2019 Talk to Cascade Manor

Two major questions are now facing the world: Pollution of the atmosphere by CO2 and other gases; and the declining supplies of high-energy fossil fuels.

Basic Premises

    1. Ecology and Evolution
    2. The World of the Mind
    3. Crises of Population and Energy Consumption

Relations of People and Energy

    1. The Thermodynamic Footprint
    2. The Ecological Footprint
    3. Nine Planetary Boundaries

Energy and its Transformations

    1. EROEI (energy returned on energy invested)
    2. Transformity

Peak Oil

    1. Discovery
    2. Limits to Growth
    3. Decline and Assets
    4. You and I, and Energy, and Societal EROEI

Modern World Views

    1. Our Place in the Growth of Energy Use
    2. History of Modern World Views
    3. Some conclusions
    4. Outlooks for the Future

Actions

    1. Carbon Tax
    2. Resilience
    3. Elections

Basic Premises.

Humans are part of two huge systems: 1.) the world of ecology and evolution; and 2.) the world of mind and consciousness. The first world is of matter, energy, and organisms in which humans are animals. The second world is of culture, personal and social relationships, language, technology, religion, and storytelling. (Yet a third system in which humans are increasingly involved may be arising: the digital world of cybernetics and artificial intelligence.)

The second of these two systems–the world of the mind—dominates our thoughts. Being conscious of themselves and imbued with a sense of wonder, humans have created innumerable stories and myths about who they are, how they got here, what is the purpose of life, and how they should relate to one another and the unknown. However, these stories are focused on themselves and how they can best get along in their own cultural or spiritual worlds. Some of the grand myths such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism have

spread wildly but generally fail to view humans as physical animals. The dominant myth today is that growth and progress underlie our well-being.

Only with the emergence of scientific thinking, did a few people begin to recognize consciously that they were linked physically with the world of nature. The most dramatic and scientific story is that of evolution expressed by Charles Darwin. He, and among others the great naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt, showed that all animals are but part of a broader world that in the Twentieth Century has come to be called ecological. And as part of a constantly changing natural world organic life, including humans, has emerged through an evolutionary process.

Other scientific views have shown that all organic life, all animals, including humans depend on the flows of matter and energy and the ways that they become available to the organism involved.

My talk is based on ideas of how humans relate to nature through the flows of energy and matter. This is in contrast to the world of the conscious mind which until very recently has viewed matter and energy almost exclusively as resources or cultural evaluations of materials of importance to humans. The result of thinking of the world of the mind to the near complete exclusion of the world of matter and energy of which humans are embedded has resulted in our current existential crises of climate change and peak oil. These crises are unprecedented in the lifetime of homo sapiens.

Having failed to see that humans are part of the ecology of the Earth , we have been unable to recognize the certain decline and likely collapse of civilization as we know it. The natural world within which the human species evolved and on which civilization must depend is rapidly becoming shredded by human activities. Not only have the consequences of human induced climate changes become apparent, but also the devastations of biodiversity through simplifications and extinctions have increasingly been observed.

It is, however, easy to ignore the signs of decline and probable collapse when more humans’ lives are better than ever. More people live longer and are healthier, eat better, are more mobile, and have greater material wealth. We only need to compare our lives with those of most people who lived but two centuries ago. The success of modern life is apparent when compared to the lives of the one billion world inhabitants in 1803, and even the two billion people when I was born, let alone the 7.7 billion people today. I, and many of you, live longer and with more material wealth than even kings and queens did but a couple of centuries ago.

We must ask “What supports this increased and healthier population? ” and “What has allowed us to live surrounded with so many conveniences and goods?” And “Why is decline of civilization as we know it inevitable?”

The answers are quite simple: all organisms, from cells to humans, reproduce and grow until they reach the limits of their ecological niche; and humans have been able to break free, at least temporarily, from the ecological limits in which they evolved because they have captured the vast energy stored in fossil fuels.

But now the human population has grown so much that it approaches the limits of further growth.

Crises of Population and Energy Consumption

Growth in Earth’s human population.

Until recently, the human species had not reached its ecological limits. It was able to reproduce and grow from maybe five million people at the time of the first agricultural communities 10,000 years ago to one billion people in 1803.

Oregon today has a population about the same as the world had at the time of the first farmers.

The discoveries and application of new, fossil fuel based technologies allowed new forms of agriculture, transportation, medicine and thousands of products and services that benefit human life. The result of these changes is best seen in the growth of the human population of the Earth. Until the beginning of the 19th Century, there had been soil erosion and deforestation caused by agriculture and desertification related to overgrazing animals. But new lands for farmers and grazers were still largely available. Ecological limits on a worldwide scale had not been threatened and humans had not greatly altered the course of evolution.

Malthusian limits were avoided by ever increasing technologies based on fossil fuel energy and by new lands.

Growth of consumption of primary energy.

The use of traditional biofuels–wood, vegetation, dung, etc.–has remained relatively constant since 1800, increasing somewhat in the initial stages of the industrial revolution and then again when in recent years as rural populations have grown. By the beginning of the twentieth century more energy from coal than the traditional biofuels was consumed. Coal continued to be used increasingly, with minor ups and downs, until it reached a peak in 2011. Crude oil became the major source of energy in the early 1960s and continues as such to today. Natural gas, like crude oil before it, has increasingly become a major source of energy. The use of fossil fuels–coal, crude oil, and natural gas–has greatly accelerated since 1950 with about a seven fold increase today.

Thermodynamic Footprint

In 1800 the average individual thermodynamic footprint was just over 1 human equivalent (HE), since not much fossil fuel or electricity was in use yet. By 1900 the average TF was about 4 HE, meaning that each person had the same impact as four “unassisted” people. By 2010 the TF of an “average” world citizen was almost 20 HE. Each person alive today puts the same load on the planet as 20 people did 200 or more years ago. Each person in the world in 2010 had on average the equivalent of 20 energy slaves.

World Thermodynamic Footprint Since 1800. By multiplying the average global TF figure by the actual world population, we can find the “Human Equivalent” population of the world. An historical view of population growth shows the results of the use of fossil fuels. When combined with the amount of each person’s thermodynamic footprint, the impact on the Earth becomes exponential.

In 1800 the actual world population was just under 1 billion, while the “Human Equivalent” population was just over a billion.

By 2010, the world’s numeric population was 6.85 billion, while the “Human Equivalent” population had ballooned to the staggering level of over 135 billion people. This means that the planetary systems are now experiencing an impact equivalent to 135 billion times what they were as recently as the beginning of the 19th century when people were depending almost entirely on muscle, wood and animal power alone.

The Ecological footprint

The Ecological footprint, devised by the Global Fooprint Network, tracks, through time , the supply of natural resources available on the productive surfaces of the Earth: cropland, grazing land, fishing grounds, built-up land, forests areas, and on carbon demands on land. They call this “biocapacity.”

On the demand side, the Ecological Footprint measures the ecological assets that a given population in a particular area (from an individual to the whole Earth’s population) require to produce the natural resources it consumes and the wastes it disposes.

For the United States overshoot (the date on which the biocapacity is exceeded by the ecological demands) was reached before 1960. The biocapacity of the United States has steadily declined in recent years. And much of its demands are made by imports from other parts of the earth. The United States’ footprint is such that it would require over seven Earth’s to meet its ecological demands.

Boundaries of Nine Planetary Systems

The measurement of the boundaries of nine planetary systems has been calculated by researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Center. They have estimated the quantitative change of the variables that control the physical boundaries from pre-industrial time until the present. The planetary boundaries concept indicate limits within which humanity can continue to maintain itself without major ecological change. (Shown in green are the safe zones; in yellow–those of uncertainty and of high risk; and red are the areas that have passed the safe zone. Their report says: “Crossing these boundaries increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental change.”

EXAMPLES

Example 1: CO2 Global emissions-note coal;

CO2 concentration in the Atmosphere 1958-2018

the Keeling curve

(increase of CO2 emissions from 320 ppm to over 415ppm between 1958 and 2018)

450,000 years of CO2

Causes of Insect Loss

Example 2: Loss in Biodiversity

Loss of Insects and Vertebrates

All Insects

41% are declining

31% are threatened

10%/year are becoming extinct All Vertebrates

22% are declining

18% are threatened for extinction 1.3%/year are becoming extinct

Biomass of wild and domesticated animals

World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Index

The global LPI as a measure of the health of 16,704 populations of 4,005 species

MULTIPLE EXAMPLES OF CHANGE

Energy and its Transformations

         Energy is a measure of work ( Yields of heat and product)

Energy returned on Energy invested (EROEI)

All energy is not the same. It takes investment in energy to extract energy. The return on the investment is different for all sources of energy. The problem , today, is that all newer sources of fossil fuel and biomass and solar yield less energy for the energy invested in producing it than did fossil fuels until recently. The obtaining of newer sources of energy thus requires greater investment of money. With high EROEI–fossil fuels of the last few decades, both production and consumption grew rapidly. Production has remained high because of deman but the shift to lower grade energy sources with a lower EROEI portends a decline in consumption as prices rise.

Much of the money for maintaining crude oil production with lesser quality of oil has been in the form of loans and subsidies which have yet to be paid back and are not adequately reflected in current price.

Recently, when production of crude oil stayed nearly level, prices varied with factors other than with the EROEI and the energy costs of production . Without credit passed on to consumers, the price of oil will increase and the cost of goods will increase.

EROEI

Energy Returned on Energy Invested

All energy is not the same. It takes investment in energy to extract energy. The return on the investment is different for all sources of energy. The problem , today, is that all newer sources of fossil fuel and biomass yield less energy for the energy used in producing it than did fossil fuels until recently. The obtaining of newer sources of energy thus requires greater investment of money. With high EROEI–fossil fuels of the last few decades, both production and consumption grew rapidly. Production has remained high but the shift to lower grade energy sources with a lower EROEI portends a decline in consumption as prices rise.

Much of the money for maintaining crude oil production with lesser quality of oil has been in the form of loans and subsidies which have yet to be paid back and are not adequately reflected in current price.

Recently, when production of crude oil stayed nearly level, prices varied with factors other than with the EROEI and the energy costs of production . Without credit passed on to consumers, the price of oil will increase and the cost of goods will increase.

At some point credit will become more expensive at which time prices of oil will increase and consumption will decline. Energy prices and consumption are ultimately linked. However prices fluctuate also because of local and regional shortages, unstable political and economic conditions, etc

Transformity of Energy

All energy when transformed is concentrated and loses heat . From its initial form at extraction, the energy of all fossil fuels becomes available for use or transformation. At each stage of its use or transformation, energy is either lost as heat or changed in form, incorporating lesser amounts of energy in the new product of service. At each subsequent stage of transformation, the remaining energy also becomes more complex and concentrated as it is stored in a product of service.

At each stage of use, several different lines of transformed energy–the process Odum calls transformity— which has been stored within other products or services, come together and are combined in more complex products or services. In essence, increasingly complex and concentrated products and services are the result of large amounts of energy that was expended in their creation. These products and services are not the result of only the energy that has been directly applied in their creation but also of the energy that has been stored in them in previous transformative stages. As an example: it takes energy to refine crude oil. That refined energy may then be transported to a electricity generating plant; the generated electricity may subsequently used in a manufacturing plant; each stage using part of the original energy. The manufacture of whatever new product of service then requires more of that energy as well as energy from other lines of transformed energy already stored in other products and services needed in creating yet a new, desired product. The end product, such as a smart phone, thus is the result of huge amounts of concentrated and complex energy that has already been transformed in the stages leading to its use in the parts and services in making a smart phone. Howard Odum calls this emergy, “the available energy of one kind previously used up directly or indirectly to make a product of service.”) Transformity is “the calories of available energy of one form previously required directly and indirectly to generate one calorie of another form of energy.”

Materials and energy

Not only energy is transformed at every stage of transformation, but materials from nature are extracted and incorporated in new products and services. Like energy these materials become more concentrated and complex in the process. In addition to heat loss, waste products are left behind. In the United States the amount of new mineral materials used annually by each citizen is huge. In 2010, over 38,000 pounds were consumed by each person.

Per Capita Consumption of Minerals

Odum writes “. the more transformations that a product or service has gone through directly or indirectly, the more emergy it has consumed. The more complex the product or service, the more energy it has consumed.

The concept of Peak Oil

There is a point in time when the global rate of production in fossil fuels will reach a maximum and then will decline. March 7, 1956 Marion King Hubbert, a Shell oil geologist, in San Antonio at an oil conference the major American producers created a furor when he said that the US oil production would peal somewhere near 1970 and then enter an irreversible decline. “The exploitation of all finite resources will eventually exhaust them; it progresses at a certain pace until reaching its peak, when the exploitable resources are halfway depleted, and then begins to decline.” He said “humanity’s petroleum endeavor was a unique event in human history, a unique event in biological history. It is non-repetitive, a blip in the span of time.”

In the United States oil production did peak in 1971. Soon thereafter President Nixon took the US off the gold standard, in effect making Gulf oil cheaper and letting it substitute for declining US oil production.

Hubbert’s ideas when modified and applied to other sources of energy and other places have proven correct. Several peaks in oil production have been reached. The peak in the discovery of oil was reached in 1966; the peak in the amount of the production of oil per person was reached in 1974; the production of the five largest oil companies was reached in 2004; the peak availability of net exported oil (less China and India) was 2005.

Peak Oil 2014

The most recent charting of Peak Oil shows that the peak in conventional crude oil world production was reached in 2008. Non-convention oil has allowed the peak oil to delayed somewhat. This chart indicates three possibilities of future of oil: 1. continuation of the boom with non-conventional fuels increasingly used (at greater expense) 2. restrictions of fossil fuel consumption to maintain a CO2 limit of 20 C.; and 3. the estimates by the man who correctly predicted the 2008 , who see that in 2019/2020 all oil production will peak.

Decline and discovery : The ideas of the inevitable decline in the availability of Crude oil is indicated in that the known fields and the discovery of new fields are limited. And the cost of fracking and oil sands recovery will play out.

The publication of a study done by MIT, “The Limits to Growth,” in 1970 introduced to the public to the idea of the peak use of resources and how they interact with economic and social activities. The results of their study was dismissed by most people who did not recognize the basic facts that sources of the highly enriched energy , which has fueled the growth since the 1950s, is limited.

Limits to Growth—1970

Non-believers relied on their unconscious adoption of the myths that ignore the physical realities of resource availability on a finite planet. Economists generally believed that natural resources are primarily a part of an economic theory, not that natural resources are also a part of the physical natural ecology of Earth. Most economists have seen that the limits to natural resources are simply a part of a monetary and pricing system and as something for which substitutions may be found or overcome by technological remedies. In other words, the availability of fuels and raw materials (like pollution) are external to the economic system as is pollution and are not a part of their major economic theories. They disregard the finite, physical nature of fossil fuel.

A study updated the projections of Limits to Growth for the period of 1970 -2000. They closely followed the 1971 projections. If growth continues at the present pace, the production of energy will continue to rely on sources with lower EROEI. The increased reliance will inevitably result in higher energy costs, although the cost may be hidden in the short term by debt and subsidies that eventually may not be repaid or are devalued Applying the usual laws of economics, when peak oil is reached, fuels will be less available and more expensive, resulting in higher costs to manufacturing, goods and services .

Trends 1976-2000

Assets

The legacies of the assets produced during periods of growth to peak oil will extend the lifetime of goods and services; buildings or data banks of information are legacies that may be considered assets. We need consider now how to lessen the impact of declining EROEI.

Future following Peak Oil

Erosion of Assets

How are you and I, and every human individual related to these ideas about energy and Societal (EROEI) ?

In Howard Odum’s diagram above, of the sources of energy that go into the lives of an individual living in a modern society are indicated. The hexagon represents a person. The circles represent the sources of energy. Processing of energy is depicted in elongated arrows, and storage is labeled “body” and “$ savings”.

Imagine all of the stages of transformations of energy and materials that have gone into each of the products and services used by every human. This is how each person, as an individual, contributes to the global ecological footprint.

Life cycle Transformity

At each stage in a person’s lifetime he/she demands different levels of the transformations of goods and services. The diagram attempts to show the ways in which these transformations might be envisioned. Greater demands are made at each stage of life. But what will happen as EROEI declines?

In an Historical perspective when large reserves of fuel energy are injected into a society, energy passes through a series of transformations spreading through the energy hierarchy as a wave upscale and downscale.

In common language, the Industrial Revolution captured the economy starting with wood, charcoal, and water power, and coal. It expanded with the use of oil, nuclear fuel and natural gas. People and processes moved into the cities where the more complex and compact products and services of transformed energy congregate.

There they transformed the nature of society and created a brilliance of information processing centers by the end of the 20th century (at the same time as rural production intensified). And the information explosion of the 21st century is based on the high emergy of the earlier Industrial Revolution. But with energy peaking, the roots that support the information wave are already declining. The EROI at each succeeding stage must be higher to support the products and services that are wanted. The goods and services in the later stages of energy transformation will suffer. The pyramid of uses that are dependent on the cost of oil and other forms of energy will flatten.

The transformative waves show how energy and materials have become more concentrated and complex. As each wave began to slow down its emergy became too small to allow continued exponential growth but was transfered to the next wave.

By applying the concepts of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (which is based on Odum’s ideas of Emergy and Transformity), modern society must have an EROEI of between 5 to 10:1 to provide and maintain high levels of goods and services.. As an example, simply to have a find a unit of energy at its source–say a mine head–the EROEI would only need to be 1:1; to process that energy would require a larger EROEI; to transport it would be even larger. To support the green revolution in agriculture, that transformed and transported energy would require even larger EROEI; to feed people would require more; and so on as those people want education and health , art and football tickets, etc. which would require even more EROEI. At each level of transformation of goods and services the EROEI necessarily increases. A very rough estimate of different required EROEI has recently been that shows that to supply the goods and services required at each higher level of modern society , greater EROEI is needed.

Modern World Views

Our place in energy history

  1. History of Modern World Views
  2. Some Conclusions
  3. Prospects for the Future

I use this diagram of global primary energy consumption to illustrate the energy experiences of seven generations of my family. You may be able to see your family in a similar light. My great- and great great- grandfathers lived in a mostly pre-industrial world having migrated from Scotland to rural Canada. My grandfather, Robert, who worked his way across the United States as a blacksmith on the railroad construction crews and settled on a wheat ranch in eastern Oregon, saw the very beginnings in the acceleration of consumption of fossil fuels. He died at the end of the time when coal and wood dominated the energy picture.

My father, Orin, fully participated at its beginnings of the use of large amounts of oil. He saw the arrival of the first telephone, automobile and airplanes, of electricity in rural areas and incandescent and neon lights, refrigerators, radios, television, penicillin and a huge range of medicines. And he saw the changes associated with warfare from the First World War and the use of tanks and airplanes and the dropping of the atomic and hydrogen bombs to end the Second World War. My mother lived from 1902 until2004–experiencing nearly the whole life of the rise of use of oil until it reached its peak. I, Al, may be part of the last generation of Americans who lived in homes heated with sawdust burners and coal stockers– days when wood and coal were major sources of energy for heating. I grew up with rapid changes in specialized technologies– witnessing the substitution of transistor for vacuum tubes in radios and in Army Signal Corps equipment, the first national TV broadcasts, the Green revolution, the widespread use of soap detergents, and the progression from manual typewriters to electric typewriters, to word processors, to primitive computers, to desktop computer, to tablets and hand-held smart phones. My daughter, one of the last of the baby boomers, has known nothing but an ever-expanding energy world in which technologies that drive society and culture have come to be digitally based on . She is of the first generation that has lived in a time in which awareness of polluted natural ecosystems has become widely recognized. She and members of all of the following generations have lived in the technological and consumptive society that has been part of a energy world based on the benefits from the use of high EROEI sources. Post-baby boomers saw the birth of digital processing and the rise of artificial intelligence, which are simply part of the environment and culture in which they have come to know the world. Kevin, Sarah’s step son, has recently become a planner of solar technology. I have no good ideas about what Kevin’s newborn daughter will experience. That is the future we can discuss tonight.

The norms by which all of us view the world are underlain by ideas of progress, growth, and development. Growth and progress depend on cheap energy. But the demands for energy to produce continuing economic growth will become more difficult for two major reasons: the decline in EROEI and the need to invest in transportation and infrastructure to make newer sources of energy available. Energy sources such as solar and wind, have a lower EROEI than conventional sources of oil and gas and also require vast new investments in energy storage technologies, electrical grids, and infrastructure, which must still be supplied by traditional sources of energy.

And high yielding EROEI of nuclear power is not useful because of the radiation problems associated with it– remember Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukuyama.

Of course evolution is an ongoing process. However, if homo sapiens, the wise man, simply lets evolution run its course to the extinction of humans, so be it. But instead if she/ he wants to direct her/his place in short term ecological processes through using his/her sapience, he/she must use his/her wisdom to recognize that humans are but a small part of a much larger natural system. (Do I sound like the First Step of AA?) The development of complex symbolic expressions, cultural complexities and varieties have been the focus of homo sapiens in the past one hundred thousand years. Those few years represents but a small segment of the 3.5 to 3.8 billion years that organisms have lived on Earth and have responded to changing ecological conditions. By altering our habitat–our natural ecological systems, are we simply running out our course of natural evolution? Are we accelerating the course toward the extinction of the human species? On the other hand, can we of the wise species, with highly developed consciousness, recognize that we are part of a much larger natural ecosystem that plays the major role in determining ourselves as an animal species?

