MIT says we are done in 2030

I haven't read the article but it's not a surprise that people are predicting more and more doomsday scenarios nowadays. Exponential growth tied along with the peak oil theory shows that this planet is going to go through indefinite hardships in the coming century.

The time span between these leaps in population are getting smaller (population will grow so people will believe that our economy needs to 'grow") and with this consumer mindset most of the people are just going to keep living like it's just a "recession'. The masses are just going to complain about how they have to spend more money to get to their job. The politicians in power always want growth, this is what our country has run on and it's got us to the best living environments with enormous leisure's and luxuries. (Yes, your living like a king so appreciate it)

The problem is that this growing economy is like a balloon, It will grow but in due time it will pop. We will never see this massive drop (some people say it was the economic collapse during the bush administration) but for the most part we will see small drops with periods of relief. Our cultures perspective can't comprehend long term problems, in the same way you watch a documentary about biodiversity, mass extinctions, climate change, water pollution, overpopulation.... For the first half hour (if at most) a person feels the need to tackle the problem but after that period it's back to living like a king.


BTW: There was a book published in 1972 called the Limits to Growth that predicted EXACTLY, how the economic collapse in the past 10 years played out. This book used the computer modeling of unchecked economic and population growth with finite resource supplies to come up with that prediction. Economists attacked this book violently but for the most part it was accurate. Read the End of Growth by Richard Heinburg (Published Aug 2011; very recent)

 

[continuing my reply to Meliai]

It’s hard for me to comprehend someone your age looking to our grandparents’ subsistence farming lifestyle as a model for the future. My parents wanted me to spend time with them for just the opposite reason. They knew it would motivate me to work my ass off in school and get a good job, to make sure I would never have to live like that. It worked.

I didn’t even experience the worst of it. By the time I was born, Grandpa had a “civilized” job in town, which enabled them to get decent medical and dental care. It had also funded a college scholarship for my mother. My (maternal) grandparents had also bought a window air conditioner unit, and a black and white TV that could get two channels. Indoor plumbing had arrived about ten years earlier. Most of the farming operations had been sold to a neighbor, but my grandfather was still involved on a part-time basis and showed me how everything worked, and I don’t mean from a distance. Yes, I have been slapped in the face by the wet tail of a cow who didn’t want to be milked by a total stranger at 5:00 in the morning.

The aging couple had retained most of their miserly ways, only venturing into town once a week to eat at a greasy spoon restaurant and buy a few basic items in stores.

My parents weren’t rich by any means, but it seemed like we were living like rock stars, when I compared it to the lifestyle of my grandparents. I thought it was a sad story.

One of my public school teachers once told me, “Your generation has been given more than any other generation in the history of the world. You have the highest starting point. Therefore, more will be expected of you than any other generation.” So our new goal is to go all the way back to square one? I don’t fucking think so!

Maybe somebody needs to kidnap someone like Bill Gates and make him work on a farm for a while, to make all this feel real to him. Maybe too many spoiled people don’t fully understand what they have to lose. Survival farming isn’t a wilderness camping vacation that never ends. Most of us have things that a king couldn’t buy 500 years ago, and we shouldn’t take it for granted.

We need to fight the inertia of the system a lot harder and longer before giving in to accept the idea that our retirement years are going to be spent shoveling shit out of a pig sty and breaking ice to wash our clothes in a frozen creek, rather than holding season tickets to community theater, and sharing our life experiences with younger people online.

 

The system will change, but I can't see things going back to the way things were. Why go back to subsistence farming when large tractors have made farming 55 times more efficient? It doesn't make sense to me. One of my friends thinks we're going back to horse and plow. I think we'll find new ways to power tractors. The technology that has made food so cheap isn't going to become obsolete.

 

The only meaningful change is fundamental. It is not technology that must change to change the system. Even if we were thrown back as far as deteriorating infrastructure we would still be struggling under the same essential system. It is the interpersonal relationship structures and personal value structures that contribute to the practices and effects of our socioeconomic systems.

