Pittsburgh-ification of China
by Mark Barlow
My prediction about China entering a period similar to 1970’s American Rust Belt style industrial collapse is coming true.
Background
From 1988 to 2008, I was confused and misunderstood the causes of the industrial collapse in my hometown, East Liverpool, Ohio. I had heard numerous clichéd Rust Belt origin stories: greedy corporations outsourcing jobs, labor unions becoming too expensive, incompetent, lazy, or spoiled grandchildren inheriting company leadership, ineffective government programs, government over regulation or excessive taxation—the list goes on, these are just a few of the favorites.
However, in 2008, during the Global Energy Crisis (when oil prices were nearing $200 per barrel)—a crisis oddly branded as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC)—I came across the ideas of M.K. Hubbert and Peter Thiel. In the 1950s, M.K. Hubbert had predicted an event like the GFC occurring in the early 21st century, though he did not live to see the day he could say, "I told you so." Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley technology investor, was among the first high-profile technologists to admit there was a problem with technological progress.
For me, after listening to Hubbert and Thiel, I had heard enough. I became convinced that our economic prosperity was not so much a people problem but a physics problem. Cheap energy equals prosperous people and thriving cities. From there, I embarked on a seven-year, Don Quixote-esque quest to install solar panels… but that’s a story for another time.
In 2012, I came across the writings of William McCord, who authored History of Columbiana County, Ohio and Representative Citizens. There it was, in black and white: Chapter 10, Earth’s Hidden Treasures.
McCord described a city powered by free energy—East Liverpool, Ohio. No, there were no perpetual motion machines involved. The free energy came from natural gas wells. These shallow gas wells were easy to tap and provided a virtually free source of natural gas. This was the secret behind the success of what was once the Ceramics Capital of the World.
As obvious as it seemed to me, I struggled to convince others that energy was even a problem. People love stories where other people are to blame, scapegoating is practically a favorite pastime. So, I started to think about making predictions based on this knowledge. Perhaps that would be more convincing...
Predicting Pittsburgh-ification
In the writings of McCord he accounted for the vast deposits coal deposits surrounding the region of East Liverpool and Columbiana County.
I looked at the population data for Pittsburgh and saw that it peaked around 700,000 people in the year 1950 and collapsed to somewhere around 300,000 people today (2025). Perhaps energy resources or lack thereof was to blame?
Sure enough, when I looked at the coal production data from Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Mines and Mineral Industries, the correlation between energy (coal) and people was striking. Those interested to examine the raw data can find it on my website.
In attempt to bring this interesting story about people and energy more attention, I made the video Peak Pittsburgh in 2021.
At the end of this video, with a bit of gallows humor, I invite any viewers of my channel living in China to visit Wheeling, West Virginia to see your future. I suggested that China, currently the world’s largest consumer of coal, will hit a period in it’s own history that is similar to 1970’s Rust Belt America.
For years I joked, but in a semi-serious way, that East Liverpool is the city of the future. East Liverpool’s fate is what happens when prosperity meets energy scarcity.
To coin a term Pittsburgh-ification: the reduction of people and abilities due to energy constraints... Pittsburgh was once America’s greatest industrial and technological city. Home to George Westinghouse (and briefly Nikola Tesla), Andrew Carnegie, John Brashear, Jonas Salk… list goes on. Now the city has only a fraction of the people and innovation capacity it had but 60 years ago. This was/is not a people problem, a government problem, or a creativity problem, it’s an energy problem.
Energy is simply a gift from nature; it cannot be produced by any technology known to man. Our technologies can only help us locate energy, utilize it, and share it. Once it’s used, it is radiated back into the vast universe from which it came.
Last night, while doing my usual doom-scrolling, I came across a newsreel from China that saddened me but also inspired this post. The scenes felt eerily familiar—reminiscent of the nightly news I grew up watching in the 1980s and early ’90s in the greater Pittsburgh and Ohio Rust Belt region.
Watching this video brought back memories of KDKA or WTOV covering the closing of a steel mill or a labor union dispute in Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Wheeling, or Weirton. Only difference being everyone in the video is Chinese. And so it begins… the Pittsburgh-ification of China.
The graph above helps to illustrate the plateauing of China’s ability to consume coal. This plateau is not from feeling guilty about environmental damage or that Greta Thunberg has secretly taken control of the Chinese government. It is happening for geological reasons, mining limitations and the economics of using more and more energy to extract ever smaller energy deposits.
“Behold and see as you pass by, as you are now so once was I, as I am now so you will be, prepare to Pittsburgh-ify and follow me.”
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