Why we worship waste

The ability to waste resources without the need to be concerned for one's well-being or future has always been a sign of wealth and power.

Thorstein Veblen coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption" in his famous 1899 treatise The Theory of the Leisure Class. The point, of course, for the wealthy is to be conspicuous so as to attract the attention, praise and deference of their fellow citizens. Veblen explained that wealthy people also often communicate their power to others by having a group of attendants around them who do little or nothing. He dubbed this "vicarious leisure." Since there are only 24 hours in a day, one person, however wealthy and powerful, can only enjoy so much leisure. Vicarious leisure made possible by the excess wealth of an individual is an unmistakable sign that a person is important.

The seemingly relentless drive of commercial enterprises to reduce waste and economize may appear to run counter to this. But that drive is only meant to produce more wealth for what Veblen calls the leisure class by which he means the power elite of society.

Taking a holiday break - no post this week

I'm taking a holiday break this week and expect to post again on Sunday, September 11.

Failed states: Coming to a country near you

As I was reading a story about a Mexican drug cartel enforcing price controls on tortilla vendors—something that if done is normally done by governments—I was reminded of a scene from the film "Casablanca."

It's 1940 and Nazi officers are visiting Casablanca which at this stage of World War II is controlled by the German puppet regime in France called Vichy France. In their attempts to apprehend "an enemy of the Reich," the German officers meet with and question Richard Blain, the American owner of the eponymous Rick's Cafe, a nightclub and illicit casino.

As they discuss German aspirations in the war, one of the German officers asks Rick (played by Humphrey Bogart) what he thinks of the Germans occupying his "beloved Paris." He answers, "It's not particularly my beloved Paris."

Another German officer then asks if Rick can imagine Germans occupying London. Rick again deflects saying, "When you get there, ask me." But when a German major asks Rick about invading New York City, Rick fires back: "There are certain sections of New York, major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."

Europe's disappearing rivers illustrate multiple converging catastrophes

When I was teenager, I took a week-long cruise with my family up the Rhine River. The voyage started in Amsterdam. With stops at various cities, the ship sailed all the way to Basel, Switzerland, hundreds of miles inland and about 800 feet higher in elevation than Amsterdam.

That trip would be more perilous today as the levels of Europe's major rivers decline in the face of an extreme drought that has resulted in almost no rain for the last two months across much of Europe. The Rhine, the Loire, the Danube and the Po have all been hard hit. The fate of these rivers is intimately linked to Europe's energy, food, and transportation security. And the fate of both the rivers and the daily needs of Europeans are intimately bound up with the trajectory of climate change and resource depletion, especially of water and energy.

For the Rhine, freight transportation has been curtailed as barges are unable to carry their maximum weight without scraping the bottom of the river in some places. The Rhine is a central artery for the transportation of food and fuel. Just as Europe needs more coal in the right places to generate electricity as Russian natural gas supplies have been curtailed, the cheapest way of moving coal has now become impaired. Trucks and trains are now being forced to carry more freight than normal, straining an already strained supply chain.

Taking a short break - no post this week

I'm taking a short break this week and expect to post again on Sunday, August 21.

Rain, rain go away? Climate change and Death Valley's deluge

I visited Death Valley in August 2008 shortly after rare, plentiful rains (at least by Death Valley standards) had turned one of the Earth's hottest and driest places into a riot of yellow, blue, red and pink color as wildflowers bloomed across the valley. The day I visited was a clear one and not at all unusual for Death Valley at that time of year. When at midday we tourists climbed off the air-conditioned bus, it felt as if I had just stepped into a pre-heated oven. It was 112 degrees F.

I had no thoughts of climate change that day. This was just the way Death Valley was and had been for a very long time. However, reading about recent heavy rains in Death Valley twice in the last week—rains so heavy that they trapped automobiles and closed roads due to mud and debris—I took note that in a place where dryness and heat are normal, water suddenly became a dangerous hazard, one that resulted in the closing of all roads in and out of the national park that comprises Death Valley. (Something similar happened in nearby Las Vegas, Nevada the week before as water flooded streets and gushed through roofs flooding casinos and frightening visitors. This in a city that gets less than 5 inches of rain a year.)

