http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49622.htm
Putin and Xi top the G6+1
East vs. West: the contrast between the “dueling summits” this weekend was something for the history books.
All hell broke loose at the G6+1, otherwise known as G7, in La Malbaie, Canada, while all focused on divine Eurasian integration at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in China’s Qingdao in Shandong, the home province of Confucius.
US President Donald Trump was the predictable star of the show in Canada. He came late. He left early. He skipped a working breakfast. He disagreed with everybody. He issued a “free trade proclamation”, as in no barriers and tariffs whatsoever, everywhere, after imposing steel and aluminum tariffs on Europe and Canada. He proposed that Russia should be back at the G8 (Putin said he has other priorities). He signed the final communiqué and then he didn’t.
Trump’s “I don’t give a damn” attitude drove the European leaders assembled in Canada crazy. After the official photo shoot, the US president grabbed the arm of new Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and said, in ecstasy, “You’ve had a great electoral victory!”
The Euros were not pleased and forced Conte to abide by the official EU, as in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s, policy: no G8 readmission to Russia as long as Moscow does not respect the Minsk agreements. In fact it is Ukraine that is not respecting the Minsk agreements; Trump and Conte are fully aligned on Russia.
Merkel, in extremis, proposed a “shared evaluation mechanism”, lasting roughly two weeks, to try to defuse rising trade tensions. Yet the Trump administration does not seem to be interested.
“Strategic” game-changer
Meanwhile, over in Qingdao, the stunning takeaway was offered predictably by Chinese President Xi Jinping; “President Putin and I both think that the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership is mature, firm and stable.”
This is a massive game-changer because officially, so far, this was a “comprehensive partnership.” It’s the first time on record that Xi has put the stress on “strategic”. Again, in his own words: “It is the highest-level, most profound and strategically most significant relationship between major countries in the world.”
And if that was not far-reaching enough, it’s also personal. Xi, referring to Putin and perhaps channeling Trump’s bonhomie with leaders he likes, said, “He is my best, most intimate friend.”
Heavy business, as usual, was in order. The Chinese partnered with Russian nuclear energy giant Rosatom to get advanced nuclear technologies and diversify nuclear power contracts beyond its current Western suppliers. That’s the “strategic” energy alliance component of the partnership.
In a trilateral Russia-China-Mongolia meeting, they all vowed to go full steam ahead with the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor – one of the key planks of the New Silk Roads, known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Mongolia once again volunteered to become a transit hub for Russian gas to China, diversifying from Gazprom’s current direct pipelines from Blagoveshchensk, Vladivostok and Altai. According to Putin, the Eastern Route pipeline remains on schedule, as does the US$27 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Yamal being financed by Russian and Chinese companies.
On the Arctic, Putin and Xi went all the way for developing the Northern Sea Route, including crucial modernization of deep-water ports such as Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and investment in infrastructure. The added geopolitical cachet is self-evident.
Putin had said last week that annual trade between Moscow and Beijing will soon reach US$100 billion. Currently, it stands at US$86 billion. Now Russian businesses venture the possibility of reaching US$200 billion by 2020 as feasible.
All this frenzy of activity is now openly described by Putin as the interconnectivity of BRI and the Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). Not to mention that the SCO itself interconnects with both BRI and the EAEU.
Putin told Chinese TV channel CGTN that though the SCO began as a “low-profile organization” [back in 2001] that sought merely to “solve border issues” between China, Russia and former Soviet countries, it is now evolving into a much bigger global force.
In parallel, according to Yu Jianlong, secretary general of the China Chamber of International Commerce, the SCO has now gathered extra collective strength to harness BRI expansion to increase business across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
So it’s no wonder companies from SCO nations are now being “encouraged” to use their own currencies to seal deals, bypassing the US dollar, as well as building e-commerce platforms, Alibaba-style. So far, Beijing has invested US$84 billion in other SCO members, mostly in energy, minerals, transportation (including, for instance, the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan highway), construction and manufacturing.
Putin also met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the SCO and vowed in no uncertain terms to preserve the Iranian nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.
Iran is a current SCO observer nation. Putin once again reaffirmed he wants Tehran as a full member. The SCO charter determines that “a dialogue partner status can be granted to a country that shares the goals and principles of the SCO and wants to establish relations based on equal and mutually profitable relationship.”
Iran, as an observer, fulfills the commitment. The spanner in the works happens to be tiny Tajikistan.
Enter the trademark convoluted internal politics of the Central Asian stans, in this case revolving around Tajik president Emomali Rahmon accepting Saudi Arabia’s acquisition of a 51% stake in Tajikistan’s largest bank. Nobody else wanted it; Riyadh was just buying influence.
All SCO full members must be approved unanimously. Still, that won’t prevent larger economic integration between Iran, Russia and China. The talk in the SCO corridors was that Chinese companies expect an extra bonanza in the Iranian market after the unilateral Trump pullout of the JCPOA.
Behind closed doors, as diplomats told Asia Times, the SCO also discussed the crucial plan devised by the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group, an Asia-wide peace process with Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan trying to finally solve the decades-long tragedy without Western interference.
So what about a G3?
The “dueling summits” clearly set the scene. The G7 meeting at La Malbaie represented the dysfunctional old order, dilacerated by largely self-inflicted chaos and its apoplexy at the Rise of the East – from the integration of BRI, EAEU, SCO and BRICS, to the yuan-based gold-backed oil futures market.
In contrast to the G7’s full spectrum dominance doctrine of total military superiority, Qingdao represented the new groove. Implacably derided by the old order as autocratic and filled with “democraships” bent on “aggression”, in fact it was a graphic illustration of multi-polarity at work, the intersection of four great civilizations, an Eurasian Café debating that another, non-War Party conducted future is possible.
In parallel, diplomats in Brussels confirmed to Asia Times there are insistent rumbles about Trump possibly dreaming of a G3 composed of just US, Russia and China. Trump, after all, personally admires the leadership qualities of both Putin and Xi, while deriding the Kafkaesque EU bureaucratic maze and its weaklings, currently represented by the M3 (Merkel, Macron, May).
In Europe, no one seems to be listening to informed advice, such as provided by Belgian economist Paul de Grauwe, who’s pleading for Frankfurt and Berlin to manage a common debt, without which the EU won’t survive the sovereign crises of individual members.
Trump, for all his dizzying inconsistencies, seems to have understood that the G7 is a Walking Dead, and the heart of the action revolves around China, Russia and India, which not by accident form the hard node of BRICS.
The problem is the US national security strategy, as well as the national defense strategy, advocate no less than Cold War 2.0 against both China and Russia all across Eurasia. All bets are off, however, on who blinks first.
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
SC167-5
https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
What's Wrong with the Economy: 9 Toxic Dynamics
Beneath the surface signals of an eternally rising stock market and expanding GDP, we all sense something is deeply, systemically wrong with the U.S. economy. These nine structural dynamics generate secondary dynamics, all of which are toxic to social mobility, sustainable prosperity, accountability and democracy:
1. The financialization of the economy, which transformed services, credit, risk and labor into commodities that could be traded globally. Financialization generates enormously asymmetric returns: those with access to low-cost credit, global markets and expertise in finance collect the lion's share of gains in income and wealth.
2. The technological transformation of the economy, which has placed a substantial scarcity premium on specific tech/managerial/communication skills and devalued ordinary labor and capital. As a result, the majority of gains in wealth and income flow to those with the scarce skills and forms of capital, leaving little for ordinary labor and capital.
3. The end of cheap fossil fuels. The fracking boom/bubble has obscured the long-term secular trend: the depletion of cheap-to-access and process oil. As many analysts have observed (Nate Hagens, Gail Tverberg, Richard Heinberg, Chris Martenson et al.), the global economy only grows if energy and credit are both cheap.
4. Globalization, which transformed the developing world into the environmental dumping ground of the wealthy nations and enabled the owners of capital to offshore waste and labor.
5. The destructive consequences of "growth at any cost" are piling up. "Growth" is the one constant of all existing political-economic systems, and none of the current Modes of Production (i.e. the structures that organize production, consumption, the economy and society) recognize that "growth" is not sustainable.
The first two dynamics drive three other dynamics that have hollowed out the productive economy:
6. The dominance of debt-funded speculation as the means of "getting ahead" as opposed to producing products and services of intrinsic value that serve the core needs of communities.
7. The economy's gains in income and wealth are concentrated in the very top of the wealth-power pyramid: the top 5%--entrepreneurs, professionals and technocrats, etc., and within this class, most of the gains go to the top 1/10th of 1% --the existing owners of wealth, and financiers/speculators with access to cheap credit.
The net result is the bottom 95% have few opportunities to "get ahead" outside of gambling in the asset bubbles du jour: the stock and housing market. While the average middle class household may be able to borrow enough to speculate in the housing bubble, two factors limit the odds of success for ordinary investors/gamblers:
A. The gains in housing are concentrated in specific markets; outside these hot markets, gains are modest.
B. Asset bubbles eventually pop, leaving those still owning the assets with losses. The risks are thus intrinsic and high. The average investor/gambler lacks the experience needed to recognize the bubble has stopped expanding and exit the market before ll the other speculators rush for the narrowing exit.
8. The devaluation of ordinary labor and capital means the bottom 60% of the economy that lacks the requisite skills with a scarcity premium in the Emerging Economy have lost easy access to the ladder of social mobility.
9. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the self-serving few corrupts the economy and democracy. The U.S. economy is dominated by insider and elite rackets, skims, scams and cartels/quasi-monopolies, all of which corrupt the economy by creating perverse incentives for exploitation and gaming the system to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
This corruption in service of maximizing private/personal gains at the expense of the system itself also corrupts the mechanisms of governance, which are now little more than cloaking devices that protect insiders and elites from scrutiny and consequences.
The 20% above the bottom 60% may appear to have some access to social/economic mobility, but this is largely an artifact of the bubble economy since 2009. Once the bubble deflates, the illusion of social mobility for the "middle class" between the bottom 60% and the upper 20% vanishes.
The "upper middle class" between the bottom 80% and the top 5% is being squeezed by the over-production of elites, i.e. the over-abundance of those with college degrees and the relative scarcity of secure jobs within the top 5%. As a result, credential inflation is rampant, with Masters Degrees replacing Bachelors Degrees as the default for a white-collar job, and PhDs replacing Masters diplomas as the new default for positions that lack security and upward mobility.
In other words, the number of people who qualify for and desire a slot in the elite class (top 5%) far exceeds the number of slots available. As Peter Turchin has explained, this competition generates social disorder at the top of economic heap as the top 20% fight over the few positions open in the top 5%. The disgruntled, frustrated losers far outnumber the relatively few winners.
These nine dynamics are mutually reinforcing, meaning that each dynamic strengthens one or more of the others, reinforcing each other so the sum of the nine is far more powerful than a mere addition might suggest.
What's Wrong with the Economy: 9 Toxic Dynamics
Beneath the surface signals of an eternally rising stock market and expanding GDP, we all sense something is deeply, systemically wrong with the U.S. economy. These nine structural dynamics generate secondary dynamics, all of which are toxic to social mobility, sustainable prosperity, accountability and democracy:
1. The financialization of the economy, which transformed services, credit, risk and labor into commodities that could be traded globally. Financialization generates enormously asymmetric returns: those with access to low-cost credit, global markets and expertise in finance collect the lion's share of gains in income and wealth.
2. The technological transformation of the economy, which has placed a substantial scarcity premium on specific tech/managerial/communication skills and devalued ordinary labor and capital. As a result, the majority of gains in wealth and income flow to those with the scarce skills and forms of capital, leaving little for ordinary labor and capital.
3. The end of cheap fossil fuels. The fracking boom/bubble has obscured the long-term secular trend: the depletion of cheap-to-access and process oil. As many analysts have observed (Nate Hagens, Gail Tverberg, Richard Heinberg, Chris Martenson et al.), the global economy only grows if energy and credit are both cheap.
4. Globalization, which transformed the developing world into the environmental dumping ground of the wealthy nations and enabled the owners of capital to offshore waste and labor.
5. The destructive consequences of "growth at any cost" are piling up. "Growth" is the one constant of all existing political-economic systems, and none of the current Modes of Production (i.e. the structures that organize production, consumption, the economy and society) recognize that "growth" is not sustainable.
The first two dynamics drive three other dynamics that have hollowed out the productive economy:
6. The dominance of debt-funded speculation as the means of "getting ahead" as opposed to producing products and services of intrinsic value that serve the core needs of communities.
7. The economy's gains in income and wealth are concentrated in the very top of the wealth-power pyramid: the top 5%--entrepreneurs, professionals and technocrats, etc., and within this class, most of the gains go to the top 1/10th of 1% --the existing owners of wealth, and financiers/speculators with access to cheap credit.
The net result is the bottom 95% have few opportunities to "get ahead" outside of gambling in the asset bubbles du jour: the stock and housing market. While the average middle class household may be able to borrow enough to speculate in the housing bubble, two factors limit the odds of success for ordinary investors/gamblers:
A. The gains in housing are concentrated in specific markets; outside these hot markets, gains are modest.
B. Asset bubbles eventually pop, leaving those still owning the assets with losses. The risks are thus intrinsic and high. The average investor/gambler lacks the experience needed to recognize the bubble has stopped expanding and exit the market before ll the other speculators rush for the narrowing exit.
8. The devaluation of ordinary labor and capital means the bottom 60% of the economy that lacks the requisite skills with a scarcity premium in the Emerging Economy have lost easy access to the ladder of social mobility.
9. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the self-serving few corrupts the economy and democracy. The U.S. economy is dominated by insider and elite rackets, skims, scams and cartels/quasi-monopolies, all of which corrupt the economy by creating perverse incentives for exploitation and gaming the system to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
This corruption in service of maximizing private/personal gains at the expense of the system itself also corrupts the mechanisms of governance, which are now little more than cloaking devices that protect insiders and elites from scrutiny and consequences.
The 20% above the bottom 60% may appear to have some access to social/economic mobility, but this is largely an artifact of the bubble economy since 2009. Once the bubble deflates, the illusion of social mobility for the "middle class" between the bottom 60% and the upper 20% vanishes.
The "upper middle class" between the bottom 80% and the top 5% is being squeezed by the over-production of elites, i.e. the over-abundance of those with college degrees and the relative scarcity of secure jobs within the top 5%. As a result, credential inflation is rampant, with Masters Degrees replacing Bachelors Degrees as the default for a white-collar job, and PhDs replacing Masters diplomas as the new default for positions that lack security and upward mobility.
In other words, the number of people who qualify for and desire a slot in the elite class (top 5%) far exceeds the number of slots available. As Peter Turchin has explained, this competition generates social disorder at the top of economic heap as the top 20% fight over the few positions open in the top 5%. The disgruntled, frustrated losers far outnumber the relatively few winners.
These nine dynamics are mutually reinforcing, meaning that each dynamic strengthens one or more of the others, reinforcing each other so the sum of the nine is far more powerful than a mere addition might suggest.
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
SC167-4
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49610.htm
A Tale of Two Summits
It’s almost a surreal spectacle to see the world order shifting before our very eyes. The sight of the Western G7 summit collapsing in acrimony at the weekend was in stark contrast to a positive, resplendent Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference hosted at the same time in China.
Over the weekend, the tale of two summits illustrated more than ever an historic shift in the global order. The US-led Western order is evidently breaking down, giving way to a new multilateral paradigm led primarily by China and Russia. Potentially, the latter trajectory is one marked by genuine cooperation and peaceful relations, as opposed to the old US-led order marked by hegemony and unipolar ambitions which inevitably foment conflict.
US President Donald Trump’s abrupt and abrasive departure from the G7 summit in Canada spoke volumes. Over the weekend, Trump sparred with the other Western leaders plus Japan’s Shinzo Abe over various trade disputes. Then Trump pointedly bailed out early from the gathering in a snub to host Canadian premier Justin Trudeau, bound for Singapore to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.
The symbolism was expansive. It was as if the American leader was showing disdain for an ineffectual forum, pursuing far more important matters. The rendezvous for Trump and Kim in Singapore also spoke of the Eastern impetus of a new geopolitical energy.
Trump is the first serving American president to ever meet a North Korean leader. Technically, the two countries are still at war from never having signed a peace treaty to end the 1950-53 war. That animus could all change this week if the two leaders strike up a rapport, possibly leading to de-escalation of military forces on the Korean Peninsula.
Kim arrived in Singapore two days before his scheduled historic meeting with Trump on Tuesday. The latter also arrived a day early. Kim’s highly unusual overseas trip – reportedly his third-ever as North Korean leader – was on board an Air China 747 courtesy of the Beijing government. Again, the symbolism was resonant. China was pragmatically facilitating this crucial encounter between the two adversaries.
The G7 summit Trump left behind was an embarrassing debacle. The leaders of Britain, Germany, France, Canada as well as European Union senior officials were incensed by the American president’s high-handed disdain for multilateral accord. Trump boorishly browbeat the supposed American “allies’ with complaints about “unfair” trade tariffs. It’s hard to know who is right in the trade dispute. But one thing was clear: the G7 group of Western nations plus Japan – a forum set up some 43 years ago – was in complete disarray from deep disaffection.
Trump’s combative stance threw the summit sideways before he even arrived in Quebec when he announced while leaving Washington that Russia should be readmitted to the G7. Russia was expelled from the former G8 back in 2014 over Western claims about Moscow interfering in Ukraine’s sovereignty.
The other G7 members, especially Britain’s premier Theresa May, were indignant at Trump’s offer to Russia. Only Italy’s newcomer populist Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte agreed with Trump’s position, which is consistent with how the new government in Rome wants to restore European relations with Russia. Another telltale sign of Eastward movement in international politics.
When the American president ambled into the G7 summit to be greeted by Canada’s Trudeau the body language was one of reluctance and awkwardness. The weekend descended into spats and insults. Trump even called Trudeau “dishonest” and “weak”. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron showed no fawning bromance as he had previously done towards Trump. Macron even called for a new G6 format without US “hegemony”.
The contrast with proceedings at the SCO summit in China could not have been greater. President Xi Jinping warmly greeted Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as well as the leaders of India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Iran. The convivial unity of those leaders was in sharp contrast to the disunity and bickering at the G7.
The presence of India and Pakistan as two new members of the SCO seated together after decades of war and conflict was a powerful testimony to the new geopolitical paradigm rising in the East.
The SCO nations vowed to redouble efforts for partnership in economic development and mutual security. President Xi said a new global order beckoned, based on partnership, not hegemony of one power asserting itself over the others, as is the case of the US-led order.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani expressed gratitude to Xi and Putin for leading the way in building a new global format based on multilateral respect. The Iranian leader thanked China and Russia for their steadfast support of the international nuclear accord, which Trump is trying to undermine by unilaterally withdrawing the US. It remains to be seen if the Europeans will adequately support the nuclear accord; but their ineffectualness in standing up to Trump at the latest G7 summit suggests that they won’t have the mettle to deliver on their avowed commitments.
Xi and Putin rightly reminded through public statements during the SCO gathering that the Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore this week is following their earlier endorsements for peaceful dialogue between the US and North Korea. Last year, when Trump and Kim were engaging in fiery rhetorical exchanges threatening nuclear war, it was China and Russia that both admonished peaceful dialogue as the only way forward.
The post-Second World War Western order that prevailed for over seven decades is undoubtedly waning. That order, dominated by the US, was always something of an illusion. Far from mutual partnership and high-browed virtuous claims, the US-led order was always about the dominance of American capitalism and imperialist objectives.
The Europeans were never really allies. They were appendages to American power. Now that American power has ebbed, the inter-Western rivalries are gaining sharper edges. American desire for hegemonic control is limited by its waning power, and so Washington is resorting to more brazen bullying tactics towards its supposed allies who are now realizing their true role as nothing more than vassals.
However, American unipolar “exceptionalism” is anathema in today’s world of global interconnectedness and consciousness of the principles of equality and diplomacy.
China and Russia, under the leadership of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, are on an evolutionary level of political awareness that exceeds that of the US and its coterie of Western flunkies.
The SCO summit demonstrated starkly the new global order of partnership for progress and peace. The squabbling, backbiting G7 is the ashes of an old order.
This does not guarantee that world peace will prevail. The vision is surely there and growing thanks to China and Russia and others from the Eastern hemisphere. The crucial challenge is how the dying US-led Western empire of capitalist hegemony and imperialism can be safely transformed into peaceful, multilateral partnership.
A Tale of Two Summits
It’s almost a surreal spectacle to see the world order shifting before our very eyes. The sight of the Western G7 summit collapsing in acrimony at the weekend was in stark contrast to a positive, resplendent Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference hosted at the same time in China.
Over the weekend, the tale of two summits illustrated more than ever an historic shift in the global order. The US-led Western order is evidently breaking down, giving way to a new multilateral paradigm led primarily by China and Russia. Potentially, the latter trajectory is one marked by genuine cooperation and peaceful relations, as opposed to the old US-led order marked by hegemony and unipolar ambitions which inevitably foment conflict.
US President Donald Trump’s abrupt and abrasive departure from the G7 summit in Canada spoke volumes. Over the weekend, Trump sparred with the other Western leaders plus Japan’s Shinzo Abe over various trade disputes. Then Trump pointedly bailed out early from the gathering in a snub to host Canadian premier Justin Trudeau, bound for Singapore to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.
The symbolism was expansive. It was as if the American leader was showing disdain for an ineffectual forum, pursuing far more important matters. The rendezvous for Trump and Kim in Singapore also spoke of the Eastern impetus of a new geopolitical energy.
Trump is the first serving American president to ever meet a North Korean leader. Technically, the two countries are still at war from never having signed a peace treaty to end the 1950-53 war. That animus could all change this week if the two leaders strike up a rapport, possibly leading to de-escalation of military forces on the Korean Peninsula.
Kim arrived in Singapore two days before his scheduled historic meeting with Trump on Tuesday. The latter also arrived a day early. Kim’s highly unusual overseas trip – reportedly his third-ever as North Korean leader – was on board an Air China 747 courtesy of the Beijing government. Again, the symbolism was resonant. China was pragmatically facilitating this crucial encounter between the two adversaries.
The G7 summit Trump left behind was an embarrassing debacle. The leaders of Britain, Germany, France, Canada as well as European Union senior officials were incensed by the American president’s high-handed disdain for multilateral accord. Trump boorishly browbeat the supposed American “allies’ with complaints about “unfair” trade tariffs. It’s hard to know who is right in the trade dispute. But one thing was clear: the G7 group of Western nations plus Japan – a forum set up some 43 years ago – was in complete disarray from deep disaffection.
Trump’s combative stance threw the summit sideways before he even arrived in Quebec when he announced while leaving Washington that Russia should be readmitted to the G7. Russia was expelled from the former G8 back in 2014 over Western claims about Moscow interfering in Ukraine’s sovereignty.
The other G7 members, especially Britain’s premier Theresa May, were indignant at Trump’s offer to Russia. Only Italy’s newcomer populist Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte agreed with Trump’s position, which is consistent with how the new government in Rome wants to restore European relations with Russia. Another telltale sign of Eastward movement in international politics.
When the American president ambled into the G7 summit to be greeted by Canada’s Trudeau the body language was one of reluctance and awkwardness. The weekend descended into spats and insults. Trump even called Trudeau “dishonest” and “weak”. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron showed no fawning bromance as he had previously done towards Trump. Macron even called for a new G6 format without US “hegemony”.
The contrast with proceedings at the SCO summit in China could not have been greater. President Xi Jinping warmly greeted Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as well as the leaders of India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Iran. The convivial unity of those leaders was in sharp contrast to the disunity and bickering at the G7.
The presence of India and Pakistan as two new members of the SCO seated together after decades of war and conflict was a powerful testimony to the new geopolitical paradigm rising in the East.
The SCO nations vowed to redouble efforts for partnership in economic development and mutual security. President Xi said a new global order beckoned, based on partnership, not hegemony of one power asserting itself over the others, as is the case of the US-led order.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani expressed gratitude to Xi and Putin for leading the way in building a new global format based on multilateral respect. The Iranian leader thanked China and Russia for their steadfast support of the international nuclear accord, which Trump is trying to undermine by unilaterally withdrawing the US. It remains to be seen if the Europeans will adequately support the nuclear accord; but their ineffectualness in standing up to Trump at the latest G7 summit suggests that they won’t have the mettle to deliver on their avowed commitments.
Xi and Putin rightly reminded through public statements during the SCO gathering that the Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore this week is following their earlier endorsements for peaceful dialogue between the US and North Korea. Last year, when Trump and Kim were engaging in fiery rhetorical exchanges threatening nuclear war, it was China and Russia that both admonished peaceful dialogue as the only way forward.
The post-Second World War Western order that prevailed for over seven decades is undoubtedly waning. That order, dominated by the US, was always something of an illusion. Far from mutual partnership and high-browed virtuous claims, the US-led order was always about the dominance of American capitalism and imperialist objectives.
