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BATCH 1

When humans do not perceive the systemic limits of their society, they have historically looked for scapegoats and turned to the worst, observations having shown similar behaviors in non-human animals. History already has many proofs that humans have no real limit...

In this gradation of destabilization, institutions, politics (the polis city, its politeia constitution and its politikos citizens), services, even the foundations of society can be shattered. It is enough for the viability to drop, for the pollution to become too strong, for the material resources or energy to run out for the immense Ponzi scheme that is the global, capitalistic market economy, to collapse.

When effects related to the dynamics of complex systems get involved, when there is too much pollution, when viability decreases, when all the dependencies fail in cascade, when recycling is no longer sufficient to compensate for mining depletion, overshoot can appear abruptly, and counter-intuitively…

DESTABILIZATION OF HUMAN BASES

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INCREASED ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

https://data.footprintnetwork.org/

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The ecological or environmental footprint is an indicator and a method of evaluation that takes into account the pressure exerted by mankind on natural resources and the "ecological services" provided by nature.

It measures the productive food surfaces of land and water necessary to produce the resources that an individual, a population or an activity consumes and to absorb the waste generated, taking into account the techniques and the management of the resources in force.

This surface is expressed in global hectares, that is to say in hectares with a productivity equal to the average productivity. It is currently exploding, since technical progress continues to bring new objects, since the rebound effect amplifies the phenomenon, all multiplied by the increase in population.

INCREASED ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

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HUMAN ACTIVITIES

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Since mankind appeared on Earth, it has continually drawn on its resources. From the first carved stones, the stocks of carvable stone were already exhausting on the surface, while the trees used for huts and fire were growing back.

Agriculture, industry, commerce, fishing, energy, buildings, urbanization, mining, leisure, health, social, politics, transport, residence... There are too many to list, but every activity requires energy and matter, without you might as well be worth it.

And through an effect that Raymond Kurzweil calls "the law of accelerated returns", each gain brings its share of progress, in scientific knowledge as in uses, increasing future progress even more, and diversifying activities (a feedback loop) .

HUMAN ACTIVITIES

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APPEARANCE OF LIFE ON EARTH

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As far as we can go back, and since the elements have formed more and more complex molecules and thanks to the presence of water, we tracked the oldest forms of life on our planet to 4.28 billion years ago.

Life is defined by the fact of being able to constitute oneself, to reproduce, sometimes identically, the ability to maintain certain physico-chemical parameters, a metabolism and the molecular memory that constitutes heredity.

It was after polymerization of the elements of the Earth primordial soup that life was able to develop and meet these criteria. The process of creation of living things from the inert is called abiogenesis. The elements necessary for known life are CHNOPS (Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, later Phosphorus, Sulphur).

APPEARANCE OF LIFE ON EARTH

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TECHNICAL PROGRESS

Moore's law visualization

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Human activities involve the use of elements present in the environment, these uses lead to experience, and experience leads to an optimization of these uses.

In return, knowledge accumulates, technical improvement too, and we invent, manufacture, produce more and more means, which, again, make it possible to produce more and more, with better quality, but also faster and more at the same time.

Over time, we go through cycles of interest, growth, saturation, decline and then devaluation of what we invent, produce and then disdain. These iterations always generate new uses.

TECHNICAL PROGRESS

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EXCEEDING BIOCAPACITY

Planetary

boundaries

Biocapacity vs Ecological footprint

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Each year, the Global Footprint Network produces a new edition of its national ecological footprint accounts. These calculate the ecological footprint and biocapacity of more than 200 countries and territories from 1961 to the present day.

Earth Overshoot Day is the day when humanity has exhausted the Earth's regenerative natural resources for the current year. The rest of the year being considered as a life on credit that draws on the planet's non-renewable or non-renewed reserves.

A model consisting of 9 consensual planetary boundaries has been established by Johann Rockström's team to characterize this overshoot. In 2025, it was estimated on July 30, for 1.8 planet Earth on December 31 (2.66 gha/inhab against 1.48 gha/inhab). Almost all of these limits have already been crossed.

Note that the more we exceed biocapacity, the more it decreases, leading to a decline in viability on Earth, more pollution, mining exhaustion, all in a complex system where everything is meshed and where recycling is never done without losses.

EXCEEDING BIOCAPACITY

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SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS

Great paradigms

(time before present versus delay)

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Human activities create ideas, from which research arises, which leads to discoveries, which lead to the accumulation of knowledge, science, which in turn leads to new technologies, and these technologies are made progress, an improvement in our standard of living and uses.

From the verb scire (to know) in Latin, science designates the discovery, accumulation and transmission of knowledge. As soon as humans were able to formalize their knowledge, they were able to capitalize on it and transmit it. It nevertheless changes by leaps and bounds: scientific paradigms.

As for what we discover, it is up to us to know what to do with it and how to use it for the best... Gaston Bachelard wrote: "Reality is never what we might believe, but it is always what we should have thought."

SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS

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BATCH 2 - 11 CARDS

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CREATION OF THE SUN AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

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The sun, the star of our planetary system, was formed 4.603 billion years ago, when the dust of our universe began to collapse on itself, forming astronomical objects, probably following from the explosion of an adjacent supernova forming a disk of soon-to-melt material.

It is located 150 million kilometers from Earth, an ideal distance and converging condition for the appearance of life. It measures 1,4 million kilometers in diameter (109 times the diameter of Earth), and accounts for 99.8% of the matter of our planetary system (333,000 times the mass of the Earth), which is however modest for a star.

From its surface, the photosphere, at 5,000°C, to its core, at 27 million degrees Celsius, it only exists because it is a confined thermonuclear fusion reactor, regulated by a subtle balance between attraction (strong nuclear interaction) and repulsion (nuclear Coulomb force), plus a quantum chance called the tunnel effect, allowing it to brew 620 million tons of hydrogen… Per second. And to send us a fraction of its radiation, which nevertheless represents 99.99% of the energy we receive.

CREATION OF THE SUN AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

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CREATION OF EARTH AND ITS ENVIRONMENT

Woudloper Derivative work: Hardwigg - This file was derived from: Geologic clock.jpg:, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11926892

Picture by NASA:NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Francis Reddy

Hadean

Archean

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The Earth, our celestial object, was created 4.567 billion years ago, from the collapse of the solar nebula, the cloud of gas from which the Solar System was formed, long before welcoming life.

Its history is divided into 4 major eras, called "eons": Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic and Phanerozoic. This stormy story has seen it go through radically different states: mass of gas, accretion of matter, covered in molten rock, saturated with oxygen or carbon at lethal rates...

It has known at least 15 mass extinction events. Before becoming the planet we perceive today… Our only known place of life.

It is attributed several stacked "layers": atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, geosphere, pedosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and even the magnetosphere.

CREATION OF EARTH AND ITS ENVIRONMENT

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APPEARANCE OF SEDIMENTS AND FOSSILS

Sediments worldwide

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A fossil is essentially the mineral trace of an ancient living organism, and therefore has existed since the latter appeared. Most fossil fuel deposits derive from the organic matter of living beings incorporated into the sediments during their deposition (a kerogen). It can be continental or not.

For organic matter of continental origin, the sedimented debris is mostly vascular plants, therefore rich in lignin, but also soil organic matter during significant leaching. They are deposited in marshy environments or deltaic floodplains. This sedimentation and preservation in the sediments is at the origin of the coalbed deposits consisting mainly of coal.

For the organic matter of oceanic origin, these are essentially organisms of planktonic origin to which can be added wind deposits (spores, pollens) coming from the continent.

These organic materials evolve giving rise to hydrocarbons of the oil (petroleum) and gas type, under the effect of burial, sometimes resulting from plate tectonics, and therefore from heat and underground pressure (pyrolysis).

APPEARANCE OF SEDIMENTS AND FOSSILS

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LIMITS OF THE ANTHROPOSPHERE

Picture by NASA - Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg

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The laws and principles of physics constrain us, to say the least...

Upwards, human beings have managed to go -via the Apollo 13 mission- up to 140,000 kilometers from their place of life, and the Voyager 1 probe is currently our most distant object, 24.4 billion kilometers away from Earth. In 2017, 40 years after being launched, it still responded, its thrusters were reactivated ever so slightly, soon running out of energy. It continues its one-way journey into the unknown.

Downwards, man managed to descend to 4,000 meters underground, in the deepest mine in the world, at 10,911 m via robots under the ocean (at 1071 times the pressure of the surface) and to drill down 12,262 m below the Kola Peninsula, in Russia.

In terms of speed, if you wanted to go as far as possible, the fastest human object ever recorded remains the Parker probe, brushing against the Sun at 7 million kilometers altitude, at the speed… Of 635,000 km/h, which is 1/1700th of the speed of light in vacuum.

