Peak Everything
Jul 14th, 2011 | 6 responses
Default on debt – that’s the latest conversation but it’s silly. The conversation recently has been all about a bail out of Greece. But who’s getting bailed out? It’s not the people of Greece but the banksters that loaned them money. In reality the citizens of Greece would be better off if the country defaulted. Ireland, Portugal, Spain and now Italy face a similar fate. But it won’t stop there – the entire world economy is facing the same fate. Not just governments but corporations as well.
The world economic system is based on credit and a system based on credit is dependent on economic growth to pay the interest. Growth is dependent on cheap resources and we have reached peak cheap resources so economic growth is no longer possible. A little too late there is a conversation about peak oil but it’s not just oil but nearly everything.
Peak water is the problem in some areas. India and Saudi Arabia have been using fossil water to feed their people. In both cases that fossil water is exhausted. Saudi Arabia has oil revenue to buy wheat for awhile – India not so much. The ultimate energy source is not fossil fuel but food -grain. Food production is dependent on water but modern food production is also dependent on phosphorus. And you guessed it we have also reached peak phosphorous. Of course modern agriculture depends on ammonium nitrate for fertilizer and fuel for farm equipment – fossil fuels.
And our technology is threatened as well. We have also heard about the rare earth metals that our technology is dependent on. But that same technology is dependent on something far less exotic, tin. Yes, we have reached peak tin.
Erfandi’s fleet of bamboo rafts are dredging 33 percent less tin ore from the rivers of Indonesia’s Bangka Island than in 2008, as miners fail to keep pace with consumption that jumped 14 percent in two years.
The vessels operating in the world’s largest exporting nation are hauling up no more than 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of ore daily, from 60 kilograms, as reserves get depleted, said the 46-year-old foreman. Miners from China to Peru are also struggling to meet demand for the metal, used to solder components in almost all electronic equipment…
The same thing is true for Iron, copper and all the other metals. We have picked all the low hanging fruit – all the cheap resources.
We have lived in a credit based economy that was dependent on growth to pay the interest. We have reached or exceeded peak people. The economy and the world that we knew will not return. Something new will replace it.
6 Responses to “Peak Everything”
replacement….graves, lots of graves.
you see it in any environment…macro or micro…
as soon as there becomes an overpopulation… disease and death occur. Nature will put things back in balance. It won’t be pretty.
I’m not ready to declare an apocalypse or a catastrophe because there is no such thing at this time.
All the foreseen problems will happen in slow motion and will be accompanied by accommodations of various forms.
We rushed in the 1970s and are rushing now.
http://www.eco-rescue.com/news/detail/70
Of course there will be limits (just as the fiscal limits for governments in the West are starting to be reached, in Europe; they will be reached here in the States by the 2020s), but it’s a slow-motion process and no excuse for forcing politically correct alternatives, and what (serious) alternatives are there, incidentally?
There are always the standard conservative solution: Pestilence, War, Famine and Death…
Good post Ron. Contrary to the beliefs held by many, there isn’t going to be an 11th hour bailout by any supernatural being, neither is mother nature going to be endlessly resilient – at least not in any way that necessarily favors homo sapiens. Yes there is a ceiling that will be reached when we succeed in demonstrating that we as a species are incapable of looking far enough down the road. Rational occupation of this planet by humans cannot continue indefinitely unless people and governments grasp the critical importance of sustainable living. We as a species are terribly clever, but also terribly stupid and short-sighted. This will bite us in the ass unless we get our collective heads out of the sand – soon.
Poor Don.
Keep things the way they are or insanely demand More magically from government (i.e., whoever can be taxed successfully), you really would see the economic equivalent of that in the West.
And of course, there’s the physical, too, example of North Korea.
Our future is more mundane, just a lot of hurt feelings of many when priority-setting and pruning of governments becomes inevitable.
(Adds to the big bear market scenario, regarding lower demand, insofar as rationalization and constraints of retiree entitlements go.)