Civilization Collapse 3.0

What is Working?

I started a kind of list. I had been tracking a number of institutions (like higher education) and organizations (like the US government) and casually chronicling their growing dysfunction. The list was getting long and the seriousness of the dysfunctionalities was getting extreme. It occurred to me that it would be easier to keep a list of those institutions and organizations (including geo-political and economic regions, countries, cities, etc.) where things seemed to be going well.

I define “ well” as conditions where the processes of the systems seem to be functioning and the people involved are happy and productive. What has become disconcerting for me is that I am having problems finding examples to add to this list. In fact, the list has exactly zero items on it. My initial assumption was that we would find the number of dysfunctional items would exceed the number of functional ones, which would suggest that the net of human happiness would probably be negative; a finding consistent with the hypothesis that civilization is in the throes of collapse, but still at an early stage.

In addition to a simple additive list, we should probably weight the items by the magnitude of their impact on individuals' lives. For example, a commercial organization where the real wages of workers have been going down while the work load put on those workers has been increasing would have a direct and clearly felt impact on those individuals, whereas a dysfunction in city government that affected garbage collection might be an annoyance but not a cause for deep concern in the short run. The US Congress is possibly one of the most dysfunctional governance institutions/organizations on the planet (followed all too closely by the Supreme Court and the Presidency) given its enormous resources and historical context. Their inability to grasp the real nature of the economic woes and to find solutions that will help, for example, the working poor, is having a major negative impact on human happiness, but it is insidious and subtle in how it plays out. Discerning exactly how it works is a lot like trying to ascertain how global warming is “causing” any particular weather catastrophe. We know the causal links exist but tracing them through all of the connections in a complex network of relations is a daunting task.

When I started enumerating institutions and organizations at multiple scales that were showing clear evidence of dysfunction it became clear that I would be at it indefinitely. So I started to search for evidence of non-dysfunctional instances. With the exception of a few well-run corporations that are in still high demand markets and where their CEOs are not taking exorbitant paychecks at the expense of the workers, I was having trouble coming up with any truly good examples. A few Northern European countries still seem stable and their citizens seem, on the whole, to be content. But even there there are ominous clouds gathering. For example the rise of extreme right-wing political parties that have found a platform on anti-immigration responses to the increasing influx of Islamic refugees from the Middle East and Northern Africa (designated as the MENA region) portends power struggles within the governments of those countries. There have already been civil unrest incidents and some violence that has been linked to anti-immigrant sentiments.

So I am rather at a loss to say much about where things are going well. I cannot find much that is working. But that may just be me. One could reasonably argue that I am, after all, biased and will tend to ignore evidence against my basic hypothesis, that civilization must necessarily collapse due to the decline of net free energy (i.e. peak oil combined with declining energy return on investment — EROI — and still growing populations). I am probably not immune to such selective bias. Thus I put it to you, the readers, to let me know of any evidence of some reasonably impactful institutions or organizations that seem to be working and contributing positively to human happiness (please also include estimates of the magnitude of such impact). As I was writing this one possible example did come to mind, if I allow that some kinds of religious experiences are positive (and I do even if I do not believe in most of what religions teach about an ethereal world). The current Pope of the Catholic faith (Francis), it seems to me, has done some worthwhile things that could have a positive impact on the followers of that religion, if not on other states owing to their leaders paying deference to what the Holy See says (e.g. calls for peace). But I reserve judgment of the effectiveness of his reign on the Church. For example, will he ferret out gross behaviors like child sex abuses or financial corruption in the Vatican's dealings?

If you have any contributions please make them in comments here. Let's see what sort of list we come up with. But please do not post examples of dysfunction. We already know so many it would be an act of waste of bandwidth.

Economists' View the “New Normal”

Meanwhile if we just examine the state and trends of the global economy we get a basic picture of the developing collapse. An article in today's New York Times Business section by Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University “Signs of a Shakier New Normal”, May 17, 2015, brought into focus a variety of comments made by a number of neoclassical economists of late (including, from time to time, the titular representative of ‘liberal’ economists, Paul Krugman) that we have entered a new kind of economic situation that they don't quite understand but have labeled “the new normal.” I suppose they are trying to subtly say that they expect the current set of conditions to continue indefinitely into the future. But, their reasons for saying so have nothing to do with their understanding the dynamics of the real economy and making predictions based on their bogus models. They are just tacitly admitting that something unusual is happening and it has persisted long enough now to be acknowledged as possibly permanent.

