The DUI appointee at the Pentagon is consistent with RFK jr at HHS, Noem at Homeland Security, and virtually all of the rest. No consideration of competence, only some weird ideological alignment and likely subservience. The really horrifying circumstance is that the Senate has consented. How has partisanship come to such a level that experienced representatives with safe positions could sink so low?
How has partisanship come to such a level that experienced representatives with safe positions could sink so low?
With the party primaries, I’m not sure anyone is safe from challenges. Except maybe in Alaska, where they’ve gotten rid of party primaries, and now Murkowski is openly challenging Trump.
Nick
No, I’m thinking that every Republican Senator, save McConnell, voted to confirm RFK jr for example.
This buffoon is so extraordinarily unqualified for any position of responsibility anywhere on the planet that no rational person could have voted for him.
Yet they did. Why?
Many, if not most, of the other Trump appointees are unqualified for their positions yet sailed through the partisan Senate.
If you want to undermine institutions of democracy and national security Donald is doing it right. Only problem is his incompetence and lack of vision for anything but his psychopathic emotional needs. I figure he’s building a foundation for a real fascist to build on. When real hard times come and a clear majority of the country is willing to toss the Constitution out the window. We’re only half way there.
Hegseth? Excellent men’s hair products model. And he can do pushups. When Donald’s press secretary said Pete is doing great and all of the Pentagon is against him she perfectly expressed Donald’s gas lighting nonsense. If he has actually stopped drinking he must be climbing the walls.
Trump selects people on what he sees ( TV, Magazines, in person events ) not on academic study or research ( requires reading ) or actual qualifications for the job beyond very surface level connection.
You have to be physically attractive, constantly compliment him and a YES man. The other route is to be a billionaire.
He recently picked Dr. OZ for some high ranking medical position, a day time TV personality who is a con artist.
Andr
RFK jr is not physically attractive but he makes up for it by being stark raving nuts and a danger to the nation. That works for Trump as a distraction from his real agenda; plunder.
Trump thinks TV is the world, but also just blabs what he heard ten minutes ago regardless of source. He met Zelenskyi in Rome today and came out saying Putin is just stringing him along. Then a little later he started babbling about free transit for America ships through the Panama Canal, meaning he called Putin and Putin successfully distracted him from real world issues.
Putin has his number, no need to contradict, just distract.
WP linked an article late last thread- that deserves reposting
On China and Industrial/Economic Policy-
I am a fan of long term planning. Its one of the big things I find very faulty with the US approach.
Yeah, China has been lucky to have relatively good leadership for the last 40 years. Mao demonstrated the perils of autocracy, with his catastrophic Great Leap Forward and Return to the Land programs, but lately they’ve done much better.
There’s a strong contrast with India: India’s per capita income was twice as high in 1980, they were about equal in 1991, and now China’s economy is 5x as large as India’s.
Similarly, China is moving away from FF as quickly as they can, while India is moving much more slowly – it’s just terrible in the face of India’s good, cheap clean solar resource and relatively scarce (high imports of coal and oil), expensive and polluting FF resources.
There is probably a lot more to it than being lucky.
I’m no expert but “China is largely meritocratic. The system isn’t perfect (what system is?) but it generally does produce capable, intelligent leaders with a …”
I doubt someone like Trump would have gotten past the village level of leadership in China, and then lasted for only a short time before being returned to the used car lot sales position.
This is an aspiration, not a guarantee. China is lucky that they’ve sustained a strong meritocratic element lately, but the Chinese Communist Party has a membership that is .1% of the population, and it is a top-down hierarchy which is at least as vulnerable to a conversion to pure autocracy as any democracy (e.g., Russia which is technically a democracy, but is actually totalitarian). Don’t forget Mao…
They’ve been lucky. Under Xi things are deteriorating a bit – let us hope their luck continues.
The China we all know was built on western capital. Eurodollars to be precise. Without those dollars flowing into China. China would still look much like they did during the 1970’s and 80’s.
There would be no world’s manufacturing base in China without the Eurodollar inflows. You could say that Chinese leadership capitalized on the opportunity. Cheap labor with a home grown energy supply. From a bank point of view there was nothing but $$$ signs.
Labor is currently cheaper in Mexico. Only we have to export natural gas to Mexico in order to have manufacturing there. Labor is currently cheaper in a lot of places. But you have to build manufacturing facilities. Which takes time and money. Lots and lots of borrowed money. And really you need a long term energy supply in place which a lot of places don’t have.
Over the next 20-25 years manufacturing in China was always going away anyway. Because that’s how much coal they have left at current rates of consumption.
So if you still want the manufacturing of goods it will have to be done elsewhere.
Without the inflow of Eurodollars China would have a whole lot more coal still left in the ground than they currently do.
Now, use the oil decline curve that Dennis projected in his last post. Over the next 20-25 years or so. The decline of oil production globally will pretty much equal what is available for exports currently.
Dennis could be off a little bit. Might only be 15years or maybe 30 years. Doesn’t matter. Somewhere in that timeframe oil exports are going to zero.
In a no coal and no oil imports world exactly what does China look like?
Yeah they can’t even replace all the solar panels and windmills at that point.
So goes China so goes the rest of the world. The impacts of default in China will hit the Western economies hard who depend on their cheap goods and debt. All the pretty curves get thrown out the window if oil goes to 40 and drill pipe doubles. Export decline is higher than well decline and accelerates.
Time is definitely not on our side. Capacity utilization is falling which will create insolvency globally. The risk of a deflationary spiral has never been higher because pouring more debt on the system will break it. When you run out of levers to pull what do you do?
Panic and run for the exit.
Yeah, The decline profile that Dennis has put forward is best case scenario. Regardless of if his timeline is correct or a little off.
I think we both know that the debt required to even make the best case scenario into reality won’t happen. It won’t be issued because it can’t be paid back.
We both know there is an abrupt ending coming. Because of the way money is loaned into existence and how energy is required to pay it back principal plus interest.
That associated gas coming from the Permian basin isn’t going to be a long term energy supply. If you’re investing in manufacturing in Mexico you better have an early exit strategy.
This move lower in the dollar is much like the move we seen in late 2008 early 2009. Maybe for slightly different reasons but the reason actually doesn’t matter.
We have the selling of US assets by foreign investors. Mainly US stocks. Which they receive US dollars for. And I should add that it’s foreign government entities doing the selling. Private foreign entities are still buying.
Then they are selling the dollars they receive and buying their local currencies. Mainly USD/JPY, USD/CHF and EUR/USD is where the dollar weakness is.
So they are selling dollars buying back their own currencies. By doing so they just took a massive amount of dollars out of the market that are no longer available to service dollar denominated debt. Notice they aren’t paying down dollar denominated debts with the dollars they are receiving. At least not yet.
The dollar shortage is going to be exacerbated by this move.
2008 was in fact a massive dollar shortage in the Eurodollar market. Which actually started in France when a few banks were unable to properly price the collateral they had on their books.
I’ve heard 2008 can never happen again because the Fed and other central bank are on it and all over it and have the tools necessary to stop it.
Which is bs because none of the central banks can create the dollar liquidity that the world uses for trade and finance.
There are a lot of dollars stashed away in Swiss bank accounts. Switzerland’s banking sector is multiples of the size of their actual economy. They take the excess dollars that come into their banking system and buy assets to back these deposits. Because they are required too.
So they actually have to sell assets in order to get dollars if people start drawing dollars out of their accounts to meet their dollar denominated debt payments.
So if this is the beginning of a repeat of 2008. As the dollars leave Swiss bank accounts the Swiss franc will get crushed.
Keep an eye on the USD/CHF pair. The Swiss banks only have so many dollar denominated assets to sell.
And as always there is more to it. There are a lot of Euro’s deposited at Swiss bank accounts. Now if a dollar shortage shows up in Europe and Europe has already sold a lot of dollar denominated assets what do they have to do in order to get dollars?
They have to sell Euro’s and there is also a large stash of Euros on the balance sheets of Swiss banks that will get tapped in a dollar shortage on par of bigger than 2008.
There is no such thing as safe havens. You’ll sell whatever you have in order to meet debt obligations.
I agree we already see the Swiss Central Bank approaching zero interest rates and threatening negative.
I really think that the system has been gamed for awhile already and now there is little that can be done. In the fall of 2019 the global economy was tipping into recession. Conveniently COVID came along and saved the day. All the stimulus was still running through last year but obviously couldn’t keep running. So we bought 3-4 years with a mountain of debt that would have been unacceptable had there not been a pandemic as an excuse. But even after all that and as it continued in 2023 things started breaking and have been getting worse throughout 2024 globally. The 3trillion a year and unfettered immigration papered over the US recession but it was unsustainable.
Now we’re facing a housing, and stock market bubble simultaneously. The dollar shortage is a result of the real economy of goods and services contracting reducing loan creation. This was caused by the 2018 peak in oil production. The inflation the Fed is fighting clearly isn’t inflation because it suggests there are too many dollars when in fact there are too few. So we’re actually facing supply scarcity/affordability because the energy costs are spiking. Because the economy can’t grow the manufacturing and service sectors are trying to compensate for critical mass loss with price increases. This accelerates the decline.
Illegal immigration has ended, student loan forgiveness has ended, FHA mortgage modifications are ending. Unnecessary employment is ending at federal agencies. All of this is deflationary less dollars being created and spent.
Already we are seeing a decline in air travel, Chipotle tried to raise prices and lost 1.9% top line and 0.4% bottom line. Verizon is losing customers. UK pubs are going out of business and the same is happening in Singapore. China is in deep trouble with manufacturing and real estate.
Everywhere you look the trend is down in the real economy. And accelerating.
“So we’re actually facing supply scarcity/affordability because the energy costs are spiking.”
Sorry, but that doesn’t ring true. I think it likely will be in the future.
Oil at $70 is cheap, and is roughly average for the past 50 years. Nat Gas and Coal are bargains.
PV achieved a (low) pricing revolution as of 2017.
If you were referring to new nuclear power, yes it is very expensive to build.
We probably do agree that is most ways the US, along with the rest of the world, is grossly overextended.
I think a lot people don’t understand banking in general. Most people think their money is warehoused at a bank when they deposit money into their account.
No the bank takes your money and buys dollar denominated assets to back your deposit. The bank buys short term government T-bills with your deposit. Which are very liquid and can be sold in order to get cash when needed. Banks are earning 4% on your deposits currently.
People don’t realize their deposits are funding government spending. People view banks as money warehouses because they can write a check or use a debit card at any time and access their money.
When you spend money your bank deposits become someone else’s bank deposit. And the banks continue buying short term debt to back the deposit. It’s just someone else’s deposit instead of yours now. And the banks are still making 4% on the deposits.
All the deposits are created by the banks in the first place when they loan money into existence. Money or deposits are literally destroyed through the process of repaying a loan. The liabilities side of a bank balance sheet shrinks as loans are repaid.
When you repay a loan principal plus interest. The principal portion of the loan is destroyed. But because of the interest expense you payback more than was loaned to you in the first place.
This means that you could take all the dollars ever loaned into existence and use them to pay off the principal. Then there would be zero dollars, zero deposits. But there would still be trillions owed in interest expenses.
The fact that the interest expense is being paid. Means more dollars are leaving the economy than were lent into it to begin with. Loan growth has to be exponential. Or things become very deflationary.
Low and negative interest rates aren’t inflationary. Just a sign we can’t get growth regardless of how low interest rates go.
Most people also includes Ben Bernacke who thinks banks are intermediaries. The system is being run by a bunch of chimps. That’s why it doesn’t matter who’s in the Oval Office.
The reality of the money system is too perverse for most people to contemplate. For the older generation they view it as wealth and a security for their retirement. They don’t comprehend that the next generations need to be wealthier than they are or their store of value disappears.
It also doesn’t matter what form money takes. Imperial Spain learned this lesson despite its hoards of gold it fell into economic collapse. It was the quest for gold that built its economy not the acquisition of gold.
Similarly today the economy must grow but the natural forces behind a debt based currency is deflation. As loans are repaid money is destroyed so new loans must be made that are larger than the previous loans or the system becomes insolvent.
Bottom line is the energy supply is limiting loan creation. There is nothing that can be done about that. Money is being mopped up in speculative assets globally instead of driving industry for that same reason. Costs are escalating even as people become poorer. Business is seeing its top line shrinking and are cutting costs. Everyone is going to blame Orange Man but as usual they mistake the symptom for the cause.
If you don’t even know the fundamentals of the monetary system how can you possibly identify the the problem? Unfortunately in this case even if you do there is nothing that can be done about it.
What a pile of manure. There is no such thing as air travel/cargo without being part of the mass destruction-
“Fly mindfully. Check out these suggestions, each of which, if multiplied by others, can help subdue climate change: Choose airlines that offer carbon offset programs. Donate to carbon offset organizations yourself. Choose eco-friendly airlines. Sit in economy class. Take nonstop flights to limit layovers.”
The only way to make aviation low-carbon is to use synthetic jet fuel manufactured with carbon captured from the environment, and electrolyzed hydrogen powered by renewable electricity.
It would be more expensive, but it can be done with existing technology and would work just fine. As the engineering advanced and scale increased, costs would decline somewhat.
The aviation industry and the military are pretending that biofuels are scalable, but that’s not realistic. They don’t like the idea of a higher cost structure, but they are just going to have to bite the bullet.
You’re just spreading blatant lies now. Don’t pretend you aren’t.
Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as ‘induced atmospheric vibration’. These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.
Spain has a high percentage of wind and solar that fluctuate often in the opposite direction to demand.
Oops. On re-reading your comment, I realized that you’re suggesting that both wind and solar are inversely correlated to consumption. That’s incorrect. Solar is strongly correlated with consumption. After all, all living activity evolved in response to sunlight.
Now wind is stronger at night, and winter. And, that’s a good thing. Wind and solar are inversely correlated, which reduces their combined “intermittency” sharply.
That’s why analysis of solar (or wind) in isolation is unrealistic. And a sign of very bad analysis.
—————-
Nuclear generation is pretty much flat, which means it also works nicely with solar, which takes care of daytime peak consumption.
In general, a diversity of power is a very good thing.
1. Overshoot
2. The End of Cheap Fossil Fuels
3. The Failure of Green Energy
4. Dwindling Resources
5. Topsoil Erosion
6. Water Shortages
7. Climate Change
8. Biodiversity Loss
9. Migrant Crisis
10. Increasing Conflict
Conclusion
The term “peak oil” “is mentioned 6 times in the 10 reasons. 4 times under “The end of cheap fossil fuels.” Quoted below:
People have been talking about peak oil for decades, but if you’ve never heard of it before, peak oil is the point at which the amount of oil extracted every year peaks then goes into terminal decline. This happens because there is a finite supply of oil on the planet, so as time goes by, oil companies make fewer and fewer new oil discoveries.
Although oil companies like Exxon Mobil continue to find new sources of oil, overall, oil and gas discoveries are at their lowest level in 75 years, leading many people to believe that we have already reached peak oil. And in fact, there are signs that worldwide peak oil production happened in 2018.
And once under “Migrant Crisis” quoted below
Although the surge in climate migrants will lead to civil and regional wars, that is only one of the many reasons major wars will become more common in the coming decades. In fact, most of the reasons listed above (peak oil, dwindling resources, water scarcity, food shortages, biodiversity loss, and climate-related disasters) will all contribute to a steep rise in wars and conflicts.
And once under “Increasing Conflict.” Quoted below
I believe Russia recognizes that the world has passed peak oil and that energy is going to become more scarce. They also understand that droughts and floods (along with fertilizer shortages) are making it harder to produce food.
The first two lines of the “Conclusion.”
For decades, it’s been obvious that our global industrial civilization has an expiration date, but only recently have many scientists come to realize that the expiration date could be during their own lifetimes.
I would like to poll anyone interested, their opinion on the subject. Your reply could be in as little as two words, like: Doomer Porn, or, Bullshit, or Spot on, I agree, or any other comment you might like to make.
Thank you, this is important to me.
Many of those things are real risks for serious problems, but none of them are likely to cause civilization’s collapse.
Humans can sometimes snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and we have many serious challenges, but this article is not realistic about inevitable collapse.
I could go through the problems with each of his points, but I don’t have the time. But let’s take the first: the author claims that the Global Footprint Network tells us that we’re in catastrophic overshoot. This is false. In fact, the analysis tells us that we need to kick the FF habit. Which, of course, brings us to points 2 and 3, which are also deeply unrealistic: there isn’t any use for FF that can’t be replaced, mostly with substitutes which are cheaper, cleaner and more reliable.
Nick, thanks for the reply. Your reasons are about what I expect from at least half those who respond.
I disagree with your answer but I do not wish to debate anyone right now.
Yeah, we’ve discussed these things often. But, what the heck, you wanted feedback.
A general thought: there are a lot of reasons to participate in discussions like these, but one of mine is I hate to see smart people distracted by incorrect information. It distracts people from the real problems.
The real problems are many but not hopeless – hopelessness is a weapon used by those people who are contributing to our problems, and who want people to give up.
This diagram shows that multiple global crises—like fossil fuel depletion, climate change, air pollution, and geopolitical conflicts—overlap and amplify each other, creating compound, systemic risks.
In essence:
Each problem isn’t isolated; their intersections (e.g., fossil fuel depletion + climate change → resource wars) create new, bigger challenges.
Compounding effects mean solving one issue (e.g., air pollution) might not matter much if the intersecting crises (e.g., climate refugees, political instability) continue unchecked.
Public narratives (like focusing only on air pollution) can obscure deeper systemic threats (like existential risks to global civilization).
In short:👉 Intersectionality multiplies complexity and makes single-issue solutions ineffective.
Paul,
I agree multiple problems interact, sometimes unpredictably.
But…fossil fuels are central to most of these problems. They cause resource wars. They create killer smog. They create climate change, which in turn creates refugees.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but your Venn diagram seems like a very good illustration of the problems caused by FF, and the enormous value of transition away from FF to solve most of them.
That’s called intersectionality and what the Venn diagram shows.
?????
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how groups’ and individuals’ social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these intersecting and overlapping factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class,
sexuality, religion, disability, physical appearance, and age.[1] These factors can lead to both empowerment and oppression.[2][3]
Intersectionality opposes analytical systems that treat each axis of oppression in isolation. In this framework, for instance, discrimination against black women cannot be explained as a simple combination of misogyny and racism, but as something more complicated.
Very much agree with Paul’s analysis, but have additions.
All the points mentioned are part and parcel of why we collapse. However the author, like most others misses the role of complexity and growth as a function of continuing complexity’s importance in every aspect of the modern world.
Our modern civilization is just like every other civilization that has ever existed and collapsed, only orders of magnitude larger.
Civilization itself is a self adapting system, a physical entity that has behaved like every other self adapting system we know of, that grows, increases complexity, reaches climax and collapses. The larger the system the faster the collapse. It’s a physical system based upon movement of energy within the system.
Every self adapting complex system that grows, does so until it reaches maturity, or it runs into some type of energy constraint or habitat constraint before maturity and collapses prematurely.
Even those that reach maturity eventually fail due to entropy and dissipation, more inexorable processes of our physical reality. Our continuing complexity is the only reason we are able to access the energy, minerals, metals food and water we do gain access to after depleting all the high grade resources.
The complexity only came from both human ingenuity and market size that allowed for every speciality that exists. Take away growth or size of markets and our ability to gain access to resources plumets.
Using the history of growth and collapse of civilizations or empires from pre-industrial times is extremely misleading. Look at Tainter’s “The Collapse of Complex Societies”. The subtitle is “New Studies in Archeology”. This tells you that this is not the study of modern societies.
A perspective on analyses of the collapse of civilizations: pre-modern civilizations were primarily agricultural, and had very, very low growth rates. So, agricultural productivity was key, and empires with high growth rates were essentially Ponzi schemes: when the underlying economic growth rate is .01% per year, an empire can only grow temporarily by stealing. The core of the empire exploits (loots) the periphery. The periphery expands until the empire becomes too large, and then it collapses due to the lack of new victims. Agricultural products include food and wood, and a common symptom of collapse is Peak Wood, as observed for both Athens and Rome.
Any analysis of the growth and decline of pre-modern civilizations has very, very limited application to modern times.
Modern empires are different. Japan, the UK, even Russia are all far more affluent now than they ever were during the heyday of their empires.
So…comparisons of ag empires to modern conditions are not very useful.
These problems are not inherently insurmountable, but the fact that none – or few – of them (“migrant crisis”) is the main topic of discourse makes me think we are really, most sincerely, undeniably and reliably fucked.
Having cancer and being motivated by it is one thing. Trying to pretend it isn’t happening is quite another.
Mike
EDIT: I just realized a friend sent me that article a while back.
(PS I have an article coming out in a couple of weeks called “A Tree-Hugger’s Parable” that many of you, I think, will appreciate. It’s about emerald ash borer, and population “exuberance,” and Malthus, and fossil fuels and a few other things.)
Lack of growth. The debt required to keep everything going can’t be serviced much less repaid. Not in world with a contracting energy supply. Doesn’t matter if solar and wind are a thing.
There will be no growing or inflating our way out from under the debt. Governments everywhere are in denial. With every round of fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus we go deeper into debt, not only public debt but private debt as well. Then we are left without the growth needed to repay the debt.
Collapse will begin as a monetary collapse. A collapse in the actual monetary system. Which will lead to a sovereign debt crisis and currency crisis around the globe.
You have to have a functioning monetary system in order to have an economy that is able to produce oil, coal, natural gas, solar and wind.
And the actual monetary system is the commercial banks that create all the loans via collateralized lending.
contracting energy supply. Doesn’t matter if solar and wind are a thing.
That’s unrealistic. Solar and wind really do produce energy. Their energy is just as…ahem…energetic…as Fossil Fuel.
