Murray Grimwood says we are headed for a global one-off readjustment of life as we know it that will be of epic proportions - unless we respect basic physical laws

By Murray Grimwood*

It's coming from the feel that this ain't exactly real, or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
^{(Leonard Cohen; Democracy)}

We of the recent First World had a simple narrative; growth is good. The unspoken addendum was: and our way of achieving it, is the best.

At the selfish end of that narrative winners were idolized; trophies compared. At the selfless end, defenders of the poor and of something they called ‘the environment’, toiled to reduce growth’s impacts on both (while still benefiting from it, themselves).

Both human-oriented cohorts generally urged more growth, either because of unassuaged egos or on behalf of unassuaged poverty; environmentalists ran the full growth gamut.

But two things are now happening with increasing speed, causing a third.

The first is that real growth has hit the real limits of a finite planet, indeed humanity as a species has well overshot them.

The second is that those cohorts – loosely defined within the First World as Left/Right – have yet to replace their increasingly-obsolete narrative with a reality-fitting one. The result been a plethora of suggested alternatives, increasingly polarized. Add ignorance of the greater predicament – for which our public media and publicly-paid academia need to shoulder a portion of the blame – and whatever the truth is, it has increasingly-less chance of cut-through as time goes on.

The truth about Growth

Exponential physical growth within a finite system (a planet, say) will always cease. Only total decoupling could avoid that but if decoupling was genuinely possible we’d all be infinitely rich; all the oil could be left in the ground and there would be no need to fish, farm or forest. What some folk thought was increasing decoupling, was actually an exponential increase in the number of betting-slips (on the future availability of real stuff) being held in abeyance. Plus offshoring plus inflation.

The truth about real stuff

Real stuff – call it resources – comes in three categories.

• There are non-renewable ones; the stuff we mine, consume and scatter.
• There are ‘renewable’ ones; things that grow or accumulate; using these faster than they accumulate is obviously a temporary course of action.
•  Then there are ‘sinks’; the bio-capacities to absorb and nullify; the overuse-is-temporary description fits here, too.

Graphing real stuff

The diagram below, is the stripped-to-the-basics physical truth. Humanity is the first species to have used tools to dig into the stocks on the left of the diagram, and to use the concentrated energy stocks found there, to lever both their work-output, and their population.

It is worth pointing out that this is a one-off event in global terms. We are the only species which will ever mine those resource stocks; the only one which will burn the fossil stocks to obtain the stored energy.

What is not shown in the diagram, is that we access the best, first, so every ‘next’ stock is not quite as good; is more dispersed, deeper, less pure… That goes for the energy stocks as well as the material stocks, so it’s a double whammy; less-useful oil being used to mine more-scattered copper being an example (it also applies to siting – from houses to cities to roading; all best-first so every ‘next’ is ‘worse’).

We concocted our ‘growth forever’ narrative, from inside the box. Whether it was purposely done, ignorantly done or a mixture of both, we chose not to account for the incoming and outgoing arrows. If pushed, our narrative called those ‘externalities’ – but assured us that at some price-point a replacement would always be found, ad infinitum, ad absurdum. It even assured us we could create an additional ‘market’ for degraded energy (carbon credits, ETS).

To put that last sentence another way; our narrative assured us we could override the Second Law of Thermodynamics (it takes high-quality energy to underwrite money – via work and production – not the low-grade exhaust of the burn).  In simple terms, the flow of energy across that diagram is inexorably left-right; high-quality energy is reduced to lower-quality every time work is done. We have hoed into the high-quality stocks and burned them. They’re gone. We are on a downward-quality trajectory, and will end up with real-time solar (and its derivatives: wind, hydro, firewood). Having relied on long-buried sunlit acres (oil, coal, gas) we will be forced to do everything we do, using above-ground ones. There will be competition for that sunlit acreage.

A brief Plenty

In the 200 years since we tapped into the stocks of fossilised sunlight, we have used them to assemble a never-bigger collection of built stuff. Roads, piped services, grids, skyscrapers, houses, cars, trucks, planes, ships, whiteware, electronics – all decaying at various rates. To parry that decay takes some of the resource-stream, and some of the energy stream. As the collection grows and time goes on, that maintenance-demand (including replacement) grows – exponentially.

At some inevitable point a perfect storm sets in. The reducing quality of remaining resources demands that more energy be applied to extraction. The reducing quality of the energy being applied, increases that already-increased amount of energy required. And the maintenance-demand increases with time, demanding more energy and resources as the fleet ages and grows, competing more and more with extraction. Triage sets in. Maintenance is deferred. Discretionary items get dropped. Targets get can-kicked, or dropped completely. Rules get weakened, bypassed or simply ignored.

We are witnessing the last paragraph, now. To repeat: Our overarching narrative was concocted within the box in the diagram, avoiding the in-and-out arrows. Put another way: concocted avoiding the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. And the 2nd Law is stepping up to bat.

The impact on existing narratives

From Right to Left. At the extreme Right – dreams of life-forever and expansion to distant planets (both fall foul of the 2nd Law). At the moderate Right (our current Government) every attempt made to re-start ‘growth’. Triage, deferral, rule-removal; they demonstrate it all. But it will be to no avail – the 2nd Law is already manifesting as feed-back loops and Catch-22’s, faster than they can react. For the middle – which used to be the massed middle of a bell-curve but is now the increasing hollow between a rich few and a poor many – it is a frantic effort to hold on to amassed wealth (assumed amassed, that is: all resale – be it of houses or shares or proxy - requires a buyer and both parties to assume an ongoing underwrite). The mild Left have attempted to assuage their consciences – many via obsession over their most-recent colonization-event, many agonizing over ‘climate’ (usefully distant enough to virtue-signal about). The extreme Left just wants the rapidly-growing disenfranchised cohort to be able to consume like the still-enfranchised. Noticeably, that ethos has overcome conservation/environmentalism in the Green camp.

Who was closest to being correct?

The apparently-extinct conservationists / environmentalists were. For the simple reason that their approach was the closest of all to addressing the 2nd Law. Not perfect, mind, but closest. The fact that they represented no more than 10% of the populace at best (and less in recent times) merely reflects the growing chasm between our overarching narrative and the 2nd Law (put another way: between our overarching narrative, and the truth).

The Blame Game

The Right, by and large, have come to blame the Left for the lack of growth (and have extrapolated that bias to even include blame for violence against the extreme Right). The Left have come to blame the Right/elite for degradation - be it societal or physical (and they are on firmer ground blaming the Right for calling out the National Guard…). The cruel joke is that most of the ardent First-World Lefties are still part of the overarching narrative; the urge to ‘re-wire’, the phrase ‘clean energy’, the phrase ‘carbon neutral’; urgings for an unspecified UBI for an unlimited cohort (when pensions alone are already future-unmaintainable) these can be reduced to: ‘Let’s continue business as usual, just in conscience-placatory form’.

Where to from here?

There is what should happen; the best card(s) to play in the circumstances. That would involve adaption of our money system to a non-growth-accommodating, then a de-growth-accommodating, format. It would involve an honest discussion about population, including immigration. It would involve a re-writing of the RMA to address the three resource-forms listed above. It would involve political representation/advocacy of future citizens too; to address the tendency for ‘now’ generations to discount the future.

Then there is what is likely to happen; dogged attempts to pursue growth, regardless of benefiting cohort. Continuance of mass disenfranchisement. Increasing desperation generating support for strong-appearing leaders who promise nirvana/utopia. Decreasing democracy. Increasing disrespect for science (warnings only hinder growth, and those who peddle/advocate growth will double-down). Increasing draw-down (of both resource-stocks and capacities). Increasing feed-back pressures – particularly competition for sunlit acreage (remembering the top-left corner of the diagram). War(s) over what’s left. Triage and abandonment (particularly of compressed cities, which are merely dissipative structures in a 2nd Law sense).

How best to face the change?

Leadership – either the voting public needs to be much more informed, or leadership has to be much less democratic. Discounting of the future has to be nullified – or why are we bothering?

Education – we are largely ignorant of the 2nd Law; interesting, given that we all understand the need to eat and the need to re-fuel tanks, re-charge batteries and repair or replace worn/broken items.

Tertiary education in its present form is of limited use; it never got past being a horizontal collection of pointy-ended disciplines and has been commandeered by commodification anyway. We need a Systems-understanding body above the pointy bits, tasked with looking ahead (a classic example of tertiary education failing to bridge the impossible gulf between BAU and the 2nd Law can be found here: https://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/joined-response-climate-crisis ). And we need good disseminators… 

Consumption has to be reduced to fit with non-reduction of the three resource-types. That infers a very different ‘economy’. We will never achieve full recycling of non-renewable resources (and even now, with reasonably-available energy, choose not to) but must make a strenuous attempt to do so (fossil fuel stocks are finite; on that basis alone almost no RMA application ever made, would have passed the non-reduction threshold). We need to reduce consumption of renewable resources, to at least proximate the rate at which they renew (in almost every case we’re overshot already). And we need to stop filling ‘sinks’ faster than they can cope (CO2 being merely being one overfill among many).

Timing our moves

Those who bring more energy to conflict, generally win. Cannons vs spears; machine-guns vs rifles; the list goes on. Colonisations were ever thus. It follows that de-energised societies will be at risk of being overrun by those remaining more powerful. In a way, this is the irony of all ironies; the most powerful are the most likely to dominate – but the least likely to be long-term sustainable.

Big nations – and big blocs of nations – will compete for what is left of the planet’s resources, from here on in. Until large groupings can no longer be controlled, at which stage smaller skirmishing is almost inevitable (as history reveals).

Can New Zealand remain intact? Can we maintain government and/or the grid, in a truly sustainable resource-throughput scenario? Or if supply chains cease (which is more or less the same question)? Are cities viable post fossil energy? (And if so, in what form?) These questions are asked by neither Left or Right – but need to be asked.

Some have chosen to believe that cultures operating prior to the fossil-fuel bonanza, had the answers. While they were certainly less consuming of resources, their approach did not evolve from a rejection of concentrated surplus energy, merely from a lack of it. Psychopathic leaders, battles, hakas, slavery, cannibalism – all suggest no utopia. We can, however, note that at a lower energy through-put, more notice is taken of seasons and natural surroundings – unsurprising given the narrower energy (and therefore life-supporting) margins. 

In general terms, it is likely that globalisation has peaked and will continue to decline, whether by cultural wagon-circling or by war(s). It is likely that social interaction becomes more local – indeed it would seem inevitable. Supply chains belong to globalisation rather than localism, so expect shocks or cessation. Expect increasing triage. Expect things to get increasingly ‘more expensive’ relative to ‘incomes’ (local-authority Rates outpacing inflation, for instance). Expect activities not directly associated with real production (food will come first, and ex fossil energy, food will be a struggle) to be less sought-after.

Post-growth skills

The most essential skills will be in food-production (our glib narrative about feeding 40 million is horsepoo, and Haber-Bosch-fertilized, fossil-energy-sapping horsepoo at that. We will be struggling to feed 5 million, post fossil fuel supply-chains. Our current format – mostly producing milk-powder as a food-additive – will not persist. Initially, the food will not be being produced where the humans are, either…

Leadership will be paramount; likely local (via compromised communication-methods) and likely not including incumbents. Being able to generate confidence, adapt on the fly and think in Systems, will be attributes. MBIE, amazingly, have begun the discussion: https://motu.nz/assets/Uploads/A-guide-to-just-transitions_He-puka-arataki-whakawhitinga-tika-FINAL.pdf

Triage will be a key ingredient. We are already witnessing triage, but that is via the attempt to keep growth going. It follows that what we are currently dropping is almost certainly the wrong stuff; going backwards before we go forwards. Existing material – that which has already been mined and processed – will be fiercely cannibilised and adapted (the current government stepping-away from right-to-repair is a classic example of triage in the wrong direction).

Conclusion

Nate Hagens – onetime Wall Street adviser, now podcaster and speaker – has coined a phrase for what is ahead: the Great Simplification. He describes the one-off fossil-burn as the Carbon Pulse. The process we are headed for is a global one-off; a readjustment of epic proportions. Neither end of our current narrative – neither Left or Right – comes close to grasping the magnitude or the inevitability of this phase-change. Yet we need to write a new narrative before the growth-forever one writes us off. One our descendants and their fellow planetary-inhabitants might thank us for.

*Murray Grimwood comments on interest.co.nz as powerdownkiwi.