Sustainable Development Goals

Young people are being encouraged to embrace the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals defined by the UN following the success of some of the Millennium Development goals. Global poverty has been markedly reduced while education of the poor substantially improved this century.

However, the goals are no more than wishful thinking as they are not based on what is physically possible. The primary objective of sustainable development is not possible because the operations of industrialized civilization irreversibly use up limited natural resources, produces irrevocable waste material and degrades the terrestrial and marine eco systems. This operation is an unsustainable process.

The most that sound policies can do is slightly ameliorate some of the seventeen listed predicaments. This, of course, would be admirable and is a remedial policy to be encouraged even though it is based on an anthropocentric delusion. Those who contribute to enabling these processes will have the satisfaction of doing something that is clearly worthwhile. This movement by the young will tend to counter to a small degree the common wide spread aspiration for a high material standard of living regardless of the deleterious impact on the environment and the disadvantaged people. It will give the smart youngsters pride in easing some of the problems created by the unwise decisions of their elders and ancestors. However, they need to understand that there is a practical limit to what can be done in regressing to cope with the identified predicaments. The Sustainable Development Goals are only a pie in the sky!

However, it is expected that ELAM (Earth's Lodgers' Activity Movement) will provide a more realistic agenda for the young to embrace in coping with the inevitable powering down during the coming decline of industrialized civilization. How will society cope with the rapidly decreasing land, sea and air transportation capabilities as liquid fuels become very scarce? How will they cope with decreasing communication capabilities as electronic devices and electricity become very scarce? 

Distorted perspective

The possibility of intelligent life on some of the multitude of planets in the universe appears to be quite a consideration of some cosmologists, probably because it aids their academic careers to publish seemingly knowledgeable arguments on the subject.

Of course, they are not required by society to put this issue in appropriate time perspective. After all, most people are only concerned with what has happened in recent times and what is likely in coming years here on Earth. Some have a mild interest in the speculation of cosmologists about what has happened over past eons in the vastness of the universe. The space efforts of NASA and other organizations are of wide interest largely because of the impact of satellites on what they can use and do. The increased knowledge of what it is like on Mars is an interesting abstraction that does not rate as highly in society as the doings of entertainment and sporting (human) stars.

The time reality does not, however, appear to be taken into account by those who speculate on possibility of intelligent life on other planets. The universe has developed for billions of years with galaxies coming and going. It is quite likely that intelligent life on Earth will last for only millennia. The demise of industrialized civilization is certain within centuries as the limited natural resources are used up, while the surviving human population will not have the tools to survey the stars. If any intelligent life has existed for millennia on other planets it is most unlikely that they are in existence now. Those who speculate on making contact with intelligent life on other planets do not take that time factor into account. The slight possibility that intelligent life will develop on some planets in the distant future is an issue that no doubt some people will speculate on!

No doubt most people will continue to strive to make do as global economies start to contract and the views of cosmologists will be only a very minor distraction among even the the most learned.

Anthropocentrism hallucination

Anthropocentrism is the hallucination in society of regarding humans as the central element of the universe. It involves interpreting reality exclusively in terms of human values and experience, often without understanding of what is really happening..

 

There are many examples of how this lack of understanding has led to mistaken attempts to emulate nature in providing services. An example is the installation of desalination plants to provided communities with potable water and or irrigation. The hydrological cycle is how natural forces have use energy from sunshine to supply water in rain and snow for eons with an ecological cost (such as the damage due to floods) that is remedied over time by other natural forces. It has been and will continue to be a major factor in natural operations such as plant growth and organisms operations. 

 

Desalination plants provide potable water by using electrical energy (often from coal fired power stations emitting the greenhouse gases contributing to climate disruption and ocean acidification and warming). Ironically, these plants need cooling water circulated by using electrical energy in their operation. These plants are made of irreplaceable materials and have limited lifetimes so their operation is unsustainable process. So they are an eco costly emulation, not substitution, of the hydrological cycle.

 

That is, they are a common example of the failure of costly technological systems to emulate freely available natural processes. Despite these failings, proponents argue that desalination plants are often justified to meet the range of needs of industrialized civilization when what is freely available from natural operations is insufficient.

 

There is failure to understand that systems such as desalination plants are only temporary expedients. Installing these expedients as the population and infrastructure (and severity of climate change) grow only makes the inevitable collapse of the infrastructure and the die off of the population harder to deal with.

demise of airliners

Appreciable research is under way in an endeavor to determine a viable alternative to the jet fuel derived from oil. This research is driven by the requirement to reduce emissions from the exhausts of jet engines in aircraft as well as the fact that the availability of oil is expected to decline in the future. There is a vast airline industry operating something like 200,00 airliners. An airliner consumes around 150,000 litres of jet fuel per flight. For example, a Boeing 747 consumes 4 litres/sec  So something like 3 x 10exp10 litres per day of jet fuel is being used.

Bio fuels are being promoted as a viable alternative. Fundamental energy relations show that these fuels cannot possibly meet the demand for jet fuels so the demise of most airline (and other aircraft) operations this century is certain.

Sunshine powers the production of the bio mass needed for bio fuels. About half of the amount of sunshine energy producing the biomass is available in the bio fuel produced. This means that about 15 hours of sunshine on a square metre of plant are required to produce the amount of energy in a litre of fuel. That is, about 3 square metres of plant are required to each day supply the energy provided by a litre of fuel. Plants do not have anything like the energy density of oil. The energy in jet fuel is about 35 MJ/L so airliners use abut 10exp12 MJ/day of energy in the fuel consumed in their operations. So something like 10exp11 square metres (10exp5 square Km, about 1 per cent of the area of USA) would be required of bio fuels to meet the present airliner demand. This would have to be in addition to the amount of land used for other purposes, including food production.
Research into using hydrogen as an alternative jet fuel decades ago did not get very far because it has such a low energy density in its gaseous form that the necessary fuel tanks would have been enormous. Cooling it to its liquid form was not technically practical on an aircraft.
.

Energy issues alone do not determine what is reasonable or even feasible. The extraction, transportation and processing of oil to yield jet fuel entails the use of energy and materials in technological systems that irrevocably age so need maintenance. In the main, these systems exist around the globe.

