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Population Growth Must Stop - Copy 2
Posted by Gail the Actuary on July 1, 2010 - 10:31am in The Oil Drum: Campfire
This is a second copy of this post, because of the large number of comments on the first thread.
This is a guest post by Gary Peters, a retired geography professor with a long time interest in population issues. I have added some discussion questions at the end. - Gail
Earth’s population is approaching seven billion at the same time that resource limits and environmental degradation are becoming more apparent every day. Rich nations have long assured poor nations that they, too, would one day be rich and that their rates of population growth would decline, but it is no longer clear that this will occur for most of today’s poor nations. Resource scarcities, especially oil, are likely to limit future economic growth; the demographic transition that has accompanied economic growth in the past may not be possible for many nations today. Nearly 220,000 people are added to the planet every day, further compounding most resource and environmental problems. The United States adds another person every eleven seconds. We can no longer wait for increasing wealth to bring down fertility in remaining high fertility nations; we need policies and incentives to stop growth now.
Much has been written about population growth since the first edition of Malthus's famous essay was published in 1798. However, an underlying truth is usually left unsaid: Population growth on Earth must cease. It makes more sense for humans to bring growth to a halt by adjusting birth rates downward in humane ways rather than waiting for death rates to move upward as the four horsemen reappear. Those who think it inhumane to control human fertility have apparently never experienced conditions in Third World shanty towns, where people struggle just to stay alive for another day.
In 1970 Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on developing new plant strains that formed the basis for the Green Revolution that began in the 1960s. However, in his Nobel acceptance speech Borlaug perceptively commented that "There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort. Fighting alone, they may win temporary skirmishes, but united they can win a decisive and lasting victory to provide food and other amenities of a progressive civilization for the benefit of all mankind." That was four decades ago. During that time the world's population increased by more than three billion and the struggle to feed, clothe, house, and educate ever-growing numbers of people continues. "Temporary skirmishes" seem persistent, if not permanent.
Writers sometimes confuse population issues. For example, in his post, The Population Bomb: Has It Been Defused?,", Fred Pearce wrote that "The population bomb is being defused at a quite remarkable rate." He conflates rates of growth with actual numbers. It is true that the rate of population growth worldwide has declined since 1970. However, the base population has grown by more than three billion; thus we currently add 80 million or more people to the planet each year. That is hardly "defusing" population growth!
Writers may sometimes have short memories when they write about population growth. Fred Pearce's post at "Consumption Dwarfs Population as Main Environmental Threat," is one example. George Monbiot's post on "The Population Myth," is another. Both authors seem to have discovered that our rate of consumption is an issue, so both play down population numbers and focus on our consumption habits. Neither mentions the work of Paul Ehrlich and his I = PAT equation, where I represents our impact on the Earth, P equals population, A equals affluence (hence consumption), and T stands for technology.
Both population and consumption are parts of the problem--neither can be ignored and both are exacerbating the human impact on Earth. More distressing, however, is that many among us don't even see that there are problems created by both growing populations and increasing affluence bearing down on a finite planet. To pretend that another 80 million people added to the planet each year is not a problem because they are all being added to the world’s poor nations makes no sense at all. Many of them will end up in rich nations by migrating, legally or illegally, and all will further compound environmental problems, from strains on oil and other fossil fuel resources to deforestation and higher emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. As Kenneth Boulding noted decades ago, "Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."
Population, consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow until we either face up to the fact that there are limits on our finite Earth or we are confronted by a catastrophe large enough to turn us from our current course. If Chinese, Indians, and others in the poorer world had consumption levels that rose to current western levels it would be like Earth's population suddenly increasing to 72 billion, according to Jared Diamond, who then wrote that, "Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven't met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies--for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy--they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people."
This promise is often made by people who believe that that alone will stop population growth via the demographic transition, conveniently forgetting about such exceptions as China. As Tom Athanasiou argued, in Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor, "In a world torn between affluence and poverty, the crackpot realists tell the poor, who must live from day to day, that all will be well in the long run. Amidst deepening ecological crisis, they rush to embrace small, cosmetic adaptations."
The widespread acceptance and political influence of modern neoclassical economics is a central part of our global problem. In one widely used economics textbook, Principles of Economics, Greg Mankiw wrote that “A large population means more workers to produce goods and services. At the same time, it means more people to consume those goods and services.” Speaking for many neoclassical economists, Tim Harford concluded, in The Logic of Life, that "The more of us there are in the world, living our logical lives, the better our chances of seeing out the next million years." The absurdity of Harford's statement must be recognized and challenged.
Economists do not deserve all the blame. As Thomas Berry noted, in The Great Work: Our Way into the Future, "Western civilization, dominated by a cultural arrogance, could not accept the fact that the human, as every species, is bound by limits in relation to the other members of the Earth community." On his Archdruid blog, John Greer added his observation that "Our culture's mythology of progress envisions the goal of civilization as a utopian state in which poverty, illness, death, and every other aspect of the human predicament has been converted into problems and solved by technology." We don't want to hear about limits.
Nowhere is acceptance of the twin towers of economic growth and increased consumption more apparent than in the United States, where "growing the economy" is still paramount, despite the leftovers of a financial meltdown created by banking and shadow banking systems run amok and a Gulf fouled by gushing oil. As Andrew Bacevich noted, in The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, "For the majority of contemporary Americans, the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness centers on a relentless personal quest to acquire, to consume, to indulge, and to shed whatever constraints might interfere with those endeavors." Yet evidence that modern economics has let most people down is abundant.
More than two decades ago Edward Abbey wrote, in One Life at a Time, Please, that "[W]e can see that the religion of endless growth--like any religion based on blind faith rather than reason--is a kind of mania, a form of lunacy, indeed a disease," adding that "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." He expressed his concern about modern economics as follows: "Economics, no matter how econometric it pretends to be, resembles meteorology more than mathematics. A cloudy science of swirling vapors, signifying nothing." Similarly, Nassim Taleb wrote, in The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, that "Economics is the most insular of fields; it is the one that quotes least from outside itself!" Gus Speth argued, in The Bridge at the End of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, that "In the end, what has to be modified is the open-ended commitment to aggregate economic growth--growth that is consuming environmental and social capital, both in short supply." Barbara Ehrenreich wrote, in This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation, that "The economists' odd fixation on growth as a measure of economic well-being puts them in a parallel universe of their own. . .the mantra of growth has deceived us for far too long." Whether in local areas, the United States, or the world, no problem that I can think of will be more easily solved with additional millions of people.
Future oil production will come at an increasing cost, if it comes at all. As Bill McKibbin noted, in Deep Economy: The Wealth of Comunities and the Durable Future, "Cheap and abundant fossil fuel [mainly oil] has shaped the farming system we've come to think of as normal; it's the main reason you can go to the store and get anything you want at any time and for not much money." More expensive oil will eat into world food production, especially if we continue to use foodstuffs to help fill gas tanks.
Scientists need to encourage a deeper and more realistic interest in population growth on a finite planet and its effect on many of the major issues of our time. We ignore the implications of further population growth at our peril. In 1971 Wilbur Zelinsky, in an article entitled "Beyond the Exponentials; The Role of Geography in the Great Transition," fretted that "The problem that shakes our confidence in the perpetuation and enrichment of civilized human existence or even our biological survival is that of growth: the rate, volume, and kinds of growth, and whether they can be controlled in intelligent, purposeful fashion."
Continued population growth is unsustainable, as is continued growth in the production of oil and other fossil fuels. As Lester Brown argued, in PLAN B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, "If we cannot stabilize population and if we cannot stabilize climate, there is not an ecosystem on earth we can save." As Alan Weisman wrote, in The World Without Us, “The intelligent solution [to the problem of population growth] would require the courage and the wisdom to put our knowledge to the test. It would henceforth limit every human female on Earth capable of bearing children to one.” Started now, such a policy would reduce Earth’s population down to around 1.6 billion by 2100, about the same as the world population in 1900. Had we kept Earth’s population at that level we would not be having this conversation.
Discussion Questions
1. Are there things we can do to get the population issue more into public discussion?
2. Are there other approaches to limiting population that might be more salable?
3. If Social Security is not sustainable, having fewer children will increase the likelihood that older adults will have no way of taking care of themselves. How does one deal with this issue?
Note: Copy of The Geographer's Viewpoint by Gary Peters, published by The California Geographer in 2009
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just a general comment; closing out the previous comments string when starting a new page may do a bit of disservice to what makes this site work.
Agreed with Greenish here.
I just spent fifteen or twenty minues composing a reply to green house gaseous that was a master piece of sarcasm if I say so myself.
Lost in the ether.
Thise who get it , or nearly get it, will understand my arguments;those who made thier minds up long ago are not likely to change them no matter what evidence is presented that challenges thier personal prejudices.
Gaseous has been a member for forty weeks but he has posted only two comments so far, so I know next to nothing about him.
But I doubt seriously he even read the entirity of my comment to which he responded.
Life, and the universe which we occupy, is not black and white, but exists in shades of gray.
Somehow I have a feeling that he operates in a monochrome intellectual world.
Obviously he fails to recognize that all the problems he lays at the feet of religious people are universal problems shared by the species, except for the "self described ( pseudointellectual in his case) and self righteous" sort of which he is a prime example.
Given the levers of power I expect he would have a personal jet assigned for his exclusive use about as fast as the rest of us.Slots reserved for his children at elite schools of course,and so forth.I could go on making sarcastic remarks all day ,but I won't since I am shooting blind.
Otoh, anyone who actually reads the comments sections of this site will know that I am a thorough going Darwinist and that I comment on religion as part of the human evolutionary process, etc.
I don't suppose he is acquainted with the environmental record of the old USSR or other recent societies operated on non religious cultural foundations.
OFM - I didn't read the prior comments but from what I gather there was an ad hominem attack against evangelicals. You might be interested to hear that one of the most celebrated scientists of our time, E. O. Wilson, has been courting the right in a courageous effort to preserve biodiversity:
New Humanism: E.O. Wilson and the Evangelicals
What Wilson and others are realizing is that this is a heavy load and we will need every party pulling in the same direction. It doesn't pay to alienate anyone...
Joe
EO Wilson is as close to a God as it is possible for a human being to get in my book;I intend to read everything he ever wrote eventually,if my luck holds.
I 'v finished nearly all of his popular work so far and a good bit of the more technical stuff.
If fundamentalists and evangelicals are approached in a respectful way they are easy to work with;all that is necessary is to frame the message in non threatening terms and show them-allow them to see- where thier own interests lie.
The best place to begin is with the idea that they have [God given ;-) ] property rights in clean air, clean water, and a fair share of the natural bounty of the Earth.
There is nothing contradictory to this concept in American style fundamentalism or evangalism, and I can say from experience that once acquainted with it, the average redneck Baptist from my neck of the woods is in favor of forcing coal burning industries in the Ohio valley to scrub thier stack emissions.
I feel entitled to say "redneck Baptist" for the same reasons a black comedian is entitled say the "n" word. ;)
I was brought up in the Baptist church, but I lost my faith at a very early age-so early I can't say exactly when, but somewhere between the times when cars and girls first became important.
I can understand why Wilson would be greeted as a hero, even by the Baptist at Samford in Birmingham. He is an Alabamian and we Alabamians are very proud of him.
Ron P.
When I first moved to Western NC about 12 years ago, there was one of those tourist information signs placed in front of the old court house pointing out that Asa Grey did a considerable amount of work in the area. The sign has since disappeared, perhaps the result of objections from the local Fundamentalist crowd. Some time later, I purchased a book about Darwin's life which had been removed from the shelves of the public library. I was the first reader...
E. Swanson
I so agree with trying to do things this way. When a cause is a good one, and we need as many hands on deck as possible, we need to frame issues in different ways for different groups - in an effort to persuade as many as possible. It really doesn't matter to me how or why people appeared on the deck, just that they are there and willing to join hands and pitch in to a common cause. (No less than a Christian once had a similar idea: St. Paul at one point said he was willing to be "all things to all people" in order to "gain some".)
Glad to hear folks are joining hands on many issues. Hope this happens more!
OFM, you could simply have pointed him in the direction of one of the people he references, Paul Ralph Ehrlich. In the recent book he published with his wife (The Dominant Animal) they discuss how Science is itself another religion -Scientism. Not sure what he'd of made of that though, that he was just another religious zealot, I think it would include me too, over reliance on a doctrinal narrative of beliefs and values!
Anyway, in meme terms, religion is just a very powerful, non-genetic transmission of information.
Talk about control population certainly brings out heated discussion.
"a planet under stress?" .... I think it's more correct to say a species under stress. The earth will continue without us --has been around for 4.5 billion years. Our reign of terror is but a spec in time.
webargonaut - I have heard a lot of this philosophical shrug of the shoulders lately:
The earth AFAIK is not a living conscious being. It is a very large sphere in a particular gravitational field. It's specialness is it has hosted abundant life for a very long time. Yes I know that over 99% of all species that have lived have become extinct. However at the present time we are losing 3 to 5 species per hour which is maybe 10,000 times the normal rate of extinction. To not grieve for the fate of those species is...inhuman.
Joe
So, Joe.... the point is, what are you going to do about it?
Are you growing your own food (so as not to waste resources on production and transport)? Do you walk everywhere you need to go? Have a car? Share your bank account with the less fortunate? Got milk?
I grew up on a rural farm, and I know firsthand.... we don't need what we think we need. My post wasn't a"philosophical shrug," but if that's the way you want to read it, fine. Fact is, there are precious few solutions to our population dilemma, and in my humble opinion, it's not enough to simply "grieve."
One other note, Joe.... you posted that,"The earth AFAIK is not a living conscious being. It is a very large sphere in a particular gravitational field." Are you sure about that? That's a mighty arrogant assertion, and I would argue it's the kind of "thinking" that has us where we are today. Every two weeks, we lose an indigenous language, an entire cosmos of human experience.... and many of these endangered languages convey/ or did convey a much different world view than you just professed. The earth was (and is) a sacred being in various native traditions, and when that "large sphere" is perceived as a sacred being, one interacts with plants, animals, and land in a much different way. In the languages we have lost and are losing, it's not just a fad to say that "we are all connected" ...it is profound understanding. The languages wired brains to perceive the connection --it's how you treat all living beings, including the most special being that is earth. Who are you to say what the earth is. As we have lost our traditional languages, we have moved farther and farther away from what sustains the environment, and life.
I would also suggest you read some of the commentary by astronauts who looked back on earth.... their words and experience will most definitely give you pause.
I am in total agreement with everything you just stated. I have read Lovelock and I understand his notion of GAIA. I however have never had such a personal experience (unless you count that acid trip in college). I believe in the preservation of indigenous culture as well. I bet if you and I were on a compatibility scale we would be pretty close.
Joe
Gaia! How about the Medea Hypothesis? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_hypothesis
The best book on the population problem that I know of is EXPLORING NEW ETHICS FOR SURVIVAL: THE VOYAGE OF THE SPACESHIP BEAGLE by Garrett Hardin. I used to use it in a college course I taught titled Environmental Economics.
As usual, you can buy a cheap used copy at amazon.com
This is Neo-Progressive Non-Sense.
I am sure this will be on the political agenda right after the government tells us what not to eat or drink.
The US has a fertility rate (births per mother) of 2.
Somalia has a rate of 7.
Afghanistan has a rate of 6.
(Courtesy the latest print edition of Foreign Policy)
Liberals are too PC to ID the problem populations.
If the limiting factor is energy, most of which is ultimately extracted from fossil sources, then an environmental argument would most appropriately consider the environmental impact of the marginal average person of any particular nation.
Besides that, isn't it the conservatives in the US who have set the system up such that no forms of population regulation that actually work (and therefore don't increase human misery and thus Big Christianity marketshare) shall be part of US foreign aid?
Go on, just say "those damn colored folk", and we'll all feel better. You because you don't have to post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc on the spot, and us because we'll know where you're coming from and weigh your argument appropriately. :)
Well, Libertarians are too dumb to consider more than one side of a problem (or do they just enjoy setting up straw men because they know their position is untenable? A question for the ages.)
Somalia's under 5 infant mortality rate is 225 per 1000 live births, and the average life expectancy is 50 years. (http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/somalia_865.html) While still a growing population, not nearly the out of control problem you wished to convey. And with a population of about 10 million and a per capita income of $140.00, Somalia is barely even a rounding error on America's population or energy usage.
Afghanistan's under 5 infant mortality rate is 257 deaths per 1000 live births, and a life expectancy of 44 years. Of course, if we stopped killing so many of them, it might help their stats.
I have no problem with exponentially growing populations. We all came from the earth and I would imagine mother nature will take care of us sooner or later.
I also have no problem utilizing 25% of the worlds resources among 5% of its population. At best this should catalyze a diversification in the resources we seem to depend on most.
Until then, I am not willing to bow toward a guilted belief that I should curb procreation for the good of the Somali population. I would also prefer to avoid legislation and/or taxation which hinders my ability to procreate as I see fit.
Yes, I will bring into this world more than 2 Realist, Capitalist, Libertarian offspring. Perhaps I will import an Afghani female to fill my agenda.
How charming...maybe you can build a lean-to behind your house and she can bear you many heirs. I suspect you are a troll and you got me with that one.
tsra1983 wrote
Each one of your offspring has the same environmental impact as a classroom-full of Somali peons.
In any case, local population in excess of local resources is a bad and irresponsible thing which spoils the quality of local life, for the most part. If my county is upside-down on population, the whole county suffers the effects. Somalia has nothing to do with it, and is certainly no part of a solution.
Western Hubris. tsra1983 doesn't know his place in the order of things (but he believes he does).
If that were the case, then why did you mention Somalia and Afghanistan's fertility rate at all?
The temptation to ad hominem zingers is almost overwhelming here...
but on point, you might want to do it for the benefit of those potential children, and not leave them in a Mad Max future, a probability you increase with unrestrained resource use and exponential population growth...but hey, you couldn't possibly be wrong now, could you? Preparing for the worst case scenario is for pussies.
Lucky for us, I doubt that those are the things that will hold you back.
Afghani mail-order brides, you've been warned.
Heh, why just one?! I call Poe!
I do love to play the devil here.
The reality is that most western societies have become accustomed to a standard of living that has simply grown beyond the means of reality. We simply can't continue to increase the square footage of our houses (and average sq ft per inhabitant in those homes). We've lived on an ever increasing standard since the end of the Second World War and there has to be a correction.
The idea of a lawn and garage are ingrained in our societies, but really didn't even exist 70 years ago.
Still, I disdain government intrusion and control over private matters... And state matters come to think of it. But that is most likely a lost argument here among you ultra zealous big-government granola heads.
Maybe it's not because we're granola heads but because your argument is internally inconsistent.
" a standard of living that has simply grown beyond the means of reality."..."there has to be a correction."... So there has to be a correction, but you don't want to actually make anyone do anything about the problems. Typical Libertarian dogma: "We'll all have to die, but our rights will be intact."
I appreciate your perspective, but one thing invalidates it - "big government" is the product of and dependent on massive energy surpluses. Basically, it becomes less and less sustainable, effective, and likely in a low-energy future.
All that paranoia about "one world government" and so forth is pretty pointless, and most sane granola heads are more worried about their neighbors and the weather than about some distant government.
tsra1983:
I agree with you 100%. But you are wasting your time.
When I first came to TOD I like most was impressed with the message boards and truly appreciated them for discussing issues related to energy decline in a thoughtful manner. I still am and that's why I participate.
But I have since learned that there are a large number of big government types here who talk a big game but have neither courage nor intelligence. What they really have is the desire to tell other people what to do.
Everything will happen in due time. Just as surely as oil production will fall, so will social security/medicare/defense be cut. And we will return to a gold standard, in some form.
