So what happens when...

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We all know the story of the cycle - ie. cultures and empires rise and then tend to fall of their own decadence by about their third century of going strong. What happens when you have a global culture and we're talking about the whole west though?

I don't want to find out.

probably a big civil war or a regular war or a combination of the two. maybe nukes.

Fortunately the entire world is not "in phase". So if one nation or culture declines another will arise and so it goes.

After Rome collapsed the center of intellectual gravity shifted east into what became first the Byzantine Empire and later to the Islamic domains whose intellectual light lasted about 3 to 5 hundred years then it shifted back to Europe bringing the Renaissance.
ruveyn

even with the reading of the Koran eh?
We are losing our place as the center even as we speak.
It is ok. It may be more fun to live in a backwater.

Let some other poor schmuck take point.

ruveyn

The three century empire model is, at best, empirically untested and, at worst, complete garbage. An interaction of such complex forces as an empire cannot be put on a time table without any causal mechanisms for its decline.

Besides, the U.S. is hardly declining. It just can't grow as quickly as the world due to the catch-up effect of capital investment.

Why did you stay limited to "the whole west", when the entire World's combustion will cease to be effective at about the same time (i.e., not even an open match flame will stay aflame without additional oxygen being delivered).

I've already gave the definition of the distinction between west versus east:

OCCIDENT, n. The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased tp call "war" and "commerce." These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient.
The Devil's Dictionary, Bierce

So what happens? No more industrialism.

Tadzio

I was mostly getting into our habits of maintaining a higher standard of living than we can afford and putting on the government's running tab - a problem where we're pushed to the edge right now and many countries in europe are already dancing on one foot while trying to catch Greece from freefall.

If you are a firm believer that we'll be out of fossil fuels long before solar or electric via solar become economic though - by all means - make it the whole world in that case. I don't know if I really want to get into that debate whether or not I believe that will happen, I have reservations, but regardless staying on topic - what do you see happening if the whole world collapses in your opinion?

Civilisation is not "the world". Civilisation is the folly of one species. The world is the planet. The planet has obviously suffered but the spark of nature will continue.

I feel compassion for every living thing. I do not place survival of one species, even my own, above the health of all other species. I am not concerned for civilisation. Yet I have no idea what will happen. Al I can say is, I will not be giving any energy to sustaining unsustainable growth in population and economy and lifestyle of the decreasing few.

QFT.

"The bigger they are...."











"...the more they consume" ?

Wait. That's not right...

The main problem is a simple observation I first read about decades ago in an old used university physics book. Namely, a 100 years ago the book made the claim that all fossil fuels are gone once they are used, and it took a little less than a billion years for the fuels to form, and the fuels aren't coming back. The book expressed the view that fossil fuels were much more valuable for chemical uses than the simple burning, and/or distilling them and then combusting them, for heat expansion.

The book's viewpoint on which use to put the fuels to wasn't taken, and industrialism continued full-speed ahead with the internal combustion engine and fuel powered steam engines. All the warnings were taken as if they were like the warnings of the decreasing supplies of whale oil, in that, by the time any supply becomes critical, a great new idea and source of another fuel will be available as a replacement. Compared to the value of coal and petroleum, all of the great "new" ideas have been with miniscule results to total failures. Plastics and fertilizers did become an important chemical aspect, but the simple burning remained the largest level of consumption.

The fossil fuels now remaining have much lower energy values (and a great proportion of the energy must be expended to get the remaining energy out (this wrecked farming for ethanol production, because very few lands on Earth "grows" more energy than the energy put in with industrialized farming practices). The declining energy values of the fossil fuels are going to decline near geometrically, and the side-effect of burning greater and greater proportions of the fuels retrieved to retrieve the remaining fuel for obtaining the usable output, is going to consume oxygen in exponentially higher rates, which is also going to reduce fuel burning efficiencies. With concepts like "Hubbert's Peak", the amount of fossil fuels per person per year is going to decline with out a tremenous increase in the losing of larger and larger proportions of the energy in making the energy available for consumption. The choice is with either declining consumption levels with a slow failure, or maintaining consumption levels with a fast, and probably abrupt, failure.

All other energy sources are very limited, and increasing these sources require tremendous energy investment to get them started, and heavy energy investment to maintain them, making them energy expensive with minimal resultant output (solar powered steam engines were tried a couple hundred years ago, and they were big enough failures to make wood and coal to remain "tomorrow's energy"). Windmills are good, but put up a few too many, and the wind is going to blow somewhere else or not at all (about like water following the path of least resistance (and with dust instead of silt)). All the other energy sources are miniscule, and all large scale attempts have the "perpetual motion machine" problem, in that something always prevents them from working (but the "working" on the small-scale is a perpetual temptation), and total usable energy out is always less than the usable energy put in on bigger scales.

The most energy efficient social model was described by Peter Farb (search books-dot-google for "Peter Farb Shoshone" for many sources, or "Peter Farb Shoshone Calorie" for 3 or 4 books). Different calculations with such models have pessimistically placed the World's sustainable population without fossil fuels at just 250,000,000 people (other sources place a fossil fuel/population peak of ten billion people, so by those numbers only one person out of 40 is going to be sustainable at fossil fuel failure). But, with zero fossil fuels and few people, the maximum work day is only a couple hours long, so how did advancement and living in luxury result in a 40 hour work week???

Well, maybe Santa Claus will give us Cold Fussion for real, instead of all the flim-flam con jobs.

Tadzio

Do not hold your breath.

ruveyn