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The Spike and the Peak
Ugo Bardi, The Oil Drum
… The 1950s and 1960s were perhaps the most optimistic decades in the history of humankind. Nuclear power was soon to provide us with energy “too cheap to meter”, space travel promised weekends on the moon for the whole family, and flying cars were supposed to be the future of commuting. At that time, Robert Anson Heinlein, science fiction writer, may have been the first to propose that technology was not only progressing, but progressing at exponentially growing rates. In his article “Pandora’s box” (Heinlein 1950), he showed the figure shown at the beginning of this text. Curve 4, with “progress” going up as an exponential function of time, is the trend that Heinlein enthusiastically proposed.
… However, over the years, we seem to have been gradually losing the faith in technology that was common in the 1950s. We are increasingly worried about resource depletion and global warming. Both factors could make it impossible to keep the industrial society functioning and could lead to its collapse. These ideas originated, too, in the 1950s when Marion King Hubbert (1956) first proposed the concept of a production peak for crude oil, later called “peak oil”. The idea that resource depletion was a critical factor in the world’s economy has been proposed many times, for instance with the series of studies that go under the name of “The Limits to Growth,” which saw the light for the first time in 1972. Today, Hubbert’s ideas are the basis of what we call the “peak oil movement”. The concept is often extrapolated to “peak resources” and to “peak civilization”, that could also be the result of the effects of anthropogenic global warming. The people who follow this line of thought tend to be skeptical about the capability of technology to solve these problems.
So, what will be the future, the spike or the peak? Will the peak destroy civilization, or will the spike take it to heights never experienced before? A first crucial question on this point is whether progress is really moving at exponentially growing rates. The answer seems to be no, at least if we consider technology as a whole.
(8 February 2009)
The rhythm of rest and excess– the unsustainability of under-sleep (PDF)
Russell G. Foster and Katharina Wulff, Nature Reviews via Chronobiology
Abstract | There is a stark contrast between our attitudes to sleep and those of the pre-industrial age. In Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar we are told to “Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber”. There seems little chance of this today, as we crave more, work more and expect more, and, in the process, abandon sleep. Our occupation of the night is having unanticipated costs for both our physical and mental health, which, if continued, might condemn whole sectors of our society to a dismal future.
For centuries, sleep has been regarded as a simple suspension of activity; today we appreciate that it is a complex and highly organized series of physiological and behavioural states. On average, we spend 30% of our lives asleep, and we have little idea why. This ignorance is probably the main reason why our society has such little regard for sleep. At best we tolerate the fact that we need to sleep, and at worst we think of sleep as an illness that needs a cure. This attitude is not only dangerous but unsustainable. Our immune defence, cognitive performance and mental health are all affected by sleep and our circadian rhythms. Disruption of the sleep–wake axis results in a broad range of interconnected pathologies, including poor vigilance and memory, reduced mental and physical reaction times, reduced motivation, depression, insomnia, metabolic abnormalities, obesity, immune impairment and even a greater risk of cancer. There is an intimate connection between these pathologies and the way in which we have organized our society in recent years1.
(May 2005)
Downward Spiral’s Silver Lining: End of Lonely Plastic Culture
Jan Lundberg, Culture Change Letter
… With time on our hands from unemployment, good deeds can happen as a result of reaching out to members of the community. Sharing is an important human trait that has been suppressed by divide-and-conquer domination. The tendency neighbors have to be useful to one another in order to assure survival is second to none in our human impulses, for this is our evolution (until very recently). This can manifest itself by a care-giver providing needed help while the young or sick or infirm person’s family may pursue other activities such as rigging up a bike cart or foraging for firewood.
The closeness that will increase from such interactions will bind us together again as bands and then tribes. The nation state was an effort to smash tribes, in part due to megalomania of the empire builders or the self interest of the king makers. When the unfolding collapse of the U.S. economy and corporate globalism is further along, there will be tax rebellions and a redefining of new societies’ priorities. Economies will be local, with distant nations or tribes linked through sail power — as practiced for many centuries before the oil-powered cargo ships that destroy the air and water.
One’s personal living environment will be shed of plastic crapola (thank you James Howard Kunstler) that has crapped out and no longer can be powered. It is too late for our generation and our civilization to be known other than the Plastic Culture, based on the non-biodegradability of our petroleum products we “need.” But if there are future generations to study our trash, as today’s archeologists and anthropologists do, they may also note that we seemed to cease and walk away from our Plastic Culture and its associated ways — perhaps about 2009?
Forgotten pleasures return
Although gardening is hard work, it is also healthful and social. Since nature knows no waste, we will become very efficient and go with the flows to minimize work and disruption to the land and waters that must be restored to health. So when food forests start to bear fruit and nuts, as well as coppicing for firewood and basket materials, for example, we will work less and have time again for our songs, stories and dances that all our ancestors’ cultures indulged in religiously.
(7 February 2009)
Also posted by Jan: A “New” Energy Path for Our Times.
Is This The End Of Wealth Creation?
Ron Cooke, The Cultural Economist
The rise and fall of the Roman Empire is a classic example of Return On Investment (ROI). Rome essentially funded conquest through pillage, bringing rich treasures of gold and silver back to Rome. During the early years of the Empire, the ROI on conquest was very good and Rome prospered. It had plenty of coin to fund its Legions. As the years went by, however, it became more difficult to find lands worth conquering and the travel costs to send a Legion to remote lands increased. The ROI of conquest began to falter, and Roman Emperors finally concluded additional conquests were not worth the cost. Years of wealth creation came to an end. The Roman Empire shifted its attention to wealth preservation.
Whenever a nation slips from wealth creation to wealth preservation, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain the prior level of wealth. As the cost of maintaining the Legions went up, the ROI on having them declined. In order to pay the cost of preservation, Rome debased its currency multiple times. Debasement is a way to pay today’s bills with tomorrows worthless coins. That led to incredibly high rates of inflation. Payment in kind often substituted for worthless currency. This debasement continued until mercenary legions refused to take Roman coins, sacked Rome, and established their own government. (Reference 1)
Sound Familiar?
There is a lesson here. If economic circumstances yield a positive ROI on labor, capital and material, then a nation is able to create wealth. When a nation lapses into wealth preservation, the ROI on invested capital declines. It becomes very difficult to sustain transfer payments because the creation of wealth declines to a point where there is no more wealth to transfer.
Wealth, in this sense, has little to do with how much money the rich can command. We are talking about the wealth of a nation’s workers, and more specifically the wealth of its middle class. Rome’s declining ability to maintain the wealth of its workers led to unsustainable welfare costs. The cohesive energy of Roman culture collapsed.
This is precisely the situation in America and the European Union. The 20th century was marked by multiple opportunities to create great wealth – radio, television, movies, telephone, automotive transportation, coal, oil, natural gas, electricity, railroads, airplanes, bio-sciences, communications, electronics, semiconductors, computers, PCs, the Internet and software. Economic circumstances created multiple opportunities to create wealth for the ordinary person from the mid 19th through the end of the 20th century. T
(6 February 2009)
