Daniel Schmachtenberger “Bend Not Break Part 1: Energy Blindness” | The Great Simplification #05
On this episode we meet with founding member of The Consilience Project, Daniel Schmachtenberger.
In the first of a three-part series, Nate and Daniel outline the macro risks and pathways for civilization to ‘bend’ and avoid ‘breaking’ in coming decades.
In the Part 1 conversation, Schmachtenberger flips the script to interview Nate about the urgent problems his research and work on energy, money, and growth confront. Nate explains how we can come to understand energy blindness and the overlooked role of oil in consumption, production, and progress since the Industrial Revolution. The dominant narrative of human progress prioritizes capital and labor — but the omission of energy and materials leaves out a key component to understanding how the modern human ecosystem functions.
Further, Nate discusses how a growth economy will inevitably lead to increased energy production and consumption, and how new energy technologies like renewables end up creating more energy output, not less. Putting everything together, in outsourcing our decisions and planning to a market dependent on growth, we have not so metaphorically become an energy hungry superorganism.
Finally, Daniel and Nate look forward to answering: What are ways for us to prepare for a post-growth economy? How can we stay balanced in the face of existential crises? What type of policy can help shape a future that is yet to arrive, and how can we get ahead?
Show Notes
01:45: Daniel’s website and other works
https://civilizationemerging.com/about/
2:30: Nate’s work on Macro-issues
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/i/
Economics for the Future – Beyond the Superorganism
2:45: Daniel’s work on micro-issues
https://civilizationemerging.com/
5:30: consilience project
https://consilienceproject.org/
8:40: Marvin Harris – cultural materialism
https://anthropology.ua.edu/theory/cultural-materialism/
11:20: Energy is the currency of life and a core driver of nature
https://www.wiley.com/en-ie/Behavioural+Ecology:+An+Evolutionary+Approach,+4th+Edition-p-9780865427310
Lotka: Contribution to the Energetics of Evolution
12:12: Climate warmed and stabilized, propelling agriculture and creating more energy surplus
http://www.dandebat.dk/eng-klima7.htm
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10818-013-9156-6
13:20: Since the 1800s we’ve been using stored fossil energy surplus 10 million times faster than it was sequestered
https://www.pnas.org/content/112/31/9511
13:52: Economics treats energy consumption like interest rather than principle
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/212/
14:05 One barrel of oil is equivalent to 5 years of human work
https://www.iier.ch/pub/files/Sun%2C%2007/31/2011%20-%2016%3A11/Green%20Growth%20DFID%20report.pdf
Economics for the Future – Beyond the Superorganism – section: 4.3
15:10: There is no substitute for energy
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/apr/08/can-world-economy-survive-without-fossil-fuels
15:32: GDP cannot decouple from energy
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0164733
16:25: The current financial system requires growth to continue
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/economic-growth/506423/
16:50: Central banks are blowing up their balance sheets keep the system going
https://www.yardeni.com/pub/peacockfedecbassets.pdf
17:20: We are a superorganism
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/126/
Maximum Power Principle and the Human Superorganism
17:45: Technology is dependent on energy
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/222/
19:30: Fourth Law of thermodynamics – Maximum Law Principle
https://read.realityblind.world/view/388478403/170/
20:22: Kleiber’s Law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber%27s_law
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/198/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLGDJFGAmic
23:08: Anthropocene
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-is-the-anthropocene.html
23:45: Inequality of consumption correlates with surplus
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/aracheology-wealth-inequality-180968072/
24:16: Dunbar’s number
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0158#:~:text=’Dunbar’s%20number’%20is%20the%20notion,other%20individuals%20in%20the%20group.
