and resources….. I don’t see any Greens voting for going back to that: where’s the Prius, the organic fair trade cappucino?
LOL! Love your comment…!
Greens gotta have their iphones too of course…
The Green Parties of the world although well-intentioned… haven’t got the slightest clue… even after you explain that they are wasting their lives on positions that are utter nonsense … they insist on charging head first against the brick wall again and again and again…
And of course if you do explain how they are wrong they usually get very angry and call you ‘negative’
Once you get on the train, you can’t get off. Well, on that we can agree, along with around 99% of all the other factors that essentially define “you can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet”.
Where we differ, and it will be interesting to see how other opinions side, is whether the end-game is Seneca or cascade. I of course side on cascade; any cursory review of recent world-wide legislation reveals all manner of various security acts being implemented which are directed towards ensuring continuity of government.
I think it’s wishful thinking to assume the PTB have no Plan B, that BAU is to continue full-steam ahead until the fatal blow is delivered, whereupon a big party is held and fatal overdoses of sweet opiates are administered to allow elites to gracefully depart their mortal coils.
Every day, there is ample evidence of the noose being tightened, the ring fence being erected, the media organs being tuned-up, the process systems being implemented to control the downward descent. It’s so obvious to me I’m sort of surprised others are seem to be missing the picture.
All it takes is a casus belli & declaration of war to impose wide-ranging war-time restrictions, including banning dissent, restricting travel, rationing essentials like food-stuffs, energy, etc, and imposing wage/price control mechanisms. It’s so incredibly trivial for the state to exercise such an option, especially with 100% media control and scientifically developed opinion shaping methodologies.
I think fantasists who envision a future where the elites finally get their comeuppance are putting their egos first, and not thinking this through logically. The logical analysis suggest there are many, many ways to front-run the various scenarios I’ve outlined.
I fully agree, that the state will try to continue with war/martial law restrictions. It has some limits, though. At some point the elites will be left with a choice of going global/regional war or revolution, which means exchange of the elite. There will be some “last man standing” alpha males, but many will be gone in the vortex. Look at Russia today. Where are all these 1990’s oligarchs? Berezowvsky, Chodorkovsky et al.? Left with few billions on their swiss bank accounts without real political or business influence. Financial elites are also expendable in certain periods. Bail-in time arrived. The tax heavens will be raided next.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jun/27/eu-agrees-banks-bail-in-deal
The USSR’s elite were essentially “bought out” by the west. They tired of merely exploiting the increasingly limited Soviet economy when they realized that the US system was truly going global anyway, and the opportunities for personal enrichment were much greater on the other side. Once you achieve global elite status, minor concerns like political philosophy are trivial. The only thing that matters is finding a legal and social structure that is favorable to your own immediate economic and security interests, and crony capitalism is by far the best system ever devised for that. Thus the current outrage against Putin, as he had the big brassy ones to put a limit on all that, within the confines of Russia at least. I think he’s probably fighting a losing battle over the long haul, however. The western sirens’ song of greed and materialism is a hard one to resist, even if it’s in its death throes currently.
I agree with your diagnosis. West hypnotized Russia for 15 years with “free market” advantages and then FSU decided to take care of this mess. As for the future outcome of global games Russia’s chances are quite high IMO. Europe knows, that without Russia’s resources we’re doomed. And US is doing everything to not allow Russia-Europe alliance.
http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2014/12/head-of-stratfor-private-cia-says.html
I was merely stating, that the vision of the elite as “untouchables” is false. On top of the pyramid the pressure and danger of being “dethroned” is very high in certain moments of history.
Putin took back control from the capitalists. Russia may be the only country not bought off, which may partially explain the recent events to demonize and marginalize them.
China has been bought off, though! LOL. Hook, line and sinker.
The first casus belli has already occurred with 9-11, which provided the “justification” for the GWOT and the national security state we have today. One shudders to imagine the magnitude of the next one, although the false flag shoot down of MH17, likely a failed assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin, provides a clue. That could have easily spun out of control into a nuclear exchange. But smaller false flag events are popping up constantly now, so business is good for pro-US propagandists.
I believe we are in the cascade phase now …. and eventually we go off the cliff.
I am with Gail on this — the financial system blows up (see 2008 but without the tools to combat it this time round because we’ve used everything in the box…) — and the oil stops flowing.
As for the Plan…. yes we are seeing control ratcheting up in the direction of an Orwellian nightmare situation.
My interpretation of these changes is that they are just another way to kick the can a little further.
The peasants are getting restless — and OOTF are using heavy duty propaganda to keep them in a state of confusion — the MSM tells them we are recovering — or that recovery is just around the bend …. so they remain mostly tranquil… they want to believe happy days will be hear again … they don’t riot … they continue to pay taxes… because they still believe there is a future for their children … they still believe they have something to lose…. so why tear down the entire system?
The moment any of the peasants start to organize out comes the pepper spray — the batons — the heavy hand — and if necessary the guns….. remember Occupy Wall St? remember Occupy Hong Kong? remember the Cairo riots?
OOTF will absolutely not allow these movements to get out of hand…they will smash them — even if it means turning guns on the peasants…
Because these protests are pointless… there is nothing that can be done to improve the peasants situation that is not already being done (QE ZIRP keep the hamster running … keep the shops open… the patient is dead — he is being kept alive on life support — but the peasants cannot be allowed to know that)….
All the protests can achieve — if allowed to fester and grow — is to take down BAU sooner….
And OOTF of course does not want this — they are all about kicking the can….
So I see the militarization of the police — the digital spying (keep in mind it is not only the NSA doing this — as far as I know pretty much all advanced countries are doing this — I know that the NZ government is logging my every key stroke…) as the means to stop these inchoate revolutions dead in their tracks.
But these are just another series of temporary measures — just as QE is a temporary measure aimed at delaying the collapse.
OOTF would know that at some point they will no longer have the means to exert control — BAU will snap — chaos will reign — and OOTF will be no more….
So one would expect them to do absolutely anything to delay this moment of reckoning — shoot down airliners… gas women and children — gun down protestors —- anything goes — when your very existence is at stake.
As far as I am concerned — when I look at the geopolitical situation — everything makes sense…
It’s always been about fighting over scarce resources — and resources are getting a whole lot scarce…. so as to be expected, the level of violence is escalating … and the measures are becoming more extreme…
I have no desire to see OOTF be destroyed — its not as if they can or will be replaced by some other entity that I could hope does a better job or running the world….
Koombaya does not exist… one violence based power takes over from another violence based power and on…
We have all been beneficiaries of OOTF — it would be insanity to wish our father – who brings home the bacon — dead. When OOTF goes then so do I… because this time when they go BAU goes… and there will be only the Nightmare.
Long live OOTF!!! Long live BAU!!!
Agreed across the board. By the way, what is OOTF? O-O- To Fail?
“Owners of the Fed”
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2015/06/23/bp-data-suggests-we-are-reaching-peak-energy-demand/comment-page-2/#comment-60266
Owners Of The Fed (aka the mean who run the world because they have the right to print the reserve currency out of thin air and loan it out at interest)
Pronounced Ooooh (say that like you were just punched hard in the stomach) — Tuff…. Ooooo-Tuf….
