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 
Hideaway:
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-19-2024/#comment-778642
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hello Hideaway,
There are many arguments in your ongoing debates with the people at peakoilbarrel. Many of which are sound. There are some times quite a bit of extrapolation (like all the trees will be burnt or all the horses will be eaten). I’d really like to have data.
For instance, I’d like to know, what fraction of the global energy supply is used for food production. Because, if it’s 10%, it’s not the same as if it is 80%. And I have no idea. On one hand, I understand industrial agriculture and the repartition of people over the territory are great consumers (fertilizers, machinery, transportation, transformation, storing, cooking).
However:
To me there are still many optimizations possible. They shouldn’t be really performed while the population is still growing (as it will just end up with a larger, poorer population), but on the downslope they provide some buffers to wait until the system reconfigures progressively (skills are learned, city density is reduced, soils are improved, population declines because of falling fertility rates, increasingly closed borders, increased death rates…)
I am not saying, things will turn out great, I am just pointing out there are ways to extend and slow down the impact of decline on survivability once it starts unravelling.
Also, right now, we seem to be in the staggering phase (as you rightly point out here https://un-denial.com/2024/07/04/it-bears-repeating-best-of-overshoot-essays/#comment-102956). In France, it’s beyond staggering, well in the slow (at first) decline phase. And, the inflation (especially food), we have been having for the last 3 years (https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/8219103), rather than later, is a blessing in disguise: behaviors are slowly changing.
As a last note, I recently thought, that maybe my outlook is more positive than yours, because when I read your description of collapse I am comparing with my understanding of the situation in my country, rather than the world as a whole. France population, like most of Europe, is quite old, the fertility rate is low, most of population growth is from immigration (https://www.insee.fr/en/outil-interactif/5543645/details/20_DEM/21_POP/21D_Figure4). Metropolitan France population (the european part of France) is 65 million. It was the most populous country in Europe before 1795 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France), with roughly 30 million in 1800 and roughly 40 million in 1900.
I am not foreseeing a 8th-fold population reduction in 5 years. I will now take the risk of making a prediction and drop a bomb, I apologize: a 2-fold reduction of population in a decade seems to me to be the worst case scenario for France and is acceptable to me. (France median age is around 43 years. I am older than that, but will still say that’s enough compared to historical standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy)
It would be interesting to know what are your expectation: how fast, how low, on which perimeter.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Charles, the simple quick answer is that it’s a system, not individual parts. To get fuel and fertilizer to farms and the food from farms to cities, we need finance, lawyers, accountants, teachers, cleaning staff, managers, shops, police, courts, prison guards, factories, mines, ports, trucking companies etc.
To keep them from all going crazy, we need entertainment, holidays, getaways, etc…
Which part would you cut out to make oil available for farmers when we are in serious decline?
It’s exactly like deciding which organ to cut out of the body because the body can only access 10-20% less energy. All the pieces work together, they are not separate, and the scale of the organism is such that without the energy needed to keep everything going it dies, because it’s size demands a certain minimum energy to function.
Scaling laws clearly show advantages of energy use due to larger size, throughout nature a 100% increase in organism size is accompanied by around a 70% increase in energy requirements. Human civilization behaves in very similar fashion, so unravelling cities would require more energy overall. It’s energy that’s the problem, keeping the existing system wont work with 10-20-30% less energy, I have no idea the exact percentage, but an accelerating decline in energy availability guarantees we reach the critical point of super organism death at some point.
In the past, every other civilization has collapsed, with those still alive being able to disappear into the jungle and reform later (some of the time), into a new civilization.. We have nowhere to go, so are more like the Easter Islanders who also had nowhere to go…
LikeLiked by 2 people
Carbon dioxide molecules are rising into the atmosphere from data centers across the globe, including from corporate gas factories like WordPress and Substack and institutes of higher indoctrination.
For some reason, this Easter Island process is never shown nor even acknowledged – what’s the CO2 figure of my comment, your comment, everybody’s comments altogether?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Hideaway,
We agree on the impossibility of avoiding collapse for this system.
(I’d still really like to know why, against all rationality, I feel serene like never before. Something puzzles me. Since December 2022. I guess I will know why, further down the road.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Charles, I understand this serenity, I have it as well. If there are no answers, there is no point in struggling to understand what’s ahead.
I hear my friends all the time talking about the future involving nuclear, or hydrogen or solar or whatever, yet they all struggle with how it will actually work, so create this internal conflict..
Perhaps it’s all about overcoming the denial gene to get to serenity, of a future that’s baked in, and the best we can do is enjoy our time in the here and now to the best of our ability.
Even with the discussions I have with cornucopians, I no longer get upset or angry, as I know that it’s they that are incorrect and always missing a piece of the puzzle. With no conflict internally about our overall direction, to be serine about the future is the only path.
Collapse will come when it comes, and there never was anything any of us could ever do about it..
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes. Thank you. I like your comment. Especially: “there is no point in struggling to understand what’s ahead”
It’s like I have no frame of reference, no point of comparison anymore: only what is matters since it has to be some way anyway (it could be “better”, it could be “worse”, but it’s not, it’s just as it is).
I am ready to be surprised too. To be made wrong. I’ll see soon enough when it unfolds.
🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Charles. Sorry if I’m being nosy and its none of my business, but you have me curious. What has puzzled you and why since Dec 2022?
I’m sitting here guessing: is he just saying he’s felt calm about our collapse since then and he’s not sure why? Or is that when he became overshoot aware? I even searched for important world events from dec ’22. 😊
I’m probably just overanalyzing like I normally do, but I always get a strong sense from you of “what does this guy know that I dont know”. So I thought I would ask you. Thanks.
LikeLike
No problem, you are not being nosy. I probably didn’t express myself clearly.
Your first option is right: my internal state puzzles me since Dec 2022. I have been incomprehensibly serene since then, while I had been worried non-stop (at different degrees) about overshoot for more than 2 decades. There was some kind of a switch. At dawn of some day in December 2022, my intuition told me “everything was going to be fine”. While my rational thinking still evaluates strong danger ahead. Yet my intuition has always been all encompassing. Rational thinking just finds the reason afterwards. This has never failed me.
So I don’t know why. I am trying to understand.
I don’t know. There are so many things beyond my analytical thinking… Why I currently feel so calm and detached (and can’t wear it off), is one of them. In any case, this is very unlike my past usual me, so I notice 🙂
Now, you know fairly everything there is about my current ongoing puzzlement. Which does not amount to much 🙂
LikeLiked by 3 people
I was hesitant to ask you about it, but now I’m so glad I did. Thanks for that breakdown of what’s going on inside your head. Always a treat for me to get in there for a minute or two. 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you 🙂
LikeLike
The world is now filled with zombies unphased by the risk of nuclear war, peak oil, climate change, 30 million killed by bad covid policies, the holocausted holocausting, the “good guys” blowing up critical pipelines, an incompetent secret service, exponential unsustainable debt, or an insane stock market.
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/07/20/small-stocks-keeled-over-after-brief-super-hyped-rotation-spike-magnificent-7-lost-1-3-trillion-in-seven-days/
LikeLiked by 2 people
Canadian Prepper today recaps the news of the last 7 days.
It’s no wonder the world is filled with zombies.
LikeLike
Sardines on sale today for $0.79 per can. I bought a bunch more.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Paqnation,
I hope thou are feeling well.
Perhaps this is of interest: The decimation of megafauna & its connection to agriculture.
Kind and warm regards,
ABC
LikeLike
Hello ABC. Glad to hear from you, it’s been a while. Good video. Impossible to tell they were not a species anymore, but easy to see that they were getting more and more separate & superior.
The transformation to agriculture came in all shapes and sizes. But thinking of those generations who had to make the switch because they got too good at hunting… cant imagine the desperation and frustration, as well as the highs of finally producing a decent yield.
LikeLike
Hey Chris
Good essay. Showing you are working through a large load of concepts. Having found this site might rush you through them and it can be overwhelming. Let me say this. Take a breath and try to step back and look at the big perspective only to realise there isn’t one. There is only the here and now. It took me a long time to understand that I have no influence on the big picture only my immediate surrounds and even that is EXTREMELY limited.
Good and evil are interesting ideas or again perspectives. Is there free will? If not then something being something is not their fault. Is that useful? Maybe only in so much as to be aware of it. Accepting it maybe harder. Being further down your path (in time spent) I do not envy you position because it is frustrating at best, but I wish you the best in your journey. Just remember to take every scrap of joy, fun and happiness with gratitude and zeal. I wish you a long life.
nikoB
LikeLike
Hello nikoB. Thanks, and I appreciate the advice. Yes, I definitely need to take a breath and step back 😊. Lots of heavy concepts on this site.
And I know I’m dangerously close to sounding like Fast Eddy (the way he is so annoyingly confident with all his bullshit). Definitely trying to be aware of that.
This clip below is six seconds long and it defines me to a tee, ever since I found un-Denial. (I’m Luke, of course)
LikeLike
The near future of our financial system:
Saludos
el mar
LikeLiked by 3 people
I’m not so sure of all the tangents you take your undeniable thesis about fire to, but as a fear-based ultrasocial species, humans cannot govern their instinct to employ the destructive, killing feature of fire in all of its (fossil fuel) derivations and permutations.
LikeLike
Hello notabilia. Is this in reference to my paragraph about “Peaks” looking drastically different? If so, yes I agree that I should not have used any examples. (especially the “avoided war altogether” one).
LikeLike
No, just overall disinterest. I have no interest remaining in ever reading an old novel like Quinn’s, disliked Dowd’s weird theological bent, and have long since tuned out the bullshit hucksterism of Hagens.
Trying to raise objections in comments sections is a mug’s game, but you were right to concentrate on fire’s role in humanity’s suicide.
All these blasted-brain old timers, rancid and rotting in the sun’s twilight- Kunstler, Greer, Orlov.
LikeLike
Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.
LikeLike
Good vaccine rant by Del Bigtree after Stanley Plotkin, the godfather of vaccines, effectively admitted there is inadequate science backing the claims of safe and effective.
LikeLike
I think there’s a way out of the human predicament. You won’t like it. However, that’s OK because your view plays no role in its execution.
The solution is to make today’s 8 billion people sterile.
That behavior is unethical. 8 billion people are injured when you remove their choice to have children. No person influenced by present cultures is going to do it. At least no person that you can imagine.
But if we’re going to do some imagining, let me imagine this. Assume the technology of making viruses is becoming capable of creating a virus that makes a human being sterile. Assume that the ability of a normal graduate student in a normal laboratory will eventually be able to create this virus no extra help or financing required.
So now the decision to make everyone sterile is no longer a community social contract upgrade decision. It’s no longer a dictator’s decision.
The actual decision belongs to the individual who has created and is in possession of a sterility virus.
The virus holder has two choices
If Individuals do not want to be responsible for injuring people, the decision is reduced to comparing
It’s easy to see that 8 billion people will be injured by being sterile.
The remaining challenge is calculate the injuries on the current path.
Most people have no number for injuries created by starvation and conflict on earth in the next 80 years.
The absence of that number in the comparison process makes it zero. So the holder of the virus has no problem deciding to not release it.
However, if the individual makes the calculations of injuries and it’s almost everyone who lives on earth during the next 80 years then his decision is easy. He’ll release the virus.
So what should we do about the human predicament? I suggest don’t worry about it. When a person arises that has the two capabilities, one to create the virus and one to calculate the injuries without using it, he’ll release the virus.
My estimate is this person will arise and act before any other human behavior plays a successful role.
jack alpert http://www.skil.org
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thanks Jack, this may be the first message of hope not clouded by denial I have seen, provided that the technical feasibility of creating a virus that is:
and that we can find a way to keep critical infrastructure like food, water, sanitation, trucking, and electricity operating in the presence of rapid economic degrowth with extreme levels of debt and inequality,
is not in the same techno-utopian fantasy land as hoping we can sidestep overshoot by emigrating to Mars, or that AI will solve peak oil by enabling nuclear fusion.
LikeLike
Dear Dr. Alpert,
I hope thou are feeling well.
Fascinating insight as always,
a contraption of such a calibre would be the noblest of paths for any foresighted individual.
Kind and warm regards,
ABC
LikeLike
Maybe I am the only one on this site to think like this, but I find this horrible.
If I understand you well (maybe I didn’t), this means the ensured extinction of the human species within one generation. Slow suicide at the scale of the species.
I am grateful to live in this reality where no one human mind is in charge of everything and where the future is largely unknown.
In any case, thank you for your comment. It’s indeed a proposition and may give ideas to some 🙂 Also, it helps me define even more precisely where I stand. Some kind of unstable middle ground.
PS: I hope I am not being offensive or agressive. I just wanted to express and share my point of view. I understand it is possible to reason as you do, even if I don’t. But still, what if your model doesn’t reflect reality? More importantly, isn’t subjective reality as important, if not more than some external abstract view (where all life experience is reduced to a couple of insignificant numbers)? The trajectory the world follows is in a way built in real time as a consensus between all personal viewpoints (including non-humans). Isn’t this fine enough?
LikeLike
Charles, in the past Jack has presented this plan with the additional feature of a fair lottery to select a small sustainable number of people who receive an antidote drug to reverse the virus so that our species can continue in a manner that permits the retention of some of our better scientific and technological accomplishments, rather than our current path of a collapse back to hunter gatherers, at best.
I do not know if Jack has modified his plan but I hope to speak with him in the next few days and will find out.
LikeLike
Dear Rob,
I hope thou are feeling well.
An idea of a “lottery” seems strange.
– Choosing the fittest (healthiest etc.) and most knowledgeable specimen from all corners of the globe, would likely lead to a more favourable outcome for such a plan.
Kind and warm regards,
ABC
LikeLike
Yes, you’re right, but a fair lottery that cannot be corrupted with wealth increases the probability that the majority will support the sterilization plan knowing that everyone will have a fair chance to have a child.
It seems Jack has given up on the idea that the majority can be persuaded to vote for rapid population reduction and now hopes a wise individual with means and skills will step up to do it unilaterally.
As I said, I do not know if Jack has abandoned the lottery component which it seems to me could still be implemented after the virus has done its job.
The bigger question for me is, is it technically possible to create a sterilization virus that is safe and effective? We have been unable to outwit the corona virus which is a mild insult to health compared to blocking cells from achieving their main mission in life which is to reproduce. I’m guessing sterilization is a very hard problem that will require a lot of testing and iterations and mistakes which means the probability of a stealth success is very low. But I know nothing about this technology so may be wrong.
LikeLike
Dear Rob,
I hope thou are feeling well.
The probability that mankind will agree upon anything is practically nigh impossible.
If a contraption which neutralises reproduction without harm and can retroactively be restored at will, a splendid feat of engineering.
If not, a rapidly expanding swiftly operating lethal solution would suffice.
Strange times and bizarre topics to discuss…
I wonder which option will be implemented, if ever…
“We still have a chance to be cruel. But if we are not cruel today, all is lost.”
– Kaarlo Collan (Pentti Linkola)
Kind and warm regards,
ABC
LikeLike
LikeLike
Thank you.
That’s my point. After a certain scale, I feel uncomfortable with the idea of control.
I prefer collapse (and everything it entails) to achieving such a level of control over the reproductive behaviour of the species. (Knowing humans, I believe the lottery would never be fair 🙂
I understand, other might feel other wise. I have not much say in any of this anyway 🙂
I trust this reality 🙂
PS: I don’t think we will exactly go back to hunter gatherers. Some things will remain and introduce differences for the next iteration.
LikeLike
Damn good question by Hideaway: “Is it worth trashing what’s left to buy a few more years?”
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-19-2024/#comment-778645
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a comprehensive presentation by James Howard Kunstler on his views of world affairs.
As always, biophysical wheat is mixed with political chaff, but overall very good.
It’s interesting how our views shift with time. I remember thinking Kunstler was a hard core doomer, now I think he’s an optimist. 🙂
I like his new theory on history:
In the Q&A Kunstler discloses that he believes anthropogenic climate change is BS.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Breaking news: Biden drops out of the race.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/21/biden-to-drop-out-of-2024-presidential-race.html
LikeLiked by 1 person
Inquiring minds would like to know why Biden has sufficient mental capabilities to lead the US through multiple crises, including an escalating risk of nuclear war, for another 6 months, when he has insufficient mental capabilities to run for another term?
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLike
A puppet of whom?
LikeLike
The big private and corporate donators to the campaign.
I disagree with Musk, big money donations make all candidates puppets, including Trump.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Also, I’m tired of hearing that creature (Elon Musk) screeching about population collapse, even though the population is growing by 80 million per year.
