I have to say I am amazed.
OK then, let's get started. I have been a consumer of Colin Campbell's work for a very long time and I suppose that helped me to see - many years ago - that energy, physics and ecology (biology, toxicity of waste etc.), was what really drove the World's sometimes arcane policies and was really what defined the "economy". It isn't sage politicians or financial wizards as much as they like to take credit for the exploitation of the fruits of our well endowed planet. Depletion of quality in minerals is very real. Yes, there are mega-tons of (name the ore) around the planet but in lower and lower concentrations. Copper for example, a key element in electrification is now commonly mined at 0.6 % purity or LESS. Think about that. There was a time when 2 billion people inhabited the World and copper could be found at 75% purity. Now we have 8.2 billion souls and 0.6% pure ores.
So in 1930, one ton of mined copper ore would yield 2000 lb * 0.75 = 1500 lb of copper. The cost of mining, heavily dependent on diesel fuel, electric power for crushing and finally concentration yielded 1500 lb of copper for each 2000 lb dug up from a rich lode of ore at some mine. Usually a deep shaft mine following a rich ore body.
In 2025 2000 lb of copper ore yields 2000 lb * .006 = 12 lb of copper and only after a huge increase in the consumption of diesel fuel required to mine it and the coal burned to make the electricity needed to crush the low grade ore and then concentrate it. By the way 1500 lb of copper now requires 250,000 lbs of ore to be dug up, crushed and concentrated. See the problem? Depletion of ore quality and increased consumer consumption towards electrification is a dead end - full stop. We could look at lithium and the other needed rare earths for magnets and see a scarier cliff. The lithium ore requires about 500,000 liters of water to process enough ore to make one battery pack. Anybody want a lithium mine in their back yard? These new low concentration ore bodies are always open pit mines that end up being environmental disasters from the point of view of heavy metal pollution and water table contamination. On a massive scale...
Copper is just one commodity. Take a look at this analog for energy required vs commodity out done by Dr Roper. This suggests that we are arriving at a time when many previously cheap and abundant minerals will cost more to mine and concentrate into useful materials than they are worth as a finished product. This scenario is real, geology, physics and the toxicology associated with activities encouraged by the growth based economic financial systems on a finite planet simply do not work in a depletionary regime. A new way of thinking is needed. Tariffs may actually facilitate a destruction in demand and in an odd way act as a conservation mechanism. We shall see.
The current popular monetary beliefs evolved from the good fortune of abundant resources, cheap labor and cheap energy which in turn allowed the view to exist that resource quality and energy required were so inconsequential that they simply weren't factors needed to consider in an economy focused on short term gains, greed and hubris. If you needed more of something, just go on a conquest. That doesn't work well anymore. One: no land mass is immune from depletion, and Two: the thinkers advising most sophisticated societies have made it pretty clear how this ends. We as humans are pretty bad at cognating non-linear circumstances. Especially when there is no monetary reward for espousing that reality. As the social creatures we are, we have recently seen demonstrated on a global scale how incredibly easily duped the general population is, sadly. The network of government sponsored social engineering doesn't help either when it is used to destroy the truth or malign critical thinking. I actually think that is evil.
Closer to home, consider the energy costs just to maintain what we have already put in place. Will we be maintaining the millions of miles of roads and hundreds of thousands of bridges we as a global society built, mostly in the past 70 years considering most major roads and bridges have a 50 year life, or will we be economizing our use of energy and trying to figure out how to feed a hungry World whilst transitioning to sustainable non-petrochemical enabled farming? Can you say "Deferred maintenance please"? Big industrial ag, with its investor class have a dependency on petrochemicals to juice up crop output. Ain't gonna work - not sustainable based on the toxicology and fuel feedstock limitations. What about the cost to de-comission 440 aging nuke plants (30 year life span) sprinkled around the World at a cost of one billion USD per plant? And whoopsie, what happens when those plants go silent and the grid has that much less energy to provide? Who gets what's left, policy makers? Who gets to keep their lights on, who doesn't? The current kicking-the-can-down-the-road style of governance has resulted in 42,000 US bridges rated as unsafe... Hmmm, what about water treatment plants and keeping the water safe to consume in the delivery pipelines? All of this is adding up isn't it? One generation away from the poop hitting the high rpm rotating blades.
It is also likely that the middle class (the majority of tax payers etc.) will evaporate as economies slow down and growth becomes negative. So called social services that depend on tax revenue will evaporate too. Ouch.
Will governments create committees with physicists, geologists and ecologists as law makers or will the union card for tomorrows bureaucrat still be a law degree married to a Wall Street MBA? Or does it even matter at this point in time? The seriousness of the problems we face seem to be woefully mis-understood by those who are supposed to look out for their respective societies. In my humble opinion, the middle ages solution of conquest seems to be the path they are all on. Good luck with that barbaric but traditional solution. It does lower populations, so maybe that's the ticket? I sincerely hope not. We have to learn to live within our geophysical reality and not based on our credit limit - which is fantasy. Growth based economics is incompatible with sustainable human existence amid finite resources, but that seems to be poorly understood if not outright rejected by the masses including the thought leaders, moguls and grant writing academics alike who are obviously too bright to consider such pedestrian issues. Perhaps their solution is to let it crash and for the observant, build your clan a good, well stocked and defensible bunker...preferably in the Southern Hemisphere. The old canard that innovation and technology (just fund my idea...) will save the day always seems to put rational thinking in a headlock as one belief system is profitable the other is not. Beware: Physics, energy and ecological systems do not care about profits. Not one iota. So summary point: Money doesn't drive the survivability of our ecosystem, it never did. Neither do today's wealthy cliques and their elaborate financial machinations. But I'm pretty sure there are those who would disagree.
Conquest! <- This is especially prescient, I recommend you watch it. It has all been done before... seems like this is all we know on this planet. Only this time with less fuel, the mechanisms are likely to be different, but with similar horrific results. Let us hope we can evolve.
Don't expect computer programs like AI to fix this either. Actually that technology will probably speed the delivery of a lower quality of life as knowledge automation replaces educated decision makers in various professions. AI can perhaps give better advice for some things (or worse depending on who and how it has been programmed) and so consequent labor costs should drive down as the diagnostician and thinker class gets pink slipped. An incremental step towards collapse in my opinion as globally our intellectual traditions continue to get dismantled and diluted. LOL, the AI made me do it... Watch for the sketchy climate experts too! As an aside, the planet is always changing, what is attributed to CO - a trace gas of 100 ppb - 0.001% - is more influenced by solar and geophysical phenomena naturally occuring in nature. Just the 91 volcanos under Antartica could get froggy and change the ocean warm water / cold water current loops and viola! Utter chaos in weather for untold generations. So we live on a complicated planet with lots of feedback loops and stuff we can try to understand but never control. Sorry, that's reality.
But hey - maybe a good story about running out of energy dense fuels is easier to take if you are led to believe that we had better stop consuming it 'cause it's gonna make the global temp go up a couple degrees C and we're all gonna die! Good grief the idea we can control the Earth's climate is insane with one exception - nuclear winter. Why not just be honest? No problems can be solved by propagandizing lies and deceiving the unaware, but useful idiot.
Until next time.
