[Outcast_Searcher]

According to Limits to Growth we don't get ONE of them, we get ALL of them. The whole system comes down.

Very roughly speaking:
World Population is 9 billion

When you can't tell 8 from 9 and can't be bothered to look things up before posting them, why again, should we trust what you claim?

When I google "global population", I consistently get roughly 7.8 billion people for 2020.

[Ibon]

IMO the #1 issue will be lack of access to cheap carbon free or at least very low carbon energy at an affordable price bracket. With cheap energy you can do a heck of a lot of education and things that offset human ecosystem impacts, but if your cheap energy comes from fossil fuels you cause climate to shift in ways we can only predict in the very broadest sense of the word. Timing, rate and extent are educated guesses when it comes to climate change.

As mentioned many times humans do not handle opulence well. The results can probably be observed in your immediate neighborhood. Counter Intuitively, sustainability is better achieved in times of constraints when you are forced to lean into the very constraints to manage survival. This mirrors very well natural selection.

We have had decades of opulence with no honing forces to induce real conservation and sustainability and so modern humans are like grizzly bears that were able to have 24/7 365 days a year on a salmon run that lasted for decades....... Not good!

It was only when we were forced to manage with only 8KW running an entire resort that we really started paying attention to energy being consumed. That is a microcosm example of what will happen globally when energy starts to no longer be abundant. That is when we will really start to become more energy efficient.

Not really all that counter intuitive when you stop and think about it.

Abundant energy = indolence

[Pops]

Covid surprised me, people's limited attention spans, willful ignorance and outright denial makes pandemic rise higher on my list. SARS-CoV1 had a higher fatality rate, SARS-CoV2 higher transmission —maybe because of a longer incubation period while contagious. You're spreading the disease for days before symptoms (flu can spread for 1 day before symptoms). SARS-CoV3 could easily be even more efficient, both more deadly AND higher reproduction rate. I had made some specific preps against pandemic, a few hundred bucks maybe.

Still, die-off of even a large part of the population from disease would only constitute a Jubilee for the survivors not the TEOTW. Ditto civil war or economic collapse: tough for the impacted, not so bad for the survivors. American Balkanization is a remote possibility, I'm liberal and don't care who knows it yet I moved to one of the reddest areas of the country. Obviously I don't worry about that too much.

Nuke winter I think is high risk but low probability. Not sure whether we are more at risk from modern A.I. controlled armageddon than we were from Dead Hand. I worry somewhat about a limited strike but not enough to do anything in particular beyond the general preps. Global conventional war that destroys infrastructure is bad but not the end.

GW will be bad at some point for the earth and its creatures, I don't see it as the slate-wiper, maybe a bottleneck.

I'm with T, I still think high energy price will put the "last call" to this party. Not a slate-wiper if decades off but a party pooper nevertheless. Simply because as Ibon says, we are used to not giving the slaves a second thought.

Perhaps it is just that I'm a generalist that I worry most about specialists. In fact, "industrial civilization" should have been a choice in the poll "Most immediate threat?" Take Southern California, one of the richest, most educated, most privileged places on earth. I've seen Californios in shorts and flip flops installing snow chains on 6k foot mountain passes in 0 degree weather because: [shrug] Right now they have no hospital capacity because Californians by and large have little sense of self preservation and simply became bored of staying home.

Not to pick on Californians, I are one, but to illustrate that to become a rich advanced civilization we had to become specialists with ultra-narrow focus and experience. The problem is that as individuals specialists, when the light switch, water faucet, t-stat, GrubHub and Hulu stop working... for any reason from Carrington Event to monetary collapse to Cloudflare glitch... we have not only no backup but no inkling of how anything works (aside from our narrow speciality) from which to form a backup.

Put me down for "Our Own Success"
.

