In his book, The State of Humanity, it seems Julian Simon did an effective job of debunking the hippie dippie 60's era theory of the population bomb (i.e. the excuse for many current and desired Socialist/fascist policies). It's worth a read, even if you don't agree with all of it. Does a good job of demonstrating that life is better today for the entire globe than in the history of man (income, state of poverty, life span/generalhealth, productivity, wealth, food production, etc.). I agree with it even though I feel that as a global society we stand with a glass chin, ready to be toppled back to the stone ages at any time.
The problem I have with Julian Simon types is the same one I have with all economists…they just blithely assume energy resources as to infinity.
Worse, when economists are right, often accidentally, they are quite smug and when they are wrong,as in 2008, they claim nobody could have seen it coming, or that it wasn't a problem with their models but some other thing…
…what I'm saying is I find their models to be woefully incomplete but rather than admit that, they gloat with success and when they are off target they retreat into uniform wrongness. Instead of good, debatable models, they have dogma and they have ego. Same as any ivory-tower sandbox.
To thoroughly cut standard economics down to size I highly recommend The Origin of Wealth by Erik Beinhocker (sp?). Fantastic read. I gathered much from it.
At any rate, understanding the role of energy is the most important thing, and most economists just don't.
I would suggest that the most obvious place to start would be to re-invigorate the biosphere and go back to creating what Mother Nature started at the beginning of her sojourn into the future. Yes, I agree that our species will, most likely, be one of the many in the upcoming extinction. But, is that any reason to forget the basic tenets that have this planet in, currently, the wonderful place it is? Working hard to renew it back to it's former glory is going to be an incremental task, at best. As Mr. Ehrlich suggests, we need to start thinking outside the "economic box" and return to basics. Derek Muller, of Veritasium (Youtube) is an example of critical thinking that addresses our predicament. Maybe a potential guest for a PP interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZb2_vcNTg
So Billy Gates, the white man from America, is going to step into the breach of the loss of the Colonials in Africa? In Nigeria, of all places. The Nigerians have got a reputation amongst Africans as being superlative hustlers. They are wide awake. So let us dry our eyes
Do you know how the Nigerians are going to view his attempts?
- He has lots of money
- So whitey wants us to have less babies? Eyeroll. Does he think we are morons? However,
- He has lots of money, so,
- Lets bob and nod and agree with everything he has to say because
- He has lots of money.
The Chinese spring to mind. But they are too shrewd to touch Africa.
I didn't know Mr. Ehrlich was an economist … ba dum ching
What is the long term carrying capacity of the US?
I ask this because I got a shocking answer for the same question I posed about the UK in another forum. The long term carrying capacity of the UK is about the same as it was in 1820 before the corn laws were repealed; 20 million people. After that date we started to import corn from abroad and the population started to overshoot. Now we import about a third of our food and the remaining two thirds that we do produce locally ourselves is heavily dependent in fossil fuel inputs. The UK's current population is 63 million and is rising at an alarming rate.
Sometime in the future the UK will be forced to reduce its population from 63+ million to 20 million and nobody is willing to talk about the issue. The assumption is that fossil fuels will not run out in our lifetime. How wrong can you be? How much oil will there be available on export market in 30 years? Probably none!
For me that was shocking.
Ed
Most likely if WW3 doesn't do the job a plague will. Hospitals are hiding the fact that virulent pathogens are breeding in their facilities with no way to control them due to dumb workers with bad hygiene and laziness.
If anything has pushed exponential population growth, it is fiat money, central banking, and crony politics (i.e. big government) grooming voters with transfer payments.
The UK's current population is 63 million and is rising at an alarming rate.Rat Trap baited with free goodies.
Tere's always free cheddar in the mouse trap. It's a deal baby, it's a deal.Tom Waites. (The rest of the lyrics are good too. Real poetry)
[quote=KugsCheese]
If anything has pushed exponential population growth, it is fiat money, central banking, and crony politics (i.e. big government) grooming voters with transfer payments.
