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THE Limits to Growth Thread

Discuss research and forecasts regarding hydrocarbon depletion.

Re: The Limits to Growth

Unread postby Lore » Thu 24 Dec 2009, 22:35:56

Carlhole wrote:
Lore wrote:
Carlhole wrote:
Lore wrote:Here is you're typical comment from an average DEVO 'de-evolutionized' human being. [/color]


You can always tell when someone's out of intellectual ammunition: they grumble a lot, try to change the subject...


What do you know, throw a rock into a pack of dogs and the one that gets hit is bound to yelp.


Bullsh*tter, I've been posting in this thread since the first page.


Figures, you've obviously misunderstood the metaphor.
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Re: The Limits to Growth

Unread postby shortonsense » Thu 24 Dec 2009, 22:42:14

Carlhole wrote:
Lore wrote:Here is you're typical comment from an average DEVO 'de-evolutionized' human being. [/color]


You can always tell when someone's out of intellectual ammunition: they grumble a lot, try to change the subject...


So....are you saying thats why a peak oil website has changed over the topic to this climate stuff now?
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Re: The Limits to Growth

Unread postby Newfie » Thu 24 Dec 2009, 22:48:59

Perhaps, just perhaps, this would be a good point for all to take a deep breath and reread the original post and reflect on the idea that print communication is an art form that few master.

A wee bit o' tolerance would probably grease our collective wheels.

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Re: The Limits to Growth

Unread postby Lore » Thu 24 Dec 2009, 22:57:42

Newfie wrote:Perhaps, just perhaps, this would be a good point for all to take a deep breath and reread the original post and reflect on the idea that print communication is an art form that few master.

A wee bit o' tolerance would probably grease our collective wheels.

Merry Christmas to all.


... and to all a goodnight.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
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Re: The Limits to Growth

Unread postby Carlhole » Thu 24 Dec 2009, 23:02:37

I don't know what the point of a discussion board is if you can't describe your ideas or opinions. It's not as if I can't back them up with current trends.

The subject of the thread is "Limits to Growth". And I described my ideas about limits to growth alongside rapidly developing science and technology (I mean, it really IS incredible) as being evolutionary forces which will shape the future.

What's the big deal?
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Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby Graeme » Sun 14 Apr 2013, 20:42:32

Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

With world population exceeding seven billion, there is renewed interest in the limits to growth concept first articulated by the Club of Rome in the 1970s. How can a growing population with growing affluence sustain itself on a finite planet without wreaking havoc on nature and civilisation?

The potential for major economic and political shocks from the world’s energy, food, and water systems, with their vulnerability to climate change, is concentrating attention on food , water andenergy security and their interdependence.

Is it reasonable to assume that the human population is on an inevitable and catastrophic collision course with the planet? Or will human ingenuity and innovation inspire successful adaptations that achieve an historic decoupling between economic growth and the depletion and degradation of natural resources?

Rather than rehashing a polarised debate between Malthusian determinists and technological optimists, we’d rather focus on what’s not “peak ” and how we can make better use of resources that are abundant. These abundant resources include human creativity and capacity, global genetic resources, design solutions at all scales, and technological, policy and institutional innovations.



Our most valuable export commodity, and our most renewable resource, is between our ears.


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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sun 14 Apr 2013, 21:35:43

(Where's your opinion Graeme?- We aren't supposed to cut & paste without personal input.)

The decoupling mentioned (economic growth & resource depletion- degradation), is the wrong goal. Growth cannot continue perpetually, despite the wishes of politicians world wide. A stable state economy is the only sane goal, yet to be held by any government anywhere; effectively signaling collective insanity & lack of basic comprehension.

A stable state economy can only be reached when 3 things are decided and acted on-

What level of consumption is sustainable?

What number of people can live sustainably at an acceptable level of consumption?

What is the acceptable level of per capita consumption?

The higher the number of people, the lower the necessary level of consumption for sustainability. The lower the number of people, the higher the potential standard of living.

Then there are the issues around equability, will high consumers willingly reduce consumption in favour of, to the benefit of, lower consumers? Is inequality mandatory to sustain any economy? Are the systems in place to defend inequality themselves sustainable? Can equality even exist?

Humanity is clearly insane; from top to bottom. Very few people grok the most basic fundamental equations of life. The fascism of the masses is the deciding force, not sane decision making, sustainability or resource reality. There is no collective above the level of the genus to make the decisions necessary to prevent the inevitable collision between our species and the planet.

So, yes, maybe we can.

But no we won't.

Because such requires something we don't really have: a real collective, a conscious 'We'.
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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby Graeme » Sun 14 Apr 2013, 22:28:36

SG, You're right that this thread is about sustainability. Peak oil and climate change are mere symtoms. The environment, politics, economics and community are the central issues here. Our attempts to "solve" PO and AGW are not going to work unless the world also addresses the other main issues as well. In some ways globalisation is going to help because we are all interconnected now. Communication using the Internet will help too. Whereas you see pessimism, the interconnection of the world is reason enough for hope that we can ultimately find a resolution. I saw a few days ago that world population will stabilise around 2050. That means that all of these issues must be solved by then or shortly after.
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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sun 14 Apr 2013, 23:08:05

It will either stabilize or crash, this is a given; whether around 2050 or otherwise is kind of a mute point.

More significant than 'stabilized' population is the nature of such. Is it stabilized by dieoff patches catching up with growth patches, or through some kind of global union. In other words, the inevitable end to population explosion happens in an organised or chaotic fashion- then by an organised evil means or by consensus in breeding control?

IMO the best partial solution would be a global consensus at grass roots level that more than 2 children per woman is seriously immoral. Natural population reduction would then occur at a fair pace, due to the fact not all of these 2 children would go on to have their 2 children. Some would be infertile or gay, some would die before reaching reproductive age. I am not very hopeful that this will occur, more likely the inevitable end to this particular exponential will be violent and chaotic. However, I do hope I am wrong in this regard.
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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby Graeme » Sun 14 Apr 2013, 23:58:35

Sorry I should have posted the link here too.

The team considered Earth as a closed and finite system where the migration of people within the system has no impact and where the fundamental principle of the conservation of mass -biomass in this case- and energy is fulfilled.

"Within this general principle, the variables that limit the upper and lower zone of the system's two levels are the birth and mortality rates," Muñoz pointed out and recalled the change that occurred in the ratio between the two variables throughout the last century.

"We started with a general situation where both the birth rate and mortality rate were high, with slow growth favouring the former," he added, "but the mortality rate fell sharply in the second half of the 20th century as a result of advances in healthcare and increased life expectancy and it seemed that the population would grow a lot. However, the past three decades have also seen a steep drop-off in the number of children being born worldwide."

The model's S-shaped sigmoid curve reflects this situation with an inflection point in the mid-1980s when the speed at which the population is growing starts to slow down until it stabilises around 2050.


If this model is correct, then we will have to change our economic model of growth to reflect a stable or falling population at around 2050. This will have a great bearing on how we use natural resources. So we should start preparing for this now.
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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby Ibon » Mon 15 Apr 2013, 00:21:35

SeaGypsy wrote:
Because such requires something we don't really have: a real collective, a conscious 'We'.


There is a collective. It is just unconscious. And it is aligning itself globally almost exclusively along the capitalist model of continued growth and consumption.

Graeme mentions the internet and the interconnectedness as part of the solution. It definitely is working well in reinforcing the current alignment along consumption.

To make the unconscious collective conscious requires some enlightening events which have the potential power to kill two kudzu apes with one stone.....events that reduce our population at the same time as they can enlighten the collective we. That is when the internet and global communication could reinforce a conscious collective we.

At some point we forfeit the management of our fate over to external events. That means we also forfeit a humane transition.
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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby Ibon » Mon 15 Apr 2013, 00:53:19

Graeme wrote:Sorry I should have posted the link here too.

The model's S-shaped sigmoid curve reflects this situation with an inflection point in the mid-1980s when the speed at which the population is growing starts to slow down until it stabilises around 2050.


If this model is correct, then we will have to change our economic model of growth to reflect a stable or falling population at around 2050. This will have a great bearing on how we use natural resources. So we should start preparing for this now.


This is an important point. Our economic system based on growth has counted on an increasing number of humans and an increasing percentage of higher consuming humans. This model will see population globally declining by mid century. How does a growth based economic system find its new growth markets in a declining global population with resources more constrained?

I am very curious how adaptive humans will be when external events constrain rather than enable economic growth. The collective dream during economic expansion has been the dream of prosperity and consumption which has created this unconscious we.

What is the collective dream during economic steady state or decline?
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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby peripato » Mon 15 Apr 2013, 01:54:40

Ibon wrote:What is the collective dream during economic steady state or decline?

Well, firstly I don't believe that steady-states are possible for long, as they do not exist as as part of the natural order - just interludes between expansion and decline. A bit like the oil plateau we're currently on, or the bubble economy we've been in since the mid-1990's.

The twilight between growth and non-growth for a species used to everlasting material "progress" will be traumatic to say the least, as we are already starting to witness, now we are come up against hard limits on multiple fronts.

This situation can only worsen, no matter the policies enacted to arrest it, since reality tilts towards entropy, until we finally shift into absolute decline - on all levels, aided and abetted by the physical order and our own natural behaviour of course.

Not so much a dream as a nightmare akin to the Ukrainian famine under the Stalin era will be the result. When this will happen and over what time-frame is subject to debate.
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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby ralfy » Mon 15 Apr 2013, 02:24:51

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... _footprint

Given per capita biocapacity and population for 2007, sustainability will involve a per capita footprint of only 1.8 global hectares, equivalent to ave. living standards in Cuba.

However, given environmental damage and growing population, per capita biocapacity will decrease.
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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby Pops » Mon 15 Apr 2013, 12:07:52

we can make better use of resources that are abundant. These abundant resources include human creativity and capacity, global genetic resources, design solutions


I don't usually say this but that is a load o' crap.


Let's parse this one sentence:
A 21st century “greener revolution” would also focus on energy and biodiversity conservation, community economic development, improving nutrition and building local resilience and sustainability. Urban farms are one expression of the burgeoning interest in local and diverse food systems.


What does that mean?

OK, energy conservation, but biodiversity conservation? That means limiting land used for humans, right? So, high density housing, population control, urban "nutrient" recycling and of course high intensity farming. There is something about eucalyptus trees being good and grain and potatoes being bad. But that ignores the fact that eons of trial and error have shown that the most efficient use of energy and land inputs is wheat, maize and potatoes. The proof of that statement is the very fact that those are the crops that we grow to survive.

Next, "economic development" – what? Another buzzword thrown in I guess to placate those who want to increase consumption not reduce it.

Here is the good one though; "building local resilience and sustainability"? This means living at the carrying capacity of the local region, right? But remember, we are going to conserve biodiversity so we must live in high density housing in order to not encroach further on native ecosystems. So how do you balance the need to live local on whatever the region can sustain and also not encroach further on native species if you live in say, Los Angeles or heck, I'll go out on a limb and ask; how do you do that in any town now that the last green revolution and Global Specialization have increased monocrop efficiencies enough to add a couple of billion mouths in the last 40 years?

Then comes "urban farms"? What is an urban farm? In the first part of the sentence we were going to preserve biodiversity, which at base means reduce our physical footprint. That means living in high density urban settings and maximizing the efficiency of food production to the smallest area possible. IOW, we can't all raise tomatoes and eucalyptus on little mini farms.


I'm going out on another limb here and say there is absolutely no difference in planting a billion acres of trees or a few hundred million of wheat. Again, there is a reason the human population has grown with the spread of wheat agriculture instead of trees, it's more efficient.


This is merely pablum for crunchy Portlandians to feel good about their fair trade coffee and organic baby arugula. No different and probably even worse than the myopia of flat earthers who deny limits, because telling themselves organic arugula is the solution relieves them of doing the only thing that will resolve "peak everything" and that is to stop consuming everything.

