The Destiny of Civilization

From the cave to the stars…?

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

We live in dangerous times. Everything seems to be out of normal: stagnating economies, inflation, wars and an unfolding ecological and climate disaster. This is clearly not how things ought to be… While many just wave a hand and say, we will get over it, an increasing number of people feel — almost instinctively — that there is something terribly amiss with the stories we tell ourselves about where we are headed as a society. By now we should be already on track to “decarbonize” the economy and green technologies should’ve brought about a new bout of prosperity… What we have instead is rising emissions, a fracturing world order, and a rapid decline of living standards, especially in the most prosperous parts of the globe… What’s wrong with you, world…? Isn’t there a better story out there to help us through this perilous period?

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I ended my previous essay about the decline of science and progress on a rather philosophical note — calling for a new eschatology enabling us to move past this civilization and to let go what cannot be hold onto. Eschatology, a word of Greek origin, is a set of beliefs concerning the end — be it the end of a human life, or the end of times itself. While the expression is used to discuss religious matters, this time I will focus on a much wider set of beliefs, concerning not only a certain faith, but civilization itself. Although this might sound a little abstract, what we — and most importantly our politicians — believe what our ultimate destiny is as a society, however, has an outsized impact on our future. We are in the process of leaving behind a certain mindset, but not because of a sudden enlightenment, but because of sheer necessity. The quote from Antonio Gramsci could not be more timely than today:

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

But what does all this has to do with the decline of science, resource depletion, or the ecological disaster unfolding in front of our eyes? Well, more than a lot. Let me start with the guiding belief of modernity: the myth of progress. Up until recently it was considered perfectly normal to believe in infinite growth on a finite planet. This tenet was supported by the idea that science can, and will, find an answer to all of our problems: be it novel viruses, climate change or resource depletion. Should we run out of a certain raw material, for example, we would simply find a substitute or visit the meteor belt (perhaps dig up the seafloor) for more. All of our concerns around energy would be solved in a similar fashion: by deploying ever more renewables and later: hydrogen fusion. CO2 then could be removed by huge machines, or if a faster solution were needed, geoengineering [sic] would surely save the day.

“What does this has to do with eschatology then, or concerning the end of times?” — one might ask at this point. “There are no end-times according to this narrative…” And this is exactly the point. According to the advocates of progress, the destiny of humanity is among the stars. We will never have to face material or ecological limits to our ambitions, and should we do, then we would simply transcend our material nature. Our consciousness would be uploaded to the galactic internet, where we would roam free forever; without ever having to worry about physical or ecological limits. (A small but notably curious faction actually believes that we are already there, and what we see around us is just a simulation run on a supercomputer floating in outer space.)

This belief system, built around the supremacy of the human mind, is shared by many (if not all) leaders of the modern world — especially in the West — and not without self-interest. Actually it’s quite beneficial for all the members of the ruling caste to be an advocate for the religion of progress. Campaign donations and votes tend to go to the candidate who promises more prosperity for the people, and ever higher profits for corporations. In fact, our entire financial-economic model depends on endless growth, so it’s vital to not only believe in this myth but to actively promote it. Growth must not stop or be questioned. Ever.

Thus it’s no wonder that politicians of all stripes rather borrow more money to prop up GDP figures than admit that there is something fundamentally wrong with their model. For these politicians and corporate leaders climate change, inflation, or funding endless wars is just a problem to be solved — a question of monetary investment and will. They’re literally paid not to understand that all of their proposed “solutions” depend on an ever expanding fossil fuel base, combined with an ever better energy return on investment. 

Those who read my blog long enough know that neither is possible on the long run. Rich, easy to drill / mine deposits of oil and metal ores have been already all depleted. What remains requires ever more energy to get: ever more drilling and digging — ever deeper, ever harder. As a result our energy system as a whole (including both fossil fuels and every other means of generating heat and electricity) is accelerating towards a dead state, where it becomes unable to power both the economy and the recovery of new reserves at the same time. Simply put: the more energy is needed to maintain fossil fuel production the less remains for other uses. This process, driven by depletion, has already started to cannibalize the production of every other energy source be it hydro, nuclear or “renewables”. And since ALL these alternatives depend on fossil fuels for the mining and manufacturing of their components, transportation and maintenance (even their recycling), this self-cannibalization will soon result in an ever shrinking supply of energy and resources.¹

This is where we reach the breaking point in the narrative. For the reasons stated above, soon it will be simply impossible to maintain a belief in an accelerating energy transition (which never was), let alone in a fairy tale like sustainable economic growth. In fact, this ever accelerating energy cannibalism is the very reason why energy intensive to make essentials like food and household energy keeps getting more and more expensive every year. Since there is no way to cut back on their use, debt must be taken to pay for them, driving up both prices, and the amount of money sloshing around in the system. It’s important to understand at this point that issuing new debt is a form of money creation. Thanks to fractional reserve lending, banks can lend out more money than what they have on hand. And since four years now, they don’t even have to have any deposits to back up their loans:

On March 26, 2020, the Federal Reserve reduced reserve requirements for all depositary institutions to zero. Instead, banks are now paid a specific interest rate on their reserve balance to encourage holding reserves.

So every time someone buys food or pays their bills on credit — and this is not to say it’s their fault — money is conjured into existence and starts circulating in the system. And while the principal payed back to the bank cancels out the money borrowed, the interest keeps on circulating — something which is equally true to every other form of debt. Since the supply of energy necessary to grow, manufacture and deliver more goods onto the market can no longer increase substantially (and most likely about to shrink later this decade) this trend can only end in hyperinflation — an exponentially increasing amount of money chasing a stagnating amount of goods. Add to this the massive government spending on endless unwinnable wars, all sorts of government subsidies and bail outs (all of course on credit), a heightened level of interest rates (requiring even more money to be borrowed in order to pay them), and you start to see how even the wealthiest nation on the planet can go bankrupt. First slowly, then all at once.

The effects of resource depletion — in the form of a relentless rise in the energy cost of extracting more resources and energy — has, surprise-surprise, hit those first who used the most of Earth’s bounty. Despite all the happy talk, neither oil nor metals production can be upheld at such high levels for long (neither in the US, nor elsewhere); and to make matters worse, critical minerals are already controlled by the West’s adversaries. Manufacturing of almost everything from solar panels to electric cars, or from drones to artillery shells are also dominated by Eurasian powers for the same reasons: resources and manufacturing capacity. With the return of industrial scale wars of attrition, we are witnessing the rapid unraveling of western economic and military hegemony in real time; with the only question being: what will be the final straw which will eventually break the camel’s back?

As the myth of infinite economic growth shatters, the wealth gap opens ever larger, and as younger generations feel ever more frustrated, what will you think happen next? If you placed your bets on an extension of democratic rights, freedom of speech and starting an honest public debate about the end of growth or the deep contradictions around handling climate change… Then, well, I have a bridge to sell you. On the other hand, if you thought that western democracies will increasingly turn into something eerily resembling an autocracy to maintain the status quo, then you might have just got it right; with a further escalation in the new (not so) “cold war” also in the cards.

On the other side of the divide, it is tempting to believe that as five hundred years of western hegemony is finally put to rest, a brave new world could emerge and another massive bout of economic growth could commence all around the world. According to this narrative climate change would be eventually “solved” by a massive production of solar panels and wind turbines by the newly emerging economic superpowers, which will make sure that the newly generated prosperity will be shared equally among its many citizens. Humanity could prosper then for — say — another five millennia.

Missing entirely from this idea is the notion that a) resource depletion does not care about your politics, and b) there is no human prosperity on a dead planet. All proposed solutions are still concerned with how to increase the production of goods and services, how to invite more customers into the game, and how to utilize even more resources. In other words: how to continue with the myth of progress, ecological destruction and human supremacy… And perhaps most importantly: how to remain in full denial of us being in overshoot. 

Humanity has simply grew too large and consumes far more natural and mineral resources than what could be regenerated in a year. Fish stocks. Forests. Ground water. Top soil. Sand. Minerals. Insects. Vertebrate species. Are all in a sharp decline. Our future lies not in remaining in denial and pretending that the West’s problems were solely due to their inapt leadership. It was not only the West as a political entity which was utterly unsustainable, but the entire economic model based on the extraction of finite resources, and the lifestyle it promoted. Something, which has already gained solid ground all around the world by now.

Instead of trying to perpetuate that which is unsustainable, we need a new eschatology, concerning the end of modernity and mass consumption. We have to step out of the current civilizational narrative, placing humans above all creatures and putting us in the role of sole arbiters of the fate of this planet. As the magic of fossil fuels and mineral abundance dissipates, we will face a massive ecological bottleneck, and its better to be prepared than surprised when it comes to pass. It is high time we openly and honestly discuss our future as a species, and our role in the ecosystem — regardless of where we come from.

We need a heartfelt admission that no single technological civilization based on a set of finite resources is sustainable. None. Why? Because all spend their nest egg — be it fertile topsoil, forests or coal, lithium and copper — a million times faster than it can be replenished. All that technology (in its narrowest technical sense) can do is to turn natural resources into products and services useful for us, at the cost of polluting the environment. Technology use is thus not only the root cause of our predicament, but it can only accelerate this process. More technology can only lead to faster depletion and more pollution. After a certain point however, and without dense energy sources like fossil fuels, there wont be any technology — at least not at the scale we see today. 

Civilizations are all cyclical in nature: some generations experience the ‘rising tide lift all boats’ period as resource extraction ramps up, while others have to live through its multi-decade long decline as those resources run out and the damages done to the environment add up. 

We are a species of this Earth, and we either succeed with the rest of life on this planet or go down together. We are just as obliged to obey the laws of ecology, thermodynamics and the maximum power principle, like any other complex system in the Universe, be them galaxies, stars, a pack of wolves, fungi or yeast cells. We are part of a much bigger whole, the web of life, the solar system, the galaxy. Returning to our proper place and becoming an integral part of the ecosystem will serve and fit into that whole much better than any technutopian solution could. Knowing what we know today, it looks ever more certain that we were following the wrong narrative all along. As the old story unravels, will we double down or realize that we have made a terrible mistake…? This is the true crisis of our times, not a regime shift in world politics. Something, not even Gramsci, Marx, or any other revolutionary realized.

Until next time,

B

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1. I increasingly came to the view that this energetic dilemma is the answer to the Fermi-paradox, or why we haven’t met alien civilizations yet. Driven by geology, and ultimately by the rules of star formation, the amount of accessible high ROI energy available to any species in the Universe is likely to be rather limited, and in a form not yielding to long distance space travel. Heavier elements are rather rare: much more common are Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Silicon, Magnesium, Sulfur, Iron or Carbon, the essential building blocks of life and most rock formations on Earth-like planets. Based on that it is most likely that other life forms are also carbon based, which in turn leave behind a deposit of fossil fuels. Uranium or other more potent energy sources are rather rare, and if found in larger quantities are very much poisonous to life. So if there is intelligent life on other planets, they most probably face the same issues: climate change and the depletion of rich fossil fuel deposits. Since they also lack the dense energy forms to visit other planets — not to mention the huge distances — it is highly unlikely that we will ever bump into each other... Similarly, I find it rather doubtful that we, or other species, will ever be able to build supercomputers capable of simulating the Universe. The resources and energy needed to build and maintain these things are simply not available on a realistic basis. Again, if they were, and given billions of years of evolution, shouldn’t be the Galaxy teeming with life already?