Originally posted October 2018; updated May Sep 2019 March 2020
Happy Vernal Equinox - 2020: A Black Swan Trigger for the Collapse. George Mobus, Question Everything. March 19, 2020.
Might the SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus be the black swan event that puts us past the tipping point? The virus itself, and the disease it causes, Covid-19, is certainly dangerous in its own right (though the actual death rate is not really known because we don't have accurate data on the actual number of cases) I wouldn't worry about it decimating the population. Rather what concerns me is the so-called 'knock-on' effects or the cascade of disruptions to our very brittle economic (and political) systems. Yesterday I went to Costco for some supplies (not toilet paper thank you) and was a little taken aback at the empty shelves where some of my favorite items could generally be found. Our global economy and distributed production/supply chains are vulnerable to disruptions. Like people not working in order to avoid contacting those with the virus. As we have seen over the past week, whole countries and most of the states in the US are ordering lock-downs and self-isolation to "flatten the curve", i.e. prevent the kind of spikes seen in China and now Italy. If people don't work, the work doesn't get done. If the work doesn't get done many people don't get paid, and then they don't buy stuff or pay their rents. The economy comes to a grinding halt.
Unfortunately the way our global means of production and distribution are so strongly interdependent, and thus brittle, if you break anything you break everything. Once this virus begins to subside you cannot just restart everything. We will be lucky if this ends in a 'simple' depression. But I really don't think that is going to be the playbook. The Great Depression was ended not so much by the onset of WWII but by the fact that we had access to cheap oil and coal to power the reconstruction of industry. WWII just provided the impetus to reconstruct industry rapidly and at the scale that took place. We do not have the luxury of having access to cheap energy now.
Watching Evolution in Real-time
Humans have, for a very long time, been able to subvert the processes of natural selection that have keep all prior animal populations in check. We have occasionally met with a plague disease that had a temporary impact on the population counts but all of these experiences occurred when populations were separated by distances that kept the diseases from spreading as a global pandemic. Today, globalization and extreme personal mobility has eliminated that checkpoint. We're now learning that the coronavirus is likely to have been transmitted widely before the outbreak in Wuhan, China. The virus has been incubating for a time longer than usual for the flu. And the symptoms of Covid-19 for most people look like colds of mild flu. Thus even when it was starting to show itself we were already behind the eight-ball. The experts are still trying to understand the epidemiological dynamics but one thing is clear, it will take extreme measures to get people to change their behaviors to provide the needed isolation. Just this morning Governor Jay Inslee announced restrictions on large assemblies which will kill a lot of concerts, ComiCon, and other events.
Which leads to another, even less well understood, phenomena that will put severe pressure on even the uninfected. The response to coronavirus is almost certainly going to drag the economic system into depression as mentioned. There is likely to be a complete collapse of the financial system since most businesses as well as most households, and the governments of the world are now deeply in unsustainable debt. Capitalism, even the Chinese version, cannot survive for long without the artificial monetary support having been given by the credit markets. Look at what has been happening to the smaller oil and gas fracking operators who have been depending on debt to keep going. Many (and by the time this is published, perhaps most) will fold for lack of cash. Their operating costs far exceed the price they get for the oil they pump. Say goodbye to the American energy self-sufficiency.
The global, capitalistic economy is an entangled mess of supply chains and labor services. As such it is primed for a domino take-down. It is brittle and resilience or adaptation to the new economic realities would come at a great price for energy, just when we have entered the peak of global production.
And then, on a slightly longer time scale (but within the lifetime of young adults living now) there is the spectre of radical climate chaos. Note that in spite of all of the talk of the last two decades, the greens claiming the potential of transitioning to renewable energy, and the UN insisting that all we need to do is reduce our carbon emissions, neither the energy production of so-called renewables, nor the reductions in carbon emissions have even begun to meet the promise.
These three forces, along with a host of consequent sub-forces will provide the selection that will check human growth and consumption. And that is a good thing in my opinion.
It looks like humanity might have reached the point at which the Earth will finally reign us in.
Human Nature
I must confess I have been very disappointed in Homo sapiens. We don't deserve the species name, sapiens. We are not very sapient [A Theory of Sapience] (perhaps we should have the species name, 'pre-sapiens' or even 'pseudo-sapiens'). Except for a very few people we could consider as 'wise,' the vast majority of human beings have proven to be quite foolish, and there is evidence that human intelligence and ability to learn and reason about complex issues has actually declined over the past 5,000 to 10,000 years (average braincase sizes have declined by several hundred cubic centimeters - our brains are smaller than our ancestors'). The choices we make on average have been inexorably leading us collectively down a path of increasing over complexity and increasing dysfunction in all of our major (and many minor) institutions.
We are now witness to the rise of truly massive selection forces and seeing natural selection in real-time.