The OP says we'll replace physical resources with creativity. Reminds me of the interview posted here the other day wherein the interviewee said capitalism, communism and any number of other 'isms can be successful if given enough free energy to overcome their shortcomings. "Creativity" replacing resources in a kind of a Mystic Granola Juju version of "demand creates resources", supply side, infinite growth because we deserve it egoism.
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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby dinopello » Mon 15 Apr 2013, 12:50:50

Pops wrote:Again, there is a reason the human population has grown with the spread of wheat agriculture instead of trees, it's more efficient.


Good example of Jevon's Paradox. Gathering nuts and chasing wild boars for food is very innefficient but keeps the population in check because of its innefficiency which limits the impact on the habitat. The more "efficient" we get out of exploiting the enironment for human needs the more the population increases and the more impact the collective activities of humans will have.
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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby kublikhan » Mon 15 Apr 2013, 15:52:21

dinopello wrote:Good example of Jevon's Paradox. Gathering nuts and chasing wild boars for food is very innefficient but keeps the population in check because of its innefficiency which limits the impact on the habitat. The more "efficient" we get out of exploiting the enironment for human needs the more the population increases and the more impact the collective activities of humans will have.
Jevons Paradox really only applies when a new disruptive technology is applied. Ex: Agricultural revolution, steam engine, electric motor, etc. It does not apply to incremental improvements to efficiency in mature technologies like increased insulation, better fuel mileage, fluorescent replacing incandescent, etc. So unless we are talking about unleashing so new disruptive technology, such as fusion, efficiency improvements are still something we should strive for to reduce consumption.

Similarly, the empirical evidence for the postulate is indirect, suggestive and ambiguous. Since a number of flaws have been found with both the theoretical and empirical evidence, the K-B ‘hypothesis’ cannot be considered to have been verified.
There is no a priori reason to believe that ‘backfire’ is an inevitable outcome in all cases.
The K-B postulate seems more likely to hold for improvements associated with pervasive ‘general purpose technologies’, particularly when these are adopted by producers rather than final consumers and when the improvements occur at an early stage of development and diffusion. Steam engines provide a good illustration from the 19th-century, while electric motors provide a comparable illustration from the early 20th century.
In contrast, the K-B postulate seems less likely to hold for dedicated energy efficiency technologies such as thermal insulation, particularly when these are used by consumers or when they play a subsidiary role in economic production. These technologies have smaller effects on productivity and economic growth, with the result that economy-wide energy consumption is likely to be reduced.
Many energy efficiency opportunities are highly cost effective and will remain so even when rebound effects are allowed for.
The Rebound Effect: an assessment of the evidence for economy-wide energy savings from improved energy efficiency

CFLs have made a major dent in the overall lighting market in the U.S., replacing about one in four incandescent lamp sales in just a decade’s time. Importantly, this has been accompanied by no visible change in the overall number of light bulbs sold or illumination desired by their users. By both of these measures (sockets and lumens), the speculative rebound-effect of consumer behavior is invalidated by the facts. And other well-demonstrated strategies for improving lighting systems – e.g., dimming coupled with controls for daylight harvesting – actually reduce light levels by better tailoring light output to what is needed by users and not otherwise provided by daylight.
Efficiency lives — the rebound effect, not so much

We estimate the rebound effect for motor vehicles, by which improved fuel efficiency causes
additional travel, using a pooled cross section of US states for 1966-2001. Our model accounts
for endogenous changes in fuel efficiency, distinguishes between autocorrelation and lagged
effects, includes a measure of the stringency of fuel-economy standards, and allows the rebound
effect to vary with income, urbanization, and the fuel cost of driving. At sample averages of
variables, our simultaneous-equations estimates of the short- and long-run rebound effect are
4.5% and 22.2%. But rising real income caused it to diminish substantially over the period, aided
by falling fuel prices. With variables at 1997-2001 levels, our estimates are only 2.2% and
10.7%, considerably smaller than values typically assumed for policy analysis. With income at
the 1997 – 2001 level and fuel prices at the sample average, the estimates are 3.1% and 15.3%,
respectively
Fuel Efficiency and Motor Vehicle Travel: The Declining Rebound Effect

Or just to summarize the above post, people went out and drove more because they were getting better mileage. This cut into gas savings from better fuel economy. But it did not eliminate it, or worse, reverse it. The overall decline in fuel consumption was only reduced 11%-15% once you factor in driving more. IE, if you normally would save 100 gallons of gas a year because you have a more fuel efficient car, your net savings per year are really only 85-89 gallons once you factor in the fact that you drive more.
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Re: Can We Resolve the "Peak Everything" Problem ?

