IMHO this comes CLOSE to the truth, but as no solutions are given, it remains "just close" to the truth. IMHO there definitely is a solution, and that is most likely that people must reduce consumption, reduce birth rates and must choose to live according to natures "carry capacity". If they dont, they will be forced to, either by nature itself or by their fellow men, out of necessity / inevitability. Technology can mitigate the impact of living inside natures carry capacity to a good degree, if used wisely and as long as birth rates, consumption and waste management are controlled effectively and wisely.
https://anonym.to/?http://thesaker.is/the-great-reset-and-the-re-emergence-of-neo-malthusianism/====
Karl North on June 25, 2021 · at 8:06 pm EST/EDT
Although it took a rather long winded article on the new malthusianism to bring it out, it’s nice to see awareness of global resource depletion gradually seeping into discussions on the Saker site, citing long time energy descent analysts like Catton, Tverberg, Orlov, Mumford, and Meadows et al – even if it is so far relegated to commentary rather than fully informative articles.
Certainly the general focus on the Sakar site – reporting on the collapse of the Western imperium after five centuries of terror, pillage and mass murder, and its replacement with a new, multipolar order – is valuable. However, that reporting has revealed no awareness of how deeply our species’ violation of the laws of nature is affecting the leading nations of the new order – China, Russia, Iran, etc., just as they are now causing the collapse of the old Western imperium. Writers like Escobar, Giraldi, Shamir, Martyanov and the Saker himself are great contributors to the geopolitical economics of the shifting order, but remain oblivious to the rapid rate in which industrial civilization is destroying its own resource base. This process can only result in a catabolic collapse, one that will happen sooner in some societies than others – far sooner for example in the US than in Russia, for example.
News in this commentary session of modern society succumbing to resource depletion has elicited some of the denial arguments familiar to energy descent writers like myself:
1. If only we stopped war making, and beat the swords (military budgets) into the proverbial plowshares, we could feed the world forever.
2. If only we stopped wasting the planetary resources in domination of lesser nations, there would be plenty for all. Organic farming will feed the world.
3. Technology will save us.
The problem with these arguments is not only that they are politically utopian in view of the rather poor historical record of the species. It is true that industrial economies create enormous waste of resources, but without curtailing human consumption, elimination of waste will add only a few years to the life of industrial economies. And no technology can sustain modern life without the energy to build, run and maintain it, energy which is fast depleting to unaffordable costs of extraction.
The literature of the end of cheap energy and its consequences is well developed, and includes, in addition to writers mentioned in these comments, prolific analysts such as James Kunstler, John Michael Greer, Cris Martenson and many others. As an energy descent writer (karlnorth.com), I hope to see increasing acknowledgement on Sakar of this predicament of modern society, particularly in writing about China, which is set to become the leading consumer of resources on the planet.
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Robert Shule. on June 28, 2021 · at 3:28 am EST/EDT
Thanks for posting your comment. I concur with much of what you are saying, and feel others on this blog need to grapple the subject. Actually, the greater problem is not resource depletion (there is plenty of oil in the ground), but rather the problem is of choking on waste (namely carbon dioxide, but also other things). There was an interesting exibition at the science museum in Toronto Canada many years back, (I do not know if it is still there) in which a lot of rats were put in a cage. Given food, the rats multiplied to a point where they choked on their waste, and their numbers quickly dwindled. Such a situation we humans will experience on earth if we do not start being careful of what we consume (that was the point of the exibition).
Ted Kaczynski in his book “Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How” has a very good treatment on world political economy in mathametical terms. He describes how competition among economic systems, e.g. “The West” vs. “Russia-China Axis” must maximize production to survive competatively in the near term. In doing so, they undermine their long term viability. Eventually, all systems get snuffed out.
Yes, political economy and environment are subjects joined at the hip. One cannot talk about one without acknowledging the other. What the “great reset” is hedging at is the exhaustion of world resources causing collapse in world economic systems, and what to do about it (give the elites some credit). It has little to do with Malthus.
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Thema: How to solve the worlds energy problems (Gelesen 9073 mal)