Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,
As the dog days of summer wind down, it’s hard not to notice how the climate is suffering brutally right now across many areas of the globe.
Crop failures have hit hard across Europe. Australia is under an intense drought. Warm water representing ‘archived heat’ has penetrated deep into the arctic. Coral reefs are dying through mass bleachings. The stocks of ocean fisheries are in deep trouble. Insect and bird populations remain in a state of collapse.
It couldn't be any more clear that our society's demands for ever-more "growth" are taking an increasingly dangerous toll. "Growth" is now the enemy of life on the planet; yet there are precious few leaders willing to admit as much.
What we need is less pressure on vital ecological systems and precious remaining resources. But good luck finding a politician willing to admit that.
Though a refreshing exception is French environmental minister Nicolas Hulot who dramatically resigned his position last week, on live television, declaring “I don’t want to lie to myself anymore.” His view is that the government is not addressing the major environmental issues properly and he didn't want his presence to give the false appearance that it was. Kudos to Nicolas, though I’m not sure that losing such a rare principled person in government is a step in the right direction.
Operating On Blind Faith
Most politicians appear to think that there are no big issues out there ecologically-speaking. Of course, very few of them spend any time outside or understand where their food even comes from. Most subsist on the blind faith that our planet will somehow always bounce back from the abuses we inflict on it, despite reams of mounting evidence that it's hitting a mulitplying number of breaking and tipping points.
Sadly, the mainstream media chooses to toss wedge issue after wedge issue, ususally in the most inflammatory ways it can, at an increasingly irate general populace that has almost zero clue about the true source of the shocks (financial, economic, and ecological) they are experiencing. This prevents society from having an informed discussion about the real risks we should be concerned with.
As heart-tugging a topic as 'border kids' might be, the monster asset price bubbles blown by the central banks get almost no attention in the media -- despite their ability to destroy the futures and dreams of pretty much everyone reading this article.
Our media is failing us, badly, by focusing on symptomatic issues that enrage and divide us, while remaining silent on the causal matters of vital importance to all of us.
In other words, you’d do well to ignore the pre-packaged opinions being spoon fed into your mind by the media professionals. Instead, look at the data yourself and come to your own conclusions about what's happening.
Notice the near complete lack of insect diversity and numbers? What about the collapsing populations of frogs and reptiles? How about the missing seabirds? Did you know that humans have worked their harvesting down to the lowest part of the food chain and are now netting krill -- removing the base of the pedestal for the oceanic food chain?
Why is it so hard for our culture to recognize that an economic model founded on the idea of perpetual exponential expansion, while living on a planet with finite resources, is a thoroughly unworkable idea? How can we all so blithely ignore the obvious indicators screaming that we’ve already hit the limits of that model?
The lengths to which humans are now going for new deposits of oil, copper, water, arable land and other essential economic inputs are staggeringly desperate. Each should be a warning sign unto themselves.
But taken together?
Ignoring them requires the same degree of self-deception that addicts employ in their belief that they still have things under control, and can stop anytime.
Yeah, right. Somehow ‘that day’ never arrives. It’s always just one more fix, one more day.
Except in this case it’s just one more election, one more quarter of growth, one more injection of central bank money.
Frustrating? You bet.
Trying to elevate the critical observation that pursuing infinite growth on a finite planet is not only impossible, but a really terrible idea, has been a frustrating endeavor.
We here at PeakProsperity.com have been at this for over a decade, and we can tell you first-hand, Folks, this ain't easy.
While the logic support it is extremely straightforward, it runs afoul of the majority’s entrenched belief systems. So even the most basic and compelling of data is ignored. Instead, tortured anecdotes are held up as “proof” that their treasured belief systems are correct.
Here’s an example.
Anecdote: “Electric car sales are up 40% in Europe!”
Somehow this is proof that we're on the right track. Electric cars are going to rapidly replace internal combustion cars, and thereby solve all the issues related to the world's addiction to fossil fuels.
Basic data: "There’s not enough cobalt or lithium to even replace 25% of all cars on the road, let alone 100%. EV cars still consume extraordinary resources, and release a huge amount of carbon in their manufacture. Massive subsidies are required to make them economically attractive, even to wealthy citizens of wealthy nations, so they aren't well suited to the bulk of the world’s population. And if these cars were somehow all powered by electrcity from solar and wind, those energy sources are still themselves massively dependent on fossil fuels for their mining, manufacture, transportation, installation and replacement.”
The basic data says that instead of salivating over expensive and advanced personal transportation methods designed to preserve the status quo of our current failing infrastructure, we should instead be dedicating a large part of our efforts towards mass transit, relocating our work/play/farm spaces so that they are closer together, and use vastly fewer resources to deliver the same services we rely on.
Recently I’ve been frustrated by the efforts to convince Americans that our democracy is under attack by outside agents when there’s ample evidence -- concrete, hard, firm evidence which I’ve repeatedly covered -- that US elections have been spitting out improbable and even sometimes impossible election results for the past 14 years, ever since insecure, low-integrity eVoting platforms and central tabulators were introduced.
MORE,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-02/chris-martenson-whole-system-rigged?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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