Update I thought I’d repost this a year on, and reopen the discussion 10 September 2015
Reader ZM points me to a paper with this title, by Graham Turner of the University of Melbourne. Not only does Turner answer “Yes”, he gives a date: 2015. That’s a pretty big call to be making, given that 2015 is less than four months away.
The abstract reads:
The Limits to Growth “standard run” (or business-as-usual, BAU) scenario produced about forty years ago aligns well with historical data that has been updated in this paper. The BAU scenario results in collapse of the global economy and environment (where standards of living fall at rates faster than they have historically risen due to disruption of normal economic functions), subsequently forcing population down. Although the modelled fall in population occurs after about 2030—with death rates rising from 2020 onward, reversing contemporary trends—the general onset of collapse first appears at about 2015 when per capita industrial output begins a sharp decline. Given this imminent timing, a further issue this paper raises is whether the current economic difficulties of the global financial crisis are potentially related to mechanisms of breakdown in the Limits to Growth BAU scenario. In particular, contemporary peak oil issues and analysis of net energy, or energy return on (energy) invested, support the Limits to Growth modelling of resource constraints underlying the collapse.
A central part of the argument, citing Simmons is that critics of LtG wrongly interpeted the original model as projecting a collapse beginning in 2000, whereas the correct date is 2015.
I’ve been over this issue in all sorts of ways (see here and here for example, or search on Peak Oil). So readers won’t be surprised to learn that I don’t buy this story. I won’t bother to argue further: unless the collapse is even more rapid than Turner projects, I’ll be around to eat humble pie in 2016 when the downturn in output (and the corresponding upsurge in oil prices) should be well under way.
Given that I’m a Pollyanna compared to lots of commenters here, I’d be interested to see if anyone is willing to back Turner on this, say by projecting a decline of 5 per cent or more in world industrial output per capita in (or about) 2015, continuing with a sharply declining trend thereafter. [minor clarifications added, 5/9]
John Quiggin 
Sadly Ronald, both of these stupid heresies were started by a dude called Simon, so there’s not much can be done. Context is everything!
Mines are generally run around the clock, both the excavation part and the surface operations such as milling and flotation. If the power supply was expensive diesel it could still pay to use solar during sunny daytime. Suppose diesel electricity cost $250 per Mwh comprising $100 fixed or idled costs plus $150 variable cost mainly fuel. If daytime solar was $100 then during daytime
full time diesel costs $250
idled diesel plus active solar costs $100 + $100 = $200.
Power prices on the coal dominated uncarbontaxed NEM grid may be $25 to $50 per Mwh so it usually pays to put in a power line to a mine. Ironically the retrenched Henty gold miners were hoping to be re-employed on a nearby wind farm construction which will not now go ahead with the RET uncertainty. FWIW I regard both gold mining and the RET as largely a misallocation of resources.
Wrong … capitalism ripped it up. Abbott was only the messenger.
Even if you “start again” capitalism will rip it up again, but with a different capitalist prime minister.
Hermit, the quickest way I can think of to bring down gold prices would be for the Chinese government to stop stealing from the bank accounts of Chinese citizens through bank interest rates that are below the rate of inflation.
Ivor, I think it’s more likely a few crazy old people who think flouridation is stealing their vital essence made a stink about and so rather than do what is right for the environment and the water security of Australia, the project was dropped rather than risk a few votes and saving a few dollars in the short term may have also been a motivating factor. Of course if crazy old people count as capitalists then I’ll stand corrected.
@Ronald Brak
Ronald, if this thread was dedicated to the difficulties of getting banana trees to fruit in a temperate climate, Ivor would be saying that the chief obstacle was capitalism. And if Terje was here he’d say the main problem was government. Plus ca change, etc.
Assuming that the Soviet Union and Maoist China were forms of state capitalism, I guess we can say that all the problems of modern industrial society are due to capitalism
@Tim Macknay
If the socially necessary costs were covered to have banana trees fruiting in temperate climates, and this did not happen then, yes – the chief obstacle would be capitalism.
@Ronald Brak
Some crazy old people are capitalists – Keynesians.
Thankfully, some are not.
This make no sense whatsoever.
Must have been a leaflet pasted around a university by some trots.
Ivor, capital is like, stuff, isn’t it? And most of the stuff in the Soviet Union and Maoist China was owned by the government, wasn’t it? And they were using that stuff to make more stuff in various five year plans and great leaping lizards forward, weren’t they? So wouldn’t that make them some sort of state capitalism?
An immensely complicated question and I am not sure I can explain is good English.
Capital is not “investment of savings” or “use of tools” to earn a wage.
Capital is not stuff, but “stuff” used in a particular way – to be differentiated from fuedal and slave and colonial forms.
this was all high-school stuff in Yugoslavia some time ago.
Capital is capital because it accumulates wealth from others.
Socialist investment by BOALS (Basic Organizations of Associated Labour) produces gains from their own productivity.