I don't hate humanity. The species evolved as circumstances dictated. We became sentient, then established a foothold on the shore of sapience. We evolved tremendous intelligence and creativity. But we failed to evolve the full promise of sapience which would have provided a self-monitoring (for individuals and societies) and regulating capabilities to keep us from making the choices that led to over-consumption and unrestricted growth. While there have always been a few wise people who have observed and warned us of the dangers of our hubris, since the vast majority of humans were not sufficiently minimally sapient they did not pay attention or heed the warning. And here we are today.
Consequences
I still won't try to predict what will happen exactly; after all a black swan, by definition, is unpredictable. But, I am confident this doesn't end well for most of us. Some of us, including me likely at this point, in the pandemic. But many more are going to face conflict, expulsion from homelands due to climate changes, starvation (same cause), increasingly destructive weather events, and the list goes on. In the end, only a small population of either lucky or wise enough humans will survive. There is still the full cataclysmic scenario of complete extinction, say if the methane bomb goes off (or nuclear bombs). I still don't think it will get to that. My sense of timing tells me that this coronavirus and its demolition of the global capitalist, consumerist economy has come just in time to provide the necessary negative feedback to prevent a full on cataclysm. Of course, for those of us who will face which ever scenario it will certainly seem cataclysmic. But, this is just nature restoring balance so life can get a fresh start, with or without a species of Homo.
In the meantime, try to enjoy the springing forth of life this Vernal Equinox. What else is there to do?
Autumnal Equinox - 2019. George Mobus, Question Everything. Sep. 23, 2019.
Three Books You Should Read and a Big Question
First the question. How did we get here?
Here, of course, means the impending collapse of global civilization, of technologically-based cultures, of the majority of the human population, of the great die-off of species, in short the demise of a significant portion of Earth's biomass.
Though not everyone has given up hope, nor do I suggest that would be a good idea, there is a significant number of people, influencers, thought leaders, etc. who have now publicly acknowledged the threats of global warming. Fewer have realized the nature of the energy crisis, mostly because of the hype surrounding the so-called 'fracking revolution.' But this too figures in the mix of existential threats. Just about the time people get serious about adapting to climate change and sea rise, the energy needed to accomplish the significant amount of work needed will not be available! Ironic, really.
Hordes of climate refugees seeking water to drink and food to eat, let alone adequate shelter, will increasingly find hostile locals in the regions where they seek relief. That is already happening in Europe and the US/Mexico areas. But what is going to really exacerbate things is that the water and food in those regions will be shrinking due to soil depletion, ground water loss, and, of course, increasingly unfavorable climate conditions.
Where we are is in a system (all the parts are connected through various feedback mechanisms) that is suffering from multiple failure modes all at once. But, that begs the question: Why?
To get some background and context there are two books that might be of interest to you. They are actually only representative of a growing literature on the anomalous conditions in our civilization. These books do not answer the Why question, but they do examine the dysfunctions in major social institutions which, in turn, may point to the answer. And, then there is one book that might be seen to provide some response to the Why question.
The first is "Against Democracy" by Jason Brennan. From the book jacket: "Jason Brennan (Ph.D., 2007) is Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business, and by courtesy, Professor of Philosophy, at Georgetown University. He specializes in issues at the intersection of politics, philosophy, and economics." Basically Brennan provides some very reasonable arguments for why democracy, representative or otherwise, fails to deliver on the promises it supposedly makes. He does not suggest that any other forms of governance that have been tried, historically, have done any better in terms of providing a social milieu in support of the citizens. In fact, quite the opposite. Rather he promotes something he calls Epistomocracy, meaning governance by the knowledgeable. In order to hold office or even vote for office holders, citizens would have to be provably knowledgeable in subjects of economics and civics (at least). This is not too different from what Jefferson claimed, that democracy depends on the participants to be well-educated, where "well" meant having a grasp of the humanities and not just some technical knowledge. Brennan is a little more specific in terms of what kind of education, but the sentiment is the same. Of course, the problem is that the majority of people in any society are generally ignorant and, it would seem, increasingly stupid as well. They certainly show no propensity to learn from experience, let alone textbooks.
Brennan paints a pretty bleak picture about the prospects of anything we would recognize as true democracy, where all citizens get to participate in politics and governance, if they want. Judging by the political evolution of the major world democracies, with so-called hard-right strongmen winning elections and promoting things like effective plutocracy, it can certainly be argued that Brennan is onto something.
The second book tackles another sacred cow of the modern world view, capitalism. Capitalism is bigger than democracy. Capitalism can thrive under regimes of autocracy, even presumptive communism! But according to Wolfgang Streek, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Research and Professor of Sociology at Cologne University, in "How Will Capitalism End?", capitalism everywhere is already in serious decline and will, as is happening with democracy for political power, fail to deliver the goods. Moreover, capitalism is self-destructing. Marx, of course, famously claimed the same thing. And much of Streek's arguments align with some aspects of Marxism. But there are significant differences and Streek does not see some version of socialism replacing capitalism when the latter falls (Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez notwithstanding). In fact Streek seems to be saying that while something might eventually come along that restores a social political-economy of some kind, he doesn't see anything on the horizon.
