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Population: Thinking about our Future
Posted by Gail the Actuary on September 13, 2010 - 10:30am
This is a guest post by retired geography professor Gary Peters. He wrote a previous post as well.
Death is inevitable; population growth is not. I prefer to discuss the latter and some of its implications in an attempt to convince you that further growth of the human population is unnecessary and will complicate virtually every other problem that we face today.
Writing about his popular blog, Dot Earth, Andy Revkin noted, “By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today.” The word “expected” is used here and elsewhere as if nothing we do can stop the addition of at least 2.1 billion more people to the planet over the next 40 years. That is absurd. Though nine billion is only a projected figure, based on assumptions about birth and death rates that may or may not be accurate between now and 2050, it is most often accepted as a fait accompli. That leads us, then, not to ask questions about whether we should intervene in that growth somehow, stop it, or even reverse it, but rather to focus on questions about how we are going to provide for it. Rather than ask why we want or need another 2.1 billion humans on the planet, researchers focus almost exclusively on how we are going to provide those additional people with safe drinking water, food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and other needs, even though billions already do without some or all of those things.
Let’s be clear up front. There is nothing natural or necessary about adding 2.1 billion more people to the planet and it can’t be done without either diverting scarce resources from other uses or finding new resources. Rational people in the United States consistently write on blogs and elsewhere that we cannot interfere with nature when it comes to procreation. Most of those people, mysteriously, have only one or two children, indicating to me that either they consistently interfere with nature or, by some highly improbable coincidence, they have all married partners with deficient reproductive systems.
One of the most common comments that I hear about population is the following: As the poor countries become richer, women in them will have fewer children. This thinking is based on the demographic transition model, which in turn was based on the experience of a number of western nations during earlier phases of the Industrial Revolution. The demographic transition model has no predictive power, as most demographers know, but it has led to the conventional wisdom that economic growth everywhere will lead to lower rates of population growth.
Assume that the conventional wisdom is right. We then must ask where the resources, especially energy resources, are going to come from to bring about enough economic growth to make a real demographic difference. The rich countries have long made the argument that economic growth will bless all those nations that become more like us (e.g. develop free markets, free trade, democratic institutions, etc), but future economic growth is a promise, or a hope, not a guarantee.
If we take an extreme case, the fallacy of such thinking becomes apparent. Assume that we wish to bring the world’s current population of 6.9 billion up to an American standard of living, then ask how we might do that. If we focus just on crude oil, the absurdity of such an assumption is striking. In round figures the United States right now consumes about 20 million barrels of crude oil per day and we have about 5 percent of the world’s population. If we were to bring the world up to our current oil consumption level, we would need to extract about 400 million barrels of crude oil per day, nearly five times current extraction.
Given what we know about oil extraction, oil deposits, oil reserves, alternative fuels from tar sands, and whatever else you want to throw in the mix, it is clear that we could not even come close to extracting 400 million barrels of oil per day from planet Earth, now or ever. We may not even be able to reach 100 million barrels per day. You can create your own examples, or suggest your own energy fantasies, but the brutal reality is that even if we were to add no more people to the planet we could not possibly raise the world’s population to a standard of living even closely approximating ours, period. The promise is a lie.
Here is a different example, still using crude oil. The United States reached its peak oil production in 1970, when our population was about 203 million. Had it been necessary for us to live within our means with respect to oil after 1970, we would have needed to reduce our population, reduce our per capita use of oil, or some combination of the two. However, since 1970 crude oil production in the United States has steadily declined, whereas the population has grown to 310 million. Our demand for oil grew, whereas our oil production declined. We could meet that demand, but only because we were able to import more and more crude oil from elsewhere (and because we have never been willing to calculate the real cost of doing this, including both environmental costs and the cost of maintaining major military commitments in the Middle East and elsewhere). Now extend this same thinking to the world, where we keep promising economic growth to all, and ask yourself a simple question: When the world population reaches the point where its demand for oil exceeds supply, where is Earth going to import more oil from?
We do not know for sure how much of the world’s population growth over the last two centuries has been a direct result of our use of fossil fuels, but we do know that that growth has been totally different from that in any earlier period of our history as a species, which takes us back about 200,000 years. Whatever the current share of world population is that we might attribute directly to oil, that share will begin to decline once we have reached a peak in oil production. If we were prudent, we would realize that and act now to decrease the world’s population in humane ways, mainly by decreasing birth rates below death rates and keeping them there for a very long time.
Consider two different disciplinary perspectives, economics and ecology, and their very different implications for the future of humans and our planet. In the economics corner, Larry Summers a few years back stated that there is no limit to the carrying capacity of Earth for humans. More recently, Tim Harford concluded, in The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World, “The more of us there are in the world, living our logical lives, the better our chances of seeing out the next million years.” Though I don’t want to bias you too much, keep in mind that about 99.9 percent of economists failed to predict our recent global financial meltdown.
In the ecology corner, Mark Bush wrote, in Ecology of a Changing Planet, “If there is one lesson that the geological record offers, it is that all species will go extinct; some just do it sooner than others.” He also wrote, “The human population is…the root cause of most environmental problems, and the sheer number of humans plays a very significant role in degrading the environment.” In an article in Science Harold F. Dorn wrote, “No species has ever been able to multiply without limit. There are only two checks upon a rapid increase in numbers—a high mortality and a low fertility. Unlike other biological organisms, man can choose which of these checks shall be applied, but one of them must be.” Garrett Hardin made one of the most succinct statements ever about the relationship between ecology and economics:
Don’t speak to me of shortage. My world is vast
And has more than enough—for no more than enough.
There is a shortage of nothing, save will and wisdom;
But there is a longage of people.
Economists and ecologists cannot both be right. Or can they? The answer depends in part on the time frame in which we choose to think, with economists thinking in much shorter time frames than ecologists. Barring some catastrophe, the world’s population may well continue to increase at its current 80 million per year for a while, though in either economic or ecological terms further growth makes no sense. Economists should not want to divert ever more of Earth’s scarce resources to expanding human numbers, except for very selfish reasons. The economic costs of future demographic growth seem to outweigh the benefits, unless one argues that such growth, now confined almost entirely to the poor countries, will continue to provide a supply of cheap labor that can be exploited to provide goods and services for the rich countries. The poor will continue to migrate to ever more crowded cities, live in ever grimier slums, and plan how they might one day escape to one of the rich countries.
The ecological costs of future demographic growth also outweigh the benefits. Graphs of population growth and species extinctions during the last two hundred years, for example, look enough alike to make reasonable people think twice about how many people should share the planet and how many other species of plants and animals we are willing to see go extinct so that our numbers can continue to grow. Even then, despite what Summers, Harford, and many other economists believe, the number of humans living on the planet will one day reach a limit. It may have already exceeded that limit, but that is a different question.
One final demographic comparison is worth consideration, and I thank the Population Reference Bureau for developing it. In 2010 Germany had a population of about 82 million, Ethiopia had about 85 million. However, the total fertility rate, approximately the number of children that each woman of child-bearing age will have in her lifetime, in 2010 was 1.3 in Germany and 5.4 in Ethiopia. A stable population, once adjusted to its age and sex structure, would require a total fertility rate of around 2.1, so if nothing changes in these two countries then Germany’s population will decline and Ethiopia’s will grow. Population projections for these two countries for 2050 are as follows: Germany will decline to about 72 million and Ethiopia will increase to about 174 million. At that time it is projected that only 14 percent of Germans will be under 15 years of age, compared to about 44 percent of Ethiopians. Germany will probably still be rich; Ethiopia most likely will still be poor. Both will have numerous problems associated with their projected demographic changes, if they occur as projected.
Demography may not be destiny, but it will always impact the destiny of both individual nations and the planet. To pretend otherwise, or to pretend that we cannot and should not interfere with demographic trends, is to remain in denial. To believe that another 2.1 billion people are going to share the planet, no matter what decisions are made, is nonsense. Population projections for 2050 show that China and India together will have a population of nearly 3.2 billion, more than the total world population 50 years ago. The projected population of the United States in 2050 is 423 million, 113 million more than we have today. Think of that in terms of the oil example for the United States that I mentioned earlier.
The world’s population clock continues to tick away, adding about 228,000 people to the planet each day. Each minute humans experience about 267 births and 108 deaths. The United States adds an additional person every eleven seconds. These numbers should make even economists shudder a bit and question our ability to stay ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, as Kenneth Boulding once commented, “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
In their recent study, Running on Empty? The Peak Oil Debate, David Ingles and Richard Denniss concluded the following:
Peak oil will arrive; the question is simply one of timing. It will probably be sooner than most people expect and definitely sooner than many would prefer. In an ideal world, governments would anticipate this development and plan for it; the alternative is a laissez-faire scenario likely to impose high economic costs in terms of stagflation and lost output.
If these authors, and many others, are right, then we should recognize how valuable and necessary oil is to the care and maintenance of modern societies. Given its importance, and the likelihood that its extraction is at or near its peak, it makes no sense to continue using it to support population growth. It would make much more sense to divert some funds today to curtail population growth as soon as possible. It is a clear case where an ounce of prevention (birth control and lower fertility) is much cheaper than a pound of cure (finding more oil or higher mortality).
For those who want to argue that other energy sources are on their way and that we needn’t worry so much about oil, I would suggest that you read Vaclav Smil’s book, Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects. He concluded that “Energy transitions have been, and will continue to be, inherently prolonged affairs, particularly so in large nations whose high levels of per capita energy use and whose massive and expensive infrastructures make it impossible to greatly accelerate their progress if we were to resort to some highly effective interventions.”
Finally, Smil wrote, “The overall composition of primary energy supply and the principal modes of energy conversions will closely resemble today’s arrangements five or ten years from now—but how far we will advance into the post-fossil fuel future in three or four decades will not be determined only by the commitment to innovation but also by our willingness to moderate our energy expectations and to have our energy uses following a more sensible direction, one that would combine reduced demand with a difficult, but eventually rewarding, quest for a civilization powered by renewable energy flows.”
Though Smil says nothing about population size or growth, it should be obvious to all but the most obtuse among us that future energy transitions would be easier if there were fewer of us. We have squandered part of our one-time stores of solar energy packed away in fossil fuels to expand our numbers at unsustainable rates. If we eventually do develop a “civilization powered by renewable energy flows” we may find that it will not support 6.9 billion humans, let alone the nine billion or more projected to be living in 2050. Under those conditions a more sustainable number of humans might be only two billion, though we won’t know until we get there.
As the sun rises on the dawn of peak oil we will see emerging from the shadows the four horsemen, ready to ride again if we do nothing now to humanely curtail our birth rates and shrink our burgeoning numbers. The choice is ours; the burden of making the wrong choice will fall on future generations.
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Nothing much new here.
"researchers focus almost exclusively on how we are going to provide those additional people with safe drinking water, food, clothing, shelter, medical care"
"Researchers" is of course a vast generalization, but just opening up the UN Population Division's list of publications:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/publications.htm
and looking at the first article in each alphabetical section, I find:
Abortion Policies: A Global Review
Fertility, Contraception and Population Policies
Levels and Trends of Contraceptive Use as Assessed in 2002
Partnership and Reproductive Behaviour in Low-Fertility Countries...
These certainly sound like studies about how to proactively control population growth, not just deal with the consequences. Can this "retired professor" not do a simple google search that takes a few seconds, or is he trying to reinforce a stereo-type with hand waving and intentional deception?
Turning to google scholar, under "human population," besides the predictable set of scientific papers on genetics, in the first page we get:
Human population in the biodiversity hotspots
Human population and the global environment
Given the results of these three-second searches, would the author be willing to modify the words "almost exclusively" in the statement above?
I also find it interesting that the author rejects the determinism that claims that reduced birth rates always follow increased prosperity, but then he swallows whole Smil's determinism that energy transitions must always be very long, drawn-out affairs because they have been in the past. One would at least have liked to see an acknowledgment that this is an apparent (at least) contradiction, and perhaps some argumentation as to why the author judges the determinism in the one case to be justified,but not in the other.
Also missing (all too predictably, I find) is any acknowledgment that the poorest fifth of humanity use essentially no ff nor most other non-renewable resources, so reducing their numbers will do little to nothing to cushion the resource ceilings we are bumping up against.
All of this is not to say that population is not a huge issue. Are we to see some substantive suggestions in future posts on how to address the issue? Short of that, this is just a statement that population is a problem and we should be doing something about it. I doubt anyone will disagree with that basic point here.
Would it be right to assume that this Gary Peters is the same as this Gary L. Peters of Calafornia State University, Chico, who wrote this book on population?
Coming from the UK, and not having studied geography, I'm in no position to judge either the college or quality of the research.
Crobar, you are correct.
If you were to read some of the articles that you cite you would find that virtually none of them support reducing the size of our population. Most family planning programs help people achieve their "desired family size," which remains well above replacement level in far too many places.
As for births in poor countries, many of them will end up migrating to rich countries, just as they do here, so to believe that births in poor countries do not affect resource use is wrong. At the very least more food will be needed, which often means more deforestation, etc.
To compare the demographic transition and Smil's work on energy transitions makes no sense to me. One point I tried to make was that the demographic transition was based on historical experience and occurred largely in response to economic growth that was made possible by the use of fossil fuels. Future demographic transitions will be made more difficult, if not impossible, because at least one fossil fuel, oil, is at or near its peak. That hardly negates Smil's argument, which in part is that we do not have lurking in our immediate future any new energy source that can replace oil and other fossil fuels.
"desired family size," which remains well above replacement level in far too many places.
Could you expand on this? From what I've seen, that's the case in a small minority of countries (mostly very poor and uneducated). Heck, in many countries we don't even know what that is: what will it be in Saudi Arabia when women can drive, work independently, etc, etc?
Smil's argument, which in part is that we do not have lurking in our immediate future any new energy source that can replace oil and other fossil fuels.
Is that really his argument? If it is, he's really bad at his job, and I'd be surprised to find that was the case.
I think his argument is that we're likely to move slowly. Sadly, I think he's right: we're going to use far more coal than is good for us. That doesn't mean the coal isn't there, or that wind, solar and nuclear couldn't replace it far more quickly....it just means we probably won't make that choice.
You take a quite narrow view of resource depletion if you do not believe the poor in the world do not use up non-renewable resources. The depletion of topsoil, aquifers, over hunting and over fishing, forestry, and all the myriad of species dependent upon the creatures being removed from habitat destruction all indeed represent a tremendous drain on the non renewable resource. Not all the non renewable resources are oil.
There's no money in reducing your customer base.
Not to mention how a over supply of people helps keep your labor costs down
According to the World Bank there are 250 millions women that don't have access to family programming programs and are willing to postpone o avoid pregnancies, and 75 millions ( a number that fit quite well with the 80 millions of people adding every year to the present population) of unwanted pregnacies every year. Promoting the use of modern contraceptives is largely a problem of women emopowerments. May not be The Solution but would a good step in the right direction. The "overpopulation" problem is a very sensitive one, nobody like to talk about it explicitly and this is the main reason why you don't find often explicit statements on birth control. Here are some link for interested people:
http://www.populationmedia.org/ (and links therein)
http://www.demographie-responsable.org/ (french)
http://www.rientrodolce.org/ (italian).
The first international goal would be to convocate a new UNPFA conference on population to resume the program of UNPFA and give new impulse to it after almost two decades of inertia (the last conference was Cairo 1994) supported by Vatican, some Islamic countries and the USA administration.
Since most women in the world are willing to have control on their fertility the task is not hopeless. It is quite obvious to me that if we are not able to control our fertility using the simple contraceptive techniques there is no hope to be able to have a control on much more complex problems like CO2 emissions and the like.
I think your commentary is on the mark. The economists of the world do not consider the natural world to have any intrinsic value, therefore they can make preposterous statements about the future. The concept of a "life support system" never enters their world view. If they were required to think like engineers about the amount of work involved in keeping humans alive in a space station or a submarine, they might get it, but, no, the environment is "free as air" and "cheap as dirt" to them.
If only we could get your message thru to politicians like Palin, Beck and Armey, there might be some hope. That the scientific community has failed (so far) to do this leaves me with a complete doomer view of the future.
E. Swanson
Our pie of hydrocarbons, food production and fresh water (aquifers) has been growing since, forever, but at some point, these pies will each begin to shrink.
I'd rather have fewer, and fewer mouths eating a shrinking pie, than more and more mouths eating a shrinking pie.
If only we could get your message thru to politicians like Palin, Beck and Armey, there might be some hope.
They don't oppose change because of anything economists are or aren't doing. The problem is the minority that wants to block change:
"The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are waging a war against Obama. He and his brother are lifelong libertarians and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes."
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?curren...
The problem is the minority that wants to block change
While right-wing plutocrats are certainly helping to fund and channel what passes for political debate in this country, they --and their better known ministers of propaganda-- are not what allows their viewpoint to consistently prevail. This country is deeply religious, socially conservative and ignorant of history in a way that tends to surprise and perplex first-world non-Americans. If the average American has even read a book in the last year, it was probably the Bible or one of Beck/Palin/Coulter/Limbaugh's. And this is by *choice*. It's not like there aren't other viewpoints avaialble out there in the marketplace of ideas.
This country is deeply religious, socially conservative and ignorant of history in a way that tends to surprise and perplex first-world non-Americans.
True, but that's not completely an accident. The heart of anti-intellectualism in the US is the South, and that comes from the long-term violent suppression of education necessary to perpetuate slavery.
