New cool video

Here is the link for a new cool video about how economy works. In 20 minutes everybody can understand why the system is broken. Don't be fooled by the fact that the most waste comes from production. Every little thing counts so don't give up on recycling. Also, when you can make such choice, buy stuff produced locally and/or in a sustainable way (green).

Watch The Story of Stuff at http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Food for thought

Last few months I was immersed in a learning project. After I made the calculations about the Oil and Coal reserves using Dr. Barlett's formula, I realized that these figures mean something that we should worry about. I did further research on peak oil and the state of the planet.

The UN published the report 2008 State of the future. It tells how bad things are and, of course, that there are ways out of this. The headlines in the news were: ‘2008 State of the Future report --we may not be doomed’ and ‘The Future Isn't What it Used to Be! (It's Going to be Better)’.
You can check or download the summary for yourself at:
http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/SOF2008-English.pdf
and see yourself how better it can be.

It is very clear that peak oil is happening. It is hard to believe it and the consequences are that we have to change our lifestyle. In short, consumerism is not possible anymore. We will have to get by with less and less useless stuff. Since oil and natural gas is in everything --agriculture, transportation, infrastructure, plastics, heating, etc -- we have to rethink our food supply, our transportation, and our energy resources. It won't be easy to change most of the infrastructure with less energy and troubled finances. The time factor is also against us. We should have started long time ago to adapt to the new situation. If you want to know more about it, just google 'peak oil' and you will have a wide selection.

I was reading Freakonomics and, besides the fact that I am largely unimpressed by the lack of accuracy of the studies, I found an article 'debunking' the peak oil. I expected it to be bad but it turned out to be sadly hilarious. It was written just before the soaring price of oil reassuring people that nothing is going to happen. This is why economists should listen to engineers sometimes.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/peak-oil-welcome-to-the-medias-new-version-of-shark-attacks/

A very good website that shows in and understandable way what is wrong in our world is Chris Martenson's website. His Crash Course is easy to grasp for anyone. In his lesson about money he is centered on how US financial system is, but it still help you understand why compounded interest is not a good idea.

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crash-course

Chris Martenson focuses more on money and resources. I could add that the free market mechanism works great to make money for some. Markets work best with private property and things that have a price. Its goal is to produce goods as cheap as possible, otherwise companies will disappear. When it comes to ethics or environment or future generations, it fails utterly because these things don’t have a price. Economy will chew up everything that is for free or cheap to make products that you don’t necessarily need, but you are convinced to buy. Trees, animals, fish, land, water and even human beings are only part of the game if a profit can be made. If those things disappear, oh well, we will just move onto other resources and other products?! Basically, we are trapped in an economic model whose only goal is to make more money or die. As you can see, it is a life or death situation. What if you have money but there is nothing to buy? It would be a good question for economists.

I lived through such times in communist Romania, during a period that can be compared to post oil economy. What is coming is simple: food rations, gas rations, less heating, blackouts, water on and off, other products to be found sporadically, black market, etc. Forget about traveling, or an over-abundance of products. No more painful choices to make when you buy mustard. ;-)

I warmly recommend the documentary “What a Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire”. It addresses the problems we are facing and tries to find their roots. I recommend watching it a couple of times. It is very dense information-wise. It can be shocking and most people react like they have lost something dear and go through stages of grief. It will be unpleasant but necessary.

What a way to go trailer

I’ve spent many hours reading and looking for a solution, or maybe a proof that I am wrong. With every article, book, documentary and news piece, I am more and more convinced that it is happening and there is no coherent solution out there. Every time I see an article saying that there is no reason to be worried, I hope that it will convince me. And every time I am disappointed by its shallowness. It breaks my heart when I see the hugely disproportionate coverage of political and financial issues, when the fact that a quarter of the mammal species are threatened with extinction doesn’t get any headline at all. A quarter of all species! Isn’t that some kind of unprecedented mass murder? Shouldn’t that sell newspapers?

The answer to these problems is total mobilization and cooperation at a global level. Citizens, governments and corporations all over the world have to work together toward the same goal. Hmmm. How likely is that, given the short time that we have? What chance do we have, knowing that the goal of The Market is to make more money, not to sustain life? How much can our leaders do if they only think about the next election and how to return favors to their campaign contributors? There is certainly some progress, especially at lower levels, but a few billion people have a lot of inertia. Just think about the Kyoto Protocol to realize how useless the politicians are when fast decisions have to be made.

