The economics scandal
Why none of the COPs are coping, and can’t? And why all current investments worldwide are in jeopardy and over 6 billion lives are in high danger?
By way of introduction
The whole of decision-making worldwide is based on the unquestioned assumption of continuity. The belief that next year will be basically the same as last year, except hopefully a bit better, with more of whatever. Even when contemplating disruptions or actively developing disruptive technologies, this is always taking place within a context of the ongoingness character of the world within which decision-makers believe they live in. Even perceived threats like climate change or the development of “AI” remain thought of mostly in a distant, rather foggy long-term and with a view to ensuring continuity of the fabric of “civilisation” whatever each decision-maker may mean by this word.
However, since the advent of the neolithic some 12,000 years ago, countless societies, cultures, empires and civilisations have arisen and mostly ended rather abruptly. Human history is marked by repeated, drastic discontinuities, breaks, breakdowns and collapses. In most instance when such breaks did happen, decision-makers of the time had no understanding of what was happening, no understanding that their decision-making was mostly causing or precipitating the breakdowns, and had no idea of how to possibly extricate themselves and their people from the disasters in the making. Our world is not immune to this. Research that has been accumulating since the 1960s has by now provided massive evidence that this is happening to our world, right now, at the global level. Yet, worldwide decision-making continues unabated, (un)gloriously oblivious of what is actually going on.
To illustrate the weird situation that we are now all in, I share below the slightly edited translation in English of the submission Cool Planet Foundation and its associates in the Fourth Transition Initiative made to the French Government’s public consultation on its multi-year energy planning. This consultation is running until 16 December.[1]Both plan and public consultation are grossly flawed. Yet neither the politicians involved, the civil servants obeying orders, nor French citizens are aware of the serious issues with it all. There is no “conspiracy” in this. The matter is far worse. We face a case of colossal cognitive and decision-making failure, which is extremely dangerous.
The French case is not an exception. Every single country in the world presents variations on the same theme. In my view, this is the greatest challenge we all face while engulfed in the global polycrisis. What I discuss in this submission is why, while they remain caught in the prevailing paradigm, none of the Conferences Of Parties (COPs) of any kind can ever succeed, nor any other effort, strategy, policy, or investment to deal with the Climate Emergency and the other challenges within the Polycrisis. This is why I am now sharing this submission globally.
The skandalon
Making sure one understands the problem before rushing to solutions is fundamental in science. Physicist David Bohm used to stress:
“In scientific enquiries a crucial step is to ask the right question. Indeed, each question contains presuppositions, largely implicit. If these presuppositions are wrong or confused, the question itself is wrong, in the sense that to try to answer it has no meaning. One has thus to inquire into the appropriateness of the question.”[2]
The question asked of French citizens is: To produce energy, to house ourselves, to travel, eat, consume: how can we successfully make the energy transition and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050?
Although apparently reasonable at first glance, it is in fact impossible to reply to this question in ways that are not fairy tale like and thus meaningless. Whoever they may be, neither the bureaucrats who formulated it, the politicians who commissioned this public consultation, nor the majority of well-intended citizens endeavouring to reply to it are apparently aware of its deeply inappropriate character.
In addition, citizens are faced with the obligation to fit their contributions within 140 characters, an impossible task. Contributing citizens are placed into a double bind situation. There are requested to reply while it is in fact impossible to do so. This is cruel and scandalous.
In a recent tribune in Le Monde by Michel Bradé and Alain Grandjean on the French multi-year energy planning (PPE).[3] For those of us in the know, it is clear that what the authors point out in polite terms is that the current French government seeks to have the country endorse in early 2025 choices concerning a plan that is bound to fail on numerous (thermodynamic) counts. This makes this public consultation all the more scandalous.
Scandal comes from the Greek skandalon, the snare or stumbling block. The stumbling block here is that ordinary citizens and parliamentarians alike are not equipped to understand the stakes and decide in an informed way, and neither is the government nor its civil servants.
