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Ready Or Not... The Unsustainable Status Quo Is Ending
Submitted by Chris Martenson via Peak Prosperity,
~ Walking straight in a hall of mirrors
I have to confess, it's getting more and more difficult to find ways of writing about everything going on in the world.
Not because there's a shortage of things to write about -- wars, propaganda, fraud, Ebola -- but because most of the negative news and major world events we see around us are symptoms of the disease, not the disease itself.
There are only so many times you can describe the disease, before it all becomes repetitive for both the writer and the reader. It's far more interesting to get to the root cause, because then real solutions offering real progress can be explored.
Equally troubling, in a world where the central banks have distorted, if not utterly flattened, the all important relationship between prices, risk, and reality, what good does it do to seek some sort of meaning in the new temporary arrangement of things?
When the price of money itself is distorted, then all prices are merely derivative works of that primary distortion. Some prices will be too high, some far too low, but none accurately determined by the intersection of true demand and supply.
If risk has been taken from where it belongs and instead shuffled onto central bank balance sheets, or allowed to be hidden by new and accommodating accounting tricks, has it really disappeared? In my world, risk is like energy: it can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed or transferred.
If reality no longer has a place at the table -- such as when policy makers act as if the all-too-temporary shale oil bonanza is now a new permanent constant -- then the discussions happening around that table are only accidentally useful, if ever, and always delusional.
Through all of this, the big picture as described in the Crash Course grows ever more obviously clear: we are on an unsustainable course; economically, ecologically, and -- most immediately worryingly -- in our use of energy.
So let's start there, with a simple grounding in the facts.
By The Numbers
Humans now number 7.1 billion on the planet and that number is on track to rise to 8 or 9 billion by 2050. Already 'energy per capita' is stagnant across the world and has been for a few decades. If the human population indeed grows by 15-25% over the next three and a half decades, then net energy production will have to grow by the same amount simply to remain constant on a per capita basis.
But can it? Specifically, can the net energy we derive from oil grow by another 15% to 25% from here?
Consider that, according to the EIA, the US shale oil miracle will be thirty years in the rear-view mirror by 2050 (currently projected to peak in 2020). And beyond just shale, all of the currently-operating conventional oil reservoirs will be far past peak and well into their decline. That means that the energy-rich oil from the giant fields of yesteryear will have to be replaced by an even larger volume of new oil from the energetically weaker unconventional plays just to hold things steady.
To advance oil net energy on a per capita basis between now and 2050, we'll have to fight all of the forces of depletion with one hand, and somehow generate even more energy output from energetically parsimonious unconventional sources such as shale and tar sands with the other hand.
These new finds...they just aren't the same as the old ones. They are deeper, require more effort per well to get oil out, and return far less per well than those of yesteryear. Those are just the facts as we now know them to be.
In 2013, total worldwide oil discoveries were just 20 billion barrels. That's against a backdrop of 32 billion barrels of oil production and consumption. Since 1984, consuming more oil than we're discovering has been a yearly ritual. To use an analogy: it's as if we're spending from a trust fund at a faster rate than the interest and dividends are accruing. Eventually, you eat through the principal balance and then it's game over.
Meanwhile, even as the total net energy we receive from oil slips and our consumption wildly surpasses discoveries, the collective debt of the developed economies has surpassed the $100 trillion mark -- which is a colossal bet that the future economy will not only be larger than it is currently, but exponentially larger.
These debts are showing no signs of slowing down. Indeed, the world's central banks are doing everything in their considerable monetary power to goose them higher, even if this means printing money out of thin air and buying the debt themselves.
Along with this, the demographics of most developed economies will be drawing upon badly-underfunded pension and entitlement accounts -- most of which are literally nothing more substantial than empty political promises made many years ago.
These trends in oil, debt and demographics are stark facts all on their own. But when we tie these to the obvious ecological strains of meeting the needs of just the world's current 7.1 billion, any adherence to the status quo seems worse than merely delusional.
Here's just one example from the ecological sphere. All over the globe we see regions in which ancient groundwater, in the form of underground aquifers, is being tapped to meet the local demand.
Many of these reservoirs have natural recharge rates that are measured in thousands, or even tens of thousands, of years.
Virtually all of them are being over-pumped. The ground water is being removed at a far faster rate than it naturally replenishes.
This math is simple. Each time an aquifer is over-pumped, the length of time left for that aquifer to serve human needs diminishes. Easy, simple math. Very direct.
And yet, we see cultures all over the globe continuing to build populations and living centers - very expensive investments, both economically and energetically – that are dependent for their food and water on these same over-pumped aquifers.
In most cases, you can calculate with excellent precision when those aquifers will be entirely gone and how many millions of people will be drastically impacted.
And yet, in virtually every case, the local 'plan' (if that's the correct word to use here) is to use the underground water to foster additional economic/population growth today without any clear idea of what to do later on.
The ‘plan’ such as it is, seems to be to let the people of the future deal with the consequences of today's decisions.
So if human organizations all over the globe seem unable to grasp the urgent significance of drawing down their water supplies to the point that they someday run out, what are the odds we'll successfully address the more complex and less direct impacts like slowly falling net energy from oil, or steadily rising levels of debt? Pretty low, in my estimation.
Conclusion
Look, it's really this simple: Anything that can't go on forever, won't. We know, financially speaking, that a great number of nations are utterly insolvent no matter how much the accounting is distorted. Said another way: there's really no point in worrying about the combined $100 trillion shortfall in Social Security and Medicare, because it simply won't be paid.
Why? It can't, so it won't. The promised entitlements dwarf our ability to fund them many times over. There's really not much more to say there.
But the biggest predicament we face is that steadily-eroding net energy from oil, which will someday be married to steadily-falling output as well, can't support billions more people and our steadily growing pile of debt.
Just as there's no plan at all for what to do when the groundwater runs out besides 'Let the folks in the future figure that one out,' there's no plan at all for reconciling the forced continuation of borrowing at a faster rate than the economy can (or likely will be able to) grow.
The phrase that comes to mind is 'winging it.'
The wonder of it all is that people still turn to the same trusted sources for guidance and as a place to put their trust. For myself, I have absolutely no faith that the mix of DC career politicians and academic wonks in the Fed have any clue at all about such things as energy or ecological realities. Their lens only concerns itself with money, and the only tradeoff concessions they make are between various forms of economic vs. political power.
If the captains supposed to be guiding this ship are using charts that ignore what lies beneath the waterline, then you can be sure that sooner or later the ship is going to strike something hard and founder.
I'm pretty sure the Fed's (and ECB's and BoJ's and BoE's) charts resemble those of medieval times, with "Here be dragons" scrawled in the margins next to a series of charts of falling stock prices and unwinding consumer debt.
So there we are. The globe is heading from 7.1 billion to 8 or 9 billion souls, during a period of time when literally every known oil find will be well past its peak. Perhaps additional shale finds will come along on other continents to smooth things out for a bit (which is not looking likely), but it's well past time to square up to the notion that cheap oil is gone. And with it, our prospects for the robust and widespread prosperity of times past.
Because all of this inevitably leads to some sort of time of reckoning, natural questions emerge: What might happen and when? What would that feel like? How would I know it's started? Given the knowns and unknowns, are there any dominant strategies for mitigating the risks that I should undertake? What are the challenges and what are the opportunities?
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And that's true. Why are they driving the truck?
Propaganda - and what is the root of the muslim condition of murder? The Qur'an ?
I can almost imagine financial chaos followed by a terrorist attack chased by ebola.
The equivalent of the banksters pulling down trashcans while being pursued through an alley.
Cold fusion bros and bras... cold fusion. It will solve all our proble... that and miniture home nuclear breader reactors making limitless virtually free electricity and weapons grade plutonium for everyone.
Soylent "Blue" gasoline is people.
Problem solved.
Lipo-diesel
Demo-diesel?
Progress-o-fuel?
I wouldn't want to politicize it, for fear of alienating either 49% or 51% of potential donors.
Keep it available to anyone with extra body mass, who would otherwise pay to have it sucked out.
5 stars!
Reality of Money by G Edward Griffin
Another executive order will fix it.