The growing, processing and transportation of bio mass to provide bio jet fuel entails the future installation of a massive eco costly, aging system. Yet it can only meet only a small portion of the demand. So airliners (and other aircraft) are a doomed species!

demise of shipping

http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/ Provides details of the fuel oil consumed in vast quantities in the operation of the fleet of 90,000 cargo vessels carrying 90 % of the goods of global trade. It's the cheapest and most polluting fuel available and the world's ships chew through an astonishing 7.29 million barrels of it each day, or more than 84% of all exported oil production from Saudi Arabia, the worlds largest oil exporter. The article focuses on the polluting effects of the exhausts from the engines and consequent effect on human health.  A single large container ship can emit cancer and asthma-causing pollutants equivalent to that of 50 million cars. The UN's International Maritime Organisation (IMO), which regulates shipping for 168 member nations, last October enacted new mandatory standards for phasing in cleaner engine fuel. By 2020, sulphur in marine fuel must be reduced by 90% although this new distilled fuel may be double the price of current low grade fuels. There are nuclear powered military and ice breaker ships but the in-feasibility of nuclear powering of cargo vessels was determined decades ago.The powering of some vessels by liquefied natural gas (LNG) will have insignificant impact on the holistic predicament.

There is no mention in the article of the effects of the emissions from these ships on climate change. There is no mention of the fact that the global stocks of oil are limited and oil will be getting beyond reach in the near future. There is no mention of the fact that these ships are built of irreplaceable materials and have limited life times. It appears that the decision makers around the globe do not understand these fundamental physical principles.There are already 3,693 new ship builds on the books for ocean going vessels over 150 meters in length due over the next three years. So ship builders will be facing the same grave predicament in due course as the shipping  firms and importing/exporting countries  as global trade disappears down the black hole. Society will have to cope with the inevitable powering down following the black swan event of the closure of global trade.

Resource scarcity predicament

“Scarcity: Humanity’s Final Chapter?” by Christopher O. Clugston provides a comprehensive analysis of the limited current and most likely future availability and usage of 89 non-renewable natural resources (NNR)  (fossil fuels, metals, non-metallic minerals). The amount of authoritative data  (referred to in a comprehensive End Notes and References chapter) it provides underpins the basic  tenet that this usage of NNR is an unsustainable process.

It covers the usage of the various NNR profiles in the extraction/production levels in appreciable detail in the Appendixes chapter. This information identifies whether the NNR is used in the production of goods, the provision of services or the construction, operation and maintenance of infrastructure. It does not deal with the wastes produced by these processes or the impact on the environment of these operations.

The economic viability  of the production of NNR is considered . This is quite surprising because often the future production of an NNR will be dependent on the availability of other NNR rather than an assumed future financial cost.

In Epilog, Clugston calls for an intelligent response to ‘humanity’s’ predicament. But he has identified the scarcity of NRR as being a predicament when it is only one of those that society will inevitably have to deal with.

The Myths and Reality chapter deals with a number of common myths and the associated reality. Ironically the major myth that NRR scarcity is the only predicament is not covered. Coping with global overpopulation and aging is a difficult one. Dealing with the aging of the vast infrastructure that society has become so dependent on is another predicament. So is coping with the devastation of the environment (including climate change, ocean acidification together with reducing fertile soil and aquifer water availability) by the operation of technological systems

Many of the comments on the myths covered in the book are very perceptive within that limited context. The myths dealt with in the book are discussed in the following.

 ‘Human Ingenuity and Initiative Can Solve any Problem’. The Reality comment is sound except that it refers to ‘economically viable NNRs’. The reality is that possible physical operations will determine what NNRs are viable. Money can only affect the decisions made about these possibilities whilst it holds its value.

‘Economic and Political Solutions Can Solve Any Problem’. The Reality comment sums up the situation with respect to NRR scarcity very well. But that is not the only problem facing society.

 ‘We Will Grow Our Way Out of It’. This myth has a big influence on the attitudes of the political and industrial ‘leaders’ in society and the masses go along with that delusion. The Reality comment deals with the limitations of financial markets, particularly the growth of debt, to cope with the increasing cost of NRR as these costs now become more apparent.

 ‘Everything is Cyclical – with an Upward Bias’. The Reality comment points out the past nature of the ups and downs  have occurred while requirements for NNR could be easily met. That delusion cannot continue as a range of NRR become scarce. The commitment to use many NNR to operate and maintain the vast existing infrastructure as it irrevocably ages is not taken into account

‘Plentiful NNR Supplies Remain to be Discovered’. Surprisingly the Reality comment refers to ‘economically viable NRRs’ when it is ‘ecologically and physically viable NRRs’ that will set the limits. But the essential point is that there are limits to the NRRs that can possibly be extracted. Innovative technology can only extend these limits slightly because most advances have already being made.

‘”Official” NNR Estimates Typically Understate Remaining Reserve Quantities’. The Reality comment  explains how the misleading estimates have contributed to the common misunderstanding of what will happen to NNR supply.

‘Increasing NNR Prices Always Bring About Sufficient NNR Supplies’. The Reality comment again deals with ‘economic viability of NRRs’. Increased NNR prices have had a significant influence on supply in the past  but that influence will change dramatically as NNRs become scarcer.

‘We Can Always Produce Additional NNRs’. The Reality comment focuses on the economic aspects of NNRs supply when the reality aspects are likely to have a major impact. For example, there is growing social and political pressure to reduce the mining and use of coal due to the impact of the consequential emissions on the climate.

‘Legal Restrictions Currently Limit Access to Plentiful NNR Supplies’. The Reality comment provides sound refutation perspective.

 ‘NRR Substitution will Eliminate NNR Scarcity’. The Reality comment provides refutation perspective but based on intangible financial considerations rather than sound technical issues. 

 ‘Technical Innovation Will Insure Sufficient Incremental NNR Supplies’. The major point in the Reality comment is that technology can marginally increase the supply of NNR but it cannot create additional NNRs.

 ‘Incremental Financial Investment Will Insure Sufficient NNR Supplies’. The major point made in the Reality comment is that NNR exploration and production are subject to diminishing marginal returns as they become fewer, smaller, lower grade and less accessible. Oil is a typical example of this predicament with the use of fracking being an example of the developing predicament for sections of the oil industry.

 ‘Recycling Will Extend NRR Supplies Indefinitely’. The Reality comment provides perspective on both the impossibility of recycling of some NNRs and the limited practicality of others.

‘NNR Conservation Will Enable US to Reduce NNR Utilization Levels’. The Reality comment questions whether that will ever occur because of its impact. The real point is that NNR are being irreversibly used up even if the rate of utilization is reduced.

‘Increased Efficiency and Enhanced Productivity Will Reduce NNR Requirements, Demand and Utilization’. The Reality comment points out that these improvements actually tend to reduce human labor.

‘Population Stabilization Will Solve our NNR Scarcity Problem’. The Reality comment points out that even if the unlikely population stabilization did occur, it would only slow down the rate of usage of NNR.

