[careinke]

Lucky, I thought I could get a nice response out of you.

Your comments were very useful. Thanks.

I've sort of gone into observer mode over the things I have no control over.

I am thankful we will always eat, have a place to live, and perpetual sources of energy. I am especially thankful for the historical opportunity to front run the Banks and Corporations in my accumulation of digital assets.

The fight stage is days from being completed....and then we win.

Peace

[theluckycountry]

I feel the same way inke, as my sig line testifies, I couldn't give a rats arse about the rest of the world, or the rest of Australia for that matter. It can all go to hell in a handbasket because that's what they have been working for. You want to take on half a million in debt in times of economic turmoil, well suck it up if you lose that house. You snooze you lose in this world.

[Newfie]

Lucky,

I am a bit perplexed over your take on social obligations. When you say China can just pull back because they have no health care and retirement obligations your are somewhat correct. But it means the population will fell the full force of the pulling back, the people will suffer.

So it strikes me that when you say “China” you really mean the government, damn the people. Sorta takes the “social” out of “Socialisim.”

I kinda like the idea of a country where there is a web of support.

But, as always, none of us really have a clue about the future in any detail, we just all agree it looks kinds bleak, at best.

[theluckycountry]

Lucky,

I am a bit perplexed over your take on social obligations. ... when you say “China” you really mean the government, damn the people. Sorta takes the “social” out of “Socialisim.”

I kinda like the idea of a country where there is a web of support. But, as always, none of us really have a clue about the future in any detail, we just all agree it looks kinds bleak, at best.

Socialism is a 'word' like Love (to take a quote from the Matrix) It means whatever you want it to mean and to the rulers (government in this case) it means a system of control where they can live like kings at the expense of the little people, the human resources. We have to throw out the definitions we were and are being told newfie because it's all lies, and nations like China are as bad as any. There was a small, small, window of true democracy in the recent past, and true socialism too perhaps? It was facilitated by abundant oil and coal that elevated the working class and gave them access to technologies, basically, that improved their lives no end. The phenomena moved around the world like a wave, like industrial manufacturing has moved from country to country, but was not necessarily related to it.

And yes, when I talk about these things it's about the governments in control, the people are just so many ants and we don't concern ourselves with them, though we can pretend to care if we like. The TV and social media has trained people to pretend to care, to say they care, but deep in their hearts do they really give a shit about a few million starving Africans? Of course not. If they cared they would be sacrificing a good part of their own life to help them, like we do for our own children, them we care about.

As for the future of our modern societies, well that's really no mystery. Ours is going the way of all those before it, and as we can see the process is well under way in many nations. It's a trend, to go from well ordered democratic style nations with good roads and railways and abundant food and housing to ones where the rail links collapse, the roads turn to shit, the housing and food becomes expensive. Look at Venezuela, Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Many Eastern European nations.

Technology, or the loss of it to be more precise, that is what we are talking about newfie. The Colombian rail system was beautiful once, as were many. These networks allowed freedom for the poor to travel (cheaply) to transact or visit relatives, allowed food to move around cheaply. 'the small window of democracy' but without access to cheap resources these went away and the people were again back in poverty. The simple fact that you and I and inke are doing ok points to the time in history when our societies were in their democratic technological heyday. We were able to buy and invest for the future, but not many Millennials will be able to have what we have in 30 years will they. Look at the numbers of them still living at home, why? Why did we move out young? We did it because there were opportunities and everything was cheap of course. It was better living away from our parents, it always is, but only if you can afford a great lifestyle, only if rent is cheap and food is cheap and running a car is cheap.

For someone at our age newfie it's not necessary to understand any of this stuff, one can just go sit in front of the TV or potter in the garden, it won't make any difference to our lifestyles probably. But I surmise we are here together because we want to understand where our nations are heading, and for most of us, certainly me, the underlying motivation is because we don't want to be caught with our pants down as oil and copper and all else depletes. I buy old fans newfie, old appliances if I can get my hands on them. Why? Well the new juicers and blenders and fans might look nicer but I'm sick of replacing them every few years, I got sick of the noise from the cheap bearings. The old stuff from the peak of western civilization was made to last a lifetime, modern fans don't even have any copper in them in many cases, true. A month ago I bought another sport motorbike, but now an older one from 20110 because the state of the art one I bought a couple of years ago is problematic, a pain in the arse, and it's a good brand too. I'll make money on the transition selling privately and have a better riding experience as well. It's over newfie. It's all downhill form here.

