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We are about to take a dramatic leap into the next era: the modern age of Heavy-Near, Ideas-Far. In a world where energy is increasingly scarce and expensive we simply won’t be able to transport goods and people over far distances. Yet we’ll prioritize energy use for technologies that bring us together virtually – that allow us to connect and share regardless of the distances between communities.  The world is about to get simultaneously bigger and smaller depending on the field of human activity concerned.  Imagine an America where people stick much closer to home. Where we aren’t defined by the open road, but by the quality and depth of our neighborhoods and communities. Where the majority of the things in our lives – our clothes, furniture, food and building materials come from close at hand rather than being globally sourced. We eat according to seasonal variations and see the reemergence of incredible regional diversity in architectural and cultural expressions.

At the same time it won’t be a return to provincialism and hierarchical society—an intensely localized economy will be punctuated by key global technologies that keep us connected, informed and up-to-date—with uniform access to information and ideas despite socio-economic, gender or racial backgrounds. The possibilities for environmental and social/cultural healing is immense.  Yet, this radical re-ordering won’t be easy for us and will at times be violently resisted by those rooted in the current paradigm. I believe that the riots we have been seeing around the world are natural permutations of this emerging paradigm—a world where the average person is super-connected with one another and informed—and frustrated with the status quo world power that refuses to change.

Here are some of the characteristics of the new re-ordering as I see it:

• The ‘global economy’ as its now defined will shrink rapidly between 2012-2030, as energy scarcity will limit our ability to ship things all over the world. In a short span of time the cost of transporting human or material cargoes over any appreciable distance will simply be too high and the market will begin to correct itself. In its place will emerge strongly local ‘living economies’ with an emphasis on local materials, local knowledge, durability and craft.
• Super-sized retailers and one-stop shops will all but disappear. If Wal Mart, Costco, Target and others like them survive, its because they will have learned to operate on a new business model based on locally produced goods globally managed through information management technologies (heavy near, light far).
• As we focus again on food and goods that can be grown or made locally it will have the positive effect of reinvigorating local cultures and revealing regional variations. Artisanship will reemerge and quality will trump quantity. Food and drink will become intensely local—inspiring the re-emergence of creative cuisines and local flavors. Wine from France or Australia will once again be a true luxury here—but thankfully equally good vintages will be available close to home!
• ‘Winning’ technologies (as defined by those technologies we’ll continue to invest in) will be those that require less energy to make and operate relative to the benefits they provide.  Web-enabled cell phones are a perfect present-day example, as they put a world of information in the hands of any user and draw very little energy in the process, which is why they already are ubiquitous in third world countries. Small solar panels will power hand-held electronics and tablets. Larger machines (cars, elevators, HVAC systems, etc.) will either be completely re-engineered to be super-efficient or will disappear. Larger utility infrastructure (regional energy grids and regional waste treatment plants etc.) will give way to a network of decentralized, distributed technologies.
• The era of the automobile will finally end. Expect a rapid ‘de-autoization’ of our culture over the next twenty years- despite the introduction of better electric vehicles and hybrids. While some larger specialty vehicles will continue to be supported (I think we’ll keep trains and specialized automobiles for key tasks like ambulances and fire suppression) the original mechanical horse—the bicycle, will emerge as the world’s transportation tool of choice even here in the US (as it is already in many places). Electric assist will extend our ranges, but there is still nothing more efficient than a person on a bike.
• As we become more globally connected via electronic information exchanges, we will become more physically disconnected beyond a small radius of travel. The costs of mechanized transport will limit our ability to travel overseas and relocate on a whim, but virtual communication we will expand our ability to share ideas with our across-the-world neighbors. So while you may increasingly talk and share ideas with people in other countries the chances of physically visiting them will diminish. The flip side is that we will know our own communities much more intimately while maintaining open dialog with our fellow global citizens. Information will become even more democratic and widely shared.
• The ultra-rich will continue to be the exception to most of the rules. Wealthy individuals will pay— dearly—or the privilege of globetrotting and having heavy special goods shipped from afar. Yet in a world where the exploitation of the environment and other people’s is no longer tolerated, what it means to be ‘rich’ will begin to be redefined as well.
• It goes without saying that the network of Certified Living Buildings around North America will only grow and become beacons of hope for the future of our homes, buildings and offices.

Making Global Lemonade

We delivered ourselves here on the very vehicles that we’re managing to make obsolete. So it’s up to us to plan for this next natural cycle of innovation so that we can embrace it mindfully. The path I’ve described is of course by no means certain. The future could spiral in many directions—some quite dire. But I am hopeful of the path that I think is quite possible. Heavy Near—Light Far.

Photo courtesy of Trim Tab

I believe we will return to an intensely local way of living, and one that is globally conscious. We will continue to innovate, and we will share our new ideas with friends we’ll never meet. We’ll eat and wear what’s available in our region, and we’ll create culturally rich communities as we do so. We’ll work with colleagues who live in various countries around the world, and we’ll embrace the beauty of our virtual collaborations. We’ll live in a world of relative scarcity compared to what we had in the 20th century, but we’ll be more connected and abundant from deeper connections to place and culture and a proper relationship with the natural world. We’ll rely on the human machine and ‘current solar income’ to propel us forward, and enjoy the vitality that follows. The transition likely won’t be easy, and we’ll weather many storms, but there is a chance, I believe, to find equilibrium on this planet again.

read the whole article here

This article by Jason F. McLennan was originally published in the Fall 2011 issue of Trim Tab, the International Living Future Institute’s magazine for transformational people and design. To see this and other issues of Trim Tab, go to https://ilbi.org/education/trim-tab.

Three of the five “useless” majors involve food. Another involves making clothes – kinda important.  And the other is about human expression, which Lord knows we need more of.

The article says that business majors are what we need more of.  Seriously.  Obviously the people that write shit like this have no idea of where the world is going.

So yeah, don’t be useless – get a degree in business. And hope to God that someone you know got one of those useless degrees that will be willing to keep your ass feed and clothed in the hard times coming.

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College Majors That Are Useless: Are you going back to school in hopes of graduating to more job opportunities? You might want to avoid these degrees.

By Terence Loose

If you’re considering going back to school in hopes that you’ll graduate to more opportunities, there are certain degrees that you might want to avoid.

Consider the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ (NACE) 2012 Job Outlook study, which surveyed almost 1,000 employers on their future hiring plans. Many areas of study, such as fashion design and the performing arts, didn’t even make the list.

On the other hand, majors like business had 83 percent of the surveyed employers saying they planned to recruit them. Close seconds were accounting and computer and information science majors with nearly 60 percent of surveyed employers planning to recruit them.

At the other end of the spectrum are degrees that are either so specific they can’t be applied in a variety of fields, or those linked to careers with virtually little to no projected job growth.

Want to make sure you don’t pick a dud of a degree? Check out our list of most useless degrees.

Useless Degree #1 – Agriculture

Number of Students Awarded Degree in 2008-2009: 24,988
Typical coursework: Crops, plant diseases, animal husbandry, basic veterinary science

When schools such as the University of Idaho cut their agriculture programs, you know times are tough for this degree. The state has more than 25,000 farms, for cow’s sake, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture census, in 2007.

Still, if your idea of a good day is getting up with the sun and working till it sets as an agricultural manager, a degree in agriculture might be your calling.

Just don’t expect farms and ranches to be calling you, says Laurence Shatkin, Ph.D., and author of “The 10 Best College Majors for Your Personality.” “It’s true that farms are becoming more efficient now and so there is less of a need for farm managers,” he says. That means less jobs. In fact, the U.S. Department of Labor projects 64,000 fewer jobs in this field over the next seven years.

Total Number of Agricultural Managers in 2008: 1,234,000
Projected Change in Number of Jobs 2008-2018: -64,600
Percent Change: -5

Useless Degree #2 – Fashion Design

Number of Students Awarded Degree in 2008-2009: 89,140
Typical coursework: Fashion history, sewing, tailoring, color, design, pattern making

The world of high fashion is glamorous, exciting, and, unfortunately, highly exclusive and competitive.

“Fashion never dies out, never ends, and even though everything gets made overseas now, there’s always a need for designers. But it’s incredibly competitive. It’s one you really have to establish yourself in,” Shatkin says.

And those glamour positions are expected to be the ones with the fewest opportunities among an already small field, says the U.S. Department of Labor. Because it’s so tough, Shatkin suggests that getting a practical minor with this degree is very smart.

Total Number of Fashion Designers in 2008: 22,700
Projected Change in Number of Jobs 2008-2018: +200
Percent Change: +1

Useless Degree #3 – Theater

Number of Students Awarded Degree in 2008-2009: 89,140
Typical coursework: Theater, acting, directing, design, playwriting, communications, dramatic literature

Here’s the good news: Sign up for theater as a major and at least you’ll be really good at acting like you have a job.

Here’s the bad news: Actors endure long periods of unemployment and frequent rejection, says the U.S. Department of Labor. The Department goes on to say that because earnings are erratic for actors, producers, and directors, many hold second jobs. In other words, how do you feel about waiting tables?

Of course, says Shatkin, “People go into this with such a love for it you can’t stop them.”

Total Number of Actors/Producers/Directors in 2008: 155,100
Projected Change in Number of Jobs 2008-2018: +16,900
Percent Change: +11

Useless Degree #4 – Animal Science

Number of Students Awarded Degree in 2008-2009: 80,756
Typical coursework: Animal breeding, reproductive physiology, nutrition, meat and muscle biology

Here’s another degree aimed at a career that at first glance doesn’t look all that discouraging. After all, animal scientist employment is projected by the U.S. Department of Labor to grow 13 percent from 2008 to 2018.

