Major Downturns Have an Upside – The Emergence and Growth of New Business Ideas

Economic recessions create bursts of economic and cultural change. Did the buggy and coach business just fade away?  Or did those companies die most quickly in the Panic of 1907-1908 and the Post-WWI Recession, only to be replaced by rapidly expanding businesses involved with motor vehicles, and a rising economic tide to lift them?  What new inventions attained increasingly levels of acceptance and use as people struggled for every advantage to dig themselves out of the recessionary problems of the Great Depression?  Were businesses developing lighter construction materials, alternative energy systems, and fuel conservation technologies some of the positive outcomes of the Oil Crisis and recession of 1973-1975?

The Future of Energy: Things Never Change So Much …

Things never change so much as they stay the same. That’s the saying, anyway, and I figure I’ll see how things balance out if I stick around long enough.  I expect that there will be surprises, and some advances people expect won’t happen, or will be disappointing, while other inventions will become mainstays of our civilization.  Inevitably, the deciding factor behind the decision to discard or keep something involves money, and I believe that will extend to our energy infrastructure.

Whose Lives Will Change Most as Fossil Fuel Prices Rise?

Fossil fuel prices will rise. There’s no doubting that, in the absence of any other supply of cheap, high volume energy, fossil fuel supplies will decline, and prices will rise as population continues to explode.  It is interesting to examine who is most likely to feel the effects of the change, as I don’t think many people, at least in North America where I live, are thinking about it.  In the end, it appears that the middle classes in the most developed countries and in the temperate climates will feel the effects the most.

Will Anything Reduce Global Birth Rates and Carbon Emissions Except Fossil Fuel Shortages?

Today the news proclaimed that agreements were made at the G-8 summit in Italy to hold global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Centrigrade.  It was a very positive step to see that the United States has finally joined most of the rest the world in making a commitment to fighting climate change.  Will people really be able to do this, though?  And aren’t population and energy use just as important if not moreso?

The “Glide Path” to Sustainability will Raise Recycling to a Large Scale Art

As population declines in the latter half of the 21st century new construction will be cut to a minimum, and renovation and recycling of existing buildings will dominate the construction industry.  Few new buildings will be needed as populstion decreases, growth will no longer be the predominant economic theme, and decreasing tax bases will reduce public funding. People may move out of some neighborhoods and towns and collect in others, probably to live closer to places of employment, education, etc., and reduce their cost of living.  Will smart individuals start working today to build profitable businesses that take advantage of the changes in our future?

Will Complicated Economic Cycles Recur and Worsen as Population Explodes?

There are lessons in the current worldwide economic decline as to how the global situation will interact with the population explosion in the coming decades. This recession appears to have been set up and triggered by a range of economic and political factors. A short but fierce spike in oil prices on top of a real estate price bubble combined with an regulatory trend going back decades that not only allowed banks to take on far too much risk, but also promoted a business culture in which debt became the lifeblood of businesses around the world.  Why did businesses take on so much risk?  The short term-focused profit motive, instead of good long term planning, seems to be a root cause.

The Shark Cage is Rusty – How Capitalism and Government Might Change for the Better

Corporations, by their nature, are focused on profits. Unfortunately, this causes them to sub-optimize the overall results for society. This is one of the shortcomings of the current capitalist system. Corporations, in their soulless drive for profits, will take your last dollar if they can, and will influence governments and drive them away from their original purpose, to ensure the common good and the positive evolution of society in ways that reflect the principle that, as they say in business school, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”  I found an interesting and pointed expression of this last year.

The Lights of the City Aren’t the Same to Me Any More

As a young man I sometimes drove to a high spot in town after dark, a park from which you could look out over the city, and parked my car to enjoy the twinkling of the city lights spread out before me.  It was a beautiful sight, and I could only marvel at what humanity had created.  I’ve learned a lot and thought a lot since then, however, and it all looks different to me now, or least, it provokes different thoughts and perceptions. 

