Crash and Burn
This is both optimistic and troubling.
Fairfax media reports that “China has put the world’s oil cartel into a death spiral“.
On the one hand we need oil to die. Like, yesterday. Anyone who’s paying any attention to the state of the world’s climate must understand this by now. We’re not just talking about sea level rise and the possible loss of some beachfront property. Climate change isn’t just about bushfires and floods and cyclones, although all of these things are important and traumatic for the people who live through them, the insurance companies that end up paying for them, and everyone else when the insurance companies stop covering them. More important than all of this is the loss of biodiversity, the loss of a predictable climate, the loss of regular seasons and thus the loss of a large proportion of our global food supply. Not to mention the collapse of the logistics channels that takes that rice, should we happen to be successful in growing it, from its paddies in Indonesia to the kitchen table in Melbourne. Climate change isn’t just going to make life uncomfortable for us all. Unchecked, it will lead to the deaths of a large percentage of the current eight billion humans on the planet.
The burning of fossil fuels is the primary contributor to the imbalance in the planet’s energy equation. It just is. If you’re going to comment that the climate has always changed or that humans are inconsequential or something something sunspots, please go elsewhere. This blog respects the science.
It follows that a big part of stopping climate change – if that’s still even possible – is the immediate and complete cessation of the burning of fossil fuels. So you would think that any news of a “death spiral” in oil extraction would be a good thing. But it’s not. Because oil is vital for a lot more than just turning into petrol (gas).
Obviously the biggest use of oil is turning it into petrol and other refined fuels. “We’re still reliant on fossil fuels for about 80 per cent of all of our total primary energy.” The world is working on reducing this. Too slowly, of course, but we’re building solar farms and hydroelectric generators and fleets of electric cars. And now, apparently, a burgeoning electric car industry in China is going to put OPEC and oil producers into a “death spiral”.
To understand this we need to understand the concept of EROEI.
Energy Returned on Energy Invested
"It takes energy to get energy, and the ratio of energy returned versus energy spent (energy return on investment, or EROI) has historically been extremely high for fossil fuels, as compared to previous energy sources." (resilience.org)
Or, to put it another way, it’s becoming harder, and thus more expensive, to pump a barrel of oil. For countries and companies whose existence relies on selling that oil for more than they spend to extract it, and in fact who require that excess to be continually growing, this means oil prices need to be kept high. Any forces that might reduce the demand for oil, and thus lower its price, run counter to that requirement. This is why we see OPEC (and, separately, both Russia and Saudi Arabia) deliberately reducing their oil output to force the price to remain higher.
"US industry executives are now openly acknowledging that US oil production is likely to peak within the next five or six years, or perhaps in 2030. But there is mounting evidence that the peak will come much earlier, with some industry observers pinpointing its arrival as early as within the next one or two years." (resilience.org
)
OPEC and the oil-producing nations need oil to be expensive if they’re going to continue to make profit on extracting and refining it. Expensive oil means people look for alternatives. For a time, those alternatives included fracking in the US, but that bolster to oil supply is drying up.
“
Many observers of the past 15 years of fracking frenzy have pointed out that the industry’s ability to increase levels of oil production has depended on low interest rates, which enabled companies to produce oil now and pay the bills later. Now central banks are raising interest rates in an effort to fight inflation, which is largely the result of higher oil and gas prices. But hiking interest rates will only discourage oil companies from drilling. This could potentially trigger a self-reinforcing feedback loop of crashing production, soaring energy prices, higher interest rates, and debt defaults, which would likely cease only with a major economic crash.
” (resilience.org)
As the demand for oil goes down the price to generate a barrel of oil goes up, due to peak oil and the exhaustion of good/easy sources. Decreasing demand and increasing price can only lead to the collapse of the market. As oil prices rise, the profitability of renewable alternatives continues to improve. This will only hasten the transition to solar power and renewables across all of society. As the cost of petrol inexorably increases, consumers will prefer to buy the ever-cheaper and ever improving electric cars. This will further reduce the demand for oil and require oil producers to lift the per-barrel cost even higher to preserve their profits.
