Today’s guest post by German speaking marromai contemplates the implications of peak everything caused by energy depletion and concludes the coming collapse will be rapid, harsh, and permanent. Other essays by marromai can be found here.
Following is an edited excerpt from “A Book for no One” by Stefan Gruber that discusses the so called “tipping points” worked out by David Korowicz of Feasta and concludes “Peak Everything” in the near future:
Systems have the tendency to increase their degree of complexity more and more and thus to become more and more susceptible to collapse by the smallest triggers. This is true for any chaos-mathematical system, for any physical system and, of course, for civilization. Every self-organizing system needs energy to be kept away from the chaotic state.
The replacement of human labor by the production of fossil fuels led to the fact that less and less humans were needed to produce food more and more cheaply, to mine metals and of course to extract fossil fuels themselves. Wealth increased exponentially – as did the population of Homo sapiens – and the labor force became increasingly differentiated and redirected into higher-skilled fields to meet people’s increased consumption needs, which in turn relied on the use of fossil fuels, other raw materials, and innovation.
Initially, in any self-organizing system that runs out of fuel, synergy occurs to compensate for the loss of cheap energy (globalization; outsourcing of production tools from companies), which further increases complexity. After that, the highly interconnected structures collapse.
But how can a fully mature civilization collapse worldwide? To understand this, we must familiarize ourselves a little more deeply with dynamic systems and the so-called “tipping point” and relate this to the raw material robbery and the compulsion for permanent economic growth of a system built on exponential credit growth. The true extent of the catastrophe will then reveal itself unvarnished.
The geophysicist Heribert Genreith calculated the life span of our system solely based on the debt based money view, according to which there will be a sustainable GDP decline from 2009 and a destruction of values until 2024, with subsequent hyperinflation until 2030 and the catastrophic finale (GDP exit) until 2034. In his forecast, which is supported by pure mathematics, however, he leaves out the most serious and destructive factor “peak everything“, which we will come to in a moment. It is this factor that will throw the system out of its orderly course during a global economic crisis and destroy civilization as we know it. To back this up scientifically and in terms of systems theory, we recommend reading the overview by the “Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability”, or “Feasta” for short, the essay by an international think tank based in Ireland, entitled “Tipping Point“:
We are trying to solve problems within the same systems that are responsible for creating them and that only exacerbate those problems. Moreover, we are locked and trapped in these systems. […] But these systems are far too complicated and too interconnected to fully understand their function. Managing these systems in a way that would allow for controlled shrinkage while maintaining our prosperity is not possible. There is no path to sustainable or planned decline. […] The conclusion of this report is that a decline in energy will almost certainly initiate a series of processes, at the end of which will be the collapse of our civilization. We are close to a point where world oil production will decline or may have already reached that point (peak oil). Our civilizational structure reacts unstably to a withdrawal of energy. In all likelihood, our globally interconnected civilization is on the verge of a surprisingly rapid and imminent collapse.
Oil is the foundation of our economic system and at the same time the bloodstream of civilization. It is taken for granted as a source of energy that simply exists to drive the debt-based global economic ponzi scheme – also understood and included by this think tank – and thus “economic growth”. It is subject, like all commodities, to “Jevons’ paradox“, which in economics is understood to be an observation by William Stanley Jevons “according to which technological progress that allows the more efficient use of a commodity ultimately leads to increased use of that commodity rather than decreased use. In a broader sense, this is now referred to as the rebound effect.”
We observe this effect in other areas, too: The world’s oceans have already had their “peak fish” for decades. Ever more brutal methods are used to fish at ever greater depths, with the help of ever more energy-intensive technology and with ever more unwanted by-catch to satisfy the demand for the last fish. The extinction of species is proceeding at a gigantic pace. The widespread use of pesticides and genetically modified plants is already having its first effects, and the extremely environmentally damaging mining of industrial metals (aluminum, copper, nickel, etc.) will reach its peak in a few decades, but in reality, will already become unprofitable before then due to peak oil. Whereas in the 19th century, for example, copper nuggets weighing tons were still lying around on the earth’s surface, today people are digging for the metal in kilometer-wide and hundreds of meter-deep pits to extract the metal from the stone through chemical processing, in which it is often only found in the order of per mill. So the more metal that is mined – and this yield must increase steadily to maintain our debt backed monetary system – the less copper per ton is found in new mines. This makes mining even more energy intensive and expensive, and it has been shown to be along an exponential curve – the less metal per ton, the exponentially more oil is needed to extract it.
The same phenomenon is taking place with oil itself. The largest oil reserves were already pumped dry in the 1970s. Today, oil is pumped out of the ground using increasingly costly methods (which in turn require oil), and although the price of oil is rising inexorably, there is no longer any increase in production, no matter how refined and expensive the method of oil production or how high its price, because there is simply less and less oil distributed over an ever larger area and no new large oil fields have been found for decades. And the more the oil runs out and the more its price rises with it, the more expensive the mining of industrial metals becomes, which in turn additionally reach their peak in a few decades.
So these processes are based on feedbacks and they build each other up. The same phenomenon can be observed with the technology metals (indium, gallium, germanium, etc.) and the rare earths, which are not only approaching their peak in a few decades, but are also becoming increasingly expensive due to peak oil.
Peak oil is followed by peak water: Scientists estimate that by 2030, due to population growth alone we will need about 30 percent more water, 40 percent more energy and 50 percent more food (while at the same time arable land will become scarce). How is this to be accomplished when the only cheap energy that has been available to us across the board for the past several decades is rapidly running out? Peak water” will be followed by “peak food”, which is already close to its maximum because of climate change and will be completely stifled by rising oil prices. Substitutes for oil are not in sight. High-quality coal had already peaked 20 years ago, even low-quality coal will peak in the foreseeable future, and the so-called “renewable energies” could substitute oil demand to a large extent in the most optimistic case, but only under the assumption of an immense consumption of raw materials to produce these technologies.
