A Weird Aspect of Civilization

Animals tend to use less energy per unit of body mass. An elephant, for example, uses much less energy per pound than a mouse. It's a phenomenon that was named after one of the people who characterized it: Kleiber's Law. A cat having 100x the mass of a mouse only consumes 32x the calories to maintain basal metabolism.

However, things like cities, countries, corporations, even just households don't follow that law. If anything, it seems like the bigger such an entity is, the more energy it wastes. The Globalist Religion dogma states cities are more energy efficient. A subway or bus, for example, is more energy efficient than a person driving in a car. Similar ideal-case arguments about apartment buildings versus houses are made, too. However, a city imports almost everything necessary for life all day every day. That energy cost is probably nearly impossible to score correctly. Also, the bureaucratic entities and governmental entities associated with cities and countries squander enormous resources.

If you look at satellite composite image of the United States, almost all the light green to tan areas are agricultural. It boggles the mind. Pick some area of the US west of Columbus and east of the Rockies and the deserts and zoom in and you'll see farms and pastures.

I can see there's another way to look at civilization "collapse". Really, there's continuity of populations, but the city and the system can be wiped out overnight in historical terms. The products of civilization and cultural artifacts are mostly garbage and for time wasting. Think of TV shows, movies, or broadway, or even stuff like classical music. It's mostly a pile of garbage and idle time filler for passive, idle people.

When there's an energy/or energy/time bottleneck the cities are abandoned first. Rather than being essential part of civilization, like nervous system of an animal, they're really like hair or feathers.