Adapting for the End of Growth
Navigating a world of shrinking populations, declining economies, & depleted natural resources + real capital.
This article might seem like a big departure from the content I’ve written for Acorn Land Labs in the past. It’s actually just the next logical step in my last 10 years of research. This is the punchline to the quest for “sustainable living” in our modern, industrial world (hint: it’s really not possible - but most of us are blind to this, I was).
Nothing grows forever in nature, absolutely nothing.
We humans are part of nature, and always have been, even if many modern disconnected humans try to reject that notion with all of their being. We are not immune to natural limits.
If you prefer a video format, here’s the video version of this article:
For the past 500 years we’ve been on a breakneck trajectory of discovery & growth. Funnily enough, I was born (1992) exactly 500 years after Columbus first landed on the shores of the “new world” (1492).
Like a ball being tossed high into the air, our global populations had the highest rate of growth in the 1960s - that moment was the ball being thrown sky-high.
Since the 1960s the population growth rate has steadily declined.
Here in 2024, our global population is like that ball hovering in place momentarily at the apex of the trajectory before falling back down.
We will briefly “hover” here for a few years, as population growth is plateauing prior to falling. UN projections forecasted our global peak much further into the 21st century. Many factors have sped this decline up.
It’s not just our population growth that is stalling. Our interconnected economies that rely on more people (consumers) being born into a world with easy energy (fuel) are stalling.
What would cause population growth and economic growth to slow, plateau, and fall in the immediate future?
Our global boom of “progress” over the last few centuries years has been powered by a finite resource base that is being stripped by today’s 8 billion humans. The easy pickings are gone and rapidly diminishing returns are what we’re left with.
We have three interconnected declines that are putting an end to societal growth:
The prime resource bases we depend on are depleting rapidly.
Easily accessible oil with a high EROI + high quality mineral ores.
Human populations are now declining in many countries globally.
Population growth rate is falling below 2.1/children per woman.
Our real economies for regular people are declining (don’t let GDP fool you).
Prices for basic necessities have been skyrocketing as we hit limits.
This might seem like a confusing ‘chicken and egg problem’ where the root cause is debatable, but the reality is that we’d continue to grow rapidly if cheap energy and abundant resources were still readily available for humanity.
Human ingenuity was not the single deciding factor in our massive growth.
Cheap energy (oil) is what feeds us, houses us, moves us, and support us.
Cheap energy (oil) + easy to access minerals is what builds giant cities, distributes cheap products globally, and feeds 8 billion people.
More expensive housing, more expensive food, slowing population growth, and stagnating economies are all a product of us humans running out of the easy-to-get oil, abundant minerals in high concentrations, and high-quality topsoil for farming.
This is to say nothing of increasing natural disasters with mounting costs, increased global conflict, and our increasing pollution problems.
This issues are not disconnected. All of these issues are very much connected:
Housing has become an unattainable dream for many.
K12 school systems are deteriorating in quality.
Higher education costs more than ever before.
Utilities (electricity, gas, water) keep increasing in cost.
Food costs have jumped dramatically globally.
Governments are quagmired in ineffective gridlock.
Resource wars are kicking off globally (Ukraine, Gaza).
Small companies are closing their doors more and more.
Quality of products and services are decreasing as costs rise.
Bigger companies are merging into mega-monopolies.
Life-expectancy has started to decrease for the first time in decades.
Cancer rates are increasing in young people.
You see more issues popping up everywhere, despite our temporary wealth.
We are effectively at our human peak in both our numbers, broad wellbeing and energy consumption.
The interesting thing is that there are not really any true solutions to fix this.
We simply have responses.
I used to assume solar and wind could replace fossil fuels.
I no longer believe this.
I used to imagine 8 billion modern people could be fed using permaculture practices.
I have massive doubts if that is remotely possible for all of us.
I used to believe in “eternal progress” at college studying computer science.
Now I see that modern life has been a brief & passing “bonanza” for humanity.
In many ways, we peaked back in the 1970s-1980s. Where are the new moon landings? Where are the flying cars everywhere? Geez, where are the affordable homes and healthcare?
We say we’re a species destined to colonize the stars and galaxy.
I’m confident no humans in our lifetime will live on Mars, if ever.
We can easily imagine things that will never happen, or are physically impossible. Just because we can imagine it does not make it possible.
Nothing has ever guaranteed that we humans would expand, grow, and “progress” forever. We somehow convinced ourselves that this was our future.
My perspective likely sounds very western, because it is. I do seek to understand what’s happening globally as we’re all connected now.
The “unshakable” faith in progress here in the west has been shaken for me. I believe that we have confused the wealth produced by “cheap energy” with our own supposed human brilliance.
Cars, airplanes, combines, plastics, modern medicine, concrete, steel, surplus grains for livestock, trucking, and most other modern miracles are all clever human contrivances, but without cheap oil, they all stop.
The oil is the magic. Cheap oil is what makes possible the massive middle class America has had. It stands to reason that as access to cheap energy + materials declines, so declines America’s middle class. We’re seeing this in real time.
Basic logic seems to validate this end of growth:
The earth is a sphere.
A sphere is finite in volume.
The earth supported about 1 billion people in 1800 before the industrial revolution. Earth then was far more unspoiled / unused than what we have today.
Pockets of this sphere called earth have a rare and powerful energy source: oil.
We discovered the most energy dense substance we’d ever harnessed: oil.
Being on a finite planet, oil is a finite resource.
Oil takes much, much longer to generate than we humans can afford to wait. Oil is not something that simply regenerates in a few hundred years let alone within decades.
It takes energy to explore, drill, pump, transport, refine, and harness oil. EROI: “Energy Return on Investment” is the energy we have leftover from this process.
Oil is now critical to how we feed, cloth, house, entertain, and move 8 billion people. Without oil no mega farms, no pesticides, no trucking, no cheap fertilizer.
If easy-to-gather pockets of oil were left, we wouldn’t spend billions of dollars on deep sea oil rigs or take the trouble to frack for the last dregs of oil that are left around older oil wells or in shale formations.
On paper we’re extracting more oil today than ever before globally, but this does not reflect that we’re drilling more than ever globally and getting less oil for our effort and energy invested.
The EROI (energy return on investment) used to be spending 1 barrel of oil to obtain 100 barrels back in the heyday of American oil (circa 1950s).
Today we’re spending 1 barrel of oil to obtain 15 barrels back. This is a massively diminished EROI.
This dynamic makes everything more expensive: food, travel, housing, medical expenses, manufacturing, etc.
Money is not wealth. Money is just imaginary tokens.
These tokens are just a paper system to make a claim on future energy.
Personal access to energy today is actual wealth.
Access to energy provides access to food, housing, water, travel, goods, etc.
Cheap diesel fuel comes from abundant oil.
Diesel fuel is a set percentage of a barrel of refined oil.
Diesel fuel is required to move our goods globally.
Diesel fuel is required to farm for billions of people.
Diesel fuel is required to mine for rare earth minerals.
Rare earth minerals are required for making solar panels and batteries.
Rare earth minerals & aggregates mined by diesel are required for making nuclear plants.
Diesel, coal, and natural gas (fossil fuels) are required for making wind turbines, moving wind turbines, and installing wind turbines.
Renewables are amazing tech, but are not powerful enough to produce and manufacture more renewables. You need coal and oil for this.
Most renewables (solar, wind, batteries) only have a lifespan of 20-30 years.
The percentage of useful rare earth minerals within accessible rock aggregate has declined over the past few hundred years as we mined the easy ores.
We need more fuel now to process more rock aggregate to access fewer rare earth minerals. This depletes expensive energy faster.
We’ve been masking the true cost of oil extraction and subsidizing fracking and other novel forms of oil extraction (tar sands) with clever debt financing, and other forms of energy subsidy in recent years.
This is a good deal to review, and it’s not obvious to most people.
It certainly wasn’t obvious to me.
I’ve linked to all of the authors at the bottom of this article who deserve credit for exposing me to this interrelated collection of ideas.
After exploring these ideas in-depth, I’m convinced the recent party is over for most of humanity and we’re in the midst of ragged decline for the world we know.
A few observations:
Solar panels and wind power won’t power this civilization long-term, they can’t replace oil and coal’s energy density.
Nuclear power won’t replace the role of diesel transport fuels for humanity.
A hideaway bunker on Hawaii with billionaires isn’t the answer, this decline will take decades.
A homestead in the country isn’t a fail-proof plan by any means, nobody on earth can be truly self sufficient. We can only learn to live with less.
Escaping society to live as an off-grid hermit isn’t going to work, we humans are meant to thrive in small groups.
A “stable-state” economy is not possible for 8 billion people.
Most people don’t realize we’re at the edge of decisive decline.
We likely won’t see some rapid apocalypse style ending, it will be longer & ragged.
We’re more likely to experience a series of major crisis over the next 100 years.
These major crisis will steadily batter civilization until we’re a fraction of today’s 8 billion humans.
We’ll have brief periods of reprieve between the staggered and increasing crisis.