Different values create different structures. Changing values for instance could seriously alter the birth rate causing population to fall. This in turn affects the need for food stock piles. Different values alter the way we relate to or use resources.

 

The socioeconomic system is a reflection of what people want. People still want children. I think that's something engrained into humans and it's not going to change unless it's forced.

 

It's true that elemental living would suck, unless you were just doing it for a couple of weeks. it's the kind of thing that sounds a lot more romantic than it is.

On the other hand, material possessions are over rated. We may feel sympathy for people who are poor, but there are poor people who are a lot happier than a lot of rich people are.

There different elements to happiness. As long as you have your basic material needs met, health and relationships are much more important to your happiness.

 

Certainly people still want children. It can be shown that birthrates have fallen in industrialized countries. China institutes a one child policy because of what they want to see in the world.

 

I firmly believe that a large factor in the reason that People still want children, is because there is a significant amount of social pressure to have children. As if there is any real credible evidence that people who do not reproduce experience less life fulfillment (whatever the hell that means).

Invent a safe, affordable/accessible male birth control pill and I guarantee that you'll witness an unprecedented decrease in population growth.

 

As well as economic pressure. Poverty in agrarian societies is combated by productivity. In terms of return of investment, a human being eats little and can produce a lot. Farmers have large families to increase the labor pool.

 

Umm...because you don't own a tractor? And if you already own one, where do you get fuel and repair parts without an economic system?

Reality check: Without commerce, you won't even be able to maintain a well pump, much less a tractor. Sooner or later, you will end up having to carry water to the house in a bucket.

If you get a chance to talk to someone who claims to live "off the grid" today, try to get an honest answer from them about how often they have to go into town or order something through the mail.

Farmers want even more children, because they know they will someday get too old to do heavy manual labor all day. Civilization is linked to declining birth rates.

No shit. People are not fully thinking through all the long-term consequences. Several months into a total collapse, just imagine all the armed, violent gangs from the big cities that would be roaming around the countryside, looting and killing anyone who had anything worth taking. My grandparents never had to face anything like that. They didn't start locking their front door at night until about 1960.

Life would become more like the worst parts of Africa today than the rural American South of 1935.

Then you have to consider increasing crop failures from global warming and climate change. No matter how well you tend your crops and protect them from criminals, you still might starve.

I think a lot of people's overly simplistic survival plans have given them a false sense of hope. They might be okay for a few months, with some luck. Not years. Not decades.

But food, fuel, and medical care are not. And a healthy mind requires some mental stimulation. We have to find a reasonable middle ground between the extremes of poverty and wealth.

People have to wake up and start thinking for themselves! There is no other option!

 

You are very correct. This isn't going to be a pleasant transition, but a transition is going to happen. It is unavoidable, largely because most refuse to accept the reality of this impending energy crisis. The optimist in me wants to believe that we can invent and discover our way out of this, but the realist in me knows that this trajectory isn't going to change and I have serious doubts about the human species's ability to simultaneously scale back consumption and continue to develop as a higher life form.

The choice is going to be this:
1) prepare and evolve into this new reality.

2) fiddle while civilization collapses around you and then die off.

In other words Die off or struggle to live. Psychologically you can tell yourself "I refuse to do without . . .", but you WILL do without, or your children WILL CERTAINLY DO WITHOUT, whether you like it or not, because there isn't going to be enough to go around - because we'll continue to squander it, and we'll continue to reproduce at ever increasing rates, and we'll continue to turn our backs on the horizon of this problem, until it confronts us - and it will. I have no problem with people being fatalistic about it and shrugging their shoulders at human extinction, but I do have a problem when these same people turn around and decide to have children.

Am I going to practice by not going to the dentist? No. But I'm damn sure going to enjoy my healthy teeth and look into sustainable and self-sufficient ways of reducing and perhaps avoiding tooth decay altogether. Now is the time to learn and research solutions to these kinds of problems - if not for your own sake, for future generation's sake, while you still have the luxury of time to devote to such problems. The dental issue may seem trivial, but the fact is that advances in dental care are a major contributor to the increase of life expectancy over the last century.

