Cognition and Belief Systems: Part Three — Groupthink
This contemplation is the third part of a look at several psychological mechanisms at play in our thinking about ecological overshoot and the accompanying societal ‘collapse’ that will eventually result.
In Part One, I briefly summarised four psychological mechanisms I’ve been reflecting upon in the context of ecological overshoot and in particular the collapse of our global, industrialised complex societies that will (or, as some argue, has already begun to) accompany this overshoot; you can read it here. In Part Two, I began elaborating my thoughts on the first mechanism in my list: Obedience/Deference to Authority; you can find it here.
One of the primary considerations in understanding how our cognitions and thus our beliefs and behaviours are going to be affected by the unfolding of the consequences of ecological overshoot and the concomitant ‘collapse’ of our societies is the anxiety/stress that such a future (and present) is going to have (is having) upon us; personally, on a familial level, and on the broader societal scale. Contemplating an unknowable future that is unlikely to provide many of the energetic conveniences most currently depend upon and/or that will challenge our complex systems to the breaking point because of extreme weather events, or supply chain disruptions/breakdowns (especially food, water, energy), etc. can be exceedingly anxiety-provoking.
Mix these (and many other) psychological mechanisms in with Edward Thorndike’s Law of Effect — that postulates all animals have an innate motivation to avoid pain/seek pleasure[1] — and you have an animal whose sense-making abilities are leveraged by its mind to deny/ignore away evidence that challenges them and can cause painful, anxiety-provoking emotions (in fact, there appears to be neuroscientific support for this[2]). In response, we appear to employ all sorts of biases/rationalisations to support our belief systems (a ‘pleasurable’ sensation) regardless of disconfirming evidence (that can lead to painful/stressful emotions).
A short thought about groupthink I posted on my personal Facebook Page in March, 2021:
“I’ve been reading about the phenomena of ‘groupthink’ recently. It’s amazing how much our society (and perhaps it’s every society) reflects this and the errors in judgements/decision making that result from it. The overestimation of the group’s decisions to be invulnerable and moral; the collective rationalisation and stereotyping that happens to shut out alternative perspectives/ideas; the pressures towards uniformity and to suppress dissent (e.g., self-censorship, mind guards, direct social pressure, illusion of unanimity). The mistakes that result from groupthink are avoided when a group encourages dissent and skeptical/critical thinking and the discussions that result from different perspectives, not by censoring or belittling them. We seem to be doing the exact opposite of what is needed to prevent bad decisions and judgements from being made. Many of us seem to have lost the ability to have civil discussions about matters we disagree on; to even agree to disagree. Our media (both mainstream and social) oftentimes seems more interested in controlling the narratives and stories we share than presenting the different perspectives and allowing people to decide for themselves. In our attempts to shut down others, one has to wonder if we are falling into the trap of groupthink and leading us to make faulty decisions? And even if we are, would we recognise it as such in order to reduce the cognitive dissonance that would arise as a result??”
A reminder that groupthink is summarised as “a premature concurrence-seeking tendency that interferes with collective decision-making processes and leads to poor decisions. It is characterized by deterioration in group member mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgments that result from in-group pressures to seek consensus. It is what happens when the task demands on a decision-making group are overwhelmed by the social demands to reach consensus. When experiencing groupthink, members tend to make simplistic statements about the issues and more positive in-group references than those in nongroupthink cases.”[3]
Groupthink symptoms include: an illusion of invulnerability that leads to an overly optimistic outlook; contrarian evidence being discredited or rationalised away; an illusion of morality that ignores the ethical consequences of decisions; peer pressure to conform to group thinking/decisions or risk being deemed disloyal; a tendency by members to withhold dissenting views (self-censorship); an illusion of unanimity; the development of ‘mind guards’ who take it upon themselves to protect the group from disconfirming evidence; avoidance of opposing opinions/ideas; and, a lack of impartial leadership[4].
As research has shown, while the mechanisms of groupthink and its impact on decision-making can become stronger in larger groupings, the phenomenon of unanimity is less likely[5]. And without unanimity, dissent becomes more probable opening the door to not only alternative perspectives but different ‘solutions’. This can certainly be observed in the various narratives pertaining to addressing our existential predicament of overshoot and collapse[6].
However, add Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs[7], a theory of human motivation, and we might begin to understand that there can be a tendency towards ‘herding behaviour’[8] even in large, complex populations. Maslow’s theory proposes that humans are motivated by meeting various needs. We begin with an urge to satisfy physiological needs (e.g., water, food, sleep, homeostasis). When these basic needs are met, more complex ones motivate behaviour: safety (e.g., security, protection, health, well-being); social (e.g., kin relationships, romance, non-kin relations); esteem (e.g., personal accomplishments/recognitions, sport/community/religious involvement); and, finally, self-actualisation (i.e., personal and on-going improvement). More recent iterations of this hierarchy have added the need for belongingness between safety and esteem needs, and cognitive needs after esteem[9].
Note that the need to belong to a social group of some kind is strong in humans[10]. We want to be part of a group or ‘tribe’[11]. Some psychologists argue this desire is as strong as the need for basic physiological necessities of food and water in order to ensure safety/survival; it is seen as an evolutionary adaptation[12].
“The tribal instincts hypothesis proposes that innate human predispositions to commit to their ingroups arose by coevolution with group selected cultural institutions. We are adapted to living in tribes, and the social institutions of tribes elicit strong — sometimes fanatical — commitment… The nature of the tribes that we commit to, the kinds of commitments we make, and the strength of those commitments all depend upon the cultural traditions that define the group and its institutions. Through the evolution of work-arounds in the last few thousand years, institutions have evolved that recruit the tribal subjective commitment to far larger and very different social systems than the tribe as the concept is understood by anthropologists.”[13]
While the issue for the detrimental impacts of groupthink to arise is not so significant for society at large given the array of competing voices/narratives/interpretations that can exist, it is more so a problem for governments and other elite institutions[14]; those groups that are the primary legislative-/decision-/policy-makers for society and have significant influence over the stories most people cling to.
I would add that governments and large businesses/corporations tend to be prone to groupthink due to the ‘isolation’ that exists for these decision-making bodies. Many (most?) tend to be part of a ‘class’ of people that exclusively interact with like-minded individuals and additionally receive reinforcing feedback from their ‘courtiers/sycophants’. They do not tend to interact with the masses of people who do not view the world from the same privileged perspective; they have their own ‘in-groups’.
Given the previously discussed tendency of humans to defer to ‘authority’ figures and the proclivity for these ‘leaders’ to develop ideas/policies in isolation from a wide variety of inputs/perspectives, we can imagine how maladaptive strategies created by the elite — which are driven by a primary motivation of control/expansion of their power/wealth — can ensure we, as a collective, take a misguided trajectory into the future: the elite encourage a faulty strategy (that serves their purposes) and the hoi polloi defer to it, accepting it as the righteous path to follow and support.
To understand why this tendency towards the need to belong to a social group and groupthink is relevant to overshoot and collapse, I believe we need to revisit archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s thesis regarding a complex society’s collapse due to declining marginal returns. Here we find that as these returns on investments in complexity decline the elite may, and invariably do, respond through greater legitimisation activities and/or control, imposing strict behavioural controls — particularly absent the ability to address such issues via territorial expansion [15]. And, in the end, these actions tend to expedite resource drawdown causing the impending ‘collapse’ due to diminishing returns on investments in complexity to arrive more quickly than might otherwise.
These attempts by the elite to ‘kick-the-can-down-the-road’ seems ample reason to believe we are ‘pushed’ into groupthink tendencies by those who ‘profit’ from the denial of overshoot/collapse, or, perhaps, from raising the prospects of it[16]. Propaganda’s fundamental purpose is narrative control in order to align group thinking so as to interpret events/observations/stories along specific lines. It is the interpretive lens through which we view the world that impacts our beliefs and thus actions/behaviour. If a nation state, for example, can predetermine how most citizens will ‘understand’ what is happening around them, they ease the manner in which they direct society at large. Beliefs impact behaviour and it is behavioural ‘control’ of the masses that is paramount to sustaining status quo power/wealth structures and avoiding — or, at least, deferring — ‘revolution /pushback’.
Consider here the research on Social Cognition, especially Context Effect[17]. What humans ‘perceive’ in their environment is impacted significantly by the context in which it is observed/understood/interpreted. Visual stimuli can actually appear differently to different observers for a variety of reasons but mostly because our brains take shortcuts to reduce the myriad of details, relying upon the context in which we observe to filter and simplify complexities for us. This is also true of our understanding of events. If the context is provided, even if it is faulty/fake, we understand events through it.
The ‘context’ through which we view/interpret information has been given a number of different terms: schema[18], paradigm[19], worldview[20], interpretive lens, etc.. Being able to establish/influence the context through which a person or group views the world is very much the role of propaganda/narrative control.
So, it would appear that humans can be ‘herded’ into believing particular stories by way of the higher status amongst us establishing the context through which we interpret and understand issues and events. This doesn’t necessarily necessitate some grand ‘conspiracy’ but simply a small number of decision-makers to set the stage through policies, actions, and/or even just repetitive ‘marketing’ via speeches, media releases, etc. that are invariably wrapped in verbiage that highlights supposed benefits for the masses. Once a majority of people come to accept the narrative being shared, our strong tendency to want to belong[21] and meet the ‘norms’ of the social group in which we find ourselves leads us to accept the group’s ideas and behaviours — primarily to avoid the negative social pressures that accompany non-conformity. We may not necessarily agree with certain things, but we tend to go along for better or worse.
And while research has expanded and clarified the mechanisms at work in all this, pre/history shows the manipulation of behaviour by the ruling elite over and over again, be it to support status quo power/wealth structures and/or to engage in geopolitical struggles. Throw in Bernays’s work, the need to belong, and tendencies towards group conformity and deference to authority, and we can see how influence of the masses by a small, elite group can occur rather easily.
This is where most of society currently appears to stand. There may be some growing gaps with ‘break-away’ groups challenging mainstream narratives but for the most part the significant majority of society holds onto the stories being weaved by our ruling elite. I see this very clearly in the marketing narratives pertaining to an energy transition from fossil fuels to ‘clean/green’ energy alternatives.
I end with a quote attributed to U.S. General George S. Patton: “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”
[5] Solomon Asch’s research into social conformity due to majority peer pressure are important here as well (https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html). People tend to go along with the majority in a group — even when they don’t necessarily agree — for fear of being ridiculed by others in the group and/or believe that the assessment of a majority is more informed than their individual assessment. In the absence of group unanimity, however, overall conformity drops as people are less concerned about social approval in such situations.
[6] There exist stories along a continuum from the idea that concerns are overblown and being leveraged by the ruling elite solely for the purpose of profiteering and/or social engineering/control to the assertion that this is a predicament that has no solutions, cannot be avoided, and total human extinction is at hand.
[10] In the absence of less complex and smaller human communities that are more amenable to a sense of belonging, there is still a need for this ‘urge’ to be met. Sometimes this is achieved through community organisations or institutions, such as a religious-based one.
[11] This can be observed in the self-reinforcing echo chambers that have arisen with the widespread use of social media. It appears that in their desire to confirm/reinforce beliefs, individuals orient their online browsing and communications towards like-minded individuals/groups. See this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7936330/
[16] There seems to be, on some level, an increase in the mainstream recognition of possible ‘collapse’, be it economic or some other iteration. Perhaps some see the prospects of it as ‘profitable’ in the sense of leveraging the issue in one way or another. There is, for example, much in the way of ‘commercialisation’ of products to alleviate the anxiety of possible ‘collapse’ and prepare for it. And then there is Joseph Tainter’s observation that
Today’s Contemplation has been prompted by a request to engage someone in ‘an academic lesson’ regarding the maladaptation of pursuing complex technologies in an attempt to ‘solve’ our ‘problem’ of climate change.
As Frederick Nietzsche has been credited with arguing: “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”
‘Facts/truth’ (such as the ecological destructiveness of pursuing non-renewable renewables, or that climate change is a symptom of the predicament of ecological overshoot and not a separate problem that can be ‘solved’ using maladaptive strategies that exacerbate overshoot) mean next to nothing to those captured by the fanatical belief that more technology and human ingenuity can reverse the negative consequences of almost all our technologies and the unprecedented growth they have supported. Such a belief system is difficult if not impossible to change for it is supported by powerful psychological mechanisms that prevent humans from confronting anxiety-provoking thoughts (e.g., the denial/bargaining stages of grieving a significant loss) or that serve to rationalize destructive behaviours (usually to avoid/deflect guilt).
Until someone is ready and/or willing to look in the mirror and honestly deconstruct their core beliefs — and face the evidence/possibility that what they are arguing for is actually the opposite of what is likely required of humanity — attempting to ‘school’ them is very likely pointless, and usually serves to motivate them to ‘double-down’ on their rationalisations/justifications (this is especially true if their career/income/self-image/-worth is tied up with their perspective)[1]. It also does not help in the least that there are powerful monied interests pushing the non-renewable renewable narrative at every opportunity and have captured many well-intentioned groups/individuals, or that relatively recent human history can be argued to demonstrate unending ‘progress’ in certain areas (depending upon one’s interpretation) that is ‘guaranteed’ to continue.
Examples of such behaviours abound. Academics/economists who rationalise the creation and distribution of fiat currency by a small cabal of elite, arguing that the infinite growth paradigm is not only possible on a finite planet but that it is the only way to ensure prosperity and equality for all — ignoring or denigrating countervailing evidence that such an approach is not only resource-/energy-/ecologically-blind, but guarantees our own destruction and that of most of the rest of the planet’s inhabitants; and most certainly ignores the inflationary price consequences of their actions and the inequality it creates, or the impossibility of controlling/predicting complex systems. Mainstream media that parrots without much self-reflection or critical evaluation the narratives of governments — ostracising, censoring, or eradicating those who challenge the ruling class’s edicts/machinations (think Julian Assange or Edward Snowden). An education system (and pretty well every societal institution) that continues to market the narrative that electoral systems of representative democracies provide important agency/input into sociopolitical decision-making (rather than serving to provide cover to those at the top of our power/wealth structures and their overwhelming and significant influences). Challenges/counterfactual evidence to these narratives are never the result of the ruling class’s policies/actions, instead the finger is always pointed elsewhere/anywhere[2].
I could go on but the point is as the Nietzsche quote I opened this contemplation with shows, we humans are story-telling primates that create our own ‘reality’ through complex belief systems that avoid strongly the evidence that runs contrary to our perspectives.
As this article on ecological overshoot and the impediments to a future of non-renewable renewables by Megan Seibert and William E. Rees points out: “We begin with a reminder that humans are storytellers by nature. We socially construct complex sets of facts, beliefs, and values that guide how we operate in the world. Indeed, humans act out of their socially constructed narratives as if they were real. All political ideologies, religious doctrines, economic paradigms, cultural narratives — even scientific theories — are socially constructed “stories” that may or may not accurately reflect any aspect of reality they purport to represent. Once a particular construct has taken hold, its adherents are likely to treat it more seriously than opposing evidence from an alternate conceptual framework.”
I am becoming less inclined to engage in a discussion with someone that exists in an alternate belief system surrounding our existential predicament as I am increasingly perceiving it is a waste of my time and energy (and can too often make one the focus of ad hominem rhetoric, or worse) — something that is quickly becoming more dear to me as I age and get closer to the end of my journey on this planet.
As I have outlined in the last couple of my contemplations, I am choosing to focus my diminishing energy/time on activities to help my family (and eventually community) increase its self-reliance/-resilience, and less time engaged in social media and its increasing divisiveness.
I am more motivated nowadays by: the seedlings I experimented with in a hydroponic system for the first time growing in a far more robust fashion than any of my attempts in the past at starting plants from seeds; the peas and lettuce seeds I put in the ground a couple of weeks ago beginning to pop up through the winter leaf cover; and the progress I am making in replacing rotting garden ties with concrete block terraces in our growing food gardens.
These personally gratifying things will do nothing to change the perspective of a true believer in human ingenuity and technological ‘advancement’, but neither likely will my sharing counterfactual evidence. We all believe what we want to believe, ‘facts/truth’ be damned.
If you’re still ‘on the fence’ with respect to our plight, I suggest the following texts to broaden your knowledge. Read some/all and then decide where your time/energy should be focused.
Bernays, E..
Propaganda. iG Publishing, 1928. (ISBN 0–9703125–9–8).
Catton, Jr., W.R..
Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. University of Illinois Press, 1980. (ISBN 978–0–252–00988–4)
Chomsky, N..
Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. Anansi Press, 2003. (ISBN 978–0–88784–574–1)
Clark, W.R..
Diamond, J..
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Penguin Books, 2005/2011. (ISBN 978–0–14–311700–1)
Greer, J.M..
The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age. New Society Publishers, 2008. (ISBN 978–0–86571–609–4)
Griffen. G.E..
The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, 4th Edition. American Media, 2002. (ISBN 978–0–912986–39–5)
Heinberg, R..
Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines. New Society Publishers, 2010. (ISBN 978–0–86571–645–2)
Kunstler, J. H..
The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. Grove Press, 2009/2006/2005. (ISBN 978–0–8021–4249–8)
Martenson, C..
The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future of Our Economy, Energy, and Environment. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. 2011. (ISBN 978–0–470–92764–9)
Meadows, D..
Thinking In Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008. (ISBN 978–1–60358–055–7)
Meadows, D., J. Randers, & D. Meadows.
Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004. (ISBN 978–1–931498–58–6)
Orlov, D..
The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivor’s Toolkit. New Society Publishers, 2013. (ISBN 978–0–86571–736–7)
Rothbard, M..
Anatomy of the State. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009. (ISBN 978–80–87888–43–8)
Rubin, J..
Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller. Vintage Canada, 2009. (ISBN 978–0–307–35752–6)
Ruppert, M..
Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Oil World. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009. (ISBN 978–1–60358–164–3)
Smil, V..
Energy Myths and Realities: Brining Science to the Energy Policy Debate. AEI Press, 2010. (ISBN 98–0–8447–4328–3)
Tainter, J.A..
The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge University Press, 1988. (ISBN 978–0–521–38673–9)
[1] It is not lost on me as a retired educator that one of the more important tasks of a teacher is to help students evaluate and rethink faulty beliefs. This is, of course, a much easier thing to do with those in the early stages of developing belief systems than with those that have entrenched ones that are entwined with other aspects of their life, like careers/salary.
[2] Apparently, challenges to our monetary/financial systems, media narratives, and democracy are all the fault of Vladimir Putin at the moment…
We Are Not Prepared For Shutting Down the Fossil Fuel Industry
To be or not to be, that is the question…
Prince Hamlet’s well-known soliloquy in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is apropos to a question I have been pondering: should we shut down immediately the world’s fossil fuel industries, as a seemingly increasing number of individuals and groups are advocating, or not?
Why have I been thinking about this? Mostly because I would argue it is suicide for our global, industrialised society and its vast array of complexities that the overwhelming majority of humans have come to depend upon, especially if it is without well-considered alternatives to support the loss of such an immense energy source.
In fact, without the energy provided by fossil fuels there would be no ‘transition’ to a ‘cleaner’ world that these same cheerleaders of fossil fuel’s immediate death suggest is ‘just around the corner’ — certainly, not a smooth and non-chaotic one. Without fossil fuels our various complexities that sustain us would collapse in short order and a massive die-off would occur[1]. Of this I have little doubt[2].
As far as a post-carbon transition based upon well-considered alternatives, I’m not speaking of so-called ‘green/clean’ energy substitutes for our fossil fuel-powered world in order to continue keeping on keeping on with our high energy-reliant complexities in some idealistic seamless shift. There is far too much evidence that that narrative is a lie and is being pushed by those that stand to profit from it and by well-intentioned but misguided others who believe the propaganda that such a shift is feasible and must be pursued with all haste[3]. Alternative energy-harvesting and -producing technologies are so dependent upon the fossil fuel platform that they cannot be constructed or sustained without significant fossil fuel inputs — to say little of the continued and significant environmental/ecological destruction necessary in both the upstream and downstream processes needed in their construction, maintenance, and after-life disposal/reclamation, and the lack of actual physical resources to build out a replacement for fossil fuels.
I’m speaking of a concerted ‘degrowth’ agenda that may need to be extremely radical in its undertaking if we are to minimise the most negative impacts of our ecological overshoot and perhaps ensure more of us are to make it out the other side of the ecological bottleneck we have created for our species (and many others)[4]. I have my own ideas about what this should and should not look like.
The very first order of business needs to be a discontinuation of the pursuit of the infinite growth chalice. This includes population growth but especially refers to economic growth, particularly for the so-called ‘advanced’ economies that are responsible for the lion’s share of resource use and abuse[5]. Without this our fundamental predicament of ecological overshoot simply grows in severity, leading to a more monumental collapse.
Given that the ruling class in particular but certainly a sizable portion of the citizens of advanced economies benefit immensely from the status quo systems and their continuation, I’m doubtful in the extreme that they would willingly admit and contemplate such a shift. As I expounded upon in my last contemplation, our ‘leaders’ are not in this for the masses as they pretend to be; they are in this for power and/or wealth[6]. As such, we will continue to be exposed to narratives that growth is not only beneficial for everyone but necessary to counteract the obvious dilemmas we are experiencing (but are, in fact, directly caused by our growth). Don’t, whatever you do, believe your lying eyes as the reality of resource shortages bite; continue to believe in human ingenuity and our technological prowess. Ignore the machinations going on behind that curtain over there.
Frankly, there are some difficult if not impossible decisions to be made that will and do challenge virtually everything the vast majority of us hold as near and dear to our hearts and our perception of what it means to be human; especially for those that live in ‘advanced’ economies where the transition necessarily puts everything on the table for discussion as to whether it can or should be maintained. Everything.
Many if not most of the cherished ideals that have been developed during a period of monumental surplus energy due to fossil fuel’s energy density, transportability, relative ease of extraction, and quantities are likely to be lost as our energy contraction speeds up. It may be exceedingly difficult if not impossible to maintain our ‘humanity’ in the face of this. Black Swan events, which is what this is going to be for the vast majority of people, have by far the largest impact on societies when they occur[7].
One of my ‘hopes’ as it were as we stumble into an unknown and unknowable future is that the dangerous complexities we have created (e.g., nuclear power plants, biosafety labs, chemical production and storage facilities) are dismantled and their dangers safely ‘contained/neutralised’ before we lose the energy capacity and related resources necessary to do this. I see zero progress currently on this front; in fact, there are increased demands to do the exact opposite.
And then there’s the whole economic-energy nexus where our monetary/financial systems are predicated upon credit/debt growth that is for all intents and purposes a potential claim on future energy and related resource use and its exponential growth[8]. If that energy is not there (and it’s not in a finite world), the entire Ponzi-like structure of these human-contrived systems collapses completely; and some argue this has actually already started and has been ‘papered’ over by manipulations that include accounting shenanigans and narrative control.
It is the glaring impediments (and the growing denial of these[9]) to the dreams of a ‘sustainable’ and ‘green/clean’ transition that increasingly lead me to conclude that we are totally and completely fubar. There is no saving our complexities that support our current ways. Does this necessitate losing ‘hope’? Well, hope as I’ve come to realise is a wish for something to happen over which we really have zero agency.
So, what do you have agency over? I would argue primarily one’s own actions, particularly at the local, community level[10].
Relocalising as much as possible now is paramount but especially in terms of potable water procurement, food production, and regional shelter needs. To do this an awful lot of learning and work needs to be accomplished, quickly. There is no time to waste when exponential factors are at play and a Seneca cliff of energy contraction just ahead[11].
Starting your journey to self-sufficiency yesterday would have been prudent but starting today is better than tomorrow. Do what you can, even if it seems minimal. Plants a few pots of beans or tomatoes. Read a book on composting or seed saving. Find some like-minded neighbours and begin a community garden.
I’ve been busy prepping our raised beds for the seedlings we started indoors a few weeks ago. One of our greenhouses is almost cleaned up and ready to host a few dozen grow bags for our potatoes (discovered they do better in a greenhouse than the mostly shaded backyard areas I’ve tried in previous years). Some seeds of cool-weather plants are already in — lettuce, kale, sugar peas. Half of our compliment of twenty, 200 litre rain barrels are hooked up[12]. The two-compartment, concrete-block compost bin I built last summer has been extended higher and better pest screening added[13]. Almost all the fruit trees have been pruned. Mature compost has begun to be added to the various rows of raspberry and blackberry canes. Been sidelined today because of a mid-April snowstorm but another few dozen chores await, especially the replacement of rotting garden ties, that were used a decade ago to create foundations for our three greenhouses and form terraces on our side hill, with concrete blocks.
I close by repeating what I argued in my last post: “don’t depend upon your government/ruling class for salvation from the coming collapse of current complexities. Such ‘faith’ is significantly misplaced and will be deeply disappointing if not disastrous for those that maintain it. It is personal, familial, and community resilience and preparedness that will ease the decline; pursue this rather than believing you have significant agency via the ballot box and who might hold the reins of sociopolitical power.”
Please consider visiting my website and supporting my continuation of it via a purchase of my ‘fictional’ novel trilogy.
[1] There are some that argue this is exactly what we should do to ensure the survival of other species and not worry too much about humans. That is not me; at least not yet.
[2] Do not mistake this perspective of mine as one of supporting the expansion of fossil fuel extraction or our myriad of systemic complexities (especially technological) that have ‘evolved’ as a result of the growth brought about by this extraction. It is what it is and we need to consider it in its historical context and the dependencies it has led to. Given I believe that our fundamental predicament is ecological overshoot brought about by our increasing use of technologies, especially those that allowed us to extract ever-increasing amounts of fossil energy, I am all for curtailing such use; but it needs to be done thoughtfully and with targeted precision as our energy use contracts significantly.
[4] An ecological/population bottleneck is where a significant majority of a species dies off due to a significant shift in environmental conditions. See William Catton Jr.’s Bottleneck: Humanity Impending Impasse.
[5] My current region has been on the forefront of both these growth frontiers within Ontario, Canada and as a result I have witnessed seemingly unending expansion of suburban residential housing at the expense of very limited arable land. The local politicians parrot the narrative that such growth is only beneficial and any seemingly negative consequences (most of which are dismissed/ignored) can be fully and completely mitigated. Apparently the supply chains that supply most of our food needs are guaranteed…forever and always, Amen.
[6] This may not be so for very small, local governments (and I mean very small, where ‘leaders’ socialise regularly with their constituents as neighbour, friend, or acquaintance) but it is increasingly so as governments get larger and the ‘leadership’ is removed from ‘normal’ societal participation and interactions, tending to fraternise within very closed peer groups that have little in common with the ‘average’ citizen.
[8] And we’re not talking small numbers here. We are looking at hundreds of trillions of U.S. dollars in global debt. See: https://blogs.imf.org/2021/12/15/global-debt-reaches-a-record-226-trillion/. This doesn’t even account for unfunded liabilities (e.g., pension plans) that would put the ‘true’ level multiple times higher.
[10] To be honest, I am finding this difficult as well due to the widespread belief that growth only has beneficial aspects and a local town council that pushes this narrative at every opportunity.
[12] We live on a hill with a basement walkout so I’ve utilised the grade to connect 15 of our rain barrels with each higher one feeding into the next lower one, and because of our very cold winters I unhook them all and flip them over every fall to prevent damage to the hoses and taps
[13] Damned chipmunks chewed through the metal insect screening I had wrapped around the outside and began pulling un-composted matter into the yard — concrete blocks are on their sides so the openings allow air into the pile to help with the decomposition of organic matter.
Today’s contemplation has been prompted by an article by ecologist and educator Richard Heinberg (see link below).
Infinite growth. Finite planet. What could possibly go wrong?
As our awareness of the various existential predicaments we face[1] grows, most people cling to the default view that our sociopolitical elite/leaders will address the issues because they, after all, have been ‘awarded’ the responsibility of governing and helping to ‘solve’ the problems that arise with living in a complex world[2].
I have, for the most part[3], lost the notion that our ‘leaders’ are ‘servants’ of the population motivated to improve/sustain society as the common notion projects. That is the belief the elite want us to hold so we support the status quo power structures[4] from which they and their families benefit.
At one time I did hold on to this belief but my view has shifted to a somewhat contrarian perspective that the ruling class/elite/powers-that-be are driven primarily by the incentive to control/expand the wealth-generating/-extracting systems that provide their revenue streams and thus power, using their positions of privilege to leverage circumstances to meet this driving motivation.
In an interesting article by educator and ecologist Richard Heinberg, the argument is made that our ruling elite were provided sound scientific evidence decades ago that humanity’s continued pursuit of the infinite growth chalice was anything but sustainable and, in fact, was heading us towards ecological overshoot and collapse[5].
What did our ruling class do in response? For the most part, they engaged their narrative control managers to craft stories which were propagated far and wide that, in fact, perpetual growth was not just entirely beneficial for humanity and achieving a host of great things for all, but completely possible due to our technological prowess and ingenuity.
Now, decades later, it seems to be more and more obvious that we’ve been led down the wrong path. That we have painted ourselves into a corner from which we cannot seem to escape and the moment of reckoning is fast approaching. And as Heinberg points out, the elite have failed to acknowledge this but instead doubled-down on their propaganda and control of information to distract from and deny this problematic perspective[6].
There are still a lot of people (most?) that do not comprehend the situation. The reasons for this are many and complex. From significant propaganda courtesy of the ruling elite and their courtiers that we are exposed to daily via the media institutions they control, to psychological mechanisms that cause us to deny uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking beliefs, think in herds, and defer to authority. We humans, in the words of author Robert Heinlein, are rationalising animals not rational ones; we don’t want to believe we are engaging in self-destructive behaviour so we justify our actions/beliefs and tell ourselves self-deluding tales to reduce our cognitive dissonance[7].
I have after some years of going through the grieving process arrived at the acceptance stage of our plight. ‘Collapse’ is inevitable. How it will proceed is still up in the air. There will be similarities to past complex societal decline but there will be significant differences. Perhaps the most significant difference to the past is that today’s people have lost the skills of self-sufficiency many people have required in the past regardless of how complex their society was. It was only a very minor segment of the population that depended almost entirely on the agrarian skills of their compatriots and the local supply chains that existed to survive. Today’s world is vastly different; to say little of the dependence upon energy-intensive technologies that make it so.
In the final accounting of all of this I have come to the same basic conclusion that Richard Heinberg does: don’t depend upon your government/ruling class for salvation from the coming collapse of current complexities. Such ‘faith’ is significantly misplaced and will be deeply disappointing if not disastrous for those that maintain it. It is personal, familial, and community resilience and preparedness that will be ease the decline; pursue this rather than believing you have significant agency via the ballot box and who might hold the reins of sociopolitical power.
As Heinberg writes: “But, dear reader, don’t hold your breath waiting for elites to get it right. I’ve used this essay to channel my own exasperation at cowards in high places, some of whom have enriched themselves to obscene degrees even as so many others languished. Rail against them a little or some, based on your level of outrage, but I’d advise directing the bulk of your energy to moving on. Anything that further divides us makes it harder for humanity to do whatever is still possible. A better path would be building personal and community resilience ahead of what’s coming. Ease the suffering. Save what can be saved.”
In this vein, I leave you to head back into our family’s growing food production gardens to continue preparing the soil and greenhouses for the coming warm weather. Much of the ground is still frozen in our area north of Toronto but there’s always work to be done and some of the raised beds have finally defrosted…
[1] Primarily, if not totally, the consequence of ecological overshoot
[2] Refer to archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies where it is asserted that “Complex societies are problem-solving organizations, in which more parts, different kinds of parts, more social differentiation, more inequality, and more kinds of centralization and control emerge as circumstances require.” (p. 37)
[3] I suppose I maintain a modicum of ‘hope’ that our ruling class may, in fact, be driven by higher morals than the evidence suggests but I think this may be the residual result of unending enculturation over decades prior to my losing ‘faith/trust’.
[4] I highly recommend reading Murray Rothbard’s Anatomy of the State for an interesting perspective on how State’s come into being and maintain the sociopolitical structures that benefit those in ‘control’.
[5] Important to read both Meadows et al.’s The Limits to Growth and William Catton Jr.’s Overshoot.
[6] Here I would add that the elite have in fact done what they almost always do in such circumstances: leveraged crisis to their advantage to meet their driving interest by marketing ‘solutions’ from which they profit, such as energy ‘alternatives’, and expanded control of the dominant narratives.
A contemplation prompted by a couple of posts I read early this morning. One was a list of actionable ideas for preparing for Peak Oil and the other an article on the mainstreaming of ‘Doomsday Prepping’.
I’ve written several times about the importance of energy. Of paramount importance to our complex, global and industrialised societies is the finite energy resource of fossil fuels, particularly oil[1]. Fossil fuels underpin almost everything we depend upon[2] and there is no adequate replacement. None. In fact, all those marketed as ‘renewable’ substitutes and promising a seamless transition away from fossil fuels leave out the very important and inconvenient fact that they rely quite substantially upon fossil fuels from the mining and refinement of the resources needed to produce them to their after-life reclamation or disposal — they are non-renewable energy-harvesting technologies that cannot exist without fossil fuels, and are only truly ‘renewable’ in the sense of the energy source they attempt to harness[3].
