[RD] Ecological/Economical sustainability and scarcity

[Lohrenswald]

Is maybe not the title that best describes this idea, but give me some slack.

The idea about "limits to growth" and the neccesity of sustainable development isn't unknown. But trying to think about my own personal consumption of space and recources, I can't fathom how this level is sustainable now or in the past.

Concidering the space I live in, as well as the transport I use, the food I eat, and the things I use (running water, fridges, computers and what have you), taking in account both the materials and energy used (power plants, mines, forsts, aritable land), I am fairly certain all this, just to support my own life, takes up many many square kilometers. I don't have the guts to put out a number, but I think it's many thousands at the very least.

There is some overlap in all this. Like, I live in a house and share my fridge with several other people. But even that taken into account, I still think vast space is used.

And that's without mentioning environmental poisoning or global warming.

I also suspect there is way too much overproduction. Large food consumption, especially all the meat that is consumed, takes up a lot of land and water, new telephone and computer models every year require's a lot of mining for rare materials, most people have more clothing than they need, and of course energy consumption that quickly diminish petroleum supply (and damage the environment in the process).

Obviously "the west" is the main perpetrator in this unsustainable consumtion, but I can't shake of the notion that even people in China live a livestyle that drains to many resources and damages the environment.

It seems to me that the only way the world can be saved is to impoverish humanity (of course again "the west" have to take the largest brunt of this). This means giving up on most luxuries, and settling for smaller and less like tasteful meals, fewer pieces of clothing, little machine transport, far fewer electronic products etc.

What do you think about this issue and my position on it?

 

[BenitoChavez]

It seems to me that the only way the world can be saved is to impoverish humanity (of course again "the west" have to take the largest brunt of this).

I'd agree with your basic argument but this isn't the only solution. Decreasing the population of Earth would decrease consumption, assuming everyone stayed at their current standard of living. Of course they only humane way to do this would be voluntary birth control/abstinence. Increased efficiency in how we consume resources, presumably through technological advances, could also reduce consumption. We could also procure new resources, at least some of them, from extraplanetary sources (asteroid mining for rare metals perhaps).

So basically our options are to go against human nature or pray to science. Yup, we're screwed.

 

[Narz]

What do you think about this issue and my position on it?

I agree, modern life is not sustainable and when this becomes undeniable life will get very, very bad, violent and ugly.

Forget "going backwards to 1700s standard of living. The world had vastly more natural resources and far fewer people back then.

Combine our lifestyles with depleting resources, climate change & political upheaval.... well I don't like to think about it much.

It will take multiple miracles for humanity to maintain itself with a massive population correction.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's a two-prong approach. Reducing consumption buys time. There is a limit to how much of any specific natural resource can be taken 'sustainably'. It's like an aquifer with a recharge rate. If the aquifer is full, you can take lots of water. But if you become 'addicted' to the lifestyle that is faster than the recharge rate, you're in for a rude awakening.

The second is to discover solutions, and to shift consumption. No drop of oil is being wasted driving researchers to and from the fusion power project plants. They're burning energy, but mainly as an investment to get more energy. So, if you discover a way to make vegetarian meals more tasty, or if you discover ways to get people to work at home, or if you discover ways for people to turn down their A/C, etc. you're part of the process that is building new solutions.

There's an economic connection between buying steaks and getting fusion power. Profit on the steaks are taxed, and fusion researchers are funded. Meanwhile, they use part of their salary to enjoy delicious, delicious steaks. But there are incredibly more efficient ways of getting those same effects. The profit people make selling you fertilizer for you lawn is also taxed and funneled towards long-term solutions; but you're still better off spending the same money on rejigging your electrical system to be more green. Those profits will be taxed too, after all.

Finally, there's the demand component. Engineers will happily work designing products if they get paid to do so. But there's no level of steak you can buy that will convince someone to design a tastier vegetarian lasagna.

 

[brennan]

Take the WWF environmental footprint test.

http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/

 

[Flying Pig]

I'd agree with your basic argument but this isn't the only solution. Decreasing the population of Earth would decrease consumption, assuming everyone stayed at their current standard of living. Of course they only humane way to do this would be voluntary birth control/abstinence. Increased efficiency in how we consume resources, presumably through technological advances, could also reduce consumption. We could also procure new resources, at least some of them, from extraplanetary sources (asteroid mining for rare metals perhaps).

So basically our options are to go against human nature or pray to science. Yup, we're screwed.

