"Modern-techno-industrial civilization is completely self referencing. It will always view itself as the solution to rather than the cause of all the problems that it creates". Bill Rees
Even moreso for people who spend their entire lives on a computer, where solution = software or hardware update. That's how they think we'll fix this situation: we just need to update harder!
@@egoncorneliscallery9535 All one needs to do now is turn on the news to see the latest extreme weather disaster as a direct result of modern-techno-industrial's excesses. So who's the ignorant one here? When is reality going to come home to dinner?
You have put yr finger on it. But the weather is NOT the climate.Dont confuse the two. Its a common error. Look instead to long term trends which show very small movements io the catastrophy you see in the media. But tye modern ecologist movement is a doomsday cult w true believers and heretics. But it has progressed to a true religion which actually steers away from science.
Even Simon Michaux, and basically everyone else, tells the situation as it is (dire)... but always circles around the obvious consequences (cascading and catastrophic collapse), and then finally qualifies their talk with the "and how we can fix it!" part of the narrative. Nobody wants to deal with the obvious logical endpoint for what they're all discussing: something much closer to the Walking Dead than any Amish-type society. Everyone has their "get out jail free" card they're desperately hoping will save us (i.e. mean that their lifestyle will not change significantly). I'm not referring to doom addicts, who seem to get a perverse pleasure out of fantasizing that soon everyone will be suffering just was much as they are or they think they are. I just mean an honest appraisal of the situation: at some point the global economy will become so fragile, energy and natural resources will become scarce enough that parts of the production chain will no longer function, and before long this will lead to a cascading collapse of the global economy. Collapse = simplification. But in this event the simplification will be radical, extreme, as humanity have never been so dependent on the global economy to survive day by day, and practically nobody now has any practical skills necessary for survival - even a level of survival in a medieval-level economy. Nobody wants to deal with this logical endpoint of our situation. Gail Tverberg comes closest. She doesn't use apocalyptic language, but she says it plainly: whole parts of the economy will cease to function. Everything depends on everything else. But virtually nobody can deal with what we're going to face in a few years (decades, if we are really really lucky).
It all goes back to that human exceptionalist imaginary story we are taught and raised to believe. "If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything" the laws of physics and biology beg to differ.
Most of commenters who reject Doomberg's analysis the way you do (probably a majority of those commenting here) like you do not make specific rebuttals to his points.
UUMMM, it's not the analysis....it's the cartoon character...I do not pay attention to cartoons. I turned it off as soon as a cartoon character started...
@@gibboglea specific rebuttal is that nuclear energy would not solve our global crisis for so many reasons but primarily because we are over drawing on all finite resources and just switching energy sources doesn’t address the other countless areas of human demand for which there are no comparable alternatives
I followed Doomberg when I used to have a Twitter account. They really are a mixed bag as they would have a lot very interesting insights into the energy sector but their takes on sustainability and environmentalism were really really bad, full of strawman arguments, sharing a ton of cherry picked data and even fake news on anything that went against the techno optimist capitalist mindset. This talk was really good though. I only wished there would've been more talk about the overshoot of our planetary boundaries. The answer would most likely be that we can innovate ourselves out of any issue we're in but we all know that the free market is never going to do that and he seems to be completely opposed to a planned economy. Also, tired about hearing the purposely false argument that people proposing there should be some kind of population growth control automatically means killing people. Same as how degrowth is seen by them as making everyone degrow when in actuality is having overconsumption in the first world countries stop so that third world countries can grow and have a decent standard of living.
Two obstacles to what should happen: 1) religious dogma encouraging people to have many babies. Unfortunately conservatism and faith are increasing globally along with nationalism 2) the West’s imperialist agendas, which continue to this day with hidden racism and resource theft, by design retain the third world impoverished and under-developed so that the West has less competitors for those scarce resources. Witness the continued US habit of establishing military bases in Africa, but not civil development.
Me too but my twitter feed was filled with plump curvy ladies in lingerie and it just continued, so had to stop using twitter as I just watched that all the time and made me dependent on that so it was not good for my mental health.
Agreed! I think many people like these have created another religion to replace the 'old' ones.....I call it "hopianity" a nice mixture of hope in the human innovation and technology and insanity to not realize what we've done is destructive and continue to do so
@@ziggyfrndsIt really is a religion. I don't think it's new though. Humans started viewing themselves as being above nature with the advent of agriculture 12 thousand years ago. It only became worse and worse over the years when our religions started indoctrinating our children into believing we were put here by a supernatural deity to rule over all the other animals.
Yeah a lot of his talking points are flimsy and already addressed by other ecological economists and researchers that are a part of the degrowth/post growth movement. I get the feeling that he has not engaged with the arguments of the movement in any substantial and good-faith way as his questions and counter-arguments are already sufficiently addressed by many post growth scholars. With lectures readily available here on UA-cam.
He says that the malthusian answer is less people, but it's very clear that his answer is more people. He assumption of bigger-is-better is a classic and quintessential growth growth growth mindset of Homo Colossus. He may not be energy blind but he is certainly consumption and destruction of nature blind and eco systemic blind.
Agreed. Seems that if we're consuming more FFs in 2040 than today, we might as well stop reproducing. I mean why condemn future generations to utter misery.
"The earth will be fine in the other side of this trade" -doomsberg This is what happens when most of your time is spent staring at spreadsheets and not enough is spent walking through the forest.
Techno optimist in a chicken disguise. The thesis that capital invested in addressing problems after they arise is better or more efficient than prevention and mitigation seems like a justification for apres moi le deluge.
Jeez, does this guy understand climate change?! NEwS FLASH: nuclear plants are shutting down due to lack of water and too much heat to dump…duh…and he’s an expert’s expert? Ha ha
@@nancylaplaca what is your source for the not enough water to dump heat from nuclear power plants claim? I genuinely haven't come across this. Must be careful because there is a great deal of misinfo about nuclear.
@@kvaka009 It has happened in France. Some nuclear plants are designed to take in cooling water and then discharge it back into a river, rather than having the toroidal cooling towers everyone associates with nuclear. Such designs are much cheaper because you don't have to build a cooling tower, but they usually come with environmental strings attached that the discharge water must be below a certain temperature (often like 32C or so) so as to not disrupt wildlife. When the weather is hot, water temperature in the rivers rise, causing 2 issues: the water is less effective at removing heat from the nuclear plant because the intake is at a hotter temperature to start with, and secondly less water can be discharged into the river as it can raise temperatures too much. So nuclear plants have to be pegged back in such conditions. The solutions are: build cooling towers, or allow the hotter water to be discharged into the river and damn the environmental consequences. When the choice is blackouts or killing some fish, you can guess which humans are likely to choose.
@@Lanthanideification I thought as much. From what your say, it is a solvable problem, so long as those reaping the reward are also willing to pay the true cost, i.e. like most or even all of our problems. Still, no reason to trash nuclear energy. To me it still seems that nuclear will have to be part of any solution going forward, including degrowth paths.
As Bill Rees puts it: "Modern techno industrial civilization is completely self referencing. So it will always be referred to as the solution to and not the cause of all problems humans face".
Hubris, hubris hubris! The assumption - the presumption - that humans will always be able to meet the demands of an ever-growing population is suicidal and genocidal. At this point in human history, humility and an acknowledged state of vulnerability should be our "lodestone". Pride cometh before the fall. A stitch in time saves nine, etc., etc. The arrogant presumption of those that are doing well for themselves now, totally ignores the in-built future vulnerability of billions. "Survival of the fittest" is the unspoken reality that is the undercurrent of contemporary human endeavor. Shame.
@@dbadagnaMy uncle has a huge Kona coffee farm on Maui. I asked him recently if he was having dry soil troubles, needing to mulch his orchards because the atmosphere is so hot it’s desiccating the landscape. He responded like I was from Mars, telling me of course not because it rains every day on Maui. Seems he’s a little out of touch with what’s happening on his own farm.
The world is at the same time more populated than ever and wealthier and healthier with less famine and disease than anytime in history. In other words technological progress has freed billions from abject poverty. You have the burden of proof when assuming similar progress is not possible in the future
@@edsteadham4085 A civilization’s viability can be measured by one metric alone, it’s ability to grow and store grains at scale. Ours is dwindling fast as global weather patterns become increasingly extreme. Annual crop yields are decreasing at an alarming pace on every continent now as an overheated atmosphere wreaks havoc on the Earth’s living systems we depend on for life. As a civilization we’re deep into overshoot, presently consuming the annual self renewing resources of nearly two planet Earths. As a result, by every metric, the Earth’s living systems are collapsing in perfect tandem with human population growth and consumption. The Earth does not have the carrying capacity for eight billion humans with a globalized civilization gobbling up and paving over their own life sustaining habitat. The human animal needs a livable habitat; food, water, shelter and a very mild niche climate. No technology can fill these fundamental needs. If our species loses habitat our species will go extinct. Fossil fuel based technology caused this problem. Caused the population explosion, caused an exponential and unsustainable increase in our ability to extract resources from the Earth and build barren paved over deserts where life once thrived. Now, eight billion humans with a globalized civilization only exist as a direct result of fossil fuel technology. Worse we are utterly dependent on it at every point in the global extraction, refining, manufacturing and supply chain. Now as a result of the tremendous heat produced by our daily activities, the Earth’s atmosphere is heating rapidly. Desiccating the landscape, sucking the moisture into the upper atmosphere, dumping it all at once when it hits a convergence zone, leaving vast swaths of desiccated land to burn. All over the globe. Every day now. Afraid the burden is on you now to prove that Homo-petro-techno-colossus won’t be extinct within the next decade.
@@edsteadham4085 Excellent point. Is there not, though, the niggling thought that the train happily chugging move steeply up the mountain may reach the end of the track and all passengers picked up on the way were promised a destination that didn't include plunging into a ravine. Silly childish passengers!
He obviously doesn’t like the idea of de-growth. But he doesn’t even mention conservation of energy and reducing consumption of completely unnecessary ‘stuff’ - (of which our houses and garages in the developed world are so full.) His answer is techno optimism and nuclear power and then it’s business as usual. But even if all the countries of the world had cheap abundant energy, there’d still be the problem of accelerating consumption - exacerbating our global ecological footprint - via the consumption of fresh water, forest resources, native habitat, sand, fisheries, fertile soil, phosphorus, waste disposal. Etc. etc. Reduced population growth may slow it down a little, but something tells me he wouldn’t be in favour of that either…. This chicken has tunnel vision and needs roasting.
Nate, after doomberg's passing comment about hydrogen fueled trucks, you should have him and Paul Martin in a roundtable. Also, some podcast hosts do commentary after the end of the interview, after the guest is no longer on call, to unpack some of the conversation for the listeners. Would you consider adding such a thing to at least some of your interview podcasts?
...lol...that is such a good statement... To those who 'blind faithly' say god's law over rules peoples law, and therefore they can ignore our laws because they are waiting for god to step in... to those ignorance worshipping people, I say the 'laws' of physics, chemistry and biology are the truer laws that actually are determining what's happenning around here. And, no amount of nice platitudes is going to change that...love the point.
Trying to reconcile the green chicken's perspective with that of William Rees who says that from an ecosystem perspective the very worst thing that could happen is that we should discover a new cheap and abundant source of concentrated energy. I appreciate Nate finally getting around to asking what Doomberg thought about nature, and was not really surprised to hear a response that faded quickly to something about how you need to "partition" climate and pollution. There's energy blindness, and then there's ecosystem blindness.
@@dbadagnaCould not have said it better. Chicken-clown is viewing everything through a short-term human centered lens and only looking at a fraction of the current problems facing not only us but all forms of life because of our behavior this century.
Exactly. Also, as professor of physics Thomas Murphy has pointed out, we always use more energy to grind the living world down to turn it into commodities. There cannot be infinite growth on a finite planet. Do we want to maximize the number of humans alive when we ultimately crash into that limit? Also, come on, how can you complain about how China stole some intellectual property, and then complain about how much government surveillance there is. Capitalism requires massive governments with far ranging surveillance capabilities to protect IP and patents. Not to mention the police, courts, and infrastructure. Libertarian philosophy is garbage.
The ecosystems where white people live is full of rivers we love to canoe, and lakes we love to fish and swim, and forests we love to hike and camp, and we want them free of pollution and development. But most of the world lives in ecosystems that suffer droughts and sand storms and wars and chemical dumps from gas and oil and mining companies that supply the white world with cool stuff. William Rees cannot free his perspective from his personal life experience, no matter his good intentions. The E, of which Doomberg speaks, is for everyone.
The glib response to the Malthusian perspective is antagonistic and unconstructive. That "Doomberg" cannot even interrogate a pathway with less people leads me to think there is an ideological blocker in his imagination.
Sure. The pathway is either killing people that are alive now, or restrict peoples ability to reproduce. In other words robbing people of a future that has mening. Engineering famines, spreading diseases from labs is included in "killing" Just like the chicken i got very little patience for that sort of crap. If the solution = less people the only other way would be to ask people not to have children. Well good luck with that.
Yes - that really irked me. I think many people have a knee jerk reaction reaction to suggestions of limits of human population because it is immediately conflated with eugenics, genocide, or misanthropy. Maybe this stems from a need to justify the deep desire and impulse we have to procreate as some innate good, only ever questioned by degenerates, or deviants.
As your previous guest (Kevin Anderson ) pointed out if we're buring half as much oil in 2050 as we do today we'll be "stuffed" (i.e. dead). If we're burning 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 oil in 2040 as your current guest predicts they're going to have to bury humanity twice.
@@timthetiny7538Or maybe you've been living under a rock for the last 5 years and have not noticed all the record breaking extreme weather events currently destroying people's lives around the globe. If we continue to increase the burning of fossils, we could be 3 degrees warming by 2040 or 2050. We currently are at 1.1 and already having major consequences, image more than doubling those consequences.
Doomberg's vision/solution is based on three things: nuclear energy, American lifestyle maintenance, and a new NAFTA. All three are major examples of choices that put us in our present situation. Nuclear energy in his view is the only path toward a green transition, clean (nature will be fine in case of a thousand Fukushima events), cheap (total externalization of real costs), and in line with his second pillar for a prosperous, happy and peaceful society which is the maintenance of the American lifestyle. Unnecessary to analyze the American lifestyle and its consequences for the planet and for human beings. Finally, a new NAFTA on steroids agreement is the last thing a world in search of new governance needs, to say the least. For someone who is fond of human interaction and imagination as mentioned in his final thoughts and the chess example, such choices represent quite the opposite being more of the same that put us in the present situation. Nevertheless, Nate did a great job as an interviewer allowing Mr. Doomberg to expose his contradictions, limitations, and lobbying script. As always the most problematic thing is not to denounce someone who says falsehoods all the time, but someone who uses many half-truths to support a PR campaign, and if we are going to succeed in producing real change the path passes necessarily through exposing such elaborated discourses.
A good example why degrowth is a scary term for mainstream socitely - you happen to stumble over guests in conversations, as is Mr. Doomsberg, that overtime ends up scaring with questionable conspiracy theories. Sorry to say.
The EROI for Nuclear is 6 weeks?? Hahahaha! I'm not saying that SMNRs are not useful or valuable or worthwhile, I believe they may well be, especially with some of the smarter & newer designs coming out, but to claim that nuclear has a 3-week EROI is absolute Fairy Dust Unicorn BS and really calls his credibility on everything else he is saying into question.
Doonberg has creatively found many avenues for reality denial. I find this with alot of libertarians. A perfect example of the conceptual lense that he and humanity has constructed. A smart stupid guy. Ya that is a thing and has bedn studied.
Degrowth is going to happen regardless because there's an ecological limit to fossil fuel extraction. At 3 degrees warming the rate of natural disasters will preclude the ability to maintain the infrastructure necessary for a global energy market.
While I think doomberg said a lot of things I agreed with there were some moments that felt jarring with what he was trying to say and he strawmans environmentalists a lot. Nate is right improving technology is just a bigger straw to draw down what is feasible to extract. At this point people who are aware of overshoot are usually not procreating. Idk anyone who is actively calling for people to be killed. It’s way easier to reduce population growth by educating women, giving family planning services, contraceptives etc. I think the perpetual growth mentality is just history blindness. We have for thousands of years had cycles of growth and decay of civilizations. To think we would be any different while drawing down finite resources that we are existentially dependent on is just ignoring the facts. If we were increasing fossil carbon production for the next 20 years we might as well be committing mass suicide. Pollution constraints will get us if resource constraints don’t. Also it’s kinda dumb to separate climate from pollution. The number one pollutant by mass is CO2. It’s all interrelated at the end of the day. Complex systems are basically impossible to predict but mass extinction is bad for anything that likes to consume massive amounts of energy. We really need to open our minds to the possibility that not all stories have happy endings before making decisions. I think the low tech magazine guy and guests that mention permaculture had the right ideas. If nuclear was gonna save the day it would’ve happened I don’t buy the “it’s politics” argument. In East Asia and France they are very good with nuclear but it’s not a be all end all technology. It certainly has it’s place and I’ll vote for pro nuclear candidates but I don’t see it taking off in most of the world. I also don’t see being concerned with climate change as a privilege of the rich. I’ve worked with high school students who are refugees and are some are most concerned with climate change and global poverty as their top 2 issues. Many people in the global south are worried about how climate change will impact them. I think it’s actually a privilege of the wealthy to dismiss climate change and those who care about it. Just because people can’t do stuff about it doesn’t mean they don’t care or don’t wish things were different but they are too busy getting by to do anything about it. People are complex and can care about many different things. People that don’t care are usually rich. Nate I think it’s good that you bring on a diversity of different guests, but I think you need to push against your guests a little more. In the future I recommend asking every guest what they think their blindspots are and maybe sharing your opinions of their blindspots and your own blindspots. Nobody can grasp all the things but we can all ask ourselves what do we not know. I’m walking away with a lot to think about after watching this so in that sense I think you did a good job
Maybe it’s not “pollution” so much as it is changing energy from one form to another too fast throwing everything out of balance. Take the cooling towers for example. We can stop putting the warm water back into the rivers and ocean directly or we can add it to the atmosphere. Adding it to the atmosphere adds more GHGs but would we call that “pollution”? I asked a similar question on a different episode. How much water and heat do these cooling towers add to the atmosphere? Also, how much is too much and will that affect the climate as well creating more torrential downpours, for example?
@@stefc7122 I get what you’re saying but waste heat from cooling towers and CO2 from burning fossil fuels are both absolutely considered to be pollution. I think the way doomberg tried to separate them is either foolish or intellectually dishonest. T
When I heard "preventing the worst of climate change is not the right investment strategy" I thought that the chosen name Doomberg meant something entirely different than the chicken chose it for.
I don't understand why people are shooting the messenger, it's reality for the world's poor they will consume more as more money gets to them, give them ten dollars a day and they will raise their consumption 500%. No-one doubts the ecological damage and I don't know where people are getting he's promoting it, just being realistic about what other countries will do. Africa has 7 of the worlds 11% that is arable land, they have resources coming out their wazoo and a fertility rate that surpasses the baby boom and will be almost 50% of the world by 2100 and the median age last year was 18.8, so an increasing population, based in a country with resources, and debt is money then there's going to be a lot of debt able to be paid off for those multiple decades and it will all mean energy used and released. Nothing other than force will stop them consuming as much as the west has, the last 200 years could quite easily be the next 100 years, lord knows I know no-one that has reduced their consumption 40%. Poor people are concerned with climate change because it affects them now, rich people think they can buy their way out so it doesn't affect them, same as poor people, both raise GDP, which raise's energy output. We in the modern world with 23 countries that are going to lose half their population due to old age have reached peak consumption and the best they might do is keep existing numbers with immigration but the consumption the world's poor need to have just to survive, I think it's like the same amount of food in the last 500 years in the next 100 needs to be grown. It's a blind spot in us maybe that we think we can do any real thing on what's coming other than lower consumption ourselves.
This guy's got a clear agenda: Growth at all costs and Nukes are the best way. I'd bet he's an investor in Uranium mines. Thanks for having him on. I'm the spirit of Sun Su, "Know your enemy, know yourself...
The astrophysicist Thomas Gold (1920-2004), whose work the chicken recommends at 39:20 in this interview, promoted the abiotic theory of petroleum, which claims that oil and natural gas are produced not by ancient terrestrial and aquatic plant life but by microbes in the hot layers deep below the Earth's surface, indicating that the planet's oil reserves may be far larger than policymakers believe. I don't think this hypothesis has been borne out by the available evidence, or widely accepted by scientists. The chicken's implication, however, does seem to be that if Gold was correct, peak oil isn't a reality because there may be a virtually unlimited amount of additional oil to be extracted and burned, something that it apparently believes to be a net positive in its "human-centered" world view. The obvious problem with this gleeful (not to mention incorrect) prediction is the fact that, according to James Hansen, even if we ceased the burning of all fossil fuels today, the massive amount of excess heat that has already been trapped by greenhouse gases and absorbed by the world's oceans, after slow feedbacks operate, will eventually cause the global average temperature to rise about 10°C (18°F) above preindustrial levels! Look at the catastrophic effects we've seen after an increase of just 1.2°C--just today we lost the town of Lahaina in Maui. At this rate, despite its apparently sizeable nest egg, it's only a matter of time before the chicken's own hometown gets leveled by a fire, flood, tornado, or other climate change-exacerbated disaster, and the same is true for all of us.
And we could get hit by an asteroid or Yellowstone may blow. I bet on trying and not giving up. It's how I teach young people. Growth mindset. It's not always about consumption. It can often be about growth at a very personal level. To tell young people today that their is no hope, there is nothing but chaos before them, and they have no control over it, might be causing a level of global trauma. Citing Gabor Maté.
It's likely down there deep in the Earth 🌍, BUT we simply just cannot get to it. YET. But when we do, that only means MORE heat 🔥🥵 death ☠️💀 for ALL of us including our partner species on the planet. YET, the physical natural world will go on. Quite happily without Us. Zach Bush MD et al talks about THIS, and many people are embracing the peaceful calming perspective that's emanating from this AND adjacent content makers, amidst communities of human beings going purely post doom, post anthropocene, post carbon, ETC. AND so on AND so forth.
@@jjuniper274 But that is the reality that our youth are facing and I don't think we should delude them into thinking otherwise. The last thing we should want is for them to be ill prepared for reality as an adult, especially, in these ever changing times and we're obliged to do so as teachers, elders, parents, and guardians. We're going to need all hands on deck if we want to have any hope of surviving what's to come.
The most meaningful thing I heard on this podcast was that Nate Hagens talks to his chickens. That is heartfelt connection. Everything else I heard seemed like a scouting report of probabilities from inside the pathology of the super organism. It felt toxic. For me, inspiration will not be found there, but thank you nonetheless.
Yes. I love when Nate mentioned talking to his real chickens. “…a scouting report of probabilities from inside the pathology of the super organism” is very well-stated.
The problem is that a shrinking society is a cannibal society. My homeland is disintegrating into organised crime blocs. Devouring the weak and converting key infrastructure to scrap as the economy shrinks.
@@alexedgar6539That's why we need a one child per couple policy as less people means more resources for everyone else and crime becomes far less likely when people have their basic needs met.
@@j85grim4 Needs met by whom? Every working couple having to care for their child and four elderly parents? Look at Japan. It's already looking like an old folks home. More adult diapers are sold than baby diapers. There are fewer resources to go around, not more, when only a few percent of the population is working.
A couple of criticisms; I didn't stick around to the end of the episode because my eyes were sore from rolling. First, I wish Nate would not allow his guests to blather on regarding topics that he is not prepared to challenge them on. This is not the first time it has happened, and he is not the only podcast host that fails to put guardrails around what the guests get away with. It just pollutes the discussion and send folks like me running for the exits. In this case, the guest went on about: Doug Ford (current Ontario Premier); the former Liberal provincial govts; Ontario's attempts at an energy transition; and what "progressive conservative" means, while Nate remained completely silent and completely gave whoever-he-is the stage to say whatever he wanted, completely unchallenged. One might think, after listening to the drivel, that Doug Ford was the reincarnation of JFK. Some may remember, from the news out of Toronto about 10 years ago, hearing about a certain mayor by the name of Rob Ford. It wasn't anything good; he was a clown, now deceased. His brother, Doug, was a city councilor concurrently. They were elected to council by a what could be described as a suburban MAGA-lite crowd in the Toronto suburbs (a preceding conservative govt has merged Toronto proper with a bunch of suburbs to create an amalgamated Toronto and giving the more conservative 'burbs control over a more liberal urban core). For reasons that escape me, the people of Ontario have elected Doug Ford twice as Premier (read Governor, for the Yanks). Imagine 45, only clueless, getting a second term and you wouldn't be far off. So, now, in fact, we have Doug Ford running roughshod over anything related to an energy transition and an environment. His current scandal is releasing about 7500 acres of protected wild and agricultural lands in a greenbelt, north of Toronto, for developers -- who had a hand in choosing those acres -- to buy and build more suburban sprawl. The police are apparently investigating. www.google.com/search?q=doug+ford%27s+record+on+energy+anmd+environment www.google.com/search?q=doug+ford+greenbelt&sca_esv=559481520&sxsrf=AB5stBgyo_a6z51IywUnJA1c4eDdzz7TaA:1692816571728&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:m&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjBzLWTufOAAxU4MVkFHUyiCYsQpwV6BAgEEAo&biw=1280&bih=653&dpr=2 Something the guest chose not to mention (and, of course, wasn't challenged on because Nate apparently hasn't a clue about energy in Ontario and was thus missing in action) was that Ontario used to have a huge percentage of electricity generated by coal plants; the policies of the previous provincial liberal gov't, slagged by the guest, were meant to displace the coal generation (including a ~4GW generating station - the largest coal fired generating station in North America), which they did. The current mix is captured on this GoC page: www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-ontario.html As far as the guest's reference to "progressive" conservatism... Canada has a long history of what are colloquially referred to as "Red" Tories. But, at this juncture, they are just that: historical. Since about twenty years ago, the notion of "progressive" conservatism in Canada has disappeared. The federal party is now, officially, Conservative (with a core of prairie Bible thumpers who managed to take over the federal party - long story). Provincial conservative governments are, too, for the most part far-right and entirely captured by resource extraction industries (e.g. oil & gas, but not solely). Summary: don't let guests pontificate unchallenged. Edit: when that happens, it seems to me you're being played.
As a fellow Ontarian, I 100% agree that it was sickening to hear the Ford government being held up as a paradigm to follow, but I also have to forgive Nate with not being all-knowing, and I don't find it fair to expect him to be able to challenge every particular narrative or example on merit. I personally was quite happy that the questions posed focused on higher-level concepts and challenges than the governance of one small region of our planet, even if I happen to reside in that region. I disagree with many of the statements and fundamental principles expressed by the chicken (what a world, where I can write such a statement), and I often don't align with all of Nate's statements and beliefs, but I still derive great pleasure from expanding my viewpoint listening to / watching these various guests. The entire episode, while not aligned with my personal views, was still a great listen and one of my favourite TGS interviews to date, and leaves me with notes and questions to further dig into. Civil discourse and disagreement is such a wonderful surprise when it occurs in this day and age. Thank you for adding the context regarding Mr. Ford - I'm glad someone did so. I was considering how to best do so myself. You've done a far better job than I could have.
They both agree handily on the subject that you won’t be able to build enough batteries and Solar/Wind to replace the existing energy system due to supply constraints. That’s before you even consider the value of petrochemicals for reasons other than burning as fuel.
Simon, if I’ve understood him, doesn’t think materials are a limiting factor on nuclear, but expertise are. We can’t train enough people quickly enough to get nuclear to abate the energy cliff as it reaches us. For what it’s worth i think you can reconcile doomy, Nate, and Simon: 2030 is going to be a shit year, and the years after are likely to be bad. But 2040 will be much better (perhaps departing a bit from Nate there)
@@howardmoon1234 There was a study in 2008 about how to change from fossil fuels to nuclear by 2050. The result was: we would need to increase the number of nuclear power stations by 10% every year. So, we have to build 50 nuclear stations this year... then 55 next year... then 62 the following year... etc. Eventually you have to build one new nuclear plant almost every day(!). Most of the energy would be cannibalized by the construction of new nuclear plants. You also have to completely rebuild the entire planet's infrastructure to be based on electricity (instead of based on fossil fuels). And then you would need to generate energy just to keep the regular economy going. People have very little idea of what is involved to "switch to nuclear". Nuclear also doesn't make: fertilizers, plastics, lubricants... or any of the number of other essential products our global economy needs to function. You can't fly airlines on electricity. We don't even have the technology to reproduce all the services and functions of fossil fuels with electricity yet (for example: we don't know how to do most mining, or have the technology to do most smelting with electricity). It's a complete fantasy. People think you build a nuclear plant and you plug it into the network and problem solved. The entire global economy has grown and evolved organically over 250 years based on fossil fuels. You can't just "switch" to nuclear or another energy source in a few years. Even if we finally cracked fusion power (most likely this will never happen)... we would still face all of the same problems - problems with no solutions on the time scales we need. It's never going to happen. The end of the party is near, and people are clutching at straws. Any fantasy solution so that they don't have to change anything significant in their lifestyle. But I always see endless comments and stories about how "we need nuclear" or "thorium reactors are the answer". Yes, we could run a civilization on nuclear. We just can't run ours on nuclear. Ours was not built around electricity, it was build over hundreds of years around fossil fuels. It's like expecting a creature evolved to eat one diet suddenly change to eat another completely different.
Nate, having pseudo scientific religious fanatics like this on your show only results in confusing the already confused and ignorant average person on these existential issues. I see absolutely no benefit in listening to a guy that has absolutely no idea what he's talking about with literally everything normally discussed on this podcast on here.
You could level the same criticisms at some of the points made by Kevin Anderson in his interview. Nate is trying to expose the audience to a range of views on the fix that we find ourselves in. I don't agree with Doomberg on everything but a lot of what he argues for is grounded in an understanding of engineering reality. His enthusiasm for nuclear as a panacea is overblown but he speaks from experience of industry and we need to hear voices like him alongside the others that Nate has interviewed.
Gosh I'm just not smart like you. Or as noble. Or as concerned. I think smart and wonderful people like you should be put in charge of which points of view people get to heat. Sound about right?
Wow! This guest us the ultimate techno-capitalist. He is essentially saying we don’t really have a problem. Innovation and the wealthy will save us. That is bat shit crazy.
Hey. I left some comments/replies. Because it's difficult to participate online sometimes respectfully, I just wanted to say I appreciate this channel and the perspectives it offers. I'm not sure about the guest's perspectives, but he certainly has the right to express his opinion.
The comments section here are the best i have ever seen. Really educated and deep thinkers, who can see the wood from the trees. It is a great testament to the value of this podcast and prior guests. I got alot our of reading these comments. Thanks
The bird lost a lot of credibility with me by thinking humans have an unlimited ability to innovate to produce more oil. It also thinks that spiking oil price will be affordable, it won't and so the price would fall and investment would contract. Just a lack of critical thinking, in my opinion, shown on this matter by the bird.
Oil price basically set by a monopolist. Any currency sovereign can always re-gauge (in any of a dozen ways). It's relative price that really matters. If currency sovereigns who are not setting oil prices re-gauge the price level in their own economy the nominal oil price can stay nominally as high as anyone cares. Thinking in real terms means generally thinking in relative price terms, not nominal. It's what your entire wage/income can purchase that matters, not what $1 can purchase (since you're no longer pegged to gold).
I don't think its peak complacency. It is a callous disregard for their citizenry in favor of their own goals. They do not care about the cost in human suffering or death.
Since no One Entity is actually driving the train 🚂 of the Human Super-Organism, there's not really any singular Intentionality to what is transpiring at THIS Meta Level.
So, the chicken bets the farm on techno optimism. He is reciting his devotion to the god of progress. He even mentions Star Trek. Some of what he said may be correct, and nobody knows the future, but he seems to be a bit of a fanatic, so I would listen to what he says with a healthy dose of skepticism.
If you'd been listening to what he's been saying for a couple of years now, your skepticism would certainly have graduated to respect. That said, if you haven't, this world is missing more healthy doses of skepticism so I salute you.
It is either A) we focus on advanced technologies in energy and innovate ourselves out of this B) we accept that the future humans will be much worse off on the aggregate than the current humans (for the first time in 15,000+ years Or C) determine that climate change isn’t important/isn’t real and we will be fine no matter what
@@bbor55 So a) pull ourselves by our own bootstraps, thus defying laws of physics b) face up to our profound errors and stop making them c) run back into the cave I'll take option b) please with a side of mia culpa
Thanks Nate for this very interesting interview (listened it twice). You managed with lots of humility to let the chicken talk his views. As others here I spotted the few flaws (upon all there's the usual techno solution-ism and wishful thinking) however I've to admit there have been some interesting insights. I think there's a long way between full de-growth (Medieval style) and deploying thousands of SMRs to keep this society going. As our ancestors once said "In medio stat virtus" (virtue is in the middle, not in the extremes). I hope your chickens have less predatory views w.r.t our planet. Cheers
Nate, nice guy your guest is, but he still missing the forest through the trees. The new form of energy which he alludes to peripherally his nature, its self holistically, which is our best chance of creating a new currency, and changing the paradigm. By investing in seeds and natural systems to harnessed the infinite solar energy, biologically and stored at sequester carbon, we have the opportunity of transitioning to a new in better world and finding employment for people in creating, this new form of energy in the form of a restored planet functioning optimally as one giant super organism. We can create all the energy we want until we restore the biological health of the planet. We’re still on the same trajectory to hell.
I'm convinced us finding an alternative source of energy to keep our already overgrown ant colony growing even larger, would be the worst possible thing for not only us but all the species we share the planet with.
You are living in a dream world. The planet will have 9 Billion inhabitants very soon now. Energy is life. Your seeds and natural systems will not work without massive depopulation. But don't worry, I suspect massive depopulation is quite probable.
A very interesting and wide ranging conversation. That being said, Doomsberg glossed over some pretty major items: Hydrogen Cars are a LONG way from viable on a mass scale, never mind, ships, rail and heavy duty trucks. appel.nasa.gov/2011/02/02/explosive-lessons-in-hydrogen-safety/ Wind and Solar are NOT renewable, they are Rebuildable, as long as you have massive amounts of fossil fuels to do it with. Still, a very informative and enjoyable interview!
I question the statement by r. Chicken that the ROW is trying to have the same std of living as the US (what does that mean anyway?) and other "rich" nations. It seems to me that the US to a large extent is "exporting" the idea or model the being like me is the way to go like it or not. Maybe I misunderstood what Chicken said. I think in your show you've made some comparisons between the US and other countries in terms of educational programs, health care availability, tons of waste per capita and the picture is not as rosy as we think. The opposite side of the coin is the shift in power + influence that China will have in other countries and what model of the world are they exporting, I do not know the answer to that. Maybe in the US we could somehow think more about "responsible exports" and trade. Mentioned in your show I think, I preach and implement decarbonization but export huge amounts coal elsewhere because my state is rich in that natural resource. Responsible exports / trade seem to me are an essential part of a low carbon world.
Exporting the model, yes. If there is hope to be had and acted upon, it will come from those at the margins who reject those models and build their own. QoL is not found in mindless consumption, but good health and connection.
