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Social Cohesion Is Vital, and We’re Losing It

January 12, 2022

An American flag in front of a damaged school area in Dayton, Ohio on May 28, 2019. (Photo: Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images)

Social Cohesion Is Vital, and We’re Losing It

As with climate change, inequality, and our other collective problems, solutions will entail confronting and reining in power—whether the power of wealth, of outsized political representation, or of social media companies.

The United States is tumbling toward socio-political crisis. Here are just a few of the distress signals recently visible:

The insurrection at the US Capitol building (January 6, 2021).
Rapidly increasing numbers of death threats against politicians—including threats from fellow politicians.
A majority of followers of one of the two main political parties telling pollsters that they would approve of violence as a means to political power (for the population as a whole, one in three now say that political violence can be justified, up from one in six in 2010).
A state governor planning to set up a militia, answerable only to himself.
Continual demonization by members of both major political parties of their opponents as “unamerican.”
US generals warning that disaffected military personnel may lead another insurrection in 2024.
Threats to “primary” elected leaders (i.e., to challenge them in primary elections with candidates more extreme and doctrinaire), leading to ever-further radicalization and polarization of the political positions of policy makers.
The proliferation of weapons (there are now 120.5 guns in the US for every 100 people).

We’ve all seen this basic movie plot before—in “failed states” in the modern world, and in declining civilizations throughout history—and it seldom ends well.

For a society to succeed, people must cooperate. They must trust government leaders, who in turn must work together, at least partly for the benefit of the society as a whole…

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

Richard Heinberg: Post-doom with Michael Dowd

December 30, 2021

Richard Heinberg: Post-doom with Michael Dowd

Introduction to Power by Richard Heinberg

December 23, 2021

Introduction to Power by Richard Heinberg

Richard Heinberg’s latest title, Power is an exploration of humanity’s power over nature and the power of some people over others. Power traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources — most significantly, fossil fuels. Today, we take an excerpt from Power that explains how Richard started on the journey of writing this book.

Excerpted from the introduction to Power

Many people are searching for a magic formula to save the world from the converging crises of the 21st century. Climate change, economic inequality, air and water pollution, resource depletion, and the catastrophic disappearance of wildlife threaten to upend society while destabilizing our planet to such a degree that it may be impossible for future generations of humans to persist. What if we could solve all these problems with one simple trick?

Don’t hold your breath. A single solution doesn’t exist: it’s not socialism or capitalism, it’s not renewable energy or nuclear power, it’s not religion or atheism, and it’s not hemp. However, I believe there is a single causative agent in back of most of our troubles, the understanding of which could indeed help us emerge from the hole we’re rapidly digging for ourselves.

That causative agent is power—our pursuit of it, our overuse of it, and our abuse of it. In this book, I argue that all the problems mentioned above, and others as well, are problems of power. We humans are nature’s supreme power addicts. Power—the ability to do something, the ability to get someone else to do something, or the ability to prevent someone else from doing something—is everywhere in the human world…

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

Here’s the Fracking Truth About America’s Last Fossil-Fueled Hurrah

December 9, 2021

Here’s the Fracking Truth About America’s Last Fossil-Fueled Hurrah

In order to recover the abundance of these fuels that the EIA claims will be there for the taking, between now and 2050 the industry will need to drill something on the order of 700,000 new wells at a total cost of over $5 trillion.

As global leaders struggle to tackle the climate crisis, and as ordinary people worldwide are increasingly whiplashed by high fuel costs, the US government is promising policymakers, industrialists, and investors that there will be decades of growing supplies of fracked oil and natural gas. However, an independent earth scientist with 32 years of experience with the Geological Service of Canada is using the industry’s and government’s own data to show why that’s a dangerous fallacy.

Hughes has just issued his latest, Shale Reality Check 2021, and it provides an invaluable, comprehensive, yet detailed view of the past, present, and future of tight oil and shale gas.

