Great piece as always! There's also a delayed curve between "physical" extraction (depletion) and the public's "perceived" extraction (depletion). we can see this effect in the stock market where, generally, the economy starts falling long before the stock market. Once the public recognizes what you've pointed out there will be no going back. It's a dead growth-economy walking.
Coal will be back. The U.S. will replicate what China is doing on a smaller scale. It will mine coal to manufacture solar/win. But not for everyone. The trend is already here, as you point out. People are getting priced out of electricity. We ain't seen nothing yet ;) We'll be back to walled-cities around coal mines with solar panels, water collection and gardens on the rooftops.
And still we continue to avoid the biggest bubble of all and one that can’t easily be solved, the population bubble. As the continued growth of energy supply grows, the amount of energy available per person merely maintains or declines. The short term solution is to limit energy to the wealthy nations while millions in Africa starve due to lack of energy and its byproducts, food primarily. But ultimately lack of energy will affect us all, except for the super rich of course. But their time will come too.
Yes, but only in Africa and a few Islamic countries (but not Iran)...The TFR for the rest of the world ranges from the catastrophic .67 TFR in S.Korea, to 1.9 in N. Korea, which is still quite short of the necessary 2.2....Feminism and women with advanced educations have killed reproduction in most places, and greatly so in Europe and America...
"Feminism and women with advanced educations have killed reproduction in most places, and greatly so in Europe and America..."
How odd. While their TFR goes into free fall, some European & North American governments have pursued policies resulting in essentially importing (and warehousing against later needs?) human "stock" from those higher TFR areas & cultures. All that despite widespread public resistance to having these "stocks" warehoused among them by their declining "legacy populations".
We already see this "farming" bad option. If regular middle class person is struggling to buy food and pay electric bill, what gives that low skilled, even lower income person would fare... consireding mercantilist, hubristic way more and more northern countries shifted to import nearly all food, exaggerating this issue.
I would argue central africa is much better place. They use smartphone, device comparable to renewables, using very little power and eveyrthign else they decide on needs and supply basis. Lighting? Flashlights maybe. Heating? Not needed. Extremely low energy life possible with still crucial western benefits of smartphone or computer available along motorcycle or small car. Their PPP would be many factors higher than middle class westerners, as anything they earn besides food can be used to improve life or get luxuries. See, sunlight and heat is free in many areas of world. Need huge amount of tech consuming money and energy to overcome that part. Food part is easy if they can adapt that to their lifestyle (timewise) and still do some work. eg have some chickens and garden at sparsely populated area. Not do this unsustainable western way of overcrowded concrete buildings.
Need for that smartphone means they will limit amount of kids to have them supplied with necessities and school(to try to treat every kid equal). Any parent does that.
Does the name Thomas Malthus mean anything to you? How about Ralph Nader? Albert Einstein, perhaps? The entire cosmos is energy, in one form or another. History shows us time and again that doomsayers are wrong. Where do they go wrong? By failing to account for two facts: (1) the cosmos is energy and (2) humans are insanely innovative.
If we had new energy extraction technologies ready to go, all of this wouldn't be such a concern. With nothing anywhere near ready to replace fossil fuels, "hope" for finding something in the nick of time is all we have left.
Unfortunately, that is not a very good survival strategy.
If we can find a way to produce electricity directly from breaking down atoms somehow, that might do it, as everything else could be derivative. There is just nothing that can be experimentally shown to do this. Fusion keeps being talked about, but about the best hope there is to heat water. Fuel for it doesn't really exist on Earth in any readily collectable form.
Imagination is all that’s required. Except for a few vanishingly small number of atoms that have escaped earth’s atmosphere so far, all the atoms that were ever here on earth still are, albeit in different configurations. Humans have proved exceptionally good at altering the configurations of atoms on earth. I think the probability is quite high that humans will continue doing so, regardless of the paucity of easy to mine coal.
"Humans have proved exceptionally good at altering the configurations of atoms on earth" Yes - in other words, exceptionally good at converting dense forms of energy into diffuse forms, (eg FF) into KE + heat (eg in an ICE).
Or: FF + ores → consumer products + waste.
Once the fuel has been burned, it can't be 'reconfigured' back into fuel - it's gone.
Imagination is grossly undervalued - but one thing it can't do is create energy.
I don't think we need to imagine messing around with the laws of thermodynamics in order to have ample energy on earth. So far as I know, we have plenty of atoms whose energy has not been lost to the cosmos in the form of heat.
But just between you and me, I'm pretty convinced that humans have nothing like all there is to know about physics already in hand. Quantum physics is a bloody mess, no? Dark energy?
Of course humans don't know all there is to know about physics - and they never will.
Useable energy is not normally found in an atomic state. It's usually in the form of molecules - eg, CH4 (methane) or C2H6 (ethane) etc etc.
Our finite knowledge of physics has no bearing on depleting, finite reserves of energy on this planet - which our technological, consumerist (and *destructive*) civilization depends on.
As it happens, "finite reserves of energy on this planet" is a bit of an exaggeration, so far as I know. Your notion that civilization is consumerist and destructive tell me all I need to know. Moving on now.
How do you imagine your way around thermodynamics? I'm not a pessimist, I do have hope for the future of humanity. However, to my mind, hope should be based on the conception of a concrete and plausible course of action. This entails being brutally honest about our current predicament. Your conception of technology seems, from my point of view, to be akin to religiousity - praying for miracles, hand-wavy woo woo.
I certainly have my own ideas about where to harvest some more energy & materials. We even have much of the technology needed to acquire those resources I'm thinking of.
However, earth governments aren't going to like the potential for their eclipse militarily by a bunch of very smart & technologically competent people parked on "the high ground" outside our gravity well.
Innovation can never trump physics. We don't have access to the entire cosmos and energy is only one of the critical inputs for modernity. The other is resources. They are also finite (unless they are renewable but then the rate of use is finite).
Civilisations rise and fall, nonetheless. Like all organisms, they are mortal. Energy can only do useful work as it transitions from one state to another - entropy will always have the final word.
Hence, the doomsayers are wrong - until they are not, and the inane optimists are correct - until they are not.
"Modern civilization faces many predicaments, all stemming from..." TOO MANY HUMANS using/depleting too many natural resources, including coal and other fossil fuels, and producing too much pollution, including GHGs and GLOBAL HEATING. It is the heat that will kill us when the 1.2 trillion tons of melting global ice is further depleted and the 321 cubic miles of oceans fills with heat energy. We are just frogs sitting in our bleacher seats as the planet burns-up with us on it.
You are not entirely correct regarding your description of the coal that is used (my PhD was in coal geology, though that’s not where I work now). When you refer to coal ‘quality’, the term means different things in regard to thermal coal vs coking coal.
For thermal coal i.e. coal that is burned, anthracite could be considered ‘best' because it has the least water and thus the highest amount of energy to unit organic mass. However, it must also have low sulphur, low inorganic content and a higher proportion of volatile components (vitrinite and liptinite) to high-carbon components (inertinite). Further, there’s not that much anthracite around and a lot more bituminous coal (bituminous coal is ‘one step’ down the coalification ladder in terms of the amount of heat and pressure experienced by the original plant material)
For coking coal, the coal must have a high proportion of high-carbon organics (inertinite), which allow formation of a strong porous material for the coking process. It also needs to have good plasticity as well as low sulphur and ash. These properties are generally found in bituminous coal, rather than anthracite.
I don’t think a lot more detail is useful to you, but when you make confident statements about detail that are not well founded, you undermine the credibility of your higher level statements. You don’t mention any of the work on steel making without coal - lots of effort going into that, though we will see whether these methods prove to be feasible at scale/profitable.
I am also not at all sure you are correct about coal being ‘over’, much as I would like it to be. There’s an awful lot of coal still available that can be open cast mined (in New Zealand and Australia for starters). You make a confident statement about the world running out of open castable coal reserves with no data to back it up. I have had a look to see if I can find the answer, but there’s no easy data to be found. Can you provide the evidence for this assumption?
Thank you for that input re: less known real life considerations & actual technological issues vs. author's assumptions- you beat me to it (and expanded on what I'd intended to say).
Where are the "confident statements about detail that are not well founded"?
The article states that coal used in steel-making requires "the purest type with the highest energy density: metallurgical grade coking coal. The rest of the (much lower grade) carbon fuel can thus be burned in power plants"
Anthracite (not bituminous coal) *is* widely considered to be the best for steel, due to its high carbon content and low impurities.
For thermal coal, obviously anthracite *could* be considered 'best' - but the point is that *any* coal will do here.
As for steel making without coal, the first search result that appeared contained "utilizing electricity and hydrogen from renewable sources" in its description. But that is not energetically feasible. As many have repeatedly observed, 'renewables' are *not renewable* - they are contingent on FF.
Where is the "confident statement about the world running out of open castable coal reserves"?
The nearest I found was: "as surface mines deplete, and we have to dig deeper underground for coal, extraction costs could [exceed market price]"
*Could* - i.e. not a claim of certainty.
In any case, open cast mines are an abomination and the practise should be discontinued regardless of 'need'.
lobos y ovejas, ese es el paradigma natural. Primero sufren las ovejas y cuando van desapareciendo sufren los lobos. Tal vez se coman los lobos entre ellos, mutando a lobos bionicos mitad lobos mitad tecnologia, lo cual no consuela a las ovejas. Si los lobos aprendieran a pastorear ovejas y a criarlas eficientemente la situacion se estabilizaria pero esto no ocurrira hasta que no quede otra opcion y sera demasiado tarde. No doy un centimo por el futuro de la humanidad como conjunto pero estoy seguro de que los buenos ganaremos
Actually, I believe the key to survival will be to re-weave the social fabric, and learn to co-operate again. The source of our current failure was a failure of sociability, creating an environment which enabled sociopaths to concentrate power to a scale which is beyond our ability to control.
