8 billion people all trying to survive. In the coming decades it's quite likely many won't. But one thing the human animal is good at is adaptation, perhaps a few will manage the transition to new realities.
Really insightful piece. The thermodynamic explanation for Rome’s trajectory is compelling, but I’m struggling to see how China avoids a similar fate just by switching to renewables. Given that the Maximum Power Principle suggests systems will always increase their energy dissipation to stay competitive, and Jevons Paradox tells us efficiency only breeds more use, why would a renewable-run China be exempt from these pressures? It feels like the same thermodynamic logic would apply regardless of the energy source.
The biophysical models are different for renewable and non-renewable sources. The Jevons paradox remains the same, but a renewable-powered system will stabilize its output and make the paradox irrelevant. I think the Chinese understand this point. They don't aim at expansion but at stabilization. 生态文明
1) You might want to do a deeper dive into the Maximum Power Principle, especially its antecedents in Odums' work and his attempt to call it the 4th Law of Thermodynamics. I dismiss it myself, but there are plenty of other scientists who buy it.
2) Jevons Paradox is a paradox, a seeming contradiction. It is not a rule. Efficiency does not drive increased fossil fuel use. The ability to do more things still requires capital and desire. To be blunt, efficiency does not "breed more use." Opportunity and greed breeds more use. And again, there are plenty of other people who disagree - vehemently! They like to draw a simplistic straight line.
Replacing fossil energy with green energy will give us a chance to maintain the production of chemicals from oil and gas, at least for a certain time. Eventually, in any case, we'll have to learn how to produce them starting from biological sources.
Ugo I've have been framing this with the Club of Rome BAU as well as shooting into climate tipping points, as well as a global insurance insolvency linked to that, and once insurance goes much of a modern economy goes with it. so just think how that will go as they face local and global environment & climate collapse. I just don't think you can isolate yourself from that.
BTW another thing I would note even a strategic command economy seems to fall for short term expediency notwithstanding their long term planning. All the science I see says we still need to decarbonize as quickly as possible & game theory argues even for China they do it as quickly as possible. But they are still using coal as a energy backstop wanting to keep their social stability and competitive advantage. At this rate we will all face tipping points quicker than anticipated & I just do see the urgency from their technocrats.
I know. Their plan is to reach net zero by 2060. Way too late. But they believe they can't do otherwise if they want to supply their economy with energy. I also believe that they can correct their trajectory and arrive to net zero much earlier. What kind of damage they will receive from climate change is hard to say, but they are probably in a better position than India, which risks becoming uninhabitable in the coming years.
Sure there will be worse places but I'm not sure if you have looked at the Club of Rome BAS collapse or the climate science tipping points including the runaway climate scenarios if we get there its game over for global civilization. China itself has a large part susceptible to wet bulb extremes and sea level rise issues. Maybe their tech can save us as the US collapses and turns on itself but it will be a race & again at this stage they aren't treating it as such.
I’ve really enjoyed my reading this, and any research into the Roman Empire. My favorite is the frontier of Britannia. I tend to always find myself wondering what it must have been like for the Roman sentries on Hadrian’s Wall, especially towards the end of its occupation.
So much so, that I wrote a book about it. It’s called ‘Shadows of the Wall’. Maybe you’ll enjoy it!
Thanks for putting this together, a really great piece!
" . . . a purely military economy does not create wealth; it destroys it." Good point. This is why I have been calling soldiers "the ultimate consumers" for over 55 years. They don't leverage or synergize - they just destroy and leave the rest of the populace to rebuild.
In his 2010 book, Why the West Rules - For Now, Ian Morris (a classical archaeologist) postulated a "hard ceiling" of 30,000 kcal/person/day that was achieved by the Roman Empire. This was enabled by slave labor. After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, it took nearly 1000 years for western civilization to get back to this hard ceiling. There were some advances made during the Renaissance period that brought western civilization back up to this threshold, but it took coal energy to really get the ball rolling on energy increase per capita. When oil energy was fully integrated into western civilization after the 1880s, the energy use per capita exponentially increased. Now we are in deep shit AND we cannot go back. As I put it in my first book, "We traded culture for cheap oil." Culture is an evolutionary trait and evolution by natural selection does not go backwards. [So-called de-evolution puts you on a different plane, rather than going back to the starting point of the evolutionary changes.] So, when the oil runs down enough that we cannot afford to maintain our civilizations, they will collapse. Oops. Then the survivors of dieoff will have to rely on those of us building alternatives RIGHT NOW. I suggest you get as far away from the imploding house of cards as you can and build alternatives for dealing with collapse.
You are making a whole boat load of assumptions about my situation that are unwarranted. I suggest you do a little bit of reading in history and anthropology. You are obviously steeped in a false paradigm that is portrayed on the shoot-em-up nonsense of Netflix every night.
In previous posts you stated that the Roman Empire expanded so as to acquire more silver and gold. My response was that these precious metals do not have any intrinsic worth. However, if these metals are seen as a medium of exchange for energy in the form of human labor, then the argument makes sense.
But humans do not provide just energy ― they also provide skills, particularly in a modern economy. I recall seeing images of prisoners or war being put to work on the manufacture of the V2 rocket in 1944. But such work requires high levels of skill that are developed over years or practice and training. Slave labor can provide energy, but it cannot design or fabricate the machine tools needed to make such a weapon.
Even in a relatively low-tech economy skilled labor is still required. For example, someone had to design and fabricate the sophisticated armor that you describe.
I used to work in an armor shop in Truckee, California. We made the suits of armor for the Excalibur Casino in Las Vegas. We also made armor for SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms) orders. The pounding and shaping is not really skilled labor. Even addled Amerikan stoners can do it. I worked with a couple of them. Just a couple of basic designs, a little bit of supervision and lots and lots of pounding. Even with the Henry VIIIth era of complicated armor, it is mostly just pounding and bending and a little bit of welding.
I'm reading the comments. I have my own doubts about the Maximum Power Principle, as applied, or at least caveats. Does The Machine run itself, mechanistically, or is it the inherited algorithms of a culture?
Personally, I think that the maximum power principle is fundamental. Truly the 4th principle of thermodynamics. But it is not incompatible with stabilization. It does not negate the other three principles. (actually, two, the third is mostly irrelevant)
There seem to be some relationships to my mind between collective governance and executive decision, structural design, and the way our biological neural nets resolve situations, via training, reward and etc. I speculate.
While no optimist, I would like to point the possibility of having vast amounts of cheap electricity at our disposal. France twice developed nuclear super-generators i.e. reactors where most neutrons generated from the nuclear reactions are themselves captured by depleted uranium thereby re-creating enriched uranium. This was enabling a much better use of uranium. The programme was disbanded twice by the ecologists/greens allied with socialists/progressives.The Chinese have also performed serious work on thorium reactors.
Ammonia is also being tested as a renewable transport fuel to be generated from cheap electricity.
There is a possible future with abundant cheap electricity and phased out emissions of greenhouse gases. Unfortunately numerous influential groups work hard against it.
Don't forget that we have only few decades for finally understand that we have the most perfect fusion nuclear reactor: the Sun, togheter the perfect natural process: phothosyntesis. So it's anusefulness looking for an impossible design to construct one here in this stressed planet.
That is a very interesting article. I wonder what priorities the next civilization will have? Ours has been very materialistic for the past few hundred years.
There is an interesting development on my tiny island. The children here are much taken up with singing and playing music and performing in public. That is a much better path than say, just buying things to enhance your status.
Yes, I can see that clearly. However, after hitting rock bottom, every civilization comes up with its own priorities such as religious experience (Middle Ages), athleticism (Ancient Greece), mercantilism(late Medieval Europe), war for fun and profit(Aztec Empire among others).
dear professor ugo bardi will we still die off old age and fewer childeren like your new 2026 book the end of population growth or because the west collapses ?
8 billion people all trying to survive. In the coming decades it's quite likely many won't. But one thing the human animal is good at is adaptation, perhaps a few will manage the transition to new realities.
Really insightful piece. The thermodynamic explanation for Rome’s trajectory is compelling, but I’m struggling to see how China avoids a similar fate just by switching to renewables. Given that the Maximum Power Principle suggests systems will always increase their energy dissipation to stay competitive, and Jevons Paradox tells us efficiency only breeds more use, why would a renewable-run China be exempt from these pressures? It feels like the same thermodynamic logic would apply regardless of the energy source.
The biophysical models are different for renewable and non-renewable sources. The Jevons paradox remains the same, but a renewable-powered system will stabilize its output and make the paradox irrelevant. I think the Chinese understand this point. They don't aim at expansion but at stabilization. 生态文明
1) You might want to do a deeper dive into the Maximum Power Principle, especially its antecedents in Odums' work and his attempt to call it the 4th Law of Thermodynamics. I dismiss it myself, but there are plenty of other scientists who buy it.
2) Jevons Paradox is a paradox, a seeming contradiction. It is not a rule. Efficiency does not drive increased fossil fuel use. The ability to do more things still requires capital and desire. To be blunt, efficiency does not "breed more use." Opportunity and greed breeds more use. And again, there are plenty of other people who disagree - vehemently! They like to draw a simplistic straight line.
Renewable in a collapsing biosphere?
How can renewables make petrochemicals? Eg pharmaceuticals?
I heard that these things are made by plants...
99% is made from chemical precorsors from the refinery. 100% is dependent on oil for production and transport.
We had plant based Medicine in Japan 1804. Peroral anesthesia with anesthesia lasting 5-24 hours.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjsca/25/5/25_5_427/_article
We will learn to use less...
If we dont healthcare also could collapse. «For instance, between 2000 and 2019 health spending globally rose over 223%,»
From this article: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11309522/
Replacing fossil energy with green energy will give us a chance to maintain the production of chemicals from oil and gas, at least for a certain time. Eventually, in any case, we'll have to learn how to produce them starting from biological sources.
China will still go over the cliff with the rest of us the Middle kingdom isn't an island cut off from what will happen to the global environment
Could be, but they have a chance to isolate themselves from the worst, as they did in mid-1st millennium AD
Ugo I've have been framing this with the Club of Rome BAU as well as shooting into climate tipping points, as well as a global insurance insolvency linked to that, and once insurance goes much of a modern economy goes with it. so just think how that will go as they face local and global environment & climate collapse. I just don't think you can isolate yourself from that.
BTW another thing I would note even a strategic command economy seems to fall for short term expediency notwithstanding their long term planning. All the science I see says we still need to decarbonize as quickly as possible & game theory argues even for China they do it as quickly as possible. But they are still using coal as a energy backstop wanting to keep their social stability and competitive advantage. At this rate we will all face tipping points quicker than anticipated & I just do see the urgency from their technocrats.
I know. Their plan is to reach net zero by 2060. Way too late. But they believe they can't do otherwise if they want to supply their economy with energy. I also believe that they can correct their trajectory and arrive to net zero much earlier. What kind of damage they will receive from climate change is hard to say, but they are probably in a better position than India, which risks becoming uninhabitable in the coming years.
Sure there will be worse places but I'm not sure if you have looked at the Club of Rome BAS collapse or the climate science tipping points including the runaway climate scenarios if we get there its game over for global civilization. China itself has a large part susceptible to wet bulb extremes and sea level rise issues. Maybe their tech can save us as the US collapses and turns on itself but it will be a race & again at this stage they aren't treating it as such.
I’ve really enjoyed my reading this, and any research into the Roman Empire. My favorite is the frontier of Britannia. I tend to always find myself wondering what it must have been like for the Roman sentries on Hadrian’s Wall, especially towards the end of its occupation.
So much so, that I wrote a book about it. It’s called ‘Shadows of the Wall’. Maybe you’ll enjoy it!
Thanks for putting this together, a really great piece!
You surely read Kipling's story of the two Centurions of the wall! Fascinating. I'll read your book when I have a moment!
You caught me!! Much appreciated. Let me know what you think!
I write fiction, too!
I’ll check out your stuff 😬
Very sobering. Thank you.
Aprecio este tipo de comparaciones, son muy esclarecedoras. Gracias!
" . . . a purely military economy does not create wealth; it destroys it." Good point. This is why I have been calling soldiers "the ultimate consumers" for over 55 years. They don't leverage or synergize - they just destroy and leave the rest of the populace to rebuild.
In his 2010 book, Why the West Rules - For Now, Ian Morris (a classical archaeologist) postulated a "hard ceiling" of 30,000 kcal/person/day that was achieved by the Roman Empire. This was enabled by slave labor. After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, it took nearly 1000 years for western civilization to get back to this hard ceiling. There were some advances made during the Renaissance period that brought western civilization back up to this threshold, but it took coal energy to really get the ball rolling on energy increase per capita. When oil energy was fully integrated into western civilization after the 1880s, the energy use per capita exponentially increased. Now we are in deep shit AND we cannot go back. As I put it in my first book, "We traded culture for cheap oil." Culture is an evolutionary trait and evolution by natural selection does not go backwards. [So-called de-evolution puts you on a different plane, rather than going back to the starting point of the evolutionary changes.] So, when the oil runs down enough that we cannot afford to maintain our civilizations, they will collapse. Oops. Then the survivors of dieoff will have to rely on those of us building alternatives RIGHT NOW. I suggest you get as far away from the imploding house of cards as you can and build alternatives for dealing with collapse.
Good attempt. Except that armed groups might simply seize whatever you built and reduce you to serfdom.
You are making a whole boat load of assumptions about my situation that are unwarranted. I suggest you do a little bit of reading in history and anthropology. You are obviously steeped in a false paradigm that is portrayed on the shoot-em-up nonsense of Netflix every night.
In previous posts you stated that the Roman Empire expanded so as to acquire more silver and gold. My response was that these precious metals do not have any intrinsic worth. However, if these metals are seen as a medium of exchange for energy in the form of human labor, then the argument makes sense.
But humans do not provide just energy ― they also provide skills, particularly in a modern economy. I recall seeing images of prisoners or war being put to work on the manufacture of the V2 rocket in 1944. But such work requires high levels of skill that are developed over years or practice and training. Slave labor can provide energy, but it cannot design or fabricate the machine tools needed to make such a weapon.
Even in a relatively low-tech economy skilled labor is still required. For example, someone had to design and fabricate the sophisticated armor that you describe.
I used to work in an armor shop in Truckee, California. We made the suits of armor for the Excalibur Casino in Las Vegas. We also made armor for SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms) orders. The pounding and shaping is not really skilled labor. Even addled Amerikan stoners can do it. I worked with a couple of them. Just a couple of basic designs, a little bit of supervision and lots and lots of pounding. Even with the Henry VIIIth era of complicated armor, it is mostly just pounding and bending and a little bit of welding.
I'm reading the comments. I have my own doubts about the Maximum Power Principle, as applied, or at least caveats. Does The Machine run itself, mechanistically, or is it the inherited algorithms of a culture?
Personally, I think that the maximum power principle is fundamental. Truly the 4th principle of thermodynamics. But it is not incompatible with stabilization. It does not negate the other three principles. (actually, two, the third is mostly irrelevant)
There seem to be some relationships to my mind between collective governance and executive decision, structural design, and the way our biological neural nets resolve situations, via training, reward and etc. I speculate.
Dear Mr Bardi,
While no optimist, I would like to point the possibility of having vast amounts of cheap electricity at our disposal. France twice developed nuclear super-generators i.e. reactors where most neutrons generated from the nuclear reactions are themselves captured by depleted uranium thereby re-creating enriched uranium. This was enabling a much better use of uranium. The programme was disbanded twice by the ecologists/greens allied with socialists/progressives.The Chinese have also performed serious work on thorium reactors.
Ammonia is also being tested as a renewable transport fuel to be generated from cheap electricity.
There is a possible future with abundant cheap electricity and phased out emissions of greenhouse gases. Unfortunately numerous influential groups work hard against it.
Energy is not really a problem. The real problems are inside people's heads.
Don't forget that we have only few decades for finally understand that we have the most perfect fusion nuclear reactor: the Sun, togheter the perfect natural process: phothosyntesis. So it's anusefulness looking for an impossible design to construct one here in this stressed planet.
That is a very interesting article. I wonder what priorities the next civilization will have? Ours has been very materialistic for the past few hundred years.
There is an interesting development on my tiny island. The children here are much taken up with singing and playing music and performing in public. That is a much better path than say, just buying things to enhance your status.
The problems of the Roman Empire were solved by creating the Middle Ages. We are going along a similar route.
Yes, I can see that clearly. However, after hitting rock bottom, every civilization comes up with its own priorities such as religious experience (Middle Ages), athleticism (Ancient Greece), mercantilism(late Medieval Europe), war for fun and profit(Aztec Empire among others).
dear professor ugo bardi will we still die off old age and fewer childeren like your new 2026 book the end of population growth or because the west collapses ?
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn