World, Writing, Wealth discussion
Wealth & Economics
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If there were just enough food for the entire humanity..
Hi Nik,Technology (if applied) changes the budget.
Nik wrote: "We are a bit less than supernova, but wiki claims managed to synthesize 24 elements:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synth...
Agree though that currently it's hardly the way to replenish i..."
To get an idea of the limitations, the dreaded Og took several years of continuous effort to make three atoms! Some of the others are more stable, and I confess to having handled bag containing a few grams of Americium. But this sort of process cannot solve things like the supply of copper, which is also on the "short supply list" in the not too distant future.
Ian wrote: "Nik wrote: "We are a bit less than supernova, but wiki claims managed to synthesize 24 elements:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synth...
Agree though that currently it's hardly the way to..."
Americium is in our smoke detectors, is it not?
Funny enough, my first story in my Depot-14 series was about a group of outlaws after a shipment of americium :D
Americium is in some smoke detectors, yes.
Nik wrote: "I guess if we exhaust oil or coal, they will be replaced anyway by other techsi..."The common, popular (and now obsolete) paradigm is of resource scarcity. I can remember back 20-30 years ago and all the talk of peak oil supply. The world was going to run out of oil and prices would skyrocket and society would crash. This is the paradigm the gave us the Mad Max movies, with roving bands of survivors waging brutal war for the last few available hydrocarbons.
But instead, the world economy has begun a transition, we are now looking at peak oil demand. Where the need for oil declines as the world economy moves to other resources.
There is oil that can be extracted for profit at $100 per barrel. That's still sitting in the ground right now, because no one wants to lose $40 a barrel extracting it.
As demand peaks and then drops - the price of oil will go down, and resources that were previously economic to extract will be left in the ground.
Here's BP to talk about it, and they should know - their future depends on it.
Global oil markets are changing dramatically.
The advent of electric vehicles and the growing pressures to decarbonise the transportation sector means that oil is facing significant competition for the first time within its core source of demand. This has led to considerable focus within the industry and amongst commentators on the prospects for peak oil demand – the recognition that the combined forces of improving efficiency and building pressure to reduce carbon emissions and improve urban air quality is likely to cause oil demand to stop increasing after over 150 years of almost uninterrupted growth.
At the same time, the supply side of the oil market is experiencing its own revolution. The advent of US tight oil has fundamentally altered the behaviour of oil markets, introducing a new and flexible source of competitive oil. More generally, the application of new technologies, especially digitalisation in all its various guises, has the potential to unlock huge new reserves of oil over the next 20 to 30 years.
REF: https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporat...
We are already in transition away from a hydrocarbon economy, but will you hear about it on the nightly news.
Of course not. If it bleeds it leads! When was the last time that anyone saw a 'serious,' news program lead with a 'Good News,' story. ... crickets!
The world has changed, but the media continue to report doom, gloom, and disaster, because that's what they believe will hold your attention long enough to pass advertising space in front of you, and generate revenue from your presence observing their stories.
Oil will be replaced long before it's exhausted.
The key takeaway. We will never run out of oil. The economy will move on before oil runs out and the last drill riggers will walk away from un-economic rigs because the low price of crude can't pay the cost of operation of the rigs.
The past becomes present - can anyone identify a single person who is literally harvesting whales for their oil?
More crickets, 'cause whale oil is no longer used anywhere.
There will be a day in the not to distant future where there are whales swimming in the oceans and oil in the ground, and no one is hunting and no one is digging because there is no economic need to do so.
It seems to me that we're approaching population growth from two different perspectives. One is economic, having to do with oil and energy and replacing the workforce.
The other, and more important in my opinion, has to do with natural resources. These are the the ones most affected by overpopulation. Animals like us need oxygen, food, and water.
Oxygen in the atmosphere is made by plants, especially by phytoplankton in the ocean, but also by trees and other vegetation. Pollution in the oceans and deforestation due to growing population decreases oxygen supply. Add to that the effects of increased carbon emissions on the atmosphere due to increased population.