To be completely fair, ignorance and right-wing reactionism, while heavily concentrated in the American South, is not exclusively in residence there. Plenty of right-wing reactionaries in the Midwestern and even the "liberal" West and NorthEast, and there are a surprising number of Progressives & Independents even in the deeep South. I can count at least 7 right-wing talk radio channels on my FM dial, and I live in the supposed capitol of Free-thinking Liberalism in the nation: the S.F. Bay Area. A lot of this mentality comes from our Puritan forefathers, who preceded the slave-owning Southern plantation barons by decades.
A lot of this mentality comes from our Puritan forefathers
I'd be curious to hear you expand on that.
I can count at least 7 right-wing talk radio channels on my FM dial
That's deceptive, given the support such channels get from far-right corporate sponsors.
Where do you get your info? Right-radio has corp sponsors because PEOPLE LISTEN TO IT IN HORDES. Air America failed as a liberal channel because NOBODY LISTENED TO IT.
NPR exists as it is because it has gov't subsidy, as "the arts" do -- a built in liberal base.
NPR exists because people pay for it directly.
If the government subsidy (such as it is) disappeared tomorrow there would be enough support from member listeners to keep the lights on. As they say every few months: listener support is their #1 source of funding.
Yes, I am a member of my local NPR station.
They aren't perfect, but they are definitely a news-focused organization and provide many hours of deep news coverage every day, several blocks of a full hour devoted to a single issue with representatives of significantly differing viewpoints where they can manage it, and I haven't heard a shouting match or rant telling me to fear or hate any group yet.
If appreciating politely delivered news makes me a liberal then there has been a bigger change in the definition of conservative than I thought. I suppose I should have suspected it though, if Rush Limbaugh is supposed to be "conservative".
Hate is not a conservative value where I come from.
A haughty or condescending tone and a quietly biased coverage of issues is just as bad as a loud-mouth spewing venom. An English accent clucking patronizingly does not improve the information content delivered. Fox generally has both sides represented as well, with an opposite slant, only not very quietly.
NPR does have depth and breadth beyond the CNN/MSNBC/Fox 24-hour snippet loops. Civilized speech, well-supported positions, and carefully considered arguments seem to be in terminal decline, but really a radio show is primarily entertainment for a target base, and that base determines the content.
Disclaimer: I don't like listening to right-wing radio much either, as it tends to be narrow, simplistic, and tedious. You do get a quick read on what most of the country is thinking though. I scan the dial....
No, you get a dial on what %40 of the country is thinking, at best. Most people aren't thinking all that much about 'issues' at all. Other people either listen to NPR or go to places, like, say TOD, for news and discussion.
Yes, well... thing is that 40% happens to be a very noisy and politically active segment of the U.S. One that regularly listens to talk radio and Fox News (thereby boosting ratings & advertising revenue) also buys political books/DVDs, goes to rallies, and makes campaign contributions. It's nothing to sneeze at. The unopinionated majority that rarely votes and does not care rarely gets much consideration before or after elections. The fraction that regularly reads TOD or tunes into NPR... now, that's a pretty small segment.
I'm not saying I (or Paleocon) particularly like the current situation, but that's the situation.
I personally doubt that any of those "rightist hollering" radio and tv channels give one whit about advertising revenues, though they obviously do exploit what they can, and use listener count as a measure of success in "reaching the target audience".
You can't be serious...the stations directors themselves would put on whatever brought in money, pure and simple - its all about advertising revenue. The talking heads are also very cognizant of how their message plays, and of telling people what they want to hear as a way of maintaining market share and their revenue streams. If you knew the business at all, and what the people in it are like....
TOD was just an example. If you consider the segment that get's it's news on the internet, that's not a small segment at all these days. The number of people who visit the Huffington Post is comparable to those who watch Fox News. So is the number of viewers of the Daily Show.
It is true. I am the base, I do help determine the content.
Heck, I'm paying for it directly, I expect the most thorough news coverage available.
Sure, the coverage includes things that aren't "hard news", but it also includes things like this: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/09/14/midday2/
which is going to be repeated for each major-party MN gubernatorial candidate individually.
3 hours of air time where candidates aren't trying to talk over each other and can simply say their piece.
This is why government funding and member funding are important.
I have never seen a commercial radio or TV station offer such a service to the community. Airing debates where the candidates share an hour is as close as they ever get, and they tend to be pretty spartan with putting even those on the air.
Another way is to see it as the accidental crossroad between nature and nurture.
Hardwired into human nature is the desire to keep things going; to perpetuate our non-negotiable life (note I did not say "lifestyle").
Any animal that is not hardwired to so perpetuate its non-negotiable life goes extinct. Thus all living creatures are hardwired this way, not just humans.
An accidental outgrowth of this hardwiring is a natural desire to perpetuate our "lifestyle", or as Dick Cheney would phrase it, our non-negotiable lifestyle.
People who are born and raised in a simple minded culture (i.e. why shucks I'm just an old country boy) have a natural and understandable desire to keep that lifestyle going. There is nothing "ignorant" or "reactionary" to the way they behave. They are simply trying to continue the regeneration of a lifestyle they had no choice in the choosing of.
______________________
p.s. what are the frequencies of those right-ended FM stations? While I totally disagree with most of their philosophy, I like to listen to them every so often so as to keep up with the Limbaughs (all I know is 560 on the AM dial) Thanks.
This country was founded primarily by deeply religious people, and that sticks around. Intellectuals are their own worst enemies -- they have long control the educational system, and their eternal progression of "good ideas" have only made things worse.
To localize anything like intellectualism is unnecessary, as if the slums of northern cities are bastions of learning. Where you have poor people who do not see education as a value you will not have much education. And of course "intellectual" and "educated" do not necessarily overlap perfectly.
Last I checked slavery ended a long time ago, and only ended in the north a few years before the south. That's a pretty weak position.
Intellectuals are their own worst enemies
So you don't consider yourself one? You're certainly talking about intellectual ideas here...
Where you have poor people who do not see education as a value you will not have much education.
True. This has something to do with many of the poor having had great-grandfathers who were slaves, and therefore couldn't read or write, and could be killed for trying to change that.
slavery ended a long time ago, and only ended in the north a few years before the south
1st, I didn't say slavery didn't affect the North. 2nd, wouldn't you agree that slavery was a much, much more important institution in the South?
I'm not sure what I think I am makes any difference.
Slavery was not the cause of poor eduction -- the rural, farming based economy is, just as low-skill manufacturing was in the South and North, and gang-life of urban teens is today. If your life-plan does not require education, why put in the effort?
It doesn't matter where slavery was important, if it's not a valid cause of a pre-supposed bias. Intellectualism is an individual affectation, not a regional skill.
Merriam says: Intellectualism - "devotion to the exercise of intellect or to intellectual pursuits"
Apparently, one can be educated or intelligent and not be an intellectual, if you have little devotion to it.
As for me, I'd rather be wise than intellectual. It's a much rarer and more valuable attribute.
Slavery was not the cause of poor eduction -- the rural, farming based economy is
Farming certainly was a traditional contributor to lack of education, but basic education was violently suppressed in the South. That's important.
I'd rather be wise than intellectual. It's a much rarer and more valuable attribute.
It's also impossible: you need to know a wide range of facts and ideas to be wise, and that takes work and interest to learn. IOW, "devotion to the exercise of intellect or to intellectual pursuits". The idea that you can be wise without working at it is a fraud designed to keep people un-wise.
I disagree, and I think that a long line of American intellectuals dating back to Ben Franklin would support my position better than you could support yours.
Of course, if you think we are worse off than we were in the 18th Century, I'd be happy to discuss that with you.
Some aspects are better, others worse, since the 1700's. I'd say the issue with education is mostly in the past 50 years, though, after schools picked up a communist slant -- the needy get the resources while the capable make the sacrifices.
Well, if you want to call Wall Street bankers "needy".
I'd say the greedy get the resources and everybody else does the work. But believing that the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor is apparently one of the new "conservative" values.
Which is why they call them "neocons". But the banks are only in higher ed, with this notion that everybody can borrow money to go get a degree. Where does Wall Street fit into the public K-12? I wouldn't send my kids to a public school if wanted them to be successful sociopaths.
They are called neocons because they are former liberal (hippies?) who 'saw the light.' Hence, 'neo,' meaning 'new' conservatives.
I don't really understand what you said here.
I was a neo-con, after departing the Dems in '68, when I realized I could no longer tell the difference between them and the Republicans. Spent quite a few years supporting local Republicans,though. Charles Percy and others of the 'Eastern Republicans' were moderates, and somewhat progressive. They were fiscally conservative, though. And tried to be responsible. Today's Republicans have abandoned any pretence of conservative... they are reckless, and irresponsible to the highest degree, and, led by their leaders, Dick Cheney and Shrub Bush (or Scrub Brush, as I prefer), they engaged in two wars, enacted tax cuts, and started the snowball rolling downhill to where we are today.
Not that our BAU program was going to continue for much longer. It is just that they screwed over the future for their present gain. Greed, as I have often said on this site, is NOT good! It leads to just what we see.
Neither Fox nor MSNBC present anything close to balanced coverage... with the possible exception of Morning Joe, the best of today's presentations. Otherwise, the talking heads are mostly parroting garbage on behalf of their sponsers, who seem to thing that they can really change reality by deciding to. Democrats are as bad as Republicans, and the Tea Party is a reflection of how the public feels about their alleged leaders. We need a Democratic Tea Party to 'spank' the Democrats in their primaries, but are not getting one - yet. Just watch.
What I foresee (this is Craig, the prophet, talking) is that the money interest who have financed BAU through the established parties will turn their money machine on to fund the 'new' memebers of Congress who will mostly be Tea Party members and Republicans, hoping to buy them just as they bought the last batch. I also see them being mostly successful.
In a word, 'we are doomed.' No change will happen... most (meaning more than half, just like today) of the policians will be corrupted, and the beat goes on.
I think I will go have a drink. "Borban az igazság."
Craig
Simplistic nonsense.
Persons wanting to understand the demographic transition can find a decent beginning at the Wikepedia entry. It doesn't appear as though the poster even bothered to read that summary.
What really summarizes the shallowness of this article is the division of the universe into the perspective of economists and the perspective of ecologists. Economics is then reduced to a couple of out of context sentences of two men.
Pathetic.
I conclude the author taught the geography of Kansas in a college of no renown.
Good point on the wiki article. The fact that over half of it (and a third of the scholarly references) is on human pop control kind of destroys his claim that hardly anybody is considering the issue.
Could it be, though, that you are being a tad thin skinned about his criticism of economists? '-)
His criticism, if such a lofty word can be applied to such ill-informed views, reminds me of the 'criticism' of religion of those who pick out one or two phrases from the utterances of the current pope and move on to dismiss the legitimacy of religious perspective.
Eonomics is a toolkit with a variet of instruments. But for a moment, think of it as only a hammer, if you require an image. But then think of the hammer. In my tool kit, I have claw hammers, framing hammers, ballpeen hammers, sledge hammers, stonemason's hammer, wooden mallets, rubber mallets...
I've got friends who couldn't tell two of my hammers apart, who wouldn't know which one to select for the job at hand. These are the kind of people who say, if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This kind of comment displays their ignorance.
It's not always apparent, even to one with years of experience, which tool, or more likely, which combination of tools, is the most appropriate for the job at hand. At this point, one has to watch out for prejudice, i.e. making the facts fit a preferred theory, and/or general cluelessness.
The difference is, if you take several carpenters and ask which hammer to use for a particular job, they will all go for a similar option. If you ask a group of economists, you will get all sorts of suggestions ranging from spoons to sledgehammers for the same job.
How many of the tools you use have been verified by experimental evidence?
p.s. Not that I necessarily agree or disagree with the contents of the post that is.
That almost perfectly hits the nail on the head as to why Economics is a useless toolkit for the job at hand. What we need is a toolkit capable of sophisticated scientific analysis and laser scalpels for precision micro surgery to repair our distorted vision... and all you've got is a bag of hammers? >;^)
My optometrist rcently showed me slides indicating the permanent damage done to the vision of many victims of laser eye surgery. I'll stick to corrective lenses, thank-you.
The point about the toolkit (why am I having to explain this?) relates to discerning the appropriate tools for the job. Not only which hammer, but which saw, level, drill, fastener... and when to begin and when to stop using any of them. Those who say, as someone on this thread has, that carpenters always or even normally agree, have a different experience than mine.
I would be interested in your opinion on what constitutes "sophisticated scientific knowledge" and on whom we can count on to tell us when we have reached the necessary level of sophistication.
As for the 'vision thing', I turn to philosophers of both a secular and religious orientation for guidance.
No worries, the explanation wasn't necessary, its just that I couldn't possibly resist a retort to your hammer analogy... with a response that included hitting the nail on the head
The vision thing was meant to refer to how economists see, or rather don't see, reality. For the record, I'm an atheist and hold most philosophers to have views about as realistic and useful as most economic theory, with the occasional exception such as a Daniel Dennett, nothwithstanding.
As for what in my opinion constitutes "sophisticated scientific knowledge", I would consider a Biophysical Economic Theory to be a good starting point.
http://www.peakoil.net/files/the%20need%20for%20a%20new%20biophysical-ba...
It seems to me, TFO, that you are applying an ad hominum argument, without addressing any of the issues. How, for instance, do you propose continuing BAU (the unending growth paradigm)? Do you have some special knowledge about future energy sources? Will extrasolar aliens bring us fresh water? Are nanobots about to produce food from rock? Has the Singularity made contact with Toilforoil? Please let me know so I may plan appropriately.
This discussion has been going on for many decades. Isaac Asimov used to mention the continued growth of human population, and then ask, "Doesn't anybody care?!" The question is being answered daily with, "clearly not enough people care, and especially not enough of those who have the power to do something about it." As long as I hear moronic statements from othewise sophisticated and educated people about, "they are breeding faster than we are, so we need to have more children," I will join the doomers. And, my wife tells me I am an optimist.
Any economist who claims that we can continue to grow exponentially is an idiot.
Craig
Any economist who claims that we can continue to grow exponentially is an idiot.
Anyone who claims that economists generally believe that resource consumption will continue to grow exponentially, in the very long-term, is being inaccurate.
"Any economist who claims that we can continue to grow exponentially is an idiot. "
What about people who claim that we can continue to grow exponentially but are NOT economists? Are they not idiots, also? Why limit your assertion to economists?
oops.
Agreed.
Craig
With the realization that the very survival of humankind and life as we know it could be put at risk soon, somehow we have to find reasonable ways and means of engaging one another and the broader human family in discussions like this one that at least provide an opportunity to sensibly connect the unsustainability of global overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species with the ecological realities of the finite and frangible planet we inhabit. One way or another, we have to find the means of opening the way for ideas, policies and programs that lead us to "sustainable progress", effective designs for practicable business enterprises, and the construction of viable human communities in our planetary home.
Yes, there are numerous academic studies on population control but these are only words and no government today considers action. There will be many future books on this issue but books do not stop the world from marching towards 9 Billion people.
It was only India's Indira Gandhi who implemented population control by offering a radio to those men who agreed to be sterilized. There were also cases where police rounded up slum dwellers and homeless people for involuntary sterilization. There was an outcry by the rich Western World on Human Rights and Gandhi was forced to abandon the project.
So cite an economist who "gets" ecology. Chris Martenson?
None I can think of.
There aren't a lot when compared to the neoclassical economists but many do exist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics
It is a bit heartening that Judge Posner has 'seen the light.' Even in the Chicago School, when rapped sufficiently on the head, they can appear to "get it."
Craig
Simplistic rebuttal.
You must be cornucopian.
Actually I'm an Islamic communist.
*whew*
For a moment there I was worried that you might be someone scary!
[/sarc]
Can't make a comment without resorting to ad hominem attacks, can you? How does the location of a person affect his competence? Unless of course you're a big-city Yankee, in which case flat-landers and southerners can at least agree that you have a myopic perspective of the world.
I think a PhD in geography has more utility than one in economics, as it is a subject with some basis in reality. Even in Kansas you can count the square miles of wheat and calculate how many people the state can support.
See, ad hominem attacks are entertaining but pointless. You could instead try to educate your readers, as this author has.
Certainly this article is a tad simplistic, but the subject material is simple. Resources matter in the end, and that will drive economics. Not the other way around. No amount of money will enable support for many more people for long, and the educated/wealthy few are as blind as the 3rd-world masses to coming blight. The current world population is an impulse spike, not a trend to a higher plateau. We'll hit peak fertilizer and peak food and then peak population, in not too many years. A strong economy may push the population peak up, or a bit further out.
The other side of the population coin is the kind of world we'll have. We're headed to a deforested world of people and a few cattle, with little wildlife, few fish, and not many rustic areas. We could have 1B living in a beautiful world, versus 10B living in a ruined one.
The best thing that could happen is to have some major food shortages SOON (driven by failed crops, plant disease, war, or whatever), so we make hard decisions sooner rather than later. No amount of discussion before such a point will make a difference.
Now once that happens, who's going to volunteer for their nation to be the starvation poster-child? Who will give up their ethanol fuel or Angus burgers to free up a few pounds of corn to keep some unknown child alive? Volunteers? Anyone? Anyone?
You appear to have some difficulty with comprehension. Somewhere in New York City, I rather suspect, someone is teaching the geography of Kansas.