And wind and solar are cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable. They are far more scalable and faster and easier to install: they can easily replace FF just as fast as it depletes.
The author tries to offer a solid definition of ‘collapse’, but doesn’t quite lock it down. Let’s go with the two offered definitions though….
Collapse 1 = ‘By collapse, I mean a breakdown of social institutions like governments and economies, followed by a dramatic decline in the human population.’
Collapse 2 = ‘A collapse is the process at the end of which basic needs (water, food, housing, clothing, energy, etc.) can no longer be provided [at a reasonable cost] to a majority of the population by services under legal supervision.’
More importantly, the author completely glosses over what ‘soon’ means. Will civilization collapse tomorrow? No. Next year? Unlikely. 100 years? Perhaps. 200 years? Looking that way.
I agree with Paul. This is a systems issue, not a group of single issues that can be solved independently. As such, the benchmark has to be the LTG study. The business-as-usual baseline in that work predicts collapse this century along the lines of the above definition 1 dramatic reduction in population. LTG still looking robust 50 years on now.
Some comments point by point on the single issues anyway
1. Overshoot – Yes, the work by Rees and Wackernagel on ecological footprint is compelling. This is a real predicament.
2. FF limits – Uhm, I’m posting on peakoilbarrel…. Yes? Sarcasm aside, absolutely. The contributions to carrying capacity from Haber-Bosch process fertilizer is tough to overstate.
3. Failure of Green Energy – I’m not convinced. EROI remains pretty strong and is growing. Materials are a challenge. Likely not adequate for current and growing global population forever, but likely able to support a reduced number in closer to modern conditions for maybe 100 years. Long term of 1,000 years is an entirely different story.
4. Dwindling resources – There is absolutely some merit here with the broad concept. Ore grades are declining for example, no dispute. However, I always become wary of a source that spouts misleading information as this one does regarding desert sand use as a construction material. Fine aggregate (sand) is one of the constituent parts of concrete. Desert sand can be used as fine aggregate for many normal infrastructure purposes. Fine and coarse aggregate shape, grain size distribution and strength can become more important for some higher strength applications. This author makes it seems like the sand apocalypse.
5. Topsoil erosion – Not as concerned about this one. Absolutely concern, but in localized areas. Definitely not a concern everywhere across the globe.
6. Water shortages – Somewhat similar to topsoil, but more concerning. Significant concern for a substantial share of the globe, but there also remain plenty of places with what is a reasonably stable hydrologic cycle and adequate rainfall.
7. Climate change – We’re screwed, just with a built in time delay. Our Faustian bargain for all of that energy dense FF is coming due. On track for 3C by 2100 with locked in consequences that are only growing.
8. Biodiversity loss – I don’t have the expertise here for a full judgment, but this one scares the heck out of me.
9. Migrant Crisis – Yes. See climate change, FF resource limits, water shortage, … The author cites Syria as an example of migration induced in part due to climate change driven drought. Author misses the chance to add peak oil to this with a link to the dramatic reduction in oil production in 2010. Prior to 2010, the government is commonly cited as getting 25% of its revenue from oil production. Production collapsed in 2010. An example of systems issues.
10. Increasing conflict – Certainly some scary risks here, but from a broader historical context I’ve seen many argue the world has less armed conflict than much of history.
. As such, the benchmark has to be the LTG study. The business-as-usual baseline in that work predicts collapse this century along the lines of the above definition 1 dramatic reduction in population. LTG still looking robust 50 years on now.
Does human civilization face an inevitable collapse due to geological limits on fossil fuels, or other limited resources? Are we powerless? Or is our fate in our hands, and does it depend on our behavior and management of our economy?
The Club of Rome Limits to Growth study is sometimes presented as evidence for an inevitable collapse. But…it’s not. It’s simply an analysis of what it might look like if we DID hit resource limits.
It’s a very, very simple model. It has one variable called non-renewable resources, which in a recent revision is explicitly modeled on fossil fuels. There is no provision for wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, geothermal, etc, despite the fact that these resources are much, much larger than fossil fuels. The only renewable resource is a relatively small one, agriculture: “Non-renewable resources, measured in resource units Meadows et al. (1972), include all non-renewable resources on Earth… In order to provide suitable and accurate data, fossil fuel consumption is chosen. Although this proxy does not include metal resources, it is the most appropriate and available data. “ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13442
“Can anything be learned from such a highly aggregated model? Can its output be considered meaningful? In terms of exact redictions, the output is not meaningful.…The data we have to work with are certainly not sufficient for such forecasts, even if it were our purpose to make them” (Meadows et al. 1972, p. 94).” http://wtf.tw/ref/costanza.pdf
Meadows was right – the Club of Rome LTG models were not predictions, they weren’t forecasts: they were *scenarios* that assumed imminent limits to growth, and simply modeled the dynamics we’d see in the model outputs when the economy hits those limits. Basically, they modeled “overshoot” – what happens when there are lags, delays and positive feedback between the point of hitting limits and seeing the results in the economy.
Most of all, they *assumed* limits to growth were very close – they didn’t prove that those limits *were* close.
Sadly, Dennis Meadows has forgotten this basic fact, or chooses to not remember it, and lately has been talking as if those scenarios were in fact forecasts, and discussing how close they came to reality. In fact, the overshoot modeled in those scenarios has not been seen in any way – so far the world economy is pretty much simply growing in the same exponential way as before.
The Club of Rome models did do us a service, by showing us what overshoot might look like, and showing us the impact of lags and delays. This appears to be relevant to Climate Change, though probably not relevant to Peak Fossil Fuels – for Fossil Fuel, the lags, delays and positive feedbacks that might impair mitigating the impact of a peak are much smaller and shorter.
These are all things I’ve been seeing for a while, have to agree with it all. Several if not all these days aren’t “Problems” that have a solution but are “Predicaments”. Just going to have to deal with them, as unpleasant as they may be.
One thing mentioned there was something that I’ve been pointing out to people for at least a decade, the bugs on the windshield. in the 70’s I ALWAYS had to clean them off my windshield every time I filled my tank. Now I NEVER have to.
All big problems.
But if the definition of collapse is ” the process at the end of which basic needs (water, food, housing, clothing, energy, etc.) can no longer be provided [at a reasonable cost] to a majority of the population by services under legal supervision” I think there is a lot of wiggle room between rich countries current expectations around basic needs and the actual basic needs which still allow “civilisation” to flourish.
“They are far more scalable and faster and easier to install: they can easily replace FF just as fast as it depletes.”
I see that quote quite often.
Are there any instances though of solar panels, batteries and wind turbines being produced without energy provided by FF?
Until that actually happens, are we not pissing into the wind? . . . and what about the resins used in the manufacture of blades? where will that be sourced from?
So many questions that tend to be ignored.
The cheapest and most efficient KW of energy is the the one that is never generated . . . we need to get by and thrive with less.
“Putting an alcoholic Fox News bingo caller in charge of the Pentagon seemed like a great idea on paper, but:”
any thoughts comrades?
The DUI appointee at the Pentagon is consistent with RFK jr at HHS, Noem at Homeland Security, and virtually all of the rest. No consideration of competence, only some weird ideological alignment and likely subservience. The really horrifying circumstance is that the Senate has consented. How has partisanship come to such a level that experienced representatives with safe positions could sink so low?
How has partisanship come to such a level that experienced representatives with safe positions could sink so low?
