Thursday, July 13, 2017
Somebody Has to Say It.
This is one of the most riveting videos I've ever seen. In a half hour it sums up what you're seeing today and explains where we'll be over the next decade.
There's a growing chorus of knowledgeable voices warning that our civilizational house of cards is about to come down. These aren't weirdos, they're not 'doomsday preppers.' They're scientists and they're working from observation, experimentation, logic and research. Knowledge. We're living in a giant Ponzi scheme and our political caste think they can keep it going which is why we keep heading for the cliff edge faster and faster even as we watch our world starting to fall apart. We have gone from a record one billion people to today's record 7.5 billion people in just two centuries. Our rates of production, consumption and waste have increased even more, far more than our growth in numbers. And we think this can just keep going. Really? Over just the past thirty years we have lost half of all terrestrial life on Earth and we've lost half of all aquatic life on Earth and we don't even blink an eye.
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5 comments:
The first video doesn't end in human extinction, just extinction for most of us. I guess we all get to fight over what's left.
I have wondered what life would be like if humankind shed 60% of its population. That would bring us again under the 3 billion threshold. The lion's share of that reduction would have to come from Asia and Africa. I don't see that happening peacefully and certainly not voluntarily, i.e. mass sterilization.
Even if we did slash the overall population we would still face the conundrum of western consumption. We would have to accept what Lovelock termed "sustainable retreat." How willing would we be to give up what's been taught to us is our fundamental right to more, bigger and better. Show me the political leader who would dare advocate for such a thing.
Mound, I have wondered what life would be like if humankind shed 90% of its population.
There comes an age when people get seriously sick and eventually die. The effort to prolong our lives gets silly. I'm all in favor of ameliorating pain and suffering but saving lives when all that can be accomplished is more pain and suffering is counter productive. Here's the problem.
The researchers included not just physical but also mental disabilities such as depression and dementia. They found not a compression of morbidity but in fact an expansion—an “increase in the absolute number of years lost to disability as life expectancy rises.” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/
A couple of centenarians have told me that it is no fun living so long when your body is wracked and your friends are dead.
Almost every night on the so-called news we see/hear of some new way to save lives. Our society is still looking for the fountain of youth.
That's a terribly complex issue, Toby. Even in the relatively secular West, religious arguments can raise insurmountable obstacles. In 1900 average longevity in Canada was 50 years. It was about 46 for American males. We grew that from 50 to 81 years in the course of just one century.
Our efforts at extending life have not been matched by our ability to extend quality life. In many aspects we do simply prolong dying, stretching it out, dragging it out. And to what good end? Don't ask the Catholic church.
We really have constructed an amazing House of Cards civilization but, while it took generations to create, it will collapse pretty rapidly.
We have too many people in the lifeboat.They're all fat. And the storm-tossed seas approach.
Despite this, despite all the research and knowledge, despite the mathematical certainty of it all, our political caste still pursue perpetual exponential growth and thereby cripple whatever hope we may have for navigating these shoals wisely.
This is why God promised mankind "He would never again cause a world-wide flood to consume the earth".
...because there are so many other methods by which The Rod of God's Wrath can be wielded.
And, whether literally or metaphorically, one might say "This is what we are seeing".
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