Good Morning all of you good people out there in the global Middle Class; your King of Simple News is on the air.

As I continue to run my Show-Stopper series, I want to refer to Billy B’s comment yesterday, as it ties in nicely with today’s subject, “The real job growth will not happen, that simple. And if we could obtain a magic wand to make this impossibility take place, resource exhaustion would stop the whole thing in less than 20 years for good; like in forever.”

As we listen to the economists and talking heads assure us that recovery is on the way, we must question what the word “recovery” means. If in fact it means that we will return to our misguided quest of pursuing exponential growth; then we will not recover. After all, returning to the very borrow and consume model that brought us to this enduring recession is hardly a solution.

Without further adieu, I present part 6 of Show-Stoppers.

Show-Stoppers!

By Mike Folkerth © 2009

NONRENEWABLE NATURAL RESOURCES:

Nonrenewable natural resources are finite in nature and our ability to consume those assets is infinite. So there it is; the world’s easiest problem to comprehend. It’s not if we run out, it’s merely when. The very best way to rid ourselves of all of those pesky life giving resources, and at the same time, to end life as we have known it, would be to promote greater resource usage prior to having a viable replacement.

It seems that Americans have a knack for picking just the right leadership for shinnying further out on our precarious limb. Our past presidential selections from both major parties enjoy the commonality of promising both unprecedented and unending growth under one simple mantra; print more money, borrow the printed money under a compounding interest arrangement, and buy more stuff. There’s nothing to this economics mumbo jumbo that a person totally devoid of science and math can’t fix; temporarily. It’s the “temporary” part that will come around to haunt us.

Not only is our present President Obama going to boost the U.S. level of consumption to new record highs, he is demonstrating the magic of “Fed printing 101” to all of the G-20 nations who collectively control 85% of world GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Mr. Obama is encouraging every country in the world to produce a false debt based stimulus plan in order to spur economic activity, which will in turn consume greater resources, which will then supposedly grow the world economy.

There are actually 195 countries in the world and yet the G-20 nations control about 85% of global wealth. This is similar to the U.S. distribution of wealth where the top 20% of citizens control 85% of the wealth.

So, back to growth is the answer, massive growth requires massive resources; let’s clear a few things up about resources.

At this point and time we have no viable replacements on this planet for clean water, clean air, iron ore, copper, aluminum, manganese, tin, coal, oil, natural gas, fertile farm land, and I can go on for pages. Yet, the plan is to grow our annual usage of all the above for the sake of making additional profits.

Profits drive our entire lives and there is a total disconnect between profits and the impact on the physical system necessary to create those profits. We have flatly maxed out the physical system for providing greater profits in a world that now hosts 6.77 Billion humans.

If you only take one thing away from this entire Show-Stopper presentation, please let it be the following statement. If China alone were to consume at the same per capita rate as Americans, they would require 100% of all current resource production on earth and would experience shortages!

China has every right in the world to aspire to U.S. standards of living and they currently work night and day to achieve that end.

And, our assurance against such a happening is simply that, “they won’t?” Not so, Mr. Obama is encouraging not only China, but the entire world to behave more like Americans and consume their way to utopia. Do the simple math because I promise you, your leadership is not capable of doing it for you.

Yet another grave reality and a very real and verifiable fact is that in 1970 the U.S. hit peak oil production. Our oil production continues to decline to this day and we now produce 40% less oil (even with the Alaska Pipeline) than we did 39 years ago. Yet we utilize some 40% more oil today than in 1970. That makes us more than 60% dependent on foreign nations to provide us with a resource that is absolutely critical to our survival.

Just last year, (2008) the world bumped up against maximum global oil production and we witnessed the resulting fuel prices and the toll that that occurrence had on the world economy. If anyone wants to argue that there are viable alternatives ready to go that could replace oil, or that there is an unending supply of oil in the world, or even that they will come up with a palatable solution; please verify the sources that led you to such delusion.

Rather than me asking the question for this section, I’ll allow the esteemed Dr. Albert Bartlett, professor of physics, University of Colorado, to have the honors.

“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”

In Dr. Bartlett’s question, “population” can be directly interchanged with “resource depletion.”