Sad isn’t it, that after all this time, since the 70s, we’re still in denial. Wait till we get to anger, which is what comes next. People today might be angry at one side or another politically, but wait til they discover there’s no way out of our predicament no matter which side you’re on.
People in the US pay far less per gallon of gas than people in other countries and they are still angry. And electric cars will cost more to "refill" with AI data centers hogging the lion's share of electricity output and increasing prices.
Thank You, B. There is a suddenness of realization, a crisis-mentality being constructed, by maintaining denial of reality until the point that existence-itself will be acutely threatened, with no way to "safety", except some single "choice" which people will be presented as an only-option... unless I am wrong.
A big crisis is being set up, and our "owners" (Carlin) will not let such a thing "go to waste".
I agree with your analysis. Initially, renewables offered a concrete path toward sustainability, but they have devolved into just another narrative—a comforting myth designed to make the status quo more acceptable as we decline.
Even when the writing is on the wall , wasteful consumption continues . We are still driven by having the largest or most expensive of everything . Status is all about having the most money , and that's the biggest Ponzi scheme along with cryptocurrencies which rely on our trust in the system . The future currencies will become food and fuel (and probably potable water) and if you have them and want to survive , will be "priceless" . The end of "financialism" will be hyperinflation and energy scarcity . The current level of technology is unsustainable in the long run and the power of the current oligarchs will evaporate with it . At some point people will stop spending all their spare time staring at their phones and observing the real world instead....
Minor point that does not affect the big picture. IEA data show that solar PV generates about 10% of the world's electricity in 2026 which is only about 2.5% of total primary energy consumption (i.e, not 8.7%).
"The belief in infinite growth must be upheld at all cost—no matter how unfounded it is."
Acknowledging the physical realities about world wide non renewable resources vs. "burn rate" in the USA is now tantamount to political suicide.
Our oligarchs (oil-igarchs?) are playing a game of economic musical chairs, the longer they can keep the music going, the more they sock away and more of absolutely everything they can buy up. Also, the harder the shock for "little people" when physical reality can't be ignored any longer, no matter what % of the media they own.
The oligarch clans do understand the eventual (and inevitable) results, hence the ever increasing number of billionaire bunkers constructed in the Southern hemisphere and ocean going megayachts with helicopter landing pads...
During the rise of energy use, GDP, population, urbanization and complexity, we get efficiency gains in everything we do, which we use the increasingly available cheap high EROEI energy to do.
On the way down, we get decreasing energy use, lower GDP and efficiency losses due to the simplification, while still having high urbanization.
The entire process on the way up was one of using the highest grade resources of everything, yet on the way down we only have the lower grade resources left to use, so they become exponentially harder to obtain, from the combination of lower grades, lower efficiencies and lower energy available to gain access to it all, while still having high urbanization with people removed by distance and technology from their food sources.” ?
Demand destruction is a counterweight to supply destruction. So here's something to think about as you drive around in your gigantic pickemup truck with the duals and the huge side mirrors; OR in your gigantic Urban Assault Vehicle (aka SUV). That "dirty hippie commie pinko" riding his bike is actually saving lots of diesel and gas for YOU to consume. So BE NICE to the cyclists and don't run them off the road. You will benefit further on down the line.
Not to be pounding the modular reactor drum too loudly, but electrification of the rail network seems like one effective measure to reduce diesel fuel consumption. Much of Europe and China are already electrified, but the US rail network is still mostly diesel except for parts of the east coast.
A major capital investment to be sure, but with several advantages. 1. the rights of way already exist in the form of the railways themselves, so little to no additional land is needed. 2. Construction and transportation of materials is facilitated by the railways themselves, so few outside contractors need be involved. 3. The key to powering the network is just on the horizon - modular thorium or uranium reactors located at intervals along the ROW. No need to access existing grids, except perhaps for urban or localized operations.
Incidentally, not all mining operations are diesel only. Some large mines are electrified, and this can also be extended using modular reactors. The same is true for shipping, which only needs a source of heat-to-steam to drive the turbines, which can also be done with modular reactors.
The UK rail network is still only 50% electrified. Not sure if that means 50% of train.km or track.km. Much of it south of London is third rail which I don't think was a very good system.
Switzerland had electrified virtually all its lines (overhead cables) by about the end of the 20th. century.
One compelling theme from B’s coverage is the inevitable inability to overcome the finite. Modernity spends so much time and energy on creative paths to compensate and extend itself, and far less time internalizing hard limits that human ingenuity and technology cannot overcome in the long run.
As a species, humans have a solid track record of ignoring these limits, and an equally consistent one of growth and collapse in the face of them. The next collapse will be exponentially greater due to the world’s current interconnectivity and complexity. Exactly how and when is unknown, but it will be spectacular.
Correlation is not causation, but I notice the decline in fuel demand coincides with a decline in the birth rates in both the EU and USA. Fewer people = less demand. If not a factor today, sure to kick in at some point, no?
If not for immigrants (previously labelled refugees) most of the wests populations would be falling . Children are expensive and we are driven by materialism.
If you look at the birthrate in western nations you'll see that we crossed over into negative territory in the early 70's, about the same time that inflation started to kick in and prices began to outpace wage growth. The underlying cause is most likely the financial shenanigans associated with excess money creation once the $ anchor to gold was abandoned.
So yes, children are expensive, but I wouldn't attribute that to materialism, except in the sense that the materials we need to lead a decent life became more expensive and for most couples required more than one income to achieve. So more women in the workforce meant later family formation thus fewer children.
Bacteria racing across the petri dish operate on the same principle.
The advantage of multicellular organisms is being able to sense and navigate their surroundings.
In that states function as social super organisms, government, executive and regulatory, is the nervous system, while money and banking are blood and the circulation system.
We have evolved enough to understand that as government has to serve the entire society, if only to prevent civil wars and revolutions, that it works best as a public utility.
We haven’t yet come to understand the same principle applies to banking.
When the medium enabling markets is a player and not a utility, the rest are tenant farmers.
In a market economy, money is the medium. In a capitalist economy, money is the message. One is a tool, the other is a god.
As linear, goal oriented creatures in this cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality, people see money as signal to save and store, while markets need it to circulate. Consequently Econ 101 refers to money as both medium of exchange and store of value.
Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. If we treated roads like we treat money, everything would be paved over, but we would still be fighting over who has the biggest lots.
In your body, blood is the medium, fat is the store. Mix them up and you are dead. Try telling a doctor that medium and store are interchangeable and he will look at you like you are really stupid, but to an economist, it would be common knowledge. Consequently the entire financial accounting system of society has been turned into a giant casino.
So rather than resources being allocated where they would have the greatest benefit, much is siphoned off to feed large egos, leaving the rest to fight over the scraps. It would be like the heart telling the hands and feet to go suck dirt, as it is keeping the blood for itself.
As a medium, you own money like you own the section of road you are on, or the air and water flowing through your body. It doesn't have your picture on it, you don't hold the copyrights and, most importantly, are not directly responsible for its value, like a personal check.
While we might think of it as a commodity to mine from the economy, like we mine gold from the ground, or bitcoin from computer processing, it functions as a contract, between the holder and the rest of society.
As a contract, storing the asset side of the ledger requires a debt on the other side, so much economic, social and political activity is designed to generate debt, to store the illusion of wealth. Such as burying younger generations in debt, rather than investing in them.
That the flunkies allowed in DC are best at running up debt and the financial sector needs this debt to grow metastatically is not coincidence. The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
“The real money is in bonds.”
The banks are having their, "Let them eat cake." moment.
Nor for the slugs who get fried either. Just today I had to scrape off a fried slug who got caught between the power and the ground contacts on my charge controller box for my solar-powered electric fence. Just scraping off the carcass didn't stop the short. I had to scrub between the terminals with a wire brush. Who knew that slug slime has a high conductivity?
Where I live life goes on as usual. This year's fields of corn have been planted. People continue to roll along the highways and even make short and pointless trips in town (when they could easily get around by walking) in their Ford F150s and Dodge Rams. Other than complaining vaguely about the high cost of gas and food, nobody talks about this stuff. Part of me is perversely looking forward to a time when economic contraction gets addressed openly in "mainstream news."
