Since you are good at challenging my position, maybe you could find some mistakes that would help improve the post. I talk about substitution and coal and transition scenarios and and whether adaptation is possible.
âI consider something a lack of imagination where every aspect of the solution exists, but for cost reasons we donât currently combine them in most supply chains.â
For me, the core issue is scale. Every individual aspect of the solution might exist, and can work in a small system, but does that mean it can scale up to what our industrial society requires? Or worse, to the ever-increasing requirements of economic growth?
There are other ways of manufacturing things, yes. But there are also constraints of time and investment: right now, for materials this is the main constraint, since a mine takes on average 16 years to go from exploration to production. Several organizations, like the World Bank, the IEA, the IMF, McKinsey and Company and Eurometaux have all issued reports warning of this growing problem.
âł Entirely electrified car factories already existâ
Ah, I had not seen that, good point. Plus, they seemed to have done a lot of efficiency.
Does the materials that are used in the factory (metals, plastics) have been produced with renewables as well ? I havenât seen that info in the article.
âI think Iâm still waiting for historic examples where a material shortage has resulted in anything more than temporary economic slowdown and protests against corrupt regimes. The gilet jaunes protests are the closest I can think of, which hasnât come close to civilisation-threatening. Maybe if there were a clearer pipeline from this to fascism.â
Itâs hard to pinpoint for historical examples at the global level, since a feature of our current civilization is interconnectedness. Every time a material shortage arised somewhere, it was possible to compensate with the production somewhere else (especially for oil). This means that in the last 70 years we havenât really tested yet a situation where oil is lacking everywhere, over an extended period.
Still, there are some analysts asserting that oil depletion in Syria and Venezuela were a serious factor in the collapse of these states. Of course, the economy of these states was highly reliant on oil, so a peak had more of a local impact. But I suppose one could make the case that our global economy is also extremely dependent on oil and fossil fuels at large, given the tight relationship between energy and GDP, so the analogy would hold out.
As for a pipeline to fascism, it seems pretty straightforward: declining revenues, rising inequalities (as is happening right now as well), loss of trust in institutions, increasing polarization (boosted by mass media and social networks)âŚ
A crucial factor would be rising food prices, especially, as you said, since geopolitcial factors and climate change would weigh in. The Our World in data article is interesting and shows thereâs some marginâbut it seems to leave out natural gas. Maximo Torero, chief economist of the UN FAO, told Bloomberg TV that unaffordable fertilizer prices (due to soaring natural gas prices) could reduce global grain production by up to 40% in the next planting season.
âThe fact that we restrict FF use because of lack of availability rather than a carbon tax shouldnât make a big difference to the difficulty of decarbonising.â
Well, the big difference is that the transition should take place at a moment where the energy required to build and transport windmills and solar panels would be much more expensive, and the economic system would be in a crisis meaning a lot more volatility.
âYes, I think a lower rate of growth is likely than in an ideal world without material/âoil constraints.â
I wouldnât think that our current focus on growth is âidealââsince it doesnât add much happiness beyond a certain threshold and goes hand in hand with environmental degradation. I definitely think that itâs possible to live well with less energy, especially in rich countries where, and that we should have aimed for a reasonable level of consumption. As you said, thereâs some margin before getting to threatening food prices (then again, rich countries) - which is why Iâm more worried by sudden interruptions there.
âBut itâs not clear that growth is negative, nor that slower growth, particularly in developed nations, is that bad. Would high resource costs trigger civilizational collapse?â
This is the reason Iâm worried: high resource costs would, in all likelihood, mean a decline in economic growth. However, our entire economic system depends on the economy growing, and I fear an unplanned degrowth can go pretty poorly.
Our complex economy is based on investment. The reason people invest is that they think that they will be getting more in the future, not lessâand this requires growth. If the economy declines, why invest if thereâs less trust that youâll profit from that?
Debt is doubling every 7-8 years, while the economy doubles every 20-25 years. This is unsustainable, and at some point this will to a realization that a large part of our debt will not be repaidâespecially if there is a recession. This will inevitably lead to a âcorrectionââthe form of which is unsure. One scenario could be a ârun on the bankâ, which could by itself lead to a massive economic crisis, the bankruptcy of many actors, and big supply chain disruption.
Of course, thereâs no guarantee things will end up this way, but itâs a possible pathway. The economy has gotten back from milder shocks, but the strength of future economic shocks is expected to get bigger and bigger in the future (especially if we add environmental damage ), so we canât assume everything will sort itself out.
