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Page added on August 19, 2017
Climate Change Isn’t Our Biggest Environmental Problem, and Why Technology Won’t Save Us
Our core ecological problem is not climate change. It is overshoot, of which global warming is a symptom. Overshoot is a systemic issue. Over the past century-and-a-half, enormous amounts of cheap energy from fossil fuels enabled the rapid growth of resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumption; and these in turn led to population increase, pollution, and loss of natural habitat and hence biodiversity. The human system expanded dramatically, overshooting Earth’s long-term carrying capacity for humans while upsetting the ecological systems we depend on for our survival. Until we understand and address this systemic imbalance, symptomatic treatment (doing what we can to reverse pollution dilemmas like climate change, trying to save threatened species, and hoping to feed a burgeoning population with genetically modified crops) will constitute an endlessly frustrating round of stopgap measures that are ultimately destined to fail.
The ecology movement in the 1970s benefitted from a strong infusion of systems thinking, which was in vogue at the time (ecology—the study of the relationships between organisms and their environments—is an inherently systemic discipline, as opposed to studies like chemistry that focus on reducing complex phenomena to their components). As a result, many of the best environmental writers of the era framed the modern human predicament in terms that revealed the deep linkages between environmental symptoms and the way human society operates. Limits to Growth (1972), an outgrowth of the systems research of Jay Forrester, investigated the interactions between population growth, industrial production, food production, resource depletion, and pollution. Overshoot (1982), by William Catton, named our systemic problem and described its origins and development in a style any literate person could appreciate. Many more excellent books from the era could be cited.
However, in recent decades, as climate change has come to dominate environmental concerns, there has been a significant shift in the discussion. Today, most environmental reporting is focused laser-like on climate change, and systemic links between it and other worsening ecological dilemmas (such as overpopulation, species extinctions, water and air pollution, and loss of topsoil and fresh water) are seldom highlighted. It’s not that climate change isn’t a big deal. As a symptom, it’s a real doozy. There’s never been anything quite like it, and climate scientists and climate-response advocacy groups are right to ring the loudest of alarm bells. But our failure to see climate change in context may be our undoing.
Why have environmental writers and advocacy organizations succumbed to tunnel vision? Perhaps it’s simply that they assume systems thinking is beyond the capacity of policy makers. It’s true: if climate scientists were to approach world leaders with the message, “We have to change everything, including our entire economic system—and fast,” they might be shown the door rather rudely. A more acceptable message is, “We have identified a serious pollution problem, for which there are technical solutions.” Perhaps many of the scientists who did recognize the systemic nature of our ecological crisis concluded that if we can successfully address this one make-or-break environmental crisis, we’ll be able to buy time to deal with others waiting in the wings (overpopulation, species extinctions, resource depletion, and on and on).
If climate change can be framed as an isolated problem for which there is a technological solution, the minds of economists and policy makers can continue to graze in familiar pastures. Technology—in this case, solar, wind, and nuclear power generators, as well as batteries, electric cars, heat pumps, and, if all else fails, solar radiation management via atmospheric aerosols—centers our thinking on subjects like financial investment and industrial production. Discussion participants don’t have to develop the ability to think systemically, nor do they need to understand the Earth system and how human systems fit into it. All they need trouble themselves with is the prospect of shifting some investments, setting tasks for engineers, and managing the resulting industrial-economic transformation so as to ensure that new jobs in green industries compensate for jobs lost in coal mines.
The strategy of buying time with a techno-fix presumes either that we will be able to institute systemic change at some unspecified point in the future even though we can’t do it just now (a weak argument on its face), or that climate change and all of our other symptomatic crises will in fact be amenable to technological fixes. The latter thought-path is again a comfortable one for managers and investors. After all, everybody loves technology. It already does nearly everything for us. During the last century it solved a host of problems: it cured diseases, expanded food production, sped up transportation, and provided us with information and entertainment in quantities and varieties no one could previously have imagined. Why shouldn’t it be able to solve climate change and all the rest of our problems?
Of course, ignoring the systemic nature of our dilemma just means that as soon as we get one symptom corralled, another is likely to break loose. But, crucially, is climate change, taken as an isolated problem, fully treatable with technology? Color me doubtful. I say this having spent many months poring over the relevant data with David Fridley of the energy analysis program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Our resulting book, Our Renewable Future, concluded that nuclear power is too expensive and risky; meanwhile, solar and wind power both suffer from intermittency, which (once these sources begin to provide a large percentage of total electrical power) will require a combination of three strategies on a grand scale: energy storage, redundant production capacity, and demand adaptation. At the same time, we in industrial nations will have to adapt most of our current energy usage (which occurs in industrial processes, building heating, and transportation) to electricity. Altogether, the energy transition promises to be an enormous undertaking, unprecedented in its requirements for investment and substitution. When David and I stepped back to assess the enormity of the task, we could see no way to maintain current quantities of global energy production during the transition, much less to increase energy supplies so as to power ongoing economic growth. The biggest transitional hurdle is scale: the world uses an enormous amount of energy currently; only if that quantity can be reduced significantly, especially in industrial nations, could we imagine a credible pathway toward a post-carbon future.
Downsizing the world’s energy supplies would, effectively, also downsize industrial processes of resource extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and waste management. That’s a systemic intervention, of exactly the kind called for by the ecologists of the 1970s who coined the mantra, “Reduce, reuse, and recycle.” It gets to the heart of the overshoot dilemma—as does population stabilization and reduction, another necessary strategy. But it’s also a notion to which technocrats, industrialists, and investors are virulently allergic.
The ecological argument is, at its core, a moral one—as I explain in more detail in a just-released manifesto replete with sidebars and graphics (“There’s No App for That: Technology and Morality in the Age of Climate Change, Overpopulation, and Biodiversity Loss”). Any systems thinker who understands overshoot and prescribes powerdown as a treatment is effectively engaging in an intervention with an addictive behavior. Society is addicted to growth, and that’s having terrible consequences for the planet and, increasingly, for us as well. We have to change our collective and individual behavior and give up something we depend on—power over our environment. We must restrain ourselves, like an alcoholic foreswearing booze. That requires honesty and soul-searching.
In its early years the environmental movement made that moral argument, and it worked up to a point. Concern over rapid population growth led to family planning efforts around the world. Concern over biodiversity declines led to habitat protection. Concern over air and water pollution led to a slew of regulations. These efforts weren’t sufficient, but they showed that framing our systemic problem in moral terms could get at least some traction.