While the US government and a variety of media talking heads are hailing the “recovery” the reality of life for the vast majority of Americans does not demonstrate recovery. They continue to grow poorer, budgets are stretched even for those who have jobs, the real cost of living is still going up even in spite of the recent relief in energy costs, in short for most people there is no recovery. And that is what these economists are referring to (academically) as the new normal.

If the old normal was living a life in which incomes grew and outpaced inflation, material wealth grew and made life more enjoyable (questionable), and the future looked brighter still for the next generation, then indeed the current outlook is “new.” For most of the last 300 years life for western/northern economies, fueled by increasing access to fossil energies, has generally always looked to be improving. Now that energy is in decline we have a new reality to face. My children are struggling now to keep their heads above water and have dim prospects for ever rising to the upper middle class status that would have been their “birthrights” (please note the scare quotes!) due to my status from the mid twenty^th century rapidly growing wealth production and the sheer luck of having been born into the white middle class that had grown out of the economic expansion after WWII.

Unless humanity discovers a new high-EROI source of energy with the right power and convenience properties sans the pollution problems associated with fossil fuels the future is not bright for anyone (no pun intended).

The “Why” Hasn't Changed

I have been writing about the problem we face for many years now. While the signs of a collapse scenario are now coming into sharp relief throughout the world, the basic fundamental reason for the collapse of global civilization that I have belabored over that time has not changed. Civilization is facing increasing declines in net free energy per capita. Free energy (also called exergy) is that which enables useful economic work, i.e. producing food, shelter, etc. Of course it can also be used to build frivolous products and services (e.g. i-Pads, phones, watches, giant home entertainment centers, etc.) Many people today will not see these as frivolous (must have my ability to send an instant tweet) until they think about how the energy used has been diverted from doing useful work, like getting food to those who have little. The problem for us is that we live with a shrinking pie, not a growing one. So each new slice takes away some from others. We are in a zero-sum game with an increasing number of players entering all the time. And yet we believe we are still rich. We fully believe we can put that iPhone on our credit card with impunity. That is we do until it is time to pay the bills.

In spite of my writing (which includes work in my new book on systems science) about this fundamental problem the idea doesn't seem to get much purchase with the politicians and neoclassical economists who still see the world economy as being able to grow exponentially (meaning compound) measured in dollar value of gross domestic product, GDP, (or gross global product, GGP, once all these trade deals are in place!) To me this has always been an astounding example of sheer idiocy and complete ignorance of how the Universe works. Nothing grows infinitely. Not even cancers can grow forever because they destroy their host bodies in trying to do so. How, I wonder, did these supposedly smart people ever get so stupid. Economists are supposed to learn a form of calculus and they certainly have access to all of the literature of system dynamics. How then can they just ignore basic physics and systems theory to continue to believe that a growing economy is a healthy economy? Of course I've answered my own question with my work on the nature of sapience and the lack of wisdom in our species Homo sapiens.

Perhaps it has to do with another reality that seems more immediate. The other part of the problem of per capita decline in energy is the increase in population that drives the “need” for growth of the economy. The simple fact is that as long as we keep making more people while working hard to prevent their demise the population will continue to grow and put increasing stresses on the resources we extract from the Earth. Look at what we are doing in the extraction of tight oil (fracking shale deposits), bituminous (tar) sands (mining), and mountain top removal for coal. These are very expensive and very low EROI operations (not to mention environmentally destructive) that clearly indicate how desperate we are for fossil energy. But we need that energy to support growing more jobs to accommodate the increasing number of people who need work. Population growth is also subject to limits but crashing into those is almost always painful for any species that reaches or exceeds the carrying capacity of its environment. And while we humans have seemingly moved our carrying capacity upward through technology, that route has its own limits as well. You can't apply Moore's law to energy or general equipment. And even Moore's law has practical limits. Any study of the current situation with respect to drinking water, soil erosion, mineral supplies, etc. will show that we have, in fact, reached very close to natural limits in several different areas.

