The situation in Niger continues to worsen dramatically, as flooding wipes out all remaining food stocks, leaving over 200,000 homeless.

Niger has been particularly hard hit in recent years, with oil spills dwarfing the Gulf of Mexico disaster many times over.

The global food situation is worsening dramatically — and very, very rapidly.

I found this over on Desdemona Despair today, but couldn’t comment properly (too long).

This is an oddball article, that you should read first before my commentary: If the world is going to hell, why are humans doing so well?

This perspective depends on your view of “better”.  More people starve now then at any time in human history. More people are enslaved now (real slaves, not just wage slavery, also now at global levels) then at any time in human history (in excess of 20,000,000 real slaves are reported by human rights organizations, this is far more then at any other time in human history).

Life expectancy has risen - in some areas, but not for all. Human populations levels have massively increased — but not without a terrifying price in terms of human oppression, disease outbreaks, servitude and environmental collapse.

The notion alleged in the original article that “human well-being continues to improve” is patently false, based upon a very warped understanding of human existence and the quality of life (and what it now actually takes in terms of effort and labor to simply “exist”).

Various studies have been done by anthropologists and others that demonstrate that we work harder and receive less in terms of quality of life then at any other time in history.

Increased population levels do not mean that we are “better off” at all. Nor does the increased life-span for some groups imply this either.

“The authors, led by geographer Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne of McGill University, offer four hypotheses for this “environmentalist’s paradox”: humans are actually worse off than we think; the ability to grow food trumps all other ecosystem services as far as humans are concerned; technology has allowed us to transcend the environment; and the ill effects of environmental degradation lag its benefits, i.e. the worst is yet to come.”

Indeed it is, the worst is yet to come. Human civilization has collapsed many, many times before, we are no different. We have however, made this scenario and likelihood significantly worse then any other former human civilization, due to our global degradation and depletion of the world’s environment and natural resources. Coupled with a gigantic overshoot in human population, there can only be one possible outcome.

It’s a very odd article, a feel-good “don’t worry right now” with some weird contradictions, like this:

“A prime example is cities—both a maw of human consumption and a way to minimize the human footprint on the planet.”

Cites are in no way a “way to minimize the human footprint”, they are the exact OPPOSITE. Producing zero resources themselves, they are black holes in which energy and materials and raw resources are voraciously consumed at ever-increasing rates.

Minimizing human-footprint would actually require the demolishing of cities and a return to localized living — which is the only sustainable method of living that exists — anywhere in the world.  The city requires global / national and mega-regional inputs — a truly unsustainable existence, along with very high population levels and density.

As I said, a weird article with outrageous assumptions that defy common sense:

“First off, as far as anyone who has studied the issue can tell, despite vast differences, on the whole, humanity has never been better.”

This is yet another patently false statement. Humanity is significantly worse off now then at any other time in human history (despite our expansion and growth). Every human on the planet is now imperiled due to human-activity and the dire consequences this causes.  Future humans are even worse off as we edge constantly closer to the precipice.

The author is unread apparently, the Anthropocene is a era of human-caused disasters and suffering, one which can only be championed as “the best it’s ever been” if you simply ignore our cause and effects at the expense of everything else, even ourselves.

The present model followed for advancement and development of the world’s global civilization can be summed up as the “business as usual” growth paradigm. The main components of this paradigm are growth, commerce, consumption and economics.  Most of us understand this as capitalism, the competition for resources, labor, profits and economic activity.

These are the pistons powering the engine of human global activity in modern societies, the supercharged V-8 engine of the modern human enterprise.

However, they are also the gnashing wheels of global decline and resource destruction which are leading the world to collapse.

The end of the world as we know it is a happening event, occurring daily.  The incessant demand of civilization for business as usual is voraciously consuming the world’s remaining resources to the point of total global collapse.  Competition for land, water, food and resources has reached crisis levels, with accompanying wars, economic sanctions, deforestation and desertification and anthropogenic global climate change.

Zero-growth advocates seek a wholesale change of the status quo in the hopes to avoid collapse.  However, zero-growth will not be enough.  Current consumption rates of energy, food, fuel, land, timber, minerals and other natural resources are far, far in excess of sustainable levels even with zero-growth of present population numbers.

The only real solution is negative growth.  Contraction of world population levels and economy, human activity and consumption, limited commerce and non-destructive economics.  This is diametrically opposed to the present status quo of world activity, development and investments, and the intention of world governments, and receives scant interest, despite being the only viable long-term solution for human survival.

Current extraction and depletion rates of petroleum are primary indicators of the world’s future decline.  A petroleum based global economy cannot survive past its depletion rate.  Human civilization is highly dependent upon oil energy, for all of its activity, including sustaining or growing human populations.

