Debt Rattle Mar 20 2014: An Unprecedented Opportunity
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Arthur Rothstein Family on relief living in shanty at city dump, Herrin, Illinois 1939 My buddy VK sent me a link yesterday to a limits to growth piec
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle Mar 20 2014: An Unprecedented Opportunity]Greece is cracking under the weight of dead money. Its streets are strewn with broken lives even as the same streets are choked with automobiles.
Greece has set its priorities; ‘Automobiles Uber Alles’, cars first, everything else second. Here is a broke country that relies on tourism and exports of olive oil to meet its hard currency needs. It can’t earn enough to buy the fuel needed to operate its non-remunerative auto fleet or the fleet itself … so it has to borrow. It borrows today and will need more loans tomorrow, either that or get rid of the cars.
The Greeks will allow half of their number to die off before they turn loose of their stupid toys. As long as there is one car operating in Greece that country will continue to unravel … until it is indistinguishable from hell-holes Somalia or Haiti.
Same for the rest of Europe, btw. It’s us or the toys, there is no other way.
Karl Denninger states that Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) have the potential to generate all the electricity and liquid hydrocarbons that we would ever need. He states that China is working on this technology and we should ramp-up immediately. Can you comment on this as I have never seen you mention this possibility.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=228863
R. G. Shoen
Thorium has been a promise just around the corner for many decades. Yet there’s still not a single active (scaled up) thorium facility in the world. Which is not for lack of trying, or investment. India did a lot of work, China does some now. It’s still just a promise just around the corner, but don’t forget there’s a lot of money in promising.
steve from virginia said “Same for the rest of Europe, btw. It’s us or the toys, there is no other way.”
And the United States too. Cars, cell phones, TVs, and computers
check this out….UBUNTU World Liberation Party
https://www.ubuntuparty.org.za/p/home.html.
https://www.ubuntuusa.com/ubuntu-party.html
maybe there is a solution here. if millions of people join this bandwagon we might see some meaningful change.
Raul-Ilargi – I’m in 100% agreement regarding Nafeez Ahmed. “Airy-Fairy- Woo-Woo” is the technical term for his school of “Policy”. Personally, I think we all just need to become 100% “nice people” – tonight at midnight, and will solve everything. That has an equal probability with “banks will become non-profits.”
One of the things we all predicted here years ago- is happening. The time is RIPE for charlatans and false messiahs to appear- and become powerful. It’s happening.
I liked Nafeez Amed’s post. I didn’t think he was recommending another form of tech-fix by touting renewables –there is passive-solar, gasification, biogas, rocket-stoves and other appropriate tech methods that don’t scale and that’s good when you’re relocalizing, which is what he does recommend. The 20% electric power referred to in Ilargi’s post is PLENTY! We don’t need more. Look at what we’ve done when we’ve had too much energy! For one thing, with climate change and other disruptions, there won’t be so many people. Why do folks look at having to feed and power overshoot? It won’t happen. We haven’t done the things Nafeez recommends because we haven’t had to. Now we do. I think it’s great a London think tank is daring to say these things! Some great stuff coming out of the UK recently, as yesterday’s post here noted re the economics paradigm being trashed by a central bank report! Here we have the paradigm shifting. It is happening all around us right now just like climate change. Look at young people. Completely different priorities. Would rather have a phone than a car. Important new young artist, Ryan Trecartin, profiled in the New Yorker, displays in his art a tremendous paradox: techie connectedness is replacing Enlightenment individual identity. The apotheosis of the egoistic dissing of the environment with our toxic tech is now creating a crowd capable of new things undreamt of. We are a highly plastic self-creating species.
Excellent point daisychain!
20% renewables could be ample. Saying it’s no where near enough implies the current consumption is the baseline and the marker to aim for. Nothing could be further from the truth. The amount of energy plain wasted and also used wastefully is collossal. It’s the subject no one wants to talk about in this age of plenty. Reducing and even rationing energy use coupled with investing in renewables is a no brainer – for people with any brains that is.
I do wonder by the likes of Raul and Dimitry Orlov balk at renewable energy. They poo poo fossil energy (obviously). So where do they think their energy will come from? How much do they think they need that it won’t be enough. Please show us some numbers.
20% renewables would mean 80% non-renewables, i.e. status quo.
If you mean 20% of current energy is enough to live on, that’s partly right. If you want to get 100% of that from renewables, you will no longer have a central grid. Are we ready for that? You don’t solve that issue with a local grid here and there. You would have to reset the entire structures of our societies.
Taking down energy use to 20% of present levels also means general economic collapse; our economies need mass energy throughput to be viable concerns. Do we want economic collapse, and are we ready for it? I don’t think so. It would mean a lot of misery and fighting etc. Be careful what you wish for.
I don’t balk at renewable energy, but at the rosy stories being bandied around about it. Our societies are very much complex systems, and most well-intended measures will have unintended consequences. Which is why we need to ask questions, not just follow the circus.
I think we need to leave behind the idea that we can change entire countries, let alone the world. It’ll be hard enough to get things right at the local level.
Yes, 20% is enough. Right, no central grid. That’s an expression of an undesireable kind of social hierarchy anyway. Local grids, yes. No electricity at all is okay too, or sui generis at the household or institutional level is fine.
Of course there needs to be an entire reset of the structure of our societies. If we survive, that’s going to happen. General economic collapse, or a gradual fade-out, is inevitable. Let’s face that. Sadly that generally comes with misery and fighting such as what’s happening in Syria right now. That war was primed by severe drought in the countryside along with severe inequality. However, war is not inevitable. The “environment” is inevitable.
I too get annoyed when people prescribe national or global solutions, because so unrealistic, not to mention hubristic. But we must think and discourse. The rosy story is that renewables can prevent collapse. They can’t. Wind turbines and solar panels are utterly dependent on a fossil-fueled industrial platform; and rust never sleeps.
I agree any single large scale measure will always have unintended consequences because of the complexity of whole systems. In my view permaculture knows how to get things right at the local level in practical matters because it is an observation-based wholistic evolving design paradigm, not a single solution. Yes it is wise to be careful what you wish for. You can’t go wrong wishing for a permacultured planet. Nafeez even uses the word! Normally beneath contempt.
The difficulty is humans getting along. That’s why I’m pleased about the emergence of crowd intelligence. Look at the way we’re working together, all differences put aside, to discover the fates of 270 airline passengers! While elsewhere we’re making plans to deliberately kill each other! The way we’re sabre-rattling at Russia, but can’t make a go of it because we’re too interdependent! Scary, but the absurdity is amusing.
Electricity ought to be reserved to power the internet. All other uses are optional. We survived for millenia without it. The World Wide Web is humanity’s growing tip.
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