184. Boundaries and Belonging in the Wood Economy

Posted on 21/10/2025 by Barry

Boundaries and Belonging in the Western world was built on the power of fossil fuels. Coal, oil, and gas released more energy in a century than wood and muscle had done in thousands of years. They allowed cities to sprawl, food to travel, and people to live far from the sources of what sustained them.

Now that age is ending. As the fossil-fuel economy contracts — through depletion, cost, and climate constraint — its vast systems begin to shrink. The future will be slower, more local, and more dependent on renewable energy from the land itself. Out of this contraction will grow a new pattern of life: the wood economy.

The Natural Form of Localities

A locality is a human-scale ecosystem — a place defined not by lines on a map but by what can be sustained within its reach of energy and resources. Its extent depends on population density, terrain, and the effort needed to move people, goods, and ideas.

In the countryside, where populations are sparse, a locality may cover several former parishes, linked by woodland, water, and tramway. In towns it may be no more than a few streets and workshops clustered around a market square. Each finds its natural limit where daily cooperation and personal knowledge can still hold.

Dorothy Hartley, writing in Made in England, reminded us that water gathers in valleys and that “man follows water.” The mill stood where the stream turned, and cottages grew around it. In the coming age, those same patterns will return. Localities will once again form along rivers, ridges, and catchments, for water defines both boundary and lifeblood.

From Parishes to Localities

The ancient parishes of England were never arbitrary. Their lines often followed tribal lands, ridgelines, or watersheds — boundaries that made sense to people who walked them.

As the industrial framework recedes, those old contours will quietly reassert themselves. Localities will emerge around shared coppices, mills, and meeting halls. They may overlap or divide, depending on geography and population. The essential unit will be small enough for familiarity, large enough for self-reliance.

Energy descent makes smallness practical again. Without cheap fuel, long-distance commuting and centralised services fade. Authority and accountability return to where people can see one another’s work.

Cities Dividing into Localities

Cities were once groups of villages. London, Birmingham, and Manchester all began as loose clusters of settlements that later fused together under coal and steam.

As fossil-fuel energy declines, this process reverses. Cities will redivide into localities — self-managed neighbourhoods with their own gardens, workshops, and shared facilities. Electric grids may fragment; heating will become localised; transport will slow. The metropolis will soften back into a constellation of distinct communities, each aware of its boundaries and its dependence on nearby others.

This is not collapse, but re-formation — the industrial city returning to its village roots, adapted to a lower-energy future.

Population and Scale

The functioning size of a locality depends on density and resources. Rural localities may sustain a few hundred people across wide acres; urban ones may include several thousand. Beyond that, personal accountability fades and bureaucracy returns.

Sociological research supports this. Communities of about five hundred to five thousand can manage their own economies and decision-making without rigid hierarchies. It is roughly the range in which people can know one another by face and reputation — the foundation of trust.

Water and Power

Water is both a boundary and an energy source. Streams, rivers, and valleys determine settlement, as they always have. Water mills will return to importance — grinding grain, sawing timber, pressing oil, or generating small amounts of electricity.

Each catchment becomes a cooperative system: those who live upstream must safeguard the flow for those below. This natural interdependence replaces distant regulation. The landscape itself becomes the framework of law.

Shared Culture and Specialisation

Localities will not all look alike. Each will develop its own identity and special skill. Just as Studley in Warwickshire became known for needle making, others will be known for woodworking, pottery, herbal medicine, or glass.

Such specialisation gives character to the country and underpins small-scale trade between localities. Products carry the mark of place — tools stamped with a local symbol, pottery fired with clay from a known pit, honey tasting of a particular valley’s flowers.

The national economy thus becomes a patchwork of productive localities, trading modest surpluses rather than mass goods.

Migration and Renewal

Migration will continue — both within and into the UK — but at a slower, more deliberate pace.

Within the country, people will leave high-cost urban areas for smaller, self-reliant settlements where they can work directly in food, craft, or care. Migration from abroad will also persist, as it has through all British history. Newcomers will find belonging through participation — working in coppices, mills, or workshops, and sharing in local festivals and responsibilities.

Cultural diversity will remain, but it will be expressed through work and contribution, not separation. Each new skill or tradition becomes part of the local identity, as happened through centuries of craft migration before the fossil age.

Religion, Practice, and Social Cohesion

Faith will return to smaller meeting places — timber halls, converted barns, or open groves. Religious life will be woven into the calendar of work and season: planting, harvest, and renewal.

Doctrinal difference will matter less than shared values — fairness, stewardship, and respect for life. The rhythm of communal feasts and quiet observances will reinforce belonging and give spiritual coherence to the practical life of the locality.

Railways and the Shape of Settlement

Even in a shrinking fossil-fuel economy, inter-locality rail lines will survive. They are among the most durable artefacts of industrial civilisation — built to last and easily maintained.

Coal, charcoal, or wood-gas-fired steam engines will continue to move goods and travellers at moderate speeds. They will form the spine of national cohesion, linking one cluster of localities to another.

Settlement will once again centre around stations, as it did before the motor age. People will walk or ride five miles to meet the train, just as they did in the 19th century. Footpaths and tramways will radiate from each station like the spokes of a wheel, connecting workshops, markets, and homes.

Around these railheads small service centres will grow — inns, warehouses, repair shops, post rooms, and guild exchanges. The old sprawl of suburbia will contract into distinct, walkable communities, each aware of its boundary and connection.

The train, no longer a symbol of haste, becomes the rhythm of inter-local exchange. It allows movement and trade without sacrificing locality.

Boundaries That Breathe

The boundaries of localities will never be fixed. They will expand and contract as woodlands grow, water shifts, and populations change. Cooperation between neighbours replaces central direction.

Localities will link through federations — councils of guild representatives and mints — managing trade, transport, and environmental care. Decision-making will rise only as far as necessary, never higher.

These boundaries breathe like the lungs of the nation, each drawing in what it needs and exhaling what it can share.

The Shape of the Nation to Come

As the fossil-fuel economy contracts, it will not simply vanish — it will recede like a tide, leaving behind a network of harbours, tracks, and skills ready for reuse. The national framework remains, but it is no longer a structure of command; it becomes a pattern of cooperation.

Britain will settle into a mosaic of working localities — each tending its own woods and water, producing food, craft, and culture, and linked by the rail lines, canals, and coastal routes of the old industrial world. The capital and the great cities will endure, but not as engines of growth: they will serve as exchange points, libraries, and archives — the memory of the nation.