One critical issue you only briefly touched on was the reliance on oil powered machinery to mine and transport coal, which might make much of the world's remaining coal reserves inaccessible in a world of declining oil output. Electrification of coal mines is possible to some degree however. Coal is also a lot less straightforward than oil to transport over large distances, which is probably a major reason why industrial capacity shifted to china where the large high quality coal reserves in Inner Mongolia (and the transport systems and demographics to mine it) made rapid industrialisation possible. Huge coal reserves in Australia are less useful without the people and infrastructure, or associated industry to use the cheap energy. Australia has pretty much lost all its industrial capacity already for these reasons.
Don't worry, Australia (and possibly Ukraine?!) are about to see a boom in Chinese & other South Asian ethnic immigration. They'll be full up in no time!
Coal peaked in UK and USA because they have oil and gas. And renewables are developing. I know you are sceptical towards renewables, but I don't see why renewables can't provide electricity at peak hours, which usually at day. I don't see decline of industrial society in near future, unfortunately. UN projected global population peak at 10 billions, it means more harm to nature, more people.
Right now only countries that increase coal usage is developing countries, but developed countries actively shifting towards renewables.
“Make no mistake, from an environmental perspective this is no doubt good news.” No, not at all. Wind & Solar are highly area intensive & location dependent. The mining & deployment impacts are environmentally catastrophic and destruction of the biosphere is also a major contributor to climate change; it’s not just fossil fuel emissions as renewables advocates try to pretend.
What demise of mining? Renewables for “Net zero” demand a 16x increase in mining for critical minerals above 2020 levels, 11-26x mining for rare earths. The developing countries are reliant heavily on coal for their grid electricity, and coal consumption and mining is expanding.
We are in agreement here. B does not advocate for renewables as being good for the planet.
"Once the crumbling of the coal supply chain accelerates beyond a point — bringing all prior economies of scale with it — and as mines go bankrupt one after the other due to rising costs and worsening returns, the death spiral becomes inescapable.
Make no mistake, from an environmental perspective this is no doubt good news. As for the future prospects of industrial civilization, well, not so."
He is talking about the FACT that as FF decline, so too will mining and eventually collapse. Which is an objective good for the planet. However this will kill industrial civilization which is a necessity for the restoration of planetary health. I think you misunderstood what B was stating.
Yes, mining is expanding RIGHT now because "renewables" require massive amounts of physical material to be built out. Which in turn requires massive amounts of FF to be consumed in the process. Mining, smelting, transportation, production, installation, ect.
However, this will result in drawdown being completed faster resulting in an ultimate and permeant end to mining as economically accessible deposits of FF are at last drown down completely.
You are correct. Mining is necessary for the building of "renewables" and are therefore bad for the planet.
When I was a little kid I never dreamed that I had been born to witness the passing of peak everything. Now I only wonder how long I will survive the ride on the downslope.
Thanks, B. Regarding the primary energy graph, I see a lot of people on twitter calling it "the PE falacy". It would be great if you could write an entry about it. Just look up on twitter for the several propagandist of the renewables lobby of the likes of EMBER and you will see what I am talking about. Thanks
You are ignorant. You don't understand what renewables are stand for. Oil and coal aren't renewables because there is finite amounts of them. You are using oil industry propaganda against renewables but without same motivation. Oil industry want to make money, that's why they are against renewables, why do you against renewables. Do you want deindustrialization when it's clear pre industrial economy can't sustain 8 billions people. Renewables will take over energy, do you like it or not, and sooner it will happen then it's better to us. So do favour to humankind, stop spread bs.
This whole comment is BS and completely divorced from physical reality.
B and others who actually care about planetary health and factually report on the fact that "renewables" are not because they are made with finite reserves of materials dug up from the ground using heavy machinery powered by fossil fuels.
"Renewables" would not exist without fossil fuels. They are a fossil fuel product. They are nothing more than a more efficient way to use fossil fuels to produce electricity.
If you read through B's posts you would understand that he is for truly renewable energy systems.
Do you know what that is?
Labor power powered by carbohydrates grown using animal and human labor.
Yes, pre industrial society can not support 8 billion people.
The human species is massively overpopulated and will crash accordingly.
Human industrial civilization will crash.
It is you who don't understand what is renewable or sustainable.
Like Will Reese says, start breeding draft horses. That's your renewable vehicle of the future.
THE OIL INDUSTRY IS NOT AGAINST RENEWABLES!
The oil industry uses solar panels in their operations to offset electricity costs!
They support each other not fight against each other! The big bad oil vs good green is a myth perpetuated by the media to fool people such as yourself that think solar panels made with materials dug up from the ground done at great expense to the environment is good for the environment.
It is our way of life that is killing the planet.
It is the cities themselves that are the problem not the means by which they are powered.
I care about planetary health too. Don't make mistake thinking that I am tech bro fan, transhumanist. I am not big fan of tech. I use only essential technologies like AC, public transportation, refrigerator and etc. I don't watch movies, series, don't play videogames.
