Guest Blog: Jim Lydecker's "Perfect Storm"

As some of you will recall, last May I presented the only two guest blogs ever to appear on the Ratzaz Diaries, by my old friend Jim Lydecker, who makes his home in Napa, CA. Lately, I've been advocating the necessity of facing reality -- and I mean total reality, which for means my practice of zazen. It is my strong belief, based on all the observations I can make in this present existence, that we are coming into the end times for human civilization as we know it. I have only come to this point of view after letting go of all the stories we tell ourselves about history and looking this moment in the face.

Jim has been doing a good job for several years now of screaming in the wilderness about his similar conclusions based on plainly observable facts. I think this year people are finally starting to admit the obviousness of global warming; most of use are still in denial about Peak Oil. The worst of all these, and the granddaddy of them all and the utmost culprit, is the overpopulation crisis, which most of you are blatantly ignoring. You are, as Jim says, breeding yourselves into extinction.

Don't worry, nature takes care of herself, as they say, and hopefully a good plague or war will take out most of earth's population early so that a few may be saved in time to still the resources to rebuild. More on this later. In the meantime, here's Jim's concise summary, published in the Napa Valley register since he sent me the draft. Click here to read the story on the Register page; you can still add a comment, there, which will go to the author, or of course you can leave it here. More from me later. Now, Jim....

Overpopulation and peak oil: The perfect storm

By Jim Lydecker

Friday, January 18, 2008

Americans have recently become aware of converging crises that can end life as we know it, though experts have been warning us for many years.

For example, many economists have been warning for decades of the severe consequences resulting from runaway national debt and an imbalance of trade. And the current mortgage/liquidity crisis was first discussed in the early ‘90s by a number of financial experts.

Global warming, a phenomenon universally accepted as fact within the past five years, was first discussed by the Swedes in the 19th century. Several papers published at Stockholm University warned of global warning with the advent of the industrial age.

For a variety of reasons, humans usually don’t react to problems until they become crises. All these crises are semi-connected, where one will trigger one or more of the others. However, there are two crises marching toward us now, shoulder-to-shoulder, that will trigger every other, both large and small. At best, they will end our industrial civilization. At worst, they may depopulate most of our species. These two comrades-in-arms, overpopulation and peak oil, are of such complex magnitude, no amount of financial or scientific commitment may stop them. They are creating the perfect storm of which there may be no survival.

The ever-quickening rise in oil prices partly attributed to the ever-weakening dollar. However, oil prices would still be increasing as demand outstrips supply. The slide down peak oil is unstoppable.

Most want to believe oil is limitless. The fact of the matter is it’s a finite resource, a geological gift of nature, half of which we’ve run through in less than 150 years. You only have to look as far as the mature, collapsing fields as the North Sea, Mexico’s Cantarell, Alaska’s North Slope, Russia’s Caspian and various Middle Eastern countries to know we are in deep trouble. In December’s OPEC meetings, it was made public that they were supplying 15 percent less than two years ago despite pumping as fast as they can. The massive Saudi field, Ghawar — by far the world’s largest — has only been able to maintain its five-million-barrel-a-day output by injecting nine million barrels of sea water daily. It’s said as goes Ghawar, so goes Saudi Arabia.

No substance is more interwoven into life as oil. Most of us see it as gasoline and believe more fuel-efficient autos will save the day. This is a fallacy as cars take much oil to manufacture, so if we replace all gas guzzlers with fuel-efficient vehicles, it will make matters worse. And using grain-produced ethanol is proving to be a mistake. Agriculture is one of the most oil-intensive industries and the more we grow, the quicker we use oil up.

Oil is necessary for drugs and pharmaceuticals, energy, fertilizers and pesticides, chemical production and everything plastic. With the advent of oil came a revolution in medicine, agriculture (where 2 percent of the population now feeds the rest of us, while it was the opposite in 1850), transportation, information, machinery and industrial production. Never before has life changed so much and oil was directly responsible for this modernization.

If peak oil is the sharpshooter with modern industrial civilization in its crosshairs, overpopulation is the hangman with the noose around our necks.

In 1850, the world population lingered at 1 billion; in America it was 23 million. The world population is now closing in on 7 billion while here it nears 310 million. It was oil, and its cousin natural gas, that allowed the population to grow to unprecedented proportions as quickly as it did. As oil is depleted, it’s correct to assume the population will decrease proportionately.

In 1974, the government released a study (NSSM 200) that concluded the world population needed to be decreased drastically for humans to survive after peak oil without dire consequences. This was followed by the Carter administration’s Global 2000 document that said an immediate goal of less than 2 billion worldwide is necessary. Others suggest a world of no more than 500 million is more realistic. (For more information on hundreds of studies, visit: www.dieoff.org)

Knowing so much about a near future of mass migration, epidemics, famines, society collapse and die-offs of biblical proportions, one should ask: Why are we not making population and oil conservation the primary issues? I always wonder why towns are proud welcoming in the first born of the year when, in the overall scope of things, having a baby is the most selfish thing a person can do. Why encourage our species to breed ourselves toward extinction?

Energy and population are the two subjects you never hear politicians discuss. Columnists, on the left and right, have recently written how it is only OK to talk about conserving oil and decreasing population [now that] it’s too late.

By the way, as should be obvious, not everyone or anywhere near everyone who sits zazen shares my observations on this, or is willing to admit it. That doesn't mean anyone is wrong. Don't understand this? Try it. I've been telling you what to do, or at least pointing you toward it. This guest blog is presented to show you why....