Preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency, released in March, suggest that energy-related emissions of CO2[1] were unchanged in 2014 compared to 2013. Countries experiencing notable drops in emissions included China, Britain, Germany and the EU as a whole, but not, of course, Australia[2]
This has happened before, but only in years of global recession, whereas the global growth rate in 2014 was around 3 per cent. Of course, there are plenty of special factors such as a good year for hydro in China. Still, after looking carefully at the numbers, I’ve come to the conclusion that this really does represent, if not the long-sought peak in emissions, at least the end of the link between rising living standards and CO2 emissions.
The most striking feature of 2014 in this context was the behavior of fossil fuel prices. Coal prices had already fallen a long way from their peak levels in the years around the GFC, and they kept on falling through the year, even as coal mines began to close and lots of projects were abandoned. Oil prices remained at historically high levels until the middle of the year but then joined the downward trend, which has continued into 2015. Natural gas is a more complex story, since there isn’t a global market, and I haven’t figured it out yet.
Still, it seems to me that the 2014 outcome is a consistent with a story in which most growth in demand for energy services will be met by a combination of renewables and energy efficiency, and in which coal continues to lose ground to gas. The lack of demand implies that fossil fuel prices are likely to stay permanently below the levels anticipated when most recent projects were initiated.
Behind all this, it seems as if the various piecemeal measures introduced with the aim of switching away from fossil fuels are working better than almost anyone expected, and with minimal economic cost. Hopefully, this will encourage world leaders to set more ambitious targets, consistent with stabilising the global climate at temperatures 2 degrees or less above pre-industrial levels.
fn1. This excludes, for example, the effects of land use change, on which the IEA doesn’t collect data
fn2. At least after the repeal of the carbon tax
John Quiggin 
I think we shouldn’t underestimate the potential of adaptive geoengineering.
I recall talk of digging a channel from the ocean to the Eyre Basin to restore the old inland sea many years back. If sea levels rise, not only might this become feasible, it might become an ethical necessity (to reduce ovverall sea level rise for the benefit of low lying countries). A side benefit would be increased inland evaporation and hopefully increased rainfall in the SE of the continent.
@jt
The effect of the evaporation would be to clog the channel with salt so water no longer flowed. Pumps and salt removal may be needed. It would also need an eastward range of hills say 1,000m elevation to cool the moist air to ensure rain. if all the earth works were done with diesel machines there would be an enormous CO2 debt before it was even completed.
Interestingly that narrow channel where Spencer Gulf peters out near Pt Augusta has been the subject of several other ‘big’ ideas. Some wanted a solar thermal power station to replace the nearby coal fired power stations but the economics don’t look good, A bit further south a large desalination plant was to be built. Again too expensive, nowhere for the brine discharge to go and marine species notably giant cuttlefish like it the way it is.
Ivor, on carbon you have to realise that the stock of CO2 in the air is a product of the FLOWS – and these are very large. The reason that stock is rising is we’re creating CO2 faster than it is being absorbed by plants and oceans.
Now the more CO2 in the air, the quicker the rate it is absorbed (basically because there’s more available to be absorbed – d’uh). So for any given rate of CO2 creation there is an equilibrium level of CO2 in the air which will be reached after some centuries. The point here is that temporarily increasing the rate of CO2 creation only causes a temporary increase in CO2 levels – stop doing it and the damage will in time reverse. Therefore controlling CO2 emissions now not only slows global warming (which it does), it also reduces the temperature the planet eventually reaches. This remains true regardless of how much CO2 we’ve emitted in the past.
For CO2 emissions, bygones are not bygones – there is no sunk cost fallacy. That is because every year mother earth not only oxidises carbon, it also reduces CO2.
Salt has value. Water plants could be used to control channel erosion. Excess silt can be flushed out onto the vast Eyre Basin floodplain. Australian scientists hit the 40% mark for solar panel efficiency last year. The Germans later hit 46% in the lab and are confident they’ll get over 50% this year or next. The sky’s the limit.
@derrida derider
Yes, but the temporary increase declines over many half-lives.
CO2 in the atmosphere has a half-life around 30-40 years, so the current stock at 350 ppm will flow out to reach 300 ppm in 6 or so years provided there is zero replacement (flow rate is 2.4%).
But if civilisation ejects CO2 from any cause whatsoever, even from animal breathing after eating food, volcanos and from microbial action, the existing concentration will remain much, much longer and could increase.
Carbon pricing cannot reduce the flow of CO2 into the atmosphere to zero because animals including humans will always produce Giga-tonnes annually.
For stabilisation, the maximum amount of CO2 all activity on Earth can produce each year from all causes is just 2.4% of the current concentration.
For the necessary reduction, the available budget is substantially less.
Carbon pricing is simply not sufficient.
@Ikonoclast
What is a “quantum effect limit”? Are you talking about the reduction in size of the interconnects on microchips? Chip designers got around this one years ago by going to duo and quads. I can’t recall any other fundamental limits to growth based on “quantum effects”.
James Wimbereley,
“Material product has already stopped growing in OECD countries.”
I was reading a report a few weeks ago and globally the use of resources has increased – the only decrease is in the rate of increase but that’s in the context of a continuing absolute increase.
Ivor,
that is not correct about how long CO2 stays in the atmosphere:
“Between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years. The rest is removed by slower processes that take up to several hundreds of thousands of years, including chemical weathering and rock formation. This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhouse-gases-remain-air
And all the extra CO2 going into the ocean contributes to ocean acidification which is very bad for corals and crabs, and there is also work that suggests the oceans will not continue to take so much CO2 which means a higher proportion will stay in the atmosphere than has recently been the case
@Peter T
That “bath-tub” approach is right.
You can also use a spreadsheet software including the FV function which is usually available.
The key point is that the rate of re-absorption includes plant growth and therefore the food cycle and the half-life of CO2 is fixed.
,
John Quiggin,
From your 2008 post:
“Baumol and Oates also present in Chapter 9 a “Standard Run” from the World Model showing catastrophic collapse a little over halfway between 1900 and 2100, that is, right about now. Baumol and Oates, like most economists, are critical of Limits to Growth, but they aren’t rightwing anti-environmentalists by any stretch of the imagination. I think it’s fair to say that most readers at the time, whether they agreed with the Club of Rome or not, focused on predictions of imminent resource exhaustion, and not on what might happen in 2070”
If you google image search “Limits to Growth Standard Run Scenario” there are lots of reproductions of the graphs of the standard run scenario, and although different lines begin declining at different times I read this as being generally around 2015-2030ish period rather than in the 2000-2015 period.
The Smithsonian Magazine image has a nice colour graph and the article reads the graphs as forecasting the collapse to begin around 2030 : “Written by MIT researchers for an international think tank, the Club of Rome, the study used computers to model several possible future scenarios. The business-as-usual scenario estimated that if human beings continued to consume more than nature was capable of providing, global economic collapse and precipitous population decline could occur by 2030.”
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/looking-back-on-the-limits-of-growth-125269840/
The New Scientist article The Limits to Growth Revisited (2012 vol 213 iss 2846) also has a nice colour graph (with lines for the historical date since 1972 as well as modelling) and says the 2000 date attributed to LtG is an inaccurate interpretation of the modelling and that the 2000 date specifically relates to LtG treatment of known oil resources at the time — which was before the oil shock and subsequent search for more oil resources. Also some modelling was less accurate e.g.. population (in reality it grew more slowly) and pollution (in reality ghg are a worse problem):
“One of the most common myths is that Limits predicted collapse by 2000. Yet as a brief glance at the “standard run” shows, it didn’t (see graph, right).
The book does mention a 1970 estimate by the US Bureau of Mines that the world had 31 years of oil left. The bureau calculated this by dividing known reserves by the current rate of consumption. Rates of consumption, however, were increasing exponentially, so Limits pointed out that in fact oil had only 20 years left if nothing changed. But this calculation was made to illustrate the effects of exponential growth, not to predict that there were only 20 years of oil left.
When Matthew Simmons, a leading oil- industry banker, finally read Limits in the 1990s, he was surprised to find none of the false predictions he had heard about. On the contrary, he concluded, population and energy growth largely matched the basic simulation. He felt Limits got so much attention, then lost it, partly because the oil shock of 1973 focused minds on resource shortages that were then largely resolved.
…
And while the model was too pessimistic about birth and death rates, it was too optimistic about the future impact of pollution. We now know that overshoot – the delayed response to problems that makes the effects so much worse – will eventually be especially catastrophic for climate change, because the full effects of greenhouse gases will not be apparent for centuries.
…
Instead of declaring we are doomed, or proclaiming that technology will save us, we should explore the future more rigorously, says [Yaneer] Bar-Yam [head of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.] . We need better models.
