Sunday, November 25, 2018

AMAZING!

The night descending on Paris has brought no ease of tensions over 
fuel price hikes. ‘Yellow Vest’ protesters set more barricades ablaze, 
turning the French capital into a kind of war zone. 
 
The filmed scenes resembled street battles, with rioters engaging in 
scuffles with police, which struggled to bring the situation under 
control. 
 
The video shows brazen protesters setting barricades and tents on 
fire, as well as riot police using tear gas and water cannons to 
disperse the crowds. People have been venting their anger for the past 
two weeks over rising fuel prices and a government-proposed fuel tax, 
which is due to come into force in January 2019. 
 
https://www.rt.com/news/444817-paris-protests-night-fire/ 
 
I added some annotations to the IEA Graph - which only predicts the 
future, and may be completely wrong. With enough technology + time, we 
could be mining asteroids and the Planets - or discover completely new 
and abundant resources to use as fuel to maintain Industrial 
Civilization. 
 
There are Optimists, Pessimists and Realists. Some say that more 
people on Planet Earth = more minds to solve problems and create 
solutions. 
 
Some say that we have already overshot carrying capacity and are about 
to fall off the Seneca Cliff. That solutions to the problems 
Industrial Civilization only adds to complexity and ensures a Seneca 
Cliff collapse. I'm in agreement with that. 
 
There is absolutely NO solutions to our dilemma, because Humans can't 
seem to grasp that creating cooperative and sustainable civilization 
requires sacrifice by all - we must all agree to give up something.... 
but we only want more. 
 
We can only continue to carry on with BAU (Business as Usual) until we can't. 
 
The fewer people that can afford fuel - the more there is for those 
who can. Those at the top, will push down those at the bottom. 
 
When the petro-dollar dies, so does our way of life - what then? 
 
Right now - People from Africa,the Middle East and South America are 
fleeing the endless wars and poverty, coming to Europe and America. 
What are you willing to give up - what part of your slice of the pie 
will you share? 
 
Or, as George Bush declared.... 
 
“THE American way of life is not up for negotiation.” That was the 
stance struck by the elder George Bush at the first Earth Summit in 
Rio de Janeiro in 1992. He was responding to the thousands of green, 
anti-capitalist and other activists who were claiming that the United 
States, then as now the world's biggest energy consumer, was also its 
biggest polluter. That makes it all the more striking that his son has 
just proposed environmental policies that, he says, will 
“fundamentally alter the American way of life in a positive way.” 
 
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/02/13/a-greener-bush 
 
Endless wars for Oil and to prop up the Petro-Dollar - until the last 
American Soldier is dead.
 

2 comments:

TSE said...

Geez - and I only wanted to own a few MOPARS -

Where's my 1970 Hemi Challenger, 71 'Cuda and 72 Duster?

TSE said...

Dr Minqi Li says:

11/21/2018 at 4:56 pm

First of all, people who lived in former socialist societies did not call these societies “communism”. That’s an American expression later imposed on the rest of the world

Secondly, 20th century socialisms were a part of the capitalist world system and had to play the system’s basic game–economic growth

Thirdly, according to the world system theory (and agreed by many others), the essential feature of capitalism is the pursuit of endless accumulation of capital.

Someone might say you can have market without growth. It is possible to have a non-growth economy if the market is not dominant, like all the pre-capitalist societies. But if the market is dominant, then you have competition everywhere and competition forces everyone to pursue growth. If you do not grow, you fail and you are eliminated. That happens both to individuals and countries

Lastly, at least a large minority of environmentalists agree that economic growth is fundamentally incompatible with sustainability. So if you agree with point three and four, you have to conclude that so long as capitalism exists, there is no hope for sustainability.

http://peakoilbarrel.com/world-energy-2018-2050-world-energy-annual-report-part-5/#comments