Globalization and Future Energy Transformations

Oh hey, it's the smoldering core in your bag of charred popcorn, Ally word, and yes, collapsology. It's a real word. And it's all about the fall of empires and the disintegration of societal complexity So this oologist is an anthropologist, historian, a legend A one of a kind expert in the field literally wrote the book on the topic titled The Coapse of Complex Societies. And he also authored The Way The Wind Blows, Climate, History and Human Action, as well as the book Drilling Down the Gulf Oil deebacle and our Eergy Dilemma, and has been on radio and TV, worked on movies as a consultant And continued to teach as a professor of Environment and Society in the College of Natural Resources at Utah State University until just very recently. I listened to the audioobook of the Collapse of compleomplex Societies alongside your pod mother, Jaret Sleeper on a road trip. And Mercedes Maitland is also a fan of this oologist's work. And she produced and did a huge amount, like nearly all the research this episode. This one is steered by her MVP. And so we were certainly more familiar with him than he was of us. Hologies right ye.. So it might be geology, it might be in this case, collapsology. I'm just interested that there is such a term Apparently it was coined in twenty fifteen by some French, I think sociologists. So if you look on the Wikipedia for collllapsology, there is a subcategory all about you. He well, I'm gonna I'm gonna make a note on that. Yeah, I was thrilled to find that there was an actual alogy for it I thank you for mentioning that. that will help me. you So this is exciting. So you will hear much more from him in a minute, but first thank you to patrons of the show who support us for as little as one dollar a month and submit your questions before we record. Thank you to everyone out there wearing merch from allologies merch. com. And as always, for no dollars, you can support us so much just by leaving us a review and I read and I cherish Each one is like a log on a fire. such as this hot one from SS Reviews who says Aologies ignites wonder and celebrates love of learning, adding, I often find the episodes I think will be least interesting are the most captivating. So thank you for that Yes, this one's a tangle of history and facts. It's a good one. We're going to dive in, but first thank you to sponsors of the show who enable us to donate to a relevant charity for each episode Introducing Toyota's family full of all electric rides as cool as you are. The adventurous BzZ Woodland, the trench setting, CHR, and the versatile BZ. Zip around town in the BzZ with a smooth and sporty driving dynamic. exxplore the outdoors in the BZ Woodland with dual motors and available all train tyires, be bold on the road with the CHR's shharp handling. Imagine what you can do with an all electric vehicle that gets you. 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These are the hosts delivering creme de la crereme experience near perfect ense rates, zero cancellations and just above and beyond reviews. So when you show up, you know exactly what you're getting. Book today on the Verbo app. If you know U verbo, terms ofly. seeee verbo d. com slash trust for details Okay, let's talk about fiddling amid the flames, the worst beard in history if you should go live on a small goat farm. Pblems with civilization, the ups and downs of empires, the fall of Rome, cities lost to the desert, bred, circuses fossil fel Fertilizer, hanging chads, doomsday clocks, the cost of complexity, the beauty of simplicity, when does a return diminish? And how do you know if collapse is knocking at your door and breathing down your collar? With author of the book The Collapse of Complex Societies, Anthropologist, professor, historian, legend, and collapseologist Dr. Joseph Tainter. He him And so yes, you are officially a collapsologist Um which is not a term that I knew existed before looking into it recently. But You wrote a very seminoal book on this in nineteen eighty eight Can you give me a little bit of information about What led you to want to go down That is a rabbit hole, research wise probably more than one thing, but I'm an archaeologist and have always been interested in the big problems, the big questions of our history as a species. And there's a limited number of those. I mean, one is just human biological evolution. Another one is white didid human societies ever grow more complex, which is related to what I've worked on There's things like the origin of the state, the formation of empires a number of big questions like that that take comparative research. And one of them is why did ancient societies collapse and Cllateral, yeah our society is today still vulnerable to collapsing So there was that intellectual aspect to it, and I had it in mind for a while. I was working on a monograph on the prehistory of Northwestern New Mexico, where one of my case studies of collapse is located of the Chocuan system and had an invitation from a colleague, Dr. Tom King to give a presentation on that at a professional meeting. And at the same time, my wife encouraged me to pursue that topic. She saw that that would be an important thing to concentrate on in the future. And so I simply began concentrating on it and as I did, I had ideas come to me And also some reading and other fields. In the field of ecology There is an aspect of ecology founded in Economic reasoning I think it's called optimal foraging theory Let's back up for a sec for a little context on Chaco history. So I just got back from a trip to New Mexico actually and I sadly did not make it up to that territory. We were buzzing around, so New Meico I had to go back. However, in his book, Dr. Tayner writes Across an inhospitable upplland pllateau of Northwestern New Mexico are the remains of once populous towns and villages, now utterly ruined and filled with wind blown sand. These Chakoan towns, while not as widely known as the Mayan cities, present a similarly compelling picture. Instead of cities overtaken by jungle, the Chakoan image is of lost towns filled sands and frequented only by desert fauna or occasional Navajo or dine herders. The Chakoans were clearly masters of this desert, he writes, but somehow disturbingly, they lost their mastery and the desert prevailed And he paints this picture that the Chakoans built a series of walled stone towns called Pueblos across the basin and connected many of them by roads that traversed the desert, they ascended mesas, they crossed ravines, and they had exotic goods imported from as far away as Northern Mexico and the Pacific Ocean They got trees to roof the towns, they were carried up to fifty kilometers across the desert to Chaco Canyon, which was the center of the basin. And from as early as five hundred AD, this regional society, he says, thrived For about five hundred years until sometime after the middle of the eleventh century, around ten, fifty eighty, something went wrong. and construction at the towns ended And then many began to be abandoned and the trade networks that they had established declined. The towns were scavenged for building materials. And then by around thirteen hundred AD, the last Sary peoples had either left or they reverted to a more simple mobile lifestyle So before the Chakoan society collapsed, how did it develop that complexity? Dr. Tayner's hypothesis is that like many even hunter gatherer groups, resources were shared so that if one agricultural producer in the group had a bummer year, the entire group could ensure survival by reallocating But if you think like They claning a bachelorette trip is hard to organize with a lot of people. justust Imagine Orchestrating all of the admin and logistics of an increasingly complex society. It is not easy. And when the society got too vast, more people were hit harder by the bad years, and there just wasn't enough to go around. And the bad years got bad. There was a devastating so called mega drought that hit in the mid eleven hundreds, and that was really the death knell for them. The complex society just couldn't survive it. Oh, and that ecological theory he talked about that also sparked his book, the optimal foraging theory. It's a deep dive, but in the smallest nutshell, it's that hunters and foragers have their own economy of what they're going to harvest If berries are good and the chance for a deer say that part of the day is bad, then they'll put more energy into getting the berries. Mercedes told me that as an archeology student, her professor, Dr. Eugene Morin at Trent University, compared the optimal foraging theory to a fresh bag of Doritos. You're like Yeah, I'll rip that thing open. I'll take the big nice h ones at the top Hm. If the bag's almost gone, you're like, Yeah, I'll tip this back and I'm going to drink the crumbs. You get what you can when you can get it. So one bag of funions, it's worth two on the shelf. Fundamentally, that's just economics. I have been reading in that Just all of these things came together and gave me the idea book and the idea for explaining collapse and I actually sat down it harded to believe I sat down one afternoon and in about twenty minutes I sketched out the entire book in the arguments inute And I got to ask, what was the morning like? Did you take a long walk? Did you were these all shower thoughts? Like how what cooffee where youre drinking I think I was reading. I was working in the government at that time. I spent a lot of years as an archaeologist in the U. S. Forest Service before I came back to academic life. but there was a conference coming up on You know, a lot of the work this government does in archeology is in the realm of protecting archaeological sites against damage. There was an emphasis on asking, well, can we model the location of archaeologcical sites canan we predict where they're going to be found And I was simp reading And I learned then from that work of this field in ecology called optimal foraging theory, which is an economic theory of how Animals. Good people, good us choose to forage in different kinds of environmental patches and it has to do with the cost and benefits And I saw this. I read it and my thought Maybe I've got the answer And then I sat down and sketched out the book It was I mean, it was it was a ball from the blueood that just hit me. What a day, What a day that literally changed how we think about the world I mean, I'll never forget that day Rush I went home and told my wife about it because she'd been encouraging me to work on collapse. I went home and told her, I think I've got it What a day But then it took me another three years to do the research and the writing. But that was how it came about. But there's a related aspect to it that I think about sometimes, which is that I'm a child of the Cold War. I was born in december nineteen forty nine. I grew up in the Cold War I remember us doing silly things as school children, like hiding under our desks as if that could protect us from a nuclear blast. I'm from and we're up in San Francisco, which we always assumed would be a target And I remember at a young age, thinking well, it will happen I just assumed it would happen. and I used to have thoughts about Our home being gone and I was out camping somewhere with my parents and my brother and my sister. We were out camping somewhere because there was no longer a San Francisco. We were just living in the wilderness and that was would eventually happen. So I mean, that was just always in the back of my mind that possibility just interested me. I grew up with it. Yeah. So this kind of topic was intrinsically a personal interest to me and also an academic interest You know, and I'm from the Bara myself. I was born in San Francisco and grew up in the East Bay. And I was wondering, you know, you attended Cal Berkeley. Was there anything about the culture of San Francisco that informed sort of a look at greater political infrastructure at all I feel like growing there is a certain counter culture in San Francisco that informed my way of thought. Yeah, well, I remember the origin of what was called the Hippie era Hate Street and so forth in San Francisco There was a high school girlfriend in particular who had quite an influence on me in that regard And in fact, in my later high school years, I found myself just changing politically. and I don't want to go into it in detail because I keep my I keep politics out of my work for very specific reasons. And I find that my work seems to have had an influence across the whole political spectrum. So I mean, what you're saying is yes, but I personally went a transformation from being somewhat of a conservative to somewhat of more liberal person. this one girlfriend had an influence on me, but also things just happening in San Francisco at that time. But I want to emphasize again, that I keep deliberately keep politics out of my research I'm retired recently from teaching, and I would always say in each class that we do not get into politics in this class On the other hand, politicians are fair game. I think also as a researcher, part of the interest in allore is to remove a lot of preconceived notions and dive into what's historical and what's factual as well. I imagine that's got to be part of the thrill of it. And looking back to, I think one thing I love about your work is you have to spend time defining a civilization and defining complexity before you can understand It's fall. And I wanted to ask a little bit about that. I also think it's interesting that you started with this Chacoan society in the Pueblo people in the Southwest. And I feel like a lot of times when we hear civilization, a lot of it has kind of colonial undertones or pre contact civilizations aren't really acknowledged Can you kind of give me an overview of what is a civilization and Is that a timeline thing? Is that a political structure? Is that a population number Let me state first of all that I try to avoid valuating terminology in my work And civilization is evalu late in term. We all approve of things that are civilized, and conversely Now I do use the term because people are familiar with it and I discuss it in the book and I also discuss why I don't like to use it. It is a value laden term contrived by people who consider themselves members of what would be called civilizations and the evolution of human societies has been conceived in terms of becoming civilized. which is seen as an accomplishment. My own perspective on it is completely different. There was never any aspiration to aieve things that are part of what we call a civilized society that they simply happened as a manifestation as a side effect of the evolution of the phenomenon of complexity in human societies And I think in the book, the way I defined it is that a a civilization is a complex society but it's characterized by certain things that Wed like an approval know say great traditions of art and architecture and music and so forth. And those are all wonderful things. I appreciate those things too, but they're value lad and I tovo the midw So in previous generations, when we had just a really primitive and unavvolved understanding of archeology and human history, looaded terms like primitive and unevolved were used often so called savagery and barbarism were pitted against terms like industry and individualism and civilized in a way that glorified complexity at any cost. not accurate and really only helpful to people who want to promote eugenics and exploitation. How can we call that civilized? So the term civilization as well as primitive and unevolved All of those are valu latent and he largely tries to avoid them. For good reason. What would you say when it comes to a collapse? of that society what sort of has to exist to collapse Well complexity. Yeah. There's no thing that has to exist. I see that in the evolution of complexity in human societies, ass more or less a continuum from smallmall hunted gathering bands in which our ancestors once lived And some people today still do to highly, highly, highly complex societies occupy much of the developed world today And it's I'm continually struck by it. I I've had occasion recently to spend time in these large chain hardware stores, I w to mention any names, but every time I go in one of these and look at I don't know, three or four acres of shelves full of stuff, I think God, the diversity, the complexity of our material culture is incredible I don't know how you could even Begin to quantify It's just something impressionistic, but it shows exactly what the term complexity refers to And if you need a tidy list, in his book, Dr. Tayner explains that complexity is generally understood to refer to things like the size of a society, the number and the distinctiveness of its parts variety of specialized social roles that it incorporates, the number of distinct occupational roles or jobs, and the variety of ways to organize these into this functioning whole. And complex societies He writes are problem solving organizations They're class structured, internally differentiated, controlled societies, and the resources in them that sustain life are not equally available to everyone. And he says, these complex societies, the ones that today we're most familiar with, are an anomaly of history, and they require constant legitimization and reinforcement and it's expensive to maintain per person Think of the last time you moved, right? Think of all the stuff you have. Think of all the boxes you have. Even after you pack the boxes, think of all the pens that are sitting behind dressers and the paper clips, the scrunchy behind the couch. All of the stuff you have, put it into a truck, right How much of that stuff do you need How was all of that harvested raw materials and manufactured and packaged and marketed? and paid for, how did it get in your hands? That stuff costs money and energy and fuel Does it all make your life better Probably not People had to make it and design it and invent it though, and you had to do jobs to buy it And You know, I was just listening to Simon Winchester's book The Perfectionists About Machining and sort of the origin of metrology and just How meticulous a screw has to be. J how precise everything down to a bolt has to be to be interchangeable. Yes, yes, yes, Eactly