With regard to the unraveling, that is changing. The media seems to be waking up.

From the New York Times: Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism – A non-judgemental (unless the fops at the Times are keeping their tongues firmly in their cheeks on this one. If so, it was lost on me.

The UK’s Telegraph: RBS issues global stock and credit crash alert This is the Royal Bank of Scotland saying this, by the way:

“A very nasty period is soon to be upon us – be prepared,” said Bob Janjuah, the bank’s credit strategist.

And finally, from the Wall Street Journal: Peak Oil: IEA inches toward the Pessimists’ camp.>

The word is getting out and hitting the mainstream, or more accurately, the non-salacious mainstream. The Telegraph? The Journal? The NYT? To be real, these outlets aren’t reporting the whole story, nor are they reporting it with the alarm that’s due, but it is showing up on their radar, which I find at once, both interesting and very troubling. I’m starting to thing our problems are bearing down on us much faster than we thought.

Be prepared.

But that’s sadly, a misreading of how it all works. Everything in our world and universe, for that matter, works through the machine of cycles. It’s built into the source code of our existence, and to deny it, is just self-delusion. We see it and teach it in our educational institutions, study it in our labs and think-tanks and even applaud it in our entertainment (Think The Lion King’s ‘Circle of Life’. But when it comes to life in the U.S. and the Western World, we think it can only get better, bigger and faster, forever and forever.

We are wrong.

The U.S. is currently in a period of wealth and prosperity that eclipses all others that have gone before, and all that means, is we have a bigger correction coming that will eclipse all others seen before. We are better fed (in terms of quantity, if not quality), better paid, and generally more comfortable than any people who have lived on this earth who weren’t royalty.

We are so set up for a correction, it boggles the mind. From the housing bubble, to the derivatives debacle, to the simple fact that we’re so fouling the nest of human habitation, things cannot, repeat can not continue on in this way forever.

It simply won’t.

But the vast majority of people living in the Western World don’t see this at all. They will be totally unprepared for the slightest break in our upward spiral of quality of life. In the 1940s, a move 100 years back in time, with regard to the way we lived, would have been hard, but doable. The U.S. economy was still a “working and producing” economy, with large amounts of resources going to the local and domestic production of food. Today? Not the case.

In terms of how we live, how far “back in time” could we go and not end up completely helpless? Our information economy would have a hard time returning to 1998 in terms of technology. A crash back to the way we did things in 1988 would wreck us badly, and 1978, 30 years in our past, would be an absolute paradigm shift for us. But that really doesn’t seem to worry many of us, because so many in our society (and in our “leadership” as well) can’t imagine an event, or series of events, that could make us recede from the way we live today.

If this message resonates in any way, and you’re interested in exploring this idea further, read The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. It’s a sobering presentation of the situation we live in today, and what Kunstler is sure is going to happen in the future. His website is also a dark, but refreshingly simple and realistic view of the dangerous situation we Americans are on the brink of today.

George Ure’s Urban Survival is a warning-filled, yet optimistic site that can help you see our situation today, as well.

It is the opinion of the editor of this website that we have reached the apex of this cycle, and that all-pervasive universal force, gravity, will start to reassert its influence in our lives in ways most of us can’t imagine.

Prepare.

I’ll do what I can to help.

Michael MacLeod
Editor – WhatComesNext.net

Technorati Tags:
Depression, Economy, Stock Market Crash, Apocalypse, Long Emergency, Kunstler

There are a couple reasons for this.

We prepare what we eat more than we do at home in the States. Much less fast and pre-packaged foods. Those are available, they’re just not part of our experience when we’re there. Habits are different, and tend toward the local more than the American.

We’re not constantly shopping. We’re seeing family, visiting friends and getting out and walking more. We usually don’t rent a car, unless we plan cross-country trips, and instead rely on public transportation when walking won’work.

I think in the United States, we’re not really aware of how complicated we make our lives. From the constant “need” to shop to the messages, both essential and non-essential, that bombard us. Disengaging from the habits we have here can be a real wakeup call.

For another wakeup call, watch this video from ethicalbrand.org.

As we Americans proceed to pick our leaders for the coming years, we need to make sure we select people who will lead us out of the wasteland our over-consuming-based cultural philosophies have put us in.

It’s essential that we simplify our lives, both nationally and personally, or American culture will disappear.

Technorati Tags: Depression, Economics, Politics, Recession

My family was affected by the California Wildfires, my parents losing their home early Monday morning. The first reverse-911 call came in at about midnight, suggesting they prepare to evacuate. Two hours later, the call came – evacuate immediately. They did. Probably in the next couple hours, the home my father designed and built on a scenic hillside outside San Diego in a small gated community was consumed by fire so quickly nothing identifiable remained. Everything burned, melted and congealed into a pile of rubble. It was truly amazing.

But all are okay, the house and contents insured and life goes on. For them, at least. For those not insured or prepared (and there are many, as we will hear about in the coming weeks) life is difficult right now. Some overly optimistic watchers are actually excited, saying the disaster will create a huge demand for new housing, with new jobs, materials purchased and will result in a new California real estate boom. Their theory is that the excess supply of California housing just got burned down.

Sadly, that’s not true. The real estate inventory problem in California isn’t one of structures, it’s one of credit. The subprime meltdown is shutting off the financing for overpriced-underafforded housing. There aren’t too many houses on the market, there’s a shortage of buyers who though unable to truly afford them, were previously able to finance them. Big difference. I think a lot of burned down houses will stay down for the count. All won’t be rebuilt right away.

Rather than saving the California economy, I fear these wildfires will deal it a harsh blow.

Technorati : California, Wildfires

I believe that in that lies the reason Al Gore is being coy about entering the fray. He’ll let the others screw themselves and each others, as political candidates almost always do, then jump in at a more economical time. He’s no dummy, and probably the only person who can lead us out of this morass with some union and economy intact.

No Confidence? by Jim Kunstler

Here is a great example of that.

Paul Watson is NOT saying "exterminate 5.5 billion people." He’s saying that if our particular species is to survive, we must radically alter the way we live. Unfortunately, the change will not be made willingly, but only in response to the earth’s reaction to us (global warming) and our species’ own war-like habits. Calling Watson a "wacko" or would-be genocide is pointless, and quite frankly, a lie that distracts others from the truth – that we’re on a bad path in this world.

Will we heed the warning? No. We’re too way into our plasma TVs, SUVs, jet-set lifestyle to ever change enough to avoid eventual catastrophe.

The Beginning of the End for Life As We Know It On Planet Earth? | Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Website

Global warming soon will "affect everyone’s life … it’s the poor sectors that will be most affected," Romero Lankao said.

 

And co-author Terry Root of Stanford University said: "We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction" of species.

The report also says that because of climate change, at first, crop yields will benefit from the longer growing season, but the benefits will be short lived.

Link: My Way News – Warming Report to Warn of Coming Drought

Talking to a couple of supporters of "President Bush, right or wrong," yesterday reminded me of this. Once I happily agreed that mankind didn’t cause global warming, probably just hastened the cycle we’re in, they were fine and interested in talking about it. If only our leaders were that easy.

Australian biologist Tim Flannery has called the human species “The Future Eaters”. Indeed, paleo-anthropology suggests many historical societies collapsed due to resource depletion even though they must have been aware of it. The example made famous by Jared Diamond is ‘what was that Easter Islander thinking that chopped down the last tree’? The best documented recent mass extinctions of flightless birds and other large mammals from New Zealand and Madagascar show that humans were to blame. Though Neandertals and early Homo Sapiens did hunt game without hunting it out, upper Paleolithic hunters were more numerous and better equipped for mass slaughter – 100,000 horses killed at one site, a thousand mammoths at another. Given the millions of years of shaping of our neural circuitry, it is hard to imagine that our mental structure has changed that much in the last few thousand years.

What’s great about this post is that the comments are as engaging, intelligent and thought-provoking as the article. Read and save.

The New York Times has an excellent read on the true implications of the recent scientific assurance that global warming is being accelerated by human activity.

In essence, the debate over characterizing the near-term rise in seas is akin to arguing whether a car starting to roll down a hill toward a cliff is going 1 mile per hour or 2.

Scientists were left wondering if the public would grasp this as disaster.

How quickly does the water have to move toward your neck before you panic (especially if, like Leonardo DiCaprio in “Titanic,” you’re handcuffed to the ship)?

How quickly, indeed?

Sadly, humans are masters of both self-deception and magical thinking. Most of us look in the mirror in the morning and think “wow, lookin’ good” when often we don’t. Often, we don’t apply a lot of objectiveness to that image, but rather use the reflection as reassurance that all is well. It’s why we’re often shocked when we see a rather unflattering picture of us. It’s what others see all the time, but not what WE see. That’s because we’re so used to that bathroom mirror image. We look at the world the same way, often substituting a soothing “all is well” view, and ignoring the gradually accumulating blemishes, whether they be rising average temperatures, melting ice caps or massive, unexpected super storms.

If that’s not bad enough, we’re also prone to magical thinking that leads us to believe that if we wish really, really hard, nothing bad will happen, or the superbrains will come up with a solution at the last minute cinema-style.

Either quirk of personality can cause problems. Both together can spell serious problems, and that’s where we are right now. Our home planet’s climate is changing, but we insist on believing otherwise, or worse, arguing over whether it’s been man or nature that’s to blame. Whoever or whatever is responsible at this point is unimportant, what we do to continue to thrive, and to relieve suffering is all that is important.