But crunch a few more numbers and you quickly realize that you could be in for stiff competition to grab a piece of that pie. Fewer than 5,000 animal scientist jobs are projected to exist in the field by 2018.

The problem, says Shatkin, is the degree is so specific that trying to apply it to anything else means a tough time convincing people it gives you any useful skills for jobs outside animal science jobs.

Total Number of Animal Scientists in 2008: 3,700
Projected Change in Number of Jobs 2008-2018: +500
Percent Change: +13

Useless Degree #5 – Horticulture

Number of Students Awarded Degree in 2008-2009: 24,988
Typical coursework: Crops, plant diseases, agricultural business and economics, crop and fruit science

If you like the farm life but aren’t all that keen on all the whining and clucking of an animal farm, perhaps a degree in horticulture is growing on you.

Unfortunately, the number of jobs in the field itself is not growing, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. And Shatkin agrees. “Better than agriculture, but not by much. If you’re lucky, you may find some way to apply that to a related business like food processing or production,” he says.

Total Number of Farmers and Ranchers in 2008: 985,900
Projected Change in Number of Jobs 2008-2018: -79,200
Percent Change: -8

*All job and job growth and coursework information for 2008-2018 is attained from the U.S. Department of Labor. Number of degrees awarded information comes from Newsweek’s Daily Beast.com’s “20 Most Useless Degrees” report.

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By Vanessa Barrington

Cities all over the country are addressing the lack of access to fresh and healthy food on the part of their residents, but few are in as much of a bind as Baltimore.

Like Detroit, and other cities known for their class and race disparity, Baltimore has been losing population and gaining vacant land at a fast pace in recent decades. The result is vast swaths of neighborhoods located far from grocery stores. Baltimore gave itself a D on its own 2010 Health Disparities Report Card, which found that 43 percent of the residents in the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods had little access to healthy foods, compared to 4 percent in predominantly white neighborhoods. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of the city’s adults and almost 40 percent of high school students are overweight or obese.

In other words, the situation is a dire one. But it’s not all bad news; in fact, the city of Baltimore is going to great lengths to make a change.

Speaking on a panel at the recent Community Food Security Coalition Conference in Oakland, Calif., Abby Cocke, of Baltimore’s Office of Sustainability, and Laura Fox, of the city health department’s Virtual Supermarket Program, outlined two approaches to address the city’s food deserts. Both were presenting programs that have launched since Grist last reported on Baltimore’s efforts to address food justice. And both programs come under the auspices of The Baltimore Food Policy Initiative, a rare intergovernmental collaboration between the city’s Department of Planning, Office of Sustainability, and Health Department. They also show how an active, involved city government and a willingness to try new ideas can change the urban food landscape for the better.

According to Cocke, Baltimore’s Planning Department has a new mindset. She calls it a “place-based” model. “In the past,” she says, “growth was seen as the only way to improve the city, but we’re starting to look at ways to make our neighborhoods stronger, healthier, and more vibrant places at the low density that they’re at now.”

Intercropping farms within the urban landscape

In cities like Oakland — where well-known urban farmer Novella Carpenter was slapped with a large fine recently, resulting in a public push for changes to the zoning laws  – shifts in urban policy have been largely reactive. Other cities, like Detroit, have taken a hands-off approach. Thanks to Baltimore’s Office of Sustainability, however, the city is actively encouraging the creation of small entrepreneurial farms on vacant lots to bring more healthy fresh food to city residents.

In 2010, planning officials met with urban farmers to find out what they would need to grow food in the city. Planners mapped out 20 publicly owned parcels (ranging from one to 12 acres) that met the farmers’ criteria. City officials then encouraged experienced commercial and nonprofit groups to submit a business plan. Of the 10 initial responses, four commercial farms — including Five Seeds Farm and Seed and Cycle — and one nonprofit, Real Food Farm, were qualified to start farming.

The parcels will be leased to the would-be farmers for a mere $100 a year, and the city will make start-up capital available for those who need it. Baltimore is also rewriting its entire zoning code, one major goal of which is to facilitate farming within city limits. In addition to making its citizens healthier, says Cocke, the city hopes to “transform vacant lots, increase environmental awareness among its citizens, create green jobs, and raise its profile as a leader.”

Image: Center for a Livable Future Bringing the supermarket to libraries and other public spaces

Urban farming is a useful way to make more people aware of where their fruit and vegetables comes from, but it can only provide so much food. That’s where Baltimore’s Virtual Supermarket program — a creative public-private partnership that utilizes the city’s libraries to bring fresh groceries to remote neighborhoods — enters the picture.

According to Fox, the original idea was to launch the program in churches in underserved areas. But city officials quickly found that most people didn’t feel comfortable going into unfamiliar churches. Not to be deterred, and recognizing a good idea, the city began looking at other easily accessible neighborhood spaces, and eventually settled on public libraries.

Working with The Center for a Livable Future at nearby Johns Hopkins University, the health department conducted a mapping project to target neighborhoods with no access to fresh food, low vehicle ownership, low income, and high mortality rates from diet-related diseases. They found that as much as 18 percent of Baltimore qualifies as a food desert, using these criteria. (This data is the basis of the city’s first official “food desert map,” which will be released in January 2012).

Partnering with Santoni’s, a local, family-owned grocery chain, the city launched Virtual Supermarket in March 2010 in two public libraries. Users place orders from the city’s free-to-use library computers, and Santoni’s staff members deliver the food. Customers can pay with EBT cards, cash, or credit/debit cards.

Today the program includes three libraries and one school, and its success has enabled the city to hire a full-time community organizer to recruit potential customers at senior centers and public housing complexes. To date, 150 different customers have made 700 orders.

Although the city prohibits tobacco, it doesn’t regulate what types of foods people can buy. Nonetheless, 60 percent of the Virtual Supermarket customers polled reported that their diets have improved. Most importantly, according to Fox, the program keeps Baltimore residents from having to travel an hour by bus to the nearest store, or pay to take one of the numerous unofficial cabs that line up outside the city’s grocery stores. She says she sees it as a “health equity program,” adding, “why should someone have to pay $15 to get their groceries home in a cab when someone in a wealthier neighborhood who owns a car would pay 25 cents?”

What’s next for Baltimore? For one, the city is upping its focus on cooking. They’ll soon be staging cooking demonstrations at farmers markets and other locations, and launching a program to get citizens talking to their neighbors about nutrition and cooking.

Last March, Baltimore also became one of the first cities in America to hire a full time Food Policy Director. Holly Freishtat works out of the Office of Sustainability in the Department of Planning. As Fox sees it, embedding healthy food policy into the planning department makes complete sense. After seeing some city residents endure an ongoing ordeal simply to get fresh food on their tables, she says, “Where you live affects your whole being.”

Vanessa is a writer, cookbook author, cook, and food consultant based in Oakland, CA. She is the author of DIY Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food from Scratch and the co-author of Heirloom Beans with Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo. Her writing also appears regularly on both EcoSalon.com and CivilEats.com.

Habituating to Contraction  

The Savior State has pulled out all the stops to prop up the Status Quo. Its gargantuan borrowing and spending have fixed nothing. Contraction is replacing expansion as the new normal.

For the past 67 years, Americans have been conditioned to expect expansion and more of everything: more income, more stuff, more opportunity, more benefits, more medical care, more government entitlements, and so on.

As a result, Americans have habituated to permanent expansion. The concept that contraction–less of everything–is the new normal simply doesn’t register; it is rejected, denied, or decried as a great tragedy. The notion that it is simply reality does not compute with a populace habituated to permanent “growth” that is at worst interrupted by brief recessions.

U.S. politicians have learned that Soaring Rhetoric (TM) about “morning in America,” “the New Frontier,” “hope” and other ritualistic appeals to permanent expansion win elections, while accurate descriptions of reality lose elections.

The voting public’s demand for “permanent good news” promising permanent expansion has spawned a feedback loop of officially sanctioned manipulated statistics and media spin (a.k.a. propaganda) that expands with every administration, even as the real economy visibly weakens. Though the Obama Administration has perfected the techniques of presenting “permanent good news,” the divergence of the real economy and the official “story” that “we’ve returned to permanent expansion” is widening.

The real story is the “expansion” has cost the taxpayers trillions of dollars in new debt and trillions of dollars of backstops, shadow purchases and money-printing by the Federal Reserve. Roughly speaking, $6 trillion in additional Federal borrowing has been blown to simply keep the Status Quo from imploding, and around $13 trillion in guarantees, backstops, asset purchases, and losses made good have been issued to keep the Status Quo’s financial sector afloat and in charge.

By any credible, unmanipulated measure, for example, the number of people with fulltime employment or household income, the economy has yet to recover to 2007 levels.

This reality must be denied, both by the power-obsessed politicos who fear the truth like vampires fear garlic-garlanded crosses, and by voters who fear a reduction in their personal share of the swag.

Humans habituate quickly to a wide range of conditions and expectations, but once they’ve settled into the new habitat, they are resistant to new conditions. Needless to say, humans prefer a future in which there will be more of everything over one with less of everything, as permanent expansion means there will be few if any troublesome cost-benefit analyses, hard choices or painful triage, and little need to adjust to new realities.

