Hedge Fund Guy Says Brace for Impact: Believe it Now?

There is more than one way to figure out the future. As this chart clearly shows.....

Jeremy Grantham is the chief investment strategist for the Boston firm GMO, one of the world’s largest asset management companies ($107 billion in the portfolio at the end of last year). The title of his current newsletter to investors is “Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices are Over Forever.” In other words: Brace for Impact. (Okay, he is not saying that the crash of the industrial world has begun, but he is saying, and backing his opinion with the kind of data analysis that made him a gazillionaire, that the main benefits of industrialization — plenty of cheap stuff — are gone.) Continue reading

California Reaming: Big Ag Trashes Central Valley

First you blame me for global warming cause I get gas. Now you tell me there's crap in your water? (Photo by Gabrielle Gagne)

California’s Central Valley is probably the best example of the past success and imminent failure of industrial agriculture. The signs of the scope and proximity of the failure are accumulating fast, but while the past success has many wealthy fathers, the coming failure is an orphan. Continue reading

Reflection: The New American Evolution

Useless TV

After the evolution, there will be no use for TV sets. (Photo by Robbt/Flickr)

The imminent collapse of industrial society, an unavoidable consequence of its destruction of the web of life that supports it, is not the same thing as the end of the world, or the end of humanity. It is simply evolution at work. The world will shrug off its wounds — the only thing we underestimate more profoundly than the harm we do, is the ability of the natural world to recover from what we do. Humanity will persist. too, in a reduced, altered, and much improved form. Continue reading