And when it comes to the complexity of society, Division of labor part of that is sort of a strata of who does what involved. Oh yes, very much. And it's in fact, one of the earliest things that archaeologists and historians look for is division of labor You know, the fundamental division of laborvery and honey gathering bands is men and women generally that men are considered long distance hunters. Women are considered hunters of small game and plant food collecting near the camps. and then children also are involved at certain ages in certain kinds of labor. But that's the simplest earliest division of labor in human society. It seems to be pretty much universal And if you caught our recent patternology episode about Fatherhood with Dr. Darby Saxby, you may recall that she said women in hunter gatherer societies tended to bring in more calories than men. And it also has been debated over time how accurate that delineation of roles were, especially when it came to women and children hunting small game or men foraging while out on a hunt, not to mention that gender is a fluid thing and could have varied in a lot of hunter gatherer societies. Now the question of who has access to these societies to study them is also a pretty big point of dubiosity. but I'm going to give you a hint It was usually not women or people outside the demo of European males who came in with their own biases and suppositions. So once again, diversity and science gives greater clarity of information I know you start your book kind of going through a short list of which societies through history going back thousands of years have had a rise in a fall. wouldould you mind going through a little bit of that, you know Mesopotamia, the Western ou, Mayan, some of the ones that we may or may not realize was collapseed Well yes, and the famous well known casees that a lot of people are familiar with if you say had world history in high school or classes like that. The famous ones are the collapse of the Roman Empire, specifically the Western Roman Empire what's called the Maya society, typically called Maya civilization in Central America Those are probably the two most famous ones someome that are less familiar to people the Zou Dynasty of China, the Hittite Empire in what's now Turkey. the Egyptian first intermediate period. And societies that didn't leave written records behind like one of my case studies, the Tacoan society in the American Southwest and the F Corners area. These are some of the best known cases No, when I did the In the survey of the literature, I found about two dozen cases Oh Clearly documented collapses, what I mean by a collapse is a rapid simplification that an established level of complexity ' lost. I don't know whet that lost is a good term, but it disappears and is replaced by structures that are simpler. So the potential to collapse in human societies, I see it as as inherent in all societies with any level of complexity So collapse can happen in the big complex societies or the smaller less complex ones. Dr. Tanner writes that simple societies can lose an established level of complexities just as do great empires. And sedentary horticulturists may become mobile foragers and lose the trappings of the village life. and a group of foragers may be so distressed by environmental factors that sharing is largely abandoned. And these, he says, are as much cases of collapse as the end of the Roman Empire. And he stresses no less significant for the populations that experience them. The potential for collapse is a continuum from the simplest human societies to us today. You know, I feel like that brings up a correlation and I'm definitely projecting. But if we look at where things have gone in the last few decades, fifty or sixty years where I feel like maybe we're seeing less multig genererational living or child rearing. And I have friends who have children who say that they live far away from the grandparents, and so they have to spend a lot of their income that they make on childcare. And meanwhile, the grandparents are lonely and don't have a role. I was just interviewing someone about menopause and the grandmother hypothesis where to age out of reproduction, but you still have value in a human system as child wearing Are we seeing icturing of preparation kind of as a marker of collapse No.. Actually you're bringing up a very interesting example because what you are showing is The fundamental aspect of complexity and that is complexity costs. to become more complex Any kind of system, a living system It can be an animal species, a human society to grow in complexity, has to consume more energy, which for us is translated into money into things like money and time and various things like that, but basically time and money. But those are all transformations of energy. So if you're living a thousand miles away from your parents and you want your children to visit The grandparents that's one thousand miles away, you have to travel and that takes money, which is ultimately energy. As we can see today, with the oil crisis and airlines talking about cutting back their flights because they're worried about being able to get fuel. But I mean, this illustrates a very important point to thank you for the example It shows how Complexity imposes metabolic costs. and in my work, that's fundamental to understanding both the evolution of complexity and collapse. And I think it's interesting to look at some of the say symptoms of a collapse or markers of a collapse? I'm sure not all collapse is looked at as a disease model. But you mentioned that it's always political. It involves less social stratification, less economic specialization, less trading, less art, less monuments. And I wanted to ask about social stratification and whether or not that is something that we see more in capitalist societies, like the death of the middle class, you know, gig economy AI where people maybe feel like they have less of a role in that economic metabolic system You know, your initial publication of the book was nineteen eighty eight. How do you feel with the rise of technology and the changing of how we're employed? How have things changed since nineteen eighty eight I mean, new realms of technology have developed. I mean, I started the book in nineteen eighty three and it was on my old manual typewriter, which is almost as old as I am. a typing l thing and I discovered the other day I still have it. I can't bring myself to throw it out. Of course Just an illustration. and this is the earliest I remember my F computer something like twenty K of memories And I was thrilled to have it, absolutely thrilled to have it because I could correct my typing on it And of course, the technology changed in part because of NASA the technologies developed as part of the space program, which led to a lot of the information technology served as the basis for a lot of what we have today You know, we often forget that that in fact the government is responsible for much of what we consider valuable in information technology today through funding the space program And for more on alive humans in space, you can see our recent astro brromatology episode about space food with Maggie Koblentz or the Space Archaeology episode about junk accumulating in orbit with Dr. Alice Gorman. But yes, I mean, the difference between then and now is I mean, it's transformational Many of us find it difficult. I finally retired from teaching only about a year ago. I'm seventy six years old, and I used to tell students that You know, when it came to information technology on hopelessly twentieth century. I was alwaysten asking students how do I do this? How do I do that? I mean, I did my dissertation on punch cards for. And don any of my students has ever seen a punch card. or maybe even heard of them. Don't worry I gota. So a punch card, it looks like a scantron, but it has holes in it. and they stored or process data based on the patterns of those punched holes. And maybe you did not experience those. Perhaps you recall the prolonged hanging chad debacle of the Al Gore vers. George W. Bush election in the year thousand in which one vital Florida county had controversy about voting machines, not counting ballots with hanging chads. And the result was this Supreme Court case Bush versus Gore. and then less than a year later, we had nine eleven. at the war on terror and Let's just let's get back to societal collapse. You bring a good example of Well really, it's the role of capitalism today in developing. tenology and changing the economy, which entrepreneurs undertake because they see opportunities for profits. And this is an important point actually in my work because I've argued the days of the class book, even before that that Complexity costs And Because complexity has a metabolic cost, we can't simply assume that society' in the past grew to more complexity because people somehow aspired to it. See, before fossil fuels, Increasing the complexity of a society meant people had to work harder Now when you get to the of like state organized societies even, the society became more complex. peopleeople paid higher taxes. So when you stop