We are overloading the planet: Now What?

[Elixir]

You change it yet it's the same? That makes no sense.

You change your level of tech, lower your impact, raise standards of living and keep roughly the same population.
It’s almost like chewing gum and walking.

But that's not steady state.

No dynamic system is ever “steady state” in the sense of nothing ever changing. If the population level is maintained at a relatively steady state, that’s a steady state society for the purposes of this discussion.

 

[steve_bank]

In systems speak steady state means after all changes and transients have played out the system stays in a controlled predicable state. When disturbance occurs the system com sates to return to the steady state. For a car cruise control steady state would be a constant speed regards of hills.

A simple 1st order differential equation has a transient solution and a steady state solution.

To mea a stable or steady state population means over time it goes up and down about an average value.

A steady state economy could be a number of things.

To me it means no growth, don't see how a free market capitalist system would fit.

With a steady state population when everybody has a car, computer, refrigerator and a computer then what? When China opened up business thought it would be a huge new market for American goods. China tuned the table and beat us at our own game. We are a market for Chinese goods.

Back in the 80s Russia claimed it had full employment. One person had a job watching escalators in a transit station.

 

[bilby]

There's also the issue that the survivors of most any modern catastrophe will have to recover without any land mammals. They'll all go extinct as the ravenous hordes eat anything they can.

Seriously? You think that in the aftermath of a catastrophe the surviving humans will out breed and out eat the rats?

No way, Jose.

I seriously doubt that your ravening hordes could even drive livestock such as sheep, goats, cows, pigs, or horses to extinction.

Shit, in Australia, we still have somewhere in the order of one feral pig per human, despite concerted attempts to eradicate them using the best modern technology we can muster. A few starving city gents fresh from the boardroom and armed only with sharp sticks aren't going to make a dent in their numbers.

You should try catching a goat sometime. I bet you can't, even if (indeed, particularly if) you are starving.

Who said anything about catching? You can bring them down with guns (even in unarmed societies the police and military have guns), arrows or the like. When people are hungry enough (and they will be if the supply chains collapse) they'll eat whatever they can find. Primitive humans drove the megafauna to extinction, think modern man can't repeat that?

Modern man, with guns, hasn't made a dent in the Australian population of feral pigs.

Seriously, just driving pigs to extinction is probably beyond us. How are the starving hordes of Melbourne and Sydney, post societal collapse, even going to travel the thousands of km to where the feral pigs are? Just finding them all would be beyond our current, pre-collapse, technological and logistical capabilities. A few million hungry stockbrokers don't pose an existential threat to pigs. Same for chooks. Same for cows. Same for sheep. Same for goats. Don't even get me started on the rabbits (why do you think the Chinese built the Great Wall?).

 

[bilby]

I just looked over the Forbes 25 list--while some started from a decent position their vast wealth is mostly self-made.

Nah, it's made on the back of first world infrastructure. Otherwise we would see as many Nigerians on the list as Americans.

Or are you of the opinion that Nigerians don't make the list because they don't work as hard, or don't have as much ambition as, Americans?

I've explained it before. The road to major riches is to do something that makes others happier or more productive with a very low marginal cost.

You need access to those to make happy or processes to improve for either of these to happen.

Do you imagine that there are no sad Nigerians, or that Nigeria lacks scope for process improvement?

Nigerians are numerous, innovative, and hard working, just like Americans. The difference - the reason why Americans dominate the world's rich lists - is infrastructure.

Americans get rich because they are handed a load of expensive infrastructure as their birth-right, and it's so fundamental to their lifestyles that they don't even notice that it happened, so they fondly imagine that they are "self-made".

See that freeway you and your employees commute to the city on? The one that allows you to cheaply deliver your products to your customers, and that allows your suppliers to cheaply deliver parts and materials to your business? You didn't build that.

Now, let's also consider telecommunications, power, water, sewerage, railroads, ports, airports, police, firefighters, schools, hospitals, heavy machinery, trucks, airplanes, ships...

 

[bilby]

I don't really count fossil fuels because they can be replaced. Minerals, though, are the sticking point. I disagree on deteriorate with recycling--that's the realm of organics. Minerals can be purified. But in time we aren't going to be able to find enough.

Why not?

Where do you imagine the stuff we already found has gone?

The first law of thermodynamics should give you a hint.

 

[DBT]

It remained under one billion for our entire existence, until recent times, the industrial revolution.

If you lived in 1500BCE, you could have said "It remained under one hundred milliion for our entire existence, until recent times". Why is your choice of one billion of the slightest significance, where one hundred million is not?

Why, in short, should anyone care about one billion in this context? What is special or important about "one billion" as a milestone??

If one under billion represents long term carrying capacity for humans, and has remained within that benchmark throughout our history, we exceeded carrying capacity when our population went above that number.

Of course, one billion is not fixed by natural law, perhaps technology and efficiency may allow us 2 billion or 4 billion without overshoot.

What is clear is that with our eight billion and growing, and way doing business and the way we live (consumer capitalism) we have exceeded long term carrying capacity and sooner or later something has to give.

 

[Merle]

You change it yet it's the same? That makes no sense.

You change your level of tech, lower your impact, raise standards of living and keep roughly the same population.
It’s almost like chewing gum and walking.

Ok, so we just keep raising our standard of living with the same population but with less impact on the Earth.

Great. We have been trying that for a century. It hasn't been working. We keep falling further behind.

But what? I must just ignore that and have blind faith that technology will solve the problem?

Once again,

17 Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls:
18 Yet I will rejoice in Nuclear Power, I will joy in the God of my salvation.
19 Nuclear Power is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places.
-- Habakkuk 3:17-19, Satire Version

Is that the basic gist?

 

[Merle]

A few million hungry stockbrokers don't pose an existential threat to pigs. Same for chooks. Same for cows. Same for sheep. Same for goats. Don't even get me started on the rabbits (why do you think the Chinese built the Great Wall?).

Rabbits? Did you notice my paper mentions rabbits?

In biology, exponential growth eventually reaches a limit. When a few rabbits were introduced to Australia, for instance, the population grew like–you guessed it–rabbits (Alves, 2022). But over time, the available space for rabbits was filled up, and growth slowed. There is only so much ecological space for a species to inhabit. There are consequences to being on a finite Earth (Tverberg, 2014; Murphy,2022a). As a species fills its available habitat, the exponential growth rate tends to change to a straight-line growth instead of exponential and then eventually levels off as it reaches a limit. The curve that traces this function is known as a logistics curve. -- https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/#Logistics

I suppose you will tell me I got that wrong too, yes?

 

[Merle]

I say you make the second one a dip rather than recognize that it goes to basically zero. Even your graph shows a declining line at the end--the greens always cut the chart off before that line intersects the zero. Most estimates show a parabolic decline in the end rather than your linear one, though.

Ah, we are discussing the trajectory of the blue line on my graph. That is what my graph was meant for. Perhaps I should have described it better. The blue line was not meant to be an authoritative revelation of the true path of the curve, but rather, my estimate on where the curve would lie based on the text above it. ( https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/#Carrying )

I take it you think the safe zone looks more like the red curve shown below, where we continue on happily and obliviously, until suddenly, like the coyote chasing the roadrunner, we find nothing under our feet and we plunge to the bottom of the canyon.

Of course the actual trajectory of both the blue curve and the red curve depends on our future decisions. If we make decisions that are good for the environment, both the blue curve and the red curve can perhaps be modified to go further up or to the right.

I would love to see where other people would put the line. Please feel free to copy the chart into paint, and then sketch in your own representation of where you think the safe zone curve lies.

 

[steve_bank]

And Moses came down from the mountain where god from a burning computer gave him a blue and red curve.

Moses held up the curves and said 'Behold god hath given us salvation in the curves!'.

The people ignored Moses proclaiming 'We want unlimited self indulgence to hell with the curves!"

Hearing that god caused a great chasm into which the people fell. He cursed the world with heat ,pandemics, dogtrots, and wars.

Quality of life?

A hot shower on demand is a luxury. Drinking water on demand from a faucet is a luxury.

Refrigerators, washing machines.

Getting on a jet and flying to Vegas for a weekend is extreme luxury. At least compared to when I was growing up.

To be upscale in the first part of the last century meant higher education for your kids, good food, water, mobility around the world, clothes for the environment, housing, and medical care on demand.

People have no context to judge how well off we are historically.

 

[Elixir]

But what? I must just ignore that and have blind faith that technology will solve the problem?

You are free to do as you like. Tilting at windmills is alway an option. Even imaginary windmills are fair game.
Tech WILL contribute to the mitigation of human suffering, as it always has. It will also very likely provide the mechanisms for population reduction - either birth control and/or massive genocide. Unfortunately you don’t get to pick.

To be upscale in the first part of the last century meant higher education for your kids, good food, water, mobility around the world, clothes for the environment, housing, and medical care on demand.

Uh, that would have been upper crust elite, not just “upscale”.

 

[bilby]

If one under billion represents long term carrying capacity for humans, and has remained within that benchmark throughout our history, we exceeded carrying capacity when our population went above that number.

OK. Big "if", there.

Does "under one billion represents long term carrying capacity" (sic)?

How do you know?

It's a suspiciously round number for something that has been calculated from real data, rather than being pulled from somebody's rectum.

Of course, one billion is not fixed by natural law, perhaps technology and efficiency may allow us 2 billion or 4 billion without overshoot.

So, that number was 1 billion, plus or minus four billion? That's a fairly large error bar.

What is clear is that with our eight billion and growing, and way doing business and the way we live (consumer capitalism) we have exceeded long term carrying capacity and sooner or later something has to give.

That is not "clear" at all; that is you assuming your conclusion without a shred of evidence.

You just demonstrated that you have no clue what the long term carrying capacity is; To then assert that we have exceeded that unknown number is completely unjustified.

 

[bilby]

Ok, so we just keep raising our standard of living with the same population but with less impact on the Earth.

Great. We have been trying that for a century.

We haven't. We have started working towards that, about sixty years ago; It became clear that it was working - that birthrates were declining substantially - about forty years ago; and due to demographic lag (the people born in the 1970s and '80s had their children in the '90s and 2000s, but won't die until the 2050s and '60s) we are not going to be able to START trying that until the middle of this century, without killing people.

You yourself have repeatedly agreed that genocide isn't acceptable; The unavoidable consequence of that is that we cannot possibly have begun the experiment you claim we have conducted for a century, and won't be able to for thirty odd years.

To declare failure now is more than a little premature.

A century ago, the population was still increasing unchecked, and the people born a century ago had already had most of the children they were ever going to have, by the time the oral contraceptive was developed, much less widely available.

 

[bilby]

A few million hungry stockbrokers don't pose an existential threat to pigs. Same for chooks. Same for cows. Same for sheep. Same for goats. Don't even get me started on the rabbits (why do you think the Chinese built the Great Wall?).

Rabbits? Did you notice my paper mentions rabbits?

In biology, exponential growth eventually reaches a limit. When a few rabbits were introduced to Australia, for instance, the population grew like–you guessed it–rabbits (Alves, 2022). But over time, the available space for rabbits was filled up, and growth slowed. There is only so much ecological space for a species to inhabit. There are consequences to being on a finite Earth (Tverberg, 2014; Murphy,2022a). As a species fills its available habitat, the exponential growth rate tends to change to a straight-line growth instead of exponential and then eventually levels off as it reaches a limit. The curve that traces this function is known as a logistics curve. -- https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/#Logistics

I suppose you will tell me I got that wrong too, yes?

