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Posted on July 21, 2025 | 26 Comments
The end of June is usually an exciting time for me. Summer holidays approaching? No, it’s when the Energy Institute publishes its annual Statistical Review of World Energy. Who doesn’t love a big fat spreadsheet landing in their downloads folder to analyse to their heart’s content? The answer to that, of course, is a good many. And, in the case of the EI energy data, I have to confess I’m on a path to joining them, because I’ve found my excitement diminishing.
The main reason is because the figures tell the same darned story year after year. Despite endless talk about the purported ‘transition’ out of fossil fuels into low-carbon forms of energy, this resolutely fails to happen. Last year was no exception – the new data show that more oil, more natural gas and more coal were burned globally in 2024 than ever before in human history. Seriously, we need to stop talking about this mythical ‘transition’.
True, there was a big proportionate increase in solar and wind consumption once again – up 16 percent from 14.4 to 16.8 exajoules globally. But in absolute terms fossil fuel use increased more – up 7.6 exajoules from 505.1 to 512.7 exajoules globally. In most countries, fossil energy use dwarfs lower carbon forms of energy consumption. To reduce fossil fuel use to zero by 2050, we’d have to swipe out nearly 20 exajoules of fossil fuel each and every year between now and then – more than the entire global consumption of solar and wind energy, and more energy than is used in total by the world’s fifth highest energy-using country, Japan (figures calculated by me from the EI data).
This just isn’t going to happen – and it’s not because fossil energy companies are disgracefully dragging their feet over leaving the fossils in the ground, although that’s certainly true. For reasons much discussed on this site in the past (for example, here), the existing global economy is fatally dependent on fossils. This can’t go on indefinitely, but it’s not going to change through some smooth replacement of unsustainable energy sources with sustainable ones. If we were talking seriously about using renewables as a bridging technology to transition to lower-energy, more local lifeways, I might be able to get behind the concept of ‘transition’. But we’re not. Prepare for a bumpy ride.
There’s a lot more that could be said in detail about these energy trends, of course. But there’s a wood-for-the-trees danger in doing so that too easily evades the key headline – World economy inevitably hooked on fossils! – and draws us into a realm of global techno-fix solutionism whose number is up. The notion that the high-energy, super-connected global political economy may be able to sustain business-as-usual over the next few decades through newer energy and other technologies that can prolong its need for growth is dead in the water. Not that sustaining business-as-usual is an especially good thing, although probably better than disorderly collapse. But how to mitigate the effects of disorderly collapse now seems to me the key issue of concern.
So how, then? It may seem like a cop out, but my argument is that the answers have to be approached locally, in a panoply of context-specific ways focused on generating adequate material livelihoods in given locales that can’t be spelled out in some grand plan. There is no “if we all just did x” solution, shorn of local context, to the unravelling of the high-energy global economy. This kind of contextless thinking exemplifies what I call in my forthcoming book the ‘world environmental problems’ framework. It signally fails to provide plausible solutions.
Another shopworn example of contextless global solutionism is the notion we can reverse climate change and preserve business-as-usual by turning vegan. This view has been given a fillip recently by Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop in a paper he’s been trailing heavily, for example on Rachel Donald’s Planet Critical podcast. The headline version of his argument is that animal agriculture is the biggest driver of global heating via methane emissions and deforestation. If everybody stopped eating livestock products, the argument goes, the planet would reforest and heal itself.
There are so many problems with this that I don’t really know where to begin. I probably shouldn’t begin, for the same reason that talking about clean energy transitions cedes too much ground from the get-go to illusory solutionism. In brief, I’ll just say that I find Wedderburn-Bisshop’s arguments a bit muddled on methane, vague on the relationship between pastoralism and deforestation, ignorant on grassland and fire ecosystems, dangerously complacent on natural carbon sinks and lacking in understanding of how profit-driven fossil capital drives agricultural overproduction – particularly of arable grains – in ecologically sensitive locations.
But the problem isn’t so much the specifics. Some of the things Wedderburn-Bisshop says are certainly correct technically. As always, it’s the context, the wider inferences and the path dependencies that matter. For example, even if it were true, as Wedderburn-Bisshop claims, that animal agriculture has caused 60 percent of climate change since 1750, existing mainstream agriculture of all kinds relies fundamentally on cheap fossil energy. Without it (and also without a colonial attitude to other land and people) people would have to figure out how to produce food, fibre and fertility from their localities. Almost always, this would radically change the way they used livestock, and it would radically change a whole bunch of other things about how they lived. So the 60 percent figure implicitly misattributes the underlying cause of climate change and draws attention to the wrong remedies.
One of those wrong remedies that I suspect we’ll see amplified ever more loudly in the coming years is opposition to livestock husbandry of any kind, regardless of context. In the face of ongoing government failures to limit greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, offloading the blame onto the eaters and keepers of livestock will help to divert attention from the more radical and systemic changes needed to deliver resilient local food systems. Perusing the website of Wedderburn-Bisshop’s organisation, the World Preservation Foundation, I’m struck by the absence of fossil fuels from its characterisation of why life on earth in peril, the prominence of corporate alt-meat approaches, and the silence about local agroecological approaches to food.
Still, it’s theoretically possible that some good may nevertheless come of this anti-livestock move. If it helps to push wealthy consumers away from long supply-chain consumption of meat sourced ultimately from ecologically vulnerable agricultural frontiers it might achieve something positive, provided it avoided the siren song of the corporate alt-meat agenda and emphasised more vegetable-heavy local food systems instead.
But I’m not holding my breath. I think it’s much more likely that the narrative will be captured by corporate alt-meat and ‘land-sparing’ interests that will heap further opprobrium on small-scale mixed farmers and pastoralists of the Global South and North alike.
Meanwhile, I daresay those of us who make the case for a peopled, localist, rural and agroecological approach to food systems will continue to face the kind of putdowns I get quite regularly from pro-urban vegans and manufactured food advocates operating under ‘world environmental problems’ assumptions. I know this is going to sound patronising, but I suppose I have to steel myself to keep enduring these barbs with a kind of “ah bless” empathy toward people who sweetly imagine their actions can help preserve our present world of mass urbanism and industrial food systems, perhaps understandably in view of the profound challenges involved in imagining anything else. Nevertheless, I think they’re labouring under the misapprehension that their supposedly lower carbon footprints herald a promising long-term future trend for the preservation of a global-industrial and mass-urban civilization, rather than a last gasp attempt of that civilization to render itself sustainable in the face of its multiple inabilities to be so.
Oddly, this puts me in company with those conservative or alt-right voices that deride people from the kind of urban, left-wing, eco-conscious world from which I hail as ‘soulless bugmen, living in the pod’. Yet I believe the soulless bugmen typically share with their alt-right critics an underappreciation of quite how colonial our relationship to land, food and the people who furnish it has become in modern times. The left-leaning urbanists are probably better placed to gain that appreciation politically, whereas the right-leaning ruralists are probably better placed to appreciate and embody it in their practices of daily livelihood-making.
I discuss the importance of this non-colonial way of thinking about livelihood, of learning to be indigenous, quite a bit in my forthcoming book, along with its relation to capital-I Indigenous peoples. Because humans in general are as incapable of jettisoning symbolic systems like language, religion and money as modern humans are incapable of jettisoning fossil fuels, I don’t think our relationship to land can ever be entirely non-colonial – which is okay up to a point, and perhaps even worth celebrating. But only up to a point that’s been far exceeded by present human material systems.
To his credit, Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop does mention in the podcast that the historic modes of livelihood-making associated with Indigenous peoples are more sustainable, before rushing to the conclusion that ‘we’ don’t, won’t and/or can’t live like that. In the coming years, it seems to me likely that there will be strong selective pressures favouring those that try. This is why debates about livestock, ruminants, urban carbon footprints and the like are ultimately distractions, and why we need to kick this one-shot solutionism habit and its ‘global environmental problems’ framing. The key reality or privilege check should not be to calibrate our food choices against some universalised quantum of what’s ‘best for the planet’, but to develop local food systems that can create modest local material (not monetary) livelihoods without the expenditure of significant fossil or other exotic energies and inputs. Currently, at a collective civilizational level, we’re not doing that. And we’re not even remotely on trend – as the Energy Institute’s fossil energy data demonstrates.
For my part, I’m planning to cut the number of ruminant livestock I personally tend. This is for reasons unrelated to Wedderburn-Bisshop’s intervention, though it will no doubt help me do my bit for global cooling, provided I don’t err in other ways, for example with increased internet searches or railway journeys. Since the ruminant livestock I personally tend basically amounts to two breeding ewes it’s not easy to cut the numbers while retaining a flock at all. The trick, as ever, is to build in more cooperation with other people.