Chris,
I only read the first couple paragraphs, and you're absolutely correct, you're beating a dead horse. So is Yellen. The difference is, she knows it and you don't.
She is gonna end qe next month. What do you plan to do next month?
Yer precious market will dive like a swan, because there is no updraft from the organic economy.
You have predicted these things, yourself. Why are you still writing?
It's here, it's now. Stop predicting.
Nature will always find a balance. Sometimes in ways you least expect. or want.
and there's nothing you can do about it.
True, nature has a way of fixing things and enlightening folks, kinda like a 2x4 up side the head.
....only for the little people.
Water is an issue, but desal is a good partial answer, especially if someone will get off their duffs and get thorium fission power working. Amazing that President Solyndra isn't all over that, he could call it the New Black Power and away we go! Yeah I guess that is too slick for President Golfstix.
It only ends when "they" decide it will end. They can fix nothing, but because of our dependency on the current money system and government they can certainly hurt us by taking the rug out from under us. They at least have that power.
Where is this population increase you are so afraid of? It sure isn't in Europe, North America or Asia. Those regions have a birth decline. Except for the births of illegal aliens, the US would have 1.9 children per woman when 2.1 children is replacement.
The welfare state is causing the birth rates in North America, Europe and Asia to decline. When people believe the government's promise that they will be supported in their old age, they stop having children to do that task.
Most of the increase you fear is located in Africa. It is in primitive, non capitalist nations. It's the farmers, who are causing this problem. Their excess children survive to maturity due to modern medicine. Their first impulse when they have enough to eat is to have more babies.
In the Industrial Revolution, England tripled its population in the fifty years after 1800. Then, the birth rate rolled off because urban workers gain no benefit from large families. The decrease in the birth rate was due to urbanization.
We have a case here of Socialists obsessing about a self correcting trend. If we have a world wide depression, a billion or more people will die in the havoc in far away places. They are the children who would have died anyway if the West had never brought civilization to their regions.
If you want to save them, then urbanization and capitalism is the answer. Socialism only brings war and privation.
Yup, any day now,,,maybe even by 1980;
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/The_Population_Bomb.html
WHY do they always insist on calling my hard-earned SSN an entitlement? I work until July 1 of every year just to pay my taxes.
Whatever...
I am not trying to shit on you - really I am not - but
Go take a look at the original law that created SS that was passed by congress & signed by the president - and all the revisions since them.
Try and count how many times the word "entitlement" is used -
My guess is by the time you get to 50 you will start to understand that the reason it is called an entitlement is because it is an entitlement.
If you still don't get it by the time you have counted "entitlement" 100 times then report back and I will try and figure out a better way to explain it -
Water is wet - fire is hot - SS & Medicare are entitlements.
However it's worded it's still a confiscation. "If you want to work you will pay us $1/mo and later we'll pay you $3/mo for life. If you don't play by these rules you go to jail". Entitlement or deal you can't refuse?
It is funded by a tax - still an entitlement.
I think what part of the problem is - some see entitlement and they think welfare program.
SS is some where between welfare and I paid for it --
BUT stop and think for 10 fucking seconds -
If people had REALLY paid in enough to fund this mother fucker then why is it so underfunded?
People have been bombed with propaganda about SS for many years -
The SS trust fund? The taxes you pay in are called "contributions" The gov wants people to think it is a fucking 401K you are funding yourself.
All SS is - a program that taxes one group and redistributes the taxes to others - they are mostly the same people - but SS and Medicare have been expanded to cover all sorts of shit for people that have never paid in a dime.
Well hopefully we'll get out at least what we paid in.
Now you try to imagine what America's the world's economy would look like today if all those hateful entitlements hadn't crapped all over every retail store and every manufacturer.
Your taxes would have been lower but the recipients of entitlements would not have had their income to spend and the GNP would be 60% of what it is today.
What about unemployment? The homeless and criminals would have proliferated.
Did you think we could have done away with entitlements and the iphone6 would have been released earlier this month?
puh lease
Not sure if you are serious or being an ass.
Do you think the government can "do a better job" if they take money from people and decide how to spend it - or give it to others that didn't earn it - that they will make better decisions on what to buy?
Entitlements are just redistribution.
Doesn't matter if it is taking from middle class and giving it to GE - or taking from me and giving it to some welfare cunt with 11 kids - same damn thing.
then, by your logic, low interest rates, too big to fail bailouts, and debt-funded war are also entitlements.
Doesn't that mean if I pay in I'm entitled to it?
If you (and all the other SS folks lined up for your entitlement payments) have really PAID for it them why is SS so underfunded?
The fact is - the amount collected will NOT EVEN COME CLOSE to actually paying for the benefits promised.
So are you saying you want to pay the amount of back taxes to fully fund your SS payments?
Or
Are you willing to have your benefits cut - so the amount you have paid in covers it?
Or
Are you willing to understand that you didn't pay for it?
Look, it's really this simple: Anything that can't go on forever, won't.
This sort of crap passes for deep wisdom. When it isn't.
If you think about it, there is no way for knowing whether what replaces is will be better of worse. These are not the same thing. SOMEthings are better when they stop.
For example, Kings would not continue to rule. The Horse and buggy industry would die. Humans would not have to run around killing animals and finding berries to eat. Who wants continuous wars?
Chris Martenson has been 'selling' the fear since '08. Peak oil, overpopulation, reasource scarcity, debt - you name it. His stuff really comes on hard when the chatter of market 'topping' starts making the rounds - that's when he pours it on thick & heavy, like this piece. See - even PhD's know how to put on the hard sell, and nothing sells like fear, especially when it's packaged & polished slick, with a PhD behind it...
You need to have more than a 5 minute attention span to appreciate long-term trends.
Here is a great Craig Hulet listen for the weekend. HULET 09-25-2014
"People in this world, we have no place to go"
Given how medicine finds new ways to increase fertility well into mid-life and the fact that medical advances are keeping more people alive longer with diseases which would have killed them quickly even 30 years ago, then add in the factor that the poorer countries seem to be extremely adept at procreating without abandon (I'm thinking India and most African nations even if Ebola eliminates 1 million this round), I don't think that it is going to take 35 years to add 2 billion more people to the planet. I'd lay bets that by 2030 we'll have a good 9 billion barring some planet wide war or other planetary calamity.
"If reality no longer has a place at the table -- such as when policy makers act as if the all-too-temporary shale oil bonanza is now a new permanent constant -- then the discussions happening around that table are only accidentally useful, if ever, and always delusional."
This is - and always has been - the standard MO of policymakers.
Faced on the one hand with their obsession for power and control of everything to keep themselves in power and on the other, having little interest in the well being of their own citizens and the enduring dilemma of not knowing what the hell to do anyway, they have manufactured a Matrix world where reality is only make-believe.
Citizens are the ones who suffer and pay the price of this gross political greed and incompetence.
The Elite no longer consider humanity as fit to run the planet . The present driver of the bus is going to be replaced by them before the whole shebang goes over a cliff .
The present driver's only defence is upskilling.
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2014/09/prodigies-update-i.html
Else...
See http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-elite.html
Well, this article contains 0 new information. And that is a problem.
The other issue was the population growth. It clearly will not go on like this until 2050. It is more like the Club of Rome reference scenario, decline is not far off.
Ebola is a wildcard, anything can happen...
world population will stop growing when we reach aprox 11bln people
oil will get scarse but we will run on gas for the next 100 years
after that we will switch to Helium3 from the moon to run thermo-nuclear reactors here on earth. most of transportation will become clean electric powered. The future is bright unless banksters of today prevent it from happening
"So there we are. The globe is heading from 7.1 billion to 8 or 9 billion souls, during a period of time when literally every known oil find will be well past its peak. Perhaps additional shale finds will come along on other continents to smooth things out for a bit (which is not looking likely), but it's well past time to square up to the notion that cheap oil is gone. And with it, our prospects for the robust and widespread prosperity of times past. "
Nope.
Oil will get expensive if there is still a demand for it. There will be no demand of 9 billion people, because they can't pay ( and therefore will not buy) the ever increasing price, which will rise if there is a shortage of energy.