If this article was an attempt to educate, then it fails badly.
But it does seem to feed the prejudice's and add to the ignorance of some.
I would agree that somewhere in NYC, there's someone who knows where Kansas is. As for the educational value of this commentary, consider that there are lots of newbies lurking around here after the spill in the Gulf, that might not have thought much about the overall message presented. Maybe a few of them are cornucopians, who have so have missed this message and who will start to think more deeply about the issues raised and go to the trouble to dig deeper into the literature in search of enlightenment...
E. Swanson
Many thanks, Gary, for not being a spectator of events, and for fulfilling what President Barack H. Obama (quoting former President Abraham Lincoln) asked of us earlier this year,
"We are not bound to win but we are bound to be true; we are not bound to succeed but we are bound to live up to the light we possess."
Gary Peters is living up to the light he possesses. He is standing alone and providing analyses of vital matters, that is to say, of looming global threats to human and environmental health already visible to humankind on the far horizon.
It is not clear to me why so many experts have chosen not to follow Dr. Peters' example, but instead choose to remain electively muted spectators of what is happening on Earth in our time. Willful silence of experts who possess knowledge derived from scientific evidence strikes me as a tragic anomaly, one that has unfortunately become a dominant, widely shared characteristic of many too many human population professionals in our time. How are we to address and overcome human-forced global challenges when population experts with appropriate expertise fail to acknowledge certain scientific evidence, however unforeseen and unwelcome, by hiding the evidence in silence?
Hi Steve, I believe this series of lectures might shed some light on at least a part of the answer to that question...
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kahneman07/kahneman07_index.html
A SHORT COURSE IN THINKING ABOUT THINKING
Edge Master Class 07
DANIEL KAHNEMAN
SESSION ONE
Double posted
Hi Fred. Thanks for sending along the link to Edge. Everyone should know that this is available as a service, with regular items posted to your email. The articles are always interesting and can shed new light on a variety of topics. Hats off to you for passing it along!
Szia!
Craig
Craig, Köszönöm szépen!
Last week I was shopping for hot paprika and good wines in Budapest. Made me think twice about returning to shopping at Publix in Florida...
Hey, there's a 'Magyar' up on that sign to the right.
Is that Hungarian for 'Smith' or something?
Sounds like a great trip!
Bob
LOL! Nah, we just happen to own the whole country >;^)
Hi,
Excellent...... thanks.
Steve
It does not seem you have much of schooling since your language is too harsh. In reviewing a paper, a disagreement can be phrased more respectfully. For 17 years I was a reviewer for the American Mathematical Society and if I would have used some of your words I would have been fired.
The author just used the 2 groups to show the divergence in thinking. A detailed treatise on this subject would fill a book with hundred of pages.
We are facing a problem that has developed only in the last hundred years and yet for the most part the masses are guided forth by faith based cultural systems developed during conditions a thousand years ago. I think conventional religion stands in the way of examining a viable way forward.
Many of our survival instincts have failed to evolve as rapidly as the change in circumstances; makes for a situation where man is going to be required to do what is both contrary to his instincts and social conditioning. Not an easy product to sell!
I agree, as it is hard to reach rational and observable conclusions when one is embracing Bronze Age Fiction, and simplistic and embarrassing creation myths.
When ones brain has been wired to believe this, the possibility for wise and intelligent action is limited.
While I agree that Religion (and that's not just the fundamentalist squeaky wheels, remember?) works from older cultural languages that are frequently incompatible with today's norms, it's laughable that it gets the finger when looking at such problems.
Green Revolution,
Internal Combustion Engine,
Electric Grid,
Polymers,
High Explosives,
Fischer/Tropfh (sp?)
Naval Navigation,
Refrigeration and Long Term Food Storage
The age of Reason changed the terms, but takes little responsibility for it.. because of course, 'Science is Objective' .. hands clean, rubber gloves.
I think you're barking up the wrong tree.
EDIT.. In fact, as I look at that, it seems clear that this is picking on those parts of society that aren't 'sophisticated enough' to defend themselves, while they may have in fact, NO bearing on what really engendered this problem.
So what if families in older days had to over-reproduce to keep enough kids alive to run the farm and make it through to adulthood? That centuries old system didn't seem to pair with the kind of extreme population bombardment that came about after rural electrification, antibiotics, highway systems and intercontinental shipping.
Of course they are related to each other, but it does seem to be a form of 'Intellectual Colonialism' (if I don't sound too 'Kenyan' in saying so..) to make such a fuss about the 'backwards' parts of the world, when the 'Forwards' parts are running such a high fever pitch.. sending cheap grains into the developing world, and so both destabilizing these economies and social structures (apparently causing more overpopulation, more war, more instability) ...
bah!
To me, a key missing piece is for the Industrial world to have a clear social structure to embed ethical boundaries onto Multinational Corporations, which are vehemently amoral- and it shows. (Hi, BP!)
or...
Doctor, Heal thyself.
Not sure I fully 'get' your critique of Western science here. So, you're basically saying that Green Revolution, internal combustion engine, electric grid, refrigeration, et al are "bad" things b/c they contributed to making the population explosion happen? Aside from the Green Revolution, I can't say I 100% agree.
Anyone who advocates *not* sending food to the third world in order to curb rampant population growth immediately gets lambasted as "evil" or at the very least immoral and cruel. And let's face it, such a deliberate policy *would* be promoting intentional mass starvation. Not something your local Rotarians or 4H is likely to get behind anytime soon.
And forget population control via starvation, if you merely advocate mandatory birth control measures for the illiterate breeding masses --no matter how benign the methods proposed-- you get labelled a "Nazi Eugenicist". I've seen it happen even HERE, on one of the most open-minded and reason-driven blogs on the planet.
Well, for a moment, let's hold off on what a given action would be labeled as or publicly conceived to be.. my main point WAS that the conditions brought about by industry and technology have been the real enablers of population explosions, just as you inferred, and is said here regularly, because we've developed the tools to maximize food supply, severely reduce spoilage, and to fight disease and death. These are hardly a compendium of the effects of industrialization on population, to be sure.. some of the other effects are the way that transportation has made 'resource colonialism' far cheaper to operate, which has surely done as much to destabilize the countries in the crosshairs as anything.. OUR consumption has not really brought great prosperity to the lands where we 'get' our raw materials, has it? The Saudi Royal family might take exception, but the average Bedouin or Marsh Arab might have another story to tell.
I'm called a Technotopian as often as I'm called a Luddite, so place the marker where you will. I'm not opposed to science and technology, any more than I'm opposed to private businesses, even big ones.. But all these systems have to be held accountable for their effects on our world. They like to think they 'stand apart', and are disinterested observers. Just doing their job. It's nothing personal, it's only business.
Want to look at those enraged PETA pictures of the Thousands of Dismembered and Cancered Dogs, Cats and Monkeys in dumpsters, generously teaching us how safe it is to smear Cologne in our eyes, or testing just how much brain damage is incurred from "Shaken Baby Syndrome"? (Because doing it on our own kind is wrong) How do we get to decide what is really necessary, and what is the cheap expenditure of someone else's life? Does life matter?
We hear some of our members talking about how rigidly 'OVERSAFE' this culture is.. but that's only in the front office. Otherwise the devastation we reap with our Disposable Plastic Bags and our Half Empty Paint Thinner Cans rusting in the woods is just another kind of genocide.
When we send Monsanto Grain into Haiti or Mozambique (it might have been South Africa), restricting their cash aid until they take the GM foods, what does that do to the subsistence farmers there who are trying to rebuild their AG sector?
There might be some Fundy Congressmen involved in writing that bill or guiding the Sec'y of State to convince the desperate Prime Minister to play ball.. but it wasn't God that was guiding these Reps to set up this 'Aid Package'.. it was economic theory, Big Ag and Industrial pressure groups. So all I was saying is follow the money. I don't think religious fervor has contributed as much to our Global Blossoming as the access to energy that set both the Food Supply and the rebranded and very efficient 'Colonial Machine' into overdrive. (The Yeast-Indium Company, we might call it.)
I'm absolutely not proposing forced starvation or whatever.. but it doesn't take long to see where some of the worst side-effects of poor Aid programs can be reworked.. and yet we're making many of the same mistakes, through habit or the expectations of the suppliers of this 'surplus food' who have gotten too powerful in the decision making for that supply chain.
I see your point about poor nation "Aid" programs being largely dominated by Big Ag and generally resulting in anything-but-helpful consequences for the recipients of that aid. Even so, I don't see how such programs could possibly re-worked in a way that benefits the poor country recipients unless they are strongly coupled with a strategic birth control program (voluntary or otherwise) and some basic human rights --especially the right for women to receive an education, run for office and vote. And all you have to do is look at a world map of fertility rates ovelaid with median HH incomes, literacy levels, longetivity, etc. to see what I mean.
Check, check and check.
Plus, the food aid itself converted into an actual ag-development program, and not an inventory clearance system for US farmers.
Don't even have to teach most folks to fish.. just clear a path to the pond and have a few hooks handy.
Don't even have to teach most folks to fish.. just clear a path to the pond and have a few hooks handy.
That's great. It reminds me of the story about the hospital patient who's guest earnestly walks up to the bed and offers help. The patient gestures frantically to the guest to come closer. The guest, wanting to help, eagerly puts his ear to the patient, who says: "please..take..your..foot..off..my...oxygen...line...".
There are indications that many species have adaptations to overpopulation.
There are changes in hormonal levels and behavior that kick in before the die-off starts. Common symptoms are heightened aggression, 'disorders' like depression and obsessive compulsive behavior, and lessened parental care.
If there are adaptations to population stress, and we carry them, that means our forefathers must have gone through overpopulation several times, because otherwise adaptive traits do not fix in a population.
This implies that it is possible at least a few of us may wiggle through - we've done it before.
On the other hand, 6+ billion people going slightly bonkers and a bit suicidal is not a happy prospect.
I am quite certain that our problem was in the making much longer ago than a hundred years or so. We have been going into overshoot at least since we began agriculture : Where have the civilizations of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa gone? The Sumerians (the first - or second or third - Iraqi's) salinized their fertile land through irrigation. Where have the woods and the lions from the middle east and the mediterranian gone? The Romans fed all the elephants and the giraffes and the crocodiles and lions from north Africa to the circuses... How many Egyptian dynasties flourished and crashed? How many Chinese?
After the fall of the Roman empire, the first Crash of the Banks started around 129something and culminated in 133something. Then there was inflation through the influx of american gold and silver, the reformation wars, then the tulip bubble, the South Sea Company bubble, rinse and repeat till today.
The more I learn about the history of humankind, the more I am convinced it is but a long series of botched attempts at overshoot. But the one we are living through now takes the cake : this time, we didn't just eat all the animals, or till the earth into a desert, this time we burnt hundreds and thousands of thousands of years worth of dead plants and plankton. And we ate all the animals, tilled the earth into a desert, and emptied the seas of fish.
This is going to be a wild and wonderful ride.
lukitas
Monkey troops will splinter when resources such as food become scarce. If your group status is high enough you can stay but those lower in the social heirachy will be forced to leave and find an alternative food supply. Dispersal in the face of resource constraints is an old adaptation for social primates.
Yair...seems to me that humans are one of the only species that continue to breed on low nutrition...the females of cattle, sheep, horses, kangaroos and what all stop cycling in tough times...pity we were'nt the same.
Humans also stop cycling when calorie intake goes below a certain point.
As the sun rises on the dawn of peak oil we will see emerging from the shadows the four horsemen, ready to ride again if we do nothing now to humanely curtail our birth rates and shrink our burgeoning numbers.
I believe we are long past the point of being able to avoid the 'four horsemen'. We could make it less drastic on future generations if we took measures now to plan for reduced, sustainable population, however.
Smil has consistently (even recently) held the soft-lander line, saying we can make a smooth transition to sustainable energy sources. It's tempting, but I cannot embrace such an appealing but unrealistic belief.
An excellent post.
World population is rising at the rate of 75 million people per year(1% per year) from birth rates AND declining death rates.
The average per capita world energy consumption is 67 GJ per person per year so world energy use is growing by 5 XJ per year.
Saudi Arabia produces 17 XJ of oil per year, so the world needs to find a new Saudi Arabia of energy production every 3.5 years to keep up.
The fact is that people in the past had children primarily for economic reasons (not counting 'accidents') and the state always subsidizes population growth defeating 'natural' checks on population growth.
"The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world".
—Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population. Chapter VII, p61
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
According to Malthus if we cannot prevent population growth by birth control then we should allow poverty to increase as,
"Evil exists in the world not to create despair, but activity."
The cornucopians have it reversed--raising living standards to reduce population growth.
I'm not sure I agree with your interpretation of Malthus here. It doesn't sound like he was *advocating* for poverty, war, disease and starvation --merely stating that nature imposes those evils upon us in order to rebalance population levels with the food supply. Nature's solution is of course, the cruelest possible way of restoring equilibrium. Far better would be to voluntarily impose limits upon ourselves for the benefit of all and avoid these horrors. But then again, I'm one of those horrible Nazi Eugenics promoters, so what do I know?
As a practical matter I think we're going to have a hard time juggling all of our resource crunches (especially energy), but I think we should be clear on what the theoretical problems are, and are not.
The most important refutation of Malthus is on the population side: world population as a whole has clearly stopped growing exponentially (or geometrically, if you like), due to the demographic transition (it's roughly arithmetic at the moment). This is a key point: in many ways, growth is generally self-limited, and follows a logistic (or sigmoid curve), generally referred to as an S-curve. For instance, US car sales peaked about 35 years ago, and the US has a clear over-supply of vehicles, due to increasing vehicle longevity.
In fact, in most of the world population growth is on a long-term negative path, due to fertility rates well below replacement, including Western Europe, Russia, China, and the US (excluding immigration). Japan and Italy are the poster children for this - both are starting to show absolute declines in population. This is detailed at the UN site below, where we see that the growth rate was as high as 2.19% back in 1963. The total population peak is currently expected to be at about 9 billion around 2075 and population is expected to drop after that.
See especially Figure 3, page 6: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300fin...
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300fin...
Let's explore a couple of key concepts: the difference between arithmetic and exponential growth, and the difference between high fertility and "bottom line" growth.
Consider the following series of numbers: 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. There is growth of 7.7% at the end, but this is arithmetic growth: the change from number to number is constant, not growing with the base. Malthus assumed exponential growth for population, and arithmetic growth for agriculture. At the moment overall world population is increasing, at about 72M per year, IIRC. However, that number is stable at the moment, and very likely to decrease soon. What we see, then, is that exponential growth for population has ended.
Growth varies enormously by country - in Japan, for instance, absolute growth will be negative next year. Italy and Russia will follow soon after. These alone are sufficient to refute Malthus's general rule in a simple, clear fashion.
For many more countries, the fertility rate is below replacement. If every couple has less than about 2.1 children (the definition of the replacement fertility rate), the population is very young, and the death rate is low, there can be a lot of children and "bottom line" growth in the population, but in the long run the population will stabilize and decline, as every generation is smaller than the one before. So, if we clearly have fertility rates below replacement, we clearly have in the long run stable or declining population growth.
Now, are there still parts of the world growing pretty quickly? Sure, but they're in the minority. Just as importantly, the parts of the world that aren't growing clearly refute Malthus's idea that population always grows until it hits a resource limit - he couldn't conceive of voluntary birth control.
Do we still have huge, basic sustainability problems? Sure, but it's important to know that the broad, simple framework that Malthus proposed is just plain wrong.
This kind of logic also applies to energy. Like population, US car sales, and many other examples, energy markets (at least renewable ones, like those for wind and solar electricity - so no, I'm not talking about oil) will naturally mature and flatten out long before we reach theoretical limits.
For far too long we've been talking about a false dichotomy between "infinite exponential growth" and collapse. In fact, with a little luck, growth in resource consumption will gradually come to a stop, while humanity switches it's desire for improvement to what are generally known as "services": health, education, art, etc.
-------------------------------------
Just for the value of good trivia, let's note that Malthus believed that population growth would continue forever because he believed that contraception was morally wrong, not that it couldn't work.
-------------------------------------
update: here's comments by "relhager":
There are two relevant points: One, as Nick noted above, is that the UN predicts that the human population will never double again, and will start decreasing during this century. That’s critical.
The second is just as important: Malthus was simply wrong. Or at least half wrong. He was right about population growth (up until now, at least) but very wrong about food production. During the twentieth century, global population increased sixfold, and food production increased sevenfold, thanks to advances in genetics (the Green Revolution) and especially chemical fertilizers (see my recent book on the history of the subject, "The Alchemy of Air," as well as Vaclav Smil’s excellent "Enriching the Earth.").
Yes, we will have big issues handling the population high-water mark (+ another 4 billion or more) before we start going down in numbers, especially because of pollution. No, this does not answer questions about energy resources (making chemical fertilizer currently eats up about 1 percent of all the energy used on earth). But if we ate a reduced-meat, high-vegetable diet, we should be able to avoid the mass starvation predicted by Malthus — forever. www.thinhouse.net
Man first went through the demographic transition in Europe.
Excess European population was transported to "empty" far away lands.
Hence you are from America, I am from Africa and Eric next door is from Australia.
When the rest of the world goes through their transitions. I expect that they will discover Terra Nullius again, just as we did.
