How I Came To Believe That Civilization Is Unsustainable
A Practical Guide
Warning! What follows is not easy to digest, let alone to accept. If you think that this is all crap, or the very thought of a potential end to this way of life freaks you out, I recommend not to read any longer and close this post. Forget about this topic and live a happy life!
This post has originally appeared on my Medium blog, although I believe its message is still valid and helps understanding the topics I usually write about. I’ve also made several updates and edits to it for better clarity — you might find worthwhile to read it again.
After telling the story of my personal journey let me show you the reasons why I came to believe that our civilization is approaching its final descent. As you will see, it’s a familiar pattern, one that has been experienced by many civilizations before, and I’m sure will be experienced by many more following this one. Although the “end of times” were forecast many times before, remember that the “end” did eventually come for all prior civilizations: the Romans, Mayans, and all the others before.
What is different this time, is that now we have developed a scientific understanding why civilizations collapse. Unlike prophets of prior times, we now have solid evidence for trends clearly pointing in the wrong direction, putting our sustainability — if not our very survival — into question. I’ve collected some of these in this article and added my observations linking them into one more-or-less coherent picture, so it can serve as a useful guide in understanding what is really going on behind the scenes of our great unraveling.
Don’t take my word for it: feel free to research any of these topics. Just highlight a phrase and hit ‘define’ or ‘search’ depending on the platform you use.
While doing so, you might be lured into thinking that many of these issues can be ‘tackled’ (oh God, how I hate this word… sorry). Keep in mind however, that a number of these things have ended civilizations almost single-handedly before, and now they’ve got company. Quite a big one, for that matter. If you still think that this civilization can survive the coming storm after reading (and processing) the list below, then I you might want to read the list again…
This time without the pink glasses though.
What’s important to note here is that these topics are the net results of many positive and negative trends. None of them are news-bites about single events, which we could dismiss as pessimistic, then move on by reading some good news. Biodiversity loss is a good example: I read dire warnings almost every week, and while there were huge steps made in protecting a few fragile habitats or one or two endangered species, the overall picture still remains a strong downward trend, with no signs of turning.
The problem is, that we are not addressing the root cause to these issues. We are just fiddling around the edges, achieving quick wins here and there, while business as usual continues to roar full speed ahead…
Some topics are recurring, affecting most civilizations before, some are unique to ours due to the use of technology. Some are overarching our species entire history. So, while you are reading the list, do not miss to observe the historic patterns and parallels, their interconnected nature (solving one might aggravate another), and notice how they will not disappear even after our current civilization stops worsening them.
Resource depletion: attempting infinite growth on a finite planet is not a winning strategy. Yet every civilization gives it a shot, using finite resources (be it renewable or non-renewable) at an ever increasing and ever more unsustainable rate. A forest has a certain area, and a certain number of trees which can be harvested sustainably. Topsoil in a given country has a certain thickness and a certain amount of plant nutrients to it. Mines have a certain amount of metals that can be “produced” economically. Eventually every civilization uses up all of its cheap, easy to extract resources available to them, then perishes. Some natural resources replenish over time allowing multiple successive waves of civilizations, while some get permanently destroyed or depleted. This is a prime reason behind the limited shelf-life of every civilization and explains why all of them who are using non-renewable resources are destined to disappear — ours included.
Ecological overshoot: advancement in technology never saved any civilization from its demise before, and will certainly won’t save this one either. The reason is simple: technology keeps pushing out the boundaries — but only up to a certain point (see below). It can temporarily increase the carrying capacity of the land, but not forever. Population size and consumption are (and always were) on the other hand oblivious to this fact and kept increasing well beyond the limits set by resources (both natural and mineral). This is overshoot: using more natural and mineral resources than what can be replenished, while at the same time releasing more pollutants than what can be absorbed. Once reached, there is no safe return: civilizations have to keep doing what they are doing to avoid collapse, but by doing so they’re just hastening their demise. This is where we are at the moment.