Elon Musk is a con-artist just like Trump, he just does a better job of hiding it.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/twitter-employee-flees-home-elon-musk-mob
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/10/bill-gross-says-tesla-is-the-new-meme-stock.html
LikeLiked by 2 people
https://www.rawstory.com/secret-service-elon-musk-trump-ai-biden
LikeLike
There was talk about Biden dropping out for months. But the rumors got stronger the day after the failed attempt on Trump. I was so sure it would be at least a month or so if it was true.
If Martenson’s 2nd shooter theory is true, it will just add to the entertainment:
leader of elites: Alright, we failed to take out Trump. Time to drop Biden.
random elite: Drop Biden? (using hand gesture of gun pointing to head)
leader: No, you idiot! Drop him out of the election. No chance of Joe winning anymore.
random: Wont that look suspicious so soon after our failed assassination?
leader: Yes, and thats exactly what we want. The dumb masses will eat it up and be even more distracted.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Interesting essay.
I’m right there with you at the top of ‘collapse mountain’, yet am still drawing completely different conclusions from it. I wish you guys had any historiographical chops at all, and MORT is truly an embarrassing theory.
You are right about fire being the first energy constraint. You’re wrong about it being some kind of aberration, or about us being superior and separate because of it, or about it necessarily leading to agriculture, or fossil fuels.
We have, as of yet, only one example of the history of a detritovore to study – us. And our history is littered with chaotic contingencies. From where we are now, the point may be semantics – but we could have easily spent millions more years burning shit and fucking around with small-scale mobile agriculture without causing a mass extinction event. And we just got unlucky that our planet was booby trapped with fossil fuels.
And fuck. MORT. The thing about theories of mind is that there have actually been developments in that arena over the last few centuries, and shit makes a lot more sense when you update your ToM.
LikeLike
ditch the mort garbage and read lacan. what you’re actually talking about is the emergence of the symbolic order.
the first constraint is fire.
the second is just language. a properly materialist 21c structuralist linguistics is required, not ‘mort’.
LikeLike
Not a fan of the MORT bashing, but I am interested in what you’re saying (you’ve got that fast eddy confidence level that annoys the hell out of me, but also hooks me in 😊).
Never heard of Jacques Lacan. Looks like his book Écrits is the one to go with. Saw this review and maybe I’ll start here (if I ever decide to go down another big rabbit hole): Lacan isn’t an easy read. If you’re interested in learning about Lacan’s ideas, it’s probably a much better idea to start with something like Zizek’s How to Read Lacan, which will give you the concepts without Lacan’s sadistic writing style.
Let me know if I’m terribly wrong with this as a starting point. Thanks.
How to Read Lacan by Slavoj Žižek | Goodreads
LikeLike
Now I understand the disconnect. I was searching for Iacan rather than Lacan.
Lacan is a psychoanalyst grounded in philosophy which means he makes shit up and describes it with fancy words.
I prefer behavior to be explained by evolution and thermodynamics.
But to each his own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Lacan
LikeLiked by 1 person
My previous experience with rude people that are hostile to MORT is that they have no idea what Dr. Ajit Varki’s Mind Over Reality Transition theory actually says, yet perceive it as a threat to their world view, often but not always, because it provides an evolutionary explanation for our species’ unique belief in god.
To ensure we don’t waste time engaging in a discussion on the merits of MORT, would you please confirm you understand MORT by summarizing the theory in a sentence or two?
LikeLike
Did anyone hear about what is going on with 13th and 14th gen Intel CPUs?
LikeLike
Very interesting, first I heard of it. Does not surprise me because cpu’s are now flirting with the limits of what is possible.
Four and a half years ago I upgraded my system to a 3rd gen AMD Ryzen with 8 cores. I went for medium performance and a modest 65 watts of power. I don’t overclock because I had reliability problems with overclocking my previous Intel system.
I am super happy with my system and it is plenty fast enough even for tough tasks like x265 video encoding. I expect I won’t need to upgrade again.
Moral of the story: stay away from the cutting edge. Complexity is too high today on the cutting edge for my taste and reliability expectations.
LikeLike
LikeLiked by 2 people
Love this. Michael Dowd fans will recognize it for sure. He always used this slide. I even remember the specifics. BBC report by Luke Kemp that studied 88 civilizations in a 4,000-year time span (3000bc-1000ad).
And they all collapsed in 225-300 years (I was never clear on how that is calculated…. day of one of when people started showing up at a new city? day one of when they are considered an empire?)
Definitely puts me in the mood for some good old Dowd videos. Thanks.
LikeLike
Biden Stands Down – History Will Damn Him
LikeLiked by 1 person
The US Literally Cannot Repay Its National Debt.
The Congressional Budget Office has admitted that the US national debt cannot be repaid.
LikeLike
Hideaway is right, the curtain does not match the carpets.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-19-2024/#comment-778681
LikeLiked by 2 people
Dr. Tim Morgan puzzles at why we are so energy blind, given that energy’s importance is so obvious.
I have on several occasions introduced him to MORT. He didn’t absorb it. Almost no one does. I rarely try anymore.
LikeLiked by 2 people
B says the west will fall soon and Eurasia will continue a little longer. Maybe. The world is so interconnected today that I would not bet money on this.
I also see no evidence that WWIII has been cancelled, as his title claims.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/time-of-troubles
LikeLike
I read this before you posted it. I thought it interesting that he hypothesized that the West (and mostly the U.S.) would fall/collapse and stop buying “stuff” from China. He thought that China would be able to pivot to selling the crap they sell us to the rest of the world. I don’t think any system (chains of buyers/sellers/producers) that can pivot so fast that they also don’t fall. I think the part about abolishing WW3 is just hopium. If Trump makes it to the presidency he will pivot to China and Iran being the threats. That’s not going to work any better for the U.S. Fools in charge of the U.S.
AJ
LikeLiked by 2 people
Gail Tverberg today explains how the economy really works.
Relevant to Paqnation’s post, Gail discusses how fire assisted our dominance of the planet, and she also reviews the critical diesel supply.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2024/07/22/how-does-the-economy-really-work/
LikeLiked by 2 people
HHH @ POB says we might expect some bargains from AliExpress before everything collapses.
If you wondering what prepping items AliExpress has to offer, I’d start by checking out the flashlights and headlamps. I’ve found super quality lights at really low prices.
Note that HHH provides a counter argument to B who thinks Eurasia will do better than the west. Also recall that the US still produces the most oil.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-19-2024/#comment-778693
LikeLiked by 1 person
Woohoo, we’re #1!
LikeLiked by 1 person
yay! Go humans 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLike
Hey Rob,
how good are those walkie talkies you bought?
nikoB
LikeLike
On the most important questions, range and quality of sound, I have not yet had an opportunity to have a friend help me do some tests. I am confident these tests will be positive because this radio has been super popular with gazilions sold, and a stable design that does not change frequently. I even read that it is popular with Ukrainian soldiers.
On everything else I am very impressed. It’s a solid, well built, sophisticated two-way radio at an amazing price.
On the negative side, it’s a complicated device, and a SOB to program with the keypad. I purchased the optional programming cable and use an open source program called CHIRP to configure the frequencies and options which makes the task quite manageable.
I liked the radios so much, and after thinking through typical SHTF use cases, I bought 2 more and now have a total of 4.
I got the last two with an optional 3800 mAh battery instead of the standard 1800 mAh battery. In addition to a longer operating time, the bigger battery makes the radio easier to hold, although there is nothing wrong with holding the small battery version.
Here is the 1800 mAH radio I bought:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005424987520.html
Here is the 3800 mAH radio I bought:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005471867807.html
Here is the programming cable:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005192422888.html
P.S. I just checked, and as anticipated, they won’t ship those radios to Canada any more, so it seems I got them just in time.
LikeLike
ebay has them too
LikeLike
Knew I would see these comparison videos soon. We are way ahead of the movies pace which takes place in year 2500.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I love that movie!
LikeLike
Me too. Its actually a bad movie, but the number of good/funny ideas in it makes it an all-time cult classic. If you’ve never seen it, at least watch this clip. (no need to keep going down the overshoot rabbit hole because this scene explains it all) 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLike
Wow!! I used to laugh at this stuff, but now all it does is gross me out.