A very interesting and challenging interview, with a chicken who is obviously an expert in his barn. What a contrast with Kevin Anderson last week though. I thought it was very telling that "Doomy" wanted to separate climate from pollution, showing concern for the oceans which by the way are absorbing 90% of the excess energy from climate and becoming more acidic due to excess CO2. How is this not pollution? To me this stance is a political identity choice, you can't be concerned about emissions if you sit slightly to the right. Speaking of the environment as an externality to the economic system, showed how someone incredible knowledgable in their field can also have the blinkers on, and in this case be ecology blind. All those pesky environmentalists with their "regulations", damn them.
Studies consistently demonstrate that there is little to zero correlation between knowledge and wisdom, reasoning vs. rationality, and intelligence vs. moral virtue (Vervaeke et al).
The final comments about keeping his subscribers happy was telling. His stance on climate change is just dumb or ignorant - more likely though is that he's accurately calculated that taking climate seriously is *not* what his subscribers want to read. He's not an honest broker. Higher oil, gas and coal production in 2040 is incompatible with 9bn strong civilisation IMO - irrespective of how many nuclear reactors we build. On SMR, they run on much higher enriched uranium, ~20% compared to 3-4% in a light water reactor. A large scaling up of enrichment facilities is a proliferation risk. Also SMR produce more nuclear waste per MWh.
I think the thesis that energy (in the form of hydrocarbons) = quality of life has massive flaws and needs to be questioned more. We believe it's possible to increase quality of life while decreasing hydrocarbon consumption
@@dbadagnaHe mentioned he has a PhD, and managed a team of them. So I would infer that he has a high income. But that doesn't automatically mean all of his ideas are wrong. Let's focus on the ideas, rather than on the man.
This guy is hopelessly anthropocentric. Keeps talking about "lifestyles" in the context of acquisition not sufficiency. This mindset continues to destroy the biosphere. And unless it's changed, will complete the process.
Consistently disappointed with Doomberg’s analysis. Classic techno-hopium. Where is the oil and gas for us to burn more of it in 2040 than now going to come from? Where is the uranium to run the reactors? Where are the efficiency gains in solar going to come from? So naive and blind.
I think we can come up this philosophy as "greed and consumption is not only good, it's ethical, and if we don't consume X, Y & Z, then someone else will consume X,Y& Z. Where have we heard this before?
And then when he spoke of less technologically complex nations and said no one should limit their access to new tech-- but exactly. That’s why we have to Limits ourselves in the “developed nations” to allow for that growth. But disregards that connection.
The point is that most of the world is still poor, and the poor people want to consume at our rate. It is not saying that greed is good, but that people are greedy. It doesn't help to ignore human tendencies.
@@gibbogle in a system run on debt and seemingly endless abundance of energy that encourages overconsumption, it is easy to mistake a historical fact for a universal truth. Humans have managed to limit themselves for the sake of sustainable living and same use of common good resources across the globe and throughout history. The "humans are naturally greedy" argument is just an excuse that the greedy use to feel better about their own decadence.
@@gibboglemost of these people arguing here haven’t taken a cold shower, let alone used candle light and chopped wood for days to get through winter… their views are so skewed and very likely will never change until that cold shower becomes the norm… and by then it will be too late for the very poor and weak who will simply freeze to death or die from heat stroke, not just in the places they’ve never heard of, but in their own backyard as well.
I feel like there's a disconnect between what he says about pollution and what he says about climate. He seems to want to regulate one externalized cost and not the other. Probably this is because he underestimates climate change effects on the trajectory we're on... But in general, I appreciated his point of view, even if it spells doom IMO.
Doomberg doesn't understand the increasing cost (implicit and external) of complexity. He doesn't see that increasing complexity also increases fragility while the benefits of that additional complexity usually diminish with each new kind of technological "fix". He doesn't understand that its possible to live a better life with far lower impact on the planet. He doesn't understand that by focusing on lowering your own costs, you become more self sufficient and spend less. You also don't participate as much in the industrial economy which is clearly killing the planet. By every measure, our unsustainable, industrial system is destroying the planet. My expenses are down to $400 per month, so I have a degree of financial security I never had; not because I invested wisely, and became more dependent on the industrial system, it was because I changed my lifestyle to a more simple less complex one.
A 2020 study from Italy found microplastics in fruits and vegetables (especially apples and carrots, whose roots are more porous) ranging between between 52,050 and 233,000 particles per gram (gram!) of fruits or vegetable.
@HidingFromFate I think the implication is that becoming more untethered from industrial food production makes life better. An example of less being more.
Yes, the interviewee seems blissfully unaware of the decreasing marginal product of increasing complexity. Also, he doesn't seem to notice that innovation is clearly slowing down all around us. Practically every technology or product we use is just an update or iteration of a technology invented before 1970. Decreasing returns, but exponentially increasing investment and natural resource / energy inputs. This is the psychology of someone who spends their whole life through a computer: they think that life and reality are like the computer he's using. The solution is just: we just need an update! We just need to find the right combination of buttons to push!
We grow and transport food using fossil fuels. We do not grow and transport much food using electricity. On the day we abandon fossil fuels, food production goes over a cliff. On the same day, the people who operate nuclear reactors will not show up at work, because they will be fighting for food. The nuclear reactors, left to their own devices, will vaporize catastrophically. It doesn't need to be this way. It's a hard choice, but we don't make hard choices, so it's better to abandon nuclear power now while we can still manage the descent.
Sadly, few are cognizant of this danger, due to what the author Justin Gregg calls "prognostic myopia." Has Nate Hagens or any of his guests ever covered this issue in a serious way on his channel?
Doomberg seems to lack any ecological understanding of the situation we are in. Would be interesting to hear him react to the ecological round tables you did. Still his knowledge on energy and finance is deep and I learned a lot. Puts in perspective though even with half the picture you still can see the collapse.
Yes this is the one thing that I kind of have been taking away from all these interviews is that there doesn't seem to be a hopeful outcome. We're not acting fast enough we didn't act soon enough and we haven't even stopped arguing about what to do let alone start doing it. Still I'm glad to have a clear understanding of what is going on even if I don't like the outcome
Яку ж дурницю говорить цей розумний чоловік. Напевно йому гарно заплатили і він лобіює Біла Гейтса... Сталь, аміак, пластик, бетон, скло, ліки, нафтохімія. Ядерна енергія ніколи не зможе покрити це все, навіть для 1 млрд людей з нашими системами споживання, вимушеного застарівання і т.д. Сотні тисяч комбайнів, вантажівок, грейдерів, самоскидів, бурів і т.д. не можуть працювати на водні, бо перша проблема водню - виробництво. Ядерна енергетика не зможе покрити необхідні об'єми водню за короткий період часу. Ми не зможемо побудувати водневу інфраструктуру, водень потрібно весь час використовувати, його нерентабельно зберігати, далеко транспортувати навіть у формі гідридів. 98% водню робиться з використанням природного газу. Щоб покрити рожевим воднем весь чорний водень, треба тисячі ядерних реакторів і тисячі установок зрідження, транспортування та зберігання. Водень це ще й дуже неефективно в плані інвестованої енергії. Дядько розказує якусь техноптимістичну нісенітницю. Так звичайно ми і на Марс могли полетіти в 70-х, бо технології дозволяли, і зараз можемо, та і на Титан чи Європу я думаю також. Питання в тому яка доцільність? Яка доцільність фрекінгу в ЄС, Китаї, Іраку, Саудівській Аравії? Підвищувати нафту до 180$/барель? Нафту неможливо видобувати швидше ніж ми видобуваємо, крапка. Вугілля також виходить на плато, якщо ми відійдемо від нафти, вугілля також не протримається довго. Щодо України і Росії. Ви обоє і я не применшую, не розумієте ні менталітету ні мотивації влади і суспільства в цих країнах, жоден із вас, я думаю ніколи до кінця не зрозуміє суті "русского мира" і всієї проблеми, яку несе ця квадро-дилемна концепція. Путін напав через особисті мотиви, певне упереджене не об'єктивне відчуття власної дійсності та мрію - увійти в історію, мрію повернути території колишньої Київської Русі, від якої як відомо пішла одна з гілок що утворила Московське царство. Без Києва, Чернігова, та ін. Росія це незрозуміло яке утворення що не має історичного ланцюжка влади, немає православної руської віри, бо Русь охрестили в Києві а не Москві в т.д. Енергетична складова цієї війни вторинна. Якщо бажаєте обговорити це пишіть мені) Дякую)
@@stringlarson1247 Steve Keen is great. I would still love to listen to Michael Hudson. He's past 80 yo isn't he? But sharper than anyone around for sure!
@@DavidMarcotte-xx1nw yep, Hudson is always on point. Will be a great interview. Keen's _Debunking Economics_ vol 1 ch. 13 has an excellent example of debt to GDP and what can/will happen with a small reduction in growth. I'll summarize: it ain't pretty. ;) I'm just a simple EE/software engineer who's bad at the maths; however, these few pages drive it home.
"Waiting for Bjorn Lomberg to land." That was exactly my first thought to. I've noticed this a lot with "peak oil" (for lack of a better general term to use) channels and figures: over time they diversify so much that it just becomes a bunch of people who vaguely think we have some problems up ahead. The "diversify" aspect becomes just a diverse list of magical solutions that gets longer as time goes on: human consciousness evolution, nuclear energy, bitcoin, gold standard currency, permaculture, buy gold, gun rights... (notice that it's all very USA-centric). Similar happened with Chris Martenson's Peak Prosperity. Over the last few years he's started bringing in Ron Paul and Robert Kiyosaki, and it feels more and more like clickbait.
Absolutely fabulous discussion. I learnt so much from this conversation. I intend to listen again to soak up all of the information included in the conversation. Thank you ! The references to the Rus/Ukraine war were weak. No mention of the Minsk agreements being undermined by the USA/EU and no mention of Russia's proposals for a new security architecture in Europe rebuffed by the USA/NATO. This is a war designed to weaken Russia & for the West to regain unfettered access to Russia's natural resources. In my opinion this aligns with Doomberg's comments about cheap sources of energy being one way to address the debt dilemma of the West. All of the enlightening points made in the conversation about per capita energy usage, over commitment of public services, debt, energy consumption, environmental impact of industrial processes points to one general issue: Over population. There are too many people on the planet and our current concept of growth (economy) needs to be revised. Its obvious !!
Doomberg comes off as a typical libertarian edge lord. Everything he says is from the perspective of the asset owning class and therefore any actions that would impede the interest of said class conveniently "don't work." He's particularly wrong in his assumptions about the developing world. "Why shouldn't we burn all the oil if Indonesia or whoever is just going to do it. Because these countries absolutely look to the US/West as an example of progress. If we build giant houses and drive SUV's that's what they are going to want too. If we don't transition into a more efficient economy. They certainly won't try to..
That is so true, the role-modeling aspect. Lately I’ve been thinking that humans are just mimics - monkey see, monkey do. On a different topic, nationalism and religion, I feel Israel bears some fault for the global shift towards increased religious conservatism and nationalism. Orban looks to Netanyahu, then Tucker Carlson looks to Orban, etc. This trend is also counter to what we need for degrowth and combatting climate change. On the other hand, if we degrow, I bet others would follow.
@@kassfischer5146 even Jordan Peterson had a " summit", if you will, with Netanyahu. Although it might be the case that Netanyahu was having an audience with his holiness the Peterson.
When he talks about the desire of poor countries to reach the same levels of standard of living and energy consumption as rich countries enjoy, you think that he's speaking for the asset-owing class? Makes no sense.
'... most people drive less than 40Km a day...' we are making EVs far too big (trying to make them like old ICE machines where range is cheap, just a bigger tank). My eBike has an 80Km range and I don't use half that.
I love the general positions of the Doombergs of the world: we are going to continue to do the things we are doing, regardless of the damage we cause. Anyone that tries to stop us will be defeated because we will not be stopped. Once things collapse, we will use our relative wealth to survive and the rest are on your own. I am not saying that what they say is not true or likely. The genius of the Doombergs is that they completely focus on their wants and their success and cannot even comprehend why anyone would care about anyone or anything else.
In short, the world is a cutthroat place. The sooner you embrace that, the better. I think all of us have to agree with that, even if part of us does not want to.
As someone who works on electric cars his comment about batteries showed a deep misunderstanding of them. Having a 40 mi range means that the batteries are discharged in basically less than an hour where with a 300 mi range they are being discharged over a 5-hour. This stress on the batteries shortness of life considerably so even though you could have eight hybrid cars for every one battery car it's debatable about how long the batteries would last in one compared to the other and what would be the total mileage out of the batteries. There is the time factor that affects batteries and a 300 mi electric vehicle is going to be caught by the calendar but a 40 mi electric vehicle is going to have its batteries super stressed. We have moved away from lithium Cobalt toward lithium iron phosphate. Batteries are improving at what appears to me a phenomenal speed. And there's no talk of battery recycling. The business that I'm in is converting gas cars to electric cars and using recycled lithium batteries from wrecked cars. This is one of those things where people will say well everybody can't do that so we're not even going to count it but it is something to be considered that no electric car that is wrecked isn't going to have its batteries thrown away they're all being sold and reused.
Too many financial analysts are scientifically illiterates, so have no comprehension of the quantum, supply, or thermodynamics. Currencies are virtual representation of energy and commodities expended. Debt is committing energy and commodities from the future with unknown supply or cost.
I was surprised by Doomberg saying there was loads of shale gas in Europe and around the world. Several months ago, I heard an expert in that field give five criteria for tight gas extraction to be economically viable, and guess what? Most of the tight gas around the world isn't viable. That satisfied me as to why the shale in Poland and Germany wasn't being produced.
I am always suspicious of any person who sounds so certain about every possible future. There is also the question what happens to ecosystems if we continue economic growth.
@@teiuq The vast majority of environmentalists today are nothing more than lobbyists. They are lobbying for giant government subsidies (public money transfers) to corporations. Philip Mirowski wrote about this more than 10 years ago: the final stage of the neoliberal "plan" to fix (for whom?) global warming is geoengineering - the ultimate life-as-a-service. We're starting to see, hear and read calls for it (ie. marketing and PR) now. We have practically zero environmentalists now. Real environmentalists would call for natural solutions (planting trees would be the most cost effective and beneficial way to reduce CO2) and reduction of consumption. Greta Thunberg and co. will never call for this. They work for billionaires and corporations, even if they don't realize it.
This was a great conversation that made me think and understand a side of our energy challenges that I hadn’t recognised before. However, I deeply struggle with Doomberg’s view of the environment. To see nature as basically an input to the economy is tragic and a dangerous path for humanity to take. Nature doesn’t exist to serve us. We are a part of nature like any other species. To take such a human-centric view where technology and ingenuity saves us is sad. Doomberg may have an amazing knowledge of energy and financial systems but his lack of understanding around overshoot, systems and complexity was clearly demonstrated.
Fair enough but how does this square with his asertion that the aspirations of the 3-4 B of the global population under developed, will totally negate any degrowth efforts. History & Human nature back up his claims
That’s speculation on his part, even a strawman. If you examine who is emitting carbon, it’s not the bottom half of the world. It’s the top tenth. There’s no assurance that the bottom 3-4B will get a higher standard of living no matter how much they want it. The opposite outcome, they remain in growing poverty, is more probable IMO.@@paullafreniere3393
@paullafreniere3393 but then we are in a game theoretical spiral where each agent is optimizing for short term self interest, but collectively we destroy our environment. Industrialized countries should degrow our site down growth significantly precisely so that developing countries can grow instead. But even that growth shouldn't be measured by GDP but by goals of ecological and social sustainable flourishing. No one knows exactly what that looks like. That's what needs to happen though.
What do you mean "for humanity to take"? Everything you mention got you to where you are today. It seems as though a lot of people are shooting the messenger. Africa has 7 of the worlds 11% that is arable land, they have resources coming out their wazoo and a fertility rate that surpasses the baby boom and will be almost 50% of the world by 2100 and the median age last year was 18.8, so an increasing population, based in a country with resources, and we know debt is money then there's going to be a lot of debt able to be paid off for multiple decades. I disagree Doomberg has a lack of understanding around overshoot, just that realism dictates what will happen because of what happened to get you where you are.
Doomberg to cornacopiaberg: 1. Most of the economically recoverable Unranium has already been produced. We only have enough economically recoverable Urainum to about 2050 at current consumptions. Utilitlies will not build any more Nuclear plants because they are aware of a the supply problems. 2. SMR are Dead on Arrival. This is because even small nuclear reactors are subject to the same regulatory and planning as very large reactors. Its more afforable to build one very large reactor than dozens of smaller reactors. 3. Peak Diesel is the problem. Shale Oil does not solve diesel production shortages. The global economy depends on diesel for everything: from food production (tractors, trucks, trains), to mining. to the delivery diesel trucks & diesel trains that move everything.
@@rjalaskan Yes it is, Thorium doesn't work. Its not fissile, its fertile & needs to be transformed into U233 for fission. There are zero breeder commerical reactors for even U-238 to Pu-239 cycel in operation, nor will there ever be.
Too many Americans have fallen into the exceptional nation black hole. Know little to nothing outside of our own geographic very localized knowledge and experience. Tendency to cut and paste that knowledge into the greater world of 8 billion precious humans with 80 million net new humans arriving annually. We also demean and degrade the love of country as it's expressed by citizens of other nations particularly when it comes to our large list of enemies dujour. In case of Russia it's been invaded many many times over last few centuries alone. WW1 Germans killed 1,5 million. WW2 27 million soviets were slaughtered many were Russian. Yet we immediately decided they'd be our lifelong enemies. Had they not stopped Germans (let's not hide behind blaming the leaders, German citizens did the cruel deeds) we'd be speaking German. At fall of USSR Gorbachev Yeltsin even Putin made it clear NATO would not be allowed to create a noose around Russia. At the time US reassured this would not occur. Of course we were lying. Citizens do express a love for Mother Russia. China no different after suffering 140 years of humiliation imposed by the west. Of course Putin is a war criminal and must be held to account. US blindness to Bush's even more catastrophic barbaric illegal war with Iraq along with occupying Afghanistan for 20 years makes him a war criminal. This geopolitical stupidity inherited from the most cruel of all empires, Great Britain, is a dead end for civilization in 2023. New forms of government and governance must come into existence if we hope to at least bend the curve on the growing poly crisis we're in today. Thanks for enlightening conversation!
