Re: [asa] A Sustainable Future and Exponential growth

Ken said: Our current food and economic systems are being pushed to their
limits to provide adequate food materials for 6.5 billion people.

I respond: I think you're fundamentally wrong on this, Ken. We produce
more than enough food to feed the world right now. In the U.S. alone,
we *throw
away* about 96 billion pounds of food each year (see:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/18/us-wastes-27-of-food.html) And
regulated market economies are not zero sum games -- more demand results in
more supply which produces more jobs, though things like negative
externalites and social safety nets have to be carefully regulated.

The basic problem is not the technological / physical capabilities re: food
production, nor is it that there are too many people to sustain markets (the
latter is basically impossible). For the most part, the problems are
political, sociological, and not to put too fine a point on it, sinful.
Totalitarian governments don't free people up to become productive; corrupt
officials steal aid; and some cultural/social/religious structures are
oppressive. Mitigate those problems, and many of the other problems will
start to resolve.

As to Dave S.'s point concerning fresh water -- I'd submit that the core
problem here also is not one of capacity. Through World Vision, for about
$1000, you can have a well dug in a third world villiage that will solve
fresh water problems for a hundred people. Where there are genuine problems
with access to wells, they usually could be solved technologically if the
social and political situation would permit it.

None of this is to say that pollution and global warming aren't real
problems that could indeed impact capacity seriously. But the solution to
such problems is *not *population control.

(And as to Dave S.'s skepticism about colonies on Mercury -- well, sure, but
Dave W. was talking a billion years from now. My guess is that if humans
are around in our present creation then, we'll be well beyond this solar
system).

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 2:43 PM, Kenneth Piers <pier@calvin.edu> wrote:
> David Opderbeck wrote:
> >Ken, it seems to me that the Smail article just rehashes the Malthusian
> fallacy that technology must remain static while population grows.  For
> example, Smail says this:  /"Clearly, assertions that the Earth might be
> able
> to support a population of 10 to 15 billion people for an indefinite period
> of
> time at a standard of living superior to the present are not only cruelly
> misleading but almost certainly false." /  Why is this so clear and
> certain?
> Smail doesn't say.  (Rhetorically, whenever someone uses the words
> "clearly"
> and "certainly" in the same sentence, it's likely that the actual evidence
> is
> neither clear nor certain).
> It's quite possible that agricultural biotechnology will indeed enable us
> to
> feed 10 to 15 billion people indefinitely; it's also quite possible that
> communications technology will facilitate a global economy in which that
> many
> people; and it's also quite possible that new technology will substantially
> change the "peak energy" curve.  The market demand for all this will
> continue
> to grow (with population growth), and market demand tends to drive
> technological progress.  At the very least, it seems impossible to say what
> is
> "clear" or "certain" to be the case 50, 100 or 150 years from now
> technologically.  Moreover, technological progress and diffusion tends to
> result in a reduction in average birth rates, as people move from
> traditional
> agricultural societies into more advanced technological ones.<
>
> REPLY: I have read a lot of technological optimism and other arguments that
> essentially declare that we have nothing to worry about - just keep on
> keeping
> on, by citing the Malthusian fallacy. However I would like to suggest that
> we
> face a unique period in human history. It seems very likely to me that the
> old
> Malthusian fallacy is true again:
> 1.       All technology depends on some source of primary energy. Nearly
> 90% of
> the world's economy is powered by fossil fuels; almost 40% by oil, another
> 50%
> by coal and natural gas. There is now significant evidence that the world's
> capacity to produce oil is near its peak, with no scalable substitute in
> sight
> for liquid fuels (google ASPO or The Oil Drum).
> 2.      A peak in liquid fuel production will also likely mean a peak in
> the
> world's ability to produce food, unless we can convert to a much more labor
> intensive regionalized agricultural system before we encounter seriously
> declining supplies of oil.
> 3.      The human population with its current industrial culture is now
> large
> enough that its waste products have the capacity to affect global systems
> (consider stratospheric ozone and climate). At current growth rates we will
> add
> 50% more people than we currently have on the planet within 50 years. It
> seems
> highly probable that a human population of this magnitude will almost
> certainly
> will overwhelm many of the natural support systems upon which it depends.
> 4.      Our current food and economic systems are being pushed to their
> limits
> to provide adequate food materials for 6.5 billion people. Much needed
> economic
> development in the world's most populous nations adds a burden to food
> production capacities as their diet shift more toward that practiced in the
> developed nations of the world, a catch-22 that is not easy to evade.
> 5.      Climate change is likely to impact overall food and water resources
> negatively even as there is an ever-growing demand for such services
> 6.      Imagine if just China were to achieve a standard of consumption
> equal
> to that of the USA today. That would mean that the annual use of oil in
> China
> would have to grow to 85 million bpd, equal to the entire current global
> output
> of oil today. Is this even remotely likely?
> 7.      The only renewable and primary energy resource that scales to the
> needs
> of human culture is solar energy in its various manifestations. Ultimately
> human society will need to transition to a solar energy base - the same
> energy
> base that powered civilization prior the (brief) age of fossil fuels which
> gave
> rise to the global industrial empire. But a solar energy system provides
> electrical energy, not liquid fuels, another reason why we face a unique
> period
> in human history.
> 8.      None of us humans knows when Christ will return. Using the argument
> of
> the imminent return of Christ as a justification to keep on doing what we
> are
> doing, I regard as both bad theology and a shirking of our human
> responsibility
> to be good stewards of creation.
> 9.      Part of being good stewards of God's creation means that we should
> curtail human numbers at a level that allows life with dignity for all
> humans
> and that preserves the possibility for the development of other creaturely
> life
> forms in a healthy manner as well.
> 10.     It is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are succeeding in
> neither of
> these challenges to stewardly living today.
>
>
>
> Ken Piers
>
> "We are by nature creatures of faith, as perhaps all creatures are; we live
> by
> counting on things that cannot be proved. As creatures of faith, we must
> choose
> either to be religious or superstitious, to believe in things that cannot
> be
> proved or to believe in things that can be disproved."
> Wendell Berry
>
-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
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