By paqnation (aka Chris): Humans Are Not a Species

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:

  1. Predigesting food by cooking allowed resources to be shifted from the gut to the brain (see Richard Wrangham). 
  2. Increasing productivity beyond what muscles alone can accomplish. 
  3. Disrupting the natural carbon cycle to influence the climate. 
  4. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. Gloriously and stunningly separate & superior. 
  4. 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.

821 thoughts on “By paqnation (aka Chris): Humans Are Not a Species”

  1. Still on a roll with old movies that I forgot about. Two more

    1. The Way (2010) Drama/Comedy. American father travels to France to retrieve the body of his estranged son, who died while attempting the pilgrimage to Spain’s Santiago de Compostela. He resolves to take the journey himself, in an effort to understand both himself and his son. (full movie free on yt link below)

    2. The Last Winter (2006) Horror/Psychological thriller. Sent to evaluate the environmental impact of oil drilling in the Arctic, James clashes with the drilling crew’s chief, who wants to get the job done. Strange events begin to plague the crew, and they are soon cut off from the outside world.

    This one is a doozy and should be more popular among the overshoot community. Has that same ice cold, claustrophobic, paranoid vibe as John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). With a strong presence of wetiko (wendigo) throughout. And Ron Perlman is in it, so that’s all you really need to know. 

    The trailer gives too much info, but this 4min clip is safe to watch and will give you a good idea what it’s all about. The writer/director seems to have a good understanding of overshoot. He has another film called Wendigo (2001). Never seen it, but gonna try it this weekend.

    The Way 2010 English (youtube.com)

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      1. A lot of people were offended by the Olympics opening ceremony. I don’t watch the Olympics but I saw some clips on X and I’d rather not discuss it other than to observe that our leaders have lost their minds.

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        1. At this point fighting over who is performing at the Olympics opening ceremony is like fighting over the arrangement of the deck chairs on the titanic, IMHO.

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        3. Actually that scene (the scene with the drag queens) was not a recreation of the last supper. It was a recreation of the festival of Dionysus. How many people judged that scene just from short clips without seeing the context? Frankly, I didn’t find it offensive, It just looked a bit silly.

          Also, I am still mad at NBC for skipping a bunch of nations during the parade of nations.

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  5. Dr. James Thorp shines a light on the darkness at all levels of our governments.

    https://x.com/jathorpmfm/status/1816968684587397384

    In an unprecedented show of freedom, transparency, and honesty, the Czech Republic is the first country in the world to release all its citizens’ de-identified COVID-19 shot date/mortality data in a “case-time-cohort series” (> 10 million citizens). This is identical to the New Zealand data including 5 million citizens released by Barry Young.

    The jab is now proven to be lethal, precisely consistent with Pfizer’s data, CDC/FDA VAERS data, Rancourt’sdata, Eudravigilance, UK Yellow Card, McCullough, Kirsch, Kory, Marik, Bowden, and many other data sources, including the multiple studies my research group has published. Check out my research groups recent publications…. perfectly consistent with the Czech Republics data, New Zealand data, Rancourt’s data and many more:

    Part I
    Thorp, J., Benavides, A., Thorp, M., McDyer, D., Biss, K., Threet, J., & McCullough, P. (2024). Are COVID-19 Vaccines in Pregnancy as Safe and Effective as the U.S. Government, Medical Organizations, and Pharmaceutical Industry Claim? Part I. Preprints.

    https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202406.2062.v1

    Part II
    Thorp, J. A., Benavides, A., Thorp, M. M., McDyer, D. C., Biss, K. O., Threet, J. A., & McCullough, P. A. (2024). Are COVID-19 Vaccines in Pregnancy as Safe and Effective as the U.S. Government, Medical Organizations, and Pharmaceutical Industry Claim? Part II. Preprints.

    https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.0069.v1

    Fascinating, the USA, once upon a time, was the leader of the free world and has become one of the most deceitful countries in the world. They have achieved the Stalinistic approach to the COVID-19 shots and hiding not only their own damning data but also that of Pfizer’s. The USA continues killing its own citizens with illegal, false claims of safety and efficacy. In contrast, a former Stalinistic, Communist country shows complete truth, honesty, and transparency. Go figure.

    Reminds me that every human being and nation has the potential to promote EVIL as good, DARKNESS as light, and BITTERNESS as sweet.

    Another lingering question…. The USA has about 34 times the population of the Czech Republic. The USA could have released the same de-identified “case-time-cohort” series in the first half of 2021 and conclusively answered the concern of the COVID-19 vaccine safety. Instead, they hid behind flimsy excuses like “Oh that would violate HIPPA”. No, it would NOT. All you do is de-identify the data – exactly what the Czech Republic did.

    What about the large states? Why didn’t they do the exact same thing that the former Stalinistic Czech Republic did? It makes you wonder if there was a pay-for-play, a quid pro quo, or a cooperative care agreement in place, exactly what my research group proved by FOIA with the CDC/HHS capturing ACOG/ABOG/SMFM, with the CDC/HHS capturing the hospitals, with the CDC/HHS capturing Walgreens and CVS drug stores, with the CDC/HHS capturing the faith leaders, with the CDC/HHS capturing the media outlets and major academic centers like John’s Hopkins and so very many more.

    A great example is Florida. Why wouldn’t the Florida Department of Health / Medical Board or the equivalents in Texas, New York, or California initiate their own transparency and honesty to protect their own citizens? Isn’t that what the government – federal and state agencies – are responsible for doing? All they had to do was the same thing the Czech Republic did. This is illogical unless the HHS CDC captured all of these state agencies too.

    Florida has twice the population of the Czech Republic. Why has the Florida Department of Health been in such a lock-step narrative with the draconian and lethal COVID-19 policies of the HHS/CDC? Florida could have easily answered the question that the Czech Republic just answered. Florida should take the lead of the Czech republic and release the records now.

    The Czech data, New Zealand data, Rancourt data and many other sources all indicate that the COVID-19 injections cause significant injuries and deaths. This is exactly what Pfizer’s post-market data, the HHS/CDC VAERS data, and Pfizer’s data clearly document. Yet the fed and state governments ignored Pfizer’s data and tried to hide it for 75 years.

    One can easily extrapolate the death and injury data to any state based on the Rancourt data and the Pfizer data. Of course, that would be a huge underestimate because the USA and most states were far over the vaccination rate of the 17 countries that Rancourt studied. It can easily be estimated then that as of September 2023, the COVID-19 vaccines killed 48,200 Floridians and injured 1.6 million Floridians.

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    1. Why hasn’t mRNA at least been pulled from the market? Wouldn’t that be a first step in the right direction?

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      1. Patents are expiring and efficacy is waning on conventional live attenuated vaccines so the pharmaceutical industry views mRNA as vital to rejuvenating their vaccine (and other drug) business. It’s a dream platform that in theory would permit them to test once and then release multiple products by simply changing the genetic code.

        After years of unsuccessful attempts to make mRNA safe and effective enough to pass normal testing barriers, they helped to foment the covid emergency so they could get mRNA approved with minimal and fraudulent testing. Then they pushed policies for vaccine mandates so the unvaccinated control group would be eliminated thus making it difficult to assign injury and death to the vaccine rather than the disease. Now they block release of transparent data that would cause mRNA to be withdrawn from the market.

        Pharma is a criminal racket that is getting away with their crimes because their big money influences regulators, scientific journals, researchers, doctors, politicians, and citizens.

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        1. I don’t normally write about Covid, because like the Trump assassination attempt to many people go down too many rabbit holes for me to delineate truth from crazy. But I think you hit the nail on the head with your statement:

          “Pharma is a criminal racket that is getting away with their crimes because their big money influences regulators, scientific journals, researchers, doctors, politicians, and citizens.”

          AJ

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  6. Preptip:

    I made Gaia’s rice & beans recipe (in comments above) and I really like it.

    For add-ins I used coconut oil, a few dried mushrooms, and a little dried wakame although I think it would be perfectly fine plain.

    This is a great recipe to practice for SHTF because:

    • low cost ingredients
    • long shelf life ingredients requiring no refrigeration
    • low energy: overnight soaking and pressure cooker
    • flexible energy: use any source of heat that can boil water
    • healthy balance of protein, carbs, fiber, and fat with zero sugar
    • flexible ingredients: flavor with whatever you have on hand
    • multi-use: make extra and eat cold for lunch in the farm field while working
    • delicious comfort food

    When served it definitely needs salt. I used soy sauce but plain salt would be fine. I also drizzled some sesame oil for extra flavor but this could be skipped or replaced with a different fat like butter.

    One negative is that we don’t grow rice in Canada however white rice has a near infinite shelf life so it’s possible to stock lots when times are good.

    I am going to make this a regular in my recipe rotation.

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    1. You could grow barley, wheat or rye to use in place of rice – eventually. Kay at the Koanga Institute (NZ) uses grains in this way.

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    2. So glad something so simple hit the spot for you Rob (and several billion other people who eat some form of grain and beans everyday!)

      Did you end up using a naturally starchy rice (like glutinous, arborio, or sushi) or regular rice? Red beans would also go very well with brown rice which has a nice chew, I forgot to mention this variation before.

      If one day we don’t have as much rice or grains available, you can just increase the proportion of beans and other add-ins, and decrease the amount of rice to stretch it out and yet still have the nice difference in texture. One of the reasons I think this is excellent comfort food (as well as being nutritionally sound and economical) is that it does take some time to eat and each mouthful feels substantial, which is a great way to really enjoy the whole experience of eating.

      Another tip is just cook the soaked red beans on their own (then you only need to cover them with water and a little bit more) and flavour them as you wish. Then you can combine them with another cooked starch such as potatoes or pumpkin and that would be another excellent complete food with mixed texture.

      I think I shared in the past a recipe for dahl and basmati rice with coconut milk, another fabulous legume and grain combo. I think you already have a great recipe for this in your own repertoire.

      In the process of deliberately simplifying my life (at least in certain aspects like cooking), I am finding that I am really enjoying the natural taste and textures of pure food and simple is so innately satisfying. There is also a theory that it may be more efficient for digestion and nutritional extraction in not trying to mix too many different foodstuffs in one meal. For example, some days I just feel like eating an entire head of broccoli (don’t ignore the stalks, very tasty and crunchy!) or cauliflower either stir fried or steamed (along with some beans or maybe grains) and that is the bulk of my meal. I get to really enjoy the experience of having an abundant portion of one type of food, and somehow before I know it, I did eat the entire thing! After some time of this kind of simplified eating, I find that I crave having this concentrated focus on a certain food or limited combination of food (like the beans and rice) and really enjoy it. It’s also has the bonus of an easier prep day for cooking and can be very economical (especially if you can grow the bulk of the vegetable matter). In my thinking, occasionally limiting the combinations of food is also a natural carry-over of intermittent fasting without forgoing food completely and may have the similar benefits for metabolism and sugar control.

      Let me know when you’re ready for another instalment of Gaia’s kitchen and weird food philosophy.

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        1. Hello Niko,

          I hope your summer garden is productive with some interesting surprises and I am happy to know you are enjoying the fruits (and vegetables) of your labours in full! Interesting perspectives on what is our most efficient source of energy and proportions of these sources. In my many years of experimentation, I have learned above all that humans are very adaptive and different diets can work to maintain homeostasis. For example, I am probably on the far spectrum of an obligate plant eater whereas we have heard from Perran that he is thriving on the other as carnivore. It’s a matter of working out which one suits your body the best, no one size fits all but we all agree that nutrients should come from real food.

          Happy eating and with good company!

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          1. Hey, it’s Gaia here who has accidentally (but maybe on purpose?) revealed her true name (both given and hybridised through marriage). I’ve hit all sorts of wrong keys today, first being Anon and now here I am, unmasked and happily! Some of you here already know me by Terry anyway, so I am very pleased to introduce myself to everyone else. I’ll still post as Gaia as that really resonates with me.

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            1. That’s weird, I thought I saw my post with my name and then after my reply, it reverted back to GG upon update. I am not only losing my name but my mind…

              My name is Terry Choi-Lundberg, by the way, if anyone cares to know.

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              1. LOL. Gaia, did you take some truth serum tonight? (if so, please send me a bottle 😊)

                Don’t worry, you are not losing your mind. WordPress does weird things with the name sometimes. It has a mind of its own.

                And although you have a lovely name, there is no way I can call you by that. You will forever be known as Gaia gardener. (and Brace Face 😊) 

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              1. Aha! Mystery solved! Thank you for your valiant effort (and lightning quick, I had to do a double take myself) trying to protect my privacy but I think it’s far too late for that as I’ve already exposed so much here over the past few years (don’t forget my bum-cleaning procedural).

                You have always advocated honesty and ownership of our truth, and trying to hide behind a moniker never really was my intention, originally it was more of a novelty that I could pick one and actually do this blog thing for the first time that I agonised over choosing Gaia gardener (not really, it was pretty easy to come up with that for myself) and now I really would like to take it to my grave (shallow, compostable shroud and no markings, of course).

                But everyone can feel free to know the name that I run around with for all the 99.99% of people who know me and are in deepest denial. They would never in a million years know I lurk here as Gaia so my anonymity is pretty assured. Amongst us here, I did have the pleasure to meet David who is practically a neighbour (David, if you’re reading this, hope you are going well, I haven’t forgotten about having you over at our property, too bad it’s not looking as lush as it could as the recent frost has decimated all the new growth) so he could vouch for my actual existence as a hominid!

                Namaste, friends.

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      2. Hi Gaia, I don’t stock arborio rice but I do stock medium grain sushi rice so that’s what I used. It turned translucent and sticky like you described. I also stock brown rice so may try that next.

        Thanks again for the great recipe. I think I will cook it frequently.

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        1. So pleased it went well for you, Rob. I think you will find yourself being creative with how to enhance or change the flavour profile as you like, but at the core it’s just lovely beans and rice. To be honest, after I posted it I had some doubts that it was either too simple or too different in texture for other peoples’ liking, as Westerners aren’t always a fan for that sticky consistency which seems to be universally adored by Asians.

          I must thank you and this site for my resumed love affair with rice. Recall that originally I was hesitant to eat rice as regularly as a good Asian should (which is daily, of course) for the arsenic contamination but having learned about overshoot, I realised that I will most likely die of something else besides poisoning and why keep myself a moment longer from enjoying one of my favourite foods if our time here is foreshortened (and rice may not be available sooner or later anyway).

          Rice is so integral to the Chinese psyche that the standard greeting is “Have you eaten rice, yet?” As a nation with a long history of catastrophic famines, one can understand that the Chinese people feel that true security (and thus the possibility of society, not to mention happiness) is food security. Methinks we in the West will only really learn this through hard experience.

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    3. It depends on your definition of sugar Rob. Rice pretty much turns to glucose very quickly in your digestive tract. It doesn’t contain fructose only glucose as starch. The release time is the factor but in general it is not healthy IMHO. That said finding a substitute is not viable for storage. Cauliflower is the best alternative but doesn’t store.

      Regarding pressure cooking. I heat my cooker up on a flame and once it has been gong for about 40 mins (depending on what you are cooking) I place it in a large polystyrene box and pack with blankets and leave overnight or all day. It is usually still piping hot 8 hrs later.

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      2. When I started my low sugar diet I studied rice and learned there is a wide range of glycemic index values (how fast it digests) for rice varieties.

        If I recall correctly, brown rice and basmati are pretty good. Jasmine is terrible. Medium grain white is in the middle.

        I don’t understand the reason you need to keep hot something after it has pressure cooked for 40 minutes. In my experience, the toughest piece of meat is done in 40 minutes. Gaia’s recipe takes only 25 minutes. Why do you need to keep it cooking longer than that?

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  8. Kurt Cobb today with an update on peak oil.

    https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2024/07/mexican-oil-production-to-decline.html

    It is not inconsequential if Mexico’s oil production drops precipitously from 2030 onward. According to the Statistical Review of World Energy (formerly produced by BP), Mexico is the world’s 12th largest producer of oil. But it is the likelihood that Mexico will be joined in the same time frame by many other large producers that should be troubling. The United States (currently number one) and some of OPEC’s members who exaggerated their reserves seem likely candidates.

    Here is another troubling and inconvenient fact: World oil production—using the proper definition which the EIA follows of crude oil including lease condensate—peaked in November 2018 at 84.59 million barrels per day (mbpd), meaning it has not reached that level since. The most recent production number available, March 2024, shows world production at 82.59 mbpd.

    (Those who are longtime readers already know that the peaking of world oil production does NOT mean that we are running out of oil. It means that the RATE of production is declining. And, since our economy depends on an ever increasing RATE of energy production to underpin its growth, this decline since 2018 is already affecting worldwide economic vitality in the form of high oil prices. Oil continues to be the largest source of world energy—almost 30 percent—and it is critical for transportation where it supplies more than 90 percent of total transportation fuels.)