During the past decade, Post Carbon Institute has published a series of reports by earth scientist J. David Hughes on the status of US shale gas and tight oil resources and production (i.e. natural gas and oil that are extracted using hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking). These reports are remarkable for their technical depth and thoroughness, and are frequently referenced by climate activists, energy investors, and industry insiders. Hughes has provided a necessary counter to the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) typically over-optimistic projections, which often echo hyperbolic claims by the industry. Indeed, Hughes’s reports, which address forecasts contained in the widely-cited EIA Annual Energy Outlook, may justify calling him “the people’s shadow EIA.” Hughes has just issued his latest, Shale Reality Check 2021, and it provides an invaluable, comprehensive, yet detailed view of the past, present, and future of tight oil and shale gas.

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

How Much of the Worsening Energy Crisis is Due to Depletion?

November 24, 2021

How Much of the Worsening Energy Crisis is Due to Depletion?

The End of Growth: ten years after

November 22, 2021

The End of Growth: ten years after

Fifty years ago the authors of the groundbreaking book The Limits to Growth showed that, in any of a series of computer-generated scenarios, world economic growth would end sometime during the 21^st century. Using simple math and logic, they pointed out that growth in any material input or output cannot continue indefinitely within a finite system. Since the Earth is a finite system, the effort to perpetually grow human economies (which, by their very nature, extract resources and produce wastes) is doomed to eventual failure, leading to significant declines in resources, industrial output, food production, and population. Despite the fact that the book was a bestseller and its conclusions were well supported, world political and business leaders ignored it and persevered in their efforts to expand resource extraction, agriculture, and manufacturing.

Around the year 2010, it appeared to me that signs of growth’s slowing and approaching reversal were accumulating to the point that a new book on the subject might be timely and helpful. The End of Growth was published in 2011, and attracted healthy sales but few reviews.

Today, indications of impending economic stagnation and retrenchment are arguably stronger still. There will be many articles this semicentennial anniversary year discussing the 1972 Limits to Growth study; I thought it might also be informative to look back at my book, reflecting on whether its message is useful today.

In the book, I argued that modern economic growth is largely attributable to fossil fuels. Energy is essential to all activity, and the availability of vast amounts of energy from tens of millions of years’ worth of ancient sunlight, captured and transformed by natural processes into portable and storable fuels, has made it possible to speed up and expand nearly every human enterprise…

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

How Much of the Worsening Energy Crisis Is Due to Depletion?

November 3, 2021

How Much of the Worsening Energy Crisis Is Due to Depletion?

If society attempts to maintain current levels of energy services throughout the transition, the result will be a spike in both energy usage and carbon emissions.

Coal and natural gas spot prices have recently soared to record levels internationally, while oil is trading at over $80 a barrel—the highest price in seven years. Newspaper columnists are asking whether people in Europe and Asia who can’t afford high fuel and electricity prices might freeze this winter. High natural gas prices are causing fertilizer prices to spike, which will inevitably raise costs to farmers, with eventual catastrophic impact on people who already have trouble paying for food.

The real energy transition will almost certainly be a shift from using a lot to using a lot less.

Political commentators are naturally searching for culprits (or scapegoats). For those on the business-friendly political right, the usual target is green energy policies that discourage fossil fuel investment. For those on the left, the culprit is insufficient investment in renewable energy.

But there’s another explanation for the high prices: depletion. I’m not suggesting we’re about to completely run out of coal, oil, or gas; there’s no immediate danger of that. However, the energy industry has historically targeted the highest-quality and easiest-accessed of these resources, which means that what’s left, in most cases, are fuels that will be costlier to extract and process—and also more polluting. The proximate causes of current price spikes may be transient market conditions (the see-sawing pandemic, Britain’s decision to leave the European Internal Energy Market, Russia’s reluctance to provide more gas to European buyers until a new pipeline is given final approval, and China’s choice to reduce coal imports from Australia). But behind the energy headlines is persistent, accelerating depletion.

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

Evolution and Climate Change Through the Lens of Power

October 19, 2021

Evolution and Climate Change Through the Lens of Power

During the last century, evolutionary biologists developed the idea that power (defined as the rate of energy transfer) is key to the survival and success of species. This notion was formalized as the maximum power principle, which biologist John DeLong has explained as follows:

“biological systems organize to increase power whenever the system constraints allow. . . . With greater power, there is greater opportunity to allocate energy to reproduction and survival, and therefore an organism that captures and utilizes more energy than another organism in a population will have a fitness advantage.”[1]

The 20^th century seemed a propitious time for such an idea to arise, as one species—ours—was in the process of gaining unprecedented power by harnessing the energy of fossil fuels. Coal, oil, and natural gas constitute tens of millions of years’ worth of stored ancient sunlight—energy that’s vastly greater in quantity than any energy sources humans had harnessed previously.

Constraints on all sorts of human activities were suddenly lifted. Soon we were out-competing all other organisms and, in effect, taking over the world. During the last two centuries, human per capita energy usage grew eight-fold—while the number of “capitas” also doubled three times over. All this newly available energy found uses in agriculture, mining, manufacturing, transportation, and warfare. Today, just through mining, we displace far more of the planet’s crust each year than do all of nature’s processes (wind, rain, and earthquakes) combined. Human-made stuff now outweighs all of Earth’s biomass. It’s been the biggest power grab on this little planet of ours in tens or hundreds of millions of years…

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

Richard Heinberg’s POWER: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival

September 30, 2021

Richard Heinberg’s POWER: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival

If you know Richard Heinberg for his many previous writings on energy, you may initially assume that the title of his latest book refers to power strictly in its physics sense. But as you begin reading, it becomes apparent that he’s using a vastly broader definition of the term. For him, power is “the ability to do something, the ability to get someone else to do something, or the ability to prevent someone else from doing something.” A brilliant and searching probe into power in all its forms, this book shows how our species’ pursuit, overuse and abuse of power is plunging us ever deeper into existential crisis.

Heinberg begins his inquiry into the nature of power by tracing humanity’s present planetary dominance back to its origins. His opening chapter deals with power in nature, from the biochemical processes of individual cells to emotion, intelligence and the use of deception by animals and plants. He goes over the respective powers of physical size, muscles, neurons, warm blood, motion, perception, communication, cooperation and exclusion, among many other things. His summary of the science is engaging, accessible and filled with fascinating Heinbergian asides. (For example, he reveals that organisms have thousands of times as much power as the Sun on a gram-for-gram basis, and muses on what the evolution of eukaryotic cells–i.e., those that make up plants, animals, fungi and protists–on Earth might say about the likelihood of complex life elsewhere.)

Speaking of asides, the entire book is sprinkled with wonderfully informative sidebars. One of my favorites is titled “The Original Sins of Mainstream Economists.” It describes some of the chief blind spots of orthodox neoliberal economic theory that have led mainstream economists to absurd conclusions…

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

Richard Heinberg explores the flawed thinking behind proposed solutions to climate change

September 20, 2021

Richard Heinberg explores the flawed thinking behind proposed solutions to climate change

He explains why real climate progress will require large numbers of people in wealthy countries to forgo forms of power they currently enjoy. —

*****

“power — the ability to do something, the ability to get someone else to do something, or the ability to prevent someone else from doing something — is everywhere in the human world.” – Richard Heinberg (from “Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival”, page 1 of Chapter 1, Introduction).