As far as we can see, Earth is an insignificant dust in the universe. And the human being has… Only a tiny layer 20 kilometers thick of living space on its surface, the biosphere: the equivalent of a thickness of cellophane covering a basketball.

LIMITS OF THE ANTHROPOSPHERE

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FOSSIL GAS

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Fossil gas is formed when kerogens are buried deeper and deeper. It can be found alone, but also and often associated with oil, or coal. By increasing the heat and the pressure, in the end, only gas is obtained.

It is gas (hence natural and fossil) which is partly responsible for the primary migration (expulsion from the bedrock where it is formed), then secondary migration (along the permeable layers) towards the surface.

Fossil gas currently represents 23% of the current global energy consumption mix, representing 21% of greenhouse gas emissions. It is the energy of power plants that are easy to build and operate, of cooking and of distributed central heating.

Its peak extraction should happen somewhere between 2020 and 2070, it may have already passed. We would have about 50 to 60 years of fossil gas left, 150 with unproven but supposed reserves.

FOSSIL GAS

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FOSSIL COAL

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Fossil coal is classified using physico-chemical criteria according to the successive stages of transformation, known as coalification, which was reached during carbonification: the peat stage designates coals that have not been or have been very little buried, we can still recognize plant remains there with the naked eye. Next come the lignite, subbituminous coal, bituminous coal, then anthracite stages. It is pyrolyzed again to make coke. It was formed 65 to 350 million years ago, most of it… During the Carboniferous, the epoch to which it gave its name.

Coal, the energy of industry, currently represents 27% of energy consumption in the world, and 41% of the generation of greenhouse gases, making it the first source. It represents about 2 TW of power, for 1/3 of the world's electricity. Despite this, around 300 new coal power plants have be opened between 2021 and 2026.

Its peak of exploitation is expected to be somewhere between 2050 and 2150, and there are something between 130 and 400 years of coal left, at current extraction rate. 8 countries hold and produce 90% of the coal resources used.

FOSSIL COAL

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FOSSIL OIL

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Oil is irreplaceable. All fossil sources have their advantages, but oil is light, energy-dense, does not wear out, is easy to transport, to store (a 2-tonne vehicle can be satisfied with a 70-litre tank for hundreds of kilometers). It was formed between 20 and 350 million years ago.

Being the most widely used energy source in the world, it is the absolutely decentralized energy, of transport, but also of petrochemicals, two absolutely vital axes of our modern life, and also very slightly for heating. Its use derives above all from social interests from the military (highways, aviation) or private industrialists (individual car, daily commute). Today, cutting oil literally means stopping the world: its use is the base of everything, especially globalization. And there is still no emerging substitute to it.

Oil accounts for 32% of the global energy consumption mix, for 32% of greenhouse gas emissions. There would be 30 to 60 years of oil remaining in proven reserves, not much more counting assumed reserves. It can be conventional (like acne being drilled into the ground) or unconventional (like a ground caesarean section). The extraction of the first has already passed a peak between 2007 and 2008, the peak of extraction for all oils combined remains 2018 to this day.

FOSSIL OIL

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NUCLEAR ENERGY

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Civil nuclear energy is used in 32 countries out of 195. Irradiation by ionizing radiation (about 25 accidents in history) being invisible, it has a bad reputation in certain countries, and its related deaths (about 90 per all-time generated PWh against 1,400/PWh for hydroelectricity, or even 100,000/PWh for coal) make it one of the least lethal sources in the world (3 major accidents), but one of the most feared and delicate, although being very low carbon and minimal for land use and pollution.

Nuclear energy can be fission (currently used) or fusion (at prototype state, such as the ITER project). In all cases it uses elements that have been forged in stars. Fission "produces" around a million times more energy than other common uses of redox (fossil fuels, biomass, etc.), fusion generating another 2 to 3 times more. It represents 4% of the global energy consumption mix (436 reactors).

Fusion power plants, on the other hand, will remove all the minor drawbacks of fission energy, but won't be ready until around 2080.

Only problem to it: for fission needs the largest atoms that can reasonably be found on Earth (Uranium and Thorium), and fusion needs the smallest atoms that can be found: hydrogen. In both cases, unstable isotopes (of altered number of neutrons) are used: ²H (deuterium), ³H (tritium, essentially synthetic), fissile like ²³⁵U, or fertile (convertible to fissile): ²³²Th, ²³⁸U.

At the current rate, the peak of uranium 235 extraction is expected in the decades to come, with between approximately 60 and 100 years of reserves left. 130 times more for uranium 238, and 430 times more for thorium. Which would make between 250 and 1000 years of energy with a global mix of 100% fission nuclear energy, on condition that we switch to 4^th+ generation power plants (currently only a handful in the world).

NUCLEAR ENERGY

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RESOURCES TOO LOWLY RENEWABLE

Dbachmann — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64991770

Oil extraction estimates

World total final energy consumption

Fossil fuels reserves estimates

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Resources that are too weakly renewable are those on which we can only temporarily count, if we ever decide to exploit them.

Oil, gas and fossil coal are among these resources that are too weakly renewable: they take several million years to be created, and we deplete them in a few decades.

All these resources are therefore subject to a modeling of the extraction curve as presented by the geophysicist Marion King Hubbert in 1956, characterized by two essential points: it has a bell shape, therefore passing through a maximum and declining sharply past this point, and it is often relatively symmetrical with respect to this maximum…

RESOURCES TOO LOWLY RENEWABLE

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IRREVERSIBLE RESOURCES

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It will always be possible to synthesize the chemical elements we would wish for and which do not come from an extraterrestrial baryogenesis. Since 1936 (Technetium) and until 2010 (Tennessine), we have never stopped synthesizing some that hardly existed any more or even not at all on Earth. But this requires far too many other irreversible resources, and remains very marginal.

Basically, this means that when the two most fissile elements relatively found on Earth (Uranium and Thorium) have all been split in reactors and transformed into other atoms, there will be none left.

On the other hand, when we send matter towards space, as long as it stays there, it is lost and goes beyond our limits.

Finally, let's not forget (fortunately) that the energy balance of the Earth is neutral, even if it is abruptly unbalanced by anthropic climate change, and that the energy received by the Sun definitely goes away again and makes the Earth, despite everything… Heating space.

IRREVERSIBLE RESOURCES

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HIGHLY RENEWABLE RESOURCES

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Knowing that hunting and fishing leads almost systematically to ecological disturbances, and knowing that the breeding of animals, domestic or not, can pose major problems of resource balance (between 20 and 15,000 liters of water used per kilogram of beef depending on the location, for example), in addition to speciesist ethical problems, it is complicated to assess the quality of these resources.

On the other hand, plant resources, mosses, mushrooms, can be used, and even be beneficial to extract in certain cases. Provided you do not abuse it: in France, for example, in 1820, the country fell to 12% of its territory covered in forest, a sad and dangerous historical minimum, aggravated and saved in extremis… By coal.

These biotic resources are part of the resources on which we can count… Since this is how living systemics things works: to create living from inert matter, then from dead living matter (we are made of atoms from millions of times dead organisms). As long as the ecosystems that carry them remain intact and that we do not exceed their renewal capacity...

HIGHLY RENEWABLE RESOURCES

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BATCH 3 - 11 CARDS

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APPEARANCE OF ASTRONOMICAL OBJECTS

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It is impossible to know when the first stars actually formed. We know how to observe galaxies supposed to be more than 13 billion light-years away constantly distancing… Which is very close to the historical limits of the Big Bang.

After the dark age, a period when matter was so present that light stumbled everywhere on it, it is assumed that the universe most likely saw the first galaxies form between 300 and 500 million years after its own formation.

The first clusters would have arrived after 1 billion years, and the first superclusters after 3 billion years. Ours, called "Laniakea" ("the immense skies" in Hawaiian), modeled for the first time in 2014, would include no less than 100,000 galaxies, like ours, which still in turn contain hundreds of billions of stars and at least as many planets each.

APPEARANCE OF ASTRONOMICAL OBJECTS

BATCH 3

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POLYMERIZATION

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Primitive metabolism would have started in water, on the surface of minerals. From atoms were made simple molecules. Simple molecules have formed more complex molecules. When small molecules react with each other to form higher molecular weight ones, this is called polymerization.

At a given stage of our world, molecules have evolved into metabolites, carbohydrates, amino acids, from nuclides to more complex RNA (ribonucleic acids) and DNA, then membrane lipids, allowing cells to separate genome (nucleus) and metabolism (cytoplasm), which means maintaining life (homeostasis), reproducing, reacting to the environment and above all… Development. Life could then appear.

