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Summary:
- Today’s financial system allows many promises of future goods and services. These include debts, pensions, and even prices of shares of stock.
- However, the quantity of actual physical goods and services that can be produced appears likely to be shrinking in future years because of resource depletion.
- This mismatch means that many/most of these promises likely cannot be paid as promised. The economy will somehow change to match what is actually available. We should not be surprised if, one way or another, we receive much less than has supposedly been promised. Even if a high currency amount is provided, it likely will not buy very much. Or a new government may be in power, with virtually no promises of benefits.
- Today’s economic system requires both increasing energy supplies and increasing debt to function properly. We are now encountering limits with respect to both world energy supplies and US government debt. The parts of the world economy that are most affected by limits will likely begin to contract soon.
- We don’t know precisely how this contraction will take place, but we can examine a list of countries whose GDP has already been contracting to see how they are faring.
- Perhaps we need to be relying more on our families and/or on “villages” made up of extended relatives or friends for our long-term support, rather than on government programs.
Introduction
The world is filled with financial promises, including loans, pensions, and even the market value of stocks. So far, the system seems to be working, but in a finite world, it is hard to believe that the system will work indefinitely. Governments can create money simply by adding more promises, but they cannot create goods and services in a similar fashion.
We know that actual physical materials are needed to make the goods and services that people depend upon. Energy supplies are particularly important in making goods and services because, according to the laws of physics, energy is required to produce physical goods and services. Forecasts that support current financial promises ignore the fact that we live in a finite world. Eventually, we will run short of easy-to-extract essential materials, including fossil fuels, uranium, lithium, and copper. Economic growth will need to be replaced by economic contraction.
In this post, I will try to explain the situation in more detail, together with some charts showing what is going wrong now, such as Figure 1. In some ways, we already seem to be reaching limits to growth.
[1] At first, added debt is helpful to an economy.
In some sense, added debt pulls an economy forward.
As long as there are plenty of inexpensively available resources and not too much interest to pay, added debt seems to make sense. It pulls the economy forward, in the direction that those resources are to be used. It “feels good” to the recipients of the goods and services made possible by the debt. People like the homes and cars that added debt makes possible.
Ordinary citizens have clear limits on their credit card debt. The limits on government promises seem to be hidden until they are actually reached.
As long as an economy is growing, that growth seems to hide many problems. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff are two well-known US economists. In a 2008 working paper (p.15) examining 800 years of government debt defaults, they remarked, “It is notable that the non-defaulters, by and large, are all hugely successful growth stories.” Without “hugely successful economic growth,” it is impossible to keep adding debt and repaying it with interest. The growth allows debt to be paid back with interest. It allows the fiction that an economy will continue to grow, and this growth will provide the margin needed to repay the debt with interest.
While the world economy has been an amazingly successful growth story since the industrial revolution, we now seem to be running short of the inexpensively available fossil fuels that have made economic growth so far possible. With this change, the economy is likely to start a major shift from economic growth to economic contraction.
We don’t know exactly how this shift from economic growth to economic contraction will take place, but we can hypothesize that the economies that have recently been growing fastest might be farthest from contraction, and the economies that are already struggling with low growth might be the ones most likely to slip into contraction. The countries slipping into contraction can be expected to have special difficulty repaying debt with interest and meeting other financial promises. Some governments may even collapse, perhaps in the way the government of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
[2] Not too surprisingly, given the physics connection stated in the introduction, total world GDP and world energy consumption are highly correlated.
In fact, the growth rate of energy consumption and the growth rate of GDP are also correlated, as can be seen from the similar patterns on Figure 4.
A scatter diagram of the X-Y data used in Figure 4 gives the result shown in Figure 5:
Figure 5. Three-year average growth rates are used for stability. Energy growth rates are based on energy data from the 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute; GDP growth rates are based on GDP in constant 2015 US$ as published by the World Bank.
[3] A major issue is the fact that the growth rate of world energy consumption is trending downward.
Figure 6 shows a big upward bump starting not long after the year 2000, driven by the addition of China’s inexpensive coal resources to the global energy supply. The low-cost portion of China’s coal resources is now mostly depleted. In addition, we don’t seem to have any other energy sources that will be available in large quantity in the near future. We have been adding wind and solar, but their impact has been small. Their impact is reflected in the total energy increases shown in Figure 6, and in the other charts above.
[4] Even worse, the rate of growth of world energy consumption per capita is trending downward. In fact, if the trend line were extended to 2025, it would seem to indicate contraction in per capita energy supplies.
We know that it takes energy to make physical goods. Even services require some level of physical goods and energy, such as a building to perform these services, electricity to operate tools, and the materials needed to make any tools, such as computers or scissors.
On Figure 7, note that the trend line is dropping below 0% in 2024, and even farther below 0% in 2025. This means that a smaller energy supply is available, relative to the population. If less energy supply is available, fewer physical goods relative to the population are likely to be available, as well. No one announces this, but we see the impact in many ways. For example, we discover that our daily newspaper is no longer being delivered. Or we discover that the products we see in stores are becoming increasingly flimsy. Meanwhile, young people are becoming less able to afford cars, homes, and almost everything else.
Furthermore, with limited total energy supply, international fighting about physical goods becomes more of a problem. The place we see this first is with respect to minerals. With limited energy supply and ores that are increasingly less concentrated, it is becoming difficult to extract enough materials such as uranium, rare earths, and platinum to meet the needs of all countries. Prices may temporarily spike, but they do not rise high enough, for long enough, to allow production to rise to the overall needed level.
[5] Falling interest rates push the economy along; rising interest rates act like putting brakes on the economy.
Interest rates play a far greater role in the economy, and in economic growth, than many people would expect. Falling interest rates between 1981 and 2022 greatly supported the economy (Figure 8). Since 2022, higher interest rates have acted like a headwind to the economy. This is a concern when it comes to the possibility that the economy is heading into economic contraction because of an inadequate supply of low-cost energy.
Another piece of the picture is the effect of the “yen carry trade.” It allows international investors to borrow money at low rates in Japan, and invest this money in the United States and other countries at higher rates. The yen carry trade has been supporting international borrowing, but it now seems to be at the edge of unwinding because Japanese interest rates are now higher. With this change, it is more difficult to borrow yen at a low rate and invest the proceeds elsewhere at a higher rate. The unwinding of the yen carry trade could push US interest rates up, regardless of what the Federal Reserve tries to do.
[6] Interest payments on US government debt are already getting to be a problem.
US government debt is now close to $38 trillion, and total interest payments have recently risen because interest rates are no longer near zero. Total payments now exceed $1 trillion per year.
The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is now concerned about the high level of interest payments. When interest rates were very low in the 2008 to 2020 period (Figure 8), it was possible to add debt without substantially raising the amount of interest to be paid. But now, with higher interest rates and the debt balance increasing, interest payments have become very high, to the point where they even exceed defense spending. It becomes difficult to raise taxes enough to cover both interest outlays and other funding shortfalls.
I talk more about some of these issues in post called “Energy limits are forcing the economy to contract.” Clearly, if the US economy is being forced to contract, it is very difficult for it to be a hugely successful growth story.
[7] Which countries of the world seem likely to be most resilient against energy limits?
If we believe Reinhart and Rogoff, the countries that would be most resistant to collapse would be the countries that have been growing most rapidly, in recent years. Figure 11 shows a listing of the most rapidly growing countries during the 2019 – 2024 period, based on World Bank GDP data.
The only country on Figure 11 that is an “Advanced Economy” (member of the OECD) is Ireland. Ireland is known for its pharmaceutical exports and for its unusually low taxes on corporations. Many companies choose to domicile in Ireland to take advantage of the country’s low tax rates.
All the other countries are, in some sense, “less advanced economies.” Wages are likely lower, giving them an edge in extracting resources and in manufacturing, and then selling the goods to more advanced countries. Some of these countries may have been given loans by the IMF or China to help them develop their resources.
China and India are both known for their coal use; historically, coal has been an inexpensive energy product, allowing countries to make goods inexpensively, for export. The only country listed whose growing GDP is based on oil extraction seems to be Guyana in South America. Its oil extraction started very recently.
On Figure 12, the list of shrinking economies reads like a list of sad situations that we have read about in the news, way too many times. Many of the countries have recently been in wars or similar situations. None of the countries are Advanced Economies. A few of the countries (Iraq, Libya, Trinidad and Tobago, South Sudan, Venezuela) are oil producing countries.
With respect to the list of slowly growing countries, shown on the right side of Figure 12:
- Austria, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, and Japan are all Advanced Economies with inadequate energy supplies of their own.
- Puerto Rico is an island territory that has recently had debt problems.
- Thailand is, in some sense, a dropout from the rapidly growing nations of Southeast Asia. My impression when I visited Thailand earlier this year was that a great deal of overbuilding had taken place. Excuses for more debt had mostly stopped.
- Argentina is an oil-producing country with difficulties.
- China tightened its grip on Hong Kong in 2019, leading to much slower economic growth. Presumably, there were underlying issues that caused this tightened grip.
- South Africa has both coal supply problems and inadequate water supplies.
[8] What lies ahead?
I think that we are already in a world of “not enough to go around,” because resource limits are leading to an inadequate supply of finished goods and services for the world economy as a whole. Some countries are already being squeezed out, particularly the countries listed as having “shrinking GDP” in Figure 12. I expect that, over time, an increasing number of countries will be added to the shrinking GDP list. The outcomes may be as bad as seem to be happening to the economies that are shrinking today.
History shows that governments of shrinking countries tend to be overturned by their citizens, or they may collapse on their own. If collapse happens in either of these ways, governmental promises of pensions, and of guarantees on bank accounts, are likely to disappear. Even if the current governments can be maintained, countries will be forced to cut back greatly on the programs they are providing. Pensions may be cut, or they may be inflated away by hyperinflation.
Some governments today talk about possibly introducing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). If these currencies are implemented, I would expect that they will be used to ration the increasingly limited supplies of goods and services that are available among their populations.
I do not expect that there will be a formal World War III. Instead, I think the United States is already in a cold war against practically every other country because there cannot be enough goods and services to go around. The US can’t go into a formal war against China because it provides parts of the supply chains for many essential goods the US uses today. Even Europe is a competitor for essential goods. For example, the less oil Europe uses, the more oil will be available for other countries.
While new technologies such as artificial intelligence and energy recovery may eventually alleviate our energy problems, it is unlikely that such approaches will solve our problem in the near term. As a result, governments are likely to be less able to keep their promises. Historically, families or “villages” of extended kin have provided safety nets, rather than government programs. Perhaps now is a good time to be thinking about how we can move in this direction, as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRbO3-BZL_k
Ten percent of Indian men will never marry due to gender specific abortion against females in India. This pod caster suggests they can marry the excess women in Ukraine due to the war killing of one million Ukrainian men.
India is a very socially darwinistic society. Only those with means to pay the bride price could marry throughout its entire history.
Maybe many of the surplus men could become trans woman.
*don’t worry I’ll let myself out.
Bride price? Good lordie!! Never knew we had such things here in the subcontinent! Or, are you conflating India and China or Thailand (where there is this custom of bride price)?
And by the way, I am proud to say that my state, as opposed to the rest of the country, has always had a positive sex ratio (currently at 1084 females for every 1000 males).
Blind men trying to “see” and describe an elephant…
https://feminisminindia.com/2020/12/07/bride-price-india-marriage/
https://www.wisdomlib.org/concept/bride-price
Not in your region, but it does exist
Bride price? Good lordie!! Never knew we had such things here in the subcontinent! Or, are you conflating India and China or Thailand (where there is this custom of bride price)?
And by the way, my state, as opposed to the rest of the country, has always had a positive sex ratio (currently at 1084 females for every 1000 males).
Blind men trying to “see” and describe an elephant…
And then these men will be killed in a fierce competition by the need to provide for their families.
Now you know why so many women are voting for the continuation of the war!
Strangely enough, the many refugees in Europe are all young men who are apparently not needed in their countries of origin.
Yes, the mandatory conscription for women should be introduced.
No more women surpluses. It is a discrimination, both the West and the East are corrupt.
The males should protest.
In fact, the whole young generation protests against being conscripted:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/6/thousands-protest-in-berlin-against-new-german-military-conscription-bill
It’s a similar story in China due to the one-child policy.
There simply aren’t enough excess Ukrainian women to go around, and those that go abroad are far more likely to prefer Western Europe or North America, where there are currently huge shortages of marriageable females who shave their armpits and don’t go in for tattoos, body piercing and phosphorescent hair dyeing, due to the effects of feminism, wokism, “me”-ism, and cultural marxism.
Have you noticed how in the West, so many young people love to shock others with their speech, their appearance, their mannerisms, et. Bad behavior is cool, etiquette is passé. There’s no delicacy these days…no consideration of others. Refinement’s a thing of the past! Manners are dead!
Start from about 28 minutes in:
But the right question…is there a shortage of them folks over there?
What a piece of crap if there was any . India is already in a state of collapse . 800 million living on free rations . Now the upper middle class and the rich are feeling the heat . 65 % of the civil aviation industry collapsed two days ago . Passengers stranded on airports for 3 days . Yes , nothing bad happens till it happens to you . India is going to be an example of ” overshoot ” and ” LTG ” in a SSF ( Synchronized System Failure ) . Just repeating myself .
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/7/indigo-chaos-why-is-indias-largest-airline-canceling-hundreds-of-flights
Thanks! With your Indian background, I suspect you are better following what is going on in India. An excerpt from your link says:
Air travel across India has been in chaos in the past week after the country’s largest airline, IndiGo, cancelled more than 2,000 flights starting on Friday, stranding thousands of passengers at airports across the country.
The airline, which operates about 2,200 flights a day, has been facing pilot shortages after it failed to adapt to the new pilot rest and duty rules introduced by the government early last year..
We don’t know the real reason for the new rules. Was it to protect riders from pilots without enough sleep? Or was it indirectly related to other issues, perhaps related to airline fuel and its availability? Perhaps there were multiple reasons.
The highest year for jet fuel consumption in India was 2010, believe it or not, at 301,000 barrels per day. It already has begun to drop before 2020, hitting 236,000 in 2019.
From 2020 onwards, the pattern has been as follows:
2020 132,000
2021 140,000
2022 164,000
2023 184,000
2024 199,000
Perhaps the airline industry had cut back terribly far in 2020. They were lacking in staff and many other things (spare parts and air traffic controllers, for example), if they tried to expand the way they did. They have been trying to grow back too rapidly. Airline fuel is another issue.
Aborting baby girls when the population is already too high makes perfect sense. It helps hold future population down.
Marrying Indian men to Ukrainian women does not.
All these arguments about technology which will save humans from their folly can be summarized into one single sentence, “I don’t want to die!”
Having followed the singularitarians 2014-18, I am skeptical about any ideas they are floating. None of them are proposing viable way to obtain energy, just more ways to waste energy in more fanciful ways.
An age of abundance. With what? As meaningless as the last visions seen by the Little Match Girl. The cornucopians are like the fairy godmother who waste the girl’s final moments, but no matter what vision she might have seen, all that remains is a frozen corpse wanted by nobody, and will be buried in an unmarked grave in potter’s field.
If the world had even 10 more years, I would still be inclined to believe. But it won’t. Any argument is just denial, a denial of humanity having to pay for all the indulgences.
Human population made it through ice ages. It is doubtful that human population will completely die off. Humans will always have some renewable resources to use. If the climate changes, they can simply more to more hospitable parts of the world. I am hesitant to close out the possibility that in the future, people cannot figure out very efficient new ways to extract left-over fossil fuels. Or they cannot come up with some completely new approach.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2143250/keir-starmer-set-fresh-humiliation
Keir Starmer set for fresh humiliation as key trade union looks to split from Labour entirely
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https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/12/06/19/104509769-0-image-a-5_1765049721291.jpg
Keir Starmer in 1989.
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I asked Google whether Starmer is Asperger’s.
“There is no confirmed diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome or autism for Keir Starmer, but several commentators have speculated about his neurodivergence based on his public demeanour and behaviour. Observers have noted his atypical gaze, tuneless voice, apparent lack of empathy, and rigid thinking patterns, which are features sometimes associated with autism spectrum conditions. One article suggests that his father was an engineer, a profession often linked to neurotypes more task-oriented than people-focused, and that autism can be heritable.
Another analysis points to his excessively literal-minded compliance with human rights law and technocratic governance style as indicators that might suggest autism. However, these observations are speculative and based on public perception rather than medical diagnosis.”
================
Starmer’s speech patterns remind me a bit of John Major, who was portrayed in the satirical puppet show “Spitting Image” as being so boring that even his skin was grey. In 1993 Major visited a hospital, and the journalist included a photo of smiling nurses flocking round him. The journalist wrote of his surprise at this. I was also surprised and told it to a workmate. He replied that his partner always voted Labour, but that she liked John Major. You never can tell!
On this blog Ms. Tverberg speaks of “Our Finite World” and our constrained global resources. The blog attracts a small retinue of doomers and gloomers among its commenters, who presumably expect collapse at any moment. Yet we have recently seen AI bursting into public consciousness, in a way that suggests that we stand on the brink of the Singularity. So – doom versus the Singularity. The contrast between these two competing visions is startling.
In her latest video, Julia McCoy has “Star-Trekked” herself in order to appear as her “AI clone”, Dr. McCoy. She speaks of “a convergence of breakthroughs” that she believes will lead to “an age of abundance”. Watch her video, and you may well be at least half-convinced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24APEyZrFHo
Robots Just Got Superpowers — And Nobody’s Talking About It.
I have seen some of her videos. But the reality od everyday life is different.
There may be more machines and less people. But rising food and energy prices mean that the humans are paralyzed by the lack of the energy.
You can not store profits in the bank. The profits represent the availability of necessary items.
