Gail Tverberg has a new post up that basically says anything else is better than globalization, as we are now in a zero sum game brought on by a resource problem/predicament (depending on where you live).
I myself am conflicted, as I have two children. I want them to have a safe future. Not much I can do beyond having them aware that the world is changing, and to have multiple skills.
What would a sustainable human civilization look like?
I’ve asked this question before.
Sure you could go into lots of technical details as to how we would all live in eco homes with organic gardens and fission powered electrified transportation, but none of that matters. You neighbor will eventually come up with the idea to start exploiting a resource and grow exponentially. Once that neighbor is economically or militarily an equal, it is game over. You can’t stop them. The larger group with more resources wins. That’s the game humans have been playing since the beginning of time. You grow, or you loose.
The really sad point now is that we’ve probably set the planet on a climate course that will wipe out most life on the planet. We here might even get to watch it happen, and die with it.
What will I do in the end, just try to hold out as long as I can while protecting my family.
Here’s a link I would like to share. He’s a professor in climate science and posts often. I’ve learned a lot about what’s going on with our climate. We don’t know for sure what will happen, but at this point there are just too many paths that lead to human extinction for comfort.
https://www.youtube.com/user/PaulHBeckwith
“In unrelated news, a record number of client scientists report frequent symptoms of depression”
-Travis
Chris,
You keep hitting them out of the ball park. To me, this piece was channeling Donella Meadows and Dr. Albet Bartlett, but with more fire, probably because the consequences are happening now, instead of being predicted in the near future.
Do you remember President Carter attempting to sell the ideas in “Limits to Growth.” He lost his bid for a second term to Ronald Ragan (Zap), who removed the solar panels Carter had installed on the Whitehouse.
Hey Les, I think it was Ronald “when you’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all” Raygun (zap!). I think it was Grace Slick at Woodstock. Volunteers of America…Jeez, is it too late to take the Blue pill?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KigBEoBxhmE
There I was thinking you’d “borrowed” it! Nice one …?
It just so happened that I watched a lecture on geologic time by Tad Patzek today. There are many, many people out there that get it and Tad Patzek puts our predicament into perspective better than most.
https://youtu.be/TnrfqXGUrig
The question and answer session towards the end is worth listening to too.
I get it man. I’ve been sharing this idea with anyone who will listen for the past 5 years (ever since that red equal sign movement spread like wildfire and accomplished exactly nothing). I sent it to Facebook, the Obama administration, the Sanders campaign. I’ve pitched it to private equity firms and high net worth investors. If you private message me with your email address I’ll send you my materials.
…But you’re right. I didn’t go out and execute this myself for a few reasons:
1.) My wife thinks I’m a grandiose doomer, and I have to keep my views and initiatives largely to myself in order to protect my marriage.
2.) I have a high paying job, and a family that relies on it. I can throw money at the idea (to a point) but I can’t go all in.
To summarize, I am a selfishly responsible coward.
I do have an organization that I’ve convinced to use the marketing strategy to raise money (it will be implemented soon), but it’s not for climate change or campaign finance reform. I’m hoping its success will be a proof statement for others to pick up and run with it.
Until then I will keep using the only tools I have available to try and spur some bored jobless millennial into action.
About a World that I once knew… I’m not sure what emotion I feel when, after ten years, I see a steady “progression” from Chris not only telling us, but also showing us, how pathetic and dangerous our real world has become. The message, like the problem, grows exponentially dark. Perhaps, like Chris, I feel a complex collection of impulses - survival, human empathy, and passion just short of anger to both tell and demand the truth. Mostly, I think of my children and try to calculate some balanced formula of truth without panic. It’s difficult. Sometimes I find myself talking to the rest of the living world instead - my dog, my garden, even the insects. Like some bizzare confession . It seems “crazy“ but sometimes I think they look at us and use the same description
Sandman, thank you for this link to a wonderful video presentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=5WPB2u8EzL8
The talk points out many things. Two things stick out that need to be combined in an optimistic path forward during the collapse as follows:
At 26:41 into this lecture: The EROI of solar electric (the one energy source which is growing exponentially!) is basically good, but becomes bad because “we need to store the solar energy”
At 38:58 he explains that solar electric is no solution because "not available when ‘needed’
At 1:01:45 he explains “as the collapse unfolds, we can enjoy a new freedom, to be resilient, to adapt, and have agency to reorganize the elements of our world”
The alleged failure of solar electric to provide an energy path forward becomes a non issue for those willing to “reorganize” daily life to drastically increase the EROI of solar electric. I write from personal experience and am not hypothesizing or conjecturing:
- 1/3 of household energy is for water heating: water acts as a battery and can be heated by excess solar electric during noon and used at night (I do this now and made circuits to do this cheaply)
- much of the remainder is used for cooking, which can be done during sunlight hours a. this requires behavior change (crockpot usage, fry meat in the afternoon instead of at night etc) I made circuits that allow boiling of water etc during cloudy and rainy conditions via efficient use of large numbers of solar panels, for example. Clothes washers and dish washers can be turned on during sunlight and can automatically pause when clouds arrive overhead, and can accommodate a non-steady energy input via use of more panels or pausing operation in extreme cases
- air conditioners can be run almost directly from solar panels when sun shining and automatically turn off when clouds form/rain falls, without energy storage or expensive equipment such as inverters. I do this now using existing (commercially sold for normal use), cheap heap pumps. I had to make my own circuits to do this.
