Excellent post, but why the quote from Ayn Rand of all people, given her belief in unlimited growth and the unlimited power of human innovation and ingenuity?
Great piece but, with respect, you misinterpret the definition of eco-footprint analysis. We have always emphasized that an eco-footprint (EF) estimate is a snapshot of the situation at the time of the analysis; that is, it is a static model that reflects consumption and technology in place 'just then'. No single EF estimate or annual overshoot day is intended to imply permanent conditions -- in fact many of our publications explicitly state that EF estimates will change with changes in technology, resource availability, population, consumption, etc. This means that making EF estimates over time will yield a series of snapshots that, like an old movie, provides a moving picture of the impact of changing conditions. So when you write: "This implies that from now on we would have to continuously recalculate our true ecological footprint based on locally available resources using low-tech, low energy means of extraction" you are correct. However, this is not a flaw in the method, but rather a true reflection of its structure -- eco-footprint estimates are, like GDP and many other socio-economic indicators, are still-camera pictures, not video clips.
On EF, since it doesn't actually take into account non-biological resources (e.g. minerals and energy sources), it can't be used to indicate sustainability (e.g. if the footprint was below primary productivity, a society could still be unsustainable if it makes use of non-renewable resources).
Excellent. It's puzzling isn't it, why more don't just get that it's all an energy equation and for this model that energy is oil, period. It's really not complicated, it's almost as though it would require not just an ignorance but a willful resistance not to grasp this. At any rate, we see the signs everywhere that we're at last-call. Trump for instance is eyeing my country, Canada, now. I get it. What do empires do to extend their reign? In recent times they access more oil. Through most of history, they expropriate territory. Canada has the third highest reserves on earth in the tarsands. The economics are the shits compared to conventional oil, but one thing the tar does have going for it that shale oil does not is crucial - diesel comes from it. So if the USA can find some way to fianlly annex Canada, they get both. Oil and more than a doubling of territory.
Smart move, and maybe better for all involved, even if it won't change the overall trajectory, which is down for all of us. Interesting times.
Yes, it used to be very puzzling to me. Until I finally understood how big a factor denial plays in our species (un-Denial dotcom is where I learned this).
Heck, half the overshoot community can't even truly accept this easily digestible quote from the movie 'Leave the World Behind':
We fu#k each other over all the time, without even realizing it. We fu#k every living thing on this planet over and think it’ll be fine because we use paper straws and order the free-range chicken. And the sick thing is, I think deep down we know we’re not fooling anyone. I think we know we’re living a lie. An agreed-upon mass delusion to help us deny and keep denying how awful we really are.
Except that humans aren't living a lie. They are living in a way one would expect, given their evolved abilities. The fact that most people don't understand that their society/civilisation is in overshoot is not their fault. Remember that free will is a myth.
Because you have no free will, you will behave exactly as you do, and blame all sorts of people for all sorts of things. That the fact of no free will is abhorrent to you does not change reality.
However, the point is that, collectively, we can't expect ourselves to do anything other than what we're doing.
True for the superorganism of us, as a mass. Absolutely. Basically just an appetite. Unfortunate are the individuals that claim this excuse for themselves, however.
No Eddy, they believe that nonsense for the same reason you believe in your own wacky conspiracies: FEAR... the air is rank with the smell of it these days. You see the reality of the world and lacking a way to deal with it rationally, retreat into a childish fantasy world where the numerous interwoven contradictions of the globe-spanning system that is making you miserable are reduced to simple ideas that are immune to further analysis or criticism.
A friend of mine works for an investment bank in London ... he was just telling me that 3 young kids of 3 different colleagues have cancer... these were perfectly healthy children BEFORE they took the Death Shots.
I have 4 good friends who are now DEAD after taking the Death Shots. They died of Turbo Cancer.
I have half a dozen friends who have myocarditis to varying degrees... two had heart attacks... courtesy of the DEATH SHOTS.
I know of easily 15-20 more people with serious problems after taking the DEATH SHOTS. Blood clots... neurological problems... sudden high blood pressure etc etc etc....
Feel free to take more DEATH SHOT boosters... cuz safe and effective
hahahahahahaha
In the United States, COVID-19 genetic injections are estimated to have caused more deaths than American casualties in WWI and WWII combined. The death toll even rivals the scale of the Civil War. This is a profound national tragedy, and accountability is urgently warranted. https://t.me/EdwardDowdReal/1170
I can understand that you will want to remain in denial and ignorance of the NOT Safe or Effective DEATH SHOTS.
If you were to acknowledge that they are DEADLY.... you'd not sleep at night...
Oh and BTW --- a friend who has Pfizer Heart Damage... had his private insurance increase 30%.... he complained to his broker ... his broker said cancer rates are off the charts since the Death Shots... he himself has taken 3 Death Shots...
Vaxxed Health Insurance Broker Living in Terror of Cancer
If it's a death shot, isn't that a good thing? I mean in relation to the rest of what you believe about the fossil fuel/net energy aspect of collapse, which is more or less what I and most people here also believe. Collapse is a tangible, living reality these days and it'll only get worse, much much worse in ways neither you or I can imagine. Possible solutions involve radical and globally coordinated structural change and seem unlikely to materialise quickly enough for them to have a chance to be successful.
I'd choose a quick death over living through multi-dimensional socio-economic dysfunction in a stroke-inducing heartbeat.
You're not a moron because you avoided the Death Shot, but you are in fact a moron just like the rest of us because there is no way you can avoid literally any other medicine. Not to mention food and drink. All of those things are industrially processed, packaged and delivered to you by the system they own and control and which you are inexorably part of.
Why would they arbitrarily limit themselves to vaccines if they want to, and are capable of, doing us a favour?
Canada is de facto part of the US already. None of the resources there are going to become cheaper to extract or more plentiful due to being annexed by the US.
Exactly, i've said this for years as a Canadian. We are a de-facto colony of the USA, and you are right of course about the resources, although the economics of refining and getting returns might well be simplified (i'm thinking of tarsands right now, our last source of oil, immense reserves, poor economics.) I have seen it estimated that Canada is from 50 to 70% dependent on the economy of the USA. I'm not sure it matters if you're 50% dependent on another country or 100% dependent. If 50% of your economy evaportates or becomes uneconomical, I expect you're 100% done as a developed nation.
The only way the plan makes sense is Canada exploited like a colony or something, i.e austerity and "disrupting" the public sector. And if it really comes to that point the same things will be done to Americans. I don't think it is anywhere near that point... yet. So whatever the rhetoric is covering for is likely intended as a step in that direction.
I don’t doubt that may be in the cards. All countries are living on borrowed time, now. It only makes sense that the more powerful ones will find increasing ways to exploit what they need from the weaker ones on terms favorable to them. This is nothing new, it’s just that during the oil era, oil dumped such a vast amount of excess energy (wealth) into the general system, all we had to do was exploit oil. That arrangement is ending.
Sudden "interest" in"buying Greenland and incorporating Canada into the US is the first public "notice" of impending energy and resource shortages.
Wars will be fought over resources, and since IMHO traditional mass large scale mechanicized energy consuming wars will no longer be possible, I would not be surprised to see more regional conflicts that can be fought "on the cheap," all the high tech missile technology notwithstanding. Wars are energy intensive, and so large scale projected wars like WWI and WWII will no longer be possible. I think Russia already recognizes this looming problem as it withdrew from Syria.
The US above all other western countries, has a civilian population armed to the teeth. What will happen first: Localized internal unrest (potentially self-destructive), or regional land/resource grabs (wars/invasions)? It's one thing to "buy" Greenland. It's another thing to try to invade and carve up Russia.
There are also talks to annex the Panama Canal as well. A good way of avoiding civil war is turning the frustrations of the population with their ruling elites against an outside "other". Canada and Greenland have so much empty land available! Housing crisis solved! Canada and Greenland will be the new "frontier" so to speak. The resources wars are playing out in real time. The world's preeminent empire is going to devour its own allies to sustain itself. Fascinating times indeed.
Tim Watkins at the Consciousness of Sheep blog makes an interesting point that the sudden interest in Greenland is because of it's suitability for data centres:
If there were a really significant increase in CO2, crop yields would increase a lot...On the other hand, the continued erosion of cropland, primarily but not entirely in the 3d world, and the continued draining of water aquifers which is unfixable, point to a major food crisis approaching...The major political crisis will be over the question of exporting food, when the native population is not secure, or prices explode...The Irish "potato famine" was in fact mostly caused by British landlords exporting millions of tons of food....
Technologically, US farmers have greatly reduced erosion with no-till farming, but the 3d world is incapable of that...
There is no "no till" farming. At best you have minimum or optimal tillage. And its advantages are case-sensitive and the forms of it that are competitive are also more expensive. The reduced soil erosion is contingent on the practice being sustained over several years along with all the risks thereby entailed.
Large scale minimum till is possible in the first world because we are sucking away the resources of the third world including agri products, and diverting some of that surplus to our inefficient and heavily subsidised agriculture.
Excellent summary piece, except for the section on "fertility". A recent PEW survey revealed that 47% of Americans 18-50 are choosing not to reproduce. Also, "population density stress" is driving high cortisol levels and that inhibits the master reproductive hormone, GNRH, which may be the cause of the crashing sperm counts and female reproductive failures. You imply that this is a bad thing, which is wrong headed on your part, if you ask Mother Earth and the other species we're driving to extinction. Dare I mention that I wrote a 2018 book, "Stress R Us", after a long career in medical/psychiatric practice, laying out the primary role of our overactive stress responses in the causation of ALL the top ten killers of modern urban/suburban humans. We are now 3,000 times more numerous than were our ancestral migratory Hunter-Gatherer clan/band members, whose clans/bands never numbered more than 150 members and controlled their populations to match the availability of food. What could go wrong? Everything?
Some good points. However, don't forget the most efficient engine we have is the human body. We can grow a tremendous amount of food with very little food energy. (I have decades of data on this.) This is also why slavery was such an efficient system in past civilizations. Now we use "energy slaves." When the fossil fuel energy slaves are too expensive to continue, we will have to either: 1) re-institute slavery or 2) collapse into less-complex social systems. Oops.
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies.
One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl. Source
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. Source
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident Source (Note: The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.)
“However, many of the radioactive elements in spent fuel have long half-lives. For example, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, and plutonium-240 has a half-life of 6,800 years. Because it contains these long half-lived radioactive elements, spent fuel must be isolated and controlled for thousands of years.” Source
It does not matter how remote you are, the jet stream and ocean currents will circulate these toxic cancer-causing substances around the globe. They will be picked up by convection and pour deadly rain on your crop and water supply.
Nobody survives the collapse of civilization. This will be an extinction event.
Kyle Young presents clear video evidence with analysis: A Forensics Examination of Video Evidence for DEW's (directed energy weapons) Being Used in the L.A. fires
So LAFD abandoned Palisades. As the smoke became overwhelming HPM’s (high power microwave weapons) must have been used. Here is another video from Fabian of what the abandoned cars look like now. Note all the slag that ran from the melted engine blocks and wheels, and the unburned trees. It got hot enough to melt metal in cars sitting in the middle of the street, away from the “wildfire”, but not hot enough to burn the trees in the middle of the wildfire!?
Good article but the following point needs a little elaboration:
"According to the latest UN numbers around 735 million people globally already face hunger and 3.1 billion cannot afford and/or do not have access to healthy diets. As economic conditions deteriorate expect these numbers to grow silently, with an increasing percentage of Western population joining the ranks of people facing malnutrition. Also expect fish, meat, diary and egg products — as well as exotic produce — to become ever more expensive, and thus increasingly inaccessible to the vast majority of the population."
1> The work of economist and professor Utsa Patnaik shows around 70% globally cannot meet the World Bank minimum of nutritional intake, so that number is likely to be closer to 6 billion rather than 3. Also, that percentage has been increasing since the late 80s and will likely continue to barring drastic systemic change.
2> The tropical third world is inherently more agriculturally productive than the cold temperate first world, since they can have multiple crops per year whereas we can only have one.
3> The primary reason why so many people in the third world are slowly dying of hunger is because the first world is parasitic on third world tropical and subtropical agricultural commodities that it cannot produce at all, or can only produce in their winters. These are not merely, or even mostly, "luxury" and "exotic" foods but staples like fruits, vegetables, sugar, coffee, cotton etc. And even though the first world produces abundant grain and animal products, it only does so via mineral and industrial inputs accumulated through that same process of drain from the third world (which are thus denied to third world agriculture), as well as the geopolitical and financial hegemony that goes along with all this and serves as the vehicle whereby we subsidise our extremely inefficient farm sectors.
4> So it's not just animal products that will become more expensive but much of the food basket itself since we are parasitic on the rest of the world not only for many agri products but also the things that enable our own agri production to exist at current levels.
5> What I've described above is a zero-sum game, or to use a precise term - a structural contradiction of the system we live in. As long as the overall system persists this structural dependence will not go away. Nor will it solved by "grow local buy local".
... in DelusiSTAN... where you live
Excellent post, but why the quote from Ayn Rand of all people, given her belief in unlimited growth and the unlimited power of human innovation and ingenuity?
That also puzzled me.
I would assume that her quote was not made in the context of ecology, or of anything remotely connected to material reality.
"Even a broken clock is right twice a day."
Well said. A good quote is a good quote ... and artful string of letters ... no matter who says it.
If it doesn't work then it can't be right at any time.
Great piece but, with respect, you misinterpret the definition of eco-footprint analysis. We have always emphasized that an eco-footprint (EF) estimate is a snapshot of the situation at the time of the analysis; that is, it is a static model that reflects consumption and technology in place 'just then'. No single EF estimate or annual overshoot day is intended to imply permanent conditions -- in fact many of our publications explicitly state that EF estimates will change with changes in technology, resource availability, population, consumption, etc. This means that making EF estimates over time will yield a series of snapshots that, like an old movie, provides a moving picture of the impact of changing conditions. So when you write: "This implies that from now on we would have to continuously recalculate our true ecological footprint based on locally available resources using low-tech, low energy means of extraction" you are correct. However, this is not a flaw in the method, but rather a true reflection of its structure -- eco-footprint estimates are, like GDP and many other socio-economic indicators, are still-camera pictures, not video clips.
It is an honor to see you here, sir.
Nice explanation.
On EF, since it doesn't actually take into account non-biological resources (e.g. minerals and energy sources), it can't be used to indicate sustainability (e.g. if the footprint was below primary productivity, a society could still be unsustainable if it makes use of non-renewable resources).
Can't wait for the next EF flickbook
Excellent. It's puzzling isn't it, why more don't just get that it's all an energy equation and for this model that energy is oil, period. It's really not complicated, it's almost as though it would require not just an ignorance but a willful resistance not to grasp this. At any rate, we see the signs everywhere that we're at last-call. Trump for instance is eyeing my country, Canada, now. I get it. What do empires do to extend their reign? In recent times they access more oil. Through most of history, they expropriate territory. Canada has the third highest reserves on earth in the tarsands. The economics are the shits compared to conventional oil, but one thing the tar does have going for it that shale oil does not is crucial - diesel comes from it. So if the USA can find some way to fianlly annex Canada, they get both. Oil and more than a doubling of territory.
Smart move, and maybe better for all involved, even if it won't change the overall trajectory, which is down for all of us. Interesting times.
Yes, it used to be very puzzling to me. Until I finally understood how big a factor denial plays in our species (un-Denial dotcom is where I learned this).
Heck, half the overshoot community can't even truly accept this easily digestible quote from the movie 'Leave the World Behind':
We fu#k each other over all the time, without even realizing it. We fu#k every living thing on this planet over and think it’ll be fine because we use paper straws and order the free-range chicken. And the sick thing is, I think deep down we know we’re not fooling anyone. I think we know we’re living a lie. An agreed-upon mass delusion to help us deny and keep denying how awful we really are.
Maybe humans are just dumb? https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-dumbest-species-ever
Except that humans aren't living a lie. They are living in a way one would expect, given their evolved abilities. The fact that most people don't understand that their society/civilisation is in overshoot is not their fault. Remember that free will is a myth.
Ah yes, no free will. So no one can be blamed. Ever. For anything.
All the rapists, paedos, murderers etc bear no reponsibility at all for their actions, because they have 'no free will'. Whatever.
Because you have no free will, you will behave exactly as you do, and blame all sorts of people for all sorts of things. That the fact of no free will is abhorrent to you does not change reality.
However, the point is that, collectively, we can't expect ourselves to do anything other than what we're doing.
True for the superorganism of us, as a mass. Absolutely. Basically just an appetite. Unfortunate are the individuals that claim this excuse for themselves, however.
The reason they believe the nonsense... is the same reason they believe the Covid Death Shots are Safe and Effective.
They believe whatever cnnbbc tells them to believe
No Eddy, they believe that nonsense for the same reason you believe in your own wacky conspiracies: FEAR... the air is rank with the smell of it these days. You see the reality of the world and lacking a way to deal with it rationally, retreat into a childish fantasy world where the numerous interwoven contradictions of the globe-spanning system that is making you miserable are reduced to simple ideas that are immune to further analysis or criticism.
So you took the Death Shot?
A friend of mine works for an investment bank in London ... he was just telling me that 3 young kids of 3 different colleagues have cancer... these were perfectly healthy children BEFORE they took the Death Shots.
I have 4 good friends who are now DEAD after taking the Death Shots. They died of Turbo Cancer.
I have half a dozen friends who have myocarditis to varying degrees... two had heart attacks... courtesy of the DEATH SHOTS.
I know of easily 15-20 more people with serious problems after taking the DEATH SHOTS. Blood clots... neurological problems... sudden high blood pressure etc etc etc....
Feel free to take more DEATH SHOT boosters... cuz safe and effective
hahahahahahaha
In the United States, COVID-19 genetic injections are estimated to have caused more deaths than American casualties in WWI and WWII combined. The death toll even rivals the scale of the Civil War. This is a profound national tragedy, and accountability is urgently warranted. https://t.me/EdwardDowdReal/1170
Disabilities have EXPLODED since the Death Shots - govt data https://t.me/EdwardDowdReal/1173
I can understand that you will want to remain in denial and ignorance of the NOT Safe or Effective DEATH SHOTS.
If you were to acknowledge that they are DEADLY.... you'd not sleep at night...
Oh and BTW --- a friend who has Pfizer Heart Damage... had his private insurance increase 30%.... he complained to his broker ... his broker said cancer rates are off the charts since the Death Shots... he himself has taken 3 Death Shots...
Vaxxed Health Insurance Broker Living in Terror of Cancer
And getting monthly cancer screenings
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/vaxxed-health-insurance-broker-living
Seems this exposing this conspiracy has saved my life. No DEATH SHOTS for Fast Eddy. I feel AWESOME hahaha
If it's a death shot, isn't that a good thing? I mean in relation to the rest of what you believe about the fossil fuel/net energy aspect of collapse, which is more or less what I and most people here also believe. Collapse is a tangible, living reality these days and it'll only get worse, much much worse in ways neither you or I can imagine. Possible solutions involve radical and globally coordinated structural change and seem unlikely to materialise quickly enough for them to have a chance to be successful.
I'd choose a quick death over living through multi-dimensional socio-economic dysfunction in a stroke-inducing heartbeat.
YES! They are doing us a favour https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-ultimate-extinction-plan-uep
However I have no desire to go down early with a vax injury ... and I am not a moron so no way I could take a Death Shot....
You're not a moron because you avoided the Death Shot, but you are in fact a moron just like the rest of us because there is no way you can avoid literally any other medicine. Not to mention food and drink. All of those things are industrially processed, packaged and delivered to you by the system they own and control and which you are inexorably part of.
Why would they arbitrarily limit themselves to vaccines if they want to, and are capable of, doing us a favour?
Perhaps we should stop selling oil to the US, and get the annexation over with.