“The Bomb” is Here, But It’s the Population Bomb

My childhood fears of nuclear war have come to pass, but not the way I expected. When I was a kid I had a great fear of nuclear war.  At school we drilled, hiding under our desks, in case Russian missiles with nuclear warheads should wreak terrible, radioactive firestorms on us.  One winter night around the age of 6 I woke up from a dream and looked out the window to see the sky glowing yellow – I was immediately convinced that either a nuclear attack was creating the incredible light in the sky, or that the nearby Fermi nuclear power plant had blown up, and in either case the radiation would soon get us.  As it turned out, it was just a full moon illuminating a light snowfall, but I will never forget the terror of those moments.  These days, with nuclear war seeming to be a much more remote possibility, I don’t even think about it.  The other night, however, I noticed the sky glowing orange most of the way around the horizon, and realized that, if I didn’t know it was street lights illuminating the falling snow, I would have thought a nuclear war had broken out.  The lights were like those of an explosion frozen in time.  Then I realized that this IS an explosion – a population explosion.  This extremely long, slow-motion explosion started over a century ago and the echoes won’t die out for decades, or maybe centuries, to come.  Unfortunately this explosion has consequences potentially more devastating than even a global nuclear war.  So what are we doing about it?  How can we mitigate the effects of this very-slow, long term explosion on ourselves and our descendants?

Will Human Overpopulation Eventually Cause Lemming-like Mass Migrations?

Animal populations migrate to find food or better living conditions, often in huge numbers, when populations become too large for available resources. For the caribou, whales, birds, and other creatures an annual migration is part of their ritual of survival, but some other species, such as lemmings, only migrate when under pressure. Humans have managed to remain more sedentary as we invented shelter, clothing, and technology to keep us comfortable and well fed. How will this change when the cheap energy we use to sustain our food production and comfort becomes too expensive for most people? Will we see larger and larger “migrations” from the poorest and most overpopulated countries to the most developed?  Have the migrations already begun?

What Will Happen to Businesses When Energy Cost Eclipses Labor Cost?

Today the cost of labor is the biggest single cost element for many businesses, and drives most decisions. The rise of fossil fuel prices will not be smooth,  however, as we have seen in 2008, when oil prices doubled in a matter of months and then fell back to 30% of their peak in a few months more.  During these spikes, and in the longer term as fossil fuel sources become more difficult and costly to extract, energy costs will rise to a level that challenges or surpasses labor as the biggest component of cost for many or most businesses.  The law of supply and demand also kicks in as population continues to expand, and labor costs in many industries will fall as increasing numbers of people are seeking those jobs.  At the same time, rising energy costs will reduce or eliminate the advantage of manufacturing in “low cost countries” such as China.  How will businesses react?  Will the net effect be to cause people to generally live at a lower economic level and make less money for equivalent work compared with today?  Will manufacturing of progressively lower cost and higher margin goods return to the developed countries?

Will the New U.S. Administration Make Sustainability a Theme?

The president-elect made hope and change key planks in his platform. Since past U.S. presidencies have failed to recognize sustainability as being of key importance to our future, let alone made it a consideration in the setting of policy, will this change in the new administration? There is certainly no single topic that is more important in the intermediate and long term pictures, and we need to be both planning and acting today to ensure the most comfortable glidepath possible through the coming period of population boom-and-bust as well as energy shortages and pollution problems. Does the new administration recognize our current and future issues, and will they take action to create and act on the kind of plans we will need to avoid major economic upheavals in the coming decades?

Harnessing the Power of the Masses to Achieve a Population “Glide Path”

The population explosion is testing our intelligence as a species. There are a great many of us on the planet now, and the power of the masses has become incredible. When there are 6 billion people, and 10% of them change their habits in a way that causes them to use a tenth of a gallon less water per day, the savings of 60 million gallons of water per day, or almost 22 billion gallons of water per year, is staggering to contemplate. This incredible power over our planet and our future can only be harnessed through the use of our media to educate all those people, and that will require breaking through a lot of political and economic barriers. Can we do this and get ahead of our problems before a large proportion of the world population dies from famine, disease, or some combination of natural and man-made disasters?

Infrastructure Will Change Significantly as Population Inevitably Declines Towards a Sustainable Level

Studies of past population reveal some valuable facts with implications for our future. Given that, before the widespread use of fossil fuels, there were apparently never more than about a billion humans on the planet, the fact that we are over six billion now and climbing fast, and that fossil fuels prices are already rising due to increased scarcity, it is probable that human population will decline back toward the one billion level in the next century. This suggests a variety of scenarios for making the adjustment. Most scenarios sound bad, but the challenge to us is to create and implement long term plans to manage the change. Given what we can anticipate, can we sufficiently raise the importance of taking the long term view and making long range plans to minimize the pain of the adjustments we face in the future? The economy and infrastructure will have to change significantly, but how? How will the business world change in response?

Why Do So Many Deny Global Warming Could Be Occurring?

Why are so many people determined to deny that we are facing some daunting problems? I can understand that scientists interpret data differently, and don’t expect that scientific opinions will all agree.  The denial I see, however, is mostly not coming from scientists.