This is a great and important conversation. Nate's work is amazing. We need more conversations like this in order for the wider public to be able to meet the future halfway!
I really appreciate his perspective in calling uranium-based nuclear power short-term because we only have access to maybe 60 years worth of uranium. We really do need to start thinking of time scales as short as 60 years is being short-term. However his haste to dismiss nuclear is uncalled for. Uranium-based solid fuel water cool reactors have always been a bad idea. We only built them because they produce weapons grade fuel as a byproduct of producing energy and they can be miniaturized enough to be put on submarines and aircraft carriers. But there are other options for nuclear power beyond uranium. What he should really be advocating for is to stop letting ignorance and fear keep us from developing more advanced forms of nuclear power.
Traveling wave reactor uses nuclear waste. The current storage of the nuclear reactor wastes in the state of Kentucky alone can provide enough energy for the U.S for the next 700 years. Also, fusion is becoming more practical and in the next few decades, we will have it at the production level. That is practically a limitless source of energy for humanity's civilization. In the coming decades or centuries, ultimately humans will find a way (they have to) to master anti-matter! And that is the end of energy sources.
assumes increased demand wont increase innovation/supply. we have been told we will run out of oil my entire life, and its always 10 years away and they keep finding more.
This has been a subject that I've preemptively changed my life around, at one point I had a business putting logos on chinese imported clothing, but I couldn't get comfortable knowing how temporary that path of skill understanding would be. So I left and started learning how to farm over 13 years ago, since then I've grown every vegetable, built and designed over 100 greenhouses, and learned mycology and hydroponics, as well as how to manage chickens and rabbits, as well as skills like building my own house, making solar arrays, and fixing small engines and equipment. That is the life I assume we will have to go back to, I jumped into self imposed poverty with the ambition of putting the knowledge up for sale when the demand grew. Some romanticize hunter gatherer survival when the grid goes down, but what they don't realize is the lack of wild life now compared to when humans were symbiotically among nature, as most humans live on the edge of ecosystems, and subsist greatly from water ways. Plus the first thing to be consumed in any economically distraught area is the wild life, so we really are dependent on agriculture, or the ten thousand years of hereditary lineage of genetically tailored plants and animals, in order to subsist with a lifestyle anything close to what we enjoy today. I've done personal studies about calories, and it essentially takes 1.3 square feet of grain production to feed a chicken per day, which produces about .6 of an egg each day depending on it's age. One egg is about 75 calories and 7 grams of protein, and for one person to eat only eggs is about 8ft x 8ft every day of grain production to eat like a body builder, which really adds up considering there are only two opportunities to plant grains each year. Agriculture, and self subsistence skills are not rocket science, but they have been forgotten by the general public, which makes it more of a leap for people to understand the basic physiological understandings that come into play when interacting with nature and all of the hurdles it throws at the intention of growing food. I assume that as the world moves into this caloric deficit dilemma, humans are going to stop maintaining the hold backs of nature that we have been keeping up with, which means the invasive species are going to be given free range of areas they've established in, and will ultimately be the largest resource for people to draw from, as well as the largest menace of land management, as they have vigorous growth habits, and are essentially all consuming monocrop when left unattended. The future is small animals, worms, and mushrooms. In all of my experiments, the only way to really have a diverse diet on a small scale is by turning waste into chicken or rabbit manure, then processing that manure through worms and secondary decomposing mushrooms, to then protect that fertility from the elements with greenhouse production which also extends the season capacity. The future of growing food is going to be about growing it in smaller and smaller places, and if you look at China and how they feed their overpopulation, you'll find the inground chinese greenhouse, which utilizes solar banking berms with a east to west oriented greenhouse to extend their season with passive heat storage. There are other ways of increasing out of season production, such as compost heat, or even chickens for that matter, which run at 120f. We will be seeing hydroponics become a very buzz word niche as people get into gardening as a means of not going hungry, because hydroponics can close the loop to fertility systems, mainly because instead of putting your fertility from the chickens/rabbits onto a field to get leeched by rain, you can compost it into a safe state through bugs and fungi, to then maximize it's growth potential on hydroponic systems which also use less water. Eventually when large Ag develops Golden Rice v.2 it will be a short rice grain designed to grow on a hydroponic system, and that's where I assume all of this is going. It takes a lot of time to understand these systems, and a lot of soft skills, such as electrical, plumbing, construction, algebra in order to build and maintain these systems. It's in everyone's best interest to become familiar with systems of food procurement, as it's going to make your future much more stable no matter what comes our way.
Yeah good luck with that... if you follow the advice of the green zealots, you can kiss your farming style goodbye. You'll be tucking into "brewed microbes" just like the rest of us.
We need a LOT more people like this gentleman - and Chris. If we could infuse the wisdom this single interview contains in every other person on this Earth, our future would definitely look more promising.
