Kunstler: Belief System

Image courtesy Jorn Olsen, available for purchase here.
A friend asked me how come the public apparently grasps the reality of climate change but can’t seem to wrap its collective brain around the unfolding oil crisis.

I'm not convinced that the public does grasp climate change. It's perceived, perhaps, as a background story to daily life, which goes on regardless. Are you even sure Hollywood didn't invent it -- and maybe some boob at Time Magazine is selling it as though it were really happening?

Few have anything to gain by espousing denial of climate change. It's hard for most people to tell if they have been affected by it. It doesn't quite seem real. Those who actually make gestures in the face of it –- screwing in compact fluorescent lightbulbs, buying Prius cars -- end up appearing ridiculous, like an old granny telling you to fetch your raincoat and rubbers because a force five hurricane is organizing iself offshore, beyond the horizon.

The public appears aggressively clueless about the peak oil story. They do not accept any threats to the motoring regime. The news media is surely not helping sort things out. I saw a remarkable display of ignorance on CNN last week when the new resident idiot-maniac Glenn Beck hosted Teamster Union boss James Hoffa and they agreed that the oil companies were to blame for high fuel prices. To put it as plainly as possible, Beck doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, and it's disgraceful that CNN gives free reign to this moron to misinform the public. It's perhaps equally amazing that Hoffa doesn't know we have entered a permanent global oil crisis based on demand having outrun supply. These two idiots think that if Exxon-Mobil built a new refinery down in Louisiana, everything would be fine, diesel fuel would go back down to 99 cents a gallon, and it would be Christmas every morning.

This has been a pretty remarkable month, actually, with all the problems of "The Long Emergency" accelerating impressively. Oil is now testing the $120 mark, the airline industry is imploding (largely over fuel costs), the housing scene has reached a degree of collapse unseen since the 1930s, food shortages have strayed out of the Third World and begun to affect Japan and the USA, bats are dying of a mysterious disease in the Northeast, and the Arctic sea ice is shrinking away to nothing.

We're in a strange collective psychic bubble. We'd like to forget about all these troubling rumors of hardship and bad weather and just get on with the daily task of making a living and paying for stuff and enjoying our customary entertainments. The comforting ceremonies of everyday life seem to continue. The freeways are still full of cars. Nancy Grace comes on TV dependably at 8 p.m. and is there deploring the latest pervert arrest. The baseball season has ramped up and the teams are criss-crossing the nation in their chartered airplanes. The stock market is actually going up -- what's wrong with that?

But there's an equally eerie vibe out there that things are seriously out-of-whack. We're on the edge of something. We're at the entrance of a dark passage where some of the ceremonies of daily life meet resistance. You go to the WalMart and five of your six credit cards are refused. Uh oh. It begins to dawn on you that you're spending a quarter of your take-home pay filling up the gas-tank every week. There's no dial tone when you pick up the telephone. How could all the supermarkets in town be out of rice? The local hospital just declared bankruptcy. The neighbors down the street auctioned off all their furniture in the driveway last week. Why does the cat pick up so many ticks these days?

Events are not through with us this year. They'll keep moving where they will whether we believe in them or not. I'm hardly even convinced that it matters who wins the presidential race this year. It could end up being the world's biggest booby prize.

NVDL: The public definitely doesn't grasp climate change. I was having dinner in Seoul last week and for me, personally, I wanted to assess what the climate was doing around the world, and at our table were folks from Hawaii, New Zealand, China, Canada and me, from South Africa. I wanted to hear the firsthand account of what the climate was doing. I didn't want to tell anyone anything, I wanted to hear about the weather in variopus parts of the world. The fella from Hawaii first said the weather was "perfect", but after pressing him a little, admitted to 2 months of solid rainfall, which he said was unusual.

The lady from Canada said a freakish snow storm (very late in Canada's spring) had been her goodbye present on the way to the airport. In Seoul itself the mercury dived to 2 C one morning, and I have lived in Korea long enough to know how unseasonally cold that was. In South Africa Johannesburg had about 5 days of summer, and bizarre amounts of rain, while down the road in Bloemfontein, my girlfriend complained of it being often unbearably hot. This means, hotter than usual even for Bloemfontein. In the Kalahari this year, I experienced a few days of soaking rain and violent thunderstorms. This is in a Thirstland area, which is a notch above desert-dry conditions.

