Posted on 10/25/2011 11:24:25 AM PDT by blam
Leading Population Researcher: There Is A 90% Chance Of “Collapse Of Global Civilization” (Ehrlich)
Mac Slavo
October 25th, 2011
Paul Ralph Ehrlich, biologist and professor of population studies at Stanford University, has been warning for decades (The Population Bomb, 1968) that the earth is becoming increasingly unstable and incapable of supporting our ever expanding population growth. With 7 billion people on the planet and growth estimated to continue at a pace that would reach 15 billion by the end of the 21st century, Ehrlich notes that our concerns about feeding the world’s population and meeting energy resource needs for future generations are misguided. We shouldn’t be concerned with 9 billion people a decade or two from now, or 15 billion at the end of the century. We have an immediate problem right now and there’s a 90% chance that those living today will experience what we’ve often referred to as TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World As We Know It):
The population of Earth has doubled since Paul Ehrlich first warned the world that there were too many humans. Three and a half billion people later, he is more pessimistic than ever, estimating there is only a 10% chance of avoiding a collapse of global civilisation.
“Among the knowledgeable people there is no more conversation about whether the danger is real,” Ehrlich told the Guardian. “Civilisations have collapsed before: the question is whether we can avoid for the first time [an] entire global civilisation… of having the whole mess collapse.”
The idea sounds melodramatic, but Ehrlich insists his vision only builds on famine, drought, poverty and conflict, which are already prevalent around the world, and would unfold over the “next few decades”.
“What it would look like is getting to the situation where more and more people are living in uncertainty about their future, subject to all kinds of disease,” he said.
…
“My pessimism is deeply tied to the human failure to do anything about these problems, or even recognise or talk about them.”
…
The global population has since doubled [since 1968] and, although growth is slowing, is still on course to rise beyond the two billion maximum Ehrlich believes Earth can sustain without irrevocably destroying its water, earth and air.
“The next two billion people, should we get them, will put more and more pressure on environmental systems that are struggling today,” he said. “Each individual has to have food from more marginal land … materials from poorer ores, we’re going to use more oil so we have to drill deeper: we’re past the point of diminishing returns.”
…
“Can we solve this technologically? Theoretically, since we can’t know anything for certain, so we could come up with a magic way of producing food and that could save us. But my answer, always, to that is: we have all sorts of people in despair today. Don’t tell me how easy it’s going to be to feed nine billion people; let’s feed seven billion first, then I’ll be willing to talk to you about whether technology will take care of all those people.”
Source: The Guardian
In his 1968 book The Population Bomb, Ehlrich predicted that human demand would exceed the capacity of the Earth in the 1970′s and/or 1980′s. These predictions, argue critics, failed to materialize in the form of an all encompassing doomsday scenario.
However, if one were to look at the economic growth of, for example, the United States and Europe during these decades, one could argue that as demand began to outweigh supply certain regions of the world benefited at the expense of others. While richer nations experienced growth and prosperity, others were isolated from access to essential resources leaving billions on the globe struggling daily for food, clean water and energy resources.
In June of 2010 Michael Ruppert of Collapse Net discussed possible collapse scenarios, saying that after our financial and economic bubbles finally burst completely there will be one bubble left to go. The human population bubble.
Considering that much of the growth of Western nations from the 1970′s through today was driven by manufactured demand created through social engineering, creative finance, and monetary machinations, we should all be concerned that Ehrlich and Ruppert are on to something. Roughly one billion people, through manipulation of the global socioeconomic system, have benefited for the past forty years while four times as many have been left to fight over the scraps. What happens, then, when the economic systems on which all of this resource distribution was based collapses?
One can only surmise that this would lead the pendulum to swing from one extreme (booming growth and abundance) to the other (economic decline and poverty). This, as we have mentioned before, is a paradigm shift that will leave the majority of people in the U.S. and around the globe without the ability to acquire even the most basic of needs. The consequences of such a shift will lead to world-wide famine, drought, poverty and conflict.
We may very well be living through one of those periods in history – a multi-generational cyclical event – where there is a period of sustained economic depression and political turmoil, which often culminate in large scale wars over resource rights.
Preparing for such life changing circumstances is no easy task, but it can be done so long as your time horizon is grounded in reality. If we are, in fact, at the end of the line of global growth and economic expansion due to a system created around a model based on unsustainable processes and ideas, then we will most certainly see rapid waterfall events – things like debt defaults on a national level or hyperinflation of currencies. These sorts of events can play out quickly and without warning, and they can have an immediate impact on the population. In the midst of these crises people can expect utter chaos and uncertainty as the systems around them collapse – making access to food, resources and essential goods non-existent for a time.
Short-term preparations with a time frame of 30 days to a year will help at the immediate onset of crisis. But what if there is no going back in our lifetimes? What if the human population bubble does burst and leads to famine, disease and war for an extended period of time? It may be hard for us to imagine, but historically many civilizations – like those that survived the fall of Rome and transitioned into the middle ages circa 500 A.D. – experienced depopulation, deurbanization, and increased conflict for time frames measured not in months or years, but decades and generations.
