Collapse, Extended

 

Sooner or later, even in the United States, most or all of those controls will apply. The alternative in a not too distant future will just be too grim. The ancient Greeks and others practiced infanticide. Chinese and Indian people still do that, out of prejudice against female babies. (The modern method is abortion after sex determination.) Those prejudicial practices should be illegal, even criminal. I hope we can avoid legalized infanticide. Nonetheless, the legal and social pressures should be against population growth, not for it. (Things have already gone too far to allow a neutral stance.)

The sooner we do what is required to limit and control population, nationally and globally, the less restrictive and draconian will be the necessary measures. That is why we need to reverse course on population-related attitudes and laws now.

Resources

Most people never think about where their food and water comes from. By choice, I live within walking distance of places that grow wheat, corn, tomatoes and other crops. It's a short drive - only a few minutes - to see the horses, cows, sheep, goats, chickens and other animals people keep. It is a longer drive to the vineyards, forests and cotton fields, but all are doable within a morning or afternoon. So, I know where my food, water and everything else come from.

It takes a lot of land to feed one person, especially the way we do it in the United States. But, that agricultural is not all we need. We also use copper, iron, nickel, gold, silver and other metals, as well as coal and oil, phosphate and hundreds of other things gathered out of the Earth. Automobiles use catalytic converters to get rid of smog, which require platinum and other rare metals in their construction. As our society becomes more complex, there is an ever-growing list of minerals, chemicals and manufactured materials that we use on a grand scale.

The use of resources is, of course, directly related to population size. More importantly, "impact," or the intensity of resource use per person, is the exact measure of the economy on our planet's environment. It should be clear that an Australian Aborigine who eschews all modern "improvements," has a much lower impact on the environment than I or almost all Americans do. I have no idea how pounds of iron ore are needed to support me for one year, but I do know the Aborigines use a lot les of it.

There are lots of resources which are essentially unlimited compared to population impact. For example, our Earth is made of silicon and iron, even if most of those elements are unavailable for human use. On the other hand, the things we need to be concerned about are those which are either rate-limiting or quantity-limiting, when we ask how much is enough? Rate-limiting resources are like catalysts, whereas quantity-limiting resources are like feed stock, in a chemical reaction. The amount of reaction products will be determined by how much feed stock can be shoved in, and how fast that can be processed.

It's easier to think about resources limited in quantity. There's only so much gold, silver and platinum. There are only so many fish in the sea. There is also a limited supply of coal, oil, timber and food. Even so-called renewable resources are quantity-limited at any given time. Fish, for example, need time to replace themselves, so there are only so many available for eating right now. Moreover, fish require water resources, so only so many of them can live in the Earth's waters at one time.

The quantity-limited resources we all know and talk about include oil, coal, natural gas and energy generally. There are only so many fossil fuels deposited all over the Earth. All of those fuels were made by plants that died for us millions of years ago. It could take up to 100 million years to replace the oil we've burned in the last century; i.e., we are using it a million times faster than we are making it. We are not doing in the supply of coal at such a fast clip: maybe it could be replaced in a million years. Low grade peat (the ancestor of coal) can often be produced in a matter of a few thousand years.

Meanwhile, we have no practical, economic way of replacing the organic resources we are burning up. Due to a fundamental law of Thermodynamics (entropy), it will take even more energy to retrieve the CO₂ from the atmosphere than we derived by creating it. This dooms plans to sequester the CO₂ produced by power plants. (You would need another power plant to produce the energy needed to trap the CO₂. It would be more efficient just not to produce the CO₂ in the first place.)

Rate-limiting resources include sunlight, which is also quantity-limited. The quality of sunlight determines agricultural output in many locations. If, as a result of global warming, there is increased cloud cover, plant productivity dependent on photosynthesis could decline. Catalysts such as platinum and other rare earths are by definition rate-limiting resources, because they are required in the chemical plants and factories which make everything else. Most of us use gasoline in our cars, which is the end-product of a lengthy series of chemical reactions involving catalysis. The same is true of our synthetic clothes. Rare earths are the secret ingredient in super-strength magnets, superconductors and some specialized semiconductors.

Take away the rate-limiting resources, and life as we know it will quickly become impossible. Our First World lives depend upon high rates of production of all the things we use, such as gasoline. We can make gasoline substitutes without catalysts, but the engines that burn the substitute stuff are not as clean or efficient or as cheap to maintain. (Example: methanol corrodes engine parts, especially gasket material and glues.) The worst part of doing without catalysts is foregoing what they do: speed up things. There is simply no way the chemical industry could meet modern demands within allocated time-frames without catalysts. Somebody would have to do with gasoline or its equivalent, and the cost of a gallon of gas would probably be 100 times greater. Think about that: $200 per gallon for gas!

The only way I can justify such a prodigal use of resources is to assume someone has a remarkable new invention which somehow gets around entropy: a perpetual motion machine. Otherwise, the combination of limited quantities and rates must sooner or later put an end to increased production. The end may come even sooner than a simple calculation may suggest, due to negative competitive interactions. As population and demand grows, there will come a point when a scarce resource will be needed for different uses. Example: You could put the platinum in the catalytic converter, or in the chemical plant. Without the Star Trek transporter, that platinum is bound for years to come in making gasoline or running your car; gas or cars, not both. The corn we grow could feed people or make ethanol. Water could be used to grow crops or for drinking.

Here, in California, we are already faced with some of those problems, particularly the shortage of water. In case you've forgotten, people actually fight and kill over water. Global climate warming - a result of burning too much fossil fuel - is upon us. One ironic result will be the increased supply of rainwater and the reduced availability of fresh water in California. That's a result of the seasonality of rain, the lack of economic storage facilities, and the political wars going on over who supplies and who uses the water. Unless California solves the water problem pretty soon, the high living we've done here will come to an end.

Attitudes

It should be fairly obvious that problems with our resources is intimately related to the size of our population. Further, the biggest problems are determined by the 'weakest links in the chain,' by the limits on how fast resources can be used and how much can be used. Most people agree, there are limits. But, as usual, there are the scoff-laws, very often ultra-capitalists (market fundamentalists) who say "markets" will find a solution. The capitalist's "invisible hand" is not much different from the god that fundamentalist Christians say "will provide." Either sort of belief is a form of fatalism, the resignation that no purposeful human intelligence or action will solve the problems.

One way or another, capitalist and religious beliefs amount to trusting in blind luck. The difficulty is that we are not in a position to gamble. There are some certainties in our predicament, which reasonably skilful people can calculate. For example, there is very little doubt about the California water shortage, especially now that the Colorado River treaties are going to be fully enforced. There is very little doubt that our tropical forests are fast disappearing, and that old growth temperate forests are in danger. There is very little doubt that oil supplies are peaking, and that another major find is unlikely. There is very little doubt that our fisheries are being exhausted, and there is certainty that many of the best ones have been fished out. (The Federal government just closed most West Coast ground fisheries, as supermarket prices will attest.) These and other gruesome facts - FACTS - point to a troubled future. No guesswork or supposition is required. Further, unless there is some active, presumably human, agency to reverse and solve the problems, things won't get better. At best, left alone, they won't get worse; but, in most cases, things will degenerate.

In all of this, taking a devil may care attitude definitely makes things worse. Would you giggle and smile while your house is burning down, after laying off the Fire Dep't last month? Would any modern person believe a well equipped Fire Department is dispensable? Yet, over 150 years ago, many Americans resisted the institution of paid police officers and firemen, thinking these were not properly the business of government. Conservatives of that time didn't want to pay the taxes, preferring to leave it to individuals to fight fires. The idea was each (rich) person would hire his own fire department. Of course, that left the poor defenseless. The wealthy soon learned that their properties burned down just as quickly as their poor neighbor's, especially in the city where sparks from a poor man's fire could light another almost anywhere (as happened in Chicago and after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake). Why is it some really simple lessons have to be learned at really great expense?

There is no other agency but the government which can intervene in individual lives and private businesses to solve the ecological problem. It won't be solved by markets, or religiously waiting for the Second Coming. It seems to me everyone should be getting on their high horse about this, because - didn't you know? - your house is burning down!