Lower per capita energy translates into lower per capita real wealth since less real work can be accomplished per unit of time. For a brief time from the mid 1900s to the crash in 2008-9 we fooled ourselves into thinking we had somehow transcended the need to produce real wealth with the explosion of the use of credit to finance current consumption. This move is tricky and does not immediately appear to be problematic. Everyone basically understands the use of credit in monetary terms. You borrow an amount of money to finance something and you pay back the principal with interest to pay for the use of someone else's money over time. The theory has always been that you use the money to invest in some money-making or money-saving venture and because the economy is growing you will be earning more than enough to pay it back with interest. But the notion that this same mechanism could be applied to strictly consumption behaviors (trading up to bigger houses, buying bigger cars, and lots of fun stuff) was novel and completely unexamined critically. We jumped into it just because we could. Or at least we thought we could.

This did work as long as the economy was expanding and there would be more profit in the future. But what happens when you take out loans that either do not go to investments in profit-making or saving ventures but to finance frivolous entertainments? Or what happens when even investments in profit-making ventures fall flat because of higher than anticipated costs and thus lower profits?

Recessions happen because some of these credit financed investments have failed to provide the expected return on investment and thus investors and bankers become leery (rightly so) and withhold capital at a time when the economy has come to rely on credit to keep things going. Depressions happen when everybody loses confidence in everything.

The relation of credit and energy is a little harder to grasp. But that is only because credit also distorts the relation between money and energy. As I have written many times, the origin of money was as an information carrying token system used to regulate the flow of exergy into desired work processes. When you buy something with real money (however tokenized) you are directing the current or future flow of energy into the process that produced that something. The banking credit system, however, distorts the size of the money supply through fractional reserve banking practices that artificially inflates the supply, at least for a while. The less actual reserves are required the more distorted the money supply becomes and the illusion of having more energy available encourages investment in those frivolous efforts. But since costs (in both money terms and energy terms) are real in any work process, and profits derive from driving down costs, there has been a concerted effort to reduce them by shifting costs to externalities (pollution) and off-shoring labor (to lower energy lifestyle populations) all conveniently enabled by technologies in transportation (container ships) and telecommunications (off-shoring service jobs). By finding cheaper alternatives to getting work done, our high-energy civilizations have been able to hide the declining local net energy and continue to borrow against the future, even while that future will never support paying off the debts.

This strategy, not entirely unconsciously developed, could not hold. The costs of energy have been steadily climbing since the 1980s due to declining EROIs. Some of this has been masked by the very same debt-based financing practices applied to the extractive industries. But even that charade is rapidly coming to exposure. When the fracking revolution flooded the US markets with oil and drove the price of oil downward it did so rapidly leaving the financial condition of oil producers exposed. The costs of producing the next barrel of oil was too high to allow sustaining further exploration and drilling. Moreover already producing wells were declining much more rapidly than happens in conventional wells, with total output much less per well than with conventional wells. Companies have been diminishing their development and capital expenditures are down significantly in the oil and gas businesses and as there will be rapid diminshment of supply before much longer you can imagine what this will ultimately do to the prices for oil and gas. What has seemed like a reprieve from high energy prices will come to a crashing halt as energy prices reflect rapidly depleting supplies. Of course with a return to very high prices, the extractive companies that managed to survive will try to get back into the business (say in the Arctic Ocean), but the continuing decline in EROI of those plays will simply cause the same feedback phenomena to recur. This roller coaster ride will end more likely with the cars going off the tracks than a gentle stop.

One more clever but very unwise invention has masked the real story on the economy and the relation between money and energy. Over the last several decades we have witnessed what has been called the financialization of the economy. This really means the growth of speculative investments through bonds and stocks (initially) and more recently by a slew of “instruments” that purport to provide value through the management of portfolio risk. The fundamental belief in financialization is that money begets more money directly. In theory you no longer have to wait for profits to be made by productive enterprises; you can reap a reward by just moving funds around between stocks — buy low, sell high. Well, as I said above, investment in productive processes either do generate more energy per unit time or help us save energy leading to the effects of profit. The original stock and bond markets were set up to facilitate this kind of investment. But of recent times the stock market, in particular, has turned into a casino where gamblers are paid to gamble with other peoples' money. Returns on investment no longer depend on companies making profits and paying dividends. Money is made on trades. GDP increases with transactions even when no real wealth is produced. As with fractional reserve banking this whole business tends to distort the relation between energy and money making it seem that you really don't need to produce anything (other than financial services), you can gamble your way to wealth.