Agreed: Every day, there is ample evidence of the noose being tightened, the ring fence being erected, the media organs being tuned-up, the process systems being implemented to control the downward descent. It’s so obvious to me I’m sort of surprised others are seem to be missing the picture.
I see the Greek crisis as a crucial step in establishing the legal mechanisms for control of a sovereign state. I can’t see how the debt of 9 million people (2% of Europe’s economy) getting in the way of some kind of bailout, especially after the Germain and French banks were bailed out for trillions.
I have sympathy for the Greeks. Most articles lay the blame at their feet. I don’t Greek character has changed much in the last 50 years. Same as 2008: Blaming the buyers of those sub-prime loans doesn’t make any sense either. The system is to blame. So we are in a period of leader buyouts via bribes or get-out-of-jail promises, to allow a debt crisis to proceed so that the the people can be sold into debt-slavery.
Kinda similar to how the US has been managing South America. Bribe the leaders, who commit the company to outrageous debts, country goes bankrupt, and US vilifies previous leaders, blames the country for defaulting, and imposes yet another round of new leadership and new control over said countries resources.
*sigh*
These kinds of policies would never happen in America…Oh wait…Too late.
If you loan money to someone you know has a track record of defaulting…. and the person doesn’t pay you back …. I haven’t the slightest bit of sympathy for you as the lender…
Of course there is now everything at stake here — so the Greeks will be strapped onto the rack and stretched to the limit….
As Wolfgang Munchau has explained in a brilliant analysis in the Financial Times, Germany and France alone stand to lose €160bn when this happens, making Mrs Merkel and Mr Hollande the biggest losers in the history of money. They have a lot more to lose than Mr Tsipras.
This should remind us of old adage: “if you owe the bank £1,000, you have a problem – but if you owe it £1,000,000, it has”.
More https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/53-greece-symbol-of-our-times/
Diminishing returns is the killer. Even without growth, resource use has to keep rising, just to maintain the status quo. This resource use is from (1) Renewable resources, which we cannot use faster than they renew + (2) Depleting resources, that require more and more effort to extract the same amount.
I put all of these articles about steady state economy and prosperity without growth in the same category as the perpetual motion machine. They sound good, but they simply are not possible.
http://blackville.nbed.nb.ca/sites/blackville.nbed.nb.ca/files/bravo.gif
You are right Gail (sweetie),
Repeat what I earlier posted – but both ideas I’ve learned from you 🙂
1. There is no “sustainable” economy. There is only growth and collapse based on how soon the soil can replenish and the trees grow back. And no mining. An economy solely bounded by the available energy of the Sun per sqm per year.
2. Fire allowed us to over-power the environment and expand beyond our human-density-per-km limits. That set us on the path for depleted resources.
So in America now:
1) you are forced to buy high priced private health insurance
2) gay people can marry
More distraction, division for the working proles as we wrap up this thing called industrial civilization.
Dolph9, it is not high priced insurance. It is an alternate way for the government to fund medicaid. It is a tax.
I would postulate that he AHCA has two basic purposes.
1 The insurance companies are financial institutions. As we saw with AIG if they are not solvent there can be big problems. Voila mandate buying their product to put the quasi bank on more solid ground.
2. Keep the average joe exposed to high tech medicine. They have to “practice” on someone. They need to figure out what works for the real clients.
Dear Gail and Finite Worlders
I have previously mentioned Toby Hemenway’s forthcoming book on urban permaculture. If you are interested in Life After the Crash, or if you live in a city, you might like to take a look at the first chapter.
http://www.chelseagreen.com/permaculture-subject/the-permaculture-city
Scroll down and see the link to the first chapter on the left side of the page.
Much of the Systems Science jargon that I have been quoting from Mobus and Kalton and Capra and Luisi.
Don Stewart
PS A friend of mine moved from Portland, OR to a very rural small town. I asked him how things were going with the neighbors. Suspicion. I said to him, ‘I’m not surprised. All it took in Portland to start a party was a tub of ice with beer, but here you have to live 20 years before people nod to you’. If survival is about a network, think carefully about your options.
Modern rural life is hard on resources, as he points out. Lose lose, all too often. So far, he hasn’t mentioned the cost to species habitat. Maybe to be addressed in later chapters.
My screen name (Artleads) doesn’t show up.
No problem now. I guess there was a glitch with my computer.
@Paul aka Fast Eddy says “The financial system — a key pillar of BAU — is based on cheap energy. I can see no way to rebuild this system. The system is already collapsing because we are running out of cheap to extract oil. So how do we get a second act when a) the easy oil is gone and b) the system that allowed us to extract oil has collapsed? When collapse hits — BAU is done we will revert (if anyone survives) to living very primitively.”
Paul, thanx for the clarification – I didn’t initially see this comment, but I thought it best to break out the reply from the previous thread and let it stand-alone.
OK, so you’re on record saying the global credit/money system is dependent on FFs? You think the banking system is so intertwined with BAU (as it’s currently constructed), that there’s no way to divorce these two functions from the other?
On the other hand, I’m going on record stating that the global monetary system isn’t dependent on any actual form of production – FFs or otherwise. I believe its general use, exchange & value and simply an illusion enforced by power. But I do agree if the PTB lose the power, they lose the money. So, the imperative is incredibly simple: retain the power.
One we’ve reduced value of money to the ability to enforce via power, then it’s quite trivial to diagram how such a process would work. And please don’t confuse hard power with soft power ie propaganda; the combination of each supports the other.
I assert that the state can easily create an environment, supported by legal principles and backed by a full-spectrum security apparatus, that would be conducive to concocting any narrative of their choosing to engender all forms of debasement & levels of cognitive dissonance without any significant threat to their operations.
Furthermore, I think it would quite trivial to execute a 10:1 devaluation in order to wipe debt burdens clean in order to maintain the overall credit creation process in which to begin the cycle anew. The interim period of price/supply disruption could easily be managed by price controls, rationing, restrictions etc. Of course, the paramount feature of such a program would be shock doctrine tactics employed against the general public in order to garner their support.
It’s been countless times before through the creation of both external and/or internal enemies. This is standard counter insurgency methodology by dividing groups, rewarding supporters and (viciously) punishing opponents. Does anyone seriously believe that the average man has the intellectual resources to actually combat such a wide ranging media campaign?
Come on, did it work for WW1, WW2, Cold War, Iraq i & II, etc, etc, etc? The only ones who have a clue are quickly rounded up and isolated, with the appropriate laws quickly passed to support such actions.
It really is a bit of a joke; no one the PTB get bored. I think you should seriously re-consider your position. You are letting passion & enthusiasm for some kind of payback cloud your excellent thinking. Just one more tiny step for you to fully see.
“On the other hand, I’m going on record stating that the global monetary system isn’t dependent on any actual form of production – FFs or otherwise. I believe its general use, exchange & value and simply an illusion enforced by power.”