"In the late 2020s, then, we will likely see oil demand begin to peak. This will be exacerbated by the fact that the global oil industry is going to become economically unsustainable by around 2030, when it will begin consuming a quarter of its own energy just to keep pumping out more oil."
(resilience.org)
Sooner or later this system has to break.
What about everything else?
Because of a combination of greed and circumstances, we’ve brought ourselves to a situation where oil is no longer profitable to extract. But we still need it for things other than burning for electricity and for powering our vehicles.
"Major sectors like agriculture could see a steep decline, due to the scarcity of oil-based fertilizers and fuel. The ripple effect could continue to shipping, transportation, and even the food and manufacturing industries. In a worst-case scenario, large areas of the world could experience famine because of higher food prices."
(investopedia.org)
We use oil and its derivatives to create building materials. Large scale fertilisers, herbicides and insecticides that support our industrialised food industry. Plastics, which are the foundation of modern society. Medicines. Soap. A larger proportion of our oil, coal and gas is used in energy generation and fuels, but our society as we know it can’t work without oil.
So. Oil is hard and expensive to extract and refine. The only reason we continue to do so is that the world demand for petrol is so high. But that demand is going to collapse. We have alternatives to fossil fuels for energy generation, and these alternatives are increasingly cheaper and better than oil.
What happens to our plastics industry, our medicines, our agriculture sector, our soap, when it’s no longer economically viable to pump oil? We don’t have alternatives for plastic.
We’re not prepared for this transition. Governments continue to support the fossil fuel industries as if they can never be allowed to collapse. But economic forces are going to overwhelm such efforts – probably soon.
There will still be a market for oil. Even when we’re not burning it for energy, we will continue to need it. It’s just going to cost an enormous amount more than it does now.
What it likely means is that the cost of everything will skyrocket. When our cheapest sources of oil include high-cost investments such as mining landfill to reclaim billions of plastic bags to convert them back into oil, plastic will no longer be cheap and ubiquitous. Food won’t be plentiful. Millions will starve – not because we can’t practically feed them, but because we won’t be able to afford the fertiliser.
The longer the burning of fossil fuels goes on, the worse the problem will become. The cost of extracting oil will continue to increase as accessible reserves decrease. When we stop burning oil, all that will be left in the oilfields will be the expensive dregs to extract for making our soap. The sensible approach now would be to encourage the death spiral as quickly as possible. Force the end of fossil fuels for power and preserve as much of our reserves for the rest of society to use. But governments are generally not in the business of forcing huge industries to collapse.
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Return to home pageBrilliant, oz.
The post lived up to your first sentence perfectly.
IMHO, this is probably the most difficult task that we will face in our lifetime, or whats left of it.
Easy to read…how smart are we.
Then it sinks in, and, like the runaway BHP train of late it seems its running away.
Stop it? No way.
We will watch to the horrible train wreck at the end of the line.
Optimist, well maybe Monty Python can set it to music.
Good article, I’d be more optimistic after not decades, but past two generations of climate science denial, delay and deflection; especially the ‘Anglosphere’ even lately resorting to old fossil fueled Club of Rome nativist ‘degrowth’ or autarky for everyone ex. <1%..
China is important in producing solar, wind and related products while the appalling EU bloc (according to UK, US & Oz RWNJs & oligarchs) is having much success due to economics, i.e. faster transition to declining renewable costs, yet maintaining economic growth (most probably due to expanding services, like all economies).
Burn-Murdoch has an article in FT (2 Sep ’22) ‘Opinion Data Points: Economics may take us to net zero all on its own. The plummeting cost of low-carbon energy has already allowed many countries to decouple economic growth from emissions’; there is an excellent comparative graphic embedded in article via the link
https://www.ft.com/content/967e1d77-8d3c-4256-9339-6ea7025cd5d3
Many now suspect that the odd confluence of interests between Russian/Anglo oligarchs, Koch think tanks, GOP/Freedom Caucus and media e.g. FoxNews etc. which demand Ukraine concedes to Russia for ‘peace’, is simply about protecting fossil fuels’ future income streams and corrupt nativist authoritarians.
Andrew Smith,
Ponder the “Energy Returned on Energy Invested” segment for a moment.