Read this mate. This guy nails it. He links Big technology to autocracy and explains why democracy comes from simple technologies and why that little window occurred. It was a real eyeopener for me, connected many dots. I had always surmised that the abundance of the oil age caught the governing/ruling elites off guard. There was so much new wealth it spilled over to the working classes, just as the working class spilled over onto their ski slopes and golf courses and cluttered their bays with jet skis and little boats. Just imagine how you'd feel if a few hundred homeless started to set up camp abound your acreage, that's the analogy.

Now I'm off for a coffee and to watch the sunrise. Give your wife a cuddle mate, life is short

Life After Modern Technology
…and the power of saying no
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/li ... 5687f360e9

[theluckycountry]

Excerpt from the link above

Thanks to the many energy slaves (first real humans, now machines powered by fossil fuels) the use of complex technologies became democratic the first time during human history. Everyone who worked hard enough could’ve bought a car and a house. Food was cheap and widely available. People had a similar access to goods and thus felt they deserve equal rights. This process gave rise to human rights movements, democracies and individual freedom. For a while at least things were allowed to go in a self-organizing manner.

Given the fact that both human nature and our resource use are driven by the maximum power principle, however, western civilization fell into the same old civilizational trap as its many predecessors, repeating the same old pattern all over again. It started with discovering a new resource (fertile land, coal, oil, uranium etc.) and mining it to exhaustion. Then it went on by pretending that depletion is not a problem at all, while kicking the can down the road ever more desperately.

As resources and energy started to stagnate (and soon decline) so will technology use become ever more limited to an ever smaller, ever more privileged elite class. Again. Since the maintenance of such technologies will still require massive hierarchies, democratic self organization will be no longer enough. First resource extraction then manufacturing will become more autocratic, then outright dictatorial. Say goodby to worker rights, adequate pay, and a social safety net. Those who have the keys to the grain store, the access to oil fields, lithium or copper deposits, or those who can decide which neighborhood gets electricity by flipping a switch, will have the power and control over the population. Just like any other time before.

Not that it could’ve happened any other way. Beyond a certain point every civilization becomes wholly unsustainable, due to the fact that they always use up an accumulated resource wealth much faster than it could regenerate. Our industrial capitalist civilization is no exception. Its history follows the same arc as all of its predecessors. And just like in ancient times instead of looking for an “exit strategy” by attempting to dismantle what is wholly unsustainable in an effort to soften the blow somewhat, we will get more fairy tales of how the next bout of prosperity is just around the corner, or how we just need to elect the right leader promising to bring back the ‘good old days’...

[yellowcanoe]

People seem to think that technology will save us. It's actually the other way around - technology has enabled us to use resources at an ever increasing rate and thus hasten the day when we hit a wall.

[Newfie]

Yellow,

Can’t say I follow how your post is connecting to mine BUT I do agree with much of what you say. A point of demonstration is we use a pressure kerosene stove for cooking, but even kero is becoming hard to come by. I had to buy JPA here in Antigua because they have no straight up kero.

I look at it like this; humanity has been crossing a swamp. We build stepping stones, or mats or rafts if you like, but we disregard the ones we have used, we let them rot or sink. Thus if we ever have to go BACK on this path, well we can not. We seek answers in technology because it is the only thing we have. At one time here there was a thread here about building wooden sailing vessels. That can never happen, we cut down the trees and it takes centuries for them to grow.

This is a big part of the degrowth dilemma, we can not imagine a non-growth centric future, perhaps because there is none, which will lead to a pretty poor outcome.

[theluckycountry]

People seem to think that technology will save us. It's actually the other way around - technology has enabled us to use resources at an ever increasing rate and thus hasten the day when we hit a wall.

Really what it's done is simply give us a more cushy lifestyle, freed us from washing dishes by hand, from sweeping carpets with brooms and allowed us to do our shopping more easily. I love it, but it's obviously doing in the planet. No free ride.

[theluckycountry]

The Dark Face of Degrowth: Argentine's President, Javier Milei

Do you remember how we imagined what “degrowth” would be? A world of small communities practicing social equality and sustainability. Sorts of Hobbit villages, but with some technology included, just to make sure that you can still connect to the Web. In Italy, we even refer to it as “Happy Degrowth.”

