Collapse of Industrial Civilization in the 21st Century

[Roboramma]

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).(

Ian Morris' "social development index" seems like a pretty good metric for what you're talking about: ianmorris.org/socdev.html
http://ianmorris.org/docs/social-development.pdf

 

[BenBurch]

Macdoc, we could have nuclear power and nuclear made hydrocarbon fuel, yes. But what we don't have is a way to grow more food that doesn't destroy the land it uses.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

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

Not very well. However the average food intake of Americans is more than double that of the poorest countries in the world. Considering the sedentary lifestyle of most westerners, they could probably survive on less food than subsistence farmers who have to tend their crops with manual labor.

Or having half the medical care

A large part of our medical care is wasted on people who are eating themselves to death, and even more is wasting keeping old people alive well beyond their productive years. The US spends over $8000 per capita on healthcare, twice as much as France, 4 times as much as Israel, 20 times as much as Cuba. And yet we aren't 20 times healthier...

or half the "junk"?

We produce so much junk that some of us are literally burying ourselves in it. Our economy is based on the principle of continuous production of new items, therefore the old ones must be thrown away rather than maintained or upgraded. Recycling is largely shunned in favor of simply burying the old junk and using fresh resources to produce new junk, because it's 'cheaper' and 'more convenient'. Of course it's only cheaper because our factories are optimized to produce vast quantities of unmaintainable junk, which requires vast quantities of advertizing to convince us to keep buying it.

How are most people -- even including working-class Americans -- supposed to afford passive houses

'Passive' houses need not cost any more than conventional houses, and save money in the long run. However we may have to rethink living in extremely cold or hot places.

illuminated with free range organic LEDs?

Is this a joke? Most people don't need half the illumination they use anyway, but the total cost of ownership of LED lighting is much less than incandescents - and they last a lifetime.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Macdoc, we could have nuclear power and nuclear made hydrocarbon fuel, yes. But what we don't have is a way to grow more food that doesn't destroy the land it uses.

Don't be so sure. We have it. We just don't use it generally. I listed 2 in my earlier post. Here is another.


More food per acre than the current BMP models and regenerates the land instead of destroying it.

 

[mike3]

We produce so much junk that some of us are literally burying ourselves in it. Our economy is based on the principle of continuous production of new items, therefore the old ones must be thrown away rather than maintained or upgraded. Recycling is largely shunned in favor of simply burying the old junk and using fresh resources to produce new junk, because it's 'cheaper' and 'more convenient'. Of course it's only cheaper because our factories are optimized to produce vast quantities of unmaintainable junk, which requires vast quantities of advertizing to convince us to keep buying it.

And this seems to be a very big problem. What could be done about it, considering the fact that it runs to the very heart of the structure of our economy?

 

[CapelDodger]

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.

You're overstating the decline. When population falls it's the marginal land which is abandoned, which raises productivity. In the later Western Empire much of the best land was organised into vast private and Imperial estates run as capitalist enterprises and that system survived the German invasion. It served the new kings very well because it could support standing armies and courtly administrations. It was, of course, the prototype for European Feudalism.

By 800CE Charlemagne had essentially re-established the Western Empire, albeit in a cruder version (German court-life featured more spitting and rage-based stabbings than, say, the Byzantine, leaving aside the crapping in the corner). Less technology was used, because there wasn't much call for it in a simpler society, but little was actually lost. Just as importantly, techniques of government and business were retained and continued to develop.

This is the usual story. Emerging civilisations collapse moribund ones by building on the old. They in turn get hidebound and are overtaken by fresher and hungrier people. Through it all, knowledge and techniques continue to accumulate; if lost in some places they survive in others.

 

[CapelDodger]

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

Then I'm afraid you don't know it. At the very end, of course, it was in a parlous state, with more cattle than people inside the city walls, but even then they turned a profit selling cheese to the Turks.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

And this seems to be a very big problem.

Yes, that's why earlier I said "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."

What could be done about it, considering the fact that it runs to the very heart of the structure of our economy?