Suggest we should tag trsa1983 as one of those incorrigibly blinkered (and cocky with it) trolls who visit TOD's comments from time to time, and simply ignore him/her/it from here on. Clearly s/he/it isn't up to TOD's unusually high intellectual standards. They mostly seem to go away pretty soon after regular's start disengaging and ignoring them. 'Byeeee T!
And? We still own the problem as much as they. Just saying "it's not my fault" won't change the outcome.
Pretty noisy! I wonder if that makes up for the quieter CNG buses?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdVgmWbgj30
kalliergo wrote in the previous thread:
That's because fertility is not higher than it was 30 years ago, and has been in decline since 1991. (http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aabirthrate.htm)
Even more important, the US is no longer the only advanced country with a fertility rate above replacement. Check this Washington Post article from earlier this year:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/06/AR201004...
Of course, demographic momentum keeps the population going up for a few years or decades, but the decline will come.
Welcome to the 21st century!
Natural increase in U.S. population has gone slightly negative, but our population grows and will continue to grow because we allow immigration.
Lifeboats in rough seas can hold only a certain number of people. It is time to use the oars to bash at would-be economic immigrants to the U.S. They come here for a better life, but in doing so they destroy future prospects for a good society. The U.S, IMO, would today be a much better place if we had slammed the doors shut in 1900; in that case we'd probably still be self-sufficient in oil, and we'd have less than half our current population.
Immigration is a sensitive issue, and of one thing we can be sure: Obama is utterly gutless and will do nothing to remedy the current flood of legal and illegal immigrants to our shores. Someday a leader will arise with a very simple plank in his political platform: Deport all illegal immigrants to their country of origin. If they come again to the U.S., then put them in prison for ten years of hard labor working to restore our rail system to what it was, say back in 1920.
"The U.S, IMO, would today be a much better place if we had slammed the doors shut in 1900"
Well, that takes care of my family; all four grandparents emigrated in the 5 years just before WW1. Would a much smaller U.S. that had been closed to immigration for 40 years still have fought, let alone won, WW2? Would a much bigger Russia and eastern Europe (that's where my ancestors would have stayed if they hadn't come here) have conquered all of Germany and not just the eastern half?
I understand and support efforts to reduce overpopulation on a world scale. But keeping immigrants out of the U.S. just moves the problem somewhere else. When we tear down the Statue of Liberty, where would you like your piece delivered?
Noob,
Do you advocate continuing immigration even now?
At some point we should have cut off immigration, both legal and illegal.
Would you be happier if I had picked 1910 as a cutoff date:-)?
It's the Statue of Liberty, not the Statue of Immigration. I'm all for taking off the Emma Lazarus poem and consigning it to some more fitting place, perhaps as part of a memorial at the WTC as an example of taking an idea too far.
US immigration was very low from the Depression-era restrictions until 1965, when Teddy Kennedy spearheaded a bill which opened the floodgates. On top of 1.5 million legal permanent immigrants each year, the USA has tens to hundreds of thousands of H1Bs and other temporary work visas and as many as 2 million people who overstay tourist visas or just enter illegally. This is madness. The public is angry and wants this stopped (has favored it for many years), but our "representatives" don't represent us. Now pols are starting to lose primaries on the issue, so they're paying attention.
Your statement is evil in so many ways. Immigration from poorer to richer countries help both the immigrants and the citizens of the rich nations. It is the best foreign aid there is, and is a win-win to boot. And the US is SO not over-populated.
Btw - you are dreaming about half the population so you can be self-sufficient in oil. But you use twice the amount of oil per capita as other developed nations do!
Jeppen
How exactly does this immigration help the citezens of the rich nations ?
The whole ethos of this site is the exploration of issues associated with the fact of finite resources. Virtually all resources that we use to advance the living standards of humanity are finite, by volume in the case of non-renewables and by rate in the case of renewables.
The world is rapidly coming to the realisation that wealth (improved living standards) is directly proportion to the capacity to effectively harness these resources. Therefore it follows that the thinner these resources are spread (read higher population from immigration or procreation)the less wealthy the individual members of a particular nation will be. In past history this relationship did not always hold because of two factors, communication of ideas and the critical mass of people to support a complex society. IMO, since the advent of electronic communication and international trade neither of these factors hold any significance in any developed world economy. The primary determinent of wealth is the resources available to a community and the number of people over which those resources are spread. Everything else is a second order issue.
So again, how does increases in population benefit the existing residents of a nation.
Not that this isn't true, but resource nationalism and isolationism still reek of lebensraum to me. And the Third World deserves First World living standards too; after all, we have long depended on many of their resources to fuel our own consumption. The U.S. has many resources but is far from self-sufficient.
dupe
It adds diversity and cheap labour, which improves the purchasing power of the pre-existing citizens. It also improves the demographics by introducing more young, so that retirees have a wider base of support. It also helps the immigrants' home nations due through the immigrants sending home money, improving trade connections, repatriations w/ increased human capital and so on. It also lowers global fertility rates, which is good since resources are globally traded.
In the case of energy, only oil have a limit that is immediate enough to be of concern. Coal and NG have limits that are quite far off. Nuclear is practically infinite, and so is wind. (Even though it is debatable whether wind's variability allows high penetrations.)
And that capacity has so far not been related to the size of resources, but on the manpower and technology available.
No, it does NOT follow without the assumption that global trade will freeze up and resources can't be purchased across nation boundaries.
Yes, the human resources and the economic web with factories and so on is the primary determinant of wealth. Natural resources, however, is not. Africa is poor. Japan is rich.
Jeppen
It actually suppresses the labour rates of the bulk of the residents in the receiving nation. The elite may ride higher on the backs of this but the average Joe in the street gets shafted. I can say this honestly because I am one of the elite that benefits.
My response was to question your statement that immigration was good for the citizens of the receiving nation. I made no value judgement on the morality of the issue or on its benefits for the immigrants' home nations.
No it does not. It just spreads higher fertility rates to the rich nations while masking the problem in the home nation.
Both coal and NG will hit their peaks well within the lifespan of most immigrants. I will grant you that nuclear has the potential to address many of our energy issues, but the capacity to implement it to the level required to prevent a major economic crash is very doubtful.
You are partially correct with respect to the past but way off the mark in respect of the future. That's why I said that the world is comming to this realisation. The drivers of economic success are changing from people to resources.
It also increase the purchasing power of the bulk of the residents in the receiving nation. More so than it depress wages. Long-established residents always have an advantage.
Btw, what you are saying is that people in the manufacturing industry, who are subject to unlimited low-wage competition from imports, should accept a competition lock-down by the services and construction people, who can benefit from the more local nature of their work.
No, but perhaps you should. And perhaps you should realize that long-term, we're all in this together. What benefits other nations ultimately benefit us, for instance by way of export markets, faster technological progress, less wars, less need for foreign aid and so on.
No. Since immigration benefit both nations economically and since the focus of immigrants to earn a place in their new environment lowers fertility for them, fertility rates drop globally as a result of immigration to rich nations from poor nations.
If US coal and NG peaks within the lifespan of most immigrants, then it is probably not due to a lack of resources, but due to the US choosing to transit to other energy.
There are so many ways to give us the time needed.
It's still about adding value. Oil isn't worth anything in itself - you have to do something worthwile with it. The US (and the world) may have a big advantage in US wastefulness. That wastefulness gives us a big cushion in the face of PO. If we would have peaked with streamlined, frugal processes, we'd be in big trouble.
I've seen claims that the increased purchasing power goes to the immigrants, leaving no net benefit for the original population, plus costs of e.g. increased crowding and pollution. The increase of low-skilled workers at the bottom depresses wages for the unskilled, increasing the inequity of society.
If you do have a situation where the immigrants give up a large part of their product, you're back to slavery.
So instead of just manufacturing competing against cheap foreign labor (which can be equalized with tariffs), construction and service workers should have to compete against that labor in their own countries... using infrastructure they built!
It's profoundly immoral to suggest such a thing, let alone do it. Our government's open-borders policy (violating even the mild laws on the books) is an outrage.
I've already argued that that isn't so, so I'll leave that be.
Yes, of the US society. While decreasing the global inequity. And, as I said, absolute purchasing power increase for all.
Tariffs are even more stupid and evil than immigration control.
Of course. They benefit from competition in goods, and thus should not be allowed to cartelize and blackmail those other workers that are subject to competition.
If we didn't talk about a subject close to my heart, the absurdity of that statement would probably crack me up. You, a red-brown nationalist who "use the oars to bash at would-be economic immigrants to the U.S" and want tariffs to make the US poor poorer and destroy the jobs of even poorer people abroad, says that suggesting otherwise is "profoundly immoral". That's real rich.
I could try to engage you on the merits, but anyone who can read what I write and still come up with a statement so insanely deluded that reality is only a hazy legend in the region it comes from isn't someone I can have a productive debate with. I'll settle for writing for the public.
In other words, truth by blatant assertion. The demonstrable quality-of-life issues, including poor schools, welfare dependence, culture clashes and crime don't matter to you. The public sentiment and behavior shows that you, not they, aren't getting it.
You're not even thinking about this, you're just repeating talking points. First, increasing inequity in US society means a net decrease in purchasing power for the vast majority (who have a much higher cost of living than the low-wage parts of the world); a policy which sends more money to the plutocracy while ordinary people are put out of work is practically the definition of evil (but we already knew that your moral compass is defective).
How do restaurant dishwashers and office janitors cartelize and blackmail other workers? Roofers? Day laborers? The choice many of them have is a low-wage job or no job. If anything, the open-borders forces have cartelized those jobs and forced American citizens out in many markets. This is more proof that your moral compass is defective.
Right now there is no such thing as free trade with e.g. China. China's currency manipulation and blatant discrimination in favor of local firms have done enormous damage to the US economy. This is why economic "stimulus" doesn't work any more; money borrowed from China to buy manufactured goods from China creates no jobs in the USA. And even if you like the current situation, it is unsustainable and cannot continue. The drain of expertise from the USA to the places where manufacturing is done puts us at a disadvantage we may not be able to make up. That's not just my opinion, it's straight from Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel. I suggest that anyone whose mind is still open read his essay, "How to Make an American Job Before It's Too Late".
I think it rather silly of you to refuse the categorization after having made your viewpoints so lucently clear.
Of course they do. These are negatives. The net is positive.
No, it doesn't. Please read up on the research on this matter. For some good pointers, start here.
Another revealing comment.
By voting for a stop to immigration in an effort to create a labour shortage, for instance. In my country, unions require guest construction workers to receive at least the median pay of local native workers and they successfully blockade the construction sites of non-compliers. I guess this would be to your liking. As a result, schools, for instance, are not renovated in a timely fashion, housing shortages drive up housing prices in hot areas, and guest workers can't come here to work and send home very good money.
... is a form of foreign aid directed from China to the US. You'd be stupid not to accept it.
You need watch this clip. Let me mention that current economic theory and real-world statistics both support the points made in the clip.
I'm going to take the points out of order to make a point.
Because it doesn't exist in American politics (which you are manifestly not qualified to talk about, since you are a Swede who appears to be taking his "information" from his heavily slanted and censored news media), and it's grossly false on the one hand ("Red"? yeah, right) and both false and an example of Godwin's Law on the other (look up "corporatism" to see [a] who originated the word, and [b] just how completely wrong you are).
FWIW, the standard on Usenet and web fora is that the first one to Godwin a discussion has lost. Thanks for playing, better luck next time.
Later,
No, they are not. The National Research Council found that native-born households in California paid $1,174/year to immigrant households, which each received a $6,145 net subsidy. A more recent study found that the costs have been underestimated because the US government refuses to count them, and put the total cost at over $9,000 per immigrant (not per family, per capita).
This does not include the corrosive non-monetary effects, like lost social capital in "diverse" areas.
Define "shortage". Decent wages require a certain minimum of productivity. If cheap-labor forces claim "shortage" to press wages down, they can maintain low-productivity practices and keep labor-saving inventions off the market. Higher productivity supports higher wages and higher living standards, but you don't like that. Hmmm....
Oh, Milton Friedman again? He doesn't care that e.g. CO2 emissions in the production of Chinese steel are much higher than European or even American steel. If we care about the environment, we would not buy Chinese steel; if the CO2 emissions from shipping are less than the difference, we would even be justified in demanding that China buy European steel! But if you don't care about the environment (an externalized cost, like social capital and depressed wages), that's not a problem.
You sound like an activist with a socialist party, which pushes immigration in order to get more voters. However, when your whole country becomes Malmö, you may have some regrets—if you have a conscience.
No, your socialists aren't socialists, they're "progressives" or "liberals", I know. And sure, in some areas, you seem to be as redneck as they come, but you still flunk econ-101 like a liberal.
Yeah, a libertarian who gets his information from Swedish media. Right, that makes sense.
That suits me well, since I have wasted too much time here already.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, such claims are a mirror image of our local xenophobic party's propaganda. They've been showed not to be true in Sweden, but I won't, at this time, dig into the US statistics.
Exactly, I hate higher productivity because I'm a plutocrat bastard who loves having poor people around to do my dirty-work. Just like Robyn. Seriously, how could anyone, especially a growth-loving libertarian like myself, not like higher productivity? But productivity increases should happen when they are due. If you force mechanisation and such when there are surplus labour, you just create unemployment and poverty. (Yeah, I know you don't care as long as that poverty is in Mexico.)
I was trying to teach you something about trade and currency with that clip. I guess I succeeded if you now need CO2 as a pretext for destroying trade.
Well, libertarians and socialists typically share the social freedom agenda, but differ on economic freedom. You seem to advocate totalitarianism on both counts, so I guess we're political opposites.
@Engineer Poet
Absolutely 100% agree with you. It seems to me that peak oil and current attitude and policy directed at immigrant don't mix. The idea that all nations benefit in a increasing resource scarce world seems to me naive and part of a liberal belief system that isn't well founded. After all, Jeppen claimed that all would benefit from less war. But the converse is happening, nations are sharing and innovating increasingly powerful and easily abused weapons.
I don't care how liberal beliefs about human behavior you throw at me, when resources are scarce, the immigrant group that hasn't blended into the culture will be blamed. Why do we want to set ourselves up for this to happen?
Hi DS, well what you propose is easier than getting most Americans to live a simpler, less wasteful life!
But it is a really important point. What lengths will all Western nations go to keep this 'us and them' going. And yes, I am a firm believer in population control, but its a subject that simply confounds me. Humanity is simply not evolved enough to due it in a humane way (a bit of irony goes a long way).
I follow Garrett Hardin (see book reference by me above near top of thread) in advocating lifeboat ethics. There is no humane way to control population. The only solution that can work is Hardin's "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon."
I favor Kenneth Boulding's plan to control population by issuing ration coupons for children; this plan is described in Hardin's book, EXPLORING NEW ETHICS FOR SURVIVAL: THE VOYAGE OF THE SPACESHIP BEAGLE.
It's better when things are out of control. Chaos is good. People live in the cracks - lots of niches. Anything orderly tends to be sterile and eventually crumble. Keeping structures small with lots of little ruins is more esthetically pleasing IMO.
...in some ways I agree, but the times were different, and the people who made those choices then probably made the choices circumstances required of them. One way of looking at that part of the 20th century is as a race to get biggest fastest; most countries were concerned with growing their economies faster than their neighbors, and that required growing populations as well. We didn't get where we are accidentally - much of it was deliberate planning. The mantra of "economic growth" comes from that period, though once the limits of practical growth are reached (which I think we have passed) I think the advantage falls to those who learn to live well with what they have, rather than those who try to grow beyond their resource base.
In any case, a quick perusal of alternate histories would have our doors-slammed-shut nation soon invaded and replaced by any number of more voracious and populous global neighbors during that period. Its different now, but back then it would have been a bad choice.
Even if I were a recent immigrant, I would still pick up an oar.
"That's because fertility is not higher than it was 30 years ago, and has been in decline since 1991."
Wrong statistic. You're citing annual birthrate.
The more important number is the "total fertility rate," which reflects the number of lifetime live births per woman.
In the US, in 2007 (the latest I have handy), TFR was 2.1.
In 1976, it was 1.74.
Edit and correction:
Oops...Probably shouldn't try to post in a hurry before leaving to see the Fireworks. I did indeed manage to confuse and intertwine birth rate and fertility rate statistics.
kalliergo's numbers are correct. The fertility rate was lower in 1976, but rose in the decades after. The Fertility rate has fluctuated close to replacement for some time; the question of whether you are above or below replacement is probably not as important as the article I first quoted would have one believe, as it seems to fluctuate in a narrow band. I thought it was important because most western countries are well below replacement fertility rate, and that having the US joining us would be a milestone. I now think that having it drop a considerable level below replacement would be a milestone.
Lloyd
Actually rate of population growth in the USA has remained relatively flat for over 40 years. In 1974 the rate of population increase in the US was .914 percent. In 2008, the last year of this survey, the rate of increase was .915 percent.
World Population Growth Rate + USA
Wanna see something interesting. On this link click on Zimbabwe. Then Georgia. You can click on it again and the country you just clicked on will disappear. You can check the growth rate of any country that interest you.
Yes, the fertility rate has fallen. The population growth rate remains at a constant of just under 1 percent for forty years because of the fertility rate and immigration.
Ron P.
...its worth mentioning (as a current news topic) that the immigration is the direct result of consistent bipartisan efforts toward economic growth, going back decades. Growth creates jobs, and requires bodies to fill them; always growth is accompanied by an influx of immigration.
Our current recessionary predicament throws some harsh light on past choices, but in fairness you could say that the people in the US - black, white, brown, red, asian - everyone contributed to build the country, whether they got papers or not. When it comes down to it I don't believe you can address the population growth issue without addressing the immigration issue, and you can't get far with the immigration issue without planning for a ceiling on economic growth. Looking at both our energy and climate situations, the sooner the better (though I have no illusions about any politician on any side advocating for that).
Growth is good, immigration is good. It slows the world population growth. What you are suggesting makes no sense whatsoever.
Continual economic growth requires continually increasing energy production. If you're reading here you probably know some of the problems with that.
The incremental decreases to population growth rate that wealth seems to bring are probably over, unless we find some new huge energy source. In any case, we are still in overshoot in other areas (such as fresh water), and climate change is likely to make conditions worse for all. Trying to live well with what we have may be a more sane strategy than trying to get bigger and bigger, given the circumstances.
No, not at all. Energy efficiency increases 1-2% per year, so we can grow at least that much without increasing energy production. Also, there is no problem with availability of energy in general, just with oil. And peak oil per capita was in the 70-ies.
Nuclear and wind can provide whatever we need.
Nuclear powered desalination plants can do the trick.
National carbon taxes with an agreed global floor would be nice. Other than that, I think we should shoot for bigger and bigger.
When you change everyone over to LED's powered by the sun, you have hit the brick wall on making things more efficent, but then you have to build the solar, and build the LEDs for the 4 billion people that don't have them now.
Or rather the 4 billion people living in shacks in the shantytowns in Mexico city are as efficent as they are going to get, why let them have lights in the first place.
While I think you have the right idea, I don't think you see the scale of which you are asking.
Hong Kong is so packed that if they did not have food imports they would not be able to be so packed as they are. Same for every city in the world over about 100,000 people. For that matter look at half of California and tell me they can't have water to feed those farms and how they will feed themselves after the water dries up.
Sure Nukes will provide water. But how much water do you use in a day? times that by your city's population on a daily basis. Places like Arizona has to pump in water, from the nearest ocean, and nuke plant!