Exceptional comment, thank you for it! 😊 Indeed , If you have a little more information about the wars the US and other countries started, you can see that they're not better or worse, they are all biased and corrupt to the bone. We unfortunately carry the inheritance of a very bloody and savage past, which can awake every second. It's truly frightening, because masses are very easily misled and influenced by propaganda. Individuals too, but in masses, they just reinforce their worst decisions and ideological motivations.
Every people and nation think of themselves as exceptional the only difference is some actually pull it off for awhile, the glow lasting long after the fire has died. The poly problem will not be solved. They never are. It is likely by the time it is generally recognized as a problem it has been to late to stop the run away train for some time. The problem is human nature, likely on the collective scale rather than the personal. Species don't fix problems like this, evolution does. The hand of the nature of things is not kind, not cruel merely indifferent. The majority of the Earth's biomass is below the surface and will likely wait out whatever disasters we have set into motion. As a great philosopher of our time once said. "The Earth is fine, the people are fucked." *Cheers goodnight my fellow primates. 😉
War of aggression is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
Nobody was threatening to invade Russia, in fact the rest of the world was building stronger and stronger relations with Russia. Putin is dangerously deluded.
@@kvaka009 Exactly! Steve St Angelo would strongly disagree with him, as would Tim Watkins, Gail the Actuary and many other professionals. Maybe he gets a salary from that business and can't say otherwise?
@JonathanLoganPDX all ancient civilizations collapsed at some point. Collapse is part of the human condition. The idea that there ever was a sustainable civilization is just plain wrong.
This bird doesn’t care about people. Every scenario he envisions protects his own standard of living, because he cannot even imagine sharing. His commitment to private wealth precedes even wide-scale human death. So to avoid any mention of redistribution, no alternative exists in his limited perspective but increasing energy growth. This is only ‘life nourishing order’ from an individual competitive perspective, but it is a collective death drive.
The fact this guy is anonymous is a bit of a problem. Not just that it permits him to avoid further scrutiny. But primarily because it signals that expressing these views publicly would interfere with his other roles in the private sector. Which further signals to me that this is an insider who sees the irrationality and dangers of the system, but nevertheless partakes in it because that's how he butters his buscuit. Such a double bind is exactly the problem on the individual level. Very intelligent people see the enourmous calamities we are accelerating towards, yet are too addicted to their standards of living to avoid deceiving themselves about our true predicament.
Imagine the things I could say if I were pseudonymous. (If you one day see a talking Sasquatch using words like “biophysical” and “web of life” please forget you read this :-)
@thegreatsimplification I was going to urge you to speak out anyway, but then I took a hard look at myself & the many ways I keep quiet out of fear. But, if someone or something is directly threatening the beings I love, there isn't anything that could shut me up. Isn't creation worth it? I'm getting there.
I did not find him alarmed in any way but rather optimistic that climate change is not such a big deal, that we ll invest in technologies to tap unlimited reserves of oil, that the world will be illuminated with small nuclear plants.... where did you see him alarmed out of curiosity?
One of the more problematic guests for me. Has a lot of good points, alongside a lot of logical fallacies and opinion disguised poorly as fact. Worthwhile hearing from once, wouldn’t recommend having him back.
Also, equating national data on per capita energy use and quality of life is not valid. The idea that GDP is directly related to energy use is well established, but GDP and quality of life is very much decoupled.
What is the point of trying to make subjective judgements about such nebulous concepts as happiness. Can't be done. Yes I know there are surveys about such things but do you think I know or care that a mythical average swede or Nigerian is happier than me(or days he is). What I can't somewhat evaluate is how rich the average swede or Nigerian is using any number of metrics. Access to calories. Clean water. Electricity. education.. and I also assume that below a certain level of wealth happiness or even the chance at a long life iis less likely. So please stop with the argument that we can all be poorer and happier. You don't know that. And whether I would consider myself happier if my standard of living declined 20 or 30 per cent is for me to decide not you or anyone else.
He mentioned The Deep Hot Biosphere (Thomas Gold) which argues that geologists and petroleum engineers are wrong about oil reserves. God put lots of oil in the earth for us to use, or something bonkers like that (abiogenic origin). Personally, I think King Hubbert was right about peak oil, and hopefully Doomberg will look at the data again. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
@@gibbogle I suspect the OP is trying to bring in the abiogenic oil origin theory: that oil is essentially limitless because it's created organically deep underground.
I took a few steps in my life to reduce my carbon footprint. None of them either killed me or even inconvenienced me that much. There is so much waste in this society, we have so much we can do without lowering our standard of living at all. This man is ridiculous. We are not all going to die if we have higher fuel standards for our vehicles, more public transportation, etc.
your work is admirable but we are already fucked. so the damage is already done.. but we should still diverge to nuclear as it will literally save us. on top of localization supply chains as much as possible, and learn to conserve excess and reduce waste... then harden everything from the incoming deluge we face from climate change, relocate people from the areas most likely to be affected.
We humans perceive by contrast. We value imperfections because they trigger our senses, they surprise us and generate dopamine and other chemical rewards. A computer playing a perfect game of chess quickly stops to be interesting. This is also why ChatGPT continues to fascinate: It is imperfect. It makes interesting mistakes, gives unexpected answers. Nice interview
I can't take anyone that is that enthusiastic about "an energy miracle" (in other words, more business as usual) rather than a rational, equitable degrowth strategy to stabilize the climate and make a better world for however many humans can survive what is to come and go on to have decent lives in a post-growth world. Continued growth of the type we've had for the past 300 years equals death for our species, period.
For too many end of growth equites to lower standards of living which equates to worse life which equates to doom. I thought Kevin Anderson, Nate's previous guest, articulated very well the view that equitable distribution of resources and solutions to the polycrisis are inextricably linked. Only just solutions will really work.
How do you propose to persuade people in poor countries (i.e. the majority of the world's population) not to increase their energy use and improve their standards of living?
@@gibbogle pay them and invest in different infrastructure. What's with this obsession with standards of living? What does that even mean? It seems to cover everything from having clean drinking water to being able to order air Jordan's for $400 and have them delivered by airplane from 3000 miles away. How about investing in public transport instead of everyone driving a car. How about making products without poisonous chemicals. How about reusing and fixing instead of throwing away and buying new. Or will ask these measures cut into the standards of living?
My concern is that wealth accumulation (and the power it ensures) has become the prime motivating force of human endeavor. In that pursuit, those that have the most wealth and power are abandoning all other human considerations, all the things that make life on Earth desirable for most of us. Look no further than the state of the Earth itself. In the mad pursuit of ever more wealth and power, whole nations are contributing to its decimation. Greed truly is blind. And stupid.
This is true. But it is a short-run phenomenon. The rich live off the back of the working class, and they simply cannot push workers harder than they basically are already, same as with real finite resources o f any kind. It's tragic of course, since before any breaking point millions of people suffer. But in the long run increasing returns to wealth are doomed to fade once planetary boundaries are hit, then rentiers are gonna fade in significance I would guess, at least relative to today. No time before in history have such physical planetary boundaries been touched so existentially, except the days of London smog etc., which were only local growth limiting effects, so not really "planetary". So it's a whole new ball game.
ALL the cognitive biases are in play in MOST people in MOST places in MOST societies of collectives of Hömō Callidus, ESPECIALLY in the obscenely wealthy - CUZ they're trapped in their certain kind of bubble AND prisoners of the Rules of the so-called Big Money Game SUCH as it's currently setup to be played.
@@Achrononmaster wrote, " But in the long run increasing returns to wealth are doomed to fade once planetary boundaries are hit, then rentiers are gonna fade in significance I would guess, at least relative to today.." But the rentiers control the food supply chains of the workers. Until the latter replace the supply chains of essential goods now in control of the rentier class, we are in trouble.
I want to congratulate you for the great pod-casts. About the De-growth analysis at ~37:00, maybe you should read in detail what the proponents of De-growth are suggesting on how should rich countries could implement a De-growth scenario. Jason Hickel, for example, is proposing, based on research, that it is feasible to reduce consumption and at the same time increase citizens well being. That is, to stop the production and consumption of things that are completely irrelevant to human well being. That will leave the space needed for other countries to develop. I am not arguing if this is ever gonna happen,. What I am arguing is that if it is to happen, it is feasible, but there is only one generic path, that includes equality, justice and democratic procedures. Anything without those important aspects, probably will fail. I would suggest Jason Hickel addressing the Dutch Parliement, where he most eloquently describes what a De-growth scenario would look like. ua-cam.com/video/qrcwfyvOrLU/v-deo.html
Reduction in conspicuous consumption as a wealthy human reduces demand for products and services within my local market. If I walk to get vegan food every day instead of buying an SUV and driving to buy burgers, nobody buys that SUV or eats that burger in my place. I’ve made an ecologically conscientious decision to reduce my impact without any call, implied or otherwise, for less people on the planet. If concern for the environment is a luxury only for the wealthy, then GOOD because the wealthy are doing a disproportionate amount of the damage. Calling for reduced energy consumption and alternative energies isn’t a call for less people, it’s a call for people to do less.
39:50 Doomberg seems to think that humanity will innovate itself out of peak-liquids. "Pricespikes will trigger technological development" ROFL And somehow Doomberg fails to mention the mining, transportation, purification and enrichment of uranium as a possible factor limiting nuclear energy 🤔
I know I should listen several more times before commenting, but we have an internet ‘great simplification’ underway in our area so here I go foolishly jumping in while I am still able. What is this Malthusian label Doomberg chicken speaks of? I’m glad I don’t keep up with these latest judgements and labels from our economic and environmental systems experts. The fact is that the number of humans on our planet, living with ever-increasing consumption and energy demands and/or expectations, is quite obviously too many living with too much. No one needs to believe that deaths must occur to still believe this is true. I had hoped we would mature into a species willing to consider wiser ‘meaning of life’ actions, a species willing to CHOOSE to decrease both variables over time, but this is occurring in wealthier countries now only because the great simplification is underway. Time’s up. This was not a choice, and we are not wise. Malthus and Ehrlich bravely tried to warn us about what they saw using the best information they had in their time. It’s just like us to tear down the legacies of those we’ve decided to scapegoat in our ‘enlightened’ state, still failing to perceive. Not kind. Not necessary. Does not contribute to solutions or to generous, open, welcoming conversation.
Gas-for-Euros was literately the only thing that made European manufacturing competitive. The workforce is prohibitively expensive in Europe. Without cheap Russian gas European industry will not survive. The idea that it was some kind of mistake for Europe to buy cheap Russian gas is nonsense. It was a win-win. The only people who came out on top from the Ukraine debacle were the Americans who secured the petrodollar as the only paper-for-energy currency and in one blow weakened Russia and made Europe completely dependent on America. If the Europeans were smart they would have cut off Ukraine immediately and made it crystal clear that they would receive no support - the war would never have ended and Ukraine would have the good sense of being wary of their neighbor. Right or wrong doesn't matter in international politics. Ukraine has the right to join NATO as much as Cuba as the right to station Russian troops on their island. Just know that America will make a parking lot out of Havanna if they try.
Wait, the earth is not a closed system? Just making a blanket statement like this does not make it true, and is likely the foundation that gets this guest onto the wrong track.
Thermodynamically it isn't. The Earth recieves heat from the Sun and emits heat into space, and any one of these two facts is enough to make it not closed.
@@bogdanlevi We have to carefully define our terms. I know a lot of folks equate Closed Systems with what I understand to be Isolated Systems. I think it is very important to distinguish between the three types: Isolated: this is a system in which no matter or energy is being exchanged with the surroundings. Closed: this is a system in which only energy is being exchanged with the surroundings. Open: this is a system in which both matter and energy is being exchanged with the surroundings. By these definitions, Earth is a Closed System, effectively only exchanging energy (from the Sun coming in, and radiating heat energy out). There are minute amounts of matter that also cross these barriers, but not enough to qualify Earth as an Open System.
@@gibbogle, by definition a Closed System allows the exchange of energy, but not an exchange of matter, so yes we have solar power available. Another way it could be talked about if you're going to leave out the distinction between Closed and Isolated systems, is to say the Earth is closed with respect to matter, but open with respect to energy. The point is that if you're going to say the Earth is an open system, then you need to clearly state in what respect it is open or closed. The crucial point to understand in terms of energy literacy is that for all intents and purposes, the earth's inventory of atoms is constant. According to Peter Pogany (slightly altered to incorrporate Nate's concept of the Superorganism): "Since [the Superorganism] is a function of a diminishing terrestrial and a constant extraterrestrial (solar-lunar) flow of energy (and importantly, the second kind cannot be used without drawing from the first kind), the dynamics of our world is better analyzed by focusing on the time-dependent variable... The average perpendicular radiation per unit of time and surface at the mean distance between the Sun and the Earth, the so-called 'solar constant,' is indeed a stable, geological fixture of life on Earth, allowing the flow of sunshine to be regarded as a fund-service with the characteristics of being inexhaustible, non-stockpilable, non-materially incorporated, non-excludable, and contingent on a non-arbitrary rate of use." (Peter Pogany, "Havoc, Thy Name is Twenty-First Century") In short, we do indeed live on a finite planet whose material resources degrade over time.
Doomberg shoulda just passed on the environment question. Geez, that was a bad response, and very uninformed there at the end. Nate was very respectful and had great questions. Doomberg was very us vs. them in his arguments, China and Rusia are the bad guys etc. He doesn't have much knowledge about many of the environmental issues. But I do somewhat agree with him on nuclear.
"Modern-techno-industrial civilization is completely self referencing. It will always view itself as the solution to rather than the cause of all the problems that it creates".
Bill Rees
Even moreso for people who spend their entire lives on a computer, where solution = software or hardware update. That's how they think we'll fix this situation: we just need to update harder!
@@the81kid "You are now running GreenEarth 2.0 (TM)! All that tricky stuff has been fixed! We did however make some changes to our EULA"
Let me add that to the list of highly ignorant statements. Thank you..
@@egoncorneliscallery9535 All one needs to do now is turn on the news to see the latest extreme weather disaster as a direct result of modern-techno-industrial's excesses. So who's the ignorant one here? When is reality going to come home to dinner?
You have put yr finger on it. But the weather is NOT the climate.Dont confuse the two. Its a common error. Look instead to long term trends which show very small movements io the catastrophy you see in the media. But tye modern ecologist movement is a doomsday cult w true believers and heretics. But it has progressed to a true religion which actually steers away from science.
Simplified discussion: It can't go on forever.
But it must 😅
But it will run out.
But it can't
I just think is sounds boring to live in a society without lot of energy.
Dialectics, eh?
Wonder what post shale chicken tastes like?.
@@thorsrensen3162 boredom is the privilege of the rich neurotic.
Even Simon Michaux, and basically everyone else, tells the situation as it is (dire)... but always circles around the obvious consequences (cascading and catastrophic collapse), and then finally qualifies their talk with the "and how we can fix it!" part of the narrative. Nobody wants to deal with the obvious logical endpoint for what they're all discussing: something much closer to the Walking Dead than any Amish-type society. Everyone has their "get out jail free" card they're desperately hoping will save us (i.e. mean that their lifestyle will not change significantly).
I'm not referring to doom addicts, who seem to get a perverse pleasure out of fantasizing that soon everyone will be suffering just was much as they are or they think they are. I just mean an honest appraisal of the situation: at some point the global economy will become so fragile, energy and natural resources will become scarce enough that parts of the production chain will no longer function, and before long this will lead to a cascading collapse of the global economy. Collapse = simplification. But in this event the simplification will be radical, extreme, as humanity have never been so dependent on the global economy to survive day by day, and practically nobody now has any practical skills necessary for survival - even a level of survival in a medieval-level economy.
Nobody wants to deal with this logical endpoint of our situation. Gail Tverberg comes closest. She doesn't use apocalyptic language, but she says it plainly: whole parts of the economy will cease to function. Everything depends on everything else. But virtually nobody can deal with what we're going to face in a few years (decades, if we are really really lucky).
Very interesting conversation from an Overshoot perspective. It seems that Wile E. Coyote's busy exploring new ways to continue treading air.
Yes! Thank you. This was my feeling the entire interview. I came away from it feeling worse than I do after most of these conversations.
He's seems to be a chicken telling the turkies to vote for Christmas.
So things will continue on because they must? 🤔 I think reality has other plans
Indeed.
It all goes back to that human exceptionalist imaginary story we are taught and raised to believe. "If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything" the laws of physics and biology beg to differ.
It will just come at a high cost, monetary or, if it must, otherwise.
I CANT TAKE THIS CHICKEN SHIT SERIOUSLY
Most of commenters who reject Doomberg's analysis the way you do (probably a majority of those commenting here) like you do not make specific rebuttals to his points.
@@gibbogle The laws of physics have already done that.
UUMMM, it's not the analysis....it's the cartoon character...I do not pay attention to cartoons.
I turned it off as soon as a cartoon character started...
@@gibboglea specific rebuttal is that nuclear energy would not solve our global crisis for so many reasons but primarily because we are over drawing on all finite resources and just switching energy sources doesn’t address the other countless areas of human demand for which there are no comparable alternatives
Yikes, you sense self interest and agenda oriented opinions? The ROI on the nuclear statement, left me gaped.
I followed Doomberg when I used to have a Twitter account. They really are a mixed bag as they would have a lot very interesting insights into the energy sector but their takes on sustainability and environmentalism were really really bad, full of strawman arguments, sharing a ton of cherry picked data and even fake news on anything that went against the techno optimist capitalist mindset.
