4.2 - Autopilot
You would think that if we know which endeavors were likely to crash-and-burn this century, we might invest in minimizing suffering and preserving as much non-human life as possible. As it turns out, we can’t prevent collapse - and we can’t steer through or get ahead of it, either (at least, not at any significant scale).
“We were at MIT. We had been trained in science. The way we thought about the future was utterly logical: if you tell people there’s a disaster ahead, they will change course. If you give them a choice between a good future and a bad one, they will pick the good. They might even be grateful. Naïve, weren’t we?”
– “Limits to Growth” lead author Donella Meadows
The screenshot below is from a 1973 news broadcast about the Limits to Growth study, referenced in the above quote and in my previous post. In it, Dr Alexander King, director of the World Bank and the OECD, anticipates “the building up, probably in the next decade, in a number of particularly sensitive fields (like energy, raw materials, the use of the oceans, space and so on) of a number of what people are tending to call regimes, which will not be ordinary United Nations-type of organizations, but semi-management organizations.”
A misunderstanding of the problem’s origins and of human (specifically, civilization-dependent human) psychology led King to make an incorrect assessment of what would constitute a solution and of civilization’s potential to chart a risk-informed course.
Let’s attempt to understand the dynamics at play and do a better job of tracing the path that civilization’s institutions and citizens will take.
Maximum Power Principle
Human societies came to function as a superorganism, behaving according to the Maximum Power Principle: “During self-organization, system designs develop and prevail that maximize power intake, energy transformation, and those uses that reinforce production and efficiency.” With our population arranged to cooperate as a superorganism, our resource extraction rate grows as if on autopilot.
A study of human cultures concludes:
“The global environmental crises of the Anthropocene are the outcome of a ratcheting process in long-term human evolution which has favored groups of increased size and greater environmental exploitation… Long-distance between-group interactions may play a role in natural resource [mis-]management and environmental exploitation … Group-level cultural innovations in environmental management tend to increase the scale and intensity of environmental modification and extraction, which in turn accelerates the proliferation of cultural groups with those innovations… [There arises] a self-reinforcing (positive) feedback system which selects for ever more competitive human groups. … Warfare selects for aggressive and expansionist group-level cultural traits and destructive technologies.”
From Catton’s Overshoot:
"Whenever the in-group directly and exclusively benefits from its own overuse of a shared resource but the costs of that overuse are ‘shared’ by out-groups, then in-group motivation toward a policy of resource conservation (or sustained yield rates of harvesting) is undermined. In other words, competition for scarce resources is the enemy of self-restraint."
Even when some communities or even entire countries choose not to over-use resources, another entity usually does, and it thereby gains the advantage to become the dominating force. As Tom Murphy puts it, to have an oversized footprint or not “wasn’t a true choice, in that those opting out are either gone or not faring well in our current global civilization.”
From Greer’s “Dark Age America”:
"A glance back over our past shows clearly enough that who won, who lost, who ended up ruling a society, and who ended up enslaved or exterminated by that same society, was not determined by moral virtue or by the justice of one or another cause but by the crassly pragmatic factors of military, political, and economic power. No doubt most of us would rather live in a world that didn't work that way, but here we are, and morality remains a matter of individual choices … in the face of a cosmos that's sublimely unconcerned with our moral beliefs.”
The American Petroleum Institute’s SVP was correct when he asserted, “The world will continue to demand more energy, not less.” At the scale of the total population of our species, we will always max-out our capacity. As long as there’s a surplus to be had, we feed the surplus back into the system and the system grows, and its baseline energy requirement to function becomes higher. This will continue until activities to address our behavior’s consequences drain so much energy that no surplus energy remains, and growth stalls. Then, as the costs continue to rise, our superorganism will deteriorate.
Our Method of Meeting Basic Needs Dictates Our Paradigm
According to “cultural materialism”, infrastructure (material conditions, modes of meeting basic needs, relationships with nature and technology) dictates a society’s structure (norms, rules) and its superstructure (ideology). High-energy modernity emerged, and then our ideology formed to reflect and justify it.
As long as civilization’s extraction-oriented model persists, we’ll be unable to think outside of it. That’s why, even as heat damages London’s airport runways and makes Formula 1 drivers vomit in their helmets in Qatar, we find ways to keep flying and racing. The show must go on. Our habits, norms and codified rules will continue to impede an appropriate response.
Our infrastructure shapes our thinking because it’s the layer that we take for granted. It operates in the background. In a society where the refrigerators run, tap water flows, trucks deliver food and toilets flush, we forget to factor the complex systems that support them into our visions. We are incapable of picturing an existence too similar to other species' Normal, or a fate as grim as the one that our repeated experiments in “civilization” have inflicted on other life.
Only as civilization deteriorates, such that people have to meet basic needs independently of its systems and physical infrastructure, will they truly be able to think and act differently.
Jason Bradford interviewed by Kamea Chayne on Green Dreamer:
“People want to eat locally, people want to buy organic, people are interested in holistic-based livestock… But it’s very hard for those components to really take over until there truly is a breakdown… There is such a lock-in and such a dominance and such a sunk cost to what we have… As long as it’s still working, as long as people still have jobs, and people are making money, … they don’t see the real need to change… And that’s what we learn from resilience science. It helps you let go a little bit of trying to prove yourself and be too eager or anxious … be more accepting of the status quo, understand why it is how it is, why it’s so hard to change. And you can … build something that is going to be more viable long-term, but not beat your head against the wall, … like ‘You change, you change, you change!’ Like, sorry, you work on something and let that other system be”
Machado de Oliveira puts it more briefly with a Brazilian saying: “in a flood situation, it is only when the water reaches people’s hips that it becomes possible for them to swim... We might only be able to learn ... to exist differently once we have no other choice.”
Putting Oneself in Authorities’ Shoes
Any leader of a major power would have to weigh the consequences of abandoning the pursuit of ever-higher resource and energy consumption. Decision-makers are more afraid of the immediate threats that deprivation will bring than they are of the longer-term consequences of combustion. These include:
Economic restructuring - As the Hirsch report warned, “energy descent” will dramatically upset the flow of goods and services. People will need to spread out over the land, restore it, and learn to meet our needs fully from within the local ecological budget - but we’re imperfect and we have a short window to pull this off. Even if everyone were willing, they might not be able. Furthermore, as with a Jenga tower, an intentional endeavor to unravel our civilization-tapestry could cause disturbances that are disproportionate to the sum of the removed parts. Civilization will come apart differently than how it came together.
Geopolitics - A smaller footprint amounts to self-induced weakness. A country would only agree to this if it could trust that all others would do the same and none would take advantage of it. Given all of history and current events and the fact that we’re entering an era of resource competition and reemergent multipolarity, it’s reasonable for a government to suspect that this is a bad bet. Oil interests have fueled 25-50% of international conflicts since 1973 and much of the USA’s foreign affairs can be understood through the lens of oil (and the pursuit of the growth, control, advantage that it consigns).1 Power-hunger is and will continue to be the basis for many nations’ strategies. No matter how much we would love to see every country demilitarize, it’s more likely that we’ll see countries “go to war to ensure their ability to go to war” (Breaking Together), including to secure access to precious petroleum. Notably, the US has some of the rare earths that an energy transition requires and military power helps ensure that we get to decide what happens to them.
Popular resistance - Civilization’s members (in both “developed” and “developing” countries, in both white- and blue-collar jobs) have been led to believe that modernity will persist forever, even if all individuals haven’t (yet!) accessed its luxuries. If authorities retract the ”carrot” of consumerism, people will be distressed. Some citizens would react violently, especially given rising polarization, tribalism and conspiracy theories. For example:
When in 2023, relative fuel scarcity brought high gasoline prices, Americans complained and our government indulged them by releasing a Strategic Petroleum Reserve that was meant for emergencies.
Canadians are protesting a carbon tax on gasoline ($0.13 per gallon).
In the 2024 European Parliament, the Green Alliance’s policies lost it seats (down from 72 to 53, out of 705). Although the article attributes this to its disproportionate impact on low-income citizens, it isn’t as if policies that effectively reduce any human group’s consumption would be popular with that group.
Dave Gardner is ran as a 2024 US Presidential candidate but his platform of footprint reduction drew little attention. This is even more interesting when you consider that the NY Times featured articles about degrowth-
June 2024: “Shrink the Economy, Shave the World?”
October 2024: “These Are Boom Times for Degrowth“
Kenya’s “Finance Bill 2024” included an Eco Levy that “aimed to curb micro-pollution and waste management at the office and household levels”. This incited “massive protests which have claimed the lives of 31 Kenyans and left another 361 injured”, which lead the government to withdraw the bill.
When in 2024 Colombia faced a diesel price hike, transport workers staged a nationwide strike/blockage
Humans will not tolerate a program that prioritizes non-human life over industrialism. Conspiracy theories have emerged about “a ‘Great Reset’ that will see people locked in their homes by climate-obsessed autocracies”. Americans panic about the hardly-radical concept of 15-minute cities. 42% of Americans think climate change is not mostly human-caused. (I don’t think it counts that some now believe that meteorologists are causing natural disasters.)