Unfortunately for our energy-intensive and -dependent complex societies, fossil fuel extraction has encountered significant diminishing returns and will eventually cease to be available; not because we’ve run out of them but because it will require increasing amounts of energy to retrieve and transport them than we get back in return. And despite all the narratives surrounding a ‘voluntary’ cessation of fossil fuel extraction in order to address anthropogenic climate change[4], this will not happen by our conscious endeavours for a variety of reasons but primarily because of the thermodynamic, biophysical, and economic properties inherent in our exploitation of a finite resource.
The tremendous surplus of energy we’ve been leveraging to sustain our phenomenal growth and technological wonders over the past century or more has disappeared. We’ve been able to avoid the negative consequences of this physical reality for the last few decades mostly through some technological tweaks and monetary/financial manipulations[5]. However, it is increasingly looking like our attempts to kick-the-can-down-the-road have reached a tipping point — there’s no more hiding the fact that infinite growth on a finite planet was never a sustainable thing. Ever. It’s only been possible in our imaginations and we’ve crafted some fairly comforting narratives to help us believe it was an entirely plausible scenario, particularly because of our ingenuity and technology; and we have some very strong psychological mechanisms in play to help us deny the anxiety-producing reality that this would all end someday.
It seems that the narratives that we can continue to chase the infinite growth chalice and that we can easily transition to some alternative energy source (that is miraculously ‘clean/green’) are appearing to be coming under significant pressure. Reliance upon finite resources in somebody else’s backyard is being exposed as problematic for self-sufficiency[6]. Supply chains and the just-in-time delivery systems are increasingly showing their fragility[7]. Price inflation (as a result of money/credit expansion) in almost everything is placing more and more people in precarious economic straits, while those at the top of our power and wealth structures are accumulating more and more. The ruling class is beginning to voice the idea that global ‘austerity’ may be more than just a ‘transitory’ phenomenon — naturally they’re blaming this on everything but finite resources, and their chasing perpetual growth and other related economic/geopolitical ambitions.
The jig is up. The scams are being exposed. Increasing numbers of people are catching on to the various frauds and propaganda. The faulty and purposely fanciful stories are being interpreted for what they are: attempts to keep the unsustainable sustained just a bit longer[8].
Degrowth or ‘collapse’ is coming whether we wish it or not.
While I often refer to ‘collapse’ of our complex societies, I tend to do this in the context of archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s definition of it[9]. As he argues, collapse manifests itself as: less stratification and social differentiation; less economic and occupational specialisation; less centralised control (i.e., less regulation by elites); less behavioural control and regimentation; less investment in the epiphenomena of complexity (e.g., monumental architecture); less flow of information between a central authority and its periphery; less trading (i.e., more localisation); less coordination of groups; a smaller territory.
Most of that, quite frankly, doesn’t sound too bad.
So, what to do about all this?
I believe it would be in people’s best interest to recognise this and prepare for it .
I would argue there are at minimum three things we as individuals/local communities need to be ensuring: procurement of potable water, local food production, regional/climate-based shelter needs. Everything else is ‘gravy’ and can be considered after the aforementioned are procured. Do not put your faith in our sociopolitical systems or the complex technologies they cheerlead. Both of these are unsustainable and actually work against one’s preparatory interests. No matter how much propaganda there exists about having choice and ‘control’ in a democratic society, there is actually very little if any with respect to the large societal trends. I, personally, lost the belief that voters have any real agency via a ballot box decades ago. As I’ve written previously, the ruling class’s primary motivation is the control and/or expansion of the wealth-generating/-extracting systems that provide their revenue streams; it is not you or I except in terms of labour and tax generation.
More and more I personally am focusing upon the ‘actionable’ part of preparing rather than the ‘cerebral/academic/economic/political’ aspects of what’s happening. I can’t control what happens much outside of my own little ‘world’ so why worry about it and/or the reasons for what is happening.
And when push comes to shove it doesn’t matter the reason for our ‘collapse’, what matters is the re-learning of ‘lost’ skills/knowledge for self-sufficiency (especially for those of us enculturated in the ‘modern’ complex societies that have oriented towards a future of techno-cornucopianism that always had a relatively short lifespan on a finite planet). The last three books I have read are about composting, seed saving, and first aid/CPR. The one I just started is about mini-farming. You can find my personal summary notes of these books here (along with a couple of others, including Tainter’s).
And while my aging body may not be quite ready for the continuing work I have planned in our ever-increasing home food-production gardens, I am looking forward immensely to the coming transition to warmer weather for my northern climate and the time away from the distractions of the internet. My days will be spent outside with nature working on some specific projects requiring lots of physical labour and problem solving while I listen to some of my favourite music and get the exercise I need to be able to continue doing this work for as long as I’m physically capable.
Please consider visiting my website and purchasing my fictional novel trilogy, Olduvai, to help support my continuing online work. Less than $10 Canadian gets you the entire trilogy in PDF format.
[1] Virtually all of our other important energy sources are derived from and/or dependent upon fossil fuels in one way or another; especially the mining, refining, and transporting of minerals for nuclear plants, dams, solar panels, wind turbines, etc.. Steel and concrete production in particular cannot be done without fossil fuels.
[2] Of particular importance are resource extraction and refining, transportation, modern agriculture, long-distance supply chains, and ‘money’ (that is basically a potential claim on future energy).
[3] The narrative around ‘renewable energy’ being a solution to our fossil fuel use is a huge distraction from our underlying predicament of ecological overshoot. All the ‘clean/green’ energy in the world can’t save us from the ‘collapse’ that always accompanies a species overshooting its environmental carrying capacity and, in fact, the production and use of such energy-harvesting technologies will simply serve to put us further into overshoot.
[4] I am constantly confounded by the number of people/institutions that demand we cease our extraction of fossil fuels immediately without the slightest foresight as to what this would entail for our world, especially considering their associated call for a wholesale transition to ‘renewable’ energy. Their thinking is entirely magical in nature because it discounts entirely the reality of how non-renewable renewables are produced.
[5] Money/credit expansion and fraudulent accounting have been the primary avenues pursued.
[6] The current explanations for this are being warped by politics and economics that tends to take precedent over the biological and physical ones. But biology and physics always trumps human constructs in the end.
[7] I’ve long argued with my local politicians that dependence upon long-distance supply chains over which we have zero control is a recipe for disaster as they cheerlead the ever-increasing paving over of our limited arable lands to expand housing/industry. My Canadian province of Ontario depends upon these supply chains for 80+% of its food to feed its almost 15 million inhabitants.
[8] To consolidate more wealth at the top of the power/wealth structures in my opinion.
Today’s contemplation has been generated in response to some comments on a Chris Hedges’ article I shared in the Peak Oil Facebook group I am a member of. Hedges’ article suggests our civilisation has not been the first to collapse but it will be the last. Two members suggested this is likely not to be the case and that another will arise — I have my doubts.
Will another civilisation rise after ours collapses?
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Circumstances are always different and most certainly are today with our globalised, industrial civilisation that is, for all intents and purposes, completely reliant upon the dense and highly-transportable energy of fossil fuels — a finite resource that has encountered significant diminishing returns.
Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three significant impediments to a global, complex society again rising from the ashes of our destined-to-collapse one.
First, our environment (globally) has been degraded to a significant degree. Little fertile soil remains with most of the arable lands having to depend upon fossil fuel supplements to boost food production to feed all of us[1]. Toxic chemicals have spread across the planet, some of which have had devastating impacts upon ecological systems and other species (especially very important pollinators)[2]. It will take significant time, perhaps millennia, for our planet to recover and allow the over-exploitation that is necessary for a widespread, complex society to once again flourish[3]. And then there are those who contend that our burning of fossil fuels have created an irreversible greenhouse effect that is leading to feedback loops that will ensure inhospitable environmental conditions and precluding many, if any, species to survive long on this planet[4].
Second, today’s complex societies (but especially so-called ‘advanced’ economies) have resulted in a situation — because of our leveraging of fossil fuels — where almost no one has the skills/knowledge to be self-sufficient. In the past, most of a population was still heavily involved in food production and fundamental self-sufficiency skills, and so when a society ‘collapsed’ most people dispersed into the countryside and were able to fend for themselves[5]. That is certainly not the case today. The ability to procure potable water, grow one’s own food and/or hunt and gather, and construct shelter needs for the regional climate has been mostly lost. Few of an advanced economy’s populace would survive for much more than a few weeks/months without the ‘conveniences’ of our many energy slaves due to this loss of knowledge/skills — to say little of the chaos that would ensue and probably wipeout many of those who might possess the wherewithal to get to the other side of the ecological bottleneck we seem to be in[6].
Finally, there are those very dangerous complexities that we have created that could put an exclamation mark upon our industrialised society’s impending collapse, any peoples remaining, and the ability to establish a future complex society. Nuclear power plants. Biosafety labs. Chemical production/storage facilities. We have a potpourri of potential environmental catastrophes once the ability to contain/manage these facilities and their waste products disappears — to say little of the damage that has already been done to our ecological systems from them. 437+ nuclear power reactors[7]. 59 biosafety labs[8]. Countless chemical production and storage facilities[9]. I can only imagine the local/regional/global impact of a loss of ‘containment’.
I’d argue the chips are stacked firmly against another complex society, certainly global-spanning one, developing again in the future. Of course, as several notable personalities have been credited with stating: It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future[10].
Only time will tell…
To help support my internet presence, please consider visiting my website and purchasing my ‘fictional’ collapse novel trilogy — Olduvai.
[1] I won’t even touch upon the overshoot predicament here. See: Catton, Jr., W.R.. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. University of Illinois Press, 1980. (ISBN 978–0–252–00988–4).
It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
-Anonymous[1]
I’ve been reflecting a lot recently (for years to be honest) on the ever-present belief by most people that our governments/political class/ruling elite can lead the way to ‘solving’ our various crises, be it the ‘climate emergency’, ‘energy crisis’, ‘inflation’, ‘inequality’, ‘geopolitical disagreements’, etc.. I note such a perspective virtually every day be it in personal comments people make in social media posts and/or by journalists/contributors in the media (both mainstream and ‘alternative’); and it is particularly strong and echoed by almost everyone around election times or perceived ‘crises’.
Add to this belief the ‘bargaining/denial’ arguments that tend to suggest that the only reason the ‘problems’ have not been addressed/solved/mitigated is because we simply have not had the ‘right’ individuals or ‘party’ in power; once the ‘right’ people get chosen by the public, all will be well again — if the new government can overcome the disastrous policies/actions of the previous one or current political opposition[2].
I lost that perspective some decades ago[3]. I have increasingly come to view our world/nation state/regional ‘leaders’ (aka ruling elite/class) as part and parcel of our growing problems/predicament. In fact, more often than not I see their actions/policies as resulting in even worse situations — eventually[4] — yet they are often (always?) marketed to the public as optimal and beneficial for all (or may result in some slight, short-term pain, but most certainly will result in longer-term prosperity for all — think of the current narratives developing around the ‘austerity’ and ‘sacrifices’ required to support the war efforts in Ukraine[5]).
I have come to interpret our societal elites’ behaviour as primarily motivated by a never-ending drive to control/maintain/expand the wealth-generating/-extracting systems that provide their revenue streams and thus their power/wealth/prestige/privilege[6]. That some portion of the wealth they appropriate gets funnelled back into the public sphere is simply ‘the cost of doing business’; just as the number of financial institutions that knowingly ‘bend the rules’ to obtain obscene profits set aside a portion of that ill-begotten wealth to pay the eventual fines should they get publicly prosecuted for their shenanigans[7].
Perhaps the most egregious (but purposeful) ‘error’ our elite make is their chasing and cheerleading of the perpetual growth chalice (particularly economic growth[8], but they do also encourage population growth[9]). The common refrain/narrative is that growth is primarily — if not ‘solely’ — a benefit to human ‘progress’ and well-being, any negative impacts being discounted or rationalised away demonstrating a poor if not conveniently purposeful ignorance of the way complex systems behave.
It is as Donella Meadows argues in Thinking in Systems: A Primer[10]:
…a clear leverage point: growth. Not only population growth, but economic growth. Growth has costs as well as benefits, and we typically don’t count the costs — among which are poverty and hunger, environmental destruction and so on — the whole list of problems we are trying to solve with growth! What is needed is much slower growth, very different kinds of growth, and in some cases no growth or negative growth. The world leaders are correctly fixated on economic growth as the answer to all problems, but they’re pushing with all their might in the wrong direction. …leverage points frequently are not intuitive. Or if they are, we too often use them backward, systematically worsening whatever problems we are trying to solve.
It seems self-evident to me that this pursuit of perpetual growth runs into some fairly heavy obstacles in the sense of biophysical limits on a finite planet, despite arguments to the contrary — especially by most economists who argue for infinite substitutability as the ultimate solution to such limits, or the ever-expanding ‘printing’ of money.
There is not just the issue of resource limits and diminishing returns on extraction/exploitation of the necessary resources for our ever-increasing societal complexities (especially energy-producing ones) but the predicament of ecological overshoot that occurs when a species exceeds its environmental carrying capacity[11].
It’s instructive at this juncture to revisit what archaeologist Joseph Tainter points out in The Collapse of Complex Societies[12] given that his analysis and thesis rests primarily upon ‘collapse’ in the sociopolitical sphere (which then has serious repercussions in pretty well everything else for human societies).
Tainter argues that ”[c]omplex societies are problem-solving organizations, in which more parts, different kinds of parts, more social differentiation, more inequality, and more kinds of centralization and control emerge as circumstances require.”[13] They are maintained almost exclusively through organisational control and specialisation.
Growth of complexity refers to size, distinctiveness and number of parts, variety of social roles, distinctiveness of social personalities, and a variety of mechanisms to organize parts into a whole.
Where more complex political differentiation exists: permanent positions of authority/rank can exist in an ‘office’ that can be hereditary in nature; inequality becomes more pervasive; groups tend to be larger and more densely populated; political organisation is larger, extending beyond local community; a political economy arises with rank having authority to direct labour and economic surpluses; and, with greater size comes a need for more social organisation that is less dependent upon kinship relations, and the constraint that kin-ties had on individual political ambitions is lost.
States, perhaps the most complex of human societies, are characterized by: their territorial organisation (i.e. membership determined by place of birth/residence); a ruling authority that monopolizes sovereignty and delegates all power — with the ruling class being non-kinship-based professionals that hold a monopoly on force within the territory (e.g. taxes, laws, draft) and is validated by a state-wide ideology; maintenance of territorial integrity is stressed; and, greater stratification and specialisation, particularly with regard to occupation, develops.
Complex states, like their simpler societies, must divert resources and activities to legitimising authority in order for the political system to survive. While coercion can ensure some compliance, it is a more costly approach than moral validity.
To ensure moral validity amongst the populace, states tend to focus on a symbolic and scared ‘centre’ (necessarily independent of its various territorial parts) which is why they always have an official religion, linking leadership to the supernatural (which helps unify different groups/regions). As the need for such religious integration recedes — although not the sense of the scared — once other avenues for retaining power exist.
In summary, organisational structures that arise in complex societies[14], especially as they grow larger and even more complex[15], concomitantly see the development of ‘power’ structures[16] that lead to outsized influence/power over others by a controlling elite that then creates and fosters legitimisation narratives, and/or coercive policies, to ensure these structures are maintained/expanded.
In addition, Tainter maintains that support, be it via legitimisation or coercion, also requires a material base. This support, however, can decline when output failure (political and/or material) ensues. As this process is ongoing, it necessitates resource mobilisation in perpetuity — a significant impossibility on a finite planet where such exploitation encounters diminishing returns due to our proclivity to extract the easiest- and cheapest-to-retrieve resources first. The tendency by the elite to deal with output failure is to begin pulling in resources from other spheres and/or increase coerciveness to maintain their priorities — be it using domestic reserves and/or surpluses, and/or exploitation of other societies.
Given the above, it is not a stretch to see that the primary motivation of the elite conflicts quite significantly with any policy/action/belief that would contend that growth cannot and should not be pursued in perpetuity. Throw in the evidence that we are in ecological overshoot and the predicament for humanity multiplies several-fold.
Then we encounter all the psychological and biological/physiological mechanisms that affect human beliefs and actions, and our situational predicament explodes. Cognitive dissonance reduction. Deference to authority. Desire to believe one has agency. Groupthink. Optimism bias. Confirmation bias. Avoidance of pain and seeking of pleasure. Rationalisation/justification of behaviours that conflict with certain beliefs. Overarching propensity to deny reality.