POLYMERIZATION

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LIFE CYCLES

Mariana Ruiz Villarreal - Own work based on information found on the English wikipedia article and these websites:[1],[2],[3],File:Culex sp. Tanzania.jpg,[4],[5], between others, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10071475

By Alexander Davronov - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106124364

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After the appearance of life on Earth, the latter has never ceased to flourish, live, die, reproduce and begin again, in turn producing increasingly complex, diverse and rich biotic resources.

Several cycles can be distinguished: physico-chemical cycles, which are called geochemical cycles when it comes to the Earth (such as the evaporation/condensation/hydrometeor/runoff part of the water cycle), biological cycles when it comes to life cycles alone (life cycle of a mosquito, for example, or humus cycle) and biogeochemical cycles when the raw material comes into play with the living.

LIFE CYCLES

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BIOTIC RESOURCES

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The biotic resources resulting from the life cycles are those provided by ecosystems (of the biosphere), as opposed to abiotic resources, provided by the non-living.

We can mention forests, animals (birds, fish...), terrestrial and marine organisms, moss, mushrooms, yeasts, etc.

This therefore also includes direct derivatives (coffee, infusions, sugars, many drugs, machined wood, wood paper, alcohols, acetic acid...).

The sum of those actors form a trophic web broken down into: autotrophs (producers of organic matter from mineral matter like chlorophyllous plants, cyanobacteria and sulfur bacteria), consumers (heterotrophs, primary: herbivores, and secondary: carnivores), decomposers (reducing agents: moulds, bacteria, etc.) and detritivores (bacteria, fungi, flies, worms...).

BIOTIC RESOURCES

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APPEARANCE OF THE FIRST ORGANISMS

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Once the bases of life appeared on Earth and the physical conditions became calmer, the first biological organisms resulting from the first complex molecules could appear.

The first organisms were unicellular, but also prokaryotes (a cell without nucleus). Then appeared photosynthesis, multicellular organisms (metazoans), life without then with oxygen, then the exiting of water, eukaryotes (cells with nucleus), then sexualization, symbioses... Not everything did happen all at once, and major catastrophes took place: late heavy bombardment, great oxidation event, 5 major mass extinctions...

APPEARANCE OF THE FIRST ORGANISMS

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BIODIVERSITY AND NATURAL SELECTION

https://www.storyboardthat.com/storyboards/4f2c9e8a/rabbit-natural-selection-

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Following the stabilization of the Earth system, and the living conditions on its surface for the first organisms, life literally exploded: the number of species began to grow much more strongly. The living erratically continues to be a chaotic permanent laboratory, where mutagenic effects (radiation, chemical compounds) break the bases of genetic memory to form others, of which only an infinitely small fraction is viable and has superior characteristics, and ends up reproducing.

Thus appeared mosses, ferns, mushrooms, lichens, the first animals (-750 Myr), seed plants, then flowers, the Cambrian explosion of life (-535 Myr), reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, mammals, primates, etc.

Nothing is ever finished, and if it seems impossible on our scale to perceive evolution (we appeared between 2.4 million years ago via homo rudensis and 300,000 years ago for homo sapiens), once we observe living things with very rapid population renewal, such as mosquitoes or bacteria, we have already been able to observe mutations (resistance to products supposed to kill them, for example).

BIODIVERSITY AND NATURAL SELECTION

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APPEARANCE OF WATER ON EARTH

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We do not yet have the exact terms of the appearance of water on Earth, following the formation of the stars known today, around 4.4-4.5 billion years ago, but we are getting closer in addition to certainties as we narrow the range of probable scenarios.

The problem with water is that stellar radiation tends to break molecules apart, so it is complex to imagine how this oxide (its name is dihydrogen monoxide) formed or remained stable on Earth.

One can imagine that the water would have formed in the original cloud of Earth, but that a part would have been protected from the radiations inside (unlike Venus, for example). Another hypothesis would be that the progressive crushing of external bodies (asteroids...) containing water would have been in sufficient quantity to explain the presence of the latter. A final hypothesis would be that planets containing water came to mingle with our primitive planetary system. We can also imagine mixing all these hypotheses at the same time!

In the end, water now covers 70.9% of Earth's surface today.

APPEARANCE OF WATER ON EARTH

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Matter is what occupies space and has mass. �It has 4 known states: plasma, gaseous, liquid, solid.

In the current particle physics model, it is made up of quarks and leptons, which form hadrons (essentially baryons like protons and neutrons, formed from up and down quarks). Add to them the leptons which the electrons are and you got an atom.

These three objects form baryonic matter, the one with which we can interact (about 5% of the universe), plus primitive forms, today representing a minority because they violently annihilate on contact with this baryonic matter, called antimatter.

And for the rest of the universe… We assume 27% of so-called “dark” matter and 68% of so-called “dark” energy, barely detectable, but all that… Is only hypothetical at the present time. We will have to wait for the progress of our research to write the next page.

MATTER

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ENERGY

INVESTED

USEFUL ENERGY

LOST

ENERGY

(ANERGY)

ENERGY

SYSTEM

>>> ENERGY CONSERVATION >>>

EXERGY

INVESTED

USEFUL EXERGY

LOST

EXERGY

ENERGY

SYSTEM

>>> EXERGY DESTRUCTION >>>

ENERGY

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ENERGY

BATCH 3

Emmy Noether demonstrated (in 1918) that energy is an intangible, invariant quantity through all possible transformations of a system, and so is it because the laws of physics do not vary over time. "Pure energy" does not exist. It measures the capacity of a system to modify a state. It can be kinetic, potential, gravitational, electric, chromodynamic, nuclear, radiant, etc.

In the current particle physics model, bosons are vectors of the 4 fundamental interactions (weak, strong, electromagnetic, gravitational) whose energy quantas they transport.

The first principle of thermodynamics says: "during any transformation, there is conservation of energy". On the other hand, in any theoretical non-ideal system, there are losses (example: an electric motor has a mechanical efficiency between 80% and 98%, where a heat engine remains, around 36% as for gasoline and around 42% as for diesel). We call the useful energy of a system "exergy" and the lost energy "anergy". We speak about primary energy when it is taken from the environment (crude oil), and final energy when it comes out of the circuit (turning on electric plates).

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PHYSICS OF CURRENT PARTICLES

NEUTRON

HELIUM ATOM

DISODIUM HELIDE MOLECULE

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Current particle physics, based among other things on the standard model of particles, attempts to explain the relationships between waves and particles, between mass and matter, between matter and antimatter, as well as many other elements at the very beginning of being considered (such as dark energy or dark matter).

What interests us the most, at present, is that we deduce as best as possible the functioning and the origin of energy and matter, the foundations of everything. It is in particular the quantum associations of matter and energy which, assembled, have allowed the formation of elements at a higher level, as during primordial nucleosynthesis.

PHYSICS OF CURRENT PARTICLES

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NUCLEOSYNTHESIS AND BARYOGENESIS

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Baryogenesis refers to the formation of baryons, particles whose main representatives are protons and neutrons. It dates from the first fractions of a second of the primordial universe. Matter as we know it probably did not exist before that. All matter comes from there!

The nucleosynthesis that followed is the synthesis of atomic nuclei from these baryons by various nuclear reactions (capture of neutrons or protons, nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, spallation), possibly followed by radioactive disintegrations or spontaneous fission. It has 4 main origins:

(1) Primordial nucleosynthesis dating from the first tens of minutes following the Big Bang (light nuclei).

(2) Stellar nucleosynthesis taking place in stars, which mainly synthesize helium. At the end of their existence, stars also synthesize most of the elements between lithium and iron, then some of even heavier elements.

(3) Explosive nucleosynthesis occurring in massive stars only for the heaviest elements.

(4) Cosmic spallation, or interstellar nucleosynthesis, producing some light elements such as lithium, beryllium and boron, by bombarding matter with cosmic rays.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made inside collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff." (Carl Sagan)

NUCLEOSYNTHESIS AND BARYOGENESIS

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BATCH 4 - 13 CARDS

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LAWS AND PRINCIPLES OF PHYSICS

ΔU = q + w …

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We discover our universe a little more every day, we derive a great deal of the laws of physics from it. In particular the laws of thermodynamics, Ohm's law, the universal law of gravitation, ...

To the laws are added principles (postulates not yet being demonstrated) such as inertia, thermodynamics (again), or correspondence, as well as broader theories, such as special or general relativity, quantum mechanics, the standard model, the Big Bang, conservation of energy, mass, fluid dynamics, etc.

This work has made it possible to discover the behavior of energy, but also to identify energy vectors, making it possible to contain energy that can then be converted into mechanical work, heat, etc. We know, for example, electricity, the compression of air or oil, hydrogen, a liquid retained at altitude, etc.

These laws, principles, have no parliament to be voted on. They apply everywhere, all the time, and there is no getting around them. Any decision of civilizational orientation going against them will be physically doomed to failure.