But if there is not enough energy to civilise everyone then we might just have the BIG transition first.
The Limits to Growth model predicts a gentle down slope on the back of the population curve on a Business as Usual projection. So it is not all bad.
(Fingers crossed)
However we have painted ourselves into a corner and the only way out is up.
Time to sporate.
RIP Gerard
Big problems require bold solutions.
Not cowards.
The authors of 'Limits to Growth' specifically state that once the their models peak, they become invalid. They make no prediction about the slope of the downslope.
They do say, however, that the world has been following the BAU curve fairly closely for the last 35 years.
I find the Limits to Growth authors overly modest. Therefore I, being of an immodest nature, have to correct this imbalance.
What is the current cost of keeping a single human in space for, say, three months? Can you show a curve backed by some reasonable assumptions that projects the price into the future, presumably to some lower point?
Who me?
Not a chance.
I can direct you to much cleverer people than me.
They have spent many man hours and much planing to produce this business plan.
The answers are mostly there.
This spacecraft that we are on now is incapable of supporting us.
So I could reverse the question and ask you
How much will it cost to keep one man alive on this spacecraft (the Earth)? And 9 billion?
They will be supporting us, not we them.
if its a lifeboat scenario I question the sanity of the premise
we have no technology to support life indefinitely off world
even in O'Neils vision biological logistical support is required from earth
yes i have read the book and more... 30 yrs ago
Thanks for responding Midi.
The assumption that you are making is that we can support life indefinitely on this world.
Perhaps my time scale is greater than yours but it is inevitable that some perturbation will knock life back into slime.
As far as not being able to sustain life off planet I am puzzled by your pessimism. I reserve my pessimism for our chances if we refuse to use our one and only asset. Our flawed but brilliant brain.
I used to believe that biosphere 2 failed because of low oxygen. In fact the concrete that made up parts of the experiment absorbed oxygen and had to be sealed.
It weakest link in the exercise proved to be the people.
As a first attempt at such an endevour it shows that it is feasible to create a closed ecological system.
I moved from the 3rd world to the first.
It is unacceptably disappointing not to have the next level available to me.
It is my belief that we will have space thrust at us, regardless of our opinion.
Or choose oblivion, with which my evolutionary past will have no truck.
The problem of space colonization is not just an economic one. It takes energy to move anything out of the gravity well of the Earth. On sure, we can mine the moon and asteroids, but all that mass must still be moved via orbital changes, which takes some sort of rocket power, thus fuel. Worse, the living space must be shielded from the cosmic rays and UVB, which abound outside Earth's atmosphere. It might work for a small number of people, but, who decides who that group will be? After Peak Oil, will there be any incentive to promote such a plan, which the rest of the population would be asked to pay for? The Tea Party crowds shouting Cut Taxes Now is only beginning to be heard...
E. Swanson
I can't resist: the answer to the gravity well problem is the "space elevator".
There may be some issues there. I recall a study not more than a couple years ago that suggested buckytubes may not have the tensile strength to allow for such constructions. The best you could get would be a short skyhook, perhaps, but not a full elevator.
The wikipedia article is pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator .
You might want to find that study, and add it to the wikipedia article.
The Wiki article glosses over some key problems. And, the first picture is incorrect as it shows the center of mass at GEO. If the likely deployment is from GEO, the initial CM would be located at GEO, with the balance mass moving higher as the tether is de-orbited toward the surface. One study I read suggested that the tether must be constructed from layers, the first layer being dropped from GEO, successive layers applied by multiple passes of climbers from the ground.
The climbers are going to be a big problem, for example, at the surface, the power required to lift a ton (2000 pounds mass) at a speed of 100 mph is 533hp and that ton includes the payload and some fraction of the mass of the climber and the power delivery system. Think about it, each ton will require 533 hp delivered to the climbing wheels, with more power being required from the PV cells due to the losses in electronics. It doesn't end there, as those losses in electronics represent excess thermal energy which must be dissipated. That requires a thermal control system, sort of like the one which recently failed on the ISS. And, the PV arrays must be cooled as well.IF the climber is to return to Earth, an even larger thermal control system would be required to dissipate the energy from braking. The result would be a large mass for the climber and a rather small payload fraction, IMHO.
The article claims that carbon nanotubes are good conductors of electricity. So, what happens if there is a voltage difference between the upper atmosphere and the surface? Lightening! And that carbon/epoxy composite vaporizes, releasing the tether toward deep space...
E. Swanson
That sounds like a useful discussion.
Why don't you add it to the wikipedia article, so that it can be used and/or reviewed by others?
We could use space colonization in the same way Polynesian islanders sent out boats full of people once their islands could no longer support the population. Colony ships full of cryogenically frozen people could be sent of to distant star systems in the hope they find a habitable planet in orbit. If they dont find one then its either tough luck or if they have the energy to keep going look for another. It could make a great sci fi story if nothing elses.
keeping india's population static by sending 17 million people per annum into space to live? never-mind the other 50 million a year spilling out onto earth. if we waited until peak population and then stated sticking 80 million people a year into space we would be about where we are now population wise but the year would be 2100
thats assuming that population induced problems hadn't caused any societal collapse problems in the interim
the notion that space colonisation as a solution to population growth in the next 100 years is preposterous
this does not preclude the notion we may well go to the stars one day or decide to live in space
the point I am making is that in the short to medium term it simply can not be seen as a solution
was there a post on space colonisation somewhere?
Population itself is only part of the problem. It is the resource consumption and environment impact that is the base issue.
No one willingly gives up their advantage; it is only relinquished under duress. The ones with the most resource consumption also have a powerful influence on the mass information system and you can be sure there will be a strong bias towards maintaining BAU. They set themselve up as the role model and take a percentage off the activities of the dupes who would attempt to emulate them. Not hard to predict where the benefit of those transactions will accumulate.
There has always been the elites and the dominated and the ups and downs of that old game. It could have gone on forever except that the latest episodes have used up irreplaceable fossil energy. In the historic past only blood was spilled and that was continuously replaceable and biodegradeeable, lol!
Only a very small percentage of men realize what a game changer has occurred! I think we need some benevolent dictators because I just dont think democracy has the balls to administer the medicine we need.
That's certainly not a novel thought. Its the same one that gave us Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Pinochet etc. etc. Please stay out of MY constitution with such nonsense.
I think some issue will arise so dire that we will see emergency measures declared because it will be deemed that there is no time for democratic debate. Right now no politician could get elected or re elected on the platform of deliberate reduction of GDP or any other of the likely scenarios that must happen regardless. To even mention such things would be political suicide and that is the reason it is a taboo subject.
Look for an emergency measures committee formed from the present parties. The declared seriousness of the situation will allow the committee to put aside the stupid posturing for sound bytes that now clouds every decision. There are lots of brains amongst the politicians that have a good handle on some of the changes that be ahead.
The danger of not dealing with a situation in time is that it degrades to the point of desperation and then some charismatic psychotic like Hitler can get the nod from the mob. We have a situation here that never was before so I would not be too insistent upon historic solutions.
I dont like the thought of someone making arbitrary decisions for me either but there are times when action must be taken and argued about later. Whatever the form of government, if it fails to take survival action, it fails the common good of the people
There has recently been quite a shift in awareness that we may have to quite drastically change our direction. willingly or otherwise. Taboo is still keeping a lot of options from even being entertained let alone acted on.
When ever the topic of population control comes up the discussion inevitably fragments into strands questioning topics such as
What is true human nature?
How can democracy embrace population restraint voluntarily or politically?
Is population overshoot a integral part of the human condition?
What can we learn from historical modeling?
What can we learn from analogs from the animal kingdoms?
and a myriad other points of debate that never seem to go anywhere towards a consensus of any sort.
if instead of looking at the why or even the how we just model the where the whole thing simplifies to a point where Crofter's position seems the only area left to explore. By "where" I mean a basic attainable/sustainable metric on the population and per capita standard of living (power usage per capita if you like). Looking at the issue from a where we have to get to perspective puts all these other discussion into relief. It does not matter why or how its just a case of have to. What's the alternative to getting too some doable sustainable end point.. some solution imposed by forces we failed to take control of?
What is the preferred option?
ATEOTD where we have to get too is where we have to get too.. and it all becomes uncomfortably "the end justifies the means" territory...
the basic solution is fairly simple
Mandated birth control/family size limits and rationing..
For those that claim this is unpopular or undesirable etc my rebuttal is " Yeah we get that, what is your point?"
+ 10
You may NEED a benevolent dictator, but that won't be the kind you will get.
Benevolent dictator is kind of a wishful thinking joke. Cant remember who the fellow was that gave that answer when asked what the ideal form of government might be. Hard to keep them benevolent for very long anyways it seems. We might not really be as democratic as we think though, as the voice of the people is subject to so much manipulation and disregarded whenever inconvenient to the agenda.
Democracy is just the glazing to make our current plutocratic system paletable to the masses.
This all devolves to the problem of, who getst to decide: 1. Who can have kids? 2. How many? 3. Who can have medical care? 4. Who can have oil & gas? 5. Who gets electric power, when and how much?
The old paradigm, the Chicago School (read Libertarian), says the markets make that decision. This will become a very uncomfortable design when the 'haves' are living it up and the 'have nots' are starving in the streets. What do you think those hungry people are going to do?
When the demagogue of whom you speak gains ascendency, how will HE make those decisions?
Shoot, we can't even educate people how to control reproduction without having some far-right religious zealots wanting to censor even that. SNAFU, as we said in the Force.
Craig
Arthur, where's this new Terra Nullius that's going to be found? Mars?
Gary asks: "Economists and ecologists cannot both be right. Or can they?" No, it makes most sense to assume -- on their performance -- that most current economists should be considered simply as wilfully self-blinkered incompetents whose public comments should just not be taken seriously; in fact for the most part they shouldn't be granted much attention at all.
There are one or two who stand out from the crowd, and a whole lot of unblinkered people who don't even claim to be economists at all, but who see -- and tell -- what's really going on much more cogently than the (alleged) professionals.
These people, who are equal to the task of making a half-way effective estimate and description of what's really happening, now paint a planetwide picture which makes any average shlub who's following things closely conclude:
That human population is already in gross, and completely unsustainable overshoot.
That it's bound to go down steeply, under the draconian influence of The Limits.
That we show no prospects of doing anything proactive to make this descent happen humanely, and under any kind of control, so by default it will happen to us as a very harsh fate, with few -- probably no-one anywhere -- untouched by the multitudinous tragedies which this will enforce.
Personally, I also take a further hunch from following the real-world information and analysis flow on the bundle of closely bound topics which include our overpopulation problem:
This is that the growth of absolute numbers of humans will stop soon, and may even have stopped already (it's not as if anyone knows with any great accuracy or timeliness what's happening to our numbers, of course), and that this will -- or has -- come about by the global death rate simply surging inexorably ahead of the birth rate and -- on average -- staying there. The downstream consequence-plume of Peak Oil alone will guarantee that, to say nothing of the malign influences of all the rest of the Synergising Global Crises.
We won't do anything effective to stop the rise of our numbers, that's more or less obvious. But they'll plunge down anyway, whatever we do or don't do. And forget the demographic transition. That was a happy -- if that's the right word -- and temporary accident, which happened without our planning, to the Pampered Twenty Percent of the world's humans, in those few countries which made the transition. And they only achieved it by systematically looting the labour and the natural wealth of the peoples of the Abused and Deprived Eighty Percent. Our wealthy life was got by stealing from them at gunpoint, and then we could afford the luxury, for a short while, of 2.1 carefully protected and reared children, and the slave-supported, energy-bingeing, narcissistic lifestyle which accompanies that transient luxury.
That's over now. Now comes The Long Descent.
Terra Nullius is wherever one invades.
"What people? I see no people."
"Oh you mean them!"
"They are not really people. Not like us."
"Well if this land wasn't for the taking it is now."
Bang.
"See, I told you. Terra Nullius."
How incredibly immoral. I hope that was supposed to be a joke.
Thats how colonization works.
And it's deeply immoral, and shouldn't happen.
I am the last person to disagree with your statement, yet I cannot say that if I was in the position where I needed to make that call I would be able to take the moral high ground if it were my own family at risk.
But it will always happen. And unless our nation is able to prevent it, it will happen here (again).
Perhaps, perhaps not. Termoil seemed to be advocating it, not merely being fatalist about it, like you.
Stephan J Gould recounts the shooting and eating of a pygmy. The British were assured that they were "not one of us". This might be told in his essay "Hottentot Venus" in "The Flamingo's Smile". "We the people..." was written by members of a slave-holding culture: a simple matter of the definition of "people".
Hi there Ben.
I had to go quite a way back to where I started the Terra Nullius discussion.
Perhaps I was not lucid.
There is no true Terra Nullius left on this teeny tiny little rock.
When our European population went through the industrial transition we exported our excess populations to these fictitious "empty" lands. (Please note the quotation marks.)
In the future I say that we can expect that if other people go through a demographic transition, they will discover other "empty" lands. Do not be surprised if you happen to be living in one of these "empty" lands.
In which case you will be the Bangee, not the Banger, and your moral virtue will be intact.
I cannot see how anyone can object to an attempt to escape such a predicament. But object they do.
I do hope that clarifies things for you.
If they're not part of my tribe, they're not fully human anyway.
"...where's this new Terra Nullius that's going to be found? Mars?"
A more realistic answer is Antarctica. Global warming will strip it of its glaciers, and it will become available for development. Whether it is sufficient to handle the growth is quite doubtful, IMHO. But building a colony there is surely much less energy intensive than building one on Mars.
Isn't Antarctica expected to still have an icesheet for hundreds of years even with the worst predictions of global warming?
I don't think anyone really knows. There are no models of glacier melt that have been fully verified. And, so far as I am aware, no verses in the Bible either.
Our species has given itself the name "Homo sapiens sapiens". In light of the deplorable, human-induced state of our planetary home as well as all of the unfinished work we have immediately ahead of us in order to begin accomplishing the many things that some of our brightest and best say "matter most", are we justified by reason or common sense in naming ourselves as we have or is this way of identifying ourselves a misleading moniker of a sort that reveals more about human hubris than it says about human intelligence, much less our possessed will and wisdom? Would the name "Homo hubris hubris" be more accurate?
Perhaps hubris confuses reasoning and common sense with regard to the “placement” of humanity within the natural order of living things. There is the rub, I suppose. We have learned from God’s great gifts to humanity— natural philosophy and modern science —that Earth is not the center of the universe (Copernicus); that we are set upon a tiny celestial orb among a sea of stars (Galileo); that such things as the Law of Gravity and the Laws of Thermodynamics affect living things equally, including human beings (Newton, et al); that humankind is a part of the general evolutionary process (Darwin); and that people are to a significant degree unconscious, mistake what is illusory for what is real and, therefore, have difficulty both adequately explaining the way the world works and consciously regulating our behavior (Freud).
Now come apparently unforeseen and unfortunately unwelcome evidence of human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of Earth that indicates top rank experts have for years consensually validated a preternatural, politically convenient, economically expedient, and culturally syntonic understanding of human population dynamics, all the while consciously refusing to acknowledge evidence or accept the need for regulating certain distinctly human “overgrowth” activities. Humanity could soon confront a colossal global predicament resulting from 1) unrestrained per human consumption and outrageous individual hoarding of natural resources, 2) seemingly endless expansion of large-scale, corporate production capabilities, and 3) unbridled species propagation.
If human beings evolved on Earth (did not descend from heaven or come here from some other place in the universe) and the emerging data of human population dynamics and human overpopulation are somehow on the right track, then humanity could soon come face to face with daunting global challenges that are direct consequences of human overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activties which are now threatening to dissipate the finite resources and irreversibly degrade the frangible ecology of Earth. Likewise, if the human community goes forward from this point in time by choosing to wantonly increase already conspicuous overconsumption and excessive hoarding; unbridled production of unnecessary stuff; and the unregulated propagation of the human species, then Earth cannot be expected to remain much longer a fit place for human habitation, can it?
From this humble vantage point, the global challenges posed to humanity by its unchecked global overgrowth activities are huge ones. Even so, we can take the measure of these looming (and growing) challenges as well as find solutions to our whatever the human-induced problems in ways that are consonant with humane, universally shared values.
More voices are needed....many more voices.
Hey, RG! Good comment.
I suggest that our best hope will be to send programmed ships, with zygotes and equipment designed to incubate and produce earth type animals, plants and people on some far off world that is located by robot ships. Of course, none of us will know about it, even if there are a few left when that project succeeds. Time and distance will prevent communications between human colonies (and Earth).
Perhaps one day, our decendents might live on alien planets. And, eventually, given our baryonic natures, we will become extinct. Meanwhile, we should concentrate on prolonging our planet and ourselves where we know we can live, by limiting the overexploitation of our planet.
More than a few TODers will say, "good luck with that." And, I agree. We will certainly need more than just a bit of luck; and more than a bit of determination and resolve. It is the determination and resolve that I see lacking.
Best wishes during the Descent.
Craig
We are not individual beings.
We are walking swamps. A subsystem of our ecology.
Imagine a walking swamp blundering into another ecosystem.
What would happen?
Instant microbial warfare. Their microbes would find us defenseless, as would ours find theirs. A carnival of chaos.
Both ecosystems would, in short order, be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Slime.
After escaping a gravity well, I am sure any sane person would have lots of reservation before dropping down into another. Perhaps planets will be used as jails for miscreants.
