Crazy Town24 Sep 2025

Crazy Town Classics - Maximum Power and Scarcity, or... the Story of the Birdbrained Backhoe on the Beach

The “maximum power principle” may sound like the doctrine of an evil supervillain, but it actually applies to all living creatures. The principle states that biological systems organize to increase power whenever constraints allow. Given the way humans adhere to this principle, especially by overexploiting fossil fuels, we often do behave like supervillains, wielding power in wildly irresponsible ways and triggering climate change, biodiversity loss, and other aspects of our sustainability predicament. Sometimes it seems like we’re using a backhoe to dig our own grave. Fortunately, once you understand efficiency and its different flavors, you can see opportunities to optimize power rather than maximize it. While considering the outlook for humanity, the Crazy Townies ponder a weird question: are we smarter than reindeer? Richard Heinberg, author of Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival, joins the team to share his research on how people can optimize power. Originally recorded on May 6, 2021.

Sources/Links/Notes:

Richard Heinberg’s book is Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival.
John DeLong’s definition of the maximum power principle is that biological systems organize to increase power whenever the system constraints allow.
DeLong also wrote: “The maximum power principle predicts the outcomes of two-species competition experiments“.
Statistics on the Bagger 293 bucket-wheel excavator
Dams powered airplane and ship building in the Pacific Northwest (Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams).
The cross-Atlantic sailing voyage of Greta Thunberg
Short comic with the story of reindeer on St. Matthew Island
Episode of the Radiolab podcast with a wild story about mTOR

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