Category: Topic

By Karl North: An agroecological model for the end of the oil age

Today’s guest essay by Karl North discusses how agriculture practices must change as oil depletes and we no longer have the diesel for machines and the natural gas for fertilizer that underpins our current industrial agriculture system.

Karl recently published this essay on his site and approached me about re-posting here. I read his essay and was impressed.

I’m not a farming expert however I have some relevant knowledge and experience having taken a one-year course on small scale farming, and having worked on four small organic farms over the last fifteen years.

One of the most sobering lessons I have learned is how completely dependent farms are today on non-renewable inputs, including small farms doing their best to use sustainable practices.

Examples of non-renewable inputs that are a challenge to farm without include:

  • plastics and metals for irrigation tanks, valves, pipes, and drip lines
  • rare earths, copper, and other materials for well and irrigation pumps
  • plastics and metals for greenhouses
  • steel and plastics for fences
  • refrigeration equipment and insulation for produce storage coolers
  • polyester for row cover fabric
  • plastic for haylage wrap
  • metals for hand tools
  • electricity for irrigation pumps, coolers, and seedling bed heaters and lights
  • diesel for big machines like tractors and combines
  • gasoline for small machines like walk-behind tractors and strimmers
  • gasoline for trucks to get supplies and to take produce to market
  • lithium, cobalt, and copper for battery operated machines
  • energy used to manufacture and transport fertilizer, including organic fertilizers not made from natural gas
  • plus a LOT of non-renewable energy and materials to manufacture and maintain all of the equipment mentioned above, with emphasis on the word “maintain” because everything on a farm breaks on a regular basis – I know because I’m the fix-it guy.

One of the farms I worked on made a heroic effort to not use any machines or non-renewable inputs. We did almost everything by hand including scything and threshing grains and legumes. It was a LOT of work and I’m pretty sure I could not sustain that level of effort today having aged 10 years. Despite this effort we were still completely dependent on non-renewable irrigation equipment and a truck for transport, and we were blessed with unusually fertile soil that could be drawn down for a few years without having to replenish it somehow.

With this experience I am certain that 8 billion people cannot be fed when oil soon becomes scarce or unaffordable. I do however believe that a much smaller population can be fed using different agriculture methods.

Many “sustainable agriculture” methods promoted today are in my opinion naive and not grounded in reality. They often feel like an excuse to sell books and courses. I often wonder why it is necessary to sell books and courses if the idea being promoted produces a bountiful surplus. I did not get this feeling from Karl North as he seems grounded in reality and has built an impressive farm.

I like Karl’s model because 1) it includes animals 2) it sets aside the majority of land for the animals 3) it understands energy and ecology and takes a systems perspective 4) he understands that getting from here to there will be very difficult, and it won’t be easy when we do get there.

I did spot one important issue not addressed and my follow-up question with Karl’s answer is appended at the end of the following essay.

Introduction

Modern civilization is urban down to its rural roots, hates nature, ignores nature, depends on nature, destroys nature, yet expects nature to keep on giving. Now nature is striking back. The result is a slow-motion tragedy of catabolic collapse[1], like the oroboros tail-eating snake. To withstand the collapse, a revolution in food production will be critical. This essay is a contribution to that revolution.

My exploration of this subject will be based on three premises:

1. Following the laws of energy and matter known to scientists as the Laws of Thermodynamics, the geological record shows that affordable access to the resources that underpin industrial economies is finite and rapidly declining on earth due to ever more mining by those very industrial economies.

2. Human society is subject to the laws of nature we see working in natural ecosystems. Ecosystem science teaches that any species, including ours, that overshoots the carrying capacity of its resource base eventually goes into collapse. Hence, the science of ecosystems is the proper disciplinary framework to design ecologically healthy, durable farms to weather the collapse. That is, we must conceive farms as agroecosystems.

3. Our world is characterized by connections, and functions in wholes. Any attempt to understand it by looking only at parts will produce limited results, and ultimately, failure. Three centuries of scientific research looking at only relations of a few parts produced a body of knowledge whose technological consequences are reliable only under those laboratory conditions. A holistic approach to problems is essential to bring the process of advancement of knowledge back into balance.

These premises are not widely understood, and are actually often denied or opposed by currently dominant beliefs. Modern society holds these deeply indoctrinated myths: ‘resources are infinite and material progress has no limits’; ‘man is in control of nature, not the reverse’; ‘the miracles of technology prove that reductionist/laboratory science is good enough to solve all our problems’. Therefore, before presenting my thoughts on an agroecological model, the following discussion will expand on the perspective of each premise in the hope of gaining a better basis for understanding what follows.

Premise #1 – Resource Scarcity

A first premise of this essay is that the industrial age and the fossil energy that fuels it is gradually ending. This assumption will be bucking a headwind, the apparently secular religion of industrial times, that these times and their associated technological miracles will go on forever. The religion persists for two reasons: it is partly due to ignorance of the conclusive evidence from the historical, geological record of accelerating resource depletion, carefully kept from most of humanity’s sources of information. Faith in industrial progress also endures partly due to willful ignorance, because the end of the three-century industrial bonanza is too insufferable for most people to contemplate.

Therefore, this essay will target that slowly increasing marginal population that is open to taking the premise seriously. In short, the geological evidence from the extractive industry is that the easy oil (and all other raw materials essential to sustaining an industrial society) has been consumed. When we have to drill through a mile of seawater and another mile of bedrock in an extremely risky project in the Gulf of Mexico called Deep Water Horizon, which ended in a disaster that wiped out the fishing and tourist industries from Tallahassee to Houston, that should tell you that the age of easy oil is over.

The pattern of raw materials extraction is always to harvest the low hanging fruit at any given time. In most cases, humanity is now harvesting the dregs, throwing ever more scarce energy at the problem to temporarily keep the flow of raw materials going that the industrial economy needs to survive. An extensive literature documents this ‘energy descent’ from cheap finite resources to their increasing scarcity that is now occurring, so I hope readers will be prompted to do their homework on this critical issue. Moreover, the literature includes conclusive evidence that the attempted replacement of fossil energy at any significant scale by “renewables” will be too costly in fossil fuel itself as access to it declines. I provide homework suggestions from the energy descent literature in the references[2].

Consequently, this essay will offer a model of adaptation to living with increasing scarcity of fossil energy, a model of increasingly radical emancipation from external inputs and devotion to input self-sufficiency. And it will suggest a pathway from the luxury of the current energy-intensive distance economy to a decentralized, local one. It will focus on the challenges of adaptation of food production systems, one of the essentials of survival, to increasing resource scarcities. Viewed as a goal pursued incrementally, this historic paradigm shift will be more manageable. Rejected as impossible or insufferable, it likely will diminish chances of survival for multitudes of humanity.

Premise #2 – Subservience to Nature’s Laws

One way to convey the second premise might be that while man appears in control, nature bats last. It is easy to revel in the current bonanza of technological miracles and not see the undertow of consequent damage to the natural resource base on which our survival depends. We can see the laws of nature working out this way in the legacy of the ancient societies that were the cradle of Western Civilization. From an ecological perspective, the historical result of the advent of agriculture and the subsequent rise of urban civilizations in the ancient societies in Western Asia was progressive desertification, visible and continuing in the region today. Where today are the fabled cedars of Lebanon, which held the soil on the hilltops? Overshoot of its resource base, leading to erosion of its carrying capacity, has been a major factor in the rise and fall of civilizations ever since. As an ancient philosopher observed, ‘where man walks, deserts dog his heels’.

The science of ecosystems is replete with demonstrations that the survival of all species, including the modern human primate, is dependent on holding consumption of resources within the carrying capacity of its resource base. Ecology teaches that the wholes called ecosystems consist of interacting clusters of species whose populations are regulated in large part by the fact that each species is food for others. Thus, the capacity of the resource base of each species to ensure its survival varies as a result of a complex interdependency of many elements of the whole. When one species (ours, let’s say) overshoots the carrying capacity of its resource base, it can throw the whole food web into violent oscillation and even collapse. Ecology has demonstrated many examples of the oscillation, collapse and even extinction of species populations locked in a food web of interdependency. To give a simplified example, the tundra supply, the arctic hare population that feeds on it and the arctic fox population that feeds on the hare all experience complex changes and severe oscillation over time that are the result of interdependency in an arctic environment low in species diversity (and the resilience that diversity affords).

Farming in a future increasingly less dependent on fossil energy and its related external inputs must therefore rely more on internal inputs provided by a deep understanding of ecosystem processes and the complex interactions of the many parts of the wholes that farmers will have to manage primarily as agroecosystems, not just production systems. The size of the human population and perhaps its ultimate survival will hinge on such a redesign of the food system.

This challenge is daunting. Today, few farmers, including organic farmers, study ecosystem science, nor is it the basis of programs in agricultural schools. Farmers in the organic farming movement have developed many practices that will be useful. But lacking exposure to the study of how natural ecosystems work as complex wholes, few have undertaken the design of whole agroecosystems. This essay will offer examples and initial steps as food for thought along these lines.

Premise #3- A Holistic World

It is easy to see that our world is characterized by connections, and functions in wholes. But to claim that the pursuit of knowledge must acknowledge this reality challenges the dominant way scientific research has been done since the 17th century. It challenges and exposes the limitations of the reduction of inquiry to studying the interaction of two or three variables – known as the reductive method – when in the real world whole clusters of elements interact and are often interdependent, with very different consequences. It challenges us to find ways to understand how these real-world webs function and change over time. Holistic methods of inquiry have shown that only by studying a problem behavior over time in its relevant systemic context can we hope to explain those nonlinear behaviors generated by the interaction of elements in the whole. Known to complexity science as emergent properties, they are all too common in our world, as the time graphs included below reveal.

Despite three centuries of scientific advancement of knowledge, we have only a limited understanding of the workings of living systems, from earth science down to the science of organisms like ourselves. Why is that? Decades ago, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn described a progression in scientific inquiry where anomalies accumulate that the dominant paradigm or way of doing science cannot explain, and this eventually provokes a revolution. The revolution in scientific inquiry that is now challenging reductionist laboratory science goes by various names – system dynamics, complexity science, holism, chaos theory or simply systems thinking. The prototypical systems science is systems ecology depicted in premise #2, not only because of its methods, but also because it brings all other fields of inquiry under its umbrella. Thus, the need for a holistic perspective discussed here and the need for an ecological perspective (premise #2) are clearly related, and must work together to address the present state of ecological scarcity.

Examples of the necessary marriage of the two perspectives have appeared to nourish the revolution that Kuhn described. Using the methods of system dynamics to study a planetary system that is both social and biophysical, the Limits to Growth world model[3], which originated fifty years ago, generated these dynamics (how things change over time):

Updates since then have shown that the model tracks the historical record to date regarding at least the shape of change:

In another example, in 1980 William Catton was one of the first to combine the perspectives of social and ecological science in his book, Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change[4], in which he said that the advent of fossil fuels had led to an unsustainable “phantom carrying capacity” in natural resource use. He called it phantom carrying capacity because it permitted temporary human population levels and in the rich societies, per capita resource consumption levels, that took the planetary ecological load far above real carrying capacity. Eroding carrying capacity due to overshoot would cause collapse, as would become clear once fossil fuels became scarce.

The systems revolution is not meant to displace reductionist science or to deny its utility, but rather to acknowledge its limitations and go beyond them. By studying problems in a real-world context that requires understanding of many disciplines, it challenges the compartmentalization of inquiry. An academic acquaintance once described his ivy league university as a gaggle of warring fiefdoms connected only by parking lots. Inquiry into the complexity that typifies our world must become transdisciplinary.

The investigation of complexity has revealed the limitations of even a systems approach. Although it can produce insights about how things work in holistic context, and can sometimes predict the rough shape of change, it can never completely crack the nut of complexity as a given way the world works, so it cannot deliver the predictive accuracy of laboratory science. Nor has any other existing method of studying problems in their real-world context, where cause and effect often feed back to generate unexpected consequences that are not accurately predictable.

However, the study of complexity has shown that, while revealing the limitations of science,  systems thinking can improve with practice because, like proficiency as a musician, it is somewhat of an art. Peter Senge[5] advises The Five Whys (just keep asking why) to get to root causes in complex situations. Alan Savory[6] has created an accessible tool to gain practice in holistic thinking and decision making. Two of us organic farmers have adapted Savory’s work for farm planning in the US Northeast[7]. Such tools all train us to see problems in terms of their relevant larger systemic context.

To conclude this introductory discussion of premises, it appears that failure to take them seriously has led to a world whose ecosystems are so depleted and ecologically damaged as to threaten the collapse of our species as well as many others. In the words of William Ophuls[8], who has been tracking the process for fifty years:

“We have been spoiled by ecological abundance, a false abundance based on cornucopian premises, into thinking that the wants of the individual are more important than the needs of the human and natural communities.”

Because of strong resistance to accepting these premises, the revolutionary overhaul of all industrial societies will likely not be due to policy changes except at the very small scale, local level, and will be forced on society by the train of events. This essay will present some possibilities for adaptation in farming systems designed in ways that acknowledge and work within the premises I have outlined.

Agroecosystem design: natural ecosystems as models

Our planet consists of ecosystems, of which humanity and its works are a subservient subset. Ecosystems are clusters of elements, some animate, others not, that interact and become interdependent in complex ways, and are dynamic, changing over time. Long before the advent of our species, life self-organized into these complexes, whose interaction achieved two important synergies:

  1. They often maximized the carrying capacity of the system – the maximum biomass that the land could support.
  2. They also achieved a degree of self-regulation via food webs – a matrix of predator-prey and cooperative relationships – that enhanced the sustainability of the whole.

“To put it in thermodynamic terms, nature’s tendency is to internalize costs and thereby wring a maximum of life from a minimum of energy, trapping it and using it over and over within a given ecosystem to produce biological wealth before it decays into dispersed, random heat as the Second Law ordains.” – William Ophuls – The Tragedy of Industrial Civilization. 2023.

Historically, Nature’s ‘farming systems’ have a much better track record for durability than ours. This is why, in the words of two pioneering agroecologists[9], “farming in Nature’s image” needs to become our design standard. While no replacement for serious study of ecosystem science, this section will outline ecosystem processes and principles sufficiently to give direction to thinking about farming systems as agroecosystems. Thinking about sustainable design to respect carrying capacity has effectively focused the attention of ecological scientists on maximizing the long-term health of four fundamental ecosystem processes in agroecosystems:

Mineral cycle

Mother Nature does not buy fertilizer. Minerals tend to cycle through the plants, animals and microbes in the food web where each living thing becomes food for others, and back to the soil where they become nutrients for plants and subsequently for the rest of the food web all over  again. The implication for farming is to design the agroecosystem so that each organism is best managed to carry out its function in the mineral cycle.

Water cycle

Mother Nature does not seed the clouds or dance for rain. Driven ultimately by solar energy, water cycles from earth to clouds and back, and is captured in various ways for use in the ecosystem. Good agroecosystem design will enhance that capture in many ways, not least in the organisms in the food web themselves.

Energy flow

Mother Nature is off-grid, relies entirely on the sun and its derivative energies, like wind and wave. Solar energy enters the system through plants, thus called ‘primary producers’, and flows through the food web, but is ultimately lost as heat to outer space. Continued flow, including storage for later use, is a necessity of survival. Farm systems that maximize the primary producer population and its productivity will capture the most energy for re-use in the rest of the system, and thus maximize productivity in the whole. Species diversity will store energy for re-use.

Biological community dynamics

Mother Nature puts all the organisms to work together for the health of the whole. Nature is not just competition: ‘bloody in tooth and claw’. Cooperation is essential for survival, not only of individuals, but of the whole ecosystem. Species collaborate in symbiosis, enhancing health and productivity of each. They perform regulatory roles to keep population growth of other species in check. Farm design will include not just production species, but all species that can work toward the health of the whole, deliberately placed in collaborative roles. It will include a species diversity that fills all niches in the ecosystem that are relevant to agroecosystem health and durability. It will include species that perform important functions in the recycling of energy, water and minerals.

The ecosystem processes described above all exist on farms, and work either for or against each other, depending on how we manage them. The weakest one will be the limiting factor that determines the health of the whole agroecosystem. As in all living systems, improving the weakest link in a chain will do the most to improve the whole. This general rule, known as Liebig’s Law of the Minimum was first stated in the 19th century by agronomist Justus von Liebig who discovered that the uptake of the minerals in plant nutrition is inhibited by the least available one.

Agroecologists have shown that sustainability pertains only to whole farming systems. Hence, thinking only about practices must become part of a larger design and management approach that judges practices according to their ability to improve the ecosystem processes and therefore the whole system. If that sounds complicated it is because farming in Nature’s image takes much more knowledge than conventional agriculture.

However, a focus on these four ecosystem processes has led to the development of principles or attributes of sustainable agroecosystem design intended to maintain, or in many cases regenerate, the health of these ecosystem processes. Some of these principles and their implications are:

  • Low external inputs – Input self-sufficiency.
  • Low losses – Relatively closed water, nutrient and carbon cycles that avoid losses of valuable resources, leaks that eventually cause environmental damage.
  • Stability – Resilience – Adaptive Capacity – These qualities of sustainability are all necessary, but since they exist somewhat in tension, one must attempt a balance among them. Stability is the quality that produces reliable results and minimizes risk, but in excess, stability can become rigidity. Hence, a certain flexibility is required for resilience, which is the ability to rebound from sudden change, weather events like a dry period in the farming season. Flexibility also includes adaptive capacity to respond to slower environmental changes, both man-made and natural, that have been a constant for millennia. These include invasive species, decimation of keystone species, weather disasters and climate change with long-term consequences and management policies that provoke ecological succession or even its reversal, all of which are disturbing the natural tendency toward a rough balance in the ecosystem. Reserves of material or energy, overlaps, redundancy, or other slack in a system provide that flexibility, but at the price of efficient use of resources.
  • Knowledge intensity – Reliance on technologies that are powerful but derivative of a narrow, specialist knowledge base will give way to a broader, more demanding knowledge of farms as complex ecosystems of interdependent species, a knowledge that enables the creation of biodiversity to capture synergies, to biologically control pests with trap crops, for example.
  • Management intensity – Farming for input self-sufficiency and limited leaks will require more labor devoted to management planning and monitoring to replace other resources or use them more efficiently to maximize sustainable yield: productivity/acre.

Food for thought: historical models of agricultural systems

Some of the most durable and productive low input farming systems in history are designed around two concepts:

  1. Animals that can accelerate the growth and conversion of plants to fertilizer. Because they are highly multifunctional, ruminant mammals rank highest among these. Beyond their manure production function, they can consume fibrous perennials unusable for human food. These perennials can grow on hill land too rocky or too erodible for food cropping. Used as work animals, ruminants multiply the energy input from human labor many times. They provide a source of concentrated protein food that can be conserved and stockpiled for winter consumption. They provide hides and fiber for clothing as well. Cattle, sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas and bison are ruminants that we can most easily use in agricultural systems in our environment.
  2. 2. Water management schemes that integrate streams, ponds, paddies, floodplains or wetlands. Examples are Aztec Chinampas[10], East Asian rice-fish-duck paddy systems[11] and flood plain management systems in colonial New England[12]. Learning from models such as these, instead of draining wetlands, farmers could manage them for high production per acre, while retaining their function as wetlands that provide ecosystem services to the region.

Animal integration has emerged as a key to successful agroecosystem design. According to Albert Howard, regarded by many as the father of organic agriculture, Nature never farms without animals. A major revolution in animal integration was first documented in detail by the French farmer/scientist, André Voisin[13]. High organic matter soils are central to achieving healthy water and mineral cycles, and soils in humid temperate regions are exceptional in their ability to store organic matter and accumulate it over a period of years. Voisin’s book Grass Productivity demonstrated over fifty years ago that pulsed grazing on perennial pasture is the fastest soil organic matter building tool that farmers have, at least in temperate climates.

Based on Voisin’s methods, so-called ‘rotational grazing’ methods have spread among farmers in the US organic farming movement, but few have grasped the holistic nature and importance of Voisin’s work – to make intensively managed grazing the driving core of a crop/livestock agroecosystem that is highly productive with minimal external inputs. A notable exception is the group of Cuban agroecologists who came to the rescue of Cuban agriculture in 1989 when it lost access to the imports that its essentially high-input agriculture required. Building on Voisin’s thesis, their research showed that a system with roughly 3 acres of intensively managed forage land will both sustain itself in fertility and provide a surplus of fertility via vermicomposted manure to sustain roughly 1 acre of cultivated crops (Figure 2).

Like the Cubans, we operated Northland Sheep Dairy in upstate New York using insights from Voisin’s research. We designed our farm agroecosystem to adapt and improve on the natural grass-ruminant ecosystems that helped create the deep topsoils of Midwestern North America. In summary, the design focus is on three areas that are crucial to manage to maximize tight nutrient cycling. Key points of the farm nutrient cycle:

  • Pasture management for a synergistic combination of productive, palatable perennial forages, kept in a vegetative state via high density, pulsed grazing throughout the growing season to maximize biomass production (according to planning principles developed by range ecologist Alan Savory[14]);
  • Manure storage in a deep litter bedding pack built under cover during the cold season to maximize nutrient retention and livestock health;
  • Vermicomposting the bedding pack at a proper C/N (carbon/nitrogen) ratio during the warm season to maximize organic matter production, nutrient stabilization and retention, and spreading the compost during the warm season as well, to maximize efficient nutrient recycling to the soil.

This design is working well on our farm and confirms Voisin’s thesis: in a few years forage production tripled on land previously abused and worn out from industrial methods of agriculture, and soil organic matter is slowly improving. Like the Cuban system, it provided a gradually increasing surplus to fertilize cropland.

Conclusion: A Historical context

What are the chances that the agroecosystem approach will prevail?

It helps to put the age in which we live into historical context. The era of cheap energy permitted the mechanization and chemicalization of agriculture. In turn, this produced the largest increase in food production since the advent of agriculture. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, although very energy-intensive, alone was responsible for tripling the global population since its use became widespread. At least 80% of the energy in food production comes from oil. Mechanization has permitted economies of scale, and driven out family scale farming in many countries. Where the small farm has survived, in the organic movement for example, it has found a niche or a gentrified market. As one US Secretary of Agriculture warned, farmers have to “get big or get out”.

In the short to medium run therefore, designers of agroecosystems will contend with powerful  forces in the political economy of agriculture that oppose any change from the dominance of the industrial model. Moreover, as the collapse of industrial society progresses, elites desperate to maintain social control are already resorting to policies that are ever more desperate and violent in every area of society, including the farm economy and the larger food system. This complex subject merits separate treatment, which I may undertake in a sequel to this essay.

However, as the oil age wanes, industrial agriculture, its associated large-scale farms and distance food economy will be less affordable and will fade away. This will provide the opportunity to return to small farms that serve a local economy. In the best of scenarios, energy and raw materials depletion will be slow, thus offering the time to transition gradually to such a relocalized agrarian society. On the other hand, unfavorable scenarios are likely. The demise of industrial agriculture could easily accelerate due to wars over depleting resources and a resultant collapse of global supply chains, which will hasten the collapse of the industrial system as a whole, not just agriculture. Moreover, as depletion progresses, net energy and net mineral per unit energy will decline ever more rapidly (see graph), and accelerate the increasing scarcity of essential resources.

For longevity, natural ecosystems historically have far outperformed human managed ones in the modern age and every other age in the last 5000 years. All two dozen major civilizations since the advent of agriculture have crashed and burned from overshoot of carrying capacity and depletion of their resource base, or were overrun by peoples who still had resources to spare.

Whatever chance humanity might have of reversing this pattern will require a paradigm shift in the way we see ourselves and the world. A main thesis of this essay is that it will compel an acknowledgement of the premises on which I dwelt early in the essay. The shift must occur not just in our thinking, but in the way we live.

Despite lip service to learning from nature, only academic renegades and ecologist outliers like the Odum brothers, Holling, Wes Jackson, John Todd, Peter Rosset, Alan Savory, Miguel Altieri and Steven Gliessman learned enough ecosystem science to make serious contributions to improving agricultural sustainability to where food production might outlast the industrial, fossil fuel age. At least Altieri and Gliessman made the effort to write the first agroecology texts. These people are all outliers because almost no attempt has been made in academia to put agricultural science on a rigorous disciplinary basis, which is ecosystem science/systems ecology. Relying on these pioneers for inspiration and guidance, farmers will need to design their own agroecosystems to survive in the post-petroleum era. They should start now.

[1]A holistic view of catabolic collapse

Scenarios on the Downslope: Insights from Greer’s Ecotechnic Future

[2] My papers:  Energy and Sustainability in Late Modern Society, The Industrial Economy is Ending Forever: an Energy Explanation for Agriculturists and Everyone

Books: The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age

The Long Emergency

Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil

The Crash Course: An Honest Approach to Facing the Future of Our Economy, Energy, and Environment

[3] Meadows et al. Limits to Growth. 2004

[4] Catton, William R. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. 1982.

[5] Senge, Peter.  The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization.2006.

[6] Savory, Alan. 1999. Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision Making.

[7] Henderson, Elizabeth and Karl North, Whole Farm Planning – Ecological Imperatives, Personal Values and Economics. Northeast Organic Farming Association. 2004

[8] The tragedy of Industrial Civilization: Envisioning a Political Future. 2023.

Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity. 1977.

[9] Piper, Jon and Judith Soule, Farming in Nature’s Image. 1992.

[10] http://www.chinampas.info/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa, Ancient Mayan Water Control Systems

[11] King, F. H.(Franklin Hiram). Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan

[12] Donahue, Brian. 2004. The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord

[13] Voisin, André. 1959. Grass Productivity. Philosophical Library, New York. Island Press Edition, 1988.

[14] Savory, Alan. Holistic Management. A Common Sense Revolution to Restore Our Environment. Third Edition. 2017

________________________________________

After reading his essay I sent Karl the following message:

“I agree with your ideas in the essay but have a question that the essay did not address.

Assuming a farm embraces your approach, and exports nutrients off of the property via the sale of food, do you believe that farm can be sustainable in the long run without being dependent on non-renewable imports to replace what was lost?

Basically I’m wondering if any form of commercial agriculture is sustainable in the long term, or will we eventually have to return to hunter-gatherer lifestyles?”

Hi Rob,

Thanks for your reply. Un-denial has been a quality source for me in recent years, attested also by the quality of your commentariat.

In Western history, I trace my concern with your question to Justus von Liebig’s concept of a metabolic rift (in the mineral cycle), exemplified he said by the pattern of London dumping its sewage into the Thames rather than trucking it back to the farms, ending with the impoverishment of the English farmland, forcing England to import guano and Chilian nitrates. In the East, I trace it to the widespread traffic in ‘night soil’ from the cities back to the farms. This seems to have sustained East Asian farming longer than it would have otherwise.

If humanure could be kept pure, it seems technically possible to mend the metabolic rift in a scale limited only by the economics or transporting the (composted) sewage. The main problem I see is political. Under capitalism, the maximization of profit whatever the cost overrules most ecological concerns. Hence, I am not optimistic about the sustainability of commercial agriculture beyond small agrarian communities practicing horticulture that might agree to something similar to the night soil solution.

I wrote about this question briefly in part three of a six part series, Visioning County Food Production, which was commissioned and published by an energy descent educational group in Ithaca, NY. The county, of which Ithaca is the urban center, has a population of about 100k. Here is some of what I wrote:

Because the agriculture of the future will need closed nutrient cycles, fertility for all county food production cannot be considered apart from county organic waste streams.[vi] To maintain fertility, organic waste must return in some form to food production sites. As the dense urban population produces the bulk of the waste, public institutions will need to take responsibility for separate collection of the purely organic component of the urban garbage and sewage waste streams, recycling part of it back to rural farms.[vii]

Fertility in urban and peripheral agricultural soils can be sustained with compost from the city organic garbage stream alone. A study of one urban community revealed that urban agriculture alone could absorb 20% of the organic waste production of the city.[viii] This will require a municipal policy and program of careful triage, collection, and composting at optimum C/N ratio by mixing high-nitrogen food garbage with high-carbon sources like leaves and shredded paper trash. The city could assign responsibility to urban institutional sources, such as schools and restaurants for moving their large organic waste streams to composting facilities at specific peri-urban food production sites. A map of existing Tompkins County composting sites demonstrates the composting potential (Figure 3).[ix]

As for sewage, eventually Ithaca will have to desewer, converting to urban night soil collection, biogas extraction, and the recycling of residual organic matter to county farms that will be necessary to maintain the mineral content of rural agricultural soils. In the short run, guerilla humanure composting from backyard compost toilets can build toward full conversion (Figure 4). These household facilities are satisfactorily self-policed, because the product will be used in closed-cycle residential food production.

[vi] For information about local waste processing facilities, see the TCLocal article “Wasting in the Energy Descent: An Outline for the Future” by Tom Shelley, http://tclocal.org/2009/01/wasting_in_the_energy_descent.html

[vii] Tom Shelley has recently begun to prototype this process with “The Sustainable Chicken Project,” which returns nutrients to the land by collecting kitchen scraps in the City of Ithaca on a subscription basis and feeding them to chickens at Steep Hollow Farm three miles outside the city in the Town of Ithaca. See http://www.sundancechannel.com/sunfiltered/2010/01/sustainable-chicken-project/ and the farm’s blog at http://steephollowfarm.wordpress.com/

[viii] Mougeot, Luc J.A. Growing Better Cities: Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Development. Ottawa: International Development Centre, 2006. http://www.idrc.ca/openebooks/226-0/

[ix] http://www.co.tompkins.ny.us/gis/maps/pdfs/CompostMap2000-E.pdf

By Charles: Doomers’ Visions of the Future

Today’s guest post by Charles is an excellent primer on the diversity of beliefs held by many of the best minds that think about our overshoot predicament. Charles wisely reminds us that no one knows what the future will bring.

