Humanity’s economic, ecological dilemma

Since the late Pleistocene, 100,000 years ago, when a few thousand Homo sapiens poked around Africa, Asia, and the Mediterranean, human population has doubled 22 times. We have one more such doubling left, and that’s it. Human population may level off at 10 to 14 billion sometime around 2100, if population does not crash before then, likely exceeding the earth’s carrying capacity. Mass human starvations are already underway in degraded environments. 

 

Economists imagine that average consumption is going to increase, so we must also consider a projected annual world economic growth of approximately 1.5% in wealthy nations and 10% in China and other developing nations. Economists consider anything below 3% world economic growth to signal a global “recession.”

 

If we assume a “low” annual economic growth rate of 3.6%, then human activity will double in 20 years. (72 divided by the % growth = doubling time). Is this economic doubling possible?

 

Maybe once. Could we double the world economy twice, to 4-times our present consumption, in 40 years? Not likely. Will “technology” make this possible? No. Remember how computers were going to save paper? Never happened. Computers haven’t saved any rivers either, nor slowed soil erosion and desertification. Nor does technology increase energy, but rather costs energy. Throughout all human history, including the computer age, new technologies increase resource depletion. The “technological fix” dream represents ecological denial.

 

Humanity is trapped in a dilemma. Our economic theories suggest we can’t stop growing without economic collapse, but unfettered growth also leads to collapse. We cannot rewrite the laws of nature and calculus for our own convenience.

 

Exponential growth – any percentage growth in nature, including populations, economies, or mold in a petri dish – subsides in one of two paths: (1) the growing organism will overshoot the nutrient and energy base of its host and collapse, or (2) it will discover a homeostasis with its host and settle in to live off the capacity of its environment in symbiosis with everything else that has found a niche.

 

We were warned. Thomas Malthus – maligned by the cheerleaders of endless growth for his failure to predict fossil fuels and pesticides – got the basic math right 200 years ago. Petroleum and agricultural technologies postponed the breaking point, but did not overturn nature’s laws. The Club of Rome warned humanity in the 1972 Limits to Growth report, also allegedly refuted by growth economists. William R. Catton wrote Overshoot thirty years ago, diligently explaining all this. Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, Greenpeace, and many others pointed out that we, gulp, live on a finite planet, subject to the rules of living systems.

 

More on this in the complete "Deep Green" column at Greenpeace.

 

In later posts I’ll discuss why a "deep" approach to ecology is necessary to avoid the clash of human growth on a fixed planet.

 

 

This was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 10:14 am and is filed under Ecology . Feel free to respond, or trackback.