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The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major ‘Population Correction’ Is Inevitable

April 27, 2024

This is an article (or in science speak a paper) review. My method is to start with a copy pasted into the Medium editor unread and boil it down to key bits [and add comments in brackets as I read/assess/vet the offering, which may or may not be of value, especially to anyone who knows or knows of Bill Rees and his work, in which case they should just click this hypertext and red his paper, which is about a 34 minute read as Medium recons time].

Abstract

Homo sapiens has evolved to reproduce exponentially [to recover from depopulation events, e.g. plague, disaster], expand geographically [as K-strategists by competitive displacement, not by aggressive conquest], and consume all available resources [within environmental productivity limits, i.e. carrying capacity]. For most of humanity’s evolutionary history [over the last 50k to 75k years], such expansionist tendencies have been countered by negative feedback [e.g. overshoot and collapse]. However, the scientific revolution and the use of fossil fuels reduced many forms of negative feedback [e.g. starvation, scarcity induced conflict], enabling us to realize our full potential for exponential growth [in the abscence of adaptive and evolvable K-strategist behaviors]. This natural capacity [e.g. of a somatic cell to become cancerous is natural, not uncommon, and not selected for, a condition of being non-evolvable, non-viable long term] is being reinforced by growth-oriented neoliberal economics — nurture complements nature. Problem: the human enterprise is a ‘dissipative structure’ [a complex, adaptive, dissipative but non-evolvable system or structure as are supercells or whirlwinds] and sub-system of the ecosphere — it can grow and maintain itself only by consuming and dissipating available energy and resources extracted from its host system [in the absence of K-strategist behavioral limits], the ecosphere, and discharging waste back into its host…

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

The Second and Final Gilded Age

April 4, 2024

The Second and Final Gilded Age

New data shows that the total wealth of the top 1% of Americans just hit a record $44 trillion. Corporate profits are also hitting record highs, raking in $2.8 trillion in the last three months of 2023 alone. And that’s after taxes. It won’t surprise you to hear, given these massive numbers, that inflation is being driven primarily by corporate greed and these staggering, record profits. By raising the cost of food, housing, and every basic need corporations are facilitating a gargantuan transfer of wealth from the working class to the 1%. In doing so they’re cementing this era’s position as the second Gilded Age.

Via Talmon Smith – NYT

For most of you, that’s probably not new information. Inequality has been soaring since the Reagan era, and even though workers have been creating more and more wealth, we’re seeing a smaller and smaller share of the value we produce. But this Gilded Age is slightly different from the first, and more importantly our remedy for this era should be separate and distinct.

The Gilded Age of the late 1800s is typically defined by extreme inequality and the monopolistic consolidation of industries. A handful of men, the Robber Barons, controlled the railroads, mines, newspapers, and, ultimately, the country. The concentration of wealth was so extreme that one man, John D. Rockefeller, is estimated to have been worth approximately $400 billion at the peak of his wealth, which was about 2% of the entire U.S. economy. Others like Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and Cornelius Vanderbilt also pillaged and ruled the country with ruthless business tactics, exploitation of workers, and political corruption.

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

The End Of Fossil Fuels Will Be The End Of Modern Capitalism

July 24, 2023

That which is unsustainable can not be sustained

Ed Yourdon from New York City via Wikimedia Commons

None of us are ready for the chaos of the we are stoking, caused by the rapacious growth of what Kurt Vonnegut Jr. referred to as “thermodynamic whoopee”. You might know it as Global Industrial Civilization-GIC. This is the beginning of how the world will sort itself out for the next 20 years.

An energy conversion from fossil fuels will not be possible to an equal extent in all world regions before peak oil occurs. It is likely that a large number of countries will not be able to make the necessary investments in good time and to the required extent.

The communities that live around those festering wounds and the toxic pools know this. And their anger and disquiet is growing as is their numbers. From sanitation employees in Paris to farmers in Punjab.

Even under the threat of our mighty military the other economies and nations of the world will make alliances, some out of necessity and some out of short-term gain, but the harder we push the more defined the battle lines will be. Our ruling class wants us to believe we can win this energy transition war. By any humanitarian definition of “winning” they are lying. They think THEY can win this war. They are wrong.

