4.2 - Autopilot

Here:

The technosphere is in a losing battle against the biosphere. There is no solution to our predicament, no way for our side to continue to be in this kind of relationship with the planet, and therefore no way for us to continue to be in this kind of position.

Institutions could at least surrender and invest in palliative care for themselves. However, they face disincentives against surrendering.

Elsewhere:

Therefore, institutions (governments, universities, media) can only promote a message of perpetual human supremacy (see Post 5.3) and keep pretending to believe it.

Most people don’t / can’t / might never fully grasp “what the story is and who we’ve been in it”, or what’s unfolding. » see Post 5.1, 5.2

Therefore, they make fairly irrelevant demands, of entities that can’t help them » see Post 6.1

Existential Zugzwang

In chess, to be “in zugzwang” is “a situation in which you don’t want to move because any move you make will only worsen your situation, but you cannot not move; you must move and thus make matters worse”. The process of a civilization’s development is a process of the population positioning itself in zugzwang. We (“we” meaning: human communities who require electricity and food-from-more-than-a-few-miles-away to survive) are damned if we do, damned if we don’t:

• Our complex manmade systems destroy the environment that our survival depends on. They drive their “host” (this time, the entire planet) toward burnout.

• But if we ratchet-down our industrial foundation, the human empire would collapse anyway, taking much of our technology-dependent population with it.

If you’re willing to admit that sometimes there’s no cure-all for a happy ending, then this does seem an awful lot like one of those times. We face a predicament, not a problem that can be solved. Biology, physics, psychology and sociology have made things such that no realistic path ahead could be labeled an unambiguous victory for Homo colossus.

Idealism (Naïveté) Won’t Yield Valid Predictions

“We were at MIT. We had been trained in science. The way we thought about the future was utterly logical: if you tell people there’s a disaster ahead, they will change course. If you give them a choice between a good future and a bad one, they will pick the good. They might even be grateful. Naïve, weren’t we?”

– “Limits to Growth” lead author Donella Meadows

The screenshot below is from a 1973 news broadcast about the Limits to Growth study, referenced in the above quote and in my previous post. In it, Dr Alexander King, director of the World Bank and the OECD, anticipates “the building up, probably in the next decade, in a number of particularly sensitive fields (like energy, raw materials, the use of the oceans, space and so on) of a number of what people are tending to call regimes, which will not be ordinary United Nations-type of organizations, but semi-management organizations.” A misunderstanding of the problem’s origins and of human (specifically, civilization-dependent human) psychology led King to make an incorrect assessment of what would constitute a solution and of civilization’s potential to chart a risk-informed course. Let’s attempt to understand the dynamics at play and do a better job of tracing the path that civilization’s institutions and citizens will take.

source. “hopefully, of course!”

Leaders’ Considerations: International Affairs

Human societies came to function as a superorganism, behaving according to the Maximum Power Principle: “During self-organization, system designs develop and prevail that maximize power intake, energy transformation, and those uses that reinforce production and efficiency.” With our population arranged to cooperate as a superorganism, our resource extraction rate grows as if on autopilot.

As Tom Murphy puts it, to have an oversized footprint or not “wasn’t a true choice, in that those opting out are either gone or not faring well in our current global civilization.” Even when some communities or even entire countries choose not to over-use resources, another entity usually does, and it thereby gains the advantage to become the dominating force.

A study of human cultures concludes:

“The global environmental crises of the Anthropocene are the outcome of a ratcheting process in long-term human evolution which has favored groups of increased size and greater environmental exploitation… Long-distance between-group interactions may play a role in natural resource [mis-]management and environmental exploitation … Group-level cultural innovations in environmental management tend to increase the scale and intensity of environmental modification and extraction, which in turn accelerates the proliferation of cultural groups with those innovations… [There arises] a self-reinforcing (positive) feedback system which selects for ever more competitive human groups. … Warfare selects for aggressive and expansionist group-level cultural traits and destructive technologies.”

From Catton’s Overshoot:

"Whenever the in-group directly and exclusively benefits from its own overuse of a shared resource but the costs of that overuse are ‘shared’ by out-groups, then in-group motivation toward a policy of resource conservation (or sustained yield rates of harvesting) is undermined. In other words, competition for scarce resources is the enemy of self-restraint."

From Greer’s “Dark Age America”:

"A glance back over our past shows clearly enough that who won, who lost, who ended up ruling a society, and who ended up enslaved or exterminated by that same society, was not determined by moral virtue or by the justice of one or another cause but by the crassly pragmatic factors of military, political, and economic power. No doubt most of us would rather live in a world that didn't work that way, but here we are, and morality remains a matter of individual choices … in the face of a cosmos that's sublimely unconcerned with our moral beliefs.”

A smaller footprint amounts to self-induced weakness. A country would only agree to this if it could trust that all others would do the same and none would take advantage of it. Given all of history and current events and the fact that we’re entering an era of resource competition and reemergent multipolarity, it’s reasonable for a government to suspect that this is a bad bet. Oil interests have fueled 25-50% of international conflicts since 1973 and much of the USA’s foreign affairs can be understood through the lens of oil (and the pursuit of the growth, control, advantage that it consigns). Power-hunger is and will continue to be the basis for many nations’ strategies. No matter how much we would love to see every country demilitarize, it’s more likely that we’ll see countries “go to war to ensure their ability to go to war” (Breaking Together), including to secure access to precious petroleum. Notably, the US has some of the rare earths that an energy transition requires and military power helps ensure that we get to decide what happens to them.

The American Petroleum Institute’s SVP was correct when he asserted, “The world will continue to demand more energy, not less.” At the scale of the total population of our species, we will always max-out our capacity. As long as there’s a surplus to be had, we feed the surplus back into the system and the system grows, and its baseline energy requirement to function becomes higher. This will continue until activities to address our behavior’s consequences drain so much energy that no surplus energy remains, and growth stalls. Then, as the costs continue to rise, our superorganism will deteriorate.

source. “Insatiable” is a painting by artists Theodore Bolha and Chris Davis. Inspired by Derrick Jensen’s book Endgame

Leaders’ Considerations: Domestic Affairs

Any leader of a major power would have to weigh the consequences of abandoning the pursuit of ever-higher resource and energy consumption. The nation-state’s core imperative has always been and will be to expand its material and energetic footprint. Leaders are beholden to the superorganism. Decision-makers are more afraid of the immediate threats that deprivation will bring than they are of the longer-term consequences of combustion. They don’t want to face a contraction of activity any sooner than it will happen on its own. It's a Hot Potato that they're passing off term-by-term.

Governments –especially major powers– might promise conservation, but they can only ever pretend to try to discourage consumerism (except when they need to divert resources to a war). As the “decisive decade” proceeds, it will become more and more apparent that nations have been bluffing about emission reduction pledges. Political party affiliation makes no difference. The USA extracted more fossil fuels under President Biden (Democrat, 2020-2024) than under President Trump (Republican, 2016-2020). When the US President declared a moratorium on LNG export facilities, some organizations eagerly trusted his claim that his motivations were environmental, when it’s more likely that economic and political concerns inspired him.

Red tape and colleagues’ non-cooperation

US federal law enshrines “economic growth”, mentioning it 73 times. Any politician who wishes to defy it would have to win widespread consent from government officials who are concerned about corporate lobbyists, voters and our geopolitical position.

The challenge of restructuring society / preemptive shrinkage

As the Hirsch report warned, “energy descent” will dramatically upset the flow of goods and services. People will need to spread out over the land, restore it, and learn to meet our needs fully from within the local ecological budget - but we’re imperfect and we have a short window to pull this off. Even if everyone were willing, they might not be able.

Furthermore, as with a Jenga tower, an intentional endeavor to unravel our civilization-tapestry could cause disturbances that are disproportionate to the sum of the removed parts. Civilization will come apart differently than how it came together.

Here are examples of prioritizing business over the planet:

• Bhutan was known for championing Gross National Happiness but is now having to grow its economy to address 30% youth unemployment and 13% poverty rate. De-prioritizing growth works only if the global economy follows suite, and there’ll never be universal agreement to this.

• Sweden’s Supreme Court sided against climate activists

• Like the UK and Wales, Scotland is shifting from a “75% emissions reduction by 2030” goal to a “5-year declining carbon budgets to reach net-zero by 2045” strategy, essentially buying itself time after having taken “inadequate action on home heating, transport, farming and nature restoration”

Popular resistance

In both “developed” and “developing” countries, and in both white- and blue-collar jobs, civilization’s members have been led to believe that modernity will persist forever and that its fruits will become accessible to all humans. If authorities retract the ”carrot” of consumerism, people will be distressed. Some citizens would react violently, especially given rising polarization, tribalism and conspiracy theories. Real examples:

• When in 2023, relative fuel scarcity brought high gasoline prices, Americans complained and our government indulged them by releasing a Strategic Petroleum Reserve that was meant for emergencies.