Nutritious food in mass production needs good topsoil, and good topsoil isn't replaced overnight. It requires decomposition of vegetative matter, which takes time. I've read that our food supply lacks nutrients because the soil is overtaxed and lacks nutrients. If population continues to increase, the problem will be exacerbated.
I've read that all the water we'll ever have on this planet was here from the beginning. It won't increase, but the population that depends on it is increasing.
The planet can only support so many humans before they begin to compete for resources. Not a pretty thought.
Scout has properly identified soil as a problem. We are losing a huge tonnage of solid to erosion every year. (Forgotten where I saw the figures, but they are really horrendous.)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2..."Chinese academics recently delivered a stark warning to the country’s leaders: China is facing its most precipitous decline in population in decades, setting the stage for potential demographic, economic and even political crises in the near future."
According to World Population Clock, the current average population increase is estimated at 82 million people per year. Common sense tells us that the earth's natural resources will be depleted at some point if this continues, that there will be a tipping point where economics and politics will be the least of our worries. A point where pollution and trash created by overpopulation overwhelms the planet's ability to provide a stable environment.
We are already having a problem with trash, although there is no technological reason why most of that cannot be reused. One problem is the nasty "throw-away here" attitude. All that plastics in the ocean did not arise through careful disposal of plastics.
Ian wrote: "We are already having a problem with trash, although there is no technological reason why most of that cannot be reused. One problem is the nasty "throw-away here" attitude. All that plastics in th..."We're seeing something different. Turns out all the stuff we've been recycling has been going to China. Recently, China announced they're not taking our recyclables anymore, so the question no one seems to be asking is what happens to that stuff instead? Communities have been announcing increase in collection fees because of the change, so we can only assume it's now going into a landfill. But the whole thing just leaves me wondering why we're not processing and recycling these materials ourselves instead of shipping it all overseas for recycling.
Apparently Sweden recycles almost all its trash. As a scientist who actually worked on this problem some time ago I can assure you it is possible, but equally ion an open market the products tend to be more expensive so some sort of state subsidies or tax advantages are needed or the entity gets swamped. As an example, I once helped a company design a plastics recycling facility, and just when it started the big boys started dumping plastics into the NZ market, and the politicians refused to protect against that. The company actually lasted 20 years before a fire gave it the opportunity to collect the insurance and close, which it did.
A group of scientists have produced a recommended sustainable diet:https://phys.org/news/2019-01-sustain...
The main recommendation is to shift away from animal-based foods towards plant-based ones. You can still eat meat, but as an occasional treat instead of every day. Has health as well as environmental benefits.
Good news and thanks for the link, Fiona. "..it is indeed possible to feed everyone on the planet a healthy and environmentally sustainable diet by the year 2050" - Alleluia!
If people want to settle on Mars there will be little choice, but a total plant-based diet for the entire population does have limits. If we cut the population, we can do what we want. As an aside, in my novels about Mars, I suggest that aquaculture is still the best way of getting a more attractive diet because it tends to be more productive deeper down - the plants grow faster and the animals don't waste so much energy trying to keep warm.
Fiona wrote: "A group of scientists have produced a recommended sustainable diet:https://phys.org/news/2019-01-sustain...
The main recommendation is to shift away from animal-based f..."
I found the otiginal piece in the Lancet Journal:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/la...
It is free to read after you set up a login.
I just read a book, a Pulitzer Prize winner, The Overstory. It's about the decimation of old-growth forests. About what we're taking from the earth and keep taking to sustain population growth. Turning forests into plowed earth to grow crops for more and more people, not realizing that a forest produces much more oxygen from carbon dioxide than the crops that replace them. The point of the book is, who cares? Nobody, it seems. We're too human-centric. We, who have been here for a millisecond in the history of the planet .
