We are overloading the planet: Now What?

[DBT]

Brian Czech and Herman Daly propose steady state economics.

Steady state economics worked "well" for centuries, during the Middle Ages.

Population growth was kept in check by disease, famine, and war; Almost everyone was fated to do the exact same job as their father (if they lived to adulthood).

Personally, I don't think many people would like to return to such a system.

It's not a law of nature that a steady state economy must take that form. We don't have to be that one dimensional in our thinking and planning. It can be much the same as we have here and now, a mixture of capitalism with social security nets in place, just without the perceived dependency on perpetual growth.

 

[bilby]

Brian Czech and Herman Daly propose steady state economics.

Steady state economics worked "well" for centuries, during the Middle Ages.

Population growth was kept in check by disease, famine, and war; Almost everyone was fated to do the exact same job as their father (if they lived to adulthood).

Personally, I don't think many people would like to return to such a system.

It's not a law of nature that a steady state economy must take that form. We don't have to be that one dimensional in our thinking and planning. It can be much the same as we have here and now, a mixture of capitalism with social security nets in place, just without the perceived dependency on perpetual growth.

Growth isn't a requirement of the currently dominant economic paradigm; It's a consequence of it.

The economy doesn't depend on perpetual growth; It causes perpetual growth.

 

[steve_bank]

Adding I kw from being there the technology booms of the 90s on the west coast would not have happened without science and engineering immigrants from Asia, India, East Europe, and even Russia.

 

[steve_bank]

he derogatory term WOP meaning without papers or passport, usually applied to Italians. Mexicans were wet backs

And Irish people were "The Irish".
Japanese, Chinese, Jewish people, Middle Easterners, Hawaiians, Native Americans, Spanish, Mexicans -
Hell, dude, anyone speaking other than the Queen's English had their own unique derogatory designation.

PS: Wetbacks is all one word.

Irish were Micks, Jews were kikes and other words. But then Irish an Jews had slurs for blacks and others.

I have looked for the Yiddish slurs I heard growing up but they have been purged form the net. There are certainly Jewish blacks.

I have head it all. So whats your point?

Immigrant groups I were around like East Europeans and Italians spoke native language at home but made a point of learning English and having their kids learn. I went to school with immigrant kids and grew up with them in public housing.

 

[DBT]

Brian Czech and Herman Daly propose steady state economics.

Steady state economics worked "well" for centuries, during the Middle Ages.

Population growth was kept in check by disease, famine, and war; Almost everyone was fated to do the exact same job as their father (if they lived to adulthood).

Personally, I don't think many people would like to return to such a system.

It's not a law of nature that a steady state economy must take that form. We don't have to be that one dimensional in our thinking and planning. It can be much the same as we have here and now, a mixture of capitalism with social security nets in place, just without the perceived dependency on perpetual growth.

Growth isn't a requirement of the currently dominant economic paradigm; It's a consequence of it.

The economy doesn't depend on perpetual growth; It causes perpetual growth.

Be that as it may, whether capitalism as we practice it causes growth or depends on growth to sustain it, perpetual growth is not sustainable in the long termterm, hence there are economists, including Adam Smith, who have proposed steady state economics. Whether we are capable of making that work is the question.

"A steady-state economy is an economy made up of a constant stock of physical wealth (capital) and a constant population size. In effect, such an economy does not grow in the course of time.
The term usually refers to the national economy of a particular country, but it is also applicable to the economic system of a city, a region, or the entire world. Early in the history of economic thought, classical economist Adam Smith of the 18th century developed the concept of a stationary state of an economy: Smith believed that any national economy in the world would sooner or later settle in a final state of stationarity." - Wiki

 

[bilby]

Be that as it may, whether capitalism as we practice it causes growth or depends on growth to sustain it, perpetual growth is not sustainable in the long term

No, it doesn't.

So they say dumb things like "growth cannot continue indefinitely, because we would run out of room", (or resources, or whatever), while conveniently ignoring the fact that economic growth is measured in fiat dollars, which are limited only by the availability of higher numbers.