I look at the stuff I use and take for granted on a daily basis and I ask myself - "could I make this if there was none to be gotten". You start asking yourself these kinds of questions and your quickly faced with the reality of how helpless you really are.

My grandmother never had time to contemplate the writings of Virginia Woolf, but she knew how to grow and safely can enough vegetables year after year to feed a family of three. Right now, I have the luxury to read Woolf and learn to grow and can vegetables, why wouldn't I take this opportunity to do both? And so I am.

 

I'm not. I'm being realistic.

My opinion is that this is not going to be a sudden, apocalyptic event. It will be a steady decline in which we're already witnessing the beginning.

I can feel the pinch everytime I go to the grocery store, everytime I drive to work. So right now I simply don't have as much left over to spend for enjoyment. I can afford to cook at home every night. I can afford to get to work as long as I don't go out and blow money on unnecessary things.

Fast forward a few years: gas and grocery prices continue to rise. I simply can't afford to buy my groceries in the store. Why wouldn't I learn how to grow food, to can the food I grow in the summer to prepare for the winter? These skills may be neccessary one day in the near future.

One day I may not be able to afford to drive a car. My town hasn't invested money in public transportation yet so I don't really expect that they will in the future, especially when the rising unemployment rate means lower income taxes being collected. Wouldn't it make sense to know how to survive when a day comes when I can no longer afford to drive 20 miles to work or afford to live in the well-populated area surrounding my workplace?

Wouldn't it make sense to learn how to generate my own power to prepare for a day when only the rich can afford to pay sky-rocketing electricity rates?

Our society is lucky to have immediate access to culture. There are many societies in the world that live, in the present-day, like your grandparents did.. Accessibility to restaurants and art galleries aren't a God-given right and it simply isn't a guarantee that we will always have access to these things.

I think if these things were taken away from you, the strength of the will to survive may surprise you.

one side note: restaurant quality food generally sucks. Its rare that I come across a restaurant that uses organic, locally grown, fresh vegetables and meat. I can cook a better meal at home any day, and I usually do. I wouldn't have a problem giving up restaurants.

So if society collapses, what is your solution? You haven't offered anything. You've only said you would basically rather die than give up your culture and your art and your restaurants. You would rather die than grow your own food and live self-sufficiently.

Yes we do, but unfortunately it is the world's wealthy controlling the prices and exchange of natural resources.

If there is hope for any of us, it is to learn to live outside of the current complex web of society.

We can take our culture and art with us, you know.

If society collapses, if we never find that middle ground, if the wealthy continue to exploit natural resources until there are simply no natural resources left to exploit, then I would rather learn survival skills now.

I don't trust the powers that be to learn to live in harmony with nature so I'll do it myself.

Oh, one more sidenote: culture has existed since at least the date of the first cave painting. To suggest that culture will die simply because people acquire the skills to grow their own food and generate their own power is pure hyperbole.

 

I was agreeing with you. Only 1% of the population farms down from 50% 100 years ago. Advancements in farming have enabled us to focus on other things and have led to a much more complex economy.

 

That's true, but it will still will take a big increase in prices to make farming a logical option. Take potatos for example. It takes hours of tilling the soil, watering, harvesting, making compost, cleaning them just to get 10 pounds worth while at a grocery store they're still only $3 for a 10lb bag.
Even at minimum wage you're still earning 20lbs of potatos an hour.

 

No kids for me, thank god. A long time ago, I started having bad feelings about the long-term future, so I decided not to become responsible for making anybody else be subjected to it.

You could be right, but you need to go back and read a little more about what almost happened in 2008. Some say we came within a few days of the point of no return. Others say we were within hours. We’re talking blank ATM screens, and waiters in nice restaurants returning to the table to say, “I’m sorry sir, but you’ll have to pay with cash. For some unknown reason, MasterCard and Visa are not accepting any transactions. Our manager has not been able to get an answer from them. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.”