There may be a lot of food in some place, but the costs of getting it to the consumers may become horrible. Or there may be some other obstacles that cause that the food is spoiled.
AI may accelerate the genetic development of super-strains of crops.
Putting a calculator and encyclopaedia together and adding a nifty little voice program will not find genetic perfection, even if genetic perfection were possible and it most certainly is not(sorry kulm).
Darwin had it right with the term “descent with modification”(he never used the word evolution). Trail and error, or more correctly, lots and lots of error with occasional beneficial results.
“Darwin answers that we must look for imperfections and oddities, because any perfection in organic design or ecology obliterates the path of history and might have been created as we find it. This principle of imperfections became Darwin’s most common guide.”
Prof. Stephen J. Gould
On the plus side and despite popular delusion, genetic change can be massive and almost instant(not human timeframe), but it won’t be the delusional that bring the change, it will be what we refer to as nature(the living universe), as it always has been(probably timed nicely with Schumann resonance).
One thing that a (not)i might have hinted at, that was quickly dismissed, was when it was asked to compute planetary movement(no problem) using Newton’s laws(big problem) and it came up with utter gibberish(Harvard/MIT study).
No one appears to have asked why the calculator got it so wrong when it had all the necessary inputs, or indeed if the problem was the theory rather than a faulty calculator.
We’re desperately trying to run, when in truth we can barely stand.
and super strains of humans?
I do not take words of people who overuse the word ”could’ or ‘may’ seriously. It is like wishing on a star.
On this blog Ms. Tverberg speaks of “Our Finite World” and our constrained global resources. The blog attracts a small retinue of dreamers among its commenters, who presumably expect AI to lead us to the Singularity at any moment. Yet we have recently seen energy and resource limits, together with unsustainable levels of debt, burst into public consciousness, in a way that suggests that we stand on the brink of dramatic changes. So – Singularity versus the radical change, including the possibility of collapse. The contrast between these two competing visions is startling.
You are so sarcastic, Jesse. Let’s hope you end up as an inmate of Elon Musk’s first Martian slave labour camp. 🙂
Yes, if you do not have money, it is easy to recruit you for any stupid idea by a greedy billionare.
But Musk is also an innovator. Not all his efforts will bear fruit, but technological progress still has some future ahead of it.
musk buys rocket scientists
he is not a rocket scientist.
He moved into Tesla as a majority shareholder not as a designer
his Pickup truck is illegal in Europe—he wasnt bright enough to check that out.
From the internet, for N.P. the Luddite and cynic. (Also, rocket technology has now been superseded. Ask reante).
“Elon Musk is widely recognized for driving innovation through a combination of visionary leadership and deep technical engagement, rather than simply hiring others to execute his ideas. He is known for applying first-principles thinking to break down complex problems and challenge conventional wisdom, which has led to transformative advancements in industries like aerospace and electric vehicles.
While he relies on highly skilled teams, Musk actively participates in technical discussions, questions design choices, and pushes engineers to achieve what others deem impossible, demonstrating a hands-on role in innovation.
Musk seeks individuals with exceptional ability and a proven track record of overcoming difficult problems, prioritizing problem-solving skills and real-world accomplishments over formal academic credentials.
He is deeply involved in the hiring process, often interviewing candidates himself to assess their true contributions to past projects and their ability to think critically under pressure.
His leadership style emphasizes a culture of innovation, where employees are encouraged to take calculated risks and think outside the box, fostering an environment where bold ideas are pursued.
Despite his reliance on top talent, Musk’s ability to understand technical details and challenge assumptions allows him to guide innovation directly, as seen in SpaceX’s development of reusable rockets and Tesla’s advancements in battery technology.
Some critics argue that Musk takes credit for innovations driven by his teams, but evidence from former employees suggests he is deeply engaged in the technical aspects of product development, questioning timelines and demanding high performance.”
Elon had the software and compute skills to develop a simulation package and NVIDIA run hardware to design considering chemistry, thermodynamics, mechanical engineering all in parallel allowing a simpler, smaller, cheaper, easier to build rocket engine. It is highly ITAR protected not allowed for foreigners to see. One of the reasons SpaceX only hires Americans.
Thanks for this. And there I was, thinking that Elon had earned that trillion dollars entirely through his own efforts—just like Norman earned his pension.
It is a contrast between heading down to zero, or up to infinity.
We are hitting some kind of discontinuity. It is hard to understand.
I think down to a world population of 100 million would be nice and easy of the global fisheries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4mg0sp2nyo
Every Nation Is in Debt. So Who is the Lender?
By Yanis Varoufakis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zavMS0API2E
Why The Stock Market Hasn’t Crashed Yet? And What the Banks Are Hiding.
By Yanis Varoufakis.
Are banks becoming cemeteries of unfulfilled promises?
“cemeteries of unfulfilled promises”
A startling metaphor, MG. Some people might have a heart attack just reading it.
Yes.
Rising debts represent the physical gaps that form between the increasingly atomized parts of the imploding system.
you are
i am
money is created out of the beliefs of all of us
it exists only because we believe it does.
Money is one of the promises I am talking about.
AI is destructing scientists jobs?
Mother and baby murdered. German police charge scientist from Nitra, Slovakia
Translated by DeepL:
“A Slovak scientist is being prosecuted in Germany for the murder of a young woman (31) and her two-month-old baby. A source confirmed that he is from Nitra.
The tragedy occurred a week ago in Düsseldorf, Germany. The accused man is the husband of the deceased and the father of the child.
He was the one who called the ambulance on that fateful Saturday morning. Bild reported this on its website on December 1.
“When paramedics tried to enter the apartment, the 43-year-old man allegedly held a knife in his hand. The paramedics withdrew and called the police for help,” the German portal writes.
According to local media, the police are working on the theory that the man killed his wife and daughter and then injured himself with a knife.
He surrendered to the police without resistance: “He was seriously injured and allegedly confessed to killing his wife and child.”
https://my.sme.sk/nitra/c/matku-s-babatkom-zavrazdili-nemecka-policia-obvinila-vedca-z-nitry
https://www.cas.sk/spravy/sokujuci-nalez-v-byte-v-nemecku-matka-a-dieta-mrtvi-pri-nich-zraneny-slovak-co-sa-tam-stalo
good lord, can you pretty please do your depop in silence? we all understand it is full of stuff like that. they should have listened to the western press and get multiple vaxxes, and all this would not have happened.
Food prices in Slovakia increased by 50 % during the last 5 years.
HNonline.sk – Ceny potravín za päť rokov stúpli o polovicu a bude ešte horšie. Maloobchodníci: Zdražovanie už tlmiť nemôžeme https://share.google/bI3n16ZVZQhenYygQ
Imagine what gasoline prices with such increase do.
The marginal parts of the country depopulate, as their ageing populations have bad access to food. Besides the falling healthcare accessibility that comes hand in hand with the decreasing population.
https://hnonline.sk/finweb/ekonomika/96244297-ceny-potravin-za-pat-rokov-stupli-o-polovicu-a-bude-este-horsie-maloobchodnici-zdrazovanie-uz-tlmit-nemozeme
The state helps with energy prices:
https://energopomoc.sk/
I doubt that there is a way out of this, as there is a lot of investments needed for machines, technology and infrastructure maintenance and operation needed.
The system is imploding.
slovakia is a derivation of czechoslovakia, a monstrosity created by Woodrow Wilson who never bothered to see Europe before 1919.
The world was fine without Czechoslovakia for millennia and the world will be fine without it
I expect most of the artificial countries, created by people in London and Washington DC who never visited there, to fail within 10 years from today.
Yeah, Gail has written the same too. She expects artificial countries that need massive amounts of cheap affordable resources and energy to downsize and breakup into countries like Chech and Slovakia…
the so called United States was artificially put together and will be in pieces….maybe within 10 yeaes
Joel Garreau wrote about the 9 nations of north america in 1980s
https://shsmo.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/kansas-city/mcp/Garreau-9-10-81.pdf
That is already old since North America has fractured even further since then
I expect that countries will break up into small pieces, if we substantially lose fossil fuels. Current top layers of government will disappear, and perhaps even some lower layers.
I know that some of our commentators are OK with the current “culture of death” that is currently in the ascendent in Canada. This goes well beyond ostrich shooting. It now extends to coercing people in hospital and nursing homes into accepting euthanasia AND agreeing to donate any viable organs. Retired military vet and firebrand Kelsie Sheren—who has so many physical issues that she’s had 23 surgeries—but is bursting with energy and indignation, has exposed the entire diabolical shebang run by the governing death cult—which is targeting around 15 million Canadians for premature death—and if you want to bury your head in the sand and ignore reality like a “Good German”, well that’s your prerogative.
Something is happening behind the scenes of Canada’s MAiD system, and according to Kelsie Sheren, it’s a lot darker than the public has been told.
In a recent interview, she revealed that patients who didn’t need to die were being funneled into hospice and ultimately pushed into MAiD because there was “no room” for basic care like physio. Nurses and doctors allegedly told each other to “just kill them anyway”, not hypotheticals, but direct quotes from a whistleblowing palliative care nurse in Kelowna.
And the bigger picture is even worse.
Kelsie lays out how Health Canada is funding CAMAP, the Canadian Association of MAiD, which has partnered with Canadian Blood Services and organ-donation networks. According to her, if you pursue MAiD, you’re expected to say yes to organ donation, an eerie alignment of incentives no one is addressing.
Now Health Canada is reportedly financing a brand-new MAiD-focused medical journal produced by the same MAiD-promoting organization, to shape how doctors think about end-of-life “care.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kmCCj4SAvc
One commenter on this video said the:
The biggest problem I see with what you described is that people no longer adhere to Christian beliefs that life has sanctity. Without respect for the sanctity of life everything is permissible including killing tens of thousands of citizens to satisfy governmental financial shortfalls, population control, and political power. When people lose their Christian beliefs, they are easily manipulated emotionally and psychologically to accept the idea that Euthanasia (killing) is viable instrument to meet fabricated sympathetic human feelings that everyone is willing to accept without questions. Pain and discomfort are part of life. Unfortunately, some will suffer more than others. I have no problem easing their discomfort and pain with medications while reaching a natural death. What I have a problem with is terminating a human life before its natural time. I am 77 years old, and I have no way to know in what condition my life will end. However, I refuse to voluntarily or unvoluntary be euthanized. I will accept the pain and discomfort associated with my natural death as my ancestors did. If it’s in God design for me to have a painful end of life I will accept it. Jesus Christ endured and suffered much more than any human will ever experience. My death if painful will never equate to what He went through to save me. I know many will frown upon on what I just said because they don’t share my beliefs, but that is exactly the reason why we are having this discussion about the end of life as it was meant to be from the beginning of time.
Over the past three decades I have noticed a significant correlation between Canadians’ decline in their religious belief and their acceptance of Woke ideologies and the acceptance of total government control over their lives. Sadly, the same has been taken place in the USA but has been halted since Trump was elected President. How long will it last once Trump leaves office is anyone guest. Hopefully the people will elect a leader with similar value for personal freedom and the respect for life.
The push and acceptance by our younger generations for Socialism and Marxism is something alarming as it implicates similar distorted views about the sanctity of life now present in Canada. It’s hard to think there is an easy solution to this diabolic downturn in our culture without experiencing a significant human crisis such as a war, or a foreign government takeover to wake the population up. People in our countries need to realize how blessed we have had to live in a country founded on principles that fostered human rights and personal freedom. Sadly, our youth has been raised to believe they are entitled to have everything without efforts or consequences. They believe that socialism (government) will deliver them everything their parents provided them while growing up. They now believe the government’s job is to replace their parents and continue to nurture them in their adulthood. I pray God to make them realize that it is not too late to make them realize the evil they have been subjected to and to give them the courage and willingness to overturn it.
From a former Canadian now an American. It is very hard for me to see how far Canada and a significant portion of its population have drifted toward insane progressive ideology. From what I have seen over the past 10-12 years, Canada has basically loss its sovereignty. Foreign countries like China have insidiously infiltrated every part of our society and governments (local to federal). It was once such a beautiful country to live in, and I sadly am not sure if I would ever want to come back.
as luck may have it, one particular group of chosen people dominates the human organ trade. I am sure they are getting them at a discount.
Imagine 23 surgeries while global oil reserves are running out still feeling entitled to more.
Yes, my mind is boggling at the thought. Although she had those surgeries as a consequence of getting injured while serving in the Canadian military. So the poor girl might be forgiven for thinking that patching her up was the least her country could do for her.
It’s clear you don’t think its disgraceful that Canada is killing thousands of its own citizens as if they had no right to life or supportive medical treatment simply in order to meet performance targets and help balance the national accounts.
I won’t argue with you about that. I am just shocked that there are people who seem to be not as shocked about the shocking things going on in Canada as I am, or who are at least pretending not to be shocked.
But even if you have no compassion or empathy with the victims of this diabolical scheme, please remember that what goes around comes around. If this becomes normalized, your time is bound to come too, when the medical mafia decide to speed you on your journey into the next world, and there will be no one left to speak out for you.
Apart from that, please do get back to us when you personally feel you’ve had more than your fair share of medical treatment, or when the nice MAID people knock on your door to ask if you need any assistance in dying as a form of national service.
It really depends on a person’s age. Surgery might make sense for a young child if it could mean decades more life, but for someone who’s 80, maybe not as much. It’s also important to consider whether the surgery will improve their quality of life or leave them in a vegetative state. Figuring out the ethical side of this is definitely challenging.
If the current system isn’t working, somehow a new system will be found that works differently. I wouldn’t be surprised if something like this is part of it, at least in some parts of the world.
Movies are getting more stupid every day.
One of the most idiotic movies of all time is Million Dollar Baby, where the heroine is felled by a “German”(with clear congoid features) boxer after the bell, and Clint Eastwood and all the side do absolutely nothing as the congoid retreats with her ‘win’ , with zero apologies, zero remorse (which tends to be a feature severely lacking, among blacks and asians, for whatever reason) . The rest of the movie features Eastwood being a crybaby, with zero consequence to the congoid.Bla
I understand Eastwood was aiming for an Oscar, but the viewers would have preferred to see the uppity congoid felled by a hail of bullet fired by Eastwood, like his Dirty Harry days.
A modern retelling of All Quiet in the Western Front features the main character felled by a French soldier a few second before the armistice, and the moron sitting behind him fails to kill the Frenchie when the bell sounds, so the Frenchie goes home without remorse.
Having the watched the original, where the main character dies alone a few days before the war ends trying to snatch a flower, it is a shitty retelling.
The directors should have set the ‘French’ soldier as a Vietnamese or an Algerian (blacks were not allowed at the front), showing the future of Western World. And at least the Vietnamese or the Algerian should have been killed so he would not return to Saigon or Algiers and breed more people who would hate the West.
Some people are talking about remilitarizing Germany. I feel it is an idiotic idea. To rearm Germany it needs Silesia, which means the end of the farcial entity called Polish Republic, which London and Paris will not allow.
And, with 80 years of demonizing Germany like stupid movies like above , it is unlikely that rearming Germany will go anywhere.
I notice
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Germany-Scales-Back-Offshore-Wind-Auctions-After-Latest-Flop.html
Germany Scales Back Offshore Wind Auctions After Latest Flop
Germany moved to reduce the capacity it will auction in its offshore wind tender in 2026, following the flop in the latest auction without a single bid made.
The German Parliament approved legislation narrowing the capacity in the 2026 tender to just 2.5 gigawatts (GW) to 5 GW, compared with an earlier plan of auctioning off 6 GW of offshore wind capacity and with as much as 10 GW offered in the auction in August. . .
The auction flop signals that offshore wind power developers are wary of taking on riskier, zero-subsidy projects amid rising costs and supply chain issues.
There also was a WSJ article earlier this week about how poorly wind and solar are faring in Europe.
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/europes-green-energy-rush-slashed-emissionsand-crippled-the-economy-e65a1a07
Europe’s Green Energy Rush Slashed Emissions—and Crippled the Economy
Political consensus is cracking, industry is hobbled and high-profile projects are being postponed thanks to some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world
An excerpt about something that was new to me:
Parts of the green transition have proved unexpectedly costly. When Scotland’s biggest offshore wind farm opened in 2023, it was feted as a symbol of Britain’s push into a new era of cheap low-emissions energy. But today, British taxpayers spend tens of millions of pounds a year for the Seagreen wind farm to not produce electricity.
Why? If the wind farm was left constantly on, it would send big pulses of energy from northern Scotland to southern England that would fry the U.K.’s aging grid.
Last year, the farm’s 114 turbines in the North Sea were disconnected more than 70% of the time; a gas plant in southern England fired up instead to meet local electricity demand. The tab British consumers paid to “balance” the grid totaled £2.7 billion last year—a cost expected to rise to £8 billion by 2030. Borrowing costs have also risen, making capital-intensive offshore wind far more expensive.
“Very clearly the cost of the transition has never been admitted or recognized,” said Gordon Hughes, a professor at the University of Edinburgh and a former adviser on energy to the World Bank. “There is a massive dishonesty involved.”
This is important to stress. Green energy is propaganda and needs to be exposed as such before we destroy even more of the natural world. It truly is the ghost dance of the capitalist class.
Thanks for the suggestion.
The last declarations by the white house about its relationship ith Europe have attracted a lot of attention. It appears this is a significant degradation of the relationship.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c04vdengk3do
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/anti-free-speech-war-escalates-eu-unleashes-dsa-musks-x
https://www.rt.com/news/629112-us-national-security-strategy/
the don, and those who prop him up, intend to subdue the american nation into an extreme far right regime of theo-fascism.
been banging on about it for 10 years now
how often does it need repeating??