The book primarily examines the multiple internal inconsistencies within neoliberal capitalism (as practiced in the West), some of which are also present in, for example, the Russian oligarchic and the Chinese collectivist versions. [Another major problem with capitalism is presented by Naomi Klein in "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate".] The bottom line in all cases is that the continued production and expansion of capital inherently leads to its own destruction. A simple example of this, one I have written about frequently, is the notion that endless economic (capital) growth is a physical impossibility simply because resources are not infinite and wastes accumulate.
Capitalism and democracy, in the end, should be about the governance of an economic system that supports human existence and they are diametrically opposite in terms of the distributive functions of either. Democracy seeks to distribute the wealth, capitalism seeks to concentrate it in a few hands. They both interact in complex ways (so does plutocracy and collectivist autocracy). Their inherent deficiencies and dysfunctional designs as well as their natural antagonism contribute to each other's destruction. They are holding hands tripping down the path that leads to a cliff in the fog. The so-called leaders are completely clueless - some actually think, for example, that a Green New Deal is a possible solution!
What both books highlight is the role of human stupidity and ignorance as the underlying causal factors in the failures of these two realms. The third book I shamelessly recommend, is my own that attempts to answer the question as to why are human beings so stupid and ignorant? The answer, I claim, has to do with a retardation in what had been the evolution of the cognitive capacity that makes us as human as we are, our capacity for gaining and using wisdom, or sapience. The title is: "A Theory of Sapience: Using Systems Science to Understand the Nature of Wisdom and the Human Mind."
[note: this penultimate draft will be available for free download for several more months, but Cambridge Scholars Books will be publishing a revised print version shortly and the MAHB library version will be removed. Also you can catch my interview on Doomstead Dinerin which I talk a bit about this book.]
My thesis is that there are not just three mental domains, intelligence, creativity, and affect, the classical ones psychologists have studied. There is a fourth (more recently coming under scrutiny in psychology), wisdom. The latter is characterized as superior judgment and intuitions with respect to complex, messy, or wicked social problems. My research found that sapience, the brain capacity to attain wisdom over one's lifetime, depends on several styles or modes of thinking (especially subconscious thinking). These are strong moral sentiments meaning a sense of conscience, strategic, and systems thinking. In a broad survey of the literature on the psychology of wisdom these factors stand out as common to most studies in one form or another. When all four of these factors, judgment, moral sentiment, strategic, and systems thinking are in full bloom, the individual is in a good position to learn from life's experiences and to use that knowledge, that is wisdom, to provide the most helpful solutions to problems. They have learned deep mental models of how the world works, can think in terms of the long-term and the broadest space (strategic), can think systemically about all of the factors and interactions that are involved in the problem, and are strongly motivated to help their fellow humans.
Wisdom is what puts intelligence and creativity to positive work for other humans' benefit. Without it, intelligence and creativity are left to be used as maliciously as we witness in practice. Some of the most evil people (meaning selfish, self-centered, greedy, etc.) who are successful, in a financial sense, are often very clever. They have to be to be devious enough to take advantage of their fellow humans. And those taken advantage of are just not clever enough to recognize it.
Sapience can be dulled and thwarted. The designs of our capitalistic system does a great job of that. But its strength is based on strong genetic influence. Given a sufficient level of sapience, an individual can overcome the programming of society and learn to use their intelligence and creativity to not be stupid and ignorant. Unfortunately, high sapience is a rare commodity in human mentation. The average human possesses just enough to possess vague consciousness of being conscious. Just enough to possess the typical traits of our species such as language and an ability to solve not-too-complicated local problems. Just enough sapience to call our species Homo sapiens. But that isn't enough.
The problems humanity has created for itself come directly from exercising cleverness to gain convenience and power. No thinking about future consequences. No concern for egalitarian ideals, No sense of how everything affects everything else. We just plow ahead full speed to find new ways to dominate the planet. And so here we are.
Happy Equinox
Could there be any hope? George Mobus, Question Everything. Apr. 25, 2019.
The hope of which I speak is for the genus Homo, not our current civilization. The later is almost certainly going to collapse and likely come to completion within the next two to three decades. The collapse has already begun as evidenced by global events [some of my earlier musings here]. It is amazing to me how the mainstream media continue to consume the political/economic story about how the economy is doing so well even if growth is slow by historical standards. I take it as just a reflection of how so many people hold out a sense of hope for civilization as we have it today to continue, albeit as a green new deal or even business as usual.
