Larger context.

Dear Mr. Mercouris,

In your discussions regarding the crises in the western world generally, and Europe in particular, you have alluded to the possibility that new policy positions explicitly espoused by western leaders might be indicative of a broad conspiracy. If John Kenneth Galbraith were alive today, he might characterize these positions as “The End of Affluence”. In my opinion, the idea that the age of affluence is drawing to a close should be examined in a rigorous manner.

Preamble:

The label “conspiracy theorist” has become weaponized, and this is very dangerous. It is effectively used to ridicule, and more importantly discredit, those who postulate conspiracy as an explanation for events or situations. When the common people were poor, there was little motivation to conspire against them since there was little to be gained by doing so. Conversely, the society of the elite was rife with conspiracy because of the potential for significant gain. The notion of a small cabal working in secret to effect a malign scheme against a victim was probably an accurate characterization of conspiracy in the past, but conspiracy has evolved in response to the huge changes in society brought about by the elevation of the common people to a state of affluence. The distinguishing feature of conspiracy is that success requires that the victim remain unaware of the plan until any action on their part would be ineffective. However, to understand the potential for broad based and highly damaging conspiracies it is important to note that preventing the victim from becoming aware of the plan does not require secrecy. If a narrative can be constructed that presents the plan as beneficial to the interests of the victims, then it is possible to get the victims to embrace the plan, and even become vehement advocates for it. Mass communication has made it possible to disseminate narratives of this kind to broad segments of the population. Information that might damage the credibility of the narrative is characterized as disinformation etc, and promulgators of such information are labeled conspiracy theorists. The potential for gain from an effective conspiracy directed against a large and wealthy population is huge. Similarly, the potential for the use of a narrative enabled conspiracy to acquire political power in a (supposed) democracy is huge. Unfortunately, this type of conspiracy can be very effective when the target is a naive and credulous population (which sees itself as knowledgable and sophisticated) that uncritically accepts “the facts” and “the science” presented to them by the people who conspire against them.

Humanity is in a state of crisis and has been unable to act collectively to address the challenges that face it. This inability to act effectively is understandable if the current crisis is viewed as the culmination of a process that started at the beginning of the paleolithic era. This is a bold statement; allow me to elucidate before you consign this idea to the trash. A positive feedback cycle was started when technologies that could augment the capture of solar energy became part of human culture. Food from animal sources has a much higher energy density than food from plant sources. Technologies that enabled a larger proportion of food to come from animal sources increased the . Stone tools also increased the energy return from plant sources. The control of fire leveraged the development of other important technologies. The increases in available energy coupled with new technologies made it possible to enlarge the depth and breadth of the resource base. For hundreds of millions of years this cycle resulted in very small increments of progress, and since population is limited by available resource (Malthus is much maligned, but his basic argument is valid), population growth was very slow. Eventually, in place agriculture evolved (arguably the most important technological development in human history) and the consequent huge increase in available energy made complex, hierarchical civilization possible. As civilization evolved it created new opportunities for technological development: as barter gave way to the flexibility of currency and credit the need for a system of accounting resulted in the development of the technology we call mathematics. The cycle of technological development leveraging the availability and variety of resource/energy continued to accelerate. This positive feedback cycle has resulted in an exponential increase in the energy available to humanity, and as a consequence, the potential to alter our environment.
This brings us to the present time. In my opinion, the crisis that humanity has created is best modeled as three overlapping crises: changes to the ecosphere/biosphere (I would include global warming here); resource depletion (including energy); and waste production (pollution). These crises are intrinsically linked and there are no significant problems that face humanity which exist exclusively in one of these spaces. For this reason, problems such as climate change, the impending energy crises, and food insecurity cannot be effectively addressed in isolation.
It is my contention that humanity would ultimately find itself at this juncture of crises. I think of this as a path independent system. It is possible that the global elites have some appreciation of the nature of this crisis and a self-serving, increasingly authoritarian, paternalism is evolving in response. I think it is unlikely that they do not understand that a collapse of global industrial civilization would destroy the institutions and infrastructure that their privileged positions depend upon. This would be incentive to attempt to engineer a controlled partial collapse which would result in a dramatic reduction in overall consumption, and the entrenchment of their own power so that their own lifestyles would not be threatened. If such a plan does exist, it will not succeed.
If Meadows et al had named their research project Limits to Consumption, then people might have understood the most important lesson to be taken from the report: a stabilized world can only occur if humanity is able to break its addiction to the consumption of material goods. How can any plausible political movement arise that would result in a voluntary reduction in consumption in a world where the availability of critical resources becomes increasingly constrained, and the disparate factions of humanity descend into a desperate competition to be the last man standing? There is no way that any global elite will be able to halt the descent of humanity at floor Orwell – we will continue down to a much darker dystopia in the basement.

It is necessary to understand the mechanisms of catabolic collapse and the conditions that give rise to it to understand why such a collapse is very probable during the middle of this century.

Respectfully,

Mitchell Covell