Resilience.org is running a series of posts capturing a conversation between myself and energy transition advocate Dave Murphy—moderated by Ben McCall. The entire conversation (from back in 2023–2024) involved eight exchanges. I echo the conversation on Do the Math, with additional commentary. The first six rounds were presented in Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 while this installment covers the final two rounds (also appeared on Resilience on May 26).

The relevant portion of the original content is replicated below, followed by additional comments from me that are not addressed in the exchange itself. Within the text, links within [square brackets] point to content further down the page. At the end of each addition, another link returns to the paragraph of origin (or use browser “back” navigation). If preferring not to interrupt the flow, those additional comments are always waiting at the bottom to scoop up any time.

Seventh Exchange: The Impossible Dream

Ben: Dave, I’m guessing that your sense of ethics gives a higher weight to sustaining the current “temporary fireworks show” for the benefit of today’s currently living humans…but Tom’s analysis would suggest that implies giving a lower weight to the needs and desires of future humans, as well as the rest of the community of life? What do you think Tom is missing here?

Dave: NOW WE ARE GETTING SOMEWHERE…:)

“I would say: we owe it to ourselves to be honest about planetary limits. To the extent that we can look to the long future and delineate the sustainable from the unsustainable, we ought to do our best.”

We ought to do our best indeed, in fact we are ethically obligated to do our best for all life on this planet. It is clear that we may differ a bit on the spectrum of biocentrism to anthropocentrism, but the key is that we agree that we need to be honest about what is and is not sustainable, and then do our best to pursue the sustainable option.

So—how should we pursue that? Given your previous answers on sustainability measured on the scales of thousands of years, we have the time, we just need the right mindset to get it done. For me, I think we need to pursue the energy transition as quickly as possible (to reduce GHG emissions), promote policies to lift people out of poverty (which, among many other important health and social benefits, reduces population growth rates), create economic systems that do not require increases in physical output year after year to maintain economic well-being levels, pursue agro ecological food production systems (which have been shown to be able to feed the entire planet without the use of fossil fuels for fertilizers), and all the other amazing ways in which we can provide high quality of life at very low impact. Is there really any other choice? [Is this the best we can do?]

Ben: Tom, how should we pursue the sustainable option? Is there another choice besides the route Dave has proposed?

Tom: First, I want to point out that my quote was “rethink or abandon” human cultural constructs. The rethink part comes first, and certainly allows selecting and amplifying positive cultural qualities accumulated by various cultures over the past. Culture is a non-genetic set of principles that we use to shape how to live. Humans will never be without culture, but some are more sustainable (valuable) than others.

Second, evaluating sustainability on evolutionary timescales does not mean we have the luxury of similarly long timescales to change our ways. Ample evidence shows that we can cause enormous ecological damage on much faster timescales (decades)—thus our predicament. We would be wise to reverse course comparably fast. A fundamental asymmetry operates here: sustainability needs to be assessed over very long timescales, while unsustainability—modernity’s bailiwick—can be arbitrarily fast. Full-scale nuclear war illustrates this principle in the extreme: many millions of years of evolution wiped out in moments.

The path Dave illustrates has nice features, but does not attempt to address ecological sustainability on relevant timescales. Even with zero GHG emissions, raising the poor to average global standards, stabilizing and feeding a population of 8 billion without fossil fuels, and maintaining current physical output (ending growth), how could Earth pay its annual salary (of non-renewable demands and waste streams) for very long out of the finite environmental inheritance?

Those lifted out of poverty would finally be able to afford more material goods (possibly a car, house), eat more and better food, enjoy climate control, etc. I am not saying that I would not wish such things, but they all act to increase the scale of the human enterprise. The only “bank” available to fund this “pay raise” is our overtaxed Earth, in the form of more non-renewable materials (mining), more manufacturing (pollution), more land use (deforestation, soil erosion, runoff, aquifer depletion), and more energy (materials and manufacturing again). Now we try to lock in this higher demand for the long haul (steady “burn” rate)? We appear to be well into overshoot, so neither an increase nor holding steady seems possible. Even redistribution that equalizes all to the current global average does not reduce the absolute scale. The ecological nosedive is so rapid that maintaining a scale even resembling that of modernity will most likely finish the job, whatever the technology.