LAWS AND PRINCIPLES OF PHYSICS

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CONSTANT RESOURCES

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Solar energy includes many considerations: the first being to better design buildings to make them energy neutral buildings (we find this standardized concept from the 1930s): positioning, verandas, windows and glazed surfaces, reflectance and albedo of materials, restitution, etc. The heat of solar radiation is the oldest known source of energy, long before circulating thermal solar, concentrated solar and photovoltaics (excitation of atoms according to band theory), discovered in 1839.

Wind energy (also solar) is nothing new: at the end of the 19th century, more than 6 million wind turbines were running in the United States, it is in no way a new source of energy since we passed the era of simple windmills (dated to 700 BC).

Same goes for the heat of the center of the Earth (deep geothermal energy), still very little used, or gravitation via hydroelectricity, still the largest so-called "renewable" source in the world. Be careful however: not all are equal, as some of these sources are controllable (hydroelectricity or geothermal energy) and assimilated to constant, while others are unequal (sunshine), predictable (tides) and/or unpredictable (wind), which will require storage to buffer usage, and an increase in installed power, not to mention the densification of the electrical network for diffuse energies. In any case, their means of capture are never definitive, and they will always have to be rebuilt, not to mention that they have a very low charge rate.

CONSTANT RESOURCES

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STRONG DURABILITY

BIOSPHERE

SOCIOSPHERE

ECONOSPHERE

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This hypothesis is defended by Herman Daly (1990). According to him, only the material flows of the economy that meet the following three conditions can be considered sustainable in material and energy terms:

1) the rate of consumption of renewable resources must not exceed the rate of regeneration of these same resources,

2) the rate of consumption of non-renewable resources must not exceed the rate at which renewable and sustainable substitutes can be developed,

3) the rate of emission of pollution must not exceed the capacity of the environment to absorb and assimilate this pollution.

In this hypothesis, the stock of natural capital should not fall. Daly argues that natural capital and artificial capital are complementary and not substitutable. We therefore retain that the economy must be part of a social construction and not define it, and that the social construction cannot go beyond the Earth's biocapacity either.

STRONG DURABILITY

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WEAK DURABILITY

SOCIOSPHERE

ECONOSPHERE

BIOSPHERE

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Until recently, humans believed that all resources could be mined indefinitely without damaging the system as a whole. This has led many of the negative environmental externalities that the world faces today, summarized by the model of Johann Rockström (et al.) under form of 9 planetary boundaries not to be exceeded (climate change, ocean acidification…).

To theoretically remedy these problems, and in this purely economic hypothesis disconnected from physics, efforts have been made to find "simply" technological substitutes for the resources and services provided by nature ("technosolutionnism"). Efforts in this regard contribute to poor sustainability, or the idea that manufactured capital can replace natural capital. We also use the term substitutability of capital.

This conception of sustainability is the one that prevails in many international organizations (United Nations, World Bank), but also in the European Union as in the USA and within most rich countries.

The indicator proposed by the Stiglitz Commission, adjusted net savings, makes the three forms of capital interchangeable: "economic" (derived from production), "human" (dealt with via education expenditure alone), "natural" (limiting ecological damage to climatic aspects only). This indicator therefore remains placed in a low sustainability model.

WEAK DURABILITY

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CLIMATE CHANGE

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Probably the most debated planetary boundary of the Rockström model, climate change refers to the impact of human activities on climate (land alteration, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions…). The last time atmospheric CO₂ levels were this high was 2 million years ago. The average ocean surface temperature reached a record high of 20.98°C in 2026.

About 74% of humans will be exposed to deadly heat waves more than 20 days a year by the end of the 21^st century if the current trajectory remains unchanged. The implications of profound climate change number in the thousands. Through its activities, mankind releases gases into the atmosphere (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, fluorinated gases…) whose properties are to be opaque to thermal infrared and transparent to visible radiation, causing radiative forcing, modifying the Earth's energy balance. More heat is retained, and the average surface temperature has increased, since the Industrial Revolution era, by about +1.1°C.

In order not to exceed the objective of the IPCC (the organization fairly mandated by the UN to specifically collect the scientific literature published around this planetary limit) of the maximum of +2°C in 2100, it would be necessary to leave underground the 3/4 proven fossil fuel reserves. In the meantime, the damage is counted every day and affects all the countries of the world, more and more strongly every day.

CLIMATE CHANGE

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DISINTEGRATION OF THE BIOSPHERE

WWF (2020) Living Planet Report 2020 - Bending the curve of biodiversity loss. Almond, R.E.A., Grooten M. and Petersen, T. (Eds). WWF, Gland, Switzerland.

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Human represents 0.01% of the living mass on Earth, but has been responsible for 85% of the deaths of the living since the industrial era.

In less than 50 years, the biomass has fallen by around 68%.

In 50 years, Europe has lost 620 million birds, North America 3 billion of them, 60% of wild animal populations are dead, large freshwater fish species populations declined by 88%.

1 million species are threatened in the very short term, 1000 billion marine animals die each year from fishing. 9.3 million hectares of forest burned in 2021 alone.

DISINTEGRATION OF THE BIOSPHERE

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DISRUPTION OF BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES

Carbon, phosphorus and nitrogen biogeochemical cycles illustrated

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A biogeochemical cycle is the process of transport and cyclic transformation of a chemical element or compound between the major abiotic reservoirs, which are the geosphere, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and the biotic reservoirs, which is the biosphere.

In other words, the circulation between the inert and the living.

The most important cycles are the cycle of nitrogen, of carbon, of water, the cycle of hydrogen, of oxygen, of phosphorus, of selenium, of silicon, of underwater mercury, of sulfur, ocean salinity and circulation, and the metal cycles.

Humans strongly disrupt these cycles, such as those of phosphorus and nitrogen (human dejecta ending up in natural waters, as well as runoff linked to agriculture). Over-enriching waterways in this way is called eutrophication (asphyxiation following abnormal growth of living organisms). This planetary limit, for phosphorus and nitrogen, has been easily crossed, it is urgent to go down to levels that can be assimilated by living organisms (bacteria).

DISRUPTION OF BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES

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DISRUPTION OF LAND USE

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Soils are formed from very long processes. The transformation of soil rocks of the earth's crust into clays, by disintegration of silicate polyhedra by hydrometeors (erosion), then the use of this "skin" as a base for bacteria, then for plants, which in turn die and return these elements on the ground form humus. They are gradually transformed for human needs, mainly for agricultural uses.

Only 20% of the land surface has not been significantly or negatively impacted by human activity: disappearance of vegetation in several forms (0.6% to 1% per year are deforested), rise of underground salts making the surface land arid, memory effect of substances such as pesticides, change in albedo (light reflection power of soils), etc.

The thawing of permafrost (permafrost) is 50 times faster than expected. It releases methane (CH₄), 23 times more intense than CO₂ in the greenhouse effect. This limit therefore also impacts other limits, such as the water cycle and therefore fresh water resources, biogeochemical cycles, or climate change.

Only 22% of the total land surface is arable (cultivable). 200 hectares are cleared every day for the benefit of cities. Every year, 80,000 km² of forest disappears. Only less than 50% of the trees on Earth remain before the arrival of agriculture 12,000 years ago.

DISRUPTION OF LAND USE

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DEPLETION OF FRESHWATER RESOURCES

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Fresh water represents 2.5% of the total water on Earth, 4/5 of which is in the ice, only 1% on the surface and in the atmosphere. It is used absolutely everywhere, for everything from mining to health, industry, agriculture, etc. 70% of fresh water is used for agriculture worldwide.

1 in 9 people use drinking water from unsafe sources. 2.4 billion people live without water sanitation (300,000 children die per year). 1.8 billion people still drink water contaminated with feces, causing 502,000 deaths from diarrhea each year.

Every day, 2 million tonnes of wastewater and other effluents flow into the world's water supply. UN studies show that within a few years, less than half the world will have access to little or no usable water (more than a third already do).

Melting glaciers will bring in far too much fresh water, far too quickly, cause a change in the landscape, circulate currently frozen mercury, and if the remaining 30 million square kilometers of glaciers melt, sea level will rise by 84 meters. In one day, up to 11 billion tons of ice were reported melting in Greenland alone. About 52% of the world's population will live in regions with less water by 2050, displacing 24 to 700 million people. 60 countries will be severely to very heavily subjected to water stress by 2040.

DEPLETION OF FRESHWATER RESOURCES

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NEW POLLUTING ENTITIES

Key novel entities production worldwide

Tackling novel entities planetary boundary estimates

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This is the most emblematic and known pollution: chemical pollution and new polluting entities. Emissions of toxic and long-lived substances such as synthetic organic pollutants, trace metal compounds, and radioactive materials represent some these entities. These compounds can have potentially irreversible effects on living organisms and on the physical environment (by affecting atmospheric processes and climate).

