The Absent Superpower
In 2014's The Accidental Superpower, geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan made the case that geographic, demographic and energy trends were unravelling the global system. Zeihan takes the story a step further in The Absent Superpower, mapping out the threats and opportunities as the world descends into Disorder.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
9mentions
8people
2018–2023years
56% recommend44% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The Absent Superpower et all by Peter Zeihan. Not sure how much I agree with, but he seems to have a good handle on the topic.
- Geopop videos on youtube were my introduction, and are definitely the quickest way to get the gist. Then I started reading his books.
Accidental Superpower is his first, from 2014, and is the best overall introduction. It doesn't just look at current events; he applies his approach to pretty much all the great civilizations of world history, starting with ancient Egypt. Well worth reading for that alone, it's amazing. Also covers modern day, and while it's a bit out of date now, the broad strokes haven't changed. This book includes a prediction that Russia would invade the rest of Ukraine right about now. If you read just one, make it this one.
The next two books are entirely focused on present day.
Absent Superpower from 2016 has two parts. The first is probably more information than you want about the shale revolution in the US, but he keeps it interesting. Then he writes about individual countries, with more of an energy focus. This one's obviously most relevant to the tech we're discussing here, which could change everything if it scales up soon enough.
Now I'm partway through Disunited Nations, from 2020. This also goes country by country, and of course is the most up-to-date so far. He starts out with several chapters on China, and goes into more detail than the previous book on their situation, which is incredibly grim. Now I'm starting the next chapter, on Japan.
His next book comes out in June. I think he mentioned in a video that he focuses more on the outlook for various industries.
- Not really what you asked for but I think they are more important to gain perspective:
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein
The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America by Peter Zeihan
- Good point, "The Accidental Superpower" is wondrous in scope and ideas. The "Absent Superpower", the sequel, is OK; had some interesting insights about shale and the coming removal of the USA from the world. But the first book is timeless.
His Twitter feed is high signal as well: https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/
- Understand this basic thing:
Regardless of what we do (or don't), climate can and will change drastically at some point, most likely due to variables we have no control over. It's just a matter of time. It can happen now, it can happen next week, next month, next year, in the next 10 years, next 100 years, next 1000 years, next million years. They say that they know it will be in 5 years or 10 years or some made up number. But no, it's not possible to say for sure. It could very well be tomorrow.
There is absolutely no way to control climate in any meaningful way by doing or not doing something as humans. Even if we did manage to identify the right variables and control it a few times does not mean we'll be able to do it every time.
Environmental change will most likely wipe off our species too, just like it has done to countless other species in the past couple of billion years.
Having said that, we as humans have managed to survive some big environmental changes, like the last ice age when several other species perished. Not all of us will survive but enough of us will.
So, what are some of the climate catastrophes we need to protect ourselves against and are we doing enough to prepare for that?
One big problem today is that most humans don't have access to energy to heat or cool their habitats artificially if the planet warms up or cools down significantly. In developed nations, this is taken for granted but poorer countries lack the infrastructure for it.
Solar, wind and hydro are unreliable if say some climate catastrophe causes sun to be blocked (say because of volcanic clouds or asteroid impact or something similar) and there is no heat or light from the sun. The only good sources are fossil fuels and nuclear. Do we have infrastructure for it spread out around the world so that no matter what part of the earth the asteroid impacts, as long as it doesn't wipe off everything all at once, we can rise again?
What other problems might we face climate-wise? And assuming it happens, are we prepared such that enough of us will survive?
No, we're not thinking about any of that shit because the entire fucking world is hung up on "Global Warming" and "Climate Change", the PR material that CleanTech Industry in the U.S. fabricated to get tax breaks on their investments when they thought that the world was running out of oil... and moved the production to China... except China stole the technology and built upon it... while the U.S. found and perfected fracking... and now China is using the same PR infrastructure to promote selling solar fucking panels and wind turbines... while using their pawns in politics to try to stop fracking and natural gas projects in the U.S. because it hurts Chinese energy business.
Get a grip.
Get a job in the industry. They need technologists in energy industry too.
Read a book or two and widen your view of the subject.
How about "The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America" by Peter Zeihan?
Or just to see another side of it, how about "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels" by Alex Epstein?
Anything but repeating this PR nonsense over and over again.
- Over the past several months I read all his books. His previous book, Disunited Nations, is probably best for making the demographic argument. He devotes chapters to individual countries, covering their situations in detail, starting with several chapters on China.
(His first book, Accidental Empire, does a good job introducing his overall PoV, applying it to most of the great civilizations in history starting with ancient Egypt. This book predicted in 2014 that Russia would invade the rest of Ukraine by end of 2021. His next book, Absent Superpower, has the most on fossil fuels.)
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