The Future of Energy is Bright, Part I

There are numerous disagreements on the topic of energy with substantial, and well substantiated differences of opinion between knowledgeable people. People tend to be blindsided by these, because this topic is at once visceral (you very well know when you are too cold or too hot, and in the dark), political (you very well know when utility bills leave you broke) and technical (you don’t necessary know the difference between a kilowatt and a kilowatt-hour, or that a terawatt is a million megawatts). But it is very important not to be blindsided by these disagreements, because if you end up on the wrong side of this argument, your lack of access to affordable energy is guaranteed to seriously crimp your style.

But there does seem to be one point of near-universal agreement: concentrated forms of energy, and especially electricity, are an essential ingredient of modern civilization. Fuel shortages and price increases are a major cause of social upheaval and mayhem. Power cuts are disruptive, especially to industrial production facilities that require steady state conditions. In hospitals and medical centers they can be lethal. Extended power outages often result in riots and looting. Without refrigeration food stockpiles go to waste; without heat or air conditioning urban centers become unlivable. Commerce, increasingly reliant on distributed information networks for payment processing and inventory control, grinds to a halt. Without elevators high-rise buildings become inaccessible.

If frequent though temporary power cuts are a major nuisance, stable electricity but high electricity prices are even worse because they make entire economic sectors—any that involve running electrically powered industrial machinery—globally noncompetitive. Sometimes all it takes is one bad decision. A case in point: some time ago Lithuania decided to shut down its only nuclear reactor, because it was an old Soviet design—RBMK, the same type as had blown up in Chernobyl, although with numerous safety upgrades, and so dumb politics rather than safety were the real issue. Now the Lithuanians have some of the highest electricity rates in Europe, there is no more industry in Lithuania, and instead they have to look for work in Germany.

A lot of people seem to think that energy is all about fossil fuels, which are bad because burning fossil fuels causes global warming. True, much of our energy, and virtually all transportation energy, comes from fossil fuels. But they are also not as plentiful as we would like, and the world as a whole is depleting the resource base of fossil fuels much faster than it is finding new resources. It is also generally conceded that there are enough of these resources left in the ground to completely wreck the climate—if they are ever going to be produced. Thus, fossil fuel resource depletion, and the fact that most of the remaining resources may turn out to be too difficult and expensive to produce, is actually a sort of blessing in disguise.

Furthermore, most of the fossil fuel resources, as far as quantities of usable products, are past their peaks. China has powered its transformation into an industrial powerhouse using cheap and abundant coal (causing much environmental devastation) but now China’s coal production is declining. Gasoline production, worldwide, peaked around 2006. Heavy oil, and diesel production with it, appears to have peaked in 2018. Natural gas production is still growing, but mostly thanks to new Russian liquefied natural gas production, and to shale gas production in the US, but the latter suffers from very high depletion rates and an overall lack profitability. Though everyone involved in the fossil fuel industry is compelled to paint a rosy picture (lest the investment money dry up) and we are being constantly barraged with optimistic projections, these often turn out to be exaggerated when reexamined in the rear view mirror. In short, we may be more blessed than we know.

But the blessing is also a curse, since a lack of stable, reliable, affordable energy pretty much spells the end of the world as we know it. Perhaps it will make you feel better knowing that you are no longer destroying our home planet as you wander up and down a stretch of abandoned highway collecting dry tree branches for your campfire, on which to cook some rodents you caught with a forked stick, but wouldn’t it make you feel even better if there were a way to keep the lights on without destroying the planet?

Geopolitics & Empire Podcast: How the Technosphere Threatens the Biosphere and our Freedoms

The Self-Destruct Sequence

We approach the end of 2018 to a quickening drumbeat of news articles and analyses heralding the demise of the US as a global superpower, its huge and mounting political economic and social problems and its ever-expanding list of strategic and geopolitical failures far too obvious to ignore. There can be many possible views on what comes next, from a gradual or stepwise descent into depression, dysfunction and insignificance all the way to global catastrophe by way of nuclear annihilation, and there are about as many ways of reasoning about such views, based on macroeconomic models, risk assessment methodologies, ardent belief in Christ’s second coming or on good old-fashioned crystal ball juggling. I would like to propose a different method: of reasoning by analogy. It has stood me in good stead before.

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Bush41 was an Excremental Planetoid roiled by Wriggling Worms

I believe that it is bad form to speak badly of the recently deceased. Doing so may hurt the feelings of the loved ones they left behind and create animosities among the living. Death should be handled with dignity and decorum. Dead people should be forgiven their transgressions, for even the truly evil ones could be said to have done the right thing in the end—which is to have died, thereby ridding the world of their foul presence, their very death an act of atonement.

But is this way of thinking relevant to the timely demise of American political festering orbs, be they democratic suppurating spherical bags of pus or republican excremental planetoids roiled by wriggling worms? Would it not be profoundly disingenuous of you to do anything other than cry out joyfully at their final consignment to the nether regions of Hell? Did you not feel a tiny spasm of exaltation upon hearing that Richard Nixon had died? Did you not feel the urge to do a little happy dance when John McCain bought the farm? And will you not have to restrain yourself from pumping your tiny fists in the air and shouting “Yesss!” when you hear that Henry Kissinger has finally kicked the bucket?

The Flight of the Headless Chicken

When I was five and spending the summer in a small village a couple of time zones east of Moscow I witnessed the execution of a rooster. My brother and I walked over to a neighbor’s house to pick up some eggs. Just as we arrived the neighbor finally caught the rooster and chopped his head of. The now headless rooster then put on quite an aerobatic performance that was quite amazing. After doing an unlimited takeoff he repeatedly soared and plummeted, executed several touch-and-gos (more like crash-and-goes, actually) and was undeterred by what previously would have been head-on collisions. I was by then quite familiar with the poor aerodynamic qualities of barnyard fowl and was duly impressed with the energetic and breathtakingly erratic behavior of a bird liberated from the mental straitjacket of its brain. Unfortunately, the performance only lasted for a minute or so. A word to the wise: I later learned that it is possible to prolong the show, should the need ever arise, by heating up the hatchet so as to cauterize the severed neck. More recently, I have learned that such sans-tête aerobatics are not restricted to chickens.

Ideas on the Verge

NEW RELEASE: Collapse and the Good Life

My latest collection of essays is now in print. Some of these essays were previously published here while the rest—probably the more significant ones—have until now remained hidden behind a paywall and only accessible to subscribers. This collection represents a gradual shift of focus. I am still doing my bit as a chronicler of collapse, but what I want to emphasize is that a meaningful and fulfilling life can be lived even in the midst of collapse, which, with the right preparations and the right mindset, can be relegated to its proper use as a particularly macabre form of entertainment.

The book is 244 pages long and contains the following essays:

In Praise of Irresponsibility Part III: Out-Of-Control

The vast majority of physiologically and psychologically normal people want to be good and to do good. They wish to feel competent in carrying out challenging, complex tasks and capable of carrying them out as an exercise of their own free will. They want to have a sense of agency, a feeling that what they do matters to others. They want to be recognized and respected for their talents and their efforts. They also want to be able to pass along their wisdom and skills, their acumen and world knowledge to the future generations.

As they grow old, they want to be able to depart this world with a sense that they have helped build it with their own hands, and that it is in safe hands and will exist in perpetuity. They want to feel assured that the traditions they have inherited and passed along, or the ones they have helped establish, will be adhered to, honored and passed along after they are gone.

Even if all of the above does not result in a high level of physical comfort and luxury but involves hardship and privation, considerable personal danger, and even if many lives are cut short as a result, people can remain happy—satisfied and fulfilled—provided they get to contribute freely to a common cause. When they are deprived of any and all these things, they cease to be physiologically and psychologically normal.

When deprived of any and all of these things, they lose self-respect and interest in their work, and just try to get by, just doing the bare minimum. Some even give up on trying to do the bare minimum and just drift along, helpless and hopeless. They are unable to convince themselves that it is still worthwhile for them to make an effort, convinced that it would all go to waste.

They begin to dress shabbily and stop minding their manners. They lose interest in other people, and especially in the younger generations, feeling that they have nothing to offer them, and that even if they had, their advice would not be heeded and their contributions would not be respected.

As their physical and social environments are transformed out of all recognition, they no longer feel that they belong anywhere and become desensitized to being trapped in a dismal built-up environment full of graceless, utilitarian buildings, run-down infrastructure and hostile or indifferent strangers. Often the result is mental anguish, which drives them to psychiatrists, who in turn prescribe them antidepressants. In many cases, these either don’t work and/or exacerbate the very biochemical imbalance they were intended to correct, cause additional impairments and may drive them to suicide.

Their mental state also negatively influences their immune system, causing it to weaken, making them susceptible to infections, or to go haywire, causing autoimmune disorders and allergic reactions. They project all that is wrong with the world around them onto their own bodies and develop psychosomatic ailments, especially chronic pain, and especially in the one part of the body which is particularly capable of self-generated pain: the spinal chord. In an attempt to alleviate the pain, many of them begin to self-medicate and fall into alcoholism and drug addiction.

This is all perfectly normal and is perhaps exactly as it should be.

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RU Upset LOL?

A Little Russian Election-Day Meddling