If we take a careful and deliberate examination of the many factors we know will be influential drivers to quality of life in the decade or two ahead we can start to see through the fog and perhaps make a few predictions. Most of these factors are seemingly unconnected - but they are.
1. Energy shortfalls and the inevitable heated competition for energy feedstocks.
No the pantry is not empty but 8.2 billion people have an insatiable appetite. An appetite that has grown to a demand for a sustaining magnitude of energy never before seen on this planet and indeed we are talking about providing that energy from finite resources supporting growing economic demand as well. First let's look at what a regional energy depletion scenario looked like.
Here we see the historical rise and fall of an energy resource. A few things to note... After the rapid rise and adoption which enabled rapid economic growth, there is a volatile plateau initiated by a decline in the easy to get at source. In this part of the curve we see heroic efforts*, new methods and shifting to the harder to get deposits as a source - the success and failure of this hunt is what makes the plateau volatile. During this phase demand is still high or even growing so imports are starting to look attractive as they augment the growing regional shortfall. Eventually depletion wins out and the poor quality deposits, the hardest to get to and the most costly reserves are encountered and that signals the end to the regional supply. An energy source and an economic system are now married. The couple knows little about each other except magic happens when they are together! Where do we go next and how do we go about scoring our next fix? An important geopolitical question because dependency of this resource is now hard wired into the financial wealth generation system and to a lesser extent, an improved quality of life. Important to note here is that when coal depleted, oil became the next BIG thing. Geopolitical efforts right about the kick off of WW1 were executed with some serious consequences.
See anything familiar with the global coal consumption curve? The plateau has been reached and the volatility of continued extraction under a volatile depleting global resource base is well underway. Lots of coal left, just getting harder to get as high value deposits get exhausted the search continues for lower grade stuff. When the UK ran out of one energy it shifted to another, and finally jettisoned energy intensive activity to countries where labor and energy where cheap. That is not really an option anymore.
The story isn't much better for oil. This is a very debatable number (40-ish years left at current rates of consumption). So here's a spoiler alert. The feedstocks of oil are not viable when it takes more energy to get it out than you can get from it. So, long before the cavitation in the pumps makes that slurping sound of empty, the game will be over as far as large scale refining for consumption by the economic engines of the modern world. Competition for control of energy resources will obviously increase.
Natural gas is looking better - at current rates of consumption some say another 50 years are in the tank. But wait just a minute... If oil rates are in decline AND coal rates are peaking AND energy is still demanded, the current rate of consumption will double for gas in one generation. Remember - 8.2 billion people require lots of energy! Making gas the next BIG strategic thing and its exploration in the Arctic and elsewhere a focus of much interest. Gotta have a way to charge those EVs...
Nuclear is complex, lots of aging plants that will be decommissioned in the next ten years or so with loss of grid power, difficult geopolitics as there is a global fuel shortfall if Russia drops out and this energy feedstock plays into war materials and energy generation. Then there is the de-commissioning of hundreds of aging plants around the world at typically a billion USD per plant, used fuel sequestering etc., etc. Sticky and complicated. If in a generation nuclear is the only real option there are a lot of add on fuels like hydrogen from sea water fracking like South Korea has been pioneering in the manufacture of Hydrogen in large volumes as a mobility fuel etc. Possibilities exist with serious short and long term environmental risk. For nuclear to advance as a main energy source the whole war thing needs to go away. Even so, it probably will never be a mobility fuel, but nuke derived hydrogen could work nicely. We all need to behave much better for that to materialize. Keep your focus though, nuke fuels are finite resources too. Yeah, yeah yeah, the ocean is full of the stuff - remember eroi. About 70 years in the tank on this one only - you guessed it - If oil, gas and coal fall off we'll churn through that pretty quickly. The answer to all of this is we must change how we value energy and how we live. Sorry. Energy IS the economy so it makes sense to base trade on energy and to consider making energy the new bit coin miner! LOL, how's that for a flip of the script?
