Fourth Transition Initiative
The defining challenge of our time
Illustrated by answering the French Public Consultation on
how to adapt to 4oC+ global warming by 2100
Preamble
In May 2023, the French Government, Ministries of Ecology Energy and Territories, launched a public
consultation concerning the selection of a reference trajectory for France to adapt to climate change
(trajectoire de réchauffement de référence pour l’adaptation au changement climatique, TRACC). The French
Government posed three questions that French citizens are asked to address. Based on our own research and
that of many colleagues, we view these three questions as nonsensical, in that attempting to answer them
would have no meaning and could only mislead.
What follows is the English translation of our contribution to this “consultation”. It illustrates rather bluntly
how, worldwide, the prevailing fixation on “decarbonising” is dangerously misguided, based as it is on a gross
confusion of the symptoms of the Climate Emergency with its thermodynamic causes in the development of
the Global Energy Supply and Use System (GESUS).
Introduction
“In scientific enquiries a crucial step is to ask the right question. Indeed, each question contains
presuppositions, largely implicit. If these presuppositions are wrong or confused, the question itself is
wrong, in the sense that to try to answer it has no meaning. One has thus to inquire into the
appropriateness of the question.”
(Bohm, David, 1980, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 28).
We welcome the initiative to define a baseline warming trajectory up to 2100 in order to prepare for the
adaptations that have become inevitable. However, in reference to the above quotation from the famous
Physicist David Bohm, the three questions are very poorly posed. By failing to ensure their appropriateness in
view of the presuppositions that motivate them, the questions posed by the Ministries of Ecology, Energy and
Territories fall into the trap highlighted by David Bohm. Trying to answer them directly would make no sense.
Our response to this consultation is therefore devoted first and foremost to placing these questions in a solid,
appropriate framework, so that they or their more appropriate equivalent can be answered.
Fourth Transition Initiative (FTI)
An Initiative catalysed by Fourth Transition Ltd, Company registration number 630527
Director: Dr Louis Arnoux of New Zealand & France – Reg. Office: 10 Pearse Square, Fermoy, Co. Cork, P1 HF67, Ireland
Main contact: louis@fourthtransitionwealth.com, Ph. Ireland: +353 (0)87 091 8306, Ph. France: +33 6 19 20 25 64
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This position may come as a surprise, as it seems clear that we are on an inexorable trajectory towards
overshooting the 2015 Paris Agreement targets. We therefore ask for your patience as we explain the findings
that led us to this position.
Who are we to respond in this seemingly impertinent fashion to the questions posed? We are an international
community of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who have in common the study and knowledge of the
dynamics of global energy supply, their ecological, social and financial impacts. Let's just say that we're like
wildcats. Our more than 50 years of combined expertise enable us to see in the dark the challenges posed by
the huge "woolly mammoth in the (dark) room" that stands before the eyes of the world's elites but that they
fail to see because they remain blinded by their beliefs. We'll return to our background at the end of this
contribution.
Important Note:
The following is based on what is probably the world's most comprehensive and rigorous database on
energy challenges and associated climatic, ecological, social and financial issues. It is only a brief summary
of what we consider to be the most salient points. We will provide further details and references upon
request.
The three questions
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Question 1: Should France adopt a reference trajectory concerning warming by the end of the century
to enable it to adapt, while continuing to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in line with the objectives
of the Paris Agreement?
This question raises at least two issues that are not made explicit, and whose absence reveals as many
presuppositions:
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Ø
What GHG (greenhouse gas) reduction are we talking about? It's well established that current
reduction policies cannot succeed, for system thermodynamics reasons concerning the Global
Energy Supply and Use System (GESUS);
Ø
Why refer to the Paris Agreement? It was also established before the Paris Agreement that it
could not succeed for the same thermodynamic reasons combined with the dynamics of the
Globalised Industrial World (GIW).
Question 2: What do you think of a reference warming trajectory for adaptation in France (TRACC)
whose reference warming levels would be: +2°C in 2030, +2.7°C in 2050 and +4°C in 2100 (mainland
France)?
In addition to the above presuppositions, this question contains a number of unspoken points:
Ø
What does “reference” mean? On what basis? In what context? As we shall show, there can be
no such “reference” without a clear context concerning the challenges to be met, challenges that
are not simply those of global warming;
Ø
Why +4°C in 2100, while we know that one of the consequences of global warming may be
substantial regional cooling in North-Western Europe over a 50-year period as well as global
warming in 2100 well above the +2 °C postulated by the Ministries? See for example, James
Hansen et al., 2023, Global warming in the pipeline, https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04474 et James
Hansen et al., 2016, Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data,
climate modelling, and modern observations that 2 ◦C global warming could be dangerous,
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 3761–3812, 2016 www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/. The fact
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that these questions are debated among experts signals that a reference based on already
obsolete IPCC reports cannot be appropriate;
Ø
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What does “adaptation” mean? Adaptation to what? To whom? For whom? To what end? As we
shall show, the GIW as a whole, and France in particular, by 2030 or before, will have to face up
to a break with the past more brutal and massive than “global warming”, a threat totally ignored
by the present government, despite repeated warnings.
Question 3: What tools and what technical and financial support should be made available to local
authorities, economic players and the general public to enable them to take into account future impacts
of global warming?
It's here, more particularly, that, because of erroneous or confused presuppositions, the question itself
is erroneous, in the sense that trying to answer it makes no sense, as David Bohm warned.
Indeed, at present, almost all “players”, governments, supra-governmental organizations, the oil industry,
other energy suppliers within the GESUS and countless NGOs, remain obsessed with the climate emergency,
when it is in fact a complex set of symptoms and consequences of an underlying cause. What's more, the
situation remains masked by a fixation on economic aspects and the superficial conclusion that the emergency
is to “decarbonize with renewable energies and/or nuclear” when we know full well that this strategy simply
cannot succeed - we summarise how and why in the Appendix, The decarbonisation trap within the Dead State,
page 21.
Metaphorically speaking, the situation is akin to doctors trying to save a patient suffering from a high fever
caused by an illness that they don't understand. While they are busy trying to bring his/her temperature down,
they don't realize that their treatment is rapidly worsening his/her condition... Instead, it should be obvious
that since the climate emergency has been caused by the way humans have used fossil fuels over the last 300
years, the study of the GESUS in thermodynamic terms and of the emerging thermodynamic problems should
be the priority.
The present polycrisis impasse
After some 70 years of denial and/or procrastination, in 2015 the Paris Agreement was finally agreed, aiming
to keep “global warming” preferably below 1.5oC and certainly below 2oC. In 2015 the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) were also formulated by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), aiming to
create a future global development framework. We can also mention the Kunming-Montreal Global
Biodiversity Framework (GBF) adopted by the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) to the Convention on
Biological Diversity (CBD) on 19 December 2022 aiming to stem the 6th mass extinction of species, and
countless other agreements, commitments by governments and businesses alike, as well as endless attempts
to get inflation under control, global issues concerning the ever growing debt, and so on.
Now, in full contrast with the above, week after week, reports and statements by a wide range of decisionmakers get published acknowledging failure after failure on all fronts:
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Climate Emergency: overshooting the 2oC official limit is locked-in. E.g., as indicated by the present
public consultation, while sticking to its official objectives under the Paris Agreement, the French
Government is preparing French people to adapt to “warming” of “+2°C in 2030, +2.7°C in 2050 and
+4°C in 2100 (mainland France)” (Ministries of Ecology Energy and Territories). “Adaptation has become
unavoidable” (French Senate report). Worldwide, more and more reports acknowledge increasingly
insistently the overshoot. Hopes that it could be transient appear more and more lame.
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Global shipping: the “green” façade presented by the shipping industry and the IMO is cracking.
Notwithstanding countless ESG sustainability reports and strategies, shifts to low sulphur fuels,
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investments in alternative fuels (LNG, Ammonia, Hydrogen, bio-fuels, even some electric systems, etc.),
investments in improved propulsion systems, and even in the use of sails and kites, the industry is at
the early stages of having to face reality: presently, no matter what, under current thinking and with
the current technology mix, it can’t make it. It has no realistic prospect of achieving reasonable Scope 3
objectives, let alone sustainability by 2050. It may well face new carbon taxes in the near future.
However, such taxes are known to be ineffective unless emitters can shift to actual, effective solutions,
which is presently not the case. Current technological avenues merely shift GHG emissions elsewhere
in the global energy supply and use system (GESUS). Furthermore, the shift to low sulphur fuels is
resulting in a reduction in aerosols that until now were cooling the Planet. The prospect is over 1oC of
near instant warming already in the making (e.g., unprecedented ocean heat waves, slowing down of
key ocean currents, accelerated warming of Arctic and Antarctic, etc.).
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Air transport: the situation is the same as for shipping. “Within ten years, sustainable aviation fuels
(SAFs) will cover 10% of the industry’s fuel requirements”. This was a 2007 IATA statement. Presently,
15 years later, SAFs cover only 0.01% of the requirements. Yet, airlines buy millions of tonnes of
“sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs) and contract to buy millions of tonnes more over the next 10 years.
However, none of those SAFs are actually sustainable (or reduce carbon emissions) when assessed in a
comprehensive systemic way. This is increasingly becoming known, as well as the thermodynamic fact
that along present development lines no real SAF can be expected in the future, especially not at
affordable prices. Over the last 45 years, powering planes has considerably improved, with 5 times less
energy required per passenger kilometre now compared with the early 1970s. Manufacturers invest in
new improved design and R&D to develop “planes of the future”. However, an air travel professional
acknowledges publicly: “Betting everything on innovation and technology can in no way save us from
the climate crash” (Julien Etchanchu in Le Monde, 07-11-2022). That is, it is becoming clear that along
present technological lines, limits are being reached. The situation is similar to that of diesel engines a
few years ago. Manufacturers that could no longer meet ever more stringent environmental regulations
resorted to cheating. In effect, some form of cheating is becoming institutionalised in the air transport
system with mixes of new engines and SAFs that are touted as set to deliver various forms of “Net-Zero”
GHGs at various long-term horizons, while none of those are actual SAFs and none of the current
strategies can ever reach required emission and sustainability targets – the necessary thermodynamics
for the whole system simply does not allow it.
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Land transport: the present overwhelming focus is on electric vehicles (EVs) and Lithium batteries. In
the wake of the “dieselgate” of a few years ago, the automotive industry has been forced by political
powers to shift to EVs. Mainstream analysts project a complete takeover of ICE by EVs by 2050 if not
sooner. However, this concerns only private personal transport, and only for those who can afford EVs,
that is, a small minority of about 10% of present car owners. There is now talk of “havanisation” of the
90% remainder of drivers who may be condemned to drive 2nd to 10th hand ICE cars, like Cubans under
the 61-year US blockade of Cuba still forced to drive 1950s cars. Carlos Tavares, head of Stellantis, is
openly critical of the prevailing “all-electric” policies. German automotive manufacturers have
successfully lobbied the EU in Brussels to retain the use of ICE using “sustainable eFuels”. While there is
actually no prospect of any such fuels becoming available, even in the long-term, with existing
technologies, this is strongly indicative of an emerging situation far worse than what led to “dieselgate”.
For now, the fate of the vital road transport of goods remains in the dark. There is no viable solution for
global road transport for both goods and people that presently amount to some 76% of GHG emissions
of global transport.
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Stationary uses of energy: the situation is even worse concerning stationary supply and uses of energy
where the huge gap between official “decarbonisation” talk and commitments versus actual
achievements in all domains of human activities is becoming painfully visible and increasingly
acknowledged. This is in a context where about 90% of global population is presently undersupplied
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with safe, clean energy or not supplied at all, and where a number of manufacturers in the renewables
sectors are affected by substantial losses and share price drops. In private, and increasingly publicly, the
more lucid among decision-makers are beginning to recognise that none of the present avenues to deal
with the Climate Emergency and with everything else ecologically and socially, all the way to curbing
inflation and dealing with ever rising debt, is performing as advertised. Pdt Macron has shifted from
joking about not going back to the “Amish” lifestyle in 2020 to acknowledging the “end of abundance”
in 2022. The overall focus is increasingly creeping towards compulsory curtailment of energy uses under
a variety of labels, “sobriety”, “adaptation”, “moderation”, “learning to renounce”, and even what was
anathema a year ago, “degrowth”, all the way to calls for compulsory curtailment of some uses and
disguised forms of rationing. In short, decision-makers are progressively and more and more rapidly
forced to recognise that they have no actual solution in sight that could scale to the magnitude of the
global problems within the shrinking time span remaining to act.
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Meanwhile, the world is inexorably passing “limits” and “tipping points”: June 2023 temperatures
exceeded 1.5oC for 11 days (Copernicus Climate Change Service). This “limit” is now expected to be
breached completely sometimes over the next few years. “As a climate scientist I feel like I am watching
a global train wreck in slow motion. It’s quite frustrating,” said University of Victoria’s Andrew Weaver
(APnews.com, 22-06-2023). A number of scientists are of the view that it is now too late to save Arctic
summer ice and that Greenland melting must now be considered irretrievable. Climate scientists, EarthSystem scientists and ecologists alert that the worsening of the global situation is happening much faster
than what they had expected even a couple of years ago. “Seven of eight globally quantified safe and
just Earth System Boundaries (ESBs) and at least two regional … ESBs in over half of global land area are
already exceeded” (Joahn Rockström, et al., 2023 Safe and just Earth system boundaries,
www.nature.com, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06083-8). Each week new research findings
alert to more boundaries and/or limits being breached. Deforestation keeps increasing regardless of
pledges (The Guardian, 27-06-2023). China imposes deforestation for the sake of production of food
staples (rice, maize, soy, etc.) in a reversal of earlier reforestation policies – its food self-sufficiency has
declined from 93% in 2000 down to 65% presently with the balance imported from countries it feels
vulnerable to (Le Monde, 27-06-2023). GHG emissions have increased by 57% since 1990 and keep going
up (Le Monde, 26-06-2023). In a temperate country like France, some 33,000 people died of heat waves
since 2014 (Le Monde, 23-06-2023). In Spain, the summer heat waves of 2022 resulted in 26,849 excess
deaths (Le Monde, 27-06-2023). Current budgets to address the Climate Emergency remain a small
fraction of recognised requirements (e.g., only 10% of requirement for the EU; the situation is much
worse in the so-called “developing world”). The costs of climate extremes, ecological damages,
mitigation and adaptation to it all are sky rocketing into the trillions of Euros to be spent annually, and
counting… while increasingly finance specialists express concerns that the required funds are not
available, short of endlessly “printing money” in the form of debt that cannot ever be repaid or even
serviced. Overall, globally, it’s over €500 Trillion of financial assets that are core to the globalised
industrial world (GIW) and are under threat as entirely dependent upon the ongoing use of fossil
fuels (based on data from the Financial Stability Board, www.fsb.org). As we will see in the next
section, the threat on these assets is in fact short-term, within the next 10 years.
Week after week the lists of failures, crossed thresholds, crises and their impacts pile up at an alarming rate.
Increasingly, politicians, researchers and commentators acknowledge that the globalised industrial world
(GIW) is now in a state of “polycrisis”, a term coined in the 1990s by anthropologists Edgar Morin and Anne
Brigitte Kern, meaning an avalanche of closely interrelated crises forming a self-organising system. They can
no longer be addressed piecemeal, one at a time, independently of the others. Yet, no decision-maker to date
has been able to demonstrate a coherent understanding of the matters at stake and a safe, resilient way of
addressing them systemically. In short, since 2022, we can observe a sense of impotence somewhat abruptly
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emerging through the cracks in the veil of pretence at mastery and ability to control the global situation that
had prevailed until now.
This sense of impotence is combined with the emerging, confused recognition that, in fact, none of the present
policies, strategies, investments is “working”, i.e., individually and collectively they provide no realistic
prospect that the industrial world can make it through the avalanche of problems in the polycrisis.
“It is naive to think that the work of climatologists will trigger the necessary political decisions” concludes a
prominent sociologist (Prof. Dominique Méda, in Le Monde, 24-06-2023). It is not so much, or not only, that
decision-makers resist the science. It is rather that they find it hard to relinquish well entrenched beliefs and
are in the main not cognitively equipped to deal with the emerging situation. Yet, only by understanding the
causes for this polycrisis can we gain the power to address it successfully.
Let us then outline our findings concerning the fundamental dynamics causing the polycrisis.
Understand the core Problem: The Dead
State Threat
Let's start by describing the dire global challenge that we've identified and call the Dead State threat. Resolving
the avalanche of climatic, ecological, social and financial problems piling up on the GIW is not possible if we
don't first understand this threat, far more immediate and hard-hitting than the climate emergency, to which
almost nobody is paying attention, even though its consequences translate into massive destruction of wealth,
knowledge, and loss of human life between 2020 and 2050.
Some of us have been working for many years on global oil and energy issues, and in particular on the
relationship between the Oil-based Energy System (OES) and the Global Energy Supply and Use System
(GESUS). The latter encompasses all energy sources (oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, geothermal, hydropower,
biomass and all other renewable energies) and includes energy deliveries to end-users in the globalized
industrial world (GIW).
At the end of last year (2022), we finally succeeded in achieving one of our objectives: to produce a robust
thermodynamic assessment, based on solid data, of the GIW's position along the net energy depletion
trajectory. Until now, such a comprehensive assessment of GESUS and GIW had never been successfully
carried out. Our findings are surprising and unpleasant, to say the least. In short, the GIW is now a whisker
away from Dead State – i.e., when the total energy cost of obtaining energy equals the total gross energy
extracted, and everything comes to a halt, that is, not just oil, but energy from all other sources, including
“renewables”. The critical time horizon is around 2030, understood as a milestone year, not as an end
point.
The end of GESUS means the end of the GIW, i.e., a brutal collapse, in the near future. Yes, on the face of it,
this seems impossible. Yet the thermodynamic data we've gathered is massive and inescapable. It would be
foolish to risk ignoring or denying this threat, as so many decision-makers have done for decades regarding
what has become the climate emergency.
For the avoidance of doubt, we emphasize that this issue has nothing to do with so-called “Peak Oil” fantasies.
Instead, it has everything to do with the thermodynamics of GESUS. As we explain in our detailed
documentation, “decarbonisation with renewables and/or nuclear power and electric vehicles” in no way can
address the Dead State threat. In fact, it can only make matters worse, by building a second thermodynamic
trap into the Dead State trap (see Appendix: The decarbonisation trap within the Dead State, page 21).
In short, the Dead State threat dwarfs everything else. So far, people have been blind to it mainly because they
haven’t looked, and they haven’t looked because their whole political and/or business culture has led them to
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focus on other (much less important) matters, and also because the thermodynamics of GIW and GESUS is a
very difficult area of research, one that very few people know about.
At this stage, only three researchers worldwide, including one of us, working independently of each other,
have come to the same conclusions and reached a thorough understanding of the issue and its implications.
Given the nature of our findings, we are proceeding with great caution. Up until now, we have refrained from
widely disseminating these findings. Our preference is to first establish the basis for demonstrating that there
are ways out of this disastrous situation, as regards both transport and stationary uses of energy. However,
given the disastrous nature of our findings, we consider it necessary to have the courage to speak frankly
(i.e., along the parrhesia of Socrates and Michel Foucault), however surprising and unpleasant the
discoveries may be.
Figure 1
In fact, not only is the climate emergency a set of symptoms of the underlying thermodynamic emergency that
is now ending with the Dead State threat, but the climate issues and the avalanche of other ecological, social,
financial, and geopolitical problems that are sweeping through the GIW cannot be successfully resolved in any
way unless the fundamental thermodynamic causes are understood and addressed first. In other words, it has
become vital to treat the causes rather than messing with symptoms.
Yes, the above sounds rather extraordinary, preposterous even, until one does the maths. Once the maths has
sunk in, it's clear that the situation is explosive, and that an alternative development must be put in place as a
matter of urgency, free from all existing presuppositions and beliefs.
Figure 1 summarises the Dead State challenge. The OES is no longer self-powered. It is now entirely dependent
on energy supplies from the non-oil GESUS, while the latter is 100% dependent on OES supplies of transport
fuels and petrochemicals. The situation is similar to that of a mangy dog going round in circles faster and faster,
trying to bite its flea-infested tail... Our research and that of a number of colleagues shows that the total energy
cost to obtain energy is now increasing exponentially. This analysis must be understood in a complete systemic
sense, from mine to grave, encompassing everything and everyone needed to maintain the supply of transport
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fuels and other forms of energy, i.e., including coal and natural gas, ores, metal production, the manufacture
of the machinery needed to produce everything required by the non-oil OES and GESUS, as well as all the
associated people and services needed. Metaphorically, we call this whole system the “iceberg” because it has
a small visible part while the bulk of its volume lies “below the waterline” as it were, invisible except to systems
analysts like us.
While economists tend to consider only its visible parts, oil rigs, pipelines, tankers, refineries, power plants,
etc., in thermodynamic terms, we have to consider the whole GESUS, including the huge part usually
neglected, and the approximately four billion people participating in it directly or indirectly... We present in
Appendix BigMES, page 21, the how and why of the end of the Oil Age leading to Dead State as presented in
Figure 1.
As Figure 1 shows, things don't stop overnight. As the pressure on the GESUS-GIW system increases,
heuristically, what we call the Great Contraction takes place. Through trial and error, the GIW learns to live
within its energetic means and contracts (while, for a time, the GESUS continues to swell). This dynamic can
only last for a short time, after which we can expect an abrupt collapse during the 2030s at the latest...
“Dead man walking”
We call the dynamic that now leads to BigMES and Dead State the Energy Seneca, a long process of growth
that breaks into a sharp fall and where the thermodynamics of GESUS is the main driver. 1
Figure 2
Unbeknownst to its decision-making elites, due to the end of the Seneca dynamic summarized in Figure 1, the
entire OES and at its heart the oil industry, are in a “dead man walking” situation – to use the US slang for
death row inmates. This status is illustrated in Figure 2, which shows that two long-term oil price dynamics are
1
Seneca: un terme inventé par le Prof. Ugo Bardi d’après le philosophe romain qui le premier a identifié ce profil générique.
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in play, and that these two dynamics are the direct consequences of the interactions between the OES/GESUS
and the GIW as shown in Figure 1.
The SOC trend is driven by the exponential increase in the energy cost of obtaining energy. This is the financial
burden that the OES is driven by the thermodynamic necessities under which it operates to impose on societies
within the GIW. The SOC took off in the early 1970s, just as net energy from oil per capita of world population
peaked. Since then, the GIW has been in thermodynamic decline, something that only a few specialists have
noticed and which has remained masked by economic analyses until now.
The MASOP trend is driven by the thermodynamics of wealth generation within the GIW on the basis of rapidly
declining net energy per barrel. Around 2012, MASOP exceeded SOC, i.e., whatever the OES price
requirements, thanks to heuristic processes (a polite term for discovering things by trial and error, usually the
hard way), the long-term price of crude had to adjust to the maximum socially affordable within the GIW that
could enable the generation of some wealth from the residual net energy supplied by an OES now dependent
on non-oil GESUS.
For anyone not too deluded by the “supply and demand” fantasies of economists totally ignorant of
thermodynamics, it should be obvious that when the GESUS as a whole can no longer supply net energy to the
GIW, in the form of transport fuels, what oil remains stays underground and its value drops to zero. This is the
meaning of the global oil industry's current “dead man walking”. Unless the oil industry shifts to a radically
new and entirely sustainable paradigm, at the current rate, it is destined to disintegrate by 2030, or 2040
at the latest, dragging down with itself the entire GESUS and therefore also the GIW.
“Civilisation we have a problem”
Figure 3
Although the above is surprising, Figure 3 shows that since around 1980 the GIW has received signs and
symptoms revealing that all was not well. Indeed, it was in the 1980s that deliveries of fuel produced solely
from energy from crude oil began to decline, and total world debt soared from some 130% of World GDP to
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over 300% today. Now, more and more economists are getting worried. Even President Macron has
recognized “the end of abundance”, probably without understanding what this means...
Moreover, as Figure 3 points out, we know that GDP statistics for totalitarian regimes have been substantially
overestimated for at least a decade. The downward trend in global GDP is therefore very probably more
pronounced than shown in Figure 3, and marks the beginning of the Great Contraction shown in Figure 1.
Figure 4 reminds us that what is happening now was already well anticipated in 1972 by the Meadows and
their MIT team. Paraphrasing the famous phrase “Houston we have a problem”, we have an urgent
civilisational “problem” that is not a question of “adapting” to a warming trajectory that is already
obsolete in view of current climate science knowledge. Our problem concerns the necessity to shift to a
pioneering strategy for transforming the thermodynamic foundations of our world.
