In a Mordor Economy, where we spend more and more energy just to keep the economy going, we are forced to sacrifice everything we hold dear. What's the way out?
Perhaps for old, with pre-plastics everything, yes. Now, taking individual materials out of a modern auto or worse electronics is a high energy exercise.
See for example World's Most Polluted Places: Ghana's Toxic Scrapyard for example of what hand recycling (with no technology) looks like. https://youtu.be/lHUF53LBhgA
Kim, I address this idea obliquely in Afraid of the Past, Stuck in the Future, Mining the Landfill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kupebHeFpZk (Plastic will be used for fuel by the desperate survivors.)
Interestingly, the surface of the sun is actually very cool compared to the surrounding corona, which is at several million °C. Scientists don't know why though, which gives some idea of the level of ignorance in our society of "technological mastery".
Space colonisation has always been a complete fantasy, it only seems plausible because we cannot comprehend the truly vast distances involved, even in respect of relatively near resources such as the asteroid belt.
You've done a better job than I probably could have in getting down some ideas that I've had rattling around in my head for awhile. There are shades of "Limits to Growth" in here, and well as a potential answer to the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter. (A civilization trying to become space faring would have to escape the planet before entropy caught up to them; a tall task!)
This is why I explained to an engineer co-worker of mine the other day that we will never be able to consume or invent our way out of this mess. Even if we radically restructure our economy to not be so fixated on the infinite growth "line go up" capitalism, we are only buying time.
The big issue is that there are too many of us . The population of western nations would be dropping if not for immigration . The energy issues could be solved if we make an actual breakthrough in physics , and discover a way to tap into a previously unknown energy source . There are lots of scientific questions that we have no reasonable answers for and they may well be the key. The human species has been in a cycle of boom and bust for a long time (empires etc) but we keep making the same mistakes . The dinosaurs were around for millions of years , but only the remnants are left now. Evolution is a harsh mistress.
I humbly disagree with your “big issue.” We and the majority of animal species are becoming infertile. The ratio is shifting. Our polluting toxic ways have assured nature will rectify things—it is uncertain if collapse of our civilization will happen prior to our decline in numbers.
“Solving” the energy issue does not alter our behavior nor our unhealthy relational issues with all more than human life. Suggest you look into Jevon’s Paradox.
The root issue is the notion we are separate from, and not interwoven with the world we inhabit. So, relatedly, we have created and live in a culture driven by insecurities of self, purpose, and fear about the cycle of being which includes death/loss of our impermanent form. This has enabled us to ignore the impacts of our ways on other life and the dynamics of the earth’s systems. These also have been used to push us toward the many distractions of consumerism, with our recent tech dopamine-fixations gaining prominence.
What will likely happen in the future, is what happens to every natural system which “runs out of resources”, including energy. It collapses down to a scale where it can sustain itself.
If the world’s long term carrying capacity for people is only 5% of the current population, that’s where it will stabilize. But before that happens, there will be wild swings up and down. We are currently in the wild upward swing, so expect the population to drastically decline in the coming centuries. The human version of mass extinction (but not fully extinct).
It’s easy to write words Anopheles in the abstract quoting percentages and the ups and downs of running out of resources, but goodness forbid should it happen in our lifetime what might that experience be like, how might you and I react to these dramatic changes in our present lifestyles. And in that respect to be forewarned is to be forearmed.
The only book, and I’ve read many, that comes anywhere near close to describing the collapse of industrial civilisation is Kurt Dahl’s (2020) “American Famine” but before I give you my synopsis, to bring it’s story fully into reality I always suggest reading Alice J. Friedemann’s (nonfiction) book “When Trucks Stop Running”.
In the shadowed years from 2028 to 2048, as America's fragile empire crumbles under the weight of insatiable consumption and ecological ruin, “An American Famine” unleashes a nightmarish chronicle of societal disintegration that claws at the soul. What begins as a insidious downward spiral; supply chains fracturing, farmlands withering into dust, and cities swelling with the desperate and the destitute; escalates into a cataclysmic year of 2038, where the grid fails, marauding gangs descend upon the starving masses, and the veneer of civilisation shreds to reveal the primal beast within. Through a mosaic of shattered voices; widowed mothers clawing through rubble for scraps, once-respectable men turned cannibals in the flickering light of burning suburbs, and hollow-eyed survivors bartering their last shreds of humanity; Kurt Dahl paints a harrowing tableau of anarchy's embrace, where famine doesn't just empty bellies but devours the very essence of the American dream, leaving only echoes of screams in the endless, barren night.
Just a warning though, it’s a horrific and haunting novel, it opens with a quote by Thomas Hobbes “Hell is the truth seen too late”. Should you chose to obtain a copy and read it don’t have nightmares🤔
Robin, I’ve read both of those A.J Friedemann's books. Previously mentioned "When Trucks Stop Running" as I think it’s a good primer before reading Kurt Dahl's "An American Famine. I do hope you read it.
Anyone who might talk glibly of humanity's world regressing from a lack of FREE FINITE Flammable Fossils without understanding what the immediate effects would be is fooling themselves, along with those they may wish to convince it might not be so bad.
What "An American Famine" horrifically describes would only be the start of humanity falling down a series of Seneca cliffs until the global population of 8.2 plus Billion is reduced to around 600 Million on its way to a 17th century feudal lifestyle, and even then with a population as low as 600 Million it still might not be sustainable🤔
Thanks, Barry. I've added Kurt Dahl to my reading list. Lordy, my reading list is certainly longer than my life expectancy. I do agree that even 600 million might not be sustainable, and the image of the series of Seneca cliffs is certainly plausible.
Don’t think you’ll be disappointed Robin. And like you I also have an extensive to be read list, with many of the books I’d like to read being pushed down the list as I come across others I think more important. I’m currently reading: Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” triggered by Trump’s activities regarding Venezuela. Then next in the list Thomas Pakenham’s “The Scramble For Africa”, followed by Harald Welzer’s “Climate Wars”, James Bridle’s “New Dark Age” and Paul Kingsnorth “Against The Machine”.
Interesting...The Next Million Years, by Charles Galton Darwin (1950) reached similar conclusions based on a much more limited data base...But if humanity had interstellar travel...a very large if, it would have access to nearly unlimited resources, since new stars and planets are forming all the time...Then our motto could be "the spice must flow"!
If we had interstellar travel, the same entropic principles would apply. An interstellar culture would expand outward, colonize new worlds and leave high-entropy dead planets behind. It would look like a ring of fire, surrounding the cold embers of used-up solar systems.
That interstellar travel still requires massive energy. You need a tremendous amount energy to create that concentrated store of energy for interstellar travel, that’s entropy at work. Without abundant energy, they are going nowhere.
To paraphrase Carl Sagen, Pyrrhus, we are but stardust. The only way you and I may possibly experience the asteroid belt is when we are dead and our bodies are transformed into their most basic form over the eons of time. Until then we should take every opportunity to get out and about and experience the great outdoors, enjoy what nature provides for free, whilst we still can🤔
Simon Michaux has shown that we don't have the natural resources to even build a so-called "renewable" society. Where will we get the resources to build and launch starships?
Okay, since my initial comment on how to: 1) deal with the Mordor Economy and 2) transition into a post-collapse world resulted in two quite uniformed commenters who just wanted to argue, I am going to start a new thread.
Point 1. Since collapse is inevitable, how are you going to feed yourself and your family in the aftermath? Answer: You are going to have to use sustainable methods without tractors and other industrial methods.
Point 2. How are you going to put your sustainable food growing methods into play now? Answer: You are going to have to use energy accounting as an objective measure. These metrics exist and I have been using them for years.
Point 3. Have these methods proven to be sustainable? Yes.
Point 4. How is this measured? Answer: Thermodynamic metrics and an EROI evaluation. In addition, objective measures of soil health, crop yields and nutrient density.
Point 5. Do you have years of data and real products? Of course.
So . . . If anyone wants to argue with me about bullshit some more, be a little more prepared BEYOND something you just read about. I have fifty-five years of experience dealing with simplistic, rigid eighth-grade logic. AND you cannot eat "cool ideas." It takes real work and real commitment to produce food outside the dominant industrial paradigm.
There's a lot of spiel talked about the 'Maximum Power Principle'. Such comments serve to *excuse* the life-killing system built by humans, who, in one form or another, lived sustainably for millions of years. So it's not "human nature" to destroy one's habitat - otherwise we would have done so a long time ago and gone extinct already.
The reason humans *didn't* destroy their habitat (until relativley recently) is that they weren't born stupid and greedy - the stupid and greedy is the system that people are now born into and indoctrinated in throughout their entire lives.
Our human *consciousness* is what allowed us to *not* slavishly follow the MPP, which after all is not a law of physics, but a general principle of biology.
BTW something not covered here is that formation of fossil fuels is actually moving in the opposite direction to entropy, which is ‘allowed’ because total entropy is still increasing. However, timelines and local decreases in entropy become very important when thinking about entropy. If we look at the time scale of the sun, the solar system is doomed because the sun will stop providing energy. End of whatever life is on earth (not very likely still human!!!!). However, no one’s thinking at that scale. So I reckon the ‘second law of thermodynamics’ approach to ‘we are all doomed’ isn’t fully logical at the timeline of human beings. Given, fossil fuels weren’t created in human timeframes, either, but entropy isn’t increasing always everywhere.
They mine the easy stuff first. Our money or ability to obtain energy is under threat. We spend more to get less every day. No mainstream proposals to do anything other than accelerate. Burning the raft we're stranded on.
There will come a time when we start mining our landfill society’s dumping grounds for all the minerals/metals we’ve casually discarded.
We will but they will be low grade resources.
Yes, but still fairly easy to get to so lower energy input.
Perhaps for old, with pre-plastics everything, yes. Now, taking individual materials out of a modern auto or worse electronics is a high energy exercise.
See for example World's Most Polluted Places: Ghana's Toxic Scrapyard for example of what hand recycling (with no technology) looks like. https://youtu.be/lHUF53LBhgA
Easy but at the cost of exposure to lethal toxins.
Kim, I address this idea obliquely in Afraid of the Past, Stuck in the Future, Mining the Landfill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kupebHeFpZk (Plastic will be used for fuel by the desperate survivors.)
I always wanted to be a hunter-gatherer anyway...
Interestingly, the surface of the sun is actually very cool compared to the surrounding corona, which is at several million °C. Scientists don't know why though, which gives some idea of the level of ignorance in our society of "technological mastery".
Space colonisation has always been a complete fantasy, it only seems plausible because we cannot comprehend the truly vast distances involved, even in respect of relatively near resources such as the asteroid belt.
You've done a better job than I probably could have in getting down some ideas that I've had rattling around in my head for awhile. There are shades of "Limits to Growth" in here, and well as a potential answer to the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter. (A civilization trying to become space faring would have to escape the planet before entropy caught up to them; a tall task!)
This is why I explained to an engineer co-worker of mine the other day that we will never be able to consume or invent our way out of this mess. Even if we radically restructure our economy to not be so fixated on the infinite growth "line go up" capitalism, we are only buying time.
The big issue is that there are too many of us . The population of western nations would be dropping if not for immigration . The energy issues could be solved if we make an actual breakthrough in physics , and discover a way to tap into a previously unknown energy source . There are lots of scientific questions that we have no reasonable answers for and they may well be the key. The human species has been in a cycle of boom and bust for a long time (empires etc) but we keep making the same mistakes . The dinosaurs were around for millions of years , but only the remnants are left now. Evolution is a harsh mistress.
I humbly disagree with your “big issue.” We and the majority of animal species are becoming infertile. The ratio is shifting. Our polluting toxic ways have assured nature will rectify things—it is uncertain if collapse of our civilization will happen prior to our decline in numbers.
“Solving” the energy issue does not alter our behavior nor our unhealthy relational issues with all more than human life. Suggest you look into Jevon’s Paradox.
The root issue is the notion we are separate from, and not interwoven with the world we inhabit. So, relatedly, we have created and live in a culture driven by insecurities of self, purpose, and fear about the cycle of being which includes death/loss of our impermanent form. This has enabled us to ignore the impacts of our ways on other life and the dynamics of the earth’s systems. These also have been used to push us toward the many distractions of consumerism, with our recent tech dopamine-fixations gaining prominence.
“Upgrading low grade sunshine into something more valuable (electricity), on the other hand, is hard, costly, and material intensive. “
Little supposedly intelligent, progressive, and innovative thought considers this.
Very interesting and informative article
I enjoy ‘B’s writing style and approach, like me and only a few others, he gets Entropy.
Mordor beckons, coming ready or not!
Added to my blog post titled: "The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies. Chris Hedges & Joseph Tainter."
https://kevinhester.live/2017/08/08/the-myth-of-human-progress-and-the-collapse-of-complex-societies-chris-hedges/
Indeed.... hang on to your hats!
What will likely happen in the future, is what happens to every natural system which “runs out of resources”, including energy. It collapses down to a scale where it can sustain itself.
If the world’s long term carrying capacity for people is only 5% of the current population, that’s where it will stabilize. But before that happens, there will be wild swings up and down. We are currently in the wild upward swing, so expect the population to drastically decline in the coming centuries. The human version of mass extinction (but not fully extinct).
It’s easy to write words Anopheles in the abstract quoting percentages and the ups and downs of running out of resources, but goodness forbid should it happen in our lifetime what might that experience be like, how might you and I react to these dramatic changes in our present lifestyles. And in that respect to be forewarned is to be forearmed.
The only book, and I’ve read many, that comes anywhere near close to describing the collapse of industrial civilisation is Kurt Dahl’s (2020) “American Famine” but before I give you my synopsis, to bring it’s story fully into reality I always suggest reading Alice J. Friedemann’s (nonfiction) book “When Trucks Stop Running”.
In the shadowed years from 2028 to 2048, as America's fragile empire crumbles under the weight of insatiable consumption and ecological ruin, “An American Famine” unleashes a nightmarish chronicle of societal disintegration that claws at the soul. What begins as a insidious downward spiral; supply chains fracturing, farmlands withering into dust, and cities swelling with the desperate and the destitute; escalates into a cataclysmic year of 2038, where the grid fails, marauding gangs descend upon the starving masses, and the veneer of civilisation shreds to reveal the primal beast within. Through a mosaic of shattered voices; widowed mothers clawing through rubble for scraps, once-respectable men turned cannibals in the flickering light of burning suburbs, and hollow-eyed survivors bartering their last shreds of humanity; Kurt Dahl paints a harrowing tableau of anarchy's embrace, where famine doesn't just empty bellies but devours the very essence of the American dream, leaving only echoes of screams in the endless, barren night.
Just a warning though, it’s a horrific and haunting novel, it opens with a quote by Thomas Hobbes “Hell is the truth seen too late”. Should you chose to obtain a copy and read it don’t have nightmares🤔
E&OE
Love Alice J. Friedemann and her "When Trucks Stop Running." Even better, her follow-on book, "Life After Fossil Fuels." Springer lecture series.
Robin, I’ve read both of those A.J Friedemann's books. Previously mentioned "When Trucks Stop Running" as I think it’s a good primer before reading Kurt Dahl's "An American Famine. I do hope you read it.
Anyone who might talk glibly of humanity's world regressing from a lack of FREE FINITE Flammable Fossils without understanding what the immediate effects would be is fooling themselves, along with those they may wish to convince it might not be so bad.
What "An American Famine" horrifically describes would only be the start of humanity falling down a series of Seneca cliffs until the global population of 8.2 plus Billion is reduced to around 600 Million on its way to a 17th century feudal lifestyle, and even then with a population as low as 600 Million it still might not be sustainable🤔
Thanks, Barry. I've added Kurt Dahl to my reading list. Lordy, my reading list is certainly longer than my life expectancy. I do agree that even 600 million might not be sustainable, and the image of the series of Seneca cliffs is certainly plausible.
Don’t think you’ll be disappointed Robin. And like you I also have an extensive to be read list, with many of the books I’d like to read being pushed down the list as I come across others I think more important. I’m currently reading: Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” triggered by Trump’s activities regarding Venezuela. Then next in the list Thomas Pakenham’s “The Scramble For Africa”, followed by Harald Welzer’s “Climate Wars”, James Bridle’s “New Dark Age” and Paul Kingsnorth “Against The Machine”.
Interesting...The Next Million Years, by Charles Galton Darwin (1950) reached similar conclusions based on a much more limited data base...But if humanity had interstellar travel...a very large if, it would have access to nearly unlimited resources, since new stars and planets are forming all the time...Then our motto could be "the spice must flow"!
If we had interstellar travel, the same entropic principles would apply. An interstellar culture would expand outward, colonize new worlds and leave high-entropy dead planets behind. It would look like a ring of fire, surrounding the cold embers of used-up solar systems.
That interstellar travel still requires massive energy. You need a tremendous amount energy to create that concentrated store of energy for interstellar travel, that’s entropy at work. Without abundant energy, they are going nowhere.
As I said, interstellar travel is a very big "if"....But if we reach the asteroid belt first, they are loaded with minerals, which would help....
To paraphrase Carl Sagen, Pyrrhus, we are but stardust. The only way you and I may possibly experience the asteroid belt is when we are dead and our bodies are transformed into their most basic form over the eons of time. Until then we should take every opportunity to get out and about and experience the great outdoors, enjoy what nature provides for free, whilst we still can🤔
Okay, Elon!
Simon Michaux has shown that we don't have the natural resources to even build a so-called "renewable" society. Where will we get the resources to build and launch starships?
https://www.simonmichaux.com/
Okay, since my initial comment on how to: 1) deal with the Mordor Economy and 2) transition into a post-collapse world resulted in two quite uniformed commenters who just wanted to argue, I am going to start a new thread.
Point 1. Since collapse is inevitable, how are you going to feed yourself and your family in the aftermath? Answer: You are going to have to use sustainable methods without tractors and other industrial methods.
Point 2. How are you going to put your sustainable food growing methods into play now? Answer: You are going to have to use energy accounting as an objective measure. These metrics exist and I have been using them for years.
Point 3. Have these methods proven to be sustainable? Yes.
Point 4. How is this measured? Answer: Thermodynamic metrics and an EROI evaluation. In addition, objective measures of soil health, crop yields and nutrient density.
Point 5. Do you have years of data and real products? Of course.
So . . . If anyone wants to argue with me about bullshit some more, be a little more prepared BEYOND something you just read about. I have fifty-five years of experience dealing with simplistic, rigid eighth-grade logic. AND you cannot eat "cool ideas." It takes real work and real commitment to produce food outside the dominant industrial paradigm.
For the archeologist’s perspective I recommend Joseph Tainter’s 1988 classic “The Collapse of Complex Societies.” Yes, The Club of Rome got it right.
There's a lot of spiel talked about the 'Maximum Power Principle'. Such comments serve to *excuse* the life-killing system built by humans, who, in one form or another, lived sustainably for millions of years. So it's not "human nature" to destroy one's habitat - otherwise we would have done so a long time ago and gone extinct already.
The reason humans *didn't* destroy their habitat (until relativley recently) is that they weren't born stupid and greedy - the stupid and greedy is the system that people are now born into and indoctrinated in throughout their entire lives.
Our human *consciousness* is what allowed us to *not* slavishly follow the MPP, which after all is not a law of physics, but a general principle of biology.
Always the optimistic. It will end in our extinction no doubt. God riddance.
That's the sort of stuff you shine in. Keep it coming. Thank you!
BTW something not covered here is that formation of fossil fuels is actually moving in the opposite direction to entropy, which is ‘allowed’ because total entropy is still increasing. However, timelines and local decreases in entropy become very important when thinking about entropy. If we look at the time scale of the sun, the solar system is doomed because the sun will stop providing energy. End of whatever life is on earth (not very likely still human!!!!). However, no one’s thinking at that scale. So I reckon the ‘second law of thermodynamics’ approach to ‘we are all doomed’ isn’t fully logical at the timeline of human beings. Given, fossil fuels weren’t created in human timeframes, either, but entropy isn’t increasing always everywhere.
They mine the easy stuff first. Our money or ability to obtain energy is under threat. We spend more to get less every day. No mainstream proposals to do anything other than accelerate. Burning the raft we're stranded on.