Part 32: Boomers’ last chance; letter from the future

 

This continuing series brings you, a concerned American, more information on what this civilization faces and what we can do to change course toward a viable future for our children and all living creatures.

 

As of November 4, 2010, the United States at 310 million, steams full speed ahead toward 100 million additional people by 2035—a scant 25 years from now.  How do you feel about that number in light of water shortages, food costs, energy availability, quality of life in our cities and a host of environmental dangers?

 

While our situation may be sobering, you enjoy the option to change the future by your actions today.  Join the websites below to make impact.  Everything you do counts!  Everything you avoid doing—counts likewise!

Peak Everything: Waking Up to a Century of Declines By Richard Heinberg, New Society Publishers,   ISBN-10: 086571598X ,   ISBN-13: 978-0865715981, www.postcarbon.org; www.richardheinberg.com

 

“In his best selling book, The Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw extolled the virtues of the American men and women who grew up in the Great Depression and fought in World War II,” said Heinberg. “…as a result, their children have enjoyed the most extended and exuberant period of affluence in the history of any nation.”

 

So much so, we also created the most catastrophic environmental degradation, species extinction, crowding in our cities and other disparities ever known to humanity!  While Americans drive HUGE SUV’s that consume 22 million barrels of oil 24/7,  and live in relative luxury—around the planet, 18 million humans starve to death annually while 3.0 billion subsist on less than $2.00 per day. Americans as well as the Chinese and most Western societies ravage third world countries for metals, minerals, oil and gems.

 

On the one hand, we enjoy unimaginable luxury even for the poorest in America—and on the other, astounding human misery.

 

“This generation practiced ‘diachronic competition’, that is, competition with future generations, more ruthlessly than any other since the dawn of our species,” said Heinberg. “The implications are devastating.  A good case may be made that my generation, because it so threatens the perpetuation of its kind and the survival of countless other species, is the worst ever.”

 

While Heinberg talks about America, I watched similar circumstances erupt all over the globe.  Today, India and China work 24/7 to ‘be like America’ in wealth, industrial might and power.  They gobble resources at an alarming rate of speed.

 

James Howard Kunstler, in his The Long Emergency, reports that China expects to burn 98 million barrels of oil daily by 2030.  How? They build and place on their highways 27,000 new cars net gain weekly!  Reports this fall showed them trying to untangle a 60 mile long gridlocked traffic jam.  Look it up on Google!

 

Why do you think 98 million barrels proves astounding? We burn 84 million barrels daily all over the planet in 2010 each day!  No chance for them to extract that much oil in the light of Peak Oil!  Something will have to give!  Answer: their whole civilization will collapse!  Don’t be smug! So will ours!

 

What amazes me: how on Earth do the Chinese think anything will improve as they add eight million people net gain annually?

At one point in the 70s, President Jimmy Carter told Americans that they would have to ‘adjust’ their material way of life in order to keep their freedoms. But no one listened!

 

As of late, Chris Steiner wrote a book, $20 Per Gallon, where he researched Peak Oil, and guaranteed Americans that gas would rise to $10, $15 and ultimately $20 per gallon within two decades or sooner.  Without a doubt, our freedoms will most definitely be restricted.

 

Yet, we keep growing America’s population like that 1,810 pound pumpkin that some Wisconsin farmer featured on the Jay Leno Show in October.  “This pumpkin grew by 40 pounds a day,” the farmer said.

What do you do with a civilization that adds 3.4 million every year while water, resources, oil and ability to grow food diminish? What does that civilization do when it adds another 100 million?

 

Do you notice no one asking those ‘heavy’ questions?

 

“But there was never broad public discussion of the real issue that will impact our lives in the next few years—the generation that grew up expecting always more will soon be faced with less,” said Heinberg. “The nation, now hallucinating uncontrollably from toxic exposure of Fox News, is in debt to the point that no conceivable decision made today will prevent a devastating implosion of the U.S. economy, especially in the view of impending oil and gas peaks.”

 

THE FUTURE

 

“In the decades ahead we will be going through hell,” said Heinberg. “But the only alternative to accepting the fact is to live in denial until the reality is inescapable and our room for maneuvering is even more restricted than it has already become…we boomers have stolen much from the future generations; the main question remaining is, can we now give them back at least the possibility that they might build the world we once dreamed of?”

 

At the end of his book, Heinberg writes a letter from the future back to citizens living today. He talked about hopes of preventing the “Die-off”; “The Pruning”; “The Purification”; or “The Cleansing.”  He said, “Some terms are more palatable than others, but there really are no nice ways to describe the actual events—wars, epidemics, famines.”  Aka, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—war, disease, pestilence and famine.

 

At the end, Heinberg throws a ‘dental floss’ line of hope toward the reader with web sites and actions each can take. Ever the optimist, he might engage the best and brightest of our generation and the present generations to take action.  We can only hope!

 

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