Jul 23 2008

Laying the groundwork

(9AM – promoted by RiaD)

In order to grok the future, it is necessary to understand the present and remember the past.  In order to influence the future, strategies must be emplaced. This is my attempt to bring the docudharma nation to concensus of understanding.

feline wrote

Apparently, something is more important to members of Congress

Submitted by feline on July 17, 2008 – 9:57am.

than public opinion; more important than the U.S. Constitution, the treaties of the Geneva Conventions, and the Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal; more important than truth, justice, accountability, restoration of the rule of law. It’s something so terribly important that the opinions of the United Nations, the International Red Cross, retired generals, veterans and enlisted military personnel, the intelligence community, imbedded journalists, victims’ families, judges, constitutional and international legal scholars, psychiatrists, etc. are basically obsolete. Something is more important than our civil liberties, real national security, a stable domestic infrastructure, and diplomatic foreign policy.

Providing immunity to violators of the law and perpetrators of obstruction is more important than any of our opinions.

It is intriguing to consider what is more important to Congress.

If it is loyalty to party, then why continue to aid and abet the criminality by handing them everything they ask for: approving billions and billions more in appropriations for the occupation of Iraq when they promised they would end the war (It was priority #1) ; The military commissions act; the newest unconstitutional FISA bill; the approval of Mukaskey as Attorney General; etc?

When we elected a democratic majority house, I thought that at least we could stop losing ground. But that didn’t occur. Instead we got we can’t pass this and we can’t pass that…..we don’t have a veto proof majority. When they got a majority of both houses of Congress, the whining we hear about the inability to pass good legislation made no sense. However, the plan does make sense only if you have a majority in the House and not the Senate.

So again I ask, “If you have a majority in both houses why do you still pass bad legislation rather than no legislation?”   They want a share of the power and assume that by allowing the Republicans to implode, they will win by default. But because they stuck with the same plan anyway, they are stupid. And they think we are stupider.

Well let me tell you, the neocons and the media are going to treat this Democratic President like they did Jimmy Carter. They are going to crucify him every chance they get. If you look at recent history and the lessons learned from Nixon, after Carter we got 12 years of Republican Presidents. That is what they want. They want total control from 2013 to 2025 and beyond. They will control the use and distribution of energy to set themselves up as kings.

The Olduvai Theory

The Olduvai Theory states that the life

expectancy of industrial civilization is approximately

100 years: circa 1930-2030.

Seven intervals: 1) From 1930 to 1945 e shows

irregular growth during the Great Depression and

World War II.8 2) The strong growth from 1945 to

1970 correlates with the strong growth in world oil and

natural gas production. 3) The slowing growth of e

from 1970 to 1979 reflects slackening oil production.

4) The rugged Plateau from 1979 to 2003 shows that

energy production ran neck-in-neck with population

growth. 5) The Brink from 2004 to circa 2008

represents the energy industry*s struggle to keep up

with rising demand. 6) The Olduvai Cliff from circa

2008 to 2030 correlates with a spreading epidemic of

permanent blackouts. 7) From 2030 onward society

approaches the agrarian level of existence.

The rules are changing…..back. Did you know there is a worldwide hunger crisis going on right now. How can that be when 2007 was the year humans produced the most food ever? Maybe there is something more fundamental going on.

World Energy and Population: the Basis

During the last two centuries we have known

nothing but exponential growth and in parallel

we have evolved what amounts to an

exponential-growth culture, a culture so heavily

dependent upon the continuance of exponential

growth for its stability that it is incapable of

reckoning with problems of no growth. (M. King

Hubbert, 1976, p. 84).

A population crash is coming and chaos will ensue. Rather then find solutions to the predicted coming chaos, they selfishly welcome it.

WORLD POPULATION SCENARIOS

The resource wars will run their courses, and

populations will crash. The journey back to

‘natural* levels of world population will not be

a joyous one. Have policy-makers begun to

grasp the scale of the problem that confronts

them? Are they still dazzled by the contention that

rates of increase are slowing, not grasping that all

the time the numbers are mounting up?

Only there is a big hole in your plans. When the oil runs out for us, it will run out for your Army and Air Force Bureau of Weather Control. Also in other countries, Wind and solar power are delivering higher then expected returns. Some are already over 15% of their total national consumption from these sources alone. Looks like they might have a chance to survive.

 

24 comments

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  1. Does the Olduvai Theory fit recent history?

    • Edger on July 23, 2008 at 13:40
    • #

    It’s later than most of us realize; though from some perspectives, collapse can be a long process, it’s equally true that much of that process can only be appreciated in hindsight. When we look at the history of the twentieth century, we can see a pattern emerging, indicating that we may be up to a century into collapse already.

    1. The Slow Crash
    2. Coal, World War & the Collapse of European Imperialism
    3. The Collapse of the Soviet Union
    4. Neocolonialism & the New Map
    5. Living in Collapse

      Rather than the century of civilization’s triumph, then, it becomes clear that the 20th century was the first 100 years of global collapse.  At the end of the 20th century, most of the world was in some state of collapse.  As Joseph Tainter argued in Collapse of Complex Societies, the competition between states in a peer polity system keeps any of them from truly collapsing on their own; today, the IMF, the World Bank, and various other forces (well-portrayed in the pharmaceutical and illegal arms trades by the 2005 movies The Constant Gardener and Lord of War, respectively) “prop up” collapsed states from the remaining pillars of complexity.  This state of pseudo-collapse brings with it the worst of both worlds: the strife, poverty and violence of collapse, without the opening spaces and opportunities that a full collapse brings with it.  By the end of the twentieth century, most of the world existed in such a state, with the United States and Western Europe essentially propping up complexity across the rest of the world.  For most of the world, collapse is not a future possibility, but a very present reality.

    The soil and mineral wealth a future civilization would need, we have already consumed. This was something past civilizations did not do-could not do, because they had not yet reached the level of complexity necessary to do so. This is why every historical collapse has allowed for later resurgence; collapses constituted temporary setbacks in overall social complexity, as no collapse ever eliminated quite all the complexity the civilization had already built up.

    …

    Why does this trend end with us? Because we have finally achieved a global civilization; we have finally eliminated the frontiers that allowed further complexity possible. We have farmed and depleted all of the arable land, we have mined all of the economic, near-surface ores, and we have brought together the entire world into a global system of complexity that must stand or fall as a single system. As Fred Hoyle wrote in Of Men and Galaxy, with the unfortunate cultural chauvinism of his time:

    It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing high intelligence [sic] this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only.

    If, however, we take our own perspective as people living through collapse, we can see the inflection point quickly approaching, an event that we will no doubt experience as something very close to the apocalypse. For us, the most pertinent question is less when the last city will fall, but when the first spaces beyond civilization will begin to open up again.

    • Alma on July 23, 2008 at 17:02
    • #

    Nice essay.

    How ya doing?  Wayne got his SS disability approved.

  4. Good to see you.  Thank you for a well done essay.

    It’s all pretty scary!

    And this is very scary.  I bumped into this and I’m not saying that is all what it says, but it is not beyond the realm of a possibility:  More Important Than Impeachment!

    • feline on July 24, 2008 at 17:41
    • #

    It’s great to see you, wolverine06!

    Thank you for thinking about this issue, and for citing my comment on CB.

    I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure out what’s so much more important to members of Congress than those realities stated.  They claim repeatedly that it’s the upcoming presidential election – but, I think we’ve successfully reputed that claim repeatedly, as well.

    So, you’re suggesting that population control is their priority?  If so, not only is there a big hole in their plans, but the logic is entirely flawed.  Although industrialization may lead to longer life-expectancy, it also leads to lower birth-rates.  The least industrialized nations of the world have the highest birth-rate, and consequently, the highest occurrence of starvation and the greatest need for resources.  War and violations of human rights reduces the population, but it also sets up scenarios and desperation that lead to higher birth-rates (hence, the “baby boomer” generation), and perpetuates – even aggravates – future problems.

    Rather than killing off people in order to avoid sharing of resources, history proves that the sharing of resources brings reductions in birth-rates, and therefore reduces long term population problems.

    I know that some secret meetings have occurred that suggest members of Congress are discussing this.  However, as to what is their immediate priority, I’m leaning toward thinking it’s their fear of exposing their own complicity in committing war crimes.  I think what’s so important to them right now is covering their own asses.

  6. http://www.openseti.org/Gnosti…

  7. I’ll be able to find it again later – for further thought, discussion.

    Thanks much.

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