It looks as though you are implying that we humans have the capability of (and indeed are well on the way to) devising a global economy in which we need to no longer be reliant on natural processes including energy and resources. In other words, we have the capability of completely ‘managing nature’. This is certainly the logical conclusion to his apparent belief that there is no limit to Man’s ingenuity.
Historical examples are used to support this view – so that history is regarded as a reliable predictor of the future. Malthus’ (and even the Club of Rome’s) limits to growth is portrayed as being just so wrong. But haven’t there been great qualitative changes in the recent past? Our flirtation with fossil fuels and the classical economic model with its support for unchecked and continuous growth seems to be creaking at the seams. There is now a large gathering of scientific opinion that cries out for us to consider the environment as a significant, nay fundamental, factor in our economic thinking.
Indeed, there is a growing plea for the economy to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. I understand that eco-economists are not favoured species by conventional economists but at least they do seem to be prepared to expand their discipline to meet the comparatively new discoveries of related sciences (such as ecology). Does this not constitute progress in science?
Hence, can’t the economists devise and defend a new economic theory that accommodates itself to the basic conditions of life as articulated by the life sciences (e.g., ecosystemic stability and population limits) and the physical sciences?.
I don’t believe that to place the environment before the (traditional) economy need be misanthropic per se: it is just that perhaps we need to move away from the “Man is the Centre of the Universe’ cult to one that embraces a certain humility in our interaction with the environment – of which we are indeed a part. To this I would add that it just might be possible that management of the natural order which created and nurtured our species, might be forever beyond our capabilities.

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Zen Replied:

That doesn’t answer my question, or perhaps it implicitly agrees?

just because growth had its benefits when it took us from 100000 to 1000000000 doesn’t mean that growth will be good when it takes us from 6.5 billion to 9.5 billion.

What would have been your formula for selecting the right 1 or 2 billion?

who said there’d be any selection involved? i’d be happy with me & 999999999 others, but if i wasn’t one of the billion i’d scarcely be unhappy with that, would i?

DougT Says:
June 20th, 2008 at 1:09 pm

But, the higher the intelegence of a person, the more they realise how little thay actually know.

i’m so glad to hear you say that! i’d always thought the gradual loss of my reassuring certainties was just another unfortunate side effect of getting older.

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So we now know that the population limitiation debate this is now an old discussion since Malthus wrote and worried about it in the late 1700’s early 1800’s. Since then economics has happily enjoyed hearing people bring up the doomsday scenario time and time again. Just like people bring up the idea that socialism will work this time, because we won’t be like everyone else who have tried it and failed.

Why does economics smile and enjoy the frantic worrying and hand wringing. Because whilst there is finite resources, the ability to use those resources more productively is only just starting. Popultionn growth has occured through productivity improvements through specialisation and new technology. Productivity provided the ability to increase farm yields (and/or increase amount of tillage per person). Higher yields reduced poverty and hunger and in turn meant more healthy babies who could live longer and happier lives.

This has only really just started on a worldwide basis in the last 50 years and you can note the massive population growth occurring.

I’m happy to argue that people in very wealthy countries e.g. US have some problems and that all not all people who are rich are happy. But everyone wants the opportunity to find out what bored, healthy life is like.

And again we can look to the Berlin Wall coming down as the example proving the higher value of capitalism as a means of social distribution than socialism.

“So is Marxism-Leninism scientific?� A: “Surely not. If it were, they would have tested it on animals first.� Old Soviet joke.

Most arguments against democracy/liberalism/capitalism are basically arguments of fear. The fear of a world that seems so random and without order, yet somehow works.

Its often the reason why socialist love trains (rather than buses). Trains can be told to go from point A to point B with the objective of arriving at a specific time. Cars however are so much more random. That randomness seems irrational, yet somehow it works in providing people with socially meaningful lives and provides such enormous productivity improvements.

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Its a myth that DDT was banned for use against mosquitos in the Third World, because it wasn’t. If anything its overuse ensure that mosquito populations evolved resistance to it and it became ineffective.

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There are a few studies that talk about footprints and energy consumption, all the kinds of challenges we will need to manage into the future, and yes, ones that we are capable of managing. No disagreement with BJ that if we don’t manage it, we’ll get a spanking. (Are we allowed to use that word now? It connotes some superior authority disciplining us for our transgressions, and the Green party has clearly indicated such a form of discipline is illegal and undeserved. Do we sue the planet for its inability to discipline us in a loving, positive way that maintains our esteem and suggests we just need to express ourselves? – but I digress.)