Some basic facts no one probably ever told you
1. Energy is not a (magical) substance. E.g., coal is not energy. It is a rock that can be used as a store of energy so long as one has the scientific and engineering knowledge to do so. Energy is nothing but a gradient between a high and a low point along a dimension (temperature, pressure, altitude, etc.). Any work results from converting gradients from one dimension into others (e.g., temperature to pressure, to kinetic to voltage). It is in this sense that energy is neither created or destroyed (first principle of thermodynamics). The conversion between gradients must always balance out. When we carry out such conversions, some energy becomes inaccessible to us (second principle of thermodynamics), aka waste energy or entropy. While the processes involve a large amount of materials, at no point do we have a substance called energy. Hence, « to produce energy » is meaningless.
2. Energy cannot be replaced or exchanged with anything else. Without it, i.e., without energy flows passing through systems, no life, no industrial world. In thermodynamics this is called Dead State. This irreplaceable character is the core, basic fact that invalidates the whole of economics, use of money and money-making. It is inescapable. It has been known ever since the clear establishment of thermodynamics principles some 200 years ago and yet remains ignored by 100% of decision-making. The matter is not merely that energy is necessary for any “economic production”. The irreplaceable character is the undoing of all the preconceptions people have about the world they live in. As many other scientists keep pointing out, humans do not see "reality"; they relentlessly construct it according to their beliefs. The way it's done in the GIW has become lethal. The irreplaceable character of energy challenges everyone to radically reconsider critically all they take as “real”, as we shall now see.
The industrial world has entered an unprecedented discontinuity
The whole of decision-making worldwide is based on the unquestioned assumption of continuity. The belief that next year will be basically the same as last year, except hopefully a bit better, with more of whatever. Even when contemplating disruptions or actively developing disruptive technologies, this is always taking place within a context of the ongoingness character of the world within which decision-makers believe they live in. Even perceived threats like climate change remain thought of mostly in a distant, rather foggy long-term and with a view to ensuring continuity of the fabric of “civilisation” whatever each decision-maker may mean by this word.
Instead, core findings and insights based on the work of well over 10,000 scientists and engineers over some 60 years, are four-fold:
1. The show is over. The whole globalised industrial world (GIW) has begun to plunge towards Dead State, i.e., the point when the total energy cost of getting energy, measured in Joules, comes to equate with the total energy obtained, also measured in Joules, and everything grinds to a halt. Energy here is understood as defined earlier. This situation is bound to become irretrievable in the near future (with ~2030 as a critical time horizon). That is, research demonstrates that the GIW has locked itself in a thermodynamic trap accelerating towards Dead State. Most of humankind is now in a “dead man walking” situation with no escape possible with the present technological mix and modes of thinking, deciding, doing and organising socially.
2. The chief causes for this situation are known. For over some 300 years, decision-makers built and developed the industrial world retaining their preindustrial theistic and dualistic mentality/psyche while making use of scientific outcomes produced outside such theisms, that is, outside beliefs in some invisible power expressed in myths, rituals and magical thinking that spelt out in rigid ways what was authorised or forbidden. From the outset of the industrialisation process onwards, decision-makers and associated thinkers, invented economics as the fundamental theism of the industrial world; the fantasy of a perpetual motion machine.[4] They did so in full contradiction with thermodynamics, systems dynamics, the ecology of the whole of Life on Earth (Earth-Life), and some 3 million years of anthropological evolution. This 300 years process has now run its course. Humankind and the whole of Earth-Life now suffer the drastic consequences of idiotic (aka grossly ignorant, from the Greek idiotai, ignorant persons) decision-making over this whole period, and has entered an abrupt breakdown phase of the globalised industrial world.
3. Yet the accumulated research demonstrates that it is perfectly feasible to live 100% sustainably, in prosperous ways, 100% solar-based, in harmony with the whole of Earth-Life, i.e., outside the present thermodynamic trap.
4. Furthermore, this same accumulated research demonstrates that there is at least one way to exit the Dead State trap, pass beyond and achieve the above sustainable modes of living in prosperous ways. We do have the means to do so. However, this requires a profound change concerning how we think, decide, do and organise socially. This is a change that is perfectly achievable rapidly. The remainder of this submission explains how and why this is necessary.
Escaping the core skandalon
In 1981, Marion K. Hubbert put the chief obstacle to addressing the determining thermodynamic challenges of our time concisely, with dead accuracy:
“The world’s present industrial civilisation is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and incompatible intellectual systems:
- the accumulated knowledge of the last four centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy; and
- the associated monetary culture which has evolved from folkways of prehistoric origin.”[5]
To understand this fundamental matter let’s consider the following:
1. Through the monetary process, economics and money-making treat energy as a commodity like any other, exchangeable with any of the other commodities and with labour and capital. To see the inanity of this thinking let’s focus on the simplest analysis of the globalised industrial world (GIW) as comprising two subsystems:
- The global energy supply and use system (GESUS) that encompasses the whole set of energy sources, including “renewables” and
- The non-energy side of the globalised industrial world (NEGIW).
Together, GESUS and NEGIW form the GIW.
2. The GESUS delivers energy to the NEGIW. That is, it’s the sole source of energy for the non-energy side of the globalised industrial world. Presently, there is no replacement for the GESUS. I.e., recent research shows that renewables are a mere addition to the existing GESUS and cannot replace its fossil fuels based components before the full breakdown of the whole industrial system. Without ongoing energy supply the NEGIW dies, and thus the GESUS dies also.
3. Accelerated plunge towards Dead State. Due to the unavoidable, progressive depletion of the energy and materials sources it exploits, the total energy cost of accessing energy (expressed in Joules) is known to increase inexorably and faster than the total energy obtained. Thus the GESUS is less and less able to deliver an energy surplus (aka net energy) to the NEGIW (this includes so-called renewables since they do not enable building an alternative GESUS). No amount of money printing can change this. This is pure thermodynamics. That is, the growth in size and complexity of the GESUS inexorably and exponentially leads to the breakdown of the GESUS x NEGIW system in the near future, aka Dead State.
4. From the above, it ensues that energy is price-less, which is what 100% of economists and money-makers miss. Consider: if decision-making in the GESUS was to increase the price of energy in order to reduce NEGIW’s so-called “energy demand”, part of NEGIW’s businesses and people would die (this is already happening in parts of the world). This strategy would merely prolongate the agony of the GESUS x NEGIW system. If instead, GESUS decision-making was to lower and keep energy prices low, energy use would stay high. This would only shorten the agony. In the end, in both cases all die. That is, there is no viable “energy price” that can be found. This is what nearly everyone misses. Energy, being irreplaceable, functions at best as a referent for what people (magically) call “value”. In other words, considering critically the present extreme situation reveals the absurdity of economic thinking. As Jean Baudrillard, perhaps the most critical social scientist of the 20th century, used to point out, the whole of economics boils down to saying "a dollar is a dollar", i.e., imposing total power and falling into total ridicule all at once. He used to talk of the “impossible exchange”. The thermodynamics of the GESUS x NEGIW system presents this impossible exchange in the crudest and most inescapable way.
5. The price-less character of energy irradiates the whole of the GIW (irradiates as both casting light onto and as revealing the noxious, “radioactive” character of economics and money-making). No human activity can take place without (non-substantial) energy flows. Consider: let’s say someone uses 10kWh of energy at €0.20/kWh for some activity A. The cost is €2. A 250g packet of ground coffee costs also €2. Does it mean that 10kWh = 250g of coffee? Depending on a vast number of processes distributed around the planet, that packet of coffee may have required anywhere between, say, 100kWh to 2kWh to land in our hands but it is most unlikely that it would be 10kWh. That is, any equation like 10kWh of electricity = 250 g of coffee is meaningless. What economists posit as equations is at best the (violent) imposition of a congruence between two terms Modulo a set of power relationships.[6] In other words, any form of economic exchange oriented to making money (i.e., Money —> Stuff —> Money) violently negates thousands of thermodynamics, systems dynamics, ecological and anthropological relationships that all are necessary for ongoing, sustainable life.