Such an incredibly simplistic description of a hugely complex and dynamic issue is more "not even wrong"; But if pressed, I would certainly not tell you you had got it right, "Sophomoric" would be more charitable that just bluntly saying "wrong".

Perhaps you should have looked into what Frank Fenner (the eminent Australian virologist you quoted earlier) was doing with Myxomatosis (on which he was an expert), rather than waste our time with his opinions in areas where he was a non-expert.

 

[bilby]

Ah, we are discussing the trajectory of the blue line on my graph. That is what my graph was meant for. Perhaps I should have described it better. The blue line was not meant to be an authoritative revelation of the true path of the curve, but rather, my estimate on where the curve would lie based on the text above it.

Yes. It's your drawing of the Loch Ness Monster. As such, it's not actually a useful contribution to the discussion.

And you STILL have no justification for even the direction of slope you chose - other than that it's what you want others to believe is going to happen.

Your kind offer to reposition your line, without changing the direction of its slope, is one I must respectfully decline, on the basis that it is still bollocks.

Throughout human history, technology has given that line an upward slope; Yet you want us all to imagine (as you do) that it will start sloping downwards in the realatively near future. Why?

 

[steve_bank]

The point being at least in what we generally call the industrialized west material standards of living today were unheard of when I was born on such a scale.

The goal of American foreign policy was to spread democracy that supported free market capitalism so we could sell them cars and washing machines.

The nature of capitalism. That drives consumption.

 

[bilby]

The goal of American foreign policy was to spread democracy that supported free market capitalism so we could sell them cars and washing machines.

The volk folks at Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Seimens, Bosch, and Miele thank you for your service.

Their allies opposite numbers at Toyota, Mitsubishi and Hitachi also applaud your efforts.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You change it yet it's the same? That makes no sense.

You change your level of tech, lower your impact, raise standards of living and keep roughly the same population.
It’s almost like chewing gum and walking.

But that's not steady state.

No dynamic system is ever “steady state” in the sense of nothing ever changing. If the population level is maintained at a relatively steady state, that’s a steady state society for the purposes of this discussion.

In systems speak steady state means after all changes and transients have played out the system stays in a controlled predicable state. When disturbance occurs the system com sates to return to the steady state. For a car cruise control steady state would be a constant speed regards of hills.

See his point. Steady state means no permanent changes--but new technology is a permanent change and thus it can't be steady state. You appear to be using "steady state" to mean no growth in population or standard of living. While steady state would include that it's not all that's required for it to be steady.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't really count fossil fuels because they can be replaced. Minerals, though, are the sticking point. I disagree on deteriorate with recycling--that's the realm of organics. Minerals can be purified. But in time we aren't going to be able to find enough.

Why not?

Where do you imagine the stuff we already found has gone?

The first law of thermodynamics should give you a hint.

Dispersed into the environment at concentrations we are not currently capable of recovering it.

 

[Merle]

Ok, so we just keep raising our standard of living with the same population but with less impact on the Earth.

Great. We have been trying that for a century.

We haven't. We have started working towards that, about sixty years ago; It became clear that it was working - that birthrates were declining substantially - about forty years ago; and due to demographic lag (the people born in the 1970s and '80s had their children in the '90s and 2000s, but won't die until the 2050s and '60s) we are not going to be able to START trying that until the middle of this century, without killing people.

You yourself have repeatedly agreed that genocide isn't acceptable; The unavoidable consequence of that is that we cannot possibly have begun the experiment you claim we have conducted for a century, and won't be able to for thirty odd years.

To declare failure now is more than a little premature.

A century ago, the population was still increasing unchecked, and the people born a century ago had already had most of the children they were ever going to have, by the time the oral contraceptive was developed, much less widely available.

That wasn't what I was talking about. The issue is that we have been concerned about the environment and fossil fuel depletion for a long time. And yet the Earth is in worse condition now. Tehnology simply is not keeping up with the rate at which we trash the planet. It is little more than a statement of faith when we say that some day technology will catch up.