குழந்தைகளும் காலநிலை பிறழ்வும்

We have lost the ‘fight against climate change’ before we started, simply from the way we look at the problem. ‘We’ are not the relevant species and ‘fighting’ is not the right metaphor.

All of our ideas of ‘victory’ hinge on further domination of nature which is why we’re ‘losing’ in the first place. Actual winning would require a level of sacrifice we consider disastrous in and of itself. We are a bunch of hairless apes, ruled by corporations, picking a fight with the fucking weather. This is as stupid as it sounds.

Regardless of the theoretical possibility of ‘beating’ climate change, it is simply too late. The time to stop corporate colonialism was in the 1600s, the time to stop capitalism was in the early 1900s, and the time to address the growing symptoms of collapse was in the 1970s, at best.

The earth may move slow, but when it does move, it moves inexorably. We feel like we have control over climate collapse but we don’t.

This change has been a long time coming and we just happen to be here when it plays out. It’s like being on the beach and seeing a tsunami coming in. It’s a category error to ‘stop’ it and too late to run. What’s happening is much is bigger than us, and it’s the big one.

Given that we’ve already lost to climate change, the most important question is: what does losing look like? What do the limits to growth look lie once you hit them?

There’s no better place to look than the book The Limits To Growth from 1972.

The Limits To Growth crew ran a computer model called World3 which calculated how different forces — population, pollution, industrial growth— would interact in the future.

Unlike conventional economic models — which completely ignore the environment — these models accounted for things like finite resources, pollution and the environment will not be ignored.

The Limits To Growth results were roundly condemned/ignored by people at the time and they seemed to be right.

The actual results are in, and they’re not good.

As shown, the observed historical data for 1970–2000 most closely match the simulated results of the LtG ‘‘standard run’’ scenario for almost all the outputs reported; this scenario results in global collapse before the middle of this century, around 2050.

The comparison is well within uncertainty bounds of nearly all the data in terms of both magnitude and the trends over time. Given the complexity of numerous feedbacks between sectors incorporated in the World3 model, it is instructive that the historical data compare so favorably with the model output.

The LtG ‘‘standard run’’ scenario (and nearly all other scenarios) shows continuing growth in the economic system throughout the 20th century and into the early decades of the 21st [ie, still capitalism].

However, the simulations suggest signs of increasing environmental pressure at the start of the 21st century (e.g., resources diminishing, pollution increasing exponentially, growth slowing in food, services, and material wealth per capita) [ie, now].

The simulation of this scenario results in ‘‘overshoot and collapse’’ of the global system about mid-way through the 21st century due to a combination of diminishing resources and increasing ecological damage due to pollution.

One important point in the Limits To Growth is that almost all of the models end here. The default is collapse, and the burden of proof is really on anyone saying we can avoid it. The standard run is surprising accurate, but it’s not really about any particular model. The default scenario for any infinite growth in a finite space is collapse and you don’t need a complicated model for that.

Technological solutions are fundamentally more problem (resource use and pollution) and at best buy you (a little bit) more time. Global climate communism would mean stopping economic growth, controlling population, and distributing resources according to a rigid plan (ie, what westerners call ‘authoritarianism’). This is obviously a non-starter and, anyways, the time to start was 50 years ago.

What people chose in the 70s, 80s, and honestly up to today is effectively no action, which is the equivalent of taking strong action.

Taking no action to solve these problems is equivalent to taking strong action. Every day of continued exponential growth brings the world system closer to the ultimate limits to that growth. A decision to do nothing is a decision to increase the risk of collapse. Because of the delays in the system, if the global society waits until those constraints are unmistakably apparent, it will have waited too long.

This is precisely where we are, over 18,000 days later. We have been growing every single day and we have long since passed the ultimate limits to growth. We are feeling the time-delayed environmental responses to our bullshit, and our only response is bullshit pledges for 2050, ie a full doubling cycle later. We have offered way too little, way too late.

When the book was published in 1972, it was honestly too late. Their ‘winning’ scenarios required global climate communism that decade, and we got the opposite of that. Capitalism ‘won’ a Pyrrhic victory and now the world is in flames. Now we are nearly two doubling cycles later and the problem is four times as bad. It is way, way, way, way too late. We are well past the age of fooling around and well into the era of finding out.

Because of natural delays in the system, both population and polincrease for some time after the peak of industrialization. Population growth is finally halted by a rise in the death rate due to decreased food and medical services.

What does this mean for you? Well, as a person, you’re going to see massive population decline in your lifetime. We know this is happening in a gentle way in rich countries, as people have fewer kids, but this won’t be like that. As you can see, the birth rate actually goes up. It’s more the death rate spiking and killing people, many of them undoubtably children.

How does that happen? Look at the collapse in food per capita. Right now, every calorie we eat actually contain up to 10 kcal worth of fossil fuel energy. This is an energy return on energy invested (EROIE) of 0.1:1, a wild historic anomaly because we got a one-time inheritance of fossil fuels.

In a sense, we are eating our fossil fuels. It also points to an EROEI of 0.1:1, which is well below break-even. Obviously in times prior to fossil fuels, when we used human and animal labor in our agricultural pursuits, an EROEI less than 1:1 meant one had to put more energy to obtain food.

We still don’t know how to reliably make fertilizer or do industrial agriculture with ‘renewables’. Even if we did, the energy density of renewables is much lower than fossil fuels (compare 11 kcal/g for gasoline to 0.11 for an alkaline battery, or 0.0001 for a hydroelectric dam).

Regardless, if f you grow any consumptive process exponentially, it consumes you. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Less energy, less resources, and more pollution means more devastation.

Net-zero by 2050’ pledges are big business approved because they know that fossil fuel reserves become unprofitable by then. In reality, these pledges are an abnegation of any responsibility now and a guarantee of nature dismantling everything quite violently in the future.

Using ‘renewable’ energy for the same consumer society still digs up the Earth and outputs garbage. There is a fundamental conflict between any type of high industrial output, natural resources, and pollution. We’re just cheating the future so we can buy dumb shit a bit longer and feel good about it.

One guarantee that will be broken is all the debt this levered up society is floating on. Debt is all borrowed against a more rich future. It’s all borrowed against the idea that there will be more (young) population, more resources, exponentially more in fact. This is all false.

Hence you get the mother of all crashes, and the whole planetary Ponzi scheme we call ‘the economy’ comes down. Our present was all stolen from the past (fossil fuels) and borrowed against the future, but debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid. The 500-year Ponzi scheme we’ve called economic growth will all come down, shattering both illusions and reality as it falls.

We are on the standard run and this leads to a dramatic decline in living standards for our descendants. They will literally descend the business end of the graph, and curse us for it. When we completely bottom out, we will reach a kind of involuntary steady state, with vastly diminished resources, industrial capacity, and human population. Resources that could have been used to cushion this collapse will have been forever blown putting precious lithium in toys, flying footballers around in private jets, and assorted dumb stuff that will be remembered only in stories that sound more and more mythical.

Fate is coming for all our descendants, globally. It’s just a timing difference.