Other videos on YT in the same vein are by Nate Hagens and Art Berman. Humankind needs to figure out how to live in a completely different manner. We are in a polycrisis and anyone who understands science knows we cannot grow our way out of it. Thank you to Tom for getting this out there. BTW, Tom talked to the COSMOS cluster I taught in back in 2008 about the plane detector and moon project. The students loved the talk.
there's no solution, the survivors of the coming collapse will live in a completely different manner and their numbers will be greatly reduced, but the road from here to there won't be managed in any way
Thank you for sharing this info, Tom! Every one needs to see this. I'll be doing my part and I hope this wealth of information encourages people to change their behavior, too
Great presentation Tom, I've been thinking like this for a couple of decades now. I can remember seeing a story on the limits to growth when it was first released when I was 10 years old. I have been trying to explain these ideas to people for decades but everyone I know refuses to accept it. 58:51
Thank you Tom. This is an excellent update on your 2011 talk "Growth Has An Expiration Date" which was my all-time favorite until now. You have one of the clearest thinking and wise minds on the planet. I wish more people would listen to you.
I appreciate your work Tom! I've read dozens of your blog posts over the years and I've just finished reading your textbook today. It's excellent. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on nuclear energy as I never understood where the energy comes from. Thank you for making it freely available. If you will accept some feedback: my perspective is that it's premature to use words such as "survival" or "collapse" when contemplating our future. Sure, we don't know how humanity will respond to annual decreases in fossil fuel supply. But I’m not convinced that this can be used as an argument for the potential extinction of the human species, even when acknowledging land use change and severe loss of biodiversity. Dwindling resource can clearly lead to economic, technological, and population decline (war and famine) but how can they threated the survival of our species (in a less affluent state) or the habitability of the planet? It's too big of a leap from one to the other. A non sequitur.
Glad you appreciate my offerings. I feel a bit mis-characterized, here. I am not aware of talking of the extinction of humans-something I think to be extremely unlikely. Collapse of our institutions (modernity), though, is certainly on the table, as they are fundamentally unsustainable and incompatible with planetary limits. Many things will change, but humans themselves will come out the other side in new ways of living on the planet (hardly any choice, really).
I see. It seems I've misunderstood your views. Perhaps it would be beneficial to always define what you mean by the words survival, collapse, and failure so that other reads don't make the same mistake. Reading appendices D5 and D6, as well as posts such as Ultimate Success or Why Worry About Collapse?, I got the impression that you worry humans will either be extinct or be hunter-gatherers some time after resource extraction starts to decline. Consider that when you warn that human civilization may be closer to the end than the beginning, many readers will interpret that to mean humanity won't even engage in agriculture in the near future (since any moderately sized agricultural society such as ancient Mesopotamia counts as a civilization in your 10,000 years timeline). I think that defining what you consider collapse will only strengthen your message because people will not misinterpret you as a catastrophist or doomer.
@@raduantoniu Ah--I see. For a long time I did conflate modernity and humanity, so that I would think about a failure of modernity as a failure of humanity. Collapse to me is a substantial shedding of complexity, likely a large reduction of human population, and likely reduction in technology. I consider collapse of modernity as being very difficult to avoid, so that in a few hundred years we're living more simply. I would not rule out a resurgence of hunter-gatherer, but think it's more likely to evolve into new directions, heterogeneously/locally. Of course, we have not fully eliminated extinction via nuclear war or an ecological tipping point as part of the mass extinction we now orchestrate. So it's fair to call me collapsist, but that's only doomer if wedded to modernity as the correct/ideal way to organize. I have hope for a better arrangement emerging.
All these talks about the future fall short when they get to the "should/could do" portion at the end. I realize you don't want to end on a bad note, but seriously, it's time to get real. Should/could isn't going to happen.
For all the realism and honest Tom provided, he falls into short in considering the politics. “We” haven’t been a we for the entire modern period. A lot of people are prepared to change, but laws like private property and pseudo scientific disciplines like economics are embedded in power. This is clearly purposeful. Control, exploitation, and ownership are a form of domination that serves the short-term interests of the wealthy. And they know no moral boundaries, as they have already set us on a path where living sustainably will be much more difficult. Probably nothing less than war or revolution would unseat the privileged, and compel them to share. In the meantime, pragmatic and incremental steps should include things like photovoltaic energy, communal political systems, public transit, vegetarianism, advertising bans, lower voting age, quotas and rations etc.
Robespierre worked out a solution to the "let them eat cake"-ers centuries ago. That incestuous clique has become even more psychosociopathic and morally depraved At some point a pre-emptive mass-self-defensive re-animation of TheCVLL will be required - but in a distributed decentralized form without the performative public spectacle. The elites must be made to live in abject fear or the unwashed hordes.
Mr Tom, have you considered the amount of energy and mass (food) that a single person needs, to even _sustain_ itself, throughout its life, completely ignoring everything else? That is, one person, from birth until death, how much oxygen and food mass it needs.
Love your stuff. I also agree by any simple look at our current trajectory: things are not looking good for a high-energy, high-tech, high-population society in even the near (century scale) future. I have some issues with some of your material though, and would like to get your feedback / thoughts: 1) Who says that extensive bio-diversity is of inherent value? This seems to be your opinion, a topic you come back to frequently. I think it IS possible to be both pro-human and pro-sustainability, while thinking that humans ARE more important than other plants and animals on Earth. That is, can't we have a future where we live in a lower-population, lower energy consumption, lower overall consumption world-wide society - AND still more or less maximize land and water resources to feed people? We can make extinct polar bears, whales, rhinos, elephants, what have you... while maximizing plants and animals that are beneficial to humans (food crops, fish, etc). This might seem heartless (and I guess it is) - but I don't see any harm to humans for some decrease in bio-diversity. Heck - we've been making apex species extinct even during (and probably before) - our hunter-gatherer days. Isn't it possible to have a sustainable world-wide human society - with - or without - also prioritizing bio-diversity? You may think bio-diversity is important - and others may not. That's a difference of opinion. Now - if heavy bio-diversity was necessary to human survival - that's a different argument. Then we *need* bio-diversity to be sustainable. But I haven't seen you make that argument, and is that even a legitimate one? Again - can't we reduce total human population (say, one billion - or whatever it may be), reduce per capita consumption - and still maximize land and water resources to feed people - while living in a truly sustainable society? That is, can't we have decreased bio-diversity and still live sustainably? I haven't seen you really legitimately explain why bio-diversity is somehow inherently important in this equation - other than it's something you seem to care about. I agree - sharing the planet with other species would be less selfish... but I am also pro-human. If we have cows/pigs/chickens/fish instead of polar bears/rhinos/elephants/whales etc... we may have less bio-diversity, but can't we still live sustainably? I just don't see the connection between some species loss and sustainability. We can prioritize species that are beneficial to humans, and still transition to a sustainable world, in theory... right? To summarize, I guess I am arguing that bio-diversity and a sustainable human society are kind of two different things. You can value one or the other - or both, and still have legitimacy and logical discussions. You may even be able to have a sustainable human society, and low or low-ish bio-diversity. That bio-diversity is something that is inherently important I think is an opinion, not necessarily a fact. Also - are you a vegan? If not... then it's hard for me to take you seriously on this particular issue (some inherent value in bio-diversity). 2) You often say "civilization" as a catch-all for our current world wide lifestyles. But isn't civilization a pretty broad term? Weren't the hunter-gatherers, the Native Americans, the Incas, the Aztecs, the ancient Egyptians... they were all civilizations, too. They were just low-energy, low consumption, low ecological impact, low-er population civilizations. But they were still civilizations. I think you need to clarify more that what we need to transition away from (or nature will do it for us regardless, anyways) - is the high population, high energy, high consumption, high ecological impact civilizations. Ultimately, it's this: we need to transition from un-sustainable to sustainable civilizations. We can attempt to do that transition in an orderly manner. But if we don't (and it sure as hell doesn't look like we will) - then nature will do it for us anyways. But wouldn't it also be really helpful to have more real direct conversations about: is there an "ideal" human world-wide population? If so, what is that number? 500 million? 4 billion? What is that #? I have always thought one of the most important factors in this conversation about sustainability is human population, but it seems so taboo to talk about (especially for the people who need to be talking about it: political leaders) Anyways... curious to get some of your feedback on this stuff. Love your work!
Will you be on the board of directors of the corporation that decides what species live or die? How would you personally pick the 'keepers' and 'expendables'?
Quick think on your argument 1...ecosystem is a really complex organism, for instance we know trees have a key rol to sustain human life, and that we cannot chop the whole amazon forest to have more arable land because CO2 levels would rise, desertification would spread...you may think "well can we kill this animal then?" but you don't know that the creature is the food source of the creature that pollinize the flower of the tree you need to keep alive in order to keep *you* alive!. So, biodiversity hence is taken as an "index of health" for a given ecosystem, once you remove one link from the chain you don't know how many others will fall, and you have to understand you are a part of the chain in nature, humans are not outside or an exeption, you too have to be accountable for the healty balance for your own selfish interest.