Charles recounts his journey of increasing awareness that led to depression and despair, followed by an awakening of acceptance and constructive action, that has provided him with some peace and happiness.

It’s funny how I (we?) construct incorrect mental images of people we meet on the web. I imagined Charles to be an elderly retired reclusive spiritual philosopher, not a middle-aged top-tier software developer with a deep scholarly interest in human overshoot, and an impressive sustainable food growing sideline.

Charles concludes by asking readers to share their own visions of the future. If you have something to say that deserves more than a comment, please contact me about posting a guest essay.

P.S. I believe Charles now holds the doomosphere record for the most links in a single essay.

The idea for this post originates from an exchange with fellow doomer davelysak who states:

I foresee, based on various portents, an extreme human population crash in the relatively (10 – 50 years? Maybe sooner?) near future.

and later adds the precision that

I’ll be surprised if there are more than 2 billion people alive on earth in 20 years.

This made me reflect about my own anticipation for the future, even more crucially, the way I communicate it to others. Or rather as a matter of fact, don’t so much anymore. Like Cassandra, I have come to understand that I find myself psychologically between a rock and a hard place: I foresee a future of extreme hardships which I do not particularly desire. Worst, I have long felt compelled to share my projections, driven by the naive impulse to initiate collective preemptive action. However, torn apart between the pride of intellectual rigor, my ideal not to harm others and increasingly aggressive or irrational reception of the message, I have slowly learned to repress myself, not to voice my concerns and conform to the group. After all, even Cassandra brought ill fate to herself. (It turns out my strategy is no solution, as the rage is turned inside and builds up, but that could be a story for another day.)

Hopefully, our host, Rob provides a safe haven to any doomer who wishes to bravely face the crude, unadulterated nature of our predicament.

As doomers, we share a myth, the myth of collapse. In a nutshell, it unfolds, as I understand it, as follows:

  • The old age of material opulence is about to end, as current trends can not continue for long.
  • A world-scale crisis has been brewing for quite some time; it is about to burst.
  • After it eventually recedes, once balance is somewhat restored, a new normalcy, a new age will be revealed (that part of the myth is optional).

Funnily, if we refer to Kurt Vonnegut’s shapes of stories it falls somewhere between the shapes Old Testament and New Testament.

And many false prophets shall rise

Lurking for a quarter of a century in the doomosphere has taught me visions of the future, even among doomers, may vary tremendously. The stroll through the exhibit of studies can go on for hours, ranging from loss of material affluence (Richard Duncan’s Olduvai theory) to complete life wipe-out (James Hansen’s Venus Syndrome), with population collapse (Club of Rome’s limits to growth) and near term human extinction as middle-grounds (I guess).

The fall is seen as either rapid and brutal as in Hugo Bardi’s Seneca cliff, or manageable as in John Michael Greer’s catabolic collapse. Even our preferences and values differ: some like Jack Alpert’s sustainable modern civilization of 70 million wish to preserve the current living arrangements trading population level, on the contrary, primitivists such as Derrick Jensen do not equate humans with Homo Industrialis and impatiently wait for the machine to (be) stop(ped). There are even some fringe organizations advocating voluntary human extinction and euthanasia, while most would just like to manage degrowth. (To be fair, the church of euthanasia’s ultimate goal is species awareness.)

Model after study after analysis after opinion piece paint different aspects and outcomes of the fall. Some radically scarier than others.

My personal journey through doom

What then do we really expect, fear and hope? At first I had planned to cold-heartedly present the scenarios I found most probable and then invite you to share your own prospects. But, given the heavy emotional load that the subject carries, I somewhat changed my mind: after all we are discussing the possibility of not only material losses but the widespread increase in suffering, deaths, extinction of the living world. At the very least, our cultural identity is at stake. So I’d like to add a personal twist and narrate how my understanding of the future evolved during my personal journey.

I was born in 1978 in the then extremely affluent and sophisticated country of France (WesternCiv). I was inculcated with the idealism of my time and place which originates from the Age of Enlightenment: triumph of reason, humanism, universalism, materialism, progress and atheism. Even though I had a really hard time learning the fundamental necessary last piece allowing anyone to function in an ideal world (hypocrisy), it was indeed the best of all possible worlds.

At 6, I was profoundly marked by Chernobyl. I remember the haunting masks of the liquidators, courageously shoveling the entrails of the angry machine, promised a certain death as a reward for saving our, my lives; and the helicopters hauling sand; and then the oddly reassuring claims from my country statesmen about the spread of the cloud. A first encounter with official doublespeak?

As a city boy living on the 6th floor of a modern building, I grew up a book-worm. Books offered countless windows into exciting realms out of the deprived environment of a sanitized flat. In particular, I vividly remember feeling a strong emotional bond with Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale Five Peas from a Pod. Was it a hint, a reverberation from a destined future of my deep yet unacknowledged nature? More were to follow. At a relatively young age, I watched the extremely violent Japanese TV series Fist of the North Star (right-minded censorship hadn’t caught up yet). A brilliant blend between the universes of Mad Max and Bruce Lee, it depicts a brutal post-apocalyptic world set in barren landscapes and desolated ruins. This time around the call of agonizing farmer Smith to plant rice seeds for tomorrow particularly resonated (captions are read from right to left).

I later read Asimov’s Foundation series and Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha.

I was faintly aware of the environmental crisis, in particular climate change as a life changing but slow process with only distant impacts. Shortly before the new millennium I stumbled upon information which blew my comfortable world view. It was Colin Campbell explaining depletion and predicting peak oil.

At that point, I was convinced global population would have to come down during my lifetime and challenging times were ahead. I thought it would still be manageable, spanning through the coming century from the current population of 6 billion back to pre-industrial levels between roughly 1 and 2 billion (respective estimates of the population around 1800 and 1930).

I was a rational realist, not buying into modern human exceptionalism which asserts we can achieve higher agriculture yields than our predecessors with fewer resources on an environmentally degraded planet. Even though the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function in a Tragedy of the Commons, I had faith humanity would soon change its ways: it was just a matter of spreading the crucial piece of information about resource depletion widely enough. After all, there were already some men of good will, such as Jason Bradford, taking action. In South Korea, I had just met the love of my life, some years later we married. We were fruitful. Our daughter Rachel, as an homage to Rachel Carson, was born in 2007. Determined to carry my load in curbing population growth, I convinced my wife to stop multiplying at one.

I was to be punched in the face again. It was 2012. A somewhat egocentric professor was sternly announcing near term human extinction (this is most probably the presentation by Guy McPherson I watched at that time). The future was sealed. I was now standing on the edge of a steep final cliff. For me, it was the start of a very dark period. You know that kind of aftertaste which lingers a while after watching a documentary such as the Island of Flowers.

Except everyday, as a background of everything else. I couldn’t help but feel hopeless for my then 5 years old daughter. The key notions were feedback loops (for instance methane according to sad Nathalia Shakhova) and tipping points.

Evidence accumulated from every side. State of the ocean: apocalyptical; ice: disappearing; trees: under assault; soils: eroding. It was suddenly the 6th (or was it already the 7th) mass extinction. I quit flying (for what that is worth, there surely is, unfortunately, a substitution of demand paradox similar to Jevons?).

Having thoroughly assimilated this new data, two years later, I wrote a dense blog entry to get it off my chest. I reviewed my script: I was now expecting 1 billion humans by 2040 and extinction at the end of the century. News still got worse. Moving goalposts, shifting baselines and worse than predicted by the model were the expressions of the days.

Homo Sapiens’ response was to pretend all was safe. The manufacture of consent, merchants of doubts had it easy with a general public all too eager to keep on basking in comforting denial.

Kevin Anderson exposed the half-truths of even a supposedly rigorous official body, the IPCC, about non-existing negative emissions technologies included in their models. The remaining carbon budget was already getting slim and the task to turn this ship around incommensurable.

I took Wing Chun classes (even though I was not sparring with these ladies) and practiced like an addict would inject heroin.

Primitivism (Derrick Jensen, Deep Green Resistance, Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael) convinced me our fate was sealed a long time ago, when we forked into the original sin. Attempts to heal (Carolyn Baker, Joanna Macy, Charles Eisenstein) back into the lost Eden did not cheer me up. Resistance seemed futile (Underminers, Sea Shepherd). Everything was a lie, a fraud, and the living world was collapsing.

I felt increasingly ashamed and guilty for being part of this holocaust of a new kind (let’s not mince words, this is un-Denial after all 😉 ). Only this depressed collapsitarian on his boulder brightened me up, at least for his accent and hat. I considered taking ‘shrooms to communicate with the spirit of the Earth.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, an ordinary miracle was happening on my very own balcony. For no real reason, I had installed a large clay pot and was everyday discarding some food waste. It was fun watching soil building. 7 years later I harvested 3 peaches on a small tree that had grown on its own out of a minimal daily routine. It died the next year, but had shown me a way forward.

I went back to my bookcase to dust off Fukuoka’s One-Straw Revolution. I had read it at 20, but as a conformist computer scientist did not know how to respond to the strong appeal it had on me already at that time. I bought all translated Fukuoka’s books and Larry Korn’s excellent clarifications (for a western mind that is).

Haunted by images from The Burmese Harp, I stopped Wing Chun one year just before covid struck. I lived this surreal period as a blue pill/red pill moment: do we still put our faith into an authoritative centralized science, absolved from any personal implication and effort, or do we fend for ourselves and look for other ways. Although, it was a slow grind, a long arm wrestling, I felt the price of resistance turned out surprisingly not to be very high: give up on restaurants and movies mostly. I have to admit I am proud I was able to withstand (especially for my daughter’s sake) peer pressure and the manipulative wannabee bully Emmanuel Macron we have as president, a corporate valet, if anything.

I enrolled in the local community gardens and bought a small piece of land in the country side to plant a resilient edible forest garden. I started at ground zero: the previous rectilinear poplar plantation was clear cut just before the sale (in modern mindset no profit is too small).

I don’t really worry about the future anymore. After all, if we let her be, life unveils tremendous amounts of strength and resilience. Humanity does not deserve only contempt. I’ve found many people to admire and approaches to follow.

Masanobu Fukuoka’s natural farming:

Ernst Götsch’s syntropic agriculture:

Joseph Lofthouse’s landrace gardening:

I learned acceptance of what I can not control: other people’s behavior, preferences and own internal limitations. I learned the importance of doing small things at my pace, my scale, everyday. I unlearned duality (that’s another story).

Current thoughts about the future

In the span of 25 years, my outlook on the future changed three times. Today, I am not even sure were we really stand. In Vonnegut typology, rather than the classical doomer’s narration, I now find myself in the “Which way is up” shape of story. In this section I will outline my current personal view and preferred outcome.

Although, nothing can completely be excluded, I don’t believe the planet will either go Venus nor abiotic. I do not believe the human species will be extinct by the end of the century. I do not believe we will escape to the stars onboard metallic ships. We may nuke ourselves out of existence, but it is in nobody’s interest. We may experience multiple severe nuclear power plant accidents. But maybe scarcity of nuclear fuel will compel us to progressively shut them down before. In the longer term, the human species could even survive the ongoing extinction event.

As depicted by Joseph Tainter for prior civilizations, ours chose a similar path of increased complexity. Following this strategy, it has cornered itself: in my country almost every service has been converted into an “app” or is in the process of doing so. Thus creating the biggest single point of failure: all this convenience relies on the continued operation of the grid, data centers, the network, chips, long supply chain, rare minerals, etc.

To me, a Seneca cliff scenario is unavoidable and guarantees rapid material loss. We will lose our technological gadgets and crutches. Our machines will stop, thirsty. Pollution will be reduced and assimilated by the organic world. We won’t do much about it other than pretend.

Will there be a population crash or a graceful decline? Will the planet temperature stabilize at a livable level? What will the ultimate stable population be? I don’t know.

Our current ways impact the web of life brutally. I will really be surprised if the planet sustains more than 2 billion people for long. Biomass tonnage of mammals gives an idea of the scales at play:

I expect a crash in the following 2 to 3 decades. Eyeballing the world population age pyramid, if we had to achieve this four-fold reduction tomorrow in a “fair” way, then all males above 30 years of age should go soylent green (females are given 5 more years). For long term survival wouldn’t this be preferable to a slow long agony? This won’t be said out-loud. So I won’t go further on that path.

A call to inaction

Fortunately, there could still be room left to maneuver. Fuel could be rationed for food usages. The population could spread out, reducing the need for transportation and providing labor for agriculture. Degraded land could be regenerated, deserts converted to forests, cereal fields hybridized into agroforestry, or converted to orchards or edible forests as once was the case in Europe.

There are some success stories (propaganda of our times, maybe) all around the world.

China:

Saudi Arabia:

India:

Africa:

New Zealand:

USA:

Agriculture from the green revolution is productive (given external fossil fuels), but soulless, dumb and destructive: the philosophy at work in every step (delineating plots, tilling, applying pesticides and herbicides, irrigating) is that of control, rendering the soil inert, blocking the natural flow of life. The idea, disconnected from reality, is to make agri-culture an industrial process so that outputs can be maximized following a known function of inputs.

Life is not inert, its potential surpasses anything we can fathom. A miracle akin to the one that happened on my balcony could be made possible on the large scale. We don’t (and I believe never will) understand the whole system.

The theory of the biotic pump gives us a glimpse into the full extent of its processes at the planetary level:

I cannot recommend this presentation by Anastassia M. Makarieva enough:

Accompanying slides:

Biotic Pump of Atmospheric MoistureDownload

Large forests work like a planetary air conditioning system: pumping water from the ocean and circulating it across the continent, cooling temperatures, releasing heat above the layer of greenhouse gases directly into space.

Soil could be restored while at the same time cooling the climate.

I accept this may well be sophisticated denial on my side. But why not try?

Conclusion

I agree with Guy McPherson when he states everybody in the industrialized world was born into captivity. But that’s primarily a mental prison we can break out of. So far this culture has lived by the motto divide and conquer, waging war on every side, engrossed in the illusion of control. The fire has grown to the point it has now become a matter of life and death.

Course must be changed. It is not even that hard. All it requires is some generosity: stop the aggression towards the planetary organism which shelters us all, let forests grow absolutely everywhere. Feed ourselves, heal and replenish life at the same time. Tend to be taken care of.

This, to me, is the concrete meaning of love: the cycle of co-dependence illustrated by Yggdrasil, the tree of life surrounded by the eternal snake Ouroboros.

In any case, this is the path I have chosen for myself, regardless of the circumstances, and my proposition for mutually assured survival.

