- Or Why Many People Need to Learn to Cultivate Tropical Vegetables!
By Mitch Lawrie
We are entering an era with no precedent. There are six global threats building up largely unseen beneath the surface of daily life, like tectonic stresses beneath our feet.
The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 was just an early warning tremor… there is far more to come.
While no one can predict the future with complete certainty, it is probable that within the next 10 years a combination of intensifying global sustainability factors will reach tipping points that result in a no-growth global economy. This economy will have very different characteristics from what we have experienced all our lives.
These stresses will trigger radical change - world quakes, culture quakes, economy quakes, career quakes - in the coming years.
We are entering what various authors have called the Great Storm, the Great Decline, or the Great Transition... from a global industrial growth society to something very different, something we yet perceive but dimly through the mists of complex, non-linear system breakdown.
There will be impacts on many levels of life. Perhaps most attention-grabbing for many people is the fact that, one way or another ... most people will lose most of their money in this coming period!
Much of the money that exists in the world today is a mirage - the resources and energy supplies do not exist to back it up. Even if they have the same number of dollars, euros, etc. in the future the purchasing power will be gone.
Whilst the facts that support these views are no secrets they are, for most people, lost in the sea of media trivia which sweeps over us every day.
The six converging global system stresses are:
- Global Oil Production Ceiling… “Peak Oil”
- The Climate Change Wildcard
- The Dangerous Nature of Exponential Growth
- Multiple Other Limits to Growth
- Our House of Cards Economic System (Banking & Financial System
= Giant Ponzi Scheme) - “Black Swans” - the Unknown, Unexpected
Some of the characteristics of the resultant economy may include:
- Higher energy costs and therefore high transport and production costs
- Higher “traditional” unemployment and a shift to a diverse range of strategies to meet needs outside the formal economy
- Shift in employment from “nice to have” goods and services to “must have” goods and services
- New trends such as "forced entrepreneurship," relocalisation, and alternative energy careers and
- Higher food costs, possible shortages and a swing back to agricultural employment after a century of declining employment in this sector
Even if some individuals do not view this as the most likely future scenario the magnitude of the potential impacts in conjunction with the precautionary principle suggest it still deserves our attention.
Now is the time for learning new skills to increase one’s resilience and sustainability in the face of these changes. And these is no better place to start then learning Permaculture... particularly how to cultivate and harvest fruits and vegetables which grow well in our Queensland climate... tropical fruits and vegetables!!