[Tanada]

IMO the #1 issue will be lack of access to cheap carbon free or at least very low carbon energy at an affordable price bracket. With cheap energy you can do a heck of a lot of education and things that offset human ecosystem impacts, but if your cheap energy comes from fossil fuels you cause climate to shift in ways we can only predict in the very broadest sense of the word. Timing, rate and extent are educated guesses when it comes to climate change.

As mentioned many times humans do not handle opulence well. The results can probably be observed in your immediate neighborhood. Counter Intuitively, sustainability is better achieved in times of constraints when you are forced to lean into the very constraints to manage survival. This mirrors very well natural selection.

We have had decades of opulence with no honing forces to induce real conservation and sustainability and so modern humans are like grizzly bears that were able to have 24/7 365 days a year on a salmon run that lasted for decades....... Not good!

It was only when we were forced to manage with only 8KW running an entire resort that we really started paying attention to energy being consumed. That is a microcosm example of what will happen globally when energy starts to no longer be abundant. That is when we will really start to become more energy efficient.

Not really all that counter intuitive when you stop and think about it.

Abundant energy = indolence

Yes and no. When Europe was dependent on wood for energy there were very strict controls on wood lot ownership and care to ensure there would be enough fuel in perpetuity. If you were caught harvesting wood you did not have established rights to the punishments could be extreme. As part of this issue people all over Europe near boglands figured out how to cut and dry blocks of peat for fuel. In Ireland and the English midlands this led to forests being reduced with peat becoming the fuel of choice so that the former fuel woodlots could be converted into pasture lands allowing for a bit of population growth. Generations later much of the Boglands in central England colloquially known as "The Fens" were drained for even more pasture and crop land boosting population further. Then last of all in the 18th century using coal for steam was developed and things took off like a rocket with coal mines springing up all over and the remaining fuel wood lots being harvested and converted to other uses. In these examples more energy each step of the way led to a higher population and more demand.

On the counter example however in Europe and North America there were three basic lighting options before 1850. You could use in order of cost candles, Spirit lamps burning a mixture of alcohol and turpentine, or whale oil lamps. Whale oil was vastly preferred as it burned clean and bright and gave off a pleasant odor and this lead to more and more whale hunting until extinction became a very real possibility. Then Coal Oil aka Kerosene was invented by a person coking coal for blast furnace use who realized the condensed vapors could serve as a new kind of lamp oil for use by coal miners hence the name, it not only was made from coal it was used for mining more coal as well. Then in the 1850's at nearly the same time in Azerbaijan, Poland and Pennsylvania oil was drilled and produced expressly for the purpose of distilling the liquid to produce kerosene as a cheap lamp fuel that was even cheaper than Spirit Lamp fuel yet gave off a warm yellow light without creating too much smoke and with an odor that most folks find tolerable. The demand for Whale Oil collapsed overnight and at least three species of whales did not go extinct as would be expected to have happened if alternative lighting remained expensive.

On a similar note when the English established Philadelphia the area of the modern state was said to be so dense with forests that a squirrel could climb a tree on the beach and travel through the canopy all the way to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground in between. Those vasts forests were cut down and made into charcoal to feed iron forges all the way across the modern state to Pittsburgh. Using Charcoal for iron smelting only ended when you either ran out of wood fuel or in some locations replaced it with locally mined Anthracite coal. You might have heard of Valley Forge and Old Forge but these are not exceptions, there were scores of places known as Forge or Furnace, generally the furnaces made the charcoal and the forges burned it. By the mid 19th century Pennsylvania, along with Ohio, Michigan and points west as far as Iowa were either running out of wood or coming around to the quaint European concept of state forests that were off limits so the trees could grow back. Once coal became commonplace state forests and reserves started popping up all over the eastern half of the USA and the trees were allowed and even encouraged to return.

So Petroleum saved the whales and Coal saved the forests, sort of. Technology is a double edged tool, you can use it to help restore the ecosystem or you can use it to destroy things even faster than before. In the west with modern environmental practices more energy is better as it promotes conservation and restoration.

