Could We Go Back to the 1950s, Please?

On radical acceptance and energy cannibalism

Saying sorry might not work this time. Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

How come that we always end up discussing how to do what we do differently — like how to become sustainable, or how fast should we “transition” to “renewables” etc. — and never ever if we should abandon this model of a civilization altogether? What would it take to leave behind the concept of an industrial society and start with a clean slate…? I get that we need continuity. I also get, that abandoning what has “worked” so far is risky, and will inevitably lead to losses (and often to quite significant ones). I also get, that there is a certain sense of nostalgia, driven by the notion that if we could somehow go back to the consumption levels of the 1950’s, everything would be fine again. But would that really help, or just prolong decline somewhat?

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Deep inside, most of us know already that there is no going back. In order to forge a realistic vision of the future we cannot rely on nostalgia. We need to better understand reality, and know what is possible and what is not — even if it leads us to conclude that this civilization cannot go on for much too long. I know that this is a bitter pill to swallow… Imagining a future which sounds nice and acceptable, but that which is physically unattainable in the end, might ease the anxiety for a while, but it will also prevent us from working towards a realistic vision.

Take the idea of going back to a 1950’s level of consumption for example. Earth’s population was 2.5 billion then. Now it’s past eight. Biodiversity, on the other hand, was much higher than today: fish stocks, forests, insect populations, many birds and mammal species were all in an incomparably better shape than nowadays. The rapid degradation of the environment known as the great acceleration hasn’t even started in earnest yet (although there were quite some worrying signs already). 

On the resource front we have just discovered one of the biggest oil reserves on the planet (the Ghawar in Saudi Arabia), and there were plenty more giant fields to be found. Conventional petroleum production in Texas and all around the globe was still ramping up. Oil, the lifeblood of this civilization was cheap and plentiful — and most importantly: required very little effort (or energy expenditure) to get. Most of the wells required only a modest investment (say one unit of energy) to produce prodigious returns, sometimes as much as a hundred units. 

The same goes to other minerals — like copper, coal and sand — resources which are experiencing serious bottlenecks and very poor future prospects today. Back in 1950 we could get all the minerals and energy we needed at a minimum to low investment cost — hence the unprecedented economic growth, a hallmark of that era. Something, which has become impossible to recreate using today’s resources requiring orders of magnitude higher energy investments to get. So, even if each and every one of us (especially in the global north) could go back to a 1950’s level of consumption (no electronics, no A/C, smaller houses, and lot less clothes, furniture etc.) we would still require much more energy to maintain the very same lifestyle our parents and grandparents enjoyed. 

The important thing to understand here, is that finite resources always had the annoying tendency to run out — no matter how carefully we husband them. In our case that meant that we were forced to go after ever more energy expensive to mine stuff. First, we went after the easiest to get minerals, like copper and gold nuggets lying around in shallow river bends. Then, when those tasty nuggets ran out, we picked up a shovel to dig up the shore. Then we went up the mountainside with a pickax and a horse-drawn cart to open a small mine. Then we invented steam engines to pump the water out from those mine-shafts going deeper and deeper… Till we ended up blowing up entire mountains, hauling ever poorer quality ores on ever larger trucks; carrying their load to ever larger mills using ever more fuel, ever more (pumped) water and ever more toxic chemicals to leach out an ever meager amount of copper per ton of rock. Note, that this is an ever accelerating process, as we not only needed to mine more material than ever year after year to keep up with growing demand, but we also had to do this at an ever increasing energy cost per unit.

Sure, many of our methods and devices got much-much more energy efficient, but in the end it really did not matter. Technological advancement did not make any high quality resources more plentiful, it has only opened up more and more, lower and lower quality resources for extraction. All this has created an illusion of plenty; at the hidden expense of an exponentially growing energy demand. And while it’s true that our processes got significantly more sophisticated and efficient over time, the comparison only stands using the same resources as inputs. Considering, however, how overall resource quality has declined over the past seven decades, as we run out of the easy to get stuff, all of our efficiency gains were eventually erased, then reversed.

Open pit mine. Photo by Ryan Jubber on Unsplash

So no, there is no going back to the 1950's. Ecosystems, species count, mineral resources, oil, the climate — just to name a few — are all in a much worse shape already than they ever were. Meanwhile, our population has more than tripled, requiring more food and water than ever in this planet’s history. Underground freshwater reserves are already in the process of being depleted by mining and agriculture, or being poisoned by these processes. At the same time extracting all kinds of resources from oil to copper, or from sand to groundwater, got multiple times more energy intensive, ruining the fantastic return on investment ratios previous generations enjoyed… The very thing what made them so prosperous.

It also worth noting, that while going back to a 1950’s level of consumption is desirable from a pollution, CO2 emissions and resource conservation standpoint it could only lower future pollution levels and slow down the rate of depletion somewhat. It could not arrest any of the negative side effects already threatening to put an end to a high tech global economy. Since we would be still using natural and mineral resources well beyond their natural replenishment rates, we could not possibly hope to maintain even that (admittedly much lower) level of consumption for much too long. (1)

Any industrial civilization is by definition unsustainable, no matter how slow they burn through their resources. Today, our high-tech societies are running up against multiple hockey stick curves, as a result of this ultimately self-destructing living arrangement. In fact, since the depletion of rich deposits dictate an exponential increase in the amount of energy needed to access the next batch of resources, we could only postpone the onset of a long decline only somewhat, even by drastically lowering demand. The difference, I wager, would be nothing more than a decade or two.

Abandoning all hope that modernity is in any shape or form sustainable is the first step towards a radical acceptance of reality.

There is a world of difference between accepting the reality of a seemingly unending, winding road back to sustainability, and bargaining with the future by thinking that going back to a certain level of consumption will be “enough”, and that somehow we would be able to stabilize the situation at a steady state. This, however, doesn’t mean that we should all throw up our hands. Managing this long decline carefully, and thus making it less steep by purposefully rationing energy and resources is key in avoiding a chaotic unraveling of this society. Remaining composed but alert, and being able to act proactively (or at least in a flexible way) one can do a lot to improve their, and their loved ones’ position in the decades to come. Acceptance, I believe, can help a great deal in navigating this uncertain future.

I cannot give bulletproof recipes, though; that would require knowing how things would unfold exactly. For now I can only lay out the fundamentals based on what I learned so far: The future will be small, local and low-tech. Much will depend on our ruling class accepting this simple fact of life, and refraining from trying to “bring back the good ol’ days”… (With our current crop of delusional elites, I have to say, I’m not fully optimistic.) So, while there might be a great turmoil, as the current economic model based on growth fails in a most spectacular fashion, the coming simplification will not be a destination we could arrive at in a decade, rather a journey lasting for generations to come.

One of many ways to approach the great simplification. Photo by Christina Victoria Craft on Unsplash

Some of you might ask at this point — after acknowledging that this all sounds nice and everything — where is the proof? What makes me think that we have arrived at a turning point, marking the end of growth and forcing us to give up many of our conveniences? Well, no one will come on TV and admit that we are officially (and royally) screwed... If you read news items (especially in the energy space) however, you might notice that something is amiss, though. Of course, one needs a boatload of context to cut through the investor friendly happy talk, but hey, this is why you are here, reading so far. Take this recent headline for example:

80 More Years of Oil: The Big Attraction of Carbon Capture

After wading through the first few paragraphs, you might think that a) oil will be with us for eight more decades, together with business-as-usual, giving us no reason to worry; and b) what a freaking scam carbon capture is… ‘How dare oil companies use public money (saved for combating climate change) to extend their dreadful operations?!’ 

There is nothing new here, though. I’ve been writing about this very issue (using carbon-dioxide to extend oil production) for years now. In a nutshell: Carbon-dioxide blends really well with oil, and helps it flow through tiny cracks and holes. Plus it provides the pressure forcing the black gold upwards — not unlike gas in a can of hair-spray. In return it requires high energy inputs during capturing, pressurizing, transporting then pumping it into the well. Oh, and this method was invented well before anyone thought of burying CO2 to save the climate — so do not fall into believing that this is a genuine method to get rid of carbon from the atmosphere. No. This is a desperate attempt made at upholding oil production at an ever increasing cost — both in energetic and in ecological/climate terms.

Based on the various commentary written on the article above, few if any, heard the slurping sound ringing in their ears; marking an end to the oil era and the abundance it brought with it. No wonder, without a solid understanding of the role energy plays in accessing more energy, everything looks just fine... Just read the following two paragraphs — cited from the article linked above — carefully, and see if you can spot the elephant in the room:

Crude oil production in U.S. oil fields frequently encompasses three distinct phases: primary, secondary, and tertiary (or enhanced) recovery. During the primary recovery phase, gravity, the natural pressure of the reservoir and artificial lift techniques are used to drive oil into the wellbore. This initial phase typically recovers only about 10 percent of a reservoir’s original oil in place (OOIP). Secondary recovery techniques are used to extend a field’s productive life usually by injecting water or gas to displace oil and drive it to a production wellbore, typically resulting in the recovery of 20 to 40 percent of OOIP.

However, much of the easy-to-produce oil has already been recovered from U.S. oil fields, forcing producers to turn to several tertiary, or enhanced oil recovery (EOR), techniques. EOR technologies offer prospects for ultimately producing 30 to 60 percent, or more, of a reservoir’s OOIP.

Have you seen “energy return on investment” mentioned anywhere? Or how that ultimately spells ruin to the entire business model? No? Well, as long as everything is measured in money (an artificial construct), and while energy is still relatively abundant, this doesn’t look like a real issue. Take the ratios outlined above into account, though: 10 percent easy-to-produce oil, 20–40 percent not so easy to get stuff, and the remaining half being exponentially more energy intensive to get… Well, after admittedly having just burned through the easier to get stuff, the hockey stick marking the energy intensity of oil extraction, is about to turn from a gentle slope into a towering mountain (Delannoy et al. 2021). So when someone tells you that there is nothing to worry, we still have half of the oil left, (and we “just” need to find the technology to get it), wish them good luck extracting oil with half of the energy produced required to be turned right back into getting the next barrel.

Evolution of energy required to produce oil liquids from 1950 to 2050. Notice the marked uptick in energy demand from the 2010’s onward, as the depletion of conventional fields accelerated, and as unconventional sources came online in ever greater amounts. Source: Delannoy et al. 2021

It also worth considering — purely from an economic standpoint — that this extra energy input could’ve otherwise gone into powering homes, EV assembly plants, you name it. Make no mistake: I’m not saying that more manufacturing and consumption is good. The message I’m trying to convey here is that keeping oil flowing requires ever more energy as fields deplete, and that energy comes at the cost of not doing something else. (And no, wind and solar are no replacement, as these technologies also require oil in every single step of their lifecycle. With oil and the necessary minerals getting more and more energy intensive to get, though, these new wonderful technologies will also get exponentially harder to produce.) 

This is what energy cannibalism means in practice. It acts as a drag on economic growth, and at a point it will inevitably put an end to it. (And we haven’t even talked about staving off climate change by cloud brightening to replace sulphur emissions to the same effect. Something, which will cannibalize even more energy, together with CO2 capturing; be it direct air, or from exhaust.) Again, this is not to say that we do not need to reduce our emissions — we absolutely do — but wasting even more energy by doing so will simply result in an even faster crash than what could be expected based on natural causes (depletion of rich metal and oil deposits).

With that in mind here is another article titled: Green Hydrogen Hype Gets Dose of Reality. And while one could argue that this is just another piece of fossil fuel propaganda, numbers do not lie. When it comes to energy cannibalism hydrogen wastes more energy than anything else before it. If the depletion of rich easy to get oil deposits is a death by a thousand cuts for this civilization, trying to convert this juggernaut of an economy to use “green hydrogen” is equal to lighting up a joint in the ammo storage deck of a warship while covered in gasoline soaked clothes. And no, this is not some arcane wisdom, requiring decades of laborious studying. It literally took me ten minutes to come up with the relevant data.  

According to this study, for example, 39 kWh of electricity and around 9 liters of water is required to produce 1 kg of hydrogen, under ideal conditions. Considering inefficiencies (2) and the energy requirement of water purification, though, we would rather need 68 kWh for each and every kg of H2… (Presuming that a plentiful amount of water can be found nearby, and it doesn’t need miles of pipelines, together with pumps lifting it from underground reservoirs; taking up yet another untold kWs of electricity, and further depleting freshwater resources.)

Hydrogen, on the other hand, holds only 33.3 kWh of energy. However not all that stored energy can be translated into useful work (around 40–50% is lost as waste heat: either dissipating through fuel cells or released into the atmosphere by direct combustion). In the end we would thus end up wasting 75% of our energy inputs, even under ideal conditions. Adding transportation, and storage losses — not to mention the considerable amount of energy needed to chill and compress H2 — we might easily end up with a net loss amounting to 90% of the energy invested (i.e. we would need to generate 100kWh of electricity, to make a return of about 10kWh-s of useful work, whereas we could have used all that 100kWh to run computers in a server farm, or industrial processes in the first place). Hydrogen is not a source of energy, but a spectacular way of wasting it.

Note that none of this additional work and the associated energy waste was needed in 1950: oil kept flowing freely from shallow underground reserves with minimal pumping, refineries were producing gasoline, and other distillates by burning a small portion of that cheap and plentiful black stuff. If you were wondering where that magic, enabling all the past economic growth has gone… well, it all went up in smoke. And now — finally — even the hard to get shale oil is close to be maxed out:

Unless there is a surge of production over the next couple of months, by August the U.S. will have essentially flat year-over-year growth in oil production. That has only happened twice in the past 15 years. The first time was during OPEC’s 2015–2016 price war, and the second was during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. If U.S. production is flattening, this would mark the first time since the shale boom began that it wasn’t caused by extraordinary external factors.

What we are witnessing this decade is a massive and irreversible turn of the tide: from growth to an accelerating decline, driven by resource depletion and energy cannibalism eating up ever more of what’s left. And if you hoped that tapping Venezuelan oil will surely save the day… Then I have a bridge to sell you. All that black goo they have require pumping steam underground to make it more amenable for pumping and lifting, then a massive dose of light oil to make a blend which can be transported by ships and pipelines. In a few words: Venezuelan oil needs more energy to get and process than any other type of oil. (OK, perhaps not as much as Canadian tar sands…)

Say goodbye to sights like this, if you thought continuing with civilization is a good idea. Photo by Neil Rosenstech on Unsplash

The increase in energy demand for producing energy is accelerating in an exponential fashion (be it oil, hydrogen or copper and other minerals to make “renewables” from). This happens despite all of our efforts to boost efficiency: energy cannibalism will eventually eat away all of our gains, causing costs to increase faster than new resources could be brought onto the market. The centuries long observation, that rising demand and elevated prices will bring about more supply, will simply no longer hold: as investing in new resources will increasingly fail to make a return.

To be honest, we would need an energy miracle to keep going: like aliens bestowing us with a trillion pieces of an AA battery sized fusion reactors (each producing megawatts of energy for centuries without overheating or radiation). Knowing our track record, however, were that came to be we would certainly use that energy to keep up with an ever increasing energy demand to mine mineral resources from ever deeper, ever larger mines to build ever more stuff. That would be creating ever more pollution — and at an exponentially accelerating pace — while destroying the last remaining natural habitats on this planet… All that just to keep our oligarch overlords happy with nice and round double digit growth figures. (Why, what else did we do when we run out of copper nuggets lying around, and realized that by burning fossil fuels and blowing up entire mountains we could make a fortune…?)

Folks, it’s time to wake up. This whole mess we call an industrial society is a self-defeating concept. It’s also high time to stop dreaming about going back to an earlier version of it… Our prevailing civilizational psychosis, wetiko, has made us oblivious to this madness, and compelled us to act even against our own best interests. We fell under the spell of “a cannibalizing force driven by insatiable greed, appetite without satisfaction, consumption as an end in itself, and war for its own sake, against other tribes, species, and nature, and even against the individual’s own humanity.” — and this is how it ends.

The end of this civilization, however, is not the end of the world, nor the human race. Yes, it will be a painful and chaotic transition interspersed with periods of relative calm. Facing it in full awareness of the facts will help us keep our sanity and make sound decisions down the line. The coming decades will be a massive come to Jesus moment for many folks living around you; be sure to share this information with them when they finally seem to be ready to hear it. Act as an anchor of sanity within your community, and try to keep others away from fanatics and demagogues promising a quick fix to something, that is impossible to fix.

“Life comes at us in waves. We can’t predict or control those waves, but we can learn to surf” ― Dan Millman

Until next time,

B

Thank you for reading The Honest Sorcerer. If you would like to support my work, please subscribe for free or consider an annual subscription, perhaps leaving a tip. Every donation helps, no matter how small. Thank you in advance!

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Notes:

(1) For comparison (and presuming a time machine, together with superhuman persuasion skills) consider what would’ve happened if we had gone back to 1950 and convinced our predecessors not to do what they eventually did… What would’ve happened if they didn’t go after all those seemingly plentiful resources at such a rapacious pace as they did, and saved those for future generations? Or at least if they could freeze their consumption levels and (the number of consumers) on that level, and did not started to use plastics and DDT (together with other pesticides and chemicals) the way they did? Well, since they were still using non-renewable resources and were polluting their environment beyond Nature’s ability to replenish or tolerate, they would’ve still found themselves in a similar situation like we are in today… Only one, or maximum two centuries later.

(2) Typical commercial electrolyzer system efficiencies are somewhere between 56%–73%, and this corresponds to 70.1–53.4 kWh of electricity needed to produce 1kg of hydrogen from 9 liters of water. Purifying water, required to run this sensitive process, on the other hand, consumes an additional 6.45 kWh of electricity for each kg of Hydrogen produced.

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