The Fault Lines

Today in Los Angeles it is over 40 degrees Celsius, which is more than I am comfortable with. I love air conditioning. This is one of the best inventions along with hats and umbrellas when it’s this hot. LA has them all. It is the idea that this place might have to live with heat like this one day in the future without air conditioning that is the subject of this posting.

The reason for fat and flabby is that you don't have to be fit and fast. We have so ordered our world that we have to now find ways to get the exercise and discipline that has always been part of our everyday lives previously. We eat too much and move too little. It hasn't always been like this, and I suspect that this will not always be the case in the future.

We, in the affluent first world have become used to adjusting our world to fit our needs. We simply turn up the heat when it’s cold, the air-cooling when it’s too hot. Too dark and on come the lights, too far away and we get on a car, train, bus or airplane to bring it within reach. This all demands fuel, and that is finite. The primary source for future wars will be conflicting demands for raw materials such as fuel and food.

Will we choose to live less well to be fair to our fellow man? I don’t think we will unless we have to. That’s called losing the next war. It’s the people who were on the losing side who get the raw deal. They don’t get to write the history, or to be at the front of the line to pick up the goody bag.

We met some friends today from the UK in the bright sunshine in the excellent Marmalade café for breakfast. They were commenting on the fact that prices in LA were much higher than a year back. I think they’re right. The dollar’s weakness is beginning to impact on the price of imported goods.

Like most people, America is living in a bubble of suspended reality. We all tend to believe tomorrow is going to be much like today but have no evidence except yesterday to sustain this assumption.
The truth is that tomorrow is never like today. Most days the changes are small but sometimes they are much bigger. It’s a bit like an earthquake fault; many tiny cracks will appear before the big bang rips the place apart. That’s what I believe is happening to the World economy. I don’t expect that we are about to collapse, but I do anticipate a lot of fault lines becoming apparent. If we don’t address the problems we will get very big, potentially uncontrollable problems.

Will we in the old Anglo Saxon alliance sit back if we can’t obtain fuel or food or anything else of substance? I don’t think we will and I believe the rest of the world should be aware of this. I am not saying this makes everything we might do in the future right. Our pragmatism means that we have almost always followed what could be considered our enlightened self-interest. Most often that has turned out to be beneficial for the World community because our moral compass has been aimed in the right direction. That doesn't make us right, but it has generally made us less bad than we might have been. This might not continue to be the case.