In my post ‘Eat the Rich‘, reader Aptitude Design posted a video that deserves a place of its own. The video illustrates the shocking disparity of wealth(as of 2009) in America compared what the general population thinks is the current situation and what they believe the ideal situation would be. And the gross inequality is continuing to get even worse:
I notice the Koch brothers are tied for 6th place. These are the people who control government legislation and regulation. The lust for profits perverts everything from the food we eat (Salt, Sugar, Fat) to the choices made on energy policy. You could say that the fate of mankind on planet Earth is at the whim of capital accumulation and those few at the top of that heap.
The blurring of the line that separates profit from state,” I wrote, “has had a far more devastating effect on American values — indeed, on the very notion that anything besides a good financial buzz even has value — than the blurring of that more famously wobbly line that separates church from state.”
I fear this isn’t simply about occasional and inevitable corruption, but the righteous, for-profit gaming of a broken social system in the name of a privatized world. The driving force is privatization, and it seizes on divisive, us-vs.-them “ideals” as moral pretexts for intensifying the profitable breakup of the human commons — that which belongs to all of us, such as “human rights” and “justice.“
~Robert Koehler
The Separation of Profit and State
While I take some time off to recuperate from the stomach flu, chew on this video:
I would like to believe that planetary tipping points do not exist and that the activities of 9 billion humans cannot “break the planet”, rendering it uninhabitable for future generations, but on just an intuitive level I feel this is wishful thinking. So it was with some surprise that I saw the following article:
A group of international ecological scientists led by the University of Adelaide have rejected a doomsday-like scenario of sudden, irreversible change to the Earth’s ecology.
In a paper in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, the scientists from Australia, US and UK argue that global-scale ecological tipping points are unlikely and that ecological change over large areas seem to follow a more gradual, smooth pattern…
…A tipping point occurs when an ecosystem attribute such as species abundance or carbon sequestration responds rapidly and possibly irreversibly to a human pressure like land-use change or climate change.
Many local and regional-level ecosystems, such as lakes and grasslands, are known to behave this way. A planetary tipping point, the authors suggest, could theoretically occur if ecosystems across Earth respond in similar ways to the same human pressures, or if there are strong connections between continents that allow for rapid diffusion of impacts across the planet.
“These criteria, however, are very unlikely to be met in the real world,” says Professor Brook. “First, ecosystems on different continents are not strongly connected. Second, the responses of ecosystems to human pressures like climate change or land-use change depend on local circumstances and will therefore differ between localities.”
The scientists examined four principal drivers of terrestrial ecosystem change ? climate change, land-use change, habitat fragmentation and biodiversity loss ? and found they were unlikely to induce global tipping points.
Co-author Associate Professor Erle Ellis, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, says: “As much as four fifths of the biosphere is today characterised by ecosystems that locally, over centuries and millennia, have undergone human-driven regime shifts of one or more kinds. Recognising this reality and seeking appropriate conservation efforts at local and regional levels might be a more fruitful way forward for ecology and global change science.
I would have to disagree that ecosystems on different continents are not connected. The health of one ecosystem affects other ecosystems globally. For example, the loss of the Arctic and its albedo effect has global repercussions for climate patterns such as is discussed here:
…A difference in temperatures between the Arctic and areas to the south is usually the main driver of the wave flows, which typically stretch 2,500 and 4,000 km (1,550-2,500 miles) from crest to crest.
But a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, blamed on human activities led by use of fossil fuels, is heating the Arctic faster than other regions and slowing the mechanism that drives the waves, the study suggested…
Being a human, I care not whether planet Earth will survive humanity, but whether we humans will survive the environmental onslaught of our own activities. Of course the Earth will continue on without us, but that’s an empty consolation for the human species whose time in history will soon be forgotten on a planet left uninhabitable for our children. So do planetary tipping points exist or can humans do whatever they like with no real world effect to the global biosphere? I guess we’ll soon find out. Keep in mind that there is no precedent in the past 2.5 million years for the kind of rapid, human-induced global warming the Earth has been undergoing since the onset of the industrial revolution. We are in uncharted territory.
The Sequester has been the big topic in the news as of late. What it amounts to is austerity for the masses in America. Obama created this stealth austerity maneuver with his newly appointed Secretary of Treasury, Wall Street shark Jacob Lew:
…President Obama and a host of administration spokespersons have condemned the Sequestration, explaining how it will cause catastrophic damage to hundreds of vital government services. Those of us who teach economics, however, always stress “revealed preferences” – it’s not what you say that matters, it’s what you do that matters. Obama has revealed his preference by refusing to sponsor, or even support, a clean bill that would kill the sequestration threat to our Nation. Instead, he has nominated Jacob Lew, the author of the Sequestration provision, as his principal economic advisor. Lew is one of the strongest proponents of austerity and what he and Obama call the “Grand Bargain” – which would inflict large cuts in social programs and the safety net and some increases in revenues. Obama has made clear that he hopes this Grand Betrayal (my phrase) will be his legacy. Obama and Lew do not want to remove the Sequester because they view it as creating the leverage – over progressives – essential to induce them to vote for the Grand Betrayal…
In a rare case of truth-telling, a San Francisco news station spells out exactly what this stealth austerity is intended to do – strip away what is left of the social safety net and the remnants of the New Deal:
So while the financial elite are protected by wealth security insurance programs, aka quantitative easing and endless bailouts, the carcass of Main Street is picked clean by various asset grabs. Conservatives are correct in that you cannot have endless growth of debt and spending, but their demand of government cuts as the way to bring back growth and renew the economy will not work. It will serve only to further push down an already devastated middle class, hastening America’s fall into a barbaric neo-feudal society in a world of resource-scarcity and environmental devastation.
…It follows that neoliberal leaders of governments and their corporate masters view the ongoing economic contraction as a temporary deviation from the “natural” pattern of wealth accumulation-to-elites-trickle down-to-the-masses economics made possible by constant growth. Therefore, economic elites see an “opportunity” to use austerity as a cover to increase upward wealth transfer.[xi] A bonus is to accomplish the long-standing atavistic goal of rolling back[xii] the gains of the New Deal and Great Society.[xiii] Hence the massive governmental and corporate propaganda assaults on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid –and other social benefits programs- as “Entitlements” that allegedly weaken the collective moral character, fiscal integrity and work ethic of the nation. The central premise of this attack -which is arrantly false yet widely disseminated without skepticism by mainstream media- is that these entitlements[xiv] for the “Lesser People”[xv]place the United States government at high risk of debt[xvi] default[xvii] or bankruptcy.[xviii]
Sixty years ago Karl Polanyi anticipated the present crisis when he wrote that belief in “free market forces” –a dogma at the core of neoliberalism[xix]– is a direct threat to the “natural environment…[which also] would result in the demolition of society.”[xx]…
…It is vital to remember that on the whole, they do not yet understand why modern societies -right now- are entering a post-growth world, which augers a context where government public policy –if it overcomes neoliberalism,[xxxv] which is not guaranteed- faces the central challenge of justly divvying up a shrinking economic pie. (Remember that almost every public health lecture, article and discussion in the United States ends with some variation of this exhortation: “We’re the wealthiest and greatest nation on earth. We’ve got the technology, know-how and resources to do the job; we just need the determination to commit them…”)
Neoliberal governments are blind to the emerging world of degrowth and continue apace facilitating the 1% to impoverish and cannibalize widening segments of the 99%, in essence producing more and more socioeconomically and politically superfluous people in the process. Neoliberalism can only operate in a social world where as the economy contracts -for thermodynamic reasons- wealth and other economic benefits continue to flow upwards, while the costs and burdens fall upon those outside the tiny elite economic… – source
In other words, capitalism is cannibalizing itself – eating the underclass and environment to keep this unchecked growth of wealth accumulation intact for the upper class, as scientist Brad Jarvis also explains:
The big news of the week was, of course, the “sequester,” one of several attempts by radical government-haters to open the door to unrestrained pillage of nature and society; it will cut back on many of the means we currently have for limiting and adapting to environmental damage. The scale of that environmental damage includes, of course, more than climate change: recent research shows that wild bees are more critical to our food supply than honeybees, and being wiped out by the top mechanism of extinction, habitat loss…
…I recalled something I learned a few years ago about what is perhaps the key driver of business operation, pursuit of profit. Profit must continuously increase, preferably at an exponential rate, for a business to be considered successful. There are several ways to do so: add value to what you produce, increase demand for what you’re already making, and reduce costs. The first two approaches increase consumption if the business can provide supply to meet demand, which is bad enough in a resource-constrained world. The last approach, however, is the most damaging when applied exponentially, because there is always a minimum cost required – you can’t get something for nothing – and if you’re “successful,” you are likely just good at forcing someone else to eat that cost. Many of the mechanisms directly causing unhealthy income and social inequality in this country and elsewhere may be directly tied to the application of this approach, but it has even more far-ranging effects. Because business is the most powerful human enterprise, society and the planet’s other species are effectively being forced to give more than they can afford and still survive. We are all dying as a result. – source
What else can I say, but that we will eventually have to eat the rich.
I ran across this series on America’s water crisis by Vice Media. It was published just a few months ago so it’s recent; I highly recommend watching all three. For me, part three was the most riveting because I have relatives there and that state is my neighbor. As always, water is diverted to where the money is, and no amount of public protest or scientific studies and research will stop the juggernaut of elite monied interests, the natural environment and Main Street be damned.
On a related topic, another report has been published of one more climate feedback loop for us to worry about. This time biodiversity loss in the form of disappearing top predators will increase CO2 by a whopping 93%:
Add this factor of predator die-off to the long list of known and unknown feedback loops such as permafrost melt, clathrate methane release, the disappearing albedo effect, increased atmospheric water vapor, growing acidity and warming of the world’s oceans destroying this vital CO2 sink, and the global die-off of forests which negates yet another massive CO2 sink.
Does anyone really think we’ll be worrying about reduced labor capacity in 2050 due to climate change? Or will we be fighting just to find enough food to stay alive?
Well, yes they think that business-as-usual will continue and technological wizardry will solve any and all problems of a collapsing ecosystem. Mankind will be driving electric cars and taking trips to distant planets. Here’s some common sense advice for such foolish thinking:
What will life soon be like here on Earth. I’ll let blogger Copernicus describe it to you:
David Suzuki has forecast (‘It’s A Matter of Survival’, Harvard Univ. Press, 1991 with Anita Gordon) the first year of no seasons as 2040. However, if global warming is accelerating (much higher CO2 concentrations added each year, hence higher solar insolation by about 2 W/m^2 per year) then that date could arrive as early as 2025, if not sooner. What it will mean is that an essential thermal equilibrium will be reached in our planetary atmosphere so effectively, no more winters, summers or even intermediate (Spring, fall) seasons anywhere. That will also mark the emergence of much higher mean global temperatures, probably as high as 60-65F. Locally[Colorado], we can expect to see highs of 115F-120F and covering much larger areas for much longer (heat ‘waves’ will be more like heat seasons, lasting months.) Relatively cooler breaks, say with highs of 85-90, will likely appear in what used to be northern winters.
With the much more consistent high temperatures, pests of all types will proliferate, so we can expect to see more worm-parasite infestations for example, as well as dengue fever rivaling what we have now with West Nile Fever. Cholera, c. diff. and amoebic dysentery will also not be unheard of as our water resources continue to be used up and polluted, i.e. by fracking. All in all, it will be a world that few will enjoy living in, other than the very rich – who, unlike the rest of us – will be able to afford their own off the grid power stations, so won’t be rendered too uncomfortable when the main grids crash from over use.
Be happy as long as you are getting snow, even 2′ at a time, because it means that first year of no seasons is still a ways off!
The video below was produced several years ago, but is still prescient:
Besides making the occasional video, I will soon be expressing myself in the art of editorial cartoons which is my true passion. I’ve featured some great ones on this blog: David Horsey, Tom Toles, and Matt Wuerker. Editorial cartoons are interesting to me because they can give an entire synopsis in one shot, and if done effectively, they will stick in your mind and make you think about the issue. There’s a reason why despotic governments don’t like articulate cartoonists. Without a doubt, the best editorial cartoonists are some of the most informed people. You have to be knowledgable about world events and issues in order to produce art that will convey meaningful social commentary. So this is something I want to start doing since I do have the artistic skills. Let’s see if I can pull it off.
Agriculture and Climate Change is a blog that I just started following. Last night while on the net I was looking at her collection of editorial cartoons and saw one that pretty much sums up the state of modern industrial civilization’s relationship with the Earth. It’s done by Turkish cartoonist Kürşat Zaman whose work I’ve never seen.
It reminds me a little of an M. Wuerker cartoon from several years ago concerning the resource-sucking war machine of the American Empire:
Has anyone checked their wallet recently? For most, that Ponzi-scheming, resource-plundering American war machine, aka Military Industrial Complex, has relieved you of some major coinage over the years. For others, it has exterminated their country, if not their life.
Back to the Turkish cartoonist Zaman, here is another of his that struck me:
I interpret this one on several different levels. The first message that came to me was America’s prison industrial complex and the fact that America is number one in locking people up:
…According to California Prison Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports…
I also thought about the fact that America is basically an open-air prison with this country having become a pervasive Security and Surveillance State and all branches of its government usurped by elite monied interests. As the corrupt Boss Tweed said in the movie ‘The Gangs of New York’, “The appearance of law must be upheld, especially when it’s being broken.”
Hello my fellow Earthlings. We think we’re so fucking clever, don’t we. We’ll probably revert to our rodent instincts and burrow underground when the shit really hits the fan. With the eco-apocalypse fast approaching, the best way for the human species to redeem itself would be to voluntarily undergo a cultural and spiritual transformation on a global scale. When I say spiritual, I mean honoring the ground we walk on and not some false deity. Science, not mythology, is the basis for my beliefs. This Earth is all we really have. Start caring for it and respecting it with the same reverence and homage we pay to our electronic toys of mass distraction, i.e. TV, iphones, video games, computers, etc…
Know that this culture of self-worship and materialism is sending our species to the dustbin of failed evolutionary experiments, most certainly by the end of this century if not mid-century. The evidence is all around us if only we care to open our eyes.
Below is a video I put together to illustrate the suffocation of the real world beneath the concrete, steel, and asphalt world humans have superimposed on it. We have worked to replace what is genuine and long-lasting with something that is artificial and unsustainable. And all the science says this world we have created from fossil fuels cannot be maintained in the long run, not even with so-called renewable energy. On top of that mess, we are wrecking the planet’s biosphere and ensuring that our descendants will have no chance to experience nature or a habitable planet. We have quite literally destroyed our only true home, leaving us vulnerable to the vicious elements of the outside world which are growing ever worse in the form of climate change, resource depletion, and environmental degradation.
I’m afraid that confronting this civilization-ending calamity is not a solo endeavor, but must be a global undertaking. As someone said on this site before, the success of a society, be it an ancient tribe or a technologically advanced people, depends on whether there is cooperation and shared sacrifice. I don’t have to tell you that in today’s world, such traits are in short shrift. Individualism and self-interest dominate over any sort of collectivism and altruism. Self-glorification and the almighty profit motive are not going to solve these problems. The solution for global ecological destruction will not be found in an accounting scheme or any other such capitalist interest.
It’s time to face what we have done to the planet and ourselves. I don’t expect any such great awakening to occur. I’m fairly confident that we will stumble along into total collapse with all the usual mayhem that ensues in such an event – drought, famine, pestilence, and war. We humans had such promise, but we’re throwing it all away. If only we would grow up.
The ability to adapt to various environmental conditions and challenges has enabled our species to spread throughout the globe. But what about mankind’s superior ability to bullshit itself? The myriad of crises facing the human species would certainly demand a sober acceptance and discussion of the civilization-ending situation we find ourselves barreling towards, would it not? But instead we have the profit-seeking merchants of the fossil fuel industry funding ‘climate denial’ groups in order to fabricate an atmosphere of controversy on the subject. We’re fighting a losing battle against mother nature, and New Orleans looks to be the first U.S. city that will soon be permanently underwater. Or take the leader of our faux democracy, Barack Obama, and his bogus proclamation of an “economy on the mend”. The reality is that Obama has allowed and facilitated the further fleecing of the middle class by giving control of the U.S. housing market to the same financial speculators who caused the financial crash in the first place. Another example would be the idea that treating sick people as a source for extracting profit would make a good model for a nation’s healthcare system. The ballooning costs and poor health outcomes paint a different reality. Still another example would be the idea that straddling an entire generation of young people with insurmountable debt to fund their education is beneficial to society, even if there were jobs to be had.
There are endless examples to illustrate the point, but to add just one more to the list we have a report from the Smithsonian concerning the fraudulent labeling of fish on your dinner plate.
The non-profit oceans conservation group Oceana just announced the results of one of the largest seafood fraud investigations to date, revealing just how many seafood sellers around the United States are less than honest about their offerings.
The study compiled data from more than 1,200 seafood samples from 674 retailers in 21 states between 2010 to 2012. DNA testing showed that 33 percent of those samples were mislabeled or posing as fish that they were not. Samples claimed to be tuna and snapper had the highest fail rates, at 59 percent and 87 percent, respectively. Only seven of 120 samples of “red snapper” purchased nationwide actually proved to be red snapper. The rest belonged to any of six different misrepresented species.
As Quartz points out, in Chicago, Austin, New York and Washington D.C., every single sushi restaurant sampled sold mislabeled tuna. For example, in 84 percent of samples, “white tuna” turned out to be escolar, a fish that can cause prolonged, uncontrollable oily anal leakage.
This graph, from Oceana, gives a sense of the magnitude of the problem:
So while the last Bluefin Tuna is hunted down with sonar-equipped fishing fleets, the sushi bars and fishmongers are selling you laxative inducing seafood. You didn’t think Peak Fish could occur without it affecting the menu, did you? On the other hand, maybe you really don’t want to eat the Tuna after all…
And don’t buy the ‘sustainable seafood’ propaganda…
After the heady days of our fossil fuel burning orgy come to an end, I’m sure that self-delusion and mankind’s consummate ability to bullshit oneself will no longer be traits useful for self-preservation.
The usual suspects of drought, famine, pestilence and war come to mind when one thinks of a future population crash. The ongoing drought in America’s bread basket appears to be just a foretaste of what’s in the climate chaos pipeline.
