There's No Tomorrow - A New 34-Minute Film

Do you still think that economic growth and population growth can continue indefinately?

Why Are Twinkies Cheaper than Carrots?

In prior posts I've criticized farm subsidies from the US government. Here is a video that puts it in clear and simple terms:

Fossil Fuels are Heavily Subsidized

According to the Bloomberg website, fossil fuels received six times the subsidies that renewable energy received from the governments of the world last year. The article cites the International Energy Agency's report of an increase to an equivalent of $409 billion in subsidies for natural gas, coal and gasoline. This happened despite a 2009 pledge by G20 nations to phase out subsidies for "carbon-based fuels [that are] dug or pumped out of the earth."


Do you know where I'm going with this?


According to the IEA's World Energy Outlook, the subsidy of fossil fuels creates "market distortions that encourage wasteful consumption." And the "costs of subsidies to fossil fuels generally outweight the benefits."

I know that it is hard for politicians to say no to Chevron and BP after they've received such generous campaign contributions, but the world would be a better place if they did so.

Economic Growth is a Racket

Nationally renowned retired physics professor Albert Bartlett told an interviewer in 2005 that he suspected that economic growth "has never paid for itself. It's a racket."

But what a racket it is. Every candidate for Congress, the presidency and down to the mayors of towns and cities big and small know that they have to promise growth to get elected and re-elected. The same is true for businesspeople of all stripes: they have to either make sales go up or explain why they are momentarily down and then, if that is the case, they are also expected to have a way to ensure increased revenues and profits in the future. But look, I don't want to single out politicians and businesspeople, because the concept of growth has been supported by the vast majority of our economists and never questioned by the vast majority of ordinary Americans. Furthermore, historically speaking, we've been able to maintain growth in our population and our gross domestic product and in other measures over the last several decades.

On the other hand, math and logic tell us that growth cannot go on forever. (I mean, people cannot keep using more and more resources on the surface of a finite planet Earth...sooner or later it will have to stop, right?)

Anyway, you don't have to take my word for it, get it from the accomplished physics professor, Al Bartlett:


The description for this video on the YouTube site reads:

Two million views for an old codger giving a lecture about arithmetic? What's going on? You'll have to watch just to see what is so damn amazing about what he (Albert Bartlett) has to say.

Documentary Blames the Banksters for the Financial Collapse of 2008

Few of us are naive enough to believe that the bailouts and other measures the United States used in response to the financial collapse of 2008 have solved our problems. In fact, many experts believe that another - possibly more severe - financial/economic crisis is coming. The argument for this upcoming crisis can be approached from a number of angles.

For example, are any regulations now in effect that will prevent a bank from being "too big to fail"?

I could ask other questions, but you get the idea.


Filmmaker Charles Ferguson won an Academy Award for his documentary Inside Job. As the title suggests, Ferguson believes that the financial collapse of 2008 was caused by the financial industry itself. In taped interviews, Ferguson catches not just CEOs, but also policymakers and Ivy League professors with their hands in the cookie jar. Inside Job is no longer freely available through Top Documentary Films. Instead, I encourage you to purchase the DVD from Amazon.


Here's the trailer to get you psyched:

Do you Understand Peak Oil?

One hundred years ago, Baku, Azerbaijan was a huge industrial center and one of the most affluent cities in the world. Baku got to that point thanks to its abundant oilfields which produced up to 5000 tons of crude oil per day back then.

The graphic above is something I captured from a 6-part YouTube presentation called Understanding Peak Oil. Clearly they aren't getting 5000 tons of crude per day in Baku anymore, in fact it looks like they completely gave up on drilling altogether.



Understanding Peak Oil makes it clear that what happened in Baku has also happened elsewhere. McCamey Texas, for example:

Above: A picture from McCamey decades ago
Below: The mayor of McCamey, TX today in front of the rusted machinery used during their oil boom.


Much of Venezuela also has that former-oilfield-turned-to-wasteland look:


As I write this, I'm aware that the American economy depends heavily upon oil not just for transporation, but also for agriculture and manufacturing. And the worst thing of all is that we don't have a Plan B ready to go.

Tough times are ahead.

Or are they? Watch Understanding Peak Oil to make up your own mind.

Here's part one of Understanding Peak Oil:

CIA World Factbook: We're Not Number 1

Statistics that were compiled by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in their World Factbook, were put on a chart that ran in the New York Times a few days ago.

Since the chart is nearly impossible for you to read here, please check it out on the NYT site.

According to the statistics, we are a less democratic nation than we used to be.

Furthermore, of the thirty-three countries on the chart, we have the most food insecurity, which is defined as the percentage of people surveyed who didn't have the money to buy the food needed for their family at some point over the past 12 months.

Oh yeah, and we also have by far the largest prison population, but you knew that.

It is no wonder that the Times gave their chart the title "American Shame."

How and Why to go Retro-Techno

I'm not talking about music here, I'm talking about retreating to simpler (older), or more "primitive" forms of technology. I'll give you some resources that will provide a "how," but first, I'll briefly explain the "why."


If you can get past a few anachronistic elements (for example, language that we now consider sexist) a lot of practical information can be gleaned from retro-techno resources like this 1940's article from the Popular Science archives (right).






Let's take cars for one example. The autos being made today are so "high-tech" that specialized training and equipment is often needed to work on them. In the old days, pretty much any "handy" person could fix pretty much any vehicle. So flexibility and the potential to save a lot of money is part of the upside of going retro-techno.

Another thing to think about is the unrest going on in the Middle East right now. Our own media has only addressed this turbulence as a democracy vs. dictatorship kind of conflict, but more is going on. Larger numbers of people are being forced to live with less food available at higher and higher prices. Furthermore, countries - Egypt being one of them - that used to export oil now consume more than they produce. Although it may be difficult to accept, we Americans are also stressed by rising food prices and our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels. We are living in uncertain times. Therefore, I think the best reason to go retro-techno is that it will help you to "do for yourself", that is, to be more self-reliant.


Okay here are some resources:


Archives of Popular Science magazine has sections dealing with gadgets, cars, science and technology. The site features videos and galleries and - best of all - you can search the contents of the magazine itself as far back as the 1940's.


Instructables.com is a site that features brief how-to's posted by ordinary people. Some are practical like the "How to Grow Oyster Mushrooms" post; others, like the post that shows you how to breathe underwater, might seem to be a little bit goofy.














Makezine also has a wide variety of things you can get to work on. It appears to be better illustrated and more "professional" than the instructables site.

The Failblog's "There I Fixed it" repairs section features creative ideas like how to make your Ford look like a Mercedes with only a piece of cardboard and a magic marker.


One last piece of advice for adjusting to harder times: Spend time with elderly people, they know what life was like in simpler times where people had to work hard to get by. Just get them started and they'll tell you all about it.

We're in Bad Shape

I'm going to be the bearer of bad news again. Our safety net (or call it our doomed cluster of entitlement programs) is in bad shape. My purpose in writing isn't to blame anybody but instead to let you know where we are at and where it might lead.

According to the Associate Press, Social Security has fallen into a "permanent deficit." In 2011, the Social Security Administration will pay out $45 billion more in retirement, disability and survivor checks than it takes in in payroll taxes. And as the baby boomers retire, bigger and bigger deficits will pile up. At the rate we're going, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tells us, nothing will be left by 2037. However, many people, myself included, are inclinded to think that the CBO's projection is overly optimistic.

What can we do?
Ignore the problem until the money is completely gone?

Another option was presented in an article by Charles Hugh Smith. If anybody else has any better ideas, please let me know - or let our elected officials know.

Where can I Find Statistics Related to Credit and the Mortgage Crisis?

So you're looking for an authoritive source that will provide statistics - and other information - related to the American credit/debt scene, including, or especially, the mortgage crisis.

Look no further than U.S. Credit Conditions, a resource of the Federal Rerserve Bank of New York.




This resource features lots of charts, graphs, and interactive maps. Choice, the American Library Association's magazine of academic reviews praised U.S. Credit Conditions as "essential for research on the US consumer credit scene generally and the morgage crisis particularly" (December 2010 issue, page 744).

Frontline on the Big Spill

PBS's Frontline teamed up with the investigative journalists at Propublica to bring us a 53+ minute documentary on the culture of BP that was certainly a big factor in the oil spill of 2010.

Morgan Stanley: "Higher [oil] prices will be needed to ration demand"

As you may know, it is not only our transportation system, but our nation's entire economy that runs on oil. As a result, Morgan Stanley's prediction of an upcoming oil shortage - which will, of course, result in higher prices - should be a cause for concern to all of us.