One cannot simply take away the cheap energy source from an overpopulated, highly complex world that grew on the foundation of cheap energy and replace it with a more expensive one because, after all, cheap energy was the cause of overpopulation and complexity in the first place. So if no miracle happens in the next few years in the search for cheap energy or in the development of new technologies, one has to agree with the conclusion of Donella and Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers in their book “Limits to Growth – The 30-Year Update: Signal to Change Course”: a continuation of “business as usual” will lead to collapse from the year 2030.
Everything is striving towards the magic point “Peak Everything“, which of course will be the final nail in the coffin for the debt based economic system, if it does not perish by itself before then. And of course, already before “Peak Everything” the global commodity wars will break out, and the motives will of course be underpinned with ethical arguments – there will be little to read about commodity wars in the system media.
In the so-called ‘developed’ regions, there will be no more ‘growth’; in fact, the development will be the reverse. Constant economic growth will be replaced in the future by perpetual economic recession. How will the industrialized countries react to this enormous challenge? These peoples will experience that they are in a permanent state of siege, in which the material living conditions will be as modest as during the two world wars. The modest way of life during the wars was temporary, but the future one will be permanent and increasingly serious. A small consolation for the present and future generations, because one thing should be clear by now: The world’s population has also peaked, and like any exponential curve, as cynical and horrible as it may sound, it will collapse along with “Peak Everything” – to about one billion people. In the medium term, humanity will fall back to the level of the Neolithic Age.
———
The following is copied from discussions in the yellow forum (a German economic forum). It illustrates what may happen post peak everything during collapse and what effective prepping may look like.
Q: Why should our highly complex society not “only” be thrown back to the development level of the 16th century?
A: This is just not possible. Where are the tools of the 16th century?
Where are the robust but low-yielding seeds of the 16th century?
Where are the cows of the 16th century? Small-framed, robust, calving unassisted because the offspring are not uterus-bursting high-yielding cattle?
All that is no longer there. Instead, we have corn rootworm, fire blight, Colorado potato beetle and other pests that were unknown in the 16th century.
Where are the 30 people per square kilometer of the 16th century?
How many do we have today? Around 250.
No one is going to push aside some humus and use a pickaxe to mine coal or ores anymore. These resources are gone, no longer extractable without large-scale industrial material and energy input.
Economic reconstruction, by the way, goes the same way as energy consumption: No energy, no recovery.
Nobody will found a city at the sea anymore and reach a population density of 100 persons per square kilometer, thanks to fishing like in the antiquity.
The shoals of fish for this are also gone and will be for our lifetime.
Even if we still hurriedly forge everything possible to plows: Where are the oxen?
Even if we plow the fields with human power: Where is the non-F1 hybrid seed for next year’s harvest?
(Comment by another person)
I do not want to criticize these views. Unfortunately, I find too few discussions here that are constructively positioned and deal with the will to survive inherent in every human being, which historically proves that after every system collapse, reconstruction has taken place, resulting in a better living situation than before the crisis.
Good then a constructive approach: What does man need to survive?
Man dies after:
- 3 minutes without air
- 3 days without water
- 3 weeks without food
- 3 hours without shelter (in a snowstorm without special equipment)
Air:
We have plenty. But what about this in the event of a crisis?
When solvents, detergents and chemical precursors of all kinds are stored in countless tanks and plants as a result of an economic crash and these rust away merrily.
What about the decay ponds of nuclear power plants when the water supply fails and the freshly burned fuel rods ignite themselves after a few weeks?
Not to be extinguished and with consequences in the dimension of Chernobyl.
Where is the fire department in the collapse when whole areas full of low-energy Styrofoam pressboard wood façade houses are in flames for whatever reason?
Or the parched meadow of farmer Horst in midsummer bursts into flames due to a discarded glass bottle?
Water:
We have plenty. But … is it drinkable?
In many areas, even if one should succeed in reactivating one of the wells, which had to become deeper and deeper due to the falling water levels, the groundwater is no longer drinkable.
Be it because of agriculture, be it because after WWII the bomb craters were filled up with used oil drums, paint cans and similar debris and today no politician dares to tear away the corporation (and major employer of the region) that was created on it, to clean up the contaminated site.
Not to speak of the dozens of “pits” and embankments in each municipality, which were used as garbage dumps, whose positions are well known thanks to measuring helicopters, but no one dares to touch them, because otherwise the municipalities would be immediately broke.
Streams and rivers? Full of sewage from overflowing house pits, failing municipal sewage treatment plants, unmaintained oil separators from gas stations?
Food:
Huge problem in the worst case. Today, 10 calories of oil are in every calorie of food. Without oil, there is no food. The oil does not even need to “run out”. It is enough if we can no longer afford it or if the producing countries simply do not want to or can no longer supply it.
Or the transport routes fail, the farmers go broke, the freighters no longer run, the JIT logistics fail, etc.
The greatest danger: On the one hand, hunger does not kill immediately (i.e. the hungry person goes in search) and on the other hand, the stomach then takes control of its evolutionary-biological protuberance (aka. brain).
This offers plenty of room for scenarios, nature shows how little squeamish “hungry people” deal with each other without stockpiling.
The only consolation is that if we are going to have an abundance of one resource in the crisis, it will be “long pig”.
Accommodation:
The small cottage with garden in the wasteland, in it the stove rumbling away, a sign of civilization in a dehumanized world, a source of warmth and life energy, the small dream of every serious “prepper” and “survivalist”, on it delicious chicken soup from own chickens…
In short, a gigantic target, visible from afar thanks to a column of smoke and smellable for miles in the wasteland, attracts uninvited guests like flies and they will usually outnumber you and most likely be better armed. The owner of the oven could well end up as a “long pig” in that oven.
Are you happy now with this constructive approach?
If you don’t have any obligations, you might want to get a shotgun ready, one shot is enough. Probably better than being beaten to death in the fight for the last edibles.
This time we get Game Over… in all aspects, not only monetarily. The main problem is a caloric one, we can print money like hay … but not hay, nor potatoes, and not a drop of oil.
un-Denial 
When the Korowiscz paper was published 13 years ago, drawing on the drivers of peak energy tipping points in that paper and elsewhere, I created the above diagram of some of the key positive feedbacks that can accelerate change. I had been learning system dynamics modeling as a partial antidote to the limitations of reductionist science that we face in a complex world.
Causal loop diagrams such as this one are models that seek to demonstrate the structure of positive and negative feedbacks that collectively drive dynamics (behavior over time) that we want to understand in complex systems. They are essential tools of the system dynamics modeling method. I would encourage everyone to learn to read and create these causal loop diagrams, because they allow us to visualize in a single diagram the feedback structure that makes change in the complex systems we inhabit so nonlinear, and often deceptively so.
In this diagram, the “R” label refers to how behavior in positive feedback loops is “reinforced” to accelerate change in a vicious or virtuous spiral. The arrows indicating the direction of causality carry a plus or minus sign whose meaning must be understood. This introduction,
https://karlnorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/systems-thinking-for-problem-solvers-4c.pdf,
explains how to read causal loop diagrams, which are dense with information. I also created a course,
https://karlnorth.com/?page_id=927
which is a more general introduction to the systems thinking worldview, its principles and methods.
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Thanks Karl, very interesting and very important.
I expect you, like me, are a fan of Donella (aka Dana) Meadows, early pioneer of systems modelling and co-author of the 1972 Limits to Growth study. Here are some lectures by her in case you have not seen them:
https://un-denial.com/2015/05/06/by-dana-meadows-on-sustainable-systems/
I’d also like to bring your attention to an excellent new 3 part podcast that takes a deep dive into the history of the Limits to Growth research and the response to their report. I learned a lot including that calling for an end to growth was so toxic that the Club of Rome distanced themselves after funding the project. This is one of the best podcasts I’ve listened to.
https://tippingpoint-podcast.com/
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An implied theme of this discussion is that the IPCC is in denial of climate change reality.
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Brutal podcast. We are sooo screwed. I used to listen to Paul Beckwith but stopped because I thought he was too alarmist (kinda like McPherson). I also read Hansen’s book. I will have to listen to this again. I will buy Hansen’s new book when it comes out. They are talking about so much warming in the pipeline but still act like humanity/civilization will survive. I wish they would address what would happen if civilization collapses and there is a rapid population decrease.
Depressed again.
AJ
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Yes brutal. They both seemed to gloss over the implications of Hansen’s conclusions. Tough to discuss this stuff without some form of denial to numb the brain.
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Port Renfrew, Vancouver Island.
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Pristine with not a single human in sight! It looks to me like a coastline that saw its share of shipwrecks. Glad you discovered this hideaway and hope your time away was rejuvenating.
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I visited nearby beaches many times in the 70’s and 80’s and remember the rocks being covered in barnacles and mussels, and the tidal pools being filled with diverse life. My photo doesn’t show it but everything is now barren and dead.
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That’s sobering, Rob. Everywhere you turn, it seems everything is being sucked into a Homo sapiens caused mother of shipwrecks. Hopefully in the primordial deeps life will continue and there is still time in our cosmology to try again.
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Im only 43 Rob but definitely remember the tidepools were so full of life sometimes you had to pick your step carefully. I remember a beach with so many little frogs we left the beach because we were stepping on them. Surely there are still hatches of frogs, but one memorable experience this year was us being warned away from the beach by lifeguards due to bacteria warning, and that floating human waste had been seen in the water.
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Yes, a lot is changing and young people sadly don’t know “normal”.
I wrote about what I’m seeing at home here:
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B today argues that the coming overshoot collapse will be long and bumpy and uneven. Our system will survive much longer than many doomers predict because 8 billion clever desperate apes will focus on finding kludges to keep things running.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-great-simplification-ahead
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That should be those who manage to find a home relatively unaffected by the pollution left behind by industrial civilization and the massive climate disaster burning all that stuff caused, will have a chance living a decent and peaceful life, if they can also manage to stave off the teeming hoards who are not as lucky to have found that first. We seem to think we will all fit into that rariefied category of the fortunates (even those crying humanities’ demise speak as if they and maybe even their grandchildren will be immune) but the 8 billion clever desperate apes will probably find a way to ruin it for everyone. Sigh, I don’t think we in the West have a clue of what this bumpy road will look or feel like. The poorest of our 8 billion already have been traveling it for as long as they have remained the poorest, maybe we should focus instead on giving them a chance to finally live a decent and more peaceful life. Namaste, friends.
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At this point, MORT might be the only think that is keeping our economic house of cards from tumbling over.
Click to access Tipping_Point.pdf
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I agree with you but not with Korowicz on this point. I predict MORT will prevent us from ever acknowledging peak oil. Your can already see hints of how peak oil is and will be denied:
1) EV’s caused peak demand that killed oil supply.
2) Government policies to address climate change were successful.
3) A war in the middle east that blocks the Strait of Hormuz causes an oil shortage that triggers a global economic depression from which we never recover and we then blame the Russians & Iranians for our hardship.
4) The finance bubble pops causing damage to the banking system and a freeze in global trade due to a lack of credit. We’ll blame the bankers, not the rising cost of energy that constrained growth and forced us to create a bubble.
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I wonder what would happen if a news agency like PBS or Deutsche Welle did a documentary on Peak Oil. (I doubt that it will happen)
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Jeremy Grantham in his interview later this week with Nate Hagens predicts falling birthrates already underway in rich countries may save us from the worst consequences of overshoot collapse. He thinks 2B by 2200 is possible.
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Think of the single-use non-renewable precious kerosene burned.
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Important presentation coming on Nov. 30 by Steve Kirsch. He’s got the first ever made public record level data on mRNA from a whistleblower and he claims it will be a red pill moment for citizens after which most will not accept another vaccination of any type.
The health system is a maze deliberately designed to not look at reality. CDC does not analyze the data because the states own the data and CDC is not authorized to ask for it. The states do not analyze their own data because the CDC says the vaccines are safe.
https://rumble.com/v3ya8cz-steve-kirsch-when-this-data-comes-out-it-will-be-like-the-fall-of-the-roman.html
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Interesting short podcast. His presentation at MIT might be worth listening to. I seriously doubt if anybody important or elected or appointed officials will show up. It would be the death nail to their careers, and that and their liability for prosecution will keep them away.
AJ
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I watched a piece of Kirsch’s presentation. It set off warning bells for me. Kirsch is an arrogant prick so he’s a challenge to asses integrity. I’m not sure. I reserve judgement.
Here is the presentation:
https://rumble.com/v3yovx4-vsrf-live-104-exclusive-mit-speech-by-steve-kirsch.html
Here is a critique of the source data:
https://substack.com/inbox/post/139350394
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They knew, and they continued. Why?
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I really enjoyed this conversation between two great minds with impeccable integrity trying to understand what happened with covid.
Dr. J.J. Couey is now leaning towards the theory that a dangerous contagious virus never existed, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya takes the view that there was something making some people sick but it was the panic and inappropriate responses of our leaders that made it deadly.
Both are not sure what happened and both are respectful of the other’s opinions. It’s wonderful to listen to conversations like this because they are so rare in our polarized un-nuanced world today.
https://rumble.com/v3xvxtn-2023-11-20-jay-bhattacharya-md-phd-20-nov-2023-brief-twitch1982810923.html
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Interesting short presentation by Canadian physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, who is respected for his all-cause mortality analyses, in which he discusses big picture things he has learned about health.
1) Psychological stress & social isolation are dominant determinants of health.
2) An abusive dominance hierarchy reduces health.
3) The healthcare system itself is a massive cause of death.
4) Healthcare professionals need to be humble, there are many fundamental health issues we do not understand such as why:
– there is more death in winter than summer, everywhere, for all recorded history
– there are mortality patterns during winter that are identically synchronized around the globe
– the probability you will die is an exponential function of age with a doubling time of 10 years
– the probability of death from vaccination is an exponential function of age with a doubling time of 5 years
5) The pattern of death after vaccination can be best understood as a mass poisoning exercise.
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I started this video but haven’t finished it.
From what I’ve heard so far, most low lying coastal areas are doomed.
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Yes, I think that’s true. My mental model a few years ago was 10m rise even if we dropped emissions to zero, which of course we won’t, so it’s worse.
The question is, how fast. I expect I’ll be long dead before my home on the ocean is under water.
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So who are “they” and why are “they”conducting this “unjustified vicious assault”? Even if we grant, however tentatively, that Rancourt might be correct in saying that a pandemic never occurred, does Rancourt really provide a plausible answer to this question? If so, I must be deaf, because I haven’t heard it. And if “they” have a plan designed to usher in a totalitarian biosecurity state, could it be that “they” have, contrary to MORT, embraced the unpleasant truth that the human race is in overshoot and that the assault is indeed “justified” to prevent, if not human extinction, at least their own extinction, as “they” attempt to suppress human numbers and consumption, especially of depleting fossil fuels, to achieve that end, squeezing through the bottleneck themselves while the corpses of the proles, such as myself, pile up around the lip of the bottle?
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All good questions. Many people have uncovered solid evidence of an agenda other than maximizing public health, and most seem to blame an evil “they”. I continue to doubt that so many political leaders in so many countries (both governing and opposition parties) and the majority of healthcare professionals could coordinate on a secret plan to save us from overshoot, nor do I believe they are all evil or brain dead stupid. I also see the majority of citizens supporting what is going on.
It’s breathtaking and I continue to ask why?
P.S. I may be wrong but I don’t think Dr. Rancourt is in the camp that believes there never was a pandemic. I think he believes, as do many, including me, that our inappropriate responses were the main causes of death.
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Here’s a loaded question “Is there anything that would ever justify an outright assault against people?” Seeing as the continuation of Homo sapiens as we are, is the major cause of biosphere collapse, which would be a vicious assault against all life?
The true work of Covid and its aftermath may be considered as a success by another standard, if we ask the right questions. Let us imagine that all consequences were actually designed for and guided towards every step of the way, and it seems that it cannot be anything else as it was just so perfectly WRONG, then what really was the aim here?
Rob, I know one of your main questions all along was why did they continually push the vaccine upon young people who are not at threat for severe Covid whilst their risk of harm was not insignificant, even after this was well known. I was especially alarmed and also curious to know that most colleges and universities even refused enrollment to those who did not take the full course shots (2 and even some required the 3rd). What can be another reason underneath the seemingly great concern for student welfare? These young people should be at their prime physical health, this is the cohort that will produce the next generation, all going well biologically, economically, and socially. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Now we flip to the one topic that cannot be named, that is population reduction, especially of the wealthy consumer class of the Western countries, if this is the conclusion reached to be a useful and in fact, the only rational response to our overshoot. How can that be achieved if we cannot even have a conversation about it? If we need to reduce our numbers for a justifiable reason such as to prepare for or stave off total collapse, how else can it be done besides increase the death rate and decrease the birth rate? Did Covid and all its ramifications thereafter help achieve this end as well? The elderly at one end of the spectrum certainly took the hit for increased morbidity and mortality, and at the other, young humans would need to curtail the up-coming birth rate. It is too soon to know for sure if the shots would decrease fertility, by any and every mechanism, in the collegiate set, but making sure these most elite of the Western world got their due dose certainly was a necessary step. Dare we follow this trail? And what keeps us from doing so?
I think the answers are in front of us but we are loathe to pursue them, for it touches on that from which there is no turning back once faced.
Like the Socratic banana exercise, we should always be open to keep asking Why? Somehow I find more courage to do so amongst friends here.
Namaste.
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Gaia, your hypothesis fits the evidence and yet there are so many people involved it’s hard to imagine them coordinating across the globe and keeping the whole thing a secret. In Canada alone, if you include the MD’s that pushed and are still pushing mRNA, there must be over 10,000 people involved.
How is it possible that not one doctor broke rank and spilled the beans? Or one deputy health minister from a province? Or one hospital administrator?
There’s also conflicting evidence such as:
1) Canada has an explicit goal to rapidly increase its population via immigration.
2) mRNA is on a path to kill maybe 100M worldwide when we need a reduction more like 6-7 billion.
3) Sperm counts and fertility are already falling at 2+% per year. Jeremy Grantham below says 1 in 7 woman today is having difficulty conceiving.
4) Why are opposition parties synchronized with governing parties? Spilling the beans on this would guarantee power for an opposition leader.
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Hi there Rob,
Thank you for your as always thoughtful and thought-provoking reply. I see that I am not getting a major part of my message through because of my lack of skillfulness in expressing a point I have tried to make in the past, so I will try again in more detail as soon as I can.
Basically, I am in no way implying that tens of thousands of people were in active collusion in order to achieve any particular outcome, be it population reduction or otherwise, rather the vast majority were all just doing their job, in the exact manner as expected, given the circumstances they were subjected to. It only took very few initial but sweeping decisions to set everything into motion, and these were given by a few key players who effectively took and held control of the entire organisational structure of our society, from top down. As long as the majority of minions in the hierarchical flow chart just followed orders from the immediate superior, it led to the results we received–only very few were able to step outside the box and question or desist, and those were summarily dealt with. This behavioural response has been thoroughly studied in experiments and historical events. Almost everyone in the entire process thought they were just doing the right thing and carrying out the duties of their job, be it pharma, doctors, health ministers, academics, journalists, politicians. There was never a hidden agenda for them, there was no rank to break, just the usual responses for their profession. The damning caveat is that each profession was strangulated into a certain channel of response from the beginning. The main questions are, was this deliberate and what was the reason? As much as we can debate the who or “they”, the most important thing to understand is always the why? What kind of motivating factor could lead to what is our situation today?
I can try to address your other points, too, as in my perspective, none preclude my thought experiment. Happy to continue this discussion on another post.
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Hi,
Interesting topic.
Reality is complex. I am unsure we will ever “know”. I am even unsure what knowing in this case means: maybe there are just different ways of framing reality, angles at which things can be interpreted. (At some level, it’s resource constraints, at another level it’s the human behemoth, at yet another it’s balance of powers, etc…)
That being said.
In my own little fantasy world, I like to see things a bit differently. Here is my naïve path of reasoning:
– we hit limits to growth around 2018 (oil is the mother resource, the rest follows)
– smart people saw something in 2008, this set their strategies for the next phase
– once constraints are hit, there must be some kind of regime change (imagine the force of the collision of exponential growth against a hard limit). Something must go. But everybody has his own agenda at his own scale.
– so yes, it’s a kind of a competition in the jungle. There are wolves and sheeps. It can’t be overt otherwise the sheeps wake up.
– I believe, maybe, it is not necessarily that some group of people initiated/planned the killing of many. Let’s just say, that rather, this time, they chose not to weigh in (When Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but that instead a riot was breaking out, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “You bear the responsibility.”) The rest is just short-sighted people trying to go after a lot of money and other brainwashed people obeying a system which has already lost its sparkle. At the heart of it all, lies the collective faith in medical science. (That’s where it gets truly interesting for me, because it’s by a harsh lesson in reality (the deaths of many) that the collective belief is being rejuvenated)
– in a way, at this point, no more smart people are in a position of power or willing to take responsibility for the continuation of the system. They let it decay and focus their energy to more constructive endeavours. So we are left with crooks, fools, parasites, and the like.
Hand-waving, prediction time 🙂 I believe covid was the first (second if you count 2008) impact. There will be a third, pretty soon (next year or the year after?) Every impact will come faster after the preceding one. Doesn’t a system at its limit display oscillating behaviour until it totally breaks down?
Last remark: at this point, I do not believe population reduction by increased death is a necessary evil.
We could theoretically let go of quite much and do much more before having to go there. However, it would mean doing so many things differently, it would be extremely tough. We don’t even know how to operate differently. We must even reformat our foundational beliefs. So that’s going to take some time. I already find the ongoing decrease in fertility incredible.
At the same time, I don’t believe it is possible to avoid a system breakdown. Let’s hope smaller systems quickly reorganize at more local levels.
Honestly, I dunno what I am talking about. But I enjoy talking about it. So that’s just my bunch of reactions/intuitions for today 🙂
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Hello Charles,
Hope you and your family are well. I always find it encouraging and stimulating to be immersed in your wise and compassionate-minded thoughts. I believe we are aligned in our overall bigger perspective which is just to be part of the flow and at once witness and participate in that which is, and that being our own reality.
It may very well be that this is how total civilisational collapse looks like for our particular iteration of it. It certainly includes all the usual suspects of resource depletion, economic collapse, war, food insecurity, disease and response to disease, and of course every possible variation of hand-waving crooks, fools, parasites along with 8 billion other forms of human trying to survive. We all fit in there somewhere!
We here are lucky enough to still have enough time and resources on our hands to use and share our creative and logical faculties to try to put things together in a way that perhaps helps us keep going, mentally and emotionally. I am so thankful for our collective offerings and I can only hope we can continue this journey together as long as possible down the ever steeper slope of decline. There are still vistas to gaze at and even admire along the way down, in life there are no peaks without valleys, but it still comforting to know that others are bravely and consciously taking this path alongside.
Namaste, friends.
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Thank you Gaia gardener 🙂
Yes, my family is well. In France, it feels like people are slowly disengaging from the central power structure and, with a bit of fatalism, focusing on more concrete matters. They are letting go of the grandiose plans, ideas and such. So the overall mood is more relaxed. With winter approaching, the temperature is gradually falling, yet birds are still singing here and there. The quality of the air is extremely good. From personal impression (I have always had asthma), it has been drastically improving in the last five years. Degrowth has indeed its upsides 🙂
Yes, we seem to have a lot in common in our respective sensibilities.
I like to entertain the idea that it is the consequence of some level of mixture between the western and asian cultures. From what I understand, the western mind is rigidly fixed on states, on solid structures. Change is feared, honesty is praised and written words matter. Monuments are made out of stones and must be preserved for the sake of authenticity. The eastern mind seems to me, more focused on flows, with ever-changing logic and even morality. There are symmetries everywhere with subtle inversions of polarity over time. Immobility is feared. Monuments are made out of wood and gradually renovated so nothing is left from the origin except the shape.
On the other hand, I feel there is also something related to our respective profound natures, which may in some aspects be alike. Leaving room for, accompanying and witnessing life (be it soil, trees, animals, including humans) is such a rewarding incessant wonder 🙂
Back to our topic, I am reminded of this beautiful painting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Leading_the_Blind.
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Jeremy Grantham is I think a good man. He is a rare rich person that is aware of overshoot and is using his wealth to fund things that might improve the health and survival of all species.
Having said that, this interview was bipolar having instances of brilliant wisdom combined with stark clashes with reality.
There were several key points in the interview where Jeremy said he did not understand the denial behavior of his otherwise brilliant colleagues. Hagens had an opportunity to introduce Grantham to Varki’s MORT theory but did not. Clearly Hagens still does not buy into MORT.
An interesting segment where Grantham lamented the loss of a social contract in most countries. He used Japan as a healthy counter example stating that mRNA was optional in Japan but everyone nevertheless got injected and therefore they had many fewer deaths of old people. He also said old people tend to live longer in Japan due to other factors and did not notice his faulty logic. Nate remained silent on the topic. I’ve lost a lot of respect for Nate because I’ve never heard him speak publicly on covid issues despite mountains of troubling evidence. It’s not ok to remain silent on murder and fraud that has killed 17M to date.
Grantham believes in techno-fixes:
– unlimited green energy plus a population that naturally falls to 2B will save us
– we need to replace petro-plastics with bio-plastics
– build buildings out of cross-laminated sludge made by vats of photosynthetic microbes
– food from protein sludge made by microbes
Also believes debt is not a problem but did not want to debate this with Nate.
The best part of the discussion was on the damage being done to insect populations and sperm counts by chemical toxins in the environment. Grantham thinks this is a bigger threat than climate change and that we are on a clear path to extinction unless we ban the use of many chemicals.
Notice MORT screaming in this statement by Grantham:
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I finished watching the podcast today. Here are my thoughts.
Although there is some hopium in the podcast, it is refreshing to see a wealthy person who is
a) Not a psychopath
b) Is at least partially overshoot aware.
I especially like that he is honest about the need for population reduction.
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Good talk by Bill Rees. Even though I pick up on most unrealistic ideas, I could barely fault anything Bill said. Again, he re-iterated that humans are like any other species but with a unique ability to override natural limits for a while.
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Thanks, very good talk. Dr. Rees is a good man.
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Yes, that was a good talk. Dr. Rees sees everything correctly. His final answers to questions basically said it looks like we’re going to have a bad time in the future because we have Paleolithic brain and a complex overshoot situation – BAD outcome ahead.
Need a drink of Scotch.
AJ
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The Ecological Footprint analysis underestimates overshoot, because it only counts for renewable resources. For example it only counts the amount of land needed to absorb CO2 emissions, not the bio-capacity needed to generate fossil fuels or how much bio-capacity would be needed to replace them. It also doesn’t count non-renewable minerals either.
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It certainly doesn’t provide the complete picture of the unsustainability of human life. But overshoot, strictly speaking, is about the planet’s ability to sustain a population and that is primarily about natural resources and damage to nature. The ecological footprint provides a way to estimate that aspect of overshoot. Sustainability is a bigger picture.
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Maybe the reason half of the US navy is in the middle east is not just to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
h/t to ivanislav @ OFW
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Russia-Takes-Control-of-Iraqs-Biggest-Oil-Discovery-for-20-Years.html
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I sure do like the way Chuck Watson thinks.
