Thanks to Fred Brown for this article.  See: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-no-growth-boom-will-follow-2012-global-crash-2011-08-23

Aug. 23, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EDT

A ‘no-growth’ boom will follow 2012 global crash

Commentary: 20 promising sectors for post-crash investors

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) – There is a global economic boom coming, but unfortunately, that boom comes only after a systemic collapse of the global economy, markets and capitalism – a collapse that may well eliminate billions of people from the planet. Shocking? Cruel? Brutal? Yes.

But folks, that is the coded message in many recent warnings from environmental economists who finally realize that nothing will wake up the public. Nothing but a catastrophic system failure. Only then, a path to reform, recovery, a new boom.

But wait, you ask: If the consequences are worse than an asteroid slamming into Earth, why don’t we just plan ahead? Avoid the Black Swan? Why wait for some “creative destruction” to wipe out capitalism, reduce the global population to 5 billion? Why? Because our human genes are not good at planning ahead for catastrophes. Our brains are designed for fight-or-flight. Otherwise we procrastinate. We respond best when our backs are against the wall. Then we rally the troops, go to war, so to speak.

Until we reach that point, we focus on everyday stuff, like jobs, the kids, short-term buy-sells and ideological stuff like today’s anti-science, anti-intellectual political rhetoric. Free-market capitalism. Don’t tread on me. Stuff like that keeps us in denial about the future. No, we don’t plan, don’t act until a crisis. Not till the asteroid is about to hit. Even then, we pray for divine intervention to rescue us. Or a Churchill to emerge, take charge of the impossible challenge, get people energized and focused on a common cause. Then we’ll charge ahead, solve the problem. Until then, our brains can only think short-term.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-no-growth-boom-will-follow-2012-global-crash-2011-08-23

Thanks to Dan Jones and Fred Brown for this article.  See: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-20-rule-manifesto-for-new-no-growth-economics-2011-08-30?pagenumber=1

Aug. 30, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EDT

A 20-rule manifesto for New No-Growth Economics

Commentary: Classical economics is fatally flawed

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) – Yes, a New Economics. With new rules. Why? Classical economics is fatally flawed. So investors better learn the new rules that will win in the New Economy. Delay, deny, you’ll lose.

After the coming global collapse – the big wake-up call – classical economics will be exposed as a fraud sabotaging investors, destroying America.

Yes, new rules. Why? Because everything you know about economics is wrong. Everything. The old economics is a rigged game in a Wall Street casino. The cards are stacked in favor of the banks and their co-conspirators, political lobbyists, corporate CEOs and the Super Rich. The house always wins. You always lose. Worse, America is losing.

Here’s why: All classical economic ideas derive from one central idea. Not a scientific theory, merely an unproven hypothesis. Worse, all economic conclusions are based on this illusion, a fantasy, myth, wishful thinking. Consequently, all economic conclusions are speculations.

This central hypothesis of today’s economists – from Ben Bernanke’s Fed staff, economists in the World Bank, IMF, CBO and White House economic advisers, to economists at Wall Street banks, think tank and academic economists – is the unquestioned acceptance of the dogma of “Eternal Growth.”

Get it? All economic thought evolves from one unproven and fatally flawed hypothesis: The unscientific assumption that the global economy will continue growing indefinitely … that the world’s economies will be able support global population growth indefinitely … and that all necessary commodities and essential natural resources will be available indefinitely to sustain the world’s relentless economic and demographic growth….

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-20-rule-manifesto-for-new-no-growth-economics-2011-08-30?pagenumber=1

From the August issue of Solutions Magazine.  See: http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/968

Sustainable Shrinkage: Envisioning a Smaller, Stronger Economy

By Ernest Callenbach

In 1987 when the United Nations’ Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, appeared to worldwide fanfare, its slogan of “sustainable development” reassured environmentalists, who focused on the term “sustainable,” while pleasing business interests, who understood “development” to mean continued material growth. It seemed we could have it all. But many thoughtful observers then and since have pointed out that “sustainable development” is an oxymoron. On a finite planet, we can’t have both sustainability and continued material growth. More than two decades after the Brundtland Report, it’s past time to abandon this linguistic sleight of hand and rally around a new, shocking but this time realistic slogan: sustainable shrinkage! Within this new perspective, we can get on with saving species, restoring wastelands, improving efficiency, putting our life-support systems on sustainable bases-in short, finding solutions.

But we’ll do so with a new urgency and clarity, conscious that if we are to survive on our little planet in some reasonably civilized way, human activity (and its impacts) must shrink. If we don’t shrink it, Gaia will shrink it for us, catastrophically.

What to Shrink?

Population must shrink. Nobody knows exactly how many people eating what kinds of food the earth can support in acceptable comfort, but we know there are too many of us already. We’re steadily decreasing the fertility of the globe’s limited arable soils, increasing our dependence on fertilizers produced with fossil fuel, and rapidly pumping dry the essential aquifers on which millions depend. If climate change thins the Himalayan glaciers as it is thinning lower-elevation ones, several billion people will be unfed. They will not go peacefully. While it is shameful that world food supplies are distributed so unfairly, greater equality of access is both highly improbable under capitalism and moot in the long run: humans, like any other species, tend to use up whatever food is available.

Consumption must shrink. Sheer numbers matter in food consumption. Sheer wealth matters in food and everything else…

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/968

Petroleum and Population

Peter Goodchild

In The Coming Chaos (Abridged) I make two claims, which at first might seem hard to integrate with one another. Whether or not the claims are proven (which must be determined by examining the whole argument), there are at least some simple ways of checking the figures, and also of correlating the two claims, if I may be forgiven for quoting myself so liberally.

My figures on present and past global population, however, are all drawn from UN sources. Figures for past and present oil production can be found in such sources as BP, Campbell and Laherrère, and even M. K. Hubbert himself (see references below), although figures on early oil production are curiously less accessible than in the days when Petroconsultants was releasing such data.

Roughly speaking, the first claim is that world population must decline in parallel with the decline in world oil production: for example, oil production will fall to half of its peak in 2030, and population must therefore also drop to about half of its peak level. The second claim is that there will be approximately 2.5 billion “extra” (i.e. famine) deaths and lost births by the end of the century. (Yes, these are all very rough figures.)

The first statement (p. 13) is as follows.

“The world’s population went from about 1.7 billion in 1900 to 2.5 in 1950, to nearly 7 billion in 2010. . . . [A] calculation about future population can be made by looking more closely at the rise and fall of oil production. The rapid increase in population over the last hundred years is not merely coincident with the rapid increase in oil production. It is the latter that has actually allowed (the word ’caused’ might be too strong) the former: that is to say, oil has been the main source of energy within industrial society. It is only with abundant oil that a large population is possible. . . . When oil production drops to half of its peak amount, world population must also drop by half.”

Continue Reading »

Back in November, I distributed Peter Goodchild’s “The Coming Chaos.”  The summary that follows is worth reading.

A Time Frame for Systemic Collapse

Peter Goodchild

A time frame for systemic collapse can be extrapolated easily from the on-line document The Coming Chaos, an abridgement of a larger text (see link below). The most significant page is at the start of the text, the chart of estimated past and future oil production. Most of the other time frames will parallel that curve. Then one can look at the chapter on electricity, which as Richard Duncan says will be the first really distinct, “on-off” type of indicator. The next parallel can be found in the chapter on economics, which mentions two “phases,” divided by the point at which money as such is no longer an important means of exchange; past examples occurred with the crash of the USSR, and in Weimar Germany.

In the chapter on famine, the fall of population appears as a parallel to the fall in fossil fuels. Some critics have said that the two do not necessarily go together — or, rather, “fall” together. But they do, for a very simple mathematical reason. Fossil fuels are the source of more than 90 percent of the energy — in the strict “physics” sense of the word — in modern industrial society. If we take away 90 percent of the energy, we necessarily take away 90 percent of the population. (If we take away 100 percent of the energy, we necessarily take away 100 percent of the population.) No, we cannot replace that 90 percent with some “alternative” form of energy, as is explained in chapter one, because there isn’t enough of any “alternative” to make much difference.

Continue Reading »

Many thanks to Charlie Hall for his article, “Adjusting the economy to the new energy realities of the second half of the age of oil,” co-written with David Murphy.  To download the paper, visit https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeN2ZkMjVjOTYtNWRjOS00ZDY3LWE2MjItZDQ3NDhjOGUwNGQ3&hl=en_US

Thanks to Jane Delson for this interview by Michael Tobias with Dr. John Harte of the University of California Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management.  Dr. Harte has been at the forefront, for decades, of some of the most important studies pertaining to the biological impacts – particularly in alpine environments – of climate change, as well as humanity’s role in the disruption of critical ecosystems.  The interview provides an arresting perspective on global climate warming.  See http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltobias/2011/08/29/climate-shock-uc-berkeley-scientist-dr-john-harte-puts-the-world-on-notice/

Aug. 29 2011 – 8:15 pm

CLIMATE SHOCK: UC-Berkeley Scientist, Dr. John Harte, Puts the World on Notice

Michael Charles Tobias

Green Conversations

Dr. John Harte is based at the University of California-Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management. With a PhD in physics, his research encompasses the most serious biochemical and climate-ecosystem feedback processes of global warming and theoretical ecology. He has been at the forefront, for decades, of some of the most important studies pertaining to the biological impacts – particularly in alpine environments – of climate change, as well as humanity’s role in the disruption of critical ecosystems.

I have had the privilege of working twice with Dr. Harte during the last eight months: once for a day filming our three-hour Dancing Star Foundation TV series, “State of the Earth” and then again this July at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory above Crested Butte, Colorado, where Dr. Harte and colleagues have been monitoring climate, soil and biological changes for nearly two decades. His profound, interdisciplinary understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change are urgent news, beyond anything you may yet have heard about. For that reason I urge you to read the following carefully – you will be tested (in some form or other).

A Feedback Fiasco

Michael Tobias (MT): John, let’s cut to the chase here. While there are still some individuals in stubborn denial, even amongst those who do know how serious climate change is, there are many who still don’t quite recognize just how rapidly the situation has escalated, for the worse. In your opinion, why is the global climate over the next century likely to be even hotter than what most climate scientists are currently predicting?

