Post 4: The Thermodynamic Reality
Industrial civilization runs on a one-time inheritance. Fossil fuels represent millions of years of accumulated sunlight, compressed and concentrated by geological processes. We are burning in centuries what took eons to form.
This is the carbon pulse, an artificial monsoon that allowed extraordinary population growth and technological development. Under its influence, we built complexity far beyond what sustainable energy flows could support. We constructed global supply chains, sprawling cities, and fragile just-in-time systems on the assumption that the rain would never stop.
But pulses end. Monsoons cease.
Energy Return on Energy Invested tells the story. Early oil wells delivered 100 barrels for every barrel invested in extraction. Modern unconventional sources fall below 10 to 1. As easily accessible reserves deplete, the surplus enabling complex civilization shrinks.
Historian Joseph Tainter showed complex societies require continuous energy surplus to maintain. When that surplus declines, complexity becomes unsustainable. The system sheds expensive structures to survive.
Physics does not negotiate. The thermodynamic correction is not a policy choice. It is the universe balancing the books.
[Read the series introduction and access all nine essays here.]
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