I’m also planning not to get so drawn into debating global environmental problems type framings in the future. This probably won’t be easy, given my residual enthusiasm for things like spreadsheets of global energy data. But I will try, because such debates are an endless pit of misery in which people parade their ‘take away the number you first thought of’ confirmation biases rather than engaging in the necessary political and cultural discussions. Since I’ve just finished writing a book which makes a broad global case for not making broad global cases, I need to think about where else I might usefully focus my writing energies in the future. Suggestions welcome.
Jane Cooper The Lost Flock (a lovely memoir detailing the story of Boreray sheep and their place in premodern Highland economies – quite the antidote to too much world environmental problems thinking)
Musa al-Gharbi We Have Never Been Woke (I’m still slowly working my way through this revelatory book broadly on the complexities of human claims to status and authenticity – to be discussed soon)
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You really manage to pack a lot into these short updates.
For awhile I’ve been considering Veganism 80% correct. CAFOs should be ended, the mythical average American is probably* eating more meat than is good for their health, and if you’re starting to be more ecologically minded and your primary experience of environmental problems is mostly the shortage of other-than-human life in the urban landscape, then it does seem really wrong to take another life just for your own convenience. Or if you are trying uncouple yourself from the extractive mindset which is quite hostile to all life, then not killing animals might be a good place to hang out for awhile while you sort things out. That said I do worry about small livestock owners being used as a climate scapegoat (ha). From my perspective in ag country though where the political power of the large grain growers and feed lot operators is a part of the problem it’s hard to feel too bad if the hammer were to fall on them instead. Regardless the idea that it’s okay to, say keep flying or owning a car, just because you’re vegan is quite wrong (though I will say I don’t think I’ve ever meet a vegan who believed that, it might just be one of those media portrayal things or maybe it’s a sampling error on my part).
For awhile one of the positive things I’ve said to say about the climate crisis/poly-crisis/the problems is that it might be an opportunity for humans who want to try things differently to, if not thrive, at least survive, which is I think what you’re indicating with your comment on selective pressure. It’s hard to uncouple yourself from the system though, land access, housing, let alone the mental work to see things differently. If I do have a consolation to offer you in regards to the “barbs” then I do find it amusing when those conversations turn to, but we can’t give up the system how would we live without X? And X is something like a dishwasher or clothes dryer where it’s very easy keep to living without. At least those ones are good for a knowing chuckle.
I did buy solar panels before the tariffs earlier this year so I suppose I at least owe the blog an update in a year or so on whether that made me more of the problem or less.
*I’m not a doctor
Thanks for this, Chris. And my sympathies for another step down the horror-movie staircase of acceptance of collapse.
I of course have opinions about what you should write about, so I made a meme. I hope as your spreadsheets gather dust, your inner Wendell Berry is allowed fuller throat.
https://imgflip.com/i/a0w5q8
“Oddly, this puts me in company with those conservative or alt-right voices that deride people from the kind of urban, left-wing, eco-conscious world from which I hail as ‘soulless bugmen, living in the pod’. Yet I believe the soulless bugmen typically share with their alt-right critics an underappreciation of quite how colonial our relationship to land, food and the people who furnish it has become in modern times. The left-leaning urbanists are probably better placed to gain that appreciation politically, whereas the right-leaning ruralists are probably better placed to appreciate and embody it in their practices of daily livelihood-making.”
I totally share this perspective, Chris.
I enjoyed The Lost Flock!
I also share the view that these kinds of “global” scenarios, diets, models are doing a lot of harm. Coincidentally the last four articles on my blog has been about that.
In the last one I do call for a design of the food system according to ecosystem principles, or at least how I understand the main principles of ecosystems. I believe that gives the call for a local food system a more “scientific” grounding and less of a chauvinist image.
https://gardenearth.substack.com/p/the-ecological-economy-of-food
I hope there’s still some space on your bench for left-leaning ruralists (or at least subsistence gardeners, I guess, since I’ve lived in cities my whole life — not that, in the present moment, I have a lot of immediate choice in the matter). I do still think small cities will stick around for a long time, but larger cities like London will need to find a way to revert to a more human (and more humane) scale.
I found yet another poorly-maintained “community orchard” in a park yesterday, this one with signs still legible enough that I can tell what varieties some of the trees are; I found another a couple of weeks ago, and also a sort of micro-orchard which has some plum trees and some sea buckthorn, of all things. Everything in London this year is fruiting pretty heavily (I’ve never seen so many plums) and much of it very early (I don’t normally even look out for black mulberries until August), and between this and the yet-another-orchard syndrome I am strongly considering acquisition of a cider press.
