[vision-master]

So TPTB are getting the masses ready for harvest?

To many to control, eh?

[Tanada]

Every culture you have ever studied if you ever study history goes through a series of stages. At the end they all collapse back to a less developed state. Sometimes they fall all the way into barbarianism. The higher your position technologically the further you have to fall and the faster that fall can take place.

We are worse off if we collapse than any prior civilization because we are much further from the natural world. Not one person in ten has ever lived on a farm or done any kind of real food raising activity. Not more than one in ten has ever hunted or fished enough food to feed there family for an extended period of time.

Civilization falls on us and most of us will starve in weeks, if we don't die trying to steal our neighbors food to feed our kids or ourselves.

I vote we keep some sort of civilization going because I am not ready to die just yet. I also don't want to see my neighbors die. We could in theory feed everyone for a very long time with the FF left, but our entire world culture is now built on growth at any cost.

Growth at any cost is suicide.

[ian807]

Well sure it can, or it can at least be postponed a bit. We just need a couple of things.

1) Batteries with the energy density of gasoline (or better). Said batteries need to be reusable, cheap and made out of common materials like sodium, iron, nickel, aluminum, etc. It has to be good enough to run trains, planes, ships and automobiles.

2) Ubiquitous thorium power, although this isn't absolutely necessary. If we could store electricity as easily as gasoline with minimal loss, we could probably manage to keep centralized power systems running with some combination of nuclear, hydropower, wind, and solar without bothering with hydrocarbons at all.

Of course, this doesn't address other population/resource issues like land, water, potash for fertilizer, or rare earth metals, but it would go a long way towards making the difference between disastrous nonlinear population collapse, and slow, but relatively painless decline.

Sounds simple, doesn't it.

[ralfy]

Currently, ave. global ecological footprint (which is the same as that of Cuba) is already higher than biocapacity. The first has to keep going up as more human beings receive basic needs while the latter will drop because of depletion, ecological damage, etc.

[Newfie]

Tands,

Very well put.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ian807', 'B')atteries with the energy density of gasoline (or better).

[ian807]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ian807', 'B')atteries with the energy density of gasoline (or better).

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', ' ')

Growth at any cost is suicide.

[Newfie]

I suspect many, if not most, of us will be dead before we have enough consequences for the main stream to embrace the idea that growth at any cost is suicide. But, that is just my gut feeling. Perhaps you are right.

My bigger fear is that over the next few years we will experience increased economic difficulties, that some nut case group will say they know how to "fix" the system. And we will turn over our remaining civil liberties in the quest for continued consumer goods.

I suspect that the physical ramifications between your scenario and mine may differ a bit, but both are pretty nasty to contemplate.

Also, I got the sense that the authors of the article were pretty damn pessimistic on the whole. I know that they said things could be fixed, with the right attitude adjustments. It was just something in the tone that lead me to hear a very pessimistic outlook. Sort of like saying "Well, it will be OK, all we have to do is win the lottery, twice. It's possible, it can happen."

[ennui2]

I don't see how you can expect optimism from Ehrlich. Not that I disagree with his main thesis, but he kind of got the doomer ball rolling with The Population Bomb. So this isn't particularly newsworthy. Seeing articles like this written by people not heretofore associated with doom is more relevant, and there have been a fair share of them in recent years, not that this has filtered down into people really feeling threatened.

[Newfie]

Often I read some cautionary tale of woe, how bad things are, how hopeless the situation is. Then, in the final paragraph or chapter the author says, "but I am cautiously optimistic ." Jared Diamond in Collapse comes to mind, but it is common. Bill McKibben is another. He said a few years ago that if we didn't change things that year it would be too late. Then he said it again the next year. Then again later.

That always irks me. It makes me feel like I have been going through some sales set up. "You have this terrible disease, but I have the magic cure!"

Baloney. I believe it actually does them discredit and takes away from their core message.

I got to briefly talk to McKibben and I do believe that he thinks we are screwed. But somehow when the address a crowd they feel obliged to put some relief valve on the message.

So, yes, I expect to hear some lame optimism. I felt that this particular example was especially lame, almost intentionally transparent. Its tranparent lameness hinted at honesty in the final closing.

But I tend to read into things, pherhaps more than I should.

[dohboi]

I would like to direct people's attention to two phrases in the conclusion:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 't')he odds of avoiding collapse seem small

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ian807', 'C')arbon nanotubes still can't be made cheaply enough or in enough quantity to make these devices en masse.

[ennui2]

"I got to briefly talk to McKibben and I do believe that he thinks we are screwed. But somehow when the address a crowd they feel obliged to put some relief valve on the message."

I think once you come to the conclusion that we're screwed that it has a liberating effect. One thing I've had the hardest time in my life is dealing with rigid attitudes, and not just about doom per se. Consider the conflict I've had with the likes of Planty. But even in my family and personal life, you realize how stubborn people can be, holding onto their belief-systems, no matter the hypocrisy or cognitive-dissonance that is required to do so. Probably the hardest thing you can do in life is change somebody's mind about something. To go through life with the intention of changing hearts and minds has got to be the hardest journey anyone can ever make. If you stop feeling that your survival rests on people's minds changing and just accept that we're all f*cked, and try to let go of the frustration and the rage, then at least you can get on with the business of making the most of the good things in life that are still attainable.

[Plantagenet]

The Ehrlichs first became famous with their book "The Population Bomb", published in the 1960s. In this book the Ehrlichs predicted that mass famines were imminent. They predicted that population decline would occur in the 1970s and 1980s. This didn't happen. We know now the Ehrlichs predictions were wrong.

Their new journal article, published almost five decades later, makes the same kinds of predictions, but this time the Ehrlichs don't specify the exact time-frame for the new prediction of famine and population decline. They just hint it will happen quite soon.

Will the Ehrlich's be right this time, or will they be wrong again? Only time will tell. Personally I am skeptical of their claims of imminent doom for two reasons

#1---their predictions in the 1960s of imminent famine and global catastrophe were totally and completely wrong---and here they are saying the same thing again. One has to question if the Ehrlichs truly understand the nature of the world economy and demographics, or if they are just sensationalists who like to predict doom as way to sell books and go on TV and be media celebrities.

#2---while we hit peak oil in 2005, frakking has unlocked huge amounts of natural gas, so we are not yet at peak energy. The transition to a future with alternative solar and wind power and an NG-powered economy is not going to be easy, but its far from impossible. If this transition is successful, then the Ehrlichs will be wrong in their predictions of imminent doom for a second time.


The predictions of mass famine in the 1970s and 1980s in the Ehrlich's first book have been proven wrong---the predictions in their new journal article may turn out to be wrong as well

[Newfie]

Not wrong, just delayed.

As Malthus.

[Tanada]

The more complex a system is the more likely it is to fail. Good engineers put fail safe's into any complex system so that when something breaks the system goes into a safe rest state where repairs can be made without more damage taking place.

Globalization has taken a system where each country individually could fail and the rest of the system could keep running at least somewhat well. When the Great Depression hit the USA it hit Japan and the European markets as well, but inside 24 months only the USA was in Depression, Europe and Japan recovered and kept going after the stumble where the USA needed eight years to exceed 1929 economic levels. When the USA hit its 2008 stumble so did the EU and Asia. The EU went down even worse than the USA and is still worse off four years later, Asia kept going for a while but it can only coast for a little while longer if the USA doesn't start mass consumption again soon.

Does anyone think the USA is going back into mass consumer mode soon?

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', ' ')When the USA hit its 2008 stumble so did the EU and Asia. The EU went down even worse than the USA and is still worse off four years later, Asia kept going for a while but it can only coast for a little while longer if the USA doesn't start mass consumption again soon.

Does anyone think the USA is going back into mass consumer mode soon?