The Crash Course - Chris Martenson [115]
Second, in Malthus’s time, the laws of thermodynamics were incomplete and rudimentary, and something we take for granted, the germ theory, had to wait another 90 years to be fully accepted. Hopefully it’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that we’ve progressed in our understandings of things somewhat since Malthus’s time, and our circumstances are quite different from those in 1798.
Lastly, I am not predicting doom, only massive change. Whether someone interprets that as a crisis or an opportunity has nothing to do with facts and data, but psychology. Both of the listed objections fall under the same logical fallacy (inductive): “Because “A” hasn’t happened before, “A” can’t (or won’t) happen in the future.”
What truly is different this time is that collectively, as a species, we have never before faced declining energy flows. Never. So we’re about to enter completely uncharted waters. All we have are snippets and fragments from history to suggest what happens to localized cultures that run low on food or fuel, but these are poor analogues to our own globalized, just-in-time, highly complex, multibillion-person system of economic organization and delivery.
As we squint into the next few decades and ponder the numerous challenges converging on a very narrow strip of time, we would do well to consider the risks and question just what might happen if they converge to form the economic equivalent of a rogue wave.
1 In 1798, Thomas Malthus postulated that the human population’s geometric growth would at some point exceed the arithmetic returns of the earth, principally in the arena of food. To paraphrase, he recognized that the exponential growth of human numbers would meet with the constraints imposed by a finite world. Because this has not yet happened, some have claimed perpetual victory over the entire concept of limits. It should be noted that Thomas Malthus had no way of knowing that oil and coal would dominate the energy landscape for the next 200-plus years.
CHAPTER 24
Closing the Book on Growth
Exponential economic growth is in its final throes. The only question is whether we recognize this early, on our own terms, or later, as a consequence of a series of final and regrettable collapses that will result in enormous suffering to humans and ecosystems.
The economic predicament as I’ve laid it out goes like this:
1. Over time, debt-based money grows exponentially due to interest, and this is an immutable feature of the system.
2. Due to nonproductive loans that can’t be serviced with interest flows, the accumulation of debt also “goes exponential” over time.
3. Debt is a powerful motivator, and therefore exponential debt drives exponential economic growth and behaviors.
4. Any growth, but especially exponential economic growth, requires ever-increasing amounts of energy to sustain its order and complexity.
5. Because energy cannot, through any combination of known technologies, grow exponentially into the future forever, economic complexity and order will someday shrink.
The only sure conclusion from this line of thinking is that someday our current model of economic growth will end and something new will take its place. It’s only a question of when. Of course, any child could tell you that nothing can keep growing forever, and we’ve always known somewhere, perhaps deep down, that our current model was unsustainable. The end of the growth paradigm is now making its presence felt as the world economy and financial systems lurch from rock to rock, seemingly immune from the magic money incantations and spending potions that have always worked in the past. The predicament of stagnant economic growth resulting in financial chaos can only be “solved” by increasing the flow rate of energy (and other resources) through our economy. It cannot be solved by pouring more money into a congealing economic cauldron.
What happens when an economy that must grow is being fueled by an energy