I've read " The Techno Optimist Manifesto ". Techno capitalism potential seems to be pretty unlimited in these people's minds. According to the manifesto the earth can and will sustain a population of " 50 billion or more". The manifesto lists the main enemies of Techno Optimism. People like Tom would definitely considered pernicious blasphemers.Have a feeling their visions of the future will not get much further beyond manifestos and cgii animations.
Their visions of the future drive some of the most "dynamic" sectors of the economy. AI, crypto, space exploration, scam fusion energy startups, Small Modular Fission reactors, batteries, self driving cars, AI enabled weaponry, etc. They will get as far as they are allowed to go by the rest of humanity.
Evolution or extinction? Are we able to learn to live in harmony with each other, nature and technology including AI? Sustainability not profitability. Mindfulness and self love, respect not exploitation. Our species faces a major die off, the population is passing the peak, passing a tipping point where our population goes from exponential growth to a transition to a new sustainable relationship with the ecosystem that has sustained us up until now. That downward curve can be as steep as a cliff which falls to zero, extinction, or it can begin steeply and recover as it returns to historic levels of sustainability, pre-technology levels such as pre-Columbian America. This could lead to a selection pressure that would produce a new species of hominid, speciation. The curve could be more gentle and could include technological solutions that would level off at a population that could both live more harmoniously with nature and each other and incorporate technology that would represent an evolution into a new species of technologically enhanced humanity, cyborgs. Taking life to other planets, terraforming and evolving new species of humans who could survive other planetary ecologies is another path that will require technologies including genetic engineering to reach for the stars. Managing these changes in a moral and humane way brings hope to a future that appears very scary from our selfish and ethnocentric perspectives. Keep up the good work or as John Perkins says "Dream True" instead of living like the hero of his book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." Be blessed, you are a blessing. Aboriginal cultures have much to teach us.
Dr. Murphy, great talk. Just please wear a face mask whenever you are doing this kind on lectures in person, Long COVID is a really serious thing, take care please
No ‘BAU’? ‘Most’ ‘economic thinking’ is ‘short run’ and ‘redundant’? ‘It’ ignores the ‘supply side’? ‘Growth’ {and ‘civilisation’} depends upon ‘cheap’ F.F. - those so called ‘halcyon days’ are ‘over’. ? “The crisis now unfolding, however, is entirely different to the 1970s in one crucial respect… The 1970s crisis was largely artificial. When all is said and done, the oil shock was nothing more than the emerging OPEC cartel asserting its newfound leverage following the peak of continental US oil production. There was no shortage of oil any more than the three-day-week had been caused by coal shortages. What they did, perhaps, give us a glimpse of was what might happen in the event that our economies depleted our fossil fuel reserves before we had found a more versatile and energy-dense alternative. . . . That system has been on the life-support of quantitative easing and near zero interest rates ever since. Indeed, so perilous a state has the system been in since 2008, it was essential that the people who claim to be our leaders avoid doing anything so foolish as to lockdown the economy or launch an undeclared economic war on one of the world’s biggest commodity exporters . . . And this is why the crisis we are beginning to experience will make the 1970s look like a golden age of peace and tranquility. . . . The sad reality though, is that our leaders - at least within the western empire - have bought into a vision of the future which cannot work without some new and yet-to-be-discovered high-density energy source (which rules out all of the so-called green technologies whose main purpose is to concentrate relatively weak and diffuse energy sources). . . . Even as we struggle to reimagine the 1970s in an attempt to understand the current situation, the only people on Earth today who can even begin to imagine the economic and social horrors that await western populations are the survivors of the 1980s famine in Ethiopia, the hyperinflation in 1990s Zimbabwe, or, ironically, the Russians who survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.” ? consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2022/07/01/bigger-than-you-can-imagine/ facebook.com/cosheep
What about the loss of aerosol masking after capitalism collapse,(no more hydrocarbons being burned) and also, won't we all cook after the 440 abandoned nuclear power plants release radiation ionizing the ozone layer?
when I imagine the future, I love Tyler Durden’s monologue about hunters and gatherers living sustainably in the ruins of today’s world. “In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.” I get chills.
