Today’s brief Contemplation was prompted by The Honest Sorcerer’s latest article that looks at the latest energy ‘breakthrough’ (seems there is one every other week) and how it’s going to save modern civilisation, our species, and the planet.
In this globalised world where virtually every economic transaction has become finacialised, and one cannot for long survive without some type of revenue stream (because we have lost the skills/knowledge to live apart from our complex and monetised energy-averaging systems), it seems to me that everything has become a racket — in terms of a fraudulent scheme.
And ‘energy’, being the most fundamental of ‘resources’ for life, has been fully captured by the multitude of racketeers — as has all the revenue-generating/-extracting aspects of our sociocultural existence.
War. Politics. Food. Health. Education. Resources. You name it.
These are all being leveraged by our society’s ruling caste, grifters, and wannabes to generate revenue. And attracting investment capital with some technological/innovative ‘breakthrough’ works because of our ongoing (if very misguided, primarily due to recency bias) belief that human ingenuity and technological prowess can solve all ‘problems’ — predicaments without ‘solutions’ don’t exist.
As I more deeply explore the story-telling nature of our species and the psychological mechanisms at play during this communication process, it is becoming clear that it matters little — if at all — that the narrative being shared aligns with physical reality or not. We believe what we want to believe and all it takes is that the tale we are being told needs to be ‘plausible’, provide us with a sense of agency (especially self-efficacy), reinforces our self-esteem, reduces our cognitive dissonance, is believed by many in our social circle, and is being told by a ‘trusted/authoritative’ source.
Dave Pollard, who writes here, has put forward a ‘Law of Human Beliefs’ (see his latest here) that is quite relevant to this observation:
“Pollard’s Law of Human Beliefs: We believe what we want to believe, not what is actually true. We want to believe in happy endings, simple answers, the inevitability of progress, self-control, karma, responsibility, destiny, miracles, a proper order of things, the power of love, and infinite human capacity and agency. Most of us want to believe in a higher power that can step in when we falter. We want to believe what those in our circles of trust believe (even if it’s crazy, gaslighting or propaganda). So we tend to seek sources that reinforce those beliefs and ignore those that undermine or unsettle them. Our hopes and expectations are determined by those beliefs. Our worldview is the sum of those beliefs, hopes and expectations, and bears no necessary resemblance to truth or reality. This invented reality is the only way we can make sense of a world that is impossible to grasp, to understand, or to ever really make sense of.”
Our denial of reality is strong and often, if not always, cannot be overcome. We go to all sorts of lengths to rationalise and justify our belief systems, regardless of evidence/facts that challenge them.
“The human ability to understand and consider our own mortality without being consumed by fear seems natural to us. In fact, it appears to be just one manifestation of a peculiar human ability to ignore, rationalize, or outright deny obvious realities, and even to believe in multiple or alternate realities at the same time…
Even when we do acknowledge such realities, we tend to indulge in magical thinking, behaving as if these statistics apply to everyone else, but not to ourselves. Many humans also ignore or even deny scientific and societal realities such as biological evolution, anthropogenic climate change, human “overshoot” with nonrenewable resource depletion, gross degradation of our environment, massive expansion of national debt, ballooning healthcare costs, covert or overt racism, and so on.”
(See Rob Mielcarski’s site, un-Denial, for a lot more on this subject.)
Biogeophysical limits — meh, it’s not reality; it’s just another conspiracy theory by those tinfoil hat-wearing ecofascists. Please disregard all that ‘collapse/overshoot’ nonsense and carry on with your consumption and dreams of perpetual growth on a finite planet…oh, and please send us any investment money while you’re at it (and/or encourage your government to) so we can solve those predicaments the nutcases keep yammering on about.
“I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here. I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”
― Richard P. Feynman
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
― Albert Einstein
There are many words that could be used to describe the future and humanity’s ability to know how it will unfold. Unknowable. Unpredictable. Uncertain. Unwritten. Undetermined. Unforeseeable.
These tool-making, story-telling apes we have termed homo sapiens just happen to abhor this aspect of existence. Uncertainty has been found to result in negative affect for most people in most situations[1]. In fact, it has been suggested that “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”[2] and that “…fear of the unknown may be a, or possibly the, fundamental fear, representing an Archimedean lever for human psychology”[3].
As Dan Gardner reminds the reader in Future Babble[4] humans want and need control, especially of their environment/surroundings. Not having control, or at least the sense of it, can lead to stress, disease, and early death. Having some ‘certainty’ about what the future holds is a type of control, even if we know what happens is out of our personal control.
We have developed a host of psychological mechanisms to defend against our fear of uncertainty (e.g., illusion of control). In fact, psychologists have found an increased dependence upon magical thinking when control is lost or uncertainty increases[5]. In addition, people will cling more fiercely to their belief system in the face of counterfactual evidence in order to increase their sense of certainty. They will ignore or deny those things that increase their cognitive dissonance and the uncertainty it creates.
We also more often tend to see patterns where none exist as we search for certainty[6]. Reassurance about the future motivates people to seek it somewhere. Anywhere.
Cognitive psychologists suggest prospection, the term used to describe the generation of possible future scenarios, is a central tenet of both cognition and emotion[7]. But it is also a fundamental aspect of learning for any animal that is driven by their avoidance of pain and seeking of pleasure since being able to sense patterns of environmental changes or actions of other animals can alter their behaviour to seek a reward or avoid a punishment — perhaps the most basic one being falling prey to a potential predator.
As tool makers, we leverage this rather unique ability in attempts to help us control our environment, thus providing a sense of security against this uncertain future. And it seems we often fall back on this skill to help us believe some as-yet-to-be-hatched ‘tool’ will be created to help us achieve what we have yet to achieve — certainty about the future by solving our various problems, such as a lack of ‘clean’ energy.
As story tellers, we craft all variety of narratives to help us understand our world — the past, the present, and especially the future. Religion. Biology. Politics. Physics. Economics. History. Mathematics. Psychology. Astrology. Ecology. Chemistry. Philosophy.
