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Page added on September 19, 2018
Heinberg: What Will it Take to Avert Collapse?
A lot of people are asking the question these days—including serious folks who work full-time on climate and energy policy. How can the world’s nations reduce greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to forestall climate catastrophe, without undermining either the global economy (which is still 85 percent dependent on fossil fuels) or the hopes of billions of people in poorer countries to raise their economic prospects through “development”—which historically has depended on increasing per capita energy usage?
The United Nations has passed this vexing question along to the global climate science community as a formal request to write a Special Report providing “feasible” pathways to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius while supporting economic growth and meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The science community has responded by publishing papers featuring scenarios to fit those specifications. Until recently, most scenarios have relied on negative emissions technologies, including CCS (capturing carbon from fossil-fueled power plants, then sequestering it), or BECCS (growing biomass crops, burning them for power, then recapturing the carbon and storing it). Critics have savaged these plans as being too expensive and too environmentally risky.
A major new 13-page paper in Nature Energy, with 122 pages of supplementary materials, takes an entirely different approach. The goal of the authors, led by Arnolf Grubler, was to model a scenario that limits global warming to 1.5 °C while meeting economic goals without invoking negative emission technologies—relying instead on energy demand reduction. We and our colleagues at Post Carbon Institute have for years promoted demand reduction as the primary viable pathway to averting catastrophic climate change. However, we assume that reducing energy usage dramatically would also result in economic contraction; indeed, we don’t see any way to maintain growth much longer as energy from fossil fuels declines—whether due to climate policy or fossil fuel depletion. In our view, one of the main jobs of policy makers these days should be to find ways to minimize the impacts of economic retrenchment.
The authors of the paper are more sanguine; they write:
[W]e show how an appropriate scaling down of the size of the global energy system creates the necessary space for a feasible supply-side decarbonization within a 1.5 °C emission budget without the need for negative emission technologies and with significant sustainable development co-benefits.
We decided to take a close look at this low energy demand scenario to see just how feasible it is. Its assumptions appear transparent and well documented in the Supplemental Materials. However, as we dug into those assumptions, it was clear that the authors envision a nearly complete revamping of technology, institutions, behaviors, and belief systems to achieve their goals, and this societal transformation would need to start immediately.
In the study, much of the assumed transformation is achieved by near-universal digitalization. The authors focus on end-use energy services, suggesting that most of these could be delivered far more efficiently using microelectronics. Household and commercial electricity use could be slashed as multiple pieces of equipment are foregone for a smart phone—whose 5 Watt power consumption would substitute for 450 Watts of consumption from cameras, calculators, TVs, game consoles, DVRs, radios, scanners, tablets, stereos, alarm clocks, GPS, weather stations, video cameras, etc. Some of these uses have already been taken over by smart phones. Moreover, the authors assume that household appliances will all be connected to the Internet of Things, to allow for their optimal operation and seamless availability for demand response.
What’s not mentioned in the Grubler scenario is that universal digitalization would require a robust, dependable electricity supply and electronic communications network. This would entail substantial new infrastructure and electricity demand to accommodate data transmission, storage, and processing for nearly every piece of equipment on Earth. It would also require a great deal of copper. And it would all have to work together seamlessly 24/7.
In their discussion of energy usage in buildings, the authors posit dramatic gains in heating and cooling efficiency through a complete retrofit of buildings in the global North during the study period extending to 2050; indeed, 3 percent of buildings would have to be retrofitted each year. Meanwhile, all new buildings in the global South (amounting cumulatively to 84 billion square meters) would be built to achieve passivhaus construction standards.
“Industry” in the scenario is treated with a focus primarily on six sectors (steel, aluminum, cement, paper, petrochemicals, and feedstocks). Reductions in demand derive from maximum assumptions of dematerialization (needing less stuff) and material efficiency (stuff lasting longer), with all stuff produced at world best-practice efficiency levels. The study assumes a reduction in vehicle stock from a projected one billion in 2050 to 530 million because of the emergence of a sharing economy (more on that below). Altogether the authors project a four-billion-tonne reduction in annual demand for output from the combined six focus sectors in 2050, despite the fact that they accept that population will grow to nine billion people and that the UN’s economic assumptions regarding GDP growth rates and income will be achieved.