Movement will slow, but life will deepen. The quality of existence will no longer be measured by output but by balance — between work and rest, between locality and landscape, between human need and nature’s capacity.

This is not a return to the past but a re-rooting in continuity. The wood economy represents not nostalgia, but maturity — a civilisation adjusting to the limits of the living world. It is a Britain smaller in scale, steadier in rhythm, and richer in meaning — a land once more shaped by the patient flow of water and the enduring work of human hands.

183. Britain’s Growing Dependence on Foreign Electricity – Why Localism Is the Answer

Posted on 20/10/2025 by Barry

The Telegraph: “Britain more reliant than ever on foreign electricity imports” (20 October 2025)

The Telegraph reports that Britain is now importing around 16 percent of its electricity in the first nine months of this year, up from 15.6 percent the year before. The cause lies in the decline of the nation’s generating capacity, high domestic prices compared with France and Norway, and the economics of undersea interconnectors that automatically draw in cheaper foreign power.

This growing dependence exposes a fundamental weakness in the centralised energy system. When national supply contracts, and foreign imports fill the gap, Britain becomes more vulnerable to international price shifts, market volatility, and cross-border politics. The remedy is not simply to build more giant projects but to change the structure of the system itself.

Localism: The Practical Alternative

1. Resilient, locally controlled supply
Local energy generation – solar panels on roofs, community wind farms, small-scale hydro, or biomass systems – can supply local needs directly. This reduces exposure to the fluctuating international market and gives communities a degree of energy independence that the national grid cannot.

2. Matching production with local demand
A localised system aligns supply with the pattern of local consumption. Energy generated nearby is used nearby, cutting transmission losses and easing strain on national infrastructure.

3. Faster delivery through community engagement
Large projects often stall in the planning system. Local schemes, supported by residents and councils, can be built quickly. Local ownership generates pride and participation, creating a virtuous circle of trust and investment.

4. Keeping value within the community
When electricity is produced locally, so is its economic benefit. Revenue from generation stays in the locality, creating jobs and funding further investment in storage, maintenance, and energy efficiency.

What This Looks Like

Localities could develop networks of community energy cooperatives, each managing their own mix of solar, wind, and battery storage. Councils could coordinate neighbourhood micro-grids, ensuring power stability and fair distribution. Local demand-management schemes could smooth peaks in usage, reducing the need for imported electricity at critical times.

These developments do not replace national systems – they strengthen them from the ground up. The national grid becomes a backup, not the lifeline it is today.

A Necessary Evolution

The UK’s generating capacity fell to 71.7 gigawatts last year, down 3 percent. That trend will not reverse quickly. Centralised, capital-intensive projects take years to complete. Local energy projects can be conceived, financed, and operating within months.

Localism therefore represents the natural evolution of the British energy system – smaller, faster, more flexible, and more secure.

Conclusion

Britain’s growing reliance on foreign electricity is a symptom of over-centralisation and under-investment in local capacity. The answer lies not in larger reactors or longer cables, but in empowering local communities to generate and manage their own energy. Localism restores control, strengthens resilience, and keeps wealth circulating where it is produced.

The power Britain needs for the future may not come from across the Channel, but from its own localities – rooftop by rooftop, turbine by turbine.

173. When Less Is More: How Localism Saves Time, Energy, and Sanity

Posted on 13/10/2025 by Barry

This piece builds on the themes of “Beyond Growth: The Unavoidable Reality of Nature’s Limits”.

It explores how localism offers a natural path forward as the industrial economy reaches its limits of complexity, cost, and energy use. The argument here is simple: when money, time, and energy are seen together, the localist system emerges not as a retreat from modernity, but as its practical successor — leaner, slower, and more human.

We’ve grown used to measuring everything in money. Governments talk about GDP, companies talk about profit, and even charities measure their “impact” in pounds. But few of us stop to ask a simpler question: how are we actually spending our time, and how much energy does it take to keep our modern way of life going?

If we look at those two things — time and energy — the story of the industrial economy begins to look rather odd.

The time drain in your pocket
Take your smartphone. It’s a wonderful tool, but also a thief of hours. The average adult in Britain now spends about four hours a day staring at one. Some of that time is useful — arranging a delivery, checking the weather, or messaging a friend. But most of it isn’t.

Scrolling through news feeds, watching short videos, chasing adverts, re-entering passwords: this is busy work, not productive work. It feels active, but it rarely produces anything of value.

If you add it up, that’s more than 1,000 hours a year — almost half a working year — spent in digital drift. Imagine what that same time could do in the real world: repairing a fence, helping a neighbour, or tending a garden.

The rise of the one-time password
It’s getting worse, not better. Have you noticed how many times a day you now have to “prove” who you are?

One-time passwords, security codes, captchas, and two-step verification now clutter almost every online interaction.

Each one takes only a few seconds, but across millions of people and thousands of logins a day, it adds up to an invisible national time tax. It’s the cost of living in a complex, centralised system that no one fully trusts.

These checks don’t grow food, fix shoes, or care for the elderly. They simply maintain the machinery of complexity. The industrial economy, which once promised efficiency, now devotes an increasing share of our collective time to protecting itself from itself.

The hidden electricity bill
Phones themselves don’t use much power — perhaps a few kilowatt-hours a year, costing less than a cup of coffee. The trouble lies in the system that supports them.

Every text, photo, and video passes through mobile masts, fibre networks, and giant data centres that run 24 hours a day. For every unit of electricity used to charge your phone, thirty to fifty units are burned somewhere else to keep the network alive.

When you multiply that by 50 million UK users, the total is about five terawatt-hours a year — roughly 1½ per cent of all the electricity Britain uses. That’s equivalent to a small power station running flat out just to support our smartphone habits.

And most of that energy isn’t producing anything tangible. It’s pushing adverts, holding temporary data, and waiting for the next scroll.

The industrial model: high output, low efficiency
The modern industrial economy runs on this kind of hidden overhead. Every product or service depends on huge networks of energy, information, and security. The system looks efficient when you measure it in pounds per hour, but not when you measure it in human hours or kilowatt-hours.

For every hour of true production, several more are spent on administration, verification, and digital upkeep.

The localist alternative
Now imagine a more grounded way of working — the localist economy.

Here, people make, grow, repair, and care directly. They use simple digital tools when needed but don’t live through them. Work is personal, trust is local, and value is measured by usefulness, not by the number of clicks.