Economic growth can continue indefinitely, even in the face of both declining resource use, and declining population.

 

[DBT]

Be that as it may, whether capitalism as we practice it causes growth or depends on growth to sustain it, perpetual growth is not sustainable in the long term

No, it doesn't.

So they say dumb things like "growth cannot continue indefinitely, because we would run out of room", (or resources, or whatever), while conveniently ignoring the fact that economic growth is measured in fiat dollars, which are limited only by the availability of higher numbers.

Economic growth can continue indefinitely, even in the face of both declining resource use, and declining population.

'Economy' is more than just a matter of currency, that is one aspect, the term may broadly refer to how we conduct our business, our lives, business models, values, the natural resources we use and how we exploit our environment.

 

[Merle]

Uh, what I was saying in context was that, if you use coal to produce nuclear power plants, you are in effect extending the power you get from that coal.

Yes, and that claim is so unimaginably dumb as to be "not even wrong".

View attachment 45102

Uranium is a massively more energetic fuel than coal.

And nobody "uses coal to build" any kind of power plant.

I have no clue what would inspire anyone who has even a passing interest in the subject of electricity generation to say something so bizarre and stupid, to an audience that has shown the slightest propensity for rational thought.

Unless you enjoy looking foolish?

If nuclear power plants require coal power to build them, what power source do you imagine a coal power plant requires to build it?

Are you aware that a coal power plant is essentially identical to a nuclear power plant, except in the primary heat source?

Are you aware that making coal into heat is more technologically challenging than making uranium into heat is?

All power plants require a large amount of fossil fuels to build them.

Nuclear plants cannot supply all of our future energy.

If you think everybody looks foolish who says that, then have a good laugh as you read the writings of these fools. (Davis, 2012, Zyga, 2011, Abbott, 2016, Clifford, 2022, Murphy, 2021, B, 2021a, Berman, 2023 ).

 

[Merle]

This reminds me of a science lesson from back in high school. The required reading for that day was a treatise written somewhere in the mid-to-late 19th century. It was written by a very educated gentleman from England. In it he explained why coal powered cargo vessels couldn't cross the Atlantic. Sailing vessels were here permanently. With lots of grammatically perfect verbiage, math, and graphs, the author explained that no vessel could carry enough coal to cross from New York to London and float, much less carry cargo.
The class was really a lesson in critical thinking and noticing tacit assumptions. Clearly the author didn't take into account the human ingenuity that resulted in vast increases in steam engine efficiency. How once shippers realized that fossil fuels powered ships were faster and more reliable than sailing ships they'd want more. Etc.
The teacher also mentioned that the author was the son of a very wealthy merchant ship owner and had recently inherited a fleet of profitable sailing vessels. That he was young enough at the time of writing to have faced the choice between upgrading his fleet to coal power or watch the value of his fleet plummet during his lifetime.
Tom

We don't know what future science will find. I agree.

But one should not say, "I don't know. Therefore, all is well." That is like saying, "I don't know. Therefore God."

 

[bilby]

All power plants require a large amount of fossil fuels to build them.

That's not just wrong, it's absurd.

 

[bilby]

Nuclear plants cannot supply all of our future energy.

Yes, they can.

 

[bilby]

If you think everybody looks foolish who says that, then have a good laugh as you read the writings of these fools.

Are any of them members here?

Why should I care about them, specifically?

Are you of the impression that I haven't already spent a lifetime studying this subject?

 

[bilby]

But one should not say, "I don't know. Therefore, all is well." That is like saying, "I don't know. Therefore God."

Equally, one should not say "I don't know. Therefore disaster is imminent and unavoidable".

 

[bilby]

4) Shielding (it's just a big pile of rocks. We stick those rocks together, to stop them from moving; That's called "concrete". The Romans used it to build loads of stuff, including the Collosseum Colosseum, and they didn't need a single piece of fossil fuel burning equipment to do so).

<nitpick>
The Romans would have used some fossil fuels to build the Colosseum
1. Lime for mortar Roman lime burning
2. Cooking of some food for slaves, free workers, soldiers etc.
3. The metal used in the construction would have been forged using fossil fuel

Granted nowhere near the proportion of fossil fuel used by them compared to what we would use
</nitpick>

See, you're making the same mistake that @Merle is making.