The financial markets have turned into a giant Ponzi scheme. There is no real wealth at the base. Profits are created out of smoke and mirrors. The financial sector crash of 2009 was nothing more than a bursting of the bubble with one important difference. In this case the power of the financial giants was such that they could, without shame, go to the government with hands out and argue that they were too big to fail; that failure would bring the whole economy down. So they were bailed out. People worse than robber-barons walked away with fortunes under the protection of the United States government and the Federal Reserve (in collusion) while the rest of the nation anted up to pay the bills. And what is now different as a result? What lessons did we learn about this shady industry? Apparently none. The recent “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” has been severely criticized for its ambiguity and weakness that essentially lets Wall Street firms pretty much do as they please still (one of those examples of an institutional failure writ large).

An interesting question that a number of people who see this charade for what it is ask, “Why aren't people up in arms about this nonsense?” Why are we not lynching the hyper-robber-barons? One possible answer is that we have been conditioned so deeply to believe in the neoliberal capitalism model and believe that we, ourselves, might one day be a beneficiary of its largess so that we are prevented from seeing the evils it fosters. We want ours too.

In truth the bandits were probably right to claim that collapse of the banking system would lead to a collapse of the economy. The government acted to prevent another depression to avert the kind of suffering that took place in the 1930s. Were they right to do so? It is the terrible irony of our situation that by preventing such a situation they have merely put off the inevitable for a short time more. In reality there is suffering now. It is perhaps more diffuse and lower key than what was seen in the 1930s but it is still happening. Moreover, by kicking the can down the road they have simply ensured that the next bubble burst, and there will be one before much longer, will be even worse.

The problem with our politicians, economists, and basically just about everyone else, is that they just can't get their heads around the reality of what the economy actually is and what rules truly govern it. They have grown so used to thinking in neoclassical economics, neoliberal capitalistic, and ideological terms that they simply have no way to recognize reality when it slaps them in the face. They will continue to want to return to a “healthy” growth-based economy where it is possible in theory for everyone to get rich. And so they (which includes everyone who buys into this claptrap) will never do the right things to transition societies into low-energy, simpler lifestyles consistent with diminishing energy. They will never introduce notions of population control geared to humanely reduce the size of the population commensurate with a minimum acceptable per capita share of net free energy. And so we can expect chaos to ensue as the reality pounds our civilization further into oblivion.

Advice

I'm afraid I have little to give. Who would take it anyway? My guess is that younger families should probably try to decouple from society as best they can. Grow your own food, and all of that. I've given suggestions in the past about what sort of plan might succeed, but it is based on radical decoupling that most people will simply not believe is necessary. For myself I am too old to worry about it. I'll just observe for as long as I can. My kids (the ones struggling to stay afloat) never listen to my advice anyway so they're going to have to find their own way.

Just keep monitoring the major trends in the major institutions and organizations. Use your best judgment as to when you should take action, if any. Think now about what action you might be able to take and how you can maximize your success (whatever that is going to mean).

And good luck.

Comments

[Steven B Kurtz]

As close to my position as anything I've read to date. Needless to say, well done. I join you in pessimism.

[Rob]

The Public Library system is operating on a sustainable model. It could use more money, and put it to immediate good use. I wish I could think of more, you can't build an economy on a library system.

Social Security, Medicare, and the ACA are doing surprisingly well, but one political party is dedicated to trashing them.

[Richard Parker]

Perhaps human beings are an evolutionary mistake doomed to last no more than another few hundred years at most. Is this what Mobus believes? If so, he might be right.

Narrowing the scope of his despair, it may be only that he believes that the Golden Age (relative to the rest of mankind) that Americans have enjoyed over the past 50 years is coming to an end. If so, he might be right.

Still, a lot is better than it has ever been in the history of mankind. Almost everyone has more to eat and enjoys a safer existence than in the past. The position of woman in the world has never been better. Most people are living much longer than ever before. A higher percentage of the world population is literate than ever before.

Perhaps it all cannot go on for the reasons he advances. But probably it will. I think that we have almost no ability to foresee what the world will be like in 2100.

[Bill Roope]

Me too, I'm too old to worry
about too. The odds are pretty good that society here
in Japan will last as long as I do (I'm 72). As for non-dysfunctional institutions, local city governments seem to do a pretty good job of caring for and supporting people.
There's an initiative that has the slogon of,roughly
translated, Zero People Dieing Alone/unnoticed, and is a community effort to check on people who live alone and make sure they are OK.
Also, I think that what is most important is that an individual (me for example)can enjoy life and be productive even though it's obvious to me that the world is in for some radical and harsh for humans, changes.If you can make your lifestyle require less than your income you can have a lot of fun with a limited amount of money and in my case a lot of free time which I use to study Kanji and go hiking.