Wind and Solar are still net negative on energy in vs energy out in many applications. Supplemental low density energy is not a replacement for energy dense coal, gas or uranium. Intermittent and low energy density alternatives also pose storage challenges requiring a lot of depleting mineral elements to manufacture and are supported by subsidies which if removed make them a nice extension if you can afford them but so far not a sustainable solution. Look up copper ore grade and cobalt reserves as just two hurdles to this adjunct energy path. Batteries are also a dubious eroi as low quality ores require gigantic environmental consequences and energy consumption just to manufacture. All ending up at yet another energy draw-down with no replacement just paying to acquire intermediate energy storage by consuming more of our finite energy supply, and toxicity all over the supply chain. Not to mention the occasional pyrotechnic event.
2. Manufacturing waste stream toxicity.
Global trade continues to create toxic waste streams that infringe on the health and well being of the biosphere we need to protect to live healthy lives. The numbers for the consumption we are at are astounding. 7 to 10 billion metric tonnes of waste are created annually these days. These waste streams have grown to a magnitude that the world has never seen before and will never see again. Innovative ways to get rid of toxic goo cheaply have been going on for years and years with little to no regulation. Often ecologically neutral disposal of waste streams would make manufacturing of the thing un-profitable. Manufacturers and regulators the world over have been making a Faustian bargain with our ecology and your health while you were sleeping for far too long. Do you know how safe your water is?
3. Nutrient depletion in our food.
Agricultural needs for irrigation, fertilization, herbicides and pesticides have grown to enormous proportions. With this petrochemical dependency the industrial agriculture companies have created nutrient poor food and have introduced carcinogens up and down the food chain. When you buy a vegetable at your local market there is no meter on the side showing the bio-accumulated toxins or the low mineral or nutrient content. Wait, there's more... GMO's are created by gene editing and the goal is to produce a resilient food against some organic threat. Nowhere is there a commercial regulation that holds a genetically modified food to a non-gmo nutrient content or an analysis of protein effects on metabolism over any length of time. So it may look good, taste bad and cost more all the while nobody really knows the long term effects on your health. Anecdotal studies suggest there are some real problems not profitable to be analyzed. The lack of vitamins and minerals in our foods can result in deficiencies in our body chemistry. The consequences can be serious and of course root cause of many of our modern maladies is often mysterious. Ever the opportunistic business model, the very profitable medical complex will be cashing in on "solutions".
All 8.2 billion of us need to eat, the food quality of what is evolving out there in the labs and in the patented seed offerings looks to be more than a little sketchy. Calories are often used to frame how well we are doing in a harvested crop but nourishment is perhaps a more important indicator. Caloric intake globally has gone up, while nutrition has gone down. With poor nutrition come a host of health issues. Genetic protein modifications also pose poorly understood digestive consequences for some people with sensitive genetics. It is good to understand that technology has no conscience. Its purveyors present for profit solutions that may or may not be good for you. That is the reality of our world. Marketing often suggests otherwise. Know the difference. Marketing execs possess even less conscience than technologists!
4. Mineral depletion or rather mineral purity aka ore percentage depletion.
The supply risk of critical minerals classified as "critical" will nearly double in the next ten years. Once again let us be reminded that 8.2 billion people consume everything at an alarming rate. Apart from the increasingly hard to obtain end product that these minerals enable there is the realization that the minerals that are available will get funneled into a shorter list of "things". So steel quality will be reduced, and alloys will be exponentially increasing in cost. The tonnage of steel produced might very well be reduced as well. Copper, still plentiful in sub 0.05% pure ores, takes a lot more energy to make and another significant mineral - cobalt - very necessary in battery technology and electric motor magnets is going to get much harder to find and concentrate. So wind power has a big flashing red light that says its growth potential is materials limited and finite with escalating costs to manufacture that chip away at its eroi even in the best locations. The escalating cost to manufacture with the increasingly lower quality of the ores tilts eroi in unfavorable ways - hence more energy goes into mining it and refining it then the end device will give back in its useful life. Roper was aware of this in the 1970's only his graphs and plots suggest depletion based on the economics of that era. Nothing has changed, mineral quality depletion continues to drop and is mined only by the willingness to dump money into chasing the low quality ores. This has extended the end of life prediction but hasn't changed the curve. Financialization of everything seems to be the current fascination among economists to support more cost and less margin to derive real assets - but here's the rub - an exponential demand on energy is required just to meet the unsustainable demand based on mining the lower grade stuff. At some point all the money you can print and all the bit coins you can digitize won't fuel the bull dozer or spin the turbines that make the necessary electricity to run the rock crusher or energize the concentration plants. Let alone feed the hungry who tend to get cranky when energy is diverted away from their needs. Whoops, what about the pollution mitigation and environmental controls that require lots and lots of energy to run? Those processing operations might very well be the first energy consumers to get switched off!
