It must be stressed that civilizations collapsed, also, from elite accumulation and not just population pressure on food resources. Under capitalism, which is an inherently expanding system, that accumulation is greatly exacerbated.
Greed and Stupidity march to the same band, although I sometimes wonder whether this was deliberate. Rather than allow decades of futile struggle, maybe the plan was to hit Cousteau's wall at full speed?
Simple, to the point, and right on the money! Love your work, Sarah! I keep coming back to my original thesis - the Earth doesn't care. People like us do but the Earth just keeps spinning around and doing its loop around the sun and whatever happens, happens. Mountains, rivers, lands, oceans come and go. People? We're here for just a brief moment of eternal time. And I like being here and do what I can to maintain myself and family and friends while we live and dwell here. But when humans are gone, well, we're gone. C'est la vie, or maybe I should say C'est la morte.
Excellent, succinct summary of our predicament, Sarah. The masses have no clue, exposed to only a stream of disinformation. Most have no clue of Malthus or any ahead of their time predicting collapse. Worse from the sheer point of evil is Exxon which damn well saw today's crisis and buried it with a little help from their well-compensated friends.
Collapse could begin to really accelerate if the Strait of Hormuz doesn't open within 3-4 weeks according to Bloomberg. That's when the flow of oil falls to the point where refineries have to start shutting down. Many will sustain major, if not catastrophic damage and take years to repair.
Thanks for that. I've had this argument so many times with people who are convinced that "technology will find a solution". Earth cannot support 8 billion humans.
Also one pre-eminent law of nature: the oceans saved witless humanity from its waste products over-heating the planet emanating from its fossil fuel binge - but no longer. Blind luck will always propel a winner - until it doesn't.
well said. Time is running out and the idea of living in increasingly dense cities to extend efficiencies is crazy. Malthus was right. Every system has a limit. We will eventually reach that equilibrium. How that happens is still, but not for long, up to us.
Such a smart piece about our fundamentals. "We did not use our supreme computational efficiency to shrink our footprint or secure our civilizational longevity. We used it to accelerate our sprint toward the biophysical wall." Our ultimate challenge now comes from being so much more advanced in our capacity to move matter around than we are in being wise about how we do that.
There may be pockets of humans left. Possibly millions of people grouped into various disconnected tribes of various sizes. Not all systems will be the same. Some will be cooperative. Some will be brutal.
Just to clarify- you say tribes, does that mean you only see hunter gatherers left? Or is that just your way of saying “organised groups of humans”? In the case of the former, what happens to agriculture?
And when you say millions, do you extend that to tens/hundreds of millions, or do you see us getting knocked down to legitimately single digit millions?
Malthus, like Ehrlich after him, was working with very primitive models. It inspires discussion but should not be taken as predictive models. Two key points :-
1) Population size and food production are just two variables in an extremely complicated and interdependent system. The Limits to Growth models in the mid 70s were an attempt to quantify this. Our models now are more sophisticated again.
2) Population growth has other limitations than just food production. These limitations slow and reduce the growth well before the food runs out. We've seen this in the demographic transition of around 1970 when growth switched from exponential of ~2%/year to linear of ~80m/year We've now had over 50 years of linear growth. There's now small indications of a second transition to falling absolute growth leading to a peak.
A friend came up with an analogy for the anthropocene / fossil fuel event as a "Whale Fall". When a whale carcass reaches the deep sea floor, a huge ecosystem of scavengers appears and develops. When the stored energy in the carcass is fully consumed, the ecosystem dies out and goes back to sleep. Whales continue to fall so for the creatures it's just a case of waiting. There's some indication that fossil fuels are a one off event. The "just right" conditions of millions of years of high plant growth, quickly buried without fungal decay" and then transformed for more millions of years, may only happen once in the evolutionary history of this planet.
It must be stressed that civilizations collapsed, also, from elite accumulation and not just population pressure on food resources. Under capitalism, which is an inherently expanding system, that accumulation is greatly exacerbated.
Greed and Stupidity march to the same band, although I sometimes wonder whether this was deliberate. Rather than allow decades of futile struggle, maybe the plan was to hit Cousteau's wall at full speed?
What a summary! You touched on all the important bits in a succinct manner. Felt like I was listening to a greatest hits album.
Simple, to the point, and right on the money! Love your work, Sarah! I keep coming back to my original thesis - the Earth doesn't care. People like us do but the Earth just keeps spinning around and doing its loop around the sun and whatever happens, happens. Mountains, rivers, lands, oceans come and go. People? We're here for just a brief moment of eternal time. And I like being here and do what I can to maintain myself and family and friends while we live and dwell here. But when humans are gone, well, we're gone. C'est la vie, or maybe I should say C'est la morte.
Excellent, succinct summary of our predicament, Sarah. The masses have no clue, exposed to only a stream of disinformation. Most have no clue of Malthus or any ahead of their time predicting collapse. Worse from the sheer point of evil is Exxon which damn well saw today's crisis and buried it with a little help from their well-compensated friends.
Exactly right. It's especially heartbreaking in its stupidity factoring in what we're doing with the natural resources.
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m
Absolut empfehlenswert
Collapse could begin to really accelerate if the Strait of Hormuz doesn't open within 3-4 weeks according to Bloomberg. That's when the flow of oil falls to the point where refineries have to start shutting down. Many will sustain major, if not catastrophic damage and take years to repair.
Keep an eye on the news.
Thanks for that. I've had this argument so many times with people who are convinced that "technology will find a solution". Earth cannot support 8 billion humans.
Also one pre-eminent law of nature: the oceans saved witless humanity from its waste products over-heating the planet emanating from its fossil fuel binge - but no longer. Blind luck will always propel a winner - until it doesn't.
Yes, 'our Tommy' was right.
As was Jacques Cousteau:
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/66100
See Blip:
https://youtu.be/cdXdaIsfio8
"Blip" is also the characteristic envelope for all things in a dissipative universe.
No bargains, no exceptions.
Entropy always wins.
well said. Time is running out and the idea of living in increasingly dense cities to extend efficiencies is crazy. Malthus was right. Every system has a limit. We will eventually reach that equilibrium. How that happens is still, but not for long, up to us.
Thanx, interesting analyse. A verry good summary of where we are and what we could expect and do
Such a smart piece about our fundamentals. "We did not use our supreme computational efficiency to shrink our footprint or secure our civilizational longevity. We used it to accelerate our sprint toward the biophysical wall." Our ultimate challenge now comes from being so much more advanced in our capacity to move matter around than we are in being wise about how we do that.
Thank you, Sarah.
Love your stuff.
Sarah, what do you think about what comes after the collapse and many centuries? Regional empires again? Hunter gathering?
There may be pockets of humans left. Possibly millions of people grouped into various disconnected tribes of various sizes. Not all systems will be the same. Some will be cooperative. Some will be brutal.
Thank you!
Just to clarify- you say tribes, does that mean you only see hunter gatherers left? Or is that just your way of saying “organised groups of humans”? In the case of the former, what happens to agriculture?
And when you say millions, do you extend that to tens/hundreds of millions, or do you see us getting knocked down to legitimately single digit millions?
Malthus, like Ehrlich after him, was working with very primitive models. It inspires discussion but should not be taken as predictive models. Two key points :-
1) Population size and food production are just two variables in an extremely complicated and interdependent system. The Limits to Growth models in the mid 70s were an attempt to quantify this. Our models now are more sophisticated again.
2) Population growth has other limitations than just food production. These limitations slow and reduce the growth well before the food runs out. We've seen this in the demographic transition of around 1970 when growth switched from exponential of ~2%/year to linear of ~80m/year We've now had over 50 years of linear growth. There's now small indications of a second transition to falling absolute growth leading to a peak.
A friend came up with an analogy for the anthropocene / fossil fuel event as a "Whale Fall". When a whale carcass reaches the deep sea floor, a huge ecosystem of scavengers appears and develops. When the stored energy in the carcass is fully consumed, the ecosystem dies out and goes back to sleep. Whales continue to fall so for the creatures it's just a case of waiting. There's some indication that fossil fuels are a one off event. The "just right" conditions of millions of years of high plant growth, quickly buried without fungal decay" and then transformed for more millions of years, may only happen once in the evolutionary history of this planet.