Wise Response NewZealand Seminar on Biophysical Limits To Growth

This was an excellent seminar organised by Wise Response New Zealand, a coalition of academics, engineers, lawyers, artists, sportspeople etc who are calling on New Zealand’s Parliament to comprehensively assess imminent risks to New Zealand and to draw up plans to deal with them.

The speakers were (in order):

Associate Professor Simon Michaux (Geology)
Professor Steve Keen (Economics)
Professor Tim Jackson (Economics)
Professor Susan Krumdieck (Mechanical Engineering)

I highly recommend watching all 4 talks: they were all worthwhile, and hang together very well.

There were a few Zoom glitches, but they were ultimately overcome. My talk was supposed to start at the 23 minute mark, but it took till 24 minutes in before Zoom stopped crashing.

[williamlee]

Australia is in great need of this conversation.

[webfreakz]

Wow,
the numbers that Simon Michaux is showing are frightening. That puts your "war effort" comments regarding the scale of the project to address this in a better perspective for me. Huge! Great panel.

[purvilkh]

I am a trained engineer and working in this domain over the last 10 years. The content discussed and presented really gives a clear perspective of the situation. I completely agree with Simon's comment about the political system (starting @1:26:00). Hope whatever it evolves into life which is still not very difficult for the coming generations.

[abrahamarbores]

Thank you very much for sharing this 'online conference/seminar.' It was truly illuminating! I very much look forward to dive into the (re)sources used in the presentations, wherever they are listed/provided online (for reference), and also to look more in depth at the powerpoint presentations, slide-by-slide, given during these talks.

[Herbwise]

Another requirement is for a massive shift in the understanding by the people of the world of the problems facing us. A Public Relations exercise as it were.

[ricos]

That was a really interesting talk, thanks Steve. Good luck in your political career!

[Lyra]

The carbon trading/rationing model suggested towards the end of this discussion is effectively predicated on the idea of wealth redistribution. It is difficult to imagine the wealthy citizens of the west accepting an entirely novel social contract which rests on the sacrifice -as they will undoubtedly regard it - of their material comfort and acess to 'luxuries' in order to effect greater material wellbeing for people outside of their communities or 'tribes'.

[Herbwise]

Steve was talking about complex systems and politicians. Politics has shifted from talking about issues reflected in the class divisions to issues of vicious systems identity conflicts. Many citizens are concerned about the climate and there are discussions about that but those concerned about issues of gender, oppression, and other identity issues are getting more airplay than the climate crises in political parties with almost total disregard by those concerned about identity issues for environmental issues. The intersectionality focus central to these issues has not yet been applied to climate consistently or coherently.

[Herbwise]

Rationing is essential but trading CO2 credits seems counter-productive because the market speculators would game it unless Wall Street and other markets like that are regulated.

[floridaman]

I Bless this! A thorough analysis of the industrial and metallurgical needs to fix the planet! However, Lithium ion is old tech, glass solid state batteries look to be far more efficient.

[HimelPatel]

Simon Michaux seems very on to it. Just subscribed to his youtube channel

[Patrick-rjgh]

Could someone point me the paper which shows that CO2 correlates with temperature? If you go back 360 million years then there's no correlation between CO2 and temperature. Before the carboniferous period CO2 was at 6000 ppm and the world didn't end.

[Herbwise]

After listening to these speakers, it seems necessary to focus on sequestering CO2 while also reducing CO2 release into the atmosphere. This will require regulation and to accept that we have a mission.

[human]

Thomas Jefferson quote at 49.45 is 1809 not 1890

[profkrumdieck]

I wonder about the baseline assumption used by the first speaker - that the derrived demend from the peak of the fossil fuel era is the energy services that should be "replaced" by some kind of green energy. I hope we can all see that that assumption is flawed.

[davidprice]

My take away from the first few speakers was that having got ourselves into this mess.., there is no way out. So I'm not sure what all the discussion / questions about what can we do. It maybe interesting, but pointless. Basically we are doomed.

[Achrononmaster]

@1:13:00 that question presumption about growth was wrong. When there is death we must have growth, we cannot avoid growth. The climate/pollution problem is not one of growth, it is the problem of the _rate of growth._ The only problem is we are growing in resource use too fast, we have to slow down. But to sustain life (where there is constant death) we have to always have endless growth. The slogan is _not_ "Degrowth" it should be *"Slower Growth."* Physics geek here, so I am pedantic but using the correct terms and physical units. Excessive Power consumption kills us, not energy consumption. It's a BIG DIFFERENCE in units. Time (rate) is _all important._ We can have unlimited growth if we have death and can eject sufficient waste. The key is our planet alone is finite, but we are not alone, we have a huge external resource input, the Sun, and it will last another 10 billion years.Plenty of time, provided we just slow our growth rate down.

[ukulayme]

Nuclear EROI is well above 40… why is the first speaker acting like it’s below 10?? Is this guy serious?

[ukulayme]

Dr. Keen, why do you think we need to ration energy when nuclear power is more than capable of providing all the energy we need, totally carbon free. Uranium is essentially limitless due to Ocean water mining. France fully decarbonized using nuclear in the 60s! Only took them a decade. They have the cheapest electricity in Europe and the lowest carbon footprint. Why can’t the world do this?

[aristocraticrebel]

The people in charge need to be brutally punished.