The Money Mustache Community
Other => Off Topic => Topic started by: LennStar on September 05, 2014, 03:03:37 AM
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse?CMP=fb_gu
40 years on. If we continue to track in line with the book’s scenario, expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon.
The task was very ambitious. The team tracked industrialisation, population, food, use of resources, and pollution. They modelled data up to 1970, then developed a range of scenarios out to 2100, depending on whether humanity took serious action on environmental and resource issues. If that didn’t happen, the model predicted “overshoot and collapse” – in the economy, environment and population – before 2070. This was called the “business-as-usual” scenario.
According to the book, to feed the continued growth in industrial output there must be ever-increasing use of resources. But resources become more expensive to obtain as they are used up. As more and more capital goes towards resource extraction, industrial output per capita starts to fall – in the book, from about 2015.
Now, what do you think? Will this scenario come true? Will their be a big industrial crash? Will the Mustachian stock stash will get nearly worthless?
Or is the CoR wrong? Or will Mustachianism take over the world and save it from collapse?
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apart from these questions:
What do you think the bosses think? Do they think that scenario will come true?
If you look at the "security measures" that were made in the industrialized countries after 9/11 (taken out already drawn and written at that time), we have camera survaillance, internet survaillance, databases, rediculous scanners at airports, scare politics, up-armament of police and riot police, drones...
But: they are completely useless against terrorism. At best they may prevent a few amateurs and move it around a bit. That for the amount of money that would be enough to feed and educate all poor people in the world, reducing the reason for terrorism a lot.
And: when you look at these measures, they are awfully efficient to stop (the roots of) mass protests, and were already used for this (or at least tested). Especially harsh against anti-globalisation people or more broadly speaking against those who want another outcome then the CoR prediction. In the UK environmentalists are targeted and labeled as terrorists, even if they dont have the slightest criminal record. In germany military airplanes were jused (unconstitutional, but who cares) against the G9 protesters. And then there was Occupy, were the City of London and the Frankfurt Banking District prevented normal street protest (and occupy-ing itself) for the reason that "bankers do not need to feel fear at the sight of people beeing angry at them".
If you look at this it looks like the big guys are building somethings against big civil uprise.
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Bilderberg meetings are over for 2014. Do you have your tin foil hat ready for the Fall?
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Bilderberg meetings are over for 2014. Do you have your tin foil hat ready for the Fall?
The Club of Rome doesn't need a tin foil hat. Global warming is real, you know. Peak Oil also.
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There's an image of food shortage as a cliff where, overnight, food isn't brought to the grocery stores and the shelves are stripped (like the day before any hurricane). What will actually happen is that food becomes more expensive and certain items won't be resupplied immediately. This is already happening. The market adjusts -- almonds are more expensive due to the drought -- but there was a time when the almond bin at the local grocer was temporarily empty. Same with certain dairy items.
The CoR graphs assume that it (population, production output, food production) can't go up forever. Our cultural meme assumes that it can. What's more likely, given that we are bound by what we can extract?
As far as the uber-wealthy elites, they're doing what they do and they're as shortsighted as the rest of us. It's not a conspiracy.
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Did the CoR account for improvements in technology?
Solar panels are now economically feasible for many people. Every set that goes up means that tons of coal, natural gas or other hydrocarbons don't have to be pulled from the earth.
(In western countries) recycling is drastically more popular than it was in 1972. Millions of tons of metals that don't have to be pulled out of the ground.
Yes, the cost of resource extraction rises as resources are depleted. However, technology and human ingenuity allow us to replace scarce (expensive) resources with resources that are cheap and renewable.
I for one am betting on humanity making it to sustainable colonies in space (fingers crossed).
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I for one am betting on humanity making it to sustainable colonies in space (fingers crossed).
I don' think we're going to space. This article gives a pretty rational summary of why not:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/
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Did the CoR account for improvements in technology?
Solar panels are now economically feasible for many people. Every set that goes up means that tons of coal, natural gas or other hydrocarbons don't have to be pulled from the earth.
(In western countries) recycling is drastically more popular than it was in 1972. Millions of tons of metals that don't have to be pulled out of the ground.
Yes, the cost of resource extraction rises as resources are depleted. However, technology and human ingenuity allow us to replace scarce (expensive) resources with resources that are cheap and renewable.
I for one am betting on humanity making it to sustainable colonies in space (fingers crossed).
Humanity has yet to make a sustainable colony anywhere on Earth. I suspect that this would need to be accomplished first.
I think that hoping some future technology solves all of our problems is akin to sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the present. It's a dangerous viewpoint to hold. If we take a single issue . . . climate change . . . we have created a crisis. The most optimistic models (assuming that nobody drives a car or takes a plane starting tomorrow) are predicting significant warming (in the realm of 3-4 degrees C . . . which coupled with the rises already seen would put us in a new climate epoch) world-wide over the next 50 years. Even if some miracle technology stops the release of more greenhouse gases, the ones that have been released with continue to have an effect on the environment for another two hundred years. And those are from the best case models, assuming the best case scenarios.
We are doing more for the environment than was done in the past. But we are absolutely not doing as much as should be done. Our actions now will have long lasting repercussions . . . and without radical change in the average person's lifestyle at the moment things just get more and more bleak for our kids and their children.
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I just took out Gwynne Dyer's Climate Wars. He will have a lot to say about this, I've heard him talk about it and it was interesting - Chinese curse interesting. -
If you look at the "security measures" that were made in the industrialized countries after 9/11 (taken out already drawn and written at that time), we have camera survaillance, internet survaillance, databases, rediculous scanners at airports, scare politics, up-armament of police and riot police, drones...
But: they are completely useless against terrorism. At best they may prevent a few amateurs and move it around a bit. That for the amount of money that would be enough to feed and educate all poor people in the world, reducing the reason for terrorism a lot.
And: when you look at these measures, they are awfully efficient to stop (the roots of) mass protests, and were already used for this (or at least tested). Especially harsh against anti-globalisation people or more broadly speaking against those who want another outcome then the CoR prediction. In the UK environmentalists are targeted and labeled as terrorists, even if they dont have the slightest criminal record. In germany military airplanes were jused (unconstitutional, but who cares) against the G9 protesters. And then there was Occupy, were the City of London and the Frankfurt Banking District prevented normal street protest (and occupy-ing itself) for the reason that "bankers do not need to feel fear at the sight of people beeing angry at them".
If you look at this it looks like the big guys are building somethings against big civil uprise.
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I just took out Gwynne Dyer's Climate Wars. He will have a lot to say about this, I've heard him talk about it and it was interesting - Chinese curse interesting. -
Havent heard anything about this. If you arent from germany you likely have not herad anything about Peter Scholl Latour. He died recently, he was a great journalist of the Middle East. He "predicted" the uprisings there and so on...
But what I want to say is that he was a strong believer that in the 21st century the most wars will be fought about water. And that was even before climate change got mainstream, dont know if he calculated that in.
Resource wars are nothing new, and they are already going strong, the question is if the "poor" countries will find a way get along with each other and not get sucked dry by China (biggest buyer of agricultural land in Africa) and the Western world.
Solar panels are now economically feasible for many people. Every set that goes up means that tons of coal, natural gas or other hydrocarbons don't have to be pulled from the earth.
(In western countries) recycling is drastically more popular than it was in 1972.
I live in germany, we know a lot about recycling ;)
The problem with re-cycling is, that it is in 99% a down-cycling. You made "bad" paper out of "good" paper, that way.
What we sould need is the so-called up-cycling where you have "bad" stuff and make "good" stuff out of it, preferable without (lots of and only regenerative) additional resources.
But currently the economic-political ecosystem is one of "usage", of consumerism, not regeneration. The highest goal for politics is to create jobs so that people have money to buy stuff so that factories can produce this stuff to make more jobs.
And so, the big (coal) energy companies sucessfully lobbied the EEG (law for regenerative energies) to death a few month earlier. Solar panel installments e.g. which were driven by private small grade investors (on your own roof) have nearly stopped. In germany, start of anti-atomic and green movement! The big energy firms get lots of money or lowered taxes instead of getting punished for building new coal power plants. The C02 trade is... lets call it non-functional, because there are politically inclined way to much certificates in the wild. And so on.
At the same time innovative concepts are (at best) ignored by most political stakeholders. Just a week ago I visited for a day a week long programme (was there to speak about the Cultural Commons Collecting Society, a new and btw crowdfunded alternative to german GEMA). A lot of people are trying to "make a better world". Lots of interesting things. Its just all so damn small-scale.
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They were right in the generalized "Humans can't pollute forever at increasing rates.", but their modelling was really unrealistic.
There seems to be this meme that human population is the problem, which is incorrect for the most part. It's excess consumption that cause most pollution, and that's a direct result of choices made every day.
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Everything is pretty cheap still. Raw materials are cheap. A pound of pure copper sells for less than a Big Mac.
Oil is everywhere. They are pulling it from cracks in rocks and finding new reservoirs deep in the ocean. Even if oil runs out, there are about 200 years of coal supply just in the United States.
I don't think industrial output will stall for at least 100 years.
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Everything is pretty cheap still. Raw materials are cheap. A pound of pure copper sells for less than a Big Mac.
Oil is everywhere. They are pulling it from cracks in rocks and finding new reservoirs deep in the ocean. Even if oil runs out, there are about 200 years of coal supply just in the United States.
I don't think industrial output will stall for at least 100 years.
Copper prices have trippled in the last 10 years. Oil the same. (Not long ago there was a dogma that the industy will not survive a price of 100$/barrel, and we were way above that for a while, 100$ is about the average of the last 3 years.)
The reason why oil has goten cheaper is the "unusual" production from tar sands, which is devastating to the environment - same for gas and fracking.
There not many new oil reserves that are found, but a lot of wells will run out of oil in the next few years or have just reached their maximum.
And I dont even want to talk about coal, I do not want sandstorms in snow-free middle europe.