The Red Queen Effect

 We can learn much about our current predicament by re-reading a little of Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass".  

What does running faster and faster yet staying in the same place have to do with 8 billion people living in an environment of finite resources?  Let me explain. In previous posts I've shared the reality of mineral quality depletion.  Nothing new there, we all know about some open pit mine that closed when the ore body was no longer profitable to extract.  Or some fishery that has been so depleted it is now illegal to take fish from that area... or - you get the picture.  While all of this has been going on we've been growing in number.  Agricultural progress has allowed us to use more energy and crank up the crop output to feed a hungry world.  So far so good right?  

Back in 1918 the UK was running out of coal and was starting to transition to diesel powered war ships to maintain its ability to project power over its colonies. Not having much coal left and not owning a significant amount of oil... colonization of the honey hole known as the Middle East became a serious project.  There were winners and losers in this adventure which led directly into food insecurity and the stifled economies read:poverty that fueled WW2. 1.8 billion people who did not depend on oil were kicking around.  It's been a mess ever since.  

Back in 1945 the Hudson Institute chronicled the absolute requirement for energy dominance in war and without that dominance WW II would have had a different result. 2.3 billion souls on board.  Let us assume conventional energy dense warfare is now a thing of the past.

Back in 1957 Admiral Rickover gave a serious speech on oil depletion and what a catastrophe we were headed into unless we started to react. 2.8 billion people inhabited the Earth.

Back in 1972 the infamous Limits to Growth models were published (not all of them by the way). 3.8 billion people inhabited the Earth. 

Back in 1976 Roper published "Where have all the minerals gone?" 4.1 billion people inhabited the earth.

Back in the 1980's NASA published papers on the ozone hole... CFC's used in refrigeration, and a bunch of above ground nuclear tests in the Southern Hemisphere were effecting reflection of solar radiation in a giant spherical hole in the Southern Hemisphere. Skin cancer rates jumped. CFC's were banned and so were above ground nuke tests.  The hole will be back to pre 1980's size by 2024.  4.8 billion people inhabited the Earth.

Back in 1997 the Kushi Institute published data indicating that our industrialized farming methods were improving crop yields but drastically reducing vitamin and mineral content in the crops.  "One would have to eat 8 oranges today to get the same amount of vitamin A that our grandparents got by eating just one orange."  Vitamins A and D have a pronounced effect on our immune systems.  Hmmm, maybe boosting crop yield without attention to crop nutrient quality should have been a concern, but if you wanted a good tasting orange you found an organic supplier... not to worry technology to the rescue? 5.9 billion people inhabited the Earth. Gluten is now a thing and hydrogenated oil is too. Thanks FDA, you guys are always looking out for $omebody. Pay attention, the elite prefer to eat organic... no thank you petrochemical juiced crops for the royal we, just for thee.

Back in 2010 the Harvard Gazette published a warning on the jumps in chronic disease. 6.9 billion people inhabited the Earth. Is there a pharmacological solution to nutrient depleted food?  

In 2022 we are starting to see a lot of these articles pop up.  Resource wars, or the realization that a hungry world and an economic machine built upon growth wants to keep getting fed.  Only this time and for the first time shortfalls are global and regional.  The confluence of factors operating in the modern world will make those societies that cannot adapt to changes energy deserts with concomitant consequences.  Cold and dark, not happy places prone to act in desperation. 

Here we are in 2025 and we now have 8.2 billion people on space ship Earth.  Virtually all mineral deposits are of much lower concentrations than just a few years ago requiring much more energy to process and here is the part so many just can't cognate...

Overshoot in population is only apparent when you finally realize that the major inputs to the system a population lives on are noticeably degrading and subtle indications that energy is getting harder to get while everything is being consumed faster than ever before.  Not always easy to see, not profitable to discuss and certainly not a campaign issue to get elected with.  Rate of energy consumption is correlated to our huge population growth and our consumer appetite for economic growth making these factors combined with degradation a non-linear accelerated energy driver. Hence the Seneca Cliff.  Collapse - this time on a global scale - will happen quickly. Physics drives the final scene of how this show ends not investments or institutes, oligarchs or parliament's.  You see once in overshoot the best a population can hope for is that small pockets survive buy planning and good fortune.  

If we consider energy, dozens of reliable sources conclude we are a few years past peak oil production and the consumption rate of 8.2 billion people means we'll burn through what is left quicker than at any previous time in history.  Energy is an important enabling factor in modern life as it is used to provide food, heating, cooling, transportation, manufacturing, medicine, the list is incredibly long.  Of all the knobs and levers, energy is the biggest one! Sorry, wind and solar are intermittent additions not substitutions.  Even nuke fuel is finite.   If you have regional hydro power, you are a lottery winner!

So we have soil quality depletion, we are past peak in energy feedstocks and consuming at record rates, health quality is getting worse as nutrients just aren't there and environmental toxin waste streams grow by the tons every day - we still don't seem to be able to put these issues in front of the 8.2 billion stake holders who live here so we can first, get on the same page and second, start conservation methods in a serious way.  

So today we work harder, as just one example, copper ore is so poor now that it takes hundreds of tons of low grade ore to get the same return we knew in the 1940's with tons of mined ore.  That means exponentially more energy consumed and more labor expended, just to stay at the unsustainable rate of consumption we are now at. Which by the way also requires the creation of 293 "new" mines all of low quality ore, all requiring huge amounts of fuel just to make batteries that need to be charged with oil, coal, gas or nuke power plants - further increasing the energy draw!  The lights are on and nobody is home. 

You and I and most everybody else in 2025 are part of a Red Queen's race.  You don't have to be a part of it, but that will take some planning and changes in your life style.  Support small, sustainable non-petrochemical organic farms. Practice energy conservation, get involved with community awareness and learn how to work together.  Plant a garden, share, help, participate.  Integrate and identify each others abilities to contribute.  

Tick, tick, tick - how many minutes to midnight do you think it is?

Something to ponder...

 There are 50 Billion birds in the World... Birds like dogs, cats, elephants and squirrels can get a flu.  In their immune system, similar to our own, there is the mechanism of acquired immunity as animals get sick, recover or die and regenerate.  This cycle is broken when we decide to NOT let the animal recover and destroy it simply because somebody with a "solution" creates a "test" and proposes a for profit driven remedy. This get sick, recover thing is how life works on this planet. What is not natural is get jabbed and maybe avoid the get sick and recover part. Sometimes for lots or reasons recovery doesn't happen.  Sometimes for lots of reasons get jabbed and get sicker happens too. When we do get the flu and when our feathered friends get it and recover we all get to enjoy natural immunity. 

You can always spot the profit driven narrative when it is suggested that the made for profit jab is better, or represents less risk than the natural way of life.  Close one eye and pretend there are real studies behind the claims.  Recent events have revealed just how shabby that "science" - as in the scientific method - has been applied, or rather corrupted.  Science is after all a method used in a continuous quest for the truth IT IS NOT AN ENDPOINT.  Science is never settled, that is an asinine statement.    Science is a method which challenges, evolves and reveals a better understanding.  The sun doesn't rotate around the Earth. Blood letting didn't cure George Washington.  X-raying feet to get the right size shoe was a bad idea.... the science is settled! Or so say the boisterous fools or - paid to propagandize - idiots of their time. No conscience, just popular faces getting paid to act out a script.  

All of these things seem absurd to us now, but they were solidly held beliefs until the scientific method repeated over and over again that they were indeed truisms.  The folks invested in x-ray machines for shoe stores were pretty mad.  So was the Roman church when in 1600 they were so confident they had it right, only to admit they screwed up in the year 2000.  Bizarrely, the Vatican held onto the righteousness of burning people alive well into the 1940's.  So it sometimes takes a while to refute a dogma.

 Understand?  Think critically, and think for yourself.  

Now there are those who claim we have to vaccinate birds.  50 billion birds are a lot of birds.  Do we wish to suspend logic and pretend that if we jab a few domesticated farm animals the 49.9 billion feathered colleagues will respectfully mask-up and stay away from the domesticated  aviaries? Or you in your back yard? Now our media megaphones are so very concerned with zoonotic jumps it makes one ponder the wisdom of our modern age and the voices of the be$t expert$ money can buy...  Could it be that the mess made by gene experimentation has made the pathways more likely to occur? To whom do we owe the creation of this great threat? Think critically.