This would lead to questions for which thereâs no clear answer (as said in Post 2). In the past, there was a feedback loop with more growth leading to more energy extraction leading to more growth: what happens if this goes into reverse? Will investment hold up for natural gas and oil extraction? If trust in the monetary system is lost, how will trade over countries take place? Will country with a monetary system? To pursue economic growth at all costs, wonât some nations resort to wars over resources ?
Another problem is that the amount of interest would keep growing in the economy. In practice, it acts as a wealth pump, allowing loaners to get a larger and larger share of the economy unless the economy is growing. In this case, this would drive inequality (and social unrest) to unprecedented levels.
Moreover, our shared objective, as a society, is growthâhaving more purchasing power. If this stops being the case, what can replace this shared objective? Nationalism? Promoting your in-group at the expense of others? A focus on the local network of people that live around you?
This is why I think the end of economic growth is a big deal: it changes everything. There are of course scenarios where things end up being ok (well, depends for who) but thereâs no guarantee weâll end up in these scenariosâespecially since this would lead us into the realm of âunthought futuresâ, so different we have trouble imagining them.
âYou may be glad to note that on several occasions when writing my responses I have had cause to exclaim âheâs less wrong than I thought!â I think this is all anyone can really ask for in an internet argument. â
Glad youâre thinking this way! I also find the exchange very interesting, and it lead me to change my position on several points. This is how I can progress, and I should thank you for that.
On your new document: I think I generally nod along to the peak oil and efficiency stuff. The renewables section is unconvincing, as you might imagine from our discussion above. You are right that there are a bunch of problems with IAMs making simplifications, but you donât demonstrate that any of the factors they are missing would seriously change the results of them. Itâs good to see that some of your arguments have grown more nuanced, but it also makes reviewing it more complicated and I donât really have the time to debug the report in detail. Iâm somewhat (pleasantly?) surprised that at the end of this all youâre suggesting that energy depletion might be good for reducing extinction risk though, I donât know to what extent that flips the whole of this conversationâmaybe you are actually the optimistic one!
These studies show that mineral requirements for clean energy grow rapidly. But they donât show that the requirements are actually that high in most cases, as they state the ratios âfor energy technologyâ. Currently we donât use a lot of minerals in energy provision, so a quadrupling of that amount sounds dramatic but doesnât represent a particularly large global consumption increase. Quote from the IEA: âThere is no shortage of resources. Economically viable reserves have been growing despite continued production growth⌠However, declining ore quality poses multiple challenges for extraction and processing costs, emissions and waste volumes.â So the problem is still one of energy, rather than actual availability, which is why power is more important than minerals. So really the minerals question is still a renewables question.
Of the minerals shown here to require more than 100% of their current levels in 2050, only lithium would not be fairly easy to replace or produce for a small efficiency penalty (graphite is just carbon, indium is used in solar cells but can be replaced with graphene https://ââwww.azonano.com/ââarticle.aspx?ArticleID=3942, cobalt & vanadium are used in batteries and and all have known substitutions). Thereâs some good stuff in this twitter thread, although it doesnât have citations for everything it needs.
The historic examples you give are of the resource curse; societies becoming dependent on extracting commodities. Iâm looking for examples of societies falling because they canât buy commodities. E.g. I might have expected the increase in guano price to have created a food shortage and thus civilisational collapse, but as far as I know we didnât see that; similarly, the rise in fertiliser prices you mention donât seem to have had a rise in fascism so farâindeed, the elections so far since the invasion started have gone better for the left than might be expected.
I reiterate that debt economics arenât my field, but Iâm skeptical that they provide a barrier comparable to physics. There is clearly a secular trend towards rising debt, but I think youâre overestimating it; this IMF graph of global debt-to-gdp only grows at 1%/âyear from 2000-2018.
I feel like the majority of people I know donât really have personal finance growth as their primary objective in life, and I donât see how our society does eitherâitâs almost an accident of economics at this point.
I hope that virtualisation and renewable power means we can happily all bring on the great stagnation!
Thanks for the answer, sorry I didnât reply earlier. I started working on another project for EA France, aiming to identify impactful charities working in France, so I had much less time to spend on the topic of energy depletion. I didnât want to do a rushed answer, but didnât find the time to dig into the topic once again⌠you know how it goes.
So instead, Iâll just publish an update on my thinking on the topic (while keeping in minf that I have found several important articles that I have to read).