The Europeans were never really allies. They were appendages to American power. Now that American power has ebbed, the inter-Western rivalries are gaining sharper edges. American desire for hegemonic control is limited by its waning power, and so Washington is resorting to more brazen bullying tactics towards its supposed allies who are now realizing their true role as nothing more than vassals.
However, American unipolar “exceptionalism” is anathema in today’s world of global interconnectedness and consciousness of the principles of equality and diplomacy.
China and Russia, under the leadership of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, are on an evolutionary level of political awareness that exceeds that of the US and its coterie of Western flunkies.
The SCO summit demonstrated starkly the new global order of partnership for progress and peace. The squabbling, backbiting G7 is the ashes of an old order.
This does not guarantee that world peace will prevail. The vision is surely there and growing thanks to China and Russia and others from the Eastern hemisphere. The crucial challenge is how the dying US-led Western empire of capitalist hegemony and imperialism can be safely transformed into peaceful, multilateral partnership.
Monday, June 11, 2018
SC167-3
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/114097/facing-horrible-future
Facing The (Horrible) Future
Our fate directly depends on our courage to change it
I’d like to tell you a short story based on a movie that has had a profound impact on me.
I'll get to the story in a moment, but first, a little background on the movie...
It's called Griefwalker (by Tim Wilson) and it focuses on the life and wisdom of Stephen Jenkinson, a theologian and philosopher who worked as an end-of-life specialist for many years. Because we all must face death in our lives, inevitably our own someday, I highly recommend this movie and Stephen’s work to everyone.
After sitting at the death beds of a thousand individuals, Stephen has accumulated a wisdom regarding the process of dying that is perhaps unmatched in our modern times. His views and insights are extraordinarily powerful and extremely well-delivered in the movie.
Stephen is a blunt yet thoughtful man, and my own interview with him (Living with Meaning) remains one of my all-time favorites.
At one point in Griefwalker, Stephen was lobbed what I’m sure the interviewer thought was a soft-ball question. From memory, and I last watched the movie a few years ago so I’m certain to have this inexactly recalled, it was along the lines of “So, Stephen, you’ve learned how to ease people through the process of dying. How is that done?” I guess the idea was that after being so steeped and skilled at shepherding people through the process of dying, Stephen had arrived at some tidy formula for making it as gentle as possible.
Without blinking Stephen said, “Oh no. Dying for most people these days is horrible.” After a few shocked fumbly moments by the interviewer, and I confess to having been shocked too, Stephen continued, explaining that the physical process of dying can certainly be managed easily and well with palliative care, but the emotional journey can be quite terrifying (at first).
The reason why is because most people spend their entire lives pretending as if death is somehow avoidable. So when they find themselves dying, they suddenly have to confront the fact that they may have forgotten to fully 'live' during their one and only shot at life.
To suddenly realize the most precious thing you had was barely treasured along the way, never to be recovered, can indeed be a horrible moment.
As far as we know, we’ve only got one life to live -- and facing our end puts that into sharp focus. As Stephen says in his book Money and the Soul’s Desires, “Not success. Not growth. Not happiness. The cradle of your love of life … is death.”
To look back on one’s time on Earth and realize how much of it was spent not really being alive, not loving, not noticing, not being present with what is, is to realize that your one glorious ride was largely spent without reflection, depth or meaning. It was squandered. And there’s no undoing that fact. Again, that moment of realization is a bad moment.
I'm not writing this to push you to ponder your own demise, though that may be a healthy pursuit for many of us. Rather, I want to direct your attention towards a moment of horror that I think is coming – for all of us.
Where We're Headed
Travel with me to the future. Imagine that the year is now 2040.
If we suddenly woke in that year, what would we see in the world? More importantly, what would we not see? Which species would be missing? Which ecosystems will have utterly collapsed?
By extrapolating trends already in place (many of which are accelerating) we can easily predict a future world where there are no large animals left. Perhaps the last giraffe was killed and eaten by a hungry mob back in 2033, joining the White Rhino which was lost back in 2018.
Lions and tigers can no longer be found in the wild; their genetic stock hopelessly compressed into a few zoos and frozen test-tubes, should humans ever rally to justify the expense of trying to resurrect those species.
There are no coral reefs anywhere in the oceans, and essentially no diversity of life left in the seas at all. Acidification has upset and mostly ruined the ocean ecology from the bottom up.
First, we noticed that the oysters no longer successfully made it out of the larval stage. But by the time the scientists delivered a loud enough warning for all of the missing copepods and other vital zooplankton, it was already too late. The jellyfish had taken over. Nobody has a clue how to get the ecology to return to one that can support tuna, rockfish, dolphins, whales, seals and seabirds. Those are all gone -- starved, fished or hunted to extinction.
Worse, the ubiquitous jellyfish are entirely too efficient. In addition to decimating the zooplankton, the jellyfish are eating the phytoplankton responsible for generating most of the world’s oxygen -- their levels too low to continue being a positive force for oxygen release into the atmosphere. “Don’t worry!” scream the Tweets, "Scientists have found a new and better way in the lab to harness the sun to split water. We can make our own oxygen!" However, after the past 1,000+ lab 'miracle breakthroughs' that proved to be duds when attempted at scale, few have hope that this time will prove any different.
The vast systems offered by Nature -- more accurately, that were offered by Nature -- once taken for granted, are now fully appreciated by the people left on Earth. But it’s too late.
The insects are mostly gone, at least in terms of diversity. The terrestrial ecosystem balance that people knew and loved back in “the twenty teens” is gone and has been replaced by something far simpler and painfully less interesting. The failure to block neonicotinoid pesticides in time, as well as their more morally repugnant (yet legal!) derivations that outpaced activist’s ability to fight them, meant that entire classes of pollinators were lost.
With those, entire species of plants disappeared because they were utterly dependent on highly-specific pollinator services. Mankind's few lame attempts at creating “drone pollinators” were so utterly unfit for the task that the term became a profoundly disparaging insult, most frequently applied to ineffective politicians. “Looks like another useless bill being put up by the drone pollinator from New York.”
A few hardy bugs and roaches, lots and lots of ants (where are they all coming from?), and very few flying insects remain. No more large moths in the temperate climates, with such splendid examples as the Luna and Hawk moths now only existing as dead specimens in a few museums, right next to the dodo and African elephant displays.
And it’s been over 15 years since "the dawn chorus of birds" was a phrase that had any meaning. Nearly all of the migratory birds are gone, along with all of the insect eating species. It’s eerily silent outside in the morning. The sight of a single bumblebee, or a flash of colorful plumage, is cause for a quickening of your pulse -- the same physical reaction people once had when as noticing a movie star at a café.
Life, where it now exists in pockets, is revered. In nearly every place it remains, human guardians quickly dispatch any poachers or defilers, burying the bodies without remorse. Non-human life has become more valuable than human life.
Fossil fuels began peaking in 2030 in terms of total BTUs from all sources: oil, gas and coal. And while not crashing, they've unable to provide more, which exposed the 'continuous growth' model as being a cruelly-attractive mirage. Its handmaiden, debt-based money, was also revealed to be an artifact of the surplus energy from fossil fuels. Both models have failed.
As has retirement, a several-generation luxury never to be repeated again in human history. Everyone left alive has to work, if they want to eat.
With the loss of those fantasies, everything is now a difficult trade-off. Not surprising, many people are unable to cope with the consequences. Suicides are a leading cause of death, especially among those born during earlier and more abundant times.
Worst of all, food is now increasingly scarce due to a horrid combination of ruined soils and ever more frequent and destructive climate disruptions. Rains fall where they shouldn't and fail increasingly to fall where they should. Or they fall too hard, and too fast. Summers with temperatures of over 50C baked crops compounding water shortages, with several years' harvests lost entirely because the overnight temperatures did not cool sufficiently to allow for the open-air pollination of corn. Who knew?
How did we ever get to 9 billion people on Earth without considering that this moment might have arrived?
How did we allow ourselves to pretend that it wouldn't?
Why did we let the fantasy of relocating to Mars capture such a broad swath of our imagination and focus? Sure, we put an outpost there for a few years in the 2020’s, but – guess what? – it turns out that Mars is a hostile planet to life. It's utterly lacking in resources, it's much farther from the sun than the Earth, and managing a high-tech existence there was a colossal struggle. Of course we should have realized that going in and not placed so much of our species' odds on that hope. We spent hundreds of billions getting to Mars at the same time we were spending trillions to destroy Earth. What a horrible idea that was. In retrospect, it’s all so terribly obvious.
Another forlorn diversion was vertical farming, which posited that we’d just grow salad greens in container boxes. Of course, with some simple math and logic, we should have been able to realize that plants are calorie conversion machines, turning light energy into food energy. The idea that we were going to meaningfully replace the sun’s free and intense full-spectrum light with our own manufactured lighting, at scale and in sufficient quantities to meaningfully address the caloric needs of 9 billion people was…not very well thought through. Actually, in retrospect, that’s being too kind. We were deluding ourselves.
And so, out here in 2040, looking back, we humans have suddenly come to our collective moment of horrible realization. Because we could not face the idea that our specie's pursuit of collective growth had a predictable end, we forgot to properly care for the one planet we have.
Now that life on Earth is dying, the regret comes pouring out. Oh, how much we’d give to once again be able to hear a cacophony of birds in the morning! Or to swim over a thriving coral reef! Or to boat over an ocean teeming with fishes, whales and sea birds. Instead, the waters are now blank, sterile and depressing.
Remorse and regret. How could we have been so utterly stupid? How could we not have rallied in response to the warning signs, the endless string of increasingly desperate red flashing warning lights any one of which could have -- and should have -- been sufficient to motivate us?
Oh, what we would give to get one more chance! To go back in time and do things differently, protecting and preserving the Earth’s treasures as if…as if we were deeply in love with all of them.
Our Last Chance
In Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is given the chance to return to his present and get another shot at life. If the 2040 vision I’ve painted terrifies you on a fundamental level as it does me, just know that there's still the chance to wake up and positively alter the course of events.
Yes, the trends are very bad, but they can be changed. As I am fond of saying, we already have all the knowledge and technology we need to be agents of regeneration and abundance instead of extraction and degeneration. We simply lack the right narrative to mobilize our society productively.
Go outside and rejoice in what nature has still to offer. Really see the next bird or mammal or insect you encounter. Each one is pure magic. Take a good hard look at the individual before you, not a robin, but that robin. Not a squirrel, but that squirrel. That bumblebee. Each is an individual, same as you. Each has a role, a life, and is busy making decisions and contributing to the story exactly how it is supposed to.
This world we have is the only one we’ll ever have. It’s the one we evolved on and to which our DNA blueprints are exquisitely crafted. And it’s not dying, it’s being killed. We might as well be honest about that and use the active verb.
Killed actively and on purpose, but also by negligence. We’re neglecting to notice what’s true: that humans are a part of, not apart from nature. We are one with the larger world. It’s time to wake up and live into that story. It’s not a new one, but something we forgot in our hasty failing efforts to escape its limits -- limits that disappointed our fragile egos which wanted, needed, to be special and different.
Life ends, and life begins. There’s an evolutionary impulse underway that has given this brief moment of geological history both humans and elephants. We cannot know where evolution is going or why, but we can feel the potential of it all.
Elephants, as well as all of life, should be revered and cared for not because children’s books need real-life examples, or zoos need fresh breeding stock, or even because Kenya needs tourist dollars. But simply because they are here. With us. In this time.
A certain humility needs to be adopted along the lines of We simply don’t know what role the special and peculiar sentience of elephants is playing, so we’d better protect it. Because we don’t know. If we remove that species from the web of life, what cascade may we create?
A Call To Action
I could dredge up all the perilous ecological data I publish often on this site, noting the decline in virtually every species -- with many being lost every day and many more on the brink. But I won’t.
There’s no need. You already know in your gut that something is very badly wrong in this story. Something even worse than killing the life on the planet, including our own.
No, what’s worse is that we can do better but we’re not. We can have immense empathy, and bond with both humans and non-humans alike. We are capable of dimly grasping our own role on this planet and yet we’re collectively continuing to act as if….we’ll live forever. If there are problems with that approach, we're assuming we'll figure them out as they arise.
But as Stephen Jenkinson pointed out, when the stakes are too high that leads to a horrible moment. To get serious about saving other species after they are already gone is a wildly immature idea.
But it is still in our power to avoid that horrible moment. That’s where the idea of a 'movement' comes in. Look, I have little clue about how to actually start a self-sustaining global movement, but I do suspect that it has to involve (1) the right idea at (2) the right time and (3) involve the right people.
We have to do this. I know the time is right because so many people are already deeply unhappy with suicide rates up 30%, opioid addictions and death skyrocketing, and levels of depression (more accurately termed demoralization in most cases) at never before seen levels.
