As I live in the "substandard" part of the declining West - i.e. Europe - I see it a little differently. France (the place in which I now live) has plenty of resources since it is a largely agricultural, mixed economy. In addition, more people grow more of their food and can buy more food locally than in the US or even the UK. I don't know about Germany and other countries, but our visits to Spain, Portugal and Italy indicate they will do better than other western European countries. I also suspect the eastern Europeans will do better because of their closer relations to the land. The greater natural resources of the US is indeed a powerful argument for it lasting longer than other overdeveloped countries, but I feel that is more than overcome by the sheer stupidity and greed of the ruling elite. So I see Europe lasting longer than the US in recession, depression and collapse. I put the UK in the same category as the US because of their overpopulation and rapid decline.
12 years ago you summed up the U.S. perfectly: "However, for the last 150 years we have been using cheap oil energy to replace culture in daily life. Instead of solving problems with cultural behaviors we just throw more cheap oil energy at whatever comes up. "
France has an Urban population of over 80% (according to World Bank). I'm not sure they will fare any better than the rest of us Europeans (UK for me) if/when things go sour. There'll be a lot of angry people . Also, farming in France, whilst sometimes quite idyllic, is still overwhelmingly run by fossil fuels, and any monocrop will be as likely to fail in France as anywhere else. Indeed, I suspect that the biggest factor effecting France will be changing climate. If any of the more serious tipping points hit in the coming decades, then parts of France may become extremely difficult to grow food in (as it will everywhere). If it's just an economic collapse, then perhaps the French attitude to food will see it fare slightly better. They do seem far more attached to, and knowledgeable about, where their food comes from in my experience.
This post is one of the most clear, concise, and direct statements I've seen of industrial society's predicament. No wasted words, no digressions, just common sense for those willing to understand. And the data links are revealing and powerful, as are the other items cited. Thank you, and bravo.
The elephant in the room is over-population. There are too many people for a limited supply of resources, especially since much of these resources are wasted being spent on war, consumer spending on non-essential products and waste by the .1%- yachts, survival bunkers and vanity trips into space. How do we reduce over-population in time to meet the end of natural resources? I don't think that we can, but we can mitigate the problem by making sure that resources are not squandered and that wealth is distributed equitably. I don't see that happening either. So buckle up, it's going to be a rough ride.
Modernity is unsustainable, so if there were some way of reducing population voluntarily, modernity would still come to an end. Overpopulation will fix itself in a natural way just as all instances of overpopulation of a species has done in the past.
"delivering results with minimal material and energy footprints"
This should indeed be our goal, but it is incompatible with modern urbanism and therefore out of reach for anyone living in a modern city. As Walter Haugen pointed out in his comment, the future belongs to those who live close to the land, which is the ultimate source of all necessities. And the way to "minimize material and energy footprints" is to work, or gather from, the land without using machines.
The coming bottleneck with strike down everyone living in a modern city, which means the bulk of the populations of both Titans. Fortunately, there are still plenty of people who live close to the land and who are still living without machines. Most of these people are in the Global South. These "poor farmers" will be the titans of the post-collapse future. Those of us typing comments on internet blogs would be wise to emulate them (or at least prepare to live as they do by going back to the land).
I think the low birth rates in China, Japan, etc are likely viewed as acceptable, even beneficial, by government planners...Both are massive food importers, and that is going to come to a screeching halt sometime in the '30s as fertile cropland and clean water supplies diminish...
As to a war with China, which is 6,000 miles from the US, it would be an unmitigated disaster...It's completely impossible to supply such a war from the US, and no one else is going to join in....The US Navy is way past its sell-by date in this era of hypersonic missiles and drones...
I frequently talk to friends who worked at Rand Corp, and their own private opinion is that the US could do with a smaller population...IMO, and their's, having grown up in the '50s and '60s, it was a much better country back then....,
"[A] lot of immiserated young man (sic)" is an ironic slip up there, given that demographics show a steep decline in birth rates in many countries. @ahnafibnqais over at DOOM-central wonders (correctly, imo) where nations are going to get the manpower to fight these wars of the future.
As to your last question about what our leadership has in mind for us, just look around at the situation right now. "Business as usual." Leadership won't get us out of this mess, but I wholeheartedly agree that we need to focus on local needs at a lower tech level. My family and I are quietly working along those lines now, because we see what our future is really going to be like and we are preparing for it as best we can.
Edit - changed "birth rates everywhere" to "birth rates in many countries".
Really well thought out. Like this shit is so obvious when you stop to actually think about the implications of climate change and current world events.
"When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won't be any left. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn't the TV news is it? Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.”
