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Guest Post: Burning Down The House: Land, Water & Food
Submitted by Luke Eastwood
Burning Down The House: Land, Water & Food
I’m sure when Talking Heads wrote "Burning Down The House" that they didn’t exactly have financial collapse and environmental degradation in mind. Although with a verse like “Hold tight wait till the party's over. Hold tight we're in for nasty weather. There has got to be a way. Burning down the house” it’s hard not to see that song as strangely prophetic.
What we are now doing to the planet and to human society is exactly that – burning down the house while we are still living in it. Everyone needs fuel, especially during a bitter winter, but only a mad man starts deconstructing the house in order to burn bits of it in the stove or fireplace.
Almost as mad as that is stealing bits of other people’s houses to burn, but that at least is not soiling your own doorstep – well not at first. In a world of limited resources and limited space we’ve now reached the point where raiding our neighbours’ houses is the same thing as raiding our own house, because the net effect is the same – disaster on an unprecedented level.
Of course it’s easier to live in denial and keep on cannibalising the world’s vital resources at an ever-increasing rate and pretend that it’s business as usual, but in reality it is anything but that. The alarm bells from commentators from all sectors: science, economics, religion etc. are getting louder and more frequent, better argued and with the raw data to back it up, but we are still not listening.
Of course, the alarm bell was being rung fifty or more years ago by people such as Admiral Hyman Rickover in 19571, the now retiring Lester Brown2 and the late Rachel Carson3 (author of Silent Spring). Nobody really listened that well back then, although governments paid lip-service to these troublesome do-gooders. Now we know that what they said was entirely true, that we are headed for disaster and yet will still only get the tired old lip-service, as before or Koch Brother inspired denial.
The evidence is clearly there that we are depleting all of our resources far too quickly, especially the land we use to produce food and draw raw materials from4. In part a consequence of this, the fresh water supplies that are even more vital are also being depleted way too fast. Devastation of the land, especially deforestation exacerbates water loss and soil erosion. Couple this with increased damming of rivers, pollutant run-off into rivers, fracking and mining and you’ve a recipe for a water crisis, which will, in turn, lead to a food crisis5.
Without fresh water we cannot participate in agriculture – this is the basic fundamental industry that keeps most people on this planet alive. Of course, a few people subsistence farm or hunt and gather still, but this is a tiny, tiny fraction of the human population. The rest of the world relies on increasingly intensive agriculture to provide vegetables, grains, fruit and also meat for the several billion people that are busy doing something else with their time.
Although this is now a major catastrophe in the making – the current wisdom seems to be to gear up for water wars (metaphorical or actual), rather than making a cooperative effort to save or increase our existing water resources and manage the use of water to reduce ridiculous wastage levels6.
Governments and corporations are well aware that this is the new problem around the corner, or rather already here. The typical, unfortunate response seems to be competition, not cooperation7. Competition, of course can only end badly for most countries, and may indeed be the undoing of the entire human race, plus a whole raft of other species.
The recently banned, film ‘Under The Dome’8 highlights this problem of water pollution and over-use in the unstoppable march of China towards economic supremacy. In the end it is unlikely to be the Americans or any other country that will bring China’s economic miracle to an end – it will be the collapse of the environment that will force them to stop the machine. Bad air, bad water, bad land and total reliance on imported food will inevitably take its toll.
Of course these problems are not restricted to China, China is simply the canary in the coalmine. Across the Middle-East, Asia, Africa, southern Europe, USA and central and southern America there are increasing difficulties relating to the basics of food, water and the condition of the land9, 10.
While many of us are worried about ‘the economy’, whether or not we can afford that holiday or a new car; perhaps we should be more worried about what we are going to eat and drink in a few short years from now. Those of you familiar with Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy Of Needs’ will realise that iPads, holidays and fancy shirts will all go out of the window once our basic needs are in danger.
When our basic physiological and security needs are threatened then all else seems relatively insignificant. If this happens en masse, particularly on a global scale then the consumer economy that we all accept as the norm is likely to disappear almost overnight.
Although we all know that something must be done about the environment, but that concern has still failed to translate into concrete action. It’s almost as if we’ve noticed the chip-pan fire in the kitchen but continue watching the TV, hoping that it will go out by itself. Well the fire is not going to go out by itself, it has already spread to half the house11 and we are still on the couch, chatting about what we should do next.
James Carville came up with a great slogan for Bill Clinton’s election campaign – “It’s the economy, stupid”, to great effect. Well, I think a new variation on that phrase is long over due, as without the basics of life there is no economy and no house left to throw in the fireplace. I wonder if you can guess what that phrase might be? Suggestions welcome.
1 http://www.peakprosperity.com/energy-resources-and-our-future
2 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/25/lester-brown-vast-dus...
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
4 http://www.peakprosperity.com/video/85824/crash-course-chapter-23-enviro...
5 http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/11/dynamics-for-disaster-in-agricultu...
6 http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-water-barons-wall-street-mega-banks...
7 http://www.globalresearch.ca/nestle-continues-stealing-worlds-water-duri...
8 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-01/chinese-documentary-got-over-30...
9 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-26/its-end-march-and-9985-californ...
10 http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/irans-rivers-run-dry-amid-dr...
11 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-21/interstellar-scientist-warns-ea...
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Burned all my notebooks
What good are notebooks?
They won't help me survive
--Life After Wartime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzORu1dqEE0
....they knew the score.
Even weirder, from a couple stanzas before your quote:
"We got computers, we're tapping phone lines,
I know that that ain't allowed"
That song was released in 1979. Those nutty art students were crazy-prophetic.
Just move the capital to St. Louie, lock, stock and barrel.
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
I'm not worried about my basic needs. I have a credit card and a nearby WalMart.
And if you are lucky you have a part time job as a Walmart greeter waiting after they guy your retirement savings. And far as your credit card goes? ZIRP will go on as consumer debt interest rates fly to max.
Why is it that banks who can borrow at 0% feel the need to up the ante on credit cards to 19% at the low?
Alex : I take GREED and priveledge for $5 trillion please.
And you may find yourself
Living in an underwater shack
With max credit card debt
And an adult in the basement
And you may ask yourself:
Well, how did I get here?
Was this written by Chris Martenson under an assumed name?
America had its brush with pollution-induced death about 50 years ago. Same cause, same symptoms...and will have same solution.
Fricking Malthusians...
NOPE that comment is not true. Used to be this lawless arrogance, destruction and greed were reigned in.
So motive is same as it ever was...and now has bought off every single check and balance.
protocols of zion coming to a world not to far away...each and every one.
Renovators wanted: apply Ferguson Chamber of Commerce.
We're all just prophets tryna make a profit ~ C.W.
The Roof! The Roof! The Roof is on Fire!!!
That's prophecy right there.
We don't need no water, let the mother fucker burn!
-agreed; prophecy for shizzle. It all gunna burn
"One man scrounging for firewood is pathetic. A million people doing that will destroy a city."
-Yavlov Zhivago, from (Doctor Zhivago)
I've flown over the fields of Illinois at 1000 ft. They look like beach sand. All the carbon and microbes are gone. It will take a thousand years of buffalo stomping on prairie grass to bring it back.
Just look at Haiti, stripped clean of any firewood.
DaddyO
Yeah and Hilary's hands were in there too. Haiti was raped, is being raped, These fools never ever ever will stop until they are stopped. And I think many people are now aware that the stopping will not, cannot be kind. Because kind has been dismantled. There is not "kind" way left.
Rule of law does not exist. So there must be another rule of law. Pretty basic one IMHO. When Jamie Dimon laughs and says" I will do it anyway so just fine me"....and that is par these days.
When rule of any law that governs the 99% collapses there are a few options left.
So, the lesson of Easter Island is lost in time? Figgers....
suggested slogan? "It's life in every form stupid."
Oh what shall we do when bees/pollinators die off? (ignore it). What shall we do when superbugs resist? (ignore it)....what shall we do when the oceans die? (who gives a fuck because it will be my grandkids who have to deal with it)...what shall we do when GMO patents take over food supply (who cares my stock goes up and people in Africa continue to starve.. we can sue some folks organically)....what shall we do?
give bonuses to Dimon and the Boyz. Buy Obama's post retirement books. Feed our savings into bail-ins. Watch species go extinct. Throw roses at gladiators in the circus that distracts. Vote for A or B (who are the same). Get fed another incsecurity by ads. Lose our homes and jobs. Spend any income on high fructose garbage.
I could go on.
<-- Talking Heads (the band)
<-- talking heads (on TV)
People whose lines inspire you.
