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Our energy hunger is tethered to our economic past

July 9, 2023

Our energy hunger is tethered to our economic past

Civilization may need to “forget the flame” to reduce CO2 emissions.

Just as a living organism continually needs food to maintain itself, an economy consumes energy to do work and keep things going. That consumption comes with the cost of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, though. So, how can we use energy to keep the economy alive without burning out the planet in the process?

In a paper in PLOS ONE, University of Utah professor of atmospheric sciences Tim Garrett, with mathematician Matheus Grasselli of McMaster University and economist Stephen Keen of University College London, report that current world energy consumption is tied to unchangeable past economic production. And the way out of an ever-increasing rate of carbon emissions may not necessarily be ever-increasing energy efficiency—in fact it may be the opposite.

“How do we achieve a steady-state economy where economic production exists, but does not continually increase our size and add to our energy demands?” Garrett says. “Can we survive only by repairing decay, simultaneously switching existing fossil infrastructure to a non-fossil appetite? Can we forget the flame?”

Thermoeconomics

Garrett is an atmospheric scientist. But he recognizes that atmospheric phenomena, including rising carbon dioxide levels and climate change, are tied to human economic activity. “Since we model the earth system as a physical system,” he says, “I wondered whether we could model economic systems in a similar way.”

He’s not alone in thinking of economic systems in terms of physical laws. There’s a field of study, in fact, called thermoeconomics. Just as thermodynamics describe how heat and entropy (disorder) flow through physical systems, thermoeconomics explores how matter, energy, entropy and information flow through human systems.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Overpopulation and the Collapse of Civilization

October 17, 2022

A major shared goal of the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB) and Sustainability Central  is reducing the odds that the “perfect storm” of environmental problems that threaten humanity will lead to a collapse of civilization.  Those threats include  climate disruption, loss of biodiversity (and thus ecosystem services), land-use change and resulting degradation, global toxification, ocean acidification, decay of the epidemiological environment, increasing depletion of important resources, and resource wars (which could go nuclear).  This is not just a list of problems, it is an interconnected complex resulting from interactions within and between what can be thought of as two gigantic complex adaptive systems: the biosphere system and the human socio-economic system.  The manifestations of this interaction are often referred to as “the human predicament.”   That predicament is getting continually and rapidly worse, driven by overpopulation, overconsumption among the rich, and the use of environmentally malign technologies and socio-economic-political arrangements to service the consumption.

All of the interconnected problems are caused in part by overpopulation, in part by overconsumption by the already rich.  One would think that most educated people now understand that the larger the size of a human population, ceteris paribus, the more destructive its impact on the environment.  The degree of overpopulation is best indicated (conservatively) by ecological footprint analysis, which shows that to support today’s population sustainably at current patterns of consumption would require roughly another half a planet, and to do so at the U.S. level would take four to five more Earths.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Back to Reality: We are All Children of Oil

February 28, 2022

Back to Reality: We are All Children of Oil

Colin Campbell, founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), speaks in Pisa in 2006. Officially, the Powers that Be (PTB) ignored the ASPO message, but it could be that they understood it all too well. That would explain many things about the current situation. For two years, we thought that all our problems were caused by a microscopic, peduncled critter. Now, we are back to reality: we are all children of oil, and we cannot survive without it.

A few days ago, I found by chance on my shelves some documents from the 2006 conference of ASPO (the association for the study of peak oil) that I and others organized in Pisa, in Tuscany. The conference had a certain global resonance: it was sponsored by the Tuscan government, hundreds of people from all over the world came to attend, and the international media commented on it. It was part of a wave of interest on peak oil and its consequences. Just as another example, see the leaflet on the right that I also found rummaging among old documents. It announces a meeting to be held in the Tuscan countryside in 2004, titled, “The Party is Over“, and subtitled “How to exit from the petroleum-based economy“Today, it looks as if these things are a hundred years old. How was it that there was an age in which you could express this kind of subversive thoughts in public and be given some space in the media? And how could we delude ourselves into thinking that we could have convinced that nebulous entity called “humanity” that we were running out of our natural resources, crude oil in the first place? Even more subversive, that we should reduce consumption and move to renewable sources before it was too late?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Returning to a 1970s Economy Could Save Our Future

November 4, 2021

Returning to a 1970s Economy Could Save Our Future

We’d contract energy use by half. Shrinking consumption is the solution we can actually live with. Second of two.

GlobePalmHandGraphic.jpg
A society that consumes less energy and stuff could rehumanize society and heal the biosphere.

[Editor’s note: Read part one of this two-parter here.]

