[theluckycountry]

If we do voluntarily rein in our consumption, it will be the first time in recorded history that a civilization has. So statistically speaking...

[Newfie]

Yup, I 100% get that.

NOT optimistic.

[vtsnowedin]

Yup, I 100% get that.

NOT optimistic.

I know some of you love this idea of degrowth as an answer to the planet's problems but I see zero chance of any reduction in consumption before the worlds population peeks and starts to decline. And even then consumption will not decline as fast as the population as billions will want, demand even, to move up to higher living standards then were endured by their parents .
In the mean time we should look for more efficient ways to meet demand while cutting pollution and environmental degradation.

[Newfie]

VT,

That is pretty much what I have been talking about.

We are on a brink, the sensible thing to-do would be to walk back. That is very unlikely (and stupid) but it is what we should plan for. Likely to be nasty, but when? I.possible to say.

[theluckycountry]

We are on a brink, the sensible thing to-do would be to walk back.

We? There is no "We" in my world, there is just "Me" and my preparations to avoid the consequences of the collapse of the global empire (for lack of a better phrase)

The rest of the men can all put on dresses and lipstick as far as I'm concerned, they can blow up Eastern Europe too for all I care. We're well past the point of solutions to any of the problems and the time to head for the hills has arrived I learnt that lesson from the Chinese and the Koreans and the response of many of those people to the Japanese invasion. When trouble comes you get out of doge (coin?) and you don't look back. The earlier you leave the more you can take with you too.

[AdamB]

Fascinating video on recent US population growth. Or, apparently, not. But the knock on conclusions to what happens next in America is quite nicely laid out, with topics that are often mentioned around here as well.

The De-Population Bomb

[Newfie]

Yeah, talking about depopulation seems to have caught fashion as has Peter Zeihan. According to whom the really exposed countries who are fast track for collapse are Russia and China. They seem to be in a race to the bottom.

By contrast the USA’s problems are very minor and because of the relative nature, co oared to the rest of the West, we may do quite well.

There seems to be more evidence that China has been doctoring their demographics for at leas a decade and are further down the rabbit hole than is widely acknowledged. And they have some serious systemic problems, basically their management is deeply inept. (Worse than ours?!! ).

And Russia is either chasing out or killing their their young generation, doubling down on their already abysmal demographic situation.

[theluckycountry]

I listened to an interesting interview where it was postulated that the one child policy destroyed the natural breeding cycle in China and that it will take like 50 years for them to get back to normal growth. Who knows what's really going on there? It's such a secretive culture, the government could have planned for this just so they don't have millions of starving insurgents in the decades to come as we move back to a sustainable population level.

Opponents to depopulation really haven't looked into the consequences of moving agriculture off it's fossil energy throne. Sri Lankans know all about it, their food production fell through the floor when the government banned fertilizer use, for the logical reason that they couldn't afford them. There are big protests in France today too because the government wants to ban some pesticides.


“There’s no point in farming any more,” said KA Sumanadasa, who grows brinjals (aubergine) on a his quarter of a hectare (0.6-acre) field. Taking out a bag of puny vegetables, many streaked with fungus, the 70-year-old says the switch to organic agriculture has brought down his yield from 400kg (882 pounds) per season to 50kg (110 pounds).
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/1 ... n-planting

Sri Lanka’s organic farming disaster, explained
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022 ... re-farming

The French Protests
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/hu ... 023-02-08/


Apologists say the Sri lankans did it too fast, but we all know that no matter how you do it the crop yields without modern fertilization and pesticides will fall dramatically. They increased 7~10 fold so they have to go back that far too, natural Bell curve. And the French action is all obscured by EU Save the planet rhetoric.
"The European Union's executive commission wants to ensure that at least 25% of agricultural land across the 27-nation bloc is reserved for organic farming, compared to 8% in 2020"

Blah Blah, we want healthy food for you they say, but the simple fact is pesticides are made from oil and those in power must realize that they have to get us off them eventually. I say us because they will never want, not this side of second french revolution lol.



Are we reaching Peak population? The first big uptick happened around the time we introduced powered farming methods, the second HUGE uptick in population was around the time pesticides herbicides and super phosphate etc was introduced on a mass scale. Each one increases crop yields markedly but it's the fertilizer that was the real force multiplier.



This is what the U.N. predicts. I never listen to anything they say. They are nothing more than a group of bureaucrats representing a hundred or so dictatorships across the globe. Totally corrupt. Their population chart says it all, they are clueless.

[Newfie]

Here is a better chart.

URL=https://imgbox.com/BXc5kmEp][/URL]

Limits to Growth - Business as Usual Scenario

[vtsnowedin]

Surprising that a country with a population to feed would chose to end fertilizer and pesticide use. For every dollar you spend on fertilizer and pesticides you get three to five dollars back in higher yields. So go without and yields collapse and to avoid having the population starve you have to import food from counties that are still applying fertilizer and pesticides.

[Newfie]

Yup, thats what happened. Imagine that.

[careinke]

Surprising that a country with a population to feed would chose to end fertilizer and pesticide use. For every dollar you spend on fertilizer and pesticides you get three to five dollars back in higher yields. So go without and yields collapse and to avoid having the population starve you have to import food from counties that are still applying fertilizer and pesticides.

They didn't, The IMF forced them to do it.

Peace

[theluckycountry]

Surprising that a country with a population to feed would chose to end fertilizer and pesticide use. For every dollar you spend on fertilizer and pesticides you get three to five dollars back in higher yields.

Well I'm not sure where you got those figures but I assume they are right for food sold in the West, in Sri lanka though the people are pretty poor and they no doubt pay a lot less, just like the people of Iran paid a lot less for their gas before the US invaded and installed Halliburton to manage it. The old Iraq government could afford to give it's people cheap petroleum products because it made so much with the exports and it wasn't chasing greedy profits.

Poor old sri lanka though couldn't export enough food to balance the trade of fertilizer pesticides etc it was importing. It was going broke. Food may look expensive in the supermarket in upstate New York but at the farm gate and the dock it's a lot cheaper. Especially an Asian farmgate.

[theluckycountry]

Here is a better chart.

URL=https://imgbox.com/BXc5kmEp][/URL]

Limits to Growth - Business as Usual Scenario

Business as usual, sounds like us alright. The limits to growth has been ridiculed by the establishment but never disproved, hell it's as obvious as the nose on your face. You don't need a team from MIT and a computer to tell the world is finite.

Religion, that's the problem and always has been with human affairs. Today the religion of the western masses is Tech, anything futuristic is worshiped like a god. Most people are are just going about their lives normally and when a problem is seen on the horizon they turn to the prophets expecting a solution. The cripple Hawking on his death-chair said we have 100 years to colonize another planet or die as a species. Well who knows if that prediction was accurate, but the solution is total science fiction without a faster than light drive. Que Elon Musk stage right.

[Newfie]

Surprising that a country with a population to feed would chose to end fertilizer and pesticide use. For every dollar you spend on fertilizer and pesticides you get three to five dollars back in higher yields. So go without and yields collapse and to avoid having the population starve you have to import food from counties that are still applying fertilizer and pesticides.

They didn't, The IMF forced them to do it.

Peace

Interesting. I tried to do a little research on Sir Lanka, not much, but I could not get to the bottom of their problems. My take away was that the new government forced the farming change, not sure why, and that a LOT of small holdings were locked up in some mind of legal disputes. When the riots ran the new government out the NEW new government negotiated with the IMF and India and reinstituted old farming practices.

This is not to argue, but to parrot the story I read. I have no idea of the truth.

My conclusion was that there was a shit ton of corruption there and everyone was lying to squeeze the last drop from the carcass.

What a screwed up place. Are they really better having for having independence from British rule? It seems the British Virgin Islands are going the same route. Their PM is in jail in Florida for smuggling coke, charter companies are leaving, cruisers are avoiding the place due some getting outrageous fines.

[Newfie]

A 3 part Series. Not very long.

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023 ... th-part-1/

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023 ... th-part-2/

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023 ... th-part-3/

[Newfie]

Japan and the population crash

"Japan is about 10 or 20 years ahead of other countries that are going through this as well, and they're setting the groundwork of what to do and what not to do," said Erin Murphy, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and deputy director of its Economics Program.

https://www.newsweek.com/japan-populati ... 6496?amp=1

[theluckycountry]

Japan and the population crash

https://www.newsweek.com/japan-populati ... 6496?amp=1

The worrying data—already watched for years—emerged at the tail end of the Japanese economic miracle, which abruptly ended in the early 1990s. Low birth rates and high life expectancy together pose an unprecedented demographic challenge to Tokyo's policymakers

You get rich, you stop having kids and start buying boats and having overseas holidays, and then the wheels fall off. I remember hanging out on Queensland's Gold Coast back in the 1980's, all the street signs had Japanese subscript, that's how many were arriving, how important their touro-dollars were to the city. Now they don't like foreigners in Japan so no net immigration, unlike the western nations, but this practice of importing millions of people from "shitholes" as Trump so eloquently put it, doesn't seem to be a solution. There doesn't seem to be any solutions for anything now a days. The power of depletion I suspect.

[jato0072]

There doesn't seem to be any solutions for anything now a days. The power of depletion [decline] I suspect.

Agree. The only "solution" is to change the current finance system of perpetual growth. It will eventually happen, but it will be very messy. To also think we aren't even in depletion [decline] mode yet. With the exception of perhaps we are in a net-energy decline situation. However, I am not sure of that as nobody bothers to measure any important criteria (like EROEI).

Instead it is all bull$hit narratives and propaganda. Despite it being the "information age" no high quality information is available. The increasing noise drowns out retreating signal.

[AdamB]

Despite it being the "information age" no high quality information is available. The increasing noise drowns out retreating signal.

Change the channel.