But, as time goes on, we see that degrowth has a different and darker face. The face of the newly elected president of Argentina, Javier Milei, with his antics and tirades against the enemies of the people. It comes with the promise to dismantle everything we thought was granted in our world, all in the name of defending the people from the evils of socialism and communism while at the same time restarting economic growth. No such silly things as “degrowth” are involved, and climate change is a socialist lie.

Milei is just the most vocal and extreme example of an upcoming wave of extreme right politicians, whom we usually call “populists.” He claims to be an economist, but his proposals are based mainly on a mix of slogans, platitudes, and legends. Just as an example, in a recent interview, he launched himself into a tirade against the Club of Rome, accusing it of having predicted with their “Limits to Growth” study that fossil fuels would have run out by the year 2000 and that by now we should all have been dead. And, instead, we are two billion people more than when the prediction was made, in 1972. Didn’t you notice that, you silly communists who pretend to be ecologists?

The story of the “wrong predictions” of the Club of Rome is one of the many legends that surround the Limits to Growth study. But it is among the most resilient ones, so much that some 50 years after it appeared, it is still widely believed. It was useless that some poor guy (your humble author, U.B.) wrote an entire book, “The Limits to Growth Revisited” debunking it. It was also useless that several other quantitative evaluations (e.g. by Graham Turner, Gaya Herrington, and Nebel et al) confirmed the correctness of the basic scenarios of the study. What can mere scientific studies do against slogans spoken with absolute certainty on TV? Unfortunately, Mr. Milei is a typical politician whose primary instinct leads him to search for a culprit for all problems. If that leads him to re-propose old and debunked legends, well, that’s the way to be elected president of Argentina, apparently.

If collapse is an unavoidable destiny for these systems, it doesn’t mean people can’t try to do something to avoid it, but they usually worsen the situation. It was noted long ago, and it is called “pulling the levers in the wrong direction.” An example: everyone is noticing that the quality of the public health-care system of most Western States is getting worse and worse. It is a consequence of having fewer resources available and also of bureaucracy having accumulated well above the levels that the system can sustain. If left to itself, the system will nicely go through the Seneca cycle and vanish into thin air. But governments may think of doing something to avoid that.

The political Left will typically try to maintain the system output by making it more efficient and eliminating such things as corruption and incompetence. That implies more regulations, laws, guidelines, assessments, and the like...

The political Right will typically slash down the input of financial resources into the health system and let it decline or collapse, probably faster than it would do if left to itself. This is called “optimization”...

The difference between these two options is not large. Most governments will do both: they will increase bureaucracy AND slash down services, all in the name of doing a favor to the people. They don’t have a choice: shuffling the remaining resources from one subsystem to the other changes nothing. The whole system is desperately short of resources and has to shrink. And shrink it will, no matter what populist or socialist governments proclaim. (The collapse of our health care system is simply degrowth)

So, Javier Milei is acting as a “slave of history,” as Tolstoy termed kings and rulers. He is pushing Argentina in the direction where the country is slated to go: down the cliff. It won’t solve any problem; on the contrary, it will generate much worse ones than those Argentina already has. But, to give Milei his due, at least he clearly stated what he wanted to do and those who voted for him can’t complain for whatever is going to hit them as a consequence. It is also a good thing that Milei doesn’t seem to plan military attacks against other countries. That doesn’t mean he won’t transform Argentina into a police state, as is typical of populist dictators. But that will make little difference to a future that doesn’t look good.

Milei is showing us the ugly face of degrowth. His aggressive style and substance seem to be as far as possible from the gentle attitude of the typical supporters of degrowth. But they all make the same mistake: they neglect the fact that a complex system is a beast that needs energy, and if you starve it, it will die. Before it dies, it has plenty of chances to become nasty. Very nasty. Milei is an initial manifestation of this nastiness. Things could considerably worsen in the future. Degrowth will definitely not be happy...

Full Article https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/the ... argentines

At the risk of looking like a straw grabber I think of other leaders in history who went on insane paths when confronted with degrowth. The Nazis in Germany when that country had collapsed from the externally imposed austerity for example. And then there are the governments that simply miss the boat, like the failed state of Mexico, giving up control to lawless warlords essentially. There are many paths to collapse, which is what degrowth basically turns into.

"A world of small communities practicing social equality and sustainability." was the naive dream of first world pacifists who thought that just because a minority could conceive of an idea it could be implemented as long as they got enough other suburban pacifists to join their club. Transition Towns was such a movement, it has collapsed now of course. Here is an old example of a similar transitional collapse that shows that even under ideal conditions people do not want want to live that way.