Why didn’t the environmental movement fully succeed? Some theorists now calling themselves “bright greens” or “eco-modernists” have abandoned the moral fight altogether. Their justification for doing so is that people want a vision of the future that’s cheery and that doesn’t require sacrifice. Now, they say, only a technological fix offers any hope. The essential point of this essay (and my manifesto) is simply that, even if the moral argument fails, a techno-fix won’t work either. A gargantuan investment in technology (whether next-generation nuclear power or solar radiation geo-engineering) is being billed as our last hope. But in reality it’s no hope at all.
The reason for the failure thus far of the environmental movement wasn’t that it appealed to humanity’s moral sentiments—that was in fact the movement’s great strength. The effort fell short because it wasn’t able to alter industrial society’s central organizing principle, which is also its fatal flaw: its dogged pursuit of growth at all cost. Now we’re at the point where we must finally either succeed in overcoming growthism or face the failure not just of the environmental movement, but of civilization itself.
The good news is that systemic change is fractal in nature: it implies, indeed it requires, action at every level of society. We can start with our own individual choices and behavior; we can work within our communities. We needn’t wait for a cathartic global or national sea change. And even if our efforts cannot “save” consumerist industrial civilization, they could still succeed in planting the seeds of a regenerative human culture worthy of survival.
There’s more good news: once we humans choose to restrain our numbers and our rates of consumption, technology can assist our efforts. Machines can help us monitor our progress, and there are relatively simple technologies that can help deliver needed services with less energy usage and environmental damage. Some ways of deploying technology could even help us clean up the atmosphere and restore ecosystems.
But machines won’t make the key choices that will set us on a sustainable path. Systemic change driven by moral awakening: it’s not just our last hope; it’s the only real hope we’ve ever had.
Are We Doomed? Let’s Have a Conversation.
My most recent essay, in which I discussed a highly publicized controversy over the efficacy of plans for a comprehensive transition to an all-renewable energy future, garnered some strong responses. “If you are right,” one Facebook commenter opined, “we are doomed. Fortunately you are not right.” (The commenter didn’t explain why.) What had I said to provoke an expectation of cataclysmic oblivion? Simply that there is probably no technically and financially feasible energy pathway to enable those of us in highly industrialized countries to maintain current levels of energy usage very far into the future.
My piece happened to be published right around the same time New York Magazine released a controversial article titled “The Uninhabitable Earth,” in which author David Wallace Wells portrayed a dire future if the most pessimistic climate change models turn to reality. “It is, I promise, worse than you think,” wrote Wells. “If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today.” Wells’s article drew rebukes from—of all people—climate scientists, who pointed out a few factual errors, but also insisted that scaring the public just doesn’t help. “Importantly, fear does not motivate,” responded Michael Mann with Susan Joy Hassol and Tom Toles, “and appealing to it is often counter-productive as it tends to distance people from the problem, leading them to disengage, doubt and even dismiss it.”
It’s true: apocalyptic warnings don’t move most people. Or, rather, they move most people away from the source of discomfort, so they simply tune out. But it’s also true that people feel a sense of deep, unacknowledged unease when they are fed “solutions” that they instinctively know are false or insufficient.
Others came to Wells’s defense. Margaret Klein Salamon, a clinical psychologist and founder of the climate action group The Climate Mobilization, which advocates for starting a “World War II-scale” emergency mobilization to convert from fossil fuels, writes, “it is OK, indeed imperative, to tell the whole, frightening story. . . . [I]t’s the job of those of us trying to protect humanity and restore a safe climate to tell the truth about the climate crisis and help people process and channel their own feelings—not to preemptively try to manage and constrain those feelings.”
So: Are we doomed if we can’t maintain current and growing energy levels? And are we doomed anyway due to now-inevitable impacts of climate change?
First, the good news. With regard to energy, we should keep in mind the fact that today’s Americans use roughly twice as much per capita as their great-grandparents did in 1925. While people in that era enjoyed less mobility and fewer options for entertainment and communication than we do today, they nevertheless managed to survive and even thrive. And we now have the ability to provide many services (such as lighting) far more efficiently, so it should be possible to reduce per-capita energy usage dramatically while still maintaining a lifestyle that would be considered more than satisfactory by members of previous generations and by people in many parts of the world today. And reducing energy usage would make a whole raft of problems—climate change, resource depletion, the challenge of transitioning to renewable energy sources—much easier to solve.
The main good news with regard to climate change that I can point to (as I did in an essay posted in June) is that economically recoverable fossil fuel reserves are consistent only with lower-emissions climate change scenarios. As BP and other credible sources for coal, oil, and natural gas reserves figures show, and as more and more researchers are pointing out, the worst-case climate scenarios associated with “business as usual” levels of carbon emissions are in fact unrealistic.
Now, the bad news. While we could live perfectly well with less energy, that’s not what the managers of our economy want. They want growth. Our entire economy is structured to require constant, compounded growth of GDP, and for all practical purposes raising the GDP means using more energy. While fringe economists and environmentalists have for years been proposing ways to back away from our growth addiction (for example, by using alternative economic indices such as Gross National Happiness), none of these proposals has been put into widespread effect. As things now stand, if growth falters the economy crashes.
There’s bad climate news as well: even with current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, we’re seeing unacceptable and worsening impacts—raging fires, soaring heat levels, and melting icecaps. And there are hints that self-reinforcing feedbacks maybe kicking in: an example is the release of large amounts of methane from thawing tundra and oceanic hydrates, which could lead to a short-term but steep spike in warming. Also, no one is sure if current metrics of climate sensitivity (used to estimate the response of the global climate system to a given level of forcing) are accurate, or whether the climate is actually more sensitive than we have assumed. There’s some worrisome evidence the latter is case.
But let’s step back a bit. If we’re interested in signs of impending global crisis, there’s no need to stop with just these two global challenges. The world is losing 25 billion tons of topsoil a year due to current industrial agricultural practices; if we don’t deal with that issue, civilization will still crash even if we do manage to ace our energy and climate test. Humanity is also over-using fresh water: ancient aquifers are depleting, while other water sources are being polluted. If we don’t deal with our water crisis, we still crash. Species are going extinct at a thousand times the pre-industrial rate; if we don’t deal with the biodiversity dilemma, we still crash. Then there are social and economic problems that could cause nations to crumble even if we manage to protect the environment; this threat category includes the menaces of over-reliance on debt and increasing economic inequality.
If we attack each of these problems piecemeal with technological fixes (for example, with desalination technology to solve the water crisis or geo-engineering to stabilize the climate) we may still crash because our techno-fixes are likely to have unintended consequences, as all technological interventions do. Anyway, the likelihood of successfully identifying and deploying all the needed fixes in time is vanishingly small.
Many problems are converging at once because society is a complex system, and the challenges we have been discussing are aspects of a systemic crisis. A useful way to frame an integrated understanding of the 21st century survival challenge is this: we humans have overshot Earth’s long-term carrying capacity for our species. We’ve been able to do this due to a temporary subsidy of cheap, bountiful energy from fossil fuels, which enabled us to stretch nature’s limits and to support a far larger overall population than would otherwise be possible. But now we are starting to see supply constraints for those fuels, just as the side effects of burning enormous amounts of coal, oil, and natural gas are also coming into view. Meanwhile, using cheap energy to expand resource-extractive and waste-generating economic processes is leading to biodiversity loss; the depletion of soil, water, and minerals; and environmental pollution of many kinds. Just decarbonizing energy, while necessary, doesn’t adequately deal with systemic overshoot. Only a reduction of population and overall resource consumption, along with a rapid reduction in our reliance on fossil fuels and a redesign of industrial systems, can do that.
Economic inequality is a systemic problem too. As we’ve grown our economy, those who were in position to invest in industrial expansion or to loan money to others have reaped the majority of the rewards, while those who got by through selling their time and labor (or whose common cultural heritage was simply appropriated by industrialists) have fallen behind. There’s no technological fix for inequality; dealing with it will require redesigning our economic system and redistributing wealth. Those in wealthy nations would, on average, have to adjust their living standards downward.
Now, can we do all of this without a crash? Probably not. Indeed, many economists would regard the medicine (population reduction, a decline in per-capita energy use, and economic redistribution) as worse than whatever aspects of the disease they are willing to acknowledge. Environmentalists and human rights advocates would disagree. Which is to say, there’s really no way out. Whether we stick with business as usual, or attempt a dramatic multi-pronged intervention, our current “normal” way of life is toast.
Accepting that a crash is more or less inevitable is a big step, psychologically speaking. I call this toxic knowledge: one cannot “un-know” that the current world system hangs by a thread, and this understanding can lead to depression. In some ways, the systemic crisis we face is analogous to the individual existential crisis of life and death, which we each have to confront eventually. Some willfully ignore their own mortality for as long as possible; others grasp at a belief in the afterlife. Still others seek to create meaning and purpose by making a positive difference in the lives of those around them with whatever time they have. Such efforts don’t alter the inevitability of death; however, contributing to one’s community appears to enhance well-being in many ways beyond that of merely prolonging life.
But is a crash the same as doom?
Not necessarily. Our best hope at this point would seem to be a controlled crash that enables partial recovery at a lower level of population and resource use, and that therefore doesn’t lead to complete and utter oblivion (human extinction or close to it). Among those who understand the systemic nature of our problems, the controlled crash option is the subject of what may be the most interesting and important conversation that’s taking place on the planet just now. But only informed people who have gotten over denial and self-delusion are part of it.
This discussion started in the 1970s, though I wasn’t part of it then; I joined a couple of decades later. There is no formal membership; the conversation takes place through and among a patchwork of small organizations and scattered individuals. They don’t all know each other and there is no secret handshake. Some have publicly adopted the stance that a global crash is inevitable; most soft-pedal that message on their organizational websites but are privately plenty worried. During the course of the conversation so far, two (not mutually exclusive) strategies have emerged.
The first strategy envisions convincing the managers and power holders of the world to invest in a no-regrets insurance plan. Some systems thinkers who understand our linked global crises are offering to come up with a back-pocket checklist for policy makers, for moments when financial or environmental crisis hits: how, under such circumstances, might the managerial elite be able to prevent, say, a stock market crash from triggering food, energy, and social crises as well? A set of back-up plans wouldn’t require detailed knowledge of when or how crisis will erupt. It wouldn’t even require much of a systemic understanding of global overshoot. It would simply require willingness on the part of societal power holders to agree that there are real or potential threats to global order, and to accept the offer of help. At the moment, those pursuing this strategy are working mostly covertly, for reasons that are not hard to discern.
The second strategy consists of working within communities to build more societal resilience from the ground up. It is easier to get traction with friends and neighbors than with global power holders, and it’s within communities that political decisions are made closest to where the impact is felt. My own organization, Post Carbon Institute, has chosen to pursue this strategy via a series of books, the Community Resilience Guides; the “Think Resilience” video series; and our forthcoming compendium, The Community Resilience Reader. Rob Hopkins, who originated the Transition Towns movement, has been perhaps the most public, eloquent, and upbeat proponent of the local resilience strategy, but there are countless others scattered across the globe.
Somehow, the work of resilience building (whether top-down or bottom-up) must focus not just on maintaining supplies of food, water, energy, and other basic necessities, but also on sustaining social cohesion—a culture of understanding, tolerance, and inquiry—during times of great stress. While it’s true that people tend to pull together in remarkable ways during wars and natural disasters, sustained hard times can lead to scapegoating and worse.
Most people are not party to the conversation, not aware that it is happening, and unaware even that such a conversation is warranted. Among those who are worried about the state of the world, most are content to pursue or support efforts to keep crises from occurring by working via political parties, religious organizations, or non-profit advocacy orgs on issues such as climate change, food security, and economic inequality. There is also a small but rapidly growing segment of society that feels disempowered as the era of economic growth wanes, and that views society’s power holders as evil and corrupt. These dispossessed—whether followers of ISIS or Infowars—would prefer to “shake things up,” even to the point of bringing society to destruction, rather than suffer the continuation of the status quo. Unfortunately, this last group may have the easiest path of all.
By comparison, the number of those involved in the conversation is exceedingly small, countable probably in the hundreds of thousands, certainly not millions. Can we succeed? It depends on how one defines “success”—as the ability to maintain, for a little longer, an inherently unsustainable global industrial system? Or as the practical reduction in likely suffering on the part of the survivors of the eventual crash? A related query one often hears after environmental lectures is, Are we doing enough? If “Enough” means “enough to avert a system crash,” then the answer is no: it’s unlikely that anyone can deliver that outcome now. The question should be, What can we do—not to save a way of life that is unsalvageable, but to make a difference to the people and other species in harm’s way?