Our only friend (and at the same time, our biggest enemy) is us. We are on our own. We can only brace ourselves and start preparing for what is coming. We can start asking questions of our leaders, spread the word, ask for better planning of the cities, downsize our consumption, start building communities, localize the production of critical goods, becoming energy and food independent, or… we can just party while we can. It is our choice to make the world a better place or to let it be transformed into a Mad Max world. The edge between these two possibilities is so thin…

Czeslaw Milosz – On the day the world ends - a beautiful and sad poem

"The only rational response to both the impending end of the oil age and the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure, and our problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity." George Monbiot

There are interesting times ahead, whether we like changes or not. It can be our opportunity to build a more ethical, fair, and fulfilling world. At the same time human kind could slip into a painful dark age once again in its history. We are at an unmarked crossroad and the best path to take is not known. We have very hard problems to solve. If only everybody knew that there IS a problem. That would be the first step in solving it.

Don’t blame the Chinese

For the last couple of years I have been following the unfolding of history with concern. Now I am scared. After the movie “An inconvenient truth” I thought that the world is in a difficult situation. I learned more about how it is possible to overcome it and the only way would be a shift in human consciousness and awareness. Human will and cooperation are needed at all levels to solve environmental problems before it’s too late. How likely is that? I believe it’s very unlikely.

Few days ago I had the proof that humanity is in an even bigger jeopardy. I am not talking here about the regular problems like energy crisis, financial crisis, or other wrongs like war or bad education. No. It’s about what could lead to the End Game. The main character is overpopulation leading to resources depletion. Oh, so boring, so many have cried “Wolf!” before. It ain’t gonna happen! Not in our life time. Well, I hoped so too, but you should see this video by prof. Albert Bartlett and think about the implications.

It is a video explaining the consequences of exponential growth. It’s very easy to understand it and he gives relevant examples. He pinpoints the real problem that we are facing, that is, overpopulation. Right now we have a lot more problems than that, and all the problems are hard ones. Pay attention especially to the bacteria example and the mathematical truth that the amount needed for the doubling is bigger than the sum of all previous steps.

Video 1 Video 2 Video 3 Video 4 Video 5 Video 6 Video 7 Video 8

It is also important to remember what he says: “We cannot trust other people to do our thinking for us”. So I started to think. These assertions are quite scary and were made a few years ago. Dr. Bartlett also said “Don’t take my word for this – check my analysis, do the math!”. So I did the math, and it wasn’t too hard at all…

I found the statistics from 2007 and made some calculations to see where we are at. I used the global figures because we are in a global economy.

Exhausting time is: Te = 1/k * ln[(k*R/p)+1]
where: p = consumption/year, R=reserves, k=growth rate

And tada! The results:



I was shocked! OMG! He is right. Certainly, the future doesn’t look rosy.

If we look at the World energy usage chart, it is obvious that a lot of work has to be done. 85% of the energy is obtained from fossil fuels. Have you noticed the sharp increase of coal consumption to replace oil? It doesn’t help avoiding global warming, for sure.

Now I understand why there is an energy crisis. It is not because Chinese bought over a million cars or because there is war in middle-east. The reason is that we are running out of gas…

There is some good news too. First, Europe is a leader in decreasing the usage of fossil fuels. Last year was a modest 2% decrease or so, but exponential growth works the other way around too. Second, USA knows about this problem. They have a report about it (Hirsch report – Feb. 2005). I don’t see too many signs of action, though.

Actually, the Americans are still arguing about when the peak oil production “will” occur. They also don’t realize that peak oil production is not the middle of the journey, but the last mile. It’s important to grasp the mathematical fact that half of a finite resource is consumed during the last doubling.

If all the nations stopped increasing their fossil fuel usage right now, and started decreasing it a little every year, the time needed to achieve independence from fossil fuels is the following:



How likely is that, considering world population growth and developing countries with huge populations like China and India? Is it possible to go from a 2.6% average growth to at least a 2% decrease, so that the transition will be smooth enough? Europe shows us that it can be done. Is there enough political will for this in the rest of the world?

If you understand that the extraction of fossil fuels won’t increase exponentially and will end abruptly, then you will understand that many years of crisis are ahead. I am telling you: over the next years, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

This is it. It’s the biggest challenge for the human race. We are at 30 seconds before high noon. What are we going to do? Go shopping to appease our anxiety? Tune out the dreadful news and tune in to the next distraction? Or take the problem seriously and get prepared to face it?