Will Anything Reduce Global Birth Rates and Carbon Emissions Except Fossil Fuel Shortages?

Today the news proclaimed that agreements were made at the G-8 summit in Italy to hold global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Centrigrade.  It was a very positive step to see that the United States has finally joined most of the rest the world in making a commitment to fighting climate change.  Will people really be able to do this, though?  And aren’t population and energy use just as important if not moreso?

The Shark Cage is Rusty – How Capitalism and Government Might Change for the Better

Corporations, by their nature, are focused on profits. Unfortunately, this causes them to sub-optimize the overall results for society. This is one of the shortcomings of the current capitalist system. Corporations, in their soulless drive for profits, will take your last dollar if they can, and will influence governments and drive them away from their original purpose, to ensure the common good and the positive evolution of society in ways that reflect the principle that, as they say in business school, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”  I found an interesting and pointed expression of this last year.

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 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?

How Much Larger Can Our Cities Grow?

Many cities were begun in constrained environments, and the cost of continued expansion in their areas is rising. Many of the cities I have visited were started in places that naturally attracted humans – bays and estuaries, confluences of rivers, and other places where water and food sources were relatively more abundant and the climate was relatively favorable. I notice, however, that now that the human population has reached more than six billion these places are increasingly challenged for space, infrastructure, or resources of some important sort. At the same time, however, some are actually in a population decline, and some even have a declining “rate of sprawl.” The picture is complex, and differs significantly between developed and developing countries. So how are things likely to change from here, and how can we affect the situation positively?

Can Population Drive Current Highway Infrastructure Beyond Our Capacity to Maintain it?

My pursuit of information about this topic has yielded less information than I would like. It seems intuitive, though – if our population continues to grow there must be a point where sufficient infrastructure either can’t be produced, or existing infrastructure can’t be sufficiently maintained. I will update this item as I find more information.

Will our ability to sustain our highways will reveal our status with regard to sustainability and overpopulation? Many in North America believe our current population is sustainable, as the birthrate is low compared with that of many other countries, but the highways we travel daily could reveal our true status. If sheer population doesn’t exceed our capacity to maintain our highways, fossil fuel shortages will make it so. Is there somewhere an intersection of the curves where the cost of maintaining existing infrastructure exceeds the tax revenues that support it?

Price of Rice Reflects Overpopulation Problem

The scale of problems from overpopulation will increase as the population grows. The Christian Science Monitor, long a bastion of sound journalism that has never followed the corporate main stream media (one of few), ran an article recently (link) explaining how a lack of agricultural development in the Philippines is combining with their rapidly growing population (and that of other less-developed nations) to create food shortages. The clearest evidence of the shortages is in the doubling of rice prices in the past year (2007-2008). While most people in North America, for instance, won’t think that is a very big deal, there are hundreds of millions of people in other parts of the planet who depend on rice as a staple – a major part of their diet – and for whom any price increase is seriously bad news. I remember reading in the news a month or two ago that the price rise has caused people who used to get two bowls of rice per day to cut back to one. (Try living on that diet, you in the developed countries, if you want a dose of reality.) The important realization is that, as energy shortages and population growth exacerbate food shortages, there will be more food riots and unrest in the fastest growing and least-developed countries. In response, the developed countries need to put more family planning, education, and economic aid, all proven to reduce birthrates, into the poorest areas of the globe for the good of all. Here’s a more detailed analysis.

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.

1972 Rockefeller Commission Report on Population Was Surprisingly Insightful

President Nixon initiated a study of population that holds many insights of lasting value.  In the late 1960’s President Richard Nixon was very aware of a growing population and the problems it could cause (see my earlier entry “Who Would Have Thought Richard Nixon a Visionary“).  As a response, he set up the Rockefeller Commission under John D. Rockefeller III.  The Rockefeller Commission Report is a diverse, well-researched, and well-written report, a real eye opener, and it is clear now that it did not get the attention it deserved.   I will be writing more entries around some of the key revelations in this report, as there are just too many striking insights, still applicable today, to cover them in a single entry.  Here are a few highlights, however.

Worshipping the False Idol of Growth

American culture worships at the feet of the great god Growth.  It becomes increasingly clear, though, what a false idol it is.  In practically every report of financial news the word Growth comes up, sooner or later.  Reporters use the word as if it is a given that profitability can only be achieved through Growth, and that prosperity, the lifestyles of the average people, and indeed the entire world economy, are dependent on it.  Is this really the case?  Are we lost without Growth?  What will happen when we have no more room to grow?

Technological Development Isn’t the Only Thing Accelerating

Can improvements in technology keep up with increasing global demand? As I look around at various discussions of the current world situation I read lots of interesting thoughts and ideas around our rapidly advancing technology. Some see the rate of technological advancement as being on a continuous exponential upswing that will result in fabulous new classes of products, free or nearly free energy, and answers to practically all of our currently-anticipated global troubles within a decade or two. Others see a rocky road of regional energy and food shortages, promising technologies taking too long too implement, and much worse. I tend to be somewhere in the middle of it all, and working to raise consciousness so that the rocky road will be less so, and the technologies will have time to arrive. The problem is that, while technological development is accelerating, world problems are, too, and population seems to be the perennial behind-the-scenes story. The real race I see is between conservation (to buy time), scientific developments, the will to implement new technologies, and increasing human numbers and per capita demand. The unfortunate fact is that demand is accelerating faster than population as the world “globalizes” and modernizes.

Why Doesn’t Overpopulation Get Mentioned by the Press?

This week NPR did a story about food shortages in the developing world, but the word “population” was never said.  Other stories they have recently done about similar evidence of global environmental issues have similarly avoided mentioning overpopulation.  I have noted this phenomenon so many times that it is making me a bit crazy.  Why does the overpopulation problem, clearly behind our problems of pollution, ecological degradation, climate change, immigration, and various other economic woes, never get mentioned by the press or political candidates?  Is it THAT awful, that huge a problem? Does it have such terrifying implications that nobody can face the fact that, as a species, we humans are rapidly overpopulating the planet, and already suffering the inevitable fallout from doing so?