A local baker sells to nearby families. A handyman repairs what’s already there. A neighbour shares surplus fruit rather than advertising it online. Electricity might come from rooftop panels, a village turbine, or a community battery. Transactions are trusted, so no one wastes time proving their identity three times a day.

Time is used directly, and energy travels short distances.

Why localism becomes competitive
At first glance, this might seem nostalgic or even inefficient — until you remember that national electricity and digital overheads are now very expensive.

Industrial firms are locked into the national grid, long supply chains, and heavy data use. Their costs rise with every energy price increase and every new security regulation.

Local producers, by contrast, can use their own power and keep things simple. They don’t need to heat giant buildings or refrigerate goods for long journeys. They don’t run constant advertising campaigns or manage digital payment systems. They just work and trade.

So as national energy prices climb, local producers quietly become more competitive.

Time efficiency versus financial efficiency

It’s worth separating two kinds of efficiency.

The industrial world is efficient with money but wasteful of time.
The localist world is modest with money but careful with time.

In human terms, the second is often more productive. A person who spends their day doing useful, tangible things — even unpaid — contributes more to life than someone trapped in administrative loops or digital distraction.

The phone, used properly
This doesn’t mean we should throw our phones away. They’re marvellous for the right tasks: sharing knowledge, finding tools, checking weather patterns, or contacting customers. The problem is overuse. The aim is to put the phone back in its proper place — as a servant, not a master.

If average daily use fell from four hours to half an hour, the nation would save tens of billions of human hours each year and several terawatt-hours of electricity. That’s a lot of freed capacity — both mental and electrical — for things that actually matter.

The wider picture
When energy and digital costs rise faster than wages fall, simplicity wins.
Localism’s strength lies in this simplicity: short distances, direct trust, human time, and small power sources close to where people live.

The industrial economy will still exist for some large-scale or specialist tasks, but its cost base will keep rising as it feeds its own complexity. The localist economy, lighter and slower, will quietly outcompete it in many everyday activities — not through subsidies or slogans, but through basic physics and human sense.

A quiet revolution
The recovery of productive time and local energy isn’t a step backwards. It’s a return to proportion.

As people spend less time proving who they are and more time being who they are, life will feel less hurried and more useful.

That may turn out to be the real measure of prosperity in the years ahead — not how much money changes hands, but how wisely we spend our limited time and energy.

164. Towards a Wood Economy

Posted on 01/10/2025 by Barry

The industrial age was built on fossil fuels. Coal, oil and gas powered machines, lit homes, and drove global trade. But that age is passing. Fossil reserves are finite, and their use drives climate collapse.

What comes next may not be an economy of expansion, but an economy of contraction — smaller in scale, more local, and grounded in renewable resources close at hand. One such possibility would be a wood economy.

Wood has always been more than fuel. It has been money, shelter, transport, and culture. In Hardy’s book The Woodlanders, the forest shaped everyday life. Today, as fossil fuel energy ebbs, the coppice may again become the measure of value.

This post marks the beginning of a series exploring what a wood-based local economy could look like. Each part of town and village localist life — from coins to cricket — can be seen through the lens of the coppice.

What We Will Explore

Currency and Trade
- Wood coins minted from a parish copse.
- Equal issue to every adult, tied to the amount of fuel in store.
- Local use only, with surpluses exported for national currency.
Cottagers and Homes
- Modest timber-framed cottages, built for repair not discard.
- Shade trees to cool in summer, wood coins to pay for upkeep.
Energy and Biochar
- Charcoal and biochar as fuel and carbon store.
- Masonry stoves, communal bakehouses, and clean kilns.
- The “carbon cascade” — using fire not to waste carbon, but to bank it.
Transport Without Fossil Fuels
- Horse-drawn tramways linking coppice and village.
- Chinese-style wheelbarrows on narrow single wheel-width paths.
- Barges on rivers for national loads.
Health and Care
- Reducing smoke through technology and rules.
- Equal coin issue to support those who cannot work.
- Community book-work for those with mental capacity but poor strength.
Work and Guilds
- Charcoal burners, carpenters, coopers, bodgers.
- Apprenticeships to pass on skills.
- Ledgers and rotas as part of community management.
Food and Water
- Woodland grazing, nuts, mushrooms, smoked and preserved foods.
- Charcoal for filtering water.
- Wooden pipes, troughs, and aqueducts.
Culture and Sport
- Cricket on the green, hockey in the field, walking.
- Festivals tied to coppice cutting, charcoal burning, and coin minting.
- Songs, stories, and rituals rooted in the woodland cycle.

Living Within Limits

A wood economy is not fast or expansive. The slow growth of trees would measure it. Coins, fuel, houses, and food depend on that cycle. Yet within those limits lies resilience.

This series will sketch a future where coppice and biochar, not coal and oil, anchor community life. It will not be a return to the past, but a different way forward: slower, fairer, and more enduring.

163. The Electrification of Road Transport Will Turn Out to Be…

Posted on 30/09/2025 by Barry

Copied from a piece by The Honest Sorcerer, Sep 28, 2025

The conclusion of this piece, in relation to the future of diesel for freight transport, is that “The future will be increasingly localized, with much less product variants and with much simple lifestyles.” Yet another reason for a future of localism.

The world economy is grappling with a gradually worsening diesel shortage. In fact we might have already passed peak diesel in 2023, already. Despite claims to the contrary the world is still fed, moved, mined and built using this extremely energy dense fuel, thus its increasingly tight availability is starting to become a limiting factor to the growth of the world economy. The question poses itself: can the electrification of transport and mining ease the pain somewhat, or is it yet another myth?

World oil and natural gas supply is about to peak, then begin its long decline in the years ahead. While this statement stirred great controversy two decades ago, today it seems to be normal news. Almost too normal — as if the world no longer needed oil. Looking at the prices alone West Texas Intermediate at $65 per barrel seems to be a bargain, especially when compared to the price of gold or other commodities. Surely, if we needed more petroleum its price would be much higher, right? Well, as usual, things are a bit more complicated than that. In fact, I argue, the collapse of oil prices foreshadow a much greater than expected fall in oil supply, but let’s not get ahead ourselves just yet.

Oil is not just another commodity. It is still the lifeblood of this civilization thanks to its immense energy density, portability, low weight and widespread availability. Despite the fact that its use is a major contributor to climate change, we still heavily depend on it for agriculture, mining, long distance transport and construction. Yet, as the image below (taken from the same Ember document we discussed last week) shows: transitioning to an electricity driven transport system takes longer than expected. To be on the optimistic side I could say we just have to wait another century. Or two.

