Good front-pager in today's Wall Street Journal about the world's rising population and increased competition for scarce resources. Malthusianism is not new, obviously, and as the story points out, the gloom-and-doom predictions of the Club of Rome for a post-1970s collapse did not prove out.
But we've got a fundamentally different situation in the world today. China and India are rising fast, and aside from the added number of basic human needs, their vast populations are acquiring the money to live like Westerners, and the consumer tastes for doing so. For example, consumers the world over who have been eating a diet relatively low in animal protein, which has traditionally been expensive, now want to eat more pork, beef and chicken. It takes 10 pounds of grain to produce one pound of pork. At my local Lebanese restaurant, the pitas recently shrunk by at least a third in size, but did not get any cheaper. There's a connection between the skyrocketing demand for animal protein in the world, and the fast-rising price of grain. And of course there's the water and petroleum required to grow all that food... .
The point is not that we're all going to starve. The point is that American consumer appetites are globalizing, and putting an extraordinary strain on the planet's resources. It is self-defeating to assume that we're all going to hell in a handbasket, and that nothing can be done to stop it. But it is foolish in the extreme to assume that we can all keep living like we've been living, and everything will work out in the end. Excerpt from the Journal story:
The 1972 warnings by the Club of Rome -- a nongovernmental think tank now based in Hamburg that brings together academics, business executives, civil servants and politicians to grapple with a wide range of global issues -- struck a chord because they came as oil prices were rising sharply. Oil production in the continental U.S. had peaked, sparking fears that energy demand had outstripped supply. Over time, America became more energy efficient, overseas oil production rose and prices fell.The dynamic today appears different. So far, the oil industry has failed to find major new sources of crude. Absent major finds, prices are likely to keep rising, unless consumers cut back. Taxes are one way to curb their appetites. In Western Europe and Japan, for example, where gas taxes are higher than in the U.S., per capita consumption is much lower.
New technology could help ease the resource crunch. Advances in agriculture, desalination and the clean production of electricity, among other things, would help.
But Mr. [Joseph] Stiglitz, the economist, contends that consumers eventually will have to change their behavior even more than then did after the 1970s oil shock. He says the world's traditional definitions and measures of economic progress -- based on producing and consuming ever more -- may have to be rethought.
In years past, the U.S., Europe and Japan have proven adept at adjusting to resource constraints. But history is littered with examples of societies believed to have suffered Malthusian crises: the Mayans of Central America, the Anasazi of the U.S. Southwest, and the people of Easter Island.
Those societies, of course, lacked modern science and technology. Still, their inability to overcome resource challenges demonstrates the perils of blithely believing things will work out, says economist James Brander at the University of British Columbia, who has studied Easter Island.
"We need to look seriously at the numbers and say: Look, given what we're consuming now, given what we know about economic incentives, given what we know about price signals, what is actually plausible?" says Mr. Brander.
Which brings to mind a couple of Patrick Deneen commentaries from last week, on how the US political system does not fundamentally understand the economic crisis we're now in, and this one on how we may be seeing the bursting of the "bubble of all bubbles." If austerity and a future of Less is going to force us to adapt our definition of economic progress, I'd like to ask the room for ideas about how we collectively could revalue our values to create a measure of progress for a post-consumerist society. Ideas?
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Well, I certainly can't accuse Karth of what I normally complain of in commenters here--not reading enough science fiction. I would advise a more varied diet, however. Try some Kim Stanley Robinson, Judith Moffett, Bruce Sterling. Even a little Spider Robinson. Human beings are interesting, tricky creatures who find all kinds of ways to create working communities and evade the onrushing light of the apocalypse engine at the far end of the tunnel. If one stops focusing so hard on the One Right Way and its inevitable doom, it can be possible to find a number of partly right ways that are good enough for jazz.
Lord Karth is M_David, right? Where do the Russian/Chinese man-pig soldiers figure into the upcoming apocalypse?
"It seems to me that a good place to start (meaning a beginning-place that might actually produce results, rather than resentment) might be by actions that allow people to know the real costs and benefits of their actions, instead of distorting them or leaving them in the dark entirely"
That might cut both ways, of course. Reminding people that (1)they have already paid for their health care by accepting lower wages and/or paying Social Security payroll taxes before they even step into a doctor's office or a pharmacy [or even if they never do], and that (2)they are then going to pay even more money in the form of co-pays, and that (3)a significant portion of that money is being spent on marketing pharmaceuticals of dubious value to the consumer even when (4)the consumer really doesn't want to hear about cures for ED and genital herpes, might disgust the populace to the point of actually demanding to get some value for their money.
What might really save our economy is the realization that most of us already OWN most of what we need, or can get it very cheaply or gratis from other people who already own it.
Which is to say, most of what is in our homes goes from consumer goods to stuff to garbage in roughly five-year cycles. At each of those stages, it costs somebody money--to buy, to store/maintain, and to dispose of. If we made more efficient use of this personal property, we wouldn't need to produce so much, or find the space to landfill it, or work so hard to purchase it.
My husband used to work with a Vietnamese woman who had spent her childhood in various refugee camps. She could not remember ever having a toy. "Even a rag to use as a doll?" my husband asked her. "If it wasn't falling apart to the point of not being useable, it was being used--for clothing, covering, or cleaning material," she explained. Now THAT'S efficient use of resources.
Yes, there is a market of sorts in resale clothing and appliances and furniture. But it is a tiny proportion of the total purchases of American consumers. We are not willing to take the trouble to cart our discards to Amvets or whoever, and shopping at such places makes us feel "poor," which is unpleasant.
Yes, I even have friends who trawl the alleys in search of high-class discards, and find them quite regularly. But most of us would be embarrassed to do such things, and even more bashful about telling our friends about it. That would make us LOOK poor.
When I was a member of a political collective, one year we held a group "garage sale." It mostly resulted in swapping discards with each other. I still have some of the things I got there. Some neighborhoods have group yard sales with roughly the same result. Our churches and synagogues and mosques and neighborhood clubs should be encouraging and sponsoring such events, as well as maintaining resale shops and helping people bring discards into the shops (which is often the hardest part of the process.) And if we are going to buy clothing made by exploited labor in foreign countries (or even by sweatshop labor in the US) the least we can do it use it efficiently.
Marian, well said, both posts.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.