Courtesy of The Automatic Earth
JMW Turner Vignette Study of a Ship in a Storm c.1830
Nicole sent me this video, which I know next to nothing about. I don’t know where it was filmed, or when, or why, nada. But, apart from the fact that listening to Nicole is always interesting, and I haven’t heard her talk nearly enough recently, because we live on opposite ends of the world these days, this is interesting because it relates directly to energy issues that have lately been a recurring theme at the Automatic Earth.
That is, once the net energy we gain from our energy sources falls by enough, our complex systems become untenable. This is not an easy-to-grasp thing for many, but it’s nevertheless true. The energy return on energy invested (EROEI) on the vast majority of our present energy sources is already dangerously close to the point where we will have to make our lives, and our societies, simpler.
We can discuss whether that’s such a bad thing, but it doesn’t really matter. We can’t beat thermodynamics. The initial reactions to this will in all likelihood by very dramatic, and in cases violent, since many individuals will try to escape having to adapt, and since individuals, societies, nations will realize that energy provides political -and military- power. Trust is a delicate topic.
There can be no doubt that in the immediate future we will attempt to build even more complex systems and societies, just to solve the problems caused by complexity, only to find out later that these systems are all built around centers that cannot hold. And we can all imagine what this will mean for our economies.
Here’s Nicole:
Nicole Foss from Community Solutions on Vimeo.
