Category: (Certified 100% Denial-Free™)

By Gail Tverberg: Our Economic Growth System is Reaching Limits in a Strange Way

Gail Tverberg’s insight continues to deepen. A must read.

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/03/17/our-economic-growth-system-is-reaching-limits-in-a-strange-way/

If a person doesn’t understand what the problem is, it is easy to come to the wrong conclusion. Part of our problem is that we need a growing amount of net energy, per capita, to keep the economy from collapsing. Part of our problem is that entropy problems such as rising debt, increased pollution, and increasing complexity tend to bring the system down, even when we seem to have plenty of energy supplies. These are the two big problems we are facing that few people recognize.

Another part of our problem is that it is necessary for common laborers to have good paying jobs, and in fact rising pay, if the economy is to continue to grow. As much as we would like everyone to have advanced training (and training that changes with each new innovation), the productivity of workers does not rise sufficiently to justify the high cost of giving advanced education to a large share of the population. Instead, we must deal with the fact that the world’s economy needs large numbers of workers with relatively little training. In fact, we need rising pay for these workers, because there are so many of them, and they are the ones who keep the “demand” part of the commodity price cycle high enough.

Robots may be very efficient at producing goods and services, but they cannot recycle the earnings of the system. In theory, businesses could pay very high taxes on the output of automated systems, so that governments could create make-work projects to hire all of the unemployed workers. In practice, the idea is impractical–the businesses would simply move to an area with lower taxes.

Growth now is slowing because of all of the entropy issues involved. People in China cannot stand any more pollution. Too many laborers in developed countries are being marginalized by globalization and by competition with ever more intelligent machines that can replace much of the function of humans. None of this would be a problem, except that we have a huge amount of debt that needs to be repaid with interest, and we need commodity prices to rise high enough to encourage production. If these problems are not fixed, the whole system will collapse, even though there seems to be a surplus of energy products.

By Kim Hill: What’s Wrong with Renewable Energy?

http://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/ecocide/extraction/kim-hill-whats-wrong-with-renewable-energy/

Ten things environmentalists need to know about renewable energy:

1.    Solar panels and wind turbines aren’t made out of nothing. They are made out of metals, plastics, chemicals. These products have been mined out of the ground, transported, processed, manufactured. Each stage leaves behind a trail of devastation: habitat destruction, water contamination, colonization, toxic waste, slave labour, greenhouse gas emissions, wars, and corporate profits. Renewables can never replace fossil fuel infrastructure, as they are entirely dependent on it for their existence.

2.    The majority of electricity that is generated by renewables is used in manufacturing, mining, and other industries that are destroying the planet. Even if the generation of electricity were harmless, the consumption certainly isn’t. Every electrical device, in the process of production, leaves behind the same trail of devastation. Living communities—forests, rivers, oceans—become dead commodities.

3.    The aim of converting from conventional power generation to renewables is to maintain the very system that is killing the living world, killing us all, at a rate of 200 species per day. Taking carbon emissions out of the equation doesn’t make it sustainable. This system needs not to be sustained, but stopped.

4.    Humans, and all living beings, get our energy from plants and animals. Only the industrial system needs electricity to survive, and food and habitat for everyone are being sacrificed to feed it. Farmland and forests are being taken over, not just by the infrastructure itself, but by the mines, processing and waste dumping that it entails. Ensuring energy security for industry requires undermining energy security for living beings (that’s us).

5.    Wind turbines and solar panels generate little, if any, net energy (energy returned on energy invested). The amount of energy used in the mining, manufacturing, research and development, transport, installation, maintenance and disposal of these technologies is almost as much—or in some cases more than—they ever produce. Renewables have been described as a laundering scheme: dirty energy goes in, clean energy comes out. (Although this is really beside the point, as no matter how much energy they generate, it doesn’t justify the destruction of the living world.)

6.    Renewable energy subsidies take taxpayer money and give it directly to corporations. Investing in renewables is highly profitable. General Electric, BP, Samsung, and Mitsubishi all profit from renewables, and invest these profits in their other business activities. When environmentalists accept the word of corporations on what is good for the environment, something has gone seriously wrong.

7.    More renewables doesn’t mean less conventional power, or less carbon emissions. It just means more power is being generated overall. Very few coal and gas plants have been taken off line as a result of renewables.

8.    Only 20% of energy used globally is in the form of electricity. The rest is oil and gas. Even if all the world’s electricity could be produced without carbon emissions (which it can’t), it would only reduce total emissions by 20%. And even that would have little impact, as the amount of energy being used globally is increasing exponentially.

9.    Solar panels and wind turbines last around 20-30 years, then need to be disposed of and replaced. The production process, of extracting, polluting, and exploiting, is not something that happens once, but is continuous and expanding.

10.    The emissions reductions that renewables intend to achieve could be easily accomplished by improving the efficiency of existing coal plants, at a much lower cost. This shows that the whole renewables industry is nothing but an exercise in profiteering with no benefits for anyone other than the investors.

By John Weber: Superman Plays With Kryptonite Dice

This fabulous essay written by John Weber in 2010 was brought to my attention by a friend.

In it Weber describes the relationship between energy and our destructive dominance as a species. This theme is central to the manifesto I wrote for this site but Weber expands on the idea and provides more color.

I’m also pleased to see Weber touches on denial but I doubt he assigns the same importance to denial as I do.

Your time will be well spent reading this.

http://sunweber.blogspot.ca/2010/05/superman-plays-with-kryptonite-dice.html

 

Tim Garrett: On the Nature of Growth, and Our Special Place

This is a recent KKRN Community Radio interview with Tim Garrett, one of the scientists I respect the most.

http://kkrn.org/broadcasts/1220

Garrett again explains his thermodynamic modeling of civilization and his conclusion that collapse is inevitable regardless of what we do.

One comment in particular I found very insightful and I’ve not heard him make it in the past: There is no such thing as steady state in the universe. Thing always change. If that change happens to be growth then collapse is inevitable due to finite materials and energy. This means that a steady state economy is probably not feasible.

The interview reminded me of how fascinating denial is. The interviewer clearly understood Garrett’s theory but also refused to accept its implications, believing that if more people purchased solar panels and electric cars we could save ourselves. The denial filter in his logic was humorous to observe.

Denial is everywhere and deep when you watch for it.

Finally, the interview again got me thinking about the implications of the advanced technology we’ve created that enables abundant food, easy transportation, central heating, health care, and plentiful leisure time and toys.

The logic is as follows:

  • advanced technology requires up-front investment
  • up-front investment requires debt
  • debt requires growth
  • growth requires increasing energy and materials
  • growth must eventually stop on a finite planet
  • debt, which is the majority of wealth, becomes worthless without growth
  • complexity cannot be maintained without wealth
  • all advanced civilizations must therefore collapse
  • since the majority of energy and materials used were non-renewable, a collapsed civilization is unlikely to rebuild.

The conclusion to all of this is that advanced civilizations have short lifetimes in the universe and we should be grateful for being alive to enjoy one of the universe’s rarer and most interesting events.

The Best Idea for Population Reduction

The best idea I’ve heard for how to implement a one child policy is to mobilize grandmothers. Grandmothers are past child-bearing age and no longer feel the influence of their genes to have children. Instead they are concerned about the survival of their grandchildren.

If we could educate grandmothers on the imminent threat to their grandchildren by human overshoot then it might be possible to mobilize grandmothers as a single issue voting block in favor of a one child policy. Grandmothers are a large enough group that they could probably sway most votes if they voted as a block.

There is some history to support this idea. The prohibition of alcohol in the US, which required a majority of states to approve a change to the constitution, was spearheaded by a small group of dedicated women fed up with widespread alcoholism in society.

The threat from human overshoot far exceeds that from alcohol abuse so perhaps this idea is not so crazy after all.

I first heard this idea in an interview with Jack Alpert.

Extraenvironmentalist #11: Temporal Blindness

https://xenetwork.org/xe/episodes/episode-11-temporal-blindness/

Our education system creates the models we use to interpret information. A faulty model can lead to significant blind spots, especially in thinking about nonlinear problems. Do the cognitive models that you’ve developed allow you to understand the severe problems threatening our global civilization? How accurately can you recognize how trends will impact your society and your life? What is a reasonable response to dealing with 7 billion homo sapiens sapiens?

In Extraenvironmentalist #11 we speak with Jack Alpert of the Stanford Knowledge Integration Lab about the role that our cognitive models play in recognizing the severity of our global predicament. Seth and I discuss Jack’s writings and his Nonlinearity and the Elephant Problem video. After talking about how to deal with scarce resources on a finite planet, we dive into how to deal with overpopulation, including Jack’s approach for building public of rapid population decline through convincing grandmothers that fewer babies need to be born.