With the party primaries, I’m not sure anyone is safe from challenges. Except maybe in Alaska, where they’ve gotten rid of party primaries, and now Murkowski is openly challenging Trump.
Were you thinking of anyone in particular?
Nick
No, I’m thinking that every Republican Senator, save McConnell, voted to confirm RFK jr for example.
This buffoon is so extraordinarily unqualified for any position of responsibility anywhere on the planet that no rational person could have voted for him.
Yet they did. Why?
Many, if not most, of the other Trump appointees are unqualified for their positions yet sailed through the partisan Senate.
If you want to undermine institutions of democracy and national security Donald is doing it right. Only problem is his incompetence and lack of vision for anything but his psychopathic emotional needs. I figure he’s building a foundation for a real fascist to build on. When real hard times come and a clear majority of the country is willing to toss the Constitution out the window. We’re only half way there.
Hegseth? Excellent men’s hair products model. And he can do pushups. When Donald’s press secretary said Pete is doing great and all of the Pentagon is against him she perfectly expressed Donald’s gas lighting nonsense. If he has actually stopped drinking he must be climbing the walls.
Seriously it’s effing tragic.
Trump selects people on what he sees ( TV, Magazines, in person events ) not on academic study or research ( requires reading ) or actual qualifications for the job beyond very surface level connection.
You have to be physically attractive, constantly compliment him and a YES man. The other route is to be a billionaire.
He recently picked Dr. OZ for some high ranking medical position, a day time TV personality who is a con artist.
Andr
RFK jr is not physically attractive but he makes up for it by being stark raving nuts and a danger to the nation. That works for Trump as a distraction from his real agenda; plunder.
Sorry, I forgot related to the Kennedys.
Trump is a completely superficial person who only cares about himself (A narcissist by definition)
At mid – 70s, he would throw all his kids under a bus if someone would make a statue of of him outside the Smithsonian Museum.
Trump thinks TV is the world, but also just blabs what he heard ten minutes ago regardless of source. He met Zelenskyi in Rome today and came out saying Putin is just stringing him along. Then a little later he started babbling about free transit for America ships through the Panama Canal, meaning he called Putin and Putin successfully distracted him from real world issues.
Putin has his number, no need to contradict, just distract.
WP linked an article late last thread- that deserves reposting
On China and Industrial/Economic Policy-
I am a fan of long term planning. Its one of the big things I find very faulty with the US approach.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/04/beyond-tariffs-what-the-us-can-learn-from-chinas-industrial.html
Yeah, China has been lucky to have relatively good leadership for the last 40 years. Mao demonstrated the perils of autocracy, with his catastrophic Great Leap Forward and Return to the Land programs, but lately they’ve done much better.
There’s a strong contrast with India: India’s per capita income was twice as high in 1980, they were about equal in 1991, and now China’s economy is 5x as large as India’s.
Similarly, China is moving away from FF as quickly as they can, while India is moving much more slowly – it’s just terrible in the face of India’s good, cheap clean solar resource and relatively scarce (high imports of coal and oil), expensive and polluting FF resources.
There is probably a lot more to it than being lucky.
I’m no expert but “China is largely meritocratic. The system isn’t perfect (what system is?) but it generally does produce capable, intelligent leaders with a …”
I doubt someone like Trump would have gotten past the village level of leadership in China, and then lasted for only a short time before being returned to the used car lot sales position.
China is largely meritocratic
This is an aspiration, not a guarantee. China is lucky that they’ve sustained a strong meritocratic element lately, but the Chinese Communist Party has a membership that is .1% of the population, and it is a top-down hierarchy which is at least as vulnerable to a conversion to pure autocracy as any democracy (e.g., Russia which is technically a democracy, but is actually totalitarian). Don’t forget Mao…
They’ve been lucky. Under Xi things are deteriorating a bit – let us hope their luck continues.
The China we all know was built on western capital. Eurodollars to be precise. Without those dollars flowing into China. China would still look much like they did during the 1970’s and 80’s.
There would be no world’s manufacturing base in China without the Eurodollar inflows. You could say that Chinese leadership capitalized on the opportunity. Cheap labor with a home grown energy supply. From a bank point of view there was nothing but $$$ signs.
Labor is currently cheaper in Mexico. Only we have to export natural gas to Mexico in order to have manufacturing there. Labor is currently cheaper in a lot of places. But you have to build manufacturing facilities. Which takes time and money. Lots and lots of borrowed money. And really you need a long term energy supply in place which a lot of places don’t have.
Over the next 20-25 years manufacturing in China was always going away anyway. Because that’s how much coal they have left at current rates of consumption.
So if you still want the manufacturing of goods it will have to be done elsewhere.
Without the inflow of Eurodollars China would have a whole lot more coal still left in the ground than they currently do.
Now, use the oil decline curve that Dennis projected in his last post. Over the next 20-25 years or so. The decline of oil production globally will pretty much equal what is available for exports currently.
Dennis could be off a little bit. Might only be 15years or maybe 30 years. Doesn’t matter. Somewhere in that timeframe oil exports are going to zero.
In a no coal and no oil imports world exactly what does China look like?
Yeah they can’t even replace all the solar panels and windmills at that point.
“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
― Vladimir Ilich Lenin
So goes China so goes the rest of the world. The impacts of default in China will hit the Western economies hard who depend on their cheap goods and debt. All the pretty curves get thrown out the window if oil goes to 40 and drill pipe doubles. Export decline is higher than well decline and accelerates.
Time is definitely not on our side. Capacity utilization is falling which will create insolvency globally. The risk of a deflationary spiral has never been higher because pouring more debt on the system will break it. When you run out of levers to pull what do you do?
Panic and run for the exit.
Yeah, The decline profile that Dennis has put forward is best case scenario. Regardless of if his timeline is correct or a little off.
I think we both know that the debt required to even make the best case scenario into reality won’t happen. It won’t be issued because it can’t be paid back.
We both know there is an abrupt ending coming. Because of the way money is loaned into existence and how energy is required to pay it back principal plus interest.
That associated gas coming from the Permian basin isn’t going to be a long term energy supply. If you’re investing in manufacturing in Mexico you better have an early exit strategy.
HHH
Everyone is driving looking in the rear view. Sharp right turn ahead.
This move lower in the dollar is much like the move we seen in late 2008 early 2009. Maybe for slightly different reasons but the reason actually doesn’t matter.
We have the selling of US assets by foreign investors. Mainly US stocks. Which they receive US dollars for. And I should add that it’s foreign government entities doing the selling. Private foreign entities are still buying.
Then they are selling the dollars they receive and buying their local currencies. Mainly USD/JPY, USD/CHF and EUR/USD is where the dollar weakness is.
So they are selling dollars buying back their own currencies. By doing so they just took a massive amount of dollars out of the market that are no longer available to service dollar denominated debt. Notice they aren’t paying down dollar denominated debts with the dollars they are receiving. At least not yet.
The dollar shortage is going to be exacerbated by this move.
2008 was in fact a massive dollar shortage in the Eurodollar market. Which actually started in France when a few banks were unable to properly price the collateral they had on their books.
I’ve heard 2008 can never happen again because the Fed and other central bank are on it and all over it and have the tools necessary to stop it.
Which is bs because none of the central banks can create the dollar liquidity that the world uses for trade and finance.
There are a lot of dollars stashed away in Swiss bank accounts. Switzerland’s banking sector is multiples of the size of their actual economy. They take the excess dollars that come into their banking system and buy assets to back these deposits. Because they are required too.
