Global Turndown?

I'm not sure what's to come, except that we all should've seen this coming and prepared. Sheril, you're an optimist and I like that, so since you ask, I'm gonna say I am too.

Looking at the Dow, 2009 started with a bang!

We're still down 36% from the high in October of 2007. Every single metric of economic health--*except* for the DJI and S&P--are miserable. In addition, the daily swings on the indices are huge, which is, apparently, a hallmark of bear markets. My guess is things will get worse. Mark me on the pessimism side.

My guess is that in the short-term things will begin somewhat in neutral with a wave of enthusiasm on the heels of the new Obama administration. Then, things will continue downhill, with growing unemployment and business cutbacks and failures. The Dow could certainly lose another 50%. But, who knows?

The medium-term problem is that recovery assumes a business-as-usual paradigm. However, our debt-and-interest financial system, the ultimate ponzei scheme, will eventually run into limits on natural resources. Thus, while the recession (depression?) has temporarily allayed the immediate fears of peak oil, any recovery will bring prices back with a vengeance. The lack of investment will come back to bite us and "alternatives" are unfortunately still miles away. Someday--some faraway day--we may transition to a more meaningful economic arrangement, one possibly based on matter/energy exchange. Who knows who will be around to see that day.

In the long-term we should recognize that we are in a condition of biological overshoot, only the latest in mostly accelerating cycle involving the intensification of production, population growth, and resource depletion. Industrial civilization already is in a state of collapse, but most people just don't know it.

I think it's clear things will get much worse (retail and credit card sectors are yet to fully tank, unemployment could easily hit double digits, recovery of the housing and auto markets still far off -- I've heard some knowledgeable predictions of 3-4 yrs. to fully emerge from this mess). Having said that, the stock market will continue highly volatile, which means short-term traders can actually make a lot of money, and even longer term investors with selectivity and patience can do ok. The Dow Jones usually moves about 6 months ahead of the actual economy; this go-around it may actually move a year ahead of time. But elsewhere a lot of pain yet to work thru. :-(

Things won't get better unless we change our habits. And if there's one thing that's hard to change, it's habits. Government, industry, and individuals will have to make a concerted effort to do this; walk more often, improve public transportation, tax gas and carbon, switch to energy efficient light bulbs, build energy efficient buildings, build nuclear power plants. It's going to take a concerted all-out effort on the part of everybody. I think from now on, optimism should keep pace only with policy, no matter how slightly incremental. Otherwise it becomes no different from blind religious faith.

Maybe I'm more optimistic than you folks. I think at least one sector stands to grow dramatically under this administration: clean energy.

Exactly Chris. And I'd love to see the government start the infrastructure boost by adding funds to granting agencies like NIH and NSF. For example, let's create new fellowship opportunities in research related to biofuels and other alternatives to kick start developing industries while making us less dependent on rise and fall of oil prices.

The problem is that this government may kick-start growth in this sector, but it's up to future administrations and citizens to sustain that growth. Obama may be President for 8 years, but it's best to be conservative and operate under the working assumption that he will have four years to implement his policies. Who knows what the next administration will do. After all greenhouse gas emissions dropped by 7% under Carter but what happened then? Ronald Reagan cut mileage standards. I agree that the current situation is both more optimistic and more urgent, but it's very important as well as more difficult to keep things going compared to initiating them. Many have the drive; few have the staying power. But for now we can wish for a propitious beginning.

As an aside, Sheril's point about creating new research opportunities for clean energies and related technologies is of paramount importance. The NSF and NIH should spearhead these efforts, and one of the first and best things they can do is to provide more RO1 grants to young researchers early on in their careers. Too many young researchers are withering away from their struggles before securing their first RO1s. Right now the average age at which a young researcher gets his first grant can typically be in his or her late 30s or early 40s; by that time they are exhausted.

We are not dependent on the rise and fall of oil prices. We are dependent upon oil. The EIA 2008 report should stop you in mid-stride to take notice, in part because it is such a break with previous statements, and the likelihood that it is still far too optimistic. My guess is that by the time real supply begins to wane, there will be nothing there of any substance to pick up the slack. And importantly, even in the unlikely event that some combination of conservation, improvements in efficiency, and substitutions manage to pick up the shortfall (at least for a while), the central problem of growth still is not solved. This is the fundamental human dilemma.

That would be IEA, not EIA, but one wonders whether anyone here is checking anyway. But, hey, they only advise the energy policies of nations, nothing really important. One thing to note in that report are the unrealistic estimates for reserve growth and also for future discovery, supposedly reversing a half-century-long trend. So it goes.

Perhaps many too many leaders of the family of humanity today live arrogantly and greedily in our planetary home. They appear to take pride in their unsustainable behavior. Certainly, we will "have our cake and eat it too," they say. They own fleets of cars, fly around in thousands of private jets, live in McMansions, exchange secret handshakes, frequent exclusive clubs and distant hideouts, and risk nothing of value. They will live long, large and free, so they say. Please do not bother them with the problems of the world. They choose not to hear, see or speak of them. They hold much of the world's wealth as well as the extraordinary political/military power great wealth purchases. If left to their own devices, they will continue to self-righteously exercise their 'inalienable rights' to conspicuously consume whatever they desire; to recklessly dissipate Earth's resources and expand economic globalization unto every corner of our natural world and, guess what, beyond; to carelessly consent to the unbridled global growth of human numbers so that where there are now 6.7 billion people, by 2050 we will have 9+ billion members of the human family and, guess what, even more people, perhaps billions more beyond 2050, if that is what they wish. They are the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe. They enjoy freedom and living without regard to human limits and Earth's limitations. They adamantly eschew any talk of the personal responsibilities that come with the exercise of personal freedoms or any discussion of the existence of biophysical boundaries. They deny good science or consider it junk. Climate change is a hoax to them.

Many too many of our leaders and all of the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us choose to deny the existence of "limits to growth", even though abundant scientific evidence of the existence of such boundaries is available. Please understand that these 'Masters' do not want anyone presenting them with scientific evidence that they could be living unsustainably in an artificially designed, temporary world....a manmade world filling up with gigantic enterprises, virtual mountains of material possessions, ill-gotten gains, phony profits and filthy lucre.

Scientists appear not to have found adequate ways of communicating to the family of humanity what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the rapacious dissipation of Earth's limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet's frangible environment, and the increasing risk of destroying Earth as a fit place for human habitation in our time, when taken together, appear to be proceeding at breakneck speed now, moving toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort.... unless, as a matter of course, the world's colossal, artificially designed, soon to become patently unsustainable global economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic 'wall' called "unsustainability" at which point the unbridled expansion of the runaway global economy crashes before Earth's ecology is collapsed.

Who knows, perhaps we can still realistically and hopefully hold onto the expectation that behavioral changes by many members of the human community will encourage others, even the Masters of the Universe, to go forward from this time and place toward the achievement of new goals: restricted and "right-sized" rather than unbridled and ever larger-scale production, restrained rather than outrageous per human over-consumption and the regulation of human population growth..... changes that save both the human economy and God's Creation for our children and coming generations.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php