I’m with you on our leaders being insane… but so are the citizens. I imagine every planet that has experienced the “Peak” to be similar (with the collective insanity) at this end stage of the process.
For the people like us that can see it so clearly… 2027 cannot come soon enough.
p.s. Makes me look back at certain stages I was at and laugh. I mean at one point I was all in with Dowd about getting nuclear pp’s shutdown, migrating trees, and helping some animals make it through the bottleneck. LOL… there is no possible way to do anything correctly when the insanity level is this high.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m working my way through the Lars Larsen book on net oil exports that el mar recently posted.
So far I’m impressed and enjoying it. He’s asking the same questions I asked in the early days of my overshoot awareness., and he asks the same question I asked in reply to el mar.
It seems the export land model triggers denial on steroids, even for peak oil experts like Berman, Hagens, Tverberg, Friedemann, Murphy, St. Angelo, etc..
Larsen needs to learn MORT.
Hideaway, you should add export depletion to your story. No one else is talking about it on the sites you frequent and your star will rise farther.
https://un-denial.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/lars-larsen-the-end-of-global-net-oil-exports-13th-edition-2024.pdf
LikeLike
I’m surprised that you say Art Berman is not a supporter of the ELM as he was the one who introduced me to the concept in a reply to a comment I made on his blog many years ago.
I have to say that I always use it when considering what’s going on in USA actions around the world (Afghanistan still confuses me). I think there are some very clever people at the heart of the American permanent government who know exactly how important oil is and exactly how important the ELM is to their allies if not themselves- Venezuala and Canada will keep the western hemisphere going for a while-the rest of us not so much.
MickN
LikeLike
I try to read and listen to all of Berman’s work and I do not recall hearing him mention ELM, even in recent big picture recaps he has done on Hagens’ podcast.
Perhaps I missed it? But given the importance of ELM it’s certainly not front and center with Berman.
Could there be a flaw in the ELM theory that has caused it to drop from favor?
LikeLike
I agree with you that some people in western governments understand the implications of ELM, although probably not our elected leaders.
Larsen argues that given the growth rates of China and India they alone in a very few years will consume 100% of net exported oil.
This probably explains the recent extreme hostility to China by Europe/US with policies in essence to “keep China down”.
LikeLike
Hagens/Berman say total oil supply will be 50% lower by 2030.
Larsen says forget about total oil supply because net exported oil will be zero by 2027.
LikeLike
The assumption that oil exports to China and India will remain steady, let alone grow, while exports to the rest of the world are declining precipitously is questionable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Perhaps ELM is overestimated. An oil exporting country that makes most of its revenue from exported oil is not gong to balance payments if they start reducing exports vs increasing expenditure due to oil use. The internal economy will likely de-grow through inflation and internal oil use will reduce due to lower demand.
LikeLike
Maybe. I can imagine intense pressure not to export when Joe sixpack can’t get gas for his F150.
LikeLike
ELM has been hidden for the last decade due to the US shale fracking, reducing the USA’s need to import oil on a net basis. Once the shale boom is over ELM will really rear it’s ugly head and be far more prominent in everyone’s thinking.
All that ‘net oil’ that the US didn’t need to import has been taken up by other countries that increased their imports. Once the shale revolution runs out of places to drill, then the fall in shale production and overall US production will fall rapidly, with prices skyrocketing especially for importing countries.
I think Lars is incorrect thinking it will be India and China that keep importing as much oil as they do, it’s going to be the US demanding a lot more from world markets, and printing the dollars to obtain it, which no-one else can do. It’s probably why the US will be prepared to go to nuclear war to keep the US dollar as the main trading currency as without it, they can’t import the oil they will want.
Whichever way it goes, and assuming the US, India and China all get to import a huge amount of the remaining exports, by military force if necessary, then there will be precious little for the rest of the world.
If the US shale fracking runs out of places to drill, and those ells deplete very quickly, right around the time where Saudi production and Russia’s production falls off a cliff, then we are in the period of accelerating decline of oil. It ill be right around then as the rest of the world that’s not able to import oil and all the exporters, wake up to all the minerals and metals they can’t get because they come from ‘the rest’ and enter massive decline due to shortages of everything.
Assuming TPTB can also see the above, is anyone willing to bet the US suddenly either makes nice, or invades Venezuela and we have a rapid increase in Venezuelan oil production, all traded in US dollars???
BTW, I’m not posting much, and might miss a few comments, as wife and I away for a few days..
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m still working through Larsen’s book but so far it seems we have a big 2027 problem even if US shale keeps going well beyond 2027. I’ll report back as my understanding of his thesis improves.
LikeLike
Hi Rob and friends,
Hope all are going well in these tumultuous times. Thank you Chris for your thoughtful and passionate essay, it’s been a privilege for me to witness some of your evolution in thinking and feeling over these months and I feel comforted and validated through travelling my own journey together with everyone here. I have a few thoughts on humankind and fire but will try to find another time to share them as today I just wanted to add to the topic of how the world will really start to unravel when oil exports decline.
Be that as it will, I believe our current systems will implode just as definitively when food exports decline significantly, and surely that is just a season or two around the corner with all the climate disruptions to production as well as increasing energy pressures involved in growing, harvesting, and transporting foodstuffs, not to mention on-going and new wars. Energy security is of course foundational to food security, but while stocks of oil still have perhaps a few years to play out effectively, knowing where our next meal is coming from is an even more immediate concern. It is obvious that food needs to be replenished adequately on a regular basis for everyone, but there is every indication that food security across all demographics and geography is becoming increasingly precarious.
Olive oil, coffee, cacao are among the notable crops that have risen in price due to decreased production but still can be obtained despite declining export levels, but what happens when staple foodstuff production of rice, wheat, corn, and other grains become inconsistent? Once nations cannot feed their own people with the staple crops that keep riots at bay, then there will be no exporting as there will be no surplus, and then even wealthy nations such as ours cannot buy what is not available on open market. India gave an example of how this could be when exports of certain basmati rice were curtailed last year. The UK and much of Europe are dependent on importing food, probably more so in this past year due to record climate anomalies. As it is, inflationary pressures are becoming rampant, and more are making the choice of heat or eat. How many more seasons of underproducing yields can we weather before the grain silos empty?
When the masses really wake up and realise the fuller implications of permanently empty grocery shelves, we will have entered the end phase of our civilisation, for who and what can control the hungry and fearful hordes let loose to upend so-called stable society? Even perceived scarcity will provoke drastic responses, as every manner of atrocity becomes a justifiable survival mechanism when faced with starvation or even the possibility of losing one’s food, either already sequestered or access to.
So whilst we speculate on the timeframe of our oil depletion, let us not forget the wolf already at our door.
I was raised to appreciate and eat every grain of rice in my bowl (which represents a bead of sweat on the farmer’s brow) and how reverently I do so still! May you and your families enjoy abundance of sustenance for yourselves and enough to share for as long as possible.
Namaste, friends.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Gaia, hope you’re well.
I think you’re right that food with be the biggest issue, and most of our threats will lead to food shortages.
I am wondering when our record temps will start to impact food supply. I asked Panopticon at https://climateandeconomy.com/ to bias his news searches for food issues and he replied he is not yet seeing too many problems.
LikeLike
Hello Rob,
I’m well, just over the top busy with what is life and trying to make the most of every bonus day. I am so glad you had such a restorative time fully immersed with nature recently and hope you will be doing more of that soon.
I check ClimateandEconomy daily as it’s grounding (and as well depressing, but that feeling perhaps pushes me even more into the earth!) for me to not shirk the evidence of what is exploding all around us every day. Every day I see news of record heat, floods, massive storms with grapefruit sized hail and reading between the lines, I know that must impact food production and delivery, whether directly or indirectly (and nothing is really indirect when it comes to energy). There are regular stories of crop failures and warnings of shortages from farmers who report worst ever harvests from many factors. I think many people are getting to a point of eyes glazing over at seeing flooded out cars and roads and we’re even getting immune to any reaction since it’s such a common scene now, but they can’t seem to extrapolate to flooded out crops and loss of food as part of the same process.