Unread postby ennui2 » Mon 15 Apr 2013, 22:11:38

Pops hit the nail on the head. He sounded positively like Greer.

Bright green ecotopia visions are sounding not that different from corny denialists these days, because they fail to really run the numbers on their ideas. It's all based on hype and blind optimism and none of it really concedes that we have to powerdown and strap on condoms, and even then, it's probably too late to forestall collapse, due to environmental feedback switches we've already flipped.
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Re: The Limits to Growth

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 12 Oct 2013, 09:24:06

Bump 3 for today! (I'm finding that some of the best old threads are still locked- guess Ferret still working her way through- !!! :-D )
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Re: The Limits to Growth

Unread postby Graeme » Fri 31 Oct 2014, 17:00:52

The Club of Rome’s Next Act

This is the context in which Club of Rome Co-Chairs Anders Wijkman and Ernst von Weizsaecker convened the annual meeting of the Club of Rome in Mexico City last week. The theme of the conference was the energy transition off fossil fuels, which juxtaposed nicely against Mexico’s new commitment to clean up corruption in Pemex, the State-owned oil company, while also welcoming (and this is where it became surreal but also very poignant) new foreign direct investment, previously banned, into exploration partnerships with Pemex in order to accelerate fossil fuel extraction with the goal of reversing the State’s declining oil revenues.

This is exactly the tension underlying what I call our “$20 Trillion Big Choice.” While we focus as we must on the monumental challenge to mobilize the necessary policies and investments to transition the world off fossil fuels, those sitting on our existing stock of fossil fuel reserves, from Exxon to Mexico, are naturally seeking to optimize the exploitation of those reserves, which remain highly profitable as long as we continue to ignore the costs of global warming. And the $20 trillion “choice” is harder. It means not only ceasing to invest new capital to expand fossil fuel extraction – $674 billion last year alone – it means writing off some $20 trillion of existing proved reserves (“stranded assets”) rather than cashing them in (as a comparison, the direct financial losses of the subprime crisis in the U.S. were a mere $2.7 trillion).

The divestment movement now well underway is focused primarily on the 25 percent of this stranded asset issue owned by public companies. (See Rockefeller Brothers Fund historic decision to divest.) Exxon, the successor company to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, has responded to the Rockefeller decision with a statement about their concern for those facing energy poverty. Touching.

But the real question is the largest and most complex geopolitical challenge of all time: how can we restrain the exploitation of existing proved fossil fuel reserves, not only those controlled by the Exxon’s of the world, but even more difficult, the 75 percent of reserves controlled by nation states like Mexico (and Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Canada, and Russia just for starters) whose economies (and social cohesion) are currently highly dependent upon the continued sale of oil and gas?

I was privileged to address the attendees at the Annual Meeting on “Financing the Energy Transition.” In my speech, I addressed three interconnected monumental challenges:

Mobilizing the estimated $44 trillion (that’s Trillion with a “T”) of investment required between now and 2050 for renewable energy technologies and critical energy efficiency, (see the International Energy Agency’s recent report);

The $20 trillion stranded asset challenge referred to above; and

The overarching context of limits to growth, which implies a corollary limits to investment a challenge no economic system has ever had to contemplate.

Jane Jacobs once said, “it’s not how big you grow, it’s how you grow big.”

As we reflect on the prescience of the Club of Rome’s seminal work on limits to growth, nothing could be more important at this pivotal moment in time. Future growth and development, beginning with the energy system that fuels it, and the business models that define its qualities, will need to evolve as living systems have done over billions of years, to more intricate, regenerative systems.

Watch for the Club of Rome’s next act, shifting from prescient diagnosis, to a search for genuine solutions, rooted in a systemic level understanding of the forces at play. We can say for sure that there are limits to mindless growth. Regenerative economies nurture mindful growth and development. This is the future we had better embrace.


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