Are any of the tales we tell and share accurate reflections of our world and its functioning? Can we predict the future? Can we, using all of our cognitive abilities, understandings of the world, and technologies reduce the uncertainty that lays before us?
The answer may actually be irrelevant since we all tend to believe what we believe — be it learned or conditioned, accurate or misinformed. And we use what we believe to reduce our anxiety about an uncertain future.
Despite all of the above, and knowing full well that predictions about the future are just stories we tell to reduce our uncertainty, the following is one perspective on what the future may hold based upon two beliefs that seem certain to me, although I know they don’t to everyone:
1) We exist upon a planet with finite resources;
2) Biological and historical precedents exist from which we can learn and help us map a likely future.
First, we live upon a planet with a finite amount of resources available to us. Despite the story that infinite substitutability can overcome or mitigate this reality, I firmly believe we cannot create more of our most important resources from thin air. This is especially true for life’s primary resource, energy. As the First Law of thermodynamics states: energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only converted from one form to another. This limits what is available to all species upon our planet.
Second, there exist biological and historical ‘experiments’ concerning ecological overshoot and complex society ‘collapse’ that we can use to help us understand important processes and how they are likely to unfold.
To paraphrase the saying about events rhyming with the past, there should be no assumptions that the future will unfold exactly as it has in the past. While there will no doubt be similarities because humans are animals with strong genetic predispositions that act and react in somewhat constrained ways, we are also a species with strong sociocultural influences upon our behaviour that vary in both time and place. And the contextual environment within which we are behaving is never precisely the same; particularly given the complexities that accumulate and impact us — especially technological in nature.
There is so much that has already been written and could be said about ecological overshoot and humanity’s prospects as we travel further into it. It is important to my thinking here that I note that humans are a biological species similar to every other one on our planet and there exist many behavioural responses that we cannot avoid because of this. Perhaps the most fundamental biologically-based one is that of reproduction and a species tendency to reproduce to a level that can be sustained by their immediate habitat. Overshooting this sustainable carrying capacity invariably results in moving to an uninhabited and unexploited area or ‘reversion to the mean’ of a species’ population size[8].
Humans however, as an apex predator and with their tool-making abilities, have been able to exceed significantly the natural, environmental carrying capacity allowing us to go well beyond the limits imposed by nature. Population biology demonstrates that such a situation cannot and will not go on indefinitely. And the resulting ‘correction’ may as a result of this being even more dramatic in nature.
As William Catton Jr. argues, our ability to employ technological tools to expand our carrying capacity has resulted in a trap that now threatens the environment and ecological systems we require for our survival. Blind to what we are doing, we have embraced and increased the speed with which we are drawing down the finite resources we rely upon. There will be, based upon other species that have overshot their environmental carrying capacity, a reversion to the mean of population size that can be ‘sustained’ — and it will be much, much lower than may have been reached in an uncontaminated and undamaged environment[9].
Further, Catton observes that “[o]vershoot will occur, if it hasn’t already. We may come to feel guilty about stealing from the future, but we will continue to do it. Overshoot will further aggravate the reduction of carrying capacity. Crash must follow. The greater the overshoot, the greater the crash.” (p. 253)
The following graph from Catton’s text provides four possible growth scenarios, with Panel D being the most likely for humanity. As he explains “’carrying capacity’ has been represented by two different curves. A major fraction of the recent, apparently high carrying capacity for human high-energy living must be attributed to temporary resources — i.e., non-renewable fossil acreage, the earth’s savings deposits. In Panel D, it is optimistically assumed that the component of carrying capacity based on renewable resources has remained stable so far. But it is recognized that serious overshoot, induced by temporarily high composite carrying capacity, will at least temporarily undermine even the sustainable component.” (p. 253)
That’s overshoot in a nutshell: an epic crash in population as our fundamental resources can no longer support our numbers. The writing seems on the wall that human population numbers are likely to fall precipitously from their current and relatively high numbers.
How that unfolds is yet to be determined, but it seems the most likely scenario some time down the road as the resources, especially energy, become more scarce to support our inflated numbers…
In Part 2, I will elaborate on what I believe our pre/historical precedents suggest about what we might expect down that uncertain road…
Solace Will Not Be Found Within Our Sociopolitical Systems — Biogeophysical Limitations Cannot Be Overcome By Way Of Policy
The following Contemplation is composed of some thoughts I had as I read through and reflected upon an article that was posted on the website Zerohedge. It argues that the policies being pursued by our political systems to address climate change are likely to result in greater human suffering and what is needed is better policy by governments.
While there are some pertinent points made (such as highlighting the abuses imposed upon some local populations where resources for non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies are being extracted from), my very first thought when I finished the article was “Why, that’s so cute that you still believe we live in a ‘democracy’ that ‘serves’ the citizens it purports to and is responsive to and cares about those citizens.”
This, however, is the default believe system for a very significant portion of a nation’s population and particularly those of the West that claim to live in ‘representative democracies’. It is one of the overarching narratives that people are exposed to from a very young age and it’s hard for any to see behind the curtain that has been erected by our socialisation/enculturation and the massive propaganda that is a part of that. The denial/bargaining/rationalising others engage in when this particular core belief is challenged is breathtaking to behold at times. Very, very few wish to view critically the notion that our political systems are ‘representative’ or ‘responsive’. They accept it as a given and do not wish their illusions to be destroyed lest cognitive dissonance overwhelm them.
I have written numerous times about this and won’t dwell on these points except to share links to a handful of those Contemplations: Collapse Cometh X (Who Do ‘Representative’ Governments Truly Represent) Collapse Cometh CXII (Our Banking System: Government vs. Private Control, Part 1) Collapse Cometh CXIX (Local Community Resiliency and Political Systems) Collapse Cometh CXXX (Only Local Leadership Can Help Communities Now) Collapse Cometh CXXXVII (Local Self-Resilience Is Imperative to Pursue In Light Of Ecological Overshoot)
In addition, just as problematic (perhaps more so) in the rhetoric of the authors is their blindness to the limitations of what is being proposed and the bargaining and magical thinking that this entails. Yes, the policies being pursued by our governments are going to increase human suffering; but ultimately not in the way that the authors believe — they are going to exacerbate our ecological overshoot predicament and cause Nature’s reversion to the mean all the more chaotic and widespread.