We need consume less energy, that's obvious thing tech optimists can't comprehend. I deeply disgust technologies like AR, VR, smart glasses, Bluetooth earphones, and social media, TikTok.
And there was something deeply disturbing when I read Tomas Pueyo's post that civilization will be better with 100 billions people than with 1 billions people. That's Peter Thiel, Elone Musl level of delusion and dishonest.
I just think that civilization is better for environment that barbaric stage of humanity. Pre industrial societies weren't friendly to nature and today we care and know about nature more than ever.
Renewables are good, but tech will not save us, I agree. We need to demonopolize market, make businesses specialized again, instead of hypermarket, shoping mall and consume less. We need to car free society. EVs and self driving cars are not solution. Cars are problem. Cruise ships are problem, private jets are problem, luxury consumption are problem. In the end I understand problems of current model of production and consumption of goods and services. I just think there is no alternatives to civilization. Anarchists lost a war to fascists. Do you think fascism will not take over in post industrial society?
You are failing to understand that when human industrial civilization collapses we will revert to low tech simple lifestyles. We are a 300,000 year old species. It is human civilization that is incompatible with the natural world. What is compatible is small self sufficient villages. A few hundred million people living simple local lives. Made with locally sourced materials. Living on locally sourced and grown food. Cities are not good for the planet. To create a city, the land (environment) upon which the city currently rests had to be destroyed.
"Renewables" are not good.
Go look at some pictures of beheaded indigenous land defenders who fought against copper mining.
Copper which is essential for those "renewables".
"Renewables" are not renewable because they rely on mining and there therefore not combatable with the natural systems of the world.
We were at our least harmful, when we only had simple hand tools.
Fascism will not take over because the complexity required to maintain and establish fascism will simply not exist in a post industrial society.
Post industrial society is happening.
Your fantasies do not trump physical reality.
Human industrial civilization which is not compatible with the biosphere will collapse.
If you truly cared about planetary health, you would not advocate for Earth raping mining necessary to create "renewables".
"today we care and know about nature more than ever."
False.
Modern humans only care about continuing the comfortable way of life brought to them by high tech technology. If we truly cared, we would be pursing simplification not greater complexity in an attempt to maintain the very thing that is currently killing the planet.
Human industrial civilization.
Humans are in extreme ecological overshoot. The Earth will correct this.
"I just think there is no alternatives to civilization."
I suggest you go visit a natural history museum. Civilization came about with mono style agriculture. Civilization is roughly 6-8 thousand years old. Maybe more depending on which anthropologist you were to ask.
Native Americans were doing just fine without the "gift" of "civilization" before it was brought to them.
I’m fully aware of the environmental destruction caused by industrialization — pollution, habitat loss, and unsustainable resource use are real and serious issues. But I also care about human well-being, knowledge, and progress. Civilization, for all its flaws, is not just a system of exploitation; it’s also the foundation for medicine, science, literacy, art, and global cooperation.
Pre-industrial societies lived “closer to nature,” but they were not necessarily sustainable or harmonious either. Deforestation, overhunting, soil depletion, and inter-tribal warfare existed long before industrialization. Small villages may seem ideal, but with billions of people alive today, such a model would mean mass starvation and suffering.
Modern civilization gives us the tools to understand the damage we cause — and to fix it. Environmental science, conservation biology, and renewable energy technologies all come from the very system you condemn. Without civilization, there would be no global awareness of climate change, no satellites tracking deforestation, and no coordinated efforts to protect endangered species.
Yes, renewables rely on mining and infrastructure, but so does every human activity. The difference is that renewables at least point toward a lower-impact future. We can regulate mining, recycle metals, improve efficiency, and innovate cleaner technologies. Rejecting civilization entirely would not heal the Earth — it would only erase the capacity to manage our impact intelligently.
In short, civilization is not the opposite of nature; it’s nature becoming self-aware. The challenge is not to abandon it, but to evolve it.
You are under the false assumption that planet Earth needs humans.
The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Humans will go extinct and planet Earth will continue on. Fine. Continue to believe in your objectively false delusions. Whatever makes you feel good about your cognitive dissonance.
Great piece as always! There's also a delayed curve between "physical" extraction (depletion) and the public's "perceived" extraction (depletion). we can see this effect in the stock market where, generally, the economy starts falling long before the stock market. Once the public recognizes what you've pointed out there will be no going back. It's a dead growth-economy walking.
Coal will be back. The U.S. will replicate what China is doing on a smaller scale. It will mine coal to manufacture solar/win. But not for everyone. The trend is already here, as you point out. People are getting priced out of electricity. We ain't seen nothing yet ;) We'll be back to walled-cities around coal mines with solar panels, water collection and gardens on the rooftops.
And still we continue to avoid the biggest bubble of all and one that can’t easily be solved, the population bubble. As the continued growth of energy supply grows, the amount of energy available per person merely maintains or declines. The short term solution is to limit energy to the wealthy nations while millions in Africa starve due to lack of energy and its byproducts, food primarily. But ultimately lack of energy will affect us all, except for the super rich of course. But their time will come too.