Talking Head
Anyone remember this story about Post-Peak Oil living 100 or so years from now....
...Here we stand
There was a factoryLike an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it's nothing but flowers...
Now there are mountains and rivers
you got it, you got it We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
we got it, we got it There was a shopping mall
Now it's all covered with flowers
you've got it, you've got it If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
you've got it, you've got it
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=nothing+but+flowers+lyrics
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... www.nettrader2.com
Well I'm about to get upset from watchin' my teevee,
Been checkin' out the news until my eyeballs fail to see.
That evey day in every way is just another rotten mess,
And when it's gonna change my friend, is anybody's guess.
"I’m sure when Talking Heads wrote "Burning Down The House" that they didn’t exactly have financial collapse and environmental degradation in mind."
It's what I thought -- storm clouds gathering -- at the time and I doubt I'm alone on that.
How do you know what's they had in mind?
They foresaw the LA riots
Stevie Wonder saw that one coming.
I didn't say I know, I said that's what I was thinking of.
"Here's your ticket, pack your bags
Time for jumpin' overboard
Transportation is here
Close enough but not too far,
Maybe you know where you are
Fightin' fire with fire..Whoaa..."
If the problem is in fact as stated, then the solution is simple and obvious.
Just let the cities go: they can never be self sustaining.
The population will adjust quite rapidly given the survival -skill levels prevalent amongst the urban folk.
Green acres is the place to be.
Farm living is the life for me.
Land spreading out so far and wide.
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.
Rachel Carson has indirectly killed millions of Africans by mallaria. Spare me the source and realize this is the same old tripe we have been served since the 70's. Mostly exaggerated or flat out wrong so it must be some evil Koch brothers fault it hasn't happened yet. Of course the solution is to exterminate a few billion human beings to get back to a sustainable population which then can be controlled by the Central Planners to ensure Smart Living. I will take a pass on that one.
Political ideologies under the cover of saving the planet.
Lets play it like this: If science cannot provide a compelling enough case for people to voluntarily save themselves, then let us perish. I am sick of people trying to save me from myself. Educate me...fine. Inform me to the risks and rewards...great. Just don't use it as an excuse to create tyranny.
Let them water their crops with fracking fluid. I'm sure Monsanto can engineer a crop that flourishes in that environment.........
and you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
I remember having to look up what a shotgun shack was. Now - on a total off topic - Stones' Sympathy for the Devil - I know all the events referenced but one. - wtf are the....."troubadours who were killed before they reached Bombay"? Bothered me for years. Drove me to drink.
I always assumed it was a reference to Gandhi.
That's what I mean. Like CA 's post above - it's a vague reference while all the other events in the lyrics are pretty easily identified. Weird - I really have to let that go
The troubadors are a reference to traveling musicians killed and robbed by Indian thugs.
I believe The Stones are referring to the death of Paul McCartney and the ensuing "death" of The Beatles as everybody knew them at the time. Mick Jagger helped the band integrate and train his replacement.
Do you have any idea how long people have been preaching the doom of overpopulation and agricultural nightmares? Peak oil was lamented in 1920. We were supposed to die of overpopulation and starvation by 1980. We were supposed to have rising seas taking Manahattan by now. Sure, we need to think about these things and do what we can to preserve our resources. But now, with the economic mess we are facing you want what? Start walking everywhere and eating grass?
As a friend of mine said the other night, "We have an overpopulation of psychopaths problem."
I would add, "We also have a problem of peak war, not peak oil."
Quips aside, the problem begins with, and flows from, Zion's banksters' printing and theft. All else is nothing but symptoms.
The banksters need to repay us.
"To much Zion going on."
"To much Zion going on...
Cover the windows, lock the doors
Leave the plebs on the lawn,
Fertilize the grass, it's ok, just don't ask,
If a few drop out the ranks,
It's better for the masses...
Did you say bio diversity?
Na you never shoulda D,
There's nothing that can be done,
So we'll pick a new adversity,
Something that can be arranged,
What can we say?
Some climate change?
Bring out the bells and whistles,
We've got some demons to be hanged!
Now look at their solution,
An increase of social pollution,
Market raping, regulation,
most don't understand what they they are sayin,
But it has been decreed that we no long have a say in,
What is best, freedom has left and fukin stuck us with the check,
Can we stop this gotdam madness, nope not from the upper deck,
So how do we get down on the field???...
The “Christian” West is a master at propaganda and self-deception. Look at the evangelical "Christian" Zionist churches. They support a criminal, inhumane regime while professing to be followers of Christ. I totally give up on American religion as it stinks of politics and death at every turn. The kind of misery based on greed and materialism wiith inflections of rapists and child mutilators.
"They support a criminal, inhumane regime while professing to be followers of Christ. I totally give up on American religion as it stinks of politics and death at every turn."
You are so correct.
Also puzzling is how willing they are to have empire and Zion use their kids as cannon fodder in their rackets.
The banksters need to repay us
"War is a racket." Zion is the racketeer.
Whenever I read the term Peak Oil - I think of Mike Ruppert RIP. He got so fixated on that I don't think he could see beyond to the bigger picture. Was one of the first guys I followed - not always right but what a waste
Mike Ruppert was one of the people whom I credit with my awakening.
I recall reading several years worth of "From The Wilderness" newsletters and then buying Ruppert's book "Crossing The Rubicon". That was good stuff.
RIP Mike.
For awakenings - I'd give a salute to Wm Cooper also. Strange death. Way ahead of the times. RIP
I too was 'awakened' by FTW(FromTheWilderness) and Mike Ruppert.
I read about Peak Oil on his site back in 2001-2002ish. Read his (and his contributers) until it closed down.
Sad. RIP Mike.
Still some great reading there.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
For example, Want to know who shot Robert Kennedy? (Google: Thane Eugene Cesar)
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/rfk.html
I eat a lot of grass. I do run it through a cow first.
Luciferians!
You keep posting this mantra - are you channeling Mde Blovotsky?
Luciferians!
Oh - it's you Ms Bailey - I saw your last report on the Trust . Things seem to be going well there. Now - back to the undead .......sleeeeeeep
Maybe 'Lucy Ferry Anns' are the same people that one scholar (C.J. Bjerknes) refers to, who claims that...
A heretical cult, the "Shabataian Frankists," controls organized Jewry, including Zionism and Freemasonry.
They believe Shabatai was the Messiah (God) and his soul has transmigrated down to the Rothschild dynasty, who are now the "king of the Jews."
According to their messianic system, Redemption requires that the Rothschilds become God, i.e. king of the world. This will see the sacrifice of 2/3 of all Jews and the destruction and enslavement of the rest of mankind. Bjerknes believes this demented creed actually is the motive force behind history, including all wars, and world government.
http://just-another-inside-job.blogspot.de/2007/07/what-every-jew-and-no...
Pretty deep stuff there Jim, maybe it's time to go hit the Holodeck for some R&R...
DaddyO
page not found...
However, they are not "burning down the house," but stealing it.
They are burning the inhabitants.
The banksters need to repay us.
Cue a Doors song...
Infinite growth on a finite planet, what could possibly go wrong?
http://olduvai.ca
I think Pink Floyd had some extremely prophetic lyrics in Dogs as well...
"And when you lose control you'll reap the harvest you have sown."
Two Suns in the Sunset
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3TSz30Nj2n4
Many large civilizations have been ended by changes to their ability to grow crops. Either a climate change, a weather pattern shift, a using up of ground water, a playing out of the soil. This is par for the course. 21st century civilization will experience a massive collapse from a line up of changes coming. What is certain is that WAR will be the biggest business going on for a very long time. We are just at the cusp of the great 21st century battle to be the one holding the most resources and most livable land masses.
The seas are the ground zero of change right now. As their productive capacity decreases and their storm generating capacity explodes, the men with the biggest guns will decide who is on the wrong side of the great collapse. At least until one losser refuses to accept defeat, and goes nuclear. That is the logical next more for a big nation that just got beaten in a major resource war.
I give it 25 years, within that time frame a great war will be raging all across the world. Not very likely we avoid it, as money printing, bankers financial engineering and government regulations are fast running out of effect in the real world we ihabit.
Keep an eye on California. The El-Nino that developed failed to form near the coasts, that would have driven rains ashore to save that state. Instead, due to larger climate cycles, the El-Nino developed Mid Ocean, and this effect is associated with DRY weather in California. I'de say for the next two years, keep a sharp eye on what happens there. If rains don't come from somewhere we least expect, California will be royall fucked by 2016-7.
