Sunday Open Thread 2
Posted by Prof. Goose on April 2, 2006 - 8:32pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: africa, peak oil [list all tags]
wow, you kids sure are talkative this weekend...good for you!
[editor's note, by Prof. Goose]Here's an article to spur you on: "The era of cheap oil is over," he said. "What then becomes of our ambitions and our dreams to see Africa take the path of harmonious development?"
- One of the ways we have used the fossil
fuel bonanza is to increase our population fivefold.
- An earth with half a billion people all living
a comfortable lifestyle, with electricity and the
internet, is quite achievable.
- An earth with twenty billion people would result
in ecological ruin and collapse.
What kind of earth do we want?How will you reduce the population from 6.5 billion to 0.5 billion? What specific measures are you advocating?
I wasn't proposing a plan for reducing population to half a billion. All I said was that half a billion people could all be living in reasonable comfort. So far, it's just something to think about (since many people profess to be concerned about whether other people are living in comfort or in squalor).
Hmm, I had a hard time finding the right adjective to complete that sentence. I see now that "achievable" wasn't quite right.
Of course, it is theoretically achievable. We know what needs to be done - it's all in Heinberg's Powerdown.
But in the transition period, which must/will last a long time, we will need to develop new energy sources as well, and the most important one is probably nuclear. We'll need to invest heavily in the electric grid as well. The lead times are long, and if we focus all our attention on reduced use we may end up missing the opportunity - with disastrous consequences.
The issue is one of rate - if we cannot power down (in a controlled fashion) as fast as the present sources deplete, then uncontrolled things will happen, including population reduction on a too rapid time frame. Therefore we cannot just focus on powering down; we will have to look at sources as well.
Pushers go out of business, junkies stop robbing people [free dope], no more crack babies, welfare cost reduction, afghans/columbians etc. get their act together and plant vineyards [or biofuel crops].
Didn't Ghandi [mrs] give free transistor radios for vasectomies?
How about free fuel?? Targeted social engineering..
Excellent starting thread. Radical thinking required.
Consider if America agreed on voluntary pop. controls. to decrease headcount fairly. Immigrants would desire to come to the US even more.
Would the cheapest way to control the influx, both legal & illegal, is that the primary cost of admission is voluntary sterilization? Legal immigrants undergo fertility testing before admission to prove sterility, any illegals caught are forcibly sterilized, along with additional penalties.
If every country did this immigration rule, wouldn't this create a greater impetus for local biosolar sustainability vs moving to increasingly endangered detritus-fueled habitats? Comments?
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
It is not a two class society. If the couple has one child in the home country first, then when they come to this country legally-- they are on parity with the rest of Americans. If they have two or more children they want to bring in-- no dice unless we need that many more kids for some reason. If the father or mother wants to come in to work, but will send remittances back home to the 2 or more child family, the sterilization guarantees no extra births on his/her part while inside the US. Living in the US, without family, will tend to make them visit the original home family more often--which is good. When the kids at home become adults, the other parent, if sterilized, can then legally enter the US to be with the other spouse, thereby doubling the potential remittances sent back home.
Illegals, if they have never had a child, but want one, will tend to have them in the home country first: this effect will tend to keep them home, get a good education so as to attract a spouse, and assert the desire to be near their family and to be good stewards of their community and ecosystem. If they get caught in this country, the Border Patrol will have no idea if the illegal has already created a child on their own with another American-- that is why they are sterilized. My guess is the illegal will then be deported for breaking the Law, but now is highly incentivized to enter the US legally if he does have a child in the states. If he does come back in, the fact that he is already sterilized and has one child already keeps him at parity with the rest of the American couples.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
By the way, I like your ideas about biosolar zones. If I were philosopher king I might enact them :-)
You nailed it right there. IF some true genius would invent 'instant education' that would imediately download into everyone's head all the info on TOD, the Yahoo forums, the books by Kunstler, J. Diamond, M. Simmons, Tainter, et al, related websites like Dieoff & LATOC, etc...and so on: voluntary population control and Powerdown would be EASY because everyone would be their own Philosopher King.
Instead, the popular saying of "ignorance is bliss" condemns us to horrific sadness. The truth-telling Cassandra must have been the saddest goddess in mythology.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
If I were to put togeather an "instant education" mix I would try to make one less biased since there is a risk that I am wrong or that my ideas only solve a subset of the problems.
I would go for samples of things that makes life joyfull withouth being extremely expensive in resources, ways to socialice with strangers and ways to judge and calculate if a statement is correct and a set of informatin is thrustworthy and basic skills in reading, writing, reasoning and math.
Some things needs a Power Up, such a building long lasting usefull infrastructure for food production, transportation and nice cities.
It would be usefull for manny if people that still are irrelevant for their lives but compete for resouces would curl up and die. This would make a curl-up-and-die instant education a usefull weapon. There is an enourmous potential for evil in powerdown and die off scenarios.
You are correct about the potential for evil in various dieoff scenarios. To a large extent, some of them are juvenile fantasies that reveal vast ignorance of history, economics, and sociology.
What I find dismaying in many (not all, not even half) of the posts on TOD is that the people making comments have not done their homework. Many young people think that "truth" is something found quickly and easily in Wikipedia, and that if they can find a website that supports a position, then that position has credibility.
As one educated in Sweden, I suspect that you lack a full understanding of how little most Americans have learned about science, geography, history or mathematics. The credulity, ignorance and confusion shown by the worst posts on this site are a sad confirmation of how the U.S. educational system has failed.
On a brighter side, the best posts--including yours--are good food for thought and constructive action.
The whole question of our planet's booming population, and how on earth we get it under some sort of control, is a really Big Deal. One can easily put it on a par with global meltdown, the arms race, Peak Oil...
It's not only a huge economic, environmental and social question, morality and religion also come into it. If ever there was a thorny question population growth is it. It really needs it's own site, not an appendage to TOD.
The way some people bandy about the concepts of 'die-off' and 'nature will take care of the problem' is chilling, in my opinion. 'Care' is a word I would use carefully in relation to 'nature.' 'Nature' seems singularly lacking in 'care' most of the time, at least when I look at it. Where I live there really isn't much 'nature' left. It's all pretty much a man made 'nature' or more perhaps more correctly 'culture.' I also think it's dangerous to superimpose human cultural attitudes and morality on 'nature.' I have a lot of problems with anthropomorhpism and the way we view the socalled natural world. Basically I don't think it really helps our understanding of the world around us, it probably does the opposite.
The famous Hirsch report talked about how we needed decades of preparation if we were going to get through Peak Oil. It was prudent to start in good time. This 'time lag' also applies to population growth in the extreme. As I see it we have a population of around 6.5 billion now. I hope that's the correct figure, the last time I looked it was! I don't think we can realistically stop it hitting 10 or 11 billion or even 14 billion in the coming few decades. After that it should begin a slow decline on a world wide basis. These are clearly staggering numbers, and lot of people have real problems with them. It's worrying. How on earth will we ever feed so many people, let alone give them decent lives?
Another problem intimately connected with population growth is the decline of rural agriculture and the massive increase in urbanization. People are crowding into mega-cities looking for a better life at astounding rates. How we reduce, stabilize or control this urban growth is also a mega question.
I'm also concerned about some of the 'solutions' offered on TOD. There's this bizarre doomer fantasy that some kind of authoritarian, fascist state could somehow 'deal' with population growth. I don't buy it for a minute. What appears to characterize fascist states is their corruption, incompetence and general lack of intelligence.
China's population policy isn't really applicable to the rest of the world for a number of reasons. Do we just impose population controls on the poor, or are we included in this global fascist empire?
I'm also sceptical about 'die-off' whaterver that idea really means. It seems that people who subscibe to this idea appear to believe that they will personally survive it, and inherit the earth afterwards. I somehow don't think it'll pan-out like that, sorry guys.
I suppose I find both of these scenaios too orderly and easy to comprehend and then reject. I think the future may be far more chaotic than we suspect, with as yet unimagined consequences. I think 'fate' may come into play here and surprise us all. There are a lot of challanges ahead that we probably don't even see on the horizon.
Of course there's always bird-flu. That might solve all our problems. Maybe bird flu is a CIA plot, just like AIDS? When it's all over we the chosen can start all over again. I don't think so. Bird flu may have already mutated into type easily transmitted between humans as we speak. We just don't know at the moment. Let's hope it will never do that. It could theoretically wipe-out over half the world's population in a matter of months in a worst-case scenario. Unfortunately the knock on effects of such a pandemic for society are virtually incomprehensibe. The more one thinks about the consequences, the more ghastly and destructive they appear. We could, possibly be talking about the end of modern civilization as we know it, for decades, or maybe forever. So if one is really into 'realistic dooming' I'd bet on bird flu!
I'm actually 50:50 on whether the term "peak oil" will have to be abandoned. There is already a lot of wasted energy as memes spread that "peak oilers are all end-of-world fanatics."
Who is exaggerating now? Only a fool would say this, and I'm not aware of anyone here saying it. What is absolutely beyond question is that if there had been no fossil fuel world population would be much lower than it is right now. For heaven's sake, we were close to "peak guano" at the point that synthetic ammonia was discovered.
There would also have been much misery, of course, probably still ongoing.
"An earth with half a billion people all living a comfortable lifestyle, with electricity and the internet, is quite achievable."
You may see a great deal of difference between your pessimistic projection of a world population of a half-billion, and "we'd all be dead" ... but we'd need to lose 11 parts out of 12 in the current population to get there.
I'm not asserting that half a billion is the maximum population compatible with a first-world (but powered-down) lifestyle for everyone.
I am asserting (and of course this is a WAG) that a first-world (but powered-down) lifestyle for everyone is compatible with a world population of half a billion.
Hence, a "world without fossil fuel" prediction is necessarily a prediction about an unpredictable era.
For what it's worth, the superficial optimists don't get off the hook either. They think we will get specific technologies on demand (better batteries in 3 years, better solar cells in 5 years, hydrogen cars in 10 years). Those are all "predictions" which throw out the innovation trend-lines in their respective fields. They are just optimism, coded as prediction.
The middle ground is to deal with what we have, and to make such projections (like Hubbert's curve) as are actually supported by available data.
... if you want to write science fiction 100 years out, write it up as a movie script ... I'll watch it.
"Creative Destruction" is a term coined by the late great economist Joseph Schumpeter to explain how capitalism works. Innovations destroy the old way of doing things and much of the value of old capital investments while they create new opportunities for profit and investment in new kinds of capital.
BTW, Schumpeter observed that innovations tend to come in "swarms," at intervals of very roughly seventy-five years. The last swarm we can date at somewhere close to 1950, and I'm impatiently looking forward to the next one, because 2025 is past the time we need some Big New Innovations and Investment Opportunities (BNIIO).
Would it be war? Starvation?
No, there are 6.5 billion people, and humans are tenacious. It's going to be harder to get rid of us than it might seem.
There are also many people who use whatever turmoil is available to further their own pre-existing causes - racism, religious extremism, anti technology crusades, etc. PO is tailor made for this, and TOD is attracting this crowd lately too.
My guess is that the Hirsch report lays out pretty realistic scenarios. I don't see much public will to enact the changes we need to make, and I have little faith the invisible hand will be sufficiently proactive, but I don't see society completely collapsing from PO directly. I'm far more worried about the economic and political changes that are happening now - they may be driven mostly by energy depletion, but it probably won't help in dealing with them. I see how bad things could get if everything played out in just the worst way, and I believe what does happen will be bad enough and surprise a lot of folks, but I guess I'm not ready to call the collapse of all civilization yet!
My impression is that Finland has the best schools among the nordic countries. They did not have a political project for tearing down a functioning system to make better more equalized citizens. The sadest part of this is that it has had the worst consequences for lower class children with weak parents, the ones our socialist elite said they cared most about. They still say this but what they say is not what their actions have brought us.
USA is almost a continent, your schools cant be all bad, can they?
And you are all over the globe with your businesses and military, should that not give you good reasons and opportunities to learn about the whole world? But the percentage of the population directly involved should for a large country be lower then for a small traditional free trading nation like Sweden. I guess that might answer my own question. :-/
You dont have to know everything but I think it helps a lot to fairly well know what you know. My posts are better when I stay on the right side of this border and I try to at least be close to it while speculating and connecting small dots of knowledge in a creative way to solve a problem. I think people after a while tend to listen more if you dont bullshit them.
But immigration enthusiasts won't want to hear it. How many people do we need anyways? Next time you are in a traffic jam, imagine 1 out of 3 cars dematerialising. One out of 3 cars is piloted by a post-1965 immigrant or child thereof. Did we REALLY need to download all those prople? It's way past time we undo that law and build a wall. That is the cold hard fact we all must contend with. So if people want to call me an ecofascist, so be it. But the fact remains a fact.
As long as we enjoy the richest standards of living in the world, no law or wall will keep people out. (Nice Anagrams, there) And as long as there is cheaper labor and goods abroad, nothing will keep our 'Fuller Bucket' from siphoning out to the rest of the world, either.
As I see it, the population, just like the food supply, is ALL a result of cheap energy, and will rise or fall to the level that our available energy is able to sustain it. Immigration is only a predictable side-effect. And think about it, if we're going to be moving back towards some serious agriculture, do you think we won't need a lot of muscle to make it happen?
I was watching the History Channel yesterday. It was "doomer porn" day, I think. They did the Black Death, the Salem Witch Trials, the Little Ice Age, etc. The Little Ice Age show covering modern-day global warming as well, and had a segment on that Pentagon report. The one that predicted that climate change might lead to the U.S. being overwhelmed by refugees from Central America and the Carribean. The experts they interviewed thought that was quite possible...but also thought the opposite might happen. American refugees from the southwest might head into Mexico. Not chased by glaciers, as in that movie, but by drought and food shortages.
Either way, I fear "overcrowded lifeboat syndrome" is going to be a problem.
What about development of vaccines, anti bacterials, ability at disease detection and resolution, medical technologies such as sonar, greater access to hospitals for the masses, cleaner water, bio-technology, pills, etc etc?
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Nope, doesn't work that way. When immigrants lower wages and raise rents, they price people out of having kids. Every immigrant that comes in is a kid not born. America's population would be the same without immigrants because we would have had more children.
Same thing works for engineers. If you bring in immigrant engineers, American kids go study law or something else that doesn't have face so much competition. So one engineer in is one potential engineering student studying law.
Immigrants increase the population growth rate for two reasons. They physically add to the population base, and they tend to have larger families for two or three generations after they arrive.
Agree that we might not be using less oil, though. Chances are, we'd be using just as much. We'd just be using more each.
As an engineer and an attorney, I can tell you that 99.99999% of the attorneys in the world couldn't become engineers if the fate of the universe depended upon it.
The question those of us in the so-called "First World" must ask is something like this: "How can I respond with care and compassion to this terrible suffering?"
Not one of us made the world as it was when we were born into it. None of us knows all about how to make things right.
Yet the question remains manifest in very concrete form. "What do we do about the effect of rising oil prices on the ability of these suffering people to rise out of poverty?"
"What will we do as education, medicine and food and agricultural tools become harder for the people of Africa to buy?"
"What will we do as the infrastructure of various human settlements in Africa crumbles even as the enviroment is dramatically altered due to global climate change and the burdens it has already born?"
"What will happen as poor people become more desparate and see their children and people dying off even as First World nations consume far more resources per capita than they ever dreamed of? How will this affect geopolitics?"
As the USA is the number one weapons dealer and also has balked at providing affordable AIDs drugs to Africa, I've assumed that the US government has simply written most of the African population off already.
Is US foreign policy a policy of "let them die off" combined with "help them die off, and the sooner the better?" What about Nato? -- Europe? -- China? -- Russia --the UN?
Famine and disease are already taking large numbers in Africa. Soil is simply blowing away. This will spread to other continents soon. This is not a future issue -- it is a current issue.
Once the current world order has wrecked as much havoc on the world as it can tolerate, one of the measures to bring things back under control will certainly be population control. Whether this done humanely or fascistically is a matter of choice. The humane way would of course be use the remaining reserves of energy for planned descent, globally agreed on. It would involve first and foremost a policy guaranteeing old people security. That's why people have a lot of kids--for their old age. Second, it means restricting the number of kids people can have FAIRLY. Third it means that older people have to do light, socially useful work to ease the load on the fewer young. Plus a whole lot more. But it is certainly doable in a very humane way.
The most inhumane way is to leave it to nature to take care of it for us, and to the New World Order crowd who will do their thinning via war, plunder and chaos.