Poor countries are facing this threat even more urgently and we can see it in the instability of Africa and Bangladesh, it just hasn’t hit home for us yet because we still operate on a financial system that allows us to take more than our share of the food, and we still have access to energy to eke more from the ground in the usual modern agribusiness way. It’s expected that Africans keep starving and have unrest and war, they have been all our lives, but it’s not good news to suggest we in the almighty Empire may go the same route. I think the media being as blind to energy overshoot as it is, will not willing pursue stories that emphasise the further fragility of our civilisation. Above all, they are the sanctioned mouth pieces of the governments whose main reason for being is social order and stability, and food insecurity is the last thing anyone wants to proclaim to the masses. Recall the UK gingerly urging people to have 3 days worth of food in their pantry in case of emergency? Any more hints that something big is around the corner will spark panic buying and the house of cards will tumble from there.
I now look at bags of rice and beans longingly, lovingly and with so much gratitude for all they represent.
Namaste, everyone.
LikeLike
I also feel gratitude for every meal.
It’s the middle of summer here and an hour ago we had an unusual thunder storm that delivered the heaviest rain I can remember in over 10 years of living here, including winter storms.
LikeLike
Thanks for that Gaia. (and I look forward to your thoughts on fire and humankind)
“a season or two around the corner” is definitely the feeling of the day isn’t it? And with the 2027 ELM and Lars thing above (that I know nothing about). And with Hideaways prediction of 27-2030… LOL, the hits just keep on coming.
We are so close to the end that the anticipation is starting to help me rather than give me more anxiety. I’ve never had your appreciation of eating every grain of rice. But I am slowly getting there. Early in my journey I had to force myself to remember that the plate of food I was about to eat, used to be alive and I need to be grateful. It comes more natural to me nowadays. And if I don’t eat everything, then I give it to the dog, or save it for later.
Its kind of the same progression that I’ve had for bugs/insects. All I’ve ever done is kill them. I am now at the point where if we have something in the house, my roommates know not to kill it because I’ll get mad as hell. They just let me know what they saw and then I deal with it. Whether it’s a beetle, fly, spider, scorpion, grasshopper, etc., I will transport it safely outside. In the last year, the only thing I am guilty of willfully killing is a couple of cockroaches (hey, I’m not perfect 😊).
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s put a smile on my dial news, Chris, as in our household I don’t even kill mosquitos! (but sometimes I ask my husband to dispatch them if he needs to, haha!) Live and let live is my policy as best as I can. I have been known to kill wholesale colonies of ants, so of course there are exceptions when it comes to which civilisation survives when two collide in the same space. In the end, the ants, cockcroaches, mozzies, spiders will come out just fine without us, so just think that every one you rescue will be able to propagate their genes, now isn’t that a worthy mission?
Do you have a good rice (or any grain) and bean (any variety) recipe in your repertoire? I would be happy to share a few if you would like as for me this is the ultimate comfort and nourishing food. So frugal and simple yet I always feel this so called peasant food gives more satisfaction than any repast for kings and queens. Here I will also put in my plug again for the fabulousness of pressure cookers. Rob and I have already sung their praises in earlier times but I would say this is an essential worker device, prepping or not.
All the best to you and your household of wondrous creatures.
LikeLike
In case Chris is not interested I am definitely interested in rice & beans recipes.
LikeLike
Me too, most definitely
LikeLike
Cool beans. I will start with the most simple yet totally satisfying combo (at least to my taste), easily digested and provides a good protein profile along with fibre. It’s red kidney beans and sticky rice, also called glutinous rice (you can find this in Asian grocery stores) or if you cannot find it, use sushi or arborio rice. The idea is that you want a chewy, sticky texture for the rice, almost melting, that goes really well with the softened beans. It may be that this consistency is an acquired taste for non Asians but I think most would enjoy it at first try. I find this combo has a decidedly Asian flair and therefore the final flavour profile goes with that.
Grains and beans are perfect for pressure cooking, so much so that I think it’s almost essential as otherwise you would need to have them simmering in a very heavy casserole for hours or in an electric slow cooker (we energy freaks try to maximise efficiency wherever we can, for form’s sake). When I have my wood combustion stove going, I put them in a cast iron casserole the oven overnight but not everyone has that possibility (and certainly not in Arizona!)
I’m not a stickler for definitive measurements (this will probably annoy you, Rob, sorry!) but because rice and beans are so forgiving, and especially the glutinous rice absorbs whatever amount of fluid and changes its consistency to suit, so the proportions can be a bit loose.
Soak 1+ cup of dried kidney beans and 1 cup glutinous rice overnight (you can use the same bowl to soak), you can adjust the proportion to your liking in subsequent batches, sometimes you might feel more beany or ricey.
add-ins are finely chopped ginger/garlic/onion/carrot, use amount to your liking, but it’s also just great absolutely plain. If you are into sea vegetables, this is a good opportunity to use a strip of kombu, wakame or what have you.
Drain the kidney beans and rice, add to pressure cooker with add-ins, and add enough water to just cover the ingredients, then add more to cover to a depth of about an inch. So there will be about an inch of water over the layer of solid ingredients, this is where you can be a bit flexible depending on whether you prefer a wetter or drier consistency the next time.
A note on size of pressure cookers, these quantities would suit a 3L cooker, but if you only want one pressure cooker, I suggest getting a 6L one which is a good all purpose size.
Add a splash of oil (I use macadamia, but whatever will be fine, the final flavouring will have toasted sesame oil) to help prevent any foaming from cooking that may clog up the vent in your pressure cooker (at least this is what they always tell us in the cookbooks, but the modern ones probably don’t have this issue, and of course you shouldn’t over fill past the maximum mark, usually 2/3 of the pot).
The cookbook mavens also always tell us not to use salt (or acidity like tomatoes) when cooking beans because that toughens their skins (you add it after they’re cooked). I sometimes follow this only because they sound so official and intimidating that you will ruin your beans (and what kind of idiot can’t even cook a pot of beans?) but then again, it may have a scientific basis. I often use tomatoes when making a bean stew/soup and can’t notice much difference, besides, tougher bean skins are good for chewing practice.
If you really want to go fully Asian in flavour, a splash of mirin now would be appropriate to give it a hint of sweetness (and that has some salt in it, so what the heck) but not necessary.
Lock the lid according to your pressure cooker, bring to high pressure, lower heat to just maintain at high pressure and cook for 25 minutes, then turn off heat and let it naturally release pressure to remove the lid.
The rice will be almost translucent and the individual grains will be mushed and sticky, but the beans will be intact but should be soft. It may be more solid or even a bit soupy depending on how much water you’ve added, but either way, it will be great. Enjoy your red beans and sticky rice with a good swig of toasted sesame oil, tamari, and possibly a splash of balsamic vinegar. Finely chopped scallions would go nicely, too. I think this is such satisfying comfort food, in fact, it makes me want to make a pot of it right now! Leftovers absorb more water and the consistency is firmer, perfect for making rice/bean patties and pan-frying to crisp them up, try this too!
Let me know what you think if you happen to try this. Enjoy!
LikeLiked by 1 person
This sounds really good Gaia. I’m going to try it. Thanks.
Is soaking the rice & beans overnight for energy conservation? Or is it to remove the gas causing compound in the beans? Or some other reason? Wondering if I can skip it in exchange for extra cooking time if I don’t plan ahead the previous night?
LikeLike
Hi Rob,
Soaking the beans and rice is to cut down cooking time (which is already reduced greatly by the pressure cooker method) but in this case, glutinous rice cooks more evenly when soaked for at least 6 hours, as the grains absorb moisture and then achieves that coveted “sticky” consistency. Red kidney beans in particular take longer to cook to become soft, so a long soak is probably wise to plump them up for more even cooking. It is suggested that soaking starts to activate the bean which is really a seed and that may change the nutritional profile a bit (as in more usable and healthful compounds). The soaking may also help remove some surface sugars that contribute to gas production, but the water will need to be changed several times during the soaking so that may not be practical, and the amount of gas reduction is variable between batches of beans, type of beans, and most critically, the person’s digestive environment.
Our obsession for reducing gas production is a social norm only we humans have an issue with, all other species fart at will and happily. Gas production actually means our microbiome is actively breaking down compounds for us (one of the products are short chain fatty acids which help with blood sugar regulation and decreasing inflammation) and if you regularly eat pulses, your microbiome will evolve in species and quantity to maximise extraction of the extra nutrients for them and you. The particular stench in some gas is in no way detrimental, in fact, it probably was the result of ingesting healthful foods that contain sulfur, for which cruciferous vegetables are noted. Some people will always produce more gas than others, it has more to do with their particular mix of microbiome which is unique to each individual.