So far, Iâve updated more positively on renewablesâtheir improvement is indeed faster than just about anyone had anticipated (which makes papers obsolete as soon as theyâre a few years old, and therefore makes it very difficult to get properly informed on the subject).
Several articles Iâve read have indeed made me update on them. There were several elements where I had underestimated adaptability. The EROI of renewables is indeed correct. I have a higher probability of an energy transition âfrom the topâ, where we maintain energy growth (which isnât necessarily good news, given that the more energy we have, the greater our capacity to destroy our environment and generate existential risks). Your link about the Twitter thread exposing the limits to the GTK report was indeed interesting. I also found an article here that showed several other limits.
Iâm talking less and less about a 2050 timeframe (which is what most of the litterature talks about). However, Iâm more worried about what short-term disruptions could imply.
Indeed, my worries are more about the fact that limits on fossil fuels are probably short-term : and that time constraints could prove significant. Going from a system where almost all trucks, or cement making, or steel making, or fertilizers, or hydrogen, or plastics (etc.) are dependent on fossil fuels, to a system where >50% of these are not fossil⌠this is going to take time, and Iâm worried about what would happen during this time.
Same goes for storage : batteries are improving⌠but it seems that weâre a long way from the deployment speed required for seasonal storage in order to have a stabilized grid.
As a French Energy expert stated (prominent member of EDF) :
âThe RTE report clearly shows that energy mixes with a high proportion of renewable energies can only be achieved with a very significant drop in consumption [...]. I admit that this reduction must be significant enough to involve much more than a simple technical improvement in process efficiency. Even so, why deprive ourselves of what at least makes it possible to reduce the pain, or even avoid widespread chaos?â
Itâs the âchaosâ scenario that worries me.
I feel like the majority of people I know donât really have personal finance growth as their primary objective in life, and I donât see how our society does eitherâitâs almost an accident of economics at this point.
It seems pretty clear to me that growth is the main goal of our societyâand that it stopping would have far reaching consequences. As I said, a society where everyoneâs share of the pie is growing is very different than one where everybody is competing to secure access to declining resourcesâthe degree of trust is not the same. Especially when some wealthy people in society have the ability to agregate more and more resources, as is currently happening.
The importance of financial growth is exemplified by the fact that âdegrowthersâ have besically no traction on a political level, despite clear evidence on their side of a strong correlation between environmental impact and growth.
The more I look at it, the more the global economy appears to be working like a Ponzi schemeârequring an ever growing amount of capital and energy and resources to keep everyoneâs trust in the fact that everyoneâs investments will be paid out later. At some point, it has to stop. The question is : how do you end a Ponzi scheme in a smooth way?
Still, the future is full of weird stuff, so weâll see. Iâve had less time to keep an eye on these subjects recentlyâIâve got several interesting papers to look at (and Iâll check your point on minerals and debt). Iâll update then.
Hi !
Itâs a period with a lot of uncertainties but donât worry, I can manage. Many people have it worse, indeed, and are more in need of help.
I am working on a post (well, probably in several parts) that aims to address the usual counterpoints to the problem of energy depletion: https://ââdocs.google.com/ââdocument/ââd/ââ1l-VI5gR-xGaUL95tvNgZ_BsXFB-aUQOtlug9zC-sn3M/ââedit#
Since you are good at challenging my position, maybe you could find some mistakes that would help improve the post. I talk about substitution and coal and transition scenarios and and whether adaptation is possible.
For me, the core issue is scale. Every individual aspect of the solution might exist, and can work in a small system, but does that mean it can scale up to what our industrial society requires? Or worse, to the ever-increasing requirements of economic growth?
There are other ways of manufacturing things, yes. But there are also constraints of time and investment: right now, for materials this is the main constraint, since a mine takes on average 16 years to go from exploration to production. Several organizations, like the World Bank, the IEA, the IMF, McKinsey and Company and Eurometaux have all issued reports warning of this growing problem.
Ah, I had not seen that, good point. Plus, they seemed to have done a lot of efficiency.
Does the materials that are used in the factory (metals, plastics) have been produced with renewables as well ? I havenât seen that info in the article.
Itâs hard to pinpoint for historical examples at the global level, since a feature of our current civilization is interconnectedness. Every time a material shortage arised somewhere, it was possible to compensate with the production somewhere else (especially for oil). This means that in the last 70 years we havenât really tested yet a situation where oil is lacking everywhere, over an extended period.