Giving up because it seems impossible isn’t the answer.
We simply have to adapt and learn to change. We shall live with less.
However, this doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom.
This is what happens in nature.
When populations of living creatures “overshoot” their resource base, this is what happens. This is how life behaves. Even for clever humans.
Up until the last two years, I truly thought solutions could exist to help 8 billion people continue our modern civilization. As I’ve dug deeper into my research I simply don’t believe this anymore. I don’t see any possible solutions to preserve the civilization we’ve built. I suppose if fusion every actually came to fruition we might have a different outcome, but nothing indicates that commercial fusion power is any closer to being viable today than it was 50 years ago.
This isn’t even new. Look to past societies that grew and fell: Ancient Rome, the Mayans, Easter Island, and so on.
This time it’s just on a global scale.
This doesn’t mean the humanity is over. Far from it.
It simply means we need to reorient our mindset.
The growth we’re used to is ending rapidly.
Soon we’ll be in long-term contraction.
This will mean a few things for everyone:
Less cheap energy to use.
Less jobs and more layoffs.
Less people being born.
Less travel and vacations.
Less materialism and consumerism.
Less waste and excess.
Less eating out and processed foods.
Smaller homes & simpler pleasures.
This will also mean (if you prepare yourself well):
More time with family and less time commuting.
More reading and less TV.
More gardening and less Walmart.
More DIY projects and less time in a cubicle.
More skills and less money to pay other people.
More creativity and less mass-consumer-culture.
More focus on relationships and spirituality and less Tiktok.
More beans and less meat.
More gratitude for what we DO HAVE.
The next 75 years leading up to 2100 will be very, very hard for billions of people.
Especially people in western countries who no longer have practical skills.
Subsistence farmers in Africa will likely have an easier time with the world to come than your average American who doesn’t have the right skills or mindset.
It stands to reason we’ll have a small fraction of 8 billion people left after 2100.
This doesn’t mean we’ll have an apocalypse… But we will lose people globally, perhaps more rapidly than expected.
People are not having many babies, this is the main driver to less people now.
This is due to both social and environmental factors. PFAS, micro-plastics, and chemical pollution reduce fertility. Rising costs also deter people from having children.
People who are unwilling to change will have a hard time coping.
People who don’t understand we’re now on a downhill slope of growth will be confused, frustrated & scared by the unexplained decline in what they thought was normal.
We are seeing more casualties in resource wars today, regrettably.
Tragically we might see more famine in parts of the world as our industrial ag systems fail to deliver as they have in past years. This is already starting.
While it’s tempting to become depressed or to have a “doomer” outlook on this prognosis, I think that’s not a productive path to walk. Change is part of history.
For western readers, consumerism and modernity don’t make you happy past a point - this has been clearly proven over the past 80 years. In fact, rampant consumer culture and digital media are proven to make people sicker, have more mental issues, and skew our view of what a truly good life is.
Don’t get me wrong, many aspects of industrial society have given humans HUGE benefits to quality of life, longevity, and well being. I say we try to keep as many of those sensible benefits as we can. We just passed the point of diminishing returns a long time ago for our material wealth. We’re at a point in history where a vibrant social life has been replaced by toxic social media, and fast food restaurants are located beside dialysis offices. We’re not thriving today.
Technology is not all or nothing. We don’t have to choose between iPhones and living in caves. There are so many options in between. Who is tired of a cell phone and might prefer a landline again? Can you even repair your computerized car today? Isn’t it funny how many older products were simply made better or had a pleasant simplicity to them? We’re going to go back in time a bit.
Personally I’m tired of updating iPhones and won’t ever buy another one. Same with my MacBook. I’ll fix them until their 100% dead and then buy a flip phone and then a used PC. I’m tired of the never-ending “new-tech” game.
We will be gradually forced to give up many technologies in the coming decades. However, plenty of ‘old’ technologies will prove to be very useful in our downhill journey on the slope of fading “progress”. Think about battery-free tools, real books, and backyard gardening methods to name a few useful tools.
I’m not saying this is 100% accurate and will absolutely come to pass.
However, the data I see points in this general direction firmly.
God willing there is not a massive and painful decline. If there is, I pray it’s a slow decline rather than very abrupt. It will likely be a series of jolting crisis playing out over the rest of our lifetimes. Frankly, this is what we’ve been seeing since the 1970s oil shocks, but more pronounced since 9/11 followed by the 2008 Great Financial Crisis, COVID, and the current wars. The next shock could likely be a depression between now and 2030 or an energy crisis spurred by the conflict abroad and the decline of US hegemony and dollar dominance. All signs point to more shocks and declines being rapid by the 2030s to mid-century.
