I hope this finds you well and, at least for now, safe.

When I sat down a few weeks ago to start sketching what I would write about for this post, and after several false starts it dawned on me that there really is nothing much more to say! At least there is nothing really new to say. It seems that all of the kinds of global dangers I have been concerned about for all these years are now sufficiently advanced to be visible to all but the most stubborn willfully ignorant. And there are certainly many of those. Nevertheless, we now have growing movements such as behind Greta and Extinction Rebellion re: climate chaos. There have been a steadily growing number of economists who are starting to question the conventional wisdom regarding capitalism and free markets, if not the conventional theories behind the quasi-science. The public is still being hoodwinked by the oil and gas industries regarding the future of fossil fuel energy production; they have hyped the fracking revolution and American energy independence and the majority of people do not have the physics needed to understand the consequences of fracked well dynamics. So they don't realize that the current abundance of oil and gas is going to be short-lived. But many more people are listening to the experts (some of the same peak oil guys who went underground when fracking started taking hold) and realizing that there are problems afoot. And then there are those who strongly believe that solar and wind are going to save our civilization. If they are willing to look there are a growing number of analyses and reports that provide strong evidence that the economic power production potential for these technologies is just insufficient to run an industrial (even a so-called post-industrial) society that is dependent on the kind of power you get with fossil fuels or nuclear.

Not the kind of person who says 'I told you so, but...' Ok, so I am. But now many-many more voices have been added to the growing cacophony of doomsayers. I expect more people will start taking notice.

Still the majority hold out that some kind of techno-miracle will save our society, pretty much in its current form. Again its a question of pure physics. Stated simply, the kind of society we have right now is not in any way sustainable.

I've just finished a year-long quest for applying systems analysis to a human social system (HSS) design that would be sustainable but organized very differently from what we've grown used to as "normal." The outlines will be the last chapter in my forthcoming book. The last part of the book is devoted to design and engineering of complex adaptive and evolvable systems. So I thought, why not apply it to the HSS? I have written several papers about it for both Russian and Western systems researchers. Guess where the ideas were best relieved.

There is no way we can transition our current society to this more systemic form. We don't have the time even if the general population accepted the idea. So my prediction is still that civilization as we know it will crash (hard). You can already see the dynamics playing out. We're likely just past the peak point in Ugo Bardi's Seneca's Cliff scenario. You know, the Wiley Coyote moment! I hope to get the book out before everything goes to hell, and a few more papers published with the hopes that some remnant of the notion that a systems approach to designing and constructing a viable human society will somehow survive. Some day in the distant future, perhaps a thousand years after the collapse, some survivors in small pockets of relatively stable climate might have the opportunity to do it right the second time around. One thing for sure, they won't be in a position to exploit the kind of power sources we've had. The coal, oil, and natural gas will effectively be gone. And if my theory of evolving sapience holds any water, some of those future beings will be a little bit wiser than the current species.

Enjoy while you can, being mindful to not increase your contributions to the problems (e.g. consumerist living). If you are so inclined (and young enough) join Extinction Rebellion, go out and shut down traffic, get arrested at a protest. It might be fun.