Figure 4
From oil as an energy source to a precious
energy carrier
Let's be clear: in the face of Dead State, the central challenge of our time, there are sustainable, safe,
affordable and profitable solutions, that are necessarily outside the bogus and dangerous ideology of
“decarbonisation”. We and other teams are working on this, but that, as one says, is another story, outside
the scope of this public consultation.
We must, however, emphasize an essential point, showing that addressing our predicament cannot be a
question of dualistic choices between doing this or that, fossil or green, etc., in order to show in which direction
to orient the urgent necessity to move from a perspective of “adaptation” to a pioneering strategy of
transforming the thermodynamic foundations of our world.
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Figure 5
Figure 5 summarises our thermodynamic findings concerning the OES. Since around 2022 (at the latest), OES
is no longer self-powered. Yet, clearly, OES has not “curled up and died”. Instead, Figure 5 means that its
supplies to the GIW of petroleum-derived high-energy-density molecules (fuels) are now made possible
entirely and solely by extracting energy from non-petroleum GESUS. In other words, these fuels are no longer
a source of energy, and have become pure energy storage, aka energy carriers. In other words, the status of
all transport fuels is now the same as that of hydrogen and other “eFuels”. All are simply energy carriers that
need to be produced using other energy sources.
This emerging situation cannot last very long. Our calculations show that, based on current GESUS dynamics,
Dead State will be reached very soon, and that this applies to all energy carriers, even those produced from
so-called “renewables”. In other words, on the basis of our analyses, the drive to switch to renewables, electric
vehicles, SAFs (sustainable aviation fuels), eFuels, ammonia, LNG, etc., cannot succeed for the same
thermodynamic reasons that are propelling us at high speed towards Dead State.
In short, it is utterly foolish to imagine that the high-power GIW (about 19TW, Terawatts, of worldwide
installed capacity), currently 100% dependent on the extremely wasteful use of very low entropy energy
sources (i.e., fossil fuels) and mineral resources, could survive a switch to inherently limited, intermittent and
high-entropy energy flows (i.e., renewable energies) that are just as dependent on a hugely wasteful use of
mineral and energy resources for their implementation and maintenance.
We urgently need a “Something-else” that may enable us to move rapidly away from our current dependence
on fossil fuels, without pursuing the deadly mirage of “decarbonisation” (as summarised in Appendix, The
decarbonisation trap within the Dead State, page 22), while starting from the current situation, as analysed
above, and, just as urgently, while removing CO2 from the atmosphere on a massive scale, so as to get back to
well below 350ppme as soon as possible.
This “Something-else” can only be, in one way or another, imitating what life has been doing for billions of
years. Life is carbon-based, powered by solar energy. It recycles everything, especially CO2, and operates
like a gigantic heat pump with a coefficient of performance (COP) of around 440%. Our work shows that it
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is entirely possible, in an affordable, sustainable and profitable way, to continue to use high energy density
molecules derived from oil, natural gas and biomass, while mass-recycling transiently emitted CO2 and
closing the carbon cycle at an accelerated rate (of course in a different way from current carbon capture
and CCS technologies, and complementing land and marine based biological approaches).
Per unit volume or mass, these high energy density molecules store over 60 times more energy than the best
lithium batteries. Unlike today’s fossil-based transport fuels, in this strategy petroleum or biomass derived
fuels are pure energy carriers, powered 100% by solar energy, sustainably, affordably and cost-effectively, in
a way that “renewables” can never achieve. This applies to all forms of transport: on land, at sea and in the
air, and also to all stationary energy supplies. The system can be implemented in record time, enabling an
orderly transition away from fossil fuels instead of the current catastrophic trajectory.
Invalidation
Marion King Hubbert is world-renowned for having anticipated the first peak in conventional oil production
around 2000 (“Peak Oil”). What is little known is that, in the 1970s, he went on to point out that simply
counting barrels was not enough. It was necessary to think in thermodynamic terms to assess the net energy
supplied from oil, anticipating that in a few decades the GIW would reach what we now call Dead State.
Going a step further, in 1981, Hubbert spelt out in no uncertain terms and with great acuity the central
challenge of our time:
“The world’s present industrial civilisation is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and
incompatible intellectual systems:
r
The accumulated knowledge of the last four centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter
and energy; and
r
The associated monetary culture which has evolved from folkways of prehistoric origin.” 2
Abandoning “folk ways of prehistoric origin” and reconciling with the fundamental principles of
thermodynamics is the main challenge of the 21st century. We’re all at that stage now. Those who accept
thermodynamic reality will benefit generously. Those who don’t are candidates for going “splat” at the bottom
of this thermodynamic cliff that almost everyone can't see, aka Dead State.
Once the above is understood, it's relatively easy to figure out how to escape the double trap of Dead State
and “decarbonisation”.
In this respect, it’s worth heeding Alice Friedemann's warnings. In her recent book, she outlines the prospects
resulting from the “folk ways of prehistoric origin” denounced by Hubbert:
“Climate change is an existential threat. Agreed. Yet I believe that we are ignoring an even greater threat, one
that is not front and centre… the deadliest crisis facing our civilization is energy decline…
We are fated to live in a Wood World… [well, what’s left of it…]
The basic and unsolved problem is that alternative sources of energy require fossil fuels for every step of their
life cycle. The wind may be free but it takes a lot of fossil energy to create windmills. Sunlight may rain down
on the Earth but you cannot make photovoltaics without fossil energy. Even if you are willing to force a positive
EROI by using narrow boundaries that overlook many fossil inputs, their EROI is still nowhere near the 10:1
required for our civilization. None of the alternatives produce enough energy to ‘reproduce’”. 3
2
3
Marion K. Hubbert, 1981, Two Intellectual Systems: Matter-energy and the Monetary Culture, MIT Energy Laboratory
Alice J. Friedemann, 2021, Life after Fossil Fuels, A Reality Check on Alternative Energy, Lecture Notes in Energy 81, Springer Nature
Page 13
So, who would be foolish enough to take a chance and, worse still, play the luck of others and continue down
the current path? Or are we going to follow an intelligent path?