By Chris Martenson: The Return of Crisis

A nice essay by Chris Martenson today with an excellent big picture summary of the situation and risks.

Let me be blunt: this next crash will be far worse and more dramatic than any that has come before. Literally, the world has never seen anything like the situation we collectively find ourselves in today. The so-called Great Depression happened for purely monetary reasons.  Before, during and after the Great Depression, abundant resources, spare capacity and willing workers existed in sufficient quantities to get things moving along smartly again once the financial system had been reset.

This time there’s something different in the story line: the absence of abundant and high-net energy oil.

http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/96701/return-crisis

By Richard Smith: Green Capitalism: The God That Failed

Richard Smith is a rare voice that speaks to the ineffectiveness of environmental organizations. Green growth is not and cannot be green.

Since the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, when environmentalists began to turn to the market, “green growth” theorists and proponents have argued au contraire that “jobs and environment are not opposed,” that economic growth is compatible with emissions reduction, that carbon taxes and/or cap-and-trade schemes could suppress GHG emissions while “green jobs” in new tech, especially renewable energy, would offset lost jobs in fossil fuel industries. Their strategy has failed completely, yet this remains the dominant view of leading climate scientists, including James Hansen, and of most environmental organizations.

All such market-based efforts are doomed to fail, and a sustainable economy is inconceivable without sweeping systemic economic change.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21060-green-capitalism-the-god-that-failed

Unfortunately Smith studied economics and apparently did not study physics or biology and therefore incorrectly believes that a different economic or political system can solve our overshoot problems.

It is true that Capitalism has proven to be the most effective system for growth however every other economic and political system has also proven to be destructive to the environment.

The problem is not our economic or political system.

The problem is that humans are consuming a lot of non-renewable energy and materials, and too large a share of renewable resources. Full stop.

And another similar article by Richard Smith…

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19872-capitalism-and-the-destruction-of-life-on-earth-six-theses-on-saving-the-humans

If we want a sustainable economy, one that “meets the needs of present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs,” then we would have to do at least some or all of the following:

  1. Put the brakes on out-of-control growth in the global North – retrench or shut down unnecessary, resource-hogging, wasteful, polluting industries like fossil fuels, autos, aircraft and airlines, shipping, chemicals, bottled water, processed foods, unnecessary pharmaceuticals and so on. Abolish luxury-goods production, the fashions, jewelry, handbags, mansions, Bentleys, yachts, private jets etc. Abolish the manufacture of disposable, throw-away and “repetitive consumption” products. All these consume resources we’re running out of, resources that other people on the planet desperately need and that our children and theirs will need.
  2. Discontinue harmful industrial processes like industrial agriculture, industrial fishing, logging, mining and so on.
  3. Close many services – the banking industry, Wall Street, the credit card, retail, PR and advertising “industries” built to underwrite and promote all this overconsumption. I’m sure most of the people working in these so-called industries would rather be doing something else, something useful, creative and interesting and personally rewarding with their lives. They deserve that chance.
  4. Abolish the military-surveillance-police state industrial complex, and all its manufactures because this is just a total waste whose only purpose is global domination, terrorism and destruction abroad and repression at home. We can’t build decent societies anywhere when so much of social surplus is squandered on such waste.
  5. Reorganize, restructure, reprioritize production and build the products we do need to be as durable and shareable as possible.
  6. Steer investments into things society does need, like renewable energy, organic farming, public transportation, public water systems, ecological remediation, public health, quality schools and other currently unmet needs.
  7. Deglobalize trade to produce what can be produced locally; trade what can’t be produced locally, to reduce transportation pollution and revive local producers.
  8. Equalize development the world over by shifting resources out of useless and harmful production in the North and into developing the South, building basic infrastructure, sanitation systems, public schools, health care, and so on.
  9. Devise a rational approach to eliminate or control waste and toxins as much as possible.
  10. Provide equivalent jobs for workers displaced by the retrenchment or closure of unnecessary or harmful industries, not just the unemployment line, not just because workers cannot support the industry we and they need to save ourselves.

Nowhere in Smith’s 10 possible solutions does he clearly state the most important thing: Restoration of the planet’s health requires poorer people and/or fewer people.

