diapers, tires, and a global crisis

Oil prices are surging and soon the effect on the economy will become noticeable to all, not just drivers and travelers. Oil is not just used for transportation. It goes into everything from diapers, paper towels, laundry products, plastics to tires. Already many companies are switching back to the natural products that made up these goods before the advent of petroleum. Natural rubber, palm oil, and other natural commodities are making a huge comeback. But these items are not cheap either and prices are rising everywhere.

The reason is simple. Global warming is not our only problem. Not by a long shot. Global warming is but one symptom of a much larger problem. A problem that won't be so easy to ignore or deny. While it takes some understanding of mathematics, statistics and probability -not something most people excel at- to understand climate science and modeling, it won't take a PhD for people to see that nearly everything will soon be in short supply. Why? Too many humans, all acting as if they have infinite resources. Wasteful overindulgence on a global scale.

There have been other times in human history where people acted just as irresponsibly as we do now. Times of plenty, when excess and gluttony were the norm. Invariably such times were followed by rather dramatic collapses where the overall standard of living dropped significantly. The collapses were dramatic because they did not just affect the poor and the "middle classes," but also the rich and the very rich. In short, these events were not pretty and very few were immune.

Never before though have we experienced a global crisis. Even though previous crises affected all of the then known world, their scale was small compared to the planet. That is no longer true. We are now faced with global crises. That has never happened before and so in a very real sense, all bets are off. We are facing shortages in energy, natural resources, water, food and nearly everything imaginable. Furthermore, most of these problems are interconnected, so there is no telling which way the dice will roll. Food production is dependent on cheap oil. So is irrigation. The list goes on and on.

While it is certainly possible that we make a soft landing as slowly increasing prices eventually cure most excesses, I would not bet on it. The probability of that happening is close to zero. Soft landings are the stuff of dreams. Too many people's livelihoods depend on these excesses. Their jobs will have to go. It won't be as simple as designing eco-bottles to put water in. The whole bottled-water business has to disappear. And many other businesses too. That cannot be done without millions of job losses.

Given how many humans we have, and how long these humans live, these crises will not be resolved without some very bloody fighting and cruel warfare. Nobody is simply going to roll over and accept a much lower standard of living. And it appears the standard of living will have to drop rather dramatically from what we are used to today. It also appears that the population will have to shrink in a very real sense.