24:54: Individual and cultural plasticity
https://www.bibliovault.org/BV.landing.epl?ISBN=9780226712840
25:20: Exosomatic energy – the average american consumes >200,000 Kcals per day
http://www.ejolt.org/2012/12/human-energy-use-endosomatic-exosomatic/
26:13: We use 100 billion barrel equivalents of oil, coal, and natural gas, equivalent to 500 billion human workers
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/190/
Energy is Merely a Commodity 29:35 timestamp from Earth and Humanity
29:07: Stone age and overhunting
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/19/604031141/new-study-says-ancient-humans-hunted-big-mammals-to-extinction
31:00 Humans and livestock are 98% of mammalian biomass
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study
31:17 Total biomass is 700% of what it was 10,000 years ago
https://www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11543
31:47 60% of nitrogen in our bodies today has a chemical signature from natural gas from synthetic fertilizer https://cen.acs.org/articles/86/i33/Haber-Bosch-Reaction-Early-Chemical.html
http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/smil-article-1999-nature7.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process (last 2 references)
32:32 For most of history our food system was a net energy producer, now it is a net energy sink
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935130/
33:15: our entire food system uses 10 times the energy that it produces
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/10-calories-in-1-calorie-out-the-energy-we-spend-on-food/
https://www.postcarbon.org/publications/the-future-is-rural/
35:33: Over the last 50 years GDP has been growing 100% while energy is growing 99%
Figure 2: https://synapse9.com/drafts/2021-NewSci-IndividSys-MS.pdf
36:24: Energy intensity of GDP, some countries have been reducing their energy intensity due to exports and imports
https://voxeu.org/article/myth-decoupling
37:03: Global GDP is still very tightly coupled
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/195/
38:00: Financial manipulation also create the illusion of decoupling
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00191-017-0514-8
39:58: Wide boundary thinking
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/20/
40:56: Nate’s Hagens ~ Economics for the future – Beyond the Superorganism
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067
41:11: Jevons paradox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#:~:text=In%20economics%2C%20the%20Jevons%20paradox,rises%20due%20to%20increasing%20demand.
42:42: Energy depletion
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/03-arthurberman
43:10: Two categories of technology
https://read.realityblind.world/view/388478403/143/
47:55: We are at diminishing returns on oil
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/265/
48:25: The nature of interest requires financial growth
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477
49:30: Potential vs Kinetic energy
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/289/
51:24: Renewable are actually rebuildables
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/285/
51:50: In 2019 we grew the electricity demand by more than all the solar voltaic capacity ever built
https://www.iea.org/news/global-electricity-demand-is-growing-faster-than-renewables-driving-strong-increase-in-generation-from-fossil-fuels
52:40: We are using more wood today than we were 100 years ago
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/12/7955/htm
54:45: ER/OI – Energy return on Investments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mATjPdV3tcI&list=PLdHV4AV3ixB2J2PQrvbDnDg_93YAlklTK&index=2
Dynamic EROI of Global Energy System in Future Scenarios of Transition to Renewable Energy
57:33: Intermittence and variability
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/291/
58:21: Fossil carbons have a higher total system return on investment and is simple for our systems
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856
59:37: 20% of total global energy is electricity and many things aren’t replaceable by electricity
https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/role-fossil-fuels-sustainable-energy-system
1:00:37: We traded out human labor for mechanical labor, exponentially growing our system
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/192/
1:04:06: We have underpaid for the core economic input and don’t pay for the negative externalities
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07510-3
1:05:15: Tim Garrett – GDP and CO2 chart
https://twitter.com/nephologue/status/1455271331902099458
1:06:35: Price difference when adding negative externalities of coal
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/coals-externalities-medical-air-quality-financial-environmental/401075/
Full Cost accounting for life cycle of Coal
1:08:50: 95% of taxes are on human labor
https://www.untax.org/
1:09:57: Relationship between material consumption and GDP is 1:1 over last 50 years
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16941-y
1:10:02: 2lbs of non-renewable materials for every dollar of GDP
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2019/goal-12/
1:10:11: An American baby born today will use 3.1 million lbs of non-renewable materials in their lifetime
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mines-minerals-and-green-energy-reality-check
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/202/
https://mineralseducationcoalition.org/mining-mineral-statistics
1:10:45: Lithium and electric cars
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/is-there-enough-lithium-to-maintain-the-growth-of-the-lithium-ion-battery-m
1:11:10: Everything made from a barrel of oil
https://www.energy.gov/articles/hows-and-whys-replacing-whole-barrel
1:13:05: Waste that comes from mining
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123814753100051
https://theconversation.com/mine-waste-dams-threaten-the-environment-even-when-they-dont-fail-130770
1:14:55: What it takes to make a computer
https://scmresearch.org/2018/09/28/the-supply-chain-of-a-computer/
1:15:40: 2022 current events in Taiwan
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/navy/591015-us-aircraft-carriers-enter-south-china-sea-amid-tensions-between-taiwan
1:17:50: Dick gephardt and advanced policy
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/01-dickgephardt
1:18:14: Untax Project
https://www.untax.org/