‘”Stopping Growth”, “Downscaling”, or “Moving toward Sustainability” Are Viable Solutions to NNR Scarcity’. The Reality comment points out that these would only slow down the rate of usage of NNR so defer global societal collapse. This is misleading. NNR are used for the operation of the infrastructure of civilization. Decisions to cut back on the operations of the infrastructure do not lead to societal collapse.

‘We Can Avert Societal Collapse through a “Soft Landing”, ‘Humanity’s Real Problem is the Unequal Distribution of Wealth’. Again the Reality comment focuses on what will happen to society when NNRs become scarce when it is the operation of the infrastructure that will be the developing predicament.

 ‘Advanced Nations Such as the US Are Less Dependent on NNRs’. The Reality comment soundly sums the situation for the US. It applies to the developed economies but not to the developing ones.

 ‘Pre-collapse Preparation is the Answer’. The Reality comment notes that society has handled isolated disasters in the past but not the scale of disasters related to ever-increasing NNR scarcity.

‘Post-collapse Preparation is the Answer’. The Reality comment deals only with how some people will cope with obtaining fundamentals. It does not deal with how people will cope with the loss of such services as electricity for heating, air conditioning and communication or liquid fuels for land, se and air transportation.

 ‘Post-collapse Life Will Be Preferable to Our Industrial Lifestyle Paradigm’. Again, the Reality comment deals with how people will react without taking into account the services they will have to do without.

There are a number of other views amongst people, including the powerful, that are myths that distort our world view. The major myth is that continuing economic growth is possible. Numerous knowledgeable people (including Clugston) have provided convincing arguments for decades as to why this growth is not sustainable but many governments still pursue this delusion. Asian countries, with China and India leading the way, are doing their utmost to emulate Western countries even as their ecosystems deteriorate.

Another major myth is that using physical energy for the operation of technological systems can be done without taking into account the associated transformation of material to waste and the aging of the processing system due to friction. Even scientists have failed to point out the misunderstanding that has led to this myth. Climate disruption and ocean acidification and warming is the major deleterious consequence of belief in that myth but society will also have to deal with the disintegration of infrastructure. That is a developing predicament due to that lack of understanding of the ecological cost of necessary maintenance.  

Clugston effectively defines one of the major predicaments that global society will have to deal with as effectively as possible in coming decades. His book is but one contribution to insight into how industrialized civilization really operates in providing people with throw away goods and sometimes useful services without taking into account the irreparable and unsustainable ecological cost. Despite these warnings (in peer reviewed academic papers, books like Clugston’s and in online forums) by numerous knowledgeable and concerned people over many years, society blithely continues to head down this devastating path. Clugston refers to many of these sound contributions in End Notes and references.

The coming scarcity of NNRs is only one of the predicaments that society will have to deal with this century. The loss of services provided by the aging infrastructure has been noted above. The role of friction in this irrevocable process is not widely recognized even though the need to use energy and materials (NNRs) for maintenance is.

Concern about irrevocable climate change is even growing in governments but this predicament and the associated ocean acidification and warming is not yet being realistically addressed. Neither is the damage being caused by the production of a wide range of land, sea, air and organism pollutants.

However, over population is probably the gravest predicament for society as food shortage is likely to be the major factor in the inevitable die off. The declining availability of NNRs will have a major impact on all aspects of food supply from land preparation to serving up.

The trickle up of material standard of living that capitalists have been promoted for decades is clearly coming to an end in many Western countries and this is leading to social disruption, particularly among the young.

Ironically, many organisms have been responding to environmental disruption for decades yet most of society is only slowly waking up to these unintended consequences of industrialization. The ‘leaders’ of society are still blinded by the delusionary economic growth paradigm.

The cancer that is anthropocentrism will continue to dominate thinking amongst even the powerful in society until reality becomes too painful. Making money for wealthy (financially but not environmentally wise) investors will continue to dominate the decision processes until money inevitably loses its potency as the predicaments take over control.

It is ironical that a wise Roman summed up a long time ago what society is doing wrong.

Tertullian died before the start of the third century crisis that saw the Roman empire nearly disintegrating in a series of military defeats, civil wars, economic collapse, and currency devaluation. If Tertullian had been living today, he would be called a terrorist. But he, like many others, was just reacting to the increasing shrill and absurd official propaganda of his times. 

His view was “...our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly supply us from its natural elements; our wants grow more and more keen, and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, whilst Nature fails in affording us her usual sustenance. In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race.”

A worrisome diagnosis

Some people consider it to be a funny world as they strive to cope with the behaviour of the economy and what the pundits have to say about what the future holds. Those who consider what is actually happening rather than the hype of politicians, economists and the media see nothing laughable about what society and its tools are doing to the natural support system, the terrestrial and marine environments. These rationalists have no doubt that decisions based on the flow of intangible money will continue to dominate the decisions, often unwise, being made about which possible tangible operations will be implemented. The elite in society will ensure that their leverage of money will largely support their agenda despite the cost to the rest of society or the natural life support system.

This is the way society, especially in the developed countries, has operated for centuries with innovative technology increasing the production of goods and the provision of services as well as the construction, operation and maintenance of the vast infrastructure that society has become so dependent on. Many of the millions who live in cities enjoy comfortable living and working conditions and the convenience of virtually unlimited land, sea and air travel. Ironically, this development is only one side of the balance sheet! The ecological cost has not been offset against the financial cost. Even worse, society has deemed it has the right to consume many irreplaceable natural resources, including the fossil fuels, without paying for the divestment of natural material wealth. Freely using these resources has been and still is the dominant policy. The mining , shipping and processing of these resources is a major application of technology at an energy, material and environmental cost of this unsustainable process in the long term, despite the contrary propaganda.

 The current volatility of global financial markets are the main concern of investors who have made money, often out of thin air rather than by physical effort, and they lust for more. The employed public continues to strive for a high material standard of living even though it means going into more debt. And industry is only too willing to oblige as it makes more money for their management as well as for the investors.

However, governments have the range of the usual political, economic, ethnic, military, territorial and resource problems to deal with as best they can. They are only slowly coming around to understanding that there are irrevocable symptoms that nature is fighting back. Climate change is now on their agenda but it is still not given the warranted treatment by even the media. The cries of the scientists are still largely falling on deaf ears due to  the rustling sound of dollars. Knowledgeable online groups are sounding out about the numerous other symptoms of what civilization has and is doing wrong but they are also being drowned out, but by the online social media revolution.

So ocean warming and acidification continues to devastate the marine  ecosystem. Soil fertility continues to decline as nutrients continue to be flushed into rivers and oceans even as the more common floods add to this devastation. Fracking to extract oil is not the only process that is deleteriously affecting ground water in many regions. Rapid species extinctions are causing concern in many communities but few understand what that is doing irrevocably to biodiversity.