Such hope is misplaced in my view. It will allow people to avoid planning for survival and how to reorganize some semblance of a future social system. Humans are necessarily social creatures and some kind of social system is essentially mandatory for human beings to maintain their humanity. Of course, also in my view, this lack of forethought by the majority of humans will solve the overpopulation problem, painfully. So those persons who do not harbor a false hope, can see that any civilization remotely resembling what we have today is doomed to collapse, will be considering what actions they should take to survive said collapse (or see to it that their offspring have a chance) and be ready to execute their plan [Collapse 3.0]. Realize that neither I nor anyone can tell you what that plan should be. Collapses are, almost by definition, chaos. And in any chaotic dynamic one cannot predict exactly what will happen, or when. The best advice I can give is that one should be vigilant, observe what is happening in the world and, particularly pay attention to the rates of change, and maintain an ability to proactively adapt to the consequences.
I strongly suspect there will be survivors. I also believe the best general approach to survival will involve a group effort; strength in numbers as it were. In all likelihood these groups will survive in pockets. And the most successful will have preserved a variety of hand tools with which they can construct some form of social center. I do not believe humans will return necessarily to pure hunter-gatherer groups. Some form of agriculture will be involved (as long-time readers will know I promote the concepts of permaculture).
Despite the inevitability of collapse of our technological civilization, there are a number of things that society should be doing right now to moderate the rate and severity of the collapse, thus giving some better chances for survival of some. Bear in mind, I do not believe these actions will actually be taken because the extent of true sapience, and the wisdom it entails, in the population, especially the ruling class, is at an absolute minimum. If it were otherwise, these actions would already be undertaken. Or, perhaps, the predicaments we face wouldn't even exist in the first place.
I divide these actions into near-term, intermediate-term, and long-term periods. Some things we need to be doing right now. Others need to be started now but will not show results for a decade or more. And some things, like reorganizing our social systems and our political-economy, represent a transition to a new kind of organization of life itself.
Near-term
These are pretty radical, but absolutely essential just to slow down the rates of change that will be principle drivers of collapse. They all need to be done in parallel. They are all priority one.
The first, and most radical in light of the predominant economic paradigm, we need to cease capitalism and profit-making. That also means ceasing consumption-based commerce. Yes it will destroy the economy. Jobs will be lost but see below for new jobs that would be created. The point is, the economy depends on energy and we get the vast majority of that from burning fossil fuels. This is a simple fact. If you grow the economy, or make profits, you will be producing more greenhouse gas. The economy has to slow way down [those of you familiar with the concept of 'power' will recognize that it is the rate of energy consumption per unit time that is the real culprit here: a slower economic process will consume less overall energy and lower the rate of carbon emissions.] Capitalists must relinquish their cherished notions of growing their wealth. Indeed...
What wealth has been concentrated in the hands of the 10% needs to be confiscated (or at minimum heavily taxed) and used to provide minimal incomes for the bottom 25% and used to help finance the other steps given below. All governments would need to coordinate their tax policies, but all citizens will need to pay up to their abilities. Its gonna cost.
Start building and deploying CO2 scrubbers powered by nuclear reactors that produce mineral-absorbed solids, calcium carbonate, for example, that can be safely buried. I know all of the arguments against nuclear given by my green friends but I can't see anything else that can be done from a technological perspective that can begin to have an impact on reducing the carbon loading that already exists. We know that this is actually feasible since we have a whole fleet of nuclear-powered submarines that use such scrubbers to purge CO2 from the air so that the subs can remain underwater for months at a time. Building a set of dedicated reactors, like those in the submarines, should be a straightforward job. Deploying these units will be a little more problematic but is not insurmountable. What would be needed for this as well as the other near-term projects (below) will be a super-WWII mobilization effort. It would require diverting much government spending away from current programs. And it would need to be an international cooperative effort. France, the US, and Japan can build the reactors, Germany, Russia, and China can build the scrubbers. And many other NATO and southern hemisphere countries can provide logistics support in getting them transported and installed, operations, and then burying the minerals. There are many additional aspects that would require attention, such as training nuclear engineers and operators.
And, most of all, it would require substantial sacrifices from the citizenry. But it is all technically, logistically, and operationally feasible. Tactically, it is another question. And since there is no strategic thinking going on anywhere in the governments of the world... You can see why I am so pessimistic.
Cease all timber operations, especially in the tropic zones. Begin a massive effort to replant forests in both tropic and temperate zones. Cease all beef production. Allow some dairy but only with grass-fed cows (to reduce their belching and farting!) Start a massive project to restore soils to natural fertility. The forest and soils restoration will involve significant manual labor and lots of jobs. These projects need to be started immediately since their beneficial impact will take time to realize.
There is no way in hell that the political system is going to make these things happen. In all likelihood it will require a takeover by the militaries, a suspension of some liberties, and the establishment of a council of wise elders to provide the strategic leadership that is needed. Anyone know where we could find such people? Hint: with a few notable exceptions don't look at the current class of politicos. They have all pretty much been corrupted by money and power.
Intermediate-term
One of the primary tasks for the next several decades, if not centuries, will be to ensure the continuation of the work started in the short-term. A key to this will be the revamping of the education system to focus on training for skills needed for survival and for continuing the operations of the CO2 abatement and ecosystems restoration projects. Many of these jobs will involve a considerable amount of manual labor, to be sure. But some number of workers will need more advanced technical knowledge and this will help keep our scientific and engineering knowledge relevant and preserved.
Long-term
Over the next century mankind must undertake a project to completely restructure the form of the human social system. This means the structure of how we form communities, how we produce material goods and services, how we exchange these, and, most importantly, how we form a governance subsystem to apply social self-regulation to the whole system. This latter is absolutely necessary in order to maintain a proper relation with the whole of the Ecos. To do this we have many hurdles to overcome, not the least of which is our own innate nature. We are still substantially great apes. Our species did cross a threshold of consciousness in acquiring sapience to the degree we have. But that is not enough. For many centuries now we have been experimenting with forms of governance, cultural norms (mores), and institutions meant to apply social self-regulation in order to reduce our penchant for cut-throat competition and our natural tendencies to let our emotional states be bent by in-group/out-group psychologies [The Evolution of Governance]. We have had some partial successes, thankfully. But so much more needs to be done. The extent of our failings are enshrined in the rise to power of right-wing strongmen like Trump in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil (to name just a few). These people are motivated by deep-seated hatreds for out-groups and some kind of sense of (delusional) superiority. They, and their followers, are prime examples of the relative weakness of sapience in a large number of our species, a large enough number to have a negative influence on our social discourse.
In the long-run humanity's only real hope is to work at increasing the level of sapience for the majority. This is in contrast to the typical notion of increasing intelligence in the population. Intelligence is not the whole story of good decision-making. Some creativity is needed as well (intelligence + creativity = cleverness). But it is cleverness that has gotten us into our current predicament. We can invent clever solutions to problems, like rapid transportation of people and bulk weight by burning fossil fuels, but never wisely ask what of the long-term consequences of doing so. It takes superior sapience to acquire superior wisdom. And it takes the latter to even ask the right questions about long-term consequences, let alone come up with veridical scenarios of the future.
How sapience might be increased in the course of time is a somewhat complex proposition. Some of it has to do with culture and acculturation. We humans are already past the threshold of sapience, but how far past that threshold is not known. My claims are based on observations of the current foolishness that I witness in the world. It may be possible that the average human is actually more sapient than I give credit but is hindered in development by the kind of culture in which we live. In that case, there is hope that more people would develop more wisdom in life, if they grew up in a culture that valued and lived wisdom (ancient cultures, for example, venerated elders for their wisdom). Instead of being fed on the promotion of material wealth, if children and young adults lived in a culture of wisdom, perhaps more people would gain wisdom themselves. The problem is the lure of materiality that draws cultures away from that ideal. Modern day Japan is an example. Not that long ago young Japanese children were taught to venerate the elders. But a quick look at the developments in modern Japanese culture suggests that the promotion of wisdom is a thin veneer in a society. Japanese young adults are being very quick to adopt Western cultural standards, which are about as far as one can get from wisdom.
So a cultural environment might help to some degree. Nurture might provide part of the answer. But I am strongly of the opinion (not, I should hasten to say, backed up by data but only observations!) that the genetic propensities for the biological aspects, the genetic basis for brain development of sapience, is at fault. You can read most of my arguments for this position here which is a short version of my forthcoming book on the subject that will be available soon - announcement shortly).
In the long-run, we humans will need to address the genetic basis of sapience and explore the potentials it has evolutionarily. I have become convinced that our brains can evolve further to produce a much superior form of sapience and, thus, a much greater capacity for acquiring wisdom - veridical knowledge of how the world works. This does not necessarily translate into an increase in overall size (childbirth is already a painful act). If my conjectures regarding the part of the prefrontal cortex responsible for the management of sapience is correct, then it will be the relative sizes of that area (called Brodmann area 10) compared with other cortical areas that will produce the increase. This can be managed not by necessarily evolving new cell types, but by the developmental program governing that area either starting its development sooner in fetal life, or keeping it going longer, or both. That means that a minor change in the governing network of genes would be all that is necessary.
In the future, humanity needs to become involved in its own evolution such that it supports the further development of the qualities of sapience. The benefits should be quite profound. We do not need a planet full of clever geniuses or athletic Adonis-like people. We need, desperately, a planet full of people able to see reality as it is and lay plans for behaviors that lead to sustainable life for ourselves and for the rest of the Ecos. We need true wisdom. We need a new species of humans that is eusapient, truly wise.
How this is to be accomplished is subject to much conjecture. I am not in a position to prescribe a pathway. It may entail genetic engineering (now that we have the CRISPR technology!) or selective breeding (assortative mating). Who knows? It may involve all of the above and more. But one thing is very clear to me. Humanity must actively seek to further its own evolution beyond mere sapience. Its great that we have language and can talk to one another. But the content of our speech must be valuable and lead to better outcomes with respect to our service to the planet and consequent sustainability as a genus.
