Sustainability? 

This peaking of crises all at the same time triggers the need to think about surviving in a futuristic world of consumer shortages and possible chaos.

Our current way of life is unsustainable! It is just a matter of time before the crises escalade and get worse. As of February 03, 2011, people are rebelling in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and other countries of the world. There is an emerging reaction of people in poorer countries against poor living conditions. They are reacting to social-political injustice, lack of jobs, poverty, lack of safe drinking water, malnutrition and starvation.

Commentators such asJames Howard Kunstler argue that because over 90% of transportation in the U.S. relies on oil, the suburbs' reliance on the automobile is an unsustainable living arrangement. Wiki: Peak oil

 Food Crisis:   Whereas in years past, it has been weather that has caused a spike in commodities prices, now it's trends on both sides of the food supply/demand equation that are driving up prices. On the demand side, the culprits are population growth, rising affluence, and the use of grain to fuel cars. On the supply side: soil erosion, aquifer depletion, the loss of cropland to nonfarm uses, the diversion of irrigation water to cities, the plateauing of crop yields in agriculturally advanced countries, and—due to climate change —crop-withering heat waves and melting mountain glaciers and ice sheets. Brown: Food bubble collapse

This situation poses an imminent threat to food and political stability: Brown: Food bubble collapseTabb: global food crisis

• Today more than half of the world’s people live in countries with food bubbles. Brown: Food bubble collapse
• Estimates are that between 1 and 2 Billion people in the world are now starving or malnourished. Dreamer: world facts
• 40 percent of the world — more than 2 billion people — have no access to clean water or sanitation. Dreamer: world facts
• If however, the oil peak is real and the world has not switched to an alternative form of fuel before this time, peak oil could possibly trigger a global recession, food shortages and conflict between nations over dwindling oil supplies. Dreamer: world facts

Rising food prices: Between early 2007 and 2008, world wheat, rice, corn, and soybean prices climbed to roughly triple their historical levels. Brown: Food bubble collapse

More info: Sorochan: Localizing Agriculture

 Economic Crisis:   Tabb stressed four areas of crisis of the contemporary world system: the financial crisis, the loss of relative power by the United States, the rise of other centers of accumulation, and resource depletion and ecological crisis. The focus by Tabb on a failing economy belittles the other related crises that are occurring all at the same time. Tabb: global food crisis

The global economy needs to be overhauled and fixed!

More Info: Sorochan: money crisis

 Water Crisis:   Although water may be a human right, people in all parts of the world, today as in the past, fight over water. Today, corporations are usurping water from rivers, lakes and underground reservoirs to make money selling bottle water, to make soft drinks, and to irrigate crops as food for cash; all at the expense of depriving affordable drinking water to poor people. Another dilemma: During this current economic crisis, state and local governments are debating whether to privatize public water distribution systems as a way to save money. Water has become a biological, political and economic issue!

More info: Sorochan: Water warsSnitow: Water war USAEngelhardt: water war in America

 Fossil Fuel crisis: 

The world demand for oil since 2000 is far greater than that being produced. "World oil peaking is going to happen," the the Hirsch report says. Only the "timing is uncertain." Instability in the middle East is expected to raise the price of oil.Hirsch: US Oil Report

Oil production in 33 out of 48 out countries has now peaked, including Kuwait, Russia and Mexico. Global oil production is now also approaching an all time peak.

In 2005, theUnited States Department of Energy published a report titled Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management. Known as theHirsch report, it stated, "The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem." Commentators such asJames Howard Kunstler argue that because over 90% of transportation in the U.S. relies on oil, the suburbs' reliance on the automobile is an unsustainable living arrangement. Wiki: Peak oilHirsch: US Oil Report

The question of total oil reserves around the world remains somewhat murky, but Brown, Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton, and others using a straightforward mathematical model, have stated that the world is roughly at the same point in all-time production as the Lower-48 United States was at in 1970, when America passed its all-time production peak. We know for certain that three of the four super giant oil fields (Daqing in China; Cantarell in Mexico; Burgan in Kuwait) are past peak and there is plenty of evidence that the greatest of them all, 50-year-old Ghawar in Saudi Arabia is not only past peak but perhaps "crashing" into a super-steep decline. Although future oil predictions are embroiled in controversy, it is safe to say that the world oil production will peak,; only uncertainty is when!

Peaking of fossil fuel production is not the issue; it is the escalading demand for more electricity or energy derived from using fossil fuel that is the issue.

More info: Brown: oil decline