I rewatch this one every 4-6 months, whenever life feels nice and comfy. Real "Precipice" Toby Ord vibes, man. MW is a great kick-in-the-ass pod, Chrissy Wisdom. :)
What a thought-provoking conversation! The most meaningful part for me was not trade-offs in energy consumption, nuclear fusion etc.. but something which I have believed in for a long time. That your most valuable asset and investment is in interpersonal relationships. You can get a bigger personal reward from conversation or interaction with another person or persons, or from a contribution to someone else's quality of life than from another new phone or car. We can all do with a lot less material goods and acquire our 'status' and joy through our empathy and continual striving for knowledge, understanding and the footprint we leave behind when we are gone.
This is a great conversation. Thank you for sharing this marvellously over-arching take. Perhaps the factor of personal energy could enter the discussion in the sense that vitality can be bled off by the illusory lures of consumption and feeling the urge to acquire status. This, perhaps, is why it is so difficult to shift the perspective to where status is seen for what it is - a thought. Just a hunch.💐
It all boils down to the human drive to find a mate and procreate. Civilizations rise and fall and it's all because of sex. That's why porn is so insidious. It's sapping young men of their creative and energetic potential. Porn is gay.
Sorry but it wasn't a conversation. Chris didn't try push against his ideas. He just talk continusly with no sense. He is crying wolf for 20 years and he will continue to do that and even if in a 200 years it will happen , he could say "i told you so" .This is very child like argument. I dont understand why he claims that demografic doesn't include energy...ofcourse they are. Most likly we will not get to 9B and if we do so we will do. And if pepole will fight to death...what will be will be...so there will be less pepole....this is perfectly nature. He prefer that we will not exsit as animal on this earth, we are part of nature ...there is no rule of cosmic balance between all the organic being on this earth that been state by GAYA......be a man, give some personal example and lead the way.
Not only are the generating and distribution systems not available for an electric economy, neither are the backup storage systems. The UK needs 18,000 gwh of backup energy, to allow for unreliable renewables, but at present we only have 10 gwh (Dinorwig). We need to cost in that missing 17,990 gwh of backup (which will cost £trillions), before saying renewables are cheap. And these backup storage systems will take decades to build. And where will we put them?? R
Oh my gosh yes!!!! I’ve been waiting for Chris to have Nate on for ages!!! He is the most important guest you could have! Forget about lonely incels, feminism and those topics, this is far more important in comparison!
@@TennesseeJed this dipshit advocates "simplification" aka let's all live with less (except the rich ofc). The internet is a luxury that consumes energy. So as a "follower" why are you on the internet and not growing crops in the woods?
Would have liked to hear this guy's take on EVs, batteries, the cost (fossil fuels, logistics, mining amounts, mining pollution, etc, etc) into the "value" of EVs for a "solution" for the future.
My guess is he would say these things will not help. He mentioned that if we suddenly found a source of infinite free energy, things would only get much worse for the ecology. Humans would just grow even faster and consume even more material.
Stimulating and thought provoking interview Chris. Everything we consume relies on the extraction and production of cheap oil. That era has since passed and what is left is either of lesser quality (i.e. high sulphur content), unviable or becoming increasingly expensive to extract and refine. Fracking extended independence the last 10-15 years. Increasing costs will affect the ability to grow the economy, exacerbating inflation, hence the emphasis toward alternatives. Ultimately, the products we consume are all dependent upon oil and petrochemicals.
Re nuclear energy: There's plenty of videos from credible sources here on YT that suggest that Thorium is about 3 x more abundant than Uranium. Th reactors can also burn Uranium reactor 'waste' to enrich the Th fuel. And then there are fast breeder reactors. Nuclear should be good for a couple of centuries.
@@robertmichon5448 Electric trains, electric cars, electric heating, that ought to increase the 20%. No reason why this number has to be fixed. Things change!
Agreed on Thorium. I dont think any solution involves reducing energy expenditure. Maybe temporarily due to cost but not in long term. For makind to survive energy consumption can only go up. Overall energy efficiency will also improve but this whole thing "that we lost connection with nature" is bollocks.
Not only are the generating and distribution systems not available for an electric economy, neither are the backup storage systems. The UK needs 18,000 gwh of backup energy, to allow for unreliable renewables, but at present we only have 10 gwh (Dinorwig). We need to cost in that missing 17,990 gwh of backup (which will cost £trillions), before saying renewables are cheap. And these backup storage systems will take decades to build. And where will we put them?? R.
@@RalphEllis Exactly! There's an author/proponent in the US, Alex Epstein, who's been trying to warn people there that the world simply isn't at a point when it can abandon fossil fuels, and to do so will leave people without power and in a bad way economically. That's not to say that we shouldn't reach for renewables and develop other better non-fossil fuels that will run in existing combustion engine vehicles. We should. But we need to do this in a well-planned manner.
Wow, excellent podcast. Nate blasted out a lot of good information in a short time span. Chris, great job making use of the pauses to ask very good questions.
This was a brilliant episode. I started to listen to Nate Hagen's podcasts and even watched his short movie. This has really opened my eyes. One thing led to another and I listened to Jason Hickel about Degrowth. I even read his book Less is more. How to get a grass roots movement started about the failing of capitalism should happen before social unrest and climate change gets overwhelming. People of the world should somehow unite.
Only Degrowth will save us - and other species - in the future. It’s all about environmental sustainability, ecological footprint and carrying capacity.