This all adds up to a tendency to believe in comforting lies and avoid harsh realities. We want to believe the propaganda of the elite and their promises to address and ‘solve’ our crises. We want to believe we have significant impact on society and agency via the ballot box. We want to avoid looking in the mirror. We want to continue with our lives unencumbered by existential worries and let others, our ‘leaders’, ‘solve’ our ‘problems’.
What we have instead, I tend to believe, are elite confabs that result in grandiose promises to benefit society at large while in actuality end up funneling wealth to the owners of the industries and financial institutions required to produce and fund the actions/directives sold to us as ‘solutions’. A mainstream media (again, owned by the elite) that parrots the elitist rhetoric and provides a widely dispersed platform for the marketing and misleading propaganda of the ruling class, especially legitimisation narratives. An ever-expanding potpourri of racketeering, such as the ‘green/clean’ energy narrative, ‘equitable/beneficial’ creation/distribution of fiat currency, the necessary expansion of ‘war’ and government, etc..
The world is not as it appears to most. What most of us believe in is, in my opinion, a tightly controlled illusion that benefits a minority primarily at the expense of the majority.
There are no ‘solutions’ to our predicament of ecological overshoot and the inevitable collapse that is awaiting us (if not already begun). There is, at best, a ‘hope’ for some to come out the other side of the bottleneck we’ve created (primarily via our leveraging of technology to overexploit our planet and expand the human experiment).
But as I shared with someone who commented on my last contemplation: “Hope is very much a two-edged sword. It can indeed foster denial and bargaining so as to avoid the stress of cognitive dissonance and provide pleasure while avoiding pain. It can, depending upon how one’s energies are focused with some ‘hope’, serve to provide direction and impetus to acting in ‘better’ ways. As I see it, however, the problem is that our ‘elite’ (and feckless others) pedal and leverage it for purely self-serving purposes, and most soak their version of it up because comforting lies are much more enjoyable than harsh realities.”
Seeing beyond the grand illusion that has been constructed over the ages by the elite is, again in my opinion, what is necessary to understand what can and should be accomplished to salvage some of our human experiment. It is, as I have argued before, most important to attempt to relocalise as much as is possible potable water procurement, food production, and regional shelter requirements. It is not to give over responsibility to others who do not have your best interests but theirs in mind. And it is not to believe in their ‘solutions’ — that way surely leads to ruin.
A handful of readings that support the notion that the elite’s primary motivation is the control/expansion of the wealth-generating/extracting systems that provide their wealth/power/prestige/privilege:
[2] I have come to the conclusion that the only thing that really changes after an election is the narrative we tell ourselves and others: If my ‘team’ wins, all will be right with the world soon enough; if the other ‘team’ wins, the world will soon go to hell in a handbasket.
[3] Through the years I have been involved in the ‘political’ sphere in a number of roles. During some of my post-secondary years, I chaired a university department’s students’ ‘union’ and got to witness academic ‘politics’ first-hand. Perhaps the most eye-opening experience, however, were the years I spent as the chair of a political action committee for a relatively large teachers’ federation/union. After that, I spent a number of years as one of the chief negotiators for the region’s school administrators.
[4] The time lag that often occurs between an action/policy and the negative consequences can sometimes be quite long, causing a connection between them to be mostly unseen. However, very visible (and always highlighted) ‘benefits’ can occur quickly — think of infrastructure construction here where the project is clearly visible and can be laid before the public but the ecological/resource consequences are externalised and/or temporally far-off allowing them to be ignored/discounted.
[6] I have reached this perspective through personal experience, observation of current events, and lots of reading. A handful of examples of relevant readings will be included at the end of this contemplation.
The following ‘contemplation’ follows on the heels of a discussion I began with another within a Facebook group I am a member of. The post and dialogue can be found here. Suffice it to say, I was, as has happened numerous times, criticised for a comment that challenged an argument for accelerating our shift from fossil fuels to ‘renewable’ technologies.
What follows is my response to their response to my comment that suggested we need to simplify our existence and not accelerate our pursuit of environmentally-/ecologically-destructive and complex technologies.
Let me respond to each of your paragraphs:
First, indeed humans have harnessed wind and water power for millennia but using far, far less complex and resource-intensive technologies and for far, far fewer humans so their impact on the environment has been multiple times less, and during times when numerous biophysical limits had yet to be broached or nearing such overshoot. You then create a straw man implying I am arguing to return to the ‘Stone Age’, which I did not[1]. I left open the nature of any type of ‘simplicity’ that we should be aiming for but there’s a good argument to be made that ‘simple’ windmills/waterwheels for far fewer humans than currently exist may be the only ‘sustainable’ option[2]. What I did argue is that we need to NOT seek complex technologies that continue the destruction of the planet as our ‘modern’ harnessing of wind/solar/water do; facts you have completely glossed over[3].
Second, to point out the significant issues with non-renewable renewables (NRRs), does not necessarily feed into the ‘climate change denial, fossil fuel fundamentalism’ you accuse me of[4]. This is another straw man based upon a complete lack of contextual interpretation of my comment, and continued ignorance of the environmental destructiveness issue I raise; to say little of the reality that a massive push to accelerate the processes needed to produce NRRs would require massive fossil fuel inputs (and lots of other finite resources; thus the reason they are non-renewable). I am as concerned about continued fossil fuel extraction and its impacts as I am about all the other resource extractions we continue to rely upon (and expand as diminishing returns increase in severity).
Third, I would argue we are not where we are primarily because of fossil fuels (although they have likely sped up our predicament) but because of our propensity to expand and create complex societies based upon a number of finite resources. Humanity has shown its complex societies have been ‘unsustainable’ from the very first ones, long before fossil fuels ever came into the picture — every complex society that has ever existed has eventually ‘collapsed’ due to diminishing returns on investments in complexity[5], and accelerating an adoption of NRRs fits into this perfectly; they require significantly increased inputs compared to outputs (while continuing to destroy our biosphere[6]).
Keep in mind that resource ‘wars’ far, far predate our past few decades of fighting over oil and gas (resources that, unfortunately, underpin our current massive global complexities and footprint). Fossil fuels have simply expedited our propensity to overshoot our local carrying capacity and taken it global in nature. It is this, ecological overshoot, that is our predicament; the consequences of which we increasingly appear to be unable to avoid because we’re misdiagnosing/misinterpreting it (and have been for some decades). I would argue that there is nothing that is ‘sustainable’ for close to 8 billion humans. Nothing, probably not even ‘Stone Age’ hunting-and-gathering.
By all means, let’s transition away from fossil fuels but let’s not exacerbate our predicament by chasing the wrong path that is increasingly being shown to be just as detrimental to our species and all the other ones we depend upon. If we are not talking significant degrowth and simplification, then we are just creating comforting narratives to reduce our cognitive dissonance[7].
Having said all this, however, I am convinced we will attempt the push into NRRs that you advocate as we slide down the Seneca cliff of resource/energy availability. For, after all, the ruling class[8] that controls/influences the mainstream narratives (and what most people think/believe) stand to profit handsomely from the effort for they also control/influence all the industries and financial institutions that are required to pursue such a path. The result will surely be a trajectory further into ecological overshoot and thus a more massive ‘collapse’ (which always accompanies a species overshooting its environment). Nature always bats last and we continue to deny this and end up putting ourselves in greater danger. And, unfortunately, it would seem even a lot of the most well-intentioned individuals and groups are cheerleading us along the wrong path.
[1] While I did not suggest we would return to the ‘Stone Age’ that may indeed be the endgame of our unknowable future. In fact, some of humanity may be ‘lucky’ to make it through the bottleneck we have created and actually live in a ‘Stone Age’ type way. Time will tell.
[2] What might be ‘sustainable’ depends upon a host of factors, most importantly the number of humans and the nature of their living standards. More resource-dependent living standards necessarily means far fewer humans can be supported.
[3] The industrial processes necessary to create and produce the current technologies to harness wind, water, and solar energy are highly finite resource-dependent (including fossil fuels) and require significant mining, transportation, refining, and construction processes that result in concomitant waste production; both toxic and non-toxic in nature.
[4] It seems any criticism of ‘renewables’ is immediately construed by many as being in favour of continued fossil fuel extraction and use. This seems to me to be more of an instantaneous emotional reaction than a considered interpretation of the context in which such criticism is made. Such dichotomous thinking, while a common defense mechanism, prevents one from seeing the complexities and nuances of situations and distorts perceptions.
[5] See archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies.
[7] My discussion here doesn’t even begin to elaborate on all the additional ‘headwinds’ we are bumping up against besides resource limits and overloading of planetary sinks, a significant one being the massive ‘debt’ that currently exists. With debt being, more or less, a claim on future energy we are in substantially more dire straits than it appears on the surface due to significant debt obligations and the Ponzi-like nature of our financial/monetary/economic systems. Most, if not all, economic activity could find itself collapsing completely with the implosion of the debt bubbles that exist far before resource limits bring it all crashing down; to say little about the impact of geopolitical stressors.
[8] I use the term ‘ruling class’ as a catch-all for those individuals/families/groups that sit atop a complex society’s power and wealth structures; and whose prime motivation is the expansion/control of the wealth-generation/-extraction systems which they tend to control/own/influence.
The following ‘contemplation’ was prompted by an article that was shared to a Facebook group I am a member of regarding ‘Doughnut Economics’ and its possible role in addressing our ecological overshoot.
While I have not read extensively the argument/theory regarding ‘Doughnut Economics’[1] it seems to me, on initial perception, to be another in a growing line of rationalisations that attempt to support and extend the resource-intensive processes that provide for our complex societies. While it incorporates a lot of the concepts around ideas of sustainability and ecological overshoot, it bases most of its argument around the redefinition of ‘progress’ or ‘sustainable development’ in a way that makes it appear less environmentally-/ecologically-destructive (not too dissimilar to the ‘net zero’ narrative that ‘shifts’ numbers around to look compelling). When one scratches at the surface of the proposal, however, it looks just as resource dependent — especially with respect to energy — as our status quo system; it simply redistributes/redirects those resources in an attempt to bring all of humanity up to a ‘preferred’, and supposedly ‘sustainable’, level.
It’s almost as if the theory employs the fallacy of the straw man by initially establishing that the current economic system employed by humanity is the sole/primary cause of our existential crises because of its propensity to chase the infinite growth chalice. It then highlights the inequitable nature of ‘capitalism’. Having set up this straw man, it concludes by arguing we can continue to ‘grow’ if we just dismantle this problematic economic system and employ a different one that defines ‘growth’ in a way that allows us to keep our cake and eat it too[2]. This is all established, however, while ignoring the pre/historical examples of complex societies failing/collapsing as a result of overexploiting their natural environment despite having very different economic systems.
There is a compelling argument to be made that every experiment in complex societies to date has failed eventually because of the diminishing returns they encountered as they expanded and eventually ran out of places to extract resources from to support their growth and increasing complexities[3]. Technology at the time simply didn’t allow societies to control ever-larger areas of land and shuffle resources back to their sociopolitical centre for more than a few centuries, at best (a couple of exceptions dragged on longer but they too eventually succumbed to overextension and diminishing returns). And when the benefits of being part of the society fell below the costs, members opted out and ‘collapse’ ensued. Every time.
The takeover method of expanding one’s environmental reach from which to draw resources and support growth shifted eventually to the drawdown method of resource extraction. This occurred at a time most/all niches were occupied and expansion into unexploited regions became ever more problematic. The energy provided by a one-time cache of ancient fossil energy has allowed the human experiment to grow to unprecedented levels, well beyond the ‘natural’ capacity of the planet to sustain us[4].
The evidence is becoming clearer that we are encountering significant issues not necessarily because of the economic system we are currently employing but because the fundamental resource we have grown extremely dependent upon (fossil fuels) has encountered very problematic diminishing returns — to say little about the negative consequences of this use on our planet’s environment/ecological systems. We are now stumbling around attempting to ‘solve’ a predicament without ‘solutions’, pointing our fingers at all sorts of ‘culprits’, and many gravitate towards the clear disparity between our elite ruling class who seem to be doing just fine, thank you, and everyone else because of a ‘natural’ tendency to seek a ‘fair and just’ world (see the non-human primate studies on justice and fairness).
So, if we were to redefine ‘progress’ and ‘sustainable development’ in a way that doesn’t impinge upon our environment, as Doughnut Economics seems to aim to do, we could continue to ‘grow’. This thinking, however, appears to ignore all the resource inputs that go into virtually everything we do, regardless of how one defines it. So-called ‘service’ industries, for example, still require significant resources (especially energy) to be sustained[5]. How does one extract these resources from the environment without requiring significant resources in the first place? Especially when all the easy-to-retrieve and cheap-to-extract resources have already been used up, and remaining ones require ever-more energy/resource inputs to access and recover what’s left. Even recycling of products, as beneficial as that process is, demands significant resource inputs[6].
Perhaps the problem is not primarily the economic system employed (although that could exacerbate certain negative aspects) but, as Erik Michaels argues at Problems, Predicaments, and Technology[7], our complex societies themselves with their resource demands. And this is especially true as we approach eight billion resource-dependent humans at a time of significant diminishing returns on all the resources we have come to rely upon for our existence. Sure, we could curtail the overconsumption of ‘advanced’ economies and direct the associated resources into more ‘equitable’ avenues, but the pressure on resources and the environment remain when we are looking at billions of humans.
If we are not discussing a purposeful and likely significant contraction of our current experiment (and this is especially true for so-called advanced economies that are responsible for the lion’s share of resource demands and their negative impacts), then I fear we are simply attempting to rationalise a continuation of it to avoid the chaos of the unmitigated collapse that always accompanies a species that has overshot its environment’s natural carrying capacity.
The fundamental flaw I see in Doughnut Economics is that it proposes a ‘solution’ that is entirely the opposite of what we need to be doing. We need to be contracting our complexities and the resource-demands they place upon our planet. We can’t be seeking to bring the vast majority of ‘un/under-developed’ humans up to ‘advanced’ economy standards. We need to be lowering significantly the standards and size of the advanced economies that are very much responsible for much of our plight — perhaps even disbanding large, complex societies completely (and how many of us would survive that given the loss of skills/knowledge to be self-sufficient?). And could this even be done in an ‘equitable’ manner? I have my doubts.
Will such a radical shift even happen? Unlikely, for as writer Robert Heinlein observed we are rationalising creatures, not rational ones. And we employ all sorts of magical thinking to make sense of our ‘world’ and ensure its continuation. As long as we have ‘magic’ (i.e., complex technologies) at our disposal to kick-the-can-down-the-road, we will continue to employ it; we are after all genetically predisposed to avoid pain and seek out pleasure; and collapse, even on our own terms, will be quite ‘painful’.
As I implied in my last ‘contemplation’, we have to be on the lookout for taking the wrong path as we attempt to address our existential predicament of ecological overshoot because it will simply expedite our overshoot and bring about the collapse that always accompanies such a trajectory more quickly and ensure there is little we can do about how it unfolds[8]. A circular economy that extracts resources and recycles them at a pace that doesn’t break through planetary limits might have been tenable a couple of centuries (millennia?) ago, but not in today’s world where we seem to be already sliding down the Seneca Cliff of energy availability for an ever-larger population.
Please consider visiting my website and supporting its maintenance through the purchase of my fictional novel trilogy.
[2] Perhaps I’m misreading the theory, but that’s how it appears in my interpretation of it. It’s not that I support ‘Capitalism’, it’s just that I don’t see our current economic system as the most fundamental driver of our overshoot. It may have expedited the journey but it’s our complex societies themselves (as problem-solving organisations) that seem to be the underlying impetus.
The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost, 1915
While reportedly written as a joke by Frost for his hiking companion, Edward Thomas, who often struggled to pick a path among diverging ones when they were out on walks together, this poem has been commonly interpreted as a narrative about our choices and how these shape our future. The decision to take the road ‘less traveled’ versus the one ‘not taken’ speaks to the meaningful impact this seemingly innocuous choice can have upon subsequent events[1].
I was reminded of Frost’s poem and the general interpretation of it as I contemplated the request to post for a wider audience a comment I had made regarding an article someone added to a Facebook group I am a member of. In composing this ‘contemplation’ I reflected upon this request, my thoughts regarding humanity’s choices as we consider how best to deal with our existential predicament of ecological overshoot, and some of the conversations I’ve engaged in with others over the past week or so.
Given my belief that we are well into ecological overshoot having surpassed safe limits in a number of planetary boundaries[2] there are, similar to the hiker in Frost’s poem, several paths from which to choose — with slight variations to each. While the decision tree ahead of us is not entirely binary in nature, I will paint it as such for the purposes of this contemplation.
We can continue, for the most part, with business as usual: expanding our footprint on the planet with ever greater numbers and complexities. Alternatively, we can abandon this path and take a significantly different one: purposeful contraction of humanity and its complex systems.