As far as traveling through space is concerned this is another ill thought out concept. We are already hurtling through deep space at a respectful pace.
D. Roberts. comments from The Great Attractor
One of the things that has always troubled me about the demographic transition concept as a way of capping population is it seems to miss the point. The problem isn't the number of bodies, but the demands those bodies place on resources, energy, pollution, food, water, etc.
Let's suppose your mechanism for bringing Ethiopia down to a replacement level of population growth (eg 0) is to raise their standard of living to a Mexico level, overnight.
Now ignoring that changes in standards of living take time to have an effect, and that people would then live longer; from just the footprint characteristics alone:
85m Ethiopians at Mexico's per capita footprint = 269m Ethiopians at their existing level
That's compared to 174m in 2050 if you do nothing.
Therefore from an impact PoV the demographic transition model is a busted flash - its even worse than doing nothing.
Plus, of course, population has a ratchet mechanism built in, reducing population through lower births doesn't work because then you have an old population that need increased levels of care, and not enough workforce to make it happen. So the standard of living falls and you are back to high population growth scenarios. The only way down is painful in the extreme.
The problem isn't the number of bodies, but the demands those bodies place on resources, energy, pollution, food, water, etc.
Exactly!
Our impacts on the environment, including CO2, species extinction, and resource consumption (especially FF consumption), are much, much easier and faster to change than population.
Pursuing ZPG is certainly a good idea, especially because the most effective policies are deeply humanitarian, but it's not going to have a big impact in the next 20 years on climate change, PO, or other things like that.
--
Wouldn't you agree that even a large reduction in population growth isn't going to have a big impact in the next 20 years on climate change, PO, or other things like that?
Further, I think our current way of life is unsustainable whether our population is 500M or 10B (what was the population of Australia or N. America when all of the large mammals were extinguished 10k years ago; what was the population of the US when the passenger pigeon was extinguished?), while a sustainable lifestyle could be achieved with either 500M or 10B.
While I was credited with getting a law passed to privatize launch services in 1991, which gave rise to the CATS prize and the X-Prize, my involvement went back to the early days of the Internet including the PLATO system. The following was written after I became Senior Associate #401 of the Space Studies Institute and started a local chapter in Miami, FL at the time Jeff Bezos was in high school there.
The bottom line is that those in control are stupid except for their ability to retain control until things fail catastrophically. At that they possess supreme, if simply instinctive, genius.
And by "catastrophically" I don't mean a depression worse than the 1930s. You folks know what I mean...
Videotex Networking and the American Pioneer
I wrote the following article during my tenure as the chief
architect for the mass-market videotex experiment conducted
by AT&T;and Knight-Ridder News called “Viewtron”—a service
of the joint-venture company, Viewdata Corporation of America.
As can be sensed in the article, I had encountered some fairly
frustrating situations and was about to be told by the
corporate authorities that my telecomputing architecture,
which would have provided a dynamically downloaded Forth
graphics protocol in 1983 evolving into a distributed
Smalltalk-like environment beginning around 1985, would be
abandoned due to a corporate commitment to stick with Tandem
Computers as the mainframe vendor—a choice which I had
asserted would not be adequate for my architecture. (At least
Postscript survived.) I was subsequently offered the head
telecomputing software position at Prodigy by IBM and
turned it down when they indicated they would not support my
architecture either, due to a committment to limit merchant
access to their network to only those who had a special
status with the service provider (IBM/CBS/Sears). The distributed
Smalltalk system was specifically designed to allow the sort
of grassroots commerce now emerging in the world wide web --
particularly as people recognize JavaScript is similar to the
Self programming language and the Common Lisp Object System.
This wasn’t in keeping with IBM’s philosophy at that time since
they had yet to be humbled by Bill Gates.
My independent attempt at developing this sort of service was
squashed by the U.S. government when it provided UUCP/Usenet
service to a competitor in San Diego and would not offer me
the same subsidy via MILnet—a network that was not for
public access, by law, and which was exclusively for military
use. My complaints to DoD investigators resulted in continual
“We’re looking into it.” replies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Videotex Networking
and
The American Pioneer
by Jim Bowery
(circa 1982)
With the precipitous drop in the price of information technology,
computer-based communication has come within the technical and
economic reach of the mass-market. The term generally used for this
mass-market is “videotex” because it reduces the cost of entry into
the home by using the most ubiquitous video display device, the
television screen, to deliver its service.
The central importance of this new market is that it brings the
capital cost of establishing a publication with nation-wide
distribution to within the reach of the mass-market as well. This
means that anyone who is a “consumer” of information on this new
technology can also be a “producer” of information. The distinction
between editorial staff and readership need no longer be a function of
who has how much money, but rather, who has the greatest consumer
appeal. The last time an event of this magnitude took place was the
invention of the offset printer which brought the cost of publication
to within the reach of small businesses. That democratization of
cultural evolution was protected in our constitution under freedom of
the press. Freedom of speech was intended for the masses. In this
new technology, the distinction between press and speech is beginning
to blur. Some individuals and institutions see this as removing the
new media from either of the constitutional protections rather than
giving it both. They see a great danger in allowing the uncensored
ideas of individuals to spread across the entire nation within seconds
at a cost of only a few cents. A direct quote from a person with
authority in the management of this new technology: “We view videotex
as ‘we the institutions’ providing ‘you the people’ with information.”
I wonder what our founding fathers would have thought of a statement
like that.
Mass-media influences cultural evolution in profound ways. Rather
that assuming a paternalistic posture, we should be objective about
these influences in making policy and technology decisions about the
new media. It is important to try and preserve the positive aspects
of extant media while eliminating its deficits. On the positive side,
mass-media is very effective at eliminating “noise” or totally
uninteresting information compared to, say, CB radio. This is
accomplished via responsible editorial staffs and market forces. On
the negative side, much “signal” or vital information is eliminated
along with the noise. A good example of this is the way mass-media
attends to relatively temporal things like territorial wars, nuclear
arms, economic ills, social stratification ... etc. to the utter
exclusion of attending to the underlying cause of these events: our
limits to growth. The need for “news” is understandable, but how long
should we talk about which shade of yellow Joe’s eye is, how his wife
and her lover feel about it and whether he will wear sun-glasses out
of embarrassment before we start talking about a cure for jaundice?
Mass-media has failed to give appropriate coverage to the most
significant and interesting issue facing us because of the close tie
between institutional culture and editorial policy. Institutional
evolution selects people-oriented people—individuals with great
personal force. These people are consumed with their social
orientation to the point that they ignore or cannot understand
information not relating in fairly direct ways to politics or the
psychological aspects of economics. Since institutional evolution is
reflected in who has authority over what, editorial authority
eventually reflects the biases of this group. They cannot understand
life, except as something that generates politics and “human interest”
stories. They may even, at some level of awareness, work to maintain
our limits to growth since it places their skills at a premium. In a
people-saturated environment (one at its limits to growth)
people-oriented people are winners.
Actually, this is an ancient problem that keeps rearing its ugly head
in many places in many forms. In my industry its called the “Whiz
Kids vs. MBAs” syndrome. Others have termed it “Western Cowboys vs.
Eastern Bankers”. The list is without end. I prefer to view it as a
more stable historical pattern: “Pioneers vs. Feudalists”.
Pioneers are skilled at manipulating unpeopled environments to suit
their needs whereas feudalists are skilled at manipulating peopled
environments to suit their needs. Although, these are not necessarily
exclusive traits, people do seem to specialize toward one end or the
other simply because both skills require tremendous discipline to
master and people have limited time to invest in learning.
Pioneers want to be left alone to do their work and enjoy its fruits.
Feudalists say “no man is an island” and feel the pioneer is a “hick”
or worse, an escapist. Feudalists view themselves as lords and
pioneers as serfs. Pioneers view feudalists as either irrelevant or
as some sort of inevitable creeping crud devouring everything in its
path. At their best, feudalists represent the stable balance and
harmony exhibited by Eastern philosophy. At their worst, feudalists
represent the tyrannical predation of pioneers unable to escape
domination. At their best, pioneers represent the freedom, diversity
and respect for the individual represented by Western philosophy. At
their worst, pioneers represent the inefficient, destructive
exploitation of virgin environs.
The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans selected pioneers for the New World.
The Pioneer is in our cultural and our blood. But now that our
frontier resources have vanished, the “creeping crud” of feudalism is
catching up with us. This change in perspective is making itself felt
in all aspects of our society: big corporations, big government and
institutional mass-media. As the disease progresses, we find ourselves
looking and behaving more and more like one big company town. Soviet
Russia has already succumbed to this disease. The only weapon we have
that is truly effective against it is our greatest strength: innovation.
I firmly believe that, except to the extent that they have been silenced by
the media’s endless barrage of feudalistic values, the American people
are pioneers to their core. They are starved to share these values
with each other but they cannot because there is no mode of
communication that will support their values. Videotex may not be as
efficient at replicating and distributing information as broadcast,
but it does provide, for the first time in history, a means of
removing the editorial monopoly from feudalists and allowing pioneers
to share their own values. There will be a battle over this “privilege”
(although one would think freedom of the press and speech should be
rights). The outcome of this battle of editorial freedom vs. control in
videotex may well determine whether or not civilization ends in a war
over resources, continues with the American people spear-heading an
explosion into the high frontier or, pipe-dream of pipe-dreams, slides
into world-wide feudalism hoping to control nuclear arms and
“equitably” distribute our dwindling terrestrial resources.
There is a tremendous danger that careless promotion of deregulation
will be dogmatically (or purposefully) extended to the point that
there may form an unregulated monopoly over the information replicated
across the nation-wide videotex network, now underdevelopment. If
this happens, the prophecies of a despotic, “cashless-society” are
quite likely to become a reality. My opinion is that this nightmare
will eventually be realized but not before the American pioneers have
had a chance to reach each other and organize. I base this hope on
the fact that the first people to participate in the videotex network
will represent some of the most pioneering of Americans, since
videotex is a new “territory”.
The question at hand is this: How do we mold the early videotex
environment so that noise is suppressed without limiting the free flow
of information between customers?
The first obstacle is, of course, legal. As the knights of U.S.
feudalism, corporate lawyers have a penchant for finding ways of
stomping out innovation and diversity in any way possible. In the
case of videotex, the attempt is to keep feudal control of information
by making videotex system ownership imply liability for information
transmitted over it. For example, if a libelous communication takes
place, corporate lawyers for the plaintiff will bring suit against the
carrier rather than the individual responsible for the communication.
The rationalizations for this clearly unreasonable and contrived
position are quite numerous. Without a common carrier status, the
carrier will be treading on virgin ground legally and thus be
unprotected by precedent. Indeed, the stakes are high enough that the
competitor could easily afford to fabricate an event ideal for the
purposes of such a suit. This means the first legal precedent could
be in favor of holding the carrier responsible for the communications
transmitted over its network, thus forcing (or giving an excuse for)
the carrier to inspect, edit and censor all communications except,
perhaps, simple person-to-person or “electronic mail”. This, in turn,
would put editorial control right back in the hands of the feudalists.
Potential carriers’ own lawyers are already hard at work worrying
everyone about such a suit. They would like to win the battle against
diversity before it begins. This is unlikely because videotex is
still driven by technology and therefore by pioneers.
The question then becomes: How do we best protect against such
“legal” tactics? The answer seems to be an early emphasis on secure
identification of the source of communications so that there can be no
question as to the individual responsible. This would preempt an
attempt to hold the carrier liable. Anonymous communications, like
Delphi conferencing, could even be supported as long as some
individual would be willing to attach his/her name to the
communication before distributing it. This would be similar, legally,
to a “letters to the editor” column where a writer remains anonymous.
Another measure could be to require that only individuals of legal age
be allowed to author publishable communications. Yet another measure
could be to require anyone who wishes to write and publish information
on the network to put in writing, in an agreement separate from the
standard customer agreement, that they are liable for any and all
communications originating under their name on the network. This
would preempt the “stolen password” excuse for holding the carrier
liable.
Beyond the secure identification of communication sources, there is
the necessity of editorial services. Not everyone is going to want to
filter through everything published by everyone on the network. An
infrastructure of editorial staffs is that filter. In exchange for
their service the editorial staff gets to promote their view of the
world and, if they are in enough demand, charge money for access to
their list of approved articles. On a videotex network, there is
little capital involved in establishing an editorial staff. All that
is required is a terminal and a file on the network which may have an
intrinsic cost as low as $5/month if it represents a publication with
“only” around 100 articles. The rest is up to the customers. If they
like a publication, they will read it. If they don’t they won’t. A
customer could ask to see all articles approved by staffs A or B
inclusive, or only those articles approved by both A and B, etc. This
sort of customer selection could involve as many editorial staffs as
desired in any logical combination. An editorial staff could review
other editorial staffs as well as individual articles, forming
hierarchies to handle the mass of articles that would be submitted
every day. This sort of editorial mechanism would not only provide a
very efficient way of filtering out poor and questionable
communications without inhibiting diversity, it would add a layer of
liability for publications that would further insulate carriers from
liability and therefore from a monopoly over communications.
Wow! And from 1982! That is vision.
News of the Google/Verizon plan to destroy internet freedom was, itself, suppressed and forgotten beneath a wave of meaningless corporate media hysteria and distraction over a single building in New York and a pastor with a following of 50 people in Florida: The "Ground-zero Mosque" and the Koran burning threat".
Yes. Wow! I'm 77 y old and lived through all of this, but had no idea what was happening.
But I wonder about using feudalist as the word to label one faction in the controversy. My impression of Feudalism as a period of history is that it was characterized by a largely chaotic struggle of power centers that had vastly differing resources to bring to the controversy.
Long, but definitely worth the read.
Thanks Bowery
LOL! To think what Monty Python could have gotten out of that one... "Jousting in court"?
Anyway I was reminded of these words by Paul Graham:
As a software developer myself, who has worked in the industry since the early '70s, i must disagree. That "silicon valley" is in the US rather than another country is very little about the attributes of US programmers, they're pretty much the same all over. Its all about US venture capitalists, who are very adept at recognizing something of value to steal from the programmers and claim as their own via completely outrageous patent / copyright laws which deliver ALL the benefits to the employer and none to the producer.
The Graham essay popped into my mind because of Jim Bowery's proposed “Pioneers vs. Feudalists” -- dichotomy; Graham's hackers are pioneers.
Would you classify US venture capitalists as "exploitative pioneer" types, or as feudalists?
Of course there are pioneer/hacker types in all countries (I consider myself one, and I'm in Europe), but I think Graham has a good point about the concentration being (or having been) higher in the US.
Or perhaps it's just that american frontier mythos misleading him (and me).
Well, in all the time i've worked in this business, i can place four of the five smartest and most productive people as immigrants from 1) Iran 2) China 3) Russia 4) China. The fifth was native to N America. Those five are specific persons, and none of the thousand or more other people i've worked with similarly even gets onto the table for evaluation. Of course none of those were hackers, because they were good enough to not need to be to make a good living. (Yes, I consider hackers to be typically lower-skilled people who can't qualify for work where one needs to keep a clean criminal record. I've analysed the code of several hackers eg. the person who wrote the "I love u" virus, and the writer likely had a problem planning a bus trip, much less a large software project IMHO. Of course I'm using perhaps a too narrow definition of hacker, as one who produces illegal / undesireable computer code. There may be an occasional exception, a brilliant software person who also indulges in producing illegal / undesireable computer code, but extremely rare i'd guess.)
Most venture capital MANAGERS (those who are allowed to make decisions with venture capital) are too narrowly focused on the gains to be either pioneers or feudalists. They're very good at application of the rules of modern management, eg. the money is the only thing that matters.
It would have been nice if you'd read the essay I linked. Then you'd see that its title is The Word "Hacker" and that it begins with
Your venture capital MANAGERS are obviously hackers in Graham's sense.
[double]
There is an urgent need to examine the science regarding the human population. The topic of human population dynamics has not been and is not now being openly discussed.
Let us imagine for a moment that the growth of the human population today is the “mother” of human-driven global challenges looming before humankind and knowledgeable people willfully refuse to speak about it. How can that behavior be construed as correct? On what authority is silence in response to science condoned? Who has the right to deny the existence of knowledge of something that threatens all of us? Is there no one who has determined that experts have a “duty to warn” humanity in such dire circumstances as exist when the very future of children everywhere could be put at risk soon?
It appears that we are in need of a transformed scientific imagination by means of which scientists with appropriate expertise are freed from inadequate thought and time-honored theory.....freed to carefully examine and skillfully report new, unforeseen and unfortunately unwelcome scientific research regarding the human population.
With the rare exception of top-rank scientists like Professor Emeritus Gary Peters who is willing to speak truth-as-he-sees-it to the powerful, elective mutism is effectively vanquishing science with regard to extant evidence of human population numbers.
If the scientific evidence of human population dynamics and human overpopulation of the Earth is somehow on the correct track, then there is plenty of work for everyone in the human community to begin doing in earnest. It appears to me that there is just enough space-time for us to transform human consciousness, adopt sustainable lifestyles and right-size business enterprises, but we need to get started now.
No amount of rationalization or excuse will pass muster when the issue is the conscious denial of science.
The abject failure of every major legitimate scientific group to respond to the exceptionally strong evidence of human population dynamics and human overpopulation of the Earth from Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel as well as Alan D. Thornhill and others, is simply inexcusable. All have been effectively ignoring research from outstanding scientists who have devoted their lives to actually observing data and trying to interpret it in an intellectually honest manner.
