Where are we on the Limits to Growth model?

[kenneal - lagger]

Hopefully there will be economic collapse as I don't think the US for a start will address its overconsumption and China, although going over to renewables at home, is flogging and building coal fired power plants across the world. The only answer to climate change seems to be human civilisation collapse and though it may be catastrophic for many people it won't be as bad as runway climate change would be for the whole earth ecosystem.

Hopefully we will see a lot of *ankers jumping out of Wall Street and London skyscrapers. The fewer of them left around the better.

[Lord Beria3]

Agreed.

All the more reason for a no-deal Brexit!

[Lord Beria3]

All

https://forecastingintelligence.org/201 ... alisation/

Here is my post on the economic and societal implications of demographic contraction within the context of a wider limits to growth crisis.

Enjoy!

[raspberry-blower]

Chris Martenson has another one of those two part with the second part requiring a sub. However the first part is online now, entitled Collapse is already here

The only thing that approach lacks is a future. Because it’s not-so-subtly based on continued "growth". Infinite exponential growth. The exact same growth that is killing ancient trees, sea birds, insects, amphibians, and phytoplankton.

Who wants more of that? Insane people.

In other words, don’t hold out any hope that the Davos set representing the so-called “elite� from every prominent nation on earth are going to somehow bravely offer up real insights on our massive predicaments and solutions to our looming problems. They're too consumed with their own egos and busy preening for prominence to notice the danger or care.

[emordnilap]

Chris Martenson has another one of those two part with the second part requiring a sub. However the first part is online now, entitled Collapse is already here

The only thing that approach lacks is a future. Because it’s not-so-subtly based on continued "growth". Infinite exponential growth. The exact same growth that is killing ancient trees, sea birds, insects, amphibians, and phytoplankton.

Who wants more of that? Insane people.

In other words, don’t hold out any hope that the Davos set representing the so-called “elite� from every prominent nation on earth are going to somehow bravely offer up real insights on our massive predicaments and solutions to our looming problems. They're too consumed with their own egos and busy preening for prominence to notice the danger or care.

From the same article:

From here, there are only two likely paths:

(1) We humans simply cannot self-organize to address these plights and carry on until the bitter end, when something catastrophic happens that collapses our natural support systems.

(2) We see the light, gather our courage, and do what needs to be done. Consumption is widely and steeply curtailed, fossil fuel use is severely restrained, and living standards as measured by the amount of stuff flowing through our daily lives are dropped to sustainable levels.

It has to be (1) because (2) is too late.

[Little John]

It was always going to be 1. I accept that now.

[kenneal - lagger]

Em, it has just occurred to be that if we do what Bjork says in your strap line we'll simply end up with more Buddhists! Off topic, I know, but...

[kenneal - lagger]

It was always going to be 1. I accept that now.

There are, unfortunately, too many greedy people running things with too tight a control over government and too many gullible people like the one we have on here who are willing to support them.

[Little John]

I think it is more intractable than even that Ken.

There has always been and will always be a minority of people who are ruthlessly selfish and ambitious They are just part of the normal distribution of what it is to be human.

In and of itself, all other things being equal, in a pre-civilisational setting - which is to say, for the vast majority of the time humans have existed as a species - such behavioral traits were, at the very least, relatively harmless at the systemic level and, even, were perhaps suitable traits in certain extreme environmental situations. Indeed, they must have been. Otherwise they would not have persisted as traits at the margins of our species' behavioral repertoire.

The problem arises when we get complex civilizations that produce surpluses. Such civilizations provide both the anonymity and resources for such ruthless personality types to rise to the top and wield vast power over huge swathes of humanity. In doing so, they force the rest of us to dance to their psychopathic tune whether we want to or not.

The problem, then, is complex civilization inevitably facilitating an inordinate influence of a particular extreme of human nature. In that regard, civilization is an inherently unstable form of human organization both in terms of its own internal contradictions, as mentioned above, as well as in terms of the typical exhaustion of the environment on which it depends and the only reason it has lasted for the 10,000 or so years that it has is due to it expanding into new territories as existing ones, along with the civilizations they supported, have collapsed.

Short of un-inventing civilization and going back to being pre-historic hunter/gatherers, there is no solution. This global civilization will go the way of all the previous ones. Except, this time, there is nowhere else left to start again.

[raspberry-blower]

LJ it appears that there are a couple of others who are on the same wavelength.

Jonathan Cook: A Liberal Elite Still Pushing us to the Abyss

Meanwhile, the absolute prioritising of the individual has sanctioned a pathological self-absorption, a selfishness that has provided fertile ground not only for capitalism, materialism and consumerism but for the fusing of all of them into a turbo-charged neoliberalism. That has entitled a tiny elite to amass and squirrel away most of the planet’s wealth out of reach of the rest of humanity.

Worst of all, our rampant creativity, our self-regard and our competitiveness have blinded us to all things bigger and smaller than ourselves. We lack an emotional and spiritual connection to our planet, to other animals, to future generations, to the chaotic harmony of our universe. What we cannot understand or control, we ignore or mock.

And so the liberal impulse has driven us to the brink of extinguishing our species and possibly all life on our planet. Our drive to asset-strip, to hoard resources for personal gain, to plunder nature’s riches without respect to the consequences is so overwhelming, so compulsive that the planet will have to find a way to rebalance itself. And if we carry on, that new balance – what we limply term “climate change� – will necessitate that we are stripped from the planet.

Alastair Crooke: A Progressive artifice of Democratic Impotence: The 'World' finally 'Gets It'

This monetary artifice was always illusory: The idea that real wealth would emerge out from inflated fiat debt; that such expansion had no boundaries; that all debt could, and must, be honored; and that the debt overhang, was to be solved by – more debt - was never credible. It was a fairytale. It reflected, the secularised belief in the inevitable, upward itinerary of progress; (that resonated with, and derived from the Christian millenarian conviction of the advance towards a plentiful and more peaceful ‘End Time’).

[kenneal - lagger]

It would seem that some of the Kleptocracy realise that money and financial instruments aren't worth the paper they're printed on and are propping up the farm land price in the UK with over half of all farm land on the market being snapped up by non farmer buyers.

[Lord Beria3]

Definate IHT benefits of owning farmland.

[fuzzy]

arab-normans - whatever next??

[vtsnowedin]

It would seem that some of the Kleptocracy realise that money and financial instruments aren't worth the paper they're printed on and are propping up the farm land price in the UK with over half of all farm land on the market being snapped up by non farmer buyers.

Why not? You can lease any productive farmland to the nearest working farmer , corporate or private, and thus hold it for no annual expense to you and just let it appreciate in value. They are not making any more of it.

[kenneal - lagger]

It's city *ankers using their ill gotten gains to extend their control over the rest of us. I've been trying to buy the land next door which we currently rent/have the use of for several years to get money out of a bond and into something that will hold its value but the absentee owners won't sell because there is a tax advantage in owning the land and it not being "in use", hence "the having the use of.". And by hold its value I'm not talking about the monetary value just the intrinsic value of having somewhere where you can grow food and fuel.