The current technologies for harvesting energy from sun and wind are mechanical with limited life spans so that energy is expended each time we attempt to recycle.
I have found info on the graveyards devoted to wind turbine blades which are expired. They are almost simply another waste for landfill.New blades need oil.
EVs and solar panels are energy hungry to manufacture, so when it comes to zero carbon its all pretty doubtful.
We are dealing with recycling panels, but again it required energy for this task.
in 2023 we promote tourist air travel for our economy, and in the background wee have folk who back “carbon capture and storage”.
And we have global population rising exponentially.
douglas , you paint a very narrow view of the facts. Thats why you end up in dispare . Evs and solar panels were energy hungry .
I think you will find that in a very short time that has changed. Population is tipped to decrease in a few years time. As for wind blade cemetaries, you have blown the issue so far out of proportion i am surprised you havent been knocked on the head by one.
Ever checked out what the alternatives, ie current practices are with coal, nuclear, gas and oil?
“Current technologies are mechanical…..?” WTF are you saying? Solar is not mechanical, no moving parts. ” energy is expended each time we attempt to recycle”. So are funerals and the shit we create (litteral). If renewable energy becomes so abundant, as Tony Seba predicts, we wont worry about energy expenditure on recycling. SO to me, you are the quintisential exaggerator that puts road blocks on trying to do things better. You assume that we can just flick a switch and instantly we have all the solutions. Stop moaning about how its all too hard.
This is a long term battle and anything that moves us closer to perfection has to be done. We may never get to perfection but dont knock the good because it isnt perfect up front. This attitude has to change Douglas. All it does is say “lets not do anything..”. I for one refuse to be a stiff stuck in the head lights. Both mentally and physically,
Renerwables are becoming more efficient, cleaner and cheaper EVERYDAY. Tesla run their factories mostly on renewables. Lots of big tech companies are running on renewables. Consumers in australia are flocking to solar panels everyday. EVs are starting to shape the J curve. Batteries are using less and less toxic chemicals/metals as development fast tracks in leaps and bounds
What is your problem? Its not coming around tomorrow?
A56,
I guess my argument hinges on the use of the word “Zero”.
It is bandied around as if its achievable, so not to worry.
Oil is a resource that we have treated with contempt and being a fossil fuel, like Aldi centre aisle products, when its gone thats it.
As long as we continue we simply ignite it (the business of flying) by the ton, we are shooting ourselves in the foot because you can do so much more with it.
PVs are mechanical in that they fail eventually with use, as with wind turbines.
This planet is very very old, but in such a relatively short space of time, with human help, we have created a situation that unless we mutate( we do it very slowly compared to bacteria) we perish as a species.
We will not be permitted to ponder on how much change is needed, and the speed required.
Thanks goodness not in my lifetime. So I continue to smile, and not despair.
Douglas, I have similar views. ‘Zero Carbon’, who decided that carbon should be the metric upon which to base energy policy? The logic is difficult to follow. Carbon attached to oxygen, CO2, bad. Carbon not attached to oxygen, as in trees, good. The food of trees is CO2, therefore, what is a tree, good or bad? Do trees need to be genetically engineered to change their diet to reduce their input CO2. Someone could run that idea past Bill Gates, Chief Ecological Idiot of the world who recently stated he wanted to bury trees to store carbon. And people hang on his every word, or at least the mainstream media does. If I was working for Bill Gates on that kind of project I would report back: ‘Bill, problem fixed, trees buried, good to go’. Behind his back I would be cutting trees, yes, then milling and on-selling for a personal profit. THAT is something the likes of silly Billy would never think of, probably.
As for the continuing misinformation that oil is a fossil fuel, I wonder when ACMA will put its cloven hoof down and force the govt to issue a public notice that oil is the result of abiotic processes deep within the earth. Unless dinosaurs lived their simple lives at a depth of 4 km underground how does the current ‘fossil fuel’ theory make any sense? Part of the solution is to get pragmatic about how energy resources are used. Regulators could set a differential pricing for oil & gas products that are frivolous in use, eg air transport for holiday, plastics and products designed with planned short-term obsolescence rather than built-to-last. That is, an extra tax for being wasteful
As for EVs, 2 million litres of water to make a battery for one car. Cars are going the way of the dinosaur. It’s all there in black and white in the UK Fires ‘Absolute Zero’ report, download from here: https://ukfires.org/absolute-zero-report/
The push to pretend renewables will save the day via EVs is an illusion, part of a plan to destroy personal mobility. Without a petrol car, and EVs unaffordable, what is going to happen to Australia’s car-centric cities?
Solutions to the problems being caused by politicians exist, they just won’t be advanced by said politicians.
Again, Charley Rees > orlandosentinel.com/1984/02/03/545-people-are-responsible-for-the-mess-but-they-unite-in-a-common-con/
Douglas:
“PVs are mechanical in that they fail eventually with use, as with wind turbines.”
Everything does. Welcome to the concept of entropy.
Also, that is literally not what “mechanical” means.
Pratt by name, prat by nature.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/trump-allegedly-disclosed-us-submarine-secrets-to-anthony-pratt-us-media-20231006-p5ea8a.html
Leefe,
Please proceed, and explain how a PV comes about without mechanical aid, and experienced mechanical failure as it ages.
Im all ears.
Brad, are you off with the pixies too? You do realise that we live in the goldilox zone as far as CO2 in the atmosphere goes. Too little is no good and take a note, TOO MUCH IS ALSO DANGEROUS. Put a plant in 70% CO2 environment and it too withers.
You do realise the CO2 metric is based on scientific analysis of the world as we know it. I wont describe the details as it obviously will fly past you.
Mate you are a danger to yourself and everyone around you. Your inventing a narrative here. WTF did you get 2000000 litrs to make one battery? It takes 2million litres of brine to get 1 ton of lithium. (using the evaporation process). There is NOT 1 ton of lithium in a battery pack. Are you now so unknowledgable that you come up with stupid “fake” facts? You do know that the 1.9million litres of water evaporates and goes back into the atmosphere? It doesnt disappear as you try to imply.
.. Oil is a fossil fuel. Dont go around with fancy language that misrepresents the facts. You cant cherry pick the science or the process by being pedantic about definitions. You missed the geology classes big time.
“Regulators set up differential prices……” are you nuts? You do understand the concept of free markets and how OPEC screws us? The best way to drop prices is to stop USING THE SHIT.
You do understand that solar technology is going to disrupt everything we do? You do understand that by turning off gas powered devices and going solar is good for the environment. NOBODY says its perfect, but its a quantum leap past current practices. You do understand that the first iphone was expensive, much the same as the current iphone 15. YET, there is no shortage of buyers. Putting solar cells on your roof and buying an EV is a money saving excersise compared to doing nothing. Mate there are so many reasons why your shit makes no sense.
A56, Maaattte,
Calling from the land of the pixies.
If this planet is 3.7 BILLION years old, and we have evolved as a species from the primeval slime by incremental developments.
Then it has just taken say 200 years to degrade it to an alarming degree.
Hence “Crash and Burn”.
In your land of being in control of everything do you honestly think you have a sufficient grip on what the problem is, and the ability to fix it?.
Obama got in selling the word “hope”, and I am hearing an echo here.
yes Douglas, the word zero. First we got to decelerate the trend before we can remove and become zero. My point is that by going to solar and EVs, we are starting the race. Blythly saying its no good, it doesnt work or any other defeatist slogan isnt going to get us there. The disruptor that is solar power isnt happening in the 24hr news cycle, but it is reaching the tipping point, just look around at the statistics. If your not encouraging the trend, your becoming part of the problem that fuckswift politicians can exploit.
As for posts like Brad’s, the less said the better. I hope his ears are ringing so loud he actually goes out and finds the real facts.
Douglas to leefe, WTF are you trying to prove? That until we can utilise no energy required process we cant do something positive? Its a position i find hard to fathom. Is it some high faluting intellectual position you want to angle? It says 3 blind mice to me.
Good article. But so what?
Anyone worth their salt that has not been constantly doing their technical, scientific, economic and political research on the aforementioned matters since at least the 70s oil crisis, would seem to have their heads buried in the sand.
