By Gail Tverberg: How Our Energy Problem Leads to a Debt Collapse Problem

Another fabulous article by Gail Tverberg.

I doubt that 1 person in a 10,000 understands this important topic.

How our energy problem leads to a debt collapse problem

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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

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