"The crucial factor in all of this is net energy. - Richard Heinberg
Before a certain critical mass of human population, and barring natural disasters, the world's ecosystems in had generally been trending towards increasing the amount of soil and living species. Fueled by sunlight, what was once a poisonous, lifeless ball of rock became ever more welcoming as net surpluses of that energy were cumulatively stored in the form of chemical bonds.
Fueled by fossil sunlight, humanity is currently engaged in the process of returning the planet to its bare, poisoned, inhospitable state.
Heinberg goes into some detal here about how the fossil fueled industrial revolution allowed us to access not only current sunlight, which had long been a constraint on the flourishing of biology, but concentrated ancient sunlight. He closes this first section talking about the unsustainability of running our society on things that aren't being produced anymore.
The second part of this talk starts off discussing how the concept of limits on growth were systematically discredited by economists who were horrified by the idea that growth couldn't continue on indefinitely.
But yet, as with other things that exist in limited quantities and aren't being produced anymore, fossil fuel discoveries have peaked and then declined, while production may already have peaked. We depend on fossil fuels for everything, including food production.
As many have noted before me, agriculture used to be a producer of energy for society, but now it's a net consumer. We're consuming more calories (calories being a measure of energy) than we know how to produce without infusions of ancient sunlight.
Even coal could peak in as few as 20 years, as noted, with world fossil energy production falling down a steep hill following 2030. Our policy makers have utterly failed to get the concept of finite fossil fuel reserves through their heads, at least, that's the most charitable interpretation of their continuing refusal to seriously fund clean energy.
There's other R&D that needs to be done, as well. Heinberg notes that other key industrial resources are in decline and will need either to be replaced or used much more sensibly.
Arable land, land that can be used to grow food, is declining. Heinberg notes that in 1900, there were 4,000 tons of topsoil per person in the world. Though we don't have a precise read on what that is today, by 1995 he says there were fewer than 50 tons per capita. This is not only due to population expansion but to physical processes of erosion and degradation of productive capacity.
The production of rock phosphate, an important constraint on agricultural production, is at or near peak.
To drive the point home more starkly, Heinberg notes in his talk that around half of the world's non-renewable resources will be used up for good during the lifetime of the Baby Boom generation. Erm, thanks.
In this section, Heinberg talks about the Roman collapse that began with depletion of their agricultural soils, saying, "As the level of complexity increased, the benefits from that complexity began to decline."
He covers the need for de-mechanization and the relocation of people away from areas that won't be able to pipe in water and import enough food. He says we can attempt to do this humanely, or it will just happen by way of stepwise chaotic breakdowns.
Having just spent a week and a half in New York City I don't really want our society's complexity to decline. I like that complexity. I find it fascinating and wonderful. But it remains the case that a lot of human capital gets wasted in doing things that no one likes and that don't really need to be done.
We are, as Heinberg says, "borrowing from future generations what can never be repaid." In response to his solutions, I'd echo David Roberts and others:
One subject on which Heinberg strikes me as unduly pessimistic is the potential for R&E. He and the Post Carbon Institute think the best-case scenario is a massive, controlled, humane reduction in human population alongside a transition to a much lower-energy, localized form of life. For my part, I incline bright green. Worldchanging's Alex Steffen put it well in a recent tweet: "To be bright green is to know that a sane respect for planetary limits imposes no meaningful limits on humanity's potential, at all." It is possible to flourish sustainably.
But Heinberg's right that transition is "not optional," that these fossil energy peaks will happen whether we want them to or not. He noted in the first section that hunter-gatherers got a 10:1 return on energy put into retrieving food, pointing out at the end of this fifth section that industrialized agriculture uses about 10 calories of fossil energy for every calorie of food produced.
In his closing, instead of the mandatory message of hope, Heinberg explains that there isn't a soft landing possible for business as usual.
It is possible to work to ease the comedown from burning our global resource savings accounts, as he says. We are bright, capable and have good tools, like language, to support our efforts. He also points out that our community impulses, the social interactions that give us real satisfaction, can be a huge help in working to continue thriving.
Anyway, that's a lot to sit through, so if you did, thanks! But I'm curious what you think regarding the choice he puts to the audience at the end: If you had your basic sufficiency needs met (you have enough energy available to cook and stay warm, enough food, etc.) and a strong sense of community, would you be happy even if it meant having less stuff?
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