I have been following this topic for a few years now, mainly through the web sites "Surplus Energy Economics" (Tim Morgan) and "Our Finite Earth" (Gail Tverberg). It is always sobering reading seeing how the realities that no one wants to think about due to normalcy bias just seem to be closing in on us more and more relentlessly.
The increased debt-financing and money printing result in an increasingly k-shaped economy, which allows "the elites" to continue to be insulated from its adverse effects, and even to have a sense of personal success due to the inflation of various asset prices that goes along with the Cantillon effect. The more financialised our economy becomes, the less likely "the elites" will seriously try to address the problem because it is not really impacting them personally all that much.
Not that there are easy solutions, but under these circumstances "the elite" become even less likely to find them!
And yet again you engage in the primary energy fallacy...
"See, a physically growing world economy requires more mining, more agriculture, more construction, more goods delivered etc. by definition. In other words: higher oil and especially higher diesel fuel consumption"
Yes there are issues and it does require mining but humanity now has access to the means to generate and store and use incredibly cheap energy used really efficiently.
You continue to think that because we have been fully reliant on ( incredibly inefficient) fossil fuel energy, that we need to keep doing that or everything will colkapse
“Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s book “More and More and More”, an amazing history of energy and explanation of why there never has been an energy transition or will be. We just keep burning more and more and more wood, coal, oil, and natural gas. “?
Sad isn’t it, that after all this time, since the 70s, we’re still in denial. Wait till we get to anger, which is what comes next. People today might be angry at one side or another politically, but wait til they discover there’s no way out of our predicament no matter which side you’re on.
People in the US pay far less per gallon of gas than people in other countries and they are still angry. And electric cars will cost more to "refill" with AI data centers hogging the lion's share of electricity output and increasing prices.
"Despite solar’s rapidly increasing share of world energy—now at 8.7%"
It's actually much lower: solar is 8.7% of electricity, which is only 20% of "energy".
https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-as-a-share-of-primary-energy?tab=line
In 2024 solar was only 2.8% of "energy"
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitution?stackMode=relative
Thank You, B. There is a suddenness of realization, a crisis-mentality being constructed, by maintaining denial of reality until the point that existence-itself will be acutely threatened, with no way to "safety", except some single "choice" which people will be presented as an only-option... unless I am wrong.
A big crisis is being set up, and our "owners" (Carlin) will not let such a thing "go to waste".
I agree with your analysis. Initially, renewables offered a concrete path toward sustainability, but they have devolved into just another narrative—a comforting myth designed to make the status quo more acceptable as we decline.
Even when the writing is on the wall , wasteful consumption continues . We are still driven by having the largest or most expensive of everything . Status is all about having the most money , and that's the biggest Ponzi scheme along with cryptocurrencies which rely on our trust in the system . The future currencies will become food and fuel (and probably potable water) and if you have them and want to survive , will be "priceless" . The end of "financialism" will be hyperinflation and energy scarcity . The current level of technology is unsustainable in the long run and the power of the current oligarchs will evaporate with it . At some point people will stop spending all their spare time staring at their phones and observing the real world instead....
Minor point that does not affect the big picture. IEA data show that solar PV generates about 10% of the world's electricity in 2026 which is only about 2.5% of total primary energy consumption (i.e, not 8.7%).
@William E Rees
“only about 2.5% of total primary energy”
————-
Saved me the time, thanks.
"The belief in infinite growth must be upheld at all cost—no matter how unfounded it is."
Acknowledging the physical realities about world wide non renewable resources vs. "burn rate" in the USA is now tantamount to political suicide.
Our oligarchs (oil-igarchs?) are playing a game of economic musical chairs, the longer they can keep the music going, the more they sock away and more of absolutely everything they can buy up. Also, the harder the shock for "little people" when physical reality can't be ignored any longer, no matter what % of the media they own.