Tragedy is part of history. Many modern humans have enjoyed more abundance in the last 100 years than most humans ever have.
Nothing grows forever, not even the schemes of humans.
No politician would ever share this view publicly. It would be career ending.
No corporate exec would ever share this view publicly. It would tank their stock value.
No country will voluntarily start preparing through austerity, people would riot.
We will simply keep running the giant global machine until countless little regional failures roll into massive nation-wide failures and shortages.
And the failure will be regional at first. Much like Cuba losing power for 10 million people in October of 2024. Or the towns in North Carolina being wiped away by Helene. Or the conflict in Gaza & Ukraine. Or the day 0 water crisis in South Africa.
The USA will keep trying to repair itself from hurricanes like Helene, chemical plant fires (like the one in Georgia from BioLab), western wildfires, train derailments (Ohio), financial crisis, widespread layoffs, and other issues until the fabric of society is too depleted, spent and tired to continue repairing itself.
We’ve built far more than we can afford to maintain.
My own county I live in is $1 Billion behind in road work, and we’ll never have the tax base to cover it sustainably.
This is an end to wild human growth, particularly in the west, but it’s certainly not and end to humans.
We’ll adapt. We’ll live more locally.
We’ll start growing more gardens. Big companies like Walmart will eventually go out of business (that could be a while, don’t hold your breath). We’ll learn to build community again.
We’ll forget the McMansions and HOAs and golfing country clubs (I never bought into this vibe anyway, it’s very superficial).
We’ll learn to cook, sew, and repair things again.
We’ll be poorer, but I think many of us might be happier actually.
For those interested, here’s what I’m doing with my own family to adapt for this apparent end of growth:
We sold many of our possessions to minimize.
We sold our normal sized home to buy a much smaller home.
We’re paying off any last debt to be more free and flexible.
We don’t take fancy vacations. No Disney, mostly camping.
We cook at home mostly. We don’t eat out as much.
We’re reading more, and watching TV less.
We’re learning to garden, keep chickens, and fix things ourselves.
We’re building local community through Church and friend groups.
We’re homeschooling our boys.
We’re living frugally on one income and being content with that.
We’re not worrying about some fancy retirement.
I enjoy my work but have no longer made my career my identity.
We’re downsizing from two cars to one car.
I’m not worried about “keeping up with the Joneses” anymore.
We hardly ever buy new things. We DIY or buy used items.
We’re trying to be incredibly grateful for the little things:
A cup of coffee and a slow morning.
A walk around town with our boys.
Hot running water and a warm home.
Fresh food from a grocery store or our garden.
A functioning power grid (for today).
Gasoline under $4 (for today).
No fighting or dangerous conflict in our neighborhood.
I used to think “going off-grid” and leaving society behind was the answer to escape the challenges of modern life. I no longer believe this is a true solution. It’s a simpler lifestyle, with many benefits, but it’s not going to totally insulate you from the steady decline.
While we still want to work on having a small homestead, with a little garden, some chickens, goats, and a few acres of land, I don’t believe in the myth of rural total “self-sufficiency” anymore.
No human has ever been “self-sufficient”. I do think we need to rebuild skills. But we’ll never produce all of our own food, energy, tools, materials, etc. It’s not possible.
I find that living frugally, living simply, and practicing more gratitude today seems to be the best way to prepare for the much leaner days to come.
I must repeat: This decline isn’t the stuff of a single year or even one decade. This civilizational decline will extend far past the end of our lives. This is a long road.
I’m no ecologist, economist, or expert. However, I do think many experts are so siloed into their little niches they don’t see the bigger picture.
Who know’s what’s going to happen. This is just what makes sense to me after about a decade of research. You’ll have to draw your own conclusions.
Authors & Thinkers who have influenced this article greatly:
Nailed it, bro. I've felt this, but haven't taken the space to nail down the facts like you have.
Welcome to the SolarPunk Post-Growth Regenerative Renaissance. 🙌💚
Wow, thorough article, this looks like a culmination of your passion research. I would argue that some of the issues you mentioned are caused by factors other than lack of cheap energy, however I will not go into detail. It looks like will be a final surge of growth after this election, but unless a brand-new energy source or scientific breakthrough is discovered (which we cannot count on happening), we will not be able to sustain our massive energy load.
I loved your list of "...what I’m doing with my own family to adapt for this apparent end of growth...", indeed, we should be doing these things even during times of growth. Such a good note to end with in this article.
Ultimately, this world and its system will end and those who destroy the earth will be judged: Revelation 11:18 .