"When we once stand aside from the slings and arrows of outrageous narrative, it quickly becomes clear that the fundamentals in our economic and broader predicament are comparatively few in number.
The first is that growth in global material economic prosperity has been decelerating relentlessly towards contraction, a process that we are utterly powerless to prevent.
Equally, there is, at the collective level, an absolute refusal to accept this reality, or to prepare to manage its consequences in practical and constructive ways.
Economic inflexion has become something ‘almost everywhere experienced, but almost nowhere admitted’.
Instead, we have been invited to swallow ideas that even Lewis Carroll’s White Queen – who prided herself on her ability to believe “at least six impossible things before breakfast” – would have found wholly indigestible.
Chief amongst these notions are the beliefs that we can spend our way to prosperity, borrow our way to solvency, and innovate our way past material limitations demarcated by the planet’s resources and the laws of physics."
From your last paragraph, I get the impression that you think there is some way to retain modernity ad infinitum, even though it may be a lower level of modernity. If that impression is wrong, I'm not sure what you're saying in your last paragraph. If my impression is right, perhaps you could enlarge on the low-tech localised communities that you think could be a way out of our predicament?
Reading your conclusion, it seems that you think the Western countries could just do the independent choice to revert to a low-tech civilization.
But if indeed, the Chinese will see their extractive model on the verge of collapse sooner or later, what make you think they will just let them be ? There is a good chance they will only see whatever is left in the West as ressources they can use (if someone else won't come first). And even if there is no fossil-fuels or minerals left, there will be a lot of metal and material to be picked around. Beside, if it goes to that, history shown food and human muscle can be transported over the oceans in large quantities even with pre-industrial technologies.
So what would prevent the West to find itself in the same situation China was during the XIXth century ?
We keep framing AI in strictly economic terms: faster, cheaper, more efficient. But from a heliogenetic lens, that framing reveals our poverty of imagination. AI is being optimized to serve our economy—not life.
But what if AI wasn’t built on extractive logic at all? What if it was rooted in photonic systems, bioinformatics, neuromorphic architectures—technologies that mimic and harmonize with living systems, not just simulate intelligence to sell ads?
AI doesn’t have to accelerate collapse. It could become a steward, a translator, a signal amplifier for life itself—but only if we redesign the foundation it’s built on.
This is a piercing diagnosis of our moment, but from a heliogenetic lens, the framing remains trapped in the same gravitational field it critiques. The idea of a "clash of titans"—between the West’s dissolving liberalism and the East’s ascendant authoritarianism—still assumes that power must be concentrated, directional, and imposed. That civilization must always be led by systems of control, scaled through extractive technologies, and justified by some grand narrative of destiny.
But what if the real turning point isn't about which titan wins, but whether we stop believing titans are necessary at all?
From a heliogenetic perspective, both models are expressions of a dying paradigm: one that sees the Earth as a resource, the human as a productivity unit, and the future as something to dominate. Whether it’s Silicon Valley’s technocratic optimism or Beijing’s centralized coordination, both march forward on the same underlying logic—one that externalizes harm, accelerates disconnection, and depletes the living world to sustain abstract systems.
What we need isn’t a better empire.
What we need is a shift in the substrate itself.
A solar-aligned civilization—heliogenetic in nature—wouldn’t scale through conquest but through coherence. It would measure progress not by GDP or territorial control, but by the fertility of the soil, the clarity of water, the resilience of communities. Its technologies wouldn’t be built for acceleration, but for attunement. Its energy wouldn’t be mined from deep within the Earth or extracted from geopolitical entanglements—but received daily from the sky.
The real question isn’t whether America or China will lead.
It’s whether we will continue to build civilizations on the premise of separation—or begin to design from the logic of life.
In the end, there is no titan coming to save us.
There’s just the sun, the ground beneath our feet, and the systems we choose to root in.
China is in a FAR worse situation than the US... not that the US is on a sustainable trajectory:
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/overcapacity-and-price-wars
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/china-no-way-out
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/we-are-on-borrowed-time
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/china-120000000-unfinished-homes
Great stuff as always! BTW, I'm working on my "Net Zero" talking points. Any suggestions welcome: https://depletioncurve.com/net-zero-delusion/
Net zero was always a scam, like cap-and-trade. Some of us never gave it a second glance.
It's not dead near Harvard and MIT ;) https://www.cambridgema.gov/CDD/Projects/Climate/netzerotaskforce
Net zero is the biggest scam ever, most likely....and the perpetrators are well aware of that, but have gotten trillions out of western governments...
And maybe war with Russia too.
