and Ditto WNC!

Might be interesting to graph the increase in disparity of incomes in the world against the growth of things like population, CO2 etc or against the decrease in things like general personal satisfaction with life.

Vancouver in the 50's and 60's was a pretty slow growth place and the greatest city in the world to live in IMO. After Expo in the 80's it turned into a great investment area and just another city to get out of.

WNC Observer,

I agree we need to get to a zero-growth sustainable economy. For now we can use non-renewable resources, but these will deplete over time.

I wish we didn't have so many problems to deal with simultaneously, including:

- Soon to be declining fossil fuels
- A monetary system that needs growth to continue
- Global warming
- Fresh water shortages
- Soil problems
- Serious balance of payment problems (import more than we export)
- A debt system that is out of control
- Population overshoot
- Elected officials who are unwilling to deal with the situation

If we only had one problem, the task of trying to fix it might be reasonable. As we discover more and more problems, it is harder to see how one might find a solution and implement it on a broad scale. Relocalization would work much better as a solution if we had a stable climate, higher water tables, and fewer people.

WNC, you have expressed the exact same points Hubbert did in his 1976 paper "Exponential growth as a transient phenomenon in human history" at http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/wwf1976/

"we are now in a period of transition between a past ... and a future also characterized by slow rates of change, but by means of utilization of the world's largest source of energy, that of inexhaustible sunshine," (by which Hubbert was referring to both direct and indirect utilization of sunshine, i.e. including hydro, wind and bio.)

"It appears therefore that one of the foremost problems confronting humanity today is how to make the transition from the precarious state that we are now in to this optimum future state by a least catastrophic progression. Our principal impediments at present ... are cultural. During the last two centuries we have known nothing but exponential growth and in parallel we have evolved what amounts to an exponential-growth culture, a culture so heavily dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that it is incapable of reckoning with problems of nongrowth."

I also suggest reading his 1949 work "Energy from fossil fuels" at
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/science1949/
Notably, on page 108 he repeatedly raises the possibility of future "cultural degeneration" (predicting a Mad Max scenario in 1949!) whereby the final steady state could end up being roughly the pre-industrial one.

Hi Gail good show!

About debt ,I feel it is merely an outgrowth of original communal living. We began by doing for each other communally , if for instance a barn or house needed building the community would do it. (for brevity(and maybe other reasons:) this is rather a simplistic model). As communes grew to cities basic community was lost but houses etc were still needed. Debt is merely a substitute for what each member of a commune owed each other member.

I think what one might see from this that interest on a loan is unnecessary and in reality a theft by nonproductive middlemen.

Thanks for the reply.

Gail said :
"One thing people did do back in the 50's was have lots of children."

Mhhh...when the war was over and my father returned..sometime in 1945-6 or so.we lived in Ky still..some trips back and forth to city living but briefly...and yes, I agree that on the farm people did have more children BUT that was a biological necessity for in order to continue to farm one needed offspring..to carry on and in case of disablity or accidents and to take care of the parents in their old age. Far better to have a few sons to help out..and daughters to marry well and increase the kinship and extended families that are so important in the rural outback.

And it did happen that way, where the offspring housed and cared for the elders...in fact to this very day you see it happening albeit to a far lesser degree. But old habits and customs die slow..

So then in 1949 my father came to the farm and hauled us up to St. Louis county to something that looked weird..suburbs..the very very early beginning of suburbs...

And I an my brother(the only two offspring) were set admidst a lot of other families BUT looking back most all of them either had no children, or two children and in the odd case three children. Most had two.

I dated girls and had lots of friends back in those days as a teenager and most of those early suburban families usually had just two children.

So where did the huge increases come from then? Was it that divorce became common and therefore new 'mixmaster' families were created...like my wifes? One from a previous and two from the original? The sexual revolution?

Or was it new arrivals in our country? Or illegal immigrants?

Mostly in the burbs where I then lived and grew up..2 was usual and 3 did happen and 0 was there as well.

My wife and I had two. That was all.
My grandfather and grandmother had 14!! Most all of those 14 aunts and uncles had at most 2. And of the males none had another male except for one and so me and my brother were two and he never married..of my two, a boy and a girl..my daughter has only one and no more..my son will never marry.

So out of 14 total that line is about to die out..and in fact no male children of those 14 offspring..only 2 males were born and they never propgated,except for me.

I find this in many kinfolk around here...so I am at a lose as to the dynamics of childbirth of those who have been here for some time...I am 5th generation on my grandfathers side and 12 generation on my grandmothers. Mostly on both sides we are slowly disappearing instead of increasing.

Perhaps my experiences are just far different.

As for Social Security..those of us who are on it surely recognize that the day will come , and not too far , when there will be no more EFTs deposited in the bank. We all pretty much know that its a ponzi scheme.

My feelings on SS is that a lot, a whole lot, more recipents have been 'added' to the roles than those who paid in. All for political gain I think. And then there was those who never paid in but get benefits anyway. Forget the name of that program. Then children were added and so on .....

airdale

We cannot know exactly what the future will hold, if technology is not able to overcome the many issues associated with a finite world, including declining oil and natural gas supply, decreasing fresh water supply, and climate change.

We can know what the future holds, particularly when it comes to the issue of technology saving our butts.

Not going to happen. Technology is not energy, nor water, nor topsoil, nor any other finite element that allows us to live in our current farcical way.

But what really chaps my ass is your statement:

Part of the reason for growth is simply to pay back all of the debt with interest. If you stop the growth cycle, there isn't going to be enough money to pay back the debt with interest.

Oh lord, what a high crime it would be if we didn't pay back the fictive element known as "interest."

Economists lose all credibility when they start touting the idea that "interest" is more important than the actual PLANET!!!!!!!

To me, the tone above is a bit like a parent patiently explaining to a child that the reason we tithe the slithing toves is because the Wanderal Wraiths are loath to come to the fourth plane of existence and breath the loamy air of Barthing Time. Of course, this explanation is being given even as they are about to be ripped to pieces by an onrushing tornado.

These fictive financial devices are artful conceits and nothing more. With a pen-stroke, we could simply write them away like so many tears in the rain. The problem is many very greedy, uncaring people who are largely responsible for our situation want what they feel is rightfully theirs, and damn the planet!

I say we declare a Jubilee Year, or Decade!!

Let's increase taxes on the rich to 75%. Growth on a finite planet is just short of retarded, perhaps criminal, so let's just wipe out these criminals and put ourselves to work building an actually sustainable world.

Read here in Hubbert's notes about a steady state economy that interest rates in a non-growing industrial system have to be zero:
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/hubecon.htm
An extract:

Income in Units of Energy

On this basis our distribution then becomes foolproof and incredibly simple. We keep our records of the physical costs of production in terms of the amount of extraneous energy degraded. We set industrial production arbitrarily at a rate equal to the saturation of the physical capacity of our public to consume. We distribute purchasing power in the form of energy certificates to the public, the amount issued to each being equivalent to his pro rata share of the energy-cost of the consumer goods and services to be produced during the balanced-load period for which the certificates are issued. These certificates bear the identification of the person to whom issued and are non negotiable. They resemble a bank check in that they bear no face denomination, this being entered at the time of spending. They are surrendered upon the purchase of goods or services at any center of distribution and are permanently canceled, becoming entries in a uniform accounting system. Being nonnegotiable they cannot be lost, stolen, gambled, or given away because they are invalid in the hands of any person other than the one to whom issued. If lost, like a bank checkbook, new ones may be had for the asking. Neither can they be saved because they become void at the termination of the two-year period for which they are issued. They can only be spent. Contrary to the Price System rules, the purchasing power of an individual is no longer based upon the fallacious premise that a man is being paid in proportion to the so-called 'value' of his work (since it is a physical fact that what he receives is greatly in excess of his individual effort) but upon the equal pro rata division of the net energy degraded in the production of consumer goods and services. In this manner the income of an individual is in nowise dependent upon the nature of his work, and we are then left free to reduce the working hours of our population to as low a level as technological advancement will allow, without in any manner jeopardizing the national or individual income, and without the slightest unemployment problem or poverty. "

Yes, this is the same Hubbert who predicted peak oil in the US in 1970

Buddhists would take that one word--greed--and go another step: illusion.

They suggest that our illusions are mainly threefold with one fundamental illusion beneath it all. The three illusions at the heart of our dilemma?

1. Things do not change.
2. Something may be found in the physical world or even the psychological realm that can bring lasting deep satisfaction.
3. The life processes we solidify and call "objects" have an inherent, fixed reality, including the ego.

The fundamental illusion beneath these threefold illusions is that we are not connected and interdependent.

Greed, it seems to me, stems from the abiding illusion that there is something out there that will bring happiness. Greed is someone going to an extreme to try and make the illusion come true.

The third illusion above is the toughest one to fathom, because the reality of "no-self" is so counterintuitive.

Peak oil and its probable consequences, it seems to me, are going to rip apart the illusions of permanence, happiness-through-acquisition, and disconnected independence. Waking up to reality is going to be painful.

As it always is.

"It is up to the most conscious member of the relationship to create the space for the relationship to grow." Ram Dass

There is a mixing of metaphors in graywulffe's post; All living things grow, but they also die. The same could be said for businesses, but economists assume most businesses continue 'living' after a certain critical mass growth. I've read "A Mote in God's Eye", but a fictional work hardly counts as evidence to support such a position.

One of the issues with growth stems from population growth, not just wealth accumulation.

Thanks for that.
I wasn't aware and enjoyed the read very much. I particularly enjoyed the analogies.

Point 5 is very telling.
Scarce resources and a feedback loop has been demonstrated repeatedly. The human race will never learn.

I would like to read a professionals' (psychologist) insight into where human nature(personally and collectively)is likely to take us post peak.

I wonder about many things and here are a few.....

Will the majority act altruistically?
Will the have's adopt the FYJ principle? Will they bunker down?
What will armed starving people do to feed their families?
What mitigation methods are states and or countries likely to adopt?
Will black markets develop if rationing is adopted? Will crime increase? Will draconian counter measures to crime be expected and adopted?
Will perceived energy wasters be attacked or marginalized?

What would happen if governments were to explain in detail and in advertising campaigns the oil situation right now?