“If you think the scientific basis of those conclusions can be challenged, then the answer is more science,” he says. “We need a much better understanding of global dynamics. We need to apply that knowledge, too. The most important message of Limits was that the longer we ignore the problems caused by growth, the harder they are to overcome. As we pump out more CO2, it is clear this is a lesson we have yet to learn.”
Also, with regard to LtG MIT has just published Australian researcher Kerryn Higgs book Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet which is about how the LtG were criticised and neoliberal economists from the 1970s argued for continuing growth in order to help the poor — but this ignored resource and environmental issues and in fact as we have seen global inequality and inequality within many nations has grown rather than declined over this period.
There is a review of the book here: https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/privacy-and-security/125-november-2014-no-366/2218-the-inconvenient-truth ; and there will be a Victorian launch of the book at Trades Hall on Thursday 30th April at 7pm
@John Quiggin
Sorry John, your bottom line is incorrect. Clearly you did not read the report carefully enough. It is a common fallacy that the Club of Rome LTG report predicted that constraints would bite sharply by 2000. This is not correct, it did not say that. What the report actually said, in essence, is that if we did not change BAU by 2000 (and by implication kept growing unchecked thereafter) then the resource constraints would bit sharply at about 2035 (plus or minus 10 years).
The above is made patently clear if you look at their graphs. The main peaks (population, industrial output) are at or about 2035. The main post-peak declines occur from circa 2035 to circa 2050. A lot of people do not understand carrying capacity and overshoot though I am sure you do with your background (agricultural economics). Carrying capacity refers to long term sustainability (for example stocking in agriculture) where the “natural annual income” (grass, water) is eaten but not eaten out. Over-stocking will degrade the pasture and reduce its carrying capacity (overshoot and collapse) at least temporarily. Though some damage can become semi-permanent due to erosion, weed invasion, loss of natural seed banks etc.
With humans and LTG, the issue very much revolves around natural capital and natural income if I may use those terms. The natural capital of coal and oil (or at least the natural capital of a 280 ppm CO2 level benign holocene / pre-industrial revolution climate) has been used up in 200 years and mostly in the last hundred).
Soon we will only be able to live on “natural income” in many respects. There are many examples of us living for too long off natural capital as well as natural income. De-forestation, the destruction of natural fisheries, top soil loss and so on are examples. When the natural capital is gone, we will have to live off natural income which in many cases (just like bare, beaten earth, over-stocked paddock) has been drastically lowered by environmental destruction.
Modern science and technology can do a lot that is true. But they cannot do things which are materially, energetically and ecologically impossible. Certain key limits and laws will always pertain in this universe.
If you don’t accept LTG and Footprint science it means you don’t understand their physical underpinnings. I am a bit surprised… or not. Orthodox economists seem to have a lot of trouble with the fact that the economy is a dissaptive system.
“Thermoeconomists argue that economic systems always involve matter, energy, entropy, and information. Moreover, the aim of many economic activities is to achieve a certain structure. In this manner, thermoeconomics applies the theories in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, in which structure formations called dissipative structures form, and information theory, in which information entropy is a central construct, to the modeling of economic activities in which the natural flows of energy and materials function to create scarce resources. In thermodynamic terminology, human economic activity may be described as a dissipative system, which flourishes by consuming free energy in transformations and exchange of resources, goods, and services.” – Wikipedia.
Your colleague, John Foster, asked the question, “Why is Economics not a Complex Systems Science?” in Discussion Paper No. 336, December 2004, School of Economics, The University of Queensland. It seems a good question to me.
Without going into it in detail here, Economics needs a unified theory combining the full suite of relevant Real Systems and Formal Systems. Real systems include the real economy and the real biophysical world underpinning the real economy. Hence the need for adding in the strand of biophysical economics or thermoeconomics as it is sometimes called. At the other end is the need of political economy or as some will call it institutional economics. Institutions, from constitutions to legal laws, ownership laws, rules of finance, axioms of national accounting and theories of macroeconomics (and many other formal systems) all also need to be included in a full study of economics. In addition there is the issue of “entities” or actors (programmers will call them intelligent agents and economists will call them rational agents).