Power is not an illusion — nor is it not dependent on actual production.
Power is based on control of wealth — and wealth is just another name for resources – the key one being oil.
And control of wealth is ultimately also based on brute force — whether it be the savage’s wooden club — or an atomic weapon.
Fossil fuels are the key to power — they allow countries to build — and move their modern war machines about the board — no fossil fuels no war machines… no global power.
We are never going to see another civilization that even remotely resembles what we have now.
Of that I am quite sure
But what I am not sure of (assuming we don’t get an extinction event) is what comes after the Nightmare Period
There will most definitely be a nightmare period where billions will die from starvation — disease – violence…. I see the Nightmare Period lasting for years… I could see how the Nightmare Period could result in our extinction
7 billion people without food … what does that look like —how does that play out?
There are many variables at play:
– do these starving people kill every single animal on the planet for food? Do they turn on each other? Based on pre-aid agency periods of famine that is indeed what people did
– do they burn the forests trying to keep warm and cook food? Europe had major deforestation problems hundreds of years ago — when the population was a fraction of what it is now…
– if we are to resurrect some facsimile of a modern civilization – say a 1700’s version with sail boats and basic tools — how would we do that if we burn down the last remaining source of energy — the trees?
I can imagine some sort of civilization that could come about long after I am dead and gone — but I do not see an entity being able to exert global control — because I do not see how we could possibly be able to produce the energy required to do so.
I cannot see how we would have oil extraction, hydro dams, nulcear plants post collapse — all these sources of energy are 100% reliant on a fully functioning BAU — once BAU busts these can no longer exist… the massive supply chains collapse and can never be rebuilt … because all of this infrastructure was a product of easy to extract oil
I see a return to a rather primitive society — with localized power structures — that does not advance because the means to advance — fossil fuel energy – will not be available (well maybe we can have a go at this whole thing again in a few hundred million years when fossil fuels regenerate)
There are two big elephants in the room of course spent fuel ponds — and climate change … it has been suggested that we have passed the point of no return on global warming and that even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels today — it would not matter.
Fast, in the language of the owning class the forests are private property and a bunch of savages can not be allowed to ruin them. Likewise all the animals of the earth are a scared trust that the rich must protect. The savage hordes must be put down to protect the future of biodiversity. It is a burden to be rich and owning class but one they are willing to shoulder.
“Power is based on control of wealth — and wealth is just another name for resources – the key one being oil.”
I guess this is the main point where we differ. I believe power is based on the ability to coin money. Any actual wealth derived from said exercise of power is merely a second order effect. The ability to ‘coin money’, or in present day parlance, to conjure money into existence through the creation of debt, is what pays for weapons, not the control any ‘physical’ wealth. The control of physical wealth occurs after weapons are utilized on enemies, or rewards are garnered upon friends/allies.
The state itself is an illusion, but is an expert in leveraging and promoting the very essence of knowledge (aka media & propaganda) to promote its hegemony & monopoly over ‘legal violence’ ie power.
So, anyway, this is what makes a horse race, and why bookies simply pocket the margin between differing punters without actually having a stake in the outcome. You seem to see the system breaking, whereas I see the steady, inexorable grinding down of the general masses to successive levels of debasement. When you control history, you control the narrative; the past will be painted as a period of indulgence, of selfishness or whatever negative connotation is decided to color the period we presently live in.
Future generations will be lauded for their community spirit, for the ‘esprit de corps’ exhibited by willing participants that will be cast as a necessary factor to allow society to function under newly restrained circumstances. The elites of course will continue to thrive, to shave off large portions of wealth for themselves to enjoy.
Does this sound like feudal Europe, Edo Japan, Roman/Greek slavery, etc? It should, because that’s the obvious game plan. Once you can see the target, then it’s simply a process matter of designing, implementing and managing a long period program to move different classes of people into the appropriate slots.
I’m betting on this, while you appear to be waiting for some kind of collapse. I think you’re going to be disappointed.
I happen to think we’re at a peak.
Usually, the elites peak themselves with the peak of the general society. Yes, there will always be elites, but I am in no way betting on a continuation of BAU.
I suspect the elite of the future will be local and tribal rather than international and cosmopolitan. There is no “easy way down” for the present elites because big corporate economic polices along with big government social engineering policies don’t work anymore, and it’s all they know how to do.
What does an elite in a big corporation and federal government do when the corporation or government literally doesn’t exist? You have to answer that, it’s not trivial. I don’t think they just find an easy way out.
In 1929 the elites (OOTF) did not print money and loan it at zirp to corporations to allow them to buy back shares to prevent (delay…) the stock market crash.
No – they allowed the crash to occur.
But this time they are literally loaning trillions of dollars to corporations to buy back their shares because if they don’t the market would immediately collapse.
The OOTF are manipulating the bond market, housing market, precious metals market…. they are building ghost towns…. they are engaging in massive propaganda campaigns … lying outright….
Which leads me to believe that this time is different — this time there very existence is at stake…. they are scared… and they are doing everything possible to delay the collapse…
Because they know that when it hits… their wealth will be vapourized… their armies will disband and turn to banditry …
And they know that they are some of the least prepared individuals to survive in the post collapse world.
I can imagine a lot of these pampered people having a Plan B —- this would involved an injection ending their lives… they won’t want to spend their last days living in the gutter… diseased and starving….
The mighty will fall.. from very great heights.
Paul,
Bravo on the above posts! Have you read “The Fall of Berlin” by Anthony Beevor? In it he describes what is was like for some of the German elites at their end, crowded with others in a dark bunker, a man in uniform, his wife, a cot, some champaign, a gun, two corpses.
Highly rated http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42661.The_Fall_of_Berlin_1945
I think where you go wrong here is with our understanding of what money is.
If money in itself were power then anyone with a printing press could be a king.
Think of how money came into being.
I am a farmer – I grow just enough to feed my family with very little extra – the little extra food I have a store for a rainy day or I trade it for something I need. No need for money.
But then I see all these Koombaya types out there and I decide to enslave them because they are weak. I also enslave animals and put them to work.
Now I have a lot of extra food. I can’t store it all — and I can’t trade it all — so I invent money — which is in effect a way to store my excess production.
One day I find some black substance on my massive property and notice that it burns. I enslave this oil and use it to do monumental amounts of work for me. The money I get out of these ventures represents the work that was done by this oil. I can use the money to buy other assets – gold, property, stocks, bonds — but at the end of the day all represent the excess energy of the work done by oil.
Then one day the global economy collapses… and we go back to a situation where there is no oil — so I am forced to go back to square one — I have my land so I grow food for my family — with a little left over which I store or trade.
My bank account still has 7 figures in it…. but it is meaningless… it represents nothing …. all that matters is food now…. there is no excess…
And my stocks and bonds are good for starting my fire because when the global economy collapses all companies and governments disband. All the wealth represented by these documents vapourizes….
Because my cash and stocks and bonds were always ephemeral… they only held any value if we continued to have a cheap supply of energy which was put to work creating surpluses.
Money in itself is absolutely worthless — without cheap energy.