Is it going to be worse than what is happening in the UK, with the police arresting people for saying things on the internet every day? or kidnapping the skripals for years? I tend to think that these things are 100% correlated with resource depletion, and so the UK is necessarily farther along.
they are certainly connected with resource depletion
probably one of my usual dim days, but dont know what skripals are.
as of right now though, for all our political shortcomings, our prime minister is not spending $billions on assembling a personal army to round up undesirables, or bombing ships in international waters.
Remember ICE swears personal allegiance to Trump himself.
when you start extrajudiial killings, you enter the territory of the Taliban, North Korea or Russia, or more accurately 1930s/40s germany.
But of course, you may see that as ”good thing”.
and yes—i know idiots personally in uk who agree with what trump is doing.
Extrajudicial killings are as American as apple pie, Norman. You are 90 years old and apparently have been following international events for decades, so you should be well aware of that.
Judicial killings too, come to think of it.
I asked a bot about extrajudicial killings by each president since Reagan. Here’s what it said:
Estimating extrajudicial killings presided over by U.S. presidents involves complex judgments and considerable political context. However, I can provide a rough overview of military actions and notable interventions that resulted in fatalities, which may include extrajudicial elements. Here’s a brief summary:
Ronald Reagan (1981–1989)
Key Events: Involvement in Central America (e.g., Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras) and the bombing of Libya.
Casualty Estimate: Thousands, but specific numbers are debated.
George H.W. Bush (1989–1993)
Key Events: Gulf War, Panama invasion (Operation Just Cause).
Casualty Estimate: Tens of thousands in Iraq; thousands in Panama.
Bill Clinton (1993–2001)
Key Events: NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, humanitarian interventions in Somalia and Sudan, support for operations in East Timor.
Casualty Estimate: Thousands in Kosovo; various other conflicts.
George W. Bush (2001–2009)
Key Events: Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, drone strikes.
Casualty Estimate: Hundreds of thousands, including combatants and civilians.
Barack Obama (2009–2017)
Key Events: Increased use of drones in multiple countries (e.g., Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia).
Casualty Estimate: Thousands, with significant civilian casualties reported.
Donald Trump (2017–2021)
Key Events: Continued military actions in Syria, Yemen, and expanded drone strikes.
Casualty Estimate: Thousands, with ongoing uncertainty about civilian casualties.
Joe Biden (2021–Present)
Key Events: Withdrawal from Afghanistan, continued drone strikes.
Casualty Estimate: Ongoing; not concretely defined yet.
In summary, every president since Reagan, apart from Biden (whose numbers are not yet in), has presided over at least thousands of extrajudicial killings, with Bush the Younger topping the list at hundreds of thousands.
It should also be noted, and never forgotten, that Clinton’s Iraq sanctions in the 1990s extended by Bush the Younger until the 2003 invasion, are estimated to have killed half a million Iraqi children alone. A figure that caused Madeline Albright to declare: “I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”
And not only have they all indulged in large-scale extrajudicial killings that generate huge numbers of innocent victims that are labelled “collateral damage”, they are actually proud of their achievements on that score.
So please spare us the faux outrage at Trump. Ayone who thinks the US has just started extrajudicial killings under Trump is, to put it bluntly but fairly, woefully ignorant and well behind the times. Seriously, Norman, where have you been all this time?
“Extrajudicial killings are as American as apple pie”
Do not perpetuate this myth, Timothy. We Europeans invented apple pie long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
I stand corrected.
The origins of apple pie can be traced back to medieval England, with the first written recipe appearing in 1381 in a collection attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer.
Whether the French invented it first I can’t say, but if they did, they surely would have ruined it with too many spices.
“The origins of apple pie can be traced back to medieval England, with the first written recipe appearing in 1381 in a collection attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer. I stand corrected.”
Good. Now you can sit down again. Yes, we English have invented 99% of the good things in this world. East or West, England is best! I think we English should now impose a retrospective apple pie tax on the USA. It’ll go down a treat!
“Yes, we English have invented 99% of the good things in this world”
A rather large chunk of those ‘english’ inventions, were in fact invented by Scotsmen. The steam engine*, tv, telephone, light bulb, refrigerator, hypodermic syringe, flushing toilets, cloning, radar, discovery of penicillin… The list goes on and on.
Maybe in truth, Britian always has been run by The Scottish Order😉
*Improvment that made it practical.
Let me introduce you to Chef Mikuni’s apple tarts glazed with runny apricot jam.
An easy recipe, over the last few years, they have become a favorite winter confection in our house.
Starmer may not like this video, as you’ll also learn how to use a knife.
Netanyahu: I’m not scared of Mamdani – I’ll go to New York
“Benjamin Netanyahu said he will visit New York despite mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s repeated pledge to arrest him should he step foot in the city.
The Democratic socialist has insisted he would honour an arrest warrant for Mr Netanyahu issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.
But during an interview with the New York Times’ Dealbook Summit about whether he would hesitate visiting the Empire state, Mr Netanyahu said: “I’ll come to New York.”
Asked whether he would “test” Mr Mamdani’s threats to arrest him and how it would work, Mr Netanyahu grinned and said “well, why don’t you wait and see?”
https://archive.ph/KpU8l#selection-3501.0-3515.153
Oh boy, boy, pass the popcorn.
Interesting!
I wanted to point out some information that Foolish Fitz has linked to, down the thread the ways, regarding Chinese foreign lending practices. It is the new colonizer of the world, I am afraid.
This is the general link of the site.
https://www.aiddata.org/how-china-lends
This is a link to a recent summary of some of their work:
https://www.aiddata.org/blog/chinas-massive-overseas-lending-portfolio-shifts-course
China’s massive overseas lending portfolio shifts course, as Beijing eyes the U.S., EU, and sensitive industries
New AidData report and datasets track for the first time China’s secretive loans and grants in high-income as well as developing countries.
AidData (aiddata.org), a research lab at U.S. university William & Mary, today released a new flagship report and massive dataset that comprehensively tracks China’s lending and grant-giving activities worldwide. The scale and scope of Beijing’s portfolio is vastly larger than previously understood: $2.2 trillion of aid and credit spread across 200 countries in every region of the world. . .
“The overall size of China’s portfolio is two-to-four times larger than previously published estimates suggest,” said Brad Parks, AidData’s Executive Director and the lead author of the report. The over three-hundred-page-long publication—Chasing China: Learning to Play by Beijing’s Global Lending Rules—finds that more than three-quarters of China’s overseas lending operations now support projects and activities in upper-middle income countries and high-income countries. “Much of the lending to wealthy countries is focused on critical infrastructure, critical minerals, and the acquisition of high-tech assets, like semiconductor companies,” said Parks.
I would quibble with how the study classifies countries as high income versus low income. Venezuela, Argentina, and Russia are all categorized as high income, for example.
The US is listed as the top recipient of Chinese lending over the period 2000-2023.
The article also points out that the US is now doing something similar to what China has been doing:
The report’s authors note that the Trump administration recently took a page out of Beijing’s playbook by tapping the U.S. Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund to provide a $20 billion bailout—through a currency swap facility—to the Government of Argentina. The Biden and Trump administrations have also sought to bankroll the acquisition of ownership stakes in critical infrastructure and critical mineral assets in high-income countries—such as Greece’s Piraeus Port, Greenland’s Tanbreez rare earths deposit, the Panama Canal, and Australia’s Darwin Port—on national security grounds.
Regarding US lending, the report says:
Chinese state-owned entities are active in every corner and sector of the U.S., bankrolling the construction of liquid natural gas (LNG) projects in Texas and Louisiana, data centers in Northern Virginia, terminals at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Los Angeles International Airport in California, the Matterhorn Express Natural Gas Pipeline, and the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline.
They have financed the acquisition of high-tech companies, such as a Michigan robotics company, the infrastructure and automotive business of Silicon Labs, Complete Genomics, and OmniVision Technologies. U.S. recipients of liquidity support from Chinese state-owned creditors—via working capital and revolving credit facilities—include a wide array of Fortune 500 companies, including Amazon, AT&T, Verizon, Tesla, General Motors, Ford, Boeing, and Disney.
Later:
The report details how the BRI and China’s overseas lending program are no longer one and the same. Beijing has dramatically scaled back its lending for infrastructure projects in BRI participant countries, while ramping up the provision of cross-border credit via liquidity support facilities to countries that do and do not participate in the BRI.
“I would quibble with how the study classifies countries as high income versus low income”
Yes, Venezuela and Argentina look odd, especially Venezuela given all the sanctions. It would be interesting to know their reasoning(and funding).
When we look at the sums and countries involved, it might help to explain how so many vicious threats have quickly dissipated into meek withdrawals, as China now has its fingers over so many pressure points.
Maybe it’s time to learn Mandarin 😁
Here’s the article that brought the study to my attention
https://huabinoliver.substack.com/p/the-biggest-fish-caught-in-chinas?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
None of them would have occurred if Truman listened to MacArthur who said it was necessary to nuke Mukden (China’s industrial base at that time, now called Shenyang) to end the Korean War and end the PRC.
Shenyang is nuked into cinders, PRC loses its ability to fight the war and the KMT returns to the mainland, and with mired in a never ending civil war, it won’t have the resources to advance to the rest of the world.
https://x.com/vladimirputiniu/status/1996531614650904906
“Zelenskys magic that he turned American 350 Billion Dollars into Golden Toilets”
Post from X
Excerpt from this article:
“Damage Control: Major Blows to EU as von der Leyen’s Rotten Regime Teeters”
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/damage-control-major-blows-to-eu
From this article:
The EU cabal is experiencing some serious setbacks, not to mention blows to the tattered drapes of its credibility.
First there was the fact that Belgium has officially rejected its piracy plans of stealing Russian assets, which came as a major slap in the face of EU apparatchiks.
Next, a headline saying, “How Belgium Became Russia’s most Valuable Asset.”
Later, the article says,
It would be a great story: taking money from the wicked guy, Putin, and giving it to the good guy, Ukraine. But stealing frozen assets from another country, its sovereign wealth fund, has never been done before. This is money belonging to the Russian Central Bank. Even during World War II, Germany’s money was not confiscated. During a war, sovereign assets are frozen. And at the end of the war, the losing state must give up all or part of these assets to compensate the victors. But who really believes that Russia will lose in Ukraine? It’s a fairy tale, a total illusion.
Taking the assets now makes no sense.
There has been a study by a renowned institution that peace would cost Europe 1.800 billion and a continuation of the war 840 billion euros. NATO is apparently considering a “preemptive strike”.
One takes into account that after a peace in Ukraine, which is actually a victory, Russia could take (back) other countries such as Moldova, etc. This is certainly not taken from the air, I would also include Serbia and possibly Greece and, of course, territory on the Baltic Sea.
I think you can see the following: the policy of the never legitimized von der Leyen, who, as an official appointed by Merkel, even presumes to decide on war and peace, has passed the peak. The German ruling coalition of Conservatives and Social Democrats together only gets as many votes in polls as the size of the opposition party.
At the same time, Germany’s industrial influence is waning. With the blowing up of the Nordstream pipeline, there is too little energy, with the withdrawal of the Americans as a protecting power, it turns out that Europe can neither financially nor militarily stand up to Russia.
This will change the security architecture in Europe in the long term.
The Leyen regime is not in a position to propose creative and war-avoiding solutions and to pick up the people and rally them behind her politics. Instead, Leyen messes with everyone: with her own citizens, with Russia, with America and even with her own supporters Belgium.
Ms. Leyen is also suspected of corruption, but she must not be investigated. Now two of her “ministers” have been imprisoned on corruption charges. At the same time, she transfers hundreds of billions to her friend Zelensky, who himself is suspected of corruption. Does he transfer funds back?
France is currently hardly in a position to replace the German leadership vacuum.
The EU has arrived in a quandary. I suspect we will soon experience a new pandemic so that the Leyen people do not lose their power.
If this does not happen, Europe is likely to experience a political change similar to Trump’s, which would lead to the EU losing a lot of power. However, it is unclear whether the opposition would have the room for real improvement given the economic problems.
Sorry, Venezuela comes in 4th, after poor Australia.
Protestor throws money at FIFA president
The cynical-realist argument:
[mere few minutes of public shaming by whomever + a bit of msm vitriol] vs decades long utter luxurious live, also hanging around the global elite circles; not mentioning still enough in the pot for at least next 2-3x gen descendants maintaining said chateaux niveau..
Here we have to be all [ kulm-ians ] as the rich always win (“temporarily”)..
I found more information:
From November 10:
https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2025/11/10/boston-continues-to-rally-for-world-cup-funding-as-other-city-celebrations-loom/
Boston continues to rally for World Cup funding as other city celebrations loom
2026 FIFA World Cup Boston Host Committee officials revealed that local companies and other donors have “only pledged about” $20M to fund the tournament as the city continues efforts to cover costs, according to Shirley Leung of the BOSTON GLOBE. . .
“And as they pass the hat among big companies around town, folks aren’t eager to chip in.”. . .
“Perhaps complicating World Cup fund-raising is President Trump’s recent threat to ‘take away’ the games from Gillette Stadium and relocate them if he felt that Boston was ‘unsafe’ to host soccer festivities.” . . .
Another item, from April, which I am certain is unbiased:
https://inside.fifa.com/organisation/media-releases/fifa-wto-study-estimates-usd-47-billion-economic-output-from-fifa-club-world
FIFA-WTO study estimates USD 47 billion economic output from FIFA Club World Cup™ and FIFA World Cup™ in the US
One bullet:
Research predicts 290,000 jobs will be created in the US as a result of FIFA’s flagship events
Of course, the US has a 250th anniversary celebration going to this year, as well. The event will have to compete with it. Also, poor people are less likely to travel.
https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/shells-output-hole-is-reason-gulp-down-galp-2025-12-04/
Shell is running out of oil
Shell is headquartered in the UK. It is no secret that the North Sea is short of oil and gas now.
According to the link:
According to its current targets, boss Wael Sawan wants to keep oil output flat and preserve a production “funnel” through 2035. On current trends, though, output could fall to roughly 2.4 million barrels of oil equivalent a day (boed) by 2035. That implies a 500,000 boed hole that needs filling, UBS analysts reckon. But big exploration wins are hard to come by – especially after years of underinvestment. No surprise the company has begun signalling, opens new tab a greater openness to M&A.
So Shell wants to merge with someone else, so that on a combined basis, the company can afford to get more production from somewhere. One place is the hoped for Mopane field in Namibia (Southwest Africa), that has been discovered by Galp Energia (GALP.LS), a company in Portugal. Galp’s problem is that it cannot afford to bring the field to production by itself, so it is selling part of itself. The first barrels of the Mopane field are expected to be available in 2031.
This all sounds quite speculative at this time. “Barrels of natural gas equivalent” are a great deal more valuable if they are mostly oil than if they are mostly natural gas. Without the field in production, we don’t know very much. I expect its production will be quite low during the first few years, also.
A more recent article is this one:
https://www.worldoil.com/news/2025/12/2/totalenergies-emerges-as-top-bidder-for-galp-s-namibia-mopane-oil-stake/
TotalEnergies emerges as top bidder for Galp’s Namibia Mopane oil stake
Shell had better act quickly, or it will be left out!
Mopane oil seems to be offshore, light oil.
I found a more general article from July 2025, written by a company involved with oil extraction:
https://adi-analytics.com/2025/07/24/africas-new-oil-frontier-emerging-exploration-hotspots-across-the-continent/
It looks at all of the hotspots in Africa. It says,
As shown in Exhibit 2, these developments are expected to drive a modest recovery in African oil production from 7.2 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 2024 to over 7.5 mbpd by 2028.
This is hardly huge.
There will be a new version of Wuthering Heights
https://youtu.be/3fLCdIYShEQ?si=_zfogVl0ux9YN20e
Emily Bronte was confined to her house for most of her life but she wrote this gothic novel
In that book, Heathcliff , someone with no family and no lineage, by wit and guile and because the landowner, Hindley Earnshaw, was a wastrel, gets to own the estate which is the title of the book.
However, for whatever reason, he forgot to kill Hearton , Hindley’s son and the last of the line.
In the end, with Heathcliff’s heir dead, the daughter of Catherine(Heathcliff’s lifelong love) rebels against Heathcliff and as the latter dies in a delirium, she restores Hearton back to his old position as landowner, despite of the inconvenient fact that he received zero education and basically little more than a savage, and as soon as Hearton takes over he abandons Wuthering Heights, allowing it to fall back to ruins.
Emily Bronte’s older sister Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre.
Tl,dr, the orphan Jane Eyre does become the lady of the house, after a lot of turns and twist, and produces the heir to the family.
Jean Rhys , a scion of a plantation owning family in Jamaica, I think, did not like that story since it tells a poorer person entering the upper class.
Rhys lived a very wild life, but in her opinion an upper class person stays that way forever, no matter how undisciplined the person was.
She wrote a book, Wild Sargasso Sea, about the wife of the guy who later marries Jane Eyre. Long story short, the woman , daughter of a plantation owner , was a Creole (read: partly black) but despite of that she belonged to the upper class, and the guy who married her did so money, and she tries to destroy Jane but fails in the end.
After that book became popular, adaptations of Jane Eyre began to change so usually the ending is that Jane does not return to the man, and lives single with a female cousin of hers, ensuring her line would die and make no impact in the ruling class.
Wuthering Heights, the Great Gatsby or Wild Sargasso Sea are books which reassure that those from not exactly correct background might do something interesting, but in the end they are eliminated without trace and the old order is restored.
As a result, they are loved by critics who tend to come from upper class, since no one who has to earn the family’s upkeep will be wasting time reading long books all the time.
Jane Eyre is more revolutionary than the above 3 books.
The world is now turning from adventurer mode to maintenance mode, which is why Wuthering Heights is being remade as a movie again while Jane Eyre is not.
So many version out there, even one “Patton edition” ft. George C. Scott..