First there was wood, then we found cole mines, then oil and later oil under the seabed, then nucleair energy.
Conclusion is that there is also a possibillity of finding new forms of energy. ( forget bio, solar, geo, sun energy).
Next point i want to make is that there is enough energy for the coming hunderds of years.
LFTRs in 5 minutes - Thorium Reactors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY
3m55s “In 2007 we used 5,000,000,000 tons of coal, 31,000,000,000 barrels of oil, 5,000,000,000,000 m3 of natural gas along with 65,000 tons of uranium to produce the world’s energy. So I have a friend who is trying to start a rare earth mine in Missouri, Jim, how much thorium do you think you’ll be pulling up a year ? He goes I think 5,000 tons. 5,000 tons would supply the planet with all of it’s energy for a year.”
Coal tonnage vs thorium tonnage 1,000,000-to-1 - The petroleum cartel really is shackling humanity into energy poverty.
Do those Thorium reactors give off billions of tonnes of petrochemicals, rubber, plastics, and hydrocarbons as byproducts? If not, we had better keep coal and petroleum around.
Electricity and other "energy" is great but try going without coal and oil's billions of tonnes of life-sustaining petrochemicals, rubber, plastics, and hydrocarbons.
Like gold, oil and currency price manipulation is soon going to end because UK treasury say so haha : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/11120721... Price manipulation end because of lack of trust and physical supply and demand. And on the topic of population growth it will most likely stabilize at around 9 billion due to global development and the new one to two kids trend all over the world. See following presentation by Hans Rosling: The River of Myths https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYpX4l2UeZg
More BS+Problem -Reaction- Solution,More zeroshit,How about something on free energy,Or do i need a bigger tinfoil hat.
You're hat looks OK, but the space key issue is a problem.
Just more peak population propaganda.
Maybe what we are seeing is peak socialism, peak Keynesianism, peak watermelonism, peak centralism, and peak political correctness.
Peak oil? Big deal. Chris is a naysayer in this article. Mankind has plenty of ingenuity to overcome peak oil.
How about this link: http://www.iter.org/proj#milestones
One sure lession from the 30s Depression economists learned was that austerity breeds low birth rates. All the counterfeited money of the past 100 years promoted rising and unsustainable population hikes just as irresponsible social programs promoted and rewarded illigitamate babies.
The rise of free money was all unsustainable built on the fraud and false wealth of counterfeited Fed money. I believe we're going to see a declining population as all the delusional sheeple receive a rude awakening when TSHTF and we all rapidly descend into a 3rd world hell hole and the dollar loses 50-75% of it's purchasing power. Then the population will finally learn that American Exceptionalism means American's are exceptionally stupid.
Then the sheeple might finally realize, we're going to have to dismantle the expensive regulatory, medical mafia, welfare and warfare state in order to be globally competitive and get our manufacturing jobs back. In the meantime there's going to be a lot of shouting, temper tantrums and dying. The sickest and most toxic are going to die first.
These sheeple are also the most "entitled", stubborn and indignant. Darwin's laws will remove these "obstacles to reform" first. Finally what's left will be the people who have been avoiding toxic food, medicine and water from our hidden organized crime rulers and have been detoxing and building their immune systems in preparation for the stress of this massive transition.
This may be crucial when our hidden rulers step up the man-made Ebola virus against the public. The sheeple aren't going to know what or who hit them.
Probably one of the best posts i've ever seen on this site
sam site's comment is erudite, concise and largely correct.
I've been reading through the comments and find only a few that are useful.
Maybe I can add some simplicity to the argument.
1. Find some land in a rural area.
2. Farm it, feed yourself and significant others.
3. Learn how to make your own fuel, i.e., solar (can be used for heat, too, very simply), geo-thermal, wind, and small hydro.
4. Pay your property taxes and tell everyone to fuck off.
5. Decrease dependency on the ideo-society - cell phones, need to travel (cars), and especially, TV. Keep your internet connection. Here's why...
6. The internet is an an enabling tool for knowledge and the destruction of hierarchies like multi-national corporations and governments, and, especially, regulations and control. While I can't stand the term, "disruptive" technology, the internet has been, is, and will continue to be so, as long as people use it wisely.