Energy is needed; Energy currently comes from fossil fuel; Therefore fossil fuel is needed.

But fossil fuel is only used today because it's the currently cheapest option. It wasn't always, and it won't always be.

The Romans did NOT use fossil fuels for those things; They used what modern ecologists would call "biomass" - olive oil for lamps, wood for cooking, charcoal for metal working and lime burning.

Fossil fuels were known to them, but rarely used; Why cart coal across the empire, when you can make charcoal locally?

"Fossil fuels are used today" ≠ "Fossil fuels are an essential and unavoidable part of this activity"

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Be that as it may, whether capitalism as we practice it causes growth or depends on growth to sustain it, perpetual growth is not sustainable in the long term

No, it doesn't.

So they say dumb things like "growth cannot continue indefinitely, because we would run out of room", (or resources, or whatever), while conveniently ignoring the fact that economic growth is measured in fiat dollars, which are limited only by the availability of higher numbers.

Economic growth can continue indefinitely, even in the face of both declining resource use, and declining population.

'Economy' is more than just a matter of currency, that is one aspect, the term may broadly refer to how we conduct our business, our lives, business models, values, the natural resources we use and how we exploit our environment.

But in order for growth to have an end, wouldn't that require a stagnation of technology?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Solar thermal devices harness the Sun’s energy to produce heat that creates steam that turns a turbine to generate electricity. Solar thermal technology avoids many of the scalability problems facing nuclear technology. For instance, although a solar thermal farm requires a little more land area than the equivalent nuclear power infrastructure, it can be located in unused desert areas. It also uses safer, more abundant materials. Most importantly, solar thermal can be scaled to produce not just 15 TW, but hundreds of TW if it would ever be required.

However, the biggest problem with solar thermal technology is cloudy days and nighttime. Abbott plans to investigate a number of storage solutions for this intermittency problem, which also plagues other renewable energy solutions such as wind power, in a future study. In the transition period, he suggests that the dual-use of natural gas with solar thermal farms is the pathway to building our future energy infrastructure.

Nuclear won't work... not enough uranium, etc....! We should do solar thermal. We just need to figure out the intermittency issue of Earth's rotation. Don't worry, we'll figure it out!

Oi! Storage solutions for massive power plants. You can't store a power plant in a battery. Though the 2022 article indicated it was "years away".

 

[DBT]

Be that as it may, whether capitalism as we practice it causes growth or depends on growth to sustain it, perpetual growth is not sustainable in the long term

No, it doesn't.

So they say dumb things like "growth cannot continue indefinitely, because we would run out of room", (or resources, or whatever), while conveniently ignoring the fact that economic growth is measured in fiat dollars, which are limited only by the availability of higher numbers.

Economic growth can continue indefinitely, even in the face of both declining resource use, and declining population.

'Economy' is more than just a matter of currency, that is one aspect, the term may broadly refer to how we conduct our business, our lives, business models, values, the natural resources we use and how we exploit our environment.

But in order for growth to have an end, wouldn't that require a stagnation of technology?

Does developing new technologies require using ever more resources to achieve? A steady state economy has resources and may allocate a proportion of its budget into research and development, allowing progress. The difference being that it doesn't use more and more resources.

 

[steve_bank]

Keep in mind folks.

Every time you type a character here and it goes out over the net electoral energy is consumed and green house gasses are created.

Strike a blow for Gaia and be brief.......

 

[bilby]

electoral energy is consumed

...until nobody can be bothered to vote, even against a candidate as awful as Trump.

 

[bilby]

Does developing new technologies require using ever more resources to achieve? A steady state economy has resources and may allocate a proportion of its budget into research and development, allowing progress. The difference being that it doesn't use more and more resources.

Quite the opposite.

New technologies typically allow us to do more work with the same effort, or the same work with less effort.

The problem, if you want to build a steady-state economy, is how do you prevent people from doing the former, rather than the latter?