    If we are, in fact, past the all-time peak of world oil production, expect more revelations in the next few years like the one coming out of Mexico last week.

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  9. If you are interested in the geopolitical and military strategies of the Ukraine war this latest essay by Simplicius the Thinker is a must read.

    He’s one of the best analysts I know of and this particular essay is special because it’s a Q&A which means he discusses all of the big picture issues in one place.

    Of particular interest are his comments on who is actually controlling our elected western leaders.

    Now if we could just find someone of similar intellect and integrity that is also overshoot aware…

    https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/subscriber-mailbag-answers-72824

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  10. B today explains the source of our productivity and wealth, and the implications of resource depletion, but thinks the serious problems are far in the future.

    https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-productivity-trap

    The Productivity Trap

    Labor productivity has nothing to do with labor. It was rarely a question of an average worker devising a clever way how to make more widgets per hour. Instead, productivity gains made during the past two centuries were mostly coming from machines producing stuff faster and replacing more and more workers. (Thereby making it appear as if an average worker who could keep their job suddenly became able to produce ten times as before.) As long as energy and raw materials — needed to build and operate those machines — were cheap, this approach predictably resulted in higher profits, ultimately replacing almost all highly skilled manual labor with automatic production lines and robots. This trend is about to end though.

    Towards the end of this century — on the other side of collapse — all the productivity gains the industry has made so far through automation will be lost. Manual labor by then will have already replaced almost all machines. Not all at once, but in a piecemeal fashion: first during outages, then one by one as blackouts and fuel shortages become ever more frequent. Finally, as all generators, transformers and other electric equipment break down, permanently. People will have to re-learn how to do things manually throughout the decades ahead: how to knead bread, how to grow food, how to wash clothes etc. without the magic of electricity. This will also leave much less time for office jobs, forcing more and more people to stay at home tending gardens and doing housework. And as the economy falters due to a lack of power and the loss of productivity, so will the need arise for more locally produced goods and services — requiring even more people working outside the current economic system. First slowly, then all at once as one critical tipping point after the other is crossed, and global supply chains finally break up. I’m not saying that you will live in a Mad Max movie, or in a Hunger Games episode in ten or twenty years from now— most likely not — but this is the direction we are heading. Due to the many variables, such as a financial meltdown, wars, natural disasters (made a thousand times worse by climate change), drastic shifts in geopolitics, the pace of resource depletion etc. it is impossible to provide an exact timeline on the complete deindustrialization of the (once) developed world.

    Returning to the land and a low-tech, low-energy lifestyle will not come from a rational decision to reduce energy use, though. As long as there is power in the socket and one has a day job to pay for the electric bill, very few people will give up on their conveniences and the efficiency gains achieved by using external power sources. Heck, if anything, a low-tech economy will be inefficient as hell — at least measured by today’s standards. It will require massive amounts of human labor, and produce much-much less goods per worker — think of harvesting wheat using scythes vs a combined harvester (2). Sure, a low-tech economy will come with much less resource and fossil fuel use in the end, but it will also leave less time and energy for wasteful activities and meaningless bullshit jobs. 

    Yet, this is still far-far off in the future. Many of you probably will not see this process fully unfold. The road leading to that future, however, has been already taken: the gradual depletion of rich mineral and fossil fuel deposits will leave us with no other option than to keep on simplifying our lives — implementing more and more low tech solutions — till we eventually arrive at a more or less sustainable state (3). As the saying goes, however, life is not about the destination, but the journey.

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    1. This will also leave much less time for office jobs, forcing more and more people to stay at home tending gardens and doing housework. …..

      That whole piece is beyond bucolic. It borders on the disgusting. Beyond obsequious. What the actual fuck!

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        1. Along the same lines… Sarah Connor is trying to do something that I was all about prior to understanding MORT. She’s making a collapse 101 for newbies.

          “This page introduces climate change to someone who may be unfamiliar with the details. This is ideal for a college-aged student (or older) who is just starting to pay attention. I’ve laid out the page so someone can get a good overview within a few hours.”

          I really like Sarah’s writing and her site overall, but this is the same thing as me sending overshoot emails to my inner circle. Rob’s site has made me too pessimistic, no doubt, but she needs to come on board with un-Denial/MORT so that she can stop wasting her precious energy and direct it into something that matters like trying to figure out how to get other people to see how big and important the denial factor is. (I have no idea how to do that of course, but I know it’s more important than sending more overshoot emails to the normies) 

          p.s. She has good sources on that 101 page, but it was funny to see a Paul Beckwith video there. Nobody brand new to this stuff should be diving into Paul. Need some time to work up to him. 😊

          Climate Collapse 101 (collapse2050.com)

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          1. In case you are not aware, there are a few collapse 101 sites. From the Resources section in the un-Denial sidebar:
            https://doomfordummies.blogspot.com/
            https://energyskeptic.com/category/books/book-list/
            https://energyskeptic.com/category/decline/indexofbestposts/
            https://www.collapsemusings.com/collapse-resources/
            https://collapsewiki.com/
            https://skogslars.blogg.se/
            https://postdoom.com/collections/
            https://www.collapse2050.com/mandatory-viewing/

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            1. Knew about a couple of those already but seems even more reason that we don’t need another one.

              I’m being too pissy though. Everyone needs to start somewhere, so the more the merrier. 

              Guess I just want to see some 102 sites: how to deal with our predicament while understanding that denial is the biggest obstacle.

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      2. LOL. Glad you said it. I’m sitting here reading B the last couple of weeks and can’t tell the difference between him and Nate Hagens.

        B used to stand out from the pack big time. Not lately.

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  12. Today, July 29th was International Tiger Day.
    In the past 100 years, Tiger populations have fallen by 95%.
    A consequence of Human overshoot.

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      1. Plenty of people were telling them it was a dumb idea to begin with. They also spend a lot of money expanding airports in NZ. Such a waste

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  14. Gaza has been shoved out of the news recently (At least here in the U.S.)

    There is now a polio epidemic in Gaza.
    https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-polio-epidemic

    Health officials in the besieged Gaza Strip declared a polio epidemic on Monday and attributed the crisis to “brutal Israeli aggression,” citing the large-scale destruction of water sanitation and waste management infrastructure.

    In a statement, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that the Palestinian enclave is now a “polio epidemic zone” and urged immediate international action to end Israel’s assault and “find radical solutions” to the territory’s lack of clean water, hygiene products, and sanitation facilities.

    The crisis, according to the health ministry, poses a threat to Gaza as well as neighboring countries and marks “a setback for the global polio eradication program.”

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  15. Hi Chris. Very interesting thoughts on fire, thanks for sharing. A small corrections for you and Rob, technically humans are the only species still alive today “to use fire“. There have been many primate species using fire, they are extinct now, most probably most wiped out by homo sapiens (us).

    I do agree with you that fire is an essential step in getting us to where we are and the beginning of serious ecological issues – our ability to do harm at a large scale. But fire is also life. For example, the sun is a big fire in the sky.

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    1. Hi Monk. For some reason I didn’t get an email for this reply. Was reading my essay again and just got lucky to see your comment.

      Thanks for the feedback. Ya, I need to stop lumping all homo into the same bucket. I struggle with the separation of it. All the same to me.

      Btw, funny how I told you prior to the essay that I wasn’t gonna go all “evil” with it. Ended up using that word like 20 times. Can’t help myself 😊. I did listen to those two podcasts you recommended and enjoyed them (especially the first one). Just didn’t fit in with the vibe I was going for. I had the sentence “Fire by itself it not evil, at all”, thinking that would cover it. But I should have added a line or two from that first podcast about how productive it is. 

      And ya, good point about the sun. 100 billion of those fireballs in our galaxy powering everything. Dammit, this would have been good stuff to add. The contrast of the two helps sell the scary evil harnessing part better. 😊 

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  16. Hideaway…

    #285: Energy and the credit ratchet

    Dr Tim … “serving the religion of “infinite growth on a finite planet”.

    That’s a brilliant little piece of reality saying so much with so few words.

    The second comment about it being impossible to replace ICEs with EVs is also 100% accurate..

    However I doubt that a ‘fortunate minority’ can have them for anything except short term. It’s the complexity needed to do all the mining, processing and making of every little bit of both the EVs and the energy (solar and wind) that relies upon a 6 continent supply chain that will be gone as everything simplifies.

    As complexity of the entire system of civilization unwinds to simpler modes, the energy needed to do so will go up not down. The massive complexity has provided a scale of energy use being more efficient than lots of separate nations/companies making virtually the same things.

    For example, instead of 2 or 3 computer chip makers world wide, imagine every country tried to make their own. There is a huge energy and material cost to localise which is hidden from plain sight by all research going in the infinite growth model.

    For the first time in modern history, we will have a world of less energy every year coming soon, so every thought of ‘localising’ whatever, will run into problems of building whatever factory and obtaining all the inputs necessary.

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  17. Found a great song last night. I think doomers will dig it. 7:50 is the best part, but don’t cheat😊. Better to listen to the whole thing and get the payoff at the end.

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    1. Hello Chris,

      Hope you’re going well. It’s good to see you back here on your page, holding the fort bravely and loyally. Thank you for sharing that piece, I dug it very much! Great lyrics, as you said, it should resonate with anyone who has taken our particular turn in the road trying to make sense of how we got here. At the end, we are who we are and acceptance of all of it, rising above the misery in witness to it, is still our salvation. At least that’s somewhat of what I got from it. You will appreciate the reference to fire and you would see as I did that the prop on stage looks like an upright spine (with even the correct curvatures and vertebrae processes sticking out) and eerily silhouetted hanging from it is a doll effigy, very creepy. So this is our anatomically proved, ancestral cursed, magnified by science, but ultimately redeeming song!

      I’ve been wanting to respond to several of your posts (as always) but not only do I have to find the free moments but also the correct head space, especially for one of the topics I have been meaning to add my thoughts to, that is end of life decisions, why, when, and my most likely how. I salute you for your honesty and courage to continue keeping this most poignant discussion open and with the generous intention of being a light forward when all others have gone out. It is a great comfort to me to be able to meet you heart to heart in this space before we leave it, with eyes open and held above suffering.

      Namaste, friend.

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      1. Hi Gaia. Thank you so much for the kind words. 

        Yes, I did appreciate the reference to fire. Funny, I now notice anything pertaining to fire (kind of like how I started noticing everything denial related after I found this site). And you’re right, that doll is very creepy (had no idea that was a spinal cord, good call). Love your entire line about the “ultimately redeeming song”. You are such a wordsmith.

        And I hear ya about needing to be in the correct head space for that other subject. Take your time, but I definitely want to hear your thoughts. (and no pressure, but I’m betting you could make a guest essay out of it)

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  19. Really good interview. Lots of inspiration and wisdom for how some might survive post collapse, and how to appreciate life today.

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    1. Thanks. He’s a cool dude with cool stories. Rare for me to see a three hour interview all the way through. 

      I used to watch Alone. The editing sucks, I do not recommend it. But I do remember Jordan being a kick ass survivor. 

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      1. Jordan’s experiences both in life and in “Alone” made listening to this almost 3 hour interview worthwhile. However, I think skipping the last hour and all the “god” crap would save those who find it illogical and waste of time. (Carl Sagen “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” comes to mind.)

        AJ

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    2. I apologize in advance for criticizing.

      I could not watch the interview. Tried a bit (even though I have always felt something off and disturbing with Lex Fridman) Here is what I see, what I feel and what I think.

      I see two people reeling with insecurities.

      I feel that shows like “Alone” program us to exactly the opposite of what we should behave like and are: it’s a competition, people are alone and in places where maybe humans should be off limits (cameras for sure). And man vs. nature, isn’t this the duality at the root of human supremacy? I feel the strategy of “divide and conquer” at work.

      I think it’s the completely wrong way to address our predicament: it’s not about lone survival of the last man standing in an unlivable environment. To me, it’s about finding a way to cooperate (not only with other humans) and finding a path so that we don’t end up with an unlivable environment over the whole planet. Better, it’s about encouraging the habits which make our place a little bit easier to live for most (again here not only humans). We are in this together and it’s not a competition. Survival is not a goal. Once our basic needs are met, then it’s time to play, explore many facets of who we truly are, go further.
      This whole culture wants us kept in the dark, making us believe that just living should be hard.

      At least, these “accomplishments” are purging Jordan’s fears out of his system. And that’s good for him. What’s good for him will eventually be good for somebody else.

      I’d rather give my attention span to Tom Murphy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueAJgUKVds4) than Lex Fridman.

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      1. Hey Charles. I liked the interview, but I totally agree with you about shows like Alone. I stopped watching because it was so contrived… but if I tried watching nowadays, my human supremacy radar would not allow me to enjoy it (I can’t even watch Tales from the Green Valley anymore). This random comment on Lex’s channel kind of sums it up:

        someone pls explain: why does this creature have a priority to survive over the creatures he hunts, all for the pleasure of creatures watchin him on screen? never ever witnessed anything more perverse

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        1. Hello Chris and Charles,

          Thank you for sharing your intertwining perspectives which resonate with mine on this topic of these competitor focused, homo sapiens fighting for survival, sensationalistic contrived distractions, of which I can say I have never watched. As much as I agree with you both that it’s not about doing it alone and success of our species should paramount over all other considerations, I believe these types of shows at least reminds the audience in often graphic fashion that other species are involved in our living, and at some point in the contact, the non-human party loses its life. And in these shows this is at least done first hand by the immediate individual benefiting most from this exchange, which is important to respect especially as the majority of us do not participate directly in the point of life taking of anything we consume for our living, be it plant or animal.

          We certainly do not survive Alone now, we need battalions of energy and human and animal slaves just so we can have the luxury of even thinking survival skills, including the stalking and killing of another creature, can somehow be entertainment. I wonder how popular a show would be to put regular everyday people into an abattoir, give them the tools to do what is done in there and see how long they last? And yet we depend on so many other people (often migrant workers) to do this very thing for us, so we can be isolated from that horror.

          Yes, there must be another way, and if we are to really survive, we will have to find it together.

          Namaste, friends.

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          1. Hello Gaia. Good points. And I’m with you about putting people in the abattoir (had to look that word up 😊) and seeing how long they last doing that job. Would be great if the show came on around dinner time. But of course it would get zero ratings (MORT would make sure of that).

            The documentary ‘Dominion’ (2018) was the most graphic thing I’ve ever seen regarding animal agriculture. It made me angrier than anything I’ve read about slaves and native americans. But the sickest part is that within a couple days I was back to eating meat and doing all of my regular food habits. 

            I like to try and pinpoint our “peak of what’s possible” moment. Cell phones with internet is my vote. But when I change it to “peak insanity” or “peak evil” the answer seems clearer. Fine dining, all you can eat buffets, and just the overall way we’ve turned food into entertainment. 

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            1. Yeah, I am totally with you. It’s just an insane and cruel joke that we’ve turned over our conscience to just a few taste buds. How mighty is the tongue, in both power of speech and gustatory indulgence. What a shame how fleeting is that addictive pleasure, a few chews of delight, an obligatory swallow and into sensory oblivion as the food gets past our gullet. Certainly the further along our alimentary canal, the less appetising we think that once choice morsel. Much of what we’re consuming now (and that is a telling word) isn’t even food by nutritional standards, but it’s all about taste, convenience, and novelty, and all served with a generous side of tribal association and tradition. Disparage some culture’s traditions (which heavily feature certain food as a binding ingredient) and you are dissing those people, and that can be a recipe for a fight.

              How is it that we’ve complicated and convoluted so much of what should at the foremost be sustainable nutrition (as food is for every other living thing) and caused so much suffering along the way by our hedonistic desires? I am guilty of being caught up in this decadence, for many years I believed the pursuit of food was a greatest pleasure, and I became obsessed with cooking and experiencing different cuisines to the point of collecting every new kitchen gadget, hoarding cookbooks and food magazines, and trying out new restaurants. At my peak craze, I lived in San Francisco which boasted the highest restaurant density of any city in the US (as well as second hand bookshops), so you can imagine I was like a pig (pork, bacon, ham, prosciutto) in mud. Being of Asian heritage, every manner of animal and their parts was fair game (I didn’t really get that adventurous but ironically enough, I relished beef tongue). I cannot honestly say that I gave much thought about how that animal came onto my plate, certainly not getting into an ethical discussion with any sincerity. And generally I was considered a really kind and thoughtful person, just only to certain members of my own species. I am not trying to say here that eating animals is wrong, only that at some point it became wrong for me.