Those are all expressions of people who have lost their will to engage with life, or even to continue living. That means a loss of meaning and purpose, a devastating loss. Adam's recent report gives a hard-hitting breakdown of the mental health epidemic our disconnected and unfulfilling modern way of life has created. Be sure to read it if you haven't already.
To truly “save the planet” is to actually undertake the harder proposition of “saving ourselves.” The planet will be fine … but humans? Maybe not so much.
Changing any of this will begin with each of us as individuals. We have to become the change we wish to see. We have to shift the narrative away from the old bankrupt idea of infinite growth on a finite planet, or that humans are apart from (rather than a part of) Nature, and towards a better narrative that aligns better with the world as it actually is.
This is a tough sell, for sure. Ultimately, it requires us to find a way past our instinctual drive for comfort and more 'stuff'. Waking up to the realities involved is not easy nor pain-free. It’s emotionally devastating at first. And who wants to go through that?
“Inattention to the world's ecological state is well advised. Because attention to it mitigates against your happiness, contentment, and your sense of well-being.”
“Having a conscience now is a grief-soaked proposition”
― Stephen Jenkinson
I do, for one. Why? Because to do so is to pass through the tunnel that brings me back to living fully into the one life that I have. I’m here to live, to make a difference, and to help usher new ideas into the world. The alternative is to face a bitter end-of-life moment that was unavoidable in the first place.
What needs to happen is to somehow awaken the people of the world to the actual nature of the predicaments we face, recognize their inevitability, and go through the wrenching adjustments necessary to realign our collective narrative with the objective truths of our times.
But how?
In some ways I'm encouraged, because so many people seem to be waking up. I know this terrifies The Powers That Be, who so desperately want to cling to their authority at any and all costs, because I track their efforts towards shaping the narrative. There’s nothing subtle about the ways that Wikipedia constantly degrades and disparages the pages devoted to anti-war activists while grotesquely supporting the neocon and war party efforts and related sympathetic journalists.
Twitter and Facebook are constantly stifling various views while elevating those that fall under the umbrella of promoting business as usual and protecting the ideas of those already in power. In other words: more war, more unfairness, and maybe some barely-passable lip-service to the idea that maybe we should devote a percent or two of our resources towards rear-guard actions to protect the environment. None of which are actually effective, of course, or else they would be immediately marginalized as the work of terrorists or malcontents.
All of which is to say that any revolution of thought won’t be televised, as they once said., Perhaps in today's age we should amend this to: The revolution won’t be posted to FB and then successfully re-Tweeted.
In other words, please don’t wait for this to appear on your radar before you take it seriously. It will only ever appear long after it’s far too late.
The revolution underway is already being conducted in places like our own site Peak Prosperity, as well as Charles Eisenstein’s, Charles Hugh Smith’s, Zerohedge, Jim Kunstler, and Craig Murray’s as well as countless others not named here. Each of these sites is committed to telling narratives that run counter to what the guardians in the MSM would like you to hear.
Each of these alternative websites is saying, in its own way, Hey the old way doesn’t even make sense anymore, is shot through with logical inconsistencies, and in many cases lacks even basic morality. Collectively, they're offering an invitation to see things differently, and to begin acting differently.
Our challenge is to remain focused, to promote the new ideas, and to be the leaders that are needed in these changing and difficult times. Our adversaries are those peddling fantasies that serve only to pacify our growing inner discomfort as the world dies around us, as well as those who seek to diffuse, distort and decay the new messages either for corporate or political ends.
Our various social media platforms are a slithering mess of ever-changing algorithms (making it hard to know who you are or aren't reaching with any given post), paid trolls, and bots programmed to deceive, slide, and/or derail any given conversation.
Which means we’ll need to be alert to those tactics and find other ways of remaining in touch. You’ll need to trust your own instincts, and avoid the numerous and sophisticated ways that we are being made to feel powerless, isolated, and even a bit crazy for thinking the things we do.
My personal strategy is to (severely) limit my time on Facebook, use Twitter only for data and never opinions, and then comment at sites like Peak Prosperity where the moderation is heavy and bots and trolls are quickly booted.
This movement will consist of good people taking right action. People who are willing to lead because they know it falls to them and they are not afraid to stand out and be different for a while. People who can read the data and know that it is correct because they can feel it in their bones.
The time for infinite growth is over. It’s increasingly obvious that the benefits of pursuing growth have nosed over, and that the human rocket is now pointed towards the Earth.
We still have time to right this ship, but it’s going to take heroic efforts by a lot of people. We need to be willing to give much and possibly lose even more. However, it won’t be futile sacrifice, because this is just how things are sometimes. You were born here and now, into these times, and your gifts are desperately needed.
We need each other. And you know what? Along they way we may just discover unity, purpose, meaning and our true individual gifts to bring forth.
My personal invitation is to support the mission of Peak Prosperity (“Creating a World Worth Inheriting”) by becoming an active premium subscriber so that Adam and I can continue to bring these messages to the world, along with promising models for a sustainable future. If not that, then please use your time and money to support others working in these areas, not least of which would be the important works of the individuals writing the blogs listed above.
It's only by facing the true nature of our predicaments that we can avoid a truly horrible future moment of deep and profound regret.
Time still remains, but it is running short.
We are open to any and all ideas about how to build, join or support a movement of like-minded people who are ready and able to shuck the old conventions and start anew which begins by facing the data as we know it today.
None of the former splitting/sorting functions of old apply here. So please don’t offer up one political party over the other, or any one country or system as being better, or ways we might vote new and better scoundrels into office, or tweaks to the existing exponential debt-based fiat money system that might extend things a bit longer. None of those hold any merit.
We need a new narrative and even if it cannot lay claim to “the truth” it cannot be based on obvious falsehoods. How do we create that new narrative in a way that it can be shared broadly? What needs to be done? Who should be involved?
Perhaps nothing needs doing, and this will all unfold of its own accord when its ready, but for those with an active “do” gene, like us, there are things to be done and efforts to be made.
So let’s get going. Either we do this on our own terms now, or we all face the horror of profound regret later.
The really good news? If we do this right, we reclaim our lives, our sense of meaning, our connection to each other and the sacred, and we fulfill our potential as creative stewards of planet Earth.
....
Unfortunately the human actions that are creating/ have created our increasingly dire situation are a result of the architecture of our minds, which means BAU will continue. There won't be any meaningful change to save us. You see it in the past, present, and it will be so in our future.
Facing The (Horrible) Future
Our fate directly depends on our courage to change it
I’d like to tell you a short story based on a movie that has had a profound impact on me.
I'll get to the story in a moment, but first, a little background on the movie...
It's called Griefwalker (by Tim Wilson) and it focuses on the life and wisdom of Stephen Jenkinson, a theologian and philosopher who worked as an end-of-life specialist for many years. Because we all must face death in our lives, inevitably our own someday, I highly recommend this movie and Stephen’s work to everyone.
After sitting at the death beds of a thousand individuals, Stephen has accumulated a wisdom regarding the process of dying that is perhaps unmatched in our modern times. His views and insights are extraordinarily powerful and extremely well-delivered in the movie.
Stephen is a blunt yet thoughtful man, and my own interview with him (Living with Meaning) remains one of my all-time favorites.
At one point in Griefwalker, Stephen was lobbed what I’m sure the interviewer thought was a soft-ball question. From memory, and I last watched the movie a few years ago so I’m certain to have this inexactly recalled, it was along the lines of “So, Stephen, you’ve learned how to ease people through the process of dying. How is that done?” I guess the idea was that after being so steeped and skilled at shepherding people through the process of dying, Stephen had arrived at some tidy formula for making it as gentle as possible.
Without blinking Stephen said, “Oh no. Dying for most people these days is horrible.” After a few shocked fumbly moments by the interviewer, and I confess to having been shocked too, Stephen continued, explaining that the physical process of dying can certainly be managed easily and well with palliative care, but the emotional journey can be quite terrifying (at first).
The reason why is because most people spend their entire lives pretending as if death is somehow avoidable. So when they find themselves dying, they suddenly have to confront the fact that they may have forgotten to fully 'live' during their one and only shot at life.
To suddenly realize the most precious thing you had was barely treasured along the way, never to be recovered, can indeed be a horrible moment.
As far as we know, we’ve only got one life to live -- and facing our end puts that into sharp focus. As Stephen says in his book Money and the Soul’s Desires, “Not success. Not growth. Not happiness. The cradle of your love of life … is death.”
To look back on one’s time on Earth and realize how much of it was spent not really being alive, not loving, not noticing, not being present with what is, is to realize that your one glorious ride was largely spent without reflection, depth or meaning. It was squandered. And there’s no undoing that fact. Again, that moment of realization is a bad moment.
I'm not writing this to push you to ponder your own demise, though that may be a healthy pursuit for many of us. Rather, I want to direct your attention towards a moment of horror that I think is coming – for all of us.
Where We're Headed
Travel with me to the future. Imagine that the year is now 2040.
If we suddenly woke in that year, what would we see in the world? More importantly, what would we not see? Which species would be missing? Which ecosystems will have utterly collapsed?
By extrapolating trends already in place (many of which are accelerating) we can easily predict a future world where there are no large animals left. Perhaps the last giraffe was killed and eaten by a hungry mob back in 2033, joining the White Rhino which was lost back in 2018.
Lions and tigers can no longer be found in the wild; their genetic stock hopelessly compressed into a few zoos and frozen test-tubes, should humans ever rally to justify the expense of trying to resurrect those species.
There are no coral reefs anywhere in the oceans, and essentially no diversity of life left in the seas at all. Acidification has upset and mostly ruined the ocean ecology from the bottom up.
First, we noticed that the oysters no longer successfully made it out of the larval stage. But by the time the scientists delivered a loud enough warning for all of the missing copepods and other vital zooplankton, it was already too late. The jellyfish had taken over. Nobody has a clue how to get the ecology to return to one that can support tuna, rockfish, dolphins, whales, seals and seabirds. Those are all gone -- starved, fished or hunted to extinction.
Worse, the ubiquitous jellyfish are entirely too efficient. In addition to decimating the zooplankton, the jellyfish are eating the phytoplankton responsible for generating most of the world’s oxygen -- their levels too low to continue being a positive force for oxygen release into the atmosphere. “Don’t worry!” scream the Tweets, "Scientists have found a new and better way in the lab to harness the sun to split water. We can make our own oxygen!" However, after the past 1,000+ lab 'miracle breakthroughs' that proved to be duds when attempted at scale, few have hope that this time will prove any different.
The vast systems offered by Nature -- more accurately, that were offered by Nature -- once taken for granted, are now fully appreciated by the people left on Earth. But it’s too late.
The insects are mostly gone, at least in terms of diversity. The terrestrial ecosystem balance that people knew and loved back in “the twenty teens” is gone and has been replaced by something far simpler and painfully less interesting. The failure to block neonicotinoid pesticides in time, as well as their more morally repugnant (yet legal!) derivations that outpaced activist’s ability to fight them, meant that entire classes of pollinators were lost.
With those, entire species of plants disappeared because they were utterly dependent on highly-specific pollinator services. Mankind's few lame attempts at creating “drone pollinators” were so utterly unfit for the task that the term became a profoundly disparaging insult, most frequently applied to ineffective politicians. “Looks like another useless bill being put up by the drone pollinator from New York.”
A few hardy bugs and roaches, lots and lots of ants (where are they all coming from?), and very few flying insects remain. No more large moths in the temperate climates, with such splendid examples as the Luna and Hawk moths now only existing as dead specimens in a few museums, right next to the dodo and African elephant displays.
And it’s been over 15 years since "the dawn chorus of birds" was a phrase that had any meaning. Nearly all of the migratory birds are gone, along with all of the insect eating species. It’s eerily silent outside in the morning. The sight of a single bumblebee, or a flash of colorful plumage, is cause for a quickening of your pulse -- the same physical reaction people once had when as noticing a movie star at a café.
Life, where it now exists in pockets, is revered. In nearly every place it remains, human guardians quickly dispatch any poachers or defilers, burying the bodies without remorse. Non-human life has become more valuable than human life.
Fossil fuels began peaking in 2030 in terms of total BTUs from all sources: oil, gas and coal. And while not crashing, they've unable to provide more, which exposed the 'continuous growth' model as being a cruelly-attractive mirage. Its handmaiden, debt-based money, was also revealed to be an artifact of the surplus energy from fossil fuels. Both models have failed.
As has retirement, a several-generation luxury never to be repeated again in human history. Everyone left alive has to work, if they want to eat.
