Brexit: a subversive in Brussels

The man from Gazprom: Ugo Bardi's speech at the hearing "EU Energy Security Strategy under the conditions of the Internal Energy Market" at the European Parliament, in Brussels, on Nov 5, 2014. 

I already described this experience of mine at the EU parliament in Brussels, in 2014 but, f you have 12 minutes, you may like watch this clip with my full speech. You can notice how I had noted the start of the collapse of the oil price. I couldn't imagine, at that time, that prices would tumble to less than $40 per barrel, but I had correctly identified the troubles that would befall on the shale oil and the shale gas industry. Nor I could exactly predict when shale oil production would peak in the US (it did in mid 2015). But I warned the parliament not to put too much trust in these overhyped new sources of energy.

Not shown in the clip is the reaction of the audience. After I had stopped speaking, someone from the public took up the microphone, saying, "I completely disagree with what you said." Then, he rose up and he left the hall. Later on, they told me that he was a member of the UKIP. During the debate, someone raised the old canard that the US had attained "energy independence" by means of shale oil and that they were becoming a net energy exporter, but I had no possibility to answer back. The whole hearing had been carefully engineered to give the impression that Europe would soon receive plentiful supplies of oil and gas from the booming shale industry in the USA. No need to bow down to the evil threats of Putin and his minions. Some days after that the meeting was over, I was told that in the halls of the European parliament people were saying that I was paid by Gazprom. 

So, you see? It is not just the Britons. There has to be reason for this:

 (image from the Guardian)

Brexit: the fall of the Babel Tower

The Babel Tower: the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

(adapted from a story told by Wouter Diederen)



King of Babel: Minister, faithful minister, speak to me! I hear that there is unrest at the great tower that my workers are building. I hear that some workers want to leave, and I see that the tower is not growing anymore so fast as it was growing not long ago. Minister, tell me what's happening with my tower; the great tower of Babel of which, I, the King of Babel, am so proud!

Minister: King, what you say is true. There is unrest at the great tower of Babel, the workers are clamoring for better pay and a group of them have voted among themselves to stop working at the tower and go back to their land beyond the sea, where they will build their own tower. And because of this, the Great Tower of Babel is not growing anymore.

King: But, minister, why is that happening? Haven't these workers worked for so many years at my tower? Wasn't my tower nicely growing up until not long ago? What's happened that made the workers rebel against me, their master?

Minister: King, you see, we have a problem of energy return on investment.....

King: What?

Minister: King, let me explain to you. In order to build the tower, we need stones from quarries. And it has happened that the nearby quarries have produced so many stones for the tower that there is no stone anymore there.

King: Minister, I was told about this problem. But I was also told that there are many quarries a little farther away that still hold plenty of stone. So what is the problem with getting good stones from these quarries?

Minister: King, you see, there lies the problem. In order to carry these stones from the quarry to the tower, we need a caravan of many mules pulling carts.

King: And what is the problem with that, minister?

Minister: Well, the problem is that we keep extracting stones and the quarries we get it from are farther and farther away.

King: But that just means that the caravans will have to travel farther away, right?

Minister: King, this is the energy problem I was telling you about. You see, mules need energy, in the form of food. And the people driving the mules need energy, too, in the form of food. So, some carts in the caravan must carry food for the mules and for the mule drivers, and therefore these carts cannot carry stones. And the farther the quarry is, the more food loaded carts there have to be in it.

King: So be it. What is the problem?

Minister: It is that the quarries we are exploiting at present are so far away that most of the carts must be loaded with food and only a few can carry stones. And so what you have are long, long caravans arriving from the quarry to the tower, but carrying very few stones.

King: So, make the caravans bigger, then there will be more carts loaded with stones for the tower.

Minister: King, we are doing that, but we are running out of mules. And we also need more caravans to bring wood for the scaffolding of the towers, and here, too, we must travel to far away forests to find good wood. In addition, the bureaucrats managing the tower have been growing in numbers and are now more numerous than the workers. And we need more caravans and more mules to feed the bureaucrats. As a result, the workers are now living on reduced food rations and they are not happy about that. As I said, it is a question of diminishing energy returns. We call this the "Limits to Growth."

King: .........

Minister: So, I think we should start thinking of a sustainable tower, that won't need to grow anymore since it is already tall enough. And we could make a steady state tower that would need just a few stones to replace those that wear out. The energy investment would be much smaller......

King: Close your mouth, unfaithful minister! I do not believe a single word of what you told me. I think this story of the energy return is something you invented in order to confuse me. I think, rather, that the workers have become lazy. That the mule drivers have become lazy. And that the mules themselves have become lazy. And so, what I will do will be to punish the lazy workers, the lazy mule drivers, and the lazy mules as they deserve. And I will severely punish those workers who voted to move back to their island to build their own tower. They will feel the wrath of the king of Babel. Also, I think that my enemies outside the borders are plotting against me. And hence I will enlarge the army and attack them. And they, too, will feel the wrath of the king of Babel.

Minister: ......

King: And, now that I think about that, I also need a new minister.

Chuck Norris and the Brexit

Maybe we can take the Brexit with a grain of humor.

Chuck Norris does not vote at referendums. He is voted. And the result is always "yes" for him.

Chuck Norris is the only one who is allowed to vote "maybe" at a referendum. And when he does that, the "maybe" always wins.

Chuck Norris voted for the Brexit from Brisbane. He made a paper plane with the ballot, he launched it with a roundhouse kick, and it flew all the way to London, casting itself into the ballot box.

If Chuck Norris had held the Brexit referendum, it would have been called Breakit and it would have been decided by a roundhouse kick.

If France decides to leave the EU, Chuck Norris will dig a Channel between France and Germany with a single roundhouse kick.

If Italy decides to leave the EU, Chuck Norris will go there and say, "you think that's a boot? Now THIS is a boot." And, after a roundhouse kick, the Mediterranean sea will be much larger.

If Greece decides to leave the EU, Chuck Norris will go there, install himself on Mount Olympus, and from then on lightning bolts will appear in the shape of roundhouse kicks.

If Spain decides to leave the EU, a roundhouse kick by Chuck Norris will make Portugal much larger.

If Angela Merkel decides to keep the EU together at all costs, Chuck Norris will go to Berlin and remind her that the Berlin Wall fell because of a roundhouse kick by him, and she will think the matter over.

Putin had decided to invade Western Europe. But he found that it had already been invaded by Chuck Norris. And Russia, too.

Once, Chuck Norris voted in the Republican Primaries. As a joke, he put a carrot in the ballot box. Now this carrot is called Donald Trump.

Why does the EU have such a silly flag? Because Chuck Norris arranged the stars in that way by a roundhouse kick.

......

Brexit: requiem for a dream

For many years, I had thought that a united Europe was a great idea. An institution created by wise men who had wanted to avoid repeating the horrible mistakes that had led Europeans to massacre each other in two terrible wars. Europe was supposed to be a Europe of the people, a force for peace, for  justice, for equality, for the defense of both humankind and nature.

Two years ago, I was in Brussels for a hearing at the European Parliament; it was a shock. The Europe I knew, the Europe I thought I knew, wasn't anywhere to be found. What I found was a bunch of ill-advised, pompous bureaucrats wandering in a gigantic and useless palace. The ghosts of the founders had been thoroughly exorcised and now what was left was an empty shell; a structure that just perpetuated itself without any clear purpose, except drilling more fossil fuels out of the ground, and - maybe - make war to Russia. The dream of a Europe of the peoples acting for peace and justice was gone. Requiem for a dream.

And now what? It seems clear that Europe, as it is now, cannot survive this blow and maybe this is not a bad thing. Can we reform this Europe? Or can we restart from scratch? Impossible to say. In any case, here is the post that I wrote two years ago after my trip to Brussels. If you can read Spanish, you may be also interested in these considerations by Antono Turiel.

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Bringing the message about resource depletion to the European Parliament

With 24 languages deemed as "official," the European Union shares some characteristics with the ancient Babel Tower (above, the parliament building in Strasbourg). The Babel of languages is one of the problems associated with trying to pass messages to politicians, but not the most important one. Rather, the main problem seems to be a decisional mechanism which favors groupthink.  Here are some notes of a recent experience of mine at a hearing on energy security of the European Parliament in Brussels.

As I walk to the hearing on energy security in Europe, I am struck first of all by the size of the hall. The "Alcide De Gasperi" room in the palace of the European Parliament in Brussels was clearly built for impressing people, in addition to its function as a meeting room. One of its most remarkable features is the long row of windows of the interpreters' rooms. Since there are 24 official languages of the European Union, there have to be some 50 interpreters working in there. Then, I also notice how the screens for projecting one's slides are small and located high up, near the ceiling. This is not a place where you are supposed to support your statements with data and graphs. It is a place built for political debate.

As people collect in the hall, I can see that the atmosphere is rather formal, with several members of the European Parliament sitting in the audience. Most people are dressed in suits and many wear ties. On the podium, there are six invited speakers. And there we go; I immediately sense the mood of the conference: this is not a scientific meeting. None of the speakers seem to be an expert about fossil fuels, intended as markets, production, resources, reserves, and the like. Rather, they seem to be mainly concerned with strategic and political issues. The line that emerges from the presentations and from the reactions of the audience is clear: it is a highly confrontational attitude (to put it mildly) toward Russia, accused to be engaging in an economic war against Western Europe. The gist of what I hear is that the European Union must unite in defense; we must follow the example of the United States and get rid of our silly regulations and of the local resistance against drilling and nuclear plants. Europe can exploit its shale gas and oil resources (and also nuclear energy) and attain energy independence, as the United States did. It is "drill, drill, drill" all over.

This line, in various shades, is the position of four speakers out of six. The bias in favor of fossil fuels is shown also by the fact that the lady charged with defending renewables is given the last time slot of the hearing. The fossil oriented attitude seems to be shared by the majority of the audience. Not that it is not challenged by some of the MEPs in the room. One of them (I know him well, he has been a long time ASPO supporter) stands up and tells to one of the speakers: "it is not true that the United States has attained energy independence. You have to stop getting your data from newspapers!". He is right, (you can look at the data yourself). But it is an isolated reaction, and the overall debate remains based on the idea that the US has become energy independent or that, at least, it will soon become independent.

When it is my turn to speak, I tell a different story. I try to explain that the ultimate origin of the energy security problems in Europe is due to depletion, and that drilling more is not the solution. I keep the message as simple as possible; tailored for people who are not specialists in oil and gas. I show the price trends, I tell them something about energy return, and I make the point that renewable energy is not subjected to depletion. I sense that my talk is well received: the people in the audience listen to what I say, and they look up at my slides (but those screens are too high and too small, dammit!). I also get several questions and comments - mostly favorable ones. After the hearing is over, several people stop me to discuss further about what I said. As a talk, it was a reasonably successful one.

But, on the whole, I think I had a very modest impact, if any. As I noticed many times, it is extremely difficult to pass to decision makers messages which are perceived as out of the ordinary, as the message on resource depletion is. The problem has many facets and it has to do, mainly, with the way politicians think. According to my experience, politicians - especially high level ones - are very smart people. The problem is that they are swamped with information; just as most of us. So, in the great mass of data arriving, how do you decide what is the truth? If you are a scientist - or you are scientifically trained - you have ways to evaluate the data and filter out the bad ones. But politicians are not scientists, they are not scientifically trained, so they use a different method. They maintain a healthy dose of skepticism about everything they hear; they don't pay too much attention on data, and they tend to side with the interpretation that they perceive as the most compatible with the general opinion of the group they belong to.

There are reasons for this "groupthink" syndrome that, probably, affects politicians more than most of us. It is because then main tool in the political struggle, today, is the demonization of adversaries. So, a politician is very careful to avoid to be singled out from the crowd of colleagues and subjected to the standard demonizing treatment. For a politician, there is safety in crowds; a traditional strategy well known also by sheep and fish. In practice, you may see a politician as having a built in opinion detector in his head. He/she will sense the position of the majority and try to avoid straying too far away from it. In general, the way for a politician to obtain power is to occupy the center; to be seen as a moderate. That this is the way to success has been known for a long time; even rigorously modeled (in economics, it is known as the "Hotelling's law"). Scientists are sometimes contrarians, politicians almost never are.

So, I think I can figure out the reaction of most of the MEPs to the hearing on energy security in Brussels. It was something like, "Well, that Italian guy who spoke about resource depletion might have a point about what the real problem is. I couldn't his slides so well, so high up near the ceiling, but he seemed to have some good data. But, on the other hand, the other speakers saw the problem differently. If most people in the parliament think that Russia is waging an economic war against us and that drilling more is a good idea, then there has to be something in it. For sure, I shouldn't take the risk of siding with a minority option."



Ugo Bardi teaches at the University of Florence, Italy. He is a member of the Club of Rome and the author of "Extracted, how the quest for mineral wealth is plundering the planet" (Chelsea Green 2014)

The end of the "population boom": the Seneca collapse of Ireland's population during the great famine

The story of the Great Famine in Ireland is a starkly clear example of a "Seneca Collapse", that is of a case where decline is much more rapid than growth. Is something in store for us at the global level? (Image source Rannpháirtí anaithnid (old) at English Wikipedia)

In a previous post, I argued that many current global population projections are mistakenly based on the idea that the "demographic transition" will work backward. That is, it is often assumed that impoverished people will tend to make more children and that, therefore, the world's population will keep growing even in the midst of the profound economic decline that could accompany a resource and climate crisis. (this is, for instance, the assumption of the original "The Limits to Growth study in 1972)

I proposed, instead, that the start of a major economic/climate crisis will cause an immediate reduction of the birth rates in part as the result of the declining health of fertile women and, in part, by a rational response by families who would understand that they can only care for a limited number of children in a condition of increasing poverty.

That is, there won't be a population increase in the midst of a major crisis and the decline of birth rates would immediately bring the start of a worldwide population decline that could even take the shape of a true "Seneca Collapse." To support my argument, I brought the example of the Soviet Union, whose population started declining even before the political collapse of the Union. I also mentioned several examples of other Western Countries (e.g. Italy) where birth rates have been going down in parallel with the worsening of the economic conditions, to the point that we are starting to see an overall population decline.

This interpretation was criticized in the comments by some who argued that, yes, my interpretation may be correct for relatively modern and "Westernized" countries, but not for the poorest areas such Africa or Asia. These commentators argued that people in these areas will continue to make as many children as they can, no matter what happens around them; apparently as a result of the Imams telling them to do so (or by evil dictator Erdogan, or the like).

I don't think this criticism is correct and I can counter it with an example. We all know the story of the Irish famine that took place between 1845 and 1852, and that killed a large fraction of the Irish population. We know something about the number of deaths, about how many Irish emigrated, but we know relatively little of how the famine affected birth rates. Did Irish women try to compensate for the higher mortality by having more children?

On this point, I found a comprehensive study produced by Phelim P. Boyle and Cormac O Grada on Demography, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Nov., 1986), pp. 543-562 (here is the link). It takes some assumptions and extrapolations to determine the Irish birth rates before and after the famine. They also do not report graphs, but only tables. However, their conclusion is clear: birth rates declined with the famine in Ireland. In other words, the Irish families didn't try to compensate for the higher mortality by having more children; not at all.

This is confirmed by what we see of the Irish population in the decades after the famine. Even though food supply ceased to be a problem, still the population continued to decline or remain stable well into the 20th century. The Irish of those times didn't have good contraceptives, but they seem to have coped mainly by retarding the marriage age and by adopting a lifestyle that discouraged sexual activity among young people.

This is relevant for the case I am discussing here. In the 19th century, the Irish peasants were Catholic (or, if you prefer, "Papists"). The catholic view of marriage was supposed to be at that time (as it is still today in some circles) that a married couple should have as many children as the Lord sends them - that is as many as possible. After the famine, the Irish remained Catholic, but they totally disregarded the advice that the may perhaps have received from their priests. It was a perfectly rational choice - the Irish were not stupid.

We are clearly discussing something difficult to quantify, but I tend to think that most people on this planet are not so stupid as PR specialists seem to believe. So, from these historical examples (Russia and Ireland) I would say that a future economic/climate crisis will be immediately accompanied by a decline in birth rates and, hence, of population. If that happens, it will be a good thing as the pressure on the ecosystem will be reduced. That doesn't mean that all the problems we face will be solved, but at least we don't have to worry that people will worsen the situation by breeding like rabbits.

The end of the "population problem"? Another Seneca cliff in our future

Image from "National Geographic"

If the demographic projections by the United Nations will turn out to be true, the world population should reach over 11 billion people by 2100. Some think that it will be a disaster, others see it as a good thing as it would bring more economic growth. But is it really possible to reach such numbers? Can we really think that women would be so stupid to continue making children even in the midst of the crisis caused by declining natural resources and worsening ecosystem disruption? (unless the Pope himself were to tell them to stop)?

Yet, some models tell us the human population could keep increasing even after the collapse of the world's economy. There exists something called the "demographic transition" and it is a historical observation that may be extrapolated into the future. The data show a sort of "U-shaped fertility curve" that makes the poor and the very rich to be more fertile than those who are in the middle. When applied to the scenarios of "The Limits to Growth" of 1972, this idea generated a curious behavior, with the impoverishment of the population causing an increase in the birthrate that causes the population to continue increasing for a few decades after the collapse.

But, as it is always the case, extrapolating past trends into the future is extremely dangerous. In particular, it is at least improbable that the post-collapse world will be like running the same movie in reverse. The demographic transition has been observed to occur in growing economies, it won't simply change sign and reverse itself in contracting economies. To see how it works we can look at the demographic trends in Russia.

Image from Wikipedia Commons. 

The increase in the death rate among Russians was not compensated by an increase in birth rates, as the demographic transition model would say. Russian women and Russian families reacted to a difficult situation by postponing or avoiding to generate new children, correctly understanding that these children would face very hard times and that it would have been impossible for their families to support them. Note the rapid collapse of birthrathes, a true "Seneca Cliff."

Now, I have a highly positive opinion of the intelligence of Russian people and, in particular, of Russian women. But I just can't think that people in other regions of the world would behave very differently. Those who maintain that people will make more children as they become poorer seem to assume that most people, and women in particular, are not more intelligent than an average rabbit. But, as it is always the case, extrapolating past trends into the future is extremely dangerous. While is true that most people are not very effective at the task of acting in order to benefit humankind as a whole, most people are perfectly able to understand what's good for themselves and their immediate families. And, in times of trouble, they normally react by planning in order to optimize the number of their surviving offspring. Humans apply what's called the "K-strategy" in reproduction: they concentrate the resources available on fewer children in order to maximize their probability of success.

Of course, we are dealing with phenomena of which we know little. After that the world's economy peaks, all the bets are off. But it may not be a coincidence that whole regions of the world, such as Southern Europe have started a population decline, despite having traditionally been demographically active. Among these Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Outside Europe, Japan has also started to decline, inverting a tendency of growth that had been ongoing from the 1920s. It is not yet possible to say if these inversions are to be understood as long-term trends. But, if this is the case, they are evidence that an economic crisis has nearly immediate effects on population.

A global population decline would have at least a positive effect in the sense that it would reduce the threat of climate change and the pressure on the ecosystem. But it may turn out to be a disaster if we enter the rapidly descending slope that I called the "Seneca Cliff". Will that lead to the "near term human extinction" that some think as a likely future? It cannot be excluded, but it is also true that there may be life on the other side of the cliff if we are smart enough to understand the future. It is up to us to prepare for it.

If Switzerland had a Sahara Desert, it would be a small Africa. Does the world really have an "overpopulation problem"?

 

This post was updated on Aug 28th, 2018

This is a fascinating movie in many respects and, at the same time, a movie that makes you feel like screaming in rage. It is clear that Mr. Boote has something to say, and he manages to say it - sometimes forcefully, sometimes obliquely, and sometimes perhaps even as the opposite of what he seems to be intentioned to say.

So, what's the point of the movie? Well, most of it is based on scenes in which we see Mr. Boote going around with his unbrella in places where it never seems to rain. And interviewing people who, frankly, don't seem to have a clue about overpopulation except in attributing it to a conspiracy of the evil Western Elites.

Of course, one man's truth is another man's mistake. So, Mr. Boote has a good point in trying to see the world from the viewpoint of the poor - and I think that if I were, say, a Nigerian citizen, I would tend to think that the Westerners - just like the Whites of Western movies  - speak with forked tongues. They claim to be virtuous because they throw their waste into differently colored bins and they do that after having ruined and destroyed entire ecosystems for their consumption. And now they fault the poor for having too many children!

It is a clash of absolutes, which only a few people, like Werner Boote, are trying to bridge. The result is remarkable: the scene in which we see Boote boarding the pilgrim train in Bangladesh is worth the whole movie. It is a fantastic scene in which we see Boote as the only Wester sitting on the roof of a train chock-full of people, many of them sitting on the roof. It gives you an "ecumenic" feeling. We are all humans and we can live together. And all our screaming about being "green" will not help if we don't learn how to do that.

On the other hand, where the movie often fails is when it tries to buttress its thesis by using quantitative data or historical references. For instance, it starts immediately with misquoting Malthus, accused to "have predicted a catastrophe for 1860." Poor Malthus never said that!

Then, we have a scene where we see Mr Boote (for once without his umbrella) discussing with a man who tells him that Africa is not overpopulated because it has only 40 inhabitants per square km, compared with the 170 of Europe. Then, the man takes Boote somewhere up on a hill and he shows him an empty landscape, saying, "do you see? Africa is not overpopulated!"

Now, there are several problems here. First, the datum for the average population density in Africa seems to be correct, but the population density in Europe is 105 inhabitants per square km, not 170 (and it is just 31 if one includes the European part of Russia.). Maybe Mr Boote's informant meant Western Europe, but if you take that as meaning the European Union, then the population density still is only 116, not 170.

Then, one would be tempted to remind to Mr Boote's informant that Europe doesn't have a Sahara desert; to say nothing about the Kalahari desert and other areas unsuitable for human occupation in Africa. So, he forgets that an African country such as Nigeria has about the same density of population as Switzerland (nearly 200 people per square km), to say nothing about Rwanda, that has 460 people per square km (more than twice than Switzerland).

One could show Mr Boote and his informant some nice Swiss valley with many cows and almost no people and then tell them: "you see? Almost no one lives in Switzerland!"


So, as I said, it is a clash of absolutes. And all clashes of absolutes are difficult to tone down. For  an opposite opinion to the one of Mr. Boote, you would do well reading this post by Jacopo Simonetta. And we keep going, we'll arrive somewhere anyway.