What links human developed formal systems and real systems? The answer is information transmitted and acted on by intelligent agents. For a human formal system to be useful and useable it needs to possess a set of analogical correspondences with the real world (real systems). In that way accurate and applicable information (in the best case scenario) can be transmitted both ways and acted upon. Any unified theory of economics will have to find a way to unify and integrate an understanding of the interaction of formal systems and real systems all under the heading or aegis of systems science. Anything less than that will never be a genuine full discipline of economics. None of this is to suggest that such complex system economics will be become cut and dried like classical physics. Modern quantum and cosmological physics themselves are of course far from cut and dried.
Footnote: I did not mean to imply that the last two paragraphs of my last post where a precis of John Foster’s paper. They are in fact a precis of my own theories about how economics could be developed as a system science.
Gish gallop
The kids get scared about peak phosphorus, Worstall sets ’em str8 in the second last comment.
I am not sure what the point is?
A half-life of 30-40 years is consistent with your source. All these data have a variability of 20%.
There is no issue.
@Ikonoclast
“Modern quantum and cosmological physics themselves are of course far from cut and dried.”
There you go again with the quantum theory. How does quantum theory have anything to do with limits of growth and economics? The systems you are discussing are by definition statistically macroscopic systems, which immediately rules out any quantum effects playing a role. I suggest you drop the term in your arguments (which I agree with btw). Unless you can give a concrete example of quantum theory playing some role, it just makes it sound like you are “theory dropping”.
Just reading about how the Japanese are already mining poop to recover precious metals, gold, silver and so on. This means the leftover is safe to use as NPK rich fertiliser. Apparently the US millions upon millions of tonnes of poop in landfills jst waiting to be mined. The doom and gloom merchants should spend more time reading the tech sites; it is apparent that we already have three quarters of the tech we need to see us thru to the next millennia.
“just reading” ?
The American Chemical Society has been putting out this stuff for centuries! OK, maybe just over one century.
But please go digging in “feces” for a pot of gold, if you like.
@plaasmatron
Point taken.
@jt
And then the last commenter who states he is James Dyke, Lecturer in Complex Systems Simulation at University of Southampton, says;
Yes, the earth contains quadrillions of tons of phosphorus. But there are few concentrated deposits. We are rapidly depleting these and while it is never lost from the Earth system, to all intents and purposes that phosphorus is lost to us after it is washed away from the soil.
…
If energy wasn’t a constraint, we could run all manner of recycling.”
His last point is crucial and bears repeating. If energy wasn’t a constraint, we could run all manner of recycling. The point is that reserves or deposits of minerals need to be sufficiently concentrated to be economically recoverable. In the case of energy reserves (stocks) or energy supplies (flows), the resource must be energetically recoverable too, in the sense that it must show an energy profit upon recovery and use. Otherwise it’s an energy sink, an energy loss maker.
The Limits to Growth thesis is simple, elegant and irrefutable. Growth cannot continue indefinitely in a finite system. It’s so simple in principle one wonders why people don’t get it. My theory is that many people have trouble with two fundamental concepts. One, they confuse “big” with infinite. The earth is “big”. Many people cannot conceive that something that “big” still has limits. Two, people do not understand the power of exponential or geometric growth. Continual doubling of the global economy, even at say 2% per annum (a doubling every 35 years) will rapidly, in historical terms, reach earth’s limits.
On the emotive side, there is the natural “optimism bias” of humans. The fact that this bias exists and is so pervasive probably indicates it had and still has some sort survival-promoting value. Now however, it presents a significant obstacle to a rational assessment of the dangers we face.
@Ikonoclast
As I mention in the post linked above, the interpretation “unless we change our ways over the next 30 years, things could get bad in 60 + years time”, is undermined by a dust jacket referring to “‘The headline-making report on the imminent global disaster facing humanity’.” (emphasis added).
And not that long ago, commenter ZM pointed me to report, based on LtG and predicting collapse in 2015. Those resource constraints, particularly on oil and coal, aren’t looking too tight right now.
Of course, this is all to the good. We can’t afford to burn all the oil and coal we’ve already found, so the increasing likelihood that lots of it will be left in the ground is great news.
@Donald Oats
“So I suspect very few green-thinking people would feel population is not a deleterious factor.”
Regarding overpopulation denial Donald, it surprised me too. But its real and not trivial.
Some years back I was at an environmental NGO meeting and the issue was brought up by the organisation chair. The organisation’s manager who is normally broadminded immediately squashed discussion based as I understood at the time that it would give oxygen to Nazis. But the style of the suppression worried me and made me wonder.