The oligarch clans do understand the eventual (and inevitable) results, hence the ever increasing number of billionaire bunkers constructed in the Southern hemisphere and ocean going megayachts with helicopter landing pads...
https://youtu.be/tPZ7wjiM5yw?si=a7b6hvFzoS1Ri1Dd
This will be reality for the elites:
https://vimeo.com/319602435
Nope. The evil/amoral who profited obscenely will live long, happy lives unless we proactively correct that situation.
”HideAway:
During the rise of energy use, GDP, population, urbanization and complexity, we get efficiency gains in everything we do, which we use the increasingly available cheap high EROEI energy to do.
On the way down, we get decreasing energy use, lower GDP and efficiency losses due to the simplification, while still having high urbanization.
The entire process on the way up was one of using the highest grade resources of everything, yet on the way down we only have the lower grade resources left to use, so they become exponentially harder to obtain, from the combination of lower grades, lower efficiencies and lower energy available to gain access to it all, while still having high urbanization with people removed by distance and technology from their food sources.” ?
https://un-denial.com/2026/04/21/how-is-this-possible-seriously/
Demand destruction is a counterweight to supply destruction. So here's something to think about as you drive around in your gigantic pickemup truck with the duals and the huge side mirrors; OR in your gigantic Urban Assault Vehicle (aka SUV). That "dirty hippie commie pinko" riding his bike is actually saving lots of diesel and gas for YOU to consume. So BE NICE to the cyclists and don't run them off the road. You will benefit further on down the line.
Not to be pounding the modular reactor drum too loudly, but electrification of the rail network seems like one effective measure to reduce diesel fuel consumption. Much of Europe and China are already electrified, but the US rail network is still mostly diesel except for parts of the east coast.
A major capital investment to be sure, but with several advantages. 1. the rights of way already exist in the form of the railways themselves, so little to no additional land is needed. 2. Construction and transportation of materials is facilitated by the railways themselves, so few outside contractors need be involved. 3. The key to powering the network is just on the horizon - modular thorium or uranium reactors located at intervals along the ROW. No need to access existing grids, except perhaps for urban or localized operations.
Incidentally, not all mining operations are diesel only. Some large mines are electrified, and this can also be extended using modular reactors. The same is true for shipping, which only needs a source of heat-to-steam to drive the turbines, which can also be done with modular reactors.
The UK rail network is still only 50% electrified. Not sure if that means 50% of train.km or track.km. Much of it south of London is third rail which I don't think was a very good system.
Switzerland had electrified virtually all its lines (overhead cables) by about the end of the 20th. century.
One compelling theme from B’s coverage is the inevitable inability to overcome the finite. Modernity spends so much time and energy on creative paths to compensate and extend itself, and far less time internalizing hard limits that human ingenuity and technology cannot overcome in the long run.
As a species, humans have a solid track record of ignoring these limits, and an equally consistent one of growth and collapse in the face of them. The next collapse will be exponentially greater due to the world’s current interconnectivity and complexity. Exactly how and when is unknown, but it will be spectacular.
Correlation is not causation, but I notice the decline in fuel demand coincides with a decline in the birth rates in both the EU and USA. Fewer people = less demand. If not a factor today, sure to kick in at some point, no?
Ebear,
If not for immigrants (previously labelled refugees) most of the wests populations would be falling . Children are expensive and we are driven by materialism.
If you look at the birthrate in western nations you'll see that we crossed over into negative territory in the early 70's, about the same time that inflation started to kick in and prices began to outpace wage growth. The underlying cause is most likely the financial shenanigans associated with excess money creation once the $ anchor to gold was abandoned.
So yes, children are expensive, but I wouldn't attribute that to materialism, except in the sense that the materials we need to lead a decent life became more expensive and for most couples required more than one income to achieve. So more women in the workforce meant later family formation thus fewer children.
Bacteria racing across the petri dish operate on the same principle.
The advantage of multicellular organisms is being able to sense and navigate their surroundings.
In that states function as social super organisms, government, executive and regulatory, is the nervous system, while money and banking are blood and the circulation system.
We have evolved enough to understand that as government has to serve the entire society, if only to prevent civil wars and revolutions, that it works best as a public utility.
We haven’t yet come to understand the same principle applies to banking.
When the medium enabling markets is a player and not a utility, the rest are tenant farmers.
