The Bottom

[Crewleader]

by Jim Kunstler

Euphoria managed to out-run swine flu last week as the epidemic-du-jour, with "consumer" confidence jumping and the big bank stocks nudging up. The H1N1 virus fizzled for now, at least in terms of kill ratio, though we're warned it might boomerang in the fall with a vengeance. No one was surprised to see Chrysler roll over like a possum on a county highway, but the memory of their muscle cars will linger on like a California surfing song. Here in the northeast, where Sundays are not spent at the Nascar oval, the spring foliage reached the tenderly explosive stage and it was hard to feel bad about anything.

For now, the "bottom" is in -- that is, the bottom of this society's ability to process reality. It may continue for a month of so, even after the "stress test" for banks is finally let out of the massage parlor with a "happy ending." But events are underway that are beyond the command of personalities. We're done "doing business" in all the ways that we've been used to, but we just can't get with the new program. Let's count the ways:

1. The revolving credit economy is over. It's over because we can't increase energy inputs to the system, which is one way of saying "peak oil." Of course hardly anybody believes this right now because the price of oil crashed nine months ago, along with global manufacturing and trade. But nothing has changed on the peak oil scene -- except perhaps that ever more new oil projects have been cancelled for lack of financing, which will boomerang on us (even if swine flu doesn't) in the form of much lower future oil production. In any case, the credit fiesta is over, and the "consumer" economy with it, because industrial growth as we have known it is over. It's over globally, too, though all regions of the world will not experience its demise the same way at the same rate.

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/

[cliffordu]

1. I like Big Jim. I really do. K&R

[Gregorian]

2. Excellent.

I don't hear this talk very often. I spout it in the forum, but it rarely gets heard. Mother Nature is saying "enough". We didn't want to realize limits, so the limits came to us.


I'll say it again- economies are based on resources. Increasing population creates scarcity of resources.


It's a pretty dire and extreme blog he has written. I don't know the actual time frame, nor the extent of how far we'll veer from our present path. I believe things will happen slowly as we struggle to beat the impending consequences and crashing results. But there is no doubt slowing down is in the agenda.

[tularetom]

3. Doesn't leave me feeling very warm and fuzzy

Although I agree with his premise, I don't believe Americans will respond in a positive way to the new reality. Fifty years of consistent underfunding of education in this country and the concurrent dumbing down of our information media have left us in an unenviable position when it comes to adapting. The shock to our systems will be greater than anywhere else on earth.

[ixion]

4. kicked and recommended

well worth the whole read.

Kunstler nails it, as always.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Happy to be 5th rec..thanks, Crewleader.

[truedelphi]

6. Two key paragraphs for me:

Paragraph one:
Credit will not vanish everywhere overnight -- even in the USA -- because it is not distributed equally everywhere. But it will vanish in layers, and here in the USA a very broad layer of the lower and middle classes are now losing their access to it in one way or another -- personally, in small business -- and they will never get it back. Anyone who intends to thrive in the years just ahead had better plan on doing it on the basis of accounts receivable -- and what they receive might not even necessarily come in the form of US dollars. It may come in the form of gold or silver or in the promise of reciprocal services rendered.

Agree totally. We are happy that we have a home based business, and although we are not rich, we pay the rent and we occassionally eat. With both of us being in our fifties, and with the jobs a lot fewer than the warm bodies that apply, we are very grateful that we have this means of surviving. Of course, if things get worse, maybe no one will want our products and services. But for now, it is a living.

Paragraph two:
After discussion about the food production tanking out:
President Obama and Ag Secretary Vilsack have not given a hint that they understand the gravity of the situation. It is probably one of those unfortunate events of history that can only impress a society in the form of a crisis. It also happens to be one of the few problems we face that public policy could affect sharply and broadly -- if we underwrote the reactivation of smaller, local farm operations instead of shoveling money to giant "agribusiness" (or Citibank, or Goldman Sachs, or AIG...). I maintain that this may be the year that the crisis gets our attention, because capital is suddenly harder to get than fossil-fuel-based fertilizer.

As it is, with Vilsack favoring the Monsanto Monster of Big Agro Business, we can count on seeing more and more family farms taken away from the small farmers. After all, the Monsanto patents specifically state that the farmer who does not purchase the GMO seeds must never plant them on his acreage. So if seeds scatter across the farmer's lands, through pollination, or through the winds directly blowing them there, then the farmer will lose his farm. After all, small time family farmers cannot afford to face the Monsanto monster in Court for the years they woul dneed to battle this Goliath. The small time farmer will lose his farm to Monsanto, or else to his lawyers.

I keep wondering why Obama is
1) ignorant of what he should have doen to help the economy
]and 2) why he is ignorant of the monsanto issue.

in any case, soemtimes I wonder if a deal was made. Like someone else on Du called it, it's the effects of "The President's Club."

[GliderGuider]

7. Jim's a truth-teller, it's in his genes.

Richard Heinberg just published a column about being in the "world-saving business", in which he talks about the dilemma inherent in taking Jim's approach:

Somebody's Gotta Do It

This points up one of the dilemmas that go along with trying to save the world: should one just tell the truth fearlessly, or try to frame one’s message so as to make it generally acceptable? The two options aren’t always mutually exclusive, but neither are they exactly the same thing. You see, most people don’t want to be too alarmed, and they don’t want to hear about problems to which there are no ready solutions. So world-savers frequently try to tailor their public statements so that large numbers of people won’t be frightened to the point of despair and paralysis. How many times have I been told, “Keep it positive! Emphasize solutions!” Yet I can’t tell you how often I’ve sat down with an activist whose latest policy paper is all about solutions, and in heart-to-heart conversation they reveal that they don’t really think our species has much of a chance of avoiding major catastrophe, maybe even extinction.

I'm pretty much in Heinberg's camp. The political necessity for soft-selling what is IMO the worst crisis to hit humanity since the Neolithic (when you count in climate change, energy problems, ecological devastation, massive extinctions, increasing social injustices and the current economic collapse) is the main thing that's kept me from becoming a solutions-based activist. Like Kunstler, I can't bring myself to bullshit people about something like this.

[grasswire]

8. thank you for posting the Heinberg piece. (eom)

[tdavis]

9. interesting

interesting

[wuvuj]

10. The new paradigm?

Unless....the aliens intervene?

[End Of The Road]

11. I'm not a fan of Kuntsler's predictions

since he's been wrong as often, or more often, than right.

But I absolutely ADORE his paintings. You can see some of them at his website.