I live a low water use lifestyle, using less in a month than most people use in a day. I use mostly rainwater to water my garden, though I am still working on getting that totally fixed for next year so that the wet season will supply the dry season with all the water I'll need for the gardens, And then I'll also start filtering the rainwater for in house use, even drinking. Not many people can say that in the west.
I still see places change can happen, but I am only a whistle in a wind storm.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world,
Hugs from Arkansas.
I think I do see the scale. Japan, Germany and the UK, neither of which is optimal in energy use, has around 2.5 times the average world energy consumption per capita. And we may become 30% more people on Earth until population peak. So 2.5*1.3 = 3.25 times current energy can obviously support a first world lifestyle for all. Improved efficiency will cut that in half before we're there, I'd wager.
Yet economic growth is always accompanied by increases in energy consumption. If something looks feasible on paper yet never occurs in the real world you might look a little deeper as to why that is; one brief answer would be that the inertia of the efficiencies built into the infrastructure is massive, and it requires a huge amount of energy to remake any infrastructure for greater efficiencies.
Why don't they? Again, if something looks good on paper but doesn't occur in the real world, you might look a little deeper. Nuclear power is a massive investment in time and energy and very little is on the drawing board, considering the scale of the problem. Part of it is that nuclear plants are monstrously hard to build and manage, and another is that the energy problem s that cause the need for nuclear also cause economic conditions which push nuclear "over the horizon" as far as affordability. Wind is a different story, and has been doing well as a supplement. Whether it is suitable as a primary source is very doubtful.
When? No answer to that, as there are no plans anywhere for big nuclear desalination plants. Why is that? because they are massively expensive, well beyond the value of the freshwater they would produce - or at least well beyond the capacity to pay of any of the 2 billion + humans who have inadequate access to fresh water. The problem has been around for decades unsolved, and its unlikely that we'll put the time and energy into solving it now that we are looking at net energy declines.
Essentially, looking at the problems of any society, as a population increases every problem reaches a point where it can no longer be solved, and a population decreases every problem becomes easier and easier to solve.
No, not at all. Sections of this graph demonstrate economic growth with decreasing energy consumption.
You typically don't need to remake anything to make huge initial gains. Increase utilization (car pool, for instance) and reallocate (switch houses with someone so that you both come closer to work). But with growth and easily affordable energy, you probably don't have to, and then energy consumption increase.
Wind's growth is staggering. Nuclear's growth is small, but it is definitely building momentum. They aren't that big now, b/c of the extreme cheapness of fossils.
No, not really. It just looks that way because the plants are so massive.
Me thinks you exaggerate monstrously. They are water boilers with fuel that needs to be handled with care, nothing more. Since the operating cost is so low, they are easy to manage, as cost is a good measure of difficulty. First criticality was reached 1942 and the first commercial station was built 14 years later and then scaling was swift. Modern designs are much simpler to build and operate, but much of the increased simplicity has been eaten by over-the-top safety requirements.
That very much remains to be seen. Today, we have no problem.
Well, Japan, India, Russia are doing it. No, they are not massively expensive. But sure it is about economy and about nuclear know-how. If fossils are cheaper, that's what will be used. Some carbon taxes and more nuclear power all around may change the scene quite rapidly.
Oh, that's why Iceland produce the most Nobel laureates, were first to put people on the Moon and hosted the Manhattan Project?
...at some point its useless to argue, as an old professor of mine said: "if you are selective, there are sufficient facts to prove any argument".
Having lived in to my 5th decade, I've watched no end of bright plans to solve poverty, hunger, inequality, population, etc, be propped up and trotted around; after awhile you get used to them, and you know in the back of your mind they'll lead nowhere but to the "dustbins of history"...because they are not designed to work, but rather just to make us feel good at the moment, to feel like things are going in the right direction and the future is bright. It feels good to talk about desalinization, and how easy it is to build nuclear plants, and how well wind power is doing, and how efficiency will solve everything - its almost like a lullaby, a very familiar one. For some people what's important is to feel good about things, and there is always an audience for that. We've had a pretty easy century in many ways, but the problems facing the 9 + billion of us in the near future are real, the real world is not always so kind to sleepers.
The talking is easy the walking is hard.
That is why I talk a lot about methods of changing things, but I also do the things I am talking about.
Having found the Lifesaver Bottle through a talk on TED, as soon as I can budget for one, I am going to start using it to drink my rainwater, which I catch as part of my BioWebScape design project system. Living with a low water lifestyle like you might have to do in places where ground water is limited or polluted beyond drinkability. Though I live in a modern city, I could just use local tap water, but why, when I am also trying to claim that my designs will work outside our modern systems.
In today's drumbeat I talk about the change we can be, but I am also doing the things I talk about. There are a lot of people at TOD that walk the talk they post about, so don't be surprised if some things get changed.
Though others just make you feel good, why bother wasting the energy to feel good, if when you wake up the next morning you have to go about living in a bad world all over again.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world,
Hugs from Arkansas.
@Jeppen, you are simply applying the trend created by the new developing world upper middle classes to the world population, which if you're a peaker, you should know that that trend cannot apply to all developing countries with the global issues of resource scarcity and pollution.
If it were true that growth lowers pop growth as a whole, that would mean that all the countries currently acting as baby factories could live a resource intensive lifestyle, which we would need several more earths for. When China's citizens reach US living standards, we will need 3 more earths.
It is.
"We need X earths" is a very unspecific statement. What do we need these earths for, exactly, and why wouldn't we adapt to the specific one-earth-constraints that you see?
Try Ecosystem Services and look up the Millennium Report
No, it's the result of business demanding cheap labor. Read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle". All cheap labor does is expand the underclass.
The major cause of economic growth is productivity. Water-powered spinning mills and looms made growth. Multiple suits of clothes went from a luxury to a commodity. Adding millions of immigrants at spinning wheels and hand looms would have done nothing useful, and by taxing the land's resources it would have driven actual welfare down.
The cheap-labor lobby would like you to think that, but the US consumer would be far better off if the hordes of illegal lettuce-pickers were replaced with machines. The advances in machine vision (perhaps multi-spectral imaging to detect ripeness from a distance) and new, more delicate manipulators would have applications far beyond the fields of California. Building those machines would make good, high-wage jobs, and the machines themselves will never drive drunk, commit robbery or bring in a passel of children who enter school without a word of English. But today we have unemployed software engineers and factory workers because illegal labor from south of the border is cheaper than funding R&D, and ethnic and left-wing lobbies want more and more voters to support their agendas.
Interesting link. I will keep it. Who produces it, and how accurate is it?
I am a Rhodesian.
There is a Zimbabwean joke.
"The government is not Racist.
They hate everybody."
Jeppen writes,
As Dohboi stated (laughing).
I have to ask you, if I can afford it, won't I have several rare woods, cut down from the Amazon rainforest so that I can have a nice neato hardwood table and chairs in my McMansion? I have seen the like it several homes, And asked if they really knew how many trees had to be razzed for their pleasure I have been told, Who Cares.
Affluent does not mean sustainable, it rather means the oppisite.
We are in a race these days, a race to the bottom of the population heap. And we are all in the race even me, who has no biological children, Old enough to know I doubt I'll have any. Not that I could afford any now anyway.
I know a lot of poor childless people, so just using blanket statements like a lot of posters have been doing is not the norm. But most posters are of some affluence as they have computers, and can at least get to working ones to post on this topic.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world,
Hugs from Arkansas.
Nothing of what you say disproves anything I said. I simply stand by my comment.
jeppen, if you can not understand that the Earth's resources are finite, that is to say, ultimately limited, there's no way to have any discussion with you. As a result of these limits, unlimited growth is impossible as there would come a time where one of those finite limits starts to kick in. That limit is likely to be energy, but it might also be a problem with global change from burning fossil fuels. Burning coal and dumping the CO2 into the atmosphere is especially bad, causing more global warming than burning oil or NG for the same energy supply.
People with more wealth consume more energy than poor people, but they do so indirectly as services of other people. The most obvious example is tourism. Flying in a jet consumes about the same fuel per seat mile as driving a small car. Put two people on that plane and the amount of fuel per trip goes below that of driving. And, in a jet plane, one can travel much greater distance in a period of time, so the rate of energy consumption is much faster than driving. And, driving is itself is a great extravagance, compared to the average mode of travel of the rest of the world's peoples.
Tourism also depends on the provision of living space while away from the individual's home, which may be hotels or vacation houses. Maintaining two residences requires much more energy and materials than living in one place and never traveling. Worse, building McMansion's in the country, either as vacation or retirement palaces, exacerbates the problem. As oil production peaks out, one might expect to find that many of these activities will cease, along with the jobs which they support. I expect that the resulting unemployment will not easily be reduced, as that would involve moving people from the popular vacation areas back into cities, where jobs just might appear. Or, it's back to Life in Appalachia for the rednecks of America who were just beginning to get a hold on some of that Ponzi wealth which the real estate bubble produced...
E. Swanson
The same goes for you: nothing you said disproves anything I said. So I stand by my points: Dollar for dollar, affluent peoples' consumption cause less environmental harm. Affluence drives more stringent environmental regulation and more environmental care.
Also, in response to your comment, I'd like to point out that the finiteness of Earth's energy resources is of academical interest only. Economical alternatives such as nuclear and wind have potentials so great that we can't hope to ever exhaust them. Granted, we may or may not be in trouble when our favorite portable fuel peaks, but regarding total energy, we have no practical limits.
Your assertion that being wealthy (or, to use your term, affluent) causes less environmental harm per dollar is not supported. Whenever a dollar changes hands, it then is available for use by the next person in the chain. Thus, the more an individual spends, the greater his/her impact on the planet because of the multiplier effect. The rich guy's spending finances the poorer persons who take that money and use it to satisfy their needs and wants. It's this indirect consumption which is often overlooked. That dollar represents more than the man hours, it represents resources and when the wealthy spend money they are also consuming those resources.
I pointed to just one example, that of travel, where the price of the ticket represents a large component of fuel consumption. There is even an academic view point which says that dollars actually represent energy flows thru the economy and the exchange of money between nodes in the economy later results in energy flows in the opposite direction. From this viewpoint, money controls those energy flows which we perceive as "stuff" which is finally presented in the market for retail goods and services. This gets into deep discussion about what money represents, whether it's labor or capital or energy flows. You are welcome to explore the deep intellectual thinking, as I'm not an expert on the subject.
E. Swanson
What the next guy spends is not a "multiplier effect", it's just his own spending, and the environmental harm should be ascribed to him.
When the affluent spend a dollar, they consume less resources, in part because they get somewhat bad deals since luxury items are over-priced and has better margins than other stuff, but also because they spend more on services and immaterial goods.
Yes, there is that "multiplier effect". But, "the next guy" can spend no more than that which he earns or that which he can borrow. If the more affluent person is not able to spend his "money" to hire the poorer person, then the poorer person eventually must cut his/her consumption of resources, particularly energy. One person's spending on a service later pays for spending by other persons and or companies on energy and resources. That's the indirect spending which results in consumption by the wealthy.
Whether this spending for services is over priced or luxury, the fact is, the few affluent spenders consume more than the many poorer folk on a per capita basis and thus cause more environmental damage as a result...
E. Swanson
Jeppen,
That may very well be, and coal extracted in an affluent country is probably extracted with a lot more care and stringent regulations. But there is no amount of reglations and care that reduces the amount of coal extracted (in fact, it probably makes the process more energy intensive).
Affluent societies still use up 5 to 10 times more resources per capita then non-affluent ones.
At current growth rates America will hit 2 billion people in about 150 years. If you cut the growth rate a bit (oh how business would complain!) it might take 200 years. But they say the Sun will die in 4 billion years. Considering how utterly fixated on the short term business and politicians are, I'm sure both timeframes seem equally remote.
The value of one average M-type asteroid, in minerals, is larger than the entire US national debt. There are over 5,000 M-type asteroids in our solar system, each worth an average $20 Trillion. And no refining is necessary to mine an asteroid:
Incalculable wealth just floating around above our heads waiting for us. Everything we could possibly need for the next thousand years. If we had this we could shut down all the mining on our planet and manufacture sufficient food and goods to give everyone on Earth a North-American lifestyle by 2050.
Food? Well, that's all the NPK you could ever ask for. As for carbon, 75% of the asteroids are carbonaceous - more coal and oil than we could ever use, because of course carbon pollution would kill our atmosphere long before we used the asteroids up. And enough metal to coat every continent on Earth in a solid layer half a mile deep.
There's the little problem of getting the miners to the mine. And that's where our space program comes in. We have to junk all further idiot plans for chemical rockets and focus our entire research effort on space elevators and orion/medusa class nuclear spaceships.
With carbon nanotubes for the elevator tethers we will be able to build a space elevator within the decade. And that brings the cost of orbiting parts of nuclear mining spaceships down to just a few hundred dollars a pound.
So we construct the mining spaceships in orbit - no one need squawk about atmospheric atom bombs - haul Eros and a bunch of similar rocks into geosynchronous orbit, and start eating them.
The reason the planet is under stress is not our numbers - it's our space program. No reason to reduce human population growth. We just need to use our brains and our hands, as well as our gonads.
I love science fiction. The only thing it requires is a suspension of disbelief.
Joe
Hi Joe,
You say it can't be done. Now tell me why.
Why can't we build a space elevator in the next decade?
Why can't we use that to build orion/medusa ships in orbit?
Why can't we use those ships to mine the asteroids?
Why can't we use minerals from the asteroids to grow our civilization?
No guff about light sabers and warp drives. No suspension of disbelief. Just ordinary 21st century engineering. Why can't we do that?
I like science fiction as well. And would I have thought I could communicate like this in 1996. Some technological jumps come unexpectedly. However, Space 1999 and Moonbase Alpha seem to have not quite materialised as fast as we expected them to way back then.
Space 1999? Pshaw, give me that golden age Heinlein Luna, and don't spare the titanalloy Storer-Gulls.
But of course SF has been written about this; what technology does not have a tradition of SF leading up to its actual occurrence?
The simple aggregate probability of a long series of very-unlikely actions happening in sequence and on schedule, in the context of the real world.
I supported Gerard O'Neill in the early '70's. Seemed like there might be a tiny chance then, but there clearly isn't now if there ever was.
Reductionist engineering is a useful tool as a first-pass filter on what can't be done for physical reasons, but it ain't the whole story on what's realistic in context.
Best hopes for 22,000-mile carbon nanotube cables by 2020, and something to hook 'em to.
I've got O'Neill's pretty book on my shelves too. I remember the whole "take that hill" Apollo program from when I was a child. I knew we'd taken a wrong turn the day the little plastic spacemen stopped turning up in my corn flakes.
As for 2020 - all we can really say is the most fundamental engineering problem is solved. We have something strong enough for a tether. Manufacturing it in the required quantities, attaching and securing it against accidents, not to mention actually running the thing - sure, we might be too stupid to do that.
As for "aggregate probability" - that's gambler's logic, not an argument.
Such gambler's logic rules the universe. Even thermodynamics and entropy are probability when it comes down to it. Plants spread their seeds on the wind. Hunting and foraging strategies are probability-based. Evolution is utterly path-dependent on the "frozen accidents" of a single-valued past, and each step of evolution (of any system) must be viable in that context.
The sequence of things which would have to happen to, say, build a space elevator would be extraordinary, and it would have to be done in THIS context. So just the odds of getting funding - say an optimistic 20 trillion dollars set aside for a project not guaranteed to work, with utterly no net payoff expected for 50 years or so, is probably one in a million and would crash the global economy if attempted. The roll in the politics of it needing to be funded by multiple nations who'd need to cooperate; that the solar power satellites would be seen as threatening to many nations; that the world can barely deploy tiny solar panels on a space station in low earth orbit... etc.
I'm not sure which nation or group of nations you think can politically do this as we head into the peak oil crash, and the aggregate probability of this series of things going right is probably one in a billion even before the construction of a 22k-mile tether to be lowered from geosynch orbit and hooked to something, working the first time it's tried, and then not failing catastrophically for any of a myriad list of reasons. When at the moment a carbon nanotube shoelace may be two decades off.
I appreciate your sentiments - I met and talked to von Braun, met with and supported O'Neill; have had strong connections to NASA; helped create an international granting organization promoting space research and moving offplanet. The fellow who wrote the definitive scifi book on space elevators, sir arthur, was a personal friend and supporter, and some of his royalties from Fountains of Paradise were sent to me to fund my research projects, which he considered cutting-edge cool. I grew up enchanted by the space program as you did. That doesn't mean my opinions are right, but it should illustrate that I'm not down on space colonization in principle.
But it aint. Gonna. Happen. Anymore than squirrels are going to evolve wheels. The intermediate steps necessary are not contextually viable.
Maybe if Hitler had won, he and Walt Disney could have whipped the world into a fervor for ET-lebensraum and dedicated the world's industrial output to such a project. That's the sort of focus and control that would have been required. In retrospect, it was a huge longshot even in 1970 at the height of space euphoria.
Which is why since 1975 I have instead worked mostly to limit the damage to the home planet. Space colonization is a road not taken, and as we head into the energy/population/resource bottleneck into collapse, it will be a road never taken. I think it was Hoyle who noted that if we didn't colonize space while it was possible, no subsequent civilization ever would, because the energy and materials would be squandered.
In 100 years, even jet contrails will be rare enough to inspire awe... and probably fear. The international space station will be burning up in the fairly near future, and as the coming depression hits, space programs will be virtually eliminated. A pity, but it's probably unrealistic to bet otherwise.
Which assumes that the intermediate steps remain the same.
I'm not sure that's the case. There are advances in e.g. robotics which might eventually shrink the size of a bootstrap package to a single rocket launch. Once the cost of such an effort falls within the means of the top few hundred richest people, the likelihood goes way up.
@greenish,
I'm used to reading comments on TOD by people whose backgrounds impress me ... but that's quite the curriculum vitae. Very cool.
At the end of the 19th century, civilisation was in a lot of trouble. I don't just mean idiot politics. The trouble was that cities weren't scaling. Killer smog, overflowing sewers, pandemic plagues on a regular basis and fetid living conditions for just about everyone.
Then along came Tesla with his AC, electric motors, fluorescent lights and radio. All the old constraints fell away. 1 million people in a city? Heck with that, let's try 10!
I'm not saying I expect another Tesla. Nor am I sitting around hoping a trillion four-function calculators will magically knit themselves into an AI and usher in the singularity. I'm asking a question.
If it's Not. Going. To. Happen. then why is that?
So far what I've got is carbon nanotube textiles aren't ready yet. But with several groups working on that problem, where do you get your 50 years and 20 trillion dollars in expenses? I don't expect you to itemize, but a little discussion of the (im)practicalities would help.
Likewise for Orion/Medusa ships. If we're looking extinction in the face, why the heck shouldn't we consider launching from Jackass Flats? 10 people dead of fallout per year ... who cares about that? If Freeman Dyson's recollections are to be trusted, most of the significant problems with that technology were solved 50 years ago. So ... why not?
Thanks for the kind comment; I only dropped a few facts and names to show that I'm not opposed to what you're talking about; to the contrary, I would have given my life to boost the odds of it happening by a fraction of 1%. However, it has for many years now been clearly unrealistic so I've focused on things I can affect with a higher probability. I'm not a "blogging" kind of person, I was sucked into TOD by the relative sanity and intelligence of the community here.
The answer I gave - aggregate probability - is sufficient to explain things. I think most of the regular posters understand that, but there does seem to be a large subset of intelligent folks who don't get that, and a good number of them seem to be engineers by discipline.
So - as I wake up this morning without benefit of coffee, let's take it outside the realm of physical engineering. There are many things which are physically possible but evolutionarily effectively impossible. (here I use "evolutionarily" in the general sense of iterating adaptive systems accomodating and competing with each other).
