The “Glide Path” to Sustainability will Raise Recycling to a Large Scale Art

As population declines in the latter half of the 21st century new construction will be cut to a minimum, and renovation and recycling of existing buildings will dominate the construction industry.  Few new buildings will be needed as populstion decreases, growth will no longer be the predominant economic theme, and decreasing tax bases will reduce public funding. People may move out of some neighborhoods and towns and collect in others, probably to live closer to places of employment, education, etc., and reduce their cost of living.  Will smart individuals start working today to build profitable businesses that take advantage of the changes in our future?

The Lights of the City Aren’t the Same to Me Any More

As a young man I sometimes drove to a high spot in town after dark, a park from which you could look out over the city, and parked my car to enjoy the twinkling of the city lights spread out before me.  It was a beautiful sight, and I could only marvel at what humanity had created.  I’ve learned a lot and thought a lot since then, however, and it all looks different to me now, or least, it provokes different thoughts and perceptions. 

What Will Happen to Businesses When Energy Cost Eclipses Labor Cost?

Today the cost of labor is the biggest single cost element for many businesses, and drives most decisions. The rise of fossil fuel prices will not be smooth,  however, as we have seen in 2008, when oil prices doubled in a matter of months and then fell back to 30% of their peak in a few months more.  During these spikes, and in the longer term as fossil fuel sources become more difficult and costly to extract, energy costs will rise to a level that challenges or surpasses labor as the biggest component of cost for many or most businesses.  The law of supply and demand also kicks in as population continues to expand, and labor costs in many industries will fall as increasing numbers of people are seeking those jobs.  At the same time, rising energy costs will reduce or eliminate the advantage of manufacturing in “low cost countries” such as China.  How will businesses react?  Will the net effect be to cause people to generally live at a lower economic level and make less money for equivalent work compared with today?  Will manufacturing of progressively lower cost and higher margin goods return to the developed countries?

Infrastructure Will Change Significantly as Population Inevitably Declines Towards a Sustainable Level

Studies of past population reveal some valuable facts with implications for our future. Given that, before the widespread use of fossil fuels, there were apparently never more than about a billion humans on the planet, the fact that we are over six billion now and climbing fast, and that fossil fuels prices are already rising due to increased scarcity, it is probable that human population will decline back toward the one billion level in the next century. This suggests a variety of scenarios for making the adjustment. Most scenarios sound bad, but the challenge to us is to create and implement long term plans to manage the change. Given what we can anticipate, can we sufficiently raise the importance of taking the long term view and making long range plans to minimize the pain of the adjustments we face in the future? The economy and infrastructure will have to change significantly, but how? How will the business world change in response?

Why Do So Many Deny Global Warming Could Be Occurring?

Why are so many people determined to deny that we are facing some daunting problems? I can understand that scientists interpret data differently, and don’t expect that scientific opinions will all agree.  The denial I see, however, is mostly not coming from scientists.  

Why and How Do We Avoid Addressing Global Warming and Similar Problems?

A brilliant article opened my eyes as to how and why we keep ducking our biggest problems. I recently came across an article by Dr. Albert Bandura that is simply a brilliant analysis of human behavior as relates to the need for sustainability, and I put it in my sidebar of favorite links.  Since then what I read has kept coming back to me, as I think his paper explains a great deal about why we are where we are today.  I have long been perplexed about the fact that the main stream media almost never brings up overpopulation as a problem, and only global warming has gotten anywhere near the attention such problems deserve (though energy shortages are an up-and-coming second, and water shortages not far behind).  Dr. Bandura’s article is deep and scientific, and not the easiest to read for a variety reasons, perhaps more than anything because it describes us, but also because it is written in the language of the science of psychology.  For that reason I have written this entry to try to break down into simpler language what is going on.  Why do people keep doing things we know are bad for our future, and why do they ignore or dispute the facts?

Growth Can’t Continue Forever, So What’s Next?

Perhaps our many wonderful scientific advancements and ever-more sophisticated civilization have blinded us to certain realities. We have enjoyed the benefits of cheap energy for the past few hundred years, first with coal and then with the addition of petroleum, and our population, scientific knowledge, and standards of living have expanded greatly. Eventually, however, the easiest to obtain of our fuel sources will begin to run out, and the cost of production will inevitably rise to the point where we won’t be able to afford to use it as we did before. We have become so accustomed to our situation that we take growth for granted, and it seems the entire business world takes it as a given that success and profitability are possible only through growth. Since growth can’t continue forever, what will replace it? Are we smart enough to avoid a precipitous decline and the pain that suggests, and find a new paradigm that permits more controllable change and is sustainable in the long term?

Global Warming and Our Responsibility to the Future – A Call to Action

Global warming and climate change are only pieces of the puzzle. The storm of media coverage and conflicting scientific data around global warming is overwhelming, but it is concealing very real problems we need to face if we are to ensure ourselves and our descendants can continue anything like the kind of lifestyles we have today. Climate change will happen, whether we cause it or not, and when it does, how prepared will we be? Energy supplies are a key factor, not only for our current relative comfort but as an enabler to our ability to deal with issues we will face in the short and long term. Where does this all lead, and what are our responsibilities as individuals? What can we do to ensure a better future?

Lop-sided Focus on Climate Change Ignores Other Problems; Obscures the Root Problem: Overpopulation

Many feel the climate change risk is overstated and unsupported by evidence. Among websites that question whether global warming is supported by evidence, Anthony Watt’s Watt’s Up With That website is, in my opinion, probably the most credible, and its popularity continues to grow. His more than half million hits per month include enough commenters expressing significant weather knowledge and reasonable positions (among the Gore haters and anti-government types) to make it worth reading, in my opinion. It is clear that the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and a lot of press, some of the highest profile releases coming from James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, has stirred a lot of concern worldwide. Personally, I am more concerned with the many problems, climate change possibly included, caused by the huge increase in the global human population over the last century.

Will Climate Change Worries Encourage Positive Changes?

Whatever is behind climate change, concern over it may do a lot of good.  The furor over climate change has been interesting to follow.  The two sides, proponents and deniers, have battled hard and dug deep for science to support their cases.  In terms of popular support, it seems the proponents have been coming out ahead, and the deniers have been dragged down by unsupported assertions, bad science, emotional rhetoric, and the revelation that some of the most prominent have been paid by the oil industry.  That’s not to say that the proponents haven’t had their own problems with questionable science and extremist speech and action, too.  Whether we really have a serious problem with global warming or not, however, may be less important than the actions the issue is motivating in policy change, cultural understanding, and individual choices.

Back to the Future – Where Might We Be in Thirty Years?

Where will we be in, say, thirty years?  I know I get distracted by more current events, and stray from my purpose in this blog, which is to address issues around achieving a sustainable world situation, and how we might live and improve in the next two to ten decades.  This entry is an attempt to get back to my original intent, and  I hope to paint a relatively hopeful picture of where we may be in a few decades.  So how might we expect things to go, and where might we expect to be in the future?

Extreme Publicity is Part of the Way Societies Change

High profile publicity may shock, offend, and dismay people, but it is part of the process of change.  While pundits and climate change deniers may freak out when frightening publicity like “An Inconvenient Truth” appears, it is a key factor in getting a lot of people thinking, learning, and moving.  Later, when things didn’t turn out so badly, people can point to the publicity and say “See? It was all BS.  Nothing happened.”  Was the extreme publicity part of the process that mitigated the problems and made them not as bad as initially predicted?  Where would we have wound up without it?

Iraq War Cost Could Have Better Served as Progress Towards Sustainability … but NO-O-O!!

Talk about lost opportunities! Bloggers are having a field day with “What the cost of the Iraq War COULD have been used for …” (link). The BBC and others waded in with articles totaling up the costs and suggesting alternatives that might have been pursued (link) (link) (link). All this is very interesting and sad, but the real costs will go on and on, expressed in missed opportunities and huge tax dollars going to pay the interest on the debt the Bush Whitehouse has loaded on the backs of our descendants.

A Positive and Cost Effective Path to Birthrate Reduction and Population Control

Why are third world families so large?  In poor agrarian societies there is a direct incentive to have more children, as it provides more hands to do the work and makes the family farm more productive and profitable.  It doesn’t appear to me, however, that there are many poor agrarian societies left, and a quick look at world population trends shows that in most of the less-developed countries the bulk of the population has moved or is moving to the big cities.  There must be other reasons for large families in these fast growing countries.

Achieving Sustainability Will Involve Birthrate Reduction, But How Can That Be Achieved?

Let’s face it: the earth has too many humans, using natural resources up too quickly, and the population will be forced to decline to a sustainable level sooner or later.  Achieving a sustainable situation will require that there be a lot less humans, especially when fossil fuels become scarce.  That means the human birthrate must decline.  For population to be reduced without a birthrate reduction would mean that average lifespans would have to decline to near the minimum childbearing age, which I think is highly unlikely.  Before sustainability is reached, however, there will be a long period of change, of probably 70 to 200 or more years.  How will population most likely be reduced during that period?