The contemporary financial system is at severe and worsening risk because of the gargantuan scale of the ‘excess claims overhang’ that has been created on the false assumption that the creation of money and credit in their various forms (known to conventional economics as “demand”) can somehow expand the real economy of goods and services. Demand can raise prices but demand can not create more oil in the ground.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Energy Transition Will Run Through the Copper Gauntlet

January 17, 2023

And it may not survive

Since the 2018 IPCC climate report laid out the calamitous consequences of our unbridled carbon emissions, every pathway published by academics and think tanks that claim to save us from ourselves involves the expansion of solar and wind farms as well as net-zero and carbon capture dreams of unbridled optimism.

Net-Zero, the idea that we can keep emitting greenhouse gasses only if we somehow capture or offset those emissions by some yet-to-be-determined means was a dubious proposition at best. It relies on untested-at-scale projects such as carbon capture and sequester (CCS) as well as accounting fantasies that pretend a young sapling that takes 50 years to grow offsets the carbon released from the burning of a mature tree today after being shipped overseas.

Net-Zero plans also assume a rapid and universal deployment of renewable energy-capturing machines a.k.a. solar panels and wind generators. Unfortunately, contrary to their portrayal in mainstream media, solar panels and windmills do not produce renewable energy. These are machines designed to capture and transform energy (electromagnetic or kinetic) available to them and they are manufactured, installed, maintained, and replaced using fossil fuels.

It’s astonishing how the continual absence of any credible carbon removal technology seems to never affect net-zero policies. Whatever is thrown at it, net zero carries on without a dent in the fender.

James Dyke

Senior Lecturer in Global Systems, University of Exeter

Many other metals and rare earth elements have received a great deal of attention due to their exotic-sounding names, relative scarcity, and utilization in cutting-edge technologies, but one of the most critical minerals to the energy transition that is essential to curtailing the most serious effect of climate change is also one that the human race has learned to work earliest — copper.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

You’re Not Going to Homestead Through Collapse

August 23, 2021

No matter how self-sufficient you become

Photo by Roger Darnell on Unsplash

“By collapse, I mean a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity over a considerable area, for an extended time.” — Jared Diamond in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005)

People who criticize billionaires for foolishly building underground bunkers believe they can survive the impending doom of climate change by hunkering down on a homestead.

Both groups are attempting to escape the realities of collapse. It’s a race that most humans will likely lose. It’s now a question of whether the species can survive extinction.

On one hand the survivalists (rightfully) poo-poo plans for colonizing Mars as too difficult on a “dead planet” while simultaneously clinging to the belief that for all their beans and bullets, gardens and wells —the hoarded supplies of a prepper will see them through the sixth mass extinction on a dying Earth. It’s the poor-man’s version of an Elysium space station.

The cognitive dissonance must physically hurt.

And let’s admit what no one is saying out loud. The carefully made plans for some sort of Neo-Thoreau lifestyle is more about surviving the collapse of civilization in relative safety and comfort than reducing a carbon footprint — the same attitude that put us in this predicament in the first place.

Here are just a few of the reasons this fantasy won’t work.

Collapse will be everywhere but not all at once.

The central idea of catabolic collapse is that human societies pretty consistently tend to produce more stuff than they can afford to maintain…

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

Problems, Predicaments, and Technology

July 31, 2021

We often see people bring out certain ideas that they claim are some sort of “solution” or that “they work” and I want to try to explain why (once again) these ideas are nothing more than ideas and not “solutions” of any sort. One of the things I most would like to get others to see is the bigger picture. Many people focus on reductionist ideas such as non-renewable “renewable” energy, or alternative energy ideas such as hydrogen, or technological ideas; but fail to see how those ideas don’t really change anything and only allow for continued environmental destruction (and consolidate capital in the hands of the elite) instead.

Before I go any further, I should make it clear that climate change (and most of the topics in our files) is a predicament. A predicament has an outcome, not a solution or answer. Solutions and answers are reserved for PROBLEMS. Many people get these two mixed up and tend to see predicaments as problems. Wikipedia calls a predicament a “wicked problem” but this doesn’t change the simple fact that predicaments or dilemmas do not have solutions.

One of the first things I constantly harp about is technology. Technology has been great for those of us who can afford to use it, but it came at a huge cost to the environment AND to us over the long haul. It is our use of technology which CONTINUES the exponential expansion of the predicaments we face and it is our insistence upon not only using existing technology but on developing NEW technology to “solve” the predicaments technology caused to begin with that is itself one of the biggest parts of our predicaments.

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

The show is over.

July 12, 2021

Climate strike in Lausanne

Tomorrow 150 weeks will have passed since we started to school strike for the climate. During this time more and more people around the world have woken up to the climate- and ecological crisis, putting more and more pressure on you — the people in power.

Eventually the public pressure was too much, you had the world’s eyes on you. So you started to act. Not acting as in taking climate action. But acting as in roleplaying. Playing politics, playing with words, playing with our future.

Pretending to take responsibility. Acting as saviors as you tried to convince us that things are being taken care of, meanwhile the gap between your rhetoric and reality keeps growing wider and wider. And since the level of awareness is so low you almost get away with it.

But let’s be clear — what you are doing is not about climate action or responding to an emergency. It never was. This is communication tactics disguised as politics. You — especially leaders from high income nations — are pretending to change and listen to the young people while you continue pretty much exactly like before.

Pretending to take science seriously by saying “science is back” while holding climate summits without even inviting a single climate scientist as speaker. Pretending to wage war against fossil fuels while opening up brand new coal-mines, oilfields and pipelines. You don’t only continue business as usual as before, in many cases you are even speeding and scaling up the process.

Pretending to have the most ambitious climate policies while granting new oil licenses, exploring future oilfields. Bragging about your so-called ambitious climate commitments, which if you look holistically are vastly insufficient, and then get caught not even trying to reach those targets.

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

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXV

July 8, 2021

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXV

Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author

This contemplation was prompted by an article regarding an ‘independent’ think tank’s report that presented the argument that government funding of the oil and gas industry needed to be shifted towards ‘green/clean’ alternatives. I’ve included a few hyperlinks to sites that expand upon the concepts/issues discussed.

Context, it’s always important. This ‘independent’ think tank, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, is part and parcel of the corporate/business ‘greenwashing’ of our world and ‘solutions’ to its various dilemmas. It’s primary mission is ‘sustainable’ development/growth, a gargantuan oxymoron on a finite planet. Infinite growth. Finite planet. What could possibly go wrong?

In fact, the perpetuation of this continued pursuit of perpetual growth is seen quite clearly in the absence of any discussion about curtailing our growth but rather finding ways to ‘sustain’ it, and the misuse of language (that has become endemic in the environmental movement) and the simplified ‘solution’ offered by arguing that government funds need to be directed away from the climate change-causing oil and gas industry and towards the ‘clean’ energy alternatives of ‘renewables’.

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

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXIII

June 28, 2021

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXIII

Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author

Today’s thought was motivated by another Tyee article that carries on the notion of ‘clean energy’ and the ‘magical thinking’ needed to buy into such narratives.

*    *     *

As long as language is being manipulated (e.g., ‘clean energy’ is a gargantuan oxymoron), magical thinking employed (e.g., ‘green hydrogen’ or some iteration of it has been on the books for 2+ centuries and is still far, far away, if ever, given the physical and economic hurdles/roadblocks), and fundamental causes of our dilemmas conveniently ignored (e.g., our pursuit of the infinite growth chalice on a finite planet), the ‘solutions’ we so desperately seek will always elude us (if they even exist).

Despite relatively general recognition of humanity’s impending ‘challenges’, we continue to follow the ‘Business-As-Usual’ (BAU) scenario painted for us by Meadows et al. in their 1972 Limits to Growth. Our ‘leaders’ talk a good talk but the reality (given the obvious lack of ‘progress’ in mitigating our issues and their increasingly probable negative consequences) is that we have painted ourselves into a corner from which we apparently cannot extricate ourselves (except through some very convoluted narrative creations).

There is overwhelming and increasing evidence that there is a significant reckoning in terms of energy decline (and various other resources) in our future, regardless of our wishes, ingenuity, and technology. The complexities of our globalised, just-in-time, and highly resource-dependent industrialised societies are losing their support systems in terms of the resources they require. We have encountered significant diminishing returns on our investments and can no longer ‘afford’ them. All the talk of ‘solutions’ is, at this point, seemingly reflective of the first four stages of grief outlined by Kubler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.

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

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXII

June 22, 2021

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXII

Knossos, Greece (1993) Photo by author

A personal view of the ‘Net-Zero’ policy being implemented by governments around the world, particularly those of the ‘West’.

As happens so often (always?), the ruling elite are manipulating what is possibly one of our more (most?) existential dilemmas so as to have their cake and eat it too. The chicanery that takes place within statistical calculations is widespread and occurs in virtually everything they touch but of course gives the impression of ‘objectivity’ and ‘transparency’ because figures can’t lie (although liars can figure, simply take a look at the statistical manipulations that take place in determining a nation’s consumer price index). The trickery goes far beyond numbers, however, for the use of statistics is just one of many narrative control mechanisms used to support the stories they want citizens to believe.

They have leveraged carbon emissions as THE most pressing environmental/ecological issue (even though it is only one of many predicaments resulting from humanity overshooting its natural carrying capacity on a finite planet) and have presented a variety of ‘solutions’ from carbon taxes to widespread ‘electrification’ of society to ‘net-zero’ policies. I would argue all of these ‘solutions’ derive from their primary motivation: the control/expansion of the wealth-generating systems that provide their revenue streams. From ever-increasing taxation to capital reallocation towards ‘green/clean’ technology to increasing curtailment of once-expected liberties and mass surveillance, the ruling elite are enhancing and consolidating their grip on wealth and power but marketing it as a necessary societal shift to ‘save’ humanity from itself.

There is certainly a grain of truth in all of the efforts to shift society away from fossil fuels…

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

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XX

June 9, 2021

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XX

Pompeii, Italy (1993) Photo by author

Today’s contemplation is once again generated by way of an article from the online media site The Tyee. It’s topic is the city of Vancouver’s (British Columbia, Canada) attempts to require ‘electrification’ of all new buildings as part of their Climate Emergency Action Plan and the pushback by the Canadian Institute of Plumbing and Heating.

My first comment below was to bring to the surface the Overton Window that most media articles tend to display when discussing climate change actions and associated issues, particularly that it is only via ‘electrification’ of our society that we can adequately sustain our complexities and wean ourselves from the energy provided by fossil fuels; and thus ‘save our planet’.

The comment that follows is in response to another who responded to my comment with the tendency of some to buy into false (magical?) ‘solutions’. We tend to do this for any number of reasons, most (all?) of which are bio-psychological in nature.

The Overton Window established around policies/actions to address our ecological/environmental dilemmas is on full display here.

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

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XIX

June 7, 2021

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XIX

Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author

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.

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

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh IV

September 24, 2020

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Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by author

My comment on an article in The Tyee about our federal government’s latest throne speech by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/09/24/Throne-Speech-Stew/).

_____

The idea that a sovereign nation can never run into trouble financially because it can create its own currency is certainly the dominant narrative amongst government and ‘mainstream’ economists/bankers. After all, who benefits the most from this storyline?

But is it in fact true?

Scratching below the surface of this ‘experiment’ suggests it is not.

If printing one’s own money were a panacea, then nations like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, or the German Weimar Republic (and countless other nations throughout history) would never have experienced the hyperinflation that they have. They would be the richest nations ever to have existed.

One could counter that this is because they had to use their debased currency to import goods. True, but if one is debauching one’s currency through exponential ‘printing’, then this may be true for any nation dependent upon imports, which almost every nation is in our globalised, industrial world.

The solution that nations have rested upon given this reality is that the central banks collude to all print at relatively the same rate, so currencies don’t fall/rise too drastically compared to their trading partners.

Fine, but what does endless money/credit creation due to the purchasing power of this fiat currency created from thin air?

Previous trials in this approach indicate that it totally debases/debauches the currency, significantly reducing the ‘wealth’ of the people holding/using it because of the inflation that it creates.
Here’s what John Maynard Keynes had to say about this: “By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”

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

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh II

August 15, 2020

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Monte Alban, Mexico (1988) Photo by author.

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

Cogs in the climate machine

July 15, 2020

Cogs in the climate machine

A short course in planetary time, for planetary survival

This is less of a blog post, and more of a howl.

The planetary climate clock, in human time

Let’s start by some human and planetary timescales. I don’t know why we don’t learn them in grade school (I never learned them at all). But they matter. And let’s represent them visually, in a stark, plain way.

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King Canute and Queen Aelfgifu, date circa 1020, from the register of Hyde Abbey, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

“_” : this is our unit of time, and it’s 1000 years long.

_ is 10 long human lifespans, 40 generations, the time separating us from the first millennium and the Middle Ages in European history, when Canute of Denmark ruled Britain, before Marco Polo traveled the Silk Road. It’s a long time by any human account: twice the duration of the Roman Empire.

_____ is 5’000 years. It’s the age of the oldest known living tree, Methuselah, in the Californian White Mountains.

____________ is 12’000 years. It’s the time span separating us from the last ice age. This time is the time during which humans slowly selected plants, developed agriculture, cities, writing: anything we would call civilization. It is the time when humans thrived, cultures multiplied, our population grew. This clement and stable climate interval, which sheltered us and the plants we depend upon to live so well, is known as the Holocene. Gaze upon that interval fondly, for it is already in our past.

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Figure 1.2 from the IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5 degrees, showing that we have already left the temperature range of the Holocene.

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

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