Overview

  • 6-10-2025 Slowing of Global production:  Just as predicted in the 50 year old curves in LTG, it would appear that global output is beginning to slow. The media talks about the immediate causes, such as US-China tariff war, and fallout from the Covid pandemic, I suspect, nevertheless, that these causes are associated with Overshoot. There doesn’t seem to be a clear direct path from Overshoot to these developments, such as the slowdown of global output and the loss of institutional democracy. It would appear to me that a good test of these developments and their relationship to Overshoot would be how long these developments last. I suspect that the loss of democracy is permanent. Democracies are born and flourish during periods of economic prosperity and rapid economic growth. When the hunting is bad and game is sparse, the (Chimp) pack reverts back to mean and mutual murder, in other words, authoritarianism.  – https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/business/trump-trade-war-global-economy.html 
  • 4-10-25  Let’s insert a discussion about economic overshoot and the peaking of industrial output out of my Diary and into this section. I think this discussion is significant.
  • So, just a one-off thought here: The collapse of the human economy has been predicted. The chief factors, at least in the Limits To Growth scenario are: depleted resources, increased pollution, decreasing food supplies and decreased industrial output. Some of these things are confusing to me this morning. I suspect that we are seeing signs of decreased food supplies: The rising price of food here in the US, along with shortages of selected food commodities: eggs in particular, along with rising price of chocolate and coffee. The price of beef and meat here in the US has never been higher, reflecting, I suspect, the increasing cost of producing these meat commodities. Food shortage around the world, not covered well in the US media appears to be higher than ever. Starvation and famine, mostly due to military conflict, predominates in Aftrica. According to the WHO (which the Trump regime is bailing out of), there is a global hunger crisis underway and is steadily worsening. https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stubbornly-high-for-three-consecutive-years-as-global-crises-deepen--un-report  
  • So, without going into gritty detail right now, it appears that the world food supply is steadily decreasing, as evidenced in the poorer countries and in Gaza. So maybe we can safely conclude that the world food supply graph is now trending downward.   

But now the industrial output graph needs some examination. Somehow, this business, involving Donald Trump and his tariff bullying is relevant here.

Just on this graph, grabbed of the first web site I could find, appears to show the following: world industrial output has increased steadily for the last 30 years, per the LTG graph above. But in the past 3 years, there appears to be a pause in that steady growth in the past 3 years. The 2020 pandemic (itself a symptom of ecological overshoot) caused a temporary pause, even a downturn in world industrial output. After the rapid recovery after the pandemic was over, however, there appears to be a pause in the steady growth of industrial output. Why is that? And, on top of that, the Trump tariff bullying appears to be putting the planet on the edge of global trade wars, which will, in itself, cause a pause or even a downturn in global industrial output, and a global economic recession. Is it likely that global economic industrial output has now peaked?  After the peak, the graph predicts a sharp and permanent decline in industrial output, suggestive of not just an ongoing global recession, but something that we could describe as a global depression.

 

Perhaps one of the causes of the peaking of industrial output mentioned in the comments on April 8 is this cause: Increasing geopolitical tensions. Perhaps the increasing economic competition and confrontation between the two global superpowers will in itself, be a significant cause of the industrial output peak. – https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/business/us-china-tariffs-trade-war.html This topic bears a closer look.

 

Some points in the article above:  a. jeopardizing the fate of two superpowers and threatening to drag down the world economy. Threat to the world economy.  B. At risk is a relationship that shaped the global economy in the 21st century. Implication: historic threat to the global economy. C. 

Let's start the economic discussion with the term “declining declining resources “. Greed and the predatory instinct are basic to human 

From an article in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:  Speaks to the economic considerations in ongoing collapse:  https://thebulletin.org/2023/09/betting-against-worst-case-climate-scenarios-is-risky-business/#post-heading 

 

In a complex system, second-order social impacts including armed conflict, state breakdown, and mass migration are deeply uncertain. Climate change is a “ruin” problem of irreversible harm and a risk of total failure, meaning negative outcomes are economically unquantifiable and may pose an existential threat to human civilization.

 

Solely from just reading the articles available on the media. This reinforces my conviction that massive, presently incomprehensible and uncontemplatable, economic and social change is coming upon us rapidly, and we need to prepare for the worst, even though we don’t know exactly what it is yet. 

Rising Inequality

Strikes & Labor Unrest

Rising Debt

 “Debts a rising percentage of annual real output.”

Eroding Goals for Energy & Environment

Neglect of Infrastructure

“Capital depreciation exceeding investment, and maintenance is deferred, so there is deterioration in capital stocks, especially long-lived infrastructure.” 

Damage Control

“Capital, resources and labor diverted to activities compensating  for the loss of services there were formerly provided without cost by nature (for example, sewage treatment, air purification, water purification, flood control, pest control, restoration of soil nutrients, pollination or the preservation of species.”  Or, alternatively, failure to devote the necessary resources and these conditions continue to worsen. 

Harder to Extract

“Technologies invented to make use of lower  quality smaller, more dispersed, less valuable resources, because the higher-value ones are gone.”  

Increasing Diversion to Military Use

  • “Growing demands for capital, resources and labor used by the military or industry to gain access to, secure and defend resources that are increasingly concentrated in fewer, more remote or increasingly hostile regions.” 

Declining Human Resources

  •  “Investment in human resources (education, health care, shelter) postponed in order to meet immediate consumption, investment, or security needs , or to pay debts.”