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Techno-Narcissism & The Real Limits To Growth

Tyler Durden's picture




 

Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

If there is a Pulitzer Booby Prize for stupidity, waste no time in awarding it to The New York Times’ Monday feature, The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion. The former “newspaper of record” wants us to assume now that the sky’s the limit for human activity on the planet earth. Problemo cancelled. The article and accompanying video was actually prepared by a staff of 23 journalists. Give the Times another award for rounding up so many credentialed idiots for one job.

Apart from just dumping on Stanford U. biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb (1968), this foolish “crisis report” strenuously overlooks virtually every blossoming fiasco around the world. This must be what comes of viewing the world through your cell phone.

One main contention in the story is that the problem of feeding an exponentially growing population was already solved by the plant scientist Norman Borlaug’s “Green Revolution,” which gave the world hybridized high-yielding grain crops. Wrong. The “Green Revolution” was much more about converting fossil fuels into food. What happens to the hypothetically even larger world population when that’s not possible anymore? And did any of the 23 journalists notice that the world now has enormous additional problems with water depletion and soil degradation? Or that reckless genetic modification is now required to keep the grain production stats up?

No, they didn’t notice because the Times is firmly in the camp of techno-narcissism, the belief that the diminishing returns, unanticipated consequences, and over-investments in technology can be “solved” by layering on more technology — an idea whose first cousin is the wish to solve global over-indebtedness by generating more debt. Anyone seeking to understand why the public conversation about our pressing problems is so dumb, seek no further than this article, which explains it all.

Climate change, for instance, is only mentioned once in passing, as though it was just another trashy celebrity sighted at a “hot” new restaurant in the Meatpacking District. Also left out of the picture are the particulars of peak oil (laughed at regularly by the Times, which proclaimed the US “Saudi America” some time back), degradation of the ocean and the stock of creatures that live there, loss of forests, the political instability of whole regions that can’t support exploded populations, and the desperate migrations of people fleeing these desolate zones.

As averred to above, the Times also has no idea about the relation of finance to resources. The banking problems we see all over the world are a direct expression of the limits to growth, specifically the limits to debt creation. We can’t continue to borrow from the future to pay for our comforts and conveniences today because we have no real conviction that these debts can ever be repaid. We certainly wish we could, and the central bankers running the money system would like to pretend that we could by making negligible the cost of borrowing money and engaging in pervasive accounting fraud. But that has only served to cripple the operation of markets and pervert the meaning of interest rates — and, really, as a final result, to destroy any sense of consequence among the people running things everywhere.

The crackup of that financial system will be the signal failure of the collapse of the current economic regime. The financial system is the most fragile of all the systems we depend on (though the others do not lack fragility). This is the reason, by the way, that oil prices are so low, despite the fact that the cost of producing oil has never been higher. The oil customers are going broke even faster than the oil producers. Does anybody doubt that the standard of living in the USA is falling, despite all our cell phone apps?

The basic fact of the matter is that the energy bonanza of the past 200-odd years produced a matrix of complex systems, as well as a hypertrophy in human population. These complex systems — banking, agri-biz, hop-scotching industrialization, global commerce, Eds & Meds, Happy Motoring, commercial aviation, suburbia — have all reached their limits to growth, and those limits are expressing themselves in growing global disorder and universal bankruptcy. Do the authors of The New York Times report think that the oil distribution situation is stable?

There were two terror bombings in Saudi Arabia the past two weeks. Did anyone notice the significance of that? Or that the May 29th incident was against a Shiite mosque, or that the Shia population of Saudi Arabia is concentrated in the eastern province of the kingdom where nearly all of the oil production is concentrated? (Or that the newly failed state of neighboring Yemen is about 40 percent Shiite?) Have any of the 23 genius-level reporters at The New York Times tried to calculate what it would mean to the humming global economy if Arabian oil came off the market for only a few weeks?

Paul Ehrlich was right, just a little off in his timing and in explicating with precision the unanticipated consequences of limitless growth. But isn’t it in the nature of things unanticipated that they generally are not?

 

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Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:29 | 6152230 MayIMommaDogFac...
MayIMommaDogFace2theBananaPatch's picture

Paul Scarelich is a fool and should be treated as one.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:42 | 6152262 PartysOver
PartysOver's picture

My Propaganda Alert when batshiat when I read The New York Times’.  I did not bother to read further.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:46 | 6152278 Headbanger
Headbanger's picture

I'm really disappointed there was no mention in the NY Times of the Super High Intensity Thingy that will blast the massive comet coming at us into bits.