7. Stay as far away as possible from any government institution, from local on up. Actually, the locals, like school boards, for instance, are highly destructive to the lifestyle you should wish to lead, which is free and simple.
8. Grow your own, make your own, sell to the morons. Keep your money is a mix of gold, silver, currency (gotta pay some bills, still), and keep acquiring tools and the knowledge to use them correctly.
9. Sleep well at night. Much of what goes on in the "real" world is noise and unnecessary to leading a happy, productive, fulfilling life.
Geez, I almost want to take my own advice (disclaimer: I have)
Did you not get the memo? The free shit army gets a bigger welfare check erry month with erry keeeeid they has. Dont forget the wetbacks, either. They breed like cockroaches.
The American landscape is dotted with millions of little castles in its cities and suburbs. Few in these castles have ever given any real thought to what will happen if our distribution systems fail or we have insufficient resources…
I agree. Complex systems such as ours are vulnerable to failure. We are very interdependent. Remove or damage one small part on the engine of a large vehicle and it will not start.
"Energy" matters but don't forget the billions of tonnes of life-sustaining petrochemicals, rubber, plastics, and hydrocarbons that come from coal and oil. You don't get tonnes of plastic, polymers, and chemicals from a solar panel or a nuke plant for fcuk sake!!!!
Society would sooner collapse if the plastic for iCrap and modern food packaging and medical devices (to name a few things) became unavailable, than if gasoline for your car became unavailable.
Buy guns, ammo, food. Store water. Get ready to defend your patch from the hordes...in about 50 years.
Yawn, is this the CNN news channel?
Us mere mortals can never understand the complexity of government and monetry exchange... Because we are out of the loop that binds all countries together as they manipulate our lives to bleed every last drop from the 'pheasants' to support the 1%.
That time is here as there is only so much blood from a stone and we have given our last drop. Tell me who among you that has to borrow to make ends meet - Who buys cheeper food to feed the kids - who shares a ride to work because fuel is expensive - How many times to you have to tell your kids "not this week, we can't afford it"
Sometimes I wish we could just take a step back a hundred years or two (socially) and farm/exchange for real goods rather than faux paper remuniation.
The carbon cycle is continuous. It is a harmless gas used by plants to grow. Some of that growth becomes food, some becomes wood products, including firewood, and some becomes corn which can be turned into ethanol and used as fuel. Trying to reduce carbon dioxide is like choking a sleeping child because she is breathing out carbon dioxide and water vapor. There is not five pounds more or five pounds less carbon on earth than when it was formed.
that may be true, but it doesn't mean humans can survive if a significantly higher percentage of it is disolved in the atmosphere and oceans, vs. in an inert form. a lot of things are harmless (or beneficial) to humans until the proportions are changed.
Carbon dioxide is not "dissolved" in the atmosphere. It is one of the gases that make up the atmosphere. Also carbon dioxide is an inert gas; that is why it is often used in fire extinguishers. perhaps you are confusing 'inert' with 'noble'?
No shortage of planets or space
Humans just need to get past this age in one piece
The article makes a lot of false assumptions and actually refutes most of what he claims to be happening. If we can't survive having nine billion people on the planet then we won't have that many people. Simple. That really isn't worth writing about like he says in the first part of the article.
The Fed will continue to print until the Military seamlessly takes over. Without missing a beat.
Stop fretting. It doesn't get any better than that.
I'm surprised Zerohedge prints this clown's crap.
Sustainability means planning our future in a way that we do not set ourselves up to crash and burn at some future date. Long-term planning has not been something politicians excel at or are even good at. Our system is geared at getting politicians reelected and fulfilling the most pressing needs of today.
Things like profit, greed, and quenching our unrelinquishing desire for growth are placed in front of longer term issues and needs. Mapping out a logical and sustainable long-term plan requires delving into some rather hefty philosophical questions like what brings real happiness. More on this important topic in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/04/planning-sustainable-future-for-m...
Bummer. Like , Dude...you're TOTALLY BUMMERVILLE! You should burn one and chill. My kids are smart. They'll figure it out.