The Economy, Dire Projections, and Peak Water

The Economy-Dire Projections, and Peak Water

The Economy-Dire Projections: This comes from an 8/26/09 post from Capitalism Magazine by John Lewis, via SurvivalBlog (survivalblog.com) on 8/31/09, entitled “The Collapse of America? The Dire message of Mr. David Walker”.

The article is as important for who Mr. Walker is/was as for what it says and here’s some of both:

• “David Walker is the former Comptroller General of the United States and former head of the Government Accountability Office. …the nation’s chief accountant …”
• “His long-range perspective allows him to project fiscal trends decades into the future, and to assess, through simulations, the impacts of policy decisions beyond their immediate effects.”
• “When Walker plotted these trends, and considered demographics among many other factors, what he found was ‘chilling.’ If fundamental reforms are not begun now, he concluded, the United States will experience a financial and political collapse comparable to the fall of Rome.”
• “The bottom line is this: fiscal entitlements (read: Social Security, Medicare, etc./PH), projected into the future, are over 52,000 billion dollars. That will equal 90% of all household wealth in the U.S., and will place a burden of over 450 thousand dollars on every household in the land. This is almost ten times the present median household income level.”

Peak Water: TheBurningPlatform.com is the source of this post: “Peak Water”.

It is an extremely valuable article concerning the critical resource, water; how it’s being used today and how it will be used in the future. Here’s some of the post:

• “It should be obvious from simple arithmetic that population growth is on a direct collision course with increasingly scarce resources.” – Jeremy Grantham (“brilliant investment manager“)
• “Freshwater shortages in the wrong places could have calamitous consequences to those regions, worldwide commodity prices, the economic future of nations with water shortages and possible war. Regional water scarcity means water usage exceeds the annual natural replenishment from the water cycle. The impact of water scarcity can … lead to food shortages, famine, and starvation. Many nations, regions and states have mismanaged their water resources, and they will have to suffer the long-term consequences.”
• “We must prepare ourselves for waves of higher resource prices and periods of shortages unlike anything we have faced outside of wartime conditions.” – Jeremy Grantham –
• “In real life our species has such a modest ability to deal with distant outcomes or to defer gratification that a bad ending is probably inevitable. We need it seems, the shock of a Pearl Harbor to really gear up and make sacrifices.“ – Jeremy Grantham
• “A looming crisis of food shortages and skyrocketing commodity prices is inevitable. Peak water will play a significant role … .”
• Here are some of the undeniable facts;

1. Droughts in key farming areas due to climate change.
2. Soil erosion and depletion of underground aquifers.
3. ‘Worldwide population growth, with … expanding … diets.”
4. “War over resources has happened before and it will happen again.
5. … The question is who will attack who and when. IN THE MEANTIME, PLANT A VEGETABLE GARDEN (caps/ph).”

Until nest time; keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.