Since we have a very difficult time with the notion that we will somehow magically solve this problem over the course of the next decade, we’re left with the stark conclusion that we must, as individuals, families and close-knit communities, begin to prepare for a different paradigm, one which will force us to modify our current lifestyles.
Prepare for the short-term, but don’t ignore the long-term ramifications of what’s happening. You don’t have to do it overnight, as a collapse of this magnitude will occur over years, giving you more time to adjust your lifestyle to one of sustainability and self reliance, as opposed to consumption and dependence.
For the long-term, look to acquiring a piece of land that can be passed on to your children and grandchildren. Equally as important, begin living your life by taking out the middle man that has for decades provided for us and made us dependent on their production of resources – namely food and energy. Learn to be self reliant, and pass those skills on to other members of your family. Your kids and grand kids will thank you for it.
Mostly Dire.
We are on the edge. Every day there is a new story about the ‘Yutes’ who grow more and more restless. When you then add the fact that because of the economy people are already on edge and many are close to their breaking point it won’t take much to set things off.
Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:
“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Siege of AR-558 (#7.8)” (1998)
Quark: Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don’t believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes.
Today we have ‘yutes’ who roam our streets who are with out morals, without respect for law or life itself. They will look are you with the same ‘doll eyes’ a shark does before he eats you and they will feel no more compassion than the shark does.
That will be the test of many. Most preppers I know are Christian people and they will hesitate to do what they might have to do to stop the ‘yutes’. On the other hand the ‘yutes’ won’t think twice nor lose a minute of sleep, in fact they will smile and laugh about it.
For those who are just starting or are old hands at prepping you may find my Preparedness Manual helpfull. You can download it at:
http://www.tomeaker.com/kart/preparedness1i.pdf
For those of you who haven’t started already it’s time to prepare almost past time maybe. You needed to be stocking up on food guns, ammo, basic household supplies like soap, papergoods, cleaning supplies, good sturdy clothes including extra socks, underwear and extra shoes and boots, a extra couple changes of oil and filters for your car, tools, things you buy everyday start buying two and put one up.
As the LDS say “When the emergency is upon us the time for preparedness has past.”
Or as the bible says: A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.
NIV Proverbs 22:3
Erhlich appears to be doubling down.
Bilge water! The Establishment fully intends to abolish 90% of the world’s population for their own purposes. Has nada to do with the planet earth!
Fortunately, very few people listen to this fool anymore.
Historically, major bottoms in economies are marked by dire predictions of doom. This particular bottoming process will be long due to its’ demographic roots, which can’t be solved overnight. But these doom stories may be an indicator of a bottoming process.
Let’s see, 2012 coming up. About 10 years to go, though things will be improving within 6.
bbbrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaiiinnns!
Paul Ehrlich is a rotten bastard with a lot to answer for. The people playing his game will be overrun by those who don’t.
Anyway I got more respect for Harold Camping than this bozo.
Global Robespierre!!
I hope Preppers are planning for a very very very very LONG crisis.
—is still on course to rise beyond the two billion maximum Ehrlich believes Earth can sustain without irrevocably destroying its water, earth and air.—
He was a bit off on that one. I figure that the planet, just assuming todays technology and if everyone was in a kumbaya spirit, could support 50 billion. There is a LOT of unused land. People really have no idea how much.
OTOH, one of the ways we currently feed as many people as we do is through things like Pink Slime. I think most of the foods we eat would make us sick if we saw what was going into them and how they were processed.
There’s nothin’ like growing all your own stuff.
This book had a profound infulence on me. It started my “Prepping”. I now have 17 years of water storred, 14 years of wheat, a grinding mill, and a pizza oven. Not to mention the heard of goats so that I will never run out of CHEESE.
One of the more interesting articles regarding the collapse:
http://www.grandpappy.info/honehour.htm
We have an immediate problem right now and there’s a 90% chance that those living today will experience what we’ve often referred to as TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World As We Know It):
Why do you think I bought a farm in the middle of nowhere? I got chickens for eggs, turkeys and rabbits for meat, will have at least one milk cow within 4 months and I live walking distance to a very good salmon/trout river.
When we get hungry for red meat, we’ll barter with the local beef ranchers.
I have a 1/2 acre garden going in this coming spring along with a 1/2 acre (perhaps more) of feed corn.
Me & mine will survive.
Europe, Scandinavia and Japan’s native populations are plummeting but as usual,
let’s not let the facts stand in the way of a liberal’s hair-raising Halloween story.
Ehrlich said that 90 million people in the US would be starving by 1990.
The truth was that there were 90 million people in the US who were on diets in 1990.
His research has no merit.
Even the UN admits global population will peak around 2050. Growth rates worldwide have been declining for decades. You can't find predictions beyond 2050, because everyone knows the world is going to follow the fate of Europe and Japan. Population will level off and then begin to decline. And for countries whose industries depend on consumer spending that is very, very bad news. We, well my descendants, will suffer from population decline, not overpopulation.
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