Six converging threats to our way of life... and how to be ready for the ripples!

 

What's the Problem?!!

Problem vs Predicament

Ahhh yes... I wish it were just a problem. A problem can be solved and then forgotten about. Our situation is not so simple. Humanity today has a predicament.

A predicament is a situation that is beyond mere solutions. For example, if you were an Australian Aborigine living 200 years ago you couldn't solve the problem of these strange white people taking over your land. You had a predicament. You could only choose how you would respond.

If the developed world had taken dramatic sustained action in the 70's perhaps we could have solved things. Unfortunately the science is telling us we've left it too late. The six converging threats are no longer merely on the horizon. They are at the gate and will not submit to our usual methods of throwing money and technology at things that scare us.

I am NOT saying, "just give up!" Definitely not! How we choose to respond will still have a huge impact on us individually and collectively.

But just remember... if someone tells you they have an easy solution which will allow business as usual to continue then they are probably selling something.

Ok... so what's the predicament? Here is a very brief introduction to our six converging global threats. This is just a taste... see the Wise Up course for the substance.

 

1. Global Oil Production Limits - "Peak Oil"

“We could face a supply shortage and very high prices during the next years. I think we should leave oil before it leaves us.”
Fatih Birol, Chief Economist - International Energy Agency (IEA) 2008

The Paris-based IEA is the world’s no. 1  oil monitoring institution. It is a conservative mainstream organisation and has never made such statements before. See this interview with Fatih Birol for details. If you don't take this source seriously then you are probably in denial... but don't worry - you have plenty of company!

Not many realize Australia’s oil production peaked in 2000. We now import about 40% (& climbing) of our oil needs. Our economy, agriculture & distribution system and way of life are all based on oil being under $200 a barrel. So, most likely, is your job.

“We need to change our ways now while our economy has the strength to undertake the massive changes that are required.”
Andrew McNamara - former Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation
(Speech to the Queensland Parliament warning about peak oil, Australia - March 2006)

 

2. Climate Change Wildcard

"We underestimate the risk and ignore the fact that the planet is threatened with "sudden, unpredictable, and irreversible disaster.”
Steve Chu - United States Secretary of Energy
Nobel Prize-Winning Professor of Physics & Molecular Biology

Climate change is the biggest health threat to children in the 21st century and represents an immediate global emergency, according to a new report, "Feeling the Heat," released November 2009 by Save the Children.

"Unless action is taken, climate change will become a slow-motion train wreck with the world's children on board."
Rudolph von Bernuth, Emergency Director - Save the Children

“I am not exaggerating in saying the survival of civilisation is at stake.”
Professor Ian Lowe
Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Griffith University, Queensland

Climate change can mean Australia is The Lucky Country no more.

Consider Australia at just a 3 degrees Celsius rise...

"The combination of fire, heat and drought will make life in Australia increasingly untenable as the world warms. Farming and food production will tip into irreversible decline."
Mark Lynas - "Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet"

According to the "Precautionary Principle" even climate change deniers should take climate change seriously - the impact on us all and our children is too massive to risk ignoring it. We still insure our houses when there is a 5% chance of losing a roof in a storm. Only the most extremely arrogant climate change denier could sincerely say that there is not some chance that they are wrong and the vast majority of the world's leading scientific experts are right about the threat of climate change. It's not worth the risk.

 

3. The Dangerous Nature of Exponential Growth

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”
Al Bartlett - Professor of Physics University of Colorado

“It has taken all of human history for the economy to reach its current size. On current form it will take just two decades to double.”
New Scientist Magazine, 18 Oct 2008

Think about that... the massive increase in demand on resources and the impact on the ecology as the world economy tries to grow as much in the next couple of decades as it did in all of human history to today.

 

4. Multiple Other Limits

"We must prepare ourselves for waves of higher resource prices and shortages unlike anything we've faced outside wartime."
"We're simply running out of everything at a dangerous rate"
Jeremy Grantham - Chief Investment Officer & Co-founder of US fund manager GMO (manages over $85 billion)

The research is in. Not just Peak Oil... “peak many things” in the next 20 years:

• Fresh water
• Coal and natural gas
• Food production
• Topsoil
• Phosphorous
• Fish
• Some minerals – copper, zinc and silver

It will get harder and harder to keep increasing the flows of all of these. Nothing on Earth can grow exponentially forever.

In isolation, problems with any of the above resources could be managed. But as one goes into decline it starts to drag down others. When they combine and start to hit the system at the same time the impacts are multiplied and things start to fall apart. This is what has happened to other large civilizations in the past when they collapsed.

An example from today: as oil production increasingly struggles to keep up with demand we need to make giant efforts to spur production on... but that requires massive inputs of steel and other resources for deep water drilling platforms, tar sands conversion, refining and transport systems etc. ... but increasing the production of steel and other resources requires more and more energy... mostly in the form of oil. This leaves less and less oil and resources for everything else.

When the net energy available to the rest of the economy goes into decline, the economy will also decline. We've never had an expanding economy without an expanding net energy supply. Our economy is based on cheap energy.

We are moving from the Age of Abundance to the Age of Scarcity and we are not prepared.

 

5. House of Cards Economic System

"What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.” "
Thomas Friedmam - NY Times journalist and multi Pulitzer Prize winning author

Even George W. Bush admitted we were "addicted to oil." Unfortunately our economic system is also addicted to growth. Most of the money in the world is created by banks issuing loans. The only way that money can ever be paid back, with interest, is if the global econonomy keeps expanding forever. When growth stops we don't know how to stop the system from collapsing.

…[economic] growth may be coming to an end. Since our entire financial order from interest rates, pension funds, insurance, to stock markets is predicated on growth, the social and economic consequences may be cataclysmic.
Bryan Appleyard - The London Times

“Unfortunately, they don’t get it. I don’t know anybody who has done their homework, has researched history, and who’s good at math, who would tell you that we can grow our way out of this problem.”
David M. Walker - former Comptroller General of the United States and head of the Government Accountability Office

Walker resigned in 2008 citing limitations on what he could do and that the United States was in danger of collapsing in much the same manner as the Roman Empire.

Our highly interconnected global economy is far more vulnerable than the mainstream media leads us to believe.

 

6. Black Swans - The Unknown Unexpected

"For the last 12 years, I have been telling anyone who would listen to me that we are taking huge risks and massive exposure to rare events."

"Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse."
Nassim Taleb - author of bestseller: Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable 

Our over-populated, highly interconnected world is increasingly vulnerable to "Black Swans": unexpected, unpredictable, and underestimated events of monumental impact. Our models of reality - both perceptual and financial - are not designed to account for rare or "Black Swan" events.

 

My take on all this...

The future we will shortly be dwelling in will not be a continuation of the last few decades. It will not even be a smooth clear trajectory of any one of these global stresses in isolation.

Instead, it will be a chaotic, volatile mix of these six factors played out in real world geopolitics and "reported" in gross distortion by our mainstream media. It is going to be quite a ride.

Might be a good time to get transition wise.

 

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