Can We Grow Our Way Out of Environmental Catastrophe?

I’ve been reading about the world’s economic woes quite a bit recently and the arguments between between those who support austerity to fight some looming “deficit crisis” and those who support deficit spending to stimulate the economy. In these arguments I am starting to believe that those who argue for austerity cuts to reduced the deficit because of some impending “deficit crisis” are analogous to those who lied about WMD’s in Iraq to fool the American people into supporting that Gawd awful fiasco of a war for oil. However, I rarely see the economists, who I generally agree with, like Paul Krugman talk about the ability of our environment to sustain our insatiable need to “grow” and build more.

I’m no economist, but I do see what is happening to my part of the world and I read about environmental catastrophes in other parts of the world and even our country. I read about how China is on a massive growing streak which is adding many more people to its middle class who want more stuff just like the rest of the world. That stuff ultimately takes up more land, results in greater pollution, and leads to more greenhouse gas emissions. How will this planet sustain itself with a population of 7 plus billion people, and growing, when our planet can realistically support only the demands of a small fraction of this population?

I don’t think it can, at least not without a catastrophic decline in population due to famine or disease or a combination of the two and other causes. Even our military predicts that global climate change is going to ultimately cause our world great instability and pain.

Our world food supply is teetering on collapse and food reserves are as low as a 30-day supply. One report even says that if humans don’t switch to a largely vegetarian diet there simply won’t be enough water to grow enough food to support the 2 billion people that are likely to be added to the world population in the foreseeable future.

We already see the rapid acceleration towards extinction for species like the rhino because of trivial and absurd desires for alleged aphrodisiacs. What will happen when we face the same choices for species when it comes to a less trivial demand for food? In my part of the world we are seeing once common species like sage grouse rapidly disappearing because of livestock grazing and energy production. Whole landscapes are being converted to cheatgrass and forests are burning at an accelerated rate. Species like wolves and bison are being put at risk due to over hunting or lack of habitat. Simply put, the status quo sucks.

Back to the economists. So many economists are saying that we either need more stimulative deficit spending for large infrastructure projects to make our economy efficient and able to grow again. More or less a Keynesian model for recovery. Other economists are saying that we need to reduce deficit spending so that the rich will create more jobs and the lower classes will be forced back to work at lower wages. More or less the Milton Friedman line of thought. I agree with the Keynesian line of thought but neither of these models factors in the environmental equation.

The common wisdom nowadays, for those who try to factor in environmental sustainability, says that more money and resources need to go into developing so-called “green energy” like wind and solar. Much of that development is being proposed in areas that are undeveloped like public lands in the southwest United States for solar and sensitive bird areas for wind. It’s the fallacy of “sustainable growth”. By definition, in the context of the environment, growth is not sustainable. Every population of animal that outgrows its resources collapses. Still, the “Big Green” groups say we have to trade irreplaceable habitat for more energy. It won’t work. Primarily it won’t work because there is no corresponding reduction in greenhouse gas emitting energy and it converts undisturbed land into industrialized landscapes. It just means more unsustainable development without any reduction in demand.

So far conventional wisdom hasn’t offered a sustainable way to navigate through the rough seas ahead. Ideas like those promoted by groups like Population Connection, formerly Zero Population Growth, are considered radical and even dangerous conspiracies by many. There seems no desire to truly confront the harsh realities that are likely in store for future generations. Until the chatter class starts to honestly face these issues we are flirting with irreparable harm to our planet and future generations. To repeat a famous refrain, contrary to conventional wisdom, we can’t have it all.

68 thoughts on “Can We Grow Our Way Out of Environmental Catastrophe?

  1. Well said, Ken.

    BTW, I’d change this:

    “trivial and absurd desires for aphrodisiacs.”

    To this:

    “trivial and absurd desires for alleged aphrodisiacs”.

    There’s no real science behind the claims of the poaching black market.

      1. Do you not realize Gov’t is in it for themselves and not us? REALLY? You may win small battles here and there (and I do applaud you for the effort) but in the end Democrat or Republican you are gonna lose! They only care about themselves in washington, we are pee ons and don’t matter! Sage grouse…is that some chicken out west?who cares we got money to make off all our welfare subsides!

