The Converging Crisis: Ecology, Energy and Economics

[GliderGuider]

This meme has been bursting into the open lately. the most recent evidence of it is a column in today's Toronto Star entitled Perfect storm on the global horizon. In it Cameron Smith says:

Now, however, a perfect storm is on the not-too-distant horizon. Global warming and "peak everything" are meshing at every turn, and the list of possible consequences is fearsome.

The water in our global pot isn't boiling yet, but it's getting very warm. Luckily there's still time to turn down the burner and step out of the water.

Some options are forever gone. Yet change has to go to the heart of society. It has to result in a social transformation comparable to the industrial revolution that began in 1750, or the agricultural revolution that started about 9,500 years ago.

This sounds formidable, but it can be done. At present, however, signs of growing disorder abound. Climate stability has peaked and is becoming unstable, as global warming creates chaotic weather patterns. Humanity's ecological footprint now surpasses the carrying capacity of the globe by more than 20 per cent.

Global production of grain peaked around 1985. Natural gas production in North America peaked long ago. Global production of conventional oil has probably peaked, or is about to.

The Genuine Progress Indicator peaked around 1980 and has been declining slowly since then. Fresh water availability has probably peaked. By 2002, some 75 per cent of the world's oceans were fished out or were being exploited beyond capacity. In nature, populations of all species has dropped, on average, by a third since 1970.

Among the world's large water bodies, there are 61 major dead zones. And up to two-thirds of the world's forests are gone – half of that amount has disappeared since 1950. Concurrently, poverty has remained in epidemic proportions and the gap between rich and poor has widened dramatically.

What's at the root of all this muddle? In Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, Donella and Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers say there are two driving forces: population growth and the belief in exponential growth.

This is an astonishing article for the MSM. The author shows insight in the writing, and the paper shows courage in the publication of such a bold piece. What encouraged me was that this article appeared today, just as I finished up the Powerpoint for a new iteration of my outreach program. It's entitled "The Converging Crisis: Ecology, Energy and Economics". I'll be presenting it for the first time this Wednesday to a general audience at a community center in Ottawa.

The new presentation is a major departure for me. I no longer mention the possibility of a human die-off, and I actually talk about adaptive and protective actions we can take as individuals and as communities. This is the result of the major, positive change in my thinking that came from the two recent analytical articles on energy and GDP that are posted on my web site.

I thought y'all might be interested in a sneak preview of the new talk. So here's the pointer to the the as-yet-unpublicized PDF of the presentation, complete with speaker's notes: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/ConvergingCrisis.pdf

As usual, comments and critiques are welcome.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. The wise candidates will address these issues

or be ready to address them. These threats to our very existence on this planet are looming larger and larger--the very fact this article exists attests to that. We're going to need drastic solutions, and a strong President willing to make them.

[GliderGuider]

5. Do you have any wise candidates?

The seem quite intelligent, but that's not the same as wisdom. Wisdom is a quality that's not widely distributed in our species. In fact, I can think of only two well-known recent figures I'd consider truly wise: Gandhi and the Dalai Lama.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

9. I think wisdom can be acquired

it is a matter of being able to be open enough to see the big picture and humble enough to realize that ego is not going to help in dire situations.

[GliderGuider]

10. Here's a great comment on the nature of wisdom

An associate professor named George Mobus at the University of Washington, who works in artificial intelligence with a sideline passion for "evolutionary, cognitive neuropsychology" wrote the following on this blog thread. I think it's one of the better discussions of the biological nature of wisdom I've ever seen.

For many years I have observed the foibles of humanity in something like disbelief. My main question has been: If we are so smart, why is the world the way it is, and seemingly getting worse? I discovered that intelligence is not the key. Nor is creativity. These are the main cognitive facilities that have been rapidly evolving in Homo sapiens for the past 100,000 years or so (see reference list links from above URL). In my studies I ran across several references to the psychology of wisdom which I found intriguing and followed. In a nut shell here is what I have discovered.

Homo sapiens is misnamed. I now think that humans did indeed evolve a capacity for higher moral judgment based on two key elements of what I now call sapience. The difference between wisdom per se and sapience is that the latter is directly tied to brain functions of the prefrontal cortex, whereas wisdom also relies on internalizing the lessons of life experience. The two are strategic thinking and systems thinking. The former can briefly be described as the ability to coordinate one’s life with the world, including other humans. The latter is the ability to comprehend causes and effects through dynamic systems relations — to see the world as a whole and understand the interconnections between seemingly disparate objects and processes.

But the evolution of that facility was just getting purchase (through, it turns out, the advent of grand parenting) and was finding selective value in terms of family and tribe and territory when an explosion in cleverness (the combination of intelligence and creativity) led to agriculture and a complete restructuring of social needs. What had been a growing reliance of wisdom (generally described in the psychology literature as tacit knowledge used to make moral judgments in complex social problems) to govern the life of a tribe was irrevocably altered. The needs of villages and farming (e.g. location protection) put more emphasis on the more aggressive and manipulative aspects of human nature. The Machiavellian was selected for from that time onward. And wisdom (sapience) has taken a back seat ever since. While systems thinking has still been needed it tends to be restricted to solving local technical problems rather than global social problems.

The end result is that today we are a species that should be called Homo calidus (man the clever) rather than sapiens. I submit that the problems we are facing are due to an incomplete or minimal competency in sapience. Our brains are simply not sufficiently developed, on average, to develop the wisdom needed to base good judgments on global issues. None of the current batch of world leaders and none of the wannabe’s currently running for US president display any great signs of wisdom in my view.

That doesn’t mean that the genetic basis for sapience is not still in the species extant today. There is sparse evidence that some individuals still possess at least the genetic propensity for sapience such that if the behavioral traits associated with sapience were of selective advantage then it is conceivable that over a span of, say 10,000 to 1M years a new, robust species of humans might emerge that would be better equipped, mentally, to be the basis of a new civilization with a new capacity to understand the consequences of their integration with the natural world. I have christened the new species Homo eusapiens — man the truly wise.

Regardless of whether the capacity for wisdom is genetically mediated or not, there seems to be much less survival value to it, either for an individual or a species, than there is to simply being clever. Since the payoff of becoming wise is so low and the cost in terms of time, energy and forgone status is so great, it's not hard to understand why so few go to the trouble, opting to be clever, powerful and rich rather than wise.

[ramapo]

16. Courage needed too

Imagine a candidate going on the TV to talk about how the idea of exponential growth is completely flawed and unrealistic. The example given in the column of the 18-year-old man gaining 2% body weight a year clearly demonstrates the problem. We all see the results of "low" inflation over the past couple of decades.

Obviously no mainstream candidate has the guts nor bad judgment to deliver a no-growth message. It would be the instant target of attack ads. Imagine somebody claiming it is not Morning in America any longer?

It is sad that our society lacks the maturity to process rational thought.

[malakai2]

6. The problem with wise

Wisdom does not get one elected to political office. Charisma, rhetoric, and quick thinking gets one elected to political office.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. Then we are doomed

and as we die off as a species, we can thank our own shallow thinking for our demise.

[freedomnorth]

26. This are problems in democracy yes. nt.

[villager]

2. thanks! About that PDF -- with your permission, I think I'm gonna use it

...for a "business writing" class I teach, where they also have to do a Powerpoint presentation. I'll use this as an example, and well, if they learn something else, too, so much the better... :evilgrin:

[GliderGuider]

3. Cool. You have my permission.

I've just uploaded a new version with slightly cleaned up speakers' notes (I realized I didn't remove the previous notes when I duplicated a couple of slides).

I like your approach to education. :toast:

[villager]

4. thanks!

:hi:

[tom_paine]

7. Great presentation, Paul!

You asked if we had any wise candidates, I presume you were speaking of the Empire to your south?

The last one we had, Paul Wellstone, was murdered.

John Edwards is the closest thing we have to a wise candidate, and he has been shut out. I strongly suspect that if he got into office, and actually began following through on some of his promises, and especially if he went after the Imperial family, he would be killed, too.

You speak of tipping points in the environment, well human endeavors have "tipping points", too. Amerika has now tipped over into the New Totalitarianism. Nothing short of a tremendous upheaval or a WWII-style liberation by the rest of the world, can stop it, I believe (though I continue to holkd out hope that I am mistaken).

Plus, I would be very skeptical of such a "liberation", as there is as much chance that it would be like Amerika's "Liberation" of Iraq as opposed to the genuine liberation America helped give Europe and the world in World War II.

But the point is...do not look for wisdom from the Empire to your south. Not only are we too far gone to produce wisodm without murdering it and plowing it under with concrete, but we are spreading the New Totalitarianism like a cancer to the rest of the world, including your nation.

A recipe for enslaving people while providing the enslavers with a new level of Palusible Deniability (the Mother's Milk of any Tyrant) and actually not requiring (at least not at first) the kind of bloody-handed reprisal that most people refuse to believe tyranny cannot exist without.

That may have been true in the old days, but our new aspiring and successful tyrants have learned from the mistakes of their heroes.

Anyway, my point is that Amerika has reached our own tipping point. Do not look to us for hope or wisomd. Look to us with fear, because we are coming after you. The Empire cannot allow your free nation on our borders.

But I digress. Your .pdf is excellent, sir.

[amandabeech]

11. Personally, I don't want the rest of the world coming in here and telling us

what to do. I have two non-U.S. roommates, and it can be tiresome. The problem is that they don't understand where we've been and what our Constitution and Bill of Rights actually say. In fact, the one from Canada can't seem to get enough of censorship and the one from Turkey wants to lock up lawbreakers forever. Just think what a wonderful country they'd come up with.

I think that it will be possible to once again emerge from totalitarianism around here because we've done it before. We had real problems with censorship and spying in the early 20th century and in the 1950s. In one case the bogeyman was anarchism and the second was communism. We came to our senses after a lot of excess.

Of course, we were attacked, and now we have soldiers in shooting wars abroad. Generally, the U.S. has had more spying and tighter controls during war, although during Vietnam, the government had lots of resistance.

Any of the Dem candidates are going to roll a lot of this back, and the Dem Congress is simply going to have to protect us by statute because the Supreme Court isn't by Constitution. It really CAN be done if we get off our duff and get some help from the White House and Congress.

So, don't jump off the bridge just yet. Two years into a Dem administration and we still have problems, then get really worried.

Take this from someone who really thinks that we have nearly unsurmountable problems in energy, the environment and the world food supply. There's a lot to worry about, but I think your concern is genuine but reasonably fixable.

[tom_paine]

12. I am not suggesting I would want that any more than you would.

As I said in the post above, it would more likely be like our "liberation of Iraq". They would "liberate us" to death.

I do agree that 2008 is likely our last, outside chance to turn things around, but honestly I don't see either Democratic frontrunner being anywhere near inclined to do so.

Maybe I am wrong. We'll see. And I still have my doubts that the Bushies, with their control and neutralization of the MSM, their Sub-Media that directs the National Dialogue and sets the boundaries of Conventional Wisdom, and their massive vote-blocking and election fraud apparatus, much of it quite out in the open, like Photo ID laws and purposeful deployment of machines to serve the Bush Party, or the complete Bushification/Nazification ofthe DOJ and the rest of the Executive Agencies, all working in concert to discredit the Dems and pump up the Bushies just prior to elections...I have my doubts that we can even have a Democratic Emperor anymor, let alone a Black or Woman Emperor.

But we shall see. I certainly hope you're right, though I have my doubts.

[losthills]

13. Two years into a Democratic Congress...

we have seen some positive steps on the environment, but they have only been baby steps in my opiniion. They have opposed Bush's war quite vocally, but have not had the guts to withold funding or de-authorize it or blocked his radical right appointees to important positions. Neither of the two Democratic front-runners are promising us anything on environment or taking a forceful stand on stopping the war.

So I see no reason to expect fundamental changes from a democratic administration.

[amandabeech]

14. I think that Edwards, who has his fingers into less, and Obama,

will be more likely to pull the plug on the spying more than the Clintons, who I think are more conservative in national security, which seems to be the trigger for this stuff.

Maybe I'm just more optimistic at this time. However, I think that this election is crucial, like you do.

I also think that we could be in for a liberation of tiny, and not so tiny, curts imposed from within and without. I think the "mustn't hurt China's feelings about poison tooth paste, lead-laden toys, lung-clogging Olympic conditions . . . " is a small example.

[IDemo]

15. Looks great, what I have read so far.

Any chance you are going to YouTube the presentation?

editing note: on p9 - A British says 30% of the world’s arable land may become unusable (a British soil scientist, or?)

[phantom power]

17. I have a suggestion for future research.

Taking Kerala as your model for a better kind of human society, I think it might be profitable to examine what conditions made Kerala possible, and what conditions allow it to thrive (assuming that it is thriving, which from your descriptions seems to be so).

For example, my inner cynic wants to know: does Kerala exist as a sort of hothouse flower protected by the larger and very un-Kerala-like state of India?

I know I've made this observation before, but I still think it's an important issue: for every Kerala, there will be 10 Weimar Germanies for neighbors. As we pass through the bottleneck, any community attempting to model itself after Kerala had better be able to defend itself. I actually question whether that is possible, but at any rate, as long as we have time remaining to play Hari Seldon, it's a good problem to work on.

[GliderGuider]

18. That's a very good suggestion.

There also have to be other small to medium-scale societies out there that have multi-decade records of success in the face of low income and consumption. If there are, it would be instructive to do a common factors analysis.