And so does everyone else on the thread anyway. When I talk about the indications that population growth will naturally level out, the conversation falls back into the chant of “unlimited population growth is unsustainable”. Well, yeah, I don’t know if anyone is disagreeing with that. Of course unlimited, ad infinitum population growth is ultimately destructive. Apparently more destructive than 10,000+ nuclear bombs going off all over the planet, says Asimov.

The points of contention for me is this magic 2 billion max number, and how you propose to get the population down to that number.

BJ: Luckily, I’m not a libertarian and the idea of resource levies seems to be a good one, if done at a world wide level (although I’m not sure libertarians are totally against this concept either – you just need to put it in terms of property rights for them) . On the other hand, I still think Kyoto is stupid.

Phil U: I couldn’t make much sense of your link in regards to my point. Are you saying DDT in small amounts on interior walls would not kill malaria mossies? And what part of “may have helped” means that I blame Rachel Carson for it, versus ascribing some weight to the impact she had on all thoughts of pollution, pesticides and the use of DDT. She did have an impact didn’t she?

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“..The Silent Spring take on DDT may have helped ruin a useful tool against malaria in Africa etc..”

sorry..can’t let that pile of bullsh*t/attack on rachel carson go unanswered..

i had to go to my archives..

http://whoar.co.nz/2008/who-is-responsible-for-the-attacks-on-rachel-c arsonstand-upthe-tobacco-industry/

phil(whoar.co.nz)

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Libertarians have to oppose AGW because AGW implies that there is a control for our planetary climate.

Crude, but if there IS a control then there has to be a person or organization to manage the adjustment of the control. It’s a planetary phenomena, the only way to control it at the moment (taxing the destruction of the environment) seems to slow/stop growth.

Such a person or organization is a hideous thing to a libertarian. Unlike libertarians a green understands that a balance between personal individual freedom and collective decision-making is required for human development and progress… not growth, is the important rising tide to get under all our boats. Libertarians reject the collective (in the form of government) instinctively. They often fail to recognize the collective when it appears in the form of a corporation.

The problem for the libertarian is that if they accept that there is a control then they MUST regard the development of an organization that uses it as inevitable and for many this is a step too far. Rather than accept the science, they abandon reason and promote with wild abandon, every half-baked, misunderstood, under-researched opinion that can be substituted for the science.

Not all libertarians do that. Some understand and attack the problem that they actually have which is the form that the government control will take. Not easily but where they do that I applaud and we generally find areas of agreement.

Making the poorer countries richer is the key.

Well yes… but this is not to come at the expense of the wealthiest?

That’s actually a big problem when the top 5% own everything and the rest own nothing at all. This is where green and libertarian philosophies really hit the rather stubborn wall of human behavior.

It becomes bigger if we have really started to hit “limits to growth” and people are dying in their thousands and stunted in their development in their millions, in the poorer nations of this earth.

…and inherent in AGW is that we really have started to hit those limits. Not the only limits either. AGW is only part of the damage… we are acidifying the oceans quite rapidly as well, and that could be an even larger problem than the temperature change.

The problem is that at this point, even if it is not a purely zero-sum game, it is for all practical purposes exactly like one, and there is no way in human behavior to pry the wealth from the hands of those as have it and provide for those as need things without using a far more invasive “government” than the green proposal that we tax the abuse of the environment entails.

For one thing, any analysis I’ve seen shows that if we tried to do that we’d impoverish everyone without raising the poorest out of poverty sufficiently to matter. That’s a standard argument from the right. It implies however, not only that the wealthy should keep all they’ve managed to accumulate, but the alternative, that there are too many of us for us all to have a reasonable standard of living.

I suggest that 2-3 billion on this planet is quite sufficient and if we want to grow further we build ourselves another planet or put additional collectors of energy in space to provide useful concentrations of energy to support our surplus.

Suppose the “thermostat” became instead of control of greenhouse emissions, some mirrors to increase apparent global albedo? There’s still a government issue… but the great god of growth is not offended so we destroy the ecology of the ocean instead and wind up killing ourselves ANYWAY.

The idea that there are no limits to growth when we cannot escape the gravity well, is anathema to anyone with a firm grounding in the hard sciences. I tend to become rather derisive when people appeal to our innovation and invention and technological achievements at that level. The end result will either be that we control ourselves or Mother Earth will administer a hell of a spanking…. or we will get big enough to leave home.

respectfully
BJ

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I haven’t got a clue how the the universe was created. If you want to talk to someone about that, as Stephen Hawking. But I gotta warn you, he is worried about overpopulation too. And he’s way smarter than me.

“But the point I think you are making is that matter in a closed system (earth) is constant, but energy can be increased as we get it from the sun.”

