“Let’s continue our descent into collapse. First, let me be clear: We can’t know or predict something as complex as a human society and its trajectories.
“I note that [discussion of] collapse is gradually coming out of the shadows and into the mainstream culture — collapse caused by energy shortages, climate, AI hostility, or just collapse of social order. Collapse is increasingly taken for granted. Meanwhile, neither societies nor individuals take steps to prepare themselves.
“In my third essay [in this series] – see How and when will our civilization die?, I discussed the drivers of collapse in more detail. Just a brief version here:
“Capitalism is built on growth that can’t continue forever, and which de facto has slowed down. The growth we can see in GDP-figures is not representing any real increase of prosperity or wealth, just an increase in debt.
“Financial wealth is inherently a claim on the economy; in the end you are supposed to be able to convert your dollars, bitcoins, treasuries or stock into stuff or services. But this is simply not possible with the exponential growth of financial capital and debt.
“Capitalism will not survive no-growth, and even less de-growth – see C as in Capitalism and C as in Collapse. Capitalism will either wane or be overturned by popular discontent — probably a combination of both.
“How the current system will collapse will impact what comes after. Human cultures carry many things forward, both virtues and sins. Many components of the Roman empire shaped Europe for centuries after the fall of Rome, and still today. This path dependency is very pronounced in the make up of the metabolism of society. Once you embark on agriculture as the main source of food it is hard to move back to foraging or fishing. Path dependency in energy systems and machinery is also strong.
“The global population is rapidly moving from a rapid growth to stagnation and soon enough to contraction. A shrinking population means fewer hands in production and fewer mouths on the consumption side. Meanwhile a smaller population will, in some regards, make it easier to establish a new culture.
“The big unknown, and the fear of many, is if a collapse leads to war. By and large, I put more faith in humanity than what is reflected in various dystopias. In times of shortages and strife, people cooperate and share resources rather than fighting over them. I am not the only one that has observed both at home in Sweden and in many very poor countries that poor people tend to be more generous than rich people.
“Obviously, with war or other expressions of civil strife, the fall will be deeper and quicker than with an orderly descent. Society — capitalist and the political and economic managerial class — will try to maintain order and status quo by investing more into keeping the system going, pumping more oil and gas, spending more money, priming the economy to increase consumer spending etc. All those efforts just makes it harder to avoid a collapse and will make the collapse deeper than ‘necessary’.”
Expansive futures? – hard to say. Within limits? – more likely
“People have been forecasting the future for as long as they’ve had language. For some cultures, the arc of time was imagined as a progression from ancient virtue to present corruption and eventual ruin or salvation; for others, time was cyclical, with multiple Golden Ages and periods of decline. Today, most futurist supply scenarios based on quantifiable trends — extrapolating trends in population, economic activity, and technology.
“But there’s a problem with these scenarios: trends change. They encounter limits, countervailing trends. Failed technology predictions make for colorful and amusing reading. Just one example: in 1959, the U.S. Postmaster General, forecast that ‘before man reaches the moon’, mail would be delivered long distances by guided missiles. Instead, we got email.
“In this article, we’ll explore a four-part typology of futures from the perspective of physical constraints. As we’ll see, this approach — like others — generates both best-and worst-case scenarios. In effect, we’ll be sorting the possible from the purely fanciful.
“The use of energy and material constraints as the basis for scenario forecasting is most famously identified with the Limits to Growth study of 1972 (which also considered pollution, food, and population constraints). That study has shown itself to be more reliable than competing scenario forecasts that tended to ignore physical limits.
“Optimistic Limits – Blind Future Visions: On the hopeful side (as economists interpret it), ignoring limits to soil and water encourages expectations of ever-increasing food abundance. Ignoring limits to energy opens the possibility of humans voyaging to other star systems. This kind of limits-blind speculation is widespread. Indeed, for the past few decades, even the ‘sustainable development’ agenda has been mired in ignorance of physical limits.
“Pessimistic Limits – Blind Future Visions: Some dystopian visions of the future, because they assume a continuation of the growth trends of the past century, are unrealistic. For example, projecting AI growth into the coming decades can lead to expectations of universal human slavery to the machines. However, a full-scale Matrix (as portrayed in the movie) would require many thousands more data centers. Indeed, energy and water limits are already problems for AI, and are one reason AI will probably not, in fact, take over the world (or, if it does, not for very long).
“Pessimistic Limits – Aware Future Visions: Most novels that fit in this quadrant of futures simply describe people trying to survive in a world that’s falling apart. Post-apocalyptic fiction doesn’t always specify the cause of the disaster that has laid waste to civilization. Such is the case in The Road (2006). These are unrelievedly grim portrayals of what the future might hold for survivors in the wake of societal collapse, whatever the trigger event might be.
“Optimistic Limits – Aware Future Visions: Sometimes fictional collapse eventually leads to cultural renewal. Hopeful post-apocalyptic fiction often takes this route. One example is All the Water in the World (2025), in which a young woman and her family navigate a flooded New York while trying to preserve the best of human culture and human nature.
“As I wrote in a recent essay, a future long-term sustainable human culture would need to value ecosystems, cooperation, humility, and sharing; building it would effectively require us to re-indigenize ourselves. If such is our aim, then one futurist literary genre we should consult for guidance is Indigenous futurism. Two other sub-genres fit into this quadrant: solarpunk and eco-fiction. They are poles of a spectrum, ranging from futures bristling with high-tech sustainability solutions at one end, to stories of human re-wilding on the other.
“Altogether, this quadrant of futures offers gritty realism with a dose of optimism. Still, collapse brings the opportunity to abandon global economic and political structures that have driven us to the point of ruin, and to build instead a fabric of locally adapted, rooted, re-indigenized human cultures.”
Capitalism, energy, labor
“Now I am turning to how a post-collapse world will look. I would recommend that you read the previous five essays (they are all linked in The descent – by Gunnar Rundgren | Garden Earth) to understand where I am coming from. In this essay I discuss energy, capital, technology, and work. In the following one I will discuss food and nature and in the final (?) I will turn to the works of human society including markets and trade.
“Energy is crucial and I am quite sure that renewables will not offer a seamless transition from fossil fuels. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing in between a fully fossil fuel driven industrial civilization and a 17th century biomass economy. To begin with, also in the 17th century there were wind and water mills as well as sailing ships, so the framing is not really correct.
“But the choice is even more flawed as the accumulated infrastructure, materials and knowledge is very different. Even if we had to close down all iron mines and virgin steel mills, there is so much steel in circulation that it will supply a global $5000 per capita economy. In addition, we have much knowledge that was not available in the 17th century. Unfortunately we have also lost some knowledge and skills…
“Solar power seems to be a reasonably accessible technology. If you want to run a high tech society with constant reliable uninterrupted supply you need an awful lot of storage capacity though. It is probably a safer strategy to accept interruptions and losses of efficiency rather then spending enormous resources on storage. Solar panels will continue to work for decades. But soon enough societies will have to reproduce its energy resources. If you can’t do that, they are hardly renewable in the first place.
“Even with rather small energy resources one can run many really labour saving machines. Pumping water for household use or for irrigation of gardens has also a very high utility compared to the energy used. Such a low energy society could be fueled by a combination of biomass in various forms (biogas, syngas, biodiesel, ethanol, methanol etc.). The trick is more how to ensure that the use doesn’t expand above what is really essential, which is linked to the question about accumulation of capital.
“In the dominant capitalist civilization, investment in capital is the major driver of economic growth, which in turn result in more capital. Real capital is composed of tangible assets; machines, stocks, buildings, roads etc.
“In the modern world, capital is linked to ownership. Note that private ownership of capital has no meaning unless other people are ready to give you something in return; goods, services or their labour. This is most apparent when it comes to pure financial capital. There is no inherent value in US Treasury bonds or in US dollars or Swedish krona.
“But, regardless of the ownership perspective, accumulation of capital is essential for any kind of technological development of human society. It is a feature of human efficiency that we produce surpluses. Before modernity and capitalism, accumulation of capital over and above what was needed for immediate necessities and basic infrastructure, was rarely a primary interest. Actually, historically, there seems to have been many mechanisms to avoid accumulation, limiting the build up of capital.
“To have skilled specialists, a society needs a certain size. If you are a band of 100 people, it is quite apparent that your skill set will be much smaller than if you are thousand or a million people. Adam Smith pointed out the strong interdependence between the factory and the market. A factory needs a much bigger market than an artisan. The implication of this is that also the division of labour, a centre piece of modern society, is also dependent on a bigger market or a bigger scale.
“Imagine a small self-ruling rural community of say 10,000 people — spread it out in a small town and a number of villages and single homesteads, operating on a simple technology foundation. How much surplus will they be able to produce and how much surplus will they be willing to share with other communities for contributing to a higher common good?
“I am with William Morris (News from Nowhere) in his view of work — it is best to mix different kinds of work, creative, repetitive, intellectual, emotional, physical work. Coincidentally, that is also how I go through my days. If work is free and rewarding you certainly can work long days. I am aware though, that some people prefer to focus on doing a few things that they master. There is enough to be done and sufficient variation to allow us to be different.”
Cuts in food programs — solutions listed in the article
“In Donald Trump’s second administration, the federal funding landscape has been radically changed for the people who grow, harvest, and distribute food. The Department of Agriculture itself has lacked transparency and comprehensiveness. So we’ve put together this information guide about the status of various USDA programs.
“The Regional Food Business Program [would] establish and boost regional supply chains, and would administer financial awards to farms and food businesses. This July, the USDA terminated the program, but noted the sites that have already awarded grants ‘will have the option to continue managing existing commitments’ through May 2026.
“The Climate-Smart Commodities Grant Program provided grants for projects that create market opportunities for agricultural and forest products produced using climate-smart practices. About $3.1 billion in funding, authorized by USDA in 2023 was cancelled in April. The funding pot was then repackaged into a new program without equity, climate, or sustainability benchmarks.
“The Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grants Program addressed rising hunger and nutritional needs among school-age children by providing public schools with funding to source locally produced vegetables and fund food and agricultural education. About $10 million in funding for 2025 was terminated in March, but the USDA announced it was opening awards for the next fiscal year.
“The Emergency Food Assistance Program was designed to supplement the diets of lower-income people by providing emergency food assistance, not money. About $500 million of funding was abruptly cut by the USDA in late March. It is not clear whether the USDA plans to use Commodity Credit Corporation funds for future food purchases distributed through the program.
“The Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, and the Local Food for Schools and Child Care Agreement provided funding for schools and state, tribal, and territorial governments to purchase food produced within local and regional ranges to source more nutritious food and help farmers in their area. In March, Trump’s USDA terminated both programs, halting about $1.1 billion in federal spending.
“The Working Lands Conservation Corps provided technical training and career opportunities for young people, through climate-smart agriculture solutions for farmers and ranchers nationwide. The Corps Network was expecting $500,000 in annual IRA-authorized funding, before the federal funding freeze and a subsequent termination of funding in early March.”
Public groceries can solve growing food insecurity
“Donald Trump recently declared that he’s ‘already solved inflation’ and ‘costs are down’. Trump touted Walmart’s reducing the price of its Thanksgiving kit by 25%, anticipating cash-strapped consumers.
“Trump’s extrapolation from Walmart’s deal obscures the grueling truth about food costs: they’ve spiraled out of control. Grocery prices have climbed 35% since 2019. The top ten categories jumped nearly 60% in price, with many of them heavily monopolized by a handful of processors. Real wages are not keeping up with price growth. Before the Trump administration announced it would stop gathering data on hunger, 47 million Americans were experiencing food insecurity.
“To solve the food affordability crisis, we need to take back control from the giant companies. What would an effective overhaul look like, one adequate to meet the nutritional needs of Americans at a price they can afford? At its core would be public underwriting.
“First, to ensure a level playing field for the public sector, regulators can start by enforcing the Robinson–Patman Act (RPA) to clamp down on how bigger chains command better deals and payment terms at the expense of smaller competitors. A next step could be something like the Emergency Price Stabilization Act, first introduced in 2022. This could selectively use price controls to limit price increases in key goods and services.
“The next order of business would be to beef up public subsidies for food — in other words, supercharge the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Supercharging SNAP would mean making all fresh produce free — yes, you heard me, universal free produce. This would cost about $90 billion a year in retail price subsidies. On top of that, we’d want to subsidize the difference in total retail prices between 2019 and 2025 – or about $225 billion.
“All in, this adds up to about $400 billion. That may sound like a lot, but seen another way, it’s only the difference in defense spending between 2015 and 2025. Surely basic nutrition is as valuable to our society as defense.
“A public grocery option is next. The good news for boosters is that it already exists at scale in the US military’s commissary system, which underwrites the gross margins of retail operations so that retail prices are 20 to 30% lower than grocery prices. The commissary system is proof that the government can operate efficient, popular grocery stores that customers genuinely appreciate.”
Sin tax on meat: nanny state, or effective climate solution?
“The concept of a tax on meat products, which places a levy on high-emission animal products, is gaining traction in the offices of agricultural ministries around the world. Spain and Switzerland have carbon pricing plans in place, and Denmark, a major producer of pork and dairy, will begin taxing livestock carbon emissions in 2030. New Zealand, Germany, and the Netherlands are in discussions.
“The meat and dairy industries are responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Beef production is responsible for 41% of global deforestation, primarily in the extremely fragile Amazon rainforest. Globally, two out of three farm animals are now factory-farmed, which pollute water sources, soils, and the air. Overuse of antibiotics in farmed animals contributes to antibiotic resistance in humans.
“Environmental groups argue that a sin tax, like those placed on sugar and tobacco products, has proven successful in changing consumer behaviour. Applying this sin tax to meat and dairy products is, however, a double-edged sword. Without careful planning, farmers will bear the financial burden, supply chain job losses will be substantial, and low-income families will be disproportionately affected.
“Experts already agree that we simply cannot meet our climate goals and protect our precious ecosystems without reducing our consumption of meat and making the industry more sustainable. A blanket meat tax may not be the answer, but rather a more tailored approach. For example, taxing products according to their environmental impact to reflect the damage that they cause. Support increases when the tax covers all environmentally damaging foods, not just meat, and is coupled with subsidies on healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables.”
