RAPPORT MEADOWS : ILS ONT TOUT ANTICIPÉ IL Y A 50 ANS !
RAPPORT #MEADOWS : ILS ONT TOUT ANTICIPÉ IL Y A 50 ANS !
Jan 2022 https://indymotion.fr/w/xmXWjWD6P3n7WJXeGCaTL4

Lien image : https://indymotion.fr/static/thumbnails/97e25953-51c2-4516-bde6-c60f4a88f39a.jpg
#Collapse #Effondrement #MIT #ClubDeRome #LimitsToGrowth #Sustainability

#ToujoursPlus

Toujours plus - La demande mondiale de pétrole n’a jamais été aussi élevée
https://www.liberation.fr/economie/la-demande-mondiale-de-petrole-na-jamais-ete-aussi-elevee-20230811_IH24BJWPGJCLLETZYFEB2HQ6HE/

L’Agence internationale de l’énergie estime que la demande de pétrole va atteindre son «niveau le plus élevé jamais enregistré» en 2023 avec 102,2 millions de barils par jour en moyenne.

Merci pour ce titre #Libé, le tag #ToujoursPlus est mon préféré. C'est celui qui nous emmène de plus en plus vite au bord du gouffre.

son «niveau le plus élevé jamais enregistré» en 2023

Oui, et une #chute vertigineuse juste après, irréversible, et fatale.
Attachez vos ceintures.

«La demande mondiale de pétrole atteint des sommets records, stimulée par les voyages aériens estivaux, l’utilisation accrue de fioul dans la production d’électricité et la montée en flèche de l’activité pétrochimique chinoise», explique l’AIE.

T'es bien parti en #vacances ? De préférence loin ? En #SUV ? En #Avion ? Ben tant mieux pour toi. Ça te fera d'autant plus bizarre quand tu devras planter tes patates pour manger, ou mourir.

Et sinon : Jean-Baptiste #FRESSOZ est historien des #sciences, des techniques et de l' #environnement, ainsi que chercheur au #CNRS, nous rappelle qu'il faut faire face à la #vérité : la transition énergétique n'aura pas lieu.
Tu m'étonnes. ^^

#AIE #Croissance #Économie #Growth #Croissance #LimitsToGrowth #LimitesÀLaCroissance #Energy #Énergie #Pétrole #Consommation #TransitionÉcologique #TransitionÉnergétique #Transition #Idiocracy #Effondrement #Collapse #TicTacTicTacTicTac ....

Reversing the Freight Train: The Case for Degrowth

... Walt Rostow, who was, along with Kuznets, one of the field’s most influential early thinkers, understood growth as the foundation of the postwar world order. His Stages of Economic Growth, published in 1960, was unsubtly subtitled ‘A Non-Communist Manifesto’. According to what is now called the ‘Rostovian’ account, growth wasn’t just the solution to domestic instability in advanced industrial economies and the remedy for the backwardness of ‘traditional’ (non-industrial) societies; it was also the antidote to socialism. There was no need for revolution: the managed markets of postwar capitalism would eventually, peacefully, deliver the fruits of modernisation – a non-violent, self-reinforcing alternative to expropriation and collectivisation. It wasn’t clear, however, how traditional societies would respond to the inevitable disruption associated with integration into the global economy. ‘How,’ Rostow asked, ‘should the traditional society react to the intrusion of a more advanced power: with cohesion, promptness and vigour, like the Japanese; by making a virtue of fecklessness, like the oppressed Irish of the 18th century; by slowly and reluctantly altering the traditional society, like the Chinese?’ ...

This reviews three recent books:

• Tomorrow’s Economy: A Guide to Creating Healthy Green Growth
  by Per Espen Stoknes.
  MIT, 360 pp., £15.99, April, 978 0 262 54385 9

• Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
  by Jason Hickel.
  Windmill, 318 pp., £10.99, February 2021, 978 1 78609 121 5

• Post Growth: Life after Capitalism
  by Tim Jackson.
  Polity, 228 pp., £14.99, March 2021, 978 1 5095 4252 9

• The Case for Degrowth
  by Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D’Alisa and Federico Demaria.
  Polity, 140 pp., £9.99, September 2020, 978 1 5095 3563 7

Archive / Paywall: https://archive.ph/2022.08.10-151410/https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n16/geoff-mann/reversing-the-freight-train

HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32416815

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n16/geoff-mann/reversing-the-freight-train

#Growth #Degrowth #LimitsToGrowth #SimonKuznets #WaltRostow #PerEspenStoknes #TimJackson #JasonHickel #GiorgosKallis #SusanPaulson #GiacomoDAlisa #FedericoDemaria #Books #BookReview #LRB #LondonReview

The Modern World Can't Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels

Four materials rank highest on the scale of necessity, forming what I have called the four pillars of modern civilization: cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia are needed in larger quantities than are other essential inputs. The world now produces annually about 4.5 billion tons of cement, 1.8 billion tons of steel, nearly 400 million tons of plastics, and 180 million tons of ammonia. But it is ammonia that deserves the top position as our most important material: its synthesis is the basis of all nitrogen fertilizers, and without their applications it would be impossible to feed, at current levels, nearly half of today’s nearly 8 billion people. ...

https://time.com/6175734/reliance-on-fossil-fuels/

Payall / broken JS: https://archive.ph/7FFlL

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31395036

#VaclavSmil #Postcarbon #FossilFuels #Materials #GlobalWarming #ClimateChange #Limits #LimitsToGrowth #resources #Books

Q: Are there limits to what HN can reasonably discuss?

A: Yes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30698140#30701362

Related article:

"Are there limits to economic growth?"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00723-1

#HN #Limits #TechnoOptimism #Cornucopianism #LimitsToGrowth

The World's Richest Little Isle (1982)

Few islands in the South Pacific look less promising from the air. Instead of the usual verdant atoll -all palm trees and beaches - the island is more like a chunk of gray lunar landscape encircled by a thin ribbon of green along the shoreline. In the interior, a few sparse clumps of vegetation stand out amid stark rock pinnacles. Clearly, this is not an ordinary tropical paradise.

Yet this unprepossessing island - 26 miles south of the Equator, about midway between Hawaii and Australia and hundreds of miles from anywhere -is the envy of the South Pacific. For this is the Republic of Nauru - all eight and a half square miles of it. Nauru, with a per capita income surpassing that of any oil-rich Arab nation, is the smallest and wealthiest independent democracy in the world.

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/07/magazine/world-s-richest-little-isle.html

#Nauru #limits #NaturalResources #NaturalResourceEconomics #SouthPacific #LimitsToGrowth

How Many People Can the Earth Support? (1998)

Paywall: https://archive.is/E5AB8

Cohen is the leading authority on Earth's poplation limits and carrying capacity. He's the first to say that the question and answer are complicated, but that does not mean that there are no limits.

In his book, How many people can the earth support?, Cohen visits many estimates and/or claims regarding carrying capacity and explores the assumptions or logic behind many of these, which range from a low of about 100 million to highs over 12 trillion. Most such estimates cluster around 1--10 billion, and seem more credible than outliers, especially of the high-end group.

https://www.worldcat.org/title/how-many-people-can-the-earth-support/oclc/898942239

https://archive.org/details/howmanypeoplecan00cohe

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28904625

#population #JoelECohen #overpopulation #CarryingCapacity #limits #LimitsToGrowth

Switching to Renewables: How much energy is available?

A reasonably good explainer on the potential for powering humanity on solar power: It's interesting and better information than I'd feared, though it still omits a lot, mostly in terms of baked-in assumptions of energ consumpion increases from future wealth and population increases. An apparently-large solar energy surplus rapidly diminishes within just the next century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZEaYjo4ZJU

Basic facts:

• Global energy consumption is about 400 quadrillion BTU (quad), or 10,000 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe), or 115 petawatt hours (PWh -- 115 million GWh) equivalent. Those are units, and they're big. The important thing is to look at the total amounts and what they translate to on a per-person basis.
• US consumption is about 100 quad, / 2,500 mtoe.
• Total incident raw solar power is about 7,000 times human energy use. That's what "as much solar energy falls on the entire Earth in 1 hours as humans use in an entire year" translates to. But after figuring in various losses (land vs. water, usable daily hours, panel efficiency, other losses), what's left is closer to 100--200x current total human energy use. And some of that's got to go to both our own food supply and the rest of the environment.
• The Rest of The World (Non-OECD countries / countries outside North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia) uses a tiny fraction of the energy of the West. That's 6x the people (roughly) and about 1/3 the per-capita energy use. Note that this includes China and India, which have greatly in creased energyy usage per capita over the past 3 decades as they've industrialised.
• Global population is projected to grow to somewhere between 9--12 billion by 2100 or so.
• There's still the question of energy storage, dispatchable energy use, and the need for fuels in transportation uses, most especially marine shipping, air travel, and rockets, none of which can rely on battery or grid-supplied electricity.

Even just accounting for present population and average OECD consumption, that's another 6 * 3 or 18 time more energy consumption that is presumed just to bring the rest of the world up to average OECD levels of energy affluence.

We only had about a 100x headway in net solar energy surplus to begin with, this would cut through about 1/5 of that. Without considering future energy growth or additional energy affluence among either OECD or other nations.

Efficiency gains, especially reducing the two-thirds of all energy lost (mostly in conversion from thermal to mechanical energy) will buy us back some of that, but this is a one-time bonus, and it's going to be much less than the total lost energy. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics always wins out, and there will be energy efficiency losses.

We're using a lot of energy, and the dreams we're selling our children and the world involve a huge increase on even that. I don't doubt that the future will be solar powered, mostly. I do have doubts it will be a high-energy solar future.

Again, the ultimate critique here is not against renewables. We have no other choice. Our high-energy, large-population lifestyle is inherently unsustainable.

Data:

OECD:
- 3,784 mtoe energy (2018)
- Population: 1.3 billion (vs. 7.8 billion global, -> 6.5 billion non-OECD)
- Per-capita consumption: 2.9 tonoil (7.6 tonoil US).
- 38 member states: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, & United States.

Non-OECD
- 6,216 mtoe
- population: 6.5 billion
- Per-capita consumption: 0.96 tonoil

---

OECD energy and demographics from:

https://www.iea.org/reports/key-world-energy-statistics-2020/final-consumption
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OECD

#Energy #Resources #Limits #Solar #SolarPower #LimitsToGrowth #Population #DoTheMath #Video #YouTube

Thoughts on minimum wage, enterprise viability, welfare burden, and, of course, the end of the world as we know it

In a discussion on the merits of minimum-wage laws, I was asked to clarify what specifically my main points in a rather prolonged thread were, in particular my repeated invocation of Adam Smith's discussions of the wages of labor in Book I, Chapter VIII of The Wealth of Nations.

My starting point was this passage from Smith:

A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him....

Continued at the dreddit.

#minimumwage #adamsmith #econonomics #collapse #limitstogrowth #peakoil #economics

Bradley's Bunch: a passel of Peak Oil protestation purveyors

In firming up the References section of the dreddit Wiki, I've been looking for a good source of idiots^Wcritics of peak oil / limits thinking. I believe I've just hit the mother lode: Robert L. Bradley's "Resourceship: An Austrian theory of mineral resources".

I ran across this looking for citations and preferably critiques of Milton Friedman's
"The Energy Crisis: A Humane Solution", itself worth a demolition critique.

Instead, hosted at GMU (Koch affiliated educational institution), I found an essay by Robert L. Bradley, Libertarian CEO of the Koch-affiliated Institute for Energy Research:...

Continued at the dreddit in "Bradley's Bunch: a passel of Peak Oil protestation purveyors"

#peakoil #energy #resources #limitstogrowth #denialism #denial #cornucopian

Economic decoupling? The recent relationship between energy and growth

Can economic growth occur independently of resource, and particularly, energy consumption increases? That's the question which emerged in a recent discussion over continued economic growth. In that thread, /u/geezerman makes the assertion:

Energy consumption is declining in the advanced economies

Oh, really? I'm aware of some short-term fluctuations, most of which were accompanied by at least temporary decreases in economic output, but an overall reduction in energy accompanied by increases in GDP? Let's take a look.

Continued at the dreddit

#economics #limitstogrowth #decoupling #energy #gdp #g8 #population #usa #uk #canada #japan #german #france #italy #russia #china #india #brazil