It is hard to reconcile the observed long-term close relationships between global GDP and materials/energy use, with the assumption that population and wealth will continue to grow while materials and energy usage will start to shrink. Economists call this disconnection of GDP from energy and material usage “decoupling.” But, as a recent study has shown, claims of past decoupling don’t hold up to scrutiny. So how do the authors of the “low energy demand” paper propose to achieve in the future what has proved so elusive up until now? Partly through a shift to a sharing society, in which we give up personal ownership of cars, tools, and appliances in favor of payment for energy services such as rides, tool use, etc. Sharing will be enabled and promoted by digitalization and the Internet of Things. Not discussed is the fact that anything with a sensor or a circuit board in it becomes much more difficult to repair.
After adding up all the energy savings from end uses, the authors then create an optimized energy system to run it, in which electricity is 60 percent of all final energy usage by 2050, up from 20 percent today. Residential/commercial electrification is easy to envision, but there are few specifics about how electrification could be extended to industry, which is projected to be nearly fossil fuel-free by shortly after 2050.
As we discussed in our book Our Renewable Future, industrial uses of energy (especially for high-temperature process like cement making) will be difficult to de-carbonize, and such processes figure into nearly all supply chains. The Grubler scenario excludes aviation and shipping from consideration.
In the end, the model “works” only if every assumption is achieved, at scale, and in the needed time frame. And since the retrofitting requirement alone means we need to be working on over a billion square meters of buildings every year to 2050, it needs to start immediately; the institutional, behavioral, social, technological, and other changes necessary must fall into place just as quickly.
The global climate science community has so far supplied scenarios to meet the UN’s criteria by relying on the magic of CCS. Now, following criticism of CCS, the community is contemplating a scenario that will be extremely difficult to implement and that relies instead on the magic of decoupling to deliver desired outcomes.
In our view, at some point scientists and policy makers must begin discussing the one scenario that world leaders seem to want to avoid at all costs, i.e., managed economic contraction. The irony is that this scenario could reliably cut greenhouse gas emissions and is achievable without appeal to magic (CCS or decoupling). Absent forethought and planning, contraction could spell ruin to economies addicted to growth. But with planning and management, communities could relocalize and human needs could be met more simply. Population levels could decrease in deliberate and humane ways.
The world’s leaders have saddled the climate science community with a hopeless task. Climate scientists, after all, have dedicated their careers to studying natural systems and are likely terribly concerned about the impacts of a warmed planet on humanity and other species. Now they are being required to come up with societal responses that are narrowly constrained within the parameters of what governments believe is politically acceptable. If it turns out that what is actually needed to counter the threat of climate change is political poison, what then? Will policy makers listen and redefine what is politically acceptable? And how long might this back-and-forth continue before an effective response to the climate challenge emerges?
Resilience.org
24 Comments on "Heinberg: What Will it Take to Avert Collapse?"
Jef on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 8:43 am
What Will it Take to Avert Collapse?
A time machine.
George Straight on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 8:56 am
Stop global warming, stop fcking and making babies….People there is not a shortage of rug rats in the world
fmr-paultard on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 9:11 am
ah big brother jef you came back thinking i’d let you tard some more. i can’t brother jef. it makes me sad you tarding so hard. we’re kufurs you see? we need to pay the jizya and submit to muslims.
here’s a balanced site that address your concerns.
http://markhumphrys.com/islam.killings.html
don’t forget supertard warner who made comparisons between christianity and islam
/watch?v=I_To-cV94Bo
fmr-paultard on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 9:27 am
for brother jef, admit one
https://preview.tinyurl.com/ybf45zz4
fmr-paultard on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 10:38 am
big brother jef, i love ya. i don’t want you to tard so hard. i think i untard big brother joe. he said assad is good but he’s a muslim. and by law churches steeples have to be lower than mosques. then i headed over wiki and i see this
During the visit of Pope John Paul II to Syria in 2001, Assad requested an apology to Muslims for the Crusades and criticised Israeli treatment of Palestinians
i’m losing faith in saint fathertard wojtyla. why did he even visit a muslim nation? a pole would know better than that because of recent history with sobieski and all, i mean.
