Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

“We are completely capable as a species of devolving into a fractured, dark, poor, hungry world while still increasing greenhouse gas emissions.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Not only does greentech fail to generate sufficient electricity in most locations to contribute meaningfully to addressing our climate concerns but also it’s laughable to think that most locations could manufacture the necessary components in the first place, simply due to the lack of inputs. In truly unfortunate contrast, one product that does exist in most places is low-quality coal.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Chinese fascism has worked to this point, but between a collapse of domestic consumption due to demographic aging, a loss of export markets due to deglobalization, and an inability to protect the imports of energy and raw materials required to make it all work, China’s embracing of narcissistic nationalism risks spawning internal unrest that will consume the Communist Party.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“The world’s demographic structure passed the point of no return twenty to forty years ago. The 2020s are the decade when it all breaks apart.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Bottom line: the world we know is eminently fragile. And that’s when it is working to design. Today’s economic landscape isn’t so much dependent upon as it is eminently addicted to American strategic and tactical overwatch. Remove the Americans, and long-haul shipping degrades from being the norm to being the exception. Remove mass consumption due to demographic collapses and the entire economic argument for mass integration collapses. One way or another, our “normalâ€� is going to end, and end soon.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Future Europe’s problems are many, but four stand out. The first is energy: The Europeans are more dependent upon energy imports than the Asians, and no two major European countries think that problem can be solved the same way. The Germans fear that not having a deal with the Russians means war. The Poles want a deal with anyone but Russia. The Spanish know the only solution is in the Western Hemisphere. The Italians fear they must occupy Libya. The French want to force a deal on Algeria. The Brits are eyeing West Africa. Everyone is right. Everyone is wrong. The second is demographic: The European countries long ago aged past the point of even theoretical repopulation, meaning that the European Union is now functionally an export union. Without the American-led Order, the Europeans lose any possibility of exporting goods, which eliminates the possibility of maintaining European society in its current form. The third is economic preference: Perhaps it is mostly subconscious these days, but the Europeans are aware of their bloody history. A large number of conscious decisions were made by European leaders to remodel their systems with a socialist bent so their populations would be vested within their collective systems. This worked. This worked well. But only in the context of the Order with the Americans paying for the bulk of defense costs and enabling growth that the Europeans could have never fostered themselves. Deglobalize and Europe’s demographics and lack of global reach suggest that permanent recession is among the better interpretations of the geopolitical tea leaves. I do not see a path forward in which the core of the European socialist-democratic model can survive. The fourth and final problem: Not all European states are created equal. For every British heavyweight, there is a Greek basket case. For every insulated France, there is a vulnerable Latvia. Some countries are secure or rich or have a tradition of power projection. Others are vulnerable or poor or are little more than historical doormats. Perhaps worst of all, the biggest economic player (Germany) is the one with no options but to be the center weight of everything, while the two countries with the greatest capacity to go solo (France and the United Kingdom) hedged their bets and never really integrated with the rest of Europe. There’s little reason to expect the French to use their reach to benefit Europe, and there’s no reason to expect assistance from the British, who formally seceded from the European Union in 2020. History,”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“The world currently has two reasonably disturbing and disturbingly reasonable examples as to what this unraveling might look like: Zimbabwe and Venezuela. In both cases mismanagement par excellence destroyed the ability of both countries to produce their for-export goods—foodstuffs in the case of Zimbabwe, oil and oil products in the case of Venezuela—resulting in funds shortages so extreme, the ability of the countries to import largely collapsed. In Zimbabwe, the end result was more than a decade of negative economic growth, generating outcomes far worse than those of the Great Depression, with the bulk of the population reduced to subsistence farming. Venezuela wasn’t so . . . fortunate. It imported more than two-thirds of its foodstuffs before its economic collapse. Venezuelan oil production dropped so much, the country even lacks sufficient fuel to sow crops, contributing to the worst famine in the history of the Western Hemisphere. I don’t use these examples lightly. The word you are looking for to describe this outcome isn’t “deglobalizeâ€� or even “deindustrialize,â€� but instead “decivilize.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“A typical 100-kilowatt-hour Tesla lithium-ion battery is built in China on a largely coal-powered grid. Such an energy- and carbonintensive manufacturing process releases 13,500 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions, roughly equivalent to the carbon pollution released by a conventional gasoline-powered car traveling 33,000 miles. That 33,000-miles figure assumes the Tesla is only recharged by 100 percent greentech-generated electricity.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Everything about modern China—from its industrial structure to its food sourcing to its income streams—is a direct outcome of the American-led Order. Remove the Americans and China loses energy access, income from manufactures sales, the ability to import the raw materials to make those manufactures in the first place, and the ability to either import or grow its own food. China absolutely faces deindustrialization and deurbanization on a scale that is nothing less than mythic. It almost certainly faces political disintegration and even de-civilization. And it does so against a backdrop of an already disintegrating demography.