peak oil

I have just learned, regretfully, of the death of Jay Hanson. My first report was that it occurred in a diving accident. Subsequently it has been clarified that he fell ill after diving, and died that night. Jay Hanson lived in Hawaii. He was the founder of multiple energy resources or peak oil lists from the 1990s, starting with the incredibly popular Dieoff website and DieOff list which looked at peak oil, population numbers, and scarcity. An intermediate list was Killer Ape-Peak Oil. The last list of which we are aware was [America2Point0] which Hanson closed 'until further notice' on 20 December 2016. Hanson was teetotal for many years and studied evolutionary psychology. He believed that humans would be ultimately unable to deal with resource scarcity or human induced climate change because they could not cope with major environmental and evolutionary problems involving themselves.

His list gave rise to a number of other lists, such as EnergyResources and ERT, as people formed different views on the energy resources and human survival outlook.

Jay Hanson's dieoff page can be found in its old and new forms by clicking on the links: http://www.jayhanson.org/oldindex.htm and http://www.dieoff.org/. There is a 2003 interview by Scott Meredith at http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/hansn_02.htm. It was my own participation in the DieOff list and subsequent ones, especially EnergyResources, and then the Australian Running on Empty one (roeoz) that caused me to edit two editions of a multi-scientist authored book called The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, UK, 2005 and 2008. The first edition was initiated and partly edited by Andrew McKillop, and finished by me, Sheila Newman, and the second edition, in 2008, was entirely edited by me, with mostly new articles.

The whole 'peak oil' and energy resources debate or story or study is not over by any means. Fracking is a desperate and ruinous sort of pause, which has been used to crank up demand. It seems that we have already entered the oil wars, however most of the public have little ability to understand this, due to the influence of the corporate press and similar on our education systems, which focus less and less on science and history. US-NATO activity in the Middle East, the East and South America - notably threats towards Venezuela - are signs of this.

Jay Hanson was a charismatic internet figure, and it seems odd today that his death is not being widely reported. He was likable, trenchant and a little despotic, with many avid and admiring acolytes and friends.

This article and obituary is a very quick response to the sad news. My condoleances to his family and close friends, and to the movement he began.

This program from Press tv Iran is interesting and useful in bringing us up to date. Iranians know a thing or two about oil production and the oil market. The issues of peak demand and peak production are very hard to estimate and no-one here pretends to have the answers, but a number of factors are canvassed, including US President Trump. As usual, however, in such programs, population growth and economic growth are skirted around. Similarly, increasing efficiency among OECD countries is taken as a given, and increasing consumption among 'developing' countries is also taken as a given. The elephant in the room is, of course, when does peak demand meet peak production.

The global demand for oil is predicted to be rising at least for the few coming decades.

The projection stems from several factors. One of the major reasons is the expectation of a drastic rise in the number of vehicles on the roads.

Economic Divide caught up with Dr. Ali Shams Ardekani to discuss the future demand of oil. He should know a thing or two about the oil industry. He serves as the President of the Iran Business For Future.

He is the current head of the energy commission for the Ministry of Oil, Planning and Development and the Ministry of Industry and Mining in Iran. People across the world are getting more and more mobile. They are expected to use more cars for transportation and also trucks for transiting consumer goods as fast as possible.

Mark Jones wrote “Battle of the Titans” when he was dying of cancer in 2005. This project animated his last days and he believed that what he had to say was of utmost importance. Many readers will find it prophetic, except in so far as he overlooks the role of Russia as an oil supplier. He does not overlook China, however, and America’s willingness to use all its remaining fuel to retain global hegemony. Here I have extracted passages which fit quite well together and give a somewhat clairvoyant view – from 2005 – of today’s frantic posturing, propagandizing and stirring up trouble in Ukraine, by the United States and Europe as they perhaps tried to influence China to side with them through their power-play in the Ukraine, then, helplessly watched Putin sign the massive gas supply contract with China.

Mark Jones was an author and novelist with a long-time interest in the political economy of oil. He lived and worked in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia, working for a time with the New Statesman, whilst researching archives newly opened under Gorbachev’s policy of Glasnost. He founded the Conference of Socialist Economists and their journal, Capital and Class, in the mid 1970s and in the 1980s he was remanded in custody for publishing Leon Trotsky’s writings. He sustained a deep interest and sympathy for communism, and was concerned by the limits to growth and believed that the US economy had an unsustainable but unstoppable need for oil. His novel Black Lightning, about the fall of the Soviet Union, was published in 1995 by Victor Gollancz. The original article of which excerpts are published here was published in the first and second editions of The Final Energy Crisis Pluto Press, UK, 2006, 2008. (First edition edited by Andrew McKillop and Sheila Newman; second edition by Sheila Newman, sole editor.)

Excerpts from Battle of the Titans, by Mark Jones

Headings by candobetter.net editor
The middle decades of the last century might best be seen as an interregnum, during which time the declining and ascendant imperialist powers, Britain and the US, colluded and collaborated to fight rivals (Japan, Germany) and marginalize or contain rivals (Bolshevism). Once US hegemony was assured (by 1945) it was relatively straightforward to restructure the global system on a new, US-dominated basis, and to create the institutions and frameworks for global commerce and international law that secured unchallenged US hegemony. Except for two brief periods during the Korean and Vietnam wars, the USSR ceased to be a serious challenge after 1945, despite the much-vaunted menaces of the Cold War period.

[…]

Comparing British and US empires

In its heyday the British Empire was more powerful and effective than the US empire has been or is today. The British not only moved populations around in huge numbers; they also moved plant and animal species. The British did more to shift and transplant alien flora and fauna from one continent to another, thus reconstructing whole ecosystems, than any other empire, although the Romans did a lot more in that sphere than most people realize. It takes a lot of arrogance and certainty to do the kinds of things the British ever-so-freely took it upon themselves to do. They reshaped whole continents, from Australasia through Africa to Latin America. Successive waves of emigration from the homeland created a whole English-speaking world, of which the US was at first only a subset and which it finally inherited, but had not created. The British ploughed their way through every precapitalist social formation they encountered, and either wiped it out or, through colonialism, totally reconstructed it. Yet despite (or because of) these grandiose achievements the British Empire, which seemed so enduring, was a short-lived thing. There is nothing to suggest that the seeming permanence of the US imperium should be any less fleeting. There is also no reason to suppose that sheer self-interest might not drive Americans themselves into a recognition that the price of domination, alone and unchallenged, is too high, and that an accommodation must therefore eventually be made with a rival who might one day become a successor. Since the 1939–45 war, the US has in fact made a practice of co-opting present and potential rivals into junior partnership. It has done this not only to Britain, but also to Germany (1960s), Japan (1970s and 1980s) and latterly even to Russia (from 1991).

The US is now functionally locked into Chinese industrial capitalism; the two states are in a tight embrace, performing a minuet which is part dance of death and part marriage of convenience.

US and China economic enmeshment

Both states face many common problems, and each needs the other because of complementarities and useful asymmetries. However, the radical contradictions between them ensure that they are imperial rivals. And the balance of power between them appears to be changing. US economic and therefore military growth significantly declined from the later 1980s through to 2002. China has been growing faster, and has now entered a decisive phase of industrialization, where its industry is so diverse, deep, broadly based and synergistic that it appears to be crossing a threshold, and is emerging as the world’s premier industrial power, eclipsing all others, with an R&D capability equivalent to that of the US or Japan. Many estimates indicate that Chinese industrial production will outstrip that of the US during the present decade. It seems clear that Asia as a whole is now poised on the cusp of precipitous changes, and that the US is now clearly the declining regional power, giving way to rising regional hegemony for China. It is surely arguable, or even likely, that China could become the dominant power in Asia without the need for war, and with the US being unable to prevent this. Once the economic facts are in place, can the geopolitical consequences be far behind? What can prevent the binding together and fusion of Chinese, Japanese and Taiwanese industry and capital, under Chinese hegemonic control?

Thus for the first time in its history, the US now faces the distinct possibility of the partial eclipse of its global power. I cannot predict what will happen, and I doubt whether anybody can know, but it is surely plausible that the US will be obliged to accept its strategic defeat with good grace, to accept a seismic change in its status and position, because the US is simply no longer powerful enough to resist. The rise of China to at least regional Asian ascendancy seems to be already in the script, an inevitable and unalterable outcome of present trends.
[…]

Extra-human limits

There is, however, one huge caveat to this whole line of argument. It does not take account of underlying, apolitical, extra-human and planetary limits, which will most certainly afflict the world system, and which mean we are entering a still more radical and decisive epoch of historical challenge, upheaval and transformation in everything from geopolitics to everyday life. As is indicated by the very title of this book, no geopolitical analysis can ignore the colossal threats posed by the storm of self-reinforcing crises – anthropogenic climate change, mass extinction of species, and destruction of the biosphere – all of which were enabled by fossil energy supplies, whose wipeout will be rapid. These factors form a vast backdrop to all world-system or economics-based considerations of inter-imperial rivalry à la Lenin. But before attempting to integrate this domain of issues into the discussion, let us consider again this central question: What if China emerges first from the probable imminent global economic slump?

This slump, if it occurs, will hit the US and Europe especially hard. The dollar will decline, industrial output will shrink, consumption levels and living standards will drop with incomes. The US economy will be first and hardest hit, notably because it is wildly unbalanced, extremely dependent on cheap energy, and equally dependent on the dollar’s “reserve currency” hegemony, which enables its payments deficit to be ignored. Any US economic slump will inevitably bring with it a collapse in personal and public consumption levels. Obviously this collapse in US demand will hit major exporters, China above all. China will then have to find other outlets for its huge industrial output. This means exporting to other regions which may be doing little better than the US, such as Europe and Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Russia, and the Latin American countries – but perhaps firstly, countries which export oil, minerals, metals, and agrocommodities, which profit from higher prices for these items.

[…]

Naked emperor out in the cold

Once you strip out dollar hegemony and the advantages of being the global reserve currency (or “currency of last resort”), you are left with a very naked emperor. Except for weaponry, control of the skies and sea lanes, control and surveillance of world information networks, and a powerful propaganda machine, the US has few cards left. Take away dollar hegemony and you have just another regional economy with its fair share of internal problems (soil exhaustion, aquifer depletion, near-exhaustion of domestic oil and gas reserves, lack of alternative energy supplies, a polluted environment, poor infrastructures, badly designed and expensive-to-maintain urban environments). If the US has to compete on a level playing field with the rest of the world, then it may find that its urban infrastructure is just as uneconomic and unsustainable as was the Soviet Union’s loss-making effort to base itself on the industrialization of the Urals and Siberia. The US currently uses twice as much energy and raw materials per capita as the EU-15 average, and more than ten times that of China. It is desperately uncompetitive. When the dollar has to be backed up by real values, US per capita GNP may fall by half in just a few years, as in the Great Depression. Under these conditions it is hard to see how the US can hope to maintain its global reach and present hegemonic position.

Time running out

[…]
If, on the other hand, we are set on a course of global war, which was the outcome for “classic” economic depressions before 1914, and again through 1929–36, then Americans have only a very small window of opportunity (like Hitler enjoyed in 1939) before their military advantage evaporates.

Comment by editor

Mark Jones wrote the above conclusion - the last three lines - in 2005. By his calculations, the United States would have used up most of the surplus energy that gave it any military advantage.

If you thought that the affairs of the Ukraine and Crimea were too abstract for you, maybe this will make you more curious. Natalya Poklonskaya is or was a government prosecutor in the Ukraine Crimea. She has been made into an anime character in a video. She made strong statements about upholding the rule of law and is now on the illegitimate coup-installed Ukraine government's wanted list. The Ukraine government came to power as a result of a US/NATO orchestrated coup in the resource depletion wars of the 21st century. Russia is defending its oil and gas pipelines in the region. Russia had the very first and the longest petroleum product pipeline in the world in the late 19th century and British, US and European governments and commercial interests have been plotting to get more control there ever since. The region is criss-crossed with oil and gas pipelines going in many directions from Baku to as far as Germany and China. Natalya Poklonskaya rightly wants her message to be heard and dismisses this video, however it may be the way to get her message better appreciated worldwide, so we are promoting it. And we include in this article a video with Poklonskaya's real speech, with English sub-titles.

[Candobetter.net editor: Retitled on 23/4/2014 from "Crimean prosecutor, Natalya Poklonskaya, celebrated as anime character," due to surprisingly few reads about this remarkable woman.]

The internet fame of Crimea’s chief prosecutor, Natalya Poklonskaya, rages on. A patchy music clip made from Poklonskaya’s videos has scored millions of views on YouTube, with a celebrity opposition figure calling the attorney a "sex symbol of Russia."

Here is the actual speech that Pokloskaya made to the press on 17 March 2014, with English subtitles.

Footage of Poklonskaya's emotional speech on the coup d’état and “chaos” in Ukraine has been making rounds on the internet since March, but this is the first time it has been set to music.

The chorus of the music mix, compiled by an anonymous internet DJ known only by his alias 'Enjoykin,' could certainly be described as simplistic.

In a combination of the official speech and several informal interviews, Poklonskaya appears to be singing: “Power. Blood. Nyash-myash. Blood. Power. Crimea is ours,” (which rhymes in Russian).

The “nyash-myash” bit was apparently taken out from Poklonskaya’s own reaction to her becoming an anime star and receiving a Russian nickname of
Nyasha – to which she replied that she would prefer to be perceived as a prosecutor and will not allow any “nyash” or “myash” while at her post.

On a more serious note, the rest of the clip offers cuts from Poklonskaya's solemn statement which said that “the anti-constitutional mayhem has led to a massive bloodshed...we have no moral right to step aside from our people...our task is to get the work of the prosecutor’s office back on track in this country.”

It also features some original Japanese-style animation of Poklonskaya fighting monsters and sending a toy boat of 'friendship' to a girl who is possibly representing Ukraine.

The video, which was uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday afternoon, managed to grasp 3,791,552 views and counting by Friday.

The 34-year-old blonde, who is piled up with work as the Republic of Crimea transitions into a Russian region, was shown the clip by Kseniya Sobchak – a Russian opposition activist, journalist, and celebrity.

Sobchak said she was proud to be “the first journalist who showed the beautiful prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya the 'Nyash-myash' clip,” stating on Twitter that “she is so beautiful – the sex symbol of Russia.”

It is believed that Poklonskaya took the job after four of her male colleagues refused to take the risk days ahead of the March 16 Crimean referendum on independence from Ukraine, in which 96.77 percent of voters chose to join Russia. The Black Sea republic was then accepted into the Russian Federation on March 21.

The courageous blonde has said that she will “prove” she is worthy of the position, adding that she is not afraid of persecution by Kiev. Poklonskaya is wanted by the Security Service of Ukraine on charges of “violent overthrow of constitutional order and takeover of government power.”

NOTES

This article has been adapted from one on Russia Today, entitled "Crimean prosecutor music clip hits 3.7 mn views in three days"

"The East West Link is a white elephant that risks undermining Melbourne's productive capacity and living standards. The tunnel is not a solution. It does not provide value for money. Generations of Victorians will be burdened by an $8 billion debt for a tunnel that will have long passed its use-by date. It is regrettable that this government is seeking to amend the Infrastructure Australia legislation to give the minister heightened discretion rather than going through the proper independent, transparent processes that Australians expect when it comes to large spending on infrastructure projects." - Kelvin Thomson, MP. Wills.

(All emphases and headings have been inserted by Candobetter.net's editors.)

Unpopular, unwanted, unwise

The Liberal government's biggest piece of land transport infrastructure is the proposed freeway through Royal Park in Melbourne, which it calls the East West Link. In fact, it does not link the east and west at all. Nor does it have the support of most Victorians, who know perfectly well that if it proceeds it will come with a massive opportunity cost and put paid to their hopes for a rail line to Doncaster, a rail line to Melbourne Airport, rail to Mernda or public transport to Monash University. In particular, it does not have the support of local residents, who are appalled by its impact on Royal Park, the Moonee Ponds Creek and the Melbourne Zoo. I commend Julianne Bell, the tireless secretary of Protectors of Public Lands Victoria and committee member of Royal Park Protection Group, and all the community groups who are working incredibly hard to stop this project happening: David Muir and theKensington Association, Kaye Oddie and the Friends of Moonee Ponds Creek, the Carlton Association and many others.

Costly, profligate, secretive, ill-informed

For a Liberal government that grandstands about fiscal rectitude, this $8 billion project is being put forward without passing any serious cost-benefit analysis. The government claims that the benefits of the $6 billion to $8 billion freeway outweigh the cost but refuses to provide details, claiming that this would compromise commercial negotiations.

Misunderstands Glaeser's Triumph of the City theory

The government's business case relies totally on the assumption of what economists call an 'agglomeration effect', in which population and economic clusters in cities lead to efficiencies and add to business productivity. The Linking Melbourne Authority, which provides information on road infrastructure projects conducted on behalf of the Victorian government, has referred to a book by the American writer, Edward L Glaeser, called Triumph of the City. Its main thesis is the agglomeration benefits that create cities. But the Linking Melbourne Authority does not appear to have read the book, because the book does not argue that freeways are the path to these benefits, in fact it argues quite the opposite. Mr Glaeser argues that 'driving creates negative externalities that hamper urban economies'. He warns against highway building, calling it 'antiurban'.

I quote:

“For decades we have tried to solve the problem of too many cars on too few lanes by building more roads, but each new highway or bridge then attracts more traffic.”

The Age commentator, Kenneth Davidson, has accurately pointed out in relation to the Royal Park freeway:

“It will cripple the state's fiscal position for many years through massive payments to the public-private partnership consortium that will finance it. The financial burden on the Victorian taxpayer will be so big that it will ''crowd out'' the state's core responsibilities for funding schools, hospitals, rail transport and even other roads for at least a generation.”

Contorted and ridiculous economic estimates

An email recently obtained through FOI illustrates that the Victorian government's own economic consultant, Chris Tehan of Evans & Peck, told the government that the business case had dramatically overestimated the wider economic benefits to get an artificial figure of a $1.40 return. According to The Age:

“… the methodology ‘has not been used in any of [the Transport Department's] other public transport projects or program modelling to date’”.

The financial case for the east-west link hinges on a prediction that toll road use will jump over the next 30 years because of rising wealth and shrinking petrol and CBD parking price rises.

The business case for the link makes the controversial assumption that: firstly, a driver's willingness to use toll roads will increase by 1.4 per cent per annum due to rising incomes; secondly, the rate of increase in the cost of running a car will fall from the current two per cent per annum in real terms to half a per cent per annum by 2041; and, thirdly, that the rate of increase in the cost of inner-city parking, which is currently increasing at four per cent per annum in real terms, will fall to 0.5 per cent by 2041.

Victorian government caught out manufacturing and manipulating benefits

The Victorian government has been caught out manipulating modelling to produce a favourable result.

As the minister at the table well knows, this is the Land Transport Infrastructure Amendment Bill 2014. The East West Link is this government's prime piece of proposed land transport infrastructure, and I am detailing to the House why I am opposed to this piece of land transport infrastructure.

Increasingly dodgy business case models being passed by Victorian Government

The former Infrastructure Australia head, Michael Deegan, told a Senate committee that the government's unpublished business case provided an alternative estimate showing a benefit-cost ratio of just 0.8. Under this scenario, the project would return just 80 cents for every one dollar spent, suggesting an economic loss if the stock-standard analysis preferred by Infrastructure Australia is used.

According to The Age, in a submission to a federal infrastructure inquiry, Infrastructure Australia outed Victoria for failing to submit a robust business case for the East West Link, singling out:

“….the controversial $6 billion to $8 billion road as a key example of why the public are cynical about ‘big ticket’ infrastructure announcements.”

Infrastructure Australia's 11-member council, which includes the transport experts, Sir Rod Eddington, and the federal Treasury secretary, Martin Parkinson, is understood to broadly recommend only those projects with benefit-cost ratios of more than 1.5. And Michael Deegan warns that big-spending promises are being made without proper scrutiny. The Age quotes him as saying:

“This is a particular problem during election periods where commitments are often made although robust business cases have not been prepared, let alone independently reviewed.”

Fed Gov changes afoot to ring-fence projects from independent scrutiny

The Age continues, saying that Infrastructure Australia:

““… is particularly concerned about changes proposed by the Deputy Prime Minister, Warren Truss, which will give the federal government discretion to ring-fence some projects from independent scrutiny.”"

Mr Deegan warned that any such change would ‘exacerbate’ the problem of projects being presented to Infrastructure Australia ''with limited or questionable business cases.”

The freeway through Royal Park is a classic example of economic 'mutton dressed up as lamb'.
The article continues:

“Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is opposed to Commonwealth funding for public transport projects, has pledged $1.5 billion for the east-west project, with the rest coming from the state government, which will collect toll revenue, and the private sector.”

Costly 'solution' doomed to fail on its own terms 12 years after construction

According to the traffic expert, Stephen Pelosi, the traffic on the East-West Link in the morning peak is expected to have slowed to 20 to 30 kilometres per hour by 2031 as worsening congestion pushes the road close to capacity just 12 years after it is due to open. The East West Link is forecast to carry 80,000 vehicles a day on opening in 2019, increasing to between 100,000 and 120,000 a day by 2031 according to his modelling. He is quoted in The Age:

''If it's reaching 120,000 we're at a position where we're reaching capacity,'' Mr Pelosi said. ''Unless you intervene in some manner and manage the toll rate to influence demand, you get a situation where you're near capacity."

“

It is not much use to commuters.

457 Visas mean no guarantee Australian workers will get jobs from EastWest link

When the Prime Minister is challenged about all the manufacturing jobs that are being lost in Melbourne with the impending closure of Ford, Holden and Toyota, and the job cuts at Qantas, he says, 'It will be alright, we are going to build the EastWest Link'. But will those construction jobs actually go to Australian workers – to Victorian workers, to Melbourne workers? In fact there are no guarantees – there are no guarantees! – that Australian workers will get the jobs created on the project from design through to actual construction work. This is because government policies at the federal and state level favour foreign companies and foreign workers over Australian workers and companies.

At the end of September 2013 there were 13,440 temporary foreign workers on 457 visas in the Australian construction industry, an increase of five per cent in just 12 months. At the end of January 2014 a total of 110,000 457 visa workers were in Australia, four per cent more than at the end of January 2013. The nature of the construction industry is such that any number of these 457 visa workers could be deployed to work on the Royal Park freeway, from engineering to trades like carpentry and other blue-collar jobs. The slowdown in resource sector construction means that many firms employing 457 construction workers are desperately looking for infrastructure projects to fill the gap in their orders.

Government reducing worker protection and encouraging 457 workers

On top of that, the Liberal government has shown that its agenda is to reduce protections for Australian workers and young people in the 457 visa program in the name of deregulation and removing what it calls 'unnecessary red tape'.

Let us consider exactly what the Liberal government considers unnecessary red tape. First, it has removed or watered down the key protections for Australian workers that Labor introduced in its June 2013 legislation, the Migration Amendment (Temporary Sponsored Visas) Act 2013, specifically, the labour market testing provisions. In November last year the coalition issued regulations under that legislation which make it much easier for employers to hire temporary foreign workers on 457 visas even when qualified Australian workers are readily available and willing to do the work. The figures from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection say that, for 65 per cent of all of the 457 visa nominations.

I am not the one who made the claim that the East West Link is a solution for the unemployed manufacturing workers in Melbourne; it was the Prime Minister who made that claim. I am pointing out why that claim is flawed.
Figures from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection indicate that, for 65 per cent of all 457 visa nominations, they have exempted employers from any legal obligation to labour market test – that is, to even look for Australian workers, let alone show that none were available, before 457 visas could be approved for temporary foreign workers. The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, the CFMEU, pointed out in a recent submission to the Productivity Commission that, even in the minority of cases where 457 labour market testing is required, the protections for Australian workers looking for jobs on projects like the East West Tunnel are 'virtually non-existent'. They state:

“Employers have no obligation even to advertise jobs for which they nominate foreign nationals for 457 visas – ‘other recruitment efforts’ (unspecified) will suffice, according to FAQs on the Department’s website.
Job ads can be put on Facebook or buried on obscure company websites, for only a few minutes, then taken down. There is no minimum advertising time …”

The CFMEU propose there be a 28-day advertising period, and I agree with them. They also state:

“The so-called ‘job ads’ can be ‘placed’ any time in the last 12 months. This means employers can use job ads placed in February 2013 to justify their bid for 457 visa workers in February 2014 – regardless of the number of Australian workers who become available or unemployed in that time.”

Employers have no obligation to keep any records of the number of Australian applicants, the number who got jobs and those who didn’t, and the reasons why the Australian candidates missed out while temporary foreign workers did not.

Employers simply have to ‘declare’ this information to the Immigration Department and that’s the end of it. They have no obligation to prove they made good faith efforts to employ Australians first or keep records of any job interviews.

The government regards requirements like this as red tape holding back employers. I say that, without such requirements, a project like the East West Link, if it proceeds, will not employ many Victorian workers at all.
The East West Link is a white elephant that risks undermining Melbourne's productive capacity and living standards. The tunnel is not a solution. It does not provide value for money. Generations of Victorians will be burdened by an $8 billion debt for a tunnel that will have long passed its use-by date. It is regrettable that this government is seeking to amend the Infrastructure Australia legislation to give the minister heightened discretion rather than going through the proper independent, transparent processes that Australians expect when it comes to large spending on infrastructure projects.

Thursday 20th March 2014
The Hon Kelvin Thomson MP
Federal Labor Member for Wills

Has capitalism, corporatisation and globalisation corrupted big international aid organisations. Is there some way we can boost the grass-roots activists and reinforce whatever is still working within troubled countries like Syria. And what are we doing there, anyway? AMRIS interview inside.

Vigil for peace, but no forum for discussion

On March 14th 2014 someone convinced me to go to Federation Square to cover the "With Syria" Melbourne Vigil for Peace in Syria. I had thought that this was going to be another politically informative meeting like the 2013 AMRIS forum for peace in Syria, only bigger, involving more groups. It was not until I was on my way that I checked and realised that this was an 'event' rather than a forum and that it was organised by International Aid organisations. But it was too late to turn around.

Highly organised event for spectators

I hoped instead that I would be able to interview any Syrians attending about the worsening situation and the demands by Aid organisations for the UN to get them more penetration into Syria. However, when I arrived, I found that Syrians had stayed away in droves. With the exception of Susan Dirgham (interviewed above) who is the National Co-ordinator for AMRIS, I found no-one there to interview. I did see Bill Shorten, the leader of the Labor Party (currently in opposition in Australia) gliding about in the croud. I thought of going up with my camera and telling him how impressed I was by Anthony Albanese's speech on Syria, and seeing what he had to say, but by the time I had made up my mind, he had appeared and disappeared again like a mirage. In his place, swarms of tee-shirted international aid staff from a variety of organisations buzzed about brightly against the vast grey paved Federation Square, as they set up stalls, red balloons and candles as props for photo opportunities. Officials from international aid organisations spoke repetitively about how Syrians were being turned into refugees, as if no-one there had realised. Why this was happening was not explored. Across Collins Street on the side of the Town Hall was a big electronic announcement saying, "Let's fully welcome the refugees."

Controlling information at the Vigil

I found out that Susan Dirgham had asked organisers at some of the international aid tables for permission to place some of her AMRIS postcards there so that the public could inform themselves about that organisation. She was disappointed to be denied permission to do this. I approached Susan and filmed the interview in the video at the top of this story. Susan told me that the event organisers gave her the reason for her refusal that AMRIS is 'political' with the explanation that International Aid organisations are not. She said she thought that they mean it is 'political' because AMRIS does not support the militarised opposition; it supports efforts for reconciliation in Syria. But, for her, the international aid organisations are political and do support the militarised opposition ('the rebels'). She finds this evident in their failure to condemn the extremist theology of the countries that fund the opposition to the Syrian government and who fight its regular army, supported by outside forces and outside countries, and for not seeing the consequences of this.

For me this was unsurprising, if disappointing, because World Vision, Save the Children, et al, receive financial support from those western external forces that are currently fueling the militarised opposition, and so could hardly be expected to disagree with them and remain in business on the scale at which they operate.

International aid organisations in the global corporate world

Susan noted that people like George Soros and other very very wealthy people fund Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch etc and that these organisations are actually huge corporations in themselves. She added that they have security doors and staff and close their doors to people.

Indeed, they are huge corporations with huge staffs, dependent on vast sums of money to run their affairs and dependent on military forces to give them safe passage into various troubled countries. But they also depend on the mainstream media to publicise their campaigns for finance, so they are not likely to counter the mainstream message. Since most of their funding comes from the West, it is the Western mainstream press they must please.

The Anglophone and Western mainstream press, for its part, promotes aggressive pursuit by the US and its allies of geopolitical territory in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, focused on regional oil and gas reserves, notably around the Caspian Sea and outgoing pipelines. International Aid organisations don't talk about this, but then, how could they, when the international mainstream press and the governments supporting war in Syria don't talk about it either.

This geopolitical resource-grabbing is billed as wars against terrorism and for democracy. But democracy in these cases just means capitalism, and foreign investment and take-over of these countries' resources and trading relationships with their neighbours. These wars produce many refugees. Worse, they produce wars in countries which already harbour many refugees from previous wars in other countries. A 2008 survey by ... found that Syria was host to approximately 1,852,300 refugees, with most from Iraq (1,300,000), but many thousands from the former Palestine (543,400) and Somalia (5,200) [1] The refugee influx would have contributed to rapid population growth in Syria, which has swelled from 4.5m in the 1960s to 18m in 2004 and 21.1m in 2011. In October 2013 the UNHCR estimated that 2.1m Syrians had become international refugees, whilst around 7m were displaced, presumably within their own country.

Should the big international aid organisations get out of the area?

Am I suggesting that International Aid organisations should get out of the area entirely? My reading would tell me that those that are incapable of working locally with the Syrian government and by using and shoring up the structures in place, probably should. But what a complex area. The most recent book of many I have read on the question of international aid intervention in disaster was Jonathan M. Katz, The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster, Palgrave McMillan, 2013. Katz made the case that such was the undeserved history of Haiti and foreign intervention that you could not expect an uncorrupted government and that Aid organisations should work with whatever incumbent government and structure exists because if their efforts are independent they undermine the economy, and existing organisational structures.

This is a brilliant book on foreign aid in a disaster among many rivetting books on the subject because of the detailed investigation of the sums raised internationally and where they went. The reporter who wrote it was on the ground there when a major earthquake struck Haiti in 2010 and he stayed several years after. He was present when Clinton and others visited and knew the major Haitian politicians and, most important, both recent and long-term political history. He also spoke the creole language. In his book, he makes several really good points, but the one I want to take up is his criticism of Aid agencies tendency to create their own communications and infrastructure over the top of the government's, thus further undermining all established organisation, however good or bad, and all established business, including local food production.

From this, in addition to my earlier studies, I recognised that it does not matter what you think of a government; any government in a disaster is better than none and you can do a lot to help a country by working through its government, employing nationals and reinforcing and maintaining present infrastructure, institutions and routines.

In Haiti the international aid organisations and foreign dignitaries did not do this and the Haitians got hardly any help. A bunch of foreigners got salaries for going in there and making things worse. That's generally the way of foreign Aid; the money goes on salaries, rent, vehicles, infrastructure, corporate running expenses and public relations. There is not much left over to employ locals with or purchase materials from. Ironically, the big foreign aid organisations are very globalist because they associate with globalist governments and they tend to go along with things like the establishment of cheap garment factories etc. In Haiti, foreign financed factories were planned as part of aid committments where the owners would not pay taxes to the Haitian government. The government was operating with almost no money, yet was held responsible promises not kept by foreign entrepreneurs purporting to be part of the aid effort. This kind of thing destabilised an already fragile government system, but could not replace government. You get the same sorts of people, ex-AID organisation people, sitting on the Committee for Melbourne and dictating to ordinary Australians what kind of infrastructure they should have, who should build it for them, and how fast their populations should grow.

Some questions are asked that raise similar points about a refugee camp in Syria in this article by Kim Wilkinson, "Of Dons and Dust, The Economics of the Zaatari Refugee Camp"

[1] "World Refugee Survey 2008". U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. 19 June 2008.

How does the world reach limits? This is a question that few dare to examine. My analysis suggests that these limits will come in a very different way than most have expected–through financial stress that ultimately relates to rising unit energy costs, plus the need to use increasing amounts of energy for additional purposes:

- To extract oil and other minerals from locations where extraction is very difficult, such as in shale formations, or very deep under the sea;

- To mitigate water shortages and pollution issues, using processes such as desalination and long distance transport of food; and

- To attempt to reduce future fossil fuel use, by building devices such as solar panels and electric cars that increase fossil fuel energy use now in the hope of reducing energy use later.

We have long known that the world is likely to eventually reach limits. In 1972, the book The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows and others modeled the likely impact of growing population, limited resources, and rising pollution in a finite world. They considered a number of scenarios under a range of different assumptions. These models strongly suggested the world economy would begin to hit limits in the first half of the 21st century and would eventually collapse.

The indications of the 1972 analysis were considered nonsense by most. Clearly, the world would work its way around limits of the type suggested. The world would find additional resources in short supply. It would become more efficient at using resources and would tackle the problem of rising pollution. The free market would handle any problems that might arise.

The Limits to Growth analysis modeled the world economy in terms of flows; it did not try to model the financial system. In recent years, I have been looking at the situation and have discovered that as we hit limits in a finite world, the financial system is the most vulnerable part because of the system because it ties everything else together. Debt in particular is vulnerable because the time-shifting aspect of debt “works” much better in a rapidly growing economy than in an economy that is barely growing or shrinking.

The problem that now looks like it has the potential to push the world into financial collapse is something no one would have thought of—high oil pricesclip_image002 that take a slice out of the economy, without anything to show in return. Consumers find that their own salaries do not rise as oil prices rise. They find that they need to cut back on discretionary spending if they are to have adequate funds to pay for necessities produced using oil. Food is one such necessity; oil is used to run farm equipment, make herbicides and pesticides, and transport finished food products. The result of a cutback in discretionary spending is recession or near recession, and less job availability. Governments find themselves in financial distress from trying to mitigate the recession-like impacts without adequate tax revenue.

One of our big problems now is a lack of cheap substitutes for oil. Highly touted renewable energy sources such as wind and solar PV are not cheap. They also do not substitute directly for oil, and they increase near-term fossil fuel consumption. Ethanol can act as an “oil extender,” but it is not cheap. Battery powered cars are also not cheap.

The issue of rising oil prices is really a two-sided issue. The least expensive sources of oil tend to be extracted first. Thus, the cost of producing oil tends to rise over time. As a result, oil producers tend to require ever-rising oil prices to cover their costs. It is the interaction of these two forces that leads to the likelihood of financial collapse in the near term:

- Need for ever-rising oil prices by oil producers.

- The adverse impact of high-energy prices on consumers.

If a cheap substitute for oil had already come along in adequate quantity, there would be no problem. The issue is that no suitable substitute has been found, and financial problems are here already. In fact, collapse may very well come from oil prices not rising high enough to satisfy the needs of those extracting the oil, because of worldwide recession.

The Role of Inexpensive Energy

The fact that few stop to realize is that energy of the right type is absolutely essential for making goods and services of all kinds. Even if the services are simply typing numbers into a computer, we need energy of precisely the right kind for several different purposes:

- To make the computer and transport it to the current location.

- To build the building where the worker works.

- To light the building where the worker works.

- To heat or cool the building where the worker works.

- To transport the worker to the location where he works.

- To produce the foods that the worker eats.

- To produce the clothing that the worker wears.

Furthermore, the energy used needs to be inexpensive, for many reasons—so that the worker’s salary goes farther; so that the goods or services created are competitive in a world market; and so that governments can gain adequate tax revenue from taxing energy products. We don’t think of fossil fuel energy products as being a significant source of tax revenue, but they very often are, especially for exporters (Rodgers map of oil “government take” percentages).

Some of the energy listed above is paid for by the employer; some is paid for by the employee. This difference is irrelevant, since all are equally essential. Some energy is omitted from the above list, but is still very important. Energy to build roads, electric transmission lines, schools, and health care centers is essential if the current system is to be maintained. If energy prices rise, taxes and fees to pay for basic services such as these will likely need to rise.

How “Growth” Began

For most primates, such as chimpanzees and gorillas, the number of the species fluctuates up and down within a range. Total population isn’t very high. If human population followed that of other large primates, there wouldn’t be more than a few million humans worldwide. They would likely live in one geographical area.

How did humans venture out of this mold? In my view, a likely way that humans were able to improve their dominance over other animals and plants was through the controlled use of fire, a skill they learned over one million years ago (Luke 2012). Controlled use of fire could be used for many purposes, including cooking food, providing heat in cool weather, and scaring away wild animals.

The earliest use of fire was in some sense very inexpensive. Dry sticks and leaves were close at hand. If humans used a technique such as twirling one stick against another with the right technique and the right kind of wood, such a fire could be made in less than a minute (Hough 1890). Once humans had discovered how to make fire, they could use it to leverage their meager muscular strength.

The benefits of the controlled use of fire are perhaps not as obvious to us as they would have been to the early users. When it became possible to cook food, a much wider variety of potential foodstuffs could be eaten. The nutrition from food was also better. There is even some evidence that cooking food allowed the human body to evolve in the direction of smaller chewing and digestive apparatus and a bigger brain (Wrangham 2009). A bigger brain would allow humans to outsmart their prey. (Dilworth 2010)

Cooking food allowed humans to spend much less time chewing food than previously—only one-tenth as much time according to one study (4.7% of daily activity vs. 48% of daily activity) (Organ et al. 2011). The reduction in chewing time left more time other activities, such as making tools and clothing.

Humans gradually increased their control over many additional energy sources. Training dogs to help in hunting came very early. Humans learned to make sailboats using wind energy. They learned to domesticate plants and animals, so that they could provide more food energy in the location where it was needed. Domesticated animals could also be used to pull loads.

Humans learned to use wind mills and water mills made from wood, and eventually learned to use coal, petroleum (also called oil), natural gas, and uranium. The availability of fossil fuels vastly increased our ability to make substances that require heating, including metals, glass, and concrete. Prior to this time, wood had been used as an energy source, leading to widespread deforestation.

With the availability of metals, glass, and concrete in quantity, it became possible to develop modern hydroelectric power plants and transmission lines to transmit this electricity. It also became possible to build railroads, steam-powered ships, better plows, and many other useful devices.

Population rose dramatically after fossil fuels were added, enabling better food production and transportation. This started about 1800.

All of these activities led to a very long history of what we today might call economic growth. Prior to the availability of fossil fuels, the majority of this growth was in population, rather than a major change in living standards. (The population was still very low compared to today.) In later years, increased energy use was still associated with increased population, but it was also associated with an increase in creature comforts—bigger homes, better transportation, heating and cooling of homes, and greater availability of services like education, medicine, and financial servicesclip_image002[1].

How Cheap Energy and Technology Combine to Lead to Economic Growth

Without external energy, all we have is the energy from our own bodies. We can perhaps leverage this energy a bit by picking up a stick and using it to hit something, or by picking up a rock and throwing it. In total, this leveraging of our own energy doesn’t get us very far—many animals do the same thing. Such tools provide some leverage, but they are not quite enough.

The next step up in leverage comes if we can find some sort of external energy to use to supplement our own energy when making goods and services. One example might be heat from a fire built with sticks used for baking bread; another example might be energy from an animal pulling a cart. This additional energy can’t take too much of (1) our human energy, (2) resources from the ground, or (3) financial capital, or we will have little to invest what we really want—technology that gives us the many goods we use, and services such as education, health care, and recreation.

The use of inexpensive energy led to a positive feedback loop: the value of the goods and service produced was sufficient to produce a profit when all costs were considered, thanks to the inexpensive cost of the energy used. This profit allowed additional investment, and contributed to further energy development and further growth. This profit also often led to rising salaries. The additional cheap energy use combined with greater technology produced the impression that humans were becoming more “productive.”

For a very long time, we were able to ramp up the amount of energy we used, worldwide. There were many civilizations that collapsed along the way, but in total, for all civilizations in the world combined, energy consumption, population, and goods and services produced tended to rise over time.

In the 1970s, we had our first experience with oil limits. US oil production started dropping in 1971. The drop in oil production set us up as easy prey for an oil embargo in 1973-1974, and oil prices spiked. We got around this problem, and more high price problems in the late 1970s by

- Starting work on new inexpensive oil production in the North Sea, Alaska, and Mexico.

- Adopting more fuel-efficient cars, already available in Japan.

- Switching from oil to nuclear or coal for electricity production.

- Cutting back on oil intensive activities, such as building new roads and doing heavy manufacturing in the United States.

The economy eventually more or less recovered, but men’s wages stagnated, and women found a need to join the workforce to maintain the standards of living of their families. Oil prices dropped back, but not quite a far as to prior level. The lack of energy intensive industries (powered by cheap oil) likely contributed to the stagnation of wages for men.

Recently, since about 2004, we have again been encountering high oil prices. Unfortunately, the easy options to fix them are mostly gone. We have run out of cheap energy options—tight oil from shale formations isn’t cheap. Wages again are stagnating, even worse than before. The positive feedback loop based on low energy prices that we had been experiencing when oil prices were low isn’t working nearly as well, and economic growth rates are falling.

The technical name for the problem we are running into with oil is diminishing marginal returns. This represents a situation where more and more inputs are used in extraction, but these additional inputs add very little more in the way of the desired output, which is oil. Oil companies find that an investment of a given amount, say $1,000 dollars, yields a much smaller amount of oil than it used to in the past—often less than a fourth as much. There are often more up-front expenses in drilling the wells, and less certainty about the length of time that oil can be extracted from a new well.

Oil that requires high up-front investment needs a high price to justify its extraction. When consumers pay the high oil price, the amount they have for discretionary goods drops. The feedback loop starts working the wrong direction—in the direction of more layoffs, and lower wages for those working. Companies, including oil companies, have a harder time making a profit. They find outsourcing labor costs to lower-cost parts of the world more attractive.

Can this Growth Continue Indefinitely?

Even apart from the oil price problem, there are other reasons to think that growth cannot continue indefinitely in a finite world. For one thing, we are already running short of fresh water in many parts of the world, including China, India and the Middle East. Topsoil is eroding, and is being depleted of minerals. In addition, if population continues to rise, we will need a way to feed all of these people—either more arable land, or a way of producing more food per acre.

Pollution is another issue. One type is acidification of oceans; another leads to dead zones in oceans. Mercury pollution is a widespread problem. Fresh water that is available is often very polluted. Excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to concerns about climate change.

There is also an issue with humans crowding out other species. In the past, there have been five widespread die-offs of species, called “Mass Extinctions.” Humans seem now to be causing a Sixth Mass Extinction. Paleontologist Niles Eldredge describes the Sixth Mass Extinction as follows:

- Phase One began when first humans began to disperse to different parts of the world about 100,000 years ago. [We were still hunter-gatherers at that point, but we killed off large species for food as we went.]

- Phase Two began about 10,000 years ago, when humans turned to agriculture.

According to Eldredge, once we turned to agriculture, we stopped living within local ecosystems. We converted land to produce only one or two crops, and classified all unwanted species as “weeds”. Now with fossil fuels, we are bringing our attack on other species to a new higher level. For example, there is greater clearing of land for agriculture, overfishing, and too much forest use by humans (Eldredge 2005).

In many ways, the pattern of human population growth and growth of use of resources by humans are like a cancer. Growth has to stop for one reason or other—smothering other species, depletion of resources, or pollution.

Many Competing Wrong Diagnoses of our Current Problem

The problem we are running into now is not an easy one to figure out because the problem crosses many disciplines. Is it a financial problem? Or a climate change problem? Or an oil depletion problem? It is hard to find individuals with knowledge across a range of fields.

There is also a strong bias against really understanding the problem, if the answer appears to be in the “very bad to truly awful” range. Politicians want a problem that is easily solvable. So do sustainability folks, and peak oil folks, and people writing academic papers. Those selling newspapers want answers that will please their advertisers. Academic book publishers want books that won’t scare potential buyers.

Another issue is that nature works on a flow basis. All we have in a given year in terms of resources is what we pull out in that year. If we use more resources for one thing–extracting oil, or making solar panels, it leaves less for other purposes. Consumers also work mostly from the income from their current paychecks. Even if we come up with what looks like wonderful solutions, in terms of an investment now for payback later, nature and consumers aren’t very co-operative in producing them.

Consumers need ever-more debt, to make the solutions sort of work. If one necessary resource–cheap oil–is in short supply, nature dictates that other resource uses shrink, to work within available balances. So there is more pressure toward collapse.

Virtually no one understands our complex problem. As a result, we end up with all kinds of stories about how we can fix our problem, none of which make sense:

“Humans don’t need fossil fuels; we can just walk away.” – But how do we feed 7 billion people? How long would our forests last before they are used for fuel?

“More wind and solar PV” – But these use fossil fuels now, and don’t fix oil prices.

“Climate change is our only problem.”—Climate change needs to be considered in conjunction with other limits, many of which are hitting very soon. Maybe there is good news about climate, but it likely will be more than offset by bad news from limits not considered in the model.

This article was originally published on 04.11.2013 on Gail Tverberg's blog, Our Finite World:

#more-38555">http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/10/23/rising-energy-costs-lead-to-recession-eventually-collapse/#more-38555

About Gail Tverberg

Gail Tverberg is an actuary interested in finite world issues - oil depletion, natural gas depletion, water shortages, and climate change. The financial system is also likely to be affected. Gail writes on these issues at Our Finite World.

In a press release entitled, "North America leads the world in production of shale gas," the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) boasts long and loud that US gas quantities extracted by fracking shale beds vastly exceed production in Canada and China. Energy resources analysts, however, are critical that the EIA never releases balanced accounts on petroleum and gas production which would reveal the growing costs of extraction.

These extraction costs include threats to human water supplies, which some believe could threaten civilisation and human survival in large US populations, including New York,[1] increasing fuel required to extract more fuel from more difficult places, massive earth subsidence and drastic landscape change, destruction of farmland, poisoning of soil, disturbance of pastoral and agricultural production and, most strikingly, destruction of democracy and property rights.[2] France has outlawed fracking for these reasons. [3]

I contacted Fawzi Aloulou, the specialist spokesman for the following EIA report with questions about this. I asked him, whether he had information about the amount of energy and the financial cost of extracting this natural gas from the shale? I put it to him that, as he would be aware, we have gone from an earlier situation where liquid petroleum gushed from the ground and gas was blown off into the atmosphere to one where great lengths have to be gone to to get an energy return on investment.

I wrote to him: "The EIA figures don't show the changes in the costs of extraction for crude and other liquids over time, nor for [fracking shale]." I added that candobetter.net would like to publish the EIA reported findings but we feel that they need more comment re the energy and financial cost side.

Dr Fawsi thanked me for my interest in the EIA's work but replied, "We don’t publish the financial cost of extracting natural gas from shale for a simple reason: cost keeps changing over time as function of depth of the shale, depletion rate and technology improvement."

To this I responded with, "Surely an annual report could average them out?"

Dr Fawsi replied, "That’s a good guess. However, our cost estimates are model-generated and we do not post them in public domain."

My further question as to where I might find an objective source on this major factor in energy production has so far received no answer. But I am interested to know that the EIA does model the problem. There is probably nothing more important to the American and global public likely to be affected by increasing environmental and social turmoil associated with trying to keep up petroleum-type resources to maintain economic growth in an era of dwindling traditional fuel source forms.

Below is Dr Fawsi's report. At this point in time no-one I know can say what the amount of gas produced would look like if these graphs also revealed and deducted the amount of gas and other resources that were used up to produce these apparently stunning surpluses. For more on these unmentioned factors have a look at our pages on fracking and coal-seam gas.

EIA report that North America leads the world in production of shale gas

The United States and Canada are the only major producers of commercially viable natural gas from shale formations in the world, even though about a dozen other countries have conducted exploratory test wells, according to a joint U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)/Advanced Resources International (ARI) study released in June. China is the only nation outside of North America that has registered commercially viable production of shale gas, although the volumes contribute less than 1% of the total natural gas production in that country. In comparison, shale gas as a share of total natural gas production in 2012 was 39% in the United States and 15% in Canada.

Shale gas dry production in the United States averaged 25.7 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2012, while total dry production averaged 65.7 Bcf/d. In Canada, total dry natural gas production from the two major shale plays—the Muskwa-Otter Park shale formation in the Horn River Basin of northern British Columbia and the adjacent Montney Basin that spreads over British Columbia and Alberta—averaged 2.0 Bcf/d in 2012, while total Canadian production averaged 14.0 Bcf/d. Gross withdrawals from Horn River and Montney averaged 2.5 Bcf/d in 2012, and reached 2.8 Bcf/d by May 2013. The potential for higher production from these two plays is currently constrained by limited pipeline infrastructure.

China was ranked as the largest holder of shale gas resources among the 41 countries assessed for technically recoverable shale resources in the study released by EIA/ARI this past June. The Chinese government has not officially reported on shale gas production, but some independent Chinese energy analysts have claimed commercial production of at least 0.003 Bcf/d of shale gas, mainly from the Sichuan Basin.

Map of China with EIA/ARI shale gas/oil assessment, as explained in the article text.

Principal contributor: Aloulou Fawzi

NOTES

[1] "In Gaslands it has been suggested that, if completely developed, the huge Marcellus shale formation in the United states, under the current very poorly regulated, chaotically individual and uncoordinated system of drilling, could permit as many as 400,000 new wells. This might endanger the supply of water to New York, which would be catastrophic."
[2] Articles on social, vital and environmental costs of fracking
[3] Whilst official pronouncements try to normalise fracking as inevitable in the United States and Canada, the French experience highlights the coercive and outlandish application of this technology. More debate is needed and for debate, organisations like the EIA should release more information about these costs.

"France says "No" to fracking based on US experience

France has just passed its anti-fracking law in parliament. The law rescinds rights previously granted and puts any schale-mining for gas on hold pending new and safer technologies. Source: JT, Edition du Mercredi 13 Avril 2011, http://jt.france2.fr/20h/

This parliamentary decision is yet more evidence that the Napoleonic system in France and Europe is far more democratic - in protecting peoples' rights and communal (and national) assets and vital resources - than the anglophone systems in their various forms in Britain and her current and ex-colonies. America, Canada, Australia are among the least democratic countries in the world, with vast and growing differences between the haves and the have-nots, in legal systems which cannibalise and destroy their own community, citizens and resources. The reason that these countries are not yet obviously reduced to the poverty of Haiti is that their citizens started out with more resources per capita. As commonwealth is transferred more and more into private hands in those systems, people who have to date been able to survive, will not survive. The growing numbers of homeless and hopelessly endebted are indicators of the social unsustainability of the current economic and legal systems in Australia, America and Canada. In France and the rest of Europe, it is virtually impossible for citizens to be left without shelter unless they voluntarily opt out - as some homeless do - albeit with every attempt made to shelter them each winter.

High on the list of reasons against fracking in France was the risk of contamination of water supply and its impact on agriculture and human health." Source: First published as /?q=node/2348#comment-6275

The Alliance against fracking in South Africa, AfriForum and Treasure the Karoo Action Group (TKAG), has said that shale gas exploration cannot proceed, following a statement by Trade and Industry Minister, Rob Davies, that Government could authorise shale gas exploration before next year's elections. See also other candobetter articles on fracking here: http://candobetter.net/?q=taxonomy/term/3020

Shale gas exploration in South Africa cannot go ahead

The Alliance states that is most disappointed by Government's stance on shale gas exploration.

"Firstly, we believe that such a decision will have an impact which will endure far beyond the election cycle of the Government. This decision cannot be rushed through before next year's election. It will be completely irresponsible," says Jonathan Deal, Chairperson of TKAG.

See also http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/13/south-african-anti-fracking-activist-calls-for-global-alliance

"Secondly, Minister Susan Shabangu has promised on various occasions to consult with the public of this country prior to making any decision on shale gas mining. This has not happened, and the people of South Africa - at all levels - are entitled to be heard on an issue of this magnitude."

"We are informed that Government has thus far relied largely on research commissioned by the Department of Minerals - which, in our considered view is singularly inadequate, considering the multidisciplinary nature of mining activity."

South African laws inadequate for this complex problem

The environmental issues, of which water is only one, are complex and varied, and the laws of South Africa are wholly inadequate to control an industry with a severely tarnished reputation and the process of fracking, the Alliance believes.

"Government is selling votes with this move, but it is an empty promise. Even if Government issues the licences, exploration cannot legally proceed. We will not allow our constitutional rights to be breached; the Alliance will appeal against Government," says Julius Kleynhans, Head of Environmental Affairs at AfriForum.

"AfriForum and TKAG are most certainly pro-development, but we cannot endorse a hasty and ill-considered choice that may compromise the prosperity of current and future generations"

"Recent evidence from the United States of America indicated that fracking may contaminate drinking water. A study from Duke University analysed 141 drinking water samples across a gas-rich shale basin in north-eastern Pennsylvania."

"They found that methane concentrations were 6 times higher, ethane concentrations were 23 times higher and propane was detected in 10 samples, all of them from homes within a kilometre of the drilling sites."

Two previous studies by Duke scientists found direct evidence of methane contamination in water wells near shale-gas drilling sites in north-eastern Pennsylvania. The Alliance has said that it does not want this to occur in South Africa, especially not in the sensitive Karoo. It stressed that South Africa is an arid country and must be treated as such.

Hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, has led to a massive expansion of natural gas production in the United States but has been banned in other countries such as France due to environmental concerns.

"The gas is extracted after cracking open hydrocarbon-rich shale by pumping water, sand and chemicals into the deep wells at high pressure. Environmental groups and many scientists believe this technique degrades the land, pollutes ground water and fouls the air," added Kleynhans.

Comment from Candobetter.net editor: Often overlooked as well, and most important of all, is that the energy required to extract fuels by fracking is much greater than in extraction of conventional oils, and must be subtracted from the total haul. The concept involved here is Energy returned on energy invested. This is a key concept for resource depletion and the wider community and the reporting community don't generally know of it.

The source of the above article was from a press release signed by:

Julius Kleynhans
Head: Environmental Affairs
AfriForum
Cell: 0027-82 829 9182
E-mail: [email protected]

Jonathan Deal
Chairman
Treasure the Karoo Action Group
Cell: 027-76 838 5150

Esmarie Prinsloo
Head: Media Liaison
AfriForum
Cell: 0027-72 332 9824
E-mail: [email protected]

Former career mining professional Simon Michaux gives a public lecture in Adelaide describing the onset of 'peak mining' and its various implications for natural resource management. A significant and comprehensive update to the field. Governments will be watching this one and trying to ignore it.

A useful presentation of the decline in return on energy invested. The industry is having to work harder and harder in order to get returns. Of course the industry is not going to admit this to potential investors or to governments because, if they did, governments would put the brakes on, realising that we are heading for uncontrollable problems if we do not.

The United States with its fracking and oil-shale mining; canada with its tarsands etc - they are able to get money to invest in the short term because of high demand and low intelligence and education in the investor community. The same kind of thing is happening with many resources, including uranium.

This is the picture that is not shown by graphs of oil production, which manage to convey the impression that per capital production is on a very slightly declining trajectory. If the increasing cost of the extraction from the earth were actually taken into account, we would see a much more rapid downward curve.

Bill Gross, Nouriel Roubini, Laurence Kotlikoff, Steve Keen, Michel Chossudovsky, the Wall Street Journal and many others say that our entire economy is a Ponzi scheme.

Former Reagan budget director David Stockton just agreed:

So did a top Russian con artist and mathematician.

Even the New York Times' business page asked, "Was [the] whole economy a Ponzi scheme?"

In fact – as we've noted for 4 years (and here and here) – the banking system is entirely insolvent. And so are most countries. The whole notion of one country bailing out another country is a farce at this point. The whole system is insolvent.

As we noted last year:

Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz pointed out the Ponzi scheme nature of the whole bailout discussion:

Europe's plan to lend money to Spain to heal some of its banks may not work because the government and the country's lenders will in effect be propping each other up, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.

"The system … is the Spanish government bails out Spanish banks, and Spanish banks bail out the Spanish government," Stiglitz said in an interview.

***

"It's voodoo economics," Stiglitz said in an interview on Friday, before the weekend deal to help Spain and its banks was sealed. "It is not going to work and it's not working."

[The same is true of every other nation.]

Credit Suisse's William Porter writes:

"Portugal cannot rescue Greece, Spain cannot rescue Portugal, Italy cannot rescue Spain (as is surely about to become all too abundantly clear), France cannot rescue Italy, but Germany can rescue France." Or, the credit of the EFSF/ESM, if called upon to provide funds in large size, either calls upon the credit of Germany, or fails; i.e, it seems to us that it probably cannot fund to the extent needed to save the credit of one (and probably imminently two) countries that had hitherto been considered "too big so save" without joint and several guarantees.***

As Nouriel Roubini wrote in February:

[For] problems of that magnitude, there simply are not enough resources—governmental or super-sovereign—to go around.

As Roubini wrote in February:

"We have decided to socialize the private losses of the banking system.

***

Roubini believes that further attempts at intervention have only increased the magnitude of the problems with sovereign debt. He says, "Now you have a bunch of super sovereigns— the IMF, the EU, the eurozone—bailing out these sovereigns."

Essentially, the super-sovereigns underwrite sovereign debt—increasing the scale and concentrating the problems.

Roubini characterizes super-sovereign intervention as merely kicking the can down the road.

He says wryly: "There's not going to be anyone coming from Mars or the moon to bail out the IMF or the Eurozone." [Others have made the same point.]

But, despite the paper shuffling of debt at the national level—and at the level of supranational entities—reality ultimately intervenes: "So at some point you need restructuring. At some point you need the creditors of the banks to take a hit —otherwise you put all this debt on the balance sheet of government. And then you break the back of government—and then government is insolvent."

Peak Demographics?

Indeed, population may be the biggest ponzi scheme of all. Specifically – as we've pointed out for years – rapidly-aging populations in the developed world will exert a big drag on the economy.

The Global Mail notes:

Half the world, including almost all the developed world, now is reproducing at below replacement level. A generation from now, according to United Nations Population Division projections, less than a quarter of the world's women – most of them in Africa and south Asia – will be reproducing at above replacement rate. And those UN forecasts are probably on the high side, for reasons we'll come to later.

And as the birth rate has plunged in developed nations, and the native-born population has begun to shrink and rapidly age, governments and business have sought to make up the numbers by importing people to prop up their economies. It's all they know how to do, for our economic system is, at its base, a giant Ponzi scheme, dependent on ever more people producing and consuming ever more stuff.

But what happens if that all stops? What happens when you get an ageing, shrinking population that consumes less?

"The answer to that question is that we don't know because it's never happened before," says Peter McDonald, professor of demography and director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute at the Australian National University.

***

"We're certainly operating a Ponzi scheme in Australia," says Dr Bob Birrell, an economist and migration expert from Monash University.

"Our growth is predicated on extra numbers… [and] more of our activity is going into city building and people servicing, which do not directly produce many goods that can be traded in overseas markets.

***

Half the world is facing the problem of low fertility, and Australia, with its massive program of importing people, is providing an extreme example of one approach to the conundrum.

In a nutshell, the problem is this: lower fertility rates mean older, less innovative and productive workforces. More importantly to the Ponzi economic order, older, stable or declining populations consume less. So growth requires either importing people, or exporting stuff, or a combination of the two. Orthodox economics simply can't cope otherwise.

Europe as a whole has been reproducing at well below replacement rate for close to 40 years. The last period for which UN data showed Europe's total fertility rate above the replacement rate was 1970-75.

Europe's contemporary demographics give new meaning to the descriptor `the old world'. The continent's average person is over 40 now. By 2050, if things continue on trend, the average European will be 45.7. If one takes the UN's "low variant" projection, he/she will be over 50 years of age.

And the low variant now looks closer to the mark. Fertility rates had actually rebounded a little over recent years, the result of a bit of "catch-up" after a shift over several previous decades in which women delayed child-bearing. But the European recession has set fertility rates plunging again.

Jamie Ferguson/The Global Mail

Jamie Ferguson/The Global Mail

The recession's effects will likely linger for decades, in lower rates of earnings and savings, and also in reduced fertility.

***

Last year, Forbes magazine, that most reliable voice of the economic orthodoxy, laid the blame for Europe's economic decline squarely on its citizens' failure to reproduce in adequate numbers, in an article headlined What's Really Behind Europe's Decline? It's The Birth Rates, Stupid.

The Forbes piece was unequivocal: the biggest threat to the European Union was its low fertility rate.

***

The piece ended with a dire warning that unless Club Med managed to induce people to have more babies, catastrophic economic consequences would flow for all of Europe and maybe the world.

***

As Thomas Sobotka, one of the authors of a 2011 study on population trends by the Vienna Institute of Demography, told the Guardian newspaper, massive cuts in social spending would only exacerbate the problem.

"This may prolong the fertility impact of the recent recession well beyond its end. It could lead to a double-dip fertility decline," he said.

But when it comes to fertility declines, Asia takes the cake.

Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong, and most importantly China currently all have fertility rates lower than those of Europe.

***

China's and Korea's are about to start falling, if they haven't already.

"I'm pretty pessimistic about the east-Asian situation," says McDonald. "I think those countries find it very difficult move in the right direction of supporting work and family, in particular, reducing work hours.

"We are now talking about some 30 per cent of Japanese women not getting married."

"I saw a couple of people from the Japanese government give a paper recently, essentially accepting this as an inevitability – a low birth rate forever," he says.

It's the same all over Asia.

***

Hong Kong has a birth rate of 1.09, which is on track to see its population almost halve in a generation. Taiwan is at 1.10; China, 1.55; Thailand, 1.66; Vietnam, 1.89. Even Indonesia's fertility is just above replacement rate, at 2.23, and is falling fast. Malaysia and the Philippines are still growing pretty quickly, as are the south-Asian countries, which may give them a competitive edge for a few decades – and a growing export industry of people. But it is not projected to last more than a few decades.

Let's return to America. The United States also is reproducing at below replacement rate, and its birthrate has declined sharply in recent years.

***

The US birth rate not only fell to its lowest level ever in 2011, but the greatest decline was among immigrant women.

***

In the longer term, the world will have to adjust its economic system to cope with the novel concept of less. Fewer people, less consumption, lowered need for resources, energy, housing, roads, you name it.

Indeed, smart curmudgeons like Jeremy Granthan and Chris Martensen think that we have not only "peak" demographics, but also peak resources.
There's HOPE

The above is admittedly depressing. But the reality is that there's hope.

We can have a very bright future, indeed … if we switch from the status quo to something smarter. For example, see this and this.

For example, we can cut out the middlemen in the banking and political realms … and prosper.

Energy

And as we've previously noted about energy:

The current paradigm is that energy is produced expensively by governments or large corporations through gigantic projects using enormous amounts of money, materials and manpower. Because energy can only be produced by the big boys, we the people must bow our heads to the powers-that-be. We must pay a lot of our hard-earned money to buy electricity from them, and we can't question the methods or results of their energy production.

Our life will become much better when we begin to understand that energy is all around us – as an ocean of electromagnetic forces and as a byproduct of other processes in the form of heat, pressure, etc. – and all we need do is learn how to harvest it.

Original source of article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-entire-economy-is-a-ponzi-scheme-the-global-financial-system-is-insolvent/5331143

Another sign of overpopulation and resource competition: We publish a press release from a commercial anti-pirate operation which offers naval escort services across the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, where easy collection of oil is no longer guaranteed. "In West Africa in the area known as the Gulf of Guinea, where there is no UK, EUNAVFOR or US Naval presence (nor is there planned to be), maritime crime is escalating and is spiralling to such levels that the UN Security Council has recognised it as a specific threat to international security (Resolutions 2018 [2011] and 2039 [2012]). It is estimated that the state of Nigeria is losing $1bn of crude oil through theft every month."

Commercial Launch of Typhon Maritime Security Service

Typhon is launching its marine convoy escort service with immediate effect. This service enables ship operators to transit the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean in unprecedented safety while saving time and money. The company is now opening discussions with potential clients and negotiating long term contracts.

Piracy is spreading rapidly from its Somalian roots across the Indian Ocean as far as the Gulf of Guinea, Bangladesh and Indonesia. Maritime criminals are becoming more audacious, more violent, better equipped and more adept. With the wind-down of the EUNAFOR's naval presence in the Gulf of Aden in 2014 is likely to coincide with a major escalation in piracy in the Indian Ocean. In this theatre of operations piracy still remains a serious threat to some of the world’s busiest shipping routes. At present 147 hostages are being held by pirates in Somalia.

In West Africa in the area known as the Gulf of Guinea, where there is no UK, EUNAVFOR or US Naval presence (nor is there planned to be), maritime crime is escalating and is spiralling to such levels that the UN Security Council has recognised it as a specific threat to international security (Resolutions 2018 [2011] and 2039 [2012]). It is estimated that the state of Nigeria is losing $1bn of crude oil through theft every month.

To date the only effective commercially available counter-measure has been provided by ride-on guards otherwise known as VPDs (Vessel Protection Detachments or Details). This protection model provides a quantity of armed personnel to live aboard the client ship for the duration of the transit. However the client vessels have to detour for their embarkation and disembarkation often at significant cost. The range of protection from pirates is narrow: 400m from the ‘target’ ship.

Typhon’s Integrated Protection Model starts by detecting any threats of piracy at long range – this is done onshore in Typhon's Operations Centre in the UAE. It enables Typhon to conduct their transit safely through the network of pirate action groups – and advising clients of necessary course adjustments to avoid known trouble hot spots.

The safety of convoying through dangerous waters has been established for hundreds of years but Typhon will be the first company for over two hundred years to privately offer a naval-grade service to the commercial market.

With Typhon’s service, close protection vessels (CPVs) shadow client vessels using its ‘umbrella concept’, which consists of surveillance and, detection and early warning capabilities to identify and assess any likely or suspected threats. Through early detection, Typhon will be able to deter a pirate threat before it becomes a danger.

The convoys travel in a protected 'envelope' which make it extremely difficult for the pirates to enter the 'Protection Zone' to launch an attack. Typhon's policy is always to seek to diffuse and de-escalate any violence.

Typhon’s detection solution consists of a multi-layered service that detects piracy in three ways – by sea (using radar), by air (using satellite) and by land (through an onshore operations centre). In conjunction with the CPV, Typhon’s detection of potential threats will inform the decision to use armoured patrol boats to intercept a potential target, engage direct fire weapons or mount a key defence of the client vessel. The use of force is a last resort and is always reasonable and proportionate using the minimum amount of force necessary.

Anthony Sharp, CEO of Typhon, said, “Typhon was created in order address the specific threat from pirates in a number of key geographies. The area we will protect are too vast for current naval resources to monitor effectively and this will be an even bigger issue when Operation Atlanta comes to an end.

“Our mantra is to combat the problem of maritime crime and piracy using methods that are both effective and proportionate to the threat. With millions paid out in ransoms to pirates and much more money lost by businesses in fuel costs avoiding pirates, it is important that businesses are granted a safer passage with their cargo through dangerous waters. The benefits to business will be substantial.”

Amazingly or perhaps, true to type, Australia is experiencing extreme shortages of domestic natural gas supplies. World-wide there is a gas-rush. It also looks like oil is already not keeping up with demand as countries scramble for new more energy costly, polluting and environmentally destructive forms of energy, like tarsands, fracked gas, and sugarcane ethanol. The media is failing to paper over the cracks: Australia looks like a cartoon demonstration of entropy with energy dispersing, the environment overheating, overpopulation and political disorder. And there is nowhere for Australians to escape.

Oil and gas consumption rising of course

According to the BP Statistical Review of World energy, the world's natural gas reserves would last for 59 years if production continued at the 2010 rate (which it didn't of course - it increased by 0.7% in 2011, and Australia's consumption increased by 5.7%, China's by 5.5% and Belarus by 22.8%. You can download historical time lines here.) The BP prognosis for oil is comparatively optimistic. That is probably because BP has over the years added to its definition of crude oil, shale oil, oil sands and NGLs (the liquid content of natural gas where this is recovered separately). That’s a lot of new sources, all of them requiring more energy to extract or transport than that required to harness and package the traditional ‘gusher’ close to the surface, now a rare phenomenon.

Supplies of oil that comes out of the ground from vast reservoirs are actually being drawn down faster and faster, so gas is being called upon to substitute for more and more other forms of energy. While Australia looks to reintroducing coal to substitute for petroleum and exports more and more natural gas, China is substituting gas for coal on a massive scale.

If it quacks like a duck ...

In fact, watching countries scramble for new more energy costly, polluting and environmentally destructive forms of energy, like tarsands, fracked gas and sugarcane ethanol, you sure could be forgiven for thinking that this is a sign that oil is already not keeping up with demand.

And all these new fuels involve trampling democracy on a larger and larger scale. The biofuels cause hideous suffering to animals and are driving extinction through the destruction of habitat. In the mean time various high-tech wars in the Middle East are burning up traditional oil supplies day and night as China, Russia, the US, and Europe, attempt to get power in the biggest oil-reserve regions.

Send in the clowns

You hear governments talking about letting the market have its way and you fear that they say that because they have absolutely no control over what is happening. Because of the tyranny of profit we have more and more desperate attempts to promote business as usual. Policy follows the dollar ... anywhere. Into enslavement, overpopulation and death.

What can one say about the future when leaders all over the world seem to be escalating all our energy and pollution problems or allowing them to escalate because they simply don't know how to stop them?

Martin Ferguson, Federal Resources Minister's energy white paper argues that 'market intervention' should only be considered 'where there is clear evidence of market failure'.

King Kong had nothing on the corporate ape

Free market policy does not make sense in any social welfare or governance way. It only makes sense if you consider that the concentration of power and wealth at global levels has promoted a range of super dominant male apes absolutely ruled by their need to sit on the heads of other apes in human pyramids beyond a level where they can actually comprehend their impact and take responsibility. In the jungle other male apes would simply have beaten these big fat bullies up and removed them. In the global governance and concrete and banking jungle, where money can substitute for muscles, size, brains and agility, nothing can stop them. They can temporarily be brought to their knees financially, but they will just sacrifice lesser apes in order to get back onto the global baccarat table. Even when they die, more take their place, blindly pursuing the same senseless objectives of expansion and dominion. Following the money down a terminal plughole.

Australia already running out of natural gas

As many candobetter.net readers are aware, Australia has for decades now been in the death grip of a voracious housing industry that has major responsibility for pushing up population growth here.

You can tell when the housing industry is going bad when you see the building materials industry is in trouble. Then they start talking down resource prices so that the developers they supply can keep cranking out those houses (incidentally boosting the demand for gas even more - but what does the building materials industry care about the final result? Not a fig.)

Apparently local and international demand has forced the price of gas right up, to triple its 2008 price in West Australia and Queensland. The gas extracting industry is chasing the international dollar, leaving local manufacturing industry without supply.

Brickworks, Australia's largest brick manufacturer (responsible for those houses that cover once loved forests and fields) claims that it has been reduced to using sawdust (in Tasmania) and methane from infills. That is probably a sign of the times. If they would just adjust and downsize, then maybe we could all go home and relax, as the population growth they demand constantly to satisfy their bloated purses would die down in the absence of that demand.

But corporations have to grow, don't you know. So they are in there dividing and conquering, accusing the 'Greens' and environmentalism of causing gas shortages. How do they figure that? Well, Lindsay Partridge of Brickworks says that the shortages that are caused by exporting all our gas are only shortages because Green concerns cause obstacles to total open slather mining everywhere. So, the answer, according to Partridge, is for the government to simply remove all laws preventing mining everywhere, bringing on coal seam gas as well as natural gas.

For reasons not elaborated Mr Partridge also thinks that the supply of natural gas will become abundant towards the end of this decade. For a man who complains that he cannot guarantee supply for the next two years to plan, he is very optimistic about supply at the end of this decade.

Gas is fugitive

Other people worry that the way gas comes out of the ground - very quickly - means that the more you are getting the less time before it is all exhausted. The gases just zoom out into the atmosphere when you take the lids off the earthern reservoirs they accumulated in. There is nothing to stop their natural reservoir from emptying almost immediately unless you can plug and control their escape. It is like undoing a balloon. Natural gas even escapes between the denser particles of pipes as you transport it. These elusive qualities of gas should concern those in power but somehow they seem to remain oblivious.

Martin Ferguson, Federal Resources Minister's energy white paper argues that 'market intervention' should only be considered 'where there is clear evidence of market failure'.

Because Martin Ferguson (the Federal Resources Minister) does not consider that Australia's remaining businesses going out of business is evidence of market failure, he won't regulate gas distribution. Nor will he regulate business and housing rents driven up by population growth (the other reason that business goes out of business in Australia.)

"The role for government is not to step in and intervene but to let those better placed to negotiate a commercial outcome," he is quoted as saying.

We now seem to be witnessing “market failure" to avert environmental damage and in the scramble for ever diminishing energy sources. We may also be witnessing market failure to select technically and humanistically competent politicians.

West Australia reserves the princely portion of 16% of its natural gas production for the Australian market, but NSW and Queensland have no policies to retain any gas for domestic use, according to the Financial Review (See sources below).

It is not surprising if all this makes you feel extremely insecure with respect to future gas availability in Australia - or anywhere.
The media is failing to paper over the cracks: Australia looks like a cartoon demonstration of entropy with energy dispersing, the environment overheating, overpopulation and political disorder. And there is nowhere for Australians to escape.

Click here to Buy PRINT VERSION of S.M. Newman, Demography Territory Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations (2013)

When you think that the Australian Aborigines probably inhabited this continent for 40,000 to 60,000 years in a mostly stable population and economy you cannot help but envy them their incredibly long run of luck. They obviously knew what they were doing!

NOTES

Source: Peter Roberts, "Gas crisis looms for industry," Australian Financial Review, Monday 21 January 2013, pages 1 and 4.

Source: Rebecca Hyam,Coal seam protests forcing gas prices up: industry
Jan 21, 2013.

Permission to publish this eloquent and magnificently drawn cartoon gratefully acknowledged to the artist, Keith Nesbitt of Sustainable Population Australia, South Australia. The original drawing was done in black and white. Jill Quirk (President of SPA Victoria and Tasmanian Branch) coloured it electronically.

On November 6, 2012 it was reported that the Victorian government was cooling on the idea of another port for Hastings and instead its planners were casting their collective beady eye in the direction of Werribee. ("Government looks west for next port development," The Age, 6 Nov., p.6.) One imagines hope springing on the Mornington Peninsula as a dark shadow turns west to cast its pall on Werribeeans instead. But do we even need one new port?

At first gasp, if you have lived down on the Mornington Peninsula under the threatening shadow of a planned port for Hastings, you might tentatively hope that the government has actually called the dogs off. Then, if you have some conscience, you might think, "But why inflict the same on Werribee?" The people who live in Werribee are our fellow citizens.

Werribee is, it is true, heavily industrialised, however the area also has extensive wetlands that nature relies on. Worse, there are documents indicating associated plans for even more elaborate destruction for the wider coastal area which is of historic cultural significance in Victorian hearts, bearing the evocative name of Avalon:

"Transport Minister Terry Mulder had been briefed on a proposed ''master plan'' for the Avalon region, including a container port, an international airport, industrial development and a formula one track."

The Absurdity of multiple ports

But why are we even thinking of another port? When did state governments begin to think in terms of serial ports, one after another, in preparation for a huge increase in container traffic against a real backdrop of container traffic decline. It seems insane, unless you consider the desperation that affects people accustomed to a certain income who see the prospects of maintaining their corporate and private empires declining in a world where growth is going to become impossible to maintain. Over the past few years such people have convinced governments to use taxpayers' money to finance huge infrastructure projects - like desalination plants and massive tollways - of questionable value but involving enormous turnover for those involved. Ports are just another version of the tollways, tunnels and city apartment blocks template for raising cash from banks, investors and taxpayers. The key is to make the project sound inevitable and necessary. That's their game and the growth merchants don't have another one.

Jenny Warfe, of Blue Wedges, says,

How many ports do we really need? We have a massive port in Melbourne – with another $1.5 billion expansion planned for soon, a substantial port in Geelong, and smaller ones in Portland and Hastings."

She reminds us that all these ports occupy important, formerly publicly owned coastal assets. Every one imposes considerable negative impacts on its surrounding suburbs and waterways.

With regard to 'heavily industrialised Werribee', the greater part of the Western shoreline is largely untouched.

"The area that is being talked about for the ‘Bay West’ port is an internationally significant RAMSAR site, on which rely millions of migratory birds every year, just like Westernport," Jenny reminds us.

Only in September, Jenny compered a lecture in Melbourne from visiting US academic Richard Heinberg, who is a well-known author on the problem of oil-depletion, which many think is behind the wars we are involved in in the Middle East. Oil production or extraction is no longer keeping up with the demands of compound growth in human economic activity. Even though there is oil out there, it is harder and harder to get out of the earth, with high risks for investors and the environment. Although there is an industry for recovering oil from tar sands and even shale, what the public lack the education to understand is that the cost of extracting oil from such forms hardly leaves room for any profit and is deadly for the environment. Decline in abundant, cheap oil availability means that there won't be any new sustained 'growth' in production, trade and transport of cheap goods round and round the world. The price of production goes up as the availability of easily accessible oil goes down, so production must adjust downwards.

"In his recent Melbourne address, Heinberg warned that as we reach peak oil and peak everything else, we may not be exporting and importing so much, and surely not so much of the low cost high volume junk that fills up so many import containers at the moment, " comments Ms Warfe.

(Although 'peak oil' indicates a peak of production, where there is more oil than at any other time, there is a cliff on the other side, and that is where we are heading. In fact there are many indications that we have passed that peak.)

"Mr. Heinberg is right to be adamant that we should focus on getting population expansion and consumption levels under control and power DOWN not UP, " she says.

Nutty idea to increase trade infrastructure when trade is in decline

This is the most important message of candobetter.net and Jenny joins the dots well. There is no point in building new ports for declining trade.

Jenny suggests that these ideas for more ports are coming from old fossils in suits blowing $billions on the tired old ‘business as usual’ pipe-dream- which is this latest port proposal in a nutshell.

Instead of more of the same with the public expected to lie down and think of England, while pipe-dream addicted planners rifle through the public purse, as Ms Warfe sums up:

"We need funds and good minds with the capacity to deal with reality. We need different solutions for the very different future we and all species on Earth face."

Yes, we don't need a new port in Hastings and we don't need a new port in Werribee. They are both bad ideas. A formula one car racing track in the Avalon Region, in the light of declining oil and the need to conserve energy, is sublimely ridiculous. One can only interpret this suggestion as symbolically associated with the awful and tragic dependence of the Australian economy on the automobile industry (which also enables the suburban development industry). For anyone who had never thought of this, try ... um... driving... round some outer suburbs and you will see entire districts dedicated, not only to the sale and maintenance of new and used cars, but to marketing and retailing a range of associated paraphernalia, from deodorisers to window transfers to car brand-name wind sheeters. This is the outcome of colonial corporate thinking and the suppression of diverse local manufacturing activity. Our politicians are responsible.

Peninsula Port Plans have already cost the community dearly

Unfortunately and absurdly, even if the Mornington Peninsula is reprieved from a huge industrial port sector at Hastings, the future traffic predicted to be associated with the Port was used as an excuse to put a huge new tollway, which already scars substantial landscape and bushland. Westerfield heritage area and large parts of The Pines have been destroyed to build that road in preparation for traffic to and from Hastings (port), over years of protest by environmentalists. Even agreements to fence off predators from bandicoot areas in the Pines have since been renegged on with the special sums allocated arbitrarily diverted to other projects by Parks Victoria, according to Hans Brunner.

But do the authors of these huge projects even care, as long as someone makes a profit along the line? Costs will be borne by any investors that were counting on guaranteed tollway profits due to hugely increased volumes of traffic on the Peninsula. Such schemes are money floats for those who initiate them, but the chances of them paying down the line with oil depletion looming are minute, and the designers almost certainly knew this. They were probably taking advantage of public ignorance of resource supplies. See SEITA tollway using old data on oil prices.

At no stage either is it ever made clear to the public how closely political parties of all hues are associated with such massive land-development projects, via their business and investment arms. For an idea of how this works, look at Labor Resources, bearing in mind that this kind of activity, although on a grand scale in the Labor Party, also goes on in the other established parties with big budgets and major landed and investment assets.

There is more to these port projects than meets the eye of the casual observer.

In the US Presidential race, both roads lead to financial collapse, resource depletion, war, irreversible climate change, species extinction, chaos, despair and hopelessness.

Listen up my American friends:

The Time Is Ripe For This Man To Lead Your Exceptionally Debt-Ridden Nation!

Promising a “lean and mean” hands-off do-nothing limited government, the late Chris Clugston ponders America’s future as the first posthumous President to occupy the Oval Office (February, 2013).

The Presidential election is but one week away. In just one week, Americans will be going to the polls to elect THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD.

As a duly paid up member of that world, I therefore feel entitled to stick my nose in it---despite lacking American citizenship. Alas, I have a "voice" , but no vote. I therefore delegate that awesome responsibility to you. You have it within your power to make a choice that will affect untold generations ahead.

You stand at a critical junction, and must choose to take one of two roads.

One road leads to financial collapse, resource depletion, war, irreversible climate change, species extinction, chaos, despair and hopelessness. While the other road leads to financial collapse, resource depletion, war, irreversible climate change, species extinction, chaos, despair and hopelessness.

The choice, as exceptional Americans, is yours and only yours to make.

However, as I intimated, since I have an enormous stake in the outcome, I feel it my right to at least try to influence you to do what is right. Once again, I urge you to vote for the only credible third party candidate, Chris Clugston, who alone among the contestants has taken the novel path of speaking the blunt truth. Civilization is finished.

I sent out the attached election document early in the campaign, but as the Decision Day nears, I thought it important to remind you that there is a clear alternative to hopelessness. It is hopelessness backed up with empirically solid evidence. The kind of hopelessness which will spare you the wasted time and energy that would be involved in chasing after Romney and Obama's ridiculous "fixes" for something that can't be fixed.

The choice is not between red or blue, between Romney's tax cuts for the rich and the borrow, tax and spend agenda of Obama. But, on the one hand, between those who argue about which formula will best promote growth (Romney-nomics vs. Obamanomics), and on the other, Chris Clugston, who argues that we should take our foot off the gas pedal so that we can coast, rather than race, to the cliff. We'll be dead soon enough! So why the rush?

I make this plea now because, as I speak, Chris is presently hunkered down in a Philadelphia suburb hoping to survive the Frankenstorm, and it is entirely possible that he will never again be able to give a live presentation. We don't really care if he makes it through of course, so long as he has backed up his data on a hard disc secured in a storm-proof safe. We need that data!

Perhaps, if his campaign suddenly catches fire in this last week of electioneering, he might become the first President-elect who was elected posthumously. That might make him the most effective leader ever to make it to the Oval Office---albeit as an embalmed corpse or something less composed. After all, some economists (of the Mises school) argue that Calvin Coolidge cured the 1921 depression precisely because he didn't try to. Perhaps then, by being unable to actively pursue growthist policies, an embalmed corpse or skeletal Commander-in-Chief in the White House would be just the lame duck President we are looking for. Someone with the backbone to resist any call to get the economy moving again.

Tim Murray

October 29, 2012

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports the highest population growth rate since 2009. An 18 per cent increase in annual net overseas migration to 197,200 is responsible for the rise. Australia is entering a period of uncertainty for which we will be better prepared if we do not have to support ever more people - native born or immigrants. -- Sustainable Population Australia (SPA)

Australia's population growth getting out of control

The latest figures that show Australia’s growth rate has risen to 1.5 per cent are alarming, according to Sustainable Population Australia (SPA).

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports this is the highest growth rate since 2009. An 18 per cent increase in annual net overseas migration to 197,200 is responsible for the rise.

SPA National Vice-President, Dr John Coulter, says, irrespective of what Prime Minister Gillard once said, we are indeed hurtling down the track towards a big population.

Socially, environmentally and economically beyond the pale

“If we continue with a 1.5 per cent national growth rate, Australia will have doubled its population to 45 million by 2060,” says Dr Coulter. “This is totally untenable in environmental, social and economic terms.

“We are facing the twin challenges of climate change and peak conventional oil,” he says. “The latter will mean a possible doubling in oil prices by the end of the decade which will have grave implications for the economy.”

Dr Coulter says the current resources boom will not last and Australia will not be able to support even the present population, never mind a larger one.

Petroleum depletion, massive economic debt and climate change make three scary horsemen

“The US author Richard Heinberg is currently touring Australia. He warns that the end of economic growth is imminent because of the energy crisis, the debt bubble and climate change. If there is no economic growth, we certainly cannot support a growing population.

“Climate change is particularly worrying because we appear to be heading for a rise in temperature of at least 3.5o C which will wipe out much of Australian agriculture.

Dr Coulter said that Australia is entering a period of uncertainty for which we will be better prepared if we do not have to support ever more people, be they migrants or native-born.

Further information: John Coulter 08 8388 2153

Source: Press Release from SPA, www.population.org.au, 28 September 2012

NEW POPULATION BOOK: Sheila Newman has just published new theory in a new book, Demography, Territory & Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations (see link). Two chapters are on multi-species demography, the rest apply the theory to non-industrial societies and the author comes up with a completely new test for the collapse model of Easter Island, which will stun those who thought they knew all about it. Forensic biologist, Hans Brunner writes of it: "This book takes us to a completely new paradigm in multiple species population science. It shows how little we understand, and how much we need to know, of the sexual reactions when closed colonies with an orderly reproduction system are destroyed, be it people or animals."

__._,_.___

Report on Richard Heinberg's tour of Australia, Melbourne talk: We should remember that the economy is a subset of the environment and that 'not sustainable' does not mean 'insufficiently eco-groovy'. Heinberg pointed to Australia's growing reliance on petroleum and its decreasing production and suggested that the policy of growing our population needs a profound rethink. Some strange and interesting responses from the audience. And a standing ovation for Australian MP Kelvin Thomson, who was chairing Heinberg's session. Not to mention Jenny Warfe - a terrific new Vice President for SPA Victoria and Tasmanian Branch.

Energy, Debt, Climate Change, Overpopulation

(The following is based on notes taken from Richard Heinberg's excellent talk and does not purport to be verbatim.)

Plentiful energy in the early 20th Century caused a 'problem' of overproduction. Consumers did not have the income to keep up. Tactics to overcome this structural resistance included advertising, planned obsolescence, fashion (bringing out new models), and, most of all, credit (i.e. debt.)

Credit is a key factor producing economic growth. Delinking money from precious metals helped this along because money could be created with little restraint.

Heinberg identifies the 1980s as a turning point and cites Robert F. Gordon, "Is US Economic Growth over?" (NBER Working Paper No. 18315, August 2012.) Gordon writes that there have been three periods of technological engineering leading to industrial growth:

1. Coal, steampower
2. Oil and electrification early 20th century
3. Computers, internet, cell phones etc.

The third phase does not generate as much economic growth as previous technological changes.

Globalisation, debt and economic growth

Globalisation has posed a problem for growth because, by internationalising wage competition, it drives wages, and therefore purchasing capacity, downwards. In the US, says Heinberg, the average wage is at levels of 1973.

More debt has been used as a strategy to get low income earners to purchase more consumables and to sure up economic growth.

Debt is now growing three times faster than GDP.

The Financialisation of the Economy

This financialisation of the economy has meant expansion of the Financial Industry. The Industry hs gained political power and the ability to influence profound changes in financial legislation.

But, says Heinberg, with the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) we reached the limits to debt.

Problems with current political-economic system

Lack of redundancy makes the system fragile. Heinberg talks about how ridiculous it is to make countries into specialist economies, evoking the danger of reliance on trading for most vital resources.

Like most peak-oilers he advocates relocalisation. The reasons are many but one of the main ones is the energy cost of transport. Our current land-use planning relies on us using cars. The only way to avoid reliance on cars (which will become too expensive to run as petroleum runs down) will be to redesign, default back to land-use that makes it possible to walk or cycle to town centers, and to grow and distribute most food and materials locally. At the moment the system discourages local initiatives to supplement or supply food and materials.

We need to stop using the GDP as a measure of production because it privileges any activity that makes money, without heed to the harm it might do.

We should encourage alternative currencies, worker ownership, and population stabilisation.

Australia's growing population problems - what do we think we are doing!

Heinberg gave Australia's population problems quite a lot of attention, focusing on our declining oil production and our growing consumption of fuels, asking is it really sensible to contemplate the signs of a long future financial decline and still grow the population by importing more and more people?

On Energy and Climate

We need low energy transportation, low energy buildings, low energy agriculture and renewable energy sources. Of course no-one should expect to have anything like the current level of economic activity based on these.

We should remember that the economy is a subset of the environment and that 'not sustainable' does not mean 'insufficiently eco-groovy'.

What's not peak

Community, satisfaction with honest work well done, intergenerational solidarity, artistry, beauty of built environment, happiness, healthy environment, cooperation.

Audience Response

As one familiar with peak resources and population discussions from way back, I was not too surprised by some of the questions, however I learn something each time.

Iceland and middle class attitudes

I asked Heinberg if he thought it would be a good idea to talk about how Iceland has refused to pay its GFC 'debt' and is pursuing 200 bankers on criminal charges. I added that people could benefit from realising that most of the countries in Continental Europe do not suffer from the same rapid population growth as Australia and other Anglophone economies.

Richard said that Iceland was a shining example and its economy, released from debt, had rebounded.

At this a young man behind me gave his spirited opinion that it was not so impressive to go from zero to zero. He seemed not to consider the importance of a people being freed from debt, but that might be explained by the fact that he identified himself as employed in the Financial Industry. He described himself as having only recently escaped a life of despair on a country farm for his employment in Melbourne. Remarking that there was far more community spirit in the country than in Melbourne, he nonetheless warned somewhat contemptuously that that most of this middle-class audience would experience a rude awakening from their romantic ideas about self-sufficiency if they chose to return to the land.

Clearly the importance of our economic reliance of fossil fuels - notably petroleum - simply had not sunk in at all. He seemed to think that the whole talk was about some kind of philosophical attitude, rather than a forewarning on survival in hard times to come.

Richard Heinberg's reply was that relocalisation and self-sufficiency wasn't about 'choice'. It was about dealing with an unavoidable situation. He said that his own father had been raised on a subsistence farm but had managed to get to the city and become the first in the family to get a university education. Richard added that he and his wife lived on a large block in a city where they had numerous fruit and nut trees and hens, and that, although it was sometimes hard work, they had more fun now than they had ever had.

What I learned from this exchange was that one psychological way of not dealing with finite resources is to assume that they are somehow discretionary. Though how a farm-boy could fail to appreciate the importance of petroleum defeats me, unless this young man is an indicator of how modern schools, even in rural areas, teach within paradigms separate from rural reality.

Goldcoast Climate change refugees

Another young man, closer to the front of the audience, whilst acknowledging that population poses a problem in Australia asked, "But what should Australia do about climate change refugees from poor countries? Don't we have an obligation to take some? How many should we take?

This view seemed to me to indicate that the person asking the question had somehow assumed that peak oil, global warming and financial implosion would only affect the 'third world'. Hence his question was, given the need to limit Australia's population size, what should our position be on climate change refugees? The picture was painted of millions seeking entry to our safe and prosperous shores.

I would have liked to asked him why he seemed to assume that Australia's economy will somehow not implode with the rest of the world's and that our own population will not be affected by sea-level rise, given that most of our populations live in coastal cities. We have seen what several feet rise in river levels did for the Brisbane CBD during the floods in 2011. Well, the Brisbane River opens onto the sea, which means, if there is a rise in sea levels, the CBD is likely to be inundated. As for the Gold Coast; those hundreds of skyscrapers lining the beach are completely vulnerable to permanent deluge. Their location is a testimony to shortsightedness and opportunistic investment overseen by negligent councils and state governments.

Sydney Harbour will have its valleys inundated. Port Philip Bay and Hastings (enclosing the Mornington Peninsula where developers are planning to build many new suburbs, a new railway, tollways and to massively increase cargo traffic), are doomed to lose many buildings. Likewise for Perth (on the Swan River), Darwin on the sea, Adelaide, and so many other towns and cities.

The same can be said, in metaphor, for our economy. Look at how Campbell Newman, the new Queensland Premier, has used recent floods as an excuse to sell off more assets and close down jobs!

Standing ovation for Kelvin Thomson

Throughout this talk I was impressed with the organisation of the event by SPA members and Vice President of SPA Victoria and Tasmania, Jenny Warfe (of Blue Wedges fame)'s presence. Her introductions of the event and the speakers set an excellent tone for the evening. Kelvin Thomson MP formally introduced Richard Heinberg, but he did not overshadow the main speaker.

Some questions later targeted Thomson's knowledge of local population policy problems. He answered some, but mostly deferred to Heinberg. Unusual for an Australian politician in such an event, the audience gave Kelvin a standing ovation and a number of people spoke of how grateful they were to him for representing Australians' democratic opinion on high immigration numbers, overpopulation and overdevelopment. Richard Heinberg, naturally received very strong applause and was obviously greatly appreciated.

The Significance of this event and the way forward for the Counter-Growth Lobby

This event, which took place at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne, was unusually well attended for a counter-growth lobby population and resources lecture in Australia. The speaker, Richard Heinberg, has received far more coverage than any other non-Cornucopian population and resources speaker that I remember, apart from Tim Flannery perhaps. Sustainable Population Australia members in each state who set up his speaker tour deserve credit. Although Jill Quirk, the Victorian and Tasmanian President was unable to attend due to unforseeable events, her work in organising the branch response was vital.

The only criticism one can make is that more Australian speakers should be on this particular counter-growth lecture circuit and SPA has a number of good ones in its branches that it simply fails to promote, year after year, despite being the peak body in this field. SPA has symptoms of clique and cringe syndrome. If SPA only recycles the same national leaders and will not promote locals to prominence in speaker events and as spokespersons, its message will always be eclipsed by the mainstream and property development media, which are constantly anointing their own talking heads, with effect, despite little concern for quality. In fact raising the profile of good activists, no matter how humble, is one of the Candobetter.net's most important activities.

The Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) and the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) were also involved in supporting this event.

This article was meant to appear yesterday but, owing to a bug in Acrobat that freezes the screen whenever I try to read an acrobat article, I had to reboot and lost everything I wrote yesterday.

Kelvin Thomson MP will be chairing Richard Heinberg's talk about his book, The End of Growth 7.30pm. on Saturday 22 September 2012 at The Wheeler Centre, 176 Little Lonsdale Street. Heinberg is a well-known peak oil blogger and writer who delivers an entertaining and stimulating message on the serious subject of resource depletion which Australian governments and development and financial planners at all levels simply cannot cope with. At a time when Australia continues to back military intervention in the oil-rich Middle East, Richard's talk is especially topical. As well as that, it is the reality we all must deal with. So go along and then take the message back to your state and federal political representative and your growth-obsessed local council.

Let's hear it for the End of Growth

Senior Fellow at America’s Post Carbon Institute, Richard Heinberg, will be in Melbourne on Saturday 22 September as part of his national speaking tour on how to shape the economy of the future.

Mr Heinberg, who has written extensively on peak oil, will speak to his latest book “The End of Growth”.

“Economies cannot grow forever, even if they are based on renewable energy. We must adjust to the fact that our own civilisation has reached limits with regard to population, water, soil, raw materials, and energy,” said Mr Heinberg.

Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) is hosting his national tour, and in Melbourne they are joined by The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and the Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE). The evening will be chaired by Kelvin Thomson MP, Federal Member for Wills and well known campaigner on population issues.

Good to see that Kelvin Thomson, one of very few politicians in this country who seems to 'get it' is chairing. Well done Jill Quirk, Jenny Warfe and Vivian Ortega for getting this up in Melbourne!

Victorian/Tasmanian branch president of SPA, Jill Quirk, said it was an opportune time for Richard Heinberg to visit Melbourne.

“Melbourne’s population is growing at an alarming rate,” said Ms Quirk. “Urban growth boundaries are being extended to cope with it and green wedges violated. More and more resources are required to provide infrastructure for all the extra people yet governments are unwilling to provide them.”

Before arriving in Melbourne, Mr Heinberg will have spoken to meetings in Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, Sydney and Canberra. After Melbourne, his speaking tour will move to Adelaide and Perth and finish at the Sydney Festival of Dangerous Ideas.

Details of the Melbourne event:

The End of Growth: Peak Oil and the Economy of the Future

7.30 pm Saturday 22 September

The Wheeler Centre, 176 Little Lonsdale Street

Chaired by Kelvin Thomson MP

$5 entry at the door. RSVP and inquiries: Jenny Warfe via #10;">Email Jenny Warfe via SPAVic

Bill McKibben has recently unveiled some new "terrifying math" about global warming. But there are other numbers that terrify me more. My mother used to tell me to stop worrying, because it is not the things we worry about that usually get us, but the things we don't see coming. I think she was right.

Bill McKibben recently wrote about the “terrifying math” of global warming:

Climate Change

A third of the summer Arctic ice is gone and oceans are 30% more acidic.
We are already three-quarters along the road to the two-degree increase that we have been told is the tipping point beyond which runaway temperature increases follow.
We are on pace to exceed the 565 gigaton carbon “budget” left to keep us under the tipping point in just 16 years.
We are planning to burn oil, gas and coal reserves that would exceed this carbon budget by a factor of five.
To keep “under budget”, we must keep 80% of known hydrocarbons in the ground.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

Yes, those numbers sound truly terrifying alright. But try these on for size:

Population Overshoot

October 31, 2011
7 billion humans on Planet Earth.
A thousand times more people than what there were through most of human history.

More humans are born every day than there are primates in the world.
Each day the world adds 220,000 people to its burden (a Saskatoon, Saskatchewan every day). Each day each Canadian--or an American---consumes over 100 lbs of minerals, metals and fuels---all non-renewable.
Each day as the pool of affordable and accessible minerals, metals and fuels shrinks, the number of people making a claim on them grows.
Each year a Canadian consumes the equivalent of 25 barrels of oil.

These numbers are scary. And solid.

Realists know that there is a difference between a LONG emergency and a PERMANENT one, and know therefore, that there can be no real preparation for de-industrialization. They know that they can hide from marauding hordes in a bunker, or in a remote re-localized community, but they cannot hide from scarcity. And they know that governments will pull out all stops to keep the industrial machine running. In retrospect, environmental sensibilities will seem like a quaint middle class indulgence of a people who didn't know what real hardship was all about. We will drill in children’s graveyards if we think it will keep us warm at night.

Arctic ice can melt. But so can human flesh in a thermonuclear war---or freeze after one.
Vanishing ice can send temperatures soaring, but nuclear winter can send them plummeting.
An old bush pilot said to me that if your plane is aloft and you notice that your engine is on fire, you don't care about what the needle on your fuel gauge says. You have to focus on putting that fire out. First things first. We have to address scarcity.

Connect these dots

Connect these dots. 2010--the Chinese spend over $4 billion to buy 9% of Syncrude as a part of their determined effort to gain more control of the Alberta tar sands project. Then in the summer of 2011, they launch their first aircraft carrier in determined effort to build up their fleet and grow their military muscle. Then this summer they spent over $15 billion to purchase control of Nexen Corporation, paying 61% more than share value, to gain an even bigger foothold in the Tar Sands. Given the scale of this commitment, a pipeline to the Pacific coast to serve the Chinese market is a certainty. If not soon, then later. Environmental concerns will be cast aside.

Final dot. China---an emerging superpower, and the US, an increasingly desperate and fading superpower, both crave tar sands oil. Is this not reminiscent of the conditions which led the Japanese to launch the desperately foolish attack on Pearl Harbor? How ironic it would be if it was the United States that would be placed in Japan's position in 1941?

These are things that keep me awake at night, not Glikson’s or Hansen's speculations regarding sea levels 50 years from now.

Tinderbox

I feel that we are all sitting on a tinderbox, while across the world governments are stockpiling matches. As McKibben’s nightmare is unfolding with a quickening pace, mine has broken out into a sprint.

Let me summarize the forgoing perspective in point form:

1) The “down slope” experience is one of increasing scarcity.

2) Relocalization is just one moment in the down slope ( not the end condition).

3) Relocalized communities require isolation or insulation from roving pillagers, but there is no sanctuary from scarcity.

4) Governments are not going to help us get to sustainable communities. They are going spend every bit of monetary and natural capital trying to keep the overloaded system afloat.

5) The actions that concerned people (environmentalists) are taking to prevent the down slope are too weak to be meaningful.

6) In the end each person (each environmentalist) will desecrate everything to stay afloat.

7) You worry about rising waters and temperatures that will fry us. I worry about nuclear winter that will freeze us. But it is increasing scarcity that will trigger one of these two, and it is the problem that most deserves our focus.

8) Governments sold our resources to industry, and industry will sell them to the highest bidder. The lower bidder will resort to desperate measures to re-access lost resource streams.

9) The resulting conflict will drain resources from all both sides, resulting in further scarcity and death. Nuclear winter is the climate change that may kill us first.

Tim Murray
August 14, 2012

"Wind turbines are a compulsory backdrop for Julia Gillard when she is talking about the carbon tax but how often have you seen an image of her farewelling one of the huge coal laden boats at a Queensland port or staring into a giant open cut coal mine in the Hunter Valley? You could say that wind turbines help to mask the truth that there is a continuing growth in the usage of fossil fuels and in energy use generally." The decline in real environmental politics: despite the rising dangers of economic and population growth, an increasingly sidelined mainstream conservation movement finds false comfort in endless damage control and symbolic activity. The WW2 generation lived the community gardens, food and petrol rationing that are now goals of oil depletion awareness groups today. We were much more sustainable then. The way forward in a steady state economy would include equality and sustainability. Dr Mosley also drew a useful distinction between 'equality' and 'equal opportunity'.
All subheadings were created by Candobetter Editor. Original speech had no subheadings.

Talk to Sustainable Population Australia (Victorian and Tasmanian Branch) Balwyn Library 7 July 2012

(This milestone environmental talk was superbly organised and compered by Jill Quirk, President of Sustainable Population Australia, Victoria and Tasmania Branch, with the help of the SPAVic Committee.)

Geoff Mosley:

Many thanks for inviting me here to speak to you this afternoon. What I want to do is to take you on a conservation journey – mine – extending over some 60 years to see if there are any lessons to be learned.

Influences on conservation of Great Depression, fuel shortage and WW2

Of course, everything we experience at any one time has been greatly affected by what has gone before. I began my conservation activities in the early 1950s but what happened then was influenced by two enormously significant previous events – the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Second World War of the 1940s. These were times when there was slower population growth and greater levels of self sufficiency. During the war we were told to “Dig for Victory” but that of course was not all we were digging for.

Community gardens were everywhere There were of course many economies, including food and petrol rationing and a simpler way of living all round.

War and Land-use Planning: Britain's first national park

What is perhaps not so widely realised though is that the War created a resolve to do things better in the way of national planning. ‘Post War Reconstruction’ as it was generally called wasn’t just about picking up the pieces caused by the War and, looking back, the amazing thing is that in Britain the thinking about this began in earnest in 1942 – in the middle of the War.

I mention this because it is relevant to how I came to be involved with conservation. I was extremely fortunate to be born in the Peak District in the southern Pennines of England. The Peak made me into what I have been ever since - a geographer and a conservationist. The geography interest came from understanding the relationship between the rocks, the vegetation and the land use. The conservation from the fact that in 1951 the area became Britain’s first national park, protecting the landscapes of the privately owned land through planning. Half of the population of England and Wales lived within 60 miles of the Park’s boundaries and during the 1930s there was considerable pressure on the area for the development of its resources. Clearly also, surrounded by cities, there was a potential for the development of dormitory suburbs for commuters.

In 1951 this kind of development was stopped in its tracks. Fast forward to the present day and national parks and ‘areas of outstanding natural beauty’ cover nearly a quarter of England and Wales. And they are secure. In 61 years there have been no boundary changes to the Peak District National Park, the population is less than it was when it was founded and it receives 23 million visitors a year. Studying this approach for my Master of Arts degree was an obvious choice which helped make me into a lifelong advocate for its use in Australia.

Suez Canal Crisis: has anything changed?

My next experience was as an Education Officer in the Royal Air Force. This was the time of the Suez Canal Crisis and the first of several scares concerning global oil supply. For the first time the concept of peak oil was on the current affairs menu. Has anything changed? Will the Straits of Hormuz be the scene of a similar crisis?

Canberra Bush Walking Club

Finishing my National Service I moved first to Canada and then New Zealand where I experienced first hand another kind of national park system which had begun to be established in the 19th century on public land. Arriving in Australia in 1960 I decided to study the land use and conservation needs of outdoor recreation in Tasmania for a PhD. A keen bush walker from an early age in 1961 I helped to found the Canberra Bush Walking Club.

All of this laid the foundation for me to make a contribution to the development in Australia of systems of protected areas involving different protection aims including wilderness areas and protected landscapes/seascapes and for the zoning of individual parks Located first in Newcastle then in Canberra I was again well placed to make a contribution to several ground breaking developments including the NSW national parks and wildlife legislation of 1967, the development of a pioneering zoning plan for Kosciusko National Park, and the introduction of a national heritage protection scheme.

1966: Conservation 101 course at ANU and Australian Conservation Foundation work

In 1966 I became part of the staff of the fledgling Australian Conservation Foundation. Not surprisingly this body quickly became involved with wildlife conservation and national parks advocacy. The national park was seen as the best method of securing an area against destruction but the events at the Lake Pedder National Park in the early 1970s was the catalyst for an approach involving the federal Government. This led to the protection of the Great Barrier Reef in 1975 and to the stopping of sand mining at Fraser Island and Cooloola at about the same time. From the early 1980s we had the first Australian World Heritage Areas including the Great Barrier Reef and in 1983 this gave the federal Government the power to stop the damming of the lower Gordon and Franklin Rivers.

In 1966 I my personal understanding of what was needed in conservation was broadened when at ANU I gave what I believe was the first year long course Australian university course in the conservation of natural resources. In 1968 I became the full time Assistant Director of the ACF and we moved into what, looking back, was the most hopeful period in Australian conservation history.

1960s and 1970s critics of dysfunctional nature of economic growth (Sir Garfield Barwick, Pres. ACF)

In the late 1960s and early 1970s environmentalism began to shape up as a major political force. The Club of Rome was formed in 1968 , Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 ‘The Population Bomb’ and Donella Meadows’ 1972 ‘The Limits to Growth’ books attracted a wide readership and the developing conservation movement produced a new perspective by criticising the dysfunctional nature of economic growth. Sir Garfield Barwick, President of the Australian Conservation Foundation, called economic growth “a false and unsatisfying god”. In a speech to engineers titled ‘Economic Growth and the Environment’ (published by the ACF in 1971),

Barwick quoted extensively from John Stuart Mill’s 1848 book Principles of Political Economy concerning the advantages of a stationary state combined with growth in creativity and suggested replacing our economic growth system with “a stationary system with cyclical re-use of resources”. In December, 1969 in a letter to The Age Barwick had referred to ACF’s role as being the development of a “blueprint of a conservation policy for the Nation.”

Mill’s stationary state alternative, rebranded as the ‘steady state economy’, also began to receive more attention at this time, largely, through the work of Herman Daly. Daly for instance edited the publication ‘Toward a Steady State Economy’ in 1973 and in 1980 lectured at well attended public meetings in Australia.

Governments ignored opportunity

Barwick in his 1971 paper argued that our “entire pattern of thinking has to be radically altered”. But unfortunately a radical approach was not to be. That did not stop us from putting more emphasis into taking stock and beginning to produce conservation studies and plans from a national, state regional and local perspective. Beginning in 1980 the world began a phase of producing conservation strategies and state of the environment reports at all geographic levels. In Australia our ‘National Conservation Strategy’ was published in 1983 and this was followed by the ‘National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development’ in 1992. The first of several national state of environment reports - ‘State of the Environment in Australia’ (in 2 volumes) prepared by the Department of Arts, Heritage and Environment was published in 1985. None of these documents appear to have had any major influence on policy. In fact if you look back at them even though they got watered down by Government and the bureaucracy the suggestions in them are still ahead of the thinking today.

Successive population reports brushed off

Also, I believe it is also true to say that none of the various population reports of the last four decades, beginning with the Borrie report in 1975 and including last years ‘sustainable population’ discussions, have made any difference. In 1986 as a member of the National Population Council I wrote a report which suggested we should aim for a population not greater than 21.5 million by 2030 and in 1994 the Australian Academy of Science suggested a cap of about 23 million by 2040. The situation is that with the present rate of increase of about 1.5% our population is set to reach about four times those suggestions by the end of the century. The discussion of population policy is largely divorced from the bigger question of where Australia should be going. Kelvin Thomson rightly called it a missed opportunity to map out a direction for Australia’s future.

It is an extremely sad thing that we are not facing up to the reality of the situation, that we are more addicted to perpetual economic growth than ever when the need for an entirely new way of living could not be more obvious to those who bother to think about the matter.

Mainstream conservation focused on damage-control, carbon emissions rather than overproduction

So where exactly is the conservation movement today? Generally, it still focuses most of its efforts on damage control or what we call ‘mitigation. In other words it is basically reactionary. Let me take an example – human influence on climate through carbon emissions.

For many in the environment movement this is ”the only big issue”. Some are fixated on it. We certainly put a lot of our effort into describing how bad this will be for the environment if we do not curb it, but the almost universal approach is one of mitigation - to work for a switch to non or less carbon emitting energy sources with little concern about either the overall level of energy use or the relationship of energy use to economic growth. We treat it as a carbon emission reduction problem when the basic problem, the cause, is the over production of everything including carbon – treating the world as an infinite source of materials. An Emperor is wearing no clothes situation if ever there was one.

The present situation is that the proportion of energy derived from renewable sources is increasing but the amount of fossil fuels being used is also increasing as is, of course, the total amount of energy being produced and the total carbon emissions. This is because

in a perpetual economic growth driven system the demand for energy endlessly increases. The result is that while our efforts in relation to developing more renewable energy have reduced the potential impact of energy use on the atmosphere - in the sense that is without renewables the emissions could have been bigger - the overall impact on the earth from higher levels of energy development and use is increasing. Even if we did achieve a goal of zero carbon emissions, all of the other problems associated with energy fuelled economic growth would still remain.

Fragmented and partial approach to problem of perpetual economic growth driven economy

There are of course many other examples of this sectional approach which I could refer to. We do not just deal with every problem separately but quite often we often deal only with a part of the perceived problem. For instance here in Australia while we have decided to put a price on carbon the Government is totally ignoring the problems created by Australia’s massive coal exports. Another inconvenient truth. Even looking at it from the pollution viewpoint it has been estimated that the planned expansion of Australia’s mining will by 2020 add 11 times the amount of carbon to the atmosphere that the carbon tax will save. Similarly, the conservation movement is concerned about Coal Seam Gas exploitation on water, agriculture and natural areas such as the Great Barrier Reef but it ignores the wider effects of its use in terms of feeding economic growth. Of course Australia is not alone in being firmly committed to increasing the use of fossil fuels. Around the world coal production over the last decade has had an annual growth rate of 4.6% and in 2011 total production was 7.7 billion tonnes. In the next quarter century China, which already generates 70% of its electricity with coal and plans to bring it down to 63% by 2015, is also planning to add 600 gigawatts of coal fired power capacity, as much as is currently generated today by coal in the US, Europe and Japan put together. We kid ourselves if we think this situation is going to change. There are huge coal resources in Russia and the USA as well as Australia and I doubt whether the successor to the Kyoto Protocol will alter the present situation where countries are not responsible for the emissions from their exports.

Focus on perpetual mitigation deludes us into believing our approach will eventually work

Another major consequence of this approach of focusing on mitigation, practised by both Governments and the conservation movement, is that in doing this we are helping to create the illusion that this approach will work, that it is not the underlying system which is at fault but some aspects of the way it operates, something that can be fixed given time. For instance, that we can reduce emissions without tackling the economic growth system which drives the increased use of fossil fuels. In other words in doing this we are actually propping up a bad system and enhancing its legitimacy. ‘Green washing economic growth’ is probably a more accurate metaphor for what is going on. Or, maybe ‘green whishing’ in the case of wind turbines.

Wind turbines are a compulsory backdrop for Julia Gillard when she is talking about the carbon tax but how often have you seen an image of her farewelling one of the huge coal laden boats at a Queensland port or staring into a giant open cut coal mine in the Hunter Valley. You could say that wind turbines help to mask the truth that there is a continuing growth in the usage of fossil fuels and in energy use generally.

The closest that we ever come these days to adopting a different approach of tackling the whole is to talk vaguely about ‘transforming society’ or ‘making the transition’.

Coal production threatens hard-won national park and reserves system including Barrier Reef World Heritage

I began by mentioning the conservation movements efforts on protected areas and here clearly there has been significant progress. The national reserve system in Australia in 2010 covered over 13% of the terrestrial environment (over 40% in Tasmania). So let me return now to where I began with the efforts to create extensive systems of protected areas around the world. In the late 1960s Sir Macfarlane Burnet said that with world population out of control parks and nature would be eventually crowded out of existence If these parks are the greatest achievement of the conservation movement, providing inspiration for a more comprehensive approach, it is essential that they be maintained. Unfortunately, things are not looking good. Australia’s number one icon the Great Barrier Reef, added to the World Heritage List in 1982, is facing some serious threats from the expansion of coal export including 45 proposals for coastal development including 11 new port proposals and thousands of extra vessels sailing through the Reef

So what is the answer? Surely, it is also to find a better way, one that deals not just with the dysfunctional relationship between people and their physical environment but one which also provides for a better social relationships – a major system change to steady state economy alternative first outlined by John Stuart Mill in 1848 and referred to by Garfield Barwick over 40 years ago. It will need to be a change which affects all aspects of society. Our present institutions have been developed to facilitate growth and therefore must be changed

Steady state economy requires major systemic change

One cannot keep the means of economic growth and change the ends to a steady state economy. If these remain there is little chance of an effective change.

Decoupling is also a concept suggested by some but it is obvious that gains in efficiency could never keep up with endless economic growth and the increased consumption.

Efficiency gains generally lead to increased consumption of natural resources. To work decoupling must be accompanied by an end to economic growth. The best avenues to greater equity in a finite world are through smaller populations and redistribution.

The lesson is that the solution must be comprehensive and the different parts must be complementary, not in opposition to one another.

DEFINITION AND PRINCIPLES OF THE STEADY STATE ECONOMY

CASSE defines a steady state economy as being one “with a relatively stable, mildly fluctuating product of population and per capita consumption”.

Herman Daly’s short definition for the steady state economy is “one that develops qualitatively (by improvement in science, technology and ethics) without growing quantitatively in the physical dimensions”.

Our current universal ‘economic growth’ model by contrast involves an increase in the production of goods and services - an endless increase in the amount of materials processed, consumed and disposed of as waste. This concept of economic growth started out as a means to the end of creating wealth and power and improving standards of living in a less crowded world but it and population growth became goals with such things as competition, trade, and profit making developed as major means to those ends. Although running up against the physical limits of the world, change is unlikely unless we find another way or wait until there is a ‘planetary shipwreck’.

The principles which underpin the steady state economy alternative are concerned with both the relationship of people and the environment and the relationship between people.

The FIRST PRINCIPLE concerns the rate and scale of resource use. Instead of endlessly increasing the use of resources to provide for and stimulate more consumption we will use resources at a sustainable rate – at a rate related to the natural processes of renewal, and the capacity of the environment to deal with waste. In other words in the steady state economy there will be a stable level of material throughput at a level and scale which can be maintained indefinitely. This of course includes complete reliance on renewable resources including energy.

The SECOND PRINCIPLE concerns the goal of social equality. It is the opposite of our present system which is inequitable as well as being materialistic, competitive, individualistic and elitist. Our present system justifies disparities in wealth, education, health and justice by saying that these are necessary to provide an incentive for growth in the form of rewards for those who do well and that growth will improve standards of living for all through the trickle down effect. In the steady state, in complete contrast, there will be full and true equality everywhere. Co-operation will replace competition as the main goal and form of social interaction.

MAIN FEATURES OF THE STEADY STATE ECONOMY:

So, what will be the main features of the steady state economy?

To begin with in the steady state economy, to achieve sustainability, people will live within the earth’s means, relating their use of its resources to its environmental capacity through their close relationship to it. They will have direct control of the environment where they live and full respect for it. They will be as concerned for the long term welfare of the environment as they are for its welfare during their lifetimes. This will be achieved partly by people living in small communities, producing most of their own food and other materials. In this way they will have not only have a close knowledge of their environment but an absolute stake in its future.

At the same time the new relationship with people will involve true equality. Not today’s flawed concept of equal opportunity for all to climb the ladder to success (which along with the alleged need for competition is used as a justification for inequality) but equal treatment in every respect, including equal access to food, housing, and other services. It will be a non-hierarchical society.

No one will be superior to another. There will be respect for all. In the steady state people will gain satisfaction from developing and exercising their skills and from contributing to the well being of the community. It is important with regard to this step that that it is understood that inequality is one of the major facilitators of the Economic Growth system and that unless it is dismantled it will impede the move to a Steady State Economy.

I trust I have said enough to suggest not only that there is hope because there is a better way but also to emphasise that if we are going to have any chance of success it will need a concerted effort a change of focus and by the conservation movement. Over to you.

Geoff Mosley

6/7/2012

Australia's new Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr continues his predecessor's enthusiastic volunteering of Australia in the Coalition of the Willing, this time against Syria. Between 1991 and now, the Coalition caused the deaths of possibly 1,500,000

Iraqis and 20,000 Afghan civilians. A copy of the interview in which Carr repeated corporate media lies to justify action against Syria can be found on YouTube and is embedded in this article. Readers may wish to contrast Carr's words with facts about the Syrian conflict to be found on Global Research. See also: Young Syrian patriot fights corporate media lies against her homeland of 10 May 2012, Syria -70% vote to end one-party state - why aren't we celebrating? of 1 Mar 2012, Young Syrian patriot fights corporate media lies against her homeland of 12 Apr 2012 on candobetter, AN ONGOING DISASTER: Libya, Africa and Africom - More than 50,000 Deaths of 26 May.

Australia's new Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr continues his predecessor's enthusiastic volunteering of Australia in the Coalition of the Willing, this time against Syria. Between 1991 and now, the Coalition caused the deaths of possibbly 1,500,000

By Geoffrey Taylor with Sheila Newman

Australia's new Foreign Minister, Senator Bob Carr, has wasted little time in rekindling Australia's participation in the Coalition of the Willing, this time against Syria. In 2003 the Coalition illegally invaded Iraq using, as a pretext, the fraudulent claim that Iraq posed a threat to the world with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). This followed Australia's participation in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, based on an inadequate official investigation of the events of 9/11. As a result of the 2003 invasion of Iraq one million Iraqis may have died according to one study in the British Lancet medical journal. In the ten years prior to that invasion a further one million Iraqis had died from hunger as a result of sanctions imposed upon Iraq by the US, Australia and its allies after the conclusion of the 1991 war against Iraq[1] in which a further 130,000 Iraqis were killed.

Since the Afghan War in 2001, a further 20,000 civilians have died.

Embedded below is a YouTube broadcast of a recent interview with Bob Carr in which he uses inflammatory corporate newsmedia reports about the Syrian conflict to justify the imposition of sanctions on Syria. The journalist in the interview asks Carr if he would consider expelling the Syrian ambassador and Carr does not rule this out.

Carr says nothing of the 2011 invasion of Libya, shamefully supported by Australia's previous foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, nor, of course, anything about Australia's past participation in the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, mentioned above.

Nor does the interviewer. This is a failure of journalism to situate our current policy and actions in their historic context where our recent actions turned out to be entirely wrongly based. For instance, the fact that many Australians remain unaware that the excuse used by the US to invade Iraq, that it had weapons of mass destruction, was proven to be a CIA fabrication is a complete failure of journalism and national education. This is despite the clear accessibility of the truth in this case. (See Fair Game and the book of the same name.)

These continuing failures of accurate reporting by the Australian mass media - commercial and public - are shunting Australians and the rest of the world blindfolded towards a third world war with the Middle East.

In response to growing competition for ultimately scarce oil resources, world blocs have formed in an effort to get favorable terms for long-term access to Middle Eastern oil. What is going on now represents attempts to isolate Iran by disorganising and possibly invading its neighbours. Iranian oil reserves have been of great interest to the world since the early 20th century, beginning with Anglo-Persian oil. Iran continues to hold a disputed but considerable volume of remaining accessible oil reserves in the world and this is the reason that world attention is currently focused in this area. Iran's position on the Caspian Sea is critical. See "What's in it for Russia? Georgia, Ossetia, & Caspian oil and gas". Multi-national oil companies tend to be aligned with particular national blocs and rely on governments in their negotiations. Access to oil is never left to the international market alone.

Growth economics, combined with population growth in the first world has made us hungry for oil at almost any cost.

Above broadcast embedded from http://youtube.com/watch?v=0H9H2XsvS20

Australians seeking a more three dimensional view of these conflicts will find other views on Russia Today's media internet media outlet. The video, "Judging Syria," for instance, talks about how US allies, Saudi Arabia, are engaging in repressive violence that goes almost completely unreported in the media. Other videos ask why the media have lost interest in humanitarian causes in Libya when the country has now dissolved into armed gang warfare. The answer to that question probably resides in the very close cooperation between the Western political blocs and its mass media.

Get more background on Syria from the articles listed below

Here are links to articles about Syria from Global Research and Global Research TV, where readers can get more information than the Anglophone mainstream press provide. Please feel most welcome to add your comments below, whether critical or supportive.

SYRIA: NATO's Next "Humanitarian" War? - by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2012-05-11

SYRIA: WESTERN POWERS ARE SUBVERTING THE PEACE PROCESSPress Conference, Syria's Permanent Representative to the United Nations - 2012-04-09

BREAKING NEWS, SYRIA: Imperialist Powers Manipulate Syrian "Peace Plan" to Prepare for All Out War - by Johannes Stern - 2012-04-09

VIDEO: Syrian Journalist: CNN, Al-Jazeera Falsifying Events in Syria Get all the info on GRTV - by Rahshan Saglam, Rafik Lutf - 2012-04-08

SYRIA AND THE UN: Diplomatic Confrontation at the UN regarding The Kofi Annan Syria "Peace Plan" - by Ronda Hauben - 2012-04-08

US-led conference backs Syrian puppet group, threatens war - by Niall Green - 2012-04-02

Shocking Report Reveals Terrorists' Crimes in Syria - 2012-03-28

Syria Denounces Foreign Support for Terrorism - 2012-03-25

VIDEO: US/NATO Proxy War in Syria Follows Precedent Set in Bosnia Find out more on GRTV- by Benjamin Schett - 2012-03-22

Syrian opposition accused of "human rights abuses" - by Chris Marsden - 2012-03-22

Bahrain Medics Show Trial: This Is Not Syria, Therefore No Western Outcry

MEDIA LIES: Deaths in Syria: Counting them (politically) correctly - 2012-03-19

SYRIA OPPOSITION TARGETS CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY: Christians Expelled from Homs by "Opposition" Al Qaeda Gunmen - 2012-03-18

SYRIA: Testimonies from Homs Reveal Identity of Terrorists and Mercenaries involved in Atrocities

Foiling Peace: The Imperial “Friends” of Syria - by Ben Schreiner - 2012-04-11

SYRIA: THE WINDS OF WAR - by Stephen Lendman - 2012-04-11

SYRIA’S "ROGUE ISLAMIST OPPOSITION": US-NATO’s New Lie in its Bid for Regime Change

Syrian Peace Deal: UN's Cloak to NATO's Dagger - by Tony Cartalucci - 2012-04-09

"RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT" SYRIA: A US-NATO "TROJAN HORSE" - by Carla Stea - 2012-04-09

Kofi Annan is the "War-maker" in Syria Interview- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2012-04-08

THE HISTORY OF "REGIME CHANGE": Putting Syria into some perspective - by William Blum - 2012-04-06

“Friends of Syria”—the Antechamber of a Wider Mideast War - by Bill Van Auken - 2012-04-04

VIDEO: Free Syrian Army Foot-Soldiers of Western Military Alliance - by Michel Chossudovsky - 2012-04-02

See also: Syria -70% vote to end one-party state - why aren't we celebrating? of 1 Mar 2012, Young Syrian patriot fights corporate media lies against her homeland of 12 Apr 2012 on candobetter, AN ONGOING DISASTER: Libya, Africa and Africom - More than 50,000 Deaths of 26 May.

Footnotes

[1] Iraq had been set up by US Ambassador to Kuwait, following Kuwait illegally slant drilling for oil under Iraqi territory. As shown in the transcript of the interview April Glaspie assured Hussein that there would be no adverse consequences from the US were Iraq to invade Kuwait in retaliation for the slant drilling.

As the US was preparing to attack Iraq in reprisal for the invasion, the Public Relations firm Hill and Knowlton manufactured the lie of the "incubator babies" to overcome opposition to the war. See YouTube broadcast, embedded on candobetter in this comment.

Humanity has struggled to survive through the millennia in terms of balancing population size with food supply. The same is true now, but population numbers have been soaring for over a century. The limiting factor has been hidden, but this factor -- oil and natural gas, or petroleum -- is close to or beyond its peak extraction. Without ample, free-flowing petroleum, it will not be possible to support a population of several billion for long.

Humanity has struggled to survive through the millennia in terms of balancing population size with food supply. The same is true now, but population numbers have been soaring for over a century. The limiting factor has been hidden, but this factor -- oil and natural gas, or petroleum -- is close to or beyond its peak extraction. Without ample, free-flowing petroleum, it will not be possible to support a population of several billion for long.

By Peter Goodchild. Originally posted on Culture Change on of 2 March 2010. Re-posted her by author Peter Goodchild originally as a response to article by Tim Murray, What Will The Dalai Lama Say When The Oil Runs Out?

Humanity has struggled to survive through the millennia in terms of balancing population size with food supply. The same is true now, but population numbers have been soaring for over a century. The limiting factor has been hidden, but this factor -- oil and natural gas, or petroleum -- is close to or beyond its peak extraction. Without ample, free-flowing petroleum, it will not be possible to support a population of several billion for long.

Famine caused by petroleum supply failure alone will result in about 2.5 billion above-normal deaths before the year 2050; lost and averted births will amount to roughly an equal number.

In terms of its effects on daily human life, the most significant aspect of fossil-fuel depletion will be the lack of food. "Peak oil" is basically "peak food." Modern agriculture is highly dependent on fossil fuels for fertilizers (the Haber-Bosch process combines natural gas with atmospheric nitrogen to produce nitrogen fertilizer), pesticides, and the operation of machines for irrigation, harvesting, processing, and transportation.

Without fossil fuels, modern methods of food production will disappear, and crop yields will be far less than at present. Crop yields are far lower in societies that do not have fossil fuels or modern machinery. We should therefore have no illusions that several billion humans can be fed by "organic gardening" or anything else of that nature.

The Green Revolution involved, among other things, the development of higher-yielding crops. These new varieties, however, could be grown only with large inputs of fertilizer and pesticides, all of which required fossil fuels. In essence, the Green Revolution was little more than the invention of a way to turn petroleum into food.

Over the next few decades, therefore, there will be famine on a scale many times larger than ever before in human history. It is possible, of course, that warfare and plague will take their toll to a large extent before famine claims its victims. The distinctions, in any case, can never be absolute: often "war + drought = famine" [3], especially in sub-Saharan Africa, but there are several other combinations of factors.

Although, when discussing theories of famine, economists generally use the term "neo-malthusian" in a derogatory manner, the coming famine will be very much a case of an imbalance between population and resources. The overwhelming cause of the imbalance and famine will be fossil-fuel depletion, not government policy (as in the days of Stalin or Mao), warfare, ethnic discrimination, bad weather, poor methods of distribution, inadequate transportation, livestock diseases, or any of the other variables that have often turned mere hunger into genuine starvation.

The increase in the world's population has followed a simple curve: from about 1.7 billion in 1900 to about 6.1 billion in 2000. A quick glance at a chart of world population growth, on a broader time scale, shows a line that runs almost horizontally for thousands of years, and then makes an almost vertical ascent as it approaches the present. That is not just an amusing curiosity. It is a shocking fact that should have awakened humanity to the realization that something is dreadfully wrong.

Mankind is always prey to its own "exuberance," to use Catton's term [2]. That has certainly been true of population growth. In many cultures, "Do you have any children?" or, "How many children do you have?" is a form of greeting or civility almost equivalent to "How do you do?" or, "Nice to meet you." World population growth, nevertheless, has always been ecologically hazardous. The destruction of the environment reaches back into the invisible past, and the ruination of land, sea, and sky has been well described if not well heeded. But what is even less frequently noted is that with every increase in human numbers we are only barely able to keep up with the demand: providing all those people with food and water has not been easy. We are always pushing ourselves to the limits of Earth's ability to hold us.

Even that is an understatement. No matter how much we depleted our resources, there was always the sense that we could somehow "get by." But in the late twentieth century we stopped getting by. It is important to differentiate between production in an "absolute" sense and production "per capita." Although oil production, in "absolute" numbers, kept climbing — only to decline in the early twenty-first century — what was ignored was that although that "absolute" production was climbing, the production "per capita" reached its peak in 1979 [1].

The unequal distribution of resources plays a part, of course. The average inhabitant of the United States consumes far more than the average inhabitant of India or China. Nevertheless, if all the world's resources were evenly distributed, the result would only be universal poverty. It is the totals and the averages of resources that we must deal with in order to determine the totals and averages of results. For example, if all of the world's arable land were distributed evenly, in the absence of mechanized agriculture each person on the planet would have an inadequate amount of farmland for survival: distribution would have accomplished very little.

We were always scraping the edges of the earth, but we are now entering a far more dangerous era. The main point to keep in mind, however, is that throughout the twentieth century, oil production and human population were so closely integrated that every barrel of oil had an effect on human numbers. While population has been going up, so has oil production.

Future excess mortality can therefore be determined -- at least in a rough-and-ready manner -- by the fact that in modern industrial society it is oil supply that determines how many people can be fed. An increase in oil production leads to an increase in population, and a decrease in oil production leads to a decrease in population. [editor's note: this is why hopes for a technofix of renewable energy -- almost always only for electricity -- is far off base regarding the huge present population's need to eat.]

In round numbers, global oil production in the year 2008 was 30 billion barrels, and the population was 7 billion. The consensus is that in the year 2050 oil production will be about 2 billion barrels. The same amount of oil production occurred in the year 1930, when the population was 2 billion. The population in 2050 will therefore be about the same as in 1930: 2 billion. The difference between 7 billion people and 2 billion is 5 billion, which will therefore be the total number of famine deaths and lost or averted births for that period.

We can also determine the annual number of famine deaths and lost or averted births. From 2008 to 2050 is 42 years. The average annual difference in population is therefore 5 billion divided by 42, which is about 120 million.

It is quite possible, however, that the decline in population will not exactly parallel the decline in oil. In other words, the peak of the population curve may well be a few years later than the peak of the oil curve. People might simply live with less oil per capita for a few decades, i.e. they will just sink further into poverty, with greater problems of malnutrition. In fact, as long ago as 1972, the first edition of The Limits to Growth in its Figure 35, "World Model Standard Run," showed a 40-year gap between the peak production of food per capita and the peak of population [7].

Many of those annual 120 million will not actually be deaths; famine will cause a lowering of the birth rate. This will sometimes happen voluntarily, as people realize they lack the resources to raise children, or it will happen involuntarily when famine and general ill health result in infertility [4]. In most famines the number of deaths from starvation or from starvation-induced disease is very roughly the same as the number of lost or averted births [3, 4]. In Ireland's nineteenth-century famine, for example, the number of famine deaths was 1.3 million, whereas the number of lost births was 0.4 million. The number of famine deaths during China's Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) was perhaps 30 million, and the number of lost births was perhaps 33 million.

The "normal," non-famine-related, birth and death rates are not incorporated into the above future population figures, since for most of pre-industrial human history the sum of the two — i.e. the growth rate — has been nearly zero. If not for the problem of resource-depletion, in other words, the future birth rate and death rate would be nearly identical, as they were in pre-industrial times. And there is no question that the future will mean a return to the "pre-industrial."

Nevertheless, it will often be hard to separate "famine deaths" from a rather broad category of "other excess deaths." War, disease, global warming, topsoil deterioration, and other factors will have unforeseeable effects of their own. Considering the unusual duration of the coming famine, and with Leningrad [5] as one of many precursors, cannibalism may be significant; to what extent should this be included in a calculation of "famine deaths"? It is probably safe to say, however, that an unusually large decline in the population of a country will be the most significant indicator that this predicted famine has in fact arrived.

These figures obliterate all previous estimates of future population growth. Instead of a steady rise over the course of this century, as generally predicted, there will be a clash of the two giant forces of overpopulation and oil depletion, followed by a precipitous ride into the unknown future.

If the above figures are fairly accurate, we are ill-prepared for the next few years. The problem of oil depletion turns out to be something other than a bit of macabre speculation for people of the distant future to deal with, but rather a sudden catastrophe that will only be studied dispassionately long after the event itself has occurred. Doomsday will be upon us before we have time to look at it carefully.

The world has certainly known some terrible famines in the past, of course. In recent centuries, one of the worst was that of North China in 1876-79, when between 9 and 13 million died, but India had a famine at the same time, with perhaps 5 million deaths. The Soviet Union had famine deaths of about 5 million in 1932-34, purely because of political policies. The worst famine in history was that of China's Great Leap Forward, 1958-61, when perhaps 30 million died, as mentioned above.

A close analogy to "petroleum famine" may be Ireland's potato famine of the 1840s, since — like petroleum — it was a single commodity that caused such devastation [6]. The response of the British government at the time can be summarized as a jumble of incompetence, frustration, and indecision, if not outright genocide. "There is such a tendency to exaggeration and inaccuracy in Irish reports that delay in acting on them is always desirable," wrote Sir Robert Peel in 1845. By 1847 the description had changed: "Bodies half-eaten by rats were an ordinary sight; 'two dogs were shot while tearing a body to pieces.'"

The news of the coming famine might not be announced with sufficient clarity. Famines tend to be back-page news nowadays, perhaps for the very reason that they are too common to be worth mentioning. Although Ó Gráda speaks of "making famine history" [6], the reality is that between 70 and 80 million people died of famine in the twentieth century, far more than in any previous century [4].

The above predictions can be nothing more than approximate, of course, but even the most elaborate mathematics will not entirely help us to deal with the great number of interacting factors. We need to swing toward a more pessimistic figure for humanity's future if we include the effects of war, disease, and so on. The most serious negative factor will be largely sociological: To what extent can the oil industry maintain the advanced technology required for drilling ever-deeper wells in ever-more-remote places, when that industry will be struggling to survive in a milieu of social chaos? Intricate division of labor, large-scale government, and high-level education will no longer exist

.

On the other hand, there are elements of optimism that may need to be plugged in. For one thing, there is what might be called the "inertia factor": the planet Earth is so big that even the most catastrophic events take time for their ripples to finish spreading. An asteroid fragment 10 kilometers wide hit eastern Mexico 65 million years ago, but enough of our distant ancestors survived that we ourselves are alive today to tell the story.

Somewhat related, among optimistic factors, is the sheer tenacity of the human species: we are intelligent social creatures living at the top of the food chain, in the manner of wolves, yet we outnumber wolves worldwide by about a million to one; we are as populous as rats or mice. We can outrace a horse over long distances. Even with Stone-Age technology, we can inhabit almost every environment on Earth, even if most of the required survival skills have been forgotten.

Specifically, we must consider the fact that neither geography nor population is homogeneous. All over the world, there are forgotten pockets of habitable land, much of it abandoned in the modern transition to urbanization, for the ironic reason that city dwellers regarded rural life as too difficult, as they traded their peasant smocks for factory overalls. There are still areas of the planet's surface that are sparsely occupied although they are habitable or could be made so, to the extent that many rural areas have had a decline in population that is absolute, i.e. not merely relative to another place or time. By careful calculation, therefore, there will be survivors. Over the next few years, human ingenuity must be devoted to an understanding of these geographic and demographic matters, so that at least a few can escape the tribulation. Neither the present nor future generations should have to say, "We were never warned."

REFERENCES:

1. BP Global Statistical Review of World Energy. Annual. www.bp.com/statisticalreview

2. Catton, William R., Jr. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1982.

3. Devereux, Stephen. "Famine in the Twentieth Century." IDS Working Paper 105. www.dse.unifi.it/sviluppo/doc/WP105.pdf

4. Ó Gráda, Cormac. "Making Famine History." Journal of Economic Literature, March 2007. www.ucd.ie/economics/research/papers/2006/WP06.10.pdf

5. Salisbury, Harrison E. The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 2003.

6. Woodham-Smith, Cecil. The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849. New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, 1962.

7. Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis L. Meadows and William W. Behrens III. The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books, 1972.

* * * * *

Peter Goodchild is the author of Survival Skills of the North American Indians, published by Chicago Review Press.

I live in a community of right-brained people with innumerate minds full of New Age mush, devoid of logic and antagonistic to science. The shibboleths of 'compassion' and 'caring and sharing' prevail over dispassionate analysis. The medieval mentality of Tibetan Bhuddism combines with the prescriptions of soft-green environmentalism to produce a brew of 'thinking' that is toxic to comprehension. It is a community where people will pay $50 for a psychic reading or a quack medical therapy but balk at paying the same amount of money to fix a leaking kitchen sink or a subscription to Science Daily. I wrote this almost 5 years ago, and despite the development of our much acclaimed "Community Garden" and a local "transition" initiative, I can think of no good reason to make more than one amendment----even we do grow a backbone and a "hard edge"---a local 'fortress' would not indefinitely endure. We are hopelessly dependent on the outside world in ways that we have not yet contemplated. Our deficiencies will only become apparent, I think, when our "Long" emergency becomes a permanent one.

“We like to think that moral progress has made us nice people. We've heard that our distant ancestors were mean and cruel and ruthless, and we can't imagine that we would be such people - but we're nice mainly because we're rich and comfortable. And when we're no longer rich and comfortable, we won't be as nice." Robin Hanson, economist

“Katrina helped us realize that the veneer of society is very thin and it doesn’t take much to peel that veneer back and what you see underneath it is quite ugly, quite nasty”- Kevin Reece, Defense Consultant

What will the Dalai Lama say when the oil runs out? Will his words feed my children? Will they appease the starving marauders who threaten to take what little is left to go around? Is universal love a prescription for dealing with universal scarcity? When survival dictates that we must first defend our homesteads, then our community, then our nation from desperate outsiders too numerous to accommodate? When the oil runs out will Jesus appear to distribute loaves and fish to the hungry billions and save us from stark choices?

When affordably accessible oil runs out, food cannot be sufficiently produced or transported. There are no “green” alternatives that can be scaled up to our needs. Five billion people will die in less than twenty years, and as Dale Pfeiffer concluded, one third of America’s 300 million people and more than one third of Canada’s. The idea that we could feed ourselves is a quixotic notion that doesn’t bear up to scrutiny. We’ve already covered 20% of Fraser Valley farm soil with buildings and lost a similar proportion of arable land nationally to urban growth, which will only continue unchecked with current immigration rates. When you remove fertilizers, chemicals and fuel-run machinery with a power-down, the required land per person for food production skyrockets.

A study done of London, Ontario, a growing city of 460,000 surrounded by farm country, revealed that it simply could not be fed without fossil fuels. It would need to use 200,000 animals and conscript half the labour of the city, posing logistical problems for their commute or the commute of their school children. Storage for the food could not be found and if it was, it could not be kept from freezing in the winter time. And this is for a city that might have enough arable land in proximity. Other Canadian cities would not have that advantage.

“Relocalization” in Canada is a pipe-dream. Without oil, we’re cooked. Those Californian vegetables and fruits will not get here-- the Americans will not have a surplus to export and if they did it certainly wouldn’t be delivered to us by electric cars. The last hurdle in our island community would be the Quadra ferry. Without fuel it is not operational and virtually everything we need could not be acquired in meaningful quantities. In three days or less the shelves of both of our stores would be empty, and those with hunting rifles would make the local fish-packing plant release everything they had at gunpoint. Needless to say, the vegetables grown on Quadra would not suffice to feed 2700 people. The Community Lunch would be faced with thirty times its normal patrons but with no food to give them---it would be cancelled. The Churches would open their arms but not their empty refrigerators. It is then that we would find out about our much vaunted community spirit.

History tells us how people behave when they go hungry. The better angels of our nature often do not prevail over the desperate instinct to survive. Even in normal times, social psychologists report that more than 80% of us fantasize about murdering people we don’t like. Growing your own food is one thing. Stopping other people from taking it is another. One day we will regret our restrictive gun laws.

During the Second World War, Vancouverites living on rations made the long 40 mile car trip up a narrow road to beg for butter and eggs from farmers like my parents whose neighbours typically carried rifles to fend them off. One day my folks came back from a shopping trip to Mission and found ladders up against all the trees in their orchard with the fruit stripped off them. And these thieves were only motivated by deprivation, not starvation. By contrast, in Leningrad during the 900 day siege people were dying of starvation in the tens of thousands every month. Leningraders not only dug up the freshly buried corpses of starving people to eat them, some even resorted to cannibalism. When you are only getting 10% of your caloric needs, it’s amazing what moral precepts go by the wayside. Morality, you see, is not much use when you are dead.

So what then, of love and compassion? In my moral universe these hypocritical Christian pieties offer no help in an environment of too many people and too few resources. “Love” must co-habit with cold calculation. Empathy begins at home, and extends outward with prudence and caution. As the airplane sign instructs, if you experience a loss in cabin pressure, first secure your own oxygen mask before attempting to help others.

The kind of compassion needed in the coming collapse, be it resource depletion or ecological in nature, is the kind shown by a ship’s captain who orders that a few crewmen be jettisoned from an over-loaded lifeboat to save the rest from drowning. It’s the kind of compassion that will deny medical care to me in those times because folks my age cannot be allowed to siphon off scarce resources from the young who must survive if any portion of humanity is to survive. And it is the compassion required to save our nation and its environment from the tens of millions who will look to board our lifeboat and sink it.

Sometimes compassion would require that I shoot a beloved horse with a broken leg. Or, when medical help is unavailable, that I amputate the leg of a beautiful young woman with a gangrenous leg. Or that I assist in the suicide of a brother who suffered the indescribable nausea and pain of terminal cancer---- in defiance of Christian morality.

True compassion is not the compassion of Christianity or Buddhism or of any the major religions. It is not the compassion which would dispense development aid to African nations so that their populations explode and misery and starvation returns at an even greater level. True compassion often means saying no.

True compassion comes with a hard edge.

Tim Murray
April 12, 2007

Article, A century of famine, was kindly reposted here as a comment by its author, Petter Goodchild. It has been re-posted here as an article. - Ed

Social Scientist and petroleum depletion writer, Ted Trainer, gives his views on a way forward that does not involve growth. Most of you out there are working three times too hard, and going down with depression and obesity, as your social cohesion crumbles. How about trying a different, simpler way?

So much of the discussion of the human predicament takes for granted a uni-dimensional view of development, wealth, progress. For example many people (especially of the red-left variety) argue that there must be much more economic growth and therefore energy use to increase production so that the poorest billions can rise to satisfactory living standards. They therefore criticise the many green people who are saying that there is already far too much producing and consumption, production, energy and resource use going on. Many red left people argue for redistribution but many green people say that wouldn’t change the amount of consuming so it wouldn’t reduce resource and environmental pressure. So it looks like an insoluble dilemma.

Another way

The way out is to take The Simpler Way. I first put it in Abandon Affluence, Zed, 1985, and have detailed a more elaborate case in The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World, Envirobook, 2010. The first point is that the big global problems cannot be solved unless there is dramatic reduction in the resource consumption, GDP and “living standards” we have in rich countries, probably to one-tenth of their present levels. Several lines of argument within the general “limits to growth” analysis should now leave no doubt about this. For instance the Australian per capita “footprint” is 8 ha of productive land but by 2050 the amount available in the world will be at best .8 ha; so we are 10 times over a level that it would ever be possible for all to have. ...and these numbers totally ignore the absurd commitment to economic growth. Anyone who thinks 9 billion can rise to the “living standards” Australians expect by 2050 given 3% economic growth is assuming the planet can sustain 30 times the present global volume of producing and consuming.

Logistics

It follows that we must move to ways of living, institutions and systems that allow us to live well on a small fraction of the our present rich world affluence affluence, and indeed of the present world resource production levels. The Simpler Way argument is that this could be done, easily and quickly, thereby defusing all the big problems...if enough people saw the sense of it. TSW involves mostly small and highly self-sufficient local economies processing local resources to meet local needs, via intensely participatory and cooperative ways, with no economic growth, in economies that are not determined by market forces...and value systems in which there is no interest in competing or gaining.

Ecovillage and Transition Towns movements

Many of us in the ecovillage and Transition Towns movements live in very resource-cheap but quality of life rich ways. I live way under the “poverty line”, never travel, never watch TV, almost never buy new clothes, and could build you abeautiful small earth house for under $5000. My quality of life is high, but nothing like that in some of the communities I know. Meanwhile most of you out there are working three times too hard, going down with depression and obesity, as your social cohesion crumbles. Why don’t you come across to TSW and devote most of your week to your arts and crafts, conversation or just sitting in the sun (…working three hours a week in the remnant offices and factories we’d need)?

Prospects for Transition

Now you might think the prospects for such a transition are remote. My view is that the transition will not be achieved. But that’s not central here. What matters is that you are going to move towards TSW whether you like it or not. We are entering the era of intense and irremediable scarcity. The resources are already inaccessible for most people, and becoming scarcer, especially if you attend to declining EROI (energy return on investment) rather than price. (EROI has halved for oil in a couple of decades.) Only 1.5 billion are using the resources now...just wait until another 8.5 billion go after them. And we few in rich countries are losing our capacity to hog all the available resource wealth as we have for 500 years The Chinese are racing past us and Uncle Sam doesn’t seem to be able to win the necessary resource wars any more. You are in for a rocky road down to getting by on something like your fair share of the world’s resources for a change.

Exercise choice now because there may be no option later

So you might be wise to join us in trying to work out how to run very frugal and self-sufficient communities well, because the most likely alternative will be a nasty feudalism as the rich and the middle classes call for repressive state power to secure their property and privileges against the accelerating scarcity, discontent and breakdown.

Marxism and Capitalism both rooted in growth

My main point is that TSW represents a rejection of the uni-dimensional way of thinking, i.e., that the only way development can be thought about is in terms of moving up the slope of progress towards more jobs, production, income, GDP, wealth and development. No group has been more trapped in this mind-set than one of the teams I belong to, the Marxists. They adopt the same capitalist conception of development as the neo-liberals; development involves investment of capital to increase production for sale...how else could it be conceived? (Marxists just don’t want the capital to be privately owned.) So 3-4 billion Third World people are trapped in hopeless squalor waiting for trickle down from capital invested in the most profitable ventures ... when most of them have all around them the soil, rainfall, forests, traditions, networks, knowledge and labour that could quickly develop the simple but sufficient housing, cooperatives, chicken pens, permaculture gardens, swales, schools, woodlots, sheds, clinics etc. they need to meet most of their basic needs. Appropriate development needs little monetary capital.

Globalisation works against self-sufficiency

Of course the rich countries work hard to prevent the available resources being devoted to such purposes; they must be kept free for use by transnational corporations, and devices such as deb t and the Structural Adjustment Packages ensure that they are. (And any country foolish enough to still deviate is likely to find itself invaded on some pretext.) But the main factor preventing appropriate development is the mentality that can’t deviate from the development=growth dimension. It’s as blindingly dominant within NGOs as within the IMF.

Scarcity will undermine the centralisation dreams of Marxists and Capitalists both

The main reason why I don’t think we will make it is because the commitment to affluence is now so deeply entrenched. No one wants to think about moving to any alternative to it. It has a firm grip on academics in general and Marxists in particular. Their classic statement is that the revolution will take the factories off the capitalist class and then everyone can have a Mercedes. The left has no idea about, and evidently no interest in living simply in highly self-sufficient communities. It is still focused on getting control of the state to organise utopia from the centre. Scarcity rules that out; from here on there can be very little centralisation, heavy industrialisation, globalisation, transport , travel or tourism. Now a satisfactory society all could share can only be organised and run by small towns, suburbs and regions via political systems directly involving all in the decision making and implementation. Sorry but the Anarchist have the right vision now. (There will still be a remnant role for centralised “state” bureaucracies...which are given no power...see Chapter 10.)

The Transition book argues that both red and green people urgently need to take these simpler way themes on board.

Robert Bowman writes about the need to restore the Constitutional rights of American citizens, enhance their national security through a return to Constitutional foreign and military policies, and rebuild their economy by providing financial security to American families. None of these things can be accomplished so long as the giant multinational corporations, the banks and financial service companies, the insurance industry, the fossil fuel conglomerates, the weapons manufacturers, and the billionaires are running the US government. Therefore the first priority of American patriots, he says, has to be separating big money and political power.
by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.
National Commander, “The Patriots”
www.thepatriots.us

Since we Patriots are both liberal and conservative, we won’t all agree on every policy issue. But there are core issues that devolve from our basic mission statement: “Follow the Constitution, Honor the Truth, Serve the People.” We seem to all agree that we need to restore the Constitutional rights of American citizens, enhance our national security through a return to Constitutional foreign and military policies, and rebuild our economy by providing financial security to American families. We also agree that none of these things can be accomplished so long as the giant multinational corporations, the banks and financial service companies, the insurance industry, the fossil fuel conglomerates, the weapons manufacturers, and the billionaires are running the government. Therefore our first priority has to be separating big money and political power. Once we do that, we can then accomplish the rest of our agenda.

So let’s define our core agenda as follows:

(1) End big money control of government.
(2) Restore Constitutional rights.
(3) Enhance Constitutional National Security.
(4) Rebuild Economy & family security.

Now you may note that there is nothing in there about the size of government or about raising or lowering of taxes. Those are strategies for accomplishing the agenda, and are subject to debate. My personal belief is that we need a government big enough and strong enough and (most importantly) independent enough to protect the American people from the global corporations, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, the Federal Reserve, and the for-profit disease treatment industry. Compared to this central task, the job of protecting the American people from foreign invasion is duck soup.

Let’s now flesh out the above four core agenda items, for each one listing specific actions needed and recommending concrete pieces of legislation required.

1. End big money control of government.

1.1 End corporate “personhood”. The absolute first necessary requirement is to reverse the Supreme Court’s erroneous decision that says that corporations have a constitutional first amendment free speech right to spend as much money as they want buying up elections, voters, and legislators. To accomplish this, we must amend the Constitution, restoring its original meaning. The required amendment (which I call the “Granny D Amendment” in honor of Doris Haddock, who worked tirelessly against corporate control) reads as follows: “Corporations and other fictitious entities are not ‘persons’ under this Constitution, and shall have none of the rights and privileges thereof.”

1.2 Revise electoral system to exclude big money and empower the people. The required reforms include (1.2.1) prohibiting private money (including the candidate’s own funds) in campaigns, funding them instead with public money and free TV and radio time to qualified candidates. (1.2.2) abolition of burdensome petition requirements for independents and third parties. (1.2.3) adopting preference voting (sometimes called instant runoff voting) so that nobody is forced to choose between the lesser of two evils or risk “throwing away” their vote. (1.2.4) outlawing any method of voting that does not produce a paper ballot that can be counted, recounted, and audited as necessary. Paper ballots should be counted by hand in public. This is the only way to prevent corporate programmers or partisan hackers from stealing elections.

1.3 Reform corporate law so that boards and CEOs are not only responsible to maximize profits to shareholders, but also have responsibilities to their employees, their community, and the environment.

1.4 Mandate open, truthful, and accountable government. (1.4.1) Pass a federal sunshine law similar to that of the State of Florida, allowing the public an insight into how Congressional and administrative branch decisions are made. (1.4.2) Require identification of all those proposing “earmarks.” (1.4.3) Prohibit secret meetings such as those between Vice President Dick Cheney and oil company executives to draft energy policy. (1.4.4) Repeal and prohibit unfunded mandates to state and local governments (such as “No child left behind”). (1.4.5) Revoke presidential “Fast Track” authority and reclaim the Constitutional right and duty of Congress to regulate trade. (1.4.6) Pass a bill stating that no agreement such as the Strategic Partnership for Prosperity (SPP) or North American Union (NAU) which diminish American sovereignty or give up territory can take effect without the full participation and approval of both houses of Congress, and that no funds may be expended for studies relating to such agreements without the approval of Congress after consultation with the American people. (1.4.7) Establish truly independent investigative commissions to study controversial historical events such as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the murders of soldiers like Pat Tillman and LaVena Johnson. These commissions should have significant input from those who are critical of the official stories, and should have a co-chair from among their ranks.

1.5 Re-regulate the media. Return to the pre-Reagan prohibition on ownership of multiple media outlets. Family-owned newspapers and radio and television stations will prevent corporate monopoly media from brainwashing the public and censoring facts which expose government lies.

2. Restore Constitutional Rights for Americans

2.1 Abolish the Department of Homeland Security. We don’t need an agency whose mission is to protect the government from the American people.

2.2 Repeal the misnamed “Patriot Act,” the Military Commissions Act, and any other act which attempts to take away rights guaranteed in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

2.3 End the threat of martial law. The President should revoke Presidential Directives 20 and 51 which give him dictatorial powers, and should close the concentration camps Halliburton has built or refurbished around the country.

2.4 Release political prisoners like Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier, and all those being detained without charge. End torture and rendition, and prosecute those who authorized and carried out these illegal and immoral practices. Pardon all those incarcerated for possession or use of marijuana and end the failed “war on drugs.” Repeal federal laws against marijuana and hemp.

2.5 Pass a Congressional resolution stating that the separation of Church and State means that no government at any level may interfere with churches in setting requirements for receiving sacraments. Every denomination has the right to decide whether or not to grant the sacrament of matrimony to same-sex couples. At the same time, no governmental body may discriminate on the basis of gender by refusing adult couples wishing to enter into a civil union.

3. Rebuild Constitutional National Security

3.1 End the phony war on terror. Pass a resolution stating that terrorist attacks like that on 9/11 are criminal acts and will be investigated and prosecuted as such. The perpetrators do not deserve the exalted status of “warrior.”

3.2 End the illegal occupations. (3.2.1) Pass an authorization bill stating that no funds may be used for military activities in Iraq or Afghanistan, except for carrying out an orderly and rapid withdrawal. (3.2.2) Declare that it is US policy to vacate military bases in occupied nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq, and to give up oil and mineral rights and pipeline routes. If corporate entities wish to retain these rights, they must negotiate directly with the sovereign governments involved.

3.3 Return to Constitutional foreign and military policies. (3.3.1) Declare that the Armed Forces of the United States will be used only for the protection of our borders and our people, not the global financial interests of multinational corporations. The only exceptions will be for voluntary participation in UN peacekeeping forces or humanitarian missions such as natural disasters. Declare that any attack on Iran or any other country not specifically authorized by Congress with a Declaration of War is an impeachable offense. (3.3.2) Except for small Marine detachments guarding our embassies, bring home all our troops from around the world, returning all foreign bases to the host countries. (3.3.3) Cancel all contracts with mercenaries such as Blackwater (or Xe as they call themselves now). (3.3.4) Cancel all weapons development and procurement contracts not required for the Constitutional mission of national defense. Tell the contractors there must be no layoffs. If we can pay farmers not to grow crops, we can pay engineers and machinists not to build weapons. (3.3.5) Return all National Guard units to the control of the governors of the states. (3.3.6) Release Reserve units and excess personnel for transfer to alternative duties such as border patrol, disaster relief and cleanup, and rebuilding infrastructure. (There should be no forced separations.) The personnel and the budget to support them can eventually be transferred to other agencies. (3.3.7) Reorganize the Department of Defense and adjust the Defense budget to reflect the new mission. Once the transition is complete, the DoD budget should be around 20% of its current level. (3.3.8) End the embargo of Cuba and begin establishing normalized relations. (3.3.9) Terminate all covert actions and propaganda campaigns attempting to undermine other countries such as Iran and Venezuela. The fact that a country chooses not to cooperate with multinational corporations is no business of our government.

3.4 Abolish the CIA. Presidents Kennedy and Carter learned that it was impossible to get rid of the “dirty tricks” side of the CIA while retaining the intelligence gathering and analysis function. The CIA has continued to foster instability, insurrection, tyranny, torture, terrorism, murder, and war around the world, causing millions of deaths and creating millions of enemies for the United States through fear and hatred. We must drive a stake through its heart. The many good analysts may transfer to the DIA.

3.5 Honor and care for our Veterans. The fact that current and past wars are Unconstitutional, illegal, and destructive of our national security does not diminish the dedication, bravery, and sacrifices of our veterans who were lied to. They served in the belief that they were protecting our freedoms. We must see that they are cared for. The care of our soldiers wounded in action, suffering from PTSD, and poisoned by Depleted Uranium (DU) is not a discretionary expenditure to be avoided by delay, denial, and bureaucratic red tape. It is a solemn obligation of our government, and it must be met. (3.5.1) Fully fund the VA. (3.5.2) Direct the VA to recognize Gulf War Syndrome as a service-connected disability. (3.5.3) Direct the Department of Defense to root out prejudice against soldiers seeking help for PTSD, and to halt the practice of giving them drugs and returning them to service. (3.5.4) Direct the VA to halt the practice of some examiners who routinely deny benefits for PTSD claims because they “don’t believe in it.” (3.5.5) Direct the DoD and the VA to strengthen programs to ease the transition from combat to civilian life. There have been too many cases of domestic violence, murder, and suicide by veterans unable to make the transition. (3.5.6) Order a permanent halt to the use of DU munitions and armor. Destroy all existing supplies and store it as radioactive waste.

4. Rebuild Economy & Family Security

4.1 Expose the trickle-down myth. Both political parties promote the myth that the way to build the economy and jobs is to reduce taxes and regulations on businesses. The Republicans add a related myth that reducing taxes on millionaires will cause them to create jobs. All these myths are false. Neither businesses nor millionaires create jobs. CONSUMERS create jobs! Government can totally eliminate taxes on businesses and the super-wealthy, banks can offer business loans at zero interest. Yet not a single job will be created unless there are consumers willing and able to purchase the products and services offered. Businesses and millionaires will only create new jobs when the DEMAND can’t be met without them. At present, the demand isn’t there, because workers and the middle class can’t afford to buy. Those who still have jobs are afraid to buy because they may either lose their job or have unforeseen medical expenses. Job loss and medical bills are the leading causes of personal bankruptcy and home foreclosure, and most of us are subject to be impoverished by either one … or both. So we don’t spend our meager savings (if any) unless we have to, and we are afraid to go further in debt. The gap between the rich and the workers has gotten so big that there’s precious little left to pump to the top, and whatever goes to the top never trickles down. So the gap gets bigger. In spite of soaring productivity, real wages today are a third of what they were in the 1950s. This is unsustainable. Henry Ford used to pay his workers well, because he wanted them to be able to buy the cars they built. And both he and his workers thrived. He understood that economics was not trickle-down, but bubble-up. The only way to rescue the economy and guarantee jobs for those who want them is to make every American family financially secure, eliminating the worry that either the paychecks will stop or that medical bills will swamp them. Then people will buy things and businesses will hire more people to meet the demand. Everyone will prosper, including the rich, but only when every family gets an adequate, regular paycheck and health care when they need it.

It is here that those of us who are libertarian in ideology will diverge from those of us who are progressive. We will not agree on how to go about providing every family with paychecks and health care. But however we do it, it must be done. My prescription is outlined below in Sections 4.2 and 4.3. Those of us on the left and right come back together again on Banking Reform and Tax Reform, covered in 4.4 and 4.5. These are also vital to our economic development and to financial security.

4.2 Guarantee paychecks for all. (Don’t worry. I’ll discuss how to pay for all this in Section 4.5.) (4.2.1) The simplest solution would be to send every American family, rich or poor, a paycheck every month. Call it “Social Security for all.” Start with $800 for each adult and $200 for each child, with the amount indexed for inflation, just like Social Security. Like Social Security, it would be taxable after your other income rose above a certain level. (4.2.2) A more modest (perhaps interim) proposal is to extend unemployment benefits indefinitely — no maximum number of weeks, no expiration date. (4.2.3) The most satisfying way to provide paychecks, of course, is through jobs. I am convinced that if you provide the regular paychecks first, the jobs will follow (because paychecks will create demand). But there are other steps we should take as well. Until the demand creates sufficient private sector jobs, the government should offer jobs to anyone wanting one. Let the WPA live again. (4.2.4) In order to reinvigorate our manufacturing capability, the government should end subsidies to companies moving jobs out of the country and should use tariffs to level the playing field. Suspend NAFTA and all other “free trade” agreements (they are really free investment agreements) until our trade partners extend the same benefits, union rights, protections for health, safety, and the environment, and wages as we require of businesses here. It should be no cheaper to build widgets in Mexico or China and import them than to build them in Scranton or Detroit or Oshkosh. (4.2.5) Make it just as expensive for companies to hire undocumented workers as American citizens. Use a non-forgeable ID card with Social security number and status. Require non-citizen workers be given minimum wage and other protections accorded citizens. Offending employers would be jailed. (4.2.6) Index the Minimum Wage for inflation and gradually raise it to what it would have been had it been indexed for inflation when it was created at a dollar an hour. (That would currently be about $16 an hour.)

4.3 Health Care for all. (4.3.1) As a conservative, I believe that the only fiscally-responsible way to provide health care is to eliminate the profit, the overhead, the red tape, the interference between doctor and patient, and the interference in our political system of the insurance companies by kicking them out of health care altogether. We must finally join the rest of the civilized world and adopt a single-payer national health system. (4.3.2) A modest proposal to achieve such a single-payer system is Medicare For All. We can start with a bill expanding Medicare to cover pregnant women, infants up to age six, and seniors starting at age sixty. Include pre-natal care, well baby care, and preventive care with no co-pay. The bill should state that it is our policy to gradually expand and improve Medicare until it covers all Americans for medical , dental, vision, hearing, mental health, home health, and long-term care, with deductibles and co-pays limited to what is affordable to families on minimum wage. (4.3.3) Medicare Part D should be repealed, and prescription drugs should be covered as a standard part of Medicare Part B, just like x-rays or doctor visits.

