Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:03 pm Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
KingM wrote:
Look, in a true disaster, the US/France/UK/Japan/etc. first have to slip to the level of Taiwan, then to Mexico, then to Morocco, then to Kenya, then to Haiti, then to the Congo.
By the time the US looks like Mexico, Mexico will look like Kenya or Morocco. By the time the US looks like Haiti, the Haitians will be extinct.
Uh,....
Lots of those people on the bottom are subsistence farmers. They walk between their houses and fields. They go to sleep when the sun goes down.
Many have never bought a gallon of gasoline in their lives.
They've got more survival skills that "survivalists".
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:20 pm Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
davep wrote:
KingM wrote:
During a time of scarcity, the poor will do worse than the rich and the poor countries will do worse than the wealthy countries. This is how it always works, and not just in human societies.
I'm not so sure. Countries where they already live a poor subsistence lifestyle will surely be less affected by a lack of oil, as they use so little in the first place.
This statement has an inescapable logic to it, and can propbably be applied safely to the !kung bushmen or other "untouched" populations that live as hunter-gatherers. It can't be applied to poor countries that have already gone through the Green Revolution. These countries are the ones where population growth is out of control, due to improved medical care and a notable increase in food. Countries like India or Thailand, that are "developing" but still live pretty close to the edge, I believe will experience the worst hardship. The strongest economies in the world are China, the US and Europe. When oil becomes scarce, we in the strong economies will pay the higher pricesand continue burning the oil, and there will be less left over for countries like India and Thailand and Honduras and Ghana, and they will lose their fertilizer, pesticides, medicines and transportation. Once they do, all those 7-child families are going to starve to death on their ruined farms, while those of us in the strong economies watch on TV. In the past, we would have sent them our excess grain stocks and processed cheese spread, but in the future, we won't have any to give, so we will just watch. In terms of starvation, disease and death, the hardest fall is going to hit those who ALWAYS get hit first. In fact, you can argue it is already happening in certain countries in Africa, with the AIDS epidemic. _________________ Just another tofu-munching bike-riding Rambo(/Rambette)
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:26 pm Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
BobWallace wrote:
[
Uh,....
Lots of those people on the bottom are subsistence farmers. They walk between their houses and fields. They go to sleep when the sun goes down.
Many have never bought a gallon of gasoline in their lives.
.
By God, they've been vaccinated though, and they have medical clinics and hospitals. They make their living growing sugar cane for export. Even though they walk to the farm and use oxen to farm, they will be the first to starve when the oil runs out. It's already happening in Haiti. They've wiped out 99% of their forests burning wood to cook food to feed their skyrocketing population. Every time it rains there, they have a flood that wipes out entire villages. When the medicine runs out and the ships no longer come to port, Haiti will be the next Easter Island. _________________ Just another tofu-munching bike-riding Rambo(/Rambette)
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 4:09 pm Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
The UK will be absolutely hammered by North Sea Peak oil as it already runs at a trade deficit, is up to its eyeballs in state debt and personal debt and will start having to buy oil in large amounts with its dollars.
Its economy is headed for the toilet in the next 5 years.
Edited to clarify, the NS oil peaked in 99, but the uk is only now becoming a net importer. Its the first big industrial economy that will go down the tubes due to peak oil
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:35 pm Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
Pixie wrote:
BobWallace wrote:
[
Uh,....
Lots of those people on the bottom are subsistence farmers. They walk between their houses and fields. They go to sleep when the sun goes down.
Many have never bought a gallon of gasoline in their lives.
.
By God, they've been vaccinated though, and they have medical clinics and hospitals. They make their living growing sugar cane for export. Even though they walk to the farm and use oxen to farm, they will be the first to starve when the oil runs out. It's already happening in Haiti. They've wiped out 99% of their forests burning wood to cook food to feed their skyrocketing population. Every time it rains there, they have a flood that wipes out entire villages. When the medicine runs out and the ships no longer come to port, Haiti will be the next Easter Island.
There are a few places in the world other than Haiti.
The folks in Nepal, for example, are going to be doing a lot better feeding themselves from their rice fields than are New Yorkers trying to farm Central Park or Orange County-ites grazing on their astroturf.
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:46 pm Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
Let's see. From Mauratania to Somali, from Egypt to Eastern China.
-Probably half a billion people in that region and it's mostly desert (exception being Iran, Turkey and parts of Israel, Iraq, and a few others). Some of these nations that support millions used to only support a thousand or less just a hundred years ago. Many have poor farming lands.
-Very tense relations between multiple parties including multiple nuclear-equipped militaries.
-Some of the most corrupt regimes on the planet.