Changing conditioning is difficult and often arduous.

Americans have been conditioned for three generations to expect the Savior State to “do something” during downturns to “make it right.” The idea that systemic problems are now beyond the reach of the Federal government does not compute; there must be something the government can do to “fix” everything.

This notion that the Central State is effectively omniscient and all-powerful is central to the belief system of Americans now. The concept that the government cannot fix the problem, or that government central-planning has made the problem worse, is anathema to everyone conditioned to believe government intervention will “save the day.”

The basic reality is the Federal government has already pulled out all the stops in the past four years to “make the economy recover,” and all its unprecedented actions have accomplished is to maintain the Status Quo via unsustainably gargantuan borrowing, spending and backstopping.

If we scrape away the rhetoric and bogus statistics, at heart the current fantasy that the U.S. has “decoupled” from the global economy and will remain an island of “permanent prosperity” in a sea of recession boils down to this belief: the Federal government “won’t let us stay in recession.” In other words, it’s within the power of the Central State to make good every loss, guarantee every debt, maintain the Empire, solve every geopolitical challenge and find technological or military solutions to potential energy shortages. All we need is the “will” to force the government to use its essentially unlimited power to “fix everything.”

A people conditioned to this expectation will have great difficulty accepting that their government has already done everything possible, and that these stupendous debt-based expenditures are simply not sustainable going forward. Some problems are not fixable by more government intervention; indeed, government intervention in the marketplace is like insulin: the system begins to lose sensitivity to Central State manipulation and intervention.

2012 is looking like the year that the American public will have to face up to the fact that the Central State’s massive efforts to “fix the economy” have failed, and that Central State support of the Status Quo cannot fix what’s broken.

We will have to habituate to contraction, and the belief in a god-like Savior State with unlimited powers and money will fade as the economy’s systemic illnesses–extreme concentrations of power and wealth, corruption, financial leverage, excessive debt and so on–reassert themselves.

All that has happened for four long years is systemic problems were papered over to benefit the Status Quo. Everything that is broken awaits real repair.

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by Mark Hertsgaard

Look out, Minneapolis and Portland. Long Beach is making its move, aiming to surpass you as America’s Most Bike Friendly City. Does that sound odd for a city whose chief claim to environmental fame has been its massively polluting port and offshore oil facilities — a city that, like the rest of Southern California, has long been in thrall of the car?

Well, all that’s changing, and the change is coming from the top. Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster, who says he tries to bike 100 miles a week, actually laughs about the car addiction of his mega neighbor to the north. “I love that scene in L.A. Story where Steve Martin gets behind the wheel, backs out of his driveway, and drives to his neighbor’s driveway,” Foster says. “He won’t even walk as far as his neighbor’s house!”

Of course, there are still plenty of cars in Long Beach (though Foster himself drives an electric one), but bicycles are getting more respect, not to mention resources, than ever before. With help from state and federal grants and pressure from local cycling enthusiasts, the city government has installed 130 miles of bike trails, established protected bike lanes (that is, lanes separated from vehicular traffic by physical barriers) on major commuter thoroughfares, created bike boulevards that enable kids and parents to bike or walk safely to and from school, and installed 50 new bike racks.

Perhaps most innovative has been the city’s effort to establish bike-friendly shopping districts — the first in the country, officials say — engaging local merchants by showing them how, contrary to common belief, biking can actually bring more customers and vitality to shopping districts.

“The math is pretty simple,” says April Economides, the principal of Green Octopus Consulting and the leader of the city’s outreach to local businesses. “You can park 12 bikes in the amount of space it takes to park one car. And someone who shifts from owning a car to a bicycle tends to have more discretionary income, because, for a commuter, the typical cost of a bicycle is $300 a year, compared to $7,000 a year for a car.”

Economides, a vivacious 36-year-old whose family owns one of the best-known restaurants in town, describes herself as a “social change agent” who leverages the power of small business. “At first, most merchants didn’t think about bikes or even had a negative view of them,” she says. “My job was to educate them about how biking can put more money in their pockets.”

Kerstin Kansteiner, whose Berlin coffee shop is a member of the East Village Arts Bike-Friendly Business District, confirms the point. “I see it every day,” she says. “The bike racks outside our shop increase our visibility and bring us more customers. People on bikes stop at places they haven’t visited before because they don’t have to try to find parking.”

Lauren Lilly, the 28-year-old co-owner of Yellow 108, a sustainable clothing business that sells its hats and sunglasses in Whole Foods and other retailers nationwide, says the company moved to Long Beach from L.A. last year “because we saw Long Beach as an up-and-coming area, and it’s a lot less expensive.” Her showroom is located on one of Long Beach’s bike boulevards. “We saw lots of bike commuters going by, and that’s our core demographic: working professionals who want to live a healthy, planet-friendly lifestyle.”

In the Belmont Shore neighborhood, a green sharrows lane extends for a mile through an upscale shopping district. The lane is not physically separated from vehicular traffic, but it feels almost as safe to a bicyclist. ”Putting green paint down is a sign that the city authority says that bikes belong here,” says Charlie Gandy, a consultant to the city government. “In southern California it’s assumed that bikes don’t belong, but this sends a different message. That’s also important for the larger public education campaign around the role of bikes in our community.”

Local officials concede that making Long Beach the most bike-friendly city in America is still more an aspiration than a reality. Still, boosting cycling reinforces a new narrative for Long Beach, says Allan Crawford, the bicycle coordinator in the city’s Department of Public Works. “Long Beach has always been seen as the poor stepchild to L.A., but now we’re recreating our image,” he says. “We’re saying, especially to young people, Long Beach is a lot cheaper than L.A., and it’s not sterile like Orange County [Long Beach's neighbor to the south]. It’s easy to get around here, we encourage a car-light lifestyle, it’s still a great beach town, and there’s all these hip places to enjoy, too.”

Not everyone is pleased, of course. A taxi driver named Kenny says bike lanes only reduce parking spots and slow traffic flow, especially because cyclists are “lackadaisical” — by which he seems to mean they don’t pedal as fast as cars want to travel.

Mayor Foster says there is an element of truth to such complaints, but only a tiny one. “Parking is always an issue,” he says. “But I drive [the commuter thoroughfares of] Third Street and Broadway every day, and I don’t wait any longer for [traffic] light changes than I did before.”

Then he quotes an ancient philosopher: “I like a line by Aristotle, ‘Beware the barrenness of a busy life,’” Foster says. “Sometimes I can’t remember at the end of a day what I did the past eight hours. That’s moving too fast. A bit slower pace in life is a good thing.”

If the downward arc of business as usual in an age of decline is what we’re facing, though, that sort of tortured logic is a pretty fair guarantee of final failure. The only way out of the trap, as I’ve argued here rather more than once, is to accept a steep cut in your standard of living before it becomes necessary, as a deliberate choice, and to use the resources freed up by that choice to get rid of any debts you have, get settled in a location that has a fair chance of keeping a viable degree of community life going, and get the tools and learn the skills that you will need to manage a decent life in an age of spiraling decline. To those who cling to the idea that they can maintain their present lifestyles, admittedly, it’s hard to think of any advice less welcome, but the universe is in no way obligated to give us the future we want—even if what we want is a sudden blow that will spare us the harder experience of the Long Descent.”

John Michael Greer, Waiting for the Great Pumpkin

This is really frightening….better to just ignore it probably…..

from the economic collapse blog

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Even though most Americans have become very frustrated with this economy, the reality is that the vast majority of them still have no idea just how bad our economic decline has been or how much trouble we are going to be in if we don’t make dramatic changes immediately.  If we do not educate the American people about how deathly ill the U.S. economy has become, then they will just keep falling for the same old lies that our politicians keep telling them.  Just “tweaking” things here and there is not going to fix this economy.  We truly do need a fundamental change in direction.  America is consuming far more wealth than it is producing and our debt is absolutely exploding.  If we stay on this current path, an economic collapse is inevitable.  Hopefully the crazy economic numbers from 2011 that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.

At this time of the year, a lot of families get together, and in most homes the conversation usually gets around to politics at some point.  Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help you share the reality of the U.S. economic crisis with your family and friends.  If we all work together, hopefully we can get millions of people to wake up and realize that “business as usual” will result in a national economic apocalypse.

The following are 50 economic numbers from 2011 that are almost too crazy to believe….

#1 A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

#2 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be “low income” or impoverished.

#3 If the number of Americans that “wanted jobs” was the same today as it was back in 2007, the “official” unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.

#4 The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.

#5 One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.

#6 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

#7 Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.

#8 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006.  Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.

#9 A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.

#10 According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

#11 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs.  Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

#12 Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job.  In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.

#13 One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.

#14 The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.

#15 According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.

#16 As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages.  According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married.  Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

#17 The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.

#18 In Stockton, California home prices have declined 64 percent from where they were at when the housing market peaked.

#19 Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row.

#20 If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.

#21 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant.  That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.

#22 New home construction in the United States is on pace to set a brand new all-time record low in 2011.

#23 As I have written about previously, 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.

#24 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

#25 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980.  Today they account for approximately 16.3%.

#26 One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

#27 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

#28 The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

#29 It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.

#30 The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse.  According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

#31 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

#32 According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America’s biggest companies rose by 36.5% in just one recent 12 month period.

#33 Today, the “too big to fail” banks are larger than ever.  The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.

#34 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.

#35 According to an analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center, the median net worth for households led by someone 65 years of age or older is 47 times greater than the median net worth for households led by someone under the age of 35.

#36 If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.

#37 A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7%) than has ever been measured before.

#38 Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007.

#39 Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.

#40 Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over America.  According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.

#41 Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#42 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income.  Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.

#43 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits.  Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

#44 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP.  Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.

#45 For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars.  That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.

#46 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

#47 Amazingly, the U.S. government has now accumulated a total debt of 15 trillion dollars.  When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.

#48 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

#49 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.

#50 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

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This would not be a biblical apocalypse or even a Mayan one, but rather an event of our own making. The world has made so many problems for itself in recent decades that the whole edifice of civilization is showing signs of coming unglued.

This sort of thing has happened within living memory – remember 1914 and 1939 – so a year in which much comes undone should not come as a great surprise. If you are looking for a general theory of what is about to happen to us, you might start with Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies in which the author identifies 17 examples of rapid societal collapse. In a nutshell, if anybody thinks the Roman Empire collapsed from too much complexity, one should look at the U.S. tax code or the efforts to refinance the EU’s sovereign debt. Compared to the machinations of the 7 billion people currently running around the world, the Romans were running a kindergarten.

Whether the global civilization, or significant parts thereof, comes unstuck sooner or later is obviously a judgment call, but a case can be made that some very bad things might be coming in the next year or so. There would seem to be two fundamental problems behind the coming upheavals. One is that we are running into constraints on resources and the other is that the OECD nations have simply accumulated so much debt that it is unlikely to ever be repaid. No one ever thinks of the atmosphere’s ability to absorb and carry off carbon emissions as a resource, but as the world’s climate changes for the worse, that is exactly what it is. It could easily turn out over the course of the next 10 decades, that the atmosphere’s ability to absorb greenhouse gases turns out to be far more important than reserves of fossil fuels.

Looking at what seems to be shaping up for 2012 that could be of apocalyptic proportions we have the rapidly deteriorating financial situation in the EU. Despite endless expressions of optimism on the part of political leaders, most unbiased observers believe there is nothing that can be done to prevent an economic downturn. Some are politely referring to this downturn as a double-dip recession, but others foresee a global depression equal to or worse than the one that occurred 80 years ago. The “worse than” thesis comes from the notion that there will not be the quantities of cheap energy available to support a recovery, and that there will have to be a major transition in the sources and use of energy before economic growth will ever resume.

A case can be made that some very bad things might be coming in the next year or so.

While most attention has been paid to refinancing debt, persistently high oil prices are gaining increasing recognition as a major factor in slowing economic growth. While high oil prices coupled with new technologies have brought forth new sources of oil, most commentators ignore the fact that this “new” oil is simply unaffordable in today’s economies. The older cheap stuff that we have been living on for the last century still makes up about 75 percent of our daily consumption, but, and this is a big but, the cheap oil is disappearing at the rate of 3-4 million barrels a day (b/d) each year. In 20 years cheap oil will be largely gone, replaced by unaffordable “unconventional oil,” if we can raise enough capital to exploit the stuff. Recent economic research shows that when the U.S. spends more than 4.5 percent of its GDP on oil, it goes into recession. Although there is some debate on how to calculate the price at which oil prices seriously damage the GDP, some say $90 a barrel will do nicely. Keep in mind that oil has been selling in most places for over $100 a barrel during 2011 and shows no signs of retreating very much in the near future.

The second set of problems likely to explode in 2012 is the political instability. The most serious is in the Arab world, but as demonstrations in Moscow, China, Kazakhstan, Europe, and even mild ones on Wall Street show, social unrest is turning into a worldwide problem as resources become constrained and economic growth slows. Mankind now has seven billion mouths to feed and these are increasing by 70 million each year. There is going to be a turning point, the only question is when?

Unrest and various geopolitical confrontations have already reduced or eliminated oil exports from Libya, Yemen, and Syria this year. Efforts to sanction Iran seem to be picking up steam and the oil markets are nervous that many countries soon will be forced to stop buying Iranian crude. The Syrian situation continues downhill and the delicate Iraqi political balance that was crafted by the US appears to have lasted for only a few days after the last US troops were withdrawn. It is a good bet that there is going to be less oil exported from the Middle East and possibly Central Asia by the end of next year – raising oil prices despite deteriorating economic conditions.

On top of an emerging global economic downturn and the prospects for less oil from the Middle East, we have the United States where the electorate seems to have voted itself into political gridlock while seeking to vote for better times. It seems likely that very little in terms of improving economic policies will be accomplished in Washington until another election or two takes place and the electorate can sort out some sort of coherent path for the country. Until then a large case of fiscal austerity and more unemployment will be the order of the day.

The case for major new troubles starting in 2012 rests on the likelihood of the collapse of much or all of the Eurozone and increased turmoil in the Middle East. The interesting part of this scenario is both of these situations can come about in numerous ways. This of course increases the chances markedly that something very bad will indeed happen soon.

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By Will Doig, Salon

This story originally appeared at Salon.

In Hollywood movies, the cities of the future have speeding monorails and flying cars, everyone careening toward their destination at a zillion miles per hour. (The future always looks surprisingly like “The Jetsons,” which turns 50 next year.)

It makes for great CGI. But does it make for a great city? For generations, velocity has defined the urban experience: screeching subways, maniacal taxis, hustling crowds. Life in the fast lane. A New York minute is no minute at all. Even as our roads become clogged with traffic, we think of cities as most city-like when they move at a blur.

But look around (if you have a second) and you might notice that a lot of the new ideas seeping into cities are aimed not at making them faster, but slowing them down. The buzziest mode of transport now is a bicycle. Streetcars, a pokey throwback, are returning. Walkable neighborhoods, traffic-calming measures and “slow zones” are catching on, and freeways are being torn down and replaced with lower-speed boulevards. Even things likesit-down pedestrian plazas and pop-up cafes seem to indicate a desire to slacken the pace.

Slower cities have a lot to recommend them. “It’s not just a road safety issue,” says Rod King, the creator of “20′s Plenty for Us,” a movement to reduce London’s speed limit to 20 miles per hour. “There are a lot of peripheral advantages to slowing down traffic.” The advantages include increased biking because roads aren’t so scary, the need for less infrastructure like speed bumps, and better air quality (racing from one traffic light to the next burns more fuel). Add in the public-safety benefits of slower cars (which are hard to overstate — a few extra miles per hour canliterally kill) and putting on the brakes starts to look like a no-brainer.

For this reason, speed may be the next battleground for urban streets. Advocates for safer, more walkable and bikable cities have spent the last decade agitating largely for infrastructure: bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, curb bulb-outs and other concrete improvements. Now, they say, the fight is turning to “enforcement” — a demand for cities to crack down on dangerous driving.

Such efforts are already getting results. Seattle’s mayor wants a 20 mile-per-hour speed limit on some city streets. Last month, Washington, D.C., was talking about 15. Advocates are starting to pressure police to ticket urban speeders. There’s a growing awareness that cars could be a bigger urban menace than guns. (In a future column, we’ll look at the push to get tough on drivers who kill pedestrians.)

But the slow-city movement isn’t just about cars, nor is it always about safety. There’s a growing sense that getting around — even if it is slower — can become a joy in itself.

The streetcar resurgence is a prime example. Streetcars are sometimes slower than the bus lines they replace (some of them aren’t much faster than walking) and yet they’re wildly popular. “There are two things people say about the streetcar” in Portland, Ore., says Michael Andersen, creator of the publication Portland Afoot. “One is, ‘The streetcar is soooo sloooow.’ And the other is, ‘I loooove the streetcar.’”

The benefits and drawbacks of slow-mo transit have become a hot topic among planning geeks. In 2008, urbanist Patrick M. Condon asserted that slow streetcars would be better for Vancouver than faster rapid transit. His argument: “A high-speed system is best if the main intention is to move riders quickly from one side of the region to the other. Lower operational speeds are better if your intention is to best serve city districts with easy access within them …” In other words, in dense urban neighborhoods, slower transit with more places to hop on and off can be more useful than a fast subway that makes a single stop.

It feels strange to equate slowing down with moving ahead, but in some ways, slowing down cities, much like the slow-food movement, is about shrugging off some of the 20th century’s ill-conceived “innovations.” A hundred years ago, city streets were a multi-use melting pot of cars, trolleys, horses, buggies, bicycles and pedestrians, all moving together in a low-speed symphony. It was easy to share the road because few things moved fast enough to be really dangerous. It wasn’t until the 1930s and ’40s that we started to see the streets as reserved for things that could go very fast, and pedestrians were expected to stick to the sidewalks. “Over time, without express agreement or even acknowledgment, the streets gradually became off-limits to the unwheeled,” wrote the New York Times in a recent look back at mid-century urban street life.

Now, gradually, the pendulum appears to be swinging back toward slower streets, partly because walkable neighborhoods and urban density are in vogue again. A lazy streetcar, a strolling pedestrian or a languidly pedaling bicyclist are all signs that neighborhood life in that area is healthy and abundant. They indicate that you’re somewhere that’s packed with businesses, parks, playgrounds — things that people want to stop and use — and, in circular fashion, they encourage even more of that stuff to be built.

Not everyone buys it, of course. Condon’s argument sparked a small riot on transit consultant Jarrett Walker’s popular blog under a post titled, “Is Speed Obsolete?” Does slow transit really take cars off the road, or just pedestrians? How are streetcars better than buses? And for that matter, are bicycles even a slow way to get around? (Who could forget last summer’s thrilling bicyclist-versus-JetBlue battle royale in Los Angeles?) The debate over slowing down cities remains very much up for grabs.

Maybe the bigger dilemma is that, too much of the time, our cities aren’t going fast or slow. Chuck Marohn, executive director of the nonprofit Strong Towns, has argued that we continue to make the mistake of building 45 mile-per-hour cities — places where we travel (usually by car) at a speed that’s somewhere in the murky middle. This happens because we forget the difference between a street, where vibrant, valuable, low-speed development should flourish, and a road, which should quickly take us from one place to another. Instead, Marohn says, we’ve ended up with a bunch of “stroads” — four-lane arteries, lined with mini malls and parking lots, that are too fast to encourage good development, and too slow to efficiently move us in and out.

But there are signs everywhere that that might be changing, and that the value of slower streets is hitting home. Merchants who originally worried that traffic-calming measures would hurt their bottom lines are now realizing the benefits. Pedestrian plazas and pop-up cafes have proven extremely popular as amenities that encourage people to pause, socialize, and do a little texting. Even New York’s slow zones are a hit. It all goes to show that a great city doesn’t need to move at the speed of Hollywood to have its own kinetic energy. Life in the slow lane can be just as sweet.

© 2011 Salon All rights reserved.

We will never be the city of our imagination until we address the twin realities we face:  resource depletion and global warming.  All the slick pictures showing what could be are meaningless as long as we have the largest carbon footprint in the nation.  No amount of work on renovating the Palace of Rupp to keep the masses placated 30 nights a year will lead us to the city we need to become.  See, all the buildings shown in the picture will be powered by coal – unless some huge leap of consciousness occurs among our city’s leaders, which seems to be unlikely.

How many more mountains will be destroyed to power these buildings?   How much more pollution will we tolerate to get this shiny city?  How will we afford the ever increasing costs of fossil fuels?

The city we need to be lies in the answers to those questions.

But I think most people will ask when the view these drawings is one most important to them:  where are the parking lots?

All that said, I do like how the Town Branch weaves into and through the entire complex.

From the report:

“If our community fails to anticipate and respond to the end of affordable, plentiful oil, the eventual scarcity and expense of everything dependent on petroleum may well leave Lawrence with a limited and unappealing range of choices. But if Lawrence is proactive in transitioning to lower oil use, it may be able to choose optimal transportation modes and lifestyles. The challenge is to develop local alternatives to oil before the need becomes severe. A related challenge involves presenting those local alternatives as opportunities that Lawrence’s citizens will embrace.”

Key Conclusions
This report, Solutions to Peak Oil Vulnerabilities: A Response Plan for Lawrence, Kansas, is based on the following key conclusions:
1. Reliable sources, including the U.S. Department of Energy, predict that worldwide demand for oil soon will exceed known worldwide supply and extraction rates.
2. Oil and oil-related products will become increasingly expensive and difficult for communities to procure.
3. Lawrence is vulnerable to peak oil challenges in areas such as transportation; food supply; water, wastewater, and solid waste treatment; energy delivery; emergency services; and communications.
4. Reducing local demand for and consumption of oil and oil-related products will be Lawrence’s most immediately effective strategy for coping with peak oil challenges.
5. Lawrence should initiate adaptive measures before the need becomes severe.
6. Communicating peak oil challenges and recommended actions to the citizens of Lawrence will increase the effectiveness of adaptive measures.

The goal of this report is to chart a course for a resilient local government, a resilient business community, and resilient patterns for living and working.

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Sounds good and reasonable – why don’t we have a plan like this? Especially since we are entering into a new comprehensive planning phase….

I really like this economic growth aspect:  “Partner with the Chamber of Commerce and economic development interests to aggressively recruit businesses engaged in research and manufacturing of renewable
energy technologies.“

Read the whole thing here

By Nick Hanauer

(Bloomberg) — It is a tenet of American economic beliefs, and an article of faith for Republicans that is seldom contested by Democrats: If taxes are raised on the rich, job creation will stop.

Trouble is, sometimes the things that we know to be true are dead wrong. For the larger part of human history, for example, people were sure that the sun circles the Earth and that we are at the center of the universe. It doesn’t, and we aren’t. The conventional wisdom that the rich and businesses are our nation’s “job creators” is every bit as false.

I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, the Internet and software. I founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. in 2007 for $6.4 billion. I was also the first non-family investor in Amazon.com Inc.

Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.

Theory of Evolution

When businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it is like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it’s the other way around.

It is unquestionably true that without entrepreneurs and investors, you can’t have a dynamic and growing capitalist economy. But it’s equally true that without consumers, you can’t have entrepreneurs and investors. And the more we have happy customers with lots of disposable income, the better our businesses will do.

That’s why our current policies are so upside down. When the American middle class defends a tax system in which the lion’s share of benefits accrues to the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.

And that’s what has been happening in the U.S. for the last 30 years.

Since 1980, the share of the nation’s income for fat cats like me in the top 0.1 percent has increased a shocking 400 percent, while the share for the bottom 50 percent of Americans has declined 33 percent. At the same time, effective tax rates on the superwealthy fell to 16.6 percent in 2007, from 42 percent at the peak of U.S. productivity in the early 1960s, and about 30 percent during the expansion of the 1990s. In my case, that means that this year, I paid an 11 percent rate on an eight-figure income.

One reason this policy is so wrong-headed is that there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the average American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like everyone else, I go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.

It’s true that we do spend a lot more than the average family. Yet the one truly expensive line item in our budget is our airplane (which, by the way, was manufactured in France by Dassault Aviation SA), and those annual costs are mostly for fuel (from the Middle East). It’s just crazy to believe that any of this is more beneficial to our economy than hiring more teachers or police officers or investing in our infrastructure.

More Shoppers Needed

I can’t buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can’t buy any new clothes or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the tens of millions of middle-class families that are barely squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages.

If the average American family still got the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would have an astounding $13,000 more in their pockets a year. It’s worth pausing to consider what our economy would be like today if middle-class consumers had that additional income to spend.

It is mathematically impossible to invest enough in our economy and our country to sustain the middle class (our customers) without taxing the top 1 percent at reasonable levels again. Shifting the burden from the 99 percent to the 1 percent is the surest and best way to get our consumer-based economy rolling again.

Significant tax increases on the about $1.5 trillion in collective income of those of us in the top 1 percent could create hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in our economy, rather than letting it pile up in a few bank accounts like a huge clot in our nation’s economic circulatory system.

Consider, for example, that a puny 3 percent surtax on incomes above $1 million would be enough to maintain and expand the current payroll tax cut beyond December, preventing a $1,000 increase on the average worker’s taxes at the worst possible time for the economy. With a few more pennies on the dollar, we could invest in rebuilding schools and infrastructure. And even if we imposed a millionaires’ surtax and rolled back the Bush- era tax cuts for those at the top, the taxes on the richest Americans would still be historically low, and their incomes would still be astronomically high.

We’ve had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Middle-class consumers do, and when they thrive, U.S. businesses grow and profit. That’s why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.

So let’s give a break to the true job creators. Let’s tax the rich like we once did and use that money to spur growth by putting purchasing power back in the hands of the middle class. And let’s remember that capitalists without customers are out of business.

(Nick Hanauer is a founder of Second Avenue Partners, a venture capital company in Seattle specializing in early state startups and emerging technology. He has helped launch more than 20 companies, including aQuantive Inc. and Amazon.com, and is the co-author of two books, “The True Patriot” and “The Gardens of Democracy.” The opinions expressed are his own.)

——————–

Advance version, for publication in UNCTAD Trade and Environment Review 2011/2012 (February 2012).

Abstract
The current global food system is highly fuel- and transport-dependent. Fuels will almost certainly become less affordable in the near and medium term, making the current, highly fuel-dependent agricultural production system less secure and food less affordable. It is therefore necessary to promote food self-sufficiency and reduce the need for fuel inputs to the food system at all levels.

The connection between food and oil is systemic, and the prices of both food and fuel have risen and fallen more or less in tandem in recent years (figure 1). Modern agriculture uses oil products to fuel farm machinery, to transport other inputs to the farm, and to transport farm output to the ultimate consumer. Oil is often also used as input in agricultural chemicals. Oil price increases therefore put pressure on all these aspects of commercial food systems.

Figure 1: Evolution of food and fuel prices, 2000 to 2009

Sources: US Energy Information Administration and FAO.

Thus there is concern that high and volatile prices of crude oil may cause food prices to continue to increase (Bloomberg, 2011).

Moreover, as oil prices rise, so does demand for biofuels, which are the only non-fossil liquid fuels able to replace petroleum products in existing combustion engines and motor vehicles. But biofuels are often made from corn and other agricultural products. As demand for these alternative fuels increases, crop prices are forced upwards, making food even less affordable.

Export-led agricultural strategies also increase the world’s vulnerability to high oil prices. Most donor agencies have encouraged the less industrialized countries to focus on the production of cash crops at the expense of staples for local consumption. As a result, people in these countries are forced to rely increasingly on imports of often subsidized cereals or those funded by food aid programmes. However, rising transport costs contribute to rising prices of food imports, making them ever less affordable. Fuel costs represent as much as 50 to 60 per cent of total ship operating costs.[1] From early 2007 to mid-2008, as fuel prices soared, the cost of shipping food aid climbed by about $50 per ton – a nearly 30 per cent increase, according to the United States Agency for International Development (Garber, 2008).