These days my interests have turned to thoughts about what an ideal social system for humanity might look like and how it might evolve. This comes out of an exercise to systemically analyze our current condition and apply some of my findings from a systems analysis of things like naturally occurring "economies" (e.g., metabolism in cells) and "governance" (brains) systems. Nature is replete with examples of evolved organization that we should consider when thinking about the human condition and future.
Let me recommend an excellent book by Tyler Volk at NYU called "Quarks to Cultures: How We Came to Be", Columbia University Press, New York. Tyler paints a very clear picture of the universal evolution of higher and higher complexity in stages of organization that is very similar to what I have termed "ontogenesis", he calls it "combogenesis". He and I have started a conversation about what we think the next stage (after nation-states) might entail, what kind of humans will be involved, what sort of social system they will have, and how the collective of humanity might actually provide something like a planet-scale consciousness (become the brain of Gaia!).
I'll be exploring this more in blogs to come, I think.
Spring Equinox - 2019: Climate Chaos and More. George Mobus, Question Everything. March 20, 2019.
I honestly did not expect to be a witness to the end of civilization when I started blogging those many years ago. Though I thought I could clearly see where the trends (energy, climate, social) were heading and tried to lay out the targuments for why we needed to change our ways, I thought that the really bad outcomes would post-date my life. I grieved for my children, of course. But never really thought I would be witness to the end game itself.
Now I'm not so sure. In fact I think that recent developments in climate science, energy science, and political science make it clear that we have entered the end game already. My Italian colleague, Ugo Bardi, speaks of the Seneca Cliff phenomena (Seneca the Roman philosopher who noted that prosperity builds gradually and then declines rapidly as if falling off a cliff). My own simulation models of civilization show a gradual build up of wealth with a sudden falling down once the limits of growth are reached. I just didn't realize how close to the edge of the cliff we were.
We will not be able to save civilization as we know it by any kind of technological magic. The rate of onset of climate change (notice the weather anomalies of late?) and the catastrophic collapse of fossil fuel energies (fracked wells are falling in production as we speak) not to mention the collapse of fisheries, soil depletions, and the insane left-vs-right political strife all mark the clear signatures of collapse, but this time on a global scale.
On the energy front, the hope was that alternative energy sources such as solar or wind would replace carbon-based fuels to provide the kind of power we would need to carry on with civilization as we understood it. That is not happening. Not only is the rate of conversion from carbon to green insufficient, relative to the rate of climate disruption, for example, but we still have no real certainty that these alternatives would ever be able to provide the substitute power needed to keep civilization going, even if in some reduced material form, and provide the energy needed to adapt to the new climate regimen (and provide clean water, etc.). Its a race and humanity is losing.
I'm calling the game over. I just cannot see a solution that has humanity going on in any kind of lifestyle that we have grown accustomed to in the 21st century. Its all about the trends and relative rates of change.
Its all about the momentum. Global warming is baked into the cake at this point. Even if we were to miraculously find a way to extract and sequester CO2 from our atmosphere we still could not prevent catastrophic warming. We waited too late to react.
I've taken as many factors into account as I can. I've processed the data as best I can. I hope I am wrong in my conclusions, but so far I haven't been (except for thinking I would be gone before all of the s**t hit the fan). Go back in the archives of this blog if you don't believe me. I've called it and it is coming to pass. I'm very sorry I could not have been more effective in convincing more and more influential people that these systemic issues were coming to a head.
My advice is head for the hills.
On a more hopeful note, those that do head for the hills may find ways to survive in spite of a civilization collapse. I'm not predicting the near-term extinction of our species, just the loss of a technological society. Indeed, such a collapse would be necessary to save some of the biosphere for future efflorescence of new species, as has happened in previous major die-offs. What I sincerely hope is that some of the survivors will attempt to preserve knowledge, key knowledge (as in systems science) with which to restart the social process, but the next time, with understanding of the mistakes we have made, like blind belief in capitalism, materialism, and economic growth.
I'm certain I won't make it through a collapse (too old). But I hope some of my offerings in this blog and in my book with coauthor Mike Kalton do. The principles of systems science hold the key to re-discovering the other sciences. Survivors and their progeny will be well served by that knowledge. A straightforward example is the nature of permaculture. Systems science is built into the concepts and practices - treating a self-sustaining community as a system. If you want to enhance your progeny's chances of survival, start a permaculture commune. The descriptions can be found in the archives of this blog.
And, good luck.
Happy (sic) New Year Heading into the New Year - 2019. Mobus, ?E. Dec. 31, 2018.