Meanwhile, I am thinking a bit about gentrification and increased rents as an early driver of de-urbanisation, having tripped over some legislation allegedly intended to protect tenants which is instead threatening our housing security, or at least the functioniong of our little three-person household as a household. I’ll spare you the details, not least becuase we’re still trying to work out what our options are, but the legislation as it stands seems like a good way to make sure housing stays scarce and rents stay high.
As I see it western farming is tailored to feed cities at the lowest possible cost leaving more disposable income to spend on un nesisary junk , which in turn feeds tax revenues . Kathryn’s high rents and property prices and county taxes are only possible when food is cheap , the environment through farm subsidies pays the price to keep the people in bread and circuses . subsidies are enough to keep prices down while not bankrupting farmers ( though in England my friends are telling me that some without overdrafts are throwing in the towel and leaving the ground fallow or ploughing in crops that will cost more to harvest than sell ) food could become scarce very quickly when farmers give up .
South of where I live where was a 100 acre solar ” farm ” after a hail storm its no more , it will take around a decade to pick up the glass and they won’t get it all then , plus during the storms I am sure you have seen the ” local wind farm ” Feathered the blades out of the wind and stayed like that for three days , they are inspecting the blades for hail damage , good job for a mountain climber that’s good with ropes Chris !
Chris wrote “…by Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop in a paper he’s been trailing heavily… The headline version of his argument is that animal agriculture is the biggest driver of global heating…”
That paper by Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop has been criticized heavily by various climate scientists in the article “Agriculture emits greenhouse gases, but less than using fossil fuels, despite recent paper’s claim”, linked below. For example:
“Essentially he’s [Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop] doing two major changes to the normal way that we determine the contribution of different sectors to climate change. And he comes to the conclusion that land use/agriculture is the dominant driver of climate change and that fossil fuel is negligible, essentially, which is indeed highly controversial.”
“And the way he [Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop] does it includes one element which is totally wrong, and another element which is right. So I can start with what is wrong: he makes a claim in this paper in a previous paper as well, that we – as the Global Carbon Budget, IPCC, essentially everyone – are making a major mistake because when we talk about the fossil fuel emissions, we just account for the gross fluxes of what is going out [being emitted]. But when we account for land-use change, we account for net flux, which is the difference between what is going out [being emitted] and what is going in [being stored]. And he is saying this is not correct – that instead, we should treat things as ‘like to like’ and look at gross fluxes only. This might sound sensible, but it is complete nonsense because fossil fuels are essentially a one way flux [they emit greenhouse gases but don’t store them]…”
“For land use change, it’s much more important because it goes both ways. I mean, in many places, like in the tropics, we deforest, and deforestation leads to CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. In many other places, we reforest. We reforest in Europe, China, and we’ve reforested in the U.S. for decades. And if you look at the net flux, this is a difference between the place where you have deforestation and the place where you have reforestation. And you have to take both into account. Otherwise, you’re just wrong. So in a sense, it is the net flux that matters in more ways. It’s like your bank accounts, what matters is net between income and your expenses. If you just calculate the expenses in your bank accounts, it doesn’t give you any information on what’s happening in your bank account. It’s only half the story. It’s exactly the same for the atmosphere. It’s always the net that matters. It’s the net for fossil fuels, but the net is almost equal to the gross. It’s the net for land use too, but the net is about half of the gross, because we deforest about two billion tons of carbon and we reforest about 1 billion tons of carbon. Therefore for land use, the net is 1 billion tons of carbons, which is emitted. So, if you do the proper comparison of net emissions, for CO2 it is 10 billion tons of carbon, and for land use is one billion tons of carbon. And this is correct; this is what we report in the GCB (global carbon budget) and what is reported by the IPCC…”
“There is one argument in the [ERL] paper which is right – sulfate aerosols are associated with fossil fuel burning, because when you burn coal (other gases, too, but mainly coal) you release sulfate. They are cooling the planet because they are tiny particles [which reflect sunlight]. So they partly counterbalance warming – this part of his paper is correct. But the cooling effect of aerosols is extremely temporary. If we stopped emitting aerosols, the cooling effect would be gone in a week. And the cooling from aerosols is like half a degree. So you are cooling the planet by half a degree, but you are warming the planet by 1.5 because of CO2 and methane and therefore the net is about 1 degree C of warming.”
https://science.feedback.org/agriculture-emits-greenhouse-gases-less-than-using-fossil-fuels-despite-recent-papers-claim/
More from that article about Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop’s paper:
“Overall, the recent ERL paper did not use well-accepted methodologies and two of the climate scientists we spoke to about this paper were even surprised that it passed the peer-review process. (This emphasizes the importance of not relying on a single paper to support broad scientific conclusions.)”
“Furthermore, while it is not always problematic to publish as a single author, both papers published by Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop on this subject did not include collaborators…”
“Wedderburn-Bisshop is also the executive director of the World Preservation Foundation, an organization with an objective to spread information that ‘animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change’ – another potential bias toward the decisions made for his recent paper.”
https://science.feedback.org/agriculture-emits-greenhouse-gases-less-than-using-fossil-fuels-despite-recent-papers-claim/
“Go solar, go vegan and still collapse.”
Kinda says it all, doesn’t it? But surely we can save the System can we not? Nope. The System is going down no matter how many well-meaning people try to “reform” it. It is just demographics. It is just stochastics. It is just “the flow.” Putting energy into saving a morally bankrupt and corrupt state-level system is just foolish. In economic terms, there is a HUGE opportunity cost trying to save the System. I jumped off that train back in 1966.
The further you are from the System, the more security you will have.
Chris. Can we save ourselves and the planet? I’m betting on the long game. I’m betting on the same kind of soulful humans who helped move us beyond the catastrophes and nightmares of our collective pasts. I have no choice but to believe this. Am I cynical?? Absolutely. That’s the bit that keeps reality pliable.
Thanks for the comments. Briefly:
@bluejay – Yes, basically agree with your remarks about veganism. My aim isn’t to criticise it as a choice, just to question some of the overinflated claims made about it in respect of the climate. Another aspect of it is that just as people don’t really need to meat, they also don’t really need to eat alt-meat. The corporate backing behind Wedderburn-Bisshop’s organisation is eyebrow-raising. FWIW, I’ve occasionally heard vegans justifying flying on the basis of their dietary virtues. I agree on the difficulties of decoupling from the system. I think that’s likely to get easier by default, but not necessarily in good ways unless we try to make them good by design.
@Ruben-Bernie – thank you. Yes, peasant farming is pretty much where my thinking is going. But that can mean a lot of things. I hope to come back with some firmer proposals in due course.
@Gunnar – thanks for that. I always find your writing informative!
@Kathryn – yes, definitely still room on my bench for left-leaning ruralists, but we’re an odd little rump of a group. As I see it, the main road of leftism in the Global North has gone urban/ecomodernist/capitalist-realism, the remainder being kinda Blakean Romantic libertarians or LWA style agrarians. Neither commands any significant public narrative. I have enormous fondness for both, although I find the latter sometimes cleave overly to the main leftist road and I think could do a better job of reaching out to more mainstream rural/farming opinion. Also, I’d be very interested to hear more about your issues with rents/gentrification. This is something I want to write about soon.
@Diogenes – thanks for that. I’ll pass on climbing up the turbines! I have to drop my own turbine down to do some maintenance work on it. Definitely more work than PV panels, but it does have its uses on cloudy winter days. One of the ironies of my position is that I’m highly sceptical about a global transition to wind/solar, but entirely dependent on them for my own energy needs.
@Steve – thanks for sniffing out that weblink. Very informative.
@Walter – indeed, the opportunity cost of trying to save the System is an important issue that doesn’t get discussed enough.
@Robert – welcome. Agreed on hope/betting for the long game. All I’m saying is that we shouldn’t base real hope on exaggerated or falsely hopeful narratives.
Great post, Chris. Wedderburn-Bisshop’s failures of facts and analysis (and his corporate sponsorship) put me in mind of how and why the ‘energy transition’ mythology/ideology was cooked up by pro-nuclear technocrats and economists with a weak grasp of the real world situation – as described by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz in ‘More and more and more’.
Slowly (far too slowly) the world will get back to what humans can do within sustainable limits – but how many humans will be left by then is a moot point. Maybe just those of us (now and in the future) who are willing and able to follow the dictum “Collapse now! – and avoid the rush.”
Thank you Chris for this article, these brings me some hope to read, as I struggle otherwise to find any, which brings some novelty and new insights.
It brought me to thinking about few points from it and I try to describe my ideas about those here.