Still, there are some analysts asserting that oil depletion in Syria and Venezuela were a serious factor in the collapse of these states. Of course, the economy of these states was highly reliant on oil, so a peak had more of a local impact. But I suppose one could make the case that our global economy is also extremely dependent on oil and fossil fuels at large, given the tight relationship between energy and GDP, so the analogy would hold out.
As for a pipeline to fascism, it seems pretty straightforward: declining revenues, rising inequalities (as is happening right now as well), loss of trust in institutions, increasing polarization (boosted by mass media and social networks)âŚ
A crucial factor would be rising food prices, especially, as you said, since geopolitcial factors and climate change would weigh in. The Our World in data article is interesting and shows thereâs some marginâbut it seems to leave out natural gas. Maximo Torero, chief economist of the UN FAO, told Bloomberg TV that unaffordable fertilizer prices (due to soaring natural gas prices) could reduce global grain production by up to 40% in the next planting season.
Well, the big difference is that the transition should take place at a moment where the energy required to build and transport windmills and solar panels would be much more expensive, and the economic system would be in a crisis meaning a lot more volatility.
I wouldnât think that our current focus on growth is âidealââsince it doesnât add much happiness beyond a certain threshold and goes hand in hand with environmental degradation. I definitely think that itâs possible to live well with less energy, especially in rich countries where, and that we should have aimed for a reasonable level of consumption. As you said, thereâs some margin before getting to threatening food prices (then again, rich countries) - which is why Iâm more worried by sudden interruptions there.
This is the reason Iâm worried: high resource costs would, in all likelihood, mean a decline in economic growth. However, our entire economic system depends on the economy growing, and I fear an unplanned degrowth can go pretty poorly.
Our complex economy is based on investment. The reason people invest is that they think that they will be getting more in the future, not lessâand this requires growth. If the economy declines, why invest if thereâs less trust that youâll profit from that?
Debt is doubling every 7-8 years, while the economy doubles every 20-25 years. This is unsustainable, and at some point this will to a realization that a large part of our debt will not be repaidâespecially if there is a recession. This will inevitably lead to a âcorrectionââthe form of which is unsure. One scenario could be a ârun on the bankâ, which could by itself lead to a massive economic crisis, the bankruptcy of many actors, and big supply chain disruption.
Of course, thereâs no guarantee things will end up this way, but itâs a possible pathway. The economy has gotten back from milder shocks, but the strength of future economic shocks is expected to get bigger and bigger in the future (especially if we add environmental damage ), so we canât assume everything will sort itself out.
This would lead to questions for which thereâs no clear answer (as said in Post 2). In the past, there was a feedback loop with more growth leading to more energy extraction leading to more growth: what happens if this goes into reverse? Will investment hold up for natural gas and oil extraction? If trust in the monetary system is lost, how will trade over countries take place? Will country with a monetary system? To pursue economic growth at all costs, wonât some nations resort to wars over resources ?
Another problem is that the amount of interest would keep growing in the economy. In practice, it acts as a wealth pump, allowing loaners to get a larger and larger share of the economy unless the economy is growing. In this case, this would drive inequality (and social unrest) to unprecedented levels.
Moreover, our shared objective, as a society, is growthâhaving more purchasing power. If this stops being the case, what can replace this shared objective? Nationalism? Promoting your in-group at the expense of others? A focus on the local network of people that live around you?
This is why I think the end of economic growth is a big deal: it changes everything. There are of course scenarios where things end up being ok (well, depends for who) but thereâs no guarantee weâll end up in these scenariosâespecially since this would lead us into the realm of âunthought futuresâ, so different we have trouble imagining them.
Glad youâre thinking this way! I also find the exchange very interesting, and it lead me to change my position on several points. This is how I can progress, and I should thank you for that.
On your new document: I think I generally nod along to the peak oil and efficiency stuff. The renewables section is unconvincing, as you might imagine from our discussion above. You are right that there are a bunch of problems with IAMs making simplifications, but you donât demonstrate that any of the factors they are missing would seriously change the results of them. Itâs good to see that some of your arguments have grown more nuanced, but it also makes reviewing it more complicated and I donât really have the time to debug the report in detail. Iâm somewhat (pleasantly?) surprised that at the end of this all youâre suggesting that energy depletion might be good for reducing extinction risk though, I donât know to what extent that flips the whole of this conversationâmaybe you are actually the optimistic one!