6. It ensues from the above that, if energy can’t be priced, nothing else can be priced in any equitable waythat could abide by thermodynamics, systems dynamics, ecology and anthropology. However, hard to take, this conclusion is inescapable. In fact, anthropology shows that throughout historical times prior to the institution of the industrial world, countless societies and cultures have instituted rituals and customs that precisely prevented the violence of pricing and money-making to run riot. Let’s emphasise here that “money” is not a thing. Like energy it has no substance but unlike energy it is not a physical entity. It functions as a kind of label or short hand for transient outcomes of the operations of an enormously complex technological system built on myths and rituals, but that requires rapidly increasing and unsustainable flows of energy for its ongoing existence. It also ensues that “growth” is but a delusional fantasy: there is no reliable metric to “measure” whatever “growth”there may be.
7. Magic, Science and Religion Nexus. The above analysis sustains the anthropological observations that US anthropologist Laura Nader and one of us shared while guest speakers at the 1981 ANZAAS Congress, University of Brisbane, Australia, and that she had brilliantly encapsulated in the title of her paper: Magic, Science and Religion Revisited (in reference to Brownislav Malinowski's famous book). That is, for example, there is no substantial difference between a tie-wearing top executive from a large corporation, dressed in a three-piece suit, and a tribe’s man from, say, the Papua-New Guinea highlands, stark naked but wearing a prominent penian case atop his genitals (the tie is the gendered equivalent of the penian case). Both think, decide, do and socially organise in terms of complex concatenations of magical thinking, beliefs in myths and rituals, and some critical, scientific thinking all wrapped into some pretence to rationality. Both live entirely outside science, trapped into various forms of theisms. In the face of the Dead State threat, this mode of the human psyche has reached the end of the road. By forcibly negating thermodynamics, systems dynamics, ecological and anthropological relationships, it precludes passing beyond Dead State.
8. “It’s the economy, stupid”:[7] the ultimate, lethal theism. Fully secular, i.e., without any specifically identified deity, and posturing as science, economics constitutes the most extreme and most unsustainable form of theism. Its forcible imposition over some 300 years has been and remains extremely violent and sacrificial, i.e., the imposition of money-making in contradiction with thermodynamics, systems dynamics, ecological and anthropological relationships unavoidably result in some parties involved in exchanges being swindled and often sacrificed.
Consider, for example, the "forever chemicals”/PFAS scandal. About 99% of humankind is contaminated. Manufacturers make some US$4 billion/year while the costs to humankind are estimated at some US$17.5 trillion/year. The noxious character of PFAS had to remain hidden so that the money-making could continue. Similarly, about half of French people are over-contaminated with toxic Cadmium due to the use of phosphate fertilisers that are far too high in this metal, simply because of the money-making pressure. This is only a couple of the tips of a huge iceberg. The profitable use of fossil fuels has engendered the sacrificing of countless humans and caused the Climate Emergency affecting the whole of human and non-human life. This is only another tip of the huge iceberg that remains invisible to most.
Put crudely, money-making consists in "buying stuff for 2 peanuts and selling stuff for 4 peanuts”. It does not matter what “stuff” is. What solely matters is the accumulation of “peanuts” in whatever currency. The money-making maybe legal, “grey” or illegal. This is largely irrelevant to economics. Globally, in aggregate the total of the illegal and grey fraction is of comparable size with the legal one. What matters, let’s stress it again, is that economics and money-making thinking and decision-making are inherently swindling, violent and sacrificial processes that have brought humankind to the brink.[8]
Over the last 300 years of forcible acculturation to economics and money-making, most people have become somewhat anesthetised to the sheer horrors of it all. Nowadays, money, money-making and economics are experienced by most as obvious, “neutral”, uncritically taken for granted. It is unthinkable that there could be any other way to live, think, decide, do and organise ourselves socially. While nearly everyone is transfixed by the Climate Emergency and the avalanche of other problems sweeping through the industrial world, now subsumed as the “polycrisis”, almost no one sees the vital necessity of any change.
