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 twentyth 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.
Thanks George. It's always good to read your posts. Then it's always hard to look around at the spin-swallowing mass, and wonder.
Posted by: murray g | May 20, 2015 at 09:59 PM
Hi George,
You're just totally misreading the material, over and over again. I'm astonished at how badly you're misreading the material.
"In this statement you simply claim that it is a mistake by saying 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"
That's just a drastic red herring. I wasn't talking about refinery costs. That's not even related to what Hall wrote, or to my objection.
As I pointed out in my article, Hall et al were counting all energy production for Spain when converting money into energy units. Here is a verbatim quotation from Hall's presentation: "We have used 170.94 Toes/MEuros as the ratio Primary Energy/GDP, for Spain as a whole." During those calculations they are counting all energy production for Spain as part of energy investment.
I just have no idea how you misread that so badly to refer to "refinery costs" specifically, or anything like that.
"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)."
No, that's just totally wrong. Again, you are severely misreading the material here. On pp 41 of Hall et al's paper which I was referring to ("What is the minimum EROI that a society must have") they are counting all costs of transportation infrastructure as energy investment.
Again, here is a verbatim quotation: "Table 2 gives our estimates of the energy cost of creating and maintaining the entire infrastructure necessary to use all of the transportation fuel consumed in the US... "
Again, I just have no idea how you misread that as "a portion of a road cost used to transport fuels ".
"makes a factual claim of any kind they be ready to back it up with evidence"
George, I have backed it up with evidence, over and over again. I'm pointing it out to you, clear as day. You just don't respond to it.
"The website you suggested would not meet the standards of rigor for scientific work."
George, I'm sorry, but this stuff is just totally crackpot. This stuff is totally unserious, and what you're doing definitely does not resemble a valid, scientific response.
This stuff is filled with severe mathematical errors. When those errors are pointed out to you, you either make irrelevant personal remarks, or you just dodge the criticism, or you totally misread the source material. Those are not valid responses.
The point stands. This material is refuted.
Incidentally, there are many legitimate researchers who've looked into this issue. Read any of the papers from Fthenakis et al, for example. They carry out these calculations correctly and reach conclusions very different from those of Hall et al.
-Tom S
Posted by: Desmond Smith | May 21, 2015 at 03:50 AM
Hi George,
You're just totally misreading the material, over and over again. I'm astonished at how badly you're misreading the material.
"In this statement you simply claim that it is a mistake by saying 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"
That's just a drastic red herring. I wasn't talking about refinery costs. That's not even related to what Hall wrote, or to my objection.
As I pointed out in my article, Hall et al were counting all energy production for Spain when converting money into energy units. Here is a verbatim quotation from Hall's presentation: "We have used 170.94 Toes/MEuros as the ratio Primary Energy/GDP, for Spain as a whole." During those calculations they are counting all energy production for Spain as part of energy investment.
I just have no idea how you misread that so badly to refer to "refinery costs" specifically, or anything like that.
"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)."
No, that's just totally wrong. Again, you are severely misreading the material here. On pp 41 of Hall et al's paper which I was referring to ("What is the minimum EROI that a society must have") they are counting all costs of transportation infrastructure as energy investment.
Again, here is a verbatim quotation: "Table 2 gives our estimates of the energy cost of creating and maintaining the entire infrastructure necessary to use all of the transportation fuel consumed in the US... "
Again, I just have no idea how you misread that as "a portion of a road cost used to transport fuels ".
"makes a factual claim of any kind they be ready to back it up with evidence"
George, I have backed it up with evidence, over and over again. I'm pointing it out to you, clear as day. You just don't respond to it.
"The website you suggested would not meet the standards of rigor for scientific work."
George, I'm sorry, but this stuff is just totally crackpot. This stuff is totally unserious, and what you're doing definitely does not resemble a valid, scientific response.
This stuff is filled with severe mathematical errors. When those errors are pointed out to you, you either make irrelevant personal remarks, or you just dodge the criticism, or you totally misread the source material. Those are not valid responses.
The point stands. This material is refuted.
Incidentally, there are many legitimate researchers who've looked into this issue. Read any of the papers from Fthenakis et al, for example. They carry out these calculations correctly and reach conclusions very different from those of Hall et al.
-Tom S
Posted by: Desmond Smith | May 21, 2015 at 03:51 AM
I would also like to respond to your incorrect remarks about solar PV lifespan:
"And Hall etc did not just choose the warranty period as representing the life cycle for useful energy production. "
Yes he certainly did. As I pointed out clearly in my article, both Hall et al and Weissbach's paper assume a lifespan of 25 years for solar cells, which corresponds exactly to the standard warranty period. It's found In Weissbach's paper on pp 13, as follows: "Assuming 25 years lifetime and 1,000 peak-hours...". It's also found in Hall et al's presentation, pp 18.
"There is, however a strong correlation between warranty period lengths and actual average life times for panels so 25 years is not arbitrary."
I'm sorry, but that's just totally wrong. There's an NREL paper on this issue (Photovoltaic Degradation Rates: An Analytical Review, pp 18) which summarizes all of the research in this field. There have been more than 31 long-term studies of solar PV degradation, and not one of them shows anything similar to what you say. They all show degradation over time, but not one of them shows outright failure for most of the cells, even after decades.
-Tom S
Posted by: Desmond Smith | May 21, 2015 at 03:57 AM
@murray g.,
Thanks.
--------------------------------------
@Desmond Smith aka Tom S.,
This will sound dismissive. Well that is because it is. What I read in your comments is something close to hysterical ranting. Here is what I suggest. You write a scientifically formed paper and bring it to the Biophysical Economics conference in Vancouver BC in October. It's too late to submit a paper, but bring copies to distribute around. Face the people you criticize directly and make your claims (hopefully substantiated by more than more claims that others are misreading what you wrote). Better still get published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal. And then let us know where we can read your work. A blog doesn't cut it. I don't expect anyone to read what I write here as if it were peer reviewed, except for the papers I have posted that have undergone peer review. This blog is me trying to inform interested readers about what is happening from my perspective and report on the important scientific work that applies. It is not a forum for pseudo-science debate.
So I will say goodbye to you. You can post more if you like. I will let readers decide for themselves what your words are worth. But I will not be responding to you any more.
------------------------------------------
George
Posted by: George Mobus | May 21, 2015 at 11:02 AM
@All,
This blog has generated some good commentary but it has also seemingly generated a flood of e-mails, and requests to friend on Facebook or link on Linkedin.
As far as social media is concerned I have a pretty strict policy. Facebook is restricted to family and a few good friends (that I know in real life!). Linkedin is reserved for people I actually know personally and professionally. That means mostly former students and business/academic associates.
Please refrain from asking me to make a connection via these media as I am flooded with such requests and simply do not have the time to filter through them to see if any are from people that fit this policy. I would really appreciate your consideration on this.
As for e-mails, I try to respond to all legitimate queries about the blog or my research/book. But the volume of these has gone up since the publication of my book. Since I still work and have plenty of emails from that arena, I am finding I too often am passing over emails from readers. So again, I request that you consider carefully whether you really need to contact me. At least carefully word the subject line so I can understand the priority I need to assign it.
Respectfully, but pleadingly yours,
George
Posted by: George Mobus | May 21, 2015 at 11:49 AM
George,
I'm sorry, but there's just no science happening here. It's not sufficient to say the word "science" and to use scientific-sounding terms like "biophysical". Those kinds of things are also common within pseudoscience.
What is required are specific, falsifiable, risky predictions of things which weren't happening anyway. Then those predictions must be confirmed by subsequent evidence. That is the first step toward actual science, and it has never happened and is not happening within this group.
This group has all the hallmarks of pseudoscience. It has never produced any risky, falsifiable predictions which were confirmed by subsequent evidence, not even once. There have been massive failures of prediction, over and over again, but the theories remain totally unchanged, and the failures of prediction are not even addressed. Failures of prediction are handled by making the theory less and less falsifiable ("there is now a long descent which is difficult to see", see John Greer). Members do not respond to criticism, and leave errors uncorrected when they are pointed out. Notably, this group is ignored by legitimate researchers. There is almost no interconnection between this group and actual legitimate fields of study, and this material is rarely cited outside this group. Notably, it appears that this group settles its conclusions in advance ("civilization is about to collapse"), then generates theory after theory which all lead to that conclusion, but then the predictions all fail.
If you guys want to start doing science, then you need to respond to criticism without badly misreading it, modify your theories in light of failed predictions, and make falsifiable, risky predictions which are confirmed by subsequent evidence. Those things would be the first steps toward actual science, but those things are just not happening here.