Yes, but only in Africa and a few Islamic countries (but not Iran)...The TFR for the rest of the world ranges from the catastrophic .67 TFR in S.Korea, to 1.9 in N. Korea, which is still quite short of the necessary 2.2....Feminism and women with advanced educations have killed reproduction in most places, and greatly so in Europe and America...
"Feminism and women with advanced educations have killed reproduction in most places, and greatly so in Europe and America..."
How odd. While their TFR goes into free fall, some European & North American governments have pursued policies resulting in essentially importing (and warehousing against later needs?) human "stock" from those higher TFR areas & cultures. All that despite widespread public resistance to having these "stocks" warehoused among them by their declining "legacy populations".
Someone is hedging their bets.
We already see this "farming" bad option. If regular middle class person is struggling to buy food and pay electric bill, what gives that low skilled, even lower income person would fare... consireding mercantilist, hubristic way more and more northern countries shifted to import nearly all food, exaggerating this issue.
I would argue central africa is much better place. They use smartphone, device comparable to renewables, using very little power and eveyrthign else they decide on needs and supply basis. Lighting? Flashlights maybe. Heating? Not needed. Extremely low energy life possible with still crucial western benefits of smartphone or computer available along motorcycle or small car. Their PPP would be many factors higher than middle class westerners, as anything they earn besides food can be used to improve life or get luxuries. See, sunlight and heat is free in many areas of world. Need huge amount of tech consuming money and energy to overcome that part. Food part is easy if they can adapt that to their lifestyle (timewise) and still do some work. eg have some chickens and garden at sparsely populated area. Not do this unsustainable western way of overcrowded concrete buildings.
Need for that smartphone means they will limit amount of kids to have them supplied with necessities and school(to try to treat every kid equal). Any parent does that.
BS. Economy caused low TFR. Traditional family is economical suicide nowadays. You can't afford non working wife and five children, no way.
I'll take "Demographic Transition" for $500, Alex.
It's not just the money. Relentless capital accumulation also causes alienation and despair.
Africans are adults, the same as us. They can solve their own problems. Doing things for them is racist paternalism.
Does the name Thomas Malthus mean anything to you? How about Ralph Nader? Albert Einstein, perhaps? The entire cosmos is energy, in one form or another. History shows us time and again that doomsayers are wrong. Where do they go wrong? By failing to account for two facts: (1) the cosmos is energy and (2) humans are insanely innovative.
If we had new energy extraction technologies ready to go, all of this wouldn't be such a concern. With nothing anywhere near ready to replace fossil fuels, "hope" for finding something in the nick of time is all we have left.
Unfortunately, that is not a very good survival strategy.
If we can find a way to produce electricity directly from breaking down atoms somehow, that might do it, as everything else could be derivative. There is just nothing that can be experimentally shown to do this. Fusion keeps being talked about, but about the best hope there is to heat water. Fuel for it doesn't really exist on Earth in any readily collectable form.
Imagination is all that’s required. Except for a few vanishingly small number of atoms that have escaped earth’s atmosphere so far, all the atoms that were ever here on earth still are, albeit in different configurations. Humans have proved exceptionally good at altering the configurations of atoms on earth. I think the probability is quite high that humans will continue doing so, regardless of the paucity of easy to mine coal.
The configurations matter.
"Humans have proved exceptionally good at altering the configurations of atoms on earth" Yes - in other words, exceptionally good at converting dense forms of energy into diffuse forms, (eg FF) into KE + heat (eg in an ICE).
Or: FF + ores → consumer products + waste.
Once the fuel has been burned, it can't be 'reconfigured' back into fuel - it's gone.
Imagination is grossly undervalued - but one thing it can't do is create energy.
I don't think we need to imagine messing around with the laws of thermodynamics in order to have ample energy on earth. So far as I know, we have plenty of atoms whose energy has not been lost to the cosmos in the form of heat.
But just between you and me, I'm pretty convinced that humans have nothing like all there is to know about physics already in hand. Quantum physics is a bloody mess, no? Dark energy?
Of course humans don't know all there is to know about physics - and they never will.
Useable energy is not normally found in an atomic state. It's usually in the form of molecules - eg, CH4 (methane) or C2H6 (ethane) etc etc.
Our finite knowledge of physics has no bearing on depleting, finite reserves of energy on this planet - which our technological, consumerist (and *destructive*) civilization depends on.
As it happens, "finite reserves of energy on this planet" is a bit of an exaggeration, so far as I know. Your notion that civilization is consumerist and destructive tell me all I need to know. Moving on now.
How do you imagine your way around thermodynamics? I'm not a pessimist, I do have hope for the future of humanity. However, to my mind, hope should be based on the conception of a concrete and plausible course of action. This entails being brutally honest about our current predicament. Your conception of technology seems, from my point of view, to be akin to religiousity - praying for miracles, hand-wavy woo woo.
Lovely. Innovate away-
I certainly have my own ideas about where to harvest some more energy & materials. We even have much of the technology needed to acquire those resources I'm thinking of.
However, earth governments aren't going to like the potential for their eclipse militarily by a bunch of very smart & technologically competent people parked on "the high ground" outside our gravity well.
Shades of Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
Innovation can never trump physics. We don't have access to the entire cosmos and energy is only one of the critical inputs for modernity. The other is resources. They are also finite (unless they are renewable but then the rate of use is finite).
Civilisations rise and fall, nonetheless. Like all organisms, they are mortal. Energy can only do useful work as it transitions from one state to another - entropy will always have the final word.
Hence, the doomsayers are wrong - until they are not, and the inane optimists are correct - until they are not.
"Modern civilization faces many predicaments, all stemming from..." TOO MANY HUMANS using/depleting too many natural resources, including coal and other fossil fuels, and producing too much pollution, including GHGs and GLOBAL HEATING. It is the heat that will kill us when the 1.2 trillion tons of melting global ice is further depleted and the 321 cubic miles of oceans fills with heat energy. We are just frogs sitting in our bleacher seats as the planet burns-up with us on it.
Really great piece. I knew coal was essential, but wasn't aware of all these details. Restacking.
The Jevons Paradox observation is particularly devastating to the green energy narrative.
Our civilization built its foundation on cheap, abundant energy, and that foundation is crumbling beneath us.
What’s most revealing is how the depletion narrative is being disguised as progress.
Excellent article, thank you.
You are not entirely correct regarding your description of the coal that is used (my PhD was in coal geology, though that’s not where I work now). When you refer to coal ‘quality’, the term means different things in regard to thermal coal vs coking coal.
For thermal coal i.e. coal that is burned, anthracite could be considered ‘best' because it has the least water and thus the highest amount of energy to unit organic mass. However, it must also have low sulphur, low inorganic content and a higher proportion of volatile components (vitrinite and liptinite) to high-carbon components (inertinite). Further, there’s not that much anthracite around and a lot more bituminous coal (bituminous coal is ‘one step’ down the coalification ladder in terms of the amount of heat and pressure experienced by the original plant material)
For coking coal, the coal must have a high proportion of high-carbon organics (inertinite), which allow formation of a strong porous material for the coking process. It also needs to have good plasticity as well as low sulphur and ash. These properties are generally found in bituminous coal, rather than anthracite.
I don’t think a lot more detail is useful to you, but when you make confident statements about detail that are not well founded, you undermine the credibility of your higher level statements. You don’t mention any of the work on steel making without coal - lots of effort going into that, though we will see whether these methods prove to be feasible at scale/profitable.
I am also not at all sure you are correct about coal being ‘over’, much as I would like it to be. There’s an awful lot of coal still available that can be open cast mined (in New Zealand and Australia for starters). You make a confident statement about the world running out of open castable coal reserves with no data to back it up. I have had a look to see if I can find the answer, but there’s no easy data to be found. Can you provide the evidence for this assumption?
@Jane Shearer
Thank you for that input re: less known real life considerations & actual technological issues vs. author's assumptions- you beat me to it (and expanded on what I'd intended to say).
Where are the "confident statements about detail that are not well founded"?
The article states that coal used in steel-making requires "the purest type with the highest energy density: metallurgical grade coking coal. The rest of the (much lower grade) carbon fuel can thus be burned in power plants"
Anthracite (not bituminous coal) *is* widely considered to be the best for steel, due to its high carbon content and low impurities.
For thermal coal, obviously anthracite *could* be considered 'best' - but the point is that *any* coal will do here.
As for steel making without coal, the first search result that appeared contained "utilizing electricity and hydrogen from renewable sources" in its description. But that is not energetically feasible. As many have repeatedly observed, 'renewables' are *not renewable* - they are contingent on FF.
Where is the "confident statement about the world running out of open castable coal reserves"?
The nearest I found was: "as surface mines deplete, and we have to dig deeper underground for coal, extraction costs could [exceed market price]"
*Could* - i.e. not a claim of certainty.
In any case, open cast mines are an abomination and the practise should be discontinued regardless of 'need'.
lobos y ovejas, ese es el paradigma natural. Primero sufren las ovejas y cuando van desapareciendo sufren los lobos. Tal vez se coman los lobos entre ellos, mutando a lobos bionicos mitad lobos mitad tecnologia, lo cual no consuela a las ovejas. Si los lobos aprendieran a pastorear ovejas y a criarlas eficientemente la situacion se estabilizaria pero esto no ocurrira hasta que no quede otra opcion y sera demasiado tarde. No doy un centimo por el futuro de la humanidad como conjunto pero estoy seguro de que los buenos ganaremos
Ah, but who are those "good guys"?
muy buena pregunta. Los buenos somos nosotros. Cuanto mas amplio sea tu "nosotros", mas de los buenos eres. Y los malos son ellos, los otros
We are in a time and era, of individual survival.
Good thing I'm too old to die young. 😊
Actually, I believe the key to survival will be to re-weave the social fabric, and learn to co-operate again. The source of our current failure was a failure of sociability, creating an environment which enabled sociopaths to concentrate power to a scale which is beyond our ability to control.
We've built a runaway train without any brakes.
One critical issue you only briefly touched on was the reliance on oil powered machinery to mine and transport coal, which might make much of the world's remaining coal reserves inaccessible in a world of declining oil output. Electrification of coal mines is possible to some degree however. Coal is also a lot less straightforward than oil to transport over large distances, which is probably a major reason why industrial capacity shifted to china where the large high quality coal reserves in Inner Mongolia (and the transport systems and demographics to mine it) made rapid industrialisation possible. Huge coal reserves in Australia are less useful without the people and infrastructure, or associated industry to use the cheap energy. Australia has pretty much lost all its industrial capacity already for these reasons.
@Shane
Don't worry, Australia (and possibly Ukraine?!) are about to see a boom in Chinese & other South Asian ethnic immigration. They'll be full up in no time!
Unless they are somehow able to mine all that remote and deep coal by hand to spare the oil consumption I am not sure they will be a net positive...
Coal peaked in UK and USA because they have oil and gas. And renewables are developing. I know you are sceptical towards renewables, but I don't see why renewables can't provide electricity at peak hours, which usually at day. I don't see decline of industrial society in near future, unfortunately. UN projected global population peak at 10 billions, it means more harm to nature, more people.
Right now only countries that increase coal usage is developing countries, but developed countries actively shifting towards renewables.
I'll be surprised if we pass 9 billion. World population will peak by the end of the 30's.
Please stop referring to wind, solar, etc as "renewable"
They are not. They are built with finite reserves of materials dug up from the ground.
“Make no mistake, from an environmental perspective this is no doubt good news.” No, not at all. Wind & Solar are highly area intensive & location dependent. The mining & deployment impacts are environmentally catastrophic and destruction of the biosphere is also a major contributor to climate change; it’s not just fossil fuel emissions as renewables advocates try to pretend.
He's talking about the demise of mining *per se* being good news "from an environmental perspective".
Most (?) here already see that 'renewables' depend on mining & FF.
There is no 'renewables' solution to the predicament.
What demise of mining? Renewables for “Net zero” demand a 16x increase in mining for critical minerals above 2020 levels, 11-26x mining for rare earths. The developing countries are reliant heavily on coal for their grid electricity, and coal consumption and mining is expanding.
We are in agreement here. B does not advocate for renewables as being good for the planet.
"Once the crumbling of the coal supply chain accelerates beyond a point — bringing all prior economies of scale with it — and as mines go bankrupt one after the other due to rising costs and worsening returns, the death spiral becomes inescapable.
Make no mistake, from an environmental perspective this is no doubt good news. As for the future prospects of industrial civilization, well, not so."
He is talking about the FACT that as FF decline, so too will mining and eventually collapse. Which is an objective good for the planet. However this will kill industrial civilization which is a necessity for the restoration of planetary health. I think you misunderstood what B was stating.
Yes, mining is expanding RIGHT now because "renewables" require massive amounts of physical material to be built out. Which in turn requires massive amounts of FF to be consumed in the process. Mining, smelting, transportation, production, installation, ect.
However, this will result in drawdown being completed faster resulting in an ultimate and permeant end to mining as economically accessible deposits of FF are at last drown down completely.
You are correct. Mining is necessary for the building of "renewables" and are therefore bad for the planet.
When I was a little kid I never dreamed that I had been born to witness the passing of peak everything. Now I only wonder how long I will survive the ride on the downslope.
Thanks, B. Regarding the primary energy graph, I see a lot of people on twitter calling it "the PE falacy". It would be great if you could write an entry about it. Just look up on twitter for the several propagandist of the renewables lobby of the likes of EMBER and you will see what I am talking about. Thanks
You are ignorant. You don't understand what renewables are stand for. Oil and coal aren't renewables because there is finite amounts of them. You are using oil industry propaganda against renewables but without same motivation. Oil industry want to make money, that's why they are against renewables, why do you against renewables. Do you want deindustrialization when it's clear pre industrial economy can't sustain 8 billions people. Renewables will take over energy, do you like it or not, and sooner it will happen then it's better to us. So do favour to humankind, stop spread bs.
This whole comment is BS and completely divorced from physical reality.
B and others who actually care about planetary health and factually report on the fact that "renewables" are not because they are made with finite reserves of materials dug up from the ground using heavy machinery powered by fossil fuels.
"Renewables" would not exist without fossil fuels. They are a fossil fuel product. They are nothing more than a more efficient way to use fossil fuels to produce electricity.
If you read through B's posts you would understand that he is for truly renewable energy systems.
Do you know what that is?
Labor power powered by carbohydrates grown using animal and human labor.
Yes, pre industrial society can not support 8 billion people.