              The amount of energy that goes into what we in the West consider normal food is astounding, and I’m not even talking about the energy costs of growing, producing, and transport. Think about the process it takes to bake a cake. You have to take primary ingredients such as eggs and butter (needing refrigeration) and process them along with already processed ingredients (sugar, flour), using specialty equipment and then go the other end of the temperature spectrum to heat up an oven for some considerable time to cook up a final product that has less than desirable nutritional benefits but nevertheless is a crucial cultural staple which if omitted or refused in certain occasions would seriously affect one’s social standing. And of course it tastes good and all the better if it looks good too, so cake decorating takes the energy expenditure to a new level. I once enrolled in a professional baking course and as part of the curriculum we learned to make traditional European cakes with fancy names and expensive ingredients that took hours of time to get just right (some of these cakes required several days of effort to complete), only to be cut into pieces (part of the grading was on how even our portioning was, cutting a cake into 10 pieces by sight is challenging) and devoured in seconds.

              How can we few at the top continue to invest so much of our time and energy and meaning into something that is ultimately frivolous to our nutritional and caloric needs, the prime reason for food? Haute cuisine (artistically plated up morsels, usually unpronounceable and unrecognisable, that cost a day’s wage and wouldn’t feed a sparrow) is the epitome of our delusion. The pursuit of exclusivity and novelty is a symbol of status and power in our culture and always has been; from study of the menus of banquets all through history, it is clear in the food realm we have outdone ourselves in this regard. The most famous recorded Chinese banquet featured 108 (an auspicious number) different dishes served in 6 meals over 3 days! Some of the more exotic offerings were camel hump, leopard fetus, ape lips, rhinoceros tails–really does make one wonder if humans ever got past the oral stage in development as we stick anything into our mouths.

              These days I am very satisfied with much more plain and simple fare, (recall the rice and beans epic) but I do take ownership of the long explorative journey that got me here and I respect others’ experiences and choices. May all be nourished in the manner you need and may you always have enough in your bowl, one day at a time.

              Namaste, friends.

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              1. Thanks for sharing Gaia. Your cake story reminded me of Sid Smith’s breakdown of an average fast food meal. Ya, what a colossal waste of time, resources, and energy spent for something that rots your teeth and has zero nutritional value.

                Was watching Little Miss Sunshine recently. Love the movie but this scene stuck out big time. Its written so that the audience dislikes the dad for trying to get his little girl to not eat ice cream. In a sane universe the dad would be the hero and not the villain.

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                1. I’m pedantic : “in a sane universe” the dad would know that ‘fat’ (the component in food) is good for you and essential. A fat body is not good for you. They are not equivalent. Excess sugar and carbs are stored as fat. Not all body fat is equally bad for you :

                  • fat inside organs e.g. the liver, is the worst.
                  • fat around organs (visceral fat) is bad.
                  • subcutaneous fat, in excess, is less bad.

                  150 comments on that video and only 2 appeared to understand.

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                  1. Give it another try Rob. No child porn, just satire about kids being pushed into beauty pageants.

                    A fun road trip movie with a feel-good story.

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              2. Hi Gaia. I’ve been enjoying making dal again. Such a simple, yummy and nutritious dish – real peasant food. Now that I’m living on a bit more land, I think I will try my hand at growing lentils and pulses.

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                1. Hi monk,

                  That’s such a delightful thing to share that you and your husband are really immersing yourselves into your homesteading life. I haven’t had any extensive experience with growing pulses at any scale (yet!) but that’s hopefully on the agenda soon. Can you grow pigeon pea, that’s a great legume for both soil improvement as well as forage and fodder plant for your chickens and the beans are small but very nice and can be prolific as a plant grows like a shrub. Also another legume to try is the 7 year runner bean which is perennial (comes back at least 5 or so years, you must have a wintering period which you do in Canterbury) long pole bean that produces tons of beans which you can eat as green beans (pick them when young and still tender), otherwise leave to mature and completely dry on the vine for very beautiful purple speckled beans that are bigger than limas and very tasty, nutty and chewy, perfect addition to soups and stews (or bean burgers).

                  I join the more than billion people who love dal and I could easily eat it daily as they do. Are you planning another trip to India to see the family or perhaps you may be getting visitors from there?

                  How are you going with balancing sugar and energy levels? I can imagine you are really looking forward to the longer, warmer, and sunnier days ahead and getting ever more into the garden, which will work wonders for body and spirit.

                  All the best to you and your tribe in NZ.

                  Namaste.

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                  1. We grow a lot of broad beans in NZ too, those are a bit of favourite. I’m am so excited for summer now! Bring it on. Blood sugar has some improvement with eating protein breakfast every day now – eating my chicken’s eggs 🙂 Getting an updated test next week so fingers crossed. Chickens are a nightmare for vege gardening, and building a coop is expensive and time consuming, but has to be done soon 🙂 I especially love split pea dals. No major plans to go to India again, but hopefully there will be another family wedding soon.

                    How is life in the land of Oz? I think you guys had a much colder winter than normal?

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                    1. Hi monk,

                      Life here in Oz, like NZed is amazing compared to what’s going on in the rest of the world, aren’t we just the luckiest birds to have these Southern nesting grounds? I am chuffed that you like broad beans so much, too, have you tried them roasted, just toss with some oil, salt and pepper (or add curry spices), roast at 200C until the skins start to pull back and char a bit (about 10 minutes if preheated) so they are a bit chewy on the outside and soft and floury and nutty inside–so yummy!

                      All the best to you and your family, another family wedding soon sounds like they may have taken a cue from you!

                      Namaste.

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                    2. Roasted broad beans are super yummy! Gosh I sometimes can’t believe my good luck to have been born in New Zealand. Enjoy the spring Gaia 🙂

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                    3. We just built a big coop and house to contain 2 flocks in our old feijoa orchard (we inherited about 80 trees). Made it out of old wooden fence panels and free corrugated iron. Very cheap but yes it took 3 days working with the kids. Very worthwhile and they will hopefully help control the guava moth that spoils a bit of fruit up here.

                      https://photos.app.goo.gl/yoH6HW34VVDBNinM6

                      We have a ridiculous amount of eggs coming in daily at the moment. Nikki and our youngest have started glass egging. Seems to preserve them well.

                      https://www.farmhouseonboone.com/water-glassing-eggs/

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                  2. Hi there. I have managed to track Pigeon Pea for growing amongst our more temperate pip and stone fruit. Nikki has just sprouted our first seedlings so looking forward to getting them in the ground and seeing how they go this summer.

                    We have spent the last few days getting in another dozen or so fruit and nut trees in new food forest area. The nuts we have spread out a bit around the property because of their size. We have macadamia, walnuts, pecan, almond and chestnuts in the ground now. We also planted some sugar maple for the grandchildrens pancakes 🤔

                    We need to pay more attention to beans this year for eating fresh and shelling out. We have runner beans and other interesting varieties to go in. 🙏

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              3. The amount of energy that goes into what we in the West consider normal food is astounding, and I’m not even talking about the energy costs of growing, producing, and transport.

                Here is a first element in response to ‘there must be another way’.

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          2. While there is other, there is me,

            while there is outside, there is inside,

            while there is concave, there is convex,

            but is there?

            Expectations of the mind: what is direct experience, what is mental construct?

            Fist-and-palm: the mind takes off to see the world and is intercepted by its own representation.

            Where is It?

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            1. Dear Charles,

              I trust you and your family are well. I am always grateful for your presence and attendance to our collective conversations here. How I do see what you are, out of a sincere heart, to bring to light. For my part, I have found that as much as my spirit agrees that there is a limitlessness to ultimate existence, and as much as I may yearn for that release and formlessness that is all possibility, as long as I have a body and mind I cannot yet fully go there because it is this world, this collective construct and shades of reality, in which I live and continue choosing to do so. You would be one to celebrate my choice, any choice, to accept and witness both the joy and angst that radiates out of that particular delusion from which I anchor all other perceptions.

              For an example of how I try to balance between worlds within worlds, here I offer some ramblings that I trust you will be able to intuit.

              I have chosen to believe that I have yet some responsibility to other beings sharing the time and space journey here. It is my belief that esoteric realms are yet in their subconscious and it is my interpretation that they are asking for direct assistance very much based on this world of dualities, and so that is the level at which I am called to respond in succour as I choose. If one is hungry for physical food, that is what is appropriate and needful to give. If one is suffering a grief or grievance, to comfort and assuage are the congruous response. I have decided that the best way to try meeting another’s need is by placing myself in their perspective as much as I am able, and with the wholehearted intention of compassion and goodwill towards them. Most of the time, the other in my immediate circle of care isn’t asking for a philosophy that if embraced genuinely may lead them to overcome all illusion, they are just hurting and want to be acknowledged and cared for. I have learned that most do not wish their journey challenged unless solicited (a defining aspect of denial, as we here all know!) However, I am eager to have my worldviews examined and I am very grateful for your part in that.

              The “we” I refer to is my own distortion of myself and what I think of the other, if I can put myself in their place to be the other. But you have given me pause that I do not have agency to that projection in statements of my own claims, so I should be more mindful in language.

              Thank you for your honesty and sharing your truth. I know your generosity of spirit and feel joy that you are in wholeness and peace.

              Namaste, friend.

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              1. Hello Gaia gardener,

                Ah ah ah, yes I accept your stance. How could I not really: you are miles away from me and the unnecessary creation of antagonism inside me would come with a price eventually.

                The poem was specifically for you 🙂

                I will be more direct, even though it may create resistence.

                and if we are to really survive

                That’s an expression of fear.

                If one is hungry for physical food, that is what is appropriate and needful to give.

                Do you know anybody in this situation? I don’t. If not, that’s an expression of fear. Maybe coming out of a strong memory written in your family history (“maybe even your previous lives”).

                How can we few at the top continue to invest so much of our time and energy and meaning into something that is ultimately frivolous to our nutritional and caloric needs, the prime reason for food?

                That’s an expression of guilt as much as an accusation grounded in some form of arbitary morality.

                I understand fear and culpability are strong driving engines. However, they will take their toll. They are not necessary. Living free of fear will not prevent you from gardening, prepping, being thrift, helping others or anything else.

                There is no guilt to have. What’s the use? There is no debt to pay towards society or anyone. Yes, today, I use this computer, the clothes I wear, the food I eat is the output of an incomensurably complex system, etc, etc… Tomorrow, this changes, I change. Today, I feel bad about something, I stop. All that would still hold, if this system were different, just that I would rely on another set of incomprehensibly complex circumstances: living beings of various forms would be doing the job instead of machines. What grip do I have on most of this?

                Yes, there must be another way, and if we are to really survive, we will have to find it together.

                There is nothing to find. It’s there. I mean this litterally, not in some form of other realm, difficult to attain or philosophy: I listen, I know what I should do. The rest of creation takes care of herself. And all is well. It’s simple.

                For having been there quite some time, I know that what I continuously think impacts me deeply. Self-hypnosis has a profound influence on reality.

                See how thought arises, but if it is to be intercepted by another thought, then it’s not reaching out at all. This is a very small loop. Fist and palm.

                🙂

                Enjoy, especially gardening, cooking and eating.

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                1. Hello Charles,

                  Hope you’ve had a lovely day. Thank you for the time and intention in your reply. You need not be concerned about any resistance from me and it is not my intention at all to cause any in you, although I may have read that in your opening words. Such is the limitation in trying to communicate by words alone over the miles by two individuals bringing together perhaps lifetimes of different distortions of seeing, but the beauty is we are still open to doing so.

                  You asked me if I knew anyone that was physically hungry, and stated that you do not and if I also didn’t then the remark may have been made in fear of lack. That is not my intention, yes I am personally speaking from a place of abundance. It is not difficult for me to know of a fellow human being who is hungry, there are billions who are, the real question is do I wish to know them? Because if I do, then that is a point of choice for me on what to think and act. It is not guilt nor fear that should encourage me to reach out, but I hope it would be compassion for another with whom I am ultimately connected.

                  Creation does take care of herself, but I am of the thought that creations that come from our doing need our taking care of. I would want for courage and humility to choose not to look another way when there is some responsibility that I can take.

                  Sometimes I think it is because I am not hungry enough for both physical and spiritual food that I have the ability to muse over these things and not be living in the moment by moment as others of my species who have another particular burden of needing and wanting sustenance. I want to hope that our brothers and sisters, miles away as they may be (or even a neighbour if we wish to know) will also be able to enjoy gardening, cooking, and eating as I can. I have followed this thought, it is not from fear, nor guilt, nor any emotion that may press down my spirit. It comes from the deepest desire of my heart to be open to another, and in doing so, I will know and experience who I am, too.

                  Namaste, friend.

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                  1. Hello Gaia gardener,

                    Thank you for your answer.

                    Maybe I just completely misunderstood your comments and what they seemed to convey about your inner state. I was reading recurring fear, guilt, some amount of hate or disapointment in human beings and a lot of worry.

                    Worrying, I was an expert at that.

                    So the point of my previous comment (and I was not angry: just expressing myself as bluntly as possible to try to be clear) was basically that you need not torture yourself unnecessarily. No need in worrying about anything that is not of your concrete immediate reality. Things that are theoretical and out of our grasp do not matter.

                    The way I see things (and that’s just an example): if I don’t know anybody going hungry, then I don’t have to worry about it. If I know about people going hungry in a far away country and this affects me, then I just do something, even a small step (like going there, sending some money, praying, even turning off the TV to stop getting the news, anything…). While acknowledging that I am doing it for myself and not really for this theoretical person on the other side of the planet.
                    But, if I do not do anything about it and still keep on worrying. Then it basically means that I like worrying, that I made a habit out of it and I like the psychological state this puts me in. This is what I am advocating against, because this is a demon which can eat oneself in the long term. If this is the case, I need to examine the root cause of me constantly worrying but not doing anything to stop.

                    I am sharing because it took me quite a while to understand this about myself (not with people going hungry, but extinction of the other forms of living beings) So I am not sure, if this experience applies to you. Just sharing my expertise and free ticket to access no-worry land 🙂

                    I find, in the doomer’s psychology, there is a lot of what I call suspension of living, or denial of now (if you’d ask me, here lies the particular form of doomer’s denial). Because, we are convinced, there is this incoming catastrophe which will reset everything, we do not allow ourselves to live now, but rather always in the expectation of imminent brutal change. Except this can go on and be postponed almost forever, especially if collapse is gradual or if we put the bar of what we consider a catastrophe slightly too high. (human beings can be extremely tough)

                    Hope this made sense. Feel free to make whatever you want of it 🙂

                    By the way, if I didn’t know neither of them personnally, I would rather protect a tree than feed a human being. You can label me evil, that’s fine with me 🙂 I know the monster I can be and I still like being myself 🙂 It feels good to accept one’s “dark” sides wholly.

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                    1. Hello friend,

                      Just wanted to say in haste now that I do see you and am grateful for your care for me. You need not worry for my well-being, I am content with all as it is for my individual being, as I know I am the creator of that experience. It is not worry that I project, but perhaps more a wonder and awe at how things seem to be so, and how I fit into that and how the other is in relation to me. The other does not have to be a human, either! I am constantly seeking connection and assimilation, and a truer experience of oneness and acceptance. To me, this is what Love is, and I want to explore the limitlessness of unconditionality as much as is possible in this physical manifest. This desire has always been part of who I know myself to be, and in these vividly constructed times, I am finding much fodder for more learning and revision of what I already know. Thank you for being part of this journey, I feel your presence through your sharing as a pat on the shoulder to continue an open minded and hearted receiving.

                      Namaste.

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          4. We certainly do not survive Alone now

            Nor did ‘we’ ever did. A thing replaces another. This is a continuum. All barriers are mental.

            My words only have meaning if they are lived. Otherwise, it’s just more rubbish.

            🙂

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  20. B has a new essay about those rocks at the bottom of the sea. Of course he writes it better than me and with much more detail, but if you only read mine, you would still know all of the important info. (plus mine has an Indiana Jones reference so it wins by default 😊)

    Deep Sea Delusions. “Praise ignorance, for what man has not… | by B | Aug, 2024 | Medium

    https://un-denial.com/2024/07/29/book-review-the-end-of-global-net-oil-exports-by-lars-larsen-2024/#comment-104065

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  22. https://www.unz.com/article/an-intricate-fabric-of-bad-actors-working-hand-in-hand-so-is-war-inevitable/

    Alastair Crooke • August 12, 2024 

    “Netanyahu went to Washington to lay out the case for all-out war on Iran – a moral war of civilisation versus the Barbarians, he said. He was applauded for his stance. He returned to Israel and immediately provoked Hizbullah, Iran and Hamas in a way that dishonoured and humiliated both – knowing well that it would draw a riposte that would most likely lead to wider war.”

    Saludos

    el mar

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  23. Got nothing to write about so thought I’d share this, and maybe it will be interesting to someone. Couple weeks ago I made this outline for myself to try and track my red pill journey. My memory sucks, so I’m probably missing some key moments. And if the schedule stays consistent then I will be moving on to a new main source site in Jan 2025 (but I highly doubt there is a next level after un-Denial). 

    Michael Dowd (Jan 2022-23)

    • Intro to overshoot / carrying capacity
    • First time seeing the carbon pulse diagram. This was my first mindfuck moment
    • Unlimited growth on a finite planet
    • I knew the world was insane, but understanding the why/how (overshoot) is a huge relief. I don’t feel so alone anymore
    • Starting to understand the sacredness of fossil fuels. As well as the colossal waste (100mmb/d)
    • Intro of anthropocentrism vs ecocentrism
    • Sustainable vs unsustainable cultures (hunter/gatherer lifestyle is my new favorite subject)
    • Everything is connected (already knew this from my NDE, but Dowd and others were confirming it)
    • Intro to wetiko. I loved it because it tied into my Chomsky/Zinn anti-america stuff
    • Paul Chefurka’s 5 stages of awareness. I’m at #4 – Awareness of the interconnections between the many problems
    • Energy/EROEI – crash course from Sid Smith
    • Our predicament stems from harnessing fossil fuels

    Nate Hagens (Jan 2023-24)

    • Knowledge of human history is needed to truly understand our predicament. I am soaking up everything I can find about prior civilization collapses
    • Deeper knowledge of energy with Nate’s guests
    • Anthropocentrism is the wrong word. Its human supremacism. Derek Jensen is influencing me big time
    • Intro to MPP. I don’t like anything about it. I reject it
    • I’m now at #5 of Chefurka’s stages – Awareness that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life. (and have chosen the “inner path”)
    • Fossil fuels are getting more and more sacred. I consider them biblical at this point
    • Systems thinkers are where it’s at
    • I enjoy having this online “family” of like-minded people, but I still have lots of questions. Asking ?’s on yt is ineffective. 
    • Ecologist/biologist/geologist interviews sometimes morph into spiritual moments
    • Saying “everything is connected” is somehow still a massive understatement
    • Our predicament stems from harnessing agriculture. (Different roads to go down at this point. I was with Quinn – there is a correct way for humans & agriculture to coexist in harmony with nature) 

    un-Denial (Jan 2024-?)

    • Instantly (like day one of finding this site) – denial is much bigger/important than I had been led to believe  
    • MORT explains my confusion on why overshoot is not more known. (this was the 2nd best relief moment of my journey)
    • Sustainable cultures are more of an illusion than fact
    • MPP is starting to make more sense because I am less in denial about it (because of my understanding of MORT)
    • This online “family” is providing me with the best education about “our story”. And they excel at handling my wacky questions
    • Everything is about energy!!!
    • Yes, the Native Americans were saints compared to the wetiko Europeans, but only because they were 7,000 years behind them on the energy schedule
    • Everything about our destruction involves these three energy tools/constraints/producers: fossil fuels, agriculture, fire
    • Impossible for a species to use fire & agriculture and not have devastating effects on the equilibrium of their planet. (just give it time) 
    • Fire is the most important one because it’s the only way to get to MORT. (superpowers of intelligence & denial are required in order to destroy your planet in the blink of an eye (in ecological time)) 
    • There is 100% no such thing as interstellar space travel
    • Our predicament stems from harnessing fire (Although Gaia has me thinking this could possibly change to when hominids stood up full time (maybe that’s my Jan2025 new thing😊)

    P.S. I do have another wacky question for you guys that I can’t find an answer online. When were fossil fuels “ready”? Could they have been extracted a million years ago? (Hideaway’s training tells me that all other minerals would need to be available prior as well. No using fossil energy if you haven’t already been mining for a while with bronze, iron, etc)

    The closest thing to an answer that I could find was: the earliest known mine for a specific mineral is coal from southern Africa, appearing 20k to 40kya.

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    1. The next step after un-Denial might be the path taken by Paul Chefurka: Full acceptance that there is nothing more to understand, and that nothing wise will be done about human overshoot, and to go offline and simply enjoy whatever good days remain.

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      1. Hey, stop trying to get rid of me. 😊

        Didn’t know Paul took that path. I bet a lot of others have done that too. Probably the smartest thing to do after getting to a certain level of awareness.

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      2. I’m just about there. I have spent a week back on LinkedIn deliberately trolling some of the so-called and self professed sustainability / climate thought leaders. Their posts are filled with hopium, techno-optimism, greenwashing and probably 95% of them talking about sustainability jump straight to climate change.

        When I pose the question of whether it’s even possible for a business to be both profitable and sustainable in the face of ecological overshoot and resource depletion, highlighting oil depletion, most remain silent or bring up something about how well the “transition” is going.

        One well respected policy influencer posted about a new initiative he’s backing called “100% electric for humans”. I asked if he can he point to any examples of where renewables are being mined, manufactured, constructed and maintained using only solar or wind. He said of course he can’t “because the transition has only just begun”. He also shot down Bill Rees’ paper on the impossibly of renewables given our overshoot but people never actually respond about overshoot. It’s always a reductionist based response.

        Another posted about Earth Overshoot Day and the need for urgent action. He next celebrated a tour of the Denmark and Ireland by some KPMG colleagues where they were looking at excellence, efficiency and sustainability in infrastructure and sustainable cities. The report was all based on growth.

        I said I note Denmarks Earth Overshoot Day is 16th March, NZ 11 April and Irelands is in May. I wonder what the group could have learnt from those countries about sustainable / less impactful infrastructure. Wouldn’t they have been better visiting places like Cuba or Ecuador where Overshoot Day is in October and November respectively?

        Silence

        Two people have told me my comments / questions are not appropriate on LinkedIn.

        One German guy who engaged with me at least was honest. He said “I’m in my early 40s with 2 kids and not willing to give up my techno-optimism.”

        We are so fucked but the family and I have spent some quality time in the garden lately, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and life is good.

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        1. Hello CampbellS,

          Just wanted to say, I appreciate most of your comments, but don’t ever click the like button because login is too much hassle for me 🙂

          I don’t understand the “We are so fucked” at the end of your comment (anymore). If you are in Paul’s footsteps, then there is nothing to worry about 🙂

          Wishing you all the best to you, your family and your living place. Life is indeed good.

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          1. Hi Charles. Not speaking for Campbell, just wanted to butt in as usual 😊. A lot of us on this site say that phrase. It means we in the “walled world” know our comfort/security level is about to flip upside down. So yes, fear and anger loaded in that statement. But so are things like excitement, relief, and good riddance.

            p.s. You’ve been a little confrontational lately. I like it. And of course we all know your intentions are pure. You and Gaia have a good conversation going above.

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            1. Hello pagnation,

              Thank you for the clarification. I now understand what’s packed in this idiom better.

              And thank you for the feedback on my attitude. Yes, I have been confrontational 🙂 If you look closely though, I started a while ago, first with Mike Robert, a bit with Rob, then Hideaway, a bit with you and now Gaia gardener.

              I like a good fight to clear things up. If I say things politely, they seem to go unnoticed, like they weren’t that important. Nevertheless, it’s quite silly of me, as it seems to be extremely difficult to share some insights through words only. I guess showing by example and be followed by practice works better.

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          2. Good point Charles. Maybe that’s why I said I’m just about there. And maybe a good reminder to again close my LinkedIn account 😊

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    2. I commented (under the pinned comment).

      My take is we need a global one child policy. Population reduction (of humans) is a biophysical necessity if we want to preserve as much of the biosphere as possible.

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    3. About time! Corey was great. The comments were good too. Every nate subscriber has been waiting for this talk.

      Around the 1hr7min mark he asks Corey if he could hit a magic button and everyone would understand about overpopulation, would he?

      This was pretty telling between the two. Corey did not hesitate to say “hell yes”. Nate said he wouldn’t because people can barely make it by now, so that would just make things worse.

      Starting to think Nate has been avoiding this topic not because of funding or fear of losing subscribers… but because of his own denial/fear of the topic. Hopefully Corey loosened him up a little bit.

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    4. Thank you all for this heads up (or should I say, more heads down?) I will try to find some time today to listen but I thought it a bit ironic that Nate chose to release this interview when Rob, his perennial nemesis with confronting the population issue, is offline. I’ll bet Rob will save up his 30min daily of download for this!

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    5. Hello everyone,

      I just have to comment on Nate’s question at 38:58, “is there ever a negative extinction effect as when a species disappears and it’s positive for the ecosystem?” He said this with a straight face and Corey gave a measured reply saying that’s still an open question, also seemingly oblivious. We are that species that if disappeared would benefit every other living thing and ecosystem on this planet! We are the reverse keystone species, the one that if removed, allows the building back of all others. Is it so difficult to see and say this aloud? Maybe Corey is working towards this great conclusion, but I just had to choke and snort here.

      I am enjoying the talk and the main takeaway I am getting so far is that in the big scheme of things, life will find a way (at least tardigrades will) and there is still a billion years to wrap up the life experiment on this planet, so that’s comforting.

      Namaste, friends.

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      1. LOL! Great observation. Dont know how I missed it. I’ve noticed a similar moment in other interviews. Bill Rees is the only person I know of who is consistent in seizing that moment to say pretty much what you said Gaia.

        Alright, time for bed, I see the sun poking out. I swear, I’m a vampire. 😊

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    6. I liked this interview, probably one of Nate’s best. I only quibble with a few things they said. Correct me if I am wrong but Nate agreed with Corey’s statement that a sustainable civilization could be 2 or 3 billion?? At a 1950’s level? It’s like they are overshoot aware and in denial about what is sustainable when fossil fuel runs out?

      Other than being blue eyed, I didn’t understand if they were linking that to Neanderthal genetics (couldn’t find anything linking that blue eye evolution and Neanderthal interbreeding with modern humans).

      AJ

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    7. Interesting interview.

      Some things which I did not understand or did not seem to make sense:

      • did the climate projection include declining resources and collapse or not?
      • his population projections do not match Tom Murphy exercise on the matter
      • he first says that even in the case of collapse and increased children mortality, then population would still get to 10 billion because female compensate by having more children. But then, they go on talking about the impact of 10 billion with the same resource per capita consumption. This does not make sense, like taking two different models and combining the worst of both.
      • I found the discussion on whether the main culprit was population or consumption increase quite obscure. Why does it matter? Isn’t it that: while the economy is growing, if population were reduced then consumption per capita would increase, if consumption per capita were reduced, then population would increase.

      To me, it would be interesting to organize a roundtable between Tom Murphy, Hideaway, and Corey Bradshaw: will fast collapse turn out to be the most effective “policy” to prevent the worst of extinction, or will that not even change a dent in trajectory?

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      1. Thankyou Charles, while I also thought there were lots of good parts to the interview, it seemed each bit was in isolation. Nate is very aware of future resource constraints once we are past peak fossil fuel use, but didn’t seem to want to push the combination of population growth with resource depletion. Nor did he add in climate change at the same time.

        For me anyone who thinks in terms of a 1950’s type lifestyle or anything close, is really not thinking about the big picture. The 1950’s was a period of massive growth, with an acceleration of the availability of cheap oil. We had gained enough technology that enabled us to find, extract and move oil great distances, to get maximum immediate benefit from the one time use of that energy.

        If we only had 1950’s technology, we wouldn’t have much, if any, oil in 2024. We used up all the oil 1950’s technology could access, we need 2020’s technology and complexity to access the remaining oil (and most other non renewable resources).

        There seems to be a missing piece in the systems thinking of many people that both Nate and Corey show in this interview. We have 2020’s technology and resources because of the combination of growing population, energy use and complexity. Today’s energy availability comes from complexity, which is only possible because of large growing population and growing energy use.

        If we try to go backwards with a lower population, it simply doesn’t and can’t work. We don’t have the easy to obtain energy nor resources we had in the 1950’s, so having tractors on farms, which we had in the 1950’s cannot work. There simply wont be the fuel.

        We can’t go back to the 1850’s lifestyle either, as we would have to build so much housing for people in rural areas. That takes energy and resources we simply wont have to do the building. We also wont have the horses or oxen either, nor the 1850’s type factories to make the simple tools like horse drawn ploughs.

        Civilizations don’t go backwards gently, as they are suggesting (not specifically stating), in the interview. They collapse totally. That’s the experience of every past civilization on the planet and our modern one is easily the most unsustainable of all.

        Their stated 2-3 billion number, is to not ‘scare’ most of their audience, but 2-3B has never happened in the past without fossil fuels. Nor has 100 million without agriculture, yet the climate is heading outside the range where agriculture is possible. Agriculture even in ancient ways was only possible because of the Holocene period of stability. We are clearly heading out of that stability, so why the assumption that agriculture is going to be possible anywhere?

        It appears to me that Nate knows all the pieces, but has a denial that they all work together in negative feedback loops, the exact opposite of the positive feedback loops that allowed our civilization to build to where it is today.

        The first part we start to lose is the energy, specifically oil, at some point in the near future. Because the oil is so necessary for all international transport, once the movement of raw materials and goods shrink, the complexity of everything starts to unwind as machines all break and without replacements or parts quickly become useless. This has a cascade effect on the ability to obtain oil. Without the machines and parts for them, then rapid reduction of oil drilling and maintenance of existing oil production facilities and refineries takes place.

        This is not in isolation!! At the same time, farms cannot work normally without fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, fuel and parts. Likewise mines. Trucks delivering everything become rare (if there is anything to deliver). All in a backdrop of climate change affecting crops everywhere.

        Meanwhile we still have over 8 billion angry, hungry people, looking for food, shelter and someone to blame, when it all starts to go wrong.

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        1. I’m grateful for all of your posts, you hit the target simultaneously from different directions and leave me with very little to say. You’ve done and continue to do yeoman’s work. Hence I don’t need to post much.

          Obviously your focus is energy, minerals, alternative energy, complexity and (almost) whole systems. When other (very significant) factors are taken into account, the picture becomes bleaker, as if that were even possible.

          When difficulty obtaining (affordable) oil becomes increasingly undeniable (and before transportation issues) – the role of finance and money will become much more apparent. Credit will disappear and central bank edicts will have no meaning. Loss of faith in money combined with excessive printing will likely cause hyperinflation – even if the U.S. dollar is last to fall, the process of falling will start shortly after (and overlap) the other currencies.

          The start of mega-collapse, could take as a little as a week to go from bang in the middle-east (or eastern Europe) to bank-bail-in to empty shelves at the supermarket, empty gasoline stations, etc.

          Martial law then lasts a month or two and descends into a mix of civil unrest and cross border skirmishes. Throw in, any of : crop failure (drought, flood, insects, disease, arson, sabotage, lack of finance, lack of chemicals), volcano, earth quake, hurricane, pandemic, wild fire (natural/arson), nukes, etc. and it quickly becomes Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

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          1. Great comment Hamish. I agree with every word. 

            But don’t praise Hideaway too much😊. He gets embarrassed. He is very modest. (just another reason we love him so much) 

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            1. Ditto from me, this is all just great stuff everyone’s contributing, well done! (if only it weren’t so true) Gee, Rob is probably experiencing a serious case of FOMO now, hope he’s secured enough download time to listen to Nate’s interview, but better yet, just jump to these comments. Our intrepid captain will be very proud of us running such a tight ship in his absence. Or is the analogy more like “when the cat’s away, the mice will play!”

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                1. Because you’ve created a heck of a community here.

                  And don’t take it personal that we are thriving without you. It’s more about the audience being so deathly afraid of me writing another personal story that they are making sure I don’t get bored while you are gone. 😊 

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            2. Ditto for me. Hamish and Hideaway have encapsulated the essence of Nate’s interview. I suspect Hamish is right in his last paragraph – Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is where we are headed.
              AJ

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          2. A comment briefer than I would like because I’m typing with one finger on a phone. Thanks everyone for keeping the site going in my absence.

            I just finished 2 books on hard core prepping by Jonathan Hollerman: Survival Theory and Survival Theory II. He’s not overshoot or peak diesel aware but does believe an extended grid down event is probable due to EMP attack, solar flare, physical terrorist attack on the grid, or cyber attack.

            I think severe diesel shortages or WWIII could have similar consequences so his book is still worth reading. Somehow MORT can accept an act of God like a solar flare but not a guaranteed event due to overshoot and depletion.🥺

            Hollerman makes a very persuasive argument that 90% of people will die in the first 12 months and that the only way to survive will be to bug out to a very remote location with lots of weapons and food and to avoid other people for the first year. He’s probably right but I’m not up for this so I’ve accepted that my preps will only help in a partial collapse.

            Dr. Bret Weinstein is also worried about a grid down event (and also seems oblivious to diesel shortages) but I thought this wide ranging discussion on threats we face was excellent. I like his argument that a core issue is our world is changing faster than we can adapt.