The willful avoidance of the open discussion of science, especially the scientific research of human population dynamics, is as unconscionable as it is destructive. Experts who have remained silent need to be stood up to and directed to assume their responsibilities to science and their duties to humanity. What justifies elective mutism by experts in response to carefully collected and honestly analyzed data?
The tasks at hand for scientists are to freely acknowledge, critique and interpret evidence, I suppose, and to encourage that evidence to be examined from different viewpoints. It is irresponsible and pernicious for scientists to remain silent because they are slowing the development of momentum for necessary change in population policy and programming, I believe.
"No amount of rationalization or excuse will pass muster when the issue is the conscious denial of science."
But this statement is not science. Rather it is a statement of personal faith, a personal belief in science. Other people have faith in things other than science. If all scientist were to be murdered in a worldwide pogrom ... What then? I also believe in science, but it does have its limits.
Think of the story of Alexander cleaving the Gordian Knot. In some sense, might really does make right.
"It is irresponsible and pernicious for scientists to remain silent because they are slowing the development of momentum for necessary change in population policy and programming, I believe."
An example of a scientist who has not remained silent on an social issue is James Hansen on global warming. But his suggestion as to how to deal with the problem by a use tax has gained no traction because he is utterly out of touch with the mind-set of practicing economists. Demanding that scientists lead the way on a giant shift in world society is a cop-out, IMHO.
This has nothing to do with anything economists are or aren't doing. The problem is the minority that wants to block change:
"The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are waging a war against Obama. He and his brother are lifelong libertarians and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes."
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?curren...
This is an interesting example of what I was attempting to discuss, but not in the way that you might expect. Economists have an interest in phenomena like the Koch brothers, Hansen has displayed no awareness of them as a market 'inefficiency' that should be addressed in any proposal for a market solution to some problem. I was not complaining about economists, either individually or as a group. I intended to suggest that Hansen was operating outside his field of expertiese, and not doing a very good job of it.
But, I also feel that I have no right to EXPECT him to do a good job of it.
You're talking about Hansen the climatologist? He's not an economist.
I don't know who's field of expertise would apply to the the Koch brothers - CIA, perhaps??
"How can that behavior be construed as correct? "
To a scientist, observed behavior that appears to be consistent with some theory that also offers an explanation for many other observed behavior is generally thought to be further support for that theory. Informally, a scientist may refer to the behavior a correct example of the workings of the theory. Science speak is often very confusing and misleading.
I had written this for the Australian context:
9/4/2010
Australian Population Scenarios in the context of oil decline and global warming
http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/?p=1300
Public debate on population
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2981403.htm
Electronics business man Dick Smith:
Win AU$ 1 million
"So today I am announcing Dick Smith’s Wilberforce Award – $1 million to go to a young person under 30 who can impress me by becoming famous through his or her ability to show leadership in communicating an alternative to our population and consumption growth-obsessed economy. I will be looking for candidates whose actions over the next year show that they have what it takes to be among the next generation of leaders our incredible planet so badly needs."
http://dicksmithpopulation.com/
Most entertaining and illuminating. I wish we could hear Americans talk like this.
Perhaps scientists could begin to assist everyone else to make necessary forward movement away from "our population and consumption growth-obsessed economy" by being intellectually honest, morally courageous and openly bold in this discussion.
Gary Peters is standing up, speaking out, being bold. Few similarly situated scientists are following his example. More experts speaking truth to the powerful are needed.
How can we ably address the global challenges that appear to be driven by the overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species worldwide if the brightest and best among us choose to remain willfully blind, hysterically deaf and electively mute when confronted with the best available scientific evidence of human population dynamics? Extant evidence appears to indicate that the gigantic scale and growth of certain global overgrowth activities of the human species are at least one of the root causes of what is threatening humanity and life as we know it in our time?
I have become impatient with blogmeisters who hold powerful positions in the mass media, but willfully refuse to do all that can be done to disclose a potentially colossal threat to human wellbeing and environmental health which is not only presented to all of us......but also precipitated by all of us.
Until scientists speak out with one voice too clear and loud to be ignored, so-called leaders will keep adamantly advocating and relentlessly pursuing a ruinous a road to the future, while everyone else goes along, unknowingly consenting to these leaders' egregious behavior and following them down the soon to become patently unsustainable "primrose path" we are now taking. I am a psychologist. In our ethical code psychologists are instructed that there are rare occasions when we have a "duty to warn", for example, when life is in imminent danger. It appears to me as if the very future of life as we know it is being put at risk now by the foremost of global challenges: human overpopulation of the Earth. If the human-driven aspects of the global ecological predicament looming in the offing do not meet the standard for warning, perhaps I no longer see what set of circumstances would warrant the performance of such a duty.
I do not know if I am right or wrong to ask directly and repeatedly for truth, as each of us sees it, to be spoken loudly and clearly so that people can better share an understanding of the global emergency the human family could soon confront. But it does appear to me that if people with knowledge lose faith in God's gift of science by denying its presence, embracing silence and remaining electively mute while arrogant, selfish, shortsighted leaders go forward on the basis of specious preternatural thinking and outrageous personal self-interests, then the human community has virtually no chance of responding ably to the human-induced challenges before all of us.
Perhaps I am mistaken about the scientific research to which I draw attention. If that is shown to be case, I will end the AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population immediately. I make all of you the promise that from that moment forward you will not hear from me again. Given the human-forced global challenges that appear to be converging before humankind currently, it will just fine if it turns out that I am indeed the fool so many people take me for now. Such an outcome has certain benefits. Fool that I am, still I will be free of a "duty to warn" and gratefully released to fulfill the promise I made years ago to my long-suffering spouse: end the AWAREness Campaign I began in 2001.
I am trying to encourage the lighting of candles because the darkness enveloping the road many too many misguided leaders are trodding is anathema to me.
Sheeh. What, did we piss off another economist here?
Lowering the birth rate will not solve the current population problem since we already have too many people on the planet. To have a population of only 2 billion in the second half of this century we need to subtract 150 to 200 million per year and that can only happen via a higher death rate. Considering how big a share per capita the developed world uses that is where the population decline should happen the fastest. That means those living in the metropolitan areas of the USA need to die first as an example of how the rest of the world should adjust to declining resources. We need to get our population down to around 100 million within the next 40 to 60 years for the benefit of the rest of the world. That works out to around 5 million more deaths per year than births in the USA as well as a total ban on immigrants from anywhere else for any reason. The only way for that drop in population to happen is through famines and/or plagues. Unfortunately famines tend to kill the poor much faster than the rich but it is the rich who are over consuming.
Unless you can figure out how to convince 150 to 200 million folks a year to off themselves, I guess you are saying that we are in for some really hard times?
Not that I disagree.
As always, the question is how the triage is done, and by whom. And, what do those 150 to 200 million do when they are the ones starving (or being bombed, or dying from infectious diseases). It is a perplexing problem with a disturbing reality. Those who most loudly proclaim that we much continue BAU are likely in serious denial of this, and as is so often the case, they overcome cogniative dissonance by increasing the volume. Listen to Pat Buchanan some day, when he gets really upset.
As an American, I recognize that our past history of freedom from restrictions by government does not help us to get a grip on facts. We are not doing what is necessary, and we dare anyone to try to make us. A government that is allowed to regulate the use of hexaclorophene in soaps is not allowed to regulate production of tobacco products know to be harmful in so many ways. Just try to make us stop smoking! As a people, we are contrarians. We may not restrict use of guns, whereas we are allowed to restrict the use of automobiles. You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands. The 'Tea Party' quotes the most incindiary of the polemics of the Revolution, and ignores the seven (or 5) years between the end of the Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution (the final victory was in 1781, the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the war was signed in 1783, and the constitution was ratified (by the 9th State) in 1788 - on September 17th). So, anyway, Happy Constitution Day this Friday. The American Psyche is a strange thing!
Good luck to us all.
Craig
Yeah, the Big Picture is rather grim. Who is to be first in line to step into the Euthanasia Machine? Will he/she go willingly at some age or will they be pushed after being plucked off the street by some "jack booted thug".
The Tea Party with their obsession regarding the Constitution and some American Dream of Freedom and Liberty are another example of our overall problem. As today's commentary by David Brooks points out, even Hayek, who worried about "The Road to Serfdom" admitted the need for some level of government regulation. Brooks also points to another commentary by Paul Ryan and Arthur Brooks which appeared yesterday in the WSJ, where the authors repeat the small government anti-regulation ideal of the business class, missing the fact that Hayek's view in 1944 was of a time when all of Europe was involved in a massive war. That war was the result of earlier conflicts brought on by governments ruled by monarchs, governments which radically changed after WW I. Hayek's worry was that England, with it's long tradition of democratic governance, would become socialist and then totalitarian, which did not happen.
My reading of history is that it was the "jack booted thugs" who brought on the military dominated governments which then caused WW II. I think those same forces are at work today in our professional military and industrial dominated government. If the Tea Party folks really want to return to the Good Old Days of small government with 13 colonies and 3 million people, I suggest they need to first work toward a devolution of the MIC, perhaps moving back to a national draft to supply manpower, both as a way to provide a national service corp and to meet the man power requirements of a much reduced military establishment. Right now, they are being lead in exactly the opposite direction...
E. Swanson
hI, BD,
I appreciate your sentiments, but you are perhaps worrying overmuch..
The Tea Party thing is just a handy vehicle for the political right to focus the dissatisfactions of the country and the spotlight of the media on the current mess for short term political gain;no doubt it will work to some considerable extent.
Some minor part of what it represents will be incorporated into public policy.
But when the elections are ove and the right wing is back in power, we won't see much change as a practical matter, looking at things on the grand scale.The very most the right will accomplish is to slow the growth of entitlements for instance;there aren't more than a dozen republican big wheels in the country who would even crack a joke in private about doing away with medicare; they are too afraid the media would find out of course.
People such as Rush Limbaugh speak only to and for a rather small minority of the political right as a practical matter;the rest may enjoy the rhetoric, but they aren't actully going to change things all that much when they are back in power.
I live in the heart of the Bible Belt;there is not to my knowledge a single local politician in office within a hundred miles publicly advocating teaching creationism in the public schools, but of course there will always be a few around somewhere who manage to harvest a huge bounty of publicity.
I expect that as things get worse, we will see some local communists or socialists doing the same thing.
The scary thing is that the fringe elements on both sides may come to possess some considerable amount of influence as things go downhill-which I see as inevitable.
The left is correct in its reasoning in a lot of respects, but not really interested in losing elections-my liberal friends are all for the basic liberal agenda-until it threatens THIER personal status of course.
Hence the left will not truly in the last analysis invest its capital in doing any of the things that really need doing to correct our problems-it would pixx off too many of the thier own in group.
Hence for example there will be no dramatic legislated mpg standards for cars-that would mean finishing off the domestic auto industry and a major chunk of big labor, which is of course allied with the left.
I'm afraid we are damned if we do, and damned if we don't;serious change will not come until physical necessity force feeds it to us;maybe it won't be too late, but I fear that by then we will be too far downslope to reverse course.
I strongly disagree with your claim that a return to Republican control wouldn't make much difference. After all, it was the Republicans who set up the financial situation which led to the present economic downturn. It was Phil Gramm as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee who pushed thru the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, which removed the Depression era restrictions of the Glass-Steagall Act. That Billy Clinton signed it just shows how conservative Clinton was, IMHO.
Remember too that the Republicans under Newt Gingrich took over Congress after the 1994 election cycle and their list of goals called the Contract With America turned out to be something much different than the words on the list. So, now we find the Tea Party groups being offered another "Contract", which would likely result in something quite different from what is being discussed. Global Warming? Not a problem, they will just declare it to be a hoax and ignore the problem. Peak Oil? Same response, we'll just Drill Baby, Drill anywhere that looks promising...
E. Swanson
The demographic transition model has no predictive power
Could you expand on that?
My understanding is that the demographic transition is already well under way in most of the world. Mexico, for instance, has reached fertility levels of just above replacement, and fertility appears to be continuing to decline. My understanding is that this the case for the great majority of S America and Asia. AFAIK, the transition has not yet happened in large parts of Africa due to obvious poverty.
The United States reached its peak oil production in 1970, when our population was about 203 million. Had it been necessary for us to live within our means with respect to oil after 1970, we would have needed to reduce our population, reduce our per capita use of oil, or some combination of the two. However, since 1970 crude oil production in the United States has steadily declined, whereas the population has grown to 310 million. Our demand for oil grew
This is incorrect. Take 1979 as a benchmark: US current consumption is at about the same level. That means that we did reduce our per capita use of oil. US GPD is 2.5x as high, population is 50% higher, manufacturing output is 50% higher, and yet we use no more oil.
Economic growth does not require growth in oil consumption. In fact, it doesn't need oil at all, though oil is mighty convenient.
I gather from comments above that Vaclav Smil agrees with this - he just thinks the transition will take a while.
Without adequate natural resources and ecosystem services such as only the Earth can provide, the leviathan-like global economic colossus that enriches "the few" and neglects "the many too many" will crash, would it not?
ecosystem services
I agree that's a real risk. Exactly what the risk is, I don't think anyone knows. I'd say AGW is the biggest risk, by far, but that's not really a depletion problem - it's more a pollution problem. IOW, if you go around kicking holes in your house, you're going to have problems. That's not quite the same as a limitation to growth.
adequate natural resources
Which are you thinking of? PO is a problem, but in the long run have enough energy.
just checked interest rates for that time and they were running about 15 to 20 % 1979 1981 or so. not sure how this relates to using less oil and growth in the economy.
Interest rates rose because Carter's Fed Chair decided to "wring" inflation expectations out of the economy...
Crude oil production DID decline, and we all know that in the 70's and 80's we moved from oil for electrical generation to nuke, coal, and gas -- the "saved" oil has gone to transportation.
So we have a higher population AND we use almost as much energy per capita...only a tad bit more efficiently.
Of course if we had no immigration we'd have no population growth, either.
Economic EXISTENCE required energy. "Real" economic growth will either require more energy or better efficiency. Printing money and shuffling it faster doesn't improve anybody's quality of life, which is a much better measure than GDP.
we moved from oil for electrical generation to nuke, coal, and gas
Yes. On the one hand, it's only part of how we became more efficient, and found substitutes. OTOH, it's just an example of what can be done with our other uses of oil.
"Real" economic growth will either require more energy or better efficiency.
Yes. And, both are doable.
You raise a very good point about our own population growth and energy.
I believe it is time for anyone who is a realist to acknowledge the fact that we can't save everyone or every place;we neeed to do what we cqan to help others of course ,but we ned to save ourselves as our first priority.
Otherwise we won't be around to hepl othwers anyway.
It is wel past the time to achieve zpg in the US BY WHATEVER MEANS IS NECESSARY-INCLUDING CLOSING THE BORDERS.
And yes I do realize that my own family once immigrated here.
I agree with your sentiment in general, but I think you paint with too broad a brush.
State/region-level sutainability is what we need to aim for, and getting Americans to seek the jobs that are currently going to illegals.
Of course, those jobs don't come with health insurance. Hmm, hard work, risk of injury, no health insurance (and no government health insurance).
Never mind, let's just fortify the borders, it's easier than making those jobs a reasonable choice.
Mac,
You do realize that the US allows immigration not out the goodness of it's heart, but because employers find it profitable and convenient, right?
No, because politicians find it expedient.
Definitely the influence of potential employers. Simply no question.
delete
Nick, you are being deliberately fallacious.
You know damn well that increasingly from the early 1970's manufacturing has been "off shored". Not just the USA but for the vast majority of the developed world.
No, I don't. US manufacturing grew 50% since 1979.
Employment hasn't though, and there is still that pesky trade deficit to deal with. Corrected for population, production has been flat or somewhat up (more up if you go back another 10 or 20 years), while employment as a fraction of the populace is down.
Our "information economy" is a euphemism for "make work of various sorts to redistribute income". It would make more sense to go back to single-income households, as fewer workers are needed for basic production of food and materials.
The point is: US oil consumption has not dropped because of outshoring of manufacturing.
We don't need oil to prosper. We don't need fossil fuels.
you need to clarify this for me I am not following this train of thought correctly I think
US oil consumption has increased by 2 billion barrels a year since 1979 (more or less) irrespective of whether onshore manufacturing has risen or not.
you seem to be arguing there is some sort of energy fungability that is easily applicable via market forces for the US economy in the short to medium term. is that a correct short hand of your position?
US oil consumption 1978: 18,847 bpd
US oil consumption 2009: 18,771 bpd
there is some sort of energy fungability that is easily applicable via market forces for the US economy in the short to medium term
That's close. 1) I think more in the medium than the short term: for instance, I'm told Israel hopes to convert mostly to electric cars by 2020. You can't do that overnight. OTOH, an individual can buy a Prius today (60% fuel reduction), and a Leaf in 3 months (98% fuel reduction).
2) I wouldn't rely just on market forces: we need smart regulation, like much higher CAFE, and steep carbon taxes.
I think this is doubtful. It would at least be more precise if it read "the peak in oil production will likely be followed by population decline at some (undetermined) point in the future."
First, it is not necessarily clear that there is a share of the world population that cannot survive without oil. Survival is not the same as maintaining a standard of living. Witness huge populations (China, India) that both grew without high per capita use of oil, and that continue to survive that way.
