Common wisdom holds that if oil is ever to become really scarce, fuel prices would reach astronomical levels and long lines would form in front of gas stations.
Cars are not the problem. Innovation in battery technology has only just started, composite ones, like Aptera, only weigh 600kg, use minimal metals and can run on 100% solar, wind mills like Kitemill use only 10% of the materials the regular cumbersome monsters consume, generate 3x more energy, and shrinking populations will free up quite a lot of surplus materials like copper and steel.
The real problem will be the unfeasible upkeep of vast infrastructures. Once again effective waterways will define civilisation. So unless wet-bulb temperatures prevent it from happening, the epicentre of humanity will shift towards the South China Sea.
Why do people always post comments like this on here? You are ignoring the point intentionally. Those small batteries will still need mining, smelting, transporting, processing, and assembly. All contingent upon diesel. The diesel and the materials needed to make the batteries are finite. Our future is going to be low tech and local. Accept it. For those of us that survive the collapse of civilization that is.
Perhaps because, unlike most, we engineers actually understand how technology really works, where it came from, where the underlying thermodynamic rationale will lead it towards and what it liberated us from.
Do you realise that the low-tech local option you and all those other degrowthers are proposing is the one way ticket straight back to slavery? I strongly suggest reading "In the servitude of power: energy and civilisation through the ages”, by Debeir, Deleage and Hemery. Beware of what you wish for...
Clearly engineers such as yourself should go work in the mines that all your wonderful technologies come from. You are the one advocating for slavery. You all pretend that the technologies are made out of nothing, not raw materials stolen from the earth. It is not an option. IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. This high technology lifestyle is a blip. Earth will slap the human species back down. Sorry to burst your fantasy. It is not a wish. It simply is what is going to happen.
I would love to hear your thoughts on future declines in asphalt production, and the resulting inability to maintain our vast sprawling road networks. There is no point producing electric cars or bikes if the roads themselves are paved with cross subsidised oil byproducts.
The abrupt absence of stuff will be met by human depth and ingenuity , cooperation and camaraderie towards the shared common goal of sustainability.
Ha ha , my little joke. It will be met with the usual 4 horseman approach. Low wattage youth will take what’s available from childless older folks. For a while Some urban places will be like jack London’s ‘people of the abyss’ - established hierarchies, like Indian cities , but most will look like joburg , Caracas or some US city cores now. Having many children might help , as gadaffi once said…. The wombs of our women will conquer Europe.. we won’t run out of one resource…. I would cycle in cape town , but you don’t do it at night! That’s in good times.
Asphalt is already the most heavily recycled of all industrial materials. There is almost no degradation across generations (I guess if you wash the dirt off it).
For some of us, admittedly only a few (at least, in the so-called developed world), the present is already carless. And for good reasons. Biking is cheaper, healthier, and, as I like to claim, more fun!
Would you please do a comparative analysis on how some of these consequences of degrowth will shake out for a G South country like India or Kenya, as compared to the United States or Australia?
I wonder if they will leapfrog the U.S. as they did with cell phones? Maybe instead of asphalt roads and power-hungry charging stations, there will be small Chinese-made all terrain utility vehicles, perhaps shared by villagers and charged with a village solar generator, which can also be used for water wells. That's not exactly de-growth, but it would be less wasteful than the U.S. approach.
Yes, one could hope for smaller, cheaper, slower and more fuel-efficient cars so they will still be available for a large number of people the way it use to be. And the way they need them in their daily commuter life.
But actually, the actual trend (more or less since the C0VID-related shortages) shows that cars will be bigger, heavier, more powerful, more expensive and thus available for a smaller and smaller group of people. They will become a luxury the way they were at the very beginning of their history.
And for a good reason : so far, auto-makers realised they can get a bigger profit margin this way. After all, even if one needs 2 or 3 times the number of microchips (and actually everything else) to build a big deluxe beast than a small car, one can sell it 10 time more expensive and build 10 time less of them. So, it's much less problems and thus that much more profit. Does the Ford T economic model only work in time of abundance ?...