The real problem with the removal of forests is the extinction of a whole lot of species, and the overproduction of CO2. The "who cares" point seems to be a fair one to make. There are some who do, but they tend to be in the minority. The real problem is there are too many people.
Hmmmm....US fertility rates now at their lowest for 32 years (CDC Data).
https://www.nst.com.my/world/2019/05/...
The fertility issue continues to be ignored in this discussion.
Everyone who continues to believe that overpopulation is a genuine problem will be blindsided when human fertility drops to a level that radically impacts society. The process has already started, is gathering steam and is completely misunderstood.
This scenario
is more likely than
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Graeme wrote: "Hmmmm....US fertility rates now at their lowest for 32 years (CDC Data).
https://www.nst.com.my/world/2019/05/...
The fertility issue continues to be..."
And yet... massive species reductions from insects to birds to reptiles, fish and mammals. Increased CO2 levels affecting climate and the eco systems the flora and fauna depend on all so that humanity can continue to breed and consume at increasing rates. Before the fertility changes discussed happen we won't have a planet left that any of us can recognise.
In Borneo I watched 600 year old trees in a rain forest being cut down to grow palm oil. Destroying the habitat and migration paths of thousand of species. Even with a reversal of policy that's 600 years before that tree is back to what it used to do.
Hoping that the fertility rates reverse that policy is just that hope.
Worse, the fertility rate may be down in the US, Europe, and some others, but it is increasing in others, and unfortunately it is where it is increasing that we are having the biggest problems with pollution, deforestation, and general lack of care for the land. I saw a TV picture tonight of a river in SE Asia that was clogged with plastics waste. It is no good a small fraction coming right when there is too much elsewhere that is not. Also, of course, while the fertility rate may be coming down in the US, the proportional emission of greenhouse gas is huge. This is not picking on the US, other than perhaps a small number of politicians who are a world threat, and the US actually has the best chance of developing the technology to get us out of this mess. Of course it would be better still if the various countries in the world could get together and form a coordinated plan of attack, and make best use of the brains we have, but I guess that sort of thing is too difficult, at least while some politicians are in place.
(waving from the wilderness...)Some updates re China fertility which is now well below replacement level.
Australia's ABC: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-0...
"China's population is set to peak at 1.44 billion people in 2029 — but it then faces a long period of "unstoppable" decline, government scholars have warned."
And South China Morning Post: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-ec...
"In 2016, the World Bank said that the average Chinese woman would have 1.624 children. At that rate, the population will begin declining in 2027 and by 2065 it will fall to 1.17 billion, around the same size it was in 1990, according to CASS research."
The money shot: The world bank data from 2016 is already out of date. China's fertility is already below replacement levels and is still declining. Total population will peak within the next decade and then decline.
I predict that within 30 years, the issue of low fertility will eclipse the 'issue,' of overpopulation in mainstream public awareness.
Philip wrote: "In Borneo I watched 600 year old trees in a rain forest being cut down to grow palm oil. Destroying the habitat and migration paths of thousand of species. Even with a reversal of policy that's 600 years before that tree is back to what it used to do. ..."I couldn't agree more.
What a shame the demand for Palm Oil was created by first world decisions.
NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/bu...
"AMSTERDAM, Jan. 25 — Just a few years ago, politicians and environmental groups in the Netherlands were thrilled by the early and rapid adoption of “sustainable energy,” achieved in part by coaxing electrical plants to use biofuel — in particular, palm oil from Southeast Asia.
Spurred by government subsidies, energy companies became so enthusiastic that they designed generators that ran exclusively on the oil, which in theory would be cleaner than fossil fuels like coal because it is derived from plants.
But last year, when scientists studied practices at palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, this green fairy tale began to look more like an environmental nightmare.
Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.
Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere."
Land use changes are a clear threat to biodiversity. But the clearing of rainforest for palm oil plantations was driven by dimwitted decisions made in the first world that created an economic demand for the product.
