Hi ! 

Thanks for the answer, sorry I didn't reply earlier. I started working on another project for EA France, aiming to identify impactful charities working in France, so I had much less time to spend on the topic of energy depletion. I didn't want to do a rushed answer, but didn't find the time to dig into the topic once again... you know how it goes.

So instead, I'll just publish an update on my thinking on the topic (while keeping in minf that I have found several important articles that I have to read).
 

So far, I've updated more positively on renewables - their improvement is indeed faster than just about anyone had anticipated (which makes papers obsolete as soon as they're a few years old, and therefore makes it very difficult to get properly informed on the subject).

Several articles I've read have indeed made me update on them. There were several elements where I had underestimated adaptability. The EROI of renewables is indeed correct.
I have a higher probability of an energy transition "from the top", where we maintain energy growth (which isn't necessarily good news, given that the more energy we have, the greater our capacity to destroy our environment and generate existential risks).
Your link about the Twitter thread exposing the limits to the GTK report was indeed interesting. I also found an article here that showed several other limits. 

I'm talking less and less about a 2050 timeframe (which is what most of the litterature talks about). However, I'm more worried about what short-term disruptions could imply.

Indeed, my worries are more about the fact that limits on fossil fuels are probably short-term : and that time constraints could prove significant. Going from a system where almost all trucks, or cement making, or steel making, or fertilizers, or hydrogen, or plastics (etc.) are dependent on fossil fuels, to a system where >50% of these are not fossil... this is going to take time, and I'm worried about what would happen during this time.

Same goes for storage : batteries are improving... but it seems that we're a long way from the deployment speed required for seasonal storage in order to have a stabilized grid.

As a French Energy expert stated (prominent member of EDF) :

"The RTE report clearly shows that energy mixes with a high proportion of renewable energies can only be achieved with a very significant drop in consumption [...]. I admit that this reduction must be significant enough to involve much more than a simple technical improvement in process efficiency. Even so, why deprive ourselves of what at least makes it possible to reduce the pain, or even avoid widespread chaos?"

It's the "chaos" scenario that worries me.

I feel like the majority of people I know don't really have personal finance growth as their primary objective in life, and I don't see how our society does either - it's almost an accident of economics at this point.

It seems pretty clear to me that growth is the main goal of our society - and that it stopping would have far reaching consequences. As I said, a society where everyone's share of the pie is growing is very different than one where everybody is competing to secure access to declining resources - the degree of trust is not the same. Especially when some wealthy people in society have the ability to agregate more and more resources, as is currently happening.

The importance of financial growth is exemplified by the fact that "degrowthers" have besically no traction on a political level, despite clear evidence on their side of a strong correlation between environmental impact and growth.

The more I look at it, the more the global economy appears to be working like a Ponzi scheme - requring an ever growing amount of capital and energy and resources to keep everyone's trust in the fact that everyone's investments will be paid out later. At some point, it has to stop. The question is : how do you end a Ponzi scheme in a smooth way? 

Still, the future is full of weird stuff, so we'll see. I've had less time to keep an eye on these subjects recently - I've got several interesting papers to look at (and I'll check your point on minerals and debt). I'll update then.

This is interesting ! I had the same interrogation, their position doesn't seem that coherent.

Maybe you should to a post with this question, that would get noticed by someone at Open Phil and maybe get answered ?

I agree that most of the result ends up depending on the effects on wild animals. Always troublesome that so much of the impact depends on that when we have so many uncertainties.

most moral species is that whose extinction would lead to the greatest reduction in the value of the future

We probably don't have the same definition - if wild lives are net negative and we destroy everything by accident, I wouldn't count that as being "moral" because it's not due to moral values. But the definition doesn't matter that much, though. 

Still, I'm not certain that the "value in the future" of industrial civilization (a different concept than humanity) will be so positive, when there are so many uncertainties (and that we could continue to expand even further factory farming).

I'm highly suspicious about this "logical" factor. Humans don't always do logical things - just a look at the existence of fast fashion should be enough to be sure of that.

For the "alternative proteins will be cheaper", I fear that's not enough. See this post about why such a position is pretty optimistic : https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bfdc3MpsYEfDdvgtP/why-the-expected-numbers-of-farmed-animals-in-the-far-future.

I agree with that - but I still don't see why this implies that humans will give a lot of moral value towards animals.

So far, material improvements have worsened the conditions of farmed animals - as a lot of factory farming is not the result of a biological necessity, but is rather done for personal taste. This seems like regress, not progress.

So I don't see why, given the current trajectory, moralization would end up including animals.

Hmm, ok, I can get that.

However, it seems likely to me that a part of the recent improvements you quote were highly linked to the industrial revolution, and that moral progress alone wasn't enough to trigger that. It's easier to get rid of slaves when you have machines replacing manual labour at a cheap price. 

Same for feminism - I recently attended to a conference in French titled "Will feminism survive a collapse?". It pointed out that mechanization, better medicine and lower child mortality greatly helped femininism. A lot of women went into the worksplace, in factories and in universities because a lot a time previously allocated to household chores and child rearing was freed up.

Of course, people figthing for better rights and values did play an important role. But moral progress wasn't enough by itself. Technology changed a lot of things. And access to energy that is not guaranteed: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wXzc75txE5hbHqYug/the-great-energy-descent-short-version-an-important-thing-ea 

For animals, technology with alternative proteins could help, but that's far from certain: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bfdc3MpsYEfDdvgtP/why-the-expected-numbers-of-farmed-animals-in-the-far-future.

So I'm not convinced that we'll inevitably have moral progress in the future.

On the topic of slavery, see this paper :  https://slatestarcodex.com/Stuff/manumission.pdf

It says that slavery often had a minor significance in most societies. It usually had nothing to do with ethics but rather that slavery is not an efficient economic system. Rome or Southern US are rather rare cases. Of course, it's more complicated than that. Rome could acquire a lot of slaves and treat them in a worse way while it invaded a lot of territory (and acquired a lot of slaves).

Well, I'd rather argue that the moral circle has widened on some parts (humans) but not on others (animals). 

(although I know some people who might disagree - several features of our current industrial civilization would be viewed as pretty immoral by many cultures: widespread inequality, private property since it strenghtens inequality, merchandization, environmental destruction...)

But when you include animals, I'm unconvinced that other systems are worse. The treatment of factory farmed animals is of a degree of brutality and cruelty rarely heard of in other cultures.

For instance, the number of vegetarians in India has declined over time: this sounds like a lower consideration given to animals.

I'm curious. How exactly do you explain our current treatment of animals, if we are in the most moral social system ever ?

(I'm talking about what the majority does, not about the fact that some people here take the topic seriously)

Wow, that's interesting.

I transfered your message once again - I'll tell you what comes out of it.

(are you on the Altruisme Efficace France Slack, by the way? 

I can also give you the work on french charities if you're interested)

Interesting !

A similar process seems to be at the root of why our political system is deeply flawed and few people are satisfied with it.

It's because politicians who want to contribute to the common good are less competitive compared to to those that lie, use fallacies, or keep things secret. 

The article is here https://siparishub.medium.com/a-new-strategy-for-ambitious-environmental-laws-e4a403858fbd 

Here's a similar article for why the economic system just isn't geared to solve the environmental crisis : https://siparishub.medium.com/the-economic-system-is-an-elm-1072fe3399bf 

(the full series is here)