I see the first ‘choice’ as the one we have been upon for some millennia, and one that took a dramatic shift towards a significantly greater global population and associated complex social arrangements with our leveraging of a one-time cache of finite, ancient fossil energy. When viewed over the past 12,000 years, the increase in population[3] has been nothing short of vertiginous in nature since we began employing fossil fuels, especially oil, to ‘fuel’ our growth[4]. Concomitant with this population growth has been a huge expansion of complexities to support humanity: agricultural, sociopolitical, technological, socioeconomic, scientific, etc..
It is increasingly obvious (at least to many but not all, since there are still some that completely deny the following self-evident reality) that this path is ‘problematic’ in the sense that infinite growth cannot continue for long on a finite planet, be it in the number of humans and/or the complex systems that require physical resources to support them. Call me a ‘doomer’, but I’m not buying the argument by some I’ve discussed this predicament with that we’ll just mine passing asteroids for their resources[5], including ice for water, or leave this planet to ‘colonise’ some distant ‘goldilocks’ planet just waiting for this walking, talking primate to bring ‘sustainable development/progress’ to it[6]. The ‘bargaining’ inherent is these views is simply staggering to me. Of course, I cannot predict the future any better than the next person but such beliefs leave me shaking my head at times primarily because of the magical thinking that must be employed to believe in them.
I also see this first path as the one being marketed and cheerlead by the ruling class[7], but with a slight twist: continue to pursue our current lifestyles and complexities but support them by way of a ‘new’ energy source — non-renewable renewables that are not only ‘clean/green’ but fully sustainable (while the natural phenomena that contain the energy we want to harvest are renewable — wind, solar, wave — the technologies needed to harness this energy are non-renewable since they rely upon finite resources — especially fossil fuels — for every step of their production, maintenance, and after-life disposal/reclamation).
I believe this is being sold as the best choice for a few reasons not least of which is the very real fact that it is in the best interests of those who tend to sit atop our power and wealth structures to keep the current systems in place. Because, after all, they tend to own/control/have financial stakes in the industries that stand to profit from this path. To say little about the increasing Ponzi-like structure of our economic/financial/monetary systems that require this ‘growth’ to keep from collapsing.
So, the option that increasingly appears to be being pushed by the ruling class and their narrative control managers (especially governments and mainstream media) is this ‘green/clean’ energy transition one. This is not because it actually will do what the overhyped marketing bellows constantly, but because it is the ruling class that stands to profit handsomely from the endeavour. As they always do, they are leveraging a situation to their advantage while selling a story that it is in the best interests of the masses; because, after all, the ruling class cares deeply for the people and their welfare (#sarcasm).
That many in the environmental movement have embraced such a narrative speaks to both the power of the propaganda/greenwashing/bright green lies of the ‘green/clean’ storyline but also the well-intended desire of people to act in the face of a ‘problem’. The issue I see is choosing, regardless of the best intentions, the wrong path to travel down. Yes, this is the path of least resistance as it, for the most part, supports the notion that we can transition seamlessly to a world not unlike our current one with all its energy-intensive technologies and conveniences, but with environmental ‘awareness’ and ‘cleanliness’. We’re having our energy cake and saving the planet at the same time (#sarcasm, again).
I have to call bullshit on that narrative. There are no ‘sustainable’ technologies (at least none that could support anywhere near the current world population) and there are certainly no ‘clean/green’ energy technologies[8].
For me at least, the choice of which path we need to follow is obvious: purposeful contraction of humanity and its complex systems. It needs to be purposeful if we are to have any say in how it proceeds. I am increasingly coming to the conclusion, however, given everything I have discussed above, that the path I advocate will be ‘The Road Not Taken’; at least not until nature forces us upon it and then we won’t have any say in how it unfolds.
Anyways, without further ado, here is the comment that prompted this contemplation based upon the linked article:
This author begins with a premise that indeed many still fail to grasp: climate change is but one of the existential issues the planet faces (and I would add probably not even the most pressing, with biodiversity loss and pollution loading having far surpassed safe ‘limits’ some time ago). Unfortunately, I believe the author then misses the fundamental ‘cause’ of these predicaments; rather than seeing them as symptoms of humanity overshooting the natural carrying capacity of the planet, economic and political systems are fingered as the ultimate culprit.
This misattribution then leads him to the conclusion that with the abandonment or tweaking of these systems, our various issues can be resolved. But if the real cause has been overlooked, then the shift in human systems he suggests will not resolve the issues he seeks to address.
In fact, many of those who argue along a similar line actually end up cheerleading the pursuit of changes that actually exacerbate our overshoot. They ignore the pre/historical evidence that complexity in the form of large social units (e.g., civilisations, empires, nation states, city states, etc.) and their energy and resource demands are unsustainable regardless of the economic and/or political systems employed; that all of our previous experiments with complex societies have failed because they expand and overexploit their environments, requiring them to disband or takeover un- or under-exploited regions to sustain themselves.
With the human expansion and exploitation experiment we are now entrapped within and having reached its zenith (significantly intensified by our extraction and leveraging of ancient fossil fuel energy), there is but one viable path: a dismantling of our expansion and the complexities that support it through radical degrowth. We cannot even begin to mitigate our predicament if we have identified the wrong culprits. In our motivation to ‘do something’ we are simply making the hole we are in ever deeper.
Conversations I’ve had and comments I’ve made over the past few days that demonstrate the differing perspectives on which path to trod:
[7] To clarify, I use the catch-all ‘ruling class’ to help define a loose grouping of individuals/families/institutions that sit atop the power/wealth structures that have existed in every complex society throughout pre/history. With the division of labour and need for organisational structures to help coordinate them in complex societies, differences in access to power/wealth/influence developed. As our societies grew larger and more complex, so did these structures and the ‘power’ of those that occupied the upper tiers. I believe that the primary motivation of those that reside atop these structures grew to be (or perhaps always was) the continued control and/or expansion of the wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide their revenue streams and power/prestige. Everything they do is in service of this. Everything. Whether this ‘class’ of people actually plans anything in concert with one another is certainly open for debate and interpretation, but they are certainly driven to maintain their privileged positions and all that entails.
Another contemplation prompted by an email my mum sent me. This is a lengthier article than usual (and intended) since I added further points each time I proofread it…
“This was sent to us from a college friend of XXX’s but I think he has a valid point!
___
I’ve always doubted mankind’s impact on the issue of climate change. After all, earth has had two ice ages that were followed by two warming cycles, all before humans left their caves. So, to me, the debate is whether there is a new natural, million year warming or cooling trend. If there is, there is nothing we can do about it. The following is a mixture of pictures and political comment on the matter [not included]. I am disappointed no one has followed the money and identified all those who gained notoriety, wealth, and power over the past 20 years of fear mongering.
I will begin by stating there are a growing number of people who have (and for some time) been following the ‘money’ and have uncovered growing manipulation by the ‘elite’ in a variety of areas and ways (it goes far beyond global warming/climate change). G. Edward Griffin, for example, talks about this entire situation of environmental concerns being leveraged by the ‘ruling class’ to profit from in some detail at the end of his in-depth and biting critique of the U.S.’s central banking system, the Federal Reserve, in The Creature From Jekyll Island (1994) — given the world reserve currency status of the U.S. dollar, the Fed is perhaps the most pernicious institution currently on our planet, for it those who control the creation and distribution of ‘money’ that are amongst the most powerful on the planet.
Most of those who have done this type of research, however, do not have the platform or finances for disseminating their ideas in the way that the mainstream media and/or politicians do, and for the most part their concerns have been overwhelmed by the constant propaganda of the ruling class and suppressed (and increasingly so given the expanding calls for censorship amid accusations of ‘fake news/misinformation’ by ‘the-powers-that-be’). I believe that’s changing but the impediments to revealing those manipulating the dials behind the curtain are huge; and when one does throw light upon the dark corners of our elite, more often than not if the challengers of mainstream narratives cannot be ostracised or marginalised, they are increasingly ending up like Edward Snowden or Julian Assange.
Regardless, here’s my spin on things ‘environmental’ and the connection with those who would use them for profit.
Global warming/climate change is real. There is simply too much documented evidence that it is happening to deny it. It is quite possible to cherry pick evidence/data to support diametrically-opposed perspectives on its implications, but this is true for almost all ‘science’ — it is in the ‘interpretation’ of observable data and their meaning where we get most ‘disagreements’. The overwhelming majority of evidence, however, shows that it is occurring and trending in the wrong direction as far as human society is concerned (let alone all the other species impacted by such environmental shifts; human exacerbated or not). In fact, given how fragile and vulnerable our increasingly complex systems are (especially food production), a move of the climate even marginally in any direction will be catastrophic for humanity — particularly for regions that do not or cannot produce their own food.
How global warming/climate change will unfold in the future is even more controversial as complex systems with their non-linear feedback loops and emergent phenomena make them virtually impossible to model accurately; even very minuscule input errors can have oversized impacts on future states within predictive models. So, the ‘hothouse Earth’ extreme being predicted by some may or may not turn out to be accurate; only time can be the ultimate arbiter. As physicist Niels Bohr is credited with stating: It’s hard to make predictions, especially if they’re about the future. For better or for worse, that’s science modelling (and, naturally, this opens the door to those who wish to steer the narrative in particular directions).
This being said, there is far more and increasing evidence that human expansion is having a significant negative impact on the planet and its various sinks (processes/systems that absorb and cleanse pollutants/toxins), not just atmospheric overloading of greenhouse gases; how can the processes of resource extraction and industrial production, along with basic living requirements of almost 8 billion apex predatory humans, not? We have expanded into virtually every available ecological niche on the globe, displacing and exterminating countless others species in the process (biodiversity loss being an even more cataclysmic predicament than climate change) and using increasingly complex technology to extract dwindling and progressively marginal resources to support this — resources that are finite in nature.
On top of this obvious impact humanity is having on the planet are the sociocultural structures human societies have developed to organise themselves and their increasingly complex existence. Primary among these are the ‘power’ structures of politics and wealth (monetary/financial). Every large, complex society develops a ruling class of some type that tends to sit at the top of such structures.
Regardless of whether those in this class of people have come to their positions through some ‘democratic’ process or by way of hereditary tradition, they (or at least their financial supporters) tend to hold ‘ownership’ of the most influential aspects of society such as: military/security, monetary/financial, industrial, energy/resource, media/information, etc.. Their primary motivation tends to be to hold onto and/or expand the ‘power/revenue’ their privilege provides them using whatever means are available to them and are necessary, but especially war (both hot and indirect) and propaganda/narrative control (for they still require acquiescence of their ‘citizens/subjects’ even if it is just passive since they are significantly outnumbered).
It is my firm belief that the ruling class has taken the very real and increasing evidence that there are devastating environmental/ecological consequences for humanity’s expansion, chosen one in particular, and are leveraging it to create a narrative that serves their primary motivation. They have latched onto global warming/climate change/carbon emissions and are using it to increase taxes and market/sell products (e.g., ‘clean/green’ renewables, electric vehicles, etc.), while also justifying the creation and distribution (primarily to themselves) of trillions of units of fiat currency because of this ‘crisis’ (something they’ve done even more dramatically than usual during the Covid pandemic, to say little of the huge surge in this currency expansion following the 2008 Great Financial Crisis when quite a number of financial institutions were ‘bailed out’).
Simply put, they are pushing a narrative that serves to enrich themselves: we can be ‘saved’ from climate change by appropriately-assigned taxes and funneling humanity’s wealth and resources into specific industrial products (the production and distribution of which they own and profit from).
I won’t dwell on the evidence that such industrial production actually makes our situation even worse (refer to this site for more on this), but suffice it to say the fundamental predicament we find ourselves embroiled in is not global warming/climate change/carbon emissions but ecological overshoot. The overloading of sinks (including the dispersal of greenhouse gases — that is far more than just carbon dioxide) is but one of the various consequences of our overshooting the natural carrying capacity of our planet. There are simply far too many of us for the planet’s natural resources to sustain; and this is especially true for the living standards of so-called ‘advanced’ economies that are responsible for the lion’s share of resource extraction (especially but not exclusively fossil fuels) and all the negative consequences that flow from this.
We do have a very devastating predicament impacting our planet, but it’s not the one the world tends to be focused upon (and we can thank the ‘marketers’ of the ruling class for this: politicians and the mainstream media). I believe the primary reason the focus is not on our fundamental existential threat is because the means of addressing it is the exact opposite of what the ruling class needs/wants to meet their primary motivation: abandonment and reversal of the pursuit of the infinite growth chalice, especially for ‘advanced’ economies. The elite do not want to kill the golden goose (perpetual growth) that feeds their appetites for more power and wealth — they also need growth to keep the various Ponzi-like systems they’ve created from collapsing.
I have asked rhetorically over the past decade or so in one form or another the following: what could possibly go wrong with the strategy of infinite growth on a finite planet? Well, a lot actually. We can expect things to go even further sideways as the decline we are in speeds up and the-powers-that-be attempt to maintain their privileged positions in a decaying/contracting world — I expect a dramatic shift towards totalitarian/authoritarian political systems as the elite attempt to maintain and possibly expand their slice of an ever-shrinking pie amidst an increasingly disenfranchised and impoverished population.
The evidence of all this is building and has been for some time, but our tendency towards denial is making it next to impossible for most to see. A further complication is our tendency to defer to authority and ‘trust’ our various institutions. When politicians and economists speak of ‘confidence’ and needing to maintain this, it’s primarily because that’s all that keeping the blinkers on right now: our faith in and belief that the systems we increasingly depend upon will forever and always be there.
There is no ‘solving’ our predicament of overshoot, however. Biological and physical processes and the consequences that flow from them cannot be ‘solved’. Overshoot has occurred and species that experience such a phenomenon have but two paths for their future: ‘collapse’ back to a level that the environment can support or extinction.
There may be ‘hiding’ some of the consequences of human overshoot for a time. Currently this is done via debt/credit expansion in order to steal from the future, but also through narrative control and distractions that help to take the focus off the pillaging of the treasury by the elite — war being a favoured one since it helps to funnel funds/resources as well to the ruling class. There is also the additional help of a temporal lag between cause and effect as pollutants can accumulate for quite some time before the impacts are recognised or connected to our activities. We are capable of addressing some of the effects but only inconsequentially at the margins; the momentum is far too large for us to have any significant effect. This is all that can be done, however. Nature and physics always bat last no matter our belief that we exist above and beyond them.
We also have built-in psychological mechanisms that help us to reduce our stress/anxiety when confronted by conflicting information, especially that challenges our beliefs/wishes. We tend to ignore or reinterpret data that increases our cognitive dissonance so as to confirm/support our beliefs and feel less anxious. We additionally cling more forcefully and fully to our beliefs when they are challenged — it doesn’t matter whether our interpretation of the world reflects ‘reality’ or not.
We are not special in nature, however, and every complex society that has existed in pre/history has eventually succumbed to decline/collapse — the reasons vary, but they always do. Our belief that we are unique or that our technological prowess and ingenuity will somehow ‘save’ us is all part of the denial/bargaining that comes with the grieving process when loss is imminent or happened.
Coming to grips with our own and/or society’s mortality is difficult and not everyone makes it to the acceptance stage of grieving. We want to believe it won’t happen but no one, not one of us gets out of here alive. Everything and everyone comes to an end eventually.
The maddening part of all this is that there are individuals/institutions that are leveraging our fear and anxiety about all these factors and uncertainties to their own nefarious and self-serving ends. The ruling class enriching themselves as we begin the collapse that always accompanies overshoot is perhaps one of if not the most exasperating aspect of all this since they are not only benefiting (at least for the short term because they will experience the same collapse that we all will) but they are cheerleading the very aspects that have led us here.
I happened across this article a couple of days ago that does a great job of listing some of the most notable reasons our global complex societies are experiencing an apparent coalescence of crises, with the underlying issue being ecological overshoot. Here is a link to my most recent article on the coming ‘collapse’ that is similar in its messaging, and my personal summary notes for a number of books but especially William Catton, Jr.’s Overshoot.
To EV Or Not To EV? One Of Many Questions Regarding Our ‘Clean/Green’ Utopian Future, Part 2.