Hi Kris,My pet peeve is 'Governance,' which goes to how as a species, a society, a civilization and even as individuals we make decisions.
Any problem that is out there in the media, and defined as 'the big problems of our time,' I'd put all of them at 2nd place or below as a priority, or risk.
The reason that I put governance at #1, is that it directly impacts our approach to solving any other problem we have.
The Palm Oil nightmare could have been avoided if someone in the right position had simply asked this question, "Where is all the land for the new Palm Oil plantations going to come from?" and then answered it honestly and rigorously.
I'll stop here, as I don't have a soap box handy.
Kris wrote: "Take a look at the birth rates predicted for Nigeria. It's terrifying. UN “World Population to 2300” (2004) predicts world population will peak at 9.22 billion by 2075, with most population growth occurring in the southern hemisphere...."The same UN predicts that the global economy will increase from 2x to 8x this century.
Average per capita GDP will be higher that 75K USD per year later this century.
Once someone's income goes above $10K, fertility drops as the cost of kids rises against their economic value to the parents. I.e. kids become expensive.
The people having large families right now are the economically dispossessed living in poverty.
Countries like Nigeria will, IMHO, most likely grow out of their 'overpopulation,' through economic development.
(Not that I believe in predictions - especially about the future...)
Our earth is a closed system. Hypothetically, think of a dome placed over a piece of the earth, creating a microcosm. Would population numbers be important to survival, considering the finite natural resources, the amount of waste produced? Matching population to environmental factors would be prudent. Or not?
Think of a fish tank. If you have ever kept them, a large tank with few fish is trouble-free, provided you follow some reasonable procedures. Let them breed, and eventually you end up with a collapse of the system
It's clear what will eventually happen if population continues to increase. At some point, there will be a reckoning.
I'm quite sure we need to calibrate the discussion, as it might be seriously skewed.For example, who's leaving a bigger imprint on Earth: a million kids running naked in Africa or 1 industrialist, whose enterprises pollute like hell in countries with a lax environmental protection regime? So what if there is a demand for the produce, we could still decide we are not prepared to pay the price that it takes.
If there are poachers killing rare animals, how much difference does a population of 5 billion people or 8 billion people make? Yes, those who consume ivory, fur and stuff create a demand, but they don't kill animals - there are those who do.
We don't know earth's capacity. The density of population is very uneven and huge parts of Siberia, Australia, Canada are barely populated, with some nations "dying" and "aging", while others - expanding.
And who's to decide on a 'golden standard' for a family size? I don't think you'd deem appropriate telling Trump, for example, - "hey, you've got 5 kids - it's irresponsible, while Putin has only 2 - it's much better" -:)
The underlying concern may be about immigration, because poor dudes unable to meet ends in their respective country, tend to flock more prosperous locations, but that's a bit different problem..
Earth does not have a specific capacity. It is a variable, which behaves like, "if you want to live like X, do not exceed a population Y." The less desirable X, the bigger Y can be.As an example, taking Nik's animals, if there are only half a billion people, even if the market for fur is greater because on average people want more than ten times the amount of fur (unlikely) with ten times the amount of area, there should be far more animals so extinction is less likely. Of course we could contract the space we use with 5 billion, so this problem has more than one solution. Also, if you want fur, NZ can supply a large amount of possum fur. Thanks to a certain piece of stupidity, the introduced possum is wiping out our Jurassic rain forest now there is no real market for its fur.
Reducing the population is possibly the easiest way to solve many of Nik's problems. Who knows - certain aggressive politicians may soon get onto that problem.
I have a feeling the current reduction in population in the US and China is more through the use of contraceptives than climate change, after all the African population is not declining through that and they live in hotter places. The problem with climate change on agriculture is probably not so much through agriculture getting less efficient, but the fact that different crops need to be grown. I think places like the US will work it out, although desertification could be a big issue. There is going to be a water problem in the central plain because the gigantic aquifer there is having more removed than replaced and that cannot continue indefinitely. My fear is the biggest problem with climate change is the loss of our most productive farmland to rising sea levels.
Nik wrote: "Should it be split equally among everyone, or should the fittest (strongest, most entrepreneurial, savvy) get more, while some - little or nothing?Just wondering what you think"
The essence of civilisation is planning, this is what separates us from our primitive roots. It's conceivable we could get to a point where we don't have a mechanism to regulate access to goods and services (including food); that would be a failure signal. now it's a mater of opinion as to whether we have reached a point of failure, or are indeed headed inexorably in that direction. Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room (filmed as Soylent Green) has plenty to say on this.
Terence wrote: "The essence of civilisation is planning, this is was separates us from our primitive roots. .."That's what they said in the USSR making their 5 year plans -:)
Those who have would claim they had it planned, while those who starve and die are just bad planners. The statement can be correct and can be misleading depending on the circumstances. Should we provide a minimal umbrella to all to survive no matter what is the question.
Make Room.. sounds like an interesting read and I used to love Harrison's books
Nik wrote: "That's what they said in the USSR making their 5 year plans -:)"The Soviets made a number of mistakes. They disrupted what worked, sent those who knew how to make agriculture work into internal exile (a death sentence) and put inexperienced people in charge. Centralised control is a great concept in SF (Andre Norton used it) but in practise it's inflexible. Power is often used by the dogmatic to punish those they don't like. Check out Holodomor in the Ukraine.
Relatives on my mother's side fled the Soviets.
An obvious problem with the Soviet system was people got into positions based on their doctrinal correctness and sycophancy to the appropriate boss, and not on their ability to do the job. Bad news is released in a minimised form more designed to save face than to tell the truth. The show Chernobyl shows some serious faults. They import a robot to deal with the roof, but to hide the seriousness of the disaster they divide the radiation levels by a factor (from memory) by something like 10. The imported robot fries before it does anything. It is not fair to cite that system as a good example of central control because it was really a dictatorship.
Ian wrote: "It is not fair to cite that system as a good example of central control because it was really a dictatorship."Centralised control was a magnet to the unscrupulous in the Soviet system. Stepping outside failed politics, there's still the notion that one size (i.e. system) can fit all. There are a host of examples of fails - from business failure following the installation of an all new 'singing-dancing system' (my day job is fixing these) - to abandoned projects such as the UK government's NIRS Development of this (National Insurance Recording System went on for well over 10 years but it was never released, or the discredited Universal Credit. The latter is still causing tremendous hardship - that iteration of one size fits all, doesn't. Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four is still instructive as is Kafka's The Process and Huxley's Brave New World.
Are there calls for help in the spam you clear out or is that just naivety about human nature? ;-)
Terence wrote: "The Soviets made a number of mistakes. They disrupted what worked, sent those who knew how to make agriculture work into internal exile (a death sentence) and put inexperienced people in charge...."They rather disrupted what didn't work, as Tsarist Russia was an industrially and in all other senses backwards and bankrupt country in the hope to build something better. In some senses they succeeded and most of former republics still live off of the Soviet industrial and scientific heritage, but in many others - failed.
Yeah, a Holodomor - a very sad historical event. Ukrainians claim it was a genocide against them, while Russians - that it was a famine that everyone suffered from. To a degree - it parallels another discussion here regarding Canada's probe into missing native women, whereby they estimate that the percentage of missing among that segment is much higher than in other population segments and thus it's a genocide, while another attitude says that it's a general atrocious phenomenon affecting all women and not race-specific.
Ian wrote: ".....people got into positions based ....... not on their ability to do the job..."Read somewhere a theory that people are always displaced from where they perform best, because as soon as you really master what you do - you get noticed and promoted higher on a corporate ladder -:) And once you mastered a new position, they snatch you up again.
