Chandler, Arizona 1985 (top) population approximately 80,000 and Chandler, Arizona 2015 (bottom) population approximately 245,000.

The agricultural fields in this area of Chandler, Arizona have been overtaken by cellular expansion. In and of itself, agriculture is an unsustainable nutrient and soil mining operation, but the houses, businesses and roads were deemed a higher and better use of the land. That is, agricultural land may sell for $5,000 and acre while land zoned for single-family residences may fetch $60,000 an acre. Most of the agricultural land that may have supported the nearby population is eliminated. Food for the human RNA working in the cells is still a small proportion of the energy and resource flow. Most of the flow is in technological commodities like coal, natural gas, steel, concrete, glass, asphalt, gasoline, water, waste removal an so on.

The natural growth in RNA populations requires they be educated and put to work in factories or other productive cells. The factories pay them a wage to work with tools to produce the components of which cars, homes/cells and other things are constructed. Worker and bankers alike are rewarded by the economies of scale and automation within the factories. With a history of wage earning, RNA usually take possession of a domestic cell in the vicinity of their employment. Business hires RNA and they buy home cells and cars, more little RNA are born, more job creation, more cells are built……

Each day net human population growth is roughly 200,000 people or almost equivalent to the bottom picture of Chandler, AZ. These people are educated and welcomed into the system which promises to reward them as full fledged members of the cancer with a little house in the suburbs, a car, vacation time and stuff, in return for working in one of the production cells. Commodities flow in and waste flows out along a mostly linear path. Everything in the vicinity and beyond is consumed to build the technological infrastructure and feed and care for the human RNA that work in the cancer cells. As long as conditions permit and fecundity or migration is adequate, it grows and grows and spreads like a human cancer, pursuing maximum accumulation of wealth and reproduction, unaware that it is all the time weakening the host or ecosystem.

It seems like the feeding frenzy will go on forever and the little cells of the American Dream will just keep appearing on the horizon and beyond, and that’s all that matters to the emotional centers of the brain. But eventually the growth does stop. Student graduates stay home with their parents because the few jobs at the factories no longer pay enough to buy a little house and car. The banks provide easier lending terms to make up for inadequate wages because the factories must be kept running so that wages may be paid so that home and car loans can be serviced. But even as lending terms are eased, consumers are encouraged to go into increasing debt to buy the factory products. If the growth ever stops, the factories shut down as maintenance of the existing stock of structures is not enough to keep them running and profitable. Millions of RNA are then on the street, without jobs but still need to make payments for the next thirty years on their homes, or lose them. The flow of commodities through the factories comes to a standstill and more RNA are let go. And then not only is there not enough money for house payments, car payments, medical insurance but there is not enough money for food, utilities and transportation.

Human RNA construction workers assembling a technological cytoskeleton.

But the RNA in China and India are working hard for much less and the corporations and factories are drawn to this astounding surfeit of labor. RNA can even be housed in dormitories swathed in blankets of toxic technological effluents. Market share is taken from other cells whose RNA are paid more richly and they shrivel and go bankrupt. Societal health or quality of life no longer matters, only a ready supply of functioning RNA with which to staff the cells as cancer lines compete with each other for maximum growth.

As growth continues, the terminal build-out eventually occurs as all gradients are reduced or are abandoned as uneconomic to exploit. Waste sinks are full and are affecting the health of the RNA. Soon the RNA that once worked in cells are in full retreat, abandoning overtaxed 5,000 sq.ft. McMansions for smaller cells, cramped but easier to keep cool in the increasingly hot summers and cool in the winter. The cell/home and car manufacturing businesses are now completely defunct while the military/industrial complex still feeds on remaining resources to defend themselves as there’s not much left of society to protect.

Even towards the end, when humans should have been saving something for the future, like remnants of the ecosystem, the cancer government wanted them to spend everything to keep the factories running, making more components for more houses and cars and to provide wages to service home and car loans.

And finally it happened, it stopped, metabolism was much simplified and global industrial civilization was eclipsed. The humans briefly gathered around the bedside of their dying mother-earth and lamented having killed her before disbanding into the rubble of their former glory to await their fate.