JUNE 15 2015
MORE OF MY MUSINGS ON MONDIAL TERMINATION
OK. The title is a bit artificially construed for the simple reason that I wanted to continue the alliteration, just having a bit of literary fun. It’s not hard to guess, however, where I am aiming at: our way of life cannot be sustained. Our world suffers from a terminal malady: human greed.
Why do I even try? Now I read that people really cannot or will not grasp the idea of collapse. “Why,” as the science journalist George Marshall writes, “does the one event quicken the pulse, and the other induce widespread indifference?” He writes that our brains are wired to ignore Climate Change.” In the meantime I keep on going against the stream of human thinking. Perhaps I will convince a person here and there. More about that next week.
Believe me, my generation, those born between 1930 and 1950, is the last segment to benefit from the so-called ‘welfare society’. Take my example. I contributed to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) from its very start. As a self-employed person my first annual contribution was $75 + $75, the latter amount being the employer’s part. My last installment, just before I turned 65 was $750 +$750. In all those years I contributed about $15,000. Since interest rates during that period were high I added to each year 8 percent compound interest so I calculated that the Pension Board had about $32,000 in my pension kitty. I drew this out in less than 4 years and since then I have received about $165,000. In essence for the last 17 years I have been on welfare.
Pensions in general are based on two factors: life expectancy at 65 and return on investments. The first is much higher than the historic life span and the latter is much lower than in previous eras. Expect future pension payments to (1) be reduced and (2) to start at a later date, including OAS or Old Age Security, a payment, now about $535 per month that goes to every Canadian upon reaching the age of 65. This amount comes out of Federal (Ottawa) General Revenue. For this add another $100.000, thus so far I, one person of the many thousands of other senior Canadians, have received $265,000 from the welfare state. Add my wife and the figure comes to more than $400,000. Yes, our generation is the last to benefit from this generosity.
The Federal Government has initiated these rich provisions on the assumption that tax revenue will always increase as growth continues forever. But there are a few hitches in this reasoning: Gross Domestic Product is subject to the limits of growth which totally depends on the state of the environment. Also while the number of older people increases the younger taxpayers who must foot the bill are far fewer in number while they also earn a lot less, so there will come a real squeeze there.
In addition we are experiencing some other hiccups: the earth is no longer cooperating. It has reached the point where it not only no longer can sustain economic growth – which depends on finite resources – but we also are reaching the point in history where it now takes tax money to restore the damage done to our atmosphere, our water, our soil and air. In that sense this new condition reflects the Pension situation: both are unsustainable and self-defeating. In addition deflation rather than the inflation the Government would like to see spoils the game even further. All that ZIRP stuff, the Zero Interest Rate Policy will boomerang something big. Borrowing money at close to zero interest has created trillions of uneconomic assets which will be written off, with the result that industrial sector profits will collapse and the great inflation of financial assets over the last 27 years will meet its day of reckoning. For too long we have lived in a fool’s paradise.
Here’s a simple and very common example. Until now, when say coal was mined, the owners dug and dug and dammed streams and uprooted the trees, and, once the coal layers were excavated, went conveniently bankrupt and left the mess to society at large, including uprooted earth, sick miners and plenty of polluted streams. That same poisonous behavior takes place every day in the money world where the banks are blessed with trillions of assistance, supposedly meriting million dollar bonuses for these smart operators, but the final bill comes to haunt the taxpayer.
One of the signals of living in the Last Days – and we are – is that corruption now is universal, witness the FIFA scandal, an acronym which more appropriately stands for First In Fraudulent Actions. We all have experienced Internet crime where money is illegally obtained by accessing somebody else’s bank account or credit card. It is coming to the point where the entire financial system will be compromised. It makes common sense, if you had a few extra dollars in the bank, to take them out and put the money under the mattress and strive for a degree of self-sufficiency. Money that is generated out of nothing can just as quickly evaporate into the nothingness it represents, moneys that bought inflated real estate, inflated stocks and no-yield bonds. Suddenly these prices could collapse when the real value shows up which may be 50% lower. Then all that zero money will disappear as quickly as it was electronically generated, and sink society. Already almost half of the US population is under water because they cannot even write a check for $400 without waiting for the next paycheck and then starve for a week.
I believe that everything is insecure nowadays. And I am not a paranoid person, I believe. We live in a sick society, both mental and physical. Just imagine 95 % of the world population suffers from one disease or another according to Lancet Magazine – the influential British medical magazine – with a third having more than 5 ailments. When a pandemic strikes there is very little bodily defense left. It reminds me of the Black Death that decimated Europe’s population in the 14th Century, at a time when general health too was poor thanks to recent famines.
The world at large is definitely due for collapse. Remember the riddle of the 29th Day? Picture a pond where the growth of water lilies doubles each day. If it is completely covered on the 30th day, when is it half full? Yes, on the 29th day, when there still seems to be not a cloud in the sky because the pond is still half full with wonderful white lilies, so who cares. Suddenly…… ‘like a thief in the night….’ as the Bible puts it- we stand at the door of disintegration. That’s what’s happening with global pollution and the monetary situation. One day all is well, the next day boom or rather bust.
More and more voices are sounding a warning. Last week in my SLEEPWALKING blog I mentioned one source. Today being a doomster is becoming main stream.
According to a paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, “Now, for the first time, a global collapse [of civilization] appears likely.” The paper makes, in a scholarly, peer-reviewed manner, many of the same points about the existential threats that I made in last week’s article. Also Paul R. Ehrlich recently wrote a paper, titled “Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?” He cites the familiar threats such as toxic pollution, land degradation, scarcity of water and oil, plagues, resource wars (perhaps nuclear), over-consumption, overpopulation and the overarching threat multiplier, climate change. I know this same Paul Ehrlich wrote in 1968 The Population Bomb where he predicted that by the year 2000 the world’s population would be reduced by half. It did not happen. Ehrlich says now: “When we (his wife was the co-author) wrote it, there were about 3.5 billion people on the planet; about half a billion of them were hungry. Today there are 7 billion people on the planet and about a billion of them are hungry. We’ve lost something on the order of 200 million to 400 million to starvation and diseases related to starvation since the book was written. How ‘wrong’ were we?” He continues: “A future global collapse … could be triggered by anything from a ‘small’ nuclear war, whose ecological effects could quickly end civilization, to a more gradual breakdown because famines, epidemics and resource shortages cause a disintegration of central control within nations, in concert with disruptions of trade and conflicts over increasingly scarce necessities. In either case, regardless of survivors or replacement societies, the world familiar to anyone reading this study and the well-being of the vast majority of people would disappear. Unfortunately, awareness among scientists that humanity is in deep trouble has not been accompanied by popular awareness and pressure to counter the political and economic influences implicated in the current crisis. Without significant pressure from the public demanding action, we fear there is little chance of changing course fast enough to forestall disaster.”
There is another book that sings the same tune. It is tiny book, more like an essay. It’s small, less than 90 pages. The name says it all: THE COLLAPSE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION: a view from the future.
When I opened it the first thing I saw was a map of The Netherlands, shaded dark except for a small while spot in the center. The dark signifying the section to be covered with water once the polar ice has melted. The authors, both academics, one from Harvard, Naomi Oreskes, and the other from the California Institute of Technology, Erik M. Conway, have visualized the future and looking back from a century ahead see both Australia and Africa totally de-populated with the rest of the world somewhat supporting a drastically reduced number of people. With the Netherlands almost totally submerged – remnants gone north to Scandinavia – and large sections of North America’s east coast as well, such as New York and Florida the future of the world look damnably bleak.
A ray of hope?
Last week the G7 meeting in Germany decided to phase out the use of gasoline and diesel fuel in 85 years, by the year 2100. It’s like pumping penicillin in a person at death’s door or giving a complete blood transfusion to one breathing the last.
By now I don’t have to repeat the perils listed: they are all too familiar. I will cite the book’s last paragraph, an interview with the two authors. The question: “What do you hope that readers take away from your essay?”
Erik Conway: “Readers tend to take out of a text whatever it was they brought in. At best we can hope to have helped them think more clearly about the climate of the future.”
Naomi: “You can’t predict what your readers will take away. Books are like a message in a bottle. You hope someone will open it, read it, and get the message. Whatever that is.”
My own experience is equally bleak. For decades I have been writing for a magazine which calls itself Christian and Reformed. Even though I was not asked to quit, when I decided to do so – now close to three years ago – my going caused a sigh of relief.
Does the church offer an answer?
Last week I went back reading something by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man I always find utterly refreshing. He knew in 1944 that he lived in his last year of life – he then was 38 years old- and could at any moment be executed. In prison Bonhoeffer accused religion of offering only an escapist flight from the real world. “Religion,” he commented, “had pushed God to the boundaries of life, available on call to answer prayers of deliverance or favor.” He later wrote (from prison): “The religious act is always something partial: ‘faith’ is something whole, involving the whole of one’s life. Jesus calls a person not to a new religion, but to life. In the process religion has produced a distorted view of God, enshrining God in a world of metaphysical abstraction to be spoken of only at the edges of life: sin, guilt and death.”
Later he wrote that “The churches cowered behind their Bibles and buildings, offering self-serving piffle to the masses and failing to speak the prophetic words or to do the responsible deed for fear of losing what they most have to give, their lives in imitation of Jesus Christ.”
I repeat: “Faith is something whole, involving the whole of one’s life.”
That always has been my motto: Brace for tough times, times where only faith in the speedy return of Christ will sustain us.