Most of us will spend our tomorrows doing what we did today. If we have a job we’ll go to work. Kids will go to school. And stuffed somewhere around all that is shopping, laundry, cooking, and everything else. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow look pretty much the same.
Here’s what’s going to happen if we all keep putting one foot in front of the other courtesy of Jeremy Leggett, geologist turned environmentalist writing about the near-future in 2006, "The price of houses will collapse. Stock markets will crash. Within a short period, human wealth -- little more than a pile of paper at the best of times, even with the confidence about the future high among traders -- will shrivel. There will be emergency summits, diplomatic initiatives, urgent exploration efforts, but the turmoil will not subside. Thousands of companies will go bankrupt, and millions will be unemployed. Once affluent cities with street cafés will have queues at soup kitchens and armies of beggars. The crime rate will soar. The earth has always been a dangerous place, but now it will become a tinderbox.
... As with the Great Depression, economic hardship will bring out the worst in people. Fascists will rise, feeding on the anger of the newly poor and whipping up support. These new rulers will find the tools of repression -- emergency laws, prison camps, a relaxed attitude toward torture ..."
If that’s as bad as it’s going to get, then everybody can breathe a huge sigh of relief. But sadly we’ve got a lot more down to go.
We keep on making babies so the world’s population is projected to reach 7.9 billion by 2025. In 14 short years from today, 5 billion people, over half the world’s population, is expected to experience periodic water shortages. Rising temperatures and lack of water are likely to decrease the production of staple foods in many of the planet’s poorest countries by up to 50%.
Within the next 50-100 years it is estimated the world’s population will contract to somewhere between 500 million and 2 billion people as a result of Peaking Resources, Population Growth, and Global Climate Change. The hard core peak oil experts say 90% of humanity is going to die. The optimists say only 5 - 6 billion people will. Regardless … It’s called a Die-Off.
David Goodstein, a professor of physics and vice-provost at the California Institute of Technology, said the easiest energy alternatives -- coal and natural gas -- might carry us through to the end of this century, but ... "By the time we have burned up all that fuel, we may well have rendered the planet unfit for human life."
From Die-Off to Extinction. Runaway climate change will eventually evolve to some new stable state, but most likely without humans.
As Mat Savinar wrote in The Peak Oil and Die-Off, “Looking ahead to rapid climate destabilization, the loss of perhaps a quarter to half of the species of life on Earth, and the widening gulf of poverty and living standards, we see that it may not have been a passage at all but a road toward the abyss of extinction. But it is a mistake, I think, to regard the possible suicide of humankind as an anomaly rather than the logical outcome of a wrong turn that now must be quickly undone.”
“… Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely respected geologists, physicists, and investment bankers in the world.”
Geophysicist David Archer wrote, “The climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel CO2 to the atmosphere
will last longer than Stonehenge. Longer than time capsules, longer than nuclear waste, far longer than the age of civilization so far . . . [it] will persist for hundreds of thousands of years into the future.”
Is it possible it might now be too late to stop the die-off?
That’s the most likely outcome. The worst case scenario is extinction.
But …
The most likely outcome for a massive Die-Off is based upon the simple fact that we will continue to do tomorrow what we’ve done today. Which is nothing.
It takes 20 years to switch completely from fossil fuels to alternative forms of energy. As I wrote before, If Bill Clinton was one tenth the visionary he thinks he is … we'd almost be done by now. Not one of our “leaders” from The House, The Senate, or the Oval Office, will go on television and outline how starting tomorrow … all the steps necessary to transition from fossil fuels will be taken.
Period.
The security of not only our country, but our planet, demands that we start at once.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
If all goes well … 20 years after that broadcast … we’ll see if that was enough to stave off Doomsday. If we depend on politicians … if we Bet the Earth that our “leaders” will take command of the dire situation we find ourselves in … then salvation will always be 20 years from someday.
Y’know … I woke up this morning thinking I was going to try to describe the loathsome putrescence that is Carl Levin and John McCain. What possessed them to dream up the provision included in the National Defense Authorization Act that allows the government to imprison anyone, anywhere, indefinitely? And why did the majority of The Senate pass it?
“Essentially,” writes Andrew Napolitano, “this legislation would enable the president to divert from the criminal justice system, and thus to divert from the protections of the Constitution, any person he pleases.”
Will a Republican dominated House pass this filth on to Obama? Will we once again be hostage to the hope that Obama won’t drop a lit match onto the Constitution? It’s like listening to an old radio serial as the announcer breathlessly intones, “Will our hero rescue the country in the nick of time or cave in to the demands of the Fascistic Overlords? Tune in again next week for the next thrilling chapter of … Obama-Man!”
I was trying to imagine what combination of money, extortion … or worse, could make McCain and Levin draft the most un-Constitutional provision imaginable. Upon taking office, senators-elect must swear or affirm that they will "support and defend the Constitution." What compelled them, and the majority of The Senate, to toss their oath of office into the shredder?
I was still grappling with the seemingly absolute corruption of our Two Part System when I just … stopped. I was reacting to The Noise again. There’s not going to be enough food, water, or energy to sustain the prisoners in the gulag … or the guards. We’re all trudging up to the cliff.
We can either spend our tomorrows like we spent today and guarantee civilization will be ripped to pieces in front of our children’s eyes or we can begin to rationally dismantle our insane civilization.
The best starting point I’ve found is this book:
Deep Green Resistance, Strategy to Save the Planet by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Aric McBay
Go here: http://deepgreenresistance.org/
All the World's a Grave
