SUSTAINED GROWTH AND PROSPERITY _ THE LIE
August 8th, 2009THE LIE WE WANT TO BELIEVE - SUSTAINED GROWTH AND PROSPERITY .
In late 2008 the world’s financial institutions suffered a major near collapse, only being saved from total destruction by the somewhat clumsy intervention by goverments across the globe using the public purse to shore up these vast banking enterprises..
This time, unlike other past recessions since the Second World War,( itself the culmination of the world’s Great Depression), the economic chaos is global and not restricted to one or just a few countries.
Globalization has created huge interdependence in trade and finance. If one goes down then the tendency is to drag others with it, and this time it is nearly everyone struggling in the cold water.
The greed of unscrupulous bankers, market traders, industrialists and others who have irrevocably damaged the environment in return for their enormous profits, has spread globally like a viral infection, causing an economic and enviromental crash in real terms.
Millions have lost their jobs, trade bewteen countries around the world has dramatically decreased and, in general, the worst affected have been the very poorest, many of whom die almost as soon as they are born.
Politicians and economists talk of an inevitable economic recovery, returning to a rosy picture of “sustained growth” with more financial regulation and improved mangement to prevent the same pattern from recurring.
The environment is mostly shoved to one side with only lip-service paid to keep the ” climate camp ” quiet, or at least quieter.
Never-ending sustainable growth and prosperity ? A Utopian world where hunger is a scourge of the past and resources are limitless ?
Is this the true future ?
This is what we are all led to believe. And believe it we do because we wish it to be true .Scientists and the more intelligent and enlightened amongst us really know, as we do as well, in our heart of hearts, that this dream and political rhetoric can never be.
We know that climate change, prompted by irreversible global warming, is actually happening now and that it will not be beneficial to the lives of many millions of people in various more vunerable regions of the world. Climate change will be a massively destructive force bringing with it misery, starvation and death on an unimaginable scale in an uncomfortably near future.
The ice caps are melting at a rate faster than all predictions,even the most optimistic, creating not only real rises in sea levels, but the potential to drastically alter the direction of ocean currentswhen the polar ice of the Arctic disappears during summer months,possibly as soon as 2015 and well within the lifespan of most of the young today.
The effect this will have on global weather patterns is unknown, but is almost bound to adversely affect food production world-wide, itself already lagging behind uncontrolled population growth, and hampered by drought, pollution and increasingly extreme weather.
Climate refugees are forecast to reach 200 million by 2050.
That figure is probably over- optimistic. The figure may well exceed that number by 2020 and maybe run into 2 or 3 billion by 2050 when the global population will attain an astonishing 9 billion - an increase on today’s global population figure of nearly one third in only 40 years.
Sustained growth ? Yes - until the resources run out, and we drown in our own excrement like billions of maggots trapped in a glass dish.
At the present rate of population growth spiralling upwards, contaminating the already badly damaged environment, with increased waste, and climate change causing ever more devastation of food source areas, how can politicians complacently speak of ” sustained future economic growth and prosperity ” ?
For whom ?
It is a lie.
No politician in power today wishes to contemplate, at least in public, the stark reality awaiting all human-kind within the next few decades. They would be branded ” scare-mongers “, laughed-off as ” prophets of doom “, or just plain crazy and voted out of power by angry electorates.
“Of course nothing like that is going to happen. Everyone will carry on as usual. It is all bullshit and cranky scientists talking. The weather in Britain has always been odd “.
The thoughts of many who bury their heads in the sand and carry on trying to make themselves wealthy - ironically,for a better life in the future..
The prognosis may, hopefully, be proved wrong, but it is possible that the present economic crisis is the first phase of a global disaster occurring progressively over the coming 50 years in which billions will die in order for nature to re-balance the delicate mechanism of life on the planet.
The problem is that human daily lives carry on virtually unchanged in the richer countries, and we care little, and think even less, of what may be happening in another city, leave alone half way across the globe.
What happens when not enough food reaches London even for a week-end ?
What happens when the oil price becomes so high that Britain can no longer afford to buy petrol and deisel in the same quantities as now and people have to restrict the use of their cars ? or electricity and gas supplies are limited to certain hours during the day or cut-off altogether ?
This, and the fact that Britain will have a population of 77 million by 2050, could cause at first, political and social unrest, then mass public anxiety, food and fuel hording leading to the begining of real starvation in Britain.
Finally violence.
How will the NHS cope ?
It is almost inevitable that Government, whoever has the unlucky task of power, will have to introduce severe measures to police the country.
We are seeing the signs already under the veil of anti- terrorism legislation and other control measures..
Any intelligent government would be making provision for things to come as from now to stop the country falling over a cliff within 25 years.
Sustained growth into the future is a lie which we all want to believe, so we continue to live with it. Perhaps it is time for all of us to forget the lie and start facing the impending reality, planning properly for our self-preservation .
If not, then we will face the unthinkable consequences with only ourselves to blame.
David Anthony Cox 2009
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