New Zealand? I'm not sure how the climate is changing there. I'd assume it might be getting a little warmer. I'd be concerned about the weather in the United Kingdom though. But this was all I was looking for. Some firsthand rough data on how people on the ground are experiencing weather in their area around the world. It's a foregone conclusion that certain areas are suffering - Australia for one. My audience then wanted to know why I was aking these questions, and within about a minute, dismissed me as a 'Doomsdayer'.
It isn't safe or even easy to bring up subjects like climate change in polite dinner conversation with strangers. We will probably see climate change overtake everything else as the central issue of our time; the issue that will impact even further on fuel and food prices. I have said this many times before: when the weather in Mexico starts to have an impact on oil prices, you're in trouble. Because if there's one thing we can't count on doing what we want it to do, it's the weather. And now we really do depend on the 'luck' of the weather for things to remain affordable, and people and pestilence to stay where it is. But in 2006 when I spoke about $100 oil I was also called a Doomsdayer. It's a great word to dismiss a line of logic and reasoning. We have Christians to thank for that, who earned the term after all their Doomsday beliefs (the second coming, Y2K, Nostradamus et al) proved something of a hoax. Unfortunately the 'Doomsday' term has now been hijacked and applied to 'anything and everything of importance that we'd rather not deal with.' It's fine though. We don't have to deal with it, but it will eventually deal with us, and our intransigence. Well, it is.

Greens say dairy industry faces problems

10 businesses facing extinction in 10 years

Determining which industries aren't long for this world may seem easy enough. But some types of businesses, such as telemarketing, are surprisingly hard to kill.
And then again, other industries, probably the ones you're sad to see go, can't find a way to survive.
So start setting up your office pool, because here are our picks for 10 businesses facing extinction in 10 years.

From Entrepreneur.com
By Geoff Williams

Record stores

Record stores are closing in, well, record numbers. One of the most prominent music retailers, Tower Records, shut down all 89 stores last year after concluding it couldn't withstand the onslaught of online music stores and chains like Wal-Mart, which can offer lower prices and sell other items to offset the smaller number of CDs being sold.

Odds of survival in 10 years: Great, if you consider Wal-Mart a record store.

Camera film manufacturing

This probably isn't the best business to get into right now. According to The Chicago Tribune, from May 2006 to May 2007, the volume of prints made from digital cameras grew by 34 percent. Film camera sales, meanwhile, fell by 49 percent, while digital cameras sales continued to grow — by 5 percent. Of American internet users, 70 percent own a digital camera; another survey shows that 70 percent of Canadians now use a digital camera. Odds of survival in 10 years: Some entrepreneurs who specialize in making camera film for amateur photographers could possibly make a living.

Crop dusters

They'll be around in 10 years, but likely not in their present form. The average age of the typical crop duster is 60, the number of crop dusters is dwindling, and the profession can be dangerous. Just several weeks ago, an Arkansas crop dusting company was ordered to stop flying in Iowa after spraying farm workers with a fungicide; 36 farm hands in a cornfield had to be decontaminated by a hazardous materials crew.

Odds of survival in 10 years: The type of crop dusting plane that chased after Cary Grant in "North by Northwest" will have almost certainly gone south. Farmers say that they'll always need crop dusters, even though new technologies have made them less important than in the past. But commercial airlines are increasingly taking business away from the small, independent crop dusters.

Gay bars

As The Orlando Sentinel noted in a recent article, around the country gay bars have been going out of business as gay men and women have been gaining greater acceptance in society. What used to be a hangout for people who felt unwelcome elsewhere is becoming less necessary.

Odds of survival in 10 years: As with many industries, the very best of them will endure; the rest won't.

Newspapers

Some people thought they were through when radio and TV news came about. Even after the fax machine revolutionized offices, some people predicted that everyone would have their news faxed in, since that would be quicker than relying on a newspaper. But the numbers have been falling precipitously since the 1990s when the internet came on the scene. In the past year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations twice has posted drops averaging 2.1 and 2.8 percent over six-month periods. Newsrooms across the country have been hemorrhaging staff.

Odds of survival in 10 years: They won't disappear; they'll be on the internet. We don't recommend startups investing a lot of money into a printing press plant.

Pay phones

In 1997, there were more than 2 million pay phones in the U.S.; now there are approximately half as many. There are probably always going to be certain places like airports and hotels that offer pay phones, as long as there are people who don't own or can't afford cell phones. Because phone kiosks on the streets are a favorite for drug dealers, who don't want to have their own numbers tapped and tracked, cities are shedding them.

Odds of survival in 10 years: They'll be around, but won't be anything to call home about.

Used bookstores

They've been closing fast, and those that are still open are relying on what's making them obsolete: the internet. A used bookstore used to be the place to find that beloved, out-of-print children's book you used to read 17 times a day until your little sister flushed it down the toilet. Now you just type that title in a search engine and order it within minutes. Odds of survival in 10 years: Some of them will still be eking out an existence, but the handwriting is on the wall.
Piggy banksYou may chuckle, but as we continue gravitating toward a paperless society, it's not difficult to imagine a day when piggy banks no longer exist.

Odds of survival in 10 years: Sure, they'll probably still be a few around — in antique shops.

Telemarketing

The good news for people who hate telemarketing calls is that the industry may finally be dying; the bad news is that it may take a while. Telemarketing has been hit hard by the national Do-Not Call list that was established five years ago, and sales have been stagnant, but the industry still managed to bring in $393 billion in revenue last year. Some of this is due to clever marketing. This includes holding raffles at shopping malls; when you sign your information, you agree to accept calls from the company running the contest and its partners. Cell phones are exempt from automated telemarketing calls, but not from individuals calling. Then there are occasional windows of opportunity: The national Do-Not Call list is set to expire in 2008, unless you remember to register again.

Odds of survival in 10 years: They'll be here. Humbled, more impotent, but probably still here.

Coin-operated arcades

With Nintendo Wii, casual gaming online and the Xbox 360, the video game arcade industry is thriving, but not the standalone brick-and-mortar arcades. For those of you who thought arcades were already dead, they still exist — at movie theaters, miniature golf courses and other touristy spots — but it seems only a matter of time before they vanish from the landscape. Ten years ago, there were 10,000 arcades in the nation, and now the number is close to 3,000, according to the American Amusement Machine Association. Revenue from arcade game units brought in $866 million last year, which sounds good until you consider that in 1994, the industry was pocketing $2.3 billion and that the profits are only still high because it costs so much to play a game.

Odds of survival in 10 years: Game over.

NVDL: The grass can't stay green forever. Interesting on this list are newspapers, record stores and gay bars. Not sure if I agree with the crop duster idea. If you buy into the philosophy that the world is about to unflatten, unshrink, become far larger, we'll see the end of a lot of industries: the hypermarket, parking lots, malls, drive thru, fast food, airline alliances like Star, the convenience store at a gas station etc.

We'll see a return of cottage industries like the butcher, the baker and the candlestickmaker. We'll also see the demassification of schools, from the current prison lookalikes, to private and home tutoring and also smaller, friendlier, more community integrated buildings.

Climate Change: Why We Must Worry (N)

Life, if it ever becomes blase about itself, ought not to exist at all - NVDL

Very simply put, there are two reasons to be very, very concerned about what is happening right now on our planet. The first is a question of energy, the second, stability. Both of these are in a state of flux far beyond the range of flux that is considered a normal pattern. Let's look at each in turn.

Energy

There are plenty of systems at work. Our own bodies have a number of systems running, from the circulatory system, the respiratory, the excretory, nervous, lymphatic, digestive and others. If any one system breaks down - say, the immune system - it can lead to a systemic collapse.

Yes, it's true, our bodies can function fine - apparently - even though we may strain these systems, say through smoking, whilst old or sick.

Overall though, the system amounts to energy flows, chemical reactions. We can call that life, homeostasis, system - but that's what we're talking about.

This planet is very very rare in the cosmos. Any human being could spend his or her entire life searching for another planet like it. You might spend your lifetime searching through the most powerful telescopes, going through light years of distance and time, and you will find planet after planet that does not have that near magical ability: a life support system. Just the right distance from the sun, the right gravitational field, enough atmosphere to allow some sunlight through, but also a filter to protect the creatures underneath.

The point of that analogy is that life - the way it is on Earth - is not easily found in such abundance. Thus it is incredibly precious, and at the same time, fragile.

It may not seem so if you actually belong to the one planet where there is so much life; and it seemingly continues to exist over an infinite period. And those on that planet believe even if life ends, there's an 'afterlife'.

But never mind that, in terms of energy, the Earth is a system. It receive a constant stream of nourishing energy from the sun. This energy would be deadly were it not for an ancient process of converting solar energy into chemical/potential energy. And so our plants and forests, our alga's have paved the way for all other creatures. We started off with a mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere; now we have a proportion of oxygen in it.

Whatever the balancing mechanism, our millions of years, solar energy was converted into forests. Over millions of years these energies turned into rocks or were crushed into the few subterranean vaults we know today. In 100 years, mankind has successfully converted half of this planet's stored energy. In perhaps half that time we may be able to convert the rest of this stored solar energy into heat and smoke.

So essentially, looking at the entire system, we're seeing an awfully large injection of heat and smoke in an incredibly short period of time. Billions of machines are at work around the clock, 24 hours a day, converting coal, oil and gas into some form of energy, releasing heat and 'excrement' - CO2 gas, methane and the rest.

Stability

Naturally this has a significant impact on the stability of this system. For the human body it might be light eating 20 000 bars of chocolate in a week. You're basically exhausting a lifetime's supply of a resource into a very short period; choking the other systems with sugars and causing a massive injection of chemicals.

Can the Earth's body withstand such an attack? Possibly, but with the likelihood of it getting seriously sick. It may never fully recover; it may become terminally ill and go on to live a fairly long life in geological terms, but it may never be the same again.

On this planet, human beings are a small subsystem - like the lymphatic system. We're important only in the sense that we act like antibiotics - killing species in one of the world's largest species holocausts in its history. We are weapons of mass destruction from the point of view of Polar Bears, Elephants, virtually every other creature.

In terms of our atmosphere, the massive conversion of fossil fuels to heat, motion and energy creatures an atmosphere that has more heat and more evaporated moisture. Yes, the ice caps are melting, but all that melted, evaporated moisture gets loaded into the atmosphere. The warming adds up to a far more unstable atmospheric system. This system becomes far more conducive to erratic and super powerful storm systems as it attempts to shed its energy load.

Load Shedding

And so we're left with a body that is strained by too much energy, too soon, as so it attempts to dump this energy. A human body would vomit, or develop a fever, or diarrhea, or a combination. The Earth will do the same. It has started sweating. It has started to notice an infection spreading over it. That infection started off benign and helpful, like freckles on skin. We now number 6.7 billion, and we are threatening to collapse the entire system. As a result, we need to be part of that load shedding, and we will. We have breached the capacity of the system. Soon, there will not be enough energy to go around, and then we will see a crash.

Any system that exceeds capacity does not gradually fade and settle back to its equilibrium level. Like a storm, it builds, and with lightning and thunder, the storm finally breaks. We would do well to realise this, because the storm is already generating. But balance will come about whether we consent, co-operate or not.

NVDL: Barry Ronge's comments in the Sunday Time's magazine for me were disappointing. We are still arguing about the fineprint, about who is patronising who, instead of agreeing to get serious about the broad issue. More and more we hear that our survival may be at stake. This ought to be the biggest issue there is. Some idiots take the high ground and say: it's very complex, I'm not intelligent enough to figure it out - no one is.

Are you intelligent enough to magnify everything you do, multiplied by 6.7 billion? Because you ought to know it's going to strain the system.
Life was not designed for each individual to have their own house, own car, own TV, phone computer. We were supposed to share, but in time, perhaps we'll relearn that lesson.

Weather Warnings a Hoax?

Were the weather warnings a hoax? Actually, they weren't. To start off they were based on cogent but amorphous information. I received emails from staff at Net Care 911 (I can name names), but these were not official warnings. The weather bureau were also concerned, because some of the atmospheric conditions were, they thought, conducive to extreme weather.

And in fact we've had some incredible storms over the last few days in Lenasia (where someone died), and at a large school - I forget where - which had its roof torn off. The latter story made SABC news, since the school was concerned they might not have a place to right exams. This same school made the news when children were caught in rising flood waters, clutching school furniture.

So I think the internal staff at NetCare for example contacted their pals and issued an 'under-the-radar' warning, and from there, it got exaggerated into tornadoes and what not.

Two things emerged out of this though: on the positive side, there was an extraordinary awareness of WHAT IS GOING ON OUTSIDE THE OFFICE. On the other hand, the people who panicked and went home only to be caught in traffic snarls are going to laugh it off next time, and call it Crying Wolf. This blase attitude is opar for the course in places like the Florida panhandle, where oldies claim to have survived countless storms and false alarms and they aren't about to 'run' now. In reality, we're going to see this sort of thing - potent and destructive forces of nature - happening more and more in our lifetimes.

My own feeling was how the climate change-global warming zeitgeist actually came to the surface. It semed to me a lot of people were repressing the veracity of this, and then to receive emails about having your belongings confiscated by the weather, that just struck very close to home, and brought it to the surface. People verbalised their concerns, and then acted on them. At last.