You would have turned on the news that night to hear about all the world’s banks going down like many rows of dominoes, as they ran out of cash and credit to process normal daily transactions. In a day or two, we would have had only empty buildings that used to be banks, and a lot of unemployed people who used to be bank employees.

How do you restart a failed worldwide banking industry that took hundreds of years to create? Nobody knows. It has never been attempted. There is no plan for dealing with the failure of more than 10% of US banks at the same time. And in the weeks and months to come, all the reasons that caused the failure would still be there, so success would be highly unlikely.

Your water and power wouldn’t have been turned off immediately, but the workers would have no way of getting paid, so they would not keep showing up for work forever. Without power, nothing else happens. Water pumps, fuel pumps, and refineries stop. Hospitals have to shut down when their emergency generators run out of fuel. Food rots.

Want to live in this world, with ten billion dollars of cash in your private vault? Not me.

I honestly don't know what makes sense when everything is getting worse and there is no apparent hope for the future. Even my grandmother didn't have to face the scenario of giving up a better life, permanently. I don't know how she would have handled that.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Yeah, I could have picked a much better example to make my point.

It's true, I haven't offered a solution. After everything that defines me as a person is gone, what is left? Why do I need to be here? I accept that nobody lives forever. If all I can do in the future is survive from one day to the next, how does that make me any better or more valuable than an ant or a housefly?

And we are already losing culture, art, etc. As money gets tight, it's always the first thing to get cut out of a budget.

I've read that in the late 1950's, a lot of people started building bomb shelters in their backyards in case the Russians dropped nuclear weapons on us. Then the trend suddenly came to a halt, as more people read and understood what life after a nuclear war was going to be like, and they decided that they wouldn't want to survive the war. That's kind of where I'm at right now.

Good luck!

 

^ only use this excuse when explaining to girls why they must blow you

 

The economic collapse in 2008 was immediately tackled by the government, the government will not let an economic collapse happen. They will bury themselves in debt before accepting the fact that we're not going to grow economically in the coming years. Like i said in my last post, we will witness sudden drops with periods of relief. In due time all our daily living expenses will be much higher than they originally we're, due to inflation.

As far as losing culture, art, etc. Sure we will lose them in schools, businesses, and other areas but the internet has really opened the window for creativity. IMO culture will prosper in the coming years, not so much on the mainstream side but people will definitely have imagination to create art, music, clothing. Culture never dies, don't think because the economy is going to shit that the world will stand still with it. Economic growth won't be possible but it is possible to make leaps in innovation without a growing economy. The world will survive, it's called evolution. It will be hard, some won't adapt, the one's that do will definitely shape the course of the future.

 

Don't you believe that for a moment. There were once regulations in place that would have prevented the crash of 2008, but the financial sector worked tirelessly to get rid of them and to prevent regulation of hedge funds and exotic derivative products like CDO's. The government, my friend, went along with it -- they were complicit in causing the crash, not gallant knights riding to our rescue.

It would have been cheaper for the federal government to simply buy up all of the outstanding mortgages in the country and renegotiate those that were troubled than it was to bail out the banks. Instead, we've got a record number of foreclosures, blighted neighborhoods full of derelict houses, and all the rest that comes with those things. Oh, and big investment banks "paying back" their government loans with still more government money.

If there's someone the gubment's not looking out for, it's us common folk.

 

In general I agree, but....

Pretty sure there will never be a shortage of iron, if you pick a good place to live. Even a few old cars have a lot in them. Blacksmithing is the way to go. Heat comes from wood which is rewenable, and you can make all your tools as you go, if needbe. A hand pump would be doable, for instance. And a considerably less haggared one could be maintained. Plows can be made. Some motors, like hot bulb engines, can be maintained and run on very little, assuming we don't forget how to make the things in the first place.

For me, things will be harder: I don't expect to have my own insulin production plant.

Hopefully as this continues to draw nearer and be more apparently imminent, governments take notice and put less energy into evil and more into saving the world.

 

I'll get back to you on that.