The Great Simplification

Transcript

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[Music]

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the world to come will be different from our expectations the arc of human history informs the

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trajectory of our future we need to know who we are

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and how we got here the ecology biology and physics

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to know which paths remain open to us and which lead to dead ends

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four and a half billion years ago stardust coalesced to form a planet

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a billion years later simple life emerged by 500 million years ago a profusion of

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life had exploded on our green planet fast forward to 66 million years ago and

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dinosaurs were taken out by our planet's most recent mass extinction

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and small shrew-like survivors continued an evolutionary line that would

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eventually become us of all our hominid ancestors one species

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would ultimately remain homo sapiens a creature variously curious creative

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kind cruel cooperative competitive combative and

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clever when earth's climate warmed and stabilized around 10 000 years ago homo

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sapiens tribes who pivoted on mass to agriculture and pastoralism out

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reproduce their hunter-gatherer cousins unbeknownst to them and to most of us

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this was a planet-changing event sustained by new agricultural surplus

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these early humans slowly spread out around the globe expanding trade and

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technology [Music] for thousands of years the average

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annual growth in the size of the human economy would be unnoticeable from one

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generation to the next by the 16th century however more complex

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social organization and advanced navigational technology kick-started a unique period in human

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history yet even with these advances human cultures remained powered by

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biomass and the muscles of humans and our draft animals limiting growth

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until in the early 19th century 10 000 years after the agricultural revolution

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humans discovered how to extract fossil energy and materials

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from under earth's surface to boost their economies [Music] this new discovery of geologically

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stored sunlight in the form of coal oil and gas changed

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everything for the first time human and animal labor played second fiddle to the power of these new energy

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sources when combined with a machine a gallon of

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gasoline could output the same work in a few minutes as a person laboring for an

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entire month we increasingly replaced manual human

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tasks with machines at a tiny fraction of the cost

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the result higher profits higher wages and cheaper

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goods sudden access to this bank account of stored carbon energy turbo charged our

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populations access to good services and technology and quadrupled our economic

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growth rate yet humanity's great acceleration was still ahead

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in the latter half of the 20th century with this new power source and an upgrade from coal to higher quality

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liquid oil the human economy's average growth rate doubled yet again

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to now over 30 times what it had averaged during the last few thousand years

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compared to a global labor force of around 5 billion real humans

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the machines and work powered by access to buried carbon energy

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added the equivalent power of 500 billion human workers

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access to these fossil energies and materials brought billions more humans into existence and brought billions more

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out of poverty and led to the creation of new myths

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institutions and expectations ancestors lives were tightly linked to

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the natural flows of the earth the sun the rain and the soil

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but during this moonshot of growth and consumption our fundamental tether to nature was

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first neglected and then forgotten the main inputs to our economies were

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now mostly free we nearly had to pay for the cost of

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their extraction not the cost of their creation their true worth nor their pollution

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to our ancestors the benefits from carbon energy would have appeared

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indistinguishable from magic and instead of appreciating this giant

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one-time windfall we developed stories that our newfound wealth and progress

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had emerged purely from human ingenuity we had become

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energy blind

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energy is and always will be the currency of life

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animals were the first investors obtaining a larger energy surplus

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gives an animal a competitive advantage for survival and reproduction

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this role of surplus energy is a core driver of the natural world and dictates

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what can and can't happen we rarely think about it or talk about

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it but we're all alive during the carbon pulse the few hundred years where humans are

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drawing down earth's energy battery millions of times faster than it was

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trickle charged by daily photosynthesis hydrocarbons at a vast scale have

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enormously increased the surplus energy available to human economies

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pulses by definition don't last forever high quality ores and energy deposits

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are now mostly things of the past plenty remains but it's lower quality

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and both more costly and ecologically destructive to extract

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in nature there are countless examples where energy exists but the effort to

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obtain it is so large that the meal is effectively off the menu

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in our lifetimes society will have to redirect increasing amounts of our

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energy surplus towards obtaining the surplus itself leaving less affordable energy to

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support many of our current economic activities one day the energy it will cost to

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extract energy will be so large it won't make sense to do so

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even though resources remain energy depletion will act as a growing

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tax on human societies in this unprecedented era of large