…Climate change will also lead to changes in global rainfall patterns, intensifying both droughts and floods across the globe. The Clausius-Clapeyron equation dictates that the saturation vapor pressure of water increases nearly exponentially with temperature. Therefore, a warmer atmosphere will allow for more evaporation of water and an intensification of the hydrologic cycle, leading to increases in rainfall in some regions and decreases in others. At the present, rainfall has increased in the mid- and high-latitudes and in the tropics, while it has decreased in the sub-tropics. If global average temperature increases by 2 °C, dry-season precipitation in northern Africa, southern Europe, and western Australia is projected to decrease by ~20%, and that in the southwestern United States, eastern South America, and southern Africa to decrease by ~10%, which will have a profound impact on crop productivity and water resources. For comparison, the American “dust bowl” in the 1930s was the result of a ~10% decrease in rainfall over a decade. A reduction in mountain snow pack and glaciers will also exacerbate stresses on water resources. Climate change is also predicted to increase the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, heat waves, heavy precipitation events, and flooding. Additionally, if global average temperature increases by 1.5- 2.5 °C, approximately 20-30% of plant and animal species will be at risk of extinction. As in the case of rising sea level, these consequences of climate change are irreversible on a 1,000-year timescale because temperature increases caused by elevated CO2 are expected to persist for that time period even if carbon emissions are fully curtailed [Solomon et al., 2009; IPCC, 2007]…
Now for the current study(actual report is here) which says that we are only eight years away from a life-altering megadrought:
Beginning in just eight years, we could see permanent climate conditions across the North American Southwest that are comparable to the worst megadrought in 1,000 years. (1)
The latest research from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University published in December 2012 has some truly astounding news. The megadroughts referred to in the paper published in Nature Climate Change happened around about 900 to 1300 AD and are so extreme that they have no modern counterpart for comparison (these megadroughts will be referred to in the following as the “12th century megadrought”). The research was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
We have been warned for decades that we would be facing a megadrought if we did not do something about climate pollution. We did not, and now according to the projections of a new study, that is just what the future may hold. And remember, projected conditions similar to the worst megadrought in 1,000 years would be the baseline conditions. Dry periods, which we normally refer to as drought times today, would be superimposed on top of the megadrought extremeness…
…The results of the new research are critically deserving of an alarmist tone. That we could slip into profound continuous drought so soon is certainly a surprise to most of us, to say the least. The typical consensus opinion of unrestrained climate pollution impacts by the year 2100 only tells us that permanent drought will come to many parts of the world and, basically, that dry areas could become drier. The news that we could be experiencing permanent drought on the scale of megadrought proportions – beginning in only eight years – should be considered a global threat of the highest order…
…This “most severe, but temporary, long-term decrease in flow recorded” is the concept we need to understand. This is the megadrought reference. A 10 percent reduction beginning 2021 to 2040 is extreme enough for these researchers to compare the average conditions projected for the very near future to the 12th Century megadrought. This single message is critical and it was missed by popular reporting. Just to be sure I am clear: this quote “temporary, but long-term decreases in flow” here refers to these 75- to 200 year-long megadroughts, the last one occurring about 1,000 years ago or in the 12th Century. These droughts were temporary, like the droughts of today, but in the near future, conditions comparable to these droughts will be the average climate condition. Dry periods that we know as drought today will be on top of megadrought dryness…
And from a recent talk by Jeff Lukas, the Senior Research Associate of Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado:
On January 17, 2013, Jeff Lukas, the Senior Research Associate of Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado, gave an hour-long presentation at the most recent Weather and Climate Summit. The take-away from his presentation is this: droughts will be getting worse, no question about it. Cause: climate change. Time-frame: already started. And a potential megadrought, a phenomena that hasn’t reared its ugly head for at least 150 years, poses a real and serious risk that needs to be planned for…
…Megadroughts, are generally considered to be periods of 20 years or longer where continuous, or mostly continuous extreme drought covers a very large area, typically about 1/3 of the lower 48 (US states). And they’re as bad as they sound – maybe worse.
If such a drought happens, the Colorado River’s flow will drop drastically. The Bureau of Reclamation, which estimates that 25% of the US food supply is grown using Colorado River water, has already done a study to simulate a megadrought; results: Glen Canyon Dam hydro plant would have to stop generating power for about 20 years (two separate stretches of 10 years during the simulation). Both lake Mead and Lake Powell would see water levels drop by about 100 feet…
Jeff Lukas explained in his talk that there have been times in the past 1,000+ years when drought was so bad that the Colorado River (which supplies both Lake Mead and Powell) flowed at 25% below its current flow rate. And that very low level of flow was sustained for decades. Lukas says that such a scenario is definitely possible today. In fact, he says it is such a high risk that it needs to be planned for.
