The End of the Colombian Age

[clv101]

This essay touches on many of the topics discussed here:
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/ ... ombian-age

[UndercoverElephant]

The US clearly is in serious trouble, and so is Europe, but I think it may be a mistake to treat them a single cultural unit. The US has many serious problems that Europe either has much less of, or doesn't really have at all (eg a cultural obsession with the right to own guns, significant amounts of Christian fundamentalism. etc..). Europe has already experienced the end of its era of military-political global dominance.

[BritDownUnder]

Europe is in much more serious trouble than the US. Critics of the US seem to forget it has enormous coal reserves, abundant farmland, good wind and solar reserves, still has an operating copper mine in Utah that is one of the largest in the world. This is before considering the resources that Canada has to offer. Europe on the other hand has depleted its oil, gas and coal reserves, is dangerously overpopulated, beset by refugee problems, proximity of wars and 'failed states'. The only problem that the US has is Mexico. If they closed their border to Mexico to human and drug traffic and increased industrial trade with Mexico which is already large then most of their problems would go away.

I see the US beginning to withdraw into the Western Hemisphere and keeping any adversaries at bay across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with a rigorous use of nukes in the next 1000 years.

The US is probably one of the best placed countries to face the next 1000 years.

[UndercoverElephant]

The US is probably one of the best placed countries to face the next 1000 years.

On paper maybe. But they have cultural problems serious enough to compromise the advantage of more space and resources.

[clv101]

The US is probably one of the best placed countries to face the next 1000 years.

On paper maybe. But they have cultural problems serious enough to compromise the advantage of more space and resources.

Cultural problems come and go in decades, over the 1000 year timeframe it's all about biophysical resources and here the US/North America is relatively well endowed, so yeah, once they've been through a collapse or two in the coming decades/century, they are well placed for the rest of the millennium.

[UndercoverElephant]

The US is probably one of the best placed countries to face the next 1000 years.

On paper maybe. But they have cultural problems serious enough to compromise the advantage of more space and resources.

Cultural problems come and go in decades, over the 1000 year timeframe it's all about biophysical resources and here the US/North America is relatively well endowed, so yeah, once they've been through a collapse or two in the coming decades/century, they are well placed for the rest of the millennium.

Agreed. It is the US that is in trouble, rather than North America taken as a chunk of land.

[BritDownUnder]

I agree they have a lot of cultural - mainly ethnic problems - but a few government problems too.

I see a collapse in the US starting as shortages in the cities. Said city dwellers will try to get resources from the countryside and be met by a wall of lead from the rural inhabitants. I see an American renaissance coming from the countryside and a lot of dead city dwellers.

Unlike Europe, in the US it is not just criminals who are armed, it's everyone.

On a side note, nice to see a comment about that article from Gail Tverberg. I often wondered what happened to her.

[johnny]

This essay touches on many of the topics discussed here:
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/ ... ombian-age

Seriously, referencing Art Berman? References matter, you find good ones and use them, no different than the quality of footnotes in your dissertation that you don't want laughed at by the review board. You start referencing the geologic equivalent of Dr Seuss in anything you want people to take seriously and what impression, exactly, do your educated readers get from that?

Your "reference" proclaimed in a ASPO video in front of the Forrestal Building in Washington DC that there was no significant oil in US shale formations. In 2011. Otherwise known as one of (if not the largest at that time) fastest growing single year increases in oil production in the US in history....from...shale formations?

Yes...please take my thoughts seriously...Dr Seuss taught me everything I need to know about stuff....