 | The Energy and Environment Round-Up: October 14th 2007 | The Oil Drum: Canada | Canadian Gas - Decline Sets in. |  |
434 comments on World Energy and Population: Trends to 2100
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Thanks for this well-presented and researched report on the population dilemma.
In the "Not adopting a fatalistic stance" department, I think many population-based calculations overlook the impact of the consumption multiplier that the billion of us that comprise the global middle class bring to the calculation.
If a Human Consumption Unit (HCU) is the reasonable amount of food and 'stuff' that a human needs to live a minimal full life (As opposed to what Ted Honderich refers to as the half- and quarter- lives that at least 2 billion of us lead currently) Then the global middle class is living about 10 HCU-equivalents. I expect that if you average the under-HCU population with the obscenely over-HCU population, the planet is currently support something like 15-20 billion HCUs.
These excess HCUs are the fat in the system that gives us a window to act.
A controlled and intentional crash of global middle-class consumption, combined with the increase in death rates and reduction in birth rate that will accompany reduced middle class consumption (Think post-soviet Russia), gives us a much more humane way to negotiate the downslope to a sustainable population than the apocalyptic dreams of some of the more extreme overshoot fans.
When it comes to downsizing HCUs, I think it is far better to focus first and foremost on reducing the global "C"s, while encouraging the global "H"s to decline more gradually to carrying capacity.
You get to the same place demographically, but the trip is far more pleasant.
A future earth with 1 billion humans each enjoying a full HCU, is a far more just, stable, and humane world than our current highly polarized one.
This sort of what I was referring to when I wrote about rich individuals and nations reallocating their discretionary spending towards the purchase of energy (or other essentials such as food). The problem is with the nations and individuals who don't have the discretionary spending power. The current economic system gives them virtually no chance. There is no mechanism for the just distribution of wealth, and those who presently hold it are not likely to opt for one.
The middle class will tighten their belts, but it won't keep the Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Africans, South East Asians and South Americans from falling into the abyss.
It's a nice dream, but the future reality is much more likely to involve a widening of the gulf of inequity rather than its narrowing.
Good point Glider Guider. I do find it fortunate that the US is an oil importing country. We have the most fat that can be reallocated to preparing for the future and we will be forced to face reality faster than if we were a net exporter. Because the net export model suggests that our imports will decline much faster than actual depletion, we will have the incentive and technology to improve efficiency while many poor exporting countries avoid collapse. The US/Europe still has the excess capital to improve our infrastructure and the incentive to encourage leapfrogging to avoid global warming and keep the costs of fossil fuels down. Making this happen is our responsibility as citizens.
Does anyone have any information on the effect the Iraq war had on American oil supplies? If it decreased oil supply and was a failure on that front (which I think it was) there will be less incentive to repeat the debacle. War is very oil intensive; I'm sure we've burned more than we've gotten, but I have no data to back that up. Any references would be most appreciated.
Very well written/thought out article. I repeat your plea to reject fatalism. We must not let perfection be the enemy of good. Any action to reduce overshoot must be pursued, perhaps a cost analyses of effective overshoot reduction strategies might be in order? And not just of energy supplies; all limiting factors (food, land, water etc). Perhaps some guest posts?
Thanks
Any solution to peak oil, global warming and poverty will depend on wide or universal access to contraception.
I=PAT
Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology (from Ehrlich)
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
That should be Impact = Population X Affluence / Technology.
Concentrating solar can reduce natural gas consumption for peaking power within a timespan of months. Solar energy could be 25% of our power production in one years time, since our hundreds of megawatts of production would turn into hundreds of gigawatts at 1000 sun levels. More practically, we will just go to 100 sun levels and only produce an additional 25 gigawatts a year each year, substituting for gas at first, then for coal, then for nuclear, as we go from photovoltaic to thermal generation while our manufacturing capacity ramps up.
Concentrating solar ramps up within months, concentrating thermal takes years. Say, ten years to ramp up to the point of replacing all natural gas, and another ten years to replacing all coal.