These symptoms of what the operations of civilization are doing to nature are bad enough when all the dots are joined to provide the holistic view. But that is only one side of what is irrevocably happening. As noted, society is very dependent on the infrastructure of industrialized civilization. That infrastructure is irrevocably aging as its sustenance declines. The skyscrapers  that are now dominating so many cities around the world will become very vulnerable as electricity becomes scarce because of the demise of the generating  stations and the associated grids. Trade globalization will decline as the fuel oi used by container vessels inevitably becomes very scarce. But how will tourists, scientists, politicians and business people cope with the inevitable  loss of airline services. The public at large will find it hard to get over their love of the convenience  of using cars for commuting and leisure  but the elite will welcome the disappearance of traffic congestion.

These symptoms of the intractable disease of the current industrial civilization  provide a worrisome diagnosis that society will have to try to cope with.

Aging of Tityas

The biological aging of organisms is an acknowledged fact even though the controlling  mechanism is not well understood by even the experts. Birth, growth, senescence and demise is the lot of all animate organisms from cells, to mice, to humans, to elephants, to whales with the time scales varying tremendously.

Tityas is the name I have given to the vast, inanimate infrastructure of civilization. It is the collection of technological systems that uses energy and materials to provide society with goods and services during their inevitably limited life times. They range from power grids to pipelines to skyscrapers to aircraft carriers to container vessels to airliners to sewerage systems to air conditioners to heating systems to TV to iPhones and many other familiar systems. They all made of largely irreplaceable materials (some can be recycled by using energy and materials) and while energy flow does positive work during their operation, various forms of friction do the negative work that is the aging of the systems. This aging process is common knowledge and maintenance procedures are routinely carried out on individual systems to limit that deleterious activity but only whilst the necessary energy and materials (also money and skilled personnel) are available.

Therefore, the irrevocable aging of Tityas is an ongoing process that is using up the limited natural material resources, including the fossil fuels, while producing immutable waste material causing such problems as climate disruption and ocean warming and acidification. After the growth powered by the fossil fuels and nuclear of recent centuries, Tityas is now moving into its senescence due to the increasing difficulty of obtaining its nutrients, such as oil.

So while there is lack of understanding of the aging process in animate organisms, the irrevocable aging of inanimate Tityas is a continuing understandable process that will lead to the demise of many of its organs in the near future. Society will find it hard to cope with the deleterious impact on Tityas as the services it has provided decline.
This is an irrefutable aspect of what will happen to industrialized civilization. How people will cope with this challenge is an open question. But a die off is certain due to a number of reasons, including starvation.

Disparity between natural and artificial operations

Natural forces control the four natural operations that have characterized what happened in the terrestrial and marine ecosystems during evolution over aeons, do so now and will continue to do so far into the future. They are:

·         A host of physical operations cycle as they influence what happens. Earth cycling around the Sun: the Moon cycling around Earth: the seasons, tides, the hydrological cycle all play their part in controlling continuing operations.

·         Flora, fauna and fungi individually have limited life times but collectively have a continuing impact on operations by reproducing. Information in their seeds defines what natural forces will do in controlling functioning and growth during their lives.

·         Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are traumatic natural events that occur spasmodically due to the abnormal operation of powerful underground natural forces. They are disruptive but are often constructive. 

·         Various forms of friction continually age all forms of geological and biological systems.

In combination, these measures constitute the self-organizing and self-regulating, sustainable natural processes of evolution.

On the other hand, humans have invented and implemented technological systems in recent millennia that:

·                                       In most cases use limited and irreplaceable natural material resources to provide the energy and material to construct, operate and maintain the systems during their limited lifetime.

·                                        Produce waste material that on many occasions pollutes land, sea, air and organisms, including humans, and disrupts ecosystems by causing climate change and ocean heating and acidification. Only some of this waste can be recycled by using other technological systems.

·                                       These systems can only be reproduced if sufficient natural material resources are still available.

·                                          Various forms of friction continually age these technological systems by doing negative work.

·                                          Occasional failures of technological systems are traumatic events that are both disruptive and destructive.

In combination, these measures constitute the financially semi-regulated, semi-organized and unsustainable operation of industrialized civilization. 

This difference between natural physical operations and the artificial physical operations of industrialized civilization is the stark reality that people, including the powerful in society, do not take into account because they do not really understand what the foundational principles are. They believe in the power of intangible money

Objectives of the ELAM (Earth’s Lodgers’ Activity Management) movement.

Abstract

Society has an anthropocentric delusion fostered by the powerful in government and industry and accentuated by the mainstream media that continuing growth of the economy is possible. It conjures up the common belief that sufficient natural material resources will always continue to be available to enable this growth even though consumption of these resources underpins all materialistic operations. This fallacy is examined in this essay in order to indicate means by which society can steer the future as economic contraction inevitably sets in. Can society meet the challenge of living with what nature can continue to provide?

Technology has provided civilization with the means to irreversibly use up these limited natural material resources, produce irretrievable material wastes and degrade the environment. Climate change is just one symptom of the holistic malfeasance ordained by society using technological systems. It does this in providing the goods, services and temporary infrastructure society has become so dependent on. That operation of these technological systems is an unsustainable process that society will eventually have to cope with by powering down during the senescence of the infrastructure.  This coping process can be fostered by widespread understanding of the damage and divestment these systems of civilization are irrevocably doing. It can contribute to many people making sound decisions about what natural resources they need to use.

 ELAM (Earth’s Lodgers’ Activity Management) movement can steer humanity by providing understanding of what has gone wrong. This understanding will help humanity rise to the challenge of steering future developments as much as it is physically possible. It will require the population to accept greater responsibility for its usage decisions in exchange for having the right to use up natural material resources. This is not a dystopian vision. It is a realistic vision of true democracy. This change in attitude can only come about by educating all into what technological systems are doing wrong rather than focussing on what they supply. The accent to date has been on the benefits of technological innovations without taking into account the irrevocable ecological costs. The focus of ELAM should tend towards having skills that aid society in coping with what is happening rather than encouraging greater consumption. Improved understanding will encourage altruism and pride in underwriting a society making best possible use of the remaining natural resources.

 

 

Objectives of the ELAM (Earth’s Lodgers’ Activity Management) movement.

Basic operational principles

Humanity needs to really understand the operational scene to be able to steer the future to some extent. It is of assistance in identifying the operational principles of industrialized civilization to separate the considerations into those dealing with what people are deciding and personally doing from actually what happens in the operation of the installed technological systems, the materialistic infrastructure of civilization (termed Tityas here to simplify the discussion). The vast majority of people have a biased, anthropocentric view of how civilization operates: a view centred on the role of intangible money on the economy.  A section of society, called Preds here, have gained materially by financial misuse of capabilities while the masses, called Paras here, strive to go along with the delusion.

That anthropocentric view (called Myopia in this essay to emphasize its misleading role) is the primary reason for the failings of this civilization in wasting nature’s material bounty. Real world operations, as always determined by natural forces, are discussed before expanding on how Myopia distorts the views and decisions of people.

                                         

People have only a minor direct physical impact on the operation of the ecosystems of Gaia (the natural world named by Lovelock). Their inputs of air, food and liquids and outputs of gaseous, liquid and solid wastes are trivial items in the overall scheme of things in operations. This basic mode of operation has always been the characteristic of living organisms and will always continue. However, the production of the food, the supply of potable water and the disposal of the liquid and solid wastes do place an appreciable load on the operation of installed technological systems. The supply of potable water, the disposal of sewerage, the transportation, storage and cooking of food are just some of the basic services provided by these systems irreversibly using up natural resources to provide the energy to do the positive work on the systems, which are made of irreplaceable material.

Forms of friction always do negative work at the same time although that is not generally recognised even though the consequential aging of the systems is. The lubrication oil in car engines reduces the influence of friction but it does not stop the engines from aging. Ironically friction is very beneficial in many circumstances. The car could not move without friction enabling traction – and wear of the tyres together with heating. Even walking would not be possible without the action of friction, as people who try to walk on a frozen lake realize. A billiard ball rolls when struck due to friction. Newton’s Second Law of Motion is that force equals mass times acceleration. The motion is the result of the applied force but the motion is resisted by friction. Drop a ball. Gravity (the positive force) accelerates the ball but aerodynamic drag due to friction (the negative force) reduces the acceleration slightly.

All organisms operate within a range of natural physical constraints in their environment. Birds (and humans) need to have access to air but dolphins live in ocean waters. Bacteria inhabit soil, water, and the deep portions of Earth’s crust. Bacteria also live in relationships with plants and animals (including humans). The degree of free will of organisms to feed, reproduce and engage in other activities is thereby limited by the applicable constraints. However, some of the limitations on human beings have been markedly reduced in recent times. Many people now-a-days can exercise their free will by deciding to fly away on an overseas holiday. Communication across vast distances is easy.  Even feeding and reproducing have been ameliorated to a degree by advances in the services provided by technology together with advances in knowledge. These social improvements are because the development of Tityas has temporarily removed many of the physical constraints. So people are often misusing their free will because of lack of understanding of the long term consequences of the irrational devastation by Tityas of Gaia’s bounty. Embracing online services has become popular even though the production and operation of electronic devices is an unsustainable process. How will people cope with the withdrawal of these and other services. A popular movement embracing a high proportion of the population embracing frugality and rationality will be needed to ease the inevitable powering down.

Humans have invented the means to use up limited natural material resources to provide the energy and the materials to produce goods, supply services and to manufacture, operate and maintain the infrastructure of civilization. These technological systems do not create anything, despite what most people believe. Chemistry has produced many innovative products, often with unintended consequences, only by using reactions in a way that have not evolved naturally. These systems only use natural forces to irreversibly use natural material resources to produce things. Humans have used technology to give Tityas this capability without understanding that it can only be temporary. They do not take into account that various systems transform eighty six million barrels of irreplaceable oil to fumes each day because they seem to believe, for some incomprehensible reason, that it can continue to be extracted in the foreseeable future. Doubtless they believe that technology will improve sufficiently to make good the situation as the quality of the remaining reserves declines. Those who have invested in fracking to recover shale oil will soon learn the mistake the hard way. And oil is only one of many of nature’s bounty being consigned to the scrap heap every day.

The inanimate, tangible infrastructure, from the cities down, is a gigantic organism, constructed, operated and maintained by using up materials mined by using fossil fuel or nuclear power to provide most of the energy for the necessary machinery. Skilled workers are another essential input to this process. The flow of money to finance these operations is an intangible determinant of which possible tangible operations are carried out.  Financial market “forces” tend to balance out supply and demand, even when the demand is irrational and the supply is limited by physical constraints! All components of this infrastructure have limited lives due to the aging action of natural forces, with friction doing negative work in response to the positive work of the energy flow. Some of these components will be replaced when required (often because they are worn out by the friction) only so long as the required material, energy, machinery and skilled personnel are still available. Financing of the operation will depend on this ability to mount the tangible operation to meet the demand of society. However, that is an unsustainable replacement process because the materials are irreversibly degraded and are not replenishing naturally in a timely manner. The transformation of hydrocarbons in fossil fuels to carbon dioxide, water vapour and other material by combustion is the outstanding example of what is happening to materials. Most of the energy used is capital out of the crustal store. The usefulness of solar ‘renewable’ energy income is limited by the form of systems (such as wind farms) required to convert the solar energy to electrical energy and how long they can operate.  Financing cannot affect that principle although it will affect which possibilities are implemented.

The extraction of various forms of oil to provide the fuel for land, sea and air transportation vehicles is the major operation being unsustainably carried out. As the output from the giant oil fields in the Middle East, North Sea and elsewhere declines, industry embraces desperate methods such as fracking and oil sands to try to meet the continuing demand. However, the decreasing supply of many other materials will gradually cause other predicaments for society that can only be mitigated by sound decisions based on understanding of physical reality rather than the delusionary power of money. For example, the increasing difficulty in mining the vast range of rare earth minerals will have a deleterious impact on the availability of electronic devices. How will people cope without the online services they have become so dependent on? Phosphorus has a significant impact on food production yet its supply from the remaining natural sources is rapidly decreasing.              

 Science provides understanding of many aspects of what is irreversibly happening in the operation of natural and technological systems. The natural forces that control the growth of species of trees in various regions do not differ in principle from those that control the operation of a coal-fired power station supplying electricity. The action of these forces is prescribed by natural laws, even when humans have had no understanding of these laws. This fundamental principle has operated for eons. Scientists have provided sufficient understanding of some of these concepts in recent times to enable the industrial revolution without appreciation of some of the ramifications. Rapid, irreversible climate change with ocean heating and acidification is just one of the unintended consequences of this lack of understanding. However, the most basic one is that the technological systems of civilization do not naturally reproduce while most of the natural systems, including people, do. That is the fundamental difference between the tree and the coal-fired power station. The tree’s design together with its growth and senescence programs are in its seed, sunlight provides the energy for its growth while rainfall and soil nutrients provide the materials. The leaves it sheds and its wood contribute to natural recycling processes if humans do not interfere. Engineers design the power stations and oversee their construction, operation and maintenance using materials out of the crustal store. The power stations consume coal from this store and use water in the electricity generation process during their limited lifetimes. They may be replaced by using up more resources if circumstances permit. The fundamental difference between people and robots is similar. Robots do not naturally replenish even though their designers aim, with some success, to have their invention emulate people! And cities do not recycle. They just continue to demand the use of vast amounts of natural resources in a process that is not possibly sustainable although that reality is beyond the ken of most people. The populations of past Egyptian, Sumerian, Maya, Kmer and other civilizations learned the lesson the hard ward. Myopia is a delusion!  

 A fundamental hypothesis is that while natural processes in Gaia intrinsically cycle or reproduce so are sustainable, artificial (technological) processes in Tityas can only recycle or reproduce in some circumstances so the process is basically unsustainable.  The hydrological cycle naturally provides rainfall and snow. The carbon cycle is a major factor in respiration of animals and the photosynthesis of plants. However, electricity is just one product of technology that does not recycle. Consequently, the demise of Tityas is certain while Gaia will very slowly recover from the damage that Tityas has done.

The discussion of energy by governments, industry and the media as though it is a separate commodity contributes significantly to the misunderstanding about what is irrevocably happening in materialistic operations. Even engineers do this when they discuss processes without considering the systems in which the process operates! The fact that useful energy (chemical, electrical, kinetic, gravitational potential or heat) is always a property of materials is generally not explicitly taken into account. Thermodynamics is an engineering subject that deals with entropy increase in processes without discussion of the mechanism that causes the energy dissipation, which is friction doing negative work. This invariably occurs in a system made of materials and friction plays the major role in the dissipation of energy to heat as well as the transformation of material to waste. Car tyres heat up and wear out due to the friction that provides traction. Cars find it hard to gain traction on an icy road as the friction is low. Planes cannot fly in space because they need the friction between the flow of air and the wing surface to generate lift and drag. The heart does essential work in pumping blood through arteries and veins against friction. The irreversible flow of energy is necessary in all materialistic operations but consideration of that process alone is not sufficient for understanding of what invariably happens: the aging of the system also needs to be taken into account.

What society is doing wrong

The human race has acquired a mix of myths, false beliefs, arrogance and lack of understanding of physical operations that contribute to the Myopic (delusionary) view that it has acquired. Myopic views exist, essentially, at the three levels of reductionist  knowledge of the physics of tangible operations, biased views of the powerful in society of the role of intangible money and belief by the masses of the hype that has been generated.

 Specialists in a wide range of natural science fields have deep reductionist understanding in their fields that contributes little to the holistic understanding of the global malfeasance. Biologists have acquired an appreciable amount of data on the damage the operations of industrial civilization have done to the biodiversity that had developed for eons. Marine biologists are horrified at what they are learning about what has irreversibly happened in the oceans. Climatologists have been trying for decades to convince the powerful in society that irreversible rapid climate change is already under way due to the misunderstanding of the viability of obtaining energy from the hydrocarbons in fossil fuels. Medical experts are gaining more evidence of the harm being done by the industrial toxic wastes polluting land, sea, air and organisms, including people.

The pronouncements of these experts are discounted in the mainstream as they have little impact discernible to the masses or on the monetary decisions being made by the elite. Powerful people have little education in, so understanding of, physical sciences so are entranced with the power of money to grow economies. They believe that natural resources can be freely used despite their education into the virtue of balance sheets! Industrialists are motivated to pursue profit without having to pay the ecological costs. They do not see that the divestment of natural wealth as being their responsibility. The masses pursue as best they can a high material standard of living by working to the best of their ability and voting in politicians to make what often turns out to be irresponsible decisions (biased by Myopia).

That lack of reasonable perspective in society is compounded by a number of issues.
The production of goods and services involves three processes, the flow of money, the application of the intellectual and manual skills of the workers and the irreversible divestment of the limited natural material wealth. The ecological cost of the third item and its unsustainability is not taken into account in the Myopic considerations of society.

Society has acquired a belief in the power of money based on experience over many centuries. This power has increased appreciably in recent times, partly due to manipulation by vested interests. Its usefulness in the conduct of all aspects of business cannot be denied even though it is hit by booms and busts as it is not subject to the self-organisation and self-regulation that characterizes natural operations. However, the fundamental problem is that the usage of natural material wealth of Gaia to operate Tityas is not taken into account in the flow of money. So global bankruptcy is inevitable unless society learns how to make prudent use of the remaining natural wealth.

Entropy is a term that physicists use to describe the dissipation of energy as it flows and does positive work in a physical process. It is common in scientific and engineering circles to explain the consequences of the irreversible energy flows that do (positive) work in systems of civilization (Tityas). The role of friction in doing negative work in that energy dissipation (and the often associated material transformation) is generally taken for granted. The need for maintenance is well recognized but the consequent subsequent inability to replace systems is not. That is an aspect of Real world operations that does not enter in to Myopic considerations.

Entropy increase is tantamount to a decrease in order in a macroscopic sense. Many commentators use it in that sense in discussion of the operations of society. Growth of complexity has been a feature of the manner of operation of society and that has lessened resilience, the ability to cope with the unexpected. This has been likened to a tendency to go from order to disorder, so an increase in entropy. Increasing entropy in natural processes is an immutable principle of natural operations. Applying that principle to operations of society governed by the free will of human decisions is of doubtful veracity. People tend to make decisions based on monetary cost rather than the ecological cost. However, there is no doubt that the operation of society has become more complex. That is what has happened while the conjecture about entropy is about why it has happened. The complexity exists and the question is what can society do to cope with it as economic contraction sets in? Society has lost valuable resilience.

Globalization of trade was expected to be more efficient (in a commercial rather than physical sense) but it has not worked out that way. The volume of goods being shipped around the world has grown exponentially but that has been a means of transferring natural resources from their origin to be dumped in land fill elsewhere after satisfying the lust of some people. However, consumption of natural resources will slow down rapidly as the decline in the availability of fuel oil hits shipping hard below the belt! The facilities in many ports will add to the accumulation of waste as they become redundant.

It is common knowledge that organisms operate during their lifetime by taking in and exhausting gaseous, liquid and solid material. This is an irreversible process in which many materials are transformed. People breathe in air, eat food and drink liquids. They sweat, urinate and defecate to get rid of wastes. The food input contains the energy that does the positive work in operating the body of the organism and allowing the person to do physical and intellectual work. The flow of energy in the operation of the organism made of materials is widely understand These organisms grow from seeds by using some of the material input until reaching maturity which is then followed by senescence and then inevitable demise. These seeds contain intangible information that guides the subsequent tangible development of the organism. So the role of information in instigating the development of the organism and the associated irreversible flow of energy and the transformation and use of material are widely understood. The immutable reality is that time passes, energy flows to waste heat, material transforms to waste in all tangible operations.

