Interview: Tom Murphy
A physicist and the math on the end of growth
Talking with Tom Murphy, professor emeritus of the departments of Physics and Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of California, San Diego, passionate astronomer, author of the Do the Math blog and the Metastatic Modernity series on mapping the intersections of thermodynamics, ecological limits, and the long arc of civilizational collapse…
On species-level growth versus the fantasy of the endless economy, on Dyson spheres, on boiling the oceans, on the sixth mass extinction, on solar panels that preserve modernity rather than the planet, on peak oil and fracking, on demographic modeling, on Africa’s food spigot, on John Michael Greer and “collapse now to avoid the rush”, on sealed-glass shrimp, Mars as juvenile fantasy, on Hobbes as mythology, on rivulets down a windshield, on the amoeba’s genius and thirteen thousand genes, on hunter gather lifestyles, carrying loads of the planet, on friction fire, flint knapping, atlatl darts, on written language as the thing academics will never speak against, Tom’s work challenges both the Mars-colonizing techno-optimist and the solar-cheering mainstream environmentalist, arguing instead for falling out of love with modernity: not doom for humanity, or life, ultimately trying to provide quantitative assessment of the challenges associated with long-term human success on a finite planet.
Excerpts
Tom Murphy’s Law
And my version of Murphy’s Law is that it’s not if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. It’s that if something can happen, you shouldn’t be surprised if it does.
On Authentic Living
I’m a prisoner, and I don’t feel hypocritical bashing the prison that I’m in.
I think that’s valid. What I can do is just try to raise awareness that we don’t have to be in a prison, and ultimately we might escape to more authentic ways of living and dispel the mythology around the, fear, this irrational fear about other ways of living that have worked well for humans for countless millennia.
On The Sixth Mass Extinction
“Preserving our ability to crank out terawatts of energy is exactly the same as preserving our ability to continue a sixth mass extinction.”
Aside from his work with Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation Project, Tom Murphy is known for his blog “Do The Math” which examines societal issues related to energy production, climate change, and economic growth from an astrophysicist’s perspective