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Page added on May 21, 2019
Nature On The Eve Of Destruction — The UN Extinction Report
One million species are close to extinction, thanks to Homo sapiens.
Thus warns a landmark new report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), presented at the 7th session of the IPBES Plenary meeting earlier this month in Paris.
Sir Robert Watson, Chair of the IPBES, said, “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”
The Report highlights the urgency of global decarbonization and the need to increase nuclear power along with all other non-fossil energy sources. But while global warming will have a multiplier effect, this rapid decline in species is not just the result of climate change, but of humans all on their own.
Watson did say that it is not too late to make a difference. But we must start now at every level, from local to global, to make transformative changes, the type of changes the Nations of the World can’t seem to make on anything.
We grow enough food to feed the world and we can’t even agree on how to do that.
The U.N. assessment is the product of an international team of about 150 experts performing systematic reviews of over 15,000 scientific and government alsources, which also draws on indigenous and local knowledge.
Sprawling City. The area needed to keep almost 8 billion humans alive is incomprehensible to most people. Mexico City. See https://populationspeakout.org.
Pablo Lopez Luz
The authors of the Report ranked the five direct drivers of change in nature with the largest relative global impacts so far. All can be thought of as some form of loss of natural habitat.
These culprits are, in descending order: (1) changes in land and sea use; (2) direct exploitation of organisms; (3) climate change; (4) pollution and (5) invasive alien species.
Let’s face it. Nature is losing the battle against humans. The wild places of the world are disappearing, and will continue to disappear, until they are no more. We even have a term for this human-dominated time period – the Anthropocene.
The “Global Population Speak Out” campaign has captured the faces of this era, with photos both of Nature and of Humans, that drive home these points with exquisite beauty and sorrow. Some are shown here from their campaign to raise awareness of population pressures and habitat destruction.
The trees and plants left alive in the latter part of this century will be mostly those we want, or can’t get rid of. Some of the animals will be the ones we’ve spent billions to keep alive, but most will be those we eat and those we like. Plus those that can not only survive being around us but thrive, like cockroaches and rats.
Ruined Landscape of Oil Wells. Getting the energy we need to run the world does its own damage. While renewables have almost no emissions, the area they require, and the materials like steel, is also vast. Nuclear energy takes the least space, has the least emissions, and requires the second-least materials, second only to natural gas. Kern River Oil Field, CA. See https://populationspeakout.org.
Mark Gamba/Corbis
Unfortunately, most people on Earth don’t know or care very much about this future, especially the 4 billion people that are just looking for a regular meal and clean water that doesn’t make them sick.
And that’s the real problem. Keeping almost 8 billion people alive, soon to be 10 billion, simply takes a lot of space and resources. We’re burning billions of acres of pristine Indonesian rain forests to plant palm oil trees (Scientific American). Palm oil is now the world’s cooking oil of choice since it’s one of the healthiest oils available with a low price tag and a long shelf life.
But the low price tag doesn’t cover destroying one of the two key rainforests on Earth. On the other side of the planet, the Amazon rain forest is being destroyed for soybeans, sugar, coffee, cattle and wood.
I’m not saying that life will disappear and the Earth will become a dead planet. It’ll just become more like our back yards. Some nice and manicured, some dumpy with weeds. With a few nicely kept parks. But definitely not natural.
However, humans need a certain amount of natural wildness for our own survival. Over 35% of our food needs pollinators, which this report says are in danger. There’s a reason that oxygen is in the air. It doesn’t come out of the ground. Organisms have to put it there. Continuously. If the photosynthesizing organisms in the upper 100 meters of the ocean die, and we keep deforesting the planet, we won’t be breathing for very long.
No one remembers the passenger pigeon, but when my grandfather was born, the passenger pigeon was the most abundant bird in North America and possibly the world. People would gaze in wonder as a flock of ten million pigeons would block out the sun with a deafening roar that would last an hour as a single huge flock passed overhead.
But by 1900, their billions had dwindled to a few dozen wild flocks. In 1914, the last passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoo.
The passenger pigeon fell to the fallacy that no amount of human exploitation could endanger a creature so abundant. We are infected by that same fantasy today – that the Earth is so large, the oceans so deep, the atmosphere so vast, that nothing we do can really harm it.
This is completely wrong. Humans have the numbers, and the technologies, to pretty much destroy the surface of this planet. Or remake it into some dumbed-down version of a specimen garden.
