Maximum Power, Minimum Awareness
“I don’t have much hope for this century,” Kristine Tompkins of said in a recent interview. She’s the CEO of Patagonia, and was speaking about the rapid unraveling of ecological and social systems. What she said wasn’t new—but the clarity and steadiness of her voice made it land differently. Sometimes it’s not new facts that move us, but a new weight behind them.
She added, “I don’t really think about hope very much.” That stuck with me. Over time, I’ve come to see hope less as a virtue and more as a shield—often a way to hide from fear. Fear of collapse, of not being enough, of powerlessness. Hope becomes a mask when we can’t face those fears directly.
Tompkins chose action. She helped protect over 15 million acres in Chile and Argentina and reintroduce lost species. She encourages people to do what they can: volunteer, connect with nature, offer their skills. It’s meaningful. But it may not be enough.
Most people who seriously engage with the human predicament feel the impulse to act—to fix, to intervene. We’re the only species that tries to repair the world. The rest focus on surviving, reproducing, and making the most of their short lives. What exactly are we trying to fix? Maybe that urge says more about us than about the world itself.
We tend to think we’re the only beings capable of meaning or joy. But nature suggests otherwise. Birds sing each morning—not out of duty, but out of being. Science offers reasons, but those don’t explain the beauty. Humans, meanwhile, wake to the burden of fixing. Our stories are soaked in redemption. Birds sing. Humans strive. There’s a lesson in that.
Alfred Lotka offered another way of seeing. Building on Darwin, he framed evolution as a function of energy. Systems evolve to maximize energy flow, he proposed—laying the foundation for the Maximum Power Principle.
Odum and Pinkerton advanced this idea. It’s not just energy that matters—it’s power: the rate at which energy flows. Too fast and you burn out. Too slow and you fall behind. Charles Hall extended this to Energy Return on Investment (EROI): what matters isn’t how much energy you produce, but how much remains after you subtract the energy it took to extract and deliver it.
“The maximum accumulation of energy allows maximum reproductive output which is, after all, what natural selection is based on.”
This shift in thinking changes everything. Many popular solutions—renewable energy, degrowth—clash with the way natural systems actually operate. Nature selects for power, not restraint.
Energy is potential, an abstraction. We can’t touch it, only measure its effects. It becomes real—useful—only when it flows. That flow is power. And power is what drives everything from machines to ecosystems. (Figure 1).
That’s why renewable energy isn’t a one-to-one substitute for fossil fuels (Figure 2). Fossil fuels deliver high-density, high-speed power—concentrated solar energy, stored in coal, oil and and natural gas, and released in bursts. This is what built industrial civilization.
Renewables are slower, more diffuse. Matching fossil fuel flow rates requires massive infrastructure and storage—systems that themselves demand energy.
Viewed through the Maximum Power Principle, this is a downgrade. It’s not just changing fuel—it’s stepping down to a system that delivers less usable power. A high-energy civilization can’t run on slower sources without major simplification.
It gets worse.
There are two basic ways systems use energy. One is linear—energy comes in, gets used once, and then drifts off as waste heat. Like sunlight warming a rock. Nothing builds, nothing feeds back (Figure 3).
The other way is autocatalytic: some energy gets used to capture even more. An animal burns calories to chase food. A city uses energy to expand the infrastructure that pulls in more resources. Energy drives feedback, and feedback drives growth.
Fossil fuels powered the creation of machines that extracted more fossil fuels. They’re autocatalytic. Renewables are less autocatalytic. They don’t sustain that kind of feedback loop.
Yet many assume we can swap fuels and continue as before. That’s reductionist thinking—focusing on parts, not the whole. Civilization is a web of feedback loops. Break the energy flow, and the structure unravels.
The Maximum Power Principle helps explain why. Systems don’t survive by being efficient. They survive by maximizing useful energy flow. Not all energy is equal. Not all fuels can support complex systems.
So yes, renewables have a role. But they require a different kind of civilization—smaller, slower, more local, far less energy-intensive. Fewer people. Simpler lives.
That might not be bad. But most who advocate for renewables haven’t thought through what it really means.
As Daniel Yergin, Peter Orszag, and Atul Arya put it:
“The energy transition is not just about energy; it is about rewiring and reengineering the entire global economy.”
It’s not a substitution. It’s a transformation.
Nate Hagens takes it further. He links the Maximum Power Principle to the whole human predicament: we get daily reminders the global economy isn’t working—rising inequality, debt dependence, political instability, ecological decay. To avoid confronting biophysical limits, we’re using finance to extract what we can’t afford, and consume what we shouldn’t.
Civilization, he writes, functions like a superorganism—a global web of humans, machines, institutions, and systems acting as one. It’s not conscious, but it behaves as if it is.