In case you haven't noticed, the economy is already in bad shape. Any talk about recovery is meaningless to so many unemployed and underemployed Americans. But Morgan Stanley's report means that even the level of stability that we now have cannot be maintained.

As Bloomberg.com's Dinakar Sethuraman reported on Monday, Morgan Stanley released a research report that predicted that spare production capacity of crude oil will drop to "untenable levels" by the end of 2012. Following that, "[t]ighter, impossible levels of spare capacity are seen from 2013 to 2015."

Since it won't be easy to decrease the amount of oil we consume, Morgan Stanley asserts that "higher prices will be needed to ration demand."

Look, I don't drive enough for higher prices at the pump to bother me. Instead, what I and many experts are worried about is that the price of a barrel of oil will get high enough to upset the applecart of our economy, kind of like it did in 2008 when oil peaked at $147. I know that other factors were also in play (the mortgage crisis, for instance) but let's face it, those other factors have not gone away and will not go away in the next few years.

The far-ranging ramifications of a persistently high price of oil is not good news, but if I have startled you from complacency I may have done you a favor.


** Here's an article, from The Oil Drum blog, which explains why recession results after the price of oil reaches $80 per barrel or higher (btw, that is where we are at right now).

** For more on this topic also see "Temporary Recession or the End of Growth," by Richard Heinberg.

Savings Tips for Students

I know college tuition is expensive, so to find ways to save money on everything else is very important. I think this website was very helpful with offering tips and suggestions to students (non students can use them as well).

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2006/08/30/27-money-tips-for-college-students/

Online Film: Overdose

A new 46-minute film was uploaded to YouTube a few days ago. I do not remember seeing (or reading) a better overview of our current and future financial crisis than this one. Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis from Journeyman Pictures is the real deal, a piece of journalism that, while not looking for somebody to blame, isn't pulling any punches either. Essentially what our leaders have done in recent years is to boost our economy through stimuus spending and lower interest rates. While the film doesn't question that those tricks worked in the past, it makes it clear that we're now at a point where rates cannot go any lower and stimulus spending and bailouts have put us under a great burden of debt.





Both Democrats and Republicans have historically encouraged more home ownership. The creation of a financial environment where it was too easy for Americans to own a home ultimately led to the subprime mortgage crisis. (Remember the collapse of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?)







President Obama's "Cash for Clunkers" program is one example of an economic stimulus that was not (in my opinion) worth the debt our nation went into to fund it.





Watch Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis now!

Understand Peak Oil in Eight Minutes

While not always using its proper name, I've addressed the startling concept of peak oil before in this blog. In previous posts, I've recommended The Party's Over, sometimes referred to as the quintessential peak oil book, and Blind Spot, a remarkably well-done 86-minute online video that addresses both the seriousness of peak oil and the reasons why people are only beginning to become aware that it is (or will be) a reality.



If you haven't been able to find the time to read The Party's Over, or watch Blind Spot, I'm offering you an eight-minute alternative today. The title, 91•86•90, probably won't grab you, but if you can get past the somewhat monotone narration, this is another well-done online video with a peak oil focus.


Uploaded to YouTube in May of 2009, 91•86•90 was created by investment banker Steven Crowel. If you pay close attention, you'll come away agreeing that peak oil is "a near-term issue that will have profound influences [on our] lives."

What do the Brits Think of Our New Bank Regulations?

Most people I've spoken to - whether they were Democrats, Republicans, or Independents - were against the huge bailout that we taxpayers recently gave to the financial industry. The bailout is now, of course "water over the dam." The best we can hope for at this point is to have learned something from it and move forward as a nation. Unfortunately, however, according to our British friends and their weekly newspaper, the Telegraph, our leaders didn't learn much and we've essentially wasted another crisis.



Last week, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill into law. While it was hailed by some as the most sweeping overhaul of US financial regulation since the 1930s, many people were unimpressed. The title of the article I will quote from is "Obama signs a bill that lets banks have US over a barrel once more."

[T]he sad reality is that Dodd-Frank fails to address the fundamental problems that resulted in the sub-prime fiasco and the related damage to not just America, but also the entire global economy.