Sure, a facade was much more important than the essence and Chernobyl is a good example, which I describe in Rise of an Oligarch. Don't know whether they show it in what you watch, but they sent people on May Day demonstrations to march on radioactive streets just to preserve business-as -usual veil. The rumors were wild and some ppl had probably died from iodine poisoning, trying to counter suspected radiation..
Underpinning the idea of overpopulation is the work to Malthus.REF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_...
"Malthus came to prominence for his 1798 essay on population growth. In it, he argued that population multiplies geometrically and food arithmetically; therefore, whenever the food supply increases, population will rapidly grow to eliminate the abundance.
The main point of his essay was that whilst population grows geometrically, food grows arithmetically, and that eventually in the future, there wouldn’t be enough food for the whole of humanity to consume and people would starve. Until that point, however, the more food made available, the more the population would increase."
Sub 2.1 fertility rates in an environment of abundant food supply refutes this idea completely.
I.e. If Malthus is right, fertility will stay above replacement level as the population grows to meet the abundant food supply.
Contrawise - if fertility drops to replacement level or below, then he is wrong.
In my opinion, Malthus would be right apart from the fact that people think, and have developed contraception. In my opinion, the fact that the birthrate in the West is dropping is not really due to fertility issues, but rather the decision making not to have too many kids. The interesting thing is is it is the educated and wealthy that are having fewer children. Big families tend to be in the population that really can't afford them.
Nik, the Chernobyl programs obviously cannot carry everything, but they had a whole lot of people doing all sorts of things in the radiation zone, much of which probably had to be done to save more. They had soldiers up on the roof shovelling radioactive graphite that had been blown out from the core - they each had a 90 second turn because someone reckoned that they would at least have some sort of chance with that length of time. They had a whole lot of miners digging under the foundations to fill it with concrete to stop the core dropping into the aquifer below, in the full knowledge those miners would be dead in not much time.It really was ugly. There is one episode to go, which I see tomorrow, in which they seemingly explain what actually happened. Must see it.
Ian wrote: "Big families tend to be in the population that really can't afford them."Certainly born out by my experience. The sink estate I grew up in had plenty of 3 + kids families. I attended the best school in town, Burnley Grammar School, and I don't recall one single pupil in my year with more than one sibling.
Graeme wrote: "Underpinning the idea of overpopulation is the work to Malthus..."Science has helped on agricultural output but there's a limit to what can be achieved. A worrying impact of science is the rise in (so called) civilised diseases which afflicts those whose diet has a high level of processed foods. Track down The China Study for something might prompt you to go Vegan. World population has increased five fold and more in most non-Western countries since the 50s.
At what point do you say 'too many people' - when the first species is hunted to extinction? once you begin to factory farm? when you start domesticating? when pollution by your species fouls the biggest ocean on your planet?
Population and pollution go hand in hand. The turning point for me was when supermarkets began to use plastic bags instead of paper for wrapping food and carrying shopping. It convinced me that people as well as business had lost touch with what was good for the planet. A long time back - and now we're starting to pay the price.
Terence is correct - there is a limit to how much food can be produced on a given area. We don't know what that is, but there is more to life than simply eating. Do we really want an environment where simply going outside is undesirable, and we know we have exterminated about 95% of life, and the best chance of seeing wildlife is to find a rat?
It seems we're agreeing that population has an effect on the environment and that the environment can only effectively support a finite population. What's to be done? Any suggestions?
@Scout.Economic development with the latest tech. As soon as women's GDP goes above $10K USD they uniformly opt for smaller families.
Supporting women in business seems to be a good move, then.
World, Writing, Wealth
Books mentioned in this topic
An Essay on the Principle of Population: The Future Improvement of Society (other topics)The Children of Men (other topics)
Make Room! Make Room! (other topics)
The Population Bomb (other topics)
An Essay on the Principle of Population (other topics)
More...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synth...
Agree though that currently it's hardly the way to replenish indium.
I guess if we exhaust oil or coal, they will be replaced anyway by other techs, however ecology, forests, living organisms require a much more delicate and considerate approach.