It’s blind, hungry, and in charge. It follows energy and momentum, not foresight. Still, he believes individuals and small groups can respond—prepare, adapt, soften the landing.
Tompkins echoes this. The causes of climate chaos are clear, she says. But the will to act is missing. Voluntary efforts won’t cut it. Real change needs hard limits—enforced accountability.
She sees the need to leave fossil fuels behind. But if the Maximum Power Principle holds, that shift likely means collapse. Climate chaos won’t come alone. It’ll bring social breakdown too, as energy systems fail and the structures built on them fall apart.
The one solution many believed in no longer holds. So what now?
There are deeper implications here. Most people feel something is off. They blame leadership, policy, politics. Some see the crisis as economic. Others see it as environmental. Many feel helpless—and have stopped trying.
But beneath all of this is determinism. The system’s momentum, its energy patterns, the feedback loops—it all suggests we’re being carried, not steering.
And yet, those who see the crisis still tend to blame society. Nearly every report begins with “despite decades of warnings…” as if we could’ve prevented this.
But the path we took wasn’t just ignorance or error. It was the logic of nature itself. Life expands by maximizing power. From bacteria to cities, systems grow by capturing more energy. Evolution doesn’t optimize for good. It optimizes for throughput.
As Hagens says, energy is the currency of life. I’d add: population is the currency of evolution. Agriculture didn’t make us healthier—but it fed more people. Civilization runs on fossil fuels and credit—not because they’re ideal, but because they scale.
The Agricultural Revolution wasn’t a mistake. It was a shift. A moment when we began serving a system larger than ourselves. Today, that system is the superorganism.
Until we see this not as moral failure but as systemic outcome, we’ll keep missing the point.
In that light, collapse isn’t failure. It’s part of the cycle. Systems overshoot. Some burn out. Others adapt. Evolution doesn’t care if the game ends. It just plays it. Calls for foresight and sustainability don’t speak in evolutionary terms. They speak in human values. Ethics. Longing.
Nature is not only balance. It’s also extinction, overshoot, and churn. That’s the tension. We celebrate nature’s laws, then ask to override them. It’s like praising the lion and then scolding it for killing the gazelle.
Nature doesn’t do oughts. It just is.
The drive to fix may not be about changing outcomes. It may be how we cope. A way to stay human. Even in collapse, we reach for meaning.
But psychology holds little ground in modern life. The World Health Organization says over a billion people live with anxiety or depression. Only 15 percent seek help. We once had myth, ritual, and community. Now we have reason. But logic doesn’t hold grief. It doesn’t heal.
Modern thinking is reductionist. It wants parts, solutions, action. Introspection slows things down.
That’s not a flaw. It may serve the superorganism better. Reflection interrupts growth. A species tending its soul is less useful to a system bent on expansion. And so, quietly, we let that part of ourselves go.
Still, we don’t know what’s coming. Tompkins believes in Black Swans—tipping points we can’t predict. “Am I pessimistic about this century? Yeah. But we don’t know how it will turn out.”
Lotka and Odum used thermodynamics to understand life. Their insights were transformative. But even they had limits. Quantum theory has no explanation for matter, life, or consciousness—yet these are the ground of experience.
Einstein once said: “Whether you can see something or not depends on the theory you use.”
Above the Temple of Apollo at Delphi were the words: “Know thyself.” Maybe that was the oracle’s way of saying: you already know—you just can’t see it.
The metacrisis isn’t just ecological or political. It’s psychological. It’s spiritual. A rupture in how we relate to reality, nature, and each other.
Healing won’t come from solutions. It begins with honesty. With facing what we’ve denied.
Real change asks for presence. Not perfection. It asks us to sit in the dark until our eyes adjust.
To face the metacrisis, we must realign with reality. Accept our full humanity—our destructiveness, our beauty. Embrace humility. Reconnect with life.
This path isn’t for everyone. It demands transformation. And it starts with those ready to see–mostly young minds who are not just smart, but awake. Those who care can guide them—not to escape, but to engage. To think differently. To recover meaning. To remember wonder.
What we call determinism isn’t the only way of seeing. There are others. Analysis without presence is hollow. Science isn’t just a method. It’s a way of being in the world.
As Iain McGilchrist wrote:
“Little though we are, we don’t know how big that is.”
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Art I am keeping a journal with many of these profound quotes. This one really landed. “To face the metacrisis, we must realign with reality. Accept our full humanity – our destructiveness, our beauty.” It reminds me of Carl Jung asking us to face our shadow selves. We can’t see the stars without the night sky. I cannot look at the world with compassion if I myself have not fully embraced my own suffering, my own jealousy, my own envy, resentment and fear. There is no 10-step program but just embracing our own human frailty which paradoxically gives us human/artistic/spiritual strength.
Dave,
Carl Jung is one of my principal mentors. I read and re-read him regularly.
All the best,
Art
Excellent and important post, Art! Thank you!
For those interested in this topic, I highly recommend two books by HT Odum:
“Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-First Century,” and “A Prosperous Way Down: Principles and Policies.”
Odum realized that what works to maximize power is different when resources become scarce. Published in 2001, Odum still held the view, in A Prosperous Way Down, that “If civilization is to progress, it has to learn to advocate the patterns that these principles predict. In the process a growth culture will be able to change smoothly into a culture of descent. However, history records many systems that crashed instead.”
Which is to say he was trying to maintain an outlook with the best possible outcomes, but not being naive about it.
On page 195, he writes:
“After several centuries of frenzied growth, most of the world’s people believe strongly that growth is good and descent is bad. Human language defines growth words with positive connotations. in contrast, most descent-related words carry a negative feeling, showing our antidescent attitudes. Test yourself by reading Table 13.1…
“Within the time of one generation, we could observe a reversal of attitude so that descent becomes good and twentieth-century growth ideas become bad. As turndown progresses, people will see what works when resources are scarce. …In a sense, descent can be a kind of progress.”
For Permaculture co-originator David Holmgren, Odum’s ideas were central to the development of Permaculture principles. Two other highly recommended books are from Holmgren: “Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability,” and “Future Scenarios.”
Thanks for your comments, David.
Best,
Art
I also suggest the book “Energy and Structure: A theory of Social Power” by Richard Newbold Adams published in 1975.
“Adams, an anthropologist, proposes that social power is directly derived from control over energy processes. He identifies how power and mentalistic structures constitute fundamental determinants that shape the lives of people at all stages of cultural development, forcing them to accept alternatives often far removed from their desires. His central thesis is that the amount of power in any system varies with the amount of control exercised over the environment and that increasing power and control lead to increasing centralization of decision-making, social marginalization, and environmental despoliation. Thus the more highly developed societies, by virtue of their greater controls, are responsible for the greater ultimate subordination and destruction of human potential, as humanity combines technological advances with a growing inability to exercise good judgment with respect to our own survival.”
Ivan,
I suggest you read this post from a few months ago: “Control Oil and You Control Nations”
https://www.artberman.com/blog/control-oil-and-you-control-nations/
“The energy transition isn’t about climate—it’s corporate welfare, channeling public money to the same corporations that have been exploiting us for decades while boosting politicians’ power. For oil-poor Europe and Asia, it’s a weak attempt to cut oil dependence.
There’s no real evidence that an energy transition even exists—it’s just marketing spin. As global economic growth slows, renewables will be left at the back of the bus. Let China dominate solar panels, wind turbines, and EVs. They don’t matter in the real balance of power anyway.
Oil should anchor America’s grand geopolitical strategy. Build around it, and everything else will follow. Control oil, and you control nations.”
All the best,
Art
Brilliant encapsulation of our predicament, Art. A reminder, in conjuction with your recent post on Peak Oil, that energy determinism is not linear, but a complex, one snarl in a thicket. It is one factor among many.
This transformation–if it happens, and is not overridden by the caprice of Nature, which treats all things like straw dogs–must come from ideas, as you say, and a different understanding of our place in the cosmos. It ultimately is a spiritual crisis, but the healing, if it comes, will likely get a little cugeling from Nature along the way.
All the best to you and thanks for the insights.
Thanks for your thoughts, Pete.
I don’t think energy explains everything, but it’s likely the most powerful single factor since it’s fundamental to life itself. Complexity, which I believe you’re urging me to weigh more heavily, is a result of dissipating energy gradients. As David Bohm reminded us, we have to start with the system’s “undivided wholeness” before trying to analyze its parts.
Best,
Art
“To face the metacrisis, we must realign with reality. Accept our full humanity—our destructiveness, our beauty. Embrace humility. Reconnect with life.”
But we won’t. There is not enough will, resources, or time left for that to happen at scale.
I didn’t argue that we would face those problems, Avian—not collectively, not systemically.
What I said was that we need to see clearly what’s unfolding, without illusions. Facing it doesn’t mean fixing it. It means being honest, present, and human in the face of it—and probably more personally than collectively. That might not change the outcome, but it changes how we meet it.
All the best,
Art
This is really powerful in connecting MPP with Nate Hagens views around the superorganism. I hope a lot of people read this.
Thanks, Edward. It was a challenging project!
All the best,
Art
This was a very moving piece to read Art, thank you. I especially connected with “it all suggests we’re being carried, not steering.” So many individuals thinking things could’ve been different if we changed enough minds. Larger society and the natural order as a whole knew there was no giving up high density high flow energy.
Thanks, Marc.
Life’s imperative is growth. It’s empirical and supported by the thermodynamic work by Lotka, Odum and Hall.
No species is going to choose a less productive energy source.
All the best,
Art
Art –
Your mention of Howard Odum prompted me to pull my well thumbed copy of his book ‘Environment, Power, and Society’ off the shelf.
On the second page of chapter 2 (What Power Is), Odum writes:
“Most people think that man has progressed in the modern industrial era because his knowledge and ingenuity have no limits – a dangerous partial truth. All progress is due to special power subsidies, and progress evaporates whenever and wherever they are removed. Knowledge and ingenuity are the means for applying power subsidies when they are available, and the development and retention of knowledge are also dependent on power delivery.”
Odum’s book is well worth reading, but it takes a bit of effort due to his extensive use of his energy module formulas. Odum revised this book before his death, but my copy is the original 1971 edition.
Source: Howard T. Odum, 1971, Environment, Power, and Society, Wiley-Interscience, page 27
Regards,
Ed Lindgren
Overland Park KS
Thanks, Ed.
I’m honestly not sure what your comment is meant to add—beyond showing that you’ve also read Odum.
Are you suggesting I misunderstood something? Or that I need instruction on his work? I’m the one who just wrote the post.
All the best,
Art
“And somewhere lions still roam, unaware, in their majesty, of any weakness”
–Rainer Maria Rilke Elegy IV
Leon,
Like the lions, the superorganism roams unaware of any weakness.
All the best,
Art
It’s obstacles we face that are beyond our power to overcome. It all points to admitting we must seek a higher power to intervene. The Creator, God.
Thanks, Mark.
I respect your faith but you’re not paying attention. Read the post again.
Expecting a higher power to intervene is just another reductionist strategy to fix things. It’s fear disguised as hope.
“Belief protects people from direct experience. You try religion in order to escape from your unconscious.”
–Carl Jung
God expects us to use our free will to figure things out, and doesn’t think much of those who don’t–at least that’s my reading of Scripture.
All the best,
Art
The growth rate of capitalism has topped out. Any change forward will not be by design but by what is possible.
John,
What does capitalism have to do with my post? It’s just another way of fragmenting reality into reductionist parts.
I don’t think anyone knows what has or hasn’t topped out.
All the best,
Art
Funny how we who are paying attention are open to transformation.
Happy you have joined the fight.
Thanks Cliff.
I don’t see a fight–just a dance.
All the best,
Art
When I have my head screwed on right, I remember that I am just as susceptible as anyone else to getting caught up in memes. I admit to myself that I would probably have the same opinions as people I disagree with if I lived in their communities and swam in the same media fishbowl. Then I remember that I am unable to judge anyone else.
Scott,
Most of us would do well to contemplate the inscription over the threshold at Delphi. We really don’t know ourselves; we know the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. How can we possibly know another?
All the best,
Art
Mr Berman,
that’s a great synopsis and goes straight to the heart of the matter.
As far as we know the universe plays an energy game (in human parlance). Maximum power, with certain limitations, seems
to be the only game in town. It’s difficult for humans to fathom this and even more difficult to accept it. It goes against our deepest desire to be in control of our destiny.
…”the will to act is missing” … Indeed, but it is for the simple reason that there are no agents in this universe. We are simple, but important cogs, in the superorganism that has reached the current colossal level of complexity, fed by the one-off stream of miraculously dense energy. That stream is weakening and the superorganism will drastically contract or unravel completely.
The earth will probably never again witness the birth of such a complex superorganism.
It’s awesome that we can understand that all this is happening in our little corner of the universe and stoically watch the unfolding of this epic spectacle of which we are a part.
Nobody can change that.
Ray,
It’s a great show. I suggest vigilance against the certitude of your convictions about how things will unfold.
All the best,
Art
“Nature doesn’t do oughts. It just is.”
I’ve heard this kind of thing a lot, recently. Absolving humans for the mess of IC by saying “it’s just the MPP – we couldn’t have done otherwise”
But, as you know Art, Native Americans (and other indigenous groups) *did* behave differently – i.e. they purposefully disobeyed the so-called MPP and applied wisdom.
In other words, maybe Nature doesn’t do oughts, but humans can (agency).
James,
I never said to blame it all on the MPP. I simply said not to project human morals onto Nature.
Native Americans were violent, brutal and cruel.
All the best,
Art
“Native Americans were violent, brutal and cruel.” – not ‘civilized’, like Columbus lol
James,
I don’t do what-aboutism.
All the best,
Art
I’m not sure why you would deny that some tribes actually managed to live within the means of their environnement. Isn’t calling them violent brutal and cruel just some kind of opinion, the same way that native americans would see our way of “farming” meat to be the worst kind of insult to life itself ?
Also I think it’s hard to think outside of how we’ve been culturally educated, even with the amount of hours taken to try to take a step back and look at the systemic.
Perhaps living with Nature requires tribes that do not grow too complex and manages their size with wisdom.