Fossil fuel use in transport. Source: Ember

All that glitters is not gold

I’m not here to spread unwarranted optimism, though. We simply don’t have time till the end of this century to make a dent on fossil fuel use in road transport — and not primarily because of climate concerns. Diesel fuel availability worldwide is already on a high plateau, even as we add more and more unconventional oil and natural gas liquids to the mix we euphemistically call ‘oil’. Before 2014 every barrel of oil added to world supply resulted in a proportionate increase in diesel fuel consumption: the conversion ratio hovered around 30% (i.e.: one third of each barrel of oil was turned into gasoil). After 2014, however, this tight correlation started to break down: diesel consumption could no longer keep up with growth in oil supply. While prior to 2014 diesel supply grew at a steady 2% year-over-year, after 2014 that annual growth rate virtually collapsed by an order of magnitude to 0.28%. What’s that all about?

Diesel fuel consumption worldwide is already at a high plateau, even as we add more and more unconventional oil and natural gas liquids to the mix. R values represent correlation between diesel consumption growth and increases in world oil supply. The closer this correlation is to 1 the better the match between the two data sets are. Data source: Energy Institute / Chart: own work

As we have seen from the ratio of electricity use in road transport, that abrupt slow-down in diesel consumption growth could not come from truck drivers switching to batteries all of a sudden. If we take a good hard look at the source of “oil” supply growth since 2014, however, we might quickly realize that not all that glitters is gold — i.e. not everything is “oil” in that ever growing mix. Production growth of conventional onshore and shallow water crude — the best inputs to make diesel fuel from — began to stall in the middle of the 2000’s already, with almost all new sources of oil coming from unconventional wells ever since 2015. These new sources of petroleum, especially tight oil (oil trapped in low-permeability rocks like shale and limestone) and natural gas liquids (hydrocarbons extracted from raw natural gas during processing, including components like ethane, propane, butanes, and pentanes), however, contain very little if any diesel compounds (1). Sure, refineries could and did make a lot of plastic and gasoline out of this new found “oil”, but very little truck fuel. You see, this is the problem with trying to “replace” conventional oil with all kinds of liquids produced by the petroleum industry: most of it is unsuitable for use in trucks, excavators, ships, locomotives, combined harvesters and the rest (2).

Note how the peak oil movement in the early 2000’s was right: conventional onshore plus shallow water crude oil did peak in 2005. Adding deepwater oil into the mix pushed out this peak by two years only. These conventional oil sources are on the decline ever since, with natural gas liquids, extra-heavy and tight oil being the sole sources of growth these days. Source: IEA

What does the future hold, then? Well, not more conventional oil, that is for sure. According to the forecasts prepared by Rystad Energy and used by the IEA, we have 2–3 years till both oil and natural gas production peaks worldwide, then begins to decline. And if you take a look at the chart below, you can see that conventional oil production will experience an especially steep decline, despite additions from investments in existing and approved projects. Unconventional oil production will continue to expand into the future, but it will be unable to offset the decline from traditional oil fields, let alone make up for the fall in diesel fuel production.

Diesel availability can thus be expected to drop precipitously in the decades ahead, foreshadowing serious problems in road transport, mining, shipping and mechanized agriculture.

Source: IEA

Oil companies will not sit idle, and watch their market collapse, though. They will do everything to at least mitigate that catastrophe ahead. According to the IEA analysis linked above:

“After a primary recovery period, during which oil and gas is produced via natural reservoir drive mechanisms, operators can deploy a variety of measures to boost production or to slow decline. This includes infill drilling of both vertical and horizontal wells, pumping and lifting, large-scale injections such as water flooding, and enhanced recovery techniques. In practice, these activities can occur in sequence or in combination according to suitability, availability and economics of the technology, and in accordance with a company’s reservoir management practices.”

However, these techniques are not without their own risks:

“Once well density is maximised and infill drilling slows, production decline may accelerate above the rates observed before the new drilling was undertaken.”

To put it bluntly: enhanced oil recovery can buy us a little time, but at the cost of an abrupt decline in the end. Not the most reassuring news, if you ask me. Switching fuels sources will be of little help either. Encouraging home owners to change to electric or gas heating from oil, will not solve anything since both are dependent on a non-renewable resource equally prone to peak and decline just like oil (40% of US electricity is still generated by natural gas). The same goes to trucks, buses and agricultural machinery powered by CNG or LNG: since worldwide gas production is about to peak together with oil, switching between the two energy sources will not improve the situation the slightest.

Electrons to the rescue!

That leaves us with one thing to pin our “hopes” on: the rapid electrification of road transport and mining. And why not agriculture or container and bulk shipping? — one might ask. Well, weight is already a huge issue when it comes to agricultural machinery. Soil compacted by tractors can absorb less moisture and plant roots do not develop properly in them. Ocean shipping, often covering thousands of miles, is also “hard” (read: impossible) to electrify — no battery would last a month long journey across the Pacific. And while wind sails and solar panels could reduce fuel consumption by a couple of percentage points, they cannot completely eliminate it. That leaves us with using batteries in road transport, thereby saving fuel for agricultural use and shipping where heavy batteries and electrification is still not an option.

IEA (2025), Electric bus sales share by region, 2016–2024, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/electric-bus-sales-share-by-region-2016-2024-2, Licence: CC BY 4.0

So what are the trends in heavy-duty electric vehicles? According to the EIA’s Global EV Outlook 2025 electric bus sales have already reached an invisible ceiling (around 60% of all units sold) in China, while other regions are still dominated by diesel bus sales. Demand for electric trucks, on the other hand, is still in the 1–5% range — even in China. No wonder, despite the optimistic sentiment shared by the EIA and some other organizations, long distance (500 km range) battery electric trucks are still two to three times more expensive than regular ones, and require multi-hour long stops to recharge. Using a fast charger, on the other hand, would degrade the battery much faster than regular charge, so the cost of replacing batteries much more often would quickly negate the benefits of not having to wait several hours for each recharge. And while battery swapping could be an option, building continent wide networks of standardized battery swapping stations is still a pipe dream. Consequently electric trucks seem to remain stuck in the niche of short distance milk runs, parcel deliveries, or drayage (the transport of shipping containers over a short distance to their final destination).

Battery electric trucks are ideal for cycles with combinations of lower daily mileage, lower speeds, and predictable routes, not for long distance delivery consuming the vast majority of diesel fuel worldwide.

Then what about electric vehicle trends in mining? Well, apart from some promising experiments, the market for battery electric mining equipment is virtually non-existent at the moment. Even the most optimistic analysts admit, that there are serious productivity concerns when it comes to switching to battery electric mining trucks: “Currently, electric trucks cannot match the uptime of diesel trucks, which require only about 10 minutes of refueling per day compared to the 1 to 2 hours battery charging.” And not only that. “Battery technology remains a key obstacle, with current advancements from suppliers like CATL, ABB, and Northvolt only recently meeting the high demands of haul trucks. The lack of a unified standard in battery designs and chemistries complicates the selection of the optimal solution for mining applications.” From where a 32% compound annual growth rate (unprecedented in any other business) would come from then, remains a mystery for me. And remember, if Rystad’s calculations are correct, we are looking at a nosedive in conventional oil production in the years ahead. We don’t have decades to develop and to ramp up new battery technologies.

Pipe dream on steroids. Source: IDTechEX

The little time left to ramp up electrified mining and road transport is not the only limitation, though. While battery technologies could and most probably will improve in the future, generating the megawatts of electricity needed to fast charge these huge batteries will require a massive expansion of the electric grid, or necessitate a similar scale power generation on site. Since grids are overloaded already — and because most major mines are far away from civilization — this latter, however, could only mean natural gas turbines. “Renewables” could only provide some auxiliary support, as a mine cannot be shut down just because its overcast outside or the wind isn’t blowing. (The same goes to long distance trucking, just sayin’.) This continued reliance on fossil fuels begs the question, though: what’s the point of electrification if we just swap one fast depleting fuel (diesel) to another one (natural gas), or in the case of China: coal?

Economic reality

Finally this takes us back to the economics of extracting and making these fuels. As we have seen above, demand for diesel was not dented by electrification or alternative fuels. As a result the world is already grappling with a serious diesel shortage, evidenced by record high refinery margins made on making and selling this type of fuel. Ever since 2022 (the failed return to growth after the pandemic and Western sanctions completely upsetting diesel supply in the EU) there is a chronic shortage of the right kind of oil to make diesel from. And with relentless attacks on Russian refineries, diesel export capacities are dwindling as well. Adding all sorts of liquids from unconventional sources, on the other hand, have only resulted in a decline in oil prices, and a widening gap between desires and reality. After ten years of struggling conventional oil (and consequently diesel) supply, the penny has dropped: real, productive economic growth could no longer continue. Something got to give: the Chinese building boom had to end, and Europe’s prosperity had to be sacrificed on the altar of continued financial expansion — lest we wanted to risk tipping the entire system over.

Perhaps the best indicator of this combination of demand destruction, mounting recession fears and flight to safety is the gold to oil ratio, representing how many barrels of oil you can buy with one ounce of gold. You see, the price of oil is the first to plummet during a recession, while gold is seen as a safe haven to protect “wealth”. Whenever this ratio blows out, it indicates a flight to safety and prevailing market caution. As shown on the chart below, we are well past anything we have seen in the past — except for the 2020 health crisis, which resulted in negative oil prices. Such low prices, however, virtually guarantee the outcome laid out by Rystad and the EIA above: oil at $65 or below is simply too cheap for most of the drilling companies to go after. The material costs of drilling ever deeper, less and less productive and ever faster depleting wells simply does not worth the expenditure at these low prices. And soon, not even at $95 a barrel.

Gold to Oil Ratio — Historical Chart. Source: Macrotrends

Conclusion

Based on these premises electrification can only slow the decline in transport and mining volumes somewhat, but not considerably. As the looming diesel crisis becomes acute, the price of this fuel could skyrocket — but only for a very short time. Since our entire world economy with its six continent supply chains and high material intensity relies on cheap fuel to operate, should such a price spike occur businesses would go bankrupt in droves. A slow but steady rise in the price of diesel, on the other hand, could make anything mined, transported or built by oil so expensive, that people could no longer afford them, leading to a deflationary crisis. Either way demand for diesel would fall in tandem with supply, leaving us with less and less stuff manufactured then brought in from far away. Eventually all the benefits of globalization would be eliminated: no more cheap clothes made available by cheap labor in Cambodia, or battery minerals mined in the Congo, copper in Chile and nickel in Indonesia.

The future will be increasingly localized, with much less product variants and with much simple lifestyles. Remaining diesel supplies will be diverted entirely to maintain agriculture and food delivery, focusing on plant based foods (animal husbandry requires a lot more fuel than growing peas and beans). For the average citizen this will translate into higher food and skyrocketing meat prices, leaving little to no budget to buy anything else than a shirt or a pair of shoes every now and then. (Especially so, if you consider the effect of forced localization raising the cost of doing anything as opposed to just importing stuff from the cheapest source.) Infrastructure projects will be abandoned, just like major housing developments as these activities take a lot of fuel to complete.

How our complex, self-adaptive world economy would react to such a shock as a withdrawal of its prime source of energy, is anyone’s guess. We are looking at a highly volatile situation ahead, lasting decades into the future. Currency crash, inflation, deflation, stagnation and decline are all in the cards. Once the initial part of the crisis is over, we will be looking at a totally different economy though. Many companies will go bankrupt, and the workforce hence released would have to find jobs in agriculture and local workshops, as the demand for cheap labor could only increase with less and less affordable fuel to drive machinery. Adopting a much less materially intensive lifestyle could, however, match the availability of diesel supply, and together with a persistent fall in birth rates could ensure a smooth landing towards the end of this century when oil finally runs out. Yes, I know this might sound messy and pessimistic for those pinning their hopes on this technological civilization going on forever and a day… I have to ask, though, how exactly did you expect ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’ to play out then?

160. More about Deep Bed Farming

Posted on 18/09/2025 by Barry

Deep Bed Farming (DBF) is a farming method developed by the Malawian NGO Tiyeni. It’s designed to address a serious agricultural issue in parts of Malawi: a hard, compacted layer of earth (“hardpan”) just under the topsoil, which prevents roots, water and air from penetrating. This limits crop yields, causes soil erosion, and reduces water retention.
DBF involves several practices:
1. Breaking up the hardpan to allow penetration of roots, water, air.
2. Creating contour ridges and deep beds — raised beds which help with water retention, reduce runoff, and prevent the hardpan from reforming.
Changed crop rotations, use of cover crops and manure/compost, mulching etc., to improve soil health.
Aftrak is a project combining this farming technique with solar power and electric tractors, aiming to reduce labour, improve yields, and also bring electricity to rural communities. It is led by Loughborough University in collaboration with Tiyeni (Malawi), the Consortium for Battery Innovation (UK), and other partners.

