Reply #16: Dominos [View All]

[earthman dave]

Topsoil erosion is already a problem. As oil gets more scarce, agricultural chemicals get more scarce, and yields go down. As yields go down, more land area is needed to get the same amount of food. Topsoil erosion speeds up.

This is just an example off the top of my head. The point i'm trying to make is that we probably won't see a gradual decline, instead multiple feedbacks may cause something analogous to death in organisms - multiple simultaneous failures of support systems, as the failure of one system overloads the next system.

Quite apart from these basic infrastructural problems, there are the social issues which you describe. These too could interact in nasty ways. All in all, we're fucked. Society's elites seem to be pulling up the ladder behind them, as it were - making sure they have the resources to enable them to survive the nightmare of the next few decades.

On the plus side, money only gives control of resources because we allow it to - it's essentially a shared illusion. Billion-dollar bank accounts are useless when no-one believes in banks, or money. On the down side, there won't be enough to go round, but in my more optimistic moments I think of what is sometimes referred to as the "blitz spirit" - the way people stick together and help each other out when times get tough. That said, I tend to agree with your assessment - things look pretty bleak.