This role of energy and materials in the operation of organisms is not, for some incomprehensible reason, taken into account by seemingly knowledgeable people dealing with the operation of that vast organism, Tityas. Bodies of organisms regulate the use of the available energy sensibly. Sleep and hunger serve a useful role. On the other hand, Paras are presently content for elements of Tityas to use the limited stock of material supplying concentrated energy to, on the one hand, meet their wants and on the other to pollute land, sea, air and them while upsetting the climate and the marine ecosystem. Governments and other authoritative sources continue to foster the supply of energy by fair means and foul, with little regulation on its usage. They focus on energy supply even as skyscrapers grow unsustainably. Their attitude reinforces the myth that ravishing the eco system is a sustainable process. Yet these proponents do not deny their own mortality!

Social science is an academic discipline concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. It includes anthropology, economics, political science, psychology and sociology. It deals with the intangible decisions of people. Social science does not take into account what natural laws are continually doing although it has to consider how the consequences affect the decisions of people. The decisions of urban populations differ from those living in the country in many respects. They will have greater difficulty in coping with the inevitable powering down.

Natural science deals with what natural laws always determine what happens in natural and technological materialistic operations. Its objective is to gain understanding of the natural forces that have been operating for eons and their consequences. Physicists focus on physical operations while biologists are scientists who study living organisms and their relationship to their environment. Climatologists strive to understand the extremely complex interaction of a wide range of physical forces and processes using measurements to prove rough mathematical models. The understanding acquired about climate change has been gained by climatologists gathering vast amounts of evidence about a range of operations around the globe to associate with the complex array of mathematical models they have developed and substantiated. They have the advantage in that their models are of physical processes in which the forces acting are self-organizing and self-regulating to a large degree. Social scientists do not have that advantage in modelling the behaviour of intangible financial markets subject to little regulation and to the degree of dis-organization of booms and busts fostered by the whims of bankers and investors having the leverage of large sums of fiat money. Yet governments, economists and powerful interests believe this blarney of social scientists and the masses happily go along with it – whilst they can. The dire prophecies of the physical scientists are taken with a grain of salt at this stage. A cultural revolution is needed in which Real views take over from the Myopic mirage.

Now that rational elements of society understand that rapid climate change is under way there is the movement to reduce the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. This is a sound proposal that has limited usefulness as, at best, it will slightly slow down the irreversible process that ‘clever’ human beings had unknowingly initiated.  However, the wiser elements in society will strive to adapt to the changing influence of climate.

The powerful in society are very adept at marketing the value of economic growth. They aim to satisfy the need of the proletariat for employment without taking into account the real value of the work being done. Society would be much better off with fewer people making, marketing and selling stuff and more addressing the challenge of meeting the needs of the environment and all of its inhabitants.

Some resources are being devoted to preventing the extinction of various species of flora and fauna. However, there is little recognition of the important role these species play in the normal operation of biodiversity. Climate change is altering that view. Many organisms are adapting to this phenomenon more rapidly than humans. This issue is an item to go on the challenge list.

 Little is being done, however, about the damage being done to geodiversity to meet the needs of Tityas. Removal of mountain tops, damming of rivers, installation of pipelines, concreting over fertile soil are just some of the deleterious consequences of the lusts of technology. Remedying this damage is a problem that future generations will find intractable due to the lack of natural resources  when they wake up!

Myopia fosters a dramatic inequality in access to the Earth's resources, coupled with an ideology which sees those resources as nothing more than a playing field for a minority of members of the human species to accumulate monetary wealth without limits.

There are many deleterious facets of the operation of civilization and in combination they will ensure the demise of much of Tityas and a die-off of Paras. This list of deleterious facets identifies factors that contribute to the lack of understanding by people of the fundamental physical principles that govern what happens in the operation of civilization. Discussing these facets in isolation diverts attention from the holistic problem. Environmentalists address only part of the Real issue. Others address population and consumption. But the seriousness of the Real situation is only apparent when all the dots are connected. The challenge is to address those issues with mitigation measures that can help to steer the future.

Scientists have advanced some of the frontiers of knowledge, so illustrating their previous lack of understanding of how nature has been operating for so long. At the same time they do not recognize the fundamental principles that ensure that the operation of Tityas is unsustainable even though these same principles ensure their own demise. Inventors have been clever enough to devise means of using natural forces to use limited natural resources wastefully! They have the ridiculous belief in the ability of systems produced by humans for Tityas to emulate what has slowly evolved naturally in Gaia. Despite these failings, the technical people are more reasonable than the economists who have the belief that the money created out of thin air can actually do positive physical work. Unfortunately, society at large goes along with that hallucination - for now. They enjoy the free lunch but their grandchildren will not like having to pay for it! Can society now meet the challenge of reducing that cost?

 

Scope for society to adapt

 

The emergence of a powerful social movement among the disadvantaged young, powered by the internet, has the potential to drive a culture change that will focus on doing what is necessary to cope with the decline in what nature can provide rather than having a high material standard of living. The failure of society to provide them with satisfactory employment after years of study will give the concerned young  time to learn what knowledgeable people have been saying on the internet for years about how civilization was bound to collapse because of the focus on Myopia and failure to take into account Real world issues. ELAM (Earth’s Lodgers’ Activity Management) movement can gradually develop under the stimulus of pride in being a wise servant of nature rather than a foolish parasite. These smart young will not resist the challenge of showing they can be wiser than their forebears.

This emerging generation of smart Paras will subscribe to the view:

Gaia – the Earth System – is godlike and the giver of all life, the mother’s womb from which all life flows, a loving but firm nurturer, that provides as long as her rules (and her children’s duties) are recognized and respected. Gaia is spirituality that matters, because it is based upon truthful observation, not ancient and irrelevant god myths. Worshiping Earth and her life speaks to the challenges of ecocide, collapsing ecosystems, justice and equity, and truthfully sustaining global ecology, her peoples, and all life based upon what is observably evident.

Ecology is the ultimate truth. Without intact natural ecosystems there can be no life. Humanity is destroying natural life for fleeting comfort for some. It cannot last long. Either the human family changes – rejecting god myths for truthful knowledge – or ecology collapses and we all needlessly die in a final apocalypse. The god-freaks’ self-fulfilling prophecy will have come true, but I can assure you the only heaven is the Earth that will have been lost.

The movement will gain a lot of momentum from the rebellion against the invasion of their privacy by the government security agencies. The impression that the elite will do anything to maintain their dominance has been enough to stimulate the thoughts of the bright sparks in the movement of the true place of human beings in the operation of Gaia. They are stimulated by the challenge of making the senescence of Tityas easier for the surviving Paras.

The new emerging paradigm is premised on a fundamentally different  ethos, in which smart people see themselves not as disconnected, competing units fixated on maximising consumerist conquest over one another (the Myopian view); but as interdependent members of a single human family dependent on nature’s declining bounty (the objective of ELAM). Economies, rather than being assumed to exist in a vacuum of unlimited material expansion (the Myopic view), are seen as embedded in wider ecological framework, such that economic activity for its own sake is recognised as the pathology that it is.

The philosophy of the incumbents of ELAM is to balance their intangible contribution (decisions) with the tangible return (material not financial). They have the view “Nature is my religion, Earth is my temple”. Education will focus on making best possible use of what remains of nature’s bounty and retaining as much as possible of the services provided by the aging Tityas. It is not a green revolution as it focuses on realistically adapting the existing structure of civilization, Tityas, and of Gaia in a pragmatic manner.  It is based on understanding by its incumbents that the irreversible operation of Tityas is an unsustainable process that can only be tolerated by moderation of the ravishing of Gaia. This change in view is fostered by inflation reducing the scope for discretionary spending for most people. The objective is to promote real values like meeting basic needs for all species, education of fundamental principles and discovery of what is really worthwhile, promoting the arts and culture, sharing and giving: the values which psychologists say contribute to well-being and happiness, far more than mere money and things.

 Some industries, as ever, will seize on this change in culture to harness the opportunity to make a profit by repair rather than manufacturing stuff.  They will strive to provide sound transportation measures (such as walking and bike riding) as the existing land, sea and air vehicles become endangered. Their business plans will be based on realistic costing of resource usage, adapting to the decline in the availability of many technological services while coping with the increase in the need for basic skills. This will help in the elimination of wasteful processes while fostering personal pride in doing things well. It will also encourage rationality, frugality and adaptability in the community. It will contribute to the beneficial redeployment of the work force to meeting the ‘needs’ rather than the ‘wants’ of the masses.

Many smart people in the IT industry will have foreseen the bust of the current boom. They understood that the manufacture and operation of the vast multitude of electronic devices is an unsustainable process. So they will seize on the opportunities to help people power down by building up their basic intellectual skills to reduce the dependency on doomed things, like iPods. They will foster hard copy storage of useful information rather than rely on the unsustainable digital storage of megadata. They will follow the lead of those smart people that have started seed banks so that future generations will have access to proven sound food production measures.

Astute politicians will realize that they can gain votes by more clearly focussing on the wellbeing of the population and its life support system rather than the nebulous economic growth. They will foster the sound maintenance of the existing good features of cities rather than the unrealistic (and unsustainable) growth that lines the pockets of the developers and devastates aspects of the life style of the residents as well as degrading the environment.

This Cultural Revolution will not occur over night but it will gain momentum that it derives from its source of spurned young people in the developed countries as it flows to the multitude of ambitious youngsters in the developing countries. The pollution from rampant industrialization has had the positive effect of waking up many people to the negative side of economic growth and the vain pursuit of a high material standard of living without eventually paying the ecological price. Moral and ethical considerations will be more highly valued than the display of monetary wealth.

Awareness of the negative side of trade globalization, the fostering of the manufacture of goods by low paid workers in developing countries to meet the wants of the well off in developed countries, will grow rapidly as increasing fuel oil costs makes shipping these goods uneconomic.

Re-localization will become the boom industry because the social benefits of communities are accentuated by the increasing ecological and economic benefits.

The revolution in employment will have numerous facets. Many of those skilled in operating complex machinery will become redundant. The career prospects for airline pilots will decline as rapidly as the prospects for aeronautical engineers. Birds can manage without this help from Homo sapiens!  The desert cemeteries of redundant airliners will grow. There will be a reduced need for the engineering of advanced forms of cars but that will be offset by the much greater call for maintenance of the declining, aging fleet.  The global new car cemeteries will also grow rapidly despite the attempts of the automotive industry to cope with reality. Shipping will suffer a similar destiny. Singapore has already had to cope with a fleet of worthless container vessels.

Those youngsters who plan to go into physical research to satisfy their curiosity about how natural forces really do operate will not be carried away by innovative measures that advantage only a few. They will focus on understanding how best to use fundamental physical principles to help society at large to avoid many aspects of the final apocalypse. This understanding will help market forces contribute to coping with the powering down.

Businesses will pay for their divestment of natural material wealth. Governments will live up to their responsibility to foster maintenance of the health of the environment for the good of all species, including the human race.

Librarians will face the challenge of extracting some worthwhile knowledge from the vast amount of digital information so it can be stored in a hard copy form that is useful to the emerging generations striving to come to terms with the dissolution of the technological services.

The citizens of cities will find it hard to cope with the loss of many services, including lifts in skyscrapers and mechanical transportation vehicles. But they will gain personally in the improvement in air quality and emergent community values.  The aged and needy will have the priority for usage of the limited essential services.

This new paradigm may well still be nascent, like small seeds, planted in disparate places. But as the Crisis of Civilization accelerates over the coming decades, communities everywhere will become increasingly angry and disillusioned with what went before. But, at the same time, they will strive to show that they can do better as servants of nature rather than pretend to be the master. Education will develop the thought patterns of the young along sounder lines for meeting future challenges.

Limitations

 

Global developments over time have been so varied that social movements and policies that may be effective in some regions are inappropriate in others. The populace of Western countries are in a better position to power down than most of those in developing countries while there is no possibility that most of the population of under developed countries will acquire a reasonable living standard. The globalization that has been a feature of recent developments will inevitably give way to re-localization as communication and transportation capabilities decline.

However, there are two immutable facts that will limit what will happen in the future even if society at large tends to adopt the ELAM philosophy. Firstly, the global population is already too high for natural resources to be able to sustain the growth momentum. A die off this century is certain. Secondly, there is a commitment to use remaining natural resources to operate and maintain the vast aging Tityas infrastructure that cannot possibly be met.  The disintegration of most of this infrastructure this century is certain. The remnant society will have to manage the loss of most of the services (including heating and air conditioning) currently provided. That will be particularly hard in tropical and cold regions.

How well will Paras manage the pain of this senescence of Tityas? Gaia will slowly recover from the malfeasance while the invasive Paras and Preds species will have to adapt as much as possible. The monetary leverage of the Preds will help them for a while but rebellion by the Paras will win that tug o’war.

Conclusion

A Cultural Revolution  fostered  by the ELAM movement through appreciation  of the constraints of the Real world can provide the understanding that will enable humanity to steer the future to a limited extent. A smaller but wiser society can meet the challenge of living with nature in a simpler manner without many of the services currently provided by Tityas.