In Part 1 of this two-part Contemplation I argue that the recent trumpeting of electric vehicle (EV) car sales as a prologue to their imminent mass adoption and possibly ‘saving of the world’ from our errant carbon emission ways is more a projection of hope than reflective of realities behind some rather opaque curtains. This growth may continue as cheerleaders hope — at least for a bit longer, and thus appearing to support their assertions — but there exist some relatively strong headwinds suggesting it will not. Time of course will tell…
In attempting to peer behind or through the curtains one must consider: the pattern of previous technology bubbles created by intense mass marketing and purchases by early adopters; the evidence for the manipulation of sales growth statistics feeding into the narrative of widespread and growing adoption; and, the need for current growth to continue in light of resource constraints, a lack of infrastructure supports, government subsidy withdrawals, inflation impacts, and the cost concerns of purchasers (see this recent Bloomberg news article that highlights the international car rental agency Hertz Global Holdings unloading 20,000 EVs (about 1/3 of its U.S. EV fleet) due to higher repair costs, low demand, and reinvesting some of the sales dollars into ICE vehicles).
There is also growing skepticism towards the most marketed aspect of EVs: they are significantly better for the planet’s environment and ecological systems[1]. One needs to step well outside the Overton Window created by the marketing propaganda of retailers (and regurgitated by much mainstream media and most politicians) to gain a more balanced view of this widespread assertion. And this is where I begin this Contemplation…
Carbon tunnel vision has created a widely-accepted narrative where the most dominant and for many the only impact of concern surrounding transportation vehicles seems to be what exits the tailpipe of an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle and does not for an EV. This creates a very narrow, keyhole perspective that ignores the embodied energy and a wide variety of ecologically-destructive, hydrocarbon-based industrial processes that are necessary for the production, maintenance, and eventual reclamation/disposal of both types of vehicles.
As I point out in Part 1 of my series of Contemplations on carbon tunnel vision and energy blindness: “…the following graphic demonstrates (with respect to particular aspects of the issue of ‘sustainability’) this tendency to narrow our perspective can prevent the acknowledgement of so many other aspects of our world — and the graphic only includes some of the many others that could be considered, such as land-system change and biogeochemical flows. Perhaps most relevant is that this tunnel vision keeps many from recognising that humans exist within a world of complex systems that are intertwined and connected in nonlinear ways that the human brain cannot fathom easily, if at all.
[See an expanded version that includes more variables we’re mostly blind to below]
My own bias leads me to the belief that this hyper-focus on carbon emissions is leading many well-intentioned people to overlook the argument that atmospheric overloading is but one symptom predicament of our overarching predicament of ecological overshoot. As a result, they miss all the other symptom predicaments (e.g., biodiversity loss, resource depletion, soil degradation, geopolitical conflicts, etc.) of this overshoot and consequently advocate for ‘solutions’ that are, in fact, exacerbating our situation.
This rather narrowed perspective tends to be along the lines that if we can curtail/eliminate carbon emissions — usually through a shift in our technology to supposed ‘carbon-free’ ones — then we can avoid the negative repercussions that accompany the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, most prominently climate change. For many this is the only (or, at least, the most prominent) issue that needs to be addressed to ensure our species’ transition to a ‘sustainable’ way of living.
So, let’s try for a moment to open up this rather narrow keyhole and take in a wider perspective. Let’s look at how some of the other significant planetary boundaries are being broached.
When one opens the keyhole wider, the concern with carbon emissions/climate change may be seen as an outsized one in comparison to boundaries that appear to have been more significantly broached, such as: novel entities, biosphere integrity, land-system change, biogeochemical flows, and fresh water change.
This is not to say that the boundary of climate change is not important, it’s to try to better understand why a hyper-focus on carbon emissions is problematic: it’s one of several tipping points that need our attention, and not even the worst. The most pressing areas that we appear to have overshot beyond climate change include:
· Biogeochemical flows: agriculture and industry have increased significantly the flow of phosphorous and nitrogen into ecological systems and overloaded natural sinks (e.g., atmosphere and oceans)
· Novel entities: geologically-novel (i.e., human-made) substances that can have large-scale impacts upon Earth system processes (e.g., chemicals, plastics, etc.) have grown exponentially, even to the point of some existing in all global water supplies
· Biosphere integrity: human demand for food, water, and natural resources are decimating ecosystems (clearing land for mining and agriculture, for example, may have the worst impacts)
· Freshwater change: global groundwater levels in particular have been significantly altered by human activity and expansion (especially our drawdown of aquifers that exceed significantly their replenishment)
· Land-system change: human conversion of land systems (e.g., solar farms, agriculture, etc.) has impacts upon several of the other boundaries (i.e., biosphere integrity, biogeochemical flows, freshwater change) and the significantly important hydrological cycle
Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Wang-Erlandsson et al 2022.
Carbon tunnel vision tends to help minimise, or at worst, ignore these other predicaments of our ecological overshoot. In fact, what I sense and what some of my conversations did suggest is that the issue of ecological overshoot itself is completely off the radar for these commenters. One, in fact, admitted he had never read Catton’s book on the subject but in ‘skimming over’ the summary notes I sent a link for he simply saw “a bunch of vague assertions…didn’t learn anything…probably heading towards a hard wall…”. He then added for effect: “I don’t see any solutions from you. I do see almost entirely your focus on smearing renewables with the exact same material the Deniers and carbon pollution people do. Exactly the same.””
Leaving aside the competing narratives regarding whether or not carbon emissions are in reality greatly reduced through the production and use of EVs[2] — perhaps mostly due to the source fuel for creating much of the world’s electricity that is necessary for powering EVs (hint: it’s hydrocarbons[3]) — for most critics of EVs the dominant issue is the massive mining that is required for the materials to construct the battery components for the storage of energy to run EVs[4].
Proponents of EVs tend to ignore the significantly destructive mining that is necessary and/or rationalise it away by arguing that mining can be carried out in a more environmentally-friendly manner[5], can be avoided through recycling[6], and/or future technological breakthroughs will drastically reduce its impact[7]. An example of this type of thinking is shared in a discussion at the end of this Contemplation.
Regardless of such hopefulness about future possibilities, mining is currently one of the most ecologically-destructive industrial processes performed by humans[8], and a lot must be carried out for the finite battery minerals necessary to store the electrical power required to run EVs[9] — to say little regarding all of the finite hydrocarbon inputs needed to carry this out[10] and the negative societal impacts that arise in areas where much of this mining takes place[11]. All of this potential additional mining has raised growing concerns about the ecological systems impacts of supposed ‘clean-energy’ vehicles[12], and in fact this is true for all non-renewable, renewable energy-based technologies (NRREBTs) that have been marketed as ‘green’ and ‘clean’.
Then there’s also how EVs will worsen plastic pollution in our ecological systems[13]. For a variety of reasons, but especially because they are heavier due to the weight of battery packs, the industry has increased significantly the use of plastic components in EVs[14]. Plastics, of course, are derived from petrochemicals. This graphic depicts the vast array of plastic components that help to create an EV. It is estimated that close to 50% of an EV’s volume is composed of plastic.
These hydrocarbon-based components are integral to the production of EVs and the industry argues that it is through the continued and expanded use of these hydrocarbon-based products that EVs will become even more efficient. (Note that the plasticisation of ICE vehicles has also been occurring[15] in an effort to reduce vehicle weight, avoid corrosion, and reduce costs).
Add on top of this aspect that it has been determined that car tire and brake wear of all types of transportation vehicles are the primary cause of microplastic pollution[16]. Since EVs tend to be much heavier than ICE vehicles (due to their battery packs), the wear on these components is increased[17] leading to substantially increased microplastic pollution with EVs compared to ICE vehicles.
This particular petrochemical-based, plastic-pollution aspect is one that is rarely discussed and awareness of it needs to be raised since it appears our broaching of this specific planetary boundary (novel entities) is one of our most problematic (see graphic above), yet greatly ignored[18] — particularly when it comes to evaluating the ecological impact of EVs. EV advocates are quick to counter such issues with a reminder that it’s carbon emissions that is the most significant and/or only problem to be dealt with (e.g., don’t condemn the good looking for the perfect), minimising the harm caused by other aspects — a clear reflection of the carbon tunnel vision problem summarised above.
Further, as the curtain gets drawn aside with regard to the recycling industry and the myths that have surrounded it[19], it has become apparent that: only a portion of products actually get recycled, with a lot impossible to recycle and ending up in landfills; it requires large amounts of energy, perhaps not as much as the original product production but certainly not zero and in some cases more (and then there’s Jevon’s Paradox regarding how ‘efficiency’ savings are negated via increased demands); and, depending on what is being recycled and the processing necessary, there is much in the way of toxic pollutants created.
So, the argument that EVs and all or most of their components can be recycled and thus mining for its production can be significantly minimised falls far, far short of reality — to say little about the second law of thermodynamics and the related concept of entropy. And this is as true for ICE vehicles as it is for EVs; some of the components can be recycled (with associated ‘costs’) but much cannot — and this is particularly true for the hydrocarbon-derived, plastic components[20].
Despite narratives to the contrary, replacing billions of ICE vehicles with EVs will require significant quantities of hydrocarbon extraction, processing, and burning; the opposite of what EV cheerleaders argue is the primary reason for transitioning to them — to say little about all the hydrocarbons necessary to build and maintain/resurface the roadways these vehicles tend to travel upon, be they asphalt or gravel. Often, EV enthusiasts will counter this reality with arguments that the goal is to reduce the number of vehicles (particularly if they are ICE-based) on the road at the same time, thus mitigating the replacement problem.
This is not happening, however. The world is adding more and more vehicles every year[21], and the vast majority are ICE vehicles. EVs are, despite the ‘replacement-theory marketing hype’, becoming additive to our globe’s vehicles, not replacing the ICE fleet. Not surprisingly, this is exactly the same pattern with non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) such as solar panels and wind turbines — they are adding to our energy production, not replacing any of the hydrocarbon-based energy production they are supposedly meant to supplant[22].
In fact, as energy analyst/petroleum geologist Art Berman argues in this article localities that have taken up large number of EVs (e.g., Norway, where 23% of their fleet was composed of EVs in 2022) have witnessed little to no impact on their overall hydrocarbon consumption. Despite repeated assertions that hydrocarbon demand will drop with the adoption of EVs, the data indicates this is simply false. Berman’s conclusion: “If you like EVs, you should buy one but the data don’t support that driving one will do anything to save the planet.”
It’s perhaps important at this juncture to recall the opening passage from an article authored by Dr. Bill Rees and Meigan Siebert critical of the entire mainstream energy transition narrative:
“We begin with a reminder that humans are storytellers by nature. We socially construct complex sets of facts, beliefs, and values that guide how we operate in the world. Indeed, humans act out of their socially constructed narratives as if they were real. All political ideologies, religious doctrines, economic paradigms, cultural narratives — even scientific theories — are socially constructed “stories” that may or may not accurately reflect any aspect of reality they purport to represent. Once a particular construct has taken hold, its adherents are likely to treat it more seriously than opposing evidence from an alternate conceptual framework.”
The construct that EVs are ‘green/clean’ and an important component of a global energy transition has been with us for the past couple of decades. It took a strong foothold as earlier emissions standards for an array of pollutants from vehicles and industry, as well as greater fuel efficiency, drove research[23] and subsequent narratives. With the realisation that there were technological limits to fuel efficiency improvements, it was suggested that the most ‘efficient’ engine would be the one that didn’t require traditional hydrocarbon fuel due to energy storage batteries as the ‘fuel’. An added ‘benefit’ would be the elimination of exhaust emissions (ignoring, of course, all the emissions created in the manufacture of the batteries, and/or the electricity to charge them). Thus, through the magic of mass marketing, was born the story that EVs were ‘clean’ and ‘green’.
There has been a concerted effort to spread this notion of EV ‘cleanliness’ far and wide, especially trumpeting the lack of tailpipe emissions. A majority of the ‘positive-outlook’ articles that arose in the wake of this have been from publications that are heavily slanted towards encouraging NRREBTs and/or the financing of/investing in them. These are, for the most part, individuals/businesses significantly ‘invested’ in seeing the rapid and widespread adoption of EVs and other ‘green/clean’ technologies. Their rhetoric is purposely slanted towards placing EVs in a positive light and then leveraging that perspective towards purchasers who may wish to ‘do the right thing’ where ‘the right thing’ is buying an NRREBT such as an EV.
This is Marketing 101: grow business revenue through the expansion of market share by getting the product front and centre for potential customers, particularly via the highlighting of features and/or benefits[24]. And when multiple billions (perhaps trillions) of dollars are up for grabs, multiple millions (perhaps billions) will be ‘invested’ in managing/guiding the narrative via all sorts of avenues — to say little about the mainstream media’s dependence upon funding in the way of advertising dollars, regardless of the ‘accuracy’ of what is being marketed via their product.
The massive and significant marketing propaganda we are constantly exposed to[25] about EVs and their ‘great-for-the-planet’ attributes have convinced a lot of people. The majority of these accept without question the positive aspects highlighted in commercial advertising or preached by EV cheerleaders. The illusory truth effect explains a lot of the power of this propaganda/advertising on beliefs: repeated exposure to information regardless of its validity/reliability comes to be perceived as truthful, primarily because familiarity overpowers rationality. This is why many hundreds of billions (perhaps trillions when one includes ‘public relations’ work/agencies/departments for corporations and governments) of dollars are ‘invested’ annually in advertising and narrative management — it works to impact belief systems and thus behaviour[26].
I would argue that consumers are additionally more prone to such narratives to help alleviate and/or reduce the cognitive dissonance that arises from a growing awareness that industrial civilisation is unsustainable and destructive to ecological systems (i.e., infinite growth — that we are continuing to pursue/experience — is impossible on a finite planet and has significant negative repercussions) yet wishing to also believe that human ingenuity and our technological prowess can overcome and ‘solve’ the predicament of human ecological overshoot and/or its symptom predicaments (e.g., biodiversity loss, resource depletion/scarcity, etc.)[27].
A part of me additionally believes that the narrative that EVs can be part of some grand ‘solution’ to our ecological overshoot predicament and its various symptom predicaments is the mind’s attempt to not only reduce anxiety-provoking thoughts but cling to the notion that we all have agency in/control over a very uncertain future[28]. We story-telling apes are creating tales to support such belief systems and reduce our anxiety. Perhaps buying an EV is subsequently not really about addressing environmental concerns; it’s about telling ourselves a comforting tale and engaging in some virtue-signalling to others to help us maintain our self-image as thoughtful, caring beings with agency over our future[29].
Personally, I view technocornucopian perspectives as delusional in a world of significant human ecological overshoot where the surplus energy to continue pursuing growth and such complex technologies is quickly disappearing[30] (if not already exhausted). We have for some time been pulling growth from the future via financial/monetary machinations and supported by geo/political gamesmanship (i.e., wars over resources and market control)[31].
That governments are not only complicit but encouraging the deception about EVs and NRREBTs being ‘green’ perhaps says a lot about their stake in the narrative. And what is a government’s incentive? Aside from the need in a debt-/credit-based economic system to chase perpetual growth to avoid ‘collapse’, this may be just another racket being perpetrated on the masses as U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler suggested war is.
For myself, I tend to gravitate towards the entire energy transition narrative (of which EVs are but one component) being another in a wide array of profiteering rackets, leveraging the growing evidence and recognition that Homo sapiens are having a profoundly negative impact on the planet’s ecological systems. And those that are benefitting from this story will disseminate and protect it vociferously. Others, well, they’re caught up in the narrative/propaganda.
Given the Ponzi-type nature of our monetary/financial/economic systems, geopolitical stressors, resource constraints, and ecological concerns, one has to wonder just how far and how long the uptake of these NRREBTs can or will continue. In fact, some are arguing that the wheels have already fallen off with increasing numbers of planned projects being paused/cancelled[32]. And despite all the marketing and shouting from rooftops that the EV market is exploding, the sheen appears to be coming off the EV narrative.
Michael Shedlock begins this article with: “The market for used EVs is plummeting. What will car rental companies do with the used ones? Problems started in China but have spread to Europe and the US.” Citing a Bloomberg article, he highlights that “A subsidy-fueled boom helped build China into an electric-car giant but left weed-infested lots across the nation brimming with unwanted battery-powered vehicles.”
In this article economist Stephen Moore is quoted as stating: “The Edsel was one of the great flops of all time. I’m here to tell you, if these trends continue, we’re going to see the EV market become the next big flop because car buyers don’t want them.”
Let’s dispense with the binary narrative that is often on display and be perfectly clear and honest for a moment. Both EVs and ICE vehicles — along with all the infrastructure supports necessary for their production and use — are detrimental to our significantly important ecological systems. The continuing production and use of one, the other, or both simply exacerbates the human ecological overshoot predicament.
Once again, while the future cannot be predicted with much accuracy, the current reality is much, much different than the bargaining being carried out by those wishing to see a shift from ICE vehicles to EVs — particularly given that the environmental advantages cheerleaders crow on about are mostly founded upon as-yet-to-be-hatched-technologically-improved-and-massively-scaled-up chickens. These potential breakthroughs/improvements may or may not come to fruition. Most likely they will not make it much beyond a research lab or marginal prototype use, and believing otherwise is akin to faith/hope/wishful thinking; it is certainly not reflective of current realities.
We are being convinced by growth profiteers and their narrative managers that ‘smart’ or ‘green’ or the ridiculously oxymoronic notion of ‘sustainable’ growth is the way to maintain ‘progress’ and that human ingenuity, especially where technology is concerned, will extricate us from any and all issues we encounter along this inevitable path. We are not abiding by the precautionary principle and erring on the side of caution, however; not even close. We are travelling full-steam ahead and creating rationalisations/justifications in our story-telling manner to make us feel good about our suicidal behaviour and actions, thereby reducing our cognitive dissonance.
Without a significant, and likely expedient, reduction of both types of vehicles (that we are very unlikely to do voluntarily), there is little point in bargaining ploys to keep the status quo from continuing for as long as possible which seems to be what the narrative around an energy ‘transition’ and the adoption of NRREBTs is.
I had written a suggestive path forward on this issue that might provide some mitigation by avoiding the exacerbation of our destructive tendencies but in reflection see little point in sharing it. Given the human proclivity to pursue the business-as-usual scenario painted by Meadow’s et al. in The Limits to Growth over the past handful of decades[33], I’m certain any guideline would not be pursued and it would simply be cathartic for me.
While most want ‘solutions’ to our overshoot predicament, this demonstrates a weak understanding of not only what a predicament is (it has no ‘solution’) but also displays energy/resource blindness and denial of the ongoing ecological systems destruction that accompanies all complex technological ‘solutions’. The best mitigation any of us can pursue is a dramatic reduction in our consumptive and excessive tendencies.
The best vehicle in terms of reducing damage to our planet is the one not produced, regardless of type. If reducing one’s dependency upon and/or use of a well-maintained ICE vehicle can help to prevent the production of a new vehicle (of either type), then the negative ecological systems damage that accompanies the creation of transportation vehicles is reduced dramatically. Reducing dependence upon and/or use of an ICE vehicle (to zero if at all possible) will likely go much further than purchasing an EV.
You are not a progressive steward of the environment with your purchase or heralding of an EV (or related NRREBTs). That is a narrative we story-telling apes have weaved in order to avoid reality and reduce our anxieties, engaging in denial and massive magical thinking/bargaining along the way. As I’ve said numerous times, we are an intelligent species just not very wise.
The bottom line is as I commented on a recent FB post regarding supposed misinformation about EV battery ‘facts’: Substituting one resource-intensive and complex (and thus environmentally destructive) technology for another fully and completely overlooks humanity’s fundamental predicament of ecological overshoot, and is more about reducing one’s cognitive dissonance than anything else.
[H/T Schuyler Hupp]
A handful of other ecological variables that could be added: land system changes, resource depletion, food scarcity, biosphere integrity, climate change, novel entities, stratospheric ozone depletion. Then add on top of this massive ecological complexity all the socioeconomic and sociopolitical systems that Homo sapiens have created that exacerbate our ecological overshoot.
Here is the discussion that I referred to above that demonstrates the magical thinking some engage in regarding the energy transition being touted by many. It was in response to this posted article.
Me: It would seem we need to destroy our ecological systems to save them…hmmmmmm.
UB: I am always in favor of creative disruption. It is the very concept of “Seneca Cliff,” normally followed by a “Seneca Rebound”
D: With a sad caveat the Good Doctor has pointed at: it must be not that much fun to be creatively disrupted 😉
Me: The one aspect of this energy ‘transition’ that seems to be invariably left out of the equation is the massive and significant destruction that would and is being wrought on the planet (and a planet with already very overloaded sinks). The scale of the mining and processing that is being considered (and requiring a gargantuan pulse of fossil fuel extraction and burning) would surely put us over (if it hasn’t already) any tipping point from which our planet could recover from (let alone Homo sapiens survive, or many other species for that matter). I’ve not seen anywhere a detailed consideration or analysis of this particular perspective; except to mostly dismiss it via omission of the issue.
E: Sorry Steve Bull — but mining for the energy transition will NOT destroy the biosphere. The “Energy Transitions Commission” is a huge global think tank. They estimated the entire energy cost to mine and build the entire Energy Transition over the next decades. The total thing will release about 4.5 to 9 months of today’s global annual emissions. Once. Fossil fuel emissions will have stopped forever. (Figures here — but I converted to months equivalent CO2 emissions for ease of comparison.)
From the link above: “Between 2022–2050, the energy transition could require the production of 6.5 billion tonnes of end-use materials, 95% of which would be steel, copper and aluminium which the energy transition will require,”
Again — fossil fuels are 14 billion tons EVERY year.
Sure, a ‘think tank’ composed of people with very vested (financial) interests and focused on economic growth is guaranteed to be providing objective opinions based on very sound research and models.
It’s a great (cognitive dissonance-reducing) narrative but given how far into ecological overshoot the human species has travelled, whether it is death by a 1000 cuts or 999 or even 900 is truly moot. Both are ultimately suicidal when sustaining ‘growth’ is the fundamental driver (even if it’s not, maintaining the status quo is equally problematic given the amount of resource drawdown it requires).
The most appropriate path would be to attempt to reduce (significantly) all our complex technologies (along with other things like population) rather than attempt to carry on with business as usual via non-renewable, renewable energy-based industrial products.
If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my ‘fictional’ novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website or the link below — the ‘profits’ of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers).
Attempting a new payment system as I am contemplating shutting down my site in the future (given the ever-increasing costs to keep it running).
If you are interested in purchasing any of the 3 books individually or the trilogy, please try the link below indicating which book(s) you are purchasing.
Costs (Canadian dollars):
Book 1: $2.99
Book 2: $3.89
Book 3: $3.89
Trilogy: $9.99
Feel free to throw in a ‘tip’ on top of the base cost if you wish; perhaps by paying in U.S. dollars instead of Canadian. Every few cents/dollars helps…
If you do not hear from me within 48 hours or you are having trouble with the system, please email me: olduvaitrilogy@gmail.com.
You can also find a variety of resources, particularly my summary notes for a handful of texts, especially Catton’s Overshoot and Tainter’s Collapse: see here.
It Bears Repeating: Best Of…Volume 1
A compilation of writers focused on the nexus of limits to growth, energy, and ecological overshoot.
With a Foreword and Afterword by Michael Dowd, authors include: Max Wilbert; Tim Watkins; Mike Stasse; Dr. Bill Rees; Dr. Tim Morgan; Rob Mielcarski; Dr. Simon Michaux; Erik Michaels; Just Collapse’s Tristan Sykes & Dr. Kate Booth; Kevin Hester; Alice Friedemann; David Casey; and, Steve Bull.
The document is not a guided narrative towards a singular or overarching message; except, perhaps, that we are in a predicament of our own making with a far more chaotic future ahead of us than most imagine–and most certainly than what mainstream media/politics would have us believe.
Click here to access the document as a PDF file, free to download.
[25] It’s hilarious, in a very sad way, that the advertisements that flood my Facebook feed are almost entirely focused upon non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies (e.g., wind turbines, solar panels) and electric vehicles. This is perhaps because I occasionally comment on these posts. What the FB algorithms seem to be missing, however, is that my comments are quite critical of the assertions being made in the ads.
Yes, the grieving process must be travelled through to the end to reach ‘acceptance’ of our human ecological overshoot predicament. Some are just beginning this process and as such display the very typical denial and bargaining stages, thinking quite adamantly that human ingenuity and our technological prowess will triumph over any and everything that Nature has in store for us story-telling apes. In fact, it’s not unlikely that the vast, vast majority of people are not even remotely aware of the human ecological dilemma and attribute growing signs of ‘collapse’ to socioeconomic and sociopolitical factors solely.
For myself, it took a number of years to move through these grief stages and I still get bogged down in some ‘hopefulness’ periodically that we can avoid what is for all intents and purposes inevitable (I think mostly because I have children whom I’d like to think can ‘dodge’ the ramifications of the coming storm).
Aside from this psychological journey of grieving, I wrote a series of Contemplations (starting here) about a number of other cognitive aspects that impact our belief systems and thinking about this, concluding that:
“The collapse that always accompanies overshoot seems baked in at this point with little if anything we can do about it.
Personally, I’d like to see our dwindling fossil fuels dedicated to decommissioning safely those significantly dangerous complexities we’ve created (e.g., nuclear power plants, biosafety labs, chemical storage, etc.) and relocalising as much potable water procurement, food production, and regional shelter needs as possible rather than attempting to sustain what is ultimately unsustainable given the fossil fuel inputs necessary. Perhaps, just perhaps. by doing these things a few pockets of humanity (and many other species) can come out the other side of the bottleneck we’ve created for ourselves.”
Your call for focusing on a ‘graceful landing’ immediately had me think about Dr. Kate Booth and Tristan Sykes ‘Just Collapse’ initiative. They describe it as “an activist platform dedicated to socio-ecological justice in face of inevitable and irreversible global collapse…[that] advocates for a Just Collapse and Planned Collapse to avert the worst outcomes that will follow an otherwise unplanned, reactive collapse…[and] advocates for localised insurgent planning and mutual aid.” And this avenue may be the best path to follow at this point, particularly since it appears that most of our reactionary attempts to stave off the symptom predicaments of our overshoot are serving to exacerbate our issues.
Wanted to share yet another online discussion that arose in response to a comment link (see below) posted on my Contemplation regarding electric vehicles (see: BlogMedium) within one of the Facebook Groups I posted it to (Prepping for NTHE).
I share this as a means to spur thinking about the rather linear and simplistic cause-effect attributions that humans tend to make and that Dr. Bill Rees discusses near the beginning of the interview that forms the start of this thread–he attributes it to our nervous systems/brains evolving in relatively unchallenging environments where our thinking could be straightforward (e.g., Is this plant edible? Will this animal eat me? Should I seek shelter?). Homo sapiens’ brains did not evolve in an environment where one may need to consider complex systems with non-linear feedback loops and emergent phenomena, nor where social interactions with many dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, over short periods of time took place.
We now find ourselves in a very different world with very different circumstances and far, far more challenging environments. While we have become increasingly aware about our place in a very complex universe, we have only recently stumbled across an exceedingly complex predicament that we appear entangled within. I am, of course, speaking about human ecological overshoot with equally complex symptom predicaments (e.g., biodiversity loss, climate change) of this overshoot.
As a result of our brain’s evolutionary past, our thinking about these predicaments tends to become focused upon singular causal agents that we like to believe we can understand and then address, usually via of our ingenuity and technological prowess. This approach tends to lead us away from the significant complexities that exist.
Evidence is mounting that there are a number of causal agents to our overshoot and they are interacting in complex, nonlinear ways. Our attempts to untangle these so that we may ‘right the ship’ are, for all intents and purposes, impossible. In fact, our efforts to do this are for the most part exacerbating our predicament for a variety of reasons, and making the situation even more complex.
Perhaps the most significant impediment to our ability to mitigate overshoot — beyond the sheer complexity of it all — is our notion of human exceptionalism that Dr. Rees raises. By believing that humans stand outside or apart from Nature we miss/ignore/deny the dependence we have upon and interconnectedness we have with our natural world and its various ecological systems. We tend to hold that we can control and thus predict Nature so we can ‘solve’ overshoot.
Reminds me of the saying (sometimes attributed to Sigmund Freud) that ‘Man created God in his own image’…
Anyways, the innate tendency to expand that Dr. Rees highlights and forms the basis of the following discussion does seem to be a foundational cause–along with our tool-creation/-using acumen that provides our species a distinct advantage over others, helping us to extract and exploit resources to expand upon the natural carrying capacity of our environments and avoid the predation from most other life.
Thanks to JS for the conversation and forcing me to reflect on the issues and clarify my own thinking…
JS: JL, Major shortcoming. Rees attributes the growth imperative to “human nature.” In fact, all pre-capitalist societies did not have such an imperative, and grew only in an opportunistic manner here and there, with the norm being extended periods of steady state. Capitalism cannot do even slow growth, let alone steady state. He is clearly tied in his thinking to capitalism.
JL: Since it is apparently most of the current paradigm, I concur.
Me: JS, Not sure I agree. While I believe our current economic system — especially its ability to pull growth from the future via credit/debt creation — has turbo-charged our growth (as has our leveraging of hydrocarbons, and probably significantly more than economics has), most sources tend to trace ‘capitalism’ back to the 17th/18th century, some others to the Middle Ages (ca 14th century). But one hell of a lot of complex societies/empires/civilisations existed and tended to grow (too much) and then ‘simplify/collapse’ prior to this time, supporting Bill’s growth imperative argument — to say little about our species’ expansion from its beginnings on the African continent…growth does seem to be in our nature, especially once we had food surpluses.
DW: JS, capitalism can be thought of as a living entity, after all it is an extension of our minds which are driven by a biological need to breed. Nature has natural negative feedback, humans do not anymore thanks to fossil fuels, at least for now.
JS: Steve Bull: The Roman Empire was pretty much static for several centuries. The Mayan and Incan Empires did not expand beyond the ability of the imperial forces to control. Again static for centuries. There was no economic growth imperative during Feudal Europe. No pressure to grow or die till the advent of capitalism in late Medieval England.
Ellen Meiksins Wood Agrarian Origins of Capitalism
Monthly Review | The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism
JS: DW: See my response to Steve Bull right above. ^^^
Me: JS, I believe there would be many pre/historians who would disagree with your assertion that the three empires you name were ‘static’ for centuries; or any for that matter. And if they were, it was not because they didn’t want to pursue growth; it was because they no longer could ‘afford’ to.
In fact, archaeologist Joseph Tainter looks at two of these in detail (Roman, Mayan) and appears to conclude that both of these expanded until they no longer could due to diminishing returns on their investments in complex expansion. Once they reached their expansionary ‘peak’, they began to use surpluses or other means (e.g., increased taxes and currency devaluation; increasing warfare; expansive agricultural/hydraulic engineering) in an attempt to maintain the status quo that on the surface would have appeared as being ‘static’.
In both cases the expansionist policies reach a peak and some semblance of continuity was achieved by depleting their capital resources to sustain themselves for as long as possible, but their people were experiencing tremendous and increasing stress over those years — until the costs of supporting their sociopolitical system were well above any perceived benefits and they ‘walked away’ leading to societal ‘collapse’.
It seems that as with any biological species, humans will ‘grow/expand’ in population (and thus planetary impact) if the resources are present. If the resources or the technology to help procure such resources (be it accessing hydrocarbons, hydraulic engineering to increase food yields, military incursions, and/or financial/monetary accounting gimmickry) are not present, then that growth will not tend to occur much past the natural environmental carrying capacity — as seems to be the case for many smaller, less complex societies.
Yes, human expansion/growth is limited but probably not because we don’t have a desire to pursue it but because there are hard, biogeophysical limits that we cannot overcome; when we can overcome them as has been the case for some large, complex societies (mostly due to their ‘technologies’ that have helped them to increase available resources), it seems we tend to grow/expand.
Throw on top of this tendency of a species to grow/expand when the resources are available a one-time cache of tremendously dense and transportable hydrocarbon energy that allows the creation of all sorts of tools to expand our resource base almost unimaginably and a monetary/financial/economic system that can appear limitless due to credit-/debt-expansion and hypergrowth seems inevitable and virtually impossible to control/halt…no matter how many of us understand the double-edged nature of this expansion on a finite planet.
JS: Steve Bull: Those empires had the OPTION to not grow given it would be too expensive. Under capitalism, there is no such option. Only twice before has global capitalism entered a period of no growth/negative growth lasting more than a year or two, and i’m talking on GLOBAL terms. This was in the early 1910s, and in the 1930s (starting in late ‘29). Both these situations led to world wars. The global system has been doing its best to avoid a collapse for 5 decades now. A collapse was prevented in late 2019 only via the largest ever injection of money by the world’s central banks, and this led to the shutdown of 2020, basically putting the world’s economy into an induced coma. Excellent analysis of this by John Titus at “The Best Evidence.” This is his most recent video, from October.
Endless emergency? The Lockdown Model for a System on Life Support | Prof Fabio Vighi
Me: JS, While I don’t disagree with the additional and significant pressure placed upon current human systems to continue growing due to the economic/monetary/ financial systems that they employ (a debt-/credit-based currency being a significant factor), I believe that the biological/physiological imperatives may ultimately be more influential in the long run and, as Bill Rees argues ‘natural’. It is not just human populations that expand to fill their environments based upon available resources but all species. Throw on top of this consideration the Maximum Power Principle that Erik Michaels has emphasised in a number of his articles and it would seem we are at the mercy of our genetic predispositions.
