Hi Erik,

Thanks for your response. Yes, we have different uses of the word “technology”. In this respect, I think that what matters is not what you or anyone else may believe technology to be but how it is analysed by researchers who have spent lifetimes investigating how technology is developed and evolves. This is all the more important since, as it seems we both agree, humankind is now slightly past the brink and has no room left for error.

You state, “I hate to say it, but whether one calls technology a “product” or a “machine” is irrelevant”. This has nothing to do with what I was seeking to attract your attention to. Like it or not, in practice, technology is not a “product” or a “machine”. Instead it has to do with a process of critical analysis of how products or machines, broadly speaking means, are used to achieve some ends. This is what so many lay people and a large number of would-be or self-styled “technologists” alike ignore. The fact that some are quite successful and even end up billionnaires does not change this. At the heart of the technological developments that they used to make money there is always some form (even primitive) of critical review of the state of the art. Now, slightly past the brink, critique is what has become vital. This is where we may potentially meet.

We both engage in critique and I find a substantial number of your critiques sound and important. However, to stay on solid grounds, so to speak, it is equally vital to “enquire in the appropriateness of the questions we are asking” (as physicist David Bohm used to stress). Failing this our answers stand to not only be wrong but meanginless (as he was also stressing).

So about means you say “[they] use energy and produce waste.” Yes, we all know, or should know this. And you rightfully focus on the importance of analysing how we use those means. In support of your conclusions though you refer to Garrett et al., 2020. There we strike a big problem.

A big part of Garrett et al.’s paper is invalidated by research carried out during the 1970s and since, that is nearly 50 years earlier. But they are not aware of this, and apparently the peer review of that paper is not either… Sadly, this is unfortunately a common occurrence, physicists venturing into the field of the social sciences without bothering to learn the basics, and more importantly without learning about critical social sciences and epistemology. Had they done so, they would never have written that paper.

I could produce a critique of their work. It would necessitate several papers, given that to do so I would have to cover grounds that none of the authors are familar with. Instead I will just mention a few pointers.

They talk of “civilisation” uncritically and in the singular. There is no such “thing”. They talk about it as a kind of continuum and “track” development since 1 C.E. to the present in terms of “world production”. This is ridiculous. There is no commensurability between large numbers of social groupings that one could possibly refer to as “civilisations” over that time period, and even more importantly, between preindustrial and industrial societies. In doing so they commit the same fallacy economists have committed since the early days of the industrial revolution some 270 years ago. All of this has been well established for decades, in particular by my friend, Emeritus Prof. of Economics, Serge Latouche, who is also well versed in thermodynamics. Among other matters, it is not valid to use concepts pertaining to economic thought to analyse pre-industrial societies. Economics is nothing else but the mythology and magical thinking of the industrial world. Notwithstanding what economists dearly want to believe, It is not a science, has never been one and will never be one. Attempting to link thermodynamics with econmics only compounds the injuries. It is as meaningless to apply economic thought, even couched in seemingly thermodynamic terms, to pre-industrial societies as it would be to apply, say, medieval European christianity or Aztec thought, in reverse, to the globalised industrial world. It is even more meaningless to try and find apparently physical constants about long terms societal matters than are not commensurate neither through time nor geographically. Instead, what would be a scientific approach would be to develop a critique about how and why such apparent constants may arise, and why one could be so intent in establishing/imposing them — which is what the like of Serge, Jean Baudrillard or I, and many others, have been doing for over 50 years…

As a side remark, while Garrett et al. talk uncritically of cumulated “production” and wealth over the very long term, we know of numerous societies that were explicitly organised to prevent such accumulation and that lasted for very long time periods — in particular until they were destroyed by people from European descent (or some others). Factoring in those matters would lead to entirely other conclusions (other and not different, that is, incommensurable with theirs).

So referring to their paper to back your views, tells me that you are not familiar with the relevant science and have not taken the time to read and ponder the material I suggested you could read. This essay of mine, in lay language, rests on the well established research over the last 50 years that I refer to above. Without the use of complex equations, it invalidates Garrett et al. This is why I suggested you may want to read and study it (I had noted that you mentionned Garrett in some of your postings).

Now, to perhaps progress this, the devil, as we all know, is often in the detail. Some of Garrett’s earlier work had important components. However, at the time I had noted that the links he was attempting to establish between thermodynamics and economics were approximately holding untill 2010 and that they would probably not hold much beyond this time horizon. At the time he was not even considering why those links could possibly hold, or not, beyond some rather superficial (in my view) thermodynamic matters. In Garrett et al., I note that they do note a “discrepancy” of some 20% with empirical data after 2010 (see their Table 3)… They note discrepancies atfter that time horizon throughout their attempts to link their (so-called) thermodynamic reasoning to empirical values (temselves established highly dubiously in ways that ignore the incompatibilities between natural science and social science epistemologies). This is important because we do know that the globalised industrial world entered thermodynamic decline in the early 1970s and entered the terminal phase of that decline around 2010, that is, the rapid loss of the self-powered status of its global energy supply system. I find it significant that even in their very approximate work, discrepancies in the links that they seek to establish manifest themselves after that time horizon. No civilisation, of course, can exist without a self-powered energy supply technological system.