My point is that we need to be extremely careful to assess what can work for the long term, rather than aim for a pleasant near-term extrapolation of the familiar that only continues to degrade ecological health and is not based on a realistic evaluation of long-term sustainability in its full context.

Do we have another choice? Of course! We could become disenchanted with modernity as an unfortunate dead-end and explore other ways to live and relate to the world. It can’t happen overnight, but we are under no obligation to follow a “modernity lite” path to failure. Attempting to do so could make life worse for more people and animals, in the end.

Eighth Exchange: Pre-analytic Biases

Ben: Dave, it seems that Tom is suggesting that your proposal (clean energy transition, lifting people out of poverty, and the like) is not sustainable, and indeed would position us for increasing ecological devastation in the coming decades. He seems to instead be suggesting that the only way to achieve sustainability is through a radical rethinking of our relationship to the natural world, presumably with correspondingly radical changes to our energetic and material throughputs. I know you’re a proponent of the precautionary principle…so why shouldn’t your proposal be viewed as too risky, given the stakes involved?

Dave: Thanks for clarifying your points on culture! I agree that there is a lot to be gained from the accumulated history of humanity!

I also agree and it is a very good point that unsustainability can occur on very fast time lines while the assessment of sustainability should be over longer time scales. That said, couldn’t an “act of unsustainability” in one time period be compensated for by “acts of sustainability” later on as long as permanent change hasn’t occurred? [Progress, but bargaining]

To the larger issue—We have spent pages trying to get to the bottom of our differences, clarifying what is meant by modernity, sustainability, timescales, etc, and it is becoming clearer to me through these exchanges that Tom has made an a priori assumption about the future, which he stated in his last post: “The ecological nosedive is so rapid that maintaining a scale even resembling that of modernity will most likely finish the job, whatever the technology.” Of course, since the future hasn’t happened yet, we cannot prove or disprove this assumption, relegating it to a form of metaphysics, or a belief system, or, as Schumpeter called it, a “preanalytic vision.”

The preanalytic vision, developed by Schumpeter, is defined in Daly and Farley: “analytic effort is of necessity preceded by a preanalytic cognitive act that supplies the raw material for the analytical effort.” Importantly, Daly and Farley describe that

One might say that vision [i.e. pre-analytic vision] is the pattern or shape of the reality in question that the right hemisphere of the brain abstracts from experience, and then sends to the left hemisphere for analysis. Whatever is omitted from the preanalytic vision cannot be recaptured by subsequent analysis. Correcting the vision requires a new preanalytic cognitive act, not further analysis of the old vision.

It seems to me that Tom’s analytic effort—which is on display in the pages herein—was preceded by his vision that “maintaining a scale even resembling that of modernity will most likely finish the job.” [Has Dave seen this plot?] My vision—one in which we make incremental (hopefully large) gains over the next few decades, becoming more sustainable [huh?] through time and level-out population growth through the demographic transition—is an impossibility to Tom not because it is wrong or incorrect, rather it is impossible simply because it is omitted from Tom’s preanalytic vision. Thus further discussion will, I fear, remain futile. [Are we done, here?]

In many ways, what Tom is calling for is a paradigm shift towards collapsism, in a way that ecological economics calls for a paradigm shift away from neoclassical theory. For ecological economists, the idea that society could have a steady-state economy (i.e. more or less what I am calling for), was (and is) inconceivable for neoclassical economists because the idea of a steady-state economy was omitted from the growth-based models on which neoclassical economics was built. In other words, steady-state economics is impossible in a neoclassical vision of the economy, just the same way that steady-state economics is impossible in a collapist vision of the future. [A swing and a miss]

I would also like to say that collapse is still possible in the spectrum of futures in my vision, it is just one I hope doesn’t happen. So in this way, Tom’s vision is more restrictive than mine. I do not require a paradigm shift to see that collapse could happen, but I also do not need a paradigm shift to see sustainability happen either.

But I would like to bring this conversation back to ethics at this point, because that is where I get stuck. What happens to people in Tom’s radical reboot of human culture on Earth? The implication (though never stated explicitly) is that sustainability is only possible in Tom’s vision if there are way fewer people. Is that correct? If so, how do we get there? Do we just accept that many millions (if not billions) of people must cease to exist to be sustainable? How do we approach that subject? [Just how monstrous am I?]