[Newfie]

Will we even recognize collapse when it starts? Maybe its already here, maybe we are past peak now, its just the time frame makes it hard to see.

[vtsnowedin]

Will we even recognize collapse when it starts? Maybe its already here, maybe we are past peak now, its just the time frame makes it hard to see.

I expect that we will see collapse when we have a food shortage so widespread that international trade and normal markets can not deal with it. It would make no difference if it was caused by climate change/widespread drought or a lack of energy to produce the crops or some blight or plague that wipes out one major cereal crop.

[ralfy]

Population rate increase may be kept low through increasing prosperity, but the latter also requires cheap oil coupled with increased resource and energy consumption.

[JuanP]

I can't help but wonder how long the remaining forests and peat bogs of the world will last after fossil fuels become unaffordable for the majority of people, particularly in the Northern hemisphere, with its huge land masses in frigid areas where heating is necessary for human survival. Years, decades? That's going to release some carbon, alright!

[vtsnowedin]

I can't help but wonder how long the remaining forests and peat bogs of the world will last after fossil fuels become unaffordable for the majority of people, particularly in the Northern hemisphere, with its huge land masses in frigid areas where heating is necessary for human survival. Years, decades? That's going to release some carbon, alright!

I doubt that will happen or be a problem. First of all fossil fuels will only become "unaffordable" because governments have increased taxes on them to reduce demand and there are limits on that as voter sentiment still matters. Second what would replace fossil fuel in the Northern hemisphere would be better insulation coupled with heat pumps powered by renewable sourced electricity. We would not start over harvesting our forests and carbon in minus carbon out would balance.
It will be much easier to switch our heat source then it will be to stop using jet fuel in passenger and cargo jets.

[Ibon]

Second what would replace fossil fuel in the Northern hemisphere would be better insulation coupled with heat pumps powered by renewable sourced electricity. We would not start over harvesting our forests and carbon in minus carbon out would balance.
It will be much easier to switch our heat source then it will be to stop using jet fuel in passenger and cargo jets.

I agree. You have to see this issue and how it ties into a whole new gestalt mind set that is required, away from consumption and actually revering sustainability in a way that is related to how a farmer fixes the blade of his shovel by crafting a new handle or welding a crack.

This whole new orientation happens when everyone slows down and stops chasing consumption in debt to their gills.

Where progress as a mantra gets replaced with steady state enjoyment of that which you have not that which you are striving for.

Where we all slow down to value day to day life with work that is rewarding.

Kind of like hunter gatherers with fancier technology.

Stop chasing growth and progress and slow down.

Slow down modern humans, you are all so fucking hysterical chasing nothing really.

The contentment that you seek is found when you slow down.

Looking back when you approach death you will ask yourself, why did I spend so much of my life in the hysterical pursuit of constructing a golden cage?

[Plantagenet]

Looking back when you approach death you will ask yourself, why did I spend so much of my life in the hysterical pursuit of constructing a golden cage?

The old have always lectured the young.

And the young never listen.

The young are too busy living their lives to listen to lectures. They are entirely caught up in the fierce urgency of the now.


The young have more important things to do then listen to lectures from their elders.

Cheers!

[Newfie]

I think Juan has it right, you guys keep thinking suburbs, the majority or a large fraction there of live in high rises. We do not have the resources to replicate all that existing housing with energy efficient units.

But not in my lifetime, or yours.

[evilgenius]

Whatever else I voted for, I now think it has to be social upheaval. Any time that there is such a force of nostalgia at work within any society, such that they cannot accept whatever new things are arrived at, there is bound to be a problem. It means losing the value gained by doing experiments in order to find the truth. We are, instead, doomed to tell ourselves we know better.

Already this is manifest by how much tax recalcitrants have influenced the arguments over who should receive what help in order to aid them in facing the future. An inability to keep up dominates most people's economic lives, and, yet, we won't allow money to help people deal with this. Instead of a firehose of aid making it easy to learn or retrain, there was only ever a hidden garden hose - located at so and so's friend's house. Now, we are decades behind. Worse, we can't seem to even grasp the edge of our true dilemma.

It isn't that conservatism is poisonous to society. Far from it. It is that conservatism must not lose sight of its purpose. They aren't meant to be political players who round up all of the power for themselves, so that they silence the opposition. They are meant to be actively engaged in arguments all over society, helping it to avoid folly, and insisting upon cogent arguments from those who desire change.

[Pops]

I can't help but wonder how long the remaining forests and peat bogs of the world will last after fossil fuels become unaffordable for the majority of people, particularly in the Northern hemisphere, with its huge land masses in frigid areas where heating is necessary for human survival. Years, decades? That's going to release some carbon, alright!

When push comes to shove people will sell the family china and burn grandma's rocker, but not before they obliterate the Commons. I all comes down to whether they are just getting a little push or a great big shove.

[evilgenius]

Even after the riot at the Capitol, I still think there is a place for conservatism. The big thing that conservatives need to take in, most likely, is that this period ought to be a time of soul searching. You know, the questions you ask yourself ought to hurt at least as badly as the ones your ex used to hurl at you. You need to ask yourself if the person you think you are is the person you think they are, and how closely they, the vice versa, match. There are a lot of ways to slice through any such arrangement. I mean to say that as an appeal to all people's innate sense of fairness, not to pre-judge any group. A lot of the gripes you hear from the right seem very selfish, but some of them do seem to reach class action status. We shouldn't automatically throw out those complaints that involve several of any particular group of people. And then there are issues over throwing out the cases of individuals, when their cases depend upon some fundamental demonstration of rights which they are asking be pulled out of a document. You've gotta give people time to do that.

That sort of demonstration of good faith might be what the situation is really asking? Because just look at all of the dumb faces throughout the crowd that stormed the Capitol. If we weren't in the middle of a pandemic, I would have sworn some of those images came from Comicon. They were all pretty much there following their basic struggles, whatever those were. It's that the wisdom of the crowd mathematical hypothesis demands that we be talking about something that is at least common enough to all of us that guessing at it is still relevant. First of all, we usually look for things like that in those things which we particularly understand that we all have in common. By trying to be sensible, we can fail to see the whack jobs. But what we hope not to miss is some innocent group that doesn't have a voice, and, therefore, relies upon our due diligence to see them. I suppose that is the same reasoning as is common in the judicial system, at least the TV version.

[aadbrd]

Whatever else I voted for, I now think it has to be social upheaval.

Best parallel: Children of Men

Children of Men didn't feature limits to growth per se. No lack of arable land, water, etc... All it featured was the existential dread of humanity gently dying off after everyone currently alive reached the end of their natural lifespan. That sense of existential dread is extremely mild compared to the sort of dystopian fantasies many here predict, but it was still enough to trigger a dystopia as people abandon the social contract and just want to lash out for the sake of lashing out.

Americans used to be known for having grit. We actually don't have this, not a communitarian flavor, that's for sure. When the going gets tough, we form militia groups and turn on each other.

[Pops]

I had to look up communitarian:
Society of small, self-governing communities.

I think the US is, or was, pretty much that back in the day, and that is a large part of our current problems. I think a lot of people of a certain age want to go back there, back to Mayberry. No blacks or browns, no gays or whatevers (tho some crossdressing), certainly no immigrants. There was Otis, several moonshiners including the spinster sisters. Most people are fond of their little home town—those of us born in little home towns, anyway. Even those who left, maybe especially those, have fond memories. I moved to the midwest because even the small towns in CA are big now.

I think the US is becoming a hyper-individualistic country. Everyone is a star of their own online reality show. We belong to nothing except a grievance tribe or two—but we of course are not really attached, we're all above attachment: how many people here admit to belonging to a political party? LOL, the answer is very few. We are all above that fray, Independants are we!!!


We are in a reactionary period. Reaction to the urbanization of a historically communitarian country, the browning of a mostly northern European country. Reaction to the "meritocracy" that says and diploma holder is better at whatever than any dropout loser —and diplomas from the so-called "top schools" are best of all. A period where a plain old job is hard to come by because corporations can get the work done cheaper overseas.

In small self-governing communities, everyone knows your name, your business, your secrets. Everyone is familiar and while familiarity may breed contempt, it also breeds tolerance of those with whom we daily rub shoulders. How many times do people still in Gutwater, Missouri get all jacked out of whacked over what San Francisco is doing about Mexicans, trannies, bums, conservation, whatever. Why do they care?

Because they are petrified that the Mexicans, trannies, bums, conservation, whatever are coming to their town! Even though they have no idea about any of that because they've never interacted with any of it. They are parochial individualists who merely happen to live in small towns. So afraid of change, no longer communitarians willing to let San Francisco do it's thing. They want to impose their values —their Senator just led the charge to disenfranchise entire states because those states aren't like Gutwater.

The difference between Communitarianism and the arch evil Boogieman of socialism is simply that Gutwater isn't on it's own. The fortunate places (like San Francisco) help the less so. Missouri as a whole is on the teat of Uncle Sam, if you'll pardon the visual, Gutwater may not know it but they are just pretending to be responsible for themselves as they enjoy the fruits of San Francisco's labor.

We are a social democracy now. The government gives everyone that works and receives employer insurance a subsidy, it subsidizes home loans, oil production, education, tuition, food, healthcare, retirement and on and on. Still, lots of people are against subsidies that other people get.

OK, I'll finish.
We are seeing the remnants of communitarianism making a last stand against industrial urbanism. The only question is, will Industrialism last until the small communities expire, or will it and its urban ghettos collapse first?

[Ibon]

Good post Pops...... I still live in Mayberry here in this small town in Panama, my brother installed a cow and rooster horn on my pick up truck and when I go down to town I blast this to all the locals and friends and I swear if I would run for mayor I would probably win just because of all the laughs I get from blowing that horn when going down mainstreet.

One area where I have optimism is on this point you make about everyone in America being hyper-individualistic..... this for me is a clear hallmark of our dying baby boomer generation. This individualistic entitlement is across the board politically. In talking to younger millennials I see a completely different orientation emerging, more collectivist, more willing to live under state surveillance, more expectations of government to ease the burden of social and economic inequality etc. I see this not just the idealism of youth but an actual characteristic of this emerging generation in contrast to the perceived ills of baby boomer hyper individualism.

We may yet be surprised at how this emerging generation dissolves aspects that today divides us in the curent tribalism.

[Newfie]

A year ago the pig flue in China, now avian flue in India.

Lakh = 100,000

https://m.timesofindia.com/india/up-is- ... 193644.cms

[aadbrd]

When I used the term communitarian I meant a sense of belonging to part of a larger community, a diverse one. And the largest community people have withdrawn from is the sense of the US as a whole. We now live in at minimum two Americas, red and blue, and then it breaks down further from there. What you said about hyper-individualism is true, though.

I think people have lost their social skills altogether. The dominant personality trait of your average American is of the troll, someone for whom every interaction is some flavor of insult. Everything is intended to score some sort of point. And this is true of both ideological poles. All social interactions have been gamified. There are only allies and enemies. I am glad that I chose never to waste my time joining Twitter because I think that above else has encouraged this kind of drive-by swipe approach.

I have thought for a long time that this rewiring of the brain would eventually spill out into how we deal with each other face to face. And it has. Even before COVID we were reeling from what seemed like one mass shooting a week for a while. There is a profound lack of empathy, a spiritual void at the center of the american psyche and it doesn't matter whether it's some guy who goes through the motions attending the local megachurch while retweeting calls to put Fauci's head on a spike or some holier than though pink-haired SJW who is spending all her time piling onto JK Rowling.