The robust carbon intensity of global primary energy

[GliderGuider]

7. You can't really look at individual states for this purpose

Global civilization is too cross-linked to allow any state to stand or fall alone. If the overall global energy begins to drop, the flow through the system as a whole will decrease. Energy flow is what allows self-organizing systems to maintain their structure and size. If the flow diminishes, the system begins to lose either structure or size.

Some nations will fall faster than others, but that's not really the issue for me.

Take a human body as the analog of our civilization. Individual cells (analogous to individual humans) can die without affecting the body as a whole; if an organ (analogous to a nation) becomes necrotic it will affect other organs and the overall system to some extent. But if the energy flow through the whole system is compromised - by starvation in the human analogy - the system begins to decline. First the body enters a catabolic state in which it burns up its stored reserves of fat and then muscle. If the energy shortage is prolonged, organ shutdown begins. If it persists longer, the body dies.

From a thermodynamic point of view, exactly the same thing happens to any self-organizing system that is deprived of energy. If we're talking about a civilization that runs short of energy, first we start burning the furniture (catabolism); then weak nations begin to fail; then the whole system loses coherence and fails. At that point all the cells (i.e. people) begin to die.