Really like this man, his views are roughly aligned with the Climate Change alarmists, who have alienated me with their infantile rhetoric using deception tactics. Nate explains things with calm logic and reason, treats his audience as adult free thinkers - as a consequence has changed my entrenched position on energy use and the potential consequences.....well done.
You began your comment well ... but then lost me. It's all crap and the biggest scam ever pulled. This guy is just another grifter, peddling the sane old gloom and doom.
You may well be right, the level of deception involved is staggering. He seems to have his roots in the Hippy movement, but seems a genuine guy - doesn't subscribe to the insane rhetoric of the younger generation....@@paul_GriyaLestari
Nuclear engineer here: Just to address some of his issues with nuclear. I don't entirely disagree with his points, but a lot of them are clearly based on incomplete information: 1 - Nuclear can provide a huge amount of electricity (and waste heat, depending on design), which is exactly what is required to produce hydrogen as a liquid fuel. It's also the only way (as far as I can see, happy to be wrong here) that will produce hydrogen en masse that doesn't require large square footage of crops to do so. 2 - The solution isn't nuclear + gas going forward, it's excess nuclear baseline power and energy storage. You don't need to turn it off, the problem is not generation, it's making a battery to go with it to load match the grid. Pumped water storage would be a good solution to this where geographically available. 3 - still cheaper than your economy collapsing due to blackouts. Yes it takes time, which is the only real issue that we have. The UK is in serious danger of black/brown outs because we didn't keep adding new reactors to our nuclear fleet here. France is currently laughing because they did. The real cost issue with nuclear power is that it requires a government guaranteed unit rate to make it worth building in the first place (currently). I can see the free market taking care of this in an instant if other energy sources disappear. I can also see small modular reactors (like the kind various navies have been using for years) getting a generic design certificate to make on grid power appear faster and then increase on each site over time as more reactors are added. 4 - This is where he's completely wrong. We have enough uranium cycle fuel waste from thermal reactors to keep fast reactors going way longer than 60 years, let alone the remaining stock of mined uranium. You can also harvest uranium from the sea using amidoxime. 5 - Negative environmental cost is also significantly reduced by burning spent fuel in fast reactors. The half life of what's left is drastically reduced. Also, all new reactor designs are failsafe by default and that's only getting better. Reactors need to be passively safe, which means if left to its own devices it would shut down by virtue of the inherent design (doesn't require active safety measures to do so). Fukishima cocked up on their active mitigation because they put their backup generators in the basement, rather than somewhere higher than the calculated flood line. Anyone that's worried about radioactive particles being put into the atmosphere needs to have a serious look at coal, that puts more radiation into the atmosphere than any other fuel source. I really think this is a drop in the ocean with regard to concerns of societal breakdown. A lot of the problems he's talking about in that segment could be solved by a huge excess of electricity generation from nuclear. Also, to any of you thorium fanboys out there - it's not the solution either. Yes there is more thorium available, but to this day there is no equivalent of the PUREX process and you'd need remote processing of the fuel due to the gamma decay of daughter products, which is a vastly worse situation for fuel reprocessing than what you have with a plutonium/uranium cycle. Also, thorium is also a uranium cycle, it's just a thorium/uranium cycle. That and you'd need seed fuel to get the reactor going, which would likely contain plutonium (though I suppose you could use some kind of neutron gun). Thorium has no practical advantage over the plutonium/uranium reactors to anyone but India. Fast breeders have all the advantages that thorium thermal breeders have, only plutonium/uranium fast reactors have 50+ years of knowledge, experience and lessons learnt behind it.
There are also many nuclear engineers who disagree with each other. There is a joke among many nuclear engineers that if you ask when the more advanced forms of nuclear is going to be complete, it’s always 20 years out. These arguments have been made by nuclear advocates for many decades now. If there is a real shot at nuclear then we should be and would be building it out NOW. Because we won’t have much time left. The fact that governor isn’t putting real money into it is likely not due to ignorance but because the technology isn’t ready yet. Otherwise they wouldn’t be wasting so much money and time on far less efficient forms of energy such as solar and wind. That said, even if nuclear did ‘save’ us, the planet cannot sustain such growth. The environmental costs do NOT just come from the outputs of energy but the consumption of humans with that energy/what we do with it. Many of the raw minerals and metals we use are falling in ore grade and need more energy to get as well. So cheap raw materials do not last forever even if we have nuclear. And nuclear by the way uses many of these rare earth minerals, etc.
@@thehylander266 I'm not talking about fusion, just technology that already exists and has been used. Fusion won't be on grid in any of our lifetimes. The main problem with nuclear is the up front cost, always has been.
@@squoblat The technology you’re talking about still uses very finite resources such as rare earth minerals which are mined with fossil fuel. And exotic metals which are finite in supply. All nuclear uses these resources.