This is a very big challenge. The Energy Seneca ending in Dead State invalidates everything that has brought
us inexorably to the present situation over the past three centuries or so:
r
The whole of the so-called global economy and financial order, all the fiat and cryptocurrencies, and the
obsession with “growth”, a set of fantasies, myths and magical thinking about a perpetual motion
machine, in total contradiction with thermodynamics, system dynamics, ecology, and critical social and
human sciences; 4
r
All “decarbonization with renewables and/or nuclear” policies, plans and investments – their bottomup economic and financial aspects are invalidated by top-down thermodynamic and systemic analyses;
r
“Sustainable development” objectives – the notions of “development” and “developing countries” are
part of the set of myths that have brought us to the edge of the Seneca thermodynamic cliff. The
ideology of “development” on so-called “economic” grounds is incompatible with sustainability.
r
All current energy technology classes, i.e., most internal combustion engines (ICE), turbines (steam, gas,
and wind), photovoltaics (PV) and batteries (see Appendix, page 21). It has become impossible to tackle
the challenges of the Dead State with them. They have become obsolete, with the exception of a few
small niches.
r
All government and corporate policies based on beliefs and ideologies. In order to survive beyond Dead
State, all forms of “belief” must be abandoned.
At the edge of the Energy Seneca cliff, conforming to science becomes vital, especially thermodynamics,
system dynamics, ecology and anthropologies. The sooner people accept this, the better the prospects for
survival.
Of course, the above may be hard to digest for anyone who has been indoctrinated since childhood in socalled “economic” thinking and the use of currencies. It's just as difficult to learn to think differently when it
has become necessary to do so very quickly. But it can be done. The foundations for doing so exist and are
well tested.
Let's emphasise, then, that at least since the 1970s, some of us have understood that:
r
The GIW is on a self-destructive trajectory;
r
Because of its hegemonic nature, it cannot be deviated from this trajectory; and that
r
“Economics” is not a science, never has been and never can be, being in direct conflict with
thermodynamics, system dynamics, ecology and anthropology.
In this respect, in order to get a clearer sense of the Energy Seneca’s dynamic in anthropological terms, it's
worth studying the entire work of Jean Baudrillard, from his thesis published in 1968 (Le Système des Objets
[The system of objects]) through L'Echange Symbolique et la Mort [Symbolic exchange and death] (1976) to his
posthumous work, The Agony of Power (2010), as well as the entire work of Prof. Emeritus of Economics, Serge
Latouche, in particular: Serge Latouche, 2005, L'Invention L'Economie [The invention of economics], Albin
Michel, Collections Sciences – Sciences Humaines, Paris. Serge Latouche, 2005. Concerning Latouche, it should
be noted that the essential and fundamental aspects of Serge's work to which we refer here do not concern
his pioneering and generous position on “happy degrowth”. They concern instead his work on the specific
fundamentals of social science epistemology, his rigorous critique of “development” and his analyses revealing
the theistic character of “economics” (although he does not use this term).
4
As well as the day dreaming of « décroissance heureuse » (happy degrowth).
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Economics is nothing but the secular theism of the GIW. A theism is a set of beliefs in myths, combined with
magical thinking and rituals, clumsily cobbled together and wrapped in a semblance of rationality that
postulates a higher power (identified as deity or not) ordering how to think, speak, decide and behave in ways
that are rigidly fixed for all time, regardless of actual conditions. Max Weber, one of the founders of sociology,
referred to it as an “iron cage”. As early as 500 years before the Common Era (Karl Jasper's “Axial Age”), critical
thinkers in Greece, India and China began to understand that a theism is always fundamentally false.
A fundamental question of our time is therefore to understand how and why our decision-makers have
remained locked in a theism leading straight to Dead State for some 300 years, when they could have
created far more prosperity, in a sustainable way, by getting rid of it and conforming to thermodynamics.
After some 50 years of research, we have finally begun to get some answers, but that too is another story that
is beyond the scope of our response to this public consultation.
However, it's worth asking how come the GIW didn't collapse earlier? In 300 years, we've gone from 1%
thermodynamic efficiency (Savery steam pump) to just 12% for the whole of an extremely complex GESUS –
nothing to triumph over. In fact, the GIW has managed to survive haphazardly by just staying with the realm
of thermodynamic viability, only thanks to the “backroom” efforts of armies of engineers.
Like it or not, by pursuing the mirages of economic theism, we have now reached the end of this road. It ends
at the edge of the Dead State thermodynamic cliff. It's high time we realized this and made a paradigm shift,
radically and urgently.
From warming “trajectory” and “adaptation”
to fundamental questions
All the above summarises more than 54 years of determined research. We consider that we have
demonstrated the absolute necessity of going beyond the three questions posed, in our opinion rather naively,
to focus on the fundamental issues, most of which had been identified already during the 1970s. In the 1980s,
Prof. Joseph Tainter did further pioneering work in identifying key aspects of the causes and mechanisms of
civilisational collapse.5
In 2011, he summed up the challenges facing us all by posing four fundamental questions that remain
unanswered to this day, except by us:
“Modern societies will continue to need high-quality energy [to replace fossil fuels]... securing this should be
the first priority of every nation...: 6
1.
“Can we contravene history by finding ways to address major societal problems, such as adapting
to climate change, without increasing complexity and resource consumption, and thereby
worsening some of the problems we are trying to address?”
We've figured out how to dramatically simplify the global system of energy supply and use, GESUS, and
increase its performance – doing about three times as much with half the installed power;
2.
“Can we develop new, clean fuel sources with adequate net energy... when the productivity of
5
Tainter, Joseph, 1988, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge University Press; Tainter, Joseph A., 1996, “Complexity, Problem Solving,
and Sustainable Societies”, in Getting Down to Earth: Practical Applications of Ecological Economics, Island Press, and Tainter, Joseph A. and
Crumley, Carole, “Climate, Complexity and Problem Solving in the Roman Empire” (p. 63), in Costanza, Robert, Graumlich, Lisa J., and Steffen,
Will, editors, 2007, Sustainability or Collapse, an Integrated History and Future of People on Earth, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
and London, U.K., in cooperation with Dahlem University Press.
Joseph Tainter, 2011, Energy, complexity, and sustainability: A historical perspective, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions,
Elsevier.
6
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innovation is declining...?”
We've figured out how to sustainably tap into the immense pool of direct solar energy arriving on Earth;
3.
“How can we develop the political will and financial resources to address future large-scale
problems, including the need for more energy?”
We've figured out how to set up a system that quickly pays for itself by mobilising the more than €10
trillion euros that go up in smoke every year in the form of wasted energy;
4.
“Should we try to achieve distributional equity in new energy that requires advanced
technology, and if so, how?”
Our approach paves the way for providing sustainable, affordable energy to the approximately 90% of
the world's population who are currently deprived of adequate energy supplies.
Instead of the three questions asked in this consultation, that cannot be answered sensibly, we propose Prof.
Tainter's four questions, and will be delighted to explain how we propose to answer them.
State of mind required to survive Dead State
We are well aware that the emerging global situation is totally beyond the scope of what almost 100% of
the world's businessmen and governments are used to addressing and managing. Everyone is trained and
accustomed to thinking and acting in terms of continuity. The challenge now is that the whole world has
entered a radical discontinuity, a period of abrupt rupture that almost nobody is equipped to deal with, except
specialists like us – some of us have been observing and studying the Seneca dynamic that led to the Dead
State threat since the 1970s. Only a bold, entrepreneurial and highly profitable initiative, based entirely on
solid, well-established science, can change the game.
Let's stress it once again: there can be no question of “adaptation”. A radical and rapid transformation of the
way we obtain and use energy is required, and this is only feasible if we transform the way we think, decide,
act and organize ourselves socially. What's more, only if scientifically sound solutions are also extremely
attractive and cost-effective that their adoption can go viral on a global scale, in record time. Our solutions
meet these challenging imperatives.
Three quotes sum up the mindset required to successfully move beyond Dead State:
r
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that things are
difficult” (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, letter 104, section 26, line 5)
r
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” (Albert
Einstein)
r
“The best companies create their own sectors... [&] tend to share a few characteristics: They are not
popular... They are difficult to assess… They have technology risk, but not insurmountable technology
risk… If they succeed, their technology will be extraordinarily valuable… Entrepreneurs often know better
than we do what might be enormously valuable in the future” (Founders Fund’s Manifesto – created by
Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal)
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To conclude: moving on from the "World
Before” to the “World After”
“La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si
verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati”
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born: in this
interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”
(Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks Volume II, Notebook 3, 1930)
Antonio Gramsci foresaw the impending tragedy that would lead to WWII. We are now facing something far
worse. The “Old World” is de facto dead. Thermodynamics demonstrates this. Over the past two decades, we
have entered the “During”. The “World After” is for the moment a blank page. It can only be born if new ways
of thinking, deciding and doing are put in place.
In fact, since 2018, more than 10,000 scientists, basing their conclusions on their works in a wide range of
disciplines, including climate science, earth systems and Earth-Life research, system dynamics, ecology,
anthropology, materials extraction geology, agronomy, pollution and waste research, etc., are increasingly
vocal about three main concerns:
1.
Civilisational collapse on the horizon: the Global Industrial World (GIW) is on a self-destructive
trajectory;
2.
Vital requirement for a radical change in ways of thinking, deciding and organising society:
impossible to tackle the avalanche of problems within the existing paradigm by whatever name we call
it; and
3.
Necessity for a systemic approach: tackling each problem piecemeal, climate, energy, materials
extraction and (non)recycling, massively degraded soils, plastics, countless forms of pollution,
deforestation and countless other problems, can only worsen the situation.
A question of timing: our analyses and conclusions are exactly the same on the above three points. The only
main differences are:
1.
That they focus almost exclusively on symptoms and consequences, rather than on the basic dynamics
as we do; and
2.
That as a result, they mainly see the collapse happening gradually and mostly around 2050 or later,
whereas the data we have gathered and our transdisciplinary work, covering the same range of
disciplines as above, show that:
2.1.
The breakdown is already underway;
2.2.
The inflection point is around 2030;
2.3.
The dynamic leads to a complete collapse well before 2050; and
2.4.
The main driver is thermodynamic, hence our Energy Seneca and Dead State threat labels.
More and more people are beginning to agree with our analysis. It's only a matter of time before the Dead
State threat appears in plain sight (which will be explosive). Yet, apart from us, as far as we can assess, no one
so far has a viable answer to offer that could meet the above challenges.
However, this is the first time in some 2.4 billion years that Life on Earth has developed a life form, us, that
has become highly toxic to all Life on the Planet. The previous example was the emergence of the first photo-
Page 17
synthesizers. They caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen, a gas toxic to Life at the time anaerobic.
Under its own selection pressure, life evolved to become predominantly aerobic.
From now on, the basic challenge is the same: evolve or perish. Last time, it took millions of years. This time,
we have very few decades to do it, and we have to do it all at once, globally, systemically. The pressure of
selection is intense and intrinsically cultural/psychosocial. We change the way we think, the way we decide,
the way we do things and the way we organise ourselves socially, or we are finished...
It's also the first time in over 5,000 years that a tiny minority of people understand what happens before
total collapse, and are able to draw on the knowledge available to chart a resilient course out of
thermodynamic traps.
Fortunately, civilisational collapses are infrequent. There have only been some 90 notable cases in the last
5,000 years, with an average lifespan of around 336 years.
Time is of the essence. It's now some 325 years since the first years of the first industrial revolution (since
Savery's steam pump). By 2030, the GIW will have been going on for some 335 years... reaching Dead State.
When collapse comes...:
1.
The destruction of wealth and knowledge is enormous, as is the loss of life, as highlighted earlier;
2.
Elites don't see it coming, don't understand why their world is crashing down around their ears;
3.
They scramble helplessly in the dark, trying to extricate themselves from the mess;
4.
The few who succeed are those who break ranks early and build new foundations for a new civilisation;
5.
They win big; and
6.
They need to win big, because only if the solutions devised by pioneers are extremely profitable, and
therefore very attractive to all stakeholders (most of whom, at present, know no better than to think in
terms of such profits), can there be a rapid and viral adoption of new ways of doing things, enabling the
creation of new civilisational developments, before complete collapse has become irremediable.
It would therefore be a good thing for the ruling elites to have the courage of humility and facilitate the work
of those who know and are able to demonstrate how to get out of the double trap of Dead State and
decarbonisation....
We are acutely aware of the cognitive gap between the three questions at the heart of this “Public
Consultation” and the questions we ask and answer, based on over 50 years of research. The gulf between the
two is, for us, a tiny minority of researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs, terrifying. It is no doubt equally
terrifying for those who discover what we present in our contribution to the consultation and approach it with
an open mind.