Trash Wave. It’s not like trash and pollution only affect Nature. If we don’t take immediate action, we will not be able to escape it in our own lives. Indonesia. See https://populationspeakout.org.
Zak Noyle
For over 100,000 years, the Earth had only 10 million people on it at any one time. But the population began to grow dramatically just before the beginning of the Common Era, rising to 300 million during the Middle Ages and to a billion at the beginning of the Industrial Age.
Then 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1999 and 7 billion in 2011. 8 billion will be achieved by 2022, 9 billion by 2030 and 10 billion before 2040.
This exponential growth is textbook for a bacterial colony in a petri dish, right before it dies from outpacing its food sources and drowning in its own waste.
Humans now comprise the largest mass of mammalian matter on Earth. The rest is almost all our food and friends, mainly the animals we domesticated plus a bunch of xenobiotics we’ve transported far from their habitats that seem to able to survive anything.
Hardly any vertebrate mass left on land is wild or natural (In These Times).
Let that sink in for a minute. Most of what people see in National Geographic, on the Discovery Channel, in the Blue Planet series or in movies about animals, IS ALMOST ALL GONE. Humans have dammed a third of the world’s rivers. We have covered, destroyed or altered half of the world’s land surface. We use up most of the fresh water faster than it can be replenished.
And this is all continuing apace. The U.N. warnings come as no surprise to the scientific community. We’ve been watching this train wreck in slow motion since the 1960s.
It’s just that now we’re seeing the darkness at the end of the tunnel.
38 Comments on "Nature On The Eve Of Destruction — The UN Extinction Report"
Davy on Tue, 21st May 2019 7:41 am
Wow, that’s a dramatic change out of denialist Forbes to allow a doomerish article. Maybe there is hope from the denialist late stage capitalist crowd? nah
Davy on Tue, 21st May 2019 8:06 am
Here is an example of weather, pests, disease, and economy conspiring to dent food production. Expect this to worsen in the future as GM and chemical efforts stall. The planet is reacting and food production will surely take a hit. How long until this slaps population growth down? It definitely will be a force in lowering economic activity.
“Ag Economy Is So Bad That Farmers Hang on to Old Deere Tractors”
https://tinyurl.com/y3muncd2 bloomberg
“U.S.-China trade tensions are flaring and African swine fever in China is decimating hog herds. That’s shaking up the market share and production of key commodities like soybeans, and American farmers in many cases are bearing the brunt of the changes. In addition, wet weather in the U.S. has kept farmers from planting, exacerbating worries. The situation is “credit negative for Deere,” according to Bruce Clark, a senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service. “Deere’s plans to reduce production in its core Ag business to levels below retail sales, which will strain sales but also control the field inventory, are characteristic of the company’s approach to contend with operating stress and cyclical downturns,” Clark said.”
“Ear to Ear: China’s Farming Authority Warns of Corn-Eating Pest”
https://tinyurl.com/y3ymwm7z sixth tone dot com
“An invasive pest that feeds mainly on corn has devoured 720 million square meters of crops in 13 Chinese provincial-level regions, mostly in the south and southwest, and is moving northward at an alarming pace, the National Agro-Tech Extension and Service Center warned Tuesday. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the fall armyworm is native to tropical and subtropical areas of the Americas but was observed in central and western Africa in early 2016. In addition to corn, the worms feed on over 80 other crops, including rice and millet. “In the absence of natural controls or good management, it can cause significant damage to crops,” said the organization.”
Sissyfuss on Tue, 21st May 2019 8:37 am
It’s up to Gaia to control our numbers because we have been proven to be utterly incapable of implementing population reduction in any rational way. Overshoot=bottleneck=die-off, the Sissyfussian Equation. To quote Euclid, ” Math is a bitch.”
Robert Inget on Tue, 21st May 2019 9:38 am
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-russian-pipeline-restart-hit-135436914.html
By Dmitry Zhdannikov, Olga Yagova and Gleb Gorodyankin
LONDON (Reuters) – Hopes for a speedy resumption of oil exports from Russia to Poland and Germany along the Druzhba pipeline route are fading after plans to remove dirty oil from the pipeline had a major setback last week, three trading sources said.
Russia halted oil flows along the pipeline to Eastern Europe and Germany in April because of contaminated crude, leaving refiners in Europe scrambling to find supplies.
Under the restart plan, Total was due to take the lion’s share of the dirty oil into its Leuna refinery in Germany to dilute and process it there, sources said.
The plan, not previously reported, would allow the pipeline to restart clean oil shipments after its biggest ever outage, now in its fourth week.
But last week the Leuna refinery had a major outage and had to stop many units after an equipment failure which sources said was possibly related to refining the dirty oil.
The outage, which sources said could last for at least another week, has derailed the dirty oil evacuation plan. Some 8-9 million barrels of contaminated oil – worth $560-$630 million in normal circumstances – are still sitting in the pipeline.
“The plan has collapsed. Someone needs to come up with plan “B”,” said an industry source who is involved in discussions about dirty oil evacuation. “At the moment, there is no plan B. It is a deadlock”.
Total declined to comment. Russia’s pipeline monopoly Transneft and top Russian oil suppliers along Druzhba, Rosneft and Surgut, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Druzhba pipeline, built in Soviet times, can pump 1 million barrels per day or 1 percent of global output.
The contaminated oil crisis has become the biggest ever supply outage for Russia, the world’s No.2 oil exporter. The country has had only one other significant disruption when Moscow suspended shipments in 2007 for three days over a pricing dispute with Belarus.
DEADLOCK
The current crisis has escalated since Belarus told oil refiners and pipeline operators in Europe nearly four weeks ago that the crude heading down the 5,500 km (3,400 mile) Druzhba was heavily contaminated with organic chloride, which is used to clean oil wells and accelerate the flow of crude.
Flows via Druzhba were halted, sending crude to a six-month high above $75 a barrel and tarnishing Russia’s reputation as an exporter at a time of rising competition with the United States and Middle East.
Organic chloride should be removed before oil enters the supply chain as it can damage refining equipment. The dirty oil needs to be removed from the pipeline and stored so it can be diluted with clean oil.
Besides Leuna, Druzhba’s northern spur supplies Germany’s refinery Schwedt, which is co-owned by Rosneft, ENI and Shell. It also ships oil to PKN Orlen and Grupa Lotos refineries in Poland.
“Schwedt will take a much more cautious approach in taking dirty oil after the Leuna outage,” a second trading source said. A third trading source said Schwedt was not taking dirty oil.
Rosneft, ENI and Shell declined to comment. PKN Orlen and Grupa Lotos also declined to comment on options for evacuating the dirty oil.
PKN’s chief executive said on Monday Poland would not be able to get clean oil from Russia until refineries agree how to divide tainted crude still in the system.
Russia has repeatedly promised to restart clean oil flows towards Belarus, Poland and Germany “within days”.
But it has yet to happen and even when it happens it will not mean the crisis is over, traders said.
“All this news about clean oil flows resumption is meaningless. Dirty oil is still blocking the pipelines,” said the first industry source.
Russian officials will meet with European pipeline firms and oil buyers later this week to discuss the impasse.
A fourth industry source familiar with discussions said one of the suggestions for dirty oil evacuation was to reverse the pipeline and pump oil from Poland, Germany and Belarus back to Russia for storage and dilution.
But the oil has already changed hands multiple times and the Russian government has collected taxes and customs duties after the oil crossed the border.
All those payments would need to be reversed in a unprecedented move for the Russian government and the oil industry, the fourth source said.
forbin on Tue, 21st May 2019 10:45 am
“The rest is almost all our food and friends, mainly the animals we domesticated plus a bunch of xenobiotics we’ve transported far from their habitats that seem to able to survive anything.”
there’s your answer then , humans die off but our pets take over the world !
who would have thought that Rex and Tiddles are megalomaniacs more powerful than any James Bond villain………….
Only Shit Remains on Tue, 21st May 2019 11:42 am
It’s too late – tipping points are tipped, the arctic will likely be considered ice free this September, and if we stop burning coal the aerosol dimming will fall off, spiking the temperature to well over what has been considered safe(ish). Another failed cosmic Life experiment.
Chrome Mags on Tue, 21st May 2019 12:25 pm
On the bright side we’ve pretty much arrived at a point in time in which the top corpoations and chain restaurant and retail outlets have floated to the top. The pressure activated lighted intersections move vehicles in an efficient manner. The products on the store shelves are mostly set now. All of our cloths have been pretailored. We’ve accepted the average person is overweight and has a diet lacking in vegetable nutrition. You can even buy a car now without meeting a single person. We’ve also all pretty much accepted the federal government to be corrupt via lobbying, so it’s not all bad. You just have establish a routine to support bau and turn off any critical thinking. Congratulations, you’ve taken the blue pill.
onlooker on Tue, 21st May 2019 5:53 pm
Psst, humans , enough of the web of life dominoes fall, we will also fall. Nature bats last
Theedrich on Tue, 21st May 2019 5:57 pm
History teaches us it’ll be BAU until catastrophe. The Democrats keep importing tsunamis of subhumans to use as levers to attain power, and the Republicans want more “growth.” Both sides respond to the demands of The People. This is a “democracy” (literally, “people-rulership”) after all, sharing in the global average IQ of 82. So nothing else matters.
Yes, the planetary Petri dish is infinite — in the eye of beholder homo sapiens.
So there is a Gaian reason for all of those nukes and trigger-happy fingers.
Famlin on Tue, 21st May 2019 6:35 pm
Human population is only #2 with Rat population being #1 in the World. Rats are in jungles, villages and cities, but their population should be shrinking as more forests are cut and they have much lesser space in cities/villages to wander.
Better sanitation, pest control combined with usage of cats/owls can also help control rat population.
So humans should breed even more faster to overtake the rat population. Come on humans, you can do it. Your gods are their to help you become World #1.
Famlin on Tue, 21st May 2019 6:35 pm
The 1st 1 million population could have taken many millinneums (1,000s of years) and the 2nd million should have taken just few centuries followed by 3rd million in just few decades.
Same thing happened with the 1st billion which took more than 200,000 years of homo sapien existance. The 2nd billion took only 130 years and 3rd billion took 30 years.
Growth is always like this. So some day world will hit 1 trillion population and thereafter the 2nd and 3rd trillion could take much lesser time.
makati1 on Tue, 21st May 2019 6:42 pm
it’s only a matter of time. 2050? 2100? Sooner? Later? But for sure. The extinction clock is spinning faster and faster.
We are probably the only species to ever cause their own extinction. Even the dinosaurs lasted about 160 million years. Humans, maybe 1 million since we left the trees. Maybe 10,000 since we became “intelligent”.
Famlin on Tue, 21st May 2019 6:50 pm
In developing world, people live in 500 sq. ft / 50 sq. meter apartments and even that is only for those in urban areas.
Many of those in villages live only in huts that are just 100 sq. ft. / 10 sq. meter at best.
And people in these 3 countries; USA, Canada and Australia live in super sized mansions that guzzle electricity with their full sized suvs guzzling even more gas.
And these rich point the finger at developing world.
The higher the lifestyle, the lower the population growth and vice versa.
Expect the population growth to continue to 8 billion, 9 billion and so on.
If the developed world is really interested in controlling population, then reduce the resource consumption so that some of the resource goes to developing world and they may also reduce the population growth.
Duncan Idaho on Tue, 21st May 2019 7:07 pm
If the developed world is really interested in controlling population, then reduce the resource consumption so that some of the resource goes to developing world and they may also reduce the population growth.
Actually, just give women equal political and social rights, and population growth plummets.
Works every time.
makati1 on Tue, 21st May 2019 7:26 pm
Duncan, that is a plus, but, looking around here in the Philippines, the Catholic Church (~85% of the population are Catholics) has more to say about family size than “rights”, which most women here already have.
I’m sure that this is also true in Muslim countries, and many Western countries. After all, Mormons preach for large families also.
Perhaps it would work in African counries, or India, etc., but again, tradition and the need for enough kids to grow up and be able to take care of their parents in their old age is also a factor. It is not as simple as “rights”.
Westerners, especially those who have never traveled outside their own country, have a very narrow, brainwashed picture of the real world. They look at everything from a 1st world perspective. The 1st world is only about 12% of the real world. Like going to McDonalds for a meal that costs Americans 1/2 hour of minimum wage vs 4 hours wages for a laborer here in the Philippines. Yes, same dollar cost, different labor cost.
Cloggie on Wed, 22nd May 2019 1:45 am
“LONDON (Reuters) – Hopes for a speedy resumption of oil exports from Russia to Poland and Germany along the Druzhba pipeline route are fading after plans to remove dirty oil from the pipeline had a major setback last week, three trading sources said.”
Haha and we all thought that only wind and solar were intermittent, where oil supposedly brings its own storage facilities.
One thing is certain, if oil supplies from both Russia and the Gulf to Europe will be interrupted, nobody in Europe will be interested anymore in academic questions, Iike if climate change is manmade or not. There will be a rush into renewables as if it were a new goldrush.
With this ship the Dutch energy transition can be done in ten years. Buy two more, which takes two years to build, and the transition can be done in two plus three is five years.