It seems Smith has fallen into the same trap as the greens he criticizes.

The only possible solution is to reduce total consumption. We can do this by reducing consumption per person and/or reducing the number of people.

Achieving this will be difficult and maybe impossible because it requires an override of evolved behaviors.

Nevertheless, if we fail to voluntarily reduce total consumption, nature will do it for us, soon.

Hat tip Bodhi Paul Chefurka.

By A Chemist in Langley: On the Empty Platitudes of the Anti-pipeline Advocates

It’s refreshing to run into someone who thinks clearly and is not in denial.

This piece criticizing the unsound logic and deep denial of environmental activists is really good.

https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2016/01/31/on-the-empty-platitudes-of-the-anti-pipeline-advocates/

Why We Want Growth, Why We Can’t Have It, and What This Means

I want to talk a little about growth and why it is such a powerful force in society.

Growth is an interesting denial topic because it is obvious, even to a child or uneducated person, that infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet. Yet growth is a top priority for every country in the world, and most citizens. I have a hunch that most of our leaders and citizens do not understand the real reason they want growth which makes this topic even more interesting.

Albert Bartlett argued that part of the problem is that the human brain does not understand the exponential function. He has a point. I have taken about 10 university level mathematics courses and I still needed to create a little spreadsheet to satisfy myself that Bartlett was correct. Anything that grows exponentially, regardless of how small the exponent is, will eventually explode into a hockey stick. So if you want society to become more sustainable, it is not sufficient to argue that we should reduce our goal of say 4% annual growth to a smaller number. Any growth rate bigger than zero is a problem.

But even without this advanced understanding of exponential growth, it is still obvious that growth creates many problems. Why then does almost everyone want growth?

I think most people want growth because most people want the future to be better for themselves and their children. The logic being that in a growing economy there is a good chance my income and wealth will grow. There are other human behaviors that create a desire for growth such as competition for status, the maximum power principle, and our dopamine response to novelty. But I think most people mainly want the future to be better rather than worse. More is a happy thought. Less is a depressing thought.

There is in fact a much bigger reason to desire growth that few people understand and it has to do with the design of our monetary system.

We have a debt based fractional reserve monetary system. Money is not created at the same time that we create real stuff to buy. Money is created in advance of us creating real stuff to buy. In other words, money is loaned into existence on the promise of it being repaid from future earnings. The mathematics of this system requires growth to pay the interest on debt. I may write another essay to explain this in more detail but for the purposes of this essay please assume these statements as true, because they are.

The real reason growth is so important is not because growth will give us a little more next year, it is because growth gives us A LOT more today.

It’s all about debt. An example is probably the best way to explain this.

Let’s assume you are an environmentally aware person trying to live a low impact life. You need and want a place to live. A small used house will suffice. Lets say it costs $200,000. You have a modest income and you are able to save $10,000 per year. In a no-growth economy the only money available to borrow is surplus money saved by someone else. Therefore a no-growth economy has very little credit available and you would probably have to live with your parents and save for 20 years before you could buy the house. In a growing economy, you can save a down payment for 2 years and then borrow the balance of $180,000 to be repaid over the next 18 years. No other people had to save the $180,000 you borrowed. The $180,000 was created out of thin air on the promise of you repaying it with interest. Even though you only own 10% of the house, you get to enjoy 100% of the house now. You do not have to wait 20 years.

This logic applies to everything we typically purchase on credit like education, cars, furniture, appliances, and vacations. For many people struggling today, this logic also applies to necessities like groceries and gasoline.

Back to the original example. You are a green aware person. You did your best by buying a small used house. To enjoy the house now rather than waiting 20 years you needed an economy that is growing. What are the implications of an economy that is growing at say 3%? Anything that grows at 3% per year will double in size every 25 years (5% doubles in 16 years, 2% doubles in 36 years). So if you live for 75 years in an economy that is growing at 3% then the human footprint will be 8 times larger when you die than when you were born. Eight times! Think about that. Imagine you have a baby today and imagine Earth with 8 x 7=56 billion people and an economy of 8 x $108 = $864 trillion dollars when your child dies. Obviously this is not going to happen and we will destroy our home and most other life if we try to get there.

We all need some form of shelter to survive. A house with furniture and appliances and plumbing really does improve the quality of our lives. But we can’t destroy the planet to have a house. What to do?

