magneze
🎧
Estimated by who?
Global financial system implosion begins
- Thread starter Falcon
- Start date
elbows
Well-Known Member
No it doesn't, unless you are using an impossibly narrow definition then it makes politics and forms of organisation even more relevant. It makes the stakes higher, the needs greater, and offers a period of instability that political people will take as an opportunity.
It is not possible to predict exactly which ideas, beliefs and forces will go down with the ship, committing themselves to stuff which will be obsolete in a hurry, and which will morph themselves to fit the times. Especially as we don't arrive at some resource-less world suddenly, providing an opportunity for forces whose days are ultimately numbered to remain on the scene for a while, perhaps even in the driving seat.
Who can dare to predict exactly what blend of cooperation and competition will drive us through the coming decades. Who can say what level of rationality those with power and those with relatively little power will achieve as they respond to events, or how quickly. How much war, how much inequality, and what forces may ultimately emerge as a counter-reaction to such horrors.
Well written, elbows - thank you for that.
You might find Korten's longish piece on diminishing returns at large scale interesting in the context of your post (if you haven't already seen it.). It is well worth reading in its entirety, as it packs a lot of foundational concepts in around complexity, systems theory, resilience, energy, and collapse dynamics. The references are also first class.
magneze
🎧
Your first link doesn't appear to support your assertion about 1 billion people. Maybe I missed that bit, can you point it out?
Look at the picture!
Others, including Ehrlich, Chefurka, Pimentel and Lovelock have arrived at similar numbers for population that may be sustainably supported in the absence of fossil fuels.
(Lovelock is more concerned about the impact of climate change on agriculture)
David Pimentel said:
James Lovelock said:
free spirit
more tea vicar?
sorry, but I respectfully disagree. In a post peak oil world the nature of the ruling political ethos will be vital in determining firstly how the economic system will cope with the loss of the cheap and abundant oil inputs, how the spoils from this economic system are distributed, and whether community level initiatives to improve the lot of people at the bottom of the system are encouraged or prevented.
For the latter point, think about the difference between how Cuba dealt with communities taking over areas of derelict land to grow their own food in the 90's when they lost the support from the USSR vs how the USA (or to a lesser extent the UK) has dealt with similar initiatives in areas where the local economy has tanked and the communities are struggling to survive. In Cuba these initiatives were actively encouraged and became government policy, whereas in the USA and here they're regularly evicted to protect the assets of private corporations that prefer to sit on their vast land banks and do nothing with them rather than allow local people to grow food on them.
it is estimated.... yeah well, it's also estimated by other people with a lot better credentials than those you've quoted for estimating such things that this figure really is a worst case scenario type figure, and if we approach the problem more logically and apply sustainable development principles properly, including a more equitable distribution of resources, then there could well be no need for some mass die off to happen at all.
I particularly like this quote from Ehrlich's wiki page...
definitely strikes me as being someone who's judgement on such issues should be taken as gospel.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
one thing I never get in all this oil = population growth debate is why nobody ever mentions the awkward fact that the fastest population growth rate over the last 30 years was in the continent with the lowest increase in oil consumption (Africa)?
I'm not denying that there is a link between the 2, but it's definitely not as clear cut as some make out.
I'm not denying that there is a link between the 2, but it's definitely not as clear cut as some make out.
Imports.
The last thing Big Agriculture would allow would be domestic food production for domestic consumption. We appropriate their oil and primary resources, process them, and sell oil based food and products back to them, allowing them to fund the imports with the debt we issue to them (only) for that purpose while protecting our own manufacturers from competition.
We don't measure the embedded energy in imports.
A "ruling political ethos" distributing spoils presupposes (1) a "ruling political structure" and (2) spoils. These are precisely the entities that will be lost post-peak.
Peak oil constitutes an existential threat to the legitimacy and continuity of government. This is explicitly recognised in policy and military doctrine (if not, for obvious reasons, widely advertised by the authorities):
One of the objectives of the recent rewrite of US Military doctrine has therefore been the task of preserving the integrity and functioning of domestic civil command and control and the legitimacy and authority of government after the collapse of the US economy. That is why, for example, they are repositioning combat troops on active duty on US soil and training them in US-specific martial command and control functions, fundamentally transforming the relationship between the citizen and the state in terms of the State's authority and scope under martial law, broadening the conditions under which martial law can be invoked, etc. The UK can't afford a domestic military capability, but is enthusiastically pursuing the necessary legal reforms and surveillance infrastructure.
It is by no means certain that preserving continuity of government is possible, and in at least one recent case, wasn't. For example, following the (regional peak oil induced) collapse of the Soviet Union, the rule of law and legitimacy of government collapsed entirely outside of a few core areas. We (the oil company I worked for) had no access to FSU oil and gas properties until fairly recently - whole regions spontaneously reverted to a structure of independent fiefdoms under control of strongmen, with limited trade and communications taking place under conditions of piracy. This was in a previously highly militarised and socially structured state. Collapse led to the loss of the military and civilian institutions that underpinned and enforced social structure - the precondition for a ruling political structure.
Cuba doesn't really provide a useful comparator. While it lost direct support of the USSR, it was still embedded within a functioning global political economy. As impaired as that connection was, it still had access to and the benefit of global operational fabric (its location in the tropics didn't hurt either - try systemic agricultural reform in country where 50% of your citizens risk freezing to death each 12 month cycle). In the scenario envisaged here, the global economy is not embedded in any higher, functional structure - it *is* the structure, and that structure has collapsed.
There are no spoils to distribute. We are in a condition referred to in ecology as "overshoot" - the population in the presence of a critical resource is higher than the ecosystem can support in the absence of that critical resource. We are in deficit, in relation to that absent critical resource. Spoils can be allocated. Deficits cannot.
magneze
🎧
Aha, I see. I was looking in the text. Thanks.
deke t lefel
Active Member
if individuals do not have access to debt, they will continue to revert to a substantial subsistence level; if large corporations continue to have access to increasing debt, they will be able to choose to consume or abandon smaller corporations
leading to a situation whereby the corporate body eventually devours the capitalist head
I was just about to mention this. Tropical environments are more supportive of "self-sufficient" systems: just the right mix of light, heat and water.
When climate change turns Europe tropical, UK will subsist on a diet of coconut, papaya, watermelon and banana.
toblerone3
Grrrrr
free spirit
more tea vicar?
Amount of irrigated land...
Cuba = 8700 km2
UK = 1950 km2
this land being largely irrigated by diesel pumps in Cuba.
so I don't really see that you or Falcon have a valid point here tbh.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Returning to the more immediate and obvious economic woe, I see that the threat of no further QE and concerns about Spain have been enough to get the markets in a tizzy again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17611764
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17611764
So Cuba needed a loan from an institution comprising the global economy's operational fabric. That loan was for injecting (oil based) fertiliser and (oil based) pesticide into the (oil powered) irrigation system, to boost crop yields, promote food security, and maintain employment.
You were offering Cuba as an example of how an economy can maintain stability post oil peak. It seems to prove exactly the opposite point.
In what way do we not have a valid point?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
the loan was in 2003, by which time Cuba's access to oil had sorted itself out via Venezuala, after which it wasn't necessary for it to keep up it's involuntary oil shock experiment.
The period I was referring was really the period from 1990 to the late 90's, when Cuba managed to cope with a ~25% overnight reduction in oil availability coupled with huge reductions in food imporst, via a whole series of sustainable agriculture / permaculture measures coupled with food rationing etc that enabled them to stave off the sort of mass die off / destruction of society and government structures that you and Jon seem to think would be inevitable consequences of post peak oil situations.
The main difference though I think is you appear to view it as inevitable that all global economic and political structures will cease to function under a post peak oil scenario. I see this as being far from inevitable, and even highly unlikely, and that countries will continue to have access to development funds that could be used to aid their transition.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
I love it when people not trained in ecology try to lecture those who are trained in ecology about ecological theories and how they can or can't be applied to a totally different situation.
... In the tropics. As I write this, it is April and there are three inches of snow outside my window. Are you really arguing that latitude is not a significant factor in agricultural areal yield?
Much as I love being lectured in my core disciplines, and when people give the appearance of making an argument without providing the substance of one. In what way is it a totally different situation?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
well I've not written it, so it's unlikely that that would be the argument I was making.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
ecological overshoot theory derives originally from studies of closed ecological systems, with organisms / creatures who have a total dependence on a single food source within that closed system, and minimal capacity for waste, efficiency savings, recognising and responding to their plight etc etc
The further from those conditions you get, the less the simplistic overshoot graphs and theory apply to the situation.
