Is This What’s Going On? A Set of Questions of Global Concern.

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Is This Whats Going On

I have a set of conjectures, and want input from my friends and blog-followers about them. How much of this has actually happened over the past months, weeks, and days?
 
1. The Chinese have been buying huge amounts of silver, thus driving up its price, because…
 
2. The political and business leaders in Greater China are, themselves, sick of living in an environmental nightmare based on decades of high consumption of oil and dirty coal, and are working on building enormous numbers of solar panels to get away from fossil fuel consumption, using lots of silver, which has the highest reflectivity of any element. China’s silver buying-spree is being misinterpreted, globally, because China is not well-understood, outside China.
 
3. These leaders of China have to breathe the same air, for one thing, as many Chinese people with much less power, and going green is the pragmatic thing to do. It is quite Chinese to be pragmatic. Living in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, or other population centers, air quality is a major issue, as is global warming and other environmental concerns — all issues which many Americans are in the habit of ignoring.
 
4. As the Chinese phase themselves out of the human addiction to fossil fuels, total global oil consumption drops. Evidence: gasoline prices fell. I was buying for under $2 a gallon a week ago.
 
5. Falling oil prices have led to severe economic problems in the oil-producing countries of the Middle East. Higher-than-usual amounts of political stability have rippled through the Middle East through the last five years, and this has intensified further in recent months. The latest such development has been in Turkey, often seen as the most politically stable country in the Muslim world, is going through an attempted(?) coup, on the far side of the Middle East from China.
 
6. In the USA, one of the people running for president is a reactionary xenophobe, as well as a populist demagogue, and is running against an opponent with little to no ethical principles who is winning by default because she’s running against Trump. Donald Trump and his people (and he has a lot of people) have been spewing Islamophobia and Sinophobia, and they’ve been doing it loudly.
 
7. Many people all over the world are reacting to the Trump Trumpet o’ Hate, and freaking out. Various end-of-the-world scenarios are been floated publicly, especially in cyberspace. People are getting “off the grid” if they can, either because it’s a good idea, or because they’re panicked. In some places, efforts are actually being made to use the force of government to stop people from weaning themselves off the services of utility companies.
 
8. Few people realize that a lot of this is a set of unintended consequences of China (of all nations) leading the charge to do the right thing regarding oil addiction, from an environmental and ecological point of view, plus having a lunatic run for the White House.
 
9. The rising price of silver, panic-in-advance about a widely-expected coming collapse of fiat currencies, and the pronouncements and predictions of Ron Paul and his ilk, are all feeding off each other, in an accelerating spiral. In the meantime, the political instability in Turkey is capping off a slight rise in gas prices over recent lows, just in the last week.
 
10. Most Americans don’t know much about a lot of this because we’re at a point in the current, nasty election cycle that America as a people has simply forgotten (again) that the world outside the United States actually exists. Ignorance about the Middle East, economics, environmental science, and Greater China is widespread in the best of times. Thanks to (a) the “Donald and Hillary Show” playing 24/7 on cable news, (b) civil unrest at home (brutality on the part of some, but not all, police), and (c) a backlash against Black Lives Matter, with horrible behavior from some, but not all, of the protesters on all sides, and (d) an anti-or re-backlash against BLM is in “full throttle” right now, and (e) unrest abroad (Turkey, etc.), these certainly aren’t the best of times.
 
I invite anyone to weigh in on the subject of which of the above conjectures are valid, and which are invalid. I have deliberately cited no sources, yet, because I am asking for independent peer review, and so do not wish to suggest sources at this point. In addition to “Which of these statements are correct, and which are wrong?” I am also asking, “What am I missing?”

7 thoughts on “Is This What’s Going On? A Set of Questions of Global Concern.”

  1. I have no knowledge of China’s motives for buying silver, but your rationale seems plausible. What I do know about this general topic is that the growing turmoil and associated paranoia we’re experiencing around the world today has been foreseen by many writers for a very long time (e.g. Limits to Growth – published in 1972), and has been the subject of intense governmental study in recent years. I don’t want to sound alarmist, but the consensus of these conclusions paint a rather dire picture for the 21st century.

    I’ve done a lot of personal study on what’s happening, and one item really stood out. IPCC aggregated projections on the global food supply point towards declining production after 2030, and sharply dropping further for the remainder of the century. It included all relative factors such as agricultural technology trends and climate change impacts. Juxtaposed against this are UN projections on population growth which indicate we’re on a path to top 11 billion by 2100. Obviously, something has to give here.

    As population pressures stretch our sustainable resource limits, social instability and regional conflict will continue to increase. Unfortunately, the current pace of transitioning towards clean energy isn’t sufficient to offset these trends.

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    • A Big Hello to the two Roberts!

      I am very inclined to agree with Robert A. Vella’s excellent comment here. Some of the projected statistics and global predictions are so dire that certain folks even liken the human species as cancer cells over-multiplying and wrecking havocs in the planetary Petri dish called Earth. The very next post published on my blog will deal with these global issues and relating them back to human nature and its characteristics. This forthcoming post, like the last two (and many others before) will be very long, detailed and analytical. Please stay tuned!

      RobertLovesPi, I would like to point out a typo in your sentence “the political instability in Turkey is capping off a slight rice in gas prices over recent lows”. As far as I know, you meant “rise”, not “rice”. Perhaps your subconscious was thinking about the staple food of most Chinese in China.

      Thank you, RobertLovesPi, for your many posts regarding China. I don’t know whether you live close to any Chinatown. Did you in any way partake in the recent celebration of the Chinese New Year during the second half of February? In any case, given that you have shown considerable interests in the Chinese culture and politics, here is my very detailed post about the Chinese New Year at https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/soundeagle-in-chinese-new-year-celebration-spring-festival-lion-dance-traditional-culture-and-architecture/

      I look forward to reading more of your posts as time permits!

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  2. Hi Robert, we travelled extensively in China in 2004. Back then the air quality was sufficiently bad that I would never consider living there. Seeing how the smog there has grown even worse, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were buying up the silver to make solar panels. The atmosphere there is terrible and it isn’t something they can put off.
    I think a lot of the present angst could be the result of our technology and when something happens somewhere we not only know about it immediately, we can watch it happen. We have wars and coups and terrorist attacks. This is very disconcerting. But these things have been happening since the beginning of time. My grandparents lived through the dirty thirties in the dust bowl of Saskatchewan and my parents through the second world war. Life was tough but they got by. There will continue to be tragedies and terrible things will happen but most of us will pull together and get through it too. This is where family becomes important. We strive to help each other.
    So in spite of all these things you must not focus on it or fret over it. Just do you best job every day. You are a teacher and your job is so important. Try to get some satisfaction from that. Our teachers have one of the most challenging jobs in the world.
    Leslie

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  3. Pingback: Explaining China, Part I: The Scope of This Series, Which Includes the PRC, the ROC, the Han, and Greater China | RobertLovesPi's Blog

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