I have some good and some bad news. First the good one: we about on the cusp of fossil and hence all mineral resource extractability, having finally hit our limits of growth. The first bottleneck of the energy bottleneck appears to be the heavy hydrocarbon fraction, from which our diesel and ship bunker fuel originates. This constrains agriculture, mining and all shipping.
Now for the bad news: which is the same as the good news. This means lots of excess deaths this century, probably in the billions. The renewables we will be still able to deploy will not be able to cushion our fall. Without a renewable base that can power and maintain its own life cycle and also whatever surplus it provides for the rest of our activities the carrying capacity of this planet is less than a billion. Potentially, a lot less.
just going chime in here with an unsourced figure.
quite some time ago I read a few articles claiming a comfortable global carrying capacity of about 500 milion for a post fossil fuel world. this number is old (as I am), and I have no idea if this was misinfo/disinfo/propaganda but if you poke around you may find more detail.
I believe that Western Europe’s population at the dawn of the 17th century was about 20-25 million and this did not represent a base case for preindustrial organization – in fact it was quite scaled up and organized in its own preindustrial way, with population having been significantly less at certain places and times before that. So that gives an idea of where things may be headed, and that doesn’t take into account the accumulated damage to the biosphere that we can expect on the downside of the slope which did not have any parallel in the preindustrial world.
I have some good and some bad news. First the good one: we about on the cusp of fossil and hence all mineral resource extractability, having finally hit our limits of growth. The first bottleneck of the energy bottleneck appears to be the heavy hydrocarbon fraction, from which our diesel and ship bunker fuel originates. This constrains agriculture, mining and all shipping.
Now for the bad news: which is the same as the good news. This means lots of excess deaths this century, probably in the billions. The renewables we will be still able to deploy will not be able to cushion our fall. Without a renewable base that can power and maintain its own life cycle and also whatever surplus it provides for the rest of our activities the carrying capacity of this planet is less than a billion. Potentially, a lot less.
Intetesting, any study to back those numbers?
just going chime in here with an unsourced figure.
quite some time ago I read a few articles claiming a comfortable global carrying capacity of about 500 milion for a post fossil fuel world. this number is old (as I am), and I have no idea if this was misinfo/disinfo/propaganda but if you poke around you may find more detail.
Hardly a study, but some numbers on gas https://www.artberman.com/blog/draining-america-first-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-shale-gas/ and tight oil Eagle Ford https://www.artberman.com/blog/eagle-ford-shale-a-preview-of-permian-decline/ and Permian https://www.artberman.com/blog/beginning-of-the-end-for-the-permian/
Some reasoning on why we are already potentially running critical on diesel https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/meet-the-gator-growing-energy-demand
I believe that Western Europe’s population at the dawn of the 17th century was about 20-25 million and this did not represent a base case for preindustrial organization – in fact it was quite scaled up and organized in its own preindustrial way, with population having been significantly less at certain places and times before that. So that gives an idea of where things may be headed, and that doesn’t take into account the accumulated damage to the biosphere that we can expect on the downside of the slope which did not have any parallel in the preindustrial world.