Drought has been getting almost all the media coverage in the American Southwest. That's in part because the drought story persists over long periods and becomes a story whenever fear of water restrictions or actual restrictions surface or when it looks like rain might bring relief.

The nitrogen fertilizer monkey trap

More than a century ago two German chemists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, perfected a technique for taking nitrogen from air and combining it with hydrogen to make ammonia, now widely used to make nitrogen fertilizers. What came to be known as the Haber-Bosch process unleashed a revolution in crop yields which were no longer limited by natural inputs of nitrogen.

So important is this process to crop yields that it is estimated that without it half the people alive today would starve. If the worldwide application of nitrogen fertilizers had no adverse consequences, there would be no problem continuing business-as-usual. But the consequences have become worrisome:

• Increasing algal blooms fed by nitrogen runoff in waters around the world are killing aquatic life and endangering humans who wade or swim into such waters. This is the cause of so-called "red tides" and also of the famous "dead zones" at the end of some of the world's largest rivers.


• Nitrogen fertilizers stimulate microbes in the soil thereby increasing their conversion of nitrogen to nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Those fertilizers are responsible for a dramatic rise in nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. This gas is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas behind carbon dioxide and methane.


• The imbalances and blooms caused by nitrogen fertilizers are threatening many species and thus the planet's biodiversity.

The "we'll-just-adapt-to-climate-change" team takes drubbing

Climate change deniers have had to adjust their story in recent years as the effects of climate change have become more and more apparent to people where they live all around the world. The first iteration was that climate change is good. It will make winters milder and it will help "fertilize" crops with additional carbon dioxide which all plants need to manufacture the food they live on.

While the "greening" effect of rising carbon dioxide concentrations is real, there is a limit to how much it will help plants. As for milder winters, they may be good for some and worse for others. Where they result in diminished snows in critical watersheds such as the Himalayas and the Alps, the effect can be diminished water supplies, particularly at crucial times in summer when mountain snowmelt can stabilize flows in key streams and rivers that might otherwise be very low so that they can provide irrigation water and water for human consumption.

So, now the deniers argue that we can just adapt. This is, of course, the path of least resistance since it requires no major changes in business-as-usual. Let's see how that's working out.

Energy consultancy keeps lowering worldwide recoverable oil resources

It's hard to say that three years makes a trend. But one of the world's major energy consulting firms has lowered its estimate of world oil reserves for three years in a row now.

Rystad Energy provides a publicly available analysis of world oil reserves each year. In 2020 Rystad wrote that "the world’s recoverable oil [dropped] by around 282 billion barrels." That represented a 12.9 percent decline in just one year.  In 2021 the firm stated its analysis showed that recoverable resources declined by another 178 billion barrels or about 9.4 percent. Rystad said the decline was due in part to new modelling based on resources "at well level rather than field level." The closer Rystad looked, the less oil there seemed to be.

In 2022 Rystad noted yet another decline of almost 9 percent in its press release headline. Recoverable oil resources dropped another 152 billion barrels. (For all estimates Rystad uses figures for crude oil and lease condensate which is the accepted definition of oil.)

Acceleration forever? The increasing momentum of mineral extraction

Half of all the oil consumed since the dawn of the modern oil age in 1859 has been consumed from 1998 through 2021 inclusive based on data available from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Approximately 1.4 trillion barrels of oil is thought to have been consumed to date (though there are estimates as low as 1.1 trillion). That means that in just the last 24 years total historical oil consumption has doubled.

It is hard for most people to imagine the vast increases in the rate of consumption of practically everything that makes modern life possible. Resources appear without most of us ever thinking about how or whether the rising rates of consumption can be sustained.

For copper, one of the critical metals we depend on for electrical, mechanical and even monetary purposes, the story is similar. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that about 700 million metric tons of copper have been extracted to date. Based on mining statistics from the Copper Development Association, that means about half of all the copper ever mined has been mined from the year 2000 through 2018 inclusive.

Could we double total oil and copper consumption again in the next 24 and 19 years, respectively?