This is not a conversation about the long-term trajectory of human cultural evolution, though that’s an interesting subject for speculation. Assuming there are survivors, what will human society look like following the crises ensuing from climate change and the end of fossil fuels and capitalism? David Fleming’s Surviving the Future and John Michael Greer’s The Ecotechnic Future offer useful thoughts in this regard. My own view is that it’s hard for us to envision what comes next because our imaginations are bounded by the reality we have known. What awaits will likely be as far removed from from modern industrial urban life as Iron-Age agrarian empires were from hunting-and-gathering bands. We are approaching one of history’s great discontinuities. The best we can do under the circumstances is to get our priorities and values straight (protect the vulnerable, preserve the best of what we have collectively achieved, and live a life that’s worthy) and put one foot in front of the other.
The conversation I’m pointing to here is about fairly short-term actions. And it doesn’t lend itself to building a big movement. For that, you need villains to blame and promises of revived national or tribal glory. For those engaged in the conversation, there’s only hard work and the satisfaction of honestly facing our predicament with an attitude of curiosity, engagement, and compassion. For us, threats of doom or promises of utopia are distractions or cop-outs.
Only those drawn to the conversation by temperament and education are likely to take it up. Advertising may not work. But having a few more hands on deck, and a few more resources to work with, can only help.
A New Covenant with Nature
All human societies exhibit beliefs and practices that could be called spiritual. However, these beliefs and practices vary widely. There are strong patterns in this variability that seem tied to society’s basic economic underpinnings—whether people derive their sustenance from hunting and gathering, horticulture, or agriculture. Among agricultural societies variability seems tied to phases of urban development (“civilization.)” Today, have we reached a new and stable stage in societal evolution, or are we on the cusp of a shift as profound as any in human history? In this presentation of the 131st Summer National Convention of the Theosophical Society in America, Richard Heinberg explores the role of spirituality in that shift, and what changes in spirituality are likely to accompany the transition?
85 Comments on "Climate Change Isn’t Our Biggest Environmental Problem, and Why Technology Won’t Save Us"
Davy on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 6:53 am
Claiming climate change is our greatest problem is a great ruse. It makes us believe we can become green and solve it through techno development. Instead of making draconian decisions on reproduction, consumption, and personal choice. We claim we can overcome these problems with techno solutions. Instead of admitting we must reject affluence as an end, saying “no” and living with less, we choose to have our cake and eat it. Even our best minds who decry the deplorables who are dirty science deniers are themselves science deniers. Our very own greatest scientist are themselves science deniers because they claim we can overcome problems created by science with science.
This is a foundational issues that goes to the very core of who we are and where we are going. It is about exceptionalism or limits. You can’t have both but that is what we want. We want to both be exceptional and get around limits. Acknowledging limits but believing intelligence and technology will decouple us from limits.
The reality is we are the problem and another inconvenient reality is we lost. We must pay for what we have done. We can’t extend and pretend our way out of this one. This is a real trap and this trap is deadly. Now to clarify this in time space, we may have some years before our dues are to be paid. Some of us old shits might skate on out of this world leaving or debts unpaid. If you call death a way out then you should maybe should revaluate life. Plenty of old skydaddy worshipping people that think they will skate on out of this mess into some kind of skydaddy paradise close to their “God head”. Not trying to bash religion because I don’t have a clue on what comes after death but what I am referring to is lack of responsibility for ones actions goes all the way to the grave.
Are we going to be just a smart animal who has rationality to know better but chooses to deny ecological and sociological crimes? What is the alternative? Does it even matter? Are we following nature’s way even when we think we are not? At some point though there is a point where we have to pull the trigger on meaning. Moderns have done that and it is called techno optimistic development. We have chosen a direction and now we will live with it.
Shortend on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 7:38 am
Man, a lot of words here ….its all connected…can’t have overshoot without fossil fuels, can’t have global warming without fossil fuels. Technology is only a transformer of energy. So, in another words, high tech means fossil fuels.
Any volunteers to correct overshoot?
Yep, just what I thought.
Cloggie on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 7:54 am
Heinberg achieved global fame by predicting that by 2017 the world would be in severe economic decline because oil depletion would have begun to bite.
2017 is here and oil price is lower than $50.
Perhaps it is appropriate to insert a minute of silence for all these spectacular predictions that died without materializing.
3, 2, 1….
Thank you.
Heinberg needs to keep his chimney smoking and nothing does that better than with sensationalist we-are-all-going-to-die message. Ask Heinberg, ask Apneaman. They’re the experts.
And now professional drama queen Heinberg has found a new ticking time bomb: explosive population growth and is even willing to let go off the favorite hobby horse of our own local drama queen apneaman and his never ending weather reports: climate change.
I’m not in the mood for a long post, so here the “solution” first: after the end of the US empire should Europe and China divide Africa, like Britain and France did a century ago and carve up Africa en seriously help develop it and impose a soft form of colonialism called “adoption” and provide material aid in return for a birth control program, which will look like this: Well mr Kwahele, here is your bicycle, tablet,
4 solar panels accu and what not. Now please lower your trousers, it will only take a few minutes and it is not going to hurt.
This is the least brutal solution. It is a short-cut (pun intended) for Kenz300′ family planning policy, he is broadcasting for years now.
baha on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 8:11 am
We are just an animal. We create all kinds of gods but the Earth is our mother and keeper. She can solve these problems if we just quit making it worse. Die-off is part of it.
We can fight her to the end or we can learn to cooperate.
Antius on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 8:13 am
“Heinberg achieved global fame by predicting that by 2017 the world would be in severe economic decline because oil depletion would have begun to bite.
2017 is here and oil price is lower than $50.
Perhaps it is appropriate to insert a minute of silence for all these spectacular predictions that died without materializing.”