Meanwhile, many poor farmers who cannot afford machinery, fuels and commercial farm inputs find themselves at a disadvantage in the global food economy. Compounding this are agricultural policies in industrialized food-exporting countries that subsidize domestic producers and dump surpluses onto developing countries, thus adding to the economic disadvantages of the smallholder farmers in those countries. As a result, millions of those farmers are being driven out of business annually, those countries are giving increasing priority to production for export and they are witnessing a burgeoning landless poor urban class (whose immediate ancestors were subsistence farmers) that is chronically malnourished and hungry.

Soaring food and fuel prices have a disproportionate impact on developing countries and on poor people in developed countries. Americans, who, on average, spend less than one tenth of their income on food, are able to absorb the higher food prices more easily than the world’s poorest 2 billion people, who spend 50 to 70 per cent of their income on food.

Why are oil prices so high? Speculative investment in commodities plays a role, though there is a persuasive case to be made that oil prices would be rising even if oil futures speculation were entirely curtailed. The oil industry is changing, and rapidly. As Jeremy Gilbert, former chief petroleum engineer for BP, has put it, “The current fields we are chasing we’ve known about for a long time in many cases, but they were too complex, too fractured, too difficult to chase. Now our technology and understanding [are] better, which is a good thing, because these difficult fields are all that we have left” (Gilbert, 2011).

The trends in the oil industry are clear and undisputed: exploration and production are becoming more costly, and are giving rise to greater environmental risks, while competition for access to new prospective regions is generating increasing geopolitical tensions. According to the International Energy Agency, the rate of world crude oil production reached its peak in 2006.[IEA 2010a) The IMF has joined a chorus of energy industry analysts in concluding that scarcity and high prices are here to stay.[IMF 2011a, 2011b]

A collapse in demand for oil resulting from sharply declining global economic activity could cause oil prices to fall, as happened in late 2008. Indeed, this is a fairly likely possibility. But while it would make oil cheaper, it would not make fuel more affordable to most people. It is theoretically possible for the world to curb oil demand through policies that limit consumption, and it is also conceivable that some unexpected technological breakthrough could rapidly result in a cheap, effective alternative to petroleum. However, these latter two developments are rather improbable. Thus there is no likely scenario in which the services provided by oil will become more affordable within the context of a stable global economy at any time in the foreseeable future.

While wealthy consumers are able to absorb incremental increases in food prices, a sudden interruption in the availability of fuel (due to geopolitical events) or a significant gradual curtailment of fossil fuel production (due to the continuing depletion of world hydrocarbon reserves) could lead to a breakdown of the food system at every level, from farmer to processor to distributor to retailer and finally to consumer.

To summarize, high oil prices contribute to soaring food prices. Our modern global food system is highly oil-dependent, but petroleum is becoming less and less affordable. Extreme weather events also contribute to high food prices, and, to the extent that such events result from anthropogenic global warming, they are also ultimately fuel-related. Thus there is no solution for the world’s worsening food crisis within current energy and agricultural systems.

What is needed is a major redesigning of both food and energy systems. The goal of managers of the global food system should be to reduce its dependence on fossil energy inputs while also reducing GHG emissions from land-use activities. Achieving this goal will require increasing local food self-sufficiency and promoting less fuel- and petrochemical-intensive methods of production.

Given the degree to which the modern food system has become dependent on fossil fuels, many proposals for delinking food and fossil fuels may seem radical. However, efforts to this end must be judged not by the degree to which they support the existing imperatives of the global food system, but by their ability to solve the fundamental challenge that faces us – the need to feed a global population of seven billion (and counting) with a diminishing supply of fuels available to fertilize, plough and irrigate fields, and to harvest and transport crops. Farmers need to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels in order to build resilience against future resource scarcity and price volatility.

In general, farmers can no longer assume that products derived from petroleum and natural gas (chiefly diesel, gasoline, synthetic fertilizers, and synthetic pesticides) will remain affordable in the future, and they should therefore change their business plans accordingly. While many approaches could be explored, which in any case would depend on specific geographic locations, the necessary outlines of a general transition strategy are already clear.

• Farmers should move towards regenerative fertility systems that build humus and sequester carbon in soils, thus contributing to solving climate change rather than exacerbating it.
• Farmers should reduce their use of pesticides in favour of integrated pest management systems that rely primarily on biological, cultural and physical controls.
• More of the renewable energy that will power farming activities can and must be generated on farms. Wind and biomass production, in particular, can provide farmers with added income while also powering farm operations.
• Countries and regions must undertake proactive steps to reduce the energy needed to transport food by reorganizing their food production systems. This will entail support for local producers and for local networks that bring producers and consumers closer together. More efficient modes of transportation, such as ships and trains, must replace less efficient modes, such as trucks and planes.
• The end of the fossil fuel era should also be reflected in changes in dietary and consumption patterns among the general population, with a preference for foods that are grown locally, that are in season, and that undergo less processing. Also, a shift away from energy- and meat-intensive, diets should be encouraged.
• With less fuel available to power agricultural machinery, the world will need many more farmers. But for farmers to succeed, current agricultural policies that favour larger-scale production and production for export will need to change in favour of support to small-scale subsistence farming, gardening and agricultural cooperatives. Such policies should be formulated and put in place both by international institutions, such as the FAO and the World Bank, and also by national and regional governments.

If such a transition is undertaken proactively and intelligently, there could be many additional benefits, with more employment in farming, more environmental protection, less soil erosion, a revitalization of rural culture and significant improvements in public health. Some of this transformation will inevitably be driven by market forces, led by the rising price of fossil fuels. However, without planning, the transition may prove destructive, since market forces acting alone could bankrupt farmers while leaving consumers with few, if any, options for securing food supplies. Removing fossil fuels from the food system too quickly, before alternative systems are in place, would be catastrophic. Thus the transition process requires careful consideration and planning.

There are reasons for hope. A recent report on African agriculture by UNCTAD and UNEP (2008) suggests that organic, small-scale farming can deliver the amount of increased yields thought to be possible only through industrial farming, and without the environmental and social damages caused by the latter. Recent research by Badgley et al. (2007) also concludes that organic and low-input methods can increase yields in developing countries while maintaining yields in industrialized countries.

Generally, smaller farms have greater biodiversity (Hole et al., 2005), place greater emphasis on soil-building (D’Souza and Ikerd, 1996) and display greater land-use efficiency than large farms (Rosset, 1999).

Nevertheless, despite these promising trends and findings, it is axiomatic that no food system tied to the earth’s finite soil and water resources can support an ever-expanding and ever more resource-demanding population. The prudent path towards reforming the global food system must therefore coordinate agricultural policy with appropriate population, education, economic, transport and energy policies. The transition to a post-petroleum food system will need to be comprehensive. In its scale and required speed it promises to be one of the greatest challenges in human history. But the challenge will only grow the longer it is postponed.

References
Badgley C et al. (2007). Organic agriculture and the global food supply. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 22: 86–108.

Bloomberg (2011). Food Prices may extend gains on volatile oil costs, FAO says. 12 May

Chen Rui (2009). Analysis on “new fundaments” and range of oil price trend. London, World Energy Council.

D’Souza G and Ikerd J (1996). Small farms and sustainable development: Is small more sustainable? Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 28: 73–83.

Garber K. (2008). Fuel costs cut deeply into food aid. US News and World Reports, 7 July.

Gilbert J (2011). No we can’t: Uncertainty, technology and risk. Lecture at the ASPO-USA Conference, Washington, DC, 9 October 2010 (cited in Richard Heinberg R, 2011, The End of Growth. Gabriola Island, BC, New Society Publishers).

Hole D et al. (2005). Does organic farming benefit biodiversity? Biological Conservation, 122: 113–130.

International Energy Agency (2010a). Executive summary. World Energy Outlook 2010. Paris, OECD/IEA

International Energy Agency (2010b). Key graphs: World oil production by type in the new policies scenario. In: World Energy Outlook 2010, at: www.worldenergyoutlook.org/docs/weo2010/key_graphs.pdf.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) (2011a), “Impact of High Food and Fuel Prices on Developing Countries—Frequently Asked Questions.”. Last Updated: September 30, 2011

IMF, “IMF Sees Oil Prices Staying High.” (2011b), April 7, 2011.

Rosset PM (1999). The multiple functions and benefits of small farm agriculture. Paper presented at the FAO/Netherlands conference on Cultivating Our Futures, Maastricht, 12–17 September 1999.

UNCTAD/UNEP (2008). Organic agriculture and food security in Africa. Study for the UNEP-UNCTAD Capacity-building Task Force on Trade, Environment and Development, UNCTAD/DITC/TED/2007/15. Geneva.

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[1] World Shipping Council, Record fuel prices place stress on ocean shipping,at: www.worldshipping.org/pdf/WSC_fuel_statement_final.pdf , 2 May 2008.

Image: Bloomberg news

Our decade from hell will get worse in 2012

Commentary: Market crash, political gridlock, revolution, new class wars

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Fasten your seat belts: 2011 was far worse than expected. Our earlier predictions for America’s Worst Decade just got worse.

As financial historian Niall Ferguson writes in Newsweek: “Double-Dip Depression … We forget that the Great Depression was like a soccer match, there were two halves.” The 1929 crash kicked off the first half. But what “made the depression truly ‘great’ …began with the European banking crisis of 1931.” Sound familiar?

