Too Damn Many of US!

If we were to rank the most common arguments environmentalists use to prove that our civilization has fallen into a decadent, self-destructive haze of over-consumption, global warming would have to rank first. But running a close second, and deeply intertwined with the first, is the 'limited resources argument.' Consider this rather depressing and mopish roundtable on the population and the "consequences of overconsumption." The general argument is that there are not enough natural resources to sustain so many of us consuming at such a high level. Some environmentalists make this argument, but see in renewable energy and other technologies the potential for resolving this problem. However, if the natural limits to growth argument is taken seriously, one must reach more drastic conclusions. This, for instance, is what two of the panelists conclude:

"It'll be impossible for renewables to satisfy the energy needs of high- or even medium-income countries after fossil fuel and uranium resources have been depleted. Even if self-sustaining nuclear power becomes viable, a world without artificial fertilizers, air transport, and other essential petroleum products will be incapable of sustaining even today's population. It follows that a sustainable future is only possible through a combination of reducing consumer numbers and per-capita consumption. Indeed, the situation is now so serious that it makes little sense to talk about slowing population growth unless in the context of taking the first step toward reversing it."

Good thing we don't have to take this argument seriously! I don't mean we don't have to take it seriously because these guys represent an irrelevant lunatic fringe. Quite the opposite. They are just willing to carry to its logical conclusion an argument that is shared by many: the idea that there are natural limits to growth, which mankind has exceeded. This is an old idea. The British conservative, Thomas Malthus, believed there was not enough land upon which to grow the food needed to sustain a rapidly growing population. He though agricultural productivity grew only arithmetically, while population grew geometrically. In fact, technological advances have led to exponential improvements in agricultural productivity - so much so that many industrial countries have been taking land out of cultivation because it's simply no longer needed. Since Malthus, there have been repeated attempts to prove that there are natural limits to growth. The peak oil thesis, first proposed in the 1960s, held that there would be a peak amount of oil, after which oil supplies would rapidly start to dry up. Soon there wouldn't be adequate sources of energy to sustain the current industrial societies, let alone the industrialization of undeveloped countries. Yet there is more oil available now than there was in the 1960s, mainly because new prospecting, drilling and extraction technologies have increased discovery and the ability to extract oil where it wasn't possible before. And there are numerous other ways of producing energy, with nuclear the most obvious candidate for powering an industrial society. There have been similar scares about metal supplies, but here too the possibility for innovation is expansive. Indeed, it is quite possible some day we will get our metals from the more or less infinite supply floating around in the universe.

From each of the examples emerges a general point. When it comes to natural limits, there has always been a technological, or really a cluster of technological, solutions. We have always "been getting more from the earth than it gives up." That's why, each time nature presents an apparent limit - be it gravity or drought - we have been able to push past it. To say there are 'too many of us' is not just to adopt a misanthropic attitude, but simply to get history wrong. Or really, it's just dressing misanthropy up in bad economics and worse science.