VIDEO: Chris Martenson: "Unfixable"
EDITOR’S NOTE: Although many viewers may be familiar with the information given by Chris in this presentation, the real gems are to be found in the Q & A in the last half of the video.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Although many viewers may be familiar with the information given by Chris in this presentation, the real gems are to be found in the Q & A in the last half of the video.
In this GEAB N°59 we will analyze in detail this new phase of the crisis as well as the deepening US debt crisis. Moreover, we will begin to present, as indicated in previous GEABs, our forecasts about the future of the United States between 2012 and 2016 (5) starting with a fundamental aspect of Euro-US relations (and more generally the global system that has been in place since 1945), namely the strategic and military relations between the US and Europe. We have estimated that by 2017 the last US soldier will have left European continental soil. Finally, LEAP/E2020 will present its recommendations, dealing this month with currency, gold, capital-based pensions, the financial sector, and commodities.
We are being throttled by the Big Lie: we’re told that if the predatory financial system implodes, we’ll all be ruined. The opposite is true: the only way to save our economy is to let the corrupt, pathological and flawed financial system implode.
It’s strategic to bring protest to Wall Street rather than Washington. We must go directly to the crime scene — not with a request for reforms, but with an arrest warrant from the people.
Economists associate the availability of abundant inexpensive energy with economic growth, suggesting that the modern era’s rising tide of global wealth—and health—was borne up largely on a sea of cheap oil. “We’ve been living for 150 years on a fossil fuel bubble,” is how Stuart Chaitkin, MA, a retired energy policy analyst and senior associate in Environmental Health Sciences (EHS), describes the current situation. “You can’t just simply replace oil for many of its uses. Oil is the world’s master resource.”
Because none of us has crystal balls, and none of us is perfect, it makes the most sense to plan for multiple possible scenarios, and thus to put our energies in the places that get us the most bang for our buck, the most resilience and best possible responses for the broadest *range* of possible scenarios. I’m going to list five scenarios that I think are possible, running from the most unlikely to the most likely, and then we can explore this question of what the future is going to look like, not from our single bet, but from the perspective of trying to maximize utility for multiple scenarios.
KMO welcomes Charles Eisenstein back to the C-Realm Podcast to discuss his new book, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition. Charles talks about interest and the economic imperatives that it fosters. If the value of money decreased over time rather than growing via interest, then it would be clear to everyone that the best thing one can do with one’s money is to spend it quickly and close to home. In times of chaos and potential collapse, the best way to preserve wealth is to give your money away to those in need. Music by Inspired Flight. (ALLOW ABOUT 30 SECONDS FOR PODCAST TO BEGIN)
When theorists approach the peak oil problem from the perspective of finding a substitute that will allow us to maintain our present energy infrastructure, their conclusion is one of despair. There may be many substitutes for oil as a concentrated form of storable energy, but none of them are nearly as good as oil itself. Those invested in the status quo would, quite understandably, like to maintain it, but it is becoming apparent even to the most highly invested that the status quo is doomed; that it can be maintained only temporarily, and at a rapidly accelerating environmental cost. The transition before us is not merely a transition in fuel types. It is also a transition in the whole energy infrastructure, both physical and psychological; a transition away from big power plants, distribution lines, and metered consumers; away from capital-intensive drilling, refining, distribution, and consumer fueling stations. More broadly, it is a transition away from centralization, concentration, and all the social institutions that go along with it.
Just after the release of his newest book, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, I sat down with Richard Heinberg via Skype to get his take on what needs to happen to shift the conversation on peak oil and peak debt. The interview follows.
“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises