The Oil Drum | On American Sustainability - Anatomy of Societal Collapse (Summary)

325 comments on On American Sustainability - Anatomy of Societal Collapse (Summary)

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Scotjen61 on May 13, 2009 - 10:51am

I find these kinds of posts interesting but not particularly useful. I don't know what your sources for data are for your charts but it would take some pretty heavy studies to back up your estimated sustainability levels and on the face give no credence at all to the notion that technology provides anything relative to sustainability.

I will have to think about it. At the same time, like the Book of Revelation, some day your 'prediction' will come true. Just like I can begin to predict our sun exploding into a Red Giant. Some day that will come to pass. These kinds of posts remind me of the Woody Allen movie where a fifth grade Woody Allen is sitting in the principals office for refusing to do any homework after he finds out the Sun will one day explode. He looks at everybody and says 'What's the point?'

Does it count for anything that the US controls all the oceans of the world. Given the military position of the US it would tend to make more sense that other societies will collapse as the US hegemony drains their environments to supplement its own. I would tend to see America as the country that circles the drain on the way down if this scenario were to play out. In other words I do not necessarily see the collapse in the US. We are in too dominant a position to allow it to play out as displayed here, it will not just happen.

The only other comment is how lightly populated the US is relative to the rest of the world. I know energy use is high, but the US has more parks than almost anywhere, more unused land. So to look to areas more heavily populated, and I do not see collapse in those heavily populated regions. This is complex and I don't think a chart that shows we are here followed by a straight line down that says collapse really says anything.

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Chris C on May 13, 2009 - 10:58am

AFA data sources, I invite you to check out the "long version". Chapter 7, "Evidence", provides compelling evidence of both ecological overextension and economic overextension. Also please check out the Endnotes--most of my numbers are obtained from the US government--EIA, USGS, Federal Reserve, etc.

AFA our collapse scenario, I agree that specific timing and circumstances are impossible to predict. In a general sense my view is:

I do not believe that the populations of industrialized societies such as America, who take for granted a lifestyle paradigm characterized by “continuously more and more”, will accommodate gracefully the ecological reality of “continuously less and less”. Nor do I believe that the populations of emerging societies, who are now aspiring to lifestyle paradigms characterized by “more and more”, will accommodate gracefully the ecological reality that there are insufficient resources to fulfill their aspirations.

My view is that the populations of both industrialized and emerging societies will fight against each other and among themselves—ultimately to the death—for remaining increasingly-scarce resources, and that the US will be among the most active (and devastated) in this regard.

I hope--every day--that I am wrong...

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Pitt the Elder on May 13, 2009 - 6:25pm

AFA data sources, I invite you to check out the "long version".

If you have any hope for your work to see a wider audience, keep in mind that "read my 80-page thesis" is not an acceptable response to "where is your evidence".

Your article here had plenty of space for supporting evidence; that it contained none made the article completely unpersuasive. Indeed, quite the opposite: you kept making exceptional assertions and insisting they were "the truth", which is one of the hallmarks of cranks and deluded zealots. That's not to say you are a crank or deluded, simply that your article reads like that.

***

As far as the evidence in your "long version", you are still confusing "my opinion" with "the truth". For example:

"It is obvious that...our current total debt level is [not] sustainable" (p.41)

Saying that something is obvious to you is not evidence, it's opinion.

Moreover, you make a variety of claims that aren't even true, and insist there are no alternatives; for example:

"Our only options for resolving our social entitlement dilemma are to increase payroll taxes by over 100%, from 15.3% to 33.3% of earnings, immediately and forever; to cut all social entitlement benefits by at least 50%, immediately and forever; to cut all non-entitlement federal government spending by 77.8%, immediately and forever; or some combination thereof." (p.42)

The overwhelming majority of these future costs is medical expenses; the overwhelming majority of those is due to rapid growth in medical spending, only a tiny fraction of which is due to demographics. You can see for yourself from that CBO chart that if healthcare expenses stop growing faster than the rate at which the population is growing and aging - essentially, if current healthcare is maintained forever - then there's no problem.

There doesn't need to be any cut; all that's needed is a slower rate of cost growth (which appears to be happening). So you're factually incorrect when you assert that massive and immediate cuts are the only options.

***

I could go on like this, but hopefully you get the idea: there's a large difference between "my opinion" and "the truth", and very few people are going to take your document seriously until it clearly distinguishes between the two. You need to support your claims much more tightly with evidence (and don't use end-notes, use foot-notes), and you need to dig down to the source of that evidence, rather than relying on what other people assert. (For example, several of your points cite the Cato Institute, which is a libertarian/anti-government think tank with notorious biases of its own.)

You need to keep asking "why is this the case?" until you dig down to the raw numbers. Nothing less will persuade doubters.

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RobinPC on May 13, 2009 - 7:04pm

Pitt: I think you're right in sticking your neck out on these points. It's clear that Chris's lack of background in writing up "academic"/"scientific" type articles (rather than waffly glossy management reports) shows up here. I find I agree with most of his conclusions but would have got to them by radically different argument and presentation.

Chris's referring people to his full report is just following of what is the standard practice in many bureaucracies (which are not particularly interested in really informing their readers of what is involved).

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GliderGuider on May 13, 2009 - 9:01pm

Pitt, I remember you thrashing me soundly about the head and shoulders for the very same transgression during my short posting career on TOD. You were right then, and you're right now. This subject brings up strong emotions, and it's hard to resist the temptation to disguise opinions as truth in order to validate the emotions. I plead retrospectively guilty to that charge.

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ET on May 13, 2009 - 10:34pm

Well, it's quite obvious to me that our current debt level is not sustainable. I'd like to see a realistic scenario that demonstrates that it is sustainable.

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stream47 on May 14, 2009 - 9:52pm

On the contrary. As to national debt, it *is* sustainable, after all, we're not in default at this point. If we cut off our deficits, and are able to refinance at current interest rates, the debt will be sustainable for 30 or 40 years. It's possible, with a decrease in spending, to reduce the debt.

The part that isn't sustainable is Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. The solution to the projected Social Security shortfall is to revise the actuarial assumptions about Social Security to the equivalent of where they were in 1937, where the life expectancy was 59 years, whereas now median life expectancy is almost 20 years greater. This might mean setting the retirement age for people who were born in, say, 1948 and beyond to 75 years of age. It could also spell the end of the Social Security Disability Income program, and benefits to dependents. As for Medicare/Medicaid, the program faces imminent insolvency, so the solution might be a lot more drastic, perhaps involving the drafting of doctors and medical personnel into the Public Health Service (whose chief officer is the Surgeon-General) and the provision of medical care at reduced pay. Actually, what's more realistic is that the medical-industrial complex will collapse, being unable to sacrifice the smallest amount of its prerogatives, perhaps aided by persistent and incurable insolvency on the part of third-party insurors.

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jaggedben on May 14, 2009 - 1:47am

Thanks Pitt. It's remarkable how often you say more or less the same thing I would.

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tonyw on May 14, 2009 - 6:01am

Caveat, I have not yet read Chris's pdf. Chris's post follows The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update which shows many different scenarios and that collapse is the likely outcome of most. I strongly recommend this book.

A bit disappointing that the post equates living standard with consumption, much of which is unnecessary.

Whilst very American centric applies to all of us, population and consumption can't continually keep growing. There is plenty of room for spending cuts, just to take one example America's military (not confusingly called defense!) spending is slightly less that the rest of the world combined.

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Chris C on May 14, 2009 - 7:14am

Pitt,

Thanks for taking your time, and for your comments.

Re: the lack of references in the "short version"; Gail had asked me to limit my post to 2000 words--it was just under that number as I submitted it to her... There are so many references and so much evidence, I decided that it was best to summarize my case in the post, and refer interested readers to the "long version" for the details.

The comments you selected regarding our fiscal unsustainability are interesting. The conclusions are not mine; they are those of folks like David Walker (ex-Comptroller General of the US) and the "Trustees" (lead by the Treasury Department) who put together the yearly assessment of social entitlement program viability. Check out the references in the "endnotes"; it's all in there!

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Kevin Gardiner on May 14, 2009 - 12:51pm

Pitt, I agree we all want certified evidence. Chris, like any supporting evidence, the conclusions are arrived at by making assumptions about what evidence is admissible to the discussion. So to that point I ask:

Given that nearly all resources are in fact abundant on the Earth, but not necessarily easily accessible, the ultimate question is: Do we have enough cheap energy to make acquiring those critical resouces economically feasible?

I am a supporter of renewable energy as a long term sustainable power source, but in reality renewables are insufficient to provide for the energy needs of a resource starved world.

Thus some flavor of Fast Neutron Reactors is needed if we are to avoid undershooting the "Sustainable Population and Living Standard" level.

Ultimately long term, no matter what we do, if we do not address the collective birth control issue, overshoot and undershoot seem like a given.

Politically a massive Fast Neutron Reactor construction program seems unlikely. Any delay will only hasten the overshoot.

So I would personally like to see a post directed specifically at the issues related to Sustainability and the expediting of massive Fast Neutron Reactor construction.

Chris, Thanks for the broad overview of this pertinent topic!

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happlega on May 14, 2009 - 5:53pm

Pitt - You do yourself a disservice by not reading the entire 77 page PDF. While the paper excites the emotions in a number of ways due to overreach in some depicted scenarios, Chris is to be commended for an excellent and well researched paper.

With respect to your point about the present and future fiscal state of US entitlement programs, I think you are way too optimistic. Perhaps Chris' "opinion" on Americans' view of our special place in the world hit a nerve with you.

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Nick on May 14, 2009 - 6:37pm

I suppose I should let Pitt speak for himself, but 1) it's clear that he did read the whole thing, and 2) I felt the same way - see my comments below on energy and minerals.

As to US entitlement programs, I have to disagree. The US has an actuarial problem: entitlements are scheduled to grow, and the US can't afford that. The simple answer: stop the growth. Easy to do (just takes legislation - there's no guarantee to Social Security or Medicare benefits), and there's an easy method: just make eligibility ages rise as life expectancy rises. Easy.

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325 comments on On American Sustainability - Anatomy of Societal Collapse (Summary)

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“Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning, but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.”

—George Eliot