The name of the abyss is energy. People tend to worry about one crisis at a time. We do so at our peril. Right now, the crisis of the moment is climate warming, but the decline of fossil energy will affect more people more seriously than climate change for most of this century. Both will generate a coming crisis in food production, though declining fossil energy will eventually stop forcing the climate warming.

…and the source of the crisis is the growth of human population and consumption. Rising population and consumption led to our profligate use of fossil energy, which in turn has been the principal cause of anthropogenic climate change. Further increase in U.S. and world population will make the crisis worse, as will rising consumption levels in developing countries.

The present era begins with the invention of the steam engine in the 18th Century. That innocent invention, first built to pump water out of mines, soon required fossil fuel. It led to the industrial and agricultural revolutions and to the modern world, but the demand for that fuel has led the world, with gathering speed, into a series of interactive changes that are coming together and leading into a giant crisis new to human experience.