The scientific awareness of evolution and ecology first became known largely through the writings of Charles Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt in the middle of the 19th Century. (The term ecology is a much later term.) Until then most humans were not aware of the global implications of their place in nature. They had been unaware that they were an animal species within an Earthly nature; instead they created or discovered myths about their place in an immense, largely unknown universe in which they were located in relation to a god or gods. In these stories, as with the scientific story of evolution, humans are not in control of their lives. It was (is) hubris to believe they were (are).

I repeat as I began this essay with the fact that all organisms grow and reproduce until they reach some limits. Humans are complex organisms that in the last sixty or seventy years have begun to experience their natural limits as a species. Earlier, Malthus was aware of these limits in a pre-industrial world when energy use was almost exclusively limited to direct solar sources largely made available by photo syntheses of plants which were the ultimate continuing source of heat and food. In addition, energy that had been stored in trees modestly added to the direct solar input as did the gravitational flow of water. Coal was occasionally used for heat.

In 1864, George Perkins Marsh wrote about the modifications that humans had made to the land surface of the Earth. (Man and Nature, 1864) He recognized the destructive results of grazing and agriculture on the soils and vegetation of the Earth. These ecosystem modifications were the result of the use of human and animal sources of energy. As the industrial revolution increased the use of non-renewable energy, greater alteration occurred. At the eve of the accelerated use of fossil fuels–1955, Carl Sauer, Marston Bates, and Lewis Mumford organized a conference that brought together scholars from many disciplines to discuss “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.” The papers presented there, represent the state of knowledge of the ways the Earth had been and was then modifying natural ecosystems. Little could the conference participants imagine the magnitude of changes to come in the following years when the use of fossil fuels would provide energy that dwarfed energy uses at any previous time.

The thoughts of Marsh and others, such as John Muir, in the late 19th Century contributed to the preservation of less disturbed areas such as the national parks. In the early 20th century men like Gifford Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt started a movement for the conservation of natural resources, such as forests. In the 1930s H.Hugh Bennet, the head of the Soil Conservation Service, was instrumental in conserving soils. The TVA was a massive conservation project among other things. And Aldo Leopold made ecology a public word. Later in the 20th Century the awareness of major sources of pollution of land, sea, and air on a local scale resulted in abatement policies that corrected such problems as smog in Los Angeles and London, the burning of the Cuyahoga River, the extinction of wild life. The writings of Rachael Carson alerted a generation to the dangers of pesticides and chemical pollution. And of course, the efforts to reverse CO2 and methane gas pollution of the atmosphere dominate much environmental thought today.

Preservation and conservation efforts, and attempts to limit pollution are greater today and have more advocates than ever. These efforts are to be admired and encouraged. However great their advocacy is expressed, it is usually greatly overwhelmed by concern for growing the economy. Environmental values usually get lost in the desire to increase jobs, income, and technological fixes. (Locally I have been frustrated by the changes in planning programs at both local and state level, which first held natural environmental issues to stand on their own, but soon had to be considered directly with economic issues.)

The result is the continued growth of the ideas of the modern age which have been so successful in the last seventy years. Lewis Mumford so well expressed them as “The Pentagon of Power” which are the Powers of Politics, Progress, Production, Profit, and Publicity. But this pentagon has come at the expense of the natural ecological world. Supported by the growth in the energy from fossil fuels, humans are pushing the limits of that natural world and changing the pace of evolution. This outline, made in the 1970s, is close to the model used by the Trump administration and the Republican Senate.

Howard Odum’s Policies for Growth

International Energy Agency’s Predictions 2018-2040

This the IEA’s most recent projections for the growth in energy from various sources. Note the little possibility under their projections for renewables replacement of traditional energy sources and the implications it makes for the reduction of CO2.

Some Conclusions

The inertia of society and worldviews is great. We are firmly embedded in the modern culture which in the late 20th century and 21st century has witnessed spectacular growth in our economy. We have overwhelming faith that growth will continue. And if we encounter problems, we feel that technology will find the answers because we are a society with skilled and ingenious scientists and technologists. Others will continue to deny that problems associated with growth exist. Even some of those who recognize the problems postpone attacking them, instead blaming scapegoats–Congress, the President, immigrants, ethnic groups, etc.

We are in a new age and must first recognize that at its base, the growth of wealth of modern society is the flow of energy derived from fossil fuels. We must recognize that supplies of dense, concentrated energy sources are finite and are now declining. Furthermore the claims on energy are increasing, especially from a society that wants high energy devices and information services. We have come to expect medical miracles, a more powerful defense force, greater artificial intelligence. As a retiree, one of an increasing number, I want continued payout from my pension funds or an investment portfolio; I hope for better health care; I want to continue the good life of the services of Cascade Manor. With decreasing ERoEI of fuels as well as the inevitable changes following Peak Oil how can this growth and prosperity continue?

Unless drastic changes occur rapidly, the ecological footprint will continue to overshoot the biocapacity of the Earth’s ecosystems and more planetary boundaries will be exceeded. I see no evidence that these drastic changes are being made at the present time. Instead, global climate changes rapidly; and, locally, extinctions and habitat destruction increase. Our civilization has been unable to face these problems head on, however aware they may have begun to recognize them. Most solutions are piecemeal, and do not address the basic underlying causes.

Even if the CO2 crisis that causes global warming with its cascade of effects were to be solved by substituting renewable energy for fossil fuel energy the problems of overuse of energy would still remain. The processes of dealing with climate change have strong advocates who claim that these changes will produce jobs and boost the economy. But they ignore the underlying problem: to reduce energy use in general. The consequences of not doing so ignore the fact that we are embedded in natural systems in which energy drives all.

With present technology, ways of substituting and using renewable energy for current uses of fossil fuel energy are impracticable. Even if we rapidly and radically change our modes of transportation, recycle or reuse materials at all levels, or all become vegetarians and give up eating domesticated or wild animal flesh (all of which are good actions in themselves) they do not add up to greatly reducing our desires to grow our economy and alter our life styles.

On top of the projections of 1. Peak Oil and 2. the decline in fossil fuel production because of increasing energy costs of producing more energy, 3. the additional crisis in the use of fossil fuels in polluting the atmosphere is now recognized widely by the scientific community and much of the general public. But almost universally that crisis is not seen as part of the more general problem of growth. Attempts to offer solutions to the increasing emissions of CO2 are seen mostly in terms of technology, substitution of forms of energy,

regulations to cap emissions, or to change people’s attitudes by modifying their behavior to recycle, reuse products, to drive electric cars, and to live more efficiently. Certainly there is no national, let alone, international action to address the major problems.

Growth in modern society is going to decline in the coming decades no matter what we do. The decline in the quality and availability of fossil fuels is well underway. The question remains of how reduced growth will play out. Under present policies of both the executive and legislative branches of the government economic growth is nearly an untouchable subject. The policies for growth outlined by Howard Odum in 1971 largely remain in place.

What will the future look like?

Outlooks for the Future

Paul Chefurka’s   “View from 50,000 Feet”

Howard Odum’s “Prosperous Descent”

Let’s take a look at two perspectives of the future, base on knowledge of the role of energy and how it may play out in the next few decades. Paul Chefurka’s  pessimistic view has a 75 year perspective. Howard Odum’s “Prosperous Descent” considers the policies and actions needed to insure greater continuity to society after peak energy has occurred.

www: Paul Chefurka.ca–” View from 50,000 feet”

The following points constitute a scenario based on my reading, that I believe becomes increasingly probable as the time horizon is pushed out. Take this as a 75 year scenario.

In any event, what we face is not, at its heart, a technology problem amenable to an engineering solution. What we have is an ecological problem. We are in an overshoot situation relative to the ecological underpinnings that are required to support life, as well as having drawn down most of the accessible resources on which our civilization’s operation now depends. Our numbers and our needs have filled our ecological niche, which we have expanded to include the entire planet.

Odum, Howard T. :Environment, Power, and Society for the twenty-First Century (2007)

(I have combined stared elements of Table 13-2 with 13-3, pp. 389 & 39)1

Actions: Carbon Tax; Resilience; Election

What actions can we take as a society, a community, and on our own?

Beside reactions to peak oil, we have the direct experiential crises created by global warming. As noted above, global warming has accelerated the pollution of the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, in particular CO2. Peak oil and global warming are directly related, principally by the ways in which fossil fuels have been seen as limitless resources within a economic system that maximizes human goods and services at the expense of nd externalized natural system. The two are different in that global warming is an existential pollution-based crisis and peak oil is a longer-term problem related to how to live in a declining economy.

CARBON TAX

To attack the problem of CO2 demands immediate attention. Not to do so would result in changes to the natural world that are irreversible and harmful to the lives of all humans. ( to exceed one of the Nine global system boundaries.)But in the longer time frame, a decline in available energy has to be addressed to avoid societal and civilization’s collapse. I believe that we have to address the climate change aspects of energy use first and immediately. To do so, however, I believe that it will decrease the ability to adjust more slowly and with less disruption to a “prosperous way down.” The visual is from a Canadian proposal.

From a Canadian proposal

To reduce the amount of global warming requires an immediate reduction in fossil fuel use. I believe that for the United States (and other developed countries) the adoption of a tax on all carbon at its source–either at its extraction or point of importation– is absolutely necessary. The tax would need to be used to alleviate the distress caused to most affected people and to the ecosystems of the natural world. It could also address societal inequalities. The Carbon Tax Center has presented good arguments for a Carbon Tax in contrast to such approaches as Cap and Trade taxes.

A carbon tax is a fee on the carbon content of fossil fuels. Utilizing existing tax collection mechanisms, a carbon tax is paid “upstream,” i.e., at the point where fuels are extracted from the Earth and put into the stream of commerce, or imported into the U.S. Fuel suppliers and processors are free to pass along the cost of the tax to the extent that market conditions allow. Placing a tax on carbon gives consumers and producers a monetary incentive to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. Note that the tax is based on the energy content of each fuel.

Under an upstream system, an excise tax would be levied on (i) crude oil as it reaches the refinery, (ii) natural gas as it leaves the processor to enter a pipeline system or, for gas that bypasses the processor or pipeline system, arrives at the end user, and (iii) coal as it leaves the mine. To be consistent with a carbon tax focused solely on domestic use, fuel imports would be taxed and exports would be eligible for a refundable tax credit. Carbon dioxide captured from a fossil fuel plant or through industrial processes and permanently stored would be eligible for a refundable tax credit. Fuels or fuel products that are delivered to uses that do not release emissions, such as waxes, lubricants, solvents, or chemical feed stocks, would be exempted from the tax or could claim a credit. An upstream system would need to promulgate rules to govern such exemptions and credits. This issue does not arise to any great degree under a midstream tax, which aims to tax only those fuel products that are destined to be combusted.

Resilience

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https://www.stockholmresilience.org/

https://wayfinder.earth/the-wayfinder-

guide/

No matter what approach is taken to the inevitable reductions in the consumption of fossil fuel, modern civilization will change, and I believe radically. All of the current efforts to develop a Green New Deal are ameliorative and mostly goal setting rather than actual actions. The Stockholm Resilience Center sponsors a video course called Wayfinder that stresses organizational tools.

Another approach that has received some attention is that proposed by the Post-Carbon Institute.

https://www.postcarbon.org/ https://education.resilience.org/

We’ve packed a lot of information into four hours, and by the end of

the course you’ll have good start on two important skills:

It is positive and pro-active in that it shows ways in which local communities may become more resilient in a declining economy. I recommend its video course entitled Resilience that many of us participated in last year. It emphasizes actions at the local level. I encourage the old line preservation, conservation organizations to continue their efforts. And everyone who recycles, reuses, an reduces their consumption must by praised.

And, inform your representatives at all levels of government of the ecological and energetic based nature of both CO2 pollution and of the inevitable peaking of concentrated forms of energy in the near future at its consequences.

Having presented what I see as the state of the natural world and humanity’s inability to restrain its current patterns of growth while refusing to see the inevitable limits to its continuation, I, as an individual, remain reconciled to muddling along. The most positive thing I think that individuals can do, is to recognize that humans are but a part of an ongoing process of evolution and ecology. As such I (we) can become aware of my (our) part in creating and accepting the ecological and evolutionary changes that modern society has let loose on the planet and do my (our) part to lessen their impact.

VOTE FOR DEMOCRACY

We need to set new goals for ourselves and our descendants. We need to determine what makes us and all others happy or content–not simply more goods and services. For me, the most important starting point is to realize that we are part of a world of physical energy that flows through both our society as well as the world of nature.