Happy (sic) New Year

Heading into the New Year - 2019

As we prepare to welcome a new year, some of us with hope that things will improve compared to 2018, I'm afraid I have some sobering news to share. I've been tracking the major world trends, the dynamics of our social systems as well as the conditions of the natural world, for more than three decades. Ever since I became aware of the threat of carbon emissions on the atmosphere (and oceans) and the rapidly accelerating depletion of fossil fuels with commensurate increases in the cost of extraction, I have continued to ask what is going on here? What are we humans doing wrong that is causing these major potential catastrophes? And why are all of our institutions seeming to fail? I devoted this blog to these questions. The mainstream media and politicians and the like have tried to paint a rosy picture of the situations. They have projected that in spite of one problem after another, in the long run life would return to "normal", whatever that is. The standard pablum is that once we get economic growth back on track all will be fine again.

But what is the reality? Growth in the economy, year-over-year increases in the GDP, has not really materialized, though the official government reports do their best to make it seem so. The middle class in many countries has been shrinking as families at the bottom end fall into poverty and those at the top end fall toward the middle. The actual statistics of income and wealth distribution in the US make it clear that this kind of economy, the neoliberal capitalist-free market economy, is failing to live up to its promises. The rich are getting (supposedly) richer while the rest of us are getting poorer.

If you thought 2018 was a bad year all around (weather extremes, politics, economy, etc.) I'm afraid you will find 2019 to be even more terrible. We have finally reached an inflection point in the trajectory of decline. Throughout the previous 20-30 years (since the start of the decline in free energy per capita) the decay and collapse of society had been marginal and slow to progress. Only if you were sensitive to the trends and understood the systemic nature of them would you have realized that we had entered a whole new regime of social dynamics. For example, up until about five years ago, climatologists were unwilling to attribute any one storm (huricanes, floods, tornadoes, etc.) to climate change because the statistical variances fell within a range that they considered "normal". But the trends were already taking shape. The record highs and lows were already beginning to show. Each year new extremes were being experienced and so the reality of climate disruption was already evident. Only scientific conservatism prevented calling the kettle black.

By 2012 or 2015 more evidence that things had permanently changed in terms of climate had developed to a point that many climate scientists had started to rethink their approaches to attribution. By 2018, with coral reefs dying, forest fires taking maximum tolls in lives, acreage, and properties, with major hurricanes and typhoons decimating population centers around the world, with droughts and floods reaching unprecedented levels it has become clear to nearly everyone that something fundamental has changed. Now those same climate scientists are becoming very vocal about how climate change is contributing to record weather variances. Scientific conservatism is cast aside.

On the economic front, too, people are finally recognizing that something is amiss with the standard narrative of neoclassical capitalism. The past ten years has seen an increasing number of texts by recognized authorities on matters economic that are calling capitalism as practiced in the western "democracies" into question. Even die-hard free marketers are starting to acknowledge that something fundamental is wrong with the standard model (e.g. Alan Greespan's admission to congress that his faith in capitalism had been diminished!) Greed and personal self-interests cannot long be the basis for an economy that serves the whole population. We are now starting to see the consequences of holding such a belief. Coupled with the depletion of free energy per capita, the basis for producing goods and services, we are witnessing the collapse of capitalism and the collapse of the western economies.

Basically, 2017 and 2018 marked years in which the previously slow and imperceptible declines in institutions and economic activities started to accelerate to the point of notice by even the generally ignorant masses. The political fallout, the trend toward nationalism and xenophobia has become all too obvious. People are scared and confused. They will resort to protectionist thinking in an attempt to restore what they consider the normal order. But it is a futile effort. From this point forward the rate of decline and collapse will just increase. If we think the last several years were bad, say in the nature of mass migrations, just wait. As droughts and floods continue to make life unlivable in regions near the Equator (Middle East, Northern Africa, Central and upper South America) the violence will escalate beyond imagining. The mass exoduses from these regions into the US and Europe will intensify beyond reckoning. If we thought the tensions these migrations had stirred up already was bad, just wait.

I must admit to being surprised with the rapidity with which these events are taking place. I thought that I would be long gone before the more serious consequences of our social and physical failures would come to pass. I think now I was very wrong. The causal mechanics of these phenomena are clearly (now) non-linear and amplified by positive feedback loops that have become more visible in the last ten years. I will yet witness the implosion of the human societies, it seems.

Watch 2019 and see for yourselves.

Comments

[Bev]

A good summary. Thanks.

[Molly Radke]

Yes!

[David Gould]

I think this summary is spot on. Please share any references that would be of interest on this topic.

Thanks,

[cassandra]

Hi George,

Yes the inescapable is here. I am surrounding myself with sapient 18 - 25 year olds in a province that recently endured collapse conditions here in New Zealand. i hope that your hope for sapience - one i share - having a continuing place in this neck of the universe can continue a little while although it seems likely that extinction is a distinct possibility my will to survive will not wither until the very end.
Gene

[Frank]

A good piece, thanks for sharing your wisdom!

[Tobias Arvidsson]

I used to have very similar views to yours, but I have started feeling more optimistic. Mainly since I do think people fundamentally want our best and that people will eventually wake up and that movements for change will eventually start. As we suffer we open up for change and I do think we got the science to turn things around. There is lots of greed and corruption in goverments around and we would need to sort that out too.

[Arome Global]

Happy New Year

[Fred Magyar]

Well, I just spent a few months in Europe, was good to get a fresh perspective on things!

I had also joined https://goodcountry.org/ and they have since taken a step back. Hopefully their ideas will continue.

I think Everyone should read Quarks to Culture: How We Came to Be
by Tyler Volk

It might help all of us understand phenomena such as Brexit and Trump.

It is certainly a case of two steps forward one step back...
I'm trying to be optimistic despite being profoundly depressed. ;-)

[George Mobus]

To all commentators:

Sorry for delays. I am deeply enmeshed in a few projects aimed at still trying to understand our predicament and a systems approach to minimizing harm. These are absorbing my time completely. I will try to summarize in my equinox post in a few days.

George