I live in a house I heat with wood and cool with shade, walking or biking distance to groceries, post office, library, church or mosque, with some solar for charging electronics or running a refrigerator, but none of that will matter when the Car Era is over. I will be building a small cabin on a steep woodland about 20 miles from here, in a farm/grain mill/rail community which existed before electricity and may yet thrive if we can protect the river that runs through it. May we be a blessing for the generations to come.
Taking personal adaptive action, such as this, transforms a person's cognition and experience, and that person is walking a different path into a different future.
Abstract ideas, which do not transform fundamental lived experience, are very limited in what they can do for a person who does not choose to walk a different path.
Dr. Day, this helps more than I can say. Thank you. I will admit to the abstract belief that those most spiritually connected with Mama Earth and her offspring are also the most generous--the presently unhoused, the Indigenous grandchildren of boarding school abductees, the Appalachian children of coal miners, and the refugees from the Monsanto-ruined Maya maize lands. They are here, they inspire me, and they know how to cook. The least I can do is make a gathering place.
Kim, please do us all a favor and buy guns and ammo while you still can. What you described is the future. The future is local. The future will be living off the land as we did before the advent of civilization 10,000 years ago. Establish a self sufficient community and arm yourselves. When the crash comes, city folk such as myself will come to plunder and ruin your home. Steel your heart and defend your home.
Thank you for caring about a stranger. I think that will actually make more difference than the type of ammo we attempt to stockpile. Then again, I know a guy with a muskrat trap, and another who can make a stew out of anything, even a groundhog. I planted a garden outside my fenced garden for our groundhog, and I hope I don't have to eat him.
Even bicycles require fossil fuels for the production and transportation of the material in their frames and tires, their manufacture, and maintenance of the surfaces on which they're ridden. Sandals, moccasins, and backpacks of varied designs will be more sustainable in the long term; of we have one.
I completely agree with the contents of most of your posts, but a recurring grammatical error grates on my nerves. Please investigate and employ the difference between 'less' and 'fewer.' Yes, it's totally meaningless in the long run; but my junior high school English teacher and I will thank you.
Well, the crash might happen by 2030 (per the energy skeptics post)... By then we'll all be neatly contained within the Global Digital Prison The Deserving Elite are imposing (digital IDs, then digital cash)... Maybe one of the car makers will create a simple Model T Ford like model, stripped down, easy
to repair ("Down With Complexity !) - and it's body made from hemp... Such might stretch the oil
out a little bit longer... I'm gonna look into investing in hemp, and bamboo, companies - growing, and manufacturing... I reckon there'll be a market for both once concrete is too expensive to make...
There's no future in electric vehicles... Global Warming )aka - climate change) is the ideological cover for imposing austerity, getting us use to having less, traveling less, and so on...
Peak Everything, Overshoot & Collapse:
Net Energy Cliff and the Collapse of Civilisation:
I can't help feeling that the supposed shift to more local economies just won't happen. There is too much of a global interdependency for everything we use or eat (agriculture uses machines, fertilizers and pesticides from around the globe, as well as myriad other technologies). Such a shift would be too painful to be carried out without huge disruption but in a world where there is already huge disruption. Attempts to localise would, it seems to me, fail quickly as societies fall apart across the globe.
It is going to happen. Just NOT voluntarily. We will keep on keeping on until complete and total collapse. Wars, famine, disease will kill off at least 6 billion or more. Whoever survives will than be forced to live off the land as we did for hundreds of thousands off years or starve to death.
Automobiles have spurred massive overpopulation and overconsumption, and may well be the worst fraud ever perpetrated on humanity and life on the overburdened planet. A diesel train can carry a ton of cargo 400 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel, so a single passenger goes 4,000 miles on one gallon of fuel, right? The auto and rubber barons took the highly efficient street cars and inter-urbans to edge of American town and cities and made huge bonfires of them, in order to force our ancestors into cars. We are in the midst of a total climate collapse, largely due to overproduction of GHGs and stupid humans. The canary in the coal mine is the 1.2 trillion tons of melting global ice annually, 3.3 billion tons per day, along with the 30 million tons of melting glacial ice melting in Greenland every hour. NASA says our global heat energy imbalance is the equivalent of 13 Hiroshima nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND, although polymath Eliot Jacobson calculates it to be 20, where each one releases 63 trillion BTUs into our rapidly heating environment. We are the frog sitting in his slowly heating pan of water, too dumb to jump out until it boils him/her to death.
