Civilisation depends on the availability of increasing flows of concentrated energy. We are on the threshold of contracting flows of concentrated energy and its partial substitution by diffuse energy. It is intuitively obvious that the net withdrawal of concentrated energy should have major systemic implications for civilisation. What are they?
Well according to the dominant social narrative: none. Neoclassical economics encourages us to imagine that rising scarcity will trigger consumption efficiencies and the substitution of new energy sources so as to maintain “business as usual”. This in turn rests on everything from a faith in technology and our collective genius through to a sense that “there must be a solution”. Taken together, the resultant air of hopeful optimism amounts to the ritualised maintenance of collective denial.
David Korowicz, in his recent paper “Tipping Point—Near Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production: An Outline Review” argues differently[1]. In it, he asks the fundamental question: what happens if there is a net decrease of energy flow through the system?
The result is a tour d’horizon of the likely impacts of the unfolding depletion of oil production and mechanisms driving those impacts. Starting with a discussion of the role of energy in stabilising society and the structure and dynamics of complex society, he reviews status of energy as a key state variable in that complex system and the implications of tipping points and bifurcation. The then outlines three potential decline models (linear, oscillating and collapse) before reviewing the principle collapse mechanisms that will drive decline to conclude that collapse is an unavoidable outcome.
Think “systems”
Korowicz key insight derives from another essential question: why might a small change in energy flow (from relatively small exponential expansion to initially relatively small exponential contraction) trigger a major and abrupt loss of complexity?
The answer, he suggests, lies in recognising that the specific systems upon which focus usually rests—food, transportation, manufacturing, etc.—themselves depend on what he terms “operational fabric”, the conditions that support system-wide functionality. He identifies markets, financing, monetary stability, supply chains, global and continental transportation, digital infrastructure, command and control systems, health services, institutions of trust and sociopolitical stability.
Collapse will be rapid because we have become adapted to function only within a particular and unique structure in which which we participate but which we cannot control. That structure depends upon an operational fabric which is so integrated and co-dependent that a failure in one part triggers and reinforces failures in others.
The mechanisms of collapse
This gives rise to a number of non-linear, mutually reinforcing and non-exclusive collapse drivers: decreasing energy flow leads to decreasing economic production, which leads to decreasing energy flow; without sufficient economic production, debt becomes unserviceable, reducing economic production; monetary stability is lost leading to bank insolvency; without stable exchange and inflation rates, international trade collapses; collapsing world trade collapses “local” economies, which have evolved to become dependent on resources outwith their economy; critical infrastructure, which is dependent on short lifetime components, specialised global supply chains and large economies of scale, collapse, accelerating wider collapse; food systems, dependent on fossil fuel input, delocalised supply chains and just-in-time distribution, collapse; peak oil drives peak energy as the alternative energy transition loses its primary energy input.
Since the global economy is debt, and debt only exists to the extent that there is trust in the system, the moment that collective recognition of the predicament reaches the tipping point will itself act as a major trigger to collapse the debt based finance and monetary system and initiate the cascade of failures.
Korowicz suggests that the aggregate response so far amounts to a complete failure to understand the magnitude of the change. The situation calls for immediate and massive switch of effort from the attempt to prevent collapse to emergency action to prepare for the sudden loss of welfare systems and infrastructure.
It is an important report, and deserves your consideration.
References
[1] Korowicz, “Tipping Point Near—Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production: An Outline Review”, March 2010, The Feasta Network