Aug 17, 2026, 9:07 AMListened to a conversation yesterday and didn’t say anything. The gist of it was…
“I don’t get why people want to to go back to simpler times. I like having a fridge.”
There’s a fundamental misunderstanding here. We are in overshoot. We are hourly adding to overshoot. The debt is becoming due.
I like having a fridge too. But we are creating the conditions where having a fridge is becoming harder. Warning of this is not *wanting* to not have a fridge
Aug 17, 2026, 9:13 AM…When systems falter, the services they provide initially become intermittent and then, as the overshoot continues, they stop and don’t come back.
This is because a phase shift happened.
The dynamics that allow water to sit in a glass change when the glass is pushed off a table top https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/113418176951770714
Aug 17, 2026, 9:26 AM…Much of energy transition talk is misplaced. Because we don’t have an energy problem.
We have a *power* predicament. We have massively ramped up the power available to us. Which is also generating chasms of social power. That addiction to power is at the root of overshoot.
5 years ago, Robert Heinberg published ‘Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival’.
I yesterday learned that he died last month :(
@postcarboninstitute have a lovely tribute https://overcast.fm/+Q_ErvmnnE
Aug 17, 2026, 9:34 AM…In the podcast linked to above, Melody Traverse reflects on getting to know Richard Heinberg while working with him to make a podcast series of his book, Power. And then they play out the first episode.
I’m going to relisten to the entire series of 9 episodes
Here’s the first https://overcast.fm/+8UBr0Pb6w
Aug 17, 2026, 9:37 AM…In Melody’s eulogy of Richard Heinberg, she recalls a saying he used:
“Everyone wants a village, but nobody wants to be a villager.”
- - -
Richard died last month aged 75. He was a good and important voice
@urlyman We were tooting with #RichardHeinberg tag then and the days after his passing. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2026-07-23/devastating-news-the-loss-of-richard-heinberg/ We even translated some pieces into Spanish and Galician for our @revista 15/15\15, like this one: https://www.15-15-15.org/webzine/2026/08/14/a-mensaxe-de-richard-heinberg-para-os-musicos-en-tempos-de-colapso/
I highly recommend this lenghy interview I had the honour to do with him just a few months ago: https://www.15-15-15.org/webzine/2026/04/04/20-years-after-the-oil-depletion-protocol-an-interview-with-richard-heinberg/
Aug 17, 2026, 2:21 PM
On the face of it, that's not a statement that shows much sign of being a conclusion drawn from a full research programme. Can I assume it has some sort of figurative meaning?
(Writing as a villager...)
Aug 18, 2026, 11:01 AM@electropict The saying is meant, I think, in relation to western on-demand culture and its exhausting sense of entitlement.
Here’s how Melody qualifies it at 8m:10s in at https://overcast.fm/+Q_ErvmnnE
“To be a villager is to know how to show up, to be patient with others and with yourself, to be generous with your knowledge and your time, to inconvenience yourself sometimes. I’ve taken that with me, to be even more generous than I think I can be with the people who are right in front of me.”
Aug 17, 2026, 9:16 AM@urlyman I like having a fridge. I don't need to have a fridge with wi-fi and a cloud connection.
@urlyman There comes a point in unreliability where not having something is suddenly more pleasant than having it. Do I want to have 24/7 running water? Well that depends; is it 24/7/365? If so then yes. But if it will go out for a couple of days at a time several times a year... or a week at a time a few more times a year... Suddenly, I'd rather it weren't 24/7, because where the water only comes on a couple hours a day then burst mains are minor problems not major ones, everyone has a HUGE tank that can last them if it turns off for a week, faucet drips and toilet valve issues don't massively run up the bill, and there's no hassle about rotating emergency supplies because there is no emergency and daily habit causes the tank water to rotate anyway.
@urlyman Totally agree. And it's the same when you try to warn about the insustainability of current global population numbers - I remember that I was once called a "genocide promoter" for explaining in public what I wrote at "We, the detritivores" https://www.15-15-15.org/webzine/download/we-detritivores/