We've been royally fucked since there's been liberals in the State House. Water to minnows, none to crops...
In a world focused on self hate, white guilt and humanity as a disease on the planet, progressives are intent on saving the planet...not us.
"We've been royally fucked since there's been liberals in the State House."
they didn't get in there w/o your help, did they.
too late to pass the buck
Complexity Theory is considered useful in studying and trying to predict Catastrophic Failures in Complex Systems.
As I understand the concepts and the math behind it, when two or three system-critical parameters get close to their Limit, some external force that is strongly coupled to two or more other critical and maxed-out parameters, creates a Domino effect that amounts to an Avalanche effect. This becomes the Black Swan event -- AFTER it has occurred. Until then it's just a Grey Swan.
That's when all hell breaks loose, until a new temporary or durable equilibrium is reached.
Alas the US government seems hellbent on exacerbating key system parameters in the world (via its Monetary, Financial Military, Political and Social policies), rather than use its Best & Brightest and have them work with similar people in the G20.
Sadly, all I'm seeing is the Best & Brightest in the Bankster industry ("Fed & Friends"), seeking to max out their kingdoms of bottomless private greed and ambition.
To use a metaphor, "We will reap the Hurricane that we have sown across the ocean" (where real hurricanes are born).
"We are just at the cusp of the great 21st century battle to be the one holding the most resources and most livable land masses."
you want to flesh this one out a little bit.
the ussa is losing this 'battle' as we speak - resources and livable land mass. they are destrying their own resources (clean water and land) and livable land mass.
are you fighting for land mass in iraq, afghan?
what resources is the ussa fighting for besides oil?
what other countries are fighting for land mass? CN, RU, south america?
CA is becoming an irradiated desert. El Nino? you're joking. look at Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, etc they're drying up, look at the maps.
not tomorrow, not 25 yrs from now. now!
what a 'head-up-their-ass" society. exceptionalist day-dreamers living in a police state.
tic toc
doomed
There is no real shortage of resources only artificial ones to drive up the price.
We don't use up resources, we just move them around, spread them out or concentrate them, roadside dust in 1st world countries now contains a higher concentration of platinum than the ore that is dug from the ground, it is just more convenient (cheaper) to mine the ore, when it isn't then we will sweep the verges.
The stoneage didn't end because of a shortage of stone, it ended because something better came along, the oil age will end when more efficient energy supplies are discovered/created.
Shortages are created because of monopoly control, when that control becomes too burdensome it is overthrown.
The most important resources can't be replaced: water, soil, food. Doesn't matter how much energy there is if all the soil has degraded to the point it can't grow anything or all the water is undrinkable.
You're kidding, right? Energy will help replenish soil (it only takes dying vegetation to do that, right?), and to make water potable. We have an entire ocean - only takes desalination. Water is being continuously recycled through evaporation only to fall as clean rain - which can be captured and stored.
There are a million solutions. Water and soil aren't going anywhere - and the planet would have to be a void husk for there to be no food. All of the sun's energy is cycled into the food chain - it may change shape a bit, but it ain't going anywhere.
Nope, there is no shortage of easy solutions. The problem lies within the coincidental lack of monetary initiative... Now who controls that valuable resource?
The basic mechanisms are that civilization is controlled through backing up lies with violence. No theoretical solutions to various problems are practically possible unless they work through the established systems based on the history of being able to back up lies with violence, which became the legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, manifesting as the established monetary system being ENFORCED FRAUDS.
To put it another way, whatever the creative alternatives may be (and I believe there are plenty), none actually can be implemented outside of the established death control systems, that back up the debt control systems. Any more "money" to pay to implement any alternatives, within the established systems, must be created out of nothing as debts, while those debt slavery systems have already generated numbers which are debt insanities.
I happen to mostly agree with the article above. However, there are no politically practical ways to prevent the human species from committing collective suicide, at least not without a series of political miracles to make better death control systems possible to implement. The paradoxical problems that being the best at dishonesty and violence in the short-term is able to defeat any other longer term considerations has made the systems that surround us, while merely facing those facts does not provide any immediately realistic ways to prevent those who are the best at being dishonest and violent from continuing to control civilization in each short-term increment, by doing more of that ... Meanwhile, the real world is headed towards resolving the real problems listed in the article above by developing runaway death insanities, through which the majority of the human population will be mass murdered, since that is the default setting of social pyramid systems, which is the only one that the established systems have actually fully prepared to be able to implement.