Much more recently a friend started exploring this as part of addressing the question of what getting to a steady state (non-growing abnd maybe shrinking) global society would involve. At a moderate sized talk it became quickly clear that parts of the Green movement who attended were in denial.
Around that time I also located some literature such as a Sydney FOE’s “A Statement On Population and Climate Change” which illustrates one common position which can be reduced crudely to population controllers = fascists. Note its about playing the wo/man and not the reality. There is actually quite a lot out there.
Another example I remember around the time we passed 7 billion was a Guardian writer reiterating this position seriously when the adjacent story was projecting a population in Nigeria of 800 million around 2050!!?? No problem?
I think there are several sources for this mess. Firstly Marx reportedly dismissed Malthus as a religous elitist which he probably was, giving the ideological left an excuse to dismiss the mathematics very long ago. Then in the 1950s the UK in their twilight of empire pushed Malthus’s line again presumably to again control the lower classes when world population was about 2 billion. Such elitism does not go down well. Then you had all the sterilization’s in India promoted by Indira Ghandi’s son. And of course you have promoters of uncontrolled growth like the religions who see it as a way hitting their KPIs.
So unfortunately ideology and science got muddled understandably and it has not been sorted out.
Interestingly on this topic I’ve heard Ehrlich repeatedly state whenever asked that the best way to control population is through empowering women and addressing poverty and inequity so you have small families. Which I concur with. For the record my take on it is also beautifully summarised by Saints Paul and Anne Ehrilich’s I=PAT metaphor/equation. Its simple arithmetic.
But how do you lift the world out of poverty to say European standard of living while not trashing the biosphere. The Rio 20+ conference promoted (this is Gro Brundtland’s line) a 4 fold increase in the global economy??!!
@derrida derider
Would they be the same economists who didnt see the 2008 crash coming?
Regarding the limits to growth lot having prediction troubles, have you seen Graeme Turner’s 30 years on analysis of the LtG scenarios.
In a trivial sense the LtG people were spot on as verified 30 years later despite having an extremely simple model.
In a more nuanced sense the LtG people made several different predictions depending on how the cards fell – like the IPCC.
What the 30 years check also shows is that all the cornucopian expectations of growth economists were not in fact realized. The other predictions are still on the table and whether it will be a catastrophic collapse or slow crash landing still isnt clear.
As to the timing of material depletion based on the model – anyone who does modelling knows the precision of predictions isnt perfect and the real test is whether unexpected trends start coming in which seems to be happenning. In respect to materials this is certainly the case. On one hand there have been adaptations and new resource discoveries but there has also been a degradation of resource quality. This can be addressed by finding new sources but this has costs.
The contrast here is illustrated by deep water oil drilling. They arent doing this for fun but because easy land based supplies are running out.
It you want another illustration LtG in miniature have a look at coastal and oceanic fisheries including whaling. They are stuffed and despite decades long moratoria are still not recovering to what they were like even when I was young.
I find it remarkable that this kind of discussion about the LtG/Meadows Report is still going on.
The sensible way to regard that report is as an early (and primitive) experiment in using systems modelling to analyse global trends and sustainability issues, which highlighted the limitations of such modelling as well as its potential uses.
The fact that it continues to be regarded as a sort of prophecy is a testament to the power of religious thinking among those who purport to believe in science.
@John Quiggin
I must say I think that is a rather weak argument, Prof Q. I don’t think the marketing blurb on the cover of a book can be reasonably treated as an accurate reflection of its contents. Of course, I have no personal recollection of how the debate around LtG actually played out during the 1970s, being a wee bairn at the time.
Thanks Ronald. Here is an explanation in our old friend Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested
Lets start from the extremes. On one hand you used to have petroleum whose extraction costs in energy terms was trivial compared to what you could get from it, some of which was fed back into petroleum production.
At the other extreme when PV was first invented the amount of energy you could get during the life of the solar cells was far less than what was needed to go into manufacturing say the aluminium and glass and the zone melting.
The point here is to have useful energy supply you have to find a basic source which you can get much more out of than you put in.
Now the good news as you note is that the amount of energy you can get out of a PV panel over its lifetime in theory based on life cycle analysis exceeds that put into the manufacturing currently.
But what does the future hold?
– As resource quality is reduced financial and energy costs of component products – lets say the aluminium for PV panels will likely increase. This isnt fully factored in yet because we are still hooked on cheap fossil fuel.