This limit is not yet clearly quantified, but we are sure that we need to estimate it. Trade on the global market includes about 350,000 different types of manufactured chemicals, or "new entities": pesticides, antibiotics, plastics (90 million tonnes per year, 10% of which lands in the oceans, accumulating in 5 to 7 huge gyres where the currents meet, concentrating about 18,000 pieces per square kilometer), industrial chemical products...

An adult ingests up to 52,000 microparticles of plastic per year (wear and tear on shoes, tires, bags, packaging, etc.), to which are added an additional 90,000 if they only drink bottled water (against 4,000 if preferring tap water), about one credit card volume per week. The production of human waste will increase by around 70% in the next ten years. 98% of pesticides reach at least one other entity than their original purpose required.

NEW POLLUTING ENTITIES

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REGRESSION OF THE ATMOSPHERIC OZONE LAYER

Getty Images Plus

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The ozonosphere is a part of the atmosphere rich in ozone (O₃, about 10 ppm), formed from oxygen, among others.

In the spectrum of electromagnetic waves emitted by the Sun, the wavelengths of ultraviolet rays, from 200 to 400 nm, are included between those of X-rays and those of visible radiation. The different types of ultraviolet rays depend on their wavelengths (UVA, UVB, UVC), and all are very intense mutagens, therefore sources of cancer and aggravation of cancer, among other risks. The main absorbers in the ultraviolet are nitrogen, oxygen, dioxygen and ozone.

Computer models predict that a 10% decrease in stratospheric ozone concentration could cause 300,000 skin cancers, 4,500 melanomas and between 1.6 and 1.75 million more cases of cataracts each year worldwide. When UVB and UVA hit the skin, they cause keratinocytes (sunburn), which are actually cells that die of cell death due to DNA damage, and a health time bomb, even if UVB rays are also used by the body to transform provitamin D into vitamin D₃.

By monitoring its presence, it was established in the 1980s that the depletion of stratospheric ozone at the level of the south pole, commonly called “world's ozone hole”. From the end of the 20^th century, the development of industry and transport, the intensity of agricultural activities and other human activities released quantities of nitrogenous, nitrated and chlorinated products (in particular chlorofluorocarbons) sufficient to disturb the balance of this layer, reinforcing the ozone destruction reaction and leading to a significant reduction in its concentration. If today we consider that we have acted in a corrective way and that this "hole" has stopped growing, it will take a few more decades to return to the levels before the end of the 20th century. And be careful not to do it again.

REGRESSION OF THE ATMOSPHERIC OZONE LAYER

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OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

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Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide can end up, like almost all gases, in the atmosphere, or be captured by so-called carbon sinks: 45% end up in the atmosphere, 30% in soils and plants and 24% in the oceans (the remaining fraction goes into non-plant living). We add the runoff of anthropogenic nitrogen compounds (agriculture) towards the oceans and the sulfur compounds resulting from combustion.

When these elements are trapped by the oceans by solubility or dilution, this has the effect of reducing the pH of the latter, which therefore becomes slightly more acidic. However, plankton is very sensitive to these changes (like the human body, which must remain between 7.35 and 7.45 -at 6.8, you would already be in a coma-) and marine ecosystems are already threatened, and not only the coral. From 1751 to 2004, the pH of ocean surface waters decreased from 8.25 to 8.14 (-30%).

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

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CONCENTRATION OF ATMOSPHERIC AEROSOLS

Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility.

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Aerosols affect cloud formation and atmospheric circulation patterns, such as monsoon systems in tropical regions. They also modify the amount of solar radiation reflected or absorbed in the atmosphere. Some are toxic and directly cause health problems. Humans affect the aerosol load through pollution and land use change which increases the release of dust and smoke.

The majority of aerosols reach the atmosphere by natural means: condensed salt from ocean waters, fine sand from desert dust storms, ice crystals above the poles and ash from fires or eruptions… Humans represent 10% of the global aerosol load, mainly concentrated in the northern hemisphere.

Black carbon (the most basic paracrystalline form) and sulfur dioxide are emitted from power plants and industrial smokestacks, while hydrocarbons are emitted from car exhaust and stratospheric vapor crystals from aircraft engines.

Aerosols also block about a third of global warming. And they would decrease the current global life expectancy by about 2 years.

CONCENTRATION OF ATMOSPHERIC AEROSOLS

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BATCH 5 - 13 CARDS (+ARROWS)

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DECREASING VIABILITY ON EARTH

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If there is no doubt today that the planet would continue to host life, which appeared, let us remember, from the inert, and this regardless of the extent of the worst anthropogenic damage, on the other hand, two key questions remain:

First: what is the direction taken? Is it viable or not? And on what horizon? Is the inertia of the impacted living system of the order of a decade, a century, worse?

Second: for bad decisions of the past and present, how resilient is the biosphere? The CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere, for example, will remain there for around 10,000 years. 80, at least, to let half of it be absorbed back into the Earth system. Another example: soils destroyed by mining are destroyed for several hundreds or even thousands of years.

In the meantime, each year, humans are responsible for an average of 1,000 billion animals deaths.

And human existence is only a symbiosis between the living human and the living non-human: if the rest dies, we die with the rest.

DECREASING VIABILITY ON EARTH

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POLLUTION

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Pollution can take many forms.

"Pollution" means anything that the environment or the ecosystem is not yet ready to metabolize. Instead of being part of a cycle, the action degrades or even disintegrates the latter, which is not yet adapted and leaves the product as it is, because nothing can take charge of it. Early Earth was an incredibly more "polluted" world than ours today.

The living always adapts (worms capable of digesting polystyrene have been discovered), but it needs time. Anything that goes faster than natural cycles will remain pollution, until it disappears through physical destruction, or adaptation of ecosystems. In the very long term, everything disappears.

9.3 million people die each year from the effects of pollution. 1 billion children are now exposed to serious health effects due to exposure to pollution. An increase in pollution reduces the available resources and the recovery capacities of ecosystems for a given period, to the point of making them irreversible.

POLLUTION

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DEPENDENCY MESH

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"If there's one thing history teaches us, it is that there has never been an energy transition in the past." (Jean-Baptiste Fressoz)

When we look at the evolution of energy sources throughout history, humanity has never known how to move from one energy to another, nor from one material to another: it has simply accumulated new sources above the others, and recent revolutions such as "all electric" (however desirable) or digital do not help, quite the contrary. Apart from wars and supply shortages for political reasons, never such a thing as a transition has happened in history.

Today, at a time when we are talking about constant energy (light and therefore winds, gravity of rivers and tides, direct heat, etc.) or highly renewable energy (bioenergy, biofuels, etc.), it is important to remember that in a world at 85% fossil, 90% non-constant energy, all energies depend on each other, and therefore have neither sustainable substitute nor independence. You need oil, water for all the mines, from lithium to coal, you need coal to make the machines that use oil, you need electricity for the "all-electric" paradigm to come, you need fossil fuels and tons of materials to make solar panels, wind turbines, dams, and all the systems that, whatever happens, are not eternal and will have to be demolished and then made again, using finite resources.

DEPENDENCY MESH

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DYNAMICS OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS

Earth Syst. Dynam., 11, 395–413, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-395-2020

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The traditional approach to common and political decision-making is to apply Taylorism to any element of society. Basically, it comes down to siloing the world and thinking of each problem as having an isolable solution, each taking care of its problem.

A system is any set of interconnected and mutually influencing variables and functions. The systemic approach, developed over the past few decades, consists of taking the parameters as a whole and understanding their spatial complexities (details and mutual influences of the variables), unpredictable (chaos) and dynamic (variables linked by feedback loops…).

This approach is very unintuitive for a human being, who will go more easily towards a heap of static parameters. Systems dynamics is the science of change, evolution, loops, interactions, linearities, stabilisations, etc. It is strongly rooted in mathematics and mass analysis (big data, automated learning, etc.). The Earth system is an extremely complex system, but possible to model, with increasing complexity.

We already know multiple deductions to this approach.

DYNAMICS OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS

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RECYCLING AND DOWNCYCLING

Common goods recycling rates, EU

Strategic materials at risk, EU >>

Global recycling rates per chemical element

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Recycling starts from a supposedly sustainable principle of recovery, reprocessing, then separation for reuse of resources that are neither lost nor transformed (100% reused). However, recycling simply consists in transforming a pollution… Into another pollution. And so on, until an acceptable pollution for the Earth system is obtained. Especially since on the one hand, after a while, certain materials decycle (can no longer be recycled via our known processes and used differently) and that in any case, we do not recycle half of what we use and disdains as waste, at best, for lacking of being able to collect (it's not just about objects: substances too, such as liquids like paint, toothpaste…).