To a certain extent the problem will solve itself as resources get scarcer. When there aren't enough raw materials to keep making new products cheaply, we will have to recycle. That takes more labor. Also, people will go back to repairing old products rather than discarding them, and prefer to buy things which are maintainable - which will increase the number of 'service' jobs and restore balance to the economy. You may also see the return of cottage industry, as underemployed people use their free time to make things out of 'junk'. This is already happening in the third world.

I wonder too, whether we aren't already getting tired of consumerism. Microsoft seems to be having some trouble making enough sales of Windows 8, and millions of users are still running 'old' PCs with Windows XP - because they still work! How long before other manufacturers start to feel the pinch, as people realize that what they have is enough and they don't need any more junk? For example, once everybody has replaced all their incandescents with LEDs they won't need to buy another light bulb in their lifetime. Sales of LED bulbs will plummet, and manufacturers will have to find something else to mass-produce.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

This is the usual story. Emerging civilisations collapse moribund ones by building on the old. They in turn get hidebound and are overtaken by fresher and hungrier people. Through it all, knowledge and techniques continue to accumulate; if lost in some places they survive in others.

While I agree in general, I do think there are a couple key difference to note.

As late as 1700 just 7 percent of the world's land was used for farming. We are now at 40% and an agricultural collapse like the Mayans had would be devastating. Instead of abandoning some areas and letting that land go fallow, and moving to new areas; there are little to no "new areas". So instead of a local collapse, it could be global.

Another concern is Nuclear. While I am in general a supporter, Nuclear plants take a long time to properly shut down. If a sudden catastrophe were to disrupt civilization instead of a slow decline, Nuclear plants take a long time to properly shut down. If for some reason we were unable to do it.....That could be REALLY bad for a very long time.

 

[Brian-M]

As late as 1700 just 7 percent of the world's land was used for farming. We are now at 40% and an agricultural collapse like the Mayans had would be devastating.

Where do you get the figure 40% from?

Checking up on Wikipedia, only 33% of the world's land is even classified as being suitable for farming, and less than a third of that (9.3% of the world's land) is actually being used for farming.

Going by those figures, you could bury all the world's farms in concrete or toxic waste and still have twice as much land suitable for farming left over. (Although, the remaining land would probably be much less conveniently located.)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_land

 

[Myriad]

Not very well. However the average food intake of Americans is more than double that of the poorest countries in the world. Considering the sedentary lifestyle of most westerners, they could probably survive on less food than subsistence farmers who have to tend their crops with manual labor.

A large part of our medical care is wasted on people who are eating themselves to death, and even more is wasting keeping old people alive well beyond their productive years. The US spends over $8000 per capita on healthcare, twice as much as France, 4 times as much as Israel, 20 times as much as Cuba. And yet we aren't 20 times healthier...

We produce so much junk that some of us are literally burying ourselves in it. Our economy is based on the principle of continuous production of new items, therefore the old ones must be thrown away rather than maintained or upgraded. Recycling is largely shunned in favor of simply burying the old junk and using fresh resources to produce new junk, because it's 'cheaper' and 'more convenient'. Of course it's only cheaper because our factories are optimized to produce vast quantities of unmaintainable junk, which requires vast quantities of advertizing to convince us to keep buying it.

'Passive' houses need not cost any more than conventional houses, and save money in the long run. However we may have to rethink living in extremely cold or hot places.
Is this a joke? Most people don't need half the illumination they use anyway, but the total cost of ownership of LED lighting is much less than incandescents - and they last a lifetime.

Okay, so by "we," "our," "most people," etc. you do in fact mean well-off Americans (who are not, for example, working three part-time no-benefit minimum-wage jobs to pay their rent and feed their children, and who can afford a "conventional" house). I'll therefore readily grant that if a collapse were to result in a 50% reduction of the goods and services mentioned (which is neither a recommendation nor a prediction, just a proposed definitional threshold), and if in the process everyone somehow retained their incomes and the same relative level of wealth as before, then a certain fraction of well-off Americans would remain comfortably well-off. Nice to know, but that's a rather unimportant diversion from the topic.

