More distractions from three point sustainability platform

 I think you folks ought to challenge me directly if you don't believe the three conditions that must be met to prevent collapse and die-off in the sense of the late Jay Hanson and other visionaries who used to haunt the Peak Oil forums. Now, a mere seven years ago people had been convinced we were on the cusp of Peak Oil. Something had to be done by the owners of the world. (Perhaps they are only excessively rich, powerful, and privileged.) Commerce was flooded with venture capital to squeeze the junk oil out of deep earth porous media regardless of the harm to the environment and the likely bursting of the bubble soon, but not before the believers in Peak Oil lost patience and stopped listening to forecasters of doom. Tune in to peakoil.com, theoildrum.com. and ourfiniteworld.com to get a completely different point of view. Here's a comment from an apology I felt it necessary to offer to Gail Tverberg at OurFiniteWorld.com which got repeated on PeakOil.com. I reposted it on my blog at https://eroei.blogspot.com/ as I do with everything I write. Whether you check that out or just read Alain's comment doesn't matter to me. After Alain's comment (below), I'll come to the point of this post:

Alain Le Gargasson on Mon, 23rd Nov 2020 7:30 am <br /><br />Endless recycling is not possible for several reasons:<br />Even if you had infinite energy this does not guarantee you infinite raw materials, the circular economy is also a large consumer of energy and an impossibility in the medium term for several reasons:<br />· We still have a loss on melting metal, example: recycling case of aluminum beer cans, of the recovered quantity only 95% is available again.<br />There are thousands of steel alloys with noble metals: niobium, vanadium, tungsten, chromium, etc., only two classifications when it comes to recycling, carbon steel which will be used in construction as medium steel and l ‘stainless steel. Which never go back to the original use,<br />· Automotive industry, on average 10 years of life. For recycling, draining liquids and melting in an electric furnace, mixes up to 10 alloys of steel, copper from the electrical circuit, aluminum engine casing and combustion plastics.<br />· Disperse use, metal oxides used as colorants in paints (walls, prints, plastics, cosmetics, fireworks, etc.). The most emblematic case is titanium oxide, a universal white dye (paints, resins, cosmetics, toothpaste, etc.) 95% terminated in landfills, rivers and seas. Nanotechnology prevents recycling like the silver used in socks to prevent odors. Mobile phone with more than 40 different mendeleiev table elements (nano elements).<br />· Natural wear: Today, for example, in the streets, asphalt contains a higher concentration of palladium or platinum than certain mines, due to the exhaust of cars, copper and zinc from tires.<br />• No substitute for copper for electrical conductors, nickel for stainless steel, tin for soldering, tungsten for cutting tools, silver or platinum for the chemical and electronic industry, phosphorus for agriculture etc …<br />Agriculture: totally disperse, diesel from 100 to 150 liters per cultivated hectare, limestone in the correction of agricultural land, fertilizers (NPK- nitrogen, potash, phosphorus) phytosanitary products (herbicides, fungicides, insecticides …) which will end up in rivers and sea, as well as arable land due to erosion.<br />Renewable energies, wind turbine of 5 MW 1000t of steel and concrete at the base, 250t of the steel mast, the 50t of the 3 blades of fiberglass, carbon fiber and plastic resin, permanent magnet motor, in steel alloy with neodymium. Photovoltaic panel, with gallium, indium, selenium, cadmium or tellurium. Today not recyclable.<br />· Everything that spins needs lubricant. 50 million tonnes / year.<br />The improved return to life in 1800 is therefore assured around 2050 with a maximum of 1 or 2 billion inhabitants. In a constrained world, you can forget about democracy and going back to slavery.

Alain Le Gargassonhttps://peakoil.com/generalideas/tom-wayburn-and-gail-tverberg-discuss-eroei

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I want the same things as all of you want in the social, moral, ecological, and spiritual realms; but, these things are distractions if we don't do what is necessary to preserve humanity long enough to achieve them. (1) Reduce the population to some sort of optimum; (2) decrease economic activity, especially chrematistics, in the spirit of turning Earth into a garden; and (3) develop renewable energy technology of sufficient scope. We will know that we have achieved this last when ERoEI* is greater than or equal to 1.0. If ERoEI* < 1.0, we are on the way to collapse and die-off. Think of what Alain has written. Of course, I might be wrong, but I wouldn't count on it.