The point I was making was that we are becoming better at getting the resources we need to survive (and grow), and the sun is one of those resources that we draw from, as all life directly or indirectly does. But the rate of energy coming from the sun is finite (although it does fluctuate a little), and the sun has a finite amount of energy too. One day it will eventually burn out, but the human race will probaby be extinct or left the planet by then. And besides, I didn’t even say that energy was the limiting factor in our growth, I said that we don’t really know what the ultimate limiting factor will be.

Would you like to be around when we find out Zen Tiger?

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Libertarianism is historically diametrically opposed to Environmentalism and especially to Deep Green Theory which generally believes that everything in existence has some intrinsic value – a sort of extension of Kant’s ‘a person as an end in itself’

Whether or not prosperity will bring about population stability is debatable. What is not disputed is that so-called developed nations seem to be encountering serious problems of their own – such as localised poverty (aren’t there a few million Americans who are regarded as being impoverished?) and or course anti-social behaviour (e.g. crime) is on the increase. Very few seem to be any happier despite their ‘wealth’. These facts do not bode well for our libertarian friends, for surely, shouldn’t we be creating more harmonious societies rather than ones which seem to be socially destabilising?

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I’d say that with the growing economy in China, we’ll see if that comment is true.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html?_r=1&oref=sl ogin

China is is really going to test the theory that economic growth is better for the environment.

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Oh, but that is not to say intelligence (and there are many different types of intelligence) does not play its part.

When something is made or created, the matter that created it is taken from something else, because you can’t make something from nothing, so there must be an ultimate limit to growth for everything.

Interesting to think that billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars was all created from nothing, and in an instant.

But the point I think you are making is that matter in a closed system (earth) is constant, but energy can be increased as we get it from the sun. Energy from the sun is converted into plant structures via photosynthesis for example. We need to learn how to capture and use energy more efficiently, and we can go a lot further with transformation of matter.

Our current issue is that energy resources, such as oil, took a long time to make and are finite. Also, we need to ensure we manage our resources so that the planet is self-sustaining. We have a long way to go on that score, but we have been constantly improving – it’s just been hard to notice because of the rapid increase of population in the last 50 years. As population stabilizes, and improvements continue (and they will and they do) we should see improvements.

I’m not suggesting we need to do nothing about the waste and pollution, but I’m also not quite as paranoid as my Green friends.

This post (remember the post) brings an interesting point into play regarding my previous point.

The Greens represent 5-10% of the political voice in NZ, and yet they produce 50% of the noise. It’s a healthy thing in a democracy. It plays its part.

And here we have a study that managed to find 141 environmentally skeptical books published in the last 30 years. I had a look at the list. One was specifically refuting the population bomb doomsday book from 1968(?) that turned out to be a load of crock. You think the Conservative think tanks weren’t entitled to produce a counter argument? The Silent Spring take on DDT may have helped ruin a useful tool against malaria in Africa etc.

141 books from largely CTT organisations, but no deep analysis on how many pro-argument books published by them, and no good figures on the weighting of the impact of these in the open market – do they produce 50% of the noise? Is it good to have debate? Have scientists ever got things wrong before?? Remember, Greens often are suspicious of scientists when they work for Monsanto or Proctor and Gamble, or the FDA

If I had a bit more time, I’d go through this in more detail, but my initial thoughts are really “so what”? If AGW has a case, its being made bard by the Al Gores and IPCCs of this world, sometimes using overly emotive and wrong information to push the barrow. I don’t see anyone here apologising for that. You guys cant handle a dozen dozen critiques?

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Two comments on this – supposing it is correct:
(1) 12 billion is an awful lot of people we need to sustain – twice the current population – and the planet’s ‘creaking’ already!
(2) How do we change from a growth-orientated market to a stable or declining market? Most of the world’s economies rely on growth – more production and purchase of goods, for example. Unless we end up with an even greater per capita consumption. Which tends to defeat the whole raison d’être for facing the ‘population problem’ in the first place!

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Specialization and invention is not solely in the realm of the intelligensia and the bright sparks. I’ll get around to finding some reference material that explains this better than a 200 word comment.

Also, population growth need not be exponential, as you say at the end. It hasn’t been exponential in many developed countries for the last 20 years – and could be even without immigration, especially of poorer migrants who have large families. I think you have it the wrong way around, birth rates in developed countries are often below replacement rate.

Predictions range for future growth, I’ve seen a couple of reports where it pay peak at 12 billion around 2050 and decline thereafter, even though people will live on average to age 95.

Making the poorer countries richer is the key.

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Increased human intelegence is not a bi product of population growth, population growth is a bi product of increased human intelegence.

Unfortunatly the majority of people are in the average intelegence range, which means that they do not usually have the intelegence required to understand the limitations of the intelegence that has got them to this point in the first place.

And I also believe that even highly intelegent people are also prone to forgetting the limitations of their own intelegence.

Also. A high level of intelegence does not gaurantee a high level of wisdom. But, the higher the intelegence of a person, the more they realise how little thay actually know.

To someone like me, the world is a finite place that has a finite amount of matter. Some might argue that the universe is infinate, but we only have access to what is here on Earth. When something is made or created, the matter that created it is taken from something else, because you can’t make something from nothing, so there must be an ultimate limit to growth for everything. The limits to our growth, is the matter (or resources) that we need to survive. The fact that some resources seem to be more abundant than they were in the past, is nothing to do with resources becoming more abundant, but that we are able to access the resources that we were not able to access in the past. The amount of resources has never actually changed. But as the ability to access these resources has increased, so has the population. Nobody really knows what the ultimate limit to growth is, because we continually develop new technology that allows us to gather resources that we never had access to before. But matter is finite, so resources are too, it’s just that we don’t know what that limit is. I believe it is more prudent to limit the need for resources than to try and access more of them.

I don’t understand why some people don’t see that maintaining a stable population will allow the human race to prevent the eventual reaching of the ultimate limits of the resources we need to survive. Degradation of the environment, and the decline in populations of other species (plant life included), that do not (as far as we know) directly effect our own survival, can only be signs that we are nearing the limits of the resources needed to maintain our population, because many of the resources we need are also need by other species too.

Some people say that there are already signs of stabilisation in some countries. It is true that there are even some countries with declining populations.
If you look at the birth and death rates of these declining (or stable) countries, you will actually see that the majority of them have similar birth rates to the majority of developed countries. The death rate on the other hand is generally above the average death rate of developed countries though. Is this the kind of stabilisation that is acceptable to most people?

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Andrew Said: it could have reached one or 2 billion & then stayed there zen tiger.

Zen Replied:

That doesn’t answer my question, or perhaps it implicitly agrees?

Do you see how a world population of 100,000 would not create advancement to even a fraction of where we are today?

Do you see how pressures to improve as people compete for resources actually generates cooperation via specialisation? Do you see how the specialisation of tasks is not guided by a centrally planned style government, but on people having the freedom to respond to trade as they see best? Do you see how only those that can can act “civilised” towards others can move the entire community forward? Civilisation is ultimately, a lot of people free to do what they want, but accepting of restraints designed to look after the community as a whole.

Population growth has enabled all of this, it has been the base ingredient to stimulating everything that flows from that growth. War or cooperation, stagnation or advancement. On the whole, we’ve done OK.

Andrew Said: it could have reached one or 2 billion & then stayed there zen tiger.

How exactly? What would have been your formula for selecting the right 1 or 2 billion? Isn’t this merely wishful thinking given we are now at 6 billion plus?
—————-
Re Nuclear war versus Pop Growth:

Asimov was wrong. He predicted 6 bill or whatever, and we got there, but not with the dire results. Even if this is right, and it meant that billions starve and die and the population drops to a manageable number – that would still be better than the entire world a nuclear wasteland for however long, surely?

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New Zealand has a well-deserved reputation for being generous and open-hearted when it comes to giving refuge to those displaced by upheaval
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR8924.html

“Under New Zealand First, New Zealand would lose its compassion and become an inward looking society deaf to the cries of those being persecuted in other countries,� Mr Locke says.
“We should not be forcing migrants and refugees to go to court to try and make New Zealand live up to the spirit and the letter of the international conventions it has signed on refugees, and migrants.�
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR10401.html

“New Zealand should be a welcoming country, not one where bureaucrats have greater powers of surveillance and detention,� said Mr Locke.
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR9716.html

“The Passport Office shouldn’t hide behind ‘international requirements’ for this new step towards a ‘big brother’ society,� Mr Locke says.

http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR8903.html
“The Greens welcome a sound public consultation process, but call on Mr Swain to ensure that Maori, as tangata whenua, have a key role in the development of the policy. To do otherwise would show a complete lack of regard for the Treaty.
“We believe our immigration system should be based on a regard for human rights, balanced against our own ecological limitations. So fair and properly managed family re-unification refugee quotas are vitally important. We also hope this review will look at the category list to ensure that a broader range of skills are considered when people are applying to come here,� said Mrs Turei
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR8693.html

Mr Goff entirely ignores the major concern of the petitioners – that Samoans should be able to visit and reside in New Zealand more easily,â€? said Mr Locke, the Green Party’s Human Rights Spokesperson.
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR7757.html

“In my Minority View in the report, I have proposed that we offer New Zealand citizenship to the estimated 52,000 Samoans detrimentally affected by the 1982 legislation. They would have the individual choice of accepting or rejecting that citizenship.
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR7474.htm

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i can’t find anything on the website to that effect.

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