The US is experiencing possibly the worst flooding in the Midwest in recorded history and it can be easily attributed to climate change at this point. Many rivers have blasted through flood level records and the Mississippi has been flooded for longer than the longest flood ever recorded in 1927. The 24 hour news media is nearly silent about all of it.
Due to the extreme weather, crops haven't been planted. Corn is 30% under planted and soybeans are over 50% under planted as of today in the Midwest of the United States, and that's just two crops in one country. This is a serious problem and, again, nothing but crickets from the 24 hour news outlets.
Our water tables are being depleted faster than they can replenish themselves. And the best part (sarcasm) is that nobody knows when they run out because nobody really knows how much water they hold in the first place! Could be tomorrow, could be in 30 years - lol, who knows?! (Again, sarcasm.)
We have passed peak oil (yes, it is a thing or off-shore drilling, fracking for oil, and oil sands wouldn't be the go to methods of late, as they're all more expensive) - along with peak (insert nearly any mined raw mineral here.) Oil production isn't slowing because of less demand so much as it's slowing because it costs too friggin much at this point to drill for and/or extract from the remaining sources. If it costs (the monetary equivalent of) 2 barrels of oil to get 1 barrel out, WTF is the point?! I've got no doubt we'll find our rate of largest oil production/extraction, behind us. The same with many other raw materials that are mined/extracted. I mean, wow, oil companies are actually eyeballing the melting Arctic FFS! If peak oil hadn't already arrived, this would not be a thing. (Disclaimer - Get us off fossil fuels, I'm all for it! But production hasn't slowed out of concern for the future, it's slowed because it's harder to find and get out.)
Our economy - (I have to refrain from laughing as the mathematics of the whole system are unbelievably, remedially unsustainable) - Our economic system is in the handle of a hockey stick. Everything about it is exponential at this point. Every chart you look at, whether it's equity values, the money supply, debt (the last two being one and the same) - they are all soaring into the stratosphere simultaneously.
- Dow Historic Chart (take off the log scale if you want to see the ACTUAL curve. If you really want to go crazy, don't adjust for inflation either, as it is a direct result of and corresponds almost entirely with the exponentially increasing debt and money supply - there you'll find the hockey stick!)
I have to dive into the economics a bit more. Of course we've all heard how illogical it is to expect an economy based on infinite growth on a finite planet with finite resources to go on forever. That's just basic math. But our money itself is a lie. I asked my nine year old what she would do if I asked her to keep $10 safe for me for a rainy day. She said she'd dig a hole in a safe place and hide it there. I asked her how she'd feel about giving $10 dollars to someone to keep safe and they, instead, lent out $9 of those dollars (our fractional reserve banking system.) She said she'd be mad, that it would be stealing to do such a thing. And that's just the morality of our monetary system, let alone the exponential growth in currency and debt caused by such practises. A 9 year old girl knows actions like that are wrong, FGS!
Now, I'll go on to where we're headed financially. We've got no ammunition left after 2008. None of the money that "bailed out" all those big banks and corporations ever went where it should have, it inflated the stock market via stock buybacks (at least we're not experiencing rampant inflation as a result, I guess.) The Fed was just barely raising rates at the end of last year, and were barely able. Just a little nudge was all it took to let loose havoc on markets and we ended up in a correction because of it. Now, due to an inverted yield curve. the Fed may be about to start trimming rates again, already. There's barely room left to move them. My god, the 10 year is at 2.1% right now and would, undoubtedly, have to go negative. On top of it all, the US now holds about two and a half times the debt it did in 2007-2008. Again, when the dam breaks this time, we've got nothing left to mitigate the damage. The ammo is spent.
I don't care much about a bunch of rich people biting the bullet when all hell breaks loose, but my guess is that they won't. A few might, but most will snag the loot and run for their safe rooms. It's the rest of us that will pay. Jobs will disappear, people will go belly up. We were within inches of empty grocery store shelves last time - this time, I can't see how we avoid the worst. We're headed straight for a brick wall and it's going to hurt.
I can see that the news media, especially TV news outlets, are largely ignoring the most daunting and serous of threats to our civilization that are occurring, quite literally, as we speak. I also have no doubt they are well aware of what's happening. So many things are hitting so many places all over the world at the same time. You can almost feel things beginning to come undone. You can see that journalism has begun to shrink away from the real issues because they're becoming sooo big, they are so dire - that the corporate run media doesn't want to induce a panic as someone pointed out earlier in this sub. I think that's true. We're sheep following each other off a cliff, merrily humming along. The PTB want to get the loot and get out before too many people wake up to how precariously close to the end we are and we finally begin to fully react to that reality.
My oldest daughter is 18 years old. She is a drug addict and homeless. She disappears for months at a time and then shows up out of nowhere hoping for a place to lay her head, which I readily give, as I'm just happy she'll be safe for the night. It woke me up and suddenly. The collapse is already here. How many of us have close family and friends who are wandering the streets, drifting from couch to couch, numbing themselves to reality and to the pain of it all? They drift through the world without food, without security, and fully apart from our floundering society. It gives me chills. The EOTWAWKI (or - as we knew it) already arrived, but the PTB (the corporate world) work hard to keep our modern civilization's collapse camouflaged behind a mask of mindless chatter, material desires, games, and apps via our phones, tablets, computers, and TVs. This mask, however, is very fragile - and it's beginning to crack. It's standing right in front of us - we just have to be willing to look up.
Some visual context:
Australia's Worst Ever Drought - 2019
Camp Fire in California, US - As seen from space
Syrian Family Looking for Safety
Famine in Sudan
Drought in Kenya
Mumbai Housing
Rio Housing
US Housing
Mother shooting heroin in the streets
Delhi Pollution
Los Angeles Pollution
Our Oceans
Our Whales
The Amazon "Rain Forest" (what used to be)
Alberta Oil Sands
Indian Water Crisis
What's left of the Arctic Ice Cap as of 3 years ago...Spoiler, it'll be worse this year
How we now observe the world
How we now experience the world
How we now interact
The point is, it's not any single thing. Humanity as a species, especially the corporate class, has fucked it all up; the climate, the planet, economic structural integrity, resources, the human mind itself. Now, it's time to pay the Piper.
Collapse is here...
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