With the loss of those fantasies, everything is now a difficult trade-off. Not surprising, many people are unable to cope with the consequences. Suicides are a leading cause of death, especially among those born during earlier and more abundant times.
Worst of all, food is now increasingly scarce due to a horrid combination of ruined soils and ever more frequent and destructive climate disruptions. Rains fall where they shouldn't and fail increasingly to fall where they should. Or they fall too hard, and too fast. Summers with temperatures of over 50C baked crops compounding water shortages, with several years' harvests lost entirely because the overnight temperatures did not cool sufficiently to allow for the open-air pollination of corn. Who knew?
How did we ever get to 9 billion people on Earth without considering that this moment might have arrived?
How did we allow ourselves to pretend that it wouldn't?
Why did we let the fantasy of relocating to Mars capture such a broad swath of our imagination and focus? Sure, we put an outpost there for a few years in the 2020’s, but – guess what? – it turns out that Mars is a hostile planet to life. It's utterly lacking in resources, it's much farther from the sun than the Earth, and managing a high-tech existence there was a colossal struggle. Of course we should have realized that going in and not placed so much of our species' odds on that hope. We spent hundreds of billions getting to Mars at the same time we were spending trillions to destroy Earth. What a horrible idea that was. In retrospect, it’s all so terribly obvious.
Another forlorn diversion was vertical farming, which posited that we’d just grow salad greens in container boxes. Of course, with some simple math and logic, we should have been able to realize that plants are calorie conversion machines, turning light energy into food energy. The idea that we were going to meaningfully replace the sun’s free and intense full-spectrum light with our own manufactured lighting, at scale and in sufficient quantities to meaningfully address the caloric needs of 9 billion people was…not very well thought through. Actually, in retrospect, that’s being too kind. We were deluding ourselves.
And so, out here in 2040, looking back, we humans have suddenly come to our collective moment of horrible realization. Because we could not face the idea that our specie's pursuit of collective growth had a predictable end, we forgot to properly care for the one planet we have.
Now that life on Earth is dying, the regret comes pouring out. Oh, how much we’d give to once again be able to hear a cacophony of birds in the morning! Or to swim over a thriving coral reef! Or to boat over an ocean teeming with fishes, whales and sea birds. Instead, the waters are now blank, sterile and depressing.
Remorse and regret. How could we have been so utterly stupid? How could we not have rallied in response to the warning signs, the endless string of increasingly desperate red flashing warning lights any one of which could have -- and should have -- been sufficient to motivate us?
Oh, what we would give to get one more chance! To go back in time and do things differently, protecting and preserving the Earth’s treasures as if…as if we were deeply in love with all of them.
Our Last Chance
In Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is given the chance to return to his present and get another shot at life. If the 2040 vision I’ve painted terrifies you on a fundamental level as it does me, just know that there's still the chance to wake up and positively alter the course of events.
Yes, the trends are very bad, but they can be changed. As I am fond of saying, we already have all the knowledge and technology we need to be agents of regeneration and abundance instead of extraction and degeneration. We simply lack the right narrative to mobilize our society productively.
Go outside and rejoice in what nature has still to offer. Really see the next bird or mammal or insect you encounter. Each one is pure magic. Take a good hard look at the individual before you, not a robin, but that robin. Not a squirrel, but that squirrel. That bumblebee. Each is an individual, same as you. Each has a role, a life, and is busy making decisions and contributing to the story exactly how it is supposed to.
This world we have is the only one we’ll ever have. It’s the one we evolved on and to which our DNA blueprints are exquisitely crafted. And it’s not dying, it’s being killed. We might as well be honest about that and use the active verb.
Killed actively and on purpose, but also by negligence. We’re neglecting to notice what’s true: that humans are a part of, not apart from nature. We are one with the larger world. It’s time to wake up and live into that story. It’s not a new one, but something we forgot in our hasty failing efforts to escape its limits -- limits that disappointed our fragile egos which wanted, needed, to be special and different.
Life ends, and life begins. There’s an evolutionary impulse underway that has given this brief moment of geological history both humans and elephants. We cannot know where evolution is going or why, but we can feel the potential of it all.
Elephants, as well as all of life, should be revered and cared for not because children’s books need real-life examples, or zoos need fresh breeding stock, or even because Kenya needs tourist dollars. But simply because they are here. With us. In this time.
A certain humility needs to be adopted along the lines of We simply don’t know what role the special and peculiar sentience of elephants is playing, so we’d better protect it. Because we don’t know. If we remove that species from the web of life, what cascade may we create?
A Call To Action
I could dredge up all the perilous ecological data I publish often on this site, noting the decline in virtually every species -- with many being lost every day and many more on the brink. But I won’t.
There’s no need. You already know in your gut that something is very badly wrong in this story. Something even worse than killing the life on the planet, including our own.
No, what’s worse is that we can do better but we’re not. We can have immense empathy, and bond with both humans and non-humans alike. We are capable of dimly grasping our own role on this planet and yet we’re collectively continuing to act as if….we’ll live forever. If there are problems with that approach, we're assuming we'll figure them out as they arise.
But as Stephen Jenkinson pointed out, when the stakes are too high that leads to a horrible moment. To get serious about saving other species after they are already gone is a wildly immature idea.
But it is still in our power to avoid that horrible moment. That’s where the idea of a 'movement' comes in. Look, I have little clue about how to actually start a self-sustaining global movement, but I do suspect that it has to involve (1) the right idea at (2) the right time and (3) involve the right people.
We have to do this. I know the time is right because so many people are already deeply unhappy with suicide rates up 30%, opioid addictions and death skyrocketing, and levels of depression (more accurately termed demoralization in most cases) at never before seen levels.
Those are all expressions of people who have lost their will to engage with life, or even to continue living. That means a loss of meaning and purpose, a devastating loss. Adam's recent report gives a hard-hitting breakdown of the mental health epidemic our disconnected and unfulfilling modern way of life has created. Be sure to read it if you haven't already.
To truly “save the planet” is to actually undertake the harder proposition of “saving ourselves.” The planet will be fine … but humans? Maybe not so much.
Changing any of this will begin with each of us as individuals. We have to become the change we wish to see. We have to shift the narrative away from the old bankrupt idea of infinite growth on a finite planet, or that humans are apart from (rather than a part of) Nature, and towards a better narrative that aligns better with the world as it actually is.
This is a tough sell, for sure. Ultimately, it requires us to find a way past our instinctual drive for comfort and more 'stuff'. Waking up to the realities involved is not easy nor pain-free. It’s emotionally devastating at first. And who wants to go through that?
“Inattention to the world's ecological state is well advised. Because attention to it mitigates against your happiness, contentment, and your sense of well-being.”
“Having a conscience now is a grief-soaked proposition”
― Stephen Jenkinson
I do, for one. Why? Because to do so is to pass through the tunnel that brings me back to living fully into the one life that I have. I’m here to live, to make a difference, and to help usher new ideas into the world. The alternative is to face a bitter end-of-life moment that was unavoidable in the first place.
What needs to happen is to somehow awaken the people of the world to the actual nature of the predicaments we face, recognize their inevitability, and go through the wrenching adjustments necessary to realign our collective narrative with the objective truths of our times.
But how?
In some ways I'm encouraged, because so many people seem to be waking up. I know this terrifies The Powers That Be, who so desperately want to cling to their authority at any and all costs, because I track their efforts towards shaping the narrative. There’s nothing subtle about the ways that Wikipedia constantly degrades and disparages the pages devoted to anti-war activists while grotesquely supporting the neocon and war party efforts and related sympathetic journalists.
Twitter and Facebook are constantly stifling various views while elevating those that fall under the umbrella of promoting business as usual and protecting the ideas of those already in power. In other words: more war, more unfairness, and maybe some barely-passable lip-service to the idea that maybe we should devote a percent or two of our resources towards rear-guard actions to protect the environment. None of which are actually effective, of course, or else they would be immediately marginalized as the work of terrorists or malcontents.
All of which is to say that any revolution of thought won’t be televised, as they once said., Perhaps in today's age we should amend this to: The revolution won’t be posted to FB and then successfully re-Tweeted.
In other words, please don’t wait for this to appear on your radar before you take it seriously. It will only ever appear long after it’s far too late.
The revolution underway is already being conducted in places like our own site Peak Prosperity, as well as Charles Eisenstein’s, Charles Hugh Smith’s, Zerohedge, Jim Kunstler, and Craig Murray’s as well as countless others not named here. Each of these sites is committed to telling narratives that run counter to what the guardians in the MSM would like you to hear.
Each of these alternative websites is saying, in its own way, Hey the old way doesn’t even make sense anymore, is shot through with logical inconsistencies, and in many cases lacks even basic morality. Collectively, they're offering an invitation to see things differently, and to begin acting differently.
Our challenge is to remain focused, to promote the new ideas, and to be the leaders that are needed in these changing and difficult times. Our adversaries are those peddling fantasies that serve only to pacify our growing inner discomfort as the world dies around us, as well as those who seek to diffuse, distort and decay the new messages either for corporate or political ends.
Our various social media platforms are a slithering mess of ever-changing algorithms (making it hard to know who you are or aren't reaching with any given post), paid trolls, and bots programmed to deceive, slide, and/or derail any given conversation.
Which means we’ll need to be alert to those tactics and find other ways of remaining in touch. You’ll need to trust your own instincts, and avoid the numerous and sophisticated ways that we are being made to feel powerless, isolated, and even a bit crazy for thinking the things we do.
My personal strategy is to (severely) limit my time on Facebook, use Twitter only for data and never opinions, and then comment at sites like Peak Prosperity where the moderation is heavy and bots and trolls are quickly booted.
This movement will consist of good people taking right action. People who are willing to lead because they know it falls to them and they are not afraid to stand out and be different for a while. People who can read the data and know that it is correct because they can feel it in their bones.
The time for infinite growth is over. It’s increasingly obvious that the benefits of pursuing growth have nosed over, and that the human rocket is now pointed towards the Earth.
We still have time to right this ship, but it’s going to take heroic efforts by a lot of people. We need to be willing to give much and possibly lose even more. However, it won’t be futile sacrifice, because this is just how things are sometimes. You were born here and now, into these times, and your gifts are desperately needed.
We need each other. And you know what? Along they way we may just discover unity, purpose, meaning and our true individual gifts to bring forth.
My personal invitation is to support the mission of Peak Prosperity (“Creating a World Worth Inheriting”) by becoming an active premium subscriber so that Adam and I can continue to bring these messages to the world, along with promising models for a sustainable future. If not that, then please use your time and money to support others working in these areas, not least of which would be the important works of the individuals writing the blogs listed above.
It's only by facing the true nature of our predicaments that we can avoid a truly horrible future moment of deep and profound regret.
Time still remains, but it is running short.
We are open to any and all ideas about how to build, join or support a movement of like-minded people who are ready and able to shuck the old conventions and start anew which begins by facing the data as we know it today.
None of the former splitting/sorting functions of old apply here. So please don’t offer up one political party over the other, or any one country or system as being better, or ways we might vote new and better scoundrels into office, or tweaks to the existing exponential debt-based fiat money system that might extend things a bit longer. None of those hold any merit.
We need a new narrative and even if it cannot lay claim to “the truth” it cannot be based on obvious falsehoods. How do we create that new narrative in a way that it can be shared broadly? What needs to be done? Who should be involved?
Perhaps nothing needs doing, and this will all unfold of its own accord when its ready, but for those with an active “do” gene, like us, there are things to be done and efforts to be made.
So let’s get going. Either we do this on our own terms now, or we all face the horror of profound regret later.
The really good news? If we do this right, we reclaim our lives, our sense of meaning, our connection to each other and the sacred, and we fulfill our potential as creative stewards of planet Earth.
....
Unfortunately the human actions that are creating/ have created our increasingly dire situation are a result of the architecture of our minds, which means BAU will continue. There won't be any meaningful change to save us. You see it in the past, present, and it will be so in our future.
SC167-2
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-summer-of-discontent/
The Summer of Discontent
The ill-feeling among leaders of the G-7 nations — essentially, the West plus Japan — was mirrored early this morning in the puking financial market futures, so odious, apparently, is the presence of America’s Golden Golem of Greatness at the Quebec meet-up of First World poobahs. It’s hard to blame them. The GGG refuses to play nice in the sandbox of the old order.
Like many observers here in the USA, I can’t tell exactly whether Donald Trump is out of his mind or justifiably blowing up out-of-date relationships and conventions in a world that is desperately seeking a new disposition of things. The West had a mighty good run in the decades since the fiascos of the mid-20th century. My guess is that we’re witnessing a slow-burning panic over the impossibility of maintaining the enviable standard of living we’ve all enjoyed.