-Tom S
Posted by: Desmond Smith | May 21, 2015 at 02:52 PM
Hi George
Garrett's stuff is pretty good. He's an atmospheric physicist. one of his papers:
T. J. Garrett, No way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity alongside mitigated climate change,” Earth System Dynamics, 3, 1-17, 2012.
Daneil Dennett: “What we have to understand is that free will is our capacity to see probable futures, futures which seem like they're gonna happen, in time to take steps so that something else happens instead.”
What is wisdom, sapience, moral judgment or ecolacy but free will? and we seem to be lacking.
regards your question, there are lots of cool things some of us humans are doing which are sustainable but none of them scale.
best
Tony
Posted by: Tony Noerpel | May 22, 2015 at 03:13 AM
@Tony N.,
Thanks for the pointer. RE: Dennett's quote, the difference between prediction and anticipation is that in the former you need to see it happen in order to be successful, whereas in the latter you need to take action to prevent it from happening in order to be successful. E.g. predicting the prey will get away doesn't put food in the stomach.
On your last point, another reason why localization is our best hope.
Thanks
George
Posted by: George Mobus | May 22, 2015 at 09:50 AM
"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."
Unfortunately that's a result of the money system we use, globally. Everything must grow exponentially including the population to support the money system and to pay for future debt. This is why civilization collapse is unavoidable. The truly troubling part is that there's no substitute for fossil fuel to power the global networked economy. The other major concern is that for the first time in recorded history, every nation and economy are all in on the same game.
Posted by: Rodster | May 23, 2015 at 12:07 AM
Hi Harry Gibbs,
I just read through the comments again, and came across yours. You said:
"Could you be very kind and point me to some of those suggestions? I am about to radically decouple!"
Harry, are you going to radically decouple because you expect civilization to collapse soon? If so, you're about to throw your life away. Civilization is not collapsing for these reasons. The most recent collapse predictions from this group are no more scientific, and no better founded, than any of their other collapse predictions over the prior decades.
This material is just totally wrong. It's littered with severe errors that invalidate its conclusions, it's ignored by almost all relevant experts, it does not meet the minimal criteria of a valid scientific theory, and it's characterized by massive, repeated failures of prediction without any corresponding correction of the underlying theories.
There have already been many people who moved out into the wilderness circa 2005 in expectation of a drastic collapse of civilization, for these reasons. They wasted ten years of their lives on a fringe doomsday theory. Do you really want to join them? Of course, you can do whatever you want, but you should clearly envision what you will feel like when five or more years have passed and civilization hasn't collapsed and not that much has happened other than you living in the middle of nowhere.
Best of luck,
-Tom S
Posted by: Desmond Smith | May 23, 2015 at 02:45 AM
Hi Rodster,
"Everything must grow exponentially including the population to support the money system and to pay for future debt. This is why civilization collapse is unavoidable."
That's totally mistaken. Debt is paid from income, not growth. The idea you're espousing is based upon a fundamental misconception of how debt is paid.
"The truly troubling part is that there's no substitute for fossil fuel to power the global networked economy."
There are obvious substitutes for all uses of fossil fuels. It will be a very long time before the economy transitions away from fossil fuels entirely, but there are no absolute technological barriers which prevent it.
-Tom S
Posted by: Desmond Smith | May 23, 2015 at 02:56 AM
I just came across this post — I hope that it is not too late to reply. I found the post interesting, if maybe a little downbeat. It seems that three possible futures are envisioned.
1. We decline to eventual extinction, probably taking many other species with us.
2. We evolve into a genetically different type of being (or multiple species — interesting idea) that fit the new world.
3. We adopt a Wilkins Micawber attitude and believe that, “Something will turn up” and things will return to normal.
I like the Micawber solution, along with his magnificently cheerful speech, at a point in his life when everything has gone wrong,
“Welcome poverty! Welcome misery, welcome houselessness, welcome hunger, rags, tempest, and beggary! Mutual confidence will sustain us to the end!”
Regretfully, I suspect that his optimism is misplaced in our current situation.
But I wonder if there is fourth future, one that I am trying to sort out in my posts “Engineering in an Age of Limits”. At Peak Forests (https://peakengineering.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/2-peak-forests/) I note that, in the year 1712, Thomas Newcomen invented the first industrial steam engine. Why then? The idea of steam power had been around for at least two thousand years. So why did it suddenly go from being a toy to the foundation of a totally new way of life?
I think that the answer is that the people of that time, just like us now, were running out of their principal source of energy; in their case the ancient forests. Therefore they had to find a solution. And that solution was coal. But the catch was that most of the coal was underground so it had to be mined. But this is England, where it rains a lot. So the mines flooded, so they needed a means of removing the water, so — necessity being the mother of invention — Newcomen and his successors invented the steam engine to pump the water out of the mines.
But one solution leads to new problems. Coal is more dense than wood and was needed in large quantities. Trying to carry it in wooden carts on the mud roads of the time was a hopeless proposition, so, necessity being the mother of invention, they said, “Why don’t we put the new steam engine on a frame, put the frame on wheels, and then put the wheels on steel tracks”. And, lo and behold, they have started the industrial revolution. One consequence of these inventions was that a system for analyzing and understanding these new technologies was needed. So, necessity being the mother of invention, the discipline of engineering was created.
It is vital to stress at this point that none of this is either good or bad. Was the Industrial Revolution good or bad? Well, child labor in factories was bad, but sewer systems were good.
The key point is that the brilliant minds that created the intellectual framework for this new world, men such as Bacon, Déscartes and Newton, never visualized the society that would be created.
I use the above example as an analogy to what could occur now. Many writers have thoroughly explained the limits of the Mechanical World View. The next step is to figure out what our new society (“The Entropic World View?”) might look like. I suggest that none of know. But is it is possible that, necessity being the mother of invention, that “Something will turn up”. So maybe Micawber has it right but without the final clause, “. . . and things will return to normal”.
Maybe we are heading for a new world whose nature none of us can visualize.
Posted by: Ian Sutton | May 23, 2015 at 12:39 PM
[Edit: This one was tagged as spam for some reason, possibly since no email was provided.]
@George Mobus
It doesn't seem to be:
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=44&pid=44&aid=2&cid=regions&syid=1980&eyid=2012&unit=QBTU
Total World Primary Energy Consumption (Quadrillion Btu):
1980: 283.147
2009: 480.005
2010: 508.120
2011: 520.272
2012: 524.076
What makes you think energy is in decline?
Posted by: hitssquad | May 23, 2015 at 03:20 PM
@Rodster,
There does seem to be a positive (reinforcing) feedback loop between wealth representation (money) and population, but it isn't totally clear what the relation is. People were making more people long before there was even money. The biggest single factor was net energy per capita. When we went from hunting with stones to hunting with spears that took a big leap and led to the success of Homo over other extant genera, e.g. Australopithecus.
About 200 years ago there was a really strong correlation between the money supply and the availability of net free energy. Debt was limited so the multiplier effect on money was minimal compared with the overall economies of the time. So, again, the relation between money and population might have been more straightforward. But today, with the extreme versions of debt-creation of money the relation is terribly distorted. Also, it seems that the more nominal wealth that someone has (e.g. "owning" a heavily mortgaged house) the fewer children they have. Wealthy nations (those still hiding their sins behind massive debt) have the lowest birth rates! So granted there is a relation, but it just isn't clear how it works.
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@Ian S.,
I got a 404 error when trying your link. Better check the spelling.
The stages of civilization and engineering you describe cannot be denied, but what made the dynamic possible was the progressive finding of cheaper energy sources, that is much higher EROI sources with substantial net gains. With coal and then oil, we could afford to start out with fairly inefficient machines because the fuels had progressively higher energy content per unit weight so we could afford some slop in the efficiency ratings (and we learned a lot about thermodynamic efficiency in the process!)
My question is what would be the next high energy content source after oil and natural gas? In spite of all the hype about alternatives my own reading of the data is that they are a long way off from the kinds of net energy gains that would be needed to even power a much reduced form of current technological society. In my view the jury is still out on the verdict of go or no-go for alternatives. Extreme reduced consumption and a very low energy lifestyle (with lots of liberal conservation thrown into the mix) is a certain winner.
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@hitssquad,
I'm talking about net free energy per capita, not raw energy produced (primary energy consumption includes the energy used to get more energy). The numbers you quote do not take into account the amount of that energy it took to obtain that amount. Subtract that amount (use average EROI for all sources as a rough approximation) from the numbers and then divide by the population to get the free energy per capita. That is the number that tells how much wealth or prospective wealth there is per person in the world. Even though the primary (gross) numbers have been climbing, the net numbers have barely kept pace. And if certain results on declining EROI hold then even net energy may be declining. Population has been increasing, even if not as fast as it use to. So with slowing net energy increase and increasing total population the amount of usable energy for the economy per individual is in decline.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | May 23, 2015 at 05:31 PM
George, you said:
"I'm talking about net free energy per capita, not raw energy produced... The numbers you quote do not take into account the amount of that energy it took to obtain that amount...So with slowing net energy increase and increasing total population the amount of usable energy for the economy per individual is in decline."
No, that's clearly wrong. Let's do the math. According to the EIA's numbers, world energy consumption has increased from 480x10^15 to 524x10^15 btu, between 2009 and 2013 (inclusive). At the same time, world population increased from 6.83x10^9 to 7.08x10^9 people (http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_history3.aspx). That means that per-capita energy consumption has increased from 70.27x10^6 btu/capita to 74.01x10^6 btu/capita in that time. In other words, per capita energy consumption increased by 5.3% in 4 years, which is a compound growth rate of ~1.3% per year.
Now let's look at the prior 29 year period, from 1980-2009 (inclusive), using the same sources of data. Per capita energy consumption increased from 63.63x10^6 btu/capita to 70.27x10^6 btu/capita over 29 years, which is an increase of 10.4% over 29 years or only ~0.35% per year.
In other words, per capita energy consumption is not only increasing, but the rate of increase accelerated. The growth in per capita energy consumption was much faster during the period of 2009-2013 than during the prior 29 years.
Those figures are not EROI adjusted. It's impossible to find reliable statistics on worldwide average EROI.
However, it's totally implausible that average EROI worldwide has dropped by an amount sufficient to erase that acceleration in energy consumption. Even if EROI had been stable and had not declined at all over 29 years, and then suddenly dropped from 30 to 15 (a decline by half, which is totally implausible) in only the 4 year subsequent period, the EROI-adjusted per capita energy consumption still increased faster (0.5% vs 0.35%) during the period from 2009-2013 than during the prior 29 years.
The straightforward conclusion from this, is that per capita energy consumption is increasing, and the rate of increase has sped up, no matter what you think happened to EROI (within reason).
I don't know how you arrived at the conclusion that "usable energy ... per individual is in decline". Your statement is not compatible with the data which hitssquad just presented.
This is exactly the opposite of what energy doomers had predicted. They had confidently predicted a sudden collapse of civilization in the late late 2000s and rapid declines in energy consumption. What happened was the opposite of what they had predicted, yet again.
The consistent and severe failure of prediction from these theories implies that there is something seriously wrong with them. It's long overdue to start asking what is wrong.
Best,
-Tom S
Posted by: Desmond Smith | May 23, 2015 at 10:18 PM
George:
Thanks for the correction. The link had the final parenthesis in it. It should be:
https://peakengineering.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/2-peak-forests/
You ask, “My question is what would be the next high energy content source after oil and natural gas?” My response is that there isn’t one. Solar power is progressing fast and getting much cheaper but it does not have the energy density to directly replace oil. Nor does it provide the chemical building blocks we need to make products such as plastics and medical drugs. I suppose that there could be a breakthrough with nuclear power, but time is getting very short.
Even though we are moving into a world where we have to live without the energy provided by fossil fuels I don’t see us simply reverting to a pre-industrial life style. The invention of the steam engine led to our current Mechanical World view. Prior to that most (European) thinking was organized around a Theological World View. We seem to be creating a new type of thought which we can call the Entropic World View. One of the foundations of that world view will be low energy usage, but it will go beyond that. I have started exploring your site and you have some very interesting thoughts on this topic (for example, The Goal — Episode 1).
I don’t see us suddenly becoming wise and, as a society, implementing top-down solutions. So I tend to ignore answers that involve words such as ‘should’. We should do all sorts of things, but we don’t. We will simply respond to changes that are occurring anyway. Which is why I state that, “Engineers did not invent the steam engine — the steam engine invented engineers. What will a post-oil society invent?”
By the way, I liked your comments about Facebook and LinkedIn. I don’t use Facebook but I do use LinkedIn and so get many requests to “Connect”. If I don’t know someone personally then I will generally ignore the request.
Posted by: Ian Sutton | May 24, 2015 at 02:17 AM
War deaths as a percentage of global population has definitely decreased over time, so maybe this is a one bright spot in our cloudy sky (as long as we keep our fingers off the nuclear buttons).
https://player.vimeo.com/video/128373915
Posted by: Michael Murphy | June 13, 2015 at 08:59 AM