Rachel, this is a brilliant analysis of our predicament, 4000 words and not one wasted. This is the kind of thought process that we need to see from our political and corporate leaders. Of course, we won't get that. The power brokers are all doubling down with the wind turbines being used to assist in pumping oil, perhaps the most cynical symbol of stupidity. I have spent three years on this subject, searching for facts, statistics and science because our media is so corrupt the truth can't be found there. Without radical societal change — degrowth or donut economics — the train is going off the tracks. Sadly, I see no signs that we're going to avoid a horrifying crash.
Oliver is right. The longer Homo Colossus does it's damage the lower the carrying capacity of the resultant biosphere will be; and more species will become extinct. In the landmark book Overshoot by William R. Catton Jr. this is called Succession; the damaged biosphere is no longer supportive of the old species but have been prepared for the species that are best adapted to the new conditions (insects? fungus? bacteria?).
Thanks for a fantastic and sweeping post of great urgency, Rachel. Your analysis of the Energy Trap that human civilisation has fallen into, of how it is beyond Net Zero, renewables and dematerialised growth, bought to mind Professor Kevin Anderson's stark assessment of the two options that lie ahead: "There are now no non-radical futures. The choice is between immediate and profound social change or waiting a little longer for chaotic and violent social change." https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2023/04/18/no-radical-futures/
Hi Rachel, I love this essay. Beautifully written and true. I spent ten grueling years researching and writing a book, "How Soon Is Now" (2016), which proposed how we could radically redesign human civilization to try to avoid systemic collapse and extinction. I think it is less likely now than it was when the book came out, when it was admittedly, already unlikely. Perhaps you want to take a look at the book? Happy to email a PDF to you - send me an email : daniel.pinchbeck@gmail.com . Same for anyone reading this.
Thanks for gathering and speaking the unflinching truth, Rachel. Modernity's artifice increasingly, exponentially, does not point to the real. It is the fatal flaw of civilization as we have imagined it. Humans built this ship to wreck, and we were born in the age of witness.
The grand spectacle evaporates. Power trembles, acts in desperation. It's a helluva time to be alive.
Hi Rachel, this was great! I've really enjoyed following your podcast and now reading your takeaway and distillation of ideas from all those conversations and your work as a journalist. Your last point about language, as a linguist, sits uncomfortably with me however, not that I have an answer though. There's been a long tradition of philosophical anxiety about the severing of words from world, and much of this has to do (in my view) with a dominant western version of what language is that narrowly construes it in its denotational function. Terrence Deacon talked about this a bit I think in your conversation with him. Reimagining what language is (and how 'words world worlds' as the Zapatista movement put it) seems like a worthwhile project to me. Your concern about language also made me think of Naomi Klein's discussion of this 'gap' between words and world in her new book Doppelganger. She writes: “…here's the question that has been eating away at me: What if our books, and our movements as they are currently constructed (often in ways that resemble corporate brands), are only changing words? What if words—written on the page or shouted in protest—change only what people and institutions say, and not what they do?” (p. 152). Thanks again for this.
This is so brilliant and incredible that you amalgamated so much in 4000 words. Required reading for all teenagers around the world going out into a system -- political and economic -- that fails to comprehend ecological imperatives at its peril.
But not indiscriminately. Every teen should have at least one true buddy. My nephew Tas suffered alone from excessively well-informed information from writers of words like Micheal Rupert, David Korten ("suicide economy" 2005) and Guy "Near Term Extinction" MacPherson . Read a poignantly beautiful reference to Tas here by journalist Brian Kaller. Tas referred to "this nonsense suicide civilisation" in his 24hr delayed email to his parents, aged only just 19 in 2006, first year Chem Eng student at Sydney University. He got no reply from a detailed skeptical email to a professor promoting his lecture on "Sustainability'. Kaller makes the vital (in the Western Middle class) point about connectedness:http://restoringmayberry.blogspot.com/2008/12/moment-of-darkness.html?m=1
Be careful with our kids particularly the bright ones slightly on the Spectrum, without the exceptional support of Greta. No young person or old, alone down the rabbit hole. Please.
Brilliant Rachel. One little quibble-I don't think it's the world or the planet that's in crisis-it's human civilisation which Mother Earth is in the process of shaking off. She's going to do just fine without us.
That again defeats the work people are engaged in to avoid that lee shore, that catastrophic end to human/fauna existence on Earth. We are (still) in this fight.
This is the most clear-sighted and concise analysis I've read of the relationship between physics, economics, energy use, resource use, climate change and the environment. This should be a foundational document in terms of political thinking. It's also superbly written. It's as simple as it can be; there's no rhetorical flourishing, just clearly explained facts. But the article doesn't shy away from technical terms, specific terms which are needed to explain specific issues.
Incredible and much needed work, I've been looking for an article like this for a long time, thank you.
Acknowledging that what you got into 4000 words was a great achievement, I feel the need to add three things that running through all of these issues but were not mentioned explicitly.
I suggest that ecosystems breakdown caused by all of those "whys" is rapidly becoming part of its own "why" because the feedback effects magnify the costs of all the others - food prices, migration, lived environment ...
The issue with people goes further than "being wired to find bananas" and relates to the problem with language in a different way. We (people who read material such as this) are more cognitively oriented than average. This is not to say that people are unintelligent, but that they are not inclined to apply cognitive processes to the same degree. Humans are embodied and a lot of our choices are not made via intentional thought. Add to that the reality that people do what they perceive as necessary to thrive in the life conditions that they are in. It's the equivalent of the management expression "when you are up to your arse in alligators, it is hard to remember your original intention to drain the swamp". Long-term thinking, however essential, is a luxury that many don't have time for.
The systems that you list are all part of the life conditions. They exert constraints on what is possible for individuals, even when they do have "higher" intentions. The systems such as economics were built from earlier levels of thinking and are deeply embedded. It is hard or impossible to bolt, e.g. donut economics, onto them.
I regret to say that the crisis is a good thing, in that it heralds collapse. Painful as it will be, we need those old systems to break in order to make space for new ones. That means that our focus needs to be seen as mitigation more than prevention and even that must increasingly give way to building the networks and structures that enable us to rebuild after the collapse. Even those who are seeing ahead may need to look even further.
Wow. You got a lot into 4,000 words Rachel. This ought to be published in every Sunday 'newspaper' to be read by people whose minds most need to be changed. Thank you for writing this. Brilliant.
Masterful, thank you Rachel. The final two paragraphs are sublime.
If I was forced to nit-pick (sorry, it's in my nature), I would argue that nuclear power is the most dense energy source humanity has yet discovered, moreso than petroleum. Not that it will help much with the polycrisis, admittedly, and oil & gas are more flexible/useful than always-on atomic electrons.
Anyway, I digress. Keep it up, your words matter more than most.
Excellent article and summary. I particular like your term "surplus energy" - a very concise description of this fundamental aspect of how nature works. Note that the surplus energy of the human organism is quite a small part of the 2000 Calories we need for subsistence living. Most of it is actually needed to maintain our structure and defend it from diseases and decay. This is why all "civilizations" heavily relied on slaves (human and animals) for life above subsistence, at least until the discovery of fossil fuels.
Interestingly, 2000 calories per day is about 100 W. Compare this with the per capita consumption of primary energy of 9000 W in the US! All this surplus energy we consume at the cost of destroying life on our planet. The Swiss initiative "2000 W society" is advocating that we set ourselves the goal of living with 2000 W of power consumption per person worldwide. Note that this is smaller than the present 2400 W world power consumption, but much larger than the power consumption of many developing countries (India's is 800 W). I find this an excellent approach that puts the emphasis on the wealthy countries to reduce their wasteful power consumption (US is twice that of Europe and Japan!) and gives room for development for the developing countries. This is simply fair. The 2000 W can then hopefully come from mostly carbon-neutral energy sources. I strongly believe that we have to do both, reducing energy consumption and switch, at scale, to carbon-neutral energy sources.
On this last point, I am very glad that you mention the big difference between collecting energy (solar and wind) and using stored energy (fossil fuel, geothermal, nuclear energy - fission and fusion). As you said, collecting energy requires much more hardware and energy investment than using stored energy. I am therefore skeptical that solar or wind (collecting energy) will ever be able to replace fossil fuel (using stored energy) at scale. In fact, the only demonstration of successfully replacing all fossil fuel with another energy source was in France where all electricity production from fossil fuels was replaced with nuclear energy.
So, a real plan to stop CO2 emissions, as opposed to "guidelines" and voluntary emission reductions, would consist of a mandatory goal of bringing everybody's power consumption to 2000 W (still 20 times subsistence) and massively building nuclear power plants, likely best at existing coal power plants, to provide the 2000 W for every person or about 16 TW total. Continuing to reduce world population is also helpful!
No wise words (are there any in the face of this enormity?) but many thanks for this broad analysis of where we are. For me, just being able to get a handle on the big picture is enough to be getting on with!
Rachel, this is a brilliant analysis of our predicament, 4000 words and not one wasted. This is the kind of thought process that we need to see from our political and corporate leaders. Of course, we won't get that. The power brokers are all doubling down with the wind turbines being used to assist in pumping oil, perhaps the most cynical symbol of stupidity. I have spent three years on this subject, searching for facts, statistics and science because our media is so corrupt the truth can't be found there. Without radical societal change — degrowth or donut economics — the train is going off the tracks. Sadly, I see no signs that we're going to avoid a horrifying crash.
