Today’s essay by un-Denial friend paqnation (aka Chris) takes a fresh big picture look at the uniqueness of humans and concludes our use of fire is at the core, and is the real creator and destroyer.
Modernity’s colossal level of separation & superiority beliefs is perfectly valid. It’s the only rational/sane choice. Although it’s not a choice, it automatically comes with breaking through the three sacred energy constraints of fire, agriculture, and fossil fuels. And the belief is exponential. Grows stronger with every so-called step of progress. Only one group out of billions slipped through the cracks and pulled off all three. Nobody else has ever come close to breaking just one. Pretty damn separate & superior if you ask me. Thinking that I can get people’s worldviews to turn upside down is the only irrational/insane choice. That’s why I’m done trying and more interested in preaching to the choir.
Planets can have one species completely dominating it for long periods of time (dinosaurs 150 million years). But the golden rule is still the same: no broken energy constraints allowed. Fire by itself is not evil, at all. Harnessing it is. Everyone misses this point when trying to break down our story and how we got here and what we need to do to change things. It’s too dark at first, that’s why. Whether its Daniel Quinn and his takers & leavers, Nate Hagens and the great simplification, or Michael Dowd with his sustainable vs unsustainable cultures. It’s all predicated on the notion that you can break certain energy constraints and still fit in with Mother Earth and the rest of life. Spoiler alert: you can’t.
My entire overshoot/collapse journey has been full of ideas about agriculture and fossil fuels being evil. But almost zero talk about fire. For example, Quinn’s “takers” concept is built around the fact that humans turned the second energy constraint of captured solar energy into totalitarian agriculture (and if we had done agriculture differently, our world would be much better). In his view, two broken energy constraints are perfectly acceptable. Quinn was magnificently underestimating those built in exponential separation & superiority worldviews.
Humans are no longer a species. I say you cease being one as soon as you get to that unique position of breaking the first energy constraint. It’s actually shocking that we have allowed ourselves to still be labeled as such. It invokes some kind of connectedness. I’m in favor of going all the way with separation and removing humans from those labels of species, primates, mammals and putting us in a whole new separate category. It might even help with this insanely incorrect line of reasoning that certain broken energy constraints are acceptable (this would have saved me a lot of time on my journey).
As soon as the first constraint is broken, the countdown to the second one begins. It took 1.5 million years for the homo genus to conquer fire. Then took another 1.5 million years to get to agriculture. Pretty easy to accept why the first one took so long, but why so long for the 2nd? Most of my sources have said because of the Holocene period. 12,000 years ago, the climate got warmer and stabilized for the first time in a long time. In the 1.5 million years since we conquered fire, climate was never ripe for agriculture until 12kya? Hmmm. But its the wrong question because human brains were not equipped to pull off agriculture until only recently. We had our last major evolutionary process about 100,000 years ago (in other words this exact version of us today is 100kyo). I’m talking about the MORT theory.
If you believe this theory, as I do, then you know this was an astronomically rare situation with evolution unlocking our extended theory of mind (eToM) and mind over reality transition (MORT) at the same time. Without these evolutionary processes, we would still only be at one broken energy constraint. And if we had never figured out fire, we would not have been in a position to receive those evolutionary gifts/curses that gave us the capability to bust through agriculture.
So my question about the climate being ripe for agriculture changes to the last 100k years (ever since we’ve been capable). And yes, the Holocene is the only time in that stretch where the conditions were ripe. (another hidden bonus with MORT theory is that it gives me very logical answers to some of these questions).
In our group essay I had this line, “I am now slowly shifting to a new state of mind where it’s all about energy constraints and you can pretty much throw everything else out the window”. This has been growing stronger by the day. Putting the first constraint into the same importance (evilness) category as #2 and #3 seemed like a big reach. But I now have it as the most important because it’s the only possible way to get to the much more ecologically destructive agriculture and then final solution of fossil fuels.
I asked Rob for some help on this topic. As always, he came through with some excellent advice:
Humans are the only species to use fire and this behavior has profound implications. This is a very interesting topic with many dimensions you could explore. For example:
- Predigesting food by cooking allowed resources to be shifted from the gut to the brain (see Richard Wrangham).
- Increasing productivity beyond what muscles alone can accomplish.
- Disrupting the natural carbon cycle to influence the climate.
- Why is our species the only species that leveraged fire in a big way, despite its obvious advantage to reproductive fitness. Usually when something is really helpful, like say eyesight, evolution “discovers” and deploys it multiple times.
I started to get overwhelmed when I began to research Rob’s suggestions, almost turned me off from writing this essay. So I did what any true Empire Baby would do, I aborted on the research. (A good future essay would be to take his 1st and 2nd points and tie it in with how fire is all about slowly preparing you for MORT). But here is a quick thought on each of his topics:
- This is the main ingredient that allowed evolution to make that freakishly rare final version of us 100kya. I suspect Hideaway’s vitamin B12 theory to play heavy into this: Perhaps the need for B12 supplementation is attached to the gene that gave us ability to deny bad outcomes and believe in magical solutions to problems (god), and the ability to talk, while meaning only those that ate meat thrived in early Homo sapiens development, separating us from other Homo species.
- More help in getting us to that final version. These first two are telling me that fire is the one and only key to unlocking MORT (all the way).
- Gloriously and stunningly separate & superior.
- Because evolution is as confused as us. We are “off the grid”.
Fire is a constant taking from the planet, and a constant exuding of pollution. It should be the beginning stage of Quinn’s “takers”. If you are cutting down live trees to burn, then you can add a thousand other negative effects. Let’s stick with deadwood only. That piece of wood is going to be feasted on by fungi, moss, and a million other life forms until it is completely gone or decomposes back into the soil. But you just took it away from them and made it disappear. In other words, you stole it. (if you had eaten it or made tools/shelter with it, that would be ok because its more in line with the rest of life “on the grid”). And you didn’t quite make it all disappear either. You created some pollution that is now in the atmosphere and will eventually have to be dealt with. It’s so radically new from the planet’s perspective. First time ever that a species is stealing (constantly) and polluting (constantly), all for their advantage and at the expense of everyone else. But no serious worldwide damage because population can never explode (need agriculture). But very serious internal damage with staying on the correct path of life.
I love Dowd, Quinn, and Hagens. They were big parts of my journey. MORT is what prevents them from seeing this. Focusing on the energy constraints led me to fire and now it’s as obvious as some of these overshoot concepts. Understanding MORT has helped me get to a place that is probably the hardest to get to. The very top of collapse mountain where the unthinkable awaits: If we can’t even have fire, then what’s the fucking point? LOL. And that’s what breaking energy constraints does right there. It creates something (not a species) that is actually complaining about the meaning of it all. So damn separate & superior, my god!
If it’s all about life, then the planet has a purpose. To provide resources round the clock. Life’s purpose is to thrive (aka: Do whatever it takes). The two mix very well together. Until an ultra-rare unnatural event tilts the scales. Like 66mya when a big asteroid hit earth. Or 1.5mya when a curious species started playing around with fire. Same result. Most if not all life on earth eventually wiped out. From Life’s point of view, it’s very easy to see that harnessing fire is not acceptable and is off limits. Ditto for Mother Earth.
It seems to me the only purpose of conquering fire is to get to MORT. Purpose of MORT is to get to agriculture. Purpose of agriculture is to get to fossil fuels. Purpose of fossil fuels is to eliminate life in a speedy fashion. Purpose of eliminating life is so that the Great Reset can get the planet (resource provider) back to no broken energy constraints. LOL. Sounds biblical. And fire is the apple. At the very least it’s a hell of a good fail-safe plan. And all of the terms we use to describe human problems like parable of the tribes, tragedy of the commons, multipolar trap, etc.… they don’t apply to us. They apply to conquering fire. “It just takes one” to create the Great Reset.
Five hundred years ago our population was only 500 million and 90% of them were “on the farm”. Would have been impossible to deduce that we are not a species. Today it’s much more obvious with 8.1 billion and 2% on the farm. Getting this far into the journey is not for everyone. One of my favorite collapse writers, Tom Murphy, can barely even consider it. Few months ago, I mentioned to him that Leavers had not figured out how to bust though the energy constraints and that’s all it is. If they could have figured it out, they too would have become Takers in a heartbeat. Tom had more to say but his core message was, “I prefer to operate on the premise that we’re not just rotten to the core and thus are wasting our time trying to find better ways to live”. Very anthropocentric, Thomas😊. And too much denial for my lack of denial to accept.
Starting your overshoot journey first leads you to understanding how unsustainable and destructive fossil energy is. That’s the easy constraint to “get”. Stick with it long enough and you’ll think the same about agriculture. But that’s usually the end of the journey and most can’t even make it that far. Lonesome territory at the top of collapse mountain. But once you get here, your journey is a wrap. You will see how silly all this frantic and desperate clinging on is (like Nate’s The Great Simplification). You’ll especially get a kick out of anything involving an awakening of consciousness or a paradigm shift. Dowd had a great line, “if you don’t understand overshoot, you will misinterpret everything that’s important”. Time to change “overshoot” to “fire”.
The good and the bad of this outlook, good first. It will put an end to those “rotten to the core” thoughts that humans are hardwired for destruction. Conquering fire is what’s hardwired for destruction, period. The simplification makes it much easier to stop focusing on all those things that are hardwired into breaking energy constraints (extreme overshoot & ecological degradation, Wetiko, MPP, climate change, collapse, etc). Which in turn gives me a much better chance of letting go of it all and just sit back and genuinely be entertained by watching it unfold. Helps me to understand why humanity is drenched in evil. Which actually helps me to forgive myself and the rest of humanity for going down this road. (kind of like the famous “it’s not your fault” scene from Good Will Hunting.
And the blame game starts to evaporate. No longer valid for me to point the finger at elites, USA, white skin, politicians, technology, etc. But the best benefit is the same relief as when I found un-Denial/MORT. Being able to understand the batshit crazy times we are in is the greatest joy/relief one can receive post red pill. It makes swallowing the pill (which I regretted many times) much more bearable.
Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Overshootland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Now the bad. Obviously, the big one is the darkness of it all. Understanding that there is not supposed to be any intelligence higher than pre fire (in the universe), will mess with your modern (human centered) brain. If you’re not careful you could end up in a very nihilistic state of mind. Also, this might make you doubt or cloud up any religious beliefs you have (My spiritual advisor on this site, Charles, and his views about “the world is 1 without 2. It is as it is and not some imaginary else. There is nothing to be either fearful, angry, saddened or cheerful about. It is just as it is.” LOL, three years ago I would have dismissed him as a lunatic and now I’m all about trying to find that exact frequency).
And the entertainment value for movies/tv is dropping significantly for me (I’m losing interest in watching off grid life pretending to be comedic and dramatic). But I’ll take the tradeoff because certain music is now hitting me on a much deeper level.
In closing, I would like to give you my quick pitch. If you can’t get yourself to agree that fire and agriculture are evil, then move over to fossil fuels. Any events in history that can be traced to using fossil energy (and that no other species had ever done prior to or since) is absolutely not acceptable and completely off limits per life and the planet. Fire is the one that starts it all. I’m sure there are important evolutionary events (or freak accidents) that lead to fire, but I’m sticking with the flame as the beginning of evil (going off grid).
Over 100 billion stars in our galaxy (and ours is an average one). Two trillion Milky Ways in the universe. Certainly, there is much life out there. If MORT is as rare as we think, then most species that break the 1st energy constraint never get to the 2nd one. That paints an incorrect picture that fire is acceptable. MORT is inevitable for everyone who cracks the 1st barrier. It’s all part of the fail-safe plan. (if you don’t believe MORT theory then it should be even easier to see that fire automatically leads to agriculture). If MORT is astronomically rare, then so is harnessing fire.
The maximum power principle (MPP) always frustrated me because I was looking at it wrong. I thought it meant that if you run the human experiment 100 times, every time it’s going to play out similar to our story. I was taking it too literal. Every planet that has had a Great Reset to get back to no broken energy constraints will look identical as far as the processes in chronological order; new species, fire, MORT, agriculture, fossil fuels, extinction. This fail-safe plan is another word for MPP. But the way each planet gets there can be drastically different. I’m sure some had no concept of monetary value. Or some went all in with space travel. Others may have avoided war altogether. And maybe some even perfected the equality aspect and truly lived in a utopian civilization (for their species only of course). And as hard as it is to believe, I bet some even did it much worse than us.
But regardless of how they got to their “Peak of what’s possible in the universe”, they all have the same thing in common. They’re off the grid from the rest of life (no longer a species) and they are solely responsible for their planet’s Great Reset because they started playing around with fire (something that had never been done on that planet prior). This simplifies things quite a bit for me about our insane civilization (and human behavior). Everything after breaking the first energy constraint is irrelevant. Good, evil, indifference… irrelevant. (See, I sound like Charles already 😊)
I like this quote from Leave the World Behind because it sums up everything and is so easily understood from the top of collapse mountain:
We fuck each other over all the time, without even realizing it. We fuck every living thing on this planet over and think it’ll be fine because we use paper straws and order the free-range chicken. And the sick thing is, I think deep down we know we’re not fooling anyone. I think we know we’re living a lie. An agreed-upon mass delusion to help us ignore and keep ignoring how awful we really are.
un-Denial 
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/back-to-a-carless-future-f5b7e0640c4d
I wonder what to make of B’s latest article. Looks like he is beginning to struggle with a bit of cognitive dissonance. Half of the article is very similar to what Hideaway says but the other half is in line with what Nate Hagen’s would say. I wonder how much of his ideas are actually feasible taking into account all the feedback loops.
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Almost everyone that is overshoot aware suffers from this dissonance.
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I think the fact that he is in his 40s with a family in a landlocked Central European country probably doesn’t help with the situation. His ideas are interesting for sure. Its possible that once the collapse has run its course we may have a scavenger society of sorts for a while. The problem is the process of getting there which would be unpleasant, brutal and involve billions of deaths. This is where his thoughts venture into the denial territory as he talks about population decline happening in a lot of the world and adaptation to the declining resources. It’s almost two opposing ideas fighting for dominance. Denial is quite a potent force. I wonder what Hideaway’s opinions are about the feasibility of his ideas.
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Hi Kira, it seems The Honest Sorcerer has the same affliction in thinking as many others in that the ‘collapse’ will only be in bits and parts and not everything..
There seems to be a lack of understanding about how a 6 continent supply chain actually works! The minerals and parts come from all over the world to make anything in our modern world. Go to any manufacturer you can find and whatever they are ‘making’, we’ll find it is mostly from whole sets of different parts that were manufactured elsewhere. The ‘manufacturer’ might make the box that all the separate pieces fit in, or the computer chip board.
Once everything starts to fall to pieces with great reductions in oil year after year, businesses around the world will go bust, transport of all the separate bits and pieces that every manufacturer needs to make any product will be impossible to organise in a fashion that suits the way modern industry operates.
No-one makes all their separate pieces that may be put together to make a ‘car’, and the attempt to do so will be impossible in a world of falling energy availability and businesses going broke everywhere.
To make anything, you need industrial machines that can forge, stamp, put plastic coatings on bits of metal, or coat ‘wire’ with plastic to make electrical wire etc, all takes someone else making the machines you are going to use, plus the raw materials need to be available to make the machines.
Once the contraction of oil supplies really gets going, 5M bbls/d, then 6Mbbl/d down, year after year and economies are in collapse, governments are going to do some strange things to make the life of their own people be less worse off (in their opinion), they will ban all sorts of exports, put higher tariffs on some imports, restrict all types of activities, which all makes it harder to set up a new industry or business making anything.
With food production falling and lack of food getting to cities, the last things governments will be worried about is trying to get new businesses and industries going. The collapse will happen faster than governments can cope with, with failures in sector after sector happening across the community and everyone asking/desperately pleading for help.
Any business takes time and co-ordination to set up production, but in a world crumbling around them, we’ll be lucky to have any older manufacturers operating at all, let alone anything new happening.
The expectations of the way down to me from people like Tim Morgan or ‘B’, seem to be that only the periphery of civilization will be affected, the things we can do without anyway. That maybe true at the beginning, but if oil and therefore all energy is in an accelerating fall, next year there will be less of everything, because the fall of energy availability just continues to make less of everything in a modern civilization available, including oil drill pipe, and oil rig replacement parts, that makes the decline accelerate even further, because of the feedback loops.
The chaotic collapse means that by the time we reach ‘bottom’, whatever that may be, will be a world without oil, without mining, most agriculture gone, billions dead, in a situation making a Mad Max world, look like a party..
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This made me laugh.
I can almost imagine your past doppelganger warning imperial Japanese people how they are soon going to lose the war and how impossibly awful life under American occupation is going to be.
Don’t overdo it 😉
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Charles could you please explain what you think collapse will look like?
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Not really, I don’t know. The same way it’s extremely improbable many imperial japanese people could have imagined life under the US. (radically different culture and way of seeing the world) And yes, the first decades, were not rosy at all.
From what I understand, extremely fast material collapse is going to happen as you predict. The current trends will break. The current system won’t be able to cope.
But, who cares? Something else is emerging. So, I don’t know precisely. There are many things already going on in the world which are “seeds of pathways to the future”. I could talk about them, but, it would be incomplete and would you be willing to listen? It would be like trying to talk about aviation in the middle age. I am not implying we are going to witness more progress of the kind we have known. It’s a radical change in direction.
At this point, to me, there is a range of futures, the one you describe being a possibility. (Even though, that’s not what my intuition tells me)
The funny thing is, it is even possible that, whatever the circumstances, people won’t even notice collapse when it is right in front of their eyes: they will just handle their day-to-day life.
It’s going to be fun. In any case, more rests on what lies in our hearts, than the feasibility of continued material affluence.
If you want me to elaborate, I could try to. But I am not sure it is useful. And I don’t really want to: in a way, it would be like putting living in a box.
Let me just clumsily try to express something I am deeply convinced of: once power is removed from the hands of humans, the world will take care of itself fine.
How lucky are we to witness a great conceptual reset. Tabula rasa.
Let me end with some of my personal preferences (it’s only me):
🙂
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Hello Charles,
Hope you and your family are well. I am glad that you can adopt a view of our impending collapse that gives you meaning and what seems like excitement of anticipation that a phoenix will arise from current humanity’s ashes. This is the second time you have stated that you think the process will be fun. The first time I wrote it off as possibly a different understanding of the word but this time I just want to clarify your meaning–do you really mean to say that you think this process is going to be enjoyable, amusing, and giving light-hearted pleasure?
I categorically disagree, and if I may do so, I speak for the masses who have yet to taste, much less understand, even the first inklings of suffering that will befall them as the world and life as they know it will be swept into the crucible. This is an experience that will affect every human on the planet and we are entering the most uncharted territory imaginable for as creators of our maelstrom, we must accept that we will be changed and destroyed by its power, but I cannot fathom how one can stand at the brink and not shudder with dread. You are one to see to the other side with halcyon hopes of a new dawn, but for the majority there is no bridge to cross this chasm and they will plummet to doom. As a member of this species and with the capacity for compassion, I cannot think it will be anything but desperate, knowing the scope of suffering that our species can experience.
We are the indulged and shielded ones, the golden billion members of the club of earth, who have yet to fully acknowledge that many of our species have already been in the throes of what we will surely come to experience. Fun is not the vocabulary to describe what they and their ancestors have gone through, nor how we should attend to this realisation of our hand in it. It has not been fun for all the flora and fauna that have met their destruction to the tune of mass extinction on our watch. As I write this, I have welling up in my minds’ eye the vision of that lone burnt orangutan trying to come down the solitary standing tree after a clear-felling for a palm plantation. The feelings of utter despair, remorse and regret seem too shallow and lenient for us. Even if all that befalls is the inescapable and necessary means to a certain end (the death of modernity), surely we must have in us the heart, and I do mean courage as well as compassion, to bear witness and feel emotion for all that calls for our awareness and response.
Yes, we are about to witness and partake in the greatest reset in our human supremacist history, and it is as if we had won the lottery for the hottest ticket in town to be alive at this time. It is a great opportunity for transformation in every plane of existence, I do understand your reverence for this. We intellectually agree that the universe, with or without us, is always right and perfect, and all beginnings have an end, which is just the transition into another possibility. But somewhere in there, tucked away in this particular galaxy and star system, is our blue dot planet where we live in our physical, mental, and emotional bodies within all the constructs we have created. It is here we all start our consciousness journey and here we will end it, there is no other way and we each have to walk our own path. I feel humbled and awed to be alive and able to try directing my thoughts and actions to align with my sense of self. I also have a heightened sense of anticipation of what is unfolding, and I hope that I will remain true to my vision of who I am, and I trust all here will, too. I am grateful for all the understanding, kindness and care I have received from everyone here and I hope all will have comfort and peace in the manner and timing needed.
Namaste, friends. This is a beautiful and bonus day for being alive.
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Hi Gaia. Great post as always. Sorry for butting in like usual. That orangutan mention of yours… is that this scene from the end of Planet of the Humans? I don’t think there is a more effective clip in the universe to get me to cry on que. When I don’t have my balancing in check, I sometimes watch it just to fuel my own hatred for humans.
Regarding Charles and his “it will be fun”… I’m reading it as not the process being fun, but the end result. The new and unimaginable world that comes from it. But maybe I’m wrong and Charles is a sadist. (just kidding😊)
And just to ramble on a bit more… I’m finally paying attention to the thermodynamic angle that I don’t like. And I know it’s very similar to what I’ve been learning about here for the last 9 months. But there is something about the telling of this story involving words like entropy, gradients, and dissipation, that just seems so ice cold:
“Thermodynamics, expressed through genetics, creates beings incapable of not maximizing energy consumption. (and) God makes dissipatives blind to the facts so they’ll finish their task.”
Got both those quotes from un-Denial and they are from James/Megacancer. The God one made me laugh out loud. James seems like a dark dude with a funny sense of humor.
I’m kind of expecting the Great Reset story to change to how the whole purpose of the universe is just a game to burn through x amount of energy as quickly as possible. Maybe I come full circle and end up appreciating our peak of insanity for its impressive participation level in this game. (but I highly doubt it😊)
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Very beautiful text Gaia gardener.
I believe you are not. For, how can one speak for somebody else than her/himself?
You are seeing the “masses”, the plebs, from what you imagine a place of privilege. At some level, this sentence expresses guilt and a feeling of superiority. It creates a subtle distance.
There are so many ways to experience life. It is not possible to speak for the masses. The masses is a deshumanizing word. The masses do not exist. It is a concept. All truth is personal.
Yes, this is going to be fun (for sure for me and for others too I believe).
This is how I see things: material affluence will reduce drastically. From this constraints arises choices, freedom.
See, for instance, how fertility rates are falling. If the saying “what is rare is valued” is anything true. Then, children will be cherished.
Mortality rates are rising. This will alleviate the competition, the pressure between people.
I believe (I may be wrong), central order will be increasingly difficult to maintain. Social cohesion will increase locally, if only by necessity.
Connection with life will be rebuilt, if only out of necessity. Like the mycellium, indirectly famished by the application of fertilizers in the soil will come back. The age of lone self is over.
I do not believe the current system is the most efficient in matters of feeding people across the world. If Joseph Tainter complexity theory is anything true, this society is well beyond its optimum.
Of course, everybody would have to grow its own food and the population repartition would be different. And of course, this is endlessly debatable. And, the goal is not to maximize human population.
See the unnecessarily complex and destructive means this society employs to fulfill our needs.
Etc, etc, etc… There are so many arguments I could put up with. There are also the things that are taboo to talk on this site, because it has been decided to frame reality through some arbitrary narrow angle. But what’s the point? There is nothing so closed as a closed mind, so deaf as he who will not hear, more blind than he who does not wish to see (oops, I am unknowingly talking about denial here, but it seems upside-down, ah ah ah)
Yes, I understand how you feel, what Hideaway expects. It’s only part of the story, half of reality. I am just trying to cheer Hideaway out of his obsession. I believe he is as right as wrong. I do not claim to know better than him. I have learned one thing during the short time I have been alive: personal well-being has very little to do with the outside world but a lot more with how we consider it.
Cheer up and make the best (the way you see it) of what we are given. The rest is up to other forces.
And yes, there is a bit of sadism and also of masochistic tendencies in me. And so much else too. I am very rich. Not in a unique way: a blade of grass is very rich. It’s all fine.
Isn’t beautiful even the role of the predator that we fear?
By rejecting what I fear, I make it bigger. What is good is the twin side of what is bad. Why live only a half-life? It’s here. See how human beings whoc believe in industrial agriculture are applying this principle: killing everything they claims will harm the crop, rejecting an aspect of reality they dislike. See the consequences, battling up “God” with increasingly destructive practices. There is another way.
See what you are rejecting and smile at it. It is here for a reason. What is it trying to say?
The “masses” are more aware and alive than you think. Go out and mingle with them 🙂
Live!
Thank you for this opportunity to try to wholly express myself. Hope this gets through, somehow. Ah ah ah.
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The only taboo that I am aware of on this site is public denial of the covid crimes and incompetence.
My brain doesn’t grok spirituality or philosophy so I usually do not engage with those comments but that’s not a taboo.
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Hello Rob,
Replying to you on my own comment, because we have reached the end.