Inside New Zealand's Lost Hippy Commune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXDuZe2V7ks

It's a real eyeopener, a fascinating look into the subculture

[mousepad]

Milei is an initial manifestation of this nastiness.

Dismantling the department of diversity and inclusion? Good job Javier! I embrace your nastiness.

[ralfy]

"If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble"

https://theconversation.com/if-everyone ... uble-43905

[yellowcanoe]

The Dark Face of Degrowth: Argentine's President, Javier Milei

What's interesting about Argentina is that perhaps 100 years ago, there was a belief that both Canada and Argentina had a bright future ahead of them. Some thought that Argentina would actually do better than Canada! Well it obviously didn't work out that way. Canada has done much better economically while Argentina has recurring economic problems. Why the difference? It essentially comes down to Argentina making bad choices. In many cases those bad choices were politically popular. Unfortunately, if you dig yourself into a hole by making bad choices it is very hard to get out. It would be nice if Javier Milei can get Argentina back on a good track but the odds of him achieving that are not good.

There is also a lesson for Canada here. Canadians believe that our wealth is a birth right. In fact our wealth came in part from making good decisions and we can lose that wealth if we make poor decisions. There is some evidence already that we are now making poor decisions. The large influx of immigrants, temporary foreign workers and international students seems to be having the effect of reducing gdp per capita as well as overwhelming our medical system and driving up the cost of housing.

[mousepad]

The large influx of immigrants, temporary foreign workers and international students seems to be having the effect of reducing gdp per capita as well as overwhelming our medical system and driving up the cost of housing.

You forgot to add that they also irreversibly alter the identity of the nation, destroy tradition and social cohesion, increase anxiety and require a more and more strongarm state to keep the peace. You add in the woke identity politics, which turbo charges all those issues and you truly have to wonder what people are thinking when opening the floodgates.
Maybe a small consolation is that people get what they vote for and therefore get what they deserve.

[yellowcanoe]

The large influx of immigrants, temporary foreign workers and international students seems to be having the effect of reducing gdp per capita as well as overwhelming our medical system and driving up the cost of housing.

You forgot to add that they also irreversibly alter the identity of the nation, destroy tradition and social cohesion, increase anxiety and require a more and more strongarm state to keep the peace. You add in the woke identity politics, which turbo charges all those issues and you truly have to wonder what people are thinking when opening the floodgates.
Maybe a small consolation is that people get what they vote for and therefore get what they deserve.

Ssh! Under the federal bill C-63 Online Harms Act to suggest these things would likely get you charged with a hate crime! I would agree that the huge push towards multiculturalism carries risks that we have been indoctrinated to not talk about. Multiculturalism and immigration have been promoted as a win-win but people are now waking up and realizing that large scale immigration is not "all good" - it has its downsides too! So it is no longer the case that questioning the number of immigrants we get would automatically get you labelled as "xenophobic" or "islamaphobic" but questioning multiculturalism is still verboten!

[theluckycountry]

The Dark Face of Degrowth: Argentine's President, Javier Milei

What's interesting about Argentina is that perhaps 100 years ago, there was a belief that both Canada and Argentina had a bright future ahead of them. Some thought that Argentina would actually do better than Canada!

And it probably would have had it been in the "Club". But it wasn't part of the British Empire, it's function was to provide raw materials to the Empires, not benefit from them. It doesn't even have to be direct exchange of stuff either, Economic policies, Currency valuations, these are the tools used to exploit nations in the modern world. Get them indebted to your currency and then devalue theirs. All you have to do is pay off the right officials in the host nation.

Another interesting means of control is the US government hosting and paying for the training of many of the security forces of South American and other nations. Basically they lavished money on these men and made them allies of the US, even at the expense of their own nations. Sort of like when a priest gets a child and trains them. They become a devotee for life.

The U.S. spends billions of dollars to train and equip foreign security forces in order to address global threats such as terrorism and narcotics trafficking. But is this assistance working?

https://www.gao.gov/blog/are-we-really- ... challenges

Hell yeah it's working.

How Many More Governments Will American-Trained Soldiers Overthrow? https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... 234657139/

[yellowcanoe]

The Dark Face of Degrowth: Argentine's President, Javier Milei

What's interesting about Argentina is that perhaps 100 years ago, there was a belief that both Canada and Argentina had a bright future ahead of them. Some thought that Argentina would actually do better than Canada!

And it probably would have had it been in the "Club". But it wasn't part of the British Empire, it's function was to provide raw materials to the Empires, not benefit from them. It doesn't even have to be direct exchange of stuff either, Economic policies, Currency valuations, these are the tools used to exploit nations in the modern world. Get them indebted to your currency and then devalue theirs. All you have to do is pay off the right officials in the host nation.

Argentina acquired independence from Spain in 1816 so they have been free from the impact of colonization far longer than Canada and Australia have. Alas, it didn't seem to help them.

[theluckycountry]

Argentina acquired independence from Spain in 1816 so they have been free from the impact of colonization far longer than Canada and Australia have. Alas, it didn't seem to help them.

They were free from the old model but excluded from partnership in the new one. If resources/ raw materials was what it took for success a place like NZ would have never made it past second world status. All they have is sheep. No oil, no extensive agricultural production, but they could buy what they needed because of their connections with the U.S. and England.

Not a single south American nation is prospering though they all had decent beginnings with railway networks and good road networks and other infrastructure. The imperialists came in and helped them themselves by building all this to gain access to the resources of course. Now they are lawless impoverished dumps for the most part. Run by dictators for the most part. It's a lot easier to manipulate a nation when it's controlled by a dictator than when when controlled by a strong democratic government based on free elections. Venezuela, one of the richest had decent living conditions before 2000 and for a decade or so after but they were doomed.

Holding political power for decades, Venezuela's traditional political parties up to the 1998 election were dyed-in the-wool “crony capitalists,” with politicians growing rich in deals with the nation's "private" oil companies. As they grew rich, much of the population struggled in semi-poverty.

https://www.atlassociety.org/post/venez ... ctatorship

So the population was poor before Hugo, semi-poor, but still had abundant food. The modern imperialist system isn't cruel, it's just greedy. Those “crony capitalists” were connected, they did ok. But after Hugo Chavez decided to break from the imperialists (America now) and keep all the profits at home the place was marginalized by the West and collapsed into abject poverty. You could blame hugo chavez's socialism but Australia is just as socialist, the Government here doles out vast amounts of social welfare and provides all the roads and rail and much of the hospital care. Doctor's visits are heavily subsidized and so are key medicines.

No it's not socialism that destroyed Venezuela, or the greed of the new leader Maduro. It's simply the fact that they wanted to control their own destiny and that's not allowed.


It's explained here
https://www.unwelcomeguests.net/archive ... Matrix.mp3
Full Site
https://www.unwelcomeguests.net/750_-_B ... _New_White

"The driving force behind western imperialism has always been the pursuit of economic gain. The rhetoric of Empire concerning wars however typically has been about other things. Defeating the yellow peril, making the world safe for democracy. Any fabricated motivation for war or empire would do as long as it appealed to the collective consciousness of the population at the time. The propaganda lies of yesterday were recorded and became consensus history...

The War in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Vietnam? All just imperialistic pursuits of economic gain and the gullible population is sucked in every time thinking it's a noble cause. What was the japanese action in WWII? Simply trying to steal the economic gains of the Dutch, the English and the USA that these nations controlled on Japan's doorstep. Japan was never a threat to the US or Australia, just to the economic interests of the Great Powers. In this light, the attack on Pearl was Not an attack on America. It was an attack on an imperialistic fleet controlled by capitalist elites to protect their interests in the Eastern Pacific. Arguably a place they had no right to be meddling in but they were exploiting various nations there and wanted to protect their economic interests.

So we as members of the western club enjoy some of the profits of these endeavors, but it would be stupid to don a uniform and go and fight for them. I know this is a big pill for the average American to swallow, given the level of propaganda the people have been fed, but I couldn't give a shit. Go die in a war for Halliburton if that's what you want, convince yourself you're bringing democracy to a people who hate you if that makes you seep well at night. Let's face it, someone has to die so we can have shopping malls and fast cars.

Iraq learned its lesson.

[yellowcanoe]

Argentina acquired independence from Spain in 1816 so they have been free from the impact of colonization far longer than Canada and Australia have. Alas, it didn't seem to help them.

So the population was poor before Hugo, semi-poor, but still had abundant food. The modern imperialist system isn't cruel, it's just greedy. Those “crony capitalists” were connected, they did ok. But after Hugo Chavez decided to break from the imperialists (America now) and keep all the profits at home the place was marginalized by the West and collapsed into abject poverty. You could blame hugo chavez's socialism but Australia is just as socialist, the Government here doles out vast amounts of social welfare and provides all the roads and rail and much of the hospital care. Doctor's visits are heavily subsidized and so are key medicines.

No it's not socialism that destroyed Venezuela, or the greed of the new leader Maduro. It's simply the fact that they wanted to control their own destiny and that's not allowed.

I have family members from Venezuela. It's still a good place to live if you are a member of the elite who derive an income from the oil wealth. Chavez did try to provide more for the poor but there wasn't enough oil wealth to keep the elites and military happy as well as provide for the poor. Corruption is a big problem in Venezuela and Chavez made decisions such as sacking thousands of skilled oil sector workers (because they had gone on strike) which further reduced the oil income. Venezuela nationalized their oil industry in 1976 long before Chavez came to power.

Australia does have a strong social welfare system. The difference is that Australia is a functioning democracy with rule of law and a diverse economy. Venezuela has gone down a completely different road -- destroying its democratic institutions and becoming a dictatorship. The non-oil part of the economy has been seriously damaged through things like price controls. My step-daughter's motherinlaw was surprised to find that she could not buy milk on a trip back to Venezuela even though she was in the part of the country where the dairy industry had been centered. The problem is that what farmers had to sell their milk for didn't cover their production costs. Petro wealth can be very destructive to a country. One oil producing country that managed to avoid that fate is Norway. They have been able to benefit enormously from their oil wealth without destroying the rest of their economy. They were able to do that by having a robust democracy, good rule of law and a very low level of corruption before their oil/gas wealth was discovered.

[theluckycountry]

My step-daughter's motherinlaw was surprised to find that she could not buy milk on a trip back to Venezuela even though she was in the part of the country where the dairy industry had been centered. The problem is that what farmers had to sell their milk for didn't cover their production costs. Petro wealth can be very destructive to a country. One oil producing country that managed to avoid that fate is Norway. They have been able to benefit enormously from their oil wealth without destroying the rest of their economy. They were able to do that by having a robust democracy, good rule of law and a very low level of corruption before their oil/gas wealth was discovered.

Would you consider Venezuela a victim of the Dutch Disease as well?

The term Dutch disease was coined by The Economist magazine in 1977 when the publication analyzed a crisis that occurred in The Netherlands after the discovery of vast natural gas deposits in the North Sea in 1959. The newfound wealth and massive exports of oil caused the value of the Dutch guilder to rise sharply, making Dutch exports of all non-oil products less competitive on the world market. Unemployment rose from 1.1% to 5.1%, and capital investment in the country dropped.

[Newfie]

"If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble"

https://theconversation.com/if-everyone ... uble-43905

Ralphy,

Yes, a good article. Thank you for postingZ

Distressingly the very first sentence in that report is drastically wrong.

From a 10-15 year old interview with Rees Canadians consume about 8 acres of productivity, Americans about 10. Average is round about 1. At this AVERAGE we ares using 2-1/2 times Earths capability to replenish. Move that Average up to 8 and we would he using over 10 the replenishment capacity.

Now suppose we Americans, and all Western society, reduced our consumption to 1 acre, and the excess capacity/resources went to the below average, we would still be using 2-1/2 times replenishment capacity.

To hold our current population and to reduce consumption to below replenishment levels we have to live on less than 1/2 acre per person. Or cut American/Western consumption to 5% if current l usage.

Even if Rees/Walkenburg are wrong by a factor of 10 we would still have to reduce Western consumption by 50%.

Rees/Walkenburg due believe their model is wrong, in that it is too optimistic, making the matter even worse.

I have a friend, really bright lawyer. Named top lawyer in his populace state by the states lawyers association, he has argued a case before the Supreme Court. I have sat in a board with him and he has a very sharp analytical mind. He is a staunch liberal, strong Greenie. When I tried to explain this to him he absolutely COULD NOT believe it. It was many steps too far for him to accept that our situation was that dire. His reaction to my arguments was of disgust, as if I were telling him to literally eat shit. It is an abhorrent concept.

I believe in many ways he is of the same class, attitude, training, and culture as our ruling politicians. The necessary solutions are beyond their comprehension.

I have an even better example I will leave for latter.

I do not know how to deal with that.