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surplus we have excelled at combining energy and materials into technology and inventions

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that improve the human experience new technology can allow us to use

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resources more efficiently or it can transform natural flows into energy

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but mostly technology just creates new ways for humans to consume

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and builds higher future requirements for energy and materials things that are more complex require

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more energy when we add nodes to a supply chain each connection requires energy to maintain

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the complexity of our globally interconnected system currently requires the equivalent of 170

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billion light bulbs constantly turned on burning brightly

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powered by the carbon pulse even rebuildable technology that

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harnesses the sun and the wind grows our total consumption and has not yet

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reduced the use of carbon energy globally most people believe that money is real

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wealth yet everything we spend money on requires energy to mine create deliver

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run maintain and dispose of in this way money is ultimately a direct

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claim on energy and resources our economic stories assert that with

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more money we can create more of anything the truth is we cannot create energy

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we both extract it and burn it faster by using technology and printing money

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natural capital particularly energy is the true foundation of our monetary

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systems as we create more money we don't create more resources we merely access them

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faster the highest sustained growth rate of human economies ever before and likely

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ever again peaked 50 years ago when oil production growth was at its highest

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but rather than living within our means we found creative ways to extend growth

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for a while longer we created complex supply chains

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outsourcing the heavy lifting to countries with cheaper labor we turned to debt in a large way to

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maintain high levels of consumption a behavior that accelerated in 2008 and

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has gone into overdrive since 2020. debt allows us to spend resources from

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the future and call it economic growth this phenomenon has become so pervasive

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in the last 50 years that we think it's normal to consume today and pay tomorrow

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the developed world is now using debt to enable the extraction of things we couldn't otherwise afford to extract

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to produce things we otherwise couldn't afford to consume this strategy has an expiration date

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because all this new money will one day be spent on real things requiring energy

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enabled by an extraordinary but temporary energy surplus

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the human economy is now over 1 000 times bigger than it was just five

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centuries ago most of the benefits of this one-time geological surplus

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now flow to a fraction of people not to the rest of living humans nor

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future generations as we extract minerals and burn fossil

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carbon to support modern living standards their waste streams are in turn

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diminishing the life support systems of other species and future beings

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the impact of our global energy metabolism on nature has been tragic

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and is now accelerating resulting in among other things animal

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bird and fish populations dropping by 50 percent since the 1970s

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plastic now weighing more than all animals on land and in the sea

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and a child born today being expected to outlive earth's coral reefs

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as a culture we have recently but almost entirely

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financialized the human experience not only have we parsed the rich fabric

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of human life into a single monetary marker but in doing so we've used the wrong

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prices the price of money is wrong because we grow it with a keystroke with

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no tether to finite natural capital the price of energy is wrong

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because we don't treat it as the extraordinary irreplaceable resource it is

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non-renewable on any human time scale and in setting prices on everything

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we've lost sight of the large cost their use has on earth's

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ecosystems this biophysical story is all connected in an emergent and unexpected

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way as the carbon pulse boosted our economies our institutions and governments

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self-organized around expectations of growth

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now 8 billion members of a social species collectively seek profits

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which are linked to energy which is linked to fossil hydrocarbons and minerals

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growth as measured by increases in gdp is now required for stability

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we have arrived at a place where we as a culture have outsourced our decisions

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and planning to the financial system the market's compulsion to grow

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now out competes any alternative paths of wisdom or constraint

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the system is no longer in anyone's control the human species

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at least to this point has become a mindless insatiable

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energy-hungry super-organism [Music]

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the super-organism is an emergent phenomenon of the animals that comprise

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it us human beings are related to all other

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creatures on earth we are the product of an unbroken chain

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connecting to the first life which means that hidden beneath our stated motivations of what we do every

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day in industrial society we are driven to pursue the same neurochemical brain rewards our

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ancestors pursued this has huge implications for our behaviors our economies and our futures

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reaching for our phone to see if someone liked our facebook post or to see if bitcoin is up or down aren't really our

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goals we are in reality just seeking the same brain rewards that led to success for

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our hunter-gatherer ancestors dopamine is a molecule that in animals

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and in humans leads to motivation and action in a materially rich modern world the

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habituation to the action of consumption leads to the wanting of things

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culture-wide being stronger than the reward we get from having them

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this is a fundamental problem for an economic system that's turning billions

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of barrels of oil into microliters of dopamine

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as a carryover from ancestral tribal life we are highly tuned to social signals

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comparing ourselves to others seeking approval acceptance and jockeying for

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status with material and now digital wealth as today's primary status signal

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consumerism is now largely based on having as much or more than those around

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us rather than focusing on what we may actually need

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modern humans are still tribal beings we staunchly support those in our in groups

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and easily ostracize out groups from trivial divisions like sports teams

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to political affiliation race or nationality our evolution has primed us to blame

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other humans for situations we don't like or understand

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we have rich creative and colorful imaginations that reside in the virtual

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worlds of our minds the human brain can imagine and

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verbalize limitless combinations of physical impossibilities

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sustainable outposts on mars self-perpetuating energy machines and an

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economy based on physical consumption growing continually for centuries

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in ancestral times these virtual worlds overlapped with the physical worlds we

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inhabited making us more content and effective as a tribal unit but in a culture of vast material wealth

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information overload and social media it's increasingly difficult for us to

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separate fantasy from reality when these individual virtual worlds

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connect with the virtual worlds of others the result is widespread shared

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beliefs that money is real that our current wealth is due mostly to

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our cleverness and that technology will lead to limitless growth

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when we look to others to try and understand our complex modern world as social beings who said it

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becomes more important than logic or the quality of the evidence

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celebrity and group affiliation now matter more than truth

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our stone age brains are no match for the social media algorithms that now

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constantly hijack our attention modern media outlets prey on our

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evolutionary inclinations for novelty and in-group defense via capturing our

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attention and turning clicks and shares into

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consumption computer algorithms optimize for profit are splintering our society by reducing

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attention spans accelerating addiction polarization apathy and mistrust in science

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a metaphorical technology worm driven by exponentially improving

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artificial intelligence is silently eating our minds

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humans are creatures with finite lifespans the future is not a priority to us

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emotionally instead we are focused on the very short term

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this weekend's plans this quarter's earnings this term's election the next set of compelling

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images we're urged to scroll to we often promise to make big changes

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starting tomorrow until tomorrow becomes today and the cycle repeats delaying any

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actual change like other biological organisms humans

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seek gains and are averse to losses we look for undervalued stocks to invest

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in sales on new shoes or two for one cocktails at happy hour

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unlike squirrels or cheetahs we are an extremely social species

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we coordinate as families small businesses corporations and nation states to

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maximize our virtual surplus dollars which we then spend on real things

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our core economic and environmental challenges stem from a mismatch of hunter-gatherer

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minds inhabiting a competitive consumer growth culture

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together these human universals have led to incentives and behaviors which have

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created a metabolic super organism whose objective

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is disconnected from the well-being of its parts us

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it is tempting to look at how we live today and conclude that this is how humans are

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but modern society is only a single brief example out of thousands of

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successful arrangements in human history humans alive today don't choose to be

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hierarchical or greedy many of our choices are constrained by

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the economic system we were born into

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our current high consumption high inequality high technological distraction and low levels of daily

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human connection are a direct product of the carbon

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pulse though human brains don't change quickly under the right circumstances

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our behaviors and cultural norms can move at lightning speed our species is incredibly adaptive when

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we're challenged the way we've been living is an anomaly

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but we take it for granted because as individuals it's all we've ever known

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going forward a lifestyle adapted to lower energy use

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will reconnect our virtual and physical worlds by necessity our lives will become less

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global more interpersonally engaged and more tethered to natural flows

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as a species a global super organism is not our destiny

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who we are has brought us to this precipice who we are capable of becoming as

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individuals and as a society will be the question of our time

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we are alive at a time of wonder peril and possibility

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ahead are a million unknown destinations some dark and foreboding and some

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welcoming and beautiful many of us sense that something is different

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something is coming but we lack a shared understanding of

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the path that brought us here and of the terrain ahead which future we expect

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depends upon which lens we use to see the road modern society is polarized stressed and

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overwhelmed with information good and bad as a result common points of view our

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lenses focus on the road just in front of us for the view to the future we defer to

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culturally accepted guides who are confident they know the way forward

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through the lens of an economist for example we see a glorious road leading to growth that never stops

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any scarcity of energy or material inputs will be solved by price signals

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creating incentives which increase our productivity and growth the economic lens shows us that human

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ingenuity and the market will solve everything

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a financial lens translates stock markets at all-time highs as a sign of

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society's health pretending a rich and virtuous future

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with enough financial capital we'll be able to build roads to anywhere

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a technology lens promises a shiny road of comfort novelty and prosperity

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enabled by future inventions innovation artificial intelligence and a vibrant

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metaverse will sidestep any energy or resource constraints we envision future humans breaking free

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from the confines of earth and enjoying high-tech lifestyles where the biggest

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problem is runaway robots these lenses are all optimistic

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but misguided all these lenses are energy blind the

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real paths ahead can only be seen by integrating energy awareness

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with biology sociology physics and everything science has discovered

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we need a systems lens to read the map a systems lens

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reveals the holistic story that explains humanity's path

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in pursuit of the same emotional experiences of our ancient ancestors we transform materials and energy into

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technologies that make our lives more comfortable and fun we keep score of our progress using

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money which has become a psychological stand-in for all the things our ancestors valued

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the massive scale of humanity's consumption is evidenced by the excess co2 being

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absorbed by earth's oceans and atmosphere the emergent result is a metabolic

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superorganism with oil as its hemoglobin transporting goods through the arteries and veins of

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a global supply network like a shark needing to swim to get

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oxygen flowing through its gills our current economic system has an imperative to grow in order to satisfy

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prior financial commitments we can't stop nor can we slow down or

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the system will crash a systems lens reveals that the road

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ahead is closed to our current cultural expectations yet we continue to bear down on the

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accelerator wearing systems lenses removes the blind spots created by any single issue lens

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global economic growth will never meaningfully decouple from energy consumption it cannot because the

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world's gdp by definition has always been a proxy for how much energy we burn

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if we were to grow the global economy at three percent a year as most governments

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and institutions expect we would use as much energy and materials in the next thirty years as we

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have in the past ten thousand stock markets are poor guideposts for

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prosperity when inflated by government and central bank support all the cash stocks bonds and pension

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funds in the world will need energy and materials to be cashed out and turned into real wealth

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creativity and innovation will be central to human futures

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but modern technology requires huge amounts of energy to build and to

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operate as long as gdp is our goal efficiency

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gains from new technology will serve the super organism transitioning from fossil hydrocarbon to

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rebuildable energy won't change this dynamic ultimately in addition to using

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different energy we'll need to use energy differently

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seeing our future through a systems lens changes everything

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we have spent the last century harnessing enormous amounts of fossil

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energy to build a world of complexity like nothing seen before

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in the coming century humanity will experience a great simplification

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there will always be energy on earth as long as the sun burns

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but the amount of surplus energy available to human societies will soon

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be diminishing as the extraction of geologically stored energy becomes more difficult

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everything we're used to in society will become more costly or less available

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we are not planning for this because it's never happened before the onset of the great simplification

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will be financial and economic turbulence followed by contraction when we can no longer grow fast enough

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to maintain all the increased financial claims economies will recede to a scale that

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can again be supported by physical flows without credit complex global supply chains the related

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high consumption lifestyles and many of the conveniences and freedoms we take

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for granted in this era of abundant energy surplus will diminish

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the ensuing simplification will be among the most significant events ever

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experienced by our species those who look through a systems lens

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can serve as early visionaries of a simpler life with new ways of relating to technology

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to consumption to each other and to earth's ecosystems

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there are many pathways wending through a great simplification

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some are wise humane and even preferable to what we have now

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some are so dark as to be nearly unthinkable yet it is precisely thinking about these

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pathways and actively choosing among them which offers the only realistic hope for a

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long and meaningful human future nature has gifted us with a productive

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and beautiful home the ability to understand how we got here

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and the creativity to imagine which paths are possible

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the future need not be dystopian but cleverness alone will no longer

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suffice for the next leg of our journey we will need imagination

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foresight empathy and above all wisdom

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to navigate the path to the future that is arriving the great simplification

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[Music]

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so [Music]

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you