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The Bulletin: December 12-18, 2024
The Bulletin: December 12-18, 2024 The Baby Bust: How The Toxicity Crisis Could Cause the Next Economic Crash Global Warming and the Great Unravelling All Stories Are Propaganda | how to save the world The Big Shining Lie: We’re Better Off Now–No, We’re Poorer, Much Poorer Are We Running Out Of Copper? This Image Says […]
A Most Dangerous Assumption: Mining the Future to Spend More Today
A Most Dangerous Assumption: Mining the Future to Spend More Today What the cheerleaders are actually claiming is the process of adding zeroes to “money” is limitless, but there are limits on the utility of devaluing currency, too. How prosperous would the world be if we hadn’t collectively borrowed and spent $315 trillion—-333% of global […]
The Holy Trinity
The Holy Trinity Getting a grip on energy, materials and civilisation I like trying to get to the internal organs of the matter. Not just the heart, but also the brain, the kidneys, the stomach, the lungs, the skeleton. My conversation with Tim Garrett last week did just that, centring the matter of the universe alongside energy […]
The Copper Supply Shortage Is Here
The Copper Supply Shortage Is Here With the AI boom and green energy push fueling fresh copper demand, and with copper mines aging and not enough projects to match demand with supply, the forecasted copper shortage has finally arrived in earnest. Coupled with persistently high inflation in the US, EU, and elsewhere, I predict the industrial metal will surpass […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh LX–Infinite growth. Finite planet. What could possibly go wrong? Part Two
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh LX July 19, 2022 (original posting date) Athens, Greece (1984). Photo by author. Infinite growth. Finite planet. What could possibly go wrong? Part Two This is Part Two of a contemplation regarding what humanity’s future path ‘may’ look like. Part One can be found here. Based on the evidence found in our pre/history […]
The Green Transition is Physically Impossible
The Green Transition is Physically Impossible
GeoDestinies 2022
GeoDestinies 2022 Walter Youngquist (1921-2018) was a petroleum geologist, a University of Oregon professor, and my friend. His life’s masterpiece is a 600 page book that’s now available to everyone as a free PDF download [HERE]. Geologists study Earth resources, many of which are being degraded and depleted — aquifers, topsoil, hydrocarbons, minerals, etc. These […]
Resource limits and our strange game of musical chairs
Resource limits and our strange game of musical chairs With a wide range of commodities in limited supply, various regions of the world are now behaving as if they are engaged in simultaneous games of musical chairs when it comes to commodity shortages. The games differ by commodity and by region, but they all share […]
Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct
Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct Habitat degradation, low genetic variation and declining fertility are setting Homo sapiens up for collapse Credit: Jordan Lye/Getty Images Cast your mind back, if you will, to 1965, when Tom Lehrer recorded his live album That Was the Year That Was. Lehrer prefaced a song called “So Long Mom (A Song for […]
Revenge of the Real World
Revenge of the Real World The status quo response would be amusing if the consequences weren’t so dire. Rather than stare at empty shelves, you have two options for distraction: you can don a virtual-reality headset and cavort with dolphins in the metaverse, or you can trade various forms of phantom wealth that always go up (happy happy!) because […]
The century of the limits
The century of the limits IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING. JUST DO IT. SMASH YOUR LIMITS We know much better some slogans that sell us that everything is possible, than the laws of thermodynamics, which govern our own nature and the limits that bound it. And so it goes. This is our frame of thought and from it […]
The priest, the engineer and the economist
The priest, the engineer and the economist I was exchanging economist jokes over the holiday and heard this one that seemed apropos both to our resource predicament and the seeming abundance of the holiday season: A priest, an engineer and an economist were stranded together on a desert island. Given their location, fish seemed to […]
Capitalism Will Ruin the Earth By 2050, Scientists Say
Capitalism Will Ruin the Earth By 2050, Scientists Say The good news is, by cutting our consumption, there’s another way. 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 […]
