Industrial civilization is slowly failing and it kind a sucks being stuck with it. Over the past couple of weeks and months I’ve been increasingly posting about the failure of western civilization, but let’s not forget that the West is but a part of global civilization suffering from the same ailments bringing the entire system down. The coming end of global western dominance happens to coincide with the rapidly approaching limits to material growth and the mounting environmental challenges caused by our reckless abandon. Climate change, energy crises, resource scarcity and overshooting all natural limits and boundaries will all complicate things beyond our ruling class’ ability to manage. Expect some wild times ahead.
The whole idea of industrial civilization and unending technological progress has started with a belief that we can keep extracting minerals from underground forever (if not, then we will find substitutes). Take a look around in your room: all of your objects, together with the power feeding them, has come from somewhere underground. Plastics, made from oil pumped up from below the surface. Metal, made from mineral ores. Cement, gypsum, ceramics: all made from earth itself — not to mention the immense heat (well above 1000°C) needed to transform them into their current form. All coming from fossil fuels and minerals from beneath our feet.
Do you have solar panels on your roof? Well, those are made from minerals too. Some of them are so rare, like Indium or Gallium, that world production would need to increase several hundredfold to build out solar panels in the necessary quantity in order to “halt” climate change…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