The ability of us naked, story-telling apes to employ a variety of tools (from agriculture to modes of economic production, and everything in between — but especially leveraging energy from hydrocarbons) to influence our resource extraction and use — has turbo-charged our natural growth/expansion tendency. It seems only when we have reached hard, physical limits to that do we stop. In fact, it appears we almost always go over our natural carrying capacity in one way or another (overshooting it) because of our tool use and attempt to extend our run, but then we are forced to contract/simplify…but not by our choice; it is usually by way of external factors, be they economic or ecological.
Despite the ‘option’ of not overshooting natural limits being theoretically possible (and, certainly, the best one to pursue), it seems our species rarely if ever do so willingly. Intelligent, just not very wise.
JS: Steve Bull: With capitalism, there is not gonna be any respect to natural limits, no matter what. Slow growth is not gonna be an option. Pedal to the metal, till extinction. Previous societies did eventually pay attention to these limits. This pressure by capital is not “significant,” it is overwhelming, impossible to overcome within capitalism. “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”
Me: JS, I’m not convinced many if any societies willingly respected natural limits. Slow or no growth was imposed upon them. Humans like to believe we have agency in such matters but I am increasingly unconvinced of that.
JS: Steve Bull: you’d have to explain thousands of years of stable indigenous societies in the Western hemisphere before colonial times.
And there is no imposing any limits on capital. It will destroy the planet an all humans if that’s what it takes.
JL: In the final analysis, overshoot prescribes that we ultimately fail, much like the previous civilizations in past history. We continue to expel other life as we make our way to our perceived rewards which will be that we cause our own penultimate extinction or reduction to meaningless numbers. Humans cannot be the only life around, although they live like they are the only organism above most life extant…
Me: JS, An FYI that I am penning a somewhat lengthy response to your last comment that I am going to post as a new Contemplation, hopefully in the next few days — a tad distracted with ‘holiday’ commitments.
Here is my Contemplation response:
Me: JS, It’s been a few decades since my graduate work in Native anthropology/archaeology but I believe the idea that you are expressing — that prior to European contact and colonisation, indigenous societies in the Western hemisphere were ‘stable’ for thousands of years (and if we rid ourselves of capitalism we can return to this state) — is a derivative of the Noble Savage narrative that arose in 16th-century Europe not long after increased interactions with Native societies in several locations about the globe[1], and influenced a lot of subsequent thinking.
This view that ‘primitive’ peoples who lived outside of ‘civilisation’ were uncorrupted, possessed an inner morality, and lived in harmony with Nature filtered throughout Western intellectual circles, particularly within political philosophy where attempts to justify a centralised government raged.
Thomas Hobbes in particular applied this notion to American Indians. Jean-Jacques Rousseau furthered it by arguing the natural state of humans was of innate goodness but that urban civilisation brought out negative qualities. Literature also played a role in propagating this view of Native societies with such works as Henry Longfellow’s poem The Song of Hiawatha and James Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. In essence, civilisation=bad/corrupted and native=good/uncorrupted. Thus arose the justification/rationalisation/’need’ for central government oversight in large, complex societies.
Not surprisingly, given their widespread acceptance within academic/philosophical circles, early anthropologists/archaeologists adopted these ideas as their studies on the ‘other’ expanded. As anthropology developed, however, these views have been criticised as being overly romantic, serving political purposes, and, perhaps most importantly, on the basis that they contradict ethnographic and archaeological evidence.
Turning back to our discussion about societal stability and ultimately whether human societies grow beyond limits due to a capitalistic economic system or as an innate tendency, the vast array of complex indigenous societies that covered the ‘New World’ engaged in a variety of behaviours that can be considered quite ‘unstable’ and certainly in contrast to the stereotype of a ‘Noble Savage’.
Early on during the human occupation of the Americas there were many nomadic, hunting and gathering tribes that had little impact upon the ecological systems that they depended upon and could easily migrate to unexploited regions when the need arose but mostly because their resource needs required it. But even during these relatively ‘stable’ times (that seems to have been due primarily to resource abundance and low population pressures) humans were having a significant impact upon the native species, hunting several large mammalian species to extinction[2].
Then, as elsewhere in the world, once food surpluses were established (primarily due to the adoption of agriculture, which has been argued was a response to population pressures[3] after which positive feedback loops kicked in leading to an explosion in population numbers) a variety of large, complex societies developed. And pre/historical evidence has demonstrated that these societies are not ‘stable’. They grow, reach a peak of expansion/complexity, and then simplify/collapse.
In the ‘New World’ these societies followed a similar path to those of the ‘Old’: competed (often viciously) over resources with neighbouring competitors; were not only quite hierarchical in nature with significant inequality but some included slavery and even engaged in human sacrifice; and, on occasion, degraded their environments to the point of ‘collapse’ with many forced to migrate.
There were the well-known societies of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec. There were also the lesser-known societies of the Toltec, Mississippian, Mixtec, Moche, Teotihuacan, Iroquoian, Chimu, Olmec, Zapotec, and Chakoan, just to name a few[4].
None of these complex indigenous societies engaged in modes of production that would be considered capitalism but they certainly engaged in behaviours that would be considered detrimental to long-term sustainability and some experienced overshoot of their local environments. Archaeological evidence points to every one of these societies growing in complexity and expanding until a ‘peak’ is reached after which a societal transformation/shift occurred in which sociopolitical complexity was lost and living standards ‘simplified’.
The narrative that there was thousands of years of stability amongst indigenous societies prior to European colonisation does not reflect the evidence. It has been argued that environmentalists have adopted the belief that indigenous societies were ‘stable’ before Europeans for purposes similar to that of the political philosophers in the 16th-18th century: the belief is being leveraged for narrative purposes[5].
This does not mean that indigenous societies and some of their perceived sustainable practices should not be studied nor disseminated in attempts to correct some of our errant ways and perhaps help to mitigate marginally our overshoot. This could be said to be appropriate for every society, provided we could agree on what is truly ‘sustainable’ — there’s ample evidence that much (most? all?) of what is being marketed as such is anything but.
Dr. Rees’s contention that humanity expands from an innate predisposition is more about humans being part and parcel of Nature, and that we are a species like all others in that we are driven by genetics to propagate and expand. We do this and are successful (or not) based upon a number of ecological factors not least of which are the resources available and the factors that attempt to keep our numbers in check. As an apex predator with tool-making abilities, our expansion has been basically unchecked and thus the human ecological overshoot predicament we have found ourselves in.
While many do argue that human societies have tended to grow and broach regional and/or planetary limits due to their modes of production, it’s not as simple or straightforward as it being exclusively or even mostly due to ‘capitalism’ or some similar phenomenon. Yes, our current economic systems are horrible for ‘sustainability’ and attempts to reduce our extractive/exploitive processes. If we cannot, however, overcome the innate tendency to propagate and expand, and leverage our tool-making abilities to push beyond the natural, environmental carrying capacity, then even radical shifts in how we organise our economic systems are moot. We’re rearranging the chairs on the Titanic and telling ourselves everything will now be fine.
As I suggested previously “The ability of us naked, story-telling apes to employ a variety of tools (from agriculture to modes of economic production, and everything in between — but especially leveraging energy from hydrocarbons) to influence our resource extraction and use — has turbo-charged our natural growth/expansion tendency.”
Basically, what I guess I am arguing is that similar to other ‘tools’, our economic systems and their subsystems have been additive to our instinctual behaviours to grow. They are making a bad situation worse, as are many of our species’ other ‘tools’. Eliminating or reducing one of these variables in our complex systems is not enough to ‘right the ship’. Nonlinear feedback loops and emergent phenomena are everywhere and impossible to predict, let alone control.
And didn’t this guest post on Rob Mielcarski’s un-Denial site pop up in my email this morning. It argues that humans basically act like every other species on our planet in using whatever resources they can as quickly as they can until resources get harder to access and then the system finds a balanced state [which, in the case of overshoot, will be the result of competition over dwindling resources and very likely a massive die-off]. And while humans are unique in some aspects, we are similar to other species in the most fundamental attributes. We’ve simply been more successful than others because of our opposable thumbs and ‘cleverness’, making us an apex predator within any ecosystem we inhabit.
A ‘Solution’ to Our Predicaments: More Mass-Produced, Industrial Technologies.
Got into one of those social media discussions with someone yesterday morning. The post I was commenting upon is, unfortunately, no longer available and I failed to take a screenshot of it when I originally commented. However, it was from the Globe Content Studio, a content marketing group of the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail. It was advertising content on the importance of new technologies to address climate change and global carbon emissions.
These two images, I believe, are relevant to the conversation that evolved after my original comment:
I have to admit that I’m not sure what this other person thought I was advocating besides wanting to curtail our pursuit of industrial technologies to address atmospheric overloading (and other symptom predicaments of ecological overshoot) but perhaps some readers can discern something I am unable to see.
Keep in mind that I share this dialogue as I have previously to provide a glimpse into the variety of opinions, perceptions, and stories that are being circulated over social media and elsewhere regarding our predicaments and how they might, or might not, be addressed.
Without further ado, here is the conversation and please note that I have copied verbatim and not corrected typos/grammar/etc.).
Me: Complex, industrial technology is what has helped to create our ecological overshoot predicament. More of it only exacerbates the dilemma. Stop marketing the illusion that it can ‘solve’ anything.
WS: Steve Bull the world is not out to “solve”. That is why the Global Energy Transition is called…a transition. What part of that is so difficult yet to grasp. Are you interested in the problem or just dismissing it?
Me: WS, Perhaps you don’t understand the difference between a predicament and a problem. Ecological overshoot is an example of the former — there is no ‘solution’ apart from a correction via Mother Nature.
WS: Steve Bull unless we slow the rate of acceleration by reducing and restricting burning. Exactly what the world has agreed to do. The run away acceleration of warming of the planet and the oceans is a PROBLEM no matter how articulate you try to spin it. So spare me your Bull.
Me: WS, Please peer behind the greenwashed curtains of said energy ‘transition’ being pushed by the mainstream media and politicians. Look at the work of Dr Bill Rees, Dr Simon Michaux, Derrick Jensen, Alice Friedemann, Dr Nate Hagens, Max Wilbert, Erik Michaels, and many others. Attempts to scale up non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies and their associated products will exacerbate the symptoms of overshoot including atmospheric sink overloading through hydrocarbon use (all of such technologies rely heavily upon them, and they have simply been additive to human energy use over the decades — they have not reduced hydrocarbon use in the least). To say little about the continued destruction of ecological systems through their production, maintenance, and end-of-life reclamation/disposal. There is nothing green, clean, or sustainable about them.
WS: Steve Bull Good grief. More deflective nonsense. So what do you suggest is to be done. Think I will stick with the 250+ scientists from 60+ countries and their collective 3 year study that aligns with NASA and the WHO and MIT reports on the troposphere where 75% of ghg gases reside elevating the ceiling and trapping earth radiated and human induced heat in the lowest level of the atmosphere causing escalation in record heat events…record fires and fire seasons that are full month longer than 100 years ago. Record advancing drought and record hurricanes in frequency and intensity to the extent of “rapid intensification” one day intensity increases. Record hottest years ever recorded and record warming of the oceans. Plain English talk about about the escalation of extreme weather records which 2010–2019 saw the most records broken of any decade in recorded history which was also the hottest decade ever re order and likely both the records and the heat will be broken this decade and the next. Over 580 months without a single below average month for the planet for global mega surface temperatures. All is easily verifiable. I will check the work of the names you mentioned if their names are not on my list of debunked contrarians. Your opinion is very well articulated but still reads as just opinion. You value it..I don’t. I prefer facts.
Me: WS, I don’t disagree with the predicament created by hydrocarbon burning and subsequent atmospheric sink overloading. But I return to my general thesis: it is our technology (that has been supercharged by the leveraging of hydrocarbons) that has led us to our overshoot predicament. Yes, reduce hydrocarbon use but this necessarily includes almost all modern, mass industrial processes including all those required to produce non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies and their associated products. More technology (that requires industrial processes) is no ‘solution’.
WS: Steve Bull As it is not solvable stating something is not a solution is redundant al…”I don’t disagree but” is just more selection no matter how articulate. Reduction and restriction of emissions across all modes of transportation and burning for energy is the only practical direction which is the agree upon global direction. The rest of you commentary is just dismissive deflection and I believe you know that. You can baffle people with BS but it is little more than a veiled vested interest in the status quo. Necessity fuels innovation and the debate is really over so I will take your point but don’t really see the point of it other than dismissive deflection.
WS: Steve Bull I do t need to be informed so don’t be condescending . Theory is irrelevant in terms of the facts the drive the global direction that is necessary to attempt to slow down the rate of accelerating warming or planet and oceans leading to exponential decadal increase in disaster costs and economic loss and the potential tipping point collapses of multiple feedback loops. You ever been in a disaster Steve? Theory is rather irrelevant
Me: WS, So, you’re interested in just the facts but refuse to read more widely the researchers who have a different story to tell than those who support your perspective? You accuse me of supporting more of a status quo path when I am suggesting a significant reduction in technology but you are arguing for replacing that technology with other industrial technology — which is much more a status quo path. And all the while you are saying that I am deflecting…sounds more like you’re projecting your behaviour onto me. Again, we must agree to disagree on this. Enjoy the remainder of your day, I have better things to do than continue to engage in what is increasingly a pointless debate.
WS: Steve Bull at least I am debating facts and not theory and perspective. We definitely disagree as the debate is really over and actions have been agreed upon. I don’t have a perspective Steve. I have only a decade of research and following of weather records and climate altering extreme weather events. While you ponder your perspective your children if you have them and their children will have to live through devastating life threatening extreme events the likes that have never been seen other than cataclysmic events. You break an ice cube into smaller pieces and the melting pendulum cannot be stopped. So either it continues to get to hot to live in some places with wet bulb temperature potentials …or…the unstoppable melting slows or stops the currents that regulate climate. We simply waited too long debating the warnings and now action is needed to try and slow it down..not stop it or reverse it. Theory and perspective are at this point completely irrelevant. So drop out of this pointless debate in your opinion. I am happy to have the last word.
Me: WS, In reading through our discussion I believe that we may be speaking past one another. I am and believe that I stated that I agree with the predicament of atmospheric sink overloading, which seems to be your position. Correct me if I am wrong. My initial comment was a challenge of the approach being pushed to address this predicament: more mass-produced, industrial technology. It was not to deny nor deflect a concern for emissions. In fact, my point is that to reduce this consequence of human impacts upon our planet as well as the other planetary boundaries we have broached (such as biodiversity loss, land system changes, biogeochemical flows, etc.), we need to be reducing our industrial technologies, significantly — especially because they all require the continued use of hydrocarbons (and exponentially increasing use if we attempt to replace much or most of our current technologies). This perspective is not theoretical in nature as you suggest. It is factual. Modern, industrial processes cannot continue or expand without hydrocarbons, except perhaps on the margins in very limited ways. Want to mitigate atmospheric sink overloading (and the other boundaries)? We cannot do it via massive expansion of technologies as is being marketed (by those who stand to profit from this, not surprisingly), we need to reduce human population, consumption, and complex technologies.
WS: Steve Bull well we seem to have been cut of for some reason as I cannot load the post of see your comments where you suggested I did know the difference between predicament and problem. Predicament is soften terminology to what is a problem and life threatening one at that. You still are theorizing and discussing philosophy of perspective. I think that is deflection even if it is a predicament. It is not practical to stop technology or production at this point in time as action to drastically reduce burning is a practical action for the situation. Truthfully do you how a way to reduce population in any kilns of significant manner and do you know anyone that will voluntarily sacrifice their lifestyle. Humanity is addicted to comfort and convenience and your they is not applicable for a large enough scale. So talking about is not changing what needs to change now to even slow down the rate of extreme weather. Or just for lost lives and homes and entire towns but for the unsustainable quadrupling of extreme weather related disaster costs and economic loss. Politicians have to protect employment levels and that requires feeding the machine. We just have to do so without burning. Period. So you keep theorizing and I will debate facts and current events. I have been doing this for a very long time and have seen the extent of regurgitated deflection sponsored by organized and funded misinformation campaigns with what about isms and cherry picked data and you tube contrarians. While you may be 100% right of what is needed it still is deflection of the action necessary right now. It simply is not practical to stop the prosecution. Only innovate that so it better and and in the meantime we must agree to reduce and restrict emissions whenever and however possible. You are clearly more educated than me but education does not always equate to acquired knowledge. Happy holidays. I don’t know whether I May internet is sketchy or once again I have been sensores which has happens many times as my views that may be considered wrong by many are disliked but many as well. Especially if I bring up what the militaries are doin got prepare for the inevitable while the debate is allowed to be perpetuated. Which is what your entire dialog feels like to me.