[/quote]
Hmmmm…that's not what the data says. For example, exponential population growth really got going consistently in England (data sources for table on the right here) in the mid 1700's when - far from having either fiat money or entitlement programs - the pound sterling was hard money and servants were executed for stealing a silver spoon from their lords, and sent to the prison colony of Australia for stealing a pound of butter, according to The Fatal Shore, and other sources.
What was happening at that time, was the rapidly expanding exploitation of coal in Britain. It's no accident that the countries where population expanded first, such as the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, the US, and (a little later) Germany and France, were the places that figured out how to exploit fossil fuels first.
The argument that exponential growth and waste comes primarily from government policies puts too much emphasis on human behavior and not enough on emphasis on resources. Culture matters, of course, but it seems that it matters much less than resources when it comes to population growth, at least in the early stages of the demographic transition model - a model that is in danger of losing its relevance, if the scarier dynamics of the thing (i.e. the limits to growth model) take over.
This image of England's & Wale's energy use compared to Italy's seems to be an important part of the story. Economic historian Tony Wrigley has a lot of good data on this dynamic. Maybe the story of the expansion of civilization under industrial capitalism depends less on Smith's invisible hand and more on ancient sunlight than contemporary free market fundamentalists acknowledge.
The sun, the sky, the clouds, the air. The trees, the streams, the lakes. The people, especially people. Everything feels off.
The mindset dictates how we perceive things; our antennas are tuned to the frequencies we are 'willing' to listen to. Completely neutral/ impartial perception is almost impossible. For me the sun, the air, the wind that blows through the trees, the sunset still feel good, the fresh homemade raspberry jam still tastes fabulously good. And even the people in our village seem to be doing quite well. While there are many (virtual) clouds forming on the horizon, I'm still enjoying the good moments we're granted.
What is definitely 'off' though is global man-made elements, I'm weary of checking the news, feeling that the bottom is slowly dropping out of many of the 'larger' systems. Isn't it the ultimate joke (for lack of a better word) that the man-made systems that many think best stood the test of times, democracy and capitalism, will lead to the unwinding of our global society and regional collapse of ecosystems (I really hope not to a global collapse of ecosystems). I think failure is baked into democracy and capitalism as these systems are unable to cope with real crisis and a finite world. In the end, physical/ chemical laws (the real ones) and evolution (the way organisms react to physical/ chemical laws and other organisms) are the only systems that really stood the test of time, all the rest is fleeting noise (there may be other 'laws' that count that we're unaware of (Arthur?)).
It feels like we're drifting into a thunderstorm at sea in a rickety ship with 5 captains on the helm bickering that one got three eggs while the others only got two, unaware of the surroundings or the crew who are fighting over the breadcrumbs that are left in the hold. Current systems lack leadership, responsibility and accountability, intelligence, common sense, perspective and overview, courage, humility, empathy, honesty… We're not in the best of shape to weather this perfect storm that is coming…
In my earlier comment I stated that the long term carrying capacity of the UK is about 20 million people (the same as in 1820). On further research, the true figure is less than that because the 20 million figure included Ireland. In 1820, Ireland had over 7 million people and was in deep overshoot. Ireland's population peaked at 8 million shortly after only to crash to only 4 million by 1935. Immigration and famine where the mechanism by which this was achieved, 1 million died from the potato famine between 1845 and 1850 alone.
In the past, peoples of the world could migrate to overcome their local overshoot conditions, not something that can be easily achieved in the present day. Therefore in our race to be the last man standing, we will also have to build large fences around us to keep the hungry people away!
Do you remember looking back on your grandparents or great-grandparents with the admiration of what they used to be able to accomplish without all the luxuries of modern-day life? How clever and resourceful they were to accomplish what they did without knowing what we know now. When I daydream about the future, I picture my grandchildren and great-grandchildren looking back at my generation with an equal sense of admiration, but instead it will be an admiration of what we were able to accomplish without the knowledge or basic skills needed to do things with our own hands. They'll say, "That's so amazing that grandpa was so successful in life even though he didn't know how to grow simple crops or fix his own home. How clever and resourceful he must have been to have accomplished so much without even knowing what we know now."