Thank you. Maybe it’s myself self-censoring. But, basically, I refrain from talking about anything from this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_characterized_as_pseudoscience. Although, it lists several topics which interests me and do not seem like exclusively fraud to me. For instance electromagnetic hypersensitivity or traditional chinese medicine.
Funnily “covid-19 misinformation” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation#Vaccines) is on the list. The vaccine section of this page leads to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine_misinformation_and_hesitancy, where it is clearly stated that “Claims of inefficacy” is misinformation.
🙂
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Its the year on year decline that is difficult for people to wrap their heads around because for the last 200 years all that we have done is increase our energy production. The positive feedbacks upon feedbacks pushed us at warp speed to go from horse drawn carts to stepping on the moon in little more than a century which is almost akin to sorcery. This only happened because of using multi continent resources as having oil allowed us to shrink the world. The cobalt of DRC and lithium of Chile are right next to a factory in China thanks to the usage of massive oil powered cargo ships along with all the mining machines. When oil starts to decline the resources move farther away each year eventually being out of reach permanently. Even within the continent distances will increase, for instance China’s western provinces are rich in minerals but transporting that to the Eastern mainland will become increasingly difficult.
It appears as though oil has altered the concept of distances for us modern humans. When people like B talk about localisation they are not being specific about the distance. Is it a radius of 10km, 100km or a 1000km? If it is 10 or 100 you may not have any easily accessible minerals and fuel source to make even a bicycle. If it is 1000km then it brings us more or less right back to where we are today.
The microchip uses almost 60+ elements on the periodic table. How many of these 60 would be available within a radius of even 1000km? Without accessing the six continent resources, dense energy deposits and thousands of feedback loops in manufacturing we never would have gone from Shockley’s transistor to a microprocessor. This applies to everything from a bicycle to an airplane engine.
I also think we have to move on from EROEI as it may not longer be relevant anymore in a world where all types of liquids are lumped together to show an increasing oil production. We have surely come a long way from 10 years ago when EROEI was pretty fringe, but today even governments like china’s have special committees looking into it before sanctioning any large energy project like CTL.
We need a new terminology of DRODI (Diesel return on diesel invested) as this is a more accurate metric of usability of energy source. The shale oil for instance may be DRODI negative as it produces no diesel but surely consumes a lot of it. This works fine in a world with plenty of surplus diesel that US can import but without any imports can the US continue any shale extraction? Seems unlikely to me.
Once diesel availability falls our ability to shrink and reshape the world to our liking also goes away.
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I wanted to add that looking at your debates with Dennis has taught me that a good way to evaluate any proposition is to do deconstruct all the components and then apply the circumstances of no diesel and very low ore concentration to it. I have been training myself to do this. With this insight we can see that the only way you can even make a bicycle is if your community is within a 50km radius of a coal mine with accessible coal, an iron ore mine with float ores, access machines like Lathe and people with expertise to do everything needed. Possible today or even at the beginning of the downslope but impossible at the end of it.
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Thanks Kira, you seem to understand the problems that just multiply on top of each other. Localisation is not an alternative for 8B+ people. We use massive economies of scale with them increasingly in cities, with the 6 continent supply chain. Gathering everything from the ‘local area’, as in walking distance of a day or less, means a massive simplification of everything.
No-one lives within a days walk of a coal mine and an iron ore source and an existing smelter that can operate without constant electrical input, plus have food and shelter near by. The old smelters didn’t use electricity to drive the huge motors moving heavy hot metal and slag around. The first smelters were close to coal and iron ore sources, but we used them up, they no longer exist close to each other.
In the year 1500, we had a world population of around 450M humans and grew massively over the next 250 years to the start of the industrial revolution by increasingly using the resources of the ‘new world’. We’ve been on an upward trajectory ever since, especially since around 1800 with fossil fuels coming into use.
People just don’t understand the extreme overpopulation we have and still growing, right at the time of oil (especially diesel) reduction. All the manners of; “we’ll downsize this” or “that”, ignore the fact that once oil is in hard reduction, the declines become permanent year after year, with production of diesel especially declining, meaning the ability to build anything new all but disappears.
I see up thread that Charles thought it a laugh about when decline accelerates, but IMHO it will be no laughing matter. Suffering everywhere, just increasing year after year will be a sad sight and survivors will have to be hard people, protecting and providing for their own at the exclusion of others.
Everyone should look around the room they are in, then take a mental image of what their surrounds would look like without oil in any step of any processes to provide what they can see, because that’s the world of the future, with old decaying cold buildings and no food in cities.
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To be fair to people who advocate simplification (as I often fall into that thinking as well) the complete picture of our predicament only becomes visible when looking at both supply and demand side. If you only look at supply side the mindset of substitution of resources can creep in. Tim Watkins has an excellent article that explains the supply and demand squeeze that is causing the “Death Spiral” of industries. He chooses to focus on communications and airlines as an example but it can be applied to anything.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/09/12/the-long-and-the-short-of-it-four-power-down/
The “Critical mass” he refers to is essentially the minimum number of people needed as customer base to maintain the complexity and economy of scale of any industry.
The way I understand( feel free to correct me if I am mistaken) money is a lein on energy. When we pay Apple for an iPhone that lein is then given to Apple. Apple then uses it for direct energy purchase or further passes it down the chain till it reaches the bottom of the chain which is mining companies in Africa ,South America, Australia or Asia. The larger the critical mass the more collective lein there is to increase complexity or reduce cost or both.
This is how Solar panels which were affordable to only NASA are now affordable to even rural villages in Africa as the critical mass and therefore the total energy lein of NASA has been far exceeded by sheer number of customers using their discretionary income (lein) to buy solar panels. The complexity and efficiency has remained more or less same but cost has gone down.If this process goes in reverse and critical mass decreases then at first the profits of these companies decreases then goes into negative needing government bailouts. But the government cannot bailout every sector in the world and would prioritise sectors like agriculture and military critical for its survival. Soon every industry would enter the dreaded Death Spiral.
I tried to make this point on POB more than 5 years ago but Dennis countered that GDP growth is becoming less energy intense based on some BS charts. I was not able to frame my responses with the same clarity as you do as I was new to overshoot.
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I don’t see the chain as linear – with a start and end. It is more like a bicycle chain – without end. The workers at the mining companies are also buying Apple iPhones, etc. as are the mine owners (or shareholders), if anything the lions share of the profits go to the ‘owners’ and has the greatest impact.
When money loses value (combined effects of : printing, scarce energy, lost faith) – people will be more inclined to spend than save, so counter-intuitively, the economy could have a boost at the final end which is masked by the collapse – making it difficult to see either.
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Some might argue, including me, that the fact that the stock market has been rising for the last 10+ years regardless of crazy P/E ratios, plateaued oil, in-your-face climate change, geopolitical tensions, nuclear war threats, plandemics, poor company profits, unsustainable debt levels, etc., etc. is a sign that the end is near.
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Yes, it is all a sign that the end is near. The ‘boost’ I referred to, is likely already happening and has been happening for those 10+ years. When the boost ends and the smoke clears, all that remains is full-on massive and rapid collapse that is impossible to mask / deny.
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When cars become unaffordable for most people, what will happen to North American suburbs?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN7dgnMpwI4
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Nate Hagens recently interviewed Jeffrey Sachs on the risks of nuclear war.
Sachs is fully aware of the nuclear war risk and fully unaware of the overshoot risk which means he is grossly underestimating the nuclear risk. 😦
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I question why economists like J Sachs are so admired.. He and other economists were invited into the dying days of the Soviet Union to give advice, yet the newly formed Russia by itself had a collapse in just about everything in the ’90’s, costing millions their health and often their lives. Exactly what did the economists achieve?
It’s obvious, that now his only thinking is about preventing nuclear war, without an understanding of how the world really operates. He’s an expert in understanding economics and a know nothing about the real world.
Nate once again squibbed on asking him the hard questions, as in to justify his thinking on the hand wave of ‘renewables’ saving us. The current wars are about resources and energy, and this person doesn’t understand the real world!!
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Maybe people are slowly waking up. Seeing more of these type emails from my evil corporation. We had a vaccine one and a biometric thing that were both canceled last month because not enough people volunteered.
In the past, these emails would say that the clinic is all booked up and you can’t sign up anymore (after day one of being able to sign up).
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One hypothesis for why Pharma was so desperate to get mRNA approved using a ginned up emergency to bypass the usual testing which they knew would fail was that the annual flu shot was losing its effectiveness and they needed a new technology platform to revitalize their cash cow.
I have never had a flu shot and have had flu only once in the last 30+ years.
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Gail Tverberg today published an essay with some original research on peak oil.
I wonder if central banks focus on oil as Gail suggests, or if instead they focus on turning the dials to achieve sufficient GDP growth with acceptable inflation, which act as proxies for sufficient oil at an affordable price.
Given that all of the most influential economists are energy blind, why would central banks be any different?
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2024/09/11/crude-oil-extraction-may-be-well-past-peak/
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Alex Smith @ Radio Ecoshock started a new season today.
https://www.ecoshock.org/2024/09/what-just-happened-and-whats-next-new.html
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I found the James quote in the comments of Rob’s great essay ‘On Religion and Denial’. The first time I ever heard about this stuff (or paid any attention to it) was the quote from Rob a few months ago. I didn’t like it then and still don’t. This entropy thing is definitely darker than the Great Reset. I have a feeling MORT is trying to protect me again. Which means I need to power through it and explore this.
I guess I hate it for the obvious reason. At least the great reset paints a picture that if you remove the energy constraint breaking species, the planet will thrive with life again. Clear meaning and purpose. Earlier today Hideaway said something like, it’s really hard for people to accept that life has no meaning… I can usually let that go in one ear and out the other, but it’s staying with me for some reason.
Time for me to start reading/listening to books again. Nick Lanes ‘Vital Question’ is on deck.
I apologize if this post was pointless to you. I’m kind of just giving myself a peptalk to finally go down this road. Gonna have to get pumped up by listening to un-Denial’s unofficial theme song.
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I think of myself as a lifelong cyclist – starting as a teenager I bought my first bicycle a British Dawes Five-Star, this was a cheap hybrid road racing and entry touring bike – it came with a rear rack as standard and cost less than 60 GBP. I did my first Youth Hostel tour on it, a one week affair that included walking up a really long and really steep hill (Porlock) six miles west of Minehead in Somerset.
A year later, I was back on a much better bike – a Dawes Galaxy, with 10 speed wide ratio touring gears, a leather Brookes Professional saddle, both front and rear racks, Karrimor Panniers and much stronger legs. The bike was over 140 GBP. That bike has been to Holland, Germany, Belgium, France and done the Oregon Coast to San Francisco. At the moment it is hanging in the garage, unused for over 10 years. I’ve lost count of how many wheels, chains, brake pad changes have occurred.
Nearby is a mountain bike, that has also done some nice biking (Iceland). In a box, there is a made to measure road bike for endurance time trials. Built long before carbon fiber, it ‘was’ state of the art, with stainless steel butted spokes, Italian group set, etc.
Here is where the insanity of Tainter’s complexity kicks in :
Those ‘were’ some of the most common sizes, there is a lot more now.
Adding to the complexity, there is not a standard valve type. Many cheaper bikes use Schrader valves, these are also found on all cars and trucks and are normal (on a bicycle) for below 100 psi.
Presta valves, ubiquitous on high end bikes, commonly handle pressures up to 140 psi.
For completeness, there is also the English Dunlop valve.
Now add one last thing, many carbon fiber rims have very deep aerodynamic profiles, necessitating very long valve stems. There are literally dozens of permutations.
I want a future with easy to find generic wheels – one wheel size, one tire size, one valve type (and length). I also want the body I had when I was 32.
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So true.
In 1976 I was 16 and in high school. Me and my friends drank a lot of beer at the lake. There was one liquor store in town and it sold 4 brands of beer. All of the beer was in the same short stubby brown bottle which optimized manufacturing, distribution and recycling.
Today the ratio of liquor stores to population has probably tripled. Each store sells over a hundred brands of beer, many in unique bottles. All with best-by dates that probably cause waste due to slow turn over.
We tell ourselves this choice is a good and satisfies differing tastes. And we deny the reality that all we really care about is the ethanol drug.
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The best beer buying experience I ever had, was in Holland. Almost everyone buys beer by the crate. The supermarket carts are designed to make it easy. Reddit, how does the beer crate system work?
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“We consider that Easter Island was a microcosm which provides a model for the whole planet. Like the Earth, Easter Island was an isolated system. The people there believed that they were the only survivors on earth, all other land having sunk beneath the sea. They carried out for us the experiment of permitting unrestricted population growth, profligate use of resources, destruction of the environment and boundless confidence in their religion to take care of the future. The results was an ecological disaster leading to a population crash. A crash on a similar scale (60% reduction) for the planet Earth would lead to the deaths of about roughly 100 times the death toll of the Second World War. Do we have to repeat the experiment on this grand scale? Would it not be more sensible to learn from the lesson of Easter Island history, and apply it to the Earth Island on which we live?
About twenty years ago, a group of businessmen and computer specialists known as the Club of Rome attempted to model by computer the future of all those which included continuation of the present trends of economic expansion and population growth led to the same result. A rapid decline of resources was accompanied by a peak in pollution as population continued to soar. When resources became scarce around 2020, however, pollution (and economic activity) declined, followed by a sharp population crash. If this kind of model has any veracity, it should also apply to the Easter Island situation. The overall conclusion seems fairly clear; the Club of Rome model works.
If there is any hope, it is surely in the idea that we must change our religion. Our present gods of economic growth, science and technology, continuously rising standards of living, and the virtues of competition – deities that we consider all-powerful are like the giant statues on Easter Island platforms. Each village competed with its neighbors to erect the largest statue. Platforms were constantly replaced with more grandiose ones. More and more effort went into the resource-consuming and time-consuming, but pointless, carving, moving and erecting.
What we need to do is throw down our economic Moai.
Will we the “Earth Islanders” have the sense to change in time before our skyscrapers come tumbling about our ears? Or is the human personality always the same as that of the person who cut down the last tree?..”
– Easter Island: Earth Island (Bahn 1994)
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Today’s roundup of global economic news by Panopticon is very good.
https://climateandeconomy.com/2024/09/13/13th-september-2024-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/
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Good analysis today by Simplicius the Thinker about the west’s plan to authorize and assist Ukraine with missile strikes into Russia, Putin’s response, and what’s going on behind the scenes in NATO.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/zelenskys-last-hail-mary-gets-off
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Ohhhh Canada.
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After Hideaway mentioned Sapolsky the other day, it made me watch a couple videos. I’ve seen all of his Stanford lectures, and a bunch of interviews… but had not checked in with him for a while.
This one was the most recent I could find and is pretty good. Really liked his baboon breakdown of how those guys cannot help themselves to mischief when their EROEI increases. And the way he ties it in with humans.
Robert has lived a heck of a life. He’s like a mix between Jane Goodall and the Professor from Gilligan’s Island. And he has that rare Carl Sagan talent of being able to shatter your worldview without being offensive about it.
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If I could pick one famous intellectual to take a deep dive into MORT it would be Sapolsky. He is one hell of a dot connector, and is probably depressed enough to understand MORT.
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LOL. Good comment. He’d be my pick too.
I’m not positive on how blind Robert is to overshoot/energy. A lot I would guess. Anytime people say things like “future generations are going to be laughing at what we did” or “when future archeologists are studying why we did this or that”… it usually means they have no idea that humanity is on the verge of complete collapse.
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I’ve read many of Sapolsky’s books but cannot remember what his awareness of overshoot is.
The fact that I was very careful when compiling my list of famous polymaths in denial, and the fact that Sapolsky is not on it, and the fact that I claim no famous polymath is overshoot aware, probably means that I was unsure about his status after reading his books.
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On famous polymaths, I would have a 3rd category: Partially aware. This category would include Jared Diamond and David Attenborough.
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Yes, I know Attenborough did a documentary explaining that population reduction is required to reduce climate change. I don’t think he’s aware of collapse due to oil depletion.
I have read Guns, Germs, and Steel but don’t recall any awareness of modern overshoot by Diamond.
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Jared Diamond mentioned overshoot in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail.
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I read Diamond’s book Collapse but remember very little other than I was not impressed.
There’s a huge difference between the Earth Day/Green Party/Pinker version of overshoot that can be solved by driving EV’s, and the Alpert/Hideaway/Hanson understanding. I’d say the first group is still in denial.
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Hi Rob, I suspect a whole lot more of the polymaths out there are aware of our situation a lot more than they let on, because their income depends upon them being ‘soft’ on overshoot and offering solutions, especially those in academia…
It’s very noticeable that people like William Rees and Tom Murphy went off the script after leaving academia, not before.
I’d love to have an interview with both William Rees and Robert Sapolsky on the same program, and I’d like to ask the questions… Even now when pressed Bill Rees is very reluctant to express his full views and still puts out some numbers of 2B for human population, but I’m certain he knows it’s less. I saw an interview on one of the podcasts with both Rees and Jack Alpert and Rees didn’t disagree with Jack’s numbers, just that Jack’s plan had a zero chance off happening because of denial…
I’ve watched several of Sapolsky’s videos, long ones, and looking forward to more, it’s just everyone here puts up such fantastic resources that there is not enough time in a day to look at it all!!
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I consider 2 billion a very optimistic (and rather anthropocentric) estimate. I think 2 billion is the best case scenario, assuming humanity gets its act together and starts planning for the descent. It is almost certainly going to be lower than that due to things like climate change, biodiversity loss, topsoil erosion, and other symptoms of overshoot.
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You can’t discuss the maximum population without discussing the lifestyle.
When someone asks you what population is possible without oil, respond by asking if they mean middle class Canadians or hungry Sudanese?
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Asking a sustainable population type question of people, most assume a similar standard of living to what they currently have, which of course is not sustainable at all.
Even asking them what type of living, as Rob has stated, is only part of the answer anyway, because there are so many factors involved, most of which are unsustainable.
For instance, is the person thinking a stable climate like we have had during the Holocene or are they thinking the usual unstable climate where agriculture is nearly impossible?
Given the damage we have done to the wild mammal population and the definite decimation of all large mammal gene pools, the lack of genetic diversity alone will mean many more extinctions in the centuries ahead, even assuming humans don’t eat them all during collapse.
It’s possible there is zero future sustainable numbers of humans that can live on Earth because of the damage we have already done to our natural food sources..
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LOL. I know what you mean about too many fantastic resources. Sometimes I start getting anxiety when I fall behind a bit. “Oh shit, too many things I have to read/watch!”
Your point about going off the script only after leaving academia, reminds me of when I was into Dr Steven Greer and his alien stuff. Greer was very good at getting pilots and four-star generals to go on the record about the strange things in the sky they’ve seen… but they were always retired and never active.
And you interviewing Rees & Sapolsky at the same time…. yes please.
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From Dr Steven Greer!!!!!!!
“at least one
35:24 or two extraterrestrial vehicles are Target with that weapon and knocked down
35:30 every year so if you look at our crash retrieval section you’ll see there’s something like 130 plus crash retrieval”?
The ‘UFO’s’ are aware of this? and still fly over the area?
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I’m a big fan of Sapolsky. But I’m really just commenting on this post generally ,(I couldn’t figure out how to comment, only reply).
I love the way your mind works, paqnation. I can totally get behind the MORT theory. By age 10 I already saw humans as an “alien” “species.” Why don’t we fit in? It’s a quest of discovery I’ve been on ever since.
My research journey started with Daniel Quinn, but pretty much immediately I saw the holes in his hypothesis. That’s because I’m always looking for the root cause, and he was off by, oh, around 2 million years.
I guess it really comes down to nitpicking definitions of what’s “natural.” You could argue that any animal would have done/would do the same as humans, if given the chance. In that sense, our behavior is “natural.”
But there’s nothing good about what we’ve become. We contribute nothing and take everything. That’s what parasites do. So maybe we just need to be reclassified as a parasite species.
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I love the way your mind works, paqnation. I can totally get behind the MORT theory. By age 10 I already viewed humans as an “alien” “species.” Why don’t we fit in? It’s a quest of discovery I’ve been on ever since.
My research journey started with Daniel Quinn, but pretty much immediately I saw the holes in his hypothesis. That’s because I’m always looking for the root cause, and he was off by, oh, around 2 million years.
I guess it really comes down to nitpicking definitions of what’s “natural.” You could argue that any animal would have done/would do the same as humans, if given the chance.
But there’s nothing good about what we’ve become. We contribute nothing and take everything. That’s what parasites do. So maybe we just need to be reclassified as a parasite species.
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Hello ariggle. Thanks for the kind words. Totally agree with you about the parasite thing. Love William Rees and his evasive/plague species language. I also agree that every life form in the universe would be doing the same thing as us (if capable) …. maximizing energy consumption.
ps. If you want to make a new post (rather than reply) scroll to the very bottom of the page and look for the “Leave a comment” section. But nobody will see a new post on this essay because its old. The current one is this page: By Kira & Hideaway: On Relocalization – un-Denial
pss. I have a million comments scattered around here, but only one other guest essay. It was back when I was still a Daniel Quinn fanatic, but I think it’s a good one: By paqnation (aka Chris): My Final Act – un-Denial
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Thanks, I’ll check out your other essay!
P.S. I’m also known as Ali R. 😉
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My wifey! Why didn’t you tell me that in the first reply. You get the VIP treatment then.🤭
This is my favorite site by far. The featured essays are always good, but the comments are where you’ll find the real gold. At the bottom of the page just above the “Leave a comment” section, you’ll usually see a link for newer/older comments. That just means there are more comments from that particular featured essay. Rob (the owner of this site) usually likes a fresh new page after every 300 comments or so.
Sorry to be overly descriptive, but when I found this site back in January, I was very confused on how to navigate. Just holler if you have any questions.
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Haha, sorry hubby, I didn’t even know what my username on WordPress was before I posted the comment. I never use this site. Thanks for the tips, this site is a bit tricky to navigate. But love the posts I’m seeing so far!
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Ted Postol explains the implications of the decision to provide nuclear weapons to Germany in 2026.
Postol also discusses today’s tensions associated with the west (possibly) agreeing to help Ukraine strike deep inside Russia. A few hours ago there were signs that the US military may have forced US leaders to walk this back after Putin’s stark warning but we’ll see.
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US to start deploying long-range weapons in Germany in 2026
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-start-deploying-long-range-weapons-germany-2026-2024-07-10/
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Was it a slip of the tongue or is Kamala Harris secretly overshoot aware?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3eFXaHgNsc
But honestly, if she were to speak openly about overpopulation, I would volunteer for her campaign.
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Read the comments on that video for an extra special dose of depression.
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😊 No wonder Nate Hagens can’t go there😊 (except for that recent interview with Corey Bradshaw)
I assume Kamala knows enough about overshoot and/or dwindling resources to make that kind of slip. I also assume she got scolded afterwards. (doesn’t look like she’s reading… and zero chance of those two words being intentionally written)
The masses will never understand overshoot, so by default, they will never understand this. In their minds, it will always be that over the top crazy-evil, cartoonish stuff.
p.s. One comment reminded me of what I’ve seen multiple times now. If you toggle the comments to “newest first”, they’ll all come up. The “top comments” are sometimes missing a few (and sometimes a lot).
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Non collapse. I’m rewatching my all-time favorite tv program The Larry Sanders Show. It’s a comedy about a late-night talk show that reveals all the Hollywood bullshit behind the smoke and mirrors. The creator Garry Shandling was a genius. Based on his writing, it would not surprise me at all to find out he was fully MORT aware.
It ran from 1992-98. The casting was excellent as well as the celebrities who played themselves. And I can’t think of a better sitcom that checks all three important boxes. 1) Gets better with each season. 2) No dud episodes. 3) Great finale.
This clip will give you a taste of what the show was all about.
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In recent days, a conspiracy theory about Haitian migrants eating pets (cats, dogs, geese and ducks) has been spreading in the U.S.
Donald Trump even mentioned it during the debate on Tuesday evening.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77l28myezko
https://newrepublic.com/post/185950/neo-nazi-origins-trump-migrant-pet-eating-conspiracy
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Sorry;
But I would never believe anything from the BBC or the New Republic. Both are “left” wing captured media purveyors of the mainstream propaganda. Not that I even read/listen to CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, NYT, WaPo or mainstream “right” wing propaganda from Fox, WSJ, National Review, (fewer of them) I figure all MSM lies to preserve those in power and the status quo.
I trust independent journalists, such as: Glen Greenwald, Catlin Johnson, George Galloway, Matt Tiabi, Joe Rogan, and others, but none uncritically.
I kinda trust Tucker Carlson, but a lot of times he is too uncritical of his guests, unknowledgeable on a subject and just too partisan (trusts Trump too much).
AJ
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Do you believe the rumor itself though? It’s unfortunate that the 4th estate has flushed much of its credibility down the toilet.
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In the UK it was said that Chinese restaurants used meat obtained by ‘culling’ the local cats!
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“This works fine in a world with plenty of surplus diesel that US can import”?
So far, so good?
According to ‘David’: ‘ . . . the US refinery output of diesel is about 5 mbpd, and that the US uses “only” 3.7 mbpd so the other 1.3 mbpd of diesel is exported’?
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2023/08/31/fossil-fuel-imports-are-already-constrained/comment-page-9/#comments
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