Once again, we are therefore on a formula destined to loss, intended to tend towards zero. �The circularity rate is in fact decreasing, from 9.1% to 6.9% of the total between 2018 and 2026, on 106 Gt.

Recycling is not free, it also consumes a lot of resources, even if it is a much better solution than pushing extractivism to the limit, which would be deadly for the environment anyway. This would already be a damping factor of the worst. Indeed, the inert like the living took millions of years to form over the surface layer of rock.

RECYCLING AND DOWNCYCLING

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MINE DEPLETION

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A third of the resources extracted from the ground by humans between 1900 and 2015 have been so since 2002 (1Tt). We have taken as much over the last 70,000 years as we will take in the next 30, at the current rate. Material obsolescence, whether legitimate or planned (artificial), does not help. Out of 118 elements, including 86 metals, more than 80 are mined, twice as many as barely 70 years ago, constantly looking for substitutes between elements.

We speak of mineral when the resource is identifiable, fairly homogeneous and crystallinally known, of rock when it is relatively heterogeneous and of ore when the rock contains enough of the mineral sought or co-extracted.

It is not just a question of extracting fossil fuels from the ground, it is indeed a question here of an overwhelming majority of the elements of Mendeleev's table, the quantities of which are finite within the thin part of lithosphere accessible in our limits. And all of them are reaching their terms, one by one, except aluminum, iron, magnesium, titanium and manganese. Some elements only have proven or exploitable reserves for a handful of years. And with the pressure of the mirage of a "transition" from thermal to electric, the most used materials will see their extraction multiplied, everything rushing faster... Towards a definitive and initiated shortage. In the meantime, more and more rock must be extracted for less and less material, since historically we started with the easiest and most abundant deposits. It is estimated that more than 40 elements are already in danger of supply... Just to mention chemical elements alone (add lime, sand, oil…). The calculation is dynamic and relates to the contemporary economy, which explains that depending on the R/P ratio (reserves/production rate) the number of remaining years varies (we increase the energy cost and the quantity of mined soil to maintain rates).

Our uses have always been out of bounds, they just become visible. How long will we be able to maintain hospitals, renewables, transport, domestic, food, education, digital services, justice, civil protection, natural disaster management, construction, crafts, without counting all the totally superfluous and macrocephalic part of what we product? Unless connected slippers or water bottles, cat wigs, or USB stones seem useful to us, all listed on marketplaces thousands of times... To never be sold. During this time, we extract precious atoms from dense veins to quickly disseminate them on the surface (wear, loss, discharge, burial, deterioration)... Where we will no longer be able to gather them back.

MINE DEPLETION

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ABUNDANT ENERGY CONCENTRATIONS

World final energy consumption, 1800-2024

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Concentrated and abundant sources -such as fossil fuels and even more nuclear sources- means that the effort required to extract, transport and use them is all the more reduced and the product of their use much stronger. In order, nuclear energy, fossil fuels (then to a lesser extent hydroelectricity, biomass, then the rest) have been incredible facilitators and development vectors.

It is thanks to these characteristics that humanity has been able to make a leap forward: compactness, dangerousness, malleability, ease of extraction, transportability, appearance and shape, etc.

Today, if we were to replace non-human mechanical force with human mechanical force, we would have to... Be 250 times more on the planet, of which 99.6% of humans would be full-time slaves. Much more so in rich countries. Man thus provides at the maximum of their capacities less than 0.5% of what they consumes, smoothed over a life, less and less. Suffice to say that we are addicted to abundant energy.

ABUNDANT ENERGY CONCENTRATIONS

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THERMO-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS

Fossil energy consumption against GDP, per capita

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The historical stability of the interglacial period in which we are (the Holocene, for 11,500 years) helped a lot, in particular to become sedentary then. More recently, the discovery and advent of techniques for the extraction and industrialization of abundant energy sources has resulted in an incredible boom in human progress and development. Before that time, the Earth only had a few million humans.

Humans have been using fossil fuels for thousands of years, some originally outcropping, but it is widely believed that it was Edwin Drake's 1859 petroleum engineering work at Titusville that changed the face of the world and laid the foundations of this modern era.

The most developed countries then passed from an agrarian economy to an economy of production of goods and services, leading to an explosive use of the resources thus discovered.

Steam engine, railroad boom, internal combustion engine, telephony, pasteurization, dynamo, light bulb, nuclear physics, computing, quantum physics… Everything we were born with today and what we are used to comes from there.

THERMO-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS

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INFINITY-BASED ECONOMY

600 EXAJOULES,

2026 WORLD CONSUMPTION

3 850 000 EXAJOULES,

YEARLY SOLAR POWER ABSORBED

3 850 000 EXAJOULES,

YEARLY SOLAR POWER ABSORBED

600 EXAJOULES,

2026 WORLD CONSUMPTION

1 000 000 STARS

(SUN = AVERAGE)

ESTIMATED TOTAL STARS IN THE GALAXY

(150 GIGA STARS)

(SUN = AVERAGE)

1 391 436 000 000 EXAJOULES,

TOTAL SUN POWER

ESTIMATED TOTAL STARS IN THE UNIVERSE

(250 ZETTA STARS)

(SUN = AVERAGE)

+10%

GROWTH

+90 YEARS

+135 YEARS

+145 YEARS

+125 YEARS

+295 YEARS

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The thermo-industrial revolutions have generated a new chimera: the idea that any development of our civilization has no limits. This is, moreover, the basis of any liberal idea (freedom takes precedence and regulation must be minimal, to the detriment of the rest) not to say capitalist (the lucrative and infinite vocation of capital independently of what fuels it, supposedly non-determining, therefore infinite).

The economic theories which then resulted, called "neoclassical", have as their dominant thought that the resources at our disposal are infinite. We know now (and for a long time, in fact) that this is false. Economic growth in GDP is only an accurate reflection of growth in the use of Earth resources. With 10% growth, we would need to consume the equivalent of the energy radiated from the Sun in less than 250 years, and in less than 800 years, all of the energy of the stars in the universe.

To plunge further into these outdated theories is to condemn ourselves to civilizational collapse.

INFINITY-BASED ECONOMY

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Working hours versus labor productivity

Days off from work for vacation and holidays

Working hours per worker in developed countries

Weekly working hours of children per country

France (1962-2007): sectors, diplomas, women employment, working categories

IMPROVEMENT OF LIFE AND USES

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Through scientific and technical progress, we live better, we focus more on things that give meaning to a life. We are born better, we live better, we suffer less, we drive away poverty in all its forms, we die less, we live longer. Thus, the population increases, and lifestyles change.

It seems unthinkable to go back. Nothing was better before, it's a myth destroyed by history and facts. Life expectancy was 25 to 30 years just 4 centuries ago. And the sufferings were infinitely greater, the life miserable, short and hard.

On the other hand, improving the quality of life today amounts to increasing the use of resources: matter, energy, machines, robots, automata, network, information... In the end, it is all the underlying human activity that explodes, replacing human strength and time with something else. Symmetrically, to undergo resource regression is to undergo decline.

IMPROVEMENT OF LIFE AND USES

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POPULATION INCREASE

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Despite appearances, the decisive challenges facing humanity do not come from too large a population. This idea denotes a liberal, postcolonial, accounting and discarding vision of human development. Especially since the emergency exceeds life expectancy and would involve genocide, deadly pandemics, devastating wars or dramatic famines, and waiting for natural deaths by lowering the birth rate would be too long.

Of course, we can think that fewer people equal less consumption, but randomly halving the population, for example, just amounts to doubling (approximately) the time we have. Going from 30 to 60 years changes nothing, and concerns the same generations, to face the same problems. We must simply remember that the current lifestyle of the entire current population, like its quantity, are only aggravating factors, not the source of the problem.

Especially since if we look closely, the richer we are on a global scale, the more responsible we are. Imagining eliminating the poorest 2/3 (5.4 billion people) amounts to eliminating… Barely 20% of pollution.

The world, divisible into countries or regions, is following a very specific demographic evolution, called demographic transition. Through this development, we observe a fall in the number of children per woman of childbearing age, a drop in mortality, then a drop in the birth rate. When human beings live well, they have fewer children. Demographers expect a projection of around 10 to 12 billion human beings on Earth once this transition is complete.

POPULATION INCREASE

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Km/day/person

REBOUND EFFECT

COST

USE

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

International flight

Territorial flight

Motorized two-wheeler

Cards

Buses

Train

Biking

Hitched/animal

Walking

Daily kilometers per day in France, 1800-2017

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The rebound effect, first described by William Stanley Jevons in 1865, refers to the total increase in resources consumed despite technological and technical progress, because the latter make what they improve more accessible. It designates a systemic response to a change.

