As you already know, things are unraveling. The narratives of the past are
being revealed as false and fraudulent -- even harmful.
For example, the fallacy of pursuing "ever more" growth. Growth
up to a point is beneficial, but it turns self-destructive when it exceeds
what available resources can sustain.
As it is practiced, economic growth as pursued around the world today is
now destructive. If we continue on our current trajectory, it will become
fatal.
It already has for an increasing scope of the natural world. Beauty is
being ruined. The complex web of life is being shredded. Species loss is
accelerating.
This kind of damage is essentially permanent.
Pollinator Collapse
Right now insect ecologists the world over are utterly horrified by the
declines in insect populations. “Crashing” is not too strong of a term.
It’s almost as if the Rapture happened; but instead of humans, it's the
insects who were taken.
A healthy, prudent response by a healthy, prudent culture would be to
immediately ban any insecticides suspected of contirbuting to the problem.
And to swiftly deploy a serious scientific resources into studying the issue.
Nothing of the sort is happening in the US yet. Few other countries are,
either; with the exception of France. This is really positive news:.
France Is The First Country To Ban All Five Bee-Killing Pesticides
Nov 21, 2018
With bees on the endangered list and the terrible consequences that will
come to pass if they become extinct, France has taken a drastic step in an
attempt to save the population of pollinating insects.
As reported by Organic Consumers, the European nation has decided
to ban all five pesticides that scientists believe are responsible for killing
bees.
Both beekeepers and environmentalists have praised the move, but others,
including cereal and sugar beet farmers have issued stark warnings about the
move instead. They have warned that their crops could well be left
defenseless against harmful insects aside from bees that destroy their
produce.
Just recently, the European Union ruled to ban three of the five
neonicotinoid pesticides — clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam — but
France decided to put a blanket ban on the two excluded by the EU’s ban as
well, thiacloprid and acetamiprid. The ban from the European Union starts on
December 19 this year.
France’s ban extends to the use of all five pesticides both on
outdoor crop fields and inside greenhouses.
(Source)
My prediction is that within 5 years, France will enjoy a resurgence in
all sorts of insects -- bees, moths, butterflies, beetles, as well as the
birds that feed on them.
If these efforts include habitat preservation and the planting of various
plants that support pollinators and other insects, beauty and harmony will
return to the French landscape along with better crop and native flora
yields.
Perhaps you’ve read the recent research on the process known as
“co-extinction” where the loss of a small handful of species can bring about
the collapse of an entire ecosystem. In this past week, the esteemed journal Nature conducted
a review of the scientific literature on the subject, offering this
observation:
In particular, it is becoming increasingly evident how biotic
interactions, in addition to permitting the emergence and maintenance of
diversity, also build up complex networks through which the loss of
one species can make more species disappear (a process known as
‘co-extinction’), and possibly bring entire systems
to an unexpected, sudden regime shift, or even total collapse.
(Source – Nature)
In other words, complex systems are complex. We cannot predict what will
happen when such systems are perturbed, because the results are emergent.
That means they arise from the exceedingly subtle interplay of conditions
which are themselves subject to all sorts of feedback loops.
I'm personally very weirded out and terrified by the sudden loss of insect
populations across the globe. I think it’s a very clear harbinger of big
danger to come.
The mature response when faced with a situation that is well outside of
one's personal capabilities should be rooted in humility and caution. If you
don’t understand what the big red button on the control panel in front of you
does, then don’t push it.
Sadly, that's not how society is reacting (so far) to this tremendous mass
die-off.
We’re currently losing species at the fastest rate than the past tens of
millions of years. CO2 is now building up at an alarming rate producing
unpredictable results. The climate is yet another highly-complex system with
its own emergent behaviors, the impacts of which we’re only now just
beginning to feel.
So, in my eye, France is doing the right thing. Barring conclusive
scientific 'smoking gun' evidence that A causes B which leads to C (which is
almost never available by the way), they’ve combined both the direct and
circumstantial evidence to justify a ban on the entire class of neonicotinoid
pesticides.
To date, while causation has not been definitively proven, in part due to
the resistance mounted by the deep-pocketed companies who manufacture and
sell these chemicals (which are real biocides for their broad
toxicity to both invertebrate and avian species), data showing correlation
between the use of neonics and pollinator die-offs has been clear for years.
The subtler thing at work here is evidence that a growing consciousness is
arising. One that also values non-human life and is willing to admit that
science and technology have their limits.
This is a sort of wisdom long absent from the power structures in place.
I am personally grateful for this dawning awareness. And it’s coming not a
moment too soon.
New Money Awareness
“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
~ Leonardo Davinci
What do plummeting insect populations have to do with the S&P 500? A
lot more than most people realize.
To begin with, the trajectories of both over the past ten years are
unsustainable.
Both are artifacts of the human experiment of running an exponential economic
growth model on a finite planet. And both will end very badly if continued at
their same rate.
Very few people are ready to accept that outlook. If insects go to zero,
then in all probability so do humans. One does not simply upend a billion
years of careful ecological fine-tuning and skate away unharmed.
With a similar deficit of perspective, many people expect (and are
counting on) that equities will continue to compound at 10% per year on
average -- forever. But these same people will stare back at you blankly if
you point out that the economy is advancing at half (or less) that rate.
How can the claims upon something sustainably grow at a faster rate than
the thing itself?
Look: the economy can't grow infinitely, forever. It just runs out
resources at some point. Or room. Or maybe its raping/pollution of ecosytems
ends up killings all the insects and that’s the trigger for collapse. Who
knows?
All we can be certain of is that our current addiction to infinite growth
is a death sentence.
Focus on Markets
Why do I spend a lot of time focusing on the financial markets?
Because everybody has a stake in them, even if they have no money parked
there. So that’s where the trouble will first be felt by the majority of
people.
Once the trouble gets large enough and loud enough, more people will be
willing to take a harder look at the more difficult issues. This is why I
consider the financial markets to by a telegraphing agent for the trouble
ahead.
Part of my mission is to help protect people from unnecessary losses. We
work hard for our money, our wealth, and it would be a shame to have it
disappear in a flash due to inane policy errors by the central banks.
So understanding the likely impact(s) of a painful delfation of the third
and largest credit cycle -- the Everything Bubble which we're currently
living through -- is vitally important.
Yes, I happen to think that we (as in humans) are currently headed for
hardship. We’ve got ecological issues rapidly exploding all around us, and
our collective energy policy is not progressing nearly rapidly enough to wean
us off of fossil fuels -- oil, most critically -- in time to avoid serious
disruptions to our way of live in the future.
But those are harder issues to engage folks on. Huge belief systems stand
in the way, guarding the entrance and preventing awareness for most people.
So we begin with the markets. They are non-denominational, nonpolitical,
and everybody cares about them.
But our "gains" in the markets won’t matter in the slightest if
we’ve collapsed the ecosystems along the way. Or forgot to reconfigure our
energy infrastructure for an all-electric future and a complicated assortment
of alt-energy devices and storage methods.
More personally, whether or not your portfolio is larger or smaller will
be meaningless if you don't protect that wealth. The same is true if you're
not personally resilient across all 8
Forms Of Capital.
A time of rapid change is upon us. Most people will be caught unawares
because they have not taken the time to educate themselves. That’s a pity,
but it seems to be a human constant throughout history.
Please don’t be among them. Educate yourself and take smart action today.
Thoughts From The Precipice
As is proper for this time of the year, I'm reminded of all the things in
my life that I'm grateful for. This moment. My family. Time. The support of
so many PeakProspery.com readers -- both those I've met in person, and the
many I haven't.
The past decade of 'free money' issued by the central banks has given us
all a bit more time to prepare, to get ready, to learn and educate ourselves
as to the true nature of the many predicaments we will face in the arriving
future.
Despite my very strong motivation in pointing out the many ways our
systems are failing us; I am a preservationist. And a conservationist. I
think life, of all kinds, is amazing.
I want human progress to continue. I want a better future for all of us.
And I want to leave behind a world worth inheriting.
Yes, we’re at the precipice. And while it feels like we may be in the
process of tipping over, we are not yet fully over the edge. There's much you
can still do.
Which is why in Part 2: Easy Come, Hard Go we identify which failure
points in the economy/financial markets are most vulnerable and the 7 key
indicators we're monitoring most closely now that crash-risk and
recession-risk alarms have started screaming loudly.
As I've said, there is still much you can do with the fleeting time you
have left. Educate yourself and take smart action today.
Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free
executive summary, enrollment required for full access).
