Slower economic growth needs to be engineered?

[achilles28]

Quote from Ivanovich:

So you don't think there's a problem with exponential rate of growth in human population with regards to the amount of natural resources on the planet? And please don't give me a UN report that says anything at all, and expect me to believe it.

The relationship between fertility and poverty is well established. The driving factor is income (poverty = > kids). Urbanization is a symptom of higher income because high wage jobs are found in newly industrialized cities, which encourages emigration from low-wage, rural farms.

If there was a population problem, the logical (and humane) goal for the West is to promote wealth creation in the Third World. How? Private ownership and property rights + stable currency + eradication of systemic corruption + low taxes = wealth. Instead, our intelligencia adopted a "Kill-the-seed-before-it-grows" policy and committed economic warfare against the Third World. The book Confessions of an Economic Hitman lays it out nicely.


The poverty-fertility relationship is shown in the two pictures. Poorest countries have highest fertility rate. Richest countries have lowest fertility rate.

Poverty Rate

Fertility Rate

 

[blackjack007]

you alarmists and pessimists need not worry. capitalism will ensure natural resources will NEVER run out. that's because as a material becomes scarcer, its price increases to the point it is economically more feasible to recycle it or to stop using it altogether.

run out of drinking water? please, it's virtually limitless. as drinking water becomes scarcer, desalination plants will be built to solve this problem. if not, the price of water simply goes up to the point that farms are forced to stop wasting water, and people stop having lawns and pools, etc.. In a nutshell, we become more efficient with its usage.

the only thing humans need for survival is energy. so long as the sun shines, we'll never run out of natural resources because energy is all we need to recycle and to make seawater into drinking water.

you pessimists don't give enough credit to human ingenuity and capitalism

 

[Ivanovich]

Quote from achilles28:

That chart is fluff. Sorry. Those estimates are based on existing reserves. New discoveries are made all the time.

Of course, when I post a graph, it's fluff. When you do it, it's fact. I understand now.

 

[Misthos]

Quote from blackjack007:

you alarmists and pessimists need not worry. capitalism will ensure natural resources will NEVER run out. that's because as a material becomes scarcer, its price increases to the point it is economically more feasible to recycle it or to stop using it altogether.

run out of drinking water? please, it's virtually limitless. as drinking water becomes scarcer, desalination plants will be built to solve this problem. if not, the price of water simply goes up to the point that farms are forced to stop wasting water, and people stop having lawns and pools, etc.. In a nutshell, we become more efficient with its usage.

the only thing humans need for survival is energy. so long as the sun shines, we'll never run out of natural resources because energy is all we need to recycle and to make seawater into drinking water.

you pessimists don't give enough credit to human ingenuity and capitalism

Did you notice that all of your solutions involve the end result of things getting much more expensive, and thus, possibly out of reach for a growing segment of the world's population?

 

[achilles28]

Quote from Ivanovich:

Of course, when I post a graph, it's fluff. When you do it, it's fact. I understand now.

I didn't mean that, personally. Sorry I offended you.

My only point is resource exhaustion studies rely on Known Reserves projected forward using current consumption. What they don't consider are new discoveries (which are made all the time), amount of earth surface that remains unexplored (lots), or new technologies that allow mining of previously unexploited reserves. Ultra-deep well oil drilling comes to mind.

 

[Ivanovich]

Quote from achilles28:

I didn't mean that, personally. Sorry I offended you.

My only point is resource exhaustion studies rely on Known Reserves projected forward using current consumption. What they don't consider are new discoveries (which are made all the time), amount of earth surface that remains unexplored (lots), or new technologies that allow mining of previously unexploited reserves. Ultra-deep well oil drilling comes to mind.

Apology accepted, thank you for making it.

I completely agree with you that new findings are occuring all the time. But when you get to rare earth minerals, they're not occuring "all the time". That's why they're called rare, I would think. Additionally, it still doesn't address the fact that discoveries aren't being made at the rate of population increase. The potential for population to increase into infinity whereas there is certainly a finite amount of resources (ignoring extra-terrestrial ideas for the moment) is still an issue.