As an undergrad my Chem Eng room-mates did a project as a homework exercise. They had to design a very simple chemical plant for regulatory compliance in the US. Their conclusion: Can't be done. Will not be profitable. Then their prof said, how does it look if you remove the environmental compliance? Makes a huge margin! Where then would you build that plant? Globalism has lots of angles to it! But in the end, energy makes it all work - not gold bars, fancy speeches or chocolate cake. Although I truly love chocolate cake!
So here is what you've been waiting for:
This is what my magic 8-ball, my engineering head that took all those math classes and lived a life of logic based problem solving, and what my dog taught me... here we go.
A. None of this polycrisis stuff is reversible in four, five or even six generations. At least until a new carrying capacity is met and population stabilizes around it. Our energy shortfall will essentially define a much different way of life and we will be well into this transition in one generation like it or not. Perhaps a new population capacity of 1 billion people will eventually be possible if we are sane and rational in adjusting to our reality. Maybe the new carrying capacity based on sustainable living can be reached in three or four generations but probably longer. In the interim lots of volatility.
B. Energy shortfalls will effect global trade in a profound way within 3 to 5 years. Within 20 years dramatic shortfalls will take place making what we take for granted today "the good old days". The realization that business as usual cannot continue will become the new normal. Unfortunately it took civilization a walk right up to the cliff to understand that. No thanks to the governing class, the academe and the international organizations. The fourth column being controlled by the fifth column has truly been a worse than worthless asset. They've all been watching this, many are out to lunch and are simply useful idiots, but many do know and remain mute looking for opportunity in the coming chaos.
Regional economic zones based on resource availability and energy access will emerge. Crazy ideas as to how to govern them and get people to accept the new systems with top-down elitism will be a mixed bag of success and failure based on the sincerity, intellect, and trust leadership can employ. Not looking so good anywhere right now. Energy diverted to governance must also conform to a reduced supply and hence be much smaller. So AI and enormous data farms will probably be few in number.
C. Health, with its basis in the quality of our food stocks and our exposure to environmental toxins will continue to degrade for many unless you are fortunate enough to have access to high quality organic farming, clean water and cut processed food junk out of your diet. Pharmacological solutions will try to profit off of this but eventually the battle for energy will reset the dominance of that influence too. As populations seek healthier food and cleaner environments there will be better and worse places to be. Southern Hemisphere, de-industrialized, mainly agrarian geographies will be the prized high ground. Two or three generations to purge the pipeline.
D. Small well connected, well integrated communities will emerge by plan or by accident. They will thrive. Those groups that want to bicker, dominate and hierarchically force a class system like we have had won't do so well in parts of the world where the average citizen is well equipped - like Switzerland or the US... These communities are already forming. They will be the new landscape in a couple of generations. The ability to move freely among them will probably be a distant memory as territorial resources become critical to a regional population's success and energy to travel great distances will be costly.
E. If we can behave ethically, morally and rationally as a global population we can transition to a low density energy world and keep some semblance of quality of life, laughter, and joy. If we resort to conquest to doggedly hang on to the power and influence garnered in existing geopolitical power structures and institutions or hoard the critical energy resources there is no gaming software or AI that can predict where or how this goes. Any interventions that limit creative solutions will also negatively effect success and probably won't stand the test of time. Examples of failures will outstrip successes until we learn how to live within our geophysical limits.
Remember that happily married couple back in the start of this post? It seems as though one of them has been running up an energy bill that simply can't be paid in the future. LOL typical.
The times, they are a-changing
* Heroic efforts can be wars, color revolutions, sanctions and rarely diplomacy...