Trouble is he was right. The world is in serious economic trouble because of oil depletion. The 2008 crash would not have been as devastating as it was, had oil not hit $147/barrel. Europe has not recovered from that recession and another one is round the corner. The US oil industry has all but bankrupted itself over unprofitable shale oil. What did you think peak oil would look like?
joe on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 9:58 am
Antius, some people are not smart enough to understand. They cannot grasp that change is transitory and incremental. We are frogs in a pot slowly swimming in our own juices. They cant link one recession to another, they cant open their thoughts to processes. Instead they can understand events. Bush said it himself America is addicted to oil.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/world/americas/01iht-state.html
The US is on its way to reaching its target. Peak oil is not a secret, its a process, like the weather.
onlooker on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 10:39 am
The biggest problem and biggest threat are not the same things. Yes, the biggest problem is ourselves and our inability to understand and adapt to limitations that we must adhere to here on Earth to say within the carrying capacity of this planet with respect to our species. However, we now face an epic threat in climate change that will render any attempts to power down and reduce population fruitless. Climate change is nothing less than an existential threat. Our capacity to adapt to conditions unfavorable to higher life forms is limited. And that condition is where the planet is headed due to runaway global warming that has already been triggered.
Kenz300 on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 11:10 am
The worlds worst environmental problem is over population.
An ever growing population makes all other problems worse.
dave thompson on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 11:22 am
Anyone not understanding the predicament of abrupt climate change and that we are now in the midst of the end? Humanity and industrial civ.by the burning of FF’s have triggered over 70 self reinforcing feedback loops. The problem is not going to be fixed.
Apneaman on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 11:27 am
clog, oh hell ya, that Heinberg has ‘global fame’ alright. Everywhere he goes they need to bring in extra security to keep his legions of unruly fans from causing a ruckus. He sooooooooooo famous that folk is naming their first born after him and women get moist just looking at his picture and kids are walking to school sporting officially licensed Richard Heinberg backpacks and lunchboxes. Heinberg ain’t just regular famous either, nope, he’s Super-duper famous. He Oprah famous. Every kid in China has memorized the PCI manifesto – that’s how famous he is. He so famous that there are already plans in the works to convert his home into a tourist attraction after he dies (just like Graceland).
Fuck are you ever a lame old coot. You can’t even set up a straw-man without making yourself look like a sensationalist incompetent dummy.
clog the Dutch ALEX FUCKING JONES!!!!!!!!
paultard on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 11:46 am
nazitard, bunch of extremist tard preachers are hiding and there’s no media for them to communicate anymore. if a bullet hit extremist tard preachers it’s their fault for running into it. is that morally ambiguous? Nah, a woman has been killed and that’s clear enough.
Apneaman on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 12:08 pm
Let’s play connect the dots.
Miami Beach to begin new $100 million flood prevention project in face of sea level rise
“… citywide effort estimated to cost $400 to $500 million, the work is meant to keep streets dry in the face of sea level rise.”
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article129284119.html
Miami Beach Faces 31-Month Supply Of Luxury Condos Listed For Sale
“A balanced market is generally considered to have about six months of supply.”
“The report does not factor in the nearly 47,700 new condo units currently in the development pipeline east of Interstate 95 in the tricounty South Florida region.”
http://www.condovulturesrealty.com/info/blog/post/miami-beach-faces-31-month-supply-of-luxury-condos-listed-for-sale/
I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m just seeing things that are not there. Surely if there was a problem the authorities would be the first to tell you right? It’s not the first sign of the total crash of trillions of dollars ‘worth’ of costal properties.
Cloggie on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 12:10 pm
Hey, ApneaClimateLeninWannabee managed to get out of bed, and heroically made it to his computer in mom’s basement, skillfully avoiding climate induced 3 rain bombs and 2 forest fires while he was at it.
ApneaPunk, Heinberg was THE global face of that peak oil movement of former fame. His books were bestsellers. Now Amazon has withdrawn his earlier books.lol
Heinberg on world tour:
Australia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQyHtZLLN6M
UK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSNk1Zcbolc
New Zealand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUej8TEPLUE
Toronto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fMWwpI0MMA
Meanwhile we know that there is enough fossil fuel to fry this planet 10 times over.
Apneaman on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 12:15 pm
Sudden Droughts And Wildfires Are A Vision Of Montana’s Future, Says State Climatologist
“The state’s growing season, for example, is nearly two weeks longer than it was back in the 1950s. Seasonal temperatures are rising faster than the national average and Jencso says it’s getting hotter, more quickly, when winter turns into spring.
“I think everybody kind of recognizes that with the earlier snow melts that we’ve seen,” he says. Snow is now melting 15 to 20 days earlier than it did back in the 1950s.
“That water leaves our landscapes and things begin to dry out much more rapidly,” he says. “So we go into summertime with a reduction in soil moisture and fuel moisture and so conditions are set for increased fire and potentially drought.”
Montana is currently spending more than a million dollars a day fighting fires. The drought in eastern Montana cost farmers nearly $400 million dollars in crop losses compared to July of last year. That’s according to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”
http://mtpr.org/post/sudden-droughts-and-wildfires-are-vision-montanas-future-says-state-climatologist
Apneaman on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 12:18 pm
For clog and anyone else who still does not know the difference.
NASA – What’s the Difference Between Weather and Climate?
The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere “behaves” over relatively long periods of time.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/climate_weather.html
Cloggie on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 12:25 pm
nazitard, bunch of extremist tard preachers are hiding and there’s no media for them to communicate anymore. if a bullet hit extremist tard preachers it’s their fault for running into it. is that morally ambiguous?
Yeah dopey commie-tard, free speech and the next USSR-wannabee is no happy marriage indeed:
https://altright.com/2017/08/19/digital-platform-censorship-and-how-to-fight/
Nah, a woman has been killed and that’s clear enough.
No it isn’t. More likely is here another George Zimmerman story brewing:
http://www.unz.com/article/narrative-collapse-is-charlottesvilles-james-alex-fields-the-next-george-zimmerman/
http://www.unz.com/article/unite-the-right-who-got-it-right/
Media lies upon media lies. The Antifa, the shock troops and an extension of the US deep state, were intentionally sicked upon the European-American protesters in order to sabotage it.
It doesn’t matter, Richard Spencer, perhaps the new George Washington, was already on prime time news in countries like Holland and Germany. The breakthrough has been achieved. Only a matter of time before the Continental Army will be resurrected.
And all around the world are mighty parties interested in seeing the coming insurrection succeed. Dream on about conquering Siberia you commie fool, where in really your ass is going to conquered. Why? Because everybody on this planet wants to live in a white society, now it turns out that even a large number of Americans want that if they are honest to themselves. That means paulpunk that Europe has already half of America in its pocket… because they want to be in our pocket… and that between somewhere next month and 2025 we are not only going to reverse 1945 but additionally 1776.
Got it, commie-tard?
Apneaman on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 12:27 pm
Wildfire smoke sets records in Canada as it wafts toward the Arctic
“Forests in Canada are ablaze, with 2.2 million acres going up in flames so far this year in British Columbia alone. These fires, and others in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, have been belching smoke into the air, in some cases up to 8 miles high.
Once in the atmosphere, weather patterns are causing the wildfire smoke to converge into a blanket so thick it’s blotting out the sun across northern Canada. This smoke is working its way to the high Arctic, where it could speed up the melting of sea and land ice.
According to NASA, the smoke has set a record for its thickness, and has been especially dense across the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut provinces.”
http://mashable.com/2017/08/17/canada-is-on-fire-smoke-record-arctic/#5oqgOElkEqqw
The particulate matter/soot lands on the ice and snow making it darker which makes it absorb more of the suns energy, which means more warming – positive feedback loop.
GregT on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 1:19 pm
“Meanwhile we know that there is enough fossil fuel to fry this planet 10 times over.”
Fortunately, we also know that much of those remaining fossil fuels ( the dregs) have a very low EROEI, and are unaffordable to our economies. The main reason why the humans are attempting to replace them with alternate energy schemes, in a futile effort to maintain infinite exponential growth in a finite environment. Which just so happens to be mathematically and physically impossible. Of course the humans have their best engineers working feverishly on this impossibility.
Apneaman on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 1:21 pm
Public calamity decreed in Portugal as wildfires continue to rage out of control
“he government of Portugal has issued a state of public calamity as wildfires continue to burn across the country ahead of a weekend heat wave.
More than 10,000 separate fires have been recorded across Portugal this year according to The Portugal News.”
“The worst conditions are expected on Sunday as temperatures approach 40 C (104 F) across parts of the interior.”
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/public-calamity-decreed-in-portugal-as-wildfires-continue-to-rage-out-of-control/70002505
Public calamity. I like it.
dave thompson on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 1:22 pm
Hey cloggie better hurry up your fantasy transition. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/swiss-trees-in-danger-of-dying-out-as-climate-warms/
onlooker on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 1:32 pm
blah, blah, blah, You deniers and optimists still do not get it and you probably never will. Europe is best, America is best, Asia is best blah. We are all going down some faster and sooner but all. We do not need to spew any more CO2, we already have set in motion runaway global warming. Some of you simply cannot face these facts. As AP has provided the links to show that we developed a convenient ability to deny reality as part of our coping mechanisms. Unfortunate, but true. We are seeing it here on PO.com. Civilization is going down because of an energy and resource crunch. And soon after our species will be going down kicking and screaming by lack of habitat or harmful habitat. Hydrogen sulfide read about it. You can deny reality all you want but not its consequences fools.
Apneaman on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 1:55 pm
Steelhead struggling home in record low numbers
“Warm-water conditions in the Columbia and Snake Rivers are challenging cold water salmon and steelhead — and the problem is likely to get worse because of climate change.”
“Salmon and steelhead are in hot water — a problem scientists warn is going to get worse because of climate change.”
“The state of Idaho closed all rivers for sport harvest of steelhead this week because there are so few fish. Only about 400 steelhead had crossed Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River when the agency announced a fall steelhead season closure, a precipitous drop from the 10-year average of more than 6,000 steelhead over the dam near Lewiston, Idaho.”
“It’s an echo of the sockeye slaughter on the Columbia in 2015, when fish died in the superheated lower river before ever making it back to their home tributaries to spawn.”
“In water warmer than 70 degrees, Stanford said, Pacific salmon and steelhead tend to slow down, or stop migrating altogether. Their susceptibility to disease goes way up.
“What we see is since 2012 we have had a gradual increase in temperature,” DeHart said of the two rivers. But what is different now is how much earlier in the summer the heat sets in — and how long it lasts, she said.”
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/steelhead-struggling-home-in-record-low-numbers/
Ecosystem Keystone:
Salmon Support 137 Other Species
http://www.bluefish.org/keystone.htm
In a way it’s understandable that dumb charts-N-graphs white men born & raised inside the technological bubble have no concept of biology and web of life.
When keystone species numbers get really low or go extinct the biological dominoes start to tumble. I guess when enough species have gone extinct the techno bubble humans will finally grasp the concept of “eco system services” because they won’t be there anymore and then they’ll die. Humans are absurd little monkeys.
Cloggie on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 2:08 pm
Hey cloggie better hurry up your fantasy transition. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/swiss-trees-in-danger-of-dying-out-as-climate-warms/
So the Norway spruce has a hard time in Switzerland?
So multiculturalism doesn’t even work in the realm of trees. No surprises here. Let these trees go back to their own country.
Cloggie on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 2:14 pm
Fortunately, we also know that much of those remaining fossil fuels ( the dregs) have a very low EROEI, and are unaffordable to our economies.
EROEI is a function of technology. Underground coal gasification is a relatively new animal. I would not jump to EROI conclusions if I were you. But I agree that we should let the dregs underground, if possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_coal_gasification
GregT on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 2:15 pm
So when faced with an ecological disaster, the best thing to do is to make jokes about it?
No wonder the human race is in so much trouble.
GregT on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 2:20 pm
Technology is a function of EROEI Cloggie. No energy, no technology.
Apneaman on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 2:27 pm
Wild weather patterns hitting summer crops hard across Greece
“A destructive combination excessive rainfall and extremes of heat and cold has caused tremendous damage to many crops across Greece this summer. “How can the trees handle temperatures going from 40 degrees Celsius down to 14C within just two days? We have air conditioning – they don’t,”
“Across Attica, 40 to 50 percent of the Savatiano grape crop failed due to a heat wave in late June that sent temperatures as high as 45C. “The damage was widespread and we’re unsure whether it’s even worth harvesting what’s left when the time comes in early September”
Apneaman on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 2:28 pm
http://www.ekathimerini.com/220942/article/ekathimerini/news/wild-weather-patterns-hitting-summer-crops-hard-across-greece
Apneaman on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 2:31 pm
The West Is in the Middle of the Worst Flash Drought in Recent Memory
Conditions in the Great Plains are devastating farmers and ranchers.
“As wildfires blaze across the West, parts of Montana and the Dakotas are experiencing one of the worst droughts in recent memory. With pastures so parched that they can’t support cattle, ranchers are accepting donations of hay from wetter parts of the country and selling their animals and considering taking second jobs to get by. Farmers are also struggling. Crop harvests are a fraction of normal—the estimated yield for durum wheat in North Dakota and Montana, for example, is about half what it was last year.”
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/08/the-west-is-in-the-middle-of-the-worst-flash-drought-in-recent-memory/
Cloggie on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 2:46 pm
A recent non-alarmist scientific article about the Norway Spruce in Switzerland:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28494288
Apneaman on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 2:48 pm
Good piece and the author describes clog, and tens of millions of other stupid fucking white men, perfectly.
Climate change is happening – but don’t bother trying to convince a denier
““A man with a conviction is a hard man to change,” Leon Festinger lamented in the write-up of the study, When Prophecy Fails. “Tell him you disagree, and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point … Suppose that he is presented with … unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before.”
Study after study has since backed him up: someone motivated by denial not only repudiates contradictory evidence, they usually double down, clutching to their myths still more tightly. They’re not called cherished beliefs for nothing.”
“Denial, former head of the American Psychiatric Association Paul Appelbaum told the Washington Post, is the “deliberate, often psychologically motivated, neglect of information that would be too upsetting or anxiety-provoking to allow into one’s belief system.”
https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/climate-change-week/18-08-2017/climate-change-is-happening-but-dont-bother-trying-to-convince-a-denier/
“…too upsetting or anxiety-provoking to allow into one’s belief system”
GregT on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 3:29 pm
“A recent non-alarmist scientific article about the Norway Spruce in Switzerland:”
“The results show clear non-linear effects of N deposition on stem increment of European beech and Norway spruce as well as strong interactions with climate which have contributed to the growth decrease in beech and may get more important in future.”
A non-alarmist way of saying pretty much the same thing. Especially the ‘non-linear effects’ part.
Cloggie on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 3:49 pm
Around 1980 the forests in Europe were considered as good as dead:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_dieback
Everybody a catalyst and the problem was solved.
Good piece and the author describes clog, and tens of millions of other stupid fucking white men, perfectly.
Spare me the ramblings of your co-tribalists Festinger and Appletov.
GregT on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 4:01 pm
“Everybody a catalyst and the problem was solved.”
Do you not even read your own links Cloggie?
Global climate change
“Changes in mean annual temperature and drought are major contributing factors to forest dieback. As more carbon is released from dead trees, especially in the Amazon and Boreal forests, more greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere. Increased levels of greenhouse gases increase the temperature of the atmosphere. The feedback loop is reinforced and the biological adaptations of the species determine its survival. Projections for dieback vary, but the threat of global climate change only stands to increase the rate of dieback.”
“Scientists do not know the exact tipping points of climate change and can only estimate the timescales. When a tipping point- the critical threshold- is reached, a small change in human activity can have long-term consequences on the environment. Two of the nine tipping points for major climate changes forecast for the next century are directly related to forest diebacks. Scientists are worried that forest dieback in the Amazon rain forest and the Boreal evergreen forest will trigger a tipping point in the next 50 years.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_dieback
Also completely ignoring the fact that Climate Change, and it’s myriad associated catastrophic consequences, are all happening much more quickly than previously estimated.
GregT on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 4:11 pm
“Spare me the ramblings of your co-tribalists Festinger and Appletov.”
“Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources.”
Makati1 on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 7:27 pm
onlooker, you are correct, but, as you said, all are not going down at the same speed. The West will be first and fall the hardest because they are higher on the ladder and have farther to fall. I prefer to live in the slower fall area, Asia, which is NOT so high. The end will be the same, but it probably will come a lot later and be easier. Would you rather fall from the bottom rung of a 16’ladder or the top rung? I know my choice which is why I am moving down, not up, that ladder, by choice.
The ‘end’ is the same for all of us. We just do not know when the Grim Reaper will visit or what means he will use. Cancer? Auto accident? Heart failure? Bullet? Drugs? ‘Old age’ for sure(my preference). We debate but it does not change anything. We could all be gone by Christmas. Nukes anyone? Isn’t life interesting?
Davy on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 7:33 pm
“Would you rather fall from the bottom rung of a 16’ladder or the top rung?”
Well, makat, if you are falling from the bottom into the jaws of death I think I would prefer being higher. You are going right into the hurt zone makat. Good luck with your ladder rung nonsense.
Bloomer on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 11:49 pm
No bunch of technoweanies will solve runaway climate change as pandoras box has been opened. Thus,we will eventually not have to worry about growing the economy as it will be the least of our concerns.
Overpopulation will resolve itself as nature has its own method in dealing with invasive species.
Finally saw the sun here today as its been blotted out the last 2 weeks by smoke from the raging forest fires.
Cloggie on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 3:10 am
So when faced with an ecological disaster, the best thing to do is to make jokes about it?
That’s indeed the best thing to do if it IS a joke.
Here some facts about the real state of European forest. According to the UN (no CC “deniers” for sure): surprisingly good
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/uno-bericht-europas-waelder-wachsen-a-768498.html
Here you can see the development of European forests over the last century in a gif:
https://www.vice.com/nl/article/7bga3d/kijk-hoeveel-groener-europa-is-geworden-op-deze-geanimeerde-kaart
(scroll down to the map)
It is the same everywhere, the increased CO2 levels are beneficial for vegetation all over the planet.
#PlanetaryGreening
So give me a break with this Norwegian Spruce story as planted by our local collapse bunny and plutonium cheerleader low caps dave.
“Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources.”
Oh really Greg? Did you ever read Festinger and Appletov? Of course not but they fit in your desperate collapse beliefs, so they are “fact”, fed to you by your TalmudTurk collapse guru into the open mouth of hungry starling that you are, desperate for confirmation that your drastic decision to say goodbye to civilization was correct. Jeez man, the damage that Heinberg has done to the lives of Greg, makati, Davy, ghung. I’m glad I could limit the Heinberg damage to a f* vegetable garden behind my house (so I get some exercise.lol).
Makati1 on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 3:37 am
Cloggie, yes CO2 is beneficial to plants, to a point. It is also a poison to humans and most animals. Is that a plus or minus? When the coming heat caused droughts cause forests to die, can CO2 prevent it? Can it prevent forest fires? Nitrogen is also a plus for plants, to a point. But, again, it is poisonous to humans and animals. No amount of either can prevent a forest from dying when the climate changes.
Trees cannot migrate, like animals. At least not in less than a time frame of thousands of years. Try growing spinach or lettuce in a hot climate and see if added CO2 can make it possible. Hint: They will quickly go to seed instead of growing an edible crop, IF they sprout and grow at all. Been there. Tried that. It won’t work no matter how much CO2 there is in the air. lol
Cloggie on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 3:47 am
You gotta love Google, just type in the question and you get the answer at top, not even necessary to click links anymore:
“at what oconcentration is co2 poisonous for humans”
(you can even afford severe typos)
What concentration of co2 is toxic?
At very high concentrations (100 times atmospheric concentration, or greater), carbon dioxide can be toxic to animal life, so raising the concentration to 10,000 ppm (1%) or higher for several hours will eliminate pests such as whiteflies and spider mites in a greenhouse.
In other words, atmospheric CO2 will never be toxic for us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
Non-issue.
Makati1 on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 5:51 am
Cloggie, again you missed the intended point. That climate change is going to do us in no matter what “positives” you can come up with. The heat is going to kill us directly by heat stroke or indirectly by killing off the plant and animal life that sustains us. CO2 levels don’t matter when the high temps don’t allow seeds to germinate. Or the plant to grow. Or the fruit to form.
Do you even understand biology? I don’t think so. Have you ever planted a garden and grown your own food? I doubt it. Your tech is not going to save your old ass so you better buy some seed and learn how to feed yourself. Tech is about at its “sell by” date. You were here before it began and, if you are lucky, you will be here after it is gone. Enjoy it while it lasts. I do.
Davy on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 6:21 am
“damage that Heinberg has done to the lives of Greg, makati, Davy, ghung.”
What damage, is that what you call realistic science based observation? When someone is honest without revisions of the past and fantasy futures then that person takes realistic action in the face of observable dangers. In this case it is risk management and we call it here prepping. Clog, you would not be here except for the reason of observable dangers. I have mitigated my doom significantly but only short term and I clarify that with we don’t know enough about climate change. I also believe a systematic collapse caused primarily from economic calamities and or social destructiveness of war is possible any day or it may not happen for years. Clog, you are the damaged one with a manic pressured agenda of race wars and techno confusion. This confusion is a techno optimism of the Eurotard kind where you claim with certainty a Paris/Berlin/Moscow empire retarded-ness with a foundation of a 100% renewable energy economy in under 30 years. Wow, so who is losing it?
Cloggie on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 6:28 am
Have you ever planted a garden and grown your own food? I doubt it.
I’m in my fourth year of food producing from my 100m2 garden. And I have a greenhouse kit lying around to be set up after the end of this current, rather cold, growth season.
I’m long food self-sufficient.
The heat is going to kill us directly by heat stroke or indirectly by killing off the plant and animal life that sustains us. CO2 levels don’t matter when the high temps don’t allow seeds to germinate. Or the plant to grow.
As you can verify from my forest links, the development of the current climate is apparently good for global vegetation.
That is not to say that we shouldn’t take global warming very seriously. If we ignore for a moment old Anglo doomers and their dying civilization (for demographic reasons), with little interest in the future of the planet.
I simply follow the advice of western officialdom that we should get rid of fossil as soon as possible in the hoop that we can keep temperature increase below 2 degrees. And if necessary we should follow a crash program and step up the speed and simply write off conventional fossil power stations well before end-of-economic life and block Chinese imports produced with fossil fuel and ration car traffic.
2030 is a possible target date for smaller European countries like Holland, Denmark, Norway and Scotland and the German state of Rhineland Palatinate:
https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/03/24/the-netherlands-fossil-free-in-2030/
Cloggie on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 7:37 am
https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2017/33/lower-co2-emissions-in-q2-2017
The decarbonization of the Dutch economy proceeds unhindered despite record economic growth of 3.3%.
0.9% year-to-year when adjusted for mild winter.
Davy on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 8:04 am
“Dutch economic growth disappoints at 0.4% in Q1”
http://tinyurl.com/y9b4wd82
“Quarterly GDP growth in the Netherlands fell to 0.4 per cent in the three months to March, down from 0.6 per cent in the final quarter of last year and worse than a 0.5 per cent forecast. It was the weakest quarter since the end of 2015.”
Cloggie on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 8:19 am
That was Q1. We are now deep in Q3.
https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2017/33/exceptionally-high-gdp-growth-in-q2-2017
Exceptionally high GDP growth in Q2 2017
GDP 3.3 percent up from Q2 2016
Sorry Davy.
And it is not just Holland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM9_PrBoq9Q
90% of the world’s countries are growing.
2017 is a bad year for doomers.
Antius on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 9:19 am
Here is the historical GDP growth of the Netherlands.
https://tradingeconomics.com/netherlands/gdp-growth
Notice that GDP growth follows 10 year boom-bust cycles. One of these started in 1992 and tanked it in 2002. Another cycle started at this point. Notice that the economy appeared to be growing strongly in 2008 shortly before crashing halfway through the cycle. Another cycle started in 2012. Right now, we are exactly halfway through a cycle. One would expect the economy to be doing relatively well at this point and it is. Then again, it was doing well in 2008 before the crash.
Notice the long-term downward trend to Netherlands GDP growth. You see the same thing in all European economies. Here is UK:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth
Here is Germany:
https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp-growth
I suspect this is a direct consequence of falling EROI in energy systems, increasing complexity which makes it more difficult to do anything and growing competition in from China and Japan in key industrial sectors.
Antius on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 9:27 am
Also, notice how UK GDP growth has been effectively zero since the late 1980s. About the same time as our industries were privatized and asset stripped and we began the dash for gas. Fat lot of good North Sea oil and gas did for the UK.
Davy on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 10:24 am
“2017 is a bad year for doomers.”
Cloggie, I am showing you short term and how it can vary and you missed it. A few months of QE induced growth (bubble) and you are mentally masturbating. No, sorry for you clog, you have a long way to go to show this little blip (6 months) in at most lackluster growth is anything more than a last hurrah of irrational exuberance. You are so far down the rat hole of exceptionalism and optimism you face serious mental health issues when your techno optimist fantasies vaporize in a reality induced shake down.