Yes, huge warnings: But America’s deaf. In denial. When we predicted the 2011-2020 “decade from hell” we didn’t see the big macro events dead ahead: Arab Spring virus that’s now Occupy Wall Street, promising to explode into an even more powerful force in 2012 … war on the middle class … widening inequality gap. … Washington gridlock … the Super Rich’s blind resistance to all new taxes.

As Ferguson puts it: “To understand what has been happening in our own borderline depression, you need to know this history. But hardly anyone does.” Get it? America’s already in a “borderline depression,” and virtually nobody gets it. American leaders are dummies about history. Worse, nobody may be able to stop our depression from turning “great.”

Investors beware: Please, protect your assets: “Those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.” We’ve already forgotten the lessons of the 2008 disaster. No wonder we’re doomed to repeat the mistakes of the 1930’s triggering the Second Great Depression. Soccer anyone?

More bad news for 2012: from Gross, Grantham, Shilling and Stiglitz

Ferguson’s in good company with his dark forecast. Pimco’s Bill Gross asks rhetorically: “Where is the euro headed? More than likely down, perhaps significantly.” Gross warns of a “terrifying situation” where “the euro may fall … and take the U.S. recovery with it.”

Then there’s Jeremy Grantham, whose GMO firm manages $100 billion. He predicted the 2008 crash a couple years in advance. Predicts ‘Seven Lean Years” ahead, till 2016, the end of the next presidential term. Now, in his latest newsletter he feels “sadly … vindicated by my ‘seven lean years’ forecast.” The world “will not easily recover from the current level of debt,” as our self-destructive American and European leaders have “permanently slowed their GDP growth.”

More bad news: As we close out the first year of the “Worst Decade in American History,” economist and long-time Forbes columnist Gary Shilling just issued his semi-annual outlook: “Global Recession Likely” in 2012. OK, the best he can say is that this one “will be milder than the 2007-2008 nosedive.” Of course, you’ve already forgotten those pains, right?

And over at Vanity Fair, Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz also reexamines the dark history of the Great Depression, warning that in our ignorance of history we’re missing a fundamental economic “shift in the ‘real’ economy,” missing what will generate future jobs, just as we did back in the ‘30s. Yes, we “risk a tragic replay” of the Great Depression.

10 predictions for America’s Worst Decade Ever

Over the past decade we predicted the 2000 crash, the 2008 meltdown, the short-lived 2009 rally. Future historians will look back on the 2011-2020 decade as America’s Worst Decade. Worse than the 1930s Great Depression. Totally predictable. Totally denied.

So here’s an update of the 10 predictions of a chain reaction of events that are building to a critical mass, will consume America in what economist Joseph Shumpeter called “creative destruction” that will eventually, after cleansing the greed from America’s toxic capitalism, trigger a renewal of the American Spirit, as happened in the Great Depression.

Here’s how all this will generally unfold in the coming decade:

2011. Super Rich keep spending billions to control Washington

The conservative takeover of America’s democracy the past three decades became total and complete last year when an activist Supreme Court overturned long-established legal precedent giving soulless corporations — whose sole allegiance is to wealthy shareholders — the same inalienable rights as humans, accelerating their quest for absolute power. Hopefully Senator Bernie Sander’s proposed 28th Amendment will change that, but doubtful.

2012. Super Rich solidifies absolute power over our political system

That Supreme Court decision legalized political bribery. Now, billions pass through lobbyists to politicians with one goal: A promise that politicians vote for their special interests. Our middle class is in a rapid trickle-down into third-world status. The inequality gap steadily widens. Doesn’t matter who wins the 2012 race. Democracy is systemically corrupt by money. Obama, Mitt, Newt, all pawns of the system.

2013. Global population bubble exploding, rapidly wasting resources

America’s Conspiracy of the Super Rich drains trillions from middle-class taxpayers. They see the global population growth explosion of 100 million annually not as exhausting the world’s scarce resources, but as a tool to get richer through free-market capitalism and globalization. They ignore the tragedies as global population climbs to 10 billion, fail to hear the warnings of environmentalists like Bill McKibben that it may “be too late. The science is settled, the damage has already begun,” we can’t save the planet.

2014. Pentagon’s global commodity wars accelerate toward 2020 peak

At the outset of the Iraq War, Fortune analyzed a classified Pentagon report predicting “climate could change radically and fast. That would be the mother of all national security issues.” And billions of new people will spread unrest worldwide as “massive droughts turn farmland into dust bowls and forests to ashes.” Another history lesson forgotten: “An old pattern could emerge; warfare defining human life.” Yes, in denial politicians chose war and catastrophes over cooperation.

2015. Gilded Age globalization explodes America’s Global Empire

About the time of the Pentagon’s prediction of WWIII in 2020, Kevin Phillips warned in “Wealth & Democracy:” “Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt, and ultimately burning themselves out.” Similarly, Ferguson, warns in “Colossus: The Rise and Fall of The American Empire,” that we are in denial, thinking “about the political process in seasonal, cyclical terms.”

2016. Reaganomics capitalism self-destructs, crashes, bank bankruptcies

“But what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arrhythmic,” asks Ferguson. “What if collapse does not arrive over a number of centuries but comes suddenly,” too rapid to respond in time. True to form, a new conservative president will keep ignoring the lessons of history. And, as Jared Diamond’s warns in “Collapse:” “One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations share a sharp curve of decline … demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak in population, wealth and power.”

2017. Class war and revolution: Rich class loses big, surrenders

Warren Buffett saw the revolution long ago: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” But by the 2016 presidential election, political rage explodes into a new American Civil War over inequality. The gaping income gap pops a bubble, causes economic collapse. Riots spread preventing another massive bailout of our too-greedy-to-fail banks. New depression ignites class rebellion.

2018. The Fed and Wall Street banks collapse, Glass-Steagall reinstated

Diamond warned us: Leaders need “the courage to practice long-term thinking, make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they reach crisis proportions.” Instead, they fail to act boldly, delay. History tells us leaders act in short-term self-interest, not long-term public interests, especially politicians backed by billionaires who see only quarterly earnings, year-end bonuses, next election.

2019. Global commodity wars spread, killing millions, wasting trillions

Over half our federal budget goes to the Pentagon’s war machine, limiting America’s domestic priorities. Predictably, new commodity wars are ignited by an accelerating global population versus a decline in the world’s scarce resources. That also forces a total rethinking of the balance between spending to protect against external enemies and a rapid deterioration of domestic programs: employment, education, health care, retirement.

2020. America’s first woman president, patriarchal dominance is dead

By the end of the decade, it is finally obvious that patriarchy — male dominance of leadership roles in philosophy, economics, politics and culture throughout history — has failed our civilization, bringing the world to the brink of total destruction.

Why do male leaders consistently fail us? Jeremy Grantham brilliantly captured that fundamental flaw in our nation’s character a few years ago: Male leaders are actually quite emotional, myopic and “impatient … management types who focus on what they are doing this quarter or this annual budget.” But true leadership “requires more people with a historical perspective who are more thoughtful and more right-brained.”

Unfortunately, “we end up with an army of left-brained immediate doers.” And that guarantees “every time we get an outlying, obscure event that has never happened before in history, they are always to miss it.”

Worse, today’s male brain is so rigidly hard-wired in short-term myopia, it quickly forgets history’s most recent lessons, like 2008. As a result, our males leaders “collectively miss even totally obvious events that happen over and over in history.”

Class war? Or Gender War? By 2020 we’ll have an answer, but by then it may be too late.

—–

This could be really bad if it were to last.  America wouldn’t stand for it – we could be at war with Iran soon.

33% of all the world’s oil comes through this area – oil could hit $200+ per barrel within a week – West Texas Intermediate just shot up more than 3% in 15 minutes to over $100 a barrel

Does Lex have any contingency plans for an event like this?  I do know that there’s an argument brewing over the important stuff – Rupp and Arts and Entertainment……

——————-

It’s On: Iran Closes Straits Of Hormuz, Oil Explodes

Zero Hedge on 12/13/2011 09:53 -0500

Iran has closed the Straits of Hormuz for military training as was expected yesterday, according to RanSquawk. Oil, and all other commodities, are outtahere.

And entire commodity complex:

And for those curious about more, RanSquawk speculates that the source of the data is a report in the Tehran Times saying that Iran will hold War Games in which it would close the Straits. Unclear if this is what Ran referenced when they said the Straits were already closed.

So, with that in mind, I did a quick back-of-the-envelope (without an actual envelope) set of calculations about the possibilities of our future over the short term – say three years or so.

So here we go:

65% – the odds that peak oil will ensure that the US is entering a time of prolonged, if not permanent, economic decline.

Peak oil is an economic issue as much as it is a geologic issue.  Now that we have passed maximum supply, we are entering a new period of adjusting to high prices.  Yet our economy was built on the premise of cheap prices. High prices constrain growth.   Growth has been the measurement of our civilization for over 100 years.  Without growth, the best we could hope for is stability – a steady state economy.  Yet there are no policies in place to ensure that happens.

The other possibility is decline.  Over the past four years we have printed trillions in fake money to try and stave off decline.   Yet growth has not really been restarted in any meaningful way.  Oil prices are still a barrier to true broad based growth.  And if prices are this high in murky economic times, then what would happen if things were rosier?  The reality is that we’ve come to the end of growth as we’ve known it in a conventional sense.

