[FRIAM] Limits to Growth

Sun Jun 1 13:31:59 EDT 2025

Yes, good points. My wife and I drive an electric car because I believe it is the future. On the small street in Berlin where I live there are 4 charging stations now, 10 years ago there were none. European cities have a lot more electric cars and electric buses compared to 10 years ago. In Paris for example you only see electric buses which reduce noise and pollution a lot. We still have a long way to go, though.It is clear that we have to start the transition to renewable energy and a more sustainable economy *now* - and need to continue it where it has already started - but for various reasons, including those you mentioned, it will most likely not be possible for the 8 billion people on Earth. Which means a collapse of civilization is no longer a bugaboo, an imaginary object of fear, and it becomes increasingly likely we are heading towards a collapse of civilization and a destruction of our ecosystems (either through climate change, and insurmountable piles of nuclear and plastic waste, or by a long period of wars, or by natural disasters). There are many reasons why civilizations collapse. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300259285/amongst-the-ruins/Those who survive the collapse will need to find a more sustainable way to live. The only way forward which does not destroy the ecosystems we live in is to+ use renewable energy+ avoid burning fossil-fuels+ eliminate waste by recycling+ stop consuming non-renewable resources + stop production of nuclear waste+ stop population growthIn others words we need to respect the axioms of sustainability if we do not want to destroy the planet we live onhttps://www.resilience.org/stories/2007-02-05/five-axioms-sustainability/-J.
-------- Original message --------From: Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> Date: 6/1/25  5:28 PM  (GMT+01:00) To: 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.davewOn 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> 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-bookHeinberg 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-everythingWithout 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/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>Date: 5/31/25  5:46 AM  (GMT+01:00)To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Limits to GrowthI’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-betThis 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> 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_3mOgvrN4Did anyone notice the swiss village inundated by debris and
      meltwater from the glacier collapse uphill?   Signs of the times
      or "business as usual"?- SASOn 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/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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