I think there's quite a lot we can do to reduce our consumption without really hurting our quality of life - although we might need to adjust the things we think of as important. I just made dinner, so food is on my mind - we throw away an absolutely ungodly amount of food each year, something like half of which gets through all of the supermarkets' (excessive) quality and cosmetic checks only to be left on a plate or in a fridge. Imagine how much less energy would have been used if we never produced that food in the first place! There's a similar story with food grown out of season: can we, in Britain, not learn to live without summer vegetables in winter? You either have to ship them across the world or recreate California in a building to grow them here, but I can't say that it would be a tremendous loss to stick to having them in summer. These are minor things, but there are a great deal of little things like them, and eventually they start to add up.

 

[warpus]

Unfortunately we aren't going to be able to solve this problem, as our entire capitalist society is based on the idea of growth. Without growth our economic system freaks out and leads to problems.

Judging by past human efforts to fix such large scale problems we aren't going to be proactive here, just mainly reactive.. after the crap hits the fan. That's how humanity generally solves problems - we tend to be much better at cleaning up the fallout rather than changing our lives and lifestyles. Nobody wants to do that - we've been conditioned to want more more and more, not less.

 

[Akka]

Reducing population seems the obvious solution. We can't grow forever, we'll have to do something about it anyway at some time, so why not ASAP ?

 

[Hygro]

You can stack almost every person in one cubic mile. We're using a lot of resources, maybe catastrophically, but it's easy to imagine we're using more than we are.

 

[Ryika]

Like I always tell people (while I'm eating Chicken Wings): Save the world - become Vegan!

/edit: Sorry, probably a bit too childish of a post for a RD-discussion. To add more substance:

Depopulation itself will not solve the issue if we don't adjust our economic system accordingly. In an industry where stagnation means LOSING and only growth means profit reducing population only means that new ways will ("have to") be found to build more industry around fewer people.

 

[brennan]

Reducing population seems the obvious solution. We can't grow forever, we'll have to do something about it anyway at some time, so why not ASAP ?

Native populations are already declining in every advanced economy afaik. The UK certainly relies on immigration to maintain at least a constant population.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

The issue is actually a whole web of intertwined subjects that influence each other. So let me describe the 3 key compartiments and give my thoughts on them.

(1) Energy:
I actually think that energy generation and energy consumption are some of the smaller problems of the future. While today's energy generation has a noticeable impact on global ecology, the local effects have dimished in return.

To elaborate: One of the key reasons why europe suffered from almost complete deforestation during the medieval times was the fact that wood was the primary source of energy.

Today we have access to a lot of different sources of energy. And as long as the sun shines we have, in theory, access to more than enough energy to statisfy our needs. I can't remember the exact details, but the Sahara desert alone offers more than enough solar insolation to statisfy the world's need for energy. The problem is more about transporting/transferring that energy to the places where we need it. But overall, with solar power technology improving and fusion energy being around the corner, we have plenty of ways to statisfy our needs in the future.

That being said, increasing the efficiency of our existing technology is obviously a good idea. Computers are actually an interesting case - most modern hardware consumes way more power than necessary, but at this point we value "power" over "eco-friendliness". Case in point: I recently found out that my CPU consumes ~2-3x as much power under load than other models. If I had paid more attention, I could have saved a lot of kilowatt hours (and money).


(2) Space:
Space is a problem with a strong local touch. Japan is probably one of the prime examples where shortage of living space creates problems. The increased urban growth of the modern "mega cities" is also a significant issue, considering that the high density of population leads to inevitable ecological damage.

Last but not least we have "urban sprawl" where cities and towns start expanding "into the green". That process was most prominent during the Cold War era due to increased mobility from automobiles, but with increased fuel prices it actually stopped around 1990 or so. Instead we today see a trend of re-urbanisation with a stronger focus on centralized services that are easy to reach by public transport. Obviously this effect is stronger in europe than in the USA, due to historical importance of mass transit and higher overall fuel prices.

In general, the space problem is first and foremost a social issue. A modern approach to urban planning is needed, and the solution will probably demand a decrease of personal transportation in favor of modernized mass-transit.

On the flip side, we have the chances to make small towns in rural areas way more attractive. The internet is a great tool that does not only offer social connectivity, but it can also create work opportunities that allow an employ to work for his company via home office.

It will certainly be interesting to see how the development of city vs. rural areas will continue in the near future.


(3) Resources:
This is (imho) the biggest problem atm. As you have pointed out, humanity consumes way too much at a way too fast pace. Renewable resources (like ground water from aquifers or the soils used for agriculture) are currently depleted at an alarming rate and non-renewable resources like coal and oil aren't holding up much better.

Solving this issue will be tricky, because it is actually the main point where we will have to change our life style. The strain on energy related resources (coal, oil, uranium, etc.) can be eased by using other sources, but it will take a significant investment in infrastructure to get us there (and right now nobody is willing to justify that investment).

Soil depletion is a significant problem for farmers across the globe. The current output of our agriculture is only possible because we use significant amounts of fertilizers and mechanical equipment (tractors, etc) that consume a *massive* amount of energy. In a way, we are subsiding our farms with that.