My point is that EROI of an exponentially increasing energy supply (solar electric) goes up 5-10 via our own behavioral changes. The videocast alludes to the fact that a future of peak prosperity can exist for those who make behavioral changes. The denigrators of our exponentially increasing energy source refuse to see that the low EROI which they tout as evidence of failure are directly affected (5-10 fold) by such behavioral changes.
CM loves to throw dirt on solar electric by constantly quoting the same nuclear power industry pundit written EROI studies that count concrete pouring, security guards, bankers fees, land siting fees, batteries, R&D costs, government negotiation lawyer costs and other fillers as reasons why solar electric takes too much energy. In fact, individual initiative and behavioral changes (see above) provides 5-10 times higher EROI for this exponentially growing energy source.
I expect that CM will attack me again for pointing out the possibilities of solar electric and going against his mantra of solar electric = poor EROI.
Let the mud slinging begin.
I’ll throw Steppenwolf’s “Monster” in the contest as possibly the most prescient song of the era. The lyrics haven’t lost any of their relevance,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-7uwshsfFI
You do it, I’m busy.
My point is that EROI of an exponentially increasing energy supply (solar electric) goes up 5-10 via our own behavioral changes. The videocast alludes to the fact that a future of peak prosperity can exist for those who make behavioral changes. The denigrators of our exponentially increasing energy source refuse to see that the low EROI which they tout as evidence of failure are directly affected (5-10 fold) by such behavioral changes. CM loves to throw dirt on solar electric by constantly quoting the same nuclear power industry pundit written EROI studies that count concrete pouring, security guards, bankers fees, land siting fees, batteries, R&D costs, government negotiation lawyer costs and other fillers as reasons why solar electric takes too much energy. In fact, individual initiative and behavioral changes (see above) provides 5-10 times higher EROI for this exponentially growing energy source. I expect that CM will attack me again for pointing out the possibilities of solar electric and going against his mantra of solar electric = poor EROI. Let the mud slinging begin. Mots,You've re-framed CM's observational 'critiques' of the viability of low EROI solar electric as a strawman argument. By your own admission in this post, your multiplier on EROI of 5-10 is predicated on behavioral changes on the margin as a function of adaption to due to either enlightened prescience or presumably necessity in the emerging collapse. To my knowledge Chris has always been a proponent of individual initiative, behavioral change,and use of small scale solar, particularly thermal solar. Discussions or critiques on the viability of solar as a substitute energy source to run industrial society and replace liquid fuel transport, power the grid etc rightly calculates embedded energy costs, scalability issues etc. That is an important and critical critique as 'greening' BAU industrial society is the context that the discussion of moving away from carbon based economy is 'understood' by well intentioned but scientifically illiterate proponents of clean energy and the less well intentioned and still scientifically illiterate policy makers. mm
We will collapse.
I LOVE the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. In the book he talks about Takers and Leavers. We are all Takers. This thread seems to be asking if we can turn ourselves back into Leavers. The book itself explains that when a Taker culture intersects with a Leaver culture, only one of two things can happen. The Leavers are turned into Takers, or the Leavers are destroyed. That’s it. They cannot co-exist.
What are the odds we could convince all the countries of the world to live sustainably? Zero. The odds are zero. I can’t even convince my family members.
This is my favorite answer to the Fermi Paradox. We have not encountered alien life because it is the nature of all life (even intelligent life) to burn through your natural resources, overshoot and dieoff.
I would submit for that the most powerful force on the Earth is in fact the Human mind coupled with free volition.
What’s going on derives from the same original sin - pride - “we can solve any problem” and pursuit of mammon instead of truth.
Even thought we may act so, we are not locusts. Man’s lust and greed got us into this and only a change of this heart is going to get us out.
I recommend the book “A guide for the Perplexed” by E F Schumacher.
I would submit that the most powerful force on the Earth is in fact the Human mind coupled with human free volition.
What’s going on derives from the same original sin - pride - “we can solve any problem” and pursuit of mammon instead of truth.
Even though we may act so, we are not locusts. Man’s lust and greed got us into this and only a change of this heart is going to get us out.
I recommend the book “A guide for the Perplexed” by E F Schumacher.
You’re quite right Chris, and coincidentally I have just published a blog post along similar lines, exploring the themes of economics-as-a-religion and the inability of journalists to understand simple arithmetic. You can find it here:
https://postpeakmedicine.wordpress.com/2019/05/22/reaching-out-to-the-high-priests/
https://postpeakmedicine.com
Chris, excellent post about not being able to sustain the unsustainable and that some sort of collapse is baked in already. Did you mean a complete collapse leading to (likely) human extinction?
My modest crystal ball says that after after a serious reduction (famine, wars, etc) of the human population 60-70 years from now, say to about 1B people or so, many will turn to gene editing to speed evolution in order to survive, if not thrive.
Hence, do you think the period of Homo Evolutis is nearly upon us? Where our (grand)children will be able to precision engineer their offspring - our (great)grandchildren - into an altered species, one with capabilities to thrive in a climate chaotic, post peak energy world. Comments/thoughts?