For instance, electing a dog president of the USA. There is nothing physically preventing that from happening; we certainly have the technology to put a dog on the ballot, to amend the laws to allow canine-americans to serve. (Did you know dolphins have the legal right to vote in some local elections in Malibu already? There is not a heavy turnout.) In other words, there are no technological hurdles. Yet in the real world, the odds of each of the incremental intermediate steps becoming politically possible, and being achieved in sequence, are negligible.
So you think that was an absurd example? I'd argue that it's an entirely salient example to differentiate "what's physically possible" from "what the probabilities allow".
Indeed, having a dog for a president would not necessarily cause many changes. Democracy is all about NOT getting things done, after all - stability over effectiveness - and many hold to the adage that the government which governs least, governs best. (So maybe a golden retriever and not a border collie.) Taxes would not be raised. No new emission controls would be enacted. It would be a very unthreatening administration.
By contrast, to build a space elevator one would immediately need to put the world economy on a crash program of austerity, a war footing, to do something with a high likelihood to crash and burn, with no conceivable net payoff for 50+ years, during which time peak oil and many other dire things including significant human dieoff would bite in earnest. Between those two things, I'd say getting a dog elected president is not necessarily the bigger longshot.
On CNN at the moment, they're covering the story of trying to get a small balky supply rocket to dock at the space station with oxygen and stuff. That show represents the height of international tech cooperation in the age of opulence which will soon be going away. They already plan to scuttle the space station and not build another.
The low-hanging technological fruit has largely been plucked at this point. We have a pretty good idea what won't work, as well as an understanding that population overshoot must ultimately be unsustainable.
Moreover, large-scale projects are decided politically. If we had a workable space elevator built now, today, it would probably be shut down because the scale of what it would take to commit to USING it would crash the economy.
As I say, I'm not a luddite; I enjoy doing original scientific research and inventing things which have never been made before. And I'm not down on possible techy ways to ameliorate problems... for instance, I sought to have Bussard's fusion approach scaled up faster, but he preferred seeking small government contracts to the more ambitious program I outlined for him.
As a scifi fan and a person who has done fairly large-scale (and fairly longshot) international projects, I'll note that there's a big difference between them.
We are possibly looking extinction in the face, and worse than that, extinction of our home planet. However, launching Orion ships has nothing to do with any kind of solution to the current situation, and it would probably start wars. The cost of an Orion program would be preposterously large, would take 50+ years on a war footing during peak oil, and would have no clear goal. To borrow terminology from Niven/Pournelle who used an Orion in "Footfall" (to deal with earth attacked by asteroid-lobbing space elephants), this falls in the "Crazy Eddie" class of solutions; that is, actions planned in desperation to avoid collapse - which make matters worse.
best
I read the wiki article on Bussard's fusion polywell
A frustrated groan escaped me when I discovered that funding was diverted to the War in Iraq.
What do you think the ITER projects raison d'être is?
I am wondering if it is giving us enough bang for our buck.
"We didn't have any money, so we had to think" Rutherford.
A Gerard O'Neill type programme is possible in principle and is well worth exploring as a way out of this mess.
For those unfamiliar with it, I will briefly summarise. The basic idea was to set up manufacturing facilities in high Earth Orbit and set up Lunar mining facilities to supply them. As the escape velocity from the moon is only about twice the speed of a rifle bullet, it is cheap and easy to launch minerals into space using electromagnetic catapults, where they can be processed into glass and manufacturing metals. The idea was to use these metals to construct Solar Power Satellites, which could convert solar power into electricity and beam it down to Earth using microwaves. The average intensity of sunlight in space is almost ten times higher than an average location on Earth surface and in high orbit, the satellite will be in full sunlight close to 100% of the time.
In principle it could all work well, provided there was a relatively cheap way of launching men and materials into space. But getting any G8 nation to muster the enormous resources neccesary to set up orbital manufacturing and lunar mining industries, would pose almost impossible political problems.
It would also require the development of a very different set of space launch hardware to anything under present development. To affordably lift into orbit the tens of thousands of tonnes of hardware that would be needed, it would be neccesary to develop the Big Dumb Booster concept. Development costs for this would run into tens of billions of dollars, but ultimately, operating costs would be orders of magnitude lower than the space shuttle. The aerospace companies would hate it, as the launch industry is an important cash cow.
I would argue that there is nothing about the O'Neill project that is technically impossible. But it would take a very special leader to actually muster the resources needed to make it happen.
Thanks for that, Antius, though I don't think SPSes will do much to replace oil. Difficult to use 'em to run a Buick or make fertilizer.
Why do you favor big dumb boosters over space elevators and atomic orions?
Space elevators would require the production of 36,000km long carbon nano-tubes or diamond filaments. I doubt the viability of the technology, although I would be happy to be proven wrong.
An Orion would certainly be cost effective, but would contaminate the Earth's atmosphere with actinides and fission products. The poltical problems that it would create render it infeasible in my opinion, although i accept that it may be technologically not difficult.
The BDB can achieve relatively low cost if mass produced using shipyard type engineering. It is both technologically and politically feasible and i think, a better bet for teh next 50 years.
Not certain how to estimate the viability of a non-existent technology. Best information source I've found so far is here. Seems like, to date, there are no nanotube tethers with anything like the properties necessary for a space elevator. It's all just in principle.
As for Orion, with the elevator you can just build the thing in orbit - no contamination of anything. But back in the day Freeman Dyson estimated that a launch from Jackass Flats would probably kill about 10 people in the world due to radiation poisoning. 50,000 people die every year in car crashes on US freeways ...
It isn't particularly difficult to use electricity to do either of these things.
Use your electricity to power a thermochemical reactor producing hydrogen. Put the hot hydrogen into a chemical reactor along with (a) atmospheric nitrogen to produce ammonia (fertiliser) or (b) carbon dioxide (from limestone) to produce methanol for your Buick.
In the second case, you could produce portland cement as a useful byproduct. The most energy efficient scheme would be some form of tribrid: a battery electric vehicle for intown use, using a grid-electrified system on high speed roads for longer distances. A small IC engine (maybe 250-500cc) would provide backup.
And while they're working, the space prospectors could eat the green cheese from which the moon is made! We might still have to ship them the wine and crackers though, I'm sure that isn't an insurmountable issue, we could package the wine in special paper cartons to reduce the weight from the glass bottles... I guess Champagne is out.
Cheers!
See, this is a big part of our problem in America. If we don't understand something, or if we don't want to understand something, we make a big funny joke. Ha ha! It is all too hard, we are all doomed, hardy-har-har.
Pfui.
OK! bear with me while I struggle to keep a straight face. You said:
Would you have preferred a more measured response like this...
Yes, very impressed with Dr Bartlett, have recommended his videos to many folk myself. Now then, about the asteroid mining ...
Okay, I'll give over on the idea that mining the asteroids, whenever that might become practical, is likely to help us avoid a human dieback on Earth. It isn't exactly pie in the sky, but it certainly isn't pie on a billion dinner tables.
The asteroids will have to wait for the survivors of the crash. If any.
Sigh.
It's actually worse than that! If it were feasible, (not talking technologically)it would actually accelerate the die off.
When fermenting yeast produce enough ethanol they kill themselves because the ethanol is toxic to them.
They die in their own waste product...
Not in ten years. First off have you looked around at our space ship fleet lately? We are good at low earth orbit, but have yet to get manned ships off again to the Moon and even Mars is a few years or decades away. One reason is that outside the earths magnetosphere humans are vulnerable to Cosmic Radiation, we don't have the sheilding worked out just yet. While we do have people working on using faster than normal spaceships, they lack funding.
Getting a space elevator up and running takes a lot more than having a working model of nanotubes, which from what I know have been limited to a few pounds of them, no where the needed tens of thousands of pounds of them, even if they are what is needed to have a space elevator to work.
All the while, while you are spending money on the great space plans, you will need to get fossil fuel use down to a more sustainable level, and get food to the people that live on for a week, what you do for a day.
As to Coal and Oil, you will not find it on an asteroid, sorry no such luck there.
I have written the sci-fiction stories pretaining to this issue, and have done the research on what might be found on asteroids. Cost wise, Iron Ore on earth is a lot cheaper. Rare Earths and other elements might or might not be there, you'll have to prospect each asteroid to see what is there, and only pick the ones with the good stuff on them.
Getting to them, and then getting them into an LaGarange orbit is another bit of space engineering that we have not even started talking about.
So while it looks good on paper, it is mostly pie in the sky, great book stuff, but not practical in anyway right now.
Use the money to handle the population and food problems, then go get the space rocks for use for later. Why bring them to earth in the first place, if we could go up there and mine them, why not use it to build O'Neill SpaceStations, use them to feed people in space and as a jumping off place for elsewhere in the solar system.
Going and mining asteroids is one thing, but why bring them here, when them being in space is a lot of a better deal than them being on the ground.
But as I said, great on paper, but not something we will see any time soon.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world,
Hugs From Arkansas, My writings are at my blog, see my profile.
We're rubbish in low earth orbit. We've done everything since Apollo on a shoe-string while spending all that vast wealth we used to have on bombs and ipads.
And Mars and the Moon aren't the point. They're deserts at the bottom of gravity wells, worthless as the Sahara. More worthless - we could maybe reclaim the Sahara. But the asteroids have hardly any gravity. All our LEO experience will be relevant.
As for cosmic ray shielding you're behind on your reading. And as for funding - um, yep, we sure would need to have funding. So? Who says we can't get funding? Likewise for tons of nanotubes. Yep, we sure would need to manufacture these on a reasonable scale. What says we can't?
As your estimate of the mineral value of an asteroid, if you're calling Prof Lewis a liar you're going to have to do a lot better than, "I once wrote an SF story, trust me on this".
Now I am reasonably certain you're going to come back with, "Okay, bright eyes, show me the space elevator and then I'll believe you". But the point of my post is not that I can show you the space elevator and the nuclear ships. It is that there is a way forward - if we stop writing SF stories and wringing our hands.
As for O'Neill space stations, sure, maybe some day, but they're a damned sight harder to engineer than a nanotube tether and an atomic tugboat.
We don't need atomic tug-boats. Solar powered mass drivers would do the job just as well and would be cheap to develop. Nor do we need carbon nanotubes. A Sea Dragon type programme, based upon simple but large rockets, built from steel in an ordinary shipyard, could feasibly achieve launch costs <$1000/kg. And you can use the upper stage as reaction mass for your tugboat.
What is needed above all, is a leader with vision, who isn't a third-world marxist, who doesn't have a chip on his shoulder against white people, and is at least partially educated on the whole resource depletion problem.
Hi mouse, I am on your side with this one.
It seems Western Civilisation has got too tired.
What is the purpose of this subsystem of Gaia (Me)?
It is to defend the planet from incoming missiles
and to ameliorate our inevitable drift out of the goldilocks zone as the sun heats up due to conversion of hydrogen to helium.
If Western Civilisation can't cut the mustard then the future belongs to someone else.
Survival is not guaranteed.
I am not going to say, show me the elevator. I also understand that Prof. Lewis is talking about gold mines in space, as I have looked at his book, though funds are a bit limited in my household, buying books is not often done.
The point I was making was that at present we don't have the willingness to go do the big things that you and I have talked about. I dreamed dreams while he was still getting his degrees, and though I have no published papers on the subjects, I have been thinking about them about as long as he has.
Money does not grow on trees, though in a ironic way it does, if you count fruits and leaves, and the trees themselves, but it is not the money that gets you out of the homes on earth to the orbits of asteroids.
First you need to get to one, or catch one on a flyby, as yet we have only some small scale models of engines that can get that kind of thrust out of them to move the asteroid into a working orbit. 10 years is not going to be an easy 10 years with all the other things going on around us.
Granted B.O. did a number of the space travel business, slicing and dicing it, so that Banks and Big Money funds could get their ticket to freedom and not pay the piper like they should have. If you want this so bad, take it to the Russians and or the Chinese, they will love you for it, though they might not be able to fund it either. Space races get other people modivated when one country has and another does not.
But all this aside, we still have energy and population problems here on earth. Handling them as you have seen in this Forum's discussions is not going to be an easy task, in my opinion they are just going to go on being handled with the throw of the dice like they have been all these years.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see what you are talking about, though I do think the O'Neill ships are easy to do, if you can think of nanotubes, I can think of the other methods of making an O'Neill station just as easily. No need to bring the ores from orbit to earth, you can just manufacture them on the Asteroids and or in plants set up in space, cutting out the middleman.
Most people who hated the space race, claimed that the money would have been better spent on earth, only to have Gov't spend it on things they did not want either. So we are back to square one again, where are you going to get the funding? Does all funding go back to those trees I talked about up top, food. The basics of life, air, water, food. You can live under the stars, but you need air, water and food. And our planet is getting short on good water, though that is just us wasting it to water our lawns and fill our swimming pools and water the golf courses in places that should not have them in the first place. Or wasting it by polluting it with factory runoff, just to name a few bad habits of current humans.
So if you can spend the money first on changing people's use of their own world, then you can get the funding and manpower to get into space. First things first.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world,
Hugs from Arkansas
PS, My brother works for NASA, I am seeped in Space tech.
Hi Charles.
I take a looong view.
First things first you say?
Yes, first we get through the demographic contraction. (What a lovely euphemism.)
Then we find our special niche on the Planet.
I am guessing it is to be an executive function, and environmental control and moderation.
(Note: I am not discussing H.Sap, but his replacement. When he develops a stronger cortex he will no longer be H.Sap)
I see that change in embryonic form here where we mold life more powerfully to our needs.
@CEO,
If we had the technology, the ROI would prompt the investment.
But from googling in response to Black Dog's helpful post it seems the sticking point with the space tether is basically the carbon nanotubes. We don't have the technology to align them and bond them to make a ribbon. And while their notion of making the tether a rotovator rather than an elevator solves a lot of issues, Moravec and Forward have published calculations showing we still need the nanotube ribbon to get the thing going around Earth.
Models? Well, there was this. Yes, you can do some stuff with railgun-based mass drivers and so on. But the point of Orion/Medusa is to get enough people and tools moving around quick enough to make a proper industrial base.
Even with a working rotovator you're only going to get a few thousand people off Earth. The point is to obtain sufficient resource for Earth to be a viable place, not to make a bunch of Lagrange tin cans.
Frankly, with over 6 billion people doing a fair impression of yeast in a barrel of hops, it appears that our ability to change peoples' use of our world is zero. If we change the mindset of one group of people, they'll be outbred by any other group with less of a clue. A human fertility-delay virus might slow this down - ethical qualms notwithstanding - but even then we have the very non-trivial problem of supporting the present population in the face of peak-*.
The real problem is this: suppose everything you outline above comes to pass. All that does is to delay the problem: population will simply expand to fill the now-larger capacity. Population will always expand at an exponential rate to fill the available "envirnomental space" (barring predators, diseases, etc).
Once the space is filled up, the population crashes.
You would think humans could be different, since we can conceptualize the problem. "Being different" would mean, we consciously decide to not expand to use up the available resources (i.e. we would swim against the natural tide of life). The problem is, very few humans are a) knowledgeable enough to understand the problem, and b) wise enough to be self-limiting.
Some people would think what a fantastic thing it would be for humanity to reach 25 billion and rule the earth, the moon, the planets, etc, with a firm hand - food for all, opportunity and wealth, a hand up for the poor, always some new technology, some new wealth, and some new resource or frontier to fuel our ever growing numbers...
On the other hand, I think what a fantastic world it must have been when there were less than a billion of us - the wide world ranged around rich with life, the rivers, lakes and seas full of fish, and the lush green world rewarding a good day's work...once even the poor lived like kings upon the land, and would rather live on its bounty than bring it to heel, strip it bare, and render it a single species desert, inhabitable by nothing but us.
Oh yes, tuberculosis was so much fun. We loved living hand to mouth, happily shivering in our cold wet caves, and when winter came, no one felt sad eating Grandma.
:-)
If the past was a cold plate of Grandma in a dank mud hole, the future is a cold plate of Grandma in a crowded dank mud hole.
No, the population will not always expand at an exponential rate to fill the available environmental space. Human population growth is now sub-linear, and we have plenty environmental space available to us.
I submit that human population as a function of time is logistic, following a bell curve, the derivative of the sigmoid function, as we approach limits to resources and population collapse. It is probably just after the inflection point on the rising edge of the bell curve which would make the rate of population growth appear linear if an appropriate region is cherry picked. If the vital resources are increased with your asteroid-in-the-sky idea, population would return to exponential growth until new limits are approached.
Bob Shaw's question: Are humans smarter than yeast?
That limit is the speed of light.
By then we will have developed a functioning brain.
H.Sap is not the finished product.
Not by a long shot.
Hi Chuck,
Yes, ever since that bastard Ignatz Semmelweiss and his damned "wash your hands" technology, circa 1850, we've been breeding without any natural control at all. Having a lot of petrochemicals to eat helped a bit too. But this is a race.
Right now we have inadequate resources to keep the wheels on, much less expand faster. And we've done a piss-poor job planning our way ahead - we are certainly going to experience a crash. If Pimentel and his kin are right, about the only place on Earth that could survive the next couple of decades is Australia.
But in this race there are a lot of variables. As Stuart Staniford put it recently,
Now I'm adequately skeptical about the Singularity arriving real soon, but since we have a habit of making technological leaps when faced with dire necessity (cf invention of Alternating Current, atom bombs, etc), I'm willing to take his point. We may lose a few billion to starvation on the way to the next technological breakthrough, and I'd rather we were more rational in managing our own population, but we're not, and that's that.
Nothing about this race says we're doomed. It just says, run faster, the reaper is catching up!
One blind mouse. No use arguing with cornucopian techie-optimists joe. They KNOW, like fanatics of all stripes. Been one or two on this post. I wonder why the topic draws them in?
Anyway, back to the Archdruid, for a refresher taste of actual convincing wisdom about where the Earth is really going.
Earth to Three Blind Mice, Earth to Three Blind Mice our monitoring of your physiology is showing that you are dangerously hypoxic! Hit the O2 button *NOW*! Steady now, breathe deep, breathe deep!
Whew! that was close, man...
Now watch this video on your display screen: A tiny apartment with 24 rooms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak&feature=player_embedded
Thanks for the video Fred.
One of those little things that makes design such an open ended thing to study, so many things you can do with the little bit of space that you have to work with. I wonder how he got all that change constructed in that space.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world.
Hugs From Arkansas.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Okay, I got one for you. From 1908:
The Machine Stops.
So much for ambience ... what was your point?
It isn't 24 rooms. It's one room with wall-mounted appliances and furniture on movable wall segments. Interesting from a technology viewpoint, but you couldn't comfortably have 24 people in it, could you?
No, but if the human population continues to grow, which it would if the SF schemes of TBM come to pass, that's probably the best that the vast majority of humans will be able to hope for.
The real point is you can't comfortably fit infinite amounts of people into a finite space even if you could provide them with infinite amounts of resources from infinite external sources.
Of course the good news is the universe will expand for ever, so there will be plenty of empty space for some entity that can live in it... too bad that ain't us!
We need to work on breeding miniature humans ... a Munchkin planet. That's the ticket!
We, well, (they) almost had a chance...
Probably some big apes, (no adhominin intended to any one) came along and crushed the poor little guys.
Uh, you've come to the wrong place, Three Blind Mice. You need to be talking to some financiers, not petroleum engineers.
Bye-bye, and good luck!
What is it with all these VPs and CEOs?
Greg, I appreciate the welcome, really I do. And while I've been more a lurker than a poster, having nothing to do with petroleum engineering, I've been reading and occasionally posting to TOD for years. Usually with less optimism, but I'd really like to hear some hard-headed engineer blow the crap out of this idea. So far all I've got is "that sounds like science fiction".