Good old climate casino. Eliot is always spot on. His official stance is that civilization will collapse and there is nothing that can be done about. Good riddance. Civilization is bad for the planet.
I live in a 65' sailboat in France, basically almost off-grid, with drinking water tanks for more than a month, LED lighting and electricity from a battery bank and inverter, and the ability to sail away with free wind if needed.
France has an electricity production grid that is 70% nuclear, 15% hydro and tidal hydro, and the rest is transitioning from fossil to wind and solar. The region I live in has high rainfall all year and is a major food production area, with thousands of small and large-scale farmers, increasingly organic, that exports both to the rest of France and across Europe. The thriving local markets supply their products direct to local customers.
France is still heavily wooded and many local houses use local firewood in winter. This means that I can buy enough cut and split dry hardwood, very locally sourced and delivered, for my woodstove/cooker for the winter for around €200 ($225). Or I could just go cut my own in the woods alongside the river.
In short, there are some places where life can go on, changed but not destroyed, even after Peak Fossils demolishes the structures of city life. Or at least, I hope so - I'm betting my life on it! 🙂
Cars are not the problem. Innovation in battery technology has only just started, composite ones, like Aptera, only weigh 600kg, use minimal metals and can run on 100% solar, wind mills like Kitemill use only 10% of the materials the regular cumbersome monsters consume, generate 3x more energy, and shrinking populations will free up quite a lot of surplus materials like copper and steel.
The real problem will be the unfeasible upkeep of vast infrastructures. Once again effective waterways will define civilisation. So unless wet-bulb temperatures prevent it from happening, the epicentre of humanity will shift towards the South China Sea.
Why do people always post comments like this on here? You are ignoring the point intentionally. Those small batteries will still need mining, smelting, transporting, processing, and assembly. All contingent upon diesel. The diesel and the materials needed to make the batteries are finite. Our future is going to be low tech and local. Accept it. For those of us that survive the collapse of civilization that is.
Perhaps because, unlike most, we engineers actually understand how technology really works, where it came from, where the underlying thermodynamic rationale will lead it towards and what it liberated us from.
Do you realise that the low-tech local option you and all those other degrowthers are proposing is the one way ticket straight back to slavery? I strongly suggest reading "In the servitude of power: energy and civilisation through the ages”, by Debeir, Deleage and Hemery. Beware of what you wish for...
Clearly engineers such as yourself should go work in the mines that all your wonderful technologies come from. You are the one advocating for slavery. You all pretend that the technologies are made out of nothing, not raw materials stolen from the earth. It is not an option. IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. This high technology lifestyle is a blip. Earth will slap the human species back down. Sorry to burst your fantasy. It is not a wish. It simply is what is going to happen.
Talking about fantasy...you might want to understand the real meaning of the term "degrowth" >
https://gl-10190.medium.com/debunking-degrowth-part-ii-aded18d44652
I would love to hear your thoughts on future declines in asphalt production, and the resulting inability to maintain our vast sprawling road networks. There is no point producing electric cars or bikes if the roads themselves are paved with cross subsidised oil byproducts.
Що уже казати за дамби, мости, естакади, та "дрібноту"(дрібні асфальтні, бетонні ремонти) ро всьому місту як Нью-Йорк чи Токіо🤔
The abrupt absence of stuff will be met by human depth and ingenuity , cooperation and camaraderie towards the shared common goal of sustainability.
Ha ha , my little joke. It will be met with the usual 4 horseman approach. Low wattage youth will take what’s available from childless older folks. For a while Some urban places will be like jack London’s ‘people of the abyss’ - established hierarchies, like Indian cities , but most will look like joburg , Caracas or some US city cores now. Having many children might help , as gadaffi once said…. The wombs of our women will conquer Europe.. we won’t run out of one resource…. I would cycle in cape town , but you don’t do it at night! That’s in good times.
Asphalt is already the most heavily recycled of all industrial materials. There is almost no degradation across generations (I guess if you wash the dirt off it).
For some of us, admittedly only a few (at least, in the so-called developed world), the present is already carless. And for good reasons. Biking is cheaper, healthier, and, as I like to claim, more fun!
Would you please do a comparative analysis on how some of these consequences of degrowth will shake out for a G South country like India or Kenya, as compared to the United States or Australia?
I wonder if they will leapfrog the U.S. as they did with cell phones? Maybe instead of asphalt roads and power-hungry charging stations, there will be small Chinese-made all terrain utility vehicles, perhaps shared by villagers and charged with a village solar generator, which can also be used for water wells. That's not exactly de-growth, but it would be less wasteful than the U.S. approach.
Yes, one could hope for smaller, cheaper, slower and more fuel-efficient cars so they will still be available for a large number of people the way it use to be. And the way they need them in their daily commuter life.
But actually, the actual trend (more or less since the C0VID-related shortages) shows that cars will be bigger, heavier, more powerful, more expensive and thus available for a smaller and smaller group of people. They will become a luxury the way they were at the very beginning of their history.
And for a good reason : so far, auto-makers realised they can get a bigger profit margin this way. After all, even if one needs 2 or 3 times the number of microchips (and actually everything else) to build a big deluxe beast than a small car, one can sell it 10 time more expensive and build 10 time less of them. So, it's much less problems and thus that much more profit. Does the Ford T economic model only work in time of abundance ?...
I live in a house I heat with wood and cool with shade, walking or biking distance to groceries, post office, library, church or mosque, with some solar for charging electronics or running a refrigerator, but none of that will matter when the Car Era is over. I will be building a small cabin on a steep woodland about 20 miles from here, in a farm/grain mill/rail community which existed before electricity and may yet thrive if we can protect the river that runs through it. May we be a blessing for the generations to come.
Taking personal adaptive action, such as this, transforms a person's cognition and experience, and that person is walking a different path into a different future.
Abstract ideas, which do not transform fundamental lived experience, are very limited in what they can do for a person who does not choose to walk a different path.
Dr. Day, this helps more than I can say. Thank you. I will admit to the abstract belief that those most spiritually connected with Mama Earth and her offspring are also the most generous--the presently unhoused, the Indigenous grandchildren of boarding school abductees, the Appalachian children of coal miners, and the refugees from the Monsanto-ruined Maya maize lands. They are here, they inspire me, and they know how to cook. The least I can do is make a gathering place.
You answer the call and walk the path, Sister Kim.
;-)
Kim, please do us all a favor and buy guns and ammo while you still can. What you described is the future. The future is local. The future will be living off the land as we did before the advent of civilization 10,000 years ago. Establish a self sufficient community and arm yourselves. When the crash comes, city folk such as myself will come to plunder and ruin your home. Steel your heart and defend your home.
Well, this is Appalachia...
We're kinda feral. ;-)
Well said sister.
Thank you for caring about a stranger. I think that will actually make more difference than the type of ammo we attempt to stockpile. Then again, I know a guy with a muskrat trap, and another who can make a stew out of anything, even a groundhog. I planted a garden outside my fenced garden for our groundhog, and I hope I don't have to eat him.
Even bicycles require fossil fuels for the production and transportation of the material in their frames and tires, their manufacture, and maintenance of the surfaces on which they're ridden. Sandals, moccasins, and backpacks of varied designs will be more sustainable in the long term; of we have one.
I completely agree with the contents of most of your posts, but a recurring grammatical error grates on my nerves. Please investigate and employ the difference between 'less' and 'fewer.' Yes, it's totally meaningless in the long run; but my junior high school English teacher and I will thank you.
I also noticed that, but let it go, seeing as English is not the author's first language.
'Less' is used when the subject is not enumerated, and 'fewer' is used when the subject can be enumerated.
For example: 'Less oil will mean fewer solar panels, fewer wind turbines...'.
You're statement is correct. He is referring to bikes as a transition, not the end goal.
Well, the crash might happen by 2030 (per the energy skeptics post)... By then we'll all be neatly contained within the Global Digital Prison The Deserving Elite are imposing (digital IDs, then digital cash)... Maybe one of the car makers will create a simple Model T Ford like model, stripped down, easy
to repair ("Down With Complexity !) - and it's body made from hemp... Such might stretch the oil
out a little bit longer... I'm gonna look into investing in hemp, and bamboo, companies - growing, and manufacturing... I reckon there'll be a market for both once concrete is too expensive to make...
There's no future in electric vehicles... Global Warming )aka - climate change) is the ideological cover for imposing austerity, getting us use to having less, traveling less, and so on...
Peak Everything, Overshoot & Collapse:
Net Energy Cliff and the Collapse of Civilisation:
https://energyskeptic.com/2024/net-energy-cliff-collapse-by-2030/
I can't help feeling that the supposed shift to more local economies just won't happen. There is too much of a global interdependency for everything we use or eat (agriculture uses machines, fertilizers and pesticides from around the globe, as well as myriad other technologies). Such a shift would be too painful to be carried out without huge disruption but in a world where there is already huge disruption. Attempts to localise would, it seems to me, fail quickly as societies fall apart across the globe.
It is going to happen. Just NOT voluntarily. We will keep on keeping on until complete and total collapse. Wars, famine, disease will kill off at least 6 billion or more. Whoever survives will than be forced to live off the land as we did for hundreds of thousands off years or starve to death.
China is on the verge of total collapse... and I do mean total.... this is connected to Covid and the Covid shots...
Overcapacity and Price Wars
China’s deflationary spiral now entering a dangerous new stage
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/overcapacity-and-price-wars
Automobiles have spurred massive overpopulation and overconsumption, and may well be the worst fraud ever perpetrated on humanity and life on the overburdened planet. A diesel train can carry a ton of cargo 400 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel, so a single passenger goes 4,000 miles on one gallon of fuel, right? The auto and rubber barons took the highly efficient street cars and inter-urbans to edge of American town and cities and made huge bonfires of them, in order to force our ancestors into cars. We are in the midst of a total climate collapse, largely due to overproduction of GHGs and stupid humans. The canary in the coal mine is the 1.2 trillion tons of melting global ice annually, 3.3 billion tons per day, along with the 30 million tons of melting glacial ice melting in Greenland every hour. NASA says our global heat energy imbalance is the equivalent of 13 Hiroshima nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND, although polymath Eliot Jacobson calculates it to be 20, where each one releases 63 trillion BTUs into our rapidly heating environment. We are the frog sitting in his slowly heating pan of water, too dumb to jump out until it boils him/her to death.
Good old climate casino. Eliot is always spot on. His official stance is that civilization will collapse and there is nothing that can be done about. Good riddance. Civilization is bad for the planet.
A smart car manufacturer would start making smaller, low tech cars now. These would be easy to repair and modular at the core.
It’s impossible to find something like that in the North American market right now.
I live in a 65' sailboat in France, basically almost off-grid, with drinking water tanks for more than a month, LED lighting and electricity from a battery bank and inverter, and the ability to sail away with free wind if needed.
France has an electricity production grid that is 70% nuclear, 15% hydro and tidal hydro, and the rest is transitioning from fossil to wind and solar. The region I live in has high rainfall all year and is a major food production area, with thousands of small and large-scale farmers, increasingly organic, that exports both to the rest of France and across Europe. The thriving local markets supply their products direct to local customers.
France is still heavily wooded and many local houses use local firewood in winter. This means that I can buy enough cut and split dry hardwood, very locally sourced and delivered, for my woodstove/cooker for the winter for around €200 ($225). Or I could just go cut my own in the woods alongside the river.
In short, there are some places where life can go on, changed but not destroyed, even after Peak Fossils demolishes the structures of city life. Or at least, I hope so - I'm betting my life on it! 🙂