The Case for Reform
Editorial, NY Times
Reforming this country’s broken health care system is an urgent and essential task. Given all of the fabrications and distortions from Republican critics, and the squabbling among Democratic supporters, it is no surprise that many Americans still have doubts. President Obama and Democratic leaders have a strong case. They need to make it now. Here are compelling reasons for all Americans to root for the reform effort to succeed and urge Congress to complete the job..

Follow the Money -- Into a Double-Dip
Randall W. Forsyth, Barron's
The notion of a tightness in the money supply seems to fly in the face of all the "money printing" by the Fed since the intensification of the credit crisis in the fall of 2008. But what the Fed supplies is the monetary equivalent of crude oil to the economy, which actually runs on the refined product analogous to gasoline -- money and credit supplied by the banks. And it is those banking "refineries" whose output has been lagging, resulting in a now-shrinking broad money supply.

Housebreaking the Corporations
John Michael Greer, Energy Bulletin
The role of corporate influence in maintaining an increasingly dysfunctional status quo has been much discussed in peak oil circles, and various remedies proposed. The irony here is that effective remedies for the antisocial behavior of corporations are ready to hand, if we make a collective choice to use them -- and that choice may be made sooner than many people currently expect.

US scientists demand government ban on mountaintop mining
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian
Mountaintop mining should be banned for causing vast and permanent destruction to US environment and exposing its people to serious health consequences such as birth defects, a new study says today. An article in the journal Science, by a team of 12 ecologists, hydrologists, and engineers, provides the most comprehensive analysis so far of the damage done by the controversial mining practice. The process involves shaving off up to 1,000 vertical feet of mountain peak - including ancient forests - to expose thin, but highly prized, seams of coal.

How Much Longer Will Our Chinese Food Be Delivered?
Jeff Rubin, Jeff Rubin's Smaller World
..the average distance from farm gate to dinner table has now risen to over fifteen hundred miles. That's a bad energy deal in its own right: for every calorie of energy delivered by imported food, you burn, on average, three more calories getting it to your dinner table. But at triple-digit oil prices, bunker fuel costs will price many of those long-distance food imports right out of your shopping cart.

Dennis Meadows - Economics and Limits to Growth: What's Sustainable?
Gail the Actuary, The Oil Drum
"It was astonishing to me in 1972 that people could start from the assumption that there are no limits. It has been even more amazing to see the evolution to this thinking. Initially, the assumption was that people were just uninformed. The assumption was that if we can manage to give them the facts, they will change their opinion, and fall into line. Nothing I have seen in 40 years gives me support for that opinion. If you marshall enough facts to disprove an objection, then the critics will just find another objection. There are an infinite number of objections, so you are never going to come to the end of the process."

The Meaning of Copenhagen
Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
To my thinking, Copenhagen is something of a last straw. I have no interest in trying to discourage anyone from undertaking national or global activism. Indeed, there is a danger in taking attention away from national and international affairs: policy could get hijacked not just by parties even less competent than those currently in command, but by ones that are just plain evil. Nevertheless, this writer is finally convinced that, with whatever energies for positive change may be available to us, we are likely to accomplish the most by working locally and on a small scale, while sharing information about successes and failures as widely as possible.

Reverend Robert Revisited
Shelly Gottlieb, email from friend "Ross"
     In 1798 Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus wrote an essay on  ‘Population’ which was probably about the size of a 250 page modern book.  Perhaps it is good for the reader to remember that was long before the days of Tesla’s wireless radio and modern T.V. etc.  Newspapers were not very old or as pervasive as today.  Perhaps an essay was more likely to be read than a book.
      At the end of this decade that inaugurated the new millennium, Earth Day and Arbor Day may be a great time to remember the clarion call of this very bright, caring, thoughtful minister.

      Reverend Malthus identified a problem that all future generations should be mindful of.  Religion may not have given the problem this man identified proper attention and there may be more than shrift to pay.  Secularists dismiss same because it was too religious.  It would seem to me this minister was doing the best he could with the influence of his generation.  If this has any semblance of truth, ignoring said essay might be the greatest travesty of modern history.  I hope you will agree shortly.

      Now, in our modern influence, to ignore our green earth and simply live for ourselves and our own generation may be, according to Malthus, a shortsighted, selfish way of ignoring developing problems that may raise life threatening problems in this century for our children, grandchildren and beyond.  Life, and the emergence of humans to the top of the food chain, post ice age and post dinosaurs, may have developed a population problem that shall haunt this earth ad infinitum.

