@Cutlass:
Thanks for the links.
I'll summarize, so you can see if I've missed the key points in each.
1. Thomspon's article (scienceblogs) assumes that we'll be able to research and tech our way to feeding +50% more people using -30% water, producing +100% more food with next to no new land. Malthus was wrong because he underestimated our capacity for innovation.
2. Regarding the Castillo piece, I wonder if he proof-read it:
Malthus describes an unsustainable system in which population always grows faster than subsistence levels on earth. All penises are really really fat. And they are equal each other would be to adopt what he called, "preventive checks".
His argument can be summarized as "Energy & Food are not a constraints on economic growth, we'll innovate." Malthus is wrong because he underestimated our capacity for innovation.
3. Kent Peacock's thesis is that humans will have to arrive at a mutualistic relationship with the rest of earth's biosphere. Malthus was wrong because his premise is based on a moralistic yearning.
4. The Economist notes that Malthus was writing at the cusp of two changing worlds - he based his conclusions on the agrarian model of production but that was on the way out, supplanted by the Industrial Revolution. And "even if oil wells were to run dry, economies can still adapt by finding and exploiting other energy sources." We'll be able to innovate our way to continued growth.
Here I'll summarize [for the casual readers
] the article you linked: Energetic Limits to Economic Growth
Financial and energy economists have used econometric techniques to analyze time series of energy consumption and economic growth within countries in an effort to assess causal relationships, but they have reached no clear consensus about whether energy use causes economic growth, or vice versa
We infer that energy limits economic activity through direct causal mechanisms. The evidence for this inference is presented above and comes from three sources: (1) theory, the application of the second law of thermodynamics to complex adaptive systems; (2) data, the robust relationship between per capita energy use and per capita GDP across both space (the 220 nations of the world) and time (24 years); and (3) analogy, the similarity between biological and socioeconomic metabolism.
Just as higher metabolic rates are required to sustain and grow larger, more complex bodies (Kleiber 1961, McMahon and Bonner 1983), so higher rates of energy consumption are required to sustain and grow larger, more developed economies that provide greater levels of technological development and higher standards of living.
it has not been possible to increase socially desirable goods and services substantially without concomitantly increasing the consumption of energy and other natural resources
Even maintaining this increased population [9B] at the more modest Chinese standard of living would require 2.5 times more energy than is used today
Mainstream economists historically have dismissed warnings that resource shortages might permanently limit economic growth -- there is no scientific support for this proposition; it is either an article of faith or based on statistically flawed extrapolations of historical trends.
Some ecological economists and systems ecologists have made similar theoretical arguments for energetic constraints on economic systems. However, these perspectives have not been incorporated into mainstream economic theory, practice, or pedagogy
So here's how I see the current state of the discussion:
-I say that economic growth can't continue forever.
-It is pointed out that economic growth can continue for a lot longer assuming global population stabilizes.
-Energy limits on economic growth are compared to flawed Malthusian arguments
-Malthus is wrong because human will innovate (forever?)
-Therefore Energy is not a limit on economic growth, because we'll innovate
-But with innovation, the necessary increases in energy efficiency are enormous*
Cutlass said:
What exists to stop innovation? I can't think of a thing.
I'll answer you with more quotes (this post is already too long, I know
)
Here's a line (taken from another
DoTheMath post) from Limits To Growth (1974):
"We have felt it necessary to dwell so long on an analysis of technology here because we have found that technological optimism is the most common and the most dangerous reaction to our findings from the world model. Technology can relieve the symptoms of a problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem—the problem of growth in a finite system—and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it."
Murphy's summation:
" if our faith [in technology] is so strong that we assume that’s where we are heading, based on extrapolation of our fossil-fueled joy-ride, then we don’t go all-out to avoid the real danger of a crash. Like the nerd in the school cafeteria, our mental state is so consumed by mathy/techno thoughts that we fail to notice the stupid stuff like the stool in our path"
*I'm not claiming that innovation will stop. However, your position, unless I'm misreading, is that economic growth will not be restricted by energy because innovation will continue to provide more GDP per unit energy.
So my question is how much more energy efficiency do you think is realistic?