My late father-in-law was probably right when he said "let it collapse under its own weight."
Oliver is right. The longer Homo Colossus does it's damage the lower the carrying capacity of the resultant biosphere will be; and more species will become extinct. In the landmark book Overshoot by William R. Catton Jr. this is called Succession; the damaged biosphere is no longer supportive of the old species but have been prepared for the species that are best adapted to the new conditions (insects? fungus? bacteria?).
Not so good for the living, human and fauna/flora, specially the young.
Thanks for a fantastic and sweeping post of great urgency, Rachel. Your analysis of the Energy Trap that human civilisation has fallen into, of how it is beyond Net Zero, renewables and dematerialised growth, bought to mind Professor Kevin Anderson's stark assessment of the two options that lie ahead: "There are now no non-radical futures. The choice is between immediate and profound social change or waiting a little longer for chaotic and violent social change." https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2023/04/18/no-radical-futures/
Hi Rachel, I love this essay. Beautifully written and true. I spent ten grueling years researching and writing a book, "How Soon Is Now" (2016), which proposed how we could radically redesign human civilization to try to avoid systemic collapse and extinction. I think it is less likely now than it was when the book came out, when it was admittedly, already unlikely. Perhaps you want to take a look at the book? Happy to email a PDF to you - send me an email : daniel.pinchbeck@gmail.com . Same for anyone reading this.
Sure! Rachel@planetcritical.com
I'd love to have a look sebbylad@gmail.com thank you Daniel.
Thanks for gathering and speaking the unflinching truth, Rachel. Modernity's artifice increasingly, exponentially, does not point to the real. It is the fatal flaw of civilization as we have imagined it. Humans built this ship to wreck, and we were born in the age of witness.
The grand spectacle evaporates. Power trembles, acts in desperation. It's a helluva time to be alive.
Hi Rachel, this was great! I've really enjoyed following your podcast and now reading your takeaway and distillation of ideas from all those conversations and your work as a journalist. Your last point about language, as a linguist, sits uncomfortably with me however, not that I have an answer though. There's been a long tradition of philosophical anxiety about the severing of words from world, and much of this has to do (in my view) with a dominant western version of what language is that narrowly construes it in its denotational function. Terrence Deacon talked about this a bit I think in your conversation with him. Reimagining what language is (and how 'words world worlds' as the Zapatista movement put it) seems like a worthwhile project to me. Your concern about language also made me think of Naomi Klein's discussion of this 'gap' between words and world in her new book Doppelganger. She writes: “…here's the question that has been eating away at me: What if our books, and our movements as they are currently constructed (often in ways that resemble corporate brands), are only changing words? What if words—written on the page or shouted in protest—change only what people and institutions say, and not what they do?” (p. 152). Thanks again for this.
This is so brilliant and incredible that you amalgamated so much in 4000 words. Required reading for all teenagers around the world going out into a system -- political and economic -- that fails to comprehend ecological imperatives at its peril.
But not indiscriminately. Every teen should have at least one true buddy. My nephew Tas suffered alone from excessively well-informed information from writers of words like Micheal Rupert, David Korten ("suicide economy" 2005) and Guy "Near Term Extinction" MacPherson . Read a poignantly beautiful reference to Tas here by journalist Brian Kaller. Tas referred to "this nonsense suicide civilisation" in his 24hr delayed email to his parents, aged only just 19 in 2006, first year Chem Eng student at Sydney University. He got no reply from a detailed skeptical email to a professor promoting his lecture on "Sustainability'. Kaller makes the vital (in the Western Middle class) point about connectedness:http://restoringmayberry.blogspot.com/2008/12/moment-of-darkness.html?m=1
Be careful with our kids particularly the bright ones slightly on the Spectrum, without the exceptional support of Greta. No young person or old, alone down the rabbit hole. Please.
Brilliant Rachel. One little quibble-I don't think it's the world or the planet that's in crisis-it's human civilisation which Mother Earth is in the process of shaking off. She's going to do just fine without us.
But the longer we go on the more species we take with us; species that did not bring this catastrophe.
All this has happened before. All this will happen again.
Yep, George Carlin summed it up in 8 words
and they were...?
“The planet is fine, the people are f***ed”
Something like “the planet will be fine, the planet’s gonna shake us off like a case of fleas”
That again defeats the work people are engaged in to avoid that lee shore, that catastrophic end to human/fauna existence on Earth. We are (still) in this fight.
This is absolutely fantastic, Rachel!
This is the most clear-sighted and concise analysis I've read of the relationship between physics, economics, energy use, resource use, climate change and the environment. This should be a foundational document in terms of political thinking. It's also superbly written. It's as simple as it can be; there's no rhetorical flourishing, just clearly explained facts. But the article doesn't shy away from technical terms, specific terms which are needed to explain specific issues.