I would suggest trying the recipe (such as it is) first with soaking and the amount of water I recommended and then seeing if the texture of the rice and beans suits you. Then you can tweak it to your preference and have a starting point from which to do so. Soaking does reduce the time needed to cook significantly even in the pressure cooker, and as it’s energy free (you can give the soak water to houseplants, they will appreciate the extra starches leached out) probably the best habit to be in. I cook beans so often that it becomes just routine to pick out some type of bean and soak overnight. If you don’t happen to use it the next day, you can drain and refrigerate the soaked beans until you are ready. Some smaller pulses like lentils do not require soaking before cooking, especially the split ones as soaking will release too much starch.
If you want to cut down on the amount of time to cook dried pasta, you can use the same logic and soak the pasta for some time (at least until they swell and become a bit soft) before dropping them in a rolling boil to finish it off to the consistency you prefer. The timing all depends on the type of pasta, size, shape, amount, but this can be worked out just by experience, keep trying the pasta until done. Instead of draining the hot water down the drain, I usually put a bowl underneath the colander and save the hot water which has dissolved starches and other nutrients and may be immediately used for another dish (like water to cook beans, saving more cooking time!) or as the base for soup, this may take some planning but with experience becomes second nature to have another thing that requires hot water ready to cook whenever you are draining pasta.
Sorry for being so long-winded (ha ha, that’s a bean pun!) in my reply. I’ve got some spare time these past few days and have enjoyed sharing it through being able to produce these lengthy (and hopefully interesting and useful) comments.
Hope all are going well. These are the strangest feeling times, every day is waiting for the inevitable but somehow we still lucky enough to have our “normal” lives to continue. Cooking and eating are pleasures we should never take for granted Cooking beans is a very satisfying and invaluable skill to cultivate! Growing beans even more so!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wonderful answer, thanks. I’m uncomfortable doing anything unless I understand the why. Now I’ll soak.
LikeLike
No one saw this coming. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nice presentation on the universal human belief in life after death, and yet no mention of the most obvious question.
Why does only one species have this belief?
LikeLike
Yes, you are right there is no questioning why only one species has this belief (how would we know that no other species has a belief in life after death?? (since we can’t communicate with them)).
I hated this presentation in that he defaults to religion (unknown mysteries) and unknown history to posit that there is a “soul”. Just crap thinking that can’t face the fact that when we die our consciousness ceases to exist. We are ephemeral like all life. Without death evolution would not have been able to make “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful” (Darwin).
AJ
LikeLiked by 1 person
Which leads to other interesting questions:
Why is there only one species with an extended theory of mind?
Why did god emerge simultaneous with an extended theory of mind?
Why is there only one species that exploits fire and fossil energy?
Why are most brilliant polymaths able to understand everything except overshoot?
Why is there only one species capable of asking these questions?
LikeLike
Rob, I have to send you an interesting video of a parrot that is afraid of dying
LikeLike
Dr. Bret Weinstein thinks the Biden death rumors are designed to undermine those investigating deep state involvement in the Trump assassination attempt.
My guess? Biden got covid again because he’s transfected with mRNA, and because of his age is quite sick and will take a few days to recover, with some risk that he dies.
What a crazy world we now live in now!
LikeLike
Why would people accept claims of Biden being dead based on mere speculation and no hard evidence?
LikeLike
1) A lot of citizens no longer believe anything they are told by our leaders.
2) There were several pieces of evidence pointing in that direction.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What evidence suggested Biden was dead?
LikeLike
LikeLiked by 1 person
If Biden died in office, why wouldn’t there be an official announcement? What would TPTB gain by hiding Biden’s death?
LikeLike
Nothing that I can think of unless the goal is to divert attention from the deep state trying to kill Trump. Please watch Bret Weinstein’s video above. It’s his theory, not mine.
LikeLike
His hypothesis is intriguing, but I’m not sure it passes Occam’s razor.
LikeLike
I didn’t watch the video, but I made the mistake of looking around for info about it. I’m sure its all nonsense and Joe is in the Hamptons right now laughing his ass off.
While looking around I came across this clip of rachel and van. I have not checked in with these ass clowns lately. They have accelerated their bullshit to ungodly levels. Or maybe they actually believe it. No way. If I had to guess, its like every lie or overdramatic thing they say directly adds more bling to their paycheck. (either that or they have a gun pointed to their head).
I dont mind hearing “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction”. That’s easy to fall for. But its downright insulting when I can see through that shit without even thinking about it. Check out Maddow at 0min15s and then Jones at 4min49s. (its only like a minute for each)
LikeLike
Simplicius’ blog post today goes into detail on analysis of behind-the-scene machinations in the White House and Capitol Hill, and suspects that the CrowdStrike outage may not have been accidental — that it was a cover to erase evidence from FBI servers about complicity in organizing the hit on Trump.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/extraordinary-events-taking-place
LikeLike
Mike Benz also suspects there is more to the CrowdStrike story. Me? I think it was honest bug released without adequate testing.
LikeLike
Of course I could be wrong.
LikeLike
… and then there’s this, further down in his Twitter feed:
LikeLike
This story mentions that Shawn Henry, CrowdStrike’s chief security officer, had sold $1.49 million of CrowdStrike stock on July 15:
https://finbold.com/insider-trading-2-million-bet-against-crowdstrike-stock-days-before-outage/
Henry is a former assistant director of the FBI.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I listened to Steve Gibson’s analysis of what happened with the CrowdStrike caused computer failures.
In summary we know what happened but not how it happened, and CrowdStrike has said nothing to shed light other than they know what happened. Apparently they’re tight lipped because they might lose their company over this.
Steve Gibson is confident tech sleuths will figure it out even if CrowdStrike does not come clean.
We currently have no reason to believe it was malicious nor any reason to believe it was an honest mistake.
Skip to 1:10:45.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s not our imagination. We really are more stupid since covid.
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is that a reply to another tweet?
LikeLike
No, I was trying to show Dowd there is non-conspiratorial explanation for why the WEF says we will own nothing and be happy.
He’s overshoot blind like almost everyone else and is therefore unable to connect the dots.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Chris Martenson is doing good work on the assassination investigation.
LikeLiked by 1 person
LOL. I just watched the entire video. 100% a second shooter. Martenson is good at this.
As far as what’s next, this comment says it all: “They will look into it with some type of warren commission, produce some documents, … and seal them for 75 years”
No more overshoot videos from CM. I predict he will be wrapped up in this for the rest of his life.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeh, us doomers seem to be vulnerable to rabbit holes.
Covid consumed several of us for a couple years before we were able to return to overshoot.
For me I think it has something to do with being obsessed with what most people deny.
LikeLiked by 2 people
On a homerun streak lately with older movies that I’ve forgotten about. Thought I’d share.
LikeLike
Thanks for the tips. I’ve queued them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Meanwhile, the mainstream continues to give our morons in charge a pass.
https://www.rintrah.nl/its-raining-glycans/
LikeLike
After many writings to my inner circle about overshoot, collapse, exit strategies, evils of porn, NDE, alien conspiracies, evil white skin theories, religious/spiritual stuff, covid conspiracies, billions of people suffering, and just plain old fascination with death… they are now finally worried about me. LOL.
I share too much with them, no doubt, and throughout the years I have received messages (by email and in person) from some of them thinking I was a crazy crackpot conspiracist, or even a morbid guy that wants to kill myself. But nothing too serious, more of just the vibe of “Jeez Chris, what are you smoking?”
With my newest essay, I am actually getting genuine concern from them about my health and safety (two heartfelt letters so far). Not including my roommates (mom & brother) who usually talk about my writings or whatever bullshit I’m spewing out that day. But this essay has them completely silent.
Prior to this, the normies have been able to tolerate everything I’ve dished out to them. But start talking about how harnessing fire is off limits, and all of a sudden they’re ready to put me in a straitjacket. Wouldn’t be shocked if they all show up at my house to sit me down for an intervention. Sucks being the only sane person in the room. 😒
I like them to see where I’m at in my journey, but I should not have sent this to them. Too radical and incomprehensible for the non-overshoot mind. (funny that from un-Denial’s perspective, I bet this was one of the least controversial things I’ve ever written)
p.s. Found this link on Mike Roberts blogsite. It’s behind a paywall so I was not able to read it, but it looks interesting. Thought I would share in case anyone has a subscription to newscientist.
Hey Mike, I thought you would have been ragging on me by now for using your catchphrase in the title. 😊 (Btw, it was a shout out to you to try and get you back here posting again where you belong)
Why did humans evolve big brains? A new idea bodes ill for our future | New Scientist
LikeLike
I talk a lot less these days to my friends and family about overshoot. No one is interested in trying to understand what’s really going on in the world.
They were incapable of independent clear thinking about covid issues and that’s a lot less complicated and threatening than overshoot.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hi Chris,
Hope you’re going well and there’s a break in the heatwave in the Phoenix area. It’s refreshing to check in here daily and be able to really hear and see one another and know we’re not alone, actually it’s essential viewing for mental health and I don’t even want to contemplate the day when we will have to go it alone again in our doomsview (well, that may be the least of our worries then as it must mean grid failure and suddenly we will all be living doom alongside all the masses who will finally and suddenly get it, but oh too late, too late!)
Just wanted to add a little more fuel to your illuminating fire essay. I cannot understand why your circle should find it so incendiary, as you said, it’s probably one of the least inflammatory topics raised here. I think I should snuff out these puns now before I get burnt.
Don’t know about you but when I was in grade/middle school in the States we were practically force-fed learning all about Greek and Roman mythology which now I understand shows us how nothing changes for humankind in terms of our archetypical tendencies. But back then, it was all about trying to remember what god/goddess was responsible for what and the Greek names and their Roman counterparts. One of the myths that impressed was that of Prometheus, the being that stole fire from the gods to give to mankind and thus usher in our ascendency over all creation through the advent of civilisation. Mankind deemed him a hero but the gods foresaw how the knowledge of fire would eventually lead to man’s dominion and rejection of their own mystery and power, so they suitably punished Prometheus in a particularly gory way. He was chained to a rock and daily an eagle came to eat out his liver (this seems a recurring theme) which regrew overnight so the torture could extend into eternity. This is how damning the original possession of fire was viewed even in classical days; it was understood that man’s trajectory began with its harnessing and once unleashed it could never go back into the box (oh wait, that’s another myth). Man literally became like the gods and eventually superseded them. And because we thought we could conquer nature, we banished ourselves from that elysium existence of all other creatures who integrally are at one with nature, so I can see your conclusion that we are no longer deserving or fit to take our place on this planet as a species. Before fire, we were a species born of this planet and evolved to this planet like all others, and since fire we believe we are above the planet and the planet should bow to our bidding. No wonder the gods got angry (and nervous).
Back to the perennial question of how did this one progenitor species Homo evolve into H sapiens sapiens (I think it is debatable that we have the right to the extra sapiens denomination, if even the first), and yes, fire mastery certainly was the fateful adaptation that spurred on our mental, cultural, and technological evolution. But how were we able to do so when no other species could tame fire? To me, the answer seems so simple that I am more than a little worried that my brain is shriveling and I’m missing something obvious. It’s all about our biology and physiology–namely our physicality as a medium-sized bipedal mammal that sports relatively long limbs and most fortuitous for primates, opposable thumbs and extreme finger dexterity in a hand appendage of a size that can manipulate a wide variety of objects.
In our evolution from the primate family, we fulfilled a niche in which true and full-time bipedalism was an advantage, that was the first distortion necessary before we could gain full mastery of our hands. We really have our feet to thank for the mess we’re in! If our mobillity predominantly depended on all limbs (as with the other great apes) then we would not have been able to free up our upper limbs and hands to have the capacity for complex movement and manipulation as is needed for progressively skilled tool making and hunting, not to mention gathering wood in quantity and quality for consistent fire making. I have seen in docos chimps carrying sticks and branches but they cannot maintain a natural bipedal gait for long distances and eventually have to drop (or throw) what is in their grasp. The other great apes’ anatomy just do not suit walking upright, whereas ours dictates nothing else. Sure, their hands and fingers are as nimble as our own and definitely stronger but without the use of their hands full time, the ability to evolve ever more complex range of manipulations and being able to do so whilst also moving at speed and purpose (as in pursuing game or an adversary with a spear in hand) would be limited, whereas we fire apes went ape in technological development when we learned to harness fire, the one talisman that ruled all. Once we learned we could gather fallen wood to keep a naturally started fire going (probably from lightning strike or bush fire), that was the great leap forward into the stratosphere. From fire came protection from cold and predators, cooking of food which unleashed more nutrition more quickly, more skilled tool making, more complex communal living that furthered language and stabilising culture, and eventually led to agriculture and pottery which allowed for the storage of foodstuffs, making for class division enforced by more sophisticated weaponry–well, we know how this story will end. (and you can’t blame me for that uncontrolled run-on sentence, fire history is like that)
Fire was the catalyst for our ability to use our innate intelligence to control our environment but it still took certain anatomical constructs to be able to capitalise the potential. I have no doubt there are other species, for example elephants and whales, that have the consciousness and intelligence we arrogantly attribute to ours, but the possibility of these creatures being able to actively manipulate their environment to the degree we have achieved is nil, not because they may not be able to think it through, but because they don’t have the physical structures to do so, starting from the first iteration of fire mastery and then following on from that. Whales evolved to be in water, so fire-making is out (and probably a good thing as orcas are scarily clever already!) Elephants use their trunks for many feats, including gathering wood and tearing down trees, so potentially they could have learned to make fires, but even if they regularly used fires for their survival and evolutionary advantage, the lack of two full-time opposable thumbs would curtail further development as we hominids have achieved. Similarily, some animals may be upright (penguins, kangaroos, dinosaurs) but they lack the front appendages that could create ancillary items for survival and dominance (hard to manipulate talons of a velociraptor to do knitting, for example). In us, we had that perfect storm combination, and although we’re pretty special (and I don’t mean that in exactly a positive way), I suppose it had to happen some time in our planet’s history, because it did! Somewhere along our evolution after we got fire, MORT was born and here we now are at the end of this civilisation, most probably to end by hellfire as never experienced before. It does have a nice circular closing to it; don’t we all love tidy endings?
That’s enough lava-spewing from Gaia for one day! Please don’t be shy in telling me I’ve misfired on this completely and it’s not as simple of a conclusion as I’ve intuited it to be. But really, we should give our feet (and our pelvic girdle) all due credit for getting us so far, where would our brains be if we didn’t evolve to walk and think at the same time?
Namaste, friends.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ok, that was a good run with my essay. Rob, you can put Gaia’s up now.
I was too wrapped up in tool making stuff, but you are so right about the #1 pre fire important evolution (or freak accident). I’m glad you spoke about your concern of this being too obvious. Same feeling I’ve had with fire.
Great fire stuff with the Prometheus story and best uncontrolled run-on sentence ever. Your essay really helps me understand how we activated the Great Reset. 3mya free up arm limbs, 1.5mya fire, 100kya MORT, 12kya agriculture, 200ya fossil fuels. Thats a good quick fail-safe plan to take care of a freak accident. I bet those time frames are similar across the universe. 3mill being average but show me the planets that had the rare under 1mill or over 10mill. Those would be interesting.
Excellent stuff Gaia. And thanks for getting me to think even further down the line. I’m telling you, in all the universe I’m betting this site is the closest to having the puzzle solved regarding their own story. Those universe Olympics I was talking about a while back… we would take the gold medal, I know it. 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
Whoa there, we might really invoke the ire of the gods if not only we claimed mastery over our world but now also understanding of the universe! I really enjoy the opportunity to run these thought experiments on the stimulating topics you and others have brought to the table here. On several occasions I have wanted to add a comment but time constraints prevented (as you will well know now, it would have ended up a rather long essay), nevertheless, I have delighted in the discussions and tangents of my own mind. It’s so good to be sharing this journey with like-minded and hearted fellow Homo sapiens. I feel very fortunate indeed to have found my tribe of undenialled fire apes, although it took all of evolution to do so! Come what may, collectively we had a good go of things and knowing you are here gives me much courage to endure with as much grace and acceptance as I can our certain future.
Namaste.
LikeLiked by 2 people
LOL. I know huh? I’m about to get a lightning bolt to the head for even thinking I have it all figured out 😊. (although, I don’t think we know jack shit about the universe story… but we are getting very good with our own species story)
And I feel the same way as you about like-minded and hearted sapiens. Like Rob always says, it’s good to know that a few fire apes were able to make sense of the insanity.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Very nice.
