Comments on: Climate competitiveness 2: When the global Ponzi scheme collapses (circa 2030), the only jobs left will be green

By: william martin

william martin — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:53:40 +0000

Check out this great video from Dr.Vandana Shiva

http://www.tinyurl.com/climatecrisis

This will show you what everyone can do, easily, and in your own backyard…

By: Sasparilla

Sasparilla — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 03:57:18 +0000

These conditions that Prof Beddington has started to detail here, briefly, are rarely detailed out so the public can get its arms around what a fix we’re making for ourselves.

There is a fantastic audio production (3 parts) by the CBC (canadian) where the an author details what he has found over the last year and a half interviewing climate scientists and military planners, regarding global climate change, from all over the world – i.e. it takes these kinds of details from Prof Beddington and then says, what would be the kinds of expected geopolitical effects we might see? Its an extremely good listen:

http://www.cbc.ca/ ideas/ features/ climate-wars/ index.html

The author’s (Gwynne Dyer) book (Climate Wars), whose title refers to expected fallout of the effects of global warming, is an even better read – the author gets 2008 year level interviews with the climate scientists and looks at their latest thoughts and then uses the talks with military analysts (US and Europe) to give possible realistic scenarios at different points in time (short, medium and long term based on expected climate change effects) – best climate book I’ve read in more than a year as the information is so relevant to things we could expect to see relatively soon (and not covered in most other books).

By: paulm

paulm — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:13:01 +0000

You can see the pressure on states like Mexico. Lawlessness will rise and gangs will start to run large regions. For large cities this will become an acute problem with the breakdown of food and water supplies.

If North America thought that it was going to get out of this relatively intact then that is delusional.

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:41:04 +0000

Better start learning how to farm.

By: Agaguk

Agaguk — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:17:32 +0000

I agree with you Harrier that collapse will not be uniform, some region will be hit harder than other and more quickly than other. California is already experiencing drought for few years now and probably for years to come like somme part of australia. So region like California will collapse by water scarcity before other region like Maine or like Ontario in Canada. I agree also about density of population this will be an important factor. But when we will reach some 4 or 5 °C of shift in the temperature curve every body will be ‘doomed’ at some point. I fear…

One big problem remain agriculture with the climatic disaster she can’t survive as she need relatively stables and predictables conditions to work. I think all country will collapse quickly when things will start to disrupt badly. Even without climate agriculture is in big troubles with the decline of oil and natural gaz. We are in deep sh*t!

By: Harrier

Harrier — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:29:46 +0000

It occurs to me that the collapse wouldn’t necessarily be uniform, which seems to be an underlying point in Joe’s post. Any country that has diversified its energy sources, or begins to diversify them now, might have a chance at staying coherent. It might also help if the country has a smaller population, or at least a small amount of people per square mile/kilometer of land.

The states that meet both of these criteria could wind up in positions of strength when the global Ponzi scheme tumbles down. They could rule as technocratic superpowers over a suddenly-medieval world.

It’s almost like the plot of a science fiction novel. If only we didn’t face the prospect of living through it.

By: dougo

dougo — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:02:59 +0000

The success of “green jobs” depends on an effective regulatory environment that can internalize externalities. If the economic system collapses beyond some critical point, the regulatory environmental will collapse along with it, and unsustainable resource use will proceed without regard to consequences because no ‘authorities’ will exist to enforce the law. In summary, don’t hope for collapse because it cold return us to a world that is “nasty, brutish, and short.’

By: paulm

paulm — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:25:26 +0000

A significant component of the ‘perfect storm’ is of course technology itself.

As advance tech makes it easier for individuals and small groups to apply components which can cause mass destruction, such as viral, germ, nano, nuclear etc, we will find that if ignorance and nature don’t get us we will.

By: Agaguk

Agaguk — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:51:55 +0000

About CH4 we are runing out of it in north-america and soon we will also pass is worldwide peak (more quickly if we rush on it). There is no escape way for this civilisation no strageme can save her now it’s to late of some 30 years. She is GAME OVER all hands, brace for impact! By the way as she trashed all the resources aviable for peoples without an huge thermo-industrial toolkit she will be the last one. We will have to face the climatic apocalyps with a stone age toolkit. Thank you Mr Progress!

By: Pangolin

Pangolin — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:15:48 +0000

Did I just read something different than everybody else? The gist of what I read was that food, water, and energy resources are going to be negatively impacted by resource destruction trends while the world population climbs.

Since even in California getting food, water and energy to the same spot for end users isn’t a 100% occurance I suspect the situation in other bits of the world is going to get extremely bad in rapid jolts. Large numbers of people are going to find themselves short of critical resources due to seemingly minor changes in global temperature or resource availability.

Population growth is not written into the laws of physics any more than real estate prices are guaranteed to go up. A week without clean water and people can find themselves very dead. A few months on low rations and a minor scrape can turn into a raging infection. People are going to die in the next twenty years in job lots. The resource flows that provide food now are threatened. I don’t see any solid efforts to prop up fundamental flaws in energy dynamics.