Yet, humans have been thinking and deciding in this way for only some 0.01% of the whole of humankind’s history (many historians now consider that the postulated split between prehistory and history is irrelevant and meaningless). So, if humans have lived without it for nearly their entire history, they can do so again and must do if they are to pass beyond Dead State. However, attempts to revert to preindustrial, pre-economics systems with no reliance on money would not be viable. Such systems, e.g., various forms of feudalisms or the USSR regime (that functioned largely outside monetary systems and essentially on the bases of hierarchical allegiances) could not but eventually fail (in systems dynamics terms essentially for a lack of requisite variety). Surviving Dead State requires inventing “Something-else” than anything experienced in the past or presently.
9. The entire history of humankind can be seen as a long, haphazard, highly conflictual process of evolution of the human psyche during which thinking in theistic/dualistic ways has constituted merely a recent phase (it is only about 3000 years old). With economics resulting in Dead State, this evolution has now reacheda critical climax, an unavoidable evolutionary break point. There is no ecological niche for about 8 billion hyper-predatory, consumerist humans now so close to Dead State. There is an ecological niche for an intelligent life form able to play a creative, autopoietic role in the self-organising, self-regulating and self-perpetuating dynamics of Earth-Life.
To clarify, autopoietic means just that, a system that not only self-powers but also self-organises and self-maintains. A society or civilisation cannot be deemed sustainable if it is not autopoietic. This autopoietic requirement, that stems directly from rather basic thermodynamics and systems dynamics, means that nothing presently under the label of “sustainable development” is actually sustainable. In turn, the non-dualistic/non-theistic forms of the human psyche required to fill in that niche have been in development for some 2500 years, albeit as minority undercurrents (vis-à-vis the dominant theisms).
The intense selection pressure humankind is now under applies at this juncture. That is, the shift/technological paradigm change required for at least part of humankind to evolve and pass beyond Dead State is happening and will keep happening in a variety of ways. What is being selected against at Earth-Life’s level are theisms, especially economics and money-making. What is being selected for to fill in the known ecological niche is non-dualistic thinking and doing that may enable humankind to blend in Earth-Life’s dynamics that are also inherently non-dualistic. Left to its course, this elimination/selection process is bound to take place under sheer duress, result in a large loss of human and non-human life, and may take a long time to eventuate through arduous trial and error (heuristics).
10. First time: pioneering time. However, now, based on the 2500 years long development of non-dualistic thinking and doing that has led to cutting edge contemporary science, probably for the first time in history, a tiny number of scientists and engineers are able to understand the above dynamics and shorten the evolution process. This is so because the technological-cultural means, the knowledge, expertise and experience required to catalyse an accelerated shift away from unviable theisms and related modes of living are available, enabling to live, and conduct business, 100% without economics and money.
However surprising this may sound, let’s stress it again: over most of humankind’s history most humans have lived and prospered without much use of money, often with no money at all and no notion of “economics”. I am old enough to have experienced some such modes of social existence during my younger years in various rural regions of the world (these modes are now largely gone).
Let’s stress also that all previous transitions have been catalysed and triggered by pioneers who were thinking and doing in ways markedly other than their fellow humans.[9] Their pioneering innovations were then embraced by rapidlyincreasing communities of fellow humans who readily saw the merits of the paradigm changes.
The present situation is no different. This is what the Cool Planet Foundation and the Fourth Transition Initiative (FTI) it is part of are about. They gather scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who have developed the kind of technological-cultural means that are required to achieve a transition beyond Dead State in record time. FTI aims to share these means to enable and assist emerging human communities to invent new ways of producing, trading, doing business, organising socially, and living prosperously in 100% sustainable, i.e., in autopoietic, fashion, wholly without money and wholly without any reliance on any form of beliefs or magic thinking, especially economics.
