In aspiring toward sustainable growth, then, the Rio participants carried an irreconcilable contradiction with them into the conference. Its failure was assured — not because of the commonly cited reason that it is impossible to gather 50,000 bureaucrats for a week and get anything done. Well, OK, because of that, yes, but the contradictions run deeper. Given the way that growth is defined in our current system, sustainable growth is impossible.
About a decade ago I realized we were putting the finishing touches on our own extinction party, with the party probably over by 2030. During the intervening period I’ve seen nothing to sway this belief, and much evidence to reinforce it. Yet the protests, ridicule, and hate mail reach a fervent pitch when I speak or write about the potential for near-term extinction of Homo sapiens.
“We’re different.”
“We’re special.”
“We’re too intelligent.”
“We’ll find a way out. We always do.”
According to alarming new figures released Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation’s population of mature adults has been pushed to the brink of extinction, with only 104 grown-ups remaining in the country today.
The endangered demographic, which is projected to die out completely by 2060, is reportedly distinguished from other groups by numerous unique traits, including foresight, rationality, understanding of how to obtain and pay for a mortgage, personal responsibility, and the ability to enter a store without immediately purchasing whatever items they see and desire.
“How can I prepare for an economic collapse?” Is one of the most common questions I get. It usually takes me a second to start to explain how complex such a question is. It’s like asking an auto mechanic “Say, how do you build a car?” or asking a computer engineer “What’s all that stuff inside my laptop?” I do have some first-hand experience in this matter though. The economy in my country, Argentina, has gone through various crises, but none as large as when the economy collapsed in 2001 after a decade of apparent prosperity. The currency devaluated, Argentina defaulted on its USD$132 billion debt, the largest default ever. The middle class took to the streets after bank accounts were frozen and the president was forced to resign, escaping the presidential building in a helicopter. What I’ll do is, based on what I know, provide five quick foundational steps for you to follow so as to be better prepared if something like what happened in my country ever happens in yours.
In March this year (2011) the science journal Nature announced what many people already knew, that there are clear indications that the world’s Sixth Mass Extinction is already underway. The last mass extinction came some 65 million years ago when a comet or asteroid slammed into the Yucatan peninsula, in modern-day Mexico, causing firestorms whose dust cooled the planet, and an estimated 76 percent of species were killed, including the dinosaurs. The four previous mass extinction of species were due to gradual global warming and cooling, and happened on a scale of hundreds of thousands to millions of years. What is particular about our present mass extinction is that it has happened so quickly over a few centuries, and most significantly, it is man made. “The modern global mass extinction is a largely unaddressed hazard of climate change and human activities.”
For me, the topic of peak psychotherapy is not about wild speculation regarding the status of mental or other health care two decades from now. Will psychotherapy even exist, and if it does, what will it look like? We cannot answer that with certainty, but it is safe to assume that it will look very different from how it looks today and that however it looks in the future, it will be accessible to many fewer people than it is in present time—which may or may not be a good thing.
Times like this are hard to live through. People may respond in a panic by trying to write instant, comprehensive new stories, but often they don’t have purchase because they have no depth and no connection to peoples’ reality; they have not had the time to bed in. Or they cling resolutely to old stories – to both the dominant narrative and to counter-narratives that made sense once but don’t seem to now, however hard they try to fit them around a rapidly-unfolding reality. They – we – do this because everyone needs a story, and an old, worn-out story seems better than no story at all.
The cars are coming off the rails. This is a big market move and a signal that Apmex and many others see Fukushima’s impact on the global economy, our civilization, and the Old Paradigm. Put another way, they see pm’s going absurdly hot very shortly which is exactly what I have written about consistently for over a decade. This fits with my analysis predicting immediate (there is no better term) apocalyptic events. Having left a record of maybe three million words I have never used that word before.
Absent a global war capable of simply sweeping away an empire, the decline of a great power is often a fitful, painful, drawn-out affair. In addition to the two American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down to something not so far short of defeat, the nation’s capital is now writhing in fiscal crisis, the coin of the realm is losing its creditworthiness, and longtime allies are forging economic and even military ties to rival China. To all of this, we must now add the possible loss of loyal surrogates across the Middle East.
There have been persistent rumors of shortages at some of the biggest suppliers of emergency food in the United States. Mountain House the largest supplier of freeze dried and dehydrated food in the United States is not accepting orders for the next couple of months.