        1. Keep yer hopes up Ken, Obama will come through and we all will enjoy living off the Gov’t welfare system!

          1. Of course I realize that politicians are in it for themselves but I do think that government has a function that isn’t being served because it has been captured by and for industry only. Corporatism has overridden the interests of everyone in this country and the interests of the common man are never heard.

            I don’t think I expressed any hope in this piece, let alone hope in Obama. He’s as bad as, or worse than, Bush on environmental issues.

  2. Excellent points! Until the humans are willing to control OUR numbers and reduce them by logical and peaceful means, the sustainability of our species is in question. What the ugliest part of this horror vision to me is: how many more species will fall as/when humans attempt to feed ourselves in an impoverished landscape?

  3. “For the eye altering alters all…
    And the flat earth becomes a ball”

    We have to change the mindset, our fairy tales, and our heroes. (I’m not optimistic about that)

  4. At this point – even a plant based diet is going to take too much land and resources. Taking up land for so-called green energy – I’m amazed that just putting a green label on something, like “it’s windpower, or it’s solar!” is enough, regardless of what it does to the planet to put them up on land and sea in large areas. The oceans’ supply or fish and shellfish as a food supply is being threatened in may ways – from acidification and overfishing, to oil spills and drilling, and the installation of large-scale wind farms. There’s no question that in smaller areas, wind is a great thing, and rooftop solar, but they aren’t the answer to our energy needs.

  5. Excellent commentary, Ken. However, ending population growth will not by itself correct the situation. We also need a new economic paradigm that goes beyond Keynesianism and all the rest. We need patterns of production and distribution of both money and products that doesn’t require growth.

        1. Al Jezeera at least asks tough questions unlike American media. They actually do investigative journalism and aren’t hindered by a ridiculous self censorship like so many of the American outlets. Have you ever bothered to watch Al Jazeera or are your complaints just echoes of Fox News’ complaints about them.

              1. Ken,

                I don’t trust the MSM either. In fact, it has gotten worse as print media has consolidated or even gone out of business. How many national print media have gone under (Newsweek and who is next, Time?), and how many metro cities have gone from 2 to 1 newspapers, and how about NBC owned by one of the biggest corporations in America (TV and internet news/information)?

                While this is bad, I see caution signs far more troubling with Al Jazeera which is adeptly positioning itself as THE ONLY major news source in the Arab world (under the guidance and funding of Quatar which is at the moment pro-US), which could in a heartbeat with the right media spin and careful words initiate a call to arms and launch a jihad against the entire freaking non-Arab free world. If you think AJ has anything less than this capability and long term objective, you are IMHO mistaken.

                And, by the way, I don’t watch Fox News. I much refer PBS to it or network news.

              1. Ralph,

                Al Jazeera is heavily subsidized by the Qatar government, which is the emirate royal family in power. The small country of Qatar (borders Saudi Arabia). They are VERY rich from oil production. It is about 75-80 percent Muslim. Mostly favorable to the US as is Saudi (otherwise why would we sell Saudis’s F-18’s, and I think very recently $30B worth of F-15’s).

                Probably worth reading the link above to understand context of how influential Qatar government can be over Al Jazeeera, which is expanding and expanding as the voice of the Arab (commericial and political?) world.

                That is why we should be sleeping with one eye open.
                – – – – –

                WordPress is out of replies here, so I will directly edit this. Thanks!!

                Ralph

      1. It is a compliment Ken, imagine the country under All Gore if his presidency was not stolen. I’m quite sure we would be in a much different more progressive place.

  6. Yup. And when reasonable solutions or reasonable pathways to solutions are mentioned, they are immediately shouted down by a number of factions who can’t think of or envision anything outside the box-like trap they have us caught up in.

    What I have been saying for decades now… “Contrary to popular marketing strategies, even though you may be an American, you cannot have it all.”

    Good write up, Ken. It would be nice if more people were thinking like this and actually getting their heads out of the distractions and DO something to counter the damage.

    Food for thought:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7iW1SHPgUAQ

    1. …or as I always say to the Extractors , the Manifest Destiny robber barons, the Capitalists, and Gross Consumers in general :

      If you ‘ all would just clean up after yourselves when you go a’ consuming and a’plundering the resources, we would never have needed an EPA, OSHA , whaling commission , Greenpeace , WWF , Sierra Club , and all those regulators and agencies to make you do it.

      Simple rule: leave the planet better than you arrived on it.

  7. Thank you Salle. These companies need to be made to clean up after themselves – tar sands, mining, drilling, chemicals.

  8. We need to dismantle the animal-industrial complex (defined here http://harmonist.us/2011/01/the-animal-industrial-complex/ ) and pour the vast resources consumed by animal agriculture into producing a healthy plant-based diet. The production of one hamburger requires 2393 liters of water (632 gal.)–that amount can be visualized in this short video http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/hamburger-water-footprint_n_1624394.html

    Inspiring video from Evolve Campaigns about the dietary change that results in justice for animals, humans, and the Earth… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKr4HZ7ukSE&feature=player_embedded

    1. Bill Mollison(Father of Permaculture) has inconsistently argued in his Permaculture Design Course that vegetarianism exacerbates soil erosion. This is because removing a plant from a field removes all the nutrients it obtained from the soil, while removing an animal leaves the field intact. On US farmland, much less soil erosion is associated with pastureland used for livestock grazing than with land used for production of crops.

      I don’t think there is just one answer. We need to eat much, much less meat certainly, and rely on animals much less than we do. But with modern crop growing for a huge world population, there will be a lot of chemical usage, water usage and deforestation. I don’t think we can eliminate meat from our diets entirely. We’d need to make a complete change to the traditional concept of agriculture, which will be slow going. Or maybe just a return to the old, traditional ways – but industrial farming may be the only way to keep up with our huge world population – or it is at least one reason we have industrial farming today (along with increased profitability), to keep up with demand, which is terrible for farm animals, denying their sentience entirely. At least on smaller and organic farms they have a better life.

      We need IMHO to go back to a simpler way of living and eating.

      I’m curious about Permaculture:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture#Mollison_and_Holmgren

      1. Ida, I’ve read many times that the grains and soybeans being fed to industrially farmed animals is already enough to feed the world’s hungry. In other words, the resources exist; they just aren’t allocated fairly. Wealthy countries with meat-intensive diets take far more than their share.

        “Globally, even with climate change issues and weather extremes, we are producing enough grain to feed two times as many people as there are in the world. In 2011, there was a record harvest of grain globally, with over 2.5 billion tons, but half of that was fed to animals in the meat and dairy industries. Seventy seven percent of all coarse grains (corn, oats, sorghum, barley, etc.) and over 90% of all soy grown in the world was fed to livestock. So clearly the difficulty is not how can we produce enough food to feed the hungry, but where all the food we produce globally is going, in addition to the other factors of pricing, policy making, and education.” More at http://comfortablyunaware.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/the-world-hunger-food-choice-connection-a-summary/

        A Montana woman is addressing some of your other points (soil erosion, chemicals, etc.) with her practice of veganic permaculture:

        “…my focus is again stretching, beyond ecology and organic to veganic, permanent soil cover farming. Veganic Permaculture is my way of honoring all living beings and gardening with an unconditional effort to keep all things alive and growing. Veganic Permaculture is a willingness to balance my existence with the natural world.” More at http://veganicpermaculture.com/

        Yes, it will take a radical paradigm shift. Factory farms don’t *need* to be part of it…they are part of the problem.

        1. We need to start that paradigm shift at the individual level tho – factory farms will continue to exist unless people demand change. If they want meat for 315,000,000 and counting people or even a portion of that – we will continue to have factory farms in order to keep up with it. I have no problems envisioning cutting down meat consumption, it is generally healthy all around. Believing it is possible for everyone, or that we are capable of feeding the world this way, isn’t realistic. Do we really think we can feed billions of people indefinitely? Should we be the only ones on the planet who can reproduce without restraint? It doesn’t take into account famine, water shortages, exhausting soil, for instance. These things will take generations to overcome, it at all. And what about hunting? Would it be fair to put increasing burdens on wildlife for growing crops and hunting in the absence of meat? Horticulture makes more sense to me.

  9. It is often said of predator and prey that you can’t manage one without management of the other. We are, after all,a predator. But we go far beyond this with our manipulation of landscapes and other species. We are often told of sustainable numbers and carrying capacity when we talk of other species but it is rarely cosidered when we talk of of our own. In my opinion population numbers should be the single biggest concern. The big question is how to control our own numbers without violating peoples rights. Can we simply encourage less children by changing the ways we encourage more children now?

    1. You could change the tax code in the US to reflect deductions for having zero children and increase the tax as more are “produced” by the family, the reverse of what happens now.

      1. Ah, the tyranny of the reproducing majority will certainly prevent that! And they’ll pat us on the head and tell us how they’re doing us all a favor by breeding like bunnies.

      2. Joseph:

        Reproduction in the US is currently below population replacement (i.e., ~2.1 births/female)–meaning we would be shrinking if nor for immigration (especially illegal immigration).

        1. http://www.newgeography.com/content/002812-is-negative-population-growth-upon-us-deaths-exceed-births-one-third-us-counties

          Number of deaths for leading causes of death 2011
          •Heart disease: 597,689
          •Cancer: 574,743
          •Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 138,080
          •Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 129,476
          •Accidents (unintentional injuries): 120,859
          •Alzheimer’s disease: 83,494
          •Diabetes: 69,071
          •Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,476
          •Influenza and Pneumonia: 50,097
          •Intentional self-harm (suicide): 38,364

          A serious approach to our eating habits?

          http://grist.org/food/2012-01-12-meating-them-half-way-americans-opt-for-less/

      3. A better policy would provide a generous tax deduction for child 1, less of a deduction for child 2, no deduction for child 3 and penalties thereafter. This would encourage a stable population.

        1. JB,

          Such a program wouldn’t really be very meaningful unless its equivalent were implemented worldwide…..China, India, the African Continent, where massive future population growth and large scale consumptive use of consumer products is predicted in a growing middle class(and maybe continued political unrest) will occur in the next 50 years.

          Renew ZPG concepts worldwide!

          1. WM:

            My view: Ultimately, we can only be responsible for ourselves. Other countries will have to find their own way, or suffer the consequences of their overpopulation.

            1. JB,

              Your apparent isolationist view of world population growth (be responsible for each county’s own mess) suffers from a couple flaws. We know from the past that a need for resources has been a cause for instability in governments and world wars. And, that the effects of overpopulation, can include water and air pollution that affect the entire globe. We see it in the brown haze that comes over from China, and who knows what goes into the oceans?. They are also aggressively on the hunt for petroleum in South America, Canada and Siberia. Their economy will soon surpass ours. What next?

              Then there are the growing population/food problems of the African Continent (already mostly unstable) and India. I keep saying on this forum one in four people in this world is from China; one in three from China or India. If the population forecast folks are correct, we just might be hitting one in two will be from those two countries plus the very rapidly growing African countries.

              Do you honestly think they can take care of themselves without having direct or indirect impacts to the US?

              I am wondering exactly who “will suffer the consequences of their overpopulation,” and importantly what forms it will take?

              1. I should also say the impacts are not just limited to “population” as counted in just numbers of humans, but the consumer demands by those humans that actually amplify the effects – need for more electricity, metals, timber, petroleum based goods, etc.

              2. “Do you honestly think they can take care of themselves without having direct or indirect impacts to the US?”

                Of course not. Likewise, our addiction to fossil fuels is affecting people in these countries. (Ain’t globalization great!) But the fact is that we have little ability to impact the birth rates in other countries (though we arguably could impact Mexico if we shut off the immigration valve); what is it that you would have us do beyond our own borders?

                “I am wondering exactly who ‘will suffer the consequences of their overpopulation,’ and importantly what forms it will take?”

                Very good questions. However, a few facts are important here: (1) the US has one of the highest ratios of people to arable land, (2) we have arguably the world’s most efficient agriculture, (3) we have (arguably) the best military, (4) we are separated from those countries with the biggest population problems by two very large oceans, and (5) we have the world’s largest supply of fresh water. In sum, we are perhaps best situated to survive any ecological calamities the world might face.