Hello beautiful people. Here’s some references for different studies Nate cites in this episode: 02:16: Everything in our economy requires energy to do www.resilience.org/stories/2009-04-23/energy-everything/ 03:15: Ukraine/Russia effects on Europe’s energy www.edf.org/article/war-ukraine-driving-gas-prices 06:18 - A barrel of oil can displace 4.5 years of human labor - Section 4.3 www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067 09:21 - US oil imports and exports www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/imports-and-exports.php#:~:text=U.S.%20total%20energy%20exports%20equaled,of%20about%207.2%25%20from%202020. 09:25 - If we stopped drilling immediately, production would drop by 40% in a year - ‘Impact on Global Markets’ Section knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/beyond-gas-pump-new-world-order-oil/ 10:38 - Electricity is only 20% of modern energy use - and cannot replace liquid fuels www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/role-fossil-fuels-sustainable-energy-system 10:59 - Intermittence of renewable sources dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/95762 12:09 - The average American consumes 2kcal/day, but 210,000kcal worth of energy exosomatically (100:1) - Europe uses 50:1 energy consumption www.ejolt.org/2012/12/human-energy-use-endosomatic-exosomatic/ 13:20 - The United States uses 4x as much energy than needed www.npr.org/2022/04/12/1092045712/how-much-energy-powers-a-good-life-less-than-youre-using-says-a-new-report 16:59 - Nuclear and Renewables cannot meet the variability of human energy use www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/nuclear-plants-are-closing-in-the-us-should-we-build-more 18:45 - We don’t have uranium past 6-7 decades Figure 25.8 research.abo.fi/ws/portalfiles/portal/32953035/ASSESSMENT_OF_THE_SIZE_AND_SCOPE_OF_NON_FOSSIL_FUELS_SYSTEMS_TO_PHASE_OUT_OIL_GAS_and_COAL.pdf 21:30 - Oil discoveries peaked in 1960s years ago web.archive.org/web/20081003081853/www.worldenergysource.com/articles/pdf/longwell_WE_v5n3.pdf 22:00 - 60% of oil reserves are in the triangle of Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. web.archive.org/web/20081003081853/www.worldenergysource.com/articles/pdf/longwell_WE_v5n3.pdf 22:35 - Tar sands www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/what-are-tar-sands 24:05 - Reports on how much oil is left at what price www.iea.org/reports/oil-2021 24:44 - Economic growth rate peaked in the 1970s data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG 31:30 - 95% of money is created from commercial banks www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy 35:29 - Germany is a manufacturing hub, Russia is a resource hub www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/germany-advanced-manufacturing geohistory.today/resource-extraction-export-russia/ 42:10 - Coal currently costs $0.05/Kwh, should be $0.20/Kwh if including externalities www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210301133829.htm 46:02 - Anchoring bias/loss aversion thedecisionlab.com/biases/loss-aversion 48:50 - Kerogen reserves and viability Section 2, Box 1. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3866387/ 51:30 - Every year we add 80 million humans to the planet, and 100 million vehicles ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth www.hotcars.com/heres-how-many-new-cars-are-produced-each-year/ 54:25 - Standard economic thinking does not consider energy to be important www.jstor.org/stable/1056148 57:08 - Peak oil extraction was in November 2018 www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-world-has-already-passed-peak-oil-bp-figures-reveal/ 1:00:50 - We are at the beginning of a 6th mass extinction, populations of animals down 70% since 1960 www.science.org/content/article/are-we-middle-sixth-mass-extinction www.cbsnews.com/news/endangered-species-animal-population-decline-world-wildlife-fund-new-report/ 1:01:23 - Insects declining by 1-2% per year www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1722477115 1:01:55 - Survey saying 1% picked climate change as the issue they most care about news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx 1:11:58 - Consumption used to be egalitarian www.newscientist.com/article/dn22071-inequality-why-egalitarian-societies-died-out/www.newscientist.com/article/dn22071-inequality-why-egalitarian-societies-died-out/
I'd love to meet you one day bro, you have really intriguing ideas for OUR should be discussions among all of US. But until then brother, stay bless 🙌🏽 🙏🏽
I'm still listening But it doesn't look like he covers Power laws. You should see if you can't get Geoffrey B West from the santa fe institute on discussing Power Laws ..an example of his work ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nxgHyPCCqaw.html
You should get Peter Zeihan on your show. According to him (and I believe Elon Musk's reasoning is the same), population is going to collapse because a huge portion of the world is rapidly running out of 18-35 year-olds who could make the next generation (and, to make matters worse, those currently existing 18-35 year-olds are mostly choosing NOT to procreate). IOW, they're fate is already sealed. It's just a game of attrition for them now. Their elderly will soon start to die off at a never-seen-before rate and not be replaced. That attrition rate will be hastened by the lower standard of living coming to us all (Nate Hagens and Peter Zeihan agree on that much). Less A/C, less heat, less available healthcare, etc. will take it's toll. According to Zeihan, the world is about to cross the 8 billion people mark (in the Nov '22 time frame), but that will be close to the peak. We will never see the 9 billion mark crossed.
No one can overstate how much of a disaster population decline would be. If we don't think carefully about it, population stagnation could be equally disastrous. Particularly if such a stagnation is a numerical mirage in which declining population in developed countries is hidden by high birth rates in developing nations, as is currently the case. Imagine a deflationary economy, where you never get promoted, all of the good jobs are occupied via nepotism. Doomers like to say we are already there, but when it really happens they will wish for the way it used to be. Bad news for sure.