These studies show that mineral requirements for clean energy grow rapidly. But they donât show that the requirements are actually that high in most cases, as they state the ratios âfor energy technologyâ. Currently we donât use a lot of minerals in energy provision, so a quadrupling of that amount sounds dramatic but doesnât represent a particularly large global consumption increase. Quote from the IEA: âThere is no shortage of resources. Economically viable reserves have been
growing despite continued production growth⌠However, declining ore quality poses multiple challenges for extraction and
processing costs, emissions and waste volumes.â So the problem is still one of energy, rather than actual availability, which is why power is more important than minerals. So really the minerals question is still a renewables question.
Of the minerals shown here to require more than 100% of their current levels in 2050, only lithium would not be fairly easy to replace or produce for a small efficiency penalty (graphite is just carbon, indium is used in solar cells but can be replaced with graphene https://ââwww.azonano.com/ââarticle.aspx?ArticleID=3942, cobalt & vanadium are used in batteries and and all have known substitutions). Thereâs some good stuff in this twitter thread, although it doesnât have citations for everything it needs.
The historic examples you give are of the resource curse; societies becoming dependent on extracting commodities. Iâm looking for examples of societies falling because they canât buy commodities. E.g. I might have expected the increase in guano price to have created a food shortage and thus civilisational collapse, but as far as I know we didnât see that; similarly, the rise in fertiliser prices you mention donât seem to have had a rise in fascism so farâindeed, the elections so far since the invasion started have gone better for the left than might be expected.
I reiterate that debt economics arenât my field, but Iâm skeptical that they provide a barrier comparable to physics. There is clearly a secular trend towards rising debt, but I think youâre overestimating it; this IMF graph of global debt-to-gdp only grows at 1%/âyear from 2000-2018.
I feel like the majority of people I know donât really have personal finance growth as their primary objective in life, and I donât see how our society does eitherâitâs almost an accident of economics at this point.
I hope that virtualisation and renewable power means we can happily all bring on the great stagnation!
Hi !
Thanks for the answer, sorry I didnât reply earlier. I started working on another project for EA France, aiming to identify impactful charities working in France, so I had much less time to spend on the topic of energy depletion. I didnât want to do a rushed answer, but didnât find the time to dig into the topic once again⌠you know how it goes.
So instead, Iâll just publish an update on my thinking on the topic (while keeping in minf that I have found several important articles that I have to read).
So far, Iâve updated more positively on renewablesâtheir improvement is indeed faster than just about anyone had anticipated (which makes papers obsolete as soon as theyâre a few years old, and therefore makes it very difficult to get properly informed on the subject).
Several articles Iâve read have indeed made me update on them. There were several elements where I had underestimated adaptability. The EROI of renewables is indeed correct.
I have a higher probability of an energy transition âfrom the topâ, where we maintain energy growth (which isnât necessarily good news, given that the more energy we have, the greater our capacity to destroy our environment and generate existential risks).
Your link about the Twitter thread exposing the limits to the GTK report was indeed interesting. I also found an article here that showed several other limits.
Iâm talking less and less about a 2050 timeframe (which is what most of the litterature talks about). However, Iâm more worried about what short-term disruptions could imply.
Indeed, my worries are more about the fact that limits on fossil fuels are probably short-term : and that time constraints could prove significant. Going from a system where almost all trucks, or cement making, or steel making, or fertilizers, or hydrogen, or plastics (etc.) are dependent on fossil fuels, to a system where >50% of these are not fossil⌠this is going to take time, and Iâm worried about what would happen during this time.
Same goes for storage : batteries are improving⌠but it seems that weâre a long way from the deployment speed required for seasonal storage in order to have a stabilized grid.
As a French Energy expert stated (prominent member of EDF) :
Itâs the âchaosâ scenario that worries me.
It seems pretty clear to me that growth is the main goal of our societyâand that it stopping would have far reaching consequences. As I said, a society where everyoneâs share of the pie is growing is very different than one where everybody is competing to secure access to declining resourcesâthe degree of trust is not the same. Especially when some wealthy people in society have the ability to agregate more and more resources, as is currently happening.
The importance of financial growth is exemplified by the fact that âdegrowthersâ have besically no traction on a political level, despite clear evidence on their side of a strong correlation between environmental impact and growth.
The more I look at it, the more the global economy appears to be working like a Ponzi schemeârequring an ever growing amount of capital and energy and resources to keep everyoneâs trust in the fact that everyoneâs investments will be paid out later. At some point, it has to stop. The question is : how do you end a Ponzi scheme in a smooth way?
Still, the future is full of weird stuff, so weâll see. Iâve had less time to keep an eye on these subjects recentlyâIâve got several interesting papers to look at (and Iâll check your point on minerals and debt). Iâll update then.