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2019/05/15/developments-in-offshore-wind-jack-up-market/
Bring it on Donnie! We will survive for a couple of years on half the fossil energy supplies.
makati1 on Wed, 22nd May 2019 2:23 am
The Philippines? No, America today:
“There is no shortage of issues on which to take a stand. For instance, on any given night, over half a million people in the U.S. are homeless, and half of them are elderly. There are 46 million Americans living at or below the poverty line, and 16 million children living in households without adequate access to food.
Congress creates, on average, more than 50 new criminal laws each year. With more than 2 million Americans in prison and close to 7 million adults in correctional care, the United States has the largest prison population in the world. At least 2.7 million children in the United States have at least one parent in prison.
At least 400 to 500 innocent people are killed by police officers every year. Americans are now eight times more likely to die in a police confrontation than they are to be killed by a terrorist. On an average day in America, over 100 Americans have their homes raided by SWAT teams.
It costs the American taxpayer $52.6 billion every year to be spied on by the government intelligence agencies tasked with surveillance, data collection, counterintelligence, and covert activities. All the while, since 9/11, the U.S. has spent more than $1.6 trillion to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and police the rest of the world. This is an egregious affront to anyone who believes in freedom.”
https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/how-to-survive-the-journey-ahead-a-graduation-message-for-a-terrifying-age_05212019
Nuff said.
Davy on Wed, 22nd May 2019 5:06 am
“With this ship the Dutch energy transition can be done in ten years. Buy two more, which takes two years to build, and the transition can be done in two plus three is five years.”
I doubt it clog. Storage and demand management behavior are not there in 10 years. You don’t have the money to do it in 10 years. I doubt your export oriented economy will be there in 10 years like it is now. In 10 years you may be more worried about floating your cities somehow with climate change proceeding along nicely.
I AM THE MOB on Wed, 22nd May 2019 5:49 am
My favorite charity is…Wait for it…Doctors without borders..
LOL
Gaia on Wed, 22nd May 2019 7:04 am
Can somebody please explain to me this hypocrisy? Why are people complaining about the oppression of women in the poor countries while attempting to ban women from having the right to control THEIR bodies?
Gaia on Wed, 22nd May 2019 7:17 am
Just because people subscribe to a certain organized religion doesn’t make them a good person. How you treat others is more important than your beliefs.
Gaia on Wed, 22nd May 2019 7:46 am
What you put in your body is your business, your responsibility and your choice.
Gaia on Wed, 22nd May 2019 8:00 am
It’s too late to “save” the earth. What pisses me off the most is how people treat the planet (ex: littering, wasting food etc.).
Gaia on Wed, 22nd May 2019 8:09 am
If people are serious about stopping climate change, stop talking and starting acting. No more finger-pointing.
Gaia on Wed, 22nd May 2019 8:28 am
The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.
Rick on Wed, 22nd May 2019 10:24 am
Environmentalists and animal rights activists are filthy hypocrites. They say one thing and do the opposite.
Rick on Wed, 22nd May 2019 10:27 am
It’s too late to save the planet- life is nasty, brutish and short.
Richard Gaians on Wed, 22nd May 2019 10:34 am
Predictions in 1970 were identical to predictions today. That means that we are already dead and it is only ghosts who are making these predictions now. Hysteria dies only reluctantly.
claes on Wed, 22nd May 2019 1:17 pm
Mob says : “My favorite charity is…Wait for it…Doctors without borders..”
Mob, “Every bodies friends are nobodies friends.”
And doctors without borders – who loves everybody- have no understanding what-so-ever that they are grossly contributing to this worlds overpopulation, especially in overcrowded contries in africa . Some charities are more harmfull than good, and that includes these traveling doctors. They are christianity at its worst, totally ignoring biological balances and local susstainability.
claes on Wed, 22nd May 2019 1:58 pm
Rick said: “Environmentalists and animal rights activists are filthy hypocrites. They say one thing and do the opposite.”
Environmentalists and animal rights activists can be alrigth if they understand that the primary threat to the biosphere is the human overpopulation. All species can be a threat to others, but right now it’s the humans that are the main threat to the total life on earth. we have become a pest.
Some how we need nature to come up with a solution to this problem because humans won’t do it themselves. We won’t solve the climate problem because it’s politically and economically impossible . We won’t solve the problem with extinguishing species because humans need more and more space for their activities.
Environmentalists and animal rights activists are alright if they focus on the general overpopulation of the earth, and not just local issues of minor importance, which a lot of them do.
The main problem is overpopulation and over exploitation of soils, minerals and water.
May nature corrects us before we have totally destroid the hand that feeds us.