The human species is massively overpopulated and will crash accordingly.
Human industrial civilization will crash.
It is you who don't understand what is renewable or sustainable.
Like Will Reese says, start breeding draft horses. That's your renewable vehicle of the future.
THE OIL INDUSTRY IS NOT AGAINST RENEWABLES!
The oil industry uses solar panels in their operations to offset electricity costs!
They support each other not fight against each other! The big bad oil vs good green is a myth perpetuated by the media to fool people such as yourself that think solar panels made with materials dug up from the ground done at great expense to the environment is good for the environment.
It is our way of life that is killing the planet.
It is the cities themselves that are the problem not the means by which they are powered.
I care about planetary health too. Don't make mistake thinking that I am tech bro fan, transhumanist. I am not big fan of tech. I use only essential technologies like AC, public transportation, refrigerator and etc. I don't watch movies, series, don't play videogames.
We need consume less energy, that's obvious thing tech optimists can't comprehend. I deeply disgust technologies like AR, VR, smart glasses, Bluetooth earphones, and social media, TikTok.
And there was something deeply disturbing when I read Tomas Pueyo's post that civilization will be better with 100 billions people than with 1 billions people. That's Peter Thiel, Elone Musl level of delusion and dishonest.
I just think that civilization is better for environment that barbaric stage of humanity. Pre industrial societies weren't friendly to nature and today we care and know about nature more than ever.
Renewables are good, but tech will not save us, I agree. We need to demonopolize market, make businesses specialized again, instead of hypermarket, shoping mall and consume less. We need to car free society. EVs and self driving cars are not solution. Cars are problem. Cruise ships are problem, private jets are problem, luxury consumption are problem. In the end I understand problems of current model of production and consumption of goods and services. I just think there is no alternatives to civilization. Anarchists lost a war to fascists. Do you think fascism will not take over in post industrial society?
You are failing to understand that when human industrial civilization collapses we will revert to low tech simple lifestyles. We are a 300,000 year old species. It is human civilization that is incompatible with the natural world. What is compatible is small self sufficient villages. A few hundred million people living simple local lives. Made with locally sourced materials. Living on locally sourced and grown food. Cities are not good for the planet. To create a city, the land (environment) upon which the city currently rests had to be destroyed.
"Renewables" are not good.
Go look at some pictures of beheaded indigenous land defenders who fought against copper mining.
Copper which is essential for those "renewables".
"Renewables" are not renewable because they rely on mining and there therefore not combatable with the natural systems of the world.
We were at our least harmful, when we only had simple hand tools.
Fascism will not take over because the complexity required to maintain and establish fascism will simply not exist in a post industrial society.
Post industrial society is happening.
Your fantasies do not trump physical reality.
Human industrial civilization which is not compatible with the biosphere will collapse.
If you truly cared about planetary health, you would not advocate for Earth raping mining necessary to create "renewables".
"today we care and know about nature more than ever."
False.
Modern humans only care about continuing the comfortable way of life brought to them by high tech technology. If we truly cared, we would be pursing simplification not greater complexity in an attempt to maintain the very thing that is currently killing the planet.
Human industrial civilization.
Humans are in extreme ecological overshoot. The Earth will correct this.
"I just think there is no alternatives to civilization."
I suggest you go visit a natural history museum. Civilization came about with mono style agriculture. Civilization is roughly 6-8 thousand years old. Maybe more depending on which anthropologist you were to ask.
Native Americans were doing just fine without the "gift" of "civilization" before it was brought to them.
I’m fully aware of the environmental destruction caused by industrialization — pollution, habitat loss, and unsustainable resource use are real and serious issues. But I also care about human well-being, knowledge, and progress. Civilization, for all its flaws, is not just a system of exploitation; it’s also the foundation for medicine, science, literacy, art, and global cooperation.
Pre-industrial societies lived “closer to nature,” but they were not necessarily sustainable or harmonious either. Deforestation, overhunting, soil depletion, and inter-tribal warfare existed long before industrialization. Small villages may seem ideal, but with billions of people alive today, such a model would mean mass starvation and suffering.
Modern civilization gives us the tools to understand the damage we cause — and to fix it. Environmental science, conservation biology, and renewable energy technologies all come from the very system you condemn. Without civilization, there would be no global awareness of climate change, no satellites tracking deforestation, and no coordinated efforts to protect endangered species.
Yes, renewables rely on mining and infrastructure, but so does every human activity. The difference is that renewables at least point toward a lower-impact future. We can regulate mining, recycle metals, improve efficiency, and innovate cleaner technologies. Rejecting civilization entirely would not heal the Earth — it would only erase the capacity to manage our impact intelligently.
In short, civilization is not the opposite of nature; it’s nature becoming self-aware. The challenge is not to abandon it, but to evolve it.
You are under the false assumption that planet Earth needs humans.
The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Humans will go extinct and planet Earth will continue on. Fine. Continue to believe in your objectively false delusions. Whatever makes you feel good about your cognitive dissonance.