Examples of denial are both profound and unacknowledged.
The short-term solution to our problems is the long-term cause of our problems: economic growth
The long-term solution to our problems is the short-term cause of our problems: reduced consumption
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.
All political parties in all countries and almost all citizens, including the few citizens that understand our predicament, reject our best course of action: austerity
Most citizens have no idea how fortunate they are to be alive at this point in history: Blindspots and Superheroes
Despite wildly different beliefs about our predicament, there is one thing that almost everyone agrees on: I don’t want to change my behavior
The only problems society does not acknowledge, or discuss, or act on, are the only problems that matter: species extinction, limits to growth, debt, peak oil, overshoot, resource depletion, climate change, sea level rise, fisheries collapse & ocean acidification, nitrogen imbalance & tree decline
Every country has similar economic problems and not one leader anywhere in the world connects the dots and publicly acknowledges the root cause, even after they leave office: declining energy surplus a.k.a. energy extraction cost + debt
Citizens believe the exact opposite of reality: technology creates wealth and energy rather than energy creates wealth and technology
Citizens misunderstand the root cause of social unrest and wars because the media presents these conflicts as political or economic problems and ignores their underlying forces: biophysical constraints
There is evidence that feedback loops are taking over and causing some problems to go exponential: climate change, CO2 emissions, ice loss, sea level rise, debt
The previous year’s worst case predictions are tending to become this year’s most likely prediction: sea level rise
Actions that improve the long-term worsen the short-term: air pollution masks 0.5C of warming, austerity and debt reduction, renewable energy, population reduction
The only possible permanent solution is rejected by the belief systems of 90+% of citizens: population reduction
The only possible permanent solution is too slow to avoid the worst problems: population reduction laws
Countries fortunate to have a low birth rate often cancel their good fortune with immigration: Canada
The few people who understand the severity of our problems do not set good examples in their personal lives: leaders, climate scientists, environmentalists
History suggests that the consequence of not voluntarily contracting our economies as non-renewable resources deplete is an unthinkable war, so we don’t think about it: nuclear weapons
The quality of our leaders is declining because those people with high intelligence, wisdom, and integrity do not want to be in charge of our predicament, and because citizens are feeling the impact of overshoot, do not understand what is going on, and are angry: Trump
The leader of the free world denies science and issues daily, jaw-dropping, cringe-inducing tweets: Trump
The one world leader that did understand the problem and spoke out was rejected by the citizens and no longer speaks out: Jimmy Carter
We do not acknowledge that the world’s economic problems began with the peaking of a key non-renewable resource: conventional oil
Low energy prices have led citizens to believe we have a glut of fossil energy when in fact: all types of energy have peaked
We do not discuss or act on economic history research that shows countries always get into serious trouble when they permit an important ratio to exceed a threshold we long passed: debt to GDP
Bankers, the creators of money, do not understand the one thing that creators of money should understand: thermodynamics of wealth
The professionals with the most influence on public policy use models that violate the most trusted laws of physics: economists
The scientific theory that explains the relationship between the economy, energy, and climate is ignored by everyone that should understand it: Tim Garrett
The people who deserve the most respect and admiration get the least: scientists
The people who deserve the least respect and admiration get the most: celebrities
All types of non-fossil energy do not provide a substitute for the only energy we can’t live without: diesel for trucks, trains, ships, tractors, and combines, and mining machines; plus natural gas for fertilizer
Operating our economy on renewable energy is not renewable or feasible.
People who think the shale revolution will make America prosperous and energy independent ignore one thing: facts and more facts
Intelligent people who understand the climate change threats, like James Hansen and Bill Gates, and who want business as usual to continue, know that nuclear energy is the only option, but they ignore a problem: peak uranium
If climate deniers continue to win elections and try to maintain the existing electric grid they’ll find that strategy may not work for long: peak coal
A key component of our infrastructure appears durable but is not: reinforced concrete
Citizens most vulnerable to a fragile global supply chain with only a few days of inventory experience the strongest illusion of abundance and security: inhabitants of large cities
The “green” revolution, which increased food production to enable 7+ billion humans, was and is entirely dependent on fossil energy, and has long-term consequences that will make a return to traditional agriculture very difficult.
Most citizens are not even vaguely aware of the invention that enabled their existence and created about 50% of the nitrogen in their bodies: Haber-Bosch conversion of natural gas to fertilizer
Well meaning environmentalists demand that we stop subsidizing fossil energy companies without understanding the source of all that they cherish in modern civilization: fossil energy
Well meaning environmentalists demand that we stop subsidizing fossil energy companies without realizing that many fossil energy companies are going bankrupt: ExxonMobil
A solution frequently advocated makes things worse by accelerating growth and decreasing system resilience: efficiency
The best solution for removing CO2 from the atmosphere is being harmed by the same activity that creates CO2: planting more trees which are then injured or killed by ground level ozone
All climate science models that do not predict disaster now depend on an unproven technology that we probably can’t afford and other species definitely can’t afford: BECCS (bio-energy with carbon capture and storage)
We have not acted to prevent a predictable and very dangerous side effect of trying to maintain business-as-usual with low interest rates: increasing wealth gap
We still enjoy historically vast surplus wealth that could be deployed to improve our future lives but we are squandering it: military, airports, highways, new cars, high rises, etc.
Earth with its diverse complex life and a highly intelligent species is extraordinarily rare, precious, and worth fighting to protect, yet we dream of other barren homes: colonizing Mars
The tool that could be used to unite citizens in common purpose and useful action is instead being used to create tribes that reinforce preexisting beliefs: internet
Many people are hurting and lashing out in anger because they do not understand the cause of their pain: Brexit, Trump, Syria, Venezuela, etc.
The few sources of information that understand and communicate the truth are under threat: fake news
Few people study or heed the best predictor of the future: history
The majority of citizens share a common characteristic that makes the election of an intelligent and wise leader empowered to do the right thing unlikely: wacky beliefs
None of our schools teach skills useful and relevant to our future: growing food and other forms of lower complexity life skills
The thing that enabled the evolution of our high intelligence and its ability to understand and act on problems is the same thing that causes our problems and prevents us from acting on them: denial of reality
The theory that best explains our existence and our self-destructive behavior is ignored by everyone, including those people seeking to understand our problems: Varki and Brower’s Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory
Readers are encouraged to submit additions to the list.
A good place to go next is What would a wise society do?
un-Denial 
Plus the fact that most of our ‘leaders’ are sociopaths, defined as people without conscience – without capacity for empathy.
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I see some leaders with empathy (Obama, Trudeau) and some without empathy (Trump, Clinton).
What all leaders seem to have in common is that they do not have a clue what is actually going on, or they pretend to not have a clue.
In some cases not having a clue may be caused by low intelligence, but in most cases I suspect the cause is inherited denial of reality.
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Excellent post. These are exactly the same thoughts that have been going through my mind for a while. We have fucked up big time.
Any idea what a hypothetical quick and effective fix might be?
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The time to act was in the 70’s when the limits to growth report was released.
https://undenial.wordpress.com/2016/05/03/the-uk-a-state-of-undenial/
We are unfortunately now between a rock and a hard place without any really good options. I wrote some ideas on what I would do here:
https://undenial.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/what-would-a-wise-society-do/
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Hi, Rob! Nicely laid out information here that highlights the predicament we are in. I find it likely that there is nothing that can be done for industrial society’s problems. The inertia moving the status quo forward is very, very strong. The good news is, we can choose what to do with our individual lives. We have the ability to bring people in within our sphere of influence, break through denial, and build resilient communities. It’s all we can do, now…industrial society is lost and on the decline.
Matt, transitionrewild.blogspot.com
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Thanks kindly Matt.
I agree with your wise comments.
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All true statements in my opinion, Rob. It’s as if the more obvious the path we are on is wrong, the more strongly the denial becomes entrenched. As if the mere act of denial forces systems going awry to snap back into normalcy. No, problems don’t go away and denial is no different than sweeping dust under a rug.
I like the one about Carter no longer talking about energy the way he did in the 70’s. The denial is part of the ‘Group Think’ now and the media is part and parcel to it. Even Warren Buffett who is a master of figuring future trends of business to find the best investments is apparently in denial, saying just yesterday that people who think the US is headed for big trouble are out of their minds, as if the growth is a given no one should question.