All the jabber is about trade and obstacles to trade, but the real action probably emanates from the energy sector, especially oil. The G-7 nations are nothing without it, and the supply is getting sketchy at the margins in a way that probably and rightfully scares them. I’d suppose, for instance, that the recent run-up in oil prices from $40-a barrel to nearly $80 has had the usual effect of dampening economic activity worldwide. For some odd reason, the media doesn’t pay attention to any of that. But it’s become virtually an axiom that oil over $75-a-barrel smashes economies while oil under $75-a-barrel crushes oil companies.
Mr. Trump probably believes that the USA is in the catbird seat with oil because of the so-called “shale oil miracle.” If so, he is no more deluded than the rest of his fellow citizens, including government officials and journalists, who have failed to notice that the economics of shale oil don’t pencil out — or are afraid to say. The oil companies are not making a red cent at it, despite the record-breaking production numbers that recently exceeded the previous all-time-peak set in 1970. The public believes that we’re “energy independent” now, which is simply not true because we still import way more oil than we export: 10.7 million barrels incoming versus 7.1 million barrels a day outgoing (US EIA).
Shale oil is not a miracle so much as a spectacular stunt: how to leverage cheap debt for a short-term bump in resource extraction at the expense of a future that will surely be starved for oil. Now that the world is having major problems with excessive debt, it is also going to have major problems with oil. The quarrels over trade arise from this unacknowledged predicament: there will be less of everything that the economically hyper-developed nations want and need, including capital. So, what’s shaping up is a fight over the table-scraps of the banquet that is shutting down.
That quandary is surely enough to make powerful nations very nervous. It may also prompt them to actions and outcomes that were previously unthinkable. At the moment the excessive debt threatens to blow up the European Union, which is liable to be a much bigger problem for the EU than anything Trump is up to. It has been an admirably stable era for Europe and Japan, and I suppose the Boomers and X gens don’t really remember a time not so long ago when Europe was a cauldron of tribal hatreds and stupendous violence, with Japan marching all over East Asia, wrecking things.
There is also surprisingly little critical commentary on the notion that Mr. Trump is seeking to “re-industrialize” America. It’s perhaps an understandable wish to return to the magical prosperity of yesteryear. But things have changed. And if wishes were fishes, the state of the earth’s oceans is chastening to enough to give you the heebie-jeebies. Anyway, we’re not going back to the Detroit of 1957. We’ll be fortunate if we can turn out brooms and scythes twenty years from now, let alone flying Teslas.
This will be the summer of discontent for the West especially. The fact that populism is still a rising force among these nations is a clue of broad public skepticism about maintaining the current order. No wonder the massive bureaucracies vested in that order are freaking out. I’m not sure Mr. Trump even knows or appreciates just how he represents these dangerous dynamics.
The Summer of Discontent
The ill-feeling among leaders of the G-7 nations — essentially, the West plus Japan — was mirrored early this morning in the puking financial market futures, so odious, apparently, is the presence of America’s Golden Golem of Greatness at the Quebec meet-up of First World poobahs. It’s hard to blame them. The GGG refuses to play nice in the sandbox of the old order.
Like many observers here in the USA, I can’t tell exactly whether Donald Trump is out of his mind or justifiably blowing up out-of-date relationships and conventions in a world that is desperately seeking a new disposition of things. The West had a mighty good run in the decades since the fiascos of the mid-20th century. My guess is that we’re witnessing a slow-burning panic over the impossibility of maintaining the enviable standard of living we’ve all enjoyed.
All the jabber is about trade and obstacles to trade, but the real action probably emanates from the energy sector, especially oil. The G-7 nations are nothing without it, and the supply is getting sketchy at the margins in a way that probably and rightfully scares them. I’d suppose, for instance, that the recent run-up in oil prices from $40-a barrel to nearly $80 has had the usual effect of dampening economic activity worldwide. For some odd reason, the media doesn’t pay attention to any of that. But it’s become virtually an axiom that oil over $75-a-barrel smashes economies while oil under $75-a-barrel crushes oil companies.
Mr. Trump probably believes that the USA is in the catbird seat with oil because of the so-called “shale oil miracle.” If so, he is no more deluded than the rest of his fellow citizens, including government officials and journalists, who have failed to notice that the economics of shale oil don’t pencil out — or are afraid to say. The oil companies are not making a red cent at it, despite the record-breaking production numbers that recently exceeded the previous all-time-peak set in 1970. The public believes that we’re “energy independent” now, which is simply not true because we still import way more oil than we export: 10.7 million barrels incoming versus 7.1 million barrels a day outgoing (US EIA).
Shale oil is not a miracle so much as a spectacular stunt: how to leverage cheap debt for a short-term bump in resource extraction at the expense of a future that will surely be starved for oil. Now that the world is having major problems with excessive debt, it is also going to have major problems with oil. The quarrels over trade arise from this unacknowledged predicament: there will be less of everything that the economically hyper-developed nations want and need, including capital. So, what’s shaping up is a fight over the table-scraps of the banquet that is shutting down.
That quandary is surely enough to make powerful nations very nervous. It may also prompt them to actions and outcomes that were previously unthinkable. At the moment the excessive debt threatens to blow up the European Union, which is liable to be a much bigger problem for the EU than anything Trump is up to. It has been an admirably stable era for Europe and Japan, and I suppose the Boomers and X gens don’t really remember a time not so long ago when Europe was a cauldron of tribal hatreds and stupendous violence, with Japan marching all over East Asia, wrecking things.
There is also surprisingly little critical commentary on the notion that Mr. Trump is seeking to “re-industrialize” America. It’s perhaps an understandable wish to return to the magical prosperity of yesteryear. But things have changed. And if wishes were fishes, the state of the earth’s oceans is chastening to enough to give you the heebie-jeebies. Anyway, we’re not going back to the Detroit of 1957. We’ll be fortunate if we can turn out brooms and scythes twenty years from now, let alone flying Teslas.
This will be the summer of discontent for the West especially. The fact that populism is still a rising force among these nations is a clue of broad public skepticism about maintaining the current order. No wonder the massive bureaucracies vested in that order are freaking out. I’m not sure Mr. Trump even knows or appreciates just how he represents these dangerous dynamics.
Sunday, June 10, 2018
SC167-1
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/scapegoating-iran/
Scapegoating Iran
Seventeen years of war in the Middle East and what do we have to show for it? Iraq after our 2003 invasion and occupation is no longer a unified country. Its once modern infrastructure is largely destroyed, and the nation has fractured into warring enclaves. We have lost the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban is resurgent and has a presence in over 70 percent of the country. Libya is a failed state. Yemen after three years of relentless airstrikes and a blockade is enduring one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. The 500 “moderate” rebels we funded and armed in Syria at a cost of $500 million are in retreat after instigating a lawless reign of terror. The military adventurism has cost a staggering $5.6 trillion as our infrastructure crumbles, austerity guts basic services and half the population of the United States lives at or near poverty levels. The endless wars in the Middle East are the biggest strategic blunder in American history and herald the death of the empire.
Someone has to be blamed for debacles that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead, including at least 200,000 civilians, and millions driven from their homes. Someone has to be blamed for the proliferation of radical jihadist groups throughout the Middle East, the continued worldwide terrorist attacks, the wholesale destruction of cities and towns under relentless airstrikes and the abject failure of U.S. and U.S.-backed forces to stanch the insurgencies. You can be sure it won’t be the generals, the politicians such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the rabid neocons such as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton who sold us the wars, the Central Intelligence Agency, the arms contractors who profit from perpetual war or the celebrity pundits on the airwaves and in newspapers who serve as cheerleaders for the mayhem.
“The failed policies, or lack of policies, of the United States, which violate international law, have left the Middle East in total chaos,” the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Gholamali Khoshroo, told me when we met in New York City. “The United States, to cover up these aggressive, reckless and costly policies, blames Iran. Iran is blamed for their failures in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon.”
The Trump administration “is very naive about the Middle East and Iran,” the ambassador said. “It can only speak in the language of threats—pressure, sanctions, intervention. These policies have failed in the region. They are very risky and costly. Let the Americans deal with the problems of the countries they have already invaded and attacked. America lacks constructive power in the Middle East. It is unable to govern even a village in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Syria. All it can do is use force and destructive power. This U.S. administration wants the Middle East and the whole world to bow to it. This is not a policy conducive to sound relationships with sovereign states, especially those countries that have resisted American influence.”
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“The plan to arm ‘moderate’ rebels in Syria was a cover to topple [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad,” the ambassador went on. “The Americans knew there were no ‘moderate’ rebels. They knew these weapons would get into the hands of terrorist groups like Daesh [Islamic State], Al-Nusra and their affiliates. Once again, the American policy failed. The Americans succeeded in destroying a country. They succeeded in creating bloodbaths. They succeeded in displacing millions of people. But they gained nothing. The sovereignty of Syria is expanding by the day. It is hard to imagine what President Trump is offering as a strategy in Syria. One day, he says, ‘I will move out of Syria very soon, very quickly.’ The next day he says, ‘If Iran is there, we should stay.’ I wonder if the American taxpayers know how much of their money has been wasted in Iraq, Syria and Yemen?”
Trump’s unilateral decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, although Iran was in compliance with the agreement, was the first salvo in this effort to divert attention from these failures to Iran. Bolton, the new national security adviser, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, along with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, advocate the overthrow of the Iranian government, with Giuliani saying last month that Trump is “as committed to regime change as we [an inner circle of presidential advisers] are.”
“The Iran nuclear deal was possible following several letters by President Barack Obama assuring the Iranian leadership that America had no intention of violating Iranian sovereignty,” Ambassador Khoshroo said. “America said it wanted to engage in a serious dialogue on equal footing and mutual interests and concerns. These assurances led to the negotiations that concluded with the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action]. From the beginning, however, America was not forthcoming in its dealings with us on the JCPOA. President Obama wanted the agreement to be implemented, but he did not want it implemented in its full capacity. Congress, on the day JCPOA was implemented, passed a law warning Europeans that were doing business with Iran. The staffs of companies had to apply for a visa to the United States if they had traveled to Iran for business purposes. This began on the first day. The Americans were not always very forthcoming. OFAC [Office of Foreign Funds Control] gave ambiguous answers to many of the questions that companies had about sanctions, but at least in words the Obama administration supported the JCPOA and saw the agreement as the basis for our interactions.”
“President Trump, however, even as a candidate, called the agreement ‘the worst deal America ever made,’ ” the ambassador said. “He called this deal a source of embarrassment for America. Indeed, it was not the deal but America’s unilateral decision to walk away from an agreement that was supported by the United Nations Security Council, and in fact co-sponsored and drafted by the United States, that is the source of embarrassment for America. To walk away from an international agreement and then threaten a sovereign country is the real source of embarrassment since Iran was in full compliance while the U.S. never was.”
“In 2008, the Israelis told the world that Iran was only some days away from acquiring an atomic bomb,” he said. “The Israelis said there had to be a military strike to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. What has happened since? During the last two years, there have been 11 reports by the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] clearly confirming and demonstrating Iran’s full compliance with the JCPOA. All of the accusations [about] Iran using nuclear facilities for military purposes were refuted by the IAEA as well as by Europe, Russia, China, along with many other countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa. America is concerned about Iranian influence in the region and seeks to contain Iran because the U.S. administration realizes that America’s policies in the Middle East have failed. Their own statements about Iran repeatedly contradict each other. One day they say, ‘Iran is so weak it will collapse,’ and the next day they say, ‘Iran is governing several Arab capitals in the Middle East.’ ”
Iran announced recently that it has tentative plans to produce the feedstock for centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium, if the nuclear deal is not salvaged by European members of the JCPOA. European countries, dismayed by Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement, are attempting to renegotiate the deal, which imposes restrictions on Iran’s nuclear development in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
Why go to war with a country that abides by an agreement it has signed with the United States? Why attack a government that is the mortal enemy of the Taliban, along with other jihadist groups, including al-Qaida and Islamic State, that now threaten us after we created and armed them? Why shatter the de facto alliance we have with Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why further destabilize a region already dangerously volatile?
The architects of these wars are in trouble. They have watched helplessly as the instability and political vacuum they caused, especially in Iraq, left Iran as the dominant power in the region. Washington, in essence, elevated its nemesis. It has no idea how to reverse its mistake, beyond attacking Iran. Those both in the U.S. and abroad who began or promoted these wars see a conflict with Iran as a solution to their foreign and increasingly domestic dilemmas.
For example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, mired in corruption scandals, hopes that by fostering a conflict with Iran he can divert attention away from investigations into his abuse of power and the massacres Israel carries out against Palestinians, along with Israel’s accelerated seizure of Palestinian land.