Perhaps some experimental injections could be playing a part with adverse events unfolding as time goes by. And don't come with that conspiracy bullshit, let's contemplate eventual repercussions for a moment.
My countries population has probably trebled in fifty years, but our standard of living has declined. Less people will result in less demand for the things you mention.
dont for get 2 billion baby boomers are retiring this decade starting the end of 2022. the U.N thinks we'll reach 13 billion. which is def false. this is the most people we'll ever see alive at once in history
I use approximately a 5th or 4th the amount of energy of the average person in my area. I manage this by not flying, not driving and not wasting. My main means of transportation is my bike. And my hobbies are things that don't require much energy, like cycling, hiking, writing, reading, learning. My lifestyle also costs a fraction of the average, which meant that when I was working I could save the majority of my salary. I now live free of the need to work, and have been free of work for over a year. Which further reduces my energy consumption. Nate advocates a reduction in energy use by a 3rd. And that should be easily accomplished.
But, all this means nothing in relation to the huge swarm of 8 billion breeders living in a capitalist con game the if founded on the scam of endless growth on a finite planet. Don’t breed more to suffer and die unnecessarily.
I'm a young person, under 30, who has decided to do as much as I can to work towards leaving the current system and working towards building a better one. One of those steps after listening to the end of this podcast is to try and start a competition with other gardeners at my local community garden (first year for me) at who can grow the tastiest produce. Maybe I'll see if people want to do tomatoes. Tastiest, rather than biggest, in order to prioritize nutrition over quantity.
Made it the point to stick to the end. Didn't manage that fit. That level of arrogance - "I know, that humanity will not innovate ourselves out of this conundrum. Why? Because I can't see how". Stellar logic. As to the fallacious comparison between human body energy production capacity and a barrel of oil - dude, you know that chemical and potentiap physical energy exists, right? Humans invented the wheel, agriculture and windmills exactly so we can stop relying on our musculature. Fossils are just another step.
Some interesting points, and while I often am skeptical of the specific models and claims of climate change alarmists, I agree generally with the message of sustainability and conservation. The most likely outcome of our pending energy issues, policy, and population problems seems to me to be horrific WW3 and a rather unpleasant reset back to less energy consumption...
When you look at habitat and biomass destruction and the fact of burning hundreds of millions of years of concentrated solar chemical energy and releasing the waste in the form of CO2 into the atmosphere, it's hard to imagine that it wouldn't have a dramatic effect just on gut instinct. It just so happens that the science points to it as well.
@@stopthephilosophicalzombie9017 And history points to our ability to overcome the unintended consequences of previous generations. In all likelyhood, we'll figure it out without reverting to the word burning days, don't toss the baby out with the bath water.
@@Atchuu2004 We are talking about humans wiping out 500 million years of stored energy in 200 years. That is beyond comprehension. Unless we solve fusion I really don't see us being able to put the evil spirits back in Pandora's Box.
@@Trazynn no, you're overestimating it. the quality of fossil fuels that remains is decreasing with each subsequent extraction. peak oil has already been reached, and the vast reserves you talk about will be a net negative energy gain just due to how energy intensive they are to extract and prepare for use
@@bigdaddyof2007 Really? Have you devised yet another perpetual motion machine? Since when does any chemical reaction produce more energy than it took to bond the molecules together in the first place? Please, educate me.
@@bigdaddyof2007 In other words, is polymerizing smaller carbon chain molecules into larger carbon chain molecules an exothermic reaction, or an endothermic reaction? It's endothermic, isn't it? What am I missing here?
Great to see you two smart talkers together. Nate is an amazing chronicler of what is and what might be. And Chris brings a different energy to the issues that was able to find a meeting place in the the middle of the discussion. Brilliant discussion---and Chris, great to see you settle back and let Nate rip. Great episode. Cheers!
This whole time I was wondering if he really needed all three lamps on in the background. But then, he labeled himself as being exempt towards the end. Perfect! 🤣
@@paul_GriyaLestari You're right. There are bilions of small people on the planet. That's why we can benefit from changing the rules. And you need good light to make a good shot. There's nothing original in "rules are just for us small people" argument. But it's ok. We need stupidity for wisdom recognition.
I really enjoyed the candor regarding global use of oil as part of the coming energy crisis and the complexity of the energy grid. As an Alberta resident I am often perplexed at the oversimplification of how the oil sands produces oil or a lack of appreciation of how much there actually is which is quite a lot and how reliable it’s extraction has continued to improve in terms of environmental impact.
Scaremongers have been doomsaying the scarcity of oil for 100 years, and from what I can see, we have just found more. Tech will get better, safer, cheaper and we will be able to go farther to get it, that's human nature
iirc the downside to "oil sands" is how expensive it is to extract, am I wrong about this? Either way, that doesn't really effect its availability or environmental impact, which is the subject of this video
@@robot9674 I also have my doubts about him when he refers to climate change as if it's only a recent phenomenon and not one that stretches back to the formation of the earth. Anyone who confuses anthropogenic global warming for climate change - deliberately or not - needs to be taken with a large pinch of salt IME.
Bro I appreciate the work you do it’s hard to set this stuff up and get people on the show I’m glad I found your channel back at 100k subs like a year ago. I come from a Christian background and I’m center right but I get frustrated at some of the right leaning podcasts bc they always have bad news (bc they are always doom and gloom and I get it) but I know yours is more centrist and that’s good for me I’m sure it’s good for you. I’m kind of rambling but keep it up bro appreciate it
Check out some of Peter Zeihan's RU-vid videos. He has relieved me of much of my worry. It sounds like it's going to get real bad, but we in the U.S. will be fairly insulated from what's coming.
@@brushstroke3733 It will suck for everyone, but countries like US and Canada will be alright. The UK will need to connect more with North America. China etc is doomed
@@brushstroke3733 Even better in Australia- where we have no common borders with any other country, a continent to ourselves, a society that is not as divided as the US, where we have a fairer wage structure, universal health care and no insane gun policy.
I don't agree with all of what Nate said on various issues, but he gave quite possibly the smartest and most nuanced answer I've heard on population in a long time.
I love Rogan too, and he's much smarter than most people give him credit for (especially those on the left)...but Chris is on another level in intelligence and his breadth of knowledge.
He has a persuasive series of arguments that all feed a narrative that boils down to the idea that human progress won’t continue, we face limits that can’t be overcome, and that we’re all headed for an apocalyptic reversal of fortune. He’s convincing because he’s wrong in a dozen technical ways that would take even longer to talk about than this talk. Our challenges today are in no way greater than our challenges in the past. We will overcome them just as we always have, using human ingenuity. Those that argue we are headed to hell usually use it as a way to justify a despotic government, as only by giving control to the despot and his experts will we be saved from the apocalypse. Don’t believe prophets of doom; they’re always seeking political power. We’ll be fine. I’m a chemical engineering professor and I hear something half-wrong in what he has to say every couple of minutes. He’s never fully wrong, but he’s warping what he knows to arrive at his apocalyptic scare stories. All the clever analogies in the world don’t make his overall message correct.
It's you who is the ideologue. Your ideology is that "We'll be fine". And you maintain this view despite the evidence that mounts everyday. Nate's take is we need to get smarter about how we use energy and materials because the era of easy abundance is coming to an end in the near future. We've gotten a preview of this with the rising cost of energy, food, lumber, etc. in the past year or so. It only takes a small disruption in the system to send prices flying because there is no reserve capacity left. I also did not see any evidence that Nate was trying to justify a despotic government. Go back to the chalkboard professor.
@@bearclaw5115 The Prof is right. Nate Hagens mangles for example the term of mass extinction. There are two different meanings. Number one: The extinction of one or several species due changes in their environment, to which they cannot adapt fast enough. Changes like diseases, new predators, eviromental changes, those things. Number two: The anhilation of roughly 99% of all living beings on the planet due factors like, vulcanism, astroid impacts, super novas, this kind of stuff. Number one happens quite a lot while number two is really rare. But he said we're at the beginning of a sixth mass extinction, refering to an cataclisymic event like an astroid impact, while what we're actually facing is an event like number one. Both aren't good, but the second scenario is way, way worse and he refers to that, simply to scare people. I think that is very dishonest.
I think this conversation is a good example of how facts (raw numbers) do not equal prediction. I heard lots of assumptions of worst case scenarios and little actual solutions.
Right, we know the collapse is coming, but we already have demographics across the world imploding. We won’t need as much fuel for less people now that the globalists got what they want: population decline
“Tragedy of the commons” is a myth that people use to console themselves with their greed and selfishness by projecting it onto others. The “Commons” have been shared equitably and sustainably in many places by many cultures, most notably indigenous civilisations. In England the Commons was shared sustainably, it was the enclosure act that kicked crafters off the common land because a) aristocrats wanted to take the land for their own amusement or profit, and b) the emerging middle class industrialists wanted human labourers in the cities to be exploited as unskilled labor. It was the elite that time and time again destroyed the common-wealth-resources in western and eastern cultures, not individuals taking more than their share.
In Britain our energy cost will have doubled in October 2022 having previously doubled since 2017 - I think we've had enough taxes on energy thanks, we are bordering on civil disobedience already over this issue.
If you can up with a plan to plug the energy gap by tomorrow supper time then chapeau to you Sir! Otherwise we're going to have align demand with supply and the only way to do that is increasing the supply.
The biggest problem is powerful people are going for the central planning approach, artificially making people poorer is 1 not very humane and 2 will cause a massive backlash undermining the goals. Innovation and grass roots is the only way, but its very hard to change behaviour and culture
That's of course assuming we need a way out and that we won't continue to generally improve our command of the natural world around us without people putting their thumbs on the scale by speculating in favor of one tech over another. (Rhetorical) Why is solar or wind better than nuclear? What about tidal or hydroelectric? What about the fact that we keep finding more and more oil? What if the predictions of the effects of man made CO2 in the air are drastically wrong? None of these come without a cost, zero, it's not physically possible. Nuclear has risks to their local environment and storage of by products are at this time a problem (but that might change) Solar and Wind have massive upfront investments of pollution to mine, refine, and build the components and we are currently unable to recycle them after their use, batteries to handle the somewhat random fluctuations are heavy, costly, and inefficient and have problems being recycled Hydro increases the risk of severe flooding and large ecological disruption during rainy seasons or dam failures and large costs of concrete and steal that have to be replaced eventually Why are the potential advancements in battery tech or solar cell efficacy better than potential advancement in nuclear waste reuse or carbon capture?