The cheap energy is on the wane. The elites that are holding most of the wealth of the world — will be left holding Maggoga Bags (which is a bag full of soft shit….)
I have no idea what the future looks like (other than I know it will not be one where community spirit will be lauded — we’ve always been at each others’ throats and we always will — Koombaya is nonsense) — because I get to live in the Nightmare Period.
You know… the years of violence, famine, disease and violence.
I’d suggest that you test out the future by turning off the power for the rest of the weekend — but it seems that you are of the opinion that we the power will remain on post collapse.
There is a fair bit of cognitive dissonance (or perhaps overconfidence) on display here….
I am certain you are going to be in an utter state of shock when collapse hits … and you find that you are on your own in a very dangerous frightening world…
We all know how you carry on regarding spent fuel rods. I don’t think they will be a problem as they will be under water or underground with only local effects. However I have seen a list of nuclear powered items in orbit, gradually decaying and falling to earth.
In 2005, there were at least 13 nuclear reactor fuel cores, 8 thermonuclear generators, and 32 nuclear reactors known to be in orbit below 1700 km. How many will impact Earth?
“I don’t think they will be a problem as they will be under water or underground with only local effects”
Can you provide a reference indicating that you can store spent fuel rods underwater or underground with only local effects?
Do you mean you could just bulldoze them into the ocean and that would be the end of the problem?
Or do you just believe that … like some people believe solar energy will save the world …because it makes you feel better….
Somehow I do not see this as being a ‘local problem’
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
The problem is if the spent fuel gets too close, they will produce a fission reaction and explode with a force much larger than any fission bomb given the total amount of fuel on the site. All the fuel in all the reactors and all the storage pools at this site (1760 tons of Uranium per slide #4) would be consumed in such a mega-explosion.
In comparison, Fat Man and Little Boy weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained less than a hundred pounds each of fissile material
See more at: http://www.dcbureau.org/20110314781/natural-resources-news-service/fission-criticality-in-cooling-ponds-threaten-explosion-at-fukushima.html
A typical 1 GWe PWR core contains about 80 t fuels. Each year about one third of the core fuel is discharged into the pool. A pool with 15 year storage capacity will hold about 400 t spent fuel.
To estimate the Cs-137 inventory in the pool, for example, we assume the Cs137 inventory at shutdown is about 0.1 MCi/tU with a burn-up of 50,000 MWt-day/tU, thus the pool with 400 t of ten year old SNF would hold about 33 MCi Cs-137. [7]
Assuming a 50-100% Cs137 release during a spent fuel fire, [8] the consequence of the Cs-137 exceed those of the Chernobyl accident 8-17 times (2MCi release from Chernobyl). Based on the wedge model, the contaminated land areas can be estimated. [9] For example, for a scenario of a 50% Cs-137 release from a 400 t SNF pool, about 95,000 km² (as far as 1,350 km) would be contaminated above 15 Ci/km² (as compared to 10,000 km² contaminated area above 15 Ci/km² at Chernobyl).
http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/publication/364/radiological_terrorism.html
Once the fuel is uncovered, it could become hot enough to cause the metal cladding encasing the uranium fuel to rupture and catch fire, which in turn could further heat up the fuel until it suffers damage. Such an event could release large amounts of radioactive substances, such as cesium-137, into the environment.
This would start in more recently discharged spent fuel, which is hotter than fuel that has been in the pool for a longer time.
A typical spent fuel pool in the United States holds several hundred tons of fuel, so if a fire were to propagate from the hotter to the colder fuel a radioactive release could be very large.
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/making-nuclear-power-safer/handling-nuclear-waste/safer-storage-of-spent-fuel.html#.VUp3n5Om2J8
Feel free to pretend that the facts above do not exist.
If these facilities cannot be managed post collapse — this is without question not a local event rather it is an extinction event.
I agree with John just put them under water, river, ocean.
There will be no explosion. They are not enriched and they are not being brought close together fast enough.
So you think you just shove the entire mess into the ocean with a bulldozer without disastrous effects…
Based on what evidence? Oh — I see — because John said this was feasible….
We’re talking about probably the most dangerous materials that exist on the planet… and you reckon they can just be tossed into the ocean.
This gives new meaning to the word absurdity.
A lot of what you write is really good, but you bullshit as well, especially about the nuclear danger. There IS danger from nuclear particularly as we humans cannot be trusted to manage it. Are you a nuclear expert, or like me, a lay person? I have seen, and Edspell also mentions it, that you cannot get a nuclear explosion from spent fuel rods. They can still generate heat, hence the water option.
The rendering safe of nuclear fuel rods depends on their disposal, mostly underground and therefore out of harms way. I see a problem only if BAU collapses too suddenly for the rods to be put safely away from surface installations, but even then it’s never going to be world wide calamity.
Even Chernobyl today is far less contaminated than 30 years ago, so over time the effects will diminish, but the much reduced population will not be obliged to live within any danger zone.
By the same token a collapse of BAU will render the underground stores impossible to access thus keeping them out of the way.
If as you are saying we will soon be extinct, why bother at all? It’ll just help you on your way.
Common Sense 101:
If that could be done then why do we bother to put spent fuel into ponds for many years before dry casking?
Why not just go strait from the reactor to whatever solution you are suggesting?
And no I am not a expert that’s why I did considerable research on this topic — because it is a rather important one… and this is what the experts say:
1. Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/us-japan-fukushima-insight-idUSBRE97D00M20130814
The problem is if the spent fuel gets too close, they will produce a fission reaction and explode with a force much larger than any fission bomb given the total amount of fuel on the site. All the fuel in all the reactors and all the storage pools at this site (1760 tons of Uranium per slide #4) would be consumed in such a mega-explosion.
In comparison, Fat Man and Little Boy weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained less than a hundred pounds each of fissile material – See more at: http://www.dcbureau.org/20110314781/natural-resources-news-service/fission-criticality-in-cooling-ponds-threaten-explosion-at-fukushima.html
2. A typical 1 GWe PWR core contains about 80 t fuels. Each year about one third of the core fuel is discharged into the pool. A pool with 15 year storage capacity will hold about 400 t spent fuel.
To estimate the Cs-137 inventory in the pool, for example, we assume the Cs137 inventory at shutdown is about 0.1 MCi/tU with a burn-up of 50,000 MWt-day/tU, thus the pool with 400 t of ten year old SNF would hold about 33 MCi Cs-137. [7]
Assuming a 50-100% Cs137 release during a spent fuel fire, [8] the consequence of the Cs-137 exceed those of the Chernobyl accident 8-17 times (2MCi release from Chernobyl). Based on the wedge model, the contaminated land areas can be estimated. [9] For example, for a scenario of a 50% Cs-137 release from a 400 t SNF pool, about 95,000 km² (as far as 1,350 km) would be contaminated above 15 Ci/km² (as compared to 10,000 km² contaminated area above 15 Ci/km² at Chernobyl).
http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/publication/364/radiological_terrorism.html
Hullo folks (tip of the hat to the dominant denizens – Paul/Winky/FastEddy and B9K9),
Lots of good points up there. Fast Eddy, I think you’re basically right on the collapse scenario (and give it 75% odds with 5% extinction possibility). The stair-step versus seneca cliff collapse should consider first if our industrial society can even “degrow” and think the answer is no. As Gail illustrates, it is a hollow networked economy. But what does that mean, exactly?