This talk was really good though. I only wished there would've been more talk about the overshoot of our planetary boundaries. The answer would most likely be that we can innovate ourselves out of any issue we're in but we all know that the free market is never going to do that and he seems to be completely opposed to a planned economy.
Also, tired about hearing the purposely false argument that people proposing there should be some kind of population growth control automatically means killing people. Same as how degrowth is seen by them as making everyone degrow when in actuality is having overconsumption in the first world countries stop so that third world countries can grow and have a decent standard of living.
Two obstacles to what should happen: 1) religious dogma encouraging people to have many babies. Unfortunately conservatism and faith are increasing globally along with nationalism 2) the West’s imperialist agendas, which continue to this day with hidden racism and resource theft, by design retain the third world impoverished and under-developed so that the West has less competitors for those scarce resources. Witness the continued US habit of establishing military bases in Africa, but not civil development.
Me too but my twitter feed was filled with plump curvy ladies in lingerie and it just continued, so had to stop using twitter as I just watched that all the time and made me dependent on that so it was not good for my mental health.
Agreed! I think many people like these have created another religion to replace the 'old' ones.....I call it "hopianity" a nice mixture of hope in the human innovation and technology and insanity to not realize what we've done is destructive and continue to do so
@@ziggyfrndsIt really is a religion. I don't think it's new though. Humans started viewing themselves as being above nature with the advent of agriculture 12 thousand years ago. It only became worse and worse over the years when our religions started indoctrinating our children into believing we were put here by a supernatural deity to rule over all the other animals.
Yeah a lot of his talking points are flimsy and already addressed by other ecological economists and researchers that are a part of the degrowth/post growth movement. I get the feeling that he has not engaged with the arguments of the movement in any substantial and good-faith way as his questions and counter-arguments are already sufficiently addressed by many post growth scholars. With lectures readily available here on UA-cam.
He says that the malthusian answer is less people, but it's very clear that his answer is more people. He assumption of bigger-is-better is a classic and quintessential growth growth growth mindset of Homo Colossus. He may not be energy blind but he is certainly consumption and destruction of nature blind and eco systemic blind.
Agreed. Seems that if we're consuming more FFs in 2040 than today, we might as well stop reproducing. I mean why condemn future generations to utter misery.
So true!
"The earth will be fine in the other side of this trade" -doomsberg
This is what happens when most of your time is spent staring at spreadsheets and not enough is spent walking through the forest.
@@kvaka009 I hope his second home isn't on Maui.
@@kvaka009 ".... on the other side of this trade." ? The glib certitude
and terminology speaks for itself.
Techno optimist in a chicken disguise. The thesis that capital invested in addressing problems after they arise is better or more efficient than prevention and mitigation seems like a justification for apres moi le deluge.
Jeez, does this guy understand climate change?! NEwS FLASH: nuclear plants are shutting down due to lack of water and too much heat to dump…duh…and he’s an expert’s expert? Ha ha
@@nancylaplaca what is your source for the not enough water to dump heat from nuclear power plants claim? I genuinely haven't come across this. Must be careful because there is a great deal of misinfo about nuclear.
@@kvaka009 It has happened in France. Some nuclear plants are designed to take in cooling water and then discharge it back into a river, rather than having the toroidal cooling towers everyone associates with nuclear. Such designs are much cheaper because you don't have to build a cooling tower, but they usually come with environmental strings attached that the discharge water must be below a certain temperature (often like 32C or so) so as to not disrupt wildlife.
When the weather is hot, water temperature in the rivers rise, causing 2 issues: the water is less effective at removing heat from the nuclear plant because the intake is at a hotter temperature to start with, and secondly less water can be discharged into the river as it can raise temperatures too much.
So nuclear plants have to be pegged back in such conditions.
The solutions are: build cooling towers, or allow the hotter water to be discharged into the river and damn the environmental consequences. When the choice is blackouts or killing some fish, you can guess which humans are likely to choose.
@@Lanthanideification I thought as much. From what your say, it is a solvable problem, so long as those reaping the reward are also willing to pay the true cost, i.e. like most or even all of our problems. Still, no reason to trash nuclear energy. To me it still seems that nuclear will have to be part of any solution going forward, including degrowth paths.
As Bill Rees puts it: "Modern techno industrial civilization is completely self referencing. So it will always be referred to as the solution to and not the cause of all problems humans face".
Hubris, hubris hubris! The assumption - the presumption - that humans will always be able to meet the demands of an ever-growing population is suicidal and genocidal. At this point in human history, humility and an acknowledged state of vulnerability should be our "lodestone". Pride cometh before the fall. A stitch in time saves nine, etc., etc. The arrogant presumption of those that are doing well for themselves now, totally ignores the in-built future vulnerability of billions. "Survival of the fittest" is the unspoken reality that is the undercurrent of contemporary human endeavor. Shame.
While the island of Maui burns in "apocalyptic" fashion
@@dbadagnaMy uncle has a huge Kona coffee farm on Maui. I asked him recently if he was having dry soil troubles, needing to mulch his orchards because the atmosphere is so hot it’s desiccating the landscape. He responded like I was from Mars, telling me of course not because it rains every day on Maui.
Seems he’s a little out of touch with what’s happening on his own farm.
The world is at the same time more populated than ever and wealthier and healthier with less famine and disease than anytime in history. In other words technological progress has freed billions from abject poverty. You have the burden of proof when assuming similar progress is not possible in the future
@@edsteadham4085 A civilization’s viability can be measured by one metric alone, it’s ability to grow and store grains at scale.
Ours is dwindling fast as global weather patterns become increasingly extreme.
Annual crop yields are decreasing at an alarming pace on every continent now as an overheated atmosphere wreaks havoc on the Earth’s living systems we depend on for life.
As a civilization we’re deep into overshoot, presently consuming the annual self renewing resources of nearly two planet Earths.
As a result, by every metric, the Earth’s living systems are collapsing in perfect tandem with human population growth and consumption. The Earth does not have the carrying capacity for eight billion humans with a globalized civilization gobbling up and paving over their own life sustaining habitat. The human animal needs a livable habitat; food, water, shelter and a very mild niche climate. No technology can fill these fundamental needs. If our species loses habitat our species will go extinct.
Fossil fuel based technology caused this problem. Caused the population explosion, caused an exponential and unsustainable increase in our ability to extract resources from the Earth and build barren paved over deserts where life once thrived.
Now, eight billion humans with a globalized civilization only exist as a direct result of fossil fuel technology. Worse we are utterly dependent on it at every point in the global extraction, refining, manufacturing and supply chain.
Now as a result of the tremendous heat produced by our daily activities, the Earth’s atmosphere is heating rapidly. Desiccating the landscape, sucking the moisture into the upper atmosphere, dumping it all at once when it hits a convergence zone, leaving vast swaths of desiccated land to burn.
All over the globe.
Every day now.
Afraid the burden is on you now to prove that
Homo-petro-techno-colossus won’t be extinct within the next decade.
@@edsteadham4085 Excellent point. Is there not, though, the niggling thought that the train happily chugging move steeply up the mountain may reach the end of the track and all passengers picked up on the way were promised a destination that didn't include plunging into a ravine. Silly childish passengers!
He obviously doesn’t like the idea of de-growth. But he doesn’t even mention conservation of energy and reducing consumption of completely unnecessary ‘stuff’ - (of which our houses and garages in the developed world are so full.)
His answer is techno optimism and nuclear power and then it’s business as usual.
But even if all the countries of the world had cheap abundant energy, there’d still be the problem of accelerating consumption - exacerbating our global ecological footprint - via the consumption of fresh water, forest resources, native habitat, sand, fisheries, fertile soil, phosphorus, waste disposal. Etc. etc.
Reduced population growth may slow it down a little, but something tells me he wouldn’t be in favour of that either….
This chicken has tunnel vision and needs roasting.
Nate, after doomberg's passing comment about hydrogen fueled trucks, you should have him and Paul Martin in a roundtable. Also, some podcast hosts do commentary after the end of the interview, after the guest is no longer on call, to unpack some of the conversation for the listeners. Would you consider adding such a thing to at least some of your interview podcasts?
The G7dwarfs are in a pickle
“ the laws of physics cannot be denied with platitudes.”
Love it!
The laws of physics cannot be encapsulated with platitudes either.
But even as he said it, clearly he subordinated physics to his views on economics throughout the conversation.
...lol...that is such a good statement...
To those who 'blind faithly'
say god's law over rules
peoples law, and therefore
they can ignore our laws because they are waiting for god to step in...
to those ignorance worshipping people, I say the 'laws' of physics,
chemistry and biology are the truer laws that actually are determining what's happenning around here.
And, no amount of nice platitudes is going to change that...love the point.
Trying to reconcile the green chicken's perspective with that of William Rees who says that from an ecosystem perspective the very worst thing that could happen is that we should discover a new cheap and abundant source of concentrated energy. I appreciate Nate finally getting around to asking what Doomberg thought about nature, and was not really surprised to hear a response that faded quickly to something about how you need to "partition" climate and pollution. There's energy blindness, and then there's ecosystem blindness.
That's the difference between knowledge and wisdom. And only one of them presents themself publicly using their real name.
@@dbadagnaCould not have said it better. Chicken-clown is viewing everything through a short-term human centered lens and only looking at a fraction of the current problems facing not only us but all forms of life because of our behavior this century.
Exactly. Also, as professor of physics Thomas Murphy has pointed out, we always use more energy to grind the living world down to turn it into commodities. There cannot be infinite growth on a finite planet. Do we want to maximize the number of humans alive when we ultimately crash into that limit?
Also, come on, how can you complain about how China stole some intellectual property, and then complain about how much government surveillance there is. Capitalism requires massive governments with far ranging surveillance capabilities to protect IP and patents. Not to mention the police, courts, and infrastructure. Libertarian philosophy is garbage.
@@j85grim4I wouldn't even say he uses a human-centered lens. More like a money-centered lens. 25:50
The ecosystems where white people live is full of rivers we love to canoe, and lakes we love to fish and swim, and forests we love to hike and camp, and we want them free of pollution and development. But most of the world lives in ecosystems that suffer droughts and sand storms and wars and chemical dumps from gas and oil and mining companies that supply the white world with cool stuff. William Rees cannot free his perspective from his personal life experience, no matter his good intentions. The E, of which Doomberg speaks, is for everyone.
The glib response to the Malthusian perspective is antagonistic and unconstructive.
That "Doomberg" cannot even interrogate a pathway with less people leads me to think there is an ideological blocker in his imagination.
Sure. The pathway is either killing people that are alive now, or restrict peoples ability to reproduce. In other words robbing people of a future that has mening. Engineering famines, spreading diseases from labs is included in "killing" Just like the chicken i got very little patience for that sort of crap. If the solution = less people the only other way would be to ask people not to have children. Well good luck with that.
Yep..... That's a significant 'tell', isn't it!
Yes - that really irked me.
I think many people have a knee jerk reaction reaction to suggestions of limits of human population because it is immediately conflated with eugenics, genocide, or misanthropy.
Maybe this stems from a need to justify the deep desire and impulse we have to procreate as some innate good, only ever questioned by degenerates, or deviants.
As your previous guest (Kevin Anderson ) pointed out if we're buring half as much oil in 2050 as we do today we'll be "stuffed" (i.e. dead). If we're burning 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 oil in 2040 as your current guest predicts they're going to have to bury humanity twice.
So death it is
Previous guest was wrong then
@@timthetiny7538 or the chicken hasn't come home to roost yet
@@timthetiny7538Or maybe you've been living under a rock for the last 5 years and have not noticed all the record breaking extreme weather events currently destroying people's lives around the globe. If we continue to increase the burning of fossils, we could be 3 degrees warming by 2040 or 2050. We currently are at 1.1 and already having major consequences, image more than doubling those consequences.
@@j85grim4 nothing out of the ordinary
Doomberg's vision/solution is based on three things: nuclear energy, American lifestyle maintenance, and a new NAFTA. All three are major examples of choices that put us in our present situation. Nuclear energy in his view is the only path toward a green transition, clean (nature will be fine in case of a thousand Fukushima events), cheap (total externalization of real costs), and in line with his second pillar for a prosperous, happy and peaceful society which is the maintenance of the American lifestyle. Unnecessary to analyze the American lifestyle and its consequences for the planet and for human beings. Finally, a new NAFTA on steroids agreement is the last thing a world in search of new governance needs, to say the least. For someone who is fond of human interaction and imagination as mentioned in his final thoughts and the chess example, such choices represent quite the opposite being more of the same that put us in the present situation. Nevertheless, Nate did a great job as an interviewer allowing Mr. Doomberg to expose his contradictions, limitations, and lobbying script. As always the most problematic thing is not to denounce someone who says falsehoods all the time, but someone who uses many half-truths to support a PR campaign, and if we are going to succeed in producing real change the path passes necessarily through exposing such elaborated discourses.
Practically everyone's solution is whatever is best for them and doesn't require them to significantly change their lifestyle.
A good example why degrowth is a scary term for mainstream socitely - you happen to stumble over guests in conversations, as is Mr. Doomsberg, that overtime ends up scaring with questionable conspiracy theories. Sorry to say.
The EROI for Nuclear is 6 weeks?? Hahahaha!
I'm not saying that SMNRs are not useful or valuable or worthwhile, I believe they may well be, especially with some of the smarter & newer designs coming out, but to claim that nuclear has a 3-week EROI is absolute Fairy Dust Unicorn BS and really calls his credibility on everything else he is saying into question.
EROI isn't measured in time.
@@dbadagna of course, but that's not what he said. He said that they pay for themselves in 3 weeks.
If one ignores the externalities.
Chicken puts it all on environmentalists.
If that were true, China would be building those and not coal plants.
@@JonathanLoganPDX He actually said 6 weeks.
Doonberg has creatively found many avenues for reality denial. I find this with alot of libertarians.
A perfect example of the conceptual lense that he and humanity has constructed. A smart stupid guy. Ya that is a thing and has bedn studied.
Degrowth is going to happen regardless because there's an ecological limit to fossil fuel extraction. At 3 degrees warming the rate of natural disasters will preclude the ability to maintain the infrastructure necessary for a global energy market.
"If I didn’t kill that puppy, someone else would have". Doombergs argument against degrowth applied to killing puppies.
While I think doomberg said a lot of things I agreed with there were some moments that felt jarring with what he was trying to say and he strawmans environmentalists a lot. Nate is right improving technology is just a bigger straw to draw down what is feasible to extract. At this point people who are aware of overshoot are usually not procreating. Idk anyone who is actively calling for people to be killed. It’s way easier to reduce population growth by educating women, giving family planning services, contraceptives etc. I think the perpetual growth mentality is just history blindness. We have for thousands of years had cycles of growth and decay of civilizations. To think we would be any different while drawing down finite resources that we are existentially dependent on is just ignoring the facts. If we were increasing fossil carbon production for the next 20 years we might as well be committing mass suicide. Pollution constraints will get us if resource constraints don’t. Also it’s kinda dumb to separate climate from pollution. The number one pollutant by mass is CO2. It’s all interrelated at the end of the day.
Complex systems are basically impossible to predict but mass extinction is bad for anything that likes to consume massive amounts of energy. We really need to open our minds to the possibility that not all stories have happy endings before making decisions. I think the low tech magazine guy and guests that mention permaculture had the right ideas. If nuclear was gonna save the day it would’ve happened I don’t buy the “it’s politics” argument. In East Asia and France they are very good with nuclear but it’s not a be all end all technology. It certainly has it’s place and I’ll vote for pro nuclear candidates but I don’t see it taking off in most of the world.
I also don’t see being concerned with climate change as a privilege of the rich. I’ve worked with high school students who are refugees and are some are most concerned with climate change and global poverty as their top 2 issues. Many people in the global south are worried about how climate change will impact them. I think it’s actually a privilege of the wealthy to dismiss climate change and those who care about it. Just because people can’t do stuff about it doesn’t mean they don’t care or don’t wish things were different but they are too busy getting by to do anything about it. People are complex and can care about many different things. People that don’t care are usually rich.
Nate I think it’s good that you bring on a diversity of different guests, but I think you need to push against your guests a little more. In the future I recommend asking every guest what they think their blindspots are and maybe sharing your opinions of their blindspots and your own blindspots. Nobody can grasp all the things but we can all ask ourselves what do we not know.
I’m walking away with a lot to think about after watching this so in that sense I think you did a good job
Maybe it’s not “pollution” so much as it is changing energy from one form to another too fast throwing everything out of balance.
Take the cooling towers for example. We can stop putting the warm water back into the rivers and ocean directly or we can add it to the atmosphere. Adding it to the atmosphere adds more GHGs but would we call that “pollution”?
I asked a similar question on a different episode.
How much water and heat do these cooling towers add to the atmosphere?
Also, how much is too much and will that affect the climate as well creating more torrential downpours, for example?
@@stefc7122 I get what you’re saying but waste heat from cooling towers and CO2 from burning fossil fuels are both absolutely considered to be pollution. I think the way doomberg tried to separate them is either foolish or intellectually dishonest. T
When I heard "preventing the worst of climate change is not the right investment strategy" I thought that the chosen name Doomberg meant something entirely different than the chicken chose it for.
I don't understand why people are shooting the messenger, it's reality for the world's poor they will consume more as more money gets to them, give them ten dollars a day and they will raise their consumption 500%.
No-one doubts the ecological damage and I don't know where people are getting he's promoting it, just being realistic about what other countries will do. Africa has 7 of the worlds 11% that is arable land, they have resources coming out their wazoo and a fertility rate that surpasses the baby boom and will be almost 50% of the world by 2100 and the median age last year was 18.8, so an increasing population, based in a country with resources, and debt is money then there's going to be a lot of debt able to be paid off for those multiple decades and it will all mean energy used and released. Nothing other than force will stop them consuming as much as the west has, the last 200 years could quite easily be the next 100 years, lord knows I know no-one that has reduced their consumption 40%.
