According to Bishop de Bary in the 15th century: Geology is the science of the Earth and Theology the science of the heaven. As a geologist I have studied not only the rocks, but also the behavior of Homo Sapiens sapiens. We have seen in our short history on Earth the rise and the decline of a number of civilizations. The main reason for their downfall is that their growth was unsustainable. They were not anymore able to keep up with the changing conditions. In our western civilization we are confronted with the fact, that we are not anymore able to control our society. National borders crumble down due to the globalization process (electronic highway), depletion of natural resources, urbanization trend, shortage of fresh water and food, deforestation, extinction of species, diminishing fertility, diseases (malaria, aids etc). Maybe one of the main factors is the disintegration of the unit: family as a basis for maintaining the species. The number of divorces is growing, women are going out for work, and time spent on education of children is strongly diminishing. The reduced number of children per household induces more revenues from inheritance and less incentive to work. Children are seeking for kicks, dancing with pills on ear-damaging music. Young children are not playing anymore in the streets, but sitting for their computer participating in cruel games, to kill virtually as many people as possible. Watching TV films full of sex, drugs and violence. They get accustomed to watch horrible scenes of world news.

One of the most characteristic signals of people around me is the total denial of the facts that clearly show that we are in the fall of our western civilization. A good friend once said to me: "I don’t want to hear it. Leave me with my world". This shows that subconsciously people are well aware of the coming crisis. They see for themselves that the traffic jams of cars on the highways become everyday longer and longer, the increasing violence and criminality, the decreasing involvement in society, politics etc. This denial of the facts creates stress in their subconscious minds. They try to find a way out, and come with so-called sustainable solutions, of which can be easily shown that these are pseudo-solutions.

Once not anymore denying these facts, once not anymore trying to look for pseudo-solutions, once not more becoming sad and depressed, I realize that there is nothing anymore that you can do about. After this painful process you enter the stage of acceptance of the bare fact that growth is a natural process of life leading sooner or later to death. It is a creative positive stage in which you are able to see more clearly what life on this planet Earth is all about. It is a sort of relief no energy is anymore lost to anger, frustration, and despair. What is left is the strong desire for me to describe the fall of our western civilization. The time that we are reaping what we have sown. It is also the time to make new fruits for the spring after the winter has passed away. Mankind will continue to live for a long time on this Earth. A new civilization will spring up from the ruins of our lost civilization.

In geological times we have seen many times how after an extinction of a certain species or civilization, niches or open spaces were filled in rapidly and in no time other species or civilizations had taken over. A striking example is the sudden disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, when a large meteorite hit the Earth. The mammals soon overtook their dominance, and since the last 3 million years by the species Homo Sapiens sapiens.

What is the underlying cause of this inevitable process of birth and death, like in every form of life? Sooner or later after being born we are told, that we are going to die, which for many of us rather frightening fact. This bare fact is for many of us quite scary and frightening. One of the reasons that many are looking for a certain religion that will comfort them in believing there is life after death. They will later be judged by their good and evil behavior. This gives them relief and makes the thought of death bearable. Also people who believe in reincarnation have found the meaning of life on Earth. My belief is that I will return to where I came from, whatever that may be!

I came on Earth as a human being 75 years ago, and was confronted with the fact that I will die one day. I also struggled with this idea and I also wanted to find relief in a certain religion or belief and also looked for the reason of life. When I was young I was more reluctant about death, because it was still far away or it can come soon by some accident. This may be the reason that when I was hanging over a precipice at the end of a rope on a mountain in South America I told my companions, who were not anymore able to rescue me from my position: " this is the moment that I am going to die ". I made a fall of 90 meters and was still alive, as I am now 50 years later. Becoming older and having experienced many events. I have become more reflective and putting more questions-marks on matters of life and death, and what is the sense of life, and has nature a moral, what is love, what is egoism and so forth.

I will give you my personal experiences how I have struggled with the fact that I am living in a western society that sooner or later is going to come to an end.

At the end of the sixties I was in state of denial. I thought there must be a solution to the world problems. I started to teach my students the relation between the unequal distribution of natural resources and politics (Geopolitics). This way of teaching was not permitted and the University asked me to leave. In my farewell lecture I said that the University was an institution that will lead us to disaster.

I became an angry young man. After 50 days in prison in 1971, I looked for alternative solutions. Assisting actions to undermine the established society I saw no direct results of these actions. On the contrary, the élan of the sixties died away. I entered a stage of depression and isolation. In 1998 my isolation disappeared by surfing on Internet. I saw a great number of publications on the major world problems like the depletion of oil, and articles from people who are telling about the coming crisis. Still I had a secret hope in finding a way out. I published on Internet my homepage with an article "Where is our planet Earth heading to in the next century" and made a world trip of eight weeks to see and feel with my own eyes and other senses that our western civilization world is heading towards disaster. This world trip made me sad and depressed in seeing so much injustice: the mental genocide on the aboriginal in Australia, the destruction of the rainforest: the home of the Penan tribe in Sarawak, and finally in my own country the elimination of the culture of the "Reizigers" (Travellers).

During a dinner party with my family for my 75th birthday I told them that I was very depressive after all what I had seen. I saw no solution, no light at the end of the tunnel. By telling them openly about my depression I entered the final stage: acceptance.

The only solution I can think of is to get out of my car. But I am not able to do it yet. It will be a sort of mental suicide. Anyway it will not help the problems we are facing. This final phase of acceptance gives me a fountain of new energy, a better channeling of my energy in a positive creative way. I realize more than before that I cannot do anything to stop the accelerating train with nobody on the driver seat, that is heading toward a brick wall. The only thing is to fill the time that is left by talking about it to other people that acceptance is the only way not to become frustrated lose energy on account a depressed mood.

My new work as a geologist will now be to provide people with facts and data to show that growth is unsustainable and that our western society is in its fall towards a cold winter.

The reactions I received can be divided in two categories.

1. It is all nonsense and don't disturb me and leave me alone. I don’t want to hear it anymore.
2. A certain doubt and curiosity about the presented data.

I will advise the last category of people to ask for a second opinion. Let’s take an example of my presented data. I am saying that we are consuming three times more oil than we find, in spite of the new discovery methods of oil finding. How can they verify this data? They can write a letter to the president of an oil company.

Another fact I will, present is that our country need to import goods from an area 22 times the surface of the Netherlands to survive (Ecological footprint). If all the world citizens would live like us, we would need the surface of three planets. Ask your Prime Minister if he agrees with this data. To take one more example: when you eat an apple, it takes an average of 2000 kilometers of transport to bring this apple to your mouth. For the production of this apple we need 3 units of oil. Go to the greengrocer and ask him from which parts of the world his fruits and vegetables come. You will be surprised that they are coming from practically from all the parts of the world: from New Zealand to South Africa, from Mali to Guatemala.

After having this second opinion, the next step will be to tell me which facts are wrong or right. I will be delighted to hear that my thesis was not correct and that we have still a long way to go. But if the data seem to be correct overall than the reader can do again two things

1. to close his eyes while saying "après moi le deluge";
2. to accept the facts and enter into a stage of anger.

A representative of the second category will be upset by the fact that the media and his government have not informed him about these data. But still he does not really want to accept the facts and is going to look for alternative solutions to the problems we are facing. He will go to people of Greenpeace, green professors who will tell him that the major problems can be solved technologically and that we have to apply draconian measures to create a sustainable environment and economy. But after a while he does not see much difference. Traffic jams are becoming worse and violence is increasing etc. This will make him depressive. There are again two ways to get out of this stage:

1. to forget about all the problems and just enjoy life in feasting drinking, travelling etc.
2. to accept the coming disaster and to prepare mentally for the future shock and talk and think openly over it. This creates a positive way of thinking. Making new fruits and seeds for the spring after the winter: the ‘down’-fall of our civilization. He will then make contact with other people who are of the same state of mind. The wall of isolation is cracked and he can see light at the end of the tunnel.

The denial of the fact that we are in the "winter" of our society is harmful for your health. It will produce: burnout's, divorces, stress etc. I think that quite a number of people know already in their subconsciousness, that there is something wrong in our society. Still they refuse consciously to accept it and are looking in vain for solution that are in fact only pseudo-solutions.

In order to create a sound dialogue it is essential to present first my axioms, my starting points, and my beliefs if you want that word. Gödel proved that when you choose a starting point that you cannot prove to be correct, so you are doomed to start with a metaphysical item. He demonstrated that at the fundamental level of logical analysis, self-reference could produce either paradox or indecision. One cannot understand its own mind completely. What to think of the following paradox: the next sentence is untrue. The previous sentence is true.

Therefore I realize that in order to construct a world vision I am obliged to introduce some axioms that I have to take for granted, because I am not able to prove them. I have chosen for the law of conservation of energy; it states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, although it can be changed from one form into another. Even in a vacuum there is plenty of energy.

It is never empty. It is filled with the so-called quantum fluctuations. Hinds from Yale University has succeeded in measuring this force. He got something from nothing. (Foot, 1999)

We can arrange the different forms of energy in an "order of merit". Energy of a higher form can be degraded into a lower form but a lower form can never be wholly converted back into a higher form. This is the second law of thermodynamics.

You can see for yourself from every-day life a good example of this law. When you open the window of your heated room in on a cold winter day, the temperature of the room will drop. The energy is lost for you, you cannot get it back in your room unless you use new energy in the form of oil or gas. Our universe is proceeding from order to chaos. Energy from the sun is used for all sort of uses (food, transport etc). After having been used it has been transformed in heat and waste. If universe is going from workable energy to unworkable energy it means it goes from order to chaos. How does this fit in the creation of life? Is this not in contradiction with the second law of thermodynamics?

Freeman Dyson published in Scientific American (September p.50-59, 1971) "The energy in the universe". This article has made an enormous impression on me. He showed me clearly what implication this second law of thermodynamics has on the evolution of our solar system and of course on the entire universe. The subtitle gives also a good view of his article:

"The energy flows on the Earth are embedded in the energy flows in the universe. A delicate balance among gravitation, nuclear reactions and radiation keeps the energy from flowing too fast".

Dyson places gravity on top of the list of order of merit. But nobody really knows what gravity is although it is influencing us every moment. What we know is that gravitational energy can be converted into motion, light and heat. His order of merit is:

Dyson asks a fundamental question:

"How does it happen that the gravitational energy of the universe is still predominant?"

His answer is quite simple. The universe survives by a succession of "hang-ups", an obstacle that arrests the normal processes of degradation of energy. Although he discusses a number of hang-ups, we will elaborate on the hang up that created our existence on Earth. Of great importance is that the Earth has a spin and is orbiting around the sun. It is preserved by it from collapsing into the sun. Without the spin hang-up no planetary system could have been formed at the time the sun condensed out of the interstellar gas.

The sun contracted by gravitational forces it started the nuclear fusion of hydrogen. The hydrogen consists of a proton with an orbiting electron. The orbital motion is preventing the electron from crashing on the proton. The energy comes from the fusion of two hydrogen protons. These nuclear reactions prevented a further gravitational compression. This hang-up will last for 10 billion years. When the hydrogen is all burnt down gravitational contraction can be resumed. These 10 billion years are of crucial importance for us. We are just half- way; half of the quantity of the hydrogen fuel in the sun has been consumed. The light from the sun brings energy to the Earth in photons of light. The Earth including its inhabitants does not retain this energy, but (after some while) re-radiates it all back into space. What the sun has done for us is to supply us with a huge source of energy. The Earth has converted this energy in remarkable and intricately organized structures like us. From relative simple building stones: atoms, molecules, cells and Homo sapiens have been evolved.

Order was created. Does this not defy the second law of thermodynamics? No, because the energy from the universe was used for the creation of complex structures like Homo sapiens sapiens. These complex structures are far from away from equilibrium and will finally come to an end, less workable energy will be left over. So the building of complex structures far from equilibrium are the hang-ups of Dyson, which postpone the degradation of high-energy form into lower forms.

We have entered into an information society. This process of information needs also energy.

Information is derived from Latin informare, which means "give form to". The energy is taken from somewhere else. In the computer the 0 and 1 have before we enter data have equal probabilities. After the data has interacted the computer memory is a result of a transition of a disordered state to an ordered state. That means that the data of the computer memory have to interact with a human brain. This needs a certain amount of energy. This energy is dissipated as heat and increases the amount of disorder in the Universe. Information has no value in itself. The value of information comes out mainly in connection with the human action (Sveiby 1994, Shannon and Weaver, 1959).

Figure 1. The demon van Maxwell (after Bennett, 1987)

In 1871 James Clerk Maxwell has suggested that the second law of thermodynamics could be violated. A creature that is small enough to see and handle individual molecules. Let us assume that vessels divided in two portions A and B, by a division with a small hole. A being (the demon of Maxwell), who can see the individual molecules, opens and closes this hole so that he allows only the swifter molecules going from A to B and the slower from B to A.

He will, without expenditure of work, raise temperature of B and lower that in A. this means a direct violation of the second law. Since 1971 many physicist have tried to resolve this puzzle.

Only recently proof has been found that the second law was not violated by this thought experiment of Maxwell.

It was Charles Bennett (1987) who discovered that although the observation and measuring of molecules does not need energy, but the little devil of Maxwell demon should forget the information of the speed of the last measured molecule in order to measure the speed a new molecule. It is this forgetting that costs energy. These conclusions were base of the classical physics. It has been Seth Loyd (Physical Review A, November 1997), who has shown that in the quantum mechanics this even holds true. Quantum mechanics learn us measurements create information, because before measurements everything was in a state of superposition with all possible outcomes. This new information has to be erased before a new measurement could be made. This was the final blow to the Maxwell demon that reigned in the physical world for 127 years.

Our consciousness is also a product of a growing complexity of our brain, which is capable to realize that we have a finite time to live on this planet. In fact we are facing that every living thing is doomed to die. But not only living things but all existing forms of energy in our universe are coming to an end.