This is a two part diary and this is part one.
The whispers have started on Wall Street, in Academia, and on Main Street; “We don’t have enough resources for all of these people! Something needs to be done!” While these words have been spoken for millennia, the slaughters of World Wars 1 & 2 were the something that was done in the last century.
If you don’t remember who the 47% are, Mitt Romney described them as the percentage of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes. Of course, Mitt forgot the 47% paid all of the other taxes at a higher rate than he did. As we now know, up to 2009, Mitt did not pay any federal income taxes, either. What was the most interesting aspect of Mitt’s comment was that it revealed the attitude and perception of the very wealthy towards the non-rich. They view the 47% as consumers of resources without any return on those resources. This makes them a drag on the economy and society.
This becomes a classical economic case of supply and demand. One group feels the solution is to reduce the demand side to the available supply. Others, like me, believe the solution is to increase the supply side to match a steadily decreasing rate of demand.
These diaries discuss the what, the why, and the how of each position. The who will be left to the next election.
For full disclosure, I am the Democratic Nominee for US Congress TX6
Campaign phone: 817 909 2360
My web site is Cozad for Congress and my donation page is Donate to Cozad for Congress
Reduce the Demand: Cull the Herd
Since the days when humans domesticated animals, ranchers and dairy farmers had to deal with the effects of drought on their herds. When the supply of feed and water drops too low to properly feed all of the animals, the rancher must decide what to do and quickly. Even today, this decision making is happening in drought stricken California and Texas. In a special series of interviews, a host from Bloomberg TV was asking one of those ranchers what was his plans if the drought continued to worsen. To paraphrase the rancher, he would begin culling the herd. The process of culling the herd is as follows;
1. Get rid of the non-productive animals. These are the animals that could no longer produce calves or milk.
2. If the drought continues, the next step is to limit the number of new calves that join the herd.
3. If the drought continues, the next step is to get rid of the least productive cows and bulls. This continues until there is no herd or the drought ends.
What kind of drought would affect the complete human race? The drought would be the depletion of critical resources that are used by humanity to maintain and grow our current civilization. Energy in the form of food for our bodies and/or for our machines is reaching a maximum in production rate, especially crude oil. Recently, the US has enjoyed a short term increase in domestic (shale) and foreign (Canada) production, but the government’s data shows it is very temporary. Since any significant decrease in crude oil supplies will impact our economy, this decrease in supply would be the beginning of the energy drought.
What Is This Energy Drought?
Let us start with the US Dept of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). It has been putting out the Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) report that has some very revealing charts in it relating to the domestic production of crude oil. The AEO 2014 Release has the following charts:
Note: The units in this chart is quad Btu (1 Quad = 10^15 BTU), not millions of barrels per day (5.6 x 10^6 BTU/barrel).
The production chart indicates a sharp rise in production until 2016, then a flattening until 2019, where a slow but steady decline in production continues until 2040.
The next chart is the import of crude oil:
This chart mirrors the chart above because it shows what we still need in crude oil to fill our energy needs which is a steady requirement of roughly 37 Quad BTU. So, no energy independence ever, if we continue to rely solely on crude oil! But then the question becomes, will we be able to import the missing oil? Not all we need is the answer from IEA. Or, can we afford to pay for it? The cost could drive the country into a deeper and possibly permanent recession/depression.
There are two ways to pay; compete on the open market as oil climbs towards $150 per barrel or more. (While no one is willing to admit it, global peak oil occurred in 2006.) Or we can re-open the Cheney Option and just take it from someone(s) else. As we found to our regret, the cost of that option was $3 trillion plus 5500 dead Americans and 100s of thousands of civilian deaths. So, if the two options are not viable, we endure an energy drought that has no end. And this is where the culling of the herd concept starts.
Who Will Do The Culling?
Now that we know what kind of drought we are dealing with we can address the issues of the small percentage of the wealthy class who believes they should be the Ranchers of the human race (the herd). And they, The Ranchers, think it is imperative they take actions that protect the future of the human race.
First, The Ranchers feel there is no one else who has the personality that is strong enough to make the decisions and strong enough politically and financially to make the decisions happen. Second, they are of the generation that knew that fossil fuels were the energy source of human civilization and solar anything was a science fiction movie. Third, they have too much invested in the old way of doing things to change without a major fight.
And The Ranchers are very aware of a global drought in energy, namely non-renewable or fossil fuels or dirty energy fuels for a long time probably starting in the mid-1970s. What happened then, the theory of Peak Oil was proven true. For some of you, I will have to show you what Peak Oil looks like below.
This chart is found at
US Peak Crude Oil Production
As the graph depicts, the US had a peak production of oil in December 1970 (10.4 million barrels per day). There is a sub-peak in 1984 when the production from North Slope started flowing. There is another sub-peak starting in 2009 with the advent of the fracking of shale for oil. It looks like it could exceed the previous peak in 1970 except the latest projections from EIA indicate this sub-peak will peak at 9 million barrels per day in the 2016-2019 time frames. There is the eternal hope for some new kind of technology will release all of that oil that still remains in the ground, but any new technology would have to contend with EROEI Ratio (see diary Has Big Oil Already Killed Us All?.
How Will the Culling Be Done?
What are the signs of the culling? What policies by government, corporations, and individuals would reflect a culling? First, we must make a list of who is the 47%. Second, we make a list of policies that attack those people on the list. Third, we determine the effectiveness of those attacks. Here is the start of my list. I am sure many of you could expand this list very quickly.
List of the 47%:
• The elderly poor – don’t make enough money to pay federal income taxes.
• The severely disabled of all adult ages – don’t make any money.
• The disabled veterans – income is tax deferred.
• The working poor - don’t make enough money to pay federal income taxes.
• Now that you have the idea, you can add the rest.
Let us start with the Paul Ryan austerity budget for the last three years.
• Medicare is to become a voucher program which is used to pay private insurance for healthcare. With the vouchers set at $6500 per person per year, it will be a death sentence for the seriously ill or chronically ill. Why? Because Medicare states that it pays out $13,000 per year per person. If we do the math (without deducting the private insurance overhead), this means the $6500 is half of the average which means about a third of the total can pay for their healthcare through insurance. This leaves about two thirds having to pay their healthcare bills from other sources which for the most part they don’t have. Without healthcare, the ‘natural’ death rate will be much accelerated.
• Food stamps are to be cut by 40% or more. Since food stamps are the primary source of food for the working poor and many elderly, it will make them more vulnerable to diseases and injuries which will look like more ‘natural’ deaths.
• Social Security is under attack to reduce its benefits by changing the Cost Of Living Allowance (COLA). By reducing benefits in that manner, the poor and middle class elderly are more vulnerable to cuts in Medicare and food stamps.
• There is more on this thread, but this is a good start.
There are other policies that speak to a future of far fewer people:
• It is the failure to repair infrastructure or build new, especially now when money is so cheap for so long. This country, starting with the Reagan Administration, has accumulated a $2 trillion infrastructure debt. Many people talk about roads and bridges, but the real debt is in schools, municipal potable water systems, municipal waste disposal systems, etc. It is as though the Republicans were preparing for a far smaller population.
• The total and absolute opposition to the ACA (also known as ObamaCares) is another policy of the Republican Party that is designed to increase the death rate among the 47%. As is already established, about 40,000 people per year (prior to ACA) in this country died ‘natural’ deaths because they did not have health insurance and therefore had little or no health care.
• Opposition to every environmental action of the EPA is another policy of the Republican Party that increases the ‘natural’ death rate among the 47%. They can’t escape the fallout from the burning of lignite coal near or in their communities. They can’t escape polluted water, air, or soil in their communities.
• By using the policies of free markets and austerity to justify why food inspectors and drug inspectors are severely understaffed, these policies increase the ‘natural’ death rate of those who can’t afford their own personal inspectors. The 47% cannot rely on the safety of their food or drugs.
• The CDC is restricted by the Republican Party policy from questioning the source or keep records of gunshot deaths, of the shooter, or even of the location. This policy is to protect the NRA’s policy of pouring 310+ million guns into our society. In the name of austerity, the Republican Party has caused the reduction and under staffing of the CDC. This under staffing of the CDC makes it slow to respond to new diseases and re-energized old diseases. For example, the current epidemic of the Enterovirus EV-D68 raging through the children across the middle of America was not detected by the CDC. It was detected by a doctor in a hospital that had over 500 severely sick children who asked; “Does the CDC know about this?” and then called the CDC to warn them. The CDC should have the capability of monitoring the admissions of hospitals to detect the onset of a new epidemic, but they don’t have the money to do it.
There are more policies like the ones above. All of them have been enacted in the name of austerity because the nation does not have the money. But, contrary to Republican propaganda, we do. We are not using the tax system to protect the 47%.
Terms Used
While I have been hitting on the term “Republican”, I am using it as short hand for a small but very wealthy group of people, The Ranchers. These people have setup a network of think tanks, foundations, and institutes that have created these policies I have described above and fed it (American Legislative Exchange Council) into the political system, particularly to the very receptive Republican Party leadership. There is of course, members of the far left who envision a much smaller population of humans or none at all. But they have not figured out a set of policies to achieve that goal without violating other tenets of their belief system. These “lefties” make up a small portion of the Democratic Party. Therefore, the news media cannot logically justify in anyway making the policies of the respective parties equivalent, not with a nearly 100% of the Republican Party voting for the policies listed above.
Survival of the Human Race
Let’s examine the nature of this energy and industrial metals drought in relation to the human population of the world. When I read Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth for the first time, I was struck by two graphs, p 67 and p 216, that jumped out with the direct correlation between the use of fossil fuels (and later nuclear fuels) and the growth in the population of humans on this planet. While Al Gore was concerned with global warming/climate change, I saw a different critical concern that was much closer and more severe in its impact on the human race. At this point, I would like to introduce Dr. Roper of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. When I discovered Dr. Roper, I found that my work on this topic pales in relation to his considerable and incredibly thorough work. Dr. Roper has produced a graph that should be etched into the minds of every human being on this planet and an explanation of what it means to each individual and to the human race.
The graph to the left is found at the bottom of
Dr. Roper's Energy Future. There are three projections. The black line is the global production of fossil fuels (this line does not have the effects of EROEI Ratio drawn into it). The production of coal makes the curve better than it is for oil alone. You will notice the tipping point (or Peak Production) is around 2025. Then it drops rapidly to the end of the century. The blue line is a projection of human population if we had all of the energy we needed to sustain our current civilization. Dr. Roper’ curve tops off near 8 billion and other sources put it up to 9 billion. The red line is a projection of the human population if we continue to rely on fossil fuels alone. Nuclear fuels (also non-renewable unless a workable thorium breeder reactors become a reality) will alter the projection by less than 10%. As you can see, the population curve begins a major drop off after 2025 and is in steep decline by 2050. Personally, I think Dr. Roper is an optimist with his projection of 1.3 billion population by 2300. In my studies of military history, catastrophic declines, and the effects of EROEI Ratio on production of fossil fuels, especially crude oil, my projection has the best case result with a population of 500 million and a more likely case result of 300 million. The worse case result is extinction of the human race by the end of this century.
Conclusion
Do we, the human race, let The Ranchers manage the reduction of the population of the human race to a level and at a rate that matches the available resources, especially crude oil? Before you answer, consider these factors:
• The Ranchers will be the supreme rulers of the human race for a very long time, namely thousands of years.
• Most likely, the technology we enjoy now will not survive the culling. What does survive will be controlled by the Ranchers for their personal benefit.
• The economy will return to that prior to the industrial age and more likely to that of the feudal age sometimes called the Dark Ages in Europe.
• The political system will also be feudal which means 99% will be peasants or more likely, serfs. They will be bond to the land they tend for food. And their children will follow their parents in the same role.
• And all of this is assuming the Ranchers do manage the energy wars and the consequences of those. That is why my estimate is so low because I don't think they will do a good job.
…. Or Not!
In Part Two of this diary, I will let you in on a secret the Ranchers do NOT want you to know about. Hint! There are two paths into the future which Dr. Roper and I call “The Blue Line” future. But, in order to take the Blue Line, you must reject the future the Ranchers have planned for you. And then you had better be prepared to work harder than you and the entire human race has ever worked before.