Poor people are concerned with climate change because it affects them now, rich people think they can buy their way out so it doesn't affect them, same as poor people, both raise GDP, which raise's energy output.
We in the modern world with 23 countries that are going to lose half their population due to old age have reached peak consumption and the best they might do is keep existing numbers with immigration but the consumption the world's poor need to have just to survive, I think it's like the same amount of food in the last 500 years in the next 100 needs to be grown. It's a blind spot in us maybe that we think we can do any real thing on what's coming other than lower consumption ourselves.
Technology ruined us technology will save us?
Technology and co-operation, yes.
Technology ruined us? Do you live in an off-grid shack?
@@gibbogle
Every problem we face today was caused by technology. Our technologically "primitive" ancestors never faced these problems.
This guy's got a clear agenda: Growth at all costs and Nukes are the best way. I'd bet he's an investor in Uranium mines. Thanks for having him on. I'm the spirit of Sun Su, "Know your enemy, know yourself...
The astrophysicist Thomas Gold (1920-2004), whose work the chicken recommends at 39:20 in this interview, promoted the abiotic theory of petroleum, which claims that oil and natural gas are produced not by ancient terrestrial and aquatic plant life but by microbes in the hot layers deep below the Earth's surface, indicating that the planet's oil reserves may be far larger than policymakers believe. I don't think this hypothesis has been borne out by the available evidence, or widely accepted by scientists. The chicken's implication, however, does seem to be that if Gold was correct, peak oil isn't a reality because there may be a virtually unlimited amount of additional oil to be extracted and burned, something that it apparently believes to be a net positive in its "human-centered" world view.
The obvious problem with this gleeful (not to mention incorrect) prediction is the fact that, according to James Hansen, even if we ceased the burning of all fossil fuels today, the massive amount of excess heat that has already been trapped by greenhouse gases and absorbed by the world's oceans, after slow feedbacks operate, will eventually cause the global average temperature to rise about 10°C (18°F) above preindustrial levels! Look at the catastrophic effects we've seen after an increase of just 1.2°C--just today we lost the town of Lahaina in Maui. At this rate, despite its apparently sizeable nest egg, it's only a matter of time before the chicken's own hometown gets leveled by a fire, flood, tornado, or other climate change-exacerbated disaster, and the same is true for all of us.
And we could get hit by an asteroid or Yellowstone may blow.
I bet on trying and not giving up. It's how I teach young people. Growth mindset. It's not always about consumption. It can often be about growth at a very personal level.
To tell young people today that their is no hope, there is nothing but chaos before them, and they have no control over it, might be causing a level of global trauma. Citing Gabor Maté.
Just stop it, there is no globull warming
It's likely down there deep in the Earth 🌍, BUT we simply just cannot get to it. YET. But when we do, that only means MORE heat 🔥🥵 death ☠️💀 for ALL of us including our partner species on the planet. YET, the physical natural world will go on. Quite happily without Us. Zach Bush MD et al talks about THIS, and many people are embracing the peaceful calming perspective that's emanating from this AND adjacent content makers, amidst communities of human beings going purely post doom, post anthropocene, post carbon, ETC. AND so on AND so forth.
@@jjuniper274 There are alternatives to the religion of consumerism, and they are more human centered than the status quo.
@@jjuniper274 But that is the reality that our youth are facing and I don't think we should delude them into thinking otherwise. The last thing we should want is for them to be ill prepared for reality as an adult, especially, in these ever changing times and we're obliged to do so as teachers, elders, parents, and guardians.
We're going to need all hands on deck if we want to have any hope of surviving what's to come.
The most meaningful thing I heard on this podcast was that Nate Hagens talks to his chickens. That is heartfelt connection. Everything else I heard seemed like a scouting report of probabilities from inside the pathology of the super organism. It felt toxic. For me, inspiration will not be found there, but thank you nonetheless.
Yes. I love when Nate mentioned talking to his real chickens.
“…a scouting report of probabilities from inside the pathology of the super organism” is very well-stated.
Great comment!
The problem is that a shrinking society is a cannibal society. My homeland is disintegrating into organised crime blocs. Devouring the weak and converting key infrastructure to scrap as the economy shrinks.
@@alexedgar6539That's why we need a one child per couple policy as less people means more resources for everyone else and crime becomes far less likely when people have their basic needs met.
@@j85grim4 Needs met by whom?
Every working couple having to care for their child and four elderly parents?
Look at Japan. It's already looking like an old folks home. More adult diapers are sold than baby diapers.
There are fewer resources to go around, not more, when only a few percent of the population is working.
A couple of criticisms; I didn't stick around to the end of the episode because my eyes were sore from rolling.
First, I wish Nate would not allow his guests to blather on regarding topics that he is not prepared to challenge them on. This is not the first time it has happened, and he is not the only podcast host that fails to put guardrails around what the guests get away with. It just pollutes the discussion and send folks like me running for the exits.
In this case, the guest went on about: Doug Ford (current Ontario Premier); the former Liberal provincial govts; Ontario's attempts at an energy transition; and what "progressive conservative" means, while Nate remained completely silent and completely gave whoever-he-is the stage to say whatever he wanted, completely unchallenged. One might think, after listening to the drivel, that Doug Ford was the reincarnation of JFK.
Some may remember, from the news out of Toronto about 10 years ago, hearing about a certain mayor by the name of Rob Ford. It wasn't anything good; he was a clown, now deceased. His brother, Doug, was a city councilor concurrently. They were elected to council by a what could be described as a suburban MAGA-lite crowd in the Toronto suburbs (a preceding conservative govt has merged Toronto proper with a bunch of suburbs to create an amalgamated Toronto and giving the more conservative 'burbs control over a more liberal urban core).
For reasons that escape me, the people of Ontario have elected Doug Ford twice as Premier (read Governor, for the Yanks). Imagine 45, only clueless, getting a second term and you wouldn't be far off.
So, now, in fact, we have Doug Ford running roughshod over anything related to an energy transition and an environment. His current scandal is releasing about 7500 acres of protected wild and agricultural lands in a greenbelt, north of Toronto, for developers -- who had a hand in choosing those acres -- to buy and build more suburban sprawl. The police are apparently investigating.
www.google.com/search?q=doug+ford%27s+record+on+energy+anmd+environment
www.google.com/search?q=doug+ford+greenbelt&sca_esv=559481520&sxsrf=AB5stBgyo_a6z51IywUnJA1c4eDdzz7TaA:1692816571728&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:m&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjBzLWTufOAAxU4MVkFHUyiCYsQpwV6BAgEEAo&biw=1280&bih=653&dpr=2
Something the guest chose not to mention (and, of course, wasn't challenged on because Nate apparently hasn't a clue about energy in Ontario and was thus missing in action) was that Ontario used to have a huge percentage of electricity generated by coal plants; the policies of the previous provincial liberal gov't, slagged by the guest, were meant to displace the coal generation (including a ~4GW generating station - the largest coal fired generating station in North America), which they did. The current mix is captured on this GoC page:
www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-ontario.html
As far as the guest's reference to "progressive" conservatism...
Canada has a long history of what are colloquially referred to as "Red" Tories. But, at this juncture, they are just that: historical. Since about twenty years ago, the notion of "progressive" conservatism in Canada has disappeared. The federal party is now, officially, Conservative (with a core of prairie Bible thumpers who managed to take over the federal party - long story). Provincial conservative governments are, too, for the most part far-right and entirely captured by resource extraction industries (e.g. oil & gas, but not solely).
Summary: don't let guests pontificate unchallenged. Edit: when that happens, it seems to me you're being played.
As a fellow Ontarian, I 100% agree that it was sickening to hear the Ford government being held up as a paradigm to follow, but I also have to forgive Nate with not being all-knowing, and I don't find it fair to expect him to be able to challenge every particular narrative or example on merit.
I personally was quite happy that the questions posed focused on higher-level concepts and challenges than the governance of one small region of our planet, even if I happen to reside in that region.
I disagree with many of the statements and fundamental principles expressed by the chicken (what a world, where I can write such a statement), and I often don't align with all of Nate's statements and beliefs, but I still derive great pleasure from expanding my viewpoint listening to / watching these various guests. The entire episode, while not aligned with my personal views, was still a great listen and one of my favourite TGS interviews to date, and leaves me with notes and questions to further dig into. Civil discourse and disagreement is such a wonderful surprise when it occurs in this day and age.
Thank you for adding the context regarding Mr. Ford - I'm glad someone did so. I was considering how to best do so myself. You've done a far better job than I could have.
I would like to hear Simon Michaux's responses to Doombeg's analysis on energy use.
...I guess Tom Murphy's perspective would be interesting as well and he could come along for the ride since he is also quite ... diplomatic. ;-)
They both agree handily on the subject that you won’t be able to build enough batteries and Solar/Wind to replace the existing energy system due to supply constraints.
That’s before you even consider the value of petrochemicals for reasons other than burning as fuel.
Same
Simon, if I’ve understood him, doesn’t think materials are a limiting factor on nuclear, but expertise are. We can’t train enough people quickly enough to get nuclear to abate the energy cliff as it reaches us.
For what it’s worth i think you can reconcile doomy, Nate, and Simon: 2030 is going to be a shit year, and the years after are likely to be bad. But 2040 will be much better (perhaps departing a bit from Nate there)
@@howardmoon1234
There was a study in 2008 about how to change from fossil fuels to nuclear by 2050. The result was: we would need to increase the number of nuclear power stations by 10% every year. So, we have to build 50 nuclear stations this year... then 55 next year... then 62 the following year... etc. Eventually you have to build one new nuclear plant almost every day(!). Most of the energy would be cannibalized by the construction of new nuclear plants. You also have to completely rebuild the entire planet's infrastructure to be based on electricity (instead of based on fossil fuels). And then you would need to generate energy just to keep the regular economy going.
People have very little idea of what is involved to "switch to nuclear". Nuclear also doesn't make: fertilizers, plastics, lubricants... or any of the number of other essential products our global economy needs to function. You can't fly airlines on electricity. We don't even have the technology to reproduce all the services and functions of fossil fuels with electricity yet (for example: we don't know how to do most mining, or have the technology to do most smelting with electricity). It's a complete fantasy.
People think you build a nuclear plant and you plug it into the network and problem solved. The entire global economy has grown and evolved organically over 250 years based on fossil fuels. You can't just "switch" to nuclear or another energy source in a few years. Even if we finally cracked fusion power (most likely this will never happen)... we would still face all of the same problems - problems with no solutions on the time scales we need.
It's never going to happen. The end of the party is near, and people are clutching at straws. Any fantasy solution so that they don't have to change anything significant in their lifestyle.
But I always see endless comments and stories about how "we need nuclear" or "thorium reactors are the answer". Yes, we could run a civilization on nuclear. We just can't run ours on nuclear. Ours was not built around electricity, it was build over hundreds of years around fossil fuels. It's like expecting a creature evolved to eat one diet suddenly change to eat another completely different.
Nate, having pseudo scientific religious fanatics like this on your show only results in confusing the already confused and ignorant average person on these existential issues. I see absolutely no benefit in listening to a guy that has absolutely no idea what he's talking about with literally everything normally discussed on this podcast on here.
I agree, but I believe Nate is attempting to illustrate that vast array of human perspectives that are "out there" for didactic purposes.
It is illustrative of the rising conflict with the zealots of overconsumption
You could level the same criticisms at some of the points made by Kevin Anderson in his interview. Nate is trying to expose the audience to a range of views on the fix that we find ourselves in. I don't agree with Doomberg on everything but a lot of what he argues for is grounded in an understanding of engineering reality. His enthusiasm for nuclear as a panacea is overblown but he speaks from experience of industry and we need to hear voices like him alongside the others that Nate has interviewed.
Gosh I'm just not smart like you. Or as noble. Or as concerned. I think smart and wonderful people like you should be put in charge of which points of view people get to heat. Sound about right?
Love those big words. Pseudo scientific.
Wow! This guest us the ultimate techno-capitalist. He is essentially saying we don’t really have a problem. Innovation and the wealthy will save us. That is bat shit crazy.
Hey. I left some comments/replies. Because it's difficult to participate online sometimes respectfully, I just wanted to say I appreciate this channel and the perspectives it offers. I'm not sure about the guest's perspectives, but he certainly has the right to express his opinion.
Hands down the best interview of doomberg I’ve watched. Great job creating these questions and guiding the conversation.
Looks like #LimitsBlind might require adding to the list....
Totally! It was disheartening that despite all his knowledge around energy/finance there was a fatal shortfall in understanding overshoot.
The comments section here are the best i have ever seen. Really educated and deep thinkers, who can see the wood from the trees. It is a great testament to the value of this podcast and prior guests. I got alot our of reading these comments. Thanks
The bird lost a lot of credibility with me by thinking humans have an unlimited ability to innovate to produce more oil. It also thinks that spiking oil price will be affordable, it won't and so the price would fall and investment would contract. Just a lack of critical thinking, in my opinion, shown on this matter by the bird.
Oil price basically set by a monopolist. Any currency sovereign can always re-gauge (in any of a dozen ways). It's relative price that really matters. If currency sovereigns who are not setting oil prices re-gauge the price level in their own economy the nominal oil price can stay nominally as high as anyone cares. Thinking in real terms means generally thinking in relative price terms, not nominal. It's what your entire wage/income can purchase that matters, not what $1 can purchase (since you're no longer pegged to gold).
I don't think its peak complacency. It is a callous disregard for their citizenry in favor of their own goals. They do not care about the cost in human suffering or death.
Since no One Entity is actually driving the train 🚂 of the Human Super-Organism, there's not really any singular Intentionality to what is transpiring at THIS Meta Level.
So, the chicken bets the farm on techno optimism. He is reciting his devotion to the god of progress. He even mentions Star Trek. Some of what he said may be correct, and nobody knows the future, but he seems to be a bit of a fanatic, so I would listen to what he says with a healthy dose of skepticism.
If you'd been listening to what he's been saying for a couple of years now, your skepticism would certainly have graduated to respect. That said, if you haven't, this world is missing more healthy doses of skepticism so I salute you.
Gotta wonder if Keith is getting Koch money or if he’s just a True Believer
It is either
A) we focus on advanced technologies in energy and innovate ourselves out of this
B) we accept that the future humans will be much worse off on the aggregate than the current humans (for the first time in 15,000+ years
Or C) determine that climate change isn’t important/isn’t real and we will be fine no matter what
@@bbor55
So
a) pull ourselves by our own bootstraps, thus defying laws of physics
b) face up to our profound errors and stop making them
c) run back into the cave
I'll take option b) please with a side of mia culpa
Clearly you don't get out much. Doomberg and his team are superb are cutting through the BS we are polluted with today. Keep drinking the cool aide.
I tried, at 15 minutes in the chicken has been shown to be a waste of time. Thank the host for trying.
It gets even more insufferable after that point.
Thanks Nate for this very interesting interview (listened it twice). You managed with lots of humility to let the chicken talk his views. As others here I spotted the few flaws (upon all there's the usual techno solution-ism and wishful thinking) however I've to admit there have been some interesting insights. I think there's a long way between full de-growth (Medieval style) and deploying thousands of SMRs to keep this society going. As our ancestors once said "In medio stat virtus" (virtue is in the middle, not in the extremes). I hope your chickens have less predatory views w.r.t our planet. Cheers
Nate, nice guy your guest is, but he still missing the forest through the trees. The new form of energy which he alludes to peripherally his nature, its self holistically, which is our best chance of creating a new currency, and changing the paradigm. By investing in seeds and natural systems to harnessed the infinite solar energy, biologically and stored at sequester carbon, we have the opportunity of transitioning to a new in better world and finding employment for people in creating, this new form of energy in the form of a restored planet functioning optimally as one giant super organism. We can create all the energy we want until we restore the biological health of the planet. We’re still on the same trajectory to hell.
I'm convinced us finding an alternative source of energy to keep our already overgrown ant colony growing even larger, would be the worst possible thing for not only us but all the species we share the planet with.
You are living in a dream world. The planet will have 9 Billion inhabitants very soon now. Energy is life. Your seeds and natural systems will not work without massive depopulation. But don't worry, I suspect massive depopulation is quite probable.
A very interesting and wide ranging conversation. That being said, Doomsberg glossed over some pretty major items: Hydrogen Cars are a LONG way from viable on a mass scale, never mind, ships, rail and heavy duty trucks.
appel.nasa.gov/2011/02/02/explosive-lessons-in-hydrogen-safety/
Wind and Solar are NOT renewable, they are Rebuildable, as long as you have massive amounts of fossil fuels to do it with.
Still, a very informative and enjoyable interview!
I question the statement by r. Chicken that the ROW is trying to have the same std of living as the US (what does that mean anyway?) and other "rich" nations. It seems to me that the US to a large extent is "exporting" the idea or model the being like me is the way to go like it or not. Maybe I misunderstood what Chicken said. I think in your show you've made some comparisons between the US and other countries in terms of educational programs, health care availability, tons of waste per capita and the picture is not as rosy as we think. The opposite side of the coin is the shift in power + influence that China will have in other countries and what model of the world are they exporting, I do not know the answer to that. Maybe in the US we could somehow think more about "responsible exports" and trade. Mentioned in your show I think, I preach and implement decarbonization but export huge amounts coal elsewhere because my state is rich in that natural resource. Responsible exports / trade seem to me are an essential part of a low carbon world.
Exporting the model, yes. If there is hope to be had and acted upon, it will come from those at the margins who reject those models and build their own. QoL is not found in mindless consumption, but good health and connection.
A very interesting and challenging interview, with a chicken who is obviously an expert in his barn. What a contrast with Kevin Anderson last week though. I thought it was very telling that "Doomy" wanted to separate climate from pollution, showing concern for the oceans which by the way are absorbing 90% of the excess energy from climate and becoming more acidic due to excess CO2. How is this not pollution? To me this stance is a political identity choice, you can't be concerned about emissions if you sit slightly to the right.
Speaking of the environment as an externality to the economic system, showed how someone incredible knowledgable in their field can also have the blinkers on, and in this case be ecology blind. All those pesky environmentalists with their "regulations", damn them.
Studies consistently demonstrate that there is little to zero correlation between knowledge and wisdom, reasoning vs. rationality, and intelligence vs. moral virtue (Vervaeke et al).
@@wmgodfrey1770 thanks, John Vervaeke is indeed an incredible source for insights into human thinking.
The final comments about keeping his subscribers happy was telling. His stance on climate change is just dumb or ignorant - more likely though is that he's accurately calculated that taking climate seriously is *not* what his subscribers want to read. He's not an honest broker.
Higher oil, gas and coal production in 2040 is incompatible with 9bn strong civilisation IMO - irrespective of how many nuclear reactors we build.
On SMR, they run on much higher enriched uranium, ~20% compared to 3-4% in a light water reactor. A large scaling up of enrichment facilities is a proliferation risk. Also SMR produce more nuclear waste per MWh.
I think the thesis that energy (in the form of hydrocarbons) = quality of life has massive flaws and needs to be questioned more.
We believe it's possible to increase quality of life while decreasing hydrocarbon consumption
And as an example US has the per capita emissions of the 1920's but quality of life is so much higher.
@@Apjooz The US offshored it's emissions to China and Mexico.
@@Apjooz source? That sounds implausible. Would be interesting to be proven wrong.
@@ApjoozBy what metric? We aren't even in the top 20 countries rated on happiness.
@@ApjoozHow do you measure "quality of life"? More options of entertainment to watch?
What a depressing episode
Challenges environmentalist to be honest about their platform. Appears anonymously as a cartoon chicken.
Is it dishonest to be anonymous?
@@MegaBoolaBoola At a fundamental level, I would say yes it is.
@@MegaBoolaBoola What is the chicken's annual income, and what is its net worth?
Does anonymity place more focus on the ideas, rather than on the individual?
@@dbadagnaHe mentioned he has a PhD, and managed a team of them. So I would infer that he has a high income. But that doesn't automatically mean all of his ideas are wrong. Let's focus on the ideas, rather than on the man.
This guy is hopelessly anthropocentric. Keeps talking about "lifestyles" in the context of acquisition not sufficiency. This mindset continues to destroy the biosphere. And unless it's changed, will complete the process.
Consistently disappointed with Doomberg’s analysis. Classic techno-hopium. Where is the oil and gas for us to burn more of it in 2040 than now going to come from? Where is the uranium to run the reactors? Where are the efficiency gains in solar going to come from? So naive and blind.
I think we can come up this philosophy as "greed and consumption is not only good, it's ethical, and if we don't consume X, Y & Z, then someone else will consume X,Y& Z. Where have we heard this before?
For example, Global First Power is building a hybrid Natural Gas/Nuclear power cogeneration plant at Chalk River, Ontrario.
And then when he spoke of less technologically complex nations and said no one should limit their access to new tech-- but exactly. That’s why we have to Limits ourselves in the “developed nations” to allow for that growth. But disregards that connection.
The point is that most of the world is still poor, and the poor people want to consume at our rate. It is not saying that greed is good, but that people are greedy. It doesn't help to ignore human tendencies.
@@gibbogle in a system run on debt and seemingly endless abundance of energy that encourages overconsumption, it is easy to mistake a historical fact for a universal truth. Humans have managed to limit themselves for the sake of sustainable living and same use of common good resources across the globe and throughout history. The "humans are naturally greedy" argument is just an excuse that the greedy use to feel better about their own decadence.
@@gibboglemost of these people arguing here haven’t taken a cold shower, let alone used candle light and chopped wood for days to get through winter… their views are so skewed and very likely will never change until that cold shower becomes the norm… and by then it will be too late for the very poor and weak who will simply freeze to death or die from heat stroke, not just in the places they’ve never heard of, but in their own backyard as well.
I feel like there's a disconnect between what he says about pollution and what he says about climate. He seems to want to regulate one externalized cost and not the other. Probably this is because he underestimates climate change effects on the trajectory we're on... But in general, I appreciated his point of view, even if it spells doom IMO.
Doomberg doesn't understand the increasing cost (implicit and external) of complexity. He doesn't see that increasing complexity also increases fragility while the benefits of that additional complexity usually diminish with each new kind of technological "fix".
He doesn't understand that its possible to live a better life with far lower impact on the planet. He doesn't understand that by focusing on lowering your own costs, you become more self sufficient and spend less. You also don't participate as much in the industrial economy which is clearly killing the planet. By every measure, our unsustainable, industrial system is destroying the planet. My expenses are down to $400 per month, so I have a degree of financial security I never had; not because I invested wisely, and became more dependent on the industrial system, it was because I changed my lifestyle to a more simple less complex one.
A 2020 study from Italy found microplastics in fruits and vegetables (especially apples and carrots, whose roots are more porous) ranging between between 52,050 and 233,000 particles per gram (gram!) of fruits or vegetable.
@@dbadagnaInteresting and concerning but not sure how it relates to the post you're replying to.
@HidingFromFate I think the implication is that becoming more untethered from industrial food production makes life better. An example of less being more.
In other words, ignorant of or disregarding Joseph Tainter. Good luck with that.
Yes, the interviewee seems blissfully unaware of the decreasing marginal product of increasing complexity. Also, he doesn't seem to notice that innovation is clearly slowing down all around us. Practically every technology or product we use is just an update or iteration of a technology invented before 1970. Decreasing returns, but exponentially increasing investment and natural resource / energy inputs. This is the psychology of someone who spends their whole life through a computer: they think that life and reality are like the computer he's using. The solution is just: we just need an update! We just need to find the right combination of buttons to push!
if only environmentalists were as influential as Doomberg believes they are we wouldn't be so deep in mire
We grow and transport food using fossil fuels. We do not grow and transport much food using electricity. On the day we abandon fossil fuels, food production goes over a cliff. On the same day, the people who operate nuclear reactors will not show up at work, because they will be fighting for food. The nuclear reactors, left to their own devices, will vaporize catastrophically. It doesn't need to be this way. It's a hard choice, but we don't make hard choices, so it's better to abandon nuclear power now while we can still manage the descent.
Sadly, few are cognizant of this danger, due to what the author Justin Gregg calls "prognostic myopia." Has Nate Hagens or any of his guests ever covered this issue in a serious way on his channel?
Doomberg seems to lack any ecological understanding of the situation we are in. Would be interesting to hear him react to the ecological round tables you did. Still his knowledge on energy and finance is deep and I learned a lot. Puts in perspective though even with half the picture you still can see the collapse.
Yes this is the one thing that I kind of have been taking away from all these interviews is that there doesn't seem to be a hopeful outcome. We're not acting fast enough we didn't act soon enough and we haven't even stopped arguing about what to do let alone start doing it. Still I'm glad to have a clear understanding of what is going on even if I don't like the outcome
Яку ж дурницю говорить цей розумний чоловік.
Напевно йому гарно заплатили і він лобіює Біла Гейтса...
Сталь, аміак, пластик, бетон, скло, ліки, нафтохімія.
Ядерна енергія ніколи не зможе покрити це все, навіть для 1 млрд людей з нашими системами споживання, вимушеного застарівання і т.д.
Сотні тисяч комбайнів, вантажівок, грейдерів, самоскидів, бурів і т.д. не можуть працювати на водні, бо перша проблема водню - виробництво. Ядерна енергетика не зможе покрити необхідні об'єми водню за короткий період часу.
Ми не зможемо побудувати водневу інфраструктуру, водень потрібно весь час використовувати, його нерентабельно зберігати, далеко транспортувати навіть у формі гідридів.
98% водню робиться з використанням природного газу. Щоб покрити рожевим воднем весь чорний водень, треба тисячі ядерних реакторів і тисячі установок зрідження, транспортування та зберігання.
Водень це ще й дуже неефективно в плані інвестованої енергії.
Дядько розказує якусь техноптимістичну нісенітницю.
Так звичайно ми і на Марс могли полетіти в 70-х, бо технології дозволяли, і зараз можемо, та і на Титан чи Європу я думаю також.
Питання в тому яка доцільність? Яка доцільність фрекінгу в ЄС, Китаї, Іраку, Саудівській Аравії? Підвищувати нафту до 180$/барель?
Нафту неможливо видобувати швидше ніж ми видобуваємо, крапка.
Вугілля також виходить на плато, якщо ми відійдемо від нафти, вугілля також не протримається довго.
Щодо України і Росії. Ви обоє і я не применшую, не розумієте ні менталітету ні мотивації влади і суспільства в цих країнах, жоден із вас, я думаю ніколи до кінця не зрозуміє суті "русского мира" і всієї проблеми, яку несе ця квадро-дилемна концепція.
Путін напав через особисті мотиви, певне упереджене не об'єктивне відчуття власної дійсності та мрію - увійти в історію, мрію повернути території колишньої Київської Русі, від якої як відомо пішла одна з гілок що утворила Московське царство. Без Києва, Чернігова, та ін. Росія це незрозуміло яке утворення що не має історичного ланцюжка влади, немає православної руської віри, бо Русь охрестили в Києві а не Москві в т.д.
Енергетична складова цієї війни вторинна.
Якщо бажаєте обговорити це пишіть мені)
Дякую)
Michael Hudson would be a good person to interview about a debt jubilee.
Invited. He’s waiting til new book is finished
@@thegreatsimplification That's awesome!
Steve Keen has spoken about this topic for years.
That episode was/is excellent for anyone who hasn't listened.
@@stringlarson1247 Steve Keen is great. I would still love to listen to Michael Hudson. He's past 80 yo isn't he? But sharper than anyone around for sure!
@@DavidMarcotte-xx1nw yep, Hudson is always on point.
Will be a great interview.
Keen's _Debunking Economics_ vol 1 ch. 13 has an excellent example of debt to GDP and what can/will happen with a small reduction in growth.
I'll summarize: it ain't pretty. ;)
I'm just a simple EE/software engineer who's bad at the maths; however, these few pages drive it home.
Fun how dividing batteries didn't thought about electric bicycles batteries in the maths.
Remember human power.
Waiting for Bjorn Lomberg to land.
Dear God, no! … please no!
"Waiting for Bjorn Lomberg to land."
That was exactly my first thought to. I've noticed this a lot with "peak oil" (for lack of a better general term to use) channels and figures: over time they diversify so much that it just becomes a bunch of people who vaguely think we have some problems up ahead. The "diversify" aspect becomes just a diverse list of magical solutions that gets longer as time goes on: human consciousness evolution, nuclear energy, bitcoin, gold standard currency, permaculture, buy gold, gun rights... (notice that it's all very USA-centric).
Similar happened with Chris Martenson's Peak Prosperity. Over the last few years he's started bringing in Ron Paul and Robert Kiyosaki, and it feels more and more like clickbait.
Is it just me, or is the anthropocentrism of the chicken rather ironic?
Absolutely fabulous discussion. I learnt so much from this conversation. I intend to listen again to soak up all of the information included in the conversation. Thank you !
The references to the Rus/Ukraine war were weak. No mention of the Minsk agreements being undermined by the USA/EU and no mention of Russia's proposals for a new security architecture in Europe rebuffed by the USA/NATO. This is a war designed to weaken Russia & for the West to regain unfettered access to Russia's natural resources. In my opinion this aligns with Doomberg's comments about cheap sources of energy being one way to address the debt dilemma of the West. All of the enlightening points made in the conversation about per capita energy usage, over commitment of public services, debt, energy consumption, environmental impact of industrial processes points to one general issue: Over population. There are too many people on the planet and our current concept of growth (economy) needs to be revised. Its obvious !!
Nate, you are an excellent interviewer. I have so much more to say but yeah.
Doomberg comes off as a typical libertarian edge lord. Everything he says is from the perspective of the asset owning class and therefore any actions that would impede the interest of said class conveniently "don't work." He's particularly wrong in his assumptions about the developing world. "Why shouldn't we burn all the oil if Indonesia or whoever is just going to do it. Because these countries absolutely look to the US/West as an example of progress. If we build giant houses and drive SUV's that's what they are going to want too. If we don't transition into a more efficient economy. They certainly won't try to..
That is so true, the role-modeling aspect. Lately I’ve been thinking that humans are just mimics - monkey see, monkey do. On a different topic, nationalism and religion, I feel Israel bears some fault for the global shift towards increased religious conservatism and nationalism. Orban looks to Netanyahu, then Tucker Carlson looks to Orban, etc. This trend is also counter to what we need for degrowth and combatting climate change. On the other hand, if we degrow, I bet others would follow.
@@kassfischer5146 even Jordan Peterson had a " summit", if you will, with Netanyahu. Although it might be the case that Netanyahu was having an audience with his holiness the Peterson.
Spot on. The chicken is a true blue libertarian. Little else but feathers.
When he talks about the desire of poor countries to reach the same levels of standard of living and energy consumption as rich countries enjoy, you think that he's speaking for the asset-owing class? Makes no sense.
@@liamhickey359 Don't forget the capital L.
'... most people drive less than 40Km a day...' we are making EVs far too big (trying to make them like old ICE machines where range is cheap, just a bigger tank). My eBike has an 80Km range and I don't use half that.
I love the general positions of the Doombergs of the world: we are going to continue to do the things we are doing, regardless of the damage we cause. Anyone that tries to stop us will be defeated because we will not be stopped. Once things collapse, we will use our relative wealth to survive and the rest are on your own. I am not saying that what they say is not true or likely. The genius of the Doombergs is that they completely focus on their wants and their success and cannot even comprehend why anyone would care about anyone or anything else.
In short, the world is a cutthroat place. The sooner you embrace that, the better. I think all of us have to agree with that, even if part of us does not want to.
Still a billion people on earth without electricity
As someone who works on electric cars his comment about batteries showed a deep misunderstanding of them. Having a 40 mi range means that the batteries are discharged in basically less than an hour where with a 300 mi range they are being discharged over a 5-hour. This stress on the batteries shortness of life considerably so even though you could have eight hybrid cars for every one battery car it's debatable about how long the batteries would last in one compared to the other and what would be the total mileage out of the batteries. There is the time factor that affects batteries and a 300 mi electric vehicle is going to be caught by the calendar but a 40 mi electric vehicle is going to have its batteries super stressed. We have moved away from lithium Cobalt toward lithium iron phosphate. Batteries are improving at what appears to me a phenomenal speed. And there's no talk of battery recycling. The business that I'm in is converting gas cars to electric cars and using recycled lithium batteries from wrecked cars. This is one of those things where people will say well everybody can't do that so we're not even going to count it but it is something to be considered that no electric car that is wrecked isn't going to have its batteries thrown away they're all being sold and reused.
Too many financial analysts are scientifically illiterates, so have no comprehension of the quantum, supply, or thermodynamics. Currencies are virtual representation of energy and commodities expended. Debt is committing energy and commodities from the future with unknown supply or cost.
I was surprised by Doomberg saying there was loads of shale gas in Europe and around the world. Several months ago, I heard an expert in that field give five criteria for tight gas extraction to be economically viable, and guess what? Most of the tight gas around the world isn't viable. That satisfied me as to why the shale in Poland and Germany wasn't being produced.
I am always suspicious of any person who sounds so certain about every possible future. There is also the question what happens to ecosystems if we continue economic growth.
Me too but i wouldnt say the Doomberg Team sounded more certain than many environmentalists do.
@@teiuq
The vast majority of environmentalists today are nothing more than lobbyists. They are lobbying for giant government subsidies (public money transfers) to corporations. Philip Mirowski wrote about this more than 10 years ago: the final stage of the neoliberal "plan" to fix (for whom?) global warming is geoengineering - the ultimate life-as-a-service. We're starting to see, hear and read calls for it (ie. marketing and PR) now. We have practically zero environmentalists now. Real environmentalists would call for natural solutions (planting trees would be the most cost effective and beneficial way to reduce CO2) and reduction of consumption. Greta Thunberg and co. will never call for this. They work for billionaires and corporations, even if they don't realize it.
This was a great conversation that made me think and understand a side of our energy challenges that I hadn’t recognised before. However, I deeply struggle with Doomberg’s view of the environment. To see nature as basically an input to the economy is tragic and a dangerous path for humanity to take. Nature doesn’t exist to serve us. We are a part of nature like any other species. To take such a human-centric view where technology and ingenuity saves us is sad. Doomberg may have an amazing knowledge of energy and financial systems but his lack of understanding around overshoot, systems and complexity was clearly demonstrated.
Fair enough but how does this square with his asertion that the aspirations of the 3-4 B of the global population under developed, will totally negate any degrowth efforts. History & Human nature back up his claims
That’s speculation on his part, even a strawman. If you examine who is emitting carbon, it’s not the bottom half of the world. It’s the top tenth. There’s no assurance that the bottom 3-4B will get a higher standard of living no matter how much they want it. The opposite outcome, they remain in growing poverty, is more probable IMO.@@paullafreniere3393
@paullafreniere3393 but then we are in a game theoretical spiral where each agent is optimizing for short term self interest, but collectively we destroy our environment. Industrialized countries should degrow our site down growth significantly precisely so that developing countries can grow instead. But even that growth shouldn't be measured by GDP but by goals of ecological and social sustainable flourishing. No one knows exactly what that looks like. That's what needs to happen though.
What do you mean "for humanity to take"?
Everything you mention got you to where you are today. It seems as though a lot of people are shooting the messenger. Africa has 7 of the worlds 11% that is arable land, they have resources coming out their wazoo and a fertility rate that surpasses the baby boom and will be almost 50% of the world by 2100 and the median age last year was 18.8, so an increasing population, based in a country with resources, and we know debt is money then there's going to be a lot of debt able to be paid off for multiple decades.
I disagree Doomberg has a lack of understanding around overshoot, just that realism dictates what will happen because of what happened to get you where you are.