You could make the argument (and I'm sure you have thought of it) that 75% of the world's surface is covered by water, and much of that has not been explored. It makes sense. But can we continue to produce all of what we need to satisfy an increasing amount of people that need it? That is the real question.

You could also state that "don't worry, population will decrease due to war/famine, etc over such resources" or that (as a chap earlier stated) "we have a great free market system. As stuff becomes scarcer, prices go up." But the debate here is how to satisfy a growing population with harder to find recources - not how to kill off a number of the population due to starvation or war. Although one would be remiss to NOT think that a reduction in population is a potential solution, no matter how inhumane it may seem.

If I wasn't traveling, I'd scan the artice in Popular Science that spurred me making this thread. Once I get back, I will. It's got a lot of interesting stuff.

 

[Ivanovich]

Quote from Misthos:

Did you notice that all of your solutions involve the end result of things getting much more expensive, and thus, possibly out of reach for a growing segment of the world's population?

Right, this is what I mean. The debate of the thread is (supposed to be) about how to continue to provide resources to the world without a significant amount of the world being cut off from them.

Anyone with a brain can say "Oh, you've got unlimited population and limited resources, just limit the population's access!" And that may be the solution. But is the government already trying to do that? Do they know this and that is their decided solution?

 

[Ivanovich]

Quote from achilles28:

The relationship between fertility and poverty is well established. The driving factor is income (poverty = > kids). Urbanization is a symptom of higher income because high wage jobs are found in newly industrialized cities, which encourages emigration from low-wage, rural farms.

This is a great chart. I agree with you that poverty and fertility go hand in hand, but I'm not sure that your chart shows it to the extend you're arguing. Most of the high fertility rates are in sub-sahara africa. To be sure, poor as dirt. But I would have expected to see bright blooms of red in South America, India and the Far East as well (minus China due to artificially low rates due to govt. policies).

This leads me to believe (without proof, I confess) that it's not a matter of having many children to provide for me later in life, but more an educational/cultural issue. One could further illustrate this with the fact that many in very poor African countries continue to have sex despite massively high percentages of HIV infection. Doubtful that they're doing this to procreate.

 

[nutmeg]

For example,

Re poverty and birth rates and providing. There are theories that high birth rates (in the ghetto for example) have basis in the thought that one man cannot be a sole provider (for various reasons), hence women have children by several men ensuring multiple resources and multiple providers.

The woman can have three children with three different men and hopefully one of them can help her.

It does not work out well this way but that's the logic.

 

[dcraig]

Quote from Deadwood:

Good question.

The answer is that we don't know. Afterall dark energy makes up most all the energy in the universe. Could it be harnessed? What is it made of? How could it be used? Hell, if it can move entire galaxies it ought to be able to move a 3000lb car, right? What about dark matter? It's 74% of everything in the known universe. What is it? Whats is made of? What can be done with it?

We are just at the very begginging of even tackling these issue's, but the knowledge gained just in the last 10 years is staggering.

Will any of this come to pass in our lifetime? Probably not, but to think we are not going to learn much more about our "system" and that what we learn won't cause profound changes in just about every aspect of life is just a function of ignorance. Look it up. It's pretty cool stuff.

Err .... so what? If the global temperature has been raised 6C, the coral reefs are dead and many of the ocean food webs have collapsed because of the ocean acidity, the Amazon rain forest is dead, there has been 20% - 30% species extinction, we've run out of phosphates, cannot desalinate enough water etc etc etc, what good is all this crystal ball stuff going to be? There may not even be enough economic surplus left to finance large scale scientific research, if things turn out to be at the very high end of projections.

The holy grail of electricity generation by nuclear fusion is always "30 years off". And that's to get a commercial scale pilot plant, not for widespread deployment. There is a real lesson in this - ya gotta use available engineering and technology or developments of those that may reasonably projected.

Handwaving about some futuristic and as yet unspecified scientific discovery that is going to save all our bacon is utterly pointless. The pace of scientific discovery cannot be predicted and it is quite possible that much of the low hanging fruit in theoretical physics has already been picked and further really fundamental advances may take quite a long time to achieve. Hanging out the carrot of unspecified scientific breakthrough to deny the need for urgent action now is criminally stupid.