This is a wonderful, beautiful essay. Thank you so much! It's a keeper that I will be printing out. I reposted it in the comments over at Climate and Economy
Thanks Erica 🙏 I’ve focused on the interior experience of collapse in recent essays - I wanted to zoom out and go big picture again for a moment. Helps keep perspective 😊
It is not unusual at all to be alive at this exact moment: it looks like the global population peak will occur within the next ten years so this is the time when most people have been, or will ever be, alive so now is also the most likely time to be alive, statistically speaking.
Oh, and the heat death of the universe is not assured because the Hubble Constant seems to have several possible values, some of which imply a Big Crunch awaits us in the distant future. Well, not us, we're about to become extinct...
I suggest that, rather than focus on the very long term entropic condition of the cosmos, we should focus on negentropy. Actually I would prefer to the use term "potentiality". Negentropy, negative entropy or potentiality, refers to a process or state where a system becomes more ordered, structured, and organized, directly opposing the natural tendency toward entropy (disorder). Why should this be our focus? Because we are emergent within a bubble of potentiality called Earth. There was no inevitability to the emergence of photosynthesis on our planet and subsequent the unstable but complex chemistry enabled by free oxygen in large concentration. The near ubiquity of oxygen enables the emergence of complex life fuelled by controllable (near stable) release of potential energy. Ironically, our science fiction writers suppose that planets supporting oxygen breathing organisms "Class M planets - per Star Trek" are replete. This merely reflects the arrogance of the physics mind set over biology or ecology. This focus on potentiality rather than entropy would render a very different understanding of the optimum characteristics of a flourishing long term civilization on this planet. Looking to biological/ecological metaphors for such a civilization might be better than as "an energy consuming engine". Are you game?
Thank you for showing so beautifully that science is not anathema to poetry.
This is a wonderful, beautiful essay. Thank you so much! It's a keeper that I will be printing out. I reposted it in the comments over at Climate and Economy
https://climateandeconomy.com/2026/02/21/21st-february-2026-todays-round-up-of-climate-news/#comment-18264
Thanks MB, really appreciate this 🙏
Hi Cassandra, thanks for the pointer to this essay, it's a beauty...Flippr
I love your work. Feels like home. Kinetic stasis. Thank you.
Thanks so much Shim 🙏
Powerful and haunting, even more than usual.
Thanks Erica 🙏 I’ve focused on the interior experience of collapse in recent essays - I wanted to zoom out and go big picture again for a moment. Helps keep perspective 😊
“Come on, Yolanda! What’s Fonzie like?”
😂 I get into the weeds in my other essays!
It is not unusual at all to be alive at this exact moment: it looks like the global population peak will occur within the next ten years so this is the time when most people have been, or will ever be, alive so now is also the most likely time to be alive, statistically speaking.
Oh, and the heat death of the universe is not assured because the Hubble Constant seems to have several possible values, some of which imply a Big Crunch awaits us in the distant future. Well, not us, we're about to become extinct...
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/544/1/975/8281988?login=false
Hello Adrian,
I suggest that, rather than focus on the very long term entropic condition of the cosmos, we should focus on negentropy. Actually I would prefer to the use term "potentiality". Negentropy, negative entropy or potentiality, refers to a process or state where a system becomes more ordered, structured, and organized, directly opposing the natural tendency toward entropy (disorder). Why should this be our focus? Because we are emergent within a bubble of potentiality called Earth. There was no inevitability to the emergence of photosynthesis on our planet and subsequent the unstable but complex chemistry enabled by free oxygen in large concentration. The near ubiquity of oxygen enables the emergence of complex life fuelled by controllable (near stable) release of potential energy. Ironically, our science fiction writers suppose that planets supporting oxygen breathing organisms "Class M planets - per Star Trek" are replete. This merely reflects the arrogance of the physics mind set over biology or ecology. This focus on potentiality rather than entropy would render a very different understanding of the optimum characteristics of a flourishing long term civilization on this planet. Looking to biological/ecological metaphors for such a civilization might be better than as "an energy consuming engine". Are you game?
The only constant in the universe is change. Buckle up.
Buckle up you say? I say that may take centuries to do...