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            1. He starts off on the wrong foot by downplaying climate change.
              Does he mention any other overshoot related symptoms?

              Final thing:
              Given that Bret Weinstein is an evolutionary biologist, he should be at least somewhat familiar with the idea of carrying capacity. Does he believe that it applies to humans? If the answer to that question is no, then he is not a serious biologist.

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              1. Haven’t watched yet, but I’m gonna. Your logic is on point. I was the same way with this asshole… But he finally won me over with some good rants (or he’s good at making me “think” which is all I’m really looking for). 

                If you can get past a couple of annoyingly wrong viewpoints, he does have some value. Robs line above is so good its worth posting again because it sums up Bret perfectly: 

                “Somehow MORT can accept an act of God like a solar flare but not a guaranteed event due to overshoot and depletion.🥺”

                p.s. that sentence is absurd at first glance but just goes with that other thing: the closer you live to the dam the higher the denial of the dam breaking.

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              2. I’ve noticed a trend of more and more aware people denying the official climate change story. Not yet clear to me if this is MORT kicking in given the severity and certainty of the outcome, or if it’s driven by an understanding that everything we “plan” to do about climate change won’t help or will make it worse.

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        2. Excellent. Thank you very much for taking the time to write this follow up.

          But, the question which interests me the most is: will this be the best possible scenario for overall life on the planet?

          Personnally, I think yes. Because I don’t see how hordes of humans without technology or skills can outgrow nature’s growth in most of the world. Some densily inhabited places becoming unlivable very abruptly, yes.

          Also, it would be nice if you could work on the timeline of your projection. That would be very interesting to me. Because, as I read it, it sounds like an on/off switch. But, I have a hard time accepting that it could unravel all in, say, only a year (going from 8 billion to 1 billion in one year).
          During the interview, they were considering the reduction of 80 million per year (if I recall well, just thanks to family planning), that is almost 1 billion per decade. I guess your scenario would show faster decline than that.

          Some aspects of this civilization are very much integrated at the world level, other very much less. Basically, the more complex the end-product, the more integration. Chips and transportation will go first. But then not all countries need to collapse all at once. Climate change does not hit everywhere equally and not at the same time as oil declines.

          I agree with the impossibility to build back better in the country side. Tents will have to do.

          Do you have data on the population trajectory of previous civilizational collapses? I was under the impression that collapse often took several decades, if not centuries to unwind (https://www.quora.com/How-many-years-did-it-take-the-Roman-Empire-to-completely-fall-in-the-Western-side-and-was-it-a-gradual-decline-or-abrupt, https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ou687/how_long_did_it_take_for_the_roman_empire_to_fall/).

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          1. Hello Charles, nice to see you here on this thread–and thank you again for the pleasure of our recent interaction, to be continued I hope!

            If all out nuclear war doesn’t do the job of reducing our population from go to woe in relatively short order, then anything that will affect the food supply to the masses certainly will. About 60% of the world’s population live in cities (North America, Latin America and Europe have 80% of their population in urban areas), so we can extrapolate what can happen if the trucks stop running, assuming we can still grow the food in the field. Earlier, the esteemed Hideaway disclosed that the entire continent of Australia only has 54 days of oil supply in the country, and most countries in Europe are both heavy oil and food importers. For all practical purposes, fuel is synonymous with food. Any scenario that can cause breakdown in supply could unleash societal collapse but a massive planetary grid down event is probably the most likely candidate for a human-centric catastrophe from whence there is no recovery to any semblance of our current modernity. Some have postulated that a Carrington level event could actually be the precursor to near term human extinction (Bret Weinstein wrote a piece on just this scenario, https://unherd.com/2021/07/how-the-sun-could-wipe-us-out/). An asteroid event like Chicxulub would mean a global re-boot, so we are probably not going to have to worry about that one way or another.

            In any collapse scenario, the youngest (15 and under) and the oldest cohorts will be most vulnerable in terms of overall survival and globally these two cohorts make up about 35-40% of the total world population, but in varying proportions by countries (40% of Africa’s population is 15 and under, and only 3% make it to 65, whereas nearly 20% of Europe’s population is over 65) The middle cohorts will be actively pursuing survival at the expense of another with similar power and strength (this sounds kinda like Dungeons and Dragons) and many casualties would necessarily occur in these age groups. If enough people of child-bearing age die, and the up-coming young cohort is also significantly decreased, then this will add to the population falling off a Seneca cliff.

            The analogy of the bacteria in the petri dish running out of nutrients (or the story of the reindeer on St Matthew island) reminds us how precarious our situation is once we rely on one defined method of getting food (in our case, purely fossil-fuelled). So near complete wipeout of a sizeable base population is not impossible, even a population of a species spread over the entire planet if the conditions for collapse are the same. The one overarching common denominator we share globally now is reliance on fossil fuels for all aspects of our food, a rather conspicuous Achilles heel now sticking out like a sore thumb.

            This leads us back to Lars Larsen’s (and Hideaway’s, of course) hypothesis that our D-day is around the corner with a decrease in diesel exports. What with everything else that Hamish has so clearly enumerated, I think we are going to see a planetful of hungry people, one way or another, ready or not, here they come!

            I have written before that maybe the Sun will “save” her living planet from one of its most recalcitrant creations. One brilliant flash and we fire apes will be cut down to size and go quite some ways in levelling the playing field for every other species. This year and the next are the peak of the current cycle so we have our chances. Charles, you mentioned that you would prefer to feed a tree than a Homo sapiens in certain circumstances. I have nothing to add other than I would like nothing more than to be a Homo sapiens whose body feeds a tree.

            Namaste, friends.

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            1. When I talk about a sudden accelerating decline of oil production getting us because of the lower energy, I’m always making the assumption ‘something else’ hasn’t ‘got us’ first.

              So my assumption is if, WW3, financial armageddon, real pandemic, asteroid, Carrington type event, climate change, volcanoes etc, etc ,etc don’t do the job first, it will be collapse in energy availability starting with oil, that collapses modern civilization. We don’t need any other type of event.

              All the other events, are in their own way possible of taking us down, but in the last few decades we have survived a lot of different types of major damage, like the GFC, with an increasing oil supply overcoming massive downward problems. I’m not saying we can survive the next main down turn, but we might if ‘they’ could again turn up more oil supply.

              Anyway, my assumption of the big collapse happening during an accelerating decline in oil availability, is because it’s a period where the energy use lost, cannot be made up, so different parts of our system have to massively reduce. Assuming the loss in oil supplies is because of no reason other than oil depletion, there isn’t any hope of us increasing again, and the relentless reduction has to start affecting our ability to gain access to gas, coal, food, fertilizer, minerals, metals and every other input to modern civilization, including oil itself due to lack of oil rigs, pipe, transport ships etc. It becomes it’s own, and everything else’s, downward spiraling feedback loop.

              I’m sure a lot of the other factors that could bring us down by themselves, the financial collapse, WW3 etc, will probably also happen during the downward reduction in oil availability, to hasten the collapse, but none of them are necessary.

              The collapse is guaranteed by the accelerating decline in oil alone. Too many people for the food that can be provided in cities. The complexity of the machines and systems we use, unravels without the continuity of energy that keeps it alive and the human population of desperate, hungry, angry, people guarantees the law and order underpinning ‘civil’ization also disintegrates.

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            2. Hello Gaia gardener,

              Yes, there are many plausible doomsday scenarios. Civilization is quite fragile.

              As Hideaway said, when discussing these kind of models, it’s implicit that “exceptional” scenarios are excluded. I guess, we are just trying to understand the “nominal” dynamic of the mega-organism, called civilization.

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            3. Dammit! I slept in today and missed all the good activity here.

              Thanks for that fictional Weinstein story. I was on the edge of my seat. (btw it says 7 minute read… Took me 15-20min. I must be really slow😊) 

              Preferring to feed a tree vs an unknown sapien sounded a bit out of character for Charles. Dont get me wrong, I’m right there with him, but probably for different reasons.

              And you know you made me smile with your last line about a natural burial. Let us all be tree food in our final act. 

              Plus you gave me an excuse to put up my favorite line I have ever written:

              Mother Earth: Ok, here’s the contract. I am going to create you using my resources, then sustain you with my resources, and when you die I will end you by consuming your resources so that I can keep creating and sustaining in this beautiful cycle of life. Deal?

              Modern Humans: Ok, I’ll take you up on your offer for creating and sustaining me, but when it comes time for the end portion, I will renege on our contract and not allow you to use my resources for your benefit. In fact, I’m gonna go out with one last bang and continue harming you even though I’m dead. Deal?

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              1. Hi Chris,

                Golly, it was my turn to sleep in Down Under time and I can’t believe how the comments have mushroomed (much preferred than news of a mushroom cloud, of course). I certainly hope Rob doesn’t really think the site is better without him, perhaps it’s a bit more *unruly* as we are all seemingly going off in our own idiosyncratic ways but the core strength and message is sound. For me and Charles to be able to go around and around one another to agree to disagree on esoteric philosophy most people have probably glazed their eyes over, (but now I think we’re in agreement again, at least sealed with a smiley face!), what a blast! Finally Nate confirms his ambiguous stance on the Population dilemma. And we’ve billed “The End of the World as we know it” the ultimate must-see Thriller/Horror/Tragedy/Comedy/Drama/Doco coming soon to a theatre near you and running for just one season! It’s all happening! Even Charles is saying this is fun whilst Hamish threatens to sniff glue! Weird! Wild! Bring in on! (I must stop using these exclamation points as they have completely lost their function).

                I like your favourite line but here’s my turn to be confrontational, can you imagine that? (insert smiley face here)

                Is it really a fair deal that we promise to give back to Mother Earth just our carcass of 70 some kilos (more or less) of mainly water and a couple shovelfuls of carbon, nitrogen, and minerals as a shallow burial offering? After all the Mother has given us over a lifetime? To be absolutely fair, at a minimum, to nominally balance the running sheet, we should have been plying her all our lifetime excrement, to be applied directly on her surface (as every other natural creature), and have replanted every plant used for our food, medicine, shelter, and entertainment. All the rubbish we’ve ever generated should have been retained in our own homes so we know that just because we send it away to be dealt with somewhere else, Earth Mother still had to wear it so why shouldn’t we? And instead of passing on our worldly goods and money as an inheritance that would necessarily be expended increasing our CO2 footprint, every deceased estate should be converted into a fund to reclaim and rewilding land (hey, this is where we can buy the coal mine!)

                Whilst I’m dreaming I may as well go on. We never be able to repay the fossil fuels we drilled out but maybe as a token we could reserve several continents to be reforested (a la Jack Alpert), so that in geological time to come, perhaps they would fossilise and remain so without ever becoming some creature’s fuel again. Same with all the minerals we’ve carved out, we should reserve another couple continents to be fallow from any more human activity. With plates shifting and volcanic activity over eons, the earth will eventually replenish her surface minerals. This leaves one continent for Homo sapiens to be corralled in, and even so that is probably too generous.

                But jesting aside, it is my view that the idea of Homo sapiens just giving back the crumbs of our physical body at death is somehow a just repayment in the Circle of Life, is a blazing example of human centred hubris. Please do not think I am accusing you Chris, of this at all, I know your good hearted meaning and intention, I am just presenting a generalised idea that it can be comfortable to think we are justified in all our taking if we make this final contribution. In the long term, The Mother will be fine with or without all our “gifts”, discarded and abandoned humanmade playthings and creations that we will leave strewn all across her surface, as she will absorb all in eventuality. She will be able to live with it, seeing as the Earth will be around for another billion years. The question for us, how can we live with having treated our Mother so?

                Since I have taken on the name Gaia here, I felt it my duty to speak on her behalf (more human-centred hubris, of course). The sentiments and views expressed in the content are solely the author’s and may not reflect the opinions and beliefs of the parent organisation, intended audience, or its affiliates. Phew, I feel so much better with that disclaimer in place.

                insert row of smiley faces here

                Have a great day, Chris.

                Namaste, friends.

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                1. “… coming soon to a theatre near you and running for just one season!” 😊 Good one Gaia! Ya, Hamish’s “one season” post was an eye opener. 

                  “… going off in our own idiosyncratic ways but the core strength and message is sound.” So true. With all of us. For me it brings to mind Mike Roberts and how he was bashing my essay yet we both have the same story, give or take a few minor details. 

                  And now you’re getting confrontational with me? Jeez, Charles is rubbing off on all of us 😊. All joking aside, I’m glad you brought this up. I do actually get a sense that by giving Mother Earth my 100 kilos, it absolves me from all my sins. What an asinine way of looking at things. Thank you for slapping me back down to reality. I needed that. And I love your idea about leaving continents human-free and letting them grow wild.

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                  1. Glad you took it well, and you’re welcome! You can still donate your used spacesuit, just as I will mine. Depending on when and how and where the SHTF (we should definitely throw in some shit), there might be a backlog on accepting donations but eventually earth will appreciate the global Goodwill collection drive!

                    It’s not my idea about having human-free continents, I got that from Jack Alpert whose grand plan Rob has championed but alas, it will always remain in the “what if?” basket, which is located in the “not gonna happen” basket. We’re a basket case for sure.

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                    1. I’m embarrassed (and almost ashamed) to admit that I know jack shit about Mr Alpert. I’ve watched a video or two and read something Rob posted. Not sure why, just haven’t gotten into him. But for how respected he is with this fine audience; I should know better by now.

                      His yt channel looks like he’s taken the Chefurka path (but I know I’ve seen occasional comments from him here so he must still somewhat give a shit😊). Anyone got any favorite recommendations? 

                      ABC, I think I remember you being a big fan. What should I start with? (please, no books 😊)

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                    2. Hi Chris,

                      Jack Alpert is the one that Rob admires for actually coming up with a plan to deal with the population issue (sterilisation through a vaccine that can be reversed to maintain a certain number of births by lottery) and a possibility of maintaining a modern lifestyle for the remaining 100 million people to be living in only 3 city/states using hydroelectricity for power. When I first read it several years ago, it seemed like sci fi and I could just picture a Hollywood movie from this premise. It never seemed probable but now with all that we know (we’ve got the secret weapon in Hideaway!) and the reality of our impending collapse and how societal breakdown is on a knife’s edge, I know it never would have been possible. It’s a good thought experiment nevertheless because it highlights just how untenable our situation is to have arrived at an option for resolution that is so seemingly radical.

                      Here’s where he spells out the plan and the underpinnings for it in words https://skil.org/position_papers_folder/PlanForUnwindingThePredicament.html

                      Here’s his YouTube channel with excellent bite sized attempts to illustrate the same

                      https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2RiEwLGLCYeZ5VQQ_F-43g

                      Happy reading/viewing!

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                    3. For years Alpert believed the key to rapid population reduction was educating a minority (like grandmothers) and having them vote as a block to sway population reduction referendums. He’s recently given up on this strategy and now hopes a benevolent wise billionaire will step up to develop a sterilization virus.

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                  2. I thought I roughly knew the chemical composition of the human body but went to that insufferable know it all (aka Wikipedia) to just refresh my memory. It’s always a 70 kg man they use as the universal example, (I wonder just how many here are that magic scientifically endorsed weight?)

                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body#:~:text=About%2099%25%20of%20the%20mass,11%20are%20necessary%20for%20life.

                    The key point is that 99% of our composition is only 6 elements, with a majority 45kg out of the 70kg being oxygen, and a good percentage of it tied up in water. Carbon, which is the whole premise of organic life, is only 13kg, so we are not exactly impressive carbon sinks. Nitrogen, a key element in all protein, weighs in at only 1.8kg, and a significant portion of that nitrogen in our bodies now comes from the Haber Bosch process which produces the fertiliser for many of our foodstuffs. Calcium, forever touted as the foundation for strong bones is only present as 1kg! You’d think a 70kg man would have a skeleton that requires more than that, but it’s all about the matrix structure of bone and that is the perfect balance of strength and weight. Going down the chart, we find that there is only 0.0042kg of iron in our bodies, and 0.000072kg of copper. If we multiply that copper number by 8 billion, that’s only 576,000kg or 576 metric ton. Currently we are extracting about 13 million metric tons of copper yearly. Even if all of us were to die at once and our bodies committed to the earth, we would be returning 0.004% of what we took out in just the past year. The trace minerals are at infinitesimal amounts and many of them are just contamination as they are not yet known to be necessary to cellular function. Of course, all the structural chemicals in our bodies are being constantly turned over or recycled but at any one time, we can offer back to the earth pretty much bleep-all in terms of personally returning what we’ve taken out to make our modern life. There’s 15gm of copper in our smartphones and only 0.72gm in our bodies! And that’s just the nanotip of the iceberg of what we have dragged out of the ground, using all that one-time shot of fossil fuel to do so whilst ripping up our planet home for all its rightful residents. I realise that eventually everything will return to the earth but at what cost, and for so little long term gain for just one species.