Thanks to bright green technologies, we can continuously grow the level of consumption on planet Earth and deliver a bloated North American lifestyle to all without inviting climate catastrophe or a general breakdown of natural ecosystems that support all living things.

That’s the big bold lie that politicians are telling themselves this week at yet another climate conference. Greta Thunberg calls such dissembling just so much “blah, blah, blah.”

As I’ll share in this piece, a number of brilliant energy critics from Vaclav Smil to William Rees have done the figuring, acknowledged the physical limits of things, and told us the truth. A truth that is not as uncomfortable as you might think.

It is this. We must contract the global economy, restructure technological society and restore what’s left of natural ecosystems if we want to live and breathe.

The appeal of the “tech will save us” charade crosses ideological lines. No sacrifice is necessary; no wisdom is required; no change is necessary. Both Green New Dealers and the Business-as-Usual Crowd believe a variety of so-called green technologies forged by the burning of more fossil fuels will save the day and postpone what is already happening: a great unsettling.

These green illusions, as I explained yesterday, represent the worst kind of falsehood. Many of these techno fixes, such as direct air capture, are largely unproven, don’t scale up or will invite bankruptcy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Our population problem

October 27, 2021

Our population problem

Like Sir David Attenborough and many others, I recognise overpopulation as one of the most significant underlying causes of global problems today – along with our use of fossil fuels, overconsumption and our addiction to a perpetual growth economic model. However, when I mention this I am often countered with, “No, no. It’s not overpopulation; it’s overconsumption.”

In my experience, the person dropping this bomb usually walks away immediately, allowing no further discussion. Often there is an underlying assumption that population reduction must necessarily involve eugenics or other repugnant methods, but this is not so. And, for some, reducing population lands like an impossible task.

Certainly, reducing overpopulation is neither easy nor quick. But it is way easier than trying to reduce overconsumption. Advocates of overconsumption never address this point. And, in any case, far and away the most effective way of reducing one’s personal carbon footprint is to have fewer children.

It seems to me that overpopulation naysayers have a particularly anthropocentric view. In my experience, people who engage with nature generally recognise we are overpopulated. But overpopulation is still clear from a purely anthropocentric stance.

Eradicating deprivation

Many people support the goal of eradicating poverty, but very few give the matter further thought. Often, they do not even know how poverty is defined.

The World Bank defines three levels of poverty, reporting that in 2017: 689 million people lived in extreme poverty on less than $1.90 a day; 1.8 billion lived on less than $3.20 a day; and 43 per cent of global population lived on less than $5.50 a day. That is about 3.3 billion people. $5.50 a day translates to about US$2000 per annum. Can you imagine living on that?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil Prices Will Remain High For Years To Come

October 26, 2021

Oil Prices Will Remain High For Years To Come

  • A growing number of major investment banks are turning bullish on oil in the medium to long term.
  • A lack of investment is leading to supply deficits as demand rebounds to pre-COVID levels.
  • Rebounding consumption and tight supply could push oil prices even higher.

Six years after former BP chief executive Bob Dudley said that “the industry needs to prepare for lower for longer,” a growing number of major investment banks now expect “higher for longer” oil prices.

Rebounding global oil consumption amid tight supply—contrary to some forecasts last year that indicate demand may have peaked or was close to its peak—as well as years of underinvestment in new supply following the 2015 crash, have prompted Wall Street banks to raise significantly their projections for oil prices in the short and medium term.

Oil prices have hit multi-year highs in recent days, with WTI Crude at its highest since 2014 and Brent Crude at the highest level since October 2018.

Even after the latest rally, prices still have headroom to rise further, many major investment banks believe.

Goldman Sachs, for example, sees Brent hitting $90 per barrel at the end of this year, up from $80 expected earlier. The key driver of Goldman’s higher forecast is global oil demand recovery amid still a weaker supply response from non-OPEC+ oil producers.

The investment bank also sees sustained higher oil prices in the coming years.

Fundamentals warrant higher oil prices, and the bank’s forecast for the next several years is $85 a barrel, Damien Courvalin, Head of Energy Research & Senior Commodity Strategist at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC earlier this month.

Oil demand will set record highs next year and the year after that, and we need to see a ramp-up in investment, he said.

“We’re facing potential multi-year deficits and the risk of significantly higher prices,” Courvalin told CNBC.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Like The Dance Band On The Titanic, The Band Plays On

October 8, 2021

Like The Dance Band On The Titanic, The Band Plays On

As The Ship Goes Down The Band Plays On

It is said the dance band on the Titanic played on as the ship went down. This was all done as a grand effort to reassure the passengers and ease the panic in their hearts. Consider the possibility that behind all the noise we hear today a similar effort is being made to comfort us and take your attention off the hopeless feeling that comes when things sink away beneath your feet. For the last several months I have come to feel a similar story is playing out here. The Biden-Yellen-Powell economy is less than inspiring.Looking back, it is clear the Fed’s policies have hurt savers, It has caused savers to flee towards riskier investment in search of higher yields, driven speculation, increased equality, add added to inflation. Rather than using the bully pulpit and warnings of higher interest rates to keep government spending in check, the Fad has acted as an enabler to the crowd in Congress that loves nothing better than to sending taxpayer money back home calming it is a gift and proof they are “working hard for their district.”

With historically low-interest rates, rising inflation, and many consumers struggling to make ends meet. The economy is at a place where there is not much capability to increase consumption without throwing money from a helicopter and massively increasing the national debt. The problem with that is such stimulus programs are poorly focused. As we look about in this post-pandemic covid-lite era we see supply chains crumbling, stagflation mounting, and jobs being lost to automation. These are all immense problems even in the best of times.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

WEIRD – Thinking Beyond Technology: Issue no.5, “Research for the End of Your ‘Normal’ Everyday Existence” Mabon 2021

September 25, 2021

WEIRD – Thinking Beyond Technology:

Issue no.5, “Research for the End of Your ‘Normal’ Everyday Existence”
Mabon 2021

Go to ‘WEIRD’: Thinking Beyond Technology – Main Index

Click here for a brief explanation about the ‘WEIRD’ newsletter.

issue-004

Download this edition

  • A4 format PDF – for printing at A4, single- or double-sided, stapled in the top-left corner; or
  • A3 brochure format PDF – for printing as an A3 double-sided, folded and stapled brochure, or (with very small text) scaling-down for double-sided A4.

Contents

Note: Breaking with our usual ‘no linking’ convention,
this edition of WEIRD, each of the article headings contains a list of the academic studies referenced in it
for you to download & read.

☮ ‘Introduction’
Introducing the science for the end of your ‘normal’ everyday existence.
☮ History file: Bill Devall – ‘The Deep Ecology Movement’
Published in 1980, this tract was the first to outline the split between ‘eco-reformers’ & ‘deep ecologists’.
References:

☮ “It’s the economy, stoooopid!”
Environmentalism uses tech. as a sticking plaster; research says it’s affluence.
References:

☮ ‘Are humans a virus?’
In these times of disruptive pandemic, it might be interesting to figure how all other life on Earth looks at us.
References:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Building Community by Buying Nothing

September 3, 2021

Building Community by Buying Nothing

“It’s like a radical new economy, except of course it’s an old economy that has been around forever.”

Following knee surgery five years ago, Myra Anderson was having difficulty getting around. Living alone in Charlottesville, Virginia, she began asking on Facebook if anyone could assist her in getting a few supplies.

A friend suggested the Buy Nothing Project, a network for the free sharing of resources among neighbors. Anderson signed up, but unaware of the rules, offered to leave money on her front stoop to pay for supplies if someone could bring them to her.

By the time a message popped up in her inbox from the group administrator alerting her that’s not how Buy Nothing works, dozens of people had already offered to pick up what she needed—at no cost, of course.

Soon, people Anderson didn’t know began regularly checking in on her. She found a walking and workout partner in the group. When she’d post about feeling blue, people would respond with comfort, support, and encouragement.

“The love that has come from people I didn’t know, but just knowing they live near me, has been overwhelming and refreshing for my soul,” Anderson says.

These were the sort of genuine connections that Rebecca Rockefeller and Liesl Clark envisioned back in 2013 when they created Buy Nothing—a gift economy operated on a hyperlocal scale to bring neighbors together through sharing and community.

Neither a group, organization, association, or nonprofit, Buy Nothing is a movement that has doubled in size during the pandemic. It now has more than 4 million participants in 6,500 groups, located in 44 countries across the globe.

“It’s like a radical new economy, except of course it’s an old economy that has been around forever,” Rockefeller says. “We’re just re-presenting it.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

May This Year Bring Less Gifts and Far More Christmas

December 26, 2020

May This Year Bring Less Gifts and Far More Christmas

Even The Grinch Knows This

May this year bring to all more Christmas and less of the junk we have all come to know as gift giving. This time of year I find the mind-numbing barrage from stuff that peddlers are rushing to fill any need I can imagine overwhelming. These needs appear to be both real and imagined, I’m even asked to reach out and consider, and speculate, on the needs and desires that others might have. Over the years our lives have become so crammed with material goods, our drawers and closets are now chucked full of the trendy apparel of last season, exercise equipment, knick-knacks, and electronic equipment. For some people, the place where they live is about to explode unless they move to a larger house or rent a storage unit.Many garages across America are so full of this stuff cars can no-longer be parked inside. Neurotic people with overactive pack-rat syndrome literally destroy their quality of life with clutter and junk. This stuff will often sit in one place for years while they can’t find a chair to sit in or a clean tabletop on which to eat. Ads like – “get it all” or “have it all,” live on the cutting edge, buy all of these high-powered models, and “put your life in the zone.” fill our lives. This new-fangled electronic gizmo does it all and more, look at the artwork, let it wash over you, surround you, and cover you up. Check out that car, is it not perfect? Wouldn’t driving it make life a zen-like experience – got to have it, no payment for 90 days.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

The pandemic as the end of consumerism. Everything that’s happening is happening because it had to happen

November 30, 2020

The pandemic as the end of consumerism. Everything that’s happening is happening because it had to happen

 These Medieval ladies look like fashion models. With their splendid dresses in silk brocade, they are displaying their wealth in an age, the 14th century, in which Europe was enjoying a period of economic growth and prosperity. They couldn’t have imagined that, one century later, Europe would plunge into the terrible age of witch hunts that would put women back to their place of child-making tools. It is the way history works, it never plans, it always reacts, sometimes ruthlessly. And all that happens had a reason to happen (above, miniature by Giovanni da Como, ca.1380)

Can you tell me of at least one case in history where a society perceived a serious threat looming in the future and took action on it on the basis of data and rational arguments? With the best of goodwill, I can’t. Societies react to threats using a primeval stimulus-reaction that may be aggressive or defensive, but that’s almost never rational.

Curiously, our society, that we call sometimes “The West,” was the first in history to have a chance to do something rational to avoid the destiny awaiting it much before the threat was clearly visible. It was in 1972 when the newly developed digital computers were coupled with a powerful analytical tool, “system dynamics.” The result was the study called “The Limits to Growth” that foresaw how the gradual depletion of natural resources coupled with increasing pollution (that today we call “climate change”) would cause the whole Western economic system to collapse at some moment during the first half of the 21st century. The study also suggested rational solutions to avoid collapse: reduce consumption, stop population growth, manage pollution, and the like.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Capitalism Will Ruin the Earth By 2050, Scientists Say

October 29, 2020

Capitalism Will Ruin the Earth By 2050, Scientists Say

The good news is, by cutting our consumption, there’s another way.
GettyImages-1161614032
IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES

A spate of new scientific research starkly lays out the choice humankind faces in coming decades:

By 2050, we could retain high levels of GDP, at the price of a world wracked by minerals and materials shortages, catastrophic climate change, and a stuttering clean energy transition —paving the way for a slowly crumbling civilization.

Or, we could ditch the GDP fetish and enter a world of abundance, with energy consumption safely contained within planetary boundaries, and high-tech economies that support jobs, health and education for everyone without costing the earth.

On the first option, scientists backed by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program have concluded that capitalism-as-we-know-it cannot support a successful clean energy transition.

Not only that, but capitalism is on track to lead the world into mineral shortages and supply bottlenecks that could cut short efforts to decarbonize transport systems, guaranteeing dangerous climate change.

The new study published in the journal Energy Strategy Reviews finds that electrifying our cars, trucks and trains so that they run on renewable energy is only viable if we reduce the endlessly growing levels of consumption in industrial societies. That, effectively, means fundamentally transforming the very sinews of capitalism.

The good news is that separate research published in September proves that such an economic transformation is perfectly feasible while still maintaining a good quality of life for people all over the world.

Modeling the world

The transportation study is based on a highly sophisticated ‘integrated assessment model’ (IAM) that brings together a vast amount of empirical data. Known as the MEDEAS-World model, it incorporates feedback relations between global and regional economies; renewable, fossil fuel energy flows and energy infrastructure; technology developments and costs; minerals and land requirements; climate change and water; and many other sectors.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Penalizing Prudence

October 2, 2020

PENALIZING PRUDENCE

“Economy, prudence, and a simple life are the sure masters of need, and will often accomplish that which, their opposites, with a fortune at hand, will fail to do.” – Clara Barton

“Affairs are easier of entrance than of exit; and it is but common prudence to see our way out before we venture in.” – Aesop

One of my conceits, of which there are many, is the belief that because I have entered the third trimester of my life, I am now in possession of great volumes of wisdom and perspective. Thankfully Mrs. Cog is always nearby to efficiently and surgically remove any such thoughts of grandeur and omnipotence. That said, at some point during the flight of life, even birds of prey eventually turn their thoughts to the comfort of a nearby nest rather than their next fearless fight.

Even the most reckless among us begins elevating to greater importance the preservation of resources rather than mindless squandering, especially when we are closer to the end than the beginning. This is a good thing, by the way. It adds balance to the socioeconomic system, both personally and collectively, as well as countering the self-destructive tendencies of those obsessed with endless consumption.

There’s a reason we’re no longer referred to as ‘citizens’ in mainstream media or political speech, but rather the more personal-responsibility-evading ‘consumer’. If given even a minimum of thought, one quickly realizes this subtly propagandized term (consumer) is a significant, but not the only, component of the obvious agenda to infantilize the US (and global) population.

Like the one year old who eats, sleeps, plays, defecates, eats, sleeps, plays……with no personal responsibility other than to be self-indulgent and consume food and attention, we are being reduced (distilled down might be a better term) to our most base impulses. I suspect most people, if told this to their face, would not react well to my observation, assuming instead I was being critical of them personally.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“The Focus is ‘Enough’ Rather Than ‘More’”

September 18, 2020

“The Focus is ‘Enough’ Rather Than ‘More’”

The mainstream economics notion that unfettered growth accompanied by greater consumption and productivity benefits society is false, argues Rob Dietz, Program Director at the Post Carbon Institute. In an interview with getAbstract, he shares his vision of a new economic way forward.

“The Focus is ‘Enough’ Rather Than ‘More’”

getAbstract: In a nutshell, could you give us a short definition of “steady-state economics”?

Rob Dietz: You can think of steady-state economics as a sustainable alternative to mainstream or neoclassical economics, which assumes perpetual growth of production and consumption. So steady-state economics is the study and practice of how to maintain an economy with a stable level of resource consumption and a stable population. Such an economy keeps material and energy use within ecological limits, and the unsustainable (and unrealistic) goal of continuously increasing income and consumption is replaced by the goal of improving quality of life for all. In short, the focus is enough rather than more.

Why do you think adopting a steady-state economic model is the only way to promote widespread prosperity and resource sustainability for future generations? 

I’m not sure it’s the “only” way, but it’s our best bet at this pivotal point in history. Let’s start by establishing working definitions of the terms “widespread prosperity” and “resource sustainability.” Widespread prosperity means that everyone is able to meet his or her basic needs for physical health and sustenance, plus some standard of comfort. No one lives in poverty, and daily life offers opportunities for fulfillment and enjoyment beyond toil just to stay alive.

Related Summary in getAbstract’s Library

Image of: Enough Is Enough

Enough Is Enough

This provocative book challenges many beliefs about the value of unfettered economic growth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

You don’t have to live like this—review of Kate Soper’s Post-Growth Living

September 13, 2020

You don’t have to live like this—review of Kate Soper’s Post-Growth Living

In her new book, Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism, Kate Soper calls for a vision of the good life not reliant on endless economic growth and points us to the ways in which our current patterns of living are not only environmentally harmful, but also make us miserable. A provocative and necessary book, Nick Taylor writes, that provides us with the means to rethink consumption, work and sustainable prosperity without losing sight of what makes us feel good. (This blog also appeared on the PERC website.)

CC-BY-NC 2.0 :: Pete/Flickr

What kind of changes will the Covid-19 pandemic bring about over the long-term? While this question is on the minds of many, for those who study and work towards making our societies and economies more sustainable it brings particular concerns. Global emissions have seen a record-breaking drop during the pandemic, but not enough to slow the overall trend in atmospheric CO2 concentration, which reached its highest ever level in May, and not even enough to bring us close to meeting the 1.5C global warming target. How we respond to and attempt to recover from the deepest recession on record in a way that is not simply about restoring GDP growth is a question that should involve us all.

For critics, the pandemic has made an easy but misleading target of the post-growth or degrowth movement. They falsely equate the social and economic devastation wrought by coronavirus with the planned, long-term downscaling of society’s throughput (the materials and energy a society metabolises) that degrowth advocates argue for. Sceptics of ‘growth as prosperity’ do not want a recession, or, as is looking increasingly likely, a depression. Indeed at their most compelling, arguments for moving beyond growth as an overarching economic, social and political goal draw on the promise that a sustainable society can and should be a better, more equal and more prosperous society.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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