      Malthus, early on says that food production on the limited resources of this earth grows arithmetically whereas, the passions of  human’s will produce more population than this earth can sustain.  The geometrical (multiply) expansion of population exceeds the arithmetical (addition) capacity of food production.

      Yes, modern creative agriculture like hydroponics can postpone a developing crisis of nourishment.  However, a really bigger question may need to be asked.  Can infinite growth on a finite planet be sustained?

      Our capitalism, that has done so much for us, may be a two edged sword that delivers a good cut and a bad cut.  Do you think it so?  Let us examine both sides.

      Our society is based on growth.  Growth provides more food, homes, cars, businesses, jobs, transportation, communication, income etc.  If there is a market, capitalism will find a way to serve that market, provide jobs and growth.  The real question we have to ask is how long can this be sustained?  On a finite planet, infinite growth is impossible.   Thus growth can have both, a good side and a bad side.

      Have you noticed most all politicians run for office on growth?  The overt and subtle messages of all campaigns are, more industries, more manufacturing, more housing and the coup de gras for getting votes, more jobs.  Yes, growth always means change and it can cut both ways, good or bad and maybe both.

      Is the picture being painted here coming into focus?  Perhaps I can add some dramatic dimensions to this picture.  It took hundreds of thousands of years for humans to produce approximately 1 billion people by about the year 1750.  I should also mention that this is an expansion of Malthus numbers.  He did not have the privilege to have Einstein and relativity in his back ground so the Reverend saw the world as 6,000 years old, not 13.7 billion years old i.e. from the big bang which is a minor happening in the infinity of relativity.

      Nonetheless, we need to carry forward the startling numbers we just mentioned that Malthus was concerned with.  Think on these geometrical numbers:                                                                                                                                                                                        

Thousands of years to 1750  - 1 billion people on earth

150 years to                 1900 - 2 billion people on earth

100 years to                 2000 – 6 billion people on earth

50 years to                   2050 - estimated 12 billion people on earth

      Subsequent questions; Are we the cancer on mother earth?  Will we tax its resources beyond earth’s ability to recycle fast enough, to support massive demands for food to supply such an enormous population?  Will copper, zinc, steel, iron and other elements be mined to extinction?  If the oceans are over fished now, what will it be like in 2050, or 2100?  When will wood consumption pass our forests capacity to produce consumable wood or has that already happened?  Does urban sprawl and forest depletion help push some flora and fauna to extinction?  With the level of oceans rising from three to twelve feet by the end of this century how much useful land will disappear?   If our host mother earth dies, we humans will die.   Are we the cancer here? 

      Will the momentum to produce children drive the leaders of the world to create wars to help kill off some of the excess population?  Malthus mentions this twice and was very concerned even though he died two centuries ago.

      Which is better, to have never tasted this life or be given life and sent off to war and die?  How do you miss something you never knew?   Would reducing population tend to reduce the need for war?   Malthus thought so.

      With overpopulation looming as one of our greatest threats, Malthus identifies the evolution of food gathering for humans.  The first was the hunter and developers of flocks.  Next in importance is the gatherer, then the pasture or pastoral setting for growing meat and the last was mechanized agriculture of the arable land of which we have only a limited amount and urban sprawl is eating away at that.

      Malthus is very correct in his view that food production grows ‘arithmetically’, whereas population grows ‘geometrically’.  Will the geometric expansion of population continue until the supply and demand for food leave only the upper classes as the ones who can afford to eat?  If so, how far behind would Armageddon be?

      In conclusion, it would seem we should all be grateful that Malthus was very insightful in the last of the 18th century and pointed to those passions of humans to produce population and relate same to the need for geometrical food production.  Also, the consequences of this shadow battle grows exponentially year- by -year.

      Is this the best of all possible worlds as Dr. Pangloss would have us believe or should we abide by the admonition of Candide and tend our garden?  Living under this sword of Damocles is terrifying and will become more so in generations to come.  Let us tend our gardens, be green, as earth day would have us be and savor the greatness of Earth Day and Arbor Day.

       Let us hope that in the next few generations they can be grateful that we showed our love and caring for them by not only focusing on the problem, but also doing something significantly positive about it.  Let us all walk softer on our mother earth regarding our consumable demands and also teach family size restraints.  Our earth needs our enlightened stewardship.                               

A REVISED DR. PANGLOSS

THIS IS OUR ONLY WORLD, i.e.

So far……

ross