I have just about finished Turner’s paper (busyish week), it is quite interesting this discussion on what is capital because dynamics of capital are central to LTG BAU collapse according to Turner. As more capital and materials (including energy) is invested in exploiting diminishing and more difficult to access non-renewable resources in the model, there is less capital available for services, and less materials (including energy) available for industry and for food production and processing and transportation etc – causing a decrease in economic output and an increase in death rates and decline in population. He nominates the GFC as potentially relating to resource constraints – specifically peak oil. I remember from around 2005-GFC peak oil was a big topic of conversation amongst people I knew.
But I haven’t found how LTG / Turner defines capital in the model yet with my reading (maybe it is at the end)
I remember conversations on Crooked Timber on Pikety’s book contesting the definition of capital he used (I think capital = wealth in his book?)
David Harvey the (Marxist) geographer says Pikety has an erroneous definition of capital
“There is, however, a central difficulty with Piketty’s argument. It rests on a mistaken definition of capital. Capital is a process not a thing. It is a process of circulation in which money is used to make more money often, but not exclusively through the exploitation of labor power. Piketty defines capital as the stock of all assets held by private individuals, corporations and governments that can be traded in the market no matter whether these assets are being used or not. This includes land, real estate and intellectual property rights as well as my art and jewelry collection. How to determine the value of all of these things is a difficult technical problem that has no agreed upon solution. In order to calculate a meaningful rate of return, r, we have to have some way of valuing the initial capital. Unfortunately there is no way to value it independently of the value of the goods and services it is used to produce or how much it can be sold for in the market. The whole of neo-classical economic thought (which is the basis of Piketty’s thinking) is founded on a tautology. The rate of return on capital depends crucially on the rate of growth because capital is valued by way of that which it produces and not by what went into its production. Its value is heavily influenced by speculative conditions and can be seriously warped by the famous “irrational exuberance” that Greenspan spotted as characteristic of stock and housing markets. If we subtract housing and real estate – to say nothing of the value of the art collections of the hedge funders – from the definition of capital (and the rationale for their inclusion is rather weak) then Piketty’s explanation for increasing disparities in wealth and income would fall flat on its face, though his descriptions of the state of past and present inequalities would still stand.
Money, land, real estate and plant and equipment that are not being used productively are not capital. If the rate of return on the capital that is being used is high then this is because a part of capital is withdrawn from circulation and in effect goes on strike. Restricting the supply of capital to new investment (a phenomena we are now witnessing) ensures a high rate of return on that capital which is in circulation. The creation of such artificial scarcity is not only what the oil companies do to ensure their high rate of return: it is what all capital does when given the chance. This is what underpins the tendency for the rate of return on capital (no matter how it is defined and measured) to always exceed the rate of growth of income. This is how capital ensures its own reproduction, no matter how uncomfortable the consequences are for the rest of us. And this is how the capitalist class lives.”
@John Quiggin
Quote:- “Assuming that the Soviet Union and Maoist China were forms of state capitalism, I guess we can say that all the problems of modern industrial society are due to capitalism.”- John Quiggin.
I assume you are being sarcastic here but I will play a straight bat. Taking your statement at face value, I can reply that there are good arguments for the proposition that the Soviet Union was in the main a state capitalist system. With respect to Maoist China, the situation had two stages.
I refer to a paper:
“State Capitalism versus Communism: What Happened in the USSR and the PRC?” by
– Satya Gabriel Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, USA
– Stephen A. Resnick University of Massachusetts – Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
– Richard D. Wolff University of Massachusetts – Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
These authors state;
“We disagree with this conventional understanding of the last century’s tensions and con-
flicts between nations aligned in the contending capitalist and communist blocs. We find
that the struggle did not pit capitalism against communism. This conclusion flows from the
fact that communism – if understood as a distinct, non-capitalist class structure – was never
a significant, nor a sustained part of the history of any of the nations conventionally labeled
communist. Using the USSR and PRC as exemplars, we will argue below that those nations
actually displayed capitalist and feudal, not communist, class structures.”
A paragraph or so on;
“Thus, by the second half of the 20th century, the dominant conflicts occurred among:
(1) mostly private capitalisms (the US, Western Europe, Japan, etc.),
(2) a state capitalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, and
(3 first a state feudalism and then a state capitalism in the PRC.”
I will leave it to you and others to follow up and read this paper if interested. It is very easy to find on the internet and is not paywalled. I think the authors make a water-tight case. I won’t try to paraphrase it here. If you accept that case, you acknowledge that it is not true that Soviet Russia and China became fully communist or socialist states or anywhere near that in the Marxist or Marxian senses. Their recent transitions to private capitalism in Russia and the current hybrid of state and private capitalisms in China become more understandable in this light.
Now to the second part being that “all the problems of modern industrial society are due to capitalism”. No, of course they all are not. They are also due to science, the nature of industrialism itself, complexity, unforeseeable consequences, so-called “wicked problems”, human frailty, gullibility, greed, hubris and so on. But it is clear that we cannot now make further progress under capitalism. Note my clear admission that we have made progress under industrial capitalism (albeit at much cost to exploited and exlcuded peoples and at much cost to the environment). But it has served its purpose and is no longer the correct politcal economy system tool for the next stage.