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“We aren’t simply looking at a demographically induced economic breakdown; we are looking at the end of a half millennium of economic history. At present, I see only two preexisting economic models that might work for the world we’re (d)evolving into. Both are very old-school: The first is plain olâ€� imperialism. For this to work, the country in question must have a military, especially one with a powerful navy capable of large-scale amphibious assault. That military ventures forth to conquer territories and peoples, and then exploits said territories and peoples in whatever way it wishes: forcing conquered labor to craft products, stripping conquered territories of resources, treating conquered people as a captive market for its own products, etc. The British Empire at its height excelled at this, but to be honest, so did any other post-Columbus political entity that used the word “empireâ€� in its name. If this sounds like mass slavery with some geographic and legal displacement between master and slave, you’re thinking in the right general direction. The second is something called mercantilism, an economic system in which you heavily restrict the ability of anyone to export anything to your consumer base, but in which you also ram whatever of your production you can down the throats of anyone else. Such ramming is often done with a secondary goal of wrecking local production capacity so the target market is dependent upon you in the long term. The imperial-era French engaged in mercantilism as a matter of course, but so too did any up-and-coming industrial power. The British famously product-dumped on the Germans in the early 1800s, while the Germans did the same to anyone they could reach in the late 1800s. One could argue (fairly easily) that mercantilism was more or less the standard national economic operating policy for China in the 2000s and 2010s (under American strategic cover, no less). In essence, both possible models would be implemented with an eye toward sucking other peoples dry, and transferring the pain of general economic dislocation from the invaders to the invaded. Getting a larger slice of a smaller pie, as it were. Both models might theoretically work in a poorer, more violent, more fractured world—particularly if they are married. But even together, some version of imperialist mercantilism faces a singular, overarching, likely condemning problem: Too many guns, not enough boots.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“On the farm, having children was often more an economic decision than it was about love. Children were free labor that were de facto chained to their parentsâ€� economic needs. There was an understanding—rooted in millennia of cultural and economic norms—that children would either take over the farm as their parents aged, or at least not move all that far away. The extended family formed a tribe that consistently supported one another. This cultural-economic dynamic has held true since the dawn of recorded history, even to and through the consolidation of the world into empires and nation-states.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Some 80 percent of the world’s high-quality quartz that ultimately makes up electronic-grade silicon comes from a single mine in North Freakinâ€� Carolina. Want to remain modern? You pretty much must get along well with the Americans. They will soon have something they have never had: resource control over the base material of the Digital Age. (They’re also going to do pretty well dominating the overall high-end semiconductor space, but that particular breakdown is in the next chapter.)”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“I cannot provide you with a better way forward. Nor can I provide you with a eulogy for something that never happened. Geography does not change. Demographics do not lie. And we have a historyful of history as to how countries and peoples react to their environment.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“In absolute terms the biggest loser by far will be China. China sits at the end of the world’s longest supply routes for nearly everything it imports, including roughly 80 percent of its oil needs. China’s navy lacks the range necessary to secure, via trade or conquest, agricultural products—or even the inputs to grow and raise its own.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“The industrialized Order hasn’t simply enabled us to increase the total calories grown by a factor of seven since 1945; it has enabled vast swaths of the planet to have large populations when geography alone wouldn’t previously support them. Populations in North Africa are up by over a factor of five since 1950, Iran over six, while Saudi Arabia and Yemen have increased by over a factor of ten. Bulk food shipments originating a continent (or more) away are now a commonality.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Most people think of the Bretton Woods system as a sort of Pax Americana. The American Century, if you will. But that’s simply not the case. The entire concept of the Order is that the United States disadvantages itself economically in order to purchase the loyalty of a global alliance. That is what globalization is. The past several decades haven’t been an American Century. They’ve been an American sacrifice.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“for now, lithium and cobalt are all we have. To date they are the only materials we have sufficiently decoded to make rechargeable batteries out of at scale. We know that the “greenâ€� path we are on is unsustainable. We just don’t have a better one to consider until our materials science improves.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“A typical 100-kilowatt-hour Tesla lithium-ion battery is built in China on a largely coal-powered grid. Such an energy- and carbonintensive manufacturing process releases 13,500 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions, roughly equivalent to the carbon pollution released by a conventional gasoline-powered car traveling 33,000 miles. That 33,000-miles figure assumes the Tesla is only recharged by 100 percent greentech-generated electricity. More realistically? The American grid is powered by 40 percent natural gas and 19 percent coal. This more traditional electricity-generation profile extends the “carbon break-evenâ€� point of the Tesla out to 55,000 miles. If anything, this overstates how green-friendly an electric vehicle might be.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“More than half of commercially usable cobalt comes from a single country: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (a near-dictatorial place that is neither democratic nor a republic nor all that far from being outright failed). Much of that production is generated illegally, with artisanal miners (a fancy term to describe individuals who grab a shovel, climb over barbed wire, and evade shoot-on-sight guards in order to scrape out a few bits of ore) selling their output to Chinese middlemen for pennies.