I don't really understand your parallel between the growth of consumption of the world's resources and the economy. The economy is a human construct, as is wealth. Environmental resources and their limits exist with or without us humans.
250 years may be significant when discussing economic growth, but it is a tiny blip on the radar when discussing the survivability of a species and the sustainability of a lifestyle, especially one that consumes like the human species consumes.
Human ingenuity is very impressive, but it doesn't negate the fact that ingenuity forced upon us by larger populations and larger consumption has led to serious health and environmental issues over a relatively tiny period of time.
I couldn't tell if you were saying resources X, Y, and Z were used by us or we did not know how to convert them to useful energy, etc... or how "waste" and our definition of waste is defined, but surely you've heard of entropy. The more we convert these resources into energy, the more the output becomes less usable and less efficient. Waste is simply waste, at some point.
"Wade" wrote:
"Environmental limits exist with or without us humans." True. But IMO beside the point. Call me human-centric, but apart from my dog I don't much care what happens to rest of the planet inhabitants if all human life is gone.
The question, ISTM, is whether we should operate as if those limits are as defined by the current state of human knowledge.
Yes, the economy is a human construct. It's a construct defined by how it reshapes the environment. Reshaping the environment (or trying to) is what human beings do. We make stone and wood into houses. We make iron ore and coal into steel. We put nitrogen and water and soil together in new ways to get higher yields of corn. Man's "natural" place in nature is to strive to change it.
I believe in entropy, yes. I believe I'm going to die and become worm food. (I also believe I'm going to live again, eternally, but that's another piece of faith that really isn't relevant here.)
But in the meantime I've got to decide what I have faith in and what I'm going to fear. I've got to decide what I believe is possible and and what is not.
Yes, 250 years, in terms of the length of human existence on the planet, is pretty short. And in terms of the life of the universe, it's less than a blip. But 250 years is also 8-12 generations of human existence. And 3-4 times my expected lifespan. That, to me, is grounds for much hope.
Now, if my hope is ill-founded, I'm part of the problem. I'm accelerating our decline. But, to be frank, it's worth taking a risk. Because if the "our current lifestyle can't be sustained" argument is correct, then there's not much of an argument for
any of that edifice of technology and economic growth we've built over those 250 years. If the last 250 is just a blip before Malthus is proven right...well, we've got about 80 percent of the world's population to get rid of. Because the "simple" and "natural" world of 1750 couldn't sustain all of us.
In the end, entropy is God's problem, not mine. By God's standards of what constitutes "important works", anything we do is a waste. But I don't ask myself to solve God's problems. That's too hubristic even for an economist.
"Waste is simply waste, at some point." Sure. But the key, you see, is "when is 'some point'?" The answer to that "when?" question is going to be determined, not by the amount of oil we have or by the carbon footprint we make or, even by the number of species we kill, but by the limits of our human ingenuity.
Resources are here to be converted into other forms and used. Waste, to me, consists of two things: (i) taking away the incentive to find new ways to convert those resources in the name of "conservation"; and (ii) converting resources into a form that no one can figure out how to use.
(i) v. (ii) IMO is where the debate on sustainability belongs.
But shifting the debate alone isn't enough. We must also recognize that it is a debate that takes place on grounds of faith as well as grounds of reason. We are all intellectual descendents of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. We value, and rightly so, the "scientific evidence" on a question such as this. But because the science involved is not just the science of "resource limits" or of "physical entropy" but the science of "the limits of human understanding of resource limits i
n the future" and the science of "the extent of human ingenuity's ability to postpone entropy
in the future", we must -- all of us, on all sides -- take one or more stances of faith about what might happen in the future.
Because none of us knows the future.
My "human ingenuity" stance is based on my deciding which historical evidence is most persuasive to me (i.e. the last 250 years). But that deciding is, in the end a stance of faith.
But so, too, is everyone's deciding on what they believe about the future.
(shrug)
"MassPackersFan" wrote: