Tough to write and even tougher to understand

Walter Bushell wrote:
Doug Freyburger wrote:

The good news on world hunger is each year a smaller percentage of the
world population goes hungry. There's only a little more improvement to
go in that percentage before the absolute number of people who go hungry
starts going down. Across history well fed people have had fewer
children so feed the world and the crowding decreases, not that that has
ever happened yet in world history but it might and it is likely to
actually happen in the next few decades.

Meanwhile we got problems maintaining the present standard of living.

On the time scale of years, economic health bounces up and down about
every decade with other cycles effecting how big the peaks and valleys
are. That's not good news for last year but it is good prediction for 4
years from now. The trend of decreasing hunger percentage should
continue decade to decade even if it does not happen each and every
year.

And doing that while the other societies improve above subsistence is
going to be very, difficult.

I am quite optimistic on this front. When I was a kid "Made in Japan"
was synonymous with "junk" and Japanese labor was cheap labor. A
generation or two later "Made in Japan" is synonymous with "quality" and
Japanese labor is even more expensive than American labor. Already
factories in India and China are being outsourced to cheaper regions.
My reason for optimism is simple - The places with cheap labor are
getting farther apart and there are a limited number of such places. In
a generation no place outside of Africa will be poor. In two generation
no place outside of Antarctica will be poor. And I'm not worried about
the population of poor people in Antarctica. I might still be alive
when this process covers the entire world. I make no claim that the
process will be pleasant. Losing industrial jobs to Japan when I was a
child was not easy to the folks in the generation before mine who were
just barely to young to serve in WWII. NAFTA is not now easy. But
there's only so much world no matter that it's big.

We are doing irrigation with mined fossil water. The water tables are
dropping world wide and the Arid Zone in the American West is returning
to normal rainfall.

This is a serious problem. What is now the gigantic Gobi desert in
central Asia was once huge tracks of grain land and the steppes/prairies
that the horsemen of the "Indo-European" invasion came from. They came
because their land was lush enough to trigger a population boom but now
their descendents wonder at the hills where ruins are found. Digs in
the Sahara show ancient populations as well.

Note that the growth of deserts has been happening since the glaciers
melted. It's not new but it is accelerating as humans cut and burn rain
forrests. Brazil nuts and other forest nuts are low carb! Think
globally, act locally, buy rain forest friendly products.

Meanwhile the politicians can think of no way out except growth, if they
want to be politicians.

Note that my two projections into the future conflict. I don't know
what the time scales involved are but the optimistic projections could
happen and then the pessimistic projection after that. We'd be Atlantis.

I don't know how to resolve the water problem given the prehistory of
the Gobi and Sahara deserts. I look to the dropping price and rising
usage of solar power and wonder how such renewable power might be
applied to the issue. Thinking about it is speculation today. Working
the issue is for 1-3 decades from now. Just in time for my grandkids to
grow up and participate in the work.

In article ,
Doug Freyburger wrote:

On the time scale of years, economic health bounces up and down about
every decade with other cycles effecting how big the peaks and valleys
are. That's not good news for last year but it is good prediction for 4
years from now. The trend of decreasing hunger percentage should
continue decade to decade even if it does not happen each and every
year.

With increasing temperatures in the tropics and sub-tropics, where 2/3
of humanity lives, comes decreasing crops. So the people who had the
least to do with climate change, will be the first to pay the price.
Meanwhile, we in the first world can watch them die on television,
because the consequences of "Global Warming" will reach the temperate
regions last.

Coupled with run-a-way population growth (12 billion people by 2067),
the future that we are heading for looks very, very bleak.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/2...al_crime_scene