and think about that, you wonder why ever did human societies grow more complex? Yeah what's the point? And the argument I have made is that complexity grows to solve problems And as it grows, it requires greater consumption of energy And as I say, and as I emphasizeed in the past, this meant that people had to work harder. And again, this is called marginal productivity or declining marginal returns And think of how increasingly complex our world is growing, right? How increasingly costly it is to fund and organize and feed that complexity. So now tos into that the factors of the wealthiest hoarding the spoils of all that labor rather than it going back into the system to spread out and the stagnation in wages as inflation rises and costs for living rise and all of this complexity and energy consumption leading to a rapidly changing environment for which we are beyond poorly equipped. through So yes, complexity can be lucrative, but also veryer costly. So to quote the Stoic philosopher notorious more money, more problems. Now we're largely unaware of this today because we think complexity is free. We paper it with fossil fuels. We're learning with the current fossil fuel crisis F these improve that a society can be in fact endangered by a lack of energy. So the solution of problems, the growth of complexity to solve problems requires increase in consumption of energy No that was my original argument and it still is. I think that is the main way complexity has grown in human societies. It grows by small increments to solve problems Dr. Tainter says that even in our own society, complexity can sometimes grow in these spurts when there's opportunity to grow. And in rare cases, there have been short periods of this excess energy that would allow that complex growth. And they're so rare. we know them by special terms The agricultural Revolution The Industrial Revolution. Those are the two main ones. And we're going through another one now with I think with the technology revolution and its energy cost is A parent if you pay any attention to the controversies over the energy cost of data processing centers that are causing people in local communities to be concerned about What's going to happen to their electricity bills and so forth and so on, right home in suburban Chicago last spring. and it never goes away. Never goes away. And it's not just a noise taking a toll. She says in the last year, her average electricity bill has spiked twenty three percent The residents oppose this construction because it will not generate real local jobs. They will most likely bring in outside staff and will only worsen traffic. Furthermore, it will put our families at risk, especially children, like those attending Ranch of McDonald's. How about you listen to the community It's right here P the that I mean, it's yet another example of how growth of complexity in our society through capitalism, through opportunity takes advantage of existing energy, but also at the same time imposes a cost of more energy on us and on our descendants. And you know, I know that you've argued that compleomplex societies don't always mean that they're fair. Right? compleomx society doesn't always mean like that it's a utopia I so they're really fair even in the supposedly most egalitarian societies, there's always a degree of stratification And let's touch on Tainra's four main points for understanding collapse. Okay. So number one, human societies problem solving organizations. Number two, sociopolitical systems require energy to be maintained. And number three, increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita. So those three lead to the fourth, which is investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns. So we solve problems, sociopolitical systems need some energy, that energy costs more per person as it increases, and it becomes diminishing returns And the example I like to give is the very best example is the Roman Empire. which expanded territorially in the last few centuries BC And it was so successful that By the first century BC, the people of Italy who by this point were all Roman citizens They eliminated taxation up themselves. I mean, this was the benefit that they gained. Now we're talking about a society here run entirely by solar energy And in a society like that, like the Roman Empire, production of energy throughrough agriculture is ninety percent of the economy So the government had to run on the basis of ten percent of the economy This was in part to fund government functions, the bureaucracy in the army, always a major cost, particularly during the Roman Empire, because which was the first society in history to maintain a standing army sufficient for all of its needs. No previous society had done this. Well, this costs You know, these guys had to be paid You know, their horses had to be cared for My wife and I have always had horses. I can assure you they're expensive Yeah. keeping a horse for cavalry soldiers an expensive matter. Yeah. And a lot of these soldiers would have servants and the cost was imposed on the population. the ninety percent of the population actually producing food, producing energy through the coinage that the Roman Empire and other early societies were producing. What we see in the Roman Empire is an early silver currency running about ninety eight percent to ninety nine percent pure silver, but is as good as as pure as they could make it in those days. And the currency kept its value at this point In the year sixty four Thank it Two things happened, two challenges happened that were too expensive to cope with on the pure silver currency. One was a war in the east with what was known, we know today as the Parthian Empire, It's the ancient Persian Empire. and the other was the Great fire of Rome in the year sixty four. This is when legend tell us that Narrow filled what Rome burned. Well, Narrow may or may not have fill but Rome did Yeah. and it was very, very expensive to rebuild after that So let me speed here. So this was a blaze that ripped through Rome in July of the year ' sixty four deevastating, pretty much destroying ten out of the cities districts And it started in an area of shops near the Circus Maximus, which was essentially NASCAR with horses. And some historians are divided on the gossip of W it arson started by then emmperor general murderous rascal Nero who it said Nero was out of town at his vacation home. having an orgy and playing the fiddle, while it blazed It was a fiddle or it was a type of loute, and apparently he loved to perform, he sang poorly. Also, if you're in the market for the worst beard ever, may I suggest the Nero It's kind of like a thick chin strap that completely avoids the chin. It's all side burns and corridor of neck beard. Really astonishing. This fire. So firefighters did not have hoses that could like knock over a mammoth. They didn't have those. And so despite these raging winds that were having it spread, firefighters were trying to put it out with buckets and by dousing the fire in vinegar, eventually they demolished more buildings as a fire break, which worked Then a few days later, another fire started. and well Most of Rome was toast. So imagine if seventy five percent of New York and DC were both suddenly smoldering ruins. We're fucked. So in the recovery process, after all of these historical buildings demolished possibly by their own leader. That leader, Nero, constructed himself pregously large and lavish palace. It was rife with ivory and marble and gold leaf adornments. Bea it can't get more beautiful than that. I always like gold.. So what we find that to cope with this all of a sudden the government is a little sort of money which means a little short of taxation which means a little bit short of the foods that are produced by solar energy And so the currency begins to be debased About ten percent copper was added into it. and all of a sudden it's downounded ninety percent silver Well still pretty good coins. Very nice beautiful coins. I've seen a lot of them y lovely coins. I've illustrated some of them in the things I've written. But it's the beginning of a slippery slope that just continues on for over another two hundred years What you see is the silber content of the currency going down and down and down as the government was increasingly unable to solve the problems of its own complexity. being largely the government and the army on the basis of existing taxation So we finally get to about the year thirty five AD when the emperor at the time brings out a new coin The base silver coin I don't want to get into technical terms, but it was called a Denarius. o. It comes from the Latin for ten The silver finders the anarious This emperor comes out in I think about the year two hundred and thirty five, he comes out with a new coin that's supposedly worth two. ar except it actually only weighs one and a half So a piece titled The Decline and Fall of the Roman Denarius in the journal Materials chararacterization explained it thusly. So by decree of Caesar Augustus. This was the year fifteen BCE. The Denarius was nearly pure silver. Back then, it was up to ninety eight percent silver. It had a fixed weight and value in relation to the rest of the Roman monetary system People knew what they were getting. Now over the next two hundred and seventy years, the silver content of the Genarius declined gradually and then precipitously to about two percent. went flopped from ninety eight percent silver to about ninety eight percent not silver And the final stage of the Denarius, this paper continues, was a duplex bladed coin with a copper core and that silver surface. And eventually the surface coating was so thin. so chanky that it quickly rubbed off after the coin left the mint. It was like a dusting of silver. So this sad money was supposed to have equal value to the old ones, but by the year two hundred eighty, It was pretty much just like having an arcade token in your pocket. It was worthless. Also, we happen to have a whole episode on Ancient Rome with classical archaeologist Dr. Darius Arya. No relation to the Denarius. Back to that though And you know, people can tell this. peopleeople know when this happens. you know, they handle these things every day. Is this inflation essentially Oh yeah, ye mean there's inflation going on at the same time. We have data on rising costs that people were experiencing at this So yes, it's very inflationary. I mean, it's obviously inflationary. so The mid were taken the single value coin is to take in the tenari, flatten them out a little and And then issue them as worth two Yeah. And sometimes they didn't flatten them out very carefully. becausecause I actually own one that shows the underlying coin and then the new value stamped on it. I've illustrated it in a couple of the things that I've written. I came across this in a coin sale a number of years ago and boy, I grabbed it. Yeah because it illustrated so perfectly the argument I made about the Roman Empire. Increasing complexity requires the increasing expenditures of energy, which is manifested in Silver coins acquired through taxation. And at the same time, there were constant increasing challenges simply by being The Roman Empire, the empire made itself attractive to outside peoples, the famous ones being the Germanic peoples of Northern Europe who were continually trying to force their way into the Roman Empire, The primary frontier being Gaul, what's now France along the Rhine River, but also in the east and in the north. Later on, it's the Huns century it's the Huns. in the East, it was always the Persian peoples who were trying to grab parts of the empire. The Roman Empire was just intrinsically attractive to everyone else because everyone else saw it as being enormously wealthy. You know, the Germanic peoples were not trying to destroy the Roman Empire, they were trying to get into it. They wanted to be part of this bounty. Listen, let's say you're a billionaire, a celeb, like you' Oprah. or Vince McMahon of the WWE emmpire. No matter how you got that money, a lot of people are going to try to rob you or become your friend so they can party on your yacht. And we see by the third century, the fourth century the size of the army is doubled There's an increasing proportion of cavalry in the military. and as I was just illustrating, horses were expensive. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about increasing the cost of simply being the Roman government. So the Roman emmpire had to become more complex and more costly simply to continue existing. and in time it simply couldn't afford to be the Roman Empire. What we find is that Later in the Empire People were fleeing from their lands to avoid having to pay taxes. You know, you were talking about the peasant population, you see people actually selling their children into slavery because they couldn't Prace the This is the base peasant population that was the whole basis of the empire. These are the people who paid the bills. Even wealthier people were Yeah they're trying to get away from paying taxes. I mean, this is norm bothly people always do. Yeah. Yeah. And in his book, once again, the collapse of compleomx Societies, he explains that rulers must constantly convince you they're fit to reign. And he writes legitimizing activities include such things as external defense and internal order alleviating the effects of local productivity fluctuations undertaking local development projects and also providing food and entertainment, AKA, bread and circus, as in immperial Rome for the urban masses. And Bread and circus, if you've ever heard that, it's come to mean diversion. and appeasement of the Coders like Rolling and having a two dollarars burger, you got objects just shiny enough that rulers seem like they're doing a great job because you're not paying attention. So why bother peeking behind those expensive velvet curtains? Shut up, everythingvery's fine. But you see the cost of the Roman Empire growing and growing until it was simply becoming less and less effective at its own existence And it's a perfect example of diminishing returns to complexity, diminishing returns to The cost being a complex society. So I mean, this is the process that really was the model for understanding collapse in other cases that I found to be well documented that complexity grows to solve problems It requires more energy. Eventually a point of diminishry returns its reached. The society becomes weaker and less able to solve problems, and eventually a crisis comes along that it can't overcome and it collapses that is simplifies, breaks up into smaller parts And then the smaller parts evolve on their own. the classic example after the Roman Empire was the evolution of smaller societies in northern and Western Europe, eventually leading into the you know the European nations of today Would you know a collapse if it bonked you on the nooggin? In his book, doctor Tainter notes a few key aspects. let's talk about them. So there is first and foremost, there's a breakdown of authority and central control prior to the collapse, revolts Proincial breakaways signal the weakening of the center. The base starts to splinter and revenues to the government often decline, while foreign challengers become increasingly successful and you begin to get your ass beat Now eventually this leads to this elimination of the umbrella of law and the protection of the populace. Laws and systems no longer matter or work and people don't feel safe. Huh oh. I'm wondering there in terms of needing those resources to problem solve, is that where expansion and colonization comes in so that you can take those resources and use them run the empire? Is there an exhaustion of resources if you have gotten too big, You've kind of extracted what you can Again, we'll go back to the Roman Empire. So when the Romans would conquer a province, they would appropriate what those people had stored away as products of solar energy Okay, this would be stored food works of art precious metals and people. Those were all products of past solar energy to reform it through agriculture. And so the Romans would appropriate these accumulated bits savings of past solar energy and bring them to Italy I mean, that's why you know, that's why Italy itself and Rome itself was so full of Wors of art, beautiful sculptures from the Greek part of the world the ancient Mediterranean part of the world, the Eastern Mediterranean. a lot of those were appropriated and brought to Italy, slaves were brought to Italy. So the accumulated treasures, surpluses from Passover energy were taken by the Romans and brought to Italy. Well, what happened after that is that the empire then had to maintain itself on annual solar energy And this is an analogy to us today because of course, we also maintain ourselves on the products of past solar energy You know, we talk about, well could we maintain our society on ongoing daily solar energy through know, solar collectors or whatever. you know we talk about that as a possibility today. Well, the Romans had to experience it. They had to maintain the empire on annual solar energy which of course, goes up and down year to year. Some years the crops are good, some years the crops aren't good. And so there was always this problem of collecting taxes, collecting enough taxes to pay for the solution to ongoing problems, to pay for the complexity of being the Roman Empire So it's a matter of The transition in the Roman case from The accumulated treasures of past solar energy too year to year solar energy And this is one of the things that made them weak. Why they simply did not have the resources through time to continue to solve the problems they were facing. Is that sort of like living paycheck to paycheck? And if your car breaks down, if your dog eat something and has to go to the vet, you're really kind of upsit Creek. It's exactly it was exactly paycheck to paycheck. Yes. And I know that less social stratification is also a hallmark of a collapse. Can you explain what that means exactly? Well, it would mean that the hierarchy of the society simplifies. you go to the Roman Empire, are really any of the imperial societies or any of the societies organized as states, which mean to have a formal government There's always a hierarchy of individuals , the Romans recognizeed three social classes, the very highest, the middle and the poorest who were ninety percent of the people. I mean, even within something like that, there were gradations, you know, there were levels of government employees, there levels of say merchants, people who make a living as merchants, as money changers, which we know from ancient literature Thereations of people who made a living in various ways and have various degrees of wealth. Some landowners, of course were extremely wealthy, That's always the case. But as the emmpire collapsed, that structure it collapsed, simplified. A lot of those social positions simply went away Hey if your brain loves numbers And you need the timeline here y to provide it. So many people mark the fall of Rome occurring in the year four seventy six. This is when a Germanic chieftain booted Emperor Romulus Augustulus, whose name, yes, has six use in it. And if you're like, I I have sworn it was fourteen fifty three. It's not you. It's history. So the fall of the Western Roman Empire Western widely thought to be that for seventy six event But the organization and the wider rule of Rome's eastern empire really ate shit in the fourteen hundreds. So after that event in the late four hundreds Western Roman Empire will happen thousand podcasts worth at Myo, but I'm going to sum it up for you in like ten seconds. So what happened was the Dark ages when complexity moved into a period of cultural decline, something intellectual decline. and in short, the rich got less rich. And there were fewer written records and artifacts for museums to po over hence that lacuna is a dark patch lost to time. But don't call them dark ages. okay? We don't do that. They are referred to by academics and historians as the Middle Ages because the dark Ages incredibly valuated and biased as a term. Who are we to say it was dark Because many people may have left city centers for ps that were more remote, the archaeological finds could simply be scattered about and Humanity's failure to treasure hunt effectively for them is not necessarily a reflection of intellect or the prized productivity, as we've come to know it. And Dr. Tainter writes, complex societies, it must be emphasized, again, he emphasizes again, are recent in human history. Collapse then is not a fall to some primial chaos, but a return to the normal human condition of lower complexity. So to a population that is already receiving little return on the cost of supporting that complexity. the loss of the complexity can bring economic and perhaps administrative gains, he says. So hey, have you ever burned fossil fuels to drive to your desk job where you're forced to use AI and then you eat a twenty two dollarars salad at your desk. Maybe you've dreamed of homesteading in a small village like compound with people you like instead. As long as there's food and a doctor nearby doesn't sound too awful So the fall of the Roman Empire, it's a very long complex series of dramatic events, scandals, assassinations plundering mishaps. some absolutely horrific romantic decisions. So if you like kindind of like a game of Thrones You like a love island and you need a new obsession takes up most of your idle thoughts. The Roman Empire will your Roman emmpire And in some ways that could actually be some people who benefit from that One of the things that's intrigued me is to the pes of Western Europe. better after the collapse of the Roman Empire when they were no longer paying the heavy Roman taxes. You I think we don't really have data to answer that question, For example, did they see more of their children survive because they could feed them Did they no longer have to sell their children into slavery because they couldn't feed them anymore? These are the questions that come about from wondering whether Does anyone actually benefit from a collapse? It's an interesting question. Yeah Not all collapses are horrible for everyone what I understand. And you know, talking about this less social stratification, I also find it impossible not to think about the number of billionaires that are in the world these days, a lot of them in America. And then at the same time, I know plenty of people who would have been class you know, creators, professionals, writers, accountants who are now working gig economy doing Doorash and Uber in order to afford bills. where it seems like more people are being pushed into gig economy things while there's also a billionaire a number of billionaires that are accumulating wealth, is that an example of social stratification Oh I say it's pretty good, yes. Yeah, okay Can I ask you some questions that some listeners submitted for you But Before we do, let's take a quick break, and we're going donate to a relevant cause and this week in doctor Tainter's Honor, it's going to Utah State University's Ecology Center, which promotes and supports ecological research and graduate education at USU and beyond. And this includes immediate support for graduate students. And that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show It was a magic. 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Always pay attention to vehicle' surroundings during use. Remote Park requires operator to have key foob and interact with compatible smartphone. Review owner's manual instructions before operating Your questions, so many good ones from patrons via patreon dot com slash oologies. and we will get through as many as we can, including a popular departmental one asked by Nikki G, Peter Hankkins, Jane Nelson, Grace Conroy, and Don Smallchheck as well as Renee Wagner wanted to know what's the big difference between societal collapse and governmental? collapse, Are they independent from each other? No, I wouldn't think so the government it is an aspect of the society. The government is an aspect of the continuum complexity of the overall total complexity of the society. There you go What about on an individual level? Jane Nelson said, does it count as a collapse of society if it's that individuals are collapsing? you know, the gap between minimum wage and a living wage, peopleeople working hard to get us to consume more, like what percentage of the population needs to be existing in survival mode before we consider it a society to have collapsed Well, we go back to my concept of what a collapse is. It's rapid simplification you can look at people being shifted from well paid manufacturing jobs into doorash typetops, for example. And we can react as human beings, we can react to that But I don't see that as a collapse particularly, collapse is a long term process The factors that lead to collapse develop over periods of deceades to generations to centuries What we're looking at with, say the decline of manufacturing in the United States, the shift to a gay economy, these are short term phenomena. They're what we're living through today. so of course people are concerned about them. I understand that. But it's not really what I work on generally work on short term economic phenomena. I'd like to concentrate on longer term broader, larger overarching trends. I'm glad that you mentioned time because we did have people Lizzie Carr, Selby Paxton, Ben Resnik, Spicy Boy asked in Lizzie Carr's words, I've read something before this said most empires last about hundred and fifty years before collapsing. Is that true or is that Flim Flam? I don't know. I mean you'd have to define what is an empire, give me the case studies you're basing that on. Yeah. whereere do you time the beginning whereere's the end I don't know the anser to that. I wonder, I think also with the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the United States coming up, but the lines aren't quite that Quite that stark. You know, the awareness of it was on the minds of a lot of listeners. Rrace Conroay wanted to know what could that feel like day to day for people experiencing it a collapse today would be global in this occurrence and billions of people would die within a few months So what would that be like to experience would that be a lot of famine cut off from energy, things like that. Yes Fa disease conflict They would all rise So when it comes to that, conf Is that a symptom of collapse? LCK, based in Finland wanted to know looking at what's happening in places like Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Congo, et cetera. It seems like human rights based values that what it's built on are maybe collapsing Are things like mass conflicts, mass casualties? Are they a step in societal collapse? No, no, no, they're a manifestation of increasing complexity A They're exactly the opposite if you look at The conflict in the Levant know Israel, against Gaza, Israel, against Lebanon and so forth. There are new dimensions to this conflict now that did not exist before. I mean, the conflicts existed for a long time. but it's being carried out in new ways now with more effective technologies, much of which we've provided five stealth fighter shot down an Iranian warplane Marking the first ever confirmed air to air takedown by an F thirty five. It's actually a growth in the complexity of the system That's so surprising and so the opposite of what many of us would think, you know, that that complexity isn't always like. We have a great bullet train and universal healthcare. complexity is not always good No, no, In fact, the evolution of military is one of my primary case studies remoling complexity Thank give the presentation a number of years ago. There is a conference put on I think, annularually by the offffice of the Secretary of Defense. and I was asked to come to one at the Sound the Institute. And I gave a presentation about The evolution of complexity and the evolution of costs of complexity and illustrated it with my limited knowledge The eition of military technologies and and research I've also done on the evolution of warfare in modern Europe. by modern, I mean from, say the sixteen hundreds to today, And I was I have to admit, I was pleased to learn A few years later, one of the organizers of that conference sent me an email and he wrote that sometimes when people around here are talking about developing new weapons technologies, someone asks what would Tainter say I have to say well My goodness, I got through. The Tanger effect. I mean, I reached people. They understood what I was saying. They understood the need to look long term and to understand the relationship of cost to benefits This was his june twenty eleven keynote address to the Office of the Secretary of Defense Highlands titled Failure and Cllapse in Complex Systems. The transcript or recording. not available publicly. So unless you were at that event fifteen years ago You had to be there Department of Defense stuff. Department of War, sorryry. So speaking of such Listener Stacey Pinkkitz offered that in the face of the climate crisis and the war machine, it can be hard to feel hopeful I try to embody, as Stacey says, think globally, act locally. And while I may not be the one to redirect the efforts of the federal government, I can be highly engaged in my local community And it's welfare And patron L C K from Finland wrote in, Obviously my societal circumstances are different to what's going on in the U.S right now. No shit, but we seem to be following Elsie says, a similar path to the states when it comes to the increase of militarization, anti intellectualism, racism, surveillance as a tool of oppression, et cetera. And did the military industrial complex kind of ramping up after World War II, did that have a lot to do with it? And did we see a similar bump in complexity with the advent of the atom bomb and nuclear weapons I certainly. From the beginning of the twentieth century on from let's say World War I, I mean, it's hard to point to a starting point. Modern European history is considered that the term modern is considered from the sixteen hundreds on. This is a period of increasing complexity in military systems throughout since World War two, certainly the complexity, the riseing complexity has certainly grown, But then there are periods when things seem to change. And it's very interesting right now that the discussions I've seen just in the last few weeks about development of drone technology and how that is making Obssolete A lot of the weapon systems that we've spent decades and billions and billions of dollars developing and producing and are now putting to use It's an interesting point because from time to time There are revolutions. There are transformations that reset What I call the marginal productrouct curt that reset the relationship of costs to benefits So in his book, Dr. Tainter presents a line graph. It looks like a gentle roller coaster. It slopes upward in a hump And then it falls and then ascends to a larger hump which then falls again kindind of like picture a camel asymmetrical whose front hump little less in doubt. So this ge double curve is representative of what he calls the marginal product of increasing complexity. with technological innovation or acquisition of an energy subsidy. So thingsings going up, then they're starting to fail, and then gobbling up another energy source, he breaks it down. So empire growth tends to follow a logistical curve at first. Growth begins slowly, accelerates as the energy subsidy is partially invested in further expansion then falls off when the marginal cost of further growth becomes too high. So to recover, when some new input into an economic system is brought online, whether that's a technical innovation or an energy subsidy, it will often have the potential, at least temporarily, to raise marginal productivity. Great However In the long run, he says marginal returns will ultimately begin to decline again This is also known as chasing the dragon until perhaps your ass hits rock bottom Sometimes that's death Other times It's just a new beginning That's complex society And this seems to be the beginning of one now where The development of drone technology is resetting the cost benefit curve and making relatively simple, inexpensive technology effective against Our own Highly complex, very expensive technology And you know our own militaryies. ' aware of this. I understand that some of our military people have been study with the Ukrainians who are developing a bunch of this. The Iranians have also been developing it This is a transformation going on. but what happens in this kind of situation and this does happen where the complexity curve, the marginal product curve can be reset through some kind of innovation. is that what happens is that then complexity starts to grow again. It starts to increase again because Okay so people now have drone technology and it's hard to defend against it. Well, you're going to invest in defending against it. And then they're going to make the drones better. And then they'll make the defense better and so forth and so on. It to be a typical evolutionary curve that seems now to be resetting itself so that The system is simplified and less expensive, maybe simplified and less expensive. I mean it seems that it might be going that way, But then it will start to grow in complexity and costiveness. A, I guess that's simply the nature of military competition So what do we do Some people, obviously with plenty of existential anxiety, Mia, Care Steele, Kathleen Sachs, Pablo de Florence, Paul Gladys, Tim McCao, Rus Tharpe and Isabella Fitzpatrick, wanted to know if there's anything a person should do to be ready for it. Pablo asked, do I need to start growing my own food. Rus Tharp wanted to know, did Ancient Rome have doomsday preppers? and was it useful? And like what do you think about the prepper movement They actually did. did they actually did. There's actually ancient literature. O phrase I remember in particular writer in the third century who wrote The Age is no scene of it You know there's this old analogy that societies age like say organisms do and so forth. So the age is now seenland. And we still use that analogy today. I mean, yes, the Romans had perceptive people who were worried about this sort of thing Probably every complex society has had such people who see who are perceptive enough to see the trends beyond just day to day problems of getting poood and raising their children and so forth We supp must people concern themselves with little helps. So an astute pop cultural question from patrons, Sean Thomas Kaine, Dave Brewer, Dystopian fiction readers Jennifer Tran, Rott Weiss Waffle, Jenny Low Rhodes, Patricia Evans and Emmt, Potential Prepper, Julie Burhart, Daniel Gray, Katie Hammond, Patricia Evans, and Aticus Atlas, who asked, whyy are humans so interested in post apocalyptic fiction moovies and fantasies, it seems like everyone assumes they'd be the ones to survive. Statistically, that's not possible. Do you think that's why people love apocalypse movies so much It like an instruction. what do you do? Oh yeah, o yeah. Yeah. I mean When I talk, people always ask me, you know are we prone to collapse M M What can be done about the complexity problem? I've actually written some new material about coping with complexity that is not yet in print. I hope it will be fairly soon. Should have been in print by now. ro probably published somewhere else but that doesn't come out soon But how to cope with complexity Yes, I'd like. And there are strategies for how do you cope with complexity? I came up with I think it's eleven different strategies for coping with complexity. And the final one I give that always gets a laugh is Don't solve the problem. And then the complexity doesn't grow. You just wantn to live with it You know, we do that all the time. Appropriating bodies, Congress and state legislatures, they do that all the time. I mean, that's one way of coping with complexity is you just to go with the problem. Check the can down the road is though. is the expression. Just shove it all in the back of a closet and say you'll deal with it later and then forget it. I imagine. Yeah, ye We'll look through it somehow You know, we'll muddle through it. I mean there's exressionallyd like to use it I usually did an interview in France once and then I had to explain what the term meant. We're a species that muddles through You know, that's an American colloquialism, maybe an English colloquialism in general. We are a species that muddles through Okay. so if anyone is listening to this is not familiar with the term, it means We proceed, we find our way step by step without a plan. That's just what we do. That's what we've always done. and that's what we'll always do We model through Mercedes would like to note Isn't that strangely hopeful? And I'm pretty sure that was just a rhetorical thought. But I will add that Mercedes is a huge supporter of mutual aid and advocacy and has been for me, a really inspiring force. You can see our two genocideology episodes with expert and scholar, Dr. Durk Moses. and that yes, part of that muddling through is speaking out for others under the literal rubble and lending a hand to survive Life is full of facing hard times and enduring. That's the whole point. You know, Sam, the science teacher said, as a teacher of immigrants and refugees, I'm wondering if it only feels like societal collapse to people in the United States Rob Harbors wanted to know and so did RJ. Deutsch and Ashley Bauower Matt and Leslie wanted to know essentially how much longer does the U S have, are we as screwed as it feels like moment And I know that people probably treat you as like a doomsday almanac eper of the doomday clock, which I know we're I think we're at seventeen seconds to midnight now, but No, it's down to three seconds, Is it down to three? Yeah, I think it's down to three. They recently changed it. The bulletin and the atomic scientist, I think is Mercedes says, you're both wrong U, it hurts. But we're gonna to get to the actual time in a second. We're gonna fact check us. But if you're like, wait, what There's a stopwatch for the destruction of humanity. That's wonderful. Yeah. So in nineteen forty seven, a group of scientists who had worked on the Manhattan proroject which brought the world nuclear warfare with the World War two bombings of Hiroshima and Aagasaki. They created a newsletter called The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. And their goal has been to alert the public about the existential risks that humanity is posing to humanity. And if all of human history were a clock, the number of seconds to midnight represents how much time relative to that we have until we fuck it up so hard, we all pretty much die. And in nineteen forty seven They set it to seven minutes to midnight. nineteen ninety one. We reached flassid and comfortable seventeen minutes to midnight. Now, in January, twenty twenty six, the atomic scientists had their annual press conference Thank you for joining us today. My name is Alexandra Bell, and I am the president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists It is the determination of the Bulletin's Science and Security Bard that humanity has not made sufficient progress on the existential risks that endanger us all We thus move the clock forward. The doomsday clock is a tool for communicating how close we are. to destroy the world with technologies of our own making The risks we face from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies are all growing Every second counts And we are running out of time It is a hard truth But this is our reality. Two grim faced scientists turned a rotating pedestal to reveal a clock face, justust a whisper from the twelve It is now eighty five seconds to midnight This is the closest the world has ever been to midnight. boy. So the good news We were thinking that it was five or seventeen seconds, but that's how much it's moved up in the last few years That's good news. Bad news is It's never been worse and this eighty five seconds was set about a month before the U S Department of War in military Kahoots with Israel launched Operation Epic Fury to bomb Iran a month later. Now if you're thinking There should be an aology for the apocalpse good news there is. It's called eschatology, and we covered it years back with Dr. Emil Torres, then known as Phil, not to be confused with our leopid opterology guest Also another Phil Taorus. But doctor Emil Taorres is a philosopher and a historian of human extxtinction. They report sadly, it's an increasingly relevant topic. And you can check out their twenty twenty three book, Human Extinction, A history of the science and Ethhics of Annihilation. And if you're more kind of in a listening mood, you can enjoy their podcast, Dystopia Now in which they and comedian Kate Willet explore the philosophies and religions of Silicon Valley and tech billionaires shaping our country and our world. in our future Where were we? Yes eighty five seconds to midnight That's where we were 's pay attention to things like. Yeah, that makes my stomach drop. like I've just gone on a horrible roller coaster. But I mean, again, you're not a forecaster, but like, is it as fucked up as it feels Mbe What has Somet to concern me over the last few years is globalization That globalization makes us vulnerable. And you know, COVID is a good example of The downside of globalization on a fairly small scale I gave total worldld Geography class and I would talk to them about this globalization. And I would use this famous example, the famous photograph of I think it's a vast parking lot full of four pickup trucks. All of us were ready to go to market except they're missing one computer part, one ship, One ship. and that was because of. globalization decline in trade and interaction Because of COVID And I see that as a shot across the bow. It's a warning shot. of what could happen if the globalized system should completely break down It would cause a collapse. bring on a collapse and it would not be pleasant to see I think there would be an awful lot of starvation that would happen around the world. Yeah what could bring it on ack of energy. lack of the fundamental energy supplies that we rely And is that mostly fossil fuels? Are we looking at solar energy like livestock and food and wheat for right now to maintain Our complex societies were talking about fossil fuels. Would a move toward more renewable energy Mitigate that Yes, yes, it would. Certainly it would But energy transformations From what I have read, they usually take ty two hundred years to be fully brought about And I think we are proceeding that way now. I hope that we are There's resistance to it, of course. There are You know, this entrenched self interest with't the fossil fuel industry present automobile industry and so forth and so on and various other industries were their entrenched interest in maintaining the fossil fuel economy. And so there's of course, resistance to a transformation to less reliance on fossil fuels. you know, I used to teach a sustainability seminar and I would tell students look, we will never get completely off fossiluels we' never get them never do it. If for no reason then petrochemicals, fertilizers, various other products come from fossil fuels that we find beneficial that don't contribute much to climate change. You know the late Shaah of Iran, he said something once that always stuck in my mind You know, the saw of Iran who was overthrown leading to the present regime in Iran that we've had trouble with ever since for the last forty seven years. But the saaw of Iran once said that petroleum was too valuable to burn as a fuel that has always stuck in my mind that he was right. and It always impressed me that that this man was And you know, this this Oder cp who could have anything he wanted in the world was perceptive enough was an intelligent enough man to see that to understand it, even though his own well beinging depended on burning fossil fuels, but he saw that it was it's the wrong thing to use fossil fuels for Petrochemicals pllastics, fertilizers, I mean, all these other things that we need that fossil fuels can be used for and that we'll never be able to stop using them The political history of Iran is again, a series of one thousand podcast episodes. But what does too valuable to burn mean? And how do we fertilize crops with oil? So it's a little something called the Habor process. And I knew neither Jack nor Shit about this, but it turns out that nitrogen veryy abundant in the air but it does not like to be nabbed into ammonia. And you need that ammonia to grow things and to feed complex societies. So to convert it using the HAber process, you need energy from hydrogen, usually in the form of natural gas or coal oil, petroleum, etcetera So this Haer process, it was pioneered in the early nineteen hundreds by a German by the name of Fritz Haber. And for saving the world from famine, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in nineteen eighteen because food, even now grown using the Haber process feeds half of the world. Okay, for his work For the German forces in World War I, he is also considered the father of chemical Wfare And wrenchingly, his work developing this warfare led to the chemistry used to murder over one million Jews in the Holocaust. He himself was a Jew. Complexity. It's a mixed bag, to say the very least Back to twenty twenty six and evading world hunger. Morocco is also a big producer of rock derived phosphate fertilizer But the tariffs on those that's That's a whole other ball of wax or tar