I was in SF yesterday and the view of the skyline has two giant skyscrapers with massive cranes on top rising into the sky. SF use to be somewhat growth of giant buildings restrictive, not having apparently taken off the gloves and given carte’ blanche to super tall buildings once again.
I’ve also noticed something else that’s quite disturbing, increasing levels of reckless, high speed driving. On the east bay roads of the bay area yesterday headed east on the Bay Bridge, when it got to where there were many more lanes, drivers suddenly went wild changing lanes and accelerating to speeds of 80-90 miles an hour with two near collisions. And that kind of racing, wildly changing lanes bit was everywhere we went. It’s like people have hit some kind of speed button in their heads, as if they had suddenly gone mad. Maybe it’s the same reason Trump got elected.
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Thanks for stopping by with some excellent observations. I see insanity everywhere and I can’t think of a single indicator that is going in a good direction.
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Persian (Sufi) saying: ‘The minority of the Wise has long since been replaced by the majority of the foolish.’
And it’s just got worse since that was coined at least 1,000 years ago.
The conception of over-shoot leading to collapse is actually embodied in the old Persian legends, in the story of the First Shepherd who managed through technology to extend carrying capacity several times over, until eventually the gods told him it wasn’t going to work this time, and to get ready to hide from the Great Winter that was coming to overwhelm all living things.
Someone was wise enough to write that…….
Today in Iran, they are set to lose at least 40% of their agricultural land due to erosion, over-use of chemicals, and exhaustion of water sources caused by fossil-fuel-powered pumps.
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This is an outstanding post, greatly enjoyed it!
And because Americans are bat-shit crazy, there’s no solution, because American’s see it as their right to believe whatever the hell they please, no matter how nutty it is. Here’s the opening of my post “What percent of Americans are rational?” at http://energyskeptic.com/2018/what-percent-of-americans-are-rational/
I was inspired to write this post by the best book I’ve ever on American’s nutty beliefs from evangelistic Christianity to astrology, Kurt Andersen’s “Fantasyland: How America went Haywire: a 500-year history”. But it is much more than that — it’s also one of the best history books you will ever read. You’ll learn many startling episodes from the past, and even if they are not new to you, they are summarized with such original insights that they seem new.
The basic premise of this book is:
“What’s problematic is going overboard, letting the subjective entirely override the objective, people thinking and acting as if opinions and feelings were just as true as facts. The American experiment, the original embodiment of the great Enlightenment idea of intellectual freedom, every individual free to believe anything she wishes, has metastasized out of control. More than the billion or two other people in the rich world, we Americans believe—really believe—in the supernatural and miraculous, in Satan on Earth now…and a several-thousand-year-old story of life’s instantaneous creation several thousand years ago. ..We believe the government and other co-conspirators are hiding all sorts of monstrous truths from us concerning assassinations, extraterrestrials, the genesis of AIDS, the 9/11 attacks, the dangers of vaccines, and so much more….we have passed through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole. America has mutated into Fantasyland”.
Andersen estimates that only a third of us are more or less solidly reality-based.
The polls below show that he may be too kind. It may be only 27%, or even less, as you’ll see below in the surveys listing paranormal and supernatural beliefs, conspiracy theories, and National Science Foundation questions (26% of Americans think the sun revolves around the Earth, only 48% know that human beings developed from earlier species of animals).
What would be interesting is if a survey were done testing all nutty beliefs, not just certain segments of them.
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Thanks for the kind words Alice. I added above the following link to your excellent essay:
“The majority of citizens share a common characteristic that makes the election of an intelligent and wise leader empowered to do the right thing unlikely: wacky beliefs”
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They’re in denial about all sorts of weird stuff. I had a neighbor with a juvenile delinquent kid that kept throwing stuff at our house, eggs, garbage and rocks, but I couldn’t get the male guardian to even acknowledge what I was saying. The Sheriff would go ask them if the kid had done what I claimed and when they said, no, the sherrif just believed them and not me. This went on for years until they finally moved because the kid got in trouble at school, so they had to find a new school in a new area.