Key Technical Details & Innovation

The tractor is designed as a micro-electric/solar-electric tractor (“walk-behind” style) suitable for smallholder farmers, capable of doing the hard work of preparing land for DBF.
It uses a solar microgrid / solar base station to charge batteries and provide electricity not only for the tractor but also for domestic uses (lighting, phone charging, etc.).
The tractor can cut to a depth of 400 mm (≈ 40 cm) to break the hardpan layer.
The solar array/base station and batteries are built to be modular, somewhat flat-pack to assist local assembly, resilient to local conditions. It uses lead-acid style batteries (deep-cycle, e.g. Varta) rather than more expensive lithium systems, because lead batteries handle heat more simply and cost less (though they are heavier).

Impact & Benefits Observed / Expected

Farmers using this method (DBF) have seen double or even triple yields per hectare in some cases. DBF alone (without the tractor) has already shown big gains. The tractor plus solar should accelerate that, reduce effort, allow more land to be converted, etc.
The project helps reduce labour – using hand tools (hoes, etc.) is arduous, time-consuming, and limiting (especially for older, disabled, women-led households). The tractor eases that burden.
Also brings electricity to villages that often don’t have reliable power. The base station supplies power for lighting, phone charging, possibly some small appliances etc. This can improve quality of life (education, comfort, safety) and reduce reliance on polluting or expensive alternatives.

Funding, Recognition & Deployment

The project has been funded in part by Innovate UK under its Energy Catalyst program.
In 2024, it won the Milken-Motsepe Prize in Green Energy (USD $1 million) for its innovation.
A prototype has been built and trialed in Malawi by the Tiyeni team. Loughborough also did preparatory tests (solar microgrid, tractor operation etc.) in UK settings.

Challenges & Considerations

Cost & infrastructure: Even though this is much cheaper than large tractors or fossil fuel alternatives, there are upfront costs: solar panels, batteries, the base station, and maintenance.
Maintenance & local capacity: For sustainability, local communities need to be able to maintain equipment, replace parts, and manage charging infrastructure. If the system fails, benefits reduce sharply
Scaling: Trials so far are limited; rolling out over large distances (across villages, with varied soil types, differing climates) will bring new challenges.
Battery limitations: Lead acid batteries have limitations (weight, depth of discharge, lifetime) especially under heavy use, heat, etc. But they were chosen because they are more suitable than lithium in this context given cost, availability, heat handling.

Why It Matters

This is more than just a new piece of machinery. It sits at the intersection of:

Food security: Improving yields can help reduce hunger and poverty.
Sustainability & climate resilience: Less reliance on fossil fuels, better soil health, better water retention helps resilience to climate change (e.g. heavy rains, drought).
Energy access: Providing electricity to remote rural communities can support education, health, livelihoods.
Inclusive development: Reducing physical labour is especially helpful for people less able, such as older farmers and women.

156. A Grim Encore: Europe’s Descent into Coal

Posted on 09/09/2025 by Barry

Civilisation rests on pillars—food, water, steel, cement, and above all, energy. Without them, everything crumbles. That foundational truth, articulated in “A Return to Coal” by Consciousness of Sheep on September 8, 2025, rings louder now than ever consciousnessofsheep.co.uk.

Once the world’s industrial heart, Europe now teeters on the verge of a second Dark Age—for reasons that read like tragicomic irony.

The Mirage of “Cheap” Russian Gas

For decades, European rhetoric cast Russian gas as cheap and plentiful. But that was a myth. In reality, while Russian pipeline gas benefited from transport infrastructure and long-term contracts, pricing steadily converged with—or even exceeded—European spot and LNG levels Reuters. The notion that Russia ever offered a perpetual gas discount was less energy economics and more wishful politics.

Renewables That Aren’t So Renewable

Europe pinned its hopes on non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs)—wind and solar. But these technologies lack the physical inertia of traditional plants like coal, gas, or nuclear. That’s a serious grid integrity issue. When something disrupts the system—say, a lightning strike at a wind farm or sudden loss of production—there’s no spinning turbine mass to smooth the shock. The result? Cascading blackouts and grid instability.

Even sustainably-minded myths crumble under scrutiny: renewables can’t provide the fast ramp-up, inertia, or black-start capabilities essential to modern grids.

Lignite: Europe’s Dirty Refuge

So where does Europe turn? The article points—with mordant humor—to Europe’s vast coal reserves, especially lignite (brown coal) in places like Northern Ireland—and critically, Germany. Ironically, the nations most bullish about decarbonisation—Britain, France, Germany—may be the first to revert to coal when cheaper Russian gas flows eastward.

It’s especially telling that nuclear shutdowns and intermittent renewables are leaving Europe exposed—only to fall back on one of the dirtiest and least sustainable fuels.

The Irony of a Green Collapse

Here’s the tragic core: efforts to phase out fossil fuels—often at the cost of nuclear decommissioning—have made Europe more fragile, not greener. Germany’s premature nuclear exit, green policy fetish, and reliance on renewables without proper backup capacity led to industrial decline and imports of coal-based wind turbine components from China In the UK, expensive LNG imports have hamstrung heavy industry; steel production falters, business bankruptcies skyrocke.

All the while, the “green transition” depends heavily on subsidies and mandates—renewables get priority dispatch, despite lacking inertia, and profits for renewable operators are barely viable without these supports.

Conclusion: Coal’s Comeback – Wry, Grim, Inevitable?

Europe may well be hurtling back toward coal—not because of innovation, but under the weight of failed energy policy, shaky grids, and geopolitical isolation.

Russian gas wasn’t really cheap, and its myth masked deeper vulnerabilities.
Renewables without robust backup are fragile illusions, not anchors of sustainability.
Coal—lignite in particular—lurks as a last-resort fallback, especially for nations that once led energy reforms.

This is not a “green transition” but a reversal, propelled by miscalculation, rigid ideology, and the brutal physics of energy systems. The irony is bitter, the direction unmistakable, and the cost – economic, environmental, and societal – immeasurable.

142. Let’s Get Honest About the Human Predicament

Posted on 04/08/2025 by Barry

We are clinging to a dangerous fantasy – the belief that we can simply replace fossil fuels with something else and carry on as before. That wind, solar, nuclear, or hydrogen will allow us to keep our cars, our flights, our global supply chains, and our high-energy lifestyles. This is not just naïve – it’s reckless.

