un-Denial

By Monk: Why not nuclear?

Today’s post is by frequent un-Denial visitor and friend Monk who does a wonderful job of explaining why nuclear energy is not a useful response to overshoot.

With increasing energy prices and sanctions on Russia, people are once again considering how we can power the global industrial machine with significantly less oil and gas. Alongside this, environmentalists are getting more savvy in spotting the critical problems with the likes of wind and solar and other green hopium nonsense (green hydrogen anyone?). But for some reason, many people struggle to make the final step and admit that nuclear is not going to save us from peak oil and / or climate change.

In this article, I would like to briefly layout what I see as the high-level problems with nuclear. This is just a summary of my own personal reasons for why I’m not convinced. It is by no means a thorough technical analysis!

What I’d like us to consider is this: is it DENIAL stopping our smart and critical thinkers from admitting the problems with nuclear? People who do become aware of the problems with our system tend to jump to nuclear as a last bastion of hope. Modern commentators like to tell themselves nice stories about nuclear. This prevents them from having to seriously consider energy collapse. How often have you heard these affirmations?

Nuclear energy is cheap
Nuclear energy is safe
Nuclear energy is clean and green
Nuclear energy is a low carbon energy source
Nuclear energy can meet our energy needs when fossil fuels run out (peak oil)
New innovations will make nuclear energy better, such as micro plants, newer generations, sustained fusion etc.

We shouldn’t just believe in nuclear like it’s a fairy godmother who is going to save us from our poor energy planning. We should thoroughly interrogate claims about nuclear through the lenses of environment, energy, economy, and safety.

Nuclear energy may have a negative energy return

If we accept money (currency) as a proxy for energy units, then it is pretty clear that nuclear plants are incredibly energy expensive to plan, build, maintain, and decommission. Nuclear plants are some of the most expensive projects undertaken. The capital costs are horrendous. What that should tell you is it takes a shed load of energy just to build a nuclear power plant.

To see if this upfront energy spend is worth it, we need to see how much energy we get back. Utility providers will look at costs as a ‘cost per electricity unit’. If you compare nuclear to other electricity sources, you are spending a lot more to get nuclear. Here is an example of that type of comparison looking at just the capital cost per kilowatt:

Type	Capital cost per kilowatt (kW)
Nuclear	$7,675 to $12,500
Coal plant	$3,000 to $8,400
Gas combined	$700 to $1,300

Source (well worth a read): https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx

By the time we factor in all the other costs associated with nuclear – that other electricity generation doesn’t have – I’m not convinced nuclear is generating a net return at all. If that’s true (I’m happy to be wrong), you might ask why countries continue to build them? A few possibilities include:

Accepting burning existing fossil fuels now to get longer lasting consistent electricity in the future.
To support ongoing research.
To support the military.

I often hear pro-nuclear people talk about how much energy we can get from such a small volume of uranium. I think that is disingenuous considering all the energy we have to burn in setting up a plant before we even get a single unit of energy from uranium.

Please note that net energy studies are notoriously difficult, because it’s up to the researcher how much of the supply chain and lifecycle they factor in. That’s why I find looking at currency a useful way to approximate EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). Of course, the nuclear industry will say they generate a very positive EROEI. Here’s a good example with references: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment.aspx. However, academic “meta-analysis of EROI values for nuclear energy suggests a mean EROI of about 14:1 (n of 33 from 15 publications)” (Hall et al., 2014) NB this was looking at traditional nuclear only.

Nuclear produces electricity, not liquid energy, not coal, and not gas

Our predicament is not one of electricity, but of diesel, natural gas, and coal. These are critical energy and resource sources that cannot be replaced by electricity (or at least not with a positive energy return). A couple of simple examples:

We can’t make silicon wafers or industrial steel without coal.
We can’t move stuff around or dig it out of the ground without diesel.
We also have the issue that the world vehicle fleet is already built and requires petrol or diesel for the most part. There are no longer enough minerals left to build an entirely new electric vehicle fleet – a fact that surprising few anti-car new urbanist types are unaware of.
Natural gas provides us with nitrogen fertilizer (essential for feeding billions of people in the modern agricultural system) and plastics with many uses.

Another challenge is that if nuclear was to replace all energy from fossil fuels, we would need a better way to store excess energy. Although nothing like the intermittency problems of wind and solar, nuclear has a related type of problem in that it likes to always be running and producing a steady-ish amount of electricity. Currently this doesn’t matter where nuclear is part of the total energy mix, but if it were the bulk of the energy mix, storage would become a major consideration. There are a whole lot of issues with electricity storage that have been well-explained in the issues with wind and solar, namely finite amount of materials to build batteries, expense, and battery storage capacity.

One potential upside of nuclear energy could be to replace natural gas as the main electricity generator that balances out wind and solar intermittency. But due to the costs of nuclear compared to gas this hasn’t been done. Moreover, gas generation is preferred because it is easier to switch off and on.

Nuclear is entirely dependent on fossil fuels

A nuclear power plant could not even be built without fossil fuels:

Coal to make the steel
Diesel to mine the uranium
Diesel to mine the sand for concrete
Diesel to mine the copper to make the electric components
Gas to make the plastics for componentry and systems
Gas to make the food to feed the workers
I could go on and make this a very long list, but hopefully you get the point.

Because building a nuclear power plant is impossible without fossil fuels, that also means we will not build new nuclear power plants after the end of oil. Just like wind turbines and solar panels cannot make more of themselves, neither can a nuclear reactor.

Nuclear is not zero emissions

Obviously to build a nuclear power plant you are going to need a lot of diesel-powered plant and equipment. There is also concrete to factor in, which is a massive emissions source, accounting for approximately 8% of total global emissions.

With all those fossil fuels going into making a nuclear power plant, it should be obvious that nuclear is not and will never be net “zero emissions”. The focus on operating or tailpipe emissions is pointless when you’re still making an overall net positive addition to emissions. And arguably the world already has more than enough electricity, so building nuclear is possibly a complete waste of emissions.

Inputs to nuclear power plants are also reaching peak

As the capital costs suggest, nuclear energy plants are massive construction projects. They require vast raw materials – all of which have their own supply limitations. It is not just oil that is reaching peak, but many other raw inputs from copper to even boring old sand. Yes, peak sand is a thing. If you look at a picture of a nuclear plant, you’ll see a lot of concrete. That is sand! Concrete also requires other raw materials including calcium, silicon, iron, and aluminium. Is there even enough sand left in the world to build enough nuclear power plants to meet our energy needs? And the concrete needs will still be there for a hypothetical fusion plant, or any such other “innovative” nuclear power generation.

The story is the same for any other rare (or getting rare) earth element. There’s approximately 17 years left of zinc, 21 for silver, 35 for nickel and 64 for cobalt. Even if these numbers are wrong, it still shows that physical limits are approaching. This provides a real limit to the number of nuclear plants that it is even feasible to build. Moreover, if our system is going to rely on more electrified plant and equipment, these minerals will run out much sooner.

Uranium is finite

It’s kind of ironic that some people see nuclear as a solution to peak oil when the actual feed for nuclear is also reaching peak. How much proven uranium reserves are out there is hotly debated. Really, I don’t care because if there’s 10 years left or 100 years, it’s the same result – our industrial system runs out of power. Apparently, proven uranium reserves would last 90 years at the current rate of use (Murphy., 2021 he has lots of references).

What we can know for certain is that uranium will peak at some point and then reach a diminishing point of return where it is no longer economically viable to get it out of the ground. Bear in mind, most (some?) of the value in mining it is for weapons – with electricity just being the side gig!

Uranium is often in hard-to-get areas (including Russia, now embargoed). We can’t mine the uranium out of the ground once we run out of diesel, which would put the end of uranium to 40 years, not 90. The only hopium here is to hope they’ll invent some amazing electricity-powered mining plant and equipment, but then we are back to the peak mineral problem. For now, we are stuck with diesel and the associated carbon emissions.

Environmental considerations

Making nuclear power plants degrades the environment. This includes:

Mining all the materials required.
Burning all the diesel, gas, and coal in the manufacturing and construction phases.
Building all the roads and parking required for the plant.
And polluting the environment for hundreds of thousands of years with radioactive material that causes birth defects, genetic degradation, cancer, and death.

Michael Dowd regularly asks us to contend with the question of radioactive waste. What right do we present day humans have to pollute the world for thousands of years, just so we can run another dishwasher? It is highly likely that some, if not most, nuclear reactors will meltdown, because they will not have been safely decommissioned due to peak oil production. What an inheritance for our descendants, if we have any left!

What do we do with the waste?

Nuclear waste is incredibly dangerous to human health and the environment. Waste can also be utilised by terrorists (or bad state actors) to create a dirty bomb. So based on these problems, we need to be very careful where and how we store the waste. Not surprisingly, this is another thing humans seem determined to f-up. For starters, a lot is stored at or near sea level – great for getting water to keep it cool – not so great when you get a sea-based disaster. Sea water corrodes infrastructure at a faster rate, increasing the likelihood of failure of the waste containment. Plus, what happens with rising sea levels from climate change?

When digging more into this topic, you’ll see humans are running out of places to put this waste and the costs of waste-storage projects are increasing. This makes it less likely that a company will be 100% focussed on quality for a capex project that generates no returns.

Alice Friedemann has argued that burying nuclear waste should be a top priority, as after peak oil production, oil will be rationed to agriculture and other essential services. Spent fuel from nuclear lasts a very long time. According to Archer (2008): “… there are components of nuclear material that have a long lifetime, such as the isotopes plutonium 239 (24,000 year half-life), thorium 230 (80,000 years), and iodine 129 (15.7 million years). Ideally, these substances must be stored and isolated from reaching ground water until they decay, but the lifetimes are so immense that it is hard to believe or to prove that this can be done”.

Once the containment for nuclear waste starts to degrade, the waste can leak into ground water, contaminating drinking water and getting into the food system. Where waste gets into the ocean, the currents can travel it all over the globe. This is happening in our lifetime, forget about a thousand years from now.

Are nuclear plants really safe?

Taken at face value statistically, nuclear plants are very safe. But I think this is a sneaky statistic because this is old data from when nuclear plants were young and well-resourced. We really don’t know how the safety stats will hold up as the plants age out. Once they are over 40 years old, the risk of disaster is much higher. This risk is heightened by very old systems and componentry and the specialised nuclear workforce retiring and not being replaced.

Many nuclear plants are built close to the sea, exposing them to natural risks including sea level rise, tsunamis, typhons / hurricanes, and erosion. Near misses are surprisingly common, often a result of human error and the just mentioned old systems. There is evidence that significant near misses are underreported officially, leading to misconceptions about the safety risks posed.

There have been two major nuclear power plant disasters that I’m sure you are familiar with. The first is the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl where a design flaw, triggered ironically by a safety test, led to a reactor meltdown. The second was the 2011 Fukushima disaster, where an earthquake-triggered tsunami damaged the emergency diesel generators, leading to a loss of electric power. By the way, look there’s another essential use of fossil fuels in operating nuclear plants!

Here are two minor anecdotes to show you the environmental outcomes. Following the Chernobyl disaster, a farm in Scotland had all their new-born lambs born without eyes and they had to be culled. As a result of Fukushima, across the Pacific, there is plenty of scientific evidence of radioactive contamination in fish and shellfish – tasty!

When we look at total confirmed human deaths from these nuclear incidents, we are looking at around 100 people. Total deaths from COVID-19 thus far is around 6.6 million. So how can we say nuclear is unsafe? Well, what the official incident deaths don’t tell us is how many people are dying from cancers years after a nuclear incident. Moreover, there’s little incentive for a government to try and track each death that could be attributable to a nuclear disaster – that will only make them look bad. Considering nuclear waste is toxic for 100,000s of years, we can’t even account for the untold future suffering of humans and non-humans.

Maybe the initial risks of nuclear have been overstated, but what would happen if most or all of them failed? For example, a risk that you barely ever hear mentioned is if multiple reactors were hit by an EMP or solar flare? If the grid is wrecked, so are the nuclear reactors. Maybe that might never happen, but it does seem likely that most plants won’t be properly decommissioned (due to peak oil), which will see most of them melting down over this century.

Terrorism

Nuclear plants are a target for terrorism and potentially could be used to inflict massive damage to people and the environment. From Alice Friedemann: Plutonium waste needs to be kept away from future terrorists and dictators for the next 30,000 years. But world-wide there’s 490 metric tons of separated plutonium at military and civilian sites, enough to make more than 60,000 nuclear weapons. Plutonium and highly enriched uranium are located at over 100 civilian reactor plants. In addition, there’s 1,400 tons of highly enriched uranium world-wide. A crude nuclear bomb can be made from as little as 40 to 60 kilograms of U-235, or roughly 28,000 nuclear bombs.

Decommissioning is fraught with challenges

Decommissioning is essential as once plants age out, they become too radioactive and are likely to decay. You would then get a full or partial meltdown. Like everything else to do with nuclear, decommissioning too is a very expensive and lengthy process, often exceeding budgets. Decommissioning also requires experienced nuclear engineers who are retiring. Younger engineers no longer see nuclear as a viable career path, so the next generation of skilled nuclear workers is not there. As the nuclear plants reach the end of their design life, it will get harder and more expensive to safely decommission them. And when has a large corporate ever been good at cleaning up after itself?! Moreover, us poor taxpayers will be increasingly impoverished by peak oil economic destruction, leaving governments with less funds to pick up after the energy companies.

We might ask, where is the proof that decommissioning is happening currently and where are the government budgets put aside for decommissioning? Countries like France and the USA are also delaying decommissioning plants at the moment, possibly worried about electricity shortages and unwilling to take another source offline.

As citizens, why should we support the building of new nuclear plants when there’s barely any proof that the current ones are being safely dealt with at their end of their life?

Financial problems

Investors are not keen on nuclear power projects. They have a habit of blowing out budgets and timelines and failing to return investment (a big clue that they are negative EROEI). There’s also a bit of a wait of 7 to 10+ years for project completion before you can even hope to start seeing a financial return. Remember the cost of construction is only ever going to get more expensive now due to peak oil. Oh, and there are uninsurable liabilities!

Governments often need to invest in electricity infrastructure, and especially for nuclear, to make up this shortfall in private investment. Citizens quite rightly should demand proof that nuclear plants are worth spending energy on. They should demand Governments provide detailed risk management against all the criteria we’ve just discussed. Because nuclear is not popular with the average citizen, democratic governments are increasingly unwilling to invest in nuclear. Moreover, governments are encouraged by their populations to keep electricity prices affordable. Wind and solar are much more popular and tend to get more of the subsidies. They have also damaged the profitability of nuclear with wind and solar going first to sell to market (government policy in parts of Europe).

Replacing fossil fuels with nuclear energy is a pipe dream

In a 2019 Forbes article, Roger Pielke ran a thought experiment on how many nuclear plants the world would need to get to the 2050 net zero goal. “To achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, the world would need to deploy 3 [brand new] nuclear plants worth of carbon-free energy every two days, starting tomorrow and continuing to 2050. At the same time, a nuclear plant’s worth of fossil fuels would need to be decommissioned every day, starting tomorrow and continuing to 2050.”

We can already see that this just isn’t happening, and for the reasons laid out in this article it’s clear this can never happen. It looks like 2022 saw just 53 nuclear reactors under construction world-wide – that’s not finished by the way, just in some stage of construction.

But what about innovation

Honestly each ‘innovation’ to nuclear reactors could be an article all on its own. I have to confess I have a lazy heuristic: I just write off all of these as nonsense and don’t really give them fair consideration. But if I had to provide a high-level critic, this would be it. I have just noted the additional problems with these “innovations” – they still have all the same problems described elsewhere:

Fusion – The gold standard of hopium. As the idiom goes, sustained fusion is just 20 years in the future and always will be.
Breeder reactors – Recycling costs more energy than you get back. Also, more expensive than regular reactors, which are already too expensive.
New generation – Less safe and more toxic (go ask Alice).
Thorium – Perhaps it could have worked but looks like it’s too expensive now. That’s a good hint it would be negative EROEI. Might not be viable in reality.
And this goes for lots of things: just because something is feasible in a lab situation or theoretically possible, does not mean it will ever be a viable solution. You can do a lot if you have oodles of energy and billions of dollars to waste. We might ask, is indulging the fantasies of scientists really a good use of our last remaining surplus resources?

Well, that’s bleak, what does the future of electricity look like

Humans already have access to more electricity than we ever imagined 100 years ago. If we had a stable or reducing population (shout out to Rob), then we wouldn’t even need to worry about bringing on new electricity generation.

Categorically all forms of electricity generation have their negative drawbacks. Eventually, all the hydroelectric dams will silt up – this can take hundreds of years – and finally they will all fail. Wind turbines last for 30 years, though in reality production efficiency reduces much earlier. Coastal wind turbines will decay after 10 years due to erosion from salt water. Solar panels will last 30+ years, but the associated systems and batteries to collect and store the electricity fail much sooner and need replacement parts. Nuclear plants last for a design life of 40+ years minimum and then should be decommissioned over the following 20 years. With natural gas shortages due to the Russian Invasion, countries are delaying decommissioning their plants. Most western nuclear is aged out.

Humans could continue to produce electricity by burning coal and natural gas. There are approximately 400 years left of coal and 150 years left of natural gas. But (and it’s a big but), there is only 40 years left of oil (BP Statistical Review). Without oil we don’t have diesel powered equipment, which will make it all but impossible to extract coal and natural gas. Without coal, we can’t make industrial wind turbines, solar panels, or nuclear reactors.

What this means is that by the year 2060, we are looking at a world with much less electricity production and eventually moving to almost zero electricity as the hydro dams fail in the coming centuries – and no we can’t build new ones of scale without diesel. Perhaps some smart individuals can maintain rudimentary electricity where they live, but the days of large electric grids are numbered.

By the way, if you do want to dive into the technical details, I can point you in the direction of plenty of useful references. Just let me know 😊

Two Different Perspectives – Same Conclusion: Modern Lifestyles Will End Soon

Dr. Berndt Warm’s Perspective

Thanks to Marromai for finding this new paper by physicist Dr. Berndt Warm.

Dr. Warm uses 5 different methods, 4 relying on economics, and 1 on thermodynamics, to predict when the end of oil production and motor vehicle production will occur. All 5 methods roughly converge on 2030 as the year when modern lifestyles end.

The essay was written in German and translated to English which explains any awkward phrasing.

Warm’s conclusion agrees with my 15 years of study of many different sources which converge on oil production being down by about 50% in 2030. Because our current system requires growth not to collapse, it is plausible that predicting a 50% decline is the same as predicting a 100% decline.

Our world is of course far too complex to make precise predictions, and unexpected events like a pandemic or nuclear war can dramatically change the outcome, however for planning purposes it seems reasonable to assume we have about 5 years left to prepare for a new way of life.

Abstract

Evaluation of five data sets concerning car production, oil prices converted in energy values gives lifespan approximations for the car industry and the oil industry. The result is that the car industry will last only until 2027 and the oil industry some years more.

Berndt Warm – Calculations on the Lifespan of Vehicle Production and Petroleum Production – 11-Sep-2022 Download

Here are a few excerpts from the paper:

The author interprets the line of maxima as the oil price that the industrialized countries can afford to the maximum while maintaining their lifestyle. He interprets the line of minima as the price of oil that the producing countries need to keep their economies running. In mid-2019, the author noticed this crossroads and expected a crisis in 2020, although he was completely unclear what kind of crisis it would be. He didn’t expect Corona.

The inhabitants of the industrialized countries are now realizing that their lifestyle is at risk. The line of the maxima will reach the zero line (0%BOE) around mid-2027. From then on, the inhabitants of the industrialized countries can no longer afford oil without giving up many things of daily life. The demand of the oil producers is then 13-14 %BOE. These two values are incompatible.

Result: The extrapolation of oil prices shows that from 2022 the lifestyle in the industrialized countries will degrade, and that after 2027 the inhabitants of the industrialized countries will hardly be able to pay for oil or its products.

The fall in the price of crude oil from 2008 to 2020 with the extreme price increase since 2021 is an absolute alarm signal! Soon there will be no more crude oil affordable, no matter for which economy in the world!

Summary

Procedures 1, 2 and 4 are extrapolations of economic data of the past. Method 3 is a link between oil prices and car production. Method 5 is a calculation based on a law of physics.

The five calculation methods result in:

End of world motor vehicle production between 2031 and 2034.

End of oil production in 2027.

End of worldwide sales of motor vehicles in 2027.

End of German vehicle production in 2027.

End of oil production in 2029.

The results are not the same, but in the end the same thing comes out. All five procedures show that vehicle production and oil production will continue to collapse in the coming years. Vehicle production will disappear first. Oil production later, as the world’s existing fleet will continue to consume crude oil, even if no new vehicles are added. It is to be expected, that the crude oil production will decrease slowly until 2027, and after that very fast.

And: Oil will be extremely expensive by 2027 at the latest!

Dr. Simon Michaux’s Perspective

For those still hoping that a transition to non-fossil energy will extend our modern lifestyles, I point you to the following recent work of mining engineer Dr. Simon Michaux which shows our planet has insufficient affordable resources to implement an energy transition plan that maintains our current lifestyles.

Simon Michaux – The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth – 2021 Download

The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels, is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls. Exploration for more at required volumes will be difficult, with this seminar addressing these issues.

Simon Michaux is an Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland in the Circular Economy Solutions Unit. Holding a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Physics and Geology and a PhD in Mining Engineering from the University of Queensland, Simon has extensive experience in mining research and development, circular economic principles, industrial recycling, and mineral intelligence. Through his recent publications, Simon has outlined the many challenges facing the global industrial ecosystem. He notes our world is currently energy and minerals blind and transitioning to renewable energies is not as straightforward as it appears.

We’ve been growing without care to planetary limits for too long and change is coming, whether we like it or not. We need a completely new energy paradigm to address the challenges ahead, and as Simon says, it all starts with a conversation. We cover a lot of ground in this one, so grab a notebook and strap in for an important conversation – this is one you’ll want to listen to more than once.

On this episode, we meet with Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland, Dr. Simon Michaux. Why do humans ignore important mineral and material limits that will affect human futures? Dr. Michaux reveals how we are “minerals blind” — and the consequences of this myopia. To shed light on the effects of our minerals blindness, Dr. Michaux explores the disconnect between experts in renewable energy and economic and government leaders. Dr. Michaux offers individual strategies for us to overcome our energy and minerals blindness. How can we learn to adapt in order to overcome the coming challenges?

Dr. Simon Michaux is an Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland. He has a PhD in mining engineering. Dr. Michaux’s long-term work is on societal transformation toward a circular economy.

BenjaminTheDonkey’s Perspective

BenjaminTheDonkey today nicely captures a common theme I observe everywhere in the world today: We are collectively losing our minds; perhaps because unpleasant realities are overwhelming the denial circuit in our brains?

Alarmist? 


The powers that be won’t admit

We’re heading straight to our obit; 

So it isn’t strange we

Can already see

People are losing their shit. 

 

What is its cause at the root? 

Whom might we persecute?

From an objective view,

It’s logically true 

The reason is just overshoot.

By marromai: A Purpose in Life

Today we have a heartfelt post by marromai from Germany sharing his experience of becoming overshoot aware and how he deals with the knowledge. The essay was written in German and translated to English.

Life is wonderful – sometimes at least. But most of the time it is a very monotonous thing. And the older I get, the more often I wonder about the purpose of it. Every day, every week, every year the same procedure – enjoy the little moments, but for the rest of the time, hope that it passes by as soon as possible. Most days consist of a typical routine like getting up, sitting at work for what feels like an eternity, having a short and stressful time with my family, and then either doing chores or attending social gatherings now and then. Get the house in shape on Saturdays, and on Sundays rest or do something with the family. Rinse and repeat, every day is groundhog’s day.

Although one could think I’m blessed, because I live in the best Germany ever¹. I’m married to a wonderful wife – as wonderful as they can get in their late 30s – I have four adorable children whom I love very much but who often get on my last nerve, a house and a garden where there is always plenty of work to do for which I have neither time nor money nor desire, and my dream job as an electrical engineer, which nowadays is unfortunately all too often just another bureaucratic clerk who only sees the soldering iron from afar. So basically, I should be doing very well, you would think. I just sell a bit of my lifetime for money and can enjoy a decent life.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Personally, my biggest problem is this: Working as an employed engineer has lost its magic – it often doesn’t even make sense to me, it just sucks. For the most part, it consists of bureaucratic stuff that doesn’t solve any problems but is just to be done for its own sake. Consequently, I complete tasks at the last minute with minimal effort, which you can’t even call work to rule. Everyday work is dull, lacking real tinkering challenges and practical problems to solve. The “always having to be there” and the resulting disproportionate amount of wasted life time kills any motivation and makes me strongly question the purpose of the whole mumbo jumbo called “gainful employment”. Maybe work makes life sweet – but in this respect I have diabetes… Now and then I think about self-employment and alternative income possibilities, combined with more personal freedom – but the chance to earn enough money to support a family is close to zero. Especially since the difficult economic times that are looming mark a very unfavorable time for this. How nice it would be to have a 4-day half-day job, with full pay, of course. Or even better, if they would just transfer my salary to me, I would know what to do with my time, wouldn’t I?

Since a while it feels like I have no time at all for personal activities. Even on days off I don’t really know what to do with myself. Apart from the tasks on the house and garden, which absolutely have to be done, I often don’t manage to start anything, although I have so many ideas – but rarely the motivation to actually begin. Or too little time, that starting is not worth it – at least that’s what I tell myself. So, I end up just like at work, where I spend most of my time in front of a computer, trying to avoid getting bored while reading in some online forums. As it turned out afterwards, this was the point, where my problems began, resulting in a total destruction of any purpose in life.

You may ask, what is it, what one could read, that is so depressing?

Beside electronic forums (for new ideas, which I will never implement) I read mainly alternative news and discussions about current events. This made me realize a long time ago that official media are nothing but propaganda channels – and I really can’t listen to them anymore. Russia here, Ukraine there. Evil Putin will destroy us all. Corona is so dangerous, be sure to get vaccinated… I can’t understand how the majority of the population can believe this bullshit – but that’s another topic. It will soon matter little anyway, once you understand that all of this are just side effects to a superordinate set of issues I came across while browsing over some threads of my favorite forum.

Most people will dismiss the following problem as absurd and unrealistic. Some will understand it but will not feel affected by it or will not want to admit it. And the tiny remainder? They are left with no one to talk about a matter, for which the great majority will laugh at them as end-time prophets and declare them crazy. It is the realization that our entire civilization could only grow so fast with the help of fossil energy – and that we are running out of this energy source now. Not because we planned it so or think we can replace it to get a grip on the ridiculous CO2 climate change issue. (I think it is rather presumptuous and a huge farce to try to control the temperature of a whole ecosystem and save the planet by reducing a single trace gas in the atmosphere, while not being able to provide a solid weather forecast for more than 2 days.) But the decarbonization that politicians are longing for will happen anyway. Just not in the way they envision. That’s because fossil fuels currently still cover the main demand for energy, and the much-vaunted renewables can’t even replace a fraction of that. Now we have reached the limits of what our planet can provide. What we are currently experiencing with our gas and electricity prices is only the beginning of the coming shortages. The Ukrainian-Russian war, which actually is driven by the USA, is in fact an economic war – and the economy only works with energy. Without energy, all the money in the world is useless: “Our main problem is a caloric one. We can print money like hay, but not a single drop of oil”². The coming lack of oil will tear everything apart and cost billions of people’s lives by cold and hunger.

How it could come so far is what nobody dares to speak about: There are simply too many people on this planet who have already consumed too much raw materials and energy and always want more. It is only through coal, oil and gas that humanity has been able to multiply so enormously. But without maintaining these energy flows, the population numbers cannot be sustained. There are 10 calories of fossil energy in every calorie of food. But the soils are depleted and no longer yield anything without artificial fertilizers, agriculture is so thoroughly industrialized and complex that it can no longer be run on pure muscle power, certainly not to feed a country as densely populated as Germany. And now, of all times, we are running out of fossil energy?

The promised rescue by renewable energies is just window dressing and cannot free us from this predicament, nor can nuclear power plants. They supply only a fraction of electrical energy, but no raw materials for industry, as can be seen well in the current European gas shortage situation. No fertilizer can be produced from solar cells, and we cannot melt steel with wind energy, not even with 10 times the number of windmills. In addition to oil and gas, many other natural resources are now depleted that are required to build alternative energy sources. Fossil energy has enabled exponential population growth and unprecedented prosperity with ever increasing complexity and interconnectedness. Likewise, future energy shortages will cause an abrupt reduction in complexity – which is called collapse. And no, this will not be in a distant future, we are already in the middle of it. The coming times will be bleak. And it can go much further down very quickly when “winter is coming”, as the current situation in Europe shows.

All in all, a huge complex of topics, in whose importance I have no doubt – but the momentous realizations from it are simply devastating and destroy any further motivation and search for meaning in life – a nihilistic vicious circle of demotivation, effects see above. And the worst thing is, that one suffers all alone from this knowledge. Because the majority of people are not able to even see this unpleasant reality, let alone understand: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”.

So how to continue? One may try to convince as many others as possible of this reality and build a low-tech community. With a group of collapse-aware people, surviving could be much easier, when the crisis fully hits. Unfortunately, in Germany this is very difficult, since most people are totally brainwashed by official media. So, for me, I have decided to just try to enjoy as much free time and remaining prosperity as possible – while it’s still possible. Since I need money for this, I have to work, which is contrary to “Carpe Diem”. So I go to work, but don’t really do work – not perfect, much more like business as usual. What a shame – denying the un-denial… not knowing in the first place would have been much easier.

But as long as the hamster wheel turns and turns, you inevitably have to run with it. You have to learn to control the speed, otherwise you die of exhaustion. For someone who has recognized being in a hamster wheel, one may eventually be inclined to consider a premature exit. But that should not be a solution – especially not if you have a family, which you don’t want to leave in the lurch. Besides, aren’t you too curious to see what happens next? How bad will the crisis get? How long does such a collapse take? And what will life be like in the future? Maybe there will be challenges and problems to solve that you missed so much in your current job, for example finding food every day? Doesn’t this give you an ultimate purpose in life? You’ll probably miss the days spent in the warm office, browsing through internet forums and dreaming up gloomy fantasies about the future…

I leave you with a favorite quote from a relevant episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation:

Seize the time Maribor. Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.

Footnotes:

[1] German Bundespräsident F.W. Steinmeier on German Unity Day 2020: “We live in the best Germany of all times”.
[2] https://archiv1.dasgelbeforum.net/index.php?id=193123 (A German forum of critical thinkers)

By Gaia Gardener: On Our Hall of Denial Mirrors

Today we have another guest post by a member of the un-Denial community, Gaia Gardener, who posted these thoughts on denial as a comment. I thought they were interesting enough to warrant promoting them to a more visible post.

Hello friends, thank you for a very interesting discussion about the realities of denial and how we humans seem to be able to manipulate all perceptions to fit our chosen narrative, whether or not we are consciously aware of our programmed beliefs however they were initialised and ingrained.

I am wondering if we can look at another subject, removed from overshoot, in which denial plays a big role in our actions/inactions so we can step back and dissect out a bit more how denial originates and becomes intrenched without us even realising our immersion in it, just like we in the small minority see happening to the masses and even polymaths in regards to overshoot denial.

The topic I think can fit the bill is the question of the ethics of eating animals, namely farmed animals which we consume in the billions every year. I won’t cover using animals for our labour and experimentation as the ethics of these actions can be construed to be justified in benefitting humankind which the majority of human beings would be in favour of. But the eating of animals in the modern world is not only unnecessary (and we can be spared the example of Inuits or other very minority population cultures who rely solely on animal products for sustenance, we do not have their situation in the least) but in fact there is convincing evidence that it is harmful to both our physical bodies and the planet, but for the sake of this argument, one need not consider either of those reasons to engage in a discussion of why we cannot eat animals nor their products if we believe we have a moral obligation to another sentient being. Let’s face it–we eat meat because we were brought up to do so and it tastes good (to most human taste buds) and it’s readily available without much effort on our part. However, the fact that animals suffer solely for our pleasure, tradition, and convenience is not enough moral ground to do so, for one can easily see how this disconnect can apply to any sentient being, including other humans, which is so obviously not an ethical choice. And yet, we are in complete denial that it is okay to eat chicken, cow, and pig but outrageously wrong to eat dog, cat, or horse. It is fine for us to imprison a member of a food species in the most horrendous conditions but we can be charged with abusing and neglecting other species we call our domestic companions. We can kill a food species animal way before their natural life span in a most horrific manner (everyone knows a slaughterhouse isn’t a happy place) so we can buy our sanitized plastic-wrapped packages of pork, beef, and healthy white meat chicken, but if we organise a dog fight and enjoy it, that is disgusting and shameful. You’re right, it’s not about education (most of us know that a live being had to be killed to get meat on the plate), or even more extreme forms of presenting the facts (how many of us would volunteer to witness what happens in a slaughterhouse, or even more tellingly, choose that as our job?). Yes, we have been lied to about happy free-range chickens or happy cows enjoying being milked on the happy dairy farm, but how many of us actually have spared more thought for what really happens in these industries, we’re only too happy ourselves to buy the more expensive organic or free-range option as if that absolves us from the guilt we still harbour knowing that no matter how happy the picture of the old MacDonald’s farm, we know this is a fantasy. Every animal still comes to an end in a way far from their natural choice and inclination.

I can sense the mounting justifications and counter-arguments–we need meat for our health or else we would get sick and die, if we didn’t raise the food animal they wouldn’t have a chance at life at all, what about if we were stuck on an island with only rabbits to eat, you can see how inane these points are, and generally stated to obfuscate the moral issue at hand. I am talking about modern day humans who now have access to a wide range of very suitable and healthful plant-based protein, and the methods we use to obtain our meatstuffs, even the question of whether or not it is our evolutionary diet (very debatable) isn’t the point here. The point is our denial of other factors which should be considered when making the choice of whether it is ethical to eat farmed animals, or even a beloved family pet lamb (just these words should put it in perspective that it isn’t but somehow we still do it–is that denial? ) What is it that keeps the majority of people still reaching for their burgers and steaks and fried chicken and bacon and eggs despite knowing what everyone should know? Is it denial of the truth because to face the ethical question front on would demand a choice and most humans just cannot overcome the continuation of pleasure, tradition, and ease of living, especially if it means realising it is a morally wrong thing to do so. So it is far easier to adopt cognitive disconnect, join the masses who are in your camp, degrade and exclude those who are not, and just keep doing what you want for one more day after day as long as it can last because at least you got to enjoy it and no one can take that away. Sound familiar? See how easy denial becomes just our way of perceiving our reality, and that is why I chose this example to prove that point. Every thought that is possibly going through your head now is a function of denial, one way or another, and none of it was even conscious before I brought this so called controversial topic up–if one can deem supporting active suffering of sentient beings just because we like it, to have any controversy attached.

I guess what I’m trying to express, which is in full agreement with what has been discussed, is that all of us have the capacity for denial (whether or not MORT is the primal reason) but we can’t see it as denial when we’re in the thick of it because that is just our chosen narrative. The way we dichotomise over overshoot, population control, Covid, Russia, just about any topic you can name, all confirm this. Only others outside that narrative (and usually the minority) can see that there is another perspective (because it’s their reality) and then call out the majority as in denial, which is exactly what the majority thinks of the outliers! It’s like that endless hall of mirrors reflecting back to you ad infinitum, whichever way one looks, there’s another image looking away from you, too, with the prime cause of the illusion being your own presence and perception of your reality. I think denial is a bit like that–it’s what holds us in our place, and helps define our sense of self by creating another version of possible self to bounce off of. I’m not saying there’s any right or wrong in this, it just seems to be how we are wired and until now, it has kept us on the survival ascendancy (that and a whole heck of fossil fuels!)

I think a good question to always be ready to ask ourselves in any situation to draw out denial is “What knowledge or understanding or different perspective that I may not have now but is available to gain or learn, would change or enhance the way I see the situation? ” Try it, it is very hard to allow oneself the possibility of overcoming our deep-rooted beliefs but yet that is precisely the attitude it will take for us to change them. Forcing education upon others doesn’t work as we have seen, it has to come from a self-directed intention to fill the knowledge gaps (isn’t that how we all arrived at our overshoot awareness and acceptance? We didn’t find this site because we were lectured into it, we found it because we sought it out) and then an even more entropy defying self push to change our actions to match our new insights. If the motivation is great enough, this can and will happen, but everyone has a different threshold before the fire is lit under our bums. Maybe that is why we need to head hell-bent towards full-on collapse, perhaps the only way to save ourselves is to first come within a nanometer of destroying ourselves. I still take comfort and security from the once inviolable Newton’s third law and trust that is will prove true for this case, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Let us pray for calamity that we will reach that opposite reaction with the same energy swinging us out of our doom as going into it, and preferably very soon!

Namaste, everyone. Thanks for bearing with another Gaia attack.

By wis.dom project: Regress in Progress: My state of mind

This is an essay from reader wis.dom project who describes his painful personal journey of connecting dots to achieve awareness of our overshoot predicament.

I was born in 1969, at a time when everything still seemed possible. On July 20, two people walked on the moon, which is probably the greatest technological achievement of man to this day. In my youth, I devoured novels by Asimov, Clarke, Lem, Dick and Herbert. The galaxy’s colonization seemed within reach.

45 years later, I realized that I was a victim of mass hypnosis, what I refer to today as techno-utopia – a belief in the limitless human development, genius and almost divine uniqueness of Homo Sapiens. I realized that industrial civilization, like any other dissipative structure, is doomed to inevitable collapse.

In 1972 – 3 years after my birth, a book titled The Limits to Growth was released by the Club of Rome. It was the first scientifically compiled report analyzing future scenarios for humanity. It indicated that unlimited development is not possible on a finite planet. The book was published in 30 million copies and was one of the most popular at the time. Surprisingly, despite the wide range of my readings, the book did not appear on my horizon for a long time. As if it was covered by another intellectual “Säuberung”. In fact, it was the subject of an intellectual blitzkrieg and relatively quickly evaporated from the media circulation. I experienced this myself by talking to several university professors. Every one of them dismissed the LtG concept with a shrug and an unequivocal, non-debatable conclusion that the theory had long been discredited.

Since then, there have been many other events that have offered an opportunity to change consciousness and thus the trajectory of industrial civilization.

On June 15, 1979, during the ongoing second oil crisis, President Jimmy Carter gave a famous speech in which he announced: “The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our Nation. These are facts and we simply must face them”. Photovoltaic panels were installed on the roof of the White House to symbolize a new trend – energy conservation and an attempt to develop alternative sources.

American people responded by choosing Ronald Reagan as the 40th president of the United States, who had the panels dismantled. Before he did so, he announced: “There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.” As a result of the use of “intelligence, imagination, and wonder” American analysts probably came to the conclusion that if we do not have the resources ourselves, they should be organized from a different source. Therefore, on his first overseas trip, Reagan traveled to Saudi Arabia, where he probably proposed the following alternative: petrodollar, protection and weapons for cheap oil… or American aircraft carriers will stay anchored in the Persian Gulf for longer – as in the Al Capone quote: “You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone”. Same logic. Following, we got post-colonial globalization with all the necessary tools like the IMF, World Bank, BIS, and Washington Consensus. Pax Americana in full release. A decade of crises had begun.

In 1980, a group of “loyal Americans” constructed Georgia Guidestones, “The American Stonehenge”. On 4 granite slabs, in 8 languages, the authors recommended 10 commandments of a healthy civilization, including limiting the global population to 500 million. This humanist monument was recently destroyed by fanatical terrorists and then demolished by the county authorities for “security reasons”.

In 1984, the publisher of George Orwell’s famous book, which regained popularity as a result of events at that time, advertised it with the slogan “maybe not 1984, but there is always 1985”. We solved the waves of hunger that engulfed African countries with “Live Aid”. The eastern block began to fall apart.

For the growth protagonists, their optimistic belief in progress was confirmed in the 1990’s, after the collapse of the Eastern bloc and another “gold rush”, this time in the oil fields of Western Siberia. Another wave of globalization had begun. The ceiling of the ecological capacity of mankind was raised again, and the extraction of natural resources accelerated to planet limits. China joined the WTO and “the sky was the limit” again.

The digital revolution restored belief in unlimited development, and Hollywood started showing “happy endings” again after years of dystopian themes. However, the honeymoon of unipolar globalization was short. In 2001, cracks started to appear. US president, George W. Bush, announced that the prosperity of the Americans was not negotiable. Invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan clearly showed the intentions of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “The Grand Chessboard” strategy. After all, the 9/11 organization required remarkable synchronization, and its presentation to the public was another masterpiece of the hypnotic power of mass communication. Undoubtedly, its organizers were aware of the challenges ahead. In 1998, Colin J. Campbell, a highly respected geologist dealing with oil field analysis for companies such as BP, Texaco, Amoco, together with Jean Laherrère published an article titled The End of Cheap Oil. Shortly after, he recalled, gentlemen from the Pentagon / CIA visited him with a proposal to cooperate. They wanted to know more about the impending peak-oil. They knew the matter was serious. Campbell’s relatively precise predictions materialized in 2006, when we reached the peak of conventional oil production.

However, also this time the convulsions of civilization were prolonged. For optimists, the shale revolution, fracking, deep and arctic oil were another confirmation of human genius and the possibility of unlimited expansion of the species. Changing the definition of oil production to ‘all liquids’ and the inclusion of bizarre products such as biofuels once again gave the impression of unlimited resources. For the more inquisitive observers, it was more like “last drops from the bottom of the barrel.” The IEA’s prediction of production scenarios, with a price of $300 per barrel, did not seem to scare the public. For some, they were another opportunity for tempting profits. The oil price reached $147 a barrel in 2007 and has yet to be beaten. However, it had far-reaching consequences in the form of a global financial and economic crisis. In November 2018, we probably achieved the final peak of production of all liquid hydrocarbons. Peak oil has become a fact.

Germany’s Bundeswehr 2010 publication on the consequences of the peak extraction of critical resources has not reached a wider audience. Instead, we got another installment of mass hypnosis in the form of such oxymorons as “renewable energies” (which for semantic precision are not renewable) and “sustainable development” (whatever that means). The energy transformation, changed by all cases, was called a revolution by its followers. Apparently, none of them noticed that revolutions are by nature bottom-up. The current attempt at energy transformation, on the other hand, is a top-down, elite-bureaucratic decree forced into the economy with an enormous organizational, financial and propaganda effort, and has nothing to do with the revolution. Except perhaps the inevitable failure.

Further memes of the Holy Grails of energy appear in the widespread public perception. From nuclear fusion projects, new categories of nuclear reactors, SMRs, large-scale energy storage to the recently very popular multicolored forms of hydrogen. Already every moderately educated inhabitant of Western countries can cite further possibilities of increasing our chance for a vacation on Mars in the near future, a vision presented by Elon, the most popular techno-utopian messiah. The knowledge on this subject is usually so shallow that it only causes confusion. After all, if all these solutions are at hand, why are we living in times of a global energy crisis? Undoubtedly, if not terrorist inclinations, this can at least provoke rage against such inept politicians. Greta is disappointed, as are her millions of unsuspecting millennials. False hope is a source of frustration expressed by aggression. This generation will inspire a wave of radicalism and eco-terrorism in the near future.

So here we are. Pandemic, wars, revolutions, hunger, migrations, financial crisis, stagflation, new cold war, de-globalization – we got a jackpot in this draw.

In 2011, a public opinion research company surveyed Western countries’ populations on the threats to human civilization. 11% expressed the opinion that events that threaten civilization will occur during their lives. I wonder what the result would be today, but I have no doubt it would be significantly higher. Still, the wider population was not frightened by the fact that in 2018 Sweden mailed instructions to its citizens on how to prepare for war, which was also a pocket prepper plan. The city of New York is preparing for a nuclear attack right now. A day like any other, nothing to see here. Yet all over the world there are no reactions, no demonstrations, no prayers for peace. The masses are hypnotized. Most of the younger generation of Western societies fear climate change. Nobody told them that the greatest threat to their welfare is, paradoxically, an end to environmental rape.

A breakthrough on the legendary World3 Model Standard Run is happening right before our eyes. Except the fall, like in Hemingway’s novel: How did you go bankrupt? Bill asked. “Two ways”, Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly”. “Gradually” was already there, now “suddenly” begins. As if we were watching Seneca Cliff live. Yet most people believe this is just a temporary stumble on the way to permanent happiness and prosperity. Almost every statement of people in the media contains hidden optimism when they make plans for 10, 20 or 30 years, visions of smart-cities, hydrogen-economy, electric cars and universal happiness. Even the so-called pessimists that see the crisis and the forthcoming World War III, believe in the following reconstruction and further progress after the victory of the only right one, i.e. OUR SIDE. Spes decedit ultimo, amorem non moritur.

The pandemic, the genesis of which should be sought in biological weapons laboratories, was presented efficiently and with amazing media synchronization as a natural zoonotic epidemic. At the same time, the health service suffered global Münchhausen’s surrogate syndrome and concluded that injecting 5 billion people with experimental gene therapy is a good idea. And this despite the fact that for the vast majority of them the disease is relatively harmless, while gene therapy turns out to be ineffective and risky. I mean, safe and effective. How the “vaccine”, which should be injected in your body 4 times in 1.5 years is effective, no one explained and few asked.

Meanwhile, the frequency of meetings between political elites, presidents, prime ministers, ministers and a whole host of other notables in various configurations has drastically increased. This could hypothetically indicate greater international cooperation, but I am betting that the number of fires to be extinguished has increased instead. And I’m afraid this is just the beginning. Groups from WEF, G7, G20, BRICS, AUKUS, NATO, B&RI, QUAD, RCEP, ASEAN, to the Bilderberg Group meet to agree current positions, preferences, transactions, exchange information and confirm alliances. The chessboard is dynamically reconfigured. Global industrial civilization, like any dissipative structure, bifurcates. The world will divide. We go back in time. Another Cold War has arrived, and as one California senator noted, the truth is its first casualty. The level of propaganda is so advanced that, as in my youth, we will soon be seeing “TV is lying” graffiti. And this is justified. The elites are trying to prepare for the coming crisis, and this requires the right tools of indoctrination, surveillance and control. We can expect more riots, protests, strikes and demonstrations. More state control. More power of brute force. More epidemic passports, debt, digital currencies, vaccinations, bankruptcies, unemployment and migrations. Less money, food, travel, vacation, products, freedoms, and rights. The polarization of opinions is growing, and the spectrum of the narrative is intensifying the schizophrenia of paradigms. Social discontent will grow. As William Gibson stated, “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed”. Sri Lanka is the proverbial canary in the mine. It’s just a matter of time before it will also show up in my neighborhood. Klaus Schwab from the WEF is supposed to keep me happy, but I only see it in the scenario of Futurological Congress. I can handle “less meat” with pleasure, but a lack of property is a fresh implementation of techno-fascism based on the proven model of CCP. National Socialism has the same imperative regardless of the flag. Klaus’ pupils, the prime ministers of the Netherlands and Canada, are already eagerly implementing the plan heading straight towards Soylent Green. The new techno-utopian prophet Yuval Noah Harari (Noah is quite symbolic in this context) and at the same time faithful to the Great Reset sect defines the challenges facing humanity as, among other things, providing adequate entertainment for these billions of “useless people”. 4th industrial revolution – biotechnology, automation, geoengineering, brain-computer interface, remote control, complete elimination of privacy, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, transhumanism and singularity will save us. In which metaverse, Mr. Harari? Techno-fascism? It looks more like smart-depopulation than smart-dictatorship.

Meanwhile, the war in Europe became a breeding ground for hysterical psychosis, in which a billion people of the Western world decided that preparations for WW3 should begin. Europe has been organizing Seppuku type economic crises on an unprecedented scale since 1929, followed by the depopulation scenario of the anonymous white intelligence agency deagel.com. These two events are another masterful operations on the open brain of global population. Simultaneously the UN forecasts the size of the human population by 2300, and the optimistic scenario predicts 36.4 billion inhabitants of the planet. Are they already implementing Stanislaw Lem’s scenario in their canteens? Is this a pilot?

The process of absorbing this knowledge was painful. The closest analogy is DABDA (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in the book On Death and Dying (also published in 1969). In her description, the stages of dying may occur many times, and their sequences are individual for each person becoming aware of their own mortality. I saw it myself in my loved ones who passed away. This happened to me also in relation to the revelation that industrial civilization is dying. Such awareness is an extremely difficult experience. In addition to its own emotional consequences, it also brings deep alienation. It becomes a natural need to share your knowledge with others, including your loved ones. As much as I could, I tried to avoid it, knowing from the descriptions of others who had previously had such experiences. Sharing such information brings only isolation, mockery, and being labelled as a “depressive-manic supporter of conspiracy theories”. Despite my sincere desire, I did not avoid ostracism and contempt, like many others before me. Kassandra, the social nickname that had been given to me half-jokingly in my social circle, turned out to be only a sign of intellectual gaps of my friends. After all, Kassandra was right in predicting the fall of Troy. I was doomed, like her, to a consciousness that no one would accept. No wonder, eschatology has a long history and the list of Armageddon prophets is long.

As part of my personal DABDA I am trying to decipher the history and its mechanisms. The question “how did this happen?” is lingering. How is it possible that we have brought our species and the planet to the brink of collapse? And there is the question of who was responsible.

The story leading to the LtG conclusions seems quite obvious from my current perspective. David Attenborough provides the simplest explanation:

We have a finite environment— the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.

After 30 years of studying economics, I came to a similar conclusion. Modern mainstream economics is a scholastic sect that created pseudo-science describing economic mechanisms without considering any environmental factors in their models. Economists rationalized that any limitations related to demographics, resources and pollution will be resolved by the market, and ultimately by another sect – academy of scientific progress in cooperation with mammon wizards, i.e. rulers of the financial system. I am writing this with great respect and admiration for thousands of great scientists. We are also a brilliant species after all. Without them, we would still be jogging through the Central African savannahs. And probably the debt-engineers also deserve gratitude, because as Lloyd Blenkfein, president of Goldman Sachs said at the height of the previous global GFC financial crisis, “I’m doing God’s Work”. In fact, I cannot disagree. Without sophisticated debt magic the pyramid of industrial civilization would have collapsed much sooner.

The population of the planet grew exponentially, and we just recently surpassed 8 billion people on the planet for a while. Paul R. Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968. The book received similar intellectual reception to LtG and was recognized as a Malthusian propagation of fear and defeatism.

In 1959, Aldous Huxley published New World 30 years later: The divergence report. Even then he feared the consequences of overpopulation. His conclusions are being realized before our eyes. The mixture of Orwell’s 1984 and the original Brave New World is more and more obvious, only the proportions change. Orwell is increasingly dominating though, and “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength” is increasingly evident in current mass media hypnosis.

So who was responsible?

Politicians? People with sociopathic narcissistic disorders voted in to solve short-term problems? The Kissinger Report was published in 1974 for the President Nixon administration reads:

23. The central question for world population policy in the year 1974, is whether mankind is to remain on a track toward an ultimate population of 12 to 15 billion – implying a five to seven-fold increase in almost all the underdeveloped world outside of China – or whether (despite the momentum of population growth) it can be switched over to the course of earliest feasible population stability – implying ultimate totals of 8 to 9 billions and not more than a three or four-fold increase in any major region.
24. What are the stakes? We do not know whether technological developments will make it possible to feed over 8 much less 12 billion people in the 21st century. We cannot be entirely certain that climatic changes in the coming decade will not create great difficulties in feeding a growing population, especially people in the LDCs who live under increasingly marginal and more vulnerable conditions. There exists at least the possibility that present developments point toward Malthusian conditions for many regions of the world.

The politicians knew perfectly well, at least the well-informed ones. As Deng Xiaoping, chairman of the Communist Party of China and architect of modern China, probably concluded that if China does not join the global economy relatively quickly, it will no longer have a chance to end the Age of Humiliation and “take a central position on the world stage”. In 1992, Fidel Castro delivered this speech at the Rio Environmental Conference.

Hunger and riots have been feared by politicians since ancient Egypt. Because who wants to end on the guillotine? Today, an eclipse is not enough to pacify riots. There are much better methods, as progress can be seen in every area. Alternatives to the horsemen of the apocalypse remain. Eugenics, euthanasia, and birth control were supposedly not humanistic enough.

Financial elites? These people were destined to make more money and power. They try their best playing in the sandbox of techno-utopia. The WEF Great Reset does not look promising either. Rather desperate, though logical. Likewise their contingency plans.

Scientists? In search of clues pointing to our destiny, we can also go back to the discoveries of Prigogin, Odum, Georgescu-Roegen and Lotka, great scientists who brought us closer to the knowledge of what life is. And modern authors describe with high precision our dependence on fossil energy to keep the population alive. Joseph Tainter, Matthieu Auzanneau, Craig Dilworth, Charles A.S. Hall, François Roddier, and many others, described how the world really works and the state it is in. They also failed. Apparently the printings were too small. Science has its own limits, regardless of the symptoms of progressive degeneration to which it is subject, like any large organization. Contemporary philosophers, however, dreamed of this future, but apparently they were not invited to breakfast TVs. Yet they were destined to rule Plato’s state.

Humanity? Each of us with internet access had the opportunity to find this knowledge. Some of us, however, preferred to watch cute cats or modern gladiators running on the trimmed lawn. Panem et circenses.

Philosophers? After all, philosophy, as a love of wisdom, was perhaps the most responsible for the awareness of human destiny. The philosophers were proto-scientists, only with progressing specialization migrated to the role of provincial humanists with an inclination to determine the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. They also failed. As a result, most of humanity lives in Plato’s cave, waiting for the looming vengeance of Thomas Malthus, the first professor of political economy. What an irony.

Or maybe nobody is to blame, and humanity – as in the Greek tragedy – was destined to follow this last journey of Icarus from the beginning?

The Great Reset: An Alternate Theory

In my last post I speculated that covid was a plan orchestrated by the heads of the important central banks to provide cover for printing a gazillion dollars to head off an imminent economic collapse, and to implement tools like digital currencies and lockdown mechanisms that will be useful for maintaining social order when money printing eventually fails and the economy collapses.

In that post I asked the key question:

What force is powerful enough to synchronize senior leaders in most countries to do the wrong thing on almost every covid action without assuming every leader is evil and/or stupid?

I stated that those of us paying attention and not listening to the official narrative know that nothing about covid makes sense.

Here is a brief summary of the covid facts and actions that do not make sense and that together suggest there is an objective other than public health in play:

no investigation or consequences for China and it’s Wuhan lab that engineered the virus
no investigation or consequences for the funders of the Wuhan lab work
Fauci kept in the most powerful healthcare position in the world, despite his involvement in funding the virus research and the subsequent coverup
no gain of function research policy changes to prevent a recurrence
no consequences for grossly incompetent WHO policies that encouraged global spread of the virus in the early days
suspiciously short and record time to develop a novel vaccine technology
all 4 vaccine manufacturers use the same (probably bad idea) mRNA code
suspicious vaccine patent history
probable fraudulent vaccine approval process and attempt to hide it for 75 years
insufficient testing to determine mRNA longevity and locations of activity in the body
willingness to rapidly deploy a novel insufficiently tested vaccine technology to billions at low risk from the disease including pregnant women
confident claims that vaccines are safe and effective despite being unwillingly to unconditionally approve the vaccines
indemnification of vaccine manufacturers
aggressive censorship of covid policy debate
aggressive character assassination and career destruction of dissenting experts
no updates to mRNA vaccines despite being ineffective against current variants
boosters recommended despite risks of infection, hospitalization, and adverse reactions increasing with each subsequent shot
elimination of non-mRNA vaccines from the market
ignoring 50 years of knowledge and discounting the risk of promoting vaccine resistant and/or more virulent strains by vaccinating in the middle of a pandemic with a non-sterilizing vaccine
no cost benefit analysis on lockdown policies
testing methods that grossly overstated the prevalence of disease
reporting methods that grossly overstated the severity and risk of disease
data manipulation that grossly overstated the effectiveness of vaccines
passports required for vaccines that are ineffective at preventing transmission
no passports given to people with naturally acquired immunity
zero promotion of effective disease prevention methods like vitamin D and weight loss
aggressive promotion of ineffective disease prevention methods like mask policies that did not prevent and probably encouraged disease spread
blocking of all effective early treatments including those profitable for pharma
strong arming countries like India & Japan that developed successful prophylaxis and early treatment protocols from disclosing what they did
preventing doctors from treating patients by blocking fulfillment of prescriptions
ignoring record numbers of adverse reactions confirmed by different systems in different countries
avoiding autopsies to determine causes of suspicious deaths
gaslighting and not supporting those suffering from adverse reactions
no adjustment to policies or admission or error regardless of evidence

I argued that if we assume that most of our leaders are not evil and/or stupid then the only plausible explanation for their behavior is that they are working as a team to prevent harms worse than those being caused by their covid policies.

Those of us that study human overshoot know that 8 billion people depend for survival on rapidly depleting non-renewable, non-substitutable resources, and that the only reason our global growth dependent system functions today is that we deny limits to growth by accelerating the use of unrepayable debt, and we know that emerging inflation will soon force a day of reckoning via an economic reset.

This day of reckoning will harm many people. Most citizens will be surprised and unprepared. If citizens respond with violent social unrest then the harms will be magnified. Hence the urgent need for tools to manage a collapse such as:

lockdown tools to prevent rioting
lockdown tools to reduce consumption of energy and other scarce resources
digital currencies to enable a negative interest rate so debt can continue to grow
digital currencies to enable fair and effective rationing of scarce resources like food and energy
digital currencies to prevent panics from destroying the financial system

I argued that the real purpose of our otherwise irrational and obsessive focus on vaccines as a response to covid was to prepare the behaviors and infrastructure necessary for lockdown policies and digital currencies.

While I still think this hypothesis is plausible and probable there is a fact that bothers me because it is inconsistent with the assumption that our leaders are not evil or stupid.

That is the recent push to vaccinate children. This policy makes no sense in the context of the above hypothesis because:

vaccinating children for covid is 100% risk and 0% benefit
any sane, non-evil person knows that protecting children from harm should be a top priority
young children do not need to participate in the economy with digital currencies
children can be vaccinated at a later and safer age when they need to participate in the economy

I do not understand what’s going here. I suppose you could argue that our leaders really are evil and/or stupid, although that seems improbable given the large number of cooperating leaders.

Another possible explanation is that my hypothesis that covid is cover for collapse preparation is incorrect.

What other purpose might there be for our insane covid policies?

Just for fun, let’s go all dark and crazy and speculate the mRNA has some function that has not yet been deployed, and our leaders want it to be injected in everyone before pushing the on button.

Perhaps our leaders have employed, or stolen the ideas from, Jack Alpert to mastermind a humane population reduction plan.

I say humane, by which I mean no suffering or violence, because we’re still assuming here that our leaders are not evil.

Alpert has developed the only feasible plan in existence for retaining a modern technologically advanced civilization after we have depleted most of the economically recoverable fossil energy. His idea is to rapidly reduce our population to about fifty million people concentrated in 3 regions of world with adequate hydro electricity and other necessary natural resources. By keeping the population low and constant, but still large enough to sustain advanced technology and manufacturing, and by aggressively recycling materials and forgoing impossibly wasteful luxuries like air travel and personal vehicles, it might be possible to sustain our science and technologies long enough to make fusion work, before the hydro dams inevitably silt in.

Because of the rapid rate that fossil energy is depleting, and the total dependence of our food supply on that energy, there is insufficient time for a one-child policy and/or family planning education to get the population down to a sustainable level without massive suffering.

A very aggressive plan for reducing the population is required to avoid unimaginable suffering and probable civilization ending nuclear resource wars.

Jack’s idea is to vaccinate everyone on the planet with a genetically engineered substance that causes sterility and that can be reversed with an antidote.

Any couple desiring a child must apply for a birth permit. Once a year a carefully calculated number of permits will be randomly awarded to applicants and those lucky people will be relocated to one of the 3 regions established for humanity’s permanent civilizations and issued the sterility antidote.

If our leaders are indeed implementing Alpert’s plan with a time delayed sterility inducing vaccine, this would explain why children are being targeted for vaccination. It would be imperative that as many child bearing, and soon to be child bearing, people be vaccinated as quickly as possible because once word of the plan gets out, either via a leak or via impossible to ignore evidence, then no further vaccinations will be possible.

If true, this thankfully means our leaders are brilliant heroes rather than evil idiots.

And it gives “The Great Reset” a whole new meaning!

Go Jack go!!!

P.S. I would like to make the above list of covid things that don’t make sense as complete as possible. If I missed anything, please let me know and I will add it.

17-Jul-2022 Addendum

I’m worried that a future visitor who does not know me will will read this post and conclude that I’m a wack job and therefore should discount everything else I’ve written. This is a statement to clarify what I actually believe is going on with covid.

If we assume that our leaders are not evil and/or stupid then there is overwhelming evidence to suggest there’s an agenda other than public health in play for covid policies.

I believe that some of our most senior leaders with the power to influence lower level leaders are using covid as an excuse to implement tools that will be helpful for maintaining social order during an economic collapse.

I do not know if these senior leaders deliberately released an engineered virus, or if they are just taking advantage of a mistake made at the Wuhan lab.

All of the evidence I see supports this “covid is cover for collapse prep” theory, EXCEPT the push to vaccinate children which I cannot explain if we continue to assume our leaders are not evil and/or stupid.

I proposed above, tongue in cheek, that perhaps the child vaccination push could be explained by a humane population reduction agenda, which I think would be a brilliant thing for our leaders to do, because population reduction is the only path to reducing the suffering that is coming due to human overshoot.

The problem with this population reduction hypothesis is that I don’t think are leaders are aware or smart or brave enough to try it.

So to be clear, I do NOT think there is a population reduction agenda in play.

Which means our leaders must be evil and/or stupid.

I’m pretty sure Fauci and his gang are corrupt, but I do not think all the collaborating leaders in the world are evil.

Which leaves stupidity as the only viable explanation for what’s going on with children.

Stupid behavior can have causes other than a low IQ.

Stupid behavior can result from our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities, like for example, doubling down because “I can’t possibly have supported the biggest blunder in human history”, or from a mass formation al la Mattias Desmet that causes temporary insanity.

July 13, 2022 Addition

Thank you to a reader for bringing to my attention a list of bad covid decisions compiled by Dr. Vinay Prasad.

I respect Dr. Prasad’s fairness and integrity by only listing those items for which a functioning brain looking at evidence available at the time would know was wrong.

https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/a-checklist-for-covid-policy

“Lots of people commented about COVID-19. Some were more right than others. It isn’t fair to judge people by facts not known at the time. Instead here is a list of issues where a person who read actively, and whose brain was working (aka not riddled with anxiety) could be right in the moment.

The evidence for community cloth masking was awful, nonexistent, negative and poor and we should have run cluster RCTs. This view was obvious based on reading pre-pandemic literature and is why the CDC, WHO and Tony Fauci himself initially advised against masking. Instead, in the weeks that followed many lied about the evidence of cloth masking to push this intervention. It was propaganda, not science. It was shameful how real scientists lied and exaggerated and virtue signalled, all of which prevented randomized trials.
Without embellishment, I will think it’s ok to have supported cloth masking initially, but smart people understood the residual uncertainty and wanted cluster RCTs. Unfortunately, they were defeated by zealots, and we have zero cluster RCTs in high income countries. Aka we learned nothing. This is embarrassing.
Masking kids 2-4 and mandates (oh, of course, except when they nap for 2 hours in the same room!) was a stupid policy and it’s hard to understand how anyone whose brain was working would support it. They napped together in the same room unmasked! Use your brain! How could that possibly work? Moreover, the World Health Organization advised against doing it.
School closure in the spring of 2020 was arguable, but closure any time after Aug 2020 was clearly wrong. Enough data had accumulated by then to know it was a fools errand. Most Western European nations had returned in person by then. Liberal American cities remained the last hold outs. They paid lip service to vulnerable children, but their policies crushed their future.
Vaccinating 20 year old health care workers and teachers and ‘first responders’ before the elderly was clearly stupid. It only happened because anxious first responders are more powerful lobbying force than old people. Society, particularly America, does not value the elderly. Anyone who could do basic arithmetic would know this would cost lives. Even assuming first responders were much more likely to get the virus, the IFR by age was so steep, it could not be overcome by exposure. Wise nations didn’t do it. You only needed a calculator and 2 seconds to realize how stupid it was.
When J&J was found to cause VITT, it was obvious the product should be pulled from the market. Bad policy makers analogized it to DVT after oral contraceptives. They apparently did not understand the difference between the cerebral sinus, and the leg. Or a simple clot and runaway platelet activation. Alternatives were available. The FDA and CDC kept the product for one more year and many people were harmed.
Mandating the mRNA shot was always a stupid idea. First, remember mandating a medical intervention is not done to protect the person getting the intervention. We don’t mandate you take your blood pressure pills. And you’re allowed to decline life-saving therapies. Mandates only exist when there is sufficient benefit to third parties that the intrusion on autonomy is justified. It has to clear a high bar. In the beginning, it looked like the vaccine provided massive individual level protection. Thus, it didn’t matter if someone else didn’t get the shot, you were protected. Modeling studies suggested that thousands of people would have to be excluded to avert one acquisition of COVID. It was clear that many people would be angered, a few would not comply, and there was no justifiable case that coercive vaccination benefited third parties. If a third party was worried, they could get vaccinated themselves. Later, by the fall of 2021, when it was abundantly clear that vaccines were unable to halt novel variants and breakthrough was inevitable, then vaccine mandates were unethical because vaccines could not protect a third party from transmission anyway. Ironically, vaccine mandates were always unethical because they never conferred sufficient benefit to 3rd parties. Instead, some people argued that protecting someone from their own choice was a valuable use of coercion. These people are ignorant of medical history, and do not see the fact that there is no end to this principle. You can mandate people to get any medical intervention by this logic. Moreover, they are aloof from Americans. Americans would never tolerate such an intrusion.
Wearing a mask after vaccination. Or distancing. Or avoiding weddings or avoiding other things. After vaccination, there was nothing more you could do to lower your individual risk. Weight loss, optimizing medical issues, and vaccination by the only three risk reducing interventions. Before it was evident that breakthrough was inevitable, there’s no point to take precautions after vaccination because you were very well protected. The moment it was evident that breakthrough was inevitable, there was no point to take precautions after vaccination because if you live long enough, you’ll eventually get the virus. So what’s the goal of delaying?
Testing testing, testing. The United States not for 1 minute was able to control the virus through test, trace, isolate. The seed load or initial preconditions in 2020 made it impossible to do that. The idea we could test our way halting the virus and his tracks was delusional. Someday Congress should pass a bill asking testing companies to release the names of doctors and epidemiologists who they paid. Once you see the money trail, you will understand why people pushed testing.
After adult vaccination, the idea that wide scale testing was necessary or desirable was a delusion. Testing kids and quarantining them was massively disruptive. The loss of educational alone offset any potential gains. And the final outcome will be inevitable. 93 to 98% breakthrough.
The idea kids need a vaccine to return to normal– was insane. This was absolutely a crazy point of view. Proof that it was not true is that many nations had very high sero prevalence prior to the debut of vaccines. The United Kingdom was nearly 100%. The US was at least over 70% but probably much higher, due to terrible data collection. If kids got COVID anyway prior to vaccine all the restrictions hurt them with no possibility of benefit.
Children never faced an emergency. The regulatory use of emergency use authorization for kids was unjustified. Their drug products should have come through traditional marketing pathways. The IFR in children was too low to constitute an emergency. Moreover, by the time kids vaccines arrived it was clear that breakthrough was inevitable. Ergo vaccinating kids would not protect anyone else. The abuse of expedited pathways benefits companies, but does not benefit people. This abuse has continued in cancer drugs for years. COVID makes people scared, which pharmaceutical companies use to enrich themselves with scant data.
Giving paxlovid to young vaccinated people. Anyone who knows the history of medicine knows that extrapolating data from very sick individuals to milder versions of disease is never a good idea. It’s always better to run a randomized trial before you spend $5 billion dollars treating your anxiety.
Anyone who ever said the word zero COVID is an idiot. Because the opportunity for zero COVID ended in early December 2019, and firmly closed by March of 2020. Anyone who still thought it possible, particularly in 2021, should be muted and ignored.
By June 2022, anybody who thinks the United States should do anything to control infections is wrong. Such a person must be living under a rock to not notice the fact that 200 million plus Americans have returned to complete normal. Moreover, it is not biologically possible. These should be too good reasons for these people to stop.
Travel bans. Border closure. Testing to cross borders. It was evident that these measures could do nothing to stop spread. It’s unbelievable we repeated that until 2022.
Long COVID: If you were very ill with COVID-19, if you were hospitalized, if you were intubated, if you were on death’s door, it is entirely possible that you will have a prolonged recovery. You may never be the same. This has always been the case with respiratory viruses. Or any illness for that matter. But if you had a mild infection, if you didn’t even know you were sick, then it would be astonishing that you would have serious long-term sequela. The burden of proof that this is due to COVID should be very high. That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t take you seriously. Doctor should always take patients seriously. And if a person feels bad, we should run studies to determine what makes them better. But that’s very different than advising people that asymptomatic Long Covid is a big problem, and that we should try to control infections in perpetuity. Those are bold policy maneuvers. It requires extraordinary evidence. That evidence has never been met. The best study from the Annals of internal medicine compares patients with milder Covid to those without milder Covid and finds no differences in any of dozens of dozens of biological tests. That finding is astonishing. And should be replicated in larger sample size. But if it holds true, a serious rethinking of long COVID is needed.
Saying in 2022 we need to control infections to prevent mutations. Serious science writers are saying this. In top magazines. It’s totally delusional. There is no political buy-in. Even if there were, you’d have to weld door shut like Shanghai to achieve it. That’s not possible in free society. It’s living in a fairy tale confusing it for reality.
Saying healthcare workers will mask forever. Before you institute a sweeping change in healthcare, don’t you want to run a randomized trial to know it works? Evidence-based medicine is dead when people propose such changes without evidence. I’m pretty confident now that many people didn’t understand it.
And the biggest way to know somebody doesn’t know what they’re talking about: when somebody suggests school reopening benefits rich and privileged kids. It benefits poor, underserved, minority kids. How clueless are you?
I forgot to mention boosting 12-year-olds, yearly booster, and a load of other things. That’s for another column.

These were issues that were not just obvious in retrospect but at the time. A simple test for who knows what they’re talking about.”

What are our leaders doing?

What force is powerful enough to synchronize every leader in almost every country to do the wrong thing on almost every covid action without assuming every leader is evil and/or stupid?
Why has no one figured out what’s going on, including normally intelligent alt-media?

Let’s assume that most of our leaders are normal people, of average intelligence, with good intentions, and they care about the future of their children.

By normal I mean they are decent people with flaws, just like you and I.

By average intelligence I mean they probably have some high school level science, have read a few popular books, and maybe watched a few documentaries, but are not well grounded in the laws of physics, and their mathematics skills are modest at best. Like most people, they do not have a good understanding of energy and its relationship with everything, nor do they have a good grasp of what is technically feasible.

By good intentions I mean they want to do a good job for the people that elected them, while of course making a living, and perhaps providing some extras for their family if a benign opportunity arises, just as you or I would.

By caring about their children I mean they are genuinely worried about:

The threat of an economic crash caused by unsustainable debt and its associated everything bubble that is now flashing red and impossible to ignore.
The reality and threat of climate change that is now obvious to anyone that has been alive for more than a few decades.
Limits to growth. Our leader’s understanding of energy depletion is probably a mixed bag, as it is with our next door neighbors. Most leaders probably understand that fossil energy growth is no longer desirable, some may understand that fossil energy growth is no longer possible, most probably still hope the green energy story is true but are getting worried it may be false, and a tiny minority may understand the reality of peak oil and its implications.

Overlaying all of the above, our leaders, like most humans, have a genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities, which manifests as an optimism bias, and an inability to grasp the reality and implications of human overshoot. We can be fairly certain that none of our leaders have defective denial genes, which would permit them to see overshoot, because that would have prevented them from winning their election.

Given these assumptions about our leaders, which are probably true, what would we expect them to do?

Let’s start with what they’ve done to date:

Increased the debt and lowered the interest rate to buy time for someone to think of something.
Signed free trade agreements to squeeze more efficiency out of the global economy.
Subsidized surplus corn to stretch gasoline with ethanol.
Subsidized green energy and electric cars in the hope it would reduce fossil energy use. They don’t understand why, but they can see this strategy is not helping.
Invested a lot of money into nuclear fusion returning zero prospects of success.
Agreed with good intentions to many climate change protocols and subsequently learned it is impossible to fulfill those agreements without damaging the economy.
Continued heavy military spending, just in case.

I expect our leaders now understand that:

We are between a rock and a hard place. They don’t fully understand why we have reached limits to growth, nor can they due to their normal denial genes, but they do understand something must change soon.
Debt is a bomb waiting to explode. They can see the end of the runway with rising inflation.
Climate change is a really nasty problem. Consumption must go down, but that will crash the economy. Even with CO2 reductions, it’s too late to avoid refugees and starvation.
Avoiding damaging social unrest, and mitigating/reducing the coming suffering will require sacrifice and sharing between countries, which will require some form of global cooperation with tight control over citizens.

Those of us that have paid attention and not listened to the official narrative know that nothing about covid makes sense. To be blunt, almost every action and policy has been wrong, in almost every country, and all of our leaders are synchronized, including their political opposition, almost without exception. How can this be? It’s simply not possible that all of our leaders are evil and/or stupid.

What force is powerful enough to have caused a diverse group of big ego leaders from many countries to cooperate on a secret plan that no one discusses? What force is powerful enough to have caused them to do things that under normal circumstances would have been blocked by their good ethics and character?

We know the various central banks have been working as a team since at least the 2008 GFC to keep the global wheels on. Recall that in the 2008 aftermath it was disclosed that we were hours away from a collapse of the banking system had the US congress not approved the bailout. The stresses and pressures in the system today are MUCH higher than they were in 2008 because we fixed a too much debt problem by adding a lot more debt.

In 2019 something in the global plumbing was beginning to break and it came to a head in September with a crisis in the repo market. The central banks together decided what needed to be done and the head of each central bank sat down with the leader of their country and spelled out the reality that an imminent “recession”, if not averted, would likely take out modern civilization due to the global debt bubble and lack of growth.

I imagine they said something like, “we need an excuse to print a gazillion dollars, and we’re going to need a digital currency soon that restricts many freedoms, and we might fail so you should think about a plan B for controlling social unrest. We think a not so serious global pandemic exaggerated into a panic is the perfect cover to accomplish all of this.”

No other force is powerful enough to explain the behavior we observe. It explains everything, including why no one talks about it, because if they did it would cause panic in the markets, which would harm themselves and their children. This also thankfully means we can continue to assume that most (not all) of our leaders are decent people like you and I.

The covid pandemic provided:

A reason for everyone from all political persuasions to support printing and handing out trillions of dollars to avoid a “recession”.
A means via lockdowns of reducing energy and materials consumption, and restricting freedom of movement and assembly, that can be invoked as needed without causing the panic that disclosing the end of growth would cause.
A reason for creating the infrastructure and social behaviors necessary for a digital currency via vaccine passports. A digital currency will be very helpful for implementing negative interest rates needed to avoid a Minsky Moment, and for rationing food and energy, and for preventing bank runs. The path they chose was to require all citizens to be injected with a substance and to carry proof via a vaccine passport. I expect they hoped the injected substance would be harmless with some tangible benefit but it appears their hopes have been dashed by Murphy’s Law and inadequate time for testing.
Most powerful countries agreed to this plan. The US, EU, Japan, Canada, and Australia are all on board. As is China who engineered the virus with funding from the US, and which influenced the WHO to ensure global spread of the virus in the early days.
Russia refused to join the plan, perhaps after calculating that with its healthy ratio of natural resources to population, modest debt, food self-sufficiency, and citizens capable of enduring some hardship, they will be better off charting an independent path.
The collaborating leaders viscerally hate Putin for not being a team player and are attempting to cause a regime change in Russia by provoking Russia into an expensive war and by applying economic sanctions. As with covid, it seems this plan is failing so we should expect a Plan B soon.
A new repo crisis began in 2022 and so Monkeypox was introduced just in case another pandemic is required to get the financial system under control.

Finally, we can now answer another burning question:

Why has no one figured out what’s going on, including normally intelligent alt-media?
Because to understand requires acceptance of the end of growth and overshoot, and that’s not possible for most people due to our species’ tendency to deny unpleasant realities as explained by Varki’s MORT theory.
For those that don’t believe the official covid narrative, it’s ok to blame corrupt pharma, or a scheming WEF, but it’s not ok to blame overshoot.

Let’s hope Plan B does not involve nuclear weapons but does have something to do with humane population reduction.

By Gaia Gardener: On Suffering

Buried in the comments of the last post we discussed human overshoot and what should be done about it. I proposed our goal should be to minimize suffering and that the best path to achieving this goal is awareness of Ajit Varki’s Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory.

My view, in summary, is that when fully aware of the reality and implications of human overshoot, our best personal and collective responses become self-evident and require no coercion to implement. Conversely, when overshoot is denied, all of our best personal and collective responses are vehemently rejected as assaults on our rights and entitlements.

Unfortunately, our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities, as explained by MORT, blocks overshoot awareness. Therefore any progress in a good direction requires an understanding of MORT.

Put more bluntly, all environmental activists, climate changers, peak oilers, Gaia lovers, population reducers, etc. should be focused with Zen-like precision on MORT, and any other activity is a complete waste of time, as demonstrated by our zero progress on any substantive issue over the last 50 years since Limits to Growth was published.

Reader Gaia Gardener responded with some beautiful prose that I thought was a good reason to clear the decks and create this new post.

For useful background, the comment thread that motivated the following essay by Gaia Gardener begins here.

Upon gazing up at the starry night sky thoughts like these come to my mind–there must be some sentient life form and civilization somewhere in this vast universe that broke through this barrier of denial that causes suffering to self, other life forms, and their ultimate destruction of their planetary home. Just being able to internalize this gives me much peace and acceptance of my infinitesimally small but still conscious being. If I keep gazing, sometimes I can lose sense of self completely and just melt into a time/space/no and every mind. Fermi’s paradox may be the most probable explanation for our seemingly unique manifestation but in a near infinite cosmos, there is still a chance that we may not understand everything!
If we are not here, or even if we were never here, the vastness of the universe continues to be, the ultimate laws of physical construct still stand as foundational building blocks to all matter and life, and life forms will continue to evolve even if given the most minute opportunity. In light of these critical truths, our knowledge of it is an ego awareness and recognition of what always was and will be and which has been already recognized by eons of cultures in their own way of expression. From creation myths to quantum equations, it is all a finger pointing at the moon, a way of reaching the untouchable but the real mystery and awe lies in the experience of just being. I suppose what is most tragic to our species is that we may lose our own consciousness to reflect back on our understandings of our world, in a word, annihilation. But can we take solace in the knowledge that we are elemental stardust to begin with and will return to that state, and since our guiding laws tell us matter and energy are constantly changing form, that is what we must be also, moment by moment, if even there is something called time. Then it is not a far reach for me to accept death, but suffering is another matter. Our ability to experience suffering ourselves is the prerequisite of consciousness and to be aware of suffering in others and make a choice for relief is the core of our humanity.
I have of late, at this crossroad of our civilization, find myself asking “Has it all been worth the suffering?” The knowledge gained, the art expressed, the structures erected, the technology exploded, has it been worth what we have also wrought with the same force and energy, the destruction and injustice to our planet and other life forms, starting with our own species, closer kin than any other stardust in this vastness of space. For example, for JS Bach to be born and for us to experience the incomparable beauty of his music, was it worth whatever else had to pass for our civilization to bring forth such genius? Can another member of our Homo sapiens family, in destitution and hunger for generations oppressed, can they say our enjoyment of our highest pinnacle achievements was worth their suffering and their ancestors suffering and their children’s suffering at the hands of our dominant culture? What of their choice to relieve suffering if only we had used our energy in a different way that may have allowed them to reach their own developmental potential? I cannot lie to a deepest truth that it is only my judgment that deems one being more worthy than another, the universe has none. If we are uberconscious, then we will also know that the universe has no judgment on our beingness or existence, it is only us looking at and contemplating ourselves in the mirror for this briefest of constructs called space and time. But since we have developed this mind and we have created our microuniverse within the macro, it is our responsibility to finish what we began, on every level. Overshoot and its repercussions is the stage set for our generations, we cannot shirk from finishing the show we have written, directed, and acted in. But there is also more to our human existence, and from the earliest times our inner desire has been to find our meaning and place in this cosmos. The present is the only time we ever have to continually seek and refine for ourselves what resonates, only now it seems of greatest urgency, at least to me. Maybe being born in the age of overshoot collapse has refocussed this for all of us here. And I do agree that reduction of suffering is a noblest goal and can manifest in myriad ways; kindness is always our choice.

Sidestepping Genetic Reality Denial by Manipulating Behavior for Overshoot Harm Reduction

It’s rare to encounter a new and constructive idea for addressing human overshoot that is not fatally flawed by a lack of understanding of either thermodynamic and geophysical constraints, or the strong genetic behavior to deny unpleasant realities that enabled the human species to emerge and dominate the planet.

For anyone still looking for technically feasible solutions that have a non-zero probability of success for reducing harms from human overshoot I recommend the most recent Planet: Critical podcast in which Rachel Donald interviews Joseph Merz.

https://www.planetcritical.com/p/urgency-action-and-ethics-joseph?s=r

There are no easy solutions to the climate crisis—most governments admit their hope lies in technology which doesn’t even exist yet. Science and “visionaries” propose increasingly mad ideas, like refreezing the Arctic, or sending humans to live in Space. But given the urgency of the situation, would we be mad not to consider these mad ideas?
Joseph Merz thinks we’ve run out of time to ask questions. He founded the Merz Institute to combat the climate crisis, gathering some of the world’s best scientists to establish what is going wrong and how to fix it. He says the answer is behavioural change—and they’re developing a programme that would manipulate mass behaviour on a subconscious level.
How? Well, using the same techniques as the advertising industry.

Key points made include:

It is too late to avoid suffering caused by human overshoot.
There may still be time to make the future less bad.
All actions we might take to reduce future suffering require changes in human behavior to consume less and have fewer children.
Information and education to date have proven completely ineffective at changing human behavior in a positive direction, and we are out of time to try new methods of education.
The advertising industry has developed technologies that are very effective at manipulating people to desire and acquire things they do not need to be happy, and in many cases cannot afford.
Merz proposes to redeploy these proven marketing technologies to manipulate people to desire happiness associated with lower consumption and fewer children.

Neither Rachel Donald or Joseph Merz appear aware of Varki’s Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory but I’m thinking that Merz’s proposal might sidestep the fatal flaw in most other overshoot harm reduction proposals that require humans to first acknowledge the reality of their predicament, which appears to be impossible because of MORT.

The beauty of Merz’s plan is that it does not require reality awareness because it will manipulate humans at a subconscious level.

It will be interesting to see if the marketing technologies are powerful enough to override the Maximum Power Principle (MPP) which is another powerful genetic behavior that pushes us in an overshoot direction. I’m thinking (without any evidence or data) that it might be possible to override the MPP because we are such a strong social species.

Godspeed to Merz and screw the ethics.

P.S. I doubt it is true, but I observe that if you assume the WEF Great Reset has good intentions grounded in overshoot awareness, it is possible they are thinking along the same lines as Merz with their “you will own nothing and be happy” campaign. The WEF campaign does seem rather clumsy compared to say associating happiness with a Corona beer on a high-carbon long distance vacation. I think it is more likely the WEF is trying to prepare citizens for a Minsky moment in which much asset ownership will transfer to the state.

P.P.S. It’s fascinating that so many overshoot aware people are active in the small country of New Zealand.

By Bill Rees: On the Virtues of Self-Delusion—or maybe not!

Dr. Bill Rees, Professor Emeritus from the University of British Columbia, gave a presentation on our overshoot predicament earlier this month to a zoom meeting of the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome (CACOR).

I’m a longtime fan of Dr. Rees and consider him to be one of the most aware and knowledgeable people on the planet.

This is, I believe, the best talk I’ve seen by Dr. Rees and he covers all of the important issues, including topics like overpopulation that most of his peers avoid.

Presentations like this will probably not change our trajectory but nevertheless I find some comfort knowing there are a few other people thinking about the same issues. This can be a very lonely space.

The Q&A is also very good. I found it interesting to hear how much effort Dr. Rees has made to educate our leaders about what we should be doing to reduce future suffering. He was frank that no one to date, including the Green party, is open to his message. Not surprising, but sad. Also inspiring that someone of his stature is at least trying.

Summary

Climate-change and other environmental organizations urge governments to act decisively/rapidly to decarbonize the economy and halt further development of fossil fuel reserves. These demands arguably betray:
– ignorance of the role of energy in the modern economy;
– ill-justified confidence in society’s ability to transition to 100% green renewable energy;
– no appreciation of the ecological consequences of attempting to do so and;
– little understanding of the social implications.
Without questioning the need to abandon fossil fuels, I will argue that the dream of a smooth energy transition is little more than a comforting shared illusion. Moreover, even if it were possible it would not solve climate change and would exacerbate the real existential threat facing society, namely overshoot.
I then explore some of the consequences and implications of (the necessary) abandonment of fossil fuels in the absence of adequate substitutes, and how governments and MTI society should be responding to these unspoken biophysical realities.

Biography

Dr. William Rees is a population ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus, and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
His academic research focuses on the biophysical prerequisites for sustainability. This focus led to co-development (with his graduate students) of ecological footprint analysis, a quantitative tool that shows definitively that the human enterprise is in dysfunctional overshoot. (We would need five Earth-like planets to support just the present world population sustainably with existing technologies at North American material standards.)
Frustrated by political unresponsiveness to worsening indicators, Dr. Rees also studies the biological and psycho-cognitive barriers to environmentally rational behavior and policies. He has authored hundreds of peer reviewed and popular articles on these topics. Dr. Rees is a Fellow of Royal Society of Canada and also a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute; a founding member and former President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics; a founding Director of the OneEarth Initiative; and a Director of The Real Green New Deal. He was a full member of the Club of Rome from 2013 until 2018. His international awards include the Boulding Memorial Award in Ecological Economics, the Herman Daly Award in Ecological Economics and a Blue Planet Prize (jointly with his former student, Dr. Mathis Wackernagel).

I left the following comment on YouTube:

I’m a fellow British Columbian and longtime admirer of Dr. Rees. Thank you for the excellent presentation.
I agree with Dr. Rees’ prescription for what needs to be done but I think there’s a step that must precede his first step of acknowledging our overshoot predicament.
Given the magnitude and many dimensions of our predicament an obvious question is why do so few people see it?
I found a theory by Dr. Ajit Varki that provides a plausible explanation, and answers other important questions about our unique species.
The Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory posits that the human species with its uniquely powerful intelligence exists because it evolved to deny unpleasant realities.
If true, this implies that the first step to any positive meaningful change must be to acknowledge our tendency to deny unpleasant realities.
Varki explains his theory here:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-25466-7_6
A nice video summary by Varki is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqgYqW2Kgkg
My interpretations of the theory are here:
https://un-denial.com/denial-2/theory-short/
https://un-denial.com/2015/11/12/undenial-manifesto-energy-and-denial/

For explaining why humans are odd
To Varki and Brower we applaud
A great mystery they solved
With denial we evolved
And created the Higgs, overshoot, and God

Denial not only makes us believe in god, it is god, because denial created us, and denial may destroy us.

The singular emergence of human intelligence, and its ability to write and read this paragraph, evolved in a gene controlled machine with an unusually powerful computer, that was created by an improbable simultaneous adaptation for an extended theory of mind with denial of reality, and whose complexity was enabled by the increased energy per gene provided by mitochondria, that resulted from an accidental endosymbiosis of two prokaryotes, powered by an unintuitive chemiosmotic proton pump, that originated in an alkaline hydrothermal vent, on 1 of 40 billion planets, in 1 of 100 billion galaxies, and that planet had an improbable store of photosynthetic and geothermal generated fossil energy, that the species leveraged to understand and appreciate, the peak of what may be possible in the universe, before it vanished, because it denied the consequences of its success.

The human brain, the God it believes in, and the overshoot it enabled and denies, all resulted from the same improbable genetic adaptation that occurred about 100,000 years ago.

Varki’s MORT theory explains much of the strange water we swim in every day, and also explains why most can’t see the water.

Denial is the reality that must be most aggressively denied to avoid collapsing the house of cards that keeps us functioning.

The most amazing thing about human overshoot is that we do not discuss it.

You know you are in trouble when reduced CO2 emissions from an economic collapse caused by low-cost oil depletion is not sufficient to prevent civilization collapse from climate change caused by previously emitted CO2.

Our only choices are do we want to fall from a higher elevation later, or climb down from a lower elevation sooner?

What we should do but won’t do will happen anyway, unfortunately too late.

Things that can’t continue usually stop too late.

Truth is like poetry and most people hate poetry.

All 8 billion of us owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains; 6 billion of us also owe our existence to nitrogen fertilizer created from natural gas by Haber-Bosch factories.

Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.

Thermodynamics, expressed through genetics, creates beings incapable of not maximizing energy consumption.

Denial is evolution’s solution for permitting intelligence to coexist with our (Maximum Power Principle) subconscious decision makers.

While it digs its own grave, all the mind can do is entertain fantasies and create excuses.

When the only paying job in town is sawing off the branch which you are sitting on, you….saw away! You might refuse to saw and hang yourself from that branch, but the end is the same anyway, and that option is much less fun. — Cynic @Megacancer

Never underestimate the human capacity for denial. — Gail Zawacki

It is remarkable that a brain emerged from a cloud of hydrogen and figured out the laws of physics that governed, and possibly made inevitable, its own creation and destruction.

We have met the oblivious and they are us.

All 8 billion of us originated from one small tribe in Africa about 100,000 years ago that gave birth to a child with an improbable mutation for a more powerful brain that denied reality. The other tribes were soon toast and we took over the planet. We’re all close cousins. I love you all. Except the deniers.

Meaning comes from understanding why we can understand there is no meaning.

Way too many smart people with big reputations are wrong about everything that matters. Something’s gonna happen that gives them an excuse not to have to admit they were in denial.

The most precious and rare thing in the universe is the human brain. We have a cosmic obligation to use it.

Building a competition for maximum power on top of a finite energy source equals exponential build-out and collapse. — James @ MegaCancer.com

The fact that most believe in sustainable growth is proof that most are in denial.

Fire to cooking to intelligence to denial to god to plotting to capital punishment to self-domestication to Apollo 11 to 7 billion too many.

Nothing makes sense without the light of evolution and thermodynamics, and for one unique species that’s intelligent enough to understand both but chooses not to, you need to add denial to the list.

Lots of elephants in the room, but no adults.

A problem with a solution that does not require me to sacrifice anything does not require denial, unless the solution won’t work, like renewable energy.

And you, be you fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. And you, so not to be distracted from my command, deny reality.

The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. — Gustave Le Bon

Labor without energy is a corpse. Capital without energy is a sculpture. — Steve Keen

Debt is a promise to produce more wealth in the future than we do today, so that we can consume more wealth today than we could without debt.

One way or the other, population will fall. One way is civil, the other is not.

There is hope, and there is delusion. Both are comforting, but only one is plausible. — Nehemiah

The Green Revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise, the success of the Green Revolution will be ephemeral only. Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the “Population Monster”. . . Since man is potentially a rational being, however, I am confident that within the next two decades he will recognize the self-destructive course he steers along the road of irresponsible population growth. — Norman Borlaug

Cells vote for whomever offers the best chance of fulfilling their dream of becoming two cells.

My brain is just “the Universe aware of itself – with consciousness along for the ride” and it’s perfectly satisfied with that. — AArgot

Energy is the economy. Money is a call on energy. Debt is a lien on future energy. — Art Berman

You can’t taper a Ponzi economy. — Max Keiser

If you do not understand energy, you understand nothing.

We couldn’t save the Arctic, the Amazon or the last piece of cheesecake so it looks like we won’t be able to save ourselves. The end. — James @ Megacancer.com

‘peak demand for oil’ is the economic equivalent of saying the reindeer on St. Matthew Island faced ‘peak demand for lichen’ — Nate Hagens

What keeps me going is that it’s just so damn interesting that 99% of 8 billion people selectively turn off their impressive intelligence when confronted with something unpleasant like overshoot, despite it being in-your-face obvious, including the recursive fact that denying overshoot makes the outcome even more unpleasant. It’s amazing!

MORT is required to explain why people who understands MPP cannot escape MPP.

We formulated the laws of thermodynamics at about the same time we decided they didn’t apply to humankind. — Norman Pagett

Facts are not repealed by refusal to face them. — William R. Catton

If an energy investment is producing net energy, it should not need a subsidy, not even the subsidy of going first. — Gail Tverberg

You can’t reason somebody out of a stance they weren’t reasoned into in the first place. — Robert Sapolsky

The behavior of economists differs from climate scientists in that idiocy explains the former and denial the latter.

The human species is a short circuit on the battery we call Earth.

There is no one driving the bus. — Nate Hagens

That we party of apes could do this much damage in a mere 200 years is quite an accomplishment. — Mandrake

The Neocortex lets us imagine our own mortality; the brain stem keeps us from believing it. — Dan Brooks

What’s worse than a vaccine that doesn’t work? A vaccine that only half works. — Will Thomson

Appetite grows with eating. — proverb

Funniest site tagline: “Previously dedicated to saving humanity from itself – but now it’s probably too late” — Lord Hugh R. Adumbass

The danger we face is in the denial of it. — Norman Pagett

Our standard of living (including food) is created by machines. Interest is the cost of buying machines, and energy is the cost of operating machines. As the cost of energy goes up due to depletion, the interest rate must go down for there to be enough profit to buy and operate machines, including the machines that extract energy. When the interest rate reaches zero, the machines will begin turning off.

Our growth constrained economy is like a bomb with a burning fuse and the only way to extend the fuse is to add more explosive (QE). Having evolved to deny unpleasant realities we can’t even discuss our energy constraints nor the implications of our response.

Totalitarianism is no worse than a democracy of idiots. — AJ

I apologize to a few of you for most of you. — God

How convenient that CO2 emissions will go to zero at about the same time there is no more fossil energy to burn. Net Zero 2050 will be the only climate change commitment we meet.

Idiots gonna idiot. Muppets gonna muppet. Rapacious primates gonna rapacious. — Kowalainen

Economists are confused about inflation, the thing they should understand better than anyone, because they do not distinguish between the price of stuff rising due to depletion vs. the price of stuff rising because the money supply is growing faster than stuff. When the stuff is energy needed to make other stuff they get really confused.

If incomes are insufficient to afford higher energy prices, because high energy prices are suppressing incomes, because low cost energy reserves are depleted, and debt is maxed out, then underinvestment in energy is not a choice. Planned degrowth vs. a chaotic collapse is a choice. But only if we first acknowledge our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities.

I frequently get wound up by the covid insanity sweeping the planet and then I step back and remember it’s nothing compared to our collective ignorance and/or denial about affordable fossil energy depletion and climate change which are serious, imminent, and real threats to everyone. We are not rational or wise about anything important. Why should covid be any different?

I used to believe we would build a sustainable equitable future by understanding ecology and biophysical limits, and by moving to organic farming. Now I’ll be pleased if my neighbors don’t eat me. — Jason Bradford

The best solution to climate change is to burn all of our remaining fossil energy as fast as possible mining Bitcoin because it’s a totally pointless activity that does not lead to growth. Then maybe the planet has a prayer. — Tim Garrett

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. — C.S. Lewis

I hate the phrase “vaccine hesitant”. I prefer “moron leader allergy”.

Fossil fuel humanity is not going to transition to gulag apartment dweller. It will burn brightly, then die. That goes for me and my partner as well. That’s just the way life is going to go, my friends. — notabilia

It is easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they have been fooled. — Mark Twain

Follow the covid money: 1) Politicians depend on pharma donations. 2) News & social media depend on pharma ads. 3) Scientists depend on pharma contracts. 4) Pharma CEOs depend on profit growth. 5) Regulators depend on pharma royalties.

The Ukraine conflict will accelerate the transition to renewables. Unfortunately most of the renewables will be trees that are close enough to homes to be chopped down with axes and transported with wheelbarrows.

People ask me if I think that there will be inflation, and I tell them that I don’t think that there will be anything to buy. That is a different kind of problem. — Gail Tverberg

Nobody ever hides good news. — Karl Denninger

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. ― George Carlin

We’re shaking an unstable system that was already on the edge of collapse, and the monkeys in charge have stone age brains and nuclear weapons.

For a super intelligent species like humans to exist it must deny unpleasant realities so that an understanding of the meaning of life does not interfere with executing the meaning of life.

People can get Ph.D.s without knowing how the world really works. ― Gail Tverberg

Covid was an IQ test for 8 billion people. We failed.

One mistake by one emotional monkey and it’s all over.

We’re in a severe state of overshoot.
Abortions are safe and effective.
Make them mandatory after 1 child.
It’s the wise and humane thing to do.

Energy depletion is unsafe and effective at curing overshoot.

Adding money from politicians to science just creates political science. ― el gato malo

The human brain can’t comprehend a reality with no happy ending and a best case outcome of a less bad future.

Having many thousands of nuclear weapons and pretending we’ll never use them when food becomes scarce due to energy depletion and/or climate change is another example of genetic reality denial.

God makes dissipatives blind to the facts so they’ll finish their task. ― James @ Megacancer.com

Man’s most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe. ― Euripides

There’s no substitute for fewer and/or poorer people except denial.

How enjoyable is a fireworks show to a firework? ― Tom Murphy

I love the story that Peter Ward, Nick Lane and Ajit Varki tell about the improbable miracle of our existence as a uniquely intelligent reality denying religious fire ape with an extended theory of mind built from improbable eukaryotic cells on a rare planet with abundant improbable fossil energy alive to experience a scant 10 out of 13.7 billion years of what may be the peak complexity that is possible in the universe. Where else would you want to be?

Becker’s TMT is to Varki’s MORT as Newtonian physics is to Einstein’s General Relativity. Both do an excellent job of making predictions however the latter supersedes the former and provides a much more comprehensive and illuminating model of reality.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. — Marcus Aurelius

Wise leaders would have cancelled COP27 and convened POP1, a new conference on population reduction to address climate change PLUS the dozens of other overshoot calamities we face. Unwise leaders default to nuclear war to reduce the population.

MORT is a classic Catch-22 because MORT predicts that MORT will be denied and therefore if MORT is correct then MORT will never be acknowledged. I still value MORT because it keeps me sane by explaining why so many are so blind to so much that is so obvious.

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