La veille

Jumping into the future head first, blindfolded, handcuffed, and in darkness

In a previous post, I defined this graph as “the most amazing graph of the 21st century.” It shows how the US oil production restarted growing in 2010, picking up speed and surpassing the historical record of the “Hubbert Peak,” which took place in 1970. It overcame the dip caused by the Covid pandemic and, two years after my first post on this subject, it keeps growing.

You would think that we have more than sufficient troubles caused by global warming, pollution, resource depletion, biodiversity loss, ecosystem disruption and a few more. But there is a problem that’s not directly related to the natural world, but by a purely human construction: the financial market. Here is a discussion by Ian Schindler — maître de conference émérite (emeritus professor of mathematics) at the University of Toulouse 1, France, who proposes that we are close to a financial collapse.

A post for the anniversary of the execution of Sophie Scholl by the German Nazis in 1943

The Goddess is said to be benevolent and merciful, but she may get angry and become cruel and ruthless. We are used to discussing major events that may destroy civilization, or even the whole humankind. Most are related to global warming: tipping points, “hothouse Earth,” famines, tsunamis, and all the rest. Then, there are other human-made disasters, including the nuclear holocaust and homemade exterminations that can be carried out with simple tools such as machetes. Recently, it became fashionable to cite artificial intelligence as a threat to human beings.

Au 1er siècle de notre ère, le philosophe romain Sénèque (en latin Lucius Annaeus Seneca) observe le début de la désintégration de l’Empire romain. Ce processus ne s’achèvera que quelques siècles plus tard mais il était déjà évident pour ceux qui étaient prêts à regarder au-delà de la surface de l’Empire encore puissant.

The new version of the “Seneca Effect” blog on Substack is doing reasonably well, so I thought it was time to prepare a page that explains what the Seneca Effect is and what it can teach us. (image by Dall-E) During the 1st Century AD, the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca observed the start of the disintegration of the Roman Empire. It was a process that would take a few more centuries to complete, but that was already evident to those who were willing to look beyond the surface of the still powerful Empire.

During the past decades, the idea of acting to counteract the damage done to the ecosystem by humankind's activities has moved along at least two planning stages.

Cela fait des décennies que l’on s’inquiète de la déplétion des ressources notamment minérales, depuis le rapport Meadows. Plus récemment les travaux d’Ugo Bardi avec sa courbe de Sénèque ont attiré l’attention sur la contradiction entre les besoins en métaux de la transition énergétique et l’état des ressources naturelles exploitables....

Years ago, James Schlesinger noted that human beings have only two operational modes: complacency and panic. It is an observation that rings true and that we can generalize in terms of groups: some humans are catastrophists, and some are cornucopians. I tend to side with the catastrophists, to the point that I created the term "Seneca Effect" or "Seneca Cliff" to define the rapid decline that comes after that growth stops. Indeed, catastrophes are a common occurrence in human history, but it is also true that sometimes (rarely) a catastrophic decline can be reversed: I termed this effect the "Seneca Rebound."