[Gail Tverberg]

I am just finishing a short trip to Cuba. Cuba is having serious problems--basically not producing enough goods and services for its people. Debt is not as much used here, so I haven't been hearing about that issue. Instead, it is the basic lack of production of affordable goods and services for its people that the rest of the world is experiencing. The people here don't seem to recognize the connection of these problems to the rest of the world's problems, though.

[Don Chisholm]

I generally agree with Moubus' observation about all of the systems and subsystems that function so badly.

But this paper does not mention that there is one key human-created factor that is a common-causes to motivate them to function this way. Like the lifeblood of a body, the money system is the lifeblood that enables energy flow to bring civilization to life.

His recommendations should have suggested that we work on a blood transfusion for the system.
Don

[Harry Gibbs]

The refusal by mainstream economists and journalists to even countenance the possibility that our 'new normal' is the result of energy and resource constraints attempting to express themselves through the financial system makes this a highly discombobulating era to live through, so thank you for being a voice of reason.

"I've given suggestions in the past about what sort of plan might succeed, but it is based on radical decoupling that most people will simply not believe is necessary."

Could you be very kind and point me to some of those suggestions? I am about to radically decouple!

[Don Stewart]

Some humans are doing pretty good work. I mention two systems science books: Mobus and Kalton and Capra and Luisi. David Perlmutter, MD points out the importance of a happy relationship with one's micro biome, and Elaine Ingham talks about cooperating with the biology in the soil. Kelly McGonigal. PhD, makes persuasive arguments from neuroscience that living a purposeful life is what it is all about. Many individuals are working out ways to live purposeful lives with very small physical footprints.

Don Stewart

[Louis Ash]

George,
Your analysis is spot on as usual. Our basic systems are still working, and I try to be grateful for that every day. Food on the shelves, water from the tap, gas at the pumps, electricity from the outlets. Each of us must individually transition to a lower energy lifestyle. Institutions will not lead this shift. Like John Michael Greer says "collapse now and avoid the rush!" Let's not allow collapse fatigue from worrying about the future rob us of the present. We must do what we can, help each other out, and adapt as best we can as the energy descent plays out in real time. Keep up the great work!

[xraymike79]

The access to information at the touch of a few keys is unparalleled in world history. I just diagnosed and repaired my dishwasher by researching the problem and finding the part on the internet. The part, a small rubber check valve that prevents backflow of water, only cost a few dollars but it caused the entire machine to stop working when it broke off and clogged up the discharge hose. What would that have cost me if I had called a technician? So I would say access to knowledge is for the taking like never before, but how many of us take advantage of it? The same is true of the information you provide on the weaknesses and impending failures of our economic, political, and social systems.

Why are few listening? I think it's primarily because we have developed a blind faith in techno-fixes for all problems and are under the thrall of global capitalism. Monied interests control every facet of government and society. All problems and solutions are shoehorned within the tenets of capitalism and the need to always extract a profit.

On a more primal and biological perspective, civilizations can be thought of as super organisms which simply exploit the most energy-dense resources it can find in order to grow and expand as any organism is impelled to do in order to survive. Look up the "optimal foraging theory". Thus the "hive mind" of civilization trumps the individual intelligence and sapience of any one person. Also, Jevon's paradox and the "boomerang effect" of energy consumption guarantees our continued upward trajectory in energy demand.

I remember Joseph Tainter saying that only a couple civilizations have voluntarily and successfully simplified and reduced the complexity of their society in order to stave off collapse. We've established an economic system that enshrines survival of the fittest and demands maximization of profit and expansion of markets no matter the damage resulting from externalized costs. And for those who question the status quo too much, the surveillance and security state has ways of dealing with you.

For those of us who have an inkling of what is coming, the inability to fix things can drive you mad. Learning to deal with the fact that none of us has any control of the situation is probably the best thing you can do to maintain your mental health. As Tim Garrett said, "...if things really truly are hopeless, well then we don't have to worry as much. We can just enjoy the present."

Perhaps this is the best indication that we are chasing diminishing EROEI:

Fossil fuels subsidised by $10 million a minute, says IMF; ‘Shocking’ revelation finds $5.3tn subsidy estimate for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments

[Cantab]

Reading your sane, measured, posts is like drinking from a pure spring.