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltobias/2011/08/29/climate-shock-uc-berkeley-scientist-dr-john-harte-puts-the-world-on-notice/

Thanks to the Center for Biological Diversity for this article.  See http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2011/new-york-times-06-04-2011.html

The New York Times, June 4, 2011

A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself
By Justin Gillis

CIUDAD OBREGÓN, Mexico – The dun wheat field spreading out at Ravi P. Singh’s feet offered a possible clue to human destiny. Baked by a desert sun and deliberately starved of water, the plants were parched and nearly dead.

Dr. Singh, a wheat breeder, grabbed seed heads that should have been plump with the staff of life. His practiced fingers found empty husks.

“You’re not going to feed the people with that,” he said.

But then, over in Plot 88, his eyes settled on a healthier plant, one that had managed to thrive in spite of the drought, producing plump kernels of wheat. “This is beautiful!” he shouted as wheat beards rustled in the wind.

Hope in a stalk of grain: It is a hope the world needs these days, for the great agricultural system that feeds the human race is in trouble.

The rapid growth in farm output that defined the late 20th century has slowed to the point that it is failing to keep up with the demand for food, driven by population increases and rising affluence in once-poor countries.

Consumption of the four staples that supply most human calories – wheat, rice, corn and soybeans – has outstripped production for much of the past decade, drawing once-large stockpiles down to worrisome levels. The imbalance between supply and demand has resulted in two huge spikes in international grain prices since 2007, with some grains more than doubling in cost.

Those price jumps, though felt only moderately in the West, have worsened hunger for tens of millions of poor people, destabilizing politics in scores of countries, from Mexico to Uzbekistan to Yemen. The Haitian government was ousted in 2008 amid food riots, and anger over high prices has played a role in the recent Arab uprisings.

Now, the latest scientific research suggests that a previously discounted factor is helping to destabilize the food system: climate change.

For the rest of the article, please click here: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/center/articles/2011/new-york-times-06-04-2011.html

Many thanks to Searle Whitney for this article.  As Searle said in his email to me,  Gretchen Daly is in the Biology Department at Stanford and has written many great articles on integrating our economic system with the planet’s biological systems.  This article focuses on protecting the environment by quantifying the economic benefits we derive from it. A critical way to reach economists, politicians and business people who need to see practical consequences of their actions. See An Economist for Nature Calculates the Need for More Protection

N.Y. Times – August 8, 2011 – By John Moir

COTO BRUS, Costa Rica -Dawn is breaking over this remote upland region, where neat rows of coffee plants cover many of the hillsides. The rising tropical sun saturates the landscape with color, revealing islandlike remnants of native forest scattered among the coffee plantations.

But across this bucolic countryside, trouble is brewing. An invasive African insect known as the coffee berry borer is threatening the area’s crops. Local farmers call the pest “la broca”:the borer.

Despite the early hour, Gretchen Daily, a Stanford University biology professor, is already at work studying this complex ecosystem. Amid a cacophony of birdsong, Dr. Daily and her team are conducting experiments that demonstrate the vital connection between wildlife and native vegetation. Preliminary data from new studies suggest that consumption of insects like la broca by forest-dwelling birds and bats contribute significantly to coffee yields.

For the rest of the article, please click here: An Economist for Nature Calculates the Need for More Protection

Thanks to John Rowley of People & Planet for this article.  See http://www.peopleandplanet.net/?lid=29874&section=35&topic=27

Our blue planet is now ‘tragically in peril’

Posted: 16 June 2011

Author: Don Hinrichsen

Don Hinrichsen, Contributing Editor to Planet 21 and author of the recently published Atlas of Coasts and Oceans, has spent the last 20 years tracing the declining health of the planet’s coasts and seas. Here he makes a personal plea to those in power to act with greater vision and resolve to address the dying of the oceans.

The largely unseen, and often ignored, destruction of the world’s ocean ecosystems and the wealth of plants and animals they support was underscored afresh over the past year as I travelled and researched my recently published Atlas.

One of many observations stands out. While diving in the Lingayen Gulf, on the main Philippine island of Luzon, I was nearly blown out of the water by indiscriminate blast fishermen using dynamite to drive stunned and dying fish to the surface for easy harvesting. Though this does put food on the table for the moment, it utterly destroys the coral reef and seagrass communities upon which fisheries in this region depend. It is a Faustian bargain that confronts poor coastal communities throughout the world – the need to feed their families now at the expense of tomorrow.

Unfortunately this is exactly what most nations now do on a much larger and more destructive scale. The explosive growth of coastal urban populations, along with helter-skelter industrial and agricultural expansion, the generation of enormous quantities of waste (much of which ends up in our coastal seas), run-away coastal and marine tourism, topped off by an unprecedented rise in the world consumption of seafood, has resulted in the wholesale pillaging of our oceans. Add to this list climate change and its insidious impact on coastal and ocean ecosystems, and you have a recipe for an ecological Armageddon, a real ‘end of life as we know it’ scenario.

For the rest of the article, please click here: http://www.peopleandplanet.net/?lid=29874&section=35&topic=27