It’s enough to drive you crazy while reading the newspapers, listen to interviewers on the radio, or hear news reporters: no one asks fundamental questions or wonders about the hidden effects of partial or optimisticaly presented solutions. Everything remains stuck in well-meaning supportive chatter. “Yes, circular economy, that’s it, we’ll do it, it’s possible.” Some poor so-and-so in the street is the victim: emotional nonsense from a random individual is presented as emblamatic of the ultimate problem. Recently on the news, a lady from a French fry stall was interviewed: “What will happen if I am no longer allowed to use plastic? Will customers have to come with their own pots?” And the news presented this as a general conclusion without any context. What about the good old paper fry bag…?
Then a behavioral professor named Gupta from Amsterdam is given the floor, and I hear her on the radio claiming that the focus should be on the dangers to humans. Of course, those dangers exist, but they are caused by the same people, madam. It’s not about the dangers, it’s about behavior…. Partying in cities, consuming like like there is no end. Not a clue to how the world works, how the natural sytem, or even evolution operates. The journalist merely nods. Everything remains stuck in wishful thinking, interpersonal issues, parroting, making no real progress.
As long as we continue to place humans at the center, stick to social and emotional narratives, we will not solve humanity’s (major) problems—only make them worse. The root cause of everything: is the fact that we have placed humans at the center. But humanity is just a byproduct of larger natural processes. The foundation of life on Earth—all life—is that cycles keep flowing: water, resources, food, and energy. To keep flowing they have to stay in balance. When the cycles become lop sided, only withdrawing, the systems stops flowing.
We used to say that children didn’t know where milk comes from. Nowadays, even most adults have no idea where prosperity comes from. What happens behind the scenes when you order something online? It just arrives the next day as if falling from the sky. (In the case of food, it gets delivered in ten minutes…)
The problem is that humanity has increasingly detached itself from physical reality. Through and due to the use of fossil energy, humans have become alienated from their natural foundation and organized society as if a physical reality no longer exists. By living in cities we are withdrawing further from physical reality, into a self-fabricated world. A world of Babel.[1][2]
To make things worse, humans have enshrined all of this in laws. So now we have two types of laws:
- Laws, invented by humans, that dictate whether something is allowed or not (by humans themselves), and
- Laws, that are beyond human influence, dictated by nature whether something is possible or not.
The first type are voluntary agreements, arrangements [constructs] within our species, which could be changed tomorrow. They are separated from physical reality. You could ignore them and (sometimes) be punished, but only by fellow humans, and almost always without consequences for the species as a whole or the physical environment. (with some exceptions like deliberate forest fires). Not so for the second set of laws.
The second set of laws is physical and cannot be bent. We humans have no say over them. And those who violate or ignore them will be punished, sooner or later. This punishment may happen personally or elsewhere in the world*. Often the consequences are not even for humans but for other animals or plants, or to humanity as a whole.
Actually, we shouldn’t even call the first set of laws “laws” . But rather “arrangements” [constructs] or “agreements.” Only natural laws should be called laws. The problem is that the first category of laws is designed in such a way that they inherently violate the second type of laws.** So when we evaluate our own “laws” or arrangements, [constructs] everything seems more or less fine. We should, in fact, make the physical laws as the real legal laws!
What are the fundamental questions that need to be asked? It’s always about how all those “arrangements” [constructs] and ‘agreements’ made, fit within physical laws. Do the consequences stay within planetary boundaries, globally or regionally, so that they cause no harm to ourselves or others? The question is not, “What must the local fry vendor do?” but “How do we globally produce billions of portions of fries without causing harm?” With all due respect, that is not a question the local fry vendor can answer. Even most ministers don’t have an answer. Unfortunately. Also most journalists lack the background to test the relationship with the reality of the natural world.
Even in so-called sustainability programs on radio and television, people merely repeat what others say, continuing with green mantras like innovation and technology, without anyone asking the deeper questions: “Nice product, but what if 8 billion people buy it? What is the impact?”
“Energy transition, nice, but do we have the resources to build more and more wind farms, manage more data, share videos, create images with artificial intelligence?”
“And do the people who have to extract those resources have acceptable working conditions, and are they not destroying their own environment in the process?
Bitcoin is cool, but it’s just a gambling game that consumes energy, requiring a lot of wind farms as it grows. What we should do, is to make it mandatory for all technological advances, to indicate how many wind farms and resources are required for the new innovation. Ask that question!
A recent example was an article in the Correspondent, a Dutch online newspaper, which criticized an environmental evaluation method, declared this misleading, since it used a metric like planting trees, only to make the problem tangible. Ridiculous, according to the author retreating back to a tech solutions. Because that’s how we like it…
To see the connection, you need to understand the bigger picture, for that, you must take step back and reflect on how nature, the world, and the planet actually function as a whole. Fundamentally, everything in the universe is in an onward process of degradation, becoming disorganized, leading to chaos in the sense that everything turns to dust and spreads out so that it is of no value ( entropy increase, TD). Even on Earth that is the basis. The only reason we have evolution (organizational growth, entropy decline) here (yes, that’s a natural fact, we ourselves are a result of it, including our actions) is that there happens to be an energy source nearby that provides just enough energy to keep our system going, preventing chaos. Not too much and not too little. That’s the basis. At least, until humanity discovered fossil fuels, using more energy than is available within the critical balance to keep things flowing, thereby setting degradation and chaos into motion, far beyond the unique self-regulating capacity of the natural system.
Let me try to make the bigger picture clear using a relevant example like the hype around a company here in the Netherlands, called ASML : It grows like hell, but then: are we going to support this as a country? If so, the first question is: do we have the people for it? No, because there’s no unemployment. So we’ll bring them from abroad. Do we have houses for them? No, so we’ll build them. Do we have construction workers for this? No. Do we have the resources for it? No. So what will we build those houses with? Obviously, it has to be renewable resources, requiring land, do we have that land to grow the resources? No, because it’s owned by livestock and dairy farmers. So we’ll get it from abroad, with all the consequences this entails.
A second question: what does ASML make? Chip machines. Do we have a chip shortage? No, but we want more. Do we have the resources for them? Not here, so we’ll get them from abroad. What impact will that have there? Their problem. Okay, and now we have chips. What do we do with them? We play games, like Bitcoin. Or use artificial intelligence. Do we have the energy for this? No, but we’ll build mega data centers and wind farms for them. Do we have the resources for this (if the whole world does it)? Uh, Uh, no….etc.
So the question for everything we invent, devise, or decide needs to be asked: how does it fit into the bigger picture? For example, an energy transition: nice, but where will we get the resources? And are we consuming resources faster than they can replenish (also regarding metals!)? And what are the consequences for the countries where they are extracted? Consider it as if it your own country—would you still do it?
Do journalists ask these questions? Politicians? Usually, only one question is asked: will GDP go up? Yes, then we’ll do it. It’s allowed: by us! It fits within our constructed laws and is great for our self-invented financial system! More money will come in, and with that, we can, by definition, use even more energy and resources! But is it possible according to natural laws, and what are the consequences for the evolutionary system balance? From a physical standpoint? Therefor: Fundamental questions? No, hardly.
But hey, it a nice company, so we support them anyhow.
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* For the most basic form of ignoring physical laws see the TV program “don’t do this at home videos….”
** stimulating endless growth for instance; or using a fake metric to valuate things (money); or choose by popular vote on matters of natural physics (such as CO2, or nitrogen or water quality or manure, or air pollution)
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