• Dave Gardner is ran as a 2024 US Presidential candidate but his platform of footprint reduction drew little attention. This is even more interesting when you consider that the NY Times featured articles about degrowth-

  • June 2024: “Shrink the Economy, Shave the World?”

  • October 2024: “These Are Boom Times for Degrowth“

• In the 2024 European Parliament, the Green Alliance’s policies lost it seats (down from 72 to 53, out of 705). Although the article attributes this to its disproportionate impact on low-income citizens, it isn’t as if policies that effectively reduce any human group’s consumption would be popular with that group.

• 70% of Switzerland’s voters opposed proposed requirement “that economic activities do not consume more resources and release more pollutants than is permitted for the preservation of natural resources”

See Post #3.3 for more examples of citizens protesting against higher fuel prices / fuel shortages.

Business and Debtors

Meanwhile, companies compete for market share and strive to generate profits for shareholders who’ve bought equity, which locks them into the growth spiral. Small businesses have more liberty to opt out. But for every company that restricts its material use, there will be plenty who move in. If the CEO of Walmart or McDonald’s were to declare “The world would be a better place without our corporation. Let’s all go home and garden”, sufficient employees would choose to stay and the Board of Directors would simply replace the defectors. Bendell explains: “People who seek power within hierarchies are generally people who are well-adjusted to succeeding in those hierarchies, playing the game … Also, because once you’re in charge of a big organization there’s this sense of responsibility to just keep the show on the road… I’m speaking from experience of hanging out with world leaders since 2012 at Davos and the UN.”

Some 2024 examples of companies dropping the charade that they would ever prioritize environment over business obligations: Unilever and Shell

Finally, when individuals or companies take on debt, our society adds interest. This implies that the borrower will gradually generate the total value of both the principle and the interest. Since money is essentially a voucher that citizens can presumably redeem later, resource extraction must increase to cover the additional value of the interest. Breaking Together devotes a chapter to this - "bank earnings are, understandably, partially saved rather than recirculated … This expansionist logic means that we are all incentivized as employees, entrepreneurs, investors and voters to constantly seek not only to expand economic activity but also for new ways for life to be commodified into what can be bought and sold."

Kicking the Can

Civilization’s members have delayed its demise before:

• In 1968, Paul Ehrlich warned a looming Population Bomb, but the Green Revolution brought chemically-boosted agricultural yields (along with ecological consequences).

• As 2005 drew near, pundits predicted Peak Oil catastrophe, but fracking and other unconventional oil extraction methods extended the industrial age.

The Carnage Continues: Our Glorious Green Transition

We’re putting the absurdly high-maintenance survival requirements of the recent generations of a single species before all other living things, just for some infrastructure that will keep civilization limping along for a few more decades. By late-century, the industrial system will be well on its way out, taking down with it any beings who depend on it.

The longer modern high-metabolism humans chase their Green Transition mirage, the more habitat we destroy and carbon dioxide we emit, degrading the biosphere on which all organisms’ survival depends. We’ll have further annihilated other lifeforms through our insistence on a fantasy of a perpetual technology-supported exemption from how other organisms live.

Ironically, when we devote diesel to the green-industrial supply chain, we burn a precious resource that we could’ve used to extend the time that humans have to readjust to post-mechanical agrarianism where possible. Diverting finite diesel toward manufacturing solar panels means that tractors will grind to a halt that much sooner.

Nations and corporations’ power plays are stronger forces that progressive movements when it comes to determining how our species interacts with its environment. Corporations indulge causes that open up new market segments for profit. One dominant human group triumphs over another for self-interested reasons, which happens to benefit an underprivileged group. When boycotts and marches seem to guide us toward a brighter future, it’s because they aren’t truly threaten Homo colossus’ ability to continue metabolizing the planet; their goals are aligning with the superorganism’s drive. It’s convenient for the green-industrial complex that activists have adopted its language (green jobs, clean tech, decarbonization, climate justice) and are demanding that it plow ahead with its plans to decimate what remains of our biosphere.