Second, there is no clear correlation between trends in the use of oil and population growth or decline. In the last couple decades, to pick some salient examples, oil consumption in the Phillipines has declined while population growth there has continued steadily, while in Poland oil consumption has climbed even as the population did not grow. In Russia in the last decade population has declined slowly while oil consumption has climbed slightly.
Whatever the relationship of population and oil consumption, it is at a minimum not time correlated on scales less than a human generation.
Nonetheless, I agree with the conclusion...
...since eventually the lower energy flows of renewable sources will be all we have left.
If we would simply stop subsidizing agricultural production, we could successfully price a few billion people out of the market for food. Let free markets do their work.
Your comment is disgusting, and I can't figure out how it is a response to mine.
By choosing to do little else, this will eventually be the choice. And it will be made invisibly -- we do it today. If all Americans ate corn instead of beef, and donated the savings to aid organizations, nobody in the world would be hungry. For a few years, anyway.
By being consumptive, we now have a buffer zone that we COULD use to cover troughs of availability in the eventual food plateau. However, I doubt we will do so purposefully -- instead, those who can afford filet mignon will eat steak, and many will eat hamburgers, while others quietly starve.
Of course those weakened by hunger will be poor, so many will die of treatable diseases or simple exposure as well, and we'll see the numbers on the news and feel momentarily sad, or a tad ashamed, and many just a shadow of fear (Could that ever be US?). And then we'll load the kids in the minivan and go get ice cream and forget about it.
It doesn't really get disgusting until somebody says, "All those people are living and dying horribly. Surely it would have been better for them never to have been born. Let's humanely rectify that apparent oversight." We do it in animal pounds today, so the streets aren't littered with dangerous, disease-ridden, dirty, starving animals and their leavings. Could that ever include humans? Does it already, in some parts of the world? Does it already, here?
The correlation is that the grain production that feeds most of the world is a global market and heavily oil dependent. When fossil fuel goes into decline, global food production will fall.
There will be famine, and it will happen because billions of people suddenly won't be able to afford food, and sufficient food aid will not be forthcoming.
Not necessarily. This would only have to be true if all fossil fuel were used for food production. We know very well that it isn't. The relatively small percentage of current fossil fuel consumption that is necessary to maintain grain production could quite possibly continue to be channeled to grain production for decades after the peak in oil production. Most likely other things will disappear first (e.g. international air travel)
I don't see what's going to be sudden about it. Quite possibly the peak in oil production was two years ago. It's quite possible that a decline in population on the scale of billions will take place over the course of decades or even centuries, especially since it is unlikely to be even.
fossil fuel consumption that is necessary to maintain grain production
And, of course, FFs aren't necessary to maintain grain production. Electric tractors, soy instead of corn (for nitrogen), electrolytic hydrogen->ammonia, permaculture, etc, etc.
Nick,
Like all animals, humans need food to survive. Homo sapiens have been around about 200,000 years, but only in the last couple of centuries did our growth rate suddenly leap upward. That coincides with our use of fossil fuels to a considerable extent. Remove fossil fuels from world agriculture and there will be a lot of hungry people.
only in the last couple of centuries did our growth rate suddenly leap upward. That coincides with our use of fossil fuels to a considerable extent.
No question FFs helped enormously. But...why is it so hard to believe that FFs might no longer be necessary?
It is not a question of belief, it is a question of thermodynamics. Your posts are naively optimistic.
You state that AGW is a big problem yet you advocate economic growth, growth = extraction and pollution. You spout the naivety that US GDP is higher than it was since 1979 yet for the vast majority of people real wages adjusted for inflation have been stagnant to declining for 35 years, including for the most educated segment of society, their wages have been stagnant for 20 years or more. You fail to consider that US debt has increased by 4.5 Trillion dollars in the last 4 years and in that same time, housing went down, stocks went down and unemployment soared. So the US economy is in a deeper hole than it was last year.
Growth is dead, collapse has begun.
it is a question of thermodynamics.
What does thermodynamics have to do with it? You're clear that the Earth is not a closed system, that it receives solar energy that's 20,000 times as large as human consumption?
Have you looked at the scalability of wind power? It has high E-ROI, and the resource is much larger than current human energy consumption. Not to mention nuclear, solar, geothermal, etc.
you advocate economic growth
No, I'm not especially advocating growth in resource extraction. I think we should go to wind and solar power, and greatly reduce FF consumption.
for the vast majority of people real wages adjusted for inflation have been stagnant to declining for 35 years, including for the most educated segment of society, their wages have been stagnant for 20 years or more.
Average wages have been stagnant, but household wages have been rising. I would agree that income inequality has been rising, but how is that relevant to this discussion?
the US economy is in a deeper hole than it was last year.
True - we're having a difficult recovery, with stagnant employment. That's not really what we're talking about, though: we're talking about the limits to production, which we're nowhere close to right now.
Because without growing energy and raw materials -- resources -- real growth is impossible.
So at some point real growth ends.
As resources deplete we either find adequate replacements or at some point our culture undergoes a phase change to deal with reality.
If we are lucky the change won't be too painful (we aren't that lucky).
But after the change? Life goes on.
But, we have plenty of wind, solar, nuclear. Unfortunately, we also have plenty of coal, too.
Nick,
What do you plan to use instead that can be scaled up enough to replace oil in world agriculture? Even as we approach the peak of oil production, if we've not passed it already, we continue to add more than 80 million people to the world's population each year; over 220,000 each day. If you were adding another person to your household each year, and the prospect of feeding them was iffy at best, wouldn't it be prudent for you to stop those annual additions?
What do you plan to use instead that can be scaled up enough to replace oil in world agriculture?
That's really not hard, in the long run. What's so difficult about electric tractors, soy instead of corn (for nitrogen), electrolytic hydrogen for ammonia fertilizer, permaculture, etc, etc?
Have you looked at the scalability of wind power? It has high E-ROI, and the resource is much larger than current human energy consumption. Not to mention nuclear, solar, geothermal, etc.
If economics (or at least freakonomics) tells us anything, it is that people respond to incentives. What are the incentives for people to have children (or perhaps, more children than they need for their emotional satisfaction) and how do we break them?
C'mon man. People have children because...
a)they enjoy sex, and they don't have access to birth control
c)they need more hands on the family farm
d)their religion tells them too
so the solutions are:
a)provide birth control
b)provide enough motive energy so people don't need to birth farmhands
c)criticize outdated earth-ignorant religions
It's 'b' that needs the most additional discussion.
There is also a national and ethnic interest, which parallels your "religions" point.
If you can't beat them, you have to join them -- if group A procreates at a flat rate, and group B doubles every 10 years, then in a few decades A will fall to irrelevance, especially if death when it comes is either flat (affecting all equally) or skewed to the larger (as with hand-to-hand battle, or simple discrimination).
At some point it is likely that group A will either need to accept a quiet fade into history, or elect to eliminate the competition. If you put off the decision too long, there no longer is a choice available.
Even within a society, there are divergent birth rates for social strata, but also increasing separation. If we end up Eloi and Morlocks, will we have succeeded at all?
Generally speaking the solution to these issues is to not be racist. I don't think that this goes to the "incentives" that drive most people to have children, but where it does (e.g. Israel/Palestine) it boils down to the religious issue.
Tell that to the "Duggarites", all they seem to want to do is "be fruitful and multiply" (like any other virus...). Now of course Religion being the root cause of this insanity, what they DON'T want is for any other Religionists to "out multiply" em'. And Geebus forbid, any of those horrible Unbelievers to multiply at all...
Apparently most of the Religious "cute sayings" they invoke, have an unreadable "footnote" attached to them which speaks only to them about their "true meaning". One that is particularly memorable is the famous "love thy neighbor". Until you start doing actual historical research on its usage at the time and find out that it was more like "love thy (immediate) neighbor". It was OK to kill those miserable SOB's the lived on the other side of the river...
Both economics and freakonomics have very simple, even simplistic, views of human nature and the human condition, in my opinion. The urge to procreate has been with us since well before we had evolved into our present human form, before the emergence of primates and before the development of placental gestation of our young. I think rational argument will not do much to change it.
There is something rational in us, but that is hardly the whole story. I think that we have not despoiled the planet to the point that survival of a small human population is impossible, but I have no proof. Given the facts as I suppose them to be, economic arguments and economic incentives won't count for much.
Well, since I don't see any of our resident cornucopians posting, I'll play devil's advocate and fill the role.
The macro measurements of human progress are still trending upward:
1. The number living in [some measure of] poverty is still getting proportionally smaller year by year.
2. The food calories available to humans is still growing in a trend that began with the onset of the 'green revolution' circa 1950.
3. Medical care and education is becoming available to more people every year. (WAG)
4. Why focus on petroleum or even on fossil fuels in general when we can extract so much more energy from nuclear sources with technology that is well understood? Fossil fuel depletion is just a red herring (who cares if herring are being over-fished? :->)
5. The demographic transition will take care of the population problem. All these exponential curves of population growth (see Chris Martenson) should actually be sigmoid curves, if one extrapolates current trends in total fertility worldwide.
...and so forth and so on.
It is simply a matter of which trends you like to extrapolate into the future.
It is the same old arguments and won't change until we see these macro indicators declining in a statistically significant manner.
Why go for proportions of suffering versus absolute numbers of those hungry? Is it better to have 1M more happy people if 1000 more must die miserably? Or the converse?
It's going to be hard to define the solution when it's not even clear what the goals and valuations might be.
The converse would be "1000 more must die miserably if you have 1M more happy people?", which in this case amounts the same thing.
I think you meant to ask if the contrapositive would be better, which would be, "to not have 1M more happy people if it means 1000 more do not die miserably"
(Of course there's never been a point in history when no one died miserably, so perhaps percentages are what matters. Then again, perhaps the real question is "at what point will having 1M more people mean that more of them die miserably instead of less?")
Perhaps we're about to enter a swarming phase like locusts.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10158856
Humans seem to like to have their own "space", and abundant energy slaves have helped many achieve it. Once we have to start rubbing elbows again as things get tight, we may see the sort of "phase shifted" behavior which made Germany and Japan expansionist killers of "other" types of humans.
Such shifts can turn on and off surprisingly quickly; as in Rwanda. It may not even be biologically dysfunctional, but a normal phase shift of perceived population densities which have been held in abeyance by the largesse of fossil fuels. Humans feel joy at killing one another when in this phase, and this may be ecologically legitimate even if it's unsettling.
This may be inherently unpredictable as it is in locusts - http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/locust-swarms. Nested phase shifts. Should be an interesting century.
To me this is related to "urban sprawl". Planners say there's only two kinds of growth - controlled and uncontrolled. U.S. cities will be larger in the future, and if you plan for it, you'll be rewarded.
Like how would a region face population growth? Like my state!
http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/minnesota_population_video
Our continental climate (hot/cold) isn't the most attractive, so perhaps we're lucky to avoid huge influx of people.
The video shows the Twin Cities as expecting to absorb most of the population growth, so setting urban/rural boundaries would create an artificial barrier to growth, assuming ordinances restricted development outside the boundary. We have a "met council" http://www.metrocouncil.org/ that tries to create regional planning, but there's no agreement that growth is bad or stoppable, so they're stuck on planning for what is considered inevitable.
I think in a place like Minnesota that urban boundaries of some sort is a fair approach to development, even KNOWING it will artificially force prices up AND place limitations on growth that will seem senseless under assumptions that economies only grow.
As a thought experiment, it is worthy to me. I'm childless, but I have friends with 2,3,4,5 kids, and many will want to stay in Minnesota (we hope) so how can we make room for them? Its no a new problem, and the old solution is continually expanding rings of suburbs that have cheaper new housing that require cars to do everything. So limiting urban growth seems sensible, and if housing becomes too expensive, people will have to consider smaller families or believe their children will have to move far away when they grow up.
But perhaps NOW, in economic decline, housing surpluses, is the perfect time to face the issue of sprawl and set some limits that in the short run will prop up prices? I'm not a very good planner, and all ideas need to be tested in practice to really see the effects.
Every region it would seem needs different solutions. It would be nice if people agreed on the problem. I fully admit solutions I see "cost more" in the short run, like carbon taxes to promote conservation, and urban boundaries to limit development. You have to be smart to defend these views against short-sighted but still real self-interest of others!
Just a quick note on United States population growth. It seem that folk wish to attribute the large population growth to having children in the US. When doing a little research I found that nearly 3/5th to 2/3rds of the the population growth has been due to immigration. From reading I've done over the last decade or so, the native population of developed nations over the last few decades has been pretty static. So, in addressing population growth you really need to be discussing what needs to be done in less developed nations. I think the discussion tends to be less than honest based on political correctness and other politically motivated issues. Of course once the back side of the peak sets in, political correctness will be a thing of the past.
goodmaj,
You are quite right. Without immigrants and the children of those immigrants the U.S. population would not be growing; in fact it would probably be declining somewhat. For years immigration, espcially illegal immigration, has been a taboo topic, as population often is. Worldwide many countries have declining populations, including Japan and Russia.
The key factor is domestic birth rate per female. In the US, 2.1, in every other developed country (Canada, every European country) ranges from 1.8 to 1.2? I'm guessing its largely due to a) propensity to religiousity or b) greater GINI index.
Hi lengould,
It is certainly a factor, but I would hesitate to call it the "key" factor. The only "key" factor is growth rate - nothing else really matters in the final analysis.
Projections based upon birth/fertility rates may or may not come true - lots of speculation based upon many unpredictable variables.
"native" women in an affluent country may have a lower birth rate and thereby pave the way for a poor neighboring country with a higher birth rate to migrate workers into the affluent country.
I'm very skeptical of the idea that we can just let nature run its course and the global population will peak/stabilize/decline and therefore we need not worry are pretty little heads about this.
You think, maybe! Help spread the word: there is no god, there is just our evolved life on this small planet and our survival depends upon rational thinking and action.
Diverting resources from "other uses" such as wasteful use by the world's rich, for example?
Can't have that, obviously. If only those nasty dark-skinned people would stop breeding, we could just keep wasting without guilt!
Question....
How many abysmal failures of nerve, will and wisdom by a tiny minority of arrogant and avaricious lost souls, all self-proclaimed masters of the universe in a single foolhardy generation, are required to precipitate the extinction of life as we know it and the ruination of a good enough future for children everywhere?
Steve,
You've made many excellent comments on this topic and I thank you for that. I would hope readers give serious thought to many of the points that you've made because the population predicament will only get worse as time goes on.
Though I've tried to answer some comments made by other readers, here I would like to add a few more general ones.
Wikipedia is hardly a source for gaining an understanding of something as complicated as the demographic transition. I would recommend that people who are actually interested read John Weeks's book, Population, and some of the articles in Population and Development Review.
For those who cannot see how different demographic dynamics have become because of fossil fuels, please provide alternate hypotheses that would explain how, after 200,000 years, Homo sapiens suddenly began to expand their numbers at a much more rapid rate only after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
For those who understand that fossil fuels have helped fuel population growth over the last couple of centuries, but who now believe that that growth can continue even as fossil fuels, oil at least, reach a peak and begin to decline, please suggest what you think is going to be supporting expanding food production into the future.
Whether we have reached peak oil or not, I have tried to make two points as clearly as possible: (1) future population projections are NOT written in stone, though all too often they are interpreted that way and our energy goes into meeting the future demands of those additional numbers and (2) a prudent course, given that we may be facing limits to continued expansion of our numbers, would be to reduce those numbers in humane ways now rather than let them be reduced for us.
A different question that I've tried to raise is this: Why do we need more people on Earth today? Related to that is another question that is seldom answered, or even raised: What kind of a planet do we want to leave to future generations? These questions should be asked and debated, and the terms of the debate should not be dictated by economists and their quest for eternal economic growth. Several studies have shown now that humans and their actions appropriate about 40 percent of Earth's net terrestrial primary productivity (NPP). Isn't that enough? Must we let economic and demographic growth drive us to the point where we appropriate 100 percent of NPP?
Im sorry,
Im not sure that I understand your question.
"For those who cannot see how different demographic dynamics have become because of fossil fuels, please provide alternate hypotheses that would explain how, after 200,000 years, Homo sapiens suddenly began to expand their numbers at a much more rapid rate only after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution".
As with many things on TOD, so much insight is obfuscated within pseudo-insight. In your model how do you account for dramatically different intensities/concentrations of population around the world in regions of similar fecundity prior to the Industrial Revolution? I suspect the answer of course is that you meant to suggest how important the pattern of fossil fuel use has been to the increase in human population since its widespread extraction.
But the way you phrased it make it seems as if there is a physical system determinism embedded in the population growth we observed. Let me ask the question a different way (not that I think its a particularly important question to you or me given that the paragraphs that follow the above make it clear that you do think we have the intentionality to change the world as it is, and that a better outcome is at least a theoretical possibility of said intentionality). Do you believe the sustainable population of the Central Valley of California is higher or lower without the use of fossil fuels (but with complex agricultural system knowledge) than lets say the population density of the Central Valley in 6,000 B.C.