So they actually have to sell assets in order to get dollars if people start drawing dollars out of their accounts to meet their dollar denominated debt payments.
So if this is the beginning of a repeat of 2008. As the dollars leave Swiss bank accounts the Swiss franc will get crushed.
Keep an eye on the USD/CHF pair. The Swiss banks only have so many dollar denominated assets to sell.
And as always there is more to it. There are a lot of Euro’s deposited at Swiss bank accounts. Now if a dollar shortage shows up in Europe and Europe has already sold a lot of dollar denominated assets what do they have to do in order to get dollars?
They have to sell Euro’s and there is also a large stash of Euros on the balance sheets of Swiss banks that will get tapped in a dollar shortage on par of bigger than 2008.
There is no such thing as safe havens. You’ll sell whatever you have in order to meet debt obligations.
1521
Magellan killed in Philippines
I agree we already see the Swiss Central Bank approaching zero interest rates and threatening negative.
I really think that the system has been gamed for awhile already and now there is little that can be done. In the fall of 2019 the global economy was tipping into recession. Conveniently COVID came along and saved the day. All the stimulus was still running through last year but obviously couldn’t keep running. So we bought 3-4 years with a mountain of debt that would have been unacceptable had there not been a pandemic as an excuse. But even after all that and as it continued in 2023 things started breaking and have been getting worse throughout 2024 globally. The 3trillion a year and unfettered immigration papered over the US recession but it was unsustainable.
Now we’re facing a housing, and stock market bubble simultaneously. The dollar shortage is a result of the real economy of goods and services contracting reducing loan creation. This was caused by the 2018 peak in oil production. The inflation the Fed is fighting clearly isn’t inflation because it suggests there are too many dollars when in fact there are too few. So we’re actually facing supply scarcity/affordability because the energy costs are spiking. Because the economy can’t grow the manufacturing and service sectors are trying to compensate for critical mass loss with price increases. This accelerates the decline.
Illegal immigration has ended, student loan forgiveness has ended, FHA mortgage modifications are ending. Unnecessary employment is ending at federal agencies. All of this is deflationary less dollars being created and spent.
Already we are seeing a decline in air travel, Chipotle tried to raise prices and lost 1.9% top line and 0.4% bottom line. Verizon is losing customers. UK pubs are going out of business and the same is happening in Singapore. China is in deep trouble with manufacturing and real estate.
Everywhere you look the trend is down in the real economy. And accelerating.
“So we’re actually facing supply scarcity/affordability because the energy costs are spiking.”
Sorry, but that doesn’t ring true. I think it likely will be in the future.
Oil at $70 is cheap, and is roughly average for the past 50 years. Nat Gas and Coal are bargains.
PV achieved a (low) pricing revolution as of 2017.
If you were referring to new nuclear power, yes it is very expensive to build.
We probably do agree that is most ways the US, along with the rest of the world, is grossly overextended.
Jt,
I think a lot people don’t understand banking in general. Most people think their money is warehoused at a bank when they deposit money into their account.
No the bank takes your money and buys dollar denominated assets to back your deposit. The bank buys short term government T-bills with your deposit. Which are very liquid and can be sold in order to get cash when needed. Banks are earning 4% on your deposits currently.
People don’t realize their deposits are funding government spending. People view banks as money warehouses because they can write a check or use a debit card at any time and access their money.
When you spend money your bank deposits become someone else’s bank deposit. And the banks continue buying short term debt to back the deposit. It’s just someone else’s deposit instead of yours now. And the banks are still making 4% on the deposits.
All the deposits are created by the banks in the first place when they loan money into existence. Money or deposits are literally destroyed through the process of repaying a loan. The liabilities side of a bank balance sheet shrinks as loans are repaid.
When you repay a loan principal plus interest. The principal portion of the loan is destroyed. But because of the interest expense you payback more than was loaned to you in the first place.
This means that you could take all the dollars ever loaned into existence and use them to pay off the principal. Then there would be zero dollars, zero deposits. But there would still be trillions owed in interest expenses.
The fact that the interest expense is being paid. Means more dollars are leaving the economy than were lent into it to begin with. Loan growth has to be exponential. Or things become very deflationary.
Low and negative interest rates aren’t inflationary. Just a sign we can’t get growth regardless of how low interest rates go.
Most people also includes Ben Bernacke who thinks banks are intermediaries. The system is being run by a bunch of chimps. That’s why it doesn’t matter who’s in the Oval Office.
The reality of the money system is too perverse for most people to contemplate. For the older generation they view it as wealth and a security for their retirement. They don’t comprehend that the next generations need to be wealthier than they are or their store of value disappears.
It also doesn’t matter what form money takes. Imperial Spain learned this lesson despite its hoards of gold it fell into economic collapse. It was the quest for gold that built its economy not the acquisition of gold.
Similarly today the economy must grow but the natural forces behind a debt based currency is deflation. As loans are repaid money is destroyed so new loans must be made that are larger than the previous loans or the system becomes insolvent.
Bottom line is the energy supply is limiting loan creation. There is nothing that can be done about that. Money is being mopped up in speculative assets globally instead of driving industry for that same reason. Costs are escalating even as people become poorer. Business is seeing its top line shrinking and are cutting costs. Everyone is going to blame Orange Man but as usual they mistake the symptom for the cause.
If you don’t even know the fundamentals of the monetary system how can you possibly identify the the problem? Unfortunately in this case even if you do there is nothing that can be done about it.
What a pile of manure. There is no such thing as air travel/cargo without being part of the mass destruction-
“Fly mindfully. Check out these suggestions, each of which, if multiplied by others, can help subdue climate change: Choose airlines that offer carbon offset programs. Donate to carbon offset organizations yourself. Choose eco-friendly airlines. Sit in economy class. Take nonstop flights to limit layovers.”
The only way to make aviation low-carbon is to use synthetic jet fuel manufactured with carbon captured from the environment, and electrolyzed hydrogen powered by renewable electricity.
It would be more expensive, but it can be done with existing technology and would work just fine. As the engineering advanced and scale increased, costs would decline somewhat.
The aviation industry and the military are pretending that biofuels are scalable, but that’s not realistic. They don’t like the idea of a higher cost structure, but they are just going to have to bite the bullet.
SPAIN GRID JUST FAILED.
Spain has a high percentage of wind and solar that fluctuate often in the opposite direction to demand
You’re just spreading blatant lies now. Don’t pretend you aren’t.
Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as ‘induced atmospheric vibration’. These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.
Spain has a high percentage of wind and solar that fluctuate often in the opposite direction to demand.
Oops. On re-reading your comment, I realized that you’re suggesting that both wind and solar are inversely correlated to consumption. That’s incorrect. Solar is strongly correlated with consumption. After all, all living activity evolved in response to sunlight.
Now wind is stronger at night, and winter. And, that’s a good thing. Wind and solar are inversely correlated, which reduces their combined “intermittency” sharply.
That’s why analysis of solar (or wind) in isolation is unrealistic. And a sign of very bad analysis.
—————-
Nuclear generation is pretty much flat, which means it also works nicely with solar, which takes care of daytime peak consumption.
In general, a diversity of power is a very good thing.