“The most brutal regime is now in power in Israel,” the Iranian ambassador said. “It has no regard for international law or humanitarian law. It violates Security Council resolutions regarding settlements, its capital and occupation. Look at what Israel has done in Gaza in the last 30 days. On the same day America was unlawfully transferring its embassy to Jerusalem, 60 unarmed Palestinian protesters were killed by Israeli snipers. [Israelis] were dancing in Jerusalem while the blood of unarmed Palestinians was running in Gaza. The Trump administration gives total support and impunity to Israel. This angers many people in the Middle East, including many in Saudi Arabia. It is a Zionist project to portray Iran as the main threat to peace in the Middle East. Israel introducing Iran as a threat is an attempt to divert attention from the crimes this regime is committing, but these too are failed policies that will backfire. They are policies designed to cover weakness.”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, facing internal unrest, launched the war in Yemen as a vanity project to bolster his credentials as a military leader. Now he desperately needs to deflect attention from the quagmire and humanitarian disaster he created.
“Saudi Arabia, as part of [the civil war in Yemen], has a tactical and strategic cooperation with Israel against Iran,” the ambassador said. “But the Saudi regime is defying the sentiments of its own people. How long will this be possible? For three years now, Saudi Arabia, assisted by the United States, has bombed the Yemeni people and imposed a total blockade that includes food and medicine. Nothing has been resolved. Once again, Iran is blamed for this failure by Saudi Arabia and the United States in Yemen. Even if Iran wanted to help the Yemenis, it is not possible due to the total blockade. The Yemeni people asked for peace negotiations from the first day of the war. But Saudi military adventurism and its desire to test its military resolve made any peaceful solution impossible. The U.S. and the U.K. provide military and logistical support, including cluster bombs to be used by the Saudis in Yemen. The Emiratis are bombing Yemen. All such actions are doomed to failure since there is no military solution in Yemen. There is only a political solution. Look at the targets of Saudi airstrikes in Yemen: funerals. Wedding ceremonies. Agricultural fields. Houses. Civilians. How do the Saudis expect the Yemeni people to greet those who bomb them? With hugs? The war has cost a lot of money, and Trump responds by saying [to Saudi Arabia], ‘Oh you have money. [Paraphrasing here.] Please buy our ‘beautiful weapons.’ They are killing beautiful children with these ‘beautiful’ weapons. It is a disaster. It is tragic.”
And then there is President Donald Trump, desperate for a global crusade he can use to mask his ineptitude, the rampant corruption of his administration and his status as an international pariah when he runs for re-election in 2020.
“Of course, blaming and threatening Iran is not new,” the ambassador said. “This has been going on for 40 years. The Iranian people and the Iranian government are accustomed to this nonsense. United States intervention in the internal affairs of Iran goes back a long time, including the [Iranian] war with Iraq, when the United States supported Saddam Hussein. Then America invaded Iraq in 2003 in their so-called ‘intervention for democracy and elimination of WMDs.’ Iran has always resisted and will always resist U.S. threats.”
“America was in Iran 40 years ago,” the ambassador said. “About 100,000 U.S. advisers were in Iran during the rule of the shah, who was among the closest allies of America. America was unable to keep this regime in power because the Iranian people revolted against such dependency and suppression. Since the fall of the shah in 1979, for 40 years, America continued to violate international law, especially the Algeria agreements it signed with Iran in 1981.”
The Algeria Declaration was a set of agreements between the United States and Iran that resolved the Iranian hostage crisis. It was brokered by the Algerian government. The U.S. committed itself in the Algeria Declaration to refrain from interference in Iranian internal affairs and to lift trade sanctions on Iran and a freeze on Iranian assets.
The warmongers have no more of a plan for “regime change” in Iran than they had in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria. European allies, whom Trump alienated when he walked away from the Iranian nuclear agreement, are in no mood to cooperate with Washington. The Pentagon, even if it wanted to, does not have the hundreds of thousands of troops it would need to attack and occupy Iran. And the idea—pushed by lunatic fringe figures like Bolton and Giuliani—that the marginal and discredited Iranian resistance group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which fought alongside Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran and is viewed by most Iranians as composed of traitors, is a viable counterforce to the Iranian government is ludicrous. In all these equations the 80 million people in Iran are ignored just as the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria were ignored. Perhaps they would not welcome a war with the United States. Perhaps if attacked they would resist. Perhaps they don’t want to be occupied. Perhaps a war with Iran would be interpreted throughout the region as a war against Shiism. But these are calculations that the ideologues, who know little about the instrument of war and even less about the cultures or peoples they seek to dominate, are unable to fathom.
“The Middle East has many problems: insecurity, instability, problems with natural resources such as water, etc.,” Khoshroo said. “All of these problems have been made worse by foreign intervention as well as Israel’s lawlessness. The issue of Palestine is at the heart of turmoil in the Middle East for Muslims. Any delay in finding solutions to these wounds in the Middle East exposes this region to more dangerous threats. Americans say they want the Middle East to be free from violent extremism, but this will only happen when the Middle East is free from occupation and foreign intervention. The Americans are selling their weapons throughout the Middle East. They calculate how much money they can earn from destruction. They don’t care about human beings. They don’t care about security or democratic process or political process. This is worrisome.”
“What are the results of American policies in the Middle East?” he asked. “All of the American allies in the region are in turmoil. Only Iran is secure and stable. Why is this the case? Why, during the last 40 years, has Iran been stable? Is it because Iran has no relationship with America? Why is there hostility between Iran and America? Can’t the Americans see that Iran’s stability is important for the region? We are surrounded by Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen. What good would come from destabilizing Iran? What would America get out of that?”
Scapegoating Iran
Seventeen years of war in the Middle East and what do we have to show for it? Iraq after our 2003 invasion and occupation is no longer a unified country. Its once modern infrastructure is largely destroyed, and the nation has fractured into warring enclaves. We have lost the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban is resurgent and has a presence in over 70 percent of the country. Libya is a failed state. Yemen after three years of relentless airstrikes and a blockade is enduring one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. The 500 “moderate” rebels we funded and armed in Syria at a cost of $500 million are in retreat after instigating a lawless reign of terror. The military adventurism has cost a staggering $5.6 trillion as our infrastructure crumbles, austerity guts basic services and half the population of the United States lives at or near poverty levels. The endless wars in the Middle East are the biggest strategic blunder in American history and herald the death of the empire.
Someone has to be blamed for debacles that have resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead, including at least 200,000 civilians, and millions driven from their homes. Someone has to be blamed for the proliferation of radical jihadist groups throughout the Middle East, the continued worldwide terrorist attacks, the wholesale destruction of cities and towns under relentless airstrikes and the abject failure of U.S. and U.S.-backed forces to stanch the insurgencies. You can be sure it won’t be the generals, the politicians such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the rabid neocons such as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton who sold us the wars, the Central Intelligence Agency, the arms contractors who profit from perpetual war or the celebrity pundits on the airwaves and in newspapers who serve as cheerleaders for the mayhem.
“The failed policies, or lack of policies, of the United States, which violate international law, have left the Middle East in total chaos,” the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Gholamali Khoshroo, told me when we met in New York City. “The United States, to cover up these aggressive, reckless and costly policies, blames Iran. Iran is blamed for their failures in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon.”
The Trump administration “is very naive about the Middle East and Iran,” the ambassador said. “It can only speak in the language of threats—pressure, sanctions, intervention. These policies have failed in the region. They are very risky and costly. Let the Americans deal with the problems of the countries they have already invaded and attacked. America lacks constructive power in the Middle East. It is unable to govern even a village in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen or Syria. All it can do is use force and destructive power. This U.S. administration wants the Middle East and the whole world to bow to it. This is not a policy conducive to sound relationships with sovereign states, especially those countries that have resisted American influence.”
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“The plan to arm ‘moderate’ rebels in Syria was a cover to topple [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad,” the ambassador went on. “The Americans knew there were no ‘moderate’ rebels. They knew these weapons would get into the hands of terrorist groups like Daesh [Islamic State], Al-Nusra and their affiliates. Once again, the American policy failed. The Americans succeeded in destroying a country. They succeeded in creating bloodbaths. They succeeded in displacing millions of people. But they gained nothing. The sovereignty of Syria is expanding by the day. It is hard to imagine what President Trump is offering as a strategy in Syria. One day, he says, ‘I will move out of Syria very soon, very quickly.’ The next day he says, ‘If Iran is there, we should stay.’ I wonder if the American taxpayers know how much of their money has been wasted in Iraq, Syria and Yemen?”
Trump’s unilateral decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, although Iran was in compliance with the agreement, was the first salvo in this effort to divert attention from these failures to Iran. Bolton, the new national security adviser, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, along with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, advocate the overthrow of the Iranian government, with Giuliani saying last month that Trump is “as committed to regime change as we [an inner circle of presidential advisers] are.”
“The Iran nuclear deal was possible following several letters by President Barack Obama assuring the Iranian leadership that America had no intention of violating Iranian sovereignty,” Ambassador Khoshroo said. “America said it wanted to engage in a serious dialogue on equal footing and mutual interests and concerns. These assurances led to the negotiations that concluded with the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action]. From the beginning, however, America was not forthcoming in its dealings with us on the JCPOA. President Obama wanted the agreement to be implemented, but he did not want it implemented in its full capacity. Congress, on the day JCPOA was implemented, passed a law warning Europeans that were doing business with Iran. The staffs of companies had to apply for a visa to the United States if they had traveled to Iran for business purposes. This began on the first day. The Americans were not always very forthcoming. OFAC [Office of Foreign Funds Control] gave ambiguous answers to many of the questions that companies had about sanctions, but at least in words the Obama administration supported the JCPOA and saw the agreement as the basis for our interactions.”
“President Trump, however, even as a candidate, called the agreement ‘the worst deal America ever made,’ ” the ambassador said. “He called this deal a source of embarrassment for America. Indeed, it was not the deal but America’s unilateral decision to walk away from an agreement that was supported by the United Nations Security Council, and in fact co-sponsored and drafted by the United States, that is the source of embarrassment for America. To walk away from an international agreement and then threaten a sovereign country is the real source of embarrassment since Iran was in full compliance while the U.S. never was.”
“In 2008, the Israelis told the world that Iran was only some days away from acquiring an atomic bomb,” he said. “The Israelis said there had to be a military strike to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. What has happened since? During the last two years, there have been 11 reports by the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] clearly confirming and demonstrating Iran’s full compliance with the JCPOA. All of the accusations [about] Iran using nuclear facilities for military purposes were refuted by the IAEA as well as by Europe, Russia, China, along with many other countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa. America is concerned about Iranian influence in the region and seeks to contain Iran because the U.S. administration realizes that America’s policies in the Middle East have failed. Their own statements about Iran repeatedly contradict each other. One day they say, ‘Iran is so weak it will collapse,’ and the next day they say, ‘Iran is governing several Arab capitals in the Middle East.’ ”
Iran announced recently that it has tentative plans to produce the feedstock for centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium, if the nuclear deal is not salvaged by European members of the JCPOA. European countries, dismayed by Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement, are attempting to renegotiate the deal, which imposes restrictions on Iran’s nuclear development in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
Why go to war with a country that abides by an agreement it has signed with the United States? Why attack a government that is the mortal enemy of the Taliban, along with other jihadist groups, including al-Qaida and Islamic State, that now threaten us after we created and armed them? Why shatter the de facto alliance we have with Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why further destabilize a region already dangerously volatile?
The architects of these wars are in trouble. They have watched helplessly as the instability and political vacuum they caused, especially in Iraq, left Iran as the dominant power in the region. Washington, in essence, elevated its nemesis. It has no idea how to reverse its mistake, beyond attacking Iran. Those both in the U.S. and abroad who began or promoted these wars see a conflict with Iran as a solution to their foreign and increasingly domestic dilemmas.
For example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, mired in corruption scandals, hopes that by fostering a conflict with Iran he can divert attention away from investigations into his abuse of power and the massacres Israel carries out against Palestinians, along with Israel’s accelerated seizure of Palestinian land.