First, I also analyze Statistical Review every year, so it is good to hear that someone on the same side of fossil industry does the same 🙂 And I think it still matters, because what it delivers year after year now, is that not much is changing. And I believe it is important to observe those global world data, because it is so easy to get locked in our own bubble/perspective and miss the whole picture. So yes, no transition, no fossil energy scarcity, still all growth for the machine, maybe just not so fast in our parts of world.
As I do not think there will be any meaningful change from within the current system in global (because from its own point of view it all works fine), the only source of change can be external, something coming from outside of us-humans, coming from us-non-humans on the planet. But from where it can come, what will bring some impact full blow to the system-as-is-now ?
Will it be Climate Change ? Fossil resources scarcity ? Finance ?
I need to admin, I do no trust just Climate Change in this, as till the system has fossil fuels, it can fend off the effects of the change for affluent parts of humans, just check Saudi Arabia’s ski slope. I gave my hope for last few years to fossil resources scarcity, but as I am seeing the last developments I am afraid it will take longer then I hoped and longer that the Planet can survive. Before that, I believed in Finance, but as seen in the aftermath of 2009 and current Trump era, the capitalist system will do everything to solve this somehow and always finds some scapegoat to save the Finance as big system.
I would be happy to hear what all you think about this.
As fully as I share your critique of veganism in Wedderburn-Bisshop article, I am afraid that this is just one shout, which will take the media attention for a week or two and then the focus will move on. Because I see this as part of larger trend, trend of taking one part/sector of current system, prove that it has big out-sized impact, maybe little overblow the impact to make headlines, find some grand new end point, where it will be solved, (sorry I will not call this solution, because writing in the paper that everything will be solved when everyone will be vegan, is no solution for me) and push it to media sphere for churn.
For me this spurs from the hard emotional distress when facing the situation as whole, it reminds me Douglas Adams whole universe seeing machine in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which makes you disintegrate yourself. The way out of the distress is find out some particular problem and go full for it. The system allows it because it pose no threat for it and just admit it, it brings the author some personal rewards, in being heard, being give voice, having an agenda, so we all are prone to this.
The last but not least remark from me in this lengthy post is what does all this mean for us, for localist folks reading Chris.
I am afraid not good times ahead.
There will be strain on the capitalist system in next years from all above and this strain will fall down through all the world. We are still quite near top, so surely there will be a lot of people, who will feel this strain much more then we, but for us it will be also big change. The system will concentrate resources to the center, to the big cities, to the people working in them and pushing the system forward, away from the rural and countryside, away from support of alternatives and ecology. As the gap between the super rich and normal city rich will widen and the second will face their disposal income shrink, there will be less money flowing from them to CSA’s and local craftsmen/craftswomen. The neglect of majority of people from the state will also lead to some weird political movements in the so called populist politics. The technology, AI and all Internet/Phone ecosystem, will work tirelessly to delivery for the complacent ones, luring everybody to the system.
All this will lead to new unexpected burden for the people working locally and ecologically, working towards some long term way forward. It will affect strongly the families with kids, as the kids will be drawn towards the center of the system, towards easy rewards.
I hope this new burden will not be too much and we, as I use we here quite broadly, will sustain it.
The methane story is really more and more complex the more you dig into it. This article goes a long way to explain all sorts of complications in how methane is calculated and makes the case (other have done that as well e.g. Regenetarianism) that we have no data on historical rates of emissions, only levels in the atmosphere. But the breakdown of methane (the sink) has changed a lot and is also influenced by a number of human and non-human activities.
https://academic.oup.com/af/article/15/1/34/8106629
The institute where these guys work are perhaps a bit biased in favour of livestock, but it also has some rather interesting data-tools: https://goalsciences.org/planet-food-system-explorer
The comments on this blog represent the same spectrum as the population in total. From hope for a better future to welcoming collapse. This is not surprising. However, a paradigm shift from generating income and capital to preserving assets may be in order. Stacking gold and silver is a convenient entry into this paradigm shift. I bought a little bit of gold and quite a few ounces of silver fifteen years ago. Then I started buying as much gold and silver as I could afford in December 2023. I have continued to add to my stack. The reason for gold and silver as an alternative is that a couple of us tried alternatives years ago (scrip and time dollars) and it did not take off. However, with old silver and gold coins a person will be able to trade for food and other necessaries post-collapse – even with people who hate you. The PAMP-style gold bars in 1, 2.5, 5 and 10 gram increments are trustworthy too because of the number on the plastic packaging (size of a credit card) that corresponds to the number on the bar. Many of us are in the boat of not being able to generate either income or capital anymore, although growing food from the soil does generate capital – even for us old folks. But generally, we are stuck with what we have now; pensions, social security, art, saleable farm equipment, hand tools, etc. So concentrating on preserving what you already have is a key paradigm shift. This is the paradigm of the “gold bugs.” You can find this paradigm all over YouTube on the channels devoted to precious metals and finance.
