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>But... there is the question of whether our economic growth brings us closer to the absolute carrying capacity of spaceship Earth. Are we inching up on the ab
by fnovd 9y ago
>But... there is the question of whether our economic growth brings us closer to the absolute carrying capacity of spaceship Earth.
Are we inching up on the absolute carrying capacity of Earth? Perhaps. But what about the carrying capacity of the Sun?
We are barely capturing a fraction of the energy the Sun sends our way. Think about what we could do if our ability to harvest renewable energy in the next two decades increased not tenfold or even a hundredfold, but a thousandfold.
The smartphones in our pockets are almost unfathomably more powerful than those of a few decades ago, yet we still power them by burning rocks we found in the ground, eking out barely a day of usage before plugging them back into the grid. There is so much about our digital world that is limited by energy in ways we don't fully appreciate.
Imagine a miniaturized particle accelerator [1] that could actually turn lead into gold [2]. Imagine this done at a scale powered by energy production several orders of magnitude greater than what we have today. Obviously, this is an implausible scenario, but the fact that it could even brush up against the possible makes me wonder. How would such a system affect the value of gold? Our perception of what gold is? How would such a system applied to any resource, design, good, or service fundamentally change the way we interact with our world?
The digital revolution we have seen is something to behold, but perhaps it is only a stepping stone to something larger.
[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/devices/nanofabrication-enables-acceleratoronachip-technology https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/devices/n...
[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-lead-can-be-turned-into-gold/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-l...
- mac01021 9y agoThe following blog post[1] should be required reading for everyone everywhere. It talks about physical constraints on economic growth. The main point he makes is that, regardless of how inexhaustable our sources of energy are, increases in our rate of energy use are still necessarily limited. He notes: 1. Economic growth is always accompanied by increase in energy consumption. 2. Nearly all energy consumption (whether that be running current through computer chips, burning fuel in combustion engines, or just metabolizing food) has the effect of heating the surrounding land, air, or water. 3. If humanity's rate of energy use increases 2.3% every year, then the associated heat dissipation will be enough to cook us all within about 4 centuries. 4. Economic growth without an increased rate of energy use is not obviously impossible a priori, but it's definitely hard to imagine. [1] https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
- philippnagel 9y agoSuper interesting, thank you! Are you aware of any books exploring this topic further (aside from the textbook mentioned in the post)?
- fnovd 9y agoGreat blog post, but I had to take pause at this line: >Economist: More than happy to keep our discussion grounded to Earth. Of course we can't just keep ramping up terrestrial energy production ad infinitum. All evidence points to us trying to leave spaceship Earth. The entire discussion was grounded in a reality we are trying to move past.