While the sociopaths in our world leverage each and every worry/risk (e.g., climate change/global warming, war, economy, the ‘other’, etc.) to meet their primary goal of control/expansion of the wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide their revenue streams and thus power/influence/prestige, such analyses as presented here are as guilty of leveraging magical thinking to argue for something as profoundly misguided: the continuation of perpetual growth/progress on a finite planet through improved political policies. For example, they suggest implementing ‘responsible mining’ and ‘domestic production of complex technologies’ to avoid human suffering.
Such an approach appears blind to the energy/resource limits on a planet with biogeophysical constraints, and what can/cannot be accomplished with respect to ongoing growth and ‘progress’. Exponential growth of any species beyond the natural carrying capacity of its environment always leads to ecological overshoot and eventually collapse of the population. And there is ample evidence that humans are well into overshoot and have been for some time eating our seed corn (and creating self-congratulatory narratives) to avoid this truth.
Homo sapiens are no different from any other species in this regard. Except that we have a ruling caste that is leveraging the various symptom predicaments of overshoot (via ‘solutions’ to predicaments that have none, or to justify/rationalise invasion and occupation of resource-rich lands) in order to keep padding their offshore bank accounts and control their respective populations; and all the while they are helping to expedite the collapse of our complex societies and ecological systems in the process — mostly by drawing down finite resources to keep the mythos of perpetual growth/progress alive just a bit longer.
Yes, the vast majority of ‘solutions’ being marketed to address ‘climate change’ are mostly (if not totally) rackets being perpetrated upon society (e.g., ‘green/clean’ energy production, carbon capture and storage, Net Zero, electrification of everything) and the threats of our overarching predicament of overshoot (i.e., biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, atmospheric overloading, chemical pollutants, etc.) are getting lost in the kerfuffle — mostly through denial and bargaining.
And, yes, as diminishing returns on our investments continues to pick up speed with our exponential drawing down of resources, it is likely that the threat of ‘climate change’ or ‘war’ will be used to rationalise the need for massive ‘austerity’ (except of course for the ‘privileged’ minority) as our ruling caste attempts to protect and insulate themselves.
In fact, there’s a good argument that this approach has actually been occurring for a century+ and reality has simply been ‘papered over’ through massive currency devaluation and debt (hundreds of trillions of interest-bearing debt to date), and the increase of resource theft from regions outside the centre and not already overexploited (especially of hydrocarbons, the lifeblood of our societal complexities — there’s a reason the Middle East has been a quagmire for decades and the dominant nation coming out of World War 2 created the Petrodollar System).
But as William Yeats reminded us in The Second Coming: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold”. The fall/decline of complex societies is a recurrent theme in human pre/history regardless of the policies of the ruling caste and the best technologies of the time. Diminishing returns on investments in complexity along with the predicament of ecological overshoot is resulting in this cyclical phenomenon shifting from regional collapse to being global in nature.
How this proceeds exactly this time around is anyone’s guess, but the process cannot be avoided…and without recognising the actual predicament of overshoot and its inevitable consequences our approaches to what is unfolding will continue to be misguided and simply make Nature’s correction all the more devastating.
And our political systems and ruling caste members are likely the very last place we should be looking for guidance on all of this given their primary motivation/goal requires doing the exact opposite of what our species needs to be pursuing: rapid and significant degrowth.
My very brief comment on The Honest Sorcerer’s latest article:
Throw on top of our energy predicament the overarching predicament of ecological overshoot and the situation is even more explosive.
And I can’t help but think that since everything in our world has become a racket for our ruling sociopaths in one way or another, the dominoes will fall even more quickly — especially for the masses of non-elite in our world.
I expect even more expansive surveillance, narrative management/control, authoritariansim, ‘othering’, price inflation , ‘austerity’, divisive politics, civil disobedience, denial/bargaining, breakdown of rule of law, sociobehavioural control, economic manipulation, geopolitical manoeuvring and clashes, etc., etc., as the-powers-that-be scramble to maintain their tenuous grip on control and sustain the various wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide their revenue streams and thus power and prestige.
Homo sapiens have learned nothing from all the previous trials in large, complex societies and will indubitably repeat the same failed approaches to holding the centre that so-called ‘leaders’ have attempted repeatedly before our current experiment. What will be will be with respect to the insane and suicidal actions/policies of the ruling elite.
Intelligent creatures, just not too wise.
Personal/community ‘energies’ are best directed towards relocalising as much as possible in the limited time available to us, but especially food production, potable water procurement, and regional shelter needs. Any steps towards self-sufficiency in these basic needs will help (marginally) to mitigate the ‘collapse’ for some.
Another one of those conversations with someone at the Degrowth Facebook Group I am a member of…
JM:
I’ve just had a lengthy debate with good-willed people who are serious proponents of a rapid transition to renewables. People actually do understand how far beyond carrying capacity we are and why but they do not accept their own understanding. When I suggest that humanity must live within the photosynthetic energy budget of the current biological cycle, the reaction is repulsion, anger, and ridicule. That reaction is a visceral understanding of the carrying capacity of Earth’s systems and that the only reason society exists beyond that capacity is the infusion of energy. The response is that renewables can supply plenty of ‘clean energy’ to support ‘society’. People see and are unwilling to relinquish the societal upside of our energy subsidy, and argue that the ecological downside can be managed, but do have an unacknowledged understanding of how far past carrying capacity we are.
AD:
I start to think we need to start from arguing that we have less than half a century of oil left — and explicitly accept the ‘right-wing’ argument that our wealth has been built on fossil fuels. We had a single planetary shot at using fossil fuels well, and we are in the final stages of squandering it. After the oil is gone, there will be no more rubber, bitumen or plastic. There will be no paint; there will be no drugs. There will be no way to make or transport the solar panels or wind turbines. If we insist on burning our chemical stocks for things that do not address essential human needs, we will run out of ways to address those needs. The issue is not ‘energy’ per se: it is resources more broadly — clean air and water; a functioning ecosystem, including fertile soils; raw materials for manufacture. You can’t make a tyre for a Tesla out of nuclear power…
Me:
AD, Throw on top of all this those dangerous complexities we’ve got scattered about the planet that require large amounts of hydrocarbons to maintain: nuclear power plants and their waste products; chemical production and storage facilities; and, biosafety labs. Interesting times ahead…
AD:
SB, I’m talking more about ‘how do we convince people’, though.
Me:
AD, It’s next to impossible to ‘convince’ others. Most people don’t want their illusions destroyed.
AD:
SB, Ultimately, the only reason I’m on a group like this is because my hope is to see degrowth achieved, which will require convincing people. What are your reasons for being on the group?
Me:
AD, To learn and share my learning/understandings. And degrowth/simplification is coming, it’s just a matter of how that’s still up in the air. Pre/historical precedents and biological principles suggest it won’t be ‘managed’.
AD:
SB, Which biological principles are those?
Me:
AD, Those associated with ecological overshoot primarily.
AD:
SB, I think you are talking through your hat.
Me:
AD, Then I suggest you read Meadows et al’s The Limits to Growth, Tainter’s The Collapse of Complexity Societies, and Catton’s Overshoot to better understand.
AD:
SB, asked you why you thought people couldn’t be convinced of a need to change. You replied, ‘because ecological overshoot’. That’s the non-sequitur that I called you on.
_____
My final response:
AD, Your comments/responses do not make it clear that you asked ‘why people couldn’t be convinced’; you asked why I was in the Degrowth group. Regardless, not sure if you’ve ever studied psychology (especially social psychology) but there are strong tendencies to protect oneself from anxiety-provoking thoughts — and the notions of collapse, overshoot, etc. are certainly those. So, I don’t know if it’s possible to convince/persuade many others of the need to change fundamental aspects of their behaviour unless they are willing to challenge many of their core beliefs and expectations; and most people, quite frankly, are not. And, I would argue, that tends to be human nature.
From attempts to reduce cognitive dissonance (see Festinger’s work), to the grieving stages outlined by Kubler-Ross (particularly denial and bargaining), to beliefs about agency (we have little, if any), tendencies towards deference to authority/expertise (see Milgram’s work), going along to get along and groupthink (see Janis’s work), to a potpourri of biases (especially confirmation and optimism bias) and heuristics that lead us to overly-simplify complex phenomena, Homo sapiens tend to ‘believe what they want to believe’; reality often plays a minor role in it, if at all.
As an article on the faulty beliefs about ‘renewables’, co-written by Dr. Bill Rees (of ecological footprint fame), argues: “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.”
Given these psychological mechanisms, our story-telling ways of communicating and developing belief systems, recent historical trends, energy blindness, and the huge role of propaganda/narrative management by our ‘ruling elite (see Bernays’ work) we tend to get overwhelmed by counter-narratives to our core beliefs and gravitate towards those that reinforce our own — regardless of how wrong or counterproductive they may be.
We very much rail against evidence that do not confirm the beliefs we hold. We deny. We ignore. We craft bargaining narratives to rationalise away ‘facts’ that don’t support our thinking; i.e., if only this happened…if we did this…yeah, but….
It is for these reasons above (along with others) that the quote “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed” arose (often attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche). And it is for these reasons that the overwhelming majority of people will not and cannot be convinced to give up what they perceive as ‘modernity’ (i.e., all the hydrocarbon-based complexities we have established over the past century+).
We, especially in the West, like to believe we are rational and objective but the overwhelming evidence would suggest otherwise. We are story-telling apes that have a strong tendency to craft tales to support our belief systems rather than develop belief systems based upon objective observations. Humans are exceedingly subjective.
Perhaps this is why author Robert Heinlein quipped that “Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalising animal” in opposition to Aristotle’s definition that humans are a rational animal.
And it’s not simply enough to come up with a factual, persuasive argument but to have to overcome the massive counter narratives being fed to everyone by our ruling elite who benefit greatly from the status quo…
My personal experience strongly supports the observation that the significant majority of people do not want to be convinced that just like all living organisms, societies have an expiration date, and we can no more persuade everyone to ‘do what’s right’ than we can ‘science our way out of overshoot’.
Not only do we have a strong urge to deny our own mortality, we have a strong (perhaps even stronger) one to deny the mortality of our society and the living standards/expectations it holds for virtually all within it.
Overshoot, Hydrocarbon Energy, and Denial: Avoiding the Pain
I share an ongoing conversation with others in my town of Stouffville regarding a post on a local Facebook Group discussing ongoing expansion of our suburban community. Note the common thinking along the lines of growth being a given and the energy blindness when discussing ‘development’, particularly in distant regions of our province.
The posted comment:
I’m concerned when I look around Main St. and see all these condos going up. We’ll be in constant gridlock. I do not see any potential to widen the road. Am I wrong? It’s going to be challenging at best to drive along Main St..
On the other hand, Stouffville also needs affordable housing.
My initial reply:
Perpetual growth on a planet with finite resources and fragile ecosystems…what could possibly go wrong?
MM:
Steve Bull well, if we sterilize every couple after having two children, and euthanize everyone once they reach the retirement age, we might be able to make the zero-population growth number work from an economic standpoint. Or cutting everyone off social assistance, and withdrawing healthcare insurance for the elderly might also work.
I think it might be a bit of a hard-sell, especially among those approaching their “golden years” and those who depend on government assistance to meet the costs of staying alive.