Canada is de facto part of the US already. None of the resources there are going to become cheaper to extract or more plentiful due to being annexed by the US.
Exactly, i've said this for years as a Canadian. We are a de-facto colony of the USA, and you are right of course about the resources, although the economics of refining and getting returns might well be simplified (i'm thinking of tarsands right now, our last source of oil, immense reserves, poor economics.) I have seen it estimated that Canada is from 50 to 70% dependent on the economy of the USA. I'm not sure it matters if you're 50% dependent on another country or 100% dependent. If 50% of your economy evaportates or becomes uneconomical, I expect you're 100% done as a developed nation.
The only way the plan makes sense is Canada exploited like a colony or something, i.e austerity and "disrupting" the public sector. And if it really comes to that point the same things will be done to Americans. I don't think it is anywhere near that point... yet. So whatever the rhetoric is covering for is likely intended as a step in that direction.
I don’t doubt that may be in the cards. All countries are living on borrowed time, now. It only makes sense that the more powerful ones will find increasing ways to exploit what they need from the weaker ones on terms favorable to them. This is nothing new, it’s just that during the oil era, oil dumped such a vast amount of excess energy (wealth) into the general system, all we had to do was exploit oil. That arrangement is ending.
Sudden "interest" in"buying Greenland and incorporating Canada into the US is the first public "notice" of impending energy and resource shortages.
Wars will be fought over resources, and since IMHO traditional mass large scale mechanicized energy consuming wars will no longer be possible, I would not be surprised to see more regional conflicts that can be fought "on the cheap," all the high tech missile technology notwithstanding. Wars are energy intensive, and so large scale projected wars like WWI and WWII will no longer be possible. I think Russia already recognizes this looming problem as it withdrew from Syria.
The US above all other western countries, has a civilian population armed to the teeth. What will happen first: Localized internal unrest (potentially self-destructive), or regional land/resource grabs (wars/invasions)? It's one thing to "buy" Greenland. It's another thing to try to invade and carve up Russia.
There are also talks to annex the Panama Canal as well. A good way of avoiding civil war is turning the frustrations of the population with their ruling elites against an outside "other". Canada and Greenland have so much empty land available! Housing crisis solved! Canada and Greenland will be the new "frontier" so to speak. The resources wars are playing out in real time. The world's preeminent empire is going to devour its own allies to sustain itself. Fascinating times indeed.
Tim Watkins at the Consciousness of Sheep blog makes an interesting point that the sudden interest in Greenland is because of it's suitability for data centres:
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/01/26/a-different-land/
{A highly recommended blog is you wish to view collapse from a UK perspective}
If there were a really significant increase in CO2, crop yields would increase a lot...On the other hand, the continued erosion of cropland, primarily but not entirely in the 3d world, and the continued draining of water aquifers which is unfixable, point to a major food crisis approaching...The major political crisis will be over the question of exporting food, when the native population is not secure, or prices explode...The Irish "potato famine" was in fact mostly caused by British landlords exporting millions of tons of food....
Technologically, US farmers have greatly reduced erosion with no-till farming, but the 3d world is incapable of that...
A warming climate is a good thing... at least historically it has resulted in positive outcomes https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-three-pillars-of-bullshit
There is no "no till" farming. At best you have minimum or optimal tillage. And its advantages are case-sensitive and the forms of it that are competitive are also more expensive. The reduced soil erosion is contingent on the practice being sustained over several years along with all the risks thereby entailed.
Large scale minimum till is possible in the first world because we are sucking away the resources of the third world including agri products, and diverting some of that surplus to our inefficient and heavily subsidised agriculture.
Excellent summary piece, except for the section on "fertility". A recent PEW survey revealed that 47% of Americans 18-50 are choosing not to reproduce. Also, "population density stress" is driving high cortisol levels and that inhibits the master reproductive hormone, GNRH, which may be the cause of the crashing sperm counts and female reproductive failures. You imply that this is a bad thing, which is wrong headed on your part, if you ask Mother Earth and the other species we're driving to extinction. Dare I mention that I wrote a 2018 book, "Stress R Us", after a long career in medical/psychiatric practice, laying out the primary role of our overactive stress responses in the causation of ALL the top ten killers of modern urban/suburban humans. We are now 3,000 times more numerous than were our ancestral migratory Hunter-Gatherer clan/band members, whose clans/bands never numbered more than 150 members and controlled their populations to match the availability of food. What could go wrong? Everything?
Yep, It’s like watching a train wreck, except we are on the train.
Some good points. However, don't forget the most efficient engine we have is the human body. We can grow a tremendous amount of food with very little food energy. (I have decades of data on this.) This is also why slavery was such an efficient system in past civilizations. Now we use "energy slaves." When the fossil fuel energy slaves are too expensive to continue, we will have to either: 1) re-institute slavery or 2) collapse into less-complex social systems. Oops.
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
There are 4000 Spent Fuel Ponds Around the Globe…
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies.
One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl. Source
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. Source
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident Source (Note: The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.)
“However, many of the radioactive elements in spent fuel have long half-lives. For example, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, and plutonium-240 has a half-life of 6,800 years. Because it contains these long half-lived radioactive elements, spent fuel must be isolated and controlled for thousands of years.” Source
It does not matter how remote you are, the jet stream and ocean currents will circulate these toxic cancer-causing substances around the globe. They will be picked up by convection and pour deadly rain on your crop and water supply.
Nobody survives the collapse of civilization. This will be an extinction event.
And there is this, but why?
Kyle Young presents clear video evidence with analysis: A Forensics Examination of Video Evidence for DEW's (directed energy weapons) Being Used in the L.A. fires
So LAFD abandoned Palisades. As the smoke became overwhelming HPM’s (high power microwave weapons) must have been used. Here is another video from Fabian of what the abandoned cars look like now. Note all the slag that ran from the melted engine blocks and wheels, and the unburned trees. It got hot enough to melt metal in cars sitting in the middle of the street, away from the “wildfire”, but not hot enough to burn the trees in the middle of the wildfire!?
This was no wildfire. This was HPM’s being used to steal real estate and enrich car dealers. https://secularheretic.substack.com/p/a-forensics-examination-of-video
I don't want to come across as ungrateful, but normally a picture of a beautiful dish is accompanied by a recipe....
🤣
For those of you not familiar with William Rees, please proceed directly here: https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/3/32
Good article but the following point needs a little elaboration:
"According to the latest UN numbers around 735 million people globally already face hunger and 3.1 billion cannot afford and/or do not have access to healthy diets. As economic conditions deteriorate expect these numbers to grow silently, with an increasing percentage of Western population joining the ranks of people facing malnutrition. Also expect fish, meat, diary and egg products — as well as exotic produce — to become ever more expensive, and thus increasingly inaccessible to the vast majority of the population."
1> The work of economist and professor Utsa Patnaik shows around 70% globally cannot meet the World Bank minimum of nutritional intake, so that number is likely to be closer to 6 billion rather than 3. Also, that percentage has been increasing since the late 80s and will likely continue to barring drastic systemic change.
2> The tropical third world is inherently more agriculturally productive than the cold temperate first world, since they can have multiple crops per year whereas we can only have one.
3> The primary reason why so many people in the third world are slowly dying of hunger is because the first world is parasitic on third world tropical and subtropical agricultural commodities that it cannot produce at all, or can only produce in their winters. These are not merely, or even mostly, "luxury" and "exotic" foods but staples like fruits, vegetables, sugar, coffee, cotton etc. And even though the first world produces abundant grain and animal products, it only does so via mineral and industrial inputs accumulated through that same process of drain from the third world (which are thus denied to third world agriculture), as well as the geopolitical and financial hegemony that goes along with all this and serves as the vehicle whereby we subsidise our extremely inefficient farm sectors.
4> So it's not just animal products that will become more expensive but much of the food basket itself since we are parasitic on the rest of the world not only for many agri products but also the things that enable our own agri production to exist at current levels.
5> What I've described above is a zero-sum game, or to use a precise term - a structural contradiction of the system we live in. As long as the overall system persists this structural dependence will not go away. Nor will it solved by "grow local buy local".