Renewable/green energy is a MYTH. Iron ore needs to be strip mined so too rare earth minerals. Coal must be burned to make steal. Wind turbines/solar panels last maybe 25 years, none of it is recyclable. Modern life is UNSUSTAINABLE.
Why are you people so pessimistic? Trust the Goddess 觀音 (Guanyin) and all will be well. She hears the cries of the world, perceives the suffering of all sentient beings and responds with compassion.
That is a lot of gloss, Ugo. We experience the details at ground level, dying like Palestinians in Gaza, for example.
It behooves us to anticipate the progression and prepare ahead of time, when we have some options and agancy.
This synchronizes in time-sequence with Divine Compassion, and is not in opposition at all, quite the contrary, hence "What'cha doin' to cope?" Anticipate, prepare, merge.
At the rate the data centers are being built it won't be long 🤦♀️ NOTHING IS PERMANENT. That includes electricity. Humans are going extinct because we're too stupid not too.
Now, now, we are not so stupid. Any species would spend the inheritance of fossil-fuels to make food and cars and stuff that we discovered. It is/was a no-brainer to convert coal to heating, power and then food, as heat-engine technology developed.
Yes, how would/could we live without electricity? No stores, no gas-pumps, no utilities of other sorts, like gas and water...
Some stock up on guns to take what they need. Dead-End, I think.
Some have bunkers to live for years, alone, or in small groups ... then what?
We live and survive as working groups, smallish working groups, but not too small.
Actually doing this is not easy at all, and those of us who have lived in the modern, industrialized world are probably not the people to do it... what a conundrum.
Those of us who have the means and knowledge to make such a choice did not grow up in that life,,,
I grow a couple of kitchen gardens that we eat from daily. I ride a bike. I'm doing these re-patterning things, not eating out, engaging from this changed/changing perspective.
I'll die, but not without doing this daily work on the problems we see arising in a much-lower-energy world.
Electricity is going bye bye. You don't have to like that but you do need to be aware of it. We've destroyed our only home. That's stupid to the nth degree 🤦♀️
John Day wants to prolong the industrial economy. Not me! It is destroying our ecosystem. I suspect a few smaller life forms will make it through. I know I won't.
All photos are mine. The banner is by the Club of Rome, free to reuse. The image of Shanghai is found on the web -- I think it is public domain, but that image is very common on the Web, you can surely find a similar one that's free to use.
Ugo, that wonderful vision of a transition to a green sustainable world that you believe China could show us (humanity) is just a vision, something sci-fi over many decades would have us believe, but you more than most should know the facts don’t stack up, as any transition to a wonderful green sustainable world would be far from being painless, with a lot of us if not dying from mass starvation (something that in the not too distant past China has had practice in) then in a grab for energy at any cost in a MAD Energy War.
There are 10 calories of fossil fuel in 1 calorie of food, and that’s excluding transportation. Through the use of fossil fuels we (humanity) have changed from being naturally omnivores to being detritivores*. Without fossil fuels agriculture cannot feed 8+ Billion of us.
* For a description of how we’ve arrived at this point in our civilisation and how we became “detritivours check out B. Sydney Smith’s “HTETEOTW Chapter 5: Ecological Overshoot”, part of his “How To Enjoy The End Of The World” video series.
I’d also mention Medium’s Eric Lee’s essay “Dr. Jack Alpert on Civilization’s Predicament and Its Unwinding Behavior - A CACOR (Canadian Club of Rome) presentation Aug 20, 2025🤔
Absolutely. Add in concrete cancer, global warming impacts on food production, sea level rise flooding those pretty Shanghai's buildings, the very short lives of solar panels & wind turbines & the collapse of diesel funded mining, transport, construction and food.... There is absolutely no coming back out of massive decline.
Some of us are already off grid, growing our own food and using horses for field work. WE also press sunflower oil to use in our diesels if needed. We grow grains for flour and the sun does most of the work growing things organically. And everything is local.
The Chinese idea that “nature and the human economy must be in harmony” has a long history in Chile.
It was put forward by the Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef, winner of the Right Livelihood Award for Economics in 1983, and author of, among other works, the book “Barefoot Economics” and the concept of “human-scale economics.”
However, as the saying goes, “no one is a prophet in their own land.”
Seems like Mr Bardi woke up and chose coping today. I have to admit it is unclear to me if you are straight out mocking your audience or if you really saw the light in 上海.
Funny thing it has been the retreat of the accelerationist Nick Land since about 10 years now, but you guys aren't attending the same kind of conferences I guess.
btw, don't forget to recite the proper mantra for your next rebirth in pure land.
hello dear professor ugo bardi you posted a post on facebook that we will most likely collapse by 2040 or 2030 that is was in line with what gaya herrington said but now she says there is now time left and that we can collapse any moment now according to her we are on top of it ?
You get a lot of doomers here Ugo. What China are doing regarding energy transition, both for themselves and the world, is breathtaking. Imagine if there was no China - here in the West we'd be even ore screwed than we already are. China are showing us a path we could follow.
Mark. Ugo. Go refresh your physics & the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is totally impossible for any energy consuming system to convert to a less dense energy source with lower net energy and maintain the energy requirements of that system. Be that a city, a sovereign state, a farm, or any biological system. Your Gaia dreams of clean green future will definitely come true... for a few million hunter gatherers living within their new net zero world, exactly the same one we left only 10,000 years ago. Gaia doesn't care & even more, she understands Entropy. Cheers.
hello professor ugo bardi do you mean the near future the year 2030 like the limits to growth show nebal et al also thinks population collapse in 2030 same as gaya herrington only professor jorgen randers does not believe saw him speak in china in the club of rome youtube channel ?
Renewable/green energy is a MYTH. Iron ore needs to be strip mined so too rare earth minerals. Coal must be burned to make steal. Wind turbines/solar panels last maybe 25 years, none of it is recyclable. Modern life is UNSUSTAINABLE.
Agree 100%. There is no energy transition ahead once diesel runs out.
Exactly.
Yes but... allocation of limited resources works to prolong the existence of industrial economy. Bicycles and electric scooters, for instance. https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-oil-import-curse
The industrial economy is going to collapse.
Yes, but in what manner, over what time period?
This may take a very long time, longer than anybody now living might see all of, right?
What'cha doin' to cope?
;-)
Why are you people so pessimistic? Trust the Goddess 觀音 (Guanyin) and all will be well. She hears the cries of the world, perceives the suffering of all sentient beings and responds with compassion.
The Goddess has been directing the ecosystem to recycle everything during the past 4 billion of years. If we trust Her, we can do the same.
I other words, the Goddess is the ecosystem. The ecosystem recycles. We are part of the ecosystem. We follow the Goddess and we recycle.
That is a lot of gloss, Ugo. We experience the details at ground level, dying like Palestinians in Gaza, for example.
It behooves us to anticipate the progression and prepare ahead of time, when we have some options and agancy.
This synchronizes in time-sequence with Divine Compassion, and is not in opposition at all, quite the contrary, hence "What'cha doin' to cope?" Anticipate, prepare, merge.
;-)
At the rate the data centers are being built it won't be long 🤦♀️ NOTHING IS PERMANENT. That includes electricity. Humans are going extinct because we're too stupid not too.
Now, now, we are not so stupid. Any species would spend the inheritance of fossil-fuels to make food and cars and stuff that we discovered. It is/was a no-brainer to convert coal to heating, power and then food, as heat-engine technology developed.
Yes, how would/could we live without electricity? No stores, no gas-pumps, no utilities of other sorts, like gas and water...
Some stock up on guns to take what they need. Dead-End, I think.
Some have bunkers to live for years, alone, or in small groups ... then what?
We live and survive as working groups, smallish working groups, but not too small.
Actually doing this is not easy at all, and those of us who have lived in the modern, industrialized world are probably not the people to do it... what a conundrum.
Those of us who have the means and knowledge to make such a choice did not grow up in that life,,,
I grow a couple of kitchen gardens that we eat from daily. I ride a bike. I'm doing these re-patterning things, not eating out, engaging from this changed/changing perspective.
I'll die, but not without doing this daily work on the problems we see arising in a much-lower-energy world.
The future is bright. We'll see things that right now we can't even imagine. We have to go through the current bottleneck, but we will
Electricity is going bye bye. You don't have to like that but you do need to be aware of it. We've destroyed our only home. That's stupid to the nth degree 🤦♀️
John Day wants to prolong the industrial economy. Not me! It is destroying our ecosystem. I suspect a few smaller life forms will make it through. I know I won't.
Love the picture of Gaia and Guanyin
Hi Ugo,
May I repost your article on Resilience.org ? I've been having thoughts about China similar to yours.
Of course!
Quick question
Are the photos yours? If so, may we have permission to use them? Thanks
All photos are mine. The banner is by the Club of Rome, free to reuse. The image of Shanghai is found on the web -- I think it is public domain, but that image is very common on the Web, you can surely find a similar one that's free to use.
This one is creative commons from wikipedia. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai#/media/File:20045-Shanghai-Pano_(cropped).jpg
POSTED!
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2025-11-22/from-shanghai-with-energy/
Thanks! I will use your photos then.
Thank you ! Will probably repost on Saturday
Ugo, that wonderful vision of a transition to a green sustainable world that you believe China could show us (humanity) is just a vision, something sci-fi over many decades would have us believe, but you more than most should know the facts don’t stack up, as any transition to a wonderful green sustainable world would be far from being painless, with a lot of us if not dying from mass starvation (something that in the not too distant past China has had practice in) then in a grab for energy at any cost in a MAD Energy War.
There are 10 calories of fossil fuel in 1 calorie of food, and that’s excluding transportation. Through the use of fossil fuels we (humanity) have changed from being naturally omnivores to being detritivores*. Without fossil fuels agriculture cannot feed 8+ Billion of us.
* For a description of how we’ve arrived at this point in our civilisation and how we became “detritivours check out B. Sydney Smith’s “HTETEOTW Chapter 5: Ecological Overshoot”, part of his “How To Enjoy The End Of The World” video series.
I’d also mention Medium’s Eric Lee’s essay “Dr. Jack Alpert on Civilization’s Predicament and Its Unwinding Behavior - A CACOR (Canadian Club of Rome) presentation Aug 20, 2025🤔
E&OE
Absolutely. Add in concrete cancer, global warming impacts on food production, sea level rise flooding those pretty Shanghai's buildings, the very short lives of solar panels & wind turbines & the collapse of diesel funded mining, transport, construction and food.... There is absolutely no coming back out of massive decline.
The Honest Sorcerer, who tips-hat to Seneca's cliff here, has complimentary analysis of the Chinese position with various energy resources going forward. https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-oil-import-curse
Good article. Thanks for the link!
Some of us are already off grid, growing our own food and using horses for field work. WE also press sunflower oil to use in our diesels if needed. We grow grains for flour and the sun does most of the work growing things organically. And everything is local.
The Chinese idea that “nature and the human economy must be in harmony” has a long history in Chile.
It was put forward by the Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef, winner of the Right Livelihood Award for Economics in 1983, and author of, among other works, the book “Barefoot Economics” and the concept of “human-scale economics.”
However, as the saying goes, “no one is a prophet in their own land.”
I'm sharing this article: https://laventanaciudadana.cl/el-legado-de-manfred-max-neef/
Seems like Mr Bardi woke up and chose coping today. I have to admit it is unclear to me if you are straight out mocking your audience or if you really saw the light in 上海.
Funny thing it has been the retreat of the accelerationist Nick Land since about 10 years now, but you guys aren't attending the same kind of conferences I guess.
btw, don't forget to recite the proper mantra for your next rebirth in pure land.
阿弥陀佛, 阿弥陀佛, 阿弥陀佛
hello dear professor ugo bardi you posted a post on facebook that we will most likely collapse by 2040 or 2030 that is was in line with what gaya herrington said but now she says there is now time left and that we can collapse any moment now according to her we are on top of it ?
You get a lot of doomers here Ugo. What China are doing regarding energy transition, both for themselves and the world, is breathtaking. Imagine if there was no China - here in the West we'd be even ore screwed than we already are. China are showing us a path we could follow.
Yes... I don't understand why some people are so happy about the things that make them unhappy!
Mark. Ugo. Go refresh your physics & the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is totally impossible for any energy consuming system to convert to a less dense energy source with lower net energy and maintain the energy requirements of that system. Be that a city, a sovereign state, a farm, or any biological system. Your Gaia dreams of clean green future will definitely come true... for a few million hunter gatherers living within their new net zero world, exactly the same one we left only 10,000 years ago. Gaia doesn't care & even more, she understands Entropy. Cheers.
One of the problems with China's mastery of supply chains is they can keep on growing and will continue to do so until they no longer can!
The Belt and Road initiative is mind bending.
https://kevinhester.live/2019/09/08/the-belt-and-road-initiativeand-much-more-paving-the-road-to-collapse-and-hospice/
hello professor ugo bardi do you mean the near future the year 2030 like the limits to growth show nebal et al also thinks population collapse in 2030 same as gaya herrington only professor jorgen randers does not believe saw him speak in china in the club of rome youtube channel ?
Have faity. Gaia is benevolent and merciful. Guanyin hears the wail of all creatures.