By the way the population density of Canada is less than 4 persons per square kilometre; are you at all familiar with population distribution of Canadians outside of the Golden Horseshoe?
MB:
MM, good thing you are not aging!
Me:
MM, It’s a wicked predicament that we’ve led ourselves into.
MM:
Steve Bull the die was cast when we decided that having public education, public healthcare, municipal services like police, fire & ambulance services, potable water supply and sewage service etc. were things that were desirable.
These things all cost money; and it is the nature of the human condition that we cannot each bear our share of these costs over the entirety of our life span, and that these costs fluctuate considerably over our lifetime.
This means that we have to rely on ever increasing numbers of working age members of our society to cover these costs. Or do we withdraw these services?
Me:
MM, The predicament is much deeper and complex than what you suggest. Look up what ecological overshoot is…and all our chasing of growth is simply exacerbating it.
JO:
MM, something I have often said, there is plenty of land for use outside he Golden Horseshoe. the problem is no one seems to want to develop it. Lots of land north of Parry Sound or even North Bay.
MM:
JO, Saskatchewan has a population density of 0.018 persons/ha. Manitoba is 0.025 persons/ha.
We need to do something to encourage employers to consider places like Regina & Saskatoon and Winnipeg & Brandon for new sites and not just the Golden Horseshoe.
TK:
JO, There wouldn’t be enough jobs to justify it and the land is rough and difficult to develop.
JO:
TK, unless you have personal experience of the area I would have to disagree with you. Having grown up there it has many attractions. It is not the easiest place to live but it is doable. Of course it is not for the faint of heart nor for pampered people.
MM:
MB, I wish that were true M, but I’m 3/4 home from the start to the end, and each year passes by more quickly than the year before.
MM:
Steve Bull, I am quite familiar with the concept of ecological overshoot; and I know that our calculations of regional and global carrying capacities have had to be reassessed countless times over the past 35 years that I have been a researcher and teacher of environmental science.
There is no reliable algorithm which can adequately predict changes in carrying capacity that can adequately make allowances for the unpredictable global climatic oscillations or the influence of developing resource technologies on net resource output.
The issue in Canada is the geographical concentration of the population, not the size of the population.
My final response:
MM, We will have to agree to disagree. I would argue Canada, and the entire planet, is already well into overshoot — I will assume you are familiar with Catton’s book on the subject and I don’t need to highlight his argument as to why this is so.
Simply because there is no perfect measure of overshoot or its changes does not negate the evidence that we are well into it, especially when one considers the finiteness of that most important resource to our continued expansion, and our societal complexities and their maintenance: hydrocarbons.
Virtually every aspect of the living standards of our modern, ‘advanced’ economies (and especially the ability to pursue expansionary policies the past century plus; particularly population, economic, geopolitical, and technological in nature) has been the result of surplus energy derived from hydrocarbon extraction and use. Of particular importance to current ‘modernity’ is diesel fuel that supports not only our long-distance supply chains but (with natural gas) industrial agriculture; both of which we have grown extensively dependent upon, particularly in Ontario where we import a good 80+% of our food needs for a growing population. (See Alice Friedemann’s work on this predicament, especially When Trucks Stop Running)
Of course, declining surplus energy due to significant diminishing returns as a result of our exponentially-expanding drawdown of this resource has led us to all sorts of machinations (especially economic and geopolitical — there’s a reason the Middle East is a quagmire and the world is awash in hundreds of trillions of dollars in debt and unfunded liabilities), along with magical thinking (i.e., ‘renewables’ can ‘power’ our complex societies and maintain our living standards and growth imperative), in our attempts to keep the party going and ignore the biophysical realities that exist. As some argue, we are extremely blind to our dependence/reliance upon the drawdown of hydrocarbon energy stores. (See Nate Hagen’s four-part series on this subject: Part 1)
And all of this is being carried out with zero regard (apart from significant greenwashing narratives to keep selling ‘stuff’ and keep the masses in denial/ignorance) to the ecological systems destruction it is resulting in — there’s a reason some call our present geologic epoch the Sixth Mass Extinction.
So, yeah, we can ignore the elephant in the room of overshoot and believe in magic (especially infinite substitutability, particularly of energy) to convince us we can continue to chase the perpetual growth chalice when what we need to be discussing is how to degrow in a managed way before it is forced upon us by circumstances and Nature. Because, frankly, we aren’t going to enjoy the way in which Nature responds to our misuse of our planet in our attempts to grow well beyond physical limits. (Here I recommend watching the late Dr. Albert Bartlett’s presentation on the exponential function)
Extending our carrying capacity through the leveraging of a one-time and finite cache of photosynthetically-derived energy was always going to end badly — it’s put us neck deep into overshoot. However, instead of discussing this and its inevitable consequences we have manipulated our economic systems and weaved comforting stories to ignore its significant anxiety-provoking fallout — most (all?) of which are completely energy blind. It’s much easier to believe in comforting narratives than discuss means by which we might mitigate some of the coming storm.
Regardless of the overwhelming evidence of this misguided trajectory, my guess (based upon pre/historical precedents, the human tendency to deny anxiety-provoking thoughts, and the Maximum Power Principle) is that we will continue to bargain with/rationalise away the Laws of Thermodynamics and biophysical limits and wholeheartedly pursue growth rather than confront the looming energy cliff and all that portends.
Certainly those that profit from this path will encourage it (particularly through their mouthpieces of the government and mainstream media) and tell us comforting stories about our ingenuity and technological ability to ‘solve’ what is for all intents and purposes an insoluble predicament.
Growth, to infinity and beyond…
Of course, only time will tell how this all turns out, but certainly the signs are all there that we’re on the wrong path. With the inevitable decline in surplus energy we should be discussing how to reduce our dependency upon long-distance supply chains and how to relocalise everything but especially food production, potable water procurement, and shelter needs; not deliberating how best to continue expanding — particularly since this approach, while helping to support the Ponzi that is our financialized economic system, exacerbates our overshoot and worsens the eventual correction.
Fossil Fuels: Contributing to Complexity and Ecological Overshoot
Andrew Nikiforuk is an author and contributing editor of the online media site The Tyee. He has been writing about the oil and gas industry for close to 20 years. In his most recent article he writes about the lies being told by the Canadian government regarding its attempts to reduce carbon emissions. The Canadian government is certainly not alone in its misinformation (propaganda?) and one of the issues I believe is contributing to the lies is a (purposeful?) misidentification of our planet’s fundamental existential dilemma. Below is my comment on Andrew’s excellent discussion.
Thank you, Andrew. You’ve laid out the case for some very, very difficult decisions/choices/discussions that lay ahead of us.
I’m not convinced we will make what I consider to be the correct choices or even engage in some meaningful and productive dialogue since the changes that I believe are needed (degrowth) would be viewed as exceedingly painful to many as it challenges not only some core beliefs but what could be considered rights/entitlements/expectations regarding living standards (and it doesn’t help that we are genetically predisposed to avoid pain and seek pleasure). The brakes that need to be applied to some social practices/policies (perhaps most? all?) would also be challenged by some because I would contend the fundamental dilemma we are having to address is not necessarily carbon emissions, which I would argue is one of the consequences of the underlying issue, which is ecological overshoot.
The finite, one-time cache of easy-to-retrieve and cheap-to-access energy provided by fossil fuels has ‘fuelled’ an explosion in human numbers and sociopolitical/cultural/economic complexities unlike any other time in human pre/history. With this energy resource at our disposal we have constructed a complex, global, and industrialised world with technological wonders that would certainly appear magical to past generations.
Perhaps one of the most important consequences of this finite energy reserve has been our creation of exceedingly complex, fragile, and energy-intensive long-distance supply chains, especially for food, that have allowed us to expand and occupy quite marginal lands and completely ignore consideration of a land’s carrying capacity and ability to ‘sustain’ a local population; but also created a complete dependency by many on these systems. I use my home province of Ontario as an example. We have a population of about 15 million (and growing) but less than 9 million acres of arable farmland (and lessening), suggesting (based upon an estimate of the need of 1 acre of food production per person to supply adequate caloric intake) we are well past our natural environmental carrying capacity. It’s even worse than these numbers suggest since about 70+% of our ‘food’ production is dedicated to corn and soybean for animal feed and ethanol production. As a result we import about 80+% of our food. And many, many regions of the world are in a similar (or worse) predicament.
One of the ‘memes’ I have often used over the past few years has been ‘Infinite growth on a finite planet, what could possibly go wrong?’ We live on a finite planet with biophysical limits. These limits impact what we can and cannot do. Human ingenuity (i.e., science and technology) has allowed us to push on the boundaries of some of these limits to a certain extent but physics and biology can only be ‘delayed’, not vanquished. The energy-averaging systems we have in place (i.e., long-distance trade) to support occupation of marginal lands and expand beyond a region’s carrying capacity require huge amounts of energy to sustain. This has been possible via fossil fuels. In fact, fossil fuels have allowed us to push the apparent carrying capacity of the planet well beyond the biophysical limits imposed by a finite planet.
So what happens when this finite energy source begins to decline in not only actual physical quantities but in the amount of surplus energy it can supply us with due to diminishing returns?
The two extreme and relatively polar-opposite responses are simple. We could curtail our dependency on this resource and greatly reduce our complexities (something that was probably needed to begin decades ago). Or, we could create stories about how our ingenuity will provide us with a scientific/technological solution to avoid the tough path of degrowth — primarily through the magical thinking necessary to believe that there is a ‘green/clean’ energy source that we can tap into to sustain our energy-intensive living standards and global complexities.
I am increasingly convinced we need to take the first path but it seems quite apparent we are taking the second, a path that not only avoids the ‘pain’ that would be perceived by many as we reduce our complexities but one that weaves comforting myths to reduce our cognitive dissonance. The unfortunate thing is the easier path also puts us further into overshoot leading to an eventual steeper and calamitous decline that we cannot mitigate or manage at all. It is well past time to have the tough discussion (especially about how to do it equitably), if we are to have any hope of avoiding a future that will be much, much more challenging if we don’t.
Planetary Boundaries, Narrative Management, and Technology
As I continue to work on Part 4 of my multipart Contemplation regarding energy blindness (see: Part 1 Medium, Part 2 Medium, Part 3 BlogMedium), I offer a handful of recent comments I shared on a variety of posts I’ve been reading:
One posted to a Degrowth Group I am a member of:
AP: It is the carbon risk that is existential. All the others are nice to have after you have reduced the carbon risk. Don’t allow this sort of propaganda to divert or dilute the required focus.
CS: obviously emissions are a significant threat but when we focus on climate change as the most significant we end up, as the majority currently do, looking to technology for solutions. Ecological overshoot is the master predicament. This means degrowth in energy and material consumption (less technology) and population reduction should be the key ways forward.
I highly recommend this talk by Bill Rees of Ecological Footprint fame. Cheers
SE: Economic and then the following fertilizer/ pumped water/ food availability collapse as energy and materials slip away will tend to hurt us first. Many countries are already in the early stages of collapse. Lebanon, Argentina, Pakistan, etc.
Me: There are a number of planetary boundaries that have been broached because of our ecological overshoot. They all pose an existential risk and a number have been identified as being worse off than carbon emissions…the focus needs to be on all of them.
There’s this one on an oilprice.com article posted in the Peak Oil Facebook Group I am a member of:
Me: I have to wonder about the ‘accuracy’ of the article and its ‘conclusions’ (well, actually, prognostications as it’s about possibilities, not actualities). Bloomberg and Reuters, the two mainstream media outlets cited, are both extremely Western-biased. And we know the West would love to see cracks in the BRICS growing alliance so why not float the ‘news’ that such divisions are appearing based, naturally, on unnamed/anonymous sources. If we have learned anything from the recent decades of mainstream media reporting, it is that it has become little more than a propaganda arm for our ruling elite…
And this one in the same group:
Me: Just as fracking was, the profit-makers/-takers have spun several narratives to entice investments — both capital and retail. Believers have, once again, trusted the untrustworthy and fallen for the con failing to understand that our energy-intensive living has never been sustainable on a finite planet regardless of our ingenuity and technological prowess. All we’re doing by chasing the unicorn of ‘renewables’ is expediting our journey over the energy cliff while contributing evermore to our ecological overshoot. Sad on so many levels.
LM: totally agree with that. The question is…what’s next
Wonder how long it will take for the discussions about Peak Oil to go fully mainstream once the Strait of Hormuz is closed off???
Comments:
SH: I expect the many manifestations of natural limits will likely end up being used as vehicles for scapegoating, to promote non-sequitur ideological agendas, and with examples of Overshoot being seen as isolated phenomenon, rather than part of a broader problem. People are already seeing global climate that way, so it stands to reason that Peak Oil will just give them one more thing regarding which they can petition governments and big corporations to solve for them. I have yet to encounter a climate activist who has seriously considered what people can do to address the problem by way of changing personal behaviors, as opposed to technological fixes and policy changes offering a “plug and play” solution. The notion of a wicked problem in which mitigation might involve a paradigm shift in collective behaviors and expectations is not on anyone’s radar.
Me: Yes, I agree that all sorts of narratives will be constructed — especially by the ruling elite and associated profit-makers/-takers — to leverage our energy fall/descent in advantageous ways to their goals. They will certainly be a lot of ‘othering’ going forward as our ‘leadership’ attempts to deflect blame/responsibility/focus on them and their wayward ways.
LM: predicament
DI: We blame the symptoms not the disease.
Me: True enough. A lot will be blamed on those ‘undemocratic/despotic’ regimes that are keeping us from their hydrocarbons…you know, because they ‘hate our freedom’.
SMK: It will never go mainstream. Anything but it will be blamed for conserving of remaining reserves: climate change [sic], unfolding warfare in Middle East, Biden falling down some steps, Swift and Kelce, whatever…NEVER peak oil.
Me: Perhaps. There are and have been a growing number attempting to raise the concept and implications of Peak Oil but as will likely continue to be the case the ‘influential’ narrative managers of society (those that work on behalf of the world’s elite and can shout through our politicians and mainstream media outlets) will continue to weave their competing stories, especially those flaunting human ingenuity and technological ‘solutions to our dilemma. That is, until the truth of PO and the insanity of chasing infinite growth on a finite planet are eventually so obvious that they can no longer be pushed to the margins and the saner voices of warning begin to turn more and more heads; not all, probably not even a lot, but I wager to guess at least increasing numbers.
I don’t believe our ruling elite will ever admit to PO and the inadvisability of chasing the perpetual growth chalice or turn towards degrowing our existence for that would mean removing the gravy train that provides their revenue streams and thus positions of power/influence and prestige. No, they will likely insist on the path of exacerbating our Overshoot while getting their propagandists to double/triple down on the tales of a technologically-based transition to a ‘clean/green’ utopia.
I think we can see part of the narrative plan going forward is to highlight the concept of Peak Demand as opposed to Peak Supply. Demand for hydrocarbons has peaked because everyone is already transitioning to the ‘Electrification of Everything Plan’ with their electric vehicle purchases and investments in non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies…only the reality indicates that this tale is nonsense and hydrocarbon extraction and use is increasing along with these technologies resulting in an exacerbation of our overshoot predicament.
Throw our currently increasing morass of geopolitical gamesmanship on top of an already deadly dead-end trajectory and that jump off the Seneca Cliff of energy decline seems further and further in the rear-view mirror — along with all the ecological systems destruction we can’t help but compound in our desire to control our destiny.
But, yeah, let’s all go see the Taylor Swift movie to deny the death of our world just a bit longer and sing along, holding hands as gravity takes hold. Such is the way of these story-telling apes who will do and believe almost any and everything to avoid/deny reality and the anxiety-provoking thoughts it raises.
NOTE: Beginning to post these thoughts of mine here. I began a couple of years ago posting them on Medium but have found that the subscription practices there are somewhat restrictive. I will attempt to post one per day until I am caught up…and then will be posting in both locations.
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Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh
August 8, 2020
Palace of Knossos, 1993 (Crete, Greece) Photo by author
Mythical Narratives Everywhere to Avoid Reality
As I approach my 7th decade on this planet, I have reached the conclusion that we all interpret the world through mythical narratives; some of our own creation, many (most?) others ‘imposed’ upon us. The ruling class of society conditions us in numerous ways to accept stories that, for the most part, support and prolong their position of power and control.
From hereditary chieftains/monarchs to ‘democratic’ leadership, the ‘elite’ of society maintain a hold over the ‘tribe’ so as to ensure their revenue streams and wealth (some would argue this is a parasitic arrangement since this class returns little in the way of productive value to the system). They use the various tools at their disposal (e.g., education system, media, etc.) to inculcate/predispose us to accepting this arrangement and continuing to control and expand the wealth-generating/extraction systems that arise from everyday human economic interactions.
Power and wealth is concentrated significantly at the top of the pyramid; yet we are constantly exposed to narratives that we not only have agency, but that the ‘elite’ put our needs at the forefront of their policies and decision-making. I strongly believe these are false and propagated to influence/manipulate our thinking and beliefs.
Just like our financial institutions (especially the big banks) who knowingly engage in criminal activity and then receive raps on the wrist with minimal fines when caught (making their brazen thievery well worth it), the ruling class is more than willing to break ‘rules/laws’ (in fact, I would argue they are constantly doing so) because the ‘price’ for doing so is negligible (with the occasional sacrifice made to appease the masses).
I don’t believe there is a ‘solution’ to any of this (unlike most who do because, you know, hope — and reduction of cognitive dissonance) aside from complete sociopolitical collapse — which I would argue will eventually happen as it has for every complex society that has preceded ours. My response to this has been to accept it, and try and remove myself from the Matrix as much as is possible and prepare accordingly.
The world is not as we have been conditioned to believe by the narrative managers who weave the various storylines (read Edward Bernays book Propaganda for interesting insight on this). Awareness of this is a first step towards a better understanding of how messed up this world truly is and, possibly, doing something for your family/community to make it more resilient as the system inevitably declines/collapses.
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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.
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.
Across the world, rainforests are becoming savanna or farmland, savanna is drying out and turning into desert, and icy tundra is thawing. Indeed, scientific studies have now recorded “regime shifts” like these in more than 20 different types of ecosystem where tipping points have been passed. Across the world, more than 20% of ecosystems are in danger of shifting or collapsing into something different.
These collapses might happen sooner than you’d think. Humans are already putting ecosystems under pressure in many different ways – what we refer to as stresses. And when you combine these stresses with an increase in climate-driven extreme weather, the date these tipping points are crossed could be brought forward by as much as 80%.
This means an ecosystem collapse that we might previously have expected to avoid until late this century could happen as soon as in the next few decades. That’s the gloomy conclusion of our latest research, published in Nature Sustainability.
Human population growth, increased economic demands, and greenhouse gas concentrations put pressures on ecosystems and landscapes to supply food and maintain key services such as clean water. The number of extreme climate events is also increasing and will only get worse.
What really worries us is that climate extremes could hit already stressed ecosystems, which in turn transfer new or heightened stresses to some other ecosystem, and so on. This means one collapsing ecosystem could have a knock-on effect on neighbouring ecosystems through successive feedback loops: an “ecological doom-loop” scenario, with catastrophic consequences.
How long until a collapse?
In our new research, we wanted to get a sense of the amount of stress that ecosystems can take before collapsing. We did this using models – computer programs that simulate how an ecosystem will work in future, and how it will react to changes in circumstance.
I have brought up feedback loops (both positive and negative) many times in this space. I’ve also brought up unsustainable systems in one way or another in practically every article, since they are endemic in human society and at the root of every predicament. It would be very simple for me to tell you that if we just eliminated every unsustainable system and replaced them with sustainable ones that most all our troubles would be resolved. Aaahhh, if only it were that simple. While there is much truth to that statement, the physical realities of replacing these systems would be a massive transformation that is prevented by the Limits to Growth – not enough energy and resources to accomplish the job due to self-reinforcing positive feedback loops which would only add fuel to the fire of the existing ecological overshoot that we are already in. Understanding how we got to this point is key in comprehending why
options on dealing with overshoot are so limited. Several different ideas revolve around the same concept of creating a “new civilization” that humans could embark on to reduce overshoot and live happily ever after. I’ve pointed out one concept known as The Venus Project which is really nothing more than pure hopium. I’ve spent the last several articles detailing the Degrowth Movement and why degrowth in and of itself isn’t enough to actually accomplish much, mainly due to a lack of acceptance from corporations and governments, which would suffer greatly as a result. Of course, we’re all going to suffer from the implications of overshoot anyway, which makes that fact more or less irrelevant in the first place. I’ve pointed out why the MEER concept is unrealistic and more fantasy than reality…
Abstract The human enterprise is in overshoot; we exceed the long-term carrying capacity of Earth and are degrading the biophysical basis of our own existence. Despite decades of cumulative evidence, the world community has failed dismally in efforts to address this problem. I argue that cultural evolution and global change have outpaced bio-evolution; despite millennia of evolutionary history, the human brain and associated cognitive processes are functionally obsolete to deal with the human eco-crisis. H. sapiens tends to respond to problems in simplistic, reductionist, mechanical ways. Simplistic diagnoses lead to simplistic remedies. Politically acceptable technical ‘solutions’ to global warming assume fossil fuels are the problem, require major capital investment and are promoted on the basis of profit potential, thousands of well-paying jobs and bland assurances that climate change can readily be rectified. If successful, this would merely extend overshoot. Complexity demands a systemic approach; to address overshoot requires unprecedented international cooperation in the design of coordinated policies to ensure a socially-just economic contraction, mostly in high-income countries, and significant population reductions everywhere. The ultimate goal should be a human population in the vicinity of two billion thriving more equitably in ‘steady-state’ within the biophysical means of nature.
Introduction: Evolution and humanity’s eco-predicament This article attempts a more-than-usually systemic assessment of the human eco-predicament. It is inspired by two related facts: First, the human population substantially exceeds the long-term carrying capacity of Earth even at current average material standards. We are in overshoot, a state in which excess consumption and pollution are eroding the biophysical basis of our own existence (GFN, 2022a; Rees, 2020a). Second, national government and international community responses to even the most publicised symptom of overshoot, climate change, have been dismally limited and wholly ineffective (Figure 1).
Our high-tech civilization is like an ageing man in full denial of his mortality. It is eating his children just to live a day longer, rather than admitting that its craving for immortality is founded on nothing more than magical thinking. In its firm belief that technology can save it, it is constantly looking for “solutions” on the predicament of its death, actively poisoning its kin with chemicals, heavy metals and radioactive waste from mining and production. Is there a last chance for it change course?
Every civilization is built around a set of unquestionable beliefs, with a considerable number of them dealing with death itself. Although many devout followers of modernity claim that they are fully aware of their mortality, deep inside they are still in denial. There is no end to the row of books, articles and publications on how singularity will come, how we will upload our consciousness into the cloud, how AI will take care of us and ultimately: how our digital technology will eventually make our souls immortal (1) once our bodies are gone.
According to this belief system, we will eventually free ourselves from the muddy reality of our biological origin, full of bacteria, viruses, illness and misery. The road to this modernist Nirvana starts with growing food in sterile steel and glass halls under artificial LED light, and elongating our lifespans with gene therapy — and if death does come for one before we get there, then there are plenty of options for a cryogenic afterlife in a nice and shiny metal tube.