10 Reasons Our Civilization Will Soon Collapse
10 Reasons Our Civilization Will Soon Collapse
1. Overshoot
2. The End of Cheap Fossil Fuels
3. The Failure of Green Energy
4. Dwindling Resources
5. Topsoil Erosion
6. Water Shortages
7. Climate Change
8. Biodiversity Loss
9. Migrant Crisis
10. Increasing Conflict
Conclusion
The term “peak oil” “is mentioned 6 times in the 10 reasons. 4 times under “The end of cheap fossil fuels.” Quoted below:
People have been talking about peak oil for decades, but if you’ve never heard of it before, peak oil is the point at which the amount of oil extracted every year peaks then goes into terminal decline. This happens because there is a finite supply of oil on the planet, so as time goes by, oil companies make fewer and fewer new oil discoveries.
Although oil companies like Exxon Mobil continue to find new sources of oil, overall, oil and gas discoveries are at their lowest level in 75 years, leading many people to believe that we have already reached peak oil. And in fact, there are signs that worldwide peak oil production happened in 2018.
And once under “Migrant Crisis” quoted below
Although the surge in climate migrants will lead to civil and regional wars, that is only one of the many reasons major wars will become more common in the coming decades. In fact, most of the reasons listed above (peak oil, dwindling resources, water scarcity, food shortages, biodiversity loss, and climate-related disasters) will all contribute to a steep rise in wars and conflicts.
And once under “Increasing Conflict.” Quoted below
I believe Russia recognizes that the world has passed peak oil and that energy is going to become more scarce. They also understand that droughts and floods (along with fertilizer shortages) are making it harder to produce food.
The first two lines of the “Conclusion.”
For decades, it’s been obvious that our global industrial civilization has an expiration date, but only recently have many scientists come to realize that the expiration date could be during their own lifetimes.
I would like to poll anyone interested, their opinion on the subject. Your reply could be in as little as two words, like: Doomer Porn, or, Bullshit, or Spot on, I agree, or any other comment you might like to make.
Thank you, this is important to me.
Click on the blue headline to read the article.
Ron
Not realistic.
Many of those things are real risks for serious problems, but none of them are likely
to cause civilization’s collapse.
Humans can sometimes snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and we have many serious challenges, but this article is not realistic about inevitable collapse.
I could go through the problems with each of his points, but I don’t have the time. But let’s take the first: the author claims that the Global Footprint Network tells us that we’re in catastrophic overshoot. This is false. In fact, the analysis tells us that we need to kick the FF habit. Which, of course, brings us to points 2 and 3, which are also deeply unrealistic: there isn’t any use for FF that can’t be replaced, mostly with substitutes which are cheaper, cleaner and more reliable.
And so on…
Nick, thanks for the reply. Your reasons are about what I expect from at least half those who respond.
I disagree with your answer but I do not wish to debate anyone right now.
Yeah, we’ve discussed these things often. But, what the heck, you wanted feedback.
A general thought: there are a lot of reasons to participate in discussions like these, but one of mine is I hate to see smart people distracted by incorrect information. It distracts people from the real problems.
The real problems are many but not hopeless – hopelessness is a weapon used by those people who are contributing to our problems, and who want people to give up.
And I appreciate your feedback. Thanks.
This diagram shows that multiple global crises—like fossil fuel depletion, climate change, air pollution, and geopolitical conflicts—overlap and amplify each other, creating compound, systemic risks.
In essence:
Each problem isn’t isolated; their intersections (e.g., fossil fuel depletion + climate change → resource wars) create new, bigger challenges.
Compounding effects mean solving one issue (e.g., air pollution) might not matter much if the intersecting crises (e.g., climate refugees, political instability) continue unchecked.
Public narratives (like focusing only on air pollution) can obscure deeper systemic threats (like existential risks to global civilization).
In short:👉 Intersectionality multiplies complexity and makes single-issue solutions ineffective.
Paul,
I agree multiple problems interact, sometimes unpredictably.
But…fossil fuels are central to most of these problems. They cause resource wars. They create killer smog. They create climate change, which in turn creates refugees.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but your Venn diagram seems like a very good illustration of the problems caused by FF, and the enormous value of transition away from FF to solve most of them.
That’s called intersectionality and what the Venn diagram shows.
?????
Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how groups’ and individuals’ social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these intersecting and overlapping factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class,
sexuality, religion, disability, physical appearance, and age.[1] These factors can lead to both empowerment and oppression.[2][3]
Intersectionality opposes analytical systems that treat each axis of oppression in isolation. In this framework, for instance, discrimination against black women cannot be explained as a simple combination of misogyny and racism, but as something more complicated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
Very much agree with Paul’s analysis, but have additions.
All the points mentioned are part and parcel of why we collapse. However the author, like most others misses the role of complexity and growth as a function of continuing complexity’s importance in every aspect of the modern world.
Our modern civilization is just like every other civilization that has ever existed and collapsed, only orders of magnitude larger.
Civilization itself is a self adapting system, a physical entity that has behaved like every other self adapting system we know of, that grows, increases complexity, reaches climax and collapses. The larger the system the faster the collapse. It’s a physical system based upon movement of energy within the system.
Every self adapting complex system that grows, does so until it reaches maturity, or it runs into some type of energy constraint or habitat constraint before maturity and collapses prematurely.
Even those that reach maturity eventually fail due to entropy and dissipation, more inexorable processes of our physical reality. Our continuing complexity is the only reason we are able to access the energy, minerals, metals food and water we do gain access to after depleting all the high grade resources.
The complexity only came from both human ingenuity and market size that allowed for every speciality that exists. Take away growth or size of markets and our ability to gain access to resources plumets.
Sounds like you’ve been reading Tainter.
Using the history of growth and collapse of civilizations or empires from pre-industrial times is extremely misleading. Look at Tainter’s “The Collapse of Complex Societies”. The subtitle is “New Studies in Archeology”. This tells you that this is not the study of modern societies.
A perspective on analyses of the collapse of civilizations: pre-modern civilizations were primarily agricultural, and had very, very low growth rates. So, agricultural productivity was key, and empires with high growth rates were essentially Ponzi schemes: when the underlying economic growth rate is .01% per year, an empire can only grow temporarily by stealing. The core of the empire exploits (loots) the periphery. The periphery expands until the empire becomes too large, and then it collapses due to the lack of new victims. Agricultural products include food and wood, and a common symptom of collapse is Peak Wood, as observed for both Athens and Rome.
Any analysis of the growth and decline of pre-modern civilizations has very, very limited application to modern times.
Modern empires are different. Japan, the UK, even Russia are all far more affluent now than they ever were during the heyday of their empires.
So…comparisons of ag empires to modern conditions are not very useful.
These problems are not inherently insurmountable, but the fact that none – or few – of them (“migrant crisis”) is the main topic of discourse makes me think we are really, most sincerely, undeniably and reliably fucked.
Having cancer and being motivated by it is one thing. Trying to pretend it isn’t happening is quite another.
Mike
EDIT: I just realized a friend sent me that article a while back.
(PS I have an article coming out in a couple of weeks called “A Tree-Hugger’s Parable” that many of you, I think, will appreciate. It’s about emerald ash borer, and population “exuberance,” and Malthus, and fossil fuels and a few other things.)
Lack of growth. The debt required to keep everything going can’t be serviced much less repaid. Not in world with a contracting energy supply. Doesn’t matter if solar and wind are a thing.
There will be no growing or inflating our way out from under the debt. Governments everywhere are in denial. With every round of fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus we go deeper into debt, not only public debt but private debt as well. Then we are left without the growth needed to repay the debt.
