A New Normal

When I was growing up in the 1950s I remember people saying to me a lot, "Kid, you don't know just how lucky you are." I remember thinking at the time 'What are you people talking about? I'm bored!'

However, by the time I was in High School starting in 1963 I had already studied enough about what my parents and grandparents and older relatives had been through to be nauseated about just how bad  things had been for the U.S. and the world. So, it wasn't hard for me to understand why so many people older than me were kind of crazy in a whole lot of ways.

We were one of the first generations to actually have enough. Enough food, clothing, bicycles, hula hoops, surfboards, skateboards (made from a separated roller skate and a 2by4) and frisbees(flying discs, saucers) or any other name you had for them then. So, what was the most different about us than previous generations was that we had enough of everything. So, we turned our sights on what we didn't have which was enough rights for blacks, whites, men and women and children and other minorities. But, I can see now that only when there was "Enough" could that kind of progress actually come about. If there "Wasn't enough" civil rights and women's rights and black power and brown power and all the rest could not have happened.

But, the problem for now is that the world is going in reverse economically because of Global Warming and overpopulation. So, there is less and less food to go around, there is less affordable electricity to go around and gas prices will inevitably inch their way higher in periodic fits and spurts worldwide simply because there is less and less available that is easily pumped out of the ground (Almost all new reserves are either natural gas or oil shale which is much more expensive to process).

So, that means it is inevitable that fuel prices (except for wind and sun and waves) will increase exponentially during the rest of this century and beyond. And that will mean even higher food prices and even less food grown and available worldwide to buy (especially for the poor worldwide)

So, I guess what I'm seeing is that just like the baby boomers in the 1950s and 1960s like myself and my generation saw only infinite expansion of opportunities on the horizon economically, today's generation might because of lessening inexpensive natural resources be having the opposite experience. And part of the reason is the population worldwide is now 7 billion whereas in the 1950s and 1960s it was at most 1 or 2 billion people worldwide and about 100 million of those had been killed in World War II (mostly civilians). So when population growth hits droughts and floods in major food growing regions (like Australia 2006) and the U.S (2012) and the loss of most of the wheat crop in Russia last year, it is going to take several years at least worldwide for grain prices to stabilize in any normal way if then. So, you are going to see a lot more people eating a lot more vegetarian because meat and poultry might be too expensive to buy for a lot of people, especially people who live in the city and can't raise their own chickens and livestock. So, this might cause a lot of people to leave cities and to move to less expensive places in the country where they have water and enough land to have their own chickens and livestock and organic gardens to start feeding themselves just like most people did worldwide up until the last Century or so.