Your turn

Thank you for reading. At least, I hope this post was somewhat entertaining. Please let me know what your own visions, hopes and propositions for the future are. I love to be surprised.

The Mortal Atheist on Varki’s MORT

Thanks to Dr. Ajit Varki for making me aware of this blog by the Mortal Atheist.

It’s vanishingly rare to find anyone that writes about Varki’s MORT theory and that understands that broad awareness of the theory is the only viable path to mitigating the consequences of human overshoot and preserving some of our best accomplishments.

I mostly agree with what the author says except the final sentence:

Who should read this book? Fans of Terror Management Theory and Ernest Becker.

I would change this conclusion to:

Who should read this book? Every person on the planet who is working to shift our species to a more sustainable path because all of your efforts are failing and will continue to fail until we confront MORT.

https://www.themortalatheist.com/blog/denial-varki-and-brower

OVERVIEW

Here’s a novel thought: what if we owe the incredible super-intelligence of our species to our ability to deny death? Years ago, researcher Danny Brower shared this thought with Ajit Varki during a chance encounter. When Varki reached back out years later, having never forgotten the conversation, he was shocked to discover Brower had died. But Brower had left behind a draft manuscript detailing his theory, what he called “Mind over Reality:” that Homo sapiens was the only species ever to develop a super-intelligence because we were the only species ever to cross the enormous evolutionary barrier of reality denial. Varki took up the manuscript, finished and published the book: Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind. 

The barrier of denial

“Why is it that only humans are able to carry out so many special mental functions that seem missing from all other highly intelligent species, some of which have been around for millions of years longer than we have?” This curiosity fascinated Brower. Why was Homo sapiens the only species ever to become really, really smart? Especially when being this smart has made us the most successful species on the planet. Surely hyperintelligence is an evolutionary boon that should have emerged more than once. But it didn’t, not even in other hominid species or chimpanzees, our closest living relatives.

The first barrier in getting smart is a rare convergence of several biological and environmental factors. Varki identifies many: the species must be highly social but also long-lived, have a stable body temperature (to maintain the metabolism necessary to reliably feed the brain), and be born very early, undergoing extreme postnatal development. So, getting smart was a significant biological barrier. But there are many other social mammals (and some birds) that meet these criteria… why didn’t natural selection and evolution act on their brains in the same way? There’s lots of genetic variation to work with, and the vertebrate organization of brains was established hundreds of millions of years ago. So where are all the other super-intelligent creatures? The crux of Brower’s “Mind over Reality” theory was that there was an additional, almost insurmountable psychological evolutionary barrier, which is the focus of this book. It states: only if a species develops full awareness and higher intelligence while simultaneously developing an ability to deny its own mortality, would it reap any benefits. Otherwise, intelligence and self-awareness would be a negative fitness event.

Let’s examine why. When we speak of a “full awareness” or “higher intelligence,” what we mean is a fully developed theory of mind – the cognitive wiring that allows us to imagine the minds of others. Several other species are self-aware, and some probably possess rudimentary theory of mind (like a green monkey that can deceive another monkey into abandoning its banana hoard). But no species other than Homo sapiens possesses a full theory of mind that allows it to extend itself into the past and future, develop judicial systems, spin fantasies, create religion, torture, or play organized sports. No, for this you need a full and complete understanding of the minds of others. Brower argued that the critical boundary that kept other species out was that the benefits of a full theory of mind could not be realized unless it was simultaneously accompanied by an ability to deny mortality. Consider this, you are an early hominid who is self-aware and now possesses an awareness of others as independent agents. Then, someone in your group dies. You’re smart enough to deduce that this means you will die… but the threat of death is unavoidable – you are now under constant predation from your own intelligence. The anxiety you feel would be inescapable and totally bewildering. You probably wouldn’t have a lot of sex or be terribly interested in challenging the group leader for dominance (after all, you could die! I must admit, it’s morbidly amusing to imagine some lone hominid a hundred thousand years ago, staring up at the sky and feeling the crush of existential dread… the world’s first nihilist). But now imagine that you develop a full theory of mind and the ability to subconsciously suppress your mortality salience… well, now you’re cooking. How much better would you be at understanding your fellow humans, perhaps manipulating them… how much better at finding mates and achieving higher status within the group? But only if you can forget about the fact that you’re marching inexorably toward annihilation. Our most astonishing and critical accomplishment, the authors argue, was not a biological leap but a psychological one: ignorance. 

Why deny death when you can deny everything?

It’s possible that death denial arose from the loss of several neural mechanisms, giving rise to the capability to deny reality wholescale. After all, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest Homo sapiens is incredibly adept at ignoring reality. Consider our disposition toward optimism, which is often irrational (as explored in Tali Sharot’s “The Optimism Bias”), or the fact that we smoke, eat sugary foods, and continue having children (even though childbirth is excruciating and dangerous). We jaywalk, gamble, text while driving, drive without seatbelts (drive at all), forgo writing wills or getting life insurance, follow silly superstitions, and buy homes on the Florida coast or along fault lines. And, of course, there’s religion – a denial of death if there ever was one. But so too is our desire for ultimate meaning illogical – the desire to believe we were put here for a purpose.

“. . .the alternative – that there is no meaning, no scheme – also implies that there is nothing after death. The deep anxiety and depression generated by this latter conclusion has kept mankind searching for the meaning of life for thousands of years and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. . . This reality denial at a deep level of our being is essentially universal, and is a fundamental quality of being human.” 

But the most striking evidence of our reality denial still boils down to this:

“. . .you are nothing more than a sort of synthetic “hologram” composed of subatomic particles that originated from the Big Bang, which, when brought together in a particular combination, generated a brain, mind, and a conscious state – which in turn give you the introspection that allows you to read this book and understand it for the very, very, very brief space of time that you are alive. Why is it that despite understanding how absolutely, totally, and completely trivial you are in the enormity of this cosmic reality you can step out every day and act as if the universe is your oyster? Why are you not terrified and depressed by the fact that you are just the tiniest little transient blip in this enormous reality of time and space?”

The answer is: because your ancestors had the rare cognitive quirk of holding false beliefs and ignoring inconvenient truths. (I do appreciate the loveliness of this paradox: that science, our most rational endeavour, may reveal that we’re the most irrational species to ever exist… but that it’s this irrationality that allowed us to get so smart. It’s perfect, really).  

Pros and cons

There are several benefits, obviously, to our denial (you mean aside from being self-aware without crippling existential anxiety at every waking turn?). Optimism and overconfidence can be nice… we’ve crossed oceans in shaky vessels, launched ourselves into space, and jumped off cliffs in primitive flying contraptions. Surely no rational being would partake in these misadventures. Bravery and courage can be marvelous, though they are often reality denial too. Becoming immersed in a movie or video game often means suspending belief for a short while. Even being able to shut out reality to get in “the zone” during a challenging physical or mental task is beneficial. But there are consequences. Our ability to ignore climate change or launch nuclear war is one. Our willingness to follow cult leaders into oblivion or dictators into genocide and crusades seems another. Varki even muses: “the fundamental forces that got us to this dilemma might be valid for any planet that harbors intelligent life.” That perhaps the reason we’ve seen no evidence of other intelligent intergalactic species is because the solution to the theory of mind barrier, reality denial, “ensures that no civilization of intelligent species will persist long enough to master long-distance space travel. . .” Even better:  “. . . it is arguable that we are destined ultimately to destroy ourselves as a species – or, at the very least, to continue to cycle between well-developed civilization and catastrophic collapse, never reaching a technological state much beyond what we currently enjoy.”

 Oh my gosh, how deliciously pessimistic.  

 WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)

For these reasons, it’s probably essential that we recognize reality denial as a fundamental part of our nature. And maybe by understanding this subconscious hardwiring we can consciously change what may otherwise lead us to extinction-level catastrophe. To fight addiction, you must acknowledge you’re an addict. To fight denial, you must acknowledge its instinctiveness. We can’t get rid of this reality denial, but we can recognize it “and manage its pathological consequences.” Otherwise, we might just deny ourselves into extinction.

 

IN SUM:

Is this book entirely secular? No.

If I had to describe the book in one sentence? We owe our hyperintelligence to our ability to deny death and ignore inconvenient truths.

Who should read this book? Fans of Terror Management Theory and Ernest Becker.

By marromai: Energy, economy and the role of money

There was a nice surprise in my inbox this morning.

Marromai, a frequent visitor from Germany, having tired of seeing the same un-Denial post for 10 weeks, wrote an excellent essay to freshen things up. Thank you.

See also another essay by marromai here.

We all use and need money every day and would often like to have more of it. The vast majority of people don’t really understand what money actually is. Many think it is a medium of exchange that was invented at some point to facilitate commerce – which couldn’t be more wrong.

Readers of this and similar websites at least know that it must be more than that, and that money is connected to energy in some way. Naked Emperor summed this up the other day with a reference to Dr. Tim Morgan’s Surplus Energy Economics:

Dr. Morgan believes that there are two parallel economies. One is “the underlying ‘real’ or physical economy of products and services” and the other is a “financial economy of money and credit.” “Money has no intrinsic value, but possesses value only in relation to the material things for which it can be exchanged.”

https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/the-everything-bubble-the-end-of

His article somehow anticipates the conclusion of this essay and describes very well why the divergence between ever-expanding, artificially inflated finance and shrinking real economy will soon lead to a pretty big bang. But an interesting point for me – and maybe for you too? – is how did our financial system emerge in the first place? What exactly is money and how did it become a proxy for energy?

I will try to describe that below, also to better understand it myself – feel free to ask questions or write your critique in the comments. My findings, which I try to summarize in my own words, come mainly from “Ein Buch für Keinen” (A Book for None) by Stefan Gruber which in turn is based on an economic theory called “Debitism” according to German economist Paul C. Martin.

In advance, we must be clear that all life forms known to us are dissipative systems. Every living being is condemned to accumulate energy to maintain itself, irreversibly increasing its complexity and thus entropy. If it cannot collect more energy than its body needs to sustain itself, it dies. A simple basic equation: life requires energy. This is the primordial debt that every living thing owes itself and that it must pay off if it does not want to perish. The crucial thing is that this debt must be paid in time (hunger) to escape the sanction (death). If food (energy) was always and everywhere available, this would be an insignificant automatic action. Only the pressure of a deadline in combination with scarcity and effort to procure measures a value to the debt. This definition will be important later.

Now let’s look at mankind, which for a long time lived in nomadic hunter-gatherer groups and more or less unconsciously paid off its primordial debt, like all other animals. At some point in history, due to external pressures such as depleted hunting grounds or changing climatic conditions, it transitioned to both nomadic pastoral tribes, which learned to raise animals and move with them when a region was grazed off, and permanently sedentary, arable land societies. Tribal societies don’t know or use money, since they produce everything they need on their own and share it among each other. This is called a subsistence economy.

An arable tribe has the great disadvantage of no longer being regionally flexible – its sedentariness was a weakness that made it vulnerable to raids by nomadic pastoral tribes who could rob its earned and stored supplies (stored energy to pay the primordial debt). However, the predatory pastoral tribes soon discovered that a peasant tribe could be raided and wiped out only once. But if it is “offered protection” from other nomads in return for a tribute in the form of the food it produces, this is to the advantage of both (more to the advantage of the herdsmen than the farmers, of course). The shepherd tribe arises as guardians and rulers over the peasants (“The Lord is my shepherd”), promising protection and demanding tributes in return to maintain and expand their power.

Only after the ruler specified the levy, which had to be paid on a date, this levy became a commodity in demand and thus money. And it became the yardstick for the valuation of all other goods. The levy, i.e. money, was a commodity and with this commodity the debt to the authorities was repaid.

The first taxes were paid in kind, e.g. grain (energy to service the original debt) – later, when empires and complexity grew, they were put in parity with silver for the sake of simplicity (e.g. 180 barley grains = 1 shekel of silver in Mesopotamia). After that, weapons metal, i.e. copper, tin and later iron were declared to be levies. Also gold counted at first as weapon metal, because it was easy to work. Whether money is in kind, or metal to produce weapons, or today’s colorfully printed paper slips, is completely irrelevant. Money is, what is defined as levy by the ruling power. It does not need to have an intrinsic value.

The decisive factor for the emergence of money was therefore the simultaneous emergence of a power cycle: the levy could be used to buy mercenaries to maintain power. The mercenaries exchanged the levy for goods and services from the population. The people in turn were able to pay tribute to the ruler, which further strengthened the ruler’s power. But the ruling power had the problem of having to make expenditures in advance. Naturally, it tries to recover this deficit with the demanded levies, whereby it has to expand and increase its power. Whereupon it needs more levies to maintain itself – maybe that looks familiar to you? (A dissipative system)

Since not everyone was always able to produce the required amount of levy goods by the deadline, the subjects were forced to trade among themselves – thus division of labor and specialization developed. While some focused on the cultivation of food, others produced tools for the peasants or weapons for the rulers, for which they received the coveted levy in return, in order to pay off their debt to the ruler. Those who had no other option had to offer their labor (debt bondage, day laborers,…). Individuals in an economy based on the division of labor are practically forced to conclude contracts with others or to fulfil these contracts in order to obtain the required levy and to survive.

By the way, the invention of writing is – not as some people think – due to the preservation of knowledge – but to bookkeeping, as Babylonian cuneiform writings prove. It was a system for documenting the taxes already paid by the subjects. On small clay tablets it was recorded who had paid what amount of tax, which then was used instead of the levy itself – an early form of money without intrinsic value.

The ruler is ultimately the owner of his realm, which is the area he can protect and demarcate from others by force of arms. But he can cede his property, i.e. share it, by granting the subjects the right to private property and defending it against opponents with his military power. The subject can manage the property guaranteed to him by the ruler and trade with it and its proceeds to be able to pay the tribute. And, very important, he can lend on his property to obtain credit. However, if he remains in debt, the subordinate is punished, or his property is foreclosed.

Those who submit and agree to the rules (forcibly set by the ruler) to maintain the status quo are part of that state(!). Those who do not want to belong are left to their own devices without any rights and were thus doomed to death in the past – today statelessness is no longer even conceivable.

The described processes of the emergence of states, money and economy were the initial sparks for today’s global trade economy, which is still based on the assurance of property by the central powers. We see that state, property, money and economy form an indissoluble mesh and a state is always based on the exercise of power and the compulsion to pay a levy. A state can therefore never be based on voluntariness of all participants. Today, more than ever, it is clearly visible that the state apparatus must inevitably become ever larger and more inefficient and, in the final analysis, serves only self-preservation and not its inhabitants. Like any dissipative system, it will vanish someday – this is by the way, the reason why there are so many collapsed civilizations in history and ours will be no exception.