There are no easy answers to this conundrum. There may be no answer. Perhaps in the long run we won’t be able to live in a nice house. I need to think more about this but my current belief is that if we could constrain our population to zero growth, and if we adopted policies to ensure the economy does not grow, then it probably means that multiple generations of a family need to share a house. For example, in a richer world, newly weds would move into their grandparent’s home and the grandparents would move into the space vacated by the newly weds in their child’s home. In a poorer world, all 3 generations would live in the same house.

There are many other deep implications of a no-growth world.

Most of the technology we enjoy today requires a large amount of up-front capital. For example, a television takes hundreds of people to design, billion dollar mines to extract the raw materials, billion dollar factories to produce its components, a billion dollar global supply chain of ships and trucks for transport, a many billion dollar energy infrastructure for oil and electricity, a billion dollar industry for television program content creation and fiber optic distribution. None of this is possible without a lot of debt to build and maintain the infrastructure.

It’s quite possible that we won’t be able to have advanced technology products like cars and airplanes and televisions and cell phones in a no-growth world.

A no-growth world also has huge implications for governments. Every country in the world today operates with a deficit which means they spend more than they collect in taxes by borrowing money. This in turn means that most citizens enjoy many more services like health care, education, water, sanitation, security, unemployment insurance, and old age pensions than they pay for. This is only possible when governments have access to large amounts of credit and this is only possible in a growing economy.

Politicians usually get elected by promising things to citizens that cost money. Since all countries are already running large deficits, our leaders are highly motivated to achieve more economic growth because this helps them stay in power. This dynamic also explains why government deficits tend to grow and often become dangerously high.

Banks make money by loaning money and more growth means they can loan more money. A no-growth world would have many fewer banks.

The value of a company is primarily determined by the growth rate of its profits. It’s much easier for a company to grow when the overall economy is growing. Managers are often compensated based on share price and are highly motivated to grow their company.

The concept of retiring and living on a pension depends on growth. If the value of money invested by pension funds in company shares did not grow there would not be sufficient funds for most people to live on at retirement. It may not be possible to retire in a no-growth world.

Last but not least, growth is required to maintain the value of the majority of our wealth which is in the form of debt. Without growth it is not possible to make interest payments and the debt will default and lose its value. This in turn will reduce the value of assets purchased with debt. Goodbye investment portfolios and million dollar shacks in San Francisco. Hello a much poorer world.

Clearly there are some very good reasons for growth. At the same time, growth cannot continue forever due to physical limits, and because we are already destroying the planet with our current footprint.

Today’s myriad economic problems and our weird and unprecedented responses to these problems are primarily due to the fact we have hit limits to growth.

Everything we do and make requires energy. By using external energy, in addition to our muscles, we increase our productivity and ability to create wealth. Energy extraction and consumption must increase for the economy to grow. Efficiency can help, but we have already harvested most of what is possible and are bumping up against the laws of physics for any further efficiency gains.

Most of our energy is fossil carbon which is a depleting non-renewable resource and extraction rates cannot increase without higher energy prices. Higher energy prices, above say $80 (not the current temporary $30 deflation price), are not possible because consumers and governments have already borrowed the maximum that is possible, even at zero interest rates.

Most renewable energy costs more than most non-renewable energy, and renewable energy is dependent on non-renewable energy so the price of both tend to scale together. It is therefore unlikely we could run today’s civilization on renewable energy, but even if we could, switching over would require a huge amount of up-front debt that will not be available in our growth constrained world.

It’s too late to change, and it probably never was possible to continue this lifestyle without cheap fossil energy.

Pain is on the horizon. It can’t be avoided. I think a proactive response of conservation, austerity, and population reduction measures might help by slowing us down in a more controlled manner, rather than our current high-speed trajectory towards a brick wall.

In conclusion, the end of growth is a really big issue.

We are not considering wise strategies to mitigate the problem.

We don’t even talk about it.

We deny the problem exists.

We Owe Our Existence to Haber-Bosch

Topsoil and Rain

I’ve edited this wisdom to be more accurate:

Despite all our accomplishments, all 7 billion of us owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains; and 6 billion of us also owe our existence to Haber-Bosch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

This invention, by far, has had the biggest negative impact on our planet.

Had Haber-Bosch been used with birth control it would have been a mostly positive invention.

I wrote a book review on the biographies of Haber and Bosch here.