Alternative energy resources are being increasingly utilized, but recent studies indicate that within the United States, that we can only expect to achieve a maximum of 6% of our present energy consumption through the use of alternative energy sources such as wind power.

Other solutions are proposed, tar sands (highly destructive to the environment), coal (same), hydro, nuclear, bio-fuels, wind, solar, and tidal.  All suffer from scalability and a rather serious lack of existing infrastructure and investment throughout the world.  None are zero-polluting or “zero-emissions” since all require technology development with the associated environmental costs and their maintenance.

Most are associated with rare-earth elements already in short-supply.  As non-renewable resources, these elements are critical to any “switch over” to new technologies to meet global energy demands.  However, it is already recognized that we cannot meet global demand.  Any future demand of these critical elements is a pipe-dream.

Often overlooked, the development of alternative energy “solutions” actually requires the initial petroleum energy resource to mine the minerals, manufacture the technology and deploy the installations.  In time, even this won’t be possible and as our alternative energy solutions will wear out, break down and become unmaintainable for lack of spare parts (and the energy required to make them), they will eventually fail — forever.

The so-called “post-carbon world” is a world where humans face the dark without their mechanical slaves.  There are many people working on these scenarios and solutions, speculating and “planning” for global adaption and / or decline.  But in the midst of this single energy issue, the business as usual paradigm rules the present day.

There are in fact many other issues of even greater importance.  To list a few: food production, fresh water, arable land,  human populations, natural resources.  Each of these issues are already in global crisis now, and each will be dramatically worsened by a decline in the availability and quality / abundance of energy.

The only exception to this is some of the world’s natural resources will benefit since humans will have less opportunity to exploit them so thoroughly in an energy-depleted world.  Other natural resources will be dramatically worsened, such as forests, as fuel wood is rapidly consumed to support existing populations (until such time as population collapse happens).

Yet despite this growing awareness of increasing global crisis and decline, the current practice of business as usual ensures collapse on a apocalyptic scale.

Present human populations are far in excess of sustainable levels without massive energy inputs being increasingly leveraged throughout the entire world.  Yet energy decline is widely known and recognized. It is by no means a stretch of the imagination to state that we cannot even begin to maintain our present populations without massive sources of energy, nor can we hope to continue to achieve growth or economic expansion on any scale without a continued supply of this now-essential energy.

Even zero-growth is not sustainable and will be quickly discovered to be impossible, since we cannot maintain present global population levels and resource depletion rates indefinitely. Humanity will be literally forced into a negative growth scenario.

I strongly suspect that this will be a truly horrific time for humanity.  Population decline is never “easy”, and oftentimes occurs because of catastrophic events — war, natural disaster, famine, environmental upheaval or disease (and fascism).  What I think is unrecognized is that all of these catastrophic events will probably occur in successive and repeating order.  This will happen because of competition and economic decline and collapse, and because of environmental factors which we are already witnessing throughout the world.

Neither zero-growth or negative growth will be voluntarily chosen.  But they will both happen as resources run out, and as economic decline continues to worsen throughout the world.  Because the business as usual paradigm will be viciously maintained as long as humanly possible, war will break out, again and again in competition for resources (we’ve already fought two in the past ten years, there will be many more all over the world).

New disasters are happening on a near-daily basis already, many which can be directly traced to human causes.  Humanity is also seeing an upsurge of new diseases and superbugs which are immune to the world’s best antibiotics.  Famine is a daily occurrence now — in a still energy-soaked world.  This can only dramatically worsen as time goes on.

For a quick daily “fix” on these and other events, read Desdemona Despair every day.  I simply don’t have the time anymore to post all the links and stories shown there.  The ongoing decline in the environment is accelerating, faster and faster and faster.  If you are not already deeply scared then you are grossly under informed.

Beyond any shadow of doubt, we are facing TEOTWAWKI. In fact, this “event” is already here for tens of millions of people throughout the world.  No singular event can truly define this horizon, as many separate but distinctly linked events can be traced as the cause.

The world’s governments are still chained to BAU however, seemingly incapable and even unconcerned about the precipice from which they’ve fallen.  The “forward looking views” expressed by world leaders is in stark contrast to world realities.  The same could be said for nearly all business and commerce — the supercharged V-8 engine and driving wheels of global decline and resource destruction (and climate collapse).

We’ve gotten business as usual, which has served up TEOTWAWKI as the main course.  We thought for the longest time that we were receiving something else, but have belatedly discovered that this energy intensive civilization isn’t sustainable anymore and that our activity has now threatened all life on the planet, even our own.

We’re are NOT being given any choices anymore.  Once we crossed the threshold of sustainability (a long time ago) we committed ourselves to a one-way path with horrific consequences.  In case you do not yet understand, here is what we face:

a) We grow, or we stop growing.

Growth means we return to at least a modicum of prosperity and commerce, forestalling temporarily our collapse only as long as we can maintain the energy inputs and continue to harvest the remaining resources; growth still means continued competition for essential resources since cooperation isn’t what we actually do; growth actually means collapse — eventually, as finite resources can never be infinite, nor can populations always expand indefinitely, nor can energy supplies as utilized today last forever, nor can environmental collapse be “managed”, et. al, — growth actually still means collapse, only a little later (but worse in all probability since there won’t be anything left, see “Why A Slow Crash Will Destroy Everything“).

To stop our growth; we “fall back” as it were to lower population levels with fewer human impacts (eventually), but not without horrific consequences, a.k.a. “die-off”, through starvation, disease, environmental collapse, refugees, war, increased competition for localized essential resources.  The “gentle draw down” in human population levels will not happen since BAU is the defacto modus operandi and is extremely unlikely to change since this is essentially how the entire world operates and functions.
The end result will be exactly the same in either scenario.

I’m betting on BAU, or BAFU because I’m absolutely disgusted by the sheer stupidity of world governments and the global plantation owners that run this planet.  They have committed humanity to absolute disaster.  And to be frank — it appears that this does not bother them one bit.  My loathing for these fools is boundless I’m afraid, I see no justifiable reason at all that they do not adapt a new strategy for human survival (and for themselves, obviously).

We’ve only got one planet to live on. It makes perfect sense to make it truly livable, which it already was.  Instead, we replaced it with greed, gluttony, corruption and evil profits, enslaving our fellow man to a lifetime of drudgery and toil.  The reason was basically simple — some people figured out how to get other people to do their bidding (and work) for them, and they learned that they themselves could have very comfortable lives in the process.

These are the clowns running this planet into the ground, denying the rest of us even the basic right to live without their lordship.  I think that this is pure evil to be honest, the manifestation of oppression and slavery.

But the truth is, it’s even worse then that — it’s genocide.  It’s ecocide.  It’s biocide.  It’s what happens when you deplete a planet of essential resources for life itself (all life, not just us) to the point of total collapse — and do nothing about it except do more of it.

It is the height of insanity and sheer stupidity.

And it’s happening to you.

The Pakistan environmental collapse disaster is still growing, as flood waters continue to increase.  Already, over 20 million people have been displaced (22% of the country).  175,000 people left Thata literally overnight.

Imagine the United States with numbers like that.  A river of refugees.  Hard to believe, but the images coming out of Pakistan are too real.  The human tragedy is heart-breaking.

I’ve seen rampant speculation that divine justice is being meted out against Pakistan, but I doubt that. Environmental collapse will happen faster in low-lying areas that are unable to deal with a massive influx of water from the sky.  Pakistan’s notoriously poor flood control system didn’t help either.

But it does look, sound and even ‘feel’ Biblical.  Pakistan is facing a whole series of disasters now, as food, water run out, and disease and outbreaks of violence occur.

The Guardian has a pictorial slide show you can watch.

Cold Empties Bolivian Rivers of Fish

“Scientists who have visited the affected rivers say the event is the biggest ecological disaster Bolivia has known, and, as an example of a sudden climatic change wreaking havoc on wildlife, it is unprecedented in recorded history.”

Millions of fish dead, thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins.

“There’s just a huge number of dead fish,” says Michel Jégu, a researcher from the Institute for Developmental Research in Marseilles, France, who is currently working at the Noel Kempff Mercado Natural History Museum in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. “In the rivers near Santa Cruz there’s about 1,000 dead fish for every 100 metres of river.”

With such extreme climatic events potentially becoming more common due to climate change, scientists are hurrying to coordinate research into the impact, and how quickly the ecosystem is likely to recover.

You will be reading a lot more about climate collapse and the ecosystem.  The notion of “recovery” however, is wishful thinking. Like the American economy, the climate is tanking all over the world.  A new equilibrium will be found, but it won’t be like anything you recognized before.

It’s pretty clear now that Pakistan has been struck with a biblical-level apocalypse.  Refugee camps are overflowing, food is in severe short supply and thousands of people are being turned away from aid.

Pakistan Flood Survivors Refused Aid At Refugee Camps

Everyone remember what I said about being a refugee?  About how not to become one, and don’t make yourself one either? The Pakistan tragedy proves this point beyond a shadow of doubt.  You do not want to be a refugee.