As I live in the "substandard" part of the declining West - i.e. Europe - I see it a little differently. France (the place in which I now live) has plenty of resources since it is a largely agricultural, mixed economy. In addition, more people grow more of their food and can buy more food locally than in the US or even the UK. I don't know about Germany and other countries, but our visits to Spain, Portugal and Italy indicate they will do better than other western European countries. I also suspect the eastern Europeans will do better because of their closer relations to the land. The greater natural resources of the US is indeed a powerful argument for it lasting longer than other overdeveloped countries, but I feel that is more than overcome by the sheer stupidity and greed of the ruling elite. So I see Europe lasting longer than the US in recession, depression and collapse. I put the UK in the same category as the US because of their overpopulation and rapid decline.
12 years ago you summed up the U.S. perfectly: "However, for the last 150 years we have been using cheap oil energy to replace culture in daily life. Instead of solving problems with cultural behaviors we just throw more cheap oil energy at whatever comes up. "
France has an Urban population of over 80% (according to World Bank). I'm not sure they will fare any better than the rest of us Europeans (UK for me) if/when things go sour. There'll be a lot of angry people . Also, farming in France, whilst sometimes quite idyllic, is still overwhelmingly run by fossil fuels, and any monocrop will be as likely to fail in France as anywhere else. Indeed, I suspect that the biggest factor effecting France will be changing climate. If any of the more serious tipping points hit in the coming decades, then parts of France may become extremely difficult to grow food in (as it will everywhere). If it's just an economic collapse, then perhaps the French attitude to food will see it fare slightly better. They do seem far more attached to, and knowledgeable about, where their food comes from in my experience.
This post is one of the most clear, concise, and direct statements I've seen of industrial society's predicament. No wasted words, no digressions, just common sense for those willing to understand. And the data links are revealing and powerful, as are the other items cited. Thank you, and bravo.
And comprehensive.
The elephant in the room is over-population. There are too many people for a limited supply of resources, especially since much of these resources are wasted being spent on war, consumer spending on non-essential products and waste by the .1%- yachts, survival bunkers and vanity trips into space. How do we reduce over-population in time to meet the end of natural resources? I don't think that we can, but we can mitigate the problem by making sure that resources are not squandered and that wealth is distributed equitably. I don't see that happening either. So buckle up, it's going to be a rough ride.
Over population will solve itself, and the Earth will be just fine. I expect humans to get along, too, just with a lot fewer of us around.
Modernity is unsustainable, so if there were some way of reducing population voluntarily, modernity would still come to an end. Overpopulation will fix itself in a natural way just as all instances of overpopulation of a species has done in the past.
All things come to an end, ours won’t be pretty.
Yes. Whether I'll be around is debatable but unlikely. I hope not, but it would be nice to see acknowledgement of this simple fact gain some traction.
"delivering results with minimal material and energy footprints"
This should indeed be our goal, but it is incompatible with modern urbanism and therefore out of reach for anyone living in a modern city. As Walter Haugen pointed out in his comment, the future belongs to those who live close to the land, which is the ultimate source of all necessities. And the way to "minimize material and energy footprints" is to work, or gather from, the land without using machines.
The coming bottleneck with strike down everyone living in a modern city, which means the bulk of the populations of both Titans. Fortunately, there are still plenty of people who live close to the land and who are still living without machines. Most of these people are in the Global South. These "poor farmers" will be the titans of the post-collapse future. Those of us typing comments on internet blogs would be wise to emulate them (or at least prepare to live as they do by going back to the land).
Population Ecology 101.
All organisms make more, increase when resources allow, compete when they don't, overshoot if density-dependence regulation is slow, crash.
Great article BTW, they should make it compulsory reading in high school.
We are the 8th grade fruit fly experiment.
I think the low birth rates in China, Japan, etc are likely viewed as acceptable, even beneficial, by government planners...Both are massive food importers, and that is going to come to a screeching halt sometime in the '30s as fertile cropland and clean water supplies diminish...
As to a war with China, which is 6,000 miles from the US, it would be an unmitigated disaster...It's completely impossible to supply such a war from the US, and no one else is going to join in....The US Navy is way past its sell-by date in this era of hypersonic missiles and drones...
I frequently talk to friends who worked at Rand Corp, and their own private opinion is that the US could do with a smaller population...IMO, and their's, having grown up in the '50s and '60s, it was a much better country back then....,
"[A] lot of immiserated young man (sic)" is an ironic slip up there, given that demographics show a steep decline in birth rates in many countries. @ahnafibnqais over at DOOM-central wonders (correctly, imo) where nations are going to get the manpower to fight these wars of the future.
As to your last question about what our leadership has in mind for us, just look around at the situation right now. "Business as usual." Leadership won't get us out of this mess, but I wholeheartedly agree that we need to focus on local needs at a lower tech level. My family and I are quietly working along those lines now, because we see what our future is really going to be like and we are preparing for it as best we can.
Edit - changed "birth rates everywhere" to "birth rates in many countries".
Really well thought out. Like this shit is so obvious when you stop to actually think about the implications of climate change and current world events.
Kurt Vonnegut in 2007:
"When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won't be any left. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn't the TV news is it? Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.”
Wise words from a wise man.
A kindred site:
"When we once stand aside from the slings and arrows of outrageous narrative, it quickly becomes clear that the fundamentals in our economic and broader predicament are comparatively few in number.
The first is that growth in global material economic prosperity has been decelerating relentlessly towards contraction, a process that we are utterly powerless to prevent.
Equally, there is, at the collective level, an absolute refusal to accept this reality, or to prepare to manage its consequences in practical and constructive ways.
Economic inflexion has become something ‘almost everywhere experienced, but almost nowhere admitted’.
Instead, we have been invited to swallow ideas that even Lewis Carroll’s White Queen – who prided herself on her ability to believe “at least six impossible things before breakfast” – would have found wholly indigestible.
Chief amongst these notions are the beliefs that we can spend our way to prosperity, borrow our way to solvency, and innovate our way past material limitations demarcated by the planet’s resources and the laws of physics."
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2025/05/05/302-at-the-end-of-modernity-part-one/
From your last paragraph, I get the impression that you think there is some way to retain modernity ad infinitum, even though it may be a lower level of modernity. If that impression is wrong, I'm not sure what you're saying in your last paragraph. If my impression is right, perhaps you could enlarge on the low-tech localised communities that you think could be a way out of our predicament?
Reading your conclusion, it seems that you think the Western countries could just do the independent choice to revert to a low-tech civilization.
But if indeed, the Chinese will see their extractive model on the verge of collapse sooner or later, what make you think they will just let them be ? There is a good chance they will only see whatever is left in the West as ressources they can use (if someone else won't come first). And even if there is no fossil-fuels or minerals left, there will be a lot of metal and material to be picked around. Beside, if it goes to that, history shown food and human muscle can be transported over the oceans in large quantities even with pre-industrial technologies.
So what would prevent the West to find itself in the same situation China was during the XIXth century ?
We keep framing AI in strictly economic terms: faster, cheaper, more efficient. But from a heliogenetic lens, that framing reveals our poverty of imagination. AI is being optimized to serve our economy—not life.
But what if AI wasn’t built on extractive logic at all? What if it was rooted in photonic systems, bioinformatics, neuromorphic architectures—technologies that mimic and harmonize with living systems, not just simulate intelligence to sell ads?
AI doesn’t have to accelerate collapse. It could become a steward, a translator, a signal amplifier for life itself—but only if we redesign the foundation it’s built on.
The real question isn’t what AI can do for us.
It’s what kind of planet it learns to serve.
This is a piercing diagnosis of our moment, but from a heliogenetic lens, the framing remains trapped in the same gravitational field it critiques. The idea of a "clash of titans"—between the West’s dissolving liberalism and the East’s ascendant authoritarianism—still assumes that power must be concentrated, directional, and imposed. That civilization must always be led by systems of control, scaled through extractive technologies, and justified by some grand narrative of destiny.
But what if the real turning point isn't about which titan wins, but whether we stop believing titans are necessary at all?
From a heliogenetic perspective, both models are expressions of a dying paradigm: one that sees the Earth as a resource, the human as a productivity unit, and the future as something to dominate. Whether it’s Silicon Valley’s technocratic optimism or Beijing’s centralized coordination, both march forward on the same underlying logic—one that externalizes harm, accelerates disconnection, and depletes the living world to sustain abstract systems.
What we need isn’t a better empire.
What we need is a shift in the substrate itself.
A solar-aligned civilization—heliogenetic in nature—wouldn’t scale through conquest but through coherence. It would measure progress not by GDP or territorial control, but by the fertility of the soil, the clarity of water, the resilience of communities. Its technologies wouldn’t be built for acceleration, but for attunement. Its energy wouldn’t be mined from deep within the Earth or extracted from geopolitical entanglements—but received daily from the sky.
The real question isn’t whether America or China will lead.
It’s whether we will continue to build civilizations on the premise of separation—or begin to design from the logic of life.
In the end, there is no titan coming to save us.
There’s just the sun, the ground beneath our feet, and the systems we choose to root in.