Collapse of Industrial Civilization in the 21st Century

[BenBurch]

What's supposed to collapse exactly? "Civilization" isn't going anywhere, though some forms of it will wax and wane. I would bet on new and/or more efficient energy sources pushing the production curve and making decent living more affordable indefinitely.

What will collapse is the ability to feed teeming billions. Most of us will die.

This will cause a breakdown in the systems that provide power, water, police, sanitation, etc.

Humans will no doubt live through it. And you know, ancient Babylon was a civilization, so civilization (likely with writing and glassmaking and an idea of how medicine is actually supposed to work) will exist in a couple hundred years.

What will the total population be? My guess is around 100 million.

 

[lionking]

Greer? The Archdruid?

The credibility of the OP drops dramatically with the mention of this loony doom merchant.

World population is predicted to peak sooner and sooner as each year passes. It looks like occurring well before 2050. Humans are innovative and adaptive. I'm optimistic we will bumble through well enough.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

What will collapse is the ability to feed teeming billions. Most of us will die.

This will cause a breakdown in the systems that provide power, water, police, sanitation, etc.

What will the total population be? My guess is around 100 million.

That could happen, but it doesn't necessarily have to happen. (at least not any time soon)

The current models of agriculture most common in the world today certainly must fail. That I agree with. If we let them fail, then you may have a case.

I would challenge you with this idea though. There are regenerative models of agriculture. Those are unlikely to fail for a very very very long time...ie deep geological time at least. In that case your scenario really has no meaning in this context. So at least that particular doomsday scenario is avoidable even at current technology.

 

[macdoc]

Ben c'mon - with near free power, feeding is not an issue. The trick as RB is pointing out and Cuba was forced into is to make food into a closed cycle locally.

But even then - the next step

As reported on Six One News, a feature of RTE News in Ireland, Yosses and several other food experts showed a live audience how to create various foams, gels, solids, and other food-like textured substances out of chemicals that, when combined, resemble things like lemon souffle and chocolate pudding. These food scientists then shared samples of these laboratory creations with audience members, who were told that the imitation food products are the wave of the future.

"You take the (chemical) compounds and you make the dish," said Herve This of AgroParisTech, a science and research organization based in France, to RTE News in Ireland. "So you have no vegetables, no fruit, no meat, no fish, nothing except compounds. And you have to create a shape, a color, a taste, a freshness, a pungency, an astringency, everything," he added, likening traditional cooking methods such as "cracking eggs" and using real food ingredients to "living in the Middle Ages."

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/036626_cooking_chemicals_ingredients.html#ixzz33omV7m67

The greater risk is lack of diversity leading to opportunistic bugs ( Irish potato famine ). eg mono-cropped bananas and the route wheat is going. That risk is reduced by constituent chemical based food.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food_substitute)

 

[a_unique_person]

this is foggy. We can right now transmit the entire contents of the Library of Congress anywhere in the world there is a fibre cable in seconds.
Is there a limit to growth of knowledge, digitized entertainment. Look at the impact of Google, Netflix, almost any and all communication technology.
If we get the same transformation in energy and raw materials to finished product and back to raw materials.....then what are the limits on what our brains can contain.

The planet is surely big enough to support a large sustainable population. WHy do we need to postulate a collapse.

In theory, we could all live in peace and harmony. History has shown that we don't.

As someone who works in the high technology sector, and has to deal with learning new technology continually, the management seem to underestimate continually what is needed to make it all work.

Our brains have a definite limit, and with the advance of knowledge into amazing new technologies. We end up knowing more and more about less and less. I don't know if we have the ability to manage the specialisation needed to utilise those technologies. This is new territory we are charting here.

 

[Myriad]

All right, it appears I erred by trying to give a concrete definition of collapse. When I said 50% reduction in production per capita (I said "productivity," but productivity x time = production per capita, right?), I meant half as much of concrete useful things, not half as many arbitrary tokens counted up on computers. Half as much food. Half as many man-miles of travel. Half as many ton-miles of transport. Half as much electrical power. Things like that. Not necessarily everything in proportion, but keep in mind, for example, that another thousandfold times as much data transmission would not compensate for half as much food, no matter how you decide to weight the coefficients for some quality-of-life index.

In any case, regardless of definitions, if a collapse were to happen I don't think we would be arguing about whether it happened or not.

Macdoc, where does the near free power you're referring to come from?

 

[Roger Ramjets]

To start out, I'll define "collapse" as a significant (say, 50% or greater) decrease in worldwide economic productivity per capita,

The current worldwide productivity (GDP) per capita is $12,700, but the EU is nearly 3 times higher and the US is 4 times higher. You could completely wipe the US and EU off the map, and worldwide economic productivity would only drop 30%.

When most people talk about the collapse of 'civilization' what they really mean is the collapse of our civilization. They are afraid of loosing the comforts of an affluent society that the majority of people in the world don't get anyway. So rather than using worldwide economic productivity as a guideline, it would be more appropriate to consider the possibility of eg. US GDP dropping to match that of China. Would that be so bad?

The scenario I'm most interested in, because it seems the most plausible, is of a slow collapse caused by resource limitations, especially energy resource limitations, and irreversible due to population pressure. That is to say, the aftermath of a population overshoot that's already put us above any sustainable level.

Compared to us in the West, the inhabitants of most third world countries have much smaller ecological footprints, and many have been living sustainably for generations. However they have never had the level of industrialization that we do. The challenge for us is to maintain our level of technology and comfort, without having to keep consuming resources to do it. If we can't do it then our civilization must collapse, but what I think will happen is a gradual leveling out to match other countries such as China and India (whose living standards are improving).

The fact is that in the name of 'economic growth' we are producing too much stuff, so much that it is actively hurting us. We could dramatically reduce this unnecessary production and still be just as comfortable, healthier and happier than we are now.

What we need to change is not the industrialization itself, but how we do it and what we use it for. We have progressed from using steam engines driving factories full of dangerous machinery, to robots controlled by computer. The next step is to recycle all materials and harness renewable resources to become fully sustainable. But the biggest challenge may to change our way thinking about the economy, dropping the idea that we must keep making more and more stuff to keep people employed, and finding a more equitable way to share the benefits of mechanization.

The alternative scenarios to eventual (slow or fast) collapse appear to be the following:
- indefinite continued growth

Not possible, neither theoretically nor in practice (short term).

- a future gradual population contraction to a sustainable equilibrium that occurs without collapse

This is the most likely scenario. In fact it's already happening (population growth has slowed and is expected to reverse).

- apocalypse (global nuclear war, meteor impact, solar mass ejection, nearby supernova, supervolcano, superflu, or other event that suddenly causes a radical population decrease)

Anything can happen, but these scenarios are unlikely. The critical phase of global nuclear war is behind us, we have and will continue to beat disease outbreaks, and catastrophic natural disasters are so rare that we can ignore the possibility.

- singularity (an event or change that makes any comparison with the present impossible, such as being invited to join the Federation of Planets, the Rapture, or uploading our consciousnesses into computers)

Pure fantasy, not worth even considering...

- delayed collapse; that is, continued growth or non-sustainable equilibrium through the 21st century but collapse sometime after

History has shown that while individual civilizations may collapse, overall the trend is forwards not backwards.

I do fear one thing though, that religious fundamentalism may overtake a large part of the world, holding back the scientific progress that is desperately needed. To avoid that we need to stop trying to impose our culture onto other countries, and let them find their own way to progress. We should concentrate on improving ourselves, and the rest will follow.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

In theory, we could all live in peace and harmony. History has shown that we don't.

I disagree. History has shown that for the most part we do live in peace and harmony. Without it, economies relying on trade could not exist. Are we still living in small tribes, constantly at war with each other over territory and resources? No, and as our population expands and the world becomes smaller, cultures mix and 'peace and harmony' increases. The West has 'buried the hatchet' as far as war and conflict are concerned, and the same will eventually happen worldwide as people see the benefits of cooperation.

 

[Myriad]

That could happen, but it doesn't necessarily have to happen. (at least not any time soon)

The current models of agriculture most common in the world today certainly must fail. That I agree with. If we let them fail, then you may have a case.

I would challenge you with this idea though. There are regenerative models of agriculture. Those are unlikely to fail for a very very very long time...ie deep geological time at least. In that case your scenario really has no meaning in this context. So at least that particular doomsday scenario is avoidable even at current technology.

What would need to happen to get from here (present-day industrialized farming) to there (widespread use of regenerative methods), while feeding the current population in between?

For instance, would the agricultural labor force have to increase, and by how much? Would land have to be redistributed by some other means than the free market? Would the transition depend on everyone cooperating at once? Can the new models out-compete the old, without the impetus of e.g. a serious fuel or water crisis?

 

[tsig]

What's supposed to collapse exactly? "Civilization" isn't going anywhere, though some forms of it will wax and wane. I would bet on new and/or more efficient energy sources pushing the production curve and making decent living more affordable indefinitely.

Dr Pangloss I presume.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

What would need to happen to get from here (present-day industrialized farming) to there (widespread use of regenerative methods), while feeding the current population in between?

For instance, would the agricultural labor force have to increase, and by how much? Would land have to be redistributed by some other means than the free market? Would the transition depend on everyone cooperating at once? Can the new models out-compete the old, without the impetus of e.g. a serious fuel or water crisis?

The most important thing that needs to happen to get us from here to there is education. In some cases yes, more labor is required, but in other cases, not. It really depends on the crop and the method.

Here is one case where the actual labor is pretty similar to the industrial model, but the method is regenerative.
Why pasture cropping is such a big deal

Here is one not completely 100% "regenerative" but certainly approaching it by being far more sustainable. Wouldn't take much at all to tip the scales. However, it takes more labor than an industrial model, and sometimes even a bit more at least in the first few years than traditional. But with an average of 40% increase to double the yields per acre, well worth it.
India's Rice Revolution

PS the above record was broken and now stands at 24 tonnes of paddy rice per hectare. Again by a farmer using SRI but also using some chemical ferts in addition to his organic. So not as sustainable. (different part of India that uses green manure crops instead of animal manure, so had to use chemical ferts to make up the difference)

The biggest hurdle to regenerative agriculture in the USA is regulatory. The USDA simply doesn't have enough inspectors to certify meat and other animal products if they are removed from the CAFO business model and raised on pasture. Yet they require inspections. Also many of the abattoir regulations were put in place to stop the abuses of an industrial model, and really don't apply to a smaller abattoir. Or if they do apply, are cost prohibitive. So a lot of work would need to be done there to streamline the regulatory system yet still maintain food safety. However, one way or another, the CAFOs must end. They are the single biggest obstical. Animals are involved in almost every single regenerative model of agriculture, yet in the industrial CAFO model, they are the most unsustainable. That single change will improve the whole dynamic.

“As the small trickle of results grows into an avalanche — as is now happening overseas — it will soon be realized that the animal is our farming partner and no practice and no knowledge which ignores this fact will contribute anything to human welfare or indeed will have any chance either of usefulness or of survival.” Sir Albert Howard

PS I don't have all the answers, but I'll try my best to answer the last few questions. The quantifiable increase in labor required over all I don't know. I believe the free market can handle the change. Yes the new models can out compete the old.

 

[Earthborn]

"Current exponential economic growth"?
Where are you living at the moment, Earthborn?

In Europe. Sure, the world economy took a bit of a dip a few years ago, but in the long run that's still just a burp in an exponential growth of a few hundred years by most economic indicators. We certainly didn't return to pre-industrial living standards.

All right, it appears I erred by trying to give a concrete definition of collapse.

Yes.

Half as much food. Half as many man-miles of travel. Half as many ton-miles of transport. Half as much electrical power. Things like that.

Still not a great definition. Suppose we stop eating ourselves fat, stop flying all over the world for no particular reason, stop shipping junk all over the place, start living in passive houses illuminated with free range organic LEDs... Is that "collapse" or "indefinitely sustainable ecotopia achieved -- collapse averted."

 

[PixyMisa]

Yes, new social systems take over for the old. Extinction isn't the scenario.

But, in Italy and western Europe after the fall of the western Empire, the population decreased by about 95%.

What? No it didn't. The city of Rome itself suffered a decline on that scale - from around a million people at the empire's height to around 40,000 at its low point in the dark ages. But for western Europe as a whole the population declined by around 30%, over a period of hundreds of years.

Technology regressed to the point where, by the time the dark age was ending a few hundred years later, the Roman ruins were said, by the people who scavenged them, to be the work of an ancient race of giants. The Greek learning that the Romans had inherited had to be recovered from the Middle East. A change in social systems can be pretty extreme, from the ground.

You do realize that the Eastern Roman Empire survived through the Dark Ages and Middle Ages and into the Renaissance?

Where exactly are you getting your "facts"?

 

[macdoc]

Macdoc, where does the near free power you're referring to come from?

Solar, small and large nuclear plus efficiency - Sweden is well charted to be carbon neutral by 2050 - carbon neutral has immense implications for this discussion.
Spain already has more power available than its power economy model can handle.
Germany provided 74% of its power for one day last month from renewables.

The real disruption tho will come via 3d printing and base raw materials to food and material goods such as shelter.
This is a glimpse of the issues

3D is likely to be highly disruptive. The technology is bound to generate a host of currently unknown opportunities and threats for existing businesses and entrepreneurial startups across all sectors.

But what about the social and environmental impacts of 3D printing? Will this technology lead to a planet slowly asphyxiated by a plethora of personalized happy meal toys … or will it engender an efficient and empowered new world in which waste is reduced and consumers are able to access the products they need outside of the current constraints of space and time? Now is the moment for marketers to ask these questions: to understand the implications of the technology for their consumers, their brands and their innovation strategies, so as to avoid being left behind or ending up on the wrong side of the debate.

For the 3D optimists, the technology has the potential to provide consumers access to an affordable higher quality of life, particularly in developing countries. Already, a war amputee in South Sudan has had a prosthetic arm created for him for $100 – a feat impossible without 3D printing. And in Haiti, a project is underway to enable life-saving medical instruments to be printed quickly to meet the needs of under-resourced doctors struggling to serve a growing population. Even in developed markets this technology could revolutionize treatment and radically alter the cost curve.

http://added-value.com/3d-printing-creative-disruption-or-dystopia/

The biggest issue I have with the OP is distance out - 2100 is simply unimaginable given pace of change.

In my view, the biggest challenge will be water and hydrology changes that climate change will engender.
Future now??

http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/04/18/3884370/californias-water-wars-reach-new.html

and

http://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2014/04/water-wars/

and

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/09/global-water-shortages-threat-terror-war

Water is difficult - energy is solvable - goods are solvable - water is tough and almost certainly will rely on de-salinization.

Six decades of providing water in a country that’s 60 percent desert have made Israel a technological leader in the field, a model that points the way for drought-stricken California.

Desalination of sea water, reuse of treated sewage for agriculture, software creating an early-warning system for leaks, computerized drip irrigation and careful accounting of every drop have become the norm in Israel, the world’s 40th biggest economy. Officials in California, which would be the 10th largest if it were a nation, are paying attention.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...ion-shows-california-not-to-fear-drought.html

and we still don't have decent metrics to measure things such as sustainable and human well being - part of the problem right now is reliance on dated metrics

If technology wins out as I expect - 2100 will be utopia for many while for some a dystopia.

Just as the world is urbanizing and rewilding going on in some areas, there will be big winners and many crises - the oceans being one.
We are resilient - Cuba went through a minature one with the loss of Russian support and notably fuel.
Even without the massive technological resources of the first world they got through.

What we're trying to do in this thread is noodle about say the interesting phenomena of coherent light back in 1960.....where will it lead

Laser Inventor| The story of.....
www.laserinventor.com/
Welcome. On May 16, 1960, the laser was born. The world would never be the same. Recognized as one of the top ten technological achievements of the

and we still have not tapped the extent of its influence.

Bottom line.....we simply do not know beyond that there are disruptive changes brewing right now, both in the physical world and the technological.. and attempting to predict would be like trying to figure out where coherent light would take us.

I don't think we can.

•••

for those wanting to get an over view on 3D printing.

http://www.newscientist.com/special/3D-printing

This is a pretty strong statement

3D printing: Second industrial revolution is under way

that I agree with

 

[Myriad]

What? No it didn't. The city of Rome itself suffered a decline on that scale - from around a million people at the empire's height to around 40,000 at its low point in the dark ages. But for western Europe as a whole the population declined by around 30%, over a period of hundreds of years.

Yikes! I was indeed thinking of the city itself, and also conflating it with the classic Maya collapse in which some regions, not just urban centers, did depopulate by around 95%. (Yes, I know that the entire Mayan civilization did not collapse at that time.)

Overall in western Europe, the 30% population decline is about right. The larger difference was the loss of almost all agricultural surplus; that is, production declined nearly to subsistence level even for the reduced population, leaving little to support trade, large armies, or a literate class.

That's one reason I wanted to attempt to define collapse in terms of productivity rather than e.g. population or form of government. Other definitions I've seen refer to a decrease in complexity (but that's hard to define) or a decrease in energy use (which works for history, but could be confounded by increases in efficiency in a technological era).

You do realize that the Eastern Roman Empire survived through the Dark Ages and Middle Ages and into the Renaissance?

Where exactly are you getting your "facts"?

Brainipedia, which unfortunately sometimes suffers from unauthorized edits.

 

[a_unique_person]

You do realize that the Eastern Roman Empire survived through the Dark Ages and Middle Ages and into the Renaissance?

Where exactly are you getting your "facts"?

It might have been called an Empire at the end. I call it false advertising.

 

[Myriad]

Still not a great definition. Suppose we stop eating ourselves fat, stop flying all over the world for no particular reason, stop shipping junk all over the place, start living in passive houses illuminated with free range organic LEDs... Is that "collapse" or "indefinitely sustainable ecotopia achieved -- collapse averted."

That depends on who the "we" is. If it's just, say, middle to upper class Americans, Europeans, and Japanese, and they were to make those particular changes leaving everyone else at least no worse off than before, that would be closer to ecotopia for them. It certainly wouldn't represent a collapse scenario.

How much of the world, though, do you think would benefit health-wise from eating half as much food as at present? Or having half the medical care or half the "junk"? How are most people -- even including working-class Americans -- supposed to afford passive houses illuminated with free range organic LEDs?

I agree that it's still not a great definition, but it works a lot better when not applied selectively to the global elite.

 

[Soapy Sam]

The Yorkshiremen were arguing about how bad it was when they were young.

OK The irony age then.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yikes! I was indeed thinking of the city itself, and also conflating it with the classic Maya collapse in which some regions, not just urban centers, did depopulate by around 95%. (Yes, I know that the entire Mayan civilization did not collapse at that time.)

Overall in western Europe, the 30% population decline is about right. The larger difference was the loss of almost all agricultural surplus; that is, production declined nearly to subsistence level even for the reduced population, leaving little to support trade, large armies, or a literate class.

Okay, fair enough. The Roman Empire supported a large middle class with a fair degree of literacy. That disappeared from most of Western Europe with the collapse of the empire (excepting some of the lands held by the Byzantine Empire) and didn't really start to recover until at least the late Middle Ages.

 

[HansMustermann]

How much of the world, though, do you think would benefit health-wise from eating half as much food as at present?

Except, where do you get the idea that food production would halve? I could see an argument made for reaching some shortage of materials or energy for industrial goods, but how would the great famine of the 21st century even happen? Do you think we'd just simply forget about all the modified crops producing more grains harvested per grain planted than ever? That all the industrial farming of broiler chicken or fish would just, err, what, be selectively nuked from orbit?

Or having half the medical care or half the "junk"?

Generally, service prices, including medical care, tend to align themselves proportional to the average wage. It's not like doctors alone will keep their purchasing power, while everyone else doesn't.

How are most people -- even including working-class Americans -- supposed to afford passive houses illuminated with free range organic LEDs?

Presumably by way of those leds getting cheaper. Which they already are getting.

I'm not even expecting some major change like what happened way back, when aluminium went from more expensive than gold, to cheap enough to make disposable soda cans, almost over night.

But most stuff does get cheaper, as the technology matures. In the 50's you could have asked how are working class Americans ever going to afford colour TVs, but now not only colour CRTs dirt-cheap, they're obsoleted by LCD. Which in turn too once was expensive enough that one could ask how are working class americans ever gonna afford HD LCD screens. Etc.

Plus, considering how everyone is going on about peak energy, going LED might actually be the cheaper version in the long run. As in, if we roll back the PPP GDP per capita to 1990, you might actually live better than in 1990 if you consume less energy with a LED than if you heat the atmosphere with a thermal light bulb like they did.