Pretty much the last nail in the coffin for the idea that there’s going to be a smooth transition out of fossil fuels and into renewables that can rescue the existing high-energy global economy in anything like its present form comes courtesy of Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and his 2024 book
Amazing write up that strings together some intuitions I've had about these topics. Like you I'm an interested amateur but non-expert in energy. Most of my familiarity has come from Vaclav Smil's work, and more recently the blog Surplus Energy Economics. And finally--I agree completely with your last line: the future is going to look much more local. What the context will look like (miserable subsistence vs peaceful healthy community based subsistence) is up in the air.
On the wool thing, I read that as concern about the microplastics currently poisoning us (and as recent studies show, killing us with heart attacks and strokes), rather than a climate change focus.
I'm not sure why we'd "welcome" and embrace renewables over high density, easily transportable oil-based fuels. Both are "authoritarian technics" as Mumford would say; neither are possible in a world with vastly reduced energy supplies and low-tech. The materials intensity of renewables--meaning they are simply fossil fuels+ due to the intense mining and refining required to make them--plus their intermittency and reliance on batteries to make them work "off grid" beyond just "quick, charge your phone while the sun is shining," make them untenable for long in a simplified world (plus batteries add their own materials intensity and toxic nasty supply chain and end of life).
Thanks for the great review! I thoroughly enjoyed this book also. I found I kept saying "wow" over the same things you did (e.g. the wood used in holding up mine shafts, etc.).
Thanks for the comments, appreciated. Re Elisabeth's point, yes on reflection 'welcome' is too strong a word ... maybe 'be ambivalently thankful for renewables inasmuch as they could conceivably help ease us out of the hole we've dug for ourselves, if only enough of us realised that we were in a hole in the first place'.
Thanks Mark for the Lyle Lewis link. Much to agree with in it, and some things to disagree with too. Perhaps I'll touch on that in a future post.
You also got a shout out in the Resilience org podcast Crazy Town episode 99 (March 6), always a good listen!
Amazing write up that strings together some intuitions I've had about these topics. Like you I'm an interested amateur but non-expert in energy. Most of my familiarity has come from Vaclav Smil's work, and more recently the blog Surplus Energy Economics. And finally--I agree completely with your last line: the future is going to look much more local. What the context will look like (miserable subsistence vs peaceful healthy community based subsistence) is up in the air.
On the wool thing, I read that as concern about the microplastics currently poisoning us (and as recent studies show, killing us with heart attacks and strokes), rather than a climate change focus.
I'm not sure why we'd "welcome" and embrace renewables over high density, easily transportable oil-based fuels. Both are "authoritarian technics" as Mumford would say; neither are possible in a world with vastly reduced energy supplies and low-tech. The materials intensity of renewables--meaning they are simply fossil fuels+ due to the intense mining and refining required to make them--plus their intermittency and reliance on batteries to make them work "off grid" beyond just "quick, charge your phone while the sun is shining," make them untenable for long in a simplified world (plus batteries add their own materials intensity and toxic nasty supply chain and end of life).
Thanks for the great review! I thoroughly enjoyed this book also. I found I kept saying "wow" over the same things you did (e.g. the wood used in holding up mine shafts, etc.).
Regarding sheep, and other domestic animals, see Lyle Lewis' article on soil compaction:
https://race2extinct.com/blog/ecological-myth-busting/
Thanks for the comments, appreciated. Re Elisabeth's point, yes on reflection 'welcome' is too strong a word ... maybe 'be ambivalently thankful for renewables inasmuch as they could conceivably help ease us out of the hole we've dug for ourselves, if only enough of us realised that we were in a hole in the first place'.
Thanks Mark for the Lyle Lewis link. Much to agree with in it, and some things to disagree with too. Perhaps I'll touch on that in a future post.
Fressoz was also recently on Nate Hagens’ The Great Simplification - a fascinating episode!
We need to recognise that the super power of humanity is denial of reality and creation of delusional perceptions.
Technology is the answer to nothing unless "how to support ecocide" is the question.
Just stop manufacturing things. We murder the living world with everything we produce.