                    This exercise is just to illustrate in a facetious way how imbalanced we truly are to our environment in terms of ins and outs. Oh fateful day that Prometheus brought fire and thus eventually civilisation to mankind! Our species would have dug out our Mother’s very heart if we could.

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                    1. Nice read. Very interesting. The level of theft/destruction between us and 2nd place is laughable. So insanely separate and superior.

                      God bless The Great Reset.

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          2. Hi Charles. I don’t think the collapse of modern civilization will be anything like past collapses as we are so much more heavily reliant upon ancient sunlight especially oil to move everything. In Roman times they had horse and cart distributing food from rural areas to Rome. The similarity would be like all the horses and oxen that did the ploughing for them rapidly died over a couple of years, an event they couldn’t overcome.

            Also back in Roman times, despite the one large city, most of the population of the empire was still in rural areas able to feed themselves. If they had our ratio of city to rural population, with the rural people all using ‘super’ horses and oxen to do the field work, and those animals dies over a couple of years do to some incurable disease, then they would have collapsed much faster than they did. People of Rome and outer areas were able to flee away from the empire to the barbarian areas, or by sailboat to other places.

            During the long slow collapse of Rome people still had the option of using sail, or horse/oxen etc to help them move, and the relative proportion of people in rural areas to those fleeing the city wasn’t as much an issue. The population density was so much lower than at present.

            IMHO it’s the combination of population, complexity of machines, lack of transport options, that combine to make our collapse extremely rapid compared to prior collapses, with all the systems we rely upon all failing at once, while depending on each other to operate normally.

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            1. Thank you. Yes, this is all plausible.

              What, then, would you call “extremely rapid”? A year? A decade? A quarter century?

              If I am being honest, I dont exclude nor do I entirely buy this scenario either. Reality is neither monolithic nor static. What I mean by that is that collapse may happen in various places in succession and that people will react, even anticipate. We will see.

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  28. Heat stress threatens agricultural workers’ health as U.S. temperatures rise
    https://www.edf.org/report/heat-stress-threatens-agricultural-workers-health-us-temperatures-rise

    More than 2 million farmworkers play an integral role in the U.S. food system, contributing to the countless fruits, vegetables and grains that line our local grocery store aisles. This essential group is at exceptionally high risk for heat-related illness due to the strenuous nature of their work, which primarily takes place outdoors. This risk is growing as record-breaking temperatures become more frequent and persistent due to climate change. Climate adaptation measures will need to center justice and equity to protect those that are vulnerable and underserved, including farmworker communities.

    Mortality from heat-related illness is 20 times higher for crop workers in the U.S. than private industry and non-federal government workers. The average U.S. agricultural worker is currently exposed to 21 working days in the summer growing season that are unsafe due to heat. Farmworkers would experience an additional 18 days of work above safe heat levels if emissions peak before mid-century and then slowly decline. This number will only grow with additional warming.

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  30. Prof. Nate Hagens. YouTube “Frankly 70”

    In Nate’s ask-me-anything, my rhetorical question got answered.

    Will the spending of “carbon taxes” result in additional emissions of carbon?

    Obviously yes. Any recipient of money has a few choices:

    • spend
    • save
    • invest
    • pay other taxes
    • destroy it

    All of those options (including destroy) are different routes to the same destination – more carbon emissions.

    It is a paradox.

    At best, the only thing that ‘might’ help, is a repeated full-stop. This would slow matters down and ‘might’ give us a little longer before the inevitable.

    https://youtu.be/UNyqZYYTFbI?t=1056

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    1. Perversely, slowing down could make matters worse (in the long run) for those that make it through to the other side. Full speed ahead and dooming the majority, might provide the only sliver of hope to a tiny minority – and over generations the (aural) story of what happened morphs into a giant cliche (a religion).

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      1. What you call a sliver of hope the rest of life calls a nightmare. I can envision a scenario on the other side of the bottleneck where people are targeting and sabotaging the survivors that are thriving. Not for their own survival but to ensure man’s extinction. 

        But yes, if the nightmare does actually happen, after a few generations I could see a new religion morphing out of our story. Kind of like Cloud Atlas where in the year 2300 they worship what they think is a person from a couple hundred years prior who was a savior named Sonmi, but it turns out she was a robot or replicant or whatever.

        AI still might help us get there with that one. (except Sonmi was actually a good person (or clone) worth worshipping… the AI version that we worship will be more of a corporate caricature with no redeeming qualities)

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    2. This doesn’t ring true to me. Here are some ideas.

      One could theoretically buy a coal mine and dump nuclear wastes in it, so that nobody would dare extract the coal later on. Or one could buy a piece of land and convert it into a wildlife refuge. One could sabotage infrastructure which is used to extract and route fossil fuel. Basically, anything which increases the energy cost of fossil energy use.

      But these things are difficult to achieve in a short-term, competitive environment, such as the one we operate in. And the machine will defend itself.

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      1. Sorry Charles but Jesus <expletive> Christ !!

        one could buy a piece of land and …

        What exactly does the seller of the land do with the money?????

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        1. As you wish.

          The point is not in the money, the point is about moving some portion of nature out of the hands of the burners.

          Yes, the seller might use money for other means, unless he does the same.

          And, yes, if too many people did that, the burners might change the rules of the game: increase land taxes or come with the army…

          Money is a simulacrum. This is all a pretend power-play game.

          And what about the other suggestions? Isn’t only one counter-example enough to falsify a proposition?

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      2. “What about the others …”

        Buy a coal mine – what does the seller do with the money?

        Buy nuclear waste – what does the seller do with the money?

        Buy land and … – what does the seller do with the money?

        Sabotage infrastructure … – the ‘broken window fallacy’, results in more spending – what do the recipients do with the money? How does anyone ‘sabotage’ anything without being in-the-economy and causing more carbon emissions? A large part of the third-world depends on largess from the first-world created using surplus energy (carbon emissions).

        And where does this money to buy things come from – a job? Lottery winnings maybe, that come from people buying lottery tickets, that in-turn comes from having jobs, that (oh wait) contribute to more carbon emissions!

        What if the seller of the land has to do the same thing? Please extrapolate – when all of the land is converted back to wild (somehow without carbon emissions in the process) we have no more land for agriculture and (oops) we all die anyway. That is just a different route to the same destination.

        It makes no difference where the money comes from or where it goes to – we are fucked!

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        1. Oh I see.

          Your question wasn’t really about carbon emission. But about avoiding a route where we all die.

          We all die, at some point. (that is, in the materialistic worldview)

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          1. My question was not an actual question – it was rhetorical, constructed to make a point.

            There are politicians, economists, environmentalists and numerous others that all think/believe “carbon taxes” can somehow help. My point is, they do exactly nothing and cannot help no matter how they are implemented.

            I consider Nate Hagens to have acknowledged my point. One down and hundreds of millions to go.

            I should start sniffing glue.

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            1. Thank you for the explanation.

              Yes. Things are out of our hands. This can either be the simplest or the most difficult thing to accept.

              Please, don’t sniff glue. It would make our conversations even more weird 🙂

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        2. “Buy a coal mine…” Is the seller looking for the value of all the coal that gets stuck in the ground? That would achieve precisely nothing! The full value of the coal is now circulating, over and over …

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          1. 🙂

            Relax.

            I am not advocating for carbon taxes and I know they can’t “work” (in the current scheme of things).

            Just saying, money doesn’t matter, physical reality does (in the materialistic worldview).

            Don’t worry, we (as individuals) all die. Life goes on.

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  31. Above Charles asked Hideaway :

    What, then, would you call “extremely rapid”? A year? A decade? A quarter century?

    A season.

    If mega-collapse-start coincides with the start of (a slightly extreme) summer or winter, then by the end of the season 99.9% of us are gone. From billions to less than several million. If mega-collapse-start coincides with start of spring or autumn, then two seasons. When it all stops, there is nothing that can re-start society.

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    1. Thank you very much for giving a precise answer.

      That’s plausible. Still I don’t necessarily buy it. But I can’t rationnally exclude it.

      We will see.

      This is really fun. The range of possibilities is quite wide. And I am slowly coming to the conclusion that some events (regime changes) are inherently not predictable.

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    2. “Killing frost”

      “Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.”

      -Revelation 14:15

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  32. Indi has a good new essay about the evils of mining. The whole time I was reading it I could only think of that famous quote “forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them”.

    On Indi’s “DEI Genocide” essay I had posted a link to my fire essay along with how I have stopped focusing on white skin and am now at a point where harnessing fire has all my attention. He replied back that I might have a point about fire and gave me a little story about Prometheus. So then I immediately gave him the link to Gaia’s Prometheus comment.

    He never responded back but I have a feeling it had an impact on him. This is his first essay in a long time that is not directed only at Gaza, White Empire or colonialism.

    He references Prometheus: All of this greedy mine, mine, mine is part of the gift (curse) of Prometheus. Aeschylus portrayed Prometheus as the bringer of mining as well as fire, and you know how that worked out for him.

    And I liked this quote too: Witnessing the environmental destruction of even pre-industrial mining in -400, Plato said, “What now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left.”

    The Way Down In The Mines — indi.ca

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    1. Oooh, we are connected! I was just sending off my last comment championing our Earth Mother and you were posting this one! More references to mining in mine, too.

      Thank you for sharing with indi, I lurk there frequently but this is the only place I ever post, or have ever posted. It almost seems like adultery if I were to start leaving my comments under any one else’s site now. haha

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      1. I listened to the whole thing. It was good and Bill Rees had his usual thorough presentation of overshoot. I thought he was incorrect thinking that collapse could possibly occur slowly and leave us with 2 billion people. Although as he stated there is another carrier group (just passed the Straits of Malacca) heading to the Middle East) and we could have nuclear war when it arrives – and that would precipitate rapid collapse.

        I also liked his stating that maybe there could be technology in the future but he thought it would consist of water wheels, mechanical wind mills (old Dutch style), etc., but that modernity is on its way out.

        Gaia should like the last part (20 min.) in that neither commentator saw people as evil, just working within a world view (construct) where they were doing the best that they could – just some constructs were bad/wrong.

        Overall a good podcast.

        AJ

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    2. Just watched it. I like what he’s selling: “our brains are functionally obsolete, no longer neurologically adapted for survival in a mega-system of our own making.”

      Sounds like he’s trying to get away from his R rated language of “invasive species and plague” and make it more PG rated with “obsolete brains”. (probably a good idea). Everything he said can be summed up in three words… peak of insanity. But it’s worth watching because Bill Rees is the man. (I quit after his presentation, so not sure about the Q/A) 

      I’d like him to start exploring why his brain is not functionally obsolete. Then start looking at the other people whose brains are also not obsolete. Then look at why this group is so small. Then narrow down what they have in common or any patterns. Then… well, I dont know but keep exploring this road and it will eventually lead Bill to MORT/un-Denial… Bill’s influence eventually puts Rob’s site on the map in the overshoot world. All of the best experts are now interacting daily here. Everyone feeding off each other is producing mind blowing results and ideas. We are making some actual noise and the audience population has exploded to 25 million strong… Obviously Rob has an entire staff of 100 plus people at this point. Most of the staff consists of un-Denialist’s who were there prior to the popularity. We are everywhere on the internet, but finally our big break comes. Primetime tv interview with CBS 60 minutes. Rob insists on the entire team being part of the 30-minute segment piece… So we charter a private jet that goes around the world picking up everyone (Rob is rolling in the dough remember). Last pickup is un-Denial headquarters in Canada where 50 of the staff work and live. We are all partying in the plane on our way to New York for the interview of the millennium. This is gonna change the world!! is the running theme. All of a sudden the plane blows up and we all die instantly… After a few weeks of investigation, the black box is recovered and reveals it was a bomb. The conspiracies and outrage by the millions of fans is starting to boil over to violent protests… Within a couple months everything about un-Denial is discredited and hated because “they” have made it look like we were a terrorist group hell bent on the extinction of humans that blew up our plane on accident. The end. (sorry, no idea where that paragraph came from)  

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      2. You gotta take it easy with that glue sniffing.

        And you forgot one important part. When Rob starts making his millions, he promised to buy a tiny home and live in my commune, along with any other foundational un-denialists who wish to partake in Gaia’s haven. Although there are many here who have created sanctuaries so maybe the private jet can just take us around to each one, avoiding the worst of the collapse wherever it might be!

        It should be just about time now that Rob gets back before his site is completely overtaken by our delirium.

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    1. Heya Stellar, hope you are going well. Thank you for your out of this world efforts to keep us up to date on the latest world atrocities. Just looking at the title, I can scream “Hell ya, the Gaza death toll is wrong, all right!” As in whenever was genocide considered right by the people being genocided? It’s interesting (dehumanising, distressing, infuriating, confounding) that the ICJ hasn’t revisited this despite the on-going bombings and massacre, surely Israel has fulfilled to the letter the definition of genocide by now? Instead, Netanyahu gets a standing ovation at Congress and a purchase order for $20 billion worth of our weapons. Harris only said “I will not be silent” but not promising any definite action, and that already was enough to send those that really run the country into conniptions, so effectively, all will be silenced. Israel, that naughty child, is still the favourite son and must be nurtured and protected whatever the cost. I don’t hear nations setting aside a trust fund to rebuild Gaza for the Palestinians, and you’d think that would be something on someone’s agenda by now if there was any chance there would still be Palestinians left in the region. Heck, they could at least pretend to do so just to make it look like there was always that possibility! I guess we’re really not fooling anyone.

      Thank you for keeping your finger on the geopolitical pulse, as erratic and feeble as it may be.

      Namaste.

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    2. The leadership of Israel clearly want to wipe them all out. What will happen in the West Bank once they are done with Gaza? one wonders. immanentizing the eschaton

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    1. “the only way we ever return to normal is by exiting from this dystopian technological nightmare”

      “we’ve lost pride in our country (usa) and traditions”  

      Cool dude, and I liked his entire rant. Very angry and confused. He articulates it well, but this is what you sound like when you’re blind to overshoot, human history, American history, and MORT. 

      I can picture the Europeans of the 17th and 18th century saying the same thing as Oliver about their country’s leadership before they set sail for the New World… and then proceeded to make that New World even more awful than the Old World. 😉

      Although it’s not much of a consolation prize, understanding that we are right on schedule with every other planet in the universe that has had a Great Reset due to broken energy constraints… is the major payoff for swallowing the red pill.

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      1. Funny… I went out to dinner after I posted this and the whole time we were eating… my “sanity” was scolding me for downplaying the prize of awareness. I somehow still make that mistake.

        Yes I would trade my financial level with Oliver’s in a second… but I would never in a million years trade my awareness level for his.

        Life is hard enough without the anger and confusion that comes with not understanding our predicament. 

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          1. I love it! Tracey’s tweet is so spot on for me… Enough with the dread of waiting, let’s get this show on the road.

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  37. I have seen Nate’s videos and I think I have some idea of his thought process and why he believes we can gently simplify our civilization and go back to 2-3 billion.

    I want to start off by mentioning what Sid Smith said about civilization. He said “Civilization is a self assembling structure similar to an anthill and just like no ant has the blueprint to anthill, no human has one for civilization”. So controlling a civilization like ours with million moving pieces will be difficult to say the least.

    Next I want to quote Joseph Tainter who said that “complexity increases to solve problems”, and with increase in complexity comes increase in resource consumption . However it is only part of the picture because complexity can also increase for frivolous reasons.

    Taking an example of something that has become ubiquitous in our society- Microchip. Right now we are making chips which have a transistor size of 2 nanometers. There is only one company in the world which is capable of doing so TSMC. If you go up the size to 7-10 nm then there are probably 3-4 companies. If you go up to 60-80nm which is where we were two decades ago there were probably a dozen or more companies as it was relatively simpler and easier. So why did we keep reducing the transistor size? Because we needed more processing powerand that was a problem needed to be solved. We could go back a few decades in terms of hardware and “simplify” things but then we would also need to bring back early 2000’s era software to run on the systems and many of the tasks we do today will become impossible from banking to industries. So we can’t go back here.

    Next taking another example which is also becoming ubiquitous- Tech inside cars. There was a time when cars just had a cassette player and a few speakers installed in it for entertainment purposes but today we essentially have a powerful computer with a large screen,premium sound system, radars, cameras, lidars and much more. None of these things have emerged to solve any specific problem other than pampering and spoiling us. We could remove all these and drive just fine. This can be considered frivolous complexity and can easily be simplified with little to no ill effect.

    Nate probably confuses the two and thinks we could go back by a few decades and remove complexity and we will just be fine. I think similar confusion might arise with respect to energy. The airline industry consumes 5 million barrels of oil daily and is completely frivolous and unnecessary for essentials of civilization. It can be done away with and I suspect it will be when oil begins to decline year on year. So while there may be some wiggle room it is not as much as Nate and others like him believe.

    Hideaway is absolutely spot on when he says we can’t extract resources or run civilization of today’s age with complexity and technology of 60s or 70s. A good example would be tractors used on farms. The fuel efficiency of 60s or 70s was terrible compared to today so we increased complexity by enormous amount and today we have achieved probably close to 50 percent efficiency. If we remove that complexity then the efficiency goes down as well.

    Complexity is a devil’s bargain,as long as you have the resources to feed it it will work wonders for you, stop feeding it and the problem you solved with that complexity will come back to haunt you with a vengeance.

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    1. You can’t run AI on early 2000’s era hardware and software. You would also have to watch video in Standard Definition instead of HD. But on the bright side, the internet of the early 2000’s was far less addictive than the modern internet.

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      1. Good point Stellar. And good post Kira. 

        A while back when Hideaway was just starting to take energy to the next level for us, I asked him what is making him so confident about his gloominess. He said something along the lines of the deeper he dives into this research… the more he sees the huge and complex background energy that you just don’t ever see or think about. 

        Kira’s post has that kind of vibe for me. Makes me think of the well intentioned “go green” people like Naomi Klein. They really end up doing more harm than good because of their lack of energy knowledge. Hideaways getting us all up to a college degree level. Meanwhile the “go green” people arent even in grade school yet. 

        p.s. Tom Murphy corrected me on my use of modernity (he was nice about it 😊). His definition is the last 10k years of post-agricultural mayhem. I always think of it as the industrial revolution till now. What is the consensus on this site? 

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        1. Taking it from10k is very much the Deep Green analysis point of view (agriculture, civilization, and patriarchy). I don’t think we’ve ever had a perspective on it at Un-denial. A comparative essay between the two would be very interesting to read (10kya vs start of coal age)

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          1. I like your essay idea. I was playing around with it, and quickly noticed that all I’m gonna do is talk about evil agriculture vs evil fossil energy… so nothing really new or beneficial. You’re gonna have to tackle this one monk. 😊

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      2. AI is just a gimmick and will never truly be anything more than that. It’s just another toy to distract ourselves with while we burn the world around us. I think as far as addiction is concerned we were always headed towards addiction economy after internet came online with services competing for our attention, the increased processing power and improved algorithms just making it easier. B just put up a interesting post on AI and the delusions with which we stroke our ego.

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    2. Well said. I think a lot these days about the illusion of abundance created by our economic and technology systems that are actually steepening our Seneca cliff. I expect a bang that will surprise everyone rather than a gentle decline.

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      1. When I look at Nate and his optimism about supposed soft landing and his confusion about complexity I feel as though denial is a creature that feeds on the smallest doubts and gaps in the knowledge base to create false optimism to strengthen itself. Hideaway’s exchanges on POB are very illuminating in this regard. It seems as though Dennis has only become more optimistic since the last time I frequented POB despite everything that has happened.

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    3. Thanks Kira, great post.

      I really like this bit

      “Complexity is a devil’s bargain, as long as you have the resources to feed it it will work wonders for you, stop feeding it and the problem you solved with that complexity will come back to haunt you with a vengeance.”

      It’s the efficiency gains that come with the complexity that’s the devil’s (Faustian) bargain. Everyone, everywhere thinks that becoming more efficient, by using greater complexity is fantastic, and often gives an economic advantage, which chokes out the old way of farming, mining and manufacturing just about everything, so all the old ways of operating eventually die out.

      There will always be plenty of oil left, likewise for every other metal and mineral when the collapse of civilization has happened, in official resources that is. The term “reserves” are for the economic proportion of all resources, and in modern times the Reserves of everything have continually increased with new technologies making some more resources economically available.

      People should read the feasibility studies that come after discovery of any new resource. Lot’s of time and money spent preparing these documents about the supposed viability of a ‘new’ deposit. They use all the accounting terms of net present value and discounted cash flow to work out if the project will be viable (profitable), yet despite how viable many look on paper they just sit there undeveloped.

      The reason being despite all the expertise of those creating these documents, no-one can ever determine the future price of whatever is to be mined. Often something looks highly viable, and turns out a disaster, as in higher costs and lower returns, so only the very best get developed.

      What’s not known by those looking at the ‘green’ future is that when investment funds dry up in a recession, then the number of new mines likely to be developed goes down. Unless a mine is likely to pay itself off rapidly with exceptional grades, it wont be developed, so the pool of ‘viable’ goes down. Likewise when capital costs are rising rapidly.

      Once we get into perpetual recession/depression with higher oil prices, due to lower production, that leads to inflation in everything else, during the initial phase past peak oil, the quantity of ‘reserves’ will decline from what we know of in the ground. A lot will become too unviable. I already know of copper ‘reserves’ that are not reserves at all and will never be mined, as it’s just too expensive to do so. Something like 2/3rds of Australia’s copper reserves listed by the USGS simply don’t exist, they are low grade resources that will never be mined because they are too deep, and have a grade too low, which will never be economic to mine.

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  38. To Hideaways point..

    “All this talk about increasing electrification and renewable energy makes me wonder how copper is holding up.”

    “Mining companies are seeing their reserves dwindle as they run out of ore. Commodities investment firm Goehring & Rozencwajg says the industry is “approaching the lower limits of cut-off grades and brownfield expansions are no longer a viable solution. If this is correct, then we are rapidly approaching the point where reserves cannot be grown at all.””

    “A decline in ore grade results in higher operating costs due primarily to the amount and depth of material required to be mined and processed to produce the same amount of copper product. It is no surprise that both GHG emission intensity and energy intensity increase as ore grade decreases. There is a point of inflection, where below an ore grade of around 0.5% copper, the intensity of both metrics rises sharply.””

    https://rubino.substack.com/p/is-copper-a-broken-story-or-better?fbclid=IwY2xjawEvMstleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHVpLJQ_kUUozL6f7M4UqfDT2O8_gs94RAs13BbM9CeRq6BiGEjPejem8VA_aem_7HfdDOEi5ScCbDjL7KdLLw

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    1. I just finished Ed Conway’s Material World chapter on copper and I came away with a different conclusion. We have and are continuing to cope with declining ore grades and reserves as long as there is diesel to drive the mining machines. I’ll write a short book review when I soon finish it.

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    2. Hi Campbell, a while ago I checked the USGS listed reserves, against one country’s, Australia’s actual reserves. In the fine print on the USGS webpages they state they include JORC compliant resources as reserves for Australia. A resource is not a reserve. A reserve is meant to be what can be economically mined with current technology.

      In other words to be included as reserves, a company has to be able to make money mining it. There are plenty of known resources in Australia that are not even close to being economic to mine, yet the USGS includes them as reserves..

      For example the huge Olympic Dam mine owned by BHP has resources of around 78 million tonnes of copper, but most of it is between 350m-1,350m deep in the ground and of a grade below 0.6%. At depth that is totally uneconomic. Currently BHP have been mining the higher grade sections of around 2% over the last 12-15 years and have been losing money on the operation overall..

      If they can’t make money mining the high grade bits, the bulk of ore which is low grade is always going to stay underground, and never be mined. I’ve been following and keeping the statistics on the mine from the last 15 years, which were published in their annual reports. They have now changed how they report the Olympic Dam operations, so it can’t be worked out separately any more. On average over the 15 years I had records for they lost money mining the 2% grade.

      The USGS has around 100Mt of copper in Australia’s part of overall world reserves, or about 10%, then in the fine print ‘reserves’ is only around 27Mt. it makes me wonder how much of the 1B tonnes they claim are similarly uneconomic. Even a lot of the so called economic reserves are in deposits that have been sitting there undeveloped for decades, it’s just too expensive to mine, and no-one is bothering to spend the money developing them.

      Once oil is in rapid decline, the undeveloped resources /reserves will be way too expensive to develop and a lot of existing mines will also fail, right around the world, so supply of copper will be greatly curtailed. Likewise for every other mineral and metal.

      Basically the numbers we are being fed by the organisations in charge are just to appease us that everything is alright, though I’m certain the individuals that get paid to organise all this data know it’s all a fabrication, but get paid to put out ‘nice’ reports.

      Every time I look at anything really important about the future, the numbers come up woefully short, yet every official body always quotes the rubbish from reserve numbers to the EROEI of renewables (with massive boundaries that leave out most energy inputs) etc.

      For me, the mere reality of so much fudging of real numbers, it means a lot more than just the people here know that modernity is going to be very short lived.

      The people in charge of USGS reserve numbers reports, are definitely aware of huge problems, likewise EIA and IEA for energy. You’d have a hard time convincing me that the military of many countries are not aware as well, which means there is no secret about how stuffed modern civilization really is. My suspicion is they have no idea what to do, except to hide the truth for as long as possible and see how long it lasts.

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  39. There is something dark and coordinated being done to us that started in earnest with covid. I enjoyed this discussion between Chris Martenson and Bret Weinstein. Could it be as simple as they are prepping us for what needs to be done when the system soon crashes? I don’t know but something’s going on.

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  40. Hi all. Wanted to share this delightful little video. While this guy is kind of larping (he’s an academic, fulltime), but he has provided an example of how everyone will be living w100 years for now. A few highlights from the video. Crops, not veges, are most important. You need a starch crop, a protein crop, and an oil/fat crop. These will vary depending on where in the world you live. For him it is wheat, broad/fava beans, and olive trees. Basic peasant food can be grown with very little work, space, and time. Pick the right crops for your environment and use rain water / rainy season to grow them. Supplemental protein from chicken eggs, and maybe hunting/fishing.

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    1. You answered my first question before I asked it…LOL.. how does he pay for property taxes, and the gas stove, pots pans etc. Being a full time academic explains it. Also notice all the irrigation dripper pipe in the footage..

      It doesn’t matter how much food we grow on our property, I know none of what we do is sustainable, despite using compost as the fertilizer for our vegetables. We use irrigation pipe, pumped water, modern shop bought tools etc.

      We use coolrooms, solar panels and batteries for power, electrical wiring, inverters etc. It’s all only available in a modern large civilization. It all breaks down and has to be replaced over time. Entropy gets everything…

      In the future a simple diode or capacitor will fail in the inverter, making it, and the rest of the system useless unless parts are available. Eventually they wont be as supply lines break down..

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      1. LOL. Watchout!! Hideaway is in pit bull mode. He wont even let an innocent feel-good story like this pass through the gates. 😊

        Question about your great comment above with Kira. “the feasibility studies that come after discovery of any new resource”. I read that paragraph meaning the studies are purposefully made to look much sweeter than reality would suggest. Did I get that right? 

        If yes, then I assume that info goes down the pipeline to Forbes magazine, WSJ, investors, etc. (the real religion). Somehow for the first time I can actually make sense of why the techno optimists are so goddamn wrong about everything that matters… It’s got a “peak of insanity” vibe to it.

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        1. Most/all feasibility studies give a capital and operating cost as estimated by experts, including a contingency of 15-20%. Even with this added percentage, they are virtually always underquoted. Often the capital price is double or more the feasibility estimates. (so much for experts!!)

          The big money is well aware of this happening, so the only new mines that get brought into production are those with outstanding numbers as in size and grade. People know they are going to be profitable from the initial find, because the size and grade are outstanding. They also find it easy to get funding as everyone makes money from these ones. (usually taken over by larger companies very early on, as everyone can smell great profit). The problem is the fantastic ones are few and far between and getting much harder to find, as we’ve found most of the best already.

          There are plenty of theoretical profitable projects sitting around gathering dust, but every single one of them is counted in reserves for forecasting by bodies such as USGS (United States Geological Service).

          If a feasibility study is 5-10 years old, ‘waiting for the commodity price to rise’, it is totally out of date, with the costs of building it usually going up more than the price of the underlying commodity.

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          1. Thanks for the details Hideaway. Appreciate it.

            Ya, the bullshit is everywhere. I don’t know why this one surprises me. 

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      2. Just recently I discovered soil blocking as an alternative to multi-pots made out of plastics. One step towards sustainability, yeahhh! Now I need another thousand of similar ideas just to get rid of plastics/insecticides/fungicides in my garden… xD

        Hideway is right, the level of complexity is so huge, it’s even hard to imagine a world without plastics

        Best, Comrade

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      3. He said he uses irrigation for veges only. Even just storing dried goods in jars is incredibly modern. Canning was invented recently, yet people treat it like an ancient homesteading skill. I also don’t believe how many hours he said. The more tech you take away, the much longer a job takes to do

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    2. Thank you for sharing this video.

      It was very interesting. I liked how he clearly broke down the way he reasoned about nutrition, land use… And the adaptation of recipes from other cultures.

      I was surprised that he could grow most of his food in the winter (his rainy season). I guess this is an advantage of living at a lower lattitude: I am not sure I could get enough sun for that were I live? (but maybe that’s just a false belief on my part).

      For me, water is the most difficult challenge. I have too much in winter, not enough in the summer, which seems to get increasingly hot and dry (I do not (wish to) water). I keep the soil always covered (with a variety of plants) and try to improve shading (although the community garden regulations forbid us to plant trees :() Also, I hope this will get better as the soil improves and its depth increases. I do not know if I will ever be able to make the soil water reserve last until the end of summer with these constraints… However, I have faith in the ability of life to improvise and have seen gradual improvements over the last years.

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  41. Chris touched upon a point that I have thought about as well, especially following your exchanges on POB. Every time anybody brings up the issue of inflated oil reserves by Saudis or other oil producing nations Dennis makes the point that reserves increase because extraction techniques (i.e complexity) improves and more of the resources that were previously not added to reserves get added. So early reserves from an oil field may be 10Gb but could increase to 15Gb after a few years. So even if you have extracted 5Gb in those years you still end up with the original reserves because technology improved and more oil became accessible. He claims that is how Saudi reserves have held up at 200+ Gb, ofcourse he backs that up with some graphs as usual. If this is a positive feedback loop then losing all that complexity that enabled resourse-reserve conversation would make this process work in reverse right? And does this also apply to minerals? That would explain the ludicrous forecasts of lithium reserves for electrifying every single vehicle in world.

    Another thing that is ignored by utopians like Dennis is the energy cost of complexity. Taking a diesel engine as an example. Going from 25 percent to 50 percent would need things like turbo chargers,direct injection tech among countless other things. The R&D and manufacturing energy cost is not taken into account for the work that the engine is delivering or the EROEI calculations that engine is involved in. Also when you can’t make all that tech and go back to world war 2 diesel engines which were reliable and robust but not efficient you end up doubling the diesel consumption.

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  42. I saw this comment by Frank Moone on B’s newest essay. I like what he’s saying because it spills into MORT.  Although, once again, we can sum up Frank’s entire statement in 3 little words… peak of insanity.

    At the risk of being anachronistic, Freudian theory has some explanatory power to nicely describe what’s happening in society. 1) From the perspective of repression and denial, society is repressing its high anxiety about the depletion of resources and the limits to growth. The result? A belief that tech, a symbolic extension of the human ego’s mastery over nature, will provide an unlimited solution to energy and resource woes. Technology becomes a defense mechanism. 2) Freud’s take on the infantile fantasy of omnipotence is also relevant here: society’s belief that tech is all-powerful is a manifestation of a latent (infantile) fantasy of omnipotence. 3) We could also see what’s happening as an outcome of the death drive (Thanatos). Here it manifests as a compulsion, a self-destructive pursuit of progress, one that ignores its unsustainable foundations. 4) Sublimation also comes into play: collective fear of resource depletion and collapse is being sublimated into technological innovation. Instead of confronting the issue head-on, we instead are channeling our fear (with near-religious hope) into the quest for new energy technologies. 5) Finally, we are indulging in a collective delusion, a neurosis, which shields us from the painful truth that lies in our near future: the end of ‘progress.’

    An AI Takeover (Not). There is now a widespread belief that… | by B | Aug, 2024 | Medium

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  43. Brief book review:

    I just finished the book Material World by Ed Conway.

    It’s an excellent deep dive into six materials critical to modern civilization: sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium.

    Despite being reasonably well read on how our physical world works I learned a lot as the book is filled with surprising and most interesting facts. The scale and complexity of our extraction of materials from the earth is mind boggling.

    The author is fully aware of our material extraction dependence on non-renewable depleting oil, and of food availability on fossil energy, and oil’s unique energy and chemical qualities, and of falling ore grades, and of falling EROEI, and of the challenges of our hoped for energy transition, yet he remains optimistic about the future. It’s hard to explain this combination of knowledge and optimism without MORT. I suppose it might be explained by the desire to sell a popular book, however if this were the case I would have expected much less hard evidence of our overshoot predicament. It’s like he wrote one long argument for why collapse is inevitable and then ended the book with a different conclusion.

    Despite the book being yet another great case study for MORT, I loved it and will read it several more times.

    P.S. Hideaway & Kira, you should read this as it will provide much data to enhance your theses.

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    1. Nate interviewed him a while back.

      This site is about the only one I know where the understood or at least expressed concensus is this.

      Collapse (and most likely a nasty fast collapse) is not avoidable.

      Everywhere else can not swallow this pill.

      Probably the main reason we all still discuss it is to vent the mental pressure of realisation and to confirm we are not going mad.

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      1. So true nikoB. I wonder why that is. Hmmm… that’s a tough one (sarcasm).  Maybe because this site is the only one that has denial ranked as one of the most important issues to be focused on. When is the rest of the overshoot crowd gonna realize this? And fine, they don’t have to have the same stance as we do (even though they will eventually 😊), but having denial at the top of your list opens up doors.

        Stuff you could not see prior starts to come into focus. Forget about the really big examples like me going from Daniel Quinn to conquering fire…. I’m talking about smaller things like me finally being able to accept MPP, or me writing and then clicking the send button for my anti-porn article. I could never have done that pre-MORT.

        And your last point touches on something I have been thinking about since Rob mentioned Paul Chefurka’s path the other day. I would love to join Paul and be done with the collapse world… but I can’t. Yes I can easily be done with Nate Hagens, B, Tom Murphy, etc… but having un-Denial is a lifeline. Interacting with you guys makes me feel not so alone at the top of collapse mountain. And like you said, it also confirms we are not going mad. 😊

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        2. I agree with both of you. Once I saw it I could not unsee it. My life would be desperately lonely without the few aware people that hang out here.

          Just a reminder that I do not claim MORT awareness is the “solution” but I do believe if you have not yet given up on making the future less bad then MORT awareness needs to be at the top of the priority list.

          The un-Denial Decision Tree

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          1. Quit showing off Rob 😊. You really do have such an extensive library here. Anything I say, you can easily whip out an old essay and show me that you have already “been there, done that”.

            I like that decision tree a lot. And once again the comments were worth reading and I read them all. Whatever happened to Apneaman? Probably dead or he quit the collapse world. He was a great contributor, and I really dig his style. 

            Their was some drama too. You had to almost block someone. Brandon, who was an interesting pain in the ass at first, but then became annoying as hell. It’s such a religion, this site. I guess I could say that about anything that I’m passionate about. But if someone (who is overshoot aware) comes over here and doesn’t immediately grasp the importance factor of denial, I think they have no chance of ever converting. 

            This site will “fix” you on pretty much all of your flaws (in my case – sustainable cultures, aliens & interstellar travel, white skin, etc). But it cannot fix you if you can’t see denial’s importance factor. The typical lifers who are still confused on why they are the only ones who “get it”. C’mon already. I only had 2 years experience and I instantly knew MORT/un-Denial was homebase. 

            Also saw comments from Florian and Perran who I thought were newbies (after me on this site). I guess me and ABC are still the newest peeps. How the hell do you get some seniority around here? 😊

            If you dont have the desire to browse all the comments, this was my favorite thread:

            The un-Denial Decision Tree – un-Denial

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            1. Apneaman was a great contributor and un-Denial friend. He said something which I incorrectly interpreted as an attack on my character, neither of us apologized, and he left the site. I do miss him but he could be a little rough on overshoot skeptics. 🙂 Apneaman occasionally posts now at James’ site Megacancer.

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              1. Why doesn’t that surprise me. You have had many fights/arguments over the years. I used to think it was because you were too combative or defensive or whatever. But I dont see it that way as much anymore (even though you probably do have a touch of that😊). 

                So many people have come over to this site to tell you why you are wrong or to bash MORT. You always have to be on your guard so I’m sure that spills over into some “accidents” where you might misinterpret the person’s intent. 

                The big difference between you and me is that you will duke it out with anyone and everyone. I couldn’t do that if I was running this site. My approach would be “if you dont like what I’m selling than get the hell off my site!”

                In the long run, your approach is much more productive than mine. And very beneficial to the rest of the audience because they get to see all those teacher/student moments.

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                1. It wasn’t a fight or even a disagreement. I posted some bullshit left/right political crap and thought his anger was directed at me instead of the article. Very sad.

                  I won’t have any Internet for the next 4-6 days. Stay well everyone.

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  44. Non collapse post. This is my all-time favorite stand-up comedy special. Not even George Carlin can make me laugh for an hour straight. Its crude and juvenile, but hilarious. (the video has italian subtitles, but it didn’t bother me at all)

    Robert Schimmel is similar to Bill Hicks in that he was one of the best and most people have never heard of him.

    ROBERT SCHIMMEL Unprotected SUB ITA (youtube.com)

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    2. Your video embeds stopped working because I stopped fixing them when camping with only my cell phone.

      You might be able to make them work if you are careful to always place a YouTube link on a new line by itself.

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    3. I think youtube did something that affects the embeds. I could not get my Schimmel link above to be the normal picture. But on the newest page of comments I was able to get my Medhurst link to look normal.

      Before I hit “reply”, I was playing around with random yt links and they all had about a 50/50 ratio. Some worked and some brought up that weird box with text.

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  46. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt/

    The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?

    https://peakoil.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1495707#p1495707

    theluckycountry says: “no”!

    “Interesting read ralfy, especially the linked pdf from the Melbourne institute. A good update on many of the issues we came together here at peakoil.com to thrash out.
    “So we have to understand that we’ve produced a lot of human beings on this planet who can’t survive outside of this technologically dependent existence”.
    This is what the business as usual, BAU, schema has given us. Solar/wind to the modern version of the electric car, measures taken to transition us away from our utter dependence on oil but they are in themselves utterly dependent on fossil fuels.

    It reminds me of a particularly difficult mathematical proof I encountered on an test paper years ago, I spent more time on that single question than any other on the exam paper and all I achieved was a series of steps that worked back around to the original question. After which I wrote (which proves absolutely nothing) Our endeavors here, to find a way to mitigate the peak oil crises, have been no different. We are right back where we were 25 years ago and all we have done as humans is to waste 25 years and untold oil gas and coal. And it was a waste, burnt up tail pipes, billions of plastic bags, hundreds of millions of solar panels that will be a landfill nightmare in another 25 years.

    Those guys in the article are basically post-collapse-ologists, trying to find a way to preserve some of the technology of ‘now’ for use after the collapse. I empathize with them because we’re going to lose the lot probably, the medical care, the entire electricity framework, the roads and mobility, most of the food and housing we are used to. It’s all baked into the cake because it’s all dependent on fossil fuels, long transport lines and a complex distributed manufacturing network. All magnificent previous empires on Earth collapsed for the same reasons, minus the oil dependence. That was our crowning achievement, and our greatest liability.

    fortunately our erstwhile author is focused now on a rapid rebuild of the technological society soon after the collapse of it? He leans too heavily of the SciFi trilogy “Foundation” by Asimov I’m afraid. Well that’s only natural since he’s transitioned from a marine biologist to a Hugo Award-winning science-fiction author but it doesn’t help the case giving people another dose of Hopium. I wont make the case myself ‘why’ we are doomed to collapse, if you haven’t figured that out by now, you never will. Just enjoy you’re Netflix and Cheetos while you can.”

    Saludos

    el mar

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  49. I recently watched a 2024 documentary titled <a href=”https://cineb.world/movie/the-grab-57316/” target=”_blank”>The Grab</a> (cineb.world) about international conglomerates and governments (China) semi-legally buying up enormous parts of Africa and land in the USA, basically to use the water to grow crops for export (mostly to China). One supreme irony, was a woman learning her own pension was invested in the company that was draining her local water table.

    Complimenting the documentary above is this gem on YouTube : 1k & 4K, 1 hour 11 mins, 200k subs, 0.5 million views, uploaded 2 weeks ago. A presenter (new to me) that seems very comfortable on camera.

    <a hfef-“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHOvQ5P5Mr8” target=”_blank”>Tourism in Zimbabwe: Ruins of Rhodesia.</a> (YouTube.com)

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  50. I’ve been very lethargic recently about bothering to write up much. I keep reading everyone else’s posts and go to most of the links, plus keep looking at all types of ‘green bullish’ videos, while shaking my head at the stupidity of the arguments.

    I’m just currently in the ‘mode’ of ‘why bother writing up a long message/post explaining the weaknesses in all the bright green lies’, because it does take a lot of explaining. I’m certainly understanding why Paul Chefurka decided to just live and not focus on our predicament or write about it.

    Like others have mentioned up thread, I’m sure glad I found this site, otherwise I’d go crazy thinking that I’m the only one looking at the big picture of how doomed civilization really is.

    I also wonder if we should try and spread the word.

    What would be the outcome if everyone did become aware that civilization is in for a fast collapse when the main energy source starts to decline in availability in a precipitous way?

    Are we better off making our own plans, peace or whatever?

    What’s the point of trying to tell people about the future when they prefer to deny a bad outcome? By them not knowing, are they not happier between now and then?

    Sorry, I’ve just hit a patch of not bothering to upset people with our reality, I’m sure something will stir me out of it soon…

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    1. Hello there Hideaway,

      I so hear, understand and salute you for having held the course so long being a legendary Cassandra of the doomsphere. There really is no more to do as we are all on the Titanic just before the moment she hits the iceberg. Those in Empire continue the feasting and dancing a little longer whilst those in steerage class continue to live their downtrodden lives. This is a destiny we will not escape and it remains to those of us who are aware to treasure every bonus day with even more wonder and awareness, as you say, make our own peace and comfort and hopefully with much joy as we can. It is our skilful mission, should we wish to accept it, to help reduce suffering even on moment by moment basis and that may at times require us to speak up and at other times to remain a silent witness, hopefully with as much compassion as we can find within us, for we are truly all in the same boat throughout the entire history of humankind. There’s no where else but here to live out our lives.

      These days I am finding myself more and more drawn to connecting with others on the level they are asking me, often it is very clear once you gift them the space to share what is on their minds and in their hearts. It is not necessarily knowledge they are craving but acknowledgment, just to have their story heard and their deeds seen, and to be validated that they did their best in whatever situation given, because it sure isn’t easy being a human being on this planet. I also try to leave the conversation or meeting with an expression of gratitude for the time we’ve shared, for I crave that connection which grounds my sense of being, and provides meaning and purpose. Then it is two souls whose sufferings have been alleviated, and all the more blessing for helping each other.

      I am about to plant more fruit trees, never too early or late to try to put more possibility of harvest in the ground. I may never see the fruit from these but that is not the point, if they weren’t planted at all then no-one will. Even if planted, they may not come to fruition but there is still that choice to keep that possibility alive. One day someone (or some animal, more likely and quite a pleasing prospect that) will enjoy the fruit and it may even sustain them through a difficult time. It brings me much joy and comfort to be able to think the action I take will relieve suffering in the future. Above all, it is my pleasure to partake in symbolically linking the earth, sun, and life force through the passage of time by planting a tree. This is an example of an active thing I can still do that maximises the benefit for all, regardless another’s perspective. Having more foodstuffs ready to share is another, and even if it isn’t to be exactly shared but taken, it’s still a benefit to someone.

      I don’t think we have too much longer to keep everyone else in their own self-imposed denial suspense. The iceberg is upon us and it will be obvious enough once the hull of our modernity receives its fatal gash. That is when those of us who are aware will be even more needed, not as “told you so” naysayers but as beacons of calm and purpose as much as we are able to be. For us the initial shock of horror should be tempered by our knowledge and whatever stage of acceptance we have come to, and perhaps there will occasions to rise to our highest and best, in whatever manner we can. Right now, we are shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, but there will be a time when we can. wherever we are placed on this planet, act as another’s lifeboat, by kindness and generosity.

      This site is already a lifeboat for all of us sheltered here, and although there is no great hope for ultimate rescue from treacherous storms and seas, we can keep going as best we can, as long as we can, and all the better together.

      Namaste, friends.

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    2. I think a lot of people here are right there with you. Sometimes I think this site might be too good for its own good. There is a perfect storm brewing (for me). The certainty of near-term global industrial civilization extinction. And the understanding that humans need to go with it. 

      Very hard to fake it in the normal sheep world. Definitely affecting my work. I’m almost daring them to fire me. (its amazing what you can get away with when you dont give a fuck). But their tolerance & incompetence is way higher than I thought. 

      I know I’m a broken record here, but god bless the Great Reset. 

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    3. Hi Hideaway and All,

      “I’ve been very lethargic recently about bothering to write up much.”

      I hear ya. And appreciate the very specific, detailed information you post.

      Three tenets of my life: Enjoy Life, Be Thankful, Reduce Suffering.

      I’m still working, gardening, fixing an old house, volunteering with various groups including the Recyclery Bicycle Collective in Asheville and the Asheville Tool Library.

      I recently moved to a small town near Asheville and am helping start a bike collective here.
      As I’m sure you know, bikes use far less energy/materials than cars, are good exercise, and will still be rolling when energy is far less affordable.
      Big pickups still rule here. Anything that gets more bikes more visible on the road will make me safer and reduce the air pollution I breathe.
      For me, bikes are a good starting point to talking with folks about reducing home energy use, gardens, community singing, being good neighbors and more.
      I’ve been working with my hands since I was a kid, so bikes are a good fit.

      Sign at Recyclery:
      <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
      Welcome to the Asheville Recyclery
      Where you can:
      Build a bike from our recycled parts
      Maintain your ride
      Use funny looking tools
      Share!!!
      Master the art of cleaning up

      We operate on ZERO FUNDING
      and exist solely through your donations of bicycles/parts, money and time.

      We are a non-profit(501C-3) community bike space focusing on giving people the skills to build and maintain a sustainable form of transportation.
      Staff mechanics volunteer to teach any and all aspects of bicycle building in a hands-on learning positive environment.

      >> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

      The younger folks who are the lead mechanics and make-it-happen people are near-anarchists, in the best sense of the word.
      We had a 2000 square foot building in downtown Asheville for cheap for 15 years but the owner decided to do something different with it. Rents are very high in Asheville and we have yet to find another building, are still looking.
      A bar offered space on their lot so we went to the NC capital, Raleigh, and bought a used school bus, drove it back, and are building it in to a bike shop. We opened back up last Thursday, and are still working on the bus.
      https://drive.proton.me/urls/1Y1C23CQ30#yfHDcvhPzmVR
      Outside of town, a guy donated a couple 40′ shipping containers to store most of our bikes, wheels, other parts.
      Long-term we are still looking for a building in downtown Asheville, as this is where most of the people are that really need the shop.

      I read un-denial almost every day as I find it has a very good ‘signal-to-noise’ ratio, and appreciate all involved.
      And I try to get outside every day and be in the sun/moon, with nature, talk with people, keep it physically real.

      Thanks and good health, Weogo

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      1. That’s awesome, Weogo! Thank you so much for sharing how you’re creating so much community and joy in your part of the world, it really made my day. All the best to you and your family, and keep pedaling!

        Namaste.

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    4. Hideaway “I also wonder if we should try and spread the word.”

      Short answer – No.

      Longer answer – I also occasionally ponder the point of it all. James at MegaCancer (WordPrress.com) thinks we are all pretty much following our ‘programming’ to carry our DNA and it’s encoded .metabolism into the future. In that regard, I am a miserable failure (no kids).

      I just read an article from The Economist magazine, about the nurse in the UK that got a multiple whole-life sentence for killing multiple babies, Lucy Letby. – readable without the pay-wall via archive.is

      Aside : For me understanding requires effort, beliefs are for lazy dumb shits that rely on faith & hope.

      In the article, there is both an explicit and implicit condemnation of “average” people and there understanding of (pretty much) everything. This also applies to the people in ‘authority’. Quotes from the article :

      1. Dame Kate Bingham, who chaired Britain’s vaccine taskforce, was “pretty shocked” by the level of scientific ignorance in the civil service. Worse, she felt that, for some, it is almost “a badge of honour”.
      2. [Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson] is the product of what Snow called Britain’s “fanatical belief in educational specialisation”. And that belief, says David Willetts, a former universities minister, is “as acute as ever”.]
      3. Government data suggest that almost half of the working-age population in Britain have the numeracy skills of a primary [age 4 to 10] school child.
      4. Something is certainly needed: for people in positions of authority not to have basic quantitative literacy is “unacceptable”, says Professor Spiegelhalter.

      The phrase “jury of my peers” is now trite excrement – I would require people that are actually intelligent and not easily manipulated, a ‘prosecutor’ would never allow any of them. Ergo, there is no justice. When mega-collapse starts, 90% of people are going to get what they deserve.

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        1. WordPress probably picked up on my transition from FireFox on Windows to FireFox on Ubuntu, so my post going into spam is probably not attributable to you.

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