I think you’re right, even though I live in the US, with my wife in CA. It’s no longer rational. Something did get lost in shuffle. Trouble is even worse that Trump is prez and leading to all sorts of problems, especially now the GOP are opting for another trickle down tax cut to support their base, the top 1%, which will dramatically increase the debt and reduce Medicaid and medicare by billions. He’s also picking a fight/war with NK & moving towards one with Iran. He’s so anti-Obama he’s tossing out the agreement with Iran that kept their enrichment of uranium from progressing. What?! It’s just too stupid for words.
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I’m wondering why you think just Americans have some special claim to nutty beliefs. Why not simply go back a century. Do you think people in Europe didn’t believe in angels and demons? Africans, Indians, Jews, Arabs and Chinese all have their share of ritualistic freak shows. And don’t be too sure that a conspiracy theory is all bunk and actually might have some merit.
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Sorry if I implied Americans are unique. All humans have wacky beliefs. I agree that not all (but most) conspiracy theories are bunk, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction vs. oil being a good example.
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Alice’s link above to:
http://energyskeptic.com/2017/what-percent-of-americans-are-rational/
returns 404 (not found) and appears to have been changed to:
http://energyskeptic.com/2018/what-percent-of-americans-are-rational/
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Thank you. I fixed the link.
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Very grateful to have received such a sane and realistic inventory of our collective denial…Although these insights, in themselves, don’t change much, what they’ve done is explain to me why Ive been experiencing sooooo much stress trying to encourage the people in my life to at least begin the conversations we need to have. These ‘denial lists’ also explain the weird responses Ive been receiving to a Resilience Self Assessment Questionnaire that I offer to anyone I meet: Its from http://www.peakprosperity.com by Chris Martenson. It has 100 simple questions to answer YEs/No to regarding ones preparedness for disruptions in our energy, economy, environment cycles. More people refuse to do the questionnaire than those willing…and those of us who have filled it in have all achieved less than a 50% rating! Many rivers to cross.
Thankyou for waking up!
xoxo Love and resilience,
Lesley Gillett, Brisbane, Australia.
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Welcome and thanks for the kind words. Now that you are aware of denial I think you will see it everywhere, and will be amazed by its strength. Denial explains so much of the insanity around us.
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In our culture of denial only the sane question their sanity.
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Add one more: In denial that over a 27 year period 76% of all flying insects are gone, but that’s somehow acceptable?! For one, birds eat flying insects so if all the insects are eradicated then the birds & amphibians mostly go too. Also, can we really pollinate our fruits and vegetables with drones? If 76% were lost over 27 years, then how many years before 100% are gone? Answer: Loss is 2.81% per annum average = only 8.59 more years to eradicate the remainder, unless something changes. That will be March 30, 2026.
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There are in my view quite a number of propositions that are questionable and many dimensions that are not mentioned. However, and this is huge, many more are bang-on and more importantly perhaps, almost always ignored in the innumerable discussions of our times. Congratulations! I am much encouraged because even more frustrating than the possibly insurmountable problems that we face is the sense that some of us get that no one thinks our views are worthy of consideration. How egocentric of me? Sorry.
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Thanks. I’d like to correct any errors I made and add anything important I missed so feel free to send them to me.
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Article makes the common, though arrogant, assumption that we are in charge. This idea that we can know when to shrink our population, implement austerity, and curtail consumption/production. More-over, that we can actually implement, manage and enforce these things across the entire globe. Forget it, it’s impossible. Things like that have been tried with disastrous outcomes. You cannot keep human beings from harvesting the resources of the planet as they will. Nobody has the ability to do that. Humanity is a force of nature, and in most ways out of our control.
We also must consider the very real possibility that we’re WRONG in our belief of the finite nature of our world. It might indeed be finite but the limits may be far, far beyond our estimates. We really have no idea what future technologies and discoveries will bring. “The limits of growth” was a book written in the 1970s estimated the end of growth should have happened long ago. They had no way of knowing that new advances in farming, mining, etc would prolong things so much.