Conclusion
However, startling the above may seem, what transpires from decades of research and as abundantly demonstrated in FTI’s documentation is that:
1. After some 3 million years of human history, we are at an abrupt evolutionary point, in cultural-technological terms;
2. The fundamental causes for this state of affairs are by now well understood in thermodynamic, systems dynamic, ecology of Earth-Life and anthropological terms;
3. It is perfectly feasible to live 100% sustainably, in prosperous ways, 100% solar-based, in harmony with the whole of Earth-Life – the means and knowledge to do so are available (and no, this does not include non-renewable “renewables”); and
4. There is at least one a way to exit the Dead State trap, pass beyond and achieve such sustainable modes of living.
However, the core impediment to passing safely beyond Dead State is the overriding theism of the industrial world, i.e., economics and the use of money. In other words, surviving Dead State requires a radical double Copernican decentring:
- From the mythical belief that everything revolves around economics to the recognition that everything revolves around thermodynamics. This is necessary since only if the present, acute thermodynamic challenge is addressed, i.e., the loss of the only autopoietic energy supply and use system that the globalised industrial world had, can the myriad other challenges that are encompassed in the global polycrisis can be addressed; and
- From the mythical “man over nature” belief, aka anthropocentrism to an Earth-Life, science-based focus. This is necessary for humankind to survive the intense selection pressure it is now under.
No one in the decision-making world has ever wanted to know any of what led to the present situation, the rapid plunge towards Dead State, nor any of the decades of research tersely summarised above. They could not. No one knowledgeable in these fundamental matters could engage in the money-making game nor believe in economics. Profound ignorance was necessary to pursue money-making activities. This necessary ignorance did not matter too much while plenty of net energy from coal, then oil and gas, was sloshing through the globalised industrial world. The magic show is now over. Its ending manifests the colossal failure of decision-making to date. It was easy to ignore scientists. One ignores Dead State at one’s peril.
Let’s be clear, no multi-year energy programming can ever succeed unless firmly grounded into what has been summarised above. The same applies to all other strategies, policies, investments by all governments and businesses worldwide.
Placing French citizens in an impossible situation of having to reply to a nonsensical question in order to fulfil ideological imperatives is at once cruel, scandalous and non-democratic, all the more so given that the scientific understanding of the dynamic that led to the present global situation began to be understood during the 1970s. The same applies to all other citizens worldwide under unachievable imperatives such as the so-called “Net Zero by 2050”as well as to all related Conference of Parties (COPs).
The Climate Emergency is but a consequence of the thermodynamic drive towards Dead State due to some 300 years of economic idiocy. It is futile to attempt addressing the consequences instead of the cause.
Moreover, in the face of the polycrisis of thermodynamic origin, we observe a dynamic that has become dominant, consisting of adopting responses of the type “every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost”. This dynamic integrates alliances between declining conservative forces and “technology” oligarchs who are promulgating uninhibited libertarian utopias with strong fascist, totalitarian, theist and imperialist components. It preys politically on large masses disillusioned by the failures of consumerism, of the “American dream”, of decolonisation, of “development”, of the post-USSR hopes, etc. In the post-WWII period, a bright future had been promised to the “baby boomers”, to the decolonised, to those in the post-USSR, in the after Mao, etc., to their children, grandchildren, etc., forever. And it did not “work”; it was only fantasies on a “consume and shut up; we’ll take care of everything” mode. These disillusioned masses feel downgraded, deceived and perceive a very bleak future for themselves and their children. They want “something else”; for many, the climate, ecology, democracy, etc., are of little importance. They are easy prey for all the autocratic, even totalitarian, forms of the new “every man for himself”.
All these strategies and policies are doomed to failure. As its name indicates, the GESUS, the global energy supply and use system, is indeed global. All its local, regional and national components are co-dependent on each other and on the global whole. The same is true of the components of the polycrisis. This means that no country, no government can “go it alone”.
Presently, to the best of our knowledge, over 6 billion people are in great danger between 2020 and 2050. This includes the entire French people (even the richest and apparently powerful); and, of course, everyone living in the older industrialised countries as well as most people in the so-called “developing world”. In our submission we thus urged French authorities, as well as French businesses, and all French people to come to terms with the basic realities presented in this submission. In publicising the above analyses broadly we now invite everyone to do the same.
We will be delighted to reply to any question and engage in dialogue with all interested people and parties.
To learn more contact: info@coolplanet-foundation.org
