Some Background Information on “The Shape of Things to Come”

Joseph George Caldwell

15 November 2022

1. Purpose of article: Prediction of the state of the world after fossil fuels exhaust. (“State of the world”: quality of human life and condition of the biosphere.)

2. Structure of article:

a. Background discussion on current state of the world and the major factors that will drive human society’s response to change.

b. Alternative futures.

c. Discussion.

3. There are many predictions / analyses of the future: What’s different about the one used for this article?

a. Systems models, like Donella Meadows et al.’s Limits to Growth.

b. Economic models, such as Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies, and analyses such as those by Leopold Kohr (The Breakdown of Nations), E. F. Schumacher (Small Is Beautiful), Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (The Entropy Law and the Economic Process), Herman Daly (Steady-State Economics) and Julian Simon (The Ultimate Resource 2).

c. Demographic models, like the UN’s population projections.

d. Optimization models, like General Equilibrium Models (carrying capacity, optimal population size).

e. Ecological models, like E. O. Wilson’s Half-Earth.

f. Climate-change models and analyses, such as James Hansen’s Storms of My Grandchildren and Robert Henson’s The Rough Guide to Climate Change.

g. Energy models, such as Thom Hartmann’s The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, James Howard Kunstler’s Living the Long Emergency, and Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Max Wilbert’s Bright Green Lies.

h. Political models (more democracy, more human rights, more education, conservation, carbon taxes, anarchism (John Zerzan), radical environmentalism (Kirkpatrick Sale), theocracy, dictatorship, one-world government, population control (e.g., one-child policy).

i. Religion-based models (human beings have dominion over nature; only human beings have souls; populate the Earth; husband the Earth).

j. A host of population/ecology/energy analyses, like Jared Diamond’s Collapse, Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin’s The Sixth Extinction, William Catton’s Overshoot, Lester Brown’s Plan B, Joel Cohen’s How Many People Can the Earth Support, David and Marcia Pimentel’s Food, Energy and Society, Gerard Piel’s Only One World, Garrett Hardin’s Limits to Growth, Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, Barry Commoner’s Making Peace with the Planet, Thomas Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population, and many more.

k. This article’s approach: heavy on human behavior / sociology; qualitative vs. quantitative; simplicity vs. complexity; macro vs. micro; descriptive vs. normative (i.e., diagnostic vs. prescriptive: no specific response or “solution” proposed); focus on post-fossil-fuel era; not conditional on continuation of present political/economic system; very long term.

4. Some context: my background relative to the global ecological and social crises.

a. 1993: Living in Malawi. Weekend trip to Zomba Plateau. Clear-cutting of the mountainside. Began work on book Can America Survive?

b. Initial approach: What size human population should the Earth have? Value-driven; leads to arguments over values, rather than on what is happening. Not a very useful approach.

c. Final approach (1997): What size human population will the Earth have?

d. Publishers? No interest. Internet was flourishing. In 1999, developed the Foundation website (http://foundationwebsite.org), the first and now longest-running website on Planetary Management. Posted Can America Survive? to the website (http://www.foundationwebsite.org/CanAmericaSurvive.htm), followed by many other articles relating to the condition of the biosphere and quality of human life. Thousands of “hits” over the years, but no significant impact.

e. In the 1990s, not much attention was focused on the global ecological and population crises. Now, with incipient climate change, imminent decline of petroleum reserves, massive pollution and destruction of the biosphere, and human misery on a grand scale, there is a flood of books, reports and articles on these and related topics. There is still widespread reluctance to use the term “overpopulation,” no consensus about what to do about addressing the crises, and nothing effective being done to solve the problem (in a way that promotes ecological diversity or a high quality of life for human beings in a species-rich biosphere).

f. Recently joined Medium.com, a website for publishing short, general-interest articles. Published this article in August of 2022. Limited distribution by Medium. One reader’s comment: “No solution proposed.”

5. (Optional from this point on.) Summary of article.

