 | Five Easy Leases: Ghawar's Discovery Wells | The Oil Drum | Unintended Consequences: The Long Term Impacts of Crisis Blogging |  |
From a Failed Growth Economy to a Steady-State Economy
Posted by Nate Hagens on June 6, 2009 - 11:11am
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: ecological economics, herman daly, steady state economy [list all tags]
This past week was the United States Society for Ecological Economics bi-annual conference (at American University near Washington DC). Herman Daly was honored for his many and longstanding contributions. He also gave an amazing speech which he has graciously allowed us to reproduce as a guest post on theoildrum. In it he outlines 10 prescriptions for changing the course of our current socio-economic system, along the lines of the steady state themes he has been writing about for decades. I feel like keeping it on our main page for a week straight - it isn't perfect (nothing is), but these are the concepts that should be percolating among our nations/worlds decision-makers - please read it and pass it on. I sincerely hope ideas like these will soon be acknowledged not only as mainstream but as urgent - in the opinion of many it is past time for Herman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics....
(Herman's previous essays on The Oil Drum are here (Steady-state) and here (credit crisis).
From a Failed Growth Economy to a Steady-State Economy
USSEE lecture, June 1, 2009
Herman E. Daly
School of Public Policy
University of Maryland
A steady-state economy is incompatible with continuous growth—either positive or negative growth. The goal of a steady state is to sustain a constant, sufficient stock of real wealth and people for a long time. A downward spiral of negative growth, a depression such as we are entering now, is a failed growth economy, not a steady-state economy. Halting an accelerating downward spiral is necessary, but is not the same thing as resuming continuous positive growth. The growth economy now fails in two ways: (1) positive growth becomes uneconomic in our full-world economy; (2) negative growth, resulting from the bursting of financial bubbles inflated beyond physical limits, though temporarily necessary, soon becomes self-destructive. That leaves a non-growing or steady-state economy as the only long run alternative. The level of physical wealth that the biosphere can sustain in a steady state may well be below the present level. The fact that recent efforts at growth have resulted mainly in bubbles suggests that this is so. Nevertheless, current policies all aim for the full re-establishment of the growth economy. No one denies that our problems would be easier to solve if we were richer. The question is, does growth any longer make us richer, or is it now making us poorer?
I will spend a few more minutes cursing the darkness of growth, but will then try to light ten little candles along the path to a steady state. Some advise me to forget the darkness and focus on the policy candles. But I find that without a dark background the light of my little candles is not visible in the false dawn projected by the economists, whose campaigning optimism never gives hope a chance to emerge from the shadows.
We have many problems (poverty, unemployment, environmental destruction, budget deficit, trade deficit, bailouts, bankruptcy, foreclosures, etc.), but apparently only one solution: economic growth, or as the pundits now like to say, “to grow the economy”-- as if it were a potted plant with healing leaves, like aloe vera or marijuana.
But let us stop right there and ask two questions that all students should put to their economics professors.
First, there is a deep theorem in mathematics that says when something grows it gets bigger! So, when the economy grows it too gets bigger. How big can the economy be, Professor? How big is it now? How big should it be? Have economists ever considered these questions? And most pointedly, what makes them think that growth (i.e., physical expansion of the economic subsystem into the finite containing biosphere), is not already increasing environmental and social costs faster than production benefits, thereby becoming uneconomic growth, making us poorer, not richer? After all, real GDP, the measure of “economic” growth so-called, does not separate costs from benefits, but conflates them as “economic” activity. How would we know when growth became uneconomic? Remedial and defensive activity becomes ever greater as we grow from an “empty-world” to a “full-world” economy, characterized by congestion, interference, displacement, depletion and pollution. The defensive expenditures induced by these negatives are all added to GDP, not subtracted. Be prepared, students, for some hand waving, throat clearing, and subject changing. But don’t be bluffed.
Second question; do you then, Professor, see growth as a continuing process, desirable in itself-- or as a temporary process required to reach a sufficient level of wealth which would thereafter be maintained more or less in a steady state? At least 99% of modern neoclassical economists hold the growth forever view. We have to go back to John Stuart Mill and the earlier Classical Economists to find serious treatment of the idea of a non-growing economy, the Stationary State. What makes modern economists so sure that the Classical Economists were wrong? Just dropping history of economic thought from the curriculum is not a refutation!
Here are some reasons to think that the Classical Economists are right.
A long run norm of continuous growth could make sense, only if one of the three following conditions were true:
(a) if the economy were not an open subsystem of a finite and non-growing biophysical system,
(b) if the economy were growing in a non physical dimension, or
(c) if the laws of thermodynamics did not hold.
Let us consider each of these three logical alternatives. (If you can think of a fourth one let me know.)
(a) Some economists in fact think of nature as the set of extractive subsectors of the economy (forests, fisheries, mines, wells, pastures, and even agriculture….). The economy, not the ecosystem or biosphere, is seen as the whole; nature is a collection of parts. If the economy is the whole then it is not a part of any larger thing or system that might restrain its expansion. If some extractive natural subsector gets scarce we will just substitute other sectors for it and growth of the whole economy will continue, not into any restraining biospheric envelope, but into sidereal space presumably full of resource-bearing asteroids and friendly highly-evolved aliens eager to teach us how to grow forever into their territory. Sources and sinks are considered infinite.
(b) Some economists say that what is growing in economic growth is value, and value is not reducible to physical units. The latter is true of course, but that does not mean that value is independent of physics! After all, value is price times quantity, and quantity is always basically physical. Even services are always the service of something or somebody for some time period, and people who render services have to eat. The value unit of GDP is not dollars, but dollar’s worth. A dollar’s worth of gasoline is a physical amount, currently about half a gallon. The aggregation of the dollar’s worth amounts of many different physical commodities (GDP) does not abolish the physicality of the measure even though the aggregate can no longer be expressed in physical units. True, $/q x q = $. But the fact that q cancels out mathematically does not mean that the aggregate measure, “dollars’ worth”, is just a pile of dollars. And it doesn’t help to speak instead of “value added” (by labor and capital) because we must ask, to what is the value added? And the answer is natural resources, low-entropy matter/energy—not fairy dust or frog’s hair! Development (squeezing more welfare from the same throughput of resources) is a good thing. Growth (pushing more resources through a physically larger economy) is the problem. Limiting quantitative growth is the way to force qualitative development.
(c) If resources could be created out of nothing, and wastes could be annihilated into nothing, then we could have an ever-growing resource throughput by which to fuel the continuous growth of the economy. But the first law of thermodynamics says NO. Or if we could just recycle the same matter and energy through the economy faster and faster we could keep growth going. The circular flow diagram of all economics principles texts unfortunately comes very close to affirming this. But the second law of thermodynamics says NO.
So—if we can’t grow our way out of all problems, then maybe we should reconsider the logic and virtues of non-growth, the steady-state economy. Why this refusal by neoclassical economists both to face common sense, and to reconsider the ideas of the early Classical Economists?
I think the answer is distressingly simple. Without growth the only way to cure poverty is by sharing. But redistribution is anathema. Without growth to push the hoped for demographic transition, the only way to cure overpopulation is by population control. A second anathema. Without growth the only way to increase funds to invest in environmental repair is by reducing current consumption. Anathema number three. Three anathemas and you are damned—go to hell!
And without growth how will we build up arsenals to protect democracy (and remaining petroleum reserves)? How will we go to Mars and Saturn and “conquer” space? Where can technical progress come from if not from unintended spin-offs from the military and from space research? Gnostic techno-fantasies of escaping earth to outer space, and of abolishing disease and death itself, feed on the perpetual growth myth of no limits. Digital-brained tekkies, who have never heard of the problem of evil, see heaven on earth (eternal growth) just around the corner. Without growth we must face the difficult religious task of finding a different god to worship. Too scary, we say, let’s try to grow some more instead! Let’s jump-start the GDP and the Dow-Jones! Let’s build another tower of Babel with obfuscating technical terms like sub-prime mortgage, derivative, securitized investment vehicle, collateralized debt obligation, credit default swap, “toxic” assets, and insider slang like the “dead cat bounce”. (If you drop it from a high enough tower of Babel even a dead cat will bounce enough to make some profit.)
Well, let us not do that. Let us ignore the anathemas and instead think about what policies would be required to move to a steady-state economy. They are a bit radical by present standards, but not as insanely unrealistic as any of the three alternatives for validating continuous growth, just discussed.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Let us look briefly at ten specific policy proposals for moving to a steady-state economy, i.e., an economy that maintains a constant metabolic flow of resources from depletion to pollution—a throughput that is within the assimilative and regenerative capacities of the ecosystem.
1. Cap-auction-trade systems for basic resources. Caps limit biophysical scale by quotas on depletion or pollution, whichever is more limiting. Auctioning the quotas captures scarcity rents for equitable redistribution. Trade allows efficient allocation to highest uses. This policy has the advantage of transparency. There is a limit to the amount and rate of depletion and pollution that the economy can be allowed to impose on the ecosystem. Caps are quotas, limits to the throughput of basic resources, especially fossil fuels. The quota usually should be applied at the input end because depletion is more spatially concentrated than pollution and hence easier to monitor. Also the higher price of basic resources will induce their more economical use at each upstream stage of production. It may be that the effective limit in use of a resource comes from the pollution it causes rather than from depletion—no matter, we indirectly limit pollution by restricting depletion of the resource that ultimately is converted into wastes. Limiting barrels, tons, and cubic feet of carbon fuels extracted will limit tons of CO2 emitted. This scale limit serves the goal of biophysical sustainability. Ownership of the quotas is initially public—the government auctions them to the individuals and firms. The revenues go to the treasury and are used to replace regressive taxes, such as the payroll tax, and to reduce income tax on the lowest incomes. Once purchased at auction the quotas can be freely bought and sold by third parties, just as can the resources whose rate of depletion they limit. The trading allows efficient allocation; the auction serves just distribution, and the cap serves the goal of sustainable scale. The same logic can be applied to limiting the off-take from fisheries and forests.
2. Ecological tax reform—shift tax base from value added (labor and capital) and on to “that to which value is added”, namely the entropic throughput of resources extracted from nature (depletion), and returned to nature (pollution). This internalizes external costs as well as raises revenue more equitably. It prices the scarce but previously un-priced contribution of nature. Value added is something we want to encourage, so stop taxing it. Depletion and pollution are things we want to discourage, so tax them. Ecological tax reform can be an alternative or a supplement to cap-auction-trade systems.
3. Limit the range of inequality in income distribution—a minimum income and a maximum income. Without aggregate growth poverty reduction requires redistribution. Complete equality is unfair; unlimited inequality is unfair. Seek fair limits to the range of inequality. The civil service, the military, and the university manage with a range of inequality of a factor of 15 or 20. Corporate America has a range of 500 or more. Many industrial nations are below 25. Could we not limit the range to, say, 100, and see how it works? People who have reached the limit could either work for nothing at the margin if they enjoy their work, or devote their extra time to hobbies or public service. The demand left unmet by those at the top will be filled by those who are below the maximum. A sense of community necessary for democracy is hard to maintain across the vast income differences current in the US. Rich and poor separated by a factor of 500 become almost different species. The main justification for such differences has been that they stimulate growth, which will one day make everyone rich. This may have had superficial plausibility in an empty world, but in our full world it is a fairy tale.
4. Free up the length of the working day, week, and year—allow greater option for part-time or personal work. Full-time external employment for all is hard to provide without growth. Other industrial countries have much longer vacations and maternity leaves than the US. For the Classical Economists the length of the working day was a key variable by which the worker (self-employed yeoman or artisan) balanced the marginal disutility of labor with the marginal utility of income and of leisure so as to maximize enjoyment of life. Under industrialism the length of the working day became a parameter rather than a variable (and for Karl Marx was the key determinant of the rate of exploitation). We need to make it more of a variable subject to choice by the worker. And we should stop biasing the labor–leisure choice by advertising to stimulate more consumption and more labor to pay for it. Advertising should no longer be treated as a tax deductible ordinary expense of production.
5. Re-regulate international commerce—move away from free trade, free capital mobility and globalization, adopt compensating tariffs to protect, not inefficient firms, but efficient national policies of cost internalization from standards-lowering competition. We cannot integrate with the global economy and at the same time have higher wages, environmental standards, and social safety nets than the rest of the world. Trade and capital mobility must be balanced and fair, not deregulated or “free”. Tariffs are also a good source of revenue that could substitute for other taxes.
6.Downgrade the IMF-WB-WTO to something like Keynes’ original plan for a multilateral payments clearing union, charging penalty rates on surplus as well as deficit balances—seek balance on current account, and thereby avoid large foreign debts and capital account transfers. For example, under Keynes’ plan the US would pay a penalty charge to the clearing union for its large deficit with the rest of the world, and China would also pay a similar penalty for its surplus. Both sides of the imbalance would be pressured to balance their current accounts by financial penalties, and if need be by exchange rate adjustments relative to the clearing account unit, called the bancor by Keynes. The bancor would serve as world reserve currency, a privilege that should not be enjoyed by any national currency. The IMF preaches free trade based on comparative advantage, and has done so for a long time. More recently the IMF-WB-WTO have started preaching the gospel of globalization, which, in addition to free trade, means free capital mobility internationally. The classical comparative advantage argument, however, explicitly assumes international capital immobility! When confronted with this contradiction the IMF waves its hands, suggests that you might be a xenophobe, and changes the subject. The IMF-WB-WTO contradict themselves in service to the interests of transnational corporations. International capital mobility, coupled with free trade, allows corporations to escape from national regulation in the public interest, playing one nation off against another. Since there is no global government they are in effect uncontrolled. The nearest thing we have to a global government (IMF-WB-WTO) has shown no interest in regulating transnational capital for the common good.
7. Move away from fractional reserve banking toward a system of 100% reserve requirements. This would put control of the money supply and seigniorage in hands of the government rather than private banks, which would no longer be able to create money out of nothing and lend it at interest. All quasi-bank financial institutions should be brought under this rule, regulated as commercial banks subject to 100% reserve requirements. Banks would earn their profit by financial intermediation only, lending savers’ money for them (charging a loan rate higher than the rate paid to savings account depositors) and providing checking, safekeeping, and other services. With 100% reserves every dollar loaned would be a dollar previously saved, re-establishing the classical balance between abstinence and investment. The government can pay its expenses by issuing more non interest-bearing fiat money to make up for the eliminated bank-created, interest-bearing money. However, it can only do this up to a strict limit imposed by inflation. If the government issues more money than the public wants to hold, the public will trade it for goods, driving the price level up. As soon as the price index begins to rise the government must print less and tax more. Thus a policy of maintaining a constant price index would govern the internal value of the dollar. The external value of the dollar could be left to freely fluctuating exchange rates (or preferably to the rate against the bancor in Keynes’ clearing union).
8. Stop treating the scarce as if it were non-scarce, but also stop treating the non-scarce as if it were scarce. Enclose the remaining commons of rival natural capital (e.g. atmosphere, electromagnetic spectrum, public lands) in public trusts, and price it by a cap-auction–trade system, or by taxes, while freeing from private enclosure and prices the non-rival commonwealth of knowledge and information. Knowledge, unlike throughput, is not divided in the sharing, but multiplied. Once knowledge exists, the opportunity cost of sharing it is zero and its allocative price should be zero. International development aid should more and more take the form of freely and actively shared knowledge, along with small grants, and less and less the form of large interest-bearing loans. Sharing knowledge costs little, does not create un-repayable debts, and it increases the productivity of the truly rival and scarce factors of production. Existing knowledge is the most important input to the production of new knowledge, and keeping it artificially scarce and expensive is perverse. Patent monopolies (aka “intellectual property rights”) should be given for fewer “inventions”, and for fewer years. Costs of production of new knowledge should, more and more, be publicly financed and then the knowledge freely shared.
9. Stabilize population. Work toward a balance in which births plus in- migrants equals deaths plus out-migrants. This is controversial and difficult, but as a start contraception should be made available for voluntary use everywhere. And while each nation can debate whether it should accept many or few immigrants, such a debate is rendered moot if immigration laws are not enforced. Support voluntary family planning, and enforcement of reasonable immigration laws, democratically enacted in spite of the cheap labor lobby.
10. Reform national accounts—separate GDP into a cost account and a benefits account. Compare them at the margin, stop throughput growth when marginal costs equal marginal benefits. In addition to this objective approach, recognize the importance of the subjective studies that show that, beyond a threshold, further GDP growth does not increase self-evaluated happiness. Beyond a level already reached in many countries GDP growth delivers no more happiness, but continues to generate depletion and pollution. At a minimum we must not just assume that GDP growth is “economic growth”, but prove it. And start by trying to refute the mountain of contrary evidence.
While these policies will appear radical to many, it is worth remembering that they are amenable to gradual application. One hundred percent reserves can be approached gradually, the range of distribution can be restricted gradually, caps can be adjusted gradually, etc. Also these measures are based on the conservative institutions of private property and decentralized market allocation. They simply recognize that private property loses its legitimacy if too unequally distributed, and that markets lose their legitimacy if prices do not tell the whole truth about opportunity costs. In addition, the macro-economy becomes an absurdity if its scale is structurally required to grow beyond the biophysical limits of the Earth. And well before reaching that radical physical limit we are encountering the conservative economic limit in which extra costs of growth become greater than the extra benefits, ushering in the era of uneconomic growth, so far unrecognized.
Hubbert's contribution to the debate on a steady state economy
Hubbert on the Nature of Growth
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/3845
RE-EVOLUTION AND THE STEADY STATE OF M. KING HUBBERT
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/quigley/2007/0612.html
More recent discussion here:
M. King Hubbert on growth
http://facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/2009/05/m-king-hubbert-on-growth.html
Yes, Nate, I'd agree with you: why not place this post as a permanent first post at the top of the page? (Maybe permanent is too much, so say one year then decide on more if feasible. Close comments after a while.)
The main disagreement I have is with the ratio of min:max that he proposes, 1:100. I think the ratio should be at most 1:10, so that a CEO should make no more than 10 times the salary (and perks) of the lowest employee.
I regret that I far from share the great enthusiasm of some for this post. Prof Daly is to be commended for presenting non-establishment ideas and doing so in such a clear comprehensible way, and I see quite a lot of sense in most of them (as some after all were fairly obvious already). But serious faults too.
Firstly, HD rightly criticises conventional economists for failing to see that the subject matters of economics are subservient to the constraints of Nature (physics, geology etc).
But he then goes on to fail to consider that proposals/options about these things are subservient to the constraints of politics and psychology. And that for these reasons there is no significant prospect of any of them being accepted as reforms. At best some might become accepted as part of a new status-quo after the existing system has ceased to function.