Some people may say, “But isn’t that what preserving the System is all about? We have a System that provides for us right now with refrigerators, cars, light bulbs, central heating, etc. So why SHOULDN’T we try and reform the System? Why embrace ‘Collapse now and avoid the rush.’ as John Michael Greer said years ago and Christine Dann reiterated above?” Simply put, the System is killing you. It is killing Gazans. It is killing Africans. It is keeping people enslaved in varying degrees – all along the continuum from corporate wage-slavery to actual chattel slavery. The System needs slavery to survive. It needs killing to survive. BUT, as you embrace collapse, you do not need to generate new houses, new building techniques, new herds and flocks, etc. The paradigm shift is to preserve what you already have. Generate new capital as necessary, not as a strategy. Stacking gold and silver coins is a way to get into this mind set.
I am currently buying old 5 peseta Spanish coins now because they will likely be viable in southern France and Spain once again after collapse. The silver 5 pesetas started in 1868 and were in use for over a hundred years. If you are in the US a good buy would be pre-1964 silver dimes. I wish I could get them but I live in France. I also buy 10 and 20 franc gold coins (from the Napoleon III era) as I can afford them. It is helpful to buy old gold and silver coins from the country you live in. The 5 peseta pieces are 25 grams and 90% silver, or .7234 ounce. The dealer I go to only charges 2 euros premium and there is no VAT on these coins. At today’s silver price that would be 26 euros. Easily affordable and cheap insurance for collapse.
Hi Walter,
I think it all boils down to the future your are imagining we are heading to.
I need to admit that stacking gold or silver is not on my list to prepare, because I can not see the usage of those in the future I am expecting …
Yes, historically they were used as value holders, but I think we overestimate how much. Also for me it does not mean they will have the same usage in the future, for example I can not see what I would like to sell for the gold or silver as farmer, in my image I will try to share with people around for their work and the products of their work, not least because there will be nobody in at least 20 kilometers diameter around me who will have any silver or gold.
So skills and tools are my gold and silver. The only disadvantage of those is that they made bad archeological finds …
You are correct when you say it depends on a person’s vision of the future. I like to think of solutions/adaptations that have a short-term, mid-term and long-term aspect. So gardening has all three, which is why it is the primary solution to the food problem. Right now the gold and silver protects me against inflation in the current world I live in. In the mid-term, I will likely be able to interact with other like-minded alternative types in the trade area. This will likely be conducive to community meetings, sharing goods and services, etc. And in the long-term I will have something to buy food with once I am decrepit enough to be house- or wheelchair-bound. (I would prefer to keel over some day while weeding onions, but that is not likely.) There is also the heritage aspect. I have no children but my partner had two and she now has two grandchildren. So if I never need to use my small gold and silver holdings it will be available to them. Perhaps it will cushion them from a very nasty future. If you are solid enough in your community so you will not need some form of exchange medium in the future, I am pleased. We should all be so lucky.
It seems to me that as soon as we started farming gold and silver started to have monetary value , before that it was just jewelry , bulky items were exchanged for a far more portable commodity which then could be exchanged for an y thing you needed , A good spade could be worth a tonne of potatoes but does the blacksmith accept a tonne of potatoes in exchange ? China accepted European coin in exchange for silk and spices , gold and silver had / has a accepted value world wide ( apart from shells in the Pacific islands )
Collapse now and avoid the rush. Yes collapse is going to happen, even with the best environmental policies, those will only delay it. We have to live with it. Collapse is happening now, and has been happening since the seventies in the UK, it’s unevenly spread at present, though it’s progressing to the few affluent areas left and it will get a lot worse.
People suffering adversity frequently seek scape goats and easy/quick solutions (Brexit, migrants, alt meat ect), and there are plenty of snake oil salesmen willing to cater to those desires, and who have wealthy backers wanting people’s attention elsewhere from themselves. So politically times are going to be very volatile. I don’t think ecological politics at national level will be possible or welcome. Rather doing and helping at the local level will be more effective, principally parish councils ( I’m losing my district council soon to a unitary county council who will have little interest in my patch, so pros and cons there), here at least you can get human engagement with local political, social and environmental problems.