That's just GOT to be true too!

Right??

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:45 | 6152816 SWRichmond
SWRichmond's picture

Cuntsler is the MFing narcissist.  I've been pointing out for years that debt is the actual (and unsustainable) driving force behind resource exhaustion, not technical advancement.  Stupid Malthusians.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 16:27 | 6152975 free shit plz
free shit plz's picture

Is kunstler that jew loving old cunt who supports israel? Why are his old man rants published on zerohedge, this guy was/is a peak oiler, saying oil will be $300 a barrel in 2015.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 20:48 | 6153783 Matt
Matt's picture

Oil would be $300 per barrel if demand could keep up. Turns out, demand breaks down at higher prices. 

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:45 | 6152265 froze25
froze25's picture

To quote the movie Dune, "The spice must flow" in this case we have a sandy desert instead of a planet and the "spice" is oil.  But in the movie the planets people took control of the product that the universe depended on the "spice" in this case the Shiite may take control of the oil a resource the planet depends on.  The Sci-fi version was pretty good.

Also the worlds population could fit in the State of Texas with Nassau County NY's density.  There is no population problem there is only a control "problem" with too many people.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:54 | 6152323 TBT or not TBT
TBT or not TBT's picture

The Emporer's solution to the spice embargo was to send 10 legions of elite warriors to "wipe out all life on Arrakis"   It didnt work because the natives' god turned out to have awesome supernatural powers.  On Earth, in the real world, the Arabs and Persians and magrebain peopes' god does not exist.  Their shenanigans are made possible by our own self imposed ethical constraints.  

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:00 | 6152356 froze25
froze25's picture

That is true I see you are a fan of the movie, but the real possibility of a major disruption in the oil production could and may happen if an all out civil (religious) war breaks out in the area.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:19 | 6152440 Headbanger
Headbanger's picture

BULLSHIT FROZE YOU MOOK!

Nassau County has 4705 people/ sq mile and Texes is 268,820 square miles

So that's only about 1.2 billion people

Not even close.


Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:51 | 6152845 froze25
froze25's picture

I Stand corrected.  Thank you, one mook to another.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:24 | 6152455 Parsecs Taxi
Parsecs Taxi's picture

What movie, that movie by David Lynch, the one he himself has completely disavowed?

No one is a fan of that movie.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:50 | 6152584 Citxmech
Citxmech's picture

I hope he's talking about the series on SciFi - although a bit "play-like," it was very well done IMHO and stayed very close to the books.

The David Lynch version sucked major donkey balls.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:55 | 6152608 Parsecs Taxi
Parsecs Taxi's picture

Agreed, and I'm a huge David Lynch fan.

Its too bad people can't read anymore, because Dune is a true classic.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:49 | 6152836 froze25
froze25's picture

The books are def better, start getting a bit weird with Leto being a giant worm but still a good read and that is what Sci-fi is all about.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 16:05 | 6152883 TBT or not TBT
TBT or not TBT's picture

The older men of the region remember the Highway of Death, but yes possibly the young bucks of the ISIS don't.  

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:37 | 6152246 KnuckleDragger-X
KnuckleDragger-X's picture

Overpopulation in any ecosystem is self-correcting, if you don't interfere. The special snowflakes thinks starving is bad, but mass sterlilzation and abortions for the poorest will magically be wonderful if allows them to avoid any blame. If America seriously got out of the world policeman business and let nature take its course, things will come into balance and we won't have to bleed for it.....

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:58 | 6152346 Hype Alert
Hype Alert's picture

In a rational world maybe, but there is this little issue we have today called illegal immigrants.  Until the “last in” suddenly realize we can't keep letting their next of kin in under the fence, things won't change.  That both parties have incentives to pander to those voters and future voters, we will have to suffer some crisis before that changes.  It will probably take some terrorists walking in and doing some event.  Then, what and how has to get past the political filters and the media filters for the public to finally get down to the truth.  Then, we have to expect the public to get off their asses and demand a fix.  We've seen very little of that.  Remember, Snowden is the enemy, Hillary is walking free and in line to be President and Corzine is still free and about to start a hedge fund.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:25 | 6152463 KnuckleDragger-X
KnuckleDragger-X's picture

Yeah, but 'rational' thinking requires rational people and those are few and far between. The system WILL correct itself, violently it need be....

