It’s now been close to fifteen years since the Peak Oil movement collapsed and lost whatever temporary grip it had on public awareness. We could doubtless have an interesting conversation along the lines of “did it fall or was it pushed,” and there may be a point to that conversation a little further down the road. For now, though, I think something more basic is called for: an update on where we are just now on the long slow slope of Hubbert’s curve, and what we can expect in the years immediately ahead.
Now of course if you mention that possibility among most of those few people who still remember the phrase “peak oil” at all, you can count on a horse laugh. After all, they’d claim, the entire peak oil theory disproved itself in the wake of the 2008-2009 spike and crash of petroleum prices. Peak oil theorists supposedly insisted that sometime very soon, we’d all hear a horrible gurgling noise from deep within the earth as the last barrels of crude oil got sucked up the pipes, for all the world like that disappointing sound that comes at the end of every root beer float.
That, so the theory went, would be the end of petroleum once and for all. Thereafter, since there would be no more petroleum, and the single largest share of the world’s energy consumption (including nearly all its transportation) is still made up of crude oil and its derivatives, the whole world would go hurtling down into chaos and mass death, with or without a plucky band of survivors dragging themselves out of the ruins and striking heroic poses against the sunset as the credits roll up the screen.
That was what the Peak Oil movement predicted, so the claim goes, and it didn’t happen. Instead, the 2008 spike in world petroleum prices sparked a frantic quest for more sources of liquid fuel, and since big profits could be made by coming up with those sources, they were duly found. Thus the whole peak oil theory was based on an elementary misunderstanding of economics, and we can therefore safely ignore it as a guide to the future. Right?
That’s the claim, at any rate. It is certainly true that there were people—some of whom should have known better—who were associated with the peak oil movement, and who retailed some version of the claims just outlined in books, blogs, public events, and the like. Still, the peak oil movement didn’t speak with a single voice on this or any other subject. Notably, there were quite a few people deeply involved in the peak oil movement who pointed out that the believers in this version of overnight apocalypse were quite simply deluding themselves, rehashing Hollywood fantasies and warmed-over Christian apocalyptic tropes under the mistaken notion that they were talking about the real world.
This less gullible group of peak oil theorists pointed to many lines of evidence, from petroleum geology, history, economics, and ecology, that showed that there would be no sudden collapse. Instead, they argued, what the world was facing was a long, ragged descent from the peak of industrial society, taking many generations to play out completely. They predicted in so many words that each crisis brought about by petroleum depletion would be followed by massive and at least temporarily successful efforts to find new sources of liquid fuels, and to jerry-rig industrial society so that the effects of the crisis could be contained.
Furthermore, they argued, petroleum depletion could only be understood correctly in the light of a much broader perspective, in which the depletion of a very large number of nonrenewable resources and the disruption of a good many environmental cycles all played important parts. Our planetary predicament didn’t have a single cause, and therefore it couldn’t be fixed by a single solution—be that some new energy source (cough, cough, fusion power), restrictions on a single pollutant (cough, cough, carbon dioxide), attempts to rebuild community in social contexts that had discarded it (cough, cough, the Transition Town franchise), or any of the other loudly ballyhooed gimmicks that embraced peak oil back then as part of their marketing plans.
So what fix did the thinkers we’re discussing propose? They didn’t. That’s exactly the point. They proposed that industrial civilization was moving through the usual life cycle of complex human societies, at the usual pace, toward the usual destination, and that this movement would define the future in which we all would live.
They suggested that the 2005 peak in global conventional petroleum production (which is what the phrase “peak oil” stood for) was a symptom of that broader process, not an independent variable, and that the various attempts to “solve” the predicament of industrial society had a lot in common with the attempts of guys in their sixties to insist they aren’t getting old by wearing their hair in a combover and going down to singles bars to try to pick up women in their twenties. They pointed out that there were certainly things that could be done to make the decline less steep, the coming deindustrial dark age less bitter, and the rise of successor societies less difficult, and they argued that since governments weren’t likely to lift a finger along these lines, ordinary people might want to get to work in one or another of these directions.
I’m tolerably familiar with this end of the Peak Oil movement, of course, because I was part of it. I got involved in the movement in 1998 when I joined the Running On Empty email list, at that time nearly the only place anywhere that people were discussing the worrying mismatch between the rate of world petroleum consumption and the rate at which new reserves were being discovered. In 2006 I started a blog, The Archdruid Report, which very quickly focused on peak oil, and brought me a degree of attention and notoriety that left me flabbergasted. In 2008 my first book on peak oil, The Long Descent, saw print, fielded rave reviews from within the movement, and started getting me speaking gigs at conferences on peak oil, which began to proliferate at a remarkable pace just then.
That was what landed me in Washington DC at the high point of the peak oil movement, the conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) in November 2009. There I was, an archdruid seated among professors and politicians, talking about the lessons of the 1970s oil crisis and being treated like a minor celebrity by people who apparently had a lot of money to throw around. That money, it turned out, came from (or at least through) NGOs and private donors. How much of it came from the federal budget by way of USAID and similar bureaucratic pork barrels is a question that’s been on my mind for a while, but we’ll let that pass for now.
It wasn’t all that long after that event that word started to spread that the money spigot was being turned off and anyone who wanted to stay on the gravy train had better shut up about peak oil. The new thing was climate change, and it became very clear that discussing this meant parroting the billionaires who were insisting just then that climate change was going to kill us all unless we agreed to quite a sweeping range of changes, most of which had nothing to do with climate. I wasn’t all that interested in staying on the gravy train and I had, and have, serious doubts about the way that the climate change issue was packaged and deployed for political effect—we’ll talk about those in an upcoming post—so I shrugged and walked away. And here we are.
Thus the version of peak oil theory that I was talking about in those days, and have posted about here and elsewhere from time to time, wasn’t disproved by events. It was simply ignored once it became inconvenient to certain wealthy and powerful interests. We are still slipping down the far side of Hubbert’s curve a little at a time, still moving through that long, ragged, increasingly difficult arc my first-ever peak oil essay called the Long Road Down. The United States began its trip down that curve in 1970, when we passed our peak production of conventional petroleum; the world followed suit 35 years later in 2005, when world conventional petroleum production peaked and began to decline.
Mention this among people who keep track of liquid fuels production and you can count on instant pushback. After all, total liquid fuels production is higher than it was in 2005, having peaked in 2018, and it’s still close enough to the peak that it could wobble upwards again and surpass the 2018 figure. For that matter, the fracking frenzy that rolled across America’s oil- and gas-producing regions after the 2005 peak drove US liquid fuel production figures above the 1970 peak. Doesn’t that prove that peak oil is a phantom and not a real menace?
It does look that way, so long as you pretend that every barrel of liquid fuel is the same. In the real world, where oil has to be drilled, pumped, and refined into useful products, things are different, and the crucial difference is net energy: the amount of energy you have left from that barrel, once you subtract the energy you needed to get it. Net energy is to petroleum (and all other energy resources) what profit is to a business. Just as you can go broke while making a very substantial gross income, if your expenses are more substantial still, a nation or a civilization can run short of energy even while it’s pumping vast amounts of liquid fuel, if the direct and indirect energy costs of getting that fuel are too high.
Net energy is thus the joker in the energy deck. Light sweet crude from a shallow well, the sort of petroleum that the United States produced in oceanic quantities a century ago, had a fantastically high net energy rate—oil companies in those days only had to find the equivalent of 1 barrel in 300 or so to cover the energy costs needed to drill, refine, and transport the oil. For obvious reasons, prospectors focused on that kind of oil early on, and it’s basically all gone now. Nowadays what we’ve got instead are liquids and condensates from fracking operations, sulfur-rich tar sand extractives, and sour crude from deepwater wells that require enormous investment to drill and pump. There’s still plenty of that for the moment, but the energy cost to extract, refine, and transport it is many times higher. How much higher? Estimates vary and so do wells, but most fall between 1 barrel in 40 and 1 barrel in 10.
What this means is that with every passing year, our economy has had to put a larger share of its total available supply of energy, capital, raw materials, and labor into keeping the oil flowing. Declining net energy thus places a stealth tax on all economic activity. All by itself, that would be a significant burden—but of course it’s not all by itself. Every other nonrenewable resource our economy uses is being depleted in much the same way, and many renewable resources are being used at unsustainable rates. As a result, he same sort of rising inputs of energy, capital, raw materials, and labor have to go into keeping up production of each of those resources, too.
Did you know, for example, that the world is running out of sand? Absurd as this seems, it’s quite true. Sand suitable for making concrete is relatively rare, and it’s being used at a rate far faster than nature can replace it. There’s plenty of beach sand, but that makes brittle, short-lived concrete. (It seems tolerably likely to me that one of the reasons so many bridges here in the US are in such bad shape is that many of them were made by corrupt contractors who used beach sand in place of the good stuff.) Are there ways around the problem? Sure, but they cost more—more energy, more capital, more raw materials, more labor. All of this has to be diverted from the rest of the economy.
The result is very much like what happens to your lifestyle if your rent, utility bills, and food costs all go up irregularly every year, but your paycheck stays the same. Something’s got to give, and by and large it’s your lifestyle that takes the hit. The same thing has been happening on a much broader scale to the entire United States for the last 55 years. That’s an important part of why a family of four could afford a home, a car, health care, decent clothing, three square meals a day, and the other tokens of ordinary life on a single working class salary in 1970, while a family of four trying to live on a single working class salary today is living on the street. It’s an equally important part of why terms such as “shrinkflation” and “crapification” have become current in today’s society, and why our national infrastructure is such a crumbling mess.
It also helps explain why so large a share of American voters turned to a presidential candidate in the last election who promised to remove bureaucratic obstacles to the frenzied production of oil, coal, and natural gas, and who insisted repeatedly that the entire climate change furore is a scam. Members of our society’s comfortable classes can insist all they want that the poor ought to put saving the environment and pursuing various other moral crusades ahead of feeding their families. The poor see things differently, and these days there are many more poor people in the United States than there used to be. That was far from the only reason for the outcome of the 2024 election, but it was a factor, and Trump’s opponents ignore it at their peril.
So what comes next? Can we expect the sudden apocalyptic collapse that the more clueless end of the Peak Oil movement anticipated so eagerly to show up after all? Once we get within range of another oil price spike, it’s safe to predict that another round of prophets of doom will pop out of the woodwork with the same claims as before. They’ll be wrong this time, too, for the same reasons as before, but that won’t stop them.
It really is remarkable to watch the same shopworn fantasy of instant apocalypse deployed over and over again by people who’ve seen it fail repeatedly, and still can’t draw the logical conclusion from those failures. I still field emails regularly from people who just can’t understand why I dismiss the idea of a sudden fast collapse that sweeps away industrial civilization all at once. I’ve given up arguing the point. Technically speaking, you can’t disprove the possibility of a sudden collapse, any more than you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a chimpanzee banging away on a typewriter won’t type out the first page of Hamlet, or that next Thursday, elves from another dimension won’t suddenly put bright green rabbits on the doorsteps of everyone named Jane. None of these things are going to happen, sure, but try proving that to the satisfaction of anyone who’s emotionally committed to belief in one of them!
Yet there’s another point to be made here. Apocalyptic fantasies are a standard symptom of extreme social stress, and they’re especially common in periods of serious social and economic contraction. We’ve seen a steady stream of people insisting that nuclear war—all right, the coming ice age—okay, then the Y2k problem—well, in that case overpopulation—if not that, peak oil—make that climate change—or the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012—or, for lack of anything better, Donald Trump—will bring about the sudden cataclysm that features so strongly in the pop culture mythology of our time. As predictions of the future, these are embarrassing flops, but as measures of the sheer intensity of the stress bearing down on people in late industrial America, they tell a story worth taking into account.
What we can expect, though, is something far more terrifying to most people than the most lurid disaster a Hollywood screenwriter ever imagined: more of what we’ve already seen. The long, slow, unsteady descent that’s shaped all our lives for the last half century or more? That’s going to continue along the trajectory it’s already following, for the rest of your life, and into the lives of your grandchildren’s grandchildren.
In the light of that longer view, it doesn’t especially matter who’s in the White House, or for that matter who’s in the doghouse. It matters very little more which policies get put in place and which policies get chucked in the dumpster. There are still things that individuals, families, and communities can do to brace themselves for the future ahead, and some of those things are very important—we’ll get to them in future posts. None of these will affect the overall course of this nation or of industrial society as a whole. That train left the station long ago. Listen carefully and you can hear the distant whistle on the wind, fading to silence.
That doesn’t mean the fine details of the future are fixed in place. I predicted, some years ago, that the next energy crisis would arrive sometime around 2022. That didn’t happen, because we got the Covid crisis instead. Many of the same economic and social disruptions that took place following the dramatic spike in petroleum prices in 2008 had close equivalents in 2021 and 2022, and energy usage lurched downward in a very similar manner as air travel, commuting, and many other energy-intensive activities decreased. That bought some time. The Trump administration’s push to remove regulatory barriers to oil and gas drilling may buy a little more, though that will depend on variables that aren’t yet clear, and will have cascading downsides of its own. As a very rough guess, I think it’s possible that we’ll see another energy crisis (or some comparable disruption with similar effects) before 2030, and fairly certain that we’ll get one before 2035.
The fine details will have to be worked out mathematically by those who are adept at such things, the way Colin Campbell and his associates did in the early days of the peak oil scene, back before 2000. Fortunately there are still some active peak oil aggregator sites and blogs; you can find a more or less current list here. I encourage my readers to visit them and start getting familiar with their contents. We’ll be talking more about peak oil later on—after, that is, we talk about some of the other factors that are pushing our civilization down the same well-worn chute. In two weeks we’ll turn to another of those, and talk about what’s been happening to the climate.
Good to hear you talking about Peak Oil again, I was hoping for an update. The most important thing about Peak Oil is how it can alter our view of the future, so we can plan accordingly. It’s not about the peak oil date. It’s about the direction our society is going.
Unfortunately, most people go down the route of “I just need to make it to 20XX and industrial society will collapse and I finally won’t need to go to work anymore.” This escapism is not only harmful because it’s inevitably going to leave you disappointed, but also because you lose out on making the real changes you can make to improve your life and make it tolerable.
That’s the thing about apocalypses- they don’t ask you to plan or do the work to improve your situation. All you have to do is wait for it to arrive and save (or destroy) you. It’s a popular meme, buts it’s a useless and harmful one.
Good timing, I just wanted to remind you of an event that seems to have been very little publicized, except in the affected areas, the blackout of the Spanish electricity grid, which basically, if I’m well informed, was caused by the intermittent electricity of photovoltaic and wind power, which are directly connected to the electricity grid. Guillem’s blog explains it very well.
https://beamspot.substack.com/p/operacion-salvar-al-soldado-fotovoltaico
Visions of the future? I think it’s accurate
Excellent post, JMG. An accurate checkpoint summary, if you will.
Since I started following the Peak Oil scene and the ADR 20 years ago, a number of things have clarified about our predicament:
– as you point out, people seem to think and understand the issue in binary terms – “we’ve got plenty of oil” or “the world is going to end”. A systems theory viewpoint is not commonly on display.
– among the economic machinations, the variable of “known reserves” seems to be a very squishy number, and credit/debt advantages can be gamed for those who lie the most, and always in one direction.
– the effects of depletion of physical resources with respect to oil and liquid fuels seems to pale in comparison to the magnitude of effects from the human/artificial components like recouping extraction costs and the legal/legislative ideas dreamed up by Congress Critters. We seem to spend much time in “shooting our own foot” mode, not to mention avoiding the idea “it’s a predicament, not a problem” and doing something useful.
– the most sinister thing appears to be how people come to the conclusion we have plenty of oil in the ground, ignore where it is and how much more expensive it will be to extract, believe that it’s infinite in supply because it’s abiotic while ignoring burn rates even if abiotic effects were real, and……how we then should burn, burn, burn because we deserve to keep our wasteful energy habits and standard of living in place because, well, just because.
In other words, the issues that humans bring to the table is the biggest problem of the predicament, and lends support for the crowd seeking reduction to a 500,000,000 or so global population. What a mess.
The Permian is peaking.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-permian-basins-oil-output-growth-slow-2025-despite-trumps-plan-executives-say-2025-02-06/
“Growth in oil output from the U.S. Permian basin, the country’s top oilfield, is expected to slow by at least 25% this year despite President Donald Trump’s vow to maximize production, energy executives forecast on Thursday.
At a conference in Houston, they said production is expected to rise in 2025 by about 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 300,000 bpd from the shale formation spread across Texas and New Mexico, down from last year’s 380,000-bpd increase.”
Rate of growth is moderating, then it will go to zero and depletion curves take over.
https://www.mrt.com/business/oil/article/permian-basin-rig-count-falls-20259480.php
“Oilfield services firm Baker Hughes said Friday its U.S. rig count fell rigs to 590 rigs for the week. That’s down 30 rigs or 5% from 620 rigs last April.”
And up north the Bakken is already in decline. In 2012 they were getting 140 barrels per day per well. Now it’s half that.
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/stats/historicalbakkenoilstats.pdf
As the Rockman used to say on The Oil Drum, “depletion never sleeps.”
It would seem reasonable to project global petroleum usage falling as the global population peaks (or has already peaked) but I wonder if that is too simplistic? Perhaps as the population falls, petro-states with better net energy reserves (Saudi Arabia for example) will simply drop prices to keep the petro-gravy train going a little longer and global usage will stay at or near peak flow just as long as it’s making money for some of the actors? Do you see any way that all the economically extractable liquid petroleum NOT will be burned as we stumble down the stairs to industrial civilization’s exit?
Hi John,
Thank you for this essay! I wanted to delineate my thinking on how what you said applies to globalisation and then what that could mean for us. I’d be keen to hear if I’ve understood you correctly.
From what you write: a rise in the societal cost of materials and energy reduces the surplus in the economy leaving less for consumption, profit, i.e all the necessities and perks of industrial civilisation. This is a global issue but some regions do have temporary advantages, for example when China became a part of the global economy it had lower labour and environmental costs. This temporary situation allowed some extra surplus to be generated (despite rising societal costs of materials/energy) which benefited our consumption (here in the Western world) and profits. However, as labour costs rise in China (shrinking workforce over generations, higher lifestyle/living costs) that temporary benefit is sliding away.
For those, with power, who want to keep the system going without change their options then become:
1. Find a new source of overseas cheap labour, to mitigate rising societal costs of materials and energy. But this isn’t easy as most of the low hanging fruit (i.e. countries) has been used up or is spoken for already.
2. Pray for a bumper stash of cheap materials/energy to be discovered/exploited. At one point this may have been fusion technology. Nowadays I figure this would explain why Russia is valuable (a low population and relatively high unexploited material resources) or Greenland (if we can wait for the ice to further recede to see what’s available).
3. Exploit local (i.e. Western world) labour more to bring down those costs in proportion to the inexorable rise in materials and energy costs.
In terms of the above I wonder if you think that 3. is already happening? Our leadership seems to have given up on a quick collapse of Russia, China is now an adversary, and so what is left is insourcing to friendly countries but these happen to have higher labour costs. So does it follow that labour in Western countries may soon be the next ‘best’ thing to degrade/exploit in order to mitigate the rising materials/energy costs? I see this in the UK where in sectors like adult care the workers are highly exploited (both domestic and particularly migrants brought in to fill vacancies). If so does this suggest, to you, that worker pay, conditions, and other entitlements will be the next target? Grim if so, and would explain why the enforcement and monitoring parts of the state are being bolstered to handle social unrest.
“the fracking frenzy that rolled across America’s oil- and gas-producing regions after the 2005 peak drove US liquid fuel production figures above the 1970 peak. Doesn’t that prove that peak oil is a phantom and not a real menace?”
Not to mention the damage to areas that have been heavily fracked is as depressing as mountain top removal.
“… we’d all hear a horrible gurgling noise from deep within the earth as the last barrels of crude oil got sucked up the pipes, for all the world like that disappointing sound that comes at the end of every root beer float.” Man, you are a good writer.
It seems reasonable to presume that cultures that embrace apocalyptic religions are unlikely to be very good at long term planning. Given that, do you see any currently extant cultures that seem likely to do a decent job of navigating the rest of the 21st century with all it’s converging crises?
Thanks for this post John. As a Christian, I understand the attraction of the Apocalypse, I also understand that no one can predict its arrival and that those who have attempted to have proven to be false prophets. As a geologist, I get the physical realities of petroleum, it’s hard to get people to accept those realities without reference to an Apocalypse. I will continue to enjoy your posts
Here in Australia, 2006-2009 roughly halved the buying power of the AUD, and then 2019-2021 halved it again. The entire establishment is firmly dedicated to hiding that fact. We’ve been impoverished, and yet the first world LARPing continues.
Maybe we can repurpose Cory Doctorow’s word to “Enshaleification” to describe some of what has been going on.
He used his version with regards to the way internet platforms start off all nice and cozy, and then inevitably, with the audience honey potted in, degrade their services to rake up more for themselves. But enshaleification applies to the whole shebang.
The debt most people are in these days is also just another form of indentured servitude , with the corporations lording it over their microserfs.
For the Neverending Story fans: Remember chapter 23? In it Bastian visits a city where people have lost their memories, but they are being watched by a monkey who has them play a game of dice, with various letters on the dice. The people roll and roll the dice. The monkey tells them that this is because they have lost the ability to tell themselves stories. The game however makes it possible for them to eventually produce, say, Hamlet, and all the other stories ever told, including the Neverending Story itself.
It’s interesting to me that this is in chapter 23. 23 is a number associated with William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, The Temple ov Psychic Youth, and their practice of cut-ups.
I do think “chance operations” have a place in the creation of art, but not on the same level as is being done with AI. The latter is a symptom of what Michael Ende was pointing at when people have forgotten themselves and how to tell stories.
Thanks for the infusion of levity into this blog. I too was interested in mostly the community efforts that the Transition Movement afforded and liked the stepwise methodology which results in new ways that community can act to provide lasting fun things to do. Community gardening, the Repair Cafe, as examples of programs still strong and in existence. The higher ups in the peak oil crowd seem to be cashing and jet-setting all over the planet instead of building community. I had a particular affinity with the list of ways the populace can improve and pitch in and the predictive impact of each seemed to give practical ways to pitch in, like supporting anything that increases education of women and seeking ways reduce leaks of refrigerant from major sources like supermarkets, provide programs to reduce roadside abandoned air conditioners, and destroy rather than stockpile reclaimed refrigerant. Reclaiming and destroying refrigerant has not happened; especially in places where there are no educational opportunities to enlighten and energize the technicians to do so or no funded policies and alternatives in place to deal with it. Being in action requires support, and the good intentions of policymakers goes to naught without funding and management and inculcating responsibility to act. We are all on the ride down the gyres of the decline you have captivated us with in your writings.
Enjoying the mordant humour, JMG! You’ve refined talking about grim predicaments with a degree of humour that made me “el-oh-el” as the kids put it.
I noticed my body reflexively closing up as I read your essay, as though it were saying, “Nope! This isn’t true! Life will get better or at least go on as it always has. No need to change or adapt.” Of course, I know that’s all false but it doesn’t make it any easier to face the truth of long, slow and grinding decline.
I known someone who worked as a professional chemist (and perennial believer in Progress) argue that net energy for crude oil doesn’t matter because of something to do with entropy. I wish I could remember the details more clearly, but his basic point was that net energy didn’t matter. Still, it didn’t feel right intuitively. Have you ever come across a similar attempt to argue against the net energy issue?
Thank you for this update, and for the resource list. I find Gail Tverberg to be invaluable.
Might you also share again sometime the reading list you once posted about books that shaped your thinking? I believe you originally posted it in February 2009. I’ve shared it with quite a few people over the years (though I still haven’t read all the titles myself…).
Or, Ecosophia Enjoyer @ # 1, they take the view that my faction is going to be in charge, so we will get to have the goodies, including oil. I don’t doubt that some folks, members of rich guy buying clubs, are indeed only paying $1.99 for gas.
Re: collapse
IMHO, this is what collapse looks like.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=IXXmYkzB_FM
TL;DW – they went through something like 5 different NEW alternators before finding one that wouldn’t die after a week. There was a time when this didn’t happen. That time is now somewhere in the past. You know what’s coming up next, right? No more new alternators to be had at all. Then it’s going to be no more junkyard alternators.
This is just one thing, but if you have enough of similar things going on at once, I wonder where the critical point is, where it all just goes *flump*?
James Howard Kunstler coined the phrase, the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. He was referring to the construction of suburbia in the USA after WWII. While the rest of the world was rebuilding from the desolation of the war, we were having a grand old time building a Disney style world of the future, with flying cars just around the corner. Now our infrastructure is falling apart, mass transit is a joke, and everybody needs a car, or cars, to do anything. And we don’t have the surplus energy, money, or vision to build a replacement system. People are told that we just need some new uber technology to re-energize our life style.
I don’t subscribe to the sudden collapse apocalyptic belief, but more of the rising tide theory. Every time some shock hits the system, the results leave a layer of people who were just above the poverty line now firmly below it. Everybody above shifts down one notch and learns to tie their belts tighter and trade steak for hamburger or hamburger for Ramen noodles and say they can get by. Until the next shock when one more chair is removed and everybody shuffles to occupy what’s left. There will always be a chorus of people on top saying that everything is fine. For them it is.
Dear sir,
A fascinating article. No not this one, if you have been here since 2009 almost everything in it is from an old record. Although I must admit I was fascinated by the ASPO story.
No, the fascinating article is the 2004 one. I just read it, or maybe reread it, with some attention to the themes in it. Firstly dear sir, I feel I must inform you, that you have been unoriginally restating the 2004 article for the last 21 years. it still hasn’t sunk in, has it?
Secondly, going from that, I remembered the statement you made some time ago, that you are switching from ADR to Ecosophia, because you have done peak oil to death. I get it now.
Third. It is fascinating to read the 2004 article with the events of the last 21 years in the rear view mirror. Referring to the y2k instead of the covid crisis, the Iraq instead of Ukraine war. The volume has gone up has it not.
I am minded to reflect on my options for how to act to give future generation a better chance. And after some years I have a garden once again. The corn is just coming out. Might I ask about a suggestion for a book on organic gardening.
Best regards,
Marko
It;s going to be worse because the Diesel decline rates are faster I’ve heard. I can’t find good data to corroborate.
Many of our industrial processes, mining and transportaion depend on it and no substitutes exist.
JMG , could you look at each major petroleum products reserves and consumption.
Also, can you add Lars Larsen to your blogroll. I’d send a link but i think comments block links?
Good post, got me thinking.
I think (definitely don’t know, more or a belief) that the reason that I think that the “Peak Oil” crowd’s flame guttered out was the fact that they tended to obsess on “Peak Oil” rather than “Peak Energy”. I am especially intrigued by electricity production and consumption.
I have personally been obsessing (and not all that productively to be honest) on how to blend the three measures (Oil/total energy/electricity production/consumption).
I think that the main reason that the peak oil group fell apart was the focus on a single variable in a multivariate environment. That and, at the end of the day, it will come down to telling people that they will have to take less.
I am pleased to see the Archdruid back. I have been fascinated with the story how natural resource depletion will impact industrial society since the publication of the ” Limits to Growth” and my days as a student at UNH in Natural Resource Economics.
I leafed through your fine book, “Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush” last night picking off some of your finest essays during the Peak Oil Days. Fine reading, strongly recommended for anyone new to the subject.
There are some interesting mind trips that many folks miss when considering resource depletion. One of the biggest is how exponential growth in oil use impacts demand and cummulative resource consumption. For example, If demand is growing at a modest 2% per year, annual demand doubles every 35 years. During the next 35 year period, the amount of oil consumed will be greater than the total amount of oil consumed in all other previous periods combined. That sentence should perhaps be read again. Because when you have consumed 50% of the available resource, things will become dire rather quickly.
But alas, another mind trip comes into play. Folks seem to easily confuse the amount of resource remaining with flow rates. Flow rates will be highest at the Peak. A graph of annual oil consumption depicts this as a bumpy plateau. That’s where we are now. So prices can be fairly stable or benign when flow rates are highest. As the resource depletes, so do flow rates, price will likely spiral.
I have read your theory of catabolic collapse and agree with it. However, I think that the slope of the descent will likely be steeper than the ascent. The so-called Seneca Effect. The compounding effect of negative feedback loops. We see this in the World 3 models of industrial output and every update of the World 3 model since. The drop is very rapid. What the model does not show or attempt to account for is there exists a very large capital stock of transportation, infrastructure, plant, tooling, farm equipment, etc that will be used and cannibalized for many years after that initial drop in industrial production. This is what your theory does account for, and leads to the stair step decline that modifies the descent.
Can’t wait to read more of your inciteful work!!!
Keeping doing useful things year after year can be hard. I am not having a good year in the garden. First I got a really late start because I was out of town for the first half of April, and now rats have been digging up things before they can sprout. Also, planting keeps hurting a lot and making me unable to do the other things I want to do. And yesterday evening, there was a rabbit in the yard. I scared it off, but honestly? I’m sick of it and don’t want to do it this year.
And the music stuff hasn’t really worked out due to health issues. I gave myself another tendonitis injury playing recorder, on top of all my other problems and it’s taking forever to clear up well enough to play alto. At least its stopped interfering with anything but recorder. A lot of money spent, a lot of fun and heartbreak had, but I don’t think its going to work out for making money rather than spending it.
Frankly, I’ve been struggling with depression on and off for months, and have half a mind to just take a break from everything for a few months. Except wargaming, which is still being fun and is managing to bypass most of my health issues.
I always enjoy reading your sobering and accurate essays on the state of human affairs! Must confess though to my Pollyanna streak which feels humanity will always ultimately adapt; maybe there’s some great energy source in one of those single grains of beach sand just waiting to be uncovered:-)
As long as I’m confessing, lol, being 70 years old with no (physical) children, I selfishly find myself not really caring what happens in this remaining lifetime of mine… I had a good run!
(Ok,ok I know that sounds heartless and I do truly wish the best for those that may suffer).
But for now, I’ve got my fingers crossed for my next reincarnation, and, seriously, all of humanity… I truly hope everyone can/will have such a lucky-stars life as mine.
Thank you always JMG for stimulating and thought provoking ideas clearly and entertainingly expressed!
Jill C yogaandthetarot
I found your blog last month after a long hiatus (reading your books in the 2010s). I’ve enjoyed thinking about the points you bring up, and this post seems serendipitous with me returning to your thoughts. Looking forward to future posts!
Hi JMG,
Thank you for this article. I’m very glad you write about peak oil again.
You mentioned:
“I predicted, some years ago, that the next energy crisis would arrive sometime around 2022. That didn’t happen…”
In 2022, the Russo-Ukrainian/NATO war turned kinetic, which has energy as its root. So your prediction was not that off in my opinion.
Well as Adam Smith said “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation” It will be a gradual decline with occasional sudden dips along the way. I anticiapte a dip sometime in the next ten years. Though I suppose a cataclysmic war could also happen in addition to the ecosystem, resource, economic, social declines. That concerns me more than The Long Descent.
Very timely. Glad you bring that up !
This week there were two news items, released mere days apart, and not from fringe sources, that announced that US shale would peak this year or early next. You may have seen ’em. Of course such announcements may be in part due to the recent price slump. This slump in turn has its own causes.
Many comments under these articles were dismissive, “it’s all a scam”, there’s an ocean of oil under Alaska that “we” stashed for later, to say nothing of abiotic theory. I’m a sucker for a good conspiracy narrative but… Guess I wasn’t in the mood.
Still the news that we may be “there” soon made my heart aflutter, somewhat lol. I still tend to believe that by 2030 something drastic will have happened, thrusting us in a new phase of the larger Descent. To be sure, I may just be recoiling in the face of the slow grind.
JMG, thank you so much for this. My friends think I am nuts for continuing to harp about long, slow energy descent.
Wow, Running on Empty. I haven’t thought about that list in a while. I dug up an email I kept from that list that I saved back in 2006 when I was still afraid of immediate apocalypse. It’s called 100 Things You Can Do To Get Ready for Peak Oil. I am so glad to feel more grounded in all of this now and there is useful stuff in here. Here’s the post which originated on the Energy Bulletin:
To: RunningOnEmpty2@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [RunningOnEmpty2] 100 Things You Can Do to Get Ready for Peak Oil
Spring
1. Rethink your seed starting regimen. How will you do it without potting soil, grow lights and warming mats. Consider creating manure heated hotbeds, using your own compost, building a greenhouse, or coldframe, direct seeding early versions of transplanted crops, etc…
2. Your local feed store has chicks right now – even suburbanites might consider ordering a few bantam hens and keeping them as exotic birds. Worth a shot, no? You can grow some feed in your garden for them, as well as enjoying the eggs.
3. Order enough seeds for three years of gardening. If by next spring, we are all unable to get replacement seed, will you have produced everything you need? What if you can’t grow for a year because of some crisis? Order extras from places with cheap seed like http://www.fedcoseeds.com, http://www.superseeds.com, http://www.rareseed.com.
4. Yard sale season will begin soon in the warmer parts of the country, and auctions are picking up now in the North. Stocking up on things like shoes, extra coats, kids clothing in larger sizes, hand tools, garden equipment is simply prudent – and can save a lot of money.
5. The real estate “season” will begin shortly, with families wanting to get settled in new homes during the summer, before the school year starts. If you are planning on buying or selling this year, now is the time to research the market, new locations, find that country property or the urban duplex with a big yard.
6. Once pastures are flush, last year’s hay is usually a bargain, and many farmers clean out their barns. manure and old hay are great soil builders for anyone.
7. Check out your local animal shelter and adopt a dog or cat for rodent control, protection and friendship during peak oil.
8. As things green up, begin to identify and use local wild edibles. Eat your lawn’s dandelions, your daylily shoots, new nettles. Hunt for morels (learn what you are doing first!!) and wild onions. Get in the habit of seeing what food there is to be had everywhere you go.
9. Set up rainbarrel or cistern systems and start harvesting your precipitation.
10. Planning to only grow vegetables? Truly sustainable gardens include a lot of pretty flowers, which have value as medicinals, dye and fiber plants, seasoning herbs, and natural cleaners and pest repellants.
Instead of giving up ornamentals altogether, grow a garden full of daylilies, lady’s mantle, dye hollyhocks and coreopsis, foxgloves, soapwart, bayberry, hip roses, bee balm and other useful beauties.
11. Get a garden in somewhere around you – campaign to turn open space into a community garden, ask if you can use a friend’s backyard, get your company or church, synagogue, mosque or school to grow a garden for the poor. Every garden and experienced gardener we have is a potential hedge against the disaster.
12. Join a CSA if you don’t garden, and get practice cooking and eating a local diet in season.
13. Eggs and greens are at their best in spring – dehydrated greens and cooked eggshells, ground up together add calcium and a host of other nutrients to flour, and you won’t taste them. We’re not going to be able to afford to waste food in the future, so get out of the habit now.
14. Make rhubarb, parsnip or dandelion wine for later consumption.
15. Now that warmer weather is here, start walking for more of your daily Needs. Even a four or five mile walk is quite reasonable for most healthy people.
16. Start a compost pile, or begin worm composting. Everyone can and should compost. Even apartment dwellers can keep worms or a compost bin and use the product as potting soil.
17. Use spring holidays and feasts as a chance to bring up peak oil with friends and family. Freedom and rebirth are an excellent subjects to lead into the Long Emergency.
18. Store the components of some traditional spring holiday foods, so that in hard times your family can maintain its traditions and celebrations.
19. With the renewal of the building season, now is the time to scavenge free building materials, like cinder blocks, old windows and scrap wood – with permission, of course.
20. Try and adapt to the spring weather early – get outside, turn down your heat or bank your fires, cut down on your fuel consumption as though you had no choice. Put on those sweaters one more time.
21. Shepherds are flush with wool – now is the time to buy some fleece and start spinning! Drop spindles are easy to make and cheap to use. Check out http://www.learntospin.com
22. Take a hard look back over the last winter – if you had had to survive on what you grew and stored last year, would you have made it?
Early spring was famously the “starving time” when stores ran out and everyone was hungry. Remember, when you plan your food needs that not much produces early in spring, and in northern climates, A winter’s worth of food must last until May or June.
23. Trade cuttings and divisions, seeds and seedlings with your neighbors. Learn what’s out there in your community, and sneak some useful plants into your neighbors’ garden.
24. If you’ve got a nearby college, consider scavenging the dorm dumpsters. College students often leave astounding amounts of Stuff behind including excellent books, clothes, furniture, etc.
25. Say a schecheyanu, a blessing, or a prayer. Or simply be grateful for a series of coincidences that permit us to be here, in this place, as the world and the seasons come to life again. Try to make sure that this year, this time, you will take more joy in what you have, and prepare a bit better to soften the blow that is about to fall.
SUMMER
1. If you don’t can or dehydrate, now is the time to learn. In most climates, you can waterbath can or dehydrate with a minimum of purchased materials, and produce is abundant and cheap. If you don’t garden, check out your local farmstand for day-old produce or your farmer’s market at the end of the day – they are likely to have large quantities they are anxious to get rid of. Wild fruits are also in abundance, or will be.
2. Consider dehydrating outer leaves of broccoli, cabbage, etc…, and grinding the dried mixture. It can be added to flours to increase the nutritional value of your bread.
3. Buy hay in the summer, rather than gradually over the winter. Now is an excellent time to put up simple shelters for hay storage, to avoid high early spring and winter prices.
4. Firewood, woodstoves and heating materials are at their cheapest right now. Invest now for winter. The same is true of insulating materials.
5. Back to school planning is a great time to reconsider transportation in light of peak oil. Can your children walk? Bike? If they cannot do either for reasons of safety (rather than distance) could an adult do so with them? Could you hire a local teenager to take them to school on foot or by wheel? Can you find ways to carpool, if you must drive? Grownups can do this too.
6. Also when getting ready to go back to school, consider the environmental impact of your scheduling and activities – are there ways to minimize driving/eating out/equipment costs/fuel consumption? Could your family do less in formal “activities” and more in family work?
7. Consider either home schooling or engaging in supplemental home Education. Your kids may need a large number of skills not provided by local public schools, and a critical perspective that they certainly won’t learn in an institutional setting. Teach them.
8. Try and minimize air conditioning and electrical use during high Summer. Take cool showers or baths, use ice packs, reserve activity when possible for early am or evening. Rise at 4 am and get much of your work done then.
9. Consider adding a solar powered attic fan, available from Real Goods http://www.realgoods.com.
10. Don’t go on vacation. Spend your energy and money making your home a paradise instead. Throw a barbecue, a party or an open house, and invite the neighbors in. Get to know them.
11. Be prepared for summer blackouts, some quite extensive. Have emergency supplies and lighting at hand.
12. Practice living, cooking and camping outside, so that you will be comfortable doing so if necessary. Everyone in the family can Learn basic outdoors person skills.
13. Make your own summer camp. Instead of sending kids to soccer camp, create an at-home skills camp that helps prepare people for Peak oil. Invite the neighbor kids to join you. Have a blast!
14. Begin adapting herbs and other potted plants to indoor culture. Consider adding small tropicals – figs, lemons, oranges, even bananas can often be grown in cold climate homes. Obviously, if you live in a warm climate well, be prepared for some jealousy from the rest of us come February ;-).
15. Plant a fall garden in high summer – peas, broccoli, kale, lettuces, beets, carrots, turnips, etc. All of the above will last well into early winter in even the harshest climates, and with proper techniques or in milder areas, will provide you with fresh food all year long
16. Put up a new clothesline! Consider hand washing clothes outside, since everyone will probably enjoy getting wet (and cool) anyhow.
17. If you have access to safe waters, go fishing. Get some practice, and learn a new skill.
18. Encourage pick-up games at your house. Post-peak, children will need to know how to entertain themselves.
19. For teens, encourage them to develop their own home businesses over the summers. Whether doing labor or creating a product, you may rely on them eventually to help support the family. Or have them clean out your closets and attic and help you reorganize. Let them sell the stuff.
20. Buy a hand pushed lawn mower if you have less than 1 acre of grass. New ones are easy to push and pleasant, and will save you energy and that unpleasant gas smell.
21. Keep an eye out for unharvested fruits and nuts – many suburban and rural areas have berry and fruit bushes that no one harvests. Take advantage and put up the fruit.
22. Practice extreme water conservation during the summer. Mulch to reduce the need for irrigation. Bathe less often and with less water. Reduce clothes washing when possible.
23. This is an excellent time to toilet train children – they can run around naked if necessary and accidents will do no harm. Try and get them out of diapers now, before winter.
24. Consider replacing lawns with something that doesn’t have to be mown – ground covers like vetch, moss, even edibles like wintergreen or lingonberry, chamomile or mint.
25. If it is summer time, then the living is probably easy. Take some time to enjoy it – to picnic, to celebrate democracy (and try and bring one about ;-), To explore your own area, walk in the nearby woods.
FALL
1. Simple, cheap insulating strategies (window quilts and blankets, draft stoppers, etc…) are easily made from cheap or free materials – goodwill, for example, often has jeans, tshirts and shrunken wool sweaters, of quality too poor to sell, that can be used for quilting material and batting. They are available where I am for a nominal price, and I’ve heard of getting them free.
2. Stock up for winter as though the hard times will begin this year. Besides dried and canned foods, don’t forget root cellarable and storable local produce, and season extension (cold frames, greenhouses,
etc…) techniques for fresh food when you make your food inventory.
3. Thanksgiving sales tend to be when supermarkets offer the cheapest deals on excellent supplements to food storage, like shortening, canned pumpkin, spices, etc… I’ve also heard of stores given turkeys away free with grocery purchases – turkeys can then be cooked, canned and stored. Don’t forget to throw in storable ingredients for your family’s holiday staples – in hard times, any kind of celebration or continuity is appreciated.
4. Go leaf rustling for your garden and compost pile. If you happen into places where people leave their leaves out for pickup, grab the bags and set them to composting or mulching Your own garden.
5. Plant a last crop of over wintering spinach, and enjoy in the fall and again in spring.
6. Or consider planting a bed of winter wheat. Chickens can even graze it lightly in the fall, and it will be ready to harvest in time to use the bed for your fall garden. Even a small bed will make quite a bit of fresh, delicious bread.
7. Hit those last yard sales, or back to school sales and buy a few extra clothes (or cloth to make them) for growing children and extra shoes for everyone. They will be welcome in storage, particularly if prices rise because of trade issues or inflation.
8. The best time to expand your garden is now – till or mulch and let sod rot over the winter. Add soil amendments, manure, compost and lime.
9. Now is an excellent time to start the 100 mile diet in most locales – Stores and farms and markets are bursting with delicious local produce And products. Eat local and learn new recipes.
10. Rose hip season is coming – most food storage items are low in accessible vitamin C. Harvest wild or tame unsprayed rose hips, and dry them for tea to ensure long-term good health. Rose hips are delicious mixed with raspberry leaves and lemon balm.
11. Discounts on alcohol are common between Halloween and Christmas – this is an excellent time to stock up on booze for personal, medicinal, trade or cooking. Pick up some vanilla beans as well, and make your own vanilla out of that cheap vodka.
12. Gardening equipment, and things like rainbarrels go on sale in the late summer/early fall. And nurseries often are trying to rid themselves of perennial plants – including edibles and medicinals. It isn’t too late to plant them in most parts of the country, although some care is needed in purchasing for things that have become rootbound.
13. Local honey will be at its cheapest now – now is the time to stock up. Consider making friends with the beekeeper, and perhaps taking lessons yourself.
14. Fall is the cheapest time to buy livestock, either to keep or for butchering. Many 4Hers, and those who simply don’t want to keep excess animals over the winter are anxious to find buyers now. In many cases, at auction, I see animals selling for much less than the meat you can expect to obtain from their carcass is worth.
15. Most cold climate housing has or could have a “cold room/area” – a space that is kept cool enough during the fall and winter to dispense with the necessity of a refrigerator, but that doesn’t freeze. If you have separate fridge and freezer, consider disconnecting your fridge during the cooler weather to save utility costs and conserve energy. You can build a cool room by building in a closet with a window, and insulating it with styrofoam panels
16. Now is a great time to build community (and get stuff done) by instituting a local “work bee” – invite neighbors and friends to come help either with a project for your household, or to share in some good deed for another community member. Provide food, drink, tools and get to work on whatever it is (building, harvesting, quilting, knitting – the sky is the limit), and at the same time strengthen your community. Make sure that next time, the work benefits a different neighbor or community member.
17. Most local charities get the majority of their donations between now and December. Consider dividing your charitable donations so that they are made year round, but adding extra volunteer hours to help your group handle the demands on them in the fall.
18. Many medicinal and culinary herbs are at their peak now. Consider learning about them and drying some for winter use.
19. If there is a gleaning program near you (either for charity or personal use) consider joining. If not, start one. Considerable amounts of food are wasted in the harvesting process, and you can either add to your storage or benefit your local shelters and food pantries.
20. Dig out those down comforters, extra blankets, hats with the earflaps, flannel jammies, etc… You don’t need heat in your sleeping areas – just warm clothes and blankets.
21. Learn a skill that can be done in the dark or by candlelight, while sitting with others in front of a heat source. Knitting, crocheting, whittling, rug braiding, etc… can all be done mostly by touch with little light, and are suitable for companionable evenings. In addition, learn to sing, play instruments, recite memorized speeches and poetry, etc… as something to do on dark winter evenings.
22. While I wouldn’t expect deer or turkey hunting to be a major food source in coming times (I would expect large game to be driven back to near-extinction pretty quickly), it is worth having those skills, and also the skills necessary to catch the less commonly caught small game, like rabbits, squirrel, etc…
23. Use a solar cooker or parabolic solar cooker whenever possible To prepare food. Or eat cool salads and raw foods. Not only won’t you heat up the house, but you’ll save energy.
24. A majority of children are born in the summer early fall, which suggests that some of us are doing more than keeping warm ;-). Now is a good time to get one’s birth control updated ;-).
25. Celebrate the harvest – this is a time of luxury and plenty, and
should be treated as such and enjoyed that way. Cook, drink, eat, talk, sing, pray, dance, laugh, invite guests. Winter is long and comes soon enough. Celebrate!
WINTER
1. Your local adult education program almost certainly has something useful to teach you – woodworking, crocheting, music training, horseback riding, CPR, herbalism, vegetarian cookery… take advantage of people who want to teach their skills
2. Get serious about land use planning – even if you live in a suburban neighborhood, you can find ways to optimize your land to produce the most food, fuel and barterables. Sit down and think hard about what you can do to make your land and your life more sustainable in the coming year.
3. The Winter lull is an excellent time to get involved in public affairs. No matter how cynical you tend to be, nothing ever changed without engagement. So get out there. Stand for office. Join. Volunteer.
4. Now is the time to prepare for illness – keep a stock of remedies, including useful antibiotics (although know what you are doing, don’t just buy them and take them), vitamin C supplements (I like elderberry syrup), painkillers, herbs, and tools for handling even serious illness by yourself. In the event of a truly severe epidemic of flu or other illness, avoiding illness and treating sick family members at home whenever possible may be safer than taking them to over-worked and over-crowded hospitals (or, it may not – but planning for the former won’t prevent you from using the hospital if you need it).
5. Most schools would be delighted to have volunteers come in and talk about conservation, gardening, small livestock, home-scale mechanics, ham radio, etc…, and most homeschooling families would be similarly thrilled. Consider offering to teach something you know that will be helpful post-peak (although I wouldn’t recommend discussing peak oil with any but the oldest teenagers, and not even that without their parents permission
6. Now is the time to convince your business, synagogue, church, school, community center to put a garden on that empty lawn. If you start the campaign now, you can be ready to plant in the spring. Produce can be shared among participants or offered to the needy.
7. The one-two punch of rising heating oil and gas prices may well be what is needed to make your family and friends more receptive to the peak oil message. Try again. At the very least, emphasize the options for mitigating increased economic strain with sustainable practices.
8. Get together with neighbors and check in on your area’s elderly and disabled people. Make a plan that ensures they will be checked on during bad weather, power outages, etc… Offer help with stocking up for winter, or maintaining equipment. And watch for signs that they are struggling economically.
9. Work on raising money and getting help with local poverty-abatement Programs. After the holidays, people struggle. They get hungry and cold. Remember, besides the fact that it is the right thing to do, the life you save may be your own.
10. Get out and enjoy the cold weather. It is hard to adapt to colder temperatures if you spend all your time huddled in front of a heater. Ski, snowshoe, sled, shovel, have a snowball fight, build a hut, go winter camping, but get comfortable with the cold, snowy world around you.
11. Have your chimney(s) inspected, and learn to clean your own. Learn to care for your kerosene lamps, to use candles safely, and how to use and maintain your smoke and CO detectors and fire extinguishers.
Winter is peak fire season, so keep safe.
12. Grow sprouts on your windowsill.
13. Now is an excellent time to reconsider how you use your house. Look around – could you make more space? House more people? Do projects more efficiently? Add greenhouse space? Put in a homemade composting toilet? Work with what you have to make it more useful.
14. If a holiday gift exchange is part of your life, make most of your gifts. Knit, whittle, build, sew, or otherwise create something beautiful for the people you love.
15. If someone wants to buy you something, request a useful tool or preparedness item, or a gift certificate to a place like Lehmans or Real Goods. Considering giving such gifts to friends and family – a solar crank radio, an LED flashlight, cast iron pans, These are useful and appreciated items whether or not you believe in peak oil.
16. Do a dry run in the dead of winter. Turn out all the power, turn off the water. Turn off all fossil-fuel sources of heat, and see how things go for a few days. Use what you learn to improve your preparedness, and have fun while doing it.
17. Learn to mend clothing, patch and make patchwork out of old clothes.
18. Write letters to people. The post is the most reliable way of communicating, And letters last forever.
19. Make a list of goals for the coming year, and the coming five years. Start Keeping records of your goals and your successes and failures.
20. Keep a journal. Your children and grandchildren (or someone else’s) may want To know what these days were like.
21. Wash your hands frequently, and avoid stress. Stay healthy so that you can be useful To those around you.
22. For those subject to depression or anxiety, winter can be hard. Find ways to relax, decompress and use work as an antidote to fear whenever possible. Get outside on sunny days, and try and exercise as much as possible to help maintain a positive attitude.
23. Memorize a poem or song every week. No matter what happens to you, no one can ever take away the music and words you hold in your mind. You can have them as comfort and pleasure wherever you go, and in whatever circumstances.
24. Take advantage of heating stoves by cooking on them. You can make soups or stews on top of any wood stove or even many radiators, and you can build or buy a metal oven That sits on top of woodstoves to bake in.
25. Winter is a time of quiet and contemplation. Go outside. Hear the silence. Take pleasure in what you have achieved over the past year. Focus on the abundance of this present, this day, rather than scarcity to come.
In terms of the question of “peak energy”, there has been a bit a furor lately regarding the construction and successful activation of the first “meltdown proof” thorium reactor in China, and how thorium could serve as an almost “inexhaustible” resource to rely on in the future:
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/China-Unveils-Worlds-1st-Meltdown-Proof-Thorium-Reactor.html
I have to wonder exactly how viable the notion of thorium reactors will prove in the long run? Certainly, I have my doubts it would be enough to make up for declines in oil supply, but I also wonder with China specifically whether it will be able to withstand most of the shocks as industrial civilization continues its decline, particularly given how heavily invested they are in industrial policy.
I’ve always been of the opinion that apocalyptic thinking is just people outsourcing the fear of their own inevitable demise. The only difference is that we can fantasize about averting the apocalypse with the right tech or policy. Death, sadly, countenances no surrogate or solution – industrial scale protestations made by the MechaMuskrat be damned.
You know that feeling when you see someone else say something that you’ve always thought, but rarely ever gets mentioned? You feel vindicated.
I saw this recently, on Elonbook. The gist was, someone was saying: Alberta beware, separatism may be a mirage, because Peak Oil was real and you’re going to run out sooner than you think, and what then?
After all, my region was wealthy until they hit Peak Fish and then it all fell apart. These things do happen.
But you don’t see anyone acknowledge it, very often.
A root beer float! I haven’t had one of those for a long time. With proper root beer, proper vanilla ice cream and frosted glass mug. Delicious!
JMG,
What is your take on the abiogenic theory of oil?
I recently read that Antarctica has perhaps the largest remaining petroleum reserves in the world and the confirmation of that nugget is well under way. How it plays into the world of power politics is an interesting mental exercise. The potential net energy estimates are a wildly volatile consideration as well given the remoteness and the weather of course.
JMG, Silicone Guy, et al
I see that the CEO of Diamondback energy has just announced that the Permian has already peaked this year and will start to decline. The Permian has been the only thing preventing greater world decline since 2018. The prevailing opinion seemed to have been that there would be another peak a wee bit higher than 2018 before 2028 and then a plateau into the early 30s.. The main reason seems to be geological, but$50 per barrel oil also makes most new drilling unprofitable. I suspect economics is going to be a big decline factor going forward, as well as people having less money reducing demand. My guess would be that reduced supply, reduced demand and higher operating costs are going to make a clear picture of peak oil very cloudy for a few years, especially if deliberately muddied by governments and companies. I don’t think there is enough new oil to find, especially at $50. or less per barrel, for Trump’s promises to have any meaning.
Stephen
LATOC (Life After The Oil Crash); great community. shared so many resources for free both online and in person. probably one of the greatest fully functioning online communities.
I discovered the Archdruid through James Howard Kunstler. Which actually gave my long standing interest in occultism structure and clarity. As far as Kunstler goes, today I think he’s gotten totally lost in boomer-esque politics. I wish he’d come back to critiquing urbanism and architecture.
Regarding climate change, there is an Orthodox Christian Youtuber who did an incredible highly organized breakdown on how climate change is a religion. Set aside his own bias, his analysis is actually very objective. David Patrick Harry is his name for anyone interested in looking up that particular video.
what’s your opinion on net zero energy? california is pushing to eliminate all non-renewable fuel sources. and low and behold, spain and portugal just achieved 100% renewables, followed by black outs.
One final question; in the “conspriracy” realm, there are people who asser that “fossil fuels” is a misnomer, and that oil is not dinosaur juice (Sinclair is an adorable mascot). what do you think oil “actually” is?
Hi JMG,
The mention in this essay of how the peak oil scene fell under the sway of murky NGO financing and then how those same NGO’s and their backers pivoted to ‘climate change’ reminded me of an offhand mention in Lewin and Galbraith’s satire of post WW2 managerialism The Report From Iron Mountain. I don’t have the exact quote in front of me as it has been years since I’ve read the book. I recall, as an alternative to the war economy, the satirical white paper proposed the possibility of of using the threat of environmental catastrophe as justification for keeping the masses mired in a state of self sacrifice “for the greater good” that in practice would work to maintain the current social order rather than do anything for environmental issues. Much as Cold Wars are designed never to be won.
Given that Lewin and Galbraith (particularly Galbraith) spent a lot of time in the very same elite policy circles they were lampooning, it makes me wonder how long some flavor of what became the “Davos climate change policy” has been floating around in think tanks and with cynical policy wonks and the like. It’s worth noting that in the mid 2000’s when peak oil and later climate change began to get elite attention and backing it looked like cold war style geopolitical arrangements weren’t going to come back and the stop gap measure of “The War on Terror” was rapidly becoming massively unpopular. Now that a more traditional cold war with Russia and China has come back climate change and other forms of elite backed “environmentalism” seem to be taking a back burner.
Thought provoking stuff as always JMG,
JZ
Speaking of apocalypse-du-jour tendencies in our culture, I check in with several subreddits on preparedness, economics, geopolitics, etc., and this thread has gotten pretty active: https://www.reddit.com/r/economicCollapse/comments/1kerdgt/how_can_you_tell_we_are_headed_for_a_recession_or/
This post stuck out in light of our host’s discussion here, though: (edited just to give you the relevant parts). Each bullet point is a new comment:
“•3d ago -Upstream oil and gas service company, we are closing a couple stores next week. These are bases that have been in business for over 30 years.
• 3d ago – Are you talking about oilfield service companies like wireline, tools, that sort of thing? “Stores” meaning branches that personnel and equipment are run from?
•3d ago -Yes, servicing drilling operations, the stores are exactly what you said, where the equipment and the personnel mobilize from, it’s a bummer.
•3d ago -My sympathies. We had our careers derailed by downturns in the patch many years ago.
•3d ago – What does “upstream” mean in that business?
• 2d ago – It’s basically where in the “supply chain” of O&G production. Here’s an overview:
Upstream refers to exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas, midstream is the transportation and storage of crude oil and natural gas, downstream refers to the conversion of crude oil and natural gas into thousands of finished products.”
Upstream is turning into a trickle in some locales…
@Ken #5. Yeah, I think that the population peak is going to happen soon and will relive a lot of the strain on resources. I also wonder if humans in the developed world have hit their limit for consumerism? I mean, how often do you need new countertops or new dishes?
@JMG and JillC #24 I also have no children and find myself becoming more entertained by the little crises, a stock crash here, a possible war there than concerned by it. At this point in my life, perhaps I’m cynical, or perhaps I’ve realized that the social order has already broken down and maybe it’s not worth the effort to worry about it or try to work for a better future and just enjoy the time I have left. I’ve never been in any debt in my life, but there are a lot of cool things I could buy on credit! I also started growing popcorn if anyone wants to watch with me….
Marko @ 19, the organic gardening bible is by John Jeavons, https://johnjeavons.org/books-and-videos/#BOOK‘
Do keep in mind, that the methods used at Ecology Action were developed in Coastal California, with the fantastic year-round growing season, and will need to be modified for your particular climate. That said, what he describes is the best way to get started gardening I have yet found. For one example of local modification, I needed to water twice a day in the CentraL Valley and use a mulch. The problem with most of the no till methods is that they use A Lot of off site inputs, which are increasingly expensive. Now, in Upstate NY, I dig ditches beside each garden bed to receive the water from the heavy summer rains we get here. Now that I have a compost pile going, I can pile 4″ compost–less doesn’t help much–on top of the beds and the double digging isn’t needed, unless I have some twigs and such I want to bury in the soil. Organic ferts are wonderful if you can afford them, but if you can’t, do what you can with what you have. Nothing organic should be put out on the street; it all makes good compost. Cooled water from noodles, potatoes, rinsing dishes, etc. can be used on plants that need babied. If you can afford ferts, the best I have found come from an organic chicken and egg operation in the MidWest, who found a creative way to use up their waste. I forgot the name. They were being sold by a chain called Running.
For seeds, the two go to places to start are MIgardener and Baker Creek, IMO, and for next winter, do check out winter sowing. I hope this helps and good luck with your gardening.
Galerkin @ # 34, I believe the notion of oil having abiotic origin came about when some Soviet scientists figured out a way to tell Stalin what Stalin wanted to hear. There was, and still is, oil in Russia, but I doubt it is of abiotic origin.
Bofur, about Alberta: I’ve thought that too. You are not alone. Though they should at least still have farming provided climate change doesn’t go completely insane.
The other thing I notice is that they talk about ‘the west’ but don’t consider coastal BC’s interests or inclinations at all, and just assume we’ll want to leave with them and then agree with them on whatever they want for policy. The BC coast is actually the most densely populated part of ‘the west’ with the biggest city, and has very different opinions from Alberta on a lot of things.
And without it, they would be landlocked, which generally is not great for a country.
The needed vast re-engineering of how things are done is mind boggling. I teach an environmental science class to high schoolers. In America we are surrounded by a miasma of anti-life built piece by piece since the 1800’s, in the water, air, soil, food, “medicines”, electromagnetic radiations, what we sit in, live in drive in, walk in, what we wear, plastics and forever chemicals, herbicides, pesticides. The asphalt roads exude chemicals. Human sperm counts have declined by 50% – a canary in the coal mine indicator that something is very wrong indeed! Add to that that a culture and social arrangements that do not promote positive human connections and relationships Yet this death is an intrinsic by product of the present system we use to provide stuff and services! None of the competing factions in the power structure squarely faces and understands the decades long deep restructuring that must happen. So The Long Descent will relentlessly continue.
In 1991 I sat for three days watching in horror the 24 hour/day embedded BBC and CNN Shock and Awe Show/slaughter of the Mesopotamian peoples to control and burn the mineral biomass in their land. The Anglo military-industrial-media complex’s astonishing, precise orchestration of the event shocked me to the core. By day 3 the manifestation of this terrible psychopathy generated in me such a prophetic vision of dystopia that I vowed to never own another car or fly in a jet again.
At age 77 , this rates the best, most liberating decision of my life though since then I have lived the life of an alien trapped in our hopelessly car-jet-war addicted Crown New Zealand culture. Indeed, even the good JMG ridiculed me on this forum.
What liberates and sustains these days is a wonderful experience of “energy” being as vital and bounteous as all the potential of the universe, the miracle of “global warming” and “climate change” and, in my dying days, a sense of privilege and relief of being freed of my addiction to cars and jets and the mayhem they generate for Mankind, which includes needless, dangerous “human-induced climate change”, “global warming-up” and continuous wars to maintain the Anglo “Petrodollar” hegemony.
No man (human being) can know when “peak oil” occurs. However we can have shrewd idea that our capacity to cheaply extract and combust mineral biomass passed decades ago.
These are subtle matters involving the ego that are best understood with compassion.
Hi John Michael,
Haven’t all these years been a fun ride? 😊 Whilst writing for the hippy press back in the early 2000’s, I came across the concept of Peak Oil, read a few books on the subject. It was in the newspapers of the day back in 2005 that conventional oil extraction had peaked – there was no great secret to the news. Thought about it a bit. Watched the Global Financial Crisis unfold in 2008, and then went off and did something different with my life which sort of responded to some of the new knowledge gained – and always recalled to work hard, but also have fun with the process. People waste a lot of time, energy and resources arguing, which is basically all an attempt to hold things together as they are, and that’s cool – it just ain’t me.
If I may say so, it takes a lot of time, energy and resources to hold entropy at bay. Our society isn’t even remotely focused on that possibility or outcome. Ah, another lost opportunity don’t you reckon? So many lost paths, that the field of options narrows. Oh well, shrug shoulders, movin’ on.
Having read your words for a very long time now, over the years your essays have developed a lovely cadence to them.
Cheers
Chris
Enjoyer, that’s one of the reasons apocalytic thinking is so popular. It allows people to claim that they won’t have to live with the consequences of their decisions.
Zarcayce, it’s astonished me to see how quickly that got swept under the rug, so thank you for this.
Drhooves, nicely summarized. Yeah, that’s just it — what transforms peak oil from an interesting situation to a calamity is human stupidity.
Siliconguy, if that turns out to be true, we may get the next oil shock sooner than I’d expected. Cue some other even more expensive and uneconomical source of liquid fuels, propped up by even more bizarre distortions of the world economy…
Ken, the peaking of global population is a natural consequence of the peaking of energy availability. Petroleum usage will fall, all right, as production declines in step with population, but I still expect all the economically extractable oil (along with some that isn’t economically viable, but gets extracted anyway) to be pumped out of the ground and burnt. Two hundred years from now, when global population is at 10% of current levels and most of them are subsistence farmers, there will still be a few wells pumping out a trickle of oil.
Vivek, there’s a fourth expedient, and we’re seeing it in the United States right now: eliminate excess consumption via economically unproductive areas such as government and corporate bureaucracy. If twenty million upper middle class cubicle jockeys get driven down into poverty, that will free up a very large amount of energy and materials, and it will also free up a large domestic source of unskilled labor. We’re already starting to see freakouts in the media as reporters (who belong to the surplused class) begin to realize that large language models (“AI”) can replace them and most other exployees in their category; expect this to continue as more elite classes catch on to the potential benefits.
Justin, yes, and we’ll get to that!
Alan, thank you!
Ken, we’re currently in a complex situation in which nearly every other culture on the planet has undergone what Spengler called a pseudomorphosis — the imposition of cultural forms from outside — and the source of that is precisely the European/Faustian civilization that’s heading straight for decline and fall with the pedal to the metal. As a result, everyone else is caught up in the same pell-mell rush toward the abyss. The question is purely whether any of them extract their heads from their (ahem!) in time. What I’m seeing so far is not promising, but the story’s not over yet.
Raymond, I have no objection to Christians waiting prayerfully for the Second Coming, as long as they remember that not even Jesus knows when it’s going to happen (Mark 13:32) and that the Kingdom of God is primarily an internal spiritual state (Luke 17:21). The problems usually pop up when spiritual pride leads people to think that they know better than Christ!
Synthase, that’s happening across much of the world, and for good reason: the artificial token economy of money is increasingly disconnected from the real economy of nonfinancial goods and services. The banknote below is a useful reminder of one way things could go:
Justin, “enshaleification” is certainly appropriate here. (For newcomers to this blog, quite a while ago I agreed to modify my no-profanity rule to permit the expletives “frack,” “shale,” and “borehole” here.) As for 23, as you may know, it’s also an important number in Discordian gematria: it’s a basic rule therein that the number 23 can be found in all phenomena, if you’re clever enough. 😉
Larry, the Transition Towm movement had good ideas, but those don’t mean much without adequate implementation! That’s been the great challenge all through this process: getting people to realize that good ideas without some way to get them put into practice is just cerebral flatulence.
TimPW, no, that’s one I haven’t encountered, and I’d like to see it argued sometime. In point of fact, net energy is a measure of entropy: the more complex the process by which an energy resource has to be located, extracted, processed, and transported, the more of the energy it contains is lost to entropy, because every step in the process has an entropy cost: you always lose at least a little energy at each stage.
Alison, easily done. I’ll consider a new reading list as we proceed.
Other Owen, yep. Specifically, that’s catabolic collapse in action. Expect much more of it, and a lot of “flump” sounds, as the scrambling begins.
JonL, exactly. Frantic jerry-rigging becomes the order of the day. I have to say, though, that how much you need a car really depends on where you are and how you live. At 62, I’ve never owned a car or had a driver’s license, and it’s never been a problem for me. Of course I’ve always made sure to live in places that had the resources I need within walking distance, and functional public transit is still available in some parts of this country, but you make your choices depending on what matters to you. Suburbia? I grew up there and I’d sooner live in Hell.
Marko, not everyone here’s been a reader of mine since 2009. Be prepared for a lot of other recaps of past material while we get up to speed.
PaleoTaoist, I’ll see what I can find. As for links, just type it in as plaintext and it’ll get through.
Degringolade, those were factors, sure, but I thought at the time there was much more going on than that, and at this point — as it’s become clear how much of the US federal budget was being turned into a slush fund for various unsavory social-engineering projects — I’m even more convinced of that. But we’ll talk more about that in future posts.
Tom, thank you! I’ll be discussing the so-called Seneca Cliff as we proceed. Like most fast-crash arguments, it only pays attention to one set of feedback loops — the set that accelerate decline — without dealing with the other set of feedback loops — the set that delay decline. The rhetoric of progress, amusingly, does exactly the opposite. I sometimes wonder if I should lock the two theories in a hotel room, wait nine months, and see if they give birth to common sense.
Pygmycory, I’m very sorry to hear this! Life in a society in headlong decline really can be difficult, especially for those of us who are getting on in years. May I request Quin to put you on the prayer list?
Jill, oh, of course humanity will adapt. Many of us will adapt, as you and I have, by not having children, doing our best with the rest of this incarnation, and letting the process of rebirth get us a childhood and education that will fit us for the deindustrial future. Others will adapt in other ways. Industrial civilization? It’s a brittle, ramshackle structure that’s already falling apart, and — well, let’s whisper this: flashy as it was, it never did a very good job of meeting the needs of the human spirit. The (much smaller) generations to come will try other things.
Trevor, welcome back to the three-ring deindustrial circus!
Foxhands, maybe so, but I insist on judging my own predictions with a sharp eye for evasions; predicting an energy crisis and getting a war doesn’t really seem to count, at least to me.
BeardTree, there will be wars; it’s quite possible that a really messy one is about to break out in South Asia right now. I suspect, though, that a truly cataclysmic war won’t happen, for the simple reason that the people in power will have run the numbers six ways from Sunday and determined that there’s no way they can benefit from it.
Thibault, yes, I’ve been watching both the signs of peak shale liquids and the frantic attempts by people to insist that no such thing can happen; the latter’s as good a sign of approaching trouble as the former. Here we go!
Angelica, good heavens, that’s a blast from the past! Thank you.
N, now let’s see if it’s economical to run. The thing the pro-nuclear lobby is never willing to ta;lk about is that fission power is technically feasible but an economic white elephant, and the more complex a nuclear technology is — and thorium reactors are pretty complex — the more unaffordable it is. Look into the history of nuclear powered commercial freighters sometimes if you want an unsparing look at just how unaffordable nuclear power is.
Mark, bingo. Elon Musk, and a great many people like him, are busy trying to pretend that they don’t have to abide by the limits of the human condition, using clichés from the science fiction of the last century to do it. The apocalypse lobby is trying to do the same thing with clichés that are even older. Hope springs infernal, and all that.
Bofur, I wonder if Canada will let Alberta go once the tar sands run out and it’s no longer profitable to the rest of the nation…
Bird, I have that very much in mind for this summer.
Galerkin, it doesn’t matter. Do you remember when the price of oil went soaring into triple digits for the first time in 2008? When that happened, hundreds of oil wells in the old Pennsylvania oil fields, some of them shut in for a century, were reopened. If oil was abiotic, and was produced at rates high enough to matter, those wells would have been brimfull of light sweet crude. They weren’t — they were down to the dregs, just as they had been when they were shut in. Thus, wherever oil comes from, it doesn’t regenerate at a pace fast enough to help.
BrianDamage, oh, you can be sure that Antarctica and Greenland will be plundered before all this is over. I’ve been saying for years that I expect to see the Sierra Club advocating for the strip mining of the US national park system if that’ll prop up middle class lifestyles for a few more wretched decades.
BeardTree, exactly. We’re already well along the course of decline, the brakes have failed, and the steering wheel has locked up. Enjoy the ride!
Chris, thank you! Yeah, it’s been a long strange trip, and the friends and readers I’ve collected along the way are the best part of it.
Us clever little thinkers predicting a future with the great tool of logos. Its funny how these things can change over time if we live long enough to see and discern what influence we are have in the present. Glad you brought this back in the light of an elemental. It is something to contemplate.
Thinking that one can approach this oddly abundant time from many perspectives, and realize that this might be a matter of the haves or have nots when it comes to the subject of energy and how one uses it as well. Finding that this is a time when one can really do inner work with a whole lot less distractions even if there is an abundant amount of distractions going around. That is something to behold, but i digress. Thanks for your work JMG. Its truly amazing!
Sometimes we don’t realize what we have till its gone!? What a cliche’
Ah, The Oil Drum. One of the many peak oil sites I used to read and which lead me to the ADR in ’07 and I’ve been reading you ever since. The Peak Oil conversation mostly disappeared but Peak Oil is still with us. One thing that I’ve noticed is whenever barrels of oil is mentioned, it’s never stipulated whether or not it’s gross or net amount. The Tar Sands (I refuse to call it Oil Sands) is a case in point. It’s EROEI is apparently 3 barrels of oil equivalent for every 4 mined, but there is no mention of the gross or net when amounts are mentioned. I suspect that the figures used are the gross to make it sound better.
Peak oil, as you mentioned, is only one thing that will have to be dealt with. Two others I have first hand knowledge of are mining and farming. There will be ores left in the ground simply because they are too far underground to extract without the energy which is no longer available. And farming: all of the heavy equipment is compacting the soil and the chemicals used are killing the tiny soil inhabitants that help to rejuvenate the soil. It will take decades, centuries maybe, to rebuild healthy soil that modern agriculture is destroying.
Pygmycory, take care of yourself. I’ve noticed a lot of burn out with people I know. It seems a lot of people try to do too much and can’t handle the strain. Cut back on whatever is not necessary and which you can do without for the time being. But keep doing the gaming if it gives you a lot of enjoyment and doesn’t cause any problems.
Fascinating subject. I’m 60, so I only have a couple of decades to worry about (give or take a couple of decades), and neither the ability nor the inclination to make big changes. (I may feel differently after the war starts.) But it boggles my mind to think that my preschool-age nieces may–if they’re lucky–live to see the year 2100. God only knows what that will be like.
Regarding Abiotic Oil;
I find that topic fascinating, as it appeared as a sort of Fourierism of the 20th century. Rather than make lemonade oceans, socialism would produce infinite oil. Assuming the People’s Commissariat for Oil was correct and oil was created in the mantle and percolated up to fill voids in the crust, it apparently occurs on geologic timescales so at current production rates any oil produced by the abiogenic process would happen at too low of a rate to matter.
What interests me about it is the migration of the idea from the hardest of hard left to the right recently. I’m not sure why this has happened.
Cheers,
JZ
I have often found myself impatient with notions of instant apocalypse. A long slow decline by attrition has seemed the more likely scenario to me. I expect that hunger, disease and violence will play the biggest roles with exposure playing a distant fourth except when the power grid goes down for whatever reason.
Hi JMG and all,
Michael Every of Rabobank has been commenting for a while about the trend towards Mercantilism, which (for those like me who don’t know the term) means states manipulating their economies for political gain. This was apparently standard practice in the 19th century. His writings and presentations are worth a read, IMO, and it will be interesting to see how “economic statecraft” evolves as fossil energy supplies dwindle.
Another thing I’ve been wondering about Trump: as an outsider (non US), it seems to me that he wants to eat his cake and have it too. On the one hand, he wants to basically levy other countries for the privilege of selling goods to the USA in exchange for US dollars, but on the other hand he’s taking a highly transactional approach to foreign affairs (including with allies). I’m not making a value judgement here, and realise that the US is probably over-extended militarily — what I’m wondering is whether Trump can pull this off? Can the US maintain its “exorbitant privilege” of printing US dollars to buy global goods (other countries send their savings to the US) or will other countries end up saying “we really don’t need the US to buy our goods when they don’t really produce anything we need”?
I guess this question boils down to whether the US military is powerful enough to coerce other countries to accept the US dollar as payment for goods (unless I’m missing something?). I’m interested to hear what people think about this.
Cheers, Gus
It’s great to see you returning to these themes JMG. I’m not entirely sure when I started following the Archdruid Report, I believe it was around 2008-2009. From that era I remember an interview you did on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory where you set him straight on the definition of a vampire, which was fantastic. So I came for the monsters, I stayed for the peak oil, and I went home with druidry.
The Winter’s Tale series you did back in the day was a particular favorite of mine. Somehow the episodes capture the multi-generational time scale of civilizational collapse in a way that other fiction does not. If we as humans were better at thinking over those sorts of time frames we would not be in the mess we are in right now. Anyway, I hope you do something like that again. It was also really fun to see it adapted into a graphic novel format in Into the Ruins.
There is an in-depth discussion on abiotic oil on wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
It contains this gem,
“In 1986–1990 The Gravberg-1 borehole was drilled through the deepest rock in the Siljan Ring in which proponents had hoped to find hydrocarbon reservoirs. It stopped at the depth of 6,800 metres (22,300 ft) due to drilling problems, after private investors spent $40 million.[32] Some eighty barrels of magnetite paste and hydrocarbon-bearing sludge were recovered from the well; Gold maintained that the hydrocarbons were chemically different from, and not derived from, those added to the borehole, but analyses showed that the hydrocarbons were derived from the diesel fuel-based drilling fluid used in the drilling.”
$40 million for eighty barrels of sludge. 🙂
As has been pointed out abiotic oil really doesn’t matter. I’ll do my best to paraphrase what Rockman pointed out long ago;
Assume abiotic oil is true.
It is also a fact that dry holes have been drilled. Therefore the oil rising from the mantle does not rise evenly, or it does but only certain limited geology can trap it. Either way oil may be found in very limited areas of the earth’s surface.
The volume of this favorable geology is limited by both surface area and depth. Most of this volume is taken up by inert rock.
Depletion is also a fact. Therefore the oil is being removed fast than the reservoir can refill. What reservoir refilling has been noted every once in a while can also be explained by existing oil far from the well migrating toward the well.
So abiotic oil doesn’t help. We are still pumping faster then it can be replaced, and if the reservoir refills in a few million years it won’t help us, but the evolved raccoons may find it useful.
There is a bright spot, abiotic methane really is possible although again we are pumping it fast than it can be replaced. The chemical reaction is in the article. But if it’s too hot then the methane turns into carbon and hydrogen.
On that note they found a deposit of hydrogen in France. It will save the world for two years. 😉
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/25/underground-hydrogen-discovery-france-raises-hopes-for-clean-energy
To decide if net energy matters all one has to do is a simple mental exercise. It becomes very obvious when net the net energy ratio approaches 1 to 1. To simplify it, assume your theoretical oil drilling/pumping machine runs on crude oil. At a one to one ratio you would carry a can of crude oil fuel to your machine and get back out of it one can of crude oil. Thus the process generates as much useful energy as staring at a rock at the ground. It doesn’t seem the entropy has much to do with it.
@JMG,
yes, that would be nice. Thank you. I would ask, though, that any such prayers be directed to the Christian God.
@Annette2, thank you. I’m thinking maybe I need to accept the gardening is mostly a bust this spring/summer.
It’s very easy to turn worry about decline into obsession, and as much as I adore homesteading and gardening advice and the spirit in which it is given, there are only so many hours in a day. Modern men and women are extremely overworked — JMG, didn’t you say medieval peasants had much more time off than the average American worker? and when you are putting in the hours of a normal job and doing normal chores such as washing the dishes and keeping the floor somewhat clean, there isn’t time or resources to learn herbalism, woodworking, or to construct a chicken coop, maintain a thriving garden, etc. Anyone with kids has an even heavier burden. I think sometimes we have to be content with turning an unused light off and just barely managing to get to the farmer’s market a few times in summer. My hat is off to the Ballerina Farm type (she’s a Mormon social media momfluencer who basically lives in her own idyllic world made by hand) but I will never be that gal.
and right on schedule,Disney is opening its newest and glitziest theme park in, where else? abu dhabi. fortunately, abu dhabi has sufficient air port facilities for virtually unlimited private jets. plan your trip soon.
Good timing for the topic, JMG, as the Resurrected Orange Man has been chanting “Drill, baby, drill” lately, Canada’s new WEF-puppet Marxist Leninist Prime Minister (Mark Carney aka Marx Carnage) is a Net Zero cultist who wants 80% of Canada’s “fossil fuels” to stay in the ground in perpetuity, and the Iberian peninsula went dark a couple weeks ago “despite” its wonderful “green” electrical grid.
On the last point, the best short explanation that I encountered was a post by Michael Shellenberger, excerpts of which I am reproducing below:
“It was one of the largest peacetime blackouts Europe has ever seen. And it was not random. It was not an unforeseeable event. It was the exact failure that many of us have been, repeatedly, warning lawmakers about for years – warnings that Europe’s political leaders systematically chose to ignore.
“While Portugal’s grid operator REN initially blamed the mass blackout on “extreme temperature variations” and a “rare atmospheric phenomenon,” and while some media repeated that framing, the reality is more serious. Weather may have triggered the event, but it was not the cause of the system’s collapse.
“Spain’s national grid operator, Red Electrica, revealed that the immediate cause of the blackout was a “very strong oscillation in the electrical network” that forced Spain’s grid to disconnect from the broader European system, leading to the collapse of the Iberian Peninsula’s power supply…
“‘No one has ever attempted a black start on a grid that relies so heavily on renewables as Iberia,’ noted JKempEnergy. ‘The limited number of thermal generators will make it more challenging to re-establish momentum and frequency control.’
“In a traditional power grid dominated by heavy spinning machines – coal plants, gas turbines, nuclear reactors – small disturbances, even from severe weather, are absorbed and smoothed out by the sheer physical inertia of the system. The heavy rotating mass of the generators acts like a shock absorber, resisting rapid changes in frequency and stabilizing the grid.
“But in an electricity system dominated by solar panels, wind turbines, and inverters, there is almost no physical inertia. Solar panels produce no mechanical rotation. Most modern wind turbines are electronically decoupled from the grid and provide little stabilizing force. Inverter-based systems, which dominate modern renewable energy grids, are precise but delicate. They follow the frequency of the grid rather than resisting sudden changes.”
High time to revisit the reality of Peak Oil and all the various diversions, delusions and denials that have been buttressed up to keep the public from perceiving this inconvenient truth.
In other news, in recent weeks, this Ontarian (yours truly) has been feasting on home-grown over-wintered spinach and fenugreek and early season radishes and lettuce thanks to cold frames (aka time machines). Now that’s a solar technology that I can appreciate ‘cuz it sure won’t cause the grid to crash!
This gives me a healthy dose of nostalgia, and deja vu, having most of my adult life (since 2008) influenced by this blog, and being involved, in a minor way, in the New Zealand peak oil scene in those heady days. I can remember falling victim in some ways to the false certainty that parts of the movement projected, whilst not running around prescribing imminent doom, I did substantially alter my life and career choices, which, apart from a masters degree in energy stuff that no one wants to listen to, have been fundamentally positive for me personally. Did it ostracise me from the general public and most colleagues, sure, but that was bound to happen with my odd neurology anyway. Why not collapse socially before the rush too 🙂
I suspect many others, posters and lurkers, have walked that path too, influenced by your blogging and those heady days. I think you hit Peak Archdruid with the “Peak Oil Initiation” post, where you talked about the relationship between peak oil and magic, and that one still sticks with me. Some people just aren’t going to get it, and even when hit repeatedly over the head with the realities of it, they’ll still have another name for it.
And so, if there’s going to be a second coming of Peak Oil, then I would hope that it shows some grace, humility and understanding, and communicates in a way that recognises that most people aren’t going to get this, but are further along towards getting it than the PMC types would believe (and some of us), they just use different language.
Energy and resources might define the nature of the stadium, but it doesn’t determine what games we play in it.
JMG–you mention failing infrastructure. I caught a discussion of US air traffic control on talk radio today. Apparently, there are facilities still using floppy disks, a facility with no backup power that actually was without radio or radar for 90 seconds (which is a long time when dealing with airplanes). Everyone in government has just passed the problem along–now the Democrats are blaming Orangeman and DOGE. Crazy.
Justin Patrick Moore–re 23. As JMG noted it is important to Discordians. Author Robert Anton Wilson had a great story–he was on a speaking tour. In question period someone declared that they had figured out that more 23s appearing in one’s life was because you started paying attention to the number. Wilson was noncommital. He went out for pizza with a group that included the person with that insight. When they had ordered the cashier handed them the order number. Twenty-three! The insight dude exclaimed, “How did you do that?”
I see that Congress has acted to prevent California from banning new gas-powered cars starting in 2035. More fodder for the overburdened courts to consider because I’m sure California will fight it.
Rita
“or will other countries end up saying “we really don’t need the US to buy our goods when they don’t really produce anything we need”?”
So then what do the people who made those things do? China is having a bit of a problem with that already. They were sending college graduates back to the rice fields before Trump 2.0.
70% of the US economy is consumer consumption. How much of that is stuff the advertising demanded that you buy? Fast Fashion is based on rapid turnover of oil-based clothing which is tossed into the landfill after a couple uses. Temu is an amazing collection of unneeded junk. Harbor Freight sells dubious but maybe good enough for one job tools.
If we all start being frugal then what happens to the people who no longer have a job making disposable stuff? They lose their jobs, depressing the economy, leading to more layoffs. You can look up The Paradox of Thrift for more details.
Solutions are theoretical at best. Universal Basic Income is one option often mentioned. but it has problems of its own. Heinberg’s solution to force march the inhabitants of the cities to organic subsistence farms is another one overlooking that they will have no idea what to do and you’ll have to build houses were there are none now. Heinberg was not volunteering to join them by the way.
Economically we are in a fine pickle. To live you must have a job, but the job is producing something to trade, and much of the trade is frivolous or junk. The service industry is self limiting (how many haircuts do I need in a year?{none actually, but that is a genetic issue}).
There is a reason Advanced Swindling Theory (the financial sector) is a steadily growing part of the economy.
One sign of peak oil is comes from one of the least important facets of the world. Video games. It is an interesting bell weather of the times.
Some background, years back I used to do video game reviews for a little top up of the bank account. You play it for an hour, get a feel for it, bash out a thousand words in the next hour and then get $100. That’s an easy gig. As such I keep very vague eye on how that whole space is going.
One on side, they are desperately trying to extract as much money as possible from people by any means possible. This is just business people with captive audience. Half the time it looks more like gambling or at least constant up selling. That is not the main point.
The hardware costs have been fascinating to see in action. It used to be, they release a new state-of-the-art machine for a high price, then drop it almost yearly as manufacturing costs come down. About 10 years back this started to slow down, prices dropped by smaller amounts and over longer time periods. Over the last 5-6 years, there had been NO price drops.
As of a few weeks ago, prices have started to go up across all manufacturers. This is on machines over 5 years old. Yes, the tariffs have fed in a little on this but I suspect by simply is giving them a nudge to do what was already coming. It is happening world wide as the cost of producing these things increases.
These machines are heavily subsidised by the software sales. Hardware costs are kept as low as possible, routinely sold below cost to get people in on their proprietary platform for the software sales. Even that is not enough to keep costs down. If their prices are going up, the rest of the computer industry is not far behind. In the grand scheme, video games are one of the more pointless fields of modernity.
The era of cheap computing technology is coming to an end.
But like most folks here, we know that the slow an inevitable decline of EROEI things like this was eventually going to happen. Energy goes up, inputs go up, prices go up. And as ‘Señor Petrolio’ Art Berman says “Oil ain’t what it used to be” AK – They are counting some very low grade stuff to get the numbers up.
@ Mary Bennet: Thank you, with this and the two books JMG recommended I am well supplied for reading material. Interesting stuff about composting. I am not really doing it here just now, since most of our vegetable waste goes to the chickens. I do have a pile for the odds and ends. We just moved, and this is the first time gardening in a new plot, plus I have a rambunctious aries to teach the basics I learned from my grandmother. We do have some hay fields, and we live near a Forrest edge, I was told, I forget from whom, that half rotted leaves from the Forrest are the best salad compost. Plus we got pig and cow farmers as naigbours, so manure.
@JMG: Oh, I do not mind the rerun. 🙂 As said I quite enjoyed thinking trough the different crisis and events since and how they fit into the themes presented in the article.
I still remember how in 2009 I was searching for something that explained the rampant corruption of pretty much every system around myself. At that time a guy who’s article was posted on the resilience blog had the most grounded explanation available. Wonderful nostalgia.
Does anybody have a link to the Winter’s Tale series that JMG did back in the day?
Hey JMG
It is an odd coincidence that you published this essay just as I came across a Substack essay that dissects some errors in the assumptions people have about the affordability of running everything on solar and wind power. According to this author, even if Solar panels and batteries are completely free the cost of creating a suitable grid would still make solar too expensive to implement on a large enough scale to matter.
https://schlanj.substack.com/p/even-if-solar-panels-and-batteries
The most comforting lesson I have learned from your peak oil writings is that the cyclical nature of life applies to cultures too. Each culture lives its own unique life, each stage of life takes generations to play out, and none live forever. The best that we can hope for is that some of what we’ve created is adopted by those who come after.
Another important factor influencing western lifestyle beside the global production of a resource is the share of it that is available to the west. A few decades ago most of the world lived in poverty and almost the entire global resource base was consumed by the golden billion, living in Europe, North America, Australia and Japan. But during the last 30 years the global middle class has grown by two or three billion people. We now have to compete with people in Asia and Africa for resources , this increases price and lowers availability.
The problem we have here is, that people in the third world will pay more money per unit of resource, although they are poorer, because the marginal use of it is higher. Marginal use is an important concept. The question behind it is: How much better will my life become when I consume an additional single gallon of fuel. In our world the marginal use is very low. OF course we can turn the thermostat a degree up or by a bigger car that uses more fuel but theses things do not really make a big difference in our life.
But a poor farmer in a poor country, who loads his harvest, a goat and two passengers on his motorcycle to drive to the next city because there is the market to sell his stuff has a huge marginal use for his gallon of fuel. He may consume in total much less fuel then we do in our lavish lifestyle, but he will be willing to pay a higher per unit price for it, because his marginal use is higher.
So although the global middle class in still poorer then the western middle class, they can often outcompete us in price.
So I think long before the total decline of our global civlization the first step of western decline will be losing its privileged status. While in most of the world living standards still rise, they fall in western countries. One day living standards will meet and then we will be as rich or as poor as the rest of the world.
@JMG & Vivek ” If twenty million upper middle class cubicle jockeys get driven down into poverty, that will free up a very large amount of energy and materials, and it will also free up a large domestic source of unskilled labor. ”
There has been this great line going around from the TV show ‘It’s Always sunny in Philadelphia’. “These people have no idea how to live without money. They’re what’s called “New poor” … we’re old poor”
@JMG “At 62, I’ve never owned a car or had a driver’s license, and it’s never been a problem for me. ”
At 40 I have never had a car or drivers license and I have no intention of changing this. This is in a town that so many people say “It is impossible to not have a car!” . About a year back when I turned 40 it did dawn on me, I am in absolutely no way left wanting for a car. There is no void, no desire or yearning in any way for this thing. Completely content in a situation that most people who have never lived without one would consider worse than death. I wish I was joking on that.
@ Mark #31. With all the techno millionaires/billionaires, that is a VERY strong theme in all of them. They all desperately fear death and are trying anything to deny it. Pick any of them and look closely and you will find it. There is a new book called “More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity” by Adam Becker. I haven’t read it yet but from what I have heard that is a big theme on it. For instance in part about how Ray Kurzweil tried to bring back his father using AI. Maybe this is a big part of all
Hi John,
Great post.
I was read a lot of the peak oil movement and your take has definitely performed better then most now we are in 2025.
I definitely massively underestimated the impact of US shale but I suspect that was a one off.
Whilst there are other big shale opportunities, think Russia and Argentina, they won’t equal the output from the US shakes.
My own view is we are likely to see a next major financial/energy crisis around 2030.
On the surface likely to be debt triggered but underlying factors are the accelerating decline in net energy.
So far, I’ve weathered the storms of the 2020s well.
Cleared my mortgage last year whilst under the old rates.
I predicted the inflationary shock of 2022 and stockpiled goods that kept my going for a few years.
And I’ve used my analytical skills to successfully trade the crypto market (hint, it’s v simple, buy bitcoin when everyone says its doomed and sell when everyone is saying you should buy).
That’s kept us going so far comfortably but I’m not complacent. The next crisis coming is likely to have a bigger impact on me.
“So the thesis of this book stands or falls with the correctness of the decline rate that Brown gives us. Therefore I have calculated with several different parameters as regards the decline rate, and all point in the same direction. The difference between them is a few years at most. Therefore I assume that my thesis is solid, which is that the end of global net oil exports in 2030-2032 (Brown’s scenario) is a best-case scenario.
Collapse can, I think, begin in earnest already in 2026, only because of too little diesel exports. Observe that oil exports vanish successively, more and more, not all at once.” ?
https://un-denial.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/lars-larsen-the-end-of-global-net-oil-exports-13th-edition-2024.pdf
JMG, predicting the timeline of the effects of peak oil/peak energy/peak cheap energy is of course very difficult considering all the variables involved. I can’t think of any .gov publications that have come out with any useful information since long ago in the 1950s and Rickover’s speech. While we’ve had poor attempts at establishing emission goals, “green” energy and transition to EVs, I don’t recall any attempt to quantify fossil fuel burn rates by .gov. Do you know of any?
We had gas rationing and coupons during WWII, and the oil embargo of 1973 had odd/even days of gas pump use based on license plate numbers in some areas. I suspect that formal conservation of liquid fuels using methods like those will be an early tell as depletion gets more serious. And of course, prices for those fuels. A major armed conflict could trigger those restrictions overnight.
As we get more into the realities of peak oil, more people will put forward ‘abiotic oil’ ideas. And they will say it is a conspiracy of the elite.
I am also keen to talk about peak minerals in general. It’s not just sweet crude that’s hit or hitting peak.
JMG please would you consider adding Energy Skeptic and Un-Denial to the blog lists? Energy Skeptic is great for explaining why technology / innovation can’t save us from energy decline. Un-Denial is great for exploring why do so many otherwise smart people struggle to understand the peak oil predicament.
I am so glad you are returning to some PO discussion. I only started reading the ADR in my early 20s. I feel like I missed the glory days of the peak oil movement. I am keen to read your latest thoughts on how the predicament is playing out.
Your collapse now and avoid the rush has guided my key decisions for the last 10 years. Happy to report this was great advice as opposed to the sell everything and become a homeless hippy nonsense a lot of doomsayers put forward. I would love to hear more of your thoughts on NTHE people as well.
Take care and many thanks for the years of insightful writing you have provided.
At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.
* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May Kallianeira’s partner Patrick, who passed away on May 7th, be blessed and aided in his soul’s onward journey.
May slclaire’s honorary daughter Beth, who is in the hospital undergoing dialysis due to impaired kidney function, be blessed and experience a full recovery to her kidneys.
May Viktoria have a safe and healthy pregnancy, and may the baby be born safe, healthy and blessed. May Marko have the strength, wisdom and balance to face the challenges set before him. (picture)
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Ron M’s friend Paul, who passed away on April 13, make his transition through the afterlife process with grace and peace.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, and who is now able to be at home from the hospital, be healed of throat cancer. Healing work is also welcome. [Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe]
May David Spangler (the esoteric teacher), who has been responding well to chemotherapy for his bladder cancer, be blessed, healed, and filled with positive energy such that he makes a full recovery.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be quickly healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery and drugs to treat it, if providence would have it, and if not, may her soul move on from this world and find peace with a minimum of further suffering for her and her family and friends.
May JRuss’s friend David Carruthers quickly find a job of any kind at all that allows him to avoid homelessness, first and foremost; preferably a full time job that makes at least 16 dollars an hour.
May Princess Cutekitten, who is sick of being sick, be healed of her ailments.
May Pierre in Minnesota be filled with the health, vitality, and fertility he needs to father a healthy baby with his wife.
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May 1 Wanderer’s partner Cathy, who has bravely fought against cancer to the stage of remission, now be relieved of the unpleasant and painful side-effects from the follow-up hormonal treatment, together with the stress that this imposes on both parties, and may she quickly be able to resume a normal life.
May Jennifer’s newborn daughter Eleanor be blessed with optimal growth and development; may her tongue tie revision surgery on Wednesday March 12th have been smooth and successful, and be followed by a full recovery.
May Mike Greco, who had a court date on the 14th of March, enjoy a prompt, just, and equitable settlement of the case.
May Cliff’s friend Jessica be blessed and soothed; may she discover the path out of her postpartum depression, and be supported in any of her efforts to progress along it; may the love between her and her child grow ever more profound, and may each day take her closer to an outlook of glad participation in the world, that she may deeply enjoy parenthood.
May Other Dave’s father Michael Orwig, who passed away on 2/24, make his transition to his soul’s next destination with comfort and grace; may his wife Allyn and the rest of his family be blessed and supported in this difficult time.
May Peter Evans in California, whose colon cancer has been responding well to treatment, be completely healed with ease, and make a rapid and total recovery.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Goats and Roses’ son A, who had a serious concussion weeks ago and is still suffering from the effects, regain normal healthy brain function, and rebuild his physical strength back to normal, and regain his zest for life. And may Goats and Roses be granted strength and effectiveness in finding solutions to the medical and caregiving matters that need to be addressed, and the grief and strain of the situation.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
May Peter Van Erp’s friend Kate Bowden’s husband Russ Hobson and his family be enveloped with love as he follows his path forward with the glioblastoma (brain cancer) which has afflicted him.
May Scotlyn’s friend Fiona, who has been in hospital since early October with what is a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, be blessed and healed, and encouraged in ways that help her to maintain a positive mental and spiritual outlook.
May Jennifer and Josiah and their daughters Joanna and Eleanor be protected from all harmful and malicious influences, and may any connection to malign entities or hostile thought forms or projections be broken and their influence banished.
* * *
Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
Thanks for all of this. As for Elon Musk – David Kaiser’s latest column had a detailed analysis on the man, all of which rings very true. (And Kaiser seems to have mellowed since the post before that.) Bottom line: the man is in touch with reality at a very few points.
https://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/
As to what one can do, well, like one of the comments here noted for herself, I can’t. Now, the place I’m in and its new management is being very good to us seniors, but the oldest of us seniors is 100 years old. (I brought that up at dinner last night and one of my table-mates pointed out a woman who had just turned 101.) And we’re the last generation with any memory of what it was like to live in times of crisis. Them and what’s now called Generation Z – my grandchildren – with the media moaning ans groaning over what amounts to their malaise. But what I can do is work on patience and rolling with whatever’s happening – I do recommend the writings of Epictetus and of Lao Tsu.
Anyway, for what it’s worth.
Judging from all the jumbo “heavy duty” pickups suburban dads use to commute to the office and larp as pretend farmers or ranchers, it seems America blindly assumes it will never run out of cheap fuel and/or it will just seamlessly switch from gigantic gasoline/diesel commuter pickups to gigantic electric commuter pickups without skipping a beat.
Personally, I believe these things are to our “culture” what those final gigantic statues may have been to Easter Island: a final doubling down on our subconscious denial that our “arrangement without a future” is arranging itself out of existence in front of our very eyes.
#20 Paleo_Taoist
Antonio Turiel has data on diesel production in his blog The Oil Crash, the posts called “Peak Diesel” are in Spanish, a translator can do the rest of the work.
https://crashoil.blogspot.com/2024/01/el-pico-del-diesel-edicion-de-2023.html?m=1
Siliconguy
Permian peaked
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/we-are-tipping-point-shale-giant-diamonback-says-us-oil-output-has-peaked-slashes-capex
Question is when will shale enter in the steep decline, the physics of the fields require. US production is now 8 Million barrels a day over the almost 5 Million barrels a day available in 2005, so it will not be end of world scenario, but will not be pretty either, probably, we shall see
February 2025 production is already 300Kbarell/day under the peak level from December 2024 as was January
Sigh.
Now I know why everyone is screaming that Trump is the End of the World as We Know it. (TEWWKI)
Everyone senses that the jig is up. Now what do we do?
I guess the answers will be in the next posts. One thing is that I live in D.C. in a small condo, so all those suggestions about foraging etc, do not apply. We live very simply, very simply with very little debt. My husband’s upbringing as a “Plain Person” is very helpful in pondering what new thing to embrace or not.
Meanwhile, back to the rollercoaster, where I get motion sickness. Did I mention as a kid, getting caught with my father in a stuck Ferris wheel during a thunderstorm. We were second from the top. Nerves of steel got us through, though it was traumatic. I suppose the current situation will be similar.
“Apocalyptic fantasies are a standard symptom of extreme social stress, and they’re especially common in periods of serious social and economic contraction. ”
Interesting. Presumably the data from your book ‘Apocalypse Not’ supports this, over a long period of history?
Christine S (UK)
David Holmgren has recent essay that gets into Net Energy, here is a quote:
“Net energy availability is the single most powerful determinant of both nature and human history. This belief is based on the observations of the patterns across systems at all scales, showing that a rise in the net energy base input expands the scale and territory of influence of the system and leads to growth in the number of hierarchical levels in that system. Consequently, even the shaman and other ‘elites’ in simple low energy human societies still had to organise their domestic lives, while in more complex agricultural societies the rising number of social classes reflected the same food chain hierarchies we observe in ecosystems with abundant energy. Industrial systems have greatly extended the number of hierarchical levels with the energy wealth from oil allowing the emergence of global governance structure and economic relations beyond those of nation states which were themselves gaining greater power to understand, regulate and shape their constituent communities in the fossil fuel modern era.
Any decline in the net energy will, like in nature and human history, lead to a ‘Great Simplification’; a contraction in the number of hierarchical levels, and reduced power and capacity to support the recently emergent global economic and governance structures. By this energetic framework, the ‘Relocalisation’ that some seek for ethical and other reasons becomes inevitable, even if its forms may be surprising and less radical than some hopeful visions of the future. ” -David Holmgren
https://holmgren.com.au/writing/trumps-tariffs-madness-or-medicine/
I’d say Holmgren has called it pretty well with certain aspects of his Brown Tech future scenario. It sounds akin to Salvage Industrialism -or the lead up to it anyway.
“In this scenario strong, even aggressive, national policies and actions prevail to address both the threats and the opportunities from energy peak and climatic change. The political system could be described as Corporatist…
…Flows of energy from more expensive sources such as tar sands, deep ocean oil, gas to liquids and coal to liquids slow the decline in fuels from crude oil. This transition requires a huge mobilisation of the technical and managerial capacity held mostly by global corporations, along with the financial, legal and military security that only sovereign governments can provide. This resource nationalism by government break down free trade and the faith in international markets that underpins the global economy.
The elites continue to be driven by a commitment to super rationalist beliefs, a sense of hollowness and lack of purpose characterises the shrinking middle class, while fundamentalist religions and cults plays a stronger role in the lives of the working and unemployed classes partly through genuine reactions to the failures of modern humanism and partly manipulated by the elites to deflect anger and disenchantment. The Brown Tech scenario could be dominant and even more or less socially stable for many decades until ongoing climatic breakdown and reduced net energy return drive a shift to the Lifeboats scenario.
“Top down constriction” summaries the essence of this scenario in that national power constricts consumption and focuses resources to maintain the nation state, in the face of deteriorating climate and reduced energy and food supply.”
https://www.futurescenarios.org/4-descent-scenarios/4-3-four-descent-scenarios/brown-tech/
Hi JMG, do you think the issue is that people are putting their heads in the sand about collapse or that they are moving from contemplating a social collapse to actively preparing for it and changing their chosen information sources accordingly?
The public sentiment that I can see appears more pessimistic about the continued stability of most societies around the world than ever before. I’ve also seen many people make significant changes in where they get information and how that information informs their views and actions. In particular, one pattern I see is that people are gravitating away from sources that were useful to them in the past because they feel those sources are not giving them the whole story.
For example, your discussion of collapse has focused largely on how life will work in a post-industrial future, but not what is likely to happen between now and then: cataclysmic levels of violence. You’ve said that widespread conflict is like but it isn’t interesting to you, however it must of of interest to those who aim to survive it. You have stated that for those aiming to “collapse now and avoid the rush” that city life can be a good a choice as country life and it’s the choice you made, but this seems to disregard the fact that if public utilities degrade significantly in an energy crisis, there is a good chance of riots turning cities into war zones and then mass graves as the infrastructure needed for people to live in such concentration fails.
What made me think of this in particular are the dueling crowdfunding campaigns of Karmelo Anthony and Shiloh Hendrix. Those who are not familiar can look up the details on these cases, preferably with a less-doctored search engine like Yandex. The short story is that race relations in the US are reaching a boiling point; it’s always been a faultline in the society but now the ground is shaking and lava is bursting out along its length. The attitude toward race issues I’ve seen you express in your writing is “people should focus on what’s better for everyone, like less wealth hoarding and better political representation for people who aren’t billionaires.” This is a noble sentiment, but it is increasingly disconnected from the reality that many people in Western countries are living day to day.
Many people in the West see a decline happening and believe civilizational collapse in the near future is likely, and their main related concern, even more than working longer hours for less pay, is their increasing proximity to demographics of people that express open hostility to them and their way of life. If your response to these issues is “let’s all get along” they will deem you irrelevant or even as a covert saboteur and tune you out.
Peak oil is an elephant in the room of civilization but there are in fact many more elephants in the room along with it. If you want to talk about civilizational decline but you don’t address the aspects of that decline that are of most pressing concern to many people, it’s unlikely that your words will have wide circulation and influence. Rather, people may be drawn to thinkers whose views and goals you strongly object to as long as they’re willing to address issues at the forefront of public consciousness.
@JMG, the problem with letting Alberta go would be the difficulty of getting between BC and the rest of Canada. If you can’t go through Alberta, you have to go way up North through the Yukon, and the road infrastructure that far north isn’t designed for that kind of traffic in goods and people, where it exists at all and isn’t on melting permafrost. It also leaves BC almost completely surrounded by the USA and Alberta, the exceptions being the southern coast and a lump in the very far northeast that is attached to Canada.
>If twenty million upper middle class cubicle jockeys get driven down into poverty, that will free up a very large amount of energy and materials, and it will also free up a large domestic source of unskilled labor
Sigh. I’m going to call this Elonthink, he thinks these office bureaucrats will be more productive in the private sector. I’m going to say “No, they won’t”. I’m not quite sure what they will become but industrious factory workers, they will not. Plus factory work these days isn’t quite as unskilled as it used to be nor will there be enough of it, automation will ensure that. I’m not sure how you solve this problem. I am glad it’s not my problem to solve.
In the bad old days, they’d throw a war and use that to kill people off but what kind of war would it look like if the average office bureaucrat was tasked with fighting it, I wonder? I do wonder why they haven’t offered military service in exchange for student loan forgiveness. Give them an hour or two to learn how to use an automatic rifle and send them on their way…
Leaf @79
You know that the combination of ‘environmental’ and ‘safety’ regulations in the USA is what makes it impossible to manufacture decent lightweight people and stuff hauling vehicles? You cannot buy a new 1970s type station wagon or pick-up because they aren’t legal to manufacture. So if you need to haul more than 7 people once in a while, you have to buy a full size van or SUV. If you need to haul an occasional load of stuff, you need a full size modern pickup. Can’t buy what the laws and regulations ban.
Or why I drive a twelve seat van: I can haul the household (nine, three generations) and a trailer. It’s cheaper to drive one vehicle than two, and my Beast is paid for. (Also dead cheap to insure teen male drivers on.)
Hawk, in fact, we’ll be talking about the distinction between haves and have-nots, on a national level and also on a class level, as we proceed. It’s highly relevant.
Annette2, if you were an archer, all those arrows would be right in the center of the target. Thank you! Can you point me to a source I can cite for the EROEI of tar sands? That’s something I could use in upcoming posts.
Ambrose, I’d encourage you to read histories of the twilight years of the Roman Empire, so you can get a sense of what your nieces will experience. It may help.
John Z, that’s a great comparison! The reason abiotic oil migrated right, of course, is that the right doesn’t believe in the faradiddle about green energy but can’t accept that the future will have to get by on much less energy than we’ve got today. Nuclear power and abiotic oil are the faradiddles they’ve embraced instead.
Moonwolf8, good. Being impatient with delusions is not a bad habit.
Gus, mercantilism is always the default option when a global economic hegemon loses power; we saw a lot of it as the British Empire went down, too. As for Trump, I see him as making preparations for America’s inevitable bankruptcy — it’s something he’s had experience handling, after all. That’s why he’s laying off unproductive employees, shutting down unnecessary departments, and forcing renegotiations of contracts with suppliers and customers. All his actions suggest to me that he’s preparing for the end of the dollar’s status as global reserve currency, but it’s one thing if this happens in a gradual way and quite another if it’s an uncontrolled collapse.
Samurai_47, thank you! I’ll consider it.
Siliconguy and Clay, thanks for both of these!
Kimberly, that’s a valid point — and you’re quite correct that the average medieval peasant worked shorter hours, had more days off, and kept a larger share of the value of his labor than the average American cubicle jockey. In the months ahead, though, I propose to suggest some quiet changes that will fit even in a crowded life. Stay tuned!
Moishe, it makes perfect sense. Disney is losing its grip on the US market, so they’d better be looking for new populations on which they can parasitize.
Ron, thanks for this. Can you post a link to the Shellenberger post? I’d like to be able to link to it in an upcoming discussion.
Peter, and thank you for this. Interestingly, “The Peak Oil Initiation” wasn’t one of the ten most popular posts on The Archdruid Report; the most popular of all was “Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush” in 2012. Grace, humility, and understanding are good principles to live by, though I’m not sure if any human being can rise to that standard all the time — much less a fringe movement in an age of accelerating cultural disintegration. That said, we can certainly try.
Rita, yep. Expect much more of this as we proceed.
Michael G, fascinating. Video games aren’t something I’m familiar with at all — I’ve literally never played one — and it’s intriguing to get a glimpse of decline picking up in that unfamiliar context.
Marko, thank you.
Anon, easily done. These are the original versions:
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2006/11/christmas-eve-2050.html
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2006/11/solstice-2100.html
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2006/12/nawida-2150.html
J.L.Mc12, thanks for this! That’s correct, of course.
Misty, if you’ve caught that you’ve done well. Thank you!
Deedl, good. Yes, I talked about that repeatedly back in the day, and now the “eighty percent pay cut” I predicted for the US is already beginning. We’ll talk about that in the near future!
Michael G, I’ve been very poor — as in, my late wife and I lived for more than a year in a tiny, cockroach-infested studio apartment and had to decide each week whether to buy cheese, eggs, or the cheapest possible meat because we could only afford one. It’s proven to be one of the most useful things I’ve ever done, because living poor takes skill and practice. I pity the cubicle jockeys who are being shoved out of the privileged classes just now, because they have no notion how to get by on even a modest income, to say nothing of actual poverty. As for a car, never having one was a really good choice for me, because doing without that huge cluster of expenses made it financially possible for Sara to support us while my writing career was getting off the ground (and of course that made it possible for me to support us once her health started to fail). I roll my eyes when I hear people insist that they can’t live without a car, though here again you have to learn how.
Forecasting, glad to hear it. I expect another wave of fracking to stabilize the situation after the next energy crisis, once somebody finds a way to gimmick the financial system — it was as much the US treasury’s ability to spin the presses and prop up uneconomical fracking companies, as anything else, that made it work. Of course that’ll bring more rounds of stealth inflation, infrastructure decay, and accelerating decline, and Europe won’t be anything like as sheltered from the impact as it has been so far. Hang on tight!
James, so noted. Since political and economic factors, not just technical ones, constrain energy policy, we’ll see what actually happens.
Drhooves, no, and I suspect that isn’t accidental. Back in the peak oil days, we had a bevy of number-crunching wonks who stayed up to all hours trying to estimate just how much petroleum was left and how fast it was depleting, and they pointed out that in most nations these are state secrets. As for rationing, it’s an open question whether we’ll see rationing by price or rationing by government — and it may well be both.
Monk, of course. Do you happen to know some good sources for data on this? As for the two blogs, post the URLs as text (not hyperlinked) and I’ll check them out.
Quin, thank you for this as always. Can you add Pygmycory to the prayer list (see #23 and #57), including her stipulation?
Patricia M, thanks for this. Epictetus is one of the resources I like to suggest!
Leaf, it’s a common bad habit of societies facing terminal crisis that many of their members double down on whatever’s dragging them to ruin, embracing that very thing as central to their identity. Here in the US, trucks and SUVs are good examples.
Neptunesdolphins, I have a different take on the ongoing meltdowns about the King in Orange; it’s the end of the line for the privileged end of the managerial class, and status panic is a primal force, tying into reactions we share with every other species of social mammals. It’s no wonder that they’re shrieking, because it really is the end of the world as they knew it. (And I feel fine.) No, I don’t think you mentioned the Ferris wheel story before — what a harrowing experience that must have been!
Christine, it certainly covers some of the ground. Norman Cohn’s fine books The Pursuit of the Millennium and Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come might be better resources for that, however.
Justin, excellent! Glad to see he’s still writing about such things. The “Brown Tech” future always struck me as far and away the most realistic of the options, though his “Earth Steward” vision, with bottom-up relocalization by a new peasantry, also has much to commend it.
Raja, there are plenty of people already flogging those other elephants in various directions, and if readers prefer those, I have no objection. I write what I want to write, about the subjects that interest me, for those who share those interests. I do object, though, to people misunderstanding or actively falsifying what I’m saying — did you miss the detail, for example, that I specified small cities and large towns, which are inherently less vulnerable to the kind of sudden crisis you’ve sketched out here? Equally, your comments about my views concerning race relations are, shall we say, oversimplified. Still, flog that elephant elsewhere if that makes you happy.
Pygmycory, to my mind the most likely outcome is Alberta (and quite possibly the two other Great Plains provinces) being absorbed by the United States, in which case maritime access is easily provided. Whether the US then moves on the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory is another question.
Other Owen, I didn’t say they’d be more productive — most of them won’t be. Those that don’t have the initiative to pick up skills and find new niches in the productive economy will form a new poverty class, along lines familiar to those who’ve read accounts of the Great Depression. They will be available as an unskilled labor pool, however, and doubtless some will make a living that way.
JMG wrote
I’d encourage you to read histories of the twilight years of the Roman Empire, so you can get a sense of what your nieces will experience. It may help.
I’m happy to do some research of my own, but also wondering if JMG or others might recommend a title or two pertaining to “histories of the twilight years of the Roman Empire.”
Thanks,
Pierre
On the lack of spinning inertia and the Spanish blackout, I looked up the mass of one of the local hydroelectric generators. 427 tons for the rotating part, and there are 10 of them. That is a lot of momentum.
https://www.grantpud.org/blog/final-unit-at-wanapum-dam-nears-full-rehab
It’s another case of resilience vs efficiency. Building a 500 ton flywheel connected to a synchronous motor is easy. (All synchronous motors are also generators, it depends on the relationship between frequency on power lines vs rotational speed, you don’t need to flip a switch.) But then you have bearing losses, windage losses, and whatever power is lost in the motor windings. So the inverter only system is more efficient.
But when you go to start a big electrical load the flywheel will absorb the surge with a slight change to its rotational speed. The inverter has to actively attempt to adjust to it. A large load tripping does the same thing in reverse. And if you have a bunch of inverters in parallel reacting at different speeds it could and did set the system into oscillation.
Note that batteries won’t help if they use inverters to connect to the system. Batteries could help with the Black Start problem, repowering a completely shutdown grid, but the inverters are not going to be happy with motors restarting. Starting an induction motor can take six times its running current just for a few seconds.
Back on the boat the battery (250 V DC) was connected to the AC side with a pair of 300 KW motor generators (MGs). AC on one end, DC on the other. Either of them was capable of starting the 150 HP (112kw) feed pump with not much fuss, but it did noticeable dim the lights for a second and you could hear the MG drop its rotational speed as the pump spun up. The feed pump was not the only thing on that MG set either (the electrical bus is normally split for reliability, so only one MG would power that feed pump ). The ability of sheer mass to smooth things out is very useful.
Thanks, JMG; it’s definitely time to write on peak oil again. Peak oil is what brought me to the ADR in 2009; everything else is what has kept me here. The mental changes that I’ve experienced through practicing the occultism that you teach keep me well balanced amidst the uncertainty and aid me in being a source of support for others who need it.
My husband and I have as one of our standard conversational tropes “nothing is any good any more.” In part it functions as a private joke, but it is based on being old enough to remember the 1960s and everything else between then and now. No one has to convince us of decline, of more-expensive but poorer-quality goods, because we remember when most goods were cheaper and higher quality while costing a smaller fraction of the average paycheck. We know that easier to extract and more mineral-rich ores are already used up and that higher energy density oil is gone too. We are fortunate in that between Social Security, small pensions, and investment income we have more than enough to live on today, but it’s only because we don’t have debt and have hung on to as many older, higher quality goods as we can and acquired others when possible. Because we keep track of our spending, we know we still save some of our income, but the amount we can save is decreasing. We keep an eye on what is happening and have scenarios and how to respond to them in mind, but we also know that we can’t think of everything and expect to be surprised.
Your suggestion of the 2030-2035 time frame as a potential period for the next big disruption, whatever its nature, makes sense to me. Besides depletion of oil and minerals biting deeper as time goes on, it’s in about that time frame that Social Security will no longer be able to pay all the benefits of everyone who is entitled to receive them. While various “fixes” have been proposed, I don’t see Congress implementing any of them, whether they are raising the eligibility age, raising the tax rate that goes to the program, or raising the income limit on which that tax is assessed. I don’t think most people who receive Social Security will react well to having their benefits cut so that everyone gets something, especially since it’s the primary income source for most people receiving it.
When you asked for blogs on peak oil I forgot to mention that Kurt Cobb’s blog Resource Insights, resourceinsights.blogspot.com, is my go-to source for info on the current state of energy and material resources. He wrote about the Nov. 2018 peak in total liquid fuels production on May 24, 2020.
I thought BC was poised to become part of the Cascadian Nation in one of our futures.
One part of our current system seems to be rather fragile and has the potential for rapid change, and that is the financial system. I don’t see how it can survive peak oil.
Basic problem: the financial system needs economic growth to pay off the interest on loans in order to be stable.
The size of the economy is directly proportional to the amount of oil used. If the amount of oil being extracted goes down so must the size of total economy. We have much more debt than can be repaid in in a shrinking economy.
If even a moderate percentage of people start seeing the future economy as smaller than the present i don’t see how the financial system survives. I guess some sort of government command and control system will take the place of the financial system. ( in a sneaky way this is already happening with the QE from the fed since 2009)
>Social Security will no longer be able to pay all the benefits of everyone who is entitled to receive them
IMHO, that’s not what you should be worrying about. Russia is still honoring Soviet pensions today. What you should be worrying about is whether you’ll be able to afford a nice cup of coffee from a coffeehouse or a miserable cup of coffee from the gas station once you’ve got your monthly pension allotment.
Maybe I’m being too pessimistic. Maybe it’ll be 10 nice cups of coffee. Per month. They may do part of it in kind, one of those government cheese bricks or two. Mmm, coffee and government cheese. The future’s so bright, I gotta wear these shades.
Long-time reader of The Oil Drum, TAR, now Ecosophia – this essay sounds familiar. May I ask the following (for the purpose of my own orientation in this world; hoping it is not untolerably off-topic):
A while ago you made the prediction, that around 2024-2025 you’d expect… (i can’t remember the exact wording or link to the essay)… the breaking-apart of the United States in its current form as a nation state (hope I remembered this correctly). I’ve interpreted many news from the US with this in mind – but do you still feel the same way? E.g. with those unexpecteded political developments brought underway by President Trump, do you maybe see things differently now?
Disclaimer: This is not part of a fast-collapse scenario in my head and neither do I mean to hold you accountable for one of many predictions (that I couldn’t even reproduce exactly). I’m living in a US client state and for my own orientation I was trying to keep an eye on the possibility to temporarily experience a somewhat more chaotic time (if indeed the US fractured).
JMG
I don’t think a new round of fracking will stabilize things much after the next crash. They are fast using up all the tier 1 and 2 acreage and the tier 3 and 4 stuff that is left won’t produce much., and at a high cost. I can see it being used as a way to channel money into the remaining major oil companies which will have probably absorbed the smaller companies by then, and creating a hope of growth for awhile.
Pygmy Corey
Do you think that Alberta and perhaps the rest of the prairies leaving Canada and/or joining the US would necessarily lead to losing the right of passage through them, though it would certainly add layers of delay and hassle?
I have always hoped that ultimately there would be a Cascadian nation of western BC, WA, OR and NW CA, but I doubt that would happen for 50 years or more now.
I think the recent Spanish, Portuguese blackout should give everyone a warning wherever you live. Don’t be completely elevator dependent, make sure emergency stairs are unlocked and doors not dependent on a key card. Have some food and water and a camping stove or something. I would sure hate to be locked in a high rise building or subway or be in a large city. The list would be much longer, but it could happen anywhere.
Stephen
CNN had a marvelously clueless article about how Trump’s approach to Canada backfired on him, poor sucker,etc…. how? By Canadians going all-out “Made in Canada,” waving maple leaf flags. etc, etc, etc. I say, bravo for them, despite their choice of a PM.
I also just leafed through the stockholders’ report on TEXNMex, a holding company for what used to be New Mexico’s public utility, PNM, and 2 others. They are deeply into every form of alternative energy possible, as well as gas in several places and coal in the 4 Corners. They even have a nuke in Winterburg, AZ. Lots of solar, both en masse and consumer – hey, high desert! Lots and lots of sunshine a good part of the year. Lots of wind, ditto. High desert winds are something to be reckoned with when you’re out there on the plains. But of course (sigh) they’re also getting and using bragging rights for all this. But the patchwork is interesting. (BTW: CEO pay ratio is 39/1. )
It does strike me as an “anyway we can get it” patchwork.
Hey hey JMG,
I’m glad that you are doing this. It’s high time that peak oil got some attention again. A lot of the issues (and a fair amount of crazy speculation) were discussed back in the day on The Oil Drum (TOD) but one was conspicuously absent, the likely role of governments. If memory serves, you chastised some of the doomier collapseniks for assuming that governments would just sit on their hands when TSHTF.
But, I’ve never seen much in the way of forecasts or predictions for what the governments of the world are likely to do. We have seen, and are seeing now some of those actions like resource wars in Russia and the Middle East, and domestic responses like DOGE and “drill baby, drill,” and some misguided/PR fiascos like green everything (giant SUVs but no incandescent light bulbs, luxury EVs but carbon tax exemptions for private jets and yachts, etc.). But these are not at all what was recommended by various government reports on peak oil.
So, I’m curious what you think that the governments of the world will do as the situation progresses. Do you expect a transition from politically acceptable half measures like fracking to politically unpopular but nationally critical things like railroads? In an oil constrained future railroads are a no brainer, but it does require our Faustian elites to admit that an 18th century technology is superior to 21st century vaporware.
I know that I tend ask for clear answers to questions on very murky issues, and it would make me extremely happy if you could just dial your crystal ball to eleven and narrate the future, but I’ll be content to take whatever you’ve got on this one.
Jill C. @ 24: I hope JMG’s reply to you is true and reliable. The future looks pretty dire, but not for the first time in my life. I, too, have had a good run and I’d like to “up my game,” in terms of spiritual practice.
I sold a perfectly good car back in the early 1970s because I thought the days of “happy motoring” were coming to a close then. I was only about 60 years premature! I’d call that poor judgement. Then I proceeded to take a summer job in a rural area. More poor judgement. I did lots of hitch-hiking and sponging rides from other people until I had scraped together about $800 to buy a Honda motorcycle. Being carless in a rural area or even a small town is not an experience I’d want to repeat. Here we have one bus each day, each way into the nearest city. That’s it.
Like the other veteran readers here, little of this was new to me, but I appreciate the turn back to the topic of peak oil and the Long Descent. Your essays here are consistently high quality and interesting, but your level-headed approach to these issues is such a useful antidote to so many other pundits that are either into shrill moralizing or have an obvious agenda to push. Looking forward to seeing where it goes as you get further into the update rather than recap.
“I wasn’t all that interested in staying on the gravy train […] so I shrugged and walked away”
And kudos for that. Of course I get that people have bills and need to provide for themselves, but sometimes I get so weary of this sense that everything and everyone are obviously for sale when it really gets down to it, it’s just a matter of upping the figure enough. It’s so rare to see someone who can’t be bought or tempted, period. That’s one reason I have a lot of respect for the Rich Men North of Richmond guy too, since he didn’t give in to commercialization even when faced with the prospect of a life-changing fortune.
“Our planetary predicament didn’t have a single cause, and therefore it couldn’t be fixed by a single solution”
Yes. This quote really gets to the heart of it IMO. It’s been so frustrating to see how few people are able or willing to grasp this.
Anyway, on a personal note: while I haven’t been around quite as long as some of the most veteran commenters here, I think I found the ADR in either 2011 or 2012, right as I was starting to question the idea of infinite growth. It’s been a strange journey for sure, but I appreciate the profound influence these blogs and books have had on my thinking. I probably haven’t gone as far as I should in collapsing ahead of the rush, but at least it’s altered my perspective and made me much less emotionally dependent on and invested in industrial civilization. On balance, coming to the realization of decline felt more like a sense of relief than anything. I think I knew deep down that I’d always be an oddball and who’d never really fit into the system and a conventional life, but if that whole thing was a historical dead end anyway, that wouldn’t matter as much. So I was “quietly radicalized” in a way, if that makes sense. Freer to turn my back on it without feeling like I had to try to fit in. I suspect this is one major reason I never bought into the Covid narrative years later too.
To return to the bigger picture, it feels like these things are easier to talk about and hint at than they were 20 years ago. Back then I think it really did feel like we were living in the best of all possible worlds and that everything would grow into the sky forever, at least in this corner of northern Europe. These days there’s just such a palpably autumnal air to our whole civilization, isn’t there? It feels like many people are using “inflation” (or the aforementioned “enshaleification”) as a sort of catch-all unknowing code word for the nagging malaise they feel, which actually means “peak oil and peak everything”. Of course it’s hard to keep up the pretense when a key pillar in the mythology of Progress is that every generation will be substantially better off materially than the previous one as a matter of course, and that just plain isn’t true to Millennials and below anymore.
@Michael Gray #65
Huh, that anecdote about your background explains a thing or two about the often sorry state of, ahem, “video game journalism”, doesn’t it? Anyway, as for all the “video games are totally pointless” signalling: sure, in the sense that anything that isn’t about raw survival or immediately practical products is pointless, sure. And they do use up a lot of resources and energy that could be better spent. That said, though…are they any more pointless or worthless than any other cultural field? Reading your comment, it was hard not to get a sense that you felt you had to go out of your way to signal how pointless and frivolous they were just because most of the readership here doesn’t play them.
Yes, many of them are frivolous and/or awful money grabs, but so are most published books, most movies, you name it. I’m probably biased because I grew up playing them and have spent so much of my life on them and their associated culture, but in my opinion the video game medium as a whole is no less worthy as an art form just because it happens to be unsustainable. Just like modern cinema, or modern publishing, or most of the other ways we create and distribute cultural products these days. Sometimes I almost wonder if that was one reason I incarnated in this era, to experience this medium in the brief period where it’s viable. 🙂
And to briefly add to your actual point: yes, and on top of that the prices for PC gaming hardware have become downright monstrous too. I have an old friend who still keeps up with this stuff, and the sums he mentions are jaw-dropping. I know part of this is due to their use for generative models, but still. Especially jarring when graphics are advancing much less than they used to per generation, so another example of decline. (JMG’s comments about how new media tend to go from Wild West to corporate blandness also very much applies to video games, which is one reason I mainly stick to the older ones when I indulge these days.)
“the twilight years of the Roman Empire”
Thank you for the recommendation! Er, which twilight years were those? I think I *visited* the Roman Empire once (viewing Mt. Athos as a remnant of Byzantium), but of course the nieces wouldn’t be allowed in.
(Reading the headlines just now, it occurs to me that the Catholics have a place like this too.)
One thing I think a lot of people in Canada need to thin long and hard about is the uncomfortable similarities between the swath of land in Southern Ontario, Southern Quebec, and New Brunswick, and the old Yugoslavia. In both cases there is a federation with internal boundaries drawn at roughly the borders between ethnic groups, but with a good deal of mixture of different groups; in both cases, there are populists who have started ceasing power locally; in both cases, most people think that the long era of peace is permanent, but there are centuries of mutual resentments between the ethnic groups just waiting for a spark; and in both Canada today and the former Yugoslavia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, changes to geopolitical circumstances have lead to economic malaise as the United States pulls back from providing money to the country.
Given these similarities I think there is a disturbingly high chance that the breakup of Canada will not be precipitated by Alberta leaving the country; but rather by an ethnically based civil war in Eastern Canada.
Michael Gray: ” In the grand scheme, video games are one of the more pointless fields of modernity.”
Not a gamer, but I wonder if this is like saying drama was one of the more pointless fields of the Elizabethan era?
moishe pipik, Disneyland Abu Dhabi?! Those idiots–don’t they know that Neom is where it’s at?
/s
Hey JMG
Just found this other article, though it’s more about climate change than peak oil.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/may/09/kati-thanda-lake-eyre-flood-waters-rare-spectacle-supercharged-by-climate-change
Essentially, unusually huge amounts of flooding have begun filling up Lake Eyre with water at an unprecedented speed.
Antonio Turiel has also appeared recently on the Planet: Critical podcast. http://www.planetcritical.com/p/antonio-turiel.
One of the things he said was that the “natural gas liquids” are more used for feedstocks for plastics rather than fuels, so the actual fossil fuels can be in decline even if the total hydrocarbons are not.
Pleased to be of service, JMG. Regarding Michael Shellenberger’s article about the power blackout in the Iberian peninsula, it looks like the original might be behind a paywall, but it has been circulated by others for free – such as Stephen Heins’s substack “The Word Merchant” – URL: https://stephenheins.substack.com/p/headline-over-reliance-on-renewables
JMG, yes, currently the kingdom of God is primarily an internal spiritual state. In fact it is described in Romans 14:17 as being “rightwiseness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” Rightwiseness is an older English version of righteousness used I believe in Wycliffe’s old translation. Meaning you are rightwise with God as gift which to my mind reflects the Greek better. However in the New Testament there is also an expectation of an outer physical manifestation upon the return of Jesus. Won’t bother you all with a cavalcade of Bible verses.To my observations and understanding there seem to be first time unique events, trends and developments in the past hundred years or so that can be seen as fulfillments of various indicators in the Bible that the return of Jesus is drawing near. Again I won’t spill out a parade of verses. We shall see. The funny thing about the future is that what is going to happen can be hard to tell because it hasn’t happened yet. Jesus is a here and now reality for me and I expect him, as he stated, upon my death to come back and take me to himself to where he is now to the place he has prepared. John 14:1-3 for it says – to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord
Pygmycory,
You might consider a tall raised bed herb (and perhaps flower) garden. Less productive than vegetables or grains, obviously, but also much less bending and squatting and weeding—it’s all the fun parts of gardening without the hard labor, so you can still keep your hand in and save the cost of fresh herbs which are painfully expensive, plus it might cheer you a bit with the flowers and pollinators. We are in production ag, so it feels like a bit of a cop out, but this is the form my personal garden is taking this year with a newborn and a toddler.
Dear JMG,
Tally my comment as another long-time reader happy and thankful to see you discussing, and hosting discussions on, the Long Descent once more. Also thank you for the Blogroll of Doom, I’ll most certainly partake in it as time allows. Was suprised to see some many blogs in Spanish listed – I know you know French and Latin, and I’ve long had the suspicion your German is better than you let on, but you can read Spanish too?
A very curious native Spanish speaker wants to know 🙂
“the problem with letting Alberta go would be the difficulty of getting between BC and the rest of Canada.”
I don’t think the Albertans are planning to tear up the road. People will need proper ID to transit Alberta. Trucks driving straight through can have their doors sealed at the border, then the seal inspected as they leave.
Manitoba has a sea coast on Hudson’s Bay. If all three prairie provinces declare independence as a group they have ocean access. The problem of freezing up in the winter doesn’t stop Sweden or Finland from being trading countries.
The only thing I have to say about Shiloh Hendrix and Carmelo Anthony is that the hate revolution predicted by JMG in reaction to the decades of hate repression is well under way in the United States. Future historians will look at this period of time in a similar way as they look at the sexual revolution in response to Victorian sex repression.
Hi John Michael,
Just for sheer curiosity value, I took a look at what the DOGE team have been finding and cutting, and oh my gawds! You guys and gals in the US have been paying for some rather unusual expenditures… It’s completely and utterly nuts what your country has been wasting good coin on, and don’t you wonder why these nightmares aren’t being paraded daily in the media?
Well worth the read (but it’s the sheer volume which staggers me): DOGE
You know, if I were Mr Musk, given how err, a particular brand of car’s sales are headed (probably due to cutting of salaries for folks who benefitted from the sort of programs which DOGE are now cutting) I’d bring in a really basic and cheap version of an electric car. That’s what I’d do.
Cheers
Chris
Mr. Greer … in light of this post, I suggest that MAGA is not what it seems it be. Let me explain: Elon wants Mankind to venture forth toward the sky .. sending humans to MAR$ – the initiation of terraforming (e.i. – “Building Better Worlds” .. from there to spread out onto other planetary systems – essentially the extraction of needed resources beyond the confines of the home world. So … in that light, MAGA becomes MASGA: Make A L I E N $ Gape Again. Just imagine .. numerous Nestromos, desperately trying to tow enormous mineral oil loads back to Earth .. only to be obliterated by so many frightened Karen Crew Members, brought about due to the hijinks of some hostile derelict denizens waylayed on some rocky toxic shore. Who knows, stranger things have have happened..
Think of the fictitious Dr. Wayland as the New Wildcatter. We have enough hyper-rich gazillionaires presently, on this teensy blue dot, that in all hubrisness, are ready and waiting to muck things up royally. Just sayin. I write this in jest, but only partially.
Pierre @ 91, I strongly suggest you avoid the historian, Chris Wickham. Unfortunately, his books have managed to get on the list of what public librarians buy–how that happens, I wish I knew. There is quite the reviving ancient skills movement in England lately, you might do a google search for video presentations and publications. In the 60s and 70s, there was a vogue for Daily Life In __ various historical periods. Those might be of some interest. The Welsh managed to fight off Vikings and Saxons and maintain their identity for centuries before being subsumed into the Plantagenet empire. I believe John Davies, brilliant contemporary historian, wrote a History of Wales. I have read some of his other works, but not that one.
Hi Siliconguy,
And that’s why everything has to be over rated. My locally made off grid inverter can briefly supply 15kW for a few seconds and the LiFePO4 batteries and wiring can cope with that. Anything less, and you get what happened there…
I did try to originally set up the system on the cheap, and it doesn’t work, or only partially works. But things go wrong.
Cheers
Chris
John,
Thanks for the recap, I’ve been reading your posts almost since the beginning of the Archdruid, and you are always more on point than most. (We did have a couple personal conversations at some PO events, but I don’t expect you to remember.)
Meanwhile, don’t forget the apocalyptic predictions of civilizational collapse due to the imminent collapse of the planet’s magnetic field, opening the way for, at least, the end of the electrical grids due to incoming solar radiation etc. I can accept geophysics that the poles flip periodically, and have done so multiple times during the history of our species, but never with us in such a vulnerable position. My general position is that in conversation is that, unless you recognize we are in an irreversible decline, regardless of the details of causation or symptomatic development, you can’t talk about mitigation meaningfully. And there are precious few who will accept even that basic conclusion.
Performative obedience to the rules and regulations and official programs of any particular organization is a old technique inferiors (a.k.a. “serfs) use, hiding from their bosses so that they can stay in their jobs (or keep their heads on their shoulders). However, of late, it seems that many in leadership roles are quite obviously engaging in performative obedience to their own rules. If that. And this phenomenon is observable worldwide. What I mean is that our erstwhile leaders are no longer bothering to lie to us properly, they simply tell us that what they did that’s clearly in violation of their own (and possibly our) norms and laws, rules and procedures is completely in accord with them, offering zero evidence.
Whether it’s the strange circumstances surrounding the conclave that elected Francis and the abdication (so-called) of Benedict XVI preceding it (along with an unprecedented “co-papacy”), the nomination procedure for Democrats in the last two elections (which no matter your views, it’s hard to find compelling logic for), or determining who was in charge during the entire previous US administration, or the double-speak engaged in more and more openly by corporations around the world, these trust-eroding activities proliferate. I try not to focus on them, but can’t help but notice. It rather adds up emotionally. Frankly, it’s pretty stressful where I’m sitting.
As we stumble down the stairstep of the deterioration of our society’s ability to function as it has done previously (and I’m old enough to remember that it WAS able to function, even if wrong-headedly), hand-in-hand with our sliding down the slope of peak Everything including energy, the destruction of trust in anything concerning our lives together is striking–and this stuff doesn’t help. I’m not learned enough to know specific examples of this happening in previous situations (e.g., the fall of the western Roman empire, China, Egypt, etc.). But surely it’s not a new thing. There have always been liars and hypocrites and purely political creatures, but the extent of this stuff is shocking to me.
Surely it’s not a new thing. There have always been liars and hypocrites and purely political creatures, but the extent of this stuff of late is shocking to me. Please, JMG and commentariat, help me understand this phenomenon in its context a bit better.
JMG, I typed EROEI for Alberta Oil Sands expecting Google to say “What’s EROEI?” but it actually gave me some sites. The best one is the following which is fairly recent, has references, tables, etc. which you may find useful. Sorry I have no idea how to do a direct link so at the end I just typed the whatever that goes into the space at the top. It follows the title of the piece of the article. (And all the computer experts reading this are laughing their heads off) I hope you can link to this.
Springer Nature Link “Estimating the Disaggregated Standard of Canadian Oil Sands Extracted via Open-pit Mining, 1997-2016”
Original Paper Published 11 February 2023
Volume 8, article number 2, (2023)
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41247-023-00109-5#Tab4
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ontario-debut-worlds-first-small-modular-reactor-ge-predicts
I wonder how late and over budget this one will be? The first one of anything like this will be late and over budget. That even applies to things that do prove to be economical later on.
In the meantime;
“Amid the rising prices, 70 percent of Californians believe children today will fare worse than their parents financially, according to a 2024 PPIC statewide survey.
The survey found 29 percent of Californians skipped meals or ate less food in order to save money within the prior year, while 17 percent used CalFresh (food stamp) benefits. Moreover, 20 percent put medical care on hold as a result of financial constraints.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/rent-or-buy-home-californians-increasingly-have-no-choice
But wait!
“According to the IMF’s 2024 World Economic Outlook data released yesterday, and BEA data California’s nominal GDP reached $4.1 trillion, surpassing Japan’s $4.02 trillion, and placing California behind only the United States, China, and Germany in global rankings.Apr 23, 2025”
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/04/23/california-is-now-the-4th-largest-economy-in-the-world/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20IMF's%202024,and%20Germany%20in%20global%20rankings.
It’s easy to have a really big economy when starter homes are over $1 million.
I had to look up what a root beer float is, but I can vividly imagine the slurping sound from drinking a milk shake!
Nice to see you keep your habit of annoying both sides equally. Defining the climate change issue as hijacked by billionaires for their own reasons, but then finishing the essay with a cliff-hanger about climate-related problems.
@siliconguy, I agree that much consumption, especially in North America, is unrelated to real needs and propped up by ads. However, as others have mentioned, there are a lot of unmet needs in poorer countries. Unfortunately, North American and European products aren’t competitive to meet those needs.
I do see one field of huge unmet material needs in countries as far apart as Canada, Germany and Australia: housing. People are paying 30%, 40%, 50% or even more of their income for housing. Now there are many reasons for this enormous overhang of demand: fast immigration, government overregulation, financial speculation and others. But I can’t get it out of my head that there’s another reason: the median salary buys less hours of a bulldozer, fewer sacks of cement, less copper wire and glass than ten or twenty years ago. There are not enough people whose salary can pay for the construction of new housing. If there were, they would sustain many well-paying jobs in construction. This is a vicious circle, of course, as you point out.
@pierre: I recently read a life of St. Geneviève of Paris, a contemporary of Attila. In between the miracles, there are many glimpses of daily life as Roman civilization in Northern Gaul went to pieces.
@boysmama: My reaction to a van filled with nine people of three generations is very different than when I see a huge pickup carrying a single person!
Pygmycory, I am a Catholic and I hope that’s good enough for you. I am going to be praying to our Christian God for you. Depression in terrible, I know that personally and right now I know so many people suffering from it and feeling at loose ends. Please accept my love and prayers and good wishes for you to feel better. And take care of yourself, please. Please let me know if you don’t want my prayers, but please know I am happy to pray for all of us here at the Ecosophia community.
Vancouver / western BC might secede from Canada too and form its own little coastal nation state with Seattle / western Washington and Portland / western Oregon.
And Mr. Greer, just want to say a big Thank you for this blog and all the work you do. After my parents you and Wendell Berry have been the biggest influence on my thinking processes and both of you are very inspiring. Because of you I am debt free and am working hard on collapsing now and avoiding the rush!! And keeping up what skills I have. I look at the future as an exciting time, not knowing how this will all turn out doesn’t bother me a bit. Of course my family thinks I’m nuts, but who cares? I love them all dearly and they will come around someday. One can hope and pray!! That’s all any of us can do, isn’t it? After we have made what preparations we can.
Pierre, Bryan Ward-Perkins’ The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization is excellent. Michael Grant’s magisterial histories of Rome are also very solid; The Fall of the Roman Empire: A Reappraisal is especially good.
Siliconguy, thanks for this. Yeah, that would do it!
SLClaire, thanks for this — and thanks for reminding me about Kurt! I’ve just added him to the Blogroll of Doom. As for Social Security, in theory I’ll start getting it when I sign up for Medicare in a little over two years. Will it be there? And for how long? I’m not holding my breath.
Justin, sure, if there’s a Cascadian Nation. We’ll see!
Dobbs, that’s an excellent point. The entire financial system is a Ponzi scheme based on perpetual growth, at a time when most forms of real wealth are in decline. As for how it survives, it won’t — to judge by past examples, the entire thing will unravel in stages, with a period of state economics run by zombie banks that lose money every year as one of those stages.
Ralf, I used that date as a hypothetical example in a couple of fictional accounts of the future. It’s possible at this point that it won’t happen for at least a couple of generations, precisely because Trump seems to be succeeding for the time being at the job of harnessing the most likely rebel factions in support of his reformist agenda. We’ll see if he succeeds over the long term, though.
Stephen, oh, it won’t be fracking in the United States. Several other nations have large reserves of frackable shales — Argentina and Russia are two that come to mind. One or more of those will provide the next round of temporary fixes, at a steadily rising cost, against a background of steady depletion of all other resources.
Patricia M, patchworks are the wave of the future. It’s good to see the holding company getting to work on that.
Team10tim, that’s fodder for at least one post. The short form is that I expect governments to do the right things once they’ve exhausted every other option.
BorealBear, I also had (and have) bills to pay, and needed (and need) to provide for myself (and at that time, a sick wife who couldn’t work any more). I simply chose to do it honestly, rather than becoming an intellectual prostitute. I wasn’t the only one to walk away, either, which is how I know that the ones who cashed in their ideals to suck at the corporate teat didn’t have to do so. I hope you’re right that it’ll be easier to talk about these things now; we don’t have much time.
Ambrose, and since red is kind of the same thing as orange, which is a shade of yellow, which is sort of like green, which is next thing to blue, and a bikini is a garment and so is a robe, the Virgin Mary wears a bright red bikini. If you can’t tell the difference between Mount Athos and the Forum Romanum in 100 AD, you’re engaged in the same sort of handwaving.
Anonymoose, that’s interesting, in a bleak and rather horrible sort of way. Thanks for the heads up.
J.L.Mc12, get used to it. If the rain belts keep shifting in their current direction, there’ll be big pluvial lakes all across the Outback, and we’ll get to see if bunyips can swim. 😉 I expect similar lakes across the Sahara and the Arabian peninsula.
Mawkernewek, hmm! Thank you. I’ll look that up.
Ron, many thanks for this.
BeardTree, I remember in my childhood how Protestant preachers then insisted the Second Coming would happen any day now because the radical kids all said “Peace,” and that fulfilled the prophecy in Jeremiah 6:14 and 8:11. Then the kids stopped saying “Peace.” I doubt there’s been a five minute period since 33 AD when there haven’t been plenty of things that could be used the same way. Still, as you say, and as I heartily agree, we’ll see.
Lorenzo, I can pick my way through Spanish with the help of a dictionary — it’s close enough to Latin that it’s not too hard. The blogroll sites are there because I have Spanish-speaking readers who volunteered those sites. If you know others, by all means let me know.
Chris, the reason our corporate media isn’t talking about the unbelievable grift that Elon’s autists have been digging up is that they’ve been receiving a lot of it. As for a cheap electric car, it probably would fall afoul of all the regulations that prevent any inexpensive, practical car from being made or sold in the US.
Polecat, er, okay.
Jerry, I remember having a lot of lively conversations with people at peak oil events but names tend to escape me. As for the earth’s magnetic field, those happen every half a million years or so on average, and it’s quite possible that one is building up right now, but nobody knows how fast it happens or what the effects will be; the fact that so many people make a beeline for apocalypse says much more about their favorite myths than about geomagnetism!
Clarke, this is absolutely, utterly normal. The ruling class of every collapsing society falls back on performative obedience to its own rules when it can no longer control events; think of the emperors of late Chou China, or of Japan during the sengoku jidai, going through the motions of ruling a country over which they had no effective power at all, or for that matter Emperor Honorius in Ravenna, claiming to be the emperor of Rome when he didn’t even control that city. The fact that the same thing has become so very common now shows how far down the slope of decline we are.
Annette2, thank you for this! That’s exactly what I wanted.
Siliconguy, we can be sure it’ll be cheap, safe, and successful until they start building it…
Aldarion, good gods, you Europeans are deprived of root beer floats? How horrible. As for annoying both sides evenly, climate change is my favorite place to do that, because both sides have their heads thrust so far up their backsides they’re digesting their own hairdos. I look forward to 3000 words or so of explaining that in a couple of weeks.
Heather, you’re welcome and thank you! As I see it, staying out of debt, downshifting our lifestyles, and developing our spiritual lives — whatever those happen to be — are three of the most useful things anybody can do just now, and if I’ve helped inspire you to do them, I’m delighted.
JMG @126
Interesting the two countries you referred to.
The Vaca Muerta area is far in the south of Argentina and at present there is not the infrastructure to develop it: roads, ports, etc. I feel it can be developed in the future. I think that Southern South America will be one of the areas that is most likely to thrive in the downslope. There may even be some unemployed American fracking oil workers looking for work.
I am not sure about fracking, but I believe there are considerable oil reserves in the Russian arctic. Again, at present, lack of infrastructure is the problem, although they have all the oil they need at the moment. Melting permafrost is a big challenge. They would probably need to utilize some kind of almost floating rig like off shore drilling, also devise a way to transport it over the melting permafrost. Needs must. I am sure they will come up with something. I think Russia is the country that is in the best situation of all going into the descent.
Stephen
JMG
I must add, I haven’t had a root beer float in decades. You have inspired me to have one soon. They aren’t available here in Mexico, but it is now on the top of my list when I go stay with my daughter in CA next month.
Stephen
Anonymous #124
So .. Upper Wokelandia perhaps?
Pygmycory @ 58, for next season, have you considered adding perennial edibles to your yard? Asparagus grow themselves, and the fronds from the stems that don’t get eaten are quite attractive. The berries are quite toxic, apologies if you already know that, and you might need to pick and dispose of them. I have a flat of Caucasian Mountain Spinach growing. If I can germinate something, anyone can. Yams, maybe both kinds should be possible in British Columbia. Strawberries ought to flourish for you and not be as invasive as the delicious but thuggish cane berries. If space allows, there is the fascinating world of small fruit bushes and trees.
JMG,
The oil market is the cartelized market par excellence. The argument of price hiking as a proxy of declining (intrinsic) supply isn’t convincing because there are other considerations at play. For example, during the 80s, oil price stayed at low teens. This was because the US was using it as a lever of pressure against the USSR. It succeeded. From 1998, the USG adopted the opposite tactic: keep prices high enough in order to cripple China’s development (they failed). They did it by i) manipulating the oil futures market, ii) leveraging the Saudis and iii) through control of basically all oil majors and, lastly, NOT allowing others to drill. The Iraq War project was about keeping oil in the ground, as was the case in Darfur (remember Jolie’s stint then?). These points have all been argued for very convincingly by Jim Norman.
That is to say, maybe we are running out of available oil, but looking at the spot prices isn’t exactly a convincing argument.
The scriptural indicators that the return of Jesus may be close – within a century are serious, deep and unique to our time and not superficial Bible interpretations like your example. It says that as we draw close to time we may not know the day or the hour but will realize things are at hand and not far off and if events accelerate in the neater future, in our baby boomer lifetimes, I think we will realize something truly spiritually novel is afoot and a choice will be presented, and I hold this view seriously, yet lightly and live in this world as it is and again I say, “We shall see.”
Here is a fascinating presentation by Dan Gowin who speaks about energy, namely geothermal energy and hydrogen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZk8T1Q26M0
In a nutshell, oil is not necessary to keep the industrial civilization going, albeit not quite in the current shape. Geothermal energy is present anywhere in the world and is a much better alternative to oil, if only because it does not give any region an ‘unfair’ advantage over another.
Why is this route not being exploited? Probably for that very reason. Too many a-holes around who want to rule the world.
Hey JMG
Oh, I’m not complaining. A subtropical climate with extra lakes is far more preferable to the hot and dry desert that conventional environmentalists predict Australia is going to turn into. However I’m probably not going to enjoy the extra heavy rains, since it floods underneath my house each time due to a blockage in the stormwater drains. Heavy rains also seem to encourage mould to grow on my wooden tools and furniture.
I suppose that if Australia is going to become more wet and subtropical, then various mosquito-borne diseases will be a bigger issue than they usually are now. And increased humidity will bring its own problems. I should look up how they deal with this up North.
This return of peak oil finds me in very different circumstances than the last time around. After a few years of slow cognitive decline my wife retains few memories of our four deliriously happy decades together, let alone of yesterday. Hence we live in a quiet perpetual present. Each morning we orient one another to the world we wake up to that day. The apprehension of Presidents, wars, crises, are all contingent on me or someone mentioning them. What pandemic? What climate change? What’s real is concrete and immediate and visible: the weather, the dog, pancakes from scratch she’s delighted to learn I can make,
Not exactly what I thought I was preparing for over the past fifteen years, but I’m unutterably grateful for everything in my life that’s helped me prepare, including in no small part this blog and its predecessors and the shared wisdom of its community.
Hi John Michael,
The TV tropes listing was very interesting, and respect for getting the good word out.
Man, I’ll tell ya a funny sort-of related story, those AI algae-rhythms are super weird and perhaps reflect the intentions of the folks who programmed them. Dunno about you and your experience, but I’m now seeing some very eerily well phrased comments from would be readers (and junking all of them). But just between you and I, the brain knows they’re software created because they’ve only ever learned to write in list form. Stands out like the proverbial canine testicles! 😊 The outcome reflects the inner world of the folks as created them. There’s nothing creative to see there, but at least the use of the language has cleaned up a lot.
I look forward each week to seeing what your thoughts are, AND, was rather distressed when you shut down the old ADR blog, but totally get why you did that act.
To be honest, my attention was grabbed recently by your efforts to reclaim the word ‘dastardly’! Should be the word of the year if you ask me.
And, yes, I did spot the cheeky music reference. Respect! You thought I was half asleep, but that’s only a quarter true. Such a great song too, and I saw the band perform at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl back in 1995. Country Feedback is a favourite (sorry to geek out) – the line, “it’s crazy what you could have had”, sends a strong message don’t you reckon?
Cheers
Chris
” I also had (and have) bills to pay, and needed (and need) to provide for myself (and at that time, a sick wife who couldn’t work any more). […] I wasn’t the only one to walk away, either, which is how I know that the ones who cashed in their ideals to suck at the corporate teat didn’t have to do so. ”
Just so it’s clear, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, or that it was easier for you. Of course, walking away involves a willingness to accept a less lavish way of life, which circles back to the wider subject for this post. This also brings to mind how you put your foot down for the potential Star’s Reach adaptation when they wanted to violate the spirit of the story (if I remember the events right). There are so many unnecessary adaptations, sequels and reboots of various stories that seem to exist only because they generate too much money not to, even if they’re pointless at best and totally at odds with the soul of the source material at worst. I think that’s another very visible example of the same mentality, and it always makes me sad to see no matter how understandable it might be. Tolkien’s heirs might be the worst example of many here.
And since you said this to an above commenter:
“As I see it, staying out of debt, downshifting our lifestyles, and developing our spiritual lives — whatever those happen to be — are three of the most useful things anybody can do just now, and if I’ve helped inspire you to do them, I’m delighted.”
…I wanted to add that while I’m not as advanced in green wizardry as some here, you’ve certainly inspired me to do these three things as well. Especially but by no means only the latter, since I’d probably still be a materialist and would never have gotten into the bigger world of occultism and spirituality if it wasn’t for you. So thank you for that from me as well.
Hi JMG and Ecosophia readers,
Throughout the history, crises such as the one our society is facing, triggers high level of currency devaluation. This in turn lighten the burden for debtors.
On the other hand, I understand it is important for individuals to stay out of debts.
It looks like a paradox. Would you be able to help me to reconcile these two facts ? Thank you.
Hi John,
Apologies for the typos on the previous post, I was typing in on the bus to work in the morning! That’s one more advantage of trying to live and modest and sustainable lifestyle, my work pays for my annual bus pass so I rarely need to drive!
I was going to add that we recently installed solar panels on our south-facing house. So far, it provides an excess of electricity for half a year, which I am getting paid back as credit (meaning that a good chunk of my electricity bill is paid by the panels).
Latest panels should last at least 25 years, and potentially up to 30 to 40 years and maintenance is basically zero. If you try and use electricity modestly (and time it when the sun is shining) it can work.
Battery storage remains an issue but some of the latest advances out of China suggest that potentially by the late 2020s battery tech could be good enough to provide that required storage to survive the winter months when I rely on the grid.
On its own solar PV tech isn’t going to solve our problems. But, if you use them in conjunction with a concerted attempt to reduce your electricity usage and embracing sustainable ways of living I think it has a valuable place.
As part of our “collapse now and avoid the rush” strategy, we also mainly shop now in thrift shops (we have two good ones locally) so now rarely buy new of anything. It has saved us a fortune and its definitely the way to go.
I agree with you that the coming crisis’s will impact Europe far more going into the 2030s and 2040s. At some point I will need to seriously consider establishing a legal bolthole somewhere else but I don’t think its imminent.
The best market analysts I follow strongly suggest a market crash around 2030, and a Great Depression going into around 2040, after which markets bottom and a long-term revival takes places going decades into the future (note this is a S&P 500 forecast).
Does that sound plausible to you. And if the S&P 500 really is going to go through a series of crashes from around 2026, then 2030, and finally 2040 or so – where it bottoms around 1000 (note S&P 500 is currently near 6k) – what is the type of economic revival in the US that is most realistic to you?
Gee, why not tell us what you really think,
https://pjmedia.com/david-solway-2/2025/05/07/western-canada-puts-the-rest-of-canada-on-notice-n4939566
“Though diehard loyalists will disagree, it is now time for Western Canada, in particular Alberta, to get its revolutionary act together. There is no longer any doubt that Canada is a broken, dysfunctional country, a disjointed collection of ten semi-independent provinces and three sparsely populated northern territories, superposed upon a chasm-wide divide between the East-Central “Laurentian” elite of bankers, Crown corporations, government agencies, media Jacobins and powerful political families on one side and the agricultural and energy-producing, partially rural-based, Texan-like, hardworking and self-reliant prairie West on the other. The West was never fully integrated into the Confederation as an equal partner, being consistently exploited by the Upper Canadian Anglo-Presbyterians, Québécois grandees, and their descendants who still rule the upper tier of Canadian politics. “
Neptunesdolphins, I have a different take on the ongoing meltdowns about the King in Orange; it’s the end of the line for the privileged end of the managerial class, and status panic is a primal force, tying into reactions we share with every other species of social mammals. It’s no wonder that they’re shrieking, because it really is the end of the world as they knew it. (And I feel fine.) No, I don’t think you mentioned the Ferris wheel story before — what a harrowing experience that must have been!
—-
JMG: That is explains the anti-Trump folks and their raging antics. People are screaming for a populist revolt. They got one, just not the one they wanted.
As for the Ferris wheel, whenever people suggest this is a roller coaster ride, etc, I flash back to being stuck and just get sick. I guess PTSD doesn’t leave you.
I liken the current situation with things going gently downhill and into that good night as being a sailor on the seas of fate. Like all good sailors, you watch the wind and the water. You tack to the wind and realize any port in a storm is a good one. I am in my little boat bobbing about. (My father and I would go sailing in his little Blue J in the Atlantic Ocean.)
JMG,
I was just going through some old links as I was setting up a new computer and thought I’d drop in to your blog. Its the first I’ve read in a long time though I did follow the ADR closely for many years. I’m very glad I did as it was a great post despite being a familiar theme. Thank you.
Please forgive me in advance if I touch on issues you have addressed thoroughly in the intervening years that I have been absent from this site. Given your stated intention to return to the subject of peak oil for at least a few posts, I’d like your thoughts on a working theory concerning peak oil and its relationship to recent initiatives of the global elites.
Let me state my assumptions up front: 1) Peak oil and its consequences are real in essentially the way you have outlined in detail over the years; 2) Human caused climate change is not real (though climate change itself may well be); 3) The recent Pandemic was not real; 4) The global elites (i.e. that loosely cooperative group of families and individuals who control most of the world’s financial and economic activity) are fully aware of points 1, 2, and 3.
Briefly, I offer the following “proofs” for my assumptions given above except Point 1 which you have dealt with in detail over the years. Re. Point 2: I have been led to believe that several ice core studies from Greenland and Volstok Russia conclusively indicate CO2 levels are not driving global temperature change. Temperature and CO2 generally track together (i.e. when one goes up or down, so does the other) but when they do not, CO2 level lags temperature (e.g. when temperature changes from rising to dropping it takes CO2 levels several centuries to follow suit). Given a cause must precede an effect, CO2 (though a green house gas) cannot be causing climate change. Re. Point 3: Denis Rancourt’s studies of all cause mortality data in 125 countries indicate there was no excess mortality anywhere in the world prior to the announcement of a pandemic by the WHO on 11 March 2020. Further, he concluded that the excess mortality that existed in some countries after that date is not consistent with the spread of a communicable disease. One could detail the many error is facts that came from authorities/elites to support Points 2 and 3, but space does not allow for this. The one salient fact given for each of Points 2 and 3 must be sufficient for now. I hold that the global elites are not stupid nor without recourse to reliable facts so Point 4 is self evident.
My working theory is just that the items at Points 2 and 3 (and numerous other globalist initiatives that have been grouped under the rubric of “Omniwar” by David Hughes among others) are the deliberate product of the global elites to address Point 1. I am not suggesting global elites need some incentive to attempt to centralize and consolidate their power (this is after all what elites do by definition), its just that peak oil does provide a strong incentive to pull out all the stops to do this as fast and hard as they can now. In essence, I think they are attempting a controlled demolition of the current global financial, economic, and political systems (as well as the various social and cultural elements ala Orlov’s 5 stages of collapse) so they can remain in control of these systems so they can “build back better” (i.e. install an even more Orwellian system).
You may regard the foregoing as illustrative of my clear grasp of the obvious. I hope so (because who doesn’t like to be right about obvious things). If not, I hope you will point out any error in fact or reasoning I have made (because possessing the truth is more useful than being “right”). Thank you in advance, and thanks again for you many years of writing and the insights you have provided.
Hello Mr. Greer. I would like to know if you think hybrid vehicles for those who need a car make sense. They get much better gas mileage but are so much more complicated and therefore vulnerable to supply chain issues when repairs are necessary.
Siliconguy @ # 64, I have been mulling over how to answer your comment for the last day or so. The issues you raise are rather personal for me, because I am a long time DIYer and thrift shopper, home cooked food, collection of cast iron pans from back before those became collectibles, clothing made at home, etc. Over the years I have fielded why don’t you just buy from (Wallyworld, my family’s dress shop, etc.) hints and complaints. Gee, maybe because I like paying rent and utilities on time and avoiding those nasty late fees.
As our host and others never cease to point out, we have an oversupply of govt. beaurocrats. Govt. positions, let us not use the honorable word ‘service’ where it clearly does not apply, have became a default option for mediocre college grads. If you can’t get into law or medical school, we won’t even mention engineering, there is always social work. Gotta have that unearned PMC status and lifestyle. I assert that in a similar fashion, being “in business” is also all too often a last resort for self-important incompetence. I insist that I don’t owe the former lot my respect, not the latter my money. Nor is it any part of my duty to add my mite to the profitability of overseas factories, I. Don’t. Care. who owns them. As for the employees of said overseas manufactories, their welfare is the responsibility of their own governments.
I am old enough to remember life in the 50s and 60s, those times JMG often speaks of when one salary could support a family in comfort. In those days, at least a third of families had some kind of home garden, often with fruit trees. Most women below old family wealth status made at least some of their own and children’s clothing, and housewives cooked at home. None of that home production prevented the USA from having a boom economy. Look at crowd photos from 50s and 60s. People were leaner, fitter, better dressed and mostly healthier, despite the heavy drinking and smoking which also characterized those times.
Geothermal energy has a large problem, very hot water dissolves a great many things, particularly heavy metals. When you cool the water the dissolved substances precipitate out and plug your heat exchanger.
The brine is also corrosive adding to the annoyance factor. Drilling holes miles deep and fracking the hot rock formations has the usual problems with process too.
Here is one I know of in Nevada where hot rocks are reasonably to the surface.
https://www.gem.wiki/Beowawe_geothermal_power_plant
A larger scale one is this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geysers
Note its capacity factor is only 53%. It also causes small earthquakes in the immediate area, and it’s cooling down. They are taking heat out faster than it’s coming in. Iceland doesn’t have that problem, but they do lose towns to lava flows on a regular basis.
Stephen, those are simply the two I happen to know about. There will be frackable shale deposits on every continent, and it’s quite probable that all of them will be fracked, despite all the disadvantages, before we finish the Long Descent and get fracked in our turn.
Galerkin, spot prices aren’t meant to be a convincing argument. They’re simply one data point among many to take into account.
BeardTree, I certainly don’t mean to discourage you from your beliefs. I simply note that for the last two thousand years plenty of people have had similar convictions. That said, again, we’ll see!
Paul, nope. Geothermal energy has been studied systematically since the 1950s, and the numbers always come out the same: outside of a very few geologically favored locations, such as Iceland, it takes more energy to extract and concentrate geothermal heat to useful intensities than you get out of the process. Unfortunately thermodynamic illiteracy is embarrassingly common these days.
J.L.Mc12, get used to it. I believe monsoon rains were a regular feature of the central Australian climate back in the day…
Walt, I’m very sorry to hear this, but I get it — I wasn’t expecting to be a widower at this point of the curve, either. I hope that things continue to go as well as possible for the two of you.
Chris, I rather like “algae rhythms,” as so many of them seem to be motivated by just about enough intelligence to photosynthesize, and maybe wave a flagellum or two. As for “dastardly,” it’s a fine word. Myself, I’m chuckling just now over a bit of French humor; one of my readers pointed out that “Chat GPT,” pronounced by anyone French, sounds very much like “Chat, j’ai pété,” or “Cat, I farted” in plain English. Let them add a whiff of that to their algae rhythms!
BorealBear, my point was more that it’s much less of a difficulty than some people want to claim. As for the proposed movie adaptation of Star’s Reach, I doubt it would have gotten far anyway, but yeah, they wanted to rewrite a story about what happens when it turns out we’re not going to the stars into one more dreary rehash of “we’re going to the stars.” I’ve seen plenty of displays of the stunning lack of imagination that has spayed and declawed science fiction in our time, but to me, at least, that was one for the record books.
Foxhands, in the long run, currency devaluation (ending at a value equal to zero) is inevitable. In the short to middle run, though, debt can be a crushing burden, and when the devaluations start is a question that’s hard to answer in advance.
Forecasting, that seems reasonable enough. I wonder if they’ve factored in the inevitable default (technical, at least) in US government debt; though. As for a US revival, I think it’ll vary dramatically by region, and be shaped powerfully by political forces — the southern states could see a fairly significant industrial rebuilding, given adequate tariffs, while climate shifts could make the Midwest an agricultural powerhouse again. I need to do some deep dives into potential futures on this theme.
Siliconguy, that’s one detail I’m watching very closely. If the three Great Plains provinces leave Canada and become US states, that’s going to throw quite the wild card into the economic and political mix.
Neptunesdolphins, I’ve heard exactly that from TDS patients — “sure, we wanted a populist uprising, but not this kind!” That is to say, they wanted one that was populist in name only, and would leave their end of the managerial caste in control of the levers of power. Too bad, so sad. As for sailing on the seas of fate, given my youthful reading habits, that inevitably brings this to mind:
Draw your black sword and have at it!
David, a meaningful response to that is going to require not one but several posts. I’ll be talking about climate change a couple of weeks from now; while we disagree about some of the details, you may find some of my analysis useful. As for the broader picture, “loosely cooperative” is to my mind a profoundly naive way to think about the elite classes of today’s major global powers, with their bitter feuds and constant internal power struggles. Here again, we’ll talk about that in detail as things proceed.
Stephen, the figures I’ve seen suggest that hybrids are so complex that the energy that has to go into making and repairing them exceeds the energy they save. Like so many of today’s pseudo-fixes, they make the problem worse by trying to make it better.
Siliconguy, yes, those are also among the problems. It’s not free energy — and of course neither is anything else.
The three Great Plains Canadian provinces would be well advised to wait for a new administration in DC before initiating negotiations about joining the Union. Six senators should be the Minimum the three provinces would accept, and more would be both better and reasonable. Canadians, do be aware that malefactors of great wealth of both or no political persuasion will be salivating over getting in on the mother of all land and water grabs. I wonder if you good citizens to the north understand the heartless rapaciousness of American capitalism.
I see futures are going strong in the root beer float dpt. I prefer a Moxie float though.
https://newengland.com/yankee/history/moxie-maines-classic-soda/
(For the uninitiated Moxie tastes like a hybrid root beer & cola with a bitter edge from the gentian root.)
JMG,
From reading the TV Tropes section on Star’s Reach, it absolutely would be a travesty if it’s not adapted into a movie at some point. The message we need to hear, more than any, is that Earth is our home, like it or not, and acting like we’re space pirates looting a new planet as fast as we possibly can is terribly misguided.
What would you change, if anything, if you were to rewrite it today given the events that have transpired between 2014-2025? For a movie adaptation, I am thinking it would have similar vibes to the movie adaptation of Cloud Atlas. Have you read the novel?
Also, it shares the same name as an upcoming MMORPG (massive multiplayer online RPG), so a lot of people would see it based on the name alone!
Hello, JMG
I clarify that Turiel’s blog, The Oil Crash, despite its English title, is written in Spanish. I want to emphasize that Turiel is a very important reference for all of us who follow the Peak Oil problem in Spanish-speaking countries. For 15 years, he has been working tirelessly and continuously to raise awareness about Peak Oil among citizens, businesses, and local, regional, and national institutions (such as the Spanish Senate itself). Turiel, apart from his amateur interest in Peak Oil, also conducts professional research on climate change.
Foxhand #138: “Throughout the history, crises such as the one our society is facing, triggers high level of currency devaluation.”
Currency devaluation occurs when one side of the currency trade is in worse shape than the other. If both sides of the currency trade are going through essentially the same crisis then there is no guarantee as to which direction the currency trade goes in – there may be a devaluation for one side or for the other, but it is not possible for both sides to devalue against each other simultaneously.
This is of course separate from the issue of currency losing all value altogether – i.e. not being accepting.
I love that graph which says “production *starts* to peak” and doesn’t show any peak at all. If one wanted to show a graph to tell the people that peak oil is not real and everything is alright, this would probably be the one. But there’s an important lesson to learn here, maybe even more than one. I could now go digging for more data (and would certainly have done so in the past), for data older than 25 years, I could try to do the very painstaking work and attempt find out how much energy is really needed to extract all that oil and create a graph that shows that at least peak net energy is very real. I could invest my time and energy in endless discussions with opponents and supporters of my data treatment. Or I could just assume that those who are talking of peak oil have possibly glimpsed part of the truth and that the empires unseen bureaucrats are possibly thinking quite rationally and that from their perspective, there are very powerful incentives compelling them to risk direct war with one of their most powerful adversaries and loose everything. A lot of strategic depth and fat must have vanished, a lot of low hanging fruits must have already been picked, right?
It’s the same story with climate change or “skeptic vs. believer” or certain health issues and treatments – you can run in circles endlessly and try to convince the others (or in reality: yourself). Or you can make a decision. That being said, data and graphs and stuff are important on a collective level and for some time also on an individual level. But I suppose at some point, a decision needs to be made.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
@heather,
thank you, that would be lovely. It’s not really that bad, it fluctuates but is a persistent problem for many years. I think I’ve been doing too much again, and need to make some choices about what to do less of for a while.
@Jennifer, building such beds is basically impossible for me. I think I’m just going to do a lot less gardening this year. The herbs, berry bushes, trees etc will continue to do their thing, and I’ve also got a few things I did manage to have come up successfully. It just won’t be anything like me normal garden and large areas will be weeds and not watered.
Anonymous #124,
Check out the fictional works by Ernest Callenbach; Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging. They are fictional accounts of a steady state nation carved out of the Western parts of BC, Washington and Oregon.
It was interesting that at the time these books were published ( 1981) the Cascadian region actually felt like such a thing could happen. But what a difference 40 years makes.
Reading posts backwards gave me the impression that algae rhythms are related to cat farts (maybe like the cyclic nature of giardia).
BeardTree: “The scriptural indicators that the return of Jesus may be close”
Found him!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/seven-men-around-the-world-who-each-claim-to-be-jesus-christ/2W27IHL7PIQLTO5SFAPPAMN5HM/
And are there any lady Jesii? Why sure:
https://officialsonichu.com/blogs/news/jesus-christ-chan-sonichu-prime
Justin, I’d like to try a Moxie one of these days. The bitter edge sounds pleasant.
Dennis, no, I haven’t read Cloud Atlas — I mostly read books by dead people these days. As for Star’s Reach, since it’s set in 2475 or so, it doesn’t need any updating at all — the future history that gets from here to there is still entirely plausible. The problem with a film version is of course that Hollywood these days turns everything it touches into crap; if the producers would keep the budget modest, get some competent actors, do a nice clean script that makes the same points the novel does, and leave out the cheesy special effects that make so many SF movies look stupid, that would be one thing, but that’s pretty much past hoping for these days.
PedroH, I have “in Spanish” noted after the listing, so that shouldn’t confuse anyone.
Nachtgurke, that’s when conventional petroleum production peaked, full stop, end of sentence. Increases since then have been entirely from unconventional (and low-net energy) sources such as fracking fluids and tar sands. The people who made the graph assumed that readers would be energy literate and would know this.
Ambrose, I see no error there; increased concentrations of algae could indeed drive feline flatulence, or vice versa!
@Ambrose #155 My feet are still on the ground so none of those claiming to be Jesus can be him (or her). 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17
@Pygmycory,
I’m sorry to hear that. We also have a lot of beds that are half weeds and half feral cover crops right now, but like you at least our fruit trees are chugging along! It’s been tough accepting that we’re just not going to nail it this year on the gardening front, but we figure better to accept it than to waste a bunch of scarce time and energy doing it poorly and still not ending up with anything much.
@JMG and Justin,
Moxie is good stuff. JMG, you should be able to find it in RI.
A few years ago, I was at the wedding of one of my nieces (in MA). The father of the groom had unfortunately passed away shortly before the wedding, and the family was still grieving somewhat. He was a big Moxie fan, and it was sort of a fun thing in their family. And so, at the reception, the waitstaff came around to all the tables and distributed little cups… and we toasted the newlywed couple with Moxie!
Hi John Michael,
Our feline friends would definitely enjoy a flatulence joke! Who doesn’t? 🙂
Thought you might be interested to read some data from the recent elections that the two main political parties down under are being abandoned. As a reminder, we have a preferential voting system, which means that unlike ‘first past the post’ systems, a voters preferences count towards the final result. An electorate tends to end up with the most preferred candidate, or in more blunt language, the least worst option.
The Labour party has won by a landslide, no getting around that. However, their primary vote is not all that different from the Liberal-National coalition party. The thing is, each of those two parties got about a third of the number 1 votes (which isn’t all that great), and independents and minor parties (The Greens and One Nation) now appear to receive slightly more number 1 votes than the major coalition party. On a side note, The Greens, despite the increased vote, have had a major fall from power because basically a vote for them is a vote for the Labour party (the Greens leader lost his seat). You’d have to suggest that their natural alignment to the Labour party cost them deeply.
Here’s an interesting article depicting that story playing out: Labor’s landslide victory obscures a disturbing trend for the major parties
My take away from all that, is that the two parties no longer speak to the majority of the population, of which has also been encouraged to pursue all sorts of disparate values over the past half century. What did they all expect would happen?
Cheers
Chris
Well, quite many people are not able to understand graphs like this despite being energy literate. Anyway, the red graph (world w/o shale) rising above the pre-2007 blue graph suggests (due to the distinction being made between shale and not-shale) that there is no conventional peak. Thus it would be interesting to see the red graph being further split up in the types of “crude” that contribute to the total production w/o shale. What is meant by the distinction between “shale” and “world w/o shale”? Are tar-sands, for example, included in “world w/o shale”? What part of the total amount of crude do they make up? I’m not saying at all that there is no peak – but the graphs certainly don’t show it and *suggest* that there *might* be no peak at all. This is no question of “literacy”. The relevant data just seems to be not provided in that graph.
As I tried to express with my previous post, the consequences of resources running low in general can be felt everywhere and if you don’t identify with “the system” anymore, it doesn’t take a genius to draw conclusions and make decisions. Therefore I’m not offended at all with the intention of the graph, but sometimes I’m still mildly “offended” graphs like this do a poor job. If the intention is to show a peak, then either the categories are chosen to coarse for that purpose or there simply is no significant “peak” in the chosen timeframe. But maybe I’m doing a poor job explaining myself, too.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
>I would like to know if you think hybrid vehicles for those who need a car make sense. They get much better gas mileage but are so much more complicated and therefore vulnerable to supply chain issues when repairs are necessary.
Even if you don’t have to worry about supply chain issues, basically the savings you get from gas, you’ll give it all back and then some when repairs are needed. Or god forbid the battery needs to be rebuilt or replaced. And the brain needed to figure out what’s going wrong, well, it’s already getting big but these cars demand MOAR. You’re not just a grease monkey, you’re now an electrical engineer.
I’d say you’re making a bet on the way gas prices go – if they skyrocket, you win with a hybrid, but I’m not sure where the price point is for when the numbers flip in your favor.
Depends on your time frame too – if you plan on leasing the car for the first 3 years of its life, you don’t care about the costly repairs on the back end, it’s someone else’s problem. I could see running the numbers if you’re an uber driver and coming out ahead with a leased hybrid. Then again something like a Kia Spectra may be the lowest cost no matter what.
>The problem with a film version
Why make a film when you can partner with someone to make a AA RPG? Most video game writers are incompetent, you would outperform most of them with even your first drafts. If you can write for a tabletop, you can write for a real game.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Asmongold/comments/1jiyekk/video_game_industry_in_a_nutshell/
Pygmycory, I second Jennifer Kobernik’s suggestion at #110 and grow tall herbs or flowers, but ONLY if you feel up to it. West Coast Seed sells packets of Pollinator seed. I’ve grown them and they are very easy to grow–just spread the seed on the ground, cover them lightly with soil and water until they germinate. Then ignore. These are wildflowers that can take care of themselves and they are beautiful. But do this only if you feel you can do it without over extending yourself.
I have gone into an almost meditative state just watching the bees and butterflies on these flowers. Sometimes you need to feed your soul.
Take care.
re: finding jesus
I think part of the point of Jesus’ teachings was to make finding him impossible because everyone would be Jesus. There, found him, he’s you, and him and her and him, etc. We’re not there yet, obviously, although it looks like some people are really really trying.
That said, I don’t want to be Jesus. They tend to put people like that in hospital rooms where the nice men in white coats talk to you while the not so nice cranky women in white dresses point to cups of pills for you to gobble. And if you don’t, then things get nasty and the women get even more cranky.
I dunno, would YOU want to be Jesus right now?
Mr. Greer .. if you haven’t already …. you should have a looksee at the latest TAE Summary.
….. as an aside .. those tech-bros who ($oo far, have the Presidentin’$ EAR-Worm…) have ‘acid-for-blood’..
Whenever I hear of the various oligarch$ spouting their Boner-Fido$ into the auditory orifices of the GGoG (as per J. H. Kuntsler …) , all I can think of is – ‘acid-for-blood’!! dipping copious there-of, onto the deck of plebians boots..
Does that clarify my sentiments, HollyWooden or no?
The people have spoken, so I reply: the 8th Annual Ecosophia Midsummer Potluck will have all the ingredients for Root Beer Floats! Plus whiskey, of course.
I may have the foundations for a political movement here: honest talk about Der Untergang Des Abendlandes (Oswald Spengler), and sweetener to help it go down, and something to dull the sharp edges.
@Mary Bennett #147 – thanks for your comment.
“I wonder if you good citizens to the north understand the heartless rapaciousness of American capitalism”
They don’t; it’s a big part of the problem. The starry-eyed naivete of the separatista crowd is breathtaking, when it comes to just this point. But I won’t belabour it.
As for the point about holding out for more congressional representation – no comment on that except to say, something you do read on the internet is right-wing Americans saying “by golly we don’t want those liberal Canadian provinces anyway.” No thought is ever given by these commenters that maybe the Democrats *would* be amenable to more “blue states”, making it more likely to happen!
JMG: “no, I haven’t read Cloud Atlas”
It’s quite good, and fits your expectations of decline. The movie is only so-so–they tried hard, and it has its virtues, but some things just weren’t very adaptable.
Since I was involved in the peak oil scene with all its failed predictions of doom, it’s only honest of me to present how I was thinking about things at the time.
The Freezing Point of Industrial Society, 2007 – http://theoildrum.com/node/3228
In this, I applied a simple mathematical model, asking basically – how expensive does it have to be before you get out and push? Extrapolating that person pushing the car along a broken road to all of society, we can see there will be some further changes, whether good or bad – forced changes.
What I missed was that when the oil price rises enough, we get what’s politely called “demand destruction” – economies go into recession, reducing demand for oil and thus the price, allowing the economy to gradually rise again (even if it doesn’t rise to where it was). The price doesn’t rise linearly and nothing happens until everything falls apart, but instead it rises to a level where it causes problems, there’s a period of crisis, people find new solutions to the problems – or at least temporary workarounds – and so on. Part of JMG’s catabolic collapse. But it was just a thought experiment about price, not even a model. Helps explain the Global Financial Crisis, too – oil prices peaked just before that.
What I got right was that 2015-25 would be a “period of crisis”, though of course oil was not the sole cause, eg climate change ruining grain production in Egypt and Syria was a cause of displaced farmers and a rise in the price of bread harming the working class, which then contributed to the Arab Spring, and indirectly to resurgence of insurgency in Iraq, ISIS and so on. And I also got it right that Venezuela’s land reforms would lead to hunger, but predicting the failure of socialist policies is not really a big one.
For all its failures, I think the piece I wrote was a useful thought experiment, especially for those who are convinced that we will keep happily burning oil forever. We can – but at a price, and that price may be out of reach for a lot of people, and would change economies substantially, not necessarily in ways most of us would like .
@Aldarion
As an addendum to your comment about housing costs. I was Speaking with a concrete subcontractor several weeks ago. He noted building a shed/workshop in a backyard to specification of city building code requires a foot and a half thick concrete pad to start (9 inches in the middle). Thats $12’000 canadian to just cover material and labor costs for a 13×13 pad installation. Building codes are a defintley a significant issue. Few households can afford to build even a big shed to spec when doing so would cost about $45’000.
@polecat:
Your posts and replies, and especially this week, are becoming steadily more and more incomprehensible, at least to an ancient fossil like me. What is GGoG? And what is TAE? Please have pity on us uninitiated readers.
Or are you perhaps playing with us, or even playing us? If so, the joke is on me.
@siliconguy @JMG @Mary Bennet
It won’t be easy, and the memes are already starting. Western provinces are largely made up of First Nations treaty land negotiated with the federal government and the crown. https://www.thespec.com/news/canada/first-nations-take-alberta-premier-to-task-over-separatist-rhetoric/article_d403fb98-cfc1-5627-9b72-1a66c8b30702.html
And by the way, Ontario and Quebec have vast swaths of rural areas, with very hard working people that also do not share globalist sentiments. Remember our pioneers first tried to farm the Canadian Shield lands before moving to the prairies. The families that stayed on the shield and continued to hack out a living are not the gentle cosmopolitan types. Keep that in mind when generalizing about Canadian demographics. Our culture may have faded out in the GTA, that doesn’t rule out an authentic resurgence.
Sgage, I’ll look for it once the weather warms up.
Chris, that’s common enough these days. I’m left wondering who’s going to play the Trump card in Australian politics and start speaking for the excluded middle.
Nachtgurke, er, I think you missed my point. The relevant details aren’t provided in that graph because the makers expected people to be energy literate, i.e., familiar with the waning of conventional petroleum and the approximate shares of other liquid fuel sources. Perhaps, if you find this graph unhelpful, you might consider making one of your own.
Other Owen, since I don’t know anyone who writes for that industry who’d be interested in partnering with me, I don’t anticipate getting into the field. Still, thanks for the suggestion.
Polecat, I stopped reading TAE years ago, as its interests and focus diverged too far from mine. I’m not especially sure of your sentiments, either, as I’m not perfectly sure what language you’re writing in — not one, certainly, in which I’m fluent.
Peter, delighted to hear it!
Ambrose, I’ll have a look at it at some point.
Warburton, it was indeed a useful thought experiment. Thank you for the reminder.
SiliconGuy and JMG, not to be a western alienation bore but none other than Marc Lalonde, the illustrious federal FinMin under Trudeau senior during the calamitous early 1980s and political luminary from Quebec, said out loud something that you might not expect, that the National Energy Program was meant to keep money and capital from moving west. So there you have it.
Chantal Hebert, newspaper columnist and TV pundit said something else out loud, that if the oil deposits happened to be in Quebec instead of Alberta and if Quebec had been treated as badly as Alberta, Quebec would have been independent long ago.
David Eby, BC Preem, said something else, that there will be no oil pipelines from Alberta to the west coast. Okey dokey, but he better weigh this issue carefully. You can annoy people only so much and then they start to do stuff, you know, like hate you back, in short, they stop taking punches and start firing off some of their own.
In which event BC could be sitting with wide swathes of turf between itself and its compadres in the eastern provinces. It could be inconvenient for people in BC to have a newly independent country and maybe an unfriendly one at that right next door.
I doubt there’s any appetite anywhere in the great white boring north to join the US for reasons too deadly boring to get into. Let’s just call it fundamental incompatibility.
And if the great thinkers in the US would stop to think once in a while, there’s no way they’d offer full statehood and full voting rights because it would upset US politics for a really long time.
OTOH that could be a good thing. But probably not.
“What I missed was that when the oil price rises enough, we get what’s politely called “demand destruction” – economies go into recession, reducing demand for oil and thus the price, allowing the economy to gradually rise again (even if it doesn’t rise to where it was). The price doesn’t rise linearly and nothing happens until everything falls apart, but instead it rises to a level where it causes problems, there’s a period of crisis, people find new solutions to the problems – or at least temporary workarounds – and so on. ”
A lot of people miss that. When the oil price goes up the least cost effective uses get cut first. It doesn’t even require a recession. For instance a boiler I once was responsible for was built as a dual fuel capable unit. It could burn diesel or propane. While I was there it always ran propane because that was cheaper. But if the price had changed swapping it over would have taken a short outage to swap burners. All the controls were already there.
Sort of on that topic, there was some headline about Barbie Dolls having a higher tariff than a Rolls Royce. My passing thought was that is the way it should be. Barbie is a conversion of useful oil to landfill material in a short time. The car with proper maintenance will last decades and when scrapped is mostly recyclable metal.
I just had to look it up.
“Barbie dolls are made of a variety of plastics, including EVA (ethylene-vinyl acetate) for arms, ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) for the torso, and PVC (polyvinyl chloride) for the legs and head. While some early Barbies primarily used PVC, more recent models incorporate a blend of plastics, including recycled materials in some collections.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:
Head: Hard vinyl compound.
Arms: EVA.
Torso: ABS.
Legs: PVC, with a different formula than earlier models.
Hair: Typically made of polyvinylidene dichloride (PVDC).
Eyeballs: Developed water-based spray paint systems.
It’s a nonrecyclable combination unless you had Wednesday Addams use her guillotine for separation purposes. Even burning the bimbo is difficult, the PVC and PVDC mean you need a high efficiency scrubber unless you want hydrochloric acid headed downwind.
At some point the price of oil will get high enough to force the company to make Barbie out of something else, but that’s probably a long way off.
Pierre says:
May 8, 2025 at 2:08 pm
JMG wrote
I’d encourage you to read histories of the twilight years of the Roman Empire, so you can get a sense of what your nieces will experience. It may help.
I’m happy to do some research of my own, but also wondering if JMG or others might recommend a title or two pertaining to “histories of the twilight years of the Roman Empire.”
Thanks,
Pierre
Hi Pierre,
In addition to JMG’s suggetsions, here is an old writeup by Ugo Bardi that I think did a very decent “sweep” of this, but in an indirect way: https://countercurrents.org/bardi100111.htm
Your mileage may vary, of course, and I think many on this board may disagree with at least parts of it, but it’s a brief read, and it’s free, so why not?
And, btw, just a brief quote for fun that has little to do with the rest of the piece:
Once we start reasoning in terms of complexity, we immediately see the relationship of Tainter’s model with other models. I can cite John Greer’s theory of “catabolic collapse” but we can go directly to the mother of all theories based on feedback: the study called “The Limits to Growth” that appeared for the first time in 1972.
Another part that i try to keep in mind whenever I have the urge to scream at the short-sighted stupidity of the previous 2-3 genreations, who unfortunately will not live to deal with the mess that they have created but who have somehow managed to leave my generation holding the bag:
So, suppose that pollution becomes a serious problem. Let’s imagine that fumes from smokestacks are killing people; then society will allocate some capital to reduce fumes. Say, they would place filters on smokestacks. But filters need energy and natural resources to be built and that will place some further strain on natural resources. That will put strain on capital – so, fighting pollution may accelerate collapse, but not fighting it may cause collapse as well, although for different reasons – because pollution kills people and that makes it more difficult to generate capital and so on. You see how it works.
The concept of this “double-bind” is actually really important. If one country chose not to live unsustainably, it would have basically simply been destroyed by the ones who chose to do so (without getting into an enormous political argument, think of the Indigenous people and the Europeans, at least in the simplistic stereotypical history). So the overall system tends towards short-sighted thinking–because short-soghted thinking at least lets you survive in the short term. Bardi sort of touches upon this in an example near the end of this piece, which I loved…
Having said that, I still think that the baby boomers must be the most worthless generation who have ever walked upon this earth and resent the mess that they are leaving behind.
The point of the New Testament is being a fellow son/child of God with Jesus with him being the firstborn among many brethren. Brothers and sisters linked to the Lord with each having their own unique eternal individual persona even as Jesus does himself now, not a subsistence into a nirvanic emptiness.
I welcome your return to this topic. I think it will benefit a lot of people who are facing real signs of civilizational decline, or who are more prepared than before to face them, to have a place to come and discuss strategies. I’m seeing some good comments here in this regard.
For me, it’s pretty simple. 1) We’re going to muddle through, so 2) Find ways to enjoy muddling (tip of the old tin-foil hat to the Siberians), and 3) Shale happens to everyone.
I was too late with a comment in the last Open Post (kept formulating, then ran out of time), but it looks like it will fit this week’s discussion. Japan’s got an exposition going on in Osaka right now with a whole lot of fanfare, at least domestically. These shindigs are always about wonderful future technology. I went to one about 40 years ago and after more than an hour waiting in line, got to see a short 3D movie, which was mildly memorable, but basically I think expos are worse even than suburbia. The TV gives me an overview from far away of the current one, whether I want it or not. From the waving of smartphones by the first wave of entrants, I surmise that you need one just to get in. In one of the pavillions you can raise your smartphone together with the crowd and pretend to be on a space voyage.
And wouldn’t you know it: They have an honest-to-goodness flying car! I kid you not! It seats one adult in a molded fiberglass cowling, with six wheels on a circular wheelbase, and I lost count at 12 whirling rotors up above. Within the first few days of the Expo it broke down, with a rotor busting up in flight. In praise of the designers, I must say it managed to land safely anyway. No word on it since. It looks to me to be a really nice toy for a rich bachelor who wants to remain a bachelor.
The mascot appears to be a sea anemone, which I think is really nifty–but I have yet to see any explanation of what the mascot is supposed to represent.
The whole expo seems emblematic of the state of the Space Age.
Just a quick reachout: Has anyone here heard from Princess Cutekitten recently. The last comment I have seen from her here was in the March Open Post, where she said, “Hello all, it’s the Impatient Inpatient hete. Continue to need prayers, please.” I wrote in asking if she needed daily prayers, and never heard back.
Has anybody else heard from her? Does anyone know how she might be contacted?
@Pygmycory,
I’ve noted your request for prayers and specification that they be addressed to the Christian God. I hope Quin will have the chance to address your request, but I note he seems pretty overwhelmed right now too. (No details, he’s just clearly very busy.)
It seems that you are dealing with physical and emotional burnout and depression and need some help to “ride your ship through the storm.”
I am a licensed Shinto priestess, but in the Fuji-kyo sect, the kami we name after the Ancestral Trinity is considered by some to be “the one the Christians call ‘God’.” He’s given a long name, “Goku Fuyo Miroku-jin,” which is typical of Shinto. Ultimately, we believe we are all praying to the same God, just using different names or addressing different servants in the hierarchy. Still, if this strikes you as absurd, I’ll hold off.
Here is a suggested phrasing: “To the Christian God specifically, may Pygmycory find relief from her tendonitis and be empowered to overcome her depression.”
I’m putting this forward as a starting point, but if you like it, I will recite it or any suggested improvement tomorrow (Sunday).
@Ian Duncombe – yes. I have become very convinced, in the wake of the covid pharma grift, that much of the building code is a building industry and insurance grift, meant to keep these industries afloat.
(Inb4 there’s a building inspector in the comments showing up saying “it’s for your own safety”.)
Anyway I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: before the end, you’re going to see these codes flouted and increasingly ignored, beginning in the outlying rural areas. You already do see this, in my area of the sticks people just Do Things and no one really cares.
JMG: Neptunesdolphins, I’ve heard exactly that from TDS patients — “sure, we wanted a populist uprising, but not this kind!” That is to say, they wanted one that was populist in name only, and would leave their end of the managerial caste in control of the levers of power. Too bad, so sad.
——-
I was reading Robert Reich
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/07/democrats-progressive-populism-trump
We can’t just be against Trump. It’s time for a bold, progressive populism
Robert Reich
A populist – anti-establishment – revolution was inevitable. But it didn’t have to be a tyrannical one Demonstrations against Donald Trump are getting larger and louder. Good. This is absolutely essential. But at some point we’ll need to demonstrate not just against the president but also for the United States we want. Trump’s regressive populism – cruel, bigoted, tyrannical – must be met by a bold progressive populism that strengthens democracy and shares the wealth. We can’t simply return to the path we were on before Trump. Even then, big money was taking over our democracy and siphoning off most of the economy’s gains.
Two of the country’s most respected political scientists – professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University – analyzed 1,799 policy issues decided between 1981 and 2002. They found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
Instead, lawmakers responded to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and big corporations – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns. And “when a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose.”
—-
What would progressive populism entail? Strengthening democracy by busting up big corporations. Stopping Wall Street’s gambling (eg replicating the Glass-Steagall Act). Getting big money out of politics, even if this requires amending the constitution. Requiring big corporations to share their profits with their average workers. Strengthening unions. And raising taxes on the super-wealthy to finance a universal basic income, Medicare for all, and paid family leave.
Hopefully, demonstrations against Trump’s regressive, tyrannical populism will continue to grow. But we must also be demonstrating for a better future beyond Trump – one that strengthens democracy and works on behalf of all Americans rather than a privileged few.
—–
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
—–
I edited Reich’s diatribe to capture what he means by popular uprising, etc. What I realized is what you said – he wants a Progressive uprising which means a lot of bureaucracy, government, and of course a special class to oversee the whole thing. The public can’t think for themselves – they need Reich and buddies to do that for them. What Trump does is forces people to think. He asks them what they want, not assume this is what they want. The things that Reich rails about is simply – well the wrong people are in charge. Reich knows what’s best for everyone.
Oh. Ick. That is what I really need a do-gooder who decides for me, so he feels better about himself. So much for battling out who are those privileged few. I suppose they decide we all eat crickets and walk while they fly jets and eat meat.
@team10tim and @jmg
Interesting you bring up “resource wars”. I am wondering with declining energy how we will be able to fight them.
Clearly the ukrainian conflict is ‘mostly’ outsourced as far as troops (and looks like our weapons production is not up to par) And we just declared a truce with the Houthis (after losing 3 f-18s).
The massive resource cost of a major war HAS to be factored in, right? I think that it would be very “unwinnable” and accelerate decline.
(although your (jmg) idea that the PMC may panic can’t be discounted)
thx for writing about the topic — and thanks to all for the insightful comments — very stimulating!
Jerry
If you csn find it, Moxie in a bottle is better. Sugar, no corn syrup. For some reason the stuff in the can has a blend of sugar & corn syrup. I only drinnk it a the stuff a few times a year. One of my Maine cousins visited a few times last year and brought some down. They have it at the international market here, Jungle Jims… but I also found it at a Cracker Barrel on our way back from TN last summer.
Speaking of Cracker Barrel, we are going to get into Down Home Funk mode later today at the annual Appalachian Festival. Storytelling, crafts, old timey music and bluegrass. Should be a good hoe down!
Smith, I wouldn’t expect him to say that out loud, but the fact itself is obvious. The central concern of every corrupt elite is to maintain its own power, even when that’s lost all justification for its existence. As for an independent West Canada, every one of its neighbors would have an incentive to cut off access to coastal ports and put the squeeze on it economically: the Canadian neighbors to force it back into Canada, the southern neighbors to “encourage” it to join the United States. At the very least, it would have to annex the Northwest Territories, build ports there and on Manitoba’s Hudson Bay coast, and hope that climate change makes the northern coast more accessible. More likely, the struggle to get oil and grain to markets would require the conquest of British Columbia — which would open up the new nation to a two-front war that it probably wouldn’t survive. Thus it may well come down to a choice between remaining in Canada and joining the US.
Siliconguy, dolls in the western US used to be made of corn husks. Give it a century, they’ll be corn husks again.
Patricia O, thanks for this! I’m endlessly amused any time flying cars get treated as emblems of the future. They’re emblems of the past. Here’s one from 1917:
Every possible gimmick has been tried to take the outdated concept of the flying car and make it look futuristic, but it’s still an old, failed, long-abandoned technology of the fading past. That it keeps on being dragged out as a pretense of the future shows just how antiquated our culture’s notions of the future have become.
Neptunesdolphins, good! Reich has noticed that the Democrat playbook — be against things but never offer an alternative — has failed. Now all he has to go is grasp just what he’s implying by that phrase “regressive, tyrannical populism.” “Regressive” means that people don’t want to go further down the route he and his fellow elitists have been trying to push them; “tyrannical” means that the current government is changing things without asking the permission of those same elitists; and “populism” means that this is what people voted for, and will keep voting for.
Jerry D, er, were you under the mistaken impression that wars can’t be fought without current energy-intensive technology? The Ukraine war has demonstrated that most of that technology is a waste of money — cheap drones and old-fashioned artillery are far more effective. As energy depletion continues, warfighting technologies will adapt accordingly; we’re only about 150 years, after all, from the days when this was a state-of-the-art army…
…and resource wars can certainly be fought that way.
Justin, I never drink from cans. The contents always taste of plastic and metal to me. So it’s Moxie in a bottle, or not at all. Enjoy your hoedown!
BeardTree says:
#140 May 10, 2025 at 1:33 am
You concluded your post with “not a subsistence into a nirvanic emptiness.”
One of the great errors people can fall into, according to Buddhist teachings, is to pretend to understand what nirvana is.
That said, the emptiness so many in the West see in Buddhism is not, when examined, mere vacuity, voidness, etc. In fact, it is not empty. It is full of everything that appears, only without the mistaken perception that it is exactly and only what appears. That’s the emptiness: empty of mistaken understanding (or apperception), NOT empty of appearing.
I have noticed that the great Buddhist masters I have been fortunate to meet were VIVIDLY different from one another. If anything, they became more of what they were to begin with, in an enhanced way. A saying by a modern Buddhist master (himself a being full of contradictions and obviously “bad” behavior, Trungpa Rinpoche) encapsulates this understanding brilliantly.
“Things are not what they appear to be; nor are they otherwise.”
You’re welcome.
Greetings all,
I have been reading, studying and researching the peak oil phenomenon since the scientific american issue by Dr Campbell and Laherrer of 1998 and tried to raise energy depletion issues in my country (Mauritius) ever since. To no avail. Climate change rhetoric having taken over the show.
Nevertheless in my research I managed to model the impacts of oil prices on the Mauritian economy and what it showed is that as the yearly average oil price per barrel increases, a point is reached when the cost of oil imports begin to act as a brake on economic growth. For Mauritius when the average oil price per barrel reaches US 80 or more, more than 15% of our export earnings go to buy oil products and economic growth begins to slide down and reaches zero when oil prices get close to US 120 per barrel.
Of course, each year the thresholds for oil prices and low economic growth have to be recomputed as it also depends on the performance of the local economy.
What is interesting is that it becomes possible to quantitively assess the severity of the impacts of high oil prices on the local economy. High oil prices would drive economic growth, savings and investment rates to very low levels. Beyond a certain level of very high oil prices, we would enter negative economic growth territory, with negligible saving and investment rates.
We would get some social unrest I guess. At the very least.
I tend to believe that such thresholds do exist for other oil importing countries, but such further research is beyond my capacity right now.
Mr.Greer, Got it! It seems that my attempts at political humor via celulloid metaphors have been found lacking. I’ll be taking my failing language modulator to the shop to see what can be done.. a replacement might be in order.
Re. the Power-Doll-from-Hell, I wonder what Barbie will look like after a few million years of heat and pressure.. will the tattoos survive intact, unfaded? Ken would NEVER take the plunge, as he doesn’t have the stones for it.
“The public can’t think for themselves – they need Reich and buddies to do that for them.”
Reich lifted the concept of the Vanguard Party straight from Lenin. Long ago the employees of Weirton Steel bought out the company through an employee stock ownership plan. Mother Jones magazine had that on their cover and I thought “The editors will be happy, the workers own the means of production.” I was wrong. You see, the workers lacked proper education in The Classics and therefore would not understand the proper order of society and would instead simply look out for their own self-interest.
Being just out of the Navy I had lots of choice nouns, verbs, and adjectives to describe exactly what I thought of that.
Google claims;
Robert Reich is an American political economist, professor, author and political commentator who has a net worth of $4 million.
I wonder how much he’s willing to tax himself?
Question about BC, Does northern BC share the politics of Vancouver? Prince George connects to Prince Rupert and that already has a port facility.
I’ve been to Prince George a couple times, but never to Prince Rupert.
On the financial front I had this in a newsletter about trade;
“Charles Gave wrote a fascinating note last month on what a non-dollar trading system would look like. He described it using trade between China and Indonesia as an example.
“In any bilateral trading relationship, two key steps are needed to shift trade away from the US dollar.
The two central banks must sign a swap agreement. So, in this case, the People’s Bank of China and Bank Indonesia agree on a bilateral swap line, say, for the equivalent of US$50bn, valid for the next five years.
In each country, the authorities authorize a number of banks to access foreign currency liquidity via the swap line. So for example, Bank Indonesia accredits Bank Mandiri, Bank Central Asia, and a handful of others as officially approved banks for conducting renminbi business, while the PBoC designates Bank of China and a few of its peers to deal in rupiah.
“Now, imagine that BYD wants to sell electric cars in Indonesia. In Indonesia, local auto dealers borrow in rupiah from their customary banks to pay for the imports. These banks then go to an accredited intermediary to get renminbi, which are paid to BYD. The BYD dealers now sell the cars to their Indonesian customers and repay their borrowings in rupiah.
“Now assume that an electric power producer in Southern China buys coal in Indonesia for a similar amount at roughly the same time.
“The two transactions would cancel each other and would leave the US$50bn swap line unutilized. The only thing that has actually been used is the guarantee given by each central bank to provide currency liquidity to the other country’s banking system…
“At this point, the astute reader will have realized that trade between the two countries can explode without any requirement at all for US dollars. All that is needed is a bilateral agreement between the two central banks.
“In this world, there is no need for a global currency. Instead, each country has credit lines in the currencies of its neighbors. In short, the centralized system based on the world currency is replaced by a decentralized system based on a series of bilateral agreements between central banks.”
While making that point he made another one. Without a reserve currency every country needs an agreement with every other country it trades with. This would have been impossible to manage before computers, but now it might be possible. The gold standard was abandoned in 1971, the system they patched together was based on technology and concepts at least a decade old because the negotiators understood them.
I just read this a day or two but i think the bad cat nails it in a way many haven’t considered before or not precisely. He tackles the “second world” scenario and says it’s not third world, second world, first world – but third world, first world, second world – the second world being a decayed and decaying version of the first with the worst aspects of both, which i find relevant to the discussion at hand – covere high trust, low trust, high tech, low tech and Just Do It, and many things that have been brought up so far.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-second-world
Parion
Siliconguy #193:
Just for what it is worth (maybe we should wait for an open forum to discuss this instead of a peak oil post–someone let me know either way):
1. The world *never* needs a global currency. However, most of the world generally *benefits* from a global currency under current circumstances, except for the country that is issuing the global currency (in this case, the US). However, within the US, the banks and importers benefit from this situation, and they hold more power than the manufacturers, exporters, and average citizen, who are all getting hosed by this scenario.
2. Your source’s analysis needs to complete the next steps–what does BYD do with its earnings. Once you follow them (i.e., deposits in an account, then what does the bank do with the currency, etc.), and you will find that eventually the $ gets recycled back into the USD (or, more specifically, US Treasurys).
Skipping these steps distorts the entire picture. For example, I cannot simply transfer $50 from my bank account to my wallet and now claim to be richer–I need to look at both sides of the balance sheets and cash flows.
Once you look at each country’s trade and capital flows as a set of financially interlocked financial statements, all of this becomes very easy to understand and analyze.
@Clarke #198 What is taught and presented in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament and despite some overlap in the ethical area is simply not the same as what is presented in Buddhism and that difference also extends to the experiential stuff gained by applying each system. Though attempts have been to somehow mush the two together by ignoring irreconcilable differences. I appreciate JMG’s acknowledgment that, hey, different systems lead to different results and ends.
Nah, that was exactly the point that I was trying to make (apparently not very successfully). I have no need for a better graph that might actually show the peak. But this quibbling could (theoretically) go on for quite a while as it does so often. Of course one could criticize my “literacy” and I could bemoan if you (or the creator of that graph) know the data, then why not show that darn peak when when there is one?
I don’t know if you have heard about the German railway insanity called “Stuttgart 21”. The large dead-end railway station in Stuttgart, which sits on a few important German and European railway lines is supposed to be turned into an underground through station. This whole thing is one of the most outstanding examples of large scale political corruption, police violence and outright stupidity seen in Germany, at least since the days of Rudi Dutschke. Costs are exploding, just like the date for final commissioning is always in the not so distant future. One well renown German political TV-comedian put the whole thing nicely into words, when addressing the opponents of Stuttgart 21 (paraphrasing): “You have been right all along. You have seen it all coming. Nobody knows the data better than you. But in the end you did not convince anybody, you failed.”
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
JMG,
Here is a nice map of world shale deposits with estimates of recoverable oil and gas:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php
It looks like these United States have around 10% of the shale gas and 20% of the shale oil. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the estimates are off by +/- 50%, one doesn’t really know until the fields have been tapped and start producing. But, either way, there is definitely going to be a lot of fracking in other countries as depletion continues.
@parion, I’d say high trust and rules are necessary, but not sufficient ingredients for the lifestyle North America, Europe and some others have enjoyed. I note the cat never mentions material conditions.
Parion, good essay. Thanks for this.
Hi Beardtree, so noted. I’d be the last person to try and mush them together. Not my intent. I was just attempting to deal with what I perceive to be a major misunderstanding about Buddhism. Heck, the different Buddhisms also seem to produce different results to one another despite some common terminology.
On another issue, what a lot of wobbly stuff is going in international relations currently. Seems yet another indicator of the decline, but it may just be a change in the shell orbit of our civilization to a different, comparing it to the shell-orbits of electrons around an atom.
Siliconguy
Northern BC shares some of Vancouver’s politics but not all and it varies within northern BC. Northeastern on the other side of the rockies shares a lot with alberta. Northern coast? I’m not really sure, I think they’re usually somewhere in between. And the first nations up there can be quite different from those around them, and they have considerable clout, especially with regard to resource projects.
Patricia Ormsby,
if you would like to do that, thank you. Much appreciated.
I think a lot this is more burnout than depression, and I need to cut out/down a few things for a month(s) and see where that gets me. I have been in much worse situations than this. I mostly just wanted to share because I wanted someone to listen.
aldarion #199 I agree it’s not the whole picture, but i found it an interesting angle to add to discussion about declining conditions exasperated by grifting, regulation strangulation, etc
And i can certainly see various aspects of this decline in the UK.
I am unsure what you mean about material conditions as i thought he discussed those going wrong as the dysfunction sets in. He follows this up with a second post about self checkouts epic failing and what a nightmare they are. In the UK i refuse to use them on principle, and they are starting to recede a bit.
the second in the second world scenario https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/right-on-target
Parion
@Parion (#194, 204):
That’s a superb pair of essays by the Cat; thanks for linking to it. What he’s describing reminds me strongly of the Kessler Syndrome, but affecting society rather than satellites.
Hi JMG,
“Peak Oil” is what originally drew me to you as well. I’d read Kunstler, Simmons, Heinberg, Brown, etc. and to date pretty much everything they’ve stated still holds true today. [LOL, I just now Googled “Peak Oil Authors” and you came up immediately along with the others I just mentioned.]
As an investor in both oil & gas and mining stocks it’s been rather revelatory to realize that the exact same “peak” production issue applies across the board, and yet it absolutely makes sense as to why this should be so. Just like with oil, the big easy mineral targets were taken first and have been largely exhausted, and those remaining are much harder to find let alone exploit.
IMHO it’s no coincidence that the 2008 GFC happened right at peak conventional oil. The entire world financial system is contingent upon credit growth and the ever-rising energy needed to underwrite that credit. Given that, I entirely expect new & different economic convulsions to become a permanent fixture of daily life.
Straws in the wind: (1) I bought several basic T-shirts in various colors, to replace older ones with visible holes. The tags boasted proudly “Made from cotton grown in the USA,” then added, at the bottom in finer print, “Made in El Salvador.” Ay-yi-yi!!! Shades of the Old South’s cotton supplying British mills. Si now, we’re a resource colony of E Salvador?!?!?
(2) A headline in the Washington Post, via Pocket, “Administration actively looking at suspending Habeas Corpus, Miller says. ” Miller being thee deputy chief of staff. If there is any truth to this, then that’s when – as you asked in your essay on the rise of Fred Halliot – you draw the line. Because if the Trump administration does so, my Congresscritters had better start looking at impeachment proceedings.
Of course, that’s if you can trust the WaPo.
@parion, this is a peak oil post, after all! What I mean is simply that it was not enough to create a high trust society (much less capitalism), and pronto, you get cars, huge houses and overseas vacations. You also need cheap fossil fuels for that. And the climbing costs of energy will make it impossible to maintain that 20th century lifestyle no matter if trust (and capitalism) is high. Quite obvious to most people on this blog, but apparently not too the bad cat.
I must confess people who complain about how hard it is to find a housekeeper don’t get my full sympathy. I heard a lot of that in Brazil.
Hi John Michael,
I wonder that as well. It’s possible that the Senate results will be a complete mess for the Labour government to deal with, maybe. Rarely does a party hold control of both houses.
Getting back to peak oil though, I’m of the opinion that the concept is scary for middle and upper middle class folks, because basically they’ve become used to a lifestyle which is patently unsustainable. It’s not even close to sustainable, so any loss of perquisites creates great wailing and gnashing of teeth. It’s gonna happen though due to reduced energy per capita. I get that, and was forced to face myself in the recession of the early 90’s enjoying redundancy in a job market of 10% unemployment. An instructive experience.
What such a class of people may forget, is that there are already people hard up against the wall economically, and they’ll cheer on such perquisite destruction with a sense of unbridled enthusiasm. There’s absolutely no loss for those folks to do so, and there may even be a possible gain. Imagine a world where you can run a small business and the rental costs equate to less than a weeks work, that’d be an improvement – oh, and it takes another weeks work to pay for a roof over your head where you can sleep at night. The system is stacked against many people right now, but plenty of other people benefit from that. You can only ever operate such a patently unfair system, when energy per capita rises year after year, and that ain’t happening.
You’d think that this stuff is common sense?
Cheers
Chris
“Once you follow them (i.e., deposits in an account, then what does the bank do with the currency, etc.), and you will find that eventually the $ gets recycled back into the USD (or, more specifically, US Treasurys).”
Those Treasuries pay interest which has to be paid by some production or (what the US is really doing) borrowing more money. That feedback loop gets vicious in a hurry. The Chinese have also bought enough farmland to become concerning. Now they can’t take it with them but they can plant what they want and unbalance the agricultural markets.
Being an agricultural colony of China does not sound like an optimal outcome.
Karim, many thanks for this! I think a lot of people will be able to extrapolate from your experience.
Polecat, is it by any chance an Illudium Q-36 language modulator? I know a Martian who keeps losing one of those. 😉 As for Barbie, that’s a fascinating thought. When I return to my story set a million years from now, a fossil Barbie may play a role.
Siliconguy, that’s always the problem with the American working class, according to Marxists. Instead of rushing out to die like flies in an orgy of revolutionary violence so a bunch of clueless middle class intellectuals can seize power in their name, they settle for a good wage for an honest week’s work and a fair share of the product of their labor. The scoundrels!
Parion, he’s got some useful points, but as a true believer in progress he seems to have no awareness at all of the role of resource and environmental constraints.
Nachtgurke, no, I hadn’t encountered Stuttgart 21, but I’m not even slightly surprised!
Team10tim, er, that link didn’t take me to the map you mentioned — it just took me to the home page of “Today in Energy.” I’d welcome guidance to that map.
TJ, I think you’re quite realistic in expecting economic convulsions — and of course political ones as well. It should be a wild ride.
Patricia M, the US constitution gives the president the legal authority to suspend habeas corpus; you’ll find it in Article I, section 9, clause 2. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War; Ulysses S. Grant suspended it in some parts of South Carolina to break the power of the Klan in 1871; and FDR suspended habeas corpus in Hawai’i in 1942 — for the whole duration of the war, Hawai’i was under martial law. It’s not an impeachable offense.
Chris, common sense is the least common thing in today’s world. That is to say, you’re quite correct, of course, and I think one of the reasons the comfortable classes are freaking out is that it’s beginning to sink in that if they go down in flames, countless millions of people will celebrate.
I am glad we are looking at peak oil again. I remember it was the hot topic back when I first stumbled across your blog, and I learned a lot from it. Now days there is next to nothing among the general public about peak oil; they are too busy draining wet lands to build data centers and attempting to restart decommissioned nuclear plants.
https://michiana.life/article/amazon-web-services-breaks-ground-on-11-billion-data-center-in-st-joseph-county/
https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/news/local/2025/03/10/amazon-data-center-to-remove-wetland-streams-public-input-sought-idem/81643221007/
https://www.inkfreenews.com/2025/05/01/hearing-on-amazon-data-center-wetlands-removal-draws-crowd/
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/22/michigan-nuclear-plant-shows-challenges-us-safely-restart-old-reactors-.html
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-disburses-part-loan-michigan-nuclear-power-plant-restart-2025-04-22/
I remember once you said factories would have to return to the riverside one day in order to power their equipment. Alas, in my town the former factories along the river have either been torn down or converted into apartments or modern businesses. New apartments are fast being built for the downtown crowd who want the bright city lights shining on their nightlife at the bars and party centers. If not they, their children and grandchildren may see the day where all these wonderful structures, like their predecessors, will be either torn down or converted back into factories and workshops needing water power. Oh, the irony.
Joy Marie
JMG,
Terribly sorry.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=11611
I normally remove the question mark and everything after it as it’s usually tracking information about one’s browser, mobile, language, etc. It appears that this time it was required.
@PygmyCory
I’ll be very happy if I can help you. I will say, “To the Christian God specifically, may Pygmycory find relief from her tendonitis and emotional exhaustion, and receive wise guidance in choosing which matters to address and which to let go.” I will post this on Quin’s blog as well, which is here: https://tunesmyth.dreamwidth.org/ Please feel free to update it or make any suggestions!
My warmest wishes,
Pat
Siliconguy #210: “Those Treasuries pay interest which has to be paid by some production or (what the US is really doing) borrowing more money. That feedback loop gets vicious in a hurry. ”
Yes–this is why it sucks to be the reserve currency and why, despite protestations to the contrary, no country wants to be the reserve currency. And to add insult to injury, the US is bearing the brunt of the downside (incurring debt or incrementally reducing its own competitiveness) without even getting the upside–it wasn’t even involved in the trade between the two parties in your example!
Curious: Given that conventional oil is peaking, the Permian is peaking, the US wants to produce more domestically, and that the US military is clearly not nearly as powerful as most people believed, wouldn’t it make a whole lot of sense to prioritize strong friendly relations with the major oil exporting countries like Russia and Iran (and perhaps even Venezuela)? And not just for the US–you would think Europe in particular would be bending over backwards to be on good terms with Russia at the moment.
Or am I really missing something obvious??
Siliconguy 210: “Being an agricultural colony of China does not sound like an optimal outcome.”
I didn’t actually address this, but I think (not sure) that you may be confusing a couple of cause/effect relationships. China is not buying US land because the US Government is running deficits. Rather, China (and Japan, and Korea, and Europe and …) is producing more than it is consuming as a matter of policy, and the difference in capital (cash) must go somewhere. The difference is going to the US (and the other Anglo countries, but they are tiny in comparison) not because the US is spend thrifty, but rather because the US has large capital markets that can actually absorb all this excess capital and a set of decision makers who are stupid enough (or beholden to financial interests) to e wiling to do so as a matter of policy.
However, this is the crux of the matter: the US cannot reject these inflows and remain the reserve currency–being a reserve currency in effect means that you must export dollars–this is the only way for other countries to be able to hold your currency as a reserve. And to export dollars, you must import more in goods/services than you export.
Once the US decided to provide the reserve currency (and for whatever reason Trump insists that he wants to remain the reserve currency, which still makes absolutely no sense), it was stuck being the country that would absorb the world’s capital when there are excess savings (i.e. when nobody wants it) and was stuck needing to supply capital when there is a shortage of it (i.e., when everybody wants it). It is literally the worst of both worlds. An example of the latter case was post WWII (e.g. Marshall Plan), and the US didn’t mind because it wanted to rebuild Europe and Japan. In the former case, which corresponds to the present case, the US **must** run deficits whether it wants to or not so long as the rest of the world wants to run surpluses. It literally has no choice in the matter if it wants to remain the reserve currency And by running deficits, it is providing creditor countries a claim on its assets (like farmland…)
And so the obvious question that never gets seriously addressed is: Why in the world does the average US citizen (i.e., non-banker and non-importer) think that it is a good idea to maintain the status of world reserve currency when it effectively means a loss of control over trade or budgets or employment rates? Why does it not seem to occur to these people that no other country is willing to accept such a role–go tell the Swiss or the French or the Japanese, for example, that we have decided to run massive trade surpluses with them and will buy trillions in Francs or Euros or Yen (and their debt, farmland, etc.) in return and see what happens. (This is a bit of a simplification because trade doesn’t actually settle bilaterally–the US can run massive trade surpluses with France, for example, and buy Korean Won with the net capital–but I am simplifying just to get the point across)
OK, I’ve probably beaten this issue to death.
>“Once you follow them (i.e., deposits in an account, then what does the bank do with the currency, etc.), and you will find that eventually the $ gets recycled back into the USD (or, more specifically, US Treasurys).”
This is not set in stone. BYD (to maintain your example) could pay their workers more and that consumer consumption could result in more balanced trade. But they don’t do that, they squeeze their workers and then squirrel the profits away. The real question I have is what happens when they lose confidence in Trashuries, where do they go?
>Those Treasuries pay interest which has to be paid by some production or (what the US is really doing) borrowing more money. That feedback loop gets vicious in a hurry.
There’s a name for that sort of scheme, Ponzi, I think. Not sustainable, ends badly every single time it’s done. People have been saying for decades that a reckoning is coming. I have been amazed at the lengths of fraud and criminality they’ve used to keep it all going over the years. It does look like we’re closer to that reckoning than the past. How close? Not quite sure. Close though.
Hi JMG,
I wouldn’t say that I’m exactly ’happy’ to see you returning to Peak Oil as a blogging theme; at best, ’curious’ to see how your thinking and understanding have evolved since you first started writing on this subject. It seems timely considering the imminent peak of US shale production, as this will likely trigger a series of interesting convulsions on the ragged slope downwards.
As you mentioned, peak oil is only one of the global industrial civilizations’ chief concerns just now. Peak ’everything’ is often mentioned as other resources face their own supply crunches in the face of our insatiable demand. I tend to see it as peak complexity: our technologically managed global supply chains, multinational integration of manufacturing and trade arrangements, AI-driven extraction of multiple resource classes, the creation of complex chemical and technological products, and everything else that makes up our global economy. All of that will need to go away in a lower-energy world.
So far, no other resource or ’technology’ has magically appeared to replace fossil fuel energy, despite claims to the contrary or even economists’ predictions. In some circles at least, there does appear to be a realization that geological limits and the laws of thermodynamics supersede economics. After all, charts can’t actually go up and to the right forever.
And surprisingly, no zombie apocalypse has happened either – pandemic notwithstanding.
So, it seems that your analysis has been spot-on: our civilization, like so many others that have come before us, faces a lengthy and uneven decline that will unfold over many years, with some regions (and individuals) feeling the impact earlier or more intensely than others.
I see change as an opportunity for new arrangements to emerge, despite the old arrangement failing. When you till up a patch of ground, the organisms that previously occupied that space are severely disturbed and, in some cases, destroyed, but it doesn’t take long before a different group of lifeforms moves in with a new way of making use of the energy available in that area. I think (hope) there will be opportunities for the innovative and motivated to employ locally based ’hacks’ to adapt to a lower-energy but still technologically-savvy (at least for the short term) world. Micro-scale electricity generation using salvaged components and unconventional approaches comes to mind.
Have you heard of Living Energy Farm in Virginia by chance? An idealistic and contrived off-grid intentional community yes but at least starting with a more commonsense approach to the current energy situation:
’When we set out to build LEF, we flipped the question of “how do we power our lives with renewables?” around to “what kind of lifestyle can we sustain on a modest renewable energy budget?” The answer is, a very comfortable one: our houses are warm in winter and cool in summer, we can take a hot shower any time, run a refrigerator and washing machine, charge our devices, etc. What makes this possible is the magic of cooperative living combined with the design principles of a DC microgrid: we maximize conservation, insulation and efficiency; pay attention to the timing of our energy use; and live our lives in tune with the rhythm of the sun. We are advocating a globalist vision — organizing our lifestyle in a manner that is affordable on a global scale.’
I don’t happen to think that this approach will do anything like save our global industrial civilization; instead I view it as one small-scale locally based adaptation that integrates current technologies and available materials with a new approach to resource use. These and other approaches in different fields that begin with a realistic understanding of our actual energy budget sans-fossil fuels might help individuals and communities a little as we attempt to navigate the chaotic downward slope.
@JMG – thank you for that correction, and let me wipe the egg off my face – I *have* a copy of the Constitution among my books. Though, let’s hope we don’t need to declare the country to be under martial law. And, of course, the Washington Post having screaming hysterics is par far the course.
Are we at war yet?
Greetings ADJMG!
FYI, there’s a new tv show, Landman, about the Texas oil industry. The main character, played by Billy Bob Thornton gives a short spiel about how petroleum is in everything, and it’s running out. I take it as that’s society’s subconscious talking.
Joy Marie, yes, I’ve been watching the data center fad. I wonder how long it’s going to take before it sinks in that there’s no economically viable way to boost American electricity production as far as those data centers will require. It’ll be interesting to watch that bubble pop. As for all those apartments, if they’re built to current construction standards they’ll be falling apart anyway in 20 years, so the builders of water-powered factories will simply have to clear away some derelict buildings.
Team10tim, got it and thank you!
Cyclicality, and you’ll notice that our current president is trying to push negotiations with exactly those two countries just now. One of the difficulties he faces is that the European elite classes and their American hangers-on have been obsessed for decades now with a different project: defeating and dismembering Russia so that the weak successor states can be gobbled up and stripped to the bare walls by the EU. That’s the sometimes-stated subtext behind the fighting in Ukraine right now. The plan failed catastrophically, and Russia is stronger now than it’s been at any point since the Soviet era, but many Western elites can’t accept that — partly because they suffer from delusions of omnipotence, partly because Europe in particular is facing tremendous blowback and nobody in power there wants to deal with that.
Stefania, I’m delighted to hear about Living Energy Farm; if it succeeds in getting local-scale renewable technologies through the next few rounds of crisis, that could accomplish a lot. The chance to make large-scale changes went by the boards a long time ago, but there’s still plenty that can be done by individuals, families, and small communities, and locally based “hacks” are exactly what will function best in the predicament we’re in. As for your broader perspective, the image of ecological disruption is a good one. Are you familiar with ecological succession? I’ve argued at length in print that we’re in the middle of a successional process, with the profligate early sere of industrial society giving way to more sustainable later seres that I’ve termed ecotechnic societies.
Patricia M, in the past, what’s happened is that specific places have been subject to a suspension of habeas corpus. That’s what Lincoln did, for example — in most of the Union, habeas corpus remained in effect straight through the civil war. It would not surprise me, though, if Trump suspended habeas corpus in sanctuary cities and in certain border states.
DaShui, interesting. That’s definitely a straw in the wind.
Well Mr. Greer, I can’t say .. the serial numbers had been ground-off that disfunctional model when purchased from a thing sporting a multi-armed trench coat. Serves me right for buying on the cheap!
Ahhh .. The Great Venerated GuurlBoss of Ancient Mattel?
>However, this is the crux of the matter: the US cannot reject these inflows and remain the reserve currency–being a reserve currency in effect means that you must export dollars–this is the only way for other countries to be able to hold your currency as a reserve. And to export dollars, you must import more in goods/services than you export.
Got it in one go.
>Why in the world does the average US citizen (i.e., non-banker and non-importer) think that it is a good idea to maintain the status of world reserve currency when it effectively means a loss of control over trade or budgets or employment rates?
They don’t understand it. They haven’t connected the dots – yet. I suspect when they do so, they’re going to be very very Boomer about the whole mess and the most likely statement you’ll get is “Is there some way we can do both?” and then they’ll dither and dither and dither until it comes apart on its own. That’s my best guess anyway.
>Why does it not seem to occur to these people that no other country is willing to accept such a role
Funny enough, you carefully listen to the Chinese and they do NOT want to have the next reserve currency for some strange reason. You can call them many unrepeatable things, but dumb is not one of them.
>OK, I’ve probably beaten this issue to death.
But it’s so satisfying to beat that dead horse.
Hi JMG and readers,
Thank you for the two titles you recommended regarding every day life in declined Rome.
Would you be able to recommend similar titles for the great depression ? If I understand well, you expect it would be difficult for office workers without any tangible skills in the coming years.
Thank you
Other Owen #218:
“This is not set in stone. BYD (to maintain your example) could pay their workers more and that consumer consumption could result in more balanced trade. But they don’t do that…”
Yes–that is indeed what should happen (and, incidentally, what Alexander Hamilton ensured the US companies did in its early years), but China’s economic policies discourage/make it functionally impossible for this to occur. The point I was trying to make is that the US is absorbing the downsides of China’s policies, and if it wants to remain the reserve currency, it has no choice but to do so, and it does so even if it is not a party to the immediate transaction between two countries.
“The real question I have is what happens when they lose confidence in Trashuries, where do they go?”
They can’t go anywhere. That’s their dilemma, and it is why the US has so much leverage; it is only using that leverage in an extraordinarily bad way (so badly that I don’t think it could have come up with a worse strategy if it actively tried to do so). In fact, China (and its traditional cohorts of Japan, Korea, Germany/now France, etc.) are the reason the US debt is so high–by forcing up their domestic savings and buying US dollar denominated assets, they are forcing the US to run up debts/unemployment/etc.
“Not sustainable, ends badly every single time it’s done. People have been saying for decades that a reckoning is coming. I have been amazed at the lengths of fraud and criminality they’ve used to keep it all going over the years. It does look like we’re closer to that reckoning than the past. How close? Not quite sure. Close though.”
Hmm. Two things on this one:
(1) Traditionally, it is the creditor, not the debtor nation that really suffers when things reverse. There are two sides to the transaction, and the US controls the more scarce one in this case, which is demand. I realize it is counter-intuitive, but this is why the US (to take one example), which was the major exporter in the early 1900s, ended up so much worse off than the UK (which was the consumer and debtor) during their trade wars and in the Great Depression.
(2) If people have been looking at the same data for decades, conjectured that an event was inevitable and imminent based on that data, and then the event doesn’t happen, I think they should at least wonder if their model or conjectures are wrong (or at least incomplete).
I think that this is where a lot of the original peak oilers went wrong–they thought that the collapse was going to be imminent and sharp, and they didn’t ever change their models even as the unfolding events didn’t fit their expectations. Having said that, based on the stuff I am reading that was written 20 years ago, I think this group of people were a minority–however, the few that existed were very shrill, prolific, and got all of the media attention because “the world will end in 100 years” doesn’t sell nearly as well as “the world will end in 5 years.”
I could be wrong on this, of course.
“And so the obvious question that never gets seriously addressed is: Why in the world does the average US citizen (i.e., non-banker and non-importer) think that it is a good idea to maintain the status of world reserve currency when it effectively means a loss of control over trade or budgets or employment rates? ”
The average citizen never thinks of it that way. The ones who do see two things; imported goods are cheaper for a litany of reasons, and the inevitable pollution (CO2 or otherwise) is out of sight. They don’t see their jobs go away until later.
The globalist answer for those jobs is the workers should move up the value chain to “better”, really meaning more abstract, jobs. You’ve heard the mantra ‘learn to code’? This over looks the fact that not everyone can manage that level of abstraction. I’ve done some coding and found out I’m not well suited to it. I can program the distributed control system for a chemical plant, but set your browser to show the page’s source code and I have no idea what most of it is doing.
What to do with the rest of the population? Government jobs? Health care? Picking fruit? Accept that we have a large population surplus? That won’t be real popular. Tax the rich to pay for Universal Basic Incomes? Self-termination booths on the street corners? Infinite cheap fentanyl? Oh, wait, we are doing that one.
The currant great irony is that the low level coders are starting to be replaced by AI systems.
Living Energy Farm does indeed sound like an appropriate way of exploring alternate ways of approaching the current situation. The ever-thoughtful Nate Hagens had one of the founders on his podcast recently and it was an interesting conversation: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/171-alexis-zeigler . Among many other subjects, he talked a lot about their lower-energy approach (300W per capita) which involved things like community scale solar hot water systems and using DC current (coming straight off their solar panels) to directly power adapted machinery and equipment. Intermittent yes, but the simple act of living in the community got people adapted pretty quickly to using energy while it was available.
As for ecological succession, of course, and “The Ecotechnic Future” remains one of my favorite books you’ve written.
Minor local straws in the wind. Alachua County stepped when St. Francis House could no longer afford to keep up Sunset House, its home for homeless families, and will take over its much-needed maintenance and repairs with as little disruption to the lives of its residents as possible. This means St. Francis House can go back to serving daily meals in its main building, which it had to drop last year for lack of money.
Also, after the State of Florida cut its fund for homeless students by 60%, Alachua County picked up the program and will continue it with what resources they have.
These stories courtesy of WUFT, the University of Florida’s TV station,which appeared in print. on my news-gathering program.
While I do think EROEI is an interesing and oftentimes relevant aspect of energy, I am not so convinced by the link between the ratio and the possibility to uphold civilization. If energy is cheap enough EROEI doesn’t matter much. Swiddening is a prime example where an huge quantity of energy is used to clear land that will produce much less energy in the shape of food. Having said that, it is only solar power that has any potential for being so cheap as to make EROEI irrelevant. In a way, it already is that – when the sun shines and you get negative prices…..
Given all the dead horses being beaten, I’m surprised Georgism and/or Social Credit have not made an appearance in the comments up to now.
Hey JMG
Since our civilisation is already relying on unconventional fossil fuels, do you suppose that they will try and look into biofuels again as well? I know that it is impossible to produce enough biofuels to power our civilisation, but a far more likely possibility is that they would be used to adulterate fossil fuels in order to stretch supply and cut costs.
Technically, this is already being done with E10 fuel, which is gasoline with 10% Ethanol. It is already far cheaper than other fuels, and is supposed to be superior in some ways to straight gasoline, but only some cars can use this fuel indefinitely since E10 is slightly corrosive to most engines. I specifically bought my current car because it was E10 compatible in order to save a bit of money on fuel.
Gunnar 230: the energy input by the person who does the swiddening is small. Potentially just lighting a match… If it required farmers to actually input a huge amount of energy, they wouldn’t and couldn’t do it.
The actual energy consumed in the fire was built up by photosynthesis over years.
Pygmycory, JMG, Patricia O,
Got it, it’s going on the list.
@Bofor
I accept this attitude of “people just Do Things and no one really cares” as an attainable expression of passive rebellion.
Goats, by the way, are a ‘Thing I Did’ once upon a time. So many farmsteads have a couple to sell and they live off everything, provide milk, meat, mow grass. No need for deep soil or special grasses. Just a good fence, an insulated shed, and hay in the winter. I would like to see the chart on Peak Goat in the eastern provinces. I suspect were just getting started.
I agree that western seperatists have not thought deeply around what U.S corp. has in store. I have come across little commentary on what a ripe piece of fruit the ‘strong and free’ province presents itself as. Wild Rose Country may similarily discover that innocent flowers do poorly under a high powered mower(sorry grandma and grandpa). The resource farmed state of Pennsylvania, where crude oil extraction is dropping (how timely) is a good model for What Could Happen. Albertan extractable Ng alone is an enormous figure and we don’t have infastructure to extract it ourselves.
Carney is Alberta raised and could redeem himself in overseeing development of an energy project For Real. He has certainly signalled to the public he will and the fed Gov is going to increase the money supply. The Liberals portrayed a dramatic shifting of ideology from one realm to another during the election, literally copying the conservative platform. Those ridiculous birch log porch displays have come down for the season as well.
Speaking of the Expo and dreams of Progress, I’ll note that attendance numbers are well below their hopes and expectations. Anecdotally, but quite interestingly, while I’ve taken several people out on tours who were in Japan because they working or performing at one of the foreign pavilions in the Expo, not a single of my guests yet has told me they went to the Expo outside of that context.
Re: the Expo mascot Myaku Myaku, I am not one of those who goes around calling things “demonic”, but there is something about it that made me shudder from the moment I first started seeing the advertising for it a year or so ago. The official site says that it’s not a sea anemone as Pat suggested, but rather “A mysterious creature born from the fusion of cells and water. Its true identity remains unknown.
The red part represents ‘cells,’ which divide and multiply.
The blue part represents ‘pure water,’ which can flow and change shape.
It appears to be transforming into various forms in search of who it wants to be, and its current form mimics humans.”
In other words, John Carpenter’s The Thing? Or is it predictive programming for the next pandemic, which will be a waterborne illness?
_____
Patricia O: “I hope Quin will have the chance to address your request, but I note he seems pretty overwhelmed right now too.” The source of the overwhelm was being in two different tourism/entertainment/hospitality businesses during the peak season of what is currently the hottest tour destination on the planet (Japan). It was the good kind of overwhelmed, at least for my family’s bank account.
Polecat, they’ll have no idea what it is and may not even be able to pronounce “Mattel,” depending on how genetic drift has affected the human vocal apparatus in a million years. They may identify it as a magical effigy used to curse people — its body is weirdly distorted, showing that the curse is meant to make you sick and crippled, and it has no genitals or nipples, showing that it’s also meant to make you sterile. What horrid sorcery the primitive ancients must have believed in!
Foxhands, read The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith to understand the crash and Studs Terkel’s Hard Times and Morris Dickstein’s Dancing in the Dark for the Depression itself. Yeah, getting some skills outside the cubicle world would be a really good idea just now.
Stefania, glad to hear both these.
Patricia M, thanks for the data points.
Gunnar, um, you may have just disproved your own point. Swiddening costs the farmer almost no energy at all — he girdles the trees and then a few months later lights a match. That’s why it’s so popular — the energy (in terms of food) returned from the energy the farmer invests is so high. As for “when energy is cheap EROEI doesn’t matter much,” you’re begging the question. If food is really cheap, the fact that it costs a lot to produce wouldn’t matter — but if it costs a lot to produce, food won’t be cheap.
KAN, I posted about those a few years ago, and that may still be warding such discussions off.
J.L.Mc12, it’s already being done. Here’s a table of world biofuels production:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/biofuels-production-by-region
Quin, thank you. As for Myaku Myaku, I asked some Lovecraftian horrors about it and they shuddered and backed away. It’s genuinely creepy.
Wonderful, thank you very much for these titles. Apologies JMG, might I ask also if you can recommend some titles about life in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union? I only know D. Orlov’s books which are excellent but I wish for more.
Regards
> 2. Your source’s analysis needs to complete the next steps–what does BYD do with its earnings. Once you follow them (i.e., deposits in an account, then what does the bank do with the currency, etc.), and you will find that eventually the $ gets recycled back into the USD (or, more specifically, US Treasurys).
You’d be surprised. That’s true for part of the earnings. A big part of them though is re-invested in China, buying Chinese machinery and parts, and developing knowledge, skills, industrial capacity, infrastructure, and so on.
Another part is used for trade with other nations, through bilateral deals, for raw materials, etc.
A third part is invested in methods that offer “insurance” against the dollar, from BRICs and crypto all the way to gold.
Thinking about that “non-peak-graph” and the failure of the “Stuttgart 21”-opponents – I guess it IS a problem that the opponents or proponents of mainstream-incompatible topics like peak oil frequently fail to get their message out in a way that gains enough traction to really achieve something. There probably are several problems on the side of the “outlaws”, one being the inability to simplify and “frame” their messages. Partly because it is not possible because the complexity is part of the problem, partly it may be a question of ethos and possibly pride, partly because they’re missing the skills and experience. Then there is an obvious lack of resources. Thinking about Stuttgart 21 made me ponder this – all the proponents of the project are well-pampered, well-linked influential people who command large resources and many people. The other side – a largely incoherent bunch of ordinary individuals who need to somehow scramble the resources from their everyday life, while learning to play with (or against) the “big guys”. The energy to write another post, produce another graph and find more data needs to be found somewhere, after all. It seems like walking on a razors edge. If only a little fails, everything fails. Somehow, a small comic you once posted comes to my mind – A swordsman slicing his own panel…
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
>What to do with the rest of the population? Government jobs? Health care? Picking fruit? Accept that we have a large population surplus? That won’t be real popular. Tax the rich to pay for Universal Basic Incomes? Self-termination booths on the street corners? Infinite cheap fentanyl? Oh, wait, we are doing that one.
Persuade and intimidate the population into injecting a substance that will make them sick and then dead within a few years? Encourage all sorts of perversions that end in people becoming sterile? Feast/famine the economy around so that the rest that aren’t sterile are less than motivated to start families? Make starting a family absolutely impossible via regulatory bramble gardens that cut and slice you 1000x if you try?
The real headshaker for me is, well, the debt ponzi system needs an increasing population to work. Declining population -> debt ponzi explodes. So I’m sort of ambivalent towards their population reduction initiatives. My warning to them is you might just get what you want – and you’re not going to like it one bit when you do. Not that they’re listening or anything.
For you writers, the Copyright Office has spoken;
https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-3-Generative-AI-Training-Report-Pre-Publication-Version.pdf
From the conclusion section,
“When a model is deployed for purposes such as analysis or research — the types of uses that are critical to international competitiveness — the outputs are unlikely to substitute for expressive works used in training. But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries.”
This would not affect an AI only trained on works published before 1925 since those have expired at least under US law.
@J.L.Mc12, oh boy, they’re already doing it in Brazil – gas is E30% (as in 30% ethanol), and diesel is 15% biodiesel. Both are causing a plethora of problems. Such a high amount of ethanol in gas is causing direct fuel injection systems to clog, thus reducing durability and increasing maintenance costs of gas powered cars. And the diesel…well. As it happens, biodiesel is hydrophilic. Which means it tends to absorb humidity and accumulate water inside fuel tanks if left idle for even a short time like a week or so. It also turns into a sort of a sludge over time, which accumulates inside the engine (like this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SHwKtEvowU4). That causes engine-wrecking issues, which are increasing by the day around here – thus also increasing transportation costs…
J.L. Mc12, E10 gasoline has wide compatibility with just about every gasoline powered engine produced in at least the last 20-30 years. the hardening and cracking of certain rubber formulations was the main problem, but seals and fuel lines have been, for some time now, been made to endure it, mostly. The raft of ag policy and subsidy kickback schemes encouraging corn monocropping not withstanding, it is pitched as an “oxegenate” to promote cleaner burning, as the technical reason for its inclusion in motor fuel. There are offsetting technical reasons that many, myself included, would prefer it not be included in gasoline. It has a dramatically lower energy density than gasoline, even at E10 blend levels you lose ~4% MPG. The ethanol’s affinity to absorb water primarily accounts for its corrosive effects, while also leading to rapid degradation of the fuel, it can go bad in a couple months or less in certain conditions, with fuel stabilizers being ineffective. In my personal experience, and contact with small engine repair shops, about 90% of repair jobs are related to ethanol fuel degradation, a huge waste. In general, ethanol in motor fuel is a huge net negative.
“[ethanol] is pitched as an “oxegenate” to promote cleaner burning, as the technical reason for its inclusion in motor fuel. ”
That was once a very valid reason, but now cars and street motorcycles have feedback fuel systems to control combustion more carefully. Ethanol no longer does any good there.
Re ethanol in petrol (gas): I understood that African farmers were being forced to grow ethanol fuel stock on their farms for foreign exchange instead of food for their families. Never use it.
Please delete my previous comment with mistakes.
I am also glad you are talking about peak oil. The geopolitical and military analysts all like to consider themselves energy experts as Russia, Iran and the Middle East are important parts of the world energy picture, so I will be interested in how you feel peak oil will shape international affairs. I am finding these days the geopolitical analysts come in three main groups – the TDS group, the Chinese propagandists and the Russian propagandists. Events seem to indicate there is more balance or inertia keeping things rolling than imagined. Personally I think the long term trend is for the big countries like India, Russia and the US to break apart rather than consolidate so we are in a period of counter trend which will soon go back to trend.
Hey Selkirk and Bruno
I was not aware that ethanol damages engines because it attracts water, but I was aware of its effects on seals. I was also unaware that it increases fuel degradation, which seems counterintuitive since alcohol is supposed to be a preservative.
Out of curiosity, do modern E10-compatible cars have other modifications that help them resist the negative effects of ethanol? Especially ways of reducing the amount of water the fuel absorbs?
Hi John Michael,
The old brain started considering this morning what is actually meant by ‘inflation’.
You know, in some ways the constant pressure on expansion of the money supply in a world of declining stuff, is the underlying cause of inflation, however, it has the same effect as the old wages arbitrage ploy – which was using cheap foreign labour to provide goods and services, on the cheap. If prices keep rising, and as a supplier you can pass those rises on, your income increases – and I believe the elites are good with that. Yet as someone on the other side of that imbalance of power, what you ask for your wages might not keep up with those rises, so over time you’re taking an economic hit. All very simple and uncomplicated.
The interesting thing about all this, is that Japan has taken this policy very far indeed. And I suspect (and would be curious to learn your opinion) the only way that that was possible is if the population declines. That way goodies per capita can more or less remain relatively stable. Dunno. But the west doesn’t employ that particular part of the arrangement, you know, seeking growth and stuff. Just an odd conceptual idea I floated in the brain to see what it looks like.
It’s amazing the thoughts which bubble to the surface when cleaning up the chicken enclosure. Had an interesting moon this morning too. It hung just above the fog line and looked huge, whilst the sky was pink and the fog layer had a weird blue / grey shade to it.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Selkirk,
Agreed. It’s not good. Down here, E10 fuel is the cheaper option, which I never purchase. Fuel is a weird product and goes off remarkably quickly, although my experience is that the fuel stabilisers are pretty good and saves me heaps of headaches with the small engines used here, but then no E10 (as far as I’m aware).
I do all of the servicing and repairs on the machines here, and you should see the potent acetone required to clean up carburettors of organic err, gunk. Strong, but effective stuff.
I’ve often noticed that water in fuel systems is a big issue for small engines in your country, and wondered why I rarely see that issue. Thanks for your perspective.
Cheers
Chris
One of the crucial questions that arose in the peak oil discussions of the oughts, that I don’t think was ever resolved decisively, is the lifetime EROEI of solar photovoltaic systems. Do solar power systems produce enough energy to justify themselves or are they more like a way of banking present fossil fuel energy to return limited future allotments?
The question is too complex (for me at least) to answer with data and calculations, but I note that throughout the past fifteen years, as oil prices rose and fell, as government subsidies and tax breaks came and went, homes and businesses kept building solar arrays at all scales, from homes to industrial building lots and roofs to fields (locally, former cranberry bogs). To the point that my town has passed new limitations on commercial scale solar in the past year, based mainly on environmental and aesthetic (“character of the town”) concerns. And this is at 42 degrees north latitude.
Solar power seems to keep passing the economic viability test that nuclear keeps failing. Yes it has all kinds of problems, including intermittency and grid stability and environmental costs, along with potential future trade and supply chain difficulties possibly presenting bottlenecks in the near future. Even if it stays around it doesn’t mean there will be some painless seamless transition that will continue grid service uninterrupted. But it pays for itself.
To what degree and at what scale it might be available in the future remains to be seen. Actually managing off-grid solar power (with or without some limited form of storage) for a single family home is too much like a hobby to become a universal practice, but in an extended household that could be an in-demand specialized role among the help, like the cook. Or it could be manageable on the scale of a community center. That’s what makes Initiatives like Living Energy Farm interesting and important. The significance of the first 300W per capita (that’s more generous than my 1kWh/day benchmark for what I need to ride out a power outage in relative comfort for up to 30 days) dwarfs the difference between, say, 300W and 3000W. But making use of it is a learned skill. Everyone should already know how much power everything they can plug in requires (if power management were reading, that would be like learning the alphabet), but not many do, at present. Home economics classes don’t cover it. The course that would cover it (actually, “home economics” would still be as good a name for it as any) doesn’t exist yet.
John, thank your for your good wishes. The signs had become clear by the time your wife passed, which is why I don’t remember responding to that with much more than bland condolences.
I’m wondering whether this is my life’s Final Boss, a challenge that so much of my life experience, in hindsight, looks suspiciously like practice for. In which case, to continue the questionably appropriate video game metaphor, when it’s over there won’t be anything left to do except roll the credits. But maybe not!
Siliconguy – You ask “what happens when we no longer need people making disposable stuff?” I think the answer is that you hire people to make stuff which is not just disposable, but ephemeral. By that, I mean things like musical performances, TikTok videos, blogs, financial advice, political analysis, literary criticism, professional sports commentary, and so on…
A few can keep growing the wheat and baking the bread, while the rest put on circuses for each other. That’s fine, until the few run out of diesel to move the tractor and the combine harvester.
With regards to copyright issues on AI – it is really interesting to me that the Big Tech companies are now using the arguments made in the Negativland book Fair Use, as a way to get around these issues. Negativland members pointed this out to me when we were chatting before the show when they played in Lexington last June. It’s funny to them because of how much they were sued for some of their music which actually does abide by Fair Use law. I’m not sure the same can be said for AI. This can be seen as another instance of what the Situationists called recuperation. An art style gets pioneered by types like Negativland who are critical of corporate & commercial culture, and then it ends up getting used by corporate culture as a product. (This is a theme they return to again and again.) They pointed out to me how the Silicon Valley people are using their book, which these corporations did not like at all at one time for the way Fair Use could be used with their own creations, and are now using it to make the case for their AI bots. Thanks for bringing this up @Siliconguy
https://negativland.com/products/013-negativland-fair-use-book
“In 1991, Negativland’s infamous U2 single was sued out of existence for trademark infringement, fraud, and copyright infringement for poking fun at the Irish mega-group’s anthem “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” In 1992, Negativland’s magazine-plus-CD “The Letter U and the Numeral 2” was sued out of existence for trying to tell the story of the first lawsuit. In 1995 Negativland released “Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2,” a 270-page book-with-CD to tell the story of both lawsuits and the fight for the right to make new art out of corporately owned culture.
The overwhelming (and very funny) “Fair Use” takes you deep inside Negativland’s legal, ethical, and artistic odyssey in an unusual examination of the ironic absurdities that ensue when corporate commerce, contemporary art and pre-electronic law collide over one 13-minute recording.
The book presents the progression of documents, events and results chronologically, contains the suppressed magazine in its entirety, and goes on to add much more that has happened since, to illuminate this modern saga of criminal music. Also included is a (at the time) definitive appendix of legal and artistic references on the fair use issue, including important court decisions, and a foreword written by the son of the American U-2 spy plane pilot shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960.
Packaged inside the book is a full-length CD containing a new 45-minute collage piece by Negativland, “Dead Dog Records”- which is both about artistic appropriation and an extensive example of it- plus a 26-minute “review” of the U.S. Copyright Act by Crosley Bendix, Director of Stylistic Premonitions for the Universal Media Netweb.”
Foxhands, there I can’t help you. I picked up what I know of that from news stories at the time. If anyone else has suggestions, I’d welcome them.
Nachtgurke, er, I think you’re drawing very sweeping conclusions on the basis of your interpretation of one graph.
Siliconguy, no doubt, but I wouldn’t bet a single penny on the big corporations in question following that ruling.
A1, the future before us is a complex terrain! Between resource depletion, population contraction, changing climate, and rising resource nationalism across the global South, there are so many factors in play that firm predictions are largely useless; the one thing that’s certain is that anybody who becomes global hegemon at this point becomes the captain of a sinking ship. More on this as we proceed!
Chris, I think a lot of what’s going on across the West right now is a desperate attempt to avoid following Japan’s lead. As those attempts fail, my guess is we’ll see more countries attempt to follow that lead — though without Japan’s profoundly Confucian and communitarian culture, they may not get far along that road either.
Walt, that’s a valid point. Partly the difference between solar power and nuclear power is that solar power is almost infinitely scalable — I think of those little lights with a solar cell on top that people use to light the walkways to their front doors — and that keeps a rein on any financial downside. (If solar panels could only be installed in 50 megawatt increments, you’d see a lot fewer of them.) The role of PV cells as a way to bank current energy for future payoffs is also not small. That said, you’re correct that they do seem to be passing the basic financial viability test. If that continues, and less finicky ways to manufacture them can be devised, they may be viable well down the curve, or even all the way through.
(I didn’t notice anything bland about your condolences last February, btw, and appreciated them. As for the Final Boss, no, that’s the bony guy with the scythe. Until he comes for you, you’ve still got challenges to face and side quests to follow.)
Hi Chris, Hi John…
“what’s going on across the West right now is a desperate attempt to avoid following Japan’s lead. As those attempts fail, my guess is we’ll see more countries attempt to follow that lead — though without Japan’s profoundly Confucian and communitarian culture, they may not get far along that road either.”
Population decline is very much on my mind lately. Any thoughts on what alternatives to Cofucianism there might be for those in the West, so people won’t have to continue “bowling alone”? Or are we far too individualized? I know we give lip service to community, without much experience being in community. I also see these as poles of tension, communitarian and individualist. Even Thoreau could walk back to Concord to have dinner with friends and family though…
You brought up data farms. What I have noticed in the DC area, is that people are gobbling up energy like crazy but do not data farms or more lines in the Shenandoah Valley. So where precisely are they going to get energy for their phones and their gadgets.
That is what grinds my gears – yes, we must conserve energy, yes, we must have alternative sources, etc, but no one (outside of here) has ever suggested – we must stop using fancy phones and the like. (I use an old desktop computer for my internet work.) Or stop driving cars — unless of course, you are one of the working class, then you must stop driving etc. Elites like Bernie Sanders can continue to fly private jets while fighting the Oligarchy.
I imagine that few people know how to live without air conditioning, which gobbles up energy. That is one thing I am guilty of – my family would have it be ice cubes all summer long. So, I am as guilty as the rest I rail against.
Perhaps Milton Mayeroff answered my question when I read the next passage in his short philosophical book, “On Caring.”:
“The relationship between my appropriate others and myself is not external, like that of a chair and a table. Instead, I experience them as an extension of myself and I identify with their growth. But neither is the relationship parasitic; they are part of me in a way that affirms us both. And although in all cases of caring I experience the other as as, in a sense, part of me, the experience is much more pronounced when the other is an appropriate other and is felt to complete me. Indifference to such an other turns out to be indifference to myself also, and in time results in loss of place. To be in-place then is living that is centered and integrated by my caring for my appropriate others, one of whom, to repeat, must always be myself.
My appropriate others, speaking now simply of those separate from me, are not ready-made and waiting for me. They must have developed in relation to me to the point where, in conjunction with other carings, they have become a center around which my life can be significantly ordered. And in helping them grow to this point I myself am transformed: in finding and developing my appropriate others I find and create myself.”
A really short book whose simplicity belies its depth.
>By that, I mean things like musical performances, TikTok videos, blogs, financial advice, political analysis, literary criticism, professional sports commentary, and so on
You would think that. But the third world has found another solution to the constraints – slop. They’ve found a way to scam the whole system for small amounts of money but to them it’s enough to live on. The side effect is they are taking a huge poop all over the “circus floor” with content that’s not even offensive but boring/unwatchable/unremarkable/low quality.
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear these shades…
Cause and effect; (GitHub is where many open source programmers store their code.)
Sunday: A 2024 GitHub survey found that over 97% of developers have used AI coding tools at work, with 30% to 40% of organizations actively encouraging their adoption…. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently said AI now writes up to 30% of the company’s code. Google CEO Sundar Pichai echoed that sentiment, noting more than 30% of new code at Google is AI-generated.
Today (Tuesday);
“A new report hit the wires late Tuesday morning in New York, revealing that Microsoft plans to implement “organizational changes” impacting about 3% of its global workforce, spanning all levels, teams, and regions.
“We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.
The Microsoft spokesperson did not specify the number of job cuts or the timing of the changes.
Data from Bloomberg shows Microsoft employed about 228,000 employees worldwide at the end of 2024, implying total cuts could top 7,000. ”
In the energy news; breathless headline;
“University of Texas-led Team Solves a Big Problem for Fusion Energy”
Reading the article though they just found a better way of calculating leakage points in the magnetic field.
https://news.utexas.edu/2025/05/05/university-of-texas-led-team-solves-a-big-problem-for-fusion-energy/
No atoms were fused.
JMG and Aldarion. I believe it is quite irrelevant to discuss the energy used by the farmer in swiddening as the basis for EROEI. With that perspective you would only include the energy of the farmer driving his fossil fuel driven tractor in the EROEI calculation for industrial ag.
Whether solar panels pay back their energy input or not is much debated. An immense amount of fossil fuels are in the production chain, as is often hydro electric power.
Silica (SiO2) must be mined (diesel) then reduced to Si metal (high grade coal or if in Brazil charcoal from farmed trees processed by diesel). Then the Silicon is dissolved in hydrochloric acid produced from electrical power. The silicon tetrachloride then is pumped into a high temperature reactor ( heated by electricity) where is mixes with more silicon metal and hydrogen (produced from natural gas as electrolysis would cost three times as much) to react to trichlorosilane.
That then runs through multiple distillation columns heated by natural gas burners to purify it. Then the purified gas is run over red hot silicon starter rods (more electricity) and it decomposes to silicon on the rods and HCl vapor which gets recycled to the reactor to continue the process.
The full grown rods are harvested, broken up, then remelted (look up CZ process) (electricity again) then the ingots are sliced into wafers (using diamond coated tungsten wires) and those go on to multiple steps to make the actual solar cells.
The later steps involve indium and silver and usually aluminum frames, all involving mining and extensive processing.
So where do you draw the line to determine whether they pay back their energy cost? It’s not obvious. Add in government subsidies (the Polit Bureau calls the electric company and sets the rate they will charge the polysilicon plant and no the Bureau does not care about the cost of production. It’s national policy to win the PV market by any means necessary.)
Since tariffs are in the news it’s worth remembering the Chinese put a 57% tariff on American polysilicon way back in the Obama years. They are very serious about control of the PV market..
@J.L.Mc12 most gas powered cars in Brazil are dual-fuel – they can use both ethanol and gas. Imported vehicles often have issues though – engines not properly adapted to E30 don’t last long. Even then, however, ethanol is highly corrosive, thus all engine parts that deal with it directly are designed with that in mind.
In technical terms, ethanol engines typically have higher compression ratios due to ethanol’s higher octane rating, and their fuel injectors and pumps are adapted to deliver a greater volume of fuel, as ethanol has lower energy content per liter. Components like fuel lines and tanks must be corrosion resistant, since ethanol is more corrosive and absorbs water. Cold starts require special systems, such as auxiliary gasoline tanks or injector pre-heating. The engine’s electronic control unit is also reprogrammed for ethanol’s combustion characteristics, and spark plugs are more robust.
Starting an ethanol engine in cold water can be particularly challenging. Where I live the lowest temperature at the height of winter is around the -5º Celsius degree mark, and it takes a while to start an ethanol powered car in that situation.
Justin, we don’t have the relevant traditions yet. The next five centuries will be about how they evolve.
Neptunesdolphins, oh, I know. I’ve been pointing out for almost two decades now that yelling about atmospheric carbon, or what have you, means nothing if your lifestyle demands more carbon pollution than a midsized town in West Africa…
Siliconguy, yep. Stand by for mass layoffs in the cubicle classes.
Gunnar, that’s quite the non sequitur you’ve deployed there. May I recommend you take a moment to look up the meaning of EROEI? Here, I’ll help you: it means “energy return on energy invested.” It applies solely to the human economy, which has to invest energy to build tractors…but does not have to invest energy to cause photosynthesis. By the logic you’re using, you could just as well insist that all farms lose money because the economic value of the sunlight falling on their fields has to be subtracted from their operating budget!
While we grope along, Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder both have written a fair amount about Confucianism… It seems a small literary thread, but it makes me wonder about how some kind of stimulus diffusion might influence what communitarian sense we have.
SiliconGuy – Re: AI writing software… I wonder how much different that is from just having an indexed library of source code. Years ago, I was amazed at the algorithms I could find with a simple Google search, but now, if that Google search is prettified and labeled as an “AI product”, the AI industry gets to claim some credit. Is it like giving AI credit for recommending a song for you, which someone else composed, but the AI “anonymized” before offering it to you?
I’ve seen three cycles of AI hype now, in my decades of observation (checkers and chess, “expert systems”, and now large language models). Each time, some task which seems to require intelligence is addressed (if not solved) by a computer, and eventually, people decide “No, that’s not actually intelligent at all”. This leads to a definition of “AI” as “things which computers can almost do.”
@Gunnar @261: The industrial farmer needs to invest in fertilizer and pesticides, which the slash-and-burn farmer doesn’t. The industrial farmer needs to transport his products to the city, while the subsistence farmer consumes them mostly at home or sells them nearby. That’s the point of subsistence farming: the energy invested by the farmer is very low.
Plants that autonomously grow, accumulate minerals and carbon and self-replicate are the secret behind this. The EROEI is a bit like that of a petroleum company that gets energy accumulated for millions of years for the price of boring a hole.
If each of us could afford a few square kilometers filled with self-replicating, self-growing and self-healing PV panels that produce packaged energy ready for delivery, then yes, the EROEI of PV would be very high.
Re: AI writing software
A searchable library of source code where the variable names can be switched out automatically would be useful enough on its own. “Where did I file that handy subroutine I wrote two years ago?”
Even I’ve been there.
Another place AI would be useful is in chemistry. The Beilstein library of useful reactions is vast. “What’s the best way, defined as highest yield to product, to produce a given chemical compound? Ok, how about the best way that does not depend on thallium cyclo-pentadiene? What is the best way, defined as lowest cost of reagents?” All perfectly valid questions as there is usually more than one route available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beilstein_database
There was some work along those lines some years ago, but I don’t know how well they worked.
@Neptunesdolphins and @JMG ” I’ve been pointing out for almost two decades now that yelling about atmospheric carbon, or what have you, means nothing if your lifestyle demands more carbon pollution than a midsized town in West Africa…”
The statistic that really makes one think about the scale of this civilization is, the homeless people in most western countries have a higher carbon footprint than the average African by about a factor of 2 to 3. And yet the homeless live significantly harder lives than their African counter parts.
I was contemplating this because there is a fellow, Robin Greenfield, who is currently 4 months in on a ‘non-ownership’ experiment as a means of protest against the scale of western consumption. Has no money, assets even ID’s to his name. Camps in Griffith park in LA, wearing borrowed clothes, eating out of bins, washing in rivers etc. And yet, I would guess he is probably one of the few people that could really say they do have the same impact as a west African. His friends are the ones that post his stuff online.
From what I can see Robin didn’t come from money or was ever massively wealthy, has no safety net on this, so that goes a long way to at least seeing his intents being somewhat genuine. The broad message in the extremes he takes is for others to realize they do not need so much stuff to be happy. A good message to get out into the world. Maybe if it communicated a hundred different ways by a hundred different people it might start to soak in for some more folks.
Aldarion @ 122 said,
“I do see one field of huge unmet material needs in countries as far apart as Canada, Germany and Australia: housing. People are paying 30%, 40%, 50% or even more of their income for housing. Now there are many reasons for this enormous overhang of demand: fast immigration, government overregulation, financial speculation and others. But I can’t get it out of my head that there’s another reason: the median salary buys less hours of a bulldozer, fewer sacks of cement, less copper wire and glass than ten or twenty years ago. There are not enough people whose salary can pay for the construction of new housing. If there were, they would sustain many well-paying jobs in construction. This is a vicious circle, of course, as you point out.”
Poignant for me, Aldarion– My son is living in an RV in California for this very reason, and he’s not the only one doing it. When he got there, he was fortunate to find a room for rent in a bungalow, sharing a bathroom with another batchelor, for something like $2700.00 a month, plus utilities. He moved from there into a 15-year-old RV with a barely working engine that he moved from one parking spot to another, periodically. During the last 8 years, he has traded up through a series of other RVs, and hopes to build an earthship-style house on land from his rent savings.
In my public library here in Canada, a lady told her audience how she made herself a multi-story house from hay bales and stucco on floors supported by vertical telephone poles. There were a lot of people taking notes.
I think we will see a lot of people cobbling together their own homes in coming years–
And now that I think about it, ‘Cobb’ is a traditional homebuilding material. Nothing like using tried-and-true methods!
Related to peak oil and your previous essay ‘An Elegy For The Age Of Space’. Congress has FINALLY killed the SLS program.
The ‘Space Launch System’ also know as the ‘Senate Launch System’ was generally barely tolerated within NASA as it was an endless drag on the place merely made to fill the hole from the end of the space shuttle.
A side effect of this is that they will have to push back the Artemis moon landing program. It was already going to miss its targets by a wide margin as Starship has yet to make it to orbit or survive a single landing and Blue Origin is too busy sending celebrities on glorified photo opportunities. I’m not surprised, just glad it is semi-official now.
Count this as Obama’s moon plans finally being shelved. Also still waiting for Bush’s moon base in 2020 and Trumps in 2024 moon landing. Maybe they should not put dates on these things any more. 😉
> he wants a Progressive uprising which means a lot of bureaucracy, government, and of course a special class to oversee the whole thing. The public can’t think for themselves – they need Reich and buddies to do that for them. — neptunesdolphins #184
When they tried to make robots walk they first started with a single program to control all movement centrally. A failure. Then they gave each individual limb its own bit of brainpower and basically said, sort it out among yourselves. Success at last. Extraordinarily naturalistic movements under many different conditions..
It seems to me a society is the same. Try to control it centrally and it is doomed to be a failure except under very limited conditions. There will be no resilience to adapt to changing circumstances. For that you need the individual units, i.e. the people, to have the capacity for independent action and the willingness to make the enterprise work as a unit.
JMG,
“Descent” isn’t the frightening part, its the periods of “rebound” and “recovery” that are built into the “descent” that are frightening because they give the impression that a reversal occurred but simply “failed to hold”. That “failed to hold” thought just sticks in the minds of people, amps up their frustration, leads to “There must be someone to blame”, and that blame game is where the actual worst case scenario comes from.
>Stand by for mass layoffs in the cubicle classes.
Eh, this has happened twice now already. The tech industry dropkicks everyone out the door when their workforce hits their 30s, they lay low for a few years and then they hire a new crop of recent grads, beat them for 2 decades like rented mules and then drop kick them out the door. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Don’t go into tech unless you were specifically sent here to do that kind of work. They will eat you up and spit you out. Well, they’ll do that regardless, but if you were sent here to go through that, shrug.
>If each of us could afford a few square kilometers filled with self-replicating, self-growing and self-healing PV panels
That goes back to my idea of the “booze tree”, genetically engineer one of those citrus trees to make fruit filled with ethanol (or methanol). Boozy oranges could be quite popular, however you want to use them.
>They are very serious about control of the PV market
I wonder, has the quality of their panels declined as much as their batteries have?
Sunday I spotted a strong indicator of another change in the public mood: Pantone’s Color of the Year and its corresponding palate. Now, years ago, I spotted another: not only were new buildings being painted concrete gray, but buildings which had always been the earth tones of the Southwest were being repainted gray. The message: “The party’s over.” That fad passed away, though the gray buildings remain gray.
This year, the Color of the year was Mocha Mousse, “A good base color.” – I immediately flashed on Sophie Ames’ and Jerry Shimizu’s taste in clothing. The others – a deep ruby red, a plum-brown, a deep brown, a golden, and a blue-gray, the whole set described as “warm earth tones.” The last time warm earth tones were in style, so was traditional, soft-upholstered furniture, etc.
Here in The Village, which is string on appearances, the Tower Club, which had been painted a “Florida sand” white, with rugs that went to jazzy designs, were recently repainted a softer, for friendly sand color, and the lobby rug replaced by one along the new lines. (Though the pillows and upholstery are still rock-hard.)
My intuition tells me we’ve turned another corner, and one familiar to me from long years ago.
@JMG, I have been reading yours, and many others books on peak oil and civilizational cycles. you have well compared the biological catabolic collapse to human society, i would like to expand that comparison to entropy to make the connection wider, as above so bellow. A connection that i am confident on is between Entropy, ecological/resource depletion, and human behavior. you likely have heard that life is the expression of entropy conversion, trees turn highly complex sun light into a small amount of complex carbon structures, and a lot of low complexity heat, in aggregate Trees (all life as well) decrease the complexity . Oil is quite a complex thing, and within its transfer to heat, we make a relatively small amount of complexity that produces a very large amount of heat. Entropy is quite predictable and evolution, its expression is as well. All biological systems, reproduce and exert violence on neighbors, and decline catabolically when resources decline. The nuance with humans is that 1 human is not a biological system but rather a human story is. Using the word story loosely to be any social bonding agent like ethnicity, religion, or nationality. A religion acts quite like a gorilla, in that it defends its territory, reproduces more cells of itself, and is violent to neighbors. the gorilla, if well designed acts on behalf of its DNA, and a well evolved religion is symbiotic with the people it represents, usually by ethnic exclusivity. In this way a warring religion is symbiotic with the people and DNA it represents and its super structure can act violently on behalf of the otherwise altruistic individuals. Your probably nodding your head and saying “yea so what?”. but my point is this. A story on TOP of this is a useful delusion. A story saying oh but nuclear power, oh but humans are conscious individuals, does not change the laws of entropy, which ensure that industrial society only works with oil, and that the biological system that is a human story will continue to act very simply and predictably no matter how aware of it we as parts of that system are. I would also make a connection you have only touched on lightly, Fertility rate is a version of catabolic collapse within the family. 2 people working means less time. There are many more details on how evolution is a chemical expression of entropy and can be compared to the evolution of non biological systems like tornadoes and such. ill wait to see if this gets comments to indulge. Thanks! your work has been a blessing to me.
“You can print all the money or create all the credit you want, but try stuffing paper bills down your gas tank and see how far you go.”?