@ZM
@Ikonoclast
I wish I’d said all that.
I should have turned to Harvey. I have his Enigma of Capital right next to me.
At pg 21 he notes that furtures market went from nothing in 1990 to about 600 trillion in 2008.
Go figure.
How does this fit in with the keynesian tradition?
Love this story:
I note from the number of posts on this topic that the issue of possible collapse certainly concerns or interests most readers of this blog. This is so whether they individually consider collapse likely or unlikely. I wonder if it exercises the minds of the general public in the same manner or are we here a self-selected and unrepresentative sample?
My personal view is that the majority of the public aren’t all that concerned about collapse and don’t really think it’s a possibility. I doubt that most are aware of LTG and Footprint modelling at all. Outside of the West and maybe the BRIC elites, I doubt whether the rest of the world’s population, especially the uneducated and poor, have the concepts or think about it at all. This would suggest the human race is walking into this danger mostly unconsciously.
On the other hand, the world’s scientific, technical and academic elites are thinking about it a great deal and many are very concerned. So, if the governing elites eventually get worried and call on the scientific, technical and academic elites to do something and actually give them the resources then I guess it is possible some serious headway could be made quickly on possibly avoiding real collapse.
But what will it take to bring our reactionary political and oligarchic elites to the understanding that we have serious problems to deal with and need to do it very soon? I can only see three possibilities. One, there is a fundamental shift in voting patterns in democracies, namely that BAU parties are rejected wholesale and genuine Green and Socialist governments get formed. Two, there are revolutions. Europe and especially countries like Greece, Italy, Spain and France could begin undergoing green, socialist worker revolutions. This seems the most likely area for this start. Three, the oligarchic elites themselves might become afraid of the real possibility of collapse (and revolution) then themselves and being insituting real changes.
I am fairly confident that if real collapse occurs and thus the dire reality becomes manifest, most likely as food and fuel shortages then violent riots, insurrections and revolutions will sweep the globe. Not too many regions will be immune to this. Australia might well prove to be the Lucky Country again and be relatively immune and insulated from this. The USA on the other hand could see serious disruption. However, I expect the hard right to hold power almost indefinitely and certainly brutally in the USA. A period of martial law in the US is a distinct possibility if a global collapse works through much of the globe.
However, I expect Australia, US/Canada, Russia, Brazil and maybe Germany to resist collapse relatively well. Small out of the way countries with low footprints like New Zealand will fare quite well too. The rest of the regions of the world including China, India, much of Continental Europe and the UK will be in serious trouble. Africa and the Middle East have entered collapse now IMO. All of this has to do with footprint analysis, remaining resources and the current level of development and stability.
It seems to be a race between a ecological collapse or a economic collapse.
Keep your eyes on Draghi – the ball is in his court.
i’m watching draghi, too. and scotland. -a.v.
I suppose I can be counted amongst those who isn’t keen on collapse theory. As others have noted though, much turns on what one intends by ‘collapse’.
Speaking as someone who sees in the flaws of humanity, provenance in scarcity, I should declare my predisposition. Of course, if it turns out that scarcity really is inevitable on our timeline then one is bound, I think, to have less optimistic views about human freedom and equality and inclusion, at least on any meaningful timeline.
I would strongly prefer to believe that things were not as bleak as popular ecological or resource doom theories suggest. Of course, if some of them are substantially correct what we’d prefer to believe is moot.
That all said, there does seem to be an element of essentialism in some doom talk. Does it follow that because some usages have been abandoned, civilisation has collapsed? If air travel became far harder and more exclusive, how fundamentally would that hurt civilisation? I am guessing, not much. Let’s imagine that due to FHC shortages power became intermittent wouldn’t society continue to function? Almost certainly. A new equilibrium would be found.
@Ikonoclast
It appears that TPTB have decided that “full-spectrum US dominance” and World War are the way to go. If not to stave off “collapse”, then certainly to ensure its corollary “BAU”.
From the Cameron/Obama NATO article published by Murdoch:
The world is their business and military action/dominance is the ‘solution’ to every ‘problem’.
@Megan
I had refrained from bringing military strategy and conflict into the analysis. My only reason was that it vastly complicates matters and renders so much uncertain. The U.S and NATO are pursuing the wrong strategy: one that amounts to strategic overreach. They are pushing to contain the Russian Bear and the Chinese Dragon too much and this can backfire. One, it is much too costly and two it can start a nuclear war.
If US/NATO were wise they would let Russia have its peripheral buffer of Belarus and Eastern Ukraine. Both areas are more Russian than anything else and look to Moscow. I wonder why US/NATO are never satisfied. (Actually, I know why.) Bringing Poland, the Baltic states, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, former Yugoslavia etc. into the Western orbit is achievement enough. It is not wise to push a still strong opponent further when he is already at the brink. He might recoil back against you or take you both over the brink.
