Doing some spring cleaning here... Siggy will be happy to know that I found a half-finished, semi-intact article I never published anywhere... not sure who needs to/wants to hear it but I still like it. I got some zingers in there alright!

Nirvana Sang It, You Live ItNirvana Sang It, You Live It

The heavy metal band Nirvana released the song “Nothing Else Matters” in 1991, the same year I was born. The hopeful world of the early ’90s — characterized by tech optimism, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Fukuyama’s End of History and Western liberal democracy’s undisputed victory, and Sweden’s bronze medal in the football World Cup — is long gone.

Left is a Western world in anguish, occasionally in flames, and recently covered in literal bullshit. Left is a West that has given up on many of the ideals that made it great. Left is a West with an encroaching surveillance apparatus, a hollowed-out middle-class, a money system perennially about to break, and partisan populations that can’t take their eyes off the latest political football.

The song became Nirvana’s most-watched video on YouTube a few years ago. And apart from being a powerful rock ballad it also speaks powerfully to our times: Aside from energy and a functional money, nothing else really matters.

The popular energy-finance Substack Doomberg made that observation in February [2023?? This wonderful draft been sitting in my folder for three stinking years?!], listing two paragraphs’ worth of major events that happened from 1971:

- oil crisis,
- Iran-Iraq,
- Kuwait wars,
- Middle Eastern conflicts,
- the Asian and peso and ruble financial collapses,
- the terrorist attacks,
- Libya-Syria-Ukraine,
- the GFC and Covid.

Through all of them, as tumultuous as they seemed at the time and as relevant they remain in the political consciousness, the world’s total energy consumption is a straight line through all of it. Here’s their (Bloomberg) graph:

I presented a similarly flavored argument in the piece “Transition This, Transition That,” (#928640) observing that before the UN climate summit in 1992 the share of world primary energy that came from fossil fuels was 86%:

“After three decades of climate change chatter, energy ‘transitions,’ countless government subsidy programs, invasively ugly wind farms popping up everywhere, and an unhealthy obsession — at least in the West — with all things sustainable and ESG,” we’re at the grand total of 82%. All that, every little green initiative and climate documentary and moral grandstanding and legislation and you’ve barely moved the needle in three decades.

The Doomberg piece echoes the same sentiment: socioeconomic events, left-wing leader or right-wing leaders, generation of scholars and scientists and political movements… and there’s no impact on the things that truly matter. You’re not getting anywhere. You’re not changing this.

We can extend the argument further. Total U.K. government tax intake in 1991-92 was 30.3% of GDP, a smidgeon below its stable pre-rona average of 33%. In the U.S. federal receipt as a share of GDP was 17.1%; that same figure today is 16.2%. Through three recessions, two Middle Eastern invasions, and the tech overthrow of retail and petroleum as major American industries and in the stock market indices, the federal government forcibly extracted some one-sixth of economic value every year.

The U.S. federal debt, through twenty-nine debt ceiling debacles and countless fiscal (un)sustainability reports, just keeps going — with two noticeable kinks (in 2008 and 2020) that accelerated its ever-growing journey to the stars:

However political in nature, none of these topics are a matter of political will, of economic system, of the “right” policies or technologies or leaders in charge. This. Won’t. Change. No matter who you vote for or how hard you campaign, next year the debt will be higher, your dollars be worth less, energy use and fossil fuel extraction will be higher. 

Realize that nothing else matters — and allocate your time and effort accordingly.Realize that nothing else matters — and allocate your time and effort accordingly.

hashtag, I love fossil fuels...?

...also the highlighted portion about the west, _MY GOD_ does that hit differently.