Red tape and colleagues’ non-cooperation - US federal law enshrines “economic growth”, mentioning it 73 times. Any politician who wishes to defy it would have to win widespread consent from government officials who are concerned about corporate lobbyists, voters and our geopolitical position. Governments –especially major powers– might promise conservation, but they can only ever pretend to try to discourage consumerism (except when they need to divert resources to a war).
The nation-state’s core imperative has always been and will be to expand its material and energetic footprint. Leaders are beholden to the superorganism. They don’t want to face a contraction of activity any sooner than it will happen on its own. It's a Hot Potato that they're passing off term-by-term. Political party affiliation makes no difference. The USA extracted more fossil fuels under President Biden (Democrat, 2020-2024) than under President Trump (Republican, 2016-2020). When the US President declared a moratorium on LNG export facilities, some organizations eagerly trusted his claim that his motivations were environmental, when it’s more likely that economic and political concerns inspired him. As the “decisive decade” proceeds, it will become more and more apparent that nations have been bluffing about emission reduction pledges. Watch as all nations follow Scotland's lead on admitting that their targets were too ambitious, too incompatible with their other imperatives.
Inertia at Other Levels
Meanwhile, companies compete for market share and strive to generate profits for shareholders who’ve bought equity, which locks them into the growth spiral. Small businesses have more liberty to opt out. But for every company that restricts its material use, there will be plenty who move in. If the CEO of Walmart or McDonald’s were to declare “The world would be a better place without our corporation. Let’s all go home and garden”, sufficient employees would choose to stay and the Board of Directors would simply replace the defectors. Bendell explains: “People who seek power within hierarchies are generally people who are well-adjusted to succeeding in those hierarchies, playing the game … Also, because once you’re in charge of a big organization there’s this sense of responsibility to just keep the show on the road… I’m speaking from experience of hanging out with world leaders since 2012 at Davos and the UN.”
Some 2024 examples of companies dropping the charade that they would ever prioritize environment over business obligations: Unilever and Shell
Finally, when individuals or companies take on debt, our society adds interest. This implies that the borrower will gradually generate the total value of both the principle and the interest. Since money is essentially a voucher that citizens can presumably redeem later, resource extraction must increase to cover the additional value of the interest. Breaking Together devotes a chapter to this - "bank earnings are, understandably, partially saved rather than recirculated … This expansionist logic means that we are all incentivized as employees, entrepreneurs, investors and voters to constantly seek not only to expand economic activity but also for new ways for life to be commodified into what can be bought and sold."
The Best We’ll Probably Manage: Greenwashed Carnage
By late-century, the industrial system will be well on its way out, taking down with it any beings who depend on it. The longer modern high-metabolism humans chase their Green Transition mirage, the more habitat we destroy and carbon dioxide we emit, degrading the biosphere on which all organisms’ survival depends. We’ll have pointlessly annihilated other lifeforms through our insistence on a fantasy of a perpetual technology-supported exemption from how other organisms live. We’re putting the absurdly high-maintenance survival requirements of the recent generations of a single species before all other living things, just for some infrastructure that will keep civilization limping along for a few more decades.
Ironically, when we devote diesel to the green-industrial supply chain, we burn a precious resource that we could’ve used to extend the time that humans have to readjust to post-mechanical agrarianism where possible. How much sooner will tractors grind to a halt because we diverted finite liquid fuel toward manufacturing solar panels to meet First-World humans’ “need” for their industrial heating technology and washing machines?
“We are about to see carnage caused in many of the pristine environments of the world… in the name of a transition to a ‘sustainable’ world … ‘green sacrifice zones’ … to maintain the myth … that we can continue modern life but somehow not dependent on fossil-energy … It’s just a whole new wave of so-called-green colonialism that’s already happening and will be legitimized by the story of ‘Well, we have to’”
-Jem Bendell, on an episode of the Novara podcast
Nations and corporations’ power plays are stronger forces that progressive movements when it comes to determining how our species interacts with its environment. Boycotts and marches, when their goals align with the true power-wielders’, merely seem to dictate history. Corporations indulge causes that open up new market segments for profit. One dominant human group triumphs over another for self-interested reasons, which happens to benefit an underprivileged group. It’s therefore convenient for the green-industrial complex that activists have adopted its language (green jobs, clean tech, decarbonization, climate justice) and are demanding that it plow ahead with its plans to decimate what remains of our biosphere.