Superb article. Thank you. With the press release from Accenture about their study around the world interviewing people's perceptions: http://newsroom.accenture.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=4601 perhaps getting this work passed around will encourage the average Joes to wake up to what's coming. It will be on the Weekend Link List Friday at http://newenergyandfuel.com/ with a very strong recommendation. I doubt that we're too late though. Rather we could be looking for policy leadership to mitigate the harm to those who most likely will be harmed. No where near enough attention and investment is being leveled at getting all the alternatives into working productive shape. But until 10s of millions of Joes catch on, well . . .
It's the leadership that inflicts the harm. To get out of that spiral, you need a completely new system of politics. The problem with that is that the current leaders have their fingers on all the important triggers and buttons and printing presses, and they're not planning on giving that up easily.
I agree - But what to use in place of it? A communist party as in China, soft dictatorship/democracy as in Russia or a hard dictatorship? The corporate business model doesn't have the cahones to put the money up nor should it put the investment, management, and labor at such risk. A government is a poor choice, too, as you note. Can a public corporate model be made to work or will it quickly be a bureaucratic sinkhole? Other than that Joe and Jane public has to become aware, educated, motivated and complaining about it. That means these articles are important. So . . . Pass it Around!
Like this: http://newenergyandfuel.com/
Maybe take a look at Jay Hanson's conclusions about Humans and Politics.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/killer_ape-peak_oil/messages/1?l=1
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/pdf/sixteen-two/xvi-2-93.pdf
Mr. Hanson's "killer_ape-peak_oil" group is private to members and apparently closed to anyone wishing to join at this time, as I cannot get Yahoo to give me any options about joining the group.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
GZ
go to warsocialism.com
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WarSocialism/
I don't agree with the attempt to blame our current standard of living for the predicament we are facing. Regardless of the structure of society, overshoot would have come anyway. China and India are examples, and they swamp any “excessive” HCU we have here by their sheer numbers.
I watched a show the other day where the Chinese Ambassador to Canada said that their country is so polluted and so over populated that within 10 years they will have 150 MILLION environmental refugees that will have to be “relocated”. Is that a warning that they will have to emigrate to other countries??? That’s 40% of the US population. Where would they all go?
We require the high level of HCU to run this society. A society whose science and medicine has actually caused the over population in other countries to occur with the aid and technology we send them. http://www.parl.gc.ca/39/1/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/fore-e/rep-e/rep... is a prime example of where billions of aid to Africa has only made more poorer people.
If anything, advanced societies have a much better track record on the environment than less advanced societies. Soviet Russia, Africa, Indonesia, China and many others who live in advancement only because we export from our society, were/are environmental disasters. Yes, a lot of that is supporting our advanced society, no question, but even before that environment took second fiddle to humans, and in many places humans took second fiddle to “the motherland”.
Thus we should not feel ashamed, nor feel guilty at our high consumptive lifestyle. It was a great effort while it lasted. People of the future will marvel at us, and wonder what kind of wonderful life people today must have had, and wish they had lived in our times. But they will also realize that our high technological society had a lifespan of its own. Maybe they will learn a lesson from that.
As with any population of any organism, they eventually reach the carrying capacity, or have the carrying capacity pulled out from under it. Humans are no different, and we would have gotten here anyway. If anything we should be proud of what we have achieved as a species. We have achieved so much in science and technology, that absolutely must be preserved for future peoples, even thousands of years from now.
We will crash, maybe to a small fraction of our current population. There may be some modest recovery in 100 or 200 years. Though we have essentially raped the planet of all non-renewable resources save what those people in the future can mine from our buildings and garbage dumps, if there is one positive thing we can leave behind it’s our knowledge of science and technology. Of all things it would be a great shame to see that all evaporate and return to an age where people think the world is flat, we are at center of the universe and create all sorts of gods to explain how their world works.
Richard
London, Ont.
No one is ahead of their time, just the rest of humanity is slow to catch on.