This tragedy is going to get much worse.  Pakistan is now expecting serious disease epidemics.  It is my guess that this situation is going to get a lot worse before it can get better.  With an infrastructure and agriculture wiped out, the millions impacted will require a great deal of help.  Already the world is reeling under one environmental catastrophe after another, Pakistan will be severely impacted for a long time.

Painfully Slow Progress of Aid Effort

In Pictures:Pakistan’s Flood Crisis

The world will run out of helium.  A non-renewable resource, it’s an irreplaceable gas used for many critical applications.

Liquid helium is critical for cooling cooling infrared detectors, nuclear reactors and the machinery of wind tunnels. The space industry uses it in sensitive satellite equipment and spacecraft, and Nasa uses helium in huge quantities to purge the potentially explosive fuel from its rockets.

In the form of its isotope helium-3, helium is also crucial for research into the next generation of clean, waste-free nuclear reactors powered by nuclear fusion, the nuclear reaction that powers the Sun.

Despite the critical role that the gas plays in the modern world, it is being depleted as an unprecedented rate and reserves could dwindle to virtually nothing within a generation, warns Nobel laureate Robert Richardson, professor of physics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.  Why the world is running out of helium

We should start a list of the first natural resource to disappear forever.

Link found from Desdemona, the weather in Indonesia (Jakarta) is beyond anything in human experience or memory:

Jakarta. Indonesia has been experiencing its most extreme weather conditions in recorded history, meteorologists warned on Wednesday as torrential rains continued to pound the capital.

All regions across the archipelago have been experiencing abnormal and often catastrophic weather, an official from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said.

“We have reached a super-extreme level of weather this year, the first time in our history, and this is much worse than what we experienced back in 1998, when the La Nina caused extreme weather in the country,” Edvin Aldrian warned. Super-Extreme Weather Is The Worst On Record

Several million people are presently affected. Believe it or not, this is their “dry season” too.  Current ocean temperatures are also way out of wack by a considerable amount.

Bad drainage systems are legendary there, a situation made worse by the extreme record-breaking weather.

Don’t eat the fish, or the shrimp, or the oysters either.

Mississippi Shrimpers Refuse to Trawl

The goal was to prove to the public that their fishing grounds are contaminated with both oil and dispersants. Their method was simple – they tied an absorbent rag to a weighted hook, dropped it overboard for a short duration of time, then pulled it up to find the results. The rags were covered in a brown oily substance that the fishermen identified as a mix of BP’s crude oil and toxic dispersants.

IPS watched Miller and Stewart conduct eight tests in various places around Mississippi Sound. One of them was less than a quarter mile from the mouth of Pass Christian Harbor, and another was less than one mile from a public beach. Every single test found the absorbent rags stained with brown oil.

Gulf Of Mexico Still In Crisis

What the Center’s team saw was horrific. “Touring the Gulf of Mexico this week I’ve seen firsthand how oil is still killing wildlife and fouling beaches and marshes,” said Kierán Suckling, the Center’s executive director. “This crisis is far from over.”

On Grand Isle, the team found beaches covered in oil. Pools of liquid oil lie on the surface, and oil mixed with sand is hardened in mats along the water’s edge. Some beaches appear fine from a distance but are actually sitting atop massive amounts of oil, which bubbled to the surface when the team walked across the sand. Digging into the sand with rubber gloves, the Center’s team struck oil just six inches below the clean-looking surface.

Crabs and birds continue to be covered in oil as they cross the beaches or land in the marshes. Fish and sea turtles are forced to swim through oil on the surface and below the surface as they look for food.

In short, a full four months post-explosion, the Gulf of Mexico is still an oily mess despite rosy assertions by oil companies and the Obama administration two weeks ago that most of the oil is gone. The Center’s survey supports the conclusion of independent scientists, who announced findings on Monday that 80 percent of the oil is still present and continues to foul the beaches, waters, marshes and wildlife of the Gulf.

Outrage as UN exonerates Royal Dutch Shell for oil pollution in Nigeria

Crimes and coverup going back over 40 years.  A lesson for Gulf residents in the U.S., who will most certainly get screwed over by BP.  Oops, spoke too soon: BP Oil Leaks Victims Forced To Accept Final Financial Compensation

Anybody still think that Big Oil is helping anybody?  Or just serving their own private interests at the expense of everyone and everything else?

Gulf Claims No-Sue Ruling

Notice the foreign reporting on this, like many buried stories in the US media.  It time, it’ll show up here as outrage turns to riots. By then however, the dead bodies will start piling up.

Freeacre sent me this link to the Italian landslides.

This occurred back in February, but is definitely worth watching (this thing is huge).  Reuters has more on this with video and the English translation.  Giant cracks opened up right through the village.

In April, a landslide wiped out a train in Italy.