Really, China and Russia are well contained now and further pressure will be costly to maintain and counter-productive. China will collapse under its own weight, being much over-populated, and Russia will struggle to make use of its ample resources on a sprawling territory with its inadequate population base (by superpower standards).
But the USA will press on believing it can and should achieve total hegemony over the globe. This is an egregious mistake and the consequences in detail are totally unpredictable except that they certainly will be on the bad side of the ledger.
Just to keep people up to date with what is actually happening, at around solar noon in South Australia today grid demand was down to about 700 megawatts which was about 200 megawatts lower than night time minimum demand and rooftop solar was providing about 37% of total electricity use.
Interestingly Ronald, that 20MW solar farm at Royalla in the ACT just officially opened today. All the power is going out to the grid at about 18.6 cents per kWh. It will apparently cost consumers 25 cents per household per week. A maximum of 42.293 GWh will be paid for. It is expected to send out about 37GWh per year. What’s not to like about that?
Bids have just closed for another ACT solar farm ten times the capacity of the above at 200MW. The ACT is aiming for 90% renewable by 2020.
Speaking locally ,collapse to me would be when water and food stop being easily available .I fear nothing up to that point and suspect that most of it would potentially make Aust a much better place . Community would become strong again, and people would become happier as they were forced to realise that what makes life good are the free things that were always front of us anyway. Providing we dont get invaded, I think my only regret about growth stopping or reversing would be that the pace of medical progress would slow too.
Megan ;
There is a Uni in England(cant remember which -should have googled it) doing research on radicalisation and de-radicalisation that is in touch with some Brit nationals in ISIS who want to come home but now cant .They are with a group of 40 or 50 Brits ,most of whom want to come home because they have found they dont like the reality of what they are involved in. They would be very useful at home in the de-radicalisation effort .However what stood out to me was that the main contact said he also wanted to come back because ISIS was trying to draw the US into the conflict (via be-headings etc). It sure isnt hard to draw Abbott into a fight. We are being sucked down the same, much worse than useless, hole of mutual self justified self perpetuating rhetorical and actual war again.
@ Fran what the ACT is paying wholesale for sunny daytime solar is very expensive compared to NEM annual average prices of 3-5c per kwh.
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/2014/08/volumes-and-revenues-crunched-by-oversupply/
Then again Canberrans get paid more. I wonder if the ACT should have its own microgrid separate from the NEM so as to be simon-pure. The Lake George NSW wind turbines disdained by the Treasurer could be hotwired direct to the ACT. My guess is the claim of 90% renewable energy for the ACT implies imports of Snowy Hydro but those electrons are inextricably mixed with coal pushed electrons in the NEM. What happens in droughts?
@Fran Barlow
Fran, while utility scale solar is a far better idea than burning coal or natural gas what they have done at Royalla doesn’t really make sense as it is much more cost effective to install solar point of use than to build utility scale solar farms. Point of use solar provides electricity to consumers at a lower cost than coal, natural gas, wind, hydroelectricity, or any form of grid generation. It just doesn’t make sense in Australia to put solar PV in farms instead of on roofs.
@Ikonoclast
Ikonoklast:
That’s an unhappy scenario, to rely on elites in cohort with the oligopoly to sort out global ecological collapse that was caused … wait a minute … by scientific and intellectual elites working with the oligopoly.
There is no way in the world that any country in the world will escape the consequences of ecological collapse. In Australia, for example, we may be able to maintain food, water and the trappings of civilized life but only at the expense of kissing the arse of fascists who have already made it clear that the team’s interests lie in a willingness to repel boarders or worse. So the psychological consequences of mere survival will be high. I’ve long argued that the point is not just to ‘save the world’ but to ‘save a world worth inhabiting’. One of the conditions of a world worth inhabiting, for mine at least, is one in which communal solidarity is a virtue.
On that basis I’m a bit concerned at your apparent willingness to advocate for some form of socialism on the basis of the socialism of the past while descrying that it wasn’t really socialism or communism but a distorted form. Well, Bahro, with whom you’d be familiar, argued convincingly about the failures of ‘really existing socialism’ in ’77. If he left any stone unturned from his left communist critique of real socialism then it was more than turned by Anna Funders’ account of the psychological consequences of totalitarian rule in her ‘Stasiland’.
The task of the left is to generate a vision of the future that goes beyond the argument that the left’s dystopian future is less unpleasant than the right’s.
There are many more possibilities in a radical democratic vision than anything drawing on the vapours coming off the corpse of either of the great industrial age ideologies – socialism and capitalism. Either model offers only a known history – blood, oppression, immiseration, ecological degradation and more blood.
Radical democracy, by contrast and as yet under theorized, can easily accommodate the inclusion of non-human species, at an individual and species level, within the sphere of democratic considerability. That is, non-human species can be accorded appropriate recognition and respect by radically democratic institutions that accept the rule of mutual interdependence. There are many more fruitful paths to explore and which are currently being explored, not by theoreticians, but by practitioners who are, in my recent experience, generally poor, under-educated or wildly over educated, talented and brave beyond words because they realize the full horror of what the science is telling us. They are committed to living on in the face of it rather than checking out, as so many young people are already choosing, by suicide because they have understood that Johnny Rotten was right when he screamed ‘nooooo future’.
I’ve really enjoyed your dialogue with Quiggin and agree with you on many technocratic matters and issue but my affective response to what you write, as a Marxian, is a bit like feeling that I’m in chapel – comfortable with the familiar while aware that this is ritual belief expounded when what we need is the overturning of all previous certainties.
I think the role of all older radicals is to guide and inform the young. I was deeply informed by older comrades in the CPA who literally educated me in how to stand your ground and fight for what is decent. They told of the period of illegality, how they responded, both legally and illegally, how they sustained their capacity for agency.
The future is inclusive. We’re all on the one planet. There will be no future worth living if we hold back now.
@Hermit
Hermit, if paying an extra 15 cents per kilowatt-hour is what it took to protect against global warming I would gladly pay it and be happy that the price was so low. Since the actual cost of eliminating emissions from electricity generation is far lower than that I am extremely happy. I’m talking sister attempted to have me hospitalised happy.
@jungney
I was speculating possibilities not predicting or advocating. Though, from other comments I have made in this and other threads, it is clear that I advocate (A) but hold out little hope of it actually happening before a salutary disaster or crisis. I said real action would require;
(A) A fundamental shift in voting patterns in democracies, namely that BAU parties are rejected wholesale and genuine Green and Socialist governments get formed; OR
(B) Revolutions. Europe and especially countries like Greece, Italy, Spain and France could begin undergoing green and/or socialist worker revolutions: OR
(C) The oligarchic elites themselves might become afraid of the real possibility of collapse (and revolution) then themselves and being insituting real changes.
The oligarchic capitalist elites have been known to give ground before. However, that’s always temporary and never a proper solution. It’s not a system solution and the system is the problem. Specifically, the problem is the concentration of ownership of the means of production and thus the undemocratic concentration of decision making power on how those means of production are deployed, how workers are employed, how the excluded are treated and how the envirionment is exploited.
@ RB I agree onsite installation at the user’s premises is the killer app for solar PV. Perhaps the inverter is a bit more efficient for a large array. Those 86,000 (?) panels at Royalla could have been divvied up over thousands of homes perhaps at a cut price. Covering photosynthesis driven farmland with hectares of metallic panels doesn’t seem right.
What worries me the most is the supply of phosphate.
Biochemistry of phosphates
.
The fact that Incitec Pivot don’t publish resource figures and that most of the worlds deposits are in Morroco and Western Sahara (75%), leaves Australia open to supply shoratges in the event of major geopolitical unrest in the future when our supplies do run out.
It seems like quite a few minerals have around 50 years’ worth or less of supplies. If that is the case, moving to a circular economy is quite urgent (I studied history so 50 years seems like a fairly short amount of time for things to happen historically).
Eg (figures from 2007):
Silver 15-20 years
Uranium 30-40 years
Zinc 20-30 years
Tantalum 20-30 years
Antimony 15-20 years
Hafnium ~ 10 years
Indium 5-10 years
Platinum 15 years
“”We need to minimise waste, find substitutes where possible, and recycle the rest.” …
… as Graedel points out in a paper published last year (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p 1209), “Virgin stocks of several metals appear inadequate to sustain the modern ‘developed world’ quality of life for all of Earth’s people under contemporary technology.””
http://www.sciencearchive.org.au/nova/newscientist/027ns_005.htm?q=nova/newscientist/027ns_005.htm
@Hermit
“Covering photosynthesis driven farmland with hectares of metallic panels doesn’t seem right.”
But covering the land with radiation from Chernobyls and Fukushimas is alright?
Seriously, Australia has bulk desert and marginal land for solar and wind power. There is no need to compromise any good farming or grazing land. Indeed, wind power has a very small ground footprint and crops and stock can be grown and run underneath. The two can be combined with ease. It gives farmers another source of income too which does not compromise the land and water like fracking and coal seam gas.
@Ikonoclast
Most of the Fukushima evacuation zone at 5-10 uSv/h is less radioactive than granite country in many parts of the world. Chernobyl was indeed a criminal error. Let’s hope 900 kg bulls don’t rub against the supports for paddock mounted solar panels. The sheep and cattle won’t be getting capital grants, feed in tariffs or LGC subsidies.
