2023–07–29

Carbon and perpetual growth

Nate Hagens discusses energy, specifics oil as the foundation of the modern economic system.

There are ecological and energetic laws that apply to all life, including humans and our economies. By accessing a huge surplus of dense carbon energy in the form of fossil sunlight, we’ve effectively turbo-boosted our economies, populations, and material wealth - but what happens if this fossil abundance were to go away? What are the systemic implications of an economy tethered to growth, tethered to carbon?

He ends the video with “10 Systemic Inferences” which I would simplify as: The primary problem is global capitalism.

It’s interesting and insightful to view the planet as an organism in which increasingly complex human social organization (dominated currently by capitalism) based on intensely concentrated fossil fuel energy has resulted in a machinery that is, by it’s own logic, not capable of a solution.

10 Systemic Inferences

1. Oil is not the problem - the exponential monetary system is
2. We need SYSTEMIC, not piecemeal, solutions to climate (eg EVS)
3. Reduced oil availability will cause a financial/economic cascade
4. The Maximum Power Principle applies to our energy behavior/choices
5. Solving for: a) climate, b) equity and c) growth have different solutions
6. Climate change is an emergent cultural phenomenon - not the fault of fossil fuel companies
7. Oil is the master resource and will leave us before we leave it. The UK is unlikely to ‘stop oil’
8. Democracies will never vote for austerity
9. We are in a new ‘biophysical world. Old rules and expectations no longer apply
10. Currently there is no “choice” to slow our metabolism. (But there are other choices)