We dont know what the future will bring. Through new discoveries we might prolong growth, or indeed even expand growth for another 500 years, and our end might come long before any significant scarcity through some event that we cannot conceive or avoid. People were warning of the end and suggesting austerity back in the 1890’s, they said we’d run out of oil and other resources in the 1920’s. If humanity had embraced that belief we would have put the breaks on 120 years of advancement in medicine, science, technology, and standards of living for every economic class across the board. The point is moot because we do not have the ability to dictate the kind of changes that we’d like anyway. We are not in charge. We’re very insignificant creatures acting out our natures. Every bit an expression of the natural world as the birds and the bees, and just as powerless to consciously ‘choose’ to alter the course of the universe. Accept it and enjoy the ride.
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The interesting question is why does such an intelligent species have so little free will? I think a big part of the answer is inherited denial of reality.
After many years of fighting we finally agreed that nicotine is highly addictive and harmful to health and so we changed society to reduce the amount of smoking. I’d like us to do the same with denial. It is too late to avoid a lot of pain but we could choose to make the future less bad.
You are wrong about the accuracy of the 70’s limits to growth study. We are tracking very closely to what their standard model predicted.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse
Click to access Meadows-limits_summary.pdf
https://un-denial.com/2016/05/03/the-uk-a-state-of-undenial/
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The Limits to Growth book did not make any absolute predictions. It just presented trends for several different sets of assumed human actions and nature’s response using the World3 program. The “prediction” was a misinterpretation or an outright lie made by the group that’s utterly dependent upon infinite growth. One economist actually stated that the planet could easily handle a population of a trillion people. The World3 “business as usual” scenario very accurately modeled what has actually happened during the 40 years after the LTG’s publication. Things get really ugly when the data from the last 40 years is added to the World3 model and a “business as usual” scenario is assumed.
I used to work with a guy in Boston with degrees from Yale and MIT. Back in the 80s he talked about not hearing the croaking frogs he used to hear when growing up. When I visited him and his (Stanford degree) wife 2 years ago he absolutely denied that the bees were disappearing. I have no hope that a cataclysmic collapse of everything can be avoided if someone who is that intelligent and well educated can also be so delusional.
Technology and the vast amount of rapidly disappearing energy it requires, along with human arrogance and ignorance, created these problems. Believing that some miraculous Rube Goldberg UFO technology will save us is delusional and insane. I used to work in the advanced systems group of a major aerospace company. Several projects were eventually dropped because the technology could not be developed no matter how much money was thrown at it.
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It seems somehow fitting that I’m reading this list of issues critical to our (progress-ruled) society shortly after the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s list of “95 Theses” critical of the (church-ruled) society of HIS time. He sparked a Reformation, and a Counter-Reformation, and it wasn’t until the 1960s (with Vatican II) that the Roman Catholic Church granted that, well, he was sort of right about some stuff. Change is hard, but the truth will be upon us whether we welcome or deny it.
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Trump just reversed the law banning elephant ivory tusk sales in the US. Huh?! I guess the 6th great extinction event wasn’t going fast enough.
After a few years of CO2 emissions on a plateau, news just came out that 2017 set a new record high.
Another new report states that severe weather disturbances now occur 4 times more frequently than they did in the 1970’s.
I’m beginning to realize that denial about all these bad directions has now solidified. In fact, the collective effort now seems to rest on firming up that solidification until the density of the denial matches the severity of outcome. I can see a man in the future having been swept downstream in a mudflow, ending up in a clump of broken tree limbs and other debris with his head and arms just above the hardening mud, just able to breath, saying under his breath, “Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad, but it’s always weather”, in the final last gasp utterance of denial.
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Yep. Just like Saudi Arabia wanting to sell its oil assets via an IPO has nothing to do with peak oil.
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Here is Steve Ludlum’s excellent take on “You know you are in trouble when”. Note that the majority of his 75 points are grounded in denial of reality.
https://www.economic-undertow.com/2018/01/21/another-year/
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Well done! That is a terrific list of questions.
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Sierra Club is equally against fossil and nuclear power!
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Yes, and silent on austerity and population reduction.
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Gail Zawacki on the Limits to Growth Study and human overshoot, with emphasis on nitrogen….
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/01/overshot.html
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Dr. Andrew Glikson argues that climate change should be renamed climate calamity…
https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/beyond-climate-tipping-points-greenhouse-gas-levels-exceed-the-stability-threshold-of-the-ice-sheets
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Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds by Elizabeth Kolbert
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds
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