“We’re different.”
“We’re special.”
“We’re too intelligent.”
“We’ll find a way out. We always do.”

We’re humans, and therefore animals. Like all life, we’re special. Like all organisms, we’re susceptible to overshoot. Like all organisms, we will experience population decline after overshoot.

Let’s take stock of our current predicaments, beginning with one of several ongoing processes likely to cause our extinction. Then I’ll point out the good not quite so bad news.

We’re headed for extinction via global climate change

It’s hotter than it used to be, but not as hot as it’s going to be. The political response to this now-obvious information is to suspend the scientist bearing the bad news. Which, of course, is no surprise at all: As Australian scientist Gideon Polya points out, the United States must cease production of greenhouse gases within 3.1 years if we are to avoid catastrophic runaway greenhouse. I think Polya is optimistic, and I don’t think Obama’s on-board with the attendant collapse of the U.S. industrial economy.

Apparently — too little, too late — a couple people have noticed a few facts about Obama. This “awakening” might explain why his political support is headed south at a rapid clip.

But back to climate change, one of three likely extinction events. Well, three I know about: I’m certain there are others, and any number can play. With four months remaining in the year, the U.S. has already tied its yearly record for the most billion-dollar weather disasters. Russia is headed directly for loss of 30% of its permafrost by 2050. Tundra fires could accelerate planetary warming. This year, the Northeast Passage was open as of 27 July. This is a massively dire situation for the Arctic. In fact, we have passed a de facto tipping point with respect to Arctic ice. This latter outcome is stunning, but only to those who follow the horrifically conservative and increasingly irrelevant Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Nature is responding with hybrid bears, suggesting the near-term loss of all polar bears. Indeed, all Earth’s systems are rapidly declining. Many organisms can’t keep up as they try to stay ahead of an overheating planet.

As the living planet decays, we keep piling on. Examples abound. Here’s one tiny example among thousands, from that pesky BP well at Deepwater Horizon. It’s out of the news cycle, but it’s not done destroying life in the Gulf of Mexico. But perhaps this tidbit belongs beneath the heading of …

We’re headed for extinction via environmental collapse

Nature is bankrupt, just like Wall Street and the USA. Thanks for playing, but you lose. The banksters on Wall Street “win.” But only in the short term. In the long run, we’re all dead (as first stated by John Maynard Keynes).

Among the consequences of taking down more than 200 species each day: at some point, the species we take into the abyss is Homo sapiens (the wise ape). The vanishing point draws nearer every day. Our response, in the industrialized world: Bring on the toys. Burn all fossil fuels. Harvest the rain forests and strip-mine the soil. Pollute the water, eat the seed bank.

And, most importantly, figure out how we can make a few bucks as the world burns.

We have our hand in a monkey trap, and we can’t let go.

We’re headed for extinction via nuclear meltdown

Safely shuttering a nuclear power plant requires a decade or two of careful planning. Far sooner, we’ll complete the ongoing collapse of the industrial economy. This is a source of my nuclear nightmares.

When the world’s 442 nuclear power plants melt down catastrophically, we’ve entered an extinction event. Think clusterfukushima, times 400. Ionizing radiation could, and probably will, destroy every terrestrial organism and, therefore, every marine and freshwater organism. That, by the way, includes the most unique, special, intelligent animal on Earth.

Ready for some good news?

Meanwhile, back on Wall Street

The Securities and Exchange Commission is busily covering up Wall Street crimes, just as they did during the last presidential administration. And, as it turns out, they’ve been performing this trick for two decades. Finally, though, the S&P is taking the U.S. to the woodshed.

The S&P knows what the media and politicians know: U.S. national debt isn’t really $14 trillion and change, as we’ve been led to believe. In fact, it exceeds $200 trillion. And, back when it was a mere $10.5 trillion, it exceeded the value of all circulating currencies as well as all the gold ever mined. It cannot be paid off, ever. The response will be default. With luck, it’ll happen quickly and completely, thus sending us directly to the new dark age (with the post-industrial Stone Age soon to follow).

