Ideas in Conflict: “Limits To Growth” and “The Third Industrial Revolution”
Should we be optimistic about the overall future of humankind vis-à-vis energy and the environment? True, not too many people walk around pondering this question. Of course, stock market, weight loss, professional football, and our other present-day fascinations won’t mean much if our scientists’ theories turn out to be correct, but we happily overlook that.
When we hunker down and concentrate on this larger subject, however, we see that there are two basic and contradictory concepts (actually three if you count: “do nothing and see what happens”). I’ll summarize the two main contenders that exist among leading economists:
• Idea “A”: Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy (and cleantech, efficiency, etc.) doesn’t really represent a “cost”; rather, it’s an opportunity to “get in on the ground floor” of the defining industry of the 21st Century. This happens to be the theme of my current book project: “Bullish on Renewable Energy—14 Reasons that CleanTech Investors Can’t Lose.” The phrase “The Third Industrial Revolution” is a reference to Jeremy Rifkin’s eponymous best-selling book a few years ago—one that I believe lays this story out in a very clean and compelling way.
• Idea “A” is impossible for one or more reasons. In particular, we’ve reached the end of cheap energy and cheap credit, both of which were necessary ingredients in powering the growth that much of the world experienced in the 1900s, and thus the only possible outcome is a sustained period of negative growth. Those who want a fully academic treatment of this concept are invited to check out this paper, published by Dr. Nate Hagens, who helped me with an interview that was featured in my second book, “Is Renewable Really Doable?” The basic position, I believe, grew out of the work of Donella Meadows and her seminal book “The Limits To Growth” published almost 50 years ago. As the title implies, it’s an exploration of the idea that infinite growth isn’t possible on a planet of finite size. Since the 1960s, this overarching concept has been researched from a great number of different angles, and it’s shared by a great many of the world’s top minds, including (350.org founder) Bill McKibben.
Given that these two statements contradict one another, they can’t both be true, as we learned from Aristotle (pictured above) 2400 years ago.
I invite readers to comment.
Growth doesn’t have to be infinite to be solid and sustained for a prolonged period.
Yes, only a complete fool would believe in infinite growth, but we don’t know where the finite limit of our growth potential might be. Malthus was convinced we would reach it over 200 years ago. He was wrong. A person 200 years from now might similarly laugh off the musings of Hagens..
The focus shouldn’t be the ultimate growth potential – which is probably reflected by some percentage of the net planetary insolation and is thus outside of the scope of logical projection. The focus should be on the RATE of growth and the RATE of change within society.
Society currently has a net productivity. The closest analog would be the GWP, so I’ll use that here, but it’s not a perfect analog.
With the GWP, we have a certain amount that is dedicated to maintaining the present state of the society – food must be produced and consumed; energy must be produced and consumed, infrastructure must be maintained, etc..
We also have a certain number of goals that we seek to accomplish: industrialized citizens want larger numbers representing digital wealth accounts, bigger houses, more beautification, and more entertainment; while non-industrialized citizens want food and better food production, housing, clothing, transportation, and better hygiene…
And all countries seek to increase their GDP and their share of GWP.
Obviously, some countries have a higher percentage of their citizens being “industrialized citizens’ rather than “non-industrialized citizens”. We’ve traditionally used meaningless terms like “1st world” and “3rd world” to categorize countries by the percentage of citizens that fall into either category… but that is not useful for this discussion.
So the goal of the environmentalist is to put “cleaner air, water, sea, and land” as a goal into the “wants” category for both industrialized and non-industrialized citizens.. Then see how much of the GWP you can redirect from the current “wants” towards accomplishing “cleaner air, water, earth, and sea”.
The ultimate amount of production you can direct in any given year is set by the GWP minus the amount of GWP required to maintain the present state of the society.
By framing the challenge in these terms, and discarding any irrelevant garbage concerning “growth must be finite”… You boil the challenge down to the following:
What changes can you implement that will yield the highest overall rate of growth for the least cost?
What changes can you implement that can simultaneously provide for some of the other goals that GWP is currently consumed by?
What changes yield so little growth at such a great cost that they are best left off the table at our present balance until a more favorable trade-off is possible?