Which doesn't help me much.
As I stated in my profile it is my name. Charles Edward Owens, Jr. just happens to be CEO which also goes with those guys at the tops of companies but tis been my name for a long long time, I can't help it if CEO happens to fall on the bad side of life, but I rather like my name and have had to use the letters of it a lot in one of my jobs, Initial this and that hundreds of times a day, it stuck as a great handle, as it is also my name. DUH.
I can't tell you why there are a lot of VP's as you say, but if you had been lurking around as long as you say, you'd have seen me a lot more than it seems, I have been on here just a few weeks shy of 5 years.
So now you know.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world,
Hugs From Arkansas.
Congratulations for posting at 4:20, TBM. Most of the posters here have been researching overpopulation, peak oil, and resource depletion for years, some for decades. You may in a bit over your head here, unless you're willing to do some research and reading yourself.
Um ... yeah. And your point is?
The point is that you are as a likable and enthusiastic little child among adults conducting serious business;you have had your little helping of thier time and attention.
Sometime later , you can come back for more, maybe, but for now it's time for you to go play somewhere else so the rest of us can carry on an adult dialogue.
Adding compliments to an ad hominem doesn't make it any less an ad hominem. As for adults, those of my acquaintance don't use ad hominem.
Got anything on topic here, mac and 710?
Yes-I suggest that you get thee hence to a community college and take a few introductory general science and biology courses and a math course covering probability. ;)
Then read an indepth history of technology.I suggest Boorstien's "The Inventors"
Sorry I forgot the smiley face the first time, but but you are in over your head. :(
There are numerous objections to the space elevator.
First off, consider that building such would require techniques which may not work, such as applying multiple layers of material to an existing thin ribbon to build a ribbon strong enough to hold a load. This must be done while the ribbon is under tension and fast enough for the bond between the old and new layers to gain full strength while the ribbon is within the processing "cell" of the climber. If the tension is not matched, later loads would be held by only one layer of the ribbon, likely limiting the total strength.
Secondly, lightning would destroy the ribbon, since it is to be made of carbon nanotubes, causing upper mass to fly off into space. Proposals for the the ground station suggest it be situated along the Equator where there are few thunder storms, such as west of Peru. But, what guarantee is there that no strike will occur there?
Third, the size of the lifting device must be large. It takes hundreds of horsepower to lift a 1,000 pound mass at a speed of 100 mph. The energy to power that lift is supposed to be provided by solar PV. To prevent the PV melting due to high levels of laser illumination, some type of heat rejection must be employed. How much of that 1,000 pounds would be consumed as a part of the power system? And, each increment of mass would be similarly burdened, thus the payload of the climber will be a small fraction of the mass. Worse yet, on return to Earth, energy must be dissipated by braking and the power produced will be equal to that during lift at the same speed. That requirement also results in an large heat removal system like that of lift, which adds to the mass of the system, if the climber is to be re-used.
Third, the climber would not provide tangential velocity to whatever is hoisted into space. That means no LEO access, only GEO delivery. And, to provide the tangential velocity, the elevator must lag behind the ground station while the climber is doing it's lifting. That produces a situation where there is some "catching up" at the end of the lift, as the climber will tend to be accelerated tangentionally after reaching GEO, thus the climber will move past the ground station and continue until the force of ribbon has slowed the climber to orbital speed. Can you see the problem? There is no way to damp out this motion without a rocket, so the climber will act like a pendulum, swinging back and forth like a plucked guitar string.
There are other problems as well. Thus, I think it's obvious that the Space Elevator idea is pure science fiction.
E. Swanson
@Black_Dog,
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
I'm not certain I understand your first point. I believe the idea is that the entire ribbon or cable would be manufactured and spooled, then delivered to orbit by rocket, not manufactured within the climber. I can imagine a design in which the climber did the manufacturing, but that sounds like it would make a very hard job quite a lot harder.
The lightning risk seems pretty serious given carbon nanotubes are good conductors, but there are obviously variations of the idea like rotating space tethers in which the ends of the ribbon don't enter the lower atmosphere, and the rotation of the tether provides a far more rapid ascent than a climber can.
This last answers your other points I think.
If a 22,000 mile long conductor is extended through the Earth's varying magnetic field, an electrical current should be induced on the conductor. The current would have to be continuously discharged to prevent a voltage from building up causing a high voltage discharge into the atmosphere or space elevator. A rotating tether that does not enter the upper atmosphere would have no discharge point for the current causing the voltage to build. NASA tried an experiment of this type to generate power in LEO with a tether that was several miles long. While being deployed, the tether was destroyed by high induced voltage. I am not sure what would happen with the carbon nanotubes, but I suspect there would be problems with high induced voltage.
The Space Tether Experiment
You forget that a geosynchronous tether will be static relative to Earth's magnetic field; no V, no E = V cross B (absent magnetic storms). Try again.
Some strong forms of carbon, such as graphene sheets, are highly conductive. A conductive ribbon can be acted upon by magnetic fields. A climber could rise along such a ribbon using a linear induction motor, never having to touch it. Forget 100 MPH, those could run at 1000 MPH. The issue of the tether leaning anti-spinward as mass rises is easily handled; ramp up the rate slowly, and use the final cargoes to arrest the forward swing if the system has to be idled for a while. If worse comes to worst, some mass can be slung away from the upper anchor to dissipate excess angular momentum. This principle goes back to the trebuchet.
You have to come up with better objections than physics.
The geomagnetic field is not constant in space because it reacts to the varying pressure from the solar wind. Also the cable would move while being deployed like in the space tether experiment.
The last time I looked at the space elevator concept, the idea was to deploy from GEO. The start would be the emplacement of two spools in orbit, then unwind them with one going downward toward Earth and the other upward. That process would be necessary to keep the resulting center of gravity at GEO as the two masses separate, thereby maintaining the orbit. The distances are so large that the first ribbon would need be very thin, just strong enough to hold the first climber which would be used to add another layer to the ribbon all the way to the outer end at more than twice the distance to GEO. Several layers were to then be added, starting from the surface and each of the climbers were to be left at the end of the ribbon to provide enough mass to produce the required tension on the ribbon.
It should be rather obvious that the tension at the surface must be greater than the maximum mass of any climber, else the climber would simply pull the ribbon down to the ground. After the first deployment of the ribbon, the center of mass would move ever further out away from Earth and the resulting centripetal force would result in the required tension. Again, the total length of the ribbon would need be perhaps 3 times the distance to GEO.
One must also understand that travel in space occurs by way of orbits or portions thereof. Below GEO, the orbital speed is too fast to dock and above GEO, the orbital speed is too slow. Thus, the only point at which easy access is possible to or from the ribbon is at GEO. As a consequence, the only possible way of moving any material from a asteroids outside the Earth's orbit to the space elevator would involve a transfer orbit to GEO, which would likely involve some sort of conventional rocket power or perhaps solar powered ion propulsion. I don't think this process would be cheap and as a result, so the cost to move the material back to Earth would be "astronomical"...:<(
E. Swanson
Ummm... have you eaten any synthetic staple foods lately? The stuff I eat is all GROWN, implying sufficient arable land, liquid fuels, and fresh water. A few minor details in your grand scheme.
Not to mention that the presence of carbon on an asteroid does not mean it's full of "coal and oil".
Plenty of other objections come readily to mind, but I won't waste bandwidth on them.
PT in PA
We have talked about this issue before, but again we get no where fast. Unless you can say that you are a poli-critter and can pass some sort of reform through the governmental body that you are a part of, then all this is just talking around a table with your drinks in hand and maybe some snacks to share.
I have not procreated, nor has my brother, so for us we are the end of the line. On my mother's side only 4 kids were born from her siblings, and none of those kids (of which I am one) have had children. On my Dad's side all the kids besides himself have grandkids and even greatgrandkids. So on one hand it balanced out but on the other it did not.
We can rant and rave all we like, but unless we are of a powerful enough set of people, all we talk about is for naught, and it's just a lot of hotair that we have used up talking about the big issues that we see in the world today.
I have no clue what will happen in the coming months or years. But I plan to keep on doing what I am doing now, getting better at it as I go along. finding methods to feed the people I know better, and getting more of them in their own homes. Not big fancy homes, but homes that are low impact and more sustainable than most in the Western world are today.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world.
Hugs From Arkansas.
I wish I shared your optimism. :) But if we were indeed a powerful enough set of people, there would in all likelihood be a vastly larger set of people who were jealous of or in some way mobilized against our power, and we probably wouldn't have it for long enough to make a dent in this issue.
This theme is endemic in these boards. Top-down solutions are proposed but are never going to be realistic; mass social change isn't going anywhere until the market compels it.
That's easily the most well-adjusted response that I've seen.
I don't know why people waste time pondering how to curb population growth. We need a population reduction of 5 billion within about 50 years if planet earth is to survive and retain any semblance of life as it currently exists in all its variety and still be able to support the remaining population. I guesstimated these figures from looking at the graph presented in the book "Limits to Growth."
For this reduction in population to happen we need deaths minus births of 100 million people each year. This means just over 270,000 people each day. I do not see how this could possibly be accomplished in an orderly and humane fashion. Let's just face the facts: we WILL temporarily regress into survival of the fittest, in the fullest sense of the phrase, all over again, just like in the stone age.
Since there are so few who will willingly sacrifice their lives so that others may live, there is simply no way out of this mess except by organized extermination of large masses of the human race. It's now simply a matter of WHO will take the initiative to orchestrate this. I predict a revival of eugenics - the science of sifting out the gold from the dirt among the human race.
Seriously, do you know what's going on in the world today? Do you have any idea about economic growth around the world? It continues, with the bulk of people living in poverty conscripted there by uncontrolled hatred or sex.
You cite some book as if that makes doomsday a certainty yet do you know just how much more mankind is doing with less these days? Productivity is at an all-time high.
And we're only just getting started.
War is only one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Death comes in many shapes.
Hunger will probably be one of the biggest killers. Hunger and migration create a breeding ground for epidemic illnesses.
Consider the blowout in the gulf. Canadian fishermen are worried about the spawning grounds of their tuna, in the Gulf of Mexico. Most migratory birds, heading north or south, make stopovers on the Gulf coast. Hurricanes could blow lots of oil, and dispersant, far inland. Europe may receive part of the spill on it's shores.
This is a nice example of a black swan of global proportions. A catastrophic chain of events, put in motion by the flutter of a butterfly : the notion that nothing can go wrong, the notion that we are the ones who will tame the earth, put it to heel and feed us into infinity.
The earth, and the laws of physics, are about to tame us, and humankind will be lucky to survive the punishment.
Wars are happening, will continue to happen. But soldiering requires a lot of resources. And resources are slinking. A lot of the violence will be local on local, using whatever is at hand, as in the Ruanda genocide.
A lot of what happens will show unforeseen chains of cause and effect. Our systems are hyper efficient, which in and of itself is necessary and sufficient condition for catastrophic collapse. Very small accidents can have terrifying effects : The sub-prime bubble collapse is linked to the spike in oil prices which is linked to the Nigerian oil which was missing because MEND was organizing low-cost disruption.
It has become a lot easier to disrupt the food chain. Any link in the chain is a feasible target, because it can stop the whole chain. A four day fuel shortage could start famine. A psychopathic tribe could target farmers, there aren't that many left, so a little mayhem could cause very large disruptions.
We do not know where from the wind will blow. I think all of the horsemen of the apocalypse will have their part in the proceedings. I would wager a very smallish bet that humanity will find some surprising way to solve our predicament, as we have done before. For example, we have invented being prude and we are delaying the age of childbirth, in part by delaying the ascent to adulthood.
However, my access to the state of the world is limited. What I can see is not reassuring, and I am trying to reconcile myself with the fact that dying will become a lot more probable than living.
People have always tried to predict the carrying capacity of Earth. They have always been wrong, and that's because they don't understand that we can adapt to fix environmental problems, resource problems and so on. So no nazi revival is necessary.
Praytell - exactly which environmental problem have human beings "fixed" in recent history? It's true that the rivers in Ohio don't catch fire like they did in the 70s, but that has more to do with rustbelt industrial (and population) decline than technology or "adaptation". The U.S. as a whole has taken to simply exporting most of its industry and industrial pollution along with it to third world countries --and in some cases, we quite literally export our toxic rubbish too.
I agree no Nazi style bloodbath is necessary, but current world population x consumption is clearly unsustainable by any measure. And it isn't that hard to estimate sustainable carrying capacity of the Earth. The U.N. pegged it around half a billion max (assuming N. American consumption/lifestyle) back in the 90s, which dovetails quite nicely with average human population before the industrial revolution --i.e., before we began extracting natural resources at a rate far faster than they could be replenished.
You are simply wrong on all counts. The US share of global manufacturing has been hovering around 20% since 1980. The real value of value added manufacturing output has doubled since two decades ago.
If we had the same pollution per real dollar output in the world today as we had in the 70-ies, we'd be as good as dead. So environmental problems are fixed all the time. Sure they don't have as stringent regulations in poor countries, and that's why they need to become rich quick. Their "dirty phases" needs to be as short as possible.
Not manufacturing jobs, only the $value of manufactured products.
The top 5 most automated US sectors(oil-gas-coal,transportation,chemical, plastics and food), least number of workers per $value output, produced half of all US manufacturing; 1/3 of all manufacturing workers produced 53% of $value.
More worker intensive industries are being outsourced.
This is also shown in Japan which has the slowest manufacturing sector growth of all the major economies since 1990. Japanese manufacturing has been sucked into China. Similarly US a large portion of manufacturing jobs end up going to Mexico or China.
http://www.census.gov/econ/census02/data/industry/E31-33.HTM
Automation is also wiping out sales and service jobs.
Without jobs, who is going to buy these high $valued products?
Again your obsession with money as a measure of everything doesn't add up in the long run.
Your free-market smugness is frankly disgusting.
I agree about jobs. This development is a good thing - it's very nice (the understatement of the year, perhaps) that such jobs find a place in China, both for them and for us.
People have asked that question since the Luddite movement in the early 19th century. They have always been ignorant, of course, and the purchasing power has kept increasing as people move to even better jobs.
Certainly, but I give sound advice. While your socialist ignorance is harmful.
And yes, it is quite hard to estimate the sustainable carrying capacity of the earth. It all depends on what tech you employ. Half a billion is clearly too conservative, since we are currently doing several times that with problems that could be managed with some not-too-difficult changes.
Half a billion might be wildly optimistic several decades out on that resource-constraint tail.
Trick question: what is the sustainable deer population for a small island off the coast of Alaska?
I don't think you have thought this through.
In the year 1750, the world had about 800 million inhabitants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
So you are saying that we were in grave overshoot already 260 years ago? One hundred years before petroleum was introduced as a better alternative to whale oil and phosphates from rocks began to be used for fertilization?
Do you know that in 1750, of those 800 million, only 18 million lived in North America, South America and Oceania, combined? While 163 million lived in little itty bitty Europe, and obviously managed to feed themselves?
St. Matthew might have sustained a deer population of a dozen or two indefinitely with its slow but reliable lichen production.
But they did the Lotka Volterra two-step and reproduced, eating all the lichen. Later they became acquainted with the attodeer conundrum. There might be a lesson in there somewhere, but most people can't bear to look at it.
Do you listen to others, or do you just talk?
We are in grave overshoot now. What people did 260 years ago is only marginally relevant, as the upside overshoot will be followed by an overshoot to the downside.
The carrying capacity of the Earth is neither a single number, nor is it a constant; by the time you get to a St. Matthew Island scenario the downside limit is 0. I don't know whether we will reach that limit, but it's almost impossible to predict how far the correcton will go.
Fair enough.
To defend you a bit, though at times I doubt humans will get to the point of being able to live amoung themselves long enough without crime and other mayham happening.
The earth, if everyone lived in green tech living conditions, be it a SuperAdobe house, Earthship, earth shelter, or tiny homes, even tiny apartments like Fred posted a link to above. We could house everyone on earth in something nice, rather than a cardboard box under the on-ramp. I mean just look at the housing glut in america, there are spare houses for people, not that most of them fall into the green catagory.
If you could organize everyone, we also would not have the mess we have, and we might or might not even have much of hte crime we have now, though that is always a touchy subject, almost as touchy as the one we are talking about.
Arable land That is not also under the wild(natural settings) should in a prefect world feed everyone we have today on more or less about 1/2 acre per person, though some figures say as close to 1/4 acre. Remember I am talking if everything works out right. So easily all 7 billion of us, get nice places to live, and are well fed and have enough drinking water, which can be gathered from rainwater and the humidity in the air, with several humidity to water systems. Though you can filter water with simple structures made in your backyard, if you know what you are doing.
We have enough solar tech, and know enough about passive solar, and other systems that if we combine them all you can get a design package large enough to statisfy most people. But it takes working together as a whole, and not the separate things we call nations and states, we have to lump ourselves under the fact that we are all humans, and should be looking out for each other.
So yes It is possible to live a nice life, and all of us live on earth in a nice humane manner. While I say that, It is also possible we bomb ourselves to the stoneage( metaphor not intended to be a known age to which we will be bombed).
What we do have is clearly not working out well. We could get better, so what we do is keep doing all things that are good for the most people as we can. And hope for the best.
Charles,
BioWebScape designs for a better fed and housed world,
Hugs From Arkansas.
Even assuming you are right and some distant future techno-utopia that makes Earth comfortably habitable for 7+ billion humans without driving a vast swath of other species to extinction is even *possible* (a dubious assumption), what are your thoughts on this:
--Does our finite planet even have a finite carrying capacity (timeframe: long-term, not short-term)? If so, what would you roughly estimate it to be?
--Why is it so important for the world population to keep growing anyway? What do you think of the "growth is always good" assumption at the heart of our debt/credit-based economy?
--Is "growth" (population, consumption, GDP, bank profits) a good measure of collective human happiness? Is quantity of life really more important than individual quality of life?
--Before humans invented agriculture, we survived at a much lower population level (estimated ~3-6 million) for hundreds of thousands of years --millions if you count pre-homo sapien ancestors. This was more than enough to ensure the continuation of our species, even with Stone Age technology, much less the impressive array of technology and science at our disposal today. With this in mind, how much is "enough"?
With 18th century tech and no fossils, I think we could converge at perhaps 2 billion long term. But with non-fossil high-tech (nuclear and so on), the sky is the limit.
It is not important for the world population to keep growing. It'd be humane if it were allowed to stop by way of economic growth and urbanization, though. That economic growth is good always is an assumption that we must make for the time being, however. We need it to curb population growth, wars and pollution. Growth is not that important for the industrialised nations, of course, but as they act as the world economic engines, the third world countries that do need growth benefit from our growth.
Consumption/production growth, yes, that's a good proxy measure for human happiness. As I have demonstrated with graphs, the correlation is very good.
One woman and a DNA/sperm-bank, perhaps? Not that relevant to me.
To me, #3 is just not a major concern.
Most older people don't want to be burdens on their children and are amazingly self-sufficient, if a bit lonely. They are not infants who require a LOT of care.
Most older adults don't need the support of their children, rather it's the reverse in these hard times. Only 7.5% of the elderly live in nursing homes. About 6% of the elderly have Alzheimers. Medicare covers most palliative and hospice care. I don't know any reason why care couldn't be legally performed by friends as well as children.
Some terminally ill old people are conned by doctors into expensive but hopeless medical treatments using up what's left of their life savings and spirit whereas in Europe they are allowed to end their own misery.
A lot of 'wonder medicines' prolong the misery of a VERY diminished quality of life past 90 for most people.
Just past Hartford, on the "Christopher Columbus" highway... a highway named after a pirate who cut people's hands off... Burger King smokestacks spewing burning flesh... bulldozers in clearcuts, giant stacks of dead trees like fingers... sewers, roads, malls, expanding, encroaching, more and more and more... a continuous megalopolis from D.C. to Boston, why not? Commuters safely ensconced in their pods, keep moving, normalcy at any price... High school prison-like on the horizon, conform to this way of life or be outcast, a lifetime of burger-flipping, truck-driving, cashiers, conveyor belts, unimaginable tedious hours of metal-mouthed coffee and plastic food, wrists numb, eyes glassy, time clocks ticking, calendars marked with standardized Hallmark holidays, flag-waving lunacy of convenience stores and gas stations.
I'll be the one to change it, I'll stop the madness, I'll have a baby and bring it up right, I'll teach it to fight the ugliness, to live the right way, in harmony with the earth, no more supermarkets and plastic diapers and baby toys, only politically correct eco-food from coops, recycling everything, catalogs of earth-friendly merchandise, Visa, Mastercard. Clad in a loincloth of spruce branches, living in a tee-pee, my baby will think like me, do everything that I can't do, fulfill my dreams of glorious righteousness, because I'm better, none of this is my fault, it's not me, it's the bad ugly stupid people, clogging up my drains with their ***, consuming and procreating and breathing my air, my precious air that's meant for me, me and the other good intelligent sensitive well-educated clever articulate people, God's chosen people, the master race, we mustn't let these morons, these cretins, these useless *** inherit the earth, outbreed them, more eggs, more sacred white patriarchal ***, spurting into the fertile *** of perfectly-formed aryan poetesses, we won't stop until everyone on earth thinks like us, total control, boxcars full of stupid people, gas them like Jews, in ovens of fast-food restaurants, eat them, make them into lampshades, an army of babies, with my baby leading them, the new messiah, ripping, tearing the mutant TV-watching ***-babies into pieces, baby arms and legs in piles, triumph of Shakespeare and Descartes and Plato, swells of Handel and Bach, victory.
Wait! What is this thing coming out of my ***? No! It can't be! A ***, a ***, no, no, what is the thing I'm gripping, could it be the steering wheel of a car? Oh God, no, I'm driving down the highway, toxic fumes wafting out of my backside, it's me, it's me, I'm in the dirt, consuming! My kitchen is filled with tupperware, my walls are smooth and white, with plenty of outlets, appliances beckon me, "turn me on, use me," I'm standing in line, clutching my debit card, some hairless ape is jabbering at me, what is it saying? "Paper or plastic"? My precious baby is a chocolate bunny, flush the toilet, oh the humiliation.
Thank you.
I've been to the Hartford a few times, that sums it up quite nicely! +10
Wow. No more Salvia for you, ckorda!
Excessive consumption throughout the developed world is a problem, no doubt. But as we have run up against the limits placed upon modern society by peak everything, the ridiculous levels of resource usage will no longer be possible from both an economic and physical standpoint (that is to say, we will no longer have money to buy fish nor will there be any fish left to purchase). Bottom line, excessive consumption is a temporary and can be decreased without a too substantial human cost. Whether we go willingly or kicking and screaming is not going to change the destination. However, that is not the case with much of the developing world. If one assigns an arbitrary number, say 10, to the basic consumption needs of a person then you would find that many of the places with the highest birth rates are hovering around (or even below) this level. Where it is theoretically possible for an American to drop a consumption rate of 100 down to 10 without conflict and catastrophe (that is, it's not strictly necessary for intense human cost to be incurred though some amount is unavoidable and even likely) a nation that is barely getting by right now can not decrease consumption without death. That's even ignoring potential effects of decreased crop yield because of energy scarcity. Though the rich may be the problem today, it is the poor who will be the resource drain in the future and they will be the ones who suffer in the long run.
Immigration control is a must for the developed world. Population control is a must for the developing. I don't think it is fair to establish an equal birth limit for the entire world because some places have far larger problems than others from a population density or resource scarcity viewpoint. No places should be allowed to increase their population, but some must decrease it to avoid calamity. Tariffs that increase and decrease with population growth rate for a country would be a good way to respect the sovereignty of nations while using our economic power to push them in the right direction.
Tariffs would be counter-productive. The countries with high population growth needs trade the most to curb fertility rates. Also, immigration is a great tool to curb the overall population growth, so immigration control is also counter-productive.
I'd argue that we're never going to see the kind of economic growth necessary to bring birth rates down to sustainable levels in the countries that need it the most so the link between economic growth and lower birthrates is not a long run solution. I don't think that nations will accept birth policies from foreign countries either. Using these tariffs, we motivate the domestic governments to institute policies that have a better chance of being effective.
As for immigration control, I'd agree that immigrants will likely have fewer children in a new country than they would in their old country but I don't think that solves the problem because there are not many places that can afford to sustainably support additional population. The idea would be that forcing countries to deal with the full extent of their population growth, rather than dealing with a rate partially mitigated by emigration, would more clearly demonstrate the consequences of population growth and provide reasons to curb it.
Mexican women in Mexico have a total fertility rate of 2.4. Mexican immigrant women in the USA have a TFR of 3.6 (and the recent sob story of the illegal Mexican family in Arizona who packed up for Pennsylvania because of SB 1070 had a TFR of 10!). Haiti's TFR of about 4 can only continue because nations like the USA allow immigration.
Immigration makes the problem WORSE. The Dominican Republic, on the other side of Hispaniola from Haiti, has the right idea: Haitians are not allowed to immigrate, and illegal Haitian immigrants are regularly rounded up and deported. Preventing immigration from Haiti and Mexico cannot but help, either by forcing those nations to deal with the problem and demonstrate solutions, or fail to deal with the problem and become cautionary examples.
Thanks. Even though you're evil, you taught me something today - I didn't know TFR was higher for immigrants than natives. Sounds like a sign of optimism.
Let me suggest that keeping people imprisoned in the living hell that is Haiti won't help them "demonstrate solutions", just like keeping people imprisoned in Gaza doesn't help them get rid of Hamas. But I agree, their fate will be "cautionary examples" to others asking for help and hospitality in a world full of barriers.
Wow, Mr. Free Market Fox News Libertarian calling someone else "evil" --and for basically protecting its citizens by enforcing their own borders no less. That's the pot calling the kettle black if I ever saw it.
"Keeping people imprisoned in Haiti". Uh, 'scuse me Mr. Open Borders, but how is Haiti's steadfast refusal to address overpopulation and widespread environmental devastation my personal problem? Many of perfectly good options for them, including simply using mis-allocated world charity to fund birth control/family planning programs and paying the chronically unemployed to re-plant trees on denuded hillsides. And what are Haitians doing to end their country's never-ending cycle of horrendously corrupt government? Reasonable, easily assimilated levels of immigration are fine, but are we to be the open-borders receiver of the entire Third World population (~3-4 billion)?
Open borders and no-hold barred globalism might well work in a utopian world of Jeffersonian democracies where all regional populations are more or less in balance with natural resources, everyone is literate/educated and enjoys universal civil/reproductive rights --especially women.
No, it's not you personal problem. Just go buy some extra popcorn so you don't get too bored with watching the show and feeling superior to them stupid Haitians.
You sound like a Randroid. I was one of those once, but I got better.
Or a sign of un-sustainable subsidy programs like WIC, which have too-loose eligiblity standards and give people with low expectations sufficient incentive to do things which are very wrong for this country.
Haiti is the creation of Haitians. If they have created a living hell, I don't want them re-creating it where I live. Learning to live sustainably on one island is a microcosm of learning to live sustainably on one planet.
The proximate cause of Haiti's problems is an excessive population living with damaged and depleted natural capital. Haiti would have much better prospects with a one-child policy and a re-forestation policy, but the people don't want to stop having babies or substitute solar cookers or gobar-gas burners for their traditional charcoal. The ultimate cause of Haiti's problems is human stupidity, and if there's going to be a repeat of Easter Island I want the first chapters to occur somewhere else so that maybe, just maybe, there's time to get the rest of the world to re-write the rest of that story this time around.
"The proximate cause of Haiti's problems is an excessive population living with damaged and depleted natural capital. Haiti would have much better prospects with a one-child policy and a re-forestation policy, but the people don't want to stop having babies or substitute solar cookers or gobar-gas burners for their traditional charcoal. The ultimate cause of Haiti's problems is human stupidity, and if there's going to be a repeat of Easter Island I want the first chapters to occur somewhere else so that maybe, just maybe, there's time to get the rest of the world to re-write the rest of that story this time around."
Well said, but unfortunately the moral/guilt equation keeps inserting itself into discussions like these. The above paragraph is usually followed by a trip down memory lane in order to blame the developed world (or the US in particular) for the mess that countries like Haiti are in. It all boils down to this kind of call for collective punishment, either for the 3rd world to die-off for their "stupidity" or for the 1st world to be impovrished by taking in the 3rd world in as a form of reparations for (allegedly) keeping the 3rd world down all this time.
The rhetoric may sound reasonable depending on your ideology, but of course, nobody would volunteer to have their fridge raided for the sake of correcting some centuries-old injustice, but that's how these arguments go. All principle and no pragmatism.
I don't care for the colonialism guilt trips. I'm pointing out that the "1st world to be impoverished by taking in the 3rd world" is incorrect. That trade and immigration can benefit all. How is that not pragmatic?
You're claiming it, but the claim is false. A little attention to things like the high-school dropout rate (and consequent poor employment prospects) of certain large immigrant groups, and their high welfare-dependence and crime rates compared to the nation as a whole, would prove to you that you've been lied to. Unfortunately, you don't have the intellectual curiosity to search out anything which might make you question your dogma.
Funny - the xenophobic economy-illiterate guy is talking about intellectual curiosity and dogma. Please take a look at the link I gave a minute ago in another comment. You'll see that statistics support me.
I see that you're clueless, but that was a given.
Smart of you. You know, the Haitians are like locust - it's in their genes or at least in their culture. If you let some of their ten million people lose on US soil, they're sure to have the US swamped in a few generations.
I've heard such reasoning many times before. For example, "don't help drug addicts, because if they don't get into really bad shape, people won't realize it's bad to do drugs". But I've still not heard about not helping drowning people so as to demonstrate the need for swimming ability, though. Why? I think it's simply that drug addicts and Haitians are "other people" who we feel distantly superior to, while someone you care about could be drowning just by having some bad luck, being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, Haitians and drug addicts haven't had such bad luck, right? They willfully ignored the easy solutions to their problems, and should be made an example of.
No, not evil at all. It's nice that you got better from you Randroidism and instead combined the worst of socialist econ-illiteracy and conservative nationalist intolerance.
They're much more likely to realize the error of their ways if they are among their own and don't have an alien host society to blame for their situation. This is doubly true if the alien host society is infested with multi-culturalism and other idiocy.
Nobody's making an example of them but themselves. Humanity as a whole is much more likely to make it if those who are successful at moderating their numbers and appetites are not overrun by the failures.
Just as an anecdote: Swedish elections are coming up this fall, and established parties and most of us voters fear that the "Sweden democrats" will enter the parliament and thus be able to further their xenophobic agenda. Incidentally, the largest and most problematic immigration group is currently the iraqis, which are coming here since GWII in large numbers. But no matter - what I'd like to mention is that they, the SD party, are the only party that bash multi-culturalism. They jokingly refer to it as "multi-criminalism" (the pun is not much better in Swedish).
Perhaps no one here has similar associations, but anyway, to me, your comment is quite revealing. Not that you hadn't been open with your standpoint before, but anyway.
I generally appreciate, even admire, US openness and hospitality, which I have experienced several times first-hand. Hopefully it was not just due to me being a white guy from the developed world.
Btw, I guess you yanks are not very successful in moderating your appetites, and Mexicans are quite close to you in moderating their numbers. The problem is not moderating numbers or appetites, but the uneven global allocation of political and economic freedom. You've got a lot, they've got very little. So they come to you, and the weighted average freedom of the world increase. Bad, eh? Yeah, I know, you can't afford it.
Perhaps because your news media will report Swedens sky-high rate of rape, but won't mention that immigrants are the perpetrators.
You ignore the fact that Mexico's "success" is due to exporting people to the USA, which then "fails". If Mexico's illegal aliens and their children were repatriated, the difference would be upwards of 30 million (positive for Mexico, negative for the USA).
So the solution is for [a] those other nations to export the very people who might press for more political and economic freedom, thus stabilizing the oppressive regimes, and [b] constrain MY political and economic freedom by putting pressures on MY air, water, roads, schools, and even my freedom to associate only with people who have a right to be here?
No, thanks. How about we ship all our illegal aliens to you? You want them, you can have them.
A few years ago, we reclassified so as to make the "rape" label cover many more sexual offenses (now 40% of the total, previously 25%). That and a higher willingness to report offenses is what makes us stand out. (Yes, I know the article says otherwise.)
The comments to your link says it all, for instance: "I’m very disappointed that Swedish White Men are allowing this to happen to their precious blond women. A race whose men do not fight to be with their women will cease to exist."
But of course, statistically, the immigrants are overrepresented in crime. The foreign born are 5 times as likely to be a suspect of rape, and their children are 1.8 times as likely. Since we have about 14% foreign born here, they do represent a big number of reported rapes, but still less than the native rapes. However, as with homicides, most victims are within the group, all the talk about "blondes" non-withstanding.
Somewhat, but not very much, since we were talking about total fertility rates, not about absolute numbers.
Yeah, I get it. You were born in the US and your ancestors came here early on, so it's your water and your moral success. The 20 year old girl from Haiti, however, shouldn't be shielded from the consequences of her moral failure of being born in Haiti and not turning the country around. The US can't afford her, there's too little air and water to accommodate her too, and the US culture and economy are not strong enough to assimilate her. You have no choice but to bash at her with the oars, b/c peak oil is coming!
Jeppen, your economic theory that immigration and growth are good only works when there are abundant resources to provide for economic and population growth. Your ideas result in an exponentially growing population and an equalization of the standard of living by decreasing it toward zero for everyone. This works until critical resources deplete or the production of them peaks sending an impoverished population into collapse. The resources on a finite planet are finite, unable to supply an infinite population. Ponder this concept of limits to growth for a while.
Since you advocate relieving population pressure in impoverished overpopulated counties, it falls upon you, a Swede, not Americans, to sacrifice for your ideal. As an example, I will choose Bangladesh. To be true to your ideal you must accept immigration from Bangladesh until the population densities of the two countries are equal. The CIA World Factbook reports:
Sweden:
Area (including water because people can live on boats): 450,295 km2
Population (July 2010 est.): 9,074,055 people
population density: 20.2 people / km2
Population growth rate (2010 est.): 0.16%
Bangladesh:
Area: 143,998 sq km
Population (July 2010 est.): 158,065,841 people
population density: 1098 people / km2
Population growth rate (2010 est.): 1.274%
Since the death rate in Sweden, 10.2 deaths/1,000 population, is higher than in Bangladesh, 9.08 deaths/1,000 population, perhaps your desire to help is misplaced.
Removing people from Bangladesh would relieve population pressure there, but probably would not reduce the birth rate. If anything, it may rise because parents would need more kids to improve the odds that at least one would be successful and stay nearby to provide for them in their old age. If I make realistic assumptions about the birth rates in each country (namely the Bangladeshis bring their higher birth rate to Sweden), the calculation becomes more difficult. To make an approximate calculation showing the magnitude of the result, I will assume the growth rates are 0% except for immigration which appears to be your belief in the outcome anyhow.
Population density in both countries would stabilize at 281.2 people / km2 with 126.7 million in Sweden and 40.5 million in Bangladesh. Imagine Sweden with a population density of 281.2 people / km2. If the Bangladeshis immigrate at a rate of 5% of the Swedish population / year, then after 54 years, the population densities of both countries would equalize. Sweden would experience a great economic boom as shelter must be built and food and many other goods must be provided to the growing population. The result would be deforestation, habitat destruction, fresh water shortages, abundant sewage, trash piles, increased fossil carbon emissions, increased industrial pollution, etc. Sweden's imports of crude oil and natural gas would skyrocket as you try to elevate all these people to a western standard of living because you basically have no reserves. Sometime in the year 2024 the present Swedish population would become a minority relative to the immigrants. Bangladeshi culture would overwhelm Swedish culture including their propensity to multiply fruitfully and have a large population with a low standard of living. Bangladeshi's economy would contract and under your economic theory, be devastated.
In reality an annual immigration rate of 5% relative to the Swedish population would not be enough to exceed Bangladesh's current population growth rate. Sweden would be chasing an ever increasing population density number, surpassing its local environment's carrying capacity, degrading the Swedish standard of living and becoming more dependent on imported resources until something critical snaps or a leader with some sense slams the door shut on immigration.
Bob Shaw's question: Are humans smarter than yeast?
The density of falsehoods in the above paragraph and the rest of your post is staggering. I hardly know where to begin. No, my ideas don't result in an exponentially growing population, nor a race toward zero. Quite the opposite.
You know, once I thought PO-ism was cute and harmless to others. I was SO wrong - many of you seem to draw extremely destructive policy conclusions.
First, it falls upon Americans too to act in a moral way. Second, it's not much of a sacrifice. Third, it's not about relieving population pressure, whatever that is, it's about speeding up growth, improving developed countries demographics (aging population) and improving the relative weight of countries with economic and political freedom and so on.
You know, I have a number of ideals. I advocate that a developed country should open up to immigration to the extent that it can keep stability and democracy going. The US 0.3% immigratants/natives per year is quite low, and so is Sweden's. The US has a little more than 10% first-generation immigrants living there, including Arnold S. Is that too tough to handle? I don't think so!
Then I think you are mistaken if you believe open border would mean population density equalization. People don't seek that goal. Also, people are actually a bit relucant to move away from their language, their friends, their connections and so on.
I guess you are joking? Old people die eventually.
Yeah, Sweden would become a bit more dense than the UK, but less dense than Japan, Netherlands and Belgium. Scary stuff.
No, that is not according to "my" economic theory. ("My" economic theory, btw, is mainstream academic economic thought.)
That statement is simply racist. Btw, in 1976, Bangladeshi women had 6.7 children per woman. In 1986, it was 5.2. In 1996, it was 3.5. In 2006, it was 2.5. In 2009, it was 2.3.
Yes.
In other words, if the citizens decide that they want a stable or decreasing population, more open space, less pressure on air and water, etc.... you would over-rule them. You'd eliminate democracy from the beginning (the elites of the West have already done so, maintaining levels of immigration that the populace does not want but using un-democratic means such as demonizing opponents to forestall popular reforms).
I hope you (and western elites in general) see the light on that issue before someone has to drive the point home forcefully. Beheading the abusive aristocracy for their crimes is emotionally satisfying, but leaves scars we don't need.
I think you and I must have very differing definitions of "advocate". To me, it does not imply "eliminate democracy".
"Demonizing opponents"? "Beheading the abusive aristocracy"? Do a sense a touch of bitterness in your speech? (Sorry, I do like understatements.) It seems you feel quite alienated in US society. The plutocracy is shafting all you hard-working honest white guys who want your air and water unpolluted by wetbacks, right? TPTB rigged the market so there is no REAL economic freedom and they let the Chinese rob you of your jobs? There is no REAL democracy since the elites are being bought by special interest and are "demonizing" those honest people who dare speak the truth about immigration?
Being that alienated, it's no wonder you turn to doomsday sects. But instead, perhaps you should consider moving to a successful country, one that has high tariffs, a real democracy, a real market economy and doesn't allow immigration...
I hope you realize that a person can not immigrate to a country that does not allow immigration. Therefore, one is stuck trying to change the policies of the country in which he resides.