For example, when we make vehicles cheaper and more efficient, we end up with a larger fleet in circulation, with which people individually drive more per day, increases the number of vehicles per person and their uses.

It can be direct (reduction in purchase and/or usage costs leading to more usage, substitution effect), indirect (idem, but leading to more usage of other goods and services), or structural (multiple declines leading to new types of use).

REBOUND EFFECT

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ENTROPY, WEAR AND ARROW OF TIME

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Among the most complex concepts to understand in physics are the related notions of entropy and the arrow of time. A term introduced in 1865 by Rudolf Clausius, entropy designates a quantity of disorganization of a system. If you pour milk into coffee, the structure goes from a trickle to a cloud to complete dissolution after a while, and will probably never return to the original state. Over time, in the universe, energy (which is not lost, but transformed: first law of thermodynamics) will irremediably transform this system to make it as chaotic as possible (second law).

Likewise, this transformation is one-way: there is no turning back. Finding an old state in the present is a new old state, but not the past. This notion linked to the direction taken by reactions linked to entropy is called the arrow of time.

Finally, whatever happens, if we put energy into a system, it will irremediably end up being the site of physico-chemical reactions, and will deteriorate towards chaos. The wear and tear of everything is inevitable. Nothing lasts indefinitely in our creations. Paradoxically, the best response to entropy is life.

ENTROPY, WEAR AND ARROW OF TIME

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BATCH 6 - 13 CARDS (+GROUPS)

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REVERSING TOWARDS EARTH BALANCE

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This is where everything will end. Undergone or planned. Let us raise our heads to the stars and choose our future together, without losing what keeps us alive on Earth.

"For a human being, to be is to become." �(Albert Jacquard)

REVERSING TOWARDS EARTH BALANCE

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DEGROWTH

SUSTAINABILITY ➡️	CIRCULARITY 🔄	COOPERATION 🤝🏽
USEFUL PRODUCTION ✔️	SHARING ➕	LOCAL PRODUCTION 🛺
WORK-LIFE BALANCE ⚖️	RELATIONAL GOODS 👥	JOY OF LIVING 🥰

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Degrowth is not decline, neither is it recession nor collapse. Degrowing is realizing that humans have never been in this recent period on an infinite coast of prosperity, but in a historical parenthesis consisting in burning faster -too quickly- the easy resources at their disposal. Degrowth is not chaotic self-destruction, it is an organised social project.

Scientific progress has no reason to stop, and society has no reason to erode. It can continue, on the condition of reviewing absolutely all the global thought logic, well beyond the "transitions", or the substitutes. This time, technology will not be able to overcome physics. This time, the miracle will not take place: technical progress is outpaced by uses.

"Utopia has changed sides: today a utopian is someone who believes that everything can go on as before." (Pablo Servigne)

DEGROWTH

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CIVILIZATIONAL COLLAPSE

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The most complicated thing for rich countries, especially so-called Western economies, is to project themselves into the idea that two centuries of explosive (almost) continuous growth can suffer a limit, an asymptote, an end.

On March 2, 1972, researchers at MIT built a system dynamics analysis model of humanity called "World3". From this system, they launched simulations and published a report called "The limits to growth", sold 30 million copies, in 30 languages, and which still is a main reference 50 years later.

To date, despite the corrected variables, and retesting the system, the conclusions remain the same since the beginning:

1. "If current trends of growth in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion continue, the limits of growth on this planet will be reached within the next hundred years. The most likely result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in population and industrial capacity."� 2. "It is possible to alter these growth trends and establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable into the future. [...]"� 3. "If the people of the world decide to strive for this second result rather than the first, the sooner they begin to work towards it, the greater their chances of success."

And since ? When we trace the realities which happened from known values on the hypothetical curves of this report, we inevitably arrive at a model very close to reality over 50 years, and of incredible precision. And a collapse… Somewhere between 2030 and 2050, closer to the second than the first.

CIVILIZATIONAL COLLAPSE

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CRITICALITY OF A CHOICE OF SOCIETY

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We have long since arrived in a transitional period, and we are faced with a societal choice: plan for the fall through degrowth, or watch our civilization collapse. It's time to put what we wish for on the table.

All the developments resulting from social struggles have been made possible by this sudden abundance: leave, retirement, reduced working hours, inclusion, weekends, non-religious holidays, vacations, free time, abolition of slavery, serfdom, human rights, of children, of women, of non-human animals, reduction of misery and suffering, etc. If the Human Development Index (HDI) has increased so far, it is a safe bet that this abundance had something to do with it. �The shadow of the past still lurks.

It is time to realize that crossing these planetary boundaries represents only symptoms of "social immunodeficiency", of which we are both the patients and the disease. Our only common goal: lasting happiness.

At this stage, as Arthur Keller says, "now, it's the catch or the crush".

CRITICALITY OF A SOCIETY CHOICE

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RESILIENCE OF HUMANITY

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Since the dawn of time, humans, with the strength of their neocortex, have been able to project themselves and imagine futures. The future must be sustainable, after a strong planned decline in our metabolism of natural resources. Which in truth resembles the pre-Paleolithic period from which we emerged before this period of growth, which was already not tenable.

We must find sustainable ways to provide for primary needs (sleeping, breathing, drinking, eating, eliminating, thermal protection, being safe, ensuring homeostasis) but also to develop a society that can prosper, anticipate, resist, and at the same time within which progress can continue, within the limits of what is within reach, for all, as a society.

This is the whole issue of critical awareness that we are talking about today.

Enabling a society that recovers in the event of a crisis, that anticipates and develops by adopting just principles, a quest for happiness, and, why not, one day, an abstraction from primitive animal constraints (birth, suffering, death, reproduction, competition , primary needs, etc.) which are ultimately the cause of all the evils in the world. Posthumanism, transhumanism?

RESILIENCE OF HUMANITY

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REGENERATION OF THE LIVING

Possible scenarios for regeneration depending on human choices and selected living organisms resilience factors

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Regeneration refers to the capacity of a system, whatever its scale, to repair itself after having suffered damage, including that of an entire ecosystem.

After the mineral transformation of the soil, the main axis of ecosystem regeneration often remains photosynthesis. Strong sustainability would lead to the regeneration of what can still be regenerated and which has not disappeared.

Often, invasive species return first, then a progressive ecological succession follows, until optimal stability, which can take decades, or even more... Provided that the external parameters have remained viable (climate, soils, nutrients, animal movements, low pollution…), in order to achieve homeostasis (beneficial maintenance of key factors), its climax.

REGENERATION OF THE LIVING

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GEOPOLITICAL STABILIZATION

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If everyone gets started simultaneously, without waiting for others, acts for the common good, without expecting congratulations, and mourns illusory competitiveness, then we can give ourselves a chance to stabilize the anthroposphere.

The barriers are above all geographical, which has led to cultural barriers, which have created linguistic barriers. These unnecessary barriers can be overcome and allow everyone to realize to what extent human beings are identical and their lives linked, politics having to be local and universalist at the same time.

Cultivating withdrawal means cultivating the over-differentiation of populations and individuals.

Cultivating synergy, solidarity, otherness, mutual aid means giving ourselves a chance. The world seen through the prism of another appears different, and yet it is the same.

"Unite! Practice mutual aid! It is the surest way to give each and everyone the greatest security, the best guarantee of existence and physical, intellectual and moral progress." (Peter Kropotkin)

GEOPOLITICAL STABILIZATION

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TERRITORIAL STRUCTURAL REORGANIZATION

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When transportation becomes atrophied, reorganization takes place at limited, local level. And it is geography that will determine the limits of these citizen territories.

When global economy fails, based on false predicates and untenable promises, local pragmatism will prevail.

When liberal and capitalist doctrines validate the idea that the appropriation of the resources can be done indefinitely to the detriment of biocapacity, it is the ethical collectiveness that will have to prevail, probably at the cost of struggles, most dominant ones not realizing that they are a source of aggravation and that they would take everything away with them.

When the market economy and production based on supply and demand become disconnected from the reality of physical flows, it is a society based on needs that will have to take precedence. Choosing degrowth means choosing a social and political reorganization on a local scale and with a worldwide vision.

"Act within your place, think within the world." (Edouard Glissant)

TERRITORIAL STRUCTURAL REORGANIZATION

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DECREASE IN HUMAN SURVIVAL

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As strange as it may seem, it is almost impossible to completely eradicate humans from planet Earth (apart from military scenarios of self-destruction, if any).

Despite all that, maintaining human survival means bringing it to a prehistoric level of consumption, minus the resources exploited in the meantime, minus the lost biocapacity, minus the individual know-how that we will have lost, increased by the knowledge accumulated since.