Some of the answers are pretty obvious: Implementing more wind power in high wind areas costs little, and simultaneously provides for maintaining the present state of society by providing power production in the high wind regions while improving health care (by reducing coal emissions)…
Implementing low cost insulation improvements cost little, decrease the amount of GWP that must be consumed maintaining the present state of society by reducing the need for electricity and heat within society, and improve health by reducing coal and natural gas consumption.
EV’s are extremely expensive. They slightly decrease the cost of maintaining transportation, but increase health care costs by resulting in far higher net emissions to maintain transportation. This would redirect a large portion of our GWP, offering us no room to continue to grow our GWP, while providing a net negative benefit…
Etc…
Then, once you realize that this is your goal, you can start breaking it down into numbers – price the externalities, and laying out the ROI (the growth in GWP)… and comparing and contrasting different options.
We know we won’t have a large percentage of our GWP at our disposal, and we know that many of the other goals are simply too important to individuals to consider letting them go – whether that stance is defensible or not… so we have to target our growth as efficiently as possible towards maximum growth and maximum benefit. By doing so, an ever-increasing share of the GWP will be trusted to the direction of the environmentalists, because the environmentalists will have proven that their goals do not threaten the competing goals of the rest of society… and we’ll be able to grow faster.
Right now, GWP is ~$75 trillion.
Wow, thanks very much for this detailed and extremely enlightening comment. Reading it, one can’t help but realize how we’re a million miles from where we need to be in terms of our thinking. An early step, as you point out, is at least understanding the externalities of our current approach to energy. We’re not ever there.
Craig,
Agreed. But it’s both understanding the externalities and making certain that everyone else understands the externalities.
There are times when I believe that the republicans were very clever with their dumb show act of “disbelieving” the science of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Yes, they look like fools, but they’ve forced the conversation to remain focused on AWG and CO2. That’s one of the least threatening portions of coal emissions.
If we honestly priced CO2, the value of mitigation would likely fall between $5 and $20/ton… though I think it’s worth hedging our bets a little…
But if we then considered the price to society for SO2, NOx, black carbon, soot, CH4, PAH’s, PB, AS, CD, HG, and radioactive isotopes… The mitigation value could easily climb to ~$150-$200/MWh of coal-sourced electricity.
However, the drooling idiot act on the part of the GOP has kept us focused on the much more minor costs, and we’re all paying the health care and capital maintenance costs for the other issues without comment.
What Glenn says is the similar to the reasoning I have. I feel AWG is a really bad way to try to convince people that burning fossil fuels is a bad thing and should be stopped. It is just too difficult to get people to understand. There are hundreds of other really good and immediately visible reasons to stop our use of fossil fuels. Tell a mother that the sea level might rise an inch over 10 years and the weather will possibly get wilder and she may be concerned. Tell her that her child’s asthma is caused by smoke and other byproducts from the coal burning power plants and automobiles and that mercury from that same smoke is why she was advised to stay away from fish when she was pregnant and you will stand a better chance of getting her attention and getting her to understand. Tell her that her child will have to go to war in a foreign land to secure our supply of oil and you will stand an even better chance of getting her attention.
I understand AWG but there are too many people who don’t and maybe can’t understand and will argue that it’s not happening because it’s cold out today and too many people who will believe that.
As Steven Colbert said, “Global warming isn’t real because I was cold today! Also great news: World hunger is over because I just ate”.
bigvid,
The other side of the trap, however, is that with AWG, you’re telling people their children’s lives will be worse than the lives of today (any you’re right about that)… Without it, you’re telling people that they should be concerned about their current lifestyle – which many people are fine with…
I think it takes both: our dependency on fossil fuels is making our current lifestyle worse AND is projected to worsen things further still… But when some jackass from the GOP then says “I don’t believe in AWG”… we cannot get distracted and attempt to endlessly argue with a flat-Earth imbecile… We have to develop a maturity that would just let us brush off the idiot and continue with OUR program – where we talk about both the current problems and the future problems. If we let them trap us in the future, then we’re always going to be tomorrow’s problem.
(It’s critical for me to note here that I DO NOT have the maturity that I discussed above… When some moron says something to the effect of “I don’t believe in AGW” in my hearing I stop everything and cross the room to lecture them on AGW… So I’m clearly speaking to myself as much as everyone else here… It’s EASY to get distracted by empty-headed denialism.)