The hard truth is that there is no substitute for the scale, convenience, and density of energy we once had in oil, coal, and gas. Even nuclear power, often presented as the big solution, cannot sustain our way of life. It is part of the picture – but nowhere near the whole picture.

We must abandon the idea of energy substitution and face what really lies ahead: radical energy descent.

This means reducing our use of all forms of energy – not by a little, but by a lot. It means stepping off the treadmill of endless demand. It means redesigning our lives to need far less.

Not just fewer cars – but fewer journeys.
Not just greener homes – but smaller, simpler ones.
Not just different production – but less production.
Less heating, less cooling, less lighting, less powering.

This is not a message that wins elections or sells products. But it is the message that truth demands. The world is entering a long emergency – of resource limits, climate instability, and economic contraction. More energy won’t save us. Only using less will.

The challenge is no longer technical. It is civilisational.

And so we come to localism – not as a political slogan, but as a survival strategy.

Localism works because it cuts energy demand at the root. It shortens supply chains. It eliminates unnecessary travel. It reduces the need for global logistics, mega infrastructure, and remote bureaucracy. It rebuilds community, relocalises food and work, and makes life slower, simpler, and supportable.

We cannot keep powering the industrial scale of life. But we can power the local.

Localism is not a utopia. It is a pathway through collapse – a way of contracting with dignity. A way of living that fits within the limits of the Earth and the energy it offers.

We don’t need a new fuel. We need a new way of living.
That means less of everything – and closer to home.

Let’s get honest – and start again, locally.

129. The Reductionist Delusion: How We Got Climate Change Wrong

Posted on 29/05/2025 by Barry

May 27, 2025|Art Berman

climate-complexity-and-the-limits-of-reductionist-thinking

The failure of the climate movement isn’t just political or scientific—it’s philosophical. At its core is a reductionist mindset: isolate one culprit, pursue one goal, rally around one fix. Fossil fuels became the villain, CO₂ emissions the metric, and renewables the savior—embraced more for narrative simplicity than system reality. Missing was any serious reckoning with energy, complexity, ecological limits, or human behavior. If fossil fuels caused the problem, then renewables must solve it. Doubt didn’t fit the script.

Figure 1. The Reductionist Mindset–Fossil Fuels the villain, CO₂ the metric, renewables the savior. End of discussion. Source: Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

But the real story is more tangled. Modern civilization was built on fossil fuels. They weren’t just a side-effect of progress—they were its engine. Especially after World War II, oil, coal, and gas fueled everything: industrial expansion, population growth, military power, and the rise of global trade. The abundance of cheap energy made complexity affordable and growth seem infinite.

Climate science emerged in this very context. In 1958, Charles Keeling began measuring atmospheric CO₂. His curve showed a steady rise, even as the world raced deeper into fossil dependency. By the 1970s, scientists were warning that doubling CO₂ could dangerously heat the planet. But at that same moment, the U.S. faced oil shocks—gas lines, school closures, inflation—and energy security, not climate, drove the agenda. Coal made a comeback. Natural gas gained favor. Renewables entered the conversation quietly, not as climate tools, but as buffers against foreign oil.

That separation never really healed. Climate change was treated as a future externality, while energy policy remained a present-tense strategy of supply and control. Fracking, for example, didn’t spread because it reduced emissions—it exploded because it reduced oil imports and trade deficits. Climate goals followed energy trends, not the other way around. And because energy itself was never understood as a system, climate-change advocates incorrectly believed we could swap renewables for fossil fuels and keep everything else the same.

Reductionist thinking led to energy blindness—and that blindness doomed the climate movement. Its advocates still don’t grasp that electricity makes up only a small slice of total energy use for a reason: its applications, while impressive, are inherently limited. Renewables were assumed to be plug-and-play replacements for fossil fuels. They ignored density, intermittency, scale, and material inputs. They ignored what energy actually does: fueling the machinery of global extraction, transport, manufacturing, construction, and trade—most of which can’t be electrified at the scale modern civilization demands. The entire industrial superorganism runs on a kind of metabolic intensity fossil fuels uniquely deliver. Subtract that, and you don’t just lose emissions—you lose capabilities.

But climate policy never really faced that. It isolated carbon as the problem, treated the atmosphere as the domain of action, and left the civilization it emerged from largely untouched. The public was promised a clean transition. The idea that we could decarbonize without decomplexifying was treated as not only possible, but inevitable.

Figure 2. Modern civilization will collapse without fossil fuels. Climate activists refuse to see this.
Source: Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

That’s the deeper failure. Not that the warnings weren’t loud enough. Not that the science wasn’t clear. But the framing itself was naïve and simplistic. We tried to solve climate in a way that let us avoid the real questions—about limits, about how we live, about what kind of future we’re actually powering toward.

This wasn’t just a climate mistake. It’s the same pattern we’ve seen with GDP as a proxy for wellbeing, with technological fixes for social breakdown, with laws against addiction instead of understanding its roots. We break the world into parts, fix the ones we can see, and call the system stable—until it breaks again.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice comes to mind: a young helper stumbles onto power he doesn’t fully grasp. He sets the spell in motion—automation, acceleration—but lacks the wisdom to stop it. Every fix multiplies the problem. The castle floods.

Figure 3. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Power Without Wisdom. Source: Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

We are that apprentice. We harnessed fossil energy, unleashed exponential growth, and built systems too complex to control. Then, faced with side effects—climate change, ecological overshoot, cascading risk—we reached for familiar tools: substitution, regulation, markets. Anything but reflection.

Climate change didn’t fail because we lacked solutions. It failed because we mistook the problem. We made it about emissions when it was always about our relationship with energy, with growth, with the natural world. We wanted to fix the atmosphere and leave the civilization intact. But that’s not how systems work.

The truth is harder. We don’t need new energy sources. We need a new relationship with energy that includes respect for Nature and our place in it, humility and restraint. One that recognizes that some thresholds, once crossed, don’t rewind. And some systems, once overbuilt, don’t transition—they unravel.

That doesn’t mean despair. It means clarity. It means seeing not just where we are, but how we got here—and learning, at last, to think about the whole rather than the parts

126. The Energy Cost of Energy (ECoE): Understanding the Core Constraint of the Modern Economy

Posted on 15/05/2025 by Barry

The Energy Cost of Energy (ECoE) is a vital but often overlooked concept. It refers to the share of energy output that must be used to extract, process, and deliver energy itself. In other words, it’s the energy we spend to get energy. The lower the ECoE, the more net energy remains to power the rest of the economy—everything from farming to hospitals to mobile phone factories.

A Brief History of ECoE

In the early days of fossil fuels, ECoEs were remarkably low. For example, early oil wells in Texas could produce 100 barrels of oil for every barrel of energy invested—an ECoE of just 1%. Coal, oil, and later natural gas allowed industrial economies to expand rapidly because they delivered massive net energy surpluses.

However, over time, the low-hanging fruit was picked. Oil reservoirs became harder to access. Deepwater drilling, tar sands, and shale fracking emerged as substitutes, but they required far more energy input. ECoEs began to rise.

Today, according to analysts such as Tim Morgan and the Surplus Energy Economics model, ECoE for fossil fuels is far higher than it was in the 20th century and continues to climb. Renewable sources like wind and solar may offer lower ECoEs in the long term, but their intermittency and reliance on complex, high-energy infrastructure mean their true ECoEs are not trivial.

ECoE and the Structure of the Economy

As ECoE rises, the surplus energy available to do everything else in society falls. This shift hits the economy in a particularly telling way: it squeezes the space available for discretionary activities.

The economy can be divided into two broad zones:

Essential sectors: food, healthcare, heating, basic transport, water, sanitation—these are the foundation of civilised life.
Discretionary sectors: tourism, high-street retail, entertainment, aviation, luxury goods—these depend on surplus wealth and energy.

When ECoE was low, there was enough energy to expand both sectors. But as ECoE rises, essential needs take priority. The discretionary sector—vulnerable to even small energy and financial shocks—begins to shrink.

This helps explain why ordinary people experience a sense of stagnation or decline even as official GDP figures show modest growth. Their access to discretionary consumption is quietly evaporating, not because they are lazy or mismanage their finances, but because there is less surplus energy to support those activities.

What Happens When There Isn’t Enough Net Energy?

If the ECoE rises so high that even essential activities cannot be fully supported, societies face a more severe crisis than a financial recession. Essential services such as food production, public health, and critical infrastructure begin to falter.

This is not theoretical. In some parts of the world today, power outages, water shortages, and food insecurity are symptoms of systems under stress, financially and energetically.

At this stage, governments are forced into triage: rationing, blackouts, collapse of discretionary sectors, and perhaps nationalisation of vital energy sources. Inflation may rage as real goods and services become scarcer, while money loses its anchoring function. Social unrest becomes likely.

A Glimpse Ahead

Unless the energy system can deliver a lower ECoE—either through new technologies, a renaissance in nuclear power, or a radical simplification of living standards—the modern, consumption-driven way of life will continue to contract. This contraction is not a policy choice; it is a physical necessity. The real economy follows the laws of thermodynamics, not economics textbooks.

In the long run, societies will need to relocalise, reduce their dependence on high-energy discretionary consumption, and prioritise basic needs through more resilient, informal systems. Communities may rediscover older, slower ways of meeting needs through shared labour, seasonal diets, and low-tech tools. The future may not be bright, but it can still be liveable—if we accept the limits imposed by energy reality.

Localism provides an evolutionary way of seeing the future.

122. World Without End: An Illustrated Guide to the Climate Crisis by Jean-Marc Jancovici

Posted on 01/05/2025 by Barry

This graphic novel presents a comprehensive exploration of the energy and climate challenges facing our world today. Through a dialogue between Jancovici and Blain, the book delves into topics such as:

Our Dependence on Fossil Fuels: Examining how modern economies are built on cheap, abundant energy and the implications of dwindling fossil fuel resources.
Limitations of Renewable Energy: Discussing the challenges associated with scaling up renewable energy sources to meet global demand.
Advocacy for Nuclear Power: Presenting nuclear energy as a viable solution to reduce carbon emissions and maintain energy supply .
The Inevitability of Economic Contraction: Arguing that due to physical and environmental constraints, a contraction of the economy is unavoidable, regardless of governmental actions.
The Need for Societal Restructuring: Emphasizing the importance of rethinking our energy consumption, economies, and societal structures to adapt to these changes.

The book combines scientific insights with engaging illustrations, making complex concepts accessible to a broad audience. It has been praised for its clarity and depth, with The Guardian highlighting its effectiveness in conveying the interconnectedness of energy consumption and climate change .

Jean-Marc Jancovici is a French energy and climate expert known for his clear, data-driven arguments about the limits of growth and the central role of energy—especially fossil fuels—in shaping modern civilization. His views are grounded in thermodynamics and systems thinking.

Here’s a summary of his main ideas about the future:

1. Energy is the Foundation of Modern Economies

Economic growth has historically been powered by cheap, abundant fossil fuels.
GDP is closely tied to energy consumption; without energy, machines stop and productivity collapses.

2. Peak Oil and Declining Fossil Resources

The world is nearing, or past, peak oil. Declining fossil fuel availability will reduce the energy available to societies.
Renewables cannot fully replace fossil fuels due to their lower energy return on investment (EROI), intermittency, and material constraints.

3. Climate Change is a Non-Negotiable Constraint

Continuing fossil fuel use leads to climate catastrophe.
A sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is unavoidable, but it implies a contraction of economic activity unless we rapidly restructure society.

4. Degrowth is Inevitable

Jancovici doesn’t advocate voluntary degrowth as an ideal, but sees it as a necessary adaptation to physical limits.
He argues that we will have less material wealth, fewer long-distance travels, and simpler lifestyles, whether we like it or not.

5. Technology Will Not Save Us Alone

While useful, technology cannot overcome energy and ecological limits. Efficiency gains often lead to rebound effects (Jevons Paradox).
Belief in technological salvation is, in his view, a form of denial.

6. We Must Plan for Contraction, Not Growth

Public policy should shift toward planned degrowth, focusing on resilience, equity, and preserving essential services.
Infrastructure, urban design, food production, and employment must be redesigned around low-energy principles.

7. Nuclear Energy is a Partial Solution

Jancovici is a strong proponent of nuclear energy. He believes it offers a realistic path to maintaining some industrial capacity while cutting emissions.
However, even with nuclear, we must reduce energy demand.

Tone and Outlook:
Jancovici is pragmatic and sometimes stark. He speaks of a “controlled landing” rather than a crash. He wants societies to face the truth: we can’t grow forever on a finite planet, and it’s better to anticipate limits than to be crushed by them.