IF there is any compromise possible between the real and the ideal, it will be developed by the runaway death insanities being directed into better death control systems. Not much, but still the best which could actually, maybe, develop ...
.
Apparently this guy never heard of the driveway age.
Saw The Talking Heads in Flint, Michigan in the late 70's--they opened for April Wine. They only played like three songs and were booed violently off the stage. Hundreds of beers were raining on the stage and in the middle of a song they said fuck it, destroyed all of their instruments and walked off the stage.
yeah, flint mi doesn't exist anymore does it. lmao
Been fishing lately?
Once the Singularity arrives, our replacements won't need food (as such) or water. The hydroponics required to raise organic strawberries and cream just for the few tens of thousands of humans remaining after the proles have been polished off will cost nearly nothing.
So why should anyone in a position to do anything about care if we're on our way to dying of hunger, thirst or from choking on our own vomit?
Good Lord, now people are writing articles for ZH using ZH articles as reference ... this is an opinion page, and while there are a few facts thrown out every now and then the Tylers normally supply opinion on the world's events. Using previous articles to support a theory is just wrong ... oh so wrong. What do they teach you people in school, anyway?
The only people running out of water live in a desert. Anything west of the Mississippi River in the US is a desert and it is the natural state of things for water to be scarce there. If the Great Valley is running out of groundwater to grow crops, OH WELL WE'LL JUST HAVE TO GROW OUR OWN FRICKIN LETTUCE LOCALLY!!!!! This is starting to happen anyway, as the prices have risen to the point that it's somewhat economical to do so.
As far as energy, between oil, gas and coal there is no lack of energy in this country. There is an abundance of regulation and restriction, but no lack of energy. Is it higher in price than what the Saudis can produce it for? No doubt ... but there's no lack of it. I saw the hilarious story that went from ZH to Drudge on peak gold (and copper and zinc and nickel ...). The original authors hinted at the fact that reserves estimates rarely go out more than 20 years because the economics don't aid project viability to go out any further than 20 years. But that doesn't mean that in 20 years all our mines will be closed, it just means people are realistic and don't extrapolate further than the accountants recquire. Unless you're a climate modeler ... then you extrapolate out 100s of years without batting an eyelash.
Meaning you can't see what has happened and continues to happen in China is happening elsewhere?
Learn about microbes. There is a powerful message there.
And water...it is increasingly polluted. Water that looks pure and clean is becoming more toxic. The 'acid rains' that have affected the U.S. north east? That stuff has continued to accumulate.
It is becoming 'water water everywhere and not a drop to drink'.
"Using previous articles to support a theory is just wrong ... oh so wrong. "
Not necessarily. If the article referred to has itself been properly referenced there's no reason why it can't be used.
"Using previous articles to support a theory is just wrong ... oh so wrong. "
Not necessarily. If the article referred to has itself been properly referenced there's no reason why it can't be used.
For those that continue to believe infinite growth is possible on a finite planet, might I suggest watching the late Dr Albert Bartlett's presentation entitled Arithmetic, Population, and Energy
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8
No one believes in infinite growth. We are seeing population growth leveling off and actually reversing in developed countries. We are seeing petroleum usage leveling off as well. The only thing that looks infinite to me is government spending and they are the only ones who can't see its impossibilities.
"The greatest failing of humans is the inability to understand geomentric progressions" (paraphrasing Dr. Bartlett.)
Absolutely Right skbull44
Notice the bargaining in the phrase "Ya but.... blah blah blah"
We are in Overshoot pure and simple.
As well as Oldwood's comment, the thesis suffers from its assumption that "growth" requires increased physical resources. Value is provided by growth in functionality, not necessarily growth in the physical resources used to provide that functionality.
If you look at old buildings you will see they were relatively resource intensive compared to the way we today build to provide actually greater functionality.
50 years ago a "powerful" computer filled a good size room, to provide a minute fraction of the computing power in modern phones, and the software had none of the sophistication that has been built since.
As societies develop, particularly when they develop quickly, for a period their consumption of physical resources is directly correlated with growth, but then the combination of technology and changed consumption patterns breaks the correlation.