My attempt at humor obviously failed...
What you detect is the fact that Ceaucescu, Mussolini and Marie Antoinette are not just dry, historical examples.
My, my. Thirsting for blood, are we?
Not at all. Such things leave scars, and I said we don't need them. But the leadership needs to get a clue before such scars are preferable to their current agenda.
Apologies, you think perpetual growth is possible on a finite planet with finite resources. Population pressure is a negative feedback to increasing population, something that resists the increase in population. For example, not enough food or fresh water for all the people would restrain population growth. If one removes people from an over populated region, some of the factors that restrain population are alleviated which makes it easier for the population to grow to at least maintain the same level. Simultaneously the region the people are brought into is subjected to increasing population pressure. The result is that the population in the two regions increases.
With presidential elections held between two corporate puppets, the U.S. has already lost democracy. Stability is cracking all around us. A population increase of .3% / year would increase U.S. population from 310 million to 6.2 billion people in 1,000 years. Crude oil, natural gas and coal will be depleted in far less time. The U.S. is already past peak oil and peak natural gas is looming. Government has been forcing us to conserve water and recycle trash for decades to allow for more population growth. The current fads are to outsource some of our pollution to China, snatch some of their resources and give our jobs to foreigners. U.S. standard of living has been degrading for decades to support economic and population growth.
Assuming "scary stuff" is sarcastic, take a look at the graphs and then multiply them by 14 to support all the immigrants. Does Sweden have enough resources to expand hydropower? Will nuclear fission reactors never leak?
Source: Energy Export Databrowser
Then take away the imports of crude oil over the next 23 years as explained by Export Land Model. Then take away the imports of natural gas and then coal. What would happen if Sweden has a population density of 281 people / km2 compared to 20.2 people / km2 while the supply of energy diminishes? There are limits to the resources needed to support people. The safest path forward is to keep population within the carrying capacity of the local environment. Even with a current population density of 20.2 people / km2, Sweden is not self-sufficient as evidenced by its massive imports of energy. Your desire for immigrant population growth to power economic growth collides with declining energy supply on the falling edge of the production curves of these vital energy sources.
Take enough derivatives to find population going in the direction that you desire. Their population rose exponentially during the entire time as they became more impoverished.
The race of a population has nothing to do with their choice to multiply like rabbits unless they are trying to outnumber other races. Through out these two threads on population you have made several accusations that other posters are racist because they do not advocate your views on population. I suggest you journey inward to discover your hate for white skinned people tainting your perception of others.
In a Petri dish yeast grow their population seemly unaware of the limit of their food supply and the environment's ability to process their waste products which leads them into population collapse. "Mainstream academic economic thought" and the majority of the human population appear equally blind to the limits of growth. Yeasty yearning dominates humans to this day. We may or many not wise up in time to avoid the fate of the yeast. To me, the question is unanswered.
Many of your statements I have covered elsewhere, and I'm probably too repetitive as it is, so I'll leave most of those out. Please do ask again if you want me to respond to something in particular.
I believe economic growth is mainly due to science/tech level of society.
Most of the world doesn't experience that. Fertility rates have dropped below replacement despite an historically extreme resource abundance and food/healthcare availability. In fact, for fertility rates to drop, the negative feedback needs to stop - i.e. economic growth and urbanisation is needed.
Remember: The Earth is peaking at 9 billion in some 40 years. Exponential growth is out - the world population is growing sub-linearly. Your projections are thus worthless.
Yes, so that's irrelevant. Either you cope with that, regardless, or most of you die, in which case nothing matter much anyway.
That was the most peculiar claim I've heard in this entire thread. Other misperceptions are at least somewhat understandable as economics may not be intuitive, but this? Have you no eyes to see with?
They always leak trace amounts, but they will never be a major health issue.
No prob. Sweden don't use those in significant amounts anyway.
Not really, as tech is more important.
No, not exponential and not more impoverished either. And fact remains - they are very close to replacement and dropping fast.
Or perhaps you could question your own values and judgements.
Underlying assumption of paternalism.
"We have to look after them, after all they are not fully human and need help."
I look forward to a time when Zimbabwe sends food aid to America.
Haiti will sort it's overpopulation problem out when the time is right.
It is called by the Zulu an umFikani. (A time of madness.)
After the umFikani there is plenty of space.
There is also the delicious smell of roast pork on the wind.
Bob Mugabe has an even better idea.
If you are out of the country for 90 days you are not allowed back in.
"Zimbabwe can support 6 million people." said Bob.
Zimbabwe has 11 million.
Oops.
12.5 million
In reply to Jeppen from the previous thread-
Agreed, except I don't think the system can do this because we are now in overshoot. We could have done it up until some point in the past, but now it's too late.
I agree, there is some sort of positive feedback loop, but I'm not so sure that this is necessarily so. By that I mean that's historically how it happened, but it could have happened in other ways. As for urbanisation, sure, it was a great solution for what to do with all these extra people that were being generated. I have no problem with that, the question now is do we have enough resources to continually maintain that population or at least manage a gradual decline to some sustainable level. Can 'the market' and 'efficiencies' do this? Sure, they'll help, but I still believe we're too far past the point of no return.
Sorry, I don't think I made myself clear. I should have said something like '...a reduction in this rate of population growth (not a reduction in population)...' In other words, economic progress has lead to a population growth and a subsequent levelling off of that population growth, and the attendant problems of a new larger level of population. In light of that, is economic progress still such a good thing?
I might agree that economic progress, all else equal, is good. But all else isn't equal, is it?
I would agree with you here if the only resource available with which to create value (return on investment) was human labour. Trouble is, it's not. Capitalism combined with human intelligence will inevitably seek to utilise all available resources with no thought to anything beyond next year's share dividends. Absolutely fantastic, right up to the point where you run out of resources.
No disagreement there, other than to say that it's not necessarily how we organise, it's just a very tempting way to organise, for obvious reasons (it works very well, at least over a limited timespan).
Therein lies our only real difference. The odds we each give to the various outcomes are not the same.
I do hope it is you who are right, and not me though.
Yeah, why not? Economic progress has given humanity a fantastic time and a real shot at real-life Star Trek and beyond. And if we crash, the Earth and humanity will go back to a state without progress, which is what we'd have had if we never went for it. Even if we trigger runaway global warming and all die, the Earth will recover and establish pre-human levels of bio-diversity within a few million years.
Why? Nothing in my example with the restaurant was limited to labour. I exemplified how market fluctuations is used to make profitable investments, regardless of aggregate growth or resource availability. In fact, in the face of peak oil, there'll be a flurry of investments in oil alternatives and in oil-frugal technology, logistics and infrastructure.
That's the common meme of capitalism's short-sightedness. I don't agree with that either. For example, an oil refinery takes years to plan, six years to build and many more years to get a positive return on investment. Actually, most investments takes years to yield a return.
I thought we differed in whether capitalism could function during no growth or negative growth in economy and in energy? This particular dogma seems to be a central part of mainstream TOD thinking, but I haven't found anybody who could convincingly demonstrate the incompatibility.
Ah, sort of 'Wow! that's a helluva hangover we've got, but it sure was one helluva party, dude!'
It's a valid point of view, I'll give you that. I'm just glad I experienced some of the party and hope I don't live to see too much of the hangover.
Ah, I see where you are coming from. Capitalism will continue during the decline as there are still investment opportunities. With this I agree, I just question what the result is of having more net losers than winners (decline) compared with more net winners than losers (growth). Surely a decline in money supply is inevitable for a start?
I realise that the way down is not going to be a mirror image of the way up.
I'm not sure you chose a good example. The oil refinery to me sounds like a perfect example of short-sightedness. It all depends on just what time scale you're looking at. The two hundred years since the Industrial Revolution sounds like a long time. It's of the same order of the written history of the USA. On the other hand, it's only 10% of the written history of my country.
As I allude to above, no, capitalism will I'm sure still continue to function in some fashion 'on the way down'. What I'm interested in is how this will affect the people of this planet (most especially me!), and the time scales of these changes.
Exactly! And even though we're more than animals, we had not much more choice than an expanding animal population. We had to expand, we had to seize the opportunities. And now we have to see it through.
Ok, then we agree. IF peak oil puts us into long term economic decline, then money supply will shrink, yes. And there might be unrest, protectionism, price controls, wars and so on. Those are the big risks to me - unenlightened human reactions. Not PO in itself.
I admit that oil refinery investors may not look further into the future than the 20-40 years they need to recover their investments. But OTOH, I think oil refineries aren't such a bad idea longer term either. As I have argued, we have a critical time period here where strong economic growth is necessary. Oil is a facilitator that helps us through it. With less oil, we probably get (initially) higher fertility rates b/c of less progress in the developing world. And then the likelihood for a subsequent crash increases. Each year we can avoid PO and keep BAU is a good thing. We won't be able to economically brake our way out of this - we rather need to accelerate.
Then I think we pretty much agree apart from one critical thing. You say we need to accelerate, and yes, I agree that if that were possible, BAU could continue. It's just that I reckon the pedal's pretty much on the floor as it is.
That, and the fact that we're running out of road.
Could you setup some form of criteria for the evidence that it would take to convince you otherwise?
What if in 2020, population growth has dropped according to forecasts, the world has not yet reached peak oil (or has but handles it well), still has good economic growth, has an unconventional natural gas glut, has a global market share for hybrid cars over 20% and the number of nuclear reactors worldwide has increased from 440 to 500 with 150 more under construction, all the while wind power has passed 10% of global electricity production? What then? Will you still expect a crash?
What's the smallest amount of evidence it would take for you to go from pessimist to optimist when it comes to humanity's future? Seriously?
"What if in 2020, population growth has dropped according to forecasts, the world has not yet reached peak oil (or has but handles it well), still has good economic growth, has an unconventional natural gas glut, has a global market share for hybrid cars over 20% and the number of nuclear reactors worldwide has increased from 440 to 500 with 150 more under construction, all the while wind power has passed 10% of global electricity production? What then? Will you still expect a crash?"
That covers some but not all of our problems. Try reading some Lovelock. Just on the climate piece alone we're probably locked into a die-off of some sort.
Of course, then you'll tell me we'll geoengineer our way out of it, right?
The odds of us threading the needle like this are miniscule, man. Just think of all the things we'd have to do just right, all the lucky breaks we'd need to have (including the worst projections of climate inertia/feedbacks turning out to be overly pessimistic).
The human population is gonna go down, whether it's a fast crash or a Greer-style Long Descent that is perceived as protracted neo-feudal misery rather than an abrupt malthusian catastrophe. But it's gonna go down and life isn't going to be pleasant while it happens.
Ok, so you won't be optimist no matter what. Note taken.
I stumbled upon an article by Matt Ridley today. It begins like this:
"When I was a student, in the 1970s, the world was coming to an end. The adults told me so. They said the population explosion was unstoppable, mass famine was imminent, a cancer epidemic caused by chemicals in the environment was beginning, the Sahara desert was advancing by a mile a year, the ice age was retuning, oil was running out, air pollution was choking us and nuclear winter would finish us off. There did not seem to be much point in planning for the future."
Read all of it.
You are right because-
Now is the time of greatest per capita industrial output.
Soon per capita industrial output falls off a cliff as resources are diverted to producing food.
(Report to the Club of Rome, business as usual scenario)
Please define "now" and "soon".
Now is from 2005 to 2008, soon is before 2040.
Limits to Growth pp169
Globally? Then you'll be proven half wrong in under 3 years, and fully wrong in 30 years.
Only people who have a brain read this stuff and might be persuaded by it.
Therefor they will have less children.
This is a self limiting powerful feedback loop.
Where to intervene? Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows might have better intervention points.
This is a success to the successful trap. Those who breed are rewarded by having more offspring. This can be counteracted by punishing the breeders and rewarding the non-breeders.
Again evolutionary pressure will intervene and resistance to reward will set in.
According to the Encyclopedia Britanica (Remember them?) human population undergoes outbreeding and inbreeding phases. At the moment we live in an outbreeding phase which is typical of abundance.
In times of contraction inbreeding is more typical. Inbreeding causes expression of pathological recessive genes. These are "eliminated" at birth, due to resource scarcity.
An example of the advantage of such a cleansing episode is the Norseman. Whenever a baby was born in the restricted Fjord terminus a council was called to discuss the fate of the infant. The doomed were left in the snow with a lump of fat in their mouths.
It is not by accident that most of you have Norse genes.
Gail,
I appreciate that people commenting here are looking for "planned", "reasoned" solutions to the problem of overpopulation.
Yet, it is most amusing to me, and instructive, to note the level
of bickering on the thread.
I humbly propose that "Mother Nature", or "GAIA" or "God" or whomever you would like to blame for forces which are far beyond mere mortals to control, has already built in a very strong mechanism, in virtually all creatures upon this planet, for dealing with this particular problem, which does occur in different species at different times, every now and then.
Human beings call it "war".
And its coming. And none of this talk is going to either hasten or delay its arrival or its ferocity.
cheers,
chiz
I surprised at all the bizarre capitalism worship on this board. All it is is meaningless price point voodoo and private property worship with supplanted marketing created needs. The good thing about PO is it should rid the world of this nasty capitalism infestation that has taken over the globe. Now that growth is gone, it's going to eat itself. I just wonder how much damage we will to do each other before we abandon it. Good grief, the amount of death, destruction, resource waste and environmental damage it has wrought over the planet in the name of profit is unfathomable and truly has brought us to the brink. Of course, the standard apologist will point to how we are not practicing it the proper way. It's over folks, let it go.
I can't believe it made it this far without collapsing.
Strange, really strange. It's like a patient blaming the doctor and the medicine for being ill, despite they have made him much better than he was. Please be rational.
You'll be able to say that again, decade after decade. Capitalism won't go away very soon, and growth is picking up as we speak. 61% of Americans view capitalism positively, while 33% view it negatively:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/125645/socialism-viewed-positively-americans....
"The good thing about PO is it should rid the world of this nasty capitalism infestation that has taken over the globe."
The implication being that some utopia of "gift economy" or the like will spring up? Knowing human nature, that's unlikely.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the endpoint of a broken capitalist system is perma-depression, and it ain't no fun. Or we can try stalinism but that didn't work out well either.
Gaia is not a religion.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
"Earth Systems Science" is harder on the wrists than Gaia.
War?
Certainly.
Every day and on every continent.
Personaly I would put more significance on phytoestrogens.
My guess is that without overshoot we will be down to 1,1 billion in 100 years, from 6.7 billion now.
Paper napkin calcs show a reduction rate of 56 million per year, about the same number as the entire second world war,per year.
In other words 6 times the death rate of that war.
56 million
Year on year for a hundred years.
Enjoy.
Mortality should be modeled with an exponential equation, not a linear one. To drop world population from 6.8 billion to 1.1 billion in 100 years, the death rate in excess of the birth rate would be 1.84% per year or 125 million deaths in excess of the number of births during the first year.
Thank you. I was too lazy to do the math.
A roll back of 125 million in the first year.
Makes you think.
Two points. I am assuming a smooth curve and there will be no overshoot. Neither of these will be true.
I guessed 1.1billion from
http://image.tutorvista.com/content/management-natural-resources/populat...
Empirically we supported 1.1 billion just before we industrialised.
Please feel free to choose your own number.
It wont change the feel of the situation.
The Limits to growth scenario is more accurate and kinder and we drift down to about 3.5 billion by 2100.
Prof. James Lovelock, in his jocular moments, allows us to fantasize about a few breeding couples with their camels near the north pole.
That 1.1 billion was mainly in Europe, Asia and Africa. Australia and America was almost empty then.
There a precious few scientists like Professor Gary Peters who have chosen not to remain silent but instead to accept their responsibility to science by rigorously examining extant evidence of human population dynamics. Please consider now the perspective of Dr. Peters on the research of Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel, which is found in the journal, The California Geographer, 2009. The title of his article is, Population, Resources and Enviroment: "Beyond the Exponentials" Revisited.
---begin
"The world’s population in 2009 was close to 6.8 billion. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, we can expect about 55.7 million people to die this year, so in purely demographic terms 300,000 deaths amount to just over half of one percent of all deaths. Furthermore, there are about 15,465 births per hour worldwide, so again in a purely demographic sense those 300,000 deaths can be replaced in less than 20 hours.
Paradoxically, the very fossil fuels that have allowed us to feed the
vast increase in world population over the last century or two may
113 The California Geographer n Volume 49, 2009 also be starting to increase mortality rates, even if only slightly so far. Currently we add about 80 million people to the planet each year, and we know that population growth exacerbates most environmental problems, including global warming (Speth 2008, Diamond 2005, and Friedman 2008).
Pimentel (2001), Hopfenberg (2003), and others have established
in a series of articles that human population growth is a function
of food supply, yet we continue to expand food supplies to accommodate future growth—even if that growth threatens the
planet’s socioeconomic systems, ecosystems, biodiversity, oceans,
and atmosphere. Continued expansion of food supplies has come
at considerable cost both to people and to Earth. As Pollan (2008,
121) commented, “Clearly the achievements of industrial agriculture
have come at a cost: It can produce a great many more calories
per acre, but each of those calories may supply less nutrition than
it formerly did.... A diet based on quantity rather than quality has
ushered a new creature onto the world stage: the human being who
manages to be both overfed and undernourished, two characteristics
seldom found in the same body in the long natural history of our
species.” According to Heller and Keoleian (2000), it takes seven
to ten calories of input, mainly from fossil fuels, to produce one
calorie of edible food in the United States. Looking at the American
landscape, Babbitt (2005, 100) observed that “[I]ndustrial agriculture
has been extended too far, and the price has been too high for the
land and waters to bear.” In many places, agricultural landscapes
are no longer what Tuan (1993, 143) had in mind when he wrote
that “In common with the vast majority of humankind, Americans
love the small intimate world that is their home, and, immediately
beyond it, a rich agricultural land.”
According to Pimentel (2001), humans already use more than half
the planet’s entire biomass, leaving less and less for other species.
From there, as Hopfenberg (2009, 2) noted, “It is not a far logical leap to determine that, if human population and resource use continues
to grow and we continue to kill off our neighbors in the biological
community, one of the many species facing extinction will be the
human. Thus, the impact of civilized humanity on the rest of the
biological community can be seen as lethal to the point of destroying
our own ecological support". It is a reminder that, as Bush (2000,
28) noted, “If there is one lesson that the geological record offers, it is that all species will ultimately go extinct, some just do it sooner than others.” With the expansion of human numbers has come a steady increase in the background rate of extinction.
But even among environmentalists, population has been dropped
from most discussions because it is controversial; it has been snared
in the web of political correctness. As Speth (2008, 78) somewhat
ironically pointed out, “By any objective standard, U.S. population
growth is a legitimate and serious environmental issue. But the
subject is hardly on the environmental agenda, and the country
has not learned how to discuss the problem even in progressive
circles.” Cobb (2007, 1) put it this way, “Even if some politicians,
policymakers and reporters in wealthy countries can see beyond
the daily mirage of plenty to the overpopulation problem, they do
not want to touch it.”
---end
It is one thing for "politicians, policymakers and reporters" not to touch research of human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of Earth. It is something altogether different when the elective mutism of scientists with appropriate expertise hides science in silence. Such a willful refusal to scrutinize peer-reviewed and published evidence and report findings strikes me as a betrayal of science and also a denial of what could somehow be real.
How are global challenges of the kind we can see looming before humanity in our time to be addressed and overcome if any root cause of what threatens us and life as we know it is not acknowledged?
Of course, it could be that Professor Peters' assessment of the research by Pimentel and Hopfenberg is incorrect; that their work is fatally flawed. If that is the case, we need to know it. On the other hand, if that is not the case and the research is somehow on the correct track, then discussion of the research needed to have begun years ago, at the onset of Century XXI, because this research appears, at least to me, to possess extraordinary explanatory power with potentially profound implications.
