In some earlier posts, Karl expressed reservations that growth needed to stop. If someone does not think growth needs to stop now, then the onus needs to be on that person to say when growth needs to stop, or at least to say how we will know that growth needs to stop. What will be the signs.
If yeast is introduced into a bowel of suitable media, the behavior of the yeast is quite predictable. The population will grow exponentially (like compound interest in the bank), until the food is consumed. Then the population will collapse.
29 reindeer were introduced to St. Matthew Island in 1944. There were no predators on the island and food was abundant. The environment was ideal. By the summer of 1963, they had increased in number to 6,000. But in the winter of 1963/64 most of these reindeer died. They starved to death. The reindeer had exhausted the food supply. Only 50 animals survived that winter. Humans did not interfere and ultimately they all died. The story is fascinating. http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF16/1672.html
The human population of the earth has been steady just below a billion people for thousands of years. Depending of the locale, there would be times of prosperity. It was during these times of prosperity that civilizations would achieve impressive feats, such as the building of the great wall of China, or building of the pyramids. But these times were then followed by hard times due to food shortages and disease. Because the historical record is weak, and because historical records have always focused on the elite, we have few details of these hard times.
In the Old Testament there are many references to famines. The one we all know about is the famine centering around Joseph. This famine affected not only Egypt, but also Canaan. We know that Jacob and his family were saved by migrating to Egypt. How many perished because they chose not to migrate, or did not know of the food in Egypt? But note that in that record, Egypt's time of prosperity was followed by famine. How much did the population grow during the time of prosperity? How much did it shrink during the famine?
Many civilizations (read empires) have come and gone. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Rome, Maya to name the more obvious. A goggle search will get you the history of each of these, and of course different theories (and they all are theories) as to why each collapsed. Given that I have been a lifelong observer of the agricultural scene, I find the food based explanations extremely plausible. Indeed you can take your pick and find a political or fiscal explanation plausible. Perhaps they all are inter-related.
A recent empire that collapsed is the Soviet one. For an analysis that attributes that collapse to resource depletion, see http://www.oilcrisis.com/reynolds/SovietDecline.htm
The fact of the matter is that since the beginning of the industrial revolution, we have not known of famine or serious disease in the West. We have been able to reduce infant mortality, we have been able to address other aspects of health, and we have been able to increase food production phenomenally. But there is a limit to how much growth the planet can tolerate.
What exacerbates the effect of the population growth today is that even as our population grows, our dependency on oil increases. Wouldn't it be wonderful and hopeful if it were otherwise, but it is not. New innovations such as solar, wind, and even nuclear have not served to decrease our dependency on oil.
There was a time when we were getting oil from easy to access sources. Baku in Uzbekistan was the most accessible, but Texas oil was also easy to get at. But US oil production peaked in 1970. If US and Russian oil has peaked, by what logic should one assume that world oil will not peak, despite technological advancement.
Why are we drilling in the Gulf, and off the coast of Newfoundland? Why are we extracting oil out of the Alberta oil sands? Because there is no easier oil to access. If it has taken us 100 years to develop our current dependence on oil, how many years will it take us to wean us of that dependence? How many years do we have?
I have no faith that the marketplace (does that equal capitalism?) will give us that time. In other words, well intentioned [liberal] policies have often had unintended and undesirable side effects. A blind faith in the market also has and will have unintended side effects.
Just one aside, before I end. They were promoted by self serving interests, among them farmers. I rather suspect that many of the policies a conservative would regard as leftist, a closer examination would reveal to be not that at all. An example that immediately comes to mind is government policies encouraging ethanol production. I'm sure there are many others.
Ohmegosh, I can't believe how much time it has taken me to put this together, time I could have spent gardening or building a solar food dryer -- preparing for peak oil (seriously).
So the part i agree with you, is that the West has not experienced true troubles in the past 200 years, and its quite likely we will at some point. I just disagree with the source.
ReplyDeleteNow you cite many examples of famines historically, that took place in non-capitalist systems. As you fairly cite, there are also many famines in communist systems. Yet somehow, this history leads you to have no faith in the capitalist system. Are you not just correctly arguing we live in an imperfect world? I certainly see plenty of problems with capitalism, but unfortunately it appears like the best system in an imperfect world. I do not believe there is a utopian world we can create here on earth.
There are plenty of risks in the world, but depleting earth's resources are not in my list of top 20 concerns. First, my contention is that technology advances in a free market system advances quicker than human consumption, at least that has been the pattern for not only the past 300 years. Adjusted for inflation, all commodity prices I am aware of are down, particularly as a % of peoples incomes. Second, in all first-world countries including China (so in total about 65% of the world's population) the birth rate per woman, is less than 2.1 children - implying a declining population over time. This is a big change from the trend the past 500 years. Third, i have faith in the biblical view, that we should be fruitful and multiply and God will take care of our needs if we are willing to work.
I see plenty of problems with your reindeer examples, as animals don't advance technology. If they had a capitalist system, prices would have gone up, and they would have consumed less for affordability reasons.
Capitalism is a means of distributing scarce resources. I believe that is the essence of the problem capitalism seeks to solve. It has served us well in situations where growth has been desirable - where the size of the pie is increasing - where my having more does not diminish your ability to get more. I can't get my head around how capitalism can serve us in a situation where the size of the pie is decreasing. If we don't find a way of sharing, we will fight over them. That's why capitalism has been so accepted. The sharing it has facilitated may not have been perfect, but it has been better than any alternative, particularly war.
ReplyDeleteI come back to "the rape of the commons", something I have written about before, but have not mention in the posting above. "The rape of the commons" is the Achilles heal of capitalism. It can be dealt with, but not by denying it as a threat or problem -- not by prescribing less government as the solution to every problem.
So resource depletion does not make it into your top 20 threats to world order. I suspect a big one for you is world debt. I certainly share your concern. I had this concern before the Wall Street crisis and the auto sector bailout, but it is amplified now. This situation has much in common with the crisis of resource depletion, and that is my fundamental point in talking about it. There is a problem! Something needs to be done! But the wrong thing is being done, and this will make the problem bigger, and the crash more profound when it happens. But I am interested in knowing what your other 19 concerns are.
With respect to the biblical view, I agree that a faith in God's providence is central to being a Christian, and by inference central to living at peace. I am working at that (and it may be more fruitful to dialog about this than economic systems). But "be fruitful and multiply" describes an economic system of sorts. The new testament church, where everyone sold everything and brought it to the disciples for distribution was also an economic system. I happen to think neither is relevant to the economic situation of 2010. Both ideas as literal expressions of God's will belong with the flat earth Christians.
You are making the conclusion, that the pie is diminishing, when i have tried to show through technological developments, that the pie is not diminishing. I think therefore you start with a faulty premise.
ReplyDeleteIssues I find far more troubling than theoretical resource depletion from capitalism? This list is done quickly, so surely i will admit some i view as a higher priority, but none-the-less all trouble me more than the consumption rate of resources.
1. A global culture of entitlement and government dependence driving government bankruptcies
2. Same-sex marriage and destruction of the traditional family
3. A tax structure that hurts both rich and poor in first world countries
4. Seemingly permanent underclass in 90% of the World's countries given lack of opportunities
5. Increasingly powerful unelected global bodies making decisions that impact us (UN, IMF, most prominent)
6. Nuclear threats primarily from Iran
7. Terrorism
8. Demographic trends, where today the ratio of new entries into work force to new works is 1:1 (down from 10:1 in 1970), but that is going to 1 new for every 10 retiring in 2020.
9. Birth rates in 70% of the world are below a sustainable population rate (includes every western democracy, China, Japan, Korea).
10. Given the amount of money being printed by most governments, risk of double digit inflation globally destroying the savings of the elderly and hurting the poor
11. Abortion, and the killing of millions of babies around the world, pushed by the Left from western countries. Increasingly acceptable to the Left to kill babies alive and out of the womb increasingly destroys value of human life.
12. Increasing actions from those on the Left to push christian values out of the public square
13. Increasingly poorly educated populous
14. Declining church attendance, particularly in Europe
15. Cultures most hostile towards basic human rights, growing in economic strength
16. A global media largely intolerant of capitalism, and effectively cheerleading riots
17. Parents primarily wanting to create successful or smart children, with efforts to want to create GOOD children a distant priority (opposite of society 100 years ago)
18. Most in the West are biblically illiterate, and are seeking wisdom from faulty sources
19. China is very unstable, both due to way overbuilding capacity (real estate bubble) as well as too many males, and not enough females (given the 1 child-policy, causing the abortion of girls). Single men are overwhelming the drivers of social disorder
20. Hunger in Africa
i made many errors in this post, as i quickly wrote it and didn't proofread before sending. I don't know how to edit, so apologize for the garbled language and missing words.
ReplyDeleteWow. Well done!
ReplyDeleteI do not consider any of the concerns trivial. My only critique is: why add the word "left" where you have. The threat is valid, no matter where it comes from.
And it is a bit of a bugger the way the blog is set up. There is a great deal of freedom in editing and removing posts, but we are not allowed to do anything with comments we have posted.
So where do we go from here? I remain convinced perpetual growth is unsustainable, and that if we don't find a way of living without growth, collapse is inevitable. But I have no reasonable way of predicting when this will happen, and it may well be that some other catastrophe catches up with us before this one does. But you allude to this same concern in your points 8, 9, 19 and 20, although you approach it from a different perspective.
Any preference as to where we go from here?
I add the word left, as i think it is an accurate obseration that the left is pushing abortion and pushing christianity out of the public square. Sure, there are exceptions, but as a generalization do you doubt the accuracy of the statement?
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree that for now we have perhaps exhausted the issue of the limits of resources. You make the leap that technology won't advance to support consumption rates, while I make the leap that extrapolating the past 300 year trend is a good indicator of the future (particularly in light of birth rates now declining). I think we accomplished clarity on our views, which is important and a good thing.
I wouldnt mind exploring some social issues, as it is unclear to me how the left reconciles many of their beliefs with religious teachings. Yes, i understand that conservatives emphasize "standards" in the Bible while liberals emphasize "compassion" (or at least that is how I see it). But, i dont see how the left reconciles things like same-sex marriage (amongst many other things), unless they simply believe that christians (and all religions) simply had those issues wrong until the 1960s. That religous teachings have been wrongly bigotted for over 2000 years. Sure, one can say that as a society we have progressed in some ways, and certainly women were not treated as fully human in the times of the Bible for example. It is a great thing, that women in the west are viewed as equally valued, but the Bible never taught otherwise. So in general, i am left scratching my head, as it seems left wing values trump religious teachings to many on the left.
Anyway, i am happy to take it in other directions as well. My parents are coming to visit this Friday, with my mom staying for a week, and then we have more visitors the week after, so I may not be that quick to reply.
The longer we continue these conversations, the more convinced I become that I am not a leftest by your definition, unless the definition of a leftist is anyone who is not a right wing conservative. If that is the definition, then I am a leftist.
ReplyDeleteJim Wallis of Sojourners is regarded a leftist by Fox News. He does not consider himself a leftist. His two most recent books reflect his concern about that label. "Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street" and "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It". I have not read either book, but have read quite a few reviews of both books. I also read his blog fairly often.
Yeah. Let's look at some of these social issues, and see where we come out. I will not pretend to be a spokesman for Jim Wallis, or "The Jesus Manifesto' but I have been heavily influenced by analysis done there. Also Yoder "The Politics of Jesus." I assure you, none of these are conservatives! But leftists?
