This is an excellent summary of the poly crisis that will destroy modern civilization. The only question is timing. This not just a collection of problems that may have solutions but predicaments that have only disastrous outcomes.
I’m afraid the timing in moving very close with significant tipping points by 2030 in India, the Americas and Europe. The desperate authoritarian convulsions will trigger violent responses suddenly and without warning. The long, slowly accelerating decline suddenly tips into collapse.
I think that a food crisis is going to be the real kickoff to chaos. Moving to Hawaii made me cognizant of how sensitive plants are to temperature. Coconut grows and produces from sea level to 1000 ft. At 1500 ft it grows but will not produce coconut. It's about a 1.5° F temperature differential due to altitude. 1.5° is about where we are now.
Hawaii is in the middle of a big heatsink called the Pacific (unless Trump changes it) so the temperature change should be slower. However 95% of the food here is imported, including things like banana and pineapple. Local Coffee is unaffordable @$40./lb or more for locals. Somehow it's easier and more efficient to ship banana halfway around the world than it is 20 miles to market locally. Currently the government is trying to do the "right thing" by having school lunches composed of 50% local food. So far after 2 years of trying they still haven't succeeded. "Should we tell farmers what to grow for the menu or should the farmers tell us what they have available?" seems to be the biggest problem. ???? How to cope with fools like this is beyond me? (And a humorous side note- the temporary housing for the Maui fire victims has an average cost of $411,000 ea. And they are truly temporary since the design life is 5 years. Disposable like a bic lighter which was probably used to start the fire. With an entire front consisting entirely of glass, they are built like luxury monkey cages at the zoo. Most victims are still breathlessly waiting for their luxury cage.)¹
The reliance on chemical pesticides, fertilizer and fossil fuels is an absolute necessity due to invasive plants, insects disease. The reliance on them only fuels more reliance and it's long past the state of no return.
So while Hawaii before the arrival of the haole produced physical specimens like Dwayne Johnson, fed exactly the same number of people as currently live on the big Island with stone age technology, but our current situation is far superior with citizens who are obese, diabetic, needing hip replacements and dental implants without sufficient medical staff or facilities eating superior chemicals.
Just keep telling yourself how good we have it. Eventually you'll believe it.
But start your garden anyway, just in case.
¹ Cost of 450 temporary homes for Maui wildfire victims $411,000 each.
You missed out the most important word- veganism. If we took back control from the centralised cartels and freed up 80% of land to give back to co2 sequestration we could start cooling and decolonising tomorrow. https://www.planetcritical.com/p/how-to-cool-the-planet-sailesh-rao
Great over view and details! Should be in every classroom in the US, but not unless it is offered with an equally rosy alternative future, to please the christonats.
I've known all this in substance since the 70s, talked ad nauseam about it to now several generations, each with the conviction that it can't happen, and now here it is. As a farmer on a small scale, but also involved with industrial scale farms, Ag lives and breathes diesel fuel. And as an aside, biodiesel is a net energy loss, more fuel to produce and less BTUs in the final product, so higher consumption. When discussing Ag in the US, there are two worlds. Commodities; corn and soybeans, as well as grains. All low labor, high fuel, fertilizer and pesticide use and of geopolitical significance, and a factor in the weak support of Ukraine, a major competitor. This is very vulnerable to oil shocks, and the seasonable variability of climate change; different rainfall and temperature windows, and now the disruption of the federal support lifeline. Direct subsidies in the case of ethanol, but primarily the many services, weather and climate forecasting, research, input advice and approvals...both USDA and FDA, as well as Extension through the land grant university system, all currently in the cross hairs. Something to note...Bill Gates is the largest owner of farmland in the US. Commodity farms are highly leveraged so as they begin to fail over the next couple of years so more consolidation under passive holdings, which could be expected to reduce productivity.
Everything else is considered a specialty crop in the US; lettuce, sweet corn, green beans, carrots...everything lumped together even though vastly different in methods and quantity. Still the diesel, much more labor, specific, therefore more expensive inputs. There has been much effort at mechanization of cultivation and harvesting with mixed success, almost all of this favors larger. vertically integrated operations. This is primarily CA, AZ, FL, and some smaller areas in MN, WA, WI, MI, NC, SC, NY, NJ and ME, ND, ID for potatoes and summer production of brassicas. I make this long list to show the vulnerability of the system. While it seems spread over the country, those areas all have increasing climate vulnerabilities. Some crops have a very narrow temperature range, but almost all crops have some climate weakness, which have historically been manipulated with varietals. But the real issue is the lack of seasonal climate predictability. I can plant for a hot dry summer, but will have very poor yield if I have a cool wet summer or vice versa. And farmers complain constantly about weird weather, but broadly refuse to acknowledge it's anything more.
So the impact will be soon, a significant fuel price increase will be a trigger, but already happening is labor...planting and harvesting/processing are highly skilled trades, under difficult conditions.
The unstated but obvious plan to force homeless and prison populations into the fields is totally delusional. The skilled Hispanics will self deport, regardless of legal status.
Back during the Arab spring, with the news full of rioting and violence, a friend from the region pointed out to me the difference between there and the US was that we had bread on the shelves and they did not...
This is a thorough and likely analysis. Are you predicting Ragu will be the last sauce on the shelves as well? If so, I'm outta here early. Joking aside, try to live every good day well, because at some point this slow slide will become a sudden crash. Here's a bit more on competition in the Arctic as it thaws (and releases more GHGs than we've managed to spew since the industrial revolution). The military has seen this coming for 50 years.
Great article, thank you. However, having been a peak oil believer/follower for many years from the early 2000s, including reading the likes of Greer, Campbell, and Art Berman etc, it seems that Art now thinks that the world will have plenty of oil for the next 70 years - more than enough to comprehensively fry the planet.
Shale (unconventional) has filled the gap over the past decade. The trouble is shale has steep decline rates. He seems to assume (and maybe he's correct) that we'll continually find new shale deposits to make up for these losses.
Yes, I understand the last of the US big shale basins, the Permian, is peaking faster than thought and the Bakken and Eagle Ford have already peaked, according to resource investors Goehring & Rosencwajg https://blog.gorozen.com/blog/the-permian-basin.
Art has been interviewed by Nate Hagens several times saying oil will peak soon and decline, but sometime last year he had a big public row with Doomberg who maintained there's masses of oil left, and after that Art went very quiet, and then produced this article above.
I guess they're just continuing to find new ways of accessing the last drops of ancient sunlight but also, Russia has been preparing for years for the opening up of arctic drilling, and with the rate of climate change that's probably not far off.
Very depressing as so many have hoped for years that PO would put an end to the destruction, but it seems it's not to be and the world will fry and starve instead.
At what point does flat-to-slowly-declining production fail to be 'enough'? Does 90 million barrels daily still count as 'plenty' when baseline demand is, say, 100 million? How does society change when there's a chronic energy deficit?
There are so many things we could have cut down on 50 years ago (think travel, night time office building lights, heating/cooling in shops with doors wide open, disposable everything and the plethora of consumer items nobody remotely needs), so going back to the 90s or 80s level of consumerism should be quite easy were it not for the growth fixation - and of course, now there's AI....
So doing with less is theoretically doable, except no one who could implement it gives a toss. As you say so well today, the elite, who could initiate de-growth, are focused on taking as much loot as they can on the way down, leaving nothing for the rest.
Ah after reading that now I am completely confused. Not sure who is right anymore. Any additional readings or ideas related to this by anyone is appreciated
My understanding of what Art Berman expects is that instead of a symmetrical decline in production (ie peaking and then falling off a cliff) we'll experience a plateau and gradual decline beginning in about 5yrs. My interpretation of this is that living standards across the globe will erode as production no longer grows with population and per capita energy availability declines. As this happens, those with power will hoard energy - likely supporting military first.
It’s a great article, in the sense that it highlights what appears to be a narrative on a global scale to lead us to an ultimate outcome you describe. It tends to give a very bleak view of the future with energy, weather and population portraying fear. There’s many questions to the narrative that are coming out and even exposed as potentially incorrect. We’ve had many reasons recently giving rise to questioning narratives from the leavers of power.
So although I enjoyed the article, it just highlights the need to continue to observe and question cause and effect.
Like the trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry designed around treating symptoms and never curing disease, as disease is needed to sustain the industry.
Well if this is true and it is an if, you have to account for the massive population collapse that is already baked in to the cake..
You have also got to add in human ingenuity.
Personally I think it fits in too perfectly for what the Global Elite want and what they have been preparing for , for decades.
If it was true, why haven’t they prepared their populations, instead they’ve been gradually poisoning them, dumbing them down and dividing them so they can’t form a meaningful opposition.
This is an excellent summary of the poly crisis that will destroy modern civilization. The only question is timing. This not just a collection of problems that may have solutions but predicaments that have only disastrous outcomes.
I’m afraid the timing in moving very close with significant tipping points by 2030 in India, the Americas and Europe. The desperate authoritarian convulsions will trigger violent responses suddenly and without warning. The long, slowly accelerating decline suddenly tips into collapse.
Yes to all.
I think that a food crisis is going to be the real kickoff to chaos. Moving to Hawaii made me cognizant of how sensitive plants are to temperature. Coconut grows and produces from sea level to 1000 ft. At 1500 ft it grows but will not produce coconut. It's about a 1.5° F temperature differential due to altitude. 1.5° is about where we are now.
Hawaii is in the middle of a big heatsink called the Pacific (unless Trump changes it) so the temperature change should be slower. However 95% of the food here is imported, including things like banana and pineapple. Local Coffee is unaffordable @$40./lb or more for locals. Somehow it's easier and more efficient to ship banana halfway around the world than it is 20 miles to market locally. Currently the government is trying to do the "right thing" by having school lunches composed of 50% local food. So far after 2 years of trying they still haven't succeeded. "Should we tell farmers what to grow for the menu or should the farmers tell us what they have available?" seems to be the biggest problem. ???? How to cope with fools like this is beyond me? (And a humorous side note- the temporary housing for the Maui fire victims has an average cost of $411,000 ea. And they are truly temporary since the design life is 5 years. Disposable like a bic lighter which was probably used to start the fire. With an entire front consisting entirely of glass, they are built like luxury monkey cages at the zoo. Most victims are still breathlessly waiting for their luxury cage.)¹
The reliance on chemical pesticides, fertilizer and fossil fuels is an absolute necessity due to invasive plants, insects disease. The reliance on them only fuels more reliance and it's long past the state of no return.
So while Hawaii before the arrival of the haole produced physical specimens like Dwayne Johnson, fed exactly the same number of people as currently live on the big Island with stone age technology, but our current situation is far superior with citizens who are obese, diabetic, needing hip replacements and dental implants without sufficient medical staff or facilities eating superior chemicals.
Just keep telling yourself how good we have it. Eventually you'll believe it.
But start your garden anyway, just in case.
¹ Cost of 450 temporary homes for Maui wildfire victims $411,000 each.
Honolulu Civil Beat
You missed out the most important word- veganism. If we took back control from the centralised cartels and freed up 80% of land to give back to co2 sequestration we could start cooling and decolonising tomorrow. https://www.planetcritical.com/p/how-to-cool-the-planet-sailesh-rao
Great over view and details! Should be in every classroom in the US, but not unless it is offered with an equally rosy alternative future, to please the christonats.
I've known all this in substance since the 70s, talked ad nauseam about it to now several generations, each with the conviction that it can't happen, and now here it is. As a farmer on a small scale, but also involved with industrial scale farms, Ag lives and breathes diesel fuel. And as an aside, biodiesel is a net energy loss, more fuel to produce and less BTUs in the final product, so higher consumption. When discussing Ag in the US, there are two worlds. Commodities; corn and soybeans, as well as grains. All low labor, high fuel, fertilizer and pesticide use and of geopolitical significance, and a factor in the weak support of Ukraine, a major competitor. This is very vulnerable to oil shocks, and the seasonable variability of climate change; different rainfall and temperature windows, and now the disruption of the federal support lifeline. Direct subsidies in the case of ethanol, but primarily the many services, weather and climate forecasting, research, input advice and approvals...both USDA and FDA, as well as Extension through the land grant university system, all currently in the cross hairs. Something to note...Bill Gates is the largest owner of farmland in the US. Commodity farms are highly leveraged so as they begin to fail over the next couple of years so more consolidation under passive holdings, which could be expected to reduce productivity.
Everything else is considered a specialty crop in the US; lettuce, sweet corn, green beans, carrots...everything lumped together even though vastly different in methods and quantity. Still the diesel, much more labor, specific, therefore more expensive inputs. There has been much effort at mechanization of cultivation and harvesting with mixed success, almost all of this favors larger. vertically integrated operations. This is primarily CA, AZ, FL, and some smaller areas in MN, WA, WI, MI, NC, SC, NY, NJ and ME, ND, ID for potatoes and summer production of brassicas. I make this long list to show the vulnerability of the system. While it seems spread over the country, those areas all have increasing climate vulnerabilities. Some crops have a very narrow temperature range, but almost all crops have some climate weakness, which have historically been manipulated with varietals. But the real issue is the lack of seasonal climate predictability. I can plant for a hot dry summer, but will have very poor yield if I have a cool wet summer or vice versa. And farmers complain constantly about weird weather, but broadly refuse to acknowledge it's anything more.
So the impact will be soon, a significant fuel price increase will be a trigger, but already happening is labor...planting and harvesting/processing are highly skilled trades, under difficult conditions.
The unstated but obvious plan to force homeless and prison populations into the fields is totally delusional. The skilled Hispanics will self deport, regardless of legal status.
Back during the Arab spring, with the news full of rioting and violence, a friend from the region pointed out to me the difference between there and the US was that we had bread on the shelves and they did not...
Really, whether a society remains intact is as simple as having bread on the shelves or not.
This is a thorough and likely analysis. Are you predicting Ragu will be the last sauce on the shelves as well? If so, I'm outta here early. Joking aside, try to live every good day well, because at some point this slow slide will become a sudden crash. Here's a bit more on competition in the Arctic as it thaws (and releases more GHGs than we've managed to spew since the industrial revolution). The military has seen this coming for 50 years.
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/massive-alaska-willow-drilling-project
lol
Great article, thank you. However, having been a peak oil believer/follower for many years from the early 2000s, including reading the likes of Greer, Campbell, and Art Berman etc, it seems that Art now thinks that the world will have plenty of oil for the next 70 years - more than enough to comprehensively fry the planet.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/peak-oil-requiem-for-a-failed-paradigm/
I would be interested in any comments that can refute this argument.
Shale (unconventional) has filled the gap over the past decade. The trouble is shale has steep decline rates. He seems to assume (and maybe he's correct) that we'll continually find new shale deposits to make up for these losses.
Yes, I understand the last of the US big shale basins, the Permian, is peaking faster than thought and the Bakken and Eagle Ford have already peaked, according to resource investors Goehring & Rosencwajg https://blog.gorozen.com/blog/the-permian-basin.
Art has been interviewed by Nate Hagens several times saying oil will peak soon and decline, but sometime last year he had a big public row with Doomberg who maintained there's masses of oil left, and after that Art went very quiet, and then produced this article above.
I guess they're just continuing to find new ways of accessing the last drops of ancient sunlight but also, Russia has been preparing for years for the opening up of arctic drilling, and with the rate of climate change that's probably not far off.
Very depressing as so many have hoped for years that PO would put an end to the destruction, but it seems it's not to be and the world will fry and starve instead.
At what point does flat-to-slowly-declining production fail to be 'enough'? Does 90 million barrels daily still count as 'plenty' when baseline demand is, say, 100 million? How does society change when there's a chronic energy deficit?
There are so many things we could have cut down on 50 years ago (think travel, night time office building lights, heating/cooling in shops with doors wide open, disposable everything and the plethora of consumer items nobody remotely needs), so going back to the 90s or 80s level of consumerism should be quite easy were it not for the growth fixation - and of course, now there's AI....
So doing with less is theoretically doable, except no one who could implement it gives a toss. As you say so well today, the elite, who could initiate de-growth, are focused on taking as much loot as they can on the way down, leaving nothing for the rest.
I'm afraid our species is toast.
Here's an interesting little history of PO theorists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicting_the_timing_of_peak_oil#References
And an AI search brought up Adma Taggart's interview of Doomberg in 2024 on Substack : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8hZryPAc20#:~:text=There%20are%20risks%20associated%20with%20investing%20in%20securities.%20Investing&text=Expect%20Lower%20Oil%20Prices%20In%20The%20New%20Era%20Of%20Abundant%20Supply%20%7C%20Doomberg.
Ah after reading that now I am completely confused. Not sure who is right anymore. Any additional readings or ideas related to this by anyone is appreciated
My understanding of what Art Berman expects is that instead of a symmetrical decline in production (ie peaking and then falling off a cliff) we'll experience a plateau and gradual decline beginning in about 5yrs. My interpretation of this is that living standards across the globe will erode as production no longer grows with population and per capita energy availability declines. As this happens, those with power will hoard energy - likely supporting military first.
I know this is likely to happen but this just plunged me into depression.
Sorry. Venting helps,i find. One of the reason this blog exists.
It’s a great article, in the sense that it highlights what appears to be a narrative on a global scale to lead us to an ultimate outcome you describe. It tends to give a very bleak view of the future with energy, weather and population portraying fear. There’s many questions to the narrative that are coming out and even exposed as potentially incorrect. We’ve had many reasons recently giving rise to questioning narratives from the leavers of power.
So although I enjoyed the article, it just highlights the need to continue to observe and question cause and effect.
Like the trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry designed around treating symptoms and never curing disease, as disease is needed to sustain the industry.
Well if this is true and it is an if, you have to account for the massive population collapse that is already baked in to the cake..
You have also got to add in human ingenuity.
Personally I think it fits in too perfectly for what the Global Elite want and what they have been preparing for , for decades.
If it was true, why haven’t they prepared their populations, instead they’ve been gradually poisoning them, dumbing them down and dividing them so they can’t form a meaningful opposition.
Peak oil was a mistake. Climate change is happening faster than thought.