FEBRUARY 25 2017
THE GREAT BETRAYAL
I am sure that sooner than later we will experience an economic COLLAPSE. It seems to me that we live in a world that now resembles a house of cards. Everything is racing to its ultimate demise at neck-breaking speed.
Our population increase is well known.
The world population slowly increased until there were about 1 billion of mainly self-sufficient human beings around the year 1800. Then, thanks to coal-fired mechanization the next billion only took about 120 years, and accelerated from 2 billion in 1920 to the present 7.5 billion of ever more greedy customers today. A graph would show an almost vertical line up.
The same is true, of course, in energy consumption: it too climbed steeply and with it the pollution in the air we breathe, coupled with rising global temperature. ARCTIC NEWS on February 15 2017, less than two weeks ago, signaled that the global annual land surface temperature for 2016 was 1.43°C (2.57°F) above the 20th century average, surpassing the previous record of 2015 by 0.11°C (0.19°F). When we compare this to the year 1800, thus prior to the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, it is closer to 2°C higher, a goal that the UN hoped we might never reach!
While I am writing this the outside temperature is about 10 degrees warmer than the average for late February. Last week I hung out my maple syrup buckets before I left for a weekend family reunion in Canada’s Big City. When we returned late Sunday February 19, I checked the buckets and they were full: the earliest I have seen it ever.
Does this early heat spell doom for the harvest year?
This year so far has seen a constant rise in natural disasters and the year has barely begun. We have entered a period where the risks we face are becoming potentially far more extreme in their impacts, more probable in their likelihood, and potentially irreversible in their duration.
That we live on an edge of new times is becoming clearer by the day and will increasingly be part of our experience whether we admit to them or not. It so happens that the longer this state of freakish weather persists, the greater also the dangers of total collapse.
Next month the TRUMP administration will come up with a new budget which always contains economic growth projections. Since 2008 we have seen only tiny annual increases there. To make all the projection for expected revenues fit, the new government will need 3-4% annual growth, something not experienced since early 1970. The arrests up of illegal immigrants there remind me of my war years in Holland when the Nazis rounded up Jews and all males over 18 in a similar way. This cruel act will have very negative effects on the US economy.
That’s why, rather than growth, COLLAPSE is much more likely. All government expenditure is based on continuous increase in GDP, now needed more than ever to be able to pay for an aging population, their pensions and the inevitable increase in medical costs. Yet the opposite looms, negative growth, and vastly decreased tax receipts which spell doom.
A number of factors make COLLAPSE more likely to happen of which the environmental element is the most prominent. Sad to say but we, the inhabitants of North America, have the dubious honor of being the largest per capita polluters in the world, and also are in denial of this condition. Because of our lack of ecological awareness we deserve to be more inflicted by the forces of nature than any other part of the earth because we are like the cancer patient who ignores all symptoms until it is too late.
Some 200 years ago around the year 1800 when our planet supported some 1 billion people, the world was somewhat in balance. Food was grown and consumed locally, which had its risks as local inclement weather could then temporary jeopardize the harvest outcome.
How have circumstances changed! Today our food is a global affair: just imagine: we airfreight watery lettuce across the entire American Continent so that it takes 100 calories of fuel energy to bring just ONE food calorie of these green leaves from California to Ontario where I live!! Today everything is international, meaning that the average food calorie requires a minimum of 10 energy calories. A quick look at a typical dinner table will show that the green lettuce comes from California, the avocado from Mexico, the potatoes from Prince Edward Island, the meat perhaps from Alberta, the wine from may be as far away as Australia: and the list goes on.
In 1800 there was plenty of work, because all energy, except for wind to sail the ships and make the arms of the windmills move, came from muscle power, either human or animal.
Gail Tverberg in her latest blog of OUR FINITE WORLD makes the point that non-elite workers–that is, workers without advanced education or supervisory responsibilities–play a special role in our economy, because there are millions of them, many of them unemployed. TRUMP referred to them when he promised 25,000,000 (Twenty Five Million) new jobs.
Fat chance.
The overwhelming majority of the prime-age men in this un-working army generally don’t “do civil society” (charitable work, religious activities, volunteering), or for that matter much in the way of child care or help for others in the home either, despite the abundance of time on their hands. Their routine, instead, typically centers on watching—watching TV, DVDs, Internet, hand-held devices, etc.—and indeed watching for an average of 2,000 hours a year, as if it were a full-time job, a mind-dulling occupation.
It so happens that the US economy can only grow if these disappeared workers earn a living wage and so can afford to buy the goods, the cars, the houses, that are being produced or built. If these workers find fewer jobs available, or if these jobs don’t pay sufficiently well, the economy collapses. It’s as simple as that.
Today the TRUMP revolution was fueled by these same people who trusted Trump. I call it THE GREAT BETRAYAL because jobs are disappearing thanks to automation, a process that will simply accelerate.
President Trump also promised to replace the Affordable Care Act with something that is better, is cheaper and covers more people.
Scratch that too.
Republican leaders in the House and Mr. Trump’s secretary of health and human services released a plan last week that would provide insurance that is far inferior to OBAMA care, shifts more medical costs onto families and covers far fewer people. One of my daughters, living in New Mexico, told me last week that they pay $900 per month for healthcare for a family of 4, with large deductibles.
The Middle East is a good example of what will happen here as well.
The countries there, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran were food independent back in the 1950s, but now they are importing ¾ of their food. Yes, blame CLIMATE CHANGE.
This means these countries have to export a lot to pay for it. Fortunately these Middle East countries had oil and this provided the money to feed the landless millions. But now, thanks to more efficient machinery, and stagnating wages in the Western world, there is a peaking in the word oil production, while the price is too low to exploit new resources. Yes, we have ECONOMIC PEAK OIL.
DEBT
Another exponential graph is evident in DEBT.
While income growth has been lagging, since the year 2000 DEBT has increased exponentially. Debt is a product of Credit which in turn is based on FAITH. Credit comes from the Latin word CREDO, which means I BELIEVE. Belief in God has almost disappeared, so now we believe in anything and anybody – witness the TRUMP tragedy. Once we fail to believe in CREDIT, the entire world collapses. The trigger may be set off when the Trump regime backfires, because the current regime in Washington does not inspire confidence. We haven’t had a recession since 2008, so one is overdue. Also inflation is on the rise, which means that interest rates will have to go up. The current ‘boom’ is simply due to historically low interests. Once the price of money goes up, a lot of loans will bite the dust.
Freakish weather will play havoc with food prices, and cause more natural disasters. There is a definite link between food prices and social unrest: when food prices rise, first you cut on some leisure expanses (meals out, movies, etc.); but as they keep rising you cut on core goods, such as medicine. And in a poor country, a food crisis can rapidly have terrible results.
Yes, there is an increasing probability of system breakdown. This past weekend I spent in the big city of Toronto. I cruised through its central part below the 401, that 6-8 lane Highway that bisects the more or less downtown part of the city from its suburban section.
While I was driving throughout this immense metropolitan expanse I wondered what would happen when the economy, our total system, breaks down as happened in the Middle East. There’s no doubt in my mind that the longer the system is going, the greater the impact and the more severe the outcome.
Trump and Brexit are signs of desperation.
I believe that a pervasive fear is gripping the world: a sense of insecurity, feeling of dread, an undefined anxiety that works paralyzing and causes all sorts of mental and also physical illnesses. There are no real solutions to the problems we have created, which are made worse because we are failing to acknowledge them. To open up to them means to admit that we have chosen the wrong path: in that sense we all are like TRUMP who also never admits that he has ever been wrong. Yes, there is the growing feeling that we have a permanent crisis on our hands.
We now see the craziest of conditions. We now know that the ice in the Arctic is vanishing fast: all gone by 2030. To combat this scientists propose to install enormous fans there to regenerate the ice at a cost of $500 billion. Of course that will never happen. In retrospect, the USA wasted untold trillions on useless wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, while neglecting its own infrastructure and proper training for its citizens. Because events now are moving faster than ever, while society also is much more integrated, COLLAPSE, when it comes will also be fast and furious.
The Great Betrayal will hit the underclass the most, those who live from paycheck to paycheck, and have no reserves whatsoever.
And then there is the threat of a major epidemic disease. In the 14th Century Black Plague took months and years to travel through Europe, originating in the Far East, probably China. Today it would come very quickly because of air transportation. Right now there is Bird Flu in China – more lethal than the Spanish Flu that killed between 50-75 million people in 1918 when there were less than 2 billion on the planet. Now with 7.5 billion the toll could run into the hundreds of millions. I also believe that the general health, world-wide, is poorer than a century ago.
By all indications the 21st Century is off to a poor start.
The real lack today is WISDOM. As long as my wife and I have been married – almost 64 years – every morning we have read a Psalm or a portion thereof. Last week – February 21 – we read Psalm 111 of which the last line is: ”To fear the Lord is the first stage of wisdom; all who do so prove themselves wise.”
To fear the Lord means also, perhaps primarily, to cherish his creation, to do anything to enhance it, to be in awe of its beauty and coherence and to always keep its fragility and holiness in mind.
That basic wisdom is lost and this entails that from now on we will experience what that beautiful hymn prays:
Abide with us, fast falls the eventide.
The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.
Change and decay in all around I see
But Thou who changes not, abide with me.