JD below rightly points out the concern about where (livelihood-sustaining) jobs are going to come from for all the people. The answer is that there is no reason why the availability of means of livelihood should match up to the size of the population. If we had a thousand times the population, no way would we be able to find a thousand times the food and so on for that population.
fannybuckingham et al below rightly point out the hopelessly global-dirigiste nature of some of HD's proposals. Again, it is difficult to believe this will happen, and even if it does it will be a bureaucracy disaster akin to the former SU.
HD's points 8 and 9 are particularly seriously wrong.
HD 8: Creative/intellectual work is just as important as manual or hack work, and often vastly more valuable. It often comes at a devastating personal cost to the worker, as per the historical accounts at www.energyark.net/za/gen.htm . As the great Prof David Horrobin wrote to me: "in our society people who generate ideas are regarded as pretty valueless [=worthless] which is totally outrageous."
In the same regard, the patent system tries to fulfill an immensely valuable role of enabling innovations to be made by people other than those who are already millionaires. Without the prospect of earning a fair reward many inventions would simply have never got developed. In reality the patent system is too weak; for instance I discovered a means of preventing Alzheimer's but the patent would have expired before useful trial results could be proven. A non-millionaire has a daunting challenge persuading some narrow-minded corporate to fund the continuation before his application passes its expiry date.
HD 9: Voluntary population control sounds like a good idea, especially in that it ticks the right emotional boxes of being altruistic, and voluntary rather than coerced, not nasty fascist stuff. But in reality it is about the most horrendous idea imaginable.
It amounts to handing over the future of the human race to those who do not give a damn (whether by genetics or culture or both), who are too incompetent, who are selfish rather than thinking of the wider society or the future. Thus handing over the future to the worst scum of the species must surely be even worse than any amount of overpopulation.
Appropriate population polices would include:
-respecting the right of local people to prevent immigration from other areas that indiscriminately overpopulate themselves;
-not giving subsidy support for families that have too many children beyond their own means.
These may sound harsh but that's life in the real world. You can only have your comfy caring cake if you don't eat it first.
Conclusion: No, this is not a particularly great post, and no, Prof Daly's work is not Nobel level (even assuming we ignore the corruption of the Nobel Prizes into beyond a farce).
Sure, the other economists are trash, but then that's most of academia for you...
Further down in the comments i mak the point that there are 3 types of resources, non sustainable resources, renewable resources, and resources that are sustainable but not renewable. I classify energy in the form of uranium and thorium as sustainable but not renewable, because they are recoverable with a favorable ERoEI, at average crustal levels of concentration. Given this potential, many minerals are recoverable at crustal concentration levels as a byproduct of thorium and uranium mining. Thus the case for growth limitations is far weaker than Daly suggests. The entire argument rests on a set of cognitive errors. The first is the untested assumption that peak oil is typical of all resources, and that peak oil is really peak everything. This is an example of the fallacy of composition, the belief that what is true of a part is true of the whole.
In fact some non-sustainable resources will still be available for a long time to come. Sustainable resources can in many cases be substituted for non-sustainable resources, while non-sustainable resources cn be supplied by recycling. Small amounts of non-sustainable resources can be obtained through the nuclear transmutation produced by nuclear fission, while even smaller amounts of resources can be obtained through the nuclear transmutations of sustainable materials in transmutation technologies.
A bit more to add too my point about voluntary population control. Once voluntary control has eliminated all the decent people and left the future of the human race in the incompetent hands of the don't-give-a-damn scum, then that fast-breeding remnant of humanity will of course fast forward to a new and worse overpopulation problem anyway. So all the more utter b.s..
Nobel - don't make me laugh. (No one has ever published the slightest fault of reasoning or evidence in any of my own four published theories, but then I'm not a professor so I presumably don't qualify.)
Fast breeding as in Catholics?
Sometimes yes Catholics (mainly in the past), but even more another theo-ideology that I hardly need to name.
Pentecostals?
On May 5, 2009, some began taking population control into their own hands:
I hear Oprah is back on the eatin' wagon...I can just hear her now, "mmmmmm....Soylent Green."
1. The pollution of the environment may eventually affect the birth rate. Estrogen mimic chemicals have an impact on the sexing of trout to aligators. So the problem may be self correcting.
2. In terms of biological evolution when single cells got together and produced multicelluar organisms, there developed a way to control the type and number of cells in a this more complicated organism. Uncontrolled growth is generally seen as cancer. In that sense the human race may be acting as a cancer in gaia. Since we as a species are aware of this, there seems to be the possibility that a self regulation of the numbers of our species on earth may be possible. It would seem that an arrangement for people to control the number of offspring should enable them to become members of a society where everyone is cared for. This goes to the control of the borders preventing uncontrolled immigration. The operation of the social insects could give some insight on how this might be organized, as per "Brave New World" by A. Huxley. Freedom to breed seems to be something not possible in the new world order.
What is not mentioned a lot here:
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse
...and in the above piece are FEEDBACK MECHANISMS?
These are not the kind that are forced or written into law...they occur as rational consequences related to human endeavours and expectations.
In other words...humans do their stuff...and the "real world" reacts and forces humans onto a non-planned path.
My personal opinion is that while some humans might see what's here and on the way....and try to change to avoid a precarious future...I doubt that they will manage to actually do things all that much differently...thus God or Gaia...or just plain reality is gonna bite.
As far as overpopulation...when we still have several major religions promoting overpopulation...apparently in a contest to see who will "win"...we should be prepared to meet the FEEDBACK MECHANISMS or the 3 horsemen?
Not to mention nations competing for remaining resources...and polluting like there is no tomorrow to build economies to sell more stuff to more and more people.
I can only laugh.
LDS?
I was thinking rather of a certain theo-ideology whose members conspicuously "need" to migrate in large numbers to others' countries due to running out of space in all their own lands. Not clear what the LDS is, any enlightenment?
Robin,
I expect LDS is the tla for the Later Day Saints ,better known as The Mormons.There are quite a few of them in Utah,and a few scattered around here and there else where.
Old Farmer,
From http://www.quiverfull.com/
They quote:
And use as an example:
These delusional folks advocate family size of around 12 - "a quiver full".
Why does a rational society provide tax deductions for these criminals?
That post [...delusional folks.....these criminals...] if written about Mohammed-followers in the uk would be considered by them to rate prosecution as religious hatred (even though the Qur'an would qualify infinitely more, notwithstanding Obama's latest lies), though in practice that law was only introduced to pacify the Muslim lobby and the Attorney General has not yet been coaxed into actually starting any prosecutions.
Hi RobinPC,
You're right that "criminal" was a poor choice of words - I should be more thoughtful. Selfish and inconsiderate is more the idea. But it is selfishness to the point of not caring how having a dozen children in a affluent country like the US stresses the lives of other people around the globe. Our consumption and polution footprints have a direct bearing on the well being of people in much poorer nations. In some context, the idea of "justice" ought to be considered for this type of reproduction. I am sure that there are nations in the world that take a dim view of Americans having 13 well fed children while they struggle with subsistence living conditions.
Thinking about other countries - I wonder how the authorities would treat a couple in China who deliberately create 13 children? How would they view this in terms of justice and prosecution? I really don't know the answer to this question, but I'd guess they would take a very dim view. While in the US we generally encourage larger families and provide tax deductions.
I was merely indicating the uk law of "religious hatred", not saying I agreed with it!
Dave,
Why,indeed,do we still give tax deductions for large families?I don't expect there is any need to go into that,it's just one more example of all the other irrational things we do as a society.
As far as the Mormons themselves are concerned,a population biologist would probably say that the strategy of having very large families is and has been a successful strategy for the Mormons as a social group/clan/tribe(whatever terms are currently in vogue).
Of course such high birthrates lead to population overload quickly if sustained,but if the Mormons raise enough kids successfully,thier genes inherit the earth-or at least whatever is left of it,if anything,for a while.
When humans were scarce,we had to cooperate to compete with the other animals that ate the same foods in the same environment,and to protect ourselves from the animals that would otherwise eat us.
Nowadays we compete as "us" groups against "them" groups of other humans.Packs of wolves,prides of lions,and bands of chimps compete in the same way.
If there were such a thing as an evolutionary scorecard,the winning group would be the most numerous group.
But the top of the evolutionary hill is a very slippery place and no group of individuals or speices manages to stay there very long in evolutionary time.The Mormons may be clawing thier way toward the top,but I expect our speices as a whole is headed for a serious(to us) crash.
Mother Nature is an entirely heartless bitch and she could (not) care less.Out here on the farm when we are not spraying some nasty chemical to get rid of some particular bug,and killing a dozen useful bugs at the same time,we are used to seeing the age old game played out between the foxes and the rabbits.When the rabbits have a good year,the foxes have a very good year,the following year the rabbits have a very poor year as the result of the foxes good year,the following year the foxes have an extremely bad year as a result of what they did to the rabbits the previous year.
I paint with a broad brush of course,nothing in nature is quite so simple.
My personal opinion of the Mormons is that the ninety percent or so of them living under the heel of the other ten percent need to wake up and get the hell out of Utah,but you do have to admit that the old bulls in charge have done a good job of running things,from thier pov.Not many old men in this world can have a nubile young wife simply for the asking of an old buddy-knowing that of course he will be coming around for the same favor later.
As far as abortion is concerned,I am strenously opposed to it as a default method of birth control,but otherwise if a woman finds herself preggo and after serious soul searching on her part wants an abortion,I cannot see that it really is anyone else's business-although the potential father might righteously feel differently.
The soul searching is important,because some women later bitterly regret thier decision to abort.
The Republican party has shot itself in the foot by buying the antiabortion vote in violation of true conservative principles of personal liberty, self determination, and limited government.This tactical decision helped win some elections in the past,but is is nowadays an electoral loser on the national level,and I expect the next generation of republican leadership will quietly drop the issue.
Otoh,I don't see how anybody can look at a six month fetus and not see a human being.Personally I maintain the necessary cognitive dissonance that allows me to support limited abortions by not looking and not thinking,otherwise I feel the bile rising and the whole idea makes me ill.
I do not find it at all hard to understand why some people hold such strong beliefs in this respect that they are willing to resort to murder to stop what is after all to them,not only murder but murder of the powerless and helpless.
Life is a real bitch in some respects,is it not?
could (not) care less.
H'a'h. You Yanks may yet properly learn the language of England.
Later Day Saints (Mormons). They do have large families and migrate to Utah.
You keep citing that as evidence of the strength of your theories, but if anything it's the opposite: if everyone in the world is completely ignoring your theories, that's not a good sign.
If your theories are valuable, they will have inspired follow-on work. Have they?
Pitt, I have previously pointed out the utter ridiculousness of your thesis that a theory being ignored is justification for dismissing it. I linked to the published evidence about some of the greatest of discoveries being ignored by so-called peers. I also pointed out that it has not been a case of "the world is completely ignoring" my theories anyway. I haven't come here for the purpose of trying to persuade you on this point. If you also don't have any fault of reasoning or evidence to show in my highly praised theories, I suggest you move on from your unflattering exhibition of presumption.
So bye.
"I am getting more and more depressed about the inability of scientists to step outside the narrowest of confines to lift their eyes to novel concepts"--Prof David Horrobin (self-made multimillionaire).
"Well worth publishing"--HJ Eysenck, most cited ever scientist (only the second theory to be accepted for publication by him)
"Robin P Clarke is one of those rare souls..." -- Bernard Rimland, "A titan of autism research" -- whereas quite who is "Pitt the Elder"? What's s/he achieved, other than making an arse of himself above?
No, you've simply claim that, as if claiming made it true.
By contrast, citation count and impact factor are widely-recognized figures of merit in research (see, for example, here, here, or here). If you want to make the claim that the research community has been wrong for the last 50 years in using citations as a figure of merit, please provide some evidence.
Or, at the very least, please stop pimping your article in irrelevant contexts. It's like spamming a blog link - tacky.
Very nice, but completely irrelevant.
I'm not saying your research is bad; I'm saying your implication - that "not refuted implies correct" - is nonsense. There's plenty of flawed research in tiny, irrelevant publications that nobody bothers to refute, because everyone simply ignores it.
Is your paper different? Maybe; I neither know nor care. But you keep pushing the idea that a piece of research should be regarded as good simply because nobody's refuted it yet, and that's absurd. It's the equivalent of saying "nobody's proven I'm not Elvis, so I must be". It's putting the burden of proof in entirely the wrong place.
It's not up to the world to disprove a theory; it's up to the author to prove it.
If you're trying to make the argument that you're a well-respected researcher, resorting to childish insults is perhaps not the optimal approach.
"No, you've simply claim that, as if claiming made it true"
That's simply not true. I provided a load of solid evidence.
Citation ranking is widely understood to be greatly flawed, I don't need to prove it to you if you really want to be a dead horse about it.
Thanks for finding my citations nice but their relevance arises as responses to your own.
The author has already proved it. As already pointed out sci history is full of great well-proven works which the establishment charlatans "prove" to be no good by uniformly ignoring them.
Your fallacious notion that others do not have a burden of disproof has already been debunked by some other commenters. I guess this subthread is past its bedtime now.
"Everyone in the world" (more accurately the controlling academic establishment) is also completely ignoring the ARI's proof of cure of autism by chelation, as they previously ignored six solid studies of the value of vitamin B6 for autism. And these neo-Lysenko charlatans don't just "completely ignore" my work, rather they go out of their way to avoid responding to questions, and avoid answering the sound critiques of the claptrap which they themselves publish as supposedly the work of "distinguished", "leading" "experts".
As for inspiring follow-on work, that requires that there is a reasonably decent academic world out there to be up to the job.
And yes my autism theory at least inspired my own follow-on work which I may eventually have the time/energy to publish. My update shows inter alia four confirmed predictions (body symmetry correl with IQ; binding to dna causing autism; shared causality of iq and autism; increased rationality/reduced gut intuition in autism; plus a new prediction of the update, that lack of ventilation contributes to autism, is doubly confirmed already.
By contrast you don't even know what you are talking about re the basics of scientific history's abysmal record of ignoring, deriding, and persecuting great discoveries.
There are some ideas here that are much wackier than Daly's, and feed into the "growth is forever" mantra all too neatly.
Go ahead and solve the nuclear waste conundrum, and keep from polluting the Earth with radioactive energy that is way above background, and deal with the very real economic problems of the expense of the technology and of the de-commissioning of old plants, and then talk about growth forever based on alchemy. Even more fun than carbon capture and sequestration...
Using social and political concerns to dismiss Daly's work as well merely says, "It is difficult to make a change." and leaves the debate hanging. Much of current economic "thought" has been pushed at us since the early '80's, and yet we behave as if it is law. There simply are other ways for us to use our clever minds to be... clever. As to the hold that our belief systems have over us, and the hold that those in power have, well, this too shall have to change, one way or the other.
We live in what is practically speaking a finite system - well, not quite, but the contributions of the odd asteroid, while possibly very significant in the past, can hardly be counted upon to feed more and more. The major input that we can count on to spur growth is solar power, which is added to the Earth's system every day.
It is funny that "grow, grow, grow" is pushed at us every day, that we really hope and believe that it is possible, and yet the markets can reliably provide for between 3 and 5% per year, which, coincidentally enough, is the rate of natural growth in natural systems, and the rate of growth in sustainable yield agriculture.
And there is plenty of work to show that most resources, as they are used by humans, do follow a bell curve. Note as well that the majority of resources are not used up before we pass them over for something that is better. In the case of oil, tho' we still have plenty in the earth, we simply cannot afford to burn it all. There are huge technical problems to be overcome so that we can leave oil behind, and many who argue quite convincingly that we cannot, or cannot do so in time. But at this point, I become a bit of an eco-fascist and say: Be positive. Lead. Follow. Or get the hell out of the way.
Cheers.
I think the key statement is this:
The vast majority of patents these days appear to involve protective 'inventions', and more often than not are the sort of thing that a table of inventors, skilled in the art, would think up between the time the beer hits the table and the first pizza arrives. (I've suggested that patents only be issued to inventions that pass such a jury test, one of my engineer friends told me he'd watch that if it were on TV.)
The goal of Patent law is to maximize invention foe the sake of civilization, and that is a balancing act between giving the inventor a period of time to profit from their work, and releasing it so that others may extend it into new inventions. We may well improve patent law by adding a sliding scale of protection, shortening it to 1 year for the Mickey Mouse stuff, and lengthening it to 14 years after approval for inventions that require such evaluations by Governmental oversight.
Speaking of Micky Mouse, the other intellectual property rights are related to copyright, and those laws have been twisted well beyond the definition of maximizing production of new works. Here is another case where the rights of artificial persons (corporations) are actually stronger, (longer protections) than those for meat-based persons. Disney, in particular, lobbied for, and gained broad extensions to copyrights that have prevented an enormous body of no longer commercially available works from the early half of last century from coming into the public domain -- all so that they could protect "Steamboat Willy", and the mouse trademark. We would be much better served by the copyright holder having the ability to bid in the open market to extend their copyrights. The vast majority of orphaned works would drop into the public domain, and only those with commercial value would be extended, and even for the protected works the public would benefit from the proceeds of the auction.
Every patenting system has non-obviousness (to those skilled in the art) as one of its key criteria for granting (or defence in infringement proceedings). Meanwhile anyone can make an application for any old rubbish (except certain categories such as perpetual motion or business strategies). It's possible that some or all patent jurisdictions are corrupted in the same way that the uk's civil "justice" system is an evil corrupt scam: www.2020housing.co.uk.
On the other hand such protective junk patents can serve a bit like the junk securities, to impress the impressionable that the intellectual holdings are worth more than they really are; plus the corp "inventors" need to look like they're doing something for their salaries.
And of course corporations have added their own distortions, not least unworthy legal threats akin to those in the libel field. The problem is corporatisation, not patents.
Requiring an inventor to actually have a working device which can be evaluated by an expert committee the way scientific papers are peer reviewed before publication would reduce the number of patents granted by 99%. This is especially true in the energy/power generation fields. A lot of vaporware exists in many recent patents granted.
True, but cuts both ways. Patent libraries are full of trash concepts that clearly were never tested because it is impossible to actually make them (e.g. an inaccessible adjusting screw). But meanwhile it can be dauntingly expensive and difficult to produce a working prototype without funding already in place, and thereby a great idea is lost. Remember that Watt struggled for many years to find anyone who could actually make his improved steam engine, and one wealthy supporter bankrupted himself in the attempt. PS can you fund my patent for homeopathetic, oops, homeopathic home fusion? No more heating/cooling bills ever!
Robin, I agree one hundred percent! That is about as stupid an idea as VHEMT, The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. I get so damn mad when people talk about changing the whole of human behavior as if such a thing were actually possible. Yeah right, just get everyone to voluntarily do this or that and everything will be just peachy. Such ignorance of human nature is hard to imagine.
There are really only two ways of limiting human population growth and voluntary compliance is not one of them. Garrett Hardin pointed out one way in "The Ostrich Factor":
Hardin is of course referring to involuntary population control. When that fails, and it usually does, there is the default method, die-off. The problem with the default method is that humans will eat every wild thing in the air, in the sea or on land before they eventually starve.
Ron P.
Human population growth seems to stop by itself as people move into cities, get richer and when women get jobs. Nativity has dropped like a stone all over the world, haven't you noticed? Demographers' main scenario is a population peak at around 9 billion.
"Compliance" is not necessary. Broader per capita economic growth is.
??? What in the hell does that mean? Did you mean fertility? No, I haven't noticed that nativity has dropped at all, whatever that is.
Broader per capita economic growth? Would that not require a lot more fossil fuel? A lot more oil? Hey, that is what this debate is all about. Peak oil, have you never heard of that phrase? That is the entire point Jeppen, there can be no economic growth without a growth in fossil fuels. One of them, the one used for almost all transportation, all plastics, most agricultural products has peaked!
And it is really silly to say that human population growth seems to stop by itself. Yes it does when people start to starve. And that is exactly what is happening in many parts of the world. As far as demographers go, they have not counted on peak oil. They have not counted on people by the millions starving to death. No, the population will never reach 9 billion. And it will not be because people voluntary stop having babies. It will be because of massive die-off due to drastic overshoot of our population.
Ron P.
Yes, I meant fertility. No, economic growth does not require growth in fossils. Human population growth is stopping by itself - you may call it silly - I call it "facts on the ground". Please see the gapminder graphs I have pointed to. And yes, the population will peak at about 9 billion.
Whereas I call it the fallacy of the lumped-together trend (though there's a fancier term I forget).
For the key detail you're glossing over see my next comment.
I have shown with gapminder graphs that muslim countries too have dropped in fertility, and that big muslim countries such as Turkey, Indonesia and Iran are at fertility 2. Even Saudi Arabia has dropped from 7 in 1980 to 3.3 in 2006. The muslim countries are not exceptions from the rule.
Lumping together can include lumping together of Muslims, who in my experience are a very mixed collection, many being peaceful friendly people not having a clue what the Qur'an says, others in denial of it, others just pretending from fear of the threats, and still others who have read most of it and implement its directives to total war terrorism (native Arabic speakers such as Zawahiri, bin Laden, et al).
Probably an equally important slowing factor is that most "Muslim countries" are already having severe overpopulation stresses. Not least the biggest, Pakistan, and KSA and Iran. Dubai in crisis too. Since 12th Sept 1683, Allah seems to have lost the magic touch that brought all those Jihad victories recorded in the Sacred Texts.
Just like Christianity, then.
The key phrase there is "when women get jobs". This does not apply to a huge slice of the inhabitants of Islam-controlled lands and the migrants who leak thereout to the lands of slower-breeding natives and are certainly having large families round here right now. And very much not in the women-getting-jobs business (though quite a lot are, but again quite a lot not). They don't need jobs as they get family benefits instead.
I don't agree. The key phrase is "moving into cities" actually. Iran is at 2.01 fertility, down from 7 in the sixties, for example. Press play and follow the green dots. Also, your talk about benefits is borderline racist. In Obama's speech to the muslim world lately, he pointed out that the muslim community in USA has higher average income than the total average.
Well, Jeppen there's quite a lot of not agreeing by/with you going on here.
I should add that here in the uk the Muslim clique (so-called "community") has conspicuously lower qualifications and income than all other immigrant groups. And even the fact that Indian immigrants have higher income (="make a tremendous contribution to our economy" in p-c speak) is largely because they are more obsessed with getting super-rich earning money rather than involving in the non-economic social fabric. Immigrants are conspicuous by their very low presence in the voluntary/ campaigning social institutions. They do make a bee-line for the positions of power instead. Look at your own Washington too.
I can understand why you defended that other guy from charges of racism and xenophobia.
But you are unable to actually communicate your understanding because there isn't any real understanding?
Labellings with the R-word seldom do come with any attempt at particularisation let alone substantiation, usually because there isn't any racism, just inverted racism of the perceiver.
I simply won't waste time discussing this with you.
Which is in confirmation of what I said, namely that those who lob the R-word never get round to even attempting an honest particularisation let alone substantiation of their allegations. You should withdraw your slanders.
I stand by what I said.
You believe what Obama says? He did in the same speech repeat the whopping Jihad Denial lie that genuine Islam is peaceful and decent (when in reality it is the personality cult of an abundantly documented terrorist, see (from numerous examples) Qur'an 59:2-7 documenting "Allah" enthusing about Saint Mohammed's starting of the terrorist ethnic cleansing of peaceful Jews from Arabia; even chopping down desert fruit trees is a good thing if in the service of driving out those who resist Saint Mohammed's authority; and the resulting "spoils of war" (...strange religion of peace this...) belong to the Muslims even though they "urged not any horse or riding-camel for the sake thereof" [flawless last testament 59:6]. The main reason people leave Islam is when they actually read (rather than mindlessly chant) the Qur'an and see how gratingly foolish it is. And in the words of one ex-Muslim "the sickest book I have ever read".
Just one of many examples of Qur'anic wisdom is the verse preceding those endorsing Saint M's ethnic cleansing operation, 59:1: "All that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth glorifieth Allah, and he is the Mighty, the Wise" .... including me, do I glorify Him? No, so Allah's Last Testament must be false and Allah himself a fallacy. It's even contradicted by its own verses immediately following about those "who disbelieved" [59:2] and "were opposed to Allah" [59:4].
At long last on TOD. A person who has actually studied the Quran.
Amazing. I spoke of this way way back and received some hate mail in response.
Hate mail from those who knew zipshit about the Quran.
Yet the sexual multilation of women still is not discussed by N.O.W. or even spoken of. The women are treated like scum but no one says a word. And on and on. There is far far more than some would rather dismiss. So convenient. And then there is the owning of slaves.
Airdale
airdale,
I'm off topic but I'm going to put up 25 gallons of wild blackberries-enough for a big fat pie every week till next year.
Now if you really want to see somebody hem and haw and change the subject,find yourself a feminist who is also a democrat(most likely)and wants us to get out of the middle east.Your target is one who is hardcore in both respects.
Throw her the question:
While we are over there astealing thier oil and so forth,just what does she think the value of seeing American women driving cars and airplanes,running hospitals,commanding MALE TROOPS,and in general living like free human beings rather than slaves,etc is worth in the fight for equality for half the human race?the female half?
I have seen a whole roomful of people get pretty quiet waiting for an answer.
I do love to kick over a beehive once in a while.
Most people would rather die than think.
I know you think this insightful, but it's nonsensical. Literally. Perhaps you should re-state it. Are you trying to say our men and women are in Iraq to keep us from being slaves? That's utter as false a statement as you'll ever utter, if so. Neither the attack on Iraq nor the attack on Afghanistan was about protecting Americans. Both were about vengeance and oil, nothing more, nothing less. What has that to do with being a Democrat or a feminist?
Perhaps the silence was people being embarrassed for you.
Cheers
Well after she thought about it for awhile she admitted it had never occured to her to look at the problem from that angle and that she intended to give it a lot of thought.
Now as to the comments about the relative status of women posted below,I admit that I am lacking in expertise in middle eastern culture,but I have no recollection of ever reading anywhere that women in any of thier current day societies are fully in possession of thier rights as opposed to the men.
I believe that it is an uncontested fact that in Certain countries Saudia Arabia for example and under certain regimes the taliban for example women are basically just about on the same level as slaves have been in some of the less brutal slave holding societys of the past.
You may have heard of Thomas Jefferson's Martha Hemmings and the fact that her children are virtually certain to be either his or if not the children of his close male relatives.
I have talked to a number of troops both male and female who have been over there,and all agree that the example of women in charge has been a powerful morale builder and potential paradigm changer for the women there.
Now as I said,I enjoy kicking over beehives and the big girls can give as good as they get and usually have as much fun in this kind of freewheeling discussion as I do.I have certainly come out on the shortend of such exchanges and I just laugh and say my head is spinning you got me square on the jaw.Please don't hit me again until I quit seeing two of you.
The Old Dog above, I strongly disagreed with him on something a looong time ago and he can't seem to get over it, so thanks for even-headed reply: You don't seem to have taken offense where none was offered. I did find your post a bit.... mm... shall we say... old fashioned, to be polite, but as I said, it was actually more confusing to me than offensive. Still is, really. (Does it matter, really? Nope.)
I should have had a question mark on that last sentence in my previous to you to further indicate my confusion.
Cheers (<-- Airdale: can you be any more petty?)
Oldfarmermac, you are being disingenuous.
Women in Iraq had considerable freedom under Saddam Hussein; they could drive cars, wear western outfits, go to college, hold jobs, choose their own husbands, etc. Now the country has been essentially handed over to Shia (southern Iraq) and Sunni (Anbar province) fanatics. Thanks to the Iraq war, women and religious minorities in Iraq have lost all their freedoms.
Ditto for Afghanistan. In the seventies, Afghanistan was ruled by socialists who were allied with the USSR. These were men who wore suits, spoke English and they were trying to modernize their country. At that time in the cities, women had freedom. They could drive cars, mix with men, go to college, hold jobs, drink alcohol, etc. While the cities were controlled by the government, the rural areas were ruled by fundamentalists. The fundamentalists believed that the modern world was a threat to Islam and were waging a war on the government. The US supported the fundamentalist barbarians who wanted to recreate the medieval world and subjugate women. Unfortunately for Afghan women, the fundamentalists (armed with US weapons, Saudi money and Pakistani bases and hideouts) won.
The most oppressive country in the world today is Saudi Arabia. There are no US bases in S.A. Even when the US had bases, US servicewomen were subject to Saudi laws (wear a burqa, cannot go out on your own, cannot drive a vehicle, etc.) when they left the base.
The US armed and supported Islamic fundamentalists and used them against the Soviet Union. If it wasn't for US meddling there would be no Taliban, no Jihadi infrastructure in Pakistan, no mullahs ruling Iran and no Al Qaeda as we know it today. So pehaps you should keep your troops home instead of sending them abroad to set an example for gender equality.
Suyog,
Well said sir.
As I replied above ,I am no expert on middle eastern culture,but I am aware of the elements of truth of your comments.
But the facts are that we have sent our troops over the steal the oil,or at least make sure that we get first dibs when it is sold.The fact that they show the flag for sexual equality is merely a lucky example of the siver lining that accompanies most storm clouds.
My broader piont is and was(and was so understood by the party goers) is that there are many sides to every major issue and that it helps to look over the elephant from a distance rather than depending on the 3 blind mens' description of an elephant.
But the facts are that we have sent our troops over the steal the oil,or at least make sure that we get first dibs when it is sold.The fact that they show the flag for sexual equality is merely a lucky example of the siver lining that accompanies most storm clouds.
I agree with you when you put it that way :-)
Ditto.
No. I think you just make sure that Middle Eastern oil is sold to someone. It doesn't really matter who, b/c it satisfies much of the world demand, which makes the world economy function and makes you able to buy oil from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela at acceptable prices.
Only unless and until resource wars start.
That may be. But I think it's somewhat amazing that the arabs have been allowed to keep the oil so far.
Jeppen,
As I see it,they still have it BECAUSE our army is on the ground over there.
The small number of local people who control the oil and the oil money did not get to the top of the heap entirely by accident.You have to be both pretty smart and lucky to get to the top of any heap.They had to cut an unofficial deal with somebody,because SOMEBODY'S ARMY is an unavoidable reality.
My estimate is that tptb in the that part of the world have pass ports and visas and overseas residences ready for use on a moment's notice,as well as ample funds already deposited in overseas banks.We suck up to them.They suck up to us.Niether we nor they have any choice in this matter in the short term.
Anybody who spends a few hours researching the subject will quickly realize that most of the Middle East is a powder keg that could go anytime if the cards fall wrong.
I expect the thing that worries the well off locals the most is a possible shortage of air transport if every body tries to leave the same day.Jets are so expensive that even the Saudis don't have very many.
There are some verifiable facts in these comments,but mostly these comments are just my personal opinions.
If a growth rate from about 2.0% per year forty years ago to 1.1% today is dropping "like a stone," you're right on target.
You don't understand demographics. If we have a population pyramid with a wide base, and then fertility suddenly drops to 2, what will happen? Growth will continue, rapidly at first, slower later, as the pyramid transforms into a column as wide as the pyramid's base.
Yes, growth has dropped from 2.0% to 1.1% in spite of great improvements in life expectancy and a pyramid with a wide base. This is enormous progress, and it does mean that the fertility has dropped like a stone and a steady state or decreasing population is a matter of BAU and time.
Agreed (on that narrow point), for a change!
I understand your point. I just question whether this progress is good enough. Assuming no black swans, the world will reach at least 8 billion. I suppose you think that's good enough; I am not so sure.
Yeah, I think it is good enough. I plan to live long enough to see it.
Yes, all we must do is raise everyone's standard of living to the level of that of the average American or European. But to do that everyone on earth would have to consume as much oil as we do. That would require about 300 million barrels of oil per day....at least.
Got any more good arguments Jeppen?
Ron P
No, we don't have to get to the level of the average American or European. Looking at the gapminder graph, it seems a level of $7000/capita would suffice, and that is about what we have, although it's a bit unevenly spread.
Darwinian,I do believe you have the better argument versus jeppen in the natural fertility decline scenario because I agree with you that it is too little too late.
Otoh if you want quick facts about any country,you can't do better than the CIA website.
Jeppen is right about the birth rates,they have declined enormously.The populations in the countries mentioned will continue to grow rapidly ,however, for a long time because the age distribution is skewed heavily to the young.
Another case of for me knowing things that ain't so.I had no idea the birth rates had declined so much in that part of the world.
Didn't you mean, if the economy WERE an open system (not a closed one -or a piece of a closed system).
Wisdom before its time I say. Even the mild reforms of Obama are attacked as radical (communism/facism/unamerican...), these are quite a lot to swallow. Selling the idea is clearly going to take a while.
Well evidently, the economy is an open system, and the pretence is the fiction that it is not ... that it somehow "creates" resources within the system rather than acquiring them from the supersystem of the environment, and that somehow products are simple "consumed" and disappear into the either, instead of being emitted into the environment as waste.
The default mainstream model is of a magic closed entropy destroying system, rather than the grubby reality of an entropy creating open subsystem.
Brilliant ideas, but there are a few suggestions.
First, there is no continual steady-state in nature. Systems fluctuate between steady-states and periodicities, complexities, and chaos. Even the existence of life on this planet is not in a steady state, just look at the record of mass extinctions.
Second, most natural, organic systems are found in the complex realm, with steady states and chaos being anathema to living systems.
This could partially be just a semantic argument, though, because what he talks about as steady states are actually complex states.
But there is a part about the continual flow and about wealth which is troublesome. We don't have a continual steady flow of any one thing, not even sunlight, and rest, malfunction, decay, death, and rebirth are all normal parts of our system. And wealth is troublesome, because of the assumption that wealth, or "more", somehow solves our problems.
I don't know if I have a fourth addition to the dreams of the classical economists, but I think there is another limitation to growth, and that's the incremental energy required to maintain complex system integrity. The larger we get as a society, the more energy is required just to maintain cohesion (management of money supply, media information dissemination to the public, prisons and law enforcement, education, governmental services, military), and the less energy is available to make the system bigger.
I also doubt our legal system and the majority of legal philosophy can ever work in a sustainable society, but that's a discussion for another time.
Yes. We should speak of quasi-steady state, sometimes growing, sometimes shrinking, but the long term average is steady.
I think you can make it more appealing by expanding on what fixed physical size means. It doesn't mean, that via the accumulation of knowledge, and better technology, that we aren't going to get richer -not in terms of more stuff, but in terms of better quality stuff, and greater enjoyment of our (growing) intellectual heritage. We gotta make it be something people look forward to, not dread.
Another point to stress is the possibility of more leisure time. In a steady state, we need only replace that which has broken down. Thats a lot less effort than building stuff up from scratch. Could be a golden age. But, you gotta get the right attitude.
Yes. IIRC from what I've read about ecological economics the 'steady state economy' is envisioned as being in this kind of 'dynamic equilibrium'. I think the label 'steady state' is used because it's relatively simple, memorable and understandable, and communicates the general idea that such an economy would not be geared towards perpetual growth. The 'slightly-fluctuating-sometimes-growing-sometimes-shrinking-and-sometimes-stationary-but-generally-staying-approximately-the-same-size-in-the-long-run economy' is a bit of a mouthful.
http://wpcontent.answers.com/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Atractor_Poiss...
I wonder what the attractor set of the global economy will end up looking like and if it will be a pretty picture?
I would like to add that the naming convention of this economical theory is misleading. The problem for me lies that the concept of "growth" is linked with "growth-in-size-of-production-based-on-quantity", SS theory is maybe quasi-steady-sized but other things can grow in it, for example, environmental capital or human capital. Eventually you could agree on a capital witch is potentially unlinked from physical reality and that would make it ever-growing.
The fact that people has very deep in their mindset “growth is People fail to understand that it is actually a “no-exponential growth in size” thing, but you can still have continuous growth in capitals that make grow our culture, health, technology and human rights.
I would suggest a renaming, something like
From “Steady-State Economy” to “Sustainable-Sized Economy”
From “Continuous Growth Economy” to “Size Exponential Growth Economy”
I am not native English, so you can probably find better names bit less mouthful.
Regards,
Culturally we know exactly what a quasi steady state looks like because there was the Middle Ages. For a thousand years there was always local growth, a successful Kingdom - a King Arthur - somewhere, but it was always balanced somewhere else by a Morte D'Arthur. The cultural self-explanation of this, which you see right through into Shakespeare, was "Fortune's Wheel". Someone goes up somewhere, while somewhere else someone goes down. The disappearance of Fortune's Wheel as a recognized cultural icon marks the start of the age of Growth. The Middle Ages had lots of leisure (a third of the days were feast days) but whether it was golden or not was up to Dame Fortuna.
I would suggest some study of Chinese history. What historians name dynasties had a life expectancy of between 1 and 5 centuries, and were interrupted by short(ish) periods of strife and civil war. Chinese historians saw history as a series of cycles : after a time of violence, a virtuous emperor installed a new reign, which grew to summits of well-being and civilization, before descending through decadence into collapse, violence, and start over. The longer view shows a history largely composed of longish eras of peace, prosperity and slowish growth, interrupted by short periods of intense conflict over resources.
As regards the Old World middle ages, a lot happened between 500 and 1400 AD.
For one, population was dropping around the time Rome fell, but already in 1200(±10), the Pope sent thousands of second and third sons crusading, partly as a way to let off steam from the population kettle.
The first 6 or 7 centuries may have been relatively bucolic (except for some enterprising vikings), but the 12 hundreds show a flowering of culture followed by a serious cull (the plague), and the end of the middle ages are when capitalism and the nation state show their ugly heads, and we can see impulses towards free-thinking and socially driven change in the protestant movement, and even the catholic reformation.
Frankly, I am not aware of many instances of 'steady state' cultures in history. A few South Pacific Islands come to mind, Aborigines in Australia and Papua-New Guinea, Amazonian tribes. Hunter-gatherers all.
Every culture for which historians use the words 'great', 'empire' and 'civilization' has passed through at least at least one overshoot and collapse. Every single one of them: Mohendjo Daro, Harappa, Hittites, Sumerians, Assyrians, Akkadians, Egyptians, you name it, they all went down the drain at least once. The Sumerians (where Iraq is now) salted their land through repeated irrigation - after each evaporation, remaining salts accumulate. I am quite certain that most of the reversals in Chinese history were due to population pressures, from without as well as from within.
One recurring pattern is interesting in this context: pudicity. Sexual modesty is a relatively recent development in human history. Buddhism and jainism preached turning away from desire, Christianity introduced pudicity: virginity is virtuous, abstention is virtuous, and wearing a cloth around the head was a habit of christian women, before a very young Islam adopted the fashion from the orthodox middle east. Indian women became slowly more modest under muslim influence, and the Chinese switched from lubricity to modesty around 12- to 1300. In all of these cases population pressures are at least a factor.
These are instances where humans institute 'laws' that promote a certain level of population control, and I believe these 'laws' have arisen not as a rational response, but subconsciously. The tendency we have to perform sex in private is probably a lot older than written history, but the christian invention of "sex is dirty" must take the cake in trying to take our minds of whatever leads to procreation.
It is remarkable, that wherever repression of sexuality has been used, it has never been presented, nor has it been seen as a tool against overpopulation. We like our sex to be private and that privacy should not be violated. So much so, that we have needed to find very devious arguments to limit our licentious nature, mostly having to do with dirtyness and purity.
I wonder what we will invent next, when contraception becomes hard to get.
If you google the success rate of abstinence as a means of birth control purported by the conservative right wing christian fundamentalists you will quickly find that it has been an abysmal failure. In any case, promoting repression of sexuality has generally been used as a form of authoritarian control by the males over the females of a particular society. Despite this it has never been successful in controlling population,quite the contrary, take a look at the birth rates of the so called chaste...
I never meant to state to what - if any - degree the glorification of chastity impacts on birth-rates. But it is difficult to obtain meaningful statistics. For one, modern, non-chaste humans usually have easy access to prophylactics. For another, until recently, knowledge about, and access to birth control (even simple methods such as unorthodox penetration) were restricted to a few. There is evidence, that aristocrats and bourgeois practiced birth control in the 18th and 19th centuries, whereas the lower classes did not, and were not taught about these matters.
What I tried to convey is this: human cultures have repeatedly toyed with laws and moral systems that are intent on limiting sexual licentiousness, when faced with population pressure. It would be silly not to infer that limiting births must have been the goal of these laws and philosophies(at least don't let them breed at 14, let them wait...), but never was population control mentioned in defense of chastity. It has always been about purity, about preserving yourself for your mate, about a choice made by parents, etc.
Only since abortion came to public attention, and only in the USA, has abstinence become linked to birth control, in public discourse. Before that, abstinence and chastity were just virtues which you had to make your own, for God's sake. And once you were married, procreation was a given.
Pudicity has taken a while to develop in our culture. Classic mediterranean cultures were often quite licentious, including customs such as yearly ritual prostitution for the ladies of a community. Early christians were the group who most propagandized chastity and pudicity. An early note of the change is a letter from a middle-eastern christian citizen of the third century, who has no good words for the impudicity of the peasants, who still come to market naked. Midway through this story, we find empress Theodora of the Eastern Roman Empire, who performed sex acts on stage, with geese, before she became empress and prude, and forbid such theatre. In the heyday of the middle ages (around 1200), manners were much more easy-going than the late 1800s (think codpieces versus the discreet cut of victorian trousers, with 1700s breeches -which left little to the imagination- as a mid-point).
There is much, much more to tell about the evolution of our sexual manners, but I am afraid there isn't the space nor the time. One constant is a sort of sideways approach to sex. I know pornography is rife, and boys like to boast about their conquests, and very many jokes are about sex, but we seem to have a hard time looking at our reproductive behaviour in a dispassionate way. Sex is not an easy subject to be serious about.
When contraception becomes hard to get, we'll return to fundamentals, to what some religious people call "sodomy", sexual behavior not intended for procreation. Plus, the population will be limited by the dwindling food supply and deaths from sexually transmitted disease. So condoms as a means of population control may be superfluous, and may even reduce deaths from STDs.
710: you made pretty much the same comment I had thought about making.
I think that the best we can aim for is a metastable state, but that's not a disagreement with the author's points in principle I think.
There is a fourth condition which should perhaps be considered, and that is what is evolutionarily possible to achieve in the time and the "moves" available. (Here I rather arbitrarily use "evolutionary" in the sense of the stepwise progress of self-organizing information systems into new configurations).
There are a finite number of "options" or "moves" which can be made by humans and their cohort systems, and each is constrained by the new context created by the previous moves. In a sense, the reduction in the number and kinds of "available moves" for the species is even more fundamental than resources and energy, since it reduces things to a single dimension. The path-dependent foreclosure of options in complex systems seems to me to represent another hard constraint analogous to thermodynamics.
For instance, what intermediate states would have to be traversed for the prescriptions here to be implemented; what would the recommended series of steps be?
Then again, maybe I'm just grumpy in the morning. I admittedly see the world in an odd way.
This is a very good paper in terms of describing a hypothetical desirable state to attain, and I hope it does become "required reading" for those visiting TOD. I suppose it would would be overkill to note that we need to dial the human population size down quite a bit before trying to be steady-state. Other critters are "people" too, in my world.
cheers
"Growth (pushing more resources through a physically larger economy) is the problem."
This ignores all economic growth that doesn't deplete resources; examples growth in use of renewable energy, for example generated from wind turbines or solar, using recycled steel doesn't use more resources but enables growth in GDP by providing more resources that were wasted, or improving insulation(low resource costs; sand) saving resource use(FF for heat) but contributing to GDP(cost of glass fiber, increased value of house). Higher crop yields due to higher yielding maize or wheat don't change resource inputs, just outputs( more food, higher land values).
It also ignores growth in GDP that diverts resource use, for example higher education costs will divert funds that may have been spend on travel( a high proportion of cost for FF) to being spent on tuition(providing employment, where only a small portion is spend to FF).
It also ignores growth due to new technology, for example mobile phones, low resource use, high GDP due to value or flu vaccines, increase GDP(increased medical costs,less loss of labor due to sick days ) but have great value (not feeling sick).
You are ignoring the fact that everything you mention has limits. Yes, the sun keeps shining, but the available land to collect its energy is limited. Vast, you may say, but not all of the same utility. Same with wind, tidal, etc. Higher crop yields are good, but growth in these cannot be expected to continue at the same rate. Not necessarily starvation for the masses, but there is no endless growth for biofuels from said crops.
Increasing land "values" has nothing to do with GDP growth. The fallacy that we are all richer because our home values increased over the years (before the downturn) is just that.
New technology has increased energy use, as has its adoption by more and more of the world's population. A billion Chinese used to travel nowhere except on bike and talk to nobody on the telephone. Now they all have cell phones and sometimes drive or fly.
You are seriously confusing "value" with what something costs. How does an expensive cancer treatment (bone marrow transplant, gamma knife, whatever) that adds a few years to a person's life represent sustainable growth?
There is no growth without depleting more resources. There is perhaps reallocating resources currently used, and that may improve our quality of life, but you are not going to measure that as an increase in GDP. Efficiency gains have limits too.
I'm not suggesting that there can be no progress, technological or otherwise. But cell phones, iPods, 52" flat screen TVs, Nintendo Wii, computers, yadda yadda, consume considerable resources in their manufacture.
joules,
Increasing land "values" has nothing to do with GDP growth
I am not talking about speculation, increases in land value because the land grows more bushels of corn, or increase in home value because it is more energy efficient, these are real increases in "value" not "price". US farmland produces 150-200 bu/acre compared to 30 bu/acre in 1935.
Mobile phones allow people to stay in touch with family without traveling long distances regularly, how much energy do you think a 10 minute phone call takes compared with a 500Km train, plane or car trip? You wouldn't be able to travel 100 meters on the energy used by a cell phone. How any resources can a 100 g phone use? compare this to mailing letters "airmail".
There is no growth without depleting more resources.
So building wind turbines producing 2Billion kWh to replace 1Billion kWh of coal fired electricity is not going to increase growth and at the same time reduce resource use( coal, water, less pollution)?
Some of the things you mentioned may reduce resource use for a while, assuming they replace something that is less efficient in resource use. But there are limits to even this. Building wind turbines does take resources and does divert energy from natural energy systems. Consequently, these things can't enable indefinite economic growth.
Also, as was mentioned in the article, real GDP growth inevitable requires more resources, since more stuff is being manufactured, more stuff is being used and more services (which require resources) are being offered and taken up.
It sounds like you are proposing that economic growth can go on forever. If so, please re-read the article.
I think those of us who are arguing that the end of growth in resource usage doesn't (immediately) mean the end of
improvements to human utility, aren't assuming that that secondary type of growth can be a permanent state of affairs. Obviously the returns due to the accumulation of better knowledge, and accumulation of long-lived infrastructure will eventually stagnate. But the time to reach that point of true quasi-equilibrium is likely fairly far off -say 50 to 100 years at least. Reminding people that stagnation in use of physical inputs doesn't have to mean stagnation of human welfare (in their lifetime) is important for marketing the transition to a sustainable economy.
Cultural and intellectual growth can continue forever even in a steady state economy.
But why use "growth" as your metaphor here? There are any number of words that might better describe desirable intellectual and cultural outcomes than "growth." As long as we keep using the word "growth" for "that which is always desirable and good," we will be stuck at some level in the same destructive paradigm we're in now.
Proposing that growth can go on forever is quite different to growth going on past the boundries of the earth. We can grow quite a bit based on physical limits.
If I assume your numbers are correct... the following questions still remain.
Which US farmland?
Which crop/s?
How much energy/fertiliser/pesticide are you using?
What is the nutritional value of the food produced now compared to the past?
You have reduced the measure to one simplistic value, mass, and have ignored all off farm impacts/inputs.
I ask these questions as even as a non USian I know that 1930 - 1936 was the period known as the "dust bowl" so we might expect that agricultural production was a bit low for your chosen baseline year.
We see the same argumentative stategy used all the time wrt climate.
The crop he quotes is corn. The average is for all corn land. The USDA charts this but I think they cheat a lot.
I believe that last years average was 15x/acre..maybe 154.
But if one takes the 30-35 yield of yesterdays crop perhaps it could be noted that those yields might have been more sustainable and of higher food value and other factors rather than just that of high yields.
For one thing the stalks were far larger and taller and thus more OM(organic material) was returned to the soil.The stalks were also utilized as fodder. We also,at least in my time, grew peas on the stalks. This would be unheard of now.
Following techniques such as rotation of crops and fallowing land was likely far more favorable to the environment. And what did it matter if the yield was only 30/35 bu/ac of corn when that was sufficient to the homestead/farm?
Yes we take out an average of 150 bu/ac and we destroy the land. That part of the equation seems to be ignored. AG Profs sitting in their ivory towers and copying each others and others papers instead of getting 'down in the dirt' can paint glowing pictures which are completely false.
Airdale
Airdale and SP's comments are right on. Not only is this not the same corn you got at 30-35 yield, but the land now grows little else, the corn is not as nutritious (sure seems like the research data is trending in that direction, lately), and we now use the corn to stuff feedlot beef, which is not only "not as nutritious", but downright unhealthy.
Amazing! It's almost a how-to story for turning simple plants into poisons while trashing the land that used to sustain you.
Actually, it is an excellent demonstration of the dangers of reductionist thinking. If I reduce the value of the land to a single measure (weight of corn grown), I will get myself far off track without ever understanding where I went wrong. What is in short supply is some sort of wholistic integrative thinking. In this case, understanding the real cost of inputs, the real value (and cost) of outputs, and realizing that, even though we don't see it, we are all utterly dependent on a bunch of physical realities - phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, water. More importantly, we are dependent on very limited ways to access these.
Reminds me of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of loss - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
That was a "denial" comment.
Paranoid I like your holistic thinking.
Here is my proof for your consideration.
I was born in 1938 in a small house in the rural area of W.Ky where I now live. Not in a hospital. A nurse who lived with us delivered me and gave me my lasting nickname.
I never had much processed foods. I grew up til 1950 on farms and never was vaccinated til much later. I took no vitamins. I visited no hospitals. We treated things rather simply. A nail in the foot meant soaking in a bucket of kerosene. A jar of Vicks was all we had for colds and coughs.
Til just the last year I had never been even admitted to a hospital and still take no medication to this day. My lungs are unaffected by allergies since I was exposed to most everything back then. We drank well or cistern water or out of a creek. Again I suppose my body was subjected to stuff that it learned to tolerate. I am still allergic to nothing.
And at the age of 70 feel healthy. Eating good farm raised food and lots of cows milk. No pasteurization. I just finished a bowl of my own homegrown boiled potatoes for dinner. I eat what comes out of my garden now and have for some time. A few things I purchase, like milk and butter.
Yes some children died young but those who did not were fairly healthy. I know of quite a few who died in their 90s but that picture has changed markedly with modern foodstuffs and now I see many more passing on in their 50s. And many with very many ailments.
I remember reading Edgar Cayce,who came from Bowling Green,Ky and his remedies. Like lots of green beans for stomach problems.
I am grateful for modern medicine for my cancer removal but I think that if it wasn't for modern life I would not have had the cancer. The water we drink now is very questionable. Lots of the food is adulterated and loaded with vague elements.
My wife grew up different and is 6 years younger than I and has had 14 major operations and takes a massive amount of expensive medications.
Nothing to do with economics? Not so sure about that. Health is a huge cost these days. Huge.
Airdale
Paranoid,
I am pleased that you have read KublerRoss.Most physicians apparently have not.Her book On Death And Dying is right up there with the Bible when it comes to understanding our own personal mortality and learning how to deal with the death of our loved ones.
It's better actually.You don't have to spend years teasing out the meaning,she gets right down to the nitty gritty and sticks with it.
This book is an absolutely indispensable gem.Any body who feels the aches and pangs of age,or has elderly relatives is in REAL NEED of this book.
I got my copy at a rummage sale at the local community college.It's on the RN reading list.
I have posted about this quote before. It is from a 1921 shoe manufacturing report from Harvard University Press. The yield is probably from the most ideal conditions possible at the time, but it does indicate that using simple manual labor on ideal soil, high yields of corn where possible. Now the way to maintain high yields depends on substantial inputs.
You can also look at accounts of fishing hauls from pristine fresh-water lakes of that era. Something to be said of untapped nutrients stored over thousands of years, suddenly exploited by skilled fisherman or farmers.
You don't make absolutely clear whether that is 124 and a half bushels, or 124 half-bushels. This may be obvious, but then again, they may have had a funny norm of counting half-bushels for all I know (not even knowing how much a bushel is).
Yes, my quote was not as clear as in the original text, it was 124.5 bushels.
In 2008, 19 corn growers had yields >300bu/acre, the highest 368bu/acre. The yields keep increasing.
http://nebraskacorn.blogspot.com/2008/12/corn-yield-contest-winners-anno...
Impressive yields per acre. Had a quick look how they do it. Starts with special hybrid seeds, perfect placement of the target acre within the field, intensive fertilization, exhaustive analysis of the soil content and its nutritional requirements, anti fungal treatments, application of pesticides and good old hand weeding!
Otherwise known as the worst possible way to build sustainable agriculture.
Cheers
AND the resulting product barely qualifies for description as food.
SP,
AFAIK the Dust Bowl was a phenomenon of the prairie states using bad methods of farming. We did not experience it in the Southern states and elsewhere that was not all prairie.
Without trees then you can lose enormous amounts of topsoil when the soil is bare. I have noted tractors pulling disks and rolling harrows enveloped in huge dust clouds in all states and on bare ground.
As the tree borders and fence rows are decimated then we too here where once we had much forest lands will see our soils erode with the winds.
In Lexington where I had a farm there is large areas devoid of much woodlands. As the winds kicked up it blew my border collie right off the porch/breezeway. Yet no dust bowl for that area was unsuited to Big Ag farming and thus mostly pasture.
Yet if you took a plow to it and let it the wind would take all your topsoil.
Here in the heart lands with the prices of grain we are now trying to return to those days of immense erosion due to wood and forest removal just to chase that 4 dollar corn.
Airdale-nothing can stop utter stupidity once its takes hold
Hey, AFIAK, I know nothing. But, The Southern states that were not all prairie, was because they get multiples of the rainfall of the prairie states. Further, the average wind speed is magnitudes less. So, no dust bowls.
I think there was more than one factor, undoubtedly. Farming practices and average rainfalls, etc., but there was also a very real drought. I cannot find the link, and read it fairly recently, but there was a very real shift in the storm patterns during that era that helped lead to severe drought.
Cheers
Pick your own year, then - USDA data on corn yields from 1866-2009. (Select "Corn, Field" and hit Search.)
Corn yields were about 25bu/ac in the 1800s, increasing to 30bu/ac for 1900-1920, then falling back to 25bu/ac for the 20s and 30s, increasing to 35bu/ac for the 40s, 45bu/ac for the 50s, and then increasing very rapidly (from ~50bu/ac in the late 50s to 80bu/ac in the late 60s, 100bu/ac in the late 70s, 120bu/ac in the late 80s, and 150bu/ac in the late 2000s).
So his baseline of 30bu/ac was in fact quite a reasonable estimate for any part of the period 1900-1950.
I apologise for jumping the gun by mistaking yield (bushels/acre) for production (bushels).
Of course it is remarkable that the yield for corn has been increased from ~23 bushels/acre to ~150 bushels/acre.
You haven't answered the question about the off farm impacts though...
About the dust bowl. The yield for corn dropped slightly from ~26 bushels/acre (1910-1930) to 22.5 (1931-1936).
But, land that has blown away is not in production.
The total production of corn fell from an average of 2.4 billion bushels (1910-1930) to 1.8 billion (1931-1936). In the same period land harvested (land planted was more) fell from an average of ~92 million acres to ~82.
Yield is potentially misleading... a bit like dividing remaining oil reserves by yearly consumption.
It doesn't tell the whole story.
The main corn growing areas in the US appear to be in the mid north - away from the most affected areas.
But you don't just exist on corn do you? That's mainly for cows and corn syrup isn't it?
[BTW corn is so prevalent in the US diet that it shows up as a change in the isotopic ratios of carbon (article abstract, this is because corn uses a different carbon fixation pathway 1 2]
The picture in the same period for wheat is similarish. The yield for wheat has increased from 14 bushels/acre to ~40. Impressive but not as remarkable as corn and like corn most of this occurred after WW2.
In the dust bowl period, yield only fell slightly (14 down to 13) but production fell from ~800 billion (1910-1930 bushels to ~670 (1931-1936) with the middle two years production being only 552 & 556 (ie ~half).
Without doing more googling I don't know if the location and extent of wheat agriculture in the mid south (ie the area more affected during the 30s) was greater than or less than that shown in the above map.
On the off farm impacts.
No mention has been made in this thread of the amount of energy required to produce N fertiliser.
Although prior to WW2 the US did have a few Haber-Bosch plants, after WW2 this number increased as can be seen from the exponential increase in NH3 production after 1943 (figures prior to this are harder to come by).
In the period prior to and leading up to WW2 the US had a "cheap method" of obtaining fertiliser. The Guano Islands Act.
My circuitous point?
Even to maintain the lower wheat and corn production prior to WW2, islands in the pacific were strip mined of there guano deposits.
The USGS site has a whole heap of stuff that might interest readers.
Historical Statistics for Mineral and Material Commodities in the United States
In the period prior to WW2 Phosphate Rock production increased from 1.5 million tons (1900)to 3.5 million (1936). After WW2 this went from 5.5 (1945) to 12.5 (1955), 26.9 (1965), 44.3 (1975), peaking around 1990 at ~50. Since 1990 US imports of P have increased 5 fold and from 2003 your exports of P (already low) dropped to zero.
There is no green revolution without massive inputs of N and P (ie off farm energy inputs) which most modern cities then flush.
As I said, it's a more complicated story than a one dimensional analysis of mass/acre can sustain.
SP,PITT,AIREDALE,
All your comments take together make a lot of sense.Obviously we are and have been on a nonsustainable agricultural path for somewhere around a century and a half,and it seems likely that barring unlikely developments in the energy field,we will have to change our ways or suffer dire consequences sometime within the next half century or so.
Personally I can't imagine a workable way of deferring the phosphorus depletion issue very long,but then on otoh,I thought we were in a tight spot for natural gas too,until very recently.
Maybe somebody will develop a water and sewage treatment process that can recover enough phosphorus to take the heat off for a few more decades.
Maybe there are deposits that can be mined under the sea.
There is one very important point that has not yet been considered in this thread.
The yields made possible by the use of ff inputs(of all sorts) do enable us to obtain the quantities of food we need,every thing else held constant,on a lot less land than would otherwise be under the plow.This fact is generally overlooked in any discussion of sustainable agriculture,but the implications are enormous in both environmental and economic terms.Perhaps we can get a discussion of this aspect of the ag situation going here another day.
I do not believe that it is possible, within any time frame relevant to our current resource depletion problems,to work out technical solutions to the agricultural problem,unless these solutions assume the availability of substantial amounts of synthetic fertilizer and pesticides,plus heavy machinery such as tractors,combines,and trucks,plus the fuel to run them.
The ag industry as a whole has made considerable progress in reducing the overall use of these inputs in relation to yields over the last few decades,but it is not realistic to expect that such incremental improvements can exceed more than a couple of per cent per year.
Any large reductions in ag inputs will necessarily come as a result of dietary changes-eating lower on the food chain primarily.Some significant savings can be realized by convincing the consumer to accept less than cosmetically perfect fruits and vegetables,which at present seems to be nearly impossible,but high enough prices might do the trick.
It is of course possible to produce significant amounts of food by hand with little or no fertilizer or pesticides,but most people who have not tried it don't have even the foggiest idea just how much work is involved,or how big an influence climate and geography(soil type,elevation,slope,sun exposure,etc)have on annual productivity.
The various back to the land/community gardening/relocalization movements can go a long way towards preventing a food crisis,but I don't think it is realistic to count on them to save our size xxl butts.Too little,too late,too many of us in the wrong places.
I don't think we have a snowball's chance on a red hot stove of converting the manicured and blowdried denizens of the first world into subsistence farmers,and even if it could be done under the muzzles of all the guns of all the soldiers,it probably wouldn't work anyway.
The reason why is fairly simple.There is not enough of the right sort of land.
Could anyone here imagine just how hard it would be to move most of the people in New York to Louisiana?
SOMETHING is going to bring about a major reduction of the world population within the next fifty to one hundred years unless the research a magic energy bullet.
I'm not holding my breath.
I hope it is not ordinary bullets,but I have read a lot of history,and history indicates tht war is the usual solution in such situations.
It is true that modern crop varieties are often slightly less ( a few per cent I think but it's been a long time since I have looked into this)nutritious in terms of protien content and sometimes seriously deficient in certain amino acids,vitamins,and various micronutrients that have not been much studied until very recently.
Otoh we have recently develpoed crops such as high lysine corn and golden rice,which contains beta carotene,a vitamin A precursor.
Are you sure that history indicates that war is the usual solution to food shortage? Not in the Irish potato famine. Or other famines for that matter. Nature can't be defeated by bullets. A country that is short of food knows that it is in no position to start a war. Hitler's wars don't seem to have been started by a country short of food.
Agree about the clueless relocalisers being out of their depth. I planted bean seeds in some neglected spots around here, and not one leaf has resulted. Meanwhile my secret "guerilla garden" was broken into by local children who tore out three of my climber beans. They only missed the other 7 because I had deliberately hidden them among weeds. And of course they wouldn't have a clue what the broad beans or potato plants were, so were nicely ignored too. Last year not a single one of the local (free, organic) blackberries, berberis, or apples was picked in this the poorest area of the uk except by myself. So much for the urban superiority over "country bumpkins"!
Me Irish forefathers have been fighting the English more or less forever,and me cousins will probably set off the odd bomb occasionally until they can either sever the remaining ties with the English by peaceful means or work the populace up to another war.
One on one any good Irish boy can whip any ten limeys,just like any good southern boy could whip any ten yankees circa 1860.Just kidding of course.
Winning a war requires incredible luck or else a either a reasonably even number of men and an adequate resource base to draw upon.Niether the Irish or the Rebs really stood a chance in a war of attrition,and at the time of the famine the Irish were in no shape to fight at all.
Of course wars can start for reasons other than resource shortages,the American Civil War is a perfect example.Otoh,if you read recent German history you will quickly see that oil and farmland were very serious driving influences in getting WWII started,and it is commonly accepted by historians that many wars have been fought over the possession of farmland and the other resources associated with it such as timber,fur,etc.
But the Irish-British conflict was not due to the famine but due to immigration-colonisation of Ireland which started long before and continues to this day (in effect).
Robin
Good point,I should have included it myself.
OldfarmerMac,
Not sure if you will read this but here goes.
As to phosphorus and its depletion.
There is only ONE solution. Never, never remove anything from the farm. Put it right back in the soil. Either as human waste or the debris left from the crop. Everything to return.
Phosphorus as told to me by a Chem Ag guy and Ag graduate does NOT move in the soil. It stays where you put it. Unlike N which will slowly leech downward in the soil.
So what you have there is what you wish to remain there. That means NO shipping of your outputs elsewhere. Not unless you have a ready means of replacing it easily and as a tradeoff.
As I used to cut,rake and bale hay for sale I soon discovered the cost of those nutrients that were part of the 'crop uptake'.
So when someone stopped by after I had quit baling and selling and said... "I will cut your front field for free and thereby CLEAN IT UP FOR YOU"...I said....in response..."Let me take 5 $100 dollars bills and instead throw them at your feet since that is the value you will STEAL from my land."..
Rip offs galore in farmland by idiots who move here and do not realize what they are standing on. Idiots. Sheer idiots. Stupid sheer idiots. And the shyster farm boy is even worse. I give them no slack.Never.
Airdale-take care of your land, for its soon all that one will have
Airedale,
You are a pretty sharp old coot and no mistake about it.
I have our place in shape to go back to the ways of our great grand parents in most respects and work a little more on that goal every week.
But in the meantime all the poor uninformed souls living in town must eat,and I don't want any more of them than necessary on my concsience.
Which brings up another reason to remind the instant farmers who think they can make it on a city lot why they are wrong about the amount of land they will need.
Just what do they think they are going to do when some young mother shows up holding a young child in her arms-a child with eyes as big as silver dollars and arms as about as thick as our oldfarmers fingers.Are they going to turn her away without a meal at least?
To be fair to us instant farmers and instant farmer-to-be, the idea is to spread the word, spread the knowledge, grow more than you need for sale or barter.
At least, that's how I see it. In fact, teaching others what I learn, whether formally or informally is an integral part of my plan and why I hope to be certified in P/NF (permaculture/natural farming).
Also, I don't think even the most pollyanna of those aware of the Perfect Storm expect easy sailing as move forward. A bit of a straw man, I think, on your part.
Cheers
Ccpo
I agree that a good many people,maybe even most people who are well informed in regards to the overall sustainability issue have a good idea what they are up against,or will be up against,when and if tshtf.
However I see frequent links to websites that are edited either by idiots or charlatans who obviously know very little if anything about the day to day realities of every day farming-or gardening,which is after all,nothing more nor less than small scale farming.
Some of the visitors here seem to believe that it will be possible for Joe SixPack to duplicate the claimed results presented on these sites.
My remarks are intended to enlighten those who read them and warn them about unwarranted optimism in regard to the possible food supply problems we may soon face.
My estimate of the level of knowledge of agriculture of the average citizen is that it is only a little higher than his knowledge of the energy crisis and the day to day reality of renewables such as wind and solar.That little extra is due almost solely to the popularity of gardening imo.
Since you are a regular here you are undoubtedly aware of the dismal state of public ignorance in regard to the whole ball of wax vis avis peak oil,sustainability,etc.
You may have heard the one about the small liberal arts college professor from Vermont who could not understand how Mondale(McGovern?) lost the election since every body he knew had voted for him.
I personally believe that it IS possible to overestimate the ignorance of the public,but this is one error that is not often made,except by the occasional politician caught with his hand in an inappropriate place.
Whatever you can accomplish in educating the public may really help in getting policy changes enacted which in turn might help us achieve a soft landing when tshtf,as I am sure it will,eventually.
If you can convince a few people personally to get really serious about learning small scale farming utilizing mostly hand tools and organic techniques,you may be given credit for saving thier lives someday.
I don't know just how much actual experience you have had in the subsistence lifestyle,but I came as close to living it during my early years as I care to get.
Gardening to extend the old paycheck,eat healthier,and help compensate for any food production shortfalls is absolutely one of most positive ways I can think of to move toward sustainability.
Working in a garden on Saturday and a couple of hours in the evening can be good fun and exercise after a day or a week in an office.
Hoeing corn from early till late regardless of the heat and any aches and pains you have day after day is brutally hard and deadening work.
When I was in the ninth grade,one of the toughest kids on the football team who outwieghed me by at least 10 or 15 pounds picked a fight with me over a girl,expecting to impress her.He lifted wieghts,ran,hit the tackle dummies and so forth for hours on end.I stacked hay,hoed corn,hauled apples in from the field. Chopped wood with a ten pound maul.Never had a chance to play ball.
He hit me just once before I made him say uncle by grabbing him by both wrists and twisting his arms.
I was amazed at just how easy it was to do,if I had had any idea,I would have started the fight myself.I was afraid of getting my butt kicked!
My maternal grandfather when he was sixty years old could still shoulder a hundred pound bag of feed and carry it a quarter of a mile up a fairly steep hill to an old shed used to isolate sick animals..He was a small man,only about 165 0r 70.Since he had never done anything but farm work all day every day this did not seem like any big deal to him,or even a serious inconvenience,otherwise he would have built another shed closer by.
My uncle Scheafer walked over twelve miles one way to a job in the nearest furniture factory,mostly because it was easier than the farm work.He frequently traded my grandfather even for a day ,both starting and quitting at the same time.Fourteen hours,more or less.Ten of them on the clock in a mill-the kind of place that got Carl Marx so upset he invented communism.This brought in a little actual cash for Pa when none was to be had otherwise.It enabled uncle Schaefer to keep both his little farm and his job at the mill.
They grew enough to live,and had enough left to sell to pay property taxes and buy a few minor luxuries such as coffee.
Now I don't mean to imply that they worked like mules every day.There were plenty of days
when they could take it easy,but when things need doing on the farm,that usually means at a certain time,and the work load all too often resembles an accountants office about April 12.
I was born lucky,got a scholarship,went on up to Tech,and got my degree-in ag.Been a teacher.Been a number of things I would rather not mention in public.First college degree in my entire extended family.
We still live on the same land.It's good land,well watered,very little extreme weather,good long growing season and so forth.I've been making changes as time allows and as I feel like it to get ready to power down.If I was actually sure that tsigthtf (within my personal time frame) I would be blogging less and working more.I have been stockpiling every non perishable farm input I can store and afford for a while now.These things will not last for more than a few years.I am certain that they will "appreciate" much faster than money in any savings account.
My opinion is that here in the US is that draconian rationing be utilized to keep the farms supplied and delivery trucks runnng for a long time after the crisis arrives.If that's the case,the permaculture movement has a shot at saving our rapidly shrinking butts and you will be a very important man in your local community. Without a Pearl Harbor Event and the window of opportunity opened by long term rationing,I do not believe the movement will ever grow fast enough to really matter in terms of the big picture. I try not to think about the people in countries that are depending on trade to pay for thier food,or fuel and fertilizer.
Now to be honest,I am not CERTAIN that I can personally grow,harvest,dry,can and otherwise process enough food to support just three people (without help and without fertilizer,machinery,and insecticides )even with the advantages I have.Then there is the reality of firewood,cooking.....
I wouldn't be scared of failure if not for my age.I'm not young any more but I'm still a lot tougher than most guys half my age who work in offices and watch tv for exercise.I suppose I'm as well qualified by experience and training to describe what the day to day reality of power down farming is going to be be like as well as anybody.
It ain't gonna be like A world Made by Hand.
Maybe I could write a book about it,but given my tendency to say what I actually think,I doubt it would sell 500 copies.Bad news sells.Tough solutions don't.
Airedale has been around the same block.He gets a little colorful sometimes,but he is not BSing.
My point is that people actually travel more than they used to PLUS they also spend the entire day on the phone or internet. We use MORE of everything. The myth of the paper-less office.
Because of technological advances, there is potential on the FF downslope for doing things differently. That is, we can try to maintain the systems which require the least energy for getting things done. But right now, the govt. is shoring up the auto industry.
This is a bit dated, but is still relevant:
Emissions in the above doesn't include CO2, obviously.
http://www.epa.gov/air/airtrends/aqtrnd96/brochure/summary.html
Well, since you ask...
This site gives an overview of the processes involved throughout the product lifecycle, including manufacture, distribution and recycling/disposal. It also provides a map showing the various raw materials needed for phone manufacture and the regions of the world where they're commonly extracted. This includes:
Lead, cadmium, chlorine, gold, beryllium - USA (various regions)
Silver and bismuth - Mexico
Aluminium - Jamaica
Tin, zinc - Peru
Copper - Chile
Nickel, palladium - Russia
Silicon, antimony, arsenic - China
Crude oil - Saudi Arabia
Bromine - Israel
Chromium, platinum - South Africa
Tantalum - Australia
Some of these substances are harmful or toxic and must be disposed of correctly to minimise potential damage to the environment and human health. This article states that the average phone requires 2 kg of raw materials in its manufacture.
A single handset may not use that many resources but according to an estimate from this BBC article there are currently at least 5 billion handsets in existence and the market for them is expanding.
According to this site the manufacture of the average 90g mobile (cellphone) generates 36kg of CO2. Europeans throw away 100 million mobiles each year, of which only 10% are recycled.
Then there is the energy required to run the handsets. A major problem is people leaving phones plugged in when they have finished charging (often leaving them overnight). This both wastes electricity and can shorten the life of the phone's battery.
Then of course there are the resources needed to maintain, upgrade and expand the telecommunications network, without which the handsets are useless.
One way to reduce the resources used in mobile phone communication is to reduce the frequency with which handsets are replaced. The average consumer replaces his/her handset every 18 months. Most of these discarded hansets are still perfectly functional. It has been estimated that increasing the average lifetime of mobile phones from 1 to 4 years would reduce the environmental impact by about 40%. However, this would reduce demand for handsets, fewer would be purchased causing this sector of the economy to contract, which would have a negative effect on the growth of the economy, all else being equal.
A picture is worth a 1000 words
http://www.chrisjordan.com/
Cell Phones, 2007
60x100"
Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.
Associated Press 05.07.02
WASHINGTON -- A new kind of cell phone pollution and this one is silent.
Within three years, Americans will discard about 130 million cellular telephones a year, and that means 65,000 tons of trash, including toxic metals and other health hazards, a study says. "Because these devices are so small, their environmental impacts might appear to be minimal," says Bette Fishbein, a researcher at Inform, an environmental research organization, who wrote the report.
Yup, lets keep making more cell phones....we NEED them.
Doesn't the optical semaphore network for postPeak optimal text messaging seem like the obvious conclusion?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph
I myself can't wait to see the day when parents take their kids cellphones away, then hand them some flags:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_flags
What is the eco-footprint of someone merely waving his arms around?
That completely explains the failure of the current political/economic system. Waste creates jobs.
No, waste creates profit, jobs are cost.
Yes, there is something wrong with this picture. Waste cannot create wealth or even a livelihood. I understand that many Americans do not waste at the same rate as many other Americans. Nevertheless, we are all working more hours, getting paid less per hour, then feeling frustrated and alleviating this feeling by spending money on things that are designed to not last. The point of such a system is that a few (powerful) people skim a cent or two for each transaction and thereby accumulate billions of dollars. The rest of us just gawk at the lives of the rich and famous.
More leisure time, realistically, would just mean more T.V. time for most people.
What we are really wasting is our lives, and our planet.
In the long run, yes.
But if cell phones lasted forever and didn't need replacing or upgrading, what would sales be like? Same for cars, light bulbs, paper cups, paper clips...
It's just like a sadistic sergeant telling a private to dig a hole and fill it up. A complete waste of time and energy, but it gives him something to do.
Waste creates jobs. Unnecessary jobs, but jobs.
I'm still thinking that won't work. Society is paying the private. It is making a decision to let people starve (here, or elsewhere), so we can spend money on things we simply have no use for. You can see waste as creating jobs only in a very narrowly defined way (a job for the private maybe, but at a cost of the livelihood of others). Also, why not pay the private to learn to play the guitar, or grow food instead of a lawn?
The way we are running things cannot be justified by the fact that some jobs are created, when the result is really NET LOSS!
Scientifically, I agree with you.
But it's that saying: "all politics is local"
Politicians fight to have jobs created in their communities, and regardless of whether they are making useless widgets, bombs, or cell phones that die after a year. There is a price to be paid, but by someone else, maybe sometime in the future.
Economically and politically, a "good job" is defined by something that pays wages. And a lot of "good jobs" are going to be created, at the expense of everybody else.
"There is a price to be paid, but by someone else, maybe sometime in the future." Powerful good sense.
Personally, I have long felt that the "acid test" of "we must have jobs" arguments is to apply them to cigarette factories.
One Job for sale.
Dirty, noisy and completely soul destroying.
But a Job. Yours for a snip.
50% of the earning capacity of the job up front. Wait, but that is not all, comes with very fast bicycle.
Personal reasons for sale.
Need to get a Life.
So if the average phone uses 2Kg of raw materials, compared to say an SUV requiring 4,000 Kg, so if a person replaces a phone once very 18 months about 50 phones in a lifetime or 100 Kg of raw materials. Energy use of a phone, a few watts per day, compared with an SUV; 10,000 Wh/day.
Clearly buying and using motor vehicles are just so much more important in terms of resource use, energy use, that it a bit of wasted space to arguing about mobile phones where they are not the problem. Big gas guzzling ICE vehicles are the problem.
Do we really think most people are going to continue to replace mobile phones every 18 months?
It a bit like someone saving on electricity by turning out lights but not replacing incandescent bulbs with more efficient compact fluorescent or then going on a round the world airline trip.
Every new gadget adds to the ecological burden, a burden that is already far beyond bearable. No one thing, including gas guzzling ICE vehicles, is THE single problem.
Presumably you do have a cell phone but do not have a gas guzzler. Perhaps where you stand on this is now unconnected with where you sit in this respect?
That's not a reasonable limitation, though. In the forseeable future, land area will not be a limiting factor for reasonable solar/wind energy collection. It doesn't make much sense to try extending current trends ad infinitum; what trends from 1000 years held until now? What trends from now will still be true in 1000 years? "Infinitely sustainable" is a strawman argument.
Much more reasonable is to examine what would be sustainable "for a long time" - 200 years, perhaps - and then make sure current trends are thoroughly evaluated at regular intervals. It's highly likely that significant changes in technology will occur in the next 50 years, meaning that "sustainable for 200 years" is very likely to look substantially different in 2009 than in 2059.
Sustainability isn't a problem we can solve once and be done with it; it's a continuous process, and should be discussed as such.
That's quite a bold statement; care to provide some evidence?
There's a significant amount of evidence against your argument; consumption of energy per dollar of world GDP has fallen about 1.5%/yr since 1980, thanks in part to efficiency improvements across the economy.
One simple example is light bulbs, which have moved from 5% efficient (incandescent) to 20% efficient (fluorescent) to (in the near future) 80% (LED lamps). We can experience substantial growth in electric lighting without having to generate any more electricity simply by changing to a more efficient technology.
Technically true, but for that statement to have any meaning in your argument it needs to be quantified, rather than thrown in as an offhand statement to cast aspersions on efficiency.
For example, consider the efficiency with which coal is turned into electricity; what is the change in efficiency between one of the old Chinese power plants that are being shut down en masse, and a wind turbine?
Efficiency and substitution have enormous scope for improvements, and it's not clear that they're going to run out of steam in the next 200 years.
You're confusing "increased efficiency" with "increased consumption".
Certain technologies - such as LCD vs. CRT displays - allow much greater efficiency when performing the same task. Some people choose to take advantage of that efficiency by demanding more (i.e., bigger screen) and some do not, meaning that some fraction of the efficiency gain will be clawed back due to the rebound effect. Many things can change the magnitude of the rebound effect, such as satiety - if you already have as big of a tv as you want, greater efficiency won't tempt you to a bigger one - meaning we should expect to see rebound effects taper off as a society gets richer (which does appear to be supported by empirical evidence).
Agreed, in general, but your conclusion
is whacked. How is this any different than saying, "This is all we have for the next ten years, so far as we know. I say let's budget one month at a time?"
This isn't just illogical, it's damned near insane. Your point about revisiting and being flexible in the future are spot on, but you must start with the assumption that what you have is all there is because those technofixes may never occur. Future generations deserve a decent shot at survival. That shot depends a lot on what we leave to them.
You and others make the very basic mistake of assuming, implicitly or explicitly, this civilization cannot fail. It can if not managed well. Hell, it can IF managed well (meaning the best we know how). Complexity is like that.
So, no, I don't accept budgeting the nation or the planet like most people do their household.
Cheers
How many generations do you propose to split the resources with, then? 1? 10? 100? 1000? Does anyone get to use anything, ever?
The fact of the matter is that you're making much, much stronger assumptions about the future than I am. You're assuming that every human until the end of time will need the same resources we do in the same amounts we do, and that's not an assumption that history supports in the slightest.
Based on historical evidence, the further away a future generation is, the less likely they are to have the same resource constraints we do. Summing over that probability distribution gives a total expected resource demand. All I'm doing is estimating that summation at 200 years from present (not from 2009, it's a rolling 200-year window).
Unless you're going to argue that nobody ever gets to use any non-renewable resources ever, some means of apportioning between the present and the future is necessary, and this approach seems more well-founded than most.
There's a fundamental difference of scale. It's much more analogous to a teenager not planning his life's expenditures on the assumption that he'll never earn any money other than from his paper route.
Think of the resource constraints we talk about here; was peak oil or peak lithium a problem that would have even made sense 400 years ago? Are peak bowstaves or peak shipmasts problems that have endured? Would it have made sense for people 1500 years ago to worry that they weren't leaving enough bog iron for the year 2009?
Our technology has changed enormously in recent centuries, and there's no evidence that's slowing down. Accordingly, we cannot reason in any sensible manner about what the key resource constraints will be 1000 years from now. What we can do, however, is ensure that generations in the near future will have most of what we started with; that allows today's population to use resources while still ensuring that any resources which we currently rely on which they also rely on will still be available in quantity.
Let me give you a hypothetical example:
We rely on resource C to produce our electricity, and that there's 200 years of it at our current consumption levels. I'm saying it's fine to not worry about depleting that resource.
In 50 years, C use has stayed the same, so that there's only 150 years of supplies at that rate left. I'm suggesting we should view that as depleting the resource too quickly, and should look for ways to conserve or replace at least 25%, so that there's still at least 200 years left (at the reduced rate).
In 100 years, we're still using C, so we need to reduce by another 25%, down to about 55% of original consumption rates in order to maintain the 200-year resource.
In 150 years, major changes to society have meant that resource C is hardly used. Perhaps most electricity is from solar or fusion, and C use has declined by 90%. Perhaps society has collapsed, and coal is only used for smelting iron. Whatever the change, it was unforseen 150 years prior.
Essentially, this approach gives society a rolling 200-year window to change away from a given non-renewable resource.
Not at all; I'm just proposing a well-grounded mechanism by which we can trade off between present and future needs.
We can't use nothing, and we don't know what the future will need, so all we can do is strike a reasonable balance between known immediate needs and possible future needs.
What's the correct balance? I don't know, but "don't use more than 25% of what's left in the next 50 years" seems fairly conservative; after 200 years of that, there will be 30% of the current resource level left, which should be enough to run whatever society will be there at that time for a while until they can transition away from it, assuming they haven't done so already.
Do you have an alternative, though? How much of resource X should we leave for 100, 200, or 500 years from now, without knowing whether or how much they'll use it? Less than all and more than none, but where in between?
"strike a reasonable balance between known immediate needs and possible future needs."
But it will always be the people living in the present with its "immediate needs" that will making the judgment about what is a "reasonable ballance" to strike with any "possible future needs." It's pretty clear that we have been completely ignoring future needs and rationalizing the maximization of our "immediate needs" (really immediate wants, luxuries, waste...).
Society has to have deep taboos against using essentially any non-renewable resources, because we will always fall far short of any such goal given our short term self interest.
Frankly, I stopped reading here as it is clear the argument will only go in circles.
The latter first: I'm making no assumptions. That is exactly my point: we cannot make any assumptions about the future and must budget as if everything we have and know now is all we will ever have and know. It is you who is making assumptions about the future. You are assuming some technofix *will* come, rather than the reality that it *may* come, but is not in any way guaranteed.
You made the point yourself, which I noted and agreed with, that future considerations must come into play and that future generations will have to revise based on their current conditions.
So, yes, we must consider humanity, et al. That is, all possible future generations into infinity. At least, if we have any interest in our collective survival as a species. Of course, some may not. Personally, I'm highly motivated to supply my son with a livable future. Since I assume he will have children, I want the same for them, and so on, so I am very much locked into planning with these future generations in mind. Others may not be.
Who said not use anything? Try not to toss a red herring in, eh? I think it was crystal clear I was saying use sustainably and as conditions change and knowledge increases, adjust for that. I don't claim we cannot find a way to tap solar, or other energy, in such a manner as to make energy a non-issue for some future generation and their progeny, but I know for a fact that generation is not this one. At least, not today.
Cheers
Yet I did like Pitt's example of diminishing resource apportionment.
For resources that are inflexible and must be used, I'd agree. But that should be measured only after every conceivable lifestyle change has been made to get to the lowest possible use.
For those that are flexible, a much more conservative approach seems the wiser.
Cheers
You're either contradicting yourself here or you're implicitly using an unspoken policy to discount the potential needs of future generations. If it's the former, of course, your argument is broken; if it's the latter, all I'm doing is trying to make that discount policy explicit, so we can rationally analyze it.
In case you don't follow, I'll try to clarify:
1) You say we must consider the possible needs of an infinite number of future generations.
2) You chide me for saying nobody gets to use anything.
3) Thus, some generation G gets to use some non-renewable resources.
4) Since the resources are finite, an infinite number of later generations must necessarily use less than that generation.
5) Thus, you consider those later generations as either less needing or less deserving the resource than generation G.
6) Thus, you are applying some policy for discounting those later generations.
All I'm saying is we should look directly at that policy, rather than pretending it's not there.
Game, set and match to the winner of this year's OpenTOD championships, Mr Pitt the Elder!
(Hubris ->...
Pitt, it is just common sense. Nothing can grow unless it is at the expense of something else. The human population cannot grow without more resources. More population takes up more resources, more land and the habitat of other animals.
Industry cannot grow without expanding, taking up more territory, using more raw materials and using up more energy.
The last time anything grew without the expense of something was during the Cambrian explosion. The plant and animal populations exploded into an empty world. But after the world became full, further growth of any species came only at the expense of other species, be it plants of animals.
Then humans evolved, a species with the brainpower to out compete every other species on earth. And we did. We are moving into and taking over the niche of almost every other species on earth. And they are suffering dearly because of our growth.
Ron P.
Pitt, it is just common sense. Nothing can grow unless it is at the expense of something else.
You are ignoring that economic growth can occur without using more resources, and secondly you are ignoring the use of both renewable resources and resources such as iron that are essentially unlimited in the time that we have to live on the earth.
More population takes up more resources, more land and the habitat of other animals.
Now you are talking about a different issue, not economic growth but population growth, I would agree that we should have a smaller population, but not a smaller world GDP.
Darwinian--I agree with you except that you are up against a very strong "religious" belief here.
Thing is that Pitt's notion endorsed by Neil1947 is in fact logically correct, and emotionally appealing too.
Only the test of reality threatens to intrude on the happy scene. I notice they haven't cited any actual evidence of the phenomenon.
Sure, Pitt did propose:
But there he is describing a reduced rate of depletion and confusing it with reduction of depletion itself. Pitt instead needs to show the economic growth has occurred with oil ceasing to come out of the ground or even being pumped back in. This is the sort of simple error that springs from a mind being gripped by such a "religious" conviction.
I can. Traditional farming methods were far more sustainable than modern Big Ag. (Hell, Monsanto has actually programmed renewability right out of their seeds in order to keep us all buying at the company store! This sort of progress is downright species-cidal!) Even so, the yields were not quite what we need to feed the current population. However, by studying farming up close and personal-like, and studying natural ecosystems, people like Fukuoka, Mollison and Holmgren, etc., have actually advanced the science of growing food to the point that we can get Big Ag yields from natural practices.
Imagine that. Growth without sucking up more resources. In fact, by reversing the use of resources.
Huh...
Cheers
The discussion was about increasing the amount of production, and whether that required an increased consumption rate of resources. It has nothing to do with your straw man of "nothing can be produced without using resources".
your straw man of "nothing can be produced without using resources".
Your straw man actually as I didn't write such words! The discussion appears to me to have wavered between varying levels of vagueness as to what exactly was meant. Obviously efficiency improvements can enable that specific requirement to be satisfied. I fail to see the big deal!
Well no, it cannot! It would behoove you to explain how economic growth can occur without using resources. Growth implies...well...growth. If the economy grows it, by definition, expands. Expansion means using more resources such as land, lumber, fossil fuels for such things as asphalt parking lots, not to mention employees driving to work.
And so what if you do not use up all the iron. What about the resources we do use, like oil. Simply because we use one resource that is not scarce does not negate the many resources we must use that are very scarce, like oil.
Well here is where you miss the boat completely. Population growth requires economic growth. If you have population growth then more and more people must be employed. This requires economic growth to supply jobs for these people. Growth is growth is growth! If you have population growth then you must have economic growth to employ and feed all these new people. This will require much more land, (to be taken from wild species such as monkeys and bears), more fossil fuel, more of every scarce resource. Of course it will require more iron, a resource not scarce, but to point this out is simply to drag a red herring across the trail. What is important is any growth whatsoever will require a lot of resources that are very scarce..
Ron P.
As I said in another part of this discussion, R&D may improve the process of making TV-sets so that it takes half the manpower and less resources overall, for instance by going from big fat CRTs to LCDs. Then the other half could retrain as masseurs, comedians or musicians, improving GDP with less or equal resource use. Sure, we might also use the improved productivity to make more or larger TVs, but we don't have to.
Darwinian, I'm sure something will ~eventually~ dawn on you here (unlike etc)!
All that means is you believe it. One man's "common sense" is another man's nonsense.
Evidence?
Increased energy efficiency in industrial processes is a well-known phenomenon, meaning you have a heavy burden of evidence if you want to argue that a proven ability to do the same with less cannot translate into doing more with the same.
Remember: that you believe something does not make it true.
I'm going to nominate myself for a friggin nobel prize, at least I would, but they don't award them in geology, thank goodness. Here's the basic scoop: we're in a box called Planet Earth. No amount of modeling or fancy economic schemes or theories are going to surmount the basic facts that our population and lifestyles have grown to the point that those resources critical to the continued vector sum [population x lifestyle] are at/near/past peak and are/will be soon diminishing.
The choices are obvious: decrease the vector sum by reducing population and/or lifestyles, or get more critical "stuff", including places to store the wastes. I seriously doubt such a large group of "me firsters" can organize our way out of this colossal jam at this late date, but let's see what transpires. We can all guess what failure will look like.
Whole comment is a logical fallacy. It asks us to believe that there is no way out of problem X (Peak Civilization) because of problem X (Peak Civilization). Or perhaps, "We cannot avoid collapse because society is collapsing." This is a circular argument based on a premise many reject: that resource maximums have been reached.
Peak oil does not have to mean peak everything. Not by a longshot.
No it's not a logical circularity fallacy, because it was not a logical argument at all. Simply (1) the assertion (with which I and many others agree) that the facts are that things have reached their limits, and (2) the self-evident observation that modelling/schemes/theories cannot change those facts.
PS--It is striking how so many posts on TOD betray the difficulty that even intelligent people have in grasping the end of growth, even at this late stage with so much info available. It should be a clear disproof to those who imagine that the power elites "know what is going on" just because they have the info. Info does not confer understanding, especially if it's the understanding that the grandeur you are presiding over is about to disappear. Paradigms don't shift easily or at all for most minds. The psychoshock is going to be immense if they are ever still alive to reach it.
Your #1 assertion is, in my opinion and many others, wrong because growth is not equal to oil production. Nothing else is peaking now, certainly not other energy forms, and energy can solve most, if not all, our problems.
If I am right, #2 is irrelevant.
Without even looking at the facts (that no other resources are peaking yet), one may also look at it this way: If you are right, and I am wrong, nothing I can do matters anyway, so why not try?... it can't possibly hurt. If I am right, and you are wrong, there are clear repercussions to doing nothing.
It is not that I don't grasp the end of growth. It is that I don't agree that peak oil has to cause it when there are so many other ways of doing things. After years of reading this site, I am more and more convinced that alternatives exist--alt fuels and alt ways of doing things--even if switching to them is painful. What you see as proof that society is collapsing is what I see as evidence that society is being forced to change.
Petroleum is the backbone of our economy and growth cannot possibly continue if petroleum products go into decline. The automobile industry will collapse, or perhaps has already. The airline industry will fail, or perhaps has already. Almost every product in your home is made, at least in part from petroleum. When petroleum goes into decline employment goes into decline. Actually this has also happened already. This means the end of growth.
Many other things have peaked and some have been long in steep decline. The ocean fish catch is one good example. Water tables are dropping causing irrigation water to go into steep decline. In other words irrigation water is well past peak. Phosphorus may be peaking also.
Energy cannot raise the water tables, it can only lower them by pumping more water. Energy cannot restore fish to the ocean. Energy cannot clean the air. Energy cannot restore dead lakes like Lake Chad or the Aral Sea to their original state. It is simply foolish to state that energy can solve most of our problems.
Ron P.
Energy cannot raise the water tables
Energy raises the water tables all the time. Its called rain.
I would also add that energy itself is matter conversion and therefore is limited because the matter required for conversion is limited. (There is also the question of suitability of the matter) For example (and I must acknowledge borrowing from Herman Daly's book "Beyond Growth") we should ask how those who propose growth (including economic) would expand the carbon cycle or the hydrologic cycle? The last time I checked the earth is a closed unit in this sense - there is not one additional molecule of water and scant little carbon (if any - perhaps an occasional asteroid or two???) Which means that there is a systemic limit unless we happen to nicely lower a significant asteroid within reach and then know what to do with it.....
As put in words I borrow from Daly's book: "Man cannot create material things - his efforts and sacrifices result in changing the form or arrangement of matter....so his consumption of [products] is nothing more than a disarrangement of matter which destroys its utilities" {Marshall, 1961, pg63-64 as cited in Daly, 1996, pg 62.
So in real terms it is the creation (release?) of energy that caused the problem with Lake Chad, the Aral sea, global warming...etc. And as I recall, the potential energy of the matter has now been reduced, rendering it less capable of further release. It is, if memory serves, a function of certain laws of thermodynamics. So, it is false to claim that solar, wind, or any alternative energy source will "fix" the problem now, without additional release of energy (matter conversion) that at some level, will require fossil fuels. Still, short of just lying down and waiting for the inevitable at the macro level (which is inevitable at the micro level anyway) we will, as is the way of our species, continue to attempt the impossible and create matter in a finite system. Ah, such are our shared delusions.....grin.
(other shared delusions are time, money, worth, economics, politics, capitalism, marxism, catholicism, communism, terrorism, socialism....pretty much any "...ism", truth, even our concept of love) But my how we invest so in these!
(I personally like the last one)
Briefly ... the problems with growth (industrial mass production for economies of scale) are profound. Industrialization has been attempted with every advantage and in every conceivable set of cirucumstances and it has for four hundred years failed completely. It cannot even perform it's primary purpose which is to produce large amounts of goods at a low cost.
The cost of goods (and services) is rising unaffordably because of increases in energy/oil costs. 'Growth' is pricing itself into bankruptcy. No need to bother with it, it will fail all by itself, regardless of what all those 'Brand X' economists suggest.
Failure is built into growth. More growth ='s more failure. That seems clear without any explanation.
I'm dismayed that all of HD's ten suggestions are administrative actions that require the hand of an effective government. Currently (and for the forseeable future), governments both here and abroad are powerless and fatally compromised. The ten reforms are outside the reach of ambition of even our historically most powrerful nation ...
... which is focused entirely on importing Fiat 500's.
Another year of such pointless, venal and feckless actions and the means to effect any reforms will vanish. What then?
A better way to insure a more stabile economic approach is to split the functions of investment and purchasing. The 'C' and the 'I' in Keynes's GDP formula.
Y = C+I+G+(X-M)
More lateru ...
I just had to say...if you're the same Steve, from Virginia who posts on the NYtimes website, I really do enjoy your commentary, much more than the column to which you respond.
quite .. he's got the insight.
thanks, I pleads guilty. There is also the the Steve From Virginia web site which gets neglected, unfortunately.
The Times is frustrating. NObody over there seems to have a clue except maybe Bob Herbert. Krugman is one of the most influential economists in the country right now and ... he just doesn't get it. I wanna beat my head against the wall, sometimes.
In contrast to H. Daly here is a more established look at what's happening in the eocnomic sphere:
The entire article is very interesting and has its own internal logic but it also completely missed the point. The inherent contradictions in the industrial regime are starting to pull it apart. It would seem obvious to the Times and other media organizations but ...
Really? How can that make sense? There couldn't possibly be any analogy here with the leading most distinguished experts who so consistently ignore my unchallenged theories of autism, Alzhemiers, manic-depressive, and of excessive mobility causing crime and unemployment. (As per Pitt the Elder's comments further above.)
It doesn't make sense. We're all living in 'Whacko World' ...
It is interesting to consider the physical means by which these concepts could be put into place.
For instance taking the idea of 1:100 disparity in incomes. This could be enacted through company legislation whereby the CEO cannot earn more than the lowest paid employee. This would then force a disagregation of companies so that you would have low pay production companies owned by high paid management companies. Not the desired outcome so you would need some form of flow through parenting of the wages of subsideraries.
Alternatively, you could enact the concept through taxation, whereby the marginal tax rate for income above say $1M goes to 100%. This then implies that large corporate empires would for the most part disappear as they are generally concieved out of individual wealth creation. This may have negative effects on research and development and investment in scale related efficiency improvements.
Great ideas but implimentation could take a long time (centuries) if you want to avoid unforeseen consequences.
The "high paid management companies" would move to a jurisdiction that did not have this policy. Today Monaco is full of tax exiles. Do you think many of the banksters would forego their ill-gotten gains? For a similar example look back to the late 70s when the interest that could be charged on credit cards was changed to allow the maximum rate to be that of the head office's state - banks immediately shifted their credit card operations to states where there were no limits on interest rates. Consumers started their love affair with credit which is really debt.
Also in the 70s, coming off gold allowed the government to wage war without having to raise taxes to pay for it.
Opening up trade with China was the start of off-shoring.
Is it any wonder that weekly US incomes peaked in October 1972. According to John Williams of www.shadowstats.com, if you were to go by actual inflationary data, US incomes have fallen more like 40% since 1972.
Actually, his charts say that income has fallen 40% since about 1990. Unfortunately, that is pretty solid evidence that his charts are nonsense.
The problem is that spending patterns haven't changed: if people were really that much poorer, we would expect food to make up a larger share of their spending; instead, we find it's pretty much the same (slightly lower, actually). Same with clothes. Same with pretty much all types of spending - the data is consistent with a tiny increase in wealth (which is what the government stats show), and not a huge drop in wealth (which is what Williams claims).
Don't take my word for it, though - go look up household spending patterns and see for yourself. After correcting for the (small) increase in percentage of women working since 1990 and for the lower savings rate recently, you'll find that household incomes are claimed to have dropped 40%, but that that has had absolutely no effect on people's ability to buy things.
Real-world data doesn't agree with shadowstats. It predicts a massive loss of purchasing power, but that simply didn't happen. He's just wrong. (Although he's wrong for $175, which kind of explains why he makes a big deal of it.)
If spending patterns hold steady, and real income drops, debt must increase.
I wonder what the big financial problem is today?
Sounds like they might be onto something, no?
Already taken into account in the analysis: "lower savings rate" is the same thing as "increased use of debt".
The savings rate fell from about 8% to about 0% over that period, meaning that households with 40% lower real income should have seen a drop in purchasing power of about 30%. This did not happen.
Shadowstats does not correspond to reality. Forget your preconceptions for a moment and go look at the numbers.
For an obviously intelligent person, you say some really silly shtuff.
Really? Do you have any idea how he makes the charts? Is there anything invested in your comments other than your ego? Ah, but if you're going to move the goal posts, it makes it much easier!
But our friend quoted the change from 1972. Lopping off 18 years sure changes the situation.
But don't take my word for it. Elizabeth Warren had something to say about this a little while back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A
Best Hopes for Honest Discourse
Cheers
ccpo--Pitt has already on this page successfully dismissed four of my unchallenged published theories (which took me years to write up, and were praised by some of the most outstanding of scientists), without needing to read them first. So dismissing those shadowstats as also being nonsense (on "pretty solid evidence") must be well within his remarkable capabilities.
Amusing in that I see the conflict between you two stemming from your similarities...
;)
Cheers
Similarities, pah. Pitt hasn't even published a fig let alone a theory. One of us reveals our true identity the other doesn't even reveal his name. We both share a commitment to evidence and reasoning, or at least one of us tries/pretends to!
PS--superb lecture by Eliz Warren, and also her followup interview. Not all professors are badly-spelled carp; (just almost all).
You appear to have misunderstood what I said; perhaps I was unclear. I didn't say that your research was bad; I said that your metric for measuring the quality of research was bad.
One reason a theory might be unchallenged is that it's very good; another reason it might be unchallenged is that it's so bad that the few people who've even heard of it ignore it as not worth their time. Consequently, a theory being unchallenged is not evidence that the theory is good.
(As a side-note, you appear to be taking this as a personal grudge, and derailing unrelated discussions by bringing it up repeatedly. Carrying an argument from place to place disrupts discussion of other topics, and reflects poorly on the person doing so.)
Yes, of course. The first time someone brought the site up, I took a look, read his methodology, tested it against observed spending patterns, and found it failed to match those observations. See here for one of the previous times I've gone through this in more detail here. Check my data and my calculations if you don't believe me. I'm just saying what came directly from the data, so I have every reason to want you to check for yourself - you'll find the same thing I did. Please - instead of complaining, go take a look at the data for yourself.
Note: the spending patterns link I used appears broken now, so you may wish to try looking at the raw data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Spending on food in 2007 was $6,122/$49,638 = 12.4%, whereas spending on food in 1990 was $4,296/$28,381 = 15.1%.
If purchasing power has truly dropped by 40% in those 17 years - and that is what shadowstats is claiming - then why has food gotten relatively cheaper?
I have no idea why you're getting personal, as this has nothing to do with you or me - it's about validating a claim against empirical evidence, and nothing more.
So? That has nothing to do with what I was talking about. I was saying - and asking people to verify for themselves if they didn't believe me - that:
1) The charts say purchasing power has fallen 40% since 1990, after correcting for demographics and savings rate.
2) Evidence shows income has not fallen 40%.
3) Thus, the charts are wrong.
Instead of getting emotional and personal because I don't agree with you, why don't you take a look at the data yourself? You'll see the same numbers I did, and they lead to the same conclusion I came to.
I think Herman Daly might have been referring to a country wide range of inequality. If it is on a company or organisation basis, there could still be wide disparity in a country, as a whole. Limiting the inequality to 100:1, on a national scale, would be a good start.
One way to limit pay differential is to limit the number of employees in any company [and police it so that you cannot have 'sister companies' etc.]
I have always felt this is necessary step anyway as it would force standardisation of technology. Clearly, 100 people could not build a jumbo jet - but they could build 1/3 of the wing. Companies would have to build to NON-PROPRIETARY standards. No more 'vendor lock-in'
The dirty truth of govt is that they do not support private business. They support BIG private business.
Not argueing for the theories which have led us into the mess. But before embracing this stuff as an alternative, some things should be considered:
- At which levels caps will be set? By a competent regulator I suppose. Regulators do tend to avoid regulation themselves. I could of course point to the success of highly regulated and capped systems like the Soviet Union but to keep it small: The EU today is a prime example of annihilating its fish reserves in its waters under the guidance and oversight of a regulator. How can that be? Oh, and the financial industry is and has always been the most regulated industry of them all. To protect the economy from the dangers of a failed banking system. I would be very careful to suggest something as important as the global ecological balance should be guided by an institutional set-up which has a proven track record of failure. No, please no arguments like this time it will be different. It won't.
- Same holds true for income inequalities. The only working system to balance these so far has been democracies where the voters have the power to address this issue. Of course not in a perfect manner, but far more efficient than in a regulated economy. Again in Socialist countries on paper there was financial equalitiy - the only question is how to value the life of the Gulag or KZ inhibitants. Even if you insist on lauding the regulator, so far there has been no better system invented to control regulators than democracies. Trust the voters to sort this out.
- Thirdly and the point has been made by an other poster as well: The author seems to have missed the point that the global ecosystem is neiter in a steady state nor in an equilibrium. It never has been and it never will.
- Re regulating free trade. The author seems to largely unaware that the U.S. government limits and regulates free trade in a massive manner, protects its own farmers and markets under a free-trade propaganda. This protectionism is the reason for higher wages in the U.S. not free trade. "Buy American" provisions are not free-trade, they are regulation. To give an example how the current free trade system is working in the steel industry. It is is highly tariffed and protected in the U.S. - albeit there is one foreign steel mill with a tax exemption. A German one, which is the only mill worldwide to produce the ultimate quality steel needed for the production of military equipment.
To sum it up: The author presents no solution, has a blind spot with regard to the dangers and unintended consequences of his propositions and serves to an elitist circle whishing to control for the common good. History has shown again and again these approaches are to be avoided. We need decentralisation, empowerment of the local communities, and a critical discussion of the actual benefits provided by central governments like safety (homeland security). Oh, and an open society to keep the discussion going.
The way I see it is this.
We have got to learn how to fly this space ship.
Up until now we have been infants. The ecology has fed us and wiped our bottoms for us.
From an Instrumentation and Control perspective the issues are feedback and control. Feed foward models.
However my God is not the God of the gaps. My God is the God of the Yawning Chasms.
Chaos theory shows that there will be phenomena beyond our theories. These are empirical effects.
We must see ourselves as a subsystem of Gaia.
Our long term purpose is to protect Gaia from the inevitable drift of the habitable zone beyond Earth's orbit, due to the increased output of the sun.
This may sound harsh but it is how I view our situation. We can sustain our growth for a considerable period of time. We just do it as we've been doing it for sometime. Just reallocate resources from those who cannot protect themselves from the effort. So many obvious examples. Here's just one: small west African country (Equatorial Guinea) with a population of only 500,000. Per capita they are one of the richest nations on earth based on the value of the oil produced there. Yet the great majority of the population is in a perpetual near starvation state (seen it first hand...words can’t really describe). The oil is shipped to the EU and the money goes to the ruling dictator.
Thus is the future as resources continue to deplete IMO. We nice Christian folks would never accept such immorality? When was the last time you heard an EU political leader condemn the EG gov’t and refuse to import their oil? So if the hollier then thou with their much better developed social conscious then ours don’t have a problem starving 500,000 folks so they can maintain their life styles, what do you expect we’ll do.
And the other side of this coin is the waste flows.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/jun/05/waste-world-en...
We've been doing it for decades.
Industrial society has a lot to be modest about.
Rockman
You make the point - we just go on stoking our engine, because, well that is the only way it works ... I am glad you personally pulled out of work in the EqG and continue to give that nasty little corner some publicity.
The tragedy is that so very little of 'our' usage would be needed to provide sufficiency in much of the world.
Bangladesh has been for more than 20 years on the first part of 'the demographic transition' toward a stable, albeit higher population level. Their current use of fossil fuel is trivial per capita compared with ours, especially with US/EU; about a factor of 1/50. A surprisingly small input in energy terms of fertilizer N into many 3rd World existing farming systems, with an organized financial safety-net, and very small, in our terms, investment in infrastructure, improves food and societal security via productivity, and this could be done on a pretty much 'sustainable' basis for foreseeable decades at least.
A ninety percent decrease in total global fossil fuel use would still allow, if shared out, enough for places like Bangladesh to improve as well as survive. I happen to think our own survivability would be significantly improved by such an arrangement, but cannot imagine getting from 'here' to 'there'.
Phil -- I know I offered a pretty strong condemnation of the policies/attitudes of the developed economies. But as you point out there's more examples out there then we can ever dump into TOD. I can be just as guilty as the rest of us when it comes to ignoring how we usurp resources from the poorer cultures. My life is great. The lives of many at the lower end of our economy are so much richer then many "middle class" in other parts of the world. Human nature is what it is. Do I want my 8 yo daughter to not have a full and rich life? She wants to be a horse vet one day. And I'll do what ever I can to make it happen. Not just a temporary fantasy...she tenacious and stubborn...gets that from me. The ironic part is that she was adopted from China. Imagine how here life would have been had she survived the orphanage and grew up there. And this is a part of the world expanding and increasing its claim on foreign resources.
In a way I suppose we collectively have a mob mentality towards such matters. A quiet mob. We just sit back and turn a blind eye towards the reality. I like to think if I were 30 years younger I might want to be a part of an effort to over thrown the EG gov’t as was attempted a few years ago (I was not without some skills at that age). Just the fantasies of an aging guy with bad knees I suppose.
Rockman
Ah, dodgy knees. I'm lucky that way, but some of the pals went through it. For one guy it was too much tennis when young. The post-op thing was not a lot of fun.
Horse-vet, however sounds pretty good. Useful things, horses. Also a good vet IMO is often better for humans than a doctor - that used to be a joke round here, but I have seen actual examples. She'll keep you straight.
phil -- too much running up and down steel ladderways of drilling rigs for me. But have surgery scheduled in 3 weeks. But it will be a relatively simple fix with little rehab. Lucky all in all.
Rockman - knees - arthroscopic to clean up torn meniscus cartilage was not too bad - 6 weeks later did a 500 mile, one week bike tour in Ireland. Total knee replacement - more like 6 months to get back to that level. Total knee replacements are not a lot of fun - but, it does allow this 70 year old body to bike the MS 150 (150 miles in 2 days). Best of luck on your surgery and do every scrap of the rehab stuff - it really makes a difference.
Sorry I sounded a bit downbeat above. Unintended.
The rehab hard work is absolutely key for getting and keeping the mobility and not just for the knees. Just about the whole physiology. Great bicycle mileage.
ROCKMAN, if you get the chance, send me an email (in my user profile)
JB
Joules -- Guess I kept reading yout u/n incorrectly so the message kept getting bounced back. I'm wjd2211@aol.com.
We will do what we have learned from experience and evolution since that is the way evolution's 'selection of the fittest' works - human nature says we will try and outgrow resources - and fail at some stage.
We almost certainly don't have the time for adequate rational human responses since the situation is too complex, we are not as clever as we think we are, and there is plenty of evidence that we mostly don't think or act rationally.
The first part of the article is a very good summation of our OECD predicament - the proposed responses in order to move to a steady-ish state indicate to me that the only guaranteed solution is nature's way, proven to work successfully over BILLIONS of years.
It is certainly possible to turn non-resources into resources through the introduction of technology. The primary example of this would be thorium which has the potential to provide the entire population of the earth with a very large amount of energy over a time span of millions of years. A new reactor designed to extract energy from thorium would be all that is required. Furthermore the process that would extract energy from thorium would also transfotm thoroum intgo new materials, by a two atoms for one ratio, thus quite litterly making something out of nothing.
This is not the same as creating resources ex nihilo. Simply calling something a 'non-resource' before it is used does not change the fact that it must exist in an accessible form before one can use it. Furthermore, as far as our current understanding of physics goes, it is not possible to create something entirely from nothing. Your example of atomic fission is simply the splitting of atoms. It is not the act of 'making something out of nothing'.
In Daly's terms, what you are saying is that we live in a relatively "empty world" with respect to energy from electricity. I don't think you are meaning to deny the second law of thermodynamics. Technology does not create new resources, it discovers them. At some point this will reach the point of diminishing returns. Even when you've perfected your matter-antimatter energy generator, the laws of physics will impose limits at some point. 186,283 miles per second -- it's not just a good idea, it's the law.
The limiting factor on the physical growth of the economy may not be electricity, but other things -- food, for example. My pet problem is soil erosion: it's 10-20 times the rate of natural soil formation in the U. S. and Europe, and even higher than that in Africa and Asia. There's also peak phosphate, peak minerals, and so forth.
With our current economic system the transition to thorium nuclear electricity may not be possible without many of the reforms Daly is proposing. In our current system, we are likely to burn coal and oil as long as they're around. Nuclear plants need a lot of planning and investment. If the economy and the political system collapses, we may not have the ability to construct these new nuclear plants. It might help if we just loosened up the regulations, but I seriously doubt it will happen fast enough.
The transition to a thorium nuclear energy economy would still be greatly assisted by, if it does not actually require, a lot of the proposals Daly is making. "Cap and trade" refers mostly to limits on fossil fuels. And surely you would support ecological tax reform, a reduction in income inequality, and freeing up the work week to allow for more "part time" work or longer vacations.
Keith
Keith, at a certain point we will most certainly arrive at a steady-state economy, but that point is n the distant future, it is not today. With the enormous increase of energy that harnessing thorium would bring, it will be possible to mine mineral resources from very low grade ore, with very positive ERoEI. My contention then is that it is highly premature to speak of a failed growth economy, and that the day when the world economy settle into a stead state mode is not today of tomorrow. Also the resources of the earth are sufficient to bring the entire population of the planet to a level of material prosperity enjoyed now in Western Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, and a few other countries with advanced economies.
Thus we need not, and should not write off economic growth yet. Nor should we be prepared to anytime soon.
Even if I agreed with you, (which I don't -recent growth has been financed by debt and will largely prove in future to have been phantom, and thorium, if valid will not power our transportation structures in time), are we to wait until the last cheap energy pulls in non-energy resources from the periphery and move to something more durable at the last moment? We need our remaining cheap resources invested into infrastructure more durable and meaningful. To wait until the whites of the eyes of end of growth are visible and we will leave ourselves with few options (indeed that is where I believe we are now).
How many thorium nuclear electric plants have been built since credit crisis accelerated last year? Time is a scarce resource as well.
Nate this entire line of argument is based on the falacy of composition. The center of economic growth has shifted from Europe and North America to Asia, with both the Chinese and the Indian economies growing rapidly in recent years. We can expect to see this pattern of rapid economic growth continue for some time to come, with both the Chinese and I
ndian economies making a rapid shift durint the next four decades from fossil fuel to nuclear economies. This shift will become much more wrenching in Europe and North America, because a follish ideological opposition to material progresds has become popular. The consequence will be that Europe and North America will become economic backwaters, not the end of economic growth.
Charles,
Soil erosion? Will electricity from nuclear plants enable us to halt soil erosion? Without food, we have a problem. China and India have some of the worst soil erosion in the world.
Species extinction? Paul Macready said that 98% of all land-based vertebrates are either humans, their livestock, or their pets. Will electricity from nuclear plants halt species extinction?
I don't think you've responded effectively to Nate's comment about "the last moment." Sure, in principle, give me enough nukes and a couple of decades to research how it would play out, I could probably generate the entire current economic output from electricity. But in practice, it's just not going to happen. Huge infrastructure changes are needed, and a lot of the problems haven't even been resolved in theory. Too much of their economy (and ours) depends on liquid fuels. Without electric cars and trucks, nuclear is to no avail.
As a practical matter, investment in nuclear is too little, too late to save the growth economy. The crisis is upon us, now. And even going back in time 35 or 50 years and doing the Vulcan mind-meld on the entire world's political leaders to get them to go in this direction, it would be a huge undertaking, and you'd need to think through the entire economy in detail. I don't see a lot of detail here, just vague references to mining stuff with electricity. There are probably resources we haven't even thought about that would be limiting factors.
I would also encourage you to "lighten up" a bit with respect to inequality. There are a billion people in the world who are making less than $1 U. S. per day. Their lot has worsened during the last decade. Even the lot of the middle class in the U. S. A. has worsened. Can they eat electricity? Surely we need at least to have some redistribution here. Don't just assume that an attack on progress is an attack on science. They are two different things. "Progress" is a euphemism for destruction. "Science" represents actual knowledge.
Keith
Evidence, please. Poverty trends disagree with your claim:
Living standards have risen dramatically over the last decades. The proportion of the developing world's population living in extreme economic poverty — defined as living on less than $1.25 per day (at 2005 prices, adjusted to account for the most recent differences in purchasing power across countries) — has fallen from 52 percent in 1981 to 26 percent in 2005.
Pitt--I suggest that that concept of "surviving on only $x a day" is rather unsound anyway. For instance some women in Africa go and gather some nuts as a major food source, but as no money or even exchange is involved it does not get counted in their "income" or "expenditure". And ditto the developed world not so long ago. Much of the food I have eaten myself has never entered any markets. And it was/is of far higher quality that that which has!
This is, in effect, trying to send the discussion into a wild goose chase. Blatant global inequality is too well discussed elsewhere. It's not worth discussing in detail in this context. In a forum such as this, it's more helpful to look at the general tone of my comment and to respond to that, rather than try to stir up ideological debates on peripheral issues.
I will cite the first thing I came across, from that notorious anarcho-communist, Jeffrey Sachs, in "Common Wealth," pages 30-31:
"The Poorest Billion and the Poverty Trap . . . There are still large regions of the world, with roughly one billion people that have not unleashed convergent economic growth. These regions are, by definition, falling further and fvvurther behind the world's leaders. . . . For the past generation, sub-Saharan Africa has failed to achieve a rise in income per person. The growing gap is dangerous in countless ways. . . . "
Talking of wild goose chase, there are lots of fat wild geese bolshily strutting around here. Does anyone have any advice about how to catch one for dinner without getting pecked to death by a team of its colleagues in the process? Seems they set up as groups of four adults to protect their goslings.
Keith, soil conservation is of course the answer to fighting soil erosion. I am in fact the only energy writer on the internet who takes soil conservation seriously. i plan, in the very near future to do a study of the phosphate problem. But no one violates the principles of soil conservation more than tribal societies.
As for species extinction, it is an issue of Darwinian fitness. We cannot stop the process of evolution, or the impact of human beings on other species. it is irrational to see the impact of human's on other species as inevitably evil.
How do you know that investment in nuclear will be too little too late?
I am in favor of redistribution of labor, so that people get to do better quality jobs that pay them better. That might involve immigration, people going to where the jobs are. It is the tribal goat tender, whose goats strip the soil of its protection from erosion, who needs to change his line of work. The tribal goat tender willl be much better off as a Wal-Mart cashier.
This misuse of "darwinian fitness" is a tautology. It's like saying plane crashes are due to gravity and thus "newtonian", so it's irrational to try to prevent them. Nobody but you has suggested anyone is "trying to stop evolution". You're using the existence of evolution as an all-purpose excuse for doing any fool thing, because, well, it's "darwinian".
Straw man argument, introducing the phrase "inevitably evil" and attributing it to those who disagree with you to imply irrationality. Try "undesirable".
And there is nothing whatsoever irrational about considering man's terrible current and projected impact on other species undesirable. For someone who apparently sets great store in his own writing abilities, that's pretty shoddy logic in the service of a pretty shaky premise.
The facts of the Darwinian process include the human impact on the environment. While we should not be about wontenly destroying other species, we cannot step out of nature, or exempt ourselves from being a part of natural processes. It is hardly a straw man argument to acknowledge that our species is a part of nature, and that we will impact nature. Not is the human impact on nature, including species die off always evil. What is to be avoided is environmental impacts that adversely effects us.
I won't continue the process of responding after this since you obviously will, but:
Species evolve based on the prevailing context, yes. That in no way constitutes or supports a rationale for hugely perturbing a functional system.
Who, besides you, has proposed stepping outside nature? I must have missed it. Another straw man argument, seems to be a specialty of yours.
The straw man argument you previously made was explained in my previous post. Read it again.
Again you cast your arguments in term of "good and evil" when no one else is, which is either disingenuous or deranged, depending on your intent.
I'll add you to my mental list of commenters who are not worth responding to.
O. K., at last something we agree on. In my book "A Vegetarian Sourcebook," first published 1983, I state: "Any area in which pastoral nomads get the upper hand will inevitably be transformed into a desert" (1993 edition, p. 125-126). But you're the only energy writer on the internet that takes soil conservation seriously? Hey -- what about me? But the underlying point is that soil erosion is a limiting factor on the economy, specifically on population.
Come to think of it -- I should have mentioned this earlier -- even if we assume basically free universally available electricity, the limiting factor on mining may well be wastes, not energy. Mining produces large quantities of wastes and some of it requires large quantities of water. This might actually be the limiting factor on growth even if we assume free electricity everywhere. Remember what Daly said about "source or sink." Source is a limiting factor if we don't have enough; sink is a limiting factor if pollution is out of hand (witness global warming).
Species extinction is an issue because we do not know all the interactions between species which defines our ecological niche. We may in fact be destroying our ecological niche. This, and not some sentimental attachment to earthworms, is my primary concern. When we're talking about an extinction at the rate of 1000 times the "normal" rate, we need to start asking questions. Prima facie (for me at least), this is a threat to human existence until someone can show, in detail, that it is not threatening.
Debt. U. S. total debt is $50 trillion (not primarily government debt by the way), it has doubled in the past decade, and most of it cannot be repaid because of peak oil. The economy has to grow dramatically to repay all this debt, and for the next 5 - 10 years, at least, it may actually shrink. (How long did you say it would take to convert U. S. electricity to 100% nuclear?) It appears to me that the whole system will collapse even if everything you say about nuclear power is correct. Too much of the economy depends on liquid fuels, and nuclear does nothing for that until we have large-scale electric transportation, which likely will be decades away even if nukes were here right now.
Agreed.
Uh, let's just say "better off as a cashier." Wal-Mart might change their business model, of course, but as currently configured it depends heavily on importing cheap plastic stuff from China. Thus oil is needed for some time to come, thus peak oil will probably impact them down the line at some point.
Then how about KYRGIZSTAN.
Every time I hear about the rip- roaring Chinese and Indian economies my head wants to explode. The Chinese government is constantly blaring about 5%- 6%- 8% growth. It's like magic ... the Chinese corrupt-o-crats are lying sacks of shit. There is no reason to believe one figure that comes out of those countries. They are no better than the LSS Obamanauts; they have the advantages of cheap labor and a closed society. That's all.
Their growth is a mirage. Growth is costs less inflation. More growth equals more costs. What the Chinese and the Indians are advertising is inflation. When the costs finally catch up the 'economies' collapse. Industrialization carries with it the seeds of its own undoing. It is too efficient, it removes excess workers to the end of productivity ... it removes its own customers at the same time.
The cheap labor is kept in line by force (China) and culture (India). This metric is supposed to be the recentering of the world's economy? Which world? Charles Dickens'?
The slave- owning aristocrats of the plantation South believed they were at the center of the universe too. Cotton was king and their claims were no different from the Chinese or their apologists.
India has an opaque society and cheap labor. What advantages are these? They succeed in the zero sum game of stealing jobs from Europe and the US. They are third- world countries burdened by massive populations the bulk of which has nil chance of ever achieving any sort of 'middle class status'. These countries have cars and high- rise buildings; people will consequently believe anything promoted about them.
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
These countries copycat the worst of American cowboy culture without any sort of examination. If they looked closely they would see the model is useless. When the financial organizing metric is theft of the product, there is no other choice but to copy the process. The epitome of Indian business is the incomprehensible and useless 'call center'; the Chinese' is poisoned toys/dog food/medicine/etc. The Chinese and the Indians are building commercial nuclear reactors. In all the various discussions taking place about nuclear power, the issue of plant reliability is generally avoided like melamine- tainted baby feed. Seeing the level of competence and quality embodied in their other products it would be prudent to give Chindian nuclear products - built with the world's cheapest labor - the widest possible berth.
Neither the Chinese nor Indian governments have any qualms about irradiating or otherwise poisoning their own populations and both are aggressively militaristic enought to quash the complaints of neighbors. Let the Americans inhale Chinese and Indian smog and broil under Chinese and Indian Carbon. Why should they care about the reliability of their nuclear products. There is money on the table, that is always the answer.
It will only take one more Chernobyl to end forever the nonsense of unlimited nuclear energy for all; too cheap to meter, no doubt. With the Corrupt- ocracies of India and China behind the push for nuclear energy coupled with culture wide incompetence coupled with laisses- faire in the rest of the world more Chernobyls - and worse - are likely.
The industrialists - and their apologists - always have the same song and dance and have had it since Adam Smith; "Just a little bit more. Just another subsidy. Just some more cheap labor. Just some more resources. give it a bit more chance. Just take this river or that park or that bit of beach or that mountain. Give me some more gold or them some printed money. A little bit more and the 'Good Life' will be here for all. A practical fucking Utopia." This has never happened. A hundred years of applied machinery ... and degraded working conditions, crushing of agriculture and 200 different hanging offenses in UK, then a hundred more years of railroads, canals and steamships .... and machine guns and breech- loading artillery ... then a hundred MORE years of automobiles and jet airplanes and strip mines and toxic waste and worldwide degraded conditions for all LIFE, not just the working. Depressions and crashes and panics and vast wars, dust bowls, and the constant of a handful becoming fabulously wealthy.
The real 'inflection point' is that the world is past the peak of places for the exile rich to escape to. To escape from the mob that will torture them to death, as did the Jacobins to their enemies.
Just what are the industrialists promising this time? The Cheap Chinese reactors built by slave labor that cost a teensy weensy little bit less compared and just what do you think the outcome of this is going to really be? right, a consumer paradise. Big cars with tailfins will make a comeback.
Poisoned dog food, indeed!
"The industrialists - and their apologists - always have the same song and dance and have had it since Adam Smith; "Just a little bit more. Just another subsidy. Just some more cheap labor. Just some more resources. give it a bit more chance. Just take this river or that park or that bit of beach or that mountain. Give me some more gold or them some printed money. A little bit more and the 'Good Life' will be here for all. A practical fucking Utopia." This has never happened. A hundred years of applied machinery ... and degraded working conditions, crushing of agriculture and 200 different hanging offenses in UK, then a hundred more years of railroads, canals and steamships .... and machine guns and breech- loading artillery ... then a hundred MORE years of automobiles and jet airplanes and strip mines and toxic waste and worldwide degraded conditions for all LIFE, not just the working. Depressions and crashes and panics and vast wars, dust bowls, and the constant of a handful becoming fabulously wealthy."
Wow Steve, that is undoubtedly some of the most powerful prose I have read in a while - thank you
Al
"Wow Steve, that is undoubtedly some of the most powerful prose I have read in a while - thank you
Al"
Exactly my own thought as I read through Steve's post before reading your reaction.
Amazing passion and articulation formulated as a comment!
Awestruck!
Steve from Virginia,
Your point is that India and China should not industrialize or build nuclear reactors because they are too incompetent to manage them.
That is a pretty racist point of view.
The cheap labor is kept in line by force (China) and culture (India).
Wrong. Labor is cheap because their populations are large relative to the size of their economies.
India has an opaque society and cheap labor. What advantages are these? They succeed in the zero sum game of stealing jobs from Europe and the US.
Indian society is not opaque. It is a democracy with a free press. You can go to India anytime and study or collect data on any aspect of the Indian society. And by the way, jobs are not property; they cannot be stolen. Capital flows where it attracts the highest return. This is how capitalism has always worked. I guess you had no problems with it as long as US and Europe was on top of the world.
The epitome of Indian business is the incomprehensible and useless 'call center'
Utter rubbish. They have a massive software industry with several companies earning in excess of US $1 billion in revenue. They also have large petrochemical, steel, pharmaceutical, textile and automobile industries. They have the capability to launch satellites in orbit and the Indian space program recently launched a moon probe. India is also the largest or second largest producer of grains in the world.
Neither the Chinese nor Indian governments have any qualms about irradiating or otherwise poisoning their own populations and both are aggressively militaristic enought to quash the complaints of neighbors.
More rubbish. Perhaps it would be more accurate to argue that "the US government has no qualms about letting poor black people starve to death because no serious effort was made to help the poor black people trapped in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina".
The environmental standards in India and China are below the US. But that was true for all industrialized countries in the beginning. When people are poor, they want jobs and are willing to tolerate more pollution. When they become wealthy they demand a cleaner environment. India and China are aggressively militaristic? That is a strange accusation coming from a citizen of a country whose violent foreign policy has killed millions and continues to kill millions. The US has been at war almost constantly since the start of the 20th century.
With the Corrupt- ocracies of India and China behind the push for nuclear energy coupled with culture wide incompetence coupled with laisses- faire in the rest of the world more Chernobyls - and worse - are likely.
Culture wide incompetence, huh? Neither India nor China have 40% child births out of wedlock, a 50% divorce rate, violent crime ridden and dangerous cities, a substantial population that lives on credit and borrowed money and 50% of the population on prescription drugs. And unlike American banks, the Indian banks have not destroyed their national economy by lending money to people who cannot repay their loans. And neither country has blundered into a war of aggression and occupation that was supposed to be a cake walk and later turned into a quagmire (apparently nothing was learnt in Vietnam). So perhaps the culture of incompetence is a lot closer to home than you suspect? As far as corruption is concerned, in the US it is very common to buy favors by doing "fund raising" (read, bribes) for politicians. The US, with its Enron/WorldCom/Madoff scandals, no-bid contracts given to Halliburton/Bechtel/KBR, corporate lobbyists writing laws and a corrupt financial industry run by Wall Street "banksters" is as much a "corrupto-cracy" as China and India.
The Indian government is attempting to reduce poverty by trading with the rest of the world, by industrializing, by reducing bureaucratic control of the economy and by coming out of self imposed economic isolationism.
What would you have them do? What would you do if you were running China or India?
steve from Virginia wrote,
This is utter rubbish. The indians care as much about nuclear safety as we do. The indians are not particularly militaristic, but they intend to not be pushed around by the Pakistanis or the Chinese. Indian governments most certainly would have qualms about irradiating Indian citizens, and it would be a big political liability for any Indian government to allow a nuclear accident to happen due to negligence.
Another Chernobyl type accident is certainly not going to happen in either China nor India because neither country operates RBMK type reactors, and both understand enough about nuclear safety to understand that reactors with a positive coefficient of reactivity are unsafe. Unlike the pre- Chermobyl Soviet Union, both China and India house their reactors in Western style containment structures.
The essence of your rant, Steve from Virginia, is that you hate progress, and that you feel particularly threathened by yellow mens' progress since you belong to the economic illiterates who believe the economy is a zero sum game. This makes you bad-mouth Asian progress in the worst possible way, and as the biggest symbol of progress is nuclear power, you hate yellow nuclear power more than anything else (except rich people, perhaps).
I'm a bit disgusted that your xenophobic, anti-progress, paranoid, hateful and stupid spew gets applause from the audience.
You are right, jeppen. I also got the impression that Steve feels threatened by Asian progress and the decline of Western dominance. Sorry Steve, a substantial number