Slo-mo Splat

[Gregorian]

http://www.postcarbon.org/slo_mo_splat

Remember the wall that environmentalists (like the 1972 "Limits to Growth" authors) have long been saying that industrial society would eventually hit? Permit me to make the formal introduction: Industrial society, meet wall; wall, meet industrial society.

It's understandably taking a while for the recognition to seep in. We are not accustomed to seeing every indicator of economic well-being, in virtually every country in the world, slam into reverse over the course of a few short months. I still have random conversations with businesspeople and bankers who say we've hit bottom and recovery is at hand; in their view, this is just another business cycle. I see things a bit differently: to my eyes the world situation looks like a slow-motion film of a train wreck, and the sheet metal at the front of the locomotive has only just begun to crumple.

Everything we thought we knew about the economy is suddenly wrong. Regarding China, we are accustomed to hearing of a new power plant being constructed each week, of energy consumption growing at a rate of 10 percent per year or more, of hordes of farmers from the western provinces rushing to the coastal cities to get manufacturing jobs so they can buy refrigerators and cars. The current reality: Chinese factories are now closing by the thousands, workers are rioting and leaving the coastal cities to return to their farms, energy consumption is actually declining.

In the US, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are falling dramatically for the first time since records have been kept. During past recessions or gas price spikes, people bought smaller cars or drove slower; now they're just not driving. Explanation? The use of public transit is up, but so is unemployment: people without jobs don't commute to work. And deliveries of raw materials and finished goods are way down, so trucks are driving less, too. Gasoline and diesel consumption is down. Nobody's buying cars—large OR small—and as a result GM, Ford, and Chrysler are on deathwatch (even the Japanese automakers are reeling). Retail businesses are closing so fast that it's tough to keep track of who's still open and who isn't.

[tomreedtoon]

1. So how much are you selling cynide pills for?

Better be cheap, so that all the people you want to die for your "sustainable population level" can afford them.

[GliderGuider]

2. It won't require cyanide

In fact nobody on this side of the ecology fence "wants" anybody to die. We just recognize that any encounter with "Liebig's Law of the Minimum" will probably result in an acceleration of natural human mortality. We also suspect that such an encounter is either imminent or already in its initial stages. If net mortality rises by over 75 million per year world-wide as a result, human population will go into decline. There's no associated agenda, it's just one of those inconvenient truths that most people would prefer not to acknowledge.

Liebig's Law of the Minimum, often simply called Liebig's Law or the Law of the Minimum, is a principle developed in agricultural science by Carl Sprengel (1828) and later popularized by Justus von Liebig. It states that growth is controlled not by the total of resources available, but by the scarcest resource (limiting factor). This concept was originally applied to plant or crop growth, where it was found that increasing the amount of plentiful nutrients did not increase plant growth. Only by increasing the amount of the limiting nutrient (the one most scarce in relation to "need") was the growth of a plant or crop improved.

Liebig's Law has been extended to biological populations (and is commonly used in ecosystem models). For example, the growth of an organism such as a plant may be dependent on a number of different factors, such as sunlight or mineral nutrients (e.g. nitrate or phosphate). The availability of these may vary, such that at any given time one is more limiting than the others. Liebig's Law states that growth only occurs at the rate permitted by the most limiting.

[Gregorian]

3. I really appreciate your blog.

I started down this path long ago. I became critically aware back around 1970, as a kid. It is good to see you discussing despair. And you mention Eckhart Tolle. I recently read a couple of his books. I read his books for a very specific reason. My reaction has always been frustration and anger. I've been running for years, having to leave some incredibly beautiful properties because of ruination resulting from the mess this consumptive society. From subdivisions to logging noise and deforestation. And the same is happening on my most recent property, with essentially the realization that there is nowhere for me to go. I'm really pissed off. And partly because this property is everything I ever dreamed of. A progressive community, coastal, rural yet convenient... And yet the noise from the aircraft corridor and cars on the highway are just annoying. All indications of too many people all living lives of modern consumption. In 1970 I saw the mess, but now I'm personally offended. Money can't cure this ill. That was the big blow. So I have taken the global problem personally. I guess I didn't learn Eckhardt's lesson. But behind this there is something far greater than any tiny offense I may take.

I can't tolerate watching and hearing it. Every car. Every shrieking jet in the sky is a reminder of the disaster we're having. The slow motion wreck. How does one unlearn how to ride a bike? That's what I keep asking as I try to figure out how to not be angry.

I may regret posting this mess, but it seems I'm in good company. Mostly it is comforting to know there are others who are on the same page.

[tomreedtoon]

5. Oh, 'fess up. You just want to kill a bunch of people.

If you can't do it with suicide-inducing polemics, you'll do it with tree mulchers, or one of those things that removes turkey heads they photographed behind Sarah Palin. Anything to help make your favorite treat, Soylent Green, the ecologist's favorite snack.

Which points out how Charlton Heston was wrong. He should have said "Soylent Green WAS People."

[GliderGuider]

6. "suicide-inducing polemics" -- we'll just talk you to death

Actually, I'd settle for "vasectomy-inducing polemics". :evilgrin:

[phantom power]

7. I actually want us to be harvested as food for aliens.

It's a cookbook, motherfuckers.

[Terry in Austin]

8. Nonsense.

You just want to toss a lot of flame-bait.

[wtmusic]

4. 25,000 people are dying of starvation every day

We're already there. You're just not seeing it.

[Nihil]

9. Ah but they don't count do they?

They're just foreign people in some country somewhere.
It's not as if it was happening to REAL PEOPLE here.

Famine, drought, starvation, death - that's what they do.
They are merely the actors in those boring TV programmes,
you know, the unfunny ones ... docu-thingys like the others
where those zoo animals look like they're being killed out
in someone's farm or some crap about the seas ... don't know
why they put those things on when they could be showing
sports or comedy re-runs or other good stuff ...

[wtmusic]

10. 'Course not.

However, a really funny docu-thingy might be made on how the top 10% of the world is amazed when they suddenly realize that the people who have been eating bugs for dinner are willing to do the same work they do for pennies on the dollar. And do it pretty well.

We were so much better off when they just starved.