For at least a century, it’s been screamingly obvious that burning fossil-fuels is sheer lunacy – what a waste of finite resource, along with the wilful nihilistic death-spiral of filling our precious atmosphere with toxic wastes. Now we know why we have to stop it and how.
Yet being the opportunistic chimps we are, we elect better yabbering chimps to do our bidding, to avail us of bling and convenience, come what may. Despite that we learn of deadly risks, of course we are bound to keep up with the Joneses chimps.
We are aware that their are groups of specialist chimps, specialists in science, technology, industry, economics and ecology, and within their fields they are pretty well across the cause and affects of our existence, and to that extent know what needs to be done for our survival. And they pass that on to us, and the better yabbering chimps, so that decisions can be made and actions for improvement taken. Yet all chimps are hell bent on protecting their patch, and won’t budge, even from desire’s cliff-edge to doom, unless there’s palpable opportunity for gain or perhaps being confronted by sensation, alarm and high dudgeon.
It’s all very well indulging in conspiracies, guessing games, and theories so that we can assign blame and remove ourselves from responsibility, after all we emplaced the better yabbering chimps to serve us and hand us everything on a plate. Even though we know change is a must and is likely tough, it’s not our thing, as we hear no, see no, speak no, and roll on with our games.
All ever corruptible, that we had a handle on the space time cost of entropy would be handy; perhaps we could do a cost-benefit analysis.
Dear Douglas, i am aware of the facts but WTF are you trying to say…….come on out with it. You present a totally incoherant rant ranging from facts to esoteric arguements. What are you saying?
I dont claim to have all the answers but when something good has started , i aint going to be the one that says its all too hard. As a man of science, i have great faith in our abilities, its the population and its politicians that worry me the most. Seeing as we dont want to grab the nettle directly, people are voting with their feet and wallets. The disruption will happen, sooner than we think. Sometimes, the “market” does do its job. I would rather listen to Tony Seba than people who cry its all too hard. At least that way i have a handle on the way forward. As I said many times before. Either we control the market or the market will hit us with a big stick.
“The sensible approach now would be to encourage the death spiral as quickly as possible. Force the end of fossil fuels for power and preserve as much of our reserves for the rest of society to use. But governments are generally not in the business of forcing huge industries to collapse.” thats what i said. (sorry Lou costello)
A56, maaate
To nurse our society into the belief that putting panels on your roof is going to fix this shit, and they can sit back and jet arround on holidays is a misnomer.
When you weigh up the “collateral damage” to our species, and our environment as we proceed in our everyday “civilised” manner, it is not going to reverse the damage, and achieve this amazing Zero impact.
We have to make changes that are so radical as to make them unacceptable, and therefore the PVs on the roof and the EV car is about as far as society is prepared to go.
Now if we could discover a way to mutate faster than the destruction index, then we have a chance, but will we recognize the result?
Douglas:
Please proceed, and explain how a PV comes about without mechanical aid, and experienced mechanical failure as it ages.
First, I think you mean “without experiencing mechanical failure as it ages”, but then I don’t hope for decent languages skills, consistency – or even much in the way of logic – when I read conspiracy theory bullshit, so who knows?
Your request does not address what I said. You said that “mechanical” means they experience eventual failure with use. I simply reminded you that that is not what “mechanical” means, and that everything eventually experiences failure with use. Including technology.
When you weigh up the “collateral damage” to our species, and our environment as we proceed in our everyday “civilised” manner, it is not going to reverse the damage, and achieve this amazing Zero impact. We have to make changes that are so radical as to make them unacceptable
This much is probably true. So what is your solution? And,l please, no libertarian garbage. This isn’t about politics. This is about trying to find a way to minimise human iimpact on the global enviironment, and even reversing – if possible — the damage we have so far inflicted. Whingeing about governments using climate change as a stalking horse for an attack on personal mobility is not exactly a solution to the problem.
Andy, looks like you are right, that should have been one ton of lithium per qty water, not one car.
So much for my memory of reading articles/papers months ago, thanks for the pickup.
CO2 makes up 0.04% of air. 70% sounds like alarmism for the sake of argument.
