Overshoot

Chemistry of an empire: the last Roman empress

by

The story of the Empress Galla Placidia deals with such things as system dynamics, the fall of empires, resource depletion, controlling complex systems and, yes, also a little about Christmas.

Her story seems like the plot of an adventure movie. She started as a princess, then she was prisoner of the Goths, then she became their Queen, then she was again their prisoner.

In the 5th century, when she came to power, the Roman Empire had been running out of reactants. It had been growing on the profits made from military campaigns but, at some point around the 2nd century, it had reached its limits. With no more easy conquests in sight, the Empire had to live on its own resources and it never really learned how to do that.

During the 5th century, what an emperor (or empress) could have done was to give to the events just a little push in the right direction. Don’t fight the change, ease it. It is the way of pushing the levers in the right direction. Could Placidia have done just that? Incredibly, perhaps she did.

As economic growth fails how do we live? Part I: The four horsemen of the economic apocalypse

by

As The Big Engine That Couldn’t has faltered for several years, it is becoming increasingly clear the economy is running off the tracks. Both investors and the public are beginning to realize the long-revered goal of endless economic growth is failing. Anger and fear are widespread, as the livelihoods and hopes of ordinary Americans are being destroyed. Anger runs among the “99%” over economic injustices that favor the “1%”. Fear, however, may run among 100% over this question: How do we live when economic growth fails?

At Growth’s End

by

In Extraenvironmentalist #28 we speak with Richard Heinberg about his most recent book The End of Growth which uses data on global economies and international energy supplies to argue that the paradigm of economic growth has ended forever. Richard says that while our economies will still grow in the future, they’ll be constrained to lower and lower rates of growth that won’t be able to support money systems and financial obligations

Climate – Nov 8

by

-Wild weather worsening due to climate change, IPCC confirms
-Global carbon intensity on the rise for first time in a decade
-Map reveals stark divide in who caused climate change and who’s being hit
-The heat is on
-Health cost of 6 U.S. climate disasters: $14 billion

Are we reaching “Limits to Growth”?

by

It seems to me that we may be reaching Limits to Growth,” as foretold in the book by the same name in 1972. The book modeled the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies. A wide range of scenarios was tested, but the result in nearly all scenarios was overshoot and collapse, with the timing of collapse typically being in the 2010 to 2075 time period. The authors of Limits to Growth did not model the full interactions of the system. One element omitted was how debt would impact the system. Another item omitted was how prices for oil and other resources would affect the system.

7 billion: Understanding the demographic transition

by

The term “Demographic Transition” describes the movement of human populations from higher initial birth rates to a stabilzed lower one, and seems to be a general feature of most societies over the last several hundred years.

The demographic transition is not a product of wealth or cheap energy in large quantities – we can see that by viewing the history of demographic shifts in Europe and the US. Instead, it is mostly about enabling people to make different reproductive choices, and supporting those choices – it requires no coercion, no high energy infrastructure, and is comparatively cheap to achieve.

Revisiting population growth: The impact of ecological limits

by

Demographers are predicting that world population will climb to 10 billion later this century. But with the planet heating up and growing numbers of people putting increasing pressure on water and food supplies and on life-sustaining ecosystems, will this projected population boom turn into a bust?

Jeremy Rifkin: The Third Industrial Revolution

by

The world is doomed to repeat four-year cycles of booms followed by crashes if we don’t get off oil, Jeremy Rifkin warned a Climate One audience in San Francisco on October 3. The solution, what he calls the Third Industrial Revolution, is the “Energy Internet,” a nervous system linking millions of small renewable energy producers.