Sustainable Development Goals

Young people are being encouraged to embrace the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals defined by the UN following the success of some of the Millennium Development goals. Global poverty has been markedly reduced while education of the poor substantially improved this century.

However, the goals are no more than wishful thinking as they are not based on what is physically possible. The primary objective of sustainable development is not possible because the operations of industrialized civilization irreversibly use up limited natural resources, produces irrevocable waste material and degrades the terrestrial and marine eco systems. This operation is an unsustainable process.

The most that sound policies can do is slightly ameliorate some of the seventeen listed predicaments. This, of course, would be admirable and is a remedial policy to be encouraged even though it is based on an anthropocentric delusion. Those who contribute to enabling these processes will have the satisfaction of doing something that is clearly worthwhile. This movement by the young will tend to counter to a small degree the common wide spread aspiration for a high material standard of living regardless of the deleterious impact on the environment and the disadvantaged people. It will give the smart youngsters pride in easing some of the problems created by the unwise decisions of their elders and ancestors. However, they need to understand that there is a practical limit to what can be done in regressing to cope with the identified predicaments. The Sustainable Development Goals are only a pie in the sky!

However, it is expected that ELAM (Earth's Lodgers' Activity Movement) will provide a more realistic agenda for the young to embrace in coping with the inevitable powering down during the coming decline of industrialized civilization. How will society cope with the rapidly decreasing land, sea and air transportation capabilities as liquid fuels become very scarce? How will they cope with decreasing communication capabilities as electronic devices and electricity become very scarce? 

Power of money

Money flow currently powers the operation of economies. That is an indisputable fact. Knowledgeable people have pointed out for many years that the economic growth promoted by the flow of money is an unsustainable materialistic process. But that dose of reality decrying the delusion that money flow creates progress when the ecological cost is not taken into account has had very little impact on operations to this stage. Money still powers economic growth despite the booms and busts. Society is not prepared to allow the dose of reality to spoil the materialistic benefits of economic growth. Wise use of the remaining natural material resources is not on the agenda of those who have the leverage of money backing.

An aged billionaire learned that his health problem was due to an ailing kidney. He paid a large amount for a kidney replacement operation. That gave him another year of life!

If society should unexpectedly absorb the dose of reality, the power of money can help ease the inevitable powering down by society as natural resources become beyond reach and the existing irrevocably infrastructure ages. The belief that economic growth was sustainable will have died as people realize that nature bats last.  .

A dose of reality every day

Every day:

•  twenty four hours go by as time passes in the natural operational cycles, day/night, summer/autumn/winter/spring.
•  more people are born than die in processes that happen naturally
• all people, organisms and plants age due to irrevocable natural processes
• the inanimate structures of civilization also irrevocably age due to irrevocable natural processes,  largely forms of friction
• so do cars, trucks, ships and airliners as they use up irreplaceable fuel produced from the global store of crude oil for operation
• water recycles naturally through evaporation and precipitation in the hydrological cycle but large amounts are contaminated by industrial processes
• but systems of civilization use up aquifer water (such as the Great Artesian Basin) unsustainably 
• carbohydrates are produced using carbon dioxide in the photosynthesis stage in plants of the natural carbon cycle
• carbon dioxide is produced from carbohydrates in the respiration stage in animals in the natural carbon cycle 
• the carbon cycle was roughly in balance for eons before technological systems started using fossil fuels so now the emission rate is  much greater than the absorption rate
• hydrocarbons are converted in fossil fuel combustion in temporary systems made of irreplaceable materials to increase the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere sufficiently to change the climate and acidify and warm the ocean unnaturally
• hydrocarbons in fossil fuels are produced naturally at high pressures at such a slow rate that this does not influence the operation of civilization 
• the combustion of coal in aging power plants irreversibly emits gaseous, liquid and particular pollutants contributing to global warming, ocean acidification and harming organisms, including humans
• many millions of barrels of oil out of the crustal store are destroyed in a variety of manners, many of which are not very useful
• nitrogen cycles unnaturally in temporary plants to produce artificial fertilizers and naturally in biological  processes.
• phosphorus is so necessary in food production that its declining availability will increase starvation
• vast amounts of soil nutrients are flushed out from cities to contaminate waters
• all energy flows end up as waste heat after doing useless or useful positive work in natural and technological processes
• various forms of friction do negative work in transforming useful material to irrevocable waste during operations
• but friction also enables birds and airplanes to fly
• hearts pump blood against friction
• unexpected climatic events such as floods, droughts, storms, heat waves, cold spells, wild fires, sea level rise are growing evidence of climate change
• creation of fiat money increases the capability of people to continue their ravishing of the natural life support systems only so long as the value of the money is not irrevocably degraded by continuing inflation 
• society is  beguiled with the temporary availability of all forms of electronic gadgets for business, computing, obtaining information, banking, online shopping, communication and socializing.
• physical scientists continue using the latest technology to advance the frontiers of knowledge of how nature works, so illustrating how little was previously understood, while continuning to not take the impact of fundamentals into account
• social scientists continue to speculate on the behavior of all levels of the human race without understanding the limitations imposed by physical reality