supertard warner gave us battle map of islam and crusdade and there’s no comparision.
islam killed almost 300 million peps. that’s like everyone in america brother jef. and slavery of whiteys along the shores of the mediterranean by muslims were 1 million, and they went to scottland and ireland too.
the number of african slaves reachign america is 1/3 that.
you want numbers, you got it brother jef.
i’m your humble servant
Antius on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 11:01 am
“It is hard to reconcile the observed long-term close relationships between global GDP and materials/energy use, with the assumption that population and wealth will continue to grow while materials and energy usage will start to shrink. Economists call this disconnection of GDP from energy and material usage “decoupling.” But, as a recent study has shown, claims of past decoupling don’t hold up to scrutiny.”
This statement is basically true. What human beings consider as wealth (GDP), is basically the product of work (in a physics sense – applied energy) directed at matter, according to some design, producing an end result.
The idea of decoupling wealth production from inputs of energy and matter is impossible. Individual countries have produced the appearance of decoupling GDP from energy use, only because they have outsourced many high energy activities and made up the difference by selling assets and taking on more debt. At a global level, GDP is a linear function of exergy, i.e. thermodynamic work.
Davy on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 11:56 am
The primary focus of enlightened policy should be a real green that is a new green. The new green is the acceptance that technology and affluence of the fake greens is not going to power us out of decline and climate destabilization. The basis of real green is adapted behavior driven by a green wisdom. The relevant part of this green wisdom today revolves around less affluence and applying restrictive policy to technology and development. Green wisdom is the driver not technology. Thus behavior is the primary means to change not technology. This does not mean rejecting technology and development. This means incorporating it into behavioral changes of less affluence and the restriction of discretionary wants. This does not have to be completely about authoritative control but it must include some draconian controls. It can also be more about educating people to what survival is. Nothing is more real and offer more meaning than an effort at survival. When we get to the point of crisis then reality will show itself more clearly.
This in a nut shell means economic contraction that adapts behavior and it is only that contraction and resulting behavioral changes that can provide avenues to mitigation and adaptation to what is now a runaway overshoot event. We can slow this process down and limit pain and suffering but we cannot stop it. World governments cannot initiate this path because they do not have the tools for it. It can only be achieved through grass roots efforts. It can be leveraged by individuals who by force of numbers drive a ground swelling of change. Once a critical mass of participants power a new narrative then some changes can be made further up the economic and political ladder. Still because of the nature of competitive cooperation of our global capitalistic system only so much can be done without bringing the whole edifice down. The system cannot be reformed but it can be made less bad and that means more sustainable. This is more than energy and resources it is also about culture with procreation and consumption. It is about what is of value. It is about a new narrative and a new myth.
MASTERMIND on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 12:25 pm
Koch brothers “reason” strikes again!
https://i.redd.it/e41n7vbly6n11.jpg
Nothing makes a republican’s dick harder than poor people dying..except maybe a state with no age of consent laws.
fmr-paultard on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 1:08 pm
perfectly reasonable and moderate proposals. not sure what opposition to supertrad (pbuh) about other than extremists pushing for collapse or selling nirvana using renewables in order to usher in nazi state. bin laden said people love a winner and that’s why isis created much mayhem as possible to command respect from kufir. it’s all problem reaction solution
as suppertard sun tzu said if your enemy huff and puff he’s at the weakest. our job is to bring them out …ala hundred flowers campaign so we know who the tards are.
Antius on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 2:13 pm
Davy, your post sounds a lot like what Ted Trainer advocated in his book ‘The Conserver Society’. It presented a socioeconomic model in which basic needs were met with the minimum possibly resources, using mostly locally available resources and local manufacturing. The social ideals were based upon an anti-growth philosophy, in which consumption is avoided so far as possible and life is stripped to its barest essentials. It was not entirely clear how this coukd be brought about. I would recommend the book.
Davy on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 3:10 pm
My point is only stop gap. This doctrine accepts we have gone too far into overshoot. Our survival will be based on how best we can find that sweet spot of less growth but still have viable economic activity. Knowing that sweet spot is not possible but rather we should be aware that too much change can participate failure just as failure is coming with the status quo. The goal is to buy more time not save ourselves. This will involve triage of abandonment. Maybe not a managing hand at the triage but an emergent triage where by poor lifestyles and settlement types will be eliminated. My ideas are that a collapse process is happening and it should be adapted too. This collapse process has knowns and unknown. The known is all those poor arrangements of modern life that are not sustainable and lack resilience to shocks. These arrangements are being compromised slowly in many cases so their risk is not appreciated. The unknowns are the events and processes that are beyond forecasting. They are random and both natural and human based. The combination of these known and unknown collapse processes can be better adapted to with proper preparations. These preparation must be behavior based with a new social narrative and an underlying myth based on decline not growth. The key to these behavioral preparations is attitudes and lifestyles not technology although technology will be an expression of the adapted behavior.
My ideas are rejecting technology as our only hope and rather presenting adapted behavior as the hope. Technology and development will follow behavior instead of vice versa. Economic activity will decline and along with it affluence and wellbeing of many. Still many can adapt and possibly find more wellbeing in a life that is more spiritual based and less materialistic. When I say materialistic I mean material consumption for discretionary pleasure. We need a new materialism were we make and trade material of real value with real applications that have longevity built in. We care for and maintain them with great reverence. Gone will be the built in obsolescence and the landfill material side effect of cheap price based consumerism. People will have to work and take responsibility for their actions or they will not survive. This means the safety net will be adapted towards value and responsibility not entitlement.
Do I think this will work? No I don’t, not as recipe for a new civilization with a future. My point is rather a new social narrative for the individual and small communities to build upon when we see serious decline. I feel eventually serious decline will occur. It is occurring now but there is just as much growth so this decline is hidden. The decline is actually much worse because this decline is in the social fabric and the underlying infrastructure of modern life. We are building a civilization that is a house of cards. We are basing our economic activity on a Ponzi arrangement. We are destroying our commons and food and water producing natural assets. We are overpopulating and overconsuming and telling ourselves it is good for growth. This may go on for some time but science is clearly telling us we are breaching multiple thresholds that point to a bifurcation. This activity I mention should be started now for the future of our young. It should also be done for ourselves because someday we will not want to suffer in old age. There is no hope for modern man but there is hope for a life on the downside of our late term civilization.
Mark Ziegler on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 4:08 pm
You are the missing person from my high school teachers. ’75 grad.
My college Climate Systems teacher was all over thermal dynamics and climate change. ’78.
He was an elder fellow who worked for carrier corp. for 40 years. He said as matter of fact that Florida would be under water. Every one from the east cost would come running to Michigan. Put a few frogs in luke warm water and slowly turn up the temperature and they will not notice. One thing he said that I did not get was that the world would flip out.
Boney Joe on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 5:30 pm
“The basis of real green is adapted behavior driven by a green wisdom. The relevant part of this green wisdom today revolves around less affluence and applying restrictive policy to technology and development. Green wisdom is the driver not technology. Thus behavior is the primary means to change not technology.”
What a load of absolute worthless crap.
Cloggie on Wed, 19th Sep 2018 8:36 pm
Now here is a collapse to believe in, the collapse and breaking apart of the West.
Yesterday night in Salzburg May and the 27 EU states did not move an inch towards each other:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/eu-gipfel-in-salzburg-theresa-may-beharrt-auf-brexit-vorschlaegen-a-1229030.html
Consequences of a no deal:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-dangers-of-a-no-deal-brexit-a-1228487.html
On top of that a memo leaked from the Conservatives that discusses the downfall of May:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6187155/Leaked-memo-reveals-Tory-plot-oust-Theresa-APRIL.html
It is absolutely possible that the situation could become hostile, as we have already seen in small measure with the fishing incident.
