Debt Rattle February 16 2015
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DPC “Steamer loading grain from floating elevator, New Orleans 1906 • The USA – All Systems Go? (Steve Keen) • ‘China Must Guarantee Minimum 6.5% Annu
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle February 16 2015]“Ecological collapse Probability: N/A, Global system collapse Probability: N/A and Future bad governance Probability: N/A”
Perhaps it’s just me, but I’d put these three as the most probable future threats, rather than not try to assess their probability. For an antidote to this omission I would recommend reading the late William Catton’s book Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change.
The opening paragraph of the book’s preface starts with this extract:
“In a future that is as unavoidable as it will be unwelcome, survival and sanity may depend upon our ability to cherish rather than to disparage the concept of human dignity. My purpose in writing this book has been to enhance that ability by providing a clear understanding of the ecological context of human life.
It is axiomatic that we are in no way protected from the consequences of our actions by remaining confused about the ecological meaning of our humanness, ignorant of ecological processes, and unmindful of the ecological aspects of history. I have tried to show the real nature of humanity’s predicament not because understanding its nature will enable us to escape it, but because if we do not understand it we shall continue to act and react in ways that make it worse.”
Unfortunately the evidence mounts by the day that there is a massive failure of global governance to recognise, or even fully understand, the true nature of the growing threats facing us, such as extreme anthropogenic climate change (far far more probable than 0.01%) that will reduce the earths carrying capacity, declining net energy that will reduce our ability take corrective action or to grow the global economy, and finally flawed neoliberal economic and monetary policies that have simply buried nations in unrepayable debt, especially if economies fail to grow.
As William Catton states, if fail to understand the nature of the threats facing us we will continue acting in ways that will make them worse, which is just what we are doing, because if we did these threats would have been assessed.
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