Guns in America - A Visit to Knob Creek, Kentucky

Just when you think you have seen it all. Take ten minutes to watch as thousands of shooters, some as young as nine years old, fire machine guns, flame throwers - even using these weapons from helicopters or bringing their own armoured tank, for recreation, and sport. Seeing is believing.

Tamil Protest at Parliament Hill

Went for a walk on a sunny afternoon and ended up in the middle of a Tamil protest at Parliament Hill.

Greenland is Warming Up

My adventurous soul wants to travel to places such as Greenland. I want to witness it before the glaciers disappear. My travel to such distant lands, and that of countless others, however, only hastens their demise.

Rick Steves Discusses Iran

Rick Steves presents a refreshing perspective of an American view of Iran. This is an excellent video. What he says connects very much with my own visit in 2004.

Let's Predict the Future!

I feel in the mood to predict. I figure I can do no worse than Jim Cramer, or Wassily Leontief.

Within the next year, (let's say April Fool's Day 2010), I expect the following to have occurred on the world stage:

• The stock market will, in the short term, continue its rise, perhaps into the summer of 2009. The Dow will struggle to break through 9000, maybe even toying with the 10,000 mark. It will not reach it though. The rise will be fueled by unwarranted speculation that "the worst is over" and the economy is starting to "recover". Inflation, however, will start to dampen those spirits, and by next spring, the Dow will have retreated, probably testing if not falling through the lows of early 2009. Therefore, the Dow at 5888 on March 31, 2010. (How's that for breaking all the prediction rules!)
  
• The oil industry will report at least one of the "super giant" oil fields has peaked and gone into decline. There will be more reports, now carried in mainstream media, that world oil production may already have peaked at 87.5 mb/d and that the world economies need to prepare for the reality of a relentless decline in the flow of oil. Most people though, will fail to understand the ramifications of this and think that oil prices are too high, continuing to blame the oil companies, their government, or Santa Claus for the price of energy. There will continue to be very little recognition that it is our own highly consumptive ways that is to blame.
• The price of a barrel of oil will rise to at least the $65 range by early summer, 2009. Without much trouble, it could peak near, or perhaps even top $100 if there is major trouble in the middle east, or, at the height of the summer "driving season" supply is tightened because of storms or the collapse of a major oil field. All bets are off, however, if inflation starts to kick in and the U.S. dollar drops in value. This could be precipitated by OPEC deciding to price oil in Euros, or perhaps a basket of other currencies.
• IF OPEC decouples the price of oil from the U.S. dollar, watch out below. The value of the stock market could be cut in half again.
• IF OPEC continues to price oil in U.S. dollars, then I expect the price to have fallen back down to the mid to upper fifty dollar range in March, 2010. Demand will have continued to dampen, based on my prediction of lessening economic activity. However, we will start to see the impact of reduced supply, as the geologic reality of peak oil flow takes effect. Of course, this also will be influenced by the extent to which economic activity drops. Less activity will mean that it will still be possible for oil producing nations to supply the need, and there would be less pressure on prices. The unfortunate consequence of this is that it will delay the day when a majority of consumers understand that peak oil flow is a reality.
  
• Steve Paikin will continue to believe that everyone should rightly expect to travel whenever they want.
  
• There will no longer be a "Big Three" in Detroit. They will have been replaced by a mid-sized one, or two or three small ones. Their total size will be dwarfed by the Japanese and European automakers, who also will have shrunk in size by at least 15%.
  
• It is highly likely that a major terrorist event will unfold to challenge world leaders, and specifically President Obama.
  
• There will be at least one reported attempt on President Obama's life.
• China and Eastern Europe will experience increased social unrest as a result of the economic situation. There will be reports of significant troop movements in China to deal with this unrest.
  