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Megawatt of electricity-generating capacity for megawatt of electricity-generating capacity, greentech requires two to five times the copper and chromium of more traditional methods of generating power, as well as a host of other materials that do not feature at all in our current power plant inputs: most notably manganese, zinc, graphite, and silicon.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“With the status of greentech technology in 2022, in most cases that parallel system is a boring, conventional system that runs on either natural gas or coal. Let me underline that: greentech today is so unreliable in most locations that those localities that do attempt greentech have no choice but to maintain a full conventional system for their total peak demand—at full cost.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“We think of modern Europe as a region of culture, democracy, and peace. As having escaped history. But that escape is largely due to the Americansâ€� restructuring of all things European. What lies under the historical veneer of calm is the most war-torn and strategically unstable patch of land on the planet.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Deglobalize and Europe’s demographics and lack of global reach suggest that permanent recession is among the better interpretations of the geopolitical tea leaves. I do not see a path forward in which the core of the European socialist-democratic model can survive.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Overall, the American Millennial demographic group falls into two categories. The first match the stereotype of entitlement and laziness and taking an extended adolescence between college and entering the workforce. The second . . . got screwed: they attempted to be adults, but got sideswiped by the combination of Boomers squeezing them out of the workforce, and the mass unemployment triggered by the 2007â€�09 financial crisis. Regardless of bucket, the Millennials lost years of meaningful work experience, and today are the least skilled of any equivalent age cohort in modern American history”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“A typical 100-kilowatt-hour Tesla lithium-ion battery is built in China on a largely coal-powered grid. Such an energy- and carbonintensive manufacturing process releases 13,500 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions, roughly equivalent to the carbon pollution released by a conventional gasoline-powered car traveling 33,000 miles. That 33,000-miles figure assumes the Tesla is only recharged by 100 percent greentech-generated electricity. More realistically? The American grid is powered by 40 percent natural gas and 19 percent coal. This more traditional electricity-generation profile extends the “carbon break-evenâ€� point of the Tesla out to 55,000 miles. If anything, this overstates how green-friendly an electric vehicle might be. Most cars—EVs included—are driven during the day. That means they charge at night, when solar-generated electricity cannot be part of the fuel mix.*”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Regardless of what goes wrong, long-haul transport is an instant casualty, because long-haul transport doesn’t simply require absolute peace in this or that region; it requires absolute peace in all regions. Such long-haul disruption describes three-quarters of all shipments in energy, manufacturing, and agriculture.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Part of the Mexico factor is downright counterintuitive. The dominant ethnic group in Mexico originates from Spain, while the dominant “ethnicâ€� group in the United States is white Caucasian. In Mexican eyes, that isn’t all that different. Mexicans of Spanish descent somewhat look down on Mexicans of indigenous descent, and they feel more or less the same way about Central American migrants as Americans do.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“The trauma of the Soviet collapse was economic, cultural, political, strategic—and demographic. Between 1986 and 1994, the birth rate halved while the death rate nearly doubled. Russia today is deindustrializing at the same time its population is collapsing. Dark? Yes, but Russia is probably one of the best-case scenarios for much of the industrialized world. Russia, after all, at least has ample capacity at home to feed and fuel itself in addition to sufficient nuclear weapons to make any would-be aggressor stop and think (a few dozen times) before launching an assault.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“Everything that capitalism and fascism and the rest were designed to balance or manage—supply, demand, production, capital, labor, debt, scarcity, logistics—isn’t so much contorting as evolving into forms we have literally never experienced as a species. We are entering a period of extreme transformation, with our strategic, political, economic, technological, demographic, and cultural norms all in flux at the same time. Of course we will shift to a different management system. Second, the process will be the very definition of traumatic. The concept of more has been our guiding light as a species for centuries. From a certain point of view, the past seventy years of globalization have simply been “moreâ€� on steroids, a sharp uptake on our long-cherished economic understandings. Between the demographic inversion and the end of globalization, we are not simply ending our long experience with more, or even beginning a terrifying new world of less; we face economic free fall as everything that has underpinned humanity’s economic existence since the Renaissance unwinds all at once.”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

“In a safe, globalized world such a hybridization model can limp along so long as the commodities flow out and the money flows in. But in an unsafe, fractured world where trade is sharply circumscribed, outright national collapse will by far not be the biggest problem these peoples face. In these countries the very population is vulnerable to changes farther abroad. The industrial technologies that reduce mortality and raise standards of living cannot be uninvented, but if trade collapses, these technologies can be denied. Should anything impact these countriesâ€� commodity outflows or the income or product inflows, the entire place will break down while experiencing deep-rooted famine on a biblical scale. Economic development, quality of life, longevity, health, and demographic expansion are all subject to the whims of globalization. Or rather, in this case, deglobalization”
― Peter Zeihan, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization