12December2007
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Energy; Global Food; Rich and Poor; Suffering.
The Dec. 9, 2007 New York Times: Oil-Nations Use More Energy, Cutting Exports. “The economies of many big oil-exporting countries are growing so fast that their need for energy within their borders is crimping how much they can sell abroad, adding new strains to the global oil market.” Saudi Arabia, Russia, Mexico, Norway, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Libya, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Venezuela—all are producing—through petroleum sales—large wealthy and middle-classes, and we know what that means: more consumption per capita. More cars, bigger homes, air conditioners, vacations, etc.
And a number of large oil producers are already drying up. “Indonesia flipped from exporting oil to importing it three years ago, because of sagging production and rising demand. Iran [!!], Algeria and Malaysia are vulnerable over the next decade. Most oil experts view Mexico [!] as the next country to flip, in as little as five years.”
This, of course, affects peak oil debates, as well as rising oil prices, a struggling American economy and the global economy picture, in general. The big losers, however (the ones rarely mentioned in these discussions), continue to be the quiet billions of people who increasingly depend on high-yield grains for their survival. High-yield grains tend to require massive irrigation and intensive application of synthetic fertilizers, both of which require considerable energy. (Pesticides and farm machinery—which also require great energy inputs—can be substituted by manual labor.) Rising oil prices will continue to put the squeeze on poor farmers and the three billion undernourished people (1, 2) who depend on them. This will be one among many variables (degrading soil and water resources, global warming, population growth, desertification) that makes life for billions of people increasingly precarious.
3December2007
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Sustainability; Wisdom.
It is said that it takes a very aware fish to know that it’s wet. And we—the human species—are just becoming aware the physical and cultural medium which we inhabit. And just as we are waking up to a deep interconnection with all that is living and nonliving, we are becoming aware of the profound magnitude of the destruction we have wrought to our life-support systems. This is the human dilemma. Read the rest of this entry »
26November2007
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Energy; Future; Sustainability.
The October, 2007 issue of Wired magazine dismisses hydrogen, solar, wind, and corn-produced ethanol as viable energy sources, mainly as dramatic introduction to their cover story about the future of switchgrass. This is the plant, according to the article’s title, that will save America. Read the rest of this entry »
19November2007
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Carrying Capacity; Dieback; Future; Overshoot; Sustainability.
Sustainable, by definition, means that one’s behavior can be sustained indefinitely. If there were only four million people on the earth, they could probably cut down as many trees, clear as much land as they wished, use as many resources and produce as much waste as they desired. This is, of course, ignoring the moral argument. The immediate vicinity would be eventually destroyed, and humans would move on to another spot, behaving similarly. Meanwhile, the destroyed area would recuperate and become vibrant again. This would be sustainable behavior, and it is basically what Paleolithic and early Neolithic (early farmers) did. From our individual perspective, the earth is big and could likely sustain this sort of lifestyle indefinitely.
However, with 1000 times that number, soon to be 2000 times, such Neolithic conduct is not sustainable. Every indicator–deforestation, overfishing, oceanic acidity, biodiversity loss (1,2), desertification, water drawdown, fossil fuel resources, global warming, etc–suggests that the earth’s recuperative powers have already been overtaxed. That is, our behaviors are unsustainable. By definition, this means that the earth cannot continue to support present and projected human consumption indefinitely. And since global industries are primed to produce more than ever, it will get worse for quite a while before it gets better.
Many solutions have been proposed, and many of them are thoughtful, informed, and likely to be part of future sustainable societies. They are unlikely to be part of any large movement in the near future, however. Reading trend lines (albeit in a linear way), the destruction to earth’s life support systems is accelerating far faster than our behaviors are changing. Water, land and energy (in a easily usable form, namely oil) are diminishing so rapidly–so unsustainably–that a crash is imminent. Global warming has deservingly gotten a lot of attention, as has peak oil, mainly because the world’s wealthy billion people do not want to give up their high consumption lifestyles. However, as big a threat to humanity–at least in the timespans of decades–is the desertification/water scarcity issue. Numerous articles in the academic peer-reviewed journals have been documenting a disaster-in-the-making, threatening in the necessarily couched language of academia to a Malthusian dieback of humanity. Hundreds of millions, even billions, could die the horrific deaths of starvation and disease in the coming century. It is this event, perhaps more than any other, that will propel humanity into true sustainable action.
17November2007
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Economy; Future; Overshoot; Rich and Poor.
The new emerging paradigm strongly suggests that the earth’s human-sustaining capabilities are limited, at least in the way that we have been behaving. If we were all vegetarians, living simple earth-friendly lifestyles, the earth could support many more of us than our present behavior allows.
Yet, discussion of economics is still being held through the lens of the old paradigm. Read the rest of this entry »
15November2007
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Economy; Sustainability.
Blamed for the precipitous drop in the value of the U.S. dollar are rising oil prices, depression in home building, the most recent speculation bust which created the mortgage-bubble, and the U.S. trade deficit and governmental deficits. Whatever the causes, one consequence of a weaker dollar is that it shrinks American buying power. Countries that rely on exports to the U.S. will experience decreased sales, which likely translates into economic slowdowns in their near future. In the long run, a weakened U.S. dollar is not viable for the exporter countries. For thirty years now, the U.S. has consumed too much and various Asian countries have produced too much. It will not be economically sustainable for these countries to continue this co-dependent relationship with the United States. According to the old economic paradigm, then, this will spur these countries—specifically China and India—to move more rapidly away from being principally export economies to becoming consumer economies.
This has always been their strategy, anyway. The Asian countries have been following the well-worn path of Japan, Taiwan, then South Korea, of generating booming economies by producing first low-end, then ever high-end products for the U.S., specifically, and the world, in general. In a positive feed-back loop, exports generate capital for more investment. Meanwhile, a rising proportion of the wealth remains within the country, producing a middle class that consumes the country’s production. Americans, to a great extent, have been financing Asia’s growing wealth. And they’ve been going in debt doing so. Nothing wrong with that—in the old classical paradigm, that is. The old paradigm being that the earth is infinite and can provide as many people as many products as they can financially afford, and that the American economy is big enough to absorb any trivial trillions lost in profligacy.
14November2007
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Economy; Rich and Poor; Suffering; Water; Wisdom.
The United States has been the presiding power during the unprecedented economic boom of the past sixty years. American wealth as measured by GDP increased more than 43-fold in that time, from $300 billion in 1950 (1998 dollars) to more than $13,000 billion in 2006. The world has never seen the likes of it. We now take it for granted that most Americans live in ways far more comfortable than all of history’s royalty. Because of technological innovation and cheap oil, the lives of today’s generations promise to be long and comfortable.
In moments of reflection, most Americans will shy away from an egoistic appraisal of our wealth, away from superiority of system, away from divine providence, away from hard-working determination. Read the rest of this entry »
13November2007
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Economy; Future; Philosophy.
Numerous authorities across the political and philosophical spectrum have warned us that business has evolved in ways that generates great wealth and, at the same time, holds no allegiance to any country. Transnational in structure, corporations answer to their shareholders, and the shareholders of a company are principally other corporations, foreign as often as domesticate. And in following their short-term interests, capital’s flight to countries with cheaper labor, low taxes and lax environmental laws has left the United States “hollowed out,” according to Chalmers Johnson (1). In American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips shows that the American debt-industries are now significantly larger than its manufacturing sector. “44% percent of all corporate profits in the U.S. come from the financial sector compared with only 10% from the manufacturing sector.” The finance sector, we must remember, is largely a euphamism for the industries of debt–mortgage, auto loans, consolidation loans, credit cards, etc.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the business model has become the paradigm for everything. Read the rest of this entry »
12November2007
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Economy; Future.
Waking from the American Dream, 1
Two recent New York Times front page articles that may say so much: Rising Global Demand for Oil Provoking New Energy Crisis, and Fed Chief Warns of Worse Times in the Economy. One about oil, the other about the economy. Wisely, one can question the perspicacity of extending trends such as these—however large-scale—to divine the future. We intuit that such trends are linear with a relatively short history and that reality is so complex that any number of unanticipated events can swallow up what we once considered important.
However, among the complexity of our global reality, two mutually-reinforcing mega-trends clearly stand out. Read the rest of this entry »
7November2007
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Carrying Capacity; Future; Overshoot; Population; Sustainability.
All things, sentient and non-sentient, affect their environment. This new environment is the one to which all things must now adapt. When in general balance, the ecosystem provides the resources needed by organisms and cleans and re-integrates the wastes. One’s waste is another’s resource.
The United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (1, 2) published its findings in 2005 on the state of the world’s ecosystems. Ecosystem services include such things as water supply, waste treatment and detoxification, water purification, air purification, erosion regulation, etc. Nature provides these freely. Of the 24 services measured, 15 were found to be degraded or used unsustainably.
Included in its findings: Read the rest of this entry »