Opening sequence kids morning lavatory with ice blocks in the water.
ha.
The problem of our planet is that thanks to better buildings, we accumulate things that would have been destroyed in the past by molds, water, the heat of the sun, by the cold.
We have a lot of things that are useless, but we keep them as memories of the past, or as something unique, somthing with a historical value.
We have a lot of laws that protect not only the environment, but also these things from the past.
That is one of the reasons that we are running of the space for new things, too.
The production of new things goes down also because we have no free space for them.
So the picture of the declining production has this other side: the things occupy space. They occupy the space for new human individuals, too.
It is another type of pollution: the pollution by the dead stuff.
We certainly keep a lot of buildings from the past. Whether this makes sense is questionable. I presume this is the kind of thing your are talking about.
One issue is that we need to cook at least some of our food. Some of these seemingly unnecessary things can be burned for heat in the future. So they may have a future use. Or parts of them can be repurposed.
Iran is weaker than you think. Maybe they relocate to Russia.
https://youtu.be/gvVelZ6_eUQ?si=M-x26xP11JbH24-_
No
Fresh water is another limited resource, and the climate keeps changing. The Bible (Old Testament, primarily) is full of stories of people moving from place to place, because of droughts. We shouldn’t be surprised if this happens again.
I would like to add two observations: (1) China’s recent economic turmoil may result in a sharp drop in consumer goods due as many such factories are in bankruptcy or emptied out. (2) Many of the owners, staff, and machinery that left China may have resettled in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and surrounding areas. Malaysia, for example, does not show up in any of the lists in this article. However, it may be a country worthy of your look in the future.
I agree with you about China. I am afraid its GDP numbers are already inflated. The coal that it has left is far from where it needs to be used, adding to energy costs. And we get numerous reports about economic turmoil.
Malaysia came in at 3.0% average growth over the 2019 to 2024 period. That is pretty good. If the country can maintain that growth rate, it will be doing well.
The thing I would caution you about with Malaysia is that its crude oil production hit a peak in 2016, and it has been declining since then. Natural gas liquids and natural gas amount are also beginning to shrink. On a per capita basis, I am sure that these amounts are falling more. The country may do better than others, but any country with declining fossil fuel supplies tends to be handicapped.
You know things are bad when the pop-up shop becomes a model for industrial production.
The other day Norwegian national broadcaster NRK sent a longer interview with Jørgen Randers from the infamous Club of Rome. When asked to sum up he bluntly stated that we are going down and come next century there will be a lot less humans about. The interviewer was startled and said “Jørgen, you have grandchildren, how do you feel about such a bleak future for them?” to which he answered that he’s sad but that’s how it’s going to play out.
I am surprised that Jørgen Randers didn’t dodge the question. The Club of Rome has become a very “green” organization. But perhaps even Randers, and perhaps others, are seeing the “writing on the wall.”
“a lot less humans”. The question is who does the dying?
Simply ending fertilizers to Africa will lower the count by a billion.
A small nuke war limited to Europe and Russia will lower the count by a billion.
China seems to be doing well with respect to energy and food.
India needs an energy plan.
The US has no energy plan beyond steal oil from Valenzuela. Installing lots of nukes and expecting Russia to supply the Uranium is not a plan. Taking the uranium from Niger will be a war Russia/China/BRICS versus US/Japan/and remnants of Europe.
South America will just have to learn to live within its means.
We can presume the rich will have first access to food grown with the limited energy and with slave labor. The way the world has been for the last six thousand years.
I wish the Chinese well with their many energy sources and with their use of off world resources. The peoples revolution continues by other means.
I wish a pox on the oligarchs and their efforts to bring back full slavery beyond the current wage slave plantation.
The issue there is that US has been already for some time buying and wants to continue the importing biz of RU made NPP fuel pellets, that’s a hitec product.. usually custom made for particular line/gen of reactors etc.
Niger is not providing it – only the bare ore, and US is currently not capable to produce (in needed quality and quantity) it’s NPP fuel..
It’s not like shuffling ships cargo – imported lumps of coal into the local furnace..
Other than that yes it’s [true] RUs are now shivering from cold and eating spoiled potatoes China rejected from delivery..
/giga-sarc off
I am in favor of curtailing fertilizer first. and it is already happening due to resource depletion and exports declining much faster than production.
The problems Kevin talks about especially hit Europe, because it imports fertilizer.
fertilizer will be curtailed to all importers once it becomes critical. No need to target anyone. but Africa’s agriculture is more regenerative, so yes, I expect the worse to be in the spent euro soils.
Yeah there’s no need for a formal depop program because Collapse is already a depop program. Will the Hand steer the Collapse of the fertilizer industry? Of course it will, because so long as civilization still exists it has a rudder under power, and the rudder is for steering. But that’s still not a formal depop program. Besides, Collapse natural dieoff is perfect cover for the steering.
True story.
Over (- bumper) fruit/nuts production comes in waves, that’s generally understood. Yet, it could be still a more complex affair..
Recently, on a bike in the ~wild country-side I met elderly couple during their walk completely flabbergasted from this year’s bumper crop of apples (like single most unusual event in 20-30yrs) along very old alley between fields. We exchanged few lines – I tried to politely nudge them also into appreciating the most heavier fruit load was on the downslope from the nearby hilly fields, which have been obviously regularly fertilized.. They did not get it at all.. lolz.. The primer concern focused only they did not have a basket or larger sack for the tons of free fruits apparently just waiting for them over there..
Nice story jak that’s why drb’s in favor of curtailing fertilizers first, because he owns hundreds of walking composters/fertilizers. For those that don’t, there’s always humanure.
Randers was the author of Club of Rome’s forecast for 2052 in 2012, called 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. I wrote a post called, Why EIA, IEA, and Randers’ 2052 Energy Forecasts are Wrong
He was one who was forecasting green energy would be a savior. Efficiency would also help.
Nice Gail! Randers broke! Unless he was told to break. The national socialist vanguard WILL need to be structural doomers in order to carry out the Phase 2 hospice agenda because the DA cannot afford to waste resources on hopium.
Thanks for updating the context on Randers / CoR.
Isn’t it yet another case of “out of officialdom ” – can speak nowadays more freely or perhaps other intervening lessons too hold in life as of lately.. who knows..
Throughout history, the largest city of the world was a center of civilization, commerce, etc.
A lot of people, ideas, etc, flowed there.
For the first time in the history of world, a megacity, an euphemism for mega slum, has become the largest city on earth.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/27/jakarta-overtakes-tokyo-most-populous-city-world
The city was called Batavia by Netherlands, after its old name during Roman times.
https://youtu.be/hy2KHWpxGdY?si=YlNqIciej8aiHnx0
Flight between Amsterdam to Batavia , 1927
(No Javanese is involved at all)
Flight to Batavia, 1949, the year USA foolishly awarded it to Sukarno, who named it after an old sanskrit phrase Jayakarta (Jaya = victory, karta = glorious), glorious victory of the natives against the Western powers. (the ‘ya’ in the middle was soon dropped)
https://youtu.be/3rX5aT_6Kxs?si=C1bts3n0WzaGlPol
USA did many foolish things, but this is the top of its idiocy.
Thanks to USA, this city, visited by few tourists (if they go to what was the former Dutch East Indies they go to Bali, which is a bit more tolerable but well known for its bad wifi since the Javanese tend to give no attention to infrastructure) not to this monstrosity with 42 million people who were,, are and will be never contributing anything to civilization.
USA created a huge cancer and it is now showing by becoming the first good-for-nothing city which became the largest city of the world.
Jakarta in Indonesia is the largest city, with 42 million. Dhaka in Bangladesh with 37 million is the second largest city. I expect that both have huge slum populations.
Cities are only possible if there are large surpluses of food and other necessities from outlying areas. If transportation becomes an issue, or not enough food, or lack of jobs, it seems like these places could have even more problems than most.
for the last 50+ years Tokyo was the largest city and for sure a centre of civilization. IIRC Japanese scientists won the Nobel prize in physics every second year from 2000 to 2012. Plus of course the only medical system in the West with integrity and generally an extremely well organized society. The USA had to resort to financial and economic war to prevent Japan from becoming the #1 economy in the 1990s. Now everything is going to pot so it does not matter which slum is the biggest.
USA will not have to worry about Indonesia overtaking it.
this will happen after our time, but I could see indonesia being stronger in 70 years. by then the USA will not even have railways. In reality it might not happen, as China will probably take Indonesia.
Interesting take on Bamboozle-19 from an experienced paramedic:
“The Covid Delusion – Why the ONLY place Covid 19 ever existed, was in the mind”
https://paramaniac.substack.com/p/the-covid-delusion-why-the-only-place
Did you notice in the comments section that the author doesn’t believe that the plandemic was an elite conspiracy, despite his disbelief in the existence of ‘covid?’ He just thinks it was pure medical establishment mass formation that shut down the whole world. Wild! It takes all kinds! When virus denialism meets conspiracy denialism. Hoocoodanode.
The comments section was also a grim reminder of the hideous echo chamber quasi-‘flat earher’ wokeness of the controlled opposition no-virus establishment that’s obsessed with the viral isolation topic. The commenter Mara makes them rest reference to what’s ostensibly exosomal dynamics and they jump all over her like a pack of hyenas. I battled those types for a couple years. I set up shop in probably their worst hellhole, at Virology. Thank goodness there was one insightful and wise mind there named Clarifire. A white man in Japan like Tim.He was the reason I set-up there. He got me eating raw meat. He was excited when I discovered the water-soluble vs fat-soluble fundamental toxin dynamics, because he shared that depth of biological feel and could make that journey with me. And I likewise journeyed with him. It was only a couple years later that I ever found confirmation of those dynamics in some new research literature.
makes the merest mention
at Viroliegy
Sorry to trivialize it [..when I discovered the water-soluble vs fat-soluble fundamental toxin dynamics..]
Is that remotely related to the little wonders:
such as when you cook your ham(first)&eggs as *third/half soaked into ~quality olive oil (rapeseed) solution. It’s unbelievable how completely different outcome this provides, it’s not just flavor, completely different food.. also/chiefly in digestion.
—
* OK, frankly I had it often times /hi-bourgeois style/ even 75% submerged, and it’s like meal from another planet, yes atrociously spendy.. My car is a clunker though.
You’re clearly eating ham from modern lean hogs. Eat ham from a righteous little longhaired darkmeat lard pig like an American Guinea Hog and after a few minutes the ham is swimming in its own fat and then you throw the eggs in. No need to ruin it with vegetable oil but clearly that is tasty too!
Yes, that procedure was basically the same if not apparent from my writing. The ham was a bit on the quality side (Tiroler) with juicy fats, obviously there are even better options as you alluded.
There is perhaps a bit of misunderstanding per “veg oil” would “ruin it” only if it was some kind of water washed sunflower or mixed-up low grade olive oil..
There are basically two groups of studies, one appreciates olive oil’s polyphenols – cholesterol interaction. The other maintains it does nothing spectacular.. Usually, certain industrial &gov lobbies side with the latter, go figure..
–
Furthermore, there is an ongoing interesting [surely time-limited] phenomenon as of lately. Too many older hunters and agri-people in general retiring in droves, hence the wild game numbers spiking crazy and in return that trend followed by collapse in pricing. For example, recently I noticed wild pheasant bird meat (cleaned & packed) almost hitting the price levels of industrial chicken, i.e. way bellow “organic / pastured”.. That’s crazy.. The dark red meat from pheasant is great for ragù dish.
The young over stress-out or those unfortunate already fallen of the consumerist ladder folk simply don’t have the appetite nor time for such endeavors (meaning both culinary and hunting angles)..
Sorry jak for completely misunderstanding your ham dinner. And I certainly have no problem with a good olive oil. I just think meats should be cooked in their own fats whenever possible, on principle. We end up with most of our cooking fat passively which is nice. We’re big bone broth drinkers and when the batch cools in the fridge the tallow forms a nice hard layer on top.
That’s awesome about the pheasant meat. I’ve never had it. You better ride that wave hard jak. Bought some pigeon once from a farm store in England. Dark and delicious.
If I can’t find ham from a righteous little longhaired darkmeat lard pig, would a hamster do?
Thank goodness there was one insightful and wise mind there named Clarifire.
If I run into any white man who muses about exosomal dynamics during my travels, I must remember to say, “Dr. Carifire, I presume.”
Anyway, he sounds like my kinda guy.
Not having eaten hamster I really couldn’t say for sure but I wouldn’t imagine so, especially if it has a wheel and uses its wheel regularly. But meat can really surprise a person. When we ate our first mountain lion that the dogs treed, I expected it to be red, gamey, and tough, but it turned out to be just like white, bland, lean pork though with a delightful floral undertone. It was so tender you could fry up any part of it. I’ll never understand that.
Clarifire actually wasn’t into Establishment modeling of complex intracellular functions. He was a neo-luddite along with the rest of Team No-Virus. There’s a beauty to that and he wore that Ludditism gracefully unlike most of them imo. There’s a simple, serene beauty to the Harold Hillman minimalist school of microbiological thought that insists that only the nucleus and mitochondria, I think they are, exist. The rest they insist are artifacts of electron microscopy procedures. Radically anti- materialistic. All the cellular modeling is unsubstantiated bad theory to them. Like how Stefan Lanka doesn’t believe in fixed genes, or atoms. It’s just mechanistic thinking to them. So signaling exosomes and exosomal science are out of the question to them. Tom Cowan is the most amenable to exosomes but just treats them as the cellular trash bags that the Establishment thought they were in the 70s and 80s.
Clarifire though was excellent to converse with out on the terrain. He could handle my intensity without trying. He told me about the “high meat” scene which I’d never heard of before (and he wasn’t a part of himself), and also prolonged water fasting which he was passionate about, said he’d helped heal a friend’s cancer with it and i don’t doubt it for a second.
Disclaimer> folks if there is an interest in such experiments I should add important instructions proviso (physics lol):
Per one serving, it’s based on somewhat smaller dia (say max 3-4″) yet higher wall pan. Simmer slower at (#3-4outof10), keep the lid on most of the time. And importantly, let it cool off CLOSED and away from the hot plate for ~10mins so the moisture-liquids keep flowing-evaporating from the bottom of the pan.
Some people in the ClubMed and E.Orient are doing it even at scale as major dish for several people, there should be nuances involved-discussed elsewhere then, at YT and such..
typo.. Western Orient/Asia.. Levant ..
Recently, I tried a part-time job in a private school here in Slovakia.
The reality is as follows: As the money for building and technology renovation and upgrades are lacking, because the fees can not go up, the wages need to keep up with the inflation first and the state support for schools is inadequate, the schools need to hire retired teachers and pretend that using school note books for handwriting is good for the children. Although no one uses note books and handwriting anymore, the students record and take photos of everything with their smartphones and use AI wherever they can. Plus you have things like dyslexia, dysgraphia in the population, too, and attending a school simply becomes a burden for various reasons.
https://www.noviny.sk/slovensko/1037416-slovenske-skoly-bojuju-s-vysokou-absenciou-nove-pravidla-maju-zabranit-zneuzivaniu
The schools become detached from the reality. Not the pupils and students, as they have all the information in their smartphones.
So they dismissed me after 3 months trial period, as they discovered that they are not prepared for AI adoption.
I do not see a place for AI in education. On the humanities side read a book and discuss as a small group with teacher guidance. Ok may be AI guidance when AI have grown to have a point of view and the ability to convey it. On the science side a text book with problems sets at the end of each chapter. Then spend nine hours doing the problems with pencil and paper. No need nor use for AI.
The rising complexity of the human world has surpassed the note books and handwriting long ago. Huge populations can not live without the machines and with the ageing populations and accumulating genetic mutations, there is no way out of this union. The food delivery stops. Healthcare stops. Etc.
Your basic daily tasks need to be solved with the help of the machines.
There is no way back. Solving complex problems with note books and handwriting for hours has no meaning, because there is only stone age without the machines.
Paper is not a very flexible medium for communication. Its production has already become dependent on displays.
Latin alphabet conquers the world, Russia and Ukraine need to abandon their azbuka.
https://www.kamnavylet.sk/en/attraction/roman-inscription-on-the-rock-of-trencin
“One of the few written monuments that proves the presence of Romans in Central Europe is the Roman inscription dating from 179 AD. The inscription is carved into the castle rock in Trenčín and is traditionally considered to be the most important inscription that has been preserved in its original place.
Votive Latin inscription on the rock of Trenčín Castle announces the victory of the Roman 2nd auxiliary legion over the Germans during military expeditions led by Emperors Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus against the tribes of the Markomans and the Quads.
The Roman inscription “VICTORIAE AVGSTORV EXERCITUS QVI LAV GARICIONE SEDIT MIL L II DCCCLV MAXIMIANUS LEG II AD CVR F” can only be seen from the summer terrace of the Hotel Elizabethor the hotel restaurant.”
“Latin alphabet conquers the world, Russia and Ukraine need to abandon their azbuka.”
Putin will want to bomb Rome now, if he reads that. 🙁
The energy efficiency of writing and reading prevails. The pope is safe, they received him in Turkey and Lebanon. Now he speaks with the new Latin = flexible English that is easy to learn and use.
Some dancing English from Moscow:
https://youtu.be/iTsfLsqOong?si=NmlN7EbpiCoFyGmr
Sad corrupt new zealand should be on your shrinking list. It has negative GDP per capita. Dangerous now too. Many leaving.
I see articles on the burden your white flight is placing on Australia.
Yes, have to feel sorry for Australia. Taking so many economic refugees from dying new zealand.
It is very kind of the Australians to help so many new zealanders in need.
New Zealand is a country whose energy consumption per capita “peaked” in 2015. It has been shrinking since then. Somehow reported GDP has been increasing at an average of 1.8% per year, over the period 2019 to 2024. A person wonders how the GDP growth took place.
I notice Wikipedia says
In 2005, the World Bank praised New Zealand as the most business-friendly country in the world.[37][38] The economy diversified and by 2008, tourism had become the single biggest generator of foreign exchange.[39]
GDP increased because they opened the floodgates to the third world. However, GDP per capita in the last 12-month period fell 1.1%.
Qualified people leaving in droves for Australia but such is the mass migration from India, the Philippines and China GDP increases as you stated to 2024. But this flood of third world people are only qualified for service and labouring jobs mostly.
So many parts of the economy are now broken and the traditional kiwi culture is lost forever.
RIP new zealand.
Mistake: “But this flood of third world people IS …”
I wouldn’t judge that as a mistake. It’s a close call that not many of the new immigrants to NZ will be concerned about.
According to Google AI:
Both sentences can be considered grammatically correct, depending on whether you view “a flood of people” as a single collective unit or as individual people [1, 2].
“This flood of people IS qualified for office work” treats “flood” as a singular collective noun, focusing on the group as one mass. This is the more formal and common usage when the noun is acting as a single, unified body [1].
“This flood of people ARE qualified for office work” uses plural agreement, treating “flood” as a reference to the many individual people within the group. This is less formal and often used in British English or colloquial contexts where the focus is on the individuals performing an action [1, 2].
In most standard writing, especially in American English, the singular verb “IS” is the preferred choice to agree with the singular subject “flood” [2].
That’s all very well, but as the professor who was on the governing board of the Examinations Syndicate at Oxford in Inspector Morse said: “The Americans are everywhere these days, and they spell honour H O N O R!
Thank you Gail for the new post! I’ve been waiting 🙂
“The Federal Reserve’s Real Broad Dollar Index reached 122.7 in January 2025—the highest reading in forty years, surpassing even the Plaza Accord peak of 1985. Simultaneously, the DXY index has collapsed 8.4% year-to-date, tracking toward its worst annual performance since 2017. . . .
The DXY, created in 1973, weights 57.6% to the euro alone. European currencies collectively command 77.3% of the index. Japan receives 13.6%. The remaining 9.1% distributes across Canada, Sweden, and Switzerland. Emerging markets—which now constitute over 40% of global GDP and dominate actual US trade flows—receive zero weight.
The Federal Reserve’s Real Broad Dollar Index, by contrast, updates annually to reflect actual trade patterns. Mexico holds 14.75% weight. China commands 11.2%. Canada receives 12.6%. Vietnam, absent from any mainstream currency discussion, holds 2.31%—more than Switzerland’s weight in DXY. The “real” adjustment deflates by relative price levels, capturing purchasing power rather than nominal exchange rates.
The divergence emerges from a simple but profound reality: the dollar has strengthened dramatically against economies where Americans actually buy and sell goods, while weakening against economies that dominate financial-market indices but represent shrinking shares of trade. The Mexican peso has depreciated 23% since April 2024. The Brazilian real has fallen 20% over twelve months. The J.P. Morgan Emerging Market Currency Index declined 9% through 2024. Meanwhile, the euro has rallied toward 1.18, sterling reached forty-month highs, and the yen benefits from Bank of Japan normalization expectations.
For American exporters competing in global markets—not the six wealthy nations of DXY—the trade-weighted measure captures competitive reality: American goods are priced approximately 20% above long-term averages relative to actual trading partners. This is not strength. This is structural handicap.”?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-180751455
Interesting! Thanks!
“the dollar has strengthened dramatically against economies where Americans actually buy and sell goods, while weakening against economies that dominate financial-market indices but represent shrinking shares of trade.”
The US may not be able to sell its goods to these goods-making economies, but they can buy things from them more cheaply than otherwise. This can be an advantage.
Thanks postkey another great find. So many people are trying to figure out WTF is with the warpspeed rise of stablecoins. What to make of it. So far from what I’ve seen Michael Every is still the closest, and because I think he’s in the peak oil closet.
This guy here is great — he gets the parallel nature of stablecoins, gets the magnitude of the monetary sea change that they portend — but without understanding that we face structural energy collapse, he’s backwards on the fate of the FRN. He assumes that stablecoins are for stabilizing the world economy enough to allow the US to safely inflate its way out of debt, but that’s a multidecadal process if not a century long process. And we don’t have that time. He rightly sees that that process is a better alternative to a deflationary depression and US default, but SINCE we don’t have that much time, a deflationary dollar depression accompanied by a genius parallel dollar stablecoin flight to safety that averts US default and simultaneously props up hyperinflating currencies is the act of genius. I would have dropped a comment there but it doesn’t look like he comments himself, or maybe it was just because the four comments he got weren’t worth responding to.
It’s really fun seeing what people are making of this emerging dynamic. It’s definitely possible to get the scenario correct even if one’s not aware of peak oil because a deflationary dollar depression is still a better option than trying to inflate away the debt. The debt is too much and the world is too dependent on it; oil would become unaffordable. People outside of us just don’t understand how fragile the system is. We’re on a tightrope.
When Gail suggests that the long-term effect of depletion is uncertain—perhaps 50 or even 100 years away—she unintentionally introduces an assumption that is far more speculative than the depletion argument she aims to qualify. The issue is not whether official reserve numbers are reliable. Depletion is not a debate about how much oil might exist somewhere in theory, but about the observable decline in flows from existing fields. The industry itself reports an average annual decline rate of around six percent. At such a rate, the current field base is effectively halved within less than two decades and reduced to a marginal contributor within a single human lifetime. This is geology, not conjecture.
If one takes this decline seriously, the idea that global production could remain meaningfully stable for the next 50 to 100 years becomes very difficult to reconcile with physical reality. Maintaining today’s level of output for half a century would require roughly 1.8 trillion additional barrels; stretching the horizon to a full century would double that amount. These volumes would not only have to exist underground—they would have to be economically recoverable, technically accessible, geopolitically feasible, and brought online in time to counteract the relentless fall in output from the fields we already rely on. Yet every signal from the industry points in the opposite direction: discoveries have lagged far behind annual consumption for more than a decade, exploration budgets are at historic lows, and the remaining frontiers—deepwater above all—only make sense at price levels the global economy repeatedly fails to sustain.
In this light, it is somewhat ironic that warnings about unreliable reserve data can give the impression of a “shortage narrative” or even a scarcity myth. The real problem is not that reserve figures are too low or too uncertain, but that the 50–100 year horizon implicitly assumes a form of hidden abundance: vast, still-undeveloped reserves that do not appear in discovery statistics, investment patterns or geological trends. That assumption is far stronger, and far less grounded, than simply acknowledging that depletion is already shaping the contours of the global energy system today.
The question, therefore, is not whether depletion will matter someday, but how quickly economic and social structures will be forced to adapt to a physically declining energy flow. That is not a narrative, nor a theory, nor a question of trust in reserve lists—it is the predictable consequence of a world that has long consumed more oil than it discovers, and that invests ever less in closing the gap.
I am saying that we are heading for recession in the near term, because of current geological limits on extraction. Maybe I am not making this clear enough. I thought the image at the beginning of the article would make this clear.
I originally thought this article would be aimed more at near-term issues rather than financial impacts, but I decided to leave discussion about near term issues for a different post (December or January).
In this post, I am leaving the possibility open that sometime in the next 50 or 100 years, the situation will change for the better. Maybe new techniques will be discovered. Maybe we will be able to capture different types of energy, such as the energy associated with gravity. In a way, hydroelectric energy is already such a type of energy.
Another excellent overview of the ecocalypse which is intensifying. Add to this sociocalypse and climocalypse. Our civilization will collapse by 2035 to 2050. I have predicted in my blog posts at https://newgrammaroflife.blogspot.com since 2010.Recently I published a book Climocalypse..How to Cope
Thanks! It looks to me as if the language of your posts is mostly Assamese. Even the script is unfamiliar. You make the subject available to a different audience than English-speaking.
I have fallen off the peakoil doom scrolling bandwagon recently, too busy with the vagaries of everyday life. I do like to check back in from time to time. I was thinking the other day about how stock dividends as a form of passive income can form the basis for intergenerational wealth. That has worked so well these so many recent centuries due to the ever expanding economy afforded by increasing energy use. Which lead me to consider intergenerational wealth in the face of peakoil (or peak everything). How could one secure a steady stream of wealth to pass on to one’s heirs in a world of declining energy production? The traditional answer was one couldn’t, which is why we are all descended(mostly) from peasants and paupers. The exception, of course was the landed gentry.
In the past when I thought about this, I thought mostly of lands potential as a substrate upon which to grow crops or the landowner’s ability to charge rent. (You could mine minerals, too, but this is obviously just drawing down your starting supply, not creating a passive flow). Then it occurred to me, the value of the land, at its core, was created by the plant life upon it being able to capture sunlight though photosynthesis. Growing food, but also fixing energy in the wood that grows upon the land. A really fundamental observation, but one that strikes at the problem of trying to send wealth forward in time to ones heirs post peak.
The nobles, with hereditary titles, had the benefit of holding land outright. We, unfortunately, must pay taxes on the land. I think the ability to hold title to land during collapse will be very unlikely. To those with children, that have thought through the problem / predicament, any suggestions? Other than education, how can we pass wealth forward in a way that will benefit our heirs?
The wealth that we have is mostly from fossil fuels. Even the “value” of land depends on improvements made to it, using fossil fuels. For example, adding roads helps. If profitable crops can be grown, this helps. Low interest rates can produce artificially high land prices, but these can’t really last.
If we think about it, the reason why economies tend to collapse slowly (over 20 to 50 years, or so) is because there is still some residual value remaining, if energy supplies fall, or even if fossil fuel energy resources disappear completely. There are homes that perhaps can still be occupied by someone. There may be roads that can somewhat be utilized. Land will have some value for growing crops. There may be metal tools that can be utilized. Even stones that have been cut into blocks can be passed on from civilization to civilization, if they still have uses.
How these things can be passed down from generation to generation is tricky, however. Governments can tax away what we have, or people with weapons can take things away.
I suppose the greatest gift you can give to the next generation is the gift of good health. Americans, especially, need to move away from the “American Diet” consisting of way too much meat, lots of french fries, chips, soft drinks, and lots of sweet treats. If you eat this for long, you will find yourself in the offices of physicians. They will prescribe lots of pills, which will still leave you with terrible health. Instead, look at traditional diets with a lot less meat (fish is OK, though) and lots of vegetables.
If you have wealth that you can get along without now, you can give it away to the younger generation, so that they can have the benefit of it now. Perhaps they can hold on to it later, but even if they cannot, they will have had the benefit now.
I suppose you can help think about business of the future. Repurposing things that came into existence in the past will likely be helpful. If automobile can no longer be used, perhaps parts of them can be made into wheel barrows or shovels. Collections of metal tools would seem to be valuable for the long term.
reworking something like a car, into ”other usable objects” will require more energy input than was used to manufacture the car in the first place,
how so?
well—you might need, say, something as simple as agricultural tools.
ok—so you take a car door and cut out ”shovel shapes”
fraid not—wrong kind of steel, not hard enough—so you have to remelt that steel, add various ingredients to the recipe if possible, and make spades and hoes etc.
same applies to any ferrous object. all steels are purpose made, and cannot be ”repurposed” without modification—and that—universally–requires intense heat input
Norm doesn’t like the look of a salvage society because his balcony railing might get repurposed. So he wishes it away.
but you didnt dispute the point reante
now why was that?
Because it was such a poorly conceived one that I didn’t think it worth it. Today’s car door sheetmetal would make a perfectly serviceable loose materials shovel if used with care. Turn of the century sheetmetal from a big work truck would make an adequate digging shovel if used with care. Leaf springs would make great mattock heads for heavy digging in preparation for the shovelwork.
lol
”using a shovel with care”
is an absolute contradiction in terms
you can shovel snow—but. be careful not dig dirt.
you were saying something my comment not being worth a reply??
lol.
I use my shovels with care norm. I use all my tools with care unless I’m throwing them across the yard or shop in a fit of anger lol. Loose materials would include soil that has already been dug with a mattock or a digging bar or a commercial shovel or broadfork purchased before collapse. Either your just putting up a front or you don’t have much feel at all for materials.
Sheet metal can be cut with chisels. Chisels can be fashioned from leaf springs. You should check out what the African street car mechanics can accomplish on the yootoob channels dedicated to showing what can be done with severely limited means. Fuckin love those videos.
agreed—in my iron stuff research, i’ve watched guys pouring multi-ton castings, just wearing flip-flops. they obviously know what they are doing—i wouldn’t.
people can always adapt to immediate conditions in the short term.
my thinking is always long term.—I’m a recognised procrastination expert.
and no—i’m not practical at all…..i can tell you how machines work, better than most—just dont ask me to actually make them work…..somehow that s never been a good idea.—just the way my mind works.
i too have a 60 year old shovel—i take great care of it by using it as infrequently as possible.
Another point is that here in the Little Emerald Kingdom we are already up to our neck in shovels, so we won’t be needing to repurpose car sheet metal or old railings for centuries yet, if ever.
I inherited two old but still serviceable spades from my father-in-law 35 years ago and they are still working fine in the veggie field. I’ve also been given a couple of square bottomed shovels of the kind Norman would have used when shoveling coal into the furnace of the Flying Scotsman. They also work well for handling gravel and crushed rock and they will outlast me.
Well-taken-care-of shovels, forks and scythes will last a century or more. Let them rust and their working lives will be shorter. I often admire the brand new shovels at the home center, but I have never felt the need to actually purchase one.
In the meantime, as the population of people willing and able to pick up a shovel and put their back into it declines, there is unlikely to be a shovel shortage in the coming decades.
Do you think I should buy a gross of them as an investment, in expectation of the hordes of spade-less refugees that will be heading my way to work the land following the Great Collapse?
All I know is if you start handing out pitchforks then you need to cover your ass by handing out at least as many scythes or the Hand gonna take that personally and give you a whoopin like you wouldn’t believe. Hand out the scythes too and your good to go. Dad’s Rules.
I agree that car doors would not be very useful for making tools, but people would be desperate. They would try to use materials in whatever way they could.
my prime point still holds
you cant repurpose hard metal with corresponding heat input
No it doesn’t. Simple woodfired forges can get the job done no problem. Using homemade charcoal works even better. You can even forge weld with both media. Is it a skill? Yes.
apologies for typo—”with” should have said—”without”
i’ll see that you are supplied with a engine block casting, and see what you make with it.
i think you miss the point.
we have constructed our modern civilisation to function on sharp, finely honed edges, my ‘shovel’ references were just a simple illustration of metal conversion, when in fact our needs are much more sophisticated than that.
in any ‘depleted’future humankind will look for means to sustain that sharp edged existence..—-and will flounder if those needs are not met.
looking to repurpose casual scrap metals wont cut it…(if you’ll pardon the expression)
It will cut it Norm. Look what happened in central and south America when machetes were introduced to the natives in conjunction with imperial disturbance. A leaf spring with turn out a high quality machete, or an axe. Think of all the railroad spikes that will be lying around doing nothing. I myself have a railroad spike knife my buddy made. Has a great edge. He used anthracite but he’s planning on getting a Whitlox wood forge.
It won’t cut it for maintaining a large scale civilization but that’s a good thing. I only advocate for transitional forging as needed below Dunbar’s Number, for fighting fire with fire.
I would have replied substantively but I don’t have children.
Karl, your general vector is pointing in the correct direction.
One of the key problems with land management (often times realized by old/ancient landed gentry to some extent as well) is that with learning many-most of the involved complexities you tend to reach the following dilemma. In order to preserve all the biologic and ecologic functions (better yet enhancing them across the time space) the off-site leakage from your place should be kept to minimum!
In other words, no exports – not feeding “extra” humanoids, cattle, fruits delivered to the market, no logging and mining etc. That’s obviously not fitting with the civ, human societies as it evolved and so on.
Some, foolishly try to find – “strike a balance”, claiming various scenarios of supposedly stabilized abundance level per given locale (yet interacting engaged in trade with others) which could be maintained long term. It’s not possible that way, you will be always shuffling productivity of land from one place for another and or over-stressing the ecosystems buffer.
Now in practical terms the second best option is to get low taxed “marginal land” as perceived by the status quo, develop it for yourself/family/clan. You can still do it easily in parts of “not yet” settled parts (well e.g. say only once previously cleared forest lots) of the NA, perhaps also at few spots in northern Scandinavia or parts of Siberia. And most importantly, the actionable hands on the land should be somewhat young and full of vigor say <35yrs of age, you/me (assuming) older folks acting as guides and helping here and there only..
By that above very definition you see it's almost impossible to attract meaningful and lasting interest in such subject, unless the people are already nudged-initiated. Well, there could be a stampede alongside future collapse step marker points, but too late.
One of the greatest careers for the future is a chopper pilot, in whatever fashion (medic, army-security, forest fire dept., ..) That way you could easily
force-transition yourself into another earlier acting persons' scenario – the so-called unexpected – permanent visitor / neighbor game. The problem obviously is the timing, you can do it only ONCE at the proper highest meltdown point – not to be missed – hunted down by the tentacles of dying system.. But the timelines and future socioeconomic detours are so volatile as in unpredictable that you could easily offer it even to today's kids, teenagers.. as there could be many decades of very slow / punctuated grind in front of us.
I am afraid that this video may be right. We desperately need Venezuelan oil, and we need China to buy US bonds.
Yes, those two things are true, and the US will get them both — VZ will become a voluntary US oil protectorate under Gabbard as per the HTOE and China will even sell gold in order to buy US bonds in USDT form — but that’s about the only thing that guy got right, though I like him all the same, he can’t help not knowing about limits to growth. And he even mentioned USDT stablecoins at one point WRT VZ. Close but no cigar! His mind is going to be blown when stablecoins become the new global petrodollar while the FRN deflates. Financially, TINA to the USA post- limits to growth, if chaotic nuclear Collapse is to be averted.