How, for example, can we think of a society without “economic thought”? Let's remember that this has been
the case throughout human history, except for the last three centuries (as shown by Serge Latouche and also,
for example, David Graeber and David Wengrow, 2021, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity,
Macmillan, ISBN 978-0-241-40242-9).
Nowadays, the knowledge on which our contribution is based makes it possible to do this, to exchange,
account for, and store what is important in a society, without any “economics” at all and even without “money”
in ways extending far beyond current “cryptocurrencies”. This is also part of the solutions that we are
proposing. Consider, for example, what famous mathematician Stephen Wolfram, creator of the Mathematica
software, has to say about it:
"One of the first and historically strongest uses of numbers has been in characterising amounts of money and
prices of things. But are ‘numerical prices’ the only possible setup for an economic system? … we could imagine
Page 18
a situation where at every node in the network [of transactions] there are bots dynamically arranging
transactions… there’s no necessity to have numbers involved at the lowest level… at a fundamental level my
guess is that ultimately numbers will fall away in importance in the organisation of human society, giving way
to more detailed computation-based decision making. And maybe in the end numbers will come to seem a little
like the way logic was used in the Middle Ages might seem to us today: a framework for determining things
that’s much less complete and powerful than what we now have.”
(Stephen Wolfram, 2021, How Inevitable Is the Concept of Numbers? Writings, May 25,
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/05/how-inevitable-is-the-concept-of-numbers/)
Beyond Dead State a prosperous and exciting future is possible. It is entirely up to us to create it. We all have
access to the knowledge we need to make it happen. All we have to do is let go of Hubbert's “folk ways of
prehistoric origin”. To clarify this and conclude, let's illustrate with a parallel both the huge chasm between
contemporary decision-making elites and the body of science on the one hand and on the other hand the
prospects for a sustainable future that can still be built beyond the Dead State, by constructing a sort of bridge
over this chasm.
At the start of the 20th century, less than a dozen scientists developed relativity and quantum mechanics, a
radical new way of thinking that was inherently non-dualistic (many scientists still struggle to come to terms
with this non-dualistic character).
Some 25 years later, their discoveries allowed the demonstration of the transistor (1947). From this
demonstration onwards, all of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) unfolded and
transformed the industrial world. This saga, stemming from quantum mechanics and relativity, is an example
of a major disruption of the 2nd type, i.e., a flow of world-changing innovations that is something else than
innovations of the 1st type that simply take place within existing markets and social dynamics (for example,
USB keys replace floppy disks).
By comparison with the ICT revolution, we are now entering a disruption of the 3rd type, that is to say a
disruption that also changes our world but that is no longer “optional” as the previous one was (i.e., that
resulted from a freely undertaken research activity).
This time, the disruption is caused by the very dynamics of the globalised industrial world (GIW). Dealing with
it is a matter of life or death. Yet there is a parallel with the quantum mechanical/relativity disruption: as with
the previous disruption, now only a handful of scientists and engineers are currently able to think through this
new disruption of the 3rd kind and catalyse ways to move beyond Dead State.
Our burden is heavy to bear… We are a tiny, fragile minority in the face of this challenge and the enormous
ignorance that reigns among decision makers… There is no insurance policy guaranteeing success. If none of
us who understand the situation can catalyse a transition, things are looking very bleak for all of humanity.
There is also another common thread: these advances in 20th century physics, together with advances in
biology, ecology, systems dynamics and anthropology, and our current findings, all point to the need to shift
to a non-dualistic mode of thinking. This is what is now essential to take up the Dead State challenge... Here is
the central point of our contribution to the Public Consultation. There is a decade at most to begin to take this
sharp turn. It's doable.
This is what differentiates humans from other life forms. Where other lifeforms need thousands of years to
evolve, humans can transform in a generation culturally/psychosocially. This is also demonstrated by the ICT
development. I was born in 1947, the year of the demonstration of the transistor. During my life up to this day
I have experienced the cultural transformation brought about by ICT.
What my colleagues and I are working to catalyse is an even faster transition: after the transition of huntergatherers, that of agriculture and empires built on biomass, then the industrial one leading to Dead State, to
Page 19
quickly accomplish a Fourth Transition, 100% solar, sustainable, prosperous. This is what our logo symbolises,
four brush strokes and a sun...
Who are we and what concerns us?
Figure 6
The Fourth Transition Initiative team brings together an international community of scientists, engineers and
entrepreneurs whose common ground is the study and understanding of global energy supply dynamics and
their ecological, social and financial impacts. We're like wildcats. Our 50+ years of combined expertise enable
us to see in the dark the mortal dangers that most decision-makers, both government and business, ignore
because they remain blinded by their beliefs. Our business is to solve, in record time, the challenges posed by
the huge “woolly mammoth in the (dark) room” that stands before their eyes, unseen, threatening to massively
destroying wealth and knowledge and, as shown by Prof Christopher Bystroff and summarised in Figure 6, is
likely to eliminate around 6 billion people, all by 2050. 7
Dr Louis Arnoux,
PhD HG Development Dynamics, ME Process & Chemical
Fondateur et catalyseur de la Fourth Transition Initiative
louis@ngeni.co ou louis@fourthtransitionwealth.com
Ph. Ireland: +353 87 091 8306 et Ph. France: +33 6 19 20 25 64
7
Bystroff, Christopher, 2021, Footprints to singularity: A global population model explains late 20th century slow-down and predicts peak
within ten years, PLoS ONE 16(5): e0247214. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247214
Page 20
Figure 7
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Appendix
BigMES
Figure 8 summarises how and why the Age of Oil can only end abruptly and violently. Per average barrel, only
around 62% of energy can be extracted in the form of useful work (2nd principle of thermodynamics). This
energy must be shared between the OES and the GIW. As the best and easiest resources (sweet crude) are
depleted, total energy costs rise inexorably. At some point, these costs equal the 62% available per barrel. We
know that this happened just before 2022. Since then, the OES has been entirely dependent on non-oil energy
supplies from GESUS. We call this the Big Mad Energy Scramble (BigMES). This is the final phase of the Age of
Oil, leading to Dead State for all of the GESUS and GIW, unless a paradigm shift takes place very quickly.
Figure 8
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The decarbonisation trap within the Dead State trap
The three figures below summarise how and why “decarbonisation” with so-called renewables or nuclear
power is a dangerous mirage, trapping the GIW in a second thermodynamic trap within the Dead State trap.
Figure 9
Figure 10
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Figure 11