I spend a fair bit of time asking myself the question: Am I crazy?
I mean, without really wanting to do so, I seem to have landed on a fringe view within our culture, which is not a comfortable place for me in a social sense. I don’t love it. The easiest—seemingly most likely—explanation for the glaring mismatch is that I’m the one off kilter.
My statement: Modernity (even if defining starting 10,000 years ago) is a short-lived phase that will self-terminate—likely starting this century.
Common response: That’s crazy. Just look around you! We’ve created a new normal. Humans have transcended the bounds of nature—no longer mere animals. Ingenuity has unlimited potential, and we’re really on our way now. This changes everything, and we will never lose our technological mastery, now that we have found it. Modernity is our destiny—and kind-of the whole point of it all. It’s what makes us truly human.
But let’s look at evidence: like evidence that modernity is a new normal that can go on at least as long as our species is around (relevant timescales are 106±1 years, or a million years plus-or-minus an order of magnitude).
What’s that? Zero evidence? Of course we can’t know. The future is not kind enough to present evidence to the present. Hmmm—maybe that’s because we’re so mean to the future, frantically robbing its lives of Earth’s bounty and biodiversity.
The basic observation that we can receive no evidence from the future cuts both ways, of course. I have no future evidence that modernity will begin shutting down within a century.
However, we are not completely in the dark, here. We know some things (see my previous post on things about which I can be relatively certain). As obvious illustrations, we can be super-confident that day will follow night in a consistent cycle throughout our lives, that we will each die someday, and that the sun will render Earth uninhabitable on its way to spending its fuel. In a similar fashion, we can lay claim to a host of other near-certainties even without evidence from the future.
Near-certainties
What do I think we can say about modernity with a reasonable degree of confidence?
- Modernity is a very new phenomenon on this planet: nothing of its kind has happened before.
- Even extending the boundary of modernity to a 10,000 year run since agriculture began, its duration is exceedingly short on evolutionary timescales—even compared to our species’ existence of 250–300 kyr, which itself is short compared to many species’ lifetimes (i.e., modernity is uncharacteristic of humans).
- The present hyper-active mode, characterized by science, is just 400 years old, and the industrial/fossil-fuel age is less than 200: a mere flash, contextually.
- Modernity relies on non-renewable resources dredged out of the depths that are not integrated into ecological cycles and often create unprecedented ecological harm—the full extent of which we can’t possibly yet know. Even traditional agriculture chews up land on thousand-year timescales (much faster these days)—besides setting up ecological disconnection and objectification, money and capitalism, toxic social hierarchies and power concentrations, and human-supremacist religious and political regimes. For many materials, the prospect of depletion has become apparent after only a century or even decades of intense exploitation. The notion of maintaining current practices on millennium timescales is unsupported conjecture. Today’s practices and material profile represent a one-time stunt.
- We have loads of evidence for rapidly declining ecological health, in virtually every measure. Accelerating biodiversity loss rates are consistent with the initiation of a sixth mass extinction. Modernity has every appearance of being grossly unsustainable.
- We’re sitting on such a glaring lack of evidence for other technological civilizations beyond Earth that it borders on evidence of there not being any (or at least rare in space and time: far short of a vibrant galactic civilization bombarding us with advertisements).
Maximum Likelihood
Taken together, the default position really ought to be that modernity is fleeting. The statements above would have to be flipped in order to offer a reassuring basis for modernity’s staying-power. A betting person would not be foolish to put a timescale on the reversal of fortunes that is commensurate with the time to get to this point: reverting to non-industrial form within a couple centuries, and wiped clean in 10,000 years or so. A more aggressive bettor would recognize that it usually takes far less time to knock something down than it does to build it up—especially when Earth is exhausted from the mayhem, unable to tolerate what it did for thousands of years leading up until now.
I guess what I’m saying here is: it’s not a 50/50 proposition lacking any context, where every gut-reaction opinion has equal value (consider: is it a 50/50 guess whether daylight will return tomorrow?). The burden of proof would seem to rest quite heavily on any person making the wild assertion that modernity is here as long as we wish it to be, barring only technological annihilation (i.e., too much technological success in the form of nuclear Armageddon or Matrix/Terminator style machine takeover; the latter “fantasy,” by the way, betrays the deepest ecological ignorance). As permanent as it may seem, observing modernity in full swing out the window is a very weak (transient) form of evidence, given adequate temporal perspective.
When someone huffs that we’re not going back to the Stone Age, is the reaction based on evidence, or on a universally supported/obvious-to-all model (like day following night), or on unexamined beliefs and emotion? To be clear, I’m not saying that the Stone Age is definitely where we’re going (some things have changed since then). But I cannot justify dismissing, out of hand, outcomes bearing a “lithic” flavor.
Cognitive Limits
Where is the evidence or historical insinuation to support the belief that modernity is here to stay? Is longevity a default position just because it’s really hard to work out how exactly modernity—so firmly entrenched and familiar—would go away? If so, why would we bind ourselves to limited imagination? One relevant question: do such statements of confidence in modernity’s staying-power tend to come from the least or the most ecologically ignorant among us? Realize that brains are not masters of reality, and no human knows more about ecology than they don’t know (i.e., we’re all ignorant, dog).
Brains are evolved, intricate meat-organs capable of cognition and forming mental-model shortcuts of the world that are generally very useful within their evolutionary contexts—thus their presence. But as crafty as they are at convincing themselves they have things figured out, brains are only small and limited elements of a larger ecological reality that is indifferent to mammalian neural musings.
In the case of not having a model for how modernity falls apart, the fact that an individual’s brain can’t expand to incorporate unfamiliar contexts, connections, and interdependencies—or entertain unprecedented developments—should in no way be taken as evidence or “proof” that modernity is compatible with ecological realities. One has nothing to do with the other.
Goes Both Ways?
I get that the tendency for some is to fling this right back at me. Maybe I lack the imagination to appreciate the ways in which unlimited human brain power can solve the expanding set of problems and keep modernity going/improving essentially indefinitely. This argument has a ring of inconsistency to it: brains are simultaneously acutely limited and infinitely capable. It reminds me of political arguments that paint an opponent as pathetically feeble while also being all-powerful manipulators behind the scenes. The real story is usually one of competition between varying degrees of incompetence, with a bit of luck thrown in.
Breaking the false symmetry in our case is the simple fact that I don’t put much stock in what imaginations concoct within brains—whatever the direction. No amount of imagining stops us from being animals who must breathe, drink, eat, poop, and die. We are biological beings evolved into an ecological reality, and are only here because humans worked for millions of years within a greater ecological context—one that continues to (grudgingly?) support us for the time being. The imaginings of brains, however, are not required to apprehend anything about the degree to which we are tethered to ecological health. No amount of imagining—mine or anyone else’s—will erase biophysical realities, many aspects of which are often obscured from view.
This is part of why my position may be so alien to the modernity-booster brain. It is unthinkable—heretical, even—that one would dismiss mental capabilities across the board. Yet, that’s exactly what I am using my brain to do: to insult itself in a most unconventional way.
So, I don’t need to (and can’t) understand exactly the road modernity will take in its failure, or to waste time fantasizing about how we’ll overcome the mounting challenges. It is enough to appreciate that artificial systems that are not folded into reciprocal ecological relationships will therefore receive no ecological support, will tend to degrade ecological health (dealing in “weird,” harmful materials that life cannot process), therefore leaving the beings who brought it about unsupported and unable to continue existing in that mode. Notably, we lack evidence to the contrary, and assertions that we’ll work things out come off as unhinged and desperate grasps, in this light.
In other words, modernity is fundamentally incompatible with ecology. It is not of ecological origin, does not play by ecological rules, has not been vetted to coexist ecologically for any relevant stretch of time, and is actively dismembering the ecological foundation upon which modernity’s perpetrators are utterly dependent for their own lives. Given this, only compelling (but non-existent) evidence to the contrary should move us from the default view that modernity is a short-term stunt. To believe otherwise is to court annihilation, willfully dismissing numerous warnings. It’s a Thelma-and-Louise mad dash for the cliff edge. Maybe we’ll fly: our imaginations say it’s possible.
Lack of evidence therefore does not “go both ways,” in blindly symmetric fashion. It’s not “anyone’s guess” whether daylight returns tomorrow. Let’s avoid false equivalency.
To the Faithful
Little of this bothers the true believer in modernity. But it is important to remember: any assessment by any human is taking place in a meat-brain that simply isn’t up to the task, and never will be. Techno-optimist musings tend to have a short temporal focus (decades, typically), leave out “irrelevant” ecology altogether, display other biophysical blind spots (inevitable for all of us), and amount to leaps of faith. Solutions look easier the narrower the focus and the greater the degree of ignorance—which will always be present in some substantial measure for any human or group of humans. It is often easy to spot deliberate efforts to narrow the scope so that solutions make sense. But doing so is tantamount to moving to a fantasy world where we can live happily ever after. Deliberate decontextualization makes things simultaneously tractable and irrelevant.
Coming back to the charge that maybe it is I who lack the requisite imagination, I say: nobody is capable of deep-enough understanding to see the issue with crystal clarity. And that’s the thing: I’m not even trying to, as I believe it’s a fool’s errand. To me, the strongest argument involves the evidence we do and do not possess: we have solid evidence that humans can live in ecological context for millions of years, and zero evidence that modernity is anything but fleeting—backed by no shortage of evidence exposing modernity as a nightmarish, cancerous ecological smash-job, killing the host upon which it utterly depends.
Why doesn’t the ecological angle bother the modernity-adherent? I suspect it’s because such a person has effectively unlimited faith in human ingenuity. It’s Dunning-Kruger-adjacent: if our technology seems like miraculous magic to a person, it’s easier to imagine its power is unlimited, right? For such folks, the fact that we presently live non-ecologically seems to be sufficient proof that it can be done. “We’ll just do more of the same, ever-better. Innovation will replace ecological function. We will synthesize the things we want and need. Wild biology will be obsolete. Other species have nothing to offer, unless we wish to use some in increasingly-engineered slave-form as a matter of our convenience.” Human Reich stuff! Total rejection of our ecological origins. It is a lot like throwing a rock into the air, and—based on the fact that it’s still going up—making the bold claim that it will stay aloft as long as we wish, because we can trick our brains into imagining it being so.
I actually want you to do this mental exercise. Imagine throwing a rock up, and having it come to a stop near the apex of its trajectory, thereafter hovering as long as your imagination wishes it to do so. Douglas Adams would say that our imagined rocks hang in the sky “in much the same way that bricks don’t.” See how easy that was? I’ll bet your rock is still up there, gently bobbing around—perhaps making happy gurgling noises, now that it’s been suggested. Okay, so do you think you could go outside and realize that imagined scenario (extra points for gurgling)? Is imagining modernity to be possible as long as we wish—in blatant disregard of biophysical and ecological realities that we don’t and can’t fully grasp—really any different? Are our brain-imaginings reliable arbiters of reality?
Indeed, modernity-optimism strikes me as made-up fantasy—a sloppy extrapolation based on a temporary set of accelerating stunts that have us rapidly plummeting toward the ground, presenting a momentary illusion of flying. But, the faith that we are well-and-truly flying and can continue to do so as long as we wish is virtually unshakable for many among us—as shaky as it is, at its core.
In order to support the fantasy of long-lived modernity, one must be willing to quickly wave off many concerns, without supporting evidence or deep understanding. That’s how faith works: one must evasively short-circuit potentially terminal complications, often because they are unpleasant to consider.
My Diagnosis?
As I said at the beginning, I often ask myself if I am crazy—being so far out of alignment with respect to those around me. Here are my considerations and basis for diagnosis.
- Given that believers in long-lived modernity appear to take it as matter of faith and optimism—rejecting the alternative based largely on its perceived undesirability—is a significant red flag.
- Given that boosters favor the happy, less challenging story while I accept an outcome I don’t find personally appealing (as a product of modernity myself) speaks to the asymmetry: I’m not the one arguing for what I (or at least the pre-awareness version of myself) want to be true. It’s socially difficult and scary to confront the prospect of collapse. I was happier before, but the universe does not unfold according to my emotional state.
- Given the lack of acknowledgment that the ecological nosedive (sixth mass extinction) is well underway, is deadly serious, is our primary existential concern, and is happening because of modernity’s activities and scale (independent of power source) seems like an important foundational oversight.
- Given that others decide that I’m wrong without careful assessment of material requirements and consequences for many millennia (impossible to get right, in any case) makes their uncharted, wishful position easier for me to discount.
- Given the lack of evidence that modernity can run the marathon, it would seem foolish to assume so based on a fleeting and disastrous sprint.
- Given the biophysical limitations of the human brain, responding to “modernity can’t last” with “I don’t see why not” is not compelling: of course it’s hard to see why not, which is a huge part of the problem. Appealing to the symmetric flip side—that “I don’t see how modernity could last” is similarly unsupportable—is turning this serious topic into a decontextualized game of logic that sets aside mountains of relevant evidence. This is no game: context matters.
- Relatedly, given that the assumption of modernity’s permanence happens in individual meat-brains that are in no way equipped or qualified to make confident claims is very telling, to me.
To avoid misinterpretation, I also have a severely limited meat-brain like every other human. Part of the journey—perhaps the hardest part for members of our culture—is accepting this fact and dropping the pretense that we’ve got this thing under control, or that we ever can. Mental mastery is an illusion: a flattering story we tell ourselves. But that doesn’t render us completely incapacitated or prevent us from dimly appreciating the asymmetry and sensing modernity’s fundamental ecological incompatibility—even if not in full technicolor detail.
Anyhow, I think I’ll dismiss for now the notion that I’m the one who’s crazy…until tomorrow when I ask myself the question again. Are the modernity-boosters ever asking the same question of themselves, or are they heretical enough to dismiss humanity’s cognitive capabilities? I would guess it’s far less common—being more comfortably supported by prevailing cultural attitudes and market forces—which are, of course, other significant dimensions to the problem.
Subscribe to receive e-mail notices of new posts (info absolutely not shared!).
Views: 3034
The time scale seems to be the crucial element that is often missing from many conversations. It's impossible for us to plan for a future with unknowable details. Therefore, we tend to make short term plans. Some societies in the past have been able to take a different approach. They have tried to live in a way that will allow people to live as well as possible for the next 7 generations. This works well for the longevity of a society, unless it gets destroyed by a logically psychotic society bent on constructing a new tower of Babel.
A very well-written and cogent article.
It's a shame that most people refuse to contemplate the truth. They literally don't want to know. Trust the experts, they'll know what to do… If only.
Part of the reason is the (modern) education system. Far from encouraging critical thinking, its purpose instead is to prepare the masses for the workplace, where obedience and punctuality are the main requirements.
I find myself increasingly less worried about modernity's demise. In fact, I'd go as far as to say I'd rather live in the stone age.
Maybe I am crazy.
A new context, much needed now, comes from a comment in some media from one Florida voter who would not choose either aspirant to top U.S. political positions: "As a realist, I cannot support either side!"
Aldo Leopold was among the first to describe the emotional toll of ecological loss in his 1949 book, "A Sand County Almanac". "One of the penalties of an ecological education is to live alone in a world of wounds".
Your searching reminds me of the question of prying 'science' from the religion of "progress"='modernity'. How do we preserve 'science' without the "progress of humankind" and its concommitant destruction of the only planet we will ever live on!
For a long time, the fear of losing science and our hard-won understanding of how things work is what freaked me out the most about the prospect of modernity's failure: I sought ways to prevent that from happening. Now, I see them as going hand-in-hand, and no longer side with Team Science (see my Confessions of a Disillusioned Scientist post).
However, humans always have been and always will be keen observers of the world, and it's possible that the broadest methodology of science can accompany our observational skills to help us live in reciprocal relationship with the community of life. It's using some of the mentalities of science for completely different ends.
Hopefully we can remember to wash our hands. That was huge.
This point anticipates something I drafted for an upcoming post (probably two weeks out):
"We've learned some things that will stick. In that sense, the !Kung and other present-day hunter-gatherers might be more representative of survival statistics in an age when we have greater understanding of hygiene, disease transmission, the importance of clean water, etc. Some of those gains will not be easily lost."
Beautiful article Tom. Hysteresis is a thing and I believe many of what we have learned and has got a use in our more energy-limited range of possibilities will somehow stick around or will present little inertia to be recovered in the correct circumstances, sometimes allowing for a full recast of our perspective on a specific field allowing us for deepening our knowledge in ways that wouldn't be considered with other boundary conditions.
The demise of modernity as we know it is embedded on the transitional nature of the high levels of power we can inject in its infrastructure and I believe that in a "n-th derivative" of that there it goes the growth ratio of all branches that make up our knowledge tree, so the better we can do is trying to filter and condense the essentials for future generations to have a good grasp on everything (This is, to provide them a "good-resolution bonsai of that"). Information is also energy, and without redundancies (which is maybe >99% of what is up in the internet) I am sure we can preserve a good image of it 🙂
Your post is well articulated and the reasoning is sound. Yours may be a fringe position now, but as things progress and the possibilities you describe come to pass, there will be many more who will come around to this viewpoint. Hell, there are already many folks who agree with the views you espouse. Yes, we are a minority caucus and have been for decades, but I suspect not for much longer. To those who believe in a Boserupian potential for human technological innovation, to those who have faith in humankind's endless ability to mitigate or adapt to ecological challenges, that somehow 'science' will come up with a way to keep the circus going — to all those folks your position, Tom, will feel overly deterministic. But how does one escape a mass delusion, especially when it is society-wide and universally accepted as reality? Folks will believe that it's going to be alright up until reality smacks them in the face, because it's comforting to do so. Think it can't happen here? Better think again, because it's already underway.
Thank you. I too ask myself "Am I crazy?" every single day.
It is helpful to read articulate, smart people like yourself who ask this question and come to the same conclusions. It is indeed a lonely business being so out-of-synch with the norm.
I think you are over complicating it.
The evidence for extreme overshoot is OBVIOUS but the majority can't see it because our species evolved to deny unpleasant realities as explained by Dr. Ajit Varki's Mind Over Reality Transition theory.
If anyone's guilty of overcomplicating things it's Dr Varki, with his ridiculous theory. There is no gene for 'reality denial' (whatever reality is). It doesn't work like that. The interplay of genes and environment is far too complex for anyone to understand. It's just fashionable to say there's a gene for behaviour A or a gene for behaviour B etc.
Yes, the evidence for extreme overshoot is obvious. The majority can't see it because they're social animals, and their culture tells them that they're great (human supremacy again), and that technology will solve all their problems. While that might constitute a denial of reality, it doesn't follow that there's a genetic basis for it.
I've tried to argue against MORT for some time but Rob is stubborn in his support of the hypothesis. There are other explanations and it doesn't even need the fact that humans are a social species. https://mikerobertsblog.wordpress.com/2024/07/14/another-nail-in-morts-coffin/
The essence of your argument Mike, as I understand it, is that humans are animals, and all animals behave as they evolved to do.
You are 100% correct but it is not helpful for understanding why, for example, PhD physicists with a deep understand of thermodynamics and that study climate change, can believe that PVs and EVs are important "solutions" to fixing climate change.
Or why, for example, the majority of climate scientists ignore the few that do understand what is going on and why CO2 emissions increase with each COP conference, like Dr. Tim Garrett does.
You need MORT to explain this targeted blindness in super smart well educated people.
Super smart people are still humans, Rob, and thus members of a species. Being a species explains denial completely, since it doesn't matter what a particular human specialises in. The fact that even those who understand what is going on deny the reality of our species' almost certain future shows that no human is immune. I know I'm not, and I understand what's coming (at least in broad terms as no-one can see the future).
However, this is probably not the place to argue this out. Feel free to comment on my blog.
Your response suggests you do not understand Varki's MORT theory which is consistent with others I have encountered that argue against it instead of asking questions.
I was excited when I first heard about the MORT denial work, as denial is clearly a major factor in confronting difficult situations. And I do think denial of death (and immortality projects) is an important element driving people's actions. But the more I dug in, the more flawed the "origin story" seemed to me. Death awareness purportedly, on its own, would stifle enthusiasm to continue, reproduce, etc. I call it projection on Varki's part (and maybe followers share a similar impulse?). Many others would become more enthusiastic about procreation as the next-best-thing to living forever. I tried to communicate with Varki (we were professors at the same institution), but he never responded. In any case, it's a another shortcut mental model alleging to explain it all, but on very shaky footing. Moving on…
Thanks for explaining. You are the first person I've heard argue that mortality awareness, in the absence of any social support structures like religion, or even another person to talk to with similar awareness, might cause an increase in fitness.
It would make for a great conversation between you and Varki. If you'd like to discuss with him I can try to set it up and I will explain to him that you are a very knowledgeable and influential person worth debating. It may however not be possible because Varki's health has declined.
Fear does different things to different people. Some are energized into action (I'm that sort), and others shut down or become depressed. My previous attempt to engage Varki failed, and I came away with the impression that he wasn't interested in talking with someone who might not buy his central thesis. I'm more interested in the consequences of denial than on questionable speculations as to its origins. I would not be very invested in that particular debate. That said, I am sorry to hear of his declining health. This further suggests to me that there is little to be gained in confronting the issue.
Thanks for trying with Varki, and for the great work you do here.
For anyone else wanting to engage with Varki he's publicly stated that he welcomes anyone with a fact that kills his theory because he doesn't like its implications either.
He's not however very tolerant of people that attack the theory just because they don't like it, which in my experience is common.
Your post (RE: evidence, please?) sent me to a quick refresh of Thomas Kuhn's idea of anomalous evidence ultimately triggering revisions in understanding. Unfortunately, there is no scientific theory of modernity. It is a story, not a theory, one widely told and generally accepted — always safely beyond testing, questioning, or revision.
Science is so hyper-specialized, fragmented, and institutionally embedded (all left-brain) that we did not develop an explicit theory of modernity that could be tested. Instead, we have stories and memes (Bardi).
One potential anomaly that triggered some degree of questioning was the attention paid to energy, especially peak oil, which was recognized (too narrowly) as the lifeblood of modernity. We can be grateful for that trigger.
Your work is so helpful in reframing our understanding. We can articulate the elements of modernity theory, and share a contrasting framework.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/
A valuable take on things. Indeed, modernity "goes without saying" in science circles, as a necessary foundation for scientific activity. And, you are spot-on—at least in my case—about the gateway being energy: something that "belonged" to physics and was quantifiable. It's been a real journey from there, as I've learned to think more broadly and simultaneously recognize the limitations therein.
I suspect that any serious, holistic attempt to build a theory of modernity will quickly recognize its transient nature. It's hard to make a theory of sustainable unsustainability.
Your statement: Modernity (even if defining starting 10,000 years ago) is a short-lived phase that will self-terminate—likely starting this century.
It seems to me that in this article at least you don't back up the "likely starting this century" part of your statement.
Also, your statement suggests that you think modernity is definitely short-lived, as opposed to "almost definitely" short-lived, but most of your arguments are aimed at people who think modernity probably won't be short-lived, but don't (in this article at least) talk to those who, maybe foolishly, hold out some minor, tiny hope that it might not necessarily have to be short-lived.
It's a heavy lift to make the whole case in one post. I suggest checking out the Metastatic Modernity series (video option), or posts like Can Modernity Last, Distilled Disintegration, Inexhaustible Flows, and recent posts on population peak (and Peak Impact). When we're down to 2.5 kg of wild land mammal mass per person, have seen an average population decline of 70% in vertebrates since 1970, have toxic "forever" byproducts and microplastics everywhere, and will soon hear slurping noises in our materials demands—all while running the machine of modernity at a more frenetic speed than ever before—I'm not sure how the wheels can stay on the cart for the rest of the century before ecologies experience cascading collapse and modernity dashes on the wall of forced degrowth.
Also: why hold out hope for the most catastrophically destructive mode of living on the planet to persist as long as it might? To make sure the damage is maximal and likely extinction-level for humans as well?
Thanks for the response. Fair enough. I've read most of your other posts, and your book, and maybe it's just my complete lack of scientific knowledge or imagination, but I still think that a 50+% chance of this century having at least a "lithic flavour" is much different and harder point to prove than saying modernity will definitely not last for the next 10,000 years. You've done a much, much better job at convincing me of the latter than the former.
On the 70% vertebrate loss since 1970 point, I would be interested in your opinion on Hannah Ritchie's article about it. She thinks it's often misinterpreted..I don't know enough to judge for myself: https://ourworldindata.org/living-planet-index-decline
And finally, whether or not it's right to hope for modernity's continuance in any form, I still think it may be worth it to try to split hairs to determine whether modernity is 100% going to be short-lived, as opposed to something even a tiny bit less than 100%.
Oh–I would not suggest a lithic flavor by 2100! What I say is that the process will commence by century's end—unambiguous crumbling of modernity: population declines, economic failures, infrastructure loss, as a seemingly "new normal" with no end in sight. It probably takes a millennium or several to fully shake out to lithic form, if that's what is to happen. We're too accustomed to movies where things move frighteningly fast in order to fit in two hours. I am starting to think that "organic" demographic decline will force the reversal (via economic collapse) by the end of this century.
I have learned to be suspicious of Hannah Ritchie, as a data-savvy faith leader (see: https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/26/the-unbearable-anthropocentrism-of-our-world-in-data/). The situation is nuanced. As I understand it, the statement is that of all the populations they tracked, they saw an average decline of 70%. Some went up, some stayed about the same, and others went down (some dramatically). If this were the only study, I might be inclined to dismiss it. But I have also looked at papers detailing winners and lowers (few winners, many more losers; see e.g., https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12974). Also, 1–2% annual decline in insects and birds (many sources) comports with the same 70% decline order-of-magnitude, and the 2.5 kg wild land mammal mass per person (declining fast) is solid. A consistent story pointing to a sixth mass extinction appears in the literature, but as with climate change the waters will always be a little muddied.
Ah, okay, I misunderstood your position. Thanks for the clarification.
>Indeed, modernity-optimism strikes me as made-up fantasy—a sloppy extrapolation based on a temporary set of accelerating stunts
Much like religion, modern America's aren't mostly Christian becase of some deep insight into the world, it's because of when and where they were born. This same indoctrinating comes about with the modernity myth and as difficult for some people to get out from under no matter the what.
>That’s crazy. Just look around you! We’ve created a new normal. Humans have transcended the bounds of nature—no longer mere animals. Ingenuity has unlimited potential, and we’re really on our way now
Much like religion, they're indoctrinated. Their "belief" is based on entitlement. They see "miracles" all around them like cars, aircraft, synthetic fetiliser, nuclear energy etc and are able to be convinced that these terrible destructive bad things are evidence of good. I am sure those manufacturing artillery shells in Rusisa think a similar thing.
They're also in the top 10-20% not the poorest 80%, for example, a perspective on modernity would be different for these women
https://archive.md/Uld3n
or this guy
http://jamesnachtwey.com/jn/images/JN0011SUINGA.jpg
You're not alone though…
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/06/14/opinion/science-civilization-collapse-environment-limits
>Rees bluntly states, “the human enterprise is effectively subsuming the ecosphere” and “wide-spread societal collapse cannot be averted — collapse is not a problem to be solved, but rather the final stage of a cycle to be endured.”
Stay sane and safe.
"I am sure those manufacturing artillery shells think a similar thing." works just as well.
The manufacturing of the artillery shells, rather than the location of their manufacture, being the point.
Thanks for the post. I'm following a similar path in asking myself "have I got something fundamentally wrong?" But, each time, I just can't get away from the fact that we live on a finite planet. Even if, somehow, humans could survive without the wildlife (including plants) we seem intent on destroying, we'd start to run out of economically accessible reserves of materials to keep going. The fact that we've already crossed almost all identified planetary boundaries just amplifies the argument for our demise.
I was a bit confused by this, "To believe otherwise is to court annihilation, willfully dismissing numerous warnings." Only because what people believe is irrelevant to what is real. Unless you think that, if only most believed that modernity must come to an end, we can somehow avoid the end of modernity? Of course, I realise you don't believe that but that's why it confused me.
The argument by the rational optimists often goes along the lines of "look how much this or that has improved over time" like the rock reaching its highest point. Rational optimist arguments are almost always illogical. Should I have included "almost?" They point to how great life is (life expectancy graphs, poverty graphs, growth of so-called renewables, etc.) so, therefore, we must be able to keep going that way. Completely ridiculous but so convincing to them.
I now limit my hope to wondering whether, if most people could understand the limits and see that modernity can't go on much longer (either due to resource limits or due to the environmental damage being done) maybe we could figure out a least painful way down to a hunter-gatherer existence. It's really a hope with no basis, though. However, it seems to me the only reason to keep trying to get people to see reality.
On the confusing bit: by annihilation, I mean of humanity, not modernity (those are much different things, though conflated in our culture). Imagining two paths: one in which faith/belief is maintained and one in which modernity is jettisoned, the outcomes look rather different. The first keeps the sixth mass extinction on track and we go down with it, while the second provides an opportunity for us and the community of life to recover from the harms. In this sense, what people believe impacts what they do, and what they do impacts outcomes. We don't know which of these paths the enterprise will follow, but beliefs will be different in different paths.
How many people have even spent time looking at the evidence? It takes time to research this stuff. The mainstream media and politicians will not even acknowledge limits to growth, let alone openly say that modernity is inherently unsustainable. Sadly, most people are just in the dark about our situation and there is no shortage of magical thinking and snake oil salesmen (e.g. Elon Musk) who promise that technology will bale us out of this predicament.
After reading this post, I am wondering if you are familiar with:
https://www.worldometers.info/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4
Barring the commercialization of fusion energy in the next 40 years, it's hard for me to imagine that modernity's collapse will not be obvious to everyone alive in 2050. Maybe then it will be taken seriously?
Yes: Al Bartlett was a pioneer in communicating about exponentials. The first post on this blog and fist chapter in my textbook attempt a similar communication. S for fusion: were it to happen (not holding my breath), not much would change. It would be the most diabolically complex way ever conceived to boil water, and would only produce electricity (same limitations as solar/wind in that regard). Even getting past these challenges, fusion would only keep the engine of modernity powered so that it might continue carrying out its full-scale war on ecological health (deforestation, mining, manufacturing, chemical pollution, and waste). No antidote to collapse.
Tom – I am replying here, even though I saw your article on Resilience, which has canceled me. (Something the so-called "progressives" do, but the rightwing nutcases do not. Go figure.) No, you are not crazy. If you had rejected the system like I did in 1968, you would be far ahead of the game now. Since I am close to 75, it is likely I will die in my bed with the lights and heat on. Since you are in your mid-40s (as far as I can tell), it is likely (> 50% probability) you won't.
There are multiple solutions and adaptations. The best start is to get out of the city and find yourself some land. Since you have been an academic with all the income and perks, you should be able to afford a place where you can grow food. There are countless ways to adapt to your new environment – bliue-collar skill sets, gifting excess food, helping your neighbors, etc. If you need a little push and an analysis from the anthropological point of view, you could investigate my first book, The Laws of Physics Are On My Side (2013). If you just want a bunch of solutions, you can check out my second book, Hints for Managing Collapse (2014). Finally, if you want an outsider's view of how to create your own solutions using paradigms, my third book is Paradigms for Adaptation (2024) All of my books are housed in the Whatcom County Library System in Washington and available on interlibrary loan, so you don't have to put any money in my pocket. (I often threw this in the face of the Tea Party whackos when I was fighting them from 2010-2016.)
You are realizing that humans weren't meant to live like this. I figured that a long time ago and have moved towards a somewhat medieval, manual labor lifestyle. I now live in France among real peasants, where I still do my crop landrace research and give food away. World War III is here. Good luck.
Tom,
We are witnessing the great race of the blind leading the blind. ‘Everyone’ is out there, some willingly, but many forced to run a fast race every day while wearing a blindfold. They are running like red queens, in the wrong direction, ever faster. From time to time blindfolds slip down and people catch a glimpse, but either they or the officials quickly slip it back up. Ahhh, Nothing to see here! Are the officials also blindfolded? Most likely but surely some of them know what is really going on. Do they have a choice here, to stand up and declare ‘the end’? No way! Their identities are on the line, and it seems they would rather see the end of the world than have to rebuild themselves.
Are you crazy? I don’t think so – sadly, mostly everyone else has been completely radicalised by our radical culture. It is a relative motion problem, who are the ones on solid ground and who is flapping in the wind? It is the situation that is crazy not you.
You are an oasis of sensibility and wisdom, blindfold permanently shredded on the floor and walking cautiously in a much more appropriate direction. On solid ground.
Thanks for all your work.
Your prediction isn't at all unreasonable. But I think you're putting too much weight on the overall scale of time. As an analogy, suppose someone came up to you with a fair coin and flipped it over and over. You'd be convinced it was fair and 50-50. Suppose this was a special coin and you'd done this experiment hundreds of thousands of times, as did your father and grandfather etc. If it suddenly started turning up heads 95% of the time, how long would it take for you to adjust your probability estimates and say "something, I don't know what has changed, and it seems like the coin is no longer fair". In the Bayesian spirit you should update your probability estimates after some reasonable amount of time (depending on what your priors are). If you just kept saying my family has flipped the coin and it's been fair for thousands of times longer, you'd be correct technically, but still probably producing the wrong estimate.
I think of modernity in the same way. For a long time we didn't have modernity. But then something clearly switched and humanity had modernity. And over and over again when opportunities presented themselves to go backwards and for it to fall apart, humanity eventually found a way through. Of course it could all be unsustainable and all fall apart, but in the Bayesian spirit I'm more inclined to assume that something changed and forward progress is now more likely than backwards progress.
Of course this is insanely over-simplified and ignores all the real constraints of the world and our unsustainable approach. But it remains true that from Malthus to Erlich the world has found ways to keep kicking the can down the road. This doesn't make either of them wrong, but I think it gives evidence that the world is fairly creative and persistent in trying to extend it's run as far as possible.
All of which is just to say that I think you're too confident about the probability of collapse. Certainly in the time-frame you've said. Anything above 50-75% of modernity ending in the next 100 years seems too high to me (especially because it could easily take 200 or 300 years instead). Which, to be clear, a 50% chance of modernity ending in the next 100 years is incredibly high and something we should spending all of our time and attention on preventing!! But even the ecocide which is occurring won't necessarily result in modernity ending. And I can imagine so many ways in which certain nations simply ignore the suffering of the majority of nations and horde resources and wealth and keep modernity going in their corner of the world.
Your argument has a certain logic to it. But logic also dictates that the name Mike is short for Micycle. Abstracting to a magic coin does a disservice to biophysical reality, which is not as flippant. It is true that violent departures from normalcy are rather normal in nature (earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes), but they are also transient. Why is a coin that flips to a new "forever" behavior a more appropriate mental model for modernity than a transient destructive event? Clever brains can trick us into believing any notion is peachy, I suppose—especially when the result suits what we wish to be true. The degree of unsubstantiated disconnect and unwarranted ecological dismissiveness it requires to have any confidence that modernity (or humans) can truck along in the face of ecocide is problematic, here. As I said, I don't tend to put much stock in unconstrained imaginings. If the only bit of context I leaned on was timescales, you'd have a stronger point, in abstraction.
To be clear on timescales for collapse, I only state that I believe modernity will *start* its terminal decline this century. The process likely takes centuries to millennia to fully play out, also as a matter of degree. And in the mindset that modernity's end is inevitable and seriously destructive, why on Earth should our priority be on a futile effort to prevent its end? Is the goal to maximize the harm it causes and the risk of a sixth mass extinction?
Ah thank you for pointing that out, I had missed that your prediction only that it will *start* it's terminal decline this century. That strikes me as a plausible prediction.
I hadn't fully realized that your thesis was that modernity itself is unsustainable and there's no way of tweaking or changing it to make it sustainable. I agree that if that's the case there's no point in trying to delay its end.
Do you think there's a lower population (1B, 500M, 100M) at which we'd be able to sustain modernity? Or that the practices at even a small population level don't work?
Of course, I don't really know. In a simplistic sense, scaling down by an order-of-magnitude would seem to allow a ten-fold increase in runway before non-renewable resources (and recycling limitations) fail. Thus if the present mode has a century-long runway it becomes 1,000 years, and if current practices could conceivably go 1,000 years (I doubt it), then we're talking about 10,000 instead. That's still very short compared to our species' longevity, so appears as a blip/blunder—and a very destructive one at that.
The fact that modernity and its materials are not ecologically compatible is a big red flag that sets it up as a terminal offshoot not supported or vetted by evolutionary processes.
But the other touch-point is that we were at 1B in 1800 and already demonstrably unsustainable (even at MUCH lower per-capita material and energy usage). Denuding forests, obliterating ecological communities, driving extinctions. It's orders-of-magnitude worse, now, of course. But it seems even that mode of living (say Europeans in 1800) was not a model that a billion people around the world could practice.
For the sake of argument, let's say it would be possible to keep something like modernity at 10M or 100M people, easing the pressure enough to allow the community of life to keep up and process modernity's necessary toxic output (back to materials not part of the web of life). Is that sub-critical for maintaining a high-tech society? How would we get and STAY there? [Can we leave the goodies on the shelf, within easy reach, generation after generation, in global cooperation? Seems a real stretch!] Importantly, the way down (don't have "all day") will break institutions and fragile capabilities. It is difficult to see a realistic path that maintains the order and stability needed to support transmission of modernity into a 100- or 1000-fold reduction (on a century or few timescale).
All speculation, of course.
Very interesting, and while of course a degree of speculation is needed, what you say makes a lot of sense.
One question about looking to the vast deforestation in the 1800s, my naive understanding was that with better understanding and priorities we are now slowly reversing that at least in the United States. I assume a large amount of this is because of offshoring to deforestation in other countries. But would be curious to hear your thoughts. Do you think there's been any learnings or improvements in the last 200 years, such that with the technology and knowledge of today we could do a better job with the population of the past?
I admit I tend towards being somewhat of a techno optimist. But from my limited readings it seems like we're at least making slow progress now. That will clearly not be anywhere close to enough given the population of today. But that's where my question comes from, wondering if that progress continues, and population dramatically drops, if there's a chance for eventually reaching a sustainable equilibrium that maintains some level of modernity.
“Given the biophysical limitations of the human brain, responding to “modernity can’t last” with “I don’t see why not” is not compelling: of course it’s hard to see why not, which is a huge part of the problem.”
I think an important part of this is the impact modernity has on our brains, especially those susceptible to addictive traits, which is most of us. I see the same denial strategies with patients with chronic addiction and I guess it’s no surprise that things which provide us with pleasure and convenience, readily ticks all the boxes for a lifetime of dependency.
Yet, despite that, we are less happy, and discontented with ourselves and all that we have. That is particularly so, in my experience, with those who crave wealth and possessions. The paradox of human behaviour.
You do need to update your foundational knowledge on the resource requirements for energy.
Look at the material requirements for a modern solar panel (and not what a 10-20 year old dataset said they were even if it is republished via UNECE or TBI a year ago). Go pull one apart or read some trade documents.
It's a about 50-100 grams of scarce metals like copper, 5g of silver, and dirt.
These are resources that were easily available to someone in the stone age, and there is plenty for sufficiency.
If anything this makes considering exponentials **more** important, not less, because humans unshackled by energy scarcity will wreck things so much faster.
But it does radically change the achievable steady state. Anyone can have their 500 Watts of final energy that is the current average. It costs 80kg of mud and a bronze age necklace and the sunlight falling directly on their bed.
The fossil fuel age is not a brief blip of excess, but a tiny prelude. And this is terrifying,
First, one must include a heck of a lot more than the silicon wafer (which BTW uses high-purity quartz in short supply, not dirt). The frame, mounting structures, copper wiring, "balance of power" systems, etc.
But your larger point is that solar is so unconstrained (I disagree) as to make the situation scary. In a sense, the prospect that it's scary prevents it from happening: ecocide, which is the result of "scary" self-terminates modernity. In full complexity, various dependencies break and the system bogs down before total annihilation manifests. It's a lot like the thermodynamic argument that we'd boil oceans in 400 years under a 2–3% constant energy growth. What that tells us is not that we'll boil the oceans in 400 years (literal interpretation does not serve us well, here), but that growth won't continue for centuries (lots would break down before oceans boil!). Similarly, unsustainable systems will break before successfully carrying out total ecocide.
There are two parts to your reply. That the material balance is constrained and that non-constraint is irrelevant.
If we assert for a moment that it is unconstrained at significantly over the scale of fossil fuels, then this significantly enhances the rate and depth of overshoot. Most will die, but a substantial minority of humans can survive a 2.5C or even 4C world that the fossil fuel system will bring us if left unchecked. Whereas a civilisation wielding some part of the eg. 12PW that falls on the land occupied by an area the size if the beef industry can wield a lot more destructive power and weather it for longer before collapse. 100TW from 10 millibeef can also stuff the CO2 genie back in the bottle.
As to the constraints, I was being mildly hyperbolic, but the elemental balance (Al, Fe, Si, N, O, C) is there. And purifying it to 99% and reshaping it is something the machine can demonstrably do with larger quantities (on the order of 1M tonnes) of other substances that have lower quantity sources.
1.1V electricity in a wire isn't the same as oil, but it's not a strict downgrade even without supporting infrastructure. Modern inverters and BOS are also not what you are imagining. It takes 20-50 tonnes of 1kg/kW light commercial inverter to produce 1TWh over its 15 year lifetime. There is nowhere for 850 tonnes of copper to hide.
The total material flows for PV have been relatively constant for the last 20 years even as output has grown orders of magnitude. Physics does not prevent this trend from continuing yet.
You are a serious person and a serious thinker. Please, with all due respect, stop writing "meat-brain".
Can you explain what is galling about it, without resorting to human supremacist tropes? Brains are soft-tissue organs (i.e., not bone or cartilage) that are indeed edible as "meat" for many creatures. To be fair, I use the term knowing that it's jarring in our culture, given our degree of brain worship. Can you see the value in challenging this self-aggrandizement? Reminding people that we are animals made of organs, and that our brains are not magical devices beyond biology serves to ground us in humility, which is a necessary step in addressing an appropriate (sustainable) role for us in this world. As long as we perceive ourselves as gods—transcendent over biology—then we will remain lost and destructive. I embrace the fact that I have a meat-brain. I find it liberating, and want to provide a similar liberation to others.
Your piece, Tom, reminded me of one of my aphorisms, which I think you will like:
“Human beings, unfortunately, are too afraid to face their limits and, consequently, the limits of the planet Earth — or vice versa. Simply talking with people is enough to make one realise how arrogant most of them are, believing of themselves that they can be literally anything, if only they would like to.”
Thank you for the article.
Are you, or anyone else who doesn't succumb to cognitive dissonance and tries to tackle the root of the problem, crazy? Probably to a degree .. ha ha … nobody is completely non-crazy! We're all nuts in one way or another.
Anyway, cognitive dissonance is a powerful phenomenon. People prefer deluding themselves, rather than dealing with unpleasant truths. Then there's group-think, the argumentum ad populum fallacy, and so on – it doesn't pay to rock the boat, which means that people who might not see reality as being too rosy go with the flow, lest they be ostracized and fall by the wayside.
Your thoughts are right on and anyone who dares examine stuff objectively gotta reach pretty much the same conclusions. Many do, in fact. Generally, the more a person is incorporated into society, i.e. works in a collectivist environment, such as a corporation, the more they got the blinders on. Conversely, people who work alone, such as in a forest, formulate thoughts and conclusions that are much closer to reality, as they're unaffected by the corporate groupthink.
It is amazing to me how many stories like the following hit the media, and yet the narrative drive towards an impossible modernity powered by renewables continues.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/08/britons-urged-to-dig-out-unwanted-electricals-to-tackle-copper-shortage
It's possible that the alternative to this vision of the future is unthinkable for most people, so they don't think it.