What happened to the sand tars in Alberta?
It’s chugging along, but we can always use more.
I refer to them as “Oil Sands,” since that is what Canada refers to them as. They comprise most of Canada’s production.
Crude oil production for Canada hit a new high of 5,110,000 barrels per day in July, 2025, according to the EIA. Total crude oil production had been as follows (in 000s per day):
2019 4,408
2020 4,180
2021 4,439
2022 4,543
2023 4,594
2024 4,776
So, it looks like there has been a recent rise in production.
I guess wasn’t it at the Surplus commentariat they linked recently various news about the Yen carry trade turning away from US securities, also the maps for various naval choke points China tends to import oilz (and US schemes to threaten-choke) etc.
Well, the MAGA slogan was good politics …
I don’t think this fellow figured out the extent to which China is already in Venezuela.
But there is an issue of who will buy all of the debt that the US needs to issue.
Nevertheless, the overall picture of US now entering [begging mode] towards its major creditors is important in the sense that at some point US will have to leave that mode either into better or more likely even worse kind of mode – positioning within the global pecking order.
And given the cross investments over dependence of the major powers including the Gulfies, this could slow-mo for another ~15yrs or so.. Simply, the US can’t be allowed to implode too fast. On the positive side this mode would likely limit-constrain or completely deny major war/intervention activities we observed each decade with certain regularity..
Europe already is/will be thrown under the proverbial bus, even if the current opposition parties take over – the former privileges in terms of long term energy import contracts won’t be fully restored, only partially at best. Plus additional few outlier RoWs going under and the ~PO forcing could be obfuscated at least into the mid 2030s because of that largely curbed/denied consumer demand..
Also under that scenario of RU-CHN supposedly acquiring breakthrough energy technologies made public in recent years (w.out further details) it would make most sense for them to herd (diminish) the world polity including their former adversaries to their liking first via letting the fossil fuel depletion forcing run wild to a specific threshold. And only then in the next step deploy it “safely” en masse. As prematurely releasing it now could be still theoretically adopted in the opposing camp as well but in a decade or two those would be definitively past their capability to mount that complex effort for ever.
The limits to power supplies in Australia are obvious. My analysis no one likes to read:
10 Nov 2025
NSW power supplies October 2025 – 70 AEMO lack of reserve notices and
8 intervention instructions
https://crudeoilpeak.info/nsw-power-supplies-october-2025-70-aemo-lack-of-reserve-notices-and-8-intervention-instructions
Crunch time will come when aging coal fired power plants can no longer be repaired (i.e. lack of spare parts). While an endless debating club competition on what type of power plants should be built continues in Parliament.
It would help to reduce government engineered immigration. 100s of new apartment towers are planned to accommodate immigrants, each adding a peak load of 2-3 MW
But the Australian government does not budge. A reduction in immigration would bring down house prices which will impact on the balance sheets of banks.
All this is interconnected.
Power demand from data centres is skyrocketing. AI and our grandchildren addicted to videos on their mobile phones.
Australia doesn’t have enough electricity, it is clear. Too much of what Australia has is intermittent electricity. And it need to import a whole lot of things, probably including repair parts for its aging coal fired power plants.
But immigrants keep coming, as you say.
I expect Trump is keeping immigrants out, at least partly because of similar issues. We are running short of electricity and lots of other things in the US, too.
In your October 31 post, Conclusion 2 slide:
– Invest now in good health, tools and skills
– Also, invest in relationships with friends and relatives
In this post: “Historically, families or “villages” of extended kin have provided safety nets, rather than government programs. Perhaps now is a good time to be thinking about how we can move in this direction, as well.”
This is becoming a recurring meme from you and others. The question is how to go about this when you have no to minimal local family or friends / relatives.
You might be interested in this: https://gm-pres.tiiny.site
St. Benedict had a similar idea 1500 years ago. It was called monastery.
Yes, these good monks made studious brake through efforts into early bio sciences etc. later piggybacked during the renaissance period and later by the encyclopedists – enlightenment .. modern science..
One thing I have noticed is that older couples often move closer to their children and grandchildren. In some cases, the plan has been to help provide child care. In other cases, the adults need support with health issues.
Even from a distance, family can look out for each other. I am one of seven siblings. We have frequent updates using text messages–what recital someone is giving, or what the Northern Lights look like. Also many phone calls and Zoom calls. And planned get togethers, and unplanned ones (funerals).
I have three sisters who are widowed and one who has never married. The unmarried sister has taken a very significant interest in her nieces and nephews. Two of the widows spend a lot of time together.
There are an awfully lot of single people. There are groups for getting acquainted. Churches serve as meeting grounds, especially for older people. Join an organization, and take some kind of “job.” Perhaps you can meet some others with similar interests.
“The evidence is mathematical, not ideological. As of September 2025, the United States M2 money supply stands at $22.21 trillion, representing a 40% increase from pre-pandemic levels. During this same period, global oil production remained essentially flat at approximately 100 million barrels per day. When we calculate the ratio of West Texas Intermediate crude oil price to M2 money supply, we arrive at 0.00259—a figure that matches, with eerie precision, the troughs of 1998, 2016, and 2020.
Each previous occurrence preceded supply disruptions and price explosions of 150% to 200% within 18 to 24 months. But the parallel is misleading. The current divergence is not cyclical but structural, representing something unprecedented in the 165-year history of modern petroleum economics: the collision between infinite monetary claims and finite thermodynamic reality. . . . This is not a production crisis—it is an energy crisis. Gross production may remain statistically flat while net energy delivered to the economy collapses. The divergence between these two metrics, invisible to conventional market analysis, explains why capital expenditure has remained depressed despite seemingly adequate oil prices. . . .
The critical constraint is temporal. Grid interconnection queues in major markets now extend 5 to 7 years. Large-scale nuclear construction requires 10 to 15 years from approval to commissioning. Renewable energy deployment faces mineral supply bottlenecks and land-use constraints. The gap between AI deployment timelines (18 to 24 months) and firm power availability (5 to 10 years) must be filled by dispatchable fossil generation.
This creates unprecedented demand inelasticity. Technology companies face existential competition in AI development. Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon will pay $200 to $300 per barrel oil-equivalent for diesel backup generation before accepting service degradation that hands market position to rivals. National security establishments, recognizing AI as strategically decisive, will support this expenditure through direct subsidy if necessary.
The result is a new category of oil demand that does not respond to recession, efficiency campaigns, or price signals below the threshold of strategic abandonment. This has never existed before in petroleum markets.” ?
https://substack.com/inbox/post/179721872?r=1xomtk&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
I am afraid this is far too expensive an approach:
Training frontier artificial intelligence models like GPT-4 consumed an estimated 50,000 megawatt-hours—a one-time expenditure. Inference, by contrast, is continuous. Deploying such models at search-engine scale creates persistent baseload demand that compounds with each additional user and query. If AI assistance becomes embedded across the computing ecosystem—smartphones, vehicles, industrial systems—the power requirement scales not linearly but according to network effects.
Apparently, China has a much less energy-intensive approach. There is no way that society can afford the energy requirements of this inefficient approach.
“The most rigorous study to date comes from Stanford’s Erik Brynjolfsson and MIT’s Danielle Li, working with 5,179 customer support agents handling three million interactions at a Fortune 500 company. Their findings, published through the National Bureau of Economic Research and revised through August 2025, revealed a striking asymmetry: AI tools boosted overall productivity by 14% on average, but this average concealed a profound divergence. Lower-skilled workers experienced productivity gains of 34-35%. Highly skilled workers experienced gains approaching zero.
Read that again. The workers who had invested years accumulating expertise saw almost no benefit. The workers without that expertise suddenly performed at levels approaching their more experienced colleagues.”?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-180586776
Immediately after this quote, the article says,
Read that again. The workers who had invested years accumulating expertise saw almost no benefit. The workers without that expertise suddenly performed at levels approaching their more experienced colleagues.
This finding was reinforced by an even more counterintuitive result from METR’s July 2025 study of experienced open-source software developers. When given access to the most advanced AI coding assistants available, these expert programmers completed tasks 19% *slower* than without AI assistance—despite believing they were 20% faster. The cognitive overhead of managing AI suggestions, verifying outputs, and integrating assistance into expert workflows created friction that exceeded the productivity gains.
The implication is stark: AI does not augment expertise. It arbitrages it away. The accumulated human capital of a career—the tacit knowledge, the pattern recognition, the hard-won intuitions—faces a form of technological devaluation unprecedented in economic history.
Not only is AI terribly expensive from an energy perspective, it badly disturbs the structure we have today–the value of human expertise is mostly lost.
Popping another bubble: We are living through a great paradox of our own making. On a planet producing more food than at any point in its history, hundreds of millions go hungry. As we master the complexities of global supply chains, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, we find ourselves confounded by the most basic of biological conditions. For generations, we have operated under a single, compelling mantra: to feed a growing population, we must produce more food. This directive appears so self-evident, so morally urgent, that to question it seems callous. Yet, what if this foundational belief, this article of faith in our modern creed, is not just incomplete, but catastrophically backwards? What if our relentless drive to increase the global food supply is not the solution to hunger, but the primary engine of the population growth that perpetuates it?
This unsettling question finds its roots in the immutable laws of ecology that govern all life on earth. Homo sapiens sapiens, for all our cultural and technological achievements, are not exempt from these laws. We are creatures of earth, embedded in its biophysical systems. The science of population dynamics, observed in species from bacteria to mammals, demonstrates a fundamental principle: population size is a function of carrying capacity, and the most direct lever of that carrying capacity is food availability. Non-human experiments have starkly illustrated this relationship. When a population is provided with a daily food supply that is elevated and constant, it grows rapidly to the limit set by that allotment, then stops abruptly and declines. The food ceiling defines the population floor.
For the past 10,000 years, and with explosive intensity over the last two centuries, humanity has been engaged in a grand, planet-wide experiment to manipulate this single variable. The Agricultural Revolution was the first step, but the Industrial Revolution, followed by the Green Revolution, broke the ancient chains that bound human numbers to the immediate productivity of the land. Through sanitation, medicine, and fossil-fuel-powered agriculture, we systematically dismantled the natural checks—predation, disease, famine—that had historically regulated our population. In doing so, we created a self-reinforcing feedback loop of extraordinary power. Increased food production allowed more people to survive and reproduce; that larger population, in turn, created the perceived demand for yet more food production. We have been running on a treadmill where every step forward only makes the machine run faster.
The consequence is a fundamentally flawed diagnosis of the problem of hunger. We have mistaken a distribution and population problem for a production problem. The persistent image of starvation is used to justify an ever-expanding agricultural frontier, when the reality is that we are, in effect, tossing parachutes to people who have already fallen from the airplane. If people are starving at this moment, increasing next year’s harvest cannot save them. The food arrives too late. The tragic irony is that by focusing single-mindedly on production as the cure for hunger, we ensure the continuous creation of more people vulnerable to hunger. We are, year after year, successfully feeding more people and, in the very same process, producing more hungry people. The absolute number of the malnourished grows because the base population—driven upward by the abundant food—continues to swell.
This fatally flawed logic is enshrined in the policies of powerful global institutions. The mantra that “food production must be increased annually to meet the needs of a growing population” is a widely shared, consensually validated mistake of colossal proportions. It is a statement born of political and economic expediency, not ecological reality. It inverts cause and effect. Food availability is the independent variable, the driver; population size is the dependent variable, the consequence. To believe otherwise is to subscribe to a preternatural view of humanity, one that places us outside the ecosystem we inhabit, effectively and erroneously separate from the web of life of earth of which humans are an integral part. It is a form of collective hubris that is ideologically driven and ignores the physical reality of a finite planet. We have come to see earth not as a complex, fragile biosphere with defined limitations, but as a maternal presence, as an eternally expressive teat.
The repercussions of this error extend far beyond the grim maths of global hunger. The human population has exploded from one billion to eight billion in just over two centuries—a bacterial growth curve on the graph of history. This unprecedented surge is the primary driver of every other environmental crisis we face. It is the multiplier of our impact. Our overproduction of food fuels overpopulation, which in turn fuels overconsumption of every other resource. These three forces—overproduction, overpopulation, and overconsumption—operate synergistically, creating a vortex of climate destabilization, biodiversity loss and ecological degradation.
The moment for silence and complacency is over. The window of opportunity for a meaningful “course correction” is closing steadily. Our generation of elders faces a responsibility unlike any before it. Our ancestors confronted grave threats, and their success in overcoming them is the reason we are here today. But our challenge is unique in its scale and global extent. We are the first generation to see the crisis of the entire earth system clearly, and we may be the last with a chance to avert its most devastating outcomes. Thus far, we have largely shirked our duties, mortgaging our children’s future for the poisonous fruits of power, gluttony, and effortless ease. To change this, we must find our voice. A single voice from the wilderness is too weak to be heard by the powers that be. But a billion voices, speaking as one from a foundation of scientific truth and moral courage, can shatter the walls of complacency and denial. We must demand a different path—one that embraces “small is beautiful” over “bigger is better,” that values sufficiency over excess, and that finds prosperity in living well by living more simply and sustainably. We must pay our ecological debts instead of passing them on, and clean up the enormous messes we have made.
This is not about leaving our children a better world; that ambitious goal may now be out of reach. It is about the more urgent, fundamental task of leaving them a world that is still fit for habitation, a world with a stable climate, functioning ecosystems, and the resources necessary for them to build their own future. The choice is not between easy options. Every path forward is fraught with difficulty. But one path—the path of continued growth and denial—leads inevitably to a doomsday scenario. The others, the paths of acceptance, responsibility, and deliberate action, offer the chance of renewal.
The science is clear. The equation is simple, even if the execution is complex. Food drives population. We have manipulated the driver to the point of breaking the system. The only way to restore balance is to consciously and humanely manage the driver itself. By doing so, not to create suffering but to prevent it, and by coupling this with a commitment to justice, birth control and human empowerment, we can step off the treadmill. We can end the paradox, not by producing our way out of it, but by understanding our way out. The time to speak out, to act, and to choose a different path is now here, before the last ‘lights’ we possess vanish and the window of alternative paths closes.
I am afraid you are right, or almost right.
The attempt to somewhat turn in the opposite direction seems to have come with the man-made Covid illness, together with its vaccine and the forbidding of cheap, already available medicines for Covid. This looked a lot like an attempt to try to turn the population machine in reverse, at least a bit.
Thanks, Gail. I like your bicycle. I suggest an improvement. Debt is like deflated tires
Maybe debt that you cannot pay is like deflated tires.
I think your comment ended up in the wrong place. It was intended to be a reply to me.
yes—the world is producing more food than ever.
thats is not the problem…
producing vast amounts of food requires energy investment,….and that costs a lot of money—and that is the problem…
cheap surplus energy has multiplied us x 8 in 300 years—that is also the problem—
10–20—50000 years ago, food was effectively free, you went out and gathered it—if you didnt–you died, unless someone did it for you.—but no money changed hands. (same applied to water, shelter, heat etc.)
then some smartass invented money…
now we produce masses of food, but it is an investment, and investors demand returns on their investments…
we have to buy food, and everything else. —we cant gather it.
but someone else’s investment is outrunning your available loose change—so you find you can afford less and less as costs increase.
Farmers can’t give away food for free, because land has value, and demands a return.
We—homo sapiens—have turned the planet into cash, and remain convinced that the cash return on it will go on forever.
you cannot step off the treadmill, because everything coming up behind will roll right over you.
when you break it down, the whole thing is very easy to understand.—not that that will solve the problem—-
Allow for brief interjection.
Nowadays they moved (claimed by DNA back-tracing / retro analysis) the goal post of early wheat domestication at ~10k yrs BC. Recently it has been acknowledged at ~7k yrs BC mark. Rudimentary grafting (both berry-fruit and weaving..) around the same time, modern type of serious marketable fruit grafting ~2k yrs BC..
There are many implications stemming from such data in terms of path dependency of social organization, proto-urbanization & collapses, regional and longer distance trade, and many other mega trends.
my comment was merely a generalisation of the human timeline.
no purpose is served by nitpicking precise details
Constructively meant addition.. in fact in favor of your deliminated time-boundary.
I gather the above it’s more systemic than only detail focus. Similarly, how Gail mentioned above the Old Testament accounts of freq. relocations due to changing weather patterns (+ due to overgrazing and other pressures).
Simply, humans as exploring seemingly “better conditions” fixed themselves into a rat trap of severe intensive-evolutionary pressure chamber for the past ~12k yrs, nature abhors stasis. In simplification we were dragged and kicked out of the stage of our posh secure caves overlooking never ending flocks of large fauna protein.
The coinage-money phenomenon was likely only step change from earlier attempts and practices in keeping (trade) score via knots on fabric or ivory/clay tablets.. and so on. Where even back then various sorts of manipulation and obfuscation (+nature enforcing “chaos”) tend to occur as well..
Script or no script drama evolving..
I tend to believe-observe this is nudged kind “of reality” to pleasure the higher beings be it gods, ETs, .. or indeed just ourselves should this existence be [edu-amusement] type of self-simulation from our more distant evolved stage of understanding.
basically
our problems kicked in at 3 stages
1 we started farming
2 we started using money
3 we kicked off the industrial revolution
plus the addition of controlled fire into those 3 factors.
exact timelines vary in different parts of the world, but that summarizes the human condition…
We added complexity in the first two stages. We added fossil fuel energy with the industrial revolution.
Now we seem to need a fourth stage, to extend our domination of the Earth’s resources.
If we believe David Graeber, debt often come before money. It is debt that helps keep the economy advancing. Debt: The First 5,000 Years
I would almost substitute Debt for Money in your list. But money is better understood. Money is a form of debt.
strictly speaking, money is a form of energy exchange—hence its link to farming.
easier to cart around a few ounces of gold than several tons of grain…
and as i see it, we are still caught up in the terminal stages of the industrial revolution.
and following on….
i dont see how a fourth stage can manifest itself…
because it can only be supported by the previous three…
ie—any ”off earth” enterprise can only be created and supported by ”on earth” industry, and you cannot have any industrial enterprise created for its own sake…
there must be a marketable purpose behind it—-or it has no purpose…
as with the appollo program, which bears out my point precisely…
there was nothing on the moon of any commercial use, so commerce didnt follow…..had there been anything of value, there would be colonies of 000s there right now.
there are none—it was ultimately a vanity project for the usa.
that i think, covers a ”fourth stage”……though i might be missing something..
Snippets from one of the nudged hypothesis of our rapid (mal-)evolution provided via telephone interview transcripts of Stanley Kubrick (AC Clark hints): https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/af4moz/the_bed_room_in_2001_space_odyssey_supposed_to_be/
you have to unpack lot of comments there for the gravy..
PS I stumbled into “Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea)” look *alike in the food – super market recently and freak out a little bit from yet another coincidence pouring on me..
*this elderly gentleman was somewhere between David’s advanced age period sporting blue
dressing gown and that very terminal white suit near death condition (speaking of 1984 sequel “2010”)..
https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/af4moz/comment/edvxziy/
https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/af4moz/comment/edw7ldj/
https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/af4moz/the_bed_room_in_2001_space_odyssey_supposed_to_be/
..
.
This thread also on the key subject:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/af4moz/comment/edvwhcd/
There is a different kind of economy–a gift economy. A person is judged not by what he has, but by what he is able to give away. This approach only works in groups that are small enough that everyone knows each other. People who don’t play by the rules are ejected from the group.
agreed
but you can’t give away more than you possess, only the surplus to what you need.
unfortunately, human nature, collectively, seems to have evolved itself into taking more than it needs.—to vast excess.—this has stripped the planet of its natural assets.
so…since the creation of money, we have had millionaires and billionaires at one end of the social scale, and paupers at the other end. almost no millionaires give it all away.
we are indoctrinated to the belief that this is the way things are, yet no other species has evolved this way.
maybe humankind is an anomaly after all..
I should thank you for your comment. Yes, indeed, keeping adding food has been a big driver of population growth. Giving out antibiotics, and teaching people in the “third world” about hygiene, has made a big difference as well. We never stopped to think about how counterproductive our efforts were. When we did this, or distributed malaria nets, we were helping population grow.
Giving away free food, or close to free food, to people in Africa or after storms undermined the economic system that would have allowed African farmers to make money selling food to their own people.
Malthus & Hobbes weren’t wrong, they couldn’t anticipate fossil fuels usage expanding the ability support an ever increasing human population. Their focus was on overpopulation rather than resource consumption and ecological degradation, but the principle is the same. IMO, they both get a “bum rap.”
There won’t be any ‘humanitarian’ solution.
Solutions which can be mentally concocted are violently opposed by basic current ideas of humanitarianism.
E/G. extract from todays news item: “97 percent of households face food shortages.”
“The need for humanitarian assistance in Khartoum is urgent,”
Here is Nature providing it’s standard solution to a common problem,
It would allow most to die, except a few strong ones who may produce more ‘fit to survive’ offspring.
But this is totally unacceptable to any ‘right thinking’ human being.
So chances of achieving a change in the ‘humanism’ in humans is remote.
Can you imaging a government decreeing that mothers of less than near perfect newborns are to use the old Roman method of placing the child on the hill to be devoured by wolves?
Can’t have the race deteriorated by defects unable to do their fair share in society or continue the production of more defectives.
The ‘good news’ is that there is no time left to try to resolve this impossible task, as Nature’? or the gods? have the solution in progress , their way.
Diesel shortage is likely to be one of the early starters affecting city dwellers expecting food deliveries.
Then all the other shortages and their side effects (wars etc) will shortly follow.
The ‘experts’ have the time frame to be very close with some predicting
the diesel shortfall to take major effect in some countries by next year.
Ah well, ‘what me worry’? The sun is shining and I’ll go for a stroll in the paddock now.
If fatally bitten by a snake I will accept it as being Nature doing its thing and won’t complain. (with thanks to Marcus Aurelius).
I am afraid you are right.
There are lots of obvious things we should be changing. We shouldn’t be working so hard at keeping people who are near death alive. Keeping elderly people alive with high cost techniques when they are clearly going downhill fast makes less and less sense, but I suppose it does provide jobs for people. We are intent on saving every tiny, tiny baby.
After their batteries have run out, any tiny goat babies end up as dog’s dinner where they belong. The dog won’t touch them until I present them to her. After 8 years I let a milk goat have one last lactation with her latest kids without milking her too because her production has dropped off too much, and then then I butcher her in summertime because I’ve learned she probably won’t make it through another round. The alternative would be old school style — to kill the kids as newborns that last year and take all the milk — but I choose not to do that. I have whittled down the milk goats’ kids to one each in previous years but I’m not doing that this year. My little wordless slave family.
“We should not be surprised if, one way or another, we receive much less than has supposedly been promised.”
Well, I’d say the (obvious) intentions are that there will be much fewer of us to receive what has been promised. Thus, the problem may be solved for those that remain, although if it’s the transhuman ‘nirvana’ the globalists are aiming for, it may not be much fun to be here anyway.
Nb. If you pay attention to the war videos from Ukraine, you’ll notice Terminators are very close now. Add a bit more AI into the drones and they’ll be free roaming, killing machines.
A sobering analysis of the ecological position due to climate engineering (weather warfare, chemtrails etc) – Dane Wigington with Tucker Carlson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8A6hkS1CUE&t=1645s&pp=ygURY2FybHNvbiB3aWdpbmd0b24%3D
An interview with the smartest (highest IQ) man in the world. He covers the nature of reality, God, Satan etc: https://youtu.be/9miVG2xT5jY
Remember to party on doomers!
The second link is a two-hour interview, but it has a timestamp as to what it is about:
Timestamps
00:00:00 Welcome
00:01:25 How Michael heard about Chris and the CTMU
00:01:53 Why is the Smartest Man living on a farm in Missouri?
00:03:30 Getting Frozen out of the Economy
00:04:00 Higher Education
00:08:00 Blue collar lifestyle; bar bouncing; limited opportunity
00:11:30 Becoming an autodidact
00:13:30 Reality is Logico-Geometric
00:14:00 CTMU
00:15:30 IQ
00:16:50 Does God Exist? Nature of God.
00:20:30 Our relationship with God
00:21:30 Simulation hypothesis; Pantheism v. Panentheism
00:24:30 Reality / Christianity / Consciousness / Quantization of Reality
00:28:10 Free Will; Fixed v. Self-generating array / Metacausation
00:36:00 God in time and space / Heaven and hell / Salvation
00:39:00 Michael and Chris light up cigars
00:40:00 Psychedelics / Angels and demons / The devil
00:45:30 Satan versus Lucifer; their roles and relation to God
00:48:00 The psychology of sin; the devil; the current situation
00:51:00 Soros, Gates; the psychology of the elite
00:52:00 Money system; human utility; grassroots resistance
00:53:00 Do we need another revolution?
00:53:30 Globalism; conspiracies; WEF; Young Global Leaders
00:57:00 Donald Trump; 2020 election
00:59:30 What is your political background/beliefs? Demise of the Dems/RINOs
01:02:30 Immigration
01:06:45 COVID / vaccines / Great Reset
01:09:30 Intelligence Agencies
01:11:30 Aliens / Demons / UFOs / CIA / The Devil
01:25:00 Marxism / Academia, higher education
01:26:30 Capitalism v. Monopoly Capitalism
01:28:30 Beauty / Truth / Telesis
01:32:40 Intelligence
01:33:40 Catholicism / Pope
01:35:00 Beauty / Religion in art / Beauty & Truth
01:38:30 The Modern Right / Social engineering / LGBT
01:40:30 Modern philosophers
01:41:30 Classical philosophers; relationship b/w philosophy and religion;
01:45:00 intelligent design; new atheists; good & evil
01:48:00 Participatory observers; faith & knowledge, religion / religious institutions; truth and meaning in life
01:53:30 Transhumanism
01:57:00 What should we do about all this? Getting back to God as individuals and a species
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx4f9YBQ7ts
“US Panics As China And Venezuela Does The UNTHINKABLE, Entire Oil Industry In SHOCK” (13:10)
168,266 views Nov 20, 2025
“Let’s rewind to early 2025. The United States decided to deploy what economists call a “financial nuclear option” against Venezuela’s oil industry. This wasn’t just about banning their own imports. The first step was revoking Chevron’s license, halting the last major US-operated oil production in the country, which was producing over 100,000 barrels a day.
“But the real game-changer was the policy rolled out on April 2nd, 2025: unprecedented “secondary tariffs.” Here’s how that worked. The US government told every nation on earth: “If we catch you buying even a single barrel of Venezuelan oil, we will impose a 25% tariff on all of your exports to the United States—not just your oil, but everything from electronics to furniture.” To put that in perspective, the average US tariff is around 2%. This 25% tax would make any country’s goods uncompetitive overnight. The goal was mathematically precise: reduce Venezuela’s oil exports to zero by making the cost of buying from them catastrophic for any other nation. It was the most aggressive use of US economic power in the region in decades.”
These tariffs/sanctions are not working as intended at all. I am very impressed with China’s clairvoyance. The USA only has military options now. Blockade of China (of the Malacca strait really), blockade of Panama canal, blockade of venezuela, coup in venezuela. The latter two, if they get hot, could end up with 20+ american ships on the ocean floor. The CIA is working overtime in Venezuela as we speak but I do not expect success. from here I can see the first Chinese military base in Venezuela.
it is possible that, after another abysmal failure, and with so many hotheads in Washngton, real politik will prevail and Russia China will hand over (resource poor) Cuba to pacify these babies for a while.
There’s a good reason why I’ve recently taken to referring to the Hand’s Non-Public Degrowth Agenda as a shell game, as it’s recently transitioned into one out of late- Phase 1 slash early- Phase 2 necessity. The nature of the shell game is for the street hustler across the street from the bank, to create the illusion that there might be a dried pea (underlying collateral) under all three of the mini paper Dixie cups that were taken from the water cooler station of the bank lobby, when in fact the pea has been secreted into the Hand such that any sensible investor knows not to play the game of questioning the Shell Game by betting against the street hustler. So to the sensible investor the pea makes like Schrodinger’s cat – it’s both there and not there, Real and Not Real. It’s a nice trick if you can pull it off, and fortunately for the hustler there’s a sucker born every hour, like the author of this Yootoob video.
I didn’t watch the video but based on the excerpt, David, the author has simply fallen for one of the Hand’s more recent misdirection plays under the Non-Public Degrowth Agenda. As such, he or she is barking up the dummy tree.
A few quick questions to the AI bot predictably revealed that the Hand is using the fake (as in, it’s not going to happen as I’ve been telling Fitz) Venezuelan regime change saber rattling in order to continue China’s massive multi-year backdoor energy bailouts by seamlessly replacing the 400,000 bpd of discounted crude from Russia that was lost to the US’s secondary sanctions with….you guessed it… an extra 400,000 bpd from Venezuela. China is suddenly now importing 80pc of VZ exports. This, of course, could not possibly happen without the existence of a Hidden Hand; if anyone can co.e up with a self-organizing explanation then I’m all ears but nobody will come up with one.
Welcome to the Shell Game that seeks to make it look like we are not well into oil depletion, by making it look like there’s supply under every Dixie cup, by stealing from the marginal consumer in order to float the core. Yet Rob at un-denial wants pretend that it’s not a structural zero-sum game.
I don’t think we have been getting very good reporting about what China is doing around the world. I also think that there is a real hidden hand involved–the fact that China makes a lot of products less advanced economies want, and it is willing to sell their products on credit to these poor countries.
My impression is that China has been lending money many places, including Venezuela. In some sense, China is trying to make poor countries its colonies. Whether they can make all of their lending work is another question. China can make a lot of questionable investments. If they plan to get more food from around the world for themselves, they may make the poor countries less well off.
Sure China’s been taking it up her New Confucian Marxist ass in service of the MPP these last 40 years, and 40 centuries of farmers are rolling over in their graves. If you can’t beat em join em said Henry Kissinger to Deng Xiaoping just a few years after Mao had read “Limits to Growth” which changed everything. Later, Xiaoping and Jimmy Carter became BFFs because Carter was also deeply influenced by the book. Jimmy put solar panels on the White House and encouraged people to turn down the heat and Deng for his part instituted the one-child policy lol. That was the closest the world ever got to a public Degrowth Agenda. Then US oil production started growing again for the next six years, Saudi production went through the roof, and the Hand’s dad threw the greatest bar mitzvah anyone could ever remember.
“You’re a man now my son. Use your powers wisely. You can always find me in the details.”
“My impression is that China has been lending money many places, including Venezuela. In some sense, China is trying to make poor countries its colonies.”
Venezuela is 3rd if I remember correctly.
Have a guess who is Numero Uno?
A clue
“This is an extraordinary discovery, given that the U.S. has spent the better part of the last decade warning other countries of the dangers of accumulating significant debt exposure to China, and accusing China of practicing ‘debt trap diplomacy,’”
https://www.aiddata.org/blog/chinas-massive-overseas-lending-portfolio-shifts-course
https://www.aiddata.org/how-china-lends
Colonies will always be colonies, even when they think they are rich and in charge.
Thanks Fitz. To a DA that requires absolute cooperation, .mutually assured financial destruction is even more relevant than the nuclear kind, so these debt entanglements keep everyone on the up and up.
Up to a point, yes and then very quickly no.
At least that’s what I’m hoping, or it’s a One World Government and I haven’t even brought property in Astana 😔
Right on. The yes part is for the extend and pretend period which we are still in now, and the very quickly no part will presumably succumb to widespread force majeure rulings during the Big Nuclear Scare. Problem solved by the coming economic nationalisms.
There can’t be a one world (bureaucratic) government during Collapse. Can’t increase systemic complexity during resource collapse. There can only be a global ruling clique that maintains leverage over all nations by infiltrating them and making them structurally dependent on a DA ahead of Collapse, such that they are bound to the DA and the Hand as if it was family. As below so above.
If the media-saturated unwashed dissident masses think a one world government is coming, then we can know it’s not. Your country’s politics are just lagging US politics. You’re just still undergoing the new woke freakout that the already dying from new freakout MAGAMAHA coalition underwent. You’re area’s continuing freakout is in service of triggering the BNS.
Head for the hills dude.
If there’s a nuclear scare, it’ll only be for western consumption(those without).
My shithole, believe it or not, is much further down the chosen path than most. That path is somewhat mental(if read as the sales brochure it’s being presented as), so yes, lots of misdirection.
Hills?
I live on the North Downs(Kent). It’s nothing but rolling hills.
Unfortunately there’s little area that isn’t crisscrossed with roads and so little that’s unknown and which won’t be swamped with hyperventilating freaks extremely fast. Unless the jabbed jog off in quick order, it’s going to be a game of chance, with few winners.
I grew up in Reigate, just round the corner. I wasn’t suggesting that England would be on the receiving end of the BNS, just that Europe’s looking the patsy for causing the BNS via it’s support for Ukraine. English nuclear plant releases though could well be set off intentionally, and as much as deemed necessary, in order to emphasize the need for decommissioning the global industry. Scoping out a temporary bug out plan for heading to northwestern scotland or Wales for a couple months while the iodine 131 dissipates might be worthwhile if one’s up for some adventure during Collapse. Don’t want to be getting unnecessarily weakened by a carefully calibrated radiation poisoning. It stands to reason to me that with the UK’s population density and agricultural weakness, the plausibly deniable asymmetric war on health might be relatively more intense there.
Reigate I know and yes, Surrey Hills, so part of the North Downs. I’m originally from Streatham, so even closer.
Europe’s support for Ukraine hasn’t caused anything, that distinction falls further afield. I am aware of how that narrative has been worked, but that doesn’t and couldn’t make the accusation true(not that anyone will care when the buck has been smoothly passed). They admittedly don’t help their own cause, but that’s what you get when you accept such shady people being put in positions they have no place(it’s a bit like the Yugoslavia play).
Nuclear, I have considered and although I’m familiar with most of Scotland and The Lake District, that’s where millions will head(strange how all those that avoid nature will run to it the moment they don’t know what to do. They should think on that). I do know of some long buried and forgotten military bunkers. They are very close, no one else seems aware of their existence, so if/when things start to head south I could open one up(digging a neighbours garden up will get me some grief). Fresh water, much more than food would be an issue, then I’ve got to attempt to herd my daughter and mother into a small uninviting place.
Agriculture will be a problem, but on a personal note, I have a large seed collection and understand how to keep soil fertile(not sure if I make it past the first winter unless I could hunt, so no nuclear mishaps please).
As you said, population density is the problem here, so first task is to survive the initial and most brutal whittling, which will happen at a larger scale and far quicker than people could imagine.
When everyone runs, heading in the other direction or staying put might seem counterintuitive, whilst being the most sensible option. Once the hoards run through, there will be lots of open hills and I doubt city people will wipe out the rabbit population before they starve or flee(again). I do have the ability to get to Scotland with enough supplies to last at least a few months, although I have a nagging doubt that anyone’s vehicles will start when SHTF. I’ll play the game here, where I understand the land, while encouraging everyone else to run for the hills(I won’t thank them for all the supplies left behind, but I’ll think it😁).
Gail, thank you for this thorough and thoughtful piece. As always, I appreciate the clarity with which you describe the broad dynamics between energy, debt, and economic promises. Your charts once again illustrate convincingly that energy per capita is on a long-term downward trend.
There is, however, one central issue that I feel remains underdeveloped in your analysis: the simple physical problem of depletion versus new discoveries.
You emphasise that energy per capita is shrinking and that the global system is running into “not enough for everyone.” But the underlying reason for this shortage is not addressed explicitly. The industry-acknowledged natural decline rate of oil fields—on the order of 6% per year—is almost absent from the discussion, just as the fact that new discoveries have been running far below annual consumption for more than a decade.
In addition, today’s oil prices are too low to make the next generation of projects economically viable. The majors have cut exploration budgets to historic lows. Deepwater is the only remaining growth frontier, but only at price levels the global economy appears unable to sustain. The result is not merely lower future energy availability, but a structural and unavoidable decline in production—something your argument clearly points toward, but never names directly.
I believe your analysis would be even stronger if this physical foundation were made fully explicit. Many of the social and financial outcomes you describe—contracting economies, rising debt burdens, geopolitical friction—are ultimately consequences of this geological constraint.
By explicitly linking depletion and EROEI dynamics to the macroeconomic system, it becomes clearer that we are not simply facing scarcity, but the end phase of an energy paradigm built on abundant, cheap conventional oil.
I completely share your concerns about the societal implications. But the argument gains precision when the physical root of the problem is clearly acknowledged.
Gail explicitly mentioned resource depletion in the summary. It hardly needs mentioning anymore because resource depletion, to a post-peak oil systems theory is like the open air to a caught fish; the terminal damage is done, because we’re 7 years post-peak, and all that’s left for us to do is to accurately analyze the complex death throes of the civilization, so that we may best know how to act in order to survive its death.
We have just recently exceeded the 2018 peak in oil production
https://peakoilchart.com/peak-oil-chart?category=4
Good point!
On volume or energy content?
Fuel oil is nearly 1.5x as energy dense as LPG.
The Hubbert Curve is a fitted curve, WIT, and that curve is seven years past the undulating peak. That’s an empirical observation. Welcome to peak oil theory.
If, in response , you were to say, “but what about the pandemic?” then you’d be bargaining with peak oil theory. You’d be all the way back at the beginning because you refused to put an L in the plandemic.
The Truth is meticulous.
I was making a point that the July 2025 exceeded the November 2018 peak by a couple hundred thousand barrels a day. Hubbert viewed oil production as symmetrical, why that may be true for a particular oilfield, but for oil production in totality I think we face a more Seneca cliff.
I definitely agree, “but for oil production in totality I think we face a more Seneca cliff.”
Thanks WIT yeah apparently it did break the record but it wouldn’t surprise me if the number was manufactured given the current administration and personnel turnover. Maybe that sounds like sour grapes. Maybe it’s not really possible to fake it once or twice – I’m not sure. I’m aware of the supposed bump from the new drilling techniques supposedly outpacing the rig declines. I apologize for taking your reply as a counterpoint rather than a tangential point. I agree about the senecan cliff of course. Hubbert wasn’t a complexity theorist and didn’t have the opportunity to live long enough to engage with a mature systems theory of peak oil.
I agree that there is a depletion issue, and that conventional oil discoveries have been declining. I also agree that oil prices have been low in recent years, holding back investment. I agree that this will hold back near term extraction, but I am uncertain what the effect will be on extraction 50 or 100 years from now.
I am not sure I am the one to put together these figures. I do not believe that the oil reserve figures currently available are at all helpful, for example. People who look at them are sure that industry people must be lying about the shortfall problem, for example.
thank you gail for another article .
Thank you Gail, was hoping you would pop-up today!
Sorry I have been so slow with the new post.
I decided to add a summary to my post, to make my post understandable to a wider audience.
For so
E reason my comments didn’t make it
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2025/11/desmitificando-la-tasa-de-retorno.html?m=1
I prefer Quark to art
A little from the translated article:
I disagree with Dr. Charles Hall.
What matters is the net amount of oil we deliver to the system, not its profitability in the extraction process. . .
As long as oil extraction has an EROI greater than 1, net energy is delivered to the system, so what matters is the total amount delivered to society, not its EROI . In other words, you just have to drill and drill to obtain more energy, regardless of the EROI.
I am not a fan of EROI theory. It is not complete enough.
In the 1972 Limits to Growth analysis, there is a vaguely similar ratio that is a limiting factor. In any year, the world economy uses physical resources of all kinds (granite, iron, oil, uranium, etc.) These are combined by weight. How is this weight split between building and maintaining the system and actual use by businesses and consumers, in each calendar year period? Not too much can be used in building and maintaining the system. I forget what the percentage turned out to be.
I would presume that energy and other resource use would include maintaining and repaving roads, building and maintaining electricity transmission, extracting minerals of all kinds, as well as energy consumption.
One issue is that investments that are too “front ended” don’t work well, because they generate huge amounts of debt, unless they are surrounded by a huge amount of quick return fossil fuels. Part of the cost of front ended investments has to go for interest to lenders. This messes up the system further.
The 1972 Limits to Growth analysis included growing population and limited farmland. With all of these variables, their model could be helpful, but I don’t think EROI theory tells us much. As a practical matter, the energy used is of different kinds, not the same kind. The theory provides good projects for graduate students to write papers about. A person has to be very careful with it. It tends to make renewables appear far more useful than they really are.
we are surrounded by many theories not enough to go around because of declining liquid fuels seems to be the most plausible theory that is why no big collapse has occurred yet liquid fuels are still available providing enough momentum to keep the rest of the fossil fuels flowing to our technological system. So yes some theories are barking up the wrong road. Poor Charlie he seems to be putting the eroei theory on a pedestal.
I prefer Quark
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2025/11/desmitificando-la-tasa-de-retorno.html?m=1
Gail and her comment section provide an invaluable node of information.
One jewel amongst many.
Quark, is also rock solid!
Check out this recent one form Un-herd about Cactus: Complexity accelerated thermodynamically unsustainable system.
Absolutely devastating.
https://un-denial.com/2025/11/30/the-cactus-lens-a-clearer-view/
LOL. That website is for metaphorical college freshmen popping caffeine pills and making shit up, and not in a good way but n the out-of-true reinventing of the wheel way, such that they can continue to subconsciously bargain with Collapse while consciously acting like they’re doing the opposite. Undenial my ass.
And Hideaway essentially says that aliens have never visited earth because humans have never visited aliens. It’s proof that understanding a systems theory of Collapse doesn’t actually require critical thinking. It just requires memorization, which explains the peak oil community’s cacophonous din.
Fantastic article Gail! Love the bicycle.
I agree that this article, apparently by Rob Mielcarski, is very good.
Besides limits of energy, debt, and ecology, another way of viewing limits is through the limits of complexity. This tends to push wage and wealth disparity higher and higher.
all boils down to the human condition of wanting ”more” of everything.
we are all guilty of that—just a matter of degree, how much ”more” you want, or can get hold of.
If you’re a billionaire, you worry where the next billion is coming from.
trouble is. every ”thing” represents energy in its production, and shipping, its purchase represents ”energy input” on the part of the individual buying whatever ”thing” it is..
energy availability to make ”things” is finite.
whereas the demand for ”things” is infinite.
that is the crux of our problem, and it affects everyone.
100 years ago a car was a luxury for a few—now families want several—same with, say. bathrooms….one used to be a luxury, now 2 or 3 are standard in homes. Aircon, heating, multi-flights, all come under the same heading.
And of course we vote for the politician who says this can go on forever.. No politico would get very far if he said otherwise. Its called MAGAnut disease.
we are, in effect, voting humankind into deeper debt, because to produce all our ”stuff” we must create wages—in order to go on buying more and more ”stuff”—ie extracting more ”things” from less and less surplus energy.
With a little bit of ‘Toldya so” I wrote the book in 2013—to some derision from certain OFW’ites.. Not so much now I think.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-More-resources-humankind-unsustainable-ebook/dp/B00D0ADPFY
I think that population growth is a major issue. We all want our children to survive and be prosperous.
ultimately we want our kids to do better than we did.
they can only do that if they burn more fuel than we did.
I wonder with all the focus on vain medical procedures, and college degrees, we haven’t turned to genetic engineering to make our kids to better than we did.
We just have to figure out what the future is going to be like, and where our kids will live and genetically program to thrive in the area they will live in.
we cannot ”genetically engineer” human beings
why does that myth persist?
people mate with like minds—but might produce bright kids,, or stupid kids
stupid parents produce geniuses—or idiots—or a median in between (more likely)
handsome parents produce handsome kids—but the reversion is to the mediocre.
sex is the only means available to us—and that is a random act of chance.
all you can hope for with offspring is average normality—you might produce a nobel prizewinner or a cereal killer.
overwhelming odds says you will produce neither.—-thats just the way it is.
If a woman is using a sperm donor for conception (if the partner has no sperm–for example, a woman), the sperm donor can be screened for desirable characteristics. For example, not being color blind, if the woman is a likely carrier for the color blindness gene.
lol Gail
i really know about colour blindness
my grandfather was colour blind—unwittingly he married a colour blindness carrier—double whammy or what? but they had no knowledge of such things anyway.
yes–a sperm donor can be screened for things like that.—that is screening out—yes you can do that, for heamophilia for instance.
what you cannot do is ”screen in”—that difference is critical
you can take sperm from a heavyweight boxer, a nobel prizewinner or a concert pianist. —-three of my immediate forbears were literally prizefighters—i detested that sort of thing.. they loved punching people—i could never see the point.
you cannot screen in those characteristics.
you can screen dogs—but in a few generations the dog looks ridiculous or goes crazy–or both.
how many times do you see the children of great actors trying to make it the profession—it rarely works.
I am a carrier for color blindness. I know because one of my two sons is color blind. My daughter has a son by artificial insemination. In selecting the sperm, they looked for a donor who was not color blind.
I think it is possible to slightly “screen in” for desired characteristics. This is the way evolution works. It is how survival of the best adapted to the current situation works. It doesn’t work in a single generation, but over time, the characteristics that work best in a particular part of the world are “screened in.”
This is related to the issues that Kulm keeps talking about. The survival rate of children of the upper classes tends to be better than that of the lower classes. Upper class characteristic are better represented in later generations.
Africa seemed to develop differently than the rest of the world. In most of Africa, lineage has been through the mother, rather than the father. Men didn’t play as substantial a role in a household as in the rest of the world. If a father left, it didn’t greatly matter. Women often tend large gardens with plants that needed little care. The “village” would try to help women without husbands, and children without parents, to the extent they could.
Africa didn’t develop grain to store value, which could be used to tax and build cities. It didn’t develop industry using fossil fuels. Instead, crops could be grown close to year around. There was no pressing need for a change to a system that would provide more substantial housing or heat in winter. What was needed was strong muscles and resistance to heat of the tropics. This seems to be what was selected for.
the selection for muscle i think would have been done unconsciously by females.
within any ‘normal’ pairing–ie one that excludes any kind of force or coercion, it is the female who does the choosing—even if she gives the opposite impression.
her prime concern is for the survival of her offspring—her future if you like–so the male most likely to provide that will be her choice of mate.
i’ve always thought too, that africa didnt develop industry or grain storage because the climate provide year round food supplies
Humans and politicians cannot divert the eventual demise of our technological system as the world is finite so all humans including politicians are not guilty of any wrongdoing.
they/we are guilty of whatever wrongdoing happens between now and final collapse…
and that is going to be very unpleasant—-i promise you.
With that i concur very unpleasant .Norm is your current book available in paperback?
It doesn’t seem to be available in the US, in any form. I ordered it, and my order was cancelled.
sorry about that Gail—must be Trumps tariffs that spiked it.
If you want to email me your home address—i’ll send you a copy as a Christmas present—you deserve one for putting up with my ramblings all these years.
You mean my “Ironmen of Shropshire book, or The End of More?
both are available as paperbacks, but not worldwide yet it seems.
sorry— the end of more is available worldwide, ironmen isnt
Very good explanations!
Germany has found a way to take on an enormous amount of special debt despite the legal debt brake.
Germany vouches for debts of, for example, Greece.
A recent study puts the cost of a peace in Ukraine at EUR 1,800 billion and a continuation at EUR 840 billion over four years.
Italy has withdrawn its commitment to participate in the armament of Ukraine and has declared to the ECB that it will not be able to dispose of the EUR 300 billion in Italian gold reserves.
Fast Eddy writes that the only purpose of the Ukrainian war was to be able to explain the falling energy availability.
The Russians have just stated that many production fields are exploited.
I suspect the next pandemic is coming in Europe! People will be cheering like last time!
All the more debt to eventually default!
I blame economists partly. Their dark practice led people to believe that if you had money you could make money. Piketty pointed out the Q>R (Money is making more money on money than on selling production) and I think most people thought “good on ’em maybe I should get a trading app” instead of seeing it a warning of a system ready to explode. The myth of the dematerialised economy, as if we left the stone age and don’t use stone anymore (Fact, we use more per capita)
What you point to is important for national budgets (and what MMT tries to say): how can you make a national budget without looking at the availability of materials the companies in your nation are going to use to make the profits you are going to tax?
I think Trump and his tariffs and his wars is aiming in the direction of getting as much resources and finished goods as he can from declining supply. It is doubtful he can get around the huge problem, however.
Biden seemed to be focused on ramping up “demand” through more immigrants taken in and more debt issued to support these folks.
“as if we left the stone age and don’t use stone anymore ”
We use more stones than ever. More concrete, masonry, and silica are used , now, than at any point in the past of human history.
“What you point to is important for national budgets (and what MMT tries to say): how can you make a national budget without looking at the availability of materials the companies in your nation are going to use to make the profits you are going to tax”
The availability of loans now and in the past makes prudence less important.
To be specific, loyalty or a sense of duty to ones family, let alone one’s country erodes when one thinks strangers from far away will take care of him or her.
Many thanks Gail for new article!
It might be interesting for you and readers that at timing 59.40 financial and geopolitical analyst Alex Kreiner talks about Shale Oil and Heavy Oil and the problem related to the former kind of Oil to obtaine diesel and jet fuel, which are two key fuels for every economy.
Something you actually have been talking about since a long ago (and also, later, other people here in this blog and experts out of this blog).
Thank you for your contributes to the overall understanding of the issue.
You are right; there is a brief mention of the difference between heavy oil that Venezuela has (which can be used for diesel and jet fuel) and US shale oil, which tends not to be heavy on gasoline and natural gas liquids.
I would hope that many people would understand that there are different types of oil.
“The competitors became the customers.”?
‘The “NVIDIA Killer” thesis died because it identified the wrong competitive battlefield. The contest was never GPU versus ASIC. It was, and remains, a question of who controls the fabric through which AI systems communicate with themselves. NVIDIA understood this earlier than the market. While competitors focused on compute cores, NVIDIA built NVLink into a standard that even its competitors must license.’
https://substack.com/@shanakaanslemperera/note/c-184040640
“Or you could be one of
16:48
those people who just throw it away, who
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bet on on losers
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and don’t want to bet on winners because
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of some arbitrary thing that somebody
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says that the stock is too high. Do you
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understand that Nvidia the forward PE is
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something like 25 or 28? You know how
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cheap that stock is on a valuation
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basis? I mean, it’s ridiculous.
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Ridiculous.”?
Two great articles by Art Berman regarding our energy future going forward.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/the-nuclear-golden-calf/
https://www.artberman.com/blog/the-false-promise-of-enhanced-geothermal/
Thanks! I want to read them. I agree that there are a huge number of hurdles to jump over for either of them to actually scale up. Also, we need liquid fuels, and these do not provide liquid fuels.
Art came up with an interesting US consumer price graph 1980-2025
https://x.com/aeberman12/status/1995570479109997008
I commented on the graph by superimposing WTI oil prices.
Can you explain why consumer prices increased much more than oil prices when the Wuhan virus hit?
Oil prices can even go negative, while consumer prices, since they cover a broad range of items, stay within a more restricted range. The change from the low point is therefor higher with oil than with consumer prices.
I like Art but he is a hundred year guy. Meaning he thinks we can keep on going for another 100 years. So that puts him in denial category. He does not take into account complexity and massive growth needed to extend the system
What’s going on with Fast Eddy? Is he alive? Or just banished and ashamed? It’s strange seeing Norman but bit Eddy.
Fast Eddy has his own blog. It is
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/
i’m the ghost of christmas future—
always strange seeing me
Norm
“Predictions are hard especially about the future”. -Yogi Berra
precise predictions—yes, almost impossible…
inspired guesswork based on available information and logic isnt difficult at all
If Fast were here, I’m sure he’d encourage all the cornucopians to go reach equilibrium with the winter soil.
With respect to Nuclear, Art says (referring to a chart):
The economics simply don’t work at those costs. Using a realistic 10% cost of capital, the break-even construction cost that makes nuclear competitive is in a $2–3 billion band for a 1 GW plant (Figure 2). That’s lower than the most efficient recent projects. Even in China or Korea, capital costs would need to be half of current costs to break even over the plant’s lifetime. In the West, the gap is larger.
This is even without looking at the uranium problem, and the upgrading of uranium problem.
Regarding enhanced geothermal (which uses deeper wells in harder rock than conventional geothermal, which has generally not worked well), he says:
Why is EGS so expensive? The answer is simple: It has all the cost of shale drilling with none of the payback. A single 20-megawatt EGS project — tiny by grid standards — requires three to five very deep wells, each costing $12–25 million. Unlike oil and gas wells, these wells don’t produce a high-value liquid or gas. They just circulate water down into hot rock and back up again, hoping to pick up enough heat to spin a small turbine. Much of the electricity generated is used to run the pumps.
When something fails the economic test this badly, there’s only one conclusion: it’s not the right application of technology.