Re water and lithium and negative environmental consequences –
“While the Atacama Desert experiences water scarcity, lithium companies pump billions of liters of brine from the area’s subsoil. . . including the freshwater sources that the desert’s indigenous communities derive their water from . . in the long run, freshwater risks being mixed with saliferous brine and thus becoming undrinkable.”
I’m not saying no lithium, just how about all factors are considered in its treatment as a resource.
The same applies to abiotic oil. We can probably agree on that.
There are numerous articles and studies on abiotic oil theory, eg https://origeminorganicadopetroleo.blogspot.com/2011/02/normal-0-21-false-false-false-pt-br-x.html
You say that I can’t “cherry pick the science”, why not? If I find a more logical explanation I change course.
Re ‘free markets in oil’, isn’t that another illusion, ‘free markets’? Russia, China & the Saudis are now in a trading block and they have a common enemy to destroy – the Western ‘democracies’.
Re solar tech saving the world, try the doco ‘Planet of the Humans’ (directed by Michael Moore). As far as “turning off gas” goes, we will soon be left with no choice (UK Fires ‘Absolute Zero’ report). Climate change is a psy-op to trick people into not only accepting a neo-feudal lifestyle in the not too distant future, but actually screaming for its implementation.
It is neo-feudal for you and me, not the parasite class though.
Leefe, “This isn’t about politics.” I have to disagree, again Charley Reese > orlandosentinel.com/1984/02/03/545-people-are-responsible-for-the-mess-but-they-unite-in-a-common-con/ The public needs to vote out of power politicians who have caused the current situation. Most of the public don’t like solutions and at each election vote for who promises the most goodies. The public in other words is largely childish. As for “Whingeing about governments using climate change as a stalking horse”, the first thing to note before taking action is to understand what is actually happening. CC is a psy-op. Most of the public has been lulled into a sleep-walking state by the gov narrative of the day and we are heading for a cliff. Reacting to the CC scam according to gov ‘experts’ got us to where we are now.
Brad, our apologies for your comment being delayed.
It can happen when comments have links which the system thinks are spam. It’s rare, but it happens.
Seems like it isn’t really a question for anyone who takes the science based advice (that governments commissioned in order to make informed decisions, supposedly) seriously – committing to serious emissions reductions, ie renewables with urgency is the only reasonable course. That so many find that unreasonable is a consequence of persistent Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking – a combination of refusing to accept the science based advice (climate change is harmless) and doomist fears of economic ruin by facing up to it (renewable energy will destroy us). And bizarre alarmist fears of globalist/socialist/environmentalist/elitist conspiracies thrown in. They are the true alarmists and doomists; facing up to reality is just too much for them. Me, I find facing up to difficult reality relieves my fears.
Unfortunately when the true elitists, the wealthy influencers who’ve been subsidising and encouraging Doubt, Deny, Delay do start taking global warming seriously we will struggle to tell the difference; they will choose adaptation over emissions reductions – and they will see their wealth as their principle insurance against climate harms and therefore maximising their fossil fuel wealth whilst they can will be seen as their surest way to achieve it. ie Adaptation their way will be for the few at the expense of the many, starting with letting the problem get a lot worse.
When mainstream politics abrogated their responsibility and handed the issue off to fringe politics in “you care so much, you fix it” style it came with a bit of empty gesture funding for their preferred alternative energies – or perhaps give em enough rope funding when it was the LNP (or Tories or Republicans). Not because it was expected to work but because it was not. People apart from activists who take the challenges seriously – scientists, engineers, (capitalist) entrepreneurs – have made renewable energy work. We could do with more misjudgements like that.
Now solar has become the most built new energy generation in the world, by a VERY large margin, and only a decade after they proved themselves cost competitive against fossil fuels, not because the electricity industry cares about global warming, but because is the least cost choice, ie (ironically) due to free market economics. Renewables have done that against fierce resistance by entrenched incumbents who can and do buy political parties out of pocket change – which ‘change’ is all the greater for the political parties being willing to being so willing to be bought and write the rules for the way they want.
Such is their influence that mainstream political parties (Labor included) even give fossil fuel companies taxpayer funding to do greenwash like unworkable CCS and dodgy Carbon Offsets on top of a whole raft of exemptions, tax dodges, subsidies and support. Has any Australian delegation to international climate negotiations ever had doing the most we can as their true intent and not doing the least?
Bring on more Greens and Teals – maybe Labor will try appeasing people who care about the climate problem into submission they way they are appeasing (and subsidising) fossil fuels.
Comment posted on behalf of Ken Fabian
A reason for optimism –
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Derrick Jensen, who Wikipedia describes as “an American ecophilosopher, writer, author, teacher and environmentalist in the anarcho-primitivist tradition” – in his book Endgame1, begins with a set of premises, twenty in total. They are copied & pasted below, and offer the opportunity to ponder on whether they have relevance in these challenging times, confronted as we are with the consequences of the primacy of the capitalistic economic model; consequences that clearly include such unwelcome phenomena as huge disparities in the distribution of global wealth, civil and military upheavals, ecocide on a rampant scale, global warming and its inevitable consequences, along with the global masses seemingly unable to counter or rein in these unfolding circumstances.
PREMISE ONE: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.
PREMISE TWO: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources — gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.
PREMISE THREE: Our way of living—industrial civilization — is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.
PREMISE FOUR: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishisation of the victims.
PREMISE FIVE: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control — in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.
PREMISE SIX: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.
PREMISE SEVEN: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down — the messier the crash will be, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for
those who come after.
PREMISE EIGHT: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system. Another way to put Premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) require the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.
PREMISE NINE: Although there will clearly someday be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population may occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to
approach this transformation). Some will be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear Armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by a crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default of our culture. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence — required and caused by the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich — and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps long-term shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively — if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it — the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.
PREMISE TEN: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.
PREMISE ELEVEN: From the beginning, this culture — civilization — has been a culture of occupation.
PREMISE TWELVE: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something — or their presumed riches may be even
more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks — and the poor may not. These “rich claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.
PREMISE THIRTEEN: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.
PREMISE FOURTEEN: From birth on — and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case — we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes — and our bodies — to be poisoned.
PREMISE FIFTEEN: Love does not imply pacifism.
PREMISE SIXTEEN: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth — whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here — the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.
PREMISE SEVENTEEN: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from them will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans. [or the citizens of other countries]
PREMISE EIGHTEEN: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.
PREMISE NINETEEN: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.
PREMISE TWENTY: Within this culture, economics — not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself — drives social decisions.
Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.
Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it — if there is any heart left — you will find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.
One more try for image referenced in previous comment, can’t get it resize –
Ken, I think it’s near impossible to resize in a comment, unless it’s resized before adding it.
Roswell, I thought I did resize before posting but maybe I just changed how many pixels, not dimensions? I’ll figure it for next time.
Ozfenric,
Heard from the wilderness.
EROEI needs some form of legislative enshrinement, otherwise designed obsolescence for profit motive will nullify the potency of any potential technological solutions out of our current trajectory of self induced extinction.
Efficiency of production and function, longevity, repairability, capacity for upgrade, all are essential (amongst a raft of other changes) if humans are to have a chance of maintaining current levels of lifestyle luxury without cooking our basic life support systems.
Amidst comments claiming that ‘climate change is a psy-op scam to cripple individual mobility’, & ‘suggestions to limit population growth are inherently racist’, fact is that Antarctica is remarkable, but notably unremarked upon, as being anomalously hot as phuq.
Thank you for your perseverence.
CB
CB, good to see you. I hope you’ve been well.
Roswell,
Cheers, sentiments appreciated and returned.
I am currently in a fairly OK place in terms of body and mind.
I have been taking the time to mindfully seek out and appreciate the existent remnants of natural harmony left amongst the escalating human cacophony (love it whilst it’s still there), and devoting my energies to defending those few hills and vales left that are truly worth dying for.
As for all that evermore intrusive human shit, I am trying to say less before I learn more, in the aim of choosing the slow path to truth over the hyperactivised freeway to falsehoods.
CB
Ps In the interests of accuracy, I should mention that, although Antarctica currently has less ice (both extent & volume) than any comparative time since reliable recording, the Arctic is currently experiencing only the 5th lowest seasonal ice level seen on record.
Glad that you’re well, CB.
It’s a good state to be in while the world’s in such a mess.