Incredible and much needed work, I've been looking for an article like this for a long time, thank you.
This is an absolute triumph of a summary of the systems we find ourselves bogged down in. Thank you!
Are you okay Rachel - that's a lot to be carrying around.
P
Peter, I suspect she knows of the late, great Michael Dowd and his mantra, "Calm gratitude is both possible and contagious."
Acknowledging that what you got into 4000 words was a great achievement, I feel the need to add three things that running through all of these issues but were not mentioned explicitly.
I suggest that ecosystems breakdown caused by all of those "whys" is rapidly becoming part of its own "why" because the feedback effects magnify the costs of all the others - food prices, migration, lived environment ...
The issue with people goes further than "being wired to find bananas" and relates to the problem with language in a different way. We (people who read material such as this) are more cognitively oriented than average. This is not to say that people are unintelligent, but that they are not inclined to apply cognitive processes to the same degree. Humans are embodied and a lot of our choices are not made via intentional thought. Add to that the reality that people do what they perceive as necessary to thrive in the life conditions that they are in. It's the equivalent of the management expression "when you are up to your arse in alligators, it is hard to remember your original intention to drain the swamp". Long-term thinking, however essential, is a luxury that many don't have time for.
The systems that you list are all part of the life conditions. They exert constraints on what is possible for individuals, even when they do have "higher" intentions. The systems such as economics were built from earlier levels of thinking and are deeply embedded. It is hard or impossible to bolt, e.g. donut economics, onto them.
I regret to say that the crisis is a good thing, in that it heralds collapse. Painful as it will be, we need those old systems to break in order to make space for new ones. That means that our focus needs to be seen as mitigation more than prevention and even that must increasingly give way to building the networks and structures that enable us to rebuild after the collapse. Even those who are seeing ahead may need to look even further.
Wow. You got a lot into 4,000 words Rachel. This ought to be published in every Sunday 'newspaper' to be read by people whose minds most need to be changed. Thank you for writing this. Brilliant.
Masterful, thank you Rachel. The final two paragraphs are sublime.
If I was forced to nit-pick (sorry, it's in my nature), I would argue that nuclear power is the most dense energy source humanity has yet discovered, moreso than petroleum. Not that it will help much with the polycrisis, admittedly, and oil & gas are more flexible/useful than always-on atomic electrons.
Anyway, I digress. Keep it up, your words matter more than most.
Thank you kindly, Seb!
Excellent article and summary. I particular like your term "surplus energy" - a very concise description of this fundamental aspect of how nature works. Note that the surplus energy of the human organism is quite a small part of the 2000 Calories we need for subsistence living. Most of it is actually needed to maintain our structure and defend it from diseases and decay. This is why all "civilizations" heavily relied on slaves (human and animals) for life above subsistence, at least until the discovery of fossil fuels.
Interestingly, 2000 calories per day is about 100 W. Compare this with the per capita consumption of primary energy of 9000 W in the US! All this surplus energy we consume at the cost of destroying life on our planet. The Swiss initiative "2000 W society" is advocating that we set ourselves the goal of living with 2000 W of power consumption per person worldwide. Note that this is smaller than the present 2400 W world power consumption, but much larger than the power consumption of many developing countries (India's is 800 W). I find this an excellent approach that puts the emphasis on the wealthy countries to reduce their wasteful power consumption (US is twice that of Europe and Japan!) and gives room for development for the developing countries. This is simply fair. The 2000 W can then hopefully come from mostly carbon-neutral energy sources. I strongly believe that we have to do both, reducing energy consumption and switch, at scale, to carbon-neutral energy sources.
On this last point, I am very glad that you mention the big difference between collecting energy (solar and wind) and using stored energy (fossil fuel, geothermal, nuclear energy - fission and fusion). As you said, collecting energy requires much more hardware and energy investment than using stored energy. I am therefore skeptical that solar or wind (collecting energy) will ever be able to replace fossil fuel (using stored energy) at scale. In fact, the only demonstration of successfully replacing all fossil fuel with another energy source was in France where all electricity production from fossil fuels was replaced with nuclear energy.
So, a real plan to stop CO2 emissions, as opposed to "guidelines" and voluntary emission reductions, would consist of a mandatory goal of bringing everybody's power consumption to 2000 W (still 20 times subsistence) and massively building nuclear power plants, likely best at existing coal power plants, to provide the 2000 W for every person or about 16 TW total. Continuing to reduce world population is also helpful!
No wise words (are there any in the face of this enormity?) but many thanks for this broad analysis of where we are. For me, just being able to get a handle on the big picture is enough to be getting on with!