I think our common error lies in thinking of the planet as our environment. It's not. Not if you're reading this.
That civilisation, in turn, exists in a financial and logistical environment (let's call it FALE!) that is entirely artificial.
Much like our population has.
Over those 600 years, unimaginably vast amounts of resources have been poured into creating it.
On this very, very strange substrate, our civilisation has fed and grown.
But FALE is impossible greedy. It needs constant inputs of incredible amounts of raw _stuff_. And that's just to keep it going.
And we look around us, at bricks and trees and planks and wires, and think "Oh, this is robust. It isn't going anywhere, and even if it does, we can rebuild easily enough."
The actual environment is FALE.
And FALE isn't _real_.
There are a lot of very big kicks coming. We can see them. We all know they're there.
Global recession.
Weather disasters.
EROEI degradation.
Water poverty.
Species loss.
Pollination loss.
Food production crisis.
Each one alone is enough to disrupt FALE.
It's not a machine. It's more like a person. If a person breaks, we bury them and mourn their loss.
If FALE breaks, advanced civilisation breaks with it.
Yes, certain types of problem can be cured if they're not too systemic.
But in the end, all living things die.
EROEI -- Energy return on energy invested -- is the new name for Natural Causes here.
A hundred years ago, EROEI on oil was 100 -- each barrel of oil you spent on drilling oil gave you 100 back.
We used all that oil.
We're down to EROEI under 20.
Below about 12, business becomes unprofitable, and FALE starts to die.
Hydro is towards 100, but we've already dammed almost all the dams, and besides, water is a growing crisis.
None of this is speculation. Economists and banks and energy companies live by EROEI.
There is no current-tech solution dreamed of that offers an EROEI over ten.
We used the incredible boost of oil to create an amazingly delicate sandcastle on a sandy beach with amazing views and an afternoon of lovely warm sunshine, forgetting that suns set.
It is going to crash. It doesn't have long.
The most precarious, JIT-riddled systems die first.
That's cities, in case you were wondering.
It's not that I'm depressed, or anxious, or have turned into a wingnut.
It's just that maybe, with some advanced warning of what to look for, some of you can fight your ways through this.
Shortly after, the water will go off too.
They won't come back on.
Fifteen years, maybe. Energy source projections suggest a sharp downturn sooner, but folks are always looking for more oil.
So fifteen years.
Within that time, you want to be in a town of less than 10k, with plenty of local wood or coal, in green, arable land.
Somewhere that the average summer temperature is under 30 degrees, if you want to survive a heatwave without power.
Smaller, rural-area communities are going to be the only survivors when this flushes down the pan.
If survival matters to you... get there.
I'm a first or second wave casualty. That's fine. I'm getting old, anyway.
Maybe you don't have to be.
Go look into EROEI, and Limits To Growth, and the RPC8.5 Pathway that feeding FALE *demands* we stay on.
This is coming.
I'm so sorry. It's unavoidable. We built ourselves a wondrous house of cards, and the wind is rising.
But it's a vast die-off, over the next thirty years. @GreatDismal's "Jackpot".
We 'delved too greedily and too deep', if you prefer Tolkien, and the Balrog is loosed.
But it's not going to be the city-dwellers.
/end