Kissinger, for me, represents a time when we had leaders with knowledge and a plan. Today we have vacuous puppets drifting in the wind.
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What Watkins said was insightful. However I think he was wrong on some points. Wilkerson in the following piece essentially says Bush senior knew what he was doing and was intelligent. Wilkerson faults Clinton, Bush junior and Obama with making mistakes or just being stupid (Bush junior) and enabling the current crop of stupids to run the Biden administration and the world into the abyss. If we had more Kissinger’s now we probably wouldn’t be in as bad a place as we are.
AJ
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If you dislike Kissinger’s policies, you will love this brutal obituary.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-kissinger-war-criminal-dead-1234804748/
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Superb discussion on the decline and fall of the US empire by an insider that knows of what he speaks.
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This was a great analysis. He (Wilkerson) correctly points out that climate change and nuclear weapons are probably our greatest existential threats. Sadly he seems overshoot unaware although he mentions the distinct possibility of our extinction. I particularly like his take on the U.S. – his analysis of our presidents, power structure, hubris and it’s potential for our fall from hegemony – all are first rate.
AJ
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Some light.
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More light, just published.
Inquiry Into the Appropriateness and Efficacy of the Covid-19 Response in Canada
Click to access nci-final-report-full-inquiry-into-the-appropriateness-and-efficacy-of-the-covid-19-response-in-canada-november-28-2023.pdf
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Kunstler today again describes the insanity and offers another possible answer to the big question, WHY?
He now thinks covid was a plan by the Democrats to get rid of Trump. This doesn’t pass the smell test for me given the synchronized global insanity of covid.
I wonder if Kunstler is losing his mind like I am?
One thing is for sure, our society, including my friends and family, now believe completely different realities about everything that is important and there seems to be no curiosity in anyone to validate beliefs with facts.
Perhaps this is the way it’s always been except when resources were abundant and things were improving it didn’t matter.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-magic-moment/
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Yeah, Kunstler has somewhat lost his mind. He still likes Trump and believes the election was stolen. Crazy. Sure there may have been some irregularities in vote counts but multiple courts, with both Trump appointed judges and Dem appointed judges, found no evidence for his claims.
With regard to Covid. My take is that this was probably just what it appears; Fauci trying to get around the ban on gain of function research and farming it out to the Wuhan lab that screwed up and let it get away from them. After that the virus spread into a world that has (at least in the west) let science and medicine be corrupted by big Pharma for the last 20 years. Everyone, from the lowliest nurse, doctor, public health official has been conditioned not to rock the boat and when the “pandemic” hit they all fell in line. They knew not to rock the boat and those that did, even the most famous, quickly got punished. From the virus to the shots was one small step for all those who were corrupted (which interestingly enough now included all government officials and the media). Maybe I’m naïve, however even though more coordinated complex conspiracies are possible, I think more would have leaked out about them, IMO. I just chalk it up to compliant uninquisitive humans going with the crowd (that way you keep your job).
AJ
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Your story sounds probable to me. You could add that most citizens have an ungrounded faith that technology will solve all of our problems. So when covid arrived and profit seeking pharma told panicking citizens that vaccines were the only viable response, and that they would deliver a new programmable vaccine technology in record time, most enthusiastically embraced the story and lined up to be injected.
It’s the bits not in your story that trouble me.
If we had gotten lucky and the vaccines performed as advertised that would have been the end of the story. But we were unlucky. The vaccines did not prevent transmission or sickness, and have side effects that are harming and killing many millions of people. In addition, for most people, the covid threat was not very serious, and could have been made even less serious with some simple advice from health authorities.
You can forgive bad policies during the early days of panic and limited data, but now there is calm and the data is clear, yet policies have not changed to reflect the data.
MORT is an obvious possible explanation. To change policies now means our leaders must admit they screwed up and harmed many, including probably their own family. That’s a pretty big unpleasant reality to accept. One can easily imagine MORT blocking this.
I lean on MORT more than any other person to explain our suicidal insane behaviors, so why is it that I’m still unsettled and searching for a better explanation?
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Searching for a better explanation than MORT to explain our suicidal insane behaviors, Rob?
As the figurative “blind person” standing on my side of the elephant, I see the Maximum Power Principle (MPP) as the best explanation I have found, but in no way does it indicate MORT is incorrect:
That’s my explanation, but I’m also looking for something better. I find our current situation unbelievable. When did we step through the mirror into Alice’s Wonderland?
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Hi Preston, I agree with you that MPP is central to most of our problems.
But how does MPP explain that the health minister of my province, who does not receive a royalty from Pfizer, has not adjusted mRNA policies despite overwhelming evidence that she is harming the citizens she is charged with protecting? If maximizing her wealth is the goal, doing something that could lead to time in prison seems inconsistent with the MPP.
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Hello Rob,
Just wanted to drop by to say that to me, you don’t seem to be losing your mind 🙂 Which is quite a feat these days in the midst of the hurly-burly of the internet. I have the impression that you have a very strong will and integrity. Which I appreciate. This is the reason you can spot experts with integrity and let us know about their insights through this site. Thank you. It is also true that all qualities have their backside. It can’t be any other way. If I may, I would guess it is possible you may be prone, more than others to mental obsession. Which is not a problem (unless it is accompanied by great suffering). Just a particular shape of mind flows with attractors and whirlpools.
About the health minister of your province, you may ask her directly. But if I had to guess, she is still convinced she did the right thing. Overall, she probably thinks these were murky times where a cold-headed decision was hard to make. And even if it’s only on the margin, she still believes she made the correct decision. She lives in her bubble world. It can’t be any other way: one only has a limited amount of time and a given level of foresight. Decision-making with pressure and time-constraints is hard. And who wants to admit being a “bad” guy?
(She may also be corrupt, in which case that’s another story. But being corrupt implies more autonomy, a slightly higher intelligence and some level of understanding of the big picture.)
It seems to me, most people learn a role to play in society and are happy to keep performing it as long as it works for them. And why not? There must be bricks in the walls for the wall to stand.
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“One thing is for sure, our society, including my friends and family, now believe completely different realities about everything that is important and there seems to be no curiosity in anyone to validate beliefs with facts.”
That is exactly what I told a friend yersterday!
It is “kafkaest”:
Situations that are perceived as absurd, puzzling and threatening; the person concerned experiences a feeling of insecurity, of being at the mercy of others; usually in connection with an administration with obscure rules that seem to make no sense!
Saludos
el mar
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More on running out of sand.
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I didn’t know Chris Martenson was posting content to Rumble that is not also posted on YouTube.
This Nov. 29 discussion with Simon Michaux is quite good. In addition to the usual debunking of the energy transition, we get some insights into Michaux’s covid views and Project Venus plans.
Nice to hear Michaux rejected mRNA and sees the collective covid evil.
Some of Michaux’s Venus ideas suggest he may also be going a little crazy, but in fairness he does have a plan, and he’s going to try to find a way through collapse for himself and a few thousand other people.
Godspeed.
https://rumble.com/v3ymnwg-simon-michaux-debunking-green-myths.html
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Rob, you asked me to explain behavior by your provincial health minister. No easy answer here.
I think it may be similar to Climate articles where no one will look at them unless they conclude by saying, “However, there is still time to save the World if we act quickly.” Research that does not include that life preserver is shunned by folks who should give the contrary data a fair examination.
Regardless of the data you marshal, it doesn’t get a fair review because your health minister “knows” it does not embrace the “right” answer. (But, you probably knew that already, right?)
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Doug Nolan today on the bubble.
https://creditbubblebulletin.blogspot.com/2023/12/weekly-commentary-rule-of-thumb.html
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An update on Jem Bendell’s paper about food system collapse.
Click to access Bendell_BeyondFedUp-updated.pdf
Here is a TLDR.
Humanity is in a more precarious position than back when Malthus and Paul Ehrlich made their predictions.
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Thanks for summarizing the paper.
All true. Many things to worry about but I expect food will eventually be #1.
preptip
I talked a while ago about a simple prepping tool that has been very helpful for me. It’s a spreadhseet I created to track my reserves of food and other consumables. It’s been evolving and growing in function. I now use it to track:
– price history by item so I can monitor inflation
– date of purchase
– best by date
– quantity on hand
– location
– expected days of consumption for each item
– when I opened an item and when I finished it so I can refine expected days of consumption
– which items I should eat first to avoid spoilage
– lessons learned about what to buy and what not to buy
I synchronize the spreadsheet to my phone so when I’m in the grocery store and see something on sale I can look up the quantity I have and the last price I paid.
Using this spreadsheet for each meal somehow makes me more present and grateful. The act of cooking and eating has become more deliberate and I think carefully about making each meal as healthy and delicious as possible, and the right size for the physical effort I expended that day.
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Evil it is then, at least within the CDC.
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The only public health worker in the world with courage and ethics lives in New Zealand and is now in jail for leaking data that MAY prove mRNA is unsafe.
New Zealand, like my Canada, used to be beacons of light in the world. Now we represent evil.
One person I respect thinks the data is legit. Another thinks it was deliberatley leaked by the NZ government as a trap to vindicate their lockdown polcies.
I’ve noticed the covid skeptics are starting to fight among themselves. Everyone has a pet theory about what’s going on. I don’t like it. When the institutions that are supposed to keep you safe are in fact trying to harm you everyone goes a little wacky.
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What search engine do you use to get info on MRNA vaccines? I am trying to do my own research.
I tried to get actual numbers of people harmed by MRNA vaccines on major search engines (like Google, Yahoo, Bing and even DuckDuckGo) and all I got were the usual talking points of the Medical establishment.
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I’d start with Steve Kirsch’s recent work here:
https://kirschsubstack.com/p/data-from-us-medicare-and-the-new
And Denis Rancourt’s recent work here:
https://rumble.com/v3xza31-denis-rancourt-at-ics4-all-cause-mortality-woldwide-and-romania-18-nov-2023.html
https://denisrancourt.ca/entries.php?id=134&name=2023_10_08_quantitative_evaluation_of_whether_the_nobel_prize_winning_covid_19_vaccine_actually_saved_millions_of_lives
Be aware that Rancourt appears to be a climate change denier. I don’t know if that means he thinks the “solutions” being pushed are bunk, which I agree with, or he thinks humans are not creating a dangerous climate, which I disagee with.
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It is unfortunate that many critics of the MRNA vaccines destroy their credibility by denying climate change (You, John Michael Greer and Chris Martenson seem to be the exceptions). That is what happens when science is politicized.
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Yes it is very unfortunate. I get it though. When you have politicians promoting climate change policies that are physically impossible without crashing living standards, while at the same time emitting much more carbon than the average citizen, it’s natural to assume they are lying about everything.
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I’m not sure that Chris Martenson doesn’t deny at least the severity of human induced climate change. In the past, he’s largely avoided the issue but when he hasn’t, he definitely downplayed it. I don’t know what his current position is.
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If any other species did 1/10 of the things that humans are doing, they would be deemed an infestation.
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Thanks, Steve Cutts is great. I hadn’t seen this one.
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I use the Epic search engine with their free VPN and it pulls up some sites that others won’t.
AJ
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Brilliant.
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