It could trigger a development that the EU now finally gets really serious with setting up its integrated defense force, just in case.
Davy on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 4:29 am
“It is absolutely possible that the situation could become hostile, as we have already seen in small measure with the fishing incident. It could trigger a development that the EU now finally gets really serious with setting up its integrated defense force, just in case.”
Extremist nonsense. Going from a small fishing incident to a wider military action??? Euro land does not have the will to set up a common army. There has been talk on this for years but little in the way of action. They do not have the alliances of nations to get it done. Euroland is in the process of loosening up its alliance financially with the north south divide and politically with immigration.
Cloggie on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 4:56 am
The EU nations spend together half of what the US does on defense. The US spends 40% of that on a useless navy, useless in the 21st century. All the EU needs to do is better integration of existing forces. All agree that defense spending needs to increase, now that the West/US empire is almost over. Dream on it won’t happen, it will happen. Brexit is the opening salvo of the breakup of the West. The more hostile Brexit will be, the faster and decisive the breakup will be and the stronger the impetus of increasing defense spending will be, as well as the impulse to include Russia into the European security architecture, as announced by Macron, recently.
Btw: do you have any other word than that media word “extremist” in your small intellectual bagage?
Davy on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 5:05 am
“Btw: do you have any other word than that media word “extremist” in your small intellectual bagage?”
Not for you nor the baggage you carry and puke here daily, redundantly and obsessively.
pointer on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 5:53 am
“How can the world’s nations reduce greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to forestall climate catastrophe…[?]”
That train has left the station, and the train wreck is already underway.
The relevant questions now are “Where to move people in a civilized fashion to less-affected places?” and “You do know you are going to die soon (directly or indirectly) from some weather-related event (storm, flood, fire, drought, famine, etc.) that would not have been so severe if those fossil fuels had not been burned?”
Dredd on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 8:09 am
“What Will it Take to Avert Collapse?” – Heinberg:
The gravamen of the situation is that civilizations cease to exist. Historically either “suicide” or “murder” takes them out, but by far suicide is the main way of demise.
Avoid ecocide.
This is basic history:
“In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority.” (Etiology of Social Dementia – 18 , quoting Encyclopedia Britannica).
onlooker on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 8:40 am
In this case though Empire extended itself above all ecologically. The Empire of humans has overshot it’s carrying capacity with overpopulation and overconsumption with Earth damaging technology
Wolfie52 on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 7:03 pm
Same idiots arguing with the same idiots. I really wonder what you people do all day/week/month? I can pick almost any post (as I do about every 3 months) and find the same people arguing/talking about the EOFTWAWKI instead of having a LIFE.
Really, get out of mom’s basement and enjoy life…if it ends it won’t be like you think it will end.
onlooker on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 7:19 pm
Wolfie, so what is more pathetic, those of us logging in here on a regular basis or those like you who log in every 3 months or so to check up on us logging in regularly?
Sissyfuss on Thu, 20th Sep 2018 8:05 pm
Managed economic contraction, aka as Recession. Ind Civ is a heat engine that can only be cooled by removing the engine and transporting the operators back to circa 1700. With todays emissions not entertaining their malevolence for approximately 20 years only immense removal of GHGs will have any effect on living conditions. Plus all our lovely plans will go flittering away when we our punched in the mouth by Climate Disruption. Ask the citizens of Houston or Wilmington..
Cloggie on Fri, 21st Sep 2018 2:16 am
https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/bij-snellere-zeespiegelstijging-dan-verwacht-moet-nederland-veel-doen-om-het-droog-te-houden~b03ca425/
The Dutch national weather institute KNMI thinks sea level rise will be limited to 1 meter.
The new Dutch institution Deltares believes it is no longer a matter of if but when that sea level rise will be 1, 2, 3 meters. Even 8 meters are not ruled out.
Life in Holland will never be the same, if at all.
We’ll need 25 times more sand per year than today to keep the water out.
A proposed alternative could be a new line of defense, parallel to the entire coast:
https://mobile.twitter.com/pietjepier/status/1042547597959868418