Here's what essentially happened as the Telegraph sees it:

Big Wall Street institutions...caused a global economic crisis...forced the U.S. government to pay for a massive bail-out, but then used a slice of that bail-out cash to bribe politicians with campaign donations in order to block rule changes that might prevent a repeat performance.

Maybe you feel that that is "just business as usual" for our leaders in Washington, but I expected better.

A Promise Made by the Last Eight Presidents

Jon Stewart, America's favorite bogus news anchor, recently reviewed a promise that the last eight American presidents have made and not delivered on. That promise, updated last week by our current chief executive, Barack Obama, is to resolve our ongoing energy crisis which has led to inflation, wars, environmental catastrophe, and dependence on foreign nations.

Unfortunately, President Obama's vague statement about "unleashing America's innovation" will not be enough to resolve our worsening crisis (far from it). Instead, every American will have to make a serious effort to consume less energy and less of the things that are made with energy. If that was easy, we would have resolved the issue by now.

Click here to watch Stewart's rant (originally seen on Comedy Central's The Daily Show).

Lloyd's of London: "Bad Times Have Not Yet Hit"

The CEO of British insurance giant Lloyd's has just released a paper which predicts that the economic calamities we've been facing over the last few years are minor when compared to what is coming soon. Our global economy is based on the concept of growth and growth depends on energy, cheap energy to be exact. Therefore, when the paper predicts that the price of oil will soon hit $200 per barrel, the ramifications add up to a lot more than just a higher price at the gas pump.

The author of the document, Dr. Richard Ward, says that the world “has entered a period of deep uncertainty in how we will source energy for power, heat and mobility, and how much we will pay for it."

As Dr. Ward admits, it will be difficult for many people to accept how bad he expects things to get. He acknowledges that the truly "bad times have not yet hit."

On the other hand, those same predictions are nothing new if you've been reading all of my posts over the last few months (perhaps the difference is that this warning comes from business and industry, instead of from scientists, journalists or filmmakers).

Sustainable Energy Security is the title of Dr Ward's paper.

The paper was described on the "Peak Generation" blog.

And, if you haven't read my previous posts about films and other media on this topic, now's your chance to do so:

Online Film: The End of Suburbia

Online Film: Blind Spot

The World Consumption Clock

Edward Burtynsky's Photography

King Corn: A documentary About America's Most Subsidized Crop

The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies

Footage of the Horizon Disaster

Dmitri Orlov, a Russian American blogger, likes to compare the vulnerabilities of the present United States with that of the former Soviet Union where he grew up. His current post, An American Chernobl, is no exception. One of the commenters to that post, known only by the screen name "Overseer" shared a video that he made "detailing the true scope of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill." You already know something about this disaster from its ongoing media coverage, so with no further introduction, I invite you to watch this video from the filmaker known on YouTube as "overseeroftruth."






Overseer's comment left on Orlov's blog concludes with this passage from the Book of Revelation:

And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died.
-Revelation 8:8-9

Is something wrong with this picture? Has BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, lost any sleep over this? Does he have a conscience?

Online Film: The End of Suburbia

"We're stuck up a cul-de-sac in a cement SUV without a fill-up" James Howard Kunstler

So begins The End of Suburbia, a film that was regarded as alarmist and overly pessimistic when it first came out. However, in the last six years, many things have happened that might make reasonable people change their minds.

While higher energy prices, and higher prices for the products that use energy in their manufacture or distribution may have left many looking for somebody to blame, others are questioning if the so-called "American Way of Life" is sustainable or not.




A number of experts who appear in The End of Suburbia make a strong argument that the suburban way of life is not sustainable. In fact, it doesn't even appear to be enjoyable with all the long commutes, the traffic, and the expenses of maintaining a large house on a large lot, far away from the other places you need to go.

In addition to the large costs that suburbanites are shelling out, there are other costs borne by the taxpayer. Not many people realize that the wires, pipes, roads, and other infrastructure that make suburban living possible are subsidized with taxpayer dollars.




And isn't there something dishonest about the very essence of suburban living? The romantic names of subdivisions attempt to evoke an intercation with nature. But isn't it obvious that development itself is what is slowly but steadily using nature up and paving it over?




Instead of leaving the attentive viewer cowering in fear, The End of Suburbia leaves us with possible solutions. In particular, something called "The New Urbanism" is discussed.

Thanks to Top Documentary Films, you can watch The End of Suburbia right now!