You mention going back to 1700’s. When I read JMG, I get the impression that he thinks 1850 (Little House on the Prairie). But it may be further back when you consider that if all products (now and historical) were profitable (achieved profit+wealth) only when a certain band of cost viability.
So, in other words, the economy of 1700s was only possible based on the availability and viability of resources that existed at that time. But, now, thanks to FF, those resources are way, way more expensive to extract. Even the Romans had an extensive mining, smelting, and forging, based on wood, charcoal, and coal, producing 82,500 tons per year (wikipedia.org). So I’m not sure if even a Roman-like Empire is possible (as much as the elites and the peoples of Europe want to make it happen – good luck!).
My interpretation of a network economy is that legacy products were supported by scaffolding (cheaper energy and cheaper(more accessible) resources) that no longer exists. That scaffolding is gone. (Remember Gail has mentioned that we started to over-power nature (and exceeding our human-density-per-km) when we discovered fire. Let’s say that fire gave us a 1% growth rate – we would still reach over-population and denude the Earth of all forests, even if it took another 10K years (assuming all other factors are constant – like no ice ages, major diseases, etc). There is no “sustainable” economy. There is only growth and collapse based on how soon the soil can replenish and the trees grow back. And no mining. An economy solely bounded by the available energy of the Sun per sqm per year.
Really, I don’t see how the current economic system that is based on cheap energy and cheap debt (energy from the future) and that resembles a giant Ponzi scheme (Stock Market, Social Security, etc), can handle a semi-graceful, oscillating stair-step decline.
But, for my two cents, I can imagine a command control economy (probably neo-feudalist) that could have a hi/no tech economy (way in the future..2100+). With 5% to 25% of economic “wealth” would be devoted to a highly vertical-integrated technology development. Definitely not commerical. I give this outcome a small 10% chance of happening. This would require little or no wars (small chance). The purposes of that development would be to…explore and settle on another planet…and the price for failure would be human extinction. There is a small chance for this scenario, and would require nuclear power (a long-term gamble that will ultimately extinct almost all life – as shown by extrapolating the accident rate thus far). That scenario would require exhausting the remaining mineral resources and after that…it would be either successful space settlement or back to the Caveman age. So many contingencies…perhaps I would like to have a little hope.
(I will now swim back over to the shallower end of the internet pool…)
Oops, that is 82,500 tons of iron per year.
I am with you on a lot of this … very difficult to predict what will happen just as it would have been difficult for someone living 1000 years ago to predict the industrial revolution.
One thing that is quite easy to predict though is that there is not likely to be much in the way of energy available …. we are already having issues with extracting energy and we have a fully functioning economic system …
I am not overly concerned with long term scenarios because we will all be dead long before any of these play out….
When we lose our food supply, electricity and petrol — when the economy explodes — and billions of people die —- well… I don’t see a stable situation arising out of that for a very long time… there will most definitely be a long period of extreme chaos…
How do I make it through chaos — and will I wish I was dead when faced with a harsh existence.
People like to think we are rational creatures and that we have control over our future and our destiny. But when you look at our short history of violence and its secular cycles of growth/collapse ( Secular Cycles by Peter Turchin and Sergey A. Nefedov) and really dig deeper to understand the basis of being human, one realizes that our genetrc/biological potential, focused and tweaked by evolutionary drama (or by design if you believe in God), does not lead to bright utopian future for all living creatures on this small planet. (better writing by Paul Cherfurka to explain this).
Maybe there is a God who owns 10K Earth-like planets, each started with a different set of initial inputs. But I don’t think so. The traits that make our societies successful are the same ones that bring about total and final collapse. That is the paradox.
This Christian idea that Adam and Eve were perfect but fallen by Original Sin, for which we must suffer guilt since we are born into a sinful world with a sinful nature…I have to pick my self up off the floor after laughing so hard. Clearly, we have been programmed to not only survive, but to expand and control, mainly through violence to the earth and to fellow humans. As Paul Cherfurka says : “We are living with psychological influences that are very old, and are embedded in the physical structure of our brains.”
Sometimes I even read anthropologists waxing on romantically about the hunter-gatherers…only having to work 3 hours a day!…living in harmony with nature and their nearby villages. That is, until the young chief lusts after the daughter of the other tribe’s chief and decides to pillage and destroy that village…. *Sigh* it was starting out as such a great story! And there’s that whole thing about fire allowing us to over-power the environment and expand beyond our human-density-per-km limits…
Dang, I forgot to write something hopeful! I will next time, its part of my DNA that I inherited by mom, who loves all creatures, great or small.
Exactly!
I am listening to this http://www.audible.com/pd/History/The-History-of-the-Ancient-World-Audiobook/B00CYNMAIG/ref=a_search_c4_1_2_srTtl?qid=1435383579&sr=1-2 — it is an endless litany of wars …
There are two more books to follow and I expect they will be all about constant wars…
These wars are always fought over land – resources.
The only reason we do not have as many wars of recent is I believe because we have had oil. We have pillaged the rest of the world and even the middle classes in the west have lived like kings of old… unlimited food … chariots (cars) … wonderful homes etc….
But once we the oil is gone we will be at each others’ throats with a vengeance… too many people — very little in the way of resources (10 calories of oil in every calorie of food…)
This Koombaya bs that people spew on about is dangerous talk. Those advocating such a society are seriously living in a state of delusion … and it will get them killed.
Humans — like all animals — are not good or bad — they are about surviving… and surviving means getting enough to eat…. at it’s base level that we call that energy — calories in — calories out…. that is the battle every single one of us is fighting (we’ve been winning because we’ve had oil on our side)
Anyone trying to establish a Koombaya society will be torn to shreds or enslaved — they won’t last a week post collapse.
Civilization is but a thin veneer hiding our true nature…. civilization is only possible if we have surpluses — enough to go around…
Well there is not going to be enough to go around — not even close.
And if you expect to come out the other end of this — you better be ready to fight — or kiss the ring of someone who is willing to fight on your behalf.
I’ll take a whiff of that Hopium pipe! I think I’ve earned it!
Have you listened Dan Carlin Hardcore History (audio podcasts)? Wrath of the Khans, Blueprint for Armageddon, Ghosts of the Ostfront, Death Throes of the Republic. All great!
*PUFF*
Thanks – will check it out http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/
Alturium,
as you seem to have some interest for “The Fire”, let me link you this article with interesting views, describing how the fire used to be a wild component of the ecosystems, how it shaped us as much as we controlled it, and how we’ve (mostly) domesticated it, then enslaved it and hidden it for our industrial purposes, until…?
http://aeon.co/magazine/science/how-our-pact-with-fire-made-us-what-we-are/
Stefeun,
That is a great article, very poetic! thanks.