I think it's fairly obvious that we're pretty far removed from those conditions, therefore simplistic overshoot theories / graphs have minimal relationship to our situation.
It's also not completely irrelevant, and I'd have no problem with someone using it as a base starting point for discussing the issue, providing they also discuss the added complexities, reasons why the simplistic graph doesn't apply here etc etc. But this somehow never seems to happen - apologies if you were intending to expand further on your post to explain more about the complexities of ecological overshoot theory when applied to peak oil / human population.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
or to put it another way.
simple overshoot scenario
rabbits on a small island with no predators and rabbits only able to eat grass, and no other grazing animals.
factors involved
number of rabbits
breeding rate of rabbits
area of grass
growth rate of grass
soil fertility replenishment rate from rabbit droppings and other sources
eventually the amount of grass the rabbit population needs to eat per day will exceed the growth rate of the grass across the whole island, or in other words will exceed the carrying capacity of the island.
The rabbits will not be aware of this fact, and will continue to breed like er rabbits, and munching their way through pretty much every blade of grass on the island, and in doing so drastically degrade the grass's growth rate, and therefore the islands carrying capacity until the vast majority of the rabbits on the island starve to death, with the few remaining rabbits just about able to scratch a life from the remnants of the grass and the carrying capacity of the island will remain massively reduced until so many rabbits have died off that the grass has chance to recover... at which point the rabbits will start breeding again and the cycle will probably repeat itself... or the grass land will end up being taken up by ferns or something else that the rabbits can't eat, and the carrying capacity will be permanently degraded.
So even that's not a massively simple scenario, and evolution would probably eventually result in rabbits that produce less offspring dominating until there breeding rate better approximates the growth rate of the grass or some of the rabbits developing a taste for ferns, or learning to kill off the young of their rivals or something.
This is the sort of scenario that can be relatively accurately represented by this graph.
It also definitely can be applied to some extent to significant areas of human activity, such as over fishing of the seas dramatically reducing the number of fish available to reproduce etc. But unlike rabbits we have the ability to take actions other than most of us dying of starvation in reaction to this issue, by switching to other foods, recognising the situation and taking action to conserve fish stocks, fish farms, reducing waste etc.
Oil has made a massive difference and has unquestionably played a major part in enabling the massive growth in human population and the increase in quality of life for most. But it has also resulted in massively wasteful systems of food productions and distribution, energy use in buildings, transport, industry etc etc. Basically we have a far greater array of options at our disposal, and intelligence to enable us to adapt to this scenario than the rabbits do, so the simplistic graph above should maybe act as a warning of what could result from us ignoring the warning signs entirely, but shouldn't be seen as necessarily pre-determining the outcome of the next century.
Without wanting to underplay the dangers of the situation, we as a species have a far greater ability to determine our destiny than the rabbits do.
simple overshoot scenario
rabbits on a small island with no predators and rabbits only able to eat grass, and no other grazing animals.
factors involved
number of rabbits
breeding rate of rabbits
area of grass
growth rate of grass
soil fertility replenishment rate from rabbit droppings and other sources
eventually the amount of grass the rabbit population needs to eat per day will exceed the growth rate of the grass across the whole island, or in other words will exceed the carrying capacity of the island.
The rabbits will not be aware of this fact, and will continue to breed like er rabbits, and munching their way through pretty much every blade of grass on the island, and in doing so drastically degrade the grass's growth rate, and therefore the islands carrying capacity until the vast majority of the rabbits on the island starve to death, with the few remaining rabbits just about able to scratch a life from the remnants of the grass and the carrying capacity of the island will remain massively reduced until so many rabbits have died off that the grass has chance to recover... at which point the rabbits will start breeding again and the cycle will probably repeat itself... or the grass land will end up being taken up by ferns or something else that the rabbits can't eat, and the carrying capacity will be permanently degraded.
So even that's not a massively simple scenario, and evolution would probably eventually result in rabbits that produce less offspring dominating until there breeding rate better approximates the growth rate of the grass or some of the rabbits developing a taste for ferns, or learning to kill off the young of their rivals or something.
This is the sort of scenario that can be relatively accurately represented by this graph.
It also definitely can be applied to some extent to significant areas of human activity, such as over fishing of the seas dramatically reducing the number of fish available to reproduce etc. But unlike rabbits we have the ability to take actions other than most of us dying of starvation in reaction to this issue, by switching to other foods, recognising the situation and taking action to conserve fish stocks, fish farms, reducing waste etc.
Oil has made a massive difference and has unquestionably played a major part in enabling the massive growth in human population and the increase in quality of life for most. But it has also resulted in massively wasteful systems of food productions and distribution, energy use in buildings, transport, industry etc etc. Basically we have a far greater array of options at our disposal, and intelligence to enable us to adapt to this scenario than the rabbits do, so the simplistic graph above should maybe act as a warning of what could result from us ignoring the warning signs entirely, but shouldn't be seen as necessarily pre-determining the outcome of the next century.
Without wanting to underplay the dangers of the situation, we as a species have a far greater ability to determine our destiny than the rabbits do.
For example, with the single exception (see next point) of solar influx, the earth.
Too simplistic. Overshoot recognises that the least abundant critical *resource* is the limiting factor on population size. It is not about *food*. Oil is used for food. It is also used for heating, cooling, shelter, water production, sanitation, medicine, socio-economic stability, physical security - each of which constitutes a potential limiting resource. As the single point of failure of multiple critical systems, "oil" is the critical resource, not food. In the absence of oil, the next least abundant critical resource becomes the limiting factor. That might be the areal productive yield of solar agricultural systems, degraded by climate instability and bee die off (one of the casualties of the biophysical contradiction set up by sustaining a population of 7 billion through pesticides). Last time we checked, at a time when the solar agricultural system was *not* degraded by climate instability, and we had a functioning bee pollination system, the population was 70% lower.
We are, according to the IEA's summary of scientific consensus, five years from irreversible climate instability induced by saturation of the closed system's waste sink capacity - an event that is likely to lead to the extinction of 20%-30% of plant and animal species, many of which we depend on either directly or indirectly.
Perhaps we read different newspapers. I see the Capitalist system just getting into its stride in persuading a gullible and complacent citizenry that peak oil and climate change are mere "theory", and that there is no plight, and a citizenry that seems to be buying it. The only material response I see to peak oil at the moment is the Chinese ramping up coal fired electricity production, and the Americans ramping up shale oil and gas operations - processes which have a 20% *higher* carbon footprint than coal operations.
No. I don't think it's obvious at all.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Well thats one of the areas that differentiates us. By looking at the system as a whole, might lose sight of the fact that there will be still be spoils for some. Less carrot to use on populations as a whole, sure, but if anything the scarcity makes a variety of spoils even more desirable. So its not hard to imagine structures that support the gathering of spoils, and the uneven distribution of them, surviving for a long time post-peak in one form or another. As I said before it is not easy to make assumptions about the level of competition or the level of co-operation that will exist at those times, but we can be sure that there will still be no shortage of people with their eyes on the prizes that are still within reach. The pie will shrink but some will be looking for a wider slice to make up for this, and who knows how sane the powerful and the disenfranchised will be when that time comes. A range of precipices on offer for us to fall over, with war being the most obvious.
Also who knows what ideas will catch on. Sometimes people enter a strange embrace with their fate, one way to come to terms with it and live with it is to shift your values to fit, to recast yourself as a warrior or preacher of the cause. And Im not talking about the sort of thing we've seen up until this point, but something more driven & puritanical. Let alone all the people who think the opportunity for change of their political choice may as well be seized and struggled for once everything has gone wobble in a big way, there are other as yet relatively unconsidered directions which people may turn towards in their time of great woe.
I'm sympathetic to your argument, elbows. I'd agree if we had the luxury of time, some workable arrangement might be arrived at from the theoretical possibilities you sketch out. The problem is, we don't have time. In fact, we can work out how little time we have. The primary energy supply is depleting at 10% per year - a halving time of 7 years, or a 85% reduction in 21 years. We can't substitute it with hydrocarbon because of climate change. We can't substitute it with renewables because we cant construct renewable capacity at anything like that implied rate. So we can estimate fairly accurately the per-capita calorie and kWh depletion rate, recalling that the population is growing, bio services are degrading, and you can't current do anything without financial capital, which requires an expanding system.
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