 These activities will continue tomorrow and every day as long as natural forces allow society and its technological infrastructure to get away with freely degrading the eco systems and divesting natural material wealth. Society is so entranced with the power of fiat money that they will continue to ignore physical reality until it is too late to power down comfortably.

Tangible and intangible wealth

Time goes by. We all know that and we become more aware of it as we age! So does energy go by as it always dissipates as it flows and does work. We know that personally even though governments, industrialists and the media tell us that fossil fuels and nuclear will continue to meet energy demands, without taking into account the deleterious consequences. We also know that all organisms, including us, have to get rid of gaseous, liquid and solid wastes as well as waste heat. So material also goes by when it is transformed in a process.

But we are told we can make money out of thin air to increase our wealth. Many do this by fair means and foul. That is the accepted view in Myopia simply because society believes that it is free to use natural resources and devastate the environment without paying for it. They do not realize that they are destroying tangible natural wealth in an unsustainable process while the fortunate few play with their intangible wealth - whilst it is worth something. A high proportion of the crustal store of fossil fuel has already gone up in smoke

Making money with technical trading

Being a mathematician, I had a natural interest in technical trading in the financial market using the various forms of signals on charts for stocks and commodities. The signals give indications of when buyers are over whelming sellers and vice versa. The trader can make money rapidly, according to the theory, if he/she reads the signs in the way that is put forward. The rhetoric seems to be plausible from a mathematical point of view.

However, the proponents of this strategy do not address some fundamental issues. They claim the strategy will make money. The first question is who loses that money? The brokers obtain some of the money for providing services. So if an amateur trader acquires say $10,000 over a year, who loses it? Insiders and professional traders using high speed algorithms are in a much better position to make money than an amateur. Of course this discrepancy could be partly explained in the past by the creation by governments of money. However, those days are almost certainly over.

Some traders will doubtless continue to make money by wise selection of stocks, bonds or currencies or by having advantages due to insider knowledge and fast trading software. They will continue to take the cream off the top. The amateur trader using pricing signals on charts will probably still have an advantage over those who invest their savings in managed funds. However, as economic growth transitions to contraction, the useful pricing signals will become scarcer and more signals will be fallacious. Ironically, the amateur trader may well make money as it loses value so their real wealth does not improve. So technical trading is a fascinating game in which there will be more losers than winners as the generation of real wealth in the community dies down.

The philosophy underpinning technical trading is that pricing data provides insight into what buyers and sellers will be doing. The data indicates only what they have done up to the present.Those who believe that this data provides a useful forecast should think about forecasting the toss of a coin. There is no possible way of knowing whether it will end up as a head or tail. This inherent uncertainty about forecasting needs to be borne in mind when vested interests make claims about forecasting.

The common view that it is possible to make money will slowly die as the ability to create it out of thin air declines. Society will have to relearn the value of earning money by making a useful contribution to operations.

Grand Challenge Manifesto (GCM)

Dire times ahead! That is not the message that the young want to hear - but it is the stark reality that society will have to cope with. Industrial civilization has used up so much of the stored natural material wealth, including oil, that it is becoming so scarce that supply will not be able to meet demand in the future. Technology has provided the means to use this natural wealth but not the means to handle the material wastes produced or to repair the ecological damage that industrialization has done. So now the vast, aging infrastructure is addicted to using up the limited natural material capital as it runs out. Surviving future generations will curse their inability to do no more than make decisions about how to power down as the goods and services provided by civilization decline. They need a Grand Challenge Manifesto to guide them on the way down.

Denis Frith