…For those that don’t know, the Colorado River is already maxed out. The Southwest has seen some of the highest US population growth over recent decades, and coupled with farming demands, the river water is nearly all spoken for…
…He concludes that drought is seriously underestimated as a severe threat – even if a megadrought doesn’t develop in the near-future. Because of warming he says there will be more drought than we’ve ever seen before. And the droughts that would otherwise be moderate will now be severe – intensity will ratchet upwards with temperature. He also says that trends of the past several years are worrying when compared to the record that dates back to the year 750…
If a megadrought does unfold, past episodes may be a guide to the future. Lukas outlines a few of the effects that have been uncovered regarding past megadroughts: sand dunes forming in western Nebraska (i.e. no plants, just sand), more frequent wildfire, and rapidly dropping lake levels. One consequence that Lukas didn’t talk about was how drought-killed plants stop pulling CO2 out of the air.
…Right now, the dams and reservoirs along the Colorado can capture and store runoff, even from severe rainfall events, but only up to their maximum storage capacity, which is around 60 million acre feet, or about 4 years worth of water demand. Groundwater can be pumped up (i.e. wells) in many places, but that resource is already in sharp decline.
Are we going to wage an all-out war on reality while the natural world crumbles beneath our feet? By all available evidence – yes. The corrosive and corrupting effect of capital is working its Voodoo magic behind the scenes to ensure that industrial civilization will not go away quietly in the night, but will hang on to the bitter end. In response to anyone challenging the primacy of fossil fuels, Big Oil says “From my cold, dead hands!’.
According to a new report by geoscientist J. David Hughes, the cost of tar sands appears to outweigh any imagined benefits:
An EROEI of less than 3:1 for 80% of tar sands and the U.S. is counting on that for a large percentage of its oil ‘needs’, currently 24%? And the fossil fuel industry/government sock-puppet PR machine is touting this as a viable source of energy to prop up our vacuous, corporate manufactured, McDonaldized culture.
With all the cataclysmic problems bearing down on mankind and his industrial civilization, one recurrent thought I have is, “Will humans ever get their act together?” I live in one of the more backward states of the union, so it comes as no surprise that we are at the forefront of the McDonaldization of society and the rejection of science. What a surprise for a state which ranks near the bottom of the nation’s education ranking. The latest evidence of this escapism from reality is AZ bill SB1213:
I’ve been told that during hard times like Depressions, or the current unravelling of industrial civilization, a lucrative job to have is fortune-telling, psychic reading, and similar hocus-pocus shenanigans which cater to peoples’ mental breakdown and flight into fantasy. So as the masses consult with palm readers in this time of slow-motion destruction, the sharks on Wall Street and our corporate overlords will continue to grab and pickpocket every last shred of wealth and revenue stream remaining on Main street. The Thieves in High Places will never go to jail because they’ve bought off all the branches of government and corporate personhood provides legal cover for their crimes.
While the thought police are outlawing the reality of human-induced climate change, the ‘right to bear weapons of war’ crowd are doing the same.
According the head of the NRA, limiting the number of bullets a citizen can spray into the air is a threat to the well-being of society:
…Semi-automatic technology has been around for a hundred years. If you limit the American public’s access to semi-automatic technology, you limit their ability to survive…”
~ Wayne LaPierre
You can expect more and more of the above craziness to manifest itself in the coming years as reality, in the form of resource constraints and the ravages of unfettered capitalism, kicks into high gear and imposes itself on industrial civilization. I don’t mean to pick solely on the U.S. because this craziness is happening on a global scale wherever fossil fuel dependency has taken root and the Western way-of-life has been adopted. Nevertheless, America is the leader of this mass delusion. We’re even losing our sense of humor as we begin the great unwinding. How are we supposed to lampoon our leaders if they outlaw photoshopping?:
A war on satire cannot be a good omen for an Empire in decline.
Don’t you feel reassured of man’s ability to deftly navigate peak everything and climate chaos? If the human species doesn’t like something, it just legislates it out of sight and out of mind.
Collapse of Industrial Civilization 
