# 👹 NOTES - DOOMERING “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” - Alfred Henry Lewis, 1906 Without sulfur, there is no fertilizer. Without fertilizer, there is no food on an industrial scale More than 80 per cent of the global sulfur supply is a waste product, extracted from fossil fuels like oil and natural gas Joseph tainter Most analysts have forecast a recovery period of 40-50 years. patterns of inequality, environmental damage, reckless leadership and fragile systems prior collapses were often regional and survivable; next one will be global, and devastating self-termination Human societies and empires always collapse because they are fueled by unsustainable greed. modern capitalism's unitary focus on growth causes widespread ecological damage and is unnecessary for the further increase of human living standards infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to the finiteness of material resources on Earth every fallen empire shared the same fatal traits, including top-heavy regimes dominated by elites, fueled by inequality and held together by violence Societies collapse when their investments in social complexity and their energy subsidies reach a point of diminishing marginal returns sociopolitical complexity incurs costs, and that increasing complexity imposes increasing cost principle of diminishing returns luxury becomes necessity As its allocation of resources to complexity increases, it progressively loses the ability to cope with the occasional external shocks that complex societies are ordinarily well-adapted to endure (e.g., war, natural disaster, pandemic, etc.) wealth gap and corporate monopolies mirror that pattern, eroding social cohesion and weakening resilience Another alarming parallel was humanity's total dependence on complex, global systems [The Cult of Civilization](https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/10/the-cult-of-civilization/) distraction that cant substitute for genuine agency, security, and opportunity 2.6-3.1 degrees Celsius this century trigger “catastrophic” consequences for the planet. below 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid the worst of what the climate crisis has in store. water coal oil natural gas phosphorus rare earth elements uranium gold copper iron ore phosphate rock bauxite limestone phosphorus - 80 - 100 years fully exhausted The last 80% of world reserves are only one mine sand - concrete, glass, asphalt, silcon chips rare earth metals - Overmining due to high demand for electronics - China’s near-monopoly on rare earth metal production - Lack of effective recycling methods - naturally occurring resources, which cannot be recreated or replaced oil coppper coal zinc aluminium economically unviable in less than 50 years China controls 69% of global rare earth mining and a staggering 85–90% of refining and processing, the complex alchemy that transforms raw ore into the materials that make absolutely everything that is crucial to our everyday lives, from your electric toothbrush to phone to computer to your electric car to the servers that make everything run. China has weaponized state subsidies, environmental deregulation, and strategic overseas investments to corner the market. the world is heading toward an "irreversible collapse" as a result of unsustainable resource exploitation and "increasingly unequal wealth distribution few decades "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." So it's not really "an end of everything." Just an end for us. Other life will likely arise after. * we do not have unlimited amount of natural resources * there will be no technological fix that will allow us to consume unlimited resource biocapacity by world ecological footprint world biocapacity refers to the total amount of natural resources that Earth can regenerate in a year World ecological footprint refers to the total amount of resource that society consumes in a year, including things like energy, food, water, agricultural land, forest land, etc deny the existence of the problem of scarcity because of unwillingness.... - to change one's own consumption patterns - share scarce natural resources more equally - to a psychological defence mechanism. * renewable" resource does not imply that the resource is unlimited Freshwater only makes up 2.5% of the total volume of the world’s water, which is about 35 million kilometer cube. "The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent." "Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use." appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation "Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion." resourcification and resourcification - strives to put an end to the social processes of turning unsustainable things into resources, for example, non-renewable natural resources, and the other strives to instead develop processes of turning sustainable things into resources, for example, renewable human resources progress trap is the condition human societies experience when, in pursuing progress through human ingenuity, they inadvertently introduce problems that they do not have the resources or the political will to solve for fear of short-term losses in status, stability or quality of life.[1] This prevents further progress and sometimes leads to societal collapse. Victorian notion of "modernity" as unconditionally a good thing. Kevin J. Elliott argues the luxury is a necessity, complexity ride or die, somehow will dodge C. L. Skach argues lets regress to prevent a total Tainter style collapse "Structural-Demographic Theory enables us to analyze historical dynamics and apply that understanding to current trajectories," Turchin said. "It's not prophecy. It's modeling feedback loops that repeat with alarming regularity." He argues that violence in the U.S. tends to repeat about every 50 years— pointing to spasms of unrest around 1870, 1920, 1970 and 2020. He links these periods to how generations tend to forget what came before. "After two generations, memories of upheaval fade, elites begin to reorganize systems in their favor, and the stress returns," he said. rare earth value chains legal vs illegal mines Despite their name, rare earth elements are actually not rare. Their concentrations in the Earth’s crust are comparable to more commonly mined metals such as zinc and copper. However, rare earth elements do not often occur in easily accessible, economically viable mineral forms or high-grade deposits. The U.S. currently has only two domestic rare earth mining locations: Georgia and California. Modern agriculture is underpinned by a steady supply of fertilizer. Three most commonly used nutrients in fertilizers—potassium (potash), nitrogen, and phosphorus 🌌 NOTES - LONG THINKING The World is Becoming Uninsurable climate change will make parts of the world uninsurable Rising premiums are a de facto ‘carbon price’ on consumers as extreme weather events become more frequent Involuntary park - inhabited areas that for environmental, economic, or political reasons have lost their value for technological instrumentalism and been allowed to return to an overgrown, feral state. Examples: Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge Chernobyl Exclusion Zone military exclusion zones minefields dangerous due to pollution economic collapse sea level rise Life After People “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” But we are as gods only because of our ancestors’ diligence. The promise of a technologically advancing future is predicated on millennia of accumulated knowledge. Immortality Drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality_Drive Crypt of Civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypt_of_Civilization Complexity reduction: supply chains localize, technology sophistication decreases Global warming will permanently and irreversibly shrink the global economy, causing complete financial system collapse. Financial collapse will occur much sooner than most expect, because of the financial system's severe sensitivity to low-to-negative nominal GDP growth. Population concentrated in 35°-60° latitude bands https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1o49eti/wip_a_collapse_timeline_v2/ Malthusian trap - theory that suggests population growth will outpace food supply growth, leading to a situation where resources become insufficient to support the population, resulting in famine or decline in living standards popular immiseration, elite overproduction, and a weakening state capacity." widening inequality and elite saturation risking the creation of a radicalized "knowledge class"—overeducated, underemployed, and institutionally excluded.