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:40 | 6152787 govtsucks
govtsucks's picture

Soylent Green, that's the ticket.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:40 | 6152258 SmittyinLA
SmittyinLA's picture

Invasion has to be financed, otherwise its a money losing operation.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:44 | 6152268 Which is worse ...
Which is worse - bankers or terrorists's picture

Hey that's why they invited Goldman Sachs! They are working on a coup d'etat in Greece right now. 

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:41 | 6152260 Chuck Knoblauch
Chuck Knoblauch's picture

What does a doctor do to shock the heart back into rythm?

Ground yourselves.

CLEAR!

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:41 | 6152261 Batman11
Batman11's picture

When it stops working you just change the rules.

The dollar used to be convertible to gold but too many people preferred gold to dollars and the gold outflows became a problem.

Change the rules - the dollar is no longer convertible to gold - problem solved.

Today.

Money doesn't have to be created from debt, that is just the way it works now.

Bankers do like this system as it is very profitable for them and they not going to let go until there is a real crisis (coming soon).

See the positive money web site for the necessary rule change,

 

 

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:43 | 6152264 wall8ce
wall8ce's picture

Limitless growth on a finite world!...a few of us know differantly Howard "but" I have noticed these past few years that many more people are becomming  aware that we are reaching limits of the energy we use and the money we have in our pockets dont buy any thing near as much as it did ten years ago

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 16:49 | 6153073 Money Boo Boo
Money Boo Boo's picture

thanks for posting that, although the prolls will not be happy with such enlightenment

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:44 | 6152267 i_call_you_my_base
i_call_you_my_base's picture

The people who think technology can solve all problems are typically entrepreneurs that want you to invest in their technologies, or technology users fooled by such claims. I'm betting the authors of the NYT article are the latter. They think that because they have cell phones and facebook that some sort of technology revolution has occurred. But the truth is that none of these technologies are revolutionary, they are only revolutionary in that they have high adoption rates.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:22 | 6152711 Citxmech
Citxmech's picture

Miniturization, cheap digital storage, and data processing has lead to impressive products to be sure, but these things do absolutely nothing to address the looming issues of limited water, depleating soils, and decreasing EROEI.  

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:46 | 6152277 DJ CapGainz
DJ CapGainz's picture

"Paul Ehrlich was right, just a little off in his timing and in explicating with precision the unanticipated consequences of limitless growth. But isn’t it in the nature of things unanticipated that they generally are not?"

A) Erhlich didn't write about limitless growth; he wrote about growth rates in excess of what he thought the planet could support.

B) Ehrlich wasn't right then nor is he now.

C) There are reasons the world sits in a hell-bound handbasket, but they have little to do with CO2, oil consumption or corn production.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:58 | 6152343 SmallerGovNow2
SmallerGovNow2's picture

6CO2 + 6H2O + Sunlight Energy ------> C6H12O6 + 6O2

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:09 | 6152658 MayIMommaDogFac...
MayIMommaDogFace2theBananaPatch's picture

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970's and 1980's hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.
- Paul Ehrlich - the first sentence of his 1968 ``The Population Bomb''

 

This vast tragedy, however, is nothing compared to the nutritional disaster that seems likely to overtake humanity in the 1970s (or, at the latest, the 1980s) ... A situation has been created that could lead to a billion or more people starving to death.
- Paul Ehrlich, "The End of Affluence" (1974), p.21

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:33 | 6152741 malek
malek's picture

That quote should be put into the comments of any "population explosion disaster" article!

(Note: it's diffcult to vote on a coment that starts with italics: Right-click on the posters name, press Esc to close context-menu, press tab 2 or 3 times until a single quote appears on the up- or down-vote arrow you want to operate, then press Enter.)

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 16:05 | 6152886 walküre
walküre's picture

Ehrlich made himself a propaganda blow horn for Monsanto et al which started the GMO and Roundup revolution right around then to feed the global hunger. Cancer rates in America have never been higher. They wanted to feed us all and instead, they're slowly killing us. We are weeds to them.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:47 | 6152286 Ignatius
Ignatius's picture

"The banking problems we see all over the world are a direct expression of the limits to growth, specifically the limits to debt creation."

Any usury based money system always requires a reset and write-down at some point.  As Dr. Michael Hudson has said, "Debts that can't be repaid won't be repaid.  The question then becomes how it won't be repaid."

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 13:58 | 6152337 q99x2
q99x2's picture

At the end of limitless growth don't people's sources of money finally run out such that in order to make more they have to take from what others have. And, that the result is the use of force once financial fraud fails to produce. And, don't they know this. And, aren't they using fraud to move as much money into their hands to pay for the force that will soon be necessary to maintain what they have and to obtain more with respect or rather disrepect for what others have. These kinds of things are not happy things.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:08 | 6152393 JetsettingWelfareMom
JetsettingWelfareMom's picture

"Only when the last river is poisoned and the last tree is cut down will people realize that they cannot eat money." Native American proverb. Limitless growth of what? A fictional fiat currency? I think the genuises on Wall Street realized that they need unlimied population growth to constantly expand the pool of ever greater fools for their Ponzi scheme to run into perpetuity. Not going to happen these journlists need to put their money where their mouth is and start cranking out the kids. Anyone?

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 16:00 | 6152868 Learn more and ...
Learn more and know less's picture

Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realize that reciting red indian proverbs makes you sound like a fucking muppet.

  • Banksy
Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:23 | 6152448 Dixie Flatline
Dixie Flatline's picture

Kuntzler is a joke.  I'm all for doom porn, but it has to be credible.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:42 | 6152551 ThirdWorldDude
ThirdWorldDude's picture

Kuntzler is an idiot if he believes the JYT stooges wrote the text as it is out of incompetence. Technocracy is an agenda that's being actively pushed...

Corbett Report - "Exposing the Dark Agenda Behind the 'Resource-Based' Economy"

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 20:11 | 6153665 Dixie Flatline
Dixie Flatline's picture

Corbett is an even bigger flake than Kunzler.  What a kook.

Tue, 06/02/2015 - 01:30 | 6154469 ThirdWorldDude
ThirdWorldDude's picture

Sure, as you say, Mr. 5 weeks 1 days technocrap apologist.

Now, instead of your baseless ad hominem attacks, go ahead and refute (with links. evidence & all that) at least 1 of the conclusions that Corbett has drawn on the topics he's covered. I double-dog dare you!

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:36 | 6152465 Christ Lucifer
Christ Lucifer's picture

I like this narrative, hitting the limits. It seems the whole money system was set alight in a time of unforeseeable finality, and that is exactly the approach that allows the problem to be cancelled by intellectual debate as the world continues to paint itself into a corner, the impetus on the money and intellect and not the resources and the work to be done, because like the man says you can get an app for that. And isn't it kind of peculiar that the one leading the charge in intellectual property rights is the one sucking the world down the drain? Not to say that we may deconstruct the ivory tower in such a way that we compromise ourselves while leaving our denial intact as to compartmentalise and soften the blows of a failing system. It may just be a balancing act of coming into awareness for many who have marched to the beat of the war drums as we attacked each other and our own planet.

As is becomes apparent we are circling the rim there are those that will grasp at straws, things will go all sorts of sideways with erratic deployments of handbrakes, booster rockets, parachutes, all the mansions releasing the hounds at once and the harlots purchasing enough cosmetic surgery to secure a position in the boudoir of the the profane.

Falling in love with the attribute that is technology, hoping the exterior concept will solve the core issue that is left unabridged as we the humans grow to fill the problem that was always there, created in the mind's eye that shaped society as we know it. The realization will come that we were staring both the problem and the solution in the face all along, it's just the fast track seemed better at the time. As the old saying goes, if you take your power too early, the weak ones take your will, and you become of service to them, enslaved by the illusion of gratification.

Ponder this, ponder that, will there be enough stable minds to guide the rest, will there be solutions other than knee jerk reactions to pain or impending collisions. And to those that say there are no solutions, the trick is not to go higher in the hierarchy, but further back in the system, root out the repression in the secular function of society. And the atheists told us that science was safer than religion, I guess judgement day will show the answer on that one. Policy is a set of rules written and enforced, so in the same vein as he has the gold makes the rules, he who makes the rules, makes them to suit himself, and if the weak ones had already taken his will, then the rules will take the will of the subjects. Such is the need for a good King in our midst to counteract the world of liars the compression of information and division of labor has created.

And good spotting on the Saudi thing. 

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:29 | 6152483 Jack Burton
Jack Burton's picture

Over the past few months, reporting stations around the Arctic have shown a ramping rate of atmospheric methane accumulation. The curves in the graphs are steepening, hinting at a growing release of methane from a warming Arctic environment.

Alarming is an understatment! Since the last long term ice age, [we are still in one, the ice tide is out right now,] locked massive stores of carbon in permafrost soils and sea bed methane stores, they have lain silent and inactive, fot tens of thousands of years. Totally out of the carbon cycle. Now they are re-entering the atmosphere. The measurements don't lie, methane is releasing at a faster and faster pace. Science still refuses to accept the danger, they pretend it is not out of control. They will be proved dead wrong. The methane is only just starting to release. Let he NYT times send 1 of their 23 staff reporters north with the crews measuring methane across the tundra and arctic seas. But NO, they will not be sent, they will sit in New York and write the lies they are paid to write. Journalism in the USA is just one giant whore house.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:31 | 6152494 Jack Burton
Jack Burton's picture

 

"The science is pretty settled. There’s a massive store of ancient carbon now thawing in the Arctic.

In the land-based permafrost alone, this store is in the range of 1.3 billion tons — or nearly double the volume in the atmosphere right now. Arctic Ocean methane hydrates in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf add another 500 billion tons. A rather vulnerable store that does not include hundreds of billions of additional tons of carbon in the deeper methane hydrates around the Arctic in places like the Gakkel Ridge, in the Deep Waters off Svalbard, or in the Nares Strait. Massive carbon stores of high global warming potential gas locked in frozen ground or in ice structure upon or beneath the sea bed."

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 14:33 | 6152506 Jack Burton
Jack Burton's picture

"This accumulation and overburden of heat trapping gasses is causing the Arctic to rapidly warm. A rate of warming (now at half a degree Celsius per decade for most regions) that is providing a heat forcing pushing the ancient carbon stores to release. A heat forcing now greater than at any time in the past 150,000 years (and likely more due to the fact that the Eemian Arctic was rather cool overall). A heat forcing rapidly ramping toward at least a range not seen since major glaciation began in the Northern Hemisphere 2-3 million years ago."

So much for the NTY and their whore reporters.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:11 | 6152667 Urban Redneck
Urban Redneck's picture

If the science on that is "settled" and correct, then the ROI (financial or otherwise) on any "green investment" is negative.  FWIW

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:10 | 6152664 MASTER OF UNIVERSE
MASTER OF UNIVERSE's picture

Read Jacques Ellul's _Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes_ 1965. His thesis is that technological development works hand-in-hand with propaganda and cannot be divorced from propaganda. This means that propaganda is dependent upon technology to function. In brief, all modern contemporary propaganda is fully dependent upon technology to be effective in terms of exacting preferred attitudes and beliefs that governments and propagandists want to instill with their rhetoric. Without technology, propagandists would be fully transparent to the reader and would lose their covert edge to pull the wool over the eyes of readers rendering propaganda useless.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:27 | 6152727 malek
malek's picture

Wrong.

Successful technological development enables the removal or widening of physical limit impacts on humans, which then allows the psychopaths to run their lies for longer - but that's an unwanted side effect of technological development, not its goal.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:43 | 6152803 MASTER OF UNIVERSE
MASTER OF UNIVERSE's picture

Technology is subordinate to propaganda. Technology is not superordinate to propaganda. If you read Ellul's thesis you will get what he has attempted to convey. From the response you left it is clear that you have not read his book.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 23:40 | 6154283 malek
malek's picture

 Technology is subordinate to propaganda

That's a bullshit statement.
Technology doesn't need propaganda to come into existence. The perception of a new technology is an aspect of it.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 15:23 | 6152715 malek
malek's picture

So debt creation is equal to human proliferation?  Fuck you, JHK

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 17:07 | 6153130 kanoli
kanoli's picture

Kunstler should not be allowed to play with crayons. He writes stupid things.

Mon, 06/01/2015 - 22:26 | 6154098 Magooo
Magooo's picture

Nobody likes to be confronted by the truth - as is evidenced by the comments section

 

THE PERFECT STORM (see p. 59 onwards)

The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output (and in the global population) since the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the harnessing of ever-greater quantities of energy. But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2013/01/Perfect-Storm-LR.pdf

Mon, 06/08/2015 - 11:30 | 6174360 lisacolnett
lisacolnett's picture

Knee clicking tends to occur when the joints are being extended, and at times, it can be accompanied by severe pain. The knee starts to click because, more often than not, there is a part of the knee that is not in its proper position. Knee clicking

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