Quote from it: “When oxygen thickened in the Carboniferous period around 300 million years ago, dragonflies grew as large as seagulls, and fires swelled in like proportion such that 2 to 13 per cent of the era’s abundant coal beds consist of fossil charcoal.”
Fire needs oxygen, which a search led me to the following interesting article, a discussion about the amount of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere since its creation:
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/30/i12/html/12learn.html
From that article: It is estimated that each 1-m thickness of coal comes from the compression of a 10–20-m layer of dead organic matter (14), so that today’s 10-m thick coal seam represents an original 100 m of decayed material. Such a thick layer of decaying matter is something that we do not see anywhere today. Tropical forests today only support a very thin layer of decaying matter because of rapid oxidation. Thus, 100-m-thick layers can only occur if the atmosphere discourages oxidation. This is additional strong evidence that the atmosphere in those distant times was rich in CO2, but poor in oxygen.
Reading both of these articles got me thinking philosophically…we tend to assume that nature is cyclical but perhaps the overall trend is a one-way transaction. The introduction of oxygen (by plants using the abundant CO2), to the formation of coal and fossil fuels (not even naturally possible today), to the use of fire (in nature, and now us humanoids), tends to suggest a one-way evolutionary trip for the whole planet. Hmmm…not sure what is that final destination…the whole earth “burned” by nuclear radiation. That would be ironic, eh?
(An appropriate quote insertion here: from Planet of the Apes)…
George Taylor: You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!
Dear Gail and Finite Worlders
Regardless of what specific mechanism you choose to favor, most people who read this will agree that some sort of major reset is in store for humans and our Western civilization. I want to glean a few tidbits from Capra and Luisi (mostly Chapter 12: Mind and Consciousness) and a few other people which may give us some signposts to lead us through the reset.
The Mind/Body problem has a long history. Descartes cemented the distinction between them: I think, therefore I am. But:
‘The decisive advance of the systems view of life has been to abandon the Cartesian view of mind as a thing, and to realize that mind and consciousness are not things but processes.’
Capra and Luisi particularly note the contribution of the Santiago theory (formulated by Maturana and Varela):
‘He discovered that the ‘organization of the living being’ is a special network pattern (autopoiesis), and that the understanding of this pattern of self-generating networks provided him with the theoretical framework to understand perception and, more generally, cognition….The central insight of the Santiago theory…the identification of cognition, the process of knowing, with the process of life. Cognition is the activity involved in the self-generation and self-perpetuation of living networks. Cognition is the very process of life. The organizing activity of living systems, at all levels of life, is mental activity. The interactions of a living organism—plant, animal, or human—with its environment are cognitive interactions. Thus life and cognition are inseparably connected. Mind—or more accurately, mental activity—is immanent in matter at all levels of life.’
Maturana: ‘Our cognitive process differs from the cognitive process of other organisms only in the kinds of interactions into which we can enter, such as linguistic interactions, and not in the nature of the process itself.’
The Santiago Theory of Cognition: ‘Cognition is closely linked to autopoiesis, the self-generation of living networks. The defining characteristic of an autopoietic system is that it undergoes continual structural changes while preserving its web-like pattern of organization…One type of structural change is that of self-renewal [my note: think making new cells]. The second type of structural change is that which creates new structures—new connections in the network. These changes, developmental rather than cyclical, also take place continually, either as a consequence of environmental influences or as a result of the system’s internal dynamics….A living system couples to its environment structurally—that is, through recurrent interactions, each of which triggers structural changes in the system. Living systems are autonomous, however. The environment only triggers the structural changes; it does not specify or direct them….As a living organism responds to environmental influences with structural changes, these changes will in turn alter its future response, because the organism responds to disturbances according to its structure, and that structure has now changed. But this process—a modification of behavior on the basis of previous experience—is what we mean by learning. In other words, a structurally coupled system is a learning system.
A living system has the autonomy to decide what to notice and what will disturb it. This is the key to the Santiago theory of cognition. The structural changes in the system constitute acts of cognition. By specifying which perturbations from the environment trigger changes, the system specifies the extent of its cognitive domain; it ‘brings forth a world’. Cognition, then, is not a representation of an independently existing world but rather a continual bringing forth of a world through the process of living….Learning and development are merely two sides of the same coin.’
‘The Santiago theory of cognition is the first scientific theory that overcomes the Cartesian division of mind and matter.’
[Allow me to insert a note which I think is important. I assume that habitual patterns of thought are structures in the Santiago theory. Mind is about making new structures…hence new patterns of thought. Patterns of thought are models representing how the world works and how we intelligently respond to the world. To make a new model, we must believe:
THAT CHANGE IS NECESSARY AND POSSIBLE.]
There are two types of consciousness. First is the ‘sense of one moment—now—and about one place—here.’
‘The second type of consciousness (reflective consciousness) involves more elaborate self-awareness…identity, personhood, memories of the past and anticipation of the future…it evolved during the evolution of the great apes, together with language, conceptual thought, and all the characteristics that fully unfolded in human consciousness…Reflective consciousness …includes the ability to hold mental images, allowing us to formulate values, beliefs, goals, and strategies. This evolutionary step established a fundamental link between consciousness and social phenomena, because with the evolution of language arose not only the inner world of concepts and ideas but also the social world of organized relationships and culture.’
[My note. As social creatures, we spend a lot of time trying to find common ground between our own consciousness and the consciousness of others we need to cooperate with. As global financialized capitalism fades, the ‘finding common ground’ will loom ever larger in our scale of values.]
Consciousness as a subject for science is hard, because the scientists must accept two new scientific paradigms:
*Complexity theory…in particular the phenomena of emergence. Emergence results in the creation of novelty, and the novelty is often qualitatively different from the phenomena out of which it emerged.
*The recognition that the analysis of lived experience has to be an integral part of any science of consciousness.
‘In a science of consciousness, some of the very data to be examined are subjective, inner experiences’
[My note: Nate Hagens ‘neurotransmitters and hormones’ ]
Consider, for example, oxytocin. Oxytocin is released when we have certain experiences, and it generally reduces friction and aggression between people. Oxytocin is characteristic of orgasm and singing Kumbaya around a campfire. A scientific study will likely look at measuring both the level of oxytocin and also try to elicit some verbalization of what the subjects are feeling, but see Damasio following about that verbalization thing.]
‘Antonio Damasio’s basic hypothesis about core consciousness is that it arises from the brain’s nonverbal account of how the organism’s own state is affected by the perception of an object, either external or arising from memory [my note: or anticipated?]. The brain maps not only the entire state of the organism in its many dimensions but also the perceived object in sensory and motor structures activated by the interaction of the organism with the object. A key feature of Damasio’s theory is the recognition of the critical role of emotions in the functioning of core consciousness.
Damasio’s core consciousness is a feeling that accompanies the making of an image in the act of perception.’
I want to turn now to productive and non-productive ways to think about the systemic effect of running up against thermodynamic limits. I pick thermodynamics because it is the most fundamental limit the environment might confront us with. Thermodynamic limits would impact just about every other aspect of life that we can think of, from money to mating to eating.