Doomberg to cornacopiaberg:
1. Most of the economically recoverable Unranium has already been produced. We only have enough economically recoverable Urainum to about 2050 at current consumptions. Utilitlies will not build any more Nuclear plants because they are aware of a the supply problems.
2. SMR are Dead on Arrival. This is because even small nuclear reactors are subject to the same regulatory and planning as very large reactors. Its more afforable to build one very large reactor than dozens of smaller reactors.
3. Peak Diesel is the problem. Shale Oil does not solve diesel production shortages. The global economy depends on diesel for everything: from food production (tractors, trucks, trains), to mining. to the delivery diesel trucks & diesel trains that move everything.
Isn't there uranium and rare earth metals on the moon?
bruh uranium isn't the only way to do nuclear
@@rjalaskan Yes it is, Thorium doesn't work. Its not fissile, its fertile & needs to be transformed into U233 for fission. There are zero breeder commerical reactors for even U-238 to Pu-239 cycel in operation, nor will there ever be.
Very ironic that he accuses others of denying the laws of physics.
Too many Americans have fallen into the exceptional nation black hole. Know little to nothing outside of our own geographic very localized knowledge and experience. Tendency to cut and paste that knowledge into the greater world of 8 billion precious humans with 80 million net new humans arriving annually. We also demean and degrade the love of country as it's expressed by citizens of other nations particularly when it comes to our large list of enemies dujour. In case of Russia it's been invaded many many times over last few centuries alone. WW1 Germans killed 1,5 million. WW2 27 million soviets were slaughtered many were Russian. Yet we immediately decided they'd be our lifelong enemies. Had they not stopped Germans (let's not hide behind blaming the leaders, German citizens did the cruel deeds) we'd be speaking German. At fall of USSR Gorbachev Yeltsin even Putin made it clear NATO would not be allowed to create a noose around Russia. At the time US reassured this would not occur. Of course we were lying. Citizens do express a love for Mother Russia. China no different after suffering 140 years of humiliation imposed by the west. Of course Putin is a war criminal and must be held to account. US blindness to Bush's even more catastrophic barbaric illegal war with Iraq along with occupying Afghanistan for 20 years makes him a war criminal. This geopolitical stupidity inherited from the most cruel of all empires, Great Britain, is a dead end for civilization in 2023. New forms of government and governance must come into existence if we hope to at least bend the curve on the growing poly crisis we're in today. Thanks for enlightening conversation!
Exceptional comment, thank you for it! 😊 Indeed , If you have a little more information about the wars the US and other countries started, you can see that they're not better or worse, they are all biased and corrupt to the bone. We unfortunately carry the inheritance of a very bloody and savage past, which can awake every second. It's truly frightening, because masses are very easily misled and influenced by propaganda. Individuals too, but in masses, they just reinforce their worst decisions and ideological motivations.
Every people and nation think of themselves as exceptional the only difference is some actually pull it off for awhile, the glow lasting long after the fire has died. The poly problem will not be solved. They never are. It is likely by the time it is generally recognized as a problem it has been to late to stop the run away train for some time. The problem is human nature, likely on the collective scale rather than the personal. Species don't fix problems like this, evolution does. The hand of the nature of things is not kind, not cruel merely indifferent. The majority of the Earth's biomass is below the surface and will likely wait out whatever disasters we have set into motion. As a great philosopher of our time once said. "The Earth is fine, the people are fucked." *Cheers goodnight my fellow primates. 😉
War of aggression is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
Nobody was threatening to invade Russia, in fact the rest of the world was building stronger and stronger relations with Russia. Putin is dangerously deluded.
Wow. Very intensive dialogue - thought I could just let it run, but no, I will have to sit down and really LISTEN again.
Thanks Gentlemen!
What did I just hear???? He believes we'll discover more when the price goes up????? Say W H A T ?
Sounds like standard "market forces" argument.
He was mainly referring to fracking more previously unrecoverable oil.
@@kvaka009 Exactly! Steve St Angelo would strongly disagree with him, as would Tim Watkins, Gail the Actuary and many other professionals. Maybe he gets a salary from that business and can't say otherwise?
That is normal for mined resources.
"Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of Civilization--one for home consumption and one for the heathen market?"
Mark Twain
10,000 years of Human History show us that there are only 2 kinds of Civilizations over time: (1) Sustainable and (2) Collapsed.
@JonathanLoganPDX all ancient civilizations collapsed at some point. Collapse is part of the human condition. The idea that there ever was a sustainable civilization is just plain wrong.
Meaning what? (I apologize for my apparent density for having to ask this question 😮).
This bird doesn’t care about people. Every scenario he envisions protects his own standard of living, because he cannot even imagine sharing. His commitment to private wealth precedes even wide-scale human death. So to avoid any mention of redistribution, no alternative exists in his limited perspective but increasing energy growth. This is only ‘life nourishing order’ from an individual competitive perspective, but it is a collective death drive.
What is the chicken's annual income and net worth (not to mention its carbon footprint)?
Energy may not be closed system but all hard resources are.
Fantastic episode. Great example of how to disagree well
The fact this guy is anonymous is a bit of a problem. Not just that it permits him to avoid further scrutiny. But primarily because it signals that expressing these views publicly would interfere with his other roles in the private sector. Which further signals to me that this is an insider who sees the irrationality and dangers of the system, but nevertheless partakes in it because that's how he butters his buscuit. Such a double bind is exactly the problem on the individual level. Very intelligent people see the enourmous calamities we are accelerating towards, yet are too addicted to their standards of living to avoid deceiving themselves about our true predicament.
Дуже поділяю Вашу думку, однозначно лайк!)
Imagine the things I could say if I were pseudonymous. (If you one day see a talking Sasquatch using words like “biophysical” and “web of life” please forget you read this :-)
@@thegreatsimplification lol if I see a talking Sasquatch I'll know that we have already greatly simplified our civilization.
@thegreatsimplification I was going to urge you to speak out anyway, but then I took a hard look at myself & the many ways I keep quiet out of fear. But, if someone or something is directly threatening the beings I love, there isn't anything that could shut me up. Isn't creation worth it? I'm getting there.
I did not find him alarmed in any way but rather optimistic that climate change is not such a big deal, that we ll invest in technologies to tap unlimited reserves of oil, that the world will be illuminated with small nuclear plants.... where did you see him alarmed out of curiosity?
One of the more problematic guests for me.
Has a lot of good points, alongside a lot of logical fallacies and opinion disguised poorly as fact.
Worthwhile hearing from once, wouldn’t recommend having him back.
well said
Love these personal attacks but nothing worthwhile as a counter..
Also, equating national data on per capita energy use and quality of life is not valid. The idea that GDP is directly related to energy use is well established, but GDP and quality of life is very much decoupled.
What is the point of trying to make subjective judgements about such nebulous concepts as happiness. Can't be done. Yes I know there are surveys about such things but do you think I know or care that a mythical average swede or Nigerian is happier than me(or days he is). What I can't somewhat evaluate is how rich the average swede or Nigerian is using any number of metrics. Access to calories. Clean water. Electricity. education.. and I also assume that below a certain level of wealth happiness or even the chance at a long life iis less likely. So please stop with the argument that we can all be poorer and happier. You don't know that. And whether I would consider myself happier if my standard of living declined 20 or 30 per cent is for me to decide not you or anyone else.
Doomberg still misses the fundamental question....how did the oil, coal, gas get prodced in first place 🤓
See "chemurgy" 🤓
Why is that fundamental to this discussion?
He mentioned The Deep Hot Biosphere (Thomas Gold) which argues that geologists and petroleum engineers are wrong about oil reserves. God put lots of oil in the earth for us to use, or something bonkers like that (abiogenic origin). Personally, I think King Hubbert was right about peak oil, and hopefully Doomberg will look at the data again.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
@@gibbogle
I suspect the OP is trying to bring in the abiogenic oil origin theory: that oil is essentially limitless because it's created organically deep underground.
He is spouting U.S. propaganda .
I took a few steps in my life to reduce my carbon footprint. None of them either killed me or even inconvenienced me that much. There is so much waste in this society, we have so much we can do without lowering our standard of living at all. This man is ridiculous. We are not all going to die if we have higher fuel standards for our vehicles, more public transportation, etc.
your work is admirable but we are already fucked. so the damage is already done.. but we should still diverge to nuclear as it will literally save us. on top of localization supply chains as much as possible, and learn to conserve excess and reduce waste... then harden everything from the incoming deluge we face from climate change, relocate people from the areas most likely to be affected.
We humans perceive by contrast. We value imperfections because they trigger our senses, they surprise us and generate dopamine and other chemical rewards. A computer playing a perfect game of chess quickly stops to be interesting.
This is also why ChatGPT continues to fascinate: It is imperfect. It makes interesting mistakes, gives unexpected answers.
Nice interview
I can't take anyone that is that enthusiastic about "an energy miracle" (in other words, more business as usual) rather than a rational, equitable degrowth strategy to stabilize the climate and make a better world for however many humans can survive what is to come and go on to have decent lives in a post-growth world. Continued growth of the type we've had for the past 300 years equals death for our species, period.
Well said. I'm just glad that my opinion has already been voiced eloquently by many others already.
Hear hear. I think the chicken needs to read the news
For too many end of growth equites to lower standards of living which equates to worse life which equates to doom. I thought Kevin Anderson, Nate's previous guest, articulated very well the view that equitable distribution of resources and solutions to the polycrisis are inextricably linked. Only just solutions will really work.
How do you propose to persuade people in poor countries (i.e. the majority of the world's population) not to increase their energy use and improve their standards of living?
@@gibbogle pay them and invest in different infrastructure. What's with this obsession with standards of living? What does that even mean? It seems to cover everything from having clean drinking water to being able to order air Jordan's for $400 and have them delivered by airplane from 3000 miles away. How about investing in public transport instead of everyone driving a car. How about making products without poisonous chemicals. How about reusing and fixing instead of throwing away and buying new. Or will ask these measures cut into the standards of living?
Alt Jevons paradox - the cheaper a commodity becomes, the more we will waste it, esp energy.
Yeah, doomberg seemed to really ignore that with his promotion of nuclear
My concern is that wealth accumulation (and the power it ensures) has become the prime motivating force of human endeavor. In that pursuit, those that have the most wealth and power are abandoning all other human considerations, all the things that make life on Earth desirable for most of us. Look no further than the state of the Earth itself. In the mad pursuit of ever more wealth and power, whole nations are contributing to its decimation. Greed truly is blind. And stupid.
This is true. But it is a short-run phenomenon. The rich live off the back of the working class, and they simply cannot push workers harder than they basically are already, same as with real finite resources o f any kind. It's tragic of course, since before any breaking point millions of people suffer. But in the long run increasing returns to wealth are doomed to fade once planetary boundaries are hit, then rentiers are gonna fade in significance I would guess, at least relative to today. No time before in history have such physical planetary boundaries been touched so existentially, except the days of London smog etc., which were only local growth limiting effects, so not really "planetary". So it's a whole new ball game.
ALL the cognitive biases are in play in MOST people in MOST places in MOST societies of collectives of Hömō Callidus, ESPECIALLY in the obscenely wealthy - CUZ they're trapped in their certain kind of bubble AND prisoners of the Rules of the so-called Big Money Game SUCH as it's currently setup to be played.
@@Achrononmaster wrote, " But in the long run increasing returns to wealth are doomed to fade once planetary boundaries are hit, then rentiers are gonna fade in significance I would guess, at least relative to today.." But the rentiers control the food supply chains of the workers. Until the latter replace the supply chains of essential goods now in control of the rentier class, we are in trouble.
I want to congratulate you for the great pod-casts.
About the De-growth analysis at ~37:00, maybe you should read in detail what the proponents of De-growth are suggesting on how should rich countries could implement a De-growth scenario.
Jason Hickel, for example, is proposing, based on research, that it is feasible to reduce consumption and at the same time increase citizens well being.
That is, to stop the production and consumption of things that are completely irrelevant to human well being. That will leave the space needed for other countries to develop.
I am not arguing if this is ever gonna happen,. What I am arguing is that if it is to happen, it is feasible, but there is only one generic path, that includes equality, justice and democratic procedures. Anything without those important aspects, probably will fail.
I would suggest Jason Hickel addressing the Dutch Parliement, where he most eloquently describes what a De-growth scenario would look like.
ua-cam.com/video/qrcwfyvOrLU/v-deo.html
Im all for a second part and deep dives on topics both parties feel comfortable discussing about.
Reduction in conspicuous consumption as a wealthy human reduces demand for products and services within my local market. If I walk to get vegan food every day instead of buying an SUV and driving to buy burgers, nobody buys that SUV or eats that burger in my place. I’ve made an ecologically conscientious decision to reduce my impact without any call, implied or otherwise, for less people on the planet. If concern for the environment is a luxury only for the wealthy, then GOOD because the wealthy are doing a disproportionate amount of the damage. Calling for reduced energy consumption and alternative energies isn’t a call for less people, it’s a call for people to do less.
Perhaps your best interview yet! Thanks.
39:50 Doomberg seems to think that humanity will innovate itself out of peak-liquids. "Pricespikes will trigger technological development" ROFL
And somehow Doomberg fails to mention the mining, transportation, purification and enrichment of uranium as a possible factor limiting nuclear energy 🤔
Why did the chicken cross the road? He was trying to escape Vladimir Putin’s appetite for some tasty Chicken Kiev.
I know I should listen several more times before commenting, but we have an internet ‘great simplification’ underway in our area so here I go foolishly jumping in while I am still able.
What is this Malthusian label Doomberg chicken speaks of? I’m glad I don’t keep up with these latest judgements and labels from our economic and environmental systems experts. The fact is that the number of humans on our planet, living with ever-increasing consumption and energy demands and/or expectations, is quite obviously too many living with too much. No one needs to believe that deaths must occur to still believe this is true. I had hoped we would mature into a species willing to consider wiser ‘meaning of life’ actions, a species willing to CHOOSE to decrease both variables over time, but this is occurring in wealthier countries now only because the great simplification is underway. Time’s up.
This was not a choice, and we are not wise.
Malthus and Ehrlich bravely tried to warn us about what they saw using the best information they had in their time. It’s just like us to tear down the legacies of those we’ve decided to scapegoat in our ‘enlightened’ state, still failing to perceive.
Not kind. Not necessary. Does not contribute to solutions or to generous, open, welcoming conversation.
Thought diversity - so refreshing. Thank you for your courage in discussing this material.
Gas-for-Euros was literately the only thing that made European manufacturing competitive. The workforce is prohibitively expensive in Europe. Without cheap Russian gas European industry will not survive. The idea that it was some kind of mistake for Europe to buy cheap Russian gas is nonsense. It was a win-win. The only people who came out on top from the Ukraine debacle were the Americans who secured the petrodollar as the only paper-for-energy currency and in one blow weakened Russia and made Europe completely dependent on America. If the Europeans were smart they would have cut off Ukraine immediately and made it crystal clear that they would receive no support - the war would never have ended and Ukraine would have the good sense of being wary of their neighbor.
Right or wrong doesn't matter in international politics. Ukraine has the right to join NATO as much as Cuba as the right to station Russian troops on their island. Just know that America will make a parking lot out of Havanna if they try.
Wait, the earth is not a closed system? Just making a blanket statement like this does not make it true, and is likely the foundation that gets this guest onto the wrong track.
Thermodynamically it isn't. The Earth recieves heat from the Sun and emits heat into space, and any one of these two facts is enough to make it not closed.
@@bogdanlevi We have to carefully define our terms. I know a lot of folks equate Closed Systems with what I understand to be Isolated Systems. I think it is very important to distinguish between the three types: Isolated: this is a system in which no matter or energy is being exchanged with the surroundings. Closed: this is a system in which only energy is being exchanged with the surroundings. Open: this is a system in which both matter and energy is being exchanged with the surroundings.
By these definitions, Earth is a Closed System, effectively only exchanging energy (from the Sun coming in, and radiating heat energy out). There are minute amounts of matter that also cross these barriers, but not enough to qualify Earth as an Open System.
How could we have solar power otherwise?
@@TransitionWhatcom Thank you for clarifying this, that comment by Doomberg really had me scratching my head.
@@gibbogle, by definition a Closed System allows the exchange of energy, but not an exchange of matter, so yes we have solar power available. Another way it could be talked about if you're going to leave out the distinction between Closed and Isolated systems, is to say the Earth is closed with respect to matter, but open with respect to energy. The point is that if you're going to say the Earth is an open system, then you need to clearly state in what respect it is open or closed.
The crucial point to understand in terms of energy literacy is that for all intents and purposes, the earth's inventory of atoms is constant.
According to Peter Pogany (slightly altered to incorrporate Nate's concept of the Superorganism):
"Since [the Superorganism] is a function of a diminishing terrestrial and a constant extraterrestrial (solar-lunar) flow of energy (and importantly, the second kind cannot be used without drawing from the first kind), the dynamics of our world is better analyzed by focusing on the time-dependent variable...
The average perpendicular radiation per unit of time and surface at the mean distance between the Sun and the Earth, the so-called 'solar constant,' is indeed a stable, geological fixture of life on Earth, allowing the flow of sunshine to be regarded as a fund-service with the characteristics of being inexhaustible, non-stockpilable, non-materially incorporated, non-excludable, and contingent on a non-arbitrary rate of use." (Peter Pogany, "Havoc, Thy Name is Twenty-First Century")
In short, we do indeed live on a finite planet whose material resources degrade over time.
Ecologically and climatology ignorance
This is a great channel
Doomberg shoulda just passed on the environment question. Geez, that was a bad response, and very uninformed there at the end.
Nate was very respectful and had great questions. Doomberg was very us vs. them in his arguments, China and Rusia are the bad guys etc. He doesn't have much knowledge about many of the environmental issues.
But I do somewhat agree with him on nuclear.