Thanks to those within the community of scientists and to those in the population at large with a perspective to share who choose to examine the evidence to which your attention is drawn and report your findings.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
http://www.panearth.org/
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.
-President Barack H. Obama, (quoting former President Abraham Lincoln)
Truth is not only violated by falsehood;
it may be equally outraged by silence.
-Henri-Frederic Amiel
Speak out as if you were a million voices.
It is silence that kills the world.
-St. Catherine of Siena, 1347-1380
I would like to thank Steve Salmony for his contributions to this discussion about population and for calling attention to the work of Hopfenberg and Pimentel, among others. I would also like to thank the rest of you who contributed. Your numbers at least suggest that many are interested in population and its effect on Earth, which, despite a few comments about outer space above, is the only home humans have and probably will have.
GAIA was mentioned, though feelings about the use of the term are mixed, especially among scientists. However, James Lovelock is a bright guy and worth listening to. In his latest book, The Vanishing Face of GAIA, he wrote, correctly in my humble view, that "Like it or not, we are the problem--and as a part of the Earth system, not as something separate from and above it. When world leaders ask us to follow them to the inviting green pastures ahead, they should first check that it really is grass on solid ground and not moss covering a quagmire."
For those who suggested that it is OK for Americans to consume 25% of the world's energy resources even though we are less than 5% of the population, I would suggest that that can't go on and that we pay a higher price all the time for our belief that it can. A good look at where this might lead, especially as the BRIC countries and others join in increasing their energy consumption, is Michael Klare's book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet."
For those who have retained their belief in unfettered free markets as the solution to everything, despite so much evidence to the contrary, I can only say I'm sorry that your blinders work so well, but the Republicans will appreciate your support. At the end of his book, IOU, John Lanchester provided a significant conclusion: "In a world running out of resources, the most important ethical, political, and ecological idea can be summed up in one simple word: 'enough.'"
Everyone needs to learn about ecology as opposed to economics and learn that the economic system is embedded within the natural system, not vice versa. Economists are notorious for their "faith" in economic theology, exemplified a few years back by Larry Summers, who claimed that Earth's carrying capacity for humans was unlimited. I guess that helped him land his current job in the Whitehouse! All economics programs in our universities should require at least one ecology class--there is a real world out there, one which humans are drastically altering as we grow ever more numerous and affluent.
Finally, several people mentioned eminent ecologist Garrett Hardin. Below are some words from him that speak succinctly to where we are versus where we could and should be.
"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."
If anyone would like a copy of the California Geographer article mentioned by Steve Salmony, just ask Gail.
glp, aka Gary Peters
Whenever a scientist like Gary Peters openly expresses his fidelity to science and faith in humankind, does he not immediately become a watchman both of the night and Galileo's peaceful rest?
This is a copy of the California Geographer article. It is very good.
Copy of The Geographer's Viewpoint by Gary Peters, published by The California Geographer in 2009
Human history, abbreviated
Praise the Easter Bunny! (bunny, yay!)
Two plus two equals five! (five, yay!)
Our neighbors are unbelievers (unbelievers, boo!)
So let's kill them! (kill, yay!)
And steal their stuff! (stuff, yay!)
And rape their women! (women, yay!)
(from a dream last night)
Were you reading Yusuf Al-Qaradwi or "The Reliance of the Traveller" before bed?
This essay by Joe Bagent touches on all the issues of this thread:
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/06/live-from-planet-norte.html#more
I looked at my Report to the Club of Rome graphs on population.
If we don't mess with Business as Usual we are at the peak of a nice gentle down slope.
If we double our resource base then that is not BAU and pollution produces a steep decline. This is undesirable.
Long live BAU.
The idea that both human per-capita resource consumption AND population expansion literally never need to be limited? This is just childish IMHO.
This is the real world. Eating chocolate cake 3x/day is bad for our bodies whether we like it or not. Having unprotected sex gets women pregnant whether we like it or not. The bills come every month whether we want them to or not.
The exhaustion of the planet's resources is coming whether we like it or not. Please, everyone out there who holds this ludicrous opinion, I beg you to grow up. We may not all agree on what specific changes should be made just yet but we need to discuss this problem like adults.
Limited by who?
Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
It seems as though we are at a bifurcation point.
Or is this an artifact?
We are always at a bifurcation point.
The different furcations are based on different assumptions about future trends.
After studying the issue a little, the mainstream view on America's population level is governed by two rules of thumb:
(1) American population growth is always good. America's population must never stop growing. Her economy and very way of life require perpetual population growth.
(2) America is not overpopulated now. America can never become overpopulated. It is absurd to think that America will ever be overpopulated (foreign countries might become overpopulated but never America).
And in the mainstream view, *both* of these rules are correct, at the same time.
America is no worse than any other nation on that front IMHO.
I don't see any big rushes to willingly limit population growth anywhere else. I see China, whose reasons are not exactly altruistic anyway, and I see a lot of genocide around the world. Nobody else.
The USA's native population growth is tipping over just like in most other westerized nations. It's mainly the USA's recent immigrant population that makes the whole nation's numbers continue to explode. And just talk to the average American today about how they feel over the continually growing immigrant population. They're generally not happy about it in the slightest. The situation is happening purely for corporate interest. The vast majority of the "native" USA population wanted the borders closed & immigration controlled 30 years ago. The average american is only in favor of moderate controlled growth, and that's not irrational in light of the realtively uncrowded USA countryside compared to the rest of the world.
As for economics, I don't see anyone else willingly limiting their own economic growth for altruistic reasons either. Show me a country more willing to compromise for the planet's good than the USA, and I'll probably show you a population that suffers less of a lifestyle loss from doing so.
"The situation is happening purely for corporate interest."
The public is more ignorant about how business as usual is maintained than corporations. Indirectly, corporations act on the public's behalf by protecting cheap labor which enables them to continue to provide cheap goods and services that the public now expects.
Would the public agree to pay twice as much or more for hand-picked produce? Would enough legal americans be willing to do that job at a low enough wage not to incur produce inflation? What about yard work or construction?
I'm not defending the status quo at all. I just don't like the knee-jerk fingerpointing towards TPTB when it takes two to tango.
Whether you're talking illegal immigration, outsourcing, globalization, risky deep-sea drilling, Joe Public is an active participation in perpetuating it. They won't give up the benefits while they whine about the drawbacks. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
Cheap labor = low productivity. You cannot build a high standard of living on those things. This leads to either a permanent underclass or a general descent as the middle class disappears, with grinding poverty as the rule. This is obscene if there is any alternative. If the rich like their cheap pool boys and nannies so much, let them live in low-wage countries and leave the USA alone.
Cheap goods and services can co-exist with high wages if productivity is high, but to get high productivity there has to be sufficient return on capital to promote investment. Importing cheap labor halts this process, and the time lost is lost permanently.
You have either a gross ignorance of agriculture, or a very selective blindness. Tractors can now navigate fields of row crops on GPS guidance with almost no human interaction. This stuff gets better every year. There is no reason that machines with delicate manipulators can't see oranges and lettuce, pick them and box them. Robots in meat-packing plants could literally use X-ray vision to see into carcasses and make more precise cuts than any human, faster and without contamination.
Most of Australia's wine industry uses mechanical pickers. The USA uses mostly illegal immigrant labor. There's one more reason to buy Yellow Tail instead of Gallo.
Was there something wrong when neighborhood teenagers mowed lawns? If that won't fly any more, do a search for "robotic lawnmower" and tell me we need to import people for that. And what's so special about construction? It's stuck in a pre-industrial model, with almost all work performed on-site. Most construction work can be performed in factories, with only final assembly at the destination. Changing methods would yield far better energy efficiency as well. If anything, dependence on cheap labor has prevented us from making changes we desperately need to make. We would have made them 20 years ago, but illegal labor was cheap and nobody was counting the cost of wasted energy over a building's lifetime.
The public has been fed up with excessive immigration for years; it's TPTB which have done their best to block SB 1070 in Arizona, Proposition 187 in California, and all the other measures to put the brakes on that runaway train.
IMHO blaming the current US "native" population for taking advantage of cheap immigrant labor & outsourcing is not very fair. With all due respect I would say it borders on being intellectually dishonest. The current situation is so far down this road that the public literally has no choice. It's sort of like locking a little boy inside a candy shop without any other food or water for a week, and then blaming him for living off a diet of solid candy while he was in there.
The US public already KNOWS that it is too tempting to allow illegal immigrants & cheap outsourced products onto the shelves and then just expect patriotism to prevent them from selling. The public KNOWS that the only way to prevent the end result they do not want (out of work Americans) is to prevent these practices from happening in the first place. So the public never wanted the massive outsourcing & immigration to be this commonplace at all. But the public's wishes have been overruled by TPTB plain and simple. It's been going on for decades.
I don't get it
What is wrong with this? Seems perfectly fine with me!
If you think that:
is perfectly fine, then consider that a finite planet with finite resources can not support an infinite number of people. Harford is referring to population growth continuing for 1 million years. Picking a tiny growth rate of even .001% / year results in a massive population after 1 million years:
(6.7 billion people)(1.00001)1 million years = 1.48 x 1014 people.
If the growth rate is a trivial .1% / year, after 1 million years, there would be more people than atoms in the universe. That is clearly an absurdity. Any population growth rate that would have a significant economic impact would result in the collapse of the human population in much less than 1 million years.
As for the rest, a small population means fewer workers to produce goods and services and fewer people to consume those goods and services. All three scenarios, growth, steady state and decline, result in the same balance. The statement is meaningless as a support for growth.
I want whatever he is on.
So you want to stop population growth? Well if it helps any I agree with you, but you might encounter a few problems for the following reasons:
1. Almost EVERY repeat EVERY business in the WORLD DEPENDS ON GROWTH!
2. Almost all business on Earth know this.
3. So do most of the governments!
Now there are a few people on Earth who understand that there is such a as overconsumption of course none of them live in the USA. If they do they didn't have any kids so they could have 2 cars.
Just try to envision a world were the population was stable for about 3 milliseconds. Envision a stock market with 1% growth a decade! Envision politicans that never wanted to be reelected! (Because the easiest way to stay in power is to GROW THE ECONOMY witness our present leader and every news story about him) Envision way less crime, probably no wars, and longer life spans! That would make for fewer cops and lawyers, no military, and fewer doctors (because everyone would have enough food water etc.) assuming of course that the population was only about 4 billion.
Which of course would make the economy go south even more, and all we would have to do to fix it would be have more babies! Now do you see the problem?
P.S. do you have a job that DOES NOT DEPEND on growth? I don't. Even the Oil Drum depends on growth! (see growth isn't always a bad thing) Would you be willing to stay at your salary this moment till you retire? (or your 1974 salary when the population was 4 billion)
Peak Oil will probably fix this, however Peak Oil doesn't have to be reelected. Of course peak oil doesn't have to be believed as the cause of the recession, recessions are the best birth control known to all animals.
To do it without Peak Oil, the world would probably have to adopt the government of China, oh darn they seem to be growing anyway!
No, all three statements are simply wrong. Many countries have declining population levels, including G8 members Italy and Japan. Also, very many businesses keep being profitable even in the face of recessions. Repeat after me: Business and capitalism does not depend on growth!
No problem with this (except there can never be enough doctors)!
No and no!
For developed nations and temporarily. The birth rates in Africa would drop faster with economic growth.
B/c their population pyramid is becoming more like a column, not because its base keep increasing! The same is true for most of the world. The population is stabilizing as we speak.
yeah but they are more than compensated by growth in other countries. our current world order has us all economically linked. you need to look at the system as a whole. Mass Immigration makes the discussion of birthrates in western countries somewhat meaningless.
Our current World Economic system is addicted to Growth, dependant on growth and only works in an environment of growth. It can survive short periods of recession and some companies can even increase profitability in recessions. but If the GDP of any 1st world country were to slowly decline for 10 years, the system would completely collapse. the stock market won't function for start and our whole debt based system would Collapse. how does a home loan work when the house is expected to decrease in value for the foreseeable future? there are economic systems that could function in a steady state or declining environment but Our current world system does not.
aslong as economic system continues to prompt encourage and require growth, I fear population control is a losing battle.
In the system as a whole, population growth for the last two decades have been sub-linear. Birth rates have dropped all over the world, not just in the western world.
You make this claim and others, but you don't prove them. Actually, that capitalism requires growth is a fallacy! Robert Solow (an expert on growth if there ever was one), for instance, said that "There is no reason at all why capitalism could not survive without slow or even no growth.".
I'd like to remind you that much of Europe has 25% less GDP/capita than the US, but work 25% less and pollute 25% less and use 50% less energy. There is no reason why the US couldn't get to that state and there is no reason Europe couldn't be even more laid back.
Your shallow objections aren't valid. The stock market functions in recessions. Home loans work as before, even though lending patterns may shift a bit, and the house wouldn't necessarily be worth less.
I hope and pray you are correct on all counts. However, before I agree with all your wonderful news, I have one request.
You might have to take a little of your free time to do it or maybe not. I suppose it depends on where you live and when the hearings are. In Chicago it is called Department of Zoning & Land Use Planning, it is actually the local GROWTH council. Go to any of their hearings, sign up to speak. Tell them what you have told me, and watch their reaction.
Of course you only have to do this if you don't know that you will be met will silent disgust, and the hearing will proceed as if you had said nothing.
You could do the same thing in China and be met with the same reaction. People very rarely accept no development, they feel they cannot afford to. It is true you may have neighbors of the development thinking you are the greatest person in the world, but the development will be approved anyway.
Hope for the best, but Plan for the worse.
Oh I know the first words you will want to type are BUT THIS IS ECONOMIC GROWTH NOT POPULATION GROWTH, well sorry about that. You don't build a business unless you have customers for it, This is not 'Field of Dreams'. Would you rather be a salesman in New York or Mayberry? Well New York has the most customers.......
I know of exactly one town that is actively trying to stop population growth. They stopped building sewer lines, they are a small town, they can get away with it, no large city has ever even dared to try this, that I know of.
How about it, has anyone heard of a large city saying it wants to stop growth? Where is it and how can I move there....Oh yeah no growth....
When a guy wants to open a restaurant, he'll first do a business plan to calculate whether the investment is viable. Do you think he includes the city's population growth in his calculations? Probably not, if the influx isn't more than 10% per year or something.
Japan, Germany, Estonia, Italy have declining populations. Do you think investments have stopped? Has economic growth stopped? Has capitalism stopped working? I think not.
Of course every nation and city wants economic growth. Some also want population growth. But that doesn't mean capitalism won't work at zero or negative growth!
Using that logic people would open truck stops on highways that were closed.
You fail to mention that the fewer the customers the smaller the business. Your person opening a business HAS to guess what his/her customer base is. If she/he doesn't you can bet the bank that is loaning the money will.
How many businesses have you started anyway? I have tried to start 2 and GUESS WHAT they died from lack of CUSTOMERS!
Why do fast food joints stay open all night? Larger possible customer base.
Why do hardware chains close down that are making money? Well they aren't making AS MUCH money as their sisters in bigger towns.
Show me a shareholder that will invest in a company that has a declining customer base.
Japan, Germany, Estonia, Italy? Why leave out RUSSIA?
Russia not doing to well is it?
Population growth rate, Russia -0.10562% annual change - 2008 Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators
Population growth rate, Japan -0.05226% annual change - 2008
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators
Russia is shrinking twice as fast as Japan so it's economy (using your logic) should be twice as good right?
I have made a number of factually true statements. The "logic" is yours, and it is badly flawed, as it reach absurd conclusions from my valid premises. Sorry, but you should pay more attention instead of drawing wild conclusions.
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.
-President Barack H. Obama, (quoting former President Abraham Lincoln)
Truth is not only violated by falsehood;
it may be equally outraged by silence.
-Henri-Frederic Amiel
Speak out as if you were a million voices.
It is silence that kills the world.
-St. Catherine of Siena, 1347-1380
For all members of the human community who recognize the threat posed to humanity and life as we know it by the unbridled growth of absolute global human population numbers in our time, there has been no more dangerous or pernicious a policy promulgated in the past twenty-five years than the GLOBAL GAG RULE. Please recall that this gag rule was formally instituted and became effective in the mid-1980s under President Ronald Reagan. It was rescinded by President Bill Clinton and immediately reinstituted by President George W. Bush on his first day in office in 2001. Recently, President Barack Obama overturned President Bush's ruling. When the Global Gag Rule was in effect, no funding was provided to organizations that performed, discussed, or referred a client to an abortion provider. Organizations were also prohibited from lobbying for increased abortion rights in their respective countries. If they refused to comply with these stipulations, their funds were revoked, usually resulting in closed clinics (with a tip of the hat to the Population Connection).
That such a global gag rule is a form of coercion which limited freedom of speech and choice was disregarded.
Now there appears to be yet another global gag rule that issues from the elective mutism of experts within the ranks of the brightest, the best and the most knowledgeable in the communities of science of the potentially profound implications of the human overpopulation of Earth. These experts have access to the best available scientific evidence of human population dynamics and human overpopulation but are consciously refusing to assume their responsibilities and perform their duties to science by examining certain scientific research and reporting findings.
This is precisely why the open expression of intellectual honesty and moral courage by Gary Peters, Gail Tverberg and Fred Magyar is so vital. Despite pressures to follow those who have been engaged in a conspiracy of silence with regard to scientific evidence of human population dynamics, these individuals have stepped up and spoken out. The research of David Pimentel and Russell Hopfenberg, in particular, needs to be rigorously scrutinized rather than denied. Can anyone even imagine a way for human beings to address and overcome human-induced challenges if the best available, relevant science is not so much as acknowledged? If the science is somehow fatally flawed, so be it. We need to know that. On the other hand if extant evidence of human population dynamics extends, however slightly and tentatively, our knowledge of the "placement" of humankind within the natural order of living things and deepens our understanding of the way the world we inhabit actually works, then we can choose to be guided by that knowledge in responding ably to any human-forced challenge rather than continue down a "primrose path" toward the precipitation of some unimaginable sort of colossal ecological wreckage.
Thanks to everyone who is participating in this discussion. Perhaps necessary change toward sustainability, and away from what could fairly soon become patently unsustainable, is in the offing.
Discussion Questions
1. Are there things we can do to get the population issue more into public discussion?
---------- Probably, but there's little point. The population problem will take care of itself.
2. Are there other approaches to limiting population that might be more salable?
--------- Sure there are. Absolutely not a snowball's chance in hell that any will ever be implemented. We can't even agree internationally on banking regulations, whaling & fisheries, or trade & tariffs, yet we're gonna get it together & tell each other how many kids we can have? Pigs in flight will have broken the sound barrier before that ever happens.
3. If Social Security is not sustainable, having fewer children will increase the likelihood that older adults will have no way of taking care of themselves. How does one deal with this issue?
--------- Social Security? In 35 years it won't even be a memory. As for the rest of the "issue", it will be dealt with by us older adults dying sooner.
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 share an understanding of the global predicament looming ominously before humanity. But, it does appear to me that if people with knowledge lose faith in God's gift of science by denying its presence and remaining electively mute while selfish, shortsighted leaders go forward unsustainably on the basis of specious, preternatural thinking, then the human community has no chance whatever of responding ably (ie, in sustainable ways) to the human-induced challenges before all of us.
I am trying to encourage the lighting of candles because the darkness enveloping the "primrose path" many too many so-called leaders are so adamantly advocating and recklessly pursuing is anathema to me.
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-induced global challenges that appear, at least to me, to be looming before humankind in our time, 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.