As we prepare to welcome a new year, some of us with hope that things will improve compared to 2018, I'm afraid I have some sobering news to share. I've been tracking the major world trends, the dynamics of our social systems as well as the conditions of the natural world, for more than three decades. Ever since I became aware of the threat of carbon emissions on the atmosphere (and oceans) and the rapidly accelerating depletion of fossil fuels with commensurate increases in the cost of extraction, I have continued to ask what is going on here? What are we humans doing wrong that is causing these major potential catastrophes? And why are all of our institutions seeming to fail? I devoted this blog to these questions. The mainstream media and politicians and the like have tried to paint a rosy picture of the situations. They have projected that in spite of one problem after another, in the long run life would return to "normal", whatever that is. The standard pablum is that once we get economic growth back on track all will be fine again.
But what is the reality? Growth in the economy, year-over-year increases in the GDP, has not really materialized, though the official government reports do their best to make it seem so. The middle class in many countries has been shrinking as families at the bottom end fall into poverty and those at the top end fall toward the middle. The actual statistics of income and wealth distribution in the US make it clear that this kind of economy, the neoliberal capitalist-free market economy, is failing to live up to its promises. The rich are getting (supposedly) richer while the rest of us are getting poorer.
If you thought 2018 was a bad year all around (weather extremes, politics, economy, etc.) I'm afraid you will find 2019 to be even more terrible. We have finally reached an inflection point in the trajectory of decline. Throughout the previous 20-30 years (since the start of the decline in free energy per capita) the decay and collapse of society had been marginal and slow to progress. Only if you were sensitive to the trends and understood the systemic nature of them would you have realized that we had entered a whole new regime of social dynamics. For example, up until about five years ago, climatologists were unwilling to attribute any one storm (huricanes, floods, tornadoes, etc.) to climate change because the statistical variances fell within a range that they considered "normal". But the trends were already taking shape. The record highs and lows were already beginning to show. Each year new extremes were being experienced and so the reality of climate disruption was already evident. Only scientific conservatism prevented calling the kettle black.
By 2012 or 2015 more evidence that things had permanently changed in terms of climate had developed to a point that many climate scientists had started to rethink their approaches to attribution. By 2018, with coral reefs dying, forest fires taking maximum tolls in lives, acreage, and properties, with major hurricanes and typhoons decimating population centers around the world, with droughts and floods reaching unprecedented levels it has become clear to nearly everyone that something fundamental has changed. Now those same climate scientists are becoming very vocal about how climate change is contributing to record weather variances. Scientific conservatism is cast aside.
On the economic front, too, people are finally recognizing that something is amiss with the standard narrative of neoclassical capitalism. The past ten years has seen an increasing number of texts by recognized authorities on matters economic that are calling capitalism as practiced in the western "democracies" into question. Even die-hard free marketers are starting to acknowledge that something fundamental is wrong with the standard model (e.g. Alan Greespan's admission to congress that his faith in capitalism had been diminished!) Greed and personal self-interests cannot long be the basis for an economy that serves the whole population. We are now starting to see the consequences of holding such a belief. Coupled with the depletion of free energy per capita, the basis for producing goods and services, we are witnessing the collapse of capitalism and the collapse of the western economies.
Basically, 2017 and 2018 marked years in which the previously slow and imperceptible declines in institutions and economic activities started to accelerate to the point of notice by even the generally ignorant masses. The political fallout, the trend toward nationalism and xenophobia has become all too obvious. People are scared and confused. They will resort to protectionist thinking in an attempt to restore what they consider the normal order. But it is a futile effort. From this point forward the rate of decline and collapse will just increase. If we think the last several years were bad, say in the nature of mass migrations, just wait. As droughts and floods continue to make life unlivable in regions near the Equator (Middle East, Northern Africa, Central and upper South America) the violence will escalate beyond imagining. The mass exoduses from these regions into the US and Europe will intensify beyond reckoning. If we thought the tensions these migrations had stirred up already was bad, just wait.
I must admit to being surprised with the rapidity with which these events are taking place. I thought that I would be long gone before the more serious consequences of our social and physical failures would come to pass. I think now I was very wrong. The causal mechanics of these phenomena are clearly (now) non-linear and amplified by positive feedback loops that have become more visible in the last ten years. I will yet witness the implosion of the human societies, it seems.
Watch 2019 and see for yourselves.
Finally people are waking up to how bad it is! Oct. 10, 2018.
As hurricane Michael bears down on the Florida pan handle as a Cat 4 storm, I wonder how many people who are going to be directly affected by its devastation are thinking about anthropogenic climate change. This week a new report from the IPCC finally paints a bleak picture and calls for radical reductions in carbon dioxide emissions in order to avoid a worst-case scenario.
For a number of years now I have been predicting a dooms-day scenario due to the twin impacts of climate change and peak fossil fuels. The former represents significant costs to societies. The latter represents significant decline in generating the income needed to pay the costs. In other words, for example, just when we will need to address things like moving whole cities inland (costs) our ability to generate the needed income will have vanished. No fuel, no work, no product, no income. It's actually pretty simple.