In contrast to your children not listening to sage advice, I have the opposite problem: my parents (I am 45), enriched by the boom years, will not listen to my warnings: so much for wisdom of the elders.

As Marcus Aurelius so amusingly observed, sometimes it would be better not to poke one's head out from under the blanket. Now, if a Roman emperor could feel like that....

But whatever the folly of Man, the sun rises and just has to be enjoyed and valued, if we are sane.

Maybe one can hope to roll with the punches of Doom. And if not,so not.

[George Mobus]

@Steven K.

When you look at the larger scope of the situation and dig just a little into any one aspect it is hard to not be cynical re: any supposed solutions, especially those that would purport to save civilization as it is. Agreed.

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@Rob,

Libraries do seem to work well still in spite of the stresses of changing technology and lack of adequate resources. A very ancient and venerable institution, the curation and dissemination of the aggregate of human knowledge must find some way to survive as long as there are people, even after collapse or a population bottleneck.

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@Richard P.,

I'm not sure you can characterize evolution as making a mistake. That we are no longer fit for the environmental conditions that we have created (the Anthropocene) is not a mistake any more than the generation of excess oxygen by cyanobacteria 2+ billion years ago was a mistake. It just is the way things work.

As for:

Still, a lot is better than it has ever been in the history of mankind.

Better for whom? The benefactors of technology and energy are a smaller percentage of the whole population and growing smaller as income distribution continues to skew toward the 1%. I'm not sure you could back up those claims with solid evidence.

I agree that no one can see the details of the future, but seeing the big picture that is the result of resource constraints doesn't take any special ability. While I acknowledge that some "miracle" energy source might be in the offing, the likelihood is extremely small. And unless it came about, the demise of civilization is certain. Only the time frame is subject to uncertainty.

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@Bill R.,

I have not paid much attention to small city or many local community governance structures. I suspect that they are under the same pressures as the larger scale systems but because the "issues" are local, simpler, and more transparent those governing probably have a better handle on work arounds to problems.

In any case, I have long advocated for re-localization as a survival strategy, for the reasons mentioned here.

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@Gail T.

Hi Gail. That is not good news about Cuba. They had long been held out as an example of survival resulting from de-complexificaton post the Soviet Union withdrawal of support. They were touted as evidence of an ability to operate a reasonable society at a lower energy flow level. I look forward to you writing something about their situation in Our Finite World.

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@Don C.,

Actually I have written a good deal about money in the past and only give a nod to those posts in this one. Simply put, real money is not more than a tokenized information system used to regulate the flow of energy (the real physical currency of an economy). But as mentioned in the post here, that system has been so distorted by financialization that it no longer serves the original purpose.

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@Harry G.,

Sometime back in 8/2011 I started a series of posts regarding this. See, for example: The Goal - Episode 1. The posts are scattered throughout the site so you may have to do some searching.

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@Don S.

Thanks for the plug. But I couldn't agree more that at the level of one individual or small groups some humans are doing good stuff. It just doesn't seem to scale to the scope that has the most impact on us all.

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@Louis A.,

Thank you. And you are absolutely right. One other commentator characterized my writing as showing "despair". In reality if I were really in despair I probably wouldn't write about this at all. Once we give up the notion of a technological whiz-bang future with a global governance apparatus, and get back to human basics - small-scale communities - we can build a livable, perhaps even more enjoyable, future.

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@xraymike79,

Actually optimal foraging theory played a big role in my development of robot foraging as the basis for a learning algorithm!

Neither societies nor individuals necessarily need to consume all they can. Both have natural growth limits. The difference between an individual and a population or society is that the former has built-in (evolved) regulation mechanisms that down modulate growth once those limits are approached. The latter do not. However, given that the decision agents in a social system were sapient enough, and knowledgeable enough about natural governance systems (like those in a body) it is perfectly reasonable (IMO) to expect that the same kind of internal growth-limiting regulatory systems could be employed. Unfortunately, human societies are too much like population systems and fail to install the necessary mechanisms. So we grow beyond boundaries.

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@Cantab,

May those of us who can understand the dynamics of society and grasp the bigger picture remain sane and able to enjoy the sunrises.

George

[Robert Vogel]

Republicans, particularly, like to believe that private institutions function better than public ones. Public libraries do well. Social Security is efficient. Public sector health care (Medicare) works pretty well, and, in my opinion a single-payer system would be much more efficient than the insurance bureaucracy controlled, expensive system for medicine that we have in the U.S.

So I think it is useful to decide where to draw the line between public and private.

Take, for example, software as a product. The first copy requires a large investment, but after that, the marginal cost of copies is near zero. Free software (as defined at fsf.org) is steadily improving, and it has the potential to be a public good. As a matter of public policy, we should prefer it.

Privatization requires the profit motive that corrupts many industries including health care, elder care, pharma. Capitalism knows no limits, and that is why it will destroy us.

[Desmond Smith]

Hi George,

I disagree with some of what you said. As follows:

"that civilization must necessarily collapse due to the decline of net free energy (i.e. peak oil combined with declining energy return on investment — EROI — and still growing populations)."

Civilization is definitely not collapsing because of declining EROI. In fact, EROI is not declining in any meaningful way and has never done so. Renewable sources of energy have EROI ratios which are comparable to, or higher than, fossil fuels.

See here:

http://bountifulenergy.blogspot.com/2015/05/six-errors-in-eroei-calculations.html

"Civilization is facing increasing declines in net free energy per capita."

Civilization is not facing declines in net free energy per capita. China almost doubled its energy consumption in the last ten years, mostly from coal, and the EROI of coal has remained roughly constant. Bear in mind that China has a considerable fraction of the world's population.

"When I started enumerating institutions and organizations at multiple scales that were showing clear evidence of dysfunction it became clear that I would be at it indefinitely."

This has falsifiability problems. There have always been all kinds of dysfunction and problems in large bureaucracies. Large bureaucracies necessarily entail problems of organization. You are interpreting something which is always the case as evidence in favor of your theory. Furthermore, you are interpreting anything as evidence in favor of your theory.

"Grow your own food, and all of that."

Oh goodness, no. The system of food transportation is nowhere near collapse. It could withstand reductions in global energy production for many decades continuously before approaching collapse. The market economy sacrifices the least important things first. Since long distance transportation of food requires negligible energy, it wouldn't be sacrificed for a very long time even if net energy were declining (which it is not).

-Tom S

[George Mobus]

@Robert V.

RE: capitalism. I strongly recommend Naomi Klein's latest book, "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate." I hear more and more reasoned criticism of neoliberal capitalism and its effects on humanity.

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@Desmond S.,

Interesting comment. You make a number of claims but fail to provide any real evidence. The link you provided is pretty flimsy as well. I went through it and found most of the arguments about errors to be in error. I would suggest that if you want to have your claims taken seriously you do more than just state such-and-such is so.

In your paragraph re: "falsifiability problems" you argue that large organizations have always had dysfunction problems. True enough. But it is also the case that those very dysfunctions, if not corrected, lead to demise of the organization. Most, if not all, of the historical civilization collapses have now been linked to various forms of governance dysfunctions under environmental stresses that in turn led to collapse so thanks for verifying my thesis.

I suspect you are new to reading QE since you seem unaware of prior posts, including some of my scientific work, that led to this particular argument.

Next time you visit and feel inclined to make unsubstantiated claims, consider not wasting our time please.

George

[xraymike79]

Perhaps a significant factor in our overpopulation is the fact that we has no predators, except for each other.

[Desmond Smith]

Hi George,

"(You) fail to provide any real evidence... I would suggest that if you want to have your claims taken seriously you do more than just state such-and-such is so."

I didn't just state that such-and-such is so. I provided a link whereby I show that Charles Hall et al (who coined the term "EROI") wrongly calculated EROI, wrongly counted consumption as investment, did not account for recyclying and its effect on embedded energy, wrongly assumed that gross energy is constant, and so on. I showed that when those errors are corrected, the EROI for renewables is fine and the EROI for society as a whole has not been declining.

You haven't posted any objections to that. I see some nasty personal remarks from you, but no actual objections. That's just not a legitimate response. There are severe and widespread mathematical errors in this EROI stuff which invalidate its conclusions, and that needs to be addressed.

On this blog you regularly espouse things like "questioning your own beliefs" and so on. However, you are doing that less than almost anyone. You are responding to valid criticism by making nasty remarks and then not even addressing the criticism. Furthermore, your own collapse expectations and predictions were drastically mistaken, yet I see no evidence of any kind of critical questioning, from you or anyone else in this group. It is long overdue. I think you should take your own advice, and start asking some hard questions about why the predictions keep failing so badly.

Incidentally, there have been other researchers who are not members of the collapse/doomsday clique, and who have calculated the EROI of renewable sources of power. They found that the EROI for renewables was high. See many of the papers by Fthenakis, particularly The technical, geographical, and economic feasibility for solar energy to supply the energy needs of the US.

"consider not wasting our time please."

Some of the readers here have wrongly prepared for doomsday/collapse over and over again, year in and year out, for decades. I don't think it's a waste of time to engage briefly in some critical thinking. Especially not from someone who claims that he questions his own beliefs.

I probably won't post here any further. If you actually respond to criticism, then I may respond in turn. However, there is no point in my responding any more if you just don't address criticisms.

I wish to remind you that it's not a valid response just to engage in personal remarks and nothing else. You need to explain why this stuff is still valid despite the severe mathematical errors I pointed out, and why it's still valid despite unrelenting failure of prediction for more than a decade.

-Tom S

[George Mobus]

@Desmond/Tom S.,

I did read the website. Here is what I am talking about:

As an example, the paper[4] from C Hall (What is the Minimum EROI that a Sustainable Society Must Have?) calculates the EROI of oil. However, it includes the energy cost of freeways, automobiles, and so on. That is a mistake, because those things are energy consumption, not energy investments to obtain energy.

Hall et al have explained very reasonably the ways in which they count embodied energy in infrastructure apportioned to energy production (that portion of a road cost used to transport fuels for example). People in the business of calculating EROI have long recognized that the boundaries for energy expenditures must be large enough to take these factors into account.

In this statement you simply claim that it is a mistake by saying (not demonstrating) that it is consumption rather than investment (the embodied energy). This is a strange claim given that when we build a refinery, for example, we consume resources in its construction. However those resources are invested in the future production of fuels so it is definitely investment.

The next sentence is a red herring: "If you include all energy consumption as energy investment, then the EROI of every energy source is 1."

Hall has never come close to trying to include ALL energy used for everything so this statement, while factually true as far as it goes does not do justice to the calculations actually done.

In Error #2:

It would be highly surprising if solar PV cells failed on exactly the day their warranty expired. For example, I bought a car with a 50,000 mile warranty, but it didn't cease working at 50,000 miles.

Another red herring. And Hall etc did not just choose the warranty period as representing the life cycle for useful energy production. There is, however a strong correlation between warranty period lengths and actual average life times for panels so 25 years is not arbitrary.

From your prior comment:

Civilization is not facing declines in net free energy per capita.

You proceed to speculate about the meaning of China's consumption of coal, I suspect making the same error of reasoning about what is investment vs. consumption. But you do not provide numbers or a calculation of what you mean by free energy per capita.

Trust me that over the years I have seen many papers attempting to show higher EROI for alternatives and speculations re: supplying BAU with enough energy to run and even grow our economy. Most of them have long since been debunked by deeper analysis and widening the boundaries. My own efforts at analysis show that solar PV cannot yet supply enough net free energy to both supply consumption needs (which I define quite precisely) and the work needed to replace the solar system over its useful life. In order to be successful, alternative energy sources need to supply both power to society for economic work and power to their replacement industries to do so (that doesn't even get into maintenance).

Once again I will point out that I have been writing this blog for many years and have both questioned my own beliefs as well as shouldered criticisms. However I do insist that when someone makes a factual claim of any kind they be ready to back it up with evidence and not just more claims. The website you suggested would not meet the standards of rigor for scientific work and therefore would not be admissible as a standalone argument against EROI or Energy-LCA work. Nor does it provide any evidence for your claims that, essentially, energy is abundant.

[xraymike79]

George,
What are your thoughts on Tim Garret's work?:

Tim Garrett updates his work showing only a collapse of civilization could prevent terrible climate change. Only a precipitous crash in our economy can avoid a disastrous warming of up to 5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. (...starts at about the 28 minute mark)

Only a precipitous crash of the economy can avoid a disastrous warming of up to 5°C by 2100:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EF000171/abstract
http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/6/655/2015/esdd-6-655-2015.html

[George Mobus]

@xraymike,

Good stuff to be sure. Downloaded the full paper and will be going over it. But either he has been reading my biophysical econ blogs (with my science papers in them) or, more likely, he too has seen the clear relationship between energy and wealth production (e.g. we both use a decay factor to show the decline of wealth as energy inputs decline). Thanks for the links.

George