“We are about to see carnage caused in many of the pristine environments of the world… in the name of a transition to a ‘sustainable’ world … ‘green sacrifice zones’ … to maintain the myth … that we can continue modern life but somehow not dependent on fossil-energy … It’s just a whole new wave of so-called-green colonialism that’s already happening and will be legitimized by the story of ‘Well, we have to’”

-Jem Bendell, on an episode of the Novara podcast

Taking Planet-Wreckage to New Heights: Geo-Engineering

Our next attempt to outwit Nature might be via geoengineering (also called solar radiation manage, SRM):

• “Geoengineering is not a quick fix for the climate crisis, new analysis shows”

• “Impact on ecosystems must be predicted before technology is used, US atmospheric science agency chief says”

• 2024 Switzerland calls on UN to explore possibility of solar geoengineering … and is rejected for now

• 2024 University of Washington researchers are experimenting with marine cloud brightening in the Bay Area

• 2025 the UK gov announced plans to fund five small-scale trials related to geoengineering

source. “Development” typically entails harm to non-human life. Deforestation is deforestation, whether via CO2 emissions or to erect “green” energy infrastructure.

No One Is Driving the Bus

You would think that if we know which endeavors were likely to crash-and-burn this century, we might invest in minimizing suffering and preserving as much non-human life as possible. Society could deliberately, strategically dismantle technology. People could voluntarily move from cities to the countryside, adopt low-tech lifestyles and farm with ecologically restorative techniques. Individuals who give birth could opt to bear no more than one child each.

But this is unlikely to happen widely. In addition to having only bleak paths from which to choose, we don’t even get to pick which one our superorganism takes. No individual or group can control what happens at the planetary, species-wide scale.

“When have we ever truly steered our path as a species? Are we actually in control at all? … We’ve never really been in the driver’s seat on the decisions that have mattered most. Our path has been more like an amusement park ride equipped with an ornamental steering wheel, giving the adorable tykes an intoxicating but illusory sense of control."

– Tom Murphy, “The Ride of Our Lives”

Therefore, we (collectively) probably won’t do this “the easy (or easier) way”. We won’t get ahead of it or steer through deftly - at least, not at any significant scale. Human’s resource consumption and pollution rates will grow until circumstances impede them. Only external limits will stop us. The fading of technology, the depopulation of cities, and depopulation of the planet will occur in ways that entail more suffering. Even after activity trends turn from aggregate expansion to contraction, humans will continue to exploit resources at a rate that degrades the planet’s long-term capacity for supporting life (see examples in Post 3.3).

Nate Hagens speaks about the human superorganism (19:19-22:29)

Bill Rees, co-originator of the “ecological footprint” concept, describes Homo sapiens through the lens of energy dissipation

Tim Garrett, an atmospheric scientist, explains how the human superorganism behaves like a snowflake –

• interviewed by Sam Mitchell on Collapse Chronicles

• interviewed by Rachel Donald on Planet Critical

• his paper

• a Reddit AMA (Q&A)

Nate Hagens’ paper on the superorganism

Lisi Krall, author of “Bitter Harvest: An inquiry into the War Between Economy and the Earth”, interviewed by Nate Hagens

Lisi Krall interviewed by Rachel Donald … and Rachel’s reflection on the interview

Daniel Schmachtenberger aptly conveys the nature of the Maximum Power Principle and the human superorganism

a review of Carey King’s “The Economic Superorganism: Beyond the Competing Narratives on Energy, Growth and Policy”

Richard Heinberg explains “Why We Can’t Just Do It” (“Stop Oil”)

Nate Hagens analyzes activists’ demand and the idea of “stopping oil” – Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four

An article from Slate about what happens when a politician tries to reduce resource consumption

An article from The Hill about what happens when a politician tries to reduce resource consumption

Oil Dependency and US Foreign Policy - Council on Foreign Relations

“Governments will never voluntarily ‘degrow’ an economy because they will never voluntarily weaken their relative power relations.” - article by Samuel Alexander and Brendan Gleeson from the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute / University of Melbourne

Richard Heinberg interviewed by Rachel Donald on “Planet Critical”, on popular resistance to reduced consumption

Chris Smaje (farmer and author) reviews and compares Peter Zeihan’s “The End of the World is Just the Beginning” to his own “Small Farm Future”

Jason Bradford’s presentation, "The Future Is Rural: Adaptation to Energy Descent"

Jason Bradford’s article on “The Future of Food: Getting Beyond the Energy Blindness of Techno-Utopianism”

Jason Bradford interviewed on future human settlement patterns

Permaculture co-creator David Holmgren’s “Four Energy Descent Scenarios”

A review of “Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity” by Wes Jackson and Bob Jensen

An interview with Bob Jensen, co-author of “An Inconvenient Apocalypse”

Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb”, interviewed on “The Great Simplification”

“This Civilization Is Not Interested In Saving Itself” from the Honest Sorceror substack