– Then there is the construction and servicing and replacement of the PV infrastructure. Currently this involves trucks and cars and ships all powered by fossil fuel. These could be replaced by renewables to a degree but the costs of electric cars and hybrids which can do the same job are substantially higher. So again a like future increased energy cost.
– Most rooftop PV at the moment is putting power straight into the grid so storage is not needed. But the future will need storage facilities, another extra cost – manufacture = energy.
– Somehow at the same time we need to bring 5 billion people out of poverty, stretching resources even thinner.
– More widely our infrastructure in the west is now decaying because that is what it does (take a look at the US). So there are further costs in the future including energy to factor in for replacement just to keep what we currently have.
– It is presumed we will recycle more resources in the future. Unfortunately this is more costly than extracting native ores…so again more energy.
– It is still early days and there is a long way to go. My and my wife’s roof PV which is pretty optimal produces 1.9 kW at peak in summer. By contrast the average per capita Australian energy footprint is probably around 10 kW. So allowing for day v night production rates even if every house had a per capita system like our this would only be about 2-4 % of Australia’s total energy needs. So really we’ve barely started on this road.
Add these up and you have a challenge whose magnitude cannot be denied anymore than climate change.
Now on the other hand there are new PV technologies and lots of efficiencies which can be made. And I agree smaller would be better. But its unlikely IMHO that we will have vast amounts of additional energy with little cost as was the case when oil was discovered.
The market will help a bit but there are also absolute constraints on how far it can go. Exactly what the numbers are we dont know. The function of EROEI analysis is to identify where and what these are for now and into the future if we are not.
The Phil Trans article I referred to is a pretty easy to read illustration of the fascinating problems which will arrive.
Hope this helps.
@John Quiggin
I hope you don’t judge all books by the cover or by the dust jacket. I am not sure what the dust jackets of various editions said. I go by the contents of the book. Dust jackets are designed and written by advertising types. We know how poor their grasp of objective realities is as opposed to their considerable ability to hype, spin and push emotive buttons. Publishers and editors also interfere, if they can, with the title, promotion and message of articles and books as I am sure you will know. Commercial objectives are not the same as objective objectives. I am sure in a moment of objectivity you will admit that “the dust jacket said x” is not a good argument.
Just as I have been guilty in the past of serially forgetting to make explicit the point that a carbon tax is a price too (and which you pulled me up on), so you are guilty of serially mis-interpreting and mis-representing what The Club of Rome LTG Report said (in text and graphs) and what Graham Turner’s report said. If you argue against what they didn’t say instead of what they did say then you are putting up a straw man.
The Report clearly said we must change BAU by 2000 to avoid collapse in about 2035 plus or minus about 20 years. The graphs of the runs very clearly illustrate this with peaks in about 2035. I know you can read and interpret graphs so I wonder why you persist in a fallacious argument on this point.
Turner did not predict collapse in 2015. He predicted peaking in about 2015. Various factors may well make this predicted peak a plateau of kinds running on for years or a decade of more, IMO.
Apart from the above kerfuffle, you keep avoiding the substantive point. Growth cannot continue endlessly in a finite system. We must keep the essential principle separate from predictions about when the essential principle will finally manifest itself.
A certain kind of false prediction does not obviate its a basic principle. It’s a basic principle that a car on a journey will run out of petrol if it is not refueled. If I make sequential predictions that the fuel will run out before towns x, y and z and I am proven to be wrong in each case, this does not obviate the basic principle that a car on a journey will run out of petrol if it is not refueled.
Equally, incorrect predictions about the timing point of “peak economy” do not obviate the basic principle that the economy must peak at some point due to limits to growth. De-materialisation of the economy (and substitutions) act as extenders but do not and cannot obviate the basic principle. Substitution possibilities are not infinite. De-materialisation (a kind of efficiency at meeting needs and/or modifying needs) has limits. We are material and energetic beings with unaterable basal material and energetic needs. Our economy obeys this same system principle.
Even qualitative growth (as science, technology and culture) has limits as maintaining ever higher orders of complexity requires ever more energy. There are both theoretical quantitative and qualitative limits. The science I have read tells me the quantitative growth limits are close. The qualitative growth limits still appear distant provided we do not collapse too heavily materially or destroy ourselves.
For reasons I can’t quite fathom you are sceptical or dismissive about the science in this arena. Perhaps you could expand on your grounds for this scepticism.
@Tim Macknay
The basic principle (growth of a sub-system cannot continue forever in a finite system) is elegant and irrefutable*. It has nothing to do with religious thinking and everything to do with empirical thinking.
*Note: This holds true if you accept that science has discovered highly dependable laws about this universe, for example the laws of thermodynamics. To (attempt to) refute the proposition you would have to declare all modern physics bunkum.
I think expecting CO2 takup to continue unaffected is overly simplistic and misleading – there are feedbacks that mean that warming will cause CO2 sinks to cease taking up more and begin releasing it back to the atmosphere. Relying on these natural mechanisms to fix our waste could mean waiting a long, long time for CO2 levels to get reduced.
@Ikonoclast
I wasn’t talking about the “basic principle”. The idea that growth cannot continue forever in a limited system is common sense. I was talking about the Meadows Report/LtG, which is mostly what people on this thread have been talking about, except where they gish gallop and pretend to be talking about the “basic principle”.
The thing about the “basic principle” is it tells you precisely nothing about, which, when, where and how limitations on growth will manifest themselves. It’s just a truism, like the fact that we are all going to die. Your claim at near the top of the thread that the world is currently entering “secular stagnation”, caused by the Limits to Growth (your caps – is the capitalisation a reference to the publication, or an expression of deference to the divine?), is clearly not derived from the “basic principle”, which is equally compatible with (say) a claim that economic growth will continue for another 500 years before collapsing.
But I’m pretty sure we’ve had this conversation before, or at least one like it. You’re in broken record mode again, Ikon. 😉
@jt
Two problems.
1. We won’t share food equitably in the future, based on past performance.
2. Unless we drastically change farming practices, we’re still going to hit those limits even ignoring the population problem.
I don’t think you thought this through.
@Tim Macknay
It’s all very well to say I am in broken record mode. However, what mode are the economists, politicians etc. in when they promote endless growth? If one keeps replying to and exposing their ad nauseum repetition of rank faslehoods (same goes for climate change denial), one does not bear primary responsibility for the endless-record aspect of the debate. That responsibility lies with the deluded and deliberate purveyors of endless growth propaganda.
@Ikonoclast
To my mind, responsibility for the perpetuation of that particular “debate”, through repetition of dubious claims, rests equally on both sides of it. It’s true though, that the critics of the LtG/Meadows report are often just as prone to treating it as a “prophecy” as its fans are.
“I hope you don’t judge all books by the cover or by the dust jacket”
Authors are responsible for the cover of their book, just as much as for the contents. I’ve scrapped covers at the last minute because I regarded them as misleading. If you sign off on a book cover predicting imminent disaster, you can’t weasel out of it by pointing to a graph on page 150 that can be read to suggest something different.
Tim is right – this was an early attempt at large scale modelling that gave some useful insights, but also showed up the limits of such exercises.
Give me a break.Turner says quite unambiguously that “This scenario results in collapse of the global economy and population in the near future. It begins in about 2015 with industrial output per capita falling precipitously, followed by food and services. Consequently, death rates increase from about 2020 and population falls from about 2030 – as death rates overtake birth rates. ” (emphasis added)
This (first published in 2012, and restated in 2014) can’t possibly be read to refer to a plateau lasting a decade or more.
If you want to be taken seriously on LtG, you should either endorse this prediction, with any specific adjustments to the timescale you want or admit that it’s wrong. Otherwise you’re just like the various kinds of fundamentalists who predict the end of the world/capitalism/civilisation as we know it, and keep shifting the dates.
The energy problem is ovverated. The sun is a constant source of energy and wind is renewable. Currently roof top solar operates at only 15% efficiency. These things are Model T Fords.
We continue to see records for solar efficiency being smashed both in the lab and in the field (46% and 40% respectively last year) The scientists working on these projects know they aren’t within cooee of hitting the technical limits of what is possible. See this Catalyst program for details.
A Guardian article summarising the Turner study came away with this take home message
I can well believe things will go bad in the next 15 years. For example the weirdness of oil price deflation. A century of happy motoring and 800 million cars globally yet the price of the finite amount of the magic elixir gets cheaper. Also note appeals to technical salvation on this thread. In my opinion we should assume things will get tougher and aim for a least-worse path.
@John Quiggin
OK, I expect an admission that you are 100% WRONG in this matter as I will prove. I happen to have a PDF copy of Limits to Growth. The edition is billed on the front cover as a Potomac Associates Book and is published by Universe Books NY according to the frontispiece page inside. It is the fifth printing 1972. Library of Congress catalogue card number 73-187907.
The text on the back side of the dust jacket says and I quote;
“The message of this book is urgent and sobering: The earth’s interlocking resources – the global system of nature in which we all live – probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology.” It goes on but I need quote no more.
It is VERY, VERY crystal clear. The year 2100 is mentioned in black and white or rather black and a sort of burnt orange (in my file / screen combination anyway). I can send the entire PDF to your email if you want it.
Now it may be that earlier dust-jackets bore a misprint but I find this unlikely. It is more likely you have made the kind of perceptual or memory error to which we are all be prone at times when we strongly wish to prove a point.
However, I cannot let your mis-characterisation of the dustjacket AND the entire book cloud this debate. It is a very important debate. You need to re-think your recollections, concepts and arguments in relation to limits to growth. I suggest you need to re-read the book. I do you the justice of assuming you have read it in the past.
I will reply to the Turner issues in a further post. I have to cook a fish pie now. Mundane matters take up so much of all our lives.
John Quiggin,
I think you are being unfair to Graham Turner , he maybe should have been more careful about how his report was represented and the wording – but sometimes wording is emotional and I know when I heard him give a talk last year he finds the results of his research very worrying and also the lack of any strategy to deal with it being discussed in the political arena.
As I studied history I think several decades is the short term – but people from business often think 10 years is the long term, so unless specific numbers of years are stated it can be a bit subjective.
The collapse is predicted 2015-2030 period. You point out that deaths increase as if that is wrong , but given that there are wars in the middle east and Africa I reckon deaths have increased. And these ears often relate to the Arab Spring which is caused by food shortages (as turner predicts) due to droughts in Russia and elsewhere. With climate change droughts and food shortages are likely to get worse. So this could be the start of declining food harvest and related higher deaths
OTOH as I studied history I think modelling is better for physical things than social things – so maybe social changes can assist in preventing a collapse. But time is running out to implement these social changes
@Ikonoclast
I hope it’s not bluefin tuna…
“However, I cannot let your mis-characterisation of the dustjacket AND the entire book cloud this debate. It is a very important debate.”
Dunning-Kruger in bright flashing neon lights with a chorus of can-can dancers and, my God, did Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson just enter the building!!!!
But more seriously, for 20 years I’ve tried to place a bet with Chicken Littles who think the End is Nigel. I’ve even offered generous odds, but no-one ever steps up to the batting mound. I think economists call this revealed preference.
Meanwhile, according Nature, the earth has become more forested over the past decade:
@Tim Macknay
Actually, snapper and smoked cod. The thought did cross my mind that a person who talks about collapsing wild fisheries and then eats Australian snapper and South African smoked cod is a hypocrite. I suspect the snapper is wild but I don’t know about the cod. I do know of course that the Newfoundland cod fisheries (a long way from South Africa) were destroyed as viable fisheries a long time ago.
Then again, a mentioner / predicter of these kinds of mutiple man-made ecologicaldisasters is a hypocrite for even living. Excuse me for living. 😉
@jt
Dunning and Kruger are looking over your shoulder as you look in the mirror.
@Ikonoclast
My comment about the tuna was in jest. I don’t think you’re hypocrite.
That should have read “I don’t think you’re a hypocrite”. Aargh.
This entry on Amazon has an image of the front of, it looks like, an original edition of the book from 1972.
The disputed quote can be seen if you click on “see this image” (left side, just under a small picture of the book).
It is a quote, not from the authors but from “Anthony Lewis – New York Times”.
Sorry, scrub that.
The quote is NOT from Lewis, his quote “one of the most important documents of our time” immediately follows the quote in question. The quote in issue seems to be in the form of a subtitle to the title.
@Megan
Sorry but I cannot see the disputed quote on the image you suggest. The disputed quote is from the back of the dust-jacket and is in my PDF image of the 5th edition (1972):
“The message of this book is urgent and sobering: The earth’s interlocking resources – the global system of nature in which we all live – probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology.”
NOTE THE YEAR!!! 2100! NOT 2000!
Sorry Megan I am not shouting at you, I am shouting at all the people who repeat urban myths or rather neocon myths about this report. It is very frustrating.
Actually, it looks like the quote was only on the 8th print run edition.
So it could easily have been put there by the marketing machine.