And for years I called out the primary causes of this predicament. First and foremost is the incredible lack of wisdom in human beings' cognition. No forethought. No caution. Just barge ahead with any technology that provides individuals with more convenience. All humans share in this deficit. All humans, given whatever chances they had, have consumed and wasted resources unmindfully. But our so-called leaders are especially to blame for their inability to tell the truth (and in many cases even understand the truth). Even Obama really blew it. He had a bully pulpit even if he didn't have a Congress that would help him out. Now we get Trump who outright denies climate change (calls it a hoax) and is attempting to ease even the weak restrictions Obama put on the fossil fuel industry, which could have the effect of raising the US emissions even more.
So human foolishness and stupidity, which seem to apply to a majority of the population in the US anyway, is at the root of our problem and that isn't going to go away on its own any time soon. The rest of the world seems to have many more people who are more thoughtful about the situation and are able to accept the scientific consensus about climate change (though many of them are not as up to speed on the problems with peak energy). But even so they are still not understanding that the proximal cause of our situation is the whole neoliberal capitalistic socio-economic system with its emphasis on profit maximization and growth. These things, this philosophy and world view, are just plain wrong. Speed, convenience, private wealth, novelty, these are the habits of thought that now infest a world of 7+ billion people. Every country in the world harbors a population of people who see what the developed world's people have and they want it too. So, for example, even though China's leadership position is to fight climate change, it still maintains a desire to grow its economy. These two objectives are diametrically opposed (see Naomi Klein's book: This Changes Everything).
We need to be absolutely clear on one thing regarding what can be done to solve the immediacy of the climate catastrophe (according to the IPCC report) and that is that market-based mechanisms will simply not work to reduce carbon emissions in any meaningful way. Even a very steep tax on carbon, a policy measure rather than a strictly free market approach, probably won't do the job either, especially if the scheme involves rebating the money to the consumers. Any cost of carbon scheme needs to hurt both consumers and producers equally and sufficiently to force them to change their behaviors. Taking money out of my wallet and putting it into my pocket is not going to accomplish anything.
Only one thing will give us a chance to survive - and then only some of us. We have to stop burning fossil fuels period and that is going to make us extremely poor. We have to abandon capitalism, for profit (and especially profit maximization), growth oriented firms and relocalize, i.e. reform local communities able to collectively meet their basic needs. We have to abandon cars and trucks and airplanes and probably even trains.
We probably won't take the initiative and there are no leaders on the world stage that would risk being booted off of that stage by telling people that they will have to give up most of the trappings of civilization. So what is most likely to happen, as I have predicted before, is that we will continue to cling to our old ways until it is obviously too late (which may already be the case) and the loss of fossil fuel energies (they will be too expensive to extract and refine) and the damage to our social fabric done by climate catastrophes force us to do these things.
I've not been blogging much these days. At some point I realized that I was basically preaching to the choir for the most part and getting repetitive. What prompted me to write this was the issuing of the IPCC report and especially Trump's and other Republicans' responses to it. The report suggests that a solution is feasible but also some of the committee members admit that it is highly unlikely that any of its recommendations will be taken up in time precisely because of the postures and attitudes of the far right ideologies. The US's best hope for any kind of change in policies and taking real leadership is to vote the Republicans out of Congress in November. And then follow through in 2020 with a real change in the presidency. Personally I would prefer to see a Social Democrat (maybe not Bernie per se) run. But at least we should try to find someone with those leanings in the Democratic party and I completely support that person being a woman (just not Hillary!) The rumors about Elizabeth Warren are interesting.I honestly do feel that men have made a mess of everything in governance and that it would be really great to give women a shot at doing better. I'm betting they can. And the current climate of the #meToo movement and the energy pumped into the women electorate (and many of us males who sympathize) may just be right to propel a larger proportion of the government to be controlled by women.
To be clear, though, a change in the political landscape of the US is not a solution. At best it can only serve to possibly slow down the acceleration toward destruction. Whether that would be a good thing or not I cannot say. But like clinging to life in a desperate situation gives a chance that a miracle might happen, slowing down the destruction might offer some last minute help.
The IPCC only deals with the global temperature issue; recommending using non-fossil fuel sources is meant as a way to reduce emissions. It does not provide a complete model of the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change with respect to other dynamics vis-a-vis EROI impacts on our ability to mitigate or adapt. It does not factor in the decline in fossil fuels from excessive extraction and the fact that as of this moment it is the consumption of fossil fuels that subsidize the solar and wind industries. We are already getting poorer due to the declining return on energy invested and climate change will make everything more expensive - a positive feedback loop ensues that will shortly blow up the financial system and with it, civilization.
I continue to advise people to consider less what they can do as individuals to combat climate change (but do that also) and begin laying plans for how to survive in a totally chaotic world of 2-3 degrees C and no oil.