-Large oil reserves, but very scarce water reserves and system (look at the problems KSA had in Jeddah and Medina last year).
Yup. That sounds like the resume of the hardest crash to me. _________________ I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of God. - Rabia
Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 277 Location: Second Vermont Republic
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:48 pm Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
I think your belief that Nepalese, et al, will survive better than Americans appeals to your sense of fair play. After all, it's the Americans burning up the petroleum; they should be the ones to suffer.
The fact is, the Third World is hugely overpopulated because of cheap food and medicine. What was the population of Bangladesh in 1800? You can bet that it wasn't 140 million. Probably more like 10 or 20 million. In a total collapse, those rice farmers will have their land confiscated and their rice sold to people in Switzerland or Ohio to keep the money flowing for the power brokers of Bangladesh for a few years longer.
Again, by the time people are starving to death in Brussels, there will be a stack of corpses a million deep in Lagos.
As for the war comment, wars almost never act as a lid on population. Even the most horrific war of all times--WW II--barely made a dent in the demographic explosion of the 20th Century. It won't be war that collapses the population, it will be opportunistic disease preying on the starving.
Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 277 Location: Second Vermont Republic
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:54 pm Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
BobWallace wrote:
There are a few places in the world other than Haiti.
The folks in Nepal, for example, are going to be doing a lot better feeding themselves from their rice fields than are New Yorkers trying to farm Central Park or Orange County-ites grazing on their astroturf.
Except that New Yorkers live in New York. What have Nepalese done in the last two thousand years? I'm guessing that forty or fifty years after the crash the Northern countries will still be on top of the heap.
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 7:19 pm Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
KingM wrote:
BobWallace wrote:
There are a few places in the world other than Haiti.
The folks in Nepal, for example, are going to be doing a lot better feeding themselves from their rice fields than are New Yorkers trying to farm Central Park or Orange County-ites grazing on their astroturf.
Except that New Yorkers live in New York. What have Nepalese done in the last two thousand years? I'm guessing that forty or fifty years after the crash the Northern countries will still be on top of the heap.
The Nepalis? Learned how to live off their land. Something almost no New Yorker has learned to do.
But picking the Nepalis was a bad choice on my part. They may well be one of the first areas really badly hurt by global warming. They are to a great extent on summer melt for their water.
At that aside, I just think the "great big die-off" is a crock.
Hard times? Sure?
Some folks dropping by the wayside? Sure. Happening now.
Mankind unable to grow and distribute enough food to keep the vast majority of mankind alive and kickin'. Nope.
Descent into a Mad Max world with zipheads running around shooting everyone in sight? Highly unlikely except in a disordered mind.
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 9:16 pm Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
I think it will be a collapse of many places at once. We'll hear that small countries, like Zimbabwe don't have enough oil even to run their busses, or that in Southern Sudan people are dying at the hands of the government. Wait... we've heard all this already. Has it begun?
I think that there will be food around for a while, if you have the money to buy it. There will also be gasoline, if you have the cash.
A die off will happen quietly. There may be wars, and refugees.
Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:06 pm Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
Revi wrote:
I think it will be a collapse of many places at once. We'll hear that small countries, like Zimbabwe don't have enough oil even to run their busses, or that in Southern Sudan people are dying at the hands of the government. Wait... we've heard all this already. Has it begun?
I think that there will be food around for a while, if you have the money to buy it. There will also be gasoline, if you have the cash.
A die off will happen quietly. There may be wars, and refugees.
It's already starting, in my humble opinion.
Zimbabwe is being run (run aground) by a totally bizarre president. They're going to crash hard/are crashing hard and would do so scarce oil, global warming, or not. Oil prices might speed things up a few minutes....
The Southern Sudan may be experiencing the effects of global warming. Droughts are driving nomadic herders into tradionally farming lands and the farmers are under attack. Haven't heard if the lack of rainfall is definitely due to global warming, but if GW causes droughts then that is the sort of events that one would expect.
But don't forget, people experienced droughts and fought over land pre-industrial times. The jury is out on the root cause here as far as I know.
What we're likely to see, IMO, is an increase in marginal area problems, more migration out of those areas, ....
Will there be a lot of conflict as people get squeezed out? I'm not sure that it will be grand scale as the doomers seem to want. I suspect that we will become purposeful about moving people to better conditions as needed.
I suppose that I believe that people are basically good....
Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 1:15 am Post subject: Re: Who will crash the hardest?
Africa, will get the shaft first as usual. Mexico, is going to have a hard time once Cantarel has crashed to the point they can't export oil. The US will do fine for awhile as it has plenty of coal.
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