I'd offer as an alternative to your theory, that the driver for that expansion was technology (accumulated shared knowledge) rather than any particular energy source. Sure technology co-opted the available energy sources to support itself, and sure it may not have been able to "progress" quite so rapidly without petroleum, but I don't see petroleum being pivotal in the graph of population, which has been gradually increasing the slope of its upward curve quite steadily since the days of moveable type, if not long before. Roman concrete and aquaducts? Eqyptian irrigation? Greek bronze? Inca organization? All contributed.
lengould,
You need to take a much better look at the history of world population. Your faith in technology doesn't accord with facts. Parts of those Roman aquaducts remain across Europe today, a stark reminder that the Roman Empire collapsed, as did many earlier civilizations based on irrigation. During the Black Death in the mid-14th century Europe's population declined by about one-third, even more in some cities.
Gary,
Len, didn't argue that energy wasn't important. He argued that it was not "any particular energy source".
We can see that oil was not crucial from the fact that modern population growth accelerated well before oil was important. Coal was more than enough and, sadly, we have vast quantities of coal and other things that can be burned.
Wind, solar and nuclear really aren't needed to deal with PO, or peak FF. Rather, they're needed to reduce CO2 emissions, by leaving the FF in the ground.
I'd also point out that the use of petroleum and of electricity began almost co-incidentally, and their individual effects on society will be well-nigh impossible to separate out. Myself, I consider electricity to have been FAR more influential than petroleum. Without petroleum, we could still propose the advent of mechanized farming, long-distance real-time communication and data processing and storage. Without electricity, we'd have very little of modernity.
Tyler,
I'm sorry to be unclear. Though I don't know what the population of the Central Valley was 8,000 years ago, it must have been very low. The population of the whole state at that time was only about 300,000. It was a population of hunters and gatherers, dependent on fish, game, and acorns. Most likely both birth and death rates were high, but the system may have been sustainable for a long time, though at a low level.
The population in the Central Valley today is probably at least 5 million and the land use is dominated by large-scale agribusiness. Without fossil fuels, this population and agri-business would be unsustainable. But that is not what you asked, if I understand your question correctly.
Without fossil fuels, but with a knowledge of complex agricultural systems, the Central Valley could probably sustain a population much larger than it had 8,000 years ago but much smaller than the current population. The dry summer climate would require irrigation and would face similar risks to other hydraulic civilizations if population growth continued.
And why does irrigation need fossil fuel?
California uses a large % of it's electricity for electric pumps to move water across the state. Electricity doesn't need fossil fuel.
A lot of farm irrigation is electrically powered, mostly from the grid, and increasingly using PV.
Without fossil fuels, this population and agri-business would be unsustainable.
This is unrealistic.
Of course aquifer depletion and river water shortage is an issue too. There are other shortages besides fossil fuels.
aquifer depletion and river water shortage is an issue too.
True, but does that really threaten to reduce our food production ability by 75%? That's what it would have to do to cause starvation.
I've been told that only 1/3 of US farms are irrigated, and I would think that crop-switching could reduce water needs dramatically (why grow rice in a desert?). Heck, meat production requires many orders of magnitude more water than grain production.
Some say we just need to change the way we are using water (and in particular, reform the whole agricultural system).
This includes reduction in low-priority uses. For example, sewage effluent requires 1500 kWh/AF (an AF is roughly 326,000 gallons) and seawater requires 5400 kWh/AF. It is the largest single component in the cost of the water--especially in a high electricity rate state like California. Roughly 50% of the water we consume in Southern California goes to landscaping. The average household in Huntington Beach uses 2.5 AF per year. There is much low hanging fruit (my own yard included) before we resort to ocean desal. per Debbie, energymaven http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5155#comment-477464
Without consistent growth in food production there will be mass starvation before long.
1st, you haven't shown food production can't grow, and
2nd, the world on average is overweight right now. A 20% reduction in calories would only be to the good.
Wow, that 2nd one is the most insensitive comment I have heard in a long time.
Perhaps I wasn't clear.
There are many, many more people who are obese in the world, than those who are starving. In fact, overweight causes more health problems in the world than malnutrition.
We don't have an overall shortage of food, we have a distribution problem, due to national economic poverty, etc. Having more food in the world won't change that.
Having less energy and food will change that, for the worse, though.
True. Those who are poor, or struggling on the edge, will have a harder time transitioning away from oil.
OTOH, sometimes these things are paradoxical: rising food prices can help local farmers in developing countries stay in business.
Nick, I honestly don't know why I even both responding so some of these, but apparently I can't help myself.
1) It's not that it can't grow, it's that it won't grow enough, eventually. Exponential population growth cannot continue, since there can be no endless exponential growth of food. There are plenty of arguments over the relative yield of various farming techniques, but that does not change the fact that there are plenty of hungry people NOW, and yield growth trends are stagnating.
"that the global increase in crop yields per ha across 1961 - 1999 were accompanied by a 97% increase in irrigated acreage and 638 %, 203 %, and 854 % increases in use of nitrogen fertilizer, phosphorus fertilizer, and production of pesticides, respectively.
Some also argue that climate conditions were unusually favorable during much of the 1980's and 1990's, with cooler summers contributing to the increases in total production (Science 14 Feb. 03). (If this is so, prospects for agricultural production under changed climate circumstances may be particularly bleak...)"
Water is in short supply -- irrigation growth cannot continue. Fertilizer will become more expensive as fossil fuels and energy do, so growth cannot continue. Areas growth has been small, and cannot continue. Pesticide use is likely to become less effective, and the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Weather has been good, and has a strong likelihood of not remaining that way. Crop hybrid and modification has not yet run its course, but low-hanging fruit have likely been picked.
So, no PROOF that growth cannot continue for any given length of time, but increasingly the obvious indication is that negative factors are accumulating. The precautionary principle would say "plan for less food not more" yet "plan for more people, not fewer". Not a good mix.
2) World averages in food are preposterous, given the differences in availability. Average height is maybe 5'7" -- if cut down tall people, will short people grow?
If the overfed eat less, there is no indication that such food will immediately go to the underfed. Local supply and demand would say prices in high-consumption areas would collapse and supply would subsequently wither, with little net effect to the areas of lack. Human nature says even that possibility is preposterous, too -- how many fat people in the US will stop outside the McD's drive-through and hand their meal to the skinny homeless guy on the street?
Thanks for the food info - I'll have to think about it.
Exponential population growth
Yes. OTOH, pop growth isn't exponential.
World averages in food are preposterous, given the differences in availability
Exactly - more food in the world won't help local poverty. Malnutrition in the world has very little relation to overall production.
Conversely, we could feed 20B people on a vegetarian diet, so we're not looking at a problem of carrying capacity. We're looking at economics, development, and public policy.
Before you make any more comments about exponential growth of population, watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
Population growth is exponential. And, while we might be able to feed 20B people crap food, the real problem is that we cannot do it for much longer. And, the fact that they would all be going for the cheap carbs, as the poor do today (McDonald's dollar menu is a nightmare for nutrition), would probably result in lots of obese - and unhealthy - people.
Moreover, we can NOT do even that on a sustainable basis. Absent petroleum for transportation and factory farming, and absent commercial fertilizers, made from natural gas, and absent the soils that are now being depleted by overuse and stress, the green revolution is going to end, and we will have a (gradual) decrease in production.
More important, though, is the impact on transportation and the nature of the JIT supply chain to the neighborhood market. With about 3 days of food on hand, it won't take a long time to see serious consequences. And, we will have to rethink our entire transportation paradigm, as well as our power infrastructure. Again, the difficulty is the sheer numbers - numbers of automobiles to replace, trains to reconfigure, buses to build, in order to accomodate the mass of humanity that is here today.
The time to begin in restructuring was in 1980, and instead of doing that we decided to follow Saint Ronnie the Wrong and waste our world's wealth of resources on a binge of greedy consumerism.
Now, my crystal ball is a bit cloudy. Having said that, I submit that some things follow naturally from others. After a binge of drinking, the drunk can expect a hangover. After our binge, there will be consequences. Right now, today, people are throwing a hissy fit because the President they elected for change has not been able to deliver. And, they are impatient. They want no taxes, high government benefits, and no worries.
Well, on the HOG, the improbabilities of that are so high that they would take us to Milliways! In a heartbeat!
Craig
I'm very familiar with Bartlett. Unfortunately, most of his information is 30 years out of date.
Population growth is exponential.
No, it's not. Exponential growth is proportional to the base. World population growth, right now, is roughly linear: the number of additional humans per year is fairly constant (that's changed since Bartlett formulated his ideas). Furthermore, that number is clearly going to drop, as fertility rates drop. Are you clear on the concept of the demographic transition? Are you clear on the concept that if fertility rates are below replacement, ZPG has to happen eventually?
while we might be able to feed 20B people crap food, the real problem is that we cannot do it for much longer.
But is the potential food capability going to drop by 50%? That doesn't seem likely.
they would all be going for the cheap carbs, as the poor do today (McDonald's dollar menu is a nightmare for nutrition)
McD's nutrition isn't bad: there's a lot of protein, and other micronutrients. It could be lower fat, it's true, and a bit higher in vitamins, but it's not bad. The main problem: people eat too much of it.
Absent petroleum for transportation and factory farming
We don't need oil for those. Rail and electric motors will work just fine.
absent commercial fertilizers, made from natural gas
Apart from the fact that NG supply seems to be holding up much better than oil, what about substituting soy for corn, and getting hydrogen for ammonia fertilizer from electrolysis of water (using wind power for the electricity)?
the difficulty is the sheer numbers - numbers of automobiles to replace, trains to reconfigure, buses to build, in order to accomodate the mass of humanity that is here today.
Don't be afraid of large numbers. Manufacturing isn't that hard, and it doesn't need much oil, even in the short run.
The time to begin in restructuring was in 1980
True. OTOH, we're not starting at scratch - many of the things we need have been in development since Carter created the DOE. Wind, solar, EVs have all been developing and growing in that period - that's another change since Bartlett formulated his ideas.
Right Nick another "move along, nothing to see here" post by you.
You must deny there is a problem with over population ("we can feed ten billion people") because its conflicts with your group's BAU quieten the crowd agenda.
You deny there will be a problem with peak oil as your childish "just buy a Prius, it's cheaper than the average vehicle" rantings suggest. Now your telling us McDonald's is good, (for what, save the day?) just don't eat too much. Don't mention fibre, fresh fruit and vegetables or refined carbs, just play down the bad things like too much fat and too few viamins.
You deny there is a problem with the economy as scores of your posts have claimed.
So what are you doing here Nick, who's paying you? I've said it before, you and your group are just about the most dangerous people posting here and you've been at it for half a decade. Your posts are available for anyone to read and there are thousands of them.
Actually, my position is much more radical: kick the oil addiction now.
People who say that without oil (or FF) our economy will collapse are just reinforcing the status quo: oil at all costs.
--------------------------------
You deny there will be a problem with peak oil...You deny there is a problem with the economy
I've never said those things. What I've said is that PO won't cause the economy to collapse. Again, people who say that without oil (or FF) our economy will collapse are just reinforcing the status quo: oil at all costs.
--------------------------------
I agree that family planning is a good thing, mostly because it's the humane thing to do: there are many, many families kept in poverty by lack of contraception and education. We don't have to coerce anyone to limit their family size: as a practical matter, everyone will do that with the proper help.
---------------------------------
The minority that wants to block the transition away from oil & FF are your problem, including these oil company owners:
"The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are waging a war against Obama. He and his brother are lifelong libertarians and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes."
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?curren...
Every article on TOD that says that without oil (or FF) our economy will collapse are just helping these people to reinforce the status quo: drill, baby, drill and oil wars.
We can hope! NPG would be better, though.
I believe that much of the reason that growth is seen as linear today is from the HIV epidemic. As I noted, death rates will impact population, and in fact dropping rates in America contribute to our gains.
It sounds like we agree on most of this... I can hope, as you seem to, that we have not waited too long already. I am not sanguine about our resolve.
Craig
Nick,
You obviously didn't understand what Tyler asked. As for unrealistic, given what I've seen you've about cornered the market.
You obviously didn't understand what Tyler asked
I was replying to your comment, not Tyler's.
you've about cornered the market.
Yes, I know we disagree. OTOH, I've given specific reasons, with a little detail. I can give much more.
So, please give details for your position. I've asked you specific questions, and you haven't answered.
Yep,
you got the point of my comment. The central valley is a particularly good thought experiment because deeply insightful students of sustainable land use (Wes Jackson off the top of my head as example, not that an example is needed) realize that it doest suffer the same problems even with modern agriculture that say midwest monoculture does.
Of course there are risks (although I dont think the aquifers are a particularly large one in the example I proposed), desertification, complexity of maintaining the irrigation system, politics, greed, failure, bureucracy, etc...
I just wanted to make your claim which I think is substantively correct, stand on firmer ground. I think its possible for example that with the return of human labor to the farm that the sustainable population of the central valley might be 10x what the H/G population was.
I think lengould went at it in a nice intuitive way as well, and dont think its fair to use the criterion of dismissal to his arguments that "these innovations too passed". Sure, but none of that was pre-determined.
Hopefully more than the number of roads a man must walk down before you can call him a man.
Dear jaggedben,
Perhaps "the number of roads" depends upon how we choose to define what is means to be a man as well as how we determine what are the "roads a man must down before you can call him a man".
Are we defining a man as a human being with feet of clay or as a master of the universe? That difference makes a difference, I suppose. And which roads are to be designated roads that provide the qualifying experience for manhood?
Despite the adage, all roads do not lead to Rome.....or manhood.
Sincerely,
Steve
Dear jaggedben,
Very very briefly, if I define "man" as self-proclaimed masters of the universe do, then there are features of these personalities that come to mind: malignant narcissism, pathological arrogance, extreme foolishness and outrageous greediness. On the other hand, if "man" is defined as those who recognize themselves as human beings with feet of clay, then these human beings have different personality characteristics and behave differently.
Masters of the universe are short-term thinkers who give little thought to the long view. They live as if the only thing that exists is a materialistic dream-world and follow the shibboleth, "Live without limits." The future of coming generations is not their concern. By way of comparison, human beings with feet of clay perceive such things as human limits and Earth limitations. They see the Earth as finite and its environs as frangible; as both independent of and absolute necessary to the very existence of the material world. No natural world equals no material world. As human beings with feet of clay deepen their awareness of the biological and physical boundaries imposed by the boundaries of the natural world they inhabit, effort is made to accept and adapt to the those realities. Assuring a good enough future for coming their descendants is something about they care.
More to come on masters of the universe, human beings with feet of clay, and the differences in the roads they walk down before you call them men ...........
Clay animation, Charlie Darwin - The Low Anthem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qkGoqAZrqI
Steve, I'm sorry if you missed the reference...
I was just pulling out the Bob Dylan as a way of pointing out, poetically, that your question has been asked before. Such questions make for good protest songs, and I certainly think there's a role for that.
Being the only animal with the ability to consciously influence the future of the whole planet and every species on it is a huge responsibilty; Man doesn't appear to be taking it very seriously.
Though we could conceivably support much greater numbers that would have a cost to other species and upon the quality of life for the many people who have to live under more crowded conditions. The fact that humans can exist under such conditions as the streets of Calcutta does not justify willingly creating more of the same. That kind of a gift of life is a dubious blessing.
Unless you choose to insist that some deity defines the future then man had better start doing some rational big, big picture thinking. Boot the ones who feel it is too horrid to contemplate off the thinking platform!
Though we could conceivably support much greater numbers that would have a cost to other species and upon the quality of life for the many people who have to live under more crowded conditions.
Only if we choose to do it that way. Other ways are possible: think Hong Kong, with intensive recycling. Las Vegas, for instance, recycles sewage into drinking water.
Sewage into drinking water? yes, out of desperation! I see that most of the large cities in California are facing monetary collapse. Yes if you lower energy consumption to the lowest common denominator and get creative new ways of supplying protein etc..
You seem to be stuck looking through that knothole of possible cures for a needless problem. You wouldst see a solution, but other options would eliminate the need. The old adage about the ounce of prevention > a pound of cure comes to mind.
Sewage into drinking water? yes, out of desperation!
Well, out of necessity. What's wrong with that? Recycling of everything is the obvious way to go, to reduce our environmental footprint.
I see that most of the large cities in California are facing monetary collapse.
Perhaps they're choosing not to raise taxes as they should. CA, state and local, has enough money - they're just choosing not to balance their budgets.
if you lower energy consumption to the lowest common denominator
No need for that. Wind power is cheap and abundant. Nuclear, solar, others, work as well.
possible cures for a needless problem.
?? Eliminating oil and FF, while keeping people fed, is needless??
I agree that family planning is a very good thing, but it's not going to solve our problems quickly.
Finally, the minority that wants to block the transition away from oil & FF are your problem, including these oil company owners:
"The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are waging a war against Obama. He and his brother are lifelong libertarians and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes."
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?curren...
Every article on TOD that says that without oil (or FF) our economy will collapse are just helping these people to reinforce the status quo: drill, baby, drill and oil wars.
A lot of the present and proposed way of going is attempting to treat symptoms not the underlying cause. There are a lot more than the Koch Bros. with a heavy investment in maintaining the status quo. There is still some milk to be had out of this cow and they want the last of it. They feel pretty well insulated from the effect of more growth and the accompanying degredation so BAU is all good in their minds.
Some people have faith in techno fixes for life supporting a species that is living in post climax fashion. Others see the techno fixes themselves as having been long part of the problem. I suspect that many of the cornucopians will be turning in their name tags in 10 years or so but time will tell: it always does!