I said in the beginning that I am optimistic because I have children. My kids are my joy in life, and it seems not only against our basic biology but also ethically dubious to try to tell people how many children they can or cannot have; in other words, policy solutions limiting children is not an option. So how do we do it? War, famine? My guess is that Tom’s response will be that it is out of his hands, but suggesting that only one future is possible, and that that future must also have many millions (billions?) fewer people in it, requires at least addressing the pathway to achieving that. And that is where the ethics come into play. Who are we to assess which people around the world, which generations (today or future) are more or less important? Everyone is of equal importance and deserves life [Is this really true?]. So, I think we really don’t have any choice, we are required to, as Tom put it, “do our best.” Yes we have grown to a size that is problematic right now, but that doesn’t mean it has to be in the future. How are you going to “do your best?” How will any of us do our best? For my part, I will raise my kids to be environmentalists, feminists, and change-makers, instilling in them (as best I can) virtues and ethics. I will also produce as much good science as I can and never submit to nihilism and defeatism [the nihilism straw-man], no matter how bad the global environmental, political, social, or economic situation may get.

To be clear, I don’t disagree that population is a driving factor in environmental degradation. It clearly is. For me, the demographic transition is the only way to reduce growth equitably (and probably ethically), and it has shown itself time and time again to work. It doesn’t require endless economic growth, rather (among other things) gender equity and poverty reduction are required, both laudable goals by themselves.

Ben: Tom, is the difference between your vision of the future and Dave’s indeed a metaphysical one? Or can you make an argument that Dave’s vision is indeed “wrong or incorrect”? [Also feel free to comment on the ethics question.]

Tom: Dave raises a good point about pre-analytic vision. And it remains true that we cannot know the future. I have arrived where I am via a combination of data, extrapolation, fundamental drivers, and the precautionary principle.

I do not believe that I exclude steady-state-modernity notions because my biases have precluded my considering that state: I was once a big fan! My objection is about continued reliance on non-renewable materials (via quantitative assessment of recycling longevity) and continued ecological harm—whose prevention/reversal is effectively omitted from “transition” pre-analytics. Extinctions and non-renewable depletion are permanent costs that I would rather not continue racking up, steadily.

I would not call our difference metaphysical so much as contextual. No matter what each of us considers in our metaphysical framework, Earth is suffering irreversible losses at a rate not seen since the Chicxulub impact 65 million years ago—a condition that is not subject to our preferred cosmologies. But speaking to metaphysical differences, my foundation is that we belong to the world, rather than it to us. Maybe that core tenet makes my positions seem alien, influencing my values and what I consider to be important. [Not really metaphysics]

While I am a big fan of acknowledging the tennis match between right and left hemispheres, the exercise can be a long volley that spans decades and allows numerous corrections. This allows the pre-analytic vision to adapt and re-form based on analysis: rinse and repeat. If I look at my writings from a decade ago, my metaphysical (pre-analytic) realm was missing many pieces that I now possess, informed by analytic exercises and wrestling with their ramifications.

Among these, and germane to the present discussion, I recognize that just because the demographic transition repeatedly “worked” for the Western world in the past (ask critters how well it worked) does not mean it will work similarly for today’s poorer countries. The context has changed, dramatically. 70 years ago the world had a third as many people, a fossil fuel glut ahead of it, and a bounty of low-hanging fruit (materials) and unexploited ecosystems around the globe. A demographic transition: 1) takes many decades; 2) has always involved a significant population surge, as death rates fall well before birth rates; 3) results in greater affluence (per capita resource demand); so that 4) the aggregate resource burden on the planet soars from the combined effect. Earth had the (non-renewable) cash-on-hand 70 years ago, but can no longer afford a rinse and repeat. This is a case of analysis reshaping pre-analytic vision.

Similarly, my statement about the ecological nosedive is not a starting point for me, but a relatively new awareness resulting from data and analysis. In 2023 I produced a plot [shown farther down] of wild land mammal mass per human on the planet, over time. The result is startling. It changed me. It was not part of my pre-analytic metaphysics before performing the analysis, but will be going forward. As mentioned previously, only 2.5 kg of wild land mammal mass exists per person on the planet: it’s almost gone. In 1800 it was 80 kg, and already beginning to fall rapidly. This has happened not because of CO₂, but via deforestation, resource extraction and its associated ills, habitat fragmentation, overhunting, extermination, pollution, invasives, human-disbursed disease, and displacement by the human enterprise (i.e., modernity). Climate change interacts with these things to make a dire situation even worse.

Given the accelerating steepness of wild population declines, I am left to ask: what action would possibly result in their stabilizing or turning back up? The phenomenon is so steep, it would take an enormous, concerted effort to arrest the fall, and that won’t happen by accident as an unintended byproduct of demographic or renewable energy transitions. In fact, those things would appear to dial up pressures on the ecosystem via resource extraction—not to mention all the things we elect to do with the energy (hint: ecological restoration is not high on the list).

The sixth mass extinction appears to be underway now, and it’s happening fast. I would feel much better about modernity’s transition ambitions if the ecological crisis was modernity’s primary concern, but it takes a back seat to satisfying short-term human demands in a state of overshoot. To be clear, I am not defeatist or nihilistic about this: I am agitating hard to do something different—get people to think differently—hoping that we can avoid the worst unforced errors. I’d rather we collectively not have to see it to believe it.

As for ethics, I will just say that the scope must extend beyond humans alone, and well beyond the present century. My own “who are we” question is: who are we to consign entire species to the dustbin—avoidably? If satisfying the short-term wish list of one culture (that of modernity) extinguishes several species per day, I don’t know how to ethically justify those priorities. More maddeningly, doing so runs a sharp risk of promoting our ultimate failure anyway, as we—especially modernity—will struggle in the ensuing ecological collapse. I see the situation as simply unfortunate. We find ourselves holding the wolf by the ear: we can neither let go nor hold on indefinitely without suffering harm. We don’t have the luxury of stipulating that present-day humans suffer no downside. In fact, it is not unreasonable to expect the downside to be in proportion to the magnitude of our current transgression of sustainability. Fairness will not always appear to operate in our favor.

Conclusion

Ben: To bring this conversation to a close, I’d like to note that this wide-ranging discussion has laid bare a number of important disconnects between the two Murphys’ very different perspectives. Dave seems convinced that a just energy transition must be pursued in order to address the fundamental underpinnings of our current metacrisis; Tom seems convinced that such a transition, even if possible, could not be sustained for ecologically relevant timescales and might even accelerate the damage. Tom believes that modernity cannot be salvaged in any meaningful sense, while Dave considers the assertion that we cannot fix our problems to be an abrogation of our collective responsibility. There is also a big difference in perspective about the timescales that we should be paying attention to: an optometrist might diagnose Dave with myopia (nearsightedness) and Tom with hyperopia (farsightedness), but it’s a significant challenge to bridge visions of decadal timescales with millennial ones (we need bifocals!). Another significant disconnect stems from values: should we place more emphasis on reducing suffering among humans alive today or in the near future (as Dave might propose), or on enabling humanity and other species to flourish for millennia to come (as Tom would suggest)? A final distinction I’ll note relates to agency: Dave is firmly convinced that humans control our destiny, while Tom emphasizes the limitations of the boundary conditions imposed by our finite planet and our ecosystem.

However, it’s also worth emphasizing that our two interlocutors have much in common, beyond their last names and their years of work on the Planetary Limits Academic Network. Both agree that modern human practices are not sustainable, and that continuing on our current path increases both the risk of collapse and its severity. For either Murphy, business-as-usual is simply not an option. Also, both clearly care deeply about the happiness and well-being of both humans and our more-than-human kin, albeit perhaps in different proportions.

Yet it was striking to me the extent to which our two Murphys hold such different worldviews, despite sharing a broadly similar understanding of the facts of our current predicament. At times it seemed like they were talking past each other, unable to understand how the other saw things they way they did. Dave maintains a surprising (if not also inspiring) optimism that humanity can craft a bright future through an energy transition; while Tom seems to clearly think for modernity, the party’s over. In this Tale of Two Murphys, it seems it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

End of Final Installment

This fifth post covers the final pair of eight exchanges. The sections that follow offer additional commentary that was not part of the initial exchange. Turns out, I had more to say.

