"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.
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
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...
High tech growth and the “AI revolution” simply require more energy production. Nuclear is the clear answer. Doomberg has stated that he does not own any uranium; he believes that the physics is clear and if we want more energy, renewables aren’t going to get us there. We know how to do nuclear fission; let’s just do it.
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 !!
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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 TH-cam.
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
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
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
What a gold mine of a conversation! So many topics needs a double click as I felt they were a bit rushed. Would be great to have Doomberg on again to get a perspective on Europe, Africa and Asia reg. energy, food and finance. There maybe a desire in Asia to increase energy use, but the issue is access (many are bankrupt like Pakistan). Similarly can Europe sustain its social obligations esp. via migration as a lever to increase economic output when in reality its opting for energy poverty by policy. Complex topics that really need deep dives
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
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.
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.
Doomberg is not getting a lot of love in the comments, but this was a great conversation and a good reality check on several important topics. Several more necessary pieces to the puzzle.
Greatest takeaway for me - every molecule of fossil that saved from being burned in the West, will be used elsewhere. It's not hubris, that pushes man to get everything he can, it's just that - "if the other guy don't use it we will, and take his place, while we're at it" Nor is there any public awareness of a climate issue, in most emerging economies, they all want a car, a good airco house, yes, a pool would be nice , academies for the kids, and a steak every day. No fear of metling glaciers anywhere - until the rains stops coming and crops harvests fail.
Yep, tracking this closely in the uranium and enrichment space with looming Russian import sanctions. Appears it will likely mimic the last year of shifts in Russian oil sales, just on a much longer time horizon. Chart the Russian oil sales from pre-conflict to now. Incredible volume shifts/contract restructuring from the west to the east... that oil is definitely still making it to the global market, sanctions be darned. Seems the only thing the sanctions have accomplished is longer shipping routes and higher prices.
@@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.
Two really thoughtful and engaging people with widely divergent but informed and reasoned views of great importance. But both are true gentlemen who can engage with people who disagree with them without being disagreeable. More please.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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 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
@@gibbogle Mainly because Nate was interviewing, not debating. I am sure there is some profound disagreement that was laid aside in favor of Doomberg more fully expressing their views.
'... 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 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. th-cam.com/video/qrcwfyvOrLU/w-d-xo.html
Thank you for modeling the kind of conversations we need more of in public discourse. I do wonder what it'll take for folks to not presume malthusian-premise when pro-complex life and pro-ecosystem is more of the motivating force. Nate - I was half-expecting you to ask Doomberg about his take on the 'carbon pulse'. Always 'up and to the right' is not reflective of historical realities but hey, maybe this time is different ;). At the very least, I hope your podcast gains wider awareness and new/more listeners will enjoy your other interviews. This one is a keeper in your time capsule.
Nate, this was one of the best interviews of Doomberg that I have seen! You really illicited Doomberg to go on some deep dives! I'm so happy Doomberg emailed this podcast to all of their subscribers. Please have more high level conversations with Doomberg in the future. I have subscribed to your podcast!
Yeah, I've watched a half dozen Doomberg podcasts now and they're always the same - surface level coverage of the same topics. Nate pushed him here by asking much deeper questions than he normally is asked. I wasn't too surprised by his answers overall though.
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
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.
Nate handled this interview with grace, poise, and intelligence. Doomberg is a clever rhetorician whose primary tactic is to pose as a common-sense realist standing up against elite snake oil salesmen, fanatics, and psychos who are trying to ruin the lives of ordinary people. He plays this card over and over again. But Nate retained composure and behaved like a gentleman, showing Doomberg's sneering, arrogant, and cavalier assertions more respect than they deserved. Many comments here have already pointed out the dangerous over-simplifications and questionable assumptions in Doomberg's thinking. But I would like to just note that, unlike many of Nate's other conversation partners, like his friend Daniel Schmachtenberger, Doomberg does not seem to think at all about the cultural-philosophical-metaphysical-religious assumptions that both grow from and facilitate the ecologically catastrophic way of life in consumerist societies. Yet, Doomberg's worldview should not be free of scrutiny on this point. He likes to tell us we must face realistically the calculus of gains and losses in all our decisions and not pretend life is always just good versus evil. Okay. What losses come with his worldview and the decision to use nuclear power to continue business as usual in our consumerist cultures. Are there really no downsides? I would like to hear Nate talk more with people about this, making specific the blind spots and obfuscations in Doomberg's supposedly realistic and common sense thinking.
My point is not that Doomberg is incorrect in the facts he gives attention to seeing. My point was simply that Doomberg has a whole set of assumptions about what is sometimes called "religion" or "metaphysics" or "philosophy" or, more plainly, "the deeper meaning of life". But he does not share them with us. They are hidden behind his back as he sneers at people whom I consider honest spokespeople for certain metaphysical, philosophical, and religious points of view. Just one example: many (not all) environmentalists are something like pantheists or panentheists. Doomberg just mocks them as fools for not living in the world of his religion; Doomberg never bothers to answer their metaphysical concerns, but assumes ad hominem against the "environmentalists" is sufficient. Doomberg seems, from what he asserts, to belong (implicitly and semi-consciously) to some kind of religion of war and war gods; the deepest meaning of life is competition, avarice, and war (through market forces primarily, but other means if that is what it takes for our side to win); greed is good because it is "realistic" and "natural"; life is war and only suckers think otherwise, etc. etc. etc. Okay, one can think and live that way. But there are 101 religious and metaphysical assumptions behind this thinking, and it would be good to make them explicit and put them up for discussion in a fair intellectual contest of ideas. The members of Doomberg's sect do not have a monopoly on common sense, and they should not pretend otherwise. Nor do the pantheists have this monopoly. Nor do the Buddhists. Nor do the monotheists. But it is not intellectually honest to pretend that one is simply "realistic" and following "common sense" while ignoring very real alternative big-picture systems of meaning-defining and value-asserting that are different from one's own. Questions about money, power, environmental destruction, and energy are all questions about the meaning of life. We cannot enter discussions of these matters pretending one's own views on the meaning. of life are self-evident and alternative views not worth taking seriously. @@_yossarian_
I think I see your point but see most of Doomberg's difference with some of the environmentalist crowd coming from not a religious, but a realist approach. I can speak for myself and highlight an example. (Disclaimer, if I had a religion it would be the reverence for self-organizing systems like galaxies, stars, and life). A lot of my friends, if they had a button that halted global fossil fuel extraction, would hit that button immediately. They I think are missing two things. First and most important, would be the total global war for energy resources that would occur because, being a realist, I have read history and know that if standards of living decrease in a country war usually follows, and typically it is a war for resources to recover or improve standards of living (energy consumption is a proxy for standard of living). So I support massive investments in renewables and small nuclear reactors tech while allowing fossil fuel industry to continue to develop its horizontal drilling tech and extracting shale oil. Secondly, I'm not convinced that the most elegant and efficient solution to CO2 in the atmosphere is to stop burning fossil fuels alltogether. I think there's the possibility for solar or nuclear plants that extract C02 combining it with H from water to make synthetic fuels, thus achieving a closed CO2 loop that allows us to continue burning gas in internal combustion vehicles responsibly. Also, one of Doomberg's points which I think is being missed by a lot of these comments is that specifically CO2 in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel combustion is a different issue than the destruction of habitat through other types of pollution such as pesticides and other synthetic chemicals. CO2 in the atmosphere I believe will be used to make synthetic fuels in the not so distant future. @@kevmong1966cassian
All very good points. Doomberg's point about CCS (carbon capture and sequestration), and even the manufacture of fuel cells with carbon, is worth considering. But think about this: is it really true that war for energy is the only and inevitable result of downward changes in GDP caused by reduced use of fossil fuels? One might say that "abundance" (the overall pie) could shrink yet be more equally distributed and there would be no riots because the bottom 90% of the world would actually have a better life. The rich elites who hoard the "abundance" might foment energy wars to maintain their excessive wealth, but that is not a law of nature or realism. Picking up my earlier point: many people who are not idiots believe that "abundance" created by high-energy use is not actually making most of those in the high-energy, high-GDP world happy. Suicide rates in China, North America, and Europe are shockingly high. Most people could be / would be happier if they had abundance in other things (relationships, belonging, etc.) other than luxurious material well-being. So long as basic needs are met, the luxurious consumerist lifestyle in the wealthy high-GDP world could go away and most people might be happier overall. But the smaller GDP would have to be more evenly distributed AND cultures that value greed, conspicuous consumption, and excessive wealth accumulation will have to undergo a psychological-spiritual transformation of values. Global energy wars might be a result of reduced fossil fuel use (as Doomberg dogmatically asserts). But not necessarily. Alternative ways of life are possible, and perhaps might even be a more realistic outcome of a reduction in the use of fossil fuels. @@_yossarian_
I very much believe that there are alternate ways of life. But rather than support a forced change in society's relationship with energy I would prefer advocates of change to lead by example (I am writing this from an off-grid cabin in the woods of Maine for example). What concerns me is that every time in history there has been a significant decrease in the Energy Return on Investment for a society, instability followed. Right now, we are in one of these periods as US shale oil peaked in EROI terms sometime around 2018. The region of Ukraine that is currently occupied is the richest in fossil fuels in the area, I doubt this is a coincidence. This morning I woke up to see more evidence of this global instability increasing as it appears Hamas and Israel are at it again. Now I wish this were not the case but it is, and beyond any forced change to our energy production we are in an era where the EROI of fossil fuels is decreasing. The pinnacle of western society and the height of the US empire occurred in the two decades post WW2; but by the 1970s the EROI of global fossil fuel production had peaked and we have been in descent every since. So when you say that some smart people think that abundance did not create happiness I would say it did, but that we have to realize that the decline started 50 years ago. I would say it's really picking up now and we are in for a very rough decade. The good news is that we currently have the solution. Nuclear power has the ability to provide even higher EROI energy production than fossil fuels ever did but currently there is a lot of propaganda surrounding its danger. I realized that I had internalized this propaganda when, as a college student, I did research at Jefferson National Lab and I was made to wear a badge on my shirt to detect radiation. I was very terrified at first but then I realized radioactive contamination is very similar to more common chemical contaminates. Both types of contaminates are invisible and If they get on you then you can develop cancer in the future. I then realized that I had been raised to be terrified of anything 'nuclear' but that I considered lead on my walls an annoyance. I think it's much more likely that through abundance of energy, society will figure out how to live in harmony with the ecosystem than it would if we had energy scarcity. In the latter case all a person can do is think about where their next meal is coming from or how to not freeze to death. In a world of abundance cooperation is easier. If I could pick one thing to 'fix' it would be our monoculture food production. I think developing an economically competitive scheme where our farms are effectively a biodiverse, functioning ecosystem would be the best thing we could do to reverse the mass extinction. The great big fields of corn of one genetic type is a vestige of the last industrial revolution. What we need is a new system that implements AI to harvest from a diverse ecosystem so crops don't have to planted of one type in great big rows. But I would not advocate for this to immediately replace our current system. I would want it to be refined and compete in a fair marketplace so that we would not have an accidental decrease in food production. I really would urge anyone who thinks that the solution is to immediately cut our fossil fuel energy production to read about energy history. One of my favorites is "Power to the People: Energy in Europe over the Last Five Centuries"
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?
Thank you for the dialogue from varied perspectives. Observations from various perspectives have overlapping intersections where they agree (like a Venn Diagram). In aggregate, the overlapping intersection of the Venn Diagram helps calibrate our understanding of how the world actually is. While we may not like it or want it to be the way it is, it's helpful to see the world as it ACTUALLY is.
Chat with Chat GPT 3.5 exploring the cognitive dissonance this podcast created for me: Q: What is it called when two seemingly opposite views or theories are both true? "When two seemingly opposite views or theories are both true or valid in certain contexts, it's often referred to as a "paradox" or "dialectical tension." This situation can lead to cognitive dissonance or philosophical exploration, as it challenges our conventional understanding and pushes us to consider more complex or nuanced perspectives. Embracing such paradoxes can often lead to deeper insights and a better understanding of the underlying complexities of a topic." Q: Both theories or models are probably incomplete? "When two seemingly opposite views or theories are both true in certain contexts, it often indicates that both theories are incomplete or provide an incomplete picture of the underlying reality. This can stem from limitations in our current understanding, the complexity of the phenomenon being studied, or the fact that different theories may be applicable in different situations. In the realm of science and philosophy, it's common for theories to be refined, expanded, or replaced over time as new information and insights emerge. This process of refining and updating theories is a fundamental part of the advancement of knowledge and understanding. As our understanding deepens, we may find ways to reconcile apparent contradictions or integrate seemingly opposing viewpoints into a more comprehensive framework." Q: What is Cognitive dissonance? "Cognitive dissonance refers to the psychological discomfort or tension that arises when a person holds conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or values, or when their behavior contradicts their beliefs. It is a state of mental discomfort that occurs when there is a perceived inconsistency between one's thoughts, feelings, and actions. Cognitive dissonance theory, developed by psychologist Leon Festinger in 1957, suggests that people are motivated to reduce this discomfort by either changing their beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors to align with each other, or by finding ways to justify or rationalize the inconsistencies. For example, if someone is aware that smoking is harmful to health (belief) but continues to smoke (behavior), they may experience cognitive dissonance. To reduce this discomfort, they might either quit smoking, downplay the health risks, or find other reasons to justify their behavior (such as social benefits or stress relief). While cognitive dissonance can play a role in dealing with conflicting views or theories, it's important to note that the concept of cognitive dissonance primarily focuses on the individual's psychological response to inconsistency within their own beliefs and actions, rather than directly addressing the reconciliation of opposing theories on a broader scale."
Donella Meadows in the book "Thinking in Systems" pointed out that the highest leverage points in change are understanding that all models are just flawed models of reality. She called this "Transcending Paradigms". "There is yet one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible, to realize that no paradigm is "true," that every one, including the one that sweetly shapes your own worldview, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension.".... "...There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work hard at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of not-knowing. In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly, letting go and dancing with the system."
-I would like to hear Art Berman's opinion on oil consumption in 2040. - I had the impression of an almost "magical" look on nuclear energy - I had the feeling that it had a Dr Spock tone that ultimately did not fit with the final "Deep Optimism" - I think we all have a problem when we want to go back and forth from the simple to the complex - When you put a few bacteria in a Petri dish with a good culture broth and a good temperature and they grow exponentially, not only does growth stop due to lack of energy, but also due to the production of toxic metabolites resulting from the use of that energy. - When I see images of Black Friday I think that the human crowd would pluck the green chicken and eat it roasted, me too because I have a good amount of saturated fat - Finally I invite you to see Goya's engraving "The dreams of reason produce monsters" and of course see the black paintings -Ahhhh I forgot what we do with GOD Elon Musk and his acolytes who see a rocket take off and after 85 seconds it loses control and ends up exploding NOT reaching its goal, they say applauding, IT HAS BEEN A SUCCESS.
@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.
Just few things that stood out to me from the interview: - Hydrogen fuel cannot be easily replace gasoline in IC engines. It's actually very hard to build hydrogen based IC engines. - The guest is clearly slimy and repeats points that we have heard over and over again from economists. Doomberg speaks fast and it feels like he overwhelms you with "facts" in his answers from vastly different problems.
A very educated, reasonable discussion of an important topic. And although I don't pretend to understand all of it, I'm left with a much better idea of the "energy economy ". Thank you.
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!
I don't want to be overly critical with all my comments, Doomberg did have some good points sprinkled in there. For example, he talks about how third world nations lost out when Europe gobbled up oil and gas supplies worldwide as they lost supply from Russia. In Reality Roundtable #1, one of the 4 myths Simon Michaux lists is "We in Europe are a geopolitical power. We will ensure that if we run short that we'll get supply before anyone else". It's funny.... but that's exactly what happened.
Michaux of course was assuming a voice, to be sure, WHEN he said that... Just to re-contextualize his quoted remark, CUZ Simon is well aware of the ethics, amongst other aspects, in the issue.
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!
One of the main efficiency issues is the conversion of primary energy inputs into Quality of Life. Whilst the BTU side is readily quantifiable, the quantification of QoL is a political question. What makes for a good life?
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 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?
Enjoyed that very much Nate. Agree with almost everything Doomberg said, but it is what was left unsaid that most concerns me. Sure - all systems have fundamental constraints of energy and materials. Recycling of materials is needed for the rarer materials. Long term, burning hydrogen isn't really an option, because any molecules that leak are essentially lost (as within a few days they have percolated up through the atmosphere and are lost to space. So if we are thinking in terms of sustainability over the millions of years timescale, then no to hydrogen. But agree with Doomberg, that we are a creative species, and we can solve these classes of issues without much difficulty, if we have contexts that support such things. What is harder, is getting people to understand evolution sufficiently deeply to be able to see that cooperation is fundamental to the emergence and survival of complexity at every level, and the common myths (dogma of economics) that competition is fundamental and can solve all problems is not simply wrong, but contains existential level risk in the over simplifications embodied in it. The current economic system is one of the major issues. The idea that "value in exchange" (market value) can be generalised to be equivalent to all other forms of value, is not simply wrong, but contains several different classes of existential level risk. Jevons' "paradox" is real in some contexts, but is not as general as many would have us believe. I went through an energy intensive phase, where I owned a V8 power jet boat, drove cars far too fast, became a pilot and did a lot of very energy intensive things, but now I no longer do such things. My cars are small 4 cylinder vehicles, which are reasonably fuel efficient, and I use my electric bike where it is reasonable to do so. So most of us settle down to living lifestyles we quite enjoy, without ever expanding needs for energy consumption. For most people, single digits of KW are sufficient energy use. So agree with Doomberg that building a sustainable and interesting future, where people get to enjoy reasonable degrees of freedom and security, does seem to be reasonably possible, but not within a purely market based approach, as in the presence of advanced automation there are just too many emerging levels of perverse incentive sets in markets. One of the things that markets did do reasonably well was support distributed decision making and diversity and redundancy - all of which are critical to long term security. Central control is not a survivable option, and we do need levels of central coordination around real limits, and part of that needs to be acknowledging the need for diversity in all domains (which is antithetical to hegemony at any level). And if we want a really long term future, then we need to get off planet, as there are many classes of existential level risk that can only be solved by significant sets of technology off planet. It also solves several classes of social diversity issues, as growth off planet can be relative unconstrained for about 1,000 years, before it runs into the limits of physics at that scale. Agree with Doomberg that we can cooperate to solve these issues, and deliver a future where all agents experience what they consider reasonable levels of security, freedom and resources. And doing that is deeply more complex than most have consider the possibility of complexity. And it is clear to me, beyond any shadow of remaining reasonable doubt, that competition tends to destroy complexity long term, unless it is built on a cooperative base, and the more complex the systems, the deeper that cooperative base must be. We either achieve that, or the human experiment is over, destroyed by competition, by over simplification of the irreducibly complex, by attachment to dogma and belief over a willingness to explore novelty and be open to evidence that contradicts cherished beliefs.
James Hansen reports (in 2022) that greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing is 4.1 W/m² larger in 2021 than in 1750, equivalent to 2×CO₂ forcing. Eventual global warming due to today’s GHG forcing alone - after slow feedbacks operate - is about 10°C. [That's 18°F, and as of 2023 we're only at less than 2°C!] How will you negotiate your way out of this reality when the fires, floods, or tornadoes come to your town?
@@dbadagna If you wish to reduce insolation by 0.41%, and you use 10nm aluminum foil, that amounts to some 70,000T of foil, which using a rocket capable of lifting 300T to orbit would take some 230 launches (thanks Elon). As one potential solution - and of course it is far more complex than that, but it gives a pointer to the scale of the issue and a general class of real solutions. Long term, far better to use mass from the moon deployed to L1 to allow us to modulate the energy from the sun to mitigate ice ages etc and hold temperate and sea level within bounds we currently experience. A vastly greater amount of lunar mass is required to mitigate a reasonably large class of existential level risks, as well as provide us with greater degrees of freedom. Without an acceptance of a global need to cooperate in diversity, deploying such powerful technology embodies greater risk than the original problem. So it is a deeply complex and deeply dimensional strategic territory that I have been actively exploring at various levels since the Cuban missile crisis. Until people generally see that, contrary to popular dogma, the evolution of complexity is actually based upon and sustained by cooperation (all levels, necessarily), then we are at serious risk.
Дід, що ти дурниці розказуєш😂 Люди ніколи не зможуть жити за межами планети Земля. Технологія для виправлення чогось приносить нові проблеми, які також виправляються технологією, потім з'являються нові, для яких знову шукають технологічне рішення і т.д. Планета Земля існує більше 4 млрд років а життя близько 1,5 млрд і воно еволюціонувало, самопідтримувалось і адаптувалося, розширювало біорізноманіття виходячи з космогеобіохімічних та фізичних законів. Його не можливо поліпшити без постійної підтримки(деградації енергії), його можна тільки порушити і очікувати нові цикли самовідновлення і адаптації. Краще за природні цикли життя зануреним в біосферу(те що ми робили протягом сотень тисяч років) немає нічого. Не маніпулюйте термодинамікою і фізикою
@@ЄвгенійДаценко-н9л What I am talking about is what defines humanity - our ability to create stories, ways of thinking that influence our behaviour and technologies, that then influence our environment. We are strongly biased to prefer simple stories, with certainty, but that does not actually appear to be the sort of reality we live in (though such biases are necessarily installed by the evolutionary process). Yes - reality seems to be an open system. Everything we do has unexpected consequences, that is part of the definition of an open system. If you look at the geological record, extinction level events are actually reasonably common. So, yes - life as a general class has endured, and not so much for specific species, genera, or classes of life. Yes - evolution is an amazing process, and it is deeply complex. I have been exploring the depths of that complexity for over 50 years, The more I know, the more I know I don't know.... Certainly some aspects of life are cyclic, and some are not. Both closed and open systems seem to be necessary parts of life. I am all for sustaining nature, I chair a charitable trust devoted to ensuring the survival of an endanger seabird, and am involved in local and regional biodiversity, biosecurity and water management efforts. Too few people actually get out in nature, and get any real sort of appreciation for the beauty and complexity actually present in life - most live in cities and malls and social networks. If we wish to survive long term, then we need to develop mitigation strategies for all existential level risks, and there will likely be eternal evolving risk sets, that will require eternal creativity and vigilance. Certainly, life is based on energy flows, and there is a lot of energy from the sun that does not reach the earth that could potentially be utilised to support life. So if you would rather die than be responsible, cooperative and creative, then that is a choice you can make, but do not try to impose that choice upon me or anyone else.
@@tedhoward2606 Наведіть приклади, де життя може бути закритою системою? Ви кажете нісенітницю, енергетично неможливо вловлювати іншу енергію окрім тієї яка надходить на Землю від Сонця. Ви говорите про фотоелектричну фабрику яка складається з мільйонів гектарів сонячних панелей в якійсь точці у космосі, що передаватиме енергію технологією телепортації?😂 Фотосинтез - єдиний масштабний енергетично продуктивний процес на планеті і через ланцюг живлення поширює енергію на вищі рівні та створює порядок і цикл захоплення і перетворення енергії. Все інше виробництво по суті є не виробництвом, а деградацією матерії і енергії, згідно з другим законом термодинаміки. Щоб Ви не робили, все зламається і чим "тонше" ваш виріб тим швидше він прийде в несправність, будь що, без підтримки і подальших енерговкладень перетворюватиметься на сміття.
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!
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
"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.
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.
Wind energy makes sense in areas where there are regular strong winds. For example, the upper Great Plains / Canadian Prairies or offshore of Atlantic Canada or the Northeastern USA.
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.
Two of my favorite youtubers! Nate is my favorite collapse expert, and Doomberg is one of the best macro guys. I hope they keep collaborating. I think Doomberg had great points about Jevon's paradox making degrowth unrealistic (unless we have an authoritarian global government with CBDC ration coupons), and Nate was right to push back on Doomberg's overly optimistic view on tech saving us and how bad climate change/ ecosystem collapse might be.
You wrote, "I think Doomberg had great points about Jevon's paradox making degrowth unrealistic..." But both the paradox and your idea that degrowth is unrealistic are rooted in the malignancy that characterizes modern economies that must grow in order to be politically tenable, regardless of the ecological consequences.
@@greenftechn News flash: degrowth is unrealistic in the timeframe needed to actually matter. It will take 70+ years to create a grassroots degrowth movement (takes several generations to change people's minds) and collapse of the economy and agriculture will likely happen before then (climate change, demographics, debt bubble). Bill Rees has an interview with Nate in which he explains this. For austerity measures to actually happen soon, we'd need a global government. The WEF, UN, and even national governments have not been coy about this. The loss of freedom and rights will be unprecedented, which is why Doomberg is firmly against this. I don't like it either, but I think it is inevitable and is our best chance to avoid mass extinction. Pick your winner (trolley problem). China and India have both said that they will keep burning coal until 2070-2080. India, Indonesia, Nigeria-- all high population countries-- are expected to receive lots of money for future investment/ development. Most likely, we will keep demanding oil, coal, and natural gas in the next few decades. The US needs to rebuild its infrastructure for EV vehicles and green energy and to reshore manufacturing-- it is going all in on technology saving us. I'm as skeptical as anyone about technology saving us, but this Green New Deal will make a lot of politicians and stock holders very wealthy in the meantime (crony capitalism). As far as I can tell, there is no serious degrowth interest among the elites. They throw out little bits here and there, but nothing that would really matter. We've already pumped out enough carbon for 10 degrees Celsius (James Hansen), but we act like "there's still time" and "there's still hope." No, we have 30 years of lagging emissions which will cause us to hit around 2 degrees by 2050, and net zero is unlikely to happen. The proposals-- direct carbon capture, replacing shipping containers with sailboats (will require the reshoring of manufacturing locally and deglobalization), increasing the price of carbon (carbon tax, inflation on food/ energy), nuclear energy, 15 minute cities, and other measures-- will keep "business as usual" until we collapse-- which means further ecosystem damage and feedback loops (methane leaking from permafrost, ocean acidification, overfishing, rainforest destruction, etc). It's the worst case scenario happening. Degrowth is hopium. I was in that camp for a bit. But then I realized that we didn't have the time for it to work, when I started thinking through what degrowth would actually require to be implemented on a mass scale quickly. Degrowth should be encouraged at the individual level-- every little bit counts-- but it is not going to prevent collapse... a brutal, painful collapse.
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.
Fukushima was zero 9's in a grid down condition. We need to see a report how triple-redundant cooling systems failed on 3 separate reactors. We have many facilities of the same design in the US, are these systems tested for grid and generator failures. If not, why not, if so, how did the steam powered backup handle shutdown and cooling with no electricity available? I'm not anti-nuclear, these systems need to be tested and properly insured and bonded by third parties for the cost of containment and cleanup.
Interesting perspective. It astounds me how so many experts in the fields of energy and economics also tend to be so uninformed when it comes to ecological, and earth systems sciences .
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"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.
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
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...
High tech growth and the “AI revolution” simply require more energy production. Nuclear is the clear answer. Doomberg has stated that he does not own any uranium; he believes that the physics is clear and if we want more energy, renewables aren’t going to get us there. We know how to do nuclear fission; let’s just do it.
Hands down the best interview of doomberg I’ve watched. Great job creating these questions and guiding the conversation.
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 !!
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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
“ 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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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 TH-cam.
"If I didn’t kill that puppy, someone else would have". Doombergs argument against degrowth applied to killing puppies.
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
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.
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".
This was sensational. Deeply enjoyed the chat. Learned a whole lot and I wish it is not too late.
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.
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 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.
I did not expect that from a green chicken. Awesome what TH-cam can bring you for free. Thanks!
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.
What a gold mine of a conversation! So many topics needs a double click as I felt they were a bit rushed. Would be great to have Doomberg on again to get a perspective on Europe, Africa and Asia reg. energy, food and finance. There maybe a desire in Asia to increase energy use, but the issue is access (many are bankrupt like Pakistan). Similarly can Europe sustain its social obligations esp. via migration as a lever to increase economic output when in reality its opting for energy poverty by policy. Complex topics that really need deep dives
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?
Perhaps your best interview yet! Thanks.
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.
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.
Doomberg is not getting a lot of love in the comments, but this was a great conversation and a good reality check on several important topics. Several more necessary pieces to the puzzle.
Greatest takeaway for me - every molecule of fossil that saved from being burned in the West, will be used elsewhere. It's not hubris, that pushes man to get everything he can, it's just that - "if the other guy don't use it we will, and take his place, while we're at it"
Nor is there any public awareness of a climate issue, in most emerging economies, they all want a car, a good airco house, yes, a pool would be nice , academies for the kids, and a steak every day. No fear of metling glaciers anywhere - until the rains stops coming and crops harvests fail.
Yep, tracking this closely in the uranium and enrichment space with looming Russian import sanctions. Appears it will likely mimic the last year of shifts in Russian oil sales, just on a much longer time horizon. Chart the Russian oil sales from pre-conflict to now. Incredible volume shifts/contract restructuring from the west to the east... that oil is definitely still making it to the global market, sanctions be darned. Seems the only thing the sanctions have accomplished is longer shipping routes and higher prices.
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
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.
Two really thoughtful and engaging people with widely divergent but informed and reasoned views of great importance. But both are true gentlemen who can engage with people who disagree with them without being disagreeable. More please.
Doomberg is a world of unreasonable. His view is callous and disingenuous because his assertions appeal to baser instincts of selfishness and fear.
Explain
Doomberg's constant labelling environmentalists as "Malthusian" is rather disagreeable.
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.
Wonderful to have such information for free!
Nate, you are an excellent interviewer. I have so much more to say but yeah.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nate. I’ve now seen about a dozen interviews with doomberg and this is by far one of the best. You’re a fantastically humble interviewer and host.
Yeah, Nate is as humble and sincere, as you can get, which is an absolute necessity, if we are to get a grip on any of this.
Thought diversity - so refreshing. Thank you for your courage in discussing this material.
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.
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.
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.
Im all for a second part and deep dives on topics both parties feel comfortable discussing about.
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 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
Was not expecting to see Doomberg on here. Love that you can disagree to make for much better conversation for the listeners
I didn't hear much disagreement.
@@gibbogle Mainly because Nate was interviewing, not debating. I am sure there is some profound disagreement that was laid aside in favor of Doomberg more fully expressing their views.
'... 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.
Steve Keen was the first academic economist I can recall who realized the role of energy in economics, and incorporated it explicitly in his models
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.
th-cam.com/video/qrcwfyvOrLU/w-d-xo.html
Fun how dividing batteries didn't thought about electric bicycles batteries in the maths.
Remember human power.
Thank you for modeling the kind of conversations we need more of in public discourse. I do wonder what it'll take for folks to not presume malthusian-premise when pro-complex life and pro-ecosystem is more of the motivating force.
Nate - I was half-expecting you to ask Doomberg about his take on the 'carbon pulse'. Always 'up and to the right' is not reflective of historical realities but hey, maybe this time is different ;). At the very least, I hope your podcast gains wider awareness and new/more listeners will enjoy your other interviews. This one is a keeper in your time capsule.
Fantastic episode. Great example of how to disagree well
Nate, this was one of the best interviews of Doomberg that I have seen! You really illicited Doomberg to go on some deep dives! I'm so happy Doomberg emailed this podcast to all of their subscribers. Please have more high level conversations with Doomberg in the future. I have subscribed to your podcast!
Yeah, I've watched a half dozen Doomberg podcasts now and they're always the same - surface level coverage of the same topics.
Nate pushed him here by asking much deeper questions than he normally is asked. I wasn't too surprised by his answers overall though.
^This is definitely an AI generated comme t
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
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.
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.
Nate handled this interview with grace, poise, and intelligence. Doomberg is a clever rhetorician whose primary tactic is to pose as a common-sense realist standing up against elite snake oil salesmen, fanatics, and psychos who are trying to ruin the lives of ordinary people. He plays this card over and over again. But Nate retained composure and behaved like a gentleman, showing Doomberg's sneering, arrogant, and cavalier assertions more respect than they deserved.
Many comments here have already pointed out the dangerous over-simplifications and questionable assumptions in Doomberg's thinking. But I would like to just note that, unlike many of Nate's other conversation partners, like his friend Daniel Schmachtenberger, Doomberg does not seem to think at all about the cultural-philosophical-metaphysical-religious assumptions that both grow from and facilitate the ecologically catastrophic way of life in consumerist societies.
Yet, Doomberg's worldview should not be free of scrutiny on this point. He likes to tell us we must face realistically the calculus of gains and losses in all our decisions and not pretend life is always just good versus evil. Okay. What losses come with his worldview and the decision to use nuclear power to continue business as usual in our consumerist cultures. Are there really no downsides?
I would like to hear Nate talk more with people about this, making specific the blind spots and obfuscations in Doomberg's supposedly realistic and common sense thinking.
I find your take very interesting, can you say precisely what Doomberg is incorrect about
My point is not that Doomberg is incorrect in the facts he gives attention to seeing. My point was simply that Doomberg has a whole set of assumptions about what is sometimes called "religion" or "metaphysics" or "philosophy" or, more plainly, "the deeper meaning of life". But he does not share them with us. They are hidden behind his back as he sneers at people whom I consider honest spokespeople for certain metaphysical, philosophical, and religious points of view. Just one example: many (not all) environmentalists are something like pantheists or panentheists. Doomberg just mocks them as fools for not living in the world of his religion; Doomberg never bothers to answer their metaphysical concerns, but assumes ad hominem against the "environmentalists" is sufficient.
Doomberg seems, from what he asserts, to belong (implicitly and semi-consciously) to some kind of religion of war and war gods; the deepest meaning of life is competition, avarice, and war (through market forces primarily, but other means if that is what it takes for our side to win); greed is good because it is "realistic" and "natural"; life is war and only suckers think otherwise, etc. etc. etc.
Okay, one can think and live that way. But there are 101 religious and metaphysical assumptions behind this thinking, and it would be good to make them explicit and put them up for discussion in a fair intellectual contest of ideas. The members of Doomberg's sect do not have a monopoly on common sense, and they should not pretend otherwise. Nor do the pantheists have this monopoly. Nor do the Buddhists. Nor do the monotheists. But it is not intellectually honest to pretend that one is simply "realistic" and following "common sense" while ignoring very real alternative big-picture systems of meaning-defining and value-asserting that are different from one's own. Questions about money, power, environmental destruction, and energy are all questions about the meaning of life. We cannot enter discussions of these matters pretending one's own views on the meaning. of life are self-evident and alternative views not worth taking seriously.
@@_yossarian_
I think I see your point but see most of Doomberg's difference with some of the environmentalist crowd coming from not a religious, but a realist approach. I can speak for myself and highlight an example. (Disclaimer, if I had a religion it would be the reverence for self-organizing systems like galaxies, stars, and life). A lot of my friends, if they had a button that halted global fossil fuel extraction, would hit that button immediately. They I think are missing two things. First and most important, would be the total global war for energy resources that would occur because, being a realist, I have read history and know that if standards of living decrease in a country war usually follows, and typically it is a war for resources to recover or improve standards of living (energy consumption is a proxy for standard of living). So I support massive investments in renewables and small nuclear reactors tech while allowing fossil fuel industry to continue to develop its horizontal drilling tech and extracting shale oil. Secondly, I'm not convinced that the most elegant and efficient solution to CO2 in the atmosphere is to stop burning fossil fuels alltogether. I think there's the possibility for solar or nuclear plants that extract C02 combining it with H from water to make synthetic fuels, thus achieving a closed CO2 loop that allows us to continue burning gas in internal combustion vehicles responsibly.
Also, one of Doomberg's points which I think is being missed by a lot of these comments is that specifically CO2 in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel combustion is a different issue than the destruction of habitat through other types of pollution such as pesticides and other synthetic chemicals. CO2 in the atmosphere I believe will be used to make synthetic fuels in the not so distant future.
@@kevmong1966cassian
All very good points. Doomberg's point about CCS (carbon capture and sequestration), and even the manufacture of fuel cells with carbon, is worth considering.
But think about this: is it really true that war for energy is the only and inevitable result of downward changes in GDP caused by reduced use of fossil fuels? One might say that "abundance" (the overall pie) could shrink yet be more equally distributed and there would be no riots because the bottom 90% of the world would actually have a better life. The rich elites who hoard the "abundance" might foment energy wars to maintain their excessive wealth, but that is not a law of nature or realism.
Picking up my earlier point: many people who are not idiots believe that "abundance" created by high-energy use is not actually making most of those in the high-energy, high-GDP world happy. Suicide rates in China, North America, and Europe are shockingly high. Most people could be / would be happier if they had abundance in other things (relationships, belonging, etc.) other than luxurious material well-being. So long as basic needs are met, the luxurious consumerist lifestyle in the wealthy high-GDP world could go away and most people might be happier overall. But the smaller GDP would have to be more evenly distributed AND cultures that value greed, conspicuous consumption, and excessive wealth accumulation will have to undergo a psychological-spiritual transformation of values.
Global energy wars might be a result of reduced fossil fuel use (as Doomberg dogmatically asserts). But not necessarily. Alternative ways of life are possible, and perhaps might even be a more realistic outcome of a reduction in the use of fossil fuels.
@@_yossarian_
I very much believe that there are alternate ways of life. But rather than support a forced change in society's relationship with energy I would prefer advocates of change to lead by example (I am writing this from an off-grid cabin in the woods of Maine for example). What concerns me is that every time in history there has been a significant decrease in the Energy Return on Investment for a society, instability followed. Right now, we are in one of these periods as US shale oil peaked in EROI terms sometime around 2018. The region of Ukraine that is currently occupied is the richest in fossil fuels in the area, I doubt this is a coincidence. This morning I woke up to see more evidence of this global instability increasing as it appears Hamas and Israel are at it again.
Now I wish this were not the case but it is, and beyond any forced change to our energy production we are in an era where the EROI of fossil fuels is decreasing. The pinnacle of western society and the height of the US empire occurred in the two decades post WW2; but by the 1970s the EROI of global fossil fuel production had peaked and we have been in descent every since. So when you say that some smart people think that abundance did not create happiness I would say it did, but that we have to realize that the decline started 50 years ago. I would say it's really picking up now and we are in for a very rough decade.
The good news is that we currently have the solution. Nuclear power has the ability to provide even higher EROI energy production than fossil fuels ever did but currently there is a lot of propaganda surrounding its danger. I realized that I had internalized this propaganda when, as a college student, I did research at Jefferson National Lab and I was made to wear a badge on my shirt to detect radiation. I was very terrified at first but then I realized radioactive contamination is very similar to more common chemical contaminates. Both types of contaminates are invisible and If they get on you then you can develop cancer in the future. I then realized that I had been raised to be terrified of anything 'nuclear' but that I considered lead on my walls an annoyance. I think it's much more likely that through abundance of energy, society will figure out how to live in harmony with the ecosystem than it would if we had energy scarcity. In the latter case all a person can do is think about where their next meal is coming from or how to not freeze to death. In a world of abundance cooperation is easier.
If I could pick one thing to 'fix' it would be our monoculture food production. I think developing an economically competitive scheme where our farms are effectively a biodiverse, functioning ecosystem would be the best thing we could do to reverse the mass extinction. The great big fields of corn of one genetic type is a vestige of the last industrial revolution. What we need is a new system that implements AI to harvest from a diverse ecosystem so crops don't have to planted of one type in great big rows. But I would not advocate for this to immediately replace our current system. I would want it to be refined and compete in a fair marketplace so that we would not have an accidental decrease in food production.
I really would urge anyone who thinks that the solution is to immediately cut our fossil fuel energy production to read about energy history. One of my favorites is "Power to the People: Energy in Europe over the Last Five Centuries"
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?
This was fantastic throughout - both host and guest
Thank you for the dialogue from varied perspectives.
Observations from various perspectives have overlapping intersections where they agree (like a Venn Diagram). In aggregate, the overlapping intersection of the Venn Diagram helps calibrate our understanding of how the world actually is.
While we may not like it or want it to be the way it is, it's helpful to see the world as it ACTUALLY is.
Chat with Chat GPT 3.5 exploring the cognitive dissonance this podcast created for me:
Q: What is it called when two seemingly opposite views or theories are both true?
"When two seemingly opposite views or theories are both true or valid in certain contexts, it's often referred to as a "paradox" or "dialectical tension." This situation can lead to cognitive dissonance or philosophical exploration, as it challenges our conventional understanding and pushes us to consider more complex or nuanced perspectives. Embracing such paradoxes can often lead to deeper insights and a better understanding of the underlying complexities of a topic."
Q: Both theories or models are probably incomplete?
"When two seemingly opposite views or theories are both true in certain contexts, it often indicates that both theories are incomplete or provide an incomplete picture of the underlying reality. This can stem from limitations in our current understanding, the complexity of the phenomenon being studied, or the fact that different theories may be applicable in different situations.
In the realm of science and philosophy, it's common for theories to be refined, expanded, or replaced over time as new information and insights emerge. This process of refining and updating theories is a fundamental part of the advancement of knowledge and understanding. As our understanding deepens, we may find ways to reconcile apparent contradictions or integrate seemingly opposing viewpoints into a more comprehensive framework."
Q: What is Cognitive dissonance?
"Cognitive dissonance refers to the psychological discomfort or tension that arises when a person holds conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or values, or when their behavior contradicts their beliefs. It is a state of mental discomfort that occurs when there is a perceived inconsistency between one's thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Cognitive dissonance theory, developed by psychologist Leon Festinger in 1957, suggests that people are motivated to reduce this discomfort by either changing their beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors to align with each other, or by finding ways to justify or rationalize the inconsistencies.
For example, if someone is aware that smoking is harmful to health (belief) but continues to smoke (behavior), they may experience cognitive dissonance. To reduce this discomfort, they might either quit smoking, downplay the health risks, or find other reasons to justify their behavior (such as social benefits or stress relief).
While cognitive dissonance can play a role in dealing with conflicting views or theories, it's important to note that the concept of cognitive dissonance primarily focuses on the individual's psychological response to inconsistency within their own beliefs and actions, rather than directly addressing the reconciliation of opposing theories on a broader scale."
Donella Meadows in the book "Thinking in Systems" pointed out that the highest leverage points in change are understanding that all models are just flawed models of reality. She called this "Transcending Paradigms".
"There is yet one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible, to realize that no paradigm is "true," that every one, including the one that sweetly shapes your own worldview, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension."....
"...There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work hard at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of not-knowing. In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly, letting go and dancing with the system."
-I would like to hear Art Berman's opinion on oil consumption in 2040.
- I had the impression of an almost "magical" look on nuclear energy
- I had the feeling that it had a Dr Spock tone that ultimately did not fit with the final "Deep Optimism"
- I think we all have a problem when we want to go back and forth from the simple to the complex
- When you put a few bacteria in a Petri dish with a good culture broth and a good temperature and they grow exponentially, not only does growth stop due to lack of energy, but also due to the production of toxic metabolites resulting from the use of that energy.
- When I see images of Black Friday I think that the human crowd would pluck the green chicken and eat it roasted, me too because I have a good amount of saturated fat
- Finally I invite you to see Goya's engraving "The dreams of reason produce monsters" and of course see the black paintings
-Ahhhh I forgot what we do with GOD Elon Musk and his acolytes who see a rocket take off and after 85 seconds it loses control and ends up exploding NOT reaching its goal, they say applauding, IT HAS BEEN A SUCCESS.
"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 😮).
Thank you, Nate.
This is a great channel
Energy may not be closed system but all hard resources are.
if only environmentalists were as influential as Doomberg believes they are we wouldn't be so deep in mire
Just few things that stood out to me from the interview:
- Hydrogen fuel cannot be easily replace gasoline in IC engines. It's actually very hard to build hydrogen based IC engines.
- The guest is clearly slimy and repeats points that we have heard over and over again from economists. Doomberg speaks fast and it feels like he overwhelms you with "facts" in his answers from vastly different problems.
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.
A very educated, reasonable discussion of an important topic. And although I don't pretend to understand all of it, I'm left with a much better idea of the "energy economy ". Thank you.
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!
I don't want to be overly critical with all my comments, Doomberg did have some good points sprinkled in there. For example, he talks about how third world nations lost out when Europe gobbled up oil and gas supplies worldwide as they lost supply from Russia. In Reality Roundtable #1, one of the 4 myths Simon Michaux lists is "We in Europe are a geopolitical power. We will ensure that if we run short that we'll get supply before anyone else". It's funny.... but that's exactly what happened.
Energy production globally didn't go down but some countries may have lost in the energy shuffle that took place.
Michaux of course was assuming a voice, to be sure, WHEN he said that... Just to re-contextualize his quoted remark, CUZ Simon is well aware of the ethics, amongst other aspects, in the issue.
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!
One of the main efficiency issues is the conversion of primary energy inputs into Quality of Life. Whilst the BTU side is readily quantifiable, the quantification of QoL is a political question. What makes for a good life?
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 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?
Enjoyed that very much Nate.
Agree with almost everything Doomberg said, but it is what was left unsaid that most concerns me.
Sure - all systems have fundamental constraints of energy and materials.
Recycling of materials is needed for the rarer materials.
Long term, burning hydrogen isn't really an option, because any molecules that leak are essentially lost (as within a few days they have percolated up through the atmosphere and are lost to space. So if we are thinking in terms of sustainability over the millions of years timescale, then no to hydrogen.
But agree with Doomberg, that we are a creative species, and we can solve these classes of issues without much difficulty, if we have contexts that support such things.
What is harder, is getting people to understand evolution sufficiently deeply to be able to see that cooperation is fundamental to the emergence and survival of complexity at every level, and the common myths (dogma of economics) that competition is fundamental and can solve all problems is not simply wrong, but contains existential level risk in the over simplifications embodied in it.
The current economic system is one of the major issues.
The idea that "value in exchange" (market value) can be generalised to be equivalent to all other forms of value, is not simply wrong, but contains several different classes of existential level risk.
Jevons' "paradox" is real in some contexts, but is not as general as many would have us believe.
I went through an energy intensive phase, where I owned a V8 power jet boat, drove cars far too fast, became a pilot and did a lot of very energy intensive things, but now I no longer do such things. My cars are small 4 cylinder vehicles, which are reasonably fuel efficient, and I use my electric bike where it is reasonable to do so. So most of us settle down to living lifestyles we quite enjoy, without ever expanding needs for energy consumption. For most people, single digits of KW are sufficient energy use.
So agree with Doomberg that building a sustainable and interesting future, where people get to enjoy reasonable degrees of freedom and security, does seem to be reasonably possible, but not within a purely market based approach, as in the presence of advanced automation there are just too many emerging levels of perverse incentive sets in markets.
One of the things that markets did do reasonably well was support distributed decision making and diversity and redundancy - all of which are critical to long term security.
Central control is not a survivable option, and we do need levels of central coordination around real limits, and part of that needs to be acknowledging the need for diversity in all domains (which is antithetical to hegemony at any level).
And if we want a really long term future, then we need to get off planet, as there are many classes of existential level risk that can only be solved by significant sets of technology off planet. It also solves several classes of social diversity issues, as growth off planet can be relative unconstrained for about 1,000 years, before it runs into the limits of physics at that scale.
Agree with Doomberg that we can cooperate to solve these issues, and deliver a future where all agents experience what they consider reasonable levels of security, freedom and resources. And doing that is deeply more complex than most have consider the possibility of complexity. And it is clear to me, beyond any shadow of remaining reasonable doubt, that competition tends to destroy complexity long term, unless it is built on a cooperative base, and the more complex the systems, the deeper that cooperative base must be.
We either achieve that, or the human experiment is over, destroyed by competition, by over simplification of the irreducibly complex, by attachment to dogma and belief over a willingness to explore novelty and be open to evidence that contradicts cherished beliefs.
James Hansen reports (in 2022) that greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing is 4.1 W/m² larger in 2021 than in 1750, equivalent to 2×CO₂ forcing. Eventual global warming due to today’s GHG forcing alone - after slow feedbacks operate - is about 10°C. [That's 18°F, and as of 2023 we're only at less than 2°C!] How will you negotiate your way out of this reality when the fires, floods, or tornadoes come to your town?
@@dbadagna
If you wish to reduce insolation by 0.41%, and you use 10nm aluminum foil, that amounts to some 70,000T of foil, which using a rocket capable of lifting 300T to orbit would take some 230 launches (thanks Elon).
As one potential solution - and of course it is far more complex than that, but it gives a pointer to the scale of the issue and a general class of real solutions.
Long term, far better to use mass from the moon deployed to L1 to allow us to modulate the energy from the sun to mitigate ice ages etc and hold temperate and sea level within bounds we currently experience.
A vastly greater amount of lunar mass is required to mitigate a reasonably large class of existential level risks, as well as provide us with greater degrees of freedom.
Without an acceptance of a global need to cooperate in diversity, deploying such powerful technology embodies greater risk than the original problem.
So it is a deeply complex and deeply dimensional strategic territory that I have been actively exploring at various levels since the Cuban missile crisis. Until people generally see that, contrary to popular dogma, the evolution of complexity is actually based upon and sustained by cooperation (all levels, necessarily), then we are at serious risk.
Дід, що ти дурниці розказуєш😂
Люди ніколи не зможуть жити за межами планети Земля.
Технологія для виправлення чогось приносить нові проблеми, які також виправляються технологією, потім з'являються нові, для яких знову шукають технологічне рішення і т.д.