The problem is that despite (or in some cases: especially because) of these investments, we degenerate and erode the soils. And the problem is that soils are a renewable resource that takes hundreds to thousands of years to (re)generate and we have no meaningful way to replicate that process. Destroy the upper 30-50 cm of your soil and you are done farming for this century.

The general solution here is to improve efficiency by using new methods, to reduce non-natural inputs and to decrease overall resource consumption. Which has actually been done a lot during the last decade. A lot of studies aim at reducing the stress on eco systems by changing the way we use our available resources.

The main problem when it comes to resource consumption is, once more, a social one: As long as we follow the current idea of a globalized capitalist economy, we will not be able to make the cut before it's to late. That doesn't mean that the capitalist system is doomed, though. What we need is a shift to some sort of "eco-capitalist" economy that emphatizes sustainability - which has already happened in some areas.

A thing that is also important is to understand that the "green" movement from the 1960s had a pretty profound impact. While the "west" (to use your teminology) still consumes a lot more resources than the rest of the world, it has actually made significant progress in terms of reducing ecologic impacts. Considering that these paradigms are barely 50 years old, they already have a big impact on today's life - and mostly in a good way. Sure, this comes at a price - there are reasons otuside of worker payment that made the second sector (= manufacturing) migrate to China. But considering the massive ecological problems we see in asia, it will only be a matter of time until these countries will also start to pass more strict environmental standards.

------------

So as a conclusion:
While the current level of consumption is not sustainable, we have a lot of ways to mitigate the damage and use the time gained to develope new techniques to solve these issues. I believe that the world *can* actually live a decent life without having to "impoverish". But it will take quite a bit of effort (and technology) to reach that point. And the fact is that even today, everyone can play a small part in this transformation.

 

[Akka]

Native populations are already declining in every advanced economy afaik. The UK certainly relies on immigration to maintain at least a constant population.

The problem being that it's still about keeping growth happening - immigration is acting like a stopgap, and diminishing pop is seen as a problem to fix by either continuing said immigration or pushing people to have more babies.
Seeing reduction in population as a good objective to have across the board is not happening - because our entire economy is based on eternal growth.

 

[brennan]

Many people in the UK think it high time that our population fell (I am not one of them though.)

 

[Daw]

What do you think about this issue and my position on it?

Here goes.

The idea about "limits to growth" and the neccesity of sustainable development isn't unknown.

Right, it isn't unknown, but also it isn't doubtless or indisputable.

I tend to think that limits to growth are not constant. They grow with the growth, but due to a different set of reasons and at an independent pace.

It's shown right there in the Civ we all payed. Invented irrigation? Well done, you can produce more food, your limits to growth have just somewhat expanded. Built railroad? Perfect, you can deliver goods further and faster, your limits to growth have just expanded some more. Your scientists came up with refrigeration? Great, now we can store excessive food to eat it later instead of getting it spoiled and throwing it away, so we've got more room for growth.

Sustainability concept steps in when we need our growth not to outpace the growth of the growth limits we currently have, because if it does then we're in trouble.

Unfortunately, there are two major problems:

First, assessment of what the growth limits currently are is a tricky thing, not many can do it, and those who can often get discrepant results, and those who can't are messing around and spread panic, not necessarily true, not necessarily false, but always poorly reasoned and very emotional. Some other people do business on that.

Second, sustainability calls for modesty in consumption and that seemingly calls for totally revising the principles the economy apparently runs on, and surely calls for some level of consciousness that we, people, largely lack. Finally, we need to know if we really really need to indeed "fasten our belts" in having just two cars in the household or we still can get another one? If yes, we're okay, but if not, we better go shopping. Given the first problem, figuring that our is extremely hard and most people don't bother. If they do though, they often get it all wrong.

But trying to think about my own personal consumption of space and recources, I can't fathom how this level is sustainable now or in the past.

Concidering the space I live in, as well as the transport I use, the food I eat, and the things I use (running water, fridges, computers and what have you), taking in account both the materials and energy used (power plants, mines, forsts, aritable land), I am fairly certain all this, just to support my own life, takes up many many square kilometers. I don't have the guts to put out a number, but I think it's many thousands at the very least.

That somewhat depends on where you live and how you live. If the house you mentioned is actually a castle and the transport you mentioned are the 15 cars you drive never stopping their engines, well, that's somewhat excessive.

If it's an average house you live in with somebody else, and ordinary transport everyone uses around you, than it's fine.

There is some overlap in all this.

Right. But also there is uneven distribution. The poorest save the room for the richest to bask. Socially, it's unfair and risky. Historically, it's normal. Ecologically, it's good. There are people who cannot afford a fridge, so you can have two, without additional harm to the environment.

I also suspect there is way too much overproduction.

