when the trucks stop running





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Imagine trucks that are supplying your local supermarket, gas station, pharmacy, health center, car repair shop, and schools; stop running.   What will you do?  Will you make an immediate dash to your store and buy everything in sight along with hundreds of others?  This scenario is commonplace before a major hurricane arrives. 



But there's a modern country where it happens quite frequently.

It's happening right now in France. When the general public, unions, workers disagree about something, french truckers simply make a circular blockade of Paris and wait for capitulation - it doesn't take long.    The latest issue ('yellow jacket' strike is in full swing... link ) is rising diesel prices resulting from a carbon tax.  The Macron government just pushed through a labor wage increase along with a carbon tax, and it's resulted in higher diesel fuel prices. 

my opinion: At least they had the balls to institute a carbon tax - something that is far fetched for the USA to ever do.  Finland started the first carbon tax in the 1990's.  Several European countries also have one.  But it'll be a long time before the USA has one.  Even California doesn't have one - it has a carbon pricing program that effectively adds about 12 cents to each gallon of gasoline plus many more items.


No trucks?  Imagine no supermarket deliveries, no gasoline delivered to gas stations, no garbage pickup, banks will run out of cash, hospital run out of supplies, no maintenance or construction material deliveries, etc.   How long can a city survive?  How long can YOU survive? 

One report predicts that within 2-4 weeks the country will run out of clean water supplies and a major health epidemic will start.   Here's the report on consequences of trucks stopping in the USA:   https://www.trucking.org/ATA%20Docs/What%20We%20Do/Image%20and%20Outreach%20Programs/When%20Trucks%20Stop%20America%20Stops.pdf


Having the trucks stop running is more likely to happen in our lifetimes than some Hollywood style calamity.   At the risk of further fear mongering, there are several trends that are coming together making resource scarcity a soon-to-come phenom.   It's kinda like a perfect storm:   Rising fuel prices, extreme weather, population growth & migrations, farming & land issues.

Instead of seeing polar bears stranded on ice flows, untold species being wiped out, oceans being impaled with plastic garbage, perhaps we'll spring into action once the trucks stop running. 

 As resources dwindle and populations continue exploding there's only so much the world can do.  Something's gotta give.  Most of the current world conflicts and migrations (Syria, Somalia, Yemen, etc) have all started from drought and famine cycles along with other issues. 
We are not immune to this global phenom.  We in the West can continue being insulated from this for only so long.  The rubber band can only be stretched so far before it breaks.  And that breakage will most likely be first witnessed by more and more truck slow-downs, blockades, and strikes.


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The backdrop for all this is our population growth.  We currently have 7.63 billion people on earth. 50% of us live in seven countries (China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, USA, Pakistan and Nigeria. And this is growing - rapidly.  In 2000 there were 100,000 people over 100 years old, by 2100 there will be 21 million people over 100 years old.  WOW.    https://population.un.org/wpp/DataQuery/

Population increase and climate change are two things that most people find interesting and are concerned about, but there's little to nothing they can do about it.  However, resource scarcity and pricing will impact us all, AND it's something we will and must adapt to - one way or another. Here's a recent UN report detailing these issues:

“To continue on this business-asusual path would be very dangerous. Changes in consumption and production patterns are essential, and they must be led by the developed countries. Recent food and energy crises, and high prices for many commodities, point to a world where increasing resource scarcity is the norm.4 ” Report of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (2013)
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5483bioregional3.pdf

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