Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I just search "Will world collapse" then I found this.

MIT Predicts That World Economy Will Collapse By 2030

Then
Looking Back on the Limits of Growth



http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=326

I never know about this before.
Now I think famine will kill people. What do you think?

Yeah this is freaking me out as well - I've just started reading "The end of Growth" by R. Heinberg, 10 pages in and I've broken out in a cold sweat! Time for a group huddle to sort this cr*p out already...

Too many people on the planet it is going to happen, when it happens is not known. Bring it on, I am ready.

We've seen this prediction before. I'm sure it will eventually come true, but I have a hard time believing that things will get so bad in 15 years that we'll see a serious crash. That doesn't mean I'm not preparing for it

One thing these predictions usually don't take into account is change in technology and habits. Resources won't be reduced. We've figured out ways to maximize food and fuel production over the last 50 years, and there is no reason (other than excessive regulation) to believe that we won't continue to become more efficient. Resources per capita may decrease, but there is already enough of everything to go around... it's just not going around.

One of the things that bothers me about the chart posted is that once births and deaths reach equilibrium and we start seeing negative population growth, food calories and electricity per capita should immediately rebound. And, if starvation becomes such an issue that people in industrialized countries begin to starve to death, you can be pretty darn sure that tax dollars will be diverted to agriculture research and alternative food sources.

I'm all for doom and gloom, but it needs to be founded in reality. The reality is that groups that are on the edge will get pushed closer and closer to it and may see this kind of crash, but most industrialized nations will not.

Food per capita does appear to start to rebound ~2075, but I wonder if the original 1970's study took into account the radical effect that climate charge is having on our seasonal weather patterns, on which we rely for the majority of the worlds agricultual food production, I think not.

Make the chart even more scary.

With the world being so interconnected now it's hard to say, something in another county could start a chain reaction that affects things here.

If there was a food shortage in the middle east they might increase oil prices so they can afford to import food to feed their people.
Or in China they might stop producing as much cheap merchandise for us at low prices to redirect to producing food and/or the work force starving to death. Or steal our Roundup factories (it's probably made in China? I haven't checked that) which could affect our domestic production.

Yep, growth is not sustainable at all..

I've lost track of the number of times I've put this up..

All the more reason why our federal government should not be allowing the sale of large swathes of agricultural land and/or water licences (Cubbie station is a prime example) to foreign interests... and why our state government shouldn't have spent $300M (plus another $200M in federal funds) developing 15000Ha of prime irrigation land in a district that has been described as "Australia's future food bowl"... only to rent over 13000Ha of it to a Chinese government backed corporation... for a "peppercorn rent"!

Cubbie station takes up to 500,000 megalitres of water out of the Murray-Darling catchment every year to grow cotton, at a time when towns and entire agricultural districts down stream have been suffering from lack of water for decades and the river system itself is dying due to reduced water flow… except for the last two years of highly uncharacteristic flood events, which scientists believe may have only temporarily averted the slow death of the river system.

The federal government has drawn up a plan to save the river system, which involves greatly reducing or even cancelling the water rights of many growers in the lower Murray-Darling catchment and is going to cost billions of dollars and the loss of many jobs. Scientists believe if the govt had purchased Cubbie station and converted it back to a number of smaller grazing properties, therefore releasing the majority of the water back into the catchment, it would’ve gone a long way to restoring the health of the system downstream… at much less cost than the bringing the same amount of water back into the river through the govt’s plan… but instead the govt approved the sale of Cubbie to Chinese and Japanese interests, who made it clear they were purchasing it for the water rights.

People may call Bob Katter “The Mad Hatter”… but he calls it as he sees it and more often than not he’s on the money… and he is currently presenting a private members bill into parliament that would see legislation drawn up to block the sale of Cubbie, as well as prevent other similar sales from taking place in the future!

If it wasn’t for pollies with a bit of backbone like Bob Katter, Mick Xenophon and Barnaby Joyce… we’d all soon be knee deep in rice paddies… growing food for foreign interests that are intent on taking not only the food produced, but the also the profits, back to their country.

Im not condoning the sale on purely environmental grounds let alone food security but its no
different to foreign interest digging holes and taking the minerals and money overseas.

Australia is a food exporter we are part of the problem we feed the extra mouths that use the resources that create the problems.
We either sell the product to the countries that need it or we have a big enough army to defend it

Ive been interested in Peak Oil for a few years now and have become very aware of the end of growth.
I think the major problem will be food,not only through lack of water but lack of cheap oil to fertilise plough, sow, harvest and distribute it.
Im preparing to become more self sufficient and have been doing it for well over a decade.
The problems will come when growth slows further and you have high unemployment and unrest,it will happen in poorer countries that have a high percentage of wage to food bill first.

This doco on Greece seems to have happy people who dropped out and moved back to the country when they lost their city jobs.

http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2012/s3631692.htm

Yep.. we are a "food exporter".... but we are actually a net "food importer"... and have been for about 5 years...

We can't even garantee our own food security.... with ownership of current resources....

Selling them off... just leaves us more vunerable... and our army isn't that big... although our geography, and lines of supply are...

But even armies march on their stomachs.... and they wont be doing much marching.. or fighting... if our food supply is compromised.. or cut off...

If these forecasts come true and the world economy collapses... resources in the ground aren't gonna be worth a pinch of goat poop, except may oil and gas… and they will only be worth what the population can afford to pay for them, whereas the worth of prime agricultural land and water rights will be immeasurable.

When foreign companies dig resources out of the ground here in OZ, each mine provides many thousands of high paying jobs during construction, both directly and in associated industries, as well as many hundreds of high paying jobs during the life of the mine. The companies also pay mining royalties and a variety of state and federal taxes.

When companies, or countries, buy up our prime agricultural land, they can use our land and water to produce a product they can export directly out of the country without paying royalties or taxes. This was one issue brought up by some pollies a few months back, they wanted legislation put in place that required any produce to be sold through Australian produce brokers, such as AWB for wheat etc, before it could leave the country, this way there was at least a monetary benefit to the Australian government and people.

Most of the agricultural land is bought as going concerns, such as Cubbie, so no construction jobs, and the ongoing jobs required for the production of agricultural products are minimal and generally poor paying when compared with mining/comstruction jobs.

Also, every acre of land that is producing for a foreign entity, is an acre that can't produce for Australia in times of crisis... resources can sit in the ground until/if demand returns.

If the world economy is going to turn to shite in 18 years, then I say between now and then we should get as much for the resources as we can and elect a government that is financially astute enough, using the funds from those resources, to put our country in the best possible situation infrastructure and defence wise etc, as well as agriculturally, before the worldwide economic sh!t storm hits.

Australia has a snowball's chance of exhausting our resources between now and 2030... I say sell what we can between now and then and whatever is still in the ground at the time can stay there to facilitate our development on the other side of the ecnomic storm... whenever that be.

When resources get really tight countries start looking covetously at what their neighbours have. There are many countries with far fewer resources than us - minerals, energy, arable land (even though we have a hell of a lot of non-arable land). Many of those countries dwarf us in military power and international influence.
Given all that, I think it is in our interest - our national security interest - for a good number of powerful but resource constrained countries to have assets in Australia. Assets that help them deal with their resource limitations.
Just my inexpert 2 cents worth...

I want the sepo's on my side if/when the sh!t hits the fan!... let them develop all the bases they want in the NT and Kimberley I say!

Do you think if the Chinese owned large agricultural and resource interests in Australia and we allowed them to develop a military prescence here to protect their assets... that they then wouldn't use that foot-in-the-door and their military weight to simply take what they wanted when the time comes?

maybe not

And why would we allow a foreign country to "develop a military prescence" here in our country.... (except perhaps one of our allies... and that then makes us a target... )....