The ongoing crash of the stock markets differs from prior events because, for one thing, the Fed is about out of ammunition. At this juncture, there are no easy solutions. In fact, there are no solutions at all. We have just about used up all our “rabbits in the hat” as far as fiscal and monetary policy are concerned. Economics pundit Graham Summers agrees: The Fed is about to find itself completely powerless as 2008 redux appears. The great collapse, for which 2008 was merely a warm-up act, is under way.

Think of 2008 as an economic teddy bear, and 2011 as a grizzly. And I think I mentioned this one already: The hunters are out of bullets.

The all-too-expected political response from the final remaining superpower: ratchet up covert wars. Maybe, while we’re at it, launch another World War.

The bottom line

You’ve been warned repeatedly in this space, and the Guardian finally joins the party: The industrial economic system is about to blow. This burst of hope, our remaining chance at salvation, will undoubtedly be greeted with the usual assortment of protests, ridicule, and hate mail I’ve come to expect from planetary consumers who want to keep consuming the planet.

The underlying predicament — reduction in available energy — is described graphically by Gail Tverberg in this essay. She then tacks on fine analysis in this subsequent essay. Jared Diamond adds a dose of complexity, as described by Erik Curren at Transition Voice.

But these warning shots are only the most recent in a rich history dating back to Marcus Aurelius (and probably further). For materials only slightly older than me that focus on our energy predicament, take a peek at M. King Hubbert’s 1956 paper and the text of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover’s 1957 speech.

And then, let go.

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This essay is permalinked at Seismologik, Max Keiser, Conchscooter’s Common Sense, Counter Currents, Speaking Truth to Power, Seemorerocks, Jackpot Investor, eWallstreeter, Stocks that Pay, Intelwars, Tov Hazel, Equity Help Desk, InvestmentWatch, Gold & Silver Mashup, Singstock, a few dozen other sites, and Zero Hedge (comments at the latter site echo my opening paragraphs).

When American Empire completes its fall, it will take all the banks with it. So we won’t be worrying about cleaning up “toxic assets.” Instead, we’ll concern ourselves with storing the harvest and saving seeds.
When American Empire completes its fall, political parties will be unable to carry out desperate, ugly, and dangerous attacks on American voters. Instead, we’ll focus on helping our neighbors and building our communities.
As American Empire is completing its fall, the American government might find itself at war with its own people. As long as we have American Idol and high fructose corn syrup, I doubt the people are willing to rebel. But if they are, perhaps this time the people will win.
When American Empire completes its fall, we will leave behind arcane philosophers and their irrelevant, unworldly philosophy. Instead, we will return to a philosophy as rooted in the Earth as we are.
When American Empire completes its fall, we will not have agents of the federal government planning to invade and divide countries and sacrificing the lives of “we the people” for a few bucks (in this case, neocon leaders Feith, Wolfowitz, and Perle were discussing with the Turkish ambassador how to divide Iraq in the summer of 2001, four months before 9/11). Instead, we’ll honor the lives of humans and other animals in the region we occupy.
When American Empire completes its fall, humans will be unable to cause erosion comparable to the world’s largest rivers and glaciers. They — we — will be unable to cause destruction so severe it threatens our very existence. Instead, we’ll revere the ecosystems that provide us with water, food, clothing, protection from the elements, and all the philosophy we’ll ever need.
When American Empire completes its fall, the federal government will be unable to control what you eat, much less encourage you to eat materials that are toxic, or that make us fat, stupid, and lazy. We will not rely on two percent of our population, bound to cheap fossil fuels and corporate indenture, to feed the rest of us. Instead, we will harvest what we sow and eat what we harvest, paying careful attention to what we feed our children.
When American Empire completes its fall, the federal government will not trot out lies about medical care (while in truly Orwellian fashion, calling it “health care”). Instead, we will learn to care for the planet that sustains us all, and we will accept death as we celebrate life.
When American Empire completes its fall, governments around the world will not encourage their citizens to produce more consumers (i.e., babies) in the name of economic growth. Instead, we will cherish our (human) communities while relying on them for care, just as we will care for others. Instead of being slaves to the economy and its government, we will be partners with our neighbors and the landbase.
I used to think it took a child to raze a village, but now I know any effective politician can do it. When American Empire completes its fall, the federal government will be unable to bail out companies while ignoring the individuals who work for those companies. The governmental arsonists who started and stoked the fire will be unable to show up in fire trucks claiming they can extinguish the blaze. And then they’ll be unable to lie about it. When the empire completes its fall, neighbors will bail out each other, and expect the same in return.
When American Empire completes its fall, the myriad crises we have created will no longer outpace our ability to deal with them. The situation has become so dire, even mainstream scientists have noticed. And although these scientists admit nations and corporations cannot effectively deal with the messes we’ve generated, the solutions they propose all involve institutional reforms (i.e., government). When the empire completes its fall, communication between neighbors will account for all the reforms we need.
When American Empire completes its fall, globalization falls with it (perhaps it already has). Globalization has tricked us into ignoring matters important to our health, and to the health of other species, in the name of enriching a few wealthy (mostly) white men who serve corporations. We have abandoned work on extinction, child labor, working conditions, taxation, child labor, health, and pollution, while allowing a billion people to starve. We’ve done all this damage while allowing — and even encouraging — the few to loot the coffers of the many, even while the many are starving in numbers unimaginably large. When the empire completes its fall, localization comes back in style. We’ll know all the non-human neighbors by name, and we will nurture them as they take care of us.
When American Empire completes its fall, we will not focus on the politically lost cause of global climate change at the expense of the thousands of other insults we are visiting on the planet. We won’t need to focus on politically hopeless causes such as saving the planet and our non-human brethren. Instead, we will conduct the difficult and meaningful work associated with stewardship of the lands, waters, and communities that support us.
When American Empire completes its fall, the majority will not capitulate to the noisy minority in the echo chamber who claim that helping others is socialism, and therefore un-American. The notion that “all politics is local” will ring loudly as we all work toward governance that serves the people.
When American Empire completes its fall, we will not be forced to listen to the “patriotic” tune of the mainstream media as they continue to deny the roles of the governments of Israel and the United States in the events of September 11, 2001. And we won’t be praying for more oil from Iraq. Or Mexico. Or Canada. Or, for that matter, thinking natural gas will save western civilization. When the empire completes its fall, we’ll be concerned about legitimate wealth: food and water supplied by healthy landbases and the company of friends supplied by healthy communities.
When American Empire completes its fall, Congress will not spend your money propping up the world’s most powerful military force (although by simultaneously losing two wars, the U.S. military is rapidly exposing its declining influence). We will not continue to torture people without charging them. We will not use the world’s most lethal organization and weapons to continue killing citizens of Afghanistan in the name of our freedom. As a side effect, we’ll need not hide the pictures and bury the stories when our own children die in the process of killing Afghans. When the empire completes its fall, we will know the faces of those who threaten us and we will face reality regardless how tragic it is.
When American Empire completes its fall, we can thank our investment in military supremacy, at least in part.
When American Empire completes its fall, we’ll finally give up on the renewable-energy “savior” and, more importantly, we’ll witness the end of the seemingly endless wars for energy. We’ll live as part of the Earth, rather than apart from it.
When American Empire completes its fall, a few people will recall the warnings — dating as far back as Marcus Aurelius, and probably further — launched by a very few thoughtful voices and ignored by those in power. With respect to energy decline, they’ll recall M. King Hubbert and a few of the people listed here.
When American Empire completes its fall, people will once again wrest control of their individual and collective destinies and live in the world, thus causing superstition to fade.
If American Empire completes its fall soon enough, perhaps James Lovelock will be proven wrong: maybe, just maybe, we haven’t reached a global-climate-change tipping point. One thing is clear: There are no politically viable solutions to global climate change. But when the empire completes its fall, we will ignore the gods of economic growth who demand we destroy the planet in their name.
Why are we trying to sustain this empire?