                In any case, my comment was about how you might structure tax policy to encourage a stable population in the US. I stand by those comments. If you want to discuss what we can do to impact population growth in other countries, I’m all ears…?

      4. Good comment Joseph, in essence back when the Chinese put into place the one child policy one of the sanctions had to do with cutting benefits to those who had more then one child. Its been a long time since I studied Chinese history, Deng Xiapeng or that policy but I remember at the time I thought it was a smart move by their government but implemented poorly as it resulted in infanticide of female infants. I struggle because I believe in social programs that help the poor but I also do not condone human procreation without limits. removing social benefits is most likely going to affect the poor not the rich, so maybe a higher tax rate might provide an incentive to be socially responsible.

  10. At various times, I’ve read that human populations must continually increase so there are sufficient young working people able to support elderly retired people. Has anyone ever addressed that assumption?

  11. Talk about population control is premature unless preceded by a serious effort to get individual consumption under control. It may feel good to advocate population control, but each individual American consumes as much or more than an entire family in many parts of the world. Do we tell rural farm familes they’re limited to 2 kids so American families of 4 can continue to drive gas guzzlers every time they leave the house and eat beef 4 days a week?

  12. I don’t feel we need to stop eating meat or anything (so dream on anyone that expects this) but reducing the percentage would be beneficial. I would like to see us better process the meat we have, including hunting…especially lazy duck hunters and some deer hunters (that grab enough for backstrap and leave) The recent use of processed meat scares me more than anything, as many times there’s no way to drill down and find out what something really is anymore at a supermarket…what cut of meat, any organs, etc? Hell, sometimes what ANIMAL?
    Even though processing has gotten better in some areas, consumers have ABSOLUTELY NO INSTRUCTION in how to prevent food waste, and why it matters. The norm is now to have a giant spread of food that rarely gets over half eaten (see today’s Super Bowl parties). The advertisers want more consumed, not less…and many worship the ‘flat screen god’ now.

  13. “Primarily it won’t work because there is no corresponding reduction in greenhouse gas emitting energy and it converts undisturbed land into industrialized landscapes.”

    Ken:

    I agree with much of what you’ve written here, but this sentence bothers me. The logic of the “big” green groups is based upon good science (including economics) that says if we make green energy sources cheap at the same time as fossil fuels are becoming more expensive to extract, energy companies will switch over to the more economical form. The problem is, to make green energy competitive, it needs to be heavily subsidized for a few years, just as oil, gas and coal have been.

    About a year ago, I attended a lecture of a well known climate scientist. He showed a map of Arizona with the area highlighted that would need to be covered in solar panels to provide all of the nation’s energy needs by 2050 (that’s current demand, plus estimated increases). It was a tiny red dot. He then showed a similar picture of the Sahara (a desert the size of the United States) with a similar tiny red dot that could supply power for the entire world (again at estimated 2050 demand). So do we fight green energy while we watch oil, gas and coal take risky and increasingly horrific measures to extract every last ounce of fossil fuel out of the earth, or do we push for green energy now, betting that the sooner it becomes cheap, the sooner we (collectively) abandon fossil fuels?

    1. I have no problem with so-called “green” energy as long as its placement is correct. I’m not sure that wind turbines can be placed anywhere that won’t cause problems to people or wildlife though. Rooftop solar should be prioritized over centralized solar plants that take up too much land. That’s a disaster.

      1. Ken:

        Thanks; I agree that decentralized power production is preferable, though I don’t think we will necessarily have a choice between the two (meaning, we may need both). In any case, I would take centralized solar power plants in the desert over tar sands, fracking, mountain top removal, deep ocean oil drilling etc. any day.

  14. Our unprecedented worldwide demand for meat, eggs, and dairy products is proving to be hazardous — both to other animals and to us. In the U.S. alone, more than 9 billion land animals are slaughtered annually for meat — that’s about 1 million animals per hour — and world meat production is expected to double by 2020. [1] Animals raised for food are now ubiquitously crammed into factory farms, living in profoundly filthy and cruel conditions, which reduces their ability to fight off infections.

    It is truly mind boggling, and how it continues is beyond me:

    A really good upcoming series of articles about factory farming:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aysha-akhtar/animals-public-health_b_2592499.html?utm_hp_ref=green&ir=Green

    I’ve read some of these articles about population decreasing or stabilizing, and I find them to be vague and misleading. World population growth is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050, over 400 million in the US. That’s still a lot of people, and a lot of meat consumers. Even if we reduce our rate of consumption, more births equals more consumers.

    1. “I’ve read some of these articles about population decreasing or stabilizing, and I find them to be vague and misleading.”

      Ida: You’re missing the point. The world population is not growing because of people in the US–it is growing DESPITE people in the US. We (our government) only has the power to affect our population, which currently represents about 4% of the world population (and declining). Moreover, if we took measures to limit immigration, we could actually reduce or stabilize our population. Now consider that we have a disproportionate portion of the world’s best agricultural lands and you can see that POPULATION is not the problem in the US; rather, CONSUMPTION is the problem.

      1. Yes, I realize that, and I disagree – other countries are catching up to us in consumption departments. But we in the US of course don’t exist alone, and I still think we have an extremely large population here in the US also, immigration or not.

        1. Hmm…not sure what you’re disagreeing with? The FACT is that the US has one of the highest ratios of arable land to people (over .5 hectares); moreover, we probably have the world’s most technologically-advanced (read=efficient) system of agriculture, and the ability to control our population without enacting draconian measures (we need only control immigration). We are “sitting pretty” relative to other countries–if we could just get our consumption under control.

    2. I for one am fairly pessimistic having read people like Guy McPherson, James Hansen, Or Lovelock’s last book. We have created a web of mostly unsolvable problems if we are thinking we are going to sustain even living the way most of us live now (and others are trying to emulate). We’d all have to ‘downsize’ in ways that are quite uncomfortable. People aren’t willing to do that.

      Most depressing for me was when a friend said that when things get bad, people will start eating whatever they can, including anything now protected. I saw that in California with the 2008 downturn. Many people were poaching, especially fishing, and law enforcement was quite busy.

  15. I for one am fairly pessimistic having read people like Guy McPherson, James Hansen, Or Lovelock’s last book. We have created a web of mostly unsolvable problems if we are thinking we are going to sustain even living the way most of us live now (and others are trying to emulate). We’d all have to ‘downsize’ in ways that are quite uncomfortable. People aren’t willing to do that.

    Most depressing for me was when a friend said that when things get bad, people will start eating whatever they can, including anything now protected. I saw that in California with the 2008 downturn. Many people were poaching, especially fishing, and law enforcement was quite busy.

  16. For a look at a progressive wolf management plan see
    below link for the draft Wolf Management Plan approved by the Tribal Council of Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. This is what wolf and predator management should look like. They write they are dedicated to maintaining natural populations of wolves. The provision to use lethal management specifies only as a last resort! I hope you can take the time to read.

    http://www.kbic-nsn.gov/sites/default/files/WolfPlan_FINAL_011013_V9.4.pdf

    In the event that legislation is enacted for a wolf hunt, KBIC will designate the Home Territory, approximately 3.9 million acres within the 1842 Treaty area, as Wolf Sanctuary where sport hunting and/or trapping will not be allowed (See Appendix 2 for Home Territory Map). In addition, KBIC will not provide Tribal wolf hunting permits to community members. These measures will help to protect wolves and maintain a strong culturally based stance against the killing of wolves. KBIC Natural Resource Department will also participate in and maintain close communication with those involved in wolf monitoring and control of human-wolf conflicts. As funding allows, we intend to increase monitoring of wolves on and near the Reservation preferably with tracking of radio-collared wolves to keep tabs on any changing status of wolf packs.

  17. An economy stimulated for growth need not be wholly negative.

    The US could invest heavily in energy efficient public transportation, could invest heavily in climate change mitigation, and could invest heavily in alternative and cleaner energy sources.

    Will that happen? Probably not until it’s too late, and it may already be too late.

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