Diminishing returns: Each technological advancement in acquiring resources requires ever greater investments in innovation, energy, complexity and material use, while providing ever smaller returns. Eventually all technologies end up hitting economic limitations well before coming close to their physical limits. Increasing the use of technology thus eventually reaches a point (beyond diminishing returns) where further advancements come at higher costs than benefits (the later being realized elsewhere). This not only causes more harm than good, but also starts to inflate an unserviceable debt bubble... And not only in financial terms.
Peak technology: Due to diminishing returns in acquiring new technologies, advancement in science and technology in a given field slows down to a point where progress is barely noticeable. The next step requires too much energy, material resources and time… Things which are simply not available to the given civilization finding itself fighting battles at all fronts. It may not be obvious today, but mining in space or hydrogen fusion will remain a pie in the sky forever for the same reason: these technologies would require more energy, resources and time to scale than we can spare. Why? Read on…
Fragility: in its frenzy to fight off increasing costs of complexity civilizations (and this one especially) remove all buffers: safety stocks, excess capacities not producing profits etc. This, combined with depletion, inevitably translates into supply chain fragility, leading to disruptions, transportation delays and shortages, making a return to “normal” ever harder to achieve with each passing crises.
Climate change makes agriculture and life on Earth harder and harder to maintain. It has a profound effect on biodiversity and crop yields (here and here) as well as causing damages to (and a loss of) infrastructure due to intensified rainstorms, hurricanes, sea level rise, wildfires etc. Climate change alone has ended civilizations before, and at its current rate it has a pretty good chance against our current society as well. At the worst case: it can wipe us all out. While many believe that a climate collapse is imminent, I think it is going to be slow grind leaving ample room for these other factors to take effect. Others believe it is stoppable or even reversible by utilizing more technology, which is a nonsense knowing how technology use is a) unsustainable due to depletion and b) causes pollution and second order effects elsewhere often leading to even more warming. Finally the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has already reached levels not seen in 3 million years when ice caps where non-existent, Greenland and Antarctica was lush with forests and sea levels were hundreds of feet higher.
False solutions, or not seeing the forest for the trees. Our biggest ‘problem’ is not climate change. It is the predicament of overshoot: the consumption of Nature together with its finite resources, and polluting beyond tolerance. Renewables and electrification simply replace the consumption of one finite resource and its related pollution (fossil fuels and CO2) with another set of finite resources and their related pollution (metals and ecological destruction caused by mining, plus the CO2 released during the process). The same goes for carbon sequestration, geoengineering, the hydrogen economy, bio-fuels, fusion, mining in space, colonizing other planets and all the rest — as none of these address excess consumption, just prolong its shelf-life.
Technological lock-in: our technologies have co-evolved with one another. Evolution of technologies are very slow in real life, and even with planned obsolescence it takes many generations of products to get better in a certain respect. When viewed from way above, these technologies form a complex web, a suite of technologies, which is very hard to change: think oil wells, refineries, pipelines, petrol stations, asphalt roads, plastics… all forming a coherent whole. What matters the most though, is the huge financial incentive to use the existing system as long as possible. Since these systems wasn’t built in a year, but in decades and centuries it would take a similar timeframe to replace them with something else. A timeframe we simply doesn’t have.
Peak oil: We were placing all our eggs in one basket: fossil fuels. We are still getting 86% of our energy from these dirty resources — just like fifty years ago. The reasons are complex, but the main takeaway is simple: complex high tech civilizations require dense, portable and cheap fuels. Like oil, the master resource, the key to all other resources. So far, we have failed to find a scalable replacement, thus chances are that with the imminent, but long and slow demise of oil production our entire civilization will see its final sunset. This is Leibig’s law of the minimum in effect. If all other problems would disappear overnight, this single “issue” (of slowly declining oil extraction) alone would end our current way of life — together with our hopes for a high tech future — within the next two to five of decades.
Exponentially failing infrastructure: an exponential boom in infrastructure building (roads, bridges, dams, transmission lines, pipelines etc.) in the 20th century has brought about an exponential need in maintenance / replacement in the 21st as equipment ages. Expansion at this scale was a Ponzi scheme though, with ever-increasing rates of growth necessary to sustain long-term liabilities. Combined with disasters caused by climate change and war (depleting stocks of valuable equipment) we are facing a hyper-exponential increase in infrastructure repair costs in the decades ahead, tying up ever larger amounts of our dwindling resources. What can’t be sustained, won’t be sustained will be the rule.
Disappearing net energy (or the EROEI double whammy): it follows from the nature of resource depletion that more and more energy is needed to extract the same amount of resources (be it oil, or metals for renewables). Combined with an ever increasing need to repair infrastructure elements (most of it being essential to deliver energy, like pipelines, roads and transmission lines) we will face an impossible challenge: trying to replace a system which took hundred years to build using our best resources, with something much more complex, using a much less dense form of energy and from much scarcer resources.
Pollution: of all sorts from plastics to everlasting chemicals and radioactive waste. Toxins released to the environment has been causing sperm-counts to fall (not only in humans, but in other mammal species as well), increased rates of cancer, birth defects etc. Pollution is a side-effect to overshoot and technology use: putting a natural break on population growth and ensuring a decline in the future.
Ecological collapse, mass extinction: as a consequence of the above processes, species are disappearing a hundred times faster than anytime before during human history, or the past 65 million years for that matter. Fisheries are collapsing one after another (we have passed peak catch in the 1990’s already). Bees and insects are disappearing together with forest dwelling creatures. Coral reefs are bleaching. Oceans are becoming anoxic and acidic, developing vast dead zones. If this isn’t the time of the Great Dying, then nothing is. If you think any civilization can survive on a dead planet with rapidly depleting natural resources… Well, think again. Obviously there is a point where society breaks, and finally gives way to Nature regenerating herself… This time on her on terms.
Peak soil fertility / productivity: we have most probably passed the first, resulting in a falling micro-nutrient content of food, and without artificial fertilizers (made from non-renewable mineral resources), we would have already experienced a permanent drop in agricultural production too. Resource depletion will put an end this holiday from reality however: we will soon reach peak phosphorus and slowly run out of cheap natural gas too (both being key ingredients to fertilizers) in the decades ahead. Expect food prices to rise and stay elevated, out-pricing the poor from the market and leaving no money for people to spend on goods and services. The war and sanctions in Europe has provided ample evidence that shutting off fertilizer production due to high gas prices (together with the heating of green houses), and shutting off the import of potash had a devastating effect on food crop yields, leading to shortages.
Water scarcity: corporations (in mining, manufacturing, beverages and others) are increasingly getting into conflict with local people and agriculture over freshwater supplies. Not only because of an increasing frequency of droughts (due to climate change), but also because they are all using underground aquifers at an unsustainable rate. Another sign of overshoot, which could only be mitigated by using less technology (less mining, manufacturing etc.) in water scarce areas. Water desalination is not a solution: it requires energy and finite resources, while producing dangerous waste.
Mass migration: rising sea levels, droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, war will make more and more lands uninhabitable (yes, there are already once inhabited regions under water, or have become otherwise uninhabitable). This will force millions (if not billions) to leave their homes and look for shelter in another country. For examples, look no further than Europe, or the US southern border. Add resource/water-wars, political instability, economic hardships due to resource depletion and you can pretty safely bet that the 21st century will see the biggest migration in human history. Sudden inflows of people were already causing civilizations to fall in the past, so this unprecedented migration will surely cause many states to fail in the not so distant future.
Overproduction of elites: as wealth gets ever more concentrated at the top, while the middle-class slowly slides down the social ladder, ever more people wants to become part of the elite, increasing competition, political infighting, and creating entrenched factions ready to go to war with each other. Meanwhile short term thinking (focusing only on winning the next election), combined with greed and a lust for power led to corporations having a firm grip on decision makers. This is no longer a democracy. Not even a republic.
Inequality: again, this one alone has caused the fall of many civilizations before. As all of the wealth gets siphoned out of the lower classes they first loose their incentive to work (this is exactly where we are at today with the ‘great resignation’), then starve… or choose to overthrow the existing elite class (often with the help of competing power groups — see below).
Declining social cohesion: as a result of the previous points above, members of societies lose faith in a common goal and a uniting power. Societies within countries will continue to fracture into ever smaller factions, gradually becoming incapable to cooperate in any matter.
Propaganda: in order to preserve their failing status quo and power, elites resort to propaganda, suppressing dissent and curtailing free speech via direct government agency interventions. The process eventually reaches a point where even the very intelligence agencies responsible to provide truthful data to the ruling elite begin to filter and distort information in favor of supporting the narrative and avoiding punishment from the higher ups. Group think emerges as a result, the leadership class drifts further and further away from reality and government collapse becomes a question of when, not if.
Global war: the end of the uni-polar world, marked by Western hegemony is unquestionably coming to an end. The war in Ukraine marks only a tip of this massive iceberg coming apart in front of our eyes. This is nothing new however. Empires grew, prospered and fell many times before the West has become one, and all ended their life in a suicidal battle they could not won. This is not to say, that its contenders are not empires, they will experience the same fate due to the same factors, it just so happens that the West goes first where others follow, mainly due to resource depletion. Will this end in a nuclear conflict ending 90% life on the planet in an ensuing nuclear winter…? I hope not. There are still ample resources left in America for the US to become a ‘normal’ country in a multi-polar world — maintaining world hegemony though has ceased to be an option.
Capitalism self-terminating itself: turning finite resources into wealth starting with the cheapest, easiest to extract ones then moving on to ever more complex and costlier alternatives is a self-terminating process. There is a natural as well as an economic limit to wealth extraction. Once it is reached the system starts to live up its future and stops investing in expansion, as well as cutting corners in quality to maintain current output levels. The financial system on the other hand considers these natural limits to growth a mere ‘problem’ to be solved by more debt, and keeps expanding despite the fact that the real economy has long stopped growing. Eventually ever larger amounts of debt is needed to finance ever more costlier approaches to wealth creation, while returns are not at all guaranteed due to wildly fluctuating prices. As returns fail to materialize, costs increase due to scarcities and various disruptions, the financial Ponzi-scheme starts to crumble leading to its inevitable fall. What we witnessing in the West right now is just the beginning of this process.
Blindness to our predicament, combined with a massive tendency towards denial. Faced with all this information, people experience severe cognitive dissonance and enter various stages of grief. For most, the discrepancy between the reality of overshoot, resource depletion, the loss of being a world power and the end of their way of life is too big to bear: so they enter denial. Magical thinking, that someone somewhere is working on a ‘solution’, becomes their source of hope — not realizing that the predicament we are in is not a problem with a solution, but a slow grind with an outcome.
Humanity is acting like a mindless complex adaptive system — and unable to give up an iota of its energy use. In fact we are just simple cells of a giant superorganism, responding to the threats and opportunities around us, motivated by dopamine hits and automated by decades of cultural conditioning. Everyone wants to be rich and successful in life — saving the planet comes only thereafter. Should the 1% give up their consumption, the remaining 99% would happily jump on the bandwagon and use the newly freed up resources. There is no individual agency in stopping this train-wreck, we needed to change the system itself… It is just plain old human nature “blessed” with an illusion of a separate self, a false sense of agency and free will. We are all in this together, without anyone holding the steering wheel.
Unsustainable behavior trumps sustainability. Humans, along with every other creature, act unsustainably in an abundant world. Once left to its own devices (i.e. without proper checks and balances from predators) humans follow the ancient genetic programming and multiply into oblivion without giving a single thought whether this is sustainable or not. Evolution does not skip steps or plans ahead: it selects for the most successful features on the short term. So guess what happens if you have 10 sustainable (sort of) cultures on a continent, then suddenly an unsustainable one appears among them? Which one survives…? Well, none of them. The later, in its frenzy for resources, kills or outcompetes all other cultures then drives itself extinct. It doesn’t matter if this culture happens to be a bacteria, a new strain of a virus or white colonists on Turtle Island.
