[FRIAM] Limits to Growth

Sun Jun 1 12:10:58 EDT 2025

I think you are underestimating how much progress has been made with batteries in recent years.
California has large solar resources, and it is not unusual that during the day the whole grid is powered by solar. Here is from last week. Note the huge surge of battery usage in the evening. Tens of gigawatts of generation power are planned for offshore wind too. 

Generally, though, I agree that much of the planet is completely addicted to oil, and there’s no technology that will yet handle air travel. Hydrogen might work, but it will take time. 

The way to break an addiction is to have the addict hit rock bottom. 

There need to be some scary climate events. The prices for energy need to increase before people change their ways. Redirecting energy into AI is one way to bring that to fruition. 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
Date: Sunday, June 1, 2025 at 8:27 AM
To: friam at redfish.com <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Limits to Growth 

Unfortunately, it is almost certain that there will never be enough 'fossil fuel free power stations' to supply needed energy for electric vehicles. 

Data centers, driven in large part by AI demands and cryptocurrency will leave nothing left over. 

Some numbers: 

Three Mile Island, which is being recommissioned to supply power to a couple of Microsoft Data Centers, has a capacity of 7 Terawatt hours(T/w/h) per year. 

In 2022 data centers, globally, consumed 460 TWh, by 2026 this is estimated to be 1,000 Twh. By 2040 projected demand is 2,000-3,000 TWh. 

Crypto adds 100-150 TWh in 2022, 200-300 in 2030, and 400-600 in 2040. 

Nuclear is unlikely to provide more than 25% of this demand. 

Between now and 2040, it will be necessary to build 100 TMI-capacity nuclear plants to supply that 25%. 

If solar is to supply the other 75%, it will require between 66,000 and 80,000 square miles of solar panels. (Don't know how many batteries, but the number is not trivial.) 

Wind power, for that 75%, will require 153,000 to 214,000 turbines, each requiring 50-60 acres of space beneath them. (Also the problem of batteries.) 

It takes 10-15 years to build a nuclear plant like TMI, have no idea now many dollars. 

Neither solar nor wind, nor combined, can be installed fast enough to meet this demand and, again, have no idea of cost. 

Nothing left over for cars, the lights in your home and office, or to charge your phone: unless, of course we continue to rely on oil (shale and fracking), natural gas, and coal. 

davew 

On Sun, Jun 1, 2025, at 6:24 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote: 

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! 

On Sun, 1 Jun 2025 at 12:57, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net <mailto:jofr at cas-group.net>> wrote: 

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. 

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." 
https://richardheinberg.com/bookshelf/the-end-of-growth-book <https://richardheinberg.com/bookshelf/the-end-of-growth-book> 

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. 
https://richardheinberg.com/bookshelf/peak-everything <https://richardheinberg.com/bookshelf/peak-everything> 

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. 

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. 
https://donellameadows.org/archives/rob-hopkins-my-town-in-transition/ <https://donellameadows.org/archives/rob-hopkins-my-town-in-transition/> 

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. 

-J. 

-------- Original message -------- 

From: Pieter Steenekamp <pieters at randcontrols.co.za <mailto:pieters at randcontrols.co.za>> 

Date: 5/31/25 5:46 AM (GMT+01:00) 

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>> 

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Limits to Growth 

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. 

https://ourworldindata.org/simon-ehrlich-bet <https://ourworldindata.org/simon-ehrlich-bet> 

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. 

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. 

Turns out, betting against human ingenuity is the real risky business. 

On Fri, 30 May 2025 at 21:51, steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote: 

REC - 
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. 
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? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6_3mOgvrN4 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6_3mOgvrN4> 
Did anyone notice the swiss village inundated by debris and meltwater from the glacier collapse uphill? Signs of the times or "business as usual"? 
- SAS 
On 5/30/25 12:16 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote: 

https://thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com/2025/05/20/limits-to-growth-was-right-about-overshoot-and-collapse-new-data/ <https://thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com/2025/05/20/limits-to-growth-was-right-about-overshoot-and-collapse-new-data/> 

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. 

-- rec -- 

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