Don’t forget there were many competing tribes of uprights, and many cousin upright hominids, until one tribe broke the extended theory of mind barrier, invented god, and killed off or out-competed all the others to extinction.
LikeLiked by 1 person
How can we forget our species’ modus operandi since year dot (that would be the start of MORT)? Sigh, we are still following that paradigm of us against them although in theory we are one species originating from the same tribe. We’re all brother and sister hominids on this planet but each think their god is the right one and never once did we stop killing each other and competing for all available resources. We should rename ourselves Homo patheticus patheticus.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nicely expressed. Got me to wondering about the timing of the diaspora out of Africa viv a vis the mastery of Fire. Humans are after all a more or less tropical species, and how far could we have ranged into the far temperate zones without fire?
Aside from the direct impact of fire mastery and the sequence that followed, it also enabled spread to the entire planet.
LikeLiked by 1 person
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/climate-change-is-ending-the-sun-belt-boom-162819401.html
Climate change is ending the Sun Belt boom. It won’t happen overnight though.
LikeLike
Good, I hope this ends the snowbirds that we get here in AZ for six months a year. Mostly from Canada and Minnesota. You always know when they have arrived because the grocery store lines are double and triple the size of the norm.
LikeLike
LikeLiked by 2 people
If we want to save what remains of the Biosphere, a reduction in the human population is a biophysical necessity.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/07/mm-7-ecological-nosedive/
LikeLiked by 1 person
After a careful 5 seconds of investigation they blamed Russia for France’s train sabotage.
Maybe it’s payback for killing Russian sunbathers on a beach?
Or maybe it’s climate change activists pointing out the hypocrisy of the Olympics. If we can’t stop playing games to reduce CO2, what will we do?
LikeLiked by 1 person
https://www.dw.com/en/france-investigates-massive-attack-on-fast-train-network/a-69771241
But still, electric trains still have a lower footprint than planes. At least instead of having people from all over the world travel to one place to compete, why not instead have more regional competitions? Or at least rotate the Olympics between cities that have already hosted them, so that new infrastructure does not have to be built.
https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/ey-how-is-the-olympics-advocating-sustainability-in-events
https://www.earthday.org/paris-2024-olympics-a-greenwashing-nightmare-or-a-genuine-effort-to-save-the-planet/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukrainian-atacms-blows-over-crimean-160906716.html
I had not heard of the drone attack on Russian sunbathers until now.
LikeLike
It was a missile with cluster munitions. Western media ignored the attack on Russian civilians.
LikeLike
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/26/the-unbearable-anthropocentrism-of-our-world-in-data/
LikeLike
More from the article
LikeLiked by 2 people
Nate Hagens today explains why he is silent on “solutions” for our overshoot predicament.
I left the following comment.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I looked through the comments and didn’t see yours. Youtube apparently doesn’t like calls for population reduction.
LikeLiked by 1 person
To see Rob’s comment (and now Nate’s reply), you have to change the sort-order from the default (Top Comments) to “Newest First” and search for un-denial.
Nate’s reply:
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’ve read Nate Hagen’s reply several times and have resisted the reflexive answer. So here are my thoughts:
Nate’s reply is distressingly inadequate, for multiple reasons.
When it all implodes I don’t think Nate’s (considerable) work will have helped anyone and is likely to do the opposite.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thank you for this. Good analysis.
I too was troubled by Nate’s response and have been debating whether to reply. I think I won’t.
He just doesn’t get it, and I’m not going to change his mind.
My summary I think says it all: “It’s not complicated. We’re in overshoot…”
He makes it appear complicated, which obscures the reality of what will happen, and what we should be doing in response.
Is this intentional due to the drive for clicks or influence from donors? Or is this just another example of MORT? I’m thinking the latter. He never discusses the significance of MORT which means he probably has somewhat normal denial genes.
It’s true that it’s too late for population reduction to solve the problem. That opportunity was lost when we collectively denied the 70’s limits to growth study, or earlier when Malthus and others warned us.
But that does not change the prescription for today. The goals now should be to minimize suffering and to reduce further damage to the ecosystems that will be required when non-renewable resources are depleted. The only way to do that is to get our population down.
LikeLiked by 5 people
I did have a comment that seems to have disappeared into the either…
Rob the difference is the scale of the overshoot people think we are in. Because of fossil fuels we are in massive overshoot, yet Nate, who is involved with Earth Overshoot day seems to have a belief of minor overshoot.
I’ve always had a problem with Earth overshoot day in that it only looks at renewable resources, not the non renewables that actually sustain us, therefore gives a false indication of the magnitude of overshoot.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not in the spam folder. Sorry nothing I can do to find your missing comment.
Not sure if that explains Nate’s behavior. Maybe. I know he’s super worried. He’s definitely unable to speak clearly and plainly.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Our internet went out just as I hit ‘send’, so it was really lost, pity. It had a couple of links, one to the usual overshoot graphs of just above carrying capacity and one of wind turbines on a natural hillside, except for the huge pads and roads built for the wind turbines…
I was basically agreeing with you that the only rational response is to try and minimise suffering to humans and the natural world by having less humans. The magnitude of our problem is so vast that everything else is just noise.
LikeLike
Often when I put a lot of work into a comment I press ctrl-a (select all) and then ctrl-c (copy) to copy it to the clipboard so if the submit fails I can retry by ctrl-v (paste), or I can paste it into a document file until the problem recovers.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I also felt Nate’s answer was inadequate but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I also suspect that openly calling for population reduction fares poorly with the Youtube algorithm.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I saw this comment “What a completely content free 23 minutes. Are you just trying to fill dead air?” OMG LOL that is so mean but kinda funny
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hey Mike. There’s the ragging I was waiting for. (in case anyone missed it because it has no date, click the pingback link above the nate hagens post). I was writing you back trying to make me look right and you wrong on some of the points you were most definitely nitpicking. Deleted it when I realized all I was doing was nitpicking back.
Just like you, I’m too locked into my way of looking at it to consider anything else: All species are on their own with figuring out the flame (straying off grid, but it takes a freak occurrence like standing up full time which leads to multiple order effects). Harnessing fire is then all about preparing you for the next stage into the madness of being capable of having a continuous larger negative affect on your planet (resource provider) while patting yourself on the back every step of the way, unable to see the obvious. Yes, I’m sure many tribes were able to see it and resist (like un-Denial). But overall, the combo of eToM/MORT (superiority & separation) wins every time.
And if you dont believe MORT, and these superpowers were coming regardless (the ability to destroy the natural world and the ability to deny the destruction) … the story still makes sense. Just makes more sense with MORT.
And you just couldn’t resist throwing in the cheap shot about my lack of research😊. I’ll never be known as someone who does good thorough research. I was a salesman for a long time. It shows in my writing. I’m always trying to sell my story. I use aggressive language to make it look like I know what I’m talking about. This sometimes makes me sound like a know-it-all jerk 😊. I’ve accepted it. And every once in a while, I’m actually good at doing the research. The complete opposite of my style is Gaia. Her response to my essay was excellent and had no hint of trying to sell anything. Because her knowledge and writing skills are top-notch. (but I would say she and I both write from the heart… whatever that means… actually I think it means she has a good heart and I have a bad one 😊)
But good to see you are still writing Mike. It should be here though. Take care.
LikeLiked by 1 person
BTW Chris, thanks for the essay on fire. I also think fire is a large part of our domination and eventual undoing, but realistically it’s human use of ‘tools’ to a far greater extent than any other animal. Certainly fire is the most important ‘tool’ we ever used to harness which separates us from every other living creature.
Movies like 2001 A Space Odyssey, which depict the apes using a tool for the first time as the beginning I think is incorrect and it’s fire as a tool that really separates us from the rest. Without fire humans would just be another tool using ape, but with fire we became dominant.
Fire was used by early humans, before Homo Sapiens, so fire alone was not responsible for our domination of the planet. Homo sapiens had something else that allowed larger groups to co-operate with each other, which is where MORT fits in.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Looks like large groups may stop cooperating in times of scarcity.
LikeLike
Thanks Hideaway. Appreciate it.
Ya, looking at fire as a tool instead of an energy constraint does make sense to me.
LikeLike
LikeLike
Most Europeans oppose it, too. Macron, Scholz & Co. got whacked in the June European Parliament elections.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Important discussion on benefits vs. harms of covid mRNA transfections:
And a summary and analysis of the discussion:
LikeLike