6. Overall approach / structure of article.

a. Part 1: Identify key causal factors affecting population size / growth and industrial activity.

b. Part 2: Based on an understanding of these basic factors, estimate the response of human society and the biosphere as petroleum reserves exhaust.

c. Part 3: Discussion.

7. Summary of Part 1: Identify key causal factors affecting population growth and industrial activity.

a. Human society is disposed to growth. The current planetary system is based on growth-based economics (capitalism; invest an amount to receive more than that amount). Some salient aspects of the current system are:

i. Growth of human society destroys nature. With the advent of technology, growth has been massive, and catastrophic to the biosphere.

ii. A large human population destroys nature. For long-term sustainability of the biosphere, nature must be capable of assimilating all of the waste produced by human society, and mass extinction must end. This cannot happen with a large human population: History suggests that a sustainable human population must be far smaller than one billion.

iii. Capitalism has not served most people well. The basic desires of political leaders are acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity and love of power. These attributes, along with capitalism’s essential feature of interest, rents and profits going to property owners, have worked to keep most people in poverty. The focus is increasing wealth for property owners, not a high quality of life for people or the condition of the biosphere.

iv. The human population has now “run out of space.” The world has 16 billion acres of habitable land. With a global population of 8 billion, that is two acres per person. That is insufficient to provide a high quality of life. Six billion people are living in hardship. As natural resources continue to be consumed without regeneration and the environment is polluted further, the average quality of life will remain low.

v. There is little prospect for change. All people now depend on the global economic system for food, and have no alternative but to serve it; those in control wish to continue this system, and have little empathy for others, for future generations of mankind, or for the condition of the biosphere.

b. The nature of the problem has been well understood for over a century, yet nothing has been done to resolve it (in a way that promotes a high quality of life for human beings in a species-rich biosphere). Politically acceptable solutions are contingent on maintaining a large human population and economic growth. These will continue until ended by a force or forces outside of the current socio-economic system (such as exhaustion of fossil fuel and annihilation of the biosphere as we know it).

8. Summary of Part 2: Based on an understanding of these basic factors, estimate the response of human society and the biosphere as petroleum reserves exhaust.

a. Because of the stochastic nature of the system, it is not reasonable to predict but a single outcome. Consider alternative scenarios, characterized by major events that may occur prior to the exhaustion of petroleum and other fossil fuels.

b. Three scenarios considered (two realistic, one utopian):

i. Current global industrial system continues for as long as it can (i.e., until all commercially recoverable fossil fuel reserves are exhausted; no major events to stop this).

ii. Current global industrial system is severely damaged, immediately.

iii. A long-term-sustainable system of planetary management is established to provide a high quality of life for human society in a species-rich biosphere.

c. For the two “realistic” scenarios (the first two), human society continues to consume fossil fuel until it exhausts. The end result in both cases is a much-damaged biosphere and a small human population, most leading a low-quality existence.

9. Summary of Part 3: Discussion.

a. Summary implications of forecasts: the future likely holds a low quality of life for humanity in a much-changed (less biodiverse) biosphere.

b. Is there any way to avoid these outcomes?

i. Solutions having large human populations? No.

ii. Solutions based on growth-based economics? No.

iii. Solutions based on energy sources other than fossil fuels (e.g., nuclear, current solar). No. Continued high use of energy continues destruction of the environment and biosphere; for sustainability, far less energy must go to industrial processes. Human society must use much less energy, not more.

iv. Responses that might have a significant effect on the quality of human life and the condition of the biosphere to a point in time? Yes.

1. Steady-state economics? Possibly, but it can work only if the population is small (so that nature can metabolize human waste as it is produced). No country has ever adopted steady-state economics. How would it be enforced? How would the population be kept small?

2. World dictatorship? Dictatorships never last.

3. Focusing on solving the problem (to promote ecological diversity) has been useless. Prepare now for a much-changed world. The likelihood of survival for particular individuals is remote. Focus on the long-term survival of humankind in a species-rich biosphere. How?

4. Suggestions?