“The most brutal regime is now in power in Israel,” the Iranian ambassador said. “It has no regard for international law or humanitarian law. It violates Security Council resolutions regarding settlements, its capital and occupation. Look at what Israel has done in Gaza in the last 30 days. On the same day America was unlawfully transferring its embassy to Jerusalem, 60 unarmed Palestinian protesters were killed by Israeli snipers. [Israelis] were dancing in Jerusalem while the blood of unarmed Palestinians was running in Gaza. The Trump administration gives total support and impunity to Israel. This angers many people in the Middle East, including many in Saudi Arabia. It is a Zionist project to portray Iran as the main threat to peace in the Middle East. Israel introducing Iran as a threat is an attempt to divert attention from the crimes this regime is committing, but these too are failed policies that will backfire. They are policies designed to cover weakness.”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, facing internal unrest, launched the war in Yemen as a vanity project to bolster his credentials as a military leader. Now he desperately needs to deflect attention from the quagmire and humanitarian disaster he created.
“Saudi Arabia, as part of [the civil war in Yemen], has a tactical and strategic cooperation with Israel against Iran,” the ambassador said. “But the Saudi regime is defying the sentiments of its own people. How long will this be possible? For three years now, Saudi Arabia, assisted by the United States, has bombed the Yemeni people and imposed a total blockade that includes food and medicine. Nothing has been resolved. Once again, Iran is blamed for this failure by Saudi Arabia and the United States in Yemen. Even if Iran wanted to help the Yemenis, it is not possible due to the total blockade. The Yemeni people asked for peace negotiations from the first day of the war. But Saudi military adventurism and its desire to test its military resolve made any peaceful solution impossible. The U.S. and the U.K. provide military and logistical support, including cluster bombs to be used by the Saudis in Yemen. The Emiratis are bombing Yemen. All such actions are doomed to failure since there is no military solution in Yemen. There is only a political solution. Look at the targets of Saudi airstrikes in Yemen: funerals. Wedding ceremonies. Agricultural fields. Houses. Civilians. How do the Saudis expect the Yemeni people to greet those who bomb them? With hugs? The war has cost a lot of money, and Trump responds by saying [to Saudi Arabia], ‘Oh you have money. [Paraphrasing here.] Please buy our ‘beautiful weapons.’ They are killing beautiful children with these ‘beautiful’ weapons. It is a disaster. It is tragic.”
And then there is President Donald Trump, desperate for a global crusade he can use to mask his ineptitude, the rampant corruption of his administration and his status as an international pariah when he runs for re-election in 2020.
“Of course, blaming and threatening Iran is not new,” the ambassador said. “This has been going on for 40 years. The Iranian people and the Iranian government are accustomed to this nonsense. United States intervention in the internal affairs of Iran goes back a long time, including the [Iranian] war with Iraq, when the United States supported Saddam Hussein. Then America invaded Iraq in 2003 in their so-called ‘intervention for democracy and elimination of WMDs.’ Iran has always resisted and will always resist U.S. threats.”
“America was in Iran 40 years ago,” the ambassador said. “About 100,000 U.S. advisers were in Iran during the rule of the shah, who was among the closest allies of America. America was unable to keep this regime in power because the Iranian people revolted against such dependency and suppression. Since the fall of the shah in 1979, for 40 years, America continued to violate international law, especially the Algeria agreements it signed with Iran in 1981.”
The Algeria Declaration was a set of agreements between the United States and Iran that resolved the Iranian hostage crisis. It was brokered by the Algerian government. The U.S. committed itself in the Algeria Declaration to refrain from interference in Iranian internal affairs and to lift trade sanctions on Iran and a freeze on Iranian assets.
The warmongers have no more of a plan for “regime change” in Iran than they had in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria. European allies, whom Trump alienated when he walked away from the Iranian nuclear agreement, are in no mood to cooperate with Washington. The Pentagon, even if it wanted to, does not have the hundreds of thousands of troops it would need to attack and occupy Iran. And the idea—pushed by lunatic fringe figures like Bolton and Giuliani—that the marginal and discredited Iranian resistance group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which fought alongside Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran and is viewed by most Iranians as composed of traitors, is a viable counterforce to the Iranian government is ludicrous. In all these equations the 80 million people in Iran are ignored just as the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria were ignored. Perhaps they would not welcome a war with the United States. Perhaps if attacked they would resist. Perhaps they don’t want to be occupied. Perhaps a war with Iran would be interpreted throughout the region as a war against Shiism. But these are calculations that the ideologues, who know little about the instrument of war and even less about the cultures or peoples they seek to dominate, are unable to fathom.
“The Middle East has many problems: insecurity, instability, problems with natural resources such as water, etc.,” Khoshroo said. “All of these problems have been made worse by foreign intervention as well as Israel’s lawlessness. The issue of Palestine is at the heart of turmoil in the Middle East for Muslims. Any delay in finding solutions to these wounds in the Middle East exposes this region to more dangerous threats. Americans say they want the Middle East to be free from violent extremism, but this will only happen when the Middle East is free from occupation and foreign intervention. The Americans are selling their weapons throughout the Middle East. They calculate how much money they can earn from destruction. They don’t care about human beings. They don’t care about security or democratic process or political process. This is worrisome.”
“What are the results of American policies in the Middle East?” he asked. “All of the American allies in the region are in turmoil. Only Iran is secure and stable. Why is this the case? Why, during the last 40 years, has Iran been stable? Is it because Iran has no relationship with America? Why is there hostility between Iran and America? Can’t the Americans see that Iran’s stability is important for the region? We are surrounded by Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen. What good would come from destabilizing Iran? What would America get out of that?”
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
SC166-15
https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
The Three Crises That Will Synchronize a Global Meltdown by 2025
To understand the synchronized global meltdown that is on tap for the 2021-2025 period, we must first stipulate the relationship of "money" to energy: "money" is nothing more than a claim on future energy. If there's no energy available to fuel the global economy, "money" will have little value.
The conventional economists assure us that energy is now a small part of the overall economy, so fluctuations in energy prices will have a limited effect on global prosperity. But what's left of global prosperity when energy is unable to meet current demand at any price that consumers can afford?
The current "economic understanding" of energy and "money" is an artifact of a unique period of cheap, abundant fossil fuels. It is an article of faith in economics that energy will always become cheaper and more abundant as the pixie-dust of technology is irreversible. By the time fossil fuels become scarce many decades hence, we'll all have cold-fusion generators, or micro-nuclear power plants or nearly free electricity from solar panels, and so on.
This is of course complete rubbish. To scale up any energy source to replace fossil fuels will require decades and tens of trillions of dollars in capital investment. In other words, energy development is a financial dynamic. Technology is only the first small piece of a much larger puzzle.
This becomes clear when we ponder the unwelcome reality that the fracking miracle has resulted in $250 billion in losses. You mean all those companies lost money exploiting the miracle technologies of fracking?
My point is profits are not guaranteed in any industry that requires trillions in new investment before it earns a positive return. The financial graveyard is littered with the carcasses of costly energy technologies that were supposed to "save industrial civilization" with some new clean source of essentially limitless energy.
Conventional economists also tend to overlook the impact of rising domestic consumption of oil exporting nations. A funny thing happens when domestic demand rises with population and prosperity; the exporting nation may pump the same quantity of oil, but there's no longer much left to export.
Then there's the fantasy that governments can't go broke because they can always print as much money as they need. Venezuela proves this is correct, right? Oops, sorry: Venezuela proved that this faith in the power of the central bank/government printing press is rubbish.
You can't print more oil. You can print more future claims on oil (i.e. "money"), but all that does is devalue the existing stock of "money." Print enough "money" and all your "money" loses its purchasing power.
Inflation has a peculiar feature: printing more "money" doesn't solve the decline in purchasing power of inflation, it accelerates the decline in purchasing power. The mainstream has grown accustomed to the fantasy that all financial difficulties can be solved by central banks creating more credit / "money." But when inflation in real-world essentials like energy kicks in, expanding the pool of "money" and credit won't solve the supply-demand imbalance--it will only devalue the purchasing power of all existing "money," impoverishing everyone holding "money."
The third crisis is governance: around the world, regardless of the ideology or form of governance, the quality and legitimacy of governance is crumbling. Ruling Elites are doing everything they can to keep the privileged-insiders-plundering status quo intact, but the Elites' policies are hollowing out their economies and weakening the buffers supporting increasingly fragile civil societies.
The financial, energy and governance buffers will all start collapsing in a global synchronized meltdown in the 2021 - 2025 period. Why synchronized? Because the global financial and energy markets are one system. Once the system's buffers collapse, everyone dependent on trade, global finance and energy will collapse in a domino effect that will start with the weakest periphery nations. No nation or empire will be immune, as all the major powers rely on "money" with phantom value and energy that can't be printed by central banks.
Here's my diagram of how buffers weaken beneath the phony facade of "endless prosperity":
Venezuela's "money" exemplifies the future of all "money,", including the euro, yen, yuan/RMB and the U.S. dollar. There is nothing inherently permanent or valuable in "money" printed by central banks or governments; they are nothing but fast-accumulating claims on a diminishing supply of future energy.
We're going to get a synchronized global dynamic, but it won't be "growth" and stability, it will be DeGrowth and instability. The harsh realities of energy, "money" and mis-governance will come home to roost, and all the fantasies that technology and central banks printing "money" will save us will dissolve into thin air.
The Three Crises That Will Synchronize a Global Meltdown by 2025
To understand the synchronized global meltdown that is on tap for the 2021-2025 period, we must first stipulate the relationship of "money" to energy: "money" is nothing more than a claim on future energy. If there's no energy available to fuel the global economy, "money" will have little value.
The conventional economists assure us that energy is now a small part of the overall economy, so fluctuations in energy prices will have a limited effect on global prosperity. But what's left of global prosperity when energy is unable to meet current demand at any price that consumers can afford?
The current "economic understanding" of energy and "money" is an artifact of a unique period of cheap, abundant fossil fuels. It is an article of faith in economics that energy will always become cheaper and more abundant as the pixie-dust of technology is irreversible. By the time fossil fuels become scarce many decades hence, we'll all have cold-fusion generators, or micro-nuclear power plants or nearly free electricity from solar panels, and so on.
This is of course complete rubbish. To scale up any energy source to replace fossil fuels will require decades and tens of trillions of dollars in capital investment. In other words, energy development is a financial dynamic. Technology is only the first small piece of a much larger puzzle.
This becomes clear when we ponder the unwelcome reality that the fracking miracle has resulted in $250 billion in losses. You mean all those companies lost money exploiting the miracle technologies of fracking?
My point is profits are not guaranteed in any industry that requires trillions in new investment before it earns a positive return. The financial graveyard is littered with the carcasses of costly energy technologies that were supposed to "save industrial civilization" with some new clean source of essentially limitless energy.
Conventional economists also tend to overlook the impact of rising domestic consumption of oil exporting nations. A funny thing happens when domestic demand rises with population and prosperity; the exporting nation may pump the same quantity of oil, but there's no longer much left to export.
Then there's the fantasy that governments can't go broke because they can always print as much money as they need. Venezuela proves this is correct, right? Oops, sorry: Venezuela proved that this faith in the power of the central bank/government printing press is rubbish.
You can't print more oil. You can print more future claims on oil (i.e. "money"), but all that does is devalue the existing stock of "money." Print enough "money" and all your "money" loses its purchasing power.
Inflation has a peculiar feature: printing more "money" doesn't solve the decline in purchasing power of inflation, it accelerates the decline in purchasing power. The mainstream has grown accustomed to the fantasy that all financial difficulties can be solved by central banks creating more credit / "money." But when inflation in real-world essentials like energy kicks in, expanding the pool of "money" and credit won't solve the supply-demand imbalance--it will only devalue the purchasing power of all existing "money," impoverishing everyone holding "money."
The third crisis is governance: around the world, regardless of the ideology or form of governance, the quality and legitimacy of governance is crumbling. Ruling Elites are doing everything they can to keep the privileged-insiders-plundering status quo intact, but the Elites' policies are hollowing out their economies and weakening the buffers supporting increasingly fragile civil societies.
The financial, energy and governance buffers will all start collapsing in a global synchronized meltdown in the 2021 - 2025 period. Why synchronized? Because the global financial and energy markets are one system. Once the system's buffers collapse, everyone dependent on trade, global finance and energy will collapse in a domino effect that will start with the weakest periphery nations. No nation or empire will be immune, as all the major powers rely on "money" with phantom value and energy that can't be printed by central banks.
Here's my diagram of how buffers weaken beneath the phony facade of "endless prosperity":
Venezuela's "money" exemplifies the future of all "money,", including the euro, yen, yuan/RMB and the U.S. dollar. There is nothing inherently permanent or valuable in "money" printed by central banks or governments; they are nothing but fast-accumulating claims on a diminishing supply of future energy.
We're going to get a synchronized global dynamic, but it won't be "growth" and stability, it will be DeGrowth and instability. The harsh realities of energy, "money" and mis-governance will come home to roost, and all the fantasies that technology and central banks printing "money" will save us will dissolve into thin air.
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