Six of the Reasons Why California Faces a Major Crash

submitted by a CASF Member

California Accelerating To Major Crash!

1. Exponential Growth Economy. California, a subset of planet Earth [really!] is a finite entity with finite resources. The blind, brainless monster of exponential growth economy, a creature of the US political economy and Calif politics, demands infinite resources, especially energy, and services, especially carbon sinks, to continue its malignant growth. Whether Calif is governed by Arnold Schwarzenegger or a super-intelligent android back from the future, it makes very little difference in the ultimate outcome—a major crash.

2. Centralization. As the rate of increase in the complexity of Calif socioeconomic “model” [therefore its governance and decision-making processes] accelerates, the region becomes more vulnerable and susceptible to violent oscillations against even the slightest of changes in its “equilibrium state.” [Visualize the chaos that would occur on a crowded, fast-moving 8-lane highway, when a single vehicle goes out of control.]

3. Complexity. The disastrous impact of hurricane Ike on the power grid earlier this month,  which left up to 5 million people without power, was a stark remainder and yet another a wake-up call to how complex systems, the centralized power grid, could collapse “suddenly” and  with disastrous consequences. There will be many more instances of systems collapses, some more paralyzing than the others, in the country, especially in those states that are burdened with higher levels of socioeconomic complexity, in the coming weeks, months and years.

4. Information flow. To identify the exact nature of problems that beset a complex system, build an accurate picture of interconnectivity that exists between those issues, and create long term [syn: sustainable] applicable solutions, the decision-makers require:

• Accurate, detailed, up-to-date information – currently NOT supplied!
• Thorough knowledge of how each component of the system works – presently NOT available!
• Deep understanding of how those components operate [or don’t operate] in interconnection [syn: unison] – NOT on the menu, right now!

5. Personal stake, 2nd-home mentality. The decision-makers must understand the consequences of a major crash [societal or ecological.] When a major crash occurs in any country, or large geopolitical region, there would absolutely be no guarantee of containment. The knock-on effect of any major crash [or multiple smaller crashes] would render futile most “survival insurance plans,” for example, 2nd homes, or hideaway cabins in less populated states, or in “safer” countries.

6. Radical Changes. Desperate problems require “radical” solutions. California suffers from socioeconomic gangrene. Cosmetic dressing only hides symptoms of the disease temporarily, but delaying the cure will kill the patient. Unfortunately, deep-seated fundamental changes to save the community of life are not allowed at the expense of GDP growth .

Original Entry:

• Calif : Heading Toward a Major Crash

Related News Links:

• Schwarzenegger: Any president better than Bush on global warming
• California invites countries to carbon cap meeting

Related Links:

• Blind scientists examining the economic elephant
• World Problems:The Root Cause Matrix
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

• How to Ensure National Security AND Create a Healthy Economy!
• The 13 things you should know about the world before you depart prematurely!
• Intelligent Communities: 286W
• Gore the revolutionary; Gore the exclusionary

An Effective System of Mass Extinction

The Exponential Growth Economy is Committing Life to Extinction

Yet, our top scientists want to preserve the economic system, instead of sustaining life on Earth!

Instead of urging an immediate end to the exponential growth economy and demanding a zero-growth, low carbon, waste-free oikonomia for managing the environment, welfare of humans and other living species, and a system of ‘housekeeping’ for the planet’s natural resources to sustain life on Earth, the country’s top scientists are looking for ways of serving the economic Titanic.

Read Original Entry: Protect Economy from Climate??!

The Environmental Cost of US Economy (carbon footprint only!)

• US GDP (2007 PPP) : $13.8 trillion [World Bank]
• US CO2 Emissions (2007) : 6,825.733 MMT [based on CDIAC data updated by MSRB/CASF]
• Virtual CO2 content of US dollar (2007) : 494 g (The average amount of CO2 produced each time a dollar was paid or received in 2007. SEE: How Much Carbon Dioxide Does Your Money Make?)

Related Links:

• Blind scientists examining the economic elephant

• Energy
  
• Failing Ecosystems

• World Problems:The Root Cause Matrix
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

• Future Scenarios
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

• Giga Trends
• The Economy

• A 2009 Forecast
• World CO2 Emissions

• How Much Carbon Dioxide Does Your Money Make?
• The Billionaires’ contribution to CO2 pollution

The Exponential Growth Economy Elephant in the Room

Original Entry: Blind “experts” examining the elephant

California ‘Mojavefied’ by 2011?

Water Emergency in Calif

As most of the croplands in the Central U.S. is submerged under floodwater, the heart of California’s farming area is feeling the heat. Gov. Schwarzenegger who proclaimed last week a drought in California, declared yesterday a state of emergency in nine counties in Central Valley.

