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I remember seeing a 1980s documentary about survivalists. They were running around in radiation suits, hunting deer.
Hah. If there’s that much radiation you don’t want to get radioactive dust on you, then you absolutely can’t eat the deer.
There were prior waves, like back to the land.
I don’t see the inherent argument that technology as a whole is unsustainable. When we’re constantly evolving what resources are needed for technology. Yes current tech is unsustainable, but so were steam engines.
but so were steam engines.
Fun fact: we still use steam engines in quite a lot of things, actually. Not so much with wood and coil furnaces to power boilers in locomotives, but just about every power plant uses a steam engine.
Yep, even nuclear reactors use some form of steam engine to generate electricity out of the heat they produce. It’s remarkably effective.
But of note to OP is that steam engines aren’t necessarily unsustainable. The heat to produce motion that generates electrical current can be generated by renewable means. Molten salt solar basically does that, for example, and it fits most definitions of “sustainable”.
What types of electric generation that aren’t heat related? I can think of wind and solar, and hydro? But nuclear and fossil fuels are steam, aren’t they?
You answered your own question - correct on all counts! 😊 There are really very few physical principles to base power generation technology off to begin with; it’s all going to come down to either inducing a current in a conductor by spinning a magnetic field (molten salt solar, nuclear, fossil fuels, hydro, wind, and anything else involving a turbine at any point all operate on this principle), or inducing a current by futzing with quantum mechanics (photovoltaic cells alone operate off this principle, as far as I understand such things - and I understand just enough to know I understand nothing at all).
Comparing a modern steam turbine to a steam engine is a little bit like comparing a jet engine to a box fan.
It’s technically correct, the best kind of correct, but they are wildly different machines.
In practice current and mid-term future technology has well known limits in terms of geology and physics. Future technology can be different (molecular nanotechnology), but we need a traversable path to there that needs sustained high technology. I find it difficult to imagine such a path.
Also batteries, lithium is expensive so a lot of companies are trying to come up with cheaper, but also more sustainable alternatives. And they already have with lithium iron phosphate that requires less lithium. And as prices for a substance rise, so will the desire for alternatives and recycling.
We already know we can have sodium batteries but the economics of TWh and PWh storage plus supporting infrastructure, all created and indefinetely sustained mostly by photovoltaics, including photovoltaics itself, including high temperature industrial processes our industry hinges upon are not supported by favorable numbers.
Eventually yes, but I personally think that recycling solar panels and so on could slow collapse much more than the author suggests.
The chief problem with solar photovoltaic or wind turbine power is that its EROEI is uncomfortably close or even is below unity, if you include its supporting fossil input and mineral extraction. Right now the technology is only an extender of fossil fuels and chemical inputs. We also see in the global energy consumption chart that the renewable power is not substituting fossil inputs but only adding to it. Due to the nature of asymmetry of decline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_effect we can expect the decline of fossil inputs to be much faster, putting the deployment rate or even sustained existance of the marginal renewable base into jeopardy.
Nothing about our energy usage is unsustainable, yet. Just our energy sources. We have the technological ability to replace the majority or our petroleum based fuels with electricity or bio-fuels, but we don’t because the cost and supply of oil is very cheap and very abundant. When that is no-longer the case there will be a period of stagnated growth while various industries are bailed out and cannibalize each other and probably a few million people perish unnecessarily, but for the rich, they will be almost untouched.
Of course the above is just under-capitalism. A government that prioritized people over profit could make the transition off of oil with much less population fallout. Who knows if such a government will ever exist though. I guess China is close, but still not good enough.
What about the little elephant in the room global warming?
If we continue to wait until oil is too expensive we are going to be very far down the “earth is pretty fucking hot” timeline
Oh for sure. Global warming isn’t even being addressed, but I was referring to the article which explicitly isn’t talking about global warming, it’s talking about energy/minerals/etc
That timeline is now effectively unavoidable due to the phase change in the planetary system Earth we’ve triggered through our initial greenhouse gas injection pulse. The pulse itself is self-limiting, it began mostly by 1950 and will be rather advanced into its tail phase by 2050. Only about a century’s worth of a massive anthropogenic release. Whatever happens then is out of our hands. It arguably never was in our hands: human ensemble behavior is effectively deterministic.
Actually, the growth of our energy use is intrinsically unsustainable https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
As to the technological ability to substitute fossils with biofuels, sorry: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-environ-121912-094620
As to the technological abiltity to substitute fossils with renewable electricity, there are some very serious problems there https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m#page=182
The fossil energy is no longer terribly cheap or abundant, if you look at the numbers. Per capita energy use has been declining, net energy per capita (the only relevant metric) has been quickly declining, and we are about to reach even volume decline perhaps as quickly as 2025, since the global liquid increase is almost completely due to Permian tight oil extraction alone. There are no longer any accessible fossil organics at scale left after tight oil and gas.
As to millions people perishing, the unfortunate suggestions is that it will be billions, though hopefully over a period of a century due to increased mortality and subreplacement birth rate, rather than one fell swoop of nuclear war and famine.
You are assuming exponential growth forever, where obviously in such a case within ~1500 years we will be using more energy then our sun can provide which is absurd assuming we stay on the earth forever. Plus you are getting to fanciful concepts like type 1 civilizations. Let’s get back to earth and say that TODAY at our current energy consumption, we can replace 1 for 1 our current fossil fuel energy budget with something else. But we don’t because TODAY oil is abundant and cheap.
If you want to talk about the idiotic Capitalist assumption of infinite growth forever, obviously that is going to stop, it has to. So when it slows (and assuming nothing else changes) millions will die as the quest for profit continues. None of the above is inevitable. I maintain a government that exists for the good of the many people instead of profit for a few at the expense of everything else, can absolutely become sustainable. There isn’t even a lot that would have to change for the average person!
As for the doomsaying about 2025 volume decline, I heard literally the same argument with peak oil in the 2000. It’s a misleading number that assumes we can’t replace oil with literally anything else, even though we and have been able to since the 50’s.