Nate Hagens everyone! [applause]. Up there doing the important work. Spreading the essential ideas, information and messages to the Public. Great video!
Incredible. Such a great conversation and reframed a bunch of stuff for me. Definitely has me looking at things differently now. So fascinating and scary all at the same time.
@N.Hagens&C.Williamson ~29:25 Even if population were static along with All production/consumption (no new building..etc), constant and accelerated depletion would occur right along with global warming and sea rise. Maintaining the infrastructure alone requires constant accelerated exploration and consumption of energy. Most of this MUST be in diesel form. There is no substitute.
He wants to send us back to the dark ages...literally. This is all great reset propaganda. We could make nuclear energy for centuries! He's lying! He doesnt want any solutios besides wiping out 90% of the population. He is saying, no more advancement...how do you think this is great?
There's no issue with nuclear power being difficult to 'turn off', this is only a problem because of the way we balance the grid i.e. reducing production when demand reduces. The simple fix for this is to manage it by stabilising the demand, this can be done with dump loads, use the excess for carbon capture, desalinisation plants, whatever you like, there are plenty of worthwhile activities. Nationalise production and generate more of it.
Not at all complicated. Thorium nuclear has always been the answer. I was saying this 40 years ago in the 5th grade. Only complicated for you and this clown he invited on his show.
the calculation of a gallon of fuel for two weeks of human labor seems to be a stretch. for about the twelfth minute, the alternative to reducing energy consumption is to use nuclear energy, not to make people poor.
Great subject for discussion Chris, it's something that our weak decadent privilege affords us to be able to ignore yet for the sake of our future generations it's imperative that we don't! I'm pleased to have spent my valuable time absorbing your content once again. All the best until the next one 👍
I hear a lot of speculation and assertions, but not a whole lot of evidence. Sure, fossil fuels are a finite resource, but his argument is operating from the knowledge standpoint of where humans are today, and isn't taking into account what we will know about finding, extracting and using this resource, or others, "tomorrow." It's a very pessimistic view of humanity, and doesn't jive with the concept of human flourishing.
Evidence for what? We burn through the energy dense fossils pretty fast while speculating for a similar source in the future while theres more humans than ever. The idea is that alot of the flourishing is more due to the vast usage of fossils than human ingenuity and we are in overshoot without any backup at this point in time. Apart from that there should be a decent amount of ways this plays out in our favour but nevertheless its not unlikely the risk for our current civilization is underestimated broadly.
Very insightful and sobering conversation, and reminds me to be more aware of my energy usage in simple ways, even if I can ‘afford’ not to. I think sometimes we all need a kick in the pants to remind us of what we already know… ‘turn the damn light off when you leave the room!’ .. etc..
Even thorium aren’t as on/off as they need to be to beat gas. But there is a better overall solution, and that is to consider hydrogen production via electrolysis. Hydrogen fuel has to be manufactured and what better way than to use excess production to produce it - creates transport fuel, storage, and potentially enables many other uses.
New subscriber here. Over time I have stumbled across your videos and always liked them. Very interesting and thought-provoking, great guests. I also have been watching/following Geo-Political Analyst Peter Zeihan and he is certain human population is just about at it's zenith right now, many countries around the world are aging out, China as a unified country will not exist within 10 yrs, and globalization is ending. Much of all this was already happening but Covid sped it all up. This Russian war didn't help any either with the energy/food/fertilizer/other resources getting constrained. Change is definitely upon us all, and is going to continue. It's amazing we can hear from experts such as Nate and yet don't seem to be heeding the call, so it will be forced upon us. Sigh. Great channel though, thank you.
This is a lot of helpful insight and perspective. The fact that he doesn't mention the issue of animal agriculture and the necessity of transitioning to a plant based diet is a glaring omission.
This is where the guest and I differ.... my priority is humanity. Mother Nature has bounced back from far worse than what humanity has or can do. We should be more worried about our very, real fragility when compared to nature!
I don't disagree per se, but the 'energy shortage' alarmists have been about as successful as the malthusians at forecasting the impending doom of modern civilization. No reason not to keep developing better sources and finding ways to reduce usage, but also no reason to worry imo.
Remember the boy who cried wolf. People make estimates with regard to resource depletion and get it wrong. It doesn't mean that all future predictions will be wrong because past ones were. The low-hanging fruit is gone, that's why shale oil, deep-water, polar oil & tar sands are being developed.
@@ilangoldman8224 That's exactly the point, though. Every time the "existing energy reserves" were nearing depletion (and doom was predicted) technological innovation opened up new ones and it's not unreasonable to expect that we can continue that path, although most likely our next developments will be in next-generation nuclear power rather than oil drilling. I also take issue with the idea that the 'low-hanging fruit' has only recently been used up. There is no such thing as "low-hanging" fossil fuels which is why they weren't used for energy until after the industrial revolution enabled access to them. We are able to access more technically challenging oil wells now than in the 19th century, but it's not like our pre-industrial ancestors could just dig holes with shovels and plentiful oil would bubble up.