John Quiggin,
Now I have finished reading the report I can respond properly to your major points (sorry for such a long comment):
Is Global Collapse Imminent? “Not only does Turner answer “Yes”, he gives a date: 2015. That’s a pretty big call to be making…”
As I already mentioned – Turner actually says the *onset* of a long collapse around 2015 (which continues to 2100, when living standards per capita fall to being the same as they were at the start of the 20thC AFAICT) – is forecast by the LTG Business As Usual (BAU) Standard Run scenario. This significant fall happens “when the World3 model incorporates a growing diversion of capital towards the resource sector” p. 7 “Based simply on the comparison of observed data and the LTG…it would appear that the global economy and population is on the cusp of collapse” p. 9
Turner then examines real world developments to see if any resemble the dynamics of collapse in the BAU scenario which is “predominantly associated with resource constraints and the diversion of capital to the resource sector…” p. 9 He then looks at Peak Oil (“data on oil resource extraction corroborates a key driver of dynamics in the LTG BAU scenario” p. 12) and the GFC (“the ongoing economic downturn of the GFC may be representative of an imminent BAU style collapse”). Turner states “oil prices have been linked to recent food price increases [through high fuel prices for machinery and transport, higher fertiliser costs, and the turn to growing food crops for bio-fuel]… These developments resemble the dynamics in the LTG BAU scenario where agricultural production is negatively affected by reduced inputs.” p. 15 Further, “Hamilton’s econometric analysis (2009) indicates that the latest (US) recession , associated with the GFC, was different from previous oil related shocks in that it appears caused by the combination of strong world demand confronting stagnating world production” p. 15 The financialization of the economy (implicated in the GFC) was not included in LTG – but – Turner points out that “price increases in oil and related commodities , which would be experienced by all households simultaneously (…[especially those] with low discretionary income) [could explain] the co-ordinated debt defaults” p. 15
“A central part of the argument, citing Simmons is that critics of LtG wrongly interpeted the original model as projecting a collapse beginning in 2000, whereas the correct date is 2015.”
This is not a central part. There is a background section on the criticism of LTG that misrepresented the book. I linked earlier to the figure on p. 124 of LTG showing the BAU scenario peaks and collapses 1900-2100 – the descent to early 20th C living standards happens closer to 2100 (although beginning a downward turn earlier).
‘unless the collapse is even more rapid than Turner projects, I’ll be around to eat humble pie in 2016 when the downturn in output (and the corresponding upsurge in oil prices) should be well under way.’
You are missing the point. This is likely because you made this comment without reading all of the article. Turner points out that changes can occur (I think in modelling this is sensitivity?) but the dynamics of the model remain. Eg. there was higher use of oil from 1960-1985 – but this ‘extra production (relative to LTG) in this period closely matches the deficiency in production (relative to the LTG between 1990 and 2005). Suppose unconventional oil has a great boom (unlikely because it is hard to extract and therefore expensive etc) – this would just slightly change the peak timing a bit, not mean that oil is an inexhaustible resource – and the collapse would then be worse. Turner notes that modelling that reduces the energy/capital required for each barrel of oil sees the “collapse delayed by about 2 decades but it is worse due to increased efficiency in accessing unconventional resources” p. 14
“Now lets have a go at the cost of synfuel (based on, say, switchgrass)…. To sum up, even with no oil and a whopping carbon tax, we are not going to get anywhere near $16/litre…”
You need land to grow switchgrass on – what land are you planning to grow such copious amounts of switchgrass on to meet demand for the projected airplane passenger numbers? land is needed to grow food and textile etc plants for the high global human population, and we need to reforest spare land to draw down GHG emissions, and for biomass to make biogas to supplement stationary energy periodically (and emergency flying such as sea rescue and flying doctors), and land also needs to be put aside for animals and indigenous plants to live in etc.
How much land are you planning to grow switchgrass for aeroplanes on? Land is in limited supply. The Navy are investigating switchgrass – this is because Navy use is emergency use – not regular vacationing use. We can put some little bits of land aside to grow swtichgrass for emergency aeroplane use – not for everyone’s regular vacationing use.
“@Hermit I wouldn’t be at all surprised by a reduction in global production/consumption of oil.…
The question is, so what?”
I have not found a single non-oil based, zero GHG emissions national (but including international trade) transport plan. BZE are working on a local one – but it is not finished and they have said it is difficult to work out, and I don’t think they are looking at transport between countries – eg. international trade and tourism etc. You would also need fuel/energy substitutes for farm and mining machinery etc.
What reports demonstrate that diminishing oil supplies/zero-GHG-emissions-transport-and-machinery genuinely has negligible negative effects on material production and consumption, trade and tourism, and the economy? I think aeroplanes need to be banned except for emergency use – but I think this would affect tourism and other parts of the economy (another reason to favour an equitable-war-mobilisation-style-economy to transition to zero GHG emissions and sustainable consumption). Turner states “Empirically, there is clear evidence of a connection between many oil price increases and economic recessions” p. 15
However, I do think that the climate change mitigation technologies research that has gone into renewable energy technologies might help prevent diminishing oil supplies from causing collapse. This research needs much more funding to keep working out how we can transition quickly to non-ghg emitting energy, but it is a reason for hope that so much research has been done already even with such inadequate funding etc.
“But the valence of Peak Oil (and coal, and gas) switches sign here. Turner (and it would seem quite a few others) predict imminent disaster based on running out of (or low on) fossil fuels. If you care about the climate the sooner Peak oil happens, the better, and the fact that, in the developed countries it has already happened is one of the limited signs of hope.”
This is an inaccurate representation. The LTG BAU scenario Turner is looking at doesn’t predict imminent disaster based on running out of or low on *oil* (not fossil fuels generally) – but that the remaining oil is more difficult and expensive to access – leading to more and more capital and materials being transferred to resource extraction from other areas of the economy, which causes follow through decreases in industrial output, food production, and services like education and health etc
“Predictions of pollution in LtG are problematic. Obviously CO2 has grown more than linearly, and threatens disaster in the long run. For the next 30 years though, in the absence of a non-predictable tipping point, damage is likely to be significant but not enough to have an impact on world population etc as predicted by LtG…. “
This is an inaccurate representation of treatment of pollution in the LTG! – Turner makes the point that pollution does not cause significant negative effects in the LTG BAU scenario until late in the piece – not around now at all. “The level of global pollution is sufficiently low to not have a serious impact on the environment and human life expectancy” p. 7 However – he does say that in reality pollution might already be having an effect now on food production “(which is a secondary factor in the BAU scenario) in the recent occurrence of major droughts, storms, and fires (eg. Russia and Australia) that are potentially early impacts of global climate change” p. 15
“My point (on both water and climate change) is not that there will be no collapse, but that there need not be and that preventing it does not imply a drastic reduction in living standards.”
I think living standards need to stop being equated with material consumption for this to be true. At the moment I don’t think there are successful examples of this decoupling? I also think this decoupling would potentially affect exchange rates – say for example your advanced economy country would transition to being based largely around non-material using services such as e-books and yoga classes : why would your advanced economy country’s currency remain high compared to non-advanced economy countries’ currencies where they also have many ‘services’ like oral story telling and dancing ceremonies? It doesn’t seem to me that ebooks and yoga would make for a higher currency compared to oral story telling and dancing ceremonies.?
Post Script
One of Turner’s key points I think is that the opportunity to avoid collapse by measured/moderate government intervention has been “squandered” over the last few decades. This is what people are saying a lot these days about climate change – if governments had effected a ghg pricing mechanism in say the 1990s, and some other measured interventions, we would be better positioned at this point in time – however – they did not – and now it looks like we need a war-mobilisation-style-economy in order to make the necessary changes in a timely fashion. Turner’s analysis of the LTG BAU scenario shows that even government-war-mobilisation-style approach would be problematic now due to diminishing capital over-investment in resource extraction meaning the governments would struggle to raise funds (eg. through issuing transition bonds etc) and to pay back the bonds (the GFC [and low interest rates] shows we are at a point where debt is difficult to pay back).
However, to answer John Quiggin’s question about collapse – I do not think this problem of diminishing capital and overinvestment in resource extraction necessarily means imminent collapse will continue through to 2100. I think the first signs and onset are likely imminent or present (depending on the reasons for the GFC – I haven’t really looked into this). But this can be changed through changing economic laws to create sustainable local, national, and international economies – we can have more co-ordination, banning of aeroplanes, rationing, maybe a bit of pleasant conscription for reforestation and sustainable industry etc. If this transition cannot be funded – the Queen can just change the economy even more – she can have a grand royal commission into how we can construct an economy which allows us to transition to zero ghg emissions and sustainability. She already visited the London School of Economics after the GFC to ask them why it happened and why with so many economics professors it was not prevented – so you can see she has already started thinking about how we need a more advanced sort of economy that is not prone to always crashing at inopportune moments. And then in 2100 people can live like happy characters in News from Nowhere, instead of like characters in Mad Max.
@ZM
Your last two posts sum it up very well. Limits to Growth denialists are anti-science denialists on a par with Climate Change denialists. The cases are directly comparable. You have to ignore vast amounts of established science (especially physics, chemistry, biology and ecology) and its established explanatory and predictive capabilities to ignore the message of the science. You also have to ignore data sets and series which are now getting comprehensive enough and long enough to empirically prove these cases within the requirements for high probability judgements usually of the order of 95% or better.
I think most people are underestimating the size of the task in changing over the entire energy basis of our economy. Although there is a Stanford study which advances a plan to power the entire USA via sustainable, renewable energy and to include not just stationary power needs but transport and all other power needs. It will take an effort, dirigist led, equal to an all out war mobilisation effort.
The question is this. What has to happen to get the populace and the elites to see the direness of the situation? I keep arguing it will take mass insurrections and revolutions, following energy and food supply crises and/or massive salutary natural disasters which combined are unambiguously attributable to CC and LTG and dynamic interactions of the two problems.
Ikonoclast,
There is one war-time economy political party on Australia. This is the Save the Planet party. I joined them for a bit – but then I found some of them support geo-engineering and also they haven’t decided if they support elite interests or social justice yet – so I unjoined – but will follow developments to see if they become more joinable again.
Tania Plibersek is coming to my small town next week – so I could ask her what it would take for the ALP to start designing a war economy policy?
ZM and Ikonoklast, it’s not going to happen. Politicians aren’t going to start taking AGW seriously for another 5-15 years, and when they do they will switch seamlessly to talk of geoengineering and sequestration. Corporations won’t take it seriously ever.
Meanwhile, economics as a discipline is just incapable of understanding the link between the ecosystem and the economy. They just don’t get it. They will continue to blame future social and economic instability on its proximal rather than distal causes, seeing in each crash the specific precipitating factors rather than the broad driving forces, and will fail to build a coherent alternative economics based on a proper understanding of our place in the biosphere. Journalists and policy-makers will probably take just as long to work out what is happening. Our host’s pollyanna approach to this report is a good example of how far the economics profession has yet to go in understanding the fundamental importance of the biosphere to the economy.
There’s no way out of this. By the time events conspire to make the world really wake up and pay attention, there will be no solutions left.
@ZM
The abstract of the paper is posted above. Your reading of the paper clearly contradicts it.
And, contrary to your summary, and that implicit in comments from others, the paper barely mentions climate change, or what might be done about it. There’s one para about CO2 as a measure of pollution. All the rest is nonsense claims about Peak Oil.
John Quiggin,
I find abstracts are quite often unreliable guides to the contents of publications. I am happy to justify my reading with more quotes, but I have to finish an assignment right now.
Have you actually read the paper?
Comments crossed, but I have read the paper. Have you? Turner explicitly rejects the analysis of Randers which “forecasts collapse after 2050, largely based around climate change impacts”, in favour of a near-term story about Peak Oil.
@Ikonoclast
I think it depends what you mean by ‘Limits to Growth denialists’. If you mean Julian-Simonesque denial of the existence of any limits at all, then you have a fair point. But if you mean skepticism of the proposition that the LTG world3 ‘standard run’ scenario accurately predicts the future of the world’s systems, then the comparison is unjust – one can reasonably accept the reality of limits to growth without treating the LTG models the way New-Agers treat Nostradamus’ prophecieis (It’s also worth noting that climate change denial is a promiscuous vice – Simonesque ‘LTG denial’ and climate change denial are frequently encountered as bedfellows in the rightwing and ‘libertarian’ communities, but climate change denial makes an all-too-common appearance among peak-oilers as well. Like Gail Tverberg, for example. Just sayin’).
@faustusnotes
As I see it, this is a two-way problem. The other part of it is that physical scientists don’t understand the link between the ecosystem and the economy either, which is why they’ve frequently tended to make wrong calls about environmental and resource-based constraints on growth. Both sides of the ‘debate’ have points, and both sides need to make more effort to understand each other, IMHO. Julian Simon may have been an idiot, but Paul Erhlich was even more of an idiot for taking the bet. Erhlich’s poorly judged doomsaying gave Simon’s cornucopianism far more credibility than it deserved.
@ZM
As a more general point, an author who chooses a sensational title and offers a similarly extreme abstract can’t reasonably expect their article to be interpreted in the most qualified possible way, as you want to do.
@faustusnotes
I am 75% bleak and 25% hopeful on this whole issue. One reason I don’t give up hope entirely now is that I realised that it actually sanctions BAU when you give up. I am sure the green-washers among the neocons are smart enough to have multiple narratives to ensnare and fool opponents. They fool some with CCS, some with an ETS when a straight pigovian tax would be far better and they fool some with despair by saying nothing else will work anyway so we might as well burn all the fossil fuels.
@John Quiggin
Quoth the man who penned “Zombie Economics : How dead ideas still walk among us.”
Just a friendly dig J.Q. 😉
@Ikonoclast
I despair. I’ve pointed out over and over that there is no significant difference between an ETS and a Pigovian tax (one fixes quantities, the other fixes prices). I think you’ve got it, and then you come back with this stuff.
Similarly, I’ve demonstrated dozens of times, in many different ways, that the cost of decarbonizing the economy is trivially small, a point agreed by every serious study of the subject. But you, faustusnotes and others keep coming back to the war economy, the impossibility of economic solutions and so on.
Meanwhile, hermit and quokka keep banging the drum for nuclear, despite a decade or more of unqualified failure.
And in all this time, no real response to any of my posts. Just constant, repetitive reiteration of strong priors
I don’t know why I bother.
John Quiggin,
“an author who chooses a sensational title and offers a similarly extreme abstract can’t reasonably expect their article to be interpreted in the most qualified possible way, as you want to do”
The paper gives the name of an editor – so they might have chosen the title rather than Gragam Turner? Also – the MSSI newsletter was quite pleased about the extent of coverage for what is quite a dry complicated article – in the Guardian newspaper, and in blogs in the US and France etc. Sensational titles increase coverage and discussion – this is unfortunate but true – as Ikonoclast mentions you like a catchy title too 😉