So what happens in between? Unfortunately I think the only thing that causes humanity to change direction en masse is a little thing called necessity. In my daydreams of the future I picture stories of how oil had become too expensive for the average person or business to buy, how nations went bankrupt and great fortunes were lost. But out of it came a re-learning of skills lost to the generations on how to get by without those luxuries once taken for granted - not because they wanted to, but because they had to. The adults of the transition suffered the most but the children growing up in it knew only that, and as such they learned and adapted to that new life. There was a great contraction in population and much suffering along the way, but like an inflated stock market the correction returned us to a more sustainable mean.
Anyways, that's my "optimism out of pessimism" view. My purely pessimistic view is that some cataclysmic chain reaction of mass extinction happens first, in which case all bets are off!
Keep learning, keep informing others, maybe just maybe we can force that change ahead of schedule.
Paul could stand to do himself a service and move beyond the left/right paradigm. If he truly believes Team Blue is the answer, he's lost a good chunk of credibility in my eyes.
Does anything seriously still think there is a fundamental difference between the D's and the R's? Look at the "choices" been presented to you. A Clinton, a Bush, or Donald Trump?!?
D's and R's are not going to address the predicaments we face. They were bought and paid for long ago by the same handlers.
So that leaves people like us mostly.
Better not to get too distracted by the left/right circus. Other than than he's spot on.
In 1776 90% of the population was involved in agricultural work. Even if there was a total commercial collapse, all supply chains at full stop, the vast majority of people had simply to show up at work on Monday morning and there would be food. There might be shortages of this and that, here and there, but for the most part every one could eat.
In 1880 48% of the population was involved in agriculture and modern petrochemical agriculture hadn't been invented yet. There was an explosion of westward migration going on. Essentially the population of North America was already in overshoot at 1/6 todays population.
Today 2.6% of the population is involved in agriculture. Of that number, most are using petroleum intensive techniques. The tools, technical knowledge, draft animals and soils that would be needed to reestablish a "sustainable" 1880's agricultural system that might feed 15% of todays population are in very short supply.
This is one of the things that I have a very difficult time wrapping my head around. A little back of the envelope arithmetic would seem to suggest that it is possible that the population of North America could drop back to pre Columbian levels within a matter of years.
Good for the biosphere, bad for retirement plans.
John G.
1700's style agriculture should be kept in the quiver of human knowledge, the culturecide of convienience and petro dense energy source scewed our collective reality.
a picture of Kelsey pulling a stone boat and "keeping the quiver full"
Aloha!
From a successful politician, the Governor of a state, remarked that he was terrified over the outlook for democratic institutions in this country. He commented, "In these days we have to make promises that we know we can't carry out. We have to promise the old people pensions that would bankrupt the state if we paid them. We have to promise higher salaries to the school teachers, higher wages to the working people, higher prices to the farmers and bigger allotments of public funds from the federal government. I am ashamed of what I have done, but I wanted to win!" - HJ Haskell, 1939
It's called "human nature" and it is mostly an affliction of those who are human by nature …
I was going to engage but I am going to spend my time instead sequestering more carbon on my land. I would love to know how many trees everyone planted this year. I planted 125. I would rather do that than spend time discussing infanticide… or abortion for that matter… since life begins at conception (I am an atheist! Embryology tells me so!).
So keep your population control debates away from me and and MY KIDS!
The default (status quo) population "control" mechanisms for any species within an ecological system are the limits set by Mother Nature. Right now, we are in overshoot. The default process by which this overshoot will be corrected will also be delineated by Mother Nature.
No matter what way you look at it there ain't no way around that particular mountain, folks. Not unless L4 and L5 pan out.
But thanks for playing…