Armageddon on the Horizon?
Armageddon on the Horizon?
re: response to food shortages, energy costs and people in Australia.
We have all the same issues here in the UK. Ignoring all the conspiracy theories I think the root cause of all of this is over consumption, by us as individuals, fuelled by post war credit; and businesses through the never ending quest for growth. But I’m no expert and I don’t think anyone is!
The post war credit industry gave everyone ‘endless money’ to buy(food and goods) whatever they wanted, I first saw it in California in 1994 with garages full of stuff and food portions twice what anyone could eat. I was shocked when I returned to the UK from Australia in 2010, it resembled California’s ‘consumptive lifestyle’ not the country I left in ’94.
That led to larger families and more excessive consumption; which in turn required a huge energy burn triggering rapid global warming which is now causing food crop failures, natural disasters, and land and resource grabs like Russia for food in Ukraine, China for minerals in Africa, the USA for oil in Iraq.
The staffing shortages in the UK are mainly Brexit related, as like the Mexicans in the USA we relied on cheap Eastern European labour which largely left the country. We are seeing food rot on the farms, that can’t help prices. I’m convinced most public services (education, health, policing) here are being run down so that private enterprise can take over which is why most of those employees left in place are burnt out after Covid. More private sector ‘land grabs’, pushed along because there’s no government money to fund these huge inefficient organisations.
Covid was probably human error in China but has some interesting side effects. It slowed down human travel and consumption which is useful if governments NEEDED to reduce warming and stabilise temperatures. But if we’re saying Covid was deliberate, that has serious implications about trust in global leadership; but I don’t believe that. It seems to me most ’natural’ leaders who get into power aren’t that smart. More likely the behaviour of the type of person that lusts after power and consumption is very similar globally which is why we have ended up with so few having so much.
We (mainly the west) have been living an unsustainable lifestyle for 50 years* at least; the tree huggers of the 60’s where right to be concerned about globalisation. Now armageddon, human vs the planet or human vs human, seems a reality the rich and famous have starting shoring up their lifestyles and hoarding every asset they can find. This has or will result in more prices rises. I believe governments aren’t in a hurry to push fuel prices down because that helps reduce emissions; unfortunately high fuel prices mean EVERYTHING else gets more expensive so the less well off suffer and the very poor perish. But again high fossil fuel prices will help reduce global warming so if we have reached a tipping point then it’s a good mechanism to slow things down.
As predicted by smart people several decades back we are now seeing the start of mass migration away from the equatorial belt as it dries up and becomes un-liveable, just like the red centre of Australia. If you look at UK cross channel numbers we saw 700+ in 2018, 800+ in 2020 to 39,000 so far in 2022. But we take in less than other European countries.
We need to get real, strip back our lifestyles, reduce consumption and start making and producing locally which means smaller connected communities, stop transporting goods and people around the planet and yearn for less not more of everything; people and businesses need to realise we need balance not growth. If we do that then we can accommodate the needy having to migrate into the surviving temperate parts of the planet; otherwise anarchy will be the next big thing after runaway climate change.
I believe that if we all, the majority, do a little bit there’s hope, that won’t happen but here’s mine anyway;
* https://www.climate.gov/media/12885
Photo by Javier Miranda on Unsplash