<div dir="ltr">This is why I’m so excited about electric vehicles—I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas! Add clean fossil fuel free power stations into the mix, and voilà: abundant clean energy, no miracle inventions required. Just some clever tech and a whole lot of charging cables!</div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, 1 Jun 2025 at 12:57, Jochen Fromm <<a href="mailto:jofr@cas-group.net">jofr@cas-group.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">I believe we all have a slighty distorted view because we were all born long after industrialization has started and have seen nothing but growth. Industrialization started around 200 years ago in Great Britain and spread shortly after to America and Europe. First by exploiting coal and steam engines, later by oil and petrol engines. Tanks, warplanes, warships as well as normal cars, planes and ships all consume oil.</span></p><br dir="auto"><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Richard Heinberg writes in his book "The End of Growth": "with the fossil fuel revolution of the past century and a half, we have seen economic growth at a speed and scale unprecedented in all of human history. We harnessed the energies of coal, oil, and natural gas to build and operate cars, trucks, highways, airports, airplanes, and electric grids - all the esential features of modern industrial society. Through the one-time-only process of extracting and burning hundreds of millions of years worth of chemically stored sunlight, we built what appeared (for a brief, shining moment) to be a perpetual-growth machine. We learned to take what was in fact an extraordinary situation for granted. It became normal [...] During the past 150 years, expanding access to cheap and abundar fossil fuels enabled rapid economic expansion at an average rate of about three percent per year; economic planners began to take this situain for granted. Financial systems internalized the expectation of growth as a promise of returns on investments."</span></p><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"><a href="https://richardheinberg.com/bookshelf/the-end-of-growth-book" target="_blank">https://richardheinberg.com/bookshelf/the-end-of-growth-book</a></span></p><br dir="auto"><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Heinberg argues the time of cheap and abundant fossil fuels has come to an end. There 1.5 billion cars in the world which consume oil and produce CO2. Resources are depleted while pollution and population have reached all time highs. It is true that humans are innovative and ingenious, especially in times of scarcity, necessity and need, and we are able to find replacements for depleted resources, but Heinberg argues in his book "Peak Everything: that "in a finite world, the number of possible replacements is also finite". For example we were able to replace the whale oil by petroleum, but finding a replacement for petroleum is much harder.</span></p><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"><a href="https://richardheinberg.com/bookshelf/peak-everything" target="_blank">https://richardheinberg.com/bookshelf/peak-everything</a></span></p><br dir="auto"><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">Without oil no army would move, traffic would cease, no container or cruise ship would be able to go anywhere and therefore international trade and tourism would stop. On the bright side no more plastic and CO2 pollution either. </span></p><br dir="auto"><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline">In his book "End of Growth" Heinberg mentions "transition towns" as a path towards a more sustainable society and an economy which is not based on fossil-fuels.</span></p><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"><a href="https://donellameadows.org/archives/rob-hopkins-my-town-in-transition/" target="_blank">https://donellameadows.org/archives/rob-hopkins-my-town-in-transition/</a></span></p><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-variant-alternates:normal;vertical-align:baseline"><br></span></p><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" dir="ltr">French author Victor Hugo wrote 200 years ago that "the paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor". If rich people start to realize this and help to find a way to a more sustainable, livable society it would be a start.</p><p style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt" dir="ltr"><br></p><div dir="auto">-J.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div><br></div><div align="left" dir="auto" style="font-size:100%;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Pieter Steenekamp <<a href="mailto:pieters@randcontrols.co.za" target="_blank">pieters@randcontrols.co.za</a>> </div><div>Date: 5/31/25 5:46 AM (GMT+01:00) </div><div>To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <<a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam@redfish.com</a>> </div><div>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Limits to Growth </div><div><br></div></div><div dir="ltr">I’ve always loved the Simon-Ehrlich bet story—two clever guys betting on the future of the planet. Ehrlich lost the bet, but the debate still runs circles today.<br><br><a href="https://ourworldindata.org/simon-ehrlich-bet" target="_blank">https://ourworldindata.org/simon-ehrlich-bet</a><br><br>This article nails it: over the long term, prices mostly go down, not up, as innovation kicks in. We don’t "run out" of resources—we get better at using them. Scarcity shifts, but human creativity shifts faster.<br><br>The Limits to Growth folks had good intentions, but the real limit seems to be how fast we can adapt and rethink. And so far, we’re doing okay—messy, uneven, but okay.<br><br>Turns out, betting against human ingenuity is the real risky business.</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_attr" dir="ltr">On Fri, 30 May 2025 at 21:51, steve smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com" target="_blank">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"><u></u>
<div>
<p>REC - <br>
</p>
<p>Very timely... I did a deep dive/revisit (also met the seminal
work in college in the 70s) into Limits to Growth and World3
before the Stockholm workshop on Climate (and other existential
threats) Complexity Merle wrangled in 2019.... and was both
impressed and disappointed. Rockstrom and folks were located
right across the water from us where we met but to my knowledge
didn't engage... their work was very complementary but did not
feel as relevant to me then as it does now.</p>
<p>In the following interview, I felt he began to address many of
the things I (previously) felt were lacking in their framework
previoiusly. It was there all the time I'm sure, I just didn't
see it and I think they were not ready to talk as broadly of
implications 5 years ago as they are now?<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6_3mOgvrN4" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6_3mOgvrN4</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Did anyone notice the swiss village inundated by debris and
meltwater from the glacier collapse uphill? Signs of the times
or "business as usual"?</p>
<p>- SAS<br>
</p>
<div>On 5/30/25 12:16 PM, Roger Critchlow
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr"><a href="https://thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com/2025/05/20/limits-to-growth-was-right-about-overshoot-and-collapse-new-data/" target="_blank">https://thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com/2025/05/20/limits-to-growth-was-right-about-overshoot-and-collapse-new-data/</a>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I remember the Limits to Growth from my freshman year in
college. Now Hackernews links to the above in which some
people argue that we've achieved the predicted overshoot for
the business as usual scenario and the subsequent collapse
begins now. Enjoy the peak of human technological
development.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>-- rec --</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
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