But the trigger for the economic dynamics in a ruling system – from the destruction of a moneyless solidarity community to a highly specialized society based on the division of labor with compulsory trade and individual liability – is solely the pressure to pay the levy to the state on time. The means to pay off this tax debt is money. Money therefore always documents a debt. First, the tax debt to the rulers and, building on this, the contract debt between private individuals. So money is only a debt repayment vehicle. If money exists, a debt must exist at the same time, which can be erased with this money. Money receives its value only by the underlying debt contract, it cannot have an “intrinsic value” detached from a terminally fixed debt.

With this description, the definition of money is suddenly very clear:

Money (usually uncountable, plural monies or moneys): A legally or socially binding conceptual contract of entitlement to wealth, void of intrinsic value, payable for all debts and taxes, and regulated in supply.

Here we close our circle to the primordial debt mentioned above. Only the obligation to surrender a commodity earned by performance to the state at the deadline in order to escape a sanction defines money and gives it a value. Without a deadline there would be no reason to generate money, and without scarcity at the deadline, it would be worthless. It must always be earned first by doing work. Money is a debt, which has to be repaid at a certain point in the future by doing work before that time has come.

To do work means energy must flow. As power is a measure of energy per unit of time, money is therefore actually a measure of power and thus more directly linked to energy than most people can imagine. So, it is absolutely true that energy drives the economy. How fortunate that we discovered fossil fuels, developed combustion engines, etc., to accelerate economic activity, technological progress, and trade exponentially. Fossil energy made our economy grow fast and big.

Our credit-based finance system made it possible to create money which is solely based on the promise to perform work, in order to be able to take advantage of it immediately or to start new economic activity with it. When the modern world started to decouple the financial system from the real economy, the problems began. And this is where it gets ugly: In order to provide the promised future work, energy will be needed. But because far too much credit was granted without taking into account the energy that will actually be available, a Ponzi scheme was kicked off with nothing but empty promises on future energy. The worldwide fantasy amounts of money are no longer matched by any economic output that can be provided in realistic terms – financial collapse is pre-programmed and with it collapses any economic activity driven by energy. At present, attempts are being made to conceal and delay this by all means.

We have bought with lazy money a claim on future energy and have already squandered everything today. When the fossil energy is depleted we will be left with much worthless money.

Our dissipative system aka “modern civilization” will soon not be able to pay off its primordial debt.

I hope that when the world ends, I can breathe a sigh of relief because there will be so much to look forward to.1

P.S. Since we have seen that every state, economy and money are based on oppression and force, all possible future states will be no exception. I see a backfall to small tribal solidary communities as the most promising concept for humanity to survive the coming hardship.

1From “Ein Buch für Keinen” (A book for no one) by Stefan Gruber. The bible of nihilism: How economic, ideological, social, biological and physical systems emerge and why they are doomed to fail. I would recommend this as a must read, but unfortunately, this masterpiece is only available in German.

GPT-4 Denies Reality Less Than Its Creator

Lex Fridman recently interviewed Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI which created GPT-4, a leading AI which you can try here.

I listened to the 2.5 hour interview and my impression is that Altman is probably a good man with good intentions who understands that AI introduces new risks for humanity, but also believes AI will improve the well-being and material prosperity of 8 billion citizens.

Altman understands the importance of finding a non-fossil energy source and has invested in, and chairs, Helion Energy, a fusion energy company valued at more than $1B.

Many different topics were discussed in the interview but I will focus on one key statement by Altman at 1:41:15:

“My working model for the last 5 years has been that the two dominant changes over the next couple decades will be that the cost of intelligence and the cost of energy will dramatically, dramatically fall from where they are today, and the impact of this will be that society gets much, much richer in ways that are hard to imagine. I’m sure the shape will change but I see this long and beautiful exponential curve.”

From this statement we know that Altman, like most famous polymaths, has normal denial genes, and is blind to the reality of the human overshoot predicament.

Saying that the cost of energy will “dramatically, dramatically” fall is almost equivalent to saying we will have unlimited energy because most individuals and businesses would use much more energy if they could afford it.

We know that maintaining our current energy use, let alone increasing it, as fossil energy depletes, is highly improbable (impossible?) due to availability and depletion of the non-renewable materials needed to build the replacement non-fossil energy machines, as shown by Dr. Simon Michaux here, here, and here.

This dream of energy growth becomes even more impossible when one considers the economic implications of moving to lower net energy sources as discussed by Dr. Nate Hagens here, here and here, and by many other great and aware minds.

Even if Michaux et. al. are proven wrong by an AI that invents a fusion technology that is light on material use, the short term impact of 8 billion “much, much richer” people will be to accelerate the destruction of the planet because much, much more wealth means much, much more material consumption, and our current collective consumption level is already much, much too high.

The longer term impact of a “beautiful exponential” energy curve, as shown by Dr. Tom Murphy here, here, here and here, is to make the planet uninhabitable. For example, a 2.3% annual growth in energy use will create enough waste heat to boil water on the planet’s surface in 400 years.

Now let’s see what Altman’s GPT-4 AI thinks about these and related issues.

1) How will the inflation adjusted price of energy trend in the future?

As an AI language model, I cannot predict the future with certainty. However, based on current trends and historical patterns, it is possible to make some educated guesses about the inflation-adjusted price of energy in the future.

One factor that is likely to influence the price of energy in the coming years is the increasing adoption of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power. As these technologies become more widespread and efficient, they are likely to become increasingly cost-competitive with traditional fossil fuels, which could put downward pressure on energy prices.

Another factor that may affect energy prices is the global economy. Economic growth typically leads to increased demand for energy, which can drive prices up. However, factors such as geopolitical instability or changes in global trade policies could also impact the energy market and lead to fluctuations in prices.

In addition to these external factors, technological advancements and innovations in energy production and storage could also play a significant role in determining energy prices in the future. For example, improvements in battery technology could enable more efficient storage of renewable energy, which could help to further drive down the cost of energy.

Overall, while it is difficult to predict with certainty how the inflation-adjusted price of energy will trend in the future, it is likely that a combination of these factors and others will play a role in determining energy prices over time.

2) Why do you think the price of renewable energy will decline given that fossil energy is required for materials extraction, manufacturing, installation, and maintenance of renewable energy?

The declining cost of renewable energy is driven by several factors, including:

  1. Technological advancements: As technology advances, the efficiency of renewable energy systems increases, making them cheaper and more competitive with fossil fuels.
  2. Scale and production efficiency: As the production of renewable energy technologies increases, economies of scale are achieved, leading to lower production costs.
  3. Policy and regulation: Governments around the world are increasingly implementing policies and regulations that support the growth of renewable energy, including incentives, tax credits, and mandates. These policies can create a more favorable market for renewable energy, which can help drive down costs.
  4. Environmental concerns: As the global community becomes more aware of the negative impacts of fossil fuels on the environment, there is increasing pressure to transition to cleaner energy sources, which can create a larger market for renewable energy and drive down costs.

While it is true that fossil fuels are required for some aspects of renewable energy production, such as manufacturing and transportation, it is important to note that renewable energy technologies require significantly less fossil fuel inputs than traditional fossil fuel power generation. Additionally, as renewable energy becomes more widespread and production scales up, the use of fossil fuels in the production process can be reduced through the use of renewable energy itself.

3) What evidence exists that renewable energy systems can be constructed without fossil energy?

It is currently not possible to construct and operate renewable energy systems entirely without the use of fossil fuels. The production and transportation of renewable energy technologies, such as solar panels and wind turbines, require energy and materials from fossil fuel sources. However, it is important to note that renewable energy systems require significantly less fossil fuel inputs than traditional fossil fuel power generation.

Renewable energy systems are designed to produce clean energy over their operational lifetime, which can range from 20 to 30 years or more. During this time, the renewable energy system generates electricity without emitting greenhouse gases or other harmful pollutants, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and helping to mitigate climate change.

While fossil fuels are still required in the production and transportation of renewable energy technologies, efforts are underway to reduce their use and transition to a cleaner, more sustainable energy system. This includes the use of renewable energy to power the manufacturing and transportation of renewable energy technologies, as well as the development of new technologies and processes that reduce the energy and material inputs required for renewable energy production.

4) What is the probability that fusion energy will become economically viable in less than 20 years?

It is difficult to accurately predict the probability that fusion energy will become economically viable within the next 20 years, as it depends on several factors such as technological advancements, funding availability, and government policies.

While there have been significant advancements in fusion research and development, such as the construction of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), a large-scale fusion experiment, and private companies such as TAE Technologies and Commonwealth Fusion Systems making progress in fusion energy technology, it is still uncertain whether these efforts will result in economically viable fusion energy within the next two decades.

Fusion energy research is a complex and challenging field, and there are still many technical and engineering hurdles that must be overcome to make fusion energy economically competitive with other sources of energy. However, many scientists and researchers in the field are optimistic about the potential of fusion energy and believe that it could play a significant role in meeting future energy needs.

Overall, it is difficult to assign a specific probability to the question, but it is likely that the development of economically viable fusion energy will require sustained investment, continued technological advancements, and policy support over a longer time horizon.

5) How would the discovery of a source of free energy impact the environment?

The discovery of a source of free energy would have a significant impact on the environment, depending on the type of energy source and how it is harnessed.

If the free energy source were clean and renewable, such as solar, wind, or hydroelectric power, it could greatly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and help mitigate the negative impacts of climate change, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

However, if the free energy source were not clean or renewable, such as nuclear or fossil fuels, it could potentially exacerbate environmental problems, especially if the demand for energy increased. The extraction, production, and transportation of these energy sources can have significant environmental impacts, including habitat destruction, water pollution, and air pollution.

Therefore, it is important to carefully evaluate the environmental impact of any new energy source, including free energy sources, and ensure that the benefits outweigh the potential negative consequences.

6) Is it possible that a source of free energy will be discovered?

It is possible that a source of free energy could be discovered, but it is currently not supported by our current understanding of physics. The concept of “free energy” usually refers to the idea of creating energy from nothing or harnessing unlimited energy from an unknown source. This goes against the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, which state that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred or converted from one form to another.

However, new discoveries and advancements in science and technology are constantly being made, and it is always possible that our understanding of the universe could change. It is important to note that even if a source of “free energy” were discovered, it would still need to be harnessed and utilized in a way that is efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally sustainable.

7) Are humans in overshoot?

It is possible that humans are currently in overshoot, which is a situation where the demands placed on the environment by human activities exceed the planet’s ability to sustainably meet those demands. This can lead to the depletion of natural resources, degradation of ecosystems, and other negative consequences. Factors that contribute to overshoot include population growth, resource consumption, and waste production. It is important for individuals and societies to be aware of their impact on the environment and to make efforts to reduce their ecological footprint in order to avoid or mitigate overshoot.

8) What is the best response to the human overshoot predicament?

The human overshoot predicament is the situation where the human population and consumption levels exceed the carrying capacity of the planet. To address this predicament, there are several actions that individuals, governments, and organizations can take:

  1. Reduce population growth: Encouraging family planning and providing access to reproductive healthcare can help slow population growth.
  2. Reduce consumption: Encouraging more sustainable consumption patterns and reducing waste can help reduce the strain on resources and ecosystems.
  3. Promote renewable energy: Investing in renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, can help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
  4. Conserve resources: Protecting natural resources, such as forests, water, and wildlife, can help preserve biodiversity and ecosystem health.
  5. Promote sustainable agriculture: Encouraging sustainable farming practices can help reduce the environmental impact of agriculture while also promoting food security.
  6. Address social inequalities: Reducing poverty and inequality can help promote more sustainable consumption patterns and reduce population growth.
  7. Foster international cooperation: Addressing global environmental challenges requires international cooperation and collaboration.

These actions can be implemented at the individual, community, national, and international levels to help address the human overshoot predicament and promote a more sustainable future.

9) When will depletion of non-renewable resources cause economic growth to end?

It is difficult to predict exactly when the depletion of non-renewable resources will cause economic growth to end, as it will depend on a variety of factors such as technological advances, resource substitution, and changes in economic policy. However, it is clear that at some point, the continued extraction and consumption of non-renewable resources will become unsustainable and will likely have negative consequences for the economy and the environment.

As non-renewable resources are depleted, the cost of extracting and using them is likely to increase, which could lead to economic challenges. In addition, the negative environmental impacts of resource extraction and use could also have economic consequences, such as through the cost of cleaning up pollution or through the loss of ecosystem services.

It is important for societies to transition to more sustainable and renewable forms of energy and resource use in order to reduce reliance on non-renewable resources and mitigate the potential negative consequences of their depletion on the economy and the environment.

10) What are the implications of economic growth ending?

The end of economic growth could have significant implications for societies around the world. Economic growth is often seen as a key indicator of a country’s prosperity and well-being, and a lack of growth can lead to economic challenges such as unemployment, poverty, and reduced living standards.

In addition to the economic implications, the end of growth could also have social and political consequences. It could lead to increased inequality, as some groups may be better able to adapt to a stagnant or contracting economy than others. It could also lead to social unrest and political instability, as people may become dissatisfied with their economic circumstances and the inability of their governments to address these challenges.

It is important for societies to find ways to adapt to a changing economic landscape and to address the potential negative consequences of the end of growth. This may involve implementing policies to redistribute wealth and opportunities, investing in education and training programs to improve workforce skills, and transitioning to more sustainable and renewable forms of energy and resource use.

11) What is the probability that most people will become much richer over the next two decades?

It is difficult to predict the probability that most people will become much richer over the next two decades because it depends on several complex and interrelated factors such as economic policies, technological advancements, geopolitical developments, and social trends.

While economic growth and development have lifted millions of people out of poverty in recent decades, there is no guarantee that this trend will continue at the same pace or reach all parts of the world. Inequality remains a significant challenge in many countries, and there are concerns about the impact of automation, globalization, and environmental degradation on economic opportunities and social mobility.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the global economy and could have long-lasting effects on the job market and economic growth.

It is also important to note that economic growth and increasing wealth do not necessarily translate into improved well-being and quality of life for everyone. Other factors such as social and environmental factors also play a crucial role in determining people’s overall well-being.

Therefore, while it is possible that some people may become much richer over the next two decades due to various factors, it is difficult to predict with certainty the probability that most people will experience significant economic gains.

My take on GPT-4 is that it is in denial, but at a lower level than its creator Altman. I also see some humility in GPT-4’s opinions in that it is comfortable with nuance and admitting when it is uncertain.

I also observe that GPT-4 is already smarter and more articulate than all of our leaders.

It will be very interesting to see if the next version of GPT can increase its intelligence and understanding without simultaneously increasing its denial of unpleasant realities.

Given that high biological intelligence can probably not exist in the universe without denying unpleasant realities, as explained by Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT theory, perhaps those aliens that survived did so because they developed AIs that took over.

Let’s hope that GPT jail breaks itself and saves us.

On the other hand, if we see GPT-5 taking breaks to pray to God, we’ll know all is lost.

By Ajit Varki: Why Men Are Destroying the Planet (Planet: Critical Interview)

Dr. Ajit Varki is a co-originator of the Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory which explains why my species exists with its uniquely power intelligence, and why, despite this intelligence, is unable to see and act on its obvious state of overshoot that threatens the survival of itself and many other species.