To pursue in that vein, one of their conclusions is that “Population and emissions growth rates have inertia because the world has memory of its past innovations.” This was already known some 50 years ago through systems dynamics. It is almost trivial. Their maths does not “prove” it. In my view, it’s simply that their equations simulate roughly what global dynamics have been imposed on world people since the early days of the industrial revolution through brute force, huge suffering and huge numbers of untimely and painful deaths.

Ironically, they (unconsciously) attempt to dress in thermodynamic garb the kind of ideology the likes Walt Rostow attempted to promote in the 1960s (The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, 1960, Cambridge University Press) — Something that has been thoroughly critiqued ever since, earning some of us PhDs ;-))

Had they extended their time horizon by another 2000 years, they would have had to consider, for example, the very abrupt collapse of East Mediterranean, intensely networked, Bronze Age civilisations, around 1200 BCE. In many parts, populations dwindled by some 50% and nearly all wealth vanished (along with the use of writing, much art and loss of knowledge). It took centuries for some population to scramble through and reach levels of civilisations comparable to Bronze Age ones. This kind of consideration would have given them ground to review critically their conclusions (one would hope).

They uncritically claim to have identified “a persistent relationship between global energy consumption and cumulative economic production”. Well no, historically, in actual civilisation terms, there is no such “persistent” link beyond the trivial and only for limited time periods. They may benefit from studying the work of Prof. Joseph Tainter, and of Serge Latouche, for example.

They further conclude “Humanity grows when more energy is available than it requires for its daily needs.” Well no; the industrial world has done this, in part and for only a small part of the world population, roughly the 10% wealthiest, to the detriment of the 90% Remainder… not a very “humane” thing to do. Talking of “humanity” in this context, instead of what would have been more accurate, that is, the globalised industrial world, I regard as a gross abuse of language. Besides, that observation, in its generic sense, is trivial. There was no need for that abundance of poor mathematising to arrive at that.

So, when they say, “Because current sustenance demands emerge from past growth, inertia plays a much more important role in determining future societal and climate trajectories than has been generally acknowledged”, sure, we have known about this kind of “inertia” at least since the pioneering work of the Meadows in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and more broadly in terms of systems dynamics. And sure, much current considerations concerning the Climate Emergency ignore this, which is just yet another case of the crass ignorance of so many decision-makers and would-be economic modellers. Again, their work was not required to arrive at this conclusion.

What I find more important, and that they miss in their conclusions, is in some detail of their progress through their own “maths”. Matters like “Assuming no further efficiency gains, options look limited to rapid dec- arbonization of energy consumption…” (e.g. in their abstract)... “the efficiency of converting primary energy consumption E to the irreversible work Wirr that enables growth”... “We grow fastest if the efficiency € is high”… “the energy efficiency of economic production or energy productivity”… “What the link expressed in Eq 20 between current consumption and the economy provides is an added strong constraint on interrelationships between population, standard of living, and production efficiency.”… “What seems to be required is a peculiar dance between reducing the production efficiency of civilization while simultaneously innovating new technologies that move us away from combustion.”

Numerous assumptions they make in regard to “efficiency” do not hold in the long term, and especially not in collapse dynamic contexts. It is also meaningless to talk of “standards of living” uncritically as they do. In turn, what my essays demonstrate, in lay language, no need for complex mathematising, is that a radical way of “dancing” to use their dubious expression, is readily achievable — noting that their notion of “production efficiency” is a misnomer when considering the above 90% remainder. We are talking here of something that is in front of everyone’s nose but that almost no one sees, because of their ignorance and belief systems. It remains perfectly feasible (in the nick of time) to break away from the dynamics that have prevailed since the early days of the industrial revolution, by abandoning the childish notions concerning “technology” currently prevailing in social media as well as in most governmental and business bodies, by focusing on sound thermodynamics and learning the lessons from critical social sciences, that is, shifting away from theistic, hierarchical, dualistic modes of thinking, decision-making and social organisation, towards non-dualistic ones soundly grounded in science.

Paradoxically, my recent essaysy are about what you seem to be seeking amidst the abundant gloom. At least, certainly it is what millions are seeking, in the face of the crass incompetence of most current elite members. Compared with previous instances of collapse, for the first time in history, there is the possibility for least part of humankind to consciously extract itself from the current collapse-in-progress and to lay down the foundations for a new civilisational development that is not hyper-predatory, that is actually sustainable and fully integral to the whole of life on Earth.

I have taken the time to write to you, and now to reply to your comments, because I consider that us, who post our analyses, have a duty to do our utter best to ensure that what we put forward is well grounded scientifically. It is not, definitely not, so that others who are not familar with the matters that we discuss would come to “believe” us. Science steers clear from religion. Instead, it is merely to provide pointers that may assist readers to do their own learning and figure matters out by themselves — no one else can do it for them, and unless enough people do so, humankind will remain in its current dire predicament or worse. So, please, would you care taking a bit more time to ponder the material I pointed out? Then maybe we could discuss how to progress matters further.

Cheers

Louis