Coyote Dry Lake, Mojave Desert. Image: AnimAlu via Wikimedia. This file is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

Coyote Dry Lake is a dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert located about 24 km northeast of Barstow, and north of Interstate 15 in southern California. The lake measures about 10 km long and about 6 km wide at its widest section.

Main Entry:

Schwarzenegger Proclaims Water Emergency in Nine Counties

Related Links:

• Failing Ecosystems
• State of the World
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
  
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle
• The Economy
• Energy
• Food Security
• 286W

• Drought Index
• Future Scenarios

• Giga Trends
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix
• Tipping Point
• Topsoil
• Drying Aquifers, Sinking Cities

• The Economy
• Energy
• Food Security
• Future in the Making: A Shrinking World

edro

Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

The Next Phase of Collapse: Wars initiated by Israel/US for Hegemony Over World’s Resources

Wars by Israel/US for hegemony over resources are about the survival of the fattest. They are fought by the urge to secure more of other peoples’ resources: More water, more food, more fertile land and more energy to maintain unsustainable lifestyles.

In the most likely scenario, as the first phase of world’s cities begin to collapse, an all-out global war would break out started by Israel and the United States that would be fought with nuclear, exotic, biological and conventional weapons.

Why would a global war break out?

• The self-fulfilling prophecy for Israel [through US] to rule the world
• World’s resources are dwindling (competition for the remaining finite resources is rapidly intensifying).
• The exponential growth economy and its two leading pathogens, overproduction and overconsumption, together with unsustainable lifestyles and unethical behavior are degrading the world’s remaining resources.
• Climate change is affecting the availability, or access to resources.
• Global rates of consumption of water, food and energy are exponentially increasing.
• The consumption rate has long surpassed the sustainability rate.
• The world topsoil is falling below the critical level at which point production declines sharply.
• Two-thirds of ecosystems are collapsing.
• Deteriorating local resources and food insecurity, economic uncertainty and poverty, political corruption and instability, among other mechanisms of collapse, result in the collapse of cities and population centers.
• Cities, population centers and settlements are abandoned.
• Large-scale migrations ensue at regional, national and international levels.
• Large numbers of migrants put additional terminal strain on the remaining resources.
• Nations outstrip nature’s carrying capacity.
• Civil conflict and war break out.

Original Photo: The mushroom cloud from XX-11 IvyMike (Fusion Bomb). Public domain photo.
Source: United States Department of Energy Inset: Tomahawk Block IV Cruise Missiles

Types of Resource Wars

• Regional Conflict
• Civil War
• Border (interstate) War
• Global [nuclear] War

Hiroshima after the atom bomb. [Today’s much more powerful bombs
would robably detroy the remaining infrastructure such as the bridges.]

Nagasaki after the nuclear bomb codenamed “Fat Man”
(after Winston Churchill) was dropped on her in 1945.

More than 100,000 victims killed in large air attack on Tokyo:
234 B-29 bombers dropped 1665 tons of incendiary bombs.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Most Likely Strategies

1. Form objective-driven alliances. [The traditional military alignments would no longer apply, as survival alone would dictate offensive and defensive strategies.]
2. Depopulate primary targets to minimize resistance.
3. Launch preemptive strikes employing overwhelming force (first strike) against the opponents (rivals nations competing for the same resources).
4. Attack both military (counterforce) targets, to weaken enemy retaliation, and civilian (countervalue) targets to maximize strike [kill] value.

The MGM-140 ATACMS tactical ballistic missile firing. Public Domain Photo: Wikipedia

Primary Targets

Primary targets are selected according to the

• Availability of resources: Water, wild food, land (agricultural and forest), Energy (Fossil fuels and other available resources.)
• Content value: Amount of the available resources
• Vulnerability metrics: The ease by which the target can be depopulated and re-occupied.

Table NE1. The Primary Targets

Public Domain Photo: USAF/Dept of Defense
MGM-118A Peacekeeper (!) nuclear missile

See also: Enewetak atomic detonations

Table EN2a. The Players
Notes:
1. ‘GL’ denotes Global.
2. CO: Continental.
3. IS: Interstate (cross border).

For full list of The Players click here: Table EN2b

A Minuteman III ICBM test launch from Vandenberg AFB, California, United States.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Table EN3. Secondary Targets

Trident missile launch at sea from a UK submarine. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Hotspots

‘Hotspots’ are considered to be the countries, regions or areas that are worst affected by water scarcity, food or energy shortages, degraded land, and the corresponding political instability created as a result of those conditions, as well as those areas that are considered to be primary or secondary targets because of their relative abundance of natural resources.

Our data analysis show that within a short time global list of countries facing a high risk of political instability and danger of armed conflict resulting from dwindling resources, which would be exacerbated by the adverse effects of climate change, would grow rapidly leaving very few places, if any, temporarily unaffected.

List of Nuclear Weapons [Incomplete]