I am not suggesting there are no limits ever to growth, but the assumptions of constant growth/physical resource relationships behind exponential growth hysteria is just overly simplistic.
Luke, I haven't even read the post yet- but burning down the house can be found on two albums at least. The studio version was called Speaking In Tongues and the live one is on Stop Making Sense.
Most would dismiss David Byrne as some kind of idiot savant- I don't think so.
David was right. Ya' can't make sense of a world speaking in tongues (attorneys) while the general public is mostly unaware of the tongues being spoken and willing to accept the 6:00 news version of things.
I really would love to meet that dude, David Byrne.
"Most would dismiss David Byrne as some kind of idiot savant"
really?
what idiot would do that.
this guy said more in his music than most philosophers, priests, seers, politicians, psychiatrists could fathom in a lifetime
Apparently, an idiot like yourself.
David, himself said that the words aren't important- it's the cadence- and the repetition.
The dude was mad as a march hare, and I still find his work fascinating.
He was diagnosed with Asberger's. Seriously.
We 're on a road to nowhere
The economy is 100% based on burning fossil fuels.
Since we have no alternative then we must burn fossile fuels.
Unless of course we don't want an economy.
And not only that, the economy must keep growing or we get a deflationary collapse SO we must use more energy year after year (read fossil fuels)
And furthermore, the fossil fuels must be cheap to extract otherwise they destroy growth and we get a deflationary collapse
We are running out of cheap to extract fossil fuelds
Therefore:
WE ------------ ARE ----------- FUCKED
I don't know what economy you are talking about, but where I live the economy is largely based on agriculture.
Not only that , but we have large amounts of coal which nobody wants at the moment. We also have a bit of gas left and our oil is largely untouched.
So I guess your story only applies in certain places. You could well be fucked , but it's fine here.
How would your farm go if you have no access to petrol or diesel?
Pretty well. I might grow a little bit of sunflower or rape seed for bio diesel , but the cows do most of the harvesting in a pastoral farm situation.
Maybe you call it ranching or free range grazing .
"I live the economy is largely based on agriculture."
tractors, rubber, fertilizer, feeds, gasoline, diesel, lubricants, plastic, etc etc etc
or maybe you live on another planet. lol
Have you heard of sustainable agriculture /grass fed etc.
Not all agriculture in the world looks like the US model which is possibly the least sustainable.
Sure you've got a problem , but I'm in N.Z. and I don't have a problem.
Maybe you are right: maybe N.Z. really is like another planet.
Fertilizer production is apparently one of the biggest users of oil.
Depends what you are talking about. Nitrogen comes free , out of the air , sequestered by rhizobia growing in nodules on the roots of legumes.
My soil is rich in calcium , magnesium , and potassium from the parent rock.
There is plenty of sulphur in N.Z.
I use a wee bit of phosphorus once every 5 years.
Bottom Line... "It's the MONEY Stupid"...
Solar-powered desalination. Have yet to hear a convincing argument against it.
If ionic liquids are the answer to the rare earth
-extraction-pollution problem, then you may be right.
Where's the money for the solar panels come from?
Where's the enrgy to make the solar panels come from?
Where's the money for the massive pipe and pumping infrastructure come from?
Where's the energy for pumping millions of gallons of water come from?
You can't escape it, everything, EVERYTHING requires cheap oil. Even building stuff tthat will help us avoid using cheap oil requires cheap oil.
In the Gulf region they get most of their water this way. Can't you use the same piping, pumping and plumbing infrastructure?
Where will they money come from? The FRB!
Cultural Marxism is behind this
Rachel Carson's silent spring was proven to be a farce and lies. Given the fact that this author is pushing views which are known to be lies and have resulted in the death of tens of millions of people I cannot trust other points in this article w/o further research. Maybe Carson pushed for the DDT ban because of her dark environment views, she clearly supported human depopulation, but like most liberals she was talking about "other people of lesser value" at least in her mind. Maybe if she would have pushed her agenda by setting an example she would have more credit, she could have easily terminated herself first. Of course no self-serving, agenda pushing liberal would ever do that.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/09/05/rachel-carsons-deadly...
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html
http://hidingthetruth.com/how-the-ddt-ban-is-killing-millions/
I also want to add that the author references deforestation , which again has recently been debunked..
https://blogs.csiro.au/ecos/despite-decades-of-deforestation-the-earth-i...