 

[Myriad]

Ian Morris' "social development index" seems like a pretty good metric for what you're talking about: ianmorris.org/socdev.html
http://ianmorris.org/docs/social-development.pdf

Thanks! That could indeed be useful. I'll have to read it through. The discussion of energy capture, and the explanation of why energy capture alone is not a sufficient measure in the post industrial revolution era, looks particularly interesting.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Where do you get the figure 40% from?

Checking up on Wikipedia, only 33% of the world's land is even classified as being suitable for farming, and less than a third of that (9.3% of the world's land) is actually being used for farming.

Going by those figures, you could bury all the world's farms in concrete or toxic waste and still have twice as much land suitable for farming left over. (Although, the remaining land would probably be much less conveniently located.)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_land

Got it from here: Farming Claims Almost Half Earth's Land, New Maps Show

 

[macdoc]

Myriad you cannot get to a collapse without some measuring tool and we simply do not have them.

This is a good read even if from the bastion of traditional economic thinking - it's a good article
snip

“Our gross national product...counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage,” Robert F. Kennedy said on the presidential campaign trail in 1968. “It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.…Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.”

http://hbr.org/2012/01/the-economics-of-well-being/ar/1

By some measures....we are already well into the collapse of human society and the biome surrounding us.

Work is being done.

Gross domestic product (GDP) is a poor way to assess societal well-being. Pollution, crime, environmental destruction and inequality often accompany booming economic growth and leave people less well-off overall. GDP also blinds developing countries to more-sustainable models of development. The time has come for all countries to embrace new metrics, urge Robert Costanza and co-authors in a Comment piece in this week’s Nature.

More than a dozen alternative measures of progress have been developed, they explain. Some adjust economic measures for factors such as household work, income distribution, pollution and the depletion of natural capital; others rely on surveys of life satisfaction; still others combine indicators of health, income, living conditions and more variables. ASAP worked with the Bhutan government where citizens’ well-being has measured using gross national happiness since 2008.

Creating a successor to GDP requires a sustained, trans-disciplinary effort to integrate metrics and build consensus, Costanza and colleagues write. They call for work that is already under way on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to be used in helping the global community to identify and adopt better measures of what makes life worthwhile. Failing to do so, they say, will “condone growing inequality and the continued destruction of the natural capital on which all life on the planet depends”.

http://english.hi.is/frettir/new_metrics_assess_societal_well_being

If you cannot measure an aspect of well being for the natural environment ( what are the value of trout in a clean River Thames ) or human environment ( freedom from anxiety over health related bankruptcy) .....you cannot project progress or regress.

Hell in 2100 we may be immersed in a Matrix style cocoon exploring the universe remotely or even imaginatively.

If you THINK you are in a rich, exciting environment, is that not enough???

 

[Cuddles]

OK, here's a couple of points that I was trying to avoid in the FC thread. Note that I haven't actually read everyone's comment in this thread yet.

- The fall of the Roman Empire is the best-known of many historical examples of slow collapses.

- The fall of the Soviet Union is an example of a single "crisis" event. The population of Russia declined (due to mortality, low birth rates, and emigration), some regions broke away, and a new less complex government eventually patched things together.[/quote]

Firstly, neither of these historical situations appear to be in any way relevant. The Roman empire may have declined (although parts of it were still around by the Renaissance), but the rest of the world barely noticed. In particular, it's problems were not due to a lack of resources - the Romans did not run out of wood or forget how to make steel. Similarly, the Soviet Union may be gone, but Russia remains one of the richest and most advanced nations on the planet, and indeed is still one of the major sources of resources for the rest of the world. Importantly, in neither case did the rest of the world particularly care (in terms of civilisation rather than politics). The fall of Rome did nothing to the technological level or living conditions of those in, say, China, and the fall of the USSR arguably actually improved things for those living there.

From what I understand of the conference you went to, the hypothesis is that modern industrial civilisation will collapse, not just that one or two countries will do so. As far as I am aware, no such event has ever occurred in all of human history. Appeals to "it happened before" are therefore entirely irrelevant, because it simply didn't.

- The collapse can also be understood in basic Malthusian terms: an organism that stumbled upon an accumulation of an exploitable resource, used it to overrun its normal environmental limits, and faces the inevitable consequences of that once the resource is depleted. The industrial and green revolutions were only temporary reprieves, because they depend on finite fossil fuel resources.

Getting to the more sciency end, this is again where the claims just don't hold up. The whole point of the "green revolution" (is there actually any solid definition for that?) is that it is absolutely not based on fossil fuels. Hydro power has actually been around for longer than we've been using fossil fuels, and all renewable energy sources can output more energy than they take to build. The fact that we largely use the power from fossil fuels to construct them currently is simply an artefact of our power based currently consisting mainly of fossil fuels. We would be entirely capable of building more renewables if we started off with a base consisting solely of renewables.

It's therefore simply not true to describe any collapse as inevitable. Resources depletion is only a big deal if you don't have anything to replace it with. See here, for example. We didn't have a global collapse when we passed peak wood, we didn't have a global collapse when we passed peak coal, we've arguably already passed peak oil and haven't collapsed yet. Each time, we simply bring in new resources to replace the old. And in this case, importantly, many of the replacements are effectively unlimited, ensuring we will never have to face the same problem again.

Of course, it's a reasonable point that we might not actually build enough of them in time to prevent serious problems, but it's far from inevitable that this must be the case.

-- Debt crises in Europe, the U.S. working class turning into an underclass, chronic U.S. budget deficits and foreign debt, neglected infrastructure, and political focus on distractions are all symptoms of early stages of collapse (and are also seen in historical analogues).

-- Just as there's a tendency to see every local weather anomaly as a symptom of global climate change, there's a tendency to see every instance of declining quality or higher costs (of foods, education, manufactured goods, insurance, air travel, job benefits, medical care, etc.) as a symptom of early stages of collapse.

I think Soapy Sam made a good point here in the FC thread that a lot of this seems a lot more like the usual "it used to be better back in the day" of older people rather than an actual scientific analysis. Your account contains an awful lot of people giving anecdotal accounts of how they noticed how terrible things were, but is rather short on peer-reviewed studies.

-- The end of steady economic growth means that investment money seeking profit tends to be driven into speculative bubbles -- most recently the real estate bubble that popped in 2008 and the present ongoing fracking bubble.

The tulip bubble occurred in the 1600s, well before we had any reliance on fossil fuels, and well before any such trend of "steady economic growth" could have been established. Wiki has a handy list of stock market crashes and bubble collapses. Far from economic bubbles being a new phenomenon, they've been the norm for as long as we've had economies big and connected enough.

- Resource depletion must be understood in terms of costs of extraction and use of the remaining deposits, not just how much of the resource exists. It doesn't matter how much oil is in a shale formation, for instance, if it takes more energy to get the oil out than you get from burning the oil.

- Slow collapse cannot be arrested or reversed given the current state of the world. Awareness of the process doesn't help. There is no "solution."

How much energy does it take to build a wind or water turbine? Resource depletion is only a problem if you use depletable resources. Or resources in which the the available deposits are so large compared to usage that any shortage is an extremely long term problem. Nuclear being the obvious example, but also more the case for everything else than many people seem to think.

- Sufficiently massive build-outs of nuclear and/or alternative power sources cannot be funded in tight (let alone crisis) times, and cannot be operated at a net profit, and so cannot solve the problem. Such a build-out is more feasible sooner than later, and it's not being undertaken at anywhere near the necessary scale now, so it will not happen.

This, especially the bolded part, simply doesn't make sense. Claiming they can never be operated at a profit assumes that the cost can never fall and that other prices can never rise. In fact, some alternative power sources are already very competitive, and it would take much of a price rise in fossil fuels to make them extremely attractive. It's also worth noting that this is rather at odds with the earlier claim that no solution is possible. "It's not currently being done fast enough" is not at all the same as "it can't be done".

- Increased cost of resources drives efforts to increase efficiency. But increasing efficiency has a side effect: it tends to decrease resilience, leaving the more efficient system more vulnerable to shocks. For example, many "just in time" inventory systems were disrupted by the Tōhoku (Fukushima) tsunami in 2011.

Is there any evidence to support this claim? I can see no reason better efficiency must always equate to worse resilience.


Overall, there just doesn't seem to be much substance to the whole thing. Comparisons with history don't really fit, and everything about current events and the future is based on anecdote and personal feelings rather than science and objective evidence. In particular, there seems to be a very pessimistic "we can't do anything and it wouldn't work even if it we could" attitude that dismisses out of hand any suggestions for why things might not be so bad, especially when it comes to renewable and nuclear power, or any other new technology for that matter.

 

[Mark6]

I wonder too, whether we aren't already getting tired of consumerism. Microsoft seems to be having some trouble making enough sales of Windows 8, and millions of users are still running 'old' PCs with Windows XP - because they still work! How long before other manufacturers start to feel the pinch, as people realize that what they have is enough and they don't need any more junk? For example, once everybody has replaced all their incandescents with LEDs they won't need to buy another light bulb in their lifetime. Sales of LED bulbs will plummet, and manufacturers will have to find something else to mass-produce.

I think you are correct about overall "being tired of consumerism", at least in US. Younger people seem to have lost the "keep up with the Joneses" attitude, and are more concerned with experiences than with material things. However I do not think Windows 8 are a good example of that. Windows 8 is just really difficult to use and user-unfriendly. Personally, I hate it.

 

[CapelDodger]

Is there any evidence to support this claim? I can see no reason better efficiency must always equate to worse resilience.

Efficiency usually implies tighter tolerances and a greater tendency to seize up if anything gets a bit out of shape.

 

[CapelDodger]

I think you are correct about overall "being tired of consumerism", at least in US. Younger people seem to have lost the "keep up with the Joneses" attitude, and are more concerned with experiences than with material things.

Been there, done that; we called it the 60's and we are (figuratively) your parents. The feeling didn't really take, obviously, and I doubt it will this time.

 

[GlennB]

Yes, that's why earlier I said "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."

To a certain extent the problem will solve itself as resources get scarcer. When there aren't enough raw materials to keep making new products cheaply, we will have to recycle. That takes more labor. Also, people will go back to repairing old products rather than discarding them, and prefer to buy things which are maintainable - which will increase the number of 'service' jobs and restore balance to the economy. You may also see the return of cottage industry, as underemployed people use their free time to make things out of 'junk'. This is already happening in the third world.

Agree entirely. If anything kills the world's economy it will be addiction to growth. But who will blink first?

p.s. is the idea of 'maintainable goods' an argument against the introduction of robocars? Years back I could strip down my motorbike engine and fix almost everything. Not too much later even I could swap a knackered car cylinder head for a recon one. Some years later I looked at my new car's engine and hardly recognised a damn thing. Everything I could maintain was colour-coded in yellow, and there was precious little of that. Today I can't even see the spark plugs on my made-in-1999 car.

 

[macdoc]

If anything kills the world's economy it will be addiction to growth.

again - growth is not the issue, sustainable growth is the issue. You can "grow" as many movies and music as you want as they are distributed electronically.

But really once you understand the implications of 3d printing all paradymes from the past are irrelevant and the implications for medicine as astounding.

and you mentioned cars

Urbee 2, the 3D-Printed Car That Will Drive Across the Country
It may look like a bean, but the hybrid car Urbee 2 can get hundreds of miles to the gallon—and it's made mostly via 3D printing. In two years, it could become the first such vehicle to drive across the United States.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/car...r-that-will-drive-across-the-country-16119485

and the Germans at the upper end
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/edag-3-d-printed-car/

and the kids at the low end

http://www.materialise.com/cases/the-areion-by-formula-group-t-the-world-s-first-3d-printed-race-car

As mentioned above...this is the second industrial revolution and not one of us can imagine the implications.