BloNoBikeGuy

https://www.popsci.com/science/articl...-collapse-2030

Yeah. Living car free might not be so much optional, as mandatory in a few years.

I don't know if I buy completely into all the doom and gloom, but no matter what your opinion is on peak oil, resource consumption, etc... it's all a finite resource, and eventually it -will- run out. Just a matter of when.

ro-monster

Wait, the economy collapsed two years ago, and I didn't even notice?

Stealthammer

Yeah, but the article actually has MIT predicting back in 1972 that the World economy will collapse by 2030. Hold on to to your chonis. The worst may be yet to come.....

MIT Predicts That World Economy Will Collapse By 2030
"Turner says real-world data from 1970 to 2000 tracks with the study’s draconian predictions: “There is a very clear warning bell being rung here. We are not on a sustainable trajectory,” he tells Smithsonian."

Tom Stormcrowe

I fixed the title.

Artkansas 

That book was hot when I was taking my high school environmental studies class. It had just been published. No doubt, my grandfather the retired oil company exec never read it.

Roody

I think the message should be that the current foundations of the economy (fossil fuel dependence, American hegemony, etc.) will collapse by 2030. With any luck, we will have replacements in effect, like better energy sources and more global planning and cooperation.

poormanbiking

Collapse I don't know but a shift in economic and social standards yes.

Stealthammer

But how many "doomsday" novels did we see 40 years ago that have turned out so accurate so far?


Yeah, I don't know how brave it will be, but it certainly looks to be a new world.....

AdamDZ

Wait, 2012 isn't over yet We may never see 2030!

gerv 

OP... thanks for posting. The article was a hoot.... and all too true!

I just loved the comments too. This one was the best

I'm guessing that half-acre I bought next to Olympus Mons isn't going to be worth much.
https://www.marsshop.com/

Roody

I think that global warming has turned out to be much worse than was originally predicted. The ZPG fearmongers got the population numbers right, but failed to predict the advances in agriculture that allowed the planet to sustain the current population at higher calorie levels.

Rachel Carson predicted that most birds would be wiped out by DDT. Her prediction scared people so much that they banned DDT, and the birds survived. I f she hadn[t written her book, there's a good chance that the birds actually would have been wiped out. So sometimes a doomsday prediction is the only thing that stops doomsday from happening.

Dahon.Steve

OH NO! I will be ready to retire by 2035 and now the economy will collapse five years before!! HOLY COW! LOL.

What really concerns me what other "OIL WARS" are in store for this country years from today.

folder fanatic

I am amazed by all this hoopla. Actually let us be more accurate here. We are in a depression (I know we have been calling it nice more moderate names like "recession," "downturn," "slowdown," "hard times," and other euphemisms to try to cover the dirty little secret and the gloss over denials from coming out into the spotlight of public acknowledgment & consciousness. We have been in a depression since about 1973 or so (hard to pinpoint the exact date but several major events converge and blended together in the early 1970s to start us down this dead end path). Some people have done well and don't understand why everyone else are having problems. Others are forgotten and pushed aside as obsolete, unwanted and in the way of "progress" (cheap docile even more hungry immigrant labor and/or import most every made product, from the third world far east and services from third world English speaking countries).

So the book is right on about the trouble in the years ahead. It just got it's dates somewhat mixed up.

SweetNightmare

As I was saying to my boyfriend, I think the perfect solution would be a mix of cycling and some form of future public transportation that would run off of something we can make, something like electricity. You don't need to burn fuel to get electricity. You can make water turbines, wind turbines, all kinds of sources. Expensive for an individual person, but cheaper than filling those gas guzzling buses for the city. Electric trains. We'd be a healthier and friendlier society if the world wasn't stuck in its car shaped bubble. People would stop and say hi once in a while. No worries about sharing the road, a crash between bikes wouldn't necessarily be deadly, you pay more attention on a bike because you're so exposed.

But people will turn to chaos before they turn to sense.

Artkansas 

Yep, we'll go to war for oil long before it occurs to us to build rails and use bicycles. The people in charge are so oldschool and wrapped in obsolete memes.

DX-MAN

If indeed this happens, it'll be for two reasons:

1. We as a civilization did not get past the self-serving notion of "I'm grown, I can do what I please, I don't have to take sh** from nobody, and I don't give a f*** about you."

2. All the alternative and sustainable energy and food sources will fall short of sufficient profitablility FOR THE 'RIGHT' PEOPLE.

Roody

I'm more concerned about an oil war that may start this summer.

Pobble.808

Actually the term "depression" was a euphemism itself, wheeled out after the 1929 crash. The nineteenth century term, which they decided to avoid, was "panic."

I have to agree with this, and I'm surprised that it isn't pointed out more often. The only things that have somewhat masked and mitigated this long trajectory are the growth and savings created by high tech, the low prices for many goods and services that we've been enjoying thanks to third world labor, including illegal immigrants/ undocumented workers (take your pick), and subsidies to producers of basic commodities (which some of us of course pay for through taxes, but people seem to have a hard time making that connection) -- plus a series of speculative bubbles (S&Ls, tech stocks, real estate come to mind) which made times look good for a while.

Having said that, a lot of people have certainly managed to do very well over these years, even as others were getting into trouble. In between there's a large group of people that are hanging on, but it might not take much to push them over the line. I daresay that some of these people -- not all of them, not even most of them, but still a good number -- might be able to keep themselves out of the financial danger zone if they could find a way to stop throwing money at their car(s). I doubt that many of them will, but I hope I'm wrong.

SweetNightmare

That's what I'm trying to do. I know a car would suck up everything I make. By avoiding those costs, I'm hoping to survive this crap.

lyeinyoureye

The World3 model has some really crazy assumptions, like being able to substitute anything w/o cost, among other weirdness. It's OK as an exercise in modeling, but no one can expect to get anything realistic or accurate out of it. GIGO. That isn't to say there aren't issues, just that they're a lot more complex than this.

chasm54

I'm not very intelligent. I know this, because despite repeated experience I continue to be surprised by how easily people are persuaded by the media - which is, of course, largely the mouthpiece of corporate interests - that the current system is not just sustainable, but the only one that will keep them prosperous and safe.

It is quite clear from the evidence that the current system drives inequality. In the States, real median incomes have largely stagnated since the 1970s while the top 1% have become fantastically rich. The UK is not far behind, while the rest of Europe is heading the same way, only slower. In large part this is the product of a race to the bottom on wage levels. Jobs are simply exported to the low cost producers. This produces some benefits in the developing world, but drives big inequality there, too. Most Chinese still live in poverty. The Indian economic miracle disguises the fact that a billion Indians still live in rural poverty - often extreme poverty.

Americans work incredibly hard. Most of them don't get much of a share in the fruits of their labours. This is usually justified because entrepreneurs have ideas and take risks that create wealth, and that benefits everyone. Fine, except that most of the very rich aren't entrepreneurs, but financiers of one sort or another, who create nothing - they just skim off the top. And meanwhile, the majority aren't getting richer.

Why do people put up with this? Because they are told it is the only system compatible with freedom. BUt in my experience, people feel less free than they were a generation ago. Their choices, especially with regard to employment, are fewer. In the economic sphere, which is what shapes most of our lives, more and more power has passed from those who produce, to those who invest - or, more often, speculate.

And all of this is predicated on the necessity of consumption. We must be encouraged to consume, because that is how profit is made. So we are told that the more we consume, the better our lives will be. This is bunk even at the individual level. At global level, it is a disaster. Car ownership is soaring in China. If the Chinese get to the point of owning as many cars per person as Americans own, just fuelling those Chinese cars would take more than the amount of oil currently produced worldwide. If we are going to think of a way to make our current system sustainable, we'd better think of it quick.

Clue: leaving it to "the market" is not going to cut it.

Mithrandir

The Green Revolution only postponed the inevitable. All the extra energy used to produce fertilizers has a huge carbon cost. But the most worrying thing is this:

https://news.sciencemag.org/scienceno.../08/10-01.html

India is running out of water, FAST. They're simply using too much farming all that food. The only way to get more is to use huge amounts of energy to desalinize ocean water.

gerv 

I don't disagree with you, but I've noticed that we tend to assume the worst. In fact, there are a number of mitigating factors that could turn this around. Changing grain farming from rice to something less water-intensive might be one.

But when you mention India, everyone thinks ... "population explosion"!

And while that is somewhat true, birth rates in India aren't much more than the US (2.58 vs 2.06) and declining.

But to qualify population and understand that birth rates are falling dramatically through most of the world, take 10 minutes and view this YouTube with Hans Rosling at a TED conference. Around minute 7, Rosling pulls out his famous birth rate animation, which really nails the problem.

bobdell

Roody

That is alarming news. Especially when you combine it with two other predictions.

First, the Himalayan glaciers are melting, and that is another major source of water for this same region. There is a real possibility that the huge rivers in this region, such as the Ganges, will virtually dry up if the Himalayan snowpack vanishes.

Second, like most of southern Asia, this region is very dependent on rainfall from the annual monsoons. Many climate models predict that the monsoons will be disrupted by climate change within the next few years.

It's hard to imagine what will happen to northern India if they run out of water. This region was a major beneficiary of the Green Revolution. It produces most of India's food supply, and is also the economic powerhouse of all southern Asia.

BTW, I didn't mean to imply that the Green Revolution is either sustainable or environmentally beneficial. I was only thinking that it did negate the horror predictions of the ZPG crowd back in the 1960s.