Some people will choose to ignore any concerns about the future. They will live with Consciousness I as outlined above: here and now. While this has some adherents, I don’t think it is a good survival strategy, given the sea change which is about to overtake us.
Some people will listen but will not learn. Learning requires structural change. Going to a lecture or reading a book and then doing nothing is NOT structural change.
Some people will wait to be told what to do…they’ll come up with something. But as Capra and Luisi explain, every living creature acts on its own. Environmental changes can create a disturbance, but cannot tell an independent creature what to do. And I am not belittling the notion of joining a group for purposes of adapting to changes.
Some people will develop a plan, but the plan will turn out not to be appropriate as the new environment unfolds. These people have a high probability of dying. However, they may survive with a mid-course correction, if their minds are adaptable learning machines.
Some people will try to do wonderful things, but governments and social pressures may prevent them from doing them, and they will not survive.
Some people will do wonderful things. But they will be unlucky and will not survive.
Some people will perceive enough of the likely course of future events, and do the right things now, and will survive. They may even thrive, as their minds deepen and focus on fundamentals.
Don Stewart
Toward applying this to nature. For simplification I sometimes use the term landscape–earth, sea, sky–instead of nature. Sometimes just the term land is enough. If I consider that the land is alive (and is, in some way, the foundation for human life–although it seems impossible to separate the different forms of interconnected life) then I try to feel what it feels. (I know it wouldn’t have human feelings, but still it would respond differently, and be sensitive, to kindly or to cruel treatment…and refusal to understand that would be a serious failing, IMO.) If the ‘wellbeing’ of the land becomes our guide, there then is less space for many of the human conflicts that now consume 99% of our attention. It’s not about us; it’s about the land. And if we take that seriously, we’ll do what we must to work together to protect the land. Some societies do that better than others. So how do we come to a planetary consensus on how to put the feelings of the land first? Rhetorical question though that might seem.
Don,
Thanks for quoting excerpts of The Systems View of Life, that seems to be a really iimportant book (sorry my poor English didn’t bring me the appropriate word).
I very much like the idea of the mind (and memory, consciousness, …) as being physically supported (at least, if not “made of”), but not in the form of specific genes or chemical substances or brain areas, rather in the form of adaptive self-organizing NETWORKS, created by experience and reinforced by recurrence. “Not things but Processes”.
A subjective and fast-changing network is much more difficult to identify and characterize than, say, a gene, but on the other hand it’s a very powerful concept that re-connects us with our emotions, our bodies, our environment and -why not?- with the entire cosmos.
Here, the Buddhist principles come to mind, but I’d like to make a parallel with more recent history, namely the rise of western mechanistic science, which consisted in putting mankind (rather rich white males) in control of an inert Nature (that was created for us!).
That was not the case before:
“Is the earth dead or alive? The ancient cultures of east and west and the native peoples of America saw the earth as a mother, alive, active, and responsive to human action. Greeks and Renaissance Europeans conceptualized the cosmos as a living organism, with a body, soul, and Spirit, and the earth as a nurturing mother with respiratory, circulatory, reproductive, and elimination systems. The relationship between most peoples and the earth was an I-thou ethic of propitiation to be made before damming a brook, cutting a tree, or sinking a mine shaft. Yet for the past three hundred years, western mechanistic science and capitalism have viewed the earth as dead and inert, manipulable from outside, and exploitable for profits. The death of nature legitimated its domination. Colonial extractions of resources combined with industrial pollution and depletion have today pushed the whole earth to the brink of ecological destruction.”
This is the intro of a very worth-reading text by Carolyn Merchant:
http://www.history.vt.edu/Barrow/Hist3706/merchant.html
It seems to me that all the new findings in system-science, brain-science, thermodynamics, (epi-)genetics, (micro-)biology, etc.., are pushing us to make the way backwards (albeit on very different paths), i.e. filling up the gap and blurring the boundary we created 300 years ago between us and the Nature.
I’m not sure this can be of any use in our bleak future, but with the emergence property one cannot guess how it’ll all evolve.
And I’m rather glad that we’ve pulled down so many dogmas (even if it’s just before bursting ourselves).
Thanks for the quote and reference. Very much to the point.
The Stanford guys are at it again 100% wind, water, sun by 2050. Used be to 2030. They slipped out from 15 years to 35 years over the past one year.
It will cost in the US 14 trillion dollars and [my estimate after reading some of their report] 6 years of US oil consumption. If there were a will it would be done.
Not sure they allocate enough storage. Not sure their cost estimate is correct. But at least they put up a straw man to start a conversation, better than most.
http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USStatesWWS.pdf
Edpell,
French govt agency ADEME has made a study for the same goal, 100% “renewable” electricity in 2050.
Roger Andrews just posted a quite detailed comment about it on Euan Mearns’ Energy Matters blog, in parallel with another similar study for the UK.
http://euanmearns.com/renewable-energy-storage-and-power-to-methane/#more-9168
No suspense.
Stefeun, thanks. The French are taking storage seriously. I prefer methanol as a storage medium it is liquid at room temperature and pressure. Noble prize winner Olah wrote a book about the methanol economy.
The Stanford did mention the additional transmission lines needed to average out to some degree these variable supplies.
Keeping this system would require a lot of luck and coordination. Then there is the question of cost, and whether it would ever be possible to run an economy on the high cost system. I really doubt it.
The big question is there 6 years of spare oil for this project? Or, will oil go down like the Hill group suggests.
Hi Gail,
Thank you as always 🙂 !
The huge jump in coal consumption is incredible, especially since Kyoto 1997 was suppose to address CO2 emissions, as you pointed out. I am wondering how much of our technology such as solar cells are built using coal.
I’ve heard that the US, at one time, consumed 25% of the world’s energy. I’ve read another number that put it at 18%. My question is, do you have an idea of of what is the energy consumption for the US including both domestic and imported goods/products/services. That is, what is our total energy footprint (excluding outflows for exports)?
We rely so heavily on imported goods (90% durable from China, iPhones from China, solar from China, etc) that in a way we have just “exported” our pollution problems to China by having them burn their coal (plus cheap wages) to support our more complex economy.
Which brings me back to your description to our global/industrial economy as “dissipative” structure. The more I think about it and read about that term, the more it fits. Like a hurricane, the US (and OECD?) sits at the center, achieving higher winds and higher complexity. The periphery plays a role by allowing more “material” to be swept into the vortex, increasing the size and force of the hurricane. Globalization is probably a result of that increasing search for material to feed the beast, in a way guided the laws of thermodynamics. The great thing I like about that word “dissipative” is that it implies that the storm will eventually …well…dissipate.
uh-oh I am rambling…thank you ahead of time!
Thank you for your elaboration of my description of the global/industrial economy as a dissipative structure. It is helpful.
I don’t know exactly what percentage the US is of the world energy consumption, including both domestic and imported goods/products/services. A person could look at the United States’ share of world GDP. That seems to be about 23% (on a dollar basis). Our direct consumption of energy products reported amounts to 17.8%. That suggests we should add another 5% for imported goods and services, to balance out our service-oriented economy. Or maybe we should consider ourselves responsible for about a third of China’s and India’s growth since about 2001 (an off-hand guess), in addition to our own. This would amount to about 6% more than our reported consumption of world energy products of 18%, bringing our total percentage of the world’s energy consumption to 24%.
This article http://www.earth-policy.org/data_highlights/2014/highlights47 says that in 2013, China accounted for 64% of world solar panel production.
I don’t think we often think about the whole chain of coal-based economic development that our buying solar panels from China starts. Not only are the solar panels built, but many other things happen as well:
–New roads are built in China
–New homes are built for the workers
–New factories for solar panels are built
In short, a whole cycle of development is started in China that would not have been available otherwise. By announcing the Kyoto Protocol, we effectively told the rest of the world–we are out of this market–too much pollution. See what you can do for us. The cheaper the better! We don’t put on tariffs on your products. Instead, we put carbon taxes on the products we make ourselves. If your products weren’t competitive before, they certainly will be with our carbon taxes. I think a sixth grader could have guessed the carbon policy would be counterproductive.
Wow. And the end result is more CO2 pollution (damn that is a huge coal increase!), effectively subsidized products (this I cannot prove, but cheap energy+cheap labor+centralized government (still communist) that is incentivized to undercut) and the world’s pollution doubles. Since 1997. I suspect that solar/PV is doubly subsidized (in China), then again here in the states.
Thank you for the answer, that is exactly what I was looking for. You are such a sweetie by the way! (notice I inserted this comment where others may not notice). I am still amazed by you. Sometimes I am surprised by your bleak and dark comments, but I suspect that you actually have a deep caring side for all living things, and for the future.
Although no one knows the timetable or how long or collapse will take (we are mid-collapse as Dmitry Orlov remarked – and it’s true), my thoughts turn toward future generations. They are going to have a lot of time to piece together why we failed so spectacularly. They may have a thousand of years to study and construct a new society, but perhaps we are bound to an upper limit of genetic expression and repeatable self-destructive behavior.
I like Paul Cherfurka’s thoughts on this matter: “The thermodynamic foundation of this enterprise is tightly connected to human social behavior by way of our evolved psychology. That linkage completes the coupling of the whole physical/genetic/psychological/behavioral/cultural edifice into a solid, persistent dissipative structure.”
and “All of those behaviors had their origins in adaptations to problems we faced repeatedly over long periods of time earlier in our species’ history. According to evolutionary psychologists, these behaviors became encoded into special-purpose problem solving mental circuitry – i.e. the mechanisms that generate these behaviors are physically encoded in our brains. This physical encoding happens because it’s far more efficient and faster to have a piece of special-purpose “hardware” to solve a class of recurrent problems than to arrive at behavioral solutions from fresh algorithmic analysis every time. This worked very well through many tens of thousands of years of slowly-changing history. The difficulty it poses in a fast-changing modern environment is obvious.”
and “Humans also tend to assume that our intellect is strong enough that it can control our actions, govern the direction of our development and deal with the risks. Unfortunately, the forces that shape our behavior have a very strong genetic or “hardware” component that is difficult to recognize, let alone overcome through reason. Adding to the dilemma is the fact that we have evolved similar special-purpose mechanisms to promote social group cohesion. These mechanisms entrain our personal behavior to conform with that of people around us, so that the group can present a united front. Objectors, malcontents and whistle-blowers are subjected to enormous social pressure to get back in the fold or risk ostracism. So people who say things like, “Perhaps we shouldn’t use every last source of energy we can, and maybe we should apply the Precautionary Principle once in a while,” are about as welcome in broader society as skunks at a picnic. They are ignored, derided, harassed, or even sanctioned through job loss or imprisonment. “
from http://www.paulchefurka.ca/EvPsych_Fukushima.html
I can see that where we are headed and appreciate the understanding of why.
Where will we be in 2100? In that year, quite a number of our grandchildren will be alive (if a child born today has a child at 30 years of age, then their child would be 55 in 2100). It’s not that far in the future. What would important for them to hear from us now, as if we could put together a time capsule of objects of value from our time.
🙂
Print out all pages of this site and drop them in a time capsule…. imagine a 100 years from now reading these discussions … and finding out which predictions were correct and which were not…
Exactly. And a “Rosetta stone” in case they don’t speak English.
Full blown color revolution going in Armenia. Pretext is $3 per month rise in family electric rate demands the government step down! Rationality is never part of a color ad campaign.
There is a drought in Armenia. This means no hydro electric and no nuclear electric (no cooling water). Only natural gas electric.
“Sluggish westbound volumes have brought about the worst spot market rate collapse that this trade has experienced.” That’s how Drewry Maritime Research summarized it in a report a couple of weeks ago. Since then, the collapse of the rates for shipping containers from China to the West has gotten worse with clockwork relentlessness.
In mid-April, there had already been a lot of handwringing. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) tracks spot rates of shipping containers from Shanghai to 15 major destinations around the world. At the time, rates from Shanghai to Rotterdam had plunged to $399 per twenty-foot container equivalent unit (TEU), down 67% from a year earlier, the lowest rate ever, and half of what was considered the break-even rate for these routes.
It seemed that there would have to be some kind of uptick – that efforts by carriers to impose higher rates would stick. But nothing worked. So a week ago, there was a lot of handwringing because rates to Rotterdam had dropped to $243 per TEU, which wouldn’t even cover the cost of fuel of about $300 per TEU.
But now, in the week ended June 19, the spot rates from Shanghai to Rotterdam plunged another 15.6% to $205, a previously unimaginable low.
http://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/China-Shanghai-Containerized-Freight-index-2015-06-19.png
More http://wolfstreet.com/2015/06/22/container-shipping-rates-from-china-to-the-us-europe-totally-collapse-ccfi-scfi/
Eddy,
to be complete, we should precise that such a collapse of the container freight indexes is not only due to lower volumes. It seems to be combined with a very substantial increase in capacity, initiated by Maersk who is adding new vessels with huge capacity, hoping to push small and medium competitors off the game. The big players would suffer a lot too, but expect to still be alive at the end of the process.
Wether it’s a good strategy, or not, is very unclear.
Container Carriers Wage Price War to Form Global Shipping Oligopoly
by Wolf Richter • June 17, 2015
http://wolfstreet.com/2015/06/17/shanghai-china-containerized-freight-index-collapses-top-carriers-maersk-price-war-to-form-global-shipping-oligopoly/
Correct — but the reason main reason we have a glut of vessels is because shipping companies commission more ships based on projected volumes of shipping….
If the projected volumes are not realized — you end up with too many empty ships….
One only need take a look at this graph to understand that the problem is one of decreasing shipping volumes — something that was not anticipated by shipping companies:
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2014/12-overflow/20141229_GDP2015.jpg
Sounds like the quantity of goods being shipped is quite low.
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Best article I have read in a long time http://www.thealphapages.com/content/cnbc-demystified