Collapse is Forever

If modern civilization collapses, it will probably never rise again.

Modern civilization emerged by a virtuous cycle (an amplifying feedback loop). The scale of several things increased together:

• Scientific knowledge
• Technological complexity
• Social complexity
• Economic complexity
• Energy use

Each enables the others, and each depends on the others.

Science depends on technology for observation and experimentation. The thermometer, microscope and telescope are examples. Also, science is often motivated by problems that arise in creating and using technology. Science depends on social complexity, because only a large, complex society can afford to have some people specialize in the acquisition of knowledge. The utility of scientific knowledge is a matter of scale. A complex economy creates a demand for scientific knowledge, and jobs for scientists. It provides the surplus wealth necessary to support science. The economy also produces the instruments needed for scientific research. Last but not least, science depends on energy to free up human labor from menial tasks.

Technological complexity depends on science for general knowledge of how things work. Complex technology is only efficient to produce and use on a large scale, so it requires a complex society and economy. Complex technology typically requires specialized labor, and is used in specialized production tasks. It requires energy to make technology, and an energy source to power technology.

Social complexity (a large population organized into a cooperative system) requires that a significant percentage of the population is freed from the labor of food production. It depends on a large, powerful economy to support the institutions that enable large-scale cooperation, including the modern form of government, but also private institutions such as banks. It requires complex technology to allow long-distance communication, travel and trade. It depends on science for the knowledge necessary to make social decisions. And it depends on a large amount of energy to power the economy and the state.

Economic complexity depends on complex technology for mass production and distribution. It depends on large-scale social organization to allow millions of people to exchange goods and services. It depends on a large input of energy to power the production and distribution of goods and services, and to make complex economic organization useful.

Finally, energy must be extracted from the environment. Some sources of energy require complex technology and scientific knowledge to extract and use. Animal traction requires ropes, harnesses, plows, etc. Wind power requires windmills and sailing ships. Extracting fossil fuels requires complex technology, such as drilling machinery, pumps and pipelines, refineries, etc. Using fossil fuels also requires complex technology, such as the internal combustion engine, gas stations, power plants, roads, an electricity grid, etc. Fossil fuels are only useful in a system that includes the complex technology required to extract and use them. Fossil fuels also require a large population, so that the capital costs can be spread over many people. There must be a large, complex economy that can create the infrastructure necessary to extract and use fossil fuels, and do so efficiently.

So, all of these things depend on each other. They emerged together as a system. You cannot have one without the others. Modern civilization was created by ratcheting up the complexity of all the components of this system. Scientific, technological, economic and social complexity increased by a virtuous cycle. Each increase in the complexity of the system enabled a further increase in complexity. At each step, the system enabled the extraction of more energy, and it required more energy to sustain itself.

One of the components is different from the others: energy. The other components are created by humans, and by the system itself. Energy is a natural resource. It is the ultimate input to the system.

Modern civilization runs on fossil fuels. We use other sources of energy, but in much smaller amounts. To power our civilization, we must keep pulling energy out of the ground.

The Earth has a finite stock of fossil fuels. We have not come close to exhausting that stock yet, but we have consumed a large amount of it. If we run out of this energy source before we find another one, or scale down our civilization, there will be a catastrophic collapse of complexity: a civilizational collapse.

Collapse could occur for other reasons than a major energy shortage. A global war or a global economic depression could bring down modern civilization. Remember, everything depends on everything else. A reduction in one type of complexity forces a reduction in the others.

If we have a civilizational collapse, then modern civilization will probably be gone forever. The reason is simple: we have already used up the easily extracted fossil fuels. If we fall back to a lower level of social and technological complexity, we will lose the ability to extract and use fossil fuels.

We have maintained the huge flow of fossil fuels necessary to power our civilization by using increasingly complex technology and increasingly large capital investments. Both depend on a large, complex economy. We drill miles under the seafloor to get oil from the Gulf of Mexico. We use horizontal drilling and fracking to get oil out of shale deposits in Montana. We use huge processing plants that separate oil from water, to maintain the flow of oil out of the depleted Persian Gulf oil-fields. All of those processes depend on very complex technology and huge capital investments. None of them would be possible with the level of technological, economic and social complexity that existed at the start of the industrial revolution, or even at the end of WWII.

In the early 1800s, there were abundant deposits of coal that could be extracted with pick-axes and shovels. In the early 1900s, it was easy to get oil out of the ground in Texas or Saudi Arabia. You just drilled a hole down a hundred feet or so, and the oil gushed up. Today, that oil is gone. The coal near the surface is gone. The industrial revolution could not happen today, because the easily accessible fossil fuels are gone. Without an existing industrial economy, we couldn’t make the complex technology that we currently use to extract fossil fuels from deep in the Earth. It would be too expensive and difficult. We certainly couldn’t prospect for uranium or build a nuclear reactor.

So, if we fall down the ladder of complexity, we won’t be able to climb back up. Without abundant, easily extracted fossil fuels, we can’t recreate industrial civilization. If our civilization collapses, there will probably never be another civilization at the same level of complexity.

If modern civilization collapses, it is probably gone forever.