The Binary Circumstance

I came across this interesting clip of Joni Mitchell being interviewed by Charlie Rose in January 2008.

In the interview she noted similarities between pre-war Germany and the U.S. She also said we were “on the brink of economic collapse globally.”

In addition she commented on weak men v. aggressive women and her lifelong smoking habit.

Maybe she should give up music and become a talking head on CNBC! (Just kidding.) Jim Cramer, Alan Greenspan, the Wall Street computer models, economists, and politicians were all still pretending things were going to be fine. In fact, most still are.

This clip is from YouTube. The entire interview is on the CharlieRose.com site, dated January 19, 2008. Most of what was cut out in this version was promoting her new CD “Shine.”

Now here is a chart of the S&P 500 that shows where she said we were on the “brink of economic collapse globally.” (Click to enlarge.) As we all know, other world markets followed the same path with many now in worse shape than we are.

Chart of S&P 500 Index

Although I’ve always been a big fan of Joni Mitchell’s music, I don’t rely on her for political or economic insights. I’ve been quoting people for over three years who said the housing market was in trouble. I was hoping that people would listen to their warnings. But I certainly didn’t see it turning into the global banking meltdown that we’ve seen. I should have, but I didn’t. Maybe Joni was seeing something that others were not.

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Til it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Lyrics from “Big Yellow Taxi” – Joni Mitchell

We’ve seen a lot of bubbles in recent years like the dot.com bubble and the housing bubble. There is always a healthy dose of magical thinking that blows the bubbles up to unsustainable levels. Then comes the bust.

I think the biggest bubble is the human population bubble. The earth has been around for billions of years but humans are a relatively recent addition to the planet. While the human population continues to increase, the planet and the amount of resources that it has to sustain human life is fixed.

This chart that goes back to 10,000BC shows just how dramatic the recent increase in human population is. Just like other bubbles it is unsustainable. (Click to enlarge.)

World Population Growth

The writer of an article on NowPublic.com suggests that fossil fuels have “fueled” this huge rate of growth and draws a parallel with the fate of other species when their food supply shrinks.

The resulting population bubble of the humans on planet earth is directly mirrored in any wild population of animals. When food is plentifully the rabbits multiply because they have an overabundance of food energy to propel their explosive growth but when the next season comes around the excessive population is thinned due to a lack of food. We use fancy terms like resources and agriculture but in the end we are no better off than the rabbits in the field.

Ultimately natural systems correct themselves and we are not in control of these cycles nor can we influence it once we reach a resource exhaustion point. There will be a correction in the human population on planet earth resulting in a huge decrease in the number of humans by some mechanism that will be called a tragedy or a holocaust or some other equally colorful word. The coming correction to the global warming problem is already showing itself – food prices rising, worldwide food riots, extreme weather related deaths, increased spread of disease, less arable land and destruction of life sustaining watersheds.

There are other forms of energy like the sun, wind and nuclear that can supply the needs of the human population but we have not yet learned to exploit them economically. Not knowing the ultimate cost in money and effort to harness them, it is impossible to calculate how much human population they can sustain. With most of the world’s population already malnourished or starving and fossil fuels in limited supply and increasing in cost, it is hard to imagine that population can be sustained anywhere near its current level without a major correction.

What event might cause a big decline in human population and when it might take place is beyond my ability to predict. The current global economic meltdown could be another needle in the balloon of human population growth, however. With countries printing money faster than we can count it and governments taking on debt that can never be repaid except by printing even more money (see Hyperinflation) , the possibility of the total collapse of world order could be around the corner as countries fight over who owes who how much and individuals rebel against those they believe destroyed their livelihood and their hope for a future.

Typically, nature controls population through famine, disease and war.

How we’ll get there I don’t know. But bubbles always pop because no matter how much we’d like to believe otherwise, you can’t violate the laws of reality.