4.4 Banking Reform. The banks take high-risk gambles with our money and lose. Then they go to the federal government for a bail-out. The government goes to the Federal Reserve (which is about as federal as Federal Express) to borrow the money. The Fed then creates the money out of thin air and loans it to the government (at interest which we taxpayers have to pay). The government then gives it to the banks, who are supposed to loan it to us (again at interest, so we’re paying double interest on the same money). The banks then use the money to buy up other banks (including foreign banks) and to pay themselves huge bonuses. The stockholders of the Federal Reserve make hundreds of billions of dollars on money which was never theirs in the first place. They never have a penny of their own at risk! Some sweet deal, isn’t it? But not for us. In this system, all money is created as debt. But where does the money come from to pay the interest? More loans. They can never be paid off. It is a huge pump, pumping money from workers to the ultra-wealthy who own the banks. Both conservatives and liberals agree that this must end. (4.4.1) Pass legislation abolishing the Federal Reserve and eliminating our debt to it. (4.4.2) Pass legislation ending the debt-based monetary system and returning to Congress its Constitutional responsibility for creating money … without debt. The government should print greenbacks and use it for government purposes — including building roads and bridges, caring for disabled veterans, and providing universal health care. (4.4.3) Audit the big banks and financial service companies and nationalize those who are insolvent. They can then be run as non-profit government banks, providing low-interest loans to individuals and small businesses.

4.5 Tax Reform. We have proposed significant government expenditures for guaranteed paychecks and health care for Americans. It is fair to ask where the money is going to come from. For centuries, governments have been using taxes to control behavior. They tax what they want to discourage (like smoking, for example). So why do we tax employers for providing jobs? Payroll taxes are counter-productive. They are especially burdensome on small businesses. The minute you hire one person, you have to hire another to figure out income tax withholding, FICA taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, workers comp taxes, ad infinitum. It’s no wonder most new businesses fail before they ever make a profit. Businesses should only be taxed on profits.

Similarly, we discourage those on welfare from taking a job, because we tax them so highly. If you find a job that pays the same as welfare, and you take the job and the welfare is stopped, you have in essence been taxed 100% on your new job. Even if your new job pays twice what you got on welfare, the effective tax on it is 50% — and that’s before you pay any income tax. Then there’s the FICA (Social Security) tax, the most regressive tax of all. A minimum wage earner pays about 8%. The owner of a Mom & Pop business pays 16%. But a basketball player or CEO making $40 million a year only pays 0.02%. We’re supposed to have a graduated income tax. Yet because of the tax break on unearned income (like dividends and capital gains), the wealthy pay a much smaller percentage of their income than low-wage workers. Someone once challenged corporate executives to find one who paid a higher income tax rate than their secretary. None were found. All this suggests several ways to reform the tax system. (4.5.1) Remove the cap on earnings subject to Social Security tax. This would make it a flat tax, and would keep Social Security solvent forever. Better yet, do away with the FICA tax (and all payroll taxes) completely, compensating by increasing income tax rates or with new taxes (like the tariffs and Tobin tax discussed below). (4.5.2) Restructure the income tax to incorporate a negative income tax (similar to the guaranteed paychecks discussed in 4.2.1) and slowly rising tax rates, with a top rate (probably around 70%) sufficient to make the whole thing revenue neutral. No one with an income of less than $500,000 per year would have a tax increase. (4.5.3) Remove the favored treatment of unearned income, but index the cost basis of property subject to capital gains for inflation, so that only real gains are taxed. (4.5.4) The cost of universal health care will be much less than the current cost, since the roughly 30% skimmed off by the insurance companies will be eliminated. There will be considerable savings because conflicting and overlapping coverages (like Medicaid and VA) will be eliminated. Individuals will be relieved of the expense of private insurance policies and supplements. Businesses of all sizes will be relieved of the burden of supplying health coverage for their employees and (most importantly for companies like General Motors) for their retirees. Yet the cost to the government will rise, and must be offset by taxes. An increased tax rate on corporate profit is reasonable, especially since they will benefit so much. (4.5.5) Introduce the Tobin tax on financial transactions. There is so much gambling going on in the currency markets and stock markets that the total amount of trades is truly staggering. A tax of even a tenth of one percent would bring in enough money to pay for the new programs we have proposed and (quite possibly) make the income tax unnecessary. Such a tiny tax would not deter legitimate investment, but might put a brake on some of the lightning computer trading which goes on today. So the actual revenue created will not be known until it is implemented. (4.5.6) Go back to using tariffs (one of the few types of tax authorized in the Constitution) to level the playing field with trading partners who welcome our investments, but put up barriers to the sale of our goods in their country. Tariffs can halt the flight of jobs from our country, as discussed in 4.2.4. (4.5.7) Pass legislation limiting the corporate income tax deduction for executive compensation to twenty times the salary of their lowest paid worker (legal or illegal). The ratio between CEO pay and worker pay used to be 20 to 1. It is now over 600 to 1. This is a free country. Corporations can pay their executives whatever they wish. But we don’t have to give them a tax deduction for it.

Concluding Remarks

There are countless important issues we haven’t dealt with in this Patriots’ Agenda (like education, the environment, etc.). You can see my position on every conceivable issue on the web site www.thepatriots.us . What we have done here is to identify four core agenda items that are absolutely critical to our future as a nation. We’d love to see them taken up in the lame duck session this month. But I’m not holding my breath. My hope is that millions of Americans across the political spectrum (and perhaps a few Patriots in a future Congress) will take up an agenda like this and, one of these days, force our government to honestly deal with it. Until then, hang in there, keep the faith, and may God help us all.

(NOTE: This article is a slightly updated version of the Legislative Agenda I submitted to Congress when I was running for Congress in 2006. It resulted in me being invited to join the Veterans Affairs Committee “when you’re elected.” Although exit polls had me winning the election by 12 points, the electronic voting machines said otherwise.)

Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.
National Commander, “The Patriots”
1494 Patriot Dr, Melbourne, FL 32940
Home: (321) 752-5955
Cell: (321) 258-0582
Email: [email protected]
Alt: [email protected]
Web: www.thepatriots.us

On the brink of new year it is tempting to think about our financial situation in the months to come

On the brink of next year we wait apprehensive
For what will befall us and power expensive,
We think it’s our due to turn lights on with abandon
We’ve always done this in Carlton or Cranbourne

A financial crisis may come again
It’s a shame we don’t know quite how or quite when,
We hang onto our shares and still listen credulous
To financial “gurus” with notions so nebulous.

Of how endless growth will fulfill our need,
For amassing a fortune by thought, word and deed
To support our retirement that’s not going to happen
We’ll need an alternative else we’ll be caught nappin’

The task is impossible one hapless man says
To his realistic client who usually says “yes”
“I know” says the client, “there’s no growth to be had.
When there’s not enough oil, things have to be bad!”

“It’s the point we have reached I’m afraid to say
And I’ll get the sack for telling you today
I’m supposed to shut up and pretend that it’s good
And all will rebound and put us back in the mood.

Of investing our money, trusting everything rises
And patience will win us financial prizes.
But those days are over both you and I know it
We reap what we do and we know we have sown it.

So free and so easy we took what was on offer
It’d ever been thus and we knew no other.
It wasn’t our fault; we’re but cogs in the wheel
But we know know our *“party” had an amazing feel.

It’s over I know it and here is the crunch,
What will we do in future for dinner or lunch?
Old age isn’t easy and worse in the unknown
World of depleted resources and with crowds overblown.

Twenty twelve is a mystery as we turn over the page
Of Twenty eleven in its final stage
A doomer or gloomer will see our backs to the wall
The rest will not worry, no not one bit at all!

*For more about the "party" see "The Party's over" by Richard Heinberg.

Has the prospect of global temperature rises between two and six degrees centigrade got you down? Don’t worry, for the world might well be in for a cooling trend. The kind that comes after the planet is enveloped in a canopy of ash and debris following a thermo-nuclear war.

Has the prospect of global temperature rises between two and six degrees centigrade got you down?

Are you like me? Do you hate hot humid summers that never end? Do you toss and turn in the night, soaked in sweat, not finding relief, even in the darkest basement or under the shade of the biggest tree? Don’t worry, for the world might well be in for a cooling trend. The kind that comes after the planet is enveloped in a canopy of ash and debris following a thermo-nuclear war. You see, nuclear winter, the bogeyman you thought had gone into permanent retirement when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet empire bit the dust, is still on the menu.

For those who lost the recipe, let me tell you how we can rustle up some nuclear winter in time for dinner. It’s quick, it’s easy, and you don’t have to be a professional chef to pull it off. Just follow Chris Clugston’s Scarcity> Conflict Cook Book. (cf. “Scarcity”)

“If you like mushrooms, you’ll love mushroom clouds! Nuclear winter is a cool summer treat...And its easy to make....Just follow Chris Clugston’s recipe, let me show you how!”

The first ingredient is a hopeless economic dependence on natural non-renewable resources (NNRs). That’s easily found, especially in North America, Europe and the emerging economies of China and India. Secondly, it is important that there not be enough NNRs to satisfy the growing appetites of all those nations which demand them. Again, no problem there. Seventeen remaining global NNR reserves will be exhausted within 25 years. We are talking about trifling things like antimony, arsenic, barite, cadmium, fluorspar, gold, iron ore, lead, manganese, molybdenum, niobium, rhenium, silver, strontium, tin, zinc and zirconium. Those kind of things we can do without---that is, unless we live in an industrial civilization. And then there is boron, magnesium, mercury , phosphate rock, the platinum group metals, selenium and vanadium---which will be exhausted within 41 to 61 years. And beyond that, bromine, cement, lime, potash, rare earth minerals, salt and soda ash will be not be economically available.

But wait, I know what you’re thinkin’. We are an exceptional species. We are ingenious. Our brains are designed to work around limits. We will think of something. After all, we always have, haven’t we? We can develop “renewable energy”. Sorry to rain our your parade, but Dawn Stover said it best:

“Renewable energy sounds so much more natural and believable than a perpetual-motion machine, but there's one big problem: Unless you're planning to live without electricity and motorized transportation, you need more than just wind, water, sunlight, and plants for energy. You need raw materials, real estate, and other things that will run out one day. You need stuff that has to be mined, drilled, transported, and bulldozed -- not simply harvested or farmed...” Geothermal, wind, hydro power and biomass? “All of these technologies also require electricity transmission from rural areas to population centers. Wilderness is not renewable once roads and power-line corridors fragment it. And while proponents would have you believe that a renewable energy project churns out free electricity forever, the life expectancy of a solar panel or wind turbine is actually shorter than that of a conventional power plant. Even dams are typically designed to last only about 50 years. So what, exactly, makes renewable energy different from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power?

Renewable technologies are often less damaging to the climate and create fewer toxic wastes than conventional energy sources. But meeting the world's total energy demands in 2030 with renewable energy alone would take an estimated 3.8 million wind turbines (each with twice the capacity of today's largest machines), 720,000 wave devices, 5,350 geothermal plants, 900 hydroelectric plants, 490,000 tidal turbines, 1.7 billion rooftop photovoltaic systems, 40,000 solar photovoltaic plants, and 49,000 concentrated solar power systems. That's a heckuva lot of neodymium.

Unfortunately, "renewable energy" is a meaningless term with no established standards. Like an emperor parading around without clothes, it gets a free pass, because nobody dares to confront an inconvenient truth: None of our current energy technologies are truly renewable, at least not in the way they are currently being deployed. We haven't discovered any form of energy that is completely clean and recyclable, and the notion that such an energy source can ever be found is a mirage.” from The myth of renewable energy of 22 Nov 11 by Dawn Stover http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/dawn-stover/the-myth-of-renewable-energy

Sorry Peak Oilers but I guess it isn’t all about oil---or energy---after all. We need all those other 69 natural non-renewable resources that Chris Clugston inventoried---unless you think that solar panels, turbines, and drills etc can be made from mud and straw.

But back to Clugston’s Cook Book. We have the first of our ingredients----the non-renewable resources which are in terminal decline, and the second, which is the fact that there won’t be enough of them to go around to satisfy everybody---particularly the industrial giants---and the ones like America which is rapidly losing its stature. The third ingredient is import dependency, or in Clugston’s parlance, “potential geopolitical supply constraints”. This is the most active and critical ingredient in the whole mix. It is not so much that dwindling supplies of non-renewable resources will not be domestically available, but that many of them that will still be available are found in the most inconvenient places---for the United States at least. Politically unstable or unfriendly places.

For starters, about 80% of the world’s proven oil resources are located in the Middle East. And then there is the stuff that is used in essential infrastructure. 83% of abrasives come from China. 72% of boron reserves are found in Turkey. 75% of proven Chromium reserves are found in South Africa and Kazakhstan. 84% of clay imports come from Brazil. Half the cobalt is located in the Congo. 40% of the copper comes from Chile. China is the third largest producer of gypsum, Iran the third. China is the world’s leading steel producer and accounts for 40% of global lead mine production, 40% of proven global molybdenum reserves, 65% of the world’s silicon, and together with Indonesia, they produce 40% of the world’s tin. 40% of the world’s vanadium is produced by China and South Africa, 68% of US zinc ore imports come from Peru and 52% of titanium sponge metal imports come from Khazakhstan.

Then there are the NNRs that the United States imports to support industrial agriculture. 72% of its boron comes from Turkey. 50% of proven manganese reserves come from South Africa and the Ukraine. 100% of its phosphate rock is imported from Morocco. And to make your computer, IPhone and tech toys, 51% of US antimony comes from China, plus 86% of its arsenic, 58% of its beryilium from the Ukraine, and half the proven indium reserves are found in China. In fact, of the NNRs which the United States requires to make high tech electronic devices, 28 of them are imported from potentially volatile or unreliable sources. And 17 of those imported 28 NNRs supply more than 79% of American requirements. (cf. Scarcity, Humanity’s Final Chapter, pp. 52-57)

This roll-call of vulnerability is by no means exhaustive. But you get the picture. Without the United States Navy to impose its power and police the seaways, it is unlikely that you could drive your car to the local shopping centre to buy your latest gadget or load up on groceries. You know, that car with the “End the Iraq War” bumper sticker on it. (Never mind. Dump the car, live off the grid and wear a Ghandian loin cloth if that fits the image you want to project. But spare me your hypocrisy. You aren’t baling out of the industrial system or your dependence on the violence it’s built on.)

What happens when somebody threatens to deprive a fading superpower with a trillion dollar military budget of its supply of essential NNRs? What did Japan do when the United States cut off 90% of its oil in 1941? In the last century, resource wars claimed the lives of over 100 million people, but in this century, the arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons can destroy our species, and a good many innocent bystanders as well.

So in case you didn’t make notes, here again is the formula for our demise, a recipe for nuclear winter in a nutshell:

Take 69 non-renewable natural resources that have already peaked , any one of which can cripple our industrial economy and for which no conceivable alternatives can collectively be found.

Add accelerating scarcity of those resources.

Throw in a pinch of dependence by militarily lethal powers on foreign imports from unstable and/or potentially hostile regions....

And PRESTO---- you have a nuclear exchange, which according to Paul Ehrlich, need only be a limited one between say, India and Pakistan, to finish off humanity.

Nuclear winter would ensue and I suspect, the hospitality industry on the Gold Coast or the beaches of Florida or the Algarve would have its worst season on record. Damn, there goes your tan. You worked hard for your vacation, and as a North American, it was your entitlement. Life is so unfair.

And here you were worried about climate change. I guess Matthew 6:34 was right after all. Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself. And all of humanity apparently.

Think positive thoughts. Put on a happy face. Something will turn up. It always has, has it not? Cassandras are such a drag.... Oh, I am such a downer. No wonder the girls don’t ask me out.

Tim Murray

December 1, 2011

The supply of the world's most essential energy source is going off a cliff. Not in the distant future, but within two years. Production of all liquid fuels, including oil, will drop within 20 years to half what it is today. And the difference needs to be made up with "unidentified projects" – in other words, we face a potential ‘rank shortage’. According to this graph, we stand on the edge of a precipice, with no prior warning from either the industry or governments, which ostensibly protect the public interest.

Edited and extrapolated from an article by Nicholas C. Arguimbau, 23 April, 2010.
Additional material compiled by Brian McGavin, writer and analyst.

Look at the graph below and worry. It was drawn by the United States Department of Energy (Energy Information Administration) in 2009.

What does it imply? The supply of the world's most essential energy source is going off a cliff. Not in the distant future, but within two years. Production of all liquid fuels, including oil, will drop within 20 years to half what it is today. And the difference needs to be made up with "unidentified projects" – in other words, we face a potential ‘rank shortage’. According to this graph, we stand on the edge of a precipice, with no prior warning from either the industry or governments, which ostensibly protect the public interest.

The original graph is available at: www.eia.doe.gov/conference/2009/session3/Sweetnam.pdf
The graph was prepared for a US Department of Energy meeting in spring, 2009.

Take a good look at what it says:

• We are past the peak of oil production. Conventional oil will be substantially gone in 20 years, and there is nothing secure to replace it;

• Total petroleum production from all presently known sources, conventional and unconventional, will remain "flat" at approximately 83 mbpd for the next two years and then will proceed to drop, at first slowly but by 4% per year after 2015.

• Demand will begin to outstrip supply in 2012, and will already be 10 million barrels per day above supply in only five years. The United States Joint Forces Command concurs with these findings. http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf.
• 10 million bpd is equivalent to half the United States' entire consumption. To make up the difference, the world would have to find another Saudi Arabia and get it into full production in five years, an impossibility. See The Oil Drum, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5154

• The shortfall, labelled "unidentified projects," that needs to be filled in 18 years is 60 million barrels per day, equivalent to 3/4 of today's total production, on the basis of a very conservative estimate of only 1% annual growth in global energy demand. Yet the rate of discovery of new conventional oil has been steadily dropping now for FORTY years despite evermore searching with more sophisticated technology.

The curve is virtually identical to one produced by geologists Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere, published in "The End of Cheap Oil," in Scientific American, March, 1998. They projected that production of petroleum from conventional sources would drop from 74 mbpd in 2003 (as compared to 84 mbpd in 2008 in the DOE graph) and drop to 39 mbpd by 2030 (the same as the DOE).

The world was completely transformed by oil for the duration of the twentieth century, but if the graph is right, within 20 years it will be vastly depleted as we face rising demand and trying to support over 4 billion more people in just 40 years. Here are just some of the issues:

• zero time to plan for the replacement of oil in its essential role in EVERY industry;
• zero time to plan how to replace cars and transport in our daily lives, and distribute agricultural produce and manufactured goods;
• zero time to manufacture and install millions of home energy installations to replace fossil fuel-sourced heating;
• zero time to plan for replacement of the largest military establishment in history, almost completely dependent upon oil;
• zero time to plan for supporting a global population that, at currently fertility rates, is heading for over 11 billion people by 2050 - without the "green agricultural revolution," made possible by the age of oil and where over two billion are already suffering from malnutrition;
• zero time to plan how to re-power tractors essential to producing food on a large scale;
• imperilled water pumping and sewage plants, dependent on fossil fuel energy to work.

In a world without oil that will hit us hard in less than twenty years, there will be few oil-burning ships transporting grain and other goods to the billions now dependent on them, or oil-burning airlines serving the world's major cities and the vital global tourist economy. Yet in September 2011 the Airbus Company predicts that the global passenger plane fleet will more than double by 2030. They are in dreamland. We are heading rapidly towards a minefield of lethal limits with little thought for the future.

The most frequently discussed source of unexploited petroleum is the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, but as a high percentage of their energy value has to be used in their extraction, the quantity of reserves is misleading. Two independent researchers have estimated that production from the tar sands by 2020 may be around 3.3 million bpd to 4 million bpd. Consequently, the likelihood of tar sands making a significant contribution to the world's petroleum demand is low. (Phil Hart and Chris Skrebowski, "Peak oil: A detailed and transparent analysis”. ) http://www.energybulletin.net/node/30537. Tar sand extraction is also very polluting.

Renewable energy. No substitutes for oil have been developed on anything like the scale required, and most are very poor net energy performers. Despite potential, renewable sources (other than hydropower or traditional wood) currently provide less than 1 per cent of the energy used in the world and the annual increase in the use of most fossil fuels is much greater than the total production in electricity from wind turbines and photovoltaics. Oil consumption is now outpacing new discoveries by a rate of around 3:1. (Professor Charles Hall)

So is nuclear power, with its potentially critical contamination risks, the great hope? Nuclear fission generates around 20 per cent of electrical energy needs in many industrial countries – much less in developing countries. Most uranium deposits are found in concentrations of 2% or less. Even a potential doubling in number of fission reactors across the world could see commercially extractable uranium ore run out in just 20 to 30 years.
(David Fleming, nuclear energy analyst)

A transition to genuinely sustainable living and the role of government

The current economic crisis in many developed nations has revealed the fragile inter-dependence of the globalised economy, where many countries can be involved in the supply chain to produce a single component manufactured in one of them. Once plentiful oil supplies are running down rapidly, the 'globalised' economy this has supported will have to rethink completely.

Though the economy and GDP is growing in some places, most of us are no longer getting wealthier and in many countries performance has collapsed. The average wage in the US is less now, in real terms than it was 30 years ago. It is GDP per person that is important. More than 60 countries around the world have seen incomes per person fall in the past decade.

Where is the strategic thinking to build a genuinely sustainable economy in a sustainable environment? We have to recognise that the endless “growth is good” mantra facing a future of rapidly diminishing natural resources no longer serves our future well being. We have to rethink economic growth and the excesses of our globalised economy and manage a transition to a qualitative self-supporting economy that satisfies our needs and works reasonably well without continual growth, with goods lasting as long as possible

A ‘dynamic, steady-state economy’ neither grows nor contracts. The door is open for investments, but they are directed toward activities that promote development over growth. “We need to start measuring exactly what we want to maximise or optimise, and plan for resilience and sustainability.” (Rob Dietz, executive director, CASSE www.steadystate.org)

Ways forward?

There is a vast amount that could be done at the micro and macro scale without impacting on our lives, which would lessen the shock of survival in an energy-scarce world. Alongside the need to stabilise and gradually reduce global birth rates and huge associated infrastructure costs to a sustainable level, we can cut back on so much unnecessary production and product obsolescence. Some reductions many people would welcome. To name just a few:

• less road lighting in the country and reduced but better optics lighting in our towns to preserve the night sky; as well as cutting lighting at night in offices;
• cutting TV advertising screens in supermarkets;
• cutting back multiple TVs installed in bars;
• cutting back the multiple, unsolicited mail-shots falling out of papers and through our doors;
• cutting multiple daily flights on short-haul domestic routes, by using high-speed trains;
• banning further production of gas-guzzling performance vehicles.

Still we carry on with our head in the sands, wasting resources on an epic scale. There has been little forewarning and planning. It is time for communities to prepare for community energy independence, food security – not more office blocks on prime agricultural land, and less growth, not more. Every local and national authority needs to start now to address these huge challenges seriously. Our children won’t thank us for inheriting a world taken to an abyss.