I'm going to just leave this right here for your consumption....
READ MORE » Pessimism abounds...
It's just a simple Malthus Curve, showing the Peak Oil, which it appears that Saudi Arabia has already hit.
Pay attention to this curve, it's going to be important in a second.
So, a new study conducted by some high-minded intellectuals, researchers and scientists in D.C. tell use what we all sorta' secretly fear, and which rightly gives a good number of us pause. We are merely in the deep breath before the plunge. Your world truly is going to hell in a handbasket.
How so, you ask? Well, besides the peak oil dimming the entire global economic machine, reducing entire swaths of the industrial world to an ill-prepared tribalism, we've got some other grim things to ponder...most notable of which is our friend, Malthus, the eccentric and pessimistic 18th century researcher that noted that human population will eventually outstrip food and resource production. That is, population grows geometrically, while supply grows arithmetically.
The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, "with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia," said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.
To feed all those mouths, "we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000," said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
"By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable" if current trends continue, Clay said.
The swelling population will exacerbate problems, such as resource depletion, said John Casterline, director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University.
Told y'all.
What this will create is an entirely bifurcated world of the uber-affluent, and everyone else. The "everyone else", will face extreme resource competition, be that lebensraum, comestibles, Pokemon trading cards, whatever. Then, in some sick fucking Galt's Gulch dystopia, increased militarization and ever-growing corporate hegemony ensues. End result? Total resource war.
We're already seeing the first pawns move in this game. If anyone had any doubts about the strategic importance of Afghanistan for the Baku oil pipeline; the presence of U.S. soldiers in Nigeria's oil fields; the isolation and surrounding of Venezuela --to say nothing of Saudi, Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait and Iraq, well, let me be the first to disabuse you of your naivete. We will be, and have been, the agressor in this global resource grab. And, will, as the report predicts, be the ones to spur the resource wars and global conflicts over ever-scarcer goods.
Prepare to see a lot more of this...
That is not to say that resource wars are the be-all end-all of civilization. In fact, most conflicts are over resources: be that reproduction opportunities, food, land, minerals...whatever. But, peaceniks holding out hope that things will get better? Not a chance. The board is set, the conditions are ripe, and it's time to watch the world burn now, I guess.
Sleep tight.
-d.s.