One of the other factors for Kerala is that their economy is supported by a lot of degreed expats who leave to find employment and then send home remittances. If the global economy takes a dump that would certainly impact Karala's situation.

[appal_jack]

19. excellent work!

My only suggestion would be to tap some of the Permaculture movement and literature in your 'solutions' section. The more people grow edible landscapes, close waste-to-resource loops, plan walkable cities, and create durable, energy-efficient structures now, the less oil we will need later. The Permaculture system lends itself quite well to creating solutions due to its emphasis on sustained observation, site-specific designs, zone-based layouts (true efficiency), and sector-analysis (observing existing energies and flows and working with them wherever possible).

If you want more specifics on resources I find helpful in this area, ask in this thread or PM me.

Thanks for your good work!

-app

[GliderGuider]

20. Thanks for the reminder

I'm new to this hope thing :-), and I'd forgotten to include it. It's in there now.

[GliderGuider]

21. Yesterday I was interviewed about my new talk by Ottawa's university radio station

It was a 12 minute interview, and the interviewer was quite knowledgeable. As you can hear, he made sure I didn't get stuck in full doom and gloom mode. We spent most of the time talking about solutions and hope. The mp3 is up linked on my web page, and the direct link is http://www.paulchefurka.ca/CKCU_interview.mp3

[cedric]

22. This might be of interest

http://www.transitiontowns.org/

[GliderGuider]

23. Absolutely, thanks!

I'll add a slide on Transition Towns, and I've added their primer to my web page.

[cedric]

24. If that's of interest

check out this site

http://transitionculture.org/

and the second part of this may be of interest.
This though is only on line for a few more days

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b008wf8l.shtml

[diane in sf]

25. Nothing more exhilarating than living in exciting times.

[patch1234]

27. 1985 peak grain is untrue

perhaps the author meant something else,
per capita, or something.

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:iWCOBZKt4WUJ:news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080118/cm_csm/efood_1+global+grain+production&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=16&gl=us

[GliderGuider]

28. The numbers are from Lester Brown's Earth Policy Institute

What is meant is world end-of-season grain stocks as days of human consumption. That is affected by population growth as well as the absolute amount in storage.

World food production is still rising:

However the population is rising faster, so per-capita production has been declining since the mid-80's as well:

Of course, this sort of analysis aggregates global figures, which tell us precisely nothing about the regional situations in Africa, Europe, South Asia or North America.

[Dogmudgeon]

29. The oil *consumption* figures are similar

The peak for oil consumption came in 1978 (Heinberg).

The recent drop-off in stored grain inventory is particularly troubling. Overall crop yields are not keeping up with the population and our demand for ethanol.

--p!

[GliderGuider]

30. A quick report on the talk

So, I delivered the presentation last night.

We had audience competition because the leader of the national NDP, Jack Layton, was in town talking about pulling out of Afghanistan, and there was another major social action meeting that got more publicity than we did. We pulled an audience of about 20, all of whom were "members of the choir". So while I didn't gain any new converts to the cause, they were very interested in the picture I painted, and were willing to listen to what turned out to be a LOT of information for a one hour talk.

There was over an hour of discussion afterwards, which was very lively and came at the problems and solutions from a number of different angles. There was general agreement that:

• a collapse of some sort is unavoidable
• communities are the only answer
• we will not be able to count on politicians
• the idea of perpetual growth on a finite planet is pretty stupid
• most people won't wake up until after TSHTF
• you can't make terra preta in a suburban back yard
• authority and responsibility for decision-making needs to be repatriated to the lowest appropriate level for the community it will affect
• this is unlikely to happen because power is addictive
• there is too much useless crap and not enough humanity in our lives.

I got off to a bumpy start, as I usually do when I present a new talk for the first time, but the audience was forgiving and after a few slides it got rolling. I was in a bit of dark and serious mood, so I wasn't as uproariously funny as usual when talking about Malthusian collapse in Africa. The talk seems to strike the right balance between urgency and hope. Although one person congratulated me afterwards on how depressing it was, everyone seemed energized rather than paralyzed. The audience discussion was the best I've had in the dozen times I've spoken.

Altogether it was a most intense and enjoyable evening.

[OKIsItJustMe]

31. Glad it went well

Speaking of Malthus... did you find that information on "mouse plagues?"

Here's a paper that does a decent job of presenting the non-Malthusian factors:
http://www.irri.org/irrc/rodents/publications/EBRM%20Book/02Krebs.pdf

(FWIW: I got to do some consulting for a time with Jack (John) Christian and one of his fellow researchers, whose early work is mentioned in this overview. At the time, Jack was attempting to produce a mathematical model of the growth of an undisturbed mouse colony.)