I believe you are a leftist on economic issues, and i think certainly Jim Wallis is a leftist in his strong belief in non-voluntary redistribution of wealth. I am not clear if you or Jim Wallis are leftists on social issues, perhaps you are not.
ReplyDeleteI care far more about social issues, that economic, so oddly we may agree more than we think on important issues. I disagreed vigorously with Bush on attacking Iraq and on not cutting spending, and thereby putting the country further in peril. However, given the alternatives were Gore and Kerry (in 00 and 04) whom i believe would have behaved similarly with respect to foreign wars, but would have also pushed social leftist policies (like completely unfettered abortion including partial birth, funding foreign abortions, pushing for same-sex marriage, limiting freedom of expression), i preferred Bush even though i thought he was horrible.
So net, i sincerely prefer clarity to agreement, and based on my experience (which daily i encounter secular social leftists) most on the left don't have clarity on their views (particularly on social issues). Almost without exception, i can articulate their viewpoint on issues, but they can't clarify mine ( I think most would admit that, and i can provide many examples if needed). I can understand how you might feel the same, living in a christian-conservative town, with people that sometimes are intellectually lazy and simply assume those on the left are bad people but don't have a deeper understanding of issues ( i may be totally wrong here, but i bet i am not too far off). We should swap homes, i bet our contrarian nature would cause you to be conservative, and me to be liberal. :)
However, i respect you and believe you are a good person who does not want to do things that go against Biblical principals, and I simply hope we both gain clarity - not necessarily agreement. This is why i enjoy this forum, as i think you believe the right is dangerous, and i believe that the left (as i define it which most certainly includes Obama) is a strongly negative and anti-christian force in society. I am not confused, when more often than not when i see an Obama bumper sticker on a car in California, they often have an anti-christian symbol on their car as well (like a Jesus fish that says DARWIN inside, as if to suggest that evolution refutes the Bible).
So in short, while we have found limited agreements, i think we are accomplishing some degree of clarity which is terrific. I hope we continue to gain clarity.
I have already prepared a little piece on one of the social issues you mention, but before we leave the current topic, I would like to understand what, in your opinion, would be an enlightened response to the BP spill in the Gulf and the Massey Energy mine disaster in West Virginia.
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean is what would an enlightened government do to reduce the risk of a similar event recurring?
ReplyDeleteI have spent very little time on that story. In general, I think we have common sense rules to limit risk and impact of these kind of problems, but we typically dont have government accountability. My understanding is BP was to have a blow-out preventer by law, but didnt due to a bad business practice, and lack of government enforcement. Ironically, and another example of government incompetence, Obama was to award BP a safety award in late April (which was cancelled due to the oil rig incident).
ReplyDeleteSo I dont know the specifics, but seems like a classic case where existing rules weren't followed, and instead of improving accountability, government just takes over more control.
Of course we don't know specifics, and we are way too far removed to even comment on specifics! It may be worth noting, that I would say almost exactly what you have said.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, we move on to something else.
I agree very annoying the inability to edit comments.
ReplyDeletejust fyi, once or twice I did write on Word and copy it here, that works too.
A couple of thoughts in readng the past week of comments.
ReplyDelete1) How to change the world(paraphrased) I am reminded of the story of Father Danian , who in is youthful desire to change the world and feeling frustrated by his lack of ability to do so sought counsel from his Bishop. Again paraphrased the answer was find some part of the world that you can change. The result was a decision to minister in a leper colony on the island of Molokai, Hawaii,,which he did until his death
Guess I was wordier than I thought and ran out of space
ReplyDelete1) cont..maybe (the or a) question is what part of the my world can I change to make it "better"
2)BP faux pau (politely but possibly misspelled) - how does a government hold a multi billion dollar corporation accountable without exercising more control???
3) I note some misspelling in first comment
in is Damian
Re spelling and grammar in previous comment...stop laughing,,ok you can chuckle.... it is late or early --the natives in my hood have kept me awake with their revelry - spelling isn't getting better..I'll work on it.
ReplyDelete