A LONGTERM TREND IS COMING TO AN END.
Ah, we live in interesting times!
I know it is a Chinese curse, but still, from my perch in rural Eastern Ontario, midway between Canada’s two capitals, Toronto, its financial hub, and Ottawa its political place, matters look quite composed. The local Tim Horton always has a full parking lot. A new small coffee shop, smack in the centre of the village, does good business. Slowly ‘foreigners’ are finding their footing on our main street, with a Vietnamese running a successful new pharmacy, and a man from Trinidad reviving an auto-repair shop quite handily. So, yes, locally no complains.
Churches?
Not so rosy. While the local population is steadily increasing, and new housing and apartments are rapidly filling up, with the decline of mainstream religion in many parts of the world, all sorts of human needs – community, meaning – are being left unmet. It reminds me of one of my favorite Bible books, Amos. There I read, “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “when I will send a famine through the land— not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.”
Oh, yes, the Bible is still omnipresent. That’s not the problem: the problem is that the Word of God itself is a Trinity: (1) Creation, God’s manifest Word, (2) Christ, God’s Word become human, and (3) the Scriptures. The first two are from eternity to eternity: the last one, the Bible, will disappear in line with the fading church, as ‘religion’ is replaced with a way of life, in tune with creation.
Trump, a passing problem.
The looming Trump administration will have a short life-span, as it adheres to an outdated premise, a mode of living based on Infinite World Resources.
It seems to me we are now experiencing the ‘stillness before the storm’. Next year looms, and, while weather volatility is certain to magnify, the US new regime is ignoring the cries of creation, where also monetary deficits are slated to soar. The US DEBT clock stands at an all-time high: debt per citizen close to $107,000, as the national – Washington- induced debt exceeds $36 Trillion. That means that the average family of 4.2 is responsible for close to $500,000 in National Debt, not counting mortgage, credit card and personal monetary obligations.
Cookie Jar.
I compare the world’s total resources – air, water, soil – of being contained in a simple jar, full of goodies, such as cookies, but the freshly baked delicacies are gone, and, what is left, are the crumbs, some still quite sizeable. With demand still growing, and supplies diminishing, the fight for the remainder will become intense. FIGHTS? Yes wars, all wars, are for natural resources, now also centering on foodstuff.
Coffee, for instance. Or oranges.
Your morning – and afternoon – coffee is the latest staple threatened by climate chaos: the price of quality arabica beans shot to its highest level in half a century last week amid fears of a poor harvest in Brazil. It follows warnings that orange crops have been wiped out by the catastrophic floods in Valencia, Spain; and then there is the soaring cost of olive oil in recent years, as the southern Mediterranean has sweltered. In southern Africa drought has deprived the simple folk there of their basic staple: corn.
The messy Middle East.
It seems to me that, as civilization started in the Middle East, it also might end there. Once the presumed site of The Garden of Eden, Paradise, the reigns of Persian Emperors, its prominence has long been lost due to extreme exploitation. Where, at one time a person could walk along Africa’s north shore entirely in the shade of towering trees, from Morocco, on the Atlantic to Syria on the Mediterranean, all these regions have turned into arid deserts. At one time the Sahara was fertile land, with savannahs supporting an abundance of wild life: now 70 percent of large animals are gone.
THIS LONGTERM TREND IS COMING TO AN END.
This phenomenon has become true for much of the fauna and flora. We, humans, are next in line, with the USA, as usual, leading the way, thanks to Trump’s triumphant victory. However, his feat leads to nature’s defeat, a form of vengeance, Holy Vengeance, I should add.
Debts and Death.
The problem with debt is that it has a deadline, is due at a certain date. That also holds true for environmental debt. Debt and Death are similar: both are unavoidable and spell trouble in the form of drastic curtailment of commercial and financial activities.
I see a similarity between the desert-creating process during the preceding 10,000 years there, and the current Oil-exploitation there, causing the entire world to suffer fatal heat. This long-term danger has now become immediate.
Be Prepared.