Lost

In my mind, I look outward, see a world that "can't last", and in response, try to imagine how "virtue" and "good management" might make a difference.

Then I go on a bike ride today, sunshine, people out and about, doing their things, and I must step back and wonder what I know. NOT that I think projections are wrong, in the long run, but that worry is sufficient to motivate action.

WELL, fear MAY be enough, like living through the great depression helped define a generation, but memory loses its power for individuals and generations. I just can't seriously imagine standing up in front of a crowd and yelling FIRE! I can't deal with problems that are based on probability, even if a long term guarantee.

Maybe we're just a lost civilization, incapable of evaluating our own weakness, due to the rate of change in our lifetime. It is inconceivable that all that we know might be gone, that a day might come in our lifetime where we won't have gasoline to power our cars, natural gas to heat our homes, coal to power our electictrical grid, and specialized jobs to pay for the lifestyles we expect.

The arctic ocean is melting, glaciers in Greenland, and climate change is real, even if unclear what is "natural cycle" vs "human driving." I'm glad the issue is known, but I really can't believe ANY anti-CO2 agreements can be met, UNLESS we change everything we know.

The ending of the age of oil MIGHT change everything by necessity, but I'm sure we'll keep fighting with our pass success leading us far into an era of diminishing returns.

Meanwhile we all sleep, contented in our exciting times, the sky is the limit, and dreams are here to be sold. I just don't get how humanity can get "unlost", or found, BESIDES the rude awakening of crisis.

The sun is warm, and lakes are cool, and there's so many interesting things to do, how can we ever worry about things too dark to see.

I'm sure I'm right, and sure I'm wrong because I'm lost too.

The power of compounding interest

As a child of the 1970's, my dad loved to tell me about the power of compounding interest, how just a small amount of money, in an interest bearing account could grow into a million dollars in a lifetime.

I never quite bought his story of easy wealth. It is easier for me now, knowing about inflation, to see compounding works BOTH ways, up and down, and if your interest bearing account fails to match inflation, then you're compounding down, not up.

The mythic power of compounding is still alive and well, and the existence of pretax 401(k) plans for retirement depend on it, as well as the older fashioned pension plans. We all have to save for the future, for a time when we want to retire, or can't work, or just need a break from the rat race, right?

Well, I bought it, at least contribute to a 401(k) at the minimum level for maximum matching contributions, and I have a Roth IRA as well, at my credit union, and feel better about its 5.x% returns than the wild and woolly world of stocks and bonds, or anything that can LOSE not only against inflation, but against principle contributions as well. I'm NOT a gambler.

For the moment my "safe bet" is to put a maximum of extra contribution toward my home mortgage. The interest rate is nearly the same as my Roth, AND I can deduct the interest from my net income in computing my income taxes, so probably in a purely rational way, I'm doing the wrong thing. BUT I feel justified I'll be better off in the future when I don't have to pay a mortgage, and I can reduce the amount of money I am adding to an economy I don't believe in.

If its true that debt CREATES MONEY, then paying down my mortgage debt apparently is reducing the amount of money available in the world. I do wonder what a world would be like if everyone could avoid debt, work from previously earned assets.

I should mention that my mortgage is only for half a home, since I inherited a home when my mom died and I merely bought out her share, so she and her husband could buy a mobile home free of debt as well. Not a bad ending, especially if I can keep a room mate or two to help pay the bills.

I'm re-reading Daniel Quinn's book, "Beyond Civilization", talking about the idea that a "new tribalism" can replace civilization for those who don't fairly benefit from our hierarchical system of power and wealth, especially calling on young people to make their own way, maybe like they tried in the 1960's.

A part of me wishes EVERYONE could know the success and security I know, to consider having a paid-for home before the age of 40. Other times I get angry to see how easily others seem corrupted by false visions of easy wealth and affluence, neglecting the years of debt they must endure to escape their appetite. I'm old enough to know that in good times, work and rewards seem easy, and yet somehow burdens accumulate and rest fails to provide enough to make the next days burden's seem acceptable.

Okay, back to compounding, I'm SURE of the power of compounding. I just think there's MANY sorts of changes that compound, changes that done SOONER, become MORE than had we waited to do them later. AND other changes may be more powerful if done later rather than sooner. We can't know which, in a changing world. Perhaps we play with money and wealth as a guaranteed return for the future, but I totally don't trust this, at least outside of a few years of hoarding. Money is illusion, and it can be invested well, but whether it comes back isn't in our control. A nicer world is one where we invest in things that benefit more than ourselves and let the multiplers of helping others help them compound the gift to new highs. I mean we all already do this, but must remember this value, hidden behind desires for guarantees.

What will I do when my mortgage is paid? Could I find meaning in life outside of a high-income job, find a vocation that calls by something more than money? A good and scary dream. Meanwhile it is nice to have more money than I need.

Limits to growth

Thinking more about the problems of world population overshoot allowed by the burning of fossil fuels and the short term (century) excess food and abundance created.

I have no ability to NOT be a Malthusian, to NOT worry about future projections going further and further away from hope.

I agree that humans are ingenious to learn how to live, and our descendants (or future selves) will surely do whatever we can to avoid our own destruction, and perhaps succeed in re-finding by necessesity lifestyles that can sustain us. Maybe we'll "powerdown" rather than "crash" our civilization?

However I can't be hopeful by this predictable success (by some subset of our existing population). I mean even if a minority is wise and forward thinking and can design better lifestyles, how does a minority support a majority who DON'T have the basic resources for survival and WILL try away, by organizing common interest to destroy the remaining natural resources available for short term "good intentions".

Imagine living a lifestyle on a high wage job, and putting your pocket change each night into a jar. As your access to the high wages dry up, you can lean on your little savings, and that can handle little short falls, but what next? THEN you sell your possessions to make ends meet, assuming you've not already homeless against a foreclosed home. THEN you lean on government support, until there's too many in need. Then you lean on family, and neighbors to help. But where does this fall end? Every step is just delaying the reality that the old lifestyle is unsustainable. That's looking at the fall perhaps at an individual level.

I think the U.S. is prosperous enough, full of natural resources that can be drained a number of more decades, while poorer places of the world will suffer first. We can use physical distance to protect us from their suffering, and our danger against our wealth.

Optimists can deny my gloom by hoping that change is slow enough that we can adjust. But for me I still must fear that whatever solutions we find to adjust will not change our direction of failure, only slow the fall, only allow us more time to consume and destroy what's left.

What's the solution to this dark future I fear?

Probably there's no solution without our systems and institutions, since they are built on assumptions of endless growth. SO new systems and institutions must be discovered that can deal with decline.

Overall I have to imagine growth will be reversed when globalization reverses, when local needs can't be made by distant charity or profit motives, when people must face their local resources whatever they are. AND probably some locales will be destroyed, made barren, like fragile environments like the rainforests. Very sad.

I like groups like Nature Conservancy, which buys land to protect from development, or help to restore to a more sustainable mix of plants and animals. But how can "land ownership" be protected when others are in need?

I like to say I'm a pacifist, unwilling to use threats of violence to protect, but that must be a vanity of urban dwellers surrounded by common interest for law and justice. But how do you protect unlived wilderness? Policing is a delicate occupation - balancing needs for law and order and dealing with human suffering and bad decisions encouraged by poverty.

I'm sure if our future is at all bright, it will be because of good people who devote their lives to facing local poverty and need directly rather than waiting for poverty to lead to violence. I don't know if government can do this, or if much will just be small groups of people seeing a need and having enough themselves to give something back to the less fortunate.

Anyway, that's my only hope. We're all in this together, even if we don't all suffer equally. We must stay aware if we can, of the suffering of others, near and far.

Global peak energy: Implications for future human populations

A thought provoking article at:
http://www.energybulletin.net/34120.html

I basically believe the correlation of population and energy availability is a sound one, at least when dealing with fossil fuels. Even if a "minority" (on top) are having too much fun to have children, "successful" capitalism always leads to a wide underclass who will benefit from the system just enough (reasonably fed), that they'll make having babies their primary satisfaction of life.

So this article above suggests optimistic and conservative energy estimates for the next 100 years and projects optimistic to conservative population levels of the world to fall between 1-3 billion people in the next century. (While world population levels are expected to peak (god willing) around 9 billion in the next some 40 years.)

How will this transition happen? How does a world of 6.5 billion going on 9 billion fall to 3 billion? War, disease, starvation? How does life look "from the top" to see the creation of humanity crumble on the the weight of our success? How will we ride this collapse?

Some will say the U.S. only has 5% of the world's population, and certainly Europe looks in more danger of "immigrant overrun" without water barriers, but at least in the U.S. the Mexican border seems a prime place with such a large gradient of poverty and prosperity.

My more northern, contiental climate of Minnesota, still lots of open land for farming, seems a safer one, if I can figure out how to heat my home in the winter, AND perhaps we'll keep our 10,000 lakes and avoid the worst droughts, perhaps we'll do ok. Seriously, I can imagine complacency, not because things are not going to get worse, but just because there's less immediat threats to us, again however we can deal with less easy cheap energy. But the world is an island, and we'll all go down, unless we can help each other, help those in other places who need more than we do.

Happy thoughts, always good to believe we not only will do okay ourselves, but have something extra to give, but I don't really know. There's no evidence to me that civilization can run without cheap coal, natural gas, and oil, or that our recovered forest lands will stay that way if "renewable energy" is needed to run our economy and heat our homes.

Basically I think we're in a special transition time, where if we prepare, conserving what we have, and building infrastructure that will transition us towards a local economy, we can have something to build from in the future when things turn darker. But prosperity is an easy vice to live with, and the slower the decline, the easier we can fall without ever seeing the need to prepare soon enough.

It is fun to read quotes, like some Chinese plans to take over the world empire role as the soft U.S. falls into decline. Perhaps they have the resolve and resources to act? It would seem more bleak to me over all - all the environmental harm being inflicted there. I believe just like the U.S.S.R. fell, the U.S. can fall, and so can Communistic China as well, if capitalism fails the people. The mobs can get mean, and irrationally finish destroying what sustains them.