Dr. Tom Murphy’s Infinite Growth with a Finite Brain

Physicist Dr. Tom Murphy is one of the most aware and smart people I know of. He’s also a wise man that cares about things that matter, and tries to set a good example with his lifestyle.

I’ve followed and learned from Dr. Murphy for 15 years, and have watched him grow through stages:

1. Learning about energy in preparation for teaching a university course.
2. Becoming aware of, and worried about, our total dependence on non-renewable depleting energy.
3. Researching renewable energy, building a PV system for his home to gain hands on experience, and realizing an energy transition will be very hard.
4. Changing his lifestyle to reduce energy and materials use.
5. Doing the Math, concluding there is no solution to continuing modern civilzation, and understanding the dire implications of continued growth if there was an energy solution.
6. Writing an important book to communicate all that he had learned.
7. Lamenting the probable loss of his life’s work of scientific research after collapse.
8. Shifting his focus from collapse of modern civilzation to the damage we are doing to ecosystems and other species.
9. Today, in his most recent essay, concluding that science, and his life’s work, contributed to the problem and not the solution.

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/12/confessions-of-a-disillusioned-scientist/

Confessions of a Disillusioned Scientist

After a rocket ride through science, I am hanging up the gloves, feeling a little ashamed and embarrassed to have devoted so much of my life to what I now see as a misguided cause that has done more harm than good in this world.

My path away from science involved a number of key elements.

1. I became aware that some of the pillars on which modern life is based were necessarily temporary. Growth on a finite planet would have to stop—both in physical terms like energy, but also in economic terms.
2. Fossil fuels, upon which we are utterly dependent, would soon taper off, being a finite resource.
3. Fertilizer and agriculture critically depend on fossil fuels, so human population could experience a large correction later this century.
4. The Limits to Growth work from 1972—which I found to be insightful and credible—reinforced the plausibility of a mid-century major “adjustment.”
5. The turbulence of a transition this momentous could be so disruptive (resource wars, economies in ruins) that all my work testing general relativity might be lost and rendered meaningless (as well as all the things my colleagues work on).
6. Renewable technologies are not as easy as they sound: fossil fuels do things that the electricity from renewables has a hard time replicating, and the materials demands ramp up extraction and its associated ills.
7. Biodiversity loss (extinctions, tragic population declines) spell an ultimate dire fate if we do not heed the warnings: we are obviously now powerful enough to destroy large swaths of the ecosphere and community of life.
8. Technology is what created the predicament, and constitutes an inappropriate response, as we will never master all knowledge and will inevitably create unintended consequences.
9. An energy substitute for fossil fuels is the last thing we need, as energy is what powers our expanding terminal encroachment on the living world.
10. Science is a narrow tool: powerful and tenacious like a pit bull, but having no intrinsic wisdom or context. It concerns itself with what we can do, not what we should do.

I now think a significant portion of my adult life has been mis-spent. Scientific institutions (and university STEM departments) are, to me, a sort of day camp for smart people. Our society approves of these institutions and rewards its practitioners, in part based on the misguided notion that this is where solutions to our problems will originate. Instead, science/technology is far more likely to produce the seed corn for another generation of ecological destruction.

In short, I came to realize I was one of the bad guys. I like the saying that everyone is the hero of their own story. Part of me would certainly like to believe so, but no—I’m still a villain, if unwittingly so. The projects I worked on demanded copious energy, resources, and travel far out of line with care for the natural world. The result in no way helped the more-than-human world. I can say the same about virtually all science. It’s extremely focused on short-term, narrow-boundary benefits for humans at the ultimately-unaffordable expense of ecological health. I lament our society’s squandering of talent that presently pushes on the very things that make our situation more precarious.

I suppose an item I could append to the above list of factors contributing to my exit (thus dialing it up to eleven) is: Science, as it is practiced in our society, is a nearly perfect expression of human supremacy. It’s all for us (humans); it’s all about us. Most science is, therefore, in service to the Human Reich. I’m tired of being associated with that team.

As I find myself more on the outside of “team science” these days (I would like to be accepted on “team life,” despite a steady record of crushing losses), I am reminded of a moving song by Dar Williams called The Great Unknown. I recommend listening to it or looking over the lyrics. It’s not a perfect fit, but it hits on some key themes.

I have much less impressive accomplishments in my life but went through similar stages of awareness and I think I know how Murphy feels. I wish him good health and some happiness for the remainder of his life.