The Perfect Storm
July 7, 2010
Summary of Primary Energy, Environmental and Economic Threats with Selected References and Sources of Additional Information
The next 20 years will be totally different from the previous two decades. The main trends that ensure this difference are:
Population: World population has increased from one billion people in 1800 to 6.8 billion today, and continues to increase by one billion people every 14 years. Meanwhile, the majority of the current population lives in poverty, 2 billion lack access to clean water and sanitation, and 1 billion are hungry.
Population Reference Bureau, Washington, D.C. Available www.prb.org
Shah, A. 2010. Poverty around the world. Available http://www.globalissues.org/article/4/poverty-around-the-world
Ecosystem and resource decline: Every major global ecosystem is in decline along with their ability to provide resources and services essential to human well-being.
Foley, J. 2010. The other inconvenient truth. SEED Magazine, 4 May 2010. Available http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_other_inconvenient_truth/
Greer, J.M. 2009. The dawn of scarcity industrialism. Energy Bulletin, September 3. Available http://www.energybulletin.net/50020
Heinberg, R. 2007. Peak Everything: Waking up to the century of declines. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, B.C.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington, DC. Available http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.356.aspx.pdf
Peak oil: The rate of global oil production has peaked and is entering permanent decline. No combination of alternative energy sources can fill the emerging gap between global demand and supply of oil.
Heinberg, R. 2009. Temporary recession or the end of growth? MuseLetter 208 (August), 13 pp. Available http://heinberg.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/museletter-208-_-august-20091.pdf
Savinar, M. 2008. Life After the Oil Crash. Available http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
Climate change: The nearly 1ºC increase in average global temperature during the last century is largely caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases and has resulted in major biological and physical changes. Further increases of 2ºC to 7ºC are projected for this century along with impacts ranging from severe to disastrous.
Hansen, J.E. 2010. 2009: Second warmest year on record; end of warmest decade. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York. Available http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/
Lynas, M. 2008. Six Degrees: Our future on a hotter planet. National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.
An unstable global financial system: Fiat currencies and a debt-based monetary system require infinite economic growth, while a finite planet ensures that infinite growth is impossible. Exponential increases in money supply, private and public debt, and financial derivatives make major disruptions of the global financial system likely in the near future.
Ruppert, M. 2009. Money. Ch. 12 in Confronting Collapse. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT.
Social anarchy: Worldwide, central control by national governments is declining as power shifts to private enterprises, criminal groups, militias, tribes, or general lawlessness.
Failed States Index 2010. The Fund for Peace, Washington, D.C. Available http://www.fundforpeace.org
Glenny, M., R. Suskind, and M. Medish. 2008. McMafia: A journey through the global criminal underworld. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C. Available http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/?fa=eventDetail&id=1119
Kaplan, R. 1994. The coming anarchy. Atlantic Magazine, February. Available http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/4670/
Collapse: Taken together, these trends are symptoms and causes of an irreversible collapse of the global economic system. In response, communities worldwide are relocalizing their economies and increasing their resilience in order to survive and even prosper.
Energy Bulletin http://energybulletin.net/
Heinberg, R. 2010. China or the U.S.: Which will be the last nation standing? MuseLetter #213, February 2010. Available http://richardheinberg.com/213-china-or-the-u-s-which-will-be-the-last-nation-standing
Ruppert, M. 2009. Confronting Collapse: The crisis of energy and money in a post peak oil world. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT.
(Image from NOAA)