*****

Richard Heinberg

“Climate change is often incorrectly described as an isolated pollution issue. In this flawed framing, humanity has simply made a mistake in its choice of [fossil fuels as] energy sources. The solution entails switching [to renewable energy] sources and building enough carbon-sucking machines to clear the atmosphere of polluting CO2. Only the political power of the fossil fuel companies prevents us from adopting this [renewable energy] solution and ending our existential environmental crisis. But techno-fixes (that is, technological solutions that circumvent the need for personal or cultural change) aren’t working so far, and likely won’t work in the future. That’s because fossil fuels will be difficult to replace, and energy usage is central to our collective economic power. In other words, power is the key to solving climate change—but not necessarily in the way that many pundits claim. Solutions will not come just from defeating fossil fuel interests and empowering green entrepreneurs; real climate progress will require the willingness of large swathes of the populace, especially in wealthy countries, to forgo forms of power they currently enjoy: comfort and convenience, the ability to travel far and fast, and the option to easily obtain a wide range of consumer products whose manufacture entails large inputs of energy and natural resources.” —Richard Heinberg, Common Dreams

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

Too Much Power

June 3, 2021

Too Much Power

If we modern humans are, in effect, addicted to power, perhaps we need something like a collective twelve-step program.

This article, the third in a series, is based on the author’s forthcoming book, POWER: LIMITS AND PROSPECTS FOR HUMAN SURVIVAL. You can read the first article in the series here, and the second here. For information about the book and how to join a pre-release reading and discussion group, please go to postcarbon.org/power.

Do some people have too much power over others? Do we humans have too much power over the natural world? These questions get to the heart of our biggest global problems. They also force us to think critically about the way society is organized, and about our own behavior. We often tend to give knee-jerk answers, but too much is at stake for that. We need to think critically and contextually.

First, what do we mean by power? While the word is used many ways, there are primarily just two kinds of power: physical power and social power. Physical power can be defined as the rate of energy transfer, or as the use of energy to do something; social power is the ability of one person or a group to influence the thoughts and behavior of others.

Nature provides examples of excessive physical power. The wildfires in Sonoma County, California, where I live, can burn with many gigawatts of power. A gigawatt of electrical power that’s controlled via power lines, transformers, and circuits can supply light, heat, and internet connections to a small-to-medium-sized city. A gigawatt of radiative power unleashed in a firestorm can torch that same community in just a few hours. We humans can likewise physically overpower our surroundings by using the concentrated energy of fossil fuels to over-harvest natural resources, or by dumping wastes in quantities that nature can’t harmlessly absorb.

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

The Most Colossal Planning Failure in Human History

May 17, 2021

The Most Colossal Planning Failure in Human History

A couple of days ago I happened to pick up an old book gathering dust on one of my office shelves—Palmer Putnam’s Energy in the Future, published in 1953. Here was a time capsule of energy concerns from nearly a lifetime ago—and it got me to thinking along the lines of Howard Baker’s famous question during the Watergate hearings: “What did [w]e know, and when did [w]e know it?” That is, what did we know back then about the climate and energy conundrum that threatens to undermine civilization today?

The fossil fuel age had begun over a century prior to 1953, and it was known by then that coal, oil, and natural gas represent millions of years’ worth of stored ancient sunlight. At the start, these fuels had appeared capable of supplying useful energy to society in seemingly endless quantities. Since everything we do depends on energy, having much more of it meant we could do far more farming, mining, fishing, manufacturing, and transporting than was previously possible. The result was an economic miracle. Between 1820 and today, human population has grown eight-fold, while per-capita energy usage has also grown eight-fold. We went from horse-drawn carts to jetliners in just a few generations.

But there were a couple of snags. One was that, though initially abundant, fossil fuels are nonrenewable and therefore subject to depletion. The second was that extracting and burning these fuels pollutes air and water, subtly but surely changing the chemistry of our planet’s atmosphere and oceans. Neither issue seemed compelling to the majority of people who first benefitted from coal, oil, and gas.

So, back to Putnam’s book. This thick tome wasn’t a best seller, but it was considered authoritative, and it found a place on the desks of serious policy makers…

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

Heinberg on what to do at home

May 10, 2021

Heinberg on what to do at home

Preface. A quick summary:

Best investment: insulate exterior walls, ceiling, and floors for energy savings. Other good changes were to plant a garden and fruit-and-nut orchard, and buy solar hot water heater, solar food dryer, solar cooker, chickens, energy-efficient appliances

Lessons learned: It is expensive, especially energy storage. Solar cookers work mainly in the summer.

In the future there will ll be more bikes and ebikes than cars. There needs to be much more local production of food and other goods to shorten supply chains.

Bottom line: there’s very little we can do as individuals, we can’t mine for the minerals we need, few of us can grow all of our food, despite all these investments Heinberg still heavily depends on the greater world for food, electricity, and clothes, cars and most other objects in our lives can’t be home-made. What is required to make a transition is much bigger than most people imagine.

***

Richard Heinberg. 2020. If My House Were the World: The Renewable Energy Transition Via Chickens and Solar Cookers. Resilience.org

For the past two decades, my wife Janet and I have been trying to transition our home to a post-fossil-fuel future. I say “trying,” because the experiment is incomplete and only somewhat successful. It doesn’t offer an exact model for how the rest of the world might make the shift to renewable energy; nevertheless, there’s quite a bit that we’ve learned that could be illuminating for others as they contemplate what it will take to minimize climate change by replacing coal, oil, and gas with cleaner energy sources.

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

On a finite planet, maintaining endless economic growth is not a viable option

March 8, 2021

On a finite planet, maintaining endless economic growth is not a viable option

Cooperative conservatism could help to get us off growth with minimum pain and maximum gain, says Richard Heinberg. —

Richard Heinberg

“Both the U.S. economy and the global economy have expanded dramatically in the past century, as have life expectancies and material progress. Economists raised in this period of plenty assume that growth is good, necessary even, and should continue forever and ever without end, amen. Growth delivers jobs, returns on investment and higher tax revenues. What’s not to like? We’ve gotten so accustomed to growth that governments, corporations and banks now depend on it. It’s no exaggeration to say that we’re collectively addicted to growth. The trouble is, a bigger economy uses more stuff than a smaller one, and we happen to live on a finite planet…. Engineering a happy conclusion to the growth binge of the past century might be challenging. But it’s not impossible. Granted, we’re talking about an unprecedented, coordinated economic shift that would require political will and courage. Perhaps we could think of it as cooperative conservatism (since its goal would be to conserve nature while maximizing mutual aid). It would require a lot of creative thinking on everyone’s part.” — Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute

Richard Heinberg is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

Below is my repost of Richard’s latest contribution delivered with concise clarity and with my added subheadings, text highlighting, selected bulletted formatting, and images. Alternatively, to read his original piece on the Post Carbon Institute’s website, click on the following linked title.

**********

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

A simple way to understand what’s happening … and what to do

October 21, 2020

A simple way to understand what’s happening … and what to do

The world seems to be coming apart at the seams. It’s critical to understand why, so that we can avoid the worst and find the best responses so as to move toward the environmentally and socially healthy future we want. It turns out that there’s a relatively simple frame for gaining such understanding.

This straightforward explanation proposes that the main force driving societal change is available energy—an assertion that’s backed by a substantial amount of scientific research. Those with the patience and curiosity to investigate further can find other contributing factors to societal evolution—technology, investment, laws regarding property rights, histories of injustice, and more, many of which entail complex systemic interactions that take time to tease apart and comprehend mentally. These are important. But not as important as energy.

Energy is necessary in order for any organism to do anything whatsoever. For humans, food is energy that powers labor. But, in addition, people long ago learned how to harness energy from fire, water, and wind. Using firewood, paddlewheels, and sails, we built agrarian societies with irrigation systems, cities, cathedrals, mills, and seagoing ships, and created some pretty great art, music, and literature along the way. People also used energy from various sources to engage in wars and conquests, and to enslave millions of others in order to steal the fruits of their forced labor. In addition, humans deforested enormous regions to harvest firewood, and ruined millions of acres of soil with unsustainable farming methods.

When humans started using fossil fuels, a couple of centuries ago, they gained access to millions of years’ worth of solar energy that nature had gathered, stored, and transformed into energy sources that were far superior, at least over the short term, to firewood. It was a game-changing moment.

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

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