Our Best

Because I did not address in the previous round the impression that long-timescale consideration does not mean we have a comparably-long leash to come around, Dave repeats the hopeful position that the best plan we can execute is salvaging modernity with a shiny new energy infrastructure, as quickly as possible.

I do touch on poverty in the seventh round response, and the idea of stabilizing population in the final round. Dave leaves this one basically intoning that we have no choice but to pursue what I would characterize as a chimera! I disagree that options are limited to pursuit of business as usual by other means. (Return to conversation)

Timescale Resolution

I was glad to see agreement emerge on timescales: that destruction can happen very fast. Then comes a bit of bargaining: can we justify delicious ecological deficits now if we make up for it via future austerity?

Yes, and no: non-renewable means no take-backsies. But more importantly, extinctions are permanent and irreversible. The ecological effect of extinction is greatly amplified by the numerous interdependencies deeply woven into the web of life. It will already take millions of years for the present-day shaking of the Etch-a-Sketch (“introduced” invasives worldwide) to sort itself out ecologically. Most directly, unless ecological restoration somehow gets priority over direct/immediate human needs, no form of modernity will “make up” for itself in the future. Without an explicit commitment to prioritize ecology (at the “expense” of human population, energy, materials, comfort, footprint, etc.), it seems an empty bargain from a customer who has blown all credit. (Return to conversation)

Nosedive!

I don’t know if Dave ever saw this plot:

It’s hard to look at it and say “nothing a few solar panels can’t fix.” The predicament is far more serious—and older—than that. (Return to conversation)

More Sustainable?

I visualize the plot above whenever I hear the words “more sustainable,” which translates to a slightly gentler slope toward oblivion. Only a reversal of the sign of the slope is sustainable. Anything less is not “more” sustainable. A boat sinking in three hours is ultimately no more sustainable than one that takes two. Once on the bottom for decades and centuries, one boat is not “more sunk” than the other because the brief sinking episodes had slightly different durations. (Return to conversation)

Call to Close?

Dave may have sought to terminate the exchange on the basis that pre-analytic biases on my part (alone?) would prevent any meaningful convergence. I can’t say he’s wrong in identifying an impasse, even if not for reasons according to the model he suggests (see next point). The implication is that I am asserting (rather than listening to the material world assert) the inevitable failure of modernity, and thus no better than a brick wall as a conversational partner. (Return to conversation)

Pre-analytic Assumptions

There’s certainly value in pointing out self-imposed cognitive limitations, such as pre-analytic biases. Not represented in Dave’s analysis is that I journeyed through precisely the camp that I am charged with excluding by never having considered that framework.

But as early Do the Math writings attest, I once was enthusiastic that we could stave off collapse by getting ahead of the energy transition and establishing a steady-state economy. Dave and I were both tuned in to the same peak oil discussions, and I took seriously recommendations like those in the Hirsch Report that we needed to act fast on new infrastructure: decades before the downside. In effect, the combination of renewable energy and steady state economy was my pre-analytic starting point. It took twenty years of exploration to shed one after another biases implanted by having grown up in modernity. I address a bit of this in my response, but can’t emphasize enough that I only got to this surprising destination by a long road of dismantling embedded assumptions: I’m nowhere near my “pre-analytic” starting point!

In short, there’s a difference between collapse as a starting assumption and collapse as a reluctant conclusion after decades of torment. I was once terrified by the prospect of collapse, agitating for its mitigation. I have since switched from Team Modernity to Team Life. (Return to conversation)

Monstrous Misanthropy

This gets a lot of people. Me: “8 billion people are not sustainable; human population might need to be lower by 2–3 orders-of-magnitude.” Others: “Who do you propose to eliminate: yourself?”

The fundamental disconnect is imagining/assuming/fabricating a timescale I never articulated. It should not come as a surprise that every single one of the 8 billion people on the planet will die. I don’t need a proposal for who the “lucky” ones are. Every last one gets the shove, eventually. Ideally, people die reasonably happy after a satisfying life. But they do die, without any monstrosity required. The question is one of replacement, and that’s actually an area of good news, for a change: global fertility declines are poised to initiate this most important transition, totally unplanned in any centralized way! (Return to conversation)

Equal Importance

As to “Everyone is of equal importance and deserves life,” this statement is presumably confined to human animals. It’s part of the human supremacist trap: if every human life is valuable beyond measure, then ecology always takes a back seat by default and we all lose. Real, functioning ecology never makes the mistake of putting a premium on any individual life. That’s a fast way to break the entire edifice. Such constraints are not tolerated. Sacrifice may be necessary. Balance requires give and take. We can’t expect to take anything we want (500 quadrillion precious humans on Earth, anyone?) without devastating consequences. Some things truly are bigger than a human life, if that’s conceivable from within our culture. (Return to conversation)

Pointless?

Dave indicates that he will “never submit to nihilism and defeatism,” no matter how dire the situation. Perhaps I’m wrong to assume that he ascribes my views to having succumbed to a sense of pointlessness. If that is the insinuation, then I would chalk it up to a limited scope of imagined futures. If the only valid goal is preservation of some form of modernity, then, yes, I am defeatist on that narrow score.

But it sure doesn’t feel like defeat to me (which surely counts for something), because I don’t value modernity above the Community of Life. In fact, modernity is the number-one threat to ecological health on this planet. To me, it would be more defeatist to say we’re stuck with modernity in some form (inexhaustible solar?), and will go down with the ship if that’s what it takes. No! Other possibilities beckon, if we are open to a broader range of possibilities. (Return to conversation)

Misunderstanding Metaphysics

Back when this exchange took place, I was fuzzy on what constituted metaphysics, and some of the examples I use are not great matches. Today, I would say that my metaphysical foundation is one of material monism, from which a number of other positions flow (like humans and their brains being subsets of a larger physical world). (Return to conversation)

Reflection

Dave and I finished our conversation (in early 2024) with closing reflections that we did not include in the “official” version. Ben may have synthesized some points in his conclusion, but in any case Do the Math seems an appropriate forum for sharing my original reaction.

I value this dialog, which has served to expose an important range of perspectives in confronting our predicament. Dave and I share not only a last name, but a history of several years working together to launch the Planetary Limits Academic Network. I think it’s fair to say that we respect each other as academics and as people. Initially, I was excited by the prospect of a convergence involving “aha” moments on both our parts, but that did not happen. Neither of us seemed to generate new awareness in the other or find overlooked gaps in our perceptions of the predicament.

At times it felt like we did a lot of talking past each other—me often sounding like a broken record. Perhaps a similar dynamic played out between Europeans and Indigenous Americans: each could not understand the other, each thinking the other to be missing something big or to be incapable of understanding the obvious. For example, European concepts of property rights and money were not conceptually difficult, but to Indigenous folks ran counter to deeply-held values and would only be embraced by madmen. Conversely, speaking of all life as having immeasurable value may have sounded like gibberish to market-driven Europeans, even if such attitudes contributed to long-term sustainable living.

In the case of this conversation, each thought the other was missing something: Dave that I was too locked into certainty about the future—trapped by a pre-analytic view that did not permit less doomer-ish outcomes. Granted, we can’t know the future, and I understand Dave’s desire to not prematurely give up on modernity. But I started my journey immersed in the view that we would save modernity via technology (solar, wind, EVs, etc.) and a steady-state economic model. If anything, that was my pre-analytic view. Given this, I feel I should have done a better job bridging the divide, as it’s a journey I have taken myself.

I deem that I was ineffective at landing my concerns about the techno-track. It’s not enough to want something to happen: the biophysical basis must be there to support it, and for the very long term. I kept trying to raise awareness on basic questions like: How can an energy transition work long-term given materials limits? And even if that were to somehow succeed, what is it that we use energy to do, if not exploit ecological resources? How will mounting ecological loss be directly addressed (rather than exacerbated) by “transition” ambitions? How can we expect to survive ecological collapse and a sixth mass extinction? Dave often focused on ethical responsibilities to today’s humans, which I can certainly understand, but I kept getting caught on ethical entanglements among a much broader audience, including millions of other species and billions of future humans. Unlike Dave, I do not have kids of my own, which admittedly may underpin a differing vantage when it comes to the scope of responsibility. I have, perhaps, the luxury of thinking very long term, and more bio-inclusively.

Despite not converging ourselves, we did manage to lay bare a number of key differences in perspective, which I very much hope can help others to achieve the reconciliation—or at least clarity—that we could not.

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