No individual or group can control what happens at the planetary, species-wide scale. This means that, in addition to having only bleak paths from which to choose, we don’t even get to pick which one our superorganism takes. It will grow until circumstances impede it. Even after activity trends turn from aggregate expansion to contraction, humans will continue to exploit resources at a rate that degrades the planet’s long-term capacity for supporting life. Only external limits will stop us.
“When have we ever truly steered our path as a species? Are we actually in control at all? … We’ve never really been in the driver’s seat on the decisions that have mattered most. Our path has been more like an amusement park ride equipped with an ornamental steering wheel, giving the adorable tykes an intoxicating but illusory sense of control."
– Tom Murphy, “The Ride of Our Lives”
Nate Hagens speaks about the human superorganism (19:19-22:29)
Bill Rees, co-originator of the “ecological footprint” concept, describes Homo sapiens through the lens of energy dissipation
Tim Garrett, an atmospheric scientist, explains how the human superorganism behaves like a snowflake –
interviewed by Sam Mitchell on Collapse Chronicles
interviewed by Rachel Donald on Planet Critical
his paper
a Reddit AMA (Q&A)
Nate Hagens’ paper on the superorganism
Lisi Krall, author of “Bitter Harvest: An inquiry into the War Between Economy and the Earth”, interviewed by Nate Hagens
Lisi Krall interviewed by Rachel Donald … and Rachel’s reflection on the interview
Daniel Schmachtenberger aptly conveys the nature of the Maximum Power Principle and the human superorganism
a review of Carey King’s “The Economic Superorganism: Beyond the Competing Narratives on Energy, Growth and Policy”
Richard Heinberg explains “Why We Can’t Just Do It” (“Stop Oil”)
Nate Hagens analyzes activists’ demand and the idea of “stopping oil” – Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four
An article from Slate about what happens when a politician tries to reduce resource consumption
An article from The Hill about what happens when a politician tries to reduce resource consumption
Oil Dependency and US Foreign Policy - Council on Foreign Relations
“Governments will never voluntarily ‘degrow’ an economy because they will never voluntarily weaken their relative power relations.” - article by Samuel Alexander and Brendan Gleeson from the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute / University of Melbourne
Richard Heinberg interviewed by Rachel Donald on “Planet Critical”, on popular resistance to reduced consumption
Chris Smaje (farmer and author) reviews and compares Peter Zeihan’s “The End of the World is Just the Beginning” to his own “Small Farm Future”
Jason Bradford’s presentation, "The Future Is Rural: Adaptation to Energy Descent"
Jason Bradford’s article on “The Future of Food: Getting Beyond the Energy Blindness of Techno-Utopianism”
Jason Bradford interviewed on future human settlement patterns
Permaculture co-creator David Holmgren’s “Four Energy Descent Scenarios”
A review of “Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity” by Wes Jackson and Bob Jensen
An interview with Bob Jensen, co-author of “An Inconvenient Apocalypse”
Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb”, interviewed on “The Great Simplification”
“This Civilization Is Not Interested In Saving Itself” from the Honest Sorceror substack
A Redditor has pointed out many examples of US/NATO aggression motivated by oil: US invading Iraq, NATO destroying Libya, economic warfare on Venezuela, US soldiers squatting in Syria for its oil, Saudi Arabia looking to get rid of the petrodollar after the US and EU stole $300B from oil-producing Russia, marking a split in US-Saudi relations
Brilliant and wonderfully explained, as usual.
Everyone will have their own peculiar angle that will call for some different kind of focus, though, and mine is the over-mention of the concept of “we decided…” Corporations own all the institutions of our modern world, and “they” decide on particular methods of resource capture and extraction and production nearly wholly unconstrained by other forces. None of the excellent critics mentioned here are of any significance against this massed global fossil fuel force and its drive to continue ur and amplify profits.
Corporations, including state corporations, are the supreme ultrasocial method of driving humanity to its self-caused extinction. Look how they dominate the lives of the critics: Greer is now a Trumpian tool,; Garrett works within the corporate higher education establishment; Substack is itself a corporate arm. Murphy got paychecks for being part of the nonsensical space race. Hagens gets paychecks “advising world leaders” XR protestors walk into criminal “justice” traps that corporations sponsor.
In essence: TOO MANY HUMANS are using TOO MANY NATURAL RESOURCES and producing TOO MUCH POLLUTION, and the oh so obvious solution: CONTRACEPTION to prevent the suffering otherwise facing children not yet conceived, and the dramatic INDIVIDUAL reduction in our carbon footprints and waste production.