Source: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/03/hockey-stick-graph-now-even-more-stickish
I have a memory of myself back in the 1970s watching my mother making lunch. She takes a can of beans out of the cupboard, empties it into a pot and throws the can into the garbage. As I watch that can going into the garbage, I extrapolate that happening everyday, millions of times over for decades and at that point I realized that this "fire and forget" disposable economic model would all end one day.
This resource intensive consumption oriented lifestyle, now in overdrive, rests upon the most tenuous of assumptions, specifically around ongoing resource availability, geopolitical stability, purchasing power/demand, and overall durability of the supply chain. Ironically, disruptive and changing weather patterns operating in a violent feedback loop will be another factor that is constantly challenging the status quo model. The cost of Hurricane Sandy alone wiped out the entire savings from the recent "fiscal cliff" tax increase, in one shot. Weeks of hand wringing and negotiation by hundreds of buffoons in Washington, all wiped out in one day.
I am not going to write a long-winded dissertation on each of the above mentioned factors, only to say they are highly integrated, such that small perturbations in one factor of production or supply will have outsized impacts on the rest of the supply chain. And most importantly, the entire model rests upon the mother of all assumptions which is that the globalized ponzi economy is inherently sustainable and stable, which it's not.
Therefore, while I am enraged by pictures such as the one above which indicate that my children and grandchildren will likely inherit a world in far worse condition than what we have enjoyed thus far, I console myself in knowing that the frankenstein's monster economic model of today is doomed to fail. In addition, knowing that the denialists of global warming happen to be the most self-absorbed comfort seekers on the planet, leads me to realize they will be the most shocked and surprised when all of "this" goes away virtually overnight. They deny global warming because they are fundamentally bought in to the status quo. Therefore, they are the least prepared for a paradigm shift and this propensity for delusional wishful thinking will put them at the greatest risk of extinction. The great "unwinding" will bring karma to the universe.