In a market economy, money is the medium. In a capitalist economy, money is the message. One is a tool, the other is a god.
As linear, goal oriented creatures in this cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality, people see money as signal to save and store, while markets need it to circulate. Consequently Econ 101 refers to money as both medium of exchange and store of value.
Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. If we treated roads like we treat money, everything would be paved over, but we would still be fighting over who has the biggest lots.
In your body, blood is the medium, fat is the store. Mix them up and you are dead. Try telling a doctor that medium and store are interchangeable and he will look at you like you are really stupid, but to an economist, it would be common knowledge. Consequently the entire financial accounting system of society has been turned into a giant casino.
So rather than resources being allocated where they would have the greatest benefit, much is siphoned off to feed large egos, leaving the rest to fight over the scraps. It would be like the heart telling the hands and feet to go suck dirt, as it is keeping the blood for itself.
As a medium, you own money like you own the section of road you are on, or the air and water flowing through your body. It doesn't have your picture on it, you don't hold the copyrights and, most importantly, are not directly responsible for its value, like a personal check.
While we might think of it as a commodity to mine from the economy, like we mine gold from the ground, or bitcoin from computer processing, it functions as a contract, between the holder and the rest of society.
As a contract, storing the asset side of the ledger requires a debt on the other side, so much economic, social and political activity is designed to generate debt, to store the illusion of wealth. Such as burying younger generations in debt, rather than investing in them.
That the flunkies allowed in DC are best at running up debt and the financial sector needs this debt to grow metastatically is not coincidence. The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
“The real money is in bonds.”
The banks are having their, "Let them eat cake." moment.
The financial tail is wagging the economic dog.
denial delusions outright fanatical to think there is a chance in hell we can continue on this trajectory
"Infinite growth has never been greener".
Not for the grass under those nice shiny solar cells arrays.
Nor for the slugs who get fried either. Just today I had to scrape off a fried slug who got caught between the power and the ground contacts on my charge controller box for my solar-powered electric fence. Just scraping off the carcass didn't stop the short. I had to scrub between the terminals with a wire brush. Who knew that slug slime has a high conductivity?
Thanks ever so much for the knowledge! Now I have to drink enough Glenmorangie to forget that image... 8-)
You need some sheep for those areas…
Where I live life goes on as usual. This year's fields of corn have been planted. People continue to roll along the highways and even make short and pointless trips in town (when they could easily get around by walking) in their Ford F150s and Dodge Rams. Other than complaining vaguely about the high cost of gas and food, nobody talks about this stuff. Part of me is perversely looking forward to a time when economic contraction gets addressed openly in "mainstream news."
I have been following this topic for a few years now, mainly through the web sites "Surplus Energy Economics" (Tim Morgan) and "Our Finite Earth" (Gail Tverberg). It is always sobering reading seeing how the realities that no one wants to think about due to normalcy bias just seem to be closing in on us more and more relentlessly.
The increased debt-financing and money printing result in an increasingly k-shaped economy, which allows "the elites" to continue to be insulated from its adverse effects, and even to have a sense of personal success due to the inflation of various asset prices that goes along with the Cantillon effect. The more financialised our economy becomes, the less likely "the elites" will seriously try to address the problem because it is not really impacting them personally all that much.
Not that there are easy solutions, but under these circumstances "the elite" become even less likely to find them!
And yet again you engage in the primary energy fallacy...
"See, a physically growing world economy requires more mining, more agriculture, more construction, more goods delivered etc. by definition. In other words: higher oil and especially higher diesel fuel consumption"
Yes there are issues and it does require mining but humanity now has access to the means to generate and store and use incredibly cheap energy used really efficiently.
You continue to think that because we have been fully reliant on ( incredibly inefficient) fossil fuel energy, that we need to keep doing that or everything will colkapse
“Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s book “More and More and More”, an amazing history of energy and explanation of why there never has been an energy transition or will be. We just keep burning more and more and more wood, coal, oil, and natural gas. “?
https://energyskeptic.com/2026/more-and-more-and-more-one-of-the-best-books-on-energy-ever-written/