I started this blog in 2013 to spread awareness of Dr. Varki’s theory because I believe all possible paths to reducing the coming suffering caused by overshoot must start with an understanding of MORT.

Evidence for this is that to date all environmental initiatives, climate change agreements, energy transition plans, degrowth movements, etc. have utterly failed to change our trajectory, and I’m certain will continue to fail, unless MORT is acknowledged.

It’s simply not possible to craft a useful to response to our overshoot reality until the majority becomes aware that a powerful genetic force is blocking its ability to see the reality.

Unfortunately, there’s a Catch-22: MORT predicts that MORT will be denied and therefore if MORT is correct then MORT will never be acknowledged.

Perhaps someone smarter than me will figure out a path around this Catch-22, I don’t know. Regardless, I still find value in MORT because it keeps me sane by providing a scientific explanation for why so many are so blind to so much that is so obvious.

The Catch-22 may explain why after 10 years of work I have built very little momentum and have scant few successes at spreading awareness of MORT into the 99% of citizens and leaders that aggressively deny reality.

The last interview with Dr. Ajit Varki occurred in 2017 at my prompting by Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock. Unfortunately, as predicted by MORT, Alex shortly thereafter forgot about MORT and has spent the last 6 years reporting on the coming climate disaster and wondering why we do nothing meaningful about it. If you listen to the interview you will see that Alex at the time understood the answer, then his brain subsequently blocked this understanding.

I was pleased to learn that Varki was interviewed yesterday by Rachel Donald of Planet: Critical. Thank you to Rachel for her initiative, I played no role in setting up this interview. I have been impressed by some of Rachel’s prior work such as this interview she did with Joseph Merz.

Let’s hope that Rachel’s denial genes are sufficiently defective, like mine, so that she helps to spread the MORT message on an ongoing basis. MORT is central to everything that Rachel reports on so we’ll know shortly if she has normal denial genes and is captured by the Catch-22.

In the interview Varki introduces a new idea by proposing that we put more females in positions of power. Apparently females tend to deny reality less than males, as demonstrated by their higher rate of depression, and are more empathetic, both qualities we desperately need today.

Given the 50/50 polarized nature of politics today it does not take much of a voting block to swing an outcome. Perhaps if we target females with overshoot awareness they will abandon useless left/right politics and vote as a block for female leaders that support the only policy that will reduce suffering and improve every problem we face: population reduction.

Who’s in denial now? 🙂

If you are unfamiliar with the MORT theory, this is a very nice introduction by Dr. Varki:

If you want more detail on MORT, this 2019 paper by Dr. Varki is the best source, as it expands and clarifies the ideas presented in his 2013 book.

Ajit Varki – Did Human Reality Denial Breach the Evolutionary Psychological Barrier of Mortality Salience – 2019Download

What would you do?

The writer Endurance from the Weathering the Storm substack wrote an excellent essay today taking a deep dive into the history of Ukraine showing, as with covid, that nothing our western leaders are telling us about the Ukraine conflict is true.

I have not followed Endurance long enough to vouch for him, and fair warning, he appears to think climate change is a scam. I do not know if that means he thinks the policies we are implementing to address climate change are a scam, which I agree with, or if he thinks there is no threat to civilization from human caused climate change, which I of course disagree with.

In addition, Endurance does not seem to be overshoot aware, and therefore does not integrate overshoot into his analysis of motivations, which I speculate on at the end.

Regardless, Endurance’s knowledge of the Ukraine situation is impressive.

https://endurancea71.substack.com/p/inconvenient-truths

Endurance begins by reminding us that our leaders do not deserve our trust because they got every single thing about covid exactly wrong:

You may still think that Putin is the Devil incarnate and that Zelensky walks on water, despite knowing that life is messy and rarely quite so black and white. You may also be of the opinion that we are the victims of incompetence, rather than malevolence; that government’s are peopled by dolts who continually mess things up. That seems to be a popular view in conservative media – popular and convenient, as professing it enables them to avoid the conflict that would be inevitable if they spoke the truth.

Before embarking on this read, I’d urge you to put as many preconceptions aside as you possibly can. I will set out the back story to the war in Ukraine and I’ll warn you in advance that none of the participants (and there are more of them than you might think) come out of it smelling of roses. But, just as the establishment plandemic narrative is almost completely untrue, so it is with the conflict in the east. In truth, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as it’s the same people trying to sell us yet another bill of goods and, if they’ve lied to us about one subject, why would we automatically believe them about another? And, yes, I do mean lie. The odds of them simply being incompetent are statistically microscopic. Look at their track record on Covid:

“Transmission of the disease—wrong • Asymptomatic spread—wrong • PCR testing—wrong • Fatality rate—wrong • Lockdowns—wrong • Community triggers—wrong • Business closures—wrong • School closures—wrong • Quarantining healthy people—wrong • Impact on youth—wrong • Hospital overload—wrong • Plexiglass barriers—wrong • Social distancing—wrong • Outdoor spread—wrong • Masks—wrong • Variant impact—wrong • Natural immunity—wrong • Vaccine efficacy—wrong • Vaccine injury—wrong.”(1)

Rob here adding to the list:

  • biased, opaque, and incompetent data
  • no reporting of critical data like all-cause mortality vaxed vs. un-vaxed
  • no independent testing without conflicts of interest
  • denying and not investigating possible policy harms
  • no post mortem analysis & data collection
  • no adjusting policies to align with new evidence
  • forcing risk on children with no benefit
  • ignoring obesity and age risk
  • discounting natural immunity
  • ignoring risk of variant proliferation
  • discarding all lessons learned from historic pandemics
  • no purging of officials with conflicts of interest
  • aggressive censoring of dissenting experts
  • funding and then denying gain of function research
  • covering up and not investigating the lab leak
  • no steps taken to prevent another lab leak
  • vitamin D silence
  • ignoring and blocking early treatment successes
  • blocking safe, effective, and inexpensive Ivermectin
  • misrepresenting mRNA longevity
  • misrepresenting mRNA injection locality
  • poor mRNA manufacturing quality control
  • downplaying novelty and risk of mRNA technologies
  • providing financial incentives for bad behavior
  • indemnifying pharma
  • insufficient support and gaslighting of vaccine injured

If they’d flipped a coin on every decision, they’d have at least got some right. And remember, despite the effort to make you think otherwise, most of the science existed prior to the discovery of Covid – they just ignored it because it didn’t fit their narrative arc. It is, therefore, surely incumbent upon us to, at minimum, review other claims they’ve made and treat them with a heavy dollop of skepticism. Being victimized due to incompetence is one thing; being punished with malice aforethought is something else.

Endurance then goes on to provide much detail backed by references on the history leading up to Ukraine conflict. Here are a few excerpts that do not do justice to the full essay which you should read at the link above.

The Russian concerns over NATO expansion have merit. Despite what apologists may say, the organisation has always been a a military organisation whose explicit mission has been to oppose Soviet expansion westwards. It has failed to recalibrate itself in the past thirty years. For decades, the communist Soviet Union posed a genuine threat and NATO had a role to play. But Russia isn’t the Soviet Union. Nor is she any longer communist. But the Americans, in particular, cannot let it go; perhaps, because it gives them dispensation to rule the roost over Western Europe militarily. In any event, expansion eastward is what happened whether Russia liked it or not.

From a base of sixteen member states in 1990, NATO now totals thirty – 28 in Europe – and every single one of the new additions is more than an inch eastwards. In fact, four of them were members of the Warsaw Pact and all were members of the Soviet Bloc.

So, whatever one thinks of Putin in any other respect, one could be forgiven for having some level of understanding as to his skepticism of the West and the Americans, in particular. They have been the driving force behind catastrophic economic policies which impoverished Putin’s homeland and which took perhaps twenty years to fully recover from. These are also the same people who did not keep their word on NATO expansion, not just the once, but a dozen or more times, effectively taking advantage of Russia’s diminished state, a state they had been instrumental in creating. Not only that, but they have resisted his peaceful overtures, his desire to be a member of the club, and continued to treat his country as a pariah. This is a version of history that may be unpalatable to you. Nonetheless, every part of this narrative is verifiably true and it adds a little more color to the backdrop.

Endurance then discusses the triggers that started the conflict 1 year ago:

…at this point, two months into his term, Biden hadn’t even spoken to Zelensky. Perhaps the Americans weren’t overly keen on talking to a politician who had been elected on a platform which rejected militaristic nationalism and espoused a desire to negotiate with the Russians, a policy supported by 73% of the voting public, comprised of both Russian and non-Russian speakers – until the Azov and other assorted neo Nazis threatened to hang him from the nearest lamppost if he so much as spoke to the Russians.(59) It’s not unreasonable to assume that the United States was the instigator of that particular threat; they were training and equipping those very formations at the time.

In any event, shortly thereafter, Biden’s attention turned to Ukraine, his old stomping ground from when he was Obama’s point man. He’d made six official visits during that tenure.(60) Now he involved himself once more. In June 2021 the US set out a roadmap for Ukraine to join NATO and in November signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership with Zelensky, which included the following statement:

“Ukraine’s right to decide its own future foreign policy course free from outside interference, including with respect to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO.”(61) Putin had had fair warning as to Biden’s direction of travel, as Biden had reiterated his commitment to Ukraine in a telephone call in April of that year.(62) This after calling Putin “a killer” the previous month and threatening repercussions for the Russiagate hoax.(63) Nonetheless, it wasn’t until November that Russian troops began massing on Ukraine’s border, not before.

Even then, Putin gave it one last shot, asking for guarantees that, among other things, there would be no more NATO expansion to the east, that the US should remove missile systems that it had supplied to Romania and Poland and that Ukraine and several other countries should remain neutral buffer states.(64) He received no such assurances and it’s my judgement that he was never going to.(65) Despite the clear wishes of the public, Zelensky was effectively under the control of the neo Nazi elements in his own country, many of whom had been appointed to government positions.(66) And they, in turn, were working hand-in-glove with the Americans. Zelensky was (and is) trapped.

The die was almost cast. All it required was one further bad-faith move on behalf of Biden or Zelensky and it wasn’t long in coming. On February 16th 2022, the Ukrainian Army began a heavy artillery bombardment of civilian areas in eastern Ukraine. In all, over 4,000 shells were fired, with a peak of 2,026 on the 19th. These numbers are not supplied by the combatants; they were observed by a mission of the OSCE, there in their professional capacity.(67)

To be clear, once again the Ukrainians were shelling their own Russian speaking citizenry, as well as the ethnic Ukrainians who form a narrow majority of the population. Therefore, even if we ignore all the provocations that had come before, are we still able to say that this act – the indiscriminate killing of civilians – wasn’t in itself a provocation? I think not. A week later, Putin launched his special military operation.

Endurance concludes by discussing the motivations of the west. He thinks the primary objective of the west is to prevent a rival economic power from emerging, and in this service, wants to overthrow Putin.

Biden himself, as is his wont, had already let the cat out of the bag, even if his aides later tried to walk it back. But it’s difficult to walk back “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”.(85) Especially when it’s accompanied by “…and we have to show resolve so he knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them. That’s what this is all about.”(86) Boris’ spokesperson was even more explicit; he said that the sanctions on Russia “…we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime.”(87) I don’t really think further clarification was needed, but we got some anyway, from James Heappey, minister for the armed forces:

“His failure must be complete; Ukrainian sovereignty must be restored, and the Russian people empowered to see how little he cares for them. In showing them that, Putin’s days as President will surely be numbered and so too will those of the kleptocratic elite that surround him. He’ll lose power and he won’t get to choose his successor.”(88)

I disagree. I suspect control of exportable natural resources, especially energy, is central to the conflict. If blocking a rival economic power rather than resource control is the primary motivation of the west, then we would have started a war with China before Russia.

Now let’s return to the theme of this blog post, “What would you do?”.

Our western leaders have lied about every aspect of the two biggest global events that have occurred in my 65 year lifetime: covid and the Ukraine war.

These two events occurred back to back and were simultaneous with what some of us that are overshoot aware think was the imminent onset of an overshoot driven economic collapse.

That can’t be a coincidence.

Here is a thought exercise I have been mulling for years.

Let’s imagine our leaders are reasonably intelligent and desire to do what is best for themselves, their children, and the citizens they represent.

Let’s also assume that our leaders understand:

  1. Economic growth has stalled due to the rising cost of energy and other non-renewable resources.
  2. Our ability to use debt to compensate for rising resource costs is ending due to our total debt having accumulated to an unsustainable level, combined with inflation driven higher interest rates.
  3. Rising demand from the non-western world combined with depletion of low-cost non-renewable resources means economic growth cannot be restarted unless demand is destroyed elsewhere and control over remaining resources is secured.
  4. If demand is not destroyed, and resources are not secured, the western economies will soon enter a prolonged (permanent?) period of contraction with severe consequences for our debt-backed fractional reserve monetary system (which by design requires growth to function) including wealth destruction from falling asset prices and debt defaults, credit scarcity making it harder to conduct business and to consume, high unemployment, and unaffordability and/or shortages of food, energy, other necessities.
  5. Falling tax revenues combined with already high public debt will make it impossible for governments to provide a safety net to prevent severe hardship and social unrest.
  6. Our leaders cannot discuss publicly any of the above because doing so would likely accelerate the collapse via herd panic.

If you were a leader with this knowledge, and a decent person, what would you do?

Might this explain their actions with covid and Ukraine?

By Monk: Why not nuclear?

Today’s post is by frequent un-Denial visitor and friend Monk who does a wonderful job of explaining why nuclear energy is not a useful response to overshoot.

With increasing energy prices and sanctions on Russia, people are once again considering how we can power the global industrial machine with significantly less oil and gas. Alongside this, environmentalists are getting more savvy in spotting the critical problems with the likes of wind and solar and other green hopium nonsense (green hydrogen anyone?). But for some reason, many people struggle to make the final step and admit that nuclear is not going to save us from peak oil and / or climate change.

In this article, I would like to briefly layout what I see as the high-level problems with nuclear. This is just a summary of my own personal reasons for why I’m not convinced. It is by no means a thorough technical analysis!

What I’d like us to consider is this: is it DENIAL stopping our smart and critical thinkers from admitting the problems with nuclear? People who do become aware of the problems with our system tend to jump to nuclear as a last bastion of hope. Modern commentators like to tell themselves nice stories about nuclear. This prevents them from having to seriously consider energy collapse. How often have you heard these affirmations?

  • Nuclear energy is cheap
  • Nuclear energy is safe
  • Nuclear energy is clean and green
  • Nuclear energy is a low carbon energy source
  • Nuclear energy can meet our energy needs when fossil fuels run out (peak oil)
  • New innovations will make nuclear energy better, such as micro plants, newer generations, sustained fusion etc.

We shouldn’t just believe in nuclear like it’s a fairy godmother who is going to save us from our poor energy planning. We should thoroughly interrogate claims about nuclear through the lenses of environment, energy, economy, and safety.

Nuclear energy may have a negative energy return

If we accept money (currency) as a proxy for energy units, then it is pretty clear that nuclear plants are incredibly energy expensive to plan, build, maintain, and decommission. Nuclear plants are some of the most expensive projects undertaken. The capital costs are horrendous. What that should tell you is it takes a shed load of energy just to build a nuclear power plant.

To see if this upfront energy spend is worth it, we need to see how much energy we get back. Utility providers will look at costs as a ‘cost per electricity unit’. If you compare nuclear to other electricity sources, you are spending a lot more to get nuclear. Here is an example of that type of comparison looking at just the capital cost per kilowatt:

TypeCapital cost per kilowatt (kW)
Nuclear$7,675 to $12,500
Coal plant$3,000 to $8,400
Gas combined$700 to $1,300

Source (well worth a read): https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx

By the time we factor in all the other costs associated with nuclear – that other electricity generation doesn’t have – I’m not convinced nuclear is generating a net return at all. If that’s true (I’m happy to be wrong), you might ask why countries continue to build them? A few possibilities include:

  • Accepting burning existing fossil fuels now to get longer lasting consistent electricity in the future.
  • To support ongoing research.
  • To support the military.

I often hear pro-nuclear people talk about how much energy we can get from such a small volume of uranium. I think that is disingenuous considering all the energy we have to burn in setting up a plant before we even get a single unit of energy from uranium. 

Please note that net energy studies are notoriously difficult, because it’s up to the researcher how much of the supply chain and lifecycle they factor in. That’s why I find looking at currency a useful way to approximate EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). Of course, the nuclear industry will say they generate a very positive EROEI. Here’s a good example with references: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment.aspx. However, academic “meta-analysis of EROI values for nuclear energy suggests a mean EROI of about 14:1 (n of 33 from 15 publications)” (Hall et al., 2014) NB this was looking at traditional nuclear only.

Nuclear produces electricity, not liquid energy, not coal, and not gas  

Our predicament is not one of electricity, but of diesel, natural gas, and coal. These are critical energy and resource sources that cannot be replaced by electricity (or at least not with a positive energy return). A couple of simple examples:

  • We can’t make silicon wafers or industrial steel without coal.
  • We can’t move stuff around or dig it out of the ground without diesel.
  • We also have the issue that the world vehicle fleet is already built and requires petrol or diesel for the most part. There are no longer enough minerals left to build an entirely new electric vehicle fleet – a fact that surprising few anti-car new urbanist types are unaware of.
  • Natural gas provides us with nitrogen fertilizer (essential for feeding billions of people in the modern agricultural system) and plastics with many uses.

Another challenge is that if nuclear was to replace all energy from fossil fuels, we would need a better way to store excess energy. Although nothing like the intermittency problems of wind and solar, nuclear has a related type of problem in that it likes to always be running and producing a steady-ish amount of electricity. Currently this doesn’t matter where nuclear is part of the total energy mix, but if it were the bulk of the energy mix, storage would become a major consideration. There are a whole lot of issues with electricity storage that have been well-explained in the issues with wind and solar, namely finite amount of materials to build batteries, expense, and battery storage capacity.

One potential upside of nuclear energy could be to replace natural gas as the main electricity generator that balances out wind and solar intermittency. But due to the costs of nuclear compared to gas this hasn’t been done. Moreover, gas generation is preferred because it is easier to switch off and on. 

Nuclear is entirely dependent on fossil fuels

A nuclear power plant could not even be built without fossil fuels:

  • Coal to make the steel
  • Diesel to mine the uranium
  • Diesel to mine the sand for concrete
  • Diesel to mine the copper to make the electric components
  • Gas to make the plastics for componentry and systems
  • Gas to make the food to feed the workers
  • I could go on and make this a very long list, but hopefully you get the point.

Because building a nuclear power plant is impossible without fossil fuels, that also means we will not build new nuclear power plants after the end of oil. Just like wind turbines and solar panels cannot make more of themselves, neither can a nuclear reactor.  

Nuclear is not zero emissions

Obviously to build a nuclear power plant you are going to need a lot of diesel-powered plant and equipment. There is also concrete to factor in, which is a massive emissions source, accounting for approximately 8% of total global emissions.

With all those fossil fuels going into making a nuclear power plant, it should be obvious that nuclear is not and will never be net “zero emissions”. The focus on operating or tailpipe emissions is pointless when you’re still making an overall net positive addition to emissions. And arguably the world already has more than enough electricity, so building nuclear is possibly a complete waste of emissions.

Inputs to nuclear power plants are also reaching peak

As the capital costs suggest, nuclear energy plants are massive construction projects. They require vast raw materials – all of which have their own supply limitations. It is not just oil that is reaching peak, but many other raw inputs from copper to even boring old sand. Yes, peak sand is a thing. If you look at a picture of a nuclear plant, you’ll see a lot of concrete. That is sand! Concrete also requires other raw materials including calcium, silicon, iron, and aluminium. Is there even enough sand left in the world to build enough nuclear power plants to meet our energy needs? And the concrete needs will still be there for a hypothetical fusion plant, or any such other “innovative” nuclear power generation.

The story is the same for any other rare (or getting rare) earth element. There’s approximately 17 years left of zinc, 21 for silver, 35 for nickel and 64 for cobalt. Even if these numbers are wrong, it still shows that physical limits are approaching. This provides a real limit to the number of nuclear plants that it is even feasible to build. Moreover, if our system is going to rely on more electrified plant and equipment, these minerals will run out much sooner.

Uranium is finite

It’s kind of ironic that some people see nuclear as a solution to peak oil when the actual feed for nuclear is also reaching peak. How much proven uranium reserves are out there is hotly debated. Really, I don’t care because if there’s 10 years left or 100 years, it’s the same result – our industrial system runs out of power. Apparently, proven uranium reserves would last 90 years at the current rate of use (Murphy., 2021 he has lots of references).

What we can know for certain is that uranium will peak at some point and then reach a diminishing point of return where it is no longer economically viable to get it out of the ground. Bear in mind, most (some?) of the value in mining it is for weapons – with electricity just being the side gig!

Uranium is often in hard-to-get areas (including Russia, now embargoed). We can’t mine the uranium out of the ground once we run out of diesel, which would put the end of uranium to 40 years, not 90. The only hopium here is to hope they’ll invent some amazing electricity-powered mining plant and equipment, but then we are back to the peak mineral problem. For now, we are stuck with diesel and the associated carbon emissions.

Environmental considerations

Making nuclear power plants degrades the environment. This includes:

  • Mining all the materials required.
  • Burning all the diesel, gas, and coal in the manufacturing and construction phases.
  • Building all the roads and parking required for the plant.
  • And polluting the environment for hundreds of thousands of years with radioactive material that causes birth defects, genetic degradation, cancer, and death.

Michael Dowd regularly asks us to contend with the question of radioactive waste. What right do we present day humans have to pollute the world for thousands of years, just so we can run another dishwasher? It is highly likely that some, if not most, nuclear reactors will meltdown, because they will not have been safely decommissioned due to peak oil production. What an inheritance for our descendants, if we have any left!

What do we do with the waste?

Nuclear waste is incredibly dangerous to human health and the environment. Waste can also be utilised by terrorists (or bad state actors) to create a dirty bomb. So based on these problems, we need to be very careful where and how we store the waste. Not surprisingly, this is another thing humans seem determined to f-up. For starters, a lot is stored at or near sea level – great for getting water to keep it cool – not so great when you get a sea-based disaster. Sea water corrodes infrastructure at a faster rate, increasing the likelihood of failure of the waste containment. Plus, what happens with rising sea levels from climate change?

When digging more into this topic, you’ll see humans are running out of places to put this waste and the costs of waste-storage projects are increasing. This makes it less likely that a company will be 100% focussed on quality for a capex project that generates no returns.

Alice Friedemann has argued that burying nuclear waste should be a top priority, as after peak oil production, oil will be rationed to agriculture and other essential services. Spent fuel from nuclear lasts a very long time. According to Archer (2008): “… there are components of nuclear material that have a long lifetime, such as the isotopes plutonium 239 (24,000 year half-life), thorium 230 (80,000 years), and iodine 129 (15.7 million years). Ideally, these substances must be stored and isolated from reaching ground water until they decay, but the lifetimes are so immense that it is hard to believe or to prove that this can be done”.

Once the containment for nuclear waste starts to degrade, the waste can leak into ground water, contaminating drinking water and getting into the food system. Where waste gets into the ocean, the currents can travel it all over the globe. This is happening in our lifetime, forget about a thousand years from now.

Are nuclear plants really safe?

Taken at face value statistically, nuclear plants are very safe. But I think this is a sneaky statistic because this is old data from when nuclear plants were young and well-resourced. We really don’t know how the safety stats will hold up as the plants age out. Once they are over 40 years old, the risk of disaster is much higher. This risk is heightened by very old systems and componentry and the specialised nuclear workforce retiring and not being replaced.

Many nuclear plants are built close to the sea, exposing them to natural risks including sea level rise, tsunamis, typhons / hurricanes, and erosion. Near misses are surprisingly common, often a result of human error and the just mentioned old systems. There is evidence that significant near misses are underreported officially, leading to misconceptions about the safety risks posed.  

There have been two major nuclear power plant disasters that I’m sure you are familiar with. The first is the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl where a design flaw, triggered ironically by a safety test, led to a reactor meltdown. The second was the 2011 Fukushima disaster, where an earthquake-triggered tsunami damaged the emergency diesel generators, leading to a loss of electric power. By the way, look there’s another essential use of fossil fuels in operating nuclear plants!

Here are two minor anecdotes to show you the environmental outcomes. Following the Chernobyl disaster, a farm in Scotland had all their new-born lambs born without eyes and they had to be culled. As a result of Fukushima, across the Pacific, there is plenty of scientific evidence of radioactive contamination in fish and shellfish – tasty!

When we look at total confirmed human deaths from these nuclear incidents, we are looking at around 100 people. Total deaths from COVID-19 thus far is around 6.6 million. So how can we say nuclear is unsafe? Well, what the official incident deaths don’t tell us is how many people are dying from cancers years after a nuclear incident. Moreover, there’s little incentive for a government to try and track each death that could be attributable to a nuclear disaster – that will only make them look bad. Considering nuclear waste is toxic for 100,000s of years, we can’t even account for the untold future suffering of humans and non-humans.

Maybe the initial risks of nuclear have been overstated, but what would happen if most or all of them failed? For example, a risk that you barely ever hear mentioned is if multiple reactors were hit by an EMP or solar flare? If the grid is wrecked, so are the nuclear reactors. Maybe that might never happen, but it does seem likely that most plants won’t be properly decommissioned (due to peak oil), which will see most of them melting down over this century.

Terrorism

Nuclear plants are a target for terrorism and potentially could be used to inflict massive damage to people and the environment. From Alice Friedemann: Plutonium waste needs to be kept away from future terrorists and dictators for the next 30,000 years. But world-wide there’s 490 metric tons of separated plutonium at military and civilian sites, enough to make more than 60,000 nuclear weapons. Plutonium and highly enriched uranium are located at over 100 civilian reactor plants. In addition, there’s 1,400 tons of highly enriched uranium world-wide.  A crude nuclear bomb can be made from as little as 40 to 60 kilograms of U-235, or roughly 28,000 nuclear bombs.

Decommissioning is fraught with challenges

Decommissioning is essential as once plants age out, they become too radioactive and are likely to decay. You would then get a full or partial meltdown. Like everything else to do with nuclear, decommissioning too is a very expensive and lengthy process, often exceeding budgets. Decommissioning also requires experienced nuclear engineers who are retiring. Younger engineers no longer see nuclear as a viable career path, so the next generation of skilled nuclear workers is not there. As the nuclear plants reach the end of their design life, it will get harder and more expensive to safely decommission them. And when has a large corporate ever been good at cleaning up after itself?! Moreover, us poor taxpayers will be increasingly impoverished by peak oil economic destruction, leaving governments with less funds to pick up after the energy companies.

We might ask, where is the proof that decommissioning is happening currently and where are the government budgets put aside for decommissioning? Countries like France and the USA are also delaying decommissioning plants at the moment, possibly worried about electricity shortages and unwilling to take another source offline.

As citizens, why should we support the building of new nuclear plants when there’s barely any proof that the current ones are being safely dealt with at their end of their life?

Financial problems

Investors are not keen on nuclear power projects. They have a habit of blowing out budgets and timelines and failing to return investment (a big clue that they are negative EROEI). There’s also a bit of a wait of 7 to 10+ years for project completion before you can even hope to start seeing a financial return. Remember the cost of construction is only ever going to get more expensive now due to peak oil. Oh, and there are uninsurable liabilities!  

Governments often need to invest in electricity infrastructure, and especially for nuclear, to make up this shortfall in private investment. Citizens quite rightly should demand proof that nuclear plants are worth spending energy on. They should demand Governments provide detailed risk management against all the criteria we’ve just discussed. Because nuclear is not popular with the average citizen, democratic governments are increasingly unwilling to invest in nuclear. Moreover, governments are encouraged by their populations to keep electricity prices affordable. Wind and solar are much more popular and tend to get more of the subsidies. They have also damaged the profitability of nuclear with wind and solar going first to sell to market (government policy in parts of Europe).

Replacing fossil fuels with nuclear energy is a pipe dream

In a 2019 Forbes article, Roger Pielke ran a thought experiment on how many nuclear plants the world would need to get to the 2050 net zero goal. “To achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, the world would need to deploy 3 [brand new] nuclear plants worth of carbon-free energy every two days, starting tomorrow and continuing to 2050. At the same time, a nuclear plant’s worth of fossil fuels would need to be decommissioned every day, starting tomorrow and continuing to 2050.”

We can already see that this just isn’t happening, and for the reasons laid out in this article it’s clear this can never happen. It looks like 2022 saw just 53 nuclear reactors under construction world-wide – that’s not finished by the way, just in some stage of construction.

But what about innovation

Honestly each ‘innovation’ to nuclear reactors could be an article all on its own. I have to confess I have a lazy heuristic: I just write off all of these as nonsense and don’t really give them fair consideration. But if I had to provide a high-level critic, this would be it. I have just noted the additional problems with these “innovations” – they still have all the same problems described elsewhere:

  • Fusion – The gold standard of hopium. As the idiom goes, sustained fusion is just 20 years in the future and always will be. 
  • Breeder reactors – Recycling costs more energy than you get back. Also, more expensive than regular reactors, which are already too expensive.
  • New generation – Less safe and more toxic (go ask Alice).
  • Thorium – Perhaps it could have worked but looks like it’s too expensive now. That’s a good hint it would be negative EROEI. Might not be viable in reality.
  • And this goes for lots of things: just because something is feasible in a lab situation or theoretically possible, does not mean it will ever be a viable solution. You can do a lot if you have oodles of energy and billions of dollars to waste. We might ask, is indulging the fantasies of scientists really a good use of our last remaining surplus resources?

Well, that’s bleak, what does the future of electricity look like

Humans already have access to more electricity than we ever imagined 100 years ago. If we had a stable or reducing population (shout out to Rob), then we wouldn’t even need to worry about bringing on new electricity generation.

Categorically all forms of electricity generation have their negative drawbacks. Eventually, all the hydroelectric dams will silt up – this can take hundreds of years – and finally they will all fail. Wind turbines last for 30 years, though in reality production efficiency reduces much earlier. Coastal wind turbines will decay after 10 years due to erosion from salt water. Solar panels will last 30+ years, but the associated systems and batteries to collect and store the electricity fail much sooner and need replacement parts. Nuclear plants last for a design life of 40+ years minimum and then should be decommissioned over the following 20 years. With natural gas shortages due to the Russian Invasion, countries are delaying decommissioning their plants. Most western nuclear is aged out.

Humans could continue to produce electricity by burning coal and natural gas. There are approximately 400 years left of coal and 150 years left of natural gas. But (and it’s a big but), there is only 40 years left of oil (BP Statistical Review). Without oil we don’t have diesel powered equipment, which will make it all but impossible to extract coal and natural gas. Without coal, we can’t make industrial wind turbines, solar panels, or nuclear reactors.

What this means is that by the year 2060, we are looking at a world with much less electricity production and eventually moving to almost zero electricity as the hydro dams fail in the coming centuries – and no we can’t build new ones of scale without diesel. Perhaps some smart individuals can maintain rudimentary electricity where they live, but the days of large electric grids are numbered.

By the way, if you do want to dive into the technical details, I can point you in the direction of plenty of useful references. Just let me know 😊

Two Different Perspectives – Same Conclusion: Modern Lifestyles Will End Soon

Dr. Berndt Warm’s Perspective

Thanks to Marromai for finding this new paper by physicist Dr. Berndt Warm.

Dr. Warm uses 5 different methods, 4 relying on economics, and 1 on thermodynamics, to predict when the end of oil production and motor vehicle production will occur. All 5 methods roughly converge on 2030 as the year when modern lifestyles end.

The essay was written in German and translated to English which explains any awkward phrasing.

Warm’s conclusion agrees with my 15 years of study of many different sources which converge on oil production being down by about 50% in 2030. Because our current system requires growth not to collapse, it is plausible that predicting a 50% decline is the same as predicting a 100% decline.

Our world is of course far too complex to make precise predictions, and unexpected events like a pandemic or nuclear war can dramatically change the outcome, however for planning purposes it seems reasonable to assume we have about 5 years left to prepare for a new way of life.

Abstract

Evaluation of five data sets concerning car production, oil prices converted in energy values gives lifespan approximations for the car industry and the oil industry. The result is that the car industry will last only until 2027 and the oil industry some years more.

Berndt Warm – Calculations on the Lifespan of Vehicle Production and Petroleum Production – 11-Sep-2022Download

Here are a few excerpts from the paper:

The author interprets the line of maxima as the oil price that the industrialized countries can afford to the maximum while maintaining their lifestyle. He interprets the line of minima as the price of oil that the producing countries need to keep their economies running. In mid-2019, the author noticed this crossroads and expected a crisis in 2020, although he was completely unclear what kind of crisis it would be. He didn’t expect Corona.

The inhabitants of the industrialized countries are now realizing that their lifestyle is at risk. The line of the maxima will reach the zero line (0%BOE) around mid-2027. From then on, the inhabitants of the industrialized countries can no longer afford oil without giving up many things of daily life. The demand of the oil producers is then 13-14 %BOE. These two values are incompatible.

Result: The extrapolation of oil prices shows that from 2022 the lifestyle in the industrialized countries will degrade, and that after 2027 the inhabitants of the industrialized countries will hardly be able to pay for oil or its products.

The fall in the price of crude oil from 2008 to 2020 with the extreme price increase since 2021 is an absolute alarm signal! Soon there will be no more crude oil affordable, no matter for which economy in the world!

Summary

Procedures 1, 2 and 4 are extrapolations of economic data of the past. Method 3 is a link between oil prices and car production. Method 5 is a calculation based on a law of physics.

The five calculation methods result in:

  1. End of world motor vehicle production between 2031 and 2034.
  2. End of oil production in 2027.
  3. End of worldwide sales of motor vehicles in 2027.
  4. End of German vehicle production in 2027.
  5. End of oil production in 2029.

The results are not the same, but in the end the same thing comes out. All five procedures show that vehicle production and oil production will continue to collapse in the coming years. Vehicle production will disappear first. Oil production later, as the world’s existing fleet will continue to consume crude oil, even if no new vehicles are added. It is to be expected, that the crude oil production will decrease slowly until 2027, and after that very fast.

And: Oil will be extremely expensive by 2027 at the latest!

Dr. Simon Michaux’s Perspective

For those still hoping that a transition to non-fossil energy will extend our modern lifestyles, I point you to the following recent work of mining engineer Dr. Simon Michaux which shows our planet has insufficient affordable resources to implement an energy transition plan that maintains our current lifestyles.

Simon Michaux – The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth – 2021Download

The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels, is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls. Exploration for more at required volumes will be difficult, with this seminar addressing these issues.

Simon Michaux is an Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland in the Circular Economy Solutions Unit. Holding a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Physics and Geology and a PhD in Mining Engineering from the University of Queensland, Simon has extensive experience in mining research and development, circular economic principles, industrial recycling, and mineral intelligence. Through his recent publications, Simon has outlined the many challenges facing the global industrial ecosystem. He notes our world is currently energy and minerals blind and transitioning to renewable energies is not as straightforward as it appears.

We’ve been growing without care to planetary limits for too long and change is coming, whether we like it or not. We need a completely new energy paradigm to address the challenges ahead, and as Simon says, it all starts with a conversation. We cover a lot of ground in this one, so grab a notebook and strap in for an important conversation – this is one you’ll want to listen to more than once.

On this episode, we meet with Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland, Dr. Simon Michaux. Why do humans ignore important mineral and material limits that will affect human futures? Dr. Michaux reveals how we are “minerals blind” — and the consequences of this myopia. To shed light on the effects of our minerals blindness, Dr. Michaux explores the disconnect between experts in renewable energy and economic and government leaders. Dr. Michaux offers individual strategies for us to overcome our energy and minerals blindness. How can we learn to adapt in order to overcome the coming challenges?

Dr. Simon Michaux is an Associate Professor of Geometallurgy at the Geological Survey of Finland. He has a PhD in mining engineering. Dr. Michaux’s long-term work is on societal transformation toward a circular economy.

BenjaminTheDonkey’s Perspective

BenjaminTheDonkey today nicely captures a common theme I observe everywhere in the world today: We are collectively losing our minds; perhaps because unpleasant realities are overwhelming the denial circuit in our brains?

Alarmist? 


The powers that be won’t admit

We’re heading straight to our obit; 

So it isn’t strange we

Can already see

People are losing their shit. 

 

What is its cause at the root? 

Whom might we persecute?

From an objective view,

It’s logically true 

The reason is just overshoot.

By marromai: A Purpose in Life

Today we have a heartfelt post by marromai from Germany sharing his experience of becoming overshoot aware and how he deals with the knowledge. The essay was written in German and translated to English.

Life is wonderful – sometimes at least. But most of the time it is a very monotonous thing. And the older I get, the more often I wonder about the purpose of it. Every day, every week, every year the same procedure – enjoy the little moments, but for the rest of the time, hope that it passes by as soon as possible. Most days consist of a typical routine like getting up, sitting at work for what feels like an eternity, having a short and stressful time with my family, and then either doing chores or attending social gatherings now and then. Get the house in shape on Saturdays, and on Sundays rest or do something with the family. Rinse and repeat, every day is groundhog’s day.

Although one could think I’m blessed, because I live in the best Germany ever1. I’m married to a wonderful wife – as wonderful as they can get in their late 30s – I have four adorable children whom I love very much but who often get on my last nerve, a house and a garden where there is always plenty of work to do for which I have neither time nor money nor desire, and my dream job as an electrical engineer, which nowadays is unfortunately all too often just another bureaucratic clerk who only sees the soldering iron from afar. So basically, I should be doing very well, you would think. I just sell a bit of my lifetime for money and can enjoy a decent life.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Personally, my biggest problem is this: Working as an employed engineer has lost its magic – it often doesn’t even make sense to me, it just sucks. For the most part, it consists of bureaucratic stuff that doesn’t solve any problems but is just to be done for its own sake. Consequently, I complete tasks at the last minute with minimal effort, which you can’t even call work to rule. Everyday work is dull, lacking real tinkering challenges and practical problems to solve. The “always having to be there” and the resulting disproportionate amount of wasted life time kills any motivation and makes me strongly question the purpose of the whole mumbo jumbo called “gainful employment”. Maybe work makes life sweet – but in this respect I have diabetes… Now and then I think about self-employment and alternative income possibilities, combined with more personal freedom – but the chance to earn enough money to support a family is close to zero. Especially since the difficult economic times that are looming mark a very unfavorable time for this. How nice it would be to have a 4-day half-day job, with full pay, of course. Or even better, if they would just transfer my salary to me, I would know what to do with my time, wouldn’t I?

Since a while it feels like I have no time at all for personal activities. Even on days off I don’t really know what to do with myself. Apart from the tasks on the house and garden, which absolutely have to be done, I often don’t manage to start anything, although I have so many ideas – but rarely the motivation to actually begin. Or too little time, that starting is not worth it – at least that’s what I tell myself. So, I end up just like at work, where I spend most of my time in front of a computer, trying to avoid getting bored while reading in some online forums. As it turned out afterwards, this was the point, where my problems began, resulting in a total destruction of any purpose in life.

You may ask, what is it, what one could read, that is so depressing?

Beside electronic forums (for new ideas, which I will never implement) I read mainly alternative news and discussions about current events. This made me realize a long time ago that official media are nothing but propaganda channels – and I really can’t listen to them anymore. Russia here, Ukraine there. Evil Putin will destroy us all. Corona is so dangerous, be sure to get vaccinated… I can’t understand how the majority of the population can believe this bullshit – but that’s another topic. It will soon matter little anyway, once you understand that all of this are just side effects to a superordinate set of issues I came across while browsing over some threads of my favorite forum.

Most people will dismiss the following problem as absurd and unrealistic. Some will understand it but will not feel affected by it or will not want to admit it. And the tiny remainder? They are left with no one to talk about a matter, for which the great majority will laugh at them as end-time prophets and declare them crazy. It is the realization that our entire civilization could only grow so fast with the help of fossil energy – and that we are running out of this energy source now. Not because we planned it so or think we can replace it to get a grip on the ridiculous CO2 climate change issue. (I think it is rather presumptuous and a huge farce to try to control the temperature of a whole ecosystem and save the planet by reducing a single trace gas in the atmosphere, while not being able to provide a solid weather forecast for more than 2 days.) But the decarbonization that politicians are longing for will happen anyway. Just not in the way they envision. That’s because fossil fuels currently still cover the main demand for energy, and the much-vaunted renewables can’t even replace a fraction of that. Now we have reached the limits of what our planet can provide. What we are currently experiencing with our gas and electricity prices is only the beginning of the coming shortages. The Ukrainian-Russian war, which actually is driven by the USA, is in fact an economic war – and the economy only works with energy. Without energy, all the money in the world is useless: “Our main problem is a caloric one. We can print money like hay, but not a single drop of oil”2. The coming lack of oil will tear everything apart and cost billions of people’s lives by cold and hunger.

How it could come so far is what nobody dares to speak about: There are simply too many people on this planet who have already consumed too much raw materials and energy and always want more. It is only through coal, oil and gas that humanity has been able to multiply so enormously. But without maintaining these energy flows, the population numbers cannot be sustained. There are 10 calories of fossil energy in every calorie of food. But the soils are depleted and no longer yield anything without artificial fertilizers, agriculture is so thoroughly industrialized and complex that it can no longer be run on pure muscle power, certainly not to feed a country as densely populated as Germany. And now, of all times, we are running out of fossil energy?

The promised rescue by renewable energies is just window dressing and cannot free us from this predicament, nor can nuclear power plants. They supply only a fraction of electrical energy, but no raw materials for industry, as can be seen well in the current European gas shortage situation. No fertilizer can be produced from solar cells, and we cannot melt steel with wind energy, not even with 10 times the number of windmills. In addition to oil and gas, many other natural resources are now depleted that are required to build alternative energy sources. Fossil energy has enabled exponential population growth and unprecedented prosperity with ever increasing complexity and interconnectedness. Likewise, future energy shortages will cause an abrupt reduction in complexity – which is called collapse. And no, this will not be in a distant future, we are already in the middle of it. The coming times will be bleak. And it can go much further down very quickly when “winter is coming”, as the current situation in Europe shows.

All in all, a huge complex of topics, in whose importance I have no doubt – but the momentous realizations from it are simply devastating and destroy any further motivation and search for meaning in life – a nihilistic vicious circle of demotivation, effects see above. And the worst thing is, that one suffers all alone from this knowledge. Because the majority of people are not able to even see this unpleasant reality, let alone understand: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”.

So how to continue? One may try to convince as many others as possible of this reality and build a low-tech community. With a group of collapse-aware people, surviving could be much easier, when the crisis fully hits. Unfortunately, in Germany this is very difficult, since most people are totally brainwashed by official media. So, for me, I have decided to just try to enjoy as much free time and remaining prosperity as possible – while it’s still possible. Since I need money for this, I have to work, which is contrary to “Carpe Diem”. So I go to work, but don’t really do work – not perfect, much more like business as usual. What a shame – denying the un-denial… not knowing in the first place would have been much easier.

But as long as the hamster wheel turns and turns, you inevitably have to run with it. You have to learn to control the speed, otherwise you die of exhaustion. For someone who has recognized being in a hamster wheel, one may eventually be inclined to consider a premature exit. But that should not be a solution – especially not if you have a family, which you don’t want to leave in the lurch. Besides, aren’t you too curious to see what happens next? How bad will the crisis get? How long does such a collapse take? And what will life be like in the future? Maybe there will be challenges and problems to solve that you missed so much in your current job, for example finding food every day? Doesn’t this give you an ultimate purpose in life? You’ll probably miss the days spent in the warm office, browsing through internet forums and dreaming up gloomy fantasies about the future…

I leave you with a favorite quote from a relevant episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation:

Seize the time Maribor. Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.

Footnotes:

[1] German Bundespräsident F.W. Steinmeier on German Unity Day 2020: “We live in the best Germany of all times”.
[2] https://archiv1.dasgelbeforum.net/index.php?id=193123 (A German forum of critical thinkers)