Collapse will begin as a monetary collapse. A collapse in the actual monetary system. Which will lead to a sovereign debt crisis and currency crisis around the globe.
You have to have a functioning monetary system in order to have an economy that is able to produce oil, coal, natural gas, solar and wind.
And the actual monetary system is the commercial banks that create all the loans via collateralized lending.
contracting energy supply. Doesn’t matter if solar and wind are a thing.
That’s unrealistic. Solar and wind really do produce energy. Their energy is just as…ahem…energetic…as Fossil Fuel.
And wind and solar are cheaper, cleaner, and more reliable. They are far more scalable and faster and easier to install: they can easily replace FF just as fast as it depletes.
Ron,
The author tries to offer a solid definition of ‘collapse’, but doesn’t quite lock it down. Let’s go with the two offered definitions though….
Collapse 1 = ‘By collapse, I mean a breakdown of social institutions like governments and economies, followed by a dramatic decline in the human population.’
Collapse 2 = ‘A collapse is the process at the end of which basic needs (water, food, housing, clothing, energy, etc.) can no longer be provided [at a reasonable cost] to a majority of the population by services under legal supervision.’
More importantly, the author completely glosses over what ‘soon’ means. Will civilization collapse tomorrow? No. Next year? Unlikely. 100 years? Perhaps. 200 years? Looking that way.
I agree with Paul. This is a systems issue, not a group of single issues that can be solved independently. As such, the benchmark has to be the LTG study. The business-as-usual baseline in that work predicts collapse this century along the lines of the above definition 1 dramatic reduction in population. LTG still looking robust 50 years on now.
Some comments point by point on the single issues anyway
1. Overshoot – Yes, the work by Rees and Wackernagel on ecological footprint is compelling. This is a real predicament.
2. FF limits – Uhm, I’m posting on peakoilbarrel…. Yes? Sarcasm aside, absolutely. The contributions to carrying capacity from Haber-Bosch process fertilizer is tough to overstate.
3. Failure of Green Energy – I’m not convinced. EROI remains pretty strong and is growing. Materials are a challenge. Likely not adequate for current and growing global population forever, but likely able to support a reduced number in closer to modern conditions for maybe 100 years. Long term of 1,000 years is an entirely different story.
4. Dwindling resources – There is absolutely some merit here with the broad concept. Ore grades are declining for example, no dispute. However, I always become wary of a source that spouts misleading information as this one does regarding desert sand use as a construction material. Fine aggregate (sand) is one of the constituent parts of concrete. Desert sand can be used as fine aggregate for many normal infrastructure purposes. Fine and coarse aggregate shape, grain size distribution and strength can become more important for some higher strength applications. This author makes it seems like the sand apocalypse.
5. Topsoil erosion – Not as concerned about this one. Absolutely concern, but in localized areas. Definitely not a concern everywhere across the globe.
6. Water shortages – Somewhat similar to topsoil, but more concerning. Significant concern for a substantial share of the globe, but there also remain plenty of places with what is a reasonably stable hydrologic cycle and adequate rainfall.
7. Climate change – We’re screwed, just with a built in time delay. Our Faustian bargain for all of that energy dense FF is coming due. On track for 3C by 2100 with locked in consequences that are only growing.
8. Biodiversity loss – I don’t have the expertise here for a full judgment, but this one scares the heck out of me.
9. Migrant Crisis – Yes. See climate change, FF resource limits, water shortage, … The author cites Syria as an example of migration induced in part due to climate change driven drought. Author misses the chance to add peak oil to this with a link to the dramatic reduction in oil production in 2010. Prior to 2010, the government is commonly cited as getting 25% of its revenue from oil production. Production collapsed in 2010. An example of systems issues.
10. Increasing conflict – Certainly some scary risks here, but from a broader historical context I’ve seen many argue the world has less armed conflict than much of history.
. As such, the benchmark has to be the LTG study. The business-as-usual baseline in that work predicts collapse this century along the lines of the above definition 1 dramatic reduction in population. LTG still looking robust 50 years on now.
Does human civilization face an inevitable collapse due to geological limits on fossil fuels, or other limited resources? Are we powerless? Or is our fate in our hands, and does it depend on our behavior and management of our economy?
The Club of Rome Limits to Growth study is sometimes presented as evidence for an inevitable collapse. But…it’s not. It’s simply an analysis of what it might look like if we DID hit resource limits.
It’s a very, very simple model. It has one variable called non-renewable resources, which in a recent revision is explicitly modeled on fossil fuels. There is no provision for wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, geothermal, etc, despite the fact that these resources are much, much larger than fossil fuels. The only renewable resource is a relatively small one, agriculture: “Non-renewable resources, measured in resource units Meadows et al. (1972), include all non-renewable resources on Earth… In order to provide suitable and accurate data, fossil fuel consumption is chosen. Although this proxy does not include metal resources, it is the most appropriate and available data. “ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13442
“Can anything be learned from such a highly aggregated model? Can its output be considered meaningful? In terms of exact redictions, the output is not meaningful.…The data we have to work with are certainly not sufficient for such forecasts, even if it were our purpose to make them” (Meadows et al. 1972, p. 94).” http://wtf.tw/ref/costanza.pdf
Meadows was right – the Club of Rome LTG models were not predictions, they weren’t forecasts: they were *scenarios* that assumed imminent limits to growth, and simply modeled the dynamics we’d see in the model outputs when the economy hits those limits. Basically, they modeled “overshoot” – what happens when there are lags, delays and positive feedback between the point of hitting limits and seeing the results in the economy.
Most of all, they *assumed* limits to growth were very close – they didn’t prove that those limits *were* close.
Sadly, Dennis Meadows has forgotten this basic fact, or chooses to not remember it, and lately has been talking as if those scenarios were in fact forecasts, and discussing how close they came to reality. In fact, the overshoot modeled in those scenarios has not been seen in any way – so far the world economy is pretty much simply growing in the same exponential way as before.
The Club of Rome models did do us a service, by showing us what overshoot might look like, and showing us the impact of lags and delays. This appears to be relevant to Climate Change, though probably not relevant to Peak Fossil Fuels – for Fossil Fuel, the lags, delays and positive feedbacks that might impair mitigating the impact of a peak are much smaller and shorter.
Ron,
These are all things I’ve been seeing for a while, have to agree with it all. Several if not all these days aren’t “Problems” that have a solution but are “Predicaments”. Just going to have to deal with them, as unpleasant as they may be.
One thing mentioned there was something that I’ve been pointing out to people for at least a decade, the bugs on the windshield. in the 70’s I ALWAYS had to clean them off my windshield every time I filled my tank. Now I NEVER have to.
All big problems.
But if the definition of collapse is ” the process at the end of which basic needs (water, food, housing, clothing, energy, etc.) can no longer be provided [at a reasonable cost] to a majority of the population by services under legal supervision” I think there is a lot of wiggle room between rich countries current expectations around basic needs and the actual basic needs which still allow “civilisation” to flourish.
“They are far more scalable and faster and easier to install: they can easily replace FF just as fast as it depletes.”
I see that quote quite often.
Are there any instances though of solar panels, batteries and wind turbines being produced without energy provided by FF?
Until that actually happens, are we not pissing into the wind? . . . and what about the resins used in the manufacture of blades? where will that be sourced from?
So many questions that tend to be ignored.
The cheapest and most efficient KW of energy is the the one that is never generated . . . we need to get by and thrive with less.