SHTF Preppers are on notice. Perhaps doom and gloom is not just a tin foil phenomenon as outlined in The coming Population Wars: a 12-bomb equation.
“One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse,” warns Jared Diamond, an environmental biologist, Pulitzer prize winner and author of “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” Many “civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power.”
Other voices are darker, shrill: “We’re past the point of no return.” “It’s already too late.” “The end is near.” As with Rome’s collapse, it happens fast. Clueless leaders are caught off-guard, like Greenspan, Bernanke and Paulson a couple years ago.
Call it “WWIII: The Population Wars.” A few years ago Fortune analyzed a classified Pentagon report predicting that “climate could change radically and fast. That would be the mother of all national security issues” Population unrest would then create “massive droughts, turning farmland into dust bowls and forests to ashes.” And “by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening … an old pattern could emerge; warfare defining human life.” War will be the end-game: For capitalism, civilization, earth?
Diamond’s 12-part equation is very simple, fits perfectly with a global warfare scenario: “More people require more food, space, water, energy, and other resources … There is a long built-in momentum to human population growth called the ‘demographic bulge’ with a disproportionate number of children and young reproductive-age people.” And if the “bulge” stops for any reason, game over. Economic “growth” ends, killing capitalism.
To me, there is some truth in here, but for the most part, this is just more kooky drivel from anti-capitalist, anti-American, socialist, progressivist defeatists. Â There isn’t room here to respond to all of the author’s claims, but one major one is that nuclear is no solution. Â Funny, but France gets (I think) about 75% of their power from nuclear… it works great. Â That’s a wonderful place to start.
Secondly, and much more importantly, this kind of hysterical ranting is nothing new. Â The moronic progressivist and defeatist, biologist Paul Ehrlich, in the late 1960’s wrote an amazingly alarmist and amazingly ignorant and incorrect book called “The Population Bomb.” Â People like this simply peddle their drivel to anyone who will listen, doing their best to push the progressive globalists’ agendas.
Quotes from Ehrlich:
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” biologist Paul Ehrlich famously wrote in his 1968 best seller The Population Bomb. “In the 1970s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” He insisted “India couldn’t possibly feed 200 million more people by 1980.”
I highly recommend that people watch two movies on the subject of demographics.
“Demographic Winter” and “Demographic Bomb.”
They are very informative and provide some great insight into this subject.
I certainly agree that we should all be good stewards of the Earth. Â However, I don’t have the time or the space to go into a full-blown dissertation here, but suffice to say, there are some major holes in Mr Ehrlich’s and Mr Farrell’s analyses. Â The consideration of alternate viewpoints here would behoove the reader.
Patrick, thanks for your insights. I have personally not researched in any detail the specifics of food production as population increases. But, in my view, there could certainly be ways to mass-produce food – one example that comes to mind is vertical farmings using high rise buildings. I believe this is something in development/testing stages now. And, perhaps with commercial real estate collapsing, we might be able to try it out on a larger scale. heh.
Insofar as energy production/consumption is concerned, I don’t see how solar is limited and already reaching “peak sun” as described. Wind, wave, geothermal, natural gas, and new oil technologies seem reasonable to me. We have not developed anything but oil on a mass scale yet. I am pretty sure that necessity will be the mother of invention here.
Water is a whole different ball game right now, but I suspect that desalinization is going to be a big research field… There is a bazzillion gallon of water out there to be had if we could figure out an efficient way of making it potable. Water is relatively cheap now, and may be significantly more expensive in the future, but I, as well as pretty much everyone else would be willing to pay the cost. I pay less for water now than i do for electric/gas, and while i would not exactly be happy about a 1000% increase in the price of water, i am willing to pay! Some resourceful company will probably find a way to desalinate water over the next 20 years, making it available to people globally, even in nations that are currently in shortages.
So, I definitely see your point here.
But, perhaps those in the upper echelons making decisions either don’t see the possibilities for improvement, or simply refuse to contemplate them.
It seems to me that progressives are anything but progressive in this regard. It is going to take an enterprising capitalist(s) to make these types of changes happen. If it so happens that we can push forward with new inventions and technological discoveries in America, then that may very well be the next economic behemoth, much like the car or steam engine, that drives the US out of recession/depression.
But, our capitalists here in the US are now competing with capitalists in China, India, etc… we are what, maybe 8% of the population. So, one can figure that there is a solid chance that many of these new developments will be developed ex-USA.
just some thoughts on the matter. You really got me to thinking on this one Patrick. Thanks.
Mac