• There will be an increase in nationalist sentiment in Eastern Europe, threatening the structure of the European Union.
• There will be increased factionalism within Iraqi society as Obama attempts to remove U.S. troops. He will find it to be an increasingly difficult promise to keep.
• Obama will find it very difficult to rally support for more troops in Afghanistan. The Europeans will have become increasingly insular, and unwilling to participate, as social unrest increases on their home turf.
• Those of us who believe that the combined challenges of climate change and peak oil are the greatest threats to humanity will be greatly disappointed as world leaders focus instead on restoring "economic growth" as the answer to our problems. They will continue to fail to recognize that fueling economic growth without taking into account the ramifications of such growth is the root of the problem.
• Harper and the Conservatives in Canada will continue to characterise any effort to price carbon as a "tax" that will destroy Canada's competitiveness. They have drawn that line in the sand and will continue to stand behind it.
  

I look forward to coming back to this list in a year or so and tally my score. Who knows, I may have read the crystal ball correctly on one of these predictions! Here's to hoping I am wrong, and we will all be back in Kansas in a year, sipping Mai-Tai's. ;)

I remind myself once again of the words of Wassily Leontief: "Regarding the projections, the only thing I am certain about is that they are wrong."

Hot Air, and other Prognostications

In recent reading I have felt, at times, overwhelmed by a sense of "gloom and doom". Richard Heinberg and Matt Simmons both warn of the impending perils of peak oil flows and how it has the potential to catastrophically change civilization. Thomas Homer Dixon speaks darkly about the current economic crisis in his most recent interview with Peter Mansbridge. Jeffrey Kopstein, interviewed by Steve Paikin on The Agenda draws eerie parallels between the current eastern European banking crisis and the collapse of the Austrian banking system in 1931 that was a precursor to Nazism.

And then, just this morning I read Jeffrey Simpson's latest book "Hot Air" where he quotes Nobel Prize winner Wassily Leontief. In 1981 he commented on his own forecast of population and energy consumption for the United Nations. "Regarding the projections, the only thing I am certain about is that they are wrong."

Simpson then refers to an oft used remark from perhaps any economics professor to his or her students: "When making forecasts, give a number or a date, but never both."

To say that prediction of future events, even with availability of vast amounts of data and computing power, is an "inexact" science is, without doubt, an understatement. Just ask Jim Cramer. (Better yet, watch Jon Stewart ask him.)

Does this mean, though, that we must stop listening to prognosticators? Should we just throw up our hands in despair and leave ourselves to whatever may happen?

Obviously, no. We need some means to prepare ourselves. We need to seek some kind of understanding of what is happening around us. How did it start? Where are we going? We all, to one degree or another, grapple with these questions. None of us, though, have the BIG picture. Some of us may, in hindsight, have a better grasp on what is going on than others, but, ultimately, the best we can do, to paraphrase Nobel prizewinner Wassily Leontief, is make an educated guess. We attempt to gain a sense of that BIG picture by sucking whatever information we can from a variety of sources, to make sense of it all.

On top of all that, we must attempt to maintain perspective; that is, recognize our biases and own them. Do our best to keep an open mind.

Pretty tall order, for anyone.

Especially when, personally, my bias is that we are going to hell in a handbasket.

As I have oft stated on this blog, in one way or another, there are way too many of us on this planet consuming way too much way too quickly to sustain the kind of activity I witness on a daily basis. The only question in my mind is when is the whole sh*t house going to come crashing down on us.

Yes, I admit that I seek out those who reinforce this bias. This is why I subscribe to Richard Heinberg's museletter and Jan Lundberg's column at Culture Change. Try as I might to keep an open mind to free market boosterism and climate change skeptics (among others), my eyes almost invariably roll back when I hear the predictable rant. To me, this isn't rocket science. We live on a finite planet, yet the vast majority of us lead our lives as if we can continue to expand our consumption. Everyone blithely walks around as if there will be no end to this mindless consumption. It is a tired old saying but This is NOT sustainable!" This will end. The only question is, when? In my lifetime, or after?

There, I have made my prediction, and followed that sage economist's advice: "When making forecasts, give a number or a date, but never both."

My final questions are: Why have we lost the ability to look beyond ourselves, and our immediate selfish needs, and consider seven generations? What happened to stewardship?

Derrick Jensen on "Toxic Mimics"

"If your experience is that your food comes from a supermarket and your water comes from a tap, you will defend to the death the system that brings it to you because your life depends on it. If, on the other hand, your experience is that your food comes from a land base and your water comes from a stream, you will defend to the death that land base and the stream because your life depends on it."