The human population was just under a billion in 1800, in a world already not sustainable, but much closer to planetary boundaries. In Europe, life expectancy had just risen to about 35 years.

DECREASE IN HUMAN SURVIVAL

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SHORTAGES

Wilfredor - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31822142 - Woody Marshall/News & Record/AP - Wake The Lake - Rebecca Conway

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When a resource is lacking in relation to a need (and arbitrarily to a desire), we speak of scarcity. A collapse of the dynamics of a civilization will probably lead to such events. In general, shortages over-aggravate crisis situations.

They have devastating systemic effects: the slightest disruption announced, propagated, can create absolutely irrational behavior, going as far as the most serious ones. In a world that has cultivated the separation of responsibilities, private enterprise, borders, excessive individualism, the consequences can be disastrous. The meager appearance of a simple virus like SARS-COV-2 in 2019 has shown the perverse effects that there can be in disconnecting individuals and tearing the social fabric apart, directly (shelves emptied without reason, shortages and thefts of protective masks, shortages of gold and banknotes, of freezers…) to indirectly (production of semiconductors, therefore digital, game consoles, kettlebells, building materials…).

So project yourself for a moment and imagine a definitive decrease in resources…

In the meantime, with each passing day, given the current trajectory, there is a strong risk of seeing new shortages arrive, one by one, increasingly long and impactful.

SHORTAGES

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WITHDRAWAL, CONFLICTS, WARS

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Rising of the far right, temptations of absolute order, repression, censorship, segregation, press harassment, fascism, totalitarianism, national movements, designation of scapegoats, xenophobia, allophobia... As soon as a situation involves pain, incomprehension, suffering or death, the first physiological and social reflex is to withdraw, towards a survivalist and individualist vision, solitarily.

When the causes are invisible, unexplained, or untold, irrationality takes over, and crisis management habits through minimization and rapidly searching for causes and solutions, too. Managerial vision has finished destroying the long-term analysis: we buy fire extinguishers when the fire breaks out.

This is what we must avoid at all costs. What is apparently a solution is in truth an aggravation of the phenomena: conflicts, retreats, rejections, wars have an energetic and material cost well beyond the healthy mechanisms of a civilization.

But what to do when we are collectively being and holding the causes, effects and solutions?

WITHDRAWAL, CONFLICTS, WARS

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IRREMEDIABILITY OF MATTER DISPERSION

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What do worn soles, clothes with holes in them, cracked paint, metal sawing, rust, objects in a landfill, a can left in nature, a piece of wrapping paper thrown on the ground, overhead lines for trains, an abandoned building, a chainsaw chain, the treated tooth of a buried corpse, cosmetics, mines, a scratch on your watch or smartphone, or sun cream have in common?

In all cases, these are uses that suffer from partial one-way use. Circular economy does not exist: in addition to the concerns of recycling with or without functional loss, not everything is directly reusable, and requires imperfect physicochemical processes. Entropy pushes everything that contains energy to react, and it is what happens: mechanical losses (abrasion, wear…), spontaneous reactions mix with the emitted and dispersive uses of matter: elements are extracted from the ground, we reduce their entropy by organizing them in an exploitable and complex way, sometimes inseparable, and they end up irremediably, slowly scattered over the surface of the Earth, then disseminated in the soils and oceans by bioturbation (mixing by living things) or mechanical actions (wind, rain, irradiation…), in absolutely unrecoverable densities... Annual losses are estimated at 1/3 of the total

We therefore gradually lose the stock, and not the flow, of exploitable materials deemed sufficiently dense, surfaced, by dispersing it after having drawn it from where it was concentrated.

IRREMEDIABILITY OF MATTER DISPERSION

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Waste is a partial or total use of resources, not valued, which could have been avoided, sometimes for free, sometimes through another less wasteful use.

Waste can be at all scales: impersonal (a dysfunctional common good), individual (overconsuming, unnecessary purchasing, etc.), grouped (requirement of physical presence of employees, goodies, team building, lucrative or voluntary initiatives replacing a failure of public authorities, etc.) but above all they remain structural.

Waste is proportional to the abundance that reigns in a society. The less we have, the more we ration and reason on the need to commonly decide on orientations and activities. The more we have, the more we cultivate selfish liberal individualism, advocating the myth of autonomy. The more progress takes hold, the further we move away from the material necessities of life, suffering and death, and the less we perceive their importance.

Free decisions to launch activities are based on a strict minimum of validation, disconnected from needs by the myth of a regulation by a market, always obeying the same motive: to appropriate the profits and let the collective manage the losses. Meanwhile, the enormous additional costs linked to competition, advertising, freedom of exercise, the means used, bankruptcies, or the presence of an economy liberalizing our relations amplify the metabolism of resources.

WASTE

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FULL WORKSHOP RESTITUTION

FUNDAMENTAL KNOWLEDGE

ASTROPHYSICS

SOCIOECONOMICS

BIOSPHERE

POLLUTION

DECISION AND ACTION?

The beginning and the end of all

Astrophysics

The living

The dynamics of complex systems

Fundamental physics

Human

Planetary boundaries

What we would like to avoid

Human activities

Irreversible resources

Constant resources

Resources too lowly renewable

Highly renewable resources

Strong durability

Current particle physics

Matter

Energy

The Big Bang

Exceeding biocapacity

Technical progress

Scientific progress

Depletion of freshwater resources

New polluting entities

Regression of the atmospheric ozone layer

Ocean acidification

Climate change

Disintegration of the biosphere

Disruption of biogeochemical cycles

Disruption of land use

Concentration of atmospheric aerosols

Biotic resources

Polymerization

Nucleosynthesis and baryogenesis

The universe

Appearance of the astronomical objects

Creation of Earth and its environment

Creation of the Sun and its surroundings

Appearance of life on Earth

Abundant energy concentrations

Rebound effect

Infinity-based economy

Improvement of life and uses

Increased ecological footprint

Pollution

Limits of the anthroposphere

Life cycles

Appearance of sediments and fossils

Resilience of humanity

Civilizational collapse

Population increase

Thermo-industrial revolutions

Criticality of a choice of society

Reversing towards Earth Balance

Laws and Principles of Physics

Appearance of the first organisms

Appearance of water on Earth

Appearance of man on Earth

Biodiversity and natural selection

Complex systems dynamics

Weak durability

Recycling and downcycling

Fossil oil

Fossil gas

Fossil coal

Dependency mesh

Mine depletion

Nuclear energy

Irremediability of dispersion

Entropy, wear and arrow of time

Destabilization of human bases

Degrowth

Decrease in human survival

Decreasing viability on Earth

Shortages

Withdrawal, conflicts, wars

Regeneration of the living

Geopolitical stabilization

Territorial structural reorganization

Waste

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FULL RESTITUTION (BATCHES & CARDS)

BATCHES

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The Earth System Fresco was created by William Pinaud in 2022.

Its distribution is free, provided it is not modified. For all information, the author remains available on their networks.�The license for use is Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Any use is free (not to say "deeply encouraged"), provided you master the concepts that underlie the understanding of the content of this workshop.�Training sessions can be provided by volunteers.

This workshop is greatly inspired by its big brother: the Climate Fresk workshop, created by Cédric Ringenbach, to whom it probably owes everything. However, it is more complex.�It is also inspired by numerous works, in particular the public involvements of personalities such as Arthur Keller, Jean-Marc Jancovici, Aurore Stéphant, Philippe Bihouix, Johan Rockström, Emma Haziza, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Aurélien Barrau, Catherine Wolfram, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, Nicolas Meilhan, as well as many organizations, from the UN (IRP, IPCC, UNESCO, etc.) to the Shift Project, via the Club of Rome and its report The Limits To Growth (Meadows), the European Union, the IEA, Négawatt, the WWF, GreenPeace, EIA, Global Footprint Network and many more people and organizations, the list is fatally too long. These people and entities have in no way supported, participated in, nor endorsed this workshop.

This workshop in no way exempts, but on the contrary encourages participation, even involvement, in all the other existing workshops of this type (and there are many of them!).�It is more than recommended to become an animator of The Climate Fresk at least to animate it, and to train beforehand (videos on YouTube can help you).

Images not individually credited are credited via Pixabay.

For more information : The author: William Pinaud�> https://www.lafresquedusystemeterre.org william_dot_pinaud_at_gmail_dot_com�> https://www.theearthsystemfresco.org https://linktr.ee/DocFX� https://twitter.com/innersonics

THE EARTH SYSTEM FRESCO - A COLLABORATIVE WORKSHOP INSPIRED BY THE CLIMATE FRESK - [EN-US] - [ALL AUDIENCES] - [V2.3 - 07/07/2026]

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