Hello 🎉Chris 🎉🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤❤ Yes please fallow this path more and flush this out with your platform 🎉 I’m 51 and have been learning deeply about this for 15 years . Please spend some more time on this 🎉 Yes 🙌 I like all your relationship and psychology also - But …. 😅
I agree, sounds like "You'll own nothing..." Funny, he says we need to use less energy but he's got three lamps burning plus a lit globe. Hypocritical.
@@petermathieson5692 hahaha 😂. Good point. Now about those 1 billion cars. It's not the private jets of the uberwealthy or the 3 lights. It takes 200 light bulbs to get a car to move a mile.
Interesting conversation. The peak oil argument has been around for a long time, but I think he makes a good point. It may not be that we run out of oil, but stop producing for other reasons. If that happens, the US, as it is configured now, must recreate itself. We structured our communities based on cheap hydrocarbons unlike Europe who's configuration pre-dates petrol. It reminds me of a genetic algorithm where random inputs are scored based on a set of parameters and those inputs with the best scores move onto the next generation. The good inputs are intermingled to create a new generation of inputs, and the process repeats. It works well at finding optimized inputs, but when the parameters that determine the score change, then the old inputs no longer work well. But the important thing to note is that, through successive generations, those inputs may NEVER find their way back to an optimize state.
"It may not be that we run out of oil, but stop producing for other reasons." Well... the best reason to mostly drop oil would be cheaper EV cars. Quite possible in the long run. Just it does not mean total reshaping of society... just doing roughly what we have been doing just slightly different and much more efficient.
@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 Dude our whole civilization runs on fossil fuels, from fertilizer to heating oil to plastics. Gasoline, coal, diesel and kerosene round out the fuels that keep everything moving. EV's just move people around, not goods. The EV solution to the climate problem is a lie.
@@stopthephilosophicalzombie9017 "The EV solution to the climate problem is a lie" By "lie" do you mean relevance of this solution or whole relevance of this problem?
This is exactly what we all need to hear right now. You might be interested in 'The Crash Course' by Chris Martenson (on youtube), and Chris could potentially make a great guest! =)
@@stopthephilosophicalzombie9017 Doomers want the collapse to gain power over their cult. It's no wonder sane people have to deal with these psychos from time to time.
He is so wrong about so many things, but I'll address 2. I have a 1953 Readers Digest article explaining why the predictions of "peak oil" were wrong. Bottom line, oil companies only discover as much oil as they need for the next few years. They haven't looked everywhere. People predicting we are running out of oil have been wrong for more than 60 years. Nuclear: we have many decades of data showing that nuclear is the safest cleanest power. The irrational fear of pseudo-environmentalists opposing nuclear has caused more CO2 to be pumped into the atmosphere than was necessary. Nuclear reactors "consume" very little fuel. They produce almost as much fuel in the form of fissile plutonium then the uranium they use. The fuel rods have to be replaced because the fission process produces "poisons" in the fuel that stops fission. The fuel rods could be reprocessed and reused. I don't believe his "we only have 60 years of uranium" claim. Plus there are thorium based reactors being developed.
5th Gen reactors use reprocessed fuel, and up to 95% of fissile material is still left to be reprocessed, so our nuclear fuel could last for 600-1200 years with modern technology, but like "peak oil" I'm sure we will find more.
Australia alone holds staggering amounts of uranium and even the premise is wrong if uranium can be sourced elsewhere like the sea which apparently holds billions of tonnes of the stuff.
Guy needs to work in oil patch for a year or so before bloviating this crap. "If we stopped drilling for a year our production would drop 40%" leaving aside that this stat is skewed by US shale, how else does he propose you develop a major oil field? You drill 10 wells from an offshore platform. Then you keep drilling to maintain production. You don't just all the wells at once because you'd need a ridiculously large plant to process the fluids and then you'd have exhausted the reservoir in five years.
I’d love to hear nate react to peter joseph’s definition of energy efficiency. I don’t really get why he isn’t on any podcast show. He really has written a very interesting book with new human rights movement
The part that is always missed, even here, is that not only energy is essential for modern industrial civilization, but also that natural capital..We only exist, civilization only exists, at the pleasure of the biosphere, it creates the Oxygen, the soil, and countless other services, that allow for our existence..And our systems are systematically destroying this natural capital, it's not a morality issue, it's a survival issue...Our technology can hide the fact that we only exist because of the biosphere, but that is temporary, fertilizer only works for so long, it has an expiration date, and severe consequences, like all technology..
Nate’s work is far too comprehensive to fit in a 1.5 hour talk. Absolutely have to watch his full presentations on this to really get just how thorough his grasp is on this stuff.
Yup -- people rag on oil companies for posting record profits; they would be spending on exploration if not for their exploration projects being rejected and those that are approved being struck down by federal judges.
Chris, you just get better and better. Great conversation which gives us all a lot to think about. Please get Neil Oliver if you can. I'd love to hear a conversation between you two.