Yes, I know, this will get me lambasted by nearly everyone, as we all have a stake in seeing growth return.  But nothing I’ve read or heard suggests that there is any lasting way to keep growing as we have on a finite planet.  Technology, innovation and human ingenuity can do wonders.  They just can’t change the fundamental laws of the universe.  Americans are so poorly educated in science that few of us can truly understand that there are indeed limits on what can be done.

25% – the odds that our economic system will collapse suddenly.

By this I mean that one or both of two things could happen.  One is that the financial system which relies now exclusively on credit would simply see the availability of credit disappear.  To begin with, more money has been loaned into existence than ever has a chance of being repaid. This alone will limit future credit availability.  Further, trust is a huge part of credit, and we see that trust has nearly evaporated.  These will combine to basically force a return to a cash and carry world.  But the supply chains that keep food on the shelves and consumer goods in stores don’t currently operate that way.  A lack of credit would stop global supply chains cold.  If that happens, how will food and other stuff get to Lexington?

The other thing that could happen is a sudden and prolonged oil crisis. If global oil flows drop more than say 5%, then global commerce will grind to a halt.  Once again, our economy is extremely vulnerable to lack of oil, or to very expensive oil – which is essentially the same thing.  Without food and goods being trucked into Lexington daily, what happens?

In either scenario, the consumer economy will be severely damaged.  More than 70% of our economy would be teetering.  It is horribly fragile already; collapse would be easy to imagine.

10% – the odds that World War III will be begin and oil will be the leverage point.

For example, we only care about Iran because Iran has a lot of oil.  If we, our allies, or our surrogates attack Iran to destroy its nuclear capacity, the world will face serious repercussions.  China and India have no fear of Iran.  They only want its oil. If we start a conventional conflagration in order to prevent a nuclear one, it will have massive repercussions for oil flows.

China especially will be unlikely to tolerate any significant disruption of supply from Iran. “Iran is China’s third-largest crude supplier, shipping around 540,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first six months of this year, or more than 10 percent of Beijing’s 5.1 million bpd of imports. The flow grew 50 percent from the first half of 2010.”

Maybe they will help head off a crisis in advance, maybe they find a way to supply arms to Iran, or maybe they intervene directly to defend Iran.  This last is unlikely – yet- as the Chinese do not have the navy and air power to match the US.  However, the longer it takes to deal with Iran, the more time the Chinese have to continue their massive military expansion.  10 years from now, the Chinese military will be much more able to deal with foreign conflicts.  And securing oil supplies will be that much more important.

0% – the odds that we’ll take any meaningful action on mitigating global warming.   Republicans – who are self styled as conservative – meaning conserving of things, supposedly for the future – are nothing but live for today risk junkies.  They are betting that everything science tells us about the rapidly changing climate is either wrong or a hoax.   This is the antithesis of true conservatism.  What it is really about is a complete inability to imagine anything but greed and pollution and waste fueling the world.

Democrats on the other hand,  have no backbone in helping to prepare this country for the onslaughts of a changed climate.  Obama has completely whiffed.  It will be years before another mainstream presidential candidate will say the things he did.

Leadership in the business community knows that global warming is real and that, unaddressed, it will be very bad for business.  But they live in three month increments and will never be rewarded for long term thinking.

In a shrinking economy, organizations that ordinarily provide leadership will find it increasingly difficult to raise the funds to compete with lobbyists in order to sway legislation.

That leaves us as individuals.   Most of us have no interest in the subject.  Of those that do, few are truly committed to the fundamentally altered way of living required to vastly lower our footprints.

We will simply hope for the best.  To paraphrase what one forlorn environmentalist recently said, the battle for climate change is over and we lost.   All we can do now is duck and cover.

—–

So these are my guesses today on where we’re headed.  Even if these are taken as the rantings of crackpot, isn’t this kind of thinking that the top tier of leadership in Lexington ought to be doing?  Shouldn’t we at least put together some idea of what could happen in the future in order that we may be ready for it in the off chance it could happen?  The reason I suspect that we wont see that here is that our leaders can imagine no other world except the one in which they grew up.  Thus scenario planning is viewed a waste of time:  things will always be that way.  Another reason could be that glimpsing into a dimly light future is very scary, and really, who wants to be doom and gloom?  Looks bad on a person in our cult of optimism.

That said, what would be your breakdowns?

———

Despite the fact that over 95% of these “alarmists” understand that global warming is happening, that we are causing it, and that the results will be dire for mankind, Forbes and the Heartland Institute can just lie it away by making it sound like THEY have the facts.  Forbes and the Heartland Institute, following in the true tradition of science,”base their skepticism on real-world data and observations.”  There you have it.  Those “alarmists” are phony scientists, ones who prattle about with “speculative computer models programmed and run within the confines of cubicles and drywall.”

Yes, the ones who work for pollution and greed are the true scientists. See, they don’t have to rely on detailed, measured statistics like the “alarmists.”  Instead these guys have looked around, found that the world was hotter in the past too, and voila, warming is good for us!  Friends, THAT is how science is done.

The only possible silver lining in this piece of hate is that now these deniers have stopped denying that the world is in fact warming.  But, thanks to free market solutions and real science, nothing bad is going to happen.

Don’t you feel better?

———————–

Capital Flows
Chilling Thoughts For Global-Warming Alarmists
James Taylor

The central issues in the global warming debate have little to do with whether or not temperatures have warmed during the past century. Nearly all scientists agree that temperatures have indeed warmed during the past 100 years, just as they have warmed (and cooled) many times in previous centuries. The more important issues are whether current temperatures are abnormally warm in a longer-term perspective and whether present warming trends threaten disaster in the foreseeable future.

The first principle to keep in mind is context. While it is true that global temperatures have risen somewhat during the past 100-plus years since the Little Ice Age ended, there was little room for temperatures to go at the time but up. The Little Ice Age, lasting from approximately A.D. 1300 to 1900, brought the planet’s coldest extended temperatures during the last 10,000 years. Saying that temperatures have risen by one degree or so since the end of the Little Ice Age tells us little about the long-term temperature context because the arbitrary baseline of the Little Ice Age was an exceptionally cold climate anomaly.

Keeping this long-term temperature context in mind, we often hear that a given month, year or decade was “the hottest in recorded history,” but that statement only holds true when “recorded history” is defined as the past 130 years or so since the depths of the Little Ice Age. Proponents of a global warming crisis justify this convenient definition of “recorded history” based on the establishment of a relatively global system of weather and temperature stations approximately 130 years ago. Fair enough, but proxy climate data from a variety of sources, including ice cores drilled in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, show that global temperatures were warmer for most of the past 10,000 years than they are today. Human civilization first developed, and then thrived, during climate conditions warmer than today. Today’s temperatures, in a more appropriate long-term context, are unusually cold, not hot.

The second principle to remember is that the Earth’s long-term temperature history gives us proof that warmer temperatures have in the real world always been better for human civilization than colder ones. The Little Ice Age was typified by crop failures, famines, plagues, extreme weather events and human population contractions. By contrast, our recently warming temperatures have been a welcome reprieve from the harsh and unusually cold conditions of the Little Ice Age. During the past century as global temperatures have risen, forests have expanded, deserts have retreated, soil moisture has improved, crops have flourished and extreme weather events such as hurricanes and tornadoes have become less frequent.

While our ability to document the frequency of famines, plagues, droughts, hurricanes, etc. is more limited for the millennia before the Little Ice Age, we do know that during these warmer millennia human civilization thrived and the planet’s climate was not thrown into a chaotic downward spiral. Indeed, the Earth’s climate remains quite benign despite these thousands of years of recent warmer temperatures.

This gets to the heart of the global warming debate. If we have real-world evidence that temperatures were warmer during most of the past 10,000 years (and also during several interglacial warm periods over the past few million years) than they are today and if we also have real-world evidence that human civilization thrived during these warmer periods and the warmer temperatures did not trigger so-called “tipping points,” sending the planet into a climate catastrophe, then we have little reason to believe our present and moderately warming temperatures are poised to cause a climate catastrophe.

For many scientists this distinction between theory and real-world conditions is what typifies the differences between so-called “alarmists” and “skeptics.” As Colorado State University emeritus professor and hurricane expert William Gray frequently explains, alarmists base their climate alarmism on speculative computer models programmed and run within the confines of cubicles and drywall. Skeptics, on the other hand, base their skepticism on real-world data and observations.

Proponents of an imminent global warming crisis may present interesting theories about catastrophes that may occur if the Earth returns to the warmer temperatures that predominated during most of the past 10,000 years, but such theories are strongly contradicted by thousands of years of real-world data and real-world climate observations. The scientific method dictates that realworld observations trump speculative theory, not the other way around.

JAMES TAYLOR IS SENIOR FELLOW FOR ENVIRONMENT POLICY AT THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE AND MANAGING EDITOR OF ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATE NEWS.

Rush Limbaugh, in a typically racist rant where he goes on to call the First Lady “uppity.”

While that is disgusting, the deeper truth to me lies in what he says American’s don’t like.  We don’t like being told that there are limits, because we are Americans, and Americans can never be wrong about anything we choose to do.

It’s this attitude which will spell our doom.   We will fight the world to get “our” oil.  We will pollute the world, to keep ourselves comfortable. We will destroy our own communities in the name of greed.  We will even poison our own bodies with filth disguised as food.  Because we are Americans, and that’s what we must do to be Americans.  And don’t tell us anything different.

Scarily, this thinking is not confined to the 1%, nor only a handful of angry white men who listen to hate radio, but there is a majority of people who believe this.

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