Dredd on Wed, 22nd May 2019 2:01 pm
We see from time to time those who say that because someone miscalculated an event (e.g. a peak oil date) that it means they are forever wrong about everything.
Typically they then conclude that the event that was miscalculated will NEVER happen.
Let’s say the event date predicted was 100 years off, but then it did happen on a later date.
The person who miscalculated was off 100 years but the denier was off by forever minus 100 years.
Who is to be chided the most in such a case?
(Sea Water DNA Detection Using Conservative Temperature – 2)
Robert Inget on Wed, 22nd May 2019 2:05 pm
Don’t throw in the towel just yet.
https://electrek.co/2019/05/22/blackbird-100-electric-airplanes/
Darrell Cloud on Wed, 22nd May 2019 2:07 pm
Mice population studies indicate how this is going to play out.
https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://search.yahoo.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2428&context=open_access_etds
Robert Inget on Wed, 22nd May 2019 2:12 pm
Hold on,
Tesla’s stock is dropping faster than a flasher at
a beauty contest.
I hope it goes below $100, cause then maybe i’ll be able to afford one.
claes on Wed, 22nd May 2019 2:50 pm
robert inget, when ever you find a cheaper way of using energy, it will always result in a greater demand of energy. This is called the jevons paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox. I’m sorry that I don’t believe in cheaper transportation. I only believe in less transportation.
Live, work and enjoy yourself locally. Grab your bike and get a healthy heart.
claes on Wed, 22nd May 2019 4:04 pm
Theedrich,”after all, sharing in the global average IQ of 82. So nothing else matters.”
I use to agree with you, but it’s not the IQ-82 that is the problem, it’s the 110+ that suddenly sees an unpredecented utopia in the high tech-civilization, which they won’t give up free willing. These problems can be solved-they say- and then they continue the line of technological progress, even if each new solution creates two new problems that urgently must be solved.
Some how our technological development looks like our ponzi-economi. Every single progress is countered by new problems calling for even more solutions. And we might newer catch up with this technological ponzischeme.
But don’t blame the IQ82 for this, they just follow the trend given by others.
And don’t mistake high IQ for wisdom, because it isn’t.
Theedrich on Thu, 23rd May 2019 4:57 am
Claes, IQ 82 contributes a lot to the coming problems. It is, of course, not the only factor, but a major one nonetheless. The Democrats want a one-party-state dictatorship. See https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-22/nevada-passes-national-popular-vote-bill-undermine-electoral-college. Once the electoral college is rendered irrelevant, the Democrat traitors (likely Davos-elite multi-billionaires like Sörös and transnational corporations employing hordes of lobbyists and vast amounts of bribe money) who run the Donkey’s Party will end any and all serious freedom the country has ever known. The Leftist savages who dominate the state-supported colleges and universities will silence all independent thought. All this will be greatly facilitated by the robotization of the economy, which will put the low-IQ majority of the population out of work.
As with Venezuela or any other socialist paradise, the herd will initially be ecstatic at the success of the “popular will” in assuming supreme power. Because to the herd, “freedom” means freebies. But after having consolidated their grip on the state, the “progressive” commissars will sink the clueless and luckless masses into historically customary poverty. And those who are struck by misfortune or who cannot “learn to code” or show themselves of use to the state will be driven to desperation and drugs, a situation developing even now. Masking this decline is the current deliberate distraction by the media to divert mass attention to “cultural” issues (“racism,” homosexual “marriage,” abortion, etc.). We are being wrenched from traditional ways of life into a drastically new form of existence dependent on great mental agility — a form for which most people are mentally unsuited.
And much of this is an automatic consequence of the degradation of intelligence (see https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-22/world-getting-increasingly-dumber-study-finds) promoted by the genosuicidist superstate that fought on the wrong side in both World Wars.
Cloggie on Sun, 26th May 2019 2:41 pm
“Wollt ihr den totalen Tourismus?”
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/amsterdam-overtourism/index.html
“How Amsterdam is fighting back against mass tourism”
While Van Loon acknowledges the positive aspects of tourism, which earns the Dutch economy around 82 billion euros ($91.5 billion) a year, like many locals she’s worried that soaring visitor numbers are destroying the soul of this vibrant cosmopolitan city…
While some cities are still formulating ways to cope, Amsterdam — where a decade-long surge in visitor numbers is forecast to continue, rising from 18 million in 2018 to 42 million in 2030, or more than 50 times the current population — has simply decided it’s had enough.