Some data points from my local allotments; all plots are taken! We have seen a good number of older plot holders retire this year, though they have been completely replaced by a much younger crew, in their twenties and thirties who are very bent on growing large amounts of food, some taking on two plots. One plot holder has grown rye, and another maize (not sweetcorn) and a neighbouring plot holder is talking of growing flax next year. A significant number of these keen plot holders are non native, in this case southern and eastern Europeans who have a history of peasant/collapse culture, and have kept the meme going in there allotments.
I commend you all to keep your sharp sticks pointy, your tools shiny, you wood pile high, and your grain dry.
Oh and it’s handy to have a guard slinger around, an in joke from my gaming mates with reference to David and Goliath i.e think outside the box. Sorry, spreadsheets are so modernist.
Many thanks for the excellent analysis Chris and well done on completion of the book.
Not enough solar ….
http://www.zerohedge.com/technology/amazon-scraps-new-irish-ai-facility-amid-power-grid-shortfall
No great loss as AI can only be as good as the DEI hire that wrote the code IMHO , but a sign of the times .
endoftheamericandream.com/they-have-created-a-brand-new-rna-technology-that-they-want-to-spray-on-all-of-our-crops/
” They Have Created A Brand New RNA Technology That They Want To Spray On All Of Our Crops
July 24, 2025 “
Nice thinking and writing, thanks. I’d love to see an energetics/input/output analysis comparing livestock rotation to fossil fuel/mechanical crop production on equal acreage. Look for net gains/losses over time, including ‘calories/nutrition balance’, soil and water. Perhaps even look at the genetics of livestock. As you note, local conditions will vary.
I live in a county where white wheat is king, for now. For millennia it was grassland/shrub-steppe, yielding the meat of wild ungulates, fish, berries, and roots. Almost none of that yield remains. When the wheat fields are consistently unprofitable, (and we are close to that now) I wonder what they will become.
Richard Partington’s article on “Climateflation” in todays Guardian (28 July 2025) is yet another example of how those purportedly on the “left,” such as the Autonomy Institute, are not taking these crises seriously. Here are the first two paragraphs.
“Britain is at risk of a worsening “climateflation” crisis amid the fallout from increasingly extreme weather that could drive up food prices by more than a third by 2050.
Sounding the alarm over the financial impact for UK households, the Autonomy Institute thinktank said that climate-induced price increases for everyday food items risked pushing almost 1 million people into poverty without urgent government intervention.”
In the first place, focusing on food prices misses the point. In a country that imports >50% of its food, it is a question of supply chain problems during wartime. Ask your parents or grandparents about rationing in Britain during WW II.
Secondly, even if you focus on price alone, it is likely (>50%) that food prices will be in multiples of 100% increases. Instead of a 6-pack of eggs at Tesco being £2.55, it will be more like £7.65 or higher, NOT £3.42 or lower.
Third, the likelihood of significant dieoff by 2050 is >50%. There is no precedent for this. Therefore all economic analyses are specious. So how can we plan for 2050? You cannot. Try planning for the 2026 growing season.
As I reiterate over and over again on multiple blogs across the Internet, any model or action plan that does not include dieoff in at least one of its scenarios is intellectually bankrupt. Wedderburn-Bisshop’s arguments for veganism to “save the planet” fall into the same category as a study by a “leftwing thinktank.” Irrelevant and intellectually bankrupt.
One of the other problems is the value of the pound sterling , I remember when it was worth five dollars now its worth one and a third , as food imports are priced in us dollars the pound buys around 1/4 to 1/3 of goods compared to 40 years ago .
Then there’s ” the governments got to do something ” what exactly ? England is now a piddling little country on the edge of Europe with a ego that far out weighs its ability , if it went full medieval today it would make no difference whatsoever , the city of Beijing alone creates more co2 than the whole UK combined .
I suppose a pertinent question, in addition to “are we burning more fossil fuels than last year?” might be “is the proportion of the world’s energy use that is electricity going up or down?”
My understanding is that it’s about 20% currently. If it rises to 25% AND fossil burning goes down in absolute terms then maybe we can start talking about a transition.
https://www.ilnuovoagricoltore.it/lagricoltura-rigenerativa-e-un-modello-sostenibile-per-il-futuro-delleuropa/
Go vegan and regenerative.
And reduce the energy consumption
This can be done in Europe and in the world