Планета Земля існує більше 4 млрд років а життя близько 1,5 млрд і воно еволюціонувало, самопідтримувалось і адаптувалося, розширювало біорізноманіття виходячи з космогеобіохімічних та фізичних законів. Його не можливо поліпшити без постійної підтримки(деградації енергії), його можна тільки порушити і очікувати нові цикли самовідновлення і адаптації. Краще за природні цикли життя зануреним в біосферу(те що ми робили протягом сотень тисяч років) немає нічого.
Не маніпулюйте термодинамікою і фізикою
@@ЄвгенійДаценко-н9л
What I am talking about is what defines humanity - our ability to create stories, ways of thinking that influence our behaviour and technologies, that then influence our environment.
We are strongly biased to prefer simple stories, with certainty, but that does not actually appear to be the sort of reality we live in (though such biases are necessarily installed by the evolutionary process).
Yes - reality seems to be an open system. Everything we do has unexpected consequences, that is part of the definition of an open system.
If you look at the geological record, extinction level events are actually reasonably common.
So, yes - life as a general class has endured, and not so much for specific species, genera, or classes of life.
Yes - evolution is an amazing process, and it is deeply complex. I have been exploring the depths of that complexity for over 50 years, The more I know, the more I know I don't know....
Certainly some aspects of life are cyclic, and some are not. Both closed and open systems seem to be necessary parts of life.
I am all for sustaining nature, I chair a charitable trust devoted to ensuring the survival of an endanger seabird, and am involved in local and regional biodiversity, biosecurity and water management efforts. Too few people actually get out in nature, and get any real sort of appreciation for the beauty and complexity actually present in life - most live in cities and malls and social networks.
If we wish to survive long term, then we need to develop mitigation strategies for all existential level risks, and there will likely be eternal evolving risk sets, that will require eternal creativity and vigilance.
Certainly, life is based on energy flows, and there is a lot of energy from the sun that does not reach the earth that could potentially be utilised to support life.
So if you would rather die than be responsible, cooperative and creative, then that is a choice you can make, but do not try to impose that choice upon me or anyone else.
@@tedhoward2606 Наведіть приклади, де життя може бути закритою системою?
Ви кажете нісенітницю, енергетично неможливо вловлювати іншу енергію окрім тієї яка надходить на Землю від Сонця. Ви говорите про фотоелектричну фабрику яка складається з мільйонів гектарів сонячних панелей в якійсь точці у космосі, що передаватиме енергію технологією телепортації?😂
Фотосинтез - єдиний масштабний енергетично продуктивний процес на планеті і через ланцюг живлення поширює енергію на вищі рівні та створює порядок і цикл захоплення і перетворення енергії.
Все інше виробництво по суті є не виробництвом, а деградацією матерії і енергії, згідно з другим законом термодинаміки.
Щоб Ви не робили, все зламається і чим "тонше" ваш виріб тим швидше він прийде в несправність, будь що, без підтримки і подальших енерговкладень перетворюватиметься на сміття.
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!
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.
A chicken has reminded us of the wonder of person to person relations rather than person to computer. Thanks to both of you.
Super enjoyed this discussion. You’re a very good interviewer, as always, Nate. Thank you👍
Doomberg has some interesting points of view.
By and large, I’m with the Green Chicken!
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.
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.
Thank you Nate for seeking out facts, new ideas, and contrary ideas. We need this.
Not when those ideas are false and not based on science or reality.
@@j85grim4 Reach out to Nate with your facts and ideas. Would love to hear your point of view.
Wind energy makes sense in areas where there are regular strong winds. For example, the upper Great Plains / Canadian Prairies or offshore of Atlantic Canada or the Northeastern USA.
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.
Two of my favorite youtubers! Nate is my favorite collapse expert, and Doomberg is one of the best macro guys. I hope they keep collaborating. I think Doomberg had great points about Jevon's paradox making degrowth unrealistic (unless we have an authoritarian global government with CBDC ration coupons), and Nate was right to push back on Doomberg's overly optimistic view on tech saving us and how bad climate change/ ecosystem collapse might be.
You wrote, "I think Doomberg had great points about Jevon's paradox making degrowth unrealistic..." But both the paradox and your idea that degrowth is unrealistic are rooted in the malignancy that characterizes modern economies that must grow in order to be politically tenable, regardless of the ecological consequences.
@@greenftechn News flash: degrowth is unrealistic in the timeframe needed to actually matter. It will take 70+ years to create a grassroots degrowth movement (takes several generations to change people's minds) and collapse of the economy and agriculture will likely happen before then (climate change, demographics, debt bubble). Bill Rees has an interview with Nate in which he explains this.
For austerity measures to actually happen soon, we'd need a global government. The WEF, UN, and even national governments have not been coy about this. The loss of freedom and rights will be unprecedented, which is why Doomberg is firmly against this. I don't like it either, but I think it is inevitable and is our best chance to avoid mass extinction. Pick your winner (trolley problem).
China and India have both said that they will keep burning coal until 2070-2080. India, Indonesia, Nigeria-- all high population countries-- are expected to receive lots of money for future investment/ development. Most likely, we will keep demanding oil, coal, and natural gas in the next few decades. The US needs to rebuild its infrastructure for EV vehicles and green energy and to reshore manufacturing-- it is going all in on technology saving us. I'm as skeptical as anyone about technology saving us, but this Green New Deal will make a lot of politicians and stock holders very wealthy in the meantime (crony capitalism).
As far as I can tell, there is no serious degrowth interest among the elites. They throw out little bits here and there, but nothing that would really matter. We've already pumped out enough carbon for 10 degrees Celsius (James Hansen), but we act like "there's still time" and "there's still hope." No, we have 30 years of lagging emissions which will cause us to hit around 2 degrees by 2050, and net zero is unlikely to happen. The proposals-- direct carbon capture, replacing shipping containers with sailboats (will require the reshoring of manufacturing locally and deglobalization), increasing the price of carbon (carbon tax, inflation on food/ energy), nuclear energy, 15 minute cities, and other measures-- will keep "business as usual" until we collapse-- which means further ecosystem damage and feedback loops (methane leaking from permafrost, ocean acidification, overfishing, rainforest destruction, etc). It's the worst case scenario happening.
Degrowth is hopium. I was in that camp for a bit. But then I realized that we didn't have the time for it to work, when I started thinking through what degrowth would actually require to be implemented on a mass scale quickly. Degrowth should be encouraged at the individual level-- every little bit counts-- but it is not going to prevent collapse... a brutal, painful collapse.
"When a population has had enough, political revolt happens and physics is consulted once again".
I love that line!
I did too. A reversion to the mean is the decider.
@@rashid8646 Thank you for that.
Great conversation, wonderful insight from both.
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.
Fukushima was zero 9's in a grid down condition. We need to see a report how triple-redundant cooling systems failed on 3 separate reactors. We have many facilities of the same design in the US, are these systems tested for grid and generator failures. If not, why not, if so, how did the steam powered backup handle shutdown and cooling with no electricity available? I'm not anti-nuclear, these systems need to be tested and properly insured and bonded by third parties for the cost of containment and cleanup.
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.
Interesting perspective. It astounds me how so many experts in the fields of energy and economics also tend to be so uninformed when it comes to ecological, and earth systems sciences .