Civilizations are growth machines: they need to expand into new territories, occupying other lands for their cheap resources (the takeover method). Once growth stops however maintenance costs quickly overwhelm dwindling incomes and the system topples over. In a globalized economy on a finite planet reaching this point was only a question of time. There is no stable equilibrium for complex civilizations predicated on growth — only bio-regional and truly sustainable cultures have a chance on the long run (unless they become overwhelmed by technology use again). Not addressing overshoot, denying the root cause of the predicament we are in and pretending that we can play along just fine is a sure recipe for civilizational failure.
+1: But it’s different this time!!! No. It’s not. Overshoot is overshoot. Once your civilization starts to consume more than what naturally gets regenerated in its folly to pursue infinite growth on a finite planet, collapse is only a matter of time. It usually happens over the course of several decades if not centuries and happens in parallel with the decline of the resource base (fisheries, forests, topsoil, or in our case oil). In short it is due to over-consumption, pollution and a loss of a livable habitat — none of which we are ‘tackling’ or having much control over at the moment.
Knowing what I know today, I became comfortable with the thought of collapse. I’ve also made peace with the fact, that the main issue of overshoot won’t be addressed — and no one is to blame. Humanity had a long history spanning tens of thousands of years, all leading up this point in an immensely complex web of causes and effects. Thus the rise and fall of this fossil fuel based civilization was just as inevitable as the rise and fall of many older civilizations.
This is a perfectly normal, natural cycle of boom and bust. No leader, be it a dictator or an elected official can turn this around. This is a systemic issue and comes from the very nature of how complex systems form around energy — only to dissipate it all, then disappear into the mist. Knowing how much of Earth we have consumed in the past 150 years, how far we have depleted every resource from forests to fisheries, from coal mines to sand during our rapacious growth mania, it is not hard to imagine what comes next. Not Star Trek, for sure. Not even a return to “normal”.
In theory it would be quite possible to devise a sustainable culture — once this one is gone for good — lasting many millennia to come. Using permaculture practices, living in earth berm homes made from locally available, truly renewable materials, like wood, stones, clay, hemp etc. we could build a civilization lasting many millennia, albeit a rather primitive one measured with today’s standards. However, all it takes to drive this experiment to the ground is one spoiled generation, or one unsustainable culture, not giving a rat’s hind leg to sustainability — heck, you only live once! — and there goes your utopia. It has happened many times in the past, and there is absolutely no guarantee that it won’t happen again.
Such is life. Birth, growth, maturing then death. The same cycle repeats itself at all scales: from bacteria, to human societies, solar systems and galaxies. This is the world we live in. Be grateful, dear Reader, for you have seen the peak of human civilization. You have made it! It’s time to make peace with how it ends and start imagining what comes after.
Until next time,
B
Book References:
Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
Geodestinies: The Inevitable Control of Earth Resources over Nations and Individuals by Walter Lewellyn Youngquist —here is free audio recording by Micheal Dowd
Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change by William R. Catton Jr. — here is free audio recording by Micheal Dowd
Blogs and further resources:
Problems, Predicaments, and Technology — Erik Michaels
Peak Energy & Resources, Climate Change, and the Preservation of Knowledge
Surplus Energy Economics — Tim Morgan
Steve Bull (https://olduvai.ca)
Collapse of Industrial Civilization
Ashes Ashes (podcast)
Breaking Down: Collapse (podcast)
Thank you B🙏again😉
Over a year and one lonely comment? Anyhoo, finally someone puts all of the pieces together. I have had bits and pieces but now I can see the big picture as you have explained the topic better than probably any I have read. Or maybe I am just now “ready” to finally grasp the subject.