There's no overproduction, I think, it's just the flaws of distribution. How can there be poverty and overproduction in the same place and time, really?

Depopulation itself will not solve the issue if we don't adjust our economic system accordingly. In an industry where stagnation means LOSING and only growth means profit reducing population only means that new ways will ("have to") be found to build more industry around fewer people.

 

[Tee Kay]

I have no patience for people who advocate culling the species to "save the planet". Thank God the Greens movement here has mostly "Bright Green" types.

We are going to innovate our way out of this, and it's already working. Population growth is stabilising in every but the most deprived countries, people are coming out of absolute poverty, renewable energy is gaining momentum even as mostly-Anglosphere elites try their hardest to sabotage it.

Growth is Not Bad. Grow smarter, and more equally, that should be the goal.

 

[Akka]

I have no patience for people who advocate culling the species to "save the planet". Thank God the Greens movement here has mostly "Bright Green" types.

You realize that :
1) Reducing population doesn't mean slaughtering billions people, just lowering birth rates.
2) It's not just about the planet, it's about everyone. Lower population means that people actually living can have higher standards of living because the same amount of ressources is shared by less.

Growth is Not Bad. Grow smarter, and more equally, that should be the goal.

Growth is not bad if you're underpopulated (which has not been the case since prehistoric times), but it's definitely bad if you're overpopulated (which is the case since 50 years or so).
It's not like humanity gets somehow magically happier simply because we are 2 billions instead of 1 (on the contrary, crowded conditions tends to make people more violent and more stressed).

 

[Daw]

You realize that :
1) Reducing population doesn't mean slaughtering billions people, just lowering birth rates.

Definitely. Well, there were people in history trying other approaches as well, but yes.

However, there's an issue attached. How are you going to make the process ethical enough for people to accept it without volunteering it?

2) It's not just about the planet, it's about everyone. Lower population means that people actually living can have higher standards of living because the same amount of ressources is shared by less.

Yes, but:
1. It is only makes sense when there is a resource shortage.
2. It is only feasible when we have global government of sorts. Before that it will be balanced out by lopsidedness of the process. Like me saying, "Uh-huh, go ahead, more room for us."

Currently, I think it's both pointless and unfeasible.

Growth is not bad if you're underpopulated (which has not been the case since prehistoric times), but it's definitely bad if you're overpopulated (which is the case since 50 years or so).

Growth is not bad as long as it does not test the growth limits (resources sufficiency and their management capabilities) of its time. Terms like under-/overpopulation need clarification: your point is that we got overpopulated in the last 50 years against what?

 

[Akka]

However, there's an issue attached. How are you going to make the process ethical enough for people to accept it without volunteering it?

Yes, but:
1. It is only makes sense when there is a resource shortage.
2. It is only feasible when we have global government of sorts. Before that it will be balanced out by lopsidedness of the process. Like me saying, "Uh-huh, go ahead, more room for us."

Currently, I think it's both pointless and unfeasible.

Sadly, I don't really have a solution here. But I think overpopulation is like environment : we need some sort of global discussion about it, so everyone can admit it's a problem and stop fleeing forward into either importing population growth or producing it.

My point so far is more about making people realize that we DO NEED to reduce population. As I pointed above, it's still seen as a problem to fix to have a shrinking population (glaring example : Japan, where everyone is saying that they need to either increase their birthright or allow much more immigration, nobody seem to simply see this reduction as a good equilibrium for the future, despite the fact that Japan is one of the most overpopulated country in the world).

Growth is not bad as long as it does not test the growth limits (resources sufficiency and their management capabilities) of its time. Terms like under-/overpopulation need clarification: your point is that we got overpopulated in the last 50 years against what?

Against global ressources for a world population enjoying first-world standards of living.

 

[Daw]

Japan, where everyone is saying that they need to either increase their birthright or allow much more immigration, nobody seem to simply see this reduction as a good equilibrium for the future, despite the fact that Japan is one of the most overpopulated country in the world.

Can't we let them decide for themselves if they are overpopulated or not? If they see the room to increase birthrate, then they probably don't see themselves overpopulated...

Density is a different thing. And a different problem. Because it is local, not global. And it also can be a problem both ways. Japan is crowded is one side of it, Siberian vastness is largely uninhabited is the other.

If we spread the clots both problems about density will be attended. But again, it's unfeasible until we have globalized more than we have already.

Against global resources for a world population enjoying first-world standards of living.

Resources like what? I mean, oil prices go down exactly because oil became scarce and particularly hard to find these days, or what?

I tend to think it is much more about distribution flaws than about any shortage. Like, these guys down here are starving and need more food. Can they pay? No. Who can pay? Those guys over there. What those guys need? They need the next iPhone. Okay, we're making the next iPhone then.