Acknowledging Collapse

Next week I will be out of action while I have an operation to remove what has been diagnosed as a melanoma.

My communication with my own brother has been problematical  of late, and after receiving a rejecting and angry email I have had to process the sense of loss at a time when I would have loved some familial support.

As part of processing this I have written this letter to my brother expressing what I would like to say to him.

However, I don't think he would listen, as evidenced by this last email message:

"What righteous anger ? what excuses?

Robin, your writings are getting more and more weird.

Just stop right now.

No more communications in this vein.

I am deleting without reading.... fingers in the ears

Don't need your ramblings ."

Letter to my brother

Seemorerocks

The times in which we both grew up were good. We grew up in a period of peace and prosperity in a family that had done well by producing meat and wool for the colonial power.

You worked for the national airline.

Air NZ were able to provide a silver service for its customers, have a maintenance and service record that was second-to-none, and offer cheap flights all around the world for its employees and their families.

That all changed and In the years following you lost your job at Air NZ and have increasingly scraped a living trying to sell flight tickets to corporates.

Have you never asked why it changed, and why you have had to become more and more efficient, pull in your belt a couple of notches or two and make do with less?

The reason, I put it to you, was this prosperity was essentially based on cheap oil.

As those of us who cared to look into this know, the production peak of oil peaked in 2007.

We have consumed all the cheap, low-hanging fruit and the 50 per cent that remains is more expensive to drill for and of lower quality.

The amount of energy we get for what we spend producing it is decreasing.

That is why in a world that is becoming more and more caught up in a deflationary depression, and trying to keep this at bay by printing money still has $100 a barrel oil. Do you, per chance remember the price of oil prior to 2007 (when it shot up to $147 a barrel) – it was $20 a barrel.

Those days have gone for ever.

The economy is caught in a predicament.

The growing scarcity of cheap, easy-to-get-at oil is keeping the price at a level allowing the industry to invest in forms of "oil', like the Canadian tar sands that are hugely expensive and ultimately a losing concern.

If Peak Oil wasn't a fact why would Saudi Arabia be investing in solar and nuclear power, why would Russia decide to opt for shale? Why would the countries of the world be preparing to explore for oil in the Arctic for the first time? Why would this government be turning this country into one big mine, for anything that can be extracted from land and sea?

Apart from not providing any solution to increasing shortage, the new rape of the planet is killing it.

Global warming is not only as bad as previously projected.

It is much worse.

Last summer there was flooding in Greenland and the ice melted to an extent never previously seen.

At the moment a lot of energy is being put in to melting the polar ice caps. When this happens – possibly this summer, at least by 2015, we can expect to see rapid warming.

Notice that Australia had to add a whole new category to its weather maps to encompass the new world record temperatures.

In addition we are seeing record droughts for a second year in the United States – you won't read that in the NZ Herald!, drought in the Amazon, so severe that instead of absorbing carbon the rain forests have become a net emitter.

In fact, we have seen ten positive feedbacks (like the emission of methane into the atmosphere) because of the melting permafrost.

What this means is that instead of a nice linear causation we are seeing non-linear, mutually-reinforcing feedback.

This means that we have runaway global warming.

Some models predict that this means the extinction of all life on the planet by the year 2030.

I admit that's quite a lot to swallow.

And then there's a whole lot I forgot about – the economy, itself a giant Ponzi scheme cannot be ' fixed', because of energy depletion.

Maybe, by massaging the statistics we might get the odd quarter where things look better.

But basically every year is going to be worse than the year before.

If some of the statistics like unemployment falling (while employment is the States falls, and numbers on Food Stamps rise to unprecedented levels) might be convincing – perhaps some of the other unreported indicators of the economy might also convince you that things aren't quite as good as you would like to see them (with your eyes firmly covered!)

Like the Baltic shipping index

Or coal prices (that we do know about)

or aluminium prices

or numbers of cars manufactured in Europe, or.....

What they indicate is that industrial activity has been declining to unprecedented levels.

Soon, it will become impossible to remain blind (even with ears and eyes firmly covered).

How are we going to respond?

Maybe we can go for another round of belt tightening while hoping everything will be better next year.

Maybe we can continue to believe everything Mr. Key tells us.

Personally, I'd be sitting back, take stock and start to tend veges at your house in Taupo.

I know you won't do this.

You will remain eyes and ears covered, blame the